Frenemies with Benefits

What would a Trump foreign policy be like? Given his background in business, we can look there for some clues.

It is common for businesses to have relations with their competitors. For example, while Apple and Samsung are indeed long-term competitors, Apple purchases screens for its iPhones from Samsung. The two companies do business together as long as it is in their interests to do so, all the while being competitors.

Now apply this to Syria. Under Putin and Obama, Russia and the US are essentially fighting a proxy war: Russia is backing Bashar al-Assad while we are supporting the opposition rebels. If Trump should side with Russia, then the rebels would lose most certainly their main supplier of funds and arms and other support.

Like Apple and Samsung, we would be allies with Russia, but only on this one issue.

Once the rebels are gone, this temporary alliance ("one issue alliance") between Russia and the US will cease.

This is both similar and different from the relationship we had with Soviet Russia during World War II: similar in that two ideological enemies team up to fight a common enemy; different in that we need not paint Russia in a positive light, like was done during WW2 by Hollywood.

This "Trumpian" foreign policy, if Trump indeed uses this approach, will cause deep consternation with NATO countries and other traditional allies. Those alliances are founded on the idea that Russia can do no good, while the allies can do only good. Convincing them that these one issue alliances are indeed temporary will be the second most difficult part to implement.

The most difficult part? Preventing this from dissolving into mercantilism.

Future Tense

When recruiting for the militia of which I am a part, the first thing we discuss is this equation:

Right to Self Defense + Right to Peaceably Assemble = Militia.

One of the things that means is that if you think militias (or neighborhood protection teams or preenactment groups or FTM book clubs, etc.) should not exist, then you must abandon one or both of those two rights. A large chunk of that recruiting presentation is of a similar nature.

Since most people who attend such recruiting events are already of a patriotic bent, isn't that just preaching to the choir?

No, and here's why:

This map supposedly shows how people aged 18 to 25 voted in the 2016 presidential election. This is the next generation of adults, and they did not want orange to be the new black!

Liberals understand this. In fact, Eliza Byard, the executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, tweeted this map, saying "This is how the future voted. This is what people 18-25 said in casting their votes. We must keep this flame alight and nurture this vision."

Byard's pronouns are she, her, and hers, just so you know.

Reality gets in the way of her plans like it always does with liberals: once those 18 to 25 year olds get out of college, get jobs, and move away from their parents, they'll begin to self-deprogram and see the consequences of "sharing the wealth". They abandon the Democrats as they get responsibilities.

This period of time between eligibility to vote and the start of adulthood is a window of opportunity that the liberals are willing to exploit to their advantage. For example, look at what liberals are doing to extend this "Democrat window":

1. They insist that most everybody go to those indoctrination camps known as colleges
2. They implemented Obamacare so that “children” can stay on their parents' insurance plan until they turn 26
3. They have kept job creation low, so there is further incentive for young people to live with their parents, or to live off the dole, and to not participate in the private-sector labor force.

Add to this the great expansion of the public-sector employment - another way to be shielded from reality.

Add to this the effects of the propaganda mills formerly known as mainstream media.

Add to this the "great replacement" of our population caused by US immigration policy as well as illegal aliens.

Add to this the way that the GOP has been complicit in the "third worlding" of our country.

Liberals will do everything in their power to keep this "Democrat window" open for as long as possible, either among students or young adults or among new citizens or illegal aliens. The longer they can stretch this out, the more votes they will get.

Not pretty, is it?

To make things worse, political beliefs are not hereditary: as long as the battle remains one of ideas, we can only convince, and not breed or import our way to victory like the liberals are doing.

We are witnessing a generations-long OODA (observe, orient, decide, and act) loop being performed by the liberals. They observe that young people really have no idea of cause and effect; they realize that this is relevant to furthering their goals; they decide to increase the number or extend the length of time that people live in this fantasy world; then they execute the above steps to implement that decision.

We must short-circuit that loop.

This is why it is important to understand that equation (Right to Self Defense + Right to Peaceably Assemble = Militia), and the nature of individual rights, and the proper role of government, and the Constitution as well as the ideas behind the Constitution. We patriots must have the ideas and the tools so that we can recruit, sow the seeds of doubt, and take the fight to the enemy's safe place.

