Trump is Right...

to get us the hell out of Syria.
Just as Obama/Clinton should have done in Libya: stay home!

And we cannot refuse to learn the lessons of the Bush Jr.'s Iraq War adventuring. You cannot solve international problems permanently with guns, boots and bombs. The destroyers are just the start.

It might take decades more for our wise men to admit this, but the first loyalty an organism has it to itself. Protect yourself or you will perish.

We do our allies and the world no favors thinking we can artificially protect, pick and choose winners who are incapable of standing alone, unsupported, themselves because the frame is too weak to support the weight, because the body is incapable of survival without regional allies of its own making, or because no money source indeed is never-ending, no matter how well connected the recipient.

I know the unofficial name for it...

Big Ass Moon! Works for me.

Random Pull From the Archives.

I don't cheat. This is what got clicked on first. 9/3/2006

It's the new game in town.../

(No, no, the picture is circa '78, not 2006. My inner child.)

Leader of the Pack...

... and We Are Getting Stronger.

Tucker (19:08) and Ponchak (19:46) definitely made an impact for Libertyville with a pair of Top 10 finishes.

"I didn't know I would be this fast," said Tucker of her freshman season. "As a team we have gotten better every meet and we are getting stronger."

Junior Annalese Chudy (20:14) aided the Wildcats by taking 15th place.

"We're looking at making bigger strides than last year," added Ponchak of the Wildcats' growth. "Overall we've been grouping together and closing the gap."
----------------

In the boys' race, senior William Gordon (16:11) and junior Liam Tucker (16:15) went 11-13 for Libertyville.

Click. Off.

Let me help Gail Collins this Friday:

In a happier time Americans went about their lives, complaining about Washington, then sort of shrugging and moving on to a discussion of the World Series. Or medieval history. Or goat yoga. Whatever. Now we aren’t even free to change the subject. We’re looking at the pileup and wondering whether the next thing will usher in the Big Crackup.

I'll never understand people who willingly surrender their freedoms, then complain that they have no control in their lives and need the government to protect them. Roast a turkey this weekend, and don't worry about Turkey or the Kurds. Don't play politics on your lifestyle.

Click. Off.
Take control of the culture around you.

"Donald! Donald! Donald!"

Everybody calls me the president now.
"I just want somebody to call me "Donald!"

16 more years~!

The U.S.A. is the toughest nation to deal with.  The U.S.A.!

Emoulments?!?

She is one of the big reasons I am going to win... Minnesota in 13 months.

Remember when we won? ... One of the greatest nights in the history of television...

I hope it goes down as one of the greatest evenings in the history of this country.

I didn't need Beyonce and Jay-z. 

I love you too, darling.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

"Isn't it much better when I go off script? Isn't that better?"
(...and the crowd goes wild!)

Random Week from the Blogger Archives...

It's a new game. Go.


It was the week of 4/14/2013.

What 5 inches looks like.

Reality, vs. the Democrats.

 (...edited and bumped back to the top)
The 2020 presidential election isn't Trump v. whomever the Dems eventually elect to put up...

It's really, Reality v. the Democrats.

We're wiser now (I hope!) after President Obama's reign, to the effects of false promises even made by a heck-of-a-nice-person, someone you'd be willing to "choom" with. I'm for President Trump because Washington DC still needs to send a lot of people packing (politicians and lobbyists alike); because we need more conservative court picks at all levels; and because, of course, he sent the Bushies as well as the Clinton's packing, not liking what hit them...

I also know -- as do a lot of others based on the conversations I am overhearing -- that while we accept Trump is not the most polished at the government game, and seems to court chaos because the media is not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and tries to magnify every little "error", there is nobody folks are willing to actually vote FOR.

And that seems to be the Democrats only strategy this year: "We can run a dogcatcher against the evil Orange One, and will still win!"  We shall see, friends, we shall see.

Plus, you see, I was a mature voter in 2004, when of course, we had a president sitting in office who WAS indeed "helped" by outside powers: his father's cronies, and the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) who never should have taken the Florida case, but who should have let the Florida Supreme Court maintain their rightful authority in letting the state decide state voting procedures.

