Good sense on immigration and the usual Trumpigration.

More than any other issue, immigration propels the Trump insurrection. The animus plays out on two levels. As a matter of policy, there is no obvious, compelling reason why controlling the border and resolving the legal status of people already here in violation of our laws must be addressed in a package deal. Why can’t the government prove that it has the commitment and capacity to enforce immigration laws first? Once a functioning immigration system was in place, we could then consider the status of people here illegally without fear that any “path to citizenship” would encourage new waves of illegal immigration.

As a matter of politics, Trump voters are angry that no matter how often or how emphatically the package-deal approach to immigration is rejected, it never seems to be defeated. What part of “No” do the politicians, journalists, and activists who set the national agenda not understand?^[1]

Let's try this.

Mr. Voegli's article is top notch. I've inveighed against the stupidity of forever crying out for "comprehensive immigration reform" while refusing to take any number of simple interim steps. I can go to a department store to buy socks without buying laundry soap, a washer, a drier, a sewing machine, and a chest of drawers as part of a "comprehensive foot care package." But the morons/demons who run things at the federal level won't seal the border until Julio, Abdul, Nbongo, Babu, and Deepak either get into Stanford Medical School or are appointed to senior positions in DHS.

However, Voegli's version of the insanity of the present holy elite approach is one of the better ones, no lie.

It's a pity that he had to repeat the usual bushwah about Donald Trump's being "disreputable," "irresponsible," and a "showman." Did Trump really step out of a Mario Puzo novel or spend time in his teens learning to tap dance or do magic tricks?

Apparently, even sensible people like Voegli don't have the generosity of spirit to acknowledge the man's enormous accomplishments and talents and prefer to treat him as though he's some kind of WWII German mine cast up on a Long Island beach by a strange coincidence of soaring world temperatures, current, wind, wave, tide, rusted-through anchor chains, and long-ago Admiral Donetz strategic scheming.

Deuced odd, I say. How did that get here?

If someone presents as an outsider who was never involved in politics in his life, this is apparently something that educated brains can't handle. Not a professional politicians? Well, then it must be an alien life form.

Hillary Rodham has a far better claim to the label of low character from her cattle future bribe taking, disgraceful persecution of Billy Dale in the White House Travel Office, and blatant lying about the cause of the jihadi attacks on our America compatriots in Benghazi and her deleted emails. Yet, this scheming witch slides through the Democrat nomination process like she's Julie Andrews. Trump's the one who captures top billing as some kind of oddity who eats peas off of his knife and fondles the waitress at Waffle House.

I don't get it, but thankfully a boatload of voters don't give a tinker's dam about the attacks.

Trump 2016!

Notes
^[1] "The Reason I’m Anti-Anti-Trump." By William Voegeli, Claremont Review of Books, 12/28/15 (link removed).

Correction (7/1/16):
I realized that the text of Mr. Voegli's I quoted clearly indicates he is on board with the "path to citizenship" and the idea that if you make it to the U.S. as an illegal you're home free; Americans have then only to "consider your status" which process will not include deportation. He means, clearly, that we shouldn't be providing that "path" while the border is still open. I regret appearing to approve of any "path to citizenship." I don't. Illegals, regardless of how many anchor babies they produced or years of residence have no rights to anything and must be deported to the last man. If they want their families to stay together, they can take their citizen children with them.

I still like what he says about the obtuseness of the elites in forever plugging "comprehensive immigration reform" when all it is is a subtrefuge for inaction on sealing the border. (One must be careful to talk in terms of sealing the border lest "control" of the border be used as a weasel word to allow for less than sealing it off but good.)

2.5 miles down.

H/t: "American Digest."

Annoying Windows 10 upgrade messages.

Info about a helpful bit of freeware to stop those upgrade messages is here:

"How to Remove the “Get Windows 10” Icon from Your System Tray (and Stop Those Upgrade Notifications)." How-To-Geek. 5/23/16.

I ran the Never10 utility and it appears to have stopped those upgrade notices. I haven't been able to get it to delete the Windows 10 files secretly downloaded to my hard drive. The utility tells me that some of the files are in use and to restart and try again. The utility tells the same thing after I reboot so it looks like I'm stuck with about 1.7MB of those files.

The link above states:

Never10 was developed by well-respected security researcher Steve Gibson, which means it’s trustworthy and contains no adware, viruses, or other assorted malware nastiness up its sleeve. Basically, it acts as a frontend for Microsoft’s hidden settings that prevent the Windows 10 upgrade.

FYI. Use at your own risk.

UPDATE (6/29/16):

The developer of GWX Control Panel invited me to check it out as an alternative removal tool. Commenter Eskyman at Liberty's Torch says it's a good program.

