Holidays

Seven things that did not happen in 2018

JP Mac Holidays, News, Politics, Predictions , , , , , , , ,

Happy New Year! At the beginning of 2018, I wrote down a few common sense predictions about what would not happen in the world in the following twelve months. Did I get any right? Of course, spoiler alert, all of my predictions came true! Here are the predictions and what ended up happening:

Everyone likes to make New Year’s predictions. Just to be a little different, here is a list of things that are exceedingly unlikely to happen in 2018. Although there are scores of pundits, celebrities and other talking heads who will try and convince you otherwise, here are seven things that logic and clear thinking suggest won’t occur in calendar year 2018…

So, what actually happened:

1.Global Warming. Have you been outside lately? The polar bears will be quite safe in 2018.

The polar bears were quite safe, and they will be again this year. The French people apparently feel pretty optimistic about their future too, not so much about their own economically after carbon taxes were slapped on them briefly until they rose up in revolt.

2. Nuclear War. No, WWIII won’t start over a tweet, despite what the pundits from MSNBC and CNN want you to believe. (Gotta hedge a little because we’re talking about Kim Jong Un here after all. ) If it does happen it will be because N. Korea does something tragically stupid, and God-forbid maybe even gets in a single blow before they cease to exist. It won’t happen, however, because President Trump calls Kim Jong Un fat or “Rocket Man”.

We’re still here and Li’l Kim and Trump are trading love letters. Better than bullets.

3. The Taxpocolypse. Lower Taxes won’t destroy the country. On the contrary, expect more economic growth. The promise of lower taxes has already helped the economy and should continue to do so in FY18.

According to the CBO: “In 2018, real GDP is projected to grow by 3.1 percent.” It was as high as 4.1% On January 1st, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect, Vice President Pence noted that within a few weeks after the bill’s passage, companies began to offer their employees thousand dollar bonuses and that in his own family when his kids were little, there was a word for such a year-end windfall, “Christmas”. You don’t hear the term “Taxpocolypse” much around Capitol Hill anymore.

4. Immigration Stormtroopers. Democrat scare tactics are just that, scare tactics. There will be no squadrons of ICE rounding up foreigners and people of color for mass deportation. There will be no liquidation of East L.A., or South central Chicago.  Yes, plenty of illegal immigrants will be deported, after due process and according to existing law, but if you seriously believe they’re coming for you, and you’re a legal alien- well, you’re a just a little bit gullible.

Still no boxcars full of illegal immigrants being shipped to concentration camps. There was a caravan of prospective immigrants headed here from Central America. Funny thing, after storming Mexico’s southern border, causing riots, and sweeping like as a horde through the interior bringing crime and sickness with them, an amazing thing happened, Mexican officials and citizens started to sound a lot like Trump and his supporters with regards to an unsustainable increase in illegal aliens crossing their border and using up public resources. Tragically, there have been a couple of children among those who crossed into the US who died of sickness. Obviously, if the caravaners had their way, they would be pouring into the country with nary a medical screening. It kinda reminds one of the logic of controlled, legal immigration of screened and vetted individuals. Meanwhile, there are incidents of preventable crime by illegal immigrants who could have been deported except for asinine sanctuary city laws. In an incident of horrible irony, a legal immigrant policeman was killed by an illegal immigrant felon in the sanctuary state of California.

5. Venezuela: “A socialist success story”. There’s an outside chance of them becoming a capitalist success story sometime in the future, but will take some doing and would probably take years. On a related note, the Che Guevara-T-shirt wearing-die-hard-leftists in this country (still) won’t acknowledge that socialism destroyed that country.

Venezuela is still socialist, its people still lack basic necessities, so much so that thousands have fled to neighboring Columbia causing a bit of a refugee crisis for that country. Representative (elect) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and her fellow Democratic Socialists in this county have yet to connect socialism with Venezuela’s economic and human-rights catastrophe.

6. A “wave election” for the Democrats. Conventional wisdom says the party that holds the White House loses Congress during the mid-terms. The Democrats have little to offer except anti-Trump sentiment. If the stock market continues to go up, and GDP growth stays where it is or increases, the public won’t have much incentive to change course. Only if the economy goes south or a major crisis arises and is bungled by the White House will the Democrats have any chance of retaking either branch of Congress. That having been said, Capitol Hill is the Republicans’ to lose.

