Bookworm Room

Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

Is Trump a Nazi monster for separating illegal alien children and parents?

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Obama deliberately encouraged an influx of illegal alien children as a means of circumventing immigration law. Trump is merely reinstating the rule of law.

Immigration Illegal Alien Children

Children detained under Barack Obama, 2014 (Credit: Breitbart Texas)

I should have known that the weekend would explode into talk about Trump’s policies towards illegal aliens when I had an . . . ahem . . . “interesting” conversation with a very Proggie neighbor on Thursday at an end-of-the-school-year get together. He opened by telling me that “Your president Trump is destroying my business.”

“Well, hello to you too, neighbor.”

Here’s the story: This guy has for years been running a network of odd job people who do everything from power-washing decks to detailing cars to gardening. He relies primarily on illegal aliens to do this work. I have nothing personal against his team. He’s been working with many of them for years, and I’m sure they’re hardworking, solid people who simply want to give their families a better chance. Nevertheless, they are here illegally — and, importantly, my neighbor’s entire business model is dependent on their illegality.

Because of labor shortages in Marin (housing is too expensive for blue-collar and day labor people), he still has to pay these guys almost twice minimum wage. Nevertheless, I’m guessing that he doesn’t bother with things like employment taxes, benefits, etc. I don’t know for sure, but let’s just say that I have my suspicions.

When the neighbor greeted me by saying that Trump is destroying his business, the first thing I wanted to say was, “If your business is built on illegality, you must have known from the beginning that there was a chance law enforcement would catch up with you or at least force a change in your business model.” Indeed, as I see it, he’s quite lucky because his business is so diffuse that he hasn’t been on the receiving end of an ICE raid. His problem is that it appears that some of his employees have decided to self-deport — which is what one can predict will happen if our existing laws are actually enforced.

However, because this was a party, I wasn’t going to match my neighbor’s rudeness with my own. Instead, I just told him, “Trump’s enforcing the laws as written. If you don’t like the laws, get them changed. Obama had two years during which he could have changed the laws to grant amnesty and increase the number of Latin American immigrants . . . but he didn’t, so please don’t come crying to me.”

After a few more pointless ad hominem attacks on Trump, which I ignored, my excitable neighbor drifted away. I was no fun.

That confrontation, though, primed me for what happened over the weekend, which was the complete explosion of the “Trump is a Nazi for putting children in cages” meme led by (of course) a former CIA head (because we’re learning that many are crazy, anti-American, Deep State sociopaths):

Hayden is an ignorant man. A really, really ignorant man, not to mention intellectually shallow and manifestly stupid. Here’s what happened with the Nazis:

Starting in the 1930s, the Nazis starting enacting laws based, not on conduct, but on race. They declared that German citizens, people whose families had often been in Germany for centuries, were illegal simply by virtue of being Jewish. Then, for having committed the crime of just being, the Nazis hunted down these German Jewish citizens, stripped them of their possessions, tossed them into sadistically run, slave-labor concentration camps (splitting parents from children), and then killed as many of them as possible, both parents and children.

Beginning in 1939, the Nazis exported this practice. They violently invaded other countries and, once in power, declared that anyone who was Jewish was an illegal being simply by virtue of being Jewish. Then, for having committed the crime of just being, the Nazis hunted down Jews, stripped them of their possessions, tossed them into sadistically run, slave-labor concentration camps (splitting parents from children), and then killed as many of them as possible, both parents and children.

That’s the Nazis. What’s happening here, in Trump’s United States?

We have borders. We also have laws saying that it is illegal to cross into the United States over those borders without prior permission. Two segments of America hate those laws: the Proggies, who want as many votes as possible, giving them an incentive to bring in people whose votes can be bought. They also need bodies for census purposes. In the Leftist states to which the illegal aliens flock, counting those bodies in the census allows for more Leftist representatives in the House. That’s why Leftists are hysterical that Trump wants to exclude illegal aliens from the 2020 census. California, for example, isn’t quite so populous when you don’t count the almost 3,000,000 illegal aliens living in the state. And of course, as part of all the intersectional, white-male-hating Leftist craziness, Proggies simply want to drown out whites.