Also, commenter Carol at Liberty's Torch says merely removing Windows update KB3035583 solved the problem for her.

Commenter Rick C. flirts with heresy by saying just upgrade.

Let's just quit the pretense.

A nation consists of people with a common racial, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, historical, and political identity. The left has foisted off on us the notion that a nation is nothing but the sum total of all the people who pass through Grand Central Station over the course of a year.

The Brexit vote has established an idea that Benjamin Netanyahu would find familiar: each ethnic group must act in self-interest. It is no longer the responsibility or burden of the UK to be the world’s immigration destination; instead, English and British people can act toward their own self-interest, which means excluding everyone else.

Just because someone is born in the UK, they are not British. They are occupants, not natives. And now, the natives want their country back. The backlash has begun, against not just the EU, but democracy and its inherent Leftist tendencies and the idea of multiculturalism itself.^[1]

For the truth of the proposition that people born in Britain are not British, revisit my earlier post from which I republish this video:

Notes
^[1] "‘Stop immigration. Start repatriation.’" By Brett Stephens, Amerika, 6/26/16.

Send Them Back to the Kitchen Dept.

United States Attorney General, Loretta Lynch:

We stand with you [the LGBT community] to say that the good in this world far outweighs the evil, that our common humanity transcends our differences, and that our most effective response to terror and to hatred is compassion, it’s unity, and it’s love,” Lynch said. “We stand with you today as we grieve together, and long after the cameras are gone, we will continue to stand with you as we grow together in commitment, in solidarity, and in equality.^[1]

Lynch is no slouch in the Vacuous Buzzwords Department (VBD) either:

• stand with you,
• our common humanity,
• transcends (common sense?),
• differences,
• hatred,
• compassion,
• unity,
• love,
• stand with you today (more standing),
• grieve together,
• continue to stand with you (even more standing),
• grow together,
• commitment,
• solidarity, and
• equality.

This kind of meaningless flapdoodle is also a specialty of our putative president, as witness his speech after the Ft. Hood workplace violence incident six long years ago.

There was a great "Twilight Zone" episode years ago where a low-life card sharp dies and ends up in an amazing place where every dice throw comes up seven, gorgeous women hang on his arm and his every word, and every need is provided for in luxury. He finally becomes so bored that he begs to be sent to "the other place." The official in charge laughs and says that this is "the other place."

Maybe the nearest earthly equivalent is to live in a great country but to be afflicted by a ruling class that is devoid of insight, character, firmness of will, and ability to foresee the immediate and long-term consequences of economic and political choices. On the outside they look like intelligent, normal people but after you watch them for a while you see they are dull, venal, treacherous, flaccid, empty, and treasonous.

They are uniformly like the two teenagers in the horror movie who hear a noise in the basement of the haunted house and immediately decide to go investigate. Yes, that's right. Go find out what's making that noise! When they reach the basement you want to scream at them, "Don't split up! Don't split up!" But they always do.

The political class is like that. When faced with a ludicrous decision and a commonsense decision which one do they invariably choose? Correct. The ludicrous one. The insane one. The most destructive one.

Merkel, for example, was faced with two alternatives:

(1) stop participating in the war against Syria that generates refugees; help refugees in place at a fraction of the cost; stop groveling at the feet of Erdogan who is also participating in the war against Syria and playing her like a Dollar Store ukelele; don't be a sap about admitting criminals, jihadis, economic parasites, and competitors for jobs and resources that should go to Germans; and demand interdiction at the land border with Turkey and in the Mediterranean; or . . .

(2) flood Germany and the rest of Europe with people who will cause enormous expense, heartache, misery, destruction, crime, and death.

We all know how that one went down.

The same in the U.S. where we have two big choices: (1) stop all legal immigration, bring back our troops from the Afghan border to seal our border, and deport foreign invaders and visa overstayers, or (2) keep legal immigration at toxic levels, leave the border wide open, and grant welfare and citizenship to invading illegals.

Obvious Treason Class choice: (2).

Yeah, baby.

It's the same with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The elite has the option of supporting (1) a grasping, conniving, lying, abusive, power-hungry monster or (2) a normal person. And, 'chachos, the Establishment nominee is?

Chinese landscape painters loved to depict officials and wise men with long white beards living in gorgeous remote mountains where they contemplate waterfalls. I understand those guys. One can stand only so much mediocrity.

Notes
^[1] "Lynch: The Best Response to Terrorism Is Love and Compassion." By David Rutz, Washington Free Beacon, 6/21/16 (emphasis added).

Mile markers on the road to oblivion.

