Simple examples include believing that wind and solar can just be hooked up to batteries to store the energy they create for times when the wind/sun isn’t sufficient to generate energy. No such battery technology exists, nor is it going to exist.

Most claim to know nothing about the actual coup attempt staged by Obama’s justice, FBI and intelligence apparatus.

They actually believe we can discard fossil fuel entirely in 10 years or less, and that if we don’t, the world will be devastated.

They actually believe Hilary Clinton is not corrupt.

I could go on, but you get the picture. Despite our diametrically opposed points of view, we remain good friends. Discussing politics is off the agenda. We even hug as we greet or say goodbye to each other after lunches together, and they never say anything when they bump against my concealed carry weapon.

The power of the red hat
By Dave Ball
Cocklaphobia is the irrational fear of hats. That word tickles me, and I just couldn’t resist commenting when I read about the uber-snowflake who claimed to be triggered by MAGA hats. Rebecca Makkai is, indeed, a Pulitzer Prize–winning short story–writer whom even I, a certified knuckle-dragging conservative NRA member, have heard of.

Looking at the breadth of Makkai’s writings, she seems to be in touch with many things, excepting her own emotions. All of us are afraid of something. Some people don’t like large hairy spiders. Others aren’t particularly fond of komodo dragons. But to be triggered by a red hat seems a bit much.

Maybe the red hat reminds her that the whole world does not subscribe to her way of thought. This is really tough for liberals to swallow. I know. Maybe the red hat screams at her that America is great despite the socialist mantra. Maybe she, like most super-liberals, is just so self-centered that the red hat is telling her she’s wrong about being the center of the universe and just about everything else. Maybe we’ll never know what power the red hat holds.

…

https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2019/09/04/insane-leftists-begin-blacklist-pittsburgh-shut-trump-supporters-businesses/

Debra Messing would be proud, eh? The effort to destroy the livelihoods of those who do not accept The Approved Groupthink has expanded outside of Hollywood all the way to Pittsburgh. Either oppose Donald Trump in 2020 or get run out of town on a rail, small business owners!
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The boycotts that Broome cites [as an example of allowable political actions] are a withholding of personal custom, aimed at large corporations. This effort takes aim at small businesses, and it’s not to deprive the businesses of personal patronage. They want to chase these people out of business altogether:

Today the DOL repented their knee-jerk abdication of control to the Left.
Kinda reminds me of the Covington case, and the racism hoaxes.
When are people going to think first and act later, IF action is even warranted, which it very often is not.

https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2019/09/04/labor-department-reinstate-leif-olson-false-allegation-anti-semitism/

Acting Secretary Patrick Pizzella “personally made this decision after carefully reviewing all the facts and circumstances,” a senior Labor Department official told the DCNF. “He concluded that a correction is much better than an injustice.”

SOD OFF, SWAMPY: Vegan woman demands neighbour stop using meat on barbecue due to smell.

The massage therapist has been embroiled in a battle with Toan Vu, his wife and children since late 2018.

After her claims were rejected by a tribunal earlier this year on lack of evidence, she applied to the Supreme Court of Western Australia for right of appeal. It was also turned down in July.

Lawyer John Hammond said going to the Supreme Court was an “extreme option” — but it hadn’t stopped Ms Carden from further appealing the case.

She told Nine News she believed her neighbours were “absolutely deliberate” in allowing their smells to cross into her yard.

I forgot to link it above.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/08/my-joe-rogan-experience/594802/

In re The View, Goldberg is one of the few people who can see down the road at what happens when the Left “normalizes” their anti-social activities (see above on trawling for career-ending public comments).

https://pjmedia.com/video/video-the-view-panel-condemns-debra-messings-call-to-publicly-shame-trump-donors/

Messing has been condoning the call for a modern-day blacklist by saying that donations are a matter of public record, and that she is proud to tell everyone which politicians she donates to. That’s easy for leftists to do because conservatives don’t try to ruin the careers of people we disagree with, which is what she plainly wants to do.

Add to that the fact that the mainstream American Left has been excusing and normalizing harassment and violence being committed against Trump supporters and Messing’s call to action becomes even more problematic.

When co-host Sunny Hostin offered a variation of Messing’s justification and added the disclaimer that she’s not calling for violence against anyone, Behar interjects, “but that’s what happens.”

Whoopi followed that up by noting that “people ended up killing themselves” during the original blacklist days.

It’s something they would never do, of course!

https://victorygirlsblog.com/media-continues-targeted-social-media-tattling/

Proving once again that the media practices a “rules for thee, not for me” approach to pretty much everything, a Bloomberg reporter apparently got an incoming senior aide at the Department of Labor fired over a Facebook post.

Again, why were they suprised when “mutually assured destruction” became the rule of the day when this kind of stuff is a bragging point for journalists?

Bloomberg reporter Ben Penn had a total “gotcha!” post. He went digging through incoming Department of Labor senior aide Leif Olson’s Facebook page to find some dirt, any dirt. What he came up with, he wrote up in an article, claiming anti-Semitism.
…
Olson was apparently on the job for 18 days before Penn, with a larger media platform than he has brains, decided to go sifting through his Facebook profile for funsies and a hit job. Why does the media have a credibility problem? It’s a mystery, Charlie Brown.

The worst part of this is that it seems to be universally agreed that Olson was mocking Paul Nehlen, who is the anti-Semite crazy person who made a media profile for himself trying to primary former Speaker Paul Ryan. Who says so? Other media figures like Jonathan Chait, who pointed out that the sarcasm in Olson’s post is pretty obvious – and that Penn also edited a couple of comments out to make the context less obvious.
…
Olson was literally a cog in the Department of Labor’s wheel. They could afford to lose him. It certainly doesn’t affect the DOL to lose a new senior aide as much as it does to have a man’s professional life targeted and ruined because a reporter is either stupid or malicious.

And those are really the only two options.
…
He got a man fired (sure, he “offered his resignation,” sure), and then went to brag about it, thinking he was about to gain some serious journalisming cred. When other media outlets and journalists pointed out that he is an idiot, his only defense is “Well, he quit, didn’t he? HE MUST BE GUILTY.”

We’re all going to have to take a page from Governor Ralph Northam. Never admit to anything, give vague apologies, ignore the media until they get distracted by something else. It’s a pity that the DOL and Leif Olson couldn’t follow this formula long enough for Ben Penn to be exposed as a giant tool. Honestly, Leif Olson should be talking to a libel lawyer to see what his options are.

“If Ben Penn is too stupid to know what sarcasm is,” he has a career waiting at Snopes fact-checking the Babylon Bee.

If you don’t think it’s possible to be insightful and obtuse at the same time, just listen to an hour of his podcast with the author and neuroscientist Sam Harris, who raised some fraught but worthwhile questions about how forgiveness works in the age of the #MeToo movement and MAGA.

“We need to think through the whole process of redemption for people in our society,” Harris argued. “What are the criteria for successful apologies and for forgiveness?” Rogan agreed, hard, and they discussed the case of Liam Neeson, who may have done lasting damage to his career by confessing to racist thoughts in his youth that he is ashamed of now. “They just wanna see him burned alive,” Harris said with real alarm. “And yet … these same people on the left are people who have as a genuine ethical norm the rehabilitation of murderers … There’s no way to square those two things.” These are both good, if imperfect, points to raise, but neither of them seems to grasp that a good point coming out of the wrong mouth doesn’t count for squat.