NIMBYs By Any Other Name Are Still Progressives

I am hereby awarding my 2019 Award for the “Best Use of Alinsky’s Rule #4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules" to President Trump. I know it’s still early but the President’s plan to resettle “refugees” in sanctuary cities cannot be topped.

In one short tweet he’s exposed every progressive twit in America, along with all their talking points, for the pack of hypocritical NIMBYs they are.

Because every Progressive Democrat worth their salt has gone on record praising the virtues of “undocumented” immigrants, who they refuse to call “illegal.” How many times have they told us that all immigration is good and more immigration is even better? How many times have they told us that there is no such thing as an illegal human, that there is no distinction between legal and illegal immigration? And if you disagree you are worse than Hitler.

“Everyone is welcome in California”- Gavin Newsome

“We offer a home to immigrants, that’s who we are”- Elizabeth Warren

“Bring these people out of the shadows” –  Kamala Harris

“Immigration is not a security issue…there is no such thing as an illegal human.” – Kirsten Gillibrand

Yet offer to give them what they claim they want and they will accuse you of “dumping” - their word, not the President’s – refugees in their back yard, of using immigrant/refugees as “props” to “punish political enemies.”  Be careful now progs, your slip is showing. I mean, refugees never used to be considered “props used to punish political enemies,” not when Obama targeted small towns to resettle Syrian refugees.

Rural folks in Montana are pushing back against plans by urban elites to plant hundreds of Muslims from the Third World into Helena and Missoula. They plan a protest rally at 10 a.m. Monday in front of the county courthouse in Missoula.

So how, I ask you, can salt of the earth immigrants possibly be used as props? How can sending these cities, run by enlightened progressives, more of the very people they say they welcome with open arms be considered a punishment? Unless, as Obama said, you mean they’re being punished with a baby - or babies as the case may be.

Otherwise I don’t see how you can possible object to President Trump’s offer to resettle these human beings in some of the finest cities in America. It sure seems better than holding them in cages like Obama did, before eventually transferring them to what Progressives consider “hell holes” in flyover America like Podunk Iowa, South Dakota, Montana and Nebraska.

Instead Trump’s refugees will get to enjoy all the privileges of living in  LA, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston. There they will be able to avail themselves of all the finest medical care public money can buy in their overburdened emergency rooms, enjoy the finest education in their overloaded schools and overwhelm their overtaxed social services system.

I would have to say, well played Mr. President. Even Mr. Alinsky would have to commend your gamesmanship.

“The American people have resoundingly rejected this Administration’s toxic anti-immigrant policies, and Democrats will continue to advance immigration policies that keep us safe and honor our values.”

Checkmate

Have they, Nancy?

Would anyone like to seriously discuss immigration reform now? Maybe, now that MSM even acknowledges we might have a slight problem at the border: 'Breaking point': Mainstream media outlets change their tune on border crisis amid illegal immigration surge.

The 21st Century Weaponized ‘Tactile’ Parade of Idiots

Democrats seem to have a never-ending supply of idiots but it’s hard to outdo their womenfolk who are all too willing to parade their inadequacies around, starting with Maxine Waters.

Although Mad Maxie chairs the Financial Services Committee she frequently has no clue what that entails. For example, in grilling bank CEO’s earlier this week she appeared to have forgotten that Barack Hussein Obama nationalized the student loan program nearly a decade ago -

“By cutting out the middleman, we’ll save the American taxpayers $68 billion in the coming years,” Obama said when he signed the legislation in 2010.

thus removing banks from the loan process entirely. She also forgot that she herself had voted for it, twice. Or perhaps she just thinks that by their very existence “big banks” are responsible for all evils connected to money and should therefore be responsible to fix them.

Then, Waters turned the questions on the bank executives, asking what they intended to do about the student debt crisis: “What are you guys doing to help us with the student loan debt? Who would like to answer first? Mr. Monihan? Big bank?”

“We stopped making student loans in 2007 or so,” he responded.

“So you don’t do it anymore? Mr. Corbyn?” she pressed the next banker.

“We exited student lending in 2009,” he replied.

“Mr. Dimon?” Waters tried again.

“When the government took over student lending in 2010, we stopped doing all student lending,” he said. - Daily Caller

If you think that the chair of the House Financial Services Committee ought minimally be expected to understand the role and responsibilities of the institutions her committee purports to oversee, well, you’re probably a sexist. As well as a racist.

Next we have AOC, another member of Maxine’s committee, grilling Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan on his bank’s avaricious role in the funding of a pipeline that she doesn’t approve of and the ‘caging of children’ which I presume she likewise doesn’t approve. I’m unclear if she’s simply grandstanding or if she thinks it is her duty to shame people representing institutions who do things that she doesn’t approve of.

This is my “I’m smarter than the average fifth grader” face.

