The death throes of political correctness

Is political correctness on life support

Not everyone, not even a majority, is comfortable with the bizarre and dehumanizing ideas routinely foisted on less militant citizens in the name of self-affirmation for one group or another. The public is not interested in cultivating obsessive concern over microaggressions. Not everyone agrees when they are told, often angrily, that belief in marriage as a sacrament is merely a centuries-old excuse for oppression. Not everyone heeds the command to pretend that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman

Reprehensible conduct by the Obama administration

In 2012, Frank VanderSloot gave money to the Romney campaign. Obama blogged about him, and the power of the US government was aligned against him: the IRS, the Department of Labor, and of course the liberal media. This is not right in America.

Global warming may get real research now

In the world of climate science, the skeptics are coming in from the cold. Researchers who see global warming as something less than a planet-ending calamity believe the incoming Trump administration may allow their views to be developed and heard. This didn’t happen under the Obama administration, which denied that a debate even existed. Now, some scientists say, a more inclusive approach – and the billions of federal dollars that might support it – could be in the offing.

Suddenly, the global warming debate may get actual debate.

Dave Barry's Year in Review

All year long, humorist Dave Barry keeps careful notes about what noteworthy events happen each month. At the end of the year, he summarizes the year in an article widely picked up by newspapers every where.

In the future, Americans – assuming there are any left – will look back at 2016 and remark: “What the hell?”

They will have a point. Over the past few decades, we here at the Year in Review have reviewed some pretty disturbing years. For example, there was 2000, when the outcome of a presidential election was decided by a tiny group of deeply confused Florida residents who had apparently attempted to vote by chewing on their ballots.

Then there was 2003, when a person named “Paris Hilton” suddenly became a major international superstar, despite possessing a level of discernible talent so low as to make the Kardashians look like the Jackson 5.

There was 2006, when the vice president of the United States, who claimed he was attempting to bring down a suspected quail, shot a 78-year-old man in the face, only to be exonerated after an investigation revealed that the victim was an attorney.

And, perhaps most inexplicable of all, there was 2007, when millions of people voluntarily installed Windows Vista.

Read more here:

Leftists at the University of Wisconsin

This writer takes the position that conservatives can defeat campus radicals. The article is interesting and anecdotal, but doesn't make it clear that conservatives can succeed at the University of Wisconsin. Read the whole thing. It seems to say that college is a lost cause.

A high-visibility vest will get you anywhere

These folks tried an experiment: wear a high-visibility vest and see where you can go. It turns out you can go most anywhere: movies, zoos, rock concerts. Try it yourself, they're not expensive

The most dangerous dam in the world

A flood of Biblical proportions could inundate the traditional site of the Garden of Eden. The Mosul Dam on the Tigris River holds back a gigantic reservoir, but like the parable in Mathew 7 about the man who built his house on sand, the Mosul Dam is built on soluble rock. The gypsum beneath the dam is dissolving, leaving caverns underneath. If the dam fails, and the 8-mile long reservoir floods down the river to Bagdad, hundreds of thousands could be killed.

This is a can't-stop-reading article

12 Fantastic Thomas Sowell Quotes In Honor Of His Retirement

In honor of Dr. Thomas Sowell’s retirement, here are some of his best quotes from his many years as a writer, columnist, and thinker:

1. People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

2. If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

3. Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them.

4. Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

5. The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.

6. The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

7. The biggest and most deadly ‘tax’ rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits – food stamps, housing subsidies and the like – if their income goes up.

8. The real minimum wage is zero.

9. What ‘multiculturalism’ boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture – and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.

10. In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.

11. People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.

12. Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.

Read some more great Tomas Sowell quotes

Is Jeff Sessions a racist?

Senator Jeff Sessions has been nominated for Attorney General. The Left is reacting by calling him a racist.  The Left seems to have a problem with virtually every Trump nomination, generally producing specious arguments.

Jeff Sessions is not a racist, as this article demonstrates. He has a long history of supporting blacks, as this article demonstrates. The real problem is that he will bring common sense and actual justice back to the Department of Justice which has been politicized for the last eight years.

The Universities are going insane

George Washington University has made a course in US History optional for history majors.

The history department at GWU has been facing declining interest and enrollment. As a result, they’ve decided that an answer to that problem, and an effective way to recruit new students, is to “to better reflect a globalizing world,” according to comments made by George Washington University faculty members to the student newspaper, The Hatchet.

I guess with declining student enrollment, there less need for those tenured professors in the department. I doubt that downgrading the academics will attract more serious students willing to pay $68,725 per year for tuition. Of course the government will loan them the money and it will take two lifetimes to pay it back working at Starbucks.

A new age of Christian martyrs is upon us

This is written on December 26, Saint Stephen's day. Steven was the first Christian martyr. Now the number of Christians being martyred is growing, and Obama is doing nothing to help, even while welcoming thousands of Syrian refugees and Islamic terrorists into the US.

The Christmas carol "Good King Wenceslas" celebrates the "Feast of Stephen"

Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State

Rex Tillerson has been nominated for Secretary of State.  The Left is in a tizzy because Rex has had dealings with Putin (successful ones in fact) and they claim he is too friendly to be qualified for the job.

Here's a report by a person who served on jury duty with Tillerson. She seems to think he might be pretty qualified.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

An entertaining version of the Christmas carol

Global warming update--new ice age evidence

“The New Little Ice Age Has Started.” This is the unambiguous title of a new study from one of the world’s most prestigious scientific institutions, the Russian Academy of Science’s Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg. “The average temperature around the globe will fall by about 1.5 C when we enter the deep cooling phase of the Little Ice Age, expected in the year 2060,” the study states. “The cooling phase will last for about 45-65 years, for four to six 11-year cycles of the Sun, after which on the Earth, at the beginning of the 22nd century, will begin the new, next quasi-bicentennial cycle of warming.”

Read the whole thing

USDA wants to remove holiday snacks from schools

Starting next year, bringing a dozen homemade cupcakes to your child’s classroom to celebrate his or her birthday will be tantamount to lighting up a cigarette on the blacktop. Candy canes and gingerbread men people will be verboten during the school’s Christmas party winter celebration. And this Spring, don’t expect any candy in the classroom; the Easter fuzzy bunny is strictly prohibited from entering school grounds. As for next year’s Halloween fall festivities: kids should brace for water and carrots (hey, they’re orange!). What fun

Surely the government has better things to do  Further proof of my theorem that there are too many government employees, giving them free time to make trouble.

How about those ladies in the Israeli army?

This Female IDF Soldier Fought Off 23 Terrorists in Surprise Attack.

Captain Or Ben-Yehuda of the Israeli Defense Forces has cemented a legacy that will endure well past her lifetime. The young, decorated IDF Captain was in charge of a company of soldiers when they were violently attacked by nearly two dozen terrorists near the Egyptian border. Due to her leadership and bravery, she and her men were able to survive.