The other group that hates our immigration laws is the Chamber of Commerce cohort, to the extent it is composed of people desperate for cheap labor. The cheapest labor, as my neighbor knows, is to pay illegal immigrants under the table, while avoiding all the other required payments for legal employees, such as social security matching, unemployment, disability, taxes, etc. The next cheapest labor is to pay immigrants legitimately, but paying only minimum wage, because illegals are not always in a position to demand more. Were the illegals not around, these businesses would have to pay more to American-born laborers, including the blacks and American-born Hispanics against him the illegals compete. [Read more…]

Obama’s Marxist predestination v. Trump’s free will future

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The video that Trump showed to Kim Jong Un is a direct challenge to Obama’s Marxist predestination; it promises the triumph of great men with free will.

Trump peace North Korea PredestinationPresident Obama always had a lot to say about history. More specifically, he had a lot to say about future history.

As Obama made repeatedly clear, he believed that has a “right” side that will inevitably unfold if the world implements Obama’s policies. History also has a “wrong” side, which means doing anything counter to President Obama’s beliefs about how the world should be run. I won’t bore you with his “wrong” side critiques, but I find it quite instructive to see assembled in one place all his “right side of history” statements he made during his presidency:

  • “Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.” The President’s News Conference, June 23, 2009 (remarks about those who died in Iran protesting the mullahs, a protest Obama refused to support).
  • “I think history will end up recording that at every juncture in the situation in Egypt, that we were on the right side of history.” The President’s News Conference, February 15, 2011 (speaking of the Obama administration’s support for the radically Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, a political leadership so vile that millions of Egyptians later turned out to overthrow it).
  • “Those around him have to understand that violence that they perpetrate against innocent civilians will be monitored and they will be held accountable for it. And so to the extent that they are making calculations in their own minds about which way history is moving, they should know history is moving against Colonel Qadhafi and that their support for him and their willingness to carry out orders that are direct violence against citizens is something that ultimately they will be held accountable for.” The President’s News Conference With President Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa of Mexico, March 3, 2011 (justifying his decision to betray an ally — admittedly an ugly ally, but still an ally — during the Iraq War).
  • “And I think that the region [the Arab Middle East] will be watching carefully to make sure we’re on the right side of history, but also that we are doing so as a member of the world community and being willing to act on behalf of these values, but doing so in a way that takes all the various equities into account.” The President’s News Conference With President Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa of Mexico, March 3, 2011 (justifying, again, the decision to throw American weight behind the Muslim Brotherhood).
  • “And whether it’s helping the people of Haiti or it’s helping the people of Japan, whether it is being on the right side of history in the Middle East and North Africa or making sure that innocents who are seeking their freedom aren’t slaughtered by tyranny, what we’ve been able to do is to once again form the kind of American leadership that brings people together, as opposed to drives them apart, and that renews old alliances and creates new coalitions.” Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Fundraiser in New York City, March 29, 2011 (justifying yet once more his decision to throw America’s weight behind the Islamists during the Arab Spring).
  • “That’s why we’re on the right side of history now throughout the Middle East, because we believe in preventing innocents from getting slaughtered, and we believe in human rights for all people.” Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Fundraiser in Chicago, April 14, 2011 (Obama seems to be getting a tad defensive about allying himself with the Islamists).
  • “And as Clay has said, nothing is going to stop us from getting this done, because we’re on the right side of history. It is the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do for our economy, our businesses, and our families.” Remarks at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas, November 6, 2013 (after the disastrous Obamacare launch, trying to get people to sign up).
  • “But we’re on the right side of history on that issue.” Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Reception in San Jose, California, May 8, 2014 (expressing befuddlement at people who don’t like Obamacare).
  • “We’re on the right side of history.” Remarks on Signing an Executive Order on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Employment Discrimination, July 21, 2014.
