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A gorgeous woman gets into a taxi. She says, "To the airport, please."

After a few minutes, the taxi driver, watching the woman in the mirror, says, "You're third pregnant woman I've driven to the airport today."

She woman, indignant, says, "You must be kidding. I'm not pregnant."

The taxi driver says, "Well, you haven't arrived to the airport yet, either."

*.*

A couple was driving down a country road for several miles, not saying a word.

An earlier discussion had led to an argument and neither of them wanted to concede their position.

As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats, and pigs, the wife asked sarcastically, "Relatives of yours?"

"Yep," the husband replied, "in-laws."

*.*

Afghan policeman promoted after multiple sexual assault allegations

KABUL — Afghan National Police Col. Adeeb Safi was promoted to the rank of major general after receiving multiple sexual assault allegations, sources confirmed today.

Reports that Safi had sexually assaulted subordinates and young boys for the past 15 years came to light earlier this week, according to defense officials. After one victim went public, many others were empowered to share their stories of the horrific assaults Safi had inflicted.

“Safi has long acted as a corrupt warlord, giving drug smugglers and the Taliban free reign over his province. He made a lot of money allowing anarchy to flourish,” said Afghan Interior Minister Wais Barmak. “I considered him an outstanding police officer, and today’s news proves he has what it takes to succeed at the highest levels of the Afghan National Police force.”

The veteran officer was promoted “for his outstanding dedication to sexual assaulting the most vulnerable among the Afghan population,” according to his certificate of achievement.

Safi celebrated his promotion by adding more trinkets to his police car and defecating by the side of the road.

“It’s good to see my hard work finally get recognized,” Safi said. “I’ve spent a lot of time performing summary executions and forcing women to get raped, you know, upholding the law. At the same time I was going the extra mile to rape boys and young men. So glad my efforts are finally coming into the light.”

*.*

Although he was a qualified meteorologist, Hopkins ran up a terrible record of forecasting for the TV news program. He became something of a local joke when a newspaper began keeping a record of his predictions and showed that he'd been wrong almost three hundred times in a single year.

That kind of notoriety was enough to get him fired.

He moved to another part of the country and applied for a similar job. One blank on the job application called for the reason for leaving his previous position.

Hopkins wrote, "The climate didn't agree with me."

*.*

When I was going through puberty, I learned the meaning of the word "nymphomaniac."

I remember thinking to myself, "Well they have a name for it, I guess that means I'm not the first."

Issue of the Times;
Why Liberals Need to Look Down on Conservatives by Selwyn Duke
A common theme among progressives is that conservatives aren't just wrong; they're dumb. Reagan was dumb. G.W. Bush was dumb. Trump is dumb. "Knuckle-dragger," "mouth-breather," "stupid," and "uncultured" are typical pejoratives hurled at conservatives, who apparently tend to live in trailer parks, require dental care, handle snakes, and marry first cousins. Why, I had a liberal actor (excuse the redundancy) tell me once that I wasn't necessarily bad, just not as "evolved" as he was.
The reason for this arrogance isn't as simple as many may think. Rather, it relates to a deep psychological phenomenon that makes it difficult for those afflicted to evolve out of the leftist primordial soup.
I'll introduce this with a story. Many years ago, I was at an affair attended by a very chauvinistic, left-wing Greek fellow who would expound upon the superiority of Greek culture while at times demeaning the U.S. He was like the father character in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, only with an anti-American twist. Desiring to take him down a peg and do a little face-to-face trolling, I finally said with a smirk, "If all that's true, why is Greece now like a third-world country?" (For those offended, know that I have great respect for ancient Greek accomplishments, just love moussaka, and have the physique of a Spartan hoplite.)
Well, I exaggerate not when saying he turned red and, with veins popping out in his neck, exclaimed, "Don't say that! Don't say that!" It was the kind of situation where you get the feeling the guy might take a swing at you.
His intense reaction wasn't hard to explain. His self-esteem, his self-image, was wholly dependent upon the idea that he was a member of an elite, a superior group, with which he identified so closely that there was little to no separation in his mind between it and him. This was something deeply ingrained, part of the fabric of his being. Thus, any challenge to this idea struck directly at an intractable self-image, threatening to upset his ego's world order, which had him, through group association, at its very pinnacle.
This phenomenon is common. It's often exhibited by those considering themselves part of a "master race" or any kind of special group. It can be comforting: a person may not be accomplished, intelligent, or gifted and might otherwise feel inadequate. But his group association saves his psyche's day, for whatever he is or isn't, at least he's not like those other people, those untouchables.
Remember that at issue here isn't a mere intellectual appreciation. For example, I truly believe that Western culture (which did originate with ancient Greece, mind you) is superior to all others. Yet I derive no self-esteem from being a "Westerner"; it's just not part of who I am. Rather, the phenomenon in question here is a deeply emotional one.
For this reason, it's wholly resistant to intellectual appeals. You can't logically talk someone out of something irrational on which his self-worth is based. In fact, if it begins to dawn on such a person that his notions of superiority – and hence his self-image – rest on a lie, it will be intensely painful and depressing. The individual will thus have a strong incentive to rationalize away this realization.
I don't claim that every single leftist derives his self-esteem from the notion that he's part of a superior group called "liberals," nor does this phenomenon completely explain leftist resistance to reason. But it is common among devoted liberals, and it's part of why, as a group, they can't give traditionalist views a fair hearing. Doing so doesn't just threaten their ideology; it threatens who they are, their entire self-image. Any argument that may give them even an inkling that they're wrong can induce a bit of panic and is thus quickly rationalized away – often as the rambling of uneducated, un-evolved mouth-breathers who just don't know any better.
This phenomenon is exacerbated by two related factors. First, liberals are generally dysfunctional, vice-ridden people who embrace what we call liberalism because its underlying relativism and nihilism help them justify their sins. (They become the arbiters of their own "values." "Everything is gray, a matter of perspective. I have my own 'truth.'") Simultaneously, liberalism allows these virtue-bereft people to virtue-signal by paying homage to the day's fashionable values. In other words, liberals are generally morally "unaccomplished" people who often have nothing to cling to but the illusion of intellectual, and often moral, superiority.
(As to the left's actual moral inferiority, I urge you to read the excellent 2008 piece "Don't listen to the liberals – Right-wingers really are nicer people, latest research shows.")
Second, conservatives are more likely to have authentic faith, while liberals tend be to avowed or de facto atheists, which is why church attendance is one of the best predictors of voting patterns. This has an effect. Theists may, and I hope will, recognize moral differences among people and groups; any tendency to become haughty, however, is often tempered by a divine injunction prescribing humility and the knowledge that we're all sinners, part of a fallen race. Love for others is also demanded. Atheism involves no such requirements; in fact, its correlative moral relativism or nihilism (explained here) makes "if it feels good, do it" the ultimate guide for behavior. Moreover, unable to look up at divine perfection, and with the individual becoming his own source of (pseudo-) "morality," the self is often exalted, the ego deified. As with a pharaoh believing he's a god on Earth, it then becomes easy to look down on others.
Just as liberalism is defined not by an unchanging set of doctrines, but by opposition to conservatism and what it defends – the status quo – godless liberals can judge themselves only relative to other people. And being moral train wrecks, they can't really be happy. But hey, whatever they may or mayn't be, Mr. Conservative, at least they're not you. And that's one status quo they're dead set on maintaining.
SelwynDuke.com
Quote of the Times;
“You want to know who is enslaved in society, look at who’s not allowed to get angry.”