I suppose it would be sexist to note how attractive she is. Read the article

Freakout on the Left

This article has a great lead-in

The Democratic Party has been making a fool of itself ever since Election Day. (Before that too, probably, but that’s a different post.) An utter lack of self-awareness apparently disables Democrats from understanding that 1) they lost the presidential election because they nominated the worst candidate of modern times, 2) they have been losing ground across the large majority of America for a decade or longer, and now are at best a minority party everywhere except California, New York and a few other enclaves, and 3) their party’s leadership is uniformly both geriatric and corrupt

Read the whole thing, including the comments

The New York Times erroneous view on gun carriers

Liberals imagine that law-abiding citizens do not have any idea how to use a gun responsibly — and that criminals will start following rules.

Carrying a gun usually stops crime just but pointing it at the perpetrator, much more often than shootouts actually occur. But liberals neglect these statistics in their efforts to make the country safe for criminals. Read this analysis on gun control

Victor Davis Hanson on The Donald

"Key is his emperor-has-no-clothes instinct that what is normal and customary in Washington was long ago neither sane nor necessary. And so far, his candidacy has not only redefined American politics but also re-calibrated the nature of insight itself...leaving the wise to privately wonder whether they were ever all that wise after all." - Victor Davis Hanson on The Donald

Victor Davis Hanson is a thoughtful historian that brings his knowledge of the classics to observations on contemporary culture. Here is his analysis of the Trump candidacy

Candidate Trump blasted the “free-loading” nature of NATO, wondered out loud why it was not fighting ISIS or at least Islamic terrorism, and lamented the inordinate American contribution and the paucity of commensurate allied involvement. Pundits called that out as heresy, at least for a few weeks — until scholars, analysts, and politicos offered measured support for Trump’s charges. Europeans, shocked by gambling in Casablanca, scrambled to assure that they were upping their defense contributions and drawing the NATO line at the Baltic States. 

On the call from the President of Taiwan

President-elect Trump generated even greater outrage in the aftermath of the election when he took a call from the Taiwanese president. Pundits exploded. Foreign policy hands were aghast. Did this faker understand the dimensions of his blunder? Was he courting nuclear war? Trump shrugged, as reality again intruded: Why sell billions of dollars in weaponry to Taiwan if you cannot talk to its president? Are arms shipments less provocative than receiving a single phone call?

Read the whole thing

The charm of an asp and the charisma of a slug.

Is how one person described Hillary Clinton in this article about the recent Presidential election. The gist of the article is about how the Democrats are working to delegitimatize the President Elect. Instead of accepting and supporting the winner as they advocated before losing.

EPA caves in to political pressure

Last year, the EPA published a draft report on fracking. The report said that fracking was pretty safe. To appreciate how strong this statement was in favor of fracking, remember that the EPA is controlled at the upper levels by environmentalists who really don't like oil and natural gas as an energy source. Here's a quote from the Washington Post

In 2015, a draft report found that fracking has caused isolated instances in which drinking water was affected, but did not bring about “widespread, systemic impacts” on drinking water. At the time, Burke added that “the number of documented impacts to drinking water resources is relatively low when compared to the number of fractured wells.”

That was too much for the Left. The environmentalists and the movie stars protested so much that the final report came out with a list of ways that fracking can damage drinking water. If you read the list with a critical eye, it mentions all the things that can possibly go wrong. Seldom do any of these things go wrong, and the harm is minuscule in the universe of  energy development, but the Left is jumping all over this report as condemning fracking. Consider the New York Times, which is turning into a less reliable source of information than the tabloids at the check stands. At least they got the quote right:

The new version is far more worrying than the first, which found “no evidence that fracking systemically contaminates water” supplies. In a significant change, that conclusion was deleted from the final study.

It is unfortunate that pressure from the left, with no basis in real science, influences public policy to the detriment of all people.

How The Left Overreached In Court

The Left has been using the courts to attack Christian beliefs. They drove a small Christian bakery out of business for refusing to bake for a gay wedding. They managed to make it legal for men to use the ladies restroom. This article argues that this overreach cost the Left the Supreme Court. Christians were so upset at the attacks on their values that they voted for Donald Trump for President despite their trepidation about the man's character.

Will the global warming movement collapse?

For years, anybody who wanted to study the terrible effects and causes of global warming could get government funding. Any paper that questioned the dogma, would get rejected by scientific journals which subject the papers to "peer review". Things may change.

Over the past three decades, the environmental movement has increasingly hitched its wagon to exactly one star as the overwhelming focus of the cause, namely "climate change."  Sure, issues of bona fide pollution like smog and untreated sewage are still out there a little, but they are largely under control and don't really stir the emotions much any more.  If you want fundraising in the billions rather than the thousands, you need a good end-of-days, sin-and-redemption scare.  Human-caused global warming is your answer!

Even as this scare has advanced, a few lonely voices have warned that the radical environmentalists were taking the movement out onto a precarious limb.  Isn't there a problem that there's no real evidence of impending climate disaster?  But to no avail.  Government funding to promote the warming scare has been lavish, and in the age of Obama has exploded.  Backers of the alarm have controlled all of the relevant government bureaucracies, almost all of the scientific societies, and the access to funding and to publication for anyone who wants to have a career in the field.  What could go wrong?

At least three of Trump's nominations are likely to be antagonistic against the global warming juggernaut.

Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, as Secretary of State.  As of today, we still have as our chief diplomat the world leader of smugness who somehow thinks that "climate change" caused by use of fossil fuels is the greatest threat to global security.  He is shortly to be replaced with the CEO of Exxon.  Could there be a bigger poke in the eye to the world climate establishment?  I'm trying to envision Tillerson at the next meeting of the UN climate "conference of parties" with thousands of world bureaucrats discussing how to put the fossil fuel companies out of business.  Won't he be laughing his gut out?

Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy.  Not only was he the longest-serving governor of the biggest fossil fuel energy-producing state, but in his own 2012 presidential campaign he advocated for the elimination of the Department of Energy.  This is the department that passes out tens of billions of dollars in crony-capitalist handouts for wind and solar energy (Solyndra!), let alone more tens of billions for funding some seventeen (seventeen!) research laboratories mostly dedicated to the hopeless task of figuring out how to make intermittent sources of energy competitive for any real purpose.

And then there's Scott Pruitt for EPA.  As Attorney General of Oklahoma, another of the big fossil fuel energy-producing states, he has been a leader in litigating against the Obama EPA to stop its overreaches, including the so-called Clean Power Plan that seeks to end the use of coal for electricity and to raise everyone's cost of energy.

And how about cooking the data?