  • “What gives me confidence is that we’re on the right side of history here.” Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Fundraiser in Baltimore, Maryland, September 12, 2014 (commenting about the fight against ISIS, a fight, incidentally, that he barely waged for, as he later told Americans, it was enough to contain it. Trump, of course, thought it was enough to destroy it completely).
  • “We will impose a cost on Russia for aggression, and we will counter falsehoods with the truth. And we call upon others to join us on the right side of history.” Remarks to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, September 24, 2014 (offering bold criticisms about Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, a situation about which Obama ultimately did . . . nothing).
  • “America is leading the effort to rally the world against Russian aggression in Ukraine. Along with our allies, we will support the people of Ukraine as they develop their democracy and economy. And this week, I called upon even more nations to join us on the right side of history.” The President’s Weekly Address, September 27, 2014 (see comment above).
  • “My fellow Americans, I am confident we will succeed in this mission because we are on the right side of history.” Address to the Nation on United States Counterterrorism Strategy, December 6, 2015 (speaking about counterterrorism efforts after the San Bernardino attack — efforts that expressly included refraining from conflating Islam with terrorism, while conceding delicately that a subsection of Muslims are not nice people).
  • “If we don’t do what’s required now, I think future generations are going to look back and ask why we failed to act when the right course—the right side of history and of justice and our best American traditions—was clear.” Remarks on Closing the Detention Facilities at the United States Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, February 23, 2016.
  • “And so it’s important for the U.S. President—and the U.S. Government—to be able to work with people who are building and who are creating things and creating jobs and trying to solve major problems like climate change and setting up educational exchanges for young people who are going to create the next new, great invention or scientific breakthrough that can cure diseases. We have to make sure that we lift up, and stay focused, as well, on the things that are most important to us. Because we’re on the right side of history.” The President’s News Conference With President Mauricio Macri of Argentina in Buenos Aires, Argentina, March 23, 2016.
  • “By the way, what’s happening with respect to her position on refugees here in Europe, she is on the right side of history on this.” The President’s News Conference With Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in Hannover, Germany, April 24, 2016 (proving to his own satisfaction that Merkel was right to open Europe’s gates to millions of Muslims, a policy that has not turned out well, both because it turned the 1683 Battle of Vienna to save Europe from Islamic imperialism into a delayed defeat and it led to a populist uprising that horrifies Obama and his fellow ideologues).
  • “You will never be strong enough to destroy America or our way of life. You are going to lose. But part of that is because we’re on the right side of history, and part of it is because we can mobilize others to work with us.” Commencement Address at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, June 2, 2016 (applauding his ineffective anti-ISIS policy).
  • “In every position he held, Ab’s integrity and wisdom consistently put him on the right side of history, from fighting against prejudice and discrimination and for free speech and civil liberties. He reformed Illinois’s criminal code, defended consumers’ rights, and although his decision striking down the ban on gay Americans serving in our military was overturned, history proved him right.” Statement on the Death of Former White House Counsel Abner J. Mikva, July 5, 2016.
  • “Standing here now, in retrospect, I think what I can say is that the United States was on the right side of history when it came to the cold war.” The President’s News Conference in Vientiane, Laos, September 8, 2016 (Finally! Something about which Obama and I can agree, although he seems strangely disappointed in being forced to make that statement).

It’s easy to lead from behind if you already know where the parade is going to end. [Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 6/12/2018 — Trump Takes on The World illustrated edition

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This illustrated edition is overflowing with the best takes on Trump’s triumphs at the G-7 and in Singapore. I am so loving the Trump presidency!

[Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 7/6/2018 — The post D-Day edition and open thread

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There are so many interesting things out there (apologies, pardons, STDs, war, etc.) that I had to do a Bookworm Beat to share all of them with you.

Bookworm BeatSamantha Bee apologizes as only a narcissist can. One of the surest signs that someone is a narcissist is the fact that he or she cannot offer a heartfelt apology. Narcissists only traffic in non-apology apologies.

