IF YOU CAN’T GOVERN, WHY SHOULD YOU WIN?

Democrats won supermajorities in California a long time ago and cities ended up getting less safe, housing got more expensive, and the high speed rail just sat there, never getting completed. Can't restore faith in the party until you fix the state that has come to define it.

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) November 20, 2024

The astonishing collapse in Democratic support in deep blue areas is the strongest evidence that the 2024 election was, in fact, a referendum on 2020-era progressivism, and the progressives lost decisively. pic.twitter.com/DEUZZZWb1D

— Geoff Shullenberger (@g_shullenberger) November 20, 2024

WORTH YOUR TIME, FOR SURE: From the late Gerard van der Leun, The Name In The Stone, and Other Essays.

BATHROOM WARS:  Single-sex Congressional bathrooms will remain single-sex, not single-gender.  Note that members of Congress have their very own private bathrooms, so the newly-elected transgender Representative from Delaware–Sarah McBride–will not be forced to use the men’s room.

The notion that federal laws banning sex discrimination require that transgender individuals be assigned to the bathroom that correspond to their gender (rather than their sex) has always been a non sequitur.  The logic of the arguments that are made for it would lead to unisex bathrooms, not bathrooms based on gender.

UNAMERICAN: Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes: Business Receives Backlash After Refusing to Serve Trump Supporters.

JOEL KOTKIN: The Left’s war on men is backfiring disastrously: Young males are moving to the Right. But as birth rates collapse, this is a bigger problem than politics.

Sex is supposed to be fun, and productive, but when mixed with politics it can have some less fortunate societal impacts. This autumn, as the US presidential election moved to its denouement, both campaigns focused largely on their gender bases, hoping to win the chromosomal war.

Women almost elected the pathetic Kamala Harris, with 53 per cent of them giving her their votes according to the exit polls. Her biggest edge was among younger women, who supported her by 61 per cent, and black women, who backed her by 91 per cent. Some Democrats attacked white women after the election for “dooming Kamala”, particularly married suburban women, who turned out to care about things other than sexual politics.

But what really saved Donald Trump was his strong support among men. Trump’s focus on the “Manosphere” of fight fans, fitness buffs, male influencers, and people attracted to uber-males like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk paid off big time, with him winning the overwhelming majority of white as well as Hispanic working class men. He even notched up an astounding 21 per cent among male African Americans, more than twice his percentage with black women. Among white men under 30, he won by an astonishing 14 points.

Men clearly preferred the Trump model to that presented by Democratic men, who proudly boasted of being “less masculine” than their Republican counterparts, leading to comparisons with Bud Light’s disastrous flirtation with a transgender influencer. The low point, however, was the laughable attempt to manufacture he-men who “eat carburetors for breakfast” and vote for Harris, in a TV ad later revealed to have been created independently of her official campaign by Hollywood actors and writers.

Everything about her campaign was fake.

FAIL, BRITANNIA:

BREAKING: The UK will scrap five warships, dozens of military helicopters and a fleet of drones to save money despite growing threats from Russia and a war raging in Europe.
John Healey, the defence secretary, announced the dramatic move in parliament on Wednesday, saying it…

— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) November 20, 2024

More: “How can the UK talk tough on defence while at the same time failing to ensure sufficient funding for the military to at the very least be able to mothball “outdated” warships, helicopters & drones? A key lesson from Russia’s war in Ukraine has been that old equipment brought out of deep storage is better than no kit.”

But as CDR Salamander noted, Britain’s decline is bipartisan:

Vote for Labour, get Labour.

…but to be fair, the “Conservative” party was not much better…and really, husbanded much of the decline.

This is inertia more than anything.

From its military, to its culture, to its freedoms, to its demographics, we are watching a nation… https://t.co/5SL9nkuyLn

— cdrsalamander (@cdrsalamander) November 20, 2024

Indeed.

POLITICAL AD FODDER FOR 2026: WATCH: Dem Rep. Jasmine Crockett Goes Nuts During Hearing, Starts Shouting About the ‘White Man.’

HERE LIES THE AAUP: A once-great org that abandoned its principles in favor of partisan expediency.

PERHAPS A RETURN TO TAR AND FEATHERS IS IN ORDER: ‘Corrupt Tyrants’: Bucks County Citizens Go After County Commissioners.

LESSONS UNLEARNED: Democrats Are Going to Get Younger and More Radical.

TO BE FAIR, I GET CONFUSED BY THIS STUFF SOMETIMES, TOO: Self-Own: Fetterman Says Trans Rep. Can Use HIS Bathroom.

KAROL MARKOWICZ: The real Jewish vote: And why it matters.