Now the backers of the global warming alarm will not only be called upon to debate, but will face the likelihood of being called before a highly skeptical if not hostile EPA to answer all of the hard questions that they have avoided answering for the last eight years.  Questions like:  Why are recorded temperatures, particularly from satellites and weather balloons, so much lower than the alarmist models had predicted?  How do you explain an almost-20-year "pause" in increasing temperatures even as CO2 emissions have accelerated?  What are the details of the adjustments to the surface temperature record that have somehow reduced recorded temperatures from the 1930s and 40s, and thereby enabled continued claims of "warmest year ever" when raw temperature data show warmer years 70 and 80 years ago?  Suddenly, the usual hand-waving ("the science is settled") is not going to be good enough any more.  What now? 

Read the whole thing

 

Democratic donors want to know what went wrong

They gave a billion dollars to Hillary's campaign and got trumped. Now they are rebelling against future giving until they know what went wrong.

The call for a deep and detailed accounting of how Clinton lost a race that she and her donors were absolutely certain she’d win didn’t begin immediately after the election — there was too much shock over her defeat by Donald Trump, and overwhelming grief. Her initial conference call with top backers, which came just days after the outcome, focused primarily on FBI Director Jim Comey’s late campaign-season intervention.

But in the weeks since, the wealthy Democrats who helped pump over $1 billion into Clinton’s losing effort have been urging their local finance staffers, state party officials, and campaign aides to provide a more thorough explanation of what went wrong. With no dispassionate, centralized analysis of how Clinton failed so spectacularly, they insist, how can they be expected to keep contributing to the party?

Advanced boifuel standard has problem with economics

The government, especially the liberal wing, likes to ignore economics.  For example, the government has mandated that the oil companies include advanced biofuels in gasoline.  We're not talking about good old "corn liquor" here, but alcohol made from other stuff, like grass. The amount of advanced biofuels required increases every year by government edict. The problem is that there isn't enough advanced biofuels available to meed the mandates, and now the government wants even more.

One problem with good old grain alcohol is that the amount of energy required to grow the corn make the stuff is so close to the amount that comes out that it isn't clear whether there is a net benefit or cost in terms of carbon footprint. If the politicians were honest, they would admit that the principle benefit of corn alcohol is that Iowa is the first step to the presidential nomination. Scott Walker lost my support for the nomination when he came out in favor of corn alcohol, despite his otherwise reasonable positions.

Each year, congress and the gasoline producers arm wrestle over the legal requirement. You just can't legislate economics, all you can do is tax it and make things more expensive.

News about fake news is fake

The mainstream media have provided a lot of coverage lately about fake news. Here's an article documenting many times that the media has presented fake news as though it were real. There are many examples, most commonly in what they decide to report as "news", but here are what one writer considers the top ten examples, starting with "Rathergate".

Did the Duke Lacrosse case influence the election

Two players in the Duke Lacrosse were Stephen Miller from the class of 2007, who took great pains to argue in print that charging the Lacrosse players was political correctness gone bad. The other was Attorney General Roy Cooper, who investigated the case and concluded that the players were innocent and District Attorney Nifong's malfeasence was the result of a tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations. Read the article to see how these two influenced the 2016 elections.

Military Religious Freedom Foundation is confused

The Air Force Academy has upheld the right of a coach to post religious messages on his Twitter account, despite complaints from MRFF

The Air Force Academy ruled that Bible verses shared on a football assistant coach's Twitter account did not violate policy or law because they were private statements on a social media profile with the proper disclaimer. The Academy was responding to a request from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) to investigate "Christian evangelizing via Twitter, blatantly violating Air Force regulations."

MRFF is upset and plans further efforts to protest this behavior, contrary to their mission statement:

No member of the military may be compelled to curtail — except in the most limited of military circumstances and when it directly impacts military discipline, morale and the successful completion of a specific military goal — the free exercise of their religious practices or beliefs.

For more on religious freedom, read this article about the movie Hacksaw Ridge

“Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library”

This is an amazing story. Dolly Parton sends books, every month, to children in rural Tennessee. For those who think she's just a county-singing bimbo, like the author of this story, this is shocking news. She says she owes Dolly Parton an apology.

Ben Stein says "they have gone insane"

Ben Stein can't understand why people are so upset Trump hasn't appointed unreasonable people to his cabinet, or said anything bad about blacks or gays. What's the deal?

I just don’t get it. People are going insane about Donald Trump being president-elect. It’s beyond the wildest anger and fear I saw even about Richard Nixon, my hero. And, as I say, I just cannot see it.

Fake news is in the news.

Hillary Clinton is blaming fake news for swinging the election. The Washington Post ran a story about fake news that turned out to be fake The Clinton campaign even generated fake news that the Podestra e-mails were fake, created by the Russians. These were repeated by MSNBC, always ready to do anything to support the Clintons.

The stock market is always right

Being the collective thoughts of hundreds, if not millions, of minds, the stock market can predict future events.  The stock market has been hitting new highs almost on a daily basis in reaction to Donald Trump's election and the choices he has been making afterward.

Roger Simon asks who do you trust: the stock market or the media?

While on the road, I asked those supporters on multiple occasions whether they thought Trump was going to send all eleven million illegals home and found not one person who thought he would. The press -- that's another matter. Now the Associated Press is making a big deal of his "softer" line on immigration, but didn't you always know he would take one? It should be no surprise to anyone that Trump intends to get rid of as many criminal aliens as possible and then let the others blend into society -- but (Chuck Schumer take note) without ever getting full citizen rights, meaning the vote. To give people the vote who came here illegally would not be "fair" (as Barack Obama might put it) to those who waited in line.

Roger Simon is always insightful and fun to read.

Did the 'Obergefell' Decision Cost the Democrats the Election?

The Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees the right to marry as one of the fundamental liberties it protects, and that analysis applies to same-sex couples in the same manner as it does to opposite-sex couples. This decision was wildly unpopular with many in the general population and especially fundamental Christians.

This article argues that the decision cost the Democrats the election.  Read it for the list of anecdotes that upset the people of the country: from Pizza shops to bakeries.

Harvard study reveals press unfair to Trump

A story in the Washington Post reveals that Trump was right about the press

Let this sink in for a moment: a Harvard study about media bias is being written about in the publication that the study ranked as one of the worst offenders. Call me skeptical, but I wonder if we would even be made aware of this had Granny Maojackets prevailed.

Of course even this article is biased. Those of us who watched the news saw the bias every day. In particular, when Trump made substantive policy speeches they got absolutely no coverage, but let him say something stupid and it was continuous headline news.

Trump's choice for head of the EPA

The EPA has run roughshod over the people of the United States with rules and decisions and movements to harm the economy, moving jobs away from the US. Now, Trump has chosen an alleged "climate denier" as the new head of the EPA. I couldn't be more delighted, and it illustrates how great it is that the Republicans have a majority in the Senate to help him get confirmed.