For example, if a narcissist breaks your vase, the narcissist will not say “I am so sorry I broke your vase.” Instead, the narcissist will say “I’m sorry you’re upset that your vase is broken.” Translated, this means that the narcissist is sorry that you are angry at the narcissist. The narcissist, in his own mind, has done nothing to merit this anger. It was undoubtedly your fault, in some way as yet unknown, that the narcissist was forced to break your vase. And it’s a damn shame for the narcissist’s peace of mind you’re upset about it.

Samantha Bee is a narcissist. The appropriate thing for Bee to have done after calling Ivanka Trump the C-word, would have been to say “I am so sorry I called Ivanka Trump the C-word. It was crude and uncalled for. I did it for effect. I was not thinking and I am ashamed of myself for what I have done.” Instead, Bee, a true narcissist, essentially doubled down.

She first complained that people were mad at her. They should not be mad, she implied, because she is trying to reclaim the C-word.  Her mistake was in having momentarily abandoned this reclamation by wasting the word as an insult to Ivanka (who, Bee implies, deserved whatever insults came her way).

Having explained to her own satisfaction that people were too dumb to understand her feminist linguistic goals, Bee was ready to issue Phase 1 of the non-apology apology: “I crossed the line, I regret it, and I do apologize for that.” In other words, she’s not at all sorry that she launched a vile insult against Ivanka. She’s simply sorry that she got caught crossing the line.

It only got worse from there. Phase 2 was for Bee to say she was sorry that people didn’t understand that she was talking about immigration (how stupid of them). She was sorry that stupid people didn’t realize that her mis-use of the C-word (remember, she’s reclaiming it) obscured the fact that everything she did was “for the children.”

Bee ended by once again blaming Ivanka and all the other stupid conservatives for forcing her to issue the non-apology apology: “Civility is just nice words. Maybe we should all worry a little bit more about the niceness of our actions.”

As I said, she’s a narcissist.

Also, if you want to have fun watching a narcissist not apologize, I hope you’ve been following Bill Clinton’s travails as he tries to function in a #MeToo world.  You can just see him thinking to himself that nobody was demanding these ridiculous apologies back in the 1990s. Clinton is not sorry he destroyed Monica Lewinsky’s life — although she was complicit in her own seduction, Bill and Hillary went out of their way to destroy her reputation. He’s not sorry about Pedophile Island. He’s not sorry about assaulting and raping women. He’s just really, really sorry people nowadays keep demanding that he apologize. [Read more…]

Trump is the Democrats’ Stay Puft Marshmallow Man

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Ben Shapiro’s insight that the media created Donald Trump reminds me of nothing so much as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters.

Donald Trump Stay Puft Marshmallow ManIt’s no secret that Ben Shapiro does not like Donald Trump. Shapiro, a refined type himself, really struggles to see past Trump’s vulgarity and the constant dodging and weaving of someone for whom everything is a negotiation. Still, Shapiro is an honest man, and he recently acknowledged that Trump is the most conservative president in his lifetime:

The above clip reveals that Shapiro has yet to figure out that Trump’s rhetoric is not wild, but tightly controlled, and is part of his power. But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about one other thing that Ben Shapiro said in an article he recently wrote. Shapiro thinks, and I agree, that it was reasonable to believe when Trump, a lifetime Democrat and a social liberal, started campaigning, the he would have governed as a centrist or even as a soft Leftist. Certainly that’s what most conservatives worried about when they thought of President Trump. I wouldn’t denigrate Trump as Shapiro does, but he’s right about the fact that a warm Democrat embrace would have resulted in a very different Trump presidency:

Democrats had a massive opportunity when Trump was elected. As an ideological nonconformist and a reactionary personality, Trump seems particularly susceptible to praise and flattery. Imagine if Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) had strolled into the Oval Office during the first week of Trump’s presidency, sidled up to Trump, and told him that they’d love to impose indelible change on America by granting everyone comprehensive health care. There’s a decent shot that with the help of then–White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, Trump would have gone full Bernie Sanders. That isn’t complete speculation — in September 2017, Trump went over the heads of congressional Republicans in favor of working with Schumer and Pelosi to avoid a government shutdown.

