By Mid-Town Orphan Recycling | Over 1 Million Served!
I never was a fan of the hair. While some of my Libertarian brethren celebrate proclamations of deregulation, I remain doubtful. For me, net liberty is the best way to measure a President’s Libertarian bent or lack thereof. If Trump manages to reduce federal regulations by 20% but pushes trade protectionism, continued military engagement in Middle East matters, the expansion of the surveillance state, and other freedom-hating projects, that’s probably not a win for liberty.
I hope Trump proves me wrong, but his biggest obstacle, in any liberty-minded endeavor, will be his own party. Despite being given yet another opportunity to pass whatever they want, many Republicans lack the gonads to dismember big government. This should not be surprising given the party’s reluctance to adopt any meaningful reform efforts in the past. The opportunist in me hopes Trump can get them in line: The liberal media has gone full retard, and the political landscape is about as polarized as it can get. Reform efforts aren’t going to turn enemies into friends, but that ship has sailed. Most of the country has lined up behind their champion, and they aren’t going to switch sides anytime soon. This is the time to get unpopular things passed: Now is the time to burn it down and not look back!
Alas, Republicans seem blissfully unaware that this may be their last chance to keep the party from imploding. The election of Trump proves that a big portion of the base does not support the standard party line. That should be a wake-up call to every elected politician with the desire to maintain some authoritah. I doubt they’ll get the message – The future looks very bright for the populists.
Of course, voters want free health insurance and an Obamacare repeal; they want free retirement but don’t want to pay for it; they want free college and forgiveness of student loan debts they fully accepted; they want perfect security and zero terrorism. This puts republicans in the position of trying to satisfy unlimited demands for free shit and pipe dreams. The alternative is to back unpopular reform efforts that will lower costs, increase liberty and boost the economy. It’s time for Republicans to see the writing on the wall: The progs and populists will beat them on any efforts to give crap away; the expansion of the security state can only go so far before it collapses under its own weight. Taking the unpopular stance with big reforms now can give them support for the future, once voters see the overwhelmingly positive results of smaller government. Despite this, I expect Republicans will continue down the unsustainable path of max-security-prog-lite.
Even with my doubts on Trump’s commitment to liberty, there is something for which I owe him my deepest thanks…
Normally, I’m a news junkie. I watch and read news voraciously, and incidentally find myself completely pissed off with the slanted coverage from just about every media outlet. While I’m an equal opportunity hater of news, the liberal outlets are the frequent objects of my ire. Then Trump came along, and everything changed.
The intellectually-challenged liberal media went all-in to discredit Trump, pushing Russian conspiracy theories in the process. Allies circled the wagons and defended bad articles as merely false stories, but not fake news. #NeverTrumpers reliably bought into the media conspiracy machine, while others saw through the naked bias and tuned out. Too busy celebrating their fake news as Pulitzer-prize worthy material, the liberal media was oblivious to the fact that they had given Trump exactly what he needed…a villain and a polarized country.
Trump’s greatest skill isn’t his leadership ability or business acumen; it’s his ability to manipulate the media: If the phrase, “there is no such thing as bad publicity” is true for anyone, it’s true for Donald J. Trump. So Trump hit back and hit hard. He spewed his fair share of crap, but the media’s flailing efforts to take down Trump gave him plenty of legitimate ammunition too. And somewhere in all that mess I finally made peace with the state of the media.
Trump is not a Libertarian, not even close, yet he has brought balance to the force. Somehow, someway, the people of the United States of America elected the best possible candidate to completely undermine the media…and I love it! For years, I’ve watched the liberal media act as a direct extension of the progressive PR machine, while their trained monkeys throw shit on their chosen enemies. The people responded with Trump, a man who could throw shit faster and in greater volume than anyone else. The liberal media has met its match, and they have no idea how to fight it!