The liberals and environmental wackos (but I repeat myself) are having a fit

Leaving your church because of the election?

The election is over and so is Brandi Miller’s religious affiliation.

“On Nov. 8, white evangelical Christianity and I called it quits,” she wrote in a message posted on Facebook. Ms. Miller, a campus minister at the University of Oregon, says that exit polls showing that 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump revealed a divide over race that she, as a biracial woman, can’t condone.

“Evangelicals have decided who and with what they will associate,” wrote Ms. Miller, 26 years old, in an online magazine and on Facebook. “It’s not me.”

People are actually doing this. Before you do, consider this

December 7, a day that will live in infamy

Today is the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. They were pretty successful, except for the fact that the U.S. carriers were out to sea and they came in quite handy at the Battle of Midway. In the next four years, the U.S. built 50 more aircraft carriers, the atomic bomb, and won the war with Japan.  In these times, the military can't even build one ship in that time, let alone dominate the world's oceans.

Here's a web site with fascinating photo tours of museums and ships from that war.

What does Dilbert say about global warming?

Scott Adams draws the Dilbert cartoon, and it is famous for it's piquant observations on work. Less well known is Scott Adams blog, equally insightful. He predicted that Donald Trump would win the election a year ahead of time.  Here is his observation on climate change.

You can follow his blog here and read insightful comments on other subjects.  Here's a fun comment on the Carrier/Ford deal

The call from Taiwan to Donald Trump

The media and the chattering class were all in an uproar when Donald Trump took a call from the president of Taiwan; saying it was an example of his ignorance of statecraft and the delicate balance of international relations. This editorial disagrees

Donald Trump’s phone call with the president of Taiwan wasn’t a blunder by an inexperienced president-elect unschooled in the niceties of cross-straits diplomacy.
It was a deliberate move — and a brilliant one at that

How did Hillary lose an election that was in the bag?

Hillary had her first choice for an opposition candidate--Donald Trump--the easiest one to beat. But, she managed to lose the election.  Here's a list of the things done wrong.

Bill Whittle on Hillary and the election

Watch this video just to see the endless line of buses that brought protesters to Chicago after the election, probably paid for by George Soros.

China has a thriving business transplanting organs from live donors

In 1999, Chinese hospitals began performing more than 10,000 organ transplants annually, generating a vast and lucrative traffic in “transplant tourists,” who flocked to China on the assurance that they could obtain lifesaving organs without having to languish on a waiting list. China had no voluntary organ-donation system to speak of, yet suddenly it was providing tens of thousands of freshly harvested organs to patients with ready cash or high-placed connections. How was that possible?

They did it by harvesting organs from political prisoners.  Now, a couple of movies are becoming available which expose the practice

Conservatives are mostly cheering the Trump election

NBC’s Saturday Night Live ran a skit over the weekend lampooning Donald Trump as the clueless center of his transition team, portraying his aides as sycophants and his chief strategist Steve Bannon as a black-robed creature in a skeleton mask. The reality is far different. Trump has reached out to former critics such as Nikki Haley and James Mattis and offered them key Cabinet positions. He’s met with Mitt Romney, one of his fiercest critics, twice. His picks for the heads of such departments as Health and Human Services, Education, and Transportation are knowledgeable conservatives. The pace with which he’s been naming top officials is faster than that of any modern president-elect.

Read the article

Surprise: there seems to be excessive bureaucracy in the DOD

The Washington Post has an article that says there Department of Defense wastes an extra 125 billion dollars on bureaucracy. No surprise there. For government employees, who really can't be fired, there is no feedback mechanism like there is in private industry. And the defense contractors are just as bad because they are paid to spend money, not make money*.

*Government contracting is usually done on what is called "cost plus fixed fee". The contractor totals up what it cost to do a job and then adds a percentage for their profit. If they make extra profit, the government takes it away, thus there is no benefit in saving money.

Which churches are growing and which are declining?

Most Christians with conservative views are aware that churches that subscribe to beliefs in the Bible are growing while liberal churches are declining. Here's an update on the trend You'll be surprised at what the article says about contemporary vs. traditional music.

Update: The New York Times claims that Romans 1 calls for the execution of homosexuals. Is this correct or does it reveal how far out of touch the NYT is with actual Biblical teaching.

What will progressives say if Trump is actually good?

If you thought Trump Derangement Syndrome was a tad excessive, as they say, you ain't seen nothin' yet.  To channel an old Pacino flick, opening now for Oscar season, it's "Panic in Progressive Park."

Reason for the panic -- the dawning realization, repressed and often unrecognized though it may be, that Donald Trump may even a be a good president, possibly a great one.

For the time being, liberals are criticizing every action by Donald Trump and every cabinet appointment, which conservatives are cheering as great choices. Read more here

Update: even movie critics are on board with Trump whining

Trump's advantage--he's not Obama

Barack Obama will retire a president personally popular with the American people yet who served them (and himself, and his party) badly.

He fretted in 2012 that he would lose the election just in time for Mitt Romney to get credit for an Obama recovery. That long-delayed recovery is finally coming in the last months of his administration—the economy finally broke 3% growth in the third quarter—and now Mr. Trump will get the credit.

Trump may even deserve a bit, witness the outbreak of optimism in the stock market and small-business hiring plans.

If the link requires a subscription, go here and click on the WSJ result.

Global Warming Update

Here's what  happened to one global warming skeptic

There is scant evidence to indicate that hurricanes, floods, tornadoes or drought have become more frequent or intense in the U.S. or globally. In fact we are in an era of good fortune when it comes to extreme weather. This is a topic I’ve studied and published on as much as anyone over two decades. My conclusion might be wrong, but I think I’ve earned the right to share this research without risk to my career.

Instead, my research was under constant attack for years by activists, journalists and politicians. In 2011 writers in the journal Foreign Policy signaled that some accused me of being a “climate-change denier.” I earned the title, the authors explained, by “questioning certain graphs presented in IPCC reports.” That an academic who raised questions about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in an area of his expertise was tarred as a denier reveals the group think at work.

Anybody who expresses the least amount of skepticism about the party line in global warming is shunned, and their science doesn't see the light of day if the establishment can censor it. Hopefully this will change under Donald Trump and both sides of the argument will be heard.

Read what happened to this professor who isn't even a denier of global warming climate change.

What rights to Christians have? Satire.

From the Babylon Bee, a source for Christian news satire: Nation Shocked, Horrified As Christians Hold Christian Position

“We’re not saying people can’t be Christians,” a Seattle woman said in a Facebook comment. “This is a free country, after all. But when Christians decide to actually have Christian beliefs about things—I’m sorry, that’s just too far.”

Here's some background on the story  Read this great article on what happens if you express Christian beliefs.