Democrats, though, were so invested in Hillary, and so reflexively hostile to anything Republican, that they went in an entirely different direction. First, they ridiculed Trump: [Read more…]

My “Trump’s America” movie looks as if it will have a happy ending *UPDATED*

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I wake up happy every day in Trump’s America because I’m convinced that I’m watching a wonderful documentary in which America and Americans are thriving.

Trump's America happy movieOne of the points Scott Adams makes repeatedly is that reality is an essentially fluid concept. In order to make sense of the world, we run everything through filters, kind of like our personal 3-D glasses.

Some of these filters are obvious. If you were Japanese, December 7, 1941 was a good day; if you were American, it was not. Same thing in reverse for August 6, 1945 — if you were Japanese, that was a very bad day indeed, while it was a great day for Americans, especially those American troops who would no longer have to fight every step of the way to achieve the inevitable victory over mainland Japan. Perspective matters when we view events in our lives.

Adams’ favorite analogy (or, at least, I think it’s his favorite analogy) is to say that Progressives and conservatives in America are watching two different movies. I certainly see that in my own life as a conservative living in a Progressive enclave. For the last year, my movie has been a wonderful documentary about a revitalized America. Meanwhile, my friends think I’m in a crazy fantasy and that their dystopian horror movie about a chaotic, hate-filled world is the real documentary.

Of late, and with Adams’ in mind, when I talk to Progressives, I’ve taken to telling them about Adams’ two movie theory. I then say, not that my movie is the one true documentary, the reality that history will affirm, but that “I hope that future events reveal that my movie is the correct one, because it will be a better world for our children and grandchildren.”

Because I’ve phrased my optimism as a “hope,” not a “fact,” Progressives can’t argue with me. After all, they’ll sound pretty mean-spirited, almost evil, if they say they prefer that their horror movie, the one in which their descendants suffer, ends up proving to reality.

Once I’ve established that my movie is just that — a filter coloring my understanding of events in Trump’s America — I then proceed to list to Progressives all the things that give me hope. Again, because I’ve already acknowledged that this is simply my perspective and I respect theirs (so I lie a little), I don’t get an argument. They actually listen.

I thought I’d share with you the many reasons that I am watching a very happy movie and am more confident with every day that my movie will prove to be the real-time documentary, not the lunatic fantasy:

1. The economy is wonderful. Don’t listen to me on that point. Listen to — gasp! — an article in The New York Times:

The real question in analyzing the May jobs numbers released Friday is whether there are enough synonyms for “good” in an online thesaurus to describe them adequately.

So, for example, “splendid” and “excellent” fit the bill. Those are the kinds of terms that are appropriate when the United States economy adds 223,000 jobs in a month, despite being nine years into an expansion, and when the unemployment rate falls to 3.8 percent, a new 18-year low.

“Salubrious,” “salutary” and “healthy” work as words to describe the 0.3 percent rise in average hourly earnings, which are up 2.7 percent over the last year — a nice improvement but also not the kind of sharp increase that might lead the Federal Reserve to rethink its cautious path of interest rate increases.

And a broader definition of unemployment, which includes people who have given up looking for a job out of frustration, fell to 7.6 percent. The jobless rate for African-Americans fell to 5.9 percent, the lowest on record, which we would count as “great.”

From where I stand, that’s a movie that’s making me smile. Anyone who wants a horror movie filled with poor people instead of a happy economic documentary movie is mean.

2. Things are improving for America’s minorities. Again, don’t listen to me. I’ll just repeat a sentence from the above quotation: “The jobless rate for African-Americans fell to 5.9 percent, the lowest on record, which we would count as ‘great.'” I think it’s great too.

I also happen to think American minorities are benefiting from more than just the good economy. I think it helps that Trump has put up a “no trespassing” sign for those in the country illegally or those contemplating coming into the country illegally.

Face it: Illegal aliens are not taking away my job as a lawyer. Illegal aliens are taking away Mr. Black Person’s job as a gardening entrepreneur or Ms. Hispanic Person’s job as a housecleaning entrepreneur. I love entrepreneurship. I just think those in this country legally, especially those with deep roots in the country, should get first dibs. [Read more…]

The choice for California governor: John Cox v. Gavin Newsom

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In the battle for California governor, a surprisingly even-handed pro-Gavin Newsom flyer makes an incredibly strong case for voting for Republican John Cox.