The media, as we’ve recognized it for the past decade, is done. Once the dust settles, we will see a dramatically different fourth estate: Progs will grow exhausted from their perpetual outrage act and turn their attention back on the rifts within their own movement. The resulting drop off in already low ratings will leave liberal outlets with a choice to change direction, or get pushed to the fringes. Meanwhile, the media void will be filled with interesting upstarts, a phenomenon which is well underway. The future of media is more choice, though not necessarily less bias. Still, I’ll take it!
President Trump, you have my sincerest thanks!
I have said many times that Trump could literally accomplish nothing for 8 years and still be the greatest president to date in my lifetime because of how quickly and radically he red pilled the entire country, possibly the world, to how badly we were being manipulated.
Indeed. It’s already a huge shift of the Overton Window.
Looking at their viewership plummet over the years is pretty great. 2 parts internet, 1 part 24/7 cycle. Now add a heaping spoonful of Trump!
Its disturbing to me how much I have been enjoying the media getting stomped.
I will admit I have never enjoyed enjoyed seeing people cry hysterically and lose their minds before 11/08/2016, but now I cannot get enough of it.
+1 Obligatory Salty Ham Tears (I’ll skip the link, you can all find it)
i sprained my wrist first time watching that mashup
Please somebody post that. I missed it.
i went cold turkey trying to beat my addiction to salty ham tears but watching those brought back my drive to find more. the schadenfreude is that good.
gonna kick tomorrow.
It’s just this. SFW
The mashup (mashups, there are many of them) are not so SFW, but here’s one. They’re all pretty screechy though.
God, I went looking for compilations of leftist people laughing at the idea of a trump win.
Man, that’s fucking good. I hate Trump, but he has shown that I hate them just as much. Fucking an entire room full of people laughing, nay, shrieking at Ann Coulter for saying Trump will win… and I fucking hate Ann Coulter too… but seeing them get their fucking comeuppance for how fucking RUDE they are towards anyone who disagrees… yeah.
And I say this as a person who thought Trump would never win, and laughed at and made fun of the idea.
It would take a heart of stone not to spit a mouthful of coffee at the screen with laughter.
The original Salty Ham Tears archived from that other site. We got so many more salty prog tears this go around, and they are delicious.
Wow, 1656 comments! H&R now struggles to hit 100 on a post.
Sorry, I have already hit my sodium intake for the next month.
Holy Mackerel! Who is the threadfucker from 3 years later (2009) with the running commentary?
I slogged through the whole thing and it was URKOBOLD doing the 3 year later play-by-play. Also, I found this gem and now I’m a little verklempt.
J sub D|10.5.09 @ 6:34PM|#
I joined the H&R peanut gallery after this thread. I’d heard about it often, seen the photo many times but this is the first time I’ve visited it.
It’s kinda like a Hajj for reasonoids.
*removes cap, bows head*
Fuck off, slaver!
the mashups of the news predicting her landslide win with the results right after get me cracking up every time.
I still have Colbert’s live election night special on my DVR and whenever I need a laugh or get frustrated with PROGRESS I fire it up. It is absolutely hilarious.
My lefty friends – ok, it’s true that an aspy like me really doesn’t have friends – are still staggering around in disbelief.
I tell them that the pendulum swings back and forth, and that Trump probably won’t have any chance in the next election (provided the Dems don’t nominate someone who isn’t batshit insane or corrupt).
But I think what I’m seeing is a sense of loss. One being Obama was ultimately a letdown, even though they defend the guy. And the other: If Hillary would have won, the Supreme Court would have been left for a generation or more. This was their one chance to shove the whole American experiment down the toilet – a progressive judiciary would have been the death of the 2nd Amendment, the First, and god knows what else.
The fact that the supreme court is such a prize should prove unequivocally that the supreme court has way to much power and went flying off the rails before half of us were even born. How we fix this, I really don’t know, but the fact that the courts are currently in the process of staging a shadow coup against Trump should cause much discomfort to everyone here.
between the court system and the whole unelected executive agencies, yeah, we have a power problem.
Can’t fix judiciary when half the country believes in things like a “living constitution” and “disparate impact”
“before half of us were even born”
i assume a reference to the Slaughter-House Cases of 1873.