A follow-on story about persecution of Christians

Democratic party hypocrisy by Victor Davis Hanson

After the Democratic equality-of-opportunity agenda was largely realized (Social Security, Medicare, overtime, a 40-hour work week, disability insurance, civil rights, etc.), the next-generation equality-of-result effort has largely failed. What is left of Democratic ideology is identity politics and assorted dead-end green movements as conservation has become radical environmentalism and fairness under the law is now unapologetic redistributionism. 

The broken record of racism/sexism/homophobia plays on and on and on

A round-up of interesting election news

On Wednesday November 30, almost every campaign strategist from the 2016 election — most unsuccessful — were in one room, listening to CNN president Jeff Zucker’s attempt to explain why one of the United States’ leading broadcast news outlets played wall-to-wall coverage of Donald Trump for more than a year. Bullshit!”: GOP strategists shout

At the same meeting, Trump and Clinton staffers shout at each other

Meet Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis, Trump’s choice for secretary of defense  Obama fired several of the "fighting generals" and replaced them with weenies who would toe the line; Mattis is one of them. Another is National Security Adviser: Michael Flynn, who while at the Defense Intelligence Agency argued that exiting Iraq would open up the country to ISIS. Because this contradicted Obama's message, he also was fired.

More from Peter Thiel

Remember Peter Thiel?  He spoke at the Republican convention and also at the National Press Club. I invite you to search for those speeches on YouTube.  He is a Silicon Valley venture capital outside the usual liberal mode. Here's another speech by him on higher education.

The government goes after piano teachers

This little story is about the FTC attacking piano teachers but its more than that. It's about the fact that there are too many government employees. There is a rule in economics that "work expands to fill the time available". Give a civil servant some free time and he will look around for a way to cause mischief, and since there seems to be no checks and balances over organizations like the FTC and the EPA, the burden of regulation grows continuously. New EPA rules are costing $1 trillion with minimal benefit. After you take care of the egregious environmental problems, solving the remaining ones is not economically justified.

Castro's useful idiots

Castro was an evil dictator. People who say nice things in his memory are wrong

Lastly, for all of Castro’s ranting about the exploitive nature of capitalism, it takes a truly mercenary mind to come up with the schemes his regime employed to garner hard currency — from drug-running, to assassinations to, well, vampiric behavior. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights reported in 1966 that 166 Cuban prisoners were executed on a single day in May of that year. But before they were killed, they were forced to undergo the forced extraction of an average of seven pints of blood from their bodies. This blood was sold to Communist Vietnam at a rate of $50 per pint. Those who underwent the bloodletting suffered cerebral anemia and a state of unconsciousness and paralysis. But that didn’t stop the executions; the victims were carried on a stretcher to the killing field where they were then shot.

Why 'Starship Troopers' Is the New 'The Art of War'

I first read Starship Troopers in 1959. The book is much better than the movie. After reading this review in Popular Mechanics I will read it again.  Robert Heinlein was a commentator on many social issues well ahead of his time. Consider this quotation on Socialism

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck. 

Read more about Robert Heinlein here

The last communist city

Anyone sad about the passing of that famous world leader, or enthusiastic about socialism, should read this article from City Journal "The Last Communist City". A visit to the Havana that tourists never see. Be sure and read the part about the free health care that Michael Moore is so enamored with.

Bonus article by Glenn Reynolds: Castro and his ilk showed us that under socialism, the powerful grow rich — and everyone else grows poor. I'm not sure why this is in the "opinion" category; it's just facts.

Under capitalism, the rich grow powerful. Under socialism, the powerful grow rich — and everyone else grows poor.

Is Trump a racist homophobe like liberals say?

Anybody who things that the way the media has described Donald Trump should read this article by a person who really doesn't like him.

Discover an author that's been here all your life

The Faith and Fiction of Madeleine L’Engle in a Politically Correct World is an article about an author that writes both award-winning children's books and life-changing non-fiction with Christian values. Consider "A Wrinkle in Time" for your grandchildren or "Walking on Water..." for yourself.

A new edition of L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art was released recently, offering a look at a woman who walked and wrestled in the light of faith. The book’s title, which draws on scenes from the New Testament, emerged from L’Engle’s belief that art and faith can never be separated

Read the article, then explore her books on Amazon

The American experiment with socialism

Socialism keeps popping up despite all the evidence that it doesn't work, doesn't feed the people (see Venezuela), and doesn't make for prosperity. People are treated equal--equally bad (except for the leaders of course). Because children are not educated in America, socialists like Bernie Saunders can make a credible run to be nominated for president. Since the Left is lacking in logic, they maintain their enthusiasm for the idea.

As is his annual custom, Rush Limbaugh tells the story of the Pilgrims experiment with socialism.

The New York Times collects the columns

If you are a real enthusiast for political commentary, I recommend this link where the New York Times has conveniently placed a collection of columns. I particularly suggest you read the first by Paul Krugman, possibly the most ignorant economist ever to win a Nobel Prize. He predicts disaster, but the market has hit a new all-time high since the election. The market is always smarter than the economists.  Further down there is some pretty good wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Are Donald Trump and the Republican Party racist?

The racist label is ubiquitous in the writings of columnists and liberal reporters. It's a Democrat Party talking point. But is there a shred of evidence that there is any truth to the accusation?

D. C. Mcallister examines the charges in detail, an article worth reading

The Supreme Court elected Donald Trump

Judicial Activism Set the Stage for Trump Win

The people don't like jurists writing their own laws. What is referred to as "judicial activism" was the number one reason Trump voters gave for their presidential choice.  Hillary was widely viewed as being in favor of using the courts to advance liberal causes, especially gun control, and there was widespread fear of what she could do to lean the court to the left.

The conservatives were particularly upset when the Court read into the Constitution a right to marry between people of the same sex. Other decisions were troubling, such as the support for Obamacare. For Trump voters, the Supreme Court was the bottom line regardless of how people felt about Trump.

Global Warming Roundup

I am skeptical about global warming on several issues.

1. Is it real, considering that satellite records show no global warming in 18 years?
2. The models that are used to predict global warming don't seem to match the atmospheric temperatures.
3. Is it really that bad for the planet and the people?
4. Is it worth raising the cost of everything for minimal results?
5. Do we really trust those folk who adjust the numbers to make their case?

Here are comments from reputable scientists who are quite a bit more knowledgeable than I

Renowned Princeton Physicist Freeman Dyson: ‘I’m 100% Democrat and I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on climate issue, and the Republicans took the right side.

Nobel Prize-Winning Scientist Who Endorsed Obama Now Says Prez. is ‘Ridiculous’ & ‘Dead Wrong’ on ‘Global Warming’

Green Guru James Lovelock reverses belief in ‘global warming’: Now says ‘I’m not sure the whole thing isn’t crazy

Politically Left Scientist Dissents – Calls President Obama ‘delusional’ on global warming

Why did Hillary lose Ohio?

