I guess this means The Donald and Grandma Barker won’t be campaigning in South Carolina: Police chief: Clowns ‘terrorizing public’ in S.C. will be arrested.

Also, National Geographic asks: “Why Are So Many BASE Jumpers Dying?”

Um, perhaps Physics?

Given that its NatGeo, I’m surprised the answer isn’t “Climate Change.”

A religious satire site finds Six Hidden Gospel Messages in ‘Stranger Things.’ For example: “The Upside-Down is a clear reference to the United Methodist Church. The Upside-Down is portrayed as a cold, dreary place with not a single soul to be found. That’s an obvious allusion to United Methodist churches around the nation.”

If you’re a fan of large, ugly, crappily built homes (and, frankly, who isn’t?), the McMansion Hell Blog is for you.

I love the fact that I bought a solid 4000 SF renovated church for a fraction of what these drywall-and-Tyvek monstrosities cost.

$624,000 in Massachusetts gets you a house with this bathroom. (And if the kitchen is any indication, the homeowner owned a lot of stock in John Deere.)

Also, what happens when you take the music out of the Gayest Music Video of All Time?

This, this is what happens:

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Over behind the super-secret, members only paywall at Richochet, a comment that struck a chord with me.

I saw an op-ed piece written in the 1960s when suburbia was discovering zoning laws, the point of which has stayed with me ever since. The writer, a Jewish guy who lived in the Chappaqua New York area, had a brilliant mind, and the piece was great to read. He was talking about the problems that would occur with rigid zoning laws–wow, did he foresee sprawl. Everyone now is going back to mixed-used zoning. He perfectly predicted the result of the zoning laws that were being passed at that time. His op-ed piece ended by saying, “We have to accept a little mess.”

What an awesome philosophy. “We have to accept a little mess.” Meaning, Government can’t control everything and it shouldn’t try.

“We have to accept a little mess.”

Amen, brother.

It seems every time the Government addresses a problem (and especially when the problem is designated a “crisis”) they end up not wasting loads of money, not solving the problem, often making things worse, and then demanding more Government intervention to solve the new problems they created from their approach to the old problem.

Unfortunately, the busybody, control freak progressive left could never abide the thought of people deciding things for themselves and making choices they don’t agree with. They can’t imagine a state that… while staying out of the bedroom, of course … inserts itself into every business transaction, every social activity, and indeed every human interaction, down to policing the very language that comes out of our mouths.

“Think of all the little messes people would make if we gave them the freedom to choose for themselves,” they say.

We can deal with the little messes.

It’s gigantic, out-of-control Government we can’t deal with.

A feminist interprets every interaction with a male as a “microaggression” and an excuse for her (and all women’s) drinking problem.

I round up some girlfriends and we spend hundreds of dollars in a hipster bar, drinking rye Manhattans and eating tapas and talking about the latest crappy, non-gender-blind things that have happened to us in meetings and on business trips and at performance review time. They toast me for taking one for the team. And when we are good and numb we Uber home, thinking Look at all we’ve earned! That bar with the twinkly lights. That miniature food. This chauffeured black car. We are tough enough to put up with being ignored and interrupted and underestimated every day and laugh it off together. We’ve made it. This is the good life. Nothing needs to change.

What was she angry about?  Well, on this particular occasion, it’s because she had to serve on a panel with three male co-workers to provide orientation to incoming summer interns. And her male co-workers had the absolute gall to say that women were valuable assets to the company.

“The thing about this place,” he says, “is it’s a meritocracy. And merit is gender-blind.” He smiles at me and I stare back. Silent balefulness is all I have to offer, but his smile wavers so I know I’ve pierced some level of smug.

And she apparently works in an office obsessively devoted to Mad Men Cosplay.

At the office, every desk near mine has a bottle of wine or liquor on it in case people are too lazy to walk the 50 feet to one of the well-stocked communal bars we’ve built on our floor.

We get it. She’s miserable, and she drank to cope with her misery (as all women do) and now that she has stopped drinking she sees that it was all the fault of the patriarchy and had nothing whatsoever to do with her own self-absorption. Because that’s what modern feminism teaches women: Put yourself at the center of the universe and blame men for any and all unhappiness.

