Friday, March 7, 2025

Lidar Reveals Sacred Roads Near Chaco Canyon



CHACO CANYON, NEW MEXICO—Lidar technology has identified a 1,000-year-old sacred road system near Chaco Canyon, Live Science reports. The discovery was made at the Gasco site around 50 miles south of Chaco, where ancestral Pueblo peoples built impressive structures and ceremonial centers between the ninth and twelfth century. Researchers already knew of the existence of one ancient road in the Gasco area, but this path proved to be much longer, stretching for over 4 miles and not just a few hundred feet, as previously thought. The new study also revealed a second parallel road located about 115 feet south of the first one. Both thoroughfares align with the sunrise on the winter solstice over Mount Taylor, which was, and still is today, a sacred mountain to indigenous peoples in the region. Chacoan roads were monumental constructions typically cut directly into the sandstone bedrock and normally reached a width of 30 feet, much wider than they needed to be without the existence of wheeled vehicles or pack animals. This suggests they were used for ceremonial processions and rituals rather than just transportation. "One of the really exciting things about the work we've been doing with Chacoan roads is that they're forcing us to reconceptualize what a road might be, what a road might mean," said Dartmouth College archaeologist Robert Weiner. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Antiquity. For more on Chaco Canyon, go to "Letter from Chihuahua: Cliff Dwellers of the Sierra Madre."


Background:

Understanding this Frenzy of Intricate Chacoan Construction

The Hopi, Ute, Shoshone, Navajo, and the contemporary Puebloans all share some degree of ancestral history with this region. The Navajo and Ute refer to the inhabitants of the Great Houses as the Anasazi which means “ancient enemies” or “ancient ones.” Contemporary Puebloans do not appreciate this term, although some modern Navajo, Ute, and Hopi refuse to relinquish its use. Conscientious experts have attempted to circumvent this awkward tension by referring to these people, and this culture, by the name Chacoan.

Whoever these people were exactly, they completed a precise survey of the landscape upon their arrival and initiated a frenzy of intricate building projects. They dealt with the problems of the inhospitable land by establishing a cult which involved periodic pilgrimages and the delivery of offerings to these sacred sites.

The raw materials used to create these Astro-temples were not readily available and so sandstone and timbers were transported from great distances. Massive timbers were necessary to line the rooftops of the kivas. These large timbers were harvested so far away that archaeologists remain unsure as to their origins. Small springs were utilized, but it seems the inhabitants were dependent on, and controlled, a network of offerings that flowed from the north and south. Meanwhile, archaeological evidence has only uncovered several hundred, strange burials. [more]

https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/chaco-canyon-0015561



Don't Forget to Recommend
and Follow us at our

W3P Homepage


Make Alberta America


For weeks, President Donald Trump has said that Canada should be America’s 51st state.  He has mocked Canada’s economic dependence on the United States.  He has condemned Canadian tariffs and trade restrictions.  He has scolded Canada’s free riding on American defense.  He has knocked Canada’s porous borders and drug dens.  He has accused Canada of colluding with hostile foreign powers and global institutions.  He has trolled our prime minister.

It’s delightful.  Many Canadians are enjoying the show.

Up here in the cold white north, Trump has set the cat among the pigeons.  Canada’s chattering classes are wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth.  He has challenged their sense of entitlement.  He has exposed their patriotism of convenience and knee-jerk anti-Americanism.  He has exposed their haughty righteousness.  He has identified rot that Canadian leaders refuse to acknowledge.

Here is some friendly advice for the president.  The 51st state will not be Canada.  The Canadian political establishment, largely centered in Ontario and Quebec, will fight it tooth and nail.  Their vested interests depend upon the existing federal order of things.  Big fish in small ponds will steadfastly refuse to abandon the pond.  Canada will not join the United States as a single unit.

But the country’s provinces are a different matter.  Some parts of Canada might be persuaded, one or two at a time, to come stateside.  If there is to be a 51st state from north of the border, the best bet is Alberta.  Even better would be to adopt two provinces, Alberta and Newfoundland, to start.