Rust Belt Dems broke for Trump because they thought Clinton cared more about bathrooms than jobs.

The local chairman feels very strongly now that Clinton could have won Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan if she had just kept her eye on economic issues and not gotten distracted by the culture wars.

“Look, I’m as progressive as anybody, okay? But people in the heartland thought the Democratic Party cared more about where someone else went to the restroom than whether they had a good-paying job,” he complained. “‘Stronger together’ doesn’t get anyone a job.”

“The messages can’t be about ‘job retraining.’ These folks have heard it a million times and, frankly, they think it’s complete and total bulls**t,” he continued. “Talk about policies that will incentivize companies to repatriate manufacturing jobs. Talk about infrastructure … The workers we’re talking about don’t want to run computers; they want to run back hoes, dig ditches (and) sling concrete block. 

Holmes, who is African American, said it was more than just trade. Many Democrats in his district voted for Trump because they believed that Clinton wanted to confiscate their guns, supported late-term abortion and would not stop un-vetted Syrian refugees from pouring into the country. 

 

Remember the bakery that refused to cater a gay wedding? Payback

Brad Avakian was an obscure candidate for what might seem to be a relatively inconsequential position. But as it turns out, Oregon's secretary of state race provides an instructive lesson about the Democratic party's culture-war extremism.

Avakian briefly gained national headlines last year when, in his capacity as the Oregon commissioner of labor, he fined Aaron and Melissa Klein, the proprietors of Sweet Cakes By Melissa, $135,000 for refusing to bake a cake for a lesbian commitment ceremony. (Gay marriage was not yet legal in Oregon at the time.) The Kleins said they would be happy to serve gay customers, but they drew the line at participating in a specific ceremony contradicting their religious beliefs. What was especially notable about the fine Avakian doled out was its egregiously punitive nature. Owing to public outrage, the Kleins had shuttered their bakery a year and a half earlier. Aaron Klein had then taken a job as a garbageman to support his family.

Brad Avakian, a Democrat, lost an election in Oregon, a state where having a D after your name should guarantee a win. Read the article which tells a tale about Democrats war on culture.

How Jared Kushner got Trump elected.

The cover article in Forbes Magazine describes how Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law got him elected President.

Jared Kushner never talks to the press, to the chagrin of everyone in the media (especially the liberals, but I repeat myself). He sat down with this Forbes reporter to talk abut the campaign.

“It’s hard to overstate and hard to summarize Jared’s role in the campaign,” says billionaire Peter Thiel, the only significant Silicon Valley figure to publicly back Trump. “If Trump was the CEO, Jared was effectively the chief operating officer.”

“Jared Kushner is the biggest surprise of the 2016 election,” adds Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, who helped design the Clinton campaign’s technology system. “Best I can tell, he actually ran the campaign and did it with essentially no resources.”

Are liberals more anti-science than conservatives?

Conservatives are generally considered to be science deniers, with creationism or denial of global warming used as examples.  This article makes the case that it's liberals who are more likely to be wrong about science. And the media, being full of liberals, colors their news coverage with their bias; for example:

When Obama diplomatically ducked a question on the campaign trail about the age of the Earth (“I don’t presume to know”), the press paid no attention. When Marco Rubio later did the same thing (“I’m not a scientist”), he was lambasted as a typical Republican ignoramus determined to bring back the Dark Ages.

These prejudices affect research:

The combination of all these pressures from the Left has repeatedly skewed science over the past half-century. In 1965, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan published a paper presciently warning of the dangers for black children growing up in single-parent homes, it was greeted with such hostility—he was blaming the victim, critics said—that the topic became off-limits among liberals, stymieing public discussion and research for decades into one of the most pressing problems facing minority children. Similarly, liberal advocates have worked to suppress reporting on the problems of children raised by gay parents or on any drawbacks of putting young children in day care. In 1991, a leading family psychologist, Louise Silverstein, published an article in the American Psychologist urging her colleagues to “refuse to undertake any more research that looks for the negative consequences of other-than-mother-care.” 

The article discusses many examples of where science has gone wrong.

Environmental science has become so politicized that its myths endure even after they’ve been disproved. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring set off decades of chemophobia with its scary anecdotes and bad science, like her baseless claim that DDT was causing cancer in humans and her vision of a mass avian die-off (the bird population was actually increasing as she wrote). Yet Silent Spring is taught in high school and college courses as a model of science writing, with no mention of the increased death tolls from malaria in countries that restricted DDT, or of other problems—like the spread of dengue and the Zika virus—exacerbated by needless fears of insecticides. Similarly, the Left’s zeal to find new reasons to regulate has led to pseudoscientific scaremongering about “Frankenfoods,” transfats, BPA in plastic, mobile phones, electronic cigarettes, power lines, fracking, and nuclear energy. 

Read the whole fascinating article 

Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's strategist

There is a lot of false information coming out of the liberal media about Steve Bannon who was appointed Donald Trump's "Counselor to the President".  He has been described as a strategic genius by fans in the Trump organization and a racist Nazi by the liberal media. As always, the liberal media is not to be trusted. Here's a reasonable article in the Wall Street Journal about Mr. Bannon. (click on the link to the Google search engine then on the wsj.com option.

Where is the real fake news?

Facebook has been in the news lately over a bunch of fake news items posted on the site. The posts were shared widely until the amount of fake news exceeded the amount of real news. Facebook is working to solve the problem.

What I see as the real problem is the amount of fake news published on real news sites. One of the worst offenders is the New York Times, which regularly distorts the news in favor of liberal causes and worked hard to elect Hillary.  Here is an article with links to several NYT stories that turned out to be fake or outright biased.

People can easily check fake news, such as the story that said "the Pope was supporting Donald Trump." It's not so easy to check fake news when it's published in the mainstream media; you have to dig through alternative sources generally available only on the Internet.

16 best quotes from the retiring Gen. James Mattis

Marine General James Mattis is being considered for Secretary of Defense.  It sounds like Trump likes him.  He was retired by Obama, along with a lot of other fighting generals who were replaced with political hacks.  Here's a list of quotes from General Mattis from 2013  General Mattis was beloved by the soldiers who worked under him.

A 12-step program for liberals agonizing over the election

Nicolas Kristof wrote an article in the New York Times called "A 12-Step Program for Responding to President-Elect Trump". Actually, it's a 12-step program for liberals, of which he is one.

Andrew Kalvan wrote his own article "An Alternative 12-Step Response to Trump" from a conservative view. Naturally, it makes more sense. I recommend the second.

Broadway production Hamilton gets political

Hamilton has been in the news lately because Vice-President Elect Pence attended the show with his family. One of the actors took time out at the end to recite a political message for his benefit. Much discussion occurred among the chattering class, though Pence took it with good humor and demonstrated again that he is a class act.