John Cox California GovernorIn an ideal world, on June 5, when California voters go to the polls, members of the various political parties would have a chance to select which of the candidates affiliated with their party should end up on the ticket in November. But we do not live in an ideal world. We live in California, which several years ago chose to become an “open-primary” state.

What “open primary” means is “no primary” — party members cannot choose their candidate. Instead, an open primary is a “pre-election election,” with the top two winners facing off against each other in November. As I detailed in a post dedicated to the whole misbegotten scheme, the purpose is to remove Republicans entirely from the California ballot every November.

Sometimes, though, even the best-laid Democrat schemes go awry. In this case, two factors are creating the serious possibility that the Democrat front-runner, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, will find himself running, not against a less popular Democrat, but against an actual Republo-Libertarian, businessman John Cox.

The first factor behind this unexpected scenario is that there are a ton of Democrat candidates, ranging from hard Left to harder Left to hardest Left, and they are literally tearing each other apart. While Newsom will undoubtedly end up on the ballot’s top spot, it appears that the other Democrats will divide the vote so much that none will take second place — which leads us to the second factor: The mini-conservative rebellion in California seems to be consolidating around John Cox.

I have to admit that, of the two top Republican candidates, I prefer Travis Allen. This is not meant as a cut at Cox, whom I’d be very happy to see in the California governor’s mansion. I just like Allen’s energy more.

The numbers, however, seem to be supporting Cox, which is, I assume, the reason why Trump just endorsed him. I don’t see Trump’s endorsement as an actual personal preference for one candidate over the other. I think he’s being a pragmatist and is throwing his weight behind the candidate currently most likely to prevail over Democrats other than Newsom for a spot on the November ballot.

What’s clear is that, now that Trump has endorsed Cox, Democrats are worried. How worried? I received an interesting flyer in today’s mail from the Citizens Supporting Gavin Newsom for Governor 2018, which I reproduce below. So that you can understand it, the flyer is a single sheet of 11 x 17 paper, folded in half. If you were holding the flyer in your hand, you would open it and see pages two and three facing each other: [Read more…]

President Trump, our behaviorist in chief, schools Kim Jong Un

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Kim Jong Un’s temper tantrum upon mention of Libya was predictable, so I’m betting Trump put that out there on purpose to continue using behaviorism on Kim.

Kim Jong Un North Korea NuclearBack in my kids’ pre-school days, one of the moms told a very funny story. She had been struggling to get her three-year-old to put on his shoes before he left the house. He thought this was a terrible idea and would throw a temper tantrum every time she told him to put on his shoes. When the tantrum ended, and he put his shoes on, she would give him a cookie to reward him for putting on his shoes.

It was only after going through this routine for several weeks that she realized that her son thought that the tantrum was a prerequisite to the cookie. In other words, she had managed to train him to tantrum first, put on shoes second.

What my friend described was behaviorism gone wrong. Good behaviorism, though, produces better outcomes. Before I go further, I’d better explain what I mean by “behaviorism.” Wikipedia offers a leaden definition:

Behaviorism (or behaviourism) is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that all behaviors are either reflexes produced by a response to certain stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual’s history, including especially reinforcement and punishment, together with the individual’s current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of inheritance in determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental factors.

Yeah, whatever. Let me try to explain the concept as I understand it:

When you are dealing with a third-party (or a dog), and you want to change that third party’s (or dog’s) behavior, the reality is that, absent brute force, you it’s almost impossible actually to change someone else’s behavior. Like the famous light bulb, they have to want to change. The best that you can do when your current behavior is not effecting a change in the other person or dog is to change your behavior to see if that affects their responses. It’s essentially motivational training.

Dog training offers a good example. The old way of housebreaking dogs involved screaming at the dog if one found a puddle in the house and then rubbing the dog’s nose in it. This effectively terrorized dogs, but that did not mean they associated our behavior with the principle that they should do their business outside. Our psychological cues made no sense to them.