This weekend, I spent some time with another gay christian libertarian — a combination that rivals the Australian Hairy Nosed Wombat for rarity. He’s letting an unemployed, down-on-his-luck human being crash in his spare bedroom. Over breakfast in a local mom-and-pop diner, we got into a conversation about charity toward others. How we had helped other people out in the past, sometimes with good results, more often not, sometimes, people straight up took advantage. We had no hesitation about extending charity when opportunity arose, but we also found room to criticize people whose form of charity only perpetuated the dependency and low state of others.

But the central focus of our conversation was “Why be nice to people.” Both being of the Christian persuasion, we were both very clear that the Gospel inspires charity. But we also agreed that there is a misunderstanding among non-believers (and an unfortunate number of Christians, unfortunately) that being charitable toward others is how you buy your ticket to Heaven. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. Becoming a disciple of Christ changes your heart such that helping out others just becomes something you do. People who treat it like a deposit in the Bank of Karma are missing the point. People who think Christians only do it to win favor from God are also missing the point. It’s just good to be good.

Don’t worry. “Cute animal” vids will NOT become an annoying, regular feature of GP.

But I’d never seen this one. And, with all that’s going on in the world (not to mention some of the bizarro weirdness in certain comments), it’s good to switch gears occasionally. Enjoy!

The Internet Rage Machine has turned its livid gaze on a white male Stanford College Student who received a six-month prison sentence for sexually assaulting a woman behind a dumpster.

The media narrative is that an evil white cis-gendered male jock [four things the left hates] found an unconscious woman behind a dumpster and raped her. The facts of the case, as usual, are a little blurrier. The man and the woman were at a party together, they were both very intoxicated, she left the party with him willingly and made out behind the dumpster with him, willingly, before passing out. She passed out, he kept going. The details of the physical assault are somewhat vague but the conviction indicates he penetrated her with a ‘foreign object.’ This may have fallen short of what Whoopi Goldberg would call “rape-rape” if it had been done by someone she is more sympathetic to.

This is not a defense of anything he did. Even the most charitable reading of the circumstances indicates the guy committed a form of sexual assault and earned legal consequences. It’s pretty cut-and-dried. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. One is just observing that The Narrative simply omits mitigating circumstances that might make a six-month sentence seem a little less outrageous. Or, not.

[Over/Under on the first troll to ignore the previous five or six sentences and claim that this post is defending rape?]

Anyway, the judge who passed down the sentence and his family are receiving death threats; because that’s the language of disagreement in the 21st Century.

Whoopi, by the way, has said she thinks the judge in the case was racially biased and all judges are racially biased. So, she finally agrees with Donald Trump on something.

I wonder if any of the people who are outraged over this sentence are outraged that Historic First (TM) Democrat Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton helped a man who raped a twelve year old girl escape punishment on a legal technicality?

Probably not. That’s not how the Outrage Machine works.

Hillary’s defense of a child-rapist is not an outrage because she’s a left-wing Democrat woman.

Mitigating circumstances, one could say.

Trump bailed out of the Thursday debate because Fox would not remove Megyn Kelly. FoxNews should have someone program a Donald Trump Quote generator based on an algorithm of his responses in previous debates. Megyn Kelly could pose it questions and it would spew out a random string of superlatives and hyperbole.

The parent company of FoxNews donates millions of dollars to a group that advocates Amnesty and Open Borders. So, Trump may have a point in calling them biased. But if he can “work with” Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, as he said, why not Megyn Kelly?

Tolerant Progressive Chris Matthews asks ‘Who’s going to watch a debate between the two Cuban guys?’ Definitely not the same people who want to watch a debate between two senile white Socialists and a human Ken doll.

Illegal immigrants love Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley. Mainly because they are promising to take the most money from other people and buy them things with it. It’s too bad for them illegals aren’t allowed to vote. (Wink, wink.)

When Trump said he would make Mexico pay for his wall, everybody said that was unrealistic and stupid. But Ho Chi Minh Sanders making ‘The Rich’ pay for Free Healthcare, Free College, Free Daycare and Free Everything for everybody including all the illegals …. that’s Visionary!