Canada has always been an unlikely country.  It looks huge on the map, but most of its people live in a ribbon from east to west, close to the U.S. border.  Canada is a layer of icing on the American cake.  Trade and traffic travel primarily north-south across the border, not east-west within the country.  Canada has long had tariff-like trade restrictions even between its own provinces.

The country is a collection of regions in permanent conflict.  Some have legitimate and longstanding grievances.  The strongest, wealthiest, and most aggrieved of these is Alberta.

The quest for liberty is America’s origin story.  Its revolution against the British king lies deep in America’s cultural DNA.  Canada does not share that foundation.  In fact, the Canadian story is the mirror opposite.  When the Americans rose up, the Canadians resolved to remain loyal to the king.  If you like, Canada’s raison d’Γͺtre is to oppose the American spirit.  But Canada also depends on the United States for its security and fortunes.  The result is a fragile national psyche.  America’s best friend and ally is also its shrillest critic.

So it is understandable why politicians in Canada — even in Alberta — have decided, at least for the time being, that their political fortunes depend upon rejecting Trump’s solicitations.  Instead, they have elected to wrap themselves in the Canadian flag.

Albertans, or at least a good number of them, disagree.  Some want to become an independent country.  A nascent movement to leave Canada has been bubbling in Alberta for a long time.  They could start from scratch to draft a constitutional order that would preserve their liberty for the foreseeable future.  They could even use the American constitution (not the Canadian one) as a model on which to improve.  But many of these Albertans are interested in the potential of joining the United States, too.

Two weeks ago, I published a declaration of independence for Alberta.  There is nothing official about it.  I’m not even from Alberta; I’m an Ontario boy.  Who am I to draft an Alberta Declaration of Independence?  The answer is, I’m Canadian, and my compromised, complacent country needs shaking up.  If Alberta and other parts of this huge country resolved to separate from Canada, who could blame them?  I believe that Alberta would be better off on its own, or as part of the United States.

Many Albertans appear to agree.  On X and on my Substack, they have written the equivalent of “I am Albertan, and I endorse this message.”  Of course, that sentiment is not universal.  Some strongly oppose any suggestion of leaving Canada.  Still more, I would guess, are those in between — unhappy Albertans dissatisfied with the status quo but wary of launching into the great unknown.

Trump has opened the door.  He should invite Alberta in.  He should make the people of Alberta an offer, even an informal one, to tell them what potentially lies before them should they support American statehood.  He might start with these two promises:

1. A State, Not a Territory

America would welcome Alberta as its 51st state, not as a territory.  Trump would urge Congress to pass legislation pursuant to Article VI, Section 3 of the United States Constitution to provide for Alberta’s direct and immediate entry to the Union.  It would have all the rights and status of a state of the Union, including two seats in the United States Senate and representation in the House of Representatives in proportion to its population.

2. Dollar for dollar

Upon Alberta’s entry to the Union as a state, the federal government of the United States would recognize, transfer, and exchange Canadian dollars for American dollars on a one-to-one basis, notwithstanding the difference in the value of the currencies.  All accounts, financial assets, and legal instruments in Alberta expressed in Canadian dollars would be recognized and honored as American dollars.  (Some transitional plan would be necessary to avoid Canada-wide free riding on this windfall.)

President Trump can make Alberta America — not again, but for the first time.






China Joining Russia Against NATO

I don’t think Starmer understands. This is not marching into battle in colonial days.

Things have changed. The EU may be counting on fighting until the last Ukrainian, Romanian, and Polish, and then they can walk in and take Russia, but this is not shaping up as Europe thinks. Even North Korea has gained from the Ukrainian War. 

They are now learning an utterly new warfare game and are now up-to-date with knowledge about fighting a modern war with drones rather than jets flying overhead. According to our sources, North Korea has benefited tremendously from aiding Russia, not just by supporting its technological advances. 