Bush the boy president then took us to war under false premises (adventures! costumes! ... revenge!); tried to impose democracy at gunpoint on a non-Western culture in a foreign land; and was essentially a non-professional goofball, to anyone who had eyes to see.

The day George W. Bush was re-elected was like the proverbial gutpunch to me. I was in law school then, and thank heavens, got up the next day and went about my life and routine not quite understanding why the People had not rejected the man fully, as came later, when his costly errors became more obvious to all. (GWB defenders: give it up already. History will not be kind to you.)

So in comparison, President Trump's clumsy presentation as a non-professional politician seems like little to me. He's not costing people their lives, foreign or abroad. And I would much much rather have a "real" person in office who fumbles in his sincere efforts to make this country better, than to elect one of the know-it-all Dem politicians who essentially want to remake our country, taking away our traditions of freedom, individuality and choice because they think they know better. (On paper perhaps, but in the real world, things don't work out as consultants are paid to predict. Short-term thinkers today never seem to be held accountable for their mistakes.)

We're not going to elect someone to destabilize our country again, I don't think. And none of the candidates currently opposing Trump have the courage or the charisma to stop playing the "Hate Trump!" game and actually analyze the effects of his policies vs. what their own people are promising to do to the nation.

Moving too quickly, too soon, results in crashes.  

The media has shown their hands, and it's obvious that neutral reporting has no place in journ-o-lism anymore. They're advocates (and haters), not reporters. But we might be surprised at the numbers of independent thinkers who still value Freedom, who will not choose to elect a non-realist in 2020.

I still have hope, if not faith, in my fellow Americans...

It's the traditional American values, stupid, not the person clumsily embodying them in leadership today. Imagine where we might be if only President Trump had a solid bi-partisan team of like-minded individuals working WITH, not against him.

Dare to dream.
Even today.
-----------------------------------------

#Trump2020

.....A Good Shepherd to His Flock.

I

Will

Send Out an Army...

There is no distance

that cannot be covered

over and over

You're not defenseless

I'll be your shelter

I'll be your armor

I hear you whisper underneath your breath

I hear your SOS, your SOS

~ Laura Daigle, 

Jason Ingram, Paul Marbury

Picking a Losing Battle...

Only today's hothouse Democrats would think it a good thing to put the country through this, and ask them to pay for it after the months-long Mueller investigation was a bust, when anybody who can count to 67 understands they are fighting a losing battle in the Senate, hoping to remove President Trump from office.

We get it. You don't like him, and won't accept him as our president. That's been... kinda clear in the coverage, and the lack of unity behind his leadership in the past 3 years.

But the path to an honest victory? Up your game, figure out what the citizens of this country really want (hint? It ain't free daycare for the wealthy's offspring, paid for by further taxing workers), and work -- in Congress -- to pass compromise legislation that actually meets the country's needs by addressing important issues (emphasis without italicizing on the adjective.)

For example, take wage disparity. Overall, wage growth is not really rising, not for hourly employees nor for those salaried, other than the typical increases that come with promotions, career growth and maturity. Even today in times of high unemployment, there hasn't been the leverage to pay salaried workers more, even while there has been a push at the bottom for minimum wages, legislative paid time off to ensure sick workers aren't coming in or bringing their children to daycare lest they lose dollars.

Q: How does the promise more and more government benefit programs address this issue? Instead of advocating for more take-home pay at the end of the week -- where workers would be left with more CHOICE in how to invest their earnings (ie/ paid daycare, alternative educational options, a greater investment in family and self via direct-time contributions with elders, spouses, teens, and children too) -- we want the government to distribute the goodies?

That was kind of the fatal flaw to Obamacare, in the end. It took CHOICE away from workers and families. The immediate payoff was that "children" under 26 years could stay on a family plan, but then... the "kids" aged out, and realized what they had been mandated into. Corrective legislation quickly solved that -- the mandate that younger healthier bodies work to pay for the choices of their often wealthier, unhealthier elders.