Most people are terribly unprepared when it comes to this type of thing - our toolkit is in woeful condition. This incomplete toolkit is really an incomplete political philosophy, one that feeds our battle yet starves our victory. Our alternatives are either to give up and allow the balkanization of our country to continue, or to resort to arms as something other than a last resort.

Ultimately, the liberals need us, and we don’t need them - we’re the ones who, through the redistribution of our wealth that we generate, keep their colleges in business and their immigration policies in place. President-Elect Trump can short-circuit some of this, but it is up to us to keep him on target and to keep the other politicians in line. Trump will be around for eight years at most. We have to be around a lot longer. The liberals are in this for the long haul, and we have to be, too.

Battered Patriot Syndrome

Dear Conventional Politicians,

Regardless of your party, you may be wondering what happened last night. Let me explain it in short little sentences made of short little words.

Basically, we're through. We're breaking up. We the People are just not that into you.

We are sick of you, your lies, and your belief that perception is more important than reality.

We are sick of you using us as your personal, bottomless ATM machine.

We are sick of your insistence that we get on your lifeboat, only to have you shoot holes in the bottom.

We are tired of the Great Recession that the "experts" say is over.

We are sick of your insistence that we hand over our means of self-defense, only to make us victims of any common thug or of any of your bureaucrats.

We are sick of your sordid love affair with the media and the education system, both of which you have turned into propaganda factories.

We are sick of the way you idolize foreign cultures that are opposed to our individual rights. We're also sick of how you invite members of those cultures here instead of relocating yourselves to the hellholes they created.

We are sick of the way you limit our freedom of speech, and insist that we walk on eggshells just so that we don't offend members of even the most vile cultures that you insist on importing.

We are sick of the way you collude with businesses that insist on shipping our jobs overseas.

We are sick of the way you use immigration to not only suppress wages but to actually replace We the People.

We are sick of your wishy-washy foreign policy that limits the effectiveness of our military in order to maximize the profitability of defense contracts and to minimize the costs of rebuilding, costs that you are insisting that we pay.

We are sick of the way you play We the People against each other, and the slimy way you create dichotomies where no disparities need exist.

We are sick of your smugness, smugness that allowed your presidential candidate to dismiss half the US population as "deplorable". Bet you would miss the tax money we deplorables are forced to pay in order to support your programs!

We are sick of your "evolved" and superior morality, morality that canonizes street thugs at the expense of police officers.

We are sick of your pointless welfare programs that have the most capable supporting the most incompetent.

We are sick of laws that assume we're guilty until we prove ourselves innocent.

We are sick of the judges you appoint, judges who claim to be intelligent but who are unable to understand the Constitution and the country it had created.

We are sick of the way you nationalized our healthcare system, only to destroy it.

We are sick of the 22 veteran suicides per day and your unwillingness to fix the VA.

Mostly, though, We the People are sick of being treated like second class citizens in our own country.

You are corrupt to the point where you don't even bother to hide it.

It's not you, it's us. We allowed you to use force of guilt or force of arms on us in order to manufacture support for the most inept of bureaucracies and the most stupid of programs. We permitted our wallets to be drained and our blood to be spilled by you and your cronies.

No more.

We the People have been developing a serious case of Battered Patriot Syndrome. It is time to move on.

We’re seeing someone else, and although we know that this new beau can turn out to be just as abusive, just as corrupt, as you, at least we know what to look out for. We've forgotten the boundaries codified in the Bill of Rights, but we're starting to remember to enforce those boundaries.

What's next?

If it were up to me, I would decorate every lamp pole in DC with your eviscerated corpses as a lesson showing what happens when you defecate upon your fellow Americans, our history, and our culture. Alas, it probably won't come down to that. Most likely you'll change careers and become lobbyists - big stretch. You may get away with that, for a while. But remember: K-Street has lots of lampposts.

So, you have until January 20th, 2017 in order to vacate your offices. Leave the keys on the table. We WILL be counting the silverware. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Regards,
We the People

Election Eve Blues

Today we Americans go to the polls to determine whether the Clinton crime spree continues, or whether orange will be the new black.

There have been predictions that civil unrest (or even civil war) will break out, whoever wins. The idea is that should Trump win, then Black Lives Matter and other groups on the Left would burn down their local CVSes and loot Walmarts for everything but work boots, birth control, and Father’s Day cards. If Clinton should win, then the Klan is going to reenact “Birth of a Nation” – the D. W. Griffith version, not the Nate Parker one.