For me, it’s: Did we put our own survival at the top of the issues pile? Did we see clearly who are friends are and who they are not? Did my people learn lessons? But also to show the outside world: look, we did.

I had anecdotes. Liberal Jewish friends who leaned in over dinners and whispered “I’m voting for him.” One after another made the confession. One couple in particular, lifelong friends of mine, shocked me into silence when they said they had voted Trump. They were committed Democrats (MSNBC watchers! Howard Stern listeners!) who had spent years arguing with me. I knew they didn’t trust Kamala Harris on Israel and I figured they would sit it out. They live in New York, they don’t have to vote. But they did. And they voted for him.

I felt the sea change when Lizzy Savetsky, a Jewish influencer, tipped to Trump. I generally don’t believe that endorsements matter that much. If Oprah and Taylor and Beyoncé couldn’t swing it, who could? But I took Lizzy’s seriously. She’s an important figure in the Jewish world, she’s beautiful and smart, focused on her family and very outspoken. I saw her as representative of a specific voting bloc that I saw emerging: women who are normally repelled by Trump but set that aside to do what’s best for the country. It wasn’t just that she was voting for Trump, it was that she was admitting to it on Sid Rosenberg’s extremely popular New York City morning radio show. Lizzy Savetsky being out with her Trump support, despite the fact that it would hurt her, and cost her followers, made me think something was moving. She wasn’t like Taylor and Beyonce, they took the easy position. She was like Travis Kelce and Jay-Z, neither of whom made endorsements. But Lizzy did.

Anecdotes aren’t data, yes, of course, but data can be bad too. It’s why people recoiled so hard from Ann Selzer’s flawed Iowa poll in the closing days of the presidential election. Her “gold standard” poll showed Trump losing Iowa to Kamala Harris by 3 points. It didn’t make sense. People on the ground in Iowa were dumbfounded. Trump would end up winning Iowa by 13. Her poll was data, not anecdotes, and it was wrong.

Yeah, anecdotes are, in fact data. All facts are data, if you know what to do with them.

UH UH. IT’S NOT JUST THE  TROOPS, THEY ALSO HAVE TO BE EQUIPPED AND SUPPLIED:  Europe preps for WWIII as secret German docs reveal plans for 800K troops in case Russia invades NATO.

WHERE THE BUOYS ARE*:  Texas drops more migrant-blocking buoys into Rio Grande: ‘We won’t back down’.

*Movie reference.

‘PEOPLE DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON’? THAT’S BEEN THEIR BRAND FOR YEARS:  MSNBC staffers ‘in a panic’ as NBC-parent Comcast plans to spin off channel — and possibly change its name.

THE CAMPAIGN AS VIEWED FROM ABROAD:  Anatomy of Trump’s triumph.

SO THE SOONER WE START, THE SOONER WE’LL BE DONE:  Part 3: Fixing our bloated federal government and the administrative state is going to take decades.

ALL OUR INSTITUTIONS PRETTY MUCH:  It’s bureaucratic rot up and down the line.

AND TILTING AT WINDMILLS IS RUNNING A SALE:  Here.

LISTEN TO ME: ALL THIS DIVERSITY HIRING AND PROMOTING HAS TO STOP:  Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson Headlining Event Featuring Educators Who Backed the October 7 Massacre.

GOOD:  Syria: Israeli Airstrike Reportedly Hits Weapons Depot Linked to Iranian-Backed Terror Group.

LET’S HEAR IT FOR TRUMP’S PICKS!  Trump’s FCC Chair Pick Wants to ‘Dismantle’ Big Tech’s ‘Censorship Cartel’.

IT SEES LIKE, YES:  European Officials: Baltic Undersea Cables Cut in Apparent Act of Sabotage.

BUT SOME ODD SIGNS OF SANITY AS WELL:  President of Azerbaijan Boldly Asserts that Oil, Gas Are ‘Gift of God’ at Climate-Cult Conference.

Bravery too.

THE RACE TO EXTREME STUPIDITY IS WORLDWIDE, IT SEEMS:  A cult of ‘Saint Stalin’ has appeared in the Russian Orthodox Church, with the Soviet dictator being hailed as a saint or even a secret Orthodox bishop. In reality, Stalin closed or destroyed nearly all churches in Russia and had 85,000 Orthodox clergy shot in 1937 alone.

OH, FOR THE LOVE OF BOB:  Why do our enemies make us look so badass?

As for “men” I’m so used to being called a White Mormon Male I no longer fight it. I just note I do have a great er…. figure for a male. As for vicious, I’d not encourage trying us.