Link of the Times;
http://www.wnd.com/2017/06/true-goal-of-socialism-from-the-horses-mouth/
Root?
After intravenously injecting the chocolatey,
peanut-buttery substance that had been marinating
for a week in a mixture of vinegar, rubbing
alcohol and sea salt, I was sick for days.

Apparently, there IS a wrong way to eat a Reese's.

*.*

Senior Trying to set a Password

WINDOWS: Please enter your new password.

USER: cabbage

WINDOWS:
Sorry, the password must be more than 8 characters.

USER: boiled cabbage
WINDOWS: Sorry, the password must contain 1 numerical character.

USER: 1 boiled cabbage

WINDOWS: Sorry, the password cannot have blank spaces.

USER: 50fuckingboiledcabbages

WINDOWS: Sorry, the password must contain at least one upper case character.

USER: 50FUCKINGboiledcabbages

WINDOWS: Sorry, the password cannot use more than one upper case character consecutively.

USER: 50FuckingBoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourAssIfYouDon'tGiveMeAccessNow!

WINDOWS: Sorry, the password cannot contain punctuation.

USER: ReallyPissedOff50FuckingBoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourAssIfYouDontGiveMeAccessNow

WINDOWS: Sorry, that password is already in use.

*.*

The Most Statistically Terrifying Days On the Calendar


The One Day Each Year Everyone Drives to and from Work Shitfaced

Two hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin invented daylight savings time when his after dinner orgies grew too large to successfully navigate in the dark. These days, the lost hour of sleep is big news in the world of the Cathy comic strip, but it doesn't really faze the rest of us. Right?

Actually, that single lost hour of sleep knows 50 different ways to kill a man with its bare goddamn hands. Thanks to the 20th century's invention of "stuff to do," Americans today average an hour and a half less sleep than we did a hundred years ago. In fact, we're so sleep deprived that Transportation Officials can pretty much set their watch to a statistical spike in fatal car accidents the Monday following the spring forward.

You're basically drunk all day, and contrary to what your body and Cathy might tell you, you're not fine after the morning coffee. There's also "a significant increase in traffic fatalities in the latter half of the day" when people are driving home from work. In case you're bad at geometry, that also means you're also as good as drunk at work. A study of West Virginia coal miners found they were more likely to suffer "a serious work related accident" the week after the clock shift. There's even bad news for the small portion of our readership who aren't West Virginia coal miners. The "Spring forward" has been blamed for $31 billion in losses on Wall Street thanks to sleep deprived traders. You know, it might be time to switch to a less adorable mnemonic device for remembering Daylight Savings.


July 1st Effect

Every July 1st, hospitals across America are flooded with the newest batch of medical interns. Think the first episode of Scrubs, with JD's snappy internal monologues replaced by the phrase "Oh shit" on a continuous loop. According to a Harvard study, the medical industry's throw 'em to the wolves all at the same exact time approach to teaching results in "1,500 to 2,750 additional deaths" each July.

Before you start berating any doctor who doesn't look sufficiently dead in the eyes, that's actually the worst possible thing for you to do. There's a lot of paperwork required to get you from the emergency room to the cardiologist who knows why your heart appears to have the hiccups. Interns are well supervised, they just take longer to process paperwork, and perform other tasks. This means you spend more time in the hospital, which it turns out is just about the worst place to be provided you don't want to die.

Anywhere from 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die each year because of something they caught in the hospital, which is more than either motor vehicle crashes or breast cancer. By slowing things down, the new batch of interns ensure you get exposed to more "real" doctors whose hands, or more likely neckties, could be carrying some illness you can't pronounce from the wing where they keep people with the really scary shit.


Christmas Doesn't Make You Want to Kill Yourself, Is Happy To Do the Job Itself

First of all, suicide rates do not spike around Christmas, contrary to what our collective unconscious apparently wants to believe. But while the holidays don't sap our will to live, Christmas day is better than any other at murdering us. Between 1973 and 2001, Christmas Day netted 53 million deaths, making it the #1 killer on the calendar. And when you look at its weapons of choice, it's almost as though the entire tradition was intentionally calibrated to snuff you out with a quiet efficiency.

Picture a perfect Norman Rockwell Christmas morning. Family around a crackling fireplace, including Grandma and all the relatives. Mom fixes dad an egg nog while preparing the Christmas ham, just two of the many "traditional holiday foods" known outside of December as "the worst things you can put in your body that aren't a live hand grenade." You've got the Christmas presents under the tree that Dad spent all night putting together, and that Mom spent the past month freaking out about buying.

It's stress on top of stress, and that along with exhaustion is a great way to kill your heart. (By the way, you're also 11 percent more likely to die of a heart attack the Monday after the Spring Forward. Sorry, forgot to mention that).

Which brings us to the crackling fire, or as your heart calls it, "my chance to test drive the body of a pack a day smoker." According to a 1999 report on what cardiologists call the "holiday effect" (because "Silent Night, Deadly Night" was already taken by that 80s horror film) even "pollutants from wood-burning fireplaces trigger cardiovascular irregularities."

So according to science, you might be the only thing in your living room that's not trying to kill you this Christmas. So maybe we shouldn't be surprised by the mythical holiday depression after all. The most skillful murderers always make it look like a suicide.


Bad Days For Drunk and Sober Walking

Let's say you're having a New Year's party, and your friend who never got the hang of the whole "adulthood" thing has had one too many. As you see him staggering toward the door holding whichever dinner utensils he presently believes are the keys to his car, you're faced with a dilemma: Do you remind him that he left his keys in the kitchen when he was peeing in your stove?

This is where the echo chamber of news reports and 80s PSAs inside your head should be taking over, reminding you that drunk driving is the most dangerous thing you can do, especially on days like New Year's and the Fourth of July. Plus, he only lives a few blocks away, so you stay quiet, figuring the worst case scenario is someone bumps into him on the way home and gets peed on a little bit.

New Year's Eve is also the #1 day of the year for drunk walking deaths and according to economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner, "Doing the math, you find that on a per-mile basis, a drunk walker is eight times more likely to get killed than a drunk driver." In your friend's head, the empty 30 pack he's wearing as a helmet and the jock strap you convinced him wasn't on backwards provide all the protection he needs. But compared with the 3,000 pounds of speeding metal drunk drivers have wrapped around their body, your friend is at what's known in the world of splatter forensics as a strategic disadvantage.

Even when you take into account all the people drunk drivers plow into, Dunbar and Levitt say that "walking drunk leads to five times as many deaths per mile." This of course isn't to encourage drunk driving. Just to say that whether drunk or sober, there are certain times when walking is way more dangerous than you'd expect.

For instance, jogging, walking and any other show-offy habit that involves propelling oneself over land on foot is 350 percent more likely to get you killed during the first week of November, thanks to the fall-back half of daylight savings time. While the alarm on the joggers' stop watch tells them it's time to put on their ridiculous short shorts and hit the road at the usual time, the weekend shift means normal people are driving home from work in darker conditions than they're accustomed to. And let's face it, joggers, they're looking for any excuse.


Best Day to Make a Decision You'll Regret

Our ancestors probably had mating seasons just like the rest of the animals that they were trying to out breed. In an attempt to get a glimpse of what that might have looked like, researchers at Brown University studied rural African birth patterns and found "a tendency to have babies ... in the dry season after the harvest was complete." A 1987 Japanese study found what it considered a basic rhythm of human reproduction that peaks with a surge in Spring birthdays.

Births in the United States begin rising in August and September and peak on October 5th, the most popular birthday in America. Not only is this a bad time in relation to the harvest, our birth rate dips exactly when births in Japan and Europe are peaking.

According to D.T. Arcieri, a biologist at Farmingdale State University in New York, the answer is simple: "The average pregnancy lasts 274 days. Oct. 5 ... is about 274 days from New Year's Eve, the day millions of Americans are celebrating with alcohol."

So America's annual birth pattern went from being governed by concerns such as "availability of food" and "ability to help with the harvest" to considerations such as, "C'mon girl," and "It's not my fault, you were moving around too much." Congratulations October babies!


The Day After Valentine's, Mother's Day

There's an even crueler chaser to the holidays that are actually supposed to celebrate the before and after of the baby making equation: Valentine's and Mother's Day. What men refer to as holidays invented by the greeting card companies, women prefer to call, "the day I decide to start fucking other dudes."

Ashley Madison, the dating site for married people, typically sees 2,500 to 3,000 women sign up on an average Monday. On the day after Mother's Day last year, the site saw 31,427 new sign-ups.

According to the site's founder Noel Biderman , "Moms have high hopes that they'll be recognized on Mother's Day and often the breakfast in bed, flowers and massage never happens. Their disappointment drives them to consider other options." He stopped short of saying, "That's where I come in!" while making a thrusting motion with his hips.

If your wife was one of the 31,427 women who signed up to Ashley Madison, don't worry, there are other fish in the sea. As Biderman, the guy who made money off of destroying your family put it, "As a husband and father, I personally look forward to Mother's Day." Yes, there's a Mrs. Biderman. And we hear her husband is just super busy around Valentine's and Mother's Day.


The Worst Days Of The Year to Be Born

Did you know your birthday can screw your life? Intelligent people generally agree that the alignment of the stars when you were born is approximately as important as what was on PBS at the time. But just because astrology is complete bullshit doesn't mean your birthday isn't plotting new, and creative ways to screw you.

Americans get a small taste of this in baseball. If your birthday is in late July, every time you struck out in Little League, it turns out you should have been the one throwing empty Budweisers at your dad. That's because the age cutoff for Little League is July 31st, meaning kids with August 1st birthdays were actually a year older you, meaning he porked you into existence at the worst time possible for your baseball career. And if you think that's a minor disadvantage, you should know that a July birthday makes you 50 percent less likely to make the Major Leagues.

This starts to make sense when think about how we figure out what we're good at. It's pretty much all guess and check. You try something out. If you like it, you keep trying it. If you suck at it, you dodge empty beer cans and move on to something else.

Where it starts to get downright terrifying in in places like Australia, Norway and the UK where the school system is run with the precision that Americans reserve for children throwing a ball around in the dirt. In those countries, a child born on the wrong side of their grade's cutoff day will be at a significant disadvantage in reading at age 16, less likely to get good grades and less likely to be university-bound. All because they have the wrong birthday.


The Worst Days of the Year to Order "The Special"

When we go to a restaurant, most of us don't like to think about where the food is coming from. That's the point. You're putting the trust in the hands of a professional just like when you board a plane. Only commercial aircrafts aren't 35 percent more likely to crash during the summer, nor are pilots more likely to risk your life on Mondays--both chances you're taking every time you go out to eat on a Monday in the summer.

The 35 percent increase in food poisoning comes from the fact that microscopic organisms like warm climates just as much as we do. This is of course why most of us have refrigerators, and the meat and fish you buy at grocery stores spend most of their journey to your plate frozen solid. But restaurants are more likely to get meat and fish that hasn't been frozen from butchers and fish markets, to ensure the food tastes better. In his 2000 memoir about his time as the executive chef at some of New York's top restaurants, Anthony Bourdain describes the fish market where most Manhattan restaurants get their seafood.

And the problem isn't just Discount Sushi. As much as we don't like to think about it, restaurants are a business with notoriously thin margins. The ability to stay open can come down to how a restaurant does in a single weekend, when people are more likely to eat out. The problem is that most food providers don't deliver on the weekend, meaning a restaurant has to over estimate how much food to buy, or risk running out.

This brings us to Mondays in the summer, when the chef has a fridge full of days old fish and meat. Thanks to the hot weather, most of it was a risky proposition when it arrived in the kitchen. But if he throws it out, he risks not having a job the following Monday. So according to Bourdain, what happens instead is the chef creates a "special" dish designed to unload the ingredients that are starting to smell funny. That special dish gets printed up, inserted into the menu. Hell, the waiter even offers to "tell you about the specials," presumably because they don't feel quite as bad about poisoning people who need to have the menu read to them.


The Worst Days of the Week to Be Alive (Apparently)

Suicide is a big deal, and most of us assume that the people who kill themselves recognize this fact. It's the most important decision you make in life other than who to marry and what your high school yearbook quote is.

So what day could possibly make us almost twice as likely to kill ourselves than any other?

Not Christmas. Not the day after taxes are due. Wednesday.

What the hell is so bad about Wednesday? It's far away from the weekend, sure. And it's pretty annoying when the lady from work calls it hump day. But it's not put-a-gun-in-your-mouth annoying. She's a woman, and she's using the word hump in a sentence.

Actually, the best explanation researchers were able to come up with for the spike boils down to: The weekend is far away on both sides, and works got you down. In fact, there's no shortage of statistics showing that many suicides are less the result of a profound philosophical problem and more a temporary fart of the soul that would have passed if they'd just given it a night or two to air out.

Take the British coal-gas story, famous among suicide experts (whose children tend not to invite them to career day). For the first half of the 20th century, the preferred method of suicide in Britain was "sticking ones head in the oven," where the coal gas delivered a swift, fatal dose of CO2. When the British government transitioned to a more efficient fuel that, as a happy coincidence, couldn't kill you, the suicide rate for the entire country dropped by a third, and has stayed there ever since.

A similar thing happened in the state of Washington, where statewide jumping suicides were cut in half by raising the guard rails on one bridge. At the Golden Gate Bridge, the world's most popular suicide destination, 515 people were grabbed by cops mid suicide attempt between the years of 1937 and 1971. A researcher in the late 70s tracked these troubled souls down, and found that only six percent went on to kill themselves.

This isn't to deny that there are people in the world who have profoundly difficult problems. It just indicates that for 94 percent, ceasing to exist only seems worth it for a remarkably brief window of time. So whatever day of the week it is, if you're thinking of doing something drastic, it's probably a temporary trick of the mind. Sleep on it. If you still feel like jumping off a bridge in the morning, maybe give it until the holidays. Christmas will be happy to do the job for you.

*.*

‘Sorry aboot that, eh’ — Canadian sniper apologizes after record-breaking kill shot

OTTAWA — A Canadian sniper apologized today after he was confirmed to have scored the longest lethal shot on record, according to sources.

The sniper, whose identity is being withheld for operational security reasons, said he was sorry both to the ISIS fighter he killed and to the former record-holder, British soldier Craig Harrison, whose record his 2.2-mile shot smashed by over 3,000 feet.

“Sorry aboot that, eh,” the sniper supposedly said as the .50 caliber round ripped through the insurgent’s thoracic cavity. “I thought that was a dern moose, friend.”

According to experts, Canadian standard operating procedure is to ask a target’s permission before ending his life, so as to maintain a spirit of good sportsmanship.

“We’re all aboot friendship and fair play up here in Canada, even if we’re just killing a bunch of hosers like ISIS,” said Canadian military spokesman Mick Robinson. “All the famous Canadians that everyone’s heard of like Frank Boucher and Jack Bionda would tell you the same, buddy.”

After hiding out in full-body denim ghillie suits for days, the sniper team allegedly returned to their base where they celebrated with a “specially prepared dinner of maple syrup, Tim Horton’s doughnuts, Molson Ice, and poutine for the Québécois comm. guy.”

Robinson says this shot will “stand right up there with Gretzky’s hat trick against Calgary in ’88” as one of the greatest moments in Canadian history.

“I’d say that was aboot as accurate as a Gordie Howe slapshot, eh,” said Robinson while sitting in a refrigerator and sharpening his ice skates. “I don’t even know what a 2.2 miles is, but I’m scared to look it up.”

“You happen to catch the score of the curling match?”

*.*

A Catholic, a Protestant, a Muslim and a Jew were in a discussion
during a dinner.

Catholic: "I have a large fortune....I am going to buy Citibank!"

Protestant: "I am very wealthy and will buy General Motors!"

Muslim: "I am a fabulously rich prince.... I intend to purchase
Microsoft!"

They then all wait for the Jew to speak....

The Jew stirs his coffee, places the spoon neatly on the table, takes a sip of his coffee, looks at them and casually says:

"I'm not selling."

Issue of the Times;
Bad Philosophy by Roger Scruton

As we approach the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, it is fitting to ask whether we have learned what it tells us about its ideological root. Do we now appreciate that the Marxist ideology destroys legal order, political opposition and human rights? Do we have some idea of the death toll that has in every case followed the triumph of the ‘vanguard party’? Do we have an inkling of the human cost of collectivisation, or of what the gulag meant in terms of the humiliation and destruction of its victims?

Of course the answer in each case is no. Our school curriculum dwells incessantly on the Holocaust. Several states have made denial of it into a crime, and museums and monuments to the victims of Nazism and fascism exist all across the continent. But communism’s millions of victims are remembered hardly at all. One standard history of modern times, widely used in our schools, praises the Russian Revolution as aiming at ‘the complete destruction of the Russian and European bourgeoisie’, necessary for ‘the victory of socialism’. This history (Eric Hobsbawm’s Age of Extremes) does not mention the abolition of the law courts, or the establishment of the Cheka (the secret police), or the vicious expropriations that destroyed the Russian economy, or the mass starvation inflicted on the Ukrainian peasants. It is inadmissible for a historian to write in any but disgusted terms of the Nazi destruction of the Jews; but the equally cruel ‘destruction of the bourgeoisie’ can be described in terms of unqualified approval.

The term ‘bourgeoisie’ is a technicality of the Marxist theory. But it has a real human reference, and that reference is you and me. We who own property, deal in markets, collect salaries, have spouses and children, and live by the ordinary day-to-day morality of neighbourliness, are the people whom Lenin set out to destroy. We are the targets of resentment, and Marxism is the theory of that resentment.

One thing we should surely learn from the Russian revolution is that resentment is always on the lookout for the theories that will justify it. And the lesson that bore in on me in vivid and unforgettable ways during my own journeys behind the Iron Curtain, is that resentment, when it finally takes power, spells the death of politics. The real purpose of politics is not to express resentment but to contain and conciliate it. When, in the wake of the Grenfell fire, leading political figures began calling for a ‘day of rage’, and for the requisitioning of bourgeois property, I heard again the voice of that old resentment. And I asked myself how could it be that the lesson has not been learned?

The problem is not a lack of literature. Invocations of communist terror abound, and include masterpieces that all educated people should know, such as Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago and Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. However, resentment easily overrides the evidence. Just as anti-Semitism has survived constant reminders of the Holocaust, so does the Marxist vision survive the accumulated testimony to its murderous legacy. Resentful people cherish their hatred more than they respect the rights of those who arouse it.

For this reason it is surely time to establish museums devoted to the Marxist legacy. We have a model, indeed, in the House of Terror, established in Budapest in 2002 under the directorship of Maria Schmidt. This commemorates the victims of both fascism and communism, and has been controversial for that very reason. Even in Hungary, leftist intellectuals tell us that the two evils cannot be compared, and that to commemorate their victims in a single museum is to deny their most important difference: that the aims of communism were good, those of fascism bad. It is precisely in order to counter that kind of apology that Maria Schmidt has turned the same light on both ideologies. The aim of both, she insists, was the same. What difference does it make that one focused its resentment on the Jews, the other on the bourgeoisie, when the primary aim was in both cases the mass murder of their victims? Or do we say, with Eric Hobs-bawm, that in the one case, but not in the other, the end justified the means?

As the Momentum movement seduces more and more people towards historical oblivion and utopian exultancy, the need for a programme of public education about these matters is ever more urgent. But I fear that it may be too late.

Quote of the Times;
"Vision without action is daydream. Action without vision is nightmare."

Link of the Times;
http://www.funnyjunk.com/
Comanche?
BREAKING NEWS: The Chicago Police Department has replaced all sirens on their cars with the National Anthem, to force suspects to stop running and take a knee.

Arrests are up 110%.

*.*


Why did the woman leave her husband after he spent all their money on a penis enlarger?

She just couldn’t take it any longer.

*.*

Oneliners:

A sunrise is God's way of telling the world to lighten up.

Some people grin and bear it; others buy and charge it.

One man's wage rise is another man's price increase.

The first rule of tinkering is to save all the parts.

The next unpopular group to have its rights taken away should be illegal aliens

Recessions are started by people who fear recessions.

As I said before, I never repeat myself

If God wanted us to be thin, food wouldn't taste so good.

Golf is a lot like taxes. You drive hard to get to the green and end up in the hole.

*.*

Nine Marines Dead at Pokemon Gym

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Nine Marines are dead after an incident at a Pokemon GO! gym located in Sgt. Maj. Brad Kasal’s parking spot at 1st Marine Expeditionary Force headquarters yesterday.

Kasal reportedly rage-parked his 4×4 in the midst of a crowd of at least a dozen Marines who were training their Pokemon at a gym claimed by Team Instinct.

“For a second I thought we had come across a Machamp,” said one survivor from a full body cast. “By the time I realized it was Sgt. Maj. Kasal, he had already buried his boot about six inches into my taint.”

A number of bystanders were injured during the assault. Kasal also totaled four cars and uprooted one tree.

Witnesses say Kasal loudly argued that “Millennials will be the downfall of my beloved Corps!” throughout the attack.

Military Police did not respond to the scene quickly, as they had been following up on reports of a rare Pokemon located somewhere near the Consolidated Issue Facility.

As a result, Kasal escaped down the amtrac ramp, witnesses say, and shouted at the top of his lungs that he was surrounded by pussies before jumping into the water.

Kasal’s rampage and subsequent escape have left some survivors concerned about family members.

“He yelled something about finding my mother and making sure she ended up having a son she could eventually be proud of,” said one Marine who underwent emergency surgery to have a cell phone removed from his rectum.

Crisis response forces from the 11th MEU have deployed to capture the enraged NCO, who was last seen swimming west into the Pacific Ocean.

Headquarters Marine Corps has not responded to a request for a statement concerning the incident or any policy on the Pokemon GO! app. A spokesman did confirm that the game has surpassed vaping as the leading cause of virginity among Marines.

*.*

I'll bet in Heaven they have one single word that means "back when I was alive."

You know, to save time in meetings and stuff.

Issue of the Times;
Taboo Truths About the Comanche by Danusha V. Goska

I used to, on some level, accept the popular notion that Native Americans were more spiritual and in tune with nature than European Americans, and that it was European Americans who brought war, sexism, and environmental degradation to an otherwise innocent, peaceful and Edenic Native America.

As a kid I bought slim paperbacks from the Scholastic Book Club that taught me that Native Americans planted dead fish in their agricultural fields in order to fertilize them. I learned that North American Indians didn't have the wheel, bronze, iron, or steel, or writing. They cooked acorns by dropping hot stones into holes dug in the ground and filled with water. The acorns had to be soaked in advance in order to leech them of toxins. I thought of how cumbersome and time-consuming that cooking method would be, and how bland a meal a soaked acorn would provide.

In popular culture, Native Americans were the spiritual and natural corrective to modern Americans, who were seen as greedy and divorced from nature. On TV, Iron Eyes Cody witnessed American pollution and a visible tear flowed down his creased and weathered cheek. Of course Iron Eyes Cody was actually Sicilian but hey. The commercial meant well.

Chief Seattle was alleged to have given an eloquent speech about protecting the environment. He compared the Native American harmony with nature and the White Man's greed. Chief Seattle's environmental speech is a hoax. The version most people know was written by a white, Christian man from Texas.

My environmentalist and politically correct friends were deeply offended by the "kill theory" of megafauna extinction. How did wooly mammoths and saber toothed tigers disappear? Native Americans probably wiped them out. That's one theory, the "kill" theory. Other theories are the "chill" theory – cold weather killed the megafauna, and the "ill" theory. They died from disease. The kill theory depicted Native Americans as just like all other humans – not "in harmony with nature" but eager to exploit nature and heedless of the long-term consequences of such exploitation.

Christy Turner is a forensic anthropologist specializing in teeth. Native Americans have different teeth than European Americans. Their teeth are shovel shaped.

Turner was working his way through a box of bones in an Arizona museum in the 1970s when he said to himself, "Holy smokes." He suddenly realized that these human bones were the remains of a meal. These Native Americans had been butchered, cooked, and eaten. The bones showed typical evidence like cutting at key points to remove meat from bone. Diners had lopped off the tops of human skulls and placed them, face out, around fires in order to cook up and gain access to tasty brains. Before eating these peoples' brains, the diners had gazed at their agonized, slaughtered faces staring out at them from the cook fire.

Turner dated this horror repast, this cannibal cafeteria, between 900 AD and 1150 AD – three hundred years before Columbus arrived in North America. He found seventy-two sites with cannibal remains. Tons of human meat.

At one site, the cannibals slaughtered a family, butchered them, cooked them, ate them, and then crapped their remains out into the most sacred and beloved spot in a home – the family hearth – the source of heat, light, sustenance, and companionship. A coprolite, or fossilized feces, was found in the family hearth. It contained human remains, proof positive of Turner's cannibalism theory.

Turner published his research. He called the cannibals "thugs" and "Charles Manson types."

He was demonized. How dare you, you nasty white man named "Christy," as in the evil Christian Church (yes Turner's critics did say things like this), how dare you vilify Native Americans? Turner is hated to this day.

I was shocked when I read Turner's research. On some level I really believed that Native Americans were kinder and gentler and more spiritual.

I went to the National Museum of the American Indian run by the Smithsonian Institution. I learned there that Pizarro was able to conquer the Inca Empire with fewer than two hundred Spanish soldiers. Native American soldiers fought with him against the Inca. There must have been some mighty hatred for the Inca on the part of their Native American neighbors.

The Aztecs bragged of sacrificing 80,000 victims at the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487. A review of a museum show of Aztec art called it "chilling" and "terrifying." Writing in "The Guardian," journalist Laura Cumming called Aztec art "the most alien of all art. There are no images of moving animals, as in the caves of Lascaux. There are no accounts of great deeds, or commemorations of great leaders as in the art of the Pharaohs. Unlike just about every other culture in history, the Aztecs did not represent women, or women with babies, or, indeed, children at all. Nor, to be fair, did they ever depict men except as priests or warriors half-skeletonized in the jaws of death.

If they had any interest in the human spirit, in friendship, sex or emotion, then they certainly never showed it. The last thing you would expect from them would be anything as human or intimate as a portrait…As far as I can see, pretty much the entire purpose of Aztec art was to scare the living daylights out of everyone who saw it…Even the flea is monumentalized in stone because it lives by sucking blood.

It is impossible to look at all these objects without seeing them as the emblems and tools of a vast, putrid slaughterhouse. Nothing in Aztec art speaks of humanity or beauty. There is no attempt to inspire the sacrificial victim with rewarding images of the afterlife or to celebrate the gifts of the gods."

Obviously Ms. Cumming did not receive the memo on political correctness or cultural relativism.

Some promote Native Americans as gender heroes. The idea is that sexism is a modern invention, or that Christianity is to blame, and the further one gets from civilization and Christianity, the better things get for women and homosexuals, or "two spirit" people or berdaches.

Others acknowledge that it's not that simple. The Amazonian Yanomami is one of the most remote tribes on earth. They are very violent, including towards women. Gang rape is a fact of life. Husbands beat and burn their wives to establish dominance. According to David Good, who was born of a Yanomami mother and an anthropologist father, the language has no word for "love." When his anthropologist father left the village, his mother was gang raped by over 20 men. She had no husband to protect her.

I recently re-watched John Ford's classic 1956 western "The Searchers." The film is so rich whenever I watch it I simultaneously google various features of the story. "The Searchers" depicts settlers in 1860s Texas. Comanche warriors raid a homestead, murder four family members and kidnap the youngest, Debbie, to raise as one of their own and eventually marry her off to Scar, the chief. The plot is inspired by the kidnapping of Cynthia Ann Parker who was the mother of Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Comanche.

Every American knows how we are supposed to react to "The Searchers" now. Back in 1956, when it was first made, Americans were supposed unquestioningly to accept the film's depiction of the Comanche as scary warriors who did horrible things to captives, especially women captives.

Now we are supposed to doubt and mock that official narrative. We are supposed to understand the Comanche as noble warriors defending their homeland against white, Euro-American Christians, who are supposed to be the real savages.

That's not what I found out through Google. What I found out through Google was pretty nightmarish.

The Comanche were no more native to Texas than the European Americans. They had started out in Wyoming. Europeans brought horses to the Americans, horses that had previously been driven to extinction in North America by kill, ill, or chill.

The Comanche adopted the horse and a mentality of "total war." They made furious war on other Native Americans, including the Apache, whom they "nearly exterminated," according to S. C. Gwynne, author of "Empire of the Summer Moon."

In "The Searchers," John Ford never shows or tells exactly what the Comanche did to their captives and their slaves. One can find out, though, through a Google search. I read material that utterly shocked me. I don't want to repeat the worst things. I'll just repeat one death – they took a white slave captive's baby, tied a rope to him, and dragged his infant body through cactus plants until he died.

One sixteen-year-old captive was repeatedly burned over eighteen months until her face was roasted away and her body was covered with bruises and burns.

One captive, Rachel Plummer, turned on her tormenter and began beating the Comanche. Once the captive had the upper hand, she nearly beat the Comanche to death. She reported that other Comanche stood around and watched their fellow tribeswoman being beaten to death by a white captive, and enjoyed it as an entertaining spectacle.

Once the captive had defeated the Comanche woman and she lay prostrate, no other Comanche would help her. The white captive did so, dragging her to a shelter and dressing her wounds. Plummer reported that beating a Comanche nearly to death earned her status in the tribe, and after that she was treated as an equal. S. C. Gwynne characterizes the Comanche as possessed of a "demonic immorality." Their enthusiastically sadistic rapes "border on criminal perversion if not some very advanced form of evil."

After reading about the Comanche, I had a taboo thought. "I'm glad the Comanche lost."

I'm not saying that the conquest of the Americas was not a bloodbath initiated by Europeans on less developed and often defenseless Native Americans. Of course I acknowledge the massive human suffering and injustice. And most tribes were not the Comanche or the Anasazi cannibals or Aztecs.

But in this one case, the case of European settlers in Texas v. the Comanche, I'm glad the Comanche lost. If their way of life is accurately depicted in the accounts I read, a way of life in which constant war, enslavement of non-Comanche, rape and torture were central features, I'm glad that that culture was defeated.

This conclusion is totally at odds with the politically correct worldview that insists that Europeans and Christians as the source of problems like sexism, cruelty and war. It's totally at odds with the centuries-old concept of the Noble Savage.

David Good, the son of an anthropologist father and a Yanomami mother, reports an anecdote.

"I remember the wife of a very prominent anthropologist — I was 12 or 13 at the time — asking me what I wanted for Christmas. I said, 'A Nintendo 64 with Super Mario Bros.' She looked at me in horror and said, 'Oh, my God. You're a typical American kid. I thought you'd be different.'"

Quote of the Times;
A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself.

Link of the Times;
http://www.upworthy.com/2-monkeys-were-paid-unequally-see-what-happens-next?g=3
Millennials?
My buddy Tom was a single guy living at home with his father and working in the family business. He knew that he would inherit a fortune once his sickly father died. Tom wanted two things: To learn how to invest his inheritance and, to find a wife to share his fortune.

One evening at an investment meeting, he spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her natural beauty took his breath away.

"I may look like just an ordinary man," he said to her, "but in just a few years, my father will die, and I'll inherit 20 million dollars."

Impressed, the woman obtained his business card.

Two weeks later, she became his stepmother.

Proving: Women are much better at estate planning than men.

*.*

If the outside of buildings were covered
in carpet, and we all wore Velcro gloves,
then we'd all be like Spiderman, right?

*.*

Turkey pardoned by Trump had multiple contacts with Russian officials

WASHINGTON — The turkey pardoned by President Donald Trump has had multiple contacts with Russian officials over the past year. Grav E. Gobbles, a 4-year-old bird from western Minnesota, received a pardon Tuesday during a ceremony in the Rose Garden. But how Gobbles was able to secure a presidential pardon has come under scrutiny, sources say.

According to sources, Gobbles met privately on multiple occasions with Russian officials over the past year, leading some to allege a pumpkin pie-to-play scheme. In one instance, for example, Gobbles spoke with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, though the details of what was discussed are still unknown.

Gobbles also reportedly met with Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, according to sources, in a campaign on his own behalf. At that meeting, Gobbles reportedly schemed with Flynn to kidnap a fellow turkey from his home, before stuffing him into a waiting van headed to The White House.

The revelation comes just days after Attorney General Jeff Sessions was grilled on Capitol Hill over his own recollections of meetings with Russian officials during the presidential campaign.

*.*

It's not true that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

My old dog has been playing dead for the past three days.

*.*

I Just Realized Something:

My dog sleeps about 20 hours a day.

He has his food prepared for him. His meals are provided at no cost to him.

He visits the Dr. once a year for his checkup and again during the year, if any medical needs arise. For this he pays nothing, and nothing is required of him.

He lives in a nice neighborhood in a house that is much larger than he needs, but he is not required to do any upkeep. If he makes a mess, someone else cleans it up.

He has his choice of luxurious places to sleep. He receives these accommodations absolutely free.

He is living like a king and has absolutely no expenses whatsoever. All of his costs are picked up by others who earn a living.

I was just thinking about all this, and suddenly it hit me!

My Dog is a CONGRESSMAN!


Issue of the Times;
Hey Millennials: Communism Sucks, I Lived It by Ewa Ryszard

A recent poll found that fifty percent of millennials say they would rather live in a communist or socialist country than in a capitalist democracy. These numbers can’t be laughed off - they should frighten you. Maybe they don’t know what communism means.

I do. I lived in Communist Poland.

Perhaps those fifty percent of millennials were not properly taught about communism in school. That’s too bad, and dangerous. So here are some examples for those misguided millennials to ponder, all of which I experienced in communist Poland.

Unreliable electricity

Do you millennials enjoy having electricity on demand to charge your devices? Then you would hate Action “O.” Action “O” stood for “Oszczednosc,” which translates to “Savings.” Poland’s communist government would notoriously turn off electricity to various areas of the city to “save” energy.

They had an interesting system which they described as “customer oriented”: they would turn the electricity off for one minute and turn it back on for five minutes as a warning that a shutoff was coming. You had exactly five minutes to find your matches and candles, because after that electricity would shut off for several hours.

If that wasn’t bad enough, we suffered under a shortage of matches.

Fake equality

The most demoralizing part of the communist system was that “all were considered equal.” This was a big lie.

It didn’t matter if you worked hard - your pay was equal to the guy who barely showed up for work, or came to work drunk. The only way to advance was to join the political elite: the Communist party.

Imagine a system where the key to success wasn’t hard work or merit, but conniving and politics. If you sold your soul to the devil, you were rewarded.

My father worked at a water company in one of the major cities in Silesia Region. He was approached several times by the “party” PZPR with an offer of a promotion to a director’s position. But there was one small requirement.

He would need to first denounce his religion.

Yes, they asked him to become an atheist devoted solely to the communist ideology if he wanted to get a raise or promotion. Neither him nor our family would be able to attend mass or practice our religion in any manner.

Imagine a system where job success comes not from your productivity or character, but from the degree to which you adhere to party orthodoxy.

My dad is a religious and honorable man. He declined the offer and therefore never got promoted, and our lives never got better - and I am so proud of him for his strong beliefs and integrity.

But the idea of “equality” under communism was a lie.

Needing “connections” to buy simple goods

Imagine a life where you couldn’t buy anything without first getting the approval of the political elite.

Those who joined the party had many, many privileges that an average person never had. To the most reliable zealots, the communist party distributed special “talony” stamps to purchase cars. If you didn’t have the stamps, you could wait years “in line” before becoming “eligible” for a car.

The party members even had special stores to purchase food - and this higher quality food was often imported from the West. Instead of a Costco card, you needed a communist party card to shop there.

Needing “connections” to find a place to live

Connections were needed when applying for housing. For example, my family eventually received permission from the government to move to a larger three-room apartment. Yet the four of us had lived in a tiny two-room apartment because we didn’t have the party’s approval to find a bigger one for seven years.

How many millennials would accept needing to seek the approval of a political party or government before they could move anywhere?

Decades-long waits for apartments

If millennials want to live under communism, they need to accept being stuck living with their parents. Rentals are simply not available.

When I turned eighteen, I went to the government-run housing association with a full down payment deposit for a new apartment. The association explained the process: they would take my deposit now and add my name to the list. Once an apartment became available they would let me know, but until then I had to live with my parents. I asked: “How long will this take?” The answer: between 10 to 15 years!

This was the last straw. I took back my money and decided I would leave Poland in search of freedom from communist or socialist ideology.

Rationing

Millennials are used to buying whatever they want. That doesn’t happen in communism. All the goods that make up daily life were rationed, if they could be had at all. Everything was rationed: sugar, soap, flour, detergent, beer, butter, and most of all, meat. You couldn’t buy the basics without the talony stamps.

We were limited to only 100 grams of chocolate per month! The average American trick or treat bag has about eight years of the communist’s chocolate allowance.

Empty grocery stores, corruption, and black markets

Communist rationing created a culture of black markets and a nation comfortable with lawbreaking. This fostered countrywide corruption. There was a famous saying about purchasing food “spod lady,” meaning “from under the counter.” Most of the time, grocery stores were completely empty. But if you paid extra, you could probably get something that the lady from behind the counter “stashed” away and sold for a profit.

Lines, lines everywhere

Communism means waiting in line.

We would wait for hours, and sometimes days, for the simplest things: food, detergent, toilet paper, matches, stockings or socks. Meat was always in great shortage, and the lines the longest. Since both of my parents worked, my grandmother would get in line at 3:00 a.m. to buy a single pound of meat for the family. I remember waiting hours to buy toilet paper or matches.

Violence -- and murder -- for expressing different ideas

Millennials need to understand that communism is a culture of repression and violence. All around us was oppression, even in the education system. Brilliant teachers or priests who didn’t conform to communist ideology or spoke against it were imprisoned, tortured, or killed. Our history books were rewritten, and we were taught lies about our own history.

I recall my 8th grade friend being severely punished because in his essay he disclosed that there was a pact between Hitler and Stalin against Poland before World War II began. Of course, this was the truth - but in communism truth doesn’t matter. Only the revolutionary party dogma matters. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was never to be mentioned.

Musical and cultural totalitarianism

Think millennials want government officials controlling the music they listen to or the programs they watch?

Under communism, there was absolutely NO freedom of speech. The authorities made it easy to brainwash the public. Drinking was heavily promoted and there was no access to the external world. No direct news from the West was allowed. We only had access to two TV channels (TVP1, TVP2), and one was solely devoted to communist propaganda news.

When Elton John’s song Nikita came out, it was blacklisted by the authorities. You could be imprisoned for simply listening to the song or having a bootlegged record. Yet we still did. I remember going to my friend’s apartment who had an illegal copy of Nikita and clinging to every word of freedom portrayed in the song:

And if there comes a time

Guns and gates no longer hold you in

And if you're free to make a choice

Just look towards the West and find a friend

You, the free West, gave us a glimpse of hope. I believed that things could get better.

I pray that the millennial generation doesn’t blow it, and enable a return to the mad, dehumanizing world that I lived in under communism.

Quote of the Times;
“Your body is a reflection of your lifestyle.”