The root is deeper than the slaughterhouse cases actually, if you’re interested it all begins here Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1, 6 L. Ed. 3, (1824). Marshal establishes the reasoning which allows congress to drive any law it wants through the commerce clause with this case by hanging his decision on the commerce powers, necessitating some creative interpretation of commerce, as opposed to a power of the Federal government more fitting. Whether this was a lack of imagination on his part or something else I don’t know.
by contrast, i’m pretty sure its going to be the worst political curbstomping in American history
of course we have a few years of “who knows” to play out. But as long as the economy is ‘modestly better’ (e.g. 2%-3% GDP growth, improving costs on HC, continued low oil, food prices etc), I think the Left is going to bury itself even deeper into a prog-hole.
That sounds right. It’ll depend on economic things most of all.
I’m just trying to be nice when I tell them that 😉
Honestly Trump is one guy who is hard to read the tea leaves with.
That’s a big part of the appeal of Trump. Snowflakes bought the hope and change line with the big O but he didn’t really deliver. Trump on the other hand a first class wrecking ball and the crane operator appears to be drunk. We have no idea what he’s going to smash next but we’re enjoying the show.
That’s a lot of “ifs” and Republicans don’t seem to want to get out of the way.
True, but Democrats seem to have learned nothing. Do you think that in 2020 they are going to stiff the BLM/SJW/new gender crowd and appeal to blue-collar whites? Oppose illegal and Muslim immigration? Support gun rights? Of course not.
IT”S ALL OVER!!!
I was watching CNN on election night and I thought Van Jones was going to curb stomp Corey Lewandowski’s smiling face on live television.
TYT one is great. It’s a bit long.
Have y’all ever read any of Mencius Moldbug’s musings? A great deal of his analysis seems to be proving accurate with an ever increasing frequency. Moldbuggery has a nice organized collection of links for anyone interested.
His articles are rather dense, but I’m rather enjoying them.
He’s a very interesting guy. I find his diagnoses to be better than his prescriptions, though. (Sorry, I don’t want a monarchy.)
It is astounding what a bunch of pussies most of the Congressional Republicans are. They are more terrified of being in charge than CNN is of the Trump Presidency. They are trying to pass a healthcare bill that would have been a compromise with President Clinton, not the repeal they promised on the slim chance of Trump winning.
They aren’t even talking about spending cuts or tax reform. I hope their base turns on them viciously in the next primary cycle.
If any libertarians wanted to run as R’s, they might stand a good chance next round.
I know I personally have been dying to see some libertarians run as manchurian republicans for years now. If I had any political connections I would have done it already.
Those candidates might be popular with the voters. Might. But good luck getting those candidates past the party establishment who are taking a page from the prog playbook and doubling down on what they’ve been doing in the past.
But as noted by MOP the country has populist fever – wanting to both have their cake and eat it too.
MOR not MOP. Derp.
A serious issue. If the economy doesn’t improve, we could have a Sanders person next.
Warren. It will be Warren.
I think Bernie will be too old, and there’s probably footage of him saying some real communist-y things somewhere.
Warren might run, I think there’s too much baggage there though. Who knows though, she could make it past the DNC.
I promise pot for every chicken, and an end to foreigners wherever they may be and a glorious revolving for all Americans!
i don’t think so. the word that seems to be going around is that she’s got skeletons that wouldn’t survive a presidential run.
I think they’ll float a combo of corey booker types (young, dumb, right color), and some watered-down Blue-Trump type (a dem businessman; tom steyr? probably not. but the rumors about Howard Schultz sounded like what i’d expect they’d cook up)
I think they will avoid running a candidate with a lot of political baggage/track record. It forces them to talk about their own legacy and they can never be prog-enough to satisfy the young idealists. Bernie was as commie as they come, and they only want more of that, and more-commier. Its simply not possible. So the only thing that will work is someone with no political background who can basically make shit up on the fly and spout meaningless feelgood babble and never actually have to answer any tough questions. a blank slate.