Predictions of civil unrest would ordinarily be dismissed as bravado or sensationalism, but there are two conditions that should give one pause.

First is the cultural divide we’ve been witnessing for the past few decades. This divide isn’t “rural vs urban” or a race issue. Rather it is individualism vs collectivism.

On one side, there’s the treatment of Americans by the Obama administration and by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Both are contemptuous of the American people and, by extension, America itself. It isn’t just their characterization of us as “bitter clingers” or “basket of deplorables” – it is the smugness that leads them to those characterizations. They believe they are entitled to our tax money, our lives, and our culture of individualism because they have “evolved”. They cannot expect this to go unaddressed.

On the opposite side is the Left’s incredible sense of entitlement. Ta-Nehisi Coates’s call for reparations for the riches made off of “his stolen black body” may seem extreme, but rather it is the norm. Any call for “economic justice” or “social justice” is based upon the same “reasoning”, the same collectivist yearning for the fruits of other people’s labor, that makes reparations open for debate. By this “logic” the only ones not deserving reparations are the owners of the burned-out CVSes and looted Walmarts. We cannot expect that sense of entitlement to go away.

Individualists and collectivists both have been wronged by the government, and we all maintain (consciously or subconsciously) a list of the ways our lives have been diminished by its bureaucracies and actions. One of the differences between the collectivists and the individualists is that those wrongs are front and center for the individualists, whereas the collectivists are blind to those wrongs, or they excuse those wrongs, or they forgive those wrongs. "Use us," the collectivists say, while they throw not only themselves into the bottomless pit that is the Administrative State, but everybody else too.

A cultural divide and the resulting mistrust are not sufficient to make civil unrest inevitable. That brings us to the second condition: the difficulty that the sides have communicating with each other and the resulting “echo chambers”.

Conflicts are not possible among rational individuals, but that assumes that individuals have a common language, a common frame of reference, and tools needed to understand all this. Do we still have those?

There used to be a commonality of language, but not anymore. This is beyond regional dialects and idioms - terms have now been twisted to the point where they either lack definition completely, or the definition depends on your camp. Further, terms and phrases are now "value laden": people have an automatic emotional response attached to them. You see this whenever someone is “triggered” when they hear phrases like “illegal alien” or “anchor baby”.

Further, you have people giving higher value to feelings than to facts. Because of this, not only are terms and phrases value laden, but so are facts. This is blatantly on display whenever one claims that the appropriate bathroom to use should depend on the gender that one self-identifies with at the moment.

There goes the common frame of reference.

Once value-laden facts become acceptable, then things like “racist facts” become acceptable, too – and then it becomes acceptable to reject any factual statement not because it is false, but because it is “racist”. Thus, any Obama-esque “national conversation about race” becomes impossible.

The institution that should help make communication possible, and therefore smooth-over cultural divides, is now broken. That institution is the press. Journalists used to investigate stories, now they spin them. Once reporters began to view themselves as important as the stories they covered, it wasn’t too far of a stretch for them to believe that their job was not to report the news but to make it. The already thin line between reporting and editorializing has been erased, which makes journalists into propagandists colluding with the candidates as opposed to watching the candidates. That’s why sources that "old school" journalists would kill for, like WikiLeaks, have been ignored by contemporary “journalists”.

Oh, and logic? That excellent instrument by which we come to know anything? Logic is the key: value-laden facts and value-laden phrases lose their “triggeryness” once they are examined through logic. Trouble is, logic hasn’t been taught as a tool for knowledge for over a century.

By sabotaging logic, the common frame of reference, and the common language, we have removed a "safety valve" that allows cultural divides to be resolved.

At the end of the Vice-Presidential Debate held on October 4th, the moderator asked the following question: should their ticket win, “what specifically are you going to do to unify the country and reassure the people who voted against you?”

Kaine’s answer was that Hillary Clinton would “work across the aisle”, tacitly assuming that all our problems (election-related or otherwise) can be cured by a bipartisan Kum Ba Yah from the federal government. At least he didn’t propose truth and reconciliation commissions.

Pence’s answer was more elegant: as Trump makes America great again, people are “going to see that real change can happen after decades of just talking about it. And when that happens, the American people are going to stand tall, stand together, and we'll have the kind of unity that's been missing for way too long.”

