Facebook, You’re FIRED.

Thus was my sentiment as I climbed aboard the Dreamweaver train Friday night. The hypocrite dial had been full-throttle all day long and I could bear it no more;  it seems that the damage done to my respect for my friends and fellow countrymen pre-election was only the part of the tsunami where the water gets sucked out to sea and the beach becomes supremely still, when everyone is looking at one another feeling connected in the silence as it dawns on y’all what a bad idea it was to come to the beach.

It was with that mindset that I woke to find I had been tagged in the following post:

General poll to my Trump supporter friends & family:
1: are you happy with what he’s “done” in his first week
2. Do you honestly support it?
3. Why?

Lord have mercy.

What followed was surprisingly refreshing so I thought I would share.

My response:
I think that the premise of your question is part of the reason for the mood of the country. I was not a Trump supporter. Neither were almost 70% of Republican primary voters, however, the way that the left has behaved since the loss of the election has been so shockingly juvenile I can’t help but root for the man. The truth is, for us conservative types (Trump is not a conservative) the question came down to whether it was more important to vote against Clinton AND Trump or, more important to vote against Clinton and her leftist dogma. Obviously the latter won the day.

First it is important to note a key difference between Mr. Obama’s executive orders and what Mr. Trump has been doing. Obama was writing new laws via executive orders (or making changes to existing law – he made a number of changes to Obamacare with his pen, for example). Legislation is not the job of the president, it is the job of the Congress. The president doesn’t even have Line-Item Veto power, meaning, he cannot amend a law passed by Congress, he either signs or veto’s it. Obama overstepped his constitutional authority over and again and the pathetic Republicans in the Senate did nothing about it. When you enact laws, when you act outside of your enumerated powers by just the stroke of a pen they can be undone with the stroke of a pen. That is why you don’t want ANY president to do that. Those of us on the right find it pretty hypocritical to hear the caterwauling over federal overreach from the left now that it’s not their guy in office. It’s not a team sport. The same rules need to apply to both parties. Well, it is a team sport, it’s The People V. The Government and so far The Government is wiping the floor with us. The key difference is that Mr. Trump is not legislating with a pen. He is undoing unconstitutional actions of the former president and reinforcing existing laws. He is saying with his pen “go, do the job enforcing existing law”. Immigration for example. All of the laws surrounding migration and citizenship are on the books, it’s been the executive leadership that has precluded the enforcement of them. Our immigration system needs a major overhaul but that is not the job of the president. If the laws need to be changed it is up to the citizenry to elect people to Congress that will affect those laws under our system. For example, Congress already passed a law to build a barrier on our border – an example of a proper executive order would be to stipulate that the steel used in such a project be American made steel. Such an order forwards already existing – properly done – legislation.

I support our constitutional system. I believe in federalism. I believe that anything that removes power from the federal government and returns it to the states is a positive move in the direction of freedom. I believe that government is bad at almost everything and therefore should be very limited in its capacity to wield power. I think there is exists a large contingent of people out there who are wildly hypocritical and should spend some time thinking about why they think what they think. Why, for example, it is OK to force a Christian florist or baker out of business because they would prefer not to provide their service for a wedding, BUT, have no problem when designers refuse to dress the first lady, or they don’t bat an eye when musicians cancel their concert N. Carolina because of transgender bathroom laws?

Mr. Trump is a blunt instrument for sure but he is the result of Democrat rule. Mr. Obama reined over the biggest losses the Democrats have ever had – Republicans haven’t had all three branches since the 20’s – and over his term the Dem’s lost over 1000 seats nationwide. Republicans now hold the majority of governorships. I hope this will result in a more free country. I try not to listen to what he says because it is painful but, instead, look at what he does and so far? His appointments are really good. I think his ideas on trade are moronic and I hope he is able to learn from the very qualified people he is surrounding himself with that protectionism is not the way to run a healthy economy, that tariffs are stupid and trade deficits are what help the poorest people in our country live a better life than 95% of people in the world.

It is short sighted to make him the devil, the orange Hitler. He is going to do some good things and the American people who don’t follow politics will feel the effect of the good policies. If the left continues labeling him as Hitler etc. when he does good things will they be able to say, “Hitler DID do that well.”? No. They will be left with nowhere to go.

Thank you for asking the question. I appreciate that you are seeking understanding. XOXO

Her follow-up-
Thank you Stacy Manning. Very insightful & thorough as I anticipated it would be. I guess I’m asking more of an opinion tho….are you personally happy with what he’s done/said/how he’s portrayed himself/represented our country? That’s what I’m curious about.