AOC: Why was the bank involved in the caging of children, and financing the caging of children to begin with?'

Sloan: 'I don't know how to answer that question because we weren't.'

Not to outsmarted by the Democratic women-of-color serving in Congress at the whim of the people, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand decided to weigh in on an even weightier subject:  “tactile” nuclear weapons. Hugh Hewitt and John Bolton seem to have enjoyed her tirade.

“When you say you want to develop low-yield nuclear weapons that are tactile (sic), what you’re saying is you want to use them.”

I suppose it’s only fair to point out that Gillibrand, member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was expressing her opposition to the President’s National Defense Authorization Act of 2019, because, among other things, it included provisions “to modify or develop a low-yield nuclear warhead for submarine-launched ballistic missiles,” more commonly referred to as “tactical” nuclear weapons. You might expect her to know the difference but being a female Democrat serving on a big, important Congressional committee means never having to say ‘I’m sorry, I misspoke.’

tactical - tac·ti·cal / adjective

1. relating to or constituting actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end.

   - (of bombing or weapons) done or for use in immediate support of military or naval operations.

2. (of a person or their actions) showing adroit planning; aiming at an end beyond the immediate action.

tactile -  tac-tile / adjective

1.  of, pertaining to, endowed with, or affecting the sense of touch.

2.  perceptible to the touch; tangible.

Or maybe Senator Gilli simply knows something we don’t.

So Last Century - “Tactical Nuclear Weapon”

New 21st Century version: part of the new fuzzy-wuzzy tactile stuffed animal line:

Squeeze the Teddy Bear at your own peril

I Spy

Roger Simon thinks Congressional Dems might want to treat William Barr a little more respectfully in future faceoffs as he may well hold their party’s future in his hands.

The big story from Barr's testimony then before the subcommittee was not that the AG plans to release a redacted version of the Mueller report within a week or even that those redactions will be color-coded four ways and annotated to explain the reasons for the edits. Or that Democrats like Nita Lowey whined about transparency with all the hypocrisy only a politician can muster. This is all pro forma and predictable.

The big story was the affirmative answer he gave to a question about whether he was planning to investigate the provenance of the Russia probe itself. That would, of course, include the FISA court scandal and the Steele dossier, not to mention strange--let's call them spooky-- occurrences in the UK well before the election. Barr noted he also would look at the eight criminal referrals of DOJ personnel and others coming from Devin Nunes. He further noted we could expect the inspector general's report on these matters in May or June. He was filled with such news, much of it spontaneously given…

In other words, Barr's obviously been paying attention to the larger situation and that is bad news indeed for Democrats. This is particularly true because the Mueller probe did not come up with any crimes connected to Russia collusion, but even the beginnings of an investigation of what prompted the probe in the first place has already come up with several. – William Barr Is The Democrats’ Worse Nightmare 

The Dems are really not going to like it when the other team has the ball. In their book that’s like a violation of the natural order of things.

Watch out! The elephants have been released!

I can’t wait for the smack talk to begin. Oh wait - it already has! Barr says he believes Trump’s 2016 campaign was spied on - by the Feds, for the Democrats.

Barr says he believes Trump's 2016 campaign was spied on. @brianschatz: "Do you wanna rephrase ... I think the word 'spying' could cause people in the cable news ecosystem to freak out."

Barr: "Unauthorized surveillance ... is that more appropriate in your eyes?" pic.twitter.com/nhZyIq8MhZ

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 10, 2019

It sounds like  they’re very comfortable in the bed they made. Or at least with the words that describe it.

That’s why they spent so much time, money and effort trying to ensure that we never got the ball back, but I guess they forgot to pay off all of the officials. That means the second half will definitely be more fun to watch.

P.S. Speaking of spies, what do you think - Julian Assange: hero or villain?

Reparations: Not Just For Black-Hyphenated-Americans Anymore

Reparations? Yes. No, wait…not just yes, but HELL YES!

And why not? Let’s make the riff between races in America more pronounced, let’s ensure the rent in our country’s social fabric rips deeper. That is definitely a winning strategy, if not for the country then at least for the Democrats. Because honestly what America needs most is less individualism and more tribalism.

So let’s do that thing; let’s cough up money from the public coffers to make payments to people who’ve never been slaves to anything other than the Democrats’ plantation mentality. Let’s make people who have never even entertained the idea of slavery let alone owned one pay atonement for the white man’s guilt. Why? Because collective guilt is such a great concept! That way White-Americans can all chip in to shoulder the blame for something they did not do in order to pay off the non-slave descendant victims-by-proxy. That’s a Win Win! for the Democrats.

So, who’s in? Almost every Democratic candidate for president, that’s who.

