An arrest was made in connection with a series of “hate graffiti” incidents in Nassau County, New York:

According to authorities, Jasskirat Saini, 20, of Central Park Road, was arrested at 12:38 p.m. for multiple bias incidents at Nassau Community College. Police say Saini drew two swastikas on the exterior wall of Building H and “KKK” on the floor of F Building Cluster 225 before his arrest on Tuesday.

Police had been responding to the campus for instances of swastikas drawn on buildings since October. Most of the swastikas were found drawn in men’s bathrooms in the various buildings around campus.

As the “Garden City Patch” is part of the left-leaning “Patch” chain of community “news” sites, one may assume that had Mr. Saini had even the most tenuous link to the GOP, much less Donald Trump, it’d have gotten mentioned.   That doesn’t necessarily mean that Mr. Saini was a Democrat who was hoaxing the media to create the fraudulent impression that Nassau County was a hotbed of racism.

No.  Of course not.  Perish the thought.

After an election where Identity Politics generated an identity politics backlash that overwhelmed the Identity Politicians, MTV News triples down with perhaps the most textbook example of tone-deafness in a movement that can’t carry a tune in a bucket in the first place.

Broad, ofay stereotyping is now good, apparently:

“White guys”.  Huh.  Because an Italian about as much socially in common with a Swede as a Korean has with a Philipino?

My “favorite”?  “Learn what ‘mansplaining’ is, and stop doing it”.

Ma’am, I know what “mansplaining” is.  It’s a way to dismiss someone’s argument without actually having to address it.  It’s a weaponized rhetorical coin trick that genderizes, at most, poor communication, and at the very least, personal annoyance and peevishness.  Nothing more.  In a world run by Mitch Berg, using the term “Mansplaining” to cut off an argument would be grounds for spraying people in the face with mace.

And if I could just take a moment to express my complete fatigue with Millennial hipster pajama-boy gamma male virtue-signalling?

I plan on circulating this far and wide – until it gets disappeared, at least.

It’s also more than a little tempting to do my own New Years resolutions list for MTV and our Social Justice Warrior community.

It protects the minority from the majority.

Given that Florida and Texas are fairly red and growing fast, and New York and California are blue and shrinking, I’d suspect a lot of liberals would agree that that’s going to be a good thing for them before too terribly long.

But watching how the left is panicking over executive orders and the “nuclear option” now, after applauding Obama and Harry Reid for for broadening EOs and the Nuclear Option, I don’t think long-term planning is one of their strong suits.

2015; gun ownership is the province of bitter, gun cleaning Jesus freaks
2015; gun ownership is the province of bitter, gun clinging Jesus freaks

2016: it’s something liberals, suddenly, do.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Hillary won New York and California, which gave her the popular vote but not the electoral college vote.  How to reform the electoral process so The Will of the People is properly expressed?

 Option 1: do nothing.  It’s working now, it’s worked for a long time, it’s good enough.  Hillary’s loss isn’t novel or frightening, it’s the result of poor campaign strategy and a lousy candidate running against a media celebrity.

 Option 2: eliminate the electoral college, go strictly by popular vote.  Voters in big Liberal cities would select the President for everyone, save a lot of campaign money and fewer commercials in small states who won’t matter in the election.

 Option 3: award electoral votes based on congressional districts instead of winner takes all, which more accurately reflects the entire state’s opinion, not just the dominant city.  In Minnesota, that would have given Trump some of Hillary’s electoral college votes.

 Option 4: break up New York and California into smaller states.  Give some of California to Nevada, give some of New York to Maine, no state allowed to have more than X electoral votes, to eliminate undue influence in the election. 

 Any others?

 Joe Doakes

One more idea:  eliminate the Electoral College, but provide an easy path to secession.

Thirty years ago, white supremacy groups were a real, legitimate, dangerous thing.

Various groups – “Christian Identity”, “Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord” , the “Posse Comitatus” and of course the Klan – had, if not “power”, at least an effect on the world around them.   I’ve run into it twice in my life; my interaction with the Gordon Kahl incident back in North Dakota in ’83, and the smattering of anti-semitic death threats I got when I was on the air at KSTP – simultaneously funny (I’m a Christian who is ethnically northern-european, with no Jewish ancestry whatsoever) and not so funny (it was about the time when neo-Nazis killed Denver talk show host Alan, er, Berg).