I cannot understand the appeal of this man. I cannot fathom how we ended up here with Cruz as an option. So I think my opinion on whether he is appealing as a presidential figure is irrelevant. Do I agree with what he has done so far? Yes. I like when people deliver on their promises to their supporters, even if I don’t agree with them. I like integrity. What he says and how he comports himself? God help me no. It is interesting though, Obama sounded fabulous but his entire legacy, because he didn’t do it correctly, has been undone in a week. Conversely Trump, in all of his inelegant, unpolished, undisciplined ways, so far, is doing it correctly. We should judge by action and results, not intention and rhetoric. Even if you don’t agree with Trump it is important to hold everyone in power accountable to the rules. Not holding Obama accountable to the constraints of his office should be an important lesson to all Americans and I hope against hope that we return, collectively, to seeing big government as the anathema to freedom that it is.

A friend of hers responds:

Your friend Stacey made the most sense of anyone I have heard this year. But I’m curious why you (Stacey) thinks the appointments so far are good? Are you at all concerned about the radical and unsubstantiated position about the EPA and what it’s focus should be?

(Look. Someone who is not of my mindset politely responding and seeking more detail. For reals.)

Thank you namewithheld. Generally his appointments are Federalists, people who value the power of the states to make decisions for themselves, and are therefore anti-regulation. Regulators are ideologues wielding federal power against the people because they are not elected, but appointed, and thus they do not have to defend their actions to voters. I believe they are the most dangerous outcropping of too much federal power. The EPA has been abusive beyond belief and has done real damage to property rights in the name of environmentalism. Many rules are purposely written vaguely in order to empower individuals in power to abuse said rules. Even unintentional mistakes can, and have, been devastating to farmers, small businesses and the like. It’s always the little guys they ruin because big business can weather such storms. One story I read by Mark Stein (I wish I could find it – I’m sure I could if I had more time but you will get the gist) illustrates the evil of the EPA in which they declared tracks made by a farmers tractor which had filled in with rainwater A PROTECTED WETLAND. No kidding. It should be a joke but it’s not. These unelected people can levy fines without due process that many business cannot weather before they can even have their day in court. My husband worked with a man who owned a fleet of busses. He got into a regulation battle over the width of brake pads on the busses with the EPA – seriously – he was within the proper measurement but the unelected official decided he wasn’t far enough into the accepted measurement. In other words, the stated regulations were irrelevant to this official’s opinion of what they should be. What good are regulations if they are at the whim of an unelected official that has decided he hates you? This business owner ended up having to close his business and sell all of his coaches to fund the hundred’s of thousands of dollars in fines and legal fees he incurred. The insult to this outrage? The court ruled in his favor but it was too late. He was bankrupt and out of business for complying with the law.
That is tyranny.
Too many abuses of the people, too much unchecked power makes anything good the EPA might do pale in comparison to real lives  and livelihoods they are destroying. So, the pendulum is forced to swing.

Fin.
At least that was the last of it as of this post.

Strangers were generous and kind. They praised my willingness to engage and one woman thanked me for being informed and thoughtful about my position. It was so dang adult of everyone involved and I feel like I participated in something good and right today. So much so I have decided that Facebook is on probation, not fired.

Not yet.

 

 

 

 

Goodwill Toward Orange Men

The utterly depressing weather of the most wonderful time of the year has always inspired  –no- driven me to declutter. After all, it’s only proper to ring in the new year with a tidy home. Well, it’s  either that or give up on life completely in this God-forsaken cold darkness we call winter and, because my family is counting on me to keep it together, I choose a more orderly home over an orderly in the psyche ward.

I am not alone.

Out-with-the-old has hit a fever pitch and the isles of the thrift stores are positively groaning with cast-offs. The donation stations are overwhelmed with teetering piles of debris that would give even the most seasoned hoarder pause.  It is something to behold.

I am a credentialed thrift junkie and I have never  –ever– seen volume like I have witnessed this season. My conversations with the working folks on the front lines have confirmed it. It’s insane and the stuff just keeps pouring in.

Why this year?

The refrain ad nauseam is that the end is nigh.
Here in Seattle, bastion of leftism it is, people -even some I love and respect- have quaffed the we’re-all-gonna-die Kool-Aid.

You would think that the collective response to the end of life as we know it would be to stockpile, to keep anything EVERYTHING that might possibly be of use in the coming apocalypse.

And yet.

It seems as if underneath all of that wailing and gnashing of teeth there resides something else.

I think it’s hope.

Maybe even change.

 

Teach girls to stop being stupid.

When I was just coming of age I was sexually assaulted by a low-life looser more than a decade my senior.

And it was my fault.