They’ve all kissed the ring of the  Rev of Rend Sharpton. The idea of the government paying reparations to African-hyphen-Americans as compensation for the enslavement of their ancestors.

How does this little gnat still hold such sway?

Paying reparations for the country’s past slavery assumes a collective guilt of the living for the sins of the dead. That makes as much sense as sending a murderer’s great grandchildren to prison 100 years later when DNA evidence proves their grandfather was a killer. Have we finally lost our collective minds? Let me rephrase that: have the Democrats finally lost their collective minds? Or have they simply taken pandering to the next level as there is an election on the horizon? I vote for the later.

A parade of presidential wannabes and other Democrats took turns opining at the National Action Network conference — including Sen. Bernie Sanders, who reversed his opposition on reparations.

“I would say this, there needs to be a study.”

The Vermont independent was referring to a bill by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) calling for a study of reparations for slavery and segregation. - NYP

He had no choice really, as he was preceded by Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke all kissing the ring of reparations.

And despite the fact she isn’t old enough to run for President for another five and a half years, you’ll not be surprised to hear that AOC is on the reparation bandwagon as well. And from the sounds of her stump speech at Al’s National Action Network I’d say she’s definitely honing her platform for 2024 – at which time she figures America will be, like, totally ready for a financially illiterate Socialist Democrat. 

“That is the moral political and economic underpinning of making bold investments and dignified jobs because that is the necessary plan to fix the pipes in Flint [Michigan] and clean the air in the South Bronx, and create unionized energy jobs for transitioning workers in Appalachia and West Virginia, for single-payer health care and Medicare-for-all and tuition-free public colleges and universities to prepare our nation for the future, and for the end of mass incarceration, the war on drugs, examining and pursuing an agenda of reparations and fixing the opioid crisis too.”

And when Sandy wins those reparations will not be just for African-Americans, but for all the marginalized, brown-skinned, illegal hyphenated-Americans who came here expecting a better life and were screwed by Trump.

Beto-I’m-Too-Sexy-For-For-My-Suit-O’Rourke votes #metoo! on reparations

An Excellent Adventure in the Semi-Big City

We made a supply run into the city yesterday. We were running low on your basic paper supplies and coffee which always triggers a Costco run and Raj wanted to go to his favorite ethnic stores in order to pick up some weird ingredients that he may or may not use at some point in a future. The first stop of the day was the Chinatown Supermarket on State street in South Salt Lake.

Entryway to the Chinatown Supermarket and food emporium

This is really more entertainment than shopping. The shelves and coolers are filled with every Asian ingredient you’ve ever heard of as well as thousands you haven’t. It has an entire wall of loose leaf tea in apothecary jars, freshly roasted pork belly and whole ducks (with the quackers)

as well as a wall of live-tanks stocked with every sea creature known to man, and some that you wish weren’t.

Like these giant geoduck clams

After amusing ourselves for 45 minutes or so we emerged to find the State Street exit closed off and this going on:

Apparently a man had held up two convenience stores earlier sparking a highspeed chase down State Street. During the pursuit he leaned out the window and fired a rifle (variously described as a “long gun” “AK-47” and an assault rifle) at police while careening down the busy thoroughfare. He eventually crashed his truck into a building just north of the Chinatown Emporium where he was shot and killed by police.

Fortunately there was only one minor injury to the LEOs in the pursuit and takedown of this idiot. Watching it on the local news later I learned that witnesses to the earlier robberies described the perpetrator as a “tall thin white man.” Now I don’t know about tall and thin, but the only “white man” thing about this guy – shown here in a 2007 mug shot -

is his name: Harold Vincent Robinson. And yes, he had a rap sheet as long as your arm including counts of aggravated kidnapping and assault that date back to 2001, all of which had been dismissed for one unfathomable reason or another.

Also of note is the write up of the incident in the Salt Lake Tribune. The story was less about the robberies, pursuit and ultimate killing of the suspect than it was about the Iraqi tailor who owned the shop that the truck randomly ran into:

 'It was like the end of the world’: Shop owner recounts robbery suspect crashing truck into his South Salt Lake business and police shootout

Tom Mahdi is no stranger to violence.

The former tailor for Saddam Hussein’s sister, Mahdi and his family fled their Baghdad home amid war, after learning of possible retaliation against people with ties to the onetime First Family. They were refugees in Jordan and moved in 2009 to Utah, where they started a sewing and alterations shop on State Street and settled into a life of peace.

That peace was shattered Monday when a pickup truck crashed into the business’s front door, followed by a hail of police gunfire. Mahdi, alone in the rear of the shop, said he stood paralyzed as rock and dirt sprayed around him.

That is some fine J-school training on display right there.

Later we had lunch at a very busy Chick-fil-a before stocking up at Costco and heading back up the mountain before today’s “Winter Storm Alert” arrives. On the way out of town we ran into the usual homeless panhandlers, all pitching at their favorite corners.