Still, their troops are adapting to an entirely new warfare model that did not even exist during the Gulf War. North Korea has adapted to the rampant, cutting-edge drone warfare that has defined the conflict in Ukraine.

If nobody has noticed, we do not see dogfights with fighter jets in the air. Those are the days of World War I. Russia has developed glid bombs and does not put their planes at risk in Ukraine. 

Warfare nowadays is different from even WWII or Vietnam. Everyone thinks that nuclear weapons are no longer a deterrent because nobody will push the button. That is just not the case. You cannot move in for the kill; someone will press the button.

 https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/china/china-joining-russia-against-nato/

Trump Secures Peace Deal Where Putin Gets Ukraine During The Week While Zelenskyy Gets Weekends And Two Weeks In The Summer

 Trump Secures Peace Deal Where Putin Gets Ukraine During The Week While Zelenskyy Gets Weekends And Two Weeks In The Summer

Politics·Mar 7, 2025 · BabylonBee.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In another unorthodox move highlighting his ability to think outside the box, President Donald Trump announced that he had secured a peace deal where Putin gets Ukraine on the weekdays while Zelenskyy gets Ukraine on the weekends and for two weeks during the summer.

The new deal came after years of brutal fighting and weeks of contentious Trump-brokered negotiations between Russia and Ukraine that had appeared to reach a stalemate.

"We brought both sides to the table and all parties have to give and take," said President Trump. "Putin gets Ukraine Monday through Friday, Zelenskyy gets weekends. And to make everything fair, Zelenskyy can get two weeks in the summer for a camping trip or any other family time he wants to do with Ukraine. It's a great deal. Everyone is happy."

White House sources hailed the settlement as a perfect accommodation for both sides.

"Look, these custody things happen all the time," Trump continued. "I've had two divorces myself and they always get settled like this. You have to share."

Foreign policy experts tried to explain to Trump that an entire country with millions of citizens and vast strategic resources caught up in a complex geopolitical rivalry between NATO and Russia was nothing like a custody case in a divorce settlement, but Trump stumped the experts by replying, "Why not?"

At publishing time, sources said Ukraine would have the right to choose whether it wanted to live with Putin or Zelensky once it got old enough.

https://babylonbee.com/news/trump-secures-peace-deal-where-putin-gets-ukraine-during-the-week-while-zelensky-gets-weekends-and-two-weeks-in-the-summer

X22, And we Know, and more- March 7

 



Democrats Are Just Not Normal


Take that, little cop cancer kid! The Democrats sure showed him! No applause for you. How dare you be celebrated by the country when the president pointed you out from the lectern. Yeah, they showed him. They showed Donald Trump. They showed us all! The Democrats aren’t going to allow Donald Trump to be normalized! Nor kids with cancer! Nor foster parents of 40 kids. Nor victims of rape and murder by the Third World barbarians Democrats imported into the country. No, the party that thinks some women have penises isn’t going to normalize the party that doesn’t.

Their campaign to keep from normalizing Donald Trump has worked, but not exactly how they thought it would. They showed us that they’re not normal, that they’re weirdos, that they’re pretty much insane.

Or that they are stupid. Sometimes, stupid and insanity are hard to differentiate. But you can be sure that they’ve learned absolutely nothing. Tom Nichols, the expert on experts writing at “The Atlantic,” explained that “Democrats Are Acting Too Normal.” It’s not clear how they can be any weirder, but I’m sure they’ll give it the old communist college try. Remember, with Donald Trump, there are no rules. There are no norms. He’s that bad. He’s literally Hitler plus Putin all at the same time. Oh, and along with Elon Musk he wants to come and take your Social Security and buy some stuff at Target.

Obviously, this situation calls for drastic action. The Democrats must take a stand!

Applaud for a heroic orphan getting into West Point? No.

Applaud for finding and cutting waste in the federal budget? No.

Applaud for endless money given to ungrateful foreigners? Absolutely.