Does either candidate intend to unify the country? Does either one believe that to be desirable – either for their administration or for the country as a whole?

Should the winner indeed try to unify the county, it is not clear whether he or she knows what are the root causes of our division.

Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils

It is often said that when choosing from among bad options, one should choose the lesser of the evils. With the Election 2016 upon us, this bromide is applied to the problem of choosing a candidate.

Why is this "lesser of two evils" theory incorrect, beyond the fact that you’re still choosing an evil?

It is actually quite easy to demolish the "lesser of two evils" theory. Before doing so, here’s a partial list of some alternatives.

1. The "positive checklist" theory - Here a voter has a roster of minimal standards he or she wants in a candidate. The number of these standards that the candidate meets determines that candidate’s strength.
2. The "opportunity" theory - Opportunities are taken or created, never given. When it comes to elections, this idea becomes: which candidate allows for people (and not just politicians) to act on their ideals?
3. The "continuation" theory – Will a candidate continue the laws/regulations/programs that his/her predecessor implemented?
4. The "iconoclast" theory – Will a candidate discontinue the laws/regulations/programs that his/her predecessor implemented?

There are problems with each of these theories.

With "positive checklist" theory, what happens when a candidate meets most but not all of the items on your checklist? For example, suppose you are pro-2A and pro-choice, and your candidate only supports one of them?

With the "continuation" theory, will the candidate really continue or complete his/her predecessor’s policies? Can Bush 41's "kinder and gentler conservatism" be really be considered a continuation of Reagan's philosophy?

With the "iconoclast" theory, will the candidate really and truly discontinue his/her predecessor’s policies?

The common problem with all these theories (including the "lesser of two evils" and the "opportunity" theories) is the fact that none of these theories are "value neutral" - each relies upon the concepts of good and evil, without defining what those words mean. When theories leave terms like good and evil undefined, that leaves users of these theories free to fill-in their own definitions. As such, each of these theories can be applied by voters regardless of their political leanings, to candidates regardless of their political leanings.

Even the "opportunity" theory isn't immune from this. For the Alt-Right, the “opportunity” theory would require a voter to choose the candidate that will most easily allow us to take back our freedom, or to create it anew. For the Left, it requires them to pick the candidate who will further extend government control.

The "lesser of two evils" theory has problems that are unique to it, however. To make these problems clear, consider this (wildly) hypothetical situation: suppose our two evil candidates are that asshole Jimmy Carter and that dictator Idi Amin.

The asshole Jimmy Carter was a pretty bad president, but he wasn't responsible for implementing a regime of terror that resulted in the slaughter of 300,000 people. In this case, most people would say that the asshole peanut farmer was the lesser of two evils, and he would win in an election.

Here's why "choosing the lesser of two evils" is wrong in that situation:

The lesser of two evils has been given lots of "wiggle room". By being elected, asshole Carter is free to be as evil as he wants to be, as long as he isn’t as evil as Idi Amin.

Further, by being "soft evil" it takes the opposition longer to establish itself against asshole Carter. Reaction against Idi Amin (at least amongst Americans) would be quick and lethal.

Also, the laws/regulations/programs that asshole Carter implements results in a lessening of standards amongst the people, as they are "free enough".

Finally, extending the previous point forward in time, asshole Carter serves as a "gateway drug" for politicians who will follow in his legacy. Thus, Bill Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama were allowed to wreak havoc.

Does the "lesser of two evils" still sound reasonable?

The Religion that Dare not Speak its Name

The gay and lesbian communities are seen by outsiders as bastions of liberalism - understandable, considering that liberal gays are the only ones shown on the mainstream media. Notice the age of liberal gays and lesbians - they are predominantly in their 20s or early 30s. Smart gays quickly understand that they are but window dressing for the politicians' careers, and they get tired of being a token. The rest take much longer to understand this, but the liberal gays have the media monopoly for the moment.

It wasn't always like this.

In the mid-1980s in Columbus, Ohio, it was not uncommon for gays to be called racists and to be accused of belonging to what would now be called the Alt-Right. It didn't help that the major local issue at the time was the revitalization of the Short North.

The Short North is the part of Columbus that is south of the Ohio State University campus and north of downtown. At that time it was a predominantly black neighborhood. It was also an absolute slum: drugs and prostitution were rampant, there was public housing, and there was a park where the prostitutes would take their customers.