Though the Democrats did win back the House, it was not the wave that they had counted on. They lost ground in the Senate, thanks in large part to their ridiculous antics in the Senate during the Justice Kavanaugh hearings that saw several Democrat senators tripping over each other to grandstand during the proceedings. Those particular senators may not have lost their bids for reelection, but may have cost some of their peers in red states theirs.

7. Impeachment proceedings. Since the Republicans hold Congress and probably will after 2018, Trump would have to have committed an actual high-crime or misdemeanor, not an imagined one to get himself impeached. Sorry, left-leaning news media– not gonna happen, not in 2018 and probably not ever.

With control of the House flipping over to the Democrats, impeachment proceedings are almost a guarantee, certainly some of them have been chomping at the bit since January of 2017. It’s a lead-pipe cinch that there will be myriad Congressional investigations into the President and his associates. The presumed Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi will probably be able to hold off on an impeachment vote until after Robert Mueller’s report, which may merely serve as the DOJ passing the impeachment baton off to the various House committees that will run with it, regardless of what it actually says.

Well, 2018 is now in the books and surprise, we’re all still here and doing OK. Trump is still President and it won’t be a nuclear winter. There are no concentration camps filled with non-white slave laborers waiting to die at the hands of MAGA hatted stormtroopers. There may even be a surplus of polar bears this coming year and Miami and New York are still not under water. It wasn’t exactly a wave, but the Democrats did win back the House but lost ground in the Senate. Nancy Pelosi will be telling her party to curb their enthusiasm over impeachment, at least in the beginning. Democrats don’t not overplay their hand when given a chance, so of course, they will. Their efforts will be to no avail, as Republicans still control the Senate. In 2019, count on many of these things continuing not to happen, especially, hopefully, the bit about not having a nuclear war, that would really suck. Happy 2019!

-J.P. Mac.

Advertisements

Merry Christmas, and a happy Nativity story.

JP Mac Holidays, Quotes, Religion

On TV today, there are a lot of “Christmas” stories about giving, sharing, and compassion. Almost none make any reference to the very person whose virtues we’re being taught to emulate in them, namely Jesus. Except for A Charlie Brown Christmas, you’ll catch nary a whiff on network TV of the Nativity story recited by Linus from the Gospel According to Luke, verses 8 through 14: 

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill towards men.

​

…And that’s the Christmas story you don’t get much of from network TV. Merry Christmas.

Things to be Thankful for That the Left Barely Acknowledges.

JP Mac Americana, Holidays, Politics ,

It’s Thanksgiving time and the winter holidays are coming soon. It’s a time to be with friends and family and reflect on the things in our lives we have to be thankful for. At the same time, America is a nation deeply divided. It’s little wonder then that we don’t all agree on some things that we as a nation should have a sense of gratitude for. The left and the right value and therefore are thankful for different things. On the right, we get to celebrate the greatness and wisdom of the founders and the country they created. It’s unfortunate then that some of those things are not universally understood or held in high esteem by all Americans, some examples are worth mentioning, such as Freedom of the Press, whose demise has been greatly exaggerated, American Exceptionalism, the idea that America’s existence has been a net positive for the world, and the fact that we are a democratic republic, and not (so far) a banana republic.

Freedom of the Press. Contrary to what the left-leaning press would tell you, freedom of the press is alive and well. President Trump’s anti-press bluster is unrelenting, especially regarding his favorite targets, namely The New York Times and CNN. His issue with them is not the reporting of facts, but the reporting of opinion as fact or worse, false facts. Though there has been a steady stream of anti-Trump rhetoric coming from these outlets and others, and though Trump does not mince words when it comes to his contempt for the liberal bias in the press, no one has been hauled off and imprisoned. No left-wing reporters have been disappeared, no news offices have been raided by the Trump Gestapo that we’ve been told is just around the corner in black masks and red MAGA hats, you know, the one that Rachel Maddow has been warning us about since November of 2016. There is a black masked bunch of fascists running around violently attempting to destroy free speech, but that would be Antifa, the militant arm of the left, not anyone employed by the White House. Grandstanding correspondent Jim Acosta did briefly stage a takeover of the White House briefing room, ironically denying some actual journalists a chance to ask the President questions. He did this whilst acting like a schmuck to a female intern who tried in vain to take back the mic to give it to someone more deserving. As a result, Acosta had to turn in his White House pass. Apparently, there’s a little-known clause in the First Amendment that gives reporters the absolute right to enter White House grounds and co-opt the daily briefing into their own private news show. Acosta got his pass back. His professionalism and self-respect are apparently things he was more prepared to do without.