I don’t know who came up with the strategy of adopting only positions normal Americans hate, but it is sure a bold one. I’m eager to see how it works out for them. Maybe the idea is to be so annoying that we give up in the face of their relentless nincompoopery. But if Trump’s speech the other night was any indication, we’re just getting started.

And so are they. They seem intent on doubling down on dumb. When you get past the stupid costumes – I like how they wore pink to show support for women after unanimously showing support for men pretending to be women the day before – and their weird auction paddles and the bizarre writing on their clothes and that strange dude with the cane yelling at clouds, what’s really going on is that they reject the legitimacy of any possible faction having political power besides themselves. They have not accepted the results of the November election, and they are holding their breath really hard until maybe Trump just goes away. 

And they never will accept their loss. They can’t, because in the roiling psychodrama that passes for their political party, they are so wound up with the idea that anybody who deviates even a micrometer from their bizarre and perverted ideology is inherently evil and, therefore, cannot legitimately claim any power. The problem is that normal people don’t think that. Normal people still believe that when they elect a political party, that political party should get a chance to do what it does, and the other political party should honor some basic norms. But that’s not so for the Democrats. There are no other political parties. There are only the Democrats and the extreme ones at that. Everyone else is a Nazi. No one else can rule. This is known as “Our Democracy.” 

So, we get them ignoring basic traditions, like the leadership of both parties escorting the president into the joint session of Congress. The Democrats just didn’t show up for the walk-in, as if Donald Trump can’t be president, and if they just pretend he’s not hard enough, he will stop being president. But he’s not going to stop being president. He knows their game, and he called it to them right to their smug little faces. He told them that they wouldn’t applaud for anything he did, and these dummies took him up on it. To normal people, it looked insane. Here’s a heroic Border Patrolman who fought it out with the cartels! Silence. Nothing. Tumbleweeds. OK, normal people don’t act like that. Weirdos, losers, and mutations act like that. Crazy people act like that. The Democrats have a small group of leftist activists that they’re seeking to suck up to, and they’re sucking all right – they’re polling right there on par with foot fungus.

And as they register loss after loss, Donald Trump racks up win after win. Just on the day of the speech, Zelensky rolled over and cravenly crawled up to kiss his shoes. China and Mexico rolled over on tariffs. Because the regime media can only obsess over one or two stories at a time, Trump was busy firing people, confirming people, and DOGEing the hell out of the communist feed trough. They are helpless in the face of his onslaught, reduced to feeble and fussy protests that simply make them look stupid.

Noted nuclear physicist Jasmine Crockett decided to put out a rap video, of course. She dialed up the ghetto trashy to 11, and you could just see her daring people to point out her ghetto trashiness so she could cry racism. Well, she’s ghetto trashy, and since she already thinks you’re racist, you can say so without worrying. Maybe she will call you racister. In any case, who cares? All we Republicans can say is that we support Jasmine Crockett’s successful campaign to make an idiot of herself and to make bigger idiots of her party and that we hope to see a Tim Walz/Jasmine Crockett ticket in 2028. After all, these doofuses sum up the current Democrat Party. You’ve got a fey weirdo with a secret and a ridiculous, snarling stereotype as the face of the party. 

Well, there’s actually another face as well, the blank, boring, mid face of the Elissa Slotkins. She looks like that if she’s not on the verge of complaining to the manager, she’s going to complain to her husband about him watching football. How come they all look like her? The SSRI-ridden, Chardonnay-swilling, middle-aged white lib women are a curse upon humanity, but they are the key Democrat demo. I’m all for their party embracing that vibe – it went great for Hillary Clinton. Americans don’t want to be nagged to death by unhappy people whose only pleasure in life is pestering others. No one votes for his first wife.

These are such unhappy people. Take a look at these faces. They are vewy, vewy sewious, and they are so very disappointed in you. They probably spent the hour after Donald Trump’s epic long march of a speech high fiving each other, thinking they did great. They did not do great. Trump did. