Sunday Funnies: Green Nude Eel Edition

Well, another week where Occasional Cortex proves the point. There really is no intelligent life in there. And so on we go, like a runaway bumper car.

From Italy comes The God Emperor Trump, including the Twitter sword

Might just be the best thing the Italians have given us since this

click to embiggen

Jungle Love

And, of course

Mostly, but not all, from PowerLine, as usual

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Sunday Funnies: Polar Vortex

Another week consisting of mostly noise and storm signifying not much, but Baby, It’s Cold Outside.

And, of course

Sunday Funnies, Wall, Life, and Gillette

So, another week, how nice with the government shut down

Who might this be? *

And, of course

* Genevieve Bujold

GOPe and Corporatists

If you haven’t heard yet, Theresa May lost in Parliament, 432 to 202. Which should be a decisive, humiliating result, leading to a change in government, but probably won’t. She is supposed to present her ‘plan B’ to Parliament within three days, and Corbyn has called for a vote of no confidence. FUBAR, in other words. We’ll keep an eye on it.

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John Daniel Davidson over at The Federalist wrote about the argument Tucker Carlson unleashed about conservatism, noting what that noted sorta conservative Russ Douthat has commented.

It is time, I think that we have this conversation, as I look around, I see lots of casualties, but let see what the article says.

Over the weekend, Ross Douthat of The New York Times weighed in on the ideological battle sparked by Tucker Carlson’s recent Fox News monologue excoriating GOP elites for slavish devotion to market capitalism and indifference to its negative effects, especially for working-class families.

Carlson’s fusillade provoked a host of reactions from conservatives, some who criticized Carlson for exaggerating the problems caused by capitalism while ignoring its benefits, some who argued he has a point about how capitalism has failed to protect families and create a prosperous working class. “If there is to be a healthy American right, after Donald Trump or ever, this is the argument that conservatives should be having,” writes Douthat, and he’s correct.

Douthat zeroes in on a line from David French of National Review, a critic of Carlson, who wrote: “There are wounds that public policy can’t heal.” Douthat concedes that this is true, but argues it can become “a trap, a cul-de-sac, an excuse for doing nothing.” Too often, conservatives have “leaped to despair without even trying policy.”

He cites a few examples, like the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the disappearance of wages that can support single-income households, but then pivots to censorship and prohibition. Douthat notes that the right was once comfortable using public policy to promote private virtue, “But in recent decades, the right’s elites have despaired of censoring pornography, acquiesced to the spread of casino gambling, made peace with the creeping commercialization of marijuana, and accepted the internet’s conquest of childhood and adolescence.”

Douthat’s point is that while public policy can’t cure every social ill, it can be a “corrective”—if conservatives don’t simply throw in the towel.

There is no doubt about it, we’ve taken a lot of losses in the last almost thirty years. Part of the trouble, not the solution, is the GOPe, which talks a good game, but if you don’t like their principles, well they’ll find others.

‘Market Capitalism’ is a good place to start, it ain’t; it’s corporatism, rent-seeking, whatever you’d like to call it. It is designed to benefit the rich, the large, often multi-national corporation at the expense of the citizen and the worker. It’s not an accident, it’s a feature. See Elon Musk, or Enron, or many other examples.

For most of this, remember that politics is downstream of culture. Culture is where we need to win the culture wars, not politics. And you know, I think the pendulum has nearly reached the end of its swing and is starting to return. Be prepared, the war has merely begun. Will we win? Nobody knows but does it really matter, as far as I can see, my duty is to do the right thing and do it to the best of my ability, and what will be, will be. And as always, God decides. But we have before, many times.

Sunday Funnies: American Gothic

Was there ever a more instant meme? Or a more obvious one, than Schumer and Pelosi at that one lectern. Everyone had exactly the same reaction, pretty much. I think I’ve seen 150 variations. Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you all of them, or nothing else, but it is remarkable. Not a good look for them, either, I think,

That’s maybe a third of the ones I’ve seen, but I’m getting bored, so let’s move on.

Doing Public Service

And, of course

 

Of Presidents, Knaves, and Memes

So the President talked officially to us the other night, about illegal immigration, the wall, and Democratic obstruction of the government’s mission to defend the people of the United States. He is right on all counts. And he hit the nail squarely on the head.

Schumer and Pelosi gave the Democrat’s response, and while it was a self-seeking partisan one, surprising no one, their delivery was incredibly bad. In fact, their appearance became an instant meme, which is never a good thing for your cause. Dov Fischer says this:

[I]n their every press conference and interview rejecting President Trump’s call for a wall along our southern border to help prevent and protect against human trafficking of women and children, the unbridled import of opioids, and the entry of criminals and terrorists into our country, the Democrats maintain that they oppose only the Wall but otherwise strongly support border security. Thus, they state that they prefer drones and hi-tech equipment instead of a wall because, they say, those more modern approaches will do an even better job than will an old-fashioned wall at guarding the border. In other words, they claim to be as concerned as is the President over the chaos transpiring along our porous southern border.

There are two ways to demonstrate they are lying. One way is by sitting and arguing back-and-forth with the other side endlessly, as in a cable news panel discussion. I have come to hate wasting my time watching those. When I have a few moments each day to grab some news on Fox, the only value-added from Marie Harf, Chris Hahn, and Jessica Tarlov is that, while muting them, they offer a few moments for me to check the channel guide or pay a bill or two. But there is a much quicker alternative way to cut through the muck and prove Pelosi, Schumer, and their gang a bunch of liars on border security: […]

So it all is a game. A joke, a lie. When they say they are for border security in every which way — everything, everything except for a wall — there is the truth, the proof. No need for a cable television-news panel debate. This does not take rocket science. If you install a home protection system, but then a crook evades the front-door camera or the home alarm or just defiantly smashes your front window and breaks into your home anyway, do you take the position that you will not shoot the invader or call the police — or first call the police and then shoot the invader — because, well, they got past the alarm, so…SANCTUARY! If you employ an insect exterminator — and, no, we are not comparing illegal immigrants other than MS-13 and opioid smugglers and human traffickers to insects — and if that exterminator does a great job, but you later see an ant or spider or silverfish that got past him, would you not squish it? Or do you look at that centipede and proclaim liberty throughout the land: SANCTUARY!

He’s right, the Democrats don’t give a damn about you, your personal security, that of your family, or anything else. The only thing they care about is their power. That is the ONLY thing that matters to them. That is why their response looked like a drug-induced meme.

“O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!”.

And, no doubt, the constant lying to us, and who knows, perhaps themselves, is how they have turned themselves into a joke, an automatic meme generator, of no real account, in governing the country.