BUT OF COURSE: Colorado Legislature Wants To Game The Electoral College Because Trump!

SALENA ZITO: Nostalgia and the American dream aren’t airy fantasies.

Nostalgia is a complicated emotion. Initially it raises our endorphins as we flash back and momentarily relive simpler, happier times in our lives or our communities. But it also evokes a deep sense of loss because those times and experiences will likely never return.

We are completely powerless to change that, and we know it.

One of the complications for many professionals who live in larger cities and communities who have made the decision to embrace our current culture of dramatic and rapid change with gusto is their refusal to listen to the people who sometimes want the world to slow down.

Nostalgia to them often simply means racism. Nostalgia to many others, though, means seeking something that was lost.

The more cosmopolitan class, caught up, living and enjoying societal and political upheaval, too often view those who aren’t on board — or who are more nostalgic for a more personally connected society — as less intelligent, too tied to the tenets of their faith, backwards, or bigoted.

These cosmopolitan views are not new to the Trump era. They have been building for years and went largely unnoticed — until their class lost a presidential election in 2016.

Why this rejection? The list of reasons is long. My Washington Examiner editor Tim Carney, in his riveting and important new book “Alienated America,” explores those deeper reasons and unearths the true losses that lie inside that nostalgia.

What cosmopolitan critics got wrong about nostalgia since this populism began was the assumption that it was rooted in racism. They firmly believed then, as they do now, that “Make America Great Again” was code for something nefarious.

To be fair, they believe that everyone who votes against their agenda is motivated by racism. It’s essential to their self image. But it’s not working anymore.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Open for Business and Much, Much more. “Patricia Arquette who won an award for something or other, thanked Robert Mueller during her speech. Arquette thanked Mueller and ‘everyone working to make sure that we have sovereignty for the United States of America.’ These idiots are delusional. What do they think Mueller is going to reveal when all said and done? So far, the big fish Mueller has “gotten,” like Manafort, Flynn, Stone, Cohen have nothing to do with RUSSIA, they’ve been busted on process crimes. Only a few major players are still available who are viable candidates for the kind of serious crimes the left is fantasizing Trump committed and that would be Kushner and the Trump sons. Even Carter Page, the patient zero of RUSSIA collusion, is walking free this very minute.”

HAVING THE LEFTY MEDIA ON YOUR SIDE IS LIKE HAVING AIR SUPREMACY ON THE BATTLEFIELD. IT’S NOT DECISIVE, BUT IT SURE HELPS.

NOT MY IDEAL CARRY PIECE, BUT AMUSING: New From Full Conceal. “In response to concerns about the speed of deployment, Full counters that the gun isn’t meant to quick-draw against a bad guy who already has the carrier at gunpoint, and can, in fact, be discreetly deployed earlier in a potential encounter due to its compact shape and innocuous silhouette.”

WEIRD HOW LITTLE COVERAGE THIS IS GETTING:

NBC/WSJ POLL: Pelosi’s negatives shot up during government shutdown more than any pol // now the most unpopular politician tested in the survey.

WELL, THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO IF YOU ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT “CLIMATE CHANGE:” Bill Gates Promises Congress $1 Billion To Build Nuclear Reactors For Fighting Climate Change. I can’t help but notice that he was doing this work in China until Trump’s crackdown put an end to it. So now he’s talking about doing it here instead.

ROGER KIMBALL: A Better Guide than Elite Opinion Is Public Revulsion at It.

One of the most bizarre and disturbing aspects of this mob frenzy was the participation of many conservative figures and institutions in the ritual denunciations. Most of the truly egregious posts and tweets have since been removed, an understandable response but one that in my view comes close to being an abnegation of responsibility. I doubt, as some commentators have pointed out, that removing the offending material will achieve the absolution they now seek. The damage is done and is not undone by concealing the weapons that inflicted it.

In part, this side of the episode reflects the universality of that “passion for moral self-righteousness” I mentioned in my original thoughts about the episode. But it also bespeaks a disturbing phenomenon on the right, one that Mark Steyn has anatomized with his customary insight.

There is, Steyn noted, a “strange need of the right to virtue-signal to their detractors—as in the stampede of congressional Republicans to distance themselves from their colleague Steve King over an infelicitous interview with The New York Times.” Just so. And here is the kicker: “Democrats never do this; Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam declare that the Jews are pushing defective marijuana on black men in order to turn them gay—which would appear to be a prima facie slur on at least four Democrat constituencies: blacks, gays, Jews and potheads. Yet Clinton, Obama et al speak not a word against Calypso Louie.”

Also:

A middle-aged Indian beating a drum and chanting wildly has no greater presumption of moral dignity than a white, Trump-supporting boy who participates in a pro-life march. But that is precisely what the imperatives of political correctness demand we acknowledge.

The public—though not, for the most part, the academic elite—has reacted with condign disgust at the treatment of the boys from Covington Catholic. It knows that Nathan Phillips is no more “native American” than Nick Sandmann: both were born here and have equal title to American natality. And it senses that the culprit is the political correctness that has distorted our common life and even our ability to speak the truth about sensitive issues. If there is a silver lining in this disturbing episode, it is that public revulsion at this episode may, just possibly, spark a reconsideration of our ill-advised and demeaning adherence to the tenets of political correctness.

We can hope.