Sensible behaviorism says that we should create conditions within which the dog will succeed: Because dogs do not like to soil their immediate environment, we should keep them in that environment in the lead-up to their anticipated walk to prevent pre-walk accidents. Then, when the time is right, we take them outside and expose them to scent stimuli that will encourage them to do their business. Immediately upon their having done so, we praise them or give them a treat. Our behavior is no longer irrationally punitive but is, instead, purposefully positive. This encourages the dog to change its own behavior and to view the back yard, rather than the living room, as its toilet.

The same holds true in dealing with children. I will deny with the last breath in my body that I was a very good parent. I did figure out, however, that a child who is having a tantrum is demanding attention. The best way to deal with a tantrum, provided that the child is not hurting himself, someone else, or your house, is to ignore the child. The result was that my children never threw tantrums because there was nothing in it for them to do so.  [Read more…]

Frank Bruni’s anti-Mueller opinion piece is an insight into the Leftist mind

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With the Mueller investigation discredited, Frank Bruni suddenly realizes that Trump used America’s winner-take-all system to enact conservative policies.

Illustrated edition Trump not a sexual predator Congress MuellerFrank Bruni’s latest opinion piece at the New York Times — Robert Mueller, You’re Starting To Scare Me — is a fascinating window into the Progressives’ narcissistic mindset. Superficially, the column has a single point: the Mueller investigation is sucking so much oxygen out of the room that nobody is paying attention to what Trump is actually doing. In reality, though, it presents a world in which there can be only one point of view and one way to do things. All other viewpoints aren’t just different, they are unacceptable, even in a two-party democratic republic.

Before I get to the “Trumpian horrors” that Bruni lists, I want to take a minute to comment on his overarching thesis (that Mueller’s investigation sucked all the available oxygen out of D.C.’s news reporting). Much as it pains me to agree with Bruni, I have to. He’s perfectly correct that the Leftist media’s obsessive focus on the elusive Russian collusion theory has left them without time or energy to talk about the other things that Trump is doing.

However, while I’m always happy to blame Mueller for lots of things, the reality is that the silence on Trump’s other activities isn’t Mueller’s fault; it’s the media’s fault. Just see my reference, above, to the media’s “obsessive focus” on Mueller. Nobody is making them devote 90% of their time to that story; it’s their choice.

Bruni’s plaint probably explains why Trump didn’t exercise more executive authority over the past year to constrain the Mueller investigation. It wasn’t just the bad optics of doing so or the fact that Trump is a law-abiding executive and therefore was unwilling to interfere with a process he knew would reveal him to be innocent anyway. It probably suited Trump just fine to have the media off screaming about Mueller’s investigation, leaving him free to govern.

Just because Mueller Bruni is right about his major thesis, though, doesn’t mean he’s right about the minor thesis, which is that Trump has been committing governing atrocities all over the place. Apropos governing atrocities, when I think of them, I think of acts that violate the Constitution or the law of the United States. Some examples would be (1) allowing administrative agencies to legislate, as was the case with Obama’s HHS and EPA mandates; (2) weaponizing the IRS to shut down conservative groups during an election year; (3) spying on reporters; (4) entering into multi-million and billion dollar deals with foreign governments (the Paris Accord and the Iran Deal) without getting Congressional approval; (5) going into war in Libya without Congressional approval; (6) illegal gun-running into Mexico; (8) unilaterally changing Congressionally-legislated immigration laws to align with the Democrat Party platform, etc.

In all the examples I mentioned above, the problem for me is not that I disagreed with Obama’s policies. That’s a given, because Obama comes from a political ideology I oppose and, with him in the White House, I knew that his executive acts would run counter to my desires. However, that’s the way things happen in a “winner takes all” two-party democratic republic. The real problem for me is that each of the above acts exceeded Obama’s executive power under the Constitution or out-and-out violated federal laws. It’s one thing for an executive to pursue legal and constitutional ends that jive with his political ideology, even if I disagree with that ideology; it’s another thing entirely for him to go rogue. [Read more…]

“What did the president know and when did he know it?”