The only bright spot in the Short North was a corner restaurant called the Coffee Table. It was a small restaurant that had local artists' paintings hanging on the walls, that played edgy music, that served lattes and caprese bagels, and that had water bowls and dog treats for the customers' pets.

It was a fabulous gay coffee shop.

Walk one block in any direction, though, and you'd be back in the slums.

Gay people lived in the Short North in part because the rent was so cheap, but also because they wanted to be close to the Coffee Table and the other businesses that were cropping up there.

The blacks in the Short North were incensed! They knew that their days, along with those of the prostitutes and drug dealers, were numbered. They called it "gentrification", we called it "revitalization".

There was some gay bashing, but that was the only open antagonism between the gays and the blacks. Gays didn't open carry - what shoes go with a Glock? - but they certainly did have weapons in their homes and apartments. The antagonism was mostly implicit. For example, there was a number of female prostitutes that solicited customers down the block from the Coffee Table. Whenever they talked with each other (usually to complain about how bad business was becoming), they always referred to themselves as "girl," sometimes pronouncing it "girrrrrrl":

Prostitute #1: "Girrrrl, I haven't had two customers all day!"
Prostitute #2: "Me neither, girl!"

Pretty soon, the gays started referring to each other as "girls", too:

Gay #1: "Girrrrrl, did you see the new paintings hanging in the Coffee Table?"
Gay #2: "Oh, those are fabulous, girl!"
Gay #1: "Girl, I'm reading that new book by Quintin Crisp. It's fabulous, girl!"
Gay #2: "Oh, I know, girl, just fabulous!"

We did this in front of the prostitutes that started the whole "girl" thing.

All the while, the neighborhood kept getting better. Ten years later, the prostitution and drugs were mostly gone, as were the slums. Improvement like this was impossible according to Democrats (look at Detroit), and was barely possible under the Republicans.

So, we sided with the Republicans, barely. We knew that the Republicans tolerated faith-healing preachers like Jerry Falwell, but we just rolled our eyes at that tolerance.

What changed all this was the AIDS epidemic.

The White House was first made aware of AIDS at a press conference in 1982, when a reporter asked press secretary Larry Speakes if President Reagan knew about the "gay plague". Speakes' response was: "I don't have it - do you?" and the press corps laughed at that.

Throughout the first few years of the Reagan administration, AIDS was not mentioned in public events at all, either by politicians or by the media. It took a group called ACT UP to bring the epidemic into the news. It took the death in 1985 of the actor named Rock Hudson to eventually get a response out of Reagan. He first mentioned the epidemic in 1987 in a speech given to the American Foundation of AIDS Research (amfAR):

"As dangerous and deadly as AIDS is, many of the fears surrounding it are unfounded. These fears are based on ignorance. I was told of a newspaper photo of a baby in a hospital crib with a sign that said, "AIDS -- Do Not Touch." Fortunately, that photo was taken several years ago, and we now know there's no basis for this kind of fear. But similar incidents are still happening elsewhere in this country. I read of one man with AIDS who returned to work to find anonymous notes on his desk with such messages as, "Don't use our water fountain." I was told of a situation in Florida where 3 young brothers -- ages 10, 9, and 7 -- were all hemophiliacs carrying the AIDS virus. The pastor asked the entire family not to come back to their church. Ladies and gentlemen, this is old-fashioned fear, and it has no place in the home of the brave."

Old-fashioned fear has no place in the home of the brave - lesser politicians can utter those words, but none would actually believe them.

When you read the text of the speech, you are struck by two things:

First, how forthright Reagan was about the level of fear in the US over AIDS, especially in comparison to George W. Bush's cowardly remarks about the 9/11 attacks.

Second, you notice about the amfAR speech was that while Reagan named the disease, he omitted the name of the group most affected by that disease. The love that dare not speak its name was never spoken by Reagan nor by George H. W. Bush.

If you were gay and politically aware, you saw arrogant and dismissive public officials who did nothing during an epidemic while riding high off your tax money. You saw them not only tolerating but embracing a prancing witch doctor like Jerry Falwell. Instead of saying "let them eat cake" they might as well have said "let them eat dick."

If you were a smart operative on the left, you saw opportunity. Thus the Republicans lost the support of gays and lesbians.