At the time, “skinheads” – remember them? – roamed the streets of the Twin Cities openly, attacking gays and people of color (I witnessed an attack by 3-4 skins on a rather dapper black man walking with a white woman in Uptown back in 1987, and briefly accelerated and swerved my car to try to run one of them down as he fled the scene before thinking better of it).

Remember when Geraldo Rivera came to Janesville Wisconsin to meet (and, eventually, “fight”) with Klansmen?  Ask yourself – do you think the Klan is openly having meetings in Janesville today?  (Actually, given that it was Geraldo Rivera, you might ask if it was even accurate back then – Rivera was doing “fake news” before it was cool).

Even twenty years ago, there was an active Neo-Nazi cell in Saint Cloud (where else?) and even a not-even-all-that-neo Nazi record label, Panzerfaust Records, operating openly in the Twin Cities.

When was the last time you saw an actual skinhead?  Heard of the Posse Comitatus?  Heard of anyone getting blown up or shot by neo-Nazis?    It’s been decades, right?

“White Supremacy” has become a tinier, more lunatic fringe than it was; a shadow of itse former self.  Which isn’t to say that groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center aren’t going to say so – the more boogeymen in pointy sheets they claim they find, the more money they get (which is one of the reasons they go around declaring utterly civil thinks tanks like the Taxpayers League of Minnesota are “hate groups”)    There are bowling leagues with more members and clout than the Klan has these days.

One gets the impression that the mainstream, left-leaning media is dying to fix that.  They’re giving whatever’s left of the Klan a whoooole lot of free advertising:

To say that the series’ arrival is timely would be an understatement. The racial divide and white nationalism emerged among the bigger themes of the recent election. David Duke, a former Klan leader and perhaps one of the most outspoken racists in America, was a vocal Donald Trump supporter and has called his presidential victory a win for “his people.”

I suspect and suggest that all the free advertising is happening precisely to create more white supremacists.  Because narratives don’t further themselves.

Yet again, Democrat representative John Lesch – along with some well-meaning but deeply mistaken Republicans – is pushing legislation to scrap the electoral college and adopt  “California Rules America”.

The legislation is actually called the “National Popular Vote”, but let’s be honest (Lesch being a DFLer, he certainly won’t be); what it means is subjecting the fifty states to being ruled in perpetuity by California, New York and Illinois.

For what little it may be worth, I will be turning whatever bully pulpit I have on any Republicans who support this legislation.  I urge you to do the same, once the various voices shake out on this issue – and when they do, I will be making sure you know.

For the record?  I have nothing against a national popular vote – provided secession is also legalized and made relatively simple.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Last February, my wife and I stayed at an all-inclusive condo on Cozumel.  We asked the staff about tipping – not required but okay if you want to.  How much to tip?  Well, the groundskeepers, the people who speak no English and have no particular skills, make 70 Pesos per day.  The wait staff in the restaurants have some English skills so they make 100 per day.  Everyone was super-efficient and friendly because there was a line of applicants for those jobs.  At those wages in that economy, they weren’t just jobs – they were GOOD jobs.

 At the time, one American dollar was 15 pesos.  The groundskeeper was making about $5.00 per day; the waitress, $7.00.  Not per hour.  Per day. 

 One year later, Trump’s been elected and one American dollar is worth 20 pesos.  Yes, I’m glad Trump’s been elected, the strength of the dollar shows the rest of the world is glad, too. 

 Will it make America look like the Promised Land?  The starting wage for one day of part-time work at McDonalds is an entire week’s pay back home.  

 Will illegal immigration increase? 

“Build the Fence” is a wonderful short-term solution but eventually there will be 500 million inside the fence and 6,000 million outside it.  Can a fence hold off Billions of immigrants?  What’s the long term solution?

 Obama’s long-term solution seems to have been “if we make America into a Third World country, nobody will bother to come here.”  What’s Trump’s long-term solution?

 Joe Doakes

Not sure Trump was about long term solutions – but I’ve been surprised before.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is shopping for a generator at Menard’s.  As he pores over the spec sheet, Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK steps around the corner.  

BIRKENSTOCK:  Merg!   The “christian” college, “Liberty University”, is building a gun violence range for its students.

BERG:   It’s a gun range.  And so what?

BIRKENSTOCK:  It’s weird.

BERG:   Hardly. It’s a conservative institution.  Many of its students are shooters.  The campus 2nd Amendment group is large and active, and shootings sports are popular among students.  It’s not unreasonable to assume that a shooting-sports-friendly campus is going to be a draw for students who are, like most Liberty students, to the right of center.