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Will a famous quotation from the Watergate hearings about presidential involvement in a scandal come back to haunt former President Barack “Nixon” Obama?

President Obama SpyIf you were around during the Watergate hearings, even if you were a disinterested child, as I was, there was one question you simply could not avoid. Sen. Howard Baker’s simply phrased focus on Richard Nixon’s role in Watergate resonated loud and strong throughout America: “What did the president know and when did he know it?”

The question today is “What did President Obama know and when did he know it?”

This morning, Former Press Secretary Ari Fleischer sent out a tweet reminding Americans that, when the press was still denying spying (rather than admitting to it but arguing that it was for Trump’s own good), they didn’t yet see any reason to hide Peter Strzok’s admission about Obama’s involvement: [Read more…]

Conservatives may spin facts, but Leftists live on lies.

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Conservatives and Leftists aren’t just watching different movies, which goes to spin and values. Leftists are often watching movies based entirely on lies.

LiesScott Adams is fond of analogizing different political world views to the fact that people are watching different movies. I watch a movie that sees Trump as an incredibly effective leader who is restoring balance to American politics and to the world stage. Leftists see Trump as an evil fascist who is making the world a place of boiling oceans and hate-filled lands. That is a perception difference based upon values.

Others like to point out accurately enough that people tend to seek reinforcement for their ideas. They pay attention to those facts that support their world view, while ignoring those that don’t. That’s why Leftists like to point out that Robert Mueller is ostensibly a Republican, so conservatives have no right to complain that he has a partisan bias, while conservatives like to point out that the people on Mueller’s team are overwhelmingly Leftist in thought and deed, meaning that partisan bias infuses the whole investigation.

Under both those theories, conservatives and Leftists are living in the same world, with the same facts, but spinning them different ways.

I believe, however, that there’s a really stunning difference between conservatives and Leftists, which is that the latter cling desperately to data that is proven to be false. In other words, for Leftists, it’s not that “facts are stubborn things,” it’s that “falsehoods are stubborn things.”

I’ve got four examples of absolute falsehoods lined up here, all recent. I’m sure that you, my readers, will have your own additions to make. Keep in mind that these are examples in which the facts are absolute and unequivocal, and that the Left relentlessly clings to a narrative that bears no relationship to those stubborn facts:

1. Trump’s reference to MS-13 gang members as animals. The fact is unequivocal: There is a video showing Trump being asked a very specific question about MS-13 gang members and giving an answer that manifestly refers to MS-13 gang members, who enjoy torturing people to death and then mutilating their bodies, rather than immigrants generally, as “animals”:

Only someone deeply invested in a lie would contend that Trump was speaking of immigrants generally — but that is exactly what the entire mainstream media did:

“Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals’ in Rant,” screamed The New York Times‘s Julie Hirschfeld Davis. Her article referenced MS-13 only once, buried as an aside in the third paragraph: “He exhorted his administration to ‘do much better’ in keeping out undesirable people, including members of transnational gangs like MS-13.”

USA TODAY ran with the headline “Trump ramps up rhetoric on undocumented immigrants: ‘These aren’t people. These are animals.'” To their credit, Gregory Corte and Alan Gomez included a bit more context than The New York Times did. Even so, MS-13 did not come up until the fourth paragraph, and the opening sentence suggested that the president was “calling undocumented immigrants ‘animals.'”

NPR’s Scott Neuman ran with the same kind of twisted headline: “During Roundtable, Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals.’” Unlike USA TODAY and The New York Times, Neuman updated the story, including remarks from counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Perhaps worse than these selective headlines, various media outlets shared a selectively edited clip of Trump’s comments on Twitter. The clip removed the vital context of his comments — along with any mention of MS-13 — suggesting that the president was referring to all illegal immigrants as “animals.”

As recently as yesterday, Salon was still peddling the lie:

This is not spinning; it’s out-and-out dishonesty. [Read more…]