*****

Last weekend we got yet another demonstration of just how peaceful the "religion of peace" really is. The victims this time were patrons at a gay club in Orlando. Here's a partial list of the causes, as expounded by the Obama administration as well as the mainstream media:

• The NRA
• Magic, levitating, self-firing "assault" weapons
• Availability of "assault" weapons
• Availability of weapons to those on government watch lists
• Homophobia
• Immigration
• Hate
• Gay panic (never thought I'd hear that one again)
• Mental illness
• Steroids
• Donald Trump
• Extremist online propaganda
• Transgender bathrooms
• More hate
• Christianity
• Toxic masculinity
• The SWAT team

All this grasping at straws is because Barack Hussein Obama, the Muslim-Apologist-in-Chief, is unwilling to name Islam as the real cause of these all-too-frequent attacks - he dares not speak its name. To a gay man, it sounds not only like the response to the AIDS epidemic all over, but also a show tune: "Officer Krupke" from West Side Story. Sorry, that was homophobic.

If you're gay and politically aware, you see politicians sacrifice American ideals in general and gays' lives in particular on the altars of "tolerance" and "diversity". You see politicians and media pundits not only tolerating but embracing Islamic savages and their child-molesting prophet. You see politicians put your right to life below a Muslim's right to escape from the countries they themselves created. You see politicians importing your own murderers. You see media pundits Balkanize the country into special interest groups to make it easy for politicians to divide and conquer - and you don't want to be conquered.

If you're a smart operative on the right, you see an opportunity.

---

RIP, Edward Sotomayor and the other victims of the Pulse nightclub terrorist attack.

On Ammon Bundy and the Events in Oregon

The occupation started over the Hammonds. You remember the Hammonds, don't you? Dwight Hammond, Jr., and Steve Hammond are two ranchers from Oregon who, in 2006, were charged under the 1996 Antiterrorism & Effective Death Penalty Act (!) for accidentally burning 140 acres of BLM land adjacent to their own. They served a year in prison and paid $400,000 in fines. The federal government thought that this wasn’t sufficient, so in October 2015 the Hammonds were re-arrested and resentenced to the full 5-year prison terms.

Can you say “double jeopardy”?

The resentencing of the Hammonds was the primary reason for Ammon Bundy and others to occupy a wildlife refuge in Oregon. Ammon Bundy was under the influence of some thugs, or agent provocateurs, when he decided to be a part of this. They did this with no predefined means of communication with the outside world, no clearly defined goals, no exit strategy. It might has well have been done on a whim, as though it were a sit-in by narcissistic 60s-era campus radicals.

Notice that Bundy and the agent provocateurs became the focus of attention, by both mainstream and alternative medias. The Hammonds' plight was forgotten in all this, as were the concerns of other ranchers, as was the fact that the federal government owns most of the land in the western US.

What's the connection between the occupation of the wildlife refuge and the Hammonds, or the occupation and other ranchers, or the occupation and the BLM? There is none, and that's the problem. The occupation was all about grandstanding, and nothing about getting results.

If they had attempted to free the Hammonds, or gone after the judge or prosecutors who resentenced the Hammonds, or took substantive action directly against the BLM, that would have been different. Instead, Ammon Bundy is in custody, one of the occupiers is dead, and an opportunity has been lost.

There are three lessons to be learned here:

1. Never, ever, trust a man who is willing to die in glory but is unable to live with pride. Ammon Bundy's first mistake was trusting in such men.

2. We must remember our place: we are the flea, and we had better start using that to our advantage. Forget about strut and swagger, this is about taking effective action to regain our rights. Forget any visions of a surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri, it isn't that kind of war. We are surrounded on all sides, politically, economically, and culturally. The situation is dire, and we must give no quarter and take no captives. This doesn't mean that our situation is hopeless: do not forget what Chesty Puller said about similar circumstances.

3. No revolution, no political change, is ever born from immaculate conception. We idolize the Founding Fathers as much as the Left idolizes Che Guevara and Chairman Mao, but those idolizations are possible only because they are historical figures. The events in Oregon are here in the present, and we must act in the present, and we don't have the comfort of hindsight.

We still have time to make a difference, but not much time. We must act with resolve, not react in haste. We can make a difference, individual actions still matter in this time before the storm, but know this: once the thunderstorm starts, raindrops can no longer vote.

Quotes for 2015

"USA! USA!" - NASA engineers cheering when the New Horizons probe flew past Pluto.