I really don’t know what it will take to knock that big fat lie [diversity is our strength] on the head and kill it for good. Nine-eleven should have done it in all logic; but no, we just doubled down on our diversity gamble, admitting more Muslims for settlement in the decade after 9/11 than we had in the decade before.

"Orlando, Paris, Yorkshire, and Donald Trump’s Unanswerable Questions About Immigration." By John Derbyshire, The Unz Review, 6/19/16.

Keynesianism and the abyss.

Virtually every measure of industrial production is heading south yet, [Fed Chairwoman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve] Yellen pretends that just a few more months of ZIRP will do the trick.

* * * *

. . . Yellen and her merry band of money printers are simply prolonging the inevitable day of reckoning when the third great financial bubble of this century comes crashing down.^[1]

90 months of ZIRP are going to ignite our rocket sometime soon. Very soon. Very, very soon.

Notes
^[1] "Janet Whiffs Again——Take Cover Now!." By David Stockman, Stockman's Corner, 6/15/16.

Adios to the middle class.

In America, Europe, China, Japan, and the many other places in the world where there was an existing or emerging middle class, the global economy, which globalists in the U.S. and the EU promised us would bring more economic prosperity, has caused the opposite through downward pressure on wages due to global competition. When the beginnings of these trends first began to emerge with events like Rockefeller going to China in the 1970s and the creation of NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO, etc., the American people were told through a corporate controlled media that this would allow Americans to prosper in the new global market place.

Of course, the globalists knew what the real outcome would be from the beginning.^[1]

Also, much downward pressure on U.S. workers, if not outright displacement, from our insane diabolical embrace of open borders and encouragement of mass illegal and legal immigration.

Notes
^[1] "Precariat, Bilderberg and the Microchip." By Paul McGuire, NewsWithViews.com, 6/13/16 (emphasis added).

Three black cults.

In John McWhorter’s fine book, Losing the Race, he (bravely) describes three ‘cults’ within the Black community in general that are having such a detrimemtal effect on black lives. They are (1) the cult of anti-intellectualism; (2) the cult of separatism; and (3) the cult of victimization. The Black Lives Matter crowd (BLM), which has the ear of our president, is being intellectually dishonest when it ignores the well documented pathologies of sky rocketing illegitimacy and high school dropout rates, absent fathers, and drug and alcohol abuse and asserts the only causes for the horrific carnage in their communities is vague non-specific racism and Police malfeascence.

Comment by zygote314 on "The Tragic and Complete Collapse of Racial Relations." By Victor Davis Hanson, 8/17/15.

Arab-based cult of supremacy.

[Islam] in truth is not a Religion but an Arab based cult of supremacy that has like the Cancer it truly is spread across the globe aided more often than not by a Cabal of Saudi Arabia, the United Nations which incidently the Muslims and rogue States control by weight of numbers in the General assembly and of course the Marxist Left who are just like the Vichy French of World War Two and the Quislings of Norway and countless Treacherous traitors throughout History.^[1]

Not just Arab-based, alas.

Notes
^[1] Comment by Stephen Cox on "ISIS Will 'Kill You Strongly.'" By Dymphna, Gates of Vienna, 6/11/16.

You've Gotta Love Millennials - Micah Tyler.

Not in Kansas any more.

It’s very difficult for middle class people to understand that the institutions that they thought were there for their protection are now instruments of their persecution.

The GOP convention should be interesting–will it be disrupted and shut down with the implicit connivance of the Cleveland government? And what kind of Election Day 2016 intimidation and harassment will we be looking at?

Comment by Diversity Heretic on "Whither the Shards of America? --- It’s Us, or Them." By Fred Reed, The Unz Review, 6/9/16.

Trump and Judge Curiel.

If a judge were associated with the KKK or some white supremacy group, the media and the liberals would take to the fainting couches followed by screaming into bullhorns at protest riots. But we're supposed to cast a blind eye to obviously biased Hispanic judges and jurists who belong to race-based groups who do not hide their contempt for whites or America. . . .

Comment by tonymarini on "The race-driven San Diego La Raza Association is exactly what’s wrong with the legal system." By Jeffrey Lord, The American Spectator, 6/7/16.

Playing with fire.

It is also symptomatic of the entire anti-Russian narrative to ignore similar NGO activities by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and even Spain through a great variety of platforms that they have established around the world, with an emphasis on former colonies or territories of historical interest.