BIRKENSTOCK:  But guns on campus!  Isn’t that just kind of weird?  Shouldn’t school be a place of non-violence?

BERG:   Non-violence?   You mean like “gun-free” Virginia Tech?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Yes!

BERG:  Where a gunman killed 32 students and faculty?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Don’t confuse me with irrelevant details.

BERG:  Er, right.  So – why should Liberty not provide that facility, if it’s an obvious marketing spiff for them?

BIRKENSTOCK:  There should be no guns at places of higher learning.

BERG:  Question for you, Moonbeam:   should colleges teach abstinence only sex education?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Good heavens, no.  That never works!

BERG:  Because people naturally gravitate toward things they enjoy?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Yes!

BERG:   So abstinence only education can not work when it comes to sex, but is the only acceptable solution when it comes to guns?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Why do you hate women and minorities?

BERG:  Naturally.

And SCENE. 

The electoral college confirmed what everyone but the most deluded of Democrats already knew:  Donald Trump is the President-Elect.

There was some drama; a total of six electors – four Democrats from Washington State, two Republicans from Texas – broke ranks and voted for other people:

In the end, however, more Democrats than Republicans went rogue, underscoring deep divisions within their party. At least four Democratic electors voted for someone other than Clinton, while two Republicans turned their backs on Trump.

With nearly all votes counted, Trump had clinched 304 electoral votes to Clinton’s 227, according to an Associated Press tally of the voting by 538 electors across the country.

“I will work hard to unite our country and be the President of all Americans,” Trump said in a statement responding to the results.

This won’t end the Democrats’ attempts to  affect the Electoral College process – when Congress meets on January 6 to officially count the votes, I fully expect Illinois to gin up 300 electoral ballots.

And they will no doubt redouble their efforts to abolish the Electoral College.   Hopefully this election will end all talk of the National Popular Vote on the GOP side of the aisle, at least.

I was born in Rugby, North Dakota – which since the 1920s has called itself “the Geographic Center of North America”.

It’s kind of a chamber of commerce flim-flam – how to you calculate the geographic center of an irregular shape, like a continent?

But what matters is that Rugby trademarked the phrase waaaay back when.  As in “decades before I was born there”.

And that designation – fanciful or real or somewhere in between – has been Rugby’s sole claim to fame (that and being my birthplace, natch) for as long as anyone can remember.

And that may be in jeopardy:

“We thought, we could make an equal case just as much as Rugby can,” he said. So the friends “sort of offhandedly” declared their bar to be the geographical center.

A few weeks later, after another late night at the bar, Mr. Bender checked to see if Rugby still owned the trademark. Turns out, it had lapsed in 2009. So Mr. Bender paid $375 to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, filled out some forms and snatched it up.

Now Hanson’s—a one-room bar decorated with Johnny Cash posters and a deer head on the wall, and which was previously best known for a contest that concludes with participants blowing pumpkins to smithereens with explosives—claims it is the real geographical center of North America. It has its own logo, its own T-shirt, and soon will have its own fair, Center Fest, trumpeting its new status. Mr. Bender has begun work on a monument.

I can imagine someone from the city’s chamber of commerce staring at the poor sap from City Hall who’d dropped the ball (that he or she had likely not known about) and saying “You had one job…”

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

We know Democrats cheated in the election, they always do. The reason they lost is they didn’t cheat hard enough, possibly because they believed their own fake polls and thought she had it in the bag. That explains why they were so embarrassed when she lost – it’s their own damned fault for being so cocky.
Before the recount, Democrats confidently assured me there wasn’t a single smidgen of evidence that any voting fraud had ever happened and it was all my imagination.
But Jill Stein demanding the recount forced Michigan to ask “Why are there 300 votes for Hillary in this precinct but only 50 voters total?” Hell, why do a third of precincts show too many Hillary votes?
Cat.
Bag.
Okay, NOW can we talk about election fraud and voter ID?
Joe Doakes

That stuff that doesn’t exist, and where suggesting it is treason?

Heavens no.

Today’s the day that the Electoral College will meet and, despite six weeks of demonstrations, threats and magical thinking, elect Donald Trump as president.

The Electoral College – which, back in the days when Hillary was considered inevitable, was above reproach – like so much in our federal system, is designed to protect the huge, diverse minority from the majority.