Now, for those of you under the delusion that Salt Lake is immune to big city progressivism because of it’s large Mormon population let me disabuse of that idea. This city has become so liberal over the past 25 years that it would make your head spin. While not even close to Seattle’s league yet, it is certainly on it’s merry liberal way. Here’s a picture I took yesterday afternoon, also on State Street much closer to downtown. In case you can’t make it out it’s a man, a woman a dog and all their earthly possessions taking a break from panhandling in the shade of the local Wienerschnitzel.

Note that der Weinerschnitzel, like every other fast food restaurant in Salt Lake as the unemployment rate here is practically zero, is hiring.

All in all an excellent adventure in the semi-big city. We are all doomed, doomed I tell you.

Utah Passes the Country’s First “Free-Range Parenting Bill”

“A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer.” - Hanna Rosin, The Overprotected Kid

What could go wrong? For one thing  kids whose lives are micro-managed by helicopter parents from cradle through their first job interview never learn to manage risks on their own.

Helicopter parents have been around at least since the dawning of the Millennials but I first reported on them  4 years ago. The post discussed pushback in Wales where some concerned parents built a park called “The Land” filled with junk where kids were still allowed to wander freely, build stuff and *gasp!* build fires.

“Today, these playgrounds are so out of sync with affluent and middle-class parenting norms that when I showed fellow parents back home a video of kids crouched in the dark lighting fires, the most common sentence I heard from them was ‘This is insane.’”

As I observed at the time,

Of course, what’s considered “insane” today was part of a normal childhood just a generation or so ago. It was called “play” not “play dates.” It was how kids learned about the world, how to overcome both physical and mental obstacles, stretch their imagination, explore the unknown, solve seemingly impossible problems; and they did it all in the real world where they would reside for the rest of their lives, not the virtual world of video games.

The post was really about the Meitiv kids who were picked up by police in Silver Spring, Maryland at the behest of CPS for walking home from a neighborhood park – alone. Apparently in Maryland walking home without the accompaniment of a parental unit is illegal.  

It’s hard to absorb how much childhood norms have shifted in just one generation. Actions that would have been considered paranoid in the ’70s—walking third-graders to school, forbidding your kid to play ball in the street, going down the slide with your child in your lap—are now routine.

No kidding. But this type of overprotection naturally led to the next level, Growing Up By Proxy, in which the helicopter lands and morphs into a bulldozer to clear the landscape of any obstacles in the kids path.

Helicopter parenting, the practice of hovering anxiously near one’s children, monitoring their every activity, is so 20th century. Some affluent mothers and fathers now are more like snowplows: machines chugging ahead, clearing any obstacles in their child’s path to success, so they don’t have to encounter failure, frustration or lost opportunities. – NYT

But take heart: someone is asking the big questions, like:

What kind of society are we when we need laws to protect parents who raise their children the way most of us were raised?

I think we all know the answer to that, the kind where many things that were once taken for granted now have to be authorized by the state. So Utah did just that.

For parents in Utah, it is now legal for their children to walk or bike to and from school without an accompanying adult. They can also let their kids play outside unsupervised, and be allowed to stay at home unattended.

These newfound freedoms are the result of the “Free-Range Parenting Bill,” unanimously passed by the Utah legislature and recently signed into law by Utah governor, Gary R. Herbert. Utah’s law is said to be the first of its kind in the nation.

State officials and lawmakers told the Washington Post that authorities in Utah were “not in the business” of arresting parents who allowed their children to roam freely, but lawmakers felt compelled to pass the legislation after Child Protective Service in other states opened criminal cases against parents who did.

Yes we have come a long way baby; maybe it’s time to take a breath along with a few steps back. Oh, wait, that makes us regressive doesn’t it? And that’s a baaad thing. Because progressive, good; regressive, bad.

Of course the Progs are the ones who are always collapsing and baying at the moon, not us.

It is a sad commentary on American life when we need laws to protect parents from prosecution for letting their kids walk, play, or stay at home unsupervised. But if that’s what it takes, call your legislators. Maybe kids will once again learn how to be independent and discover that they really don’t need Big Government to provide for all their basic needs (and wants). And then they too will want to MAGA.

Art: It Will Rock Your Weltanschauung

While I still have 2 plus feet of snow in the north-facing front yard, and it’s likely to snow again today, I have seen signs that we are headed into spring, or mud season such as it is around here. So let’s focus on a different aesthetic altogether today, art.

Genre is irrelevant. Be it lens:

brush:

Valley Evening Brent Cotton

loom:

needle:

or wood:

Give us your best art. Or artist.

And by the way, congrats to Abenaki for breeding the best Alpaca Art Wool in North America!

Art: it will rock your weltanschauung.