That rapist was completely responsible for his criminal behavior and his roommates, those winners that opted to close their door so they didn’t have to hear me shout for help instead of come to my aid, were also culpable and have a special place reserved in hell along side him.

However.

I was also completely responsible for putting myself in such a vulnerable situation. I have to own how poor my choices were that night and I regret that I had to learn that lesson the tough way.

I write this because I think we have got it wrong with the messages we are sending young people. We don’t need to “teach boys not to rape”. Boys know not to rape. Men know that when a woman is not a willing partner in sex that it is not right. Males that would continue past that realization during such an encounter are criminals, possibly bonafide psychopaths, and most certainly are engaged in evil. Perhaps I am just not as intellectual as your average college student today but, from what I have observed of human nature, there is no amount of teaching that could root-out that kind of predatory nature.

If we could just “teach boys not to rape” we should also be able to “teach humanity to stop doing shitty things to one another”.  Golly gee. Just think of the Utopia we would have if we could just TEACH people to do the right thing! The money and time we could save on the criminal justice system alone!

Where have we all been on this for the past eon? It’s just so simple!

The hard truth is that it takes two people for one person to end up raped and unconscious behind a dumpster.

There is no excuse for rape.

Nor is there an excuse for being wildly irresponsible with your own safety.

There are ways to keep the likelihood that you will be sexually assaulted to a minimum. Be savvy. Don’t be naive to the dangers of this world. Be mindful of your surroundings. Learn to shoot. Don’t consume substances to the point that your judgement is compromised. Don’t put yourself in potentially compromising sexual situations with people you don’t know. Comport yourself with dignity and self-respect and don’t succumb to the the “hook-up” culture. Remember that it actually is shameful to be a slut.

And most importantly?

Don’t be stupid.

 

 

The silence for the lambs.

Did you hear that? No, it wasn’t the passing of gas but it sure does stink. That was the collective sigh of relief emitted by the dominant media. In other words, that was the “Thank-GOD-that-dude-killed-a-lion-so-we-can-distract-the-masses-from-the tax-payer-funded-predators-at-Planned-Parenthood” sigh.

Three videos revealing the atrocities casually engaged in at your neighborhood Planned Parenthood released in two weeks, the latest featuring a whistleblower describing her hands-on experience harvesting organs from a little pile of human debris, organs are apparently the most profitable commodity, and the only news sources reporting this are rightwing? Trafficking human parts, taxpayer funded no less, and it is completely ignored by most of the media?

That’s just bad business.

Or, could it possibly be that rightwing media is not the only news source with a political agenda?

In this latest video we see little intact kidneys tweezed from a dismembered fetus while someone off camera describes the find as, well, you know what? I can’t actually remember exactly but they were very impressed. I was too distracted by my stomach-churning horror as I watched unequivocal barbarism on display and I won’t be able to report the exact verbiage because I refuse to watch it again.

I wish I had never watched it but, unfortunately for me, I am compelled by a basic, fundamental morality to rail against infanticide and that requires an informed position.

But hey.

Some big game hunter killed a lion.

That lion had a NAME for goodness sake.

So did the fifty-five million babies aborted since the abomination that is Roe v. Wade.

It’s called a surname.

I wonder how the women who had their babies surgically slaughtered because they were not willing to accept the consequences of the life-creating activity that they willingly engaged in (sex for you morons) would have responded if they were informed that their child would be repositioned in their womb, pre-dismemberment, in order to most effectively harvest their most valuable parts for profit?

Seems to me these women should have been paid for their part in the profit party, no?

If it is just an unviable mass of tissue, how much different is it from donating blood?

At this point I am flummoxed.

It is WRONG to pay a fee in order to hunt big game to a government that sanctions the hunt.
It is RIGHT get paid to donate blood, sperm and eggs.
It is WRONG to sell our kidneys.
It is RIGHT for a third party sell kidneys as long as they belong to someone who cannot speak for themselves.
It is WRONG grow humans derived from the fertilization of purchased eggs by purchased sperm in a lab for organ/tissue harvest.
It is RIGHT to slaughter a human in-utero and dismember it carefully to preserve its part’s in order to net the highest price.

At least Mr. Big Game Hunter was honest about the life he was purchasing.

Minimum wage supporters are the new slaveholders.

I figured that would get your attention.

Did any of y’all know that minimum wage was a concept imagineered by Mr. Whitey after the Civil War in order to keep them freed slaves from taking all the low skill/apprentice style work?

Yep. It was entirely intended to keep the black man down.

You see, when businesses are forced to pay an inflated wage for entry level positions they will not hire someone just starting out. Mr. Whitey knew damn well that freed slaves would work for much less than he wanted to and thus, Mr. Whitey would not have work. However, Mr. Whitey was clever and realized he could use the force of government to keep freshly freed slaves out of the work place by over-pricing their labor.

