What is the LEFT's fascination with an oppressive, violent, and totalitarian regime like Cuba that abuses its citizens regularly, and keeps them in enslaved poverty?  Why do they love the Castros so much?

It is the left's blindness to reality and to nature.  This blindness allows them to believe that man is on a "progressive" course to some utopian ideal.  They've constructed a belief that the way to achieve this vision is wealth redistribution by a centralized authority.  So they keep trying, and when it fails, as it always does, they must blame anything other than themselves. The oppression, violence, etc., is either a necessary step in the journey toward perfection, or it is a result of outside meddling by others (usually white males). Their obsession results from their rage that their experiment is obviously a failure, and their scramble to rationalize why it's the fault of anything but their unnatural ideals.

Conversely, adherents to free market capitalism can also suffer from utopian idealism.  But in general, as an economic system, capitalism works far better than collectivism.  The truth is reality is fluid and capitalism recognizes that reality; collectivism does not. Society will always change around with the flow of time. The nature of man as a living organism is to behave certain ways and make constant micro-decisions for individual and group survival. Capitalism takes advantage of this reality. Collectivism tries to kill it.

Because the left doesn't understand these realities, they're doomed to constant frustration as the world keeps insisting on working the way mother nature made it, that is: individuals seek to trade at a profit to both parties.  It's the most basic of human behaviors and the left's economic theories go straight opposite of it. Because they refuse to see humans as just another working part in the whole of nature (including such horrors as killing and eating other things with faces) they suffer from internal dissonance. They can't reconcile reality with their intellectually constructed notions.  By God they will prove that their theories work if they must torture and kill every human on earth in the process.

The far left and academics with their blinders firmly in place will never admit to anything that contradicts their brainwashing. Think about it. If you sold out to something as stupid, corrupt and rife with incompetence as the progressive agenda would you willingly admit that you got taken for the ride of the century?
Between made up data to fit the predetermined agenda driven conclusion, WRT the fake MMGW scam, to every one of Obama's criminal enterprises, and Hilary's corruption, the progressive left has simply denied, denied, denied, to the point that the rest of us simply shake our heads and laugh at their brutal stupidity.
It doesn't take a genius to know that Steingar rolls out his ignorant rants about his IQ to try and silence doubt about his closed mind and narrow vision. It's self preservation for him. He CAN'T admit to his own limitations because it makes a lie out of everything he preaches and babbles about.

On the DNC refusing to let the FBI look at their servers, even when the DNC makes allegations they were hacked, by the Russians no less.

That leads to one of two conclusions.  They know once the FBI looks into the servers they will find zero evidence of foreign hacking or, they may actually find some or all of those 33,000 emails that Hillary deleted under subpoena.  Or both.

It's a hard reality for the DNC that most (reasonable thinking) Americans are no longer buying their twisted narrative and fake news stories.

The funniest thing about the entire Russian hacking charade is how the FBI did absolutely nothing about the make believe hacking until right after the Hilary loss embarrassed the wanna-be emperor.
And the moment the DNC got their underpants in a twist, the progressive lemmings jumped all into it with both barrels firing.
The lack of intellectual capacity among progressives is downright scary.

The fury that comes back when anyone doubts the made up nonsense about Russian hacking is remarkably the same as that which automatically follows when one doubts the man made global warming lies.
How interestingly convenient...

I honestly don't think there has been much pushback on these contractors in a long time.  The social justice warriors in charge now who have made their livings off the public teet have no clue how to negotiate  an contract unless it involves a cost of living increase on their employment contract.

I'm a lukewarm supporter. I didn't vote for him in the primary but did in the general of course, because this country cannot survive Hillary, she'd just continue the Obama slide into oblivion.

I am more hopeful about him now that he's been elected; he is becoming more "presidential" (less insane?).  But I understood all along that his extremist rants, like deporting all illegals and killing the families of terrorists, were designed to gain attention, and hence actually successfully win the election, more than literal promises he'd fulfill.  I had no problem with that.  It certainly wasn't as down and dirty and duplicitous as some of the things Hillary's campaign did.

I still have reservations about exactly how he is going to achieve the goal of bringing jobs back to the U.S.  Setting tariffs against imports for example would be the wrong way to do it. This would raise consumer prices, which has always been my beef with U.S. workers demanding the jobs stay home. They want union wages, and minimum wage laws, and the Feds set regulations about safety, environment, etc., plus high taxes, all the costs of which, naturally, manufacturers just pass along to the consumer.  To restrict imports as a way to force goods to be made on our soil, without addressing these reasons the jobs went overseas in the first place, will be disaster for the consumer's pocketbook.

