As a German speaker, I was surprised and delighted to see that the American English word “shitstorm” has been adapted to German.    The new German word shitstorm is a vernacular for, well, a shitstorm.

Of course, while the word is an FCC violation in the US, the English word “shit” itself has no meaning in German (the word Scheißgewitter would be both vulgar and a little meaningless in German).    So, unlike in English, the term “shitstorm” can be used in polite company…

…because the loaded, offensive term loses its meaning outside its native language.

The moral of the story:  words that are adopted into foreign languages don’t necessarily bring with them their native baggage.

Or to put it more concisely?  Context matters.

After a decade and a half of illiterately hinting, tittering and referring to conservatives of all stripes as one variety of “Nazi” or another, the left and its PR flaks in the mainstream media are shocked, shocked I tell you, that someone is…pre-literately invoking a Nazi reference:

When a video of two Donald Trump supporters shouting “Lügenpresse” (lying press) started to circulate Sunday, viewers from Germany soon noted its explosive nature. The defamatory word was most frequently used in Nazi Germany. Today, it is a common slogan among those branded as representing the “ugly Germany”: members of xenophobic, right-wing groups.

Its use across the Atlantic Ocean at a Trump rally has worried Germans who know about its origins all too well. Both the Nazi regime and the East German government made use of it, turning it into an anti-democracy slogan.

And if you’re German, commenting about German politics, that’s certainly rife with portent.

And if you think that the bobbleheads who used the term at the rally knew all that history, and knowingly thought that was the subtext, by all means, provide some evidence of it.

Because what the term literaly means is “Lying Press”.  Stripped of any historical context, that is all it means.

And while the Washington Post in the article above calls the term “defamatory”, truth negates a charge of defamation.  Our press does have bias, does lie about it, and is in the tank for Hillary Clinton.

What sort of Scheißgewitter is it going to take for our lapdog media to confront this?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Hillary ran a private email server and deleted emails.  She has variously tried to claim that everybody does it, that Colin Powell said it was okay, that nobody ever told her it was wrong.  Newsweek chimed in with: Bush Did it Too! 

 So that makes it okay?  No – wrong is wrong, no matter how many other people did it.  Whining that He Did It Too is the old False Moral Equivalence defense.  Most people quit using it after Third Grade.

 Raising that defense is worse than childish, it’s incriminating.  Hillary left the White House to join the Senate in 2001.  She was a member of Congress while they were investigating the Bush Administration’s use of email.  That means she knew damned well the private server was a problem, but she went right ahead and did it anyway.

 I always knew the mainstream media was biased but it has dropped all pretense of objectivity in its desperate struggle to drag Hillary across the finish line.  Hillary won’t be the only loser in this election.

 Joe Doakes

With all due respect to my friends and acquaintances and former colleagues in the media (whom I hope land on their feet, pinky swear), one can only hope so.

Know how I knew there was a Democrat plan to use physical violence on pro-Trump and pro-GOP rallies?

Because the media has been spending so much time talking about the “threat” of GOP violence against Democrats.

When I heard NPR last week solemnly intoning about the “threat” of “people in open-carry states standing around polling stations with guns”, doing whatever it is they were supposed to be doing, it was obvious to me; attention needed to be turned away from “progressive” thugs.

When you hear these things, always, always remember Berg’s Seventh Law:

When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.

Because it truly does explain everything:

Democratic Party operative Robert Creamer used terror to wage war on honesty. Until forced to resign his post as a “consultant” with a Democratic Party-aligned organization named Americans United for Change, Creamer ran what amounts to a domestic U.S. political terror and propaganda operation dedicated to undermining the 2016 U.S. presidential election—“rigging the election,” to use the current term.

Yes, Creamer’s operation uses terror—and three investigative videos recently released by Project Veritas contain information supporting my assessment.

(“Rigging The Election,” Part One, Part Two and Part Three, released October 24).

Creamer resigned as an official consultant because Part One and Part Two exposed him. His operation, however, remains active and continues to do damage. The election rigging scheme he commanded relies on street thuggery. That means physical fear—terror—is a core component of Americans United for Change’s crooked enterprise. Street thuggery is very low-level terrorism, but it is a type of terrorism nonetheless and it is wrong to call it otherwise.

The thing about terrorists is that their goal is to destroy moderation; to make the center untenable; you’re either with them 100%, or against them 100%.  That’s intentional; the chaos in between creates opportunity for those willing to exploit it.

Which the GOP – still focusing on all of that “Constitution” and “economy” and “Democracy” stuff – never really is, for better or worse.

It was, under the circumstances, inevitable:

Work for New Ulm Oktoberfest, and fixing to book ’em for next year (hint hint)? Go here.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

There is a proposal to amend the Minnesota constitution.  The plan is to take away from the Legislature the power to set its own salaries, giving it instead of an independent citizen’s committee. Sounds good on its face, will be a disaster in actual practice.  Which is why nobody is talking about it, of course, that would distract the voters from potty-mouth comments and emails.

 The proposal says the Citizen’s Committee will be staffed by the Governor (Democrat) and the Supreme Court (Liberals, except for Stras).  They must pick Democrats and Republicans.

 But they’re not required to pick Libertarians or TEA Party members.  The Republicans must be acceptable to the appointing authority – Democrats and Liberals.  I confidently predict they’ll end up being Arnie Carlson-Dave Durenburger-style-RINOs. 

 After that:

 A Liberal astroturf group will issue a media blitz complaining about the difficulty of obtaining quality legislators with the pay so low. 

 A Poli Sci professor will claim the concept of a “part-time” or “citizen” legislature is obsolete in these days of complex issues, we need a full-time professional legislature to deal with complicated issues, and higher salaries to attract competent people to take the job.

 A women’s rights group will notice that Minnesota women legislators get paid less than New York women legislators, a clear case of gender discrimination. 

 The Committee will hire a Liberal front group to perform a study of legislators’ salaries in other, richer states, which will conclude that ours is too low. 

 The Star Tribune and MPR will gravely intone that good government requires adequate resources, none moreso than the people in office, and they’ll recommend we double the pay and be happy to pay for a better Minnesota.

 The type of people who will run for these cushy government jobs will be busy-bodies who think they can solve society’s problems, i.e., Liberals, whatever their nominal party designation.  They’ll adopt more programs, which will make problems worse, which will make society more complex, requiring even higher pay and benefits and possibly lifetime appointments with personal servants and frequent retreats to Caribbean Islands, which the legislators will be able to afford even if their constituents can’t, because their strenuous labors deserve it.  After all . . .  Some animals are more equal than others.

 Joe Doakes

My two cents?  Vote no.  As many times as you can.