They’ve never run anyone like that before. How could they hope to win?
Scandals didn’t faze them last time. It will be a woman. You know how they are about quotas.
I thought Duval Patrick would have made a run after he finished his terms ad governor of MA.
yeah, but i don’t actually think so.
Hillary didn’t even win a majority of white women. think about that. The “First woman” thing? doesn’t cut through to voters the way people may want to pretend it does. And this was in a situation where the alternative? was a boorish, sexist, gross man who acknowledged he grabbed pussies. If there were any scenario in which merely ‘being a woman’ should have been a slam dunk, it was this one. and it proved to be worth nothing.
i recall there being a survey done a while back asking people in the business world whether they thought men or women made better bosses. And what was remarkable was that women in general were significantly more negative about female leadership than men were.
I’m not writing off the idea of a woman being the candidate; just that i’m pretty sure Warren isn’t it, and i don’t know anyone else that would do the job. Marissa Mayer? someone like that, if they could convince them – but i don’t see why anyone with any talent would want the job.
Well, looks like you make a strong case for Marissa Meyer then, except she’s a lousy candidate for other reasons too.
I can’t see the electorate saying “Lets have someone from Silicon Valley! Yay!”.
And then other people will remind us that she oversaw an utter car crash of shareholder value.
Chelsea Clinton
no, i was just throwing out a name of the *type* of woman they’d have to run. But i don’t know anyone of that caliber who actually has any interest in being the Dem nominee
I agree with Gilmore about Warren, and add that she’s old, and is also not the sort that the electorate would turn to when they are worried about the future of the country.
It will be a woman. You know how they are about quotas.
They’ll try it. I don’t think it will work. They were hoping Hillary Clinton would be for women what Barack Obama was for black people. But, it just doesn’t float. Obama was able to tap into a broad desire for racial reconciliation. There was a feeling among a lot of people that, if we put this nice young black man in the White House, we could say that all of the history of racism was behind us. But, women in America aren’t blacks in America.
The truth is, as much as feminists are loath to admit it, there’s really not all that much in the way of history that we really need to put behind us in the same way. There was never a systematic enslavement of women the way there was for black people. There was never any popular organizations devoted to the violent imposition of male supremacy. A woman could well expect to talk back to a man without fear of possible lynching.
Yes, women faced injustices. Some of them terrible. But, not a systematic injustice that wide swaths of the population are going to feel a need to put behind them.
HARRIS/VILLARAIGOSA 2020: FOR THE VANGUARD!
If they only PROG a bit harder, they’ll win!
Who is there to perform that role? Unless the Democratic establishment gets culled in the near future they’ll be running establishment candidates, barring a sudden upset like a celebrity running.
Here’s the problem though: Turn on them and do what? Elect a liberal? Not vote? What are our options when the people who promised the hope and change turn around and say ‘Sorry, but fuck you’?
They won’t go D, but they might look at L or R-L?
More trump clones. Populists. what that means, idk. a Senate full of populist with no real commitmen to liberty might not be good, but it might be better than a Senate full of Rs with no real commitment to liberty.
Hey, if they make it easier for L’s to get on the ballots, maybe we have a multi party gov again.
That’s why he said turn on them in the next primary cycle. The primaries are where the continuum of thought within the confines of a party have free reign to duke it out without people feeling compelled to toe the party line. If the Republican base is unhappy with their options, they can kick them to the curb in the primaries. Primaries are how they took out Eric Cantor (House Majority Leader) and rejected all the reasonable options in favor of Trump. Occasionally they go too far in primaries, selecting someone terrible who loses a seat, and in one case the public deliberately overturned the primary result (Lisa Murkowski – 2010), but primaries are where the most interesting action happens in a polarized electorate.
Probably just keep voting for the candidates who claim they are really conservative until they accidentally elect a few who really are.
the political landscape is about as polarized as it can get
Except for the doctrine of Nullification in practice, that whole Civil War thing, and all of FDR’s overreaching manoeuvres, yes I suppose so.