And it worked.  And that doesn’t sit well with our left:

Donald Trump’s election is difficult for many Americans to accept, but there is no good reason to question its democratic legitimacy. For better or worse, Trump won the presidency by constitutional and sensible democratic rules that guided both campaigns and were known to any politically conscious citizen. He also won the national popular vote cast outside of the single state of California. Moreover, Clinton won all of California’s 55 electoral votes despite the fact that 4.3 million of the state’s voters voted for Trump. That big winner-take-all advantage for California’s Democrats and Clinton was certainly felt, but it wasn’t enough to override her losses in many other states.

Under our electoral vote system, American voters elected a national president, not California’s choice. It is in the nation’s interest for Democratic Party’s leaders and for Clinton voters to fully recognize the legitimacy of the election as they had urged Trump to do after the third presidential debate.

I say this:  if you want to abolish the Electoral College, and make this nation a pure majority-rule state – i.e. ruled by California and New York – go for it.

But then, remove all impediments to secession.

UPDATE:  There’s one “faithless elector” so far.  It’s a Democrat, naturally – and, of course, from Minnesota:

BREAKING: Minnesota elector refuses to vote for Hillary Clinton, is dismissed under state law; alternative will vote instead

— BNO News (@BNONews) December 19, 2016

Of course it was a Minnesota Democrat.

No word on whether Jill Stein is going to demand a recount.

UPDATE 2:  Democrat demonstrators outside the State Capitol urging Minnesota’s electors meeting therein to “vote their conscience”…:

https://www.facebook.com/deb.brown.338/videos/10210675393737580/

…notwithstanding that, per state law, they were bound to vote HIllary.

UPDATE 3:   1:54PM ET:  Trump goes past 270 electoral votes.

1:55PM ET:  Democrats:  “Well?  Why isn’t America great again?  Huh?  Huh? Huh?”

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Leon Panetta, Big-shot Democrat, Clinton pal and former CIA Director time-server, says Trump will be blamed for an attack on the United States if he skips regular intelligence briefings.
So is Leon guaranteeing that Trump will NOT be blamed for an attack, if he DOES attend regular intelligence briefings? Hard to believe, given the way Democrats blamed Bush for 9/11 and Bin laden, even though the set-up for those disasters occurred entirely on Bill Clinton’s watch.
And even harder to believe, given the way Democrats still chant “Bush lied, people died” which rests on the foundation that “faulty intelligence” sucked us into the War in Iraq. Democrats insist nobody should have believed those intelligence briefings, so why should Democrats insist we believe the current ones?
In nearly 8 years of The Won proudly getting his news from the NYT, repeatedly stating that he wasn’t aware of anything until he read it there, skipping briefings routinely, when did Democrats ever demand that he pay attention? What’s changed?
Joe Doakes

To the left, reality isn’t a state; it’s a construct.

Oh, yes, liberals.  We did.

When the President started going crazy on the number and scope of his executive orders, we we warned you; “y’all might not control the White House forever.  You might not want to set that precedent”.

But you did.

And when Dingy Harry Reid tubed the filibuster, we warned you; “this is one of those traditions that has served to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority for longer than anyone can remember”, you laughed and shot the filibuster in the head.

They did it – do you remember this? – because they weren’t getting their way fast enough for their petulant adolescent tastes!

Let’s flash back to 2013:

“The American people believe Congress is broken. The American people believe the Senate is broken. And I believe they are right,” Reid said Thursday on the Senate floor. “The need for change is so very, very obvious.”…

“I’ve sat on the Judiciary (Committee) for 20 years and it has never, ever been like this. You reach a point where your frustration just overwhelms and things have to change,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who had previously opposed efforts to change filibuster rules but voted with Reid on Thursday. “I think the level of frustration on the Democratic side has just reached the point where it’s worth the risk.”

So the Democrats, in a tantrum as shortsighted as that of any teenager, blew up the filibuster.  

Today?  The hangover is setting in:  

Senator Chris Coons (D., Del.) said on CNN Tuesday that he regrets the rule change Senate Democrats made to the nomination process.

“The filibuster no longer acts as an emergency brake on the nomination,” Coons said….“I do regret that. Frankly I think many of us will regret that in this congress because it would have been a terrific speed bump, potential emergency break [sic], to have in our system to slow down the confirmation of extreme nominees,” Coons said.