CNN says Bernie Sanders has an 18% chance of winning the Republican nomination. Given the state of the GOP Establishment, they may actually be right about that.

A Democrat city councilman in Indiana has been sworn in while in jail on murder and drug charges. And you wonder why Democrats don’t care that Hillary used an illegal email server to cover up her influence peddling?

I was thinking about the Cold War today.

Suppose that during all of Stalin’s atrocities, and all of his mass murders, and the subsequent regimes with their gulags and torture chambers… the entire political leadership was telling us, “Most Communists are actually good people.”

Suppose it was the official position of the US Government and its media appendages that Communism was actually a good thing; but a thing that had been hijacked by extremists, who were practicing a bastardized form of Communism.

Suppose we were repeatedly warned by our political leadership that we should never, ever speak ill of Communism; suppose that throughout the Soviet Era, Americans were made to be ashamed of ever speaking out against Communism.

Do you think we ever would have defeated the Soviet Union?

When the immediate past Secretary of State first announced her candidacy for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, only a handful of my Facebook friends indicated their support for Mrs. Clinton, almost all of them gay.

But, what precisely has the former First Lady done for gays?  In her eight years in the Senate, did she work to repeal the relics of her husband’s administration, the Defense of Marriage Act or Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell?  (And by working, I mean, not just indicating her opposition to these laws, but actually taking action, lobbying her fellow legislators, pressing her party’s leadership to push repeal.)

And then in her four years as Secretary of State when she–and her supporters–boasted that she was the most-traveled Secretary of State, breaking travel records, among the many countries she visited, she surely visited some countries which oppressed gays.  When meeting with the leaders of those lands, did she ever discuss their treatment of our fellows and press them to change their policies?

And did the leaders of the various American gay organizations press her to act on behalf of our oppressed fellows?

Am I the only one asking these questions?

Just asking.

UPDATE:  As per the comments below, seems that Mrs. Clinton did raise the issue of anti-gay policies in Uganda with that nation’s leader President Yoweri Museveni in her summer 2012 swing through Africa.

I am mainly posting this as palate cleanser between outbreaks of gay fascism (yeah, they’re only going to get worse after the Mozilla thing). Also, I want to see if it makes Jeff’s head explode.

The shortest rendering one could make of this in Oldspeak would be: “Those whose ideas were formed before the Revolution cannot have a full emotional understanding of the principles of English Socialism.” But this is not an adequate translation. … Only a person thoroughly grounded in Ingsoc could appreciate the full force of the word bellyfeel, which implied a blind, enthusiastic, and casual acceptance difficult to imagine today.”

—Orwell, 1984 Appendix

Perhaps it was difficult to imagine when Orwell’s novel was published, in 1949. But is not “a blind, enthusiastic and casual acceptance” of whatever the Party says, typical of left-liberals in America today?

A colleague sent me this, and I find it vaguely hopeful:

An orca (a large-brained mammal related to the dolphin) knew how to kill a Great White shark, cleverly by flipping it on its back.

I’m not sure for what that’s a metaphor, but I’ll think of something. Hat tip, boingboing.net.

This is a read-the-whole-thing sort of deal, an excerpt will not do the story justice. The heart of it is an over-entitled, self-centered, forty-something vegan child-man (“Birdman”) who pitches a fit in a Chicago-area ‘Whole Foods’ because he deems the staff insufficiently accommodating.  You just *know* the guy is an Obama voter; albeit probably one who considers Obama “a little too center-right for my tastes.”

I think about that evening every time I walk into a Whole Foods during rush hour. I look for the tell-tale signs of another Birdman—impatience, over-reaction, constipated rage—and I find it every time. Then I wonder, why are these people all so angry? Is it something about Whole Foods that brings it out of them? Is it just their proximity to other miserable souls just like them? Is it the outward projection of inner self-loathing brought on by the feeling of utter helplessness in the face of social pressure to pay higher prices for organic, GMO-free, gluten-free, paleo, macro, whole foods?