"Free" daycare might seem a plus if numbers-wise, a worker would benefit today. But instead of more dollars in the pockets freeing a person up to invest in their child as they choose, they will be stuck paying for the daycare industry. That's essentially what happened to CHOICE in the healthcare reform: people got less, and the related industries made out well.

In America, FREEDOM and CHOICE have always been our mantra, our country's selling point. With those two, you are able to essentially Choose-Your-Own-Life-Adventure, by purchasing the things that matter you as an individual, often operating within a family structure. If your mother-in-law provides care, you don't get locked into the government centers that set the daycare hours, and ask you to accommodate their schedules. If you choose to have a parent stay at home for personalized child instruction, perhaps because the child is at a point in their life where they need that one-on-one and the stability of coming home directly after school say, you can invest your dollars in that.

Daycare can be very helpful, there is no denying that. Quality help can be a blessing to some, please don't misread me. But with the dollars in the pocket, that choice would still be available to those who invest resources there now. But so would the extra dollars drive alternative investments, in ways that might benefit others in a slowly disconnecting society. In short, the jury is still out if we were healthier as a while in inter-generational societies where there was more mingling of young people and their elders, particularly within the family structure. Institutionalizing everyone out of sight does not seem to be preparing our young people in advanced Western society -- all of our young people -- for what comes after the schooling and direct care ends, and their independent life awaits. And God only knows the damage, and anyone who can read the news, that can be done by those who "slip between the cracks" and make bad decisions mixing their anger with their access to weaponry and fairly untested medicinal fixes.

Picking a losing battle will only give Congress less to accomplish in Washington. The "crisis" of the day is never resolved, in favor of entertaining spectacles and grandstanding showmanship.

Myself, I do not think that is what the country really wants or needs. Let us vote with our dollars, and not be lobbied into paying for products and services that in the end may be our societal undoing.

How Asian-Americans Became Conservative...

Voting for your own self interests.
"Harvard had no immediate comment. Students for Fair Admissions said it will appeal. 'Students for Fair Admissions is disappointed that the court has upheld Harvard's discriminatory admissions policies,' Edward Blum, the group's president, said in a statement."

In one of the most closely watched lawsuits concerning affirmative action and higher education, a federal judge on Tuesday ruled that Harvard could continue considering race in its admissions process in pursuit of a diverse class.

The plaintiffs, Students for Fair Admissions, made four claims: that Harvard had intentionally discriminated against Asian-Americans, used race as a predominant factor in admissions decisions, used racial balancing and considered the race of applicants without first exhausting race-neutral alternatives.

Not much publicity on that one, with all the Fake Newsmakers covering the allegedly impending impeachment. Not gonna slip under the radar. More conservative justices, please!

The judge acknowledged that the Harvard admissions process was “not perfect,” but that when the university considered race, it did so only to benefit applicants’ chances — as a “plus” factor — not to hurt them.

Harvard admissions officers are allowed to take students’ race directly into account only when assigning their “overall rating,” at the end of the process, when race is one of several factors on the table. The magnitude of the plus factors that Harvard gives for race, the judge said, are modest, and never a “defining feature” of applications.

On the whole, “race has no specified value in the admissions process and is never viewed as a negative attribute,” the judge wrote.

The plaintiffs had argued that Harvard had given considerable weight to applicants’ race, violating strict guidance by the Supreme Court.

In 2018, Harvard provided its admissions officers with more explicit guidelines on when and when not to use race in reviewing applications and during interviews.
...
Harvard has made some changes since the plaintiff brought the lawsuit. The admissions procedures for the current freshman class explicitly directed officers that they “should not take an applicant’s race or ethnicity into account in making any of the ratings other than the overall rating” and that for the overall rating the “consideration of race or ethnicity may be considered only as one factor among many.”
...
“Harvard perhaps should have instituted an explicit written policy stating which ratings could take race into account before 2018, but that error has now been remedied,” Judge Burroughs wrote. She also wrote that the process would likely benefit from implicit bias trainings for admissions officers.

For the record, Allison Dale Burroughs is an Obama judge.