The problem, as I see it?  Too many Republicans are too compassionate, and absorbed the lessons they used to teach people about “good sportsmanship” and “being a good winner” as well as losing with grace (which we’ve done so much of we’re out of practice being “good winners”).   We have been loathe to pound home the fruits of the victories we’ve gotten (although the GOP’s idiot consulting class has a lot to do with that too).

But compassion must be tempered with teaching the Democrats a lesson.  We have federalism, and the traditions that up until Reid’s tantrum, protected the minority from the depredations of the majority.

So yes, GOP – we do need to make this a painful lesson for the Democrats.  We do  need to empanel a generation of conservative judges (to roll back the damage Obama did to the federal judiciary).  We do need to use this mandate that the people gave us in Congress to make the changes you were sent to make.

For the Democrats’ own good.

We tried to teach them about limited government the easy, comfy way.

Now it’s time to teach them the hard way.

Punch:   Harry Reid on Mitt Romney talking with Trump about serving in the Administration:

“This is a man who came out big-time against Trump. Oh, the things he said about Trump. Well, that’s great, that’s wonderful,” Reid said. “Either he wasn’t telling the truth, or he’s a person with no character. After having said that, to go and do homage to this guy he said awful things about, I don’t think that shows much character.”

“Mitt Romney is somebody I had respect for,” Reid said, in a somewhat dubious assertion. “I have none anymore.”

Counterpunch:  Romney’s response, with emphasis added to wallow in the pure gloriousness of it all:

“I was indeed very critical of Mr. Trump during his campaign. But now he has been elected president and accordingly, if I could have helped shape foreign policy to protect the country I love, I would have been more than willing to do so,” Romney said through a spokesperson. “As for Mr. Reid, I lost respect for him when he repeatedly lied about my taxes and later admitted to it cheerily. Good riddance, Mr. Reid. The Senate will be better served without you in it.”

I always like Mitt.  I like him more now.

To Democrats, doing what politicians do – engage in rhetoric – is business as usual.  Until it’s a Republican, when suddenly it’s “hypocrisy”.

Good riddance, Reid.

Here’s the Legislative Evaluation Assembly’s annual report (for the past several years, in fact).

Action For Liberty is working for a long-term solution to the Obamacare collapse.

And of  course, ♫  today’s music playlist.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air!

Today on the show:

• I’ll be talking with John Augustine of the Legislative Evaluation Assembly, looking ahead at the upcoming Legislative session.
• I’ll also be interviewing Jake Duesenberg about the Alliance for Liberty’s drive to prevent a special session on MNSure.

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson is normally heard on “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Hope to see you there!

Think it’s cold and snowy?

Sit back and pour a bourbon.  We’ve got a story for  you.

You know what it’s like when your football team has a 21 point lead at the beginning of the third quarter, but then your opponent scores three touchdowns in an amazing display of skill, luck and clutch playing?  And it’s the two minute warning, and the game is tied, and all that “we got this” brio that you had 13 game minutes earlier is replaced by the realization you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you?

72 years ago today, the Battle of the Bulge began.

It was among the coldest winters in recent European history…

Sherman tanks of the 7th Armored Division outside St. Vith, a key crossroads that the Germans seized at great cost to both sides.

…cold enough that, as Steven Ambrose noted in Citizen Soldiers, even the boys from the Dakotas and Montana had met their match.

Covered by atrocious weather that grounded US and British tactical air – which, along with the US artillery, which was fast, accurate, available in huge quantities, and had a tradition of blowing things up with style going back to the Civil War, was the thing the Germans feared most – the Germans attacked the thinly held American lines near the point where Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany’s borders meet, in the Ardennes Forest.  Here, German troops had broken through three times in the past 75 years – in 1870, 1914 and 1940.

Nobody expected lightning to strike four times.  And it showed; the Americans considered it a quiet sector, and garrisoned it thinly, with brand new troops like the 106th Infantry Division, which was just out of training and had no combat experience, as well as the 2nd Infantry Division, which was resting up after having been bled white in the fruitless bloodbath of the Hürtgenwald.

The battle launched legends (the 101st Airborne’s stand at Bastogne, immortalized long before Ambrose’s Band of Brothers brought the story to the HBO audience)…

A paratrooper of the 101st Airborne, armed with an anti-tank Bazooka, watches a road outside Bastogne Belgium.