WELL, THE ONLY VIRTUE OF A ONE-PARTY STATE IS THAT THE PARTY IN CHARGE CAN’T BLAME THE OTHER PARTY WHEN IT REFUSES TO ADDRESS PROBLEMS: Gavin Newsom just declared war on NIMBYs. “Perhaps as a former mayor of San Francisco, Newsom understands that local officials, barraged by angry NIMBYs and slow-growth activists, need state leaders to bring the hammer. The threat of a lawsuit or losing transportation funding gives city council members cover to make unpopular decisions for the greater good: ‘See, we have to plan for more apartments and denser housing, or we’ll get sued.'”

FLASHBACK: Donald Trump is a symptom of a new kind of class warfare raging at home and abroad.

Related: America’s Ruling Class — And The Perils Of Revolution.

Also: Highbrows vs. Deplorables.

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN CORRECTS A CON LAW PROF: “If it ‘shocks’ you that in a constitutional law listserv there might be Trump supporters—in a nation where around 48% of the people voted for Trump—then that might tell one & all something about the real state of the legal professoriate.”

That’s pretty much an admission of legal education’s diversity problem. We need a law professoriate that looks like America!

FROM MARGARET BALL:  A Revolution of Rubies.

The CIA has embraced mathemagics, but only as a new way of doing the same old thing: Planting bugs. Thalia and the rest of the Center for Applied Topology’s research fellows have been dispatched across Europe with the mission of attending embassy parties, and teleporting back in later to plant bugs.

Unfortunately, academics are the worst possible variable in the equations of diplomats and spies. The resulting hijinks, escapades, and misunderstandings end up with Thalia on one side of a Central Asian revolution, and her husband, case officer Brad Lensky, on the other… And if they can’t figure out a solution, the entire country may go under water!

SO ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE, THEY’RE TORMENTED WITH THE AWFUL FEELING SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE IS HAVING FUN WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION:  The Left Are Annoying Puritans.

Or maybe they hate beautiful human bodies because they are almost to the last one sad, twisted ugly creatures.  And that’s just on the inside.

THEY SPENT A CENTURY MARCHING THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS AND TECHNOLOGY HAS TAKEN THEIR MEGAPHONES AWAY; THEY SPENT A CENTURY TRYING TO PROVE COMMUNISM WORKED, AND ALL THEY GOT FOR IT WAS CORPSES; THEY THOUGHT THEY COULD NOW TAKE AMERICA AND THIS TIME WOULD WORK, AND 2016 HAPPENED.  THE AMAZING THING IS THAT THEY AREN’T CRAZIER. PEOPLE GO A LITTLE WEIRD WHEN THEIR CHERISHED PROPHECIES FAIL:  What Has Happened to the Left?

Oh, and the fact the media is on their side and hasn’t reined them in for at least 50 years makes everything even worse. Their reality check bounced and no one noticed.  And now they can’t find reality with two hands and a seeing eye alligator.

NEVER FORGET:  Holocaust Remembrance Day.

THE SAME RULES ACROSS THE DIVIDE:  A Thought Experiment.

I’M STARTING TO SUSPECT THERE’S NOTHING BAD YOU CAN SAY ABOUT THIS ONE THAT’S A LIE EITHER:  Ilhan Omar: Evil in the House.

YOU CAN’T HUMILIATE A COMMUNIST DICTATOR. THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN CALL HIM THAT’S NOT THE TRUTH:  Mike Pompeo Humiliates Venezuelan President Maduro.

COLORADO LEGISLATURE WANTS TO DISENFRANCHISE ME IN FAVOR OF NYC AND CALIFORNIA: Colorado Legislature Wants To Game The Electoral College Because Trump!

Look, first thing they did when they seized the state in 12 was institute vote fraud by mail. In the polls I watched, in 12 fraud was already rampant.

BUT even with tighter, better, higher fraud, they still don’t trust us peasants to vote the way they like.  How few of them are there? How many of us? How astonishing is the fraud?

I need a constitutional lawyer (a real one.)  They can’t possibly deny us our civil rights this blatantly.

IT REMINDS ME OF WHAT’S HIS FACE WHO MADE THE INNOCENCE OF MUSLIMS?  The capture of Roger Stone, Public Enemy #2.

When democrats screw up and need a distraction they drag an innocent (well the filmmaker was innocent of the massacre or our ambassador) out of bed and arrest him before the cameras.  It’s time we tell them it’s over.

And btw, in this entire Russian collusion thing, no one has asked the obvious question: supposing Trump was dirty and wanted to cheat his way into the presidency, WHY would it ever occur to him or anyone even slightly sane that Putin had the keys to the white house?  Not since Jimmah Carter tried to get them to help him with reelection has such a crazy idea struck anyone.  At least Jimmah tried to do this while the Soviet Union existed and had power but why would ANYONE think Putin would put them in the white house?
Are the democrats ALL still being blackmailed with their KGB files and do they therefore attribute near-magical-powers to the Russians?  One has to assume that. The alternative is heavy hallucinogen use.

Call the farce off.

THE MAN IS MADE OF LIES:  Nathan Phillips, character assassin: what even his critics seem to be ignoring about him.

IT WAS TIME 20 YEARS AGO:  It’s time to blow up the bureaucracy that’s killing America.