What isn't discussed much is the price of tickets to this sold-out show. The best seats are going up to $849  which tells you something about what kind of people attend these shows. The problem for the show was that the scalpers were making significant money in the secondary market and the producers want that money for themselves.

One interesting aspect of this production is that when they put out the casting call, they specified that "only non-whites need apply". Can you imagine what would happen if the offer said "only whites need apply"?

Conflicting opinions about General Flynn

Michael Flynn has been appointed National Security Advisor by President-Elect Trump and the establishment is in a tizzy.  Flynn seems to be guilty of speaking truth about Muslims, which is not allowed in the Obama administration or his military.

You can have some fun and watch the news being biased by reading two disparate articles: one in the Wall Street Journal and one in the New York Times.  Unless you have a subscription to the WSJ, you can't read it, but you can bypass the pay wall by pasting the headline into Google and clicking on the link to the WSJ article. The article discusses the controversies in what seems to be accurate reporting.

On the other hand, the NYT describes the choice as a calamity. Starting with the headline:

"Michael Flynn: An Alarming Pick for National Security Adviser"

Biased reporting in action. Fortunately for the Trump administration and everyone who wants to be safe from radical Islam, the position does not require Congressional approval.

The fall of the house of Clinton

Jonah Goldberg has a terrific article on the Clintons,

Well schadenfreude is always a good way to get your day going. The stories about Hillary measuring the drapes are all over Washington. They literally popped champagne on the campaign plane on Election Day. I like to imagine Bill Clinton going through binders full of women — and not the Romney kind — picking out the “deputies” he’d like to work with in the White House and Sid Blumenthal letting his fingers wander over an assortment of fine Italian leather riding crops pondering his return to power. Someone recently told me that the Bill Clinton Presidential Library is built off-center on its campus in anticipation of the day that Hillary’s presidential library would go along side it.

It also seems plausible because the Clintons always planned on Hillary becoming president. It was the logical corollary for the “two for the price of one” nonsense Bill peddled from the beginning. The Clintons burrowed into the brain stem of the Democratic party, like one of those ear-tunneling scorpion things in Star Trek II, and they never left. In the process, they hollowed out the party. Barack Obama helped of course (see my recent column on that), but the Clintons didn’t mind too much because they knew if the bench was cleared of competition, Obama would have to hand the keys to Hillary.

Fun reading of the whole article

 

Freedom From Religion Foundation gets a lump of coal for Christmas

Liberals complain that radio is dominated by right wing folks like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin. They want more liberal radio programs. There's a problem; liberal radio is both boring and often lacks fundamental logic. Even in liberal Madison Wisconsin, the liberal talk station is switching to full time Christmas music for the coming season, and will adopt a new format afterwards, much to the chagrin of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Academic freedom gone insane

Professor Joy Karega of Oberlin College was criticized early this year for sharing Facebook postings that, among other things, claimed that “Israeli and Zionist Jews” were responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, and for the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in 2015.

Karega, whose academic interests include black political and protest literacies as well as social justice writing, also wrote that the Islamic State is not “a jihadist, Islamic terrorist organization” but rather “an operation” of the CIA and Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad. And she said Israel had brought down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 widely believed to have been shot down by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine.

It took eight months to fire this person, a process that should take five minutes. Can you believe that colleges think these kind of people should be teaching our children and we should be paying $50,000 a year for the privilege?  Surely someone this dysfunctional should have failed her hiring interview.

New report on Fracking and groundwater contamination

I work in geophysics, some of it oil and gas related, so I follow the fracking debate. Environmentalists oppose fracking. Movies and web sites devoted to the issue are widely available on the web and even streaming video services.  Strangely enough, the anti-fracking people are also supporters of efforts to limit CO2 production allegedly leading to global warming. They do this despite the fact that fracking has done more to reduce CO2 production than all the windmills and solar cells in North America. Because increasing the supply of natural gas, and lower its cost, gas is replacing coal as a source for electricity (incidentally, lowering your home heating bill).

Here's a new story about the environmentalists favorite study linking fracking to groundwater contamination.

Any natural gas in the ground water is the result of natural migration to the surface which occurred long before an fracking. This happens in lots of places, often to the delight of children that enjoy flames coming out of the ground.

How ignorant are college students about history?

This professor asked students to name one country besides the United States that practiced slavery. The students seemingly thought America uniquely invented the institution, not just its racial overtones.

"We have so made American slavery the focus of our history education" that most students "have no idea that slavery is a worldwide phenomenon, that people of all races across the world have practiced it." And that wasn't the only major flaw in their knowledge — students could not identify Thomas Jefferson as a president, and could not explain Marxism, socialism, or capitalism in a sentence. Perhaps ironically, on one quiz, 29 out of 32 students knew Jefferson owned slaves, but only three identified him as president. Interestingly, six of them incorrectly believed Ben Franklin had held that office.

We've transformed the teaching of history into a political act, not a historical act.

Roger Simon thinks Trump will be a great president

Simon, columnist for PJ Media, predicted that Trump would win the election back in August.

Donald Trump will prove to be one of the greatest and most consequential American presidents, at least since Ronald Reagan and possibly before. No one will ever approach Washington or Lincoln, but Trump is positioned to be one of our most important leaders and be a true change-maker, turning this country around at a time when American power and greatness were on the wane.

Although I had previously suspected as much, I was convinced of this watching his performance on 60 Minutes Sunday. What we saw was Trump in the presidential mode he has long promised and he slipped into it remarkably easily, as if it had always been there and needed no coaxing. The daffy Donald of the primaries and later was far in the rearview mirror. (Was it ever real or just a masquerade?)

 Read his analysis here

Here's another guy who predicted Trump would win: Roger Moore

"I take no pleasure in having called this five months ago. So I don't want to hear that, really," Moore said, relating a segment on the network where panelists had made fun of the Trump campaign expense report showing the largest expenditure on red hats. "...We wear ball caps. We, to borrow the Dylan line, the country I come from is called the Midwest. This Middle America thing -- and the reason why they have this anger toward the media, this kind of elitist thing... that was laughable that they weren't spending money on getting new polls or doing -- 'they have no ground game.' 'They have no ground game.' Are you kidding me?"

"First of all, the ground game has occurred over the last 30 years and this did not turn people into Republicans, because it started under Ronald Reagan in Flint, in Detroit, where people lost tens of thousands of jobs, and their lives were decimated and they were kicked out of the middle class and when Reagan fired the air traffic controllers and other unions didn't stand up and say anything or do anything, that was the end right there. And it just got worse and worse and worse for working people," he explained.