Link of the Times;
https://grumpysloth.com/videos-10-ted-talks-that-will-change-your-life/
Electoral?
"Have you ever seen twenty dollars all crumpled up?". . . the woman
asked her husband.

"No," said her husband.

She gave him a sexy little smile, unbuttoned the top 3 or 4 buttons of
her blouse and slowly reached down into the cleavage created by a soft,
silky push-up bra and pulled out a crumpled twenty dollar note.

He took the crumpled twenty dollar note from her, and smiled approvingly.

"Have you ever seen fifty dollars all crumpled up?" . . . she then asked
her husband.

"Uh . . . no, I haven't," he said (with an anxious tone in his voice).

She gave him another sexy little smile, pulled up her skirt, and
seductively reached into her tight, sheer panties and pulled out a
crumpled fifty dollar note.

He took the crumpled fifty dollar note and started breathing a little
quicker with anticipation.

"Now," she said, "have you ever seen fifty thousand dollars all crumpled
up?"

"No way, " he said (while obviously becoming even more aroused . . . and
excited).

.

.

.

"Well go and look in the garage," she said.

*.*

Caitlyn Jenner came out today and said she was groped by Bruce Jenner over a several year period.

Thankfully there is no photo evidence

*.*

Doctor: "I see you're over a month late for your appointment. Don't you know that nervous disorders require prompt and regular attention? What's your excuse?"

Patient: "I was just following your orders, Doc."

Doctor: "Following my orders? What are you talking about? I gave you no such order."

Patient: "You told me to avoid people who irritate me."

*.*

When you light up an ant with a magnifying
glass it may seem deliberate, but in the ant
world, it's known as "spontaneous combustion.

*.*

A clearly inebriated woman, stark naked, jumped into a taxi in New York
City and laid down on the back seat.
The cab driver, an old Jewish gentleman, opened his eyes wide and stared
at the woman. He made no attempt to start the cab. The woman glared back
at him and said, "What's wrong with you, honey? - Haven't you ever seen
a naked woman before?"
The old Jewish driver answered, "Let me tell you sumsing, lady. I
vasn't staring at you like you tink; det vould not be proper vair I come
from."
The drunk woman giggled and responded, "Well, if you're not staring at
my boobs or ass, sweetie, what are you doing then?"
He paused a moment, then told her..."Vell, M'am, I am looking and I am
looking, and I am tinking to myself,'Vair in da hell is dis lady keeping
de money to pay for dis ride?

Issue of the Times;
The Electoral College Works, Leave It Alone by Joe Bob Briggs

NEW YORK—Let’s all dogpile on the Electoral College.

It’s undemocratic, it’s outdated, it’s un-American. The New York Times (surprise, surprise) believes it should be abolished and we should go to a straight-up popular vote.

Because (this is the part they don’t tell you when they make this argument)...

Screw Wyoming.

Screw Vermont.

Screw Arkansas.

Screw Rhode Island.

Screw Delaware.

How could the concerns of those little pipsqueak states matter when the massive voting blocs of the Upper West Side and West Hollywood and Nob Hill and the South Side of Chicago are saying, “You people go back to your bass boats and your cattle ranches and your plaid work shirts and let us run the country as we see fit.”

The founders never intended 100 percent popular voting except at the lowest levels of government, town halls and city councils, where everyone knows one another. Anything beyond that, they wanted some kind of check on the passions of the mob, so that nobody got railroaded just because they were too small to defend themselves.

“So 7 percent of the time, the small states get pissed off and defeat the big ones. This is exactly what the founders envisioned.”

In other words, the Electoral College is set up to defend minorities.

That’s why Wyoming gets three votes out of 538. This one half of one percent apparently outrages the East Coast Brahmans who would prefer to ignore the small-government radicals from Laramie and Casper who keep rabble-rousing for causes like better management of the wolf population and more equitable policies for grazing livestock on federal land. Who cares about crap like that? They should have exactly what their population entitles them to—

.018 percent of the vote.

They can use the incredible clout of that .018 percent to get whatever they need and then go back to roping their goats or whatever they do.

The same goes for the syrup farmers in Vermont and the Walmart moguls in Arkansas. Twenty-five of the fifty states have seven electoral votes or fewer, so all those people who choose to live away from the crowded urban areas can basically just go artificially inseminate themselves. The most underrepresented people in America—citizens of the District of Columbia—should have those three votes taken away so we don’t have to listen to their constant bitching about, you know, how they’re not represented in Congress at all.

So we’ve had 56 presidential elections, and in four of them the Electoral College has differed from the popular vote. In 1876 it was because the North and Far West went for Hayes over Tilden even though the Democrats in the South came out in far greater numbers in an effort to get rid of Reconstruction. In 1888 it was Benjamin Harrison outcampaigning the solid Democratic South that wanted to keep Grover Cleveland. In 2000 it was the South and the Midwest defeating the big voter turnout on both coasts and the Rust Belt. And in 2016 it was, of course, the South, the Midwest, and the Rust Belt defeating the heavily populated coasts.

So 7 percent of the time, the small states get pissed off and defeat the big ones. This is exactly what the founders envisioned. They didn’t want the planter class of Virginia or the mercantile millionaires of Boston and Philadelphia running roughshod over Delaware, Rhode Island, and Georgia. In fact, the small states feared the big states so much that, without that provision, the Constitution never would have been approved.

But there’s another reason why the popular-vote argument doesn’t hold water. If the most recent presidential election had been decided by popular vote, that doesn’t mean Hillary would have won, because the patterns of campaigning and spending would have been completely different. Clinton didn’t campaign in Texas. Trump didn’t campaign in Illinois. Cities like Houston and Denver and San Diego would be in play if they weren’t written off in advance. To say “Trump would have lost if we had a popular-vote system” is to create some alternative universe in which the rules are all changed but the behavior of the candidates remains the same.

The Electoral College was set up to prevent injustice. Majority rule only works when everyone agrees on the basics. And one of those basics that no one agrees on is the role of states in our federal system. If you follow the New York Times argument to its logical conclusion, we shouldn’t have states at all. We should be more like Germany. Or Russia. Or Starbucks.

Does anyone wanna risk a straight-up popular national vote on abortion? Or gun rights? Or gay marriage? Or sanctuary cities? Or affirmative action? Or any of a hundred other issues that affect one part of the population but nobody else cares about? Isn’t it better to keep the messy system we have, where small groups of people can still win because it’s impossible to ignore them? There comes a moment in everyone’s life when you’re the minority.

There comes a moment when we’re all Wyoming.

Let’s make sure our cowboy hats are creased and our eccentric causes are always heard. Let’s make sure the bigots in New York don’t eliminate the bohemians in Bozeman. The Electoral College works just fine.

Quote of the Times;
“Giving offense is a viewpoint.” – Alito

Link of the Times;
https://privnote.com/
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And someone shot a duck.

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