Put in this context, the Russian efforts are exceedingly modest and would never justify the attention that they are receiving from Moscow’s detractors. But the broader lesson is that the authors of such reports never look in the mirror and ask what they themselves are doing. Everything Russia is doing is taken to be unique, calculating and sinister whereas the West’s actions set a gold standard for selflessness, generosity and good governance.^[1]

Looking back at the run up to WWII, I invariably wonder what was so freaking urgent about jumping into that ghastly spasm of murder, bloodshed, pain, and destruction. Especially after the horror of WWI which was, like, a kleww that modern warfare was something terrible beyond all imaginings. But, no, those smug, scheming, blind pricks wanted to play at The Great Game and millions upon millions paid the price.

Apparently, this has all escaped the notice of the current crop of savants, saviors, and snakes who recklessly poke at the flanks of Russia and mouth garbage like "Arab Spring," "regime change," "Assad must go," and "Russian adeventurism."

At the conclusion of WWII, efforts to establish collective security and mechanisms to avoid catastrophes that had just happened were made with great fanfare and solemnity. It was all for nought and Obongo bombs and subverts the sovereign state of Syria (actual member of the United Nations) with impunity and no, that's no, resort to the mechanisms or principles of the U.N. and certainly not the U.S. Constitution.

The love of risk, war and death is as alive and vigorous as it has ever been. Ann Barnhardt might well be on to something.

Notes
^[1] "Is It Too Late to Save Braindead Europe From Sleepwalking Toward War? "The momentum into a new Cold War – and possibly toward World War III – is growing stronger." By Gilbert Doctorow, Russia Insider, 6/7/16.

Why I love the GOP – Reason # 4,395.

After some grandstanding to placate outraged constituents, establishment Republicans in Congress quietly voted to fund Obama’s unconstitutional plan to fundamentally transform your neighborhood by bringing in more federally funded “diversity.”

"Battle Rages as GOP Saves Obama Plot to Diversify Neighborhoods." By Alex Newman, Infowars.com, 6/7/16. (Infowars.com emphasis removed.) Originally published at The New American.

Pearls of expression.

[Janet Yellin's] one-hour speech could be summed up in 5 words = We'll do what we'll do.

Comment by Das Karl on "The Keynesians Stole The Jobs." By Ron Paul, Infowars.com, 6/6/16.

Keynesian death-o-tron.

Many will point to the May employment numbers [38,000 "jobs" added; 102 million unemployed or no longer looking for work; millions of low-wage legal and illegal immigrants competing with citizens for jobs] and the weak economy in general and pin all the blame on President Obama. However, Obama is only part of the problem. The real culprit is an economic philosophy shared by both Republicans and Democrats for many decades. It is a belief in the fantasy of effective central economic planning by the Federal Reserve. It is a belief that a central bank can determine better than the free market what interest rates should be. This belief results in mal-investment, spiraling debt, distorted markets, inflation, bubbles, and finally economic depression. * * * *

. . . What we are seeing is an epic failure of the Keynesians who have tricked so many people into believing that economic interventionism can create a perfect economy. They have mismanaged the economy and I am afraid the worst is yet to come.^[1]

Stock up on baked beans and lemonade, bitchez.

Notes
^[1] "The Keynesians Stole The Jobs." By Ron Paul, Infowars.com, 6/6/16.

H/t: Gates of Vienna.

I 'splain it to you.

Quizzed by CBS’ John Dickerson in an interview that aired Sunday on “Face the Nation,” Trump said he’d have similar concerns about a Muslim judge.

“It’s possible, yes. Yeah. That would be possible, absolutely,” he said.

“Isn’t there sort of a tradition though in America that we don’t judge people by who their parents were and where they came from?” Dickerson replied.

And Trump countered again, “I’m not talking about tradition — I’m talking about common sense, OK?”

"Trump: Muslim judge might not be fair to me either." By Kyle Cheney, Politico, 6/5/16.

That's the spot.

H/t: Bluebird of Bitterness.

Clueless after all these years.

Moreover, as we keeping insisting, there is nothing in the OASDI trust funds except intergovernmental accounting confetti. Every dime that was ever collected from the social insurance taxes, which bring in more than $1 trillion per year in revenue, has already been spent on education grants, Federal salaries, aircraft carriers, cotton subsidies, windmill farms and thousands of other Washington boondoggles.

So that steep demographic curve in the chart above [showing increase in retired aged people] means only one thing. Namely, that to fund even the current wildly unaffordable benefit schedule, massive amounts of additional cash will have to be extracted from taxpayers, the bond market or other programs.^[1]

But Obama (Harvard, JD) wants to raise Social Security benefits. Proving that after seven years "in office" Obama has failed to grasp one of the most elementary facts of our fiscal peril.

Notes
^[1] "Obama’s Latest Whopper—-Let’s Raise Social Security Benefits!" By David Stockman, Stockman's Corner, 6/3/16 (emphasis added).

H/t: Zero Hedge.