Insightful quotes from Alexis de Tocqueville

Californians voted to extend an income tax surcharge on the rich, and I was look for that quote about democracies failing when the people learned that they could vote extra largess by taking it from others. The idea of letting poor people vote to take money from rich people struck me as wrong, just like politicians tax visitors who rent cars and stay in hotels to pay for those convention centers.

Anyway, I stumbled across Alexis de Tocqueville, a visionary thinker from the 1800's. Here are some samples:

On the above subject:

A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

On Islam:

 I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.

On Socialism:

As for me, I am deeply a democrat; this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can't have it both ways.

Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude

 

Why Trump won the election

The media can't figure it out. They spent the day after the election, analyzing and hypothesizing about how the polls could have been so wrong. I went along with the talking heads, not really understanding, until late in the day Wednesday when Fox News mentioned the strong support among evangelicals, and then it all made sense.

Millions of Christians across the country were praying about the election. In the face of all that support, what could God do but swing the election to Donald Trump. As a general rule, liberals on the left don't take faith seriously, didn't call on the Almighty for their candidate, and thus Hillary didn't have a prayer.

Why did Christians support this twice-divorced womanizer? For me, it comes down to liberal attacks on Christian values. Not just gay marriage, but for the fact that a pizza restaurant can't refuse to host a gay marriage reception, or a Christian bakery can't refuse to bake a gay wedding cake, or a Christian photographer can't refuse to document a gay wedding. Why can't the gays just take their wins in the public sector and leave Christians alone? There are plenty of services available to gays; why antagonize someone who isn't harming or even inconveniencing you? Why go out of your way to make a statement and ruin a little business with outrageous fines?

So, the bottom line was the Supreme Court. We believe we knew what kind of Justices Hillary would nominate, while Trump produced a list of reasonable choices.

Of course it didn't help Hillary to be so pro-choice as to state that babies didn't have any constitutional rights.

Bonus article from The Atlantic: Why Christians Overwhelmingly Backed Trump

Update: Another writer that suggests the same reason

Pictures from the old west

Here are a series of pictures from the old west, many are fascinating

A roundup of analysis from the liberal media

The liberal media are going insane over the election results.  Here's a roundup of commentary

Huffington Post: America Has Done What Seemed Unthinkable

The New York Times: A suite of critical editorials

Slate: White Won the country is racist

Salon: A nation gone wrong . How did this happen?

The Daily Beast: How The Daily Beast Will Stand Up to President Donald Trump

Jezebel: The United States has elected Donald Trump, a 70-year-old tangerine Superfund site and a menace to the peace, stability, and dignity of the country and the future of the free world

Mother Jones: Hate Trumps History: A Reality TV Star Wins the White House in a Broken America

Chris Mathews: Hillary Won the Debates, Had ‘Best Ad Campaign’

Another reason to boycott Dunkin Donuts

Besides their coffee. It was one thing to take Christmas off their holiday cups, but take a look at this picture of a famous atheist making an obscene gesture in the spirit of the season

George Soros is spending millions to manipulate the election process

The Democrats hold up the Koch brothers as evil incarnate because they support activities conducive to right wing causes. A little research can show that the Koch's are patriotic citizens with the best interest of the country at heart. Read between the lines in this biased article in Wikipedia to see where their interests lie in the betterment of society.

On the other hand, George Soros, is working to support leftists causes. Here's an article that lists his activities to change the nature and culture of the US. George Soros is as much a hero to the Democrats as the Koch are villains. Remember this when you see the Kochs criticized on the talk shows.

The problems in Venezuela start with SOCIAL and end with ISM

Venezuela is a socialist country, lauded by liberals in the old days but now ignored. Here's a thorough article in the New Yorker exploring the problems. Worth reading. The state is failing; we should send Bernie Sanders there to tell the people how happy they are with free stuff.

Bonus story: Dana Carvey destroys socialism.  Funny of course.

Obamacare is dying and the Democrats want to blame the Republicans

Nancy Pelosi said about Obamacare, "we have to pass it so we can see what's in it".

 In “The Federalist 62” James Madison argued that “Laws must be few, understandable, and stable.”

“The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous – It poisons the blessings of liberty itself – It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow"

ObamaCare’s Chickens Have Come Home to Roost. This complex law is economic insanity, a common characteristic of things promoted by politicians who lack common sense about anything except how to get elected. The law is collapsing because it was never economically viable in the first place.

Bonus: Fewer Americans Have Private Health Insurance Now Than in 2007

Bill Whittle thinks the nation would be better off with a turnip than a Clinton

Bill Whittle always makes creative, insightful, and entertaining videos. In this one, he argues that electing a turnip (yes the vegetable) would be better for the country than electing Hillary Clinton.

Poll results over time by demographics are interesting

The LA Times and USC have plotted the way people planned to vote over time.  Right now, Trump is ahead, but what's really interesting is to dig down into the demographics and see how it affects voting preferences. Major events are plotted to see how they affected the poles. One thing is clear; if the original intent of the founding fathers was still in effect, we would have a different country today.

Watch 100 drones flying in formation--at night--with lights

Intel, the microprocessor company, created a show with 100 drones flying in formation, with lights. They took it to Germany, and Palm Springs, and Sydney. There are many versions on YouTube including the one linked above. Bringing in a live orchestra was an extra touch.

Bias in the media

Andrew Klavan thinks we should reform the mainstream media by putting some conservatives in the company of liberal operatives disgused as journalists.

The "garage" where Hewlett-Packard started

In 1938, Bill Hewlett and David Packard built an audio oscillator in a garage behind a house. The sold some oscillators to Walt Disney who used them in the movie "Fantasia". That was the start of Hewlett-Packard which became a giant company based in Palo Alto before there was a Silicon Valley. When I was a young technician, I wanted nothing more than to work at HP. One of their salesmen taught me about ethical sales practices. The garage and house have been restored and here is a photo essay.  The captions are on the right side.

5 Reasons to Start Eating Full-Fat Dairy, According to Science

Whole milk is good for you in a number of ways  They forget the sixth reason; it's tastes delicious.

Which candidate is least likely to do bad things?

Glen Reynolds argues that Trump is not likely to get away with anything, whereas Clinton is accustomed to doing whatever she wants.

The truth is, neither one of our leading candidates for president is a paragon of virtue. But only one of them has already made a habit of flouting the law while in office, selling favors and escaping the consequences, and only one of them is likely to be able to pull it off from the White House.

And that’s the problem. If Secretary of State Clinton, serving under a president and with an eye on winning a second term in the White House, wasn’t constrained by the rules, who will constrain her if she’s president?

Follow up, how bad will the transition be and why Hillary can't govern.

Update: The Clintons, they're a crime family 

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A great speech by Peter Thiel in support of Donald Trump

This speech is worth your time. Even though the fascinating interview goes an hour, the actual speech only takes the first 15 minutes.

Follow up article in USA Today