The only reason we are not shooting yet is that most people still have food and internet. I promise you if that were ever truly threatened on a nationwide scale bullets would already be flying. American cannot hate each other enough right now.
Three square meals and Twitter away from anarchy.
That’s all that’s keeping us from fixing the roads??!
Nah, we have to overcome the orphan supply shortage too,
we have to overcome the orphan supply shortage too,
I believe the solution may be in sight:
if that were ever truly threatened on a nationwide scale bullets would already be flying.
That which is seen, and that which is unseen.
But tor R C Dean, there are no *unintended* consequences ….
Bread and circuses FTW!
semi-related: No Sympathy for the Hillbilly
Democrats need to stop trying to feel everyone’s pain, and hold on to their own anger.
long article:
Notice that it appears to be only the R’s ever talking about ‘reaching across the isle’ nowadays? The libs pulled the duck season rabbit season trick on this one and the Rs bit down like a bass on a spinner.
I thought you were talking about foreign relations with the UK for a moment there.
That nefarious little a.
When TEAM BLUE is in power, “bipartisan” means the Republicans have to shut up and go along with what the Democrats propose. When TEAM RED is in power, “bipartisan” means the Republicans have to listen to the Democrats’ concerns and take them into account when drafting legislation, and not just shove stuff down the people’s throats.
Those are the people who got Obama elected.
This is why i feel so sure that the left is fucked in 2020. The coastals really have lost the plot, and think that middle america is supposed to come begging to them rather than vice versa.
they don’t know how to talk to regular people without sneering.
more of the same point
namecalling will work next time. that or promising to raise taxes, everyone loves that.
Fuck you, you moron! Now pay more! Stop voting against your own interests, idiot!
*donates to _Warren_’s campaign*
Heh, heh.
He’s right, give us hell Quimby!
Still with the hoarders, wreckers and kulaks. Not so much as an iota of self-reflection. They are toast.
Goddamn Middle Peasants!
My question is, what is this ‘ditch’ that we’ve driven into? Basically, nothing has happened.
That’s why I’m so sick of the hyperventilating of most of the media. My life has changed not at all since January 20th. Not even a little bit.
Better that Democrats cater to BLM, welfare recipients, the SJWs, the gender-confused, illegal aliens, and Muslim refugees. After all, that’s done well for them in recent years, right…?
Dept of Ag cyanide bomb kills dog, sickens boy.
Some dumb ass working for the DoA planted a cyanide mine right on the property line of a family’s home and placed no warning marker.
So can someone explain to me a legitimate reason to place a cyanide bomb..well.. anywhere? I am trying really hard not to get a pitchfork and torch out of the closet without knowing the facts first.
They say it’s to control coyotes and such. Even if you accept that there’s no reason not to place warning markers. It’s not like the animals can read.
Thanks for the info. Going to get my torch and pitchfork now.
Seriously, if someone puts a chemical landmine on my property I’m taking that as an act of war.
Aren’t chemical weapons use against the Geneva Conventions. So not only an act of war a war crime violation to boot.
Can they bring a suit like that? how would that work?
If the minefield isn’t surrounded by fences with prominently posted warnings, it’s a war-crime as well.
The fact that it’s not an actual explosive but a spring loaded contraption might well make the difference between a war crime and just another heavy handed action by an alphabet agency.
That story just hit my derpbook feed. Nobody is outraged, just sad.
If somebody killed my dog with cyanide the headline would not be “Man’s dog killed by cyanide” it would be “Gunman storms Department of Ag building; 32 dead”
Let alone your kid being hospitalized by fed negligence.
If you don’t want cyanide bombs planted on your property, then you must be doing something wrong.
/avg Facebook poster
Count on a pubsec to fuck it up. If you want to poison coyotes, all it takes is (a) hot dogs (they don’t seem particular what brand) and (b) anti-freeze (they love the taste of ethylene glycol).