…and stories that should have been legends (a single platoon of 19 men under Lieutenant Lyle Bouck held off an entire 2,000-man German airborne regiment for a crucial day at the Battle of Lanzerath Ridge, which impeded the German SS-Panzer spearhead, costing it a vital day that may well have allowed the US 2nd Armored Division to get moved into place to stop the advance, to the low-key (the troops of the 99th Infantry Battalion – Norwegian-speaking men from the Dakotas, Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan) stopping the German advance cold at Elsenborn Ridge, near Stoumont:

The position held by the 99th Independent Infantry Battalion – Norwegian-speakers from the upper Midwest, originally recruited for a Green-Beret-style role in the invasion of Norway – during the Battle for Elsenborn Ridge.

The high command, thinking Germany was on the brink of surrender, had decided to send new replacement troops to the Pacific to get ready for the invasions of Okinawa and, soon, Japan – so the casualties of the first days of the Bulge caused a huge shortage of manpower.  This gap was filled by pressing units of cooks, mechanics, construction engineers and clerks into service as provisional infantry units and, finally, the induction of black soldiers – many of them truck drivers – into replacement units.  The Army’s superstition at the time was that integrating units would sap morale – so black replacements were sent in 40-man platoons to reinforce companies that had started out as 160 men, but had been whittled way down.  Ongoing casualties caused these platoons to get divided into squads of 10 integrated into platoons of 20-30, and as the attrition went on and men got down to the brass tacks of survival, black and white soldiers sharing foxholes.   The officers who presided over this went on to

Want the whole story?  There are a scad of good books on the subject.  They’re worth a read…

…especially when you realize that the US troops that escaped into the woods, re-formed and turned the tide were, on average, about 19 years old – and there was no safe space, anywhere.

The DFL controlled Department of Employment and Economic Development is granting “Dislocated Worker” benefits – designed for large groups of private-sector workers who’ve been laid off – to DFL legislative staffers whose jobs disappeared with their majority and, in many cases, their representatives:

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/12/14/dflers-job-loss-benefits/

As Kelly Fenton notes, this is a first; political work (and work for a legislator or a caucus is political work, and much of it disappears when a party loses a majority) is unstable.  Lose an election?  Lose your staff.  Lose the majority?  Lose more staff.

And word has it some of the workers getting benefits were, in fact, campaign workers.

I say the DFL should defend this action loudly, proudly and stridently.  Preferably by calling their critics “deplorable”.

Democrats:

October 15:  “We have the best election system in the world, and saying otherwise is paranoia and treason”.

November 15:  “Our electoral system is a joke, and we need to recount every vote”.

December 15:  The election integrity problems aren’t in places that went to Trump, it was carried out by Democrat governments, and the evidence we see highlights the depravity of Democrats…

…hey, look!  Russians!

On “Morning Edition” this morning, in re Donald Trump cancelling the press conference he’d scheduled for today:

HOST:  “So, is this important, or is this just something that makes a difference to journalists?”

NPR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: “It’s important.  This is when journalists get to ask the tough questions of the president, and maybe tease out the details of some of the hard stories, as part of our mission to keep the public informed”

The last “tough question” asked in a White House press conference was eight years ago.  All of the “journalists” working at the White House then have moved on to other jobs.  The ones there now will have to ask the old-timers how it was done.

DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson says no, there was no Russian interference with the mechanics of our past election:

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius asked Johnson if he could assure the country that Russian hacking did not affect the outcome of the presidential election.

“We see no evidence that hacking by any actor altered the ballot count or any cyber actions that deprived people of voting. Whether the disclosures that we made that we pointed out in our Oct. 7th statement altered public opinion, that’s beyond my level of expertise,” he replied.

Celebrities – among the left’s most vital constituencies – are now asking for 37 electors to vote against Trump.

Don’t want to watch the whole video?  OK – the “highlight” is probably Martin Sheen, who preaches:

Sheen pledges that anyone who votes his or her way will go “down in the books as an American hero,” and others say those electors will “have my respect.”

Violating state election laws and party rules, and getting Martin Sheen’s “respect?”

Google is reaching out to hire something foreign, and a little scary, to them.

Conservatives:

In the weeks since the Nov. 8 election, Google has ramped up efforts to hire Republican lobbying firms and in-house lobbyists to change the composition of its Washington office, according to three lobbyists with knowledge of the matter.

The company also posted an advertisement for a manager for conservative outreach and public policy partnership, seeking a “liaison to conservative, libertarian and free market groups.”

I’m available to serve as a conservative-to-Silicon-Valley interpreter.

I offer the same service to the Twin Cities media.  Have your people call my people.

For a price.