And we need cheap, abundant energy. Trump needs to put an end to this movement to destroy fossil fuel.  Fuel cost impacts every single thing we buy, use, eat or do.  Perhaps no other single item is as important for him to do than to reverse what the left has done to destroy good energy in this country; closing coal plants, killing the nuclear industry, banning offshore drilling, subsidizing "green" energy so the masses do not understand how expensive and inefficient it actually is. Trump understands this but I don't know if he can fight the uphill battle of climate change hysteria.

I guess what I don't want to see is some kind of heavy handed dictatorship methods, the thing the liberals seem to think is a foregone conclusion with Trump. He's basically Hitler, you know, according to them.  Well he isn't. But like Obama, he could abuse executive powers and I'm a little wary of that. And he will have a major influence on the country for generations with the SC nominations. Trump is not going to outlaw gay marriage or any of the other stuff the snowflakes and crybabies are all panicked about. But who ends up on the SC will have an impact on these issues, and being libertarian, I'm more a social liberal, so I'm wary of that.  But I feel that economic collectivism must be avoided at ALL costs, and trumps social freedoms by a huge margin. So I fervently hope the SC positions are filled by anyone but a leftist.

Trump is not an ideologue. (This is why some on the Republican right reject him.) I guess my preference would have been a libertarian ideologue in a perfect world. But Trump is a businessman who will negotiate or bend, or change position as needed to accomplish his goal.  This is why I'm wary of him, and only a lukewarm supporter. His flip flop on some gun rights issues for example.  But, it might turn out to be a good thing because there's nothing more dangerous than a rigid thinking ideologue, on any end of the spectrum.  Those are the types who will keep a utopian ideal in mind while people around them suffer.  A pragmatic businessman on the other hand, will see the reality of the journey to the goal as well as the goal itself, and will see the nuances, variations, compromises along the way, that need to be managed to actually make the good thing happen.

For example, I expect Trump to flip flop on immigration when he sees that although Americans SAY they want the jobs that the illegals are taking, in reality they won't actually take them unless they get a high wage, which of course, means high prices for the consumer, and of course, those same Americans will then bitch about high prices.

But immigration is a touchy subject, and the real problem is cultural. When a people invade a land not to assimilate, but to replace that land's culture with their own, in the end, that country will cease to exist. This is the heart of the "nationalism" that Trump tapped into during the campaign.  Trump voters want to keep America America - no, NOT to go back to slavery - but to retain a culture supportive of free enterprise, prosperity, relative safety, and relative freedom from government molestation, that the immigrants from the century before last sought when they came through Ellis Isle. 

How Trump will reconcile these forces to result in a country with good employment, low prices, increasing wealth for the middle class, declining poverty, and a reasonable immigration policy that welcomes the hardworking, law abiding applicant who wants to actually become an American, regardless of skin color or ethnicity, remains to be seen.

I am guardedly optimistic.

The thin-skinned uber sensitive culture that we see in the collegiate atmosphere is not unique to that area. It's prevalent in most aspects of our society. Here's a theory.

During the Depression, younger folks faced serious calamity and the real prospect of starvation. Then came WWII and the birth of the Greatest Generation. These folks gave birth to the Baby Boomers, who in turn also faced calamity during the Cold War and Vietnam. After Vietnam the Baby Boomers got down and created Generation X, who in turn have spawned Millenials. Generation Y. Generations X and Y saw the birth of the Internet, the death of the Cold War, and reaped the rewards of those who sacrificed in previous generations.

We now live in a time where individuals don't need to know things, they just need to know how to find the information. And that information is so readily available that even the laziest slobs can figure stuff out. There isn't much need for folks to know how to hunt, or fish, or protect themselves. It's now ensured that those needs (food, shelter, protection) can easily be met.

No strife, no real calamity, no prospect of major loss of life. So, life becomes boring. And bored people make shit up to not be bored. Hence the drama. So, things that didn't bother people before (because they had bigger problems to worry about) now are an issue.

Of course, I'm generalizing a lot here, and I'm purposefully not being 100% accurate in social generational history. But then this exercise wouldn't be fun. 


Sent from my iPad . Squirrel!!