American Exceptionalism. Howard Zinn wrote an influential book, loosely based on American history called A People’s History of the United States. Sadly, it is still required reading in many schools, though to say it has a distorted, jaded view of American history would be somewhat of an understatement. It can come as no surprise then that younger Americans have a distorted, jaded view of this country. Thankfully, the truth is that the United States true history is a little more commendable and worth celebrating. Yes, Virginia, It’s OK to love America. For one thing, you may have read somewhere, the following from an excellent American writer who will remain me: “We help people. Anytime there is a major catastrophe anywhere in the world, America offers aid. Be it after an earthquake in Haiti, tsunamis in Indonesia and Japan, or hurricanes in the Caribbean, or any number of other disasters you can name, America is always one of the first countries to offer humanitarian assistance. We are also generous, The United States constantly rates high among all nations in charitable giving, both in terms of total dollar amounts and dollars per capita. Just google: ‘charitable giving by country’ and you’ll see.” Besides that, we invent cool stuff, win wars to free other people, put people on the moon, and are a bastion for religious, economic, and political freedom.

A Democratic Republic. Democrats bemoan the fact that we’re not a direct democracy, subject to what Alexis de Tocqueville referred to as the “tyranny of the majority”. He knew that very simply, the majority could vote themselves your property, your money, even your freedom. The Founders deliberately decided to go in another direction, the democratic republic with representative democracy. Our president is decided not by the popular vote but by the electoral college. Liberals would love to have our presidential election decided solely by America’s urban centers, but that would deprive our rural areas (you know, where most of our food comes from?) of any meaningful say in determining the president and vice president. Despite all the misgivings of the left, the midterm elections of 2018 gave wins to both parties, the Democrats have taken the House, as is customary during midterm elections, and the Republicans won a net gain in the Senate. We can have recounts and runoffs in some states, get through them, and continue on as a nation. Not every country can do that, we should be thankful for that.

Conservatives hold immense gratitude for those things our Founding Fathers gave us, and successive generations fought for and continued to perfect. No badly skewed history book, no narrative pushed by a biased press, no dubious ballot counts can sway us from the understanding that an imperfect America is far, far better and more worth showing thanks for than many on the left would have us believe. We know that the press is free. (At least that part of it outside of social media.) The fear-mongering on the part of some that suggest that there will be a violent crackdown on or state takeover of the news media is as laughable as it is ironic. The same left wing that controls much of the media also permits the abridgment of free speech on social media and on the college campus. We believe in and are subsequently thankful to live in the greatest country in the history of countries. We are a functioning, maybe not always smoothly so, but functioning democratic republic that balances the needs of the many with the needs of the few. Unlike other countries, ours has largely avoided a lot of the violence that accompanies elections in many other countries. We can attribute that to luck, but more likely, the wisdom of our forefathers had something to do with that. We are lucky to be part of the greatest country in history, we should acknowledge and be thankful for that.

On the necessity of teaching the Constitution, civics in school.

JP Mac Americana, Holidays, Politics , , ,

The Constitution
Happy Constitution Day! Keep the Constitution alive by learning about it and teaching it to your kids.

A generation ago, civics classes used to be ubiquitous in public schools.  Now, as more and more schools teach for standardized tests, the study of the government and the Constitution has fallen by the wayside.  Many Millenials don’t even have a basic knowledge of the Constitution or of civics.  Often when asked, they can’t even name the three branches of government. This is a dangerous trend in this democratic republic we call the USA. For a republic to properly function, it is essential that we the people are aware of our rights and responsibilities as citizens.

If you have school-age children, do you know if their school has any sort of civics curriculum?  Celebrating Constitution Day is a great time to think about such things and take action with your local school board to recommend bringing back civics if it’s not being taught.  If it is, please take time to praise them for supporting civics and Constitutional studies.  You may find that along with music, art, and physical education, that civics could be on the chopping block due to budget cuts or greater emphasis on teaching for standardized tests.  Your speaking up could help innoculate wavering school board members from pressure to cut such valuable programs now and in the future.

If you don’t have kids, take some time to read our important founding documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.  You are in charge of your own civics education.  If you have never read them before, or haven’t since you took civics in school, you might be surprised and enlightened by what’s in them.  There is also something about reading the actual, unfiltered texts that you can’t get by reading a book or hearing about them on TV. (Of course, no harm in doing both!) Arming yourself with this knowledge will help you fight for and protect your most sacred rights as an American.