When a business owner is forced by gunpoint (which is exactly what government is, don’t kid yourself) to pay an inflated wage for entry level work they are going to ensure that they get their money’s worth. That means that low/no skill workers will N E V E R get a job that they can learn and grow with because a business cannot remain viable paying for productivity they are not realizing, thus, only those with experience will warrant hiring.

The worst part?

Even if someone, a fellow citizen supposedly free to make their own choices, is willing to work for a very low wage in order to learn a valuable skill, they cannot. Because it is against the law.

Honestly? That should really seriously piss you off.

So, fast forward to our enlightened age and who are the current slaves? Those that are undereducated, unable to find work because they grew up in some hell-hole ghetto or a rusty trailer in W. Virginia with slack-jawed yokel parents that couldn’t even play the damned banjo, because the all-powerful government has made it illegal for them to work for less-than-approved wages. God forbid a thousand times someone learns something that will enable them to provide for themselves; then they might not need to suckle at the teat of the government for time immemorial.

You know. The same government that wants to institutionalize unemployment.

I wonder who all these sucklers will vote for?  Probably the party that provides their living which, strangely, is the same party that is driving the minimum wage hikes.

So, I guess it’s the same as it ever was.
The left wing remains in power by keeping the underprivileged enslaved.

The Walking Offended

The other day I watched a woman hobbling down the street struggling with her walker, an assist she very clearly needed. Well, she wasn’t really using the walker. Instead, she was carrying it.

Ironic, no?

Actually, she was barely carrying it. It was more of a wrestling match and a savvy gambler would have bet on the walker. She was cursing and lurching with a practiced expression of pain on her face. My car was full of the usual adolescent suspects so I was unable to offer her assistance but, I suspected she might be the type that savored her suffering because she was making an effort to cause herself a great deal of trouble.

I was captivated by this madwoman and, as I gaped at her, I realized that she was the perfect object lesson of how the perpetually offended among us behave. The thin-skinned sect take freedom, the very tool that enables Americans to walk, run or fly if they choose, and they turn it into a burden. Not their own freedom, mind you, it’s the freedom of others that is the source of their outrage.

Now, if we lived in Utopia, freedom would be unnecessary because everyone would agree on everything and the cities would all be made of pastries (at least in my Utopia they would) but here, in the Land of the Free, in order to enjoy freedom we are required to suffer one another. Unfortunately, lurking among us there exists a population of perpetually indignant types that have nothing better to do than crusade. They manufacture malfeasance, caterwauling at the slightest perceived indignity; their social currency is drama and they are fueled by emotionalism. This results in The Offended effectively crippling public discourse and, instead of laughing at them, we are rewarding their nonsense with serious consideration and media attention.

I think instead we should reward them with walkers.

Vagina. The resume entry of the unqualified.

Honestly people.

Electing the POTUS should be taken more seriously than the Student Council election in middle school. You know, the one that the gorgeous cheerleading blonde always won because she wore all the right clothes and dated all the right guys?

At least it should be.

However, If you believe “It’s time for a female president” you are no more mature than you were when you voted for the cheerleader and, for the sake of your fellow Americans, you need to keep your sexism out of the next presidential election. We need adults making informed decisions about the future leader of this country and surface attributes do not belong in the decision making process.

I know this might come as a shock to some of you but here it goes:
Diversity has nothing to do with race or sex.
Really.
True diversity is reflected in ideas and experience.

“Firsts” are irrelevant to those that have truly evolved to be colorblind; to those that know women are just as capable as men. If you happen to consider physical attributes when assessing someone’s fitness to hold the highest office in the land, in the world really(like it or not), it reveals that you have not yet risen above the sexism and racism you actually believe is beneath you.

It’s beneath you alright. Directly beneath you.
It’s the foundation on which you have built your worldview.

Do you think the Conservative Party chose Margaret Thatcher to be their leader in 1975 because she possessed a vagina?

Hell no they didn’t.

They chose her because she was the most capable, qualified individual for the position. Her mind, her ideas represented the philosophy of the party and she was gifted at persuading others to embrace her principals. She was an utter success because of her politics and remained in power for fifteen years because she was fierce. She also happened to be female.

The Iron Lady was elected and re-elected because of her skill and experience, not because a bunch of men wanted to make a statement about being “beyond sexism”. They simply were beyond it.

The Motherland was above such base thinking more than three decades ago. Perhaps American’s could start behaving like adults instead of acting like a bunch of childish sycophants frothing to elect the popular girl and, instead, choose the right person.

The best person.