…

I would bet if you asked all these angry, hateful trolls trundling to their hybrids in the parking lot trying to reconcile a $200 grocery bill with three measly paper bags full of groceries, they’d say No. They’d say they have to shop at Whole Foods because of something someone else in their family likes that they can’t find anywhere else. They always have an explanation, but it’s really just an excuse. They try to justify it, but it’s always a rationalization.

I realize I have also been away from blogging for a while, but just saw this and needed to share it with the group:

Pardon me for being judgmental, but if you don’t find this funny, you should probably spend less time with the GLAAD folks.

- Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from The Ranch)

Our commenter Sean is concerned that he might end up up dating a liberal (in the modern sense of a progressive leftist).  Those of us who are bit more seasoned may wish to offer the young pup some advice, before he makes a terrible mistake.

Here are some signs your date may be a liberal. Readers are invited to add more in the comments.

10. Tells you he thinks the minimum wage must be increased to help the working class; treats your waiter/waitress like crap and leaves a miniscule tip.
09. Pays for dinner with an EBT card.
08. Has CO3X1ST bumper sticker on his Prius, uses racial slurs when there’s no minorities around.
07. Cannot explain why he hates Sarah Palin, just knows that he does.
06. Expresses his belief that Christianity should be outlawed because Christians are “intolerant.”
05. Complains that his LGBT Studies degree really didn’t prepare him for his job at Starbucks; blames George W. Bush.
04. Harangues the waitress for not having a sufficient number of Vegan choices on the menu.
03. Can name every Oscar nominee, including costume design, but not a single senator, supreme court justice, or cabinet official.
02. Dinner “conversation” becomes a monologue on the topic of his unresolved daddy issues.
01. Brags that his purse is “the same kind Rachel Maddow carries.”

Nick Adds: (Sorry to hijack, it’s damned-near impossible to improve on #7 above, but I’ll attempt…) 11. After a half-hour soliloquy about “The evils of Right-Wing Christians and the dangers they pose to Western Society and decency in general, and American gays specifically”, a simple inquiry as to the treatment of gays by Muslims (toward whom we should exhibit much more tolerance) is met with long-desired silence and a stunned look.

I am making predictions, and I challenge Jeff and the othe cob loggers to make some as well. I don’t claim to be a psychic, but I feel pretty good about these predictions.

1. The Republicans will totally cave to Obama on the Debt Ceiling, just like they caved on the Budget Deal. The Republican leadership will clap each other on the back over the great deal they got and the MFM will cheer, and spending will continue unabated.
2. Obamacare will continue to cause hardship and suffering; the administration will continue to issue exemptions and extensions to try and contain the political damage.
3. Republicans will pick up 2-4 seats in the Senate but will fall short of a majority. Democrats will run their usual “War on Women” campaign together wih rampant use of social media to spread outrageous lies about GOP candidates, because that stuff works so well with the Democrats’ low information voter base
4. A Democrat congressman, senator, or governor will be found to have engaged in sexual misconduct; the MFM will protect him per Standard Operating Procedure unless defending him becomes politically untenable.
5. House Republicans will sneak through an Amnesty Bill in the lame duck session, perhaps earlier.
6. There will be a new Obama scandal involving corruption and the abuse of power; the MFM will do their level best to bury it and delegitimize it.
7. Media hype over gay athletes at Sochi will eclipse coverage of the actual sporting events.
8. More evidence will emerge debunking the hoax of Anthropogenic Global Warming; it will be ignored by the media and the Government.
9. There will be a shooting in a gun-free zone, which will receive much media coverage, which will wane after the shooter cannot be connected to the Tea Party or the NRA.
10. An atheist group will sue because a town’s innocuous display of religious, specifically Christian, symbols claming it made them all angry and hurt their feelers stuff. Also, Bill Maher will continue to spout things far more offensive than Phil Robertson without consequence.

I predict that my predictions will prove much more accurate than those of this Nobel-prize winning leftist:

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The left pooh-poohs the notion of American Exceptionalism. To quote their philosopher-king, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” In other words, “American exceptionalism,” is just garden variety patriotism. There is nothing special about America at all.