Now, the dog would still be dead, but the kid would probably be fine.
Government, it’s the neighbors dogs we poison together.
Or shoot, if it’s a cop.
Trump’s greatest contribution has been his effect on the collective cultural zeitgeist: many people’s masks have either fallen away or become obvious and self-evident. Despite the massively divisive nature of this, I think it’s ultimately of net benefit to civil society: the natures of our politicians, journalists, celebrities and even laymen have been exposed. A culture of lies has oddly produced a more honest discourse. CNN’s credibility has been destroyed, the justification of violence on the left, we’ve seen which Republicans actually believe in the small government ideals and the ones who carried them as a cultural identifier (cough, Hannity), etc.
I’ve known Hannity was a fuckboi for years now. He’s better than O’Reilly, but that’s not exactly a badge I would wear with pride.
Oh yeah, it tends to be more obvious to those outside the mainstream political spectrum, but Hannity shilling hard for Trump like the loudmouthed idiot he is was great. Small government conservatives needed a clean-up of their media representation and Trump gave it to them.
I’ve managed to watch maybe a total of 30 minutes of both men over the years they’ve been on. They are insufferable douchebags.
I’m hoping that the Congressional Republicans’ reluctance to actually cut the budget will lead to Republican voters cleaning house in the next primary season.
Unfortunately Lindsey Graham is in the SC long seat. He would be the perfect canary in that coal mine.
SC seems to like to grant their Senators lifetime appointment; Strom Thurmond was one of the longest serving senators and a quick check reveals that SC has not defeated an incumbent senator for at least 50 years. Graham is probably safe.
He’s just so manly!
I lived in SC for a year. Other than being a tier 1 shithole, SC had some of the worst politics I have ever seen. There was a bill being debated that would have allowed constitutional carry. They had a open hearing for it in my town. I show up and it is literally standing room only. The list to speak was 5 pages and in 3 hours only a third of the people that wanted to speak actually got a chance. It was almost unanimously in favor of the bill. Out of over 100 speakers, 3 of them were against it, and they were obviously moms demand action plants. So, the bill passed, right? Nope, it never made it out of committee.
Ok, this isn’t new, but it’s new to me and it’s some high level derp. And I had to go into places containing potentially mind threatening levels of derp to find it.
DERP!
I… this….. If we….You know….
From 1 to even I just can’t right now.
And people think I wear a tinfoil hat when I say that the left’s goal is to destroy western civilization.
“I have a question for all the science people. There is a place in KwaZulu-Natal called Umhlab’uyalingana. They believe that through the magic‚ you call it black magic‚ they call it witchcraft‚ you are able to send lightening to strike someone. Can you explain that scientifically because it’s something that happens?”
I can’t explain that scientifically, because it doesn’t fucking happen. ever.
She obviously had the same science teacher that taught O’Reilly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb3AFMe2OQY
Both people in that video are obnoxious.
That’s just rude. Give it to us in a nutshell so we dont have to suffer and cringe actually watching O’Reilly.
No one can be… told… what the derp is…. you must experience it for yourself…
And I bet you think the Kingdom of Wakanda doesn’t exist.
Of course it exists… my authentic Captain America shield has a sticker that says ‘Made in Wakanda’ right on the back of it… why else would I have paid $300 for it?!
All I can say is that when I carry this rock, I never get struck by lightning. Never in over 50 years.
Science, man. I fucking LURV it.
Mid-Town Orphan Recycling, new or alias? No fair using alias’s.
Very good article. I judge that by how pissed I get reading it. This one reminds me how much I hate chickenshit motherfuckin’ republicans.
The way he has exposed the progs for the little shits they are as well as drive the mainstream liberal press to tears has been more than gratifying for me.
Nothing like watching them itch, squirm and go completely bonkers not even trying to be balanced anymore. They’ll gladly turn on people or policies they once supported if Trump supports it.
Progressivism. A cult by other means.
This is so spot on that it stained my shirt. Good read. Thanks!