*****

"We also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that" - Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, giving license to those rioting over the death of Freddie Gray. The rioting will cost the city $20 million, not counting damages to private businesses. Rawlings-Blake is seeking FEMA reimbursement.

"You could have Mother Theresa running a police department and you’re still going to have lawyers out there saying she’s not to be trusted and we’re going to sue" - William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, upon learning that Freddie Gray's family will get a $6.4 million settlement from the city.

"I was following developments with a 5-year-old little girl sitting on her dad’s lap who just got shot in the head by a drive-by shooting. And if some of the people here gave a good goddamn about the victimization of the people in this community by crime, I’d take some of their invective more seriously... The greatest racial disparity in the city of Milwaukee is getting shot and killed. Hello! Eighty percent of my homicide victims every year are African-American. Eighty percent of our aggravated assault victims are African-American. Eighty percent of our shooting victims, who survive their shooting are African-American." - Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn on the priorities of the "Black Lives Matter" movement.

"What unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class?" - Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

"Google Photos, y’all f***ed up. My friend’s not a gorilla." - Upset user reacting to Google Photos for classifying black people as gorillas. Gorillas were upset, too.

*****

"Grow the economy, not facial hair. Cut taxes, as well as whiskers." - National Review on Speaker of the House Paul Ryan's new beard; he's already the GOP's beard.

"I never thought I would work in the phone sex industry. All those years doing customer service, my customers would comment on my sexy voice. I thought I was being professional, not sexy. This work is customer service. It’s just your customers leave with more than a smile." - A worker trying to grow... the economy.

*****

Aunt who sued nephew on why she was forced to go to trial: "I was at a party recently, and it was difficult to hold my hors d'oeuvre plate."

Dysfunctional Parrot on how to deal with hipsters and their fedoras: "The logistics problem of dispensing enough hot lattes won’t be that big of an issue once we lock the doors and burn the building to the ground."

"Accidental fur" - the politically correct term for roadkill which is made into neck muffs, leg warmers, etc. Yes, roadkill.

"I didn’t know that the fumes were so ignitable. Had I known that, I would not have doused myself before going into the apartment." - Sherry Young. She attempted to fight bedbugs by turning-on her apartment's stove and oven, then went to Walmart to purchase 20 bottles of rubbing alcohol. She sprayed herself with the alcohol, then poured alcohol on the floor. The Detroit Fire Department is calling the result an "accidental fire."

*****

"It is possible that this is terrorist-related, but we don’t know; it is also possible this was workplace-related" - Obama on the San Bernardino massacre. The one thing he is certain of is that increased gun control is the cure.

"Understandable" - John Kerry excusing the Charlie Hebdo attack.

"Every now and then, someone's going to get through. We don't like that, but that's the reality." - State Department spokesman John Kirby on how successful vetting really is.

"Does this go back to our revolution? We’re revolutionary people, we really don’t believe in government?" - Chris Matthews, asking obvious questions.

"Can we bring the cat?" - sister of Italian "Lady Jihad" Fatima Az Zahra asking about life in the Islamic State. The sister, along with Lady Jihad's mother and father were arrested just before leaving for Syria. What happened to the cat?

"Use smoke signals" - NSA Whistleblower William Binney response when asked what can be done to counter the government's mass surveillance operations.

*****

"In Manhattan, my partners included lawyers, CEOs, investment bankers or owners of start-ups. In London, the men — women were very few and far between — were universally creepy." - User of the 3ndr app, which is used to arrange for three-ways.

"I’ve been talking about negatives, and you’re up on him!" - Republican media consultant and CBS News contributor Frank Luntz, astonished that voters like Trump as much as they do.

*****

"You feel the intimacy of both man and beast, you feel the sweat and the heat coming off of the animal. It's almost like he awakens other senses within you as an audience member and you feel like you're some voyeuristic animal watching something that you shouldn't be watching." - Leonardo DiCaprio discussing the rape mauling scene in the upcoming movie "The Revenant".

"The bear flips Glass over on his belly and molests him – dry humps him actually – as he nearly devours him...the Wolf of Wall Street met the Grizzly of Yellowstone...We just need Trump to say the raping bear was Mexican and we'll be done." - Quotes from a LA Times article about the same movie.

"The Revenant" is promising more hot bear action than even the Duluth Trading Company!