Burroughs was born in 1961 in Boston, Massachusetts. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude, from Middlebury College. She received a Juris Doctor, cum laude, in 1988 from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She began her legal career as a law clerk for Judge Norma L. Shapiro of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1988 to 1989. She served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1989 to 1995 and in the District of Massachusetts from 1995 to 2005. From 2005 to 2014 she was a partner at Nutter McClennen & Fish where she represented individuals and corporations in criminal and civil proceedings primarily before Federal Courts.

On July 31, 2014, President Obama nominated Burroughs to serve as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Team Delle Donne Loses...

Here Comes the Sun!

Jonquel Jones scored 32 points and grabbed 18 rebounds, and the Sun took advantage of Delle Donne’s early injury exit on Tuesday to beat the Mystics, 99-87, and even the W.N.B.A Finals after two games.

“This was our goal, to steal a win on their floor,” Sun guard Jasmine Thomas said. “And now we get to go home and play two in a row.”

Alyssa Thomas added 21 points and 12 rebounds, and Courtney Williams had 22 points for the Sun, who dominated the paint after the 6-foot-5 Delle Donne departed in the first quarter with back spasms. The recently crowned league M.V.P., who averaged 19.5 points and 8.2 rebounds, will have an M.R.I. exam on Wednesday.

“She’s just had, kind of ongoing, late-in-the-season tightness,” Mystics Coach Mike Thibault said. “We’ve been able to treat it and it’s responded pretty well. But it’s the one nightmare I’ve had the last month, is seeing her lying on her back.”

Connecticut outrebounded Washington by 41-27 over all, and 17-6 on the offensive glass. Jones, who didn’t have an offensive board in the first game, had a W.N.B.A. Finals record nine.
...
“J.J. was going crazy today,” Williams said. “I told her I felt like I could put up the ball from half court and she was going to look out for me and get the rebound.”

Alyssa Thomas has now played all 40 minutes of the series for Connecticut.

“She just is so important to us,” Coach Curt Miller said. “She anchors our defense.”

The best-of-five series shifts to Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun Arena for Game 3 on Sunday afternoon.

Top o' the Ninth...

Nationals up, 4-3.

Send that cheater boy Ryan Braun home tonight!

Good night, folks. Glad I checked the score before bed.

3up, 3 down? Just remember BrewCrew sausage fellas: there's no cryin in baseball. For yer wimmin folk either! haha. Hope they lose, sincerely!

Cheaters Never Win, and Braun is nothing but an old cheat, who tried to take another man's job and almost got away with it, back in the day...

Is President Pence what the Country Really Wants?

The country has been engaged in a cultural cold war for generations now. Liberals win some battles, but overall, conservatives -- and their children -- appear to be quietly winning the overall war in terms of who is faring better in society.

Trump-haters want to censor him, but the truth is: we are engaged in a civil cold war that will only get worse if a presidential impeachment takes place.

In times of destability, voters will not then turn and elect a progressive Democrat who wants to use the whole country as a laboratory for national-policy experimentation. How well did that work out under Obamacare, when some were bought off essentially with promises that "children" under 26 could say insured under parents' plans, and others struggled with being mandated to purchase a product they did not want or need, to subsidize wealthier, unhealthier others?

Impeachment will not be successful, but it might damage the country enough to drive November 2020 voters into the arms of an even more conservative President Pence. He will be seen as the stable alternative to a damaged President Trump more than a Hillary do-over in the presence of an Elizabeth Warren candidate, I predict.

Be careful what you wish for, and never go to impeachment for show, when you don't have the votes to remove a man from office, and there really is no national outcry for such disruption in Washington...

Housing, Education, Infrastructure, Disparity, Law and Order/Crime+Safety, yes... Immigration. All of these are the bread-and-butter issues that matter in the daily lives of Americans. Pretending that we didn't elect President Trump, but for the Russian/Ukrainian's help, is not what we non-elites really want out of our Congress.

If you focus on the issues, you have a chance to perhaps win. (Though doubtful that the quiet majority of people will embrace instability at this time.) If you go the impeachment route and lose, you will likely only be helping mature conservatives like Mike Pence.

Is President Pence what the country really wants, do you think?