Yet, at the same time, leftists fervently believe that our debt and deficits are irrelevant (at least when a Democrat is president) and our economy can achieve their goal of regulatory socialism, without national or economic decline as consequence, because America can avoid the downfall of every Imperial Power that went down this same course. To quote the leftist philosopher-king again, “No matter what the naysayers tell us, no matter how dark the other side tries to make things look, the fact is there is not another country on earth that would not gladly trade places with the United States of America.”

So, which is it, people? Is America just an ordinary country? Or is America so exceptional that reckless spending, economic stagnation, and social decay that have destroyed other great nations are things we don’t have to worry about? Do the laws of mathematics and the lessons of history simply not apply to us?

There is a distinct air of leftist triumphalism in the air at the present time. It all reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) comment made by the builder of a certain twentieth-century ocean liner that “God Himself could not sink her.” That arrogance seems to pervade the social left at the present moment as they seem to rack up victory after victory in reshaping society in line with their secular progressive agenda.

Well, this happened…

An Arizona couple was charged with assault and disorderly conduct after arguing with McDonald’s employees and throwing food at them, KNXV reports.

Michael and Nova Smith ordered a Number 2 and Number 4, but were outraged when they did not receive hash browns with their meal.

And this happened…

And this spokesman for his generation and low-information voters everywhere said this.

“Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books.” ― Kanye West

And I can’t help thinking these events are related; linked by a common diminishment and rejection of standards of behavior across society. The people at the top of the political elite behave like street trash, and that lowers the bar for everybody else.

My mother passed away early this fall. My family is mostly made up of working/middle class folk who live in “flyover country.” We are the kind of people Obama and the rest of the ruling class look down their noses at, and dismiss as people who “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

But I will tell you this. Even those parts of my family that make ‘Duck Dynasty’ look like ‘Frasier’ had enough decorum and decency not to take selfies at my mother’s Memorial service.

But that level of respect and decency is apparently too much to ask from the Leader of the Free World. So we shouldn’t be surprised when his subjects throw tantrums at McDonald’s and denounce reading books as a waste of time.

I believe it’s been a week, maybe more, since I even checked this blog.  I did not get to the post I wanted to write on JFK, contrasting that smart Democrat’s record with the media coverage of his murder and his legacy.  I had a few notes for posts on Obamacare and honesty and one on Obamacare and prediction. Reading something this morning in the Daily Caller reminded me of a piece I had read yesterday in Commentary, articulating an idea which gets at the meaning of Obama’s reelection last year.

Peter Wehner wrote:

In their fascinating behind-the-scenes book on the 2012 election, Double Down, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann write that the campaign’s research showed “that there was a deep well of sympathy for Obama among voters.” In focus groups after the first debate, they write, “people offered excuse after excuse for his horrific presentation. In Florida, one woman said, almost protectively, ‘I just bet you he wasn’t feeling well.’”

That deep well of sympathy–that willingness to give the president the benefit of the doubt and the attachment and connection voters felt for Mr. Obama–has been crucial to his success for his entire political life. He has always been viewed as a likeable and decent man, even when his campaign employed fairly ruthless tactics. But the days of broad public faith and trust in this president appear to be over. And no wonder.

I think this is why the image of Obama responding to Hurricane Sandy was so beneficial to the incumbent.  People do want to like him.  And in the coverage of the storm and his response, that Democrat looked very much like the man they wanted to like.

It remains to be see whether the disaster of the Obamacare roll-out and the realization (despite his many promises) that many Americans who liked their health care plans couldn’t keep them will erase the goodwill many Americas feel for the incumbent.  That said we on the right should not lose sight of the fact that as Halperin and Heilemann put it, many Americans do have a “deep well of sympathy for Obama”.

——

*And the question now becomes whether we should change the tense on this verb from present to past.

NB:   (more…)

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg explains:

Watching President Obama’s press conference Thursday, I almost started humming the old ditty “The Farmer in the Dell” because all I could think was: “The cheese stands alone.”

The president did his level best to explain that he was as in the dark as anybody about the problems with his signature legislation.

He explained that he was not “informed directly” that the Healthcare.gov website was about as ready to run as a three-legged horse at the Preakness Stakes. Apparently, the old saw that the “buck stops” with the president never took into account the possibility that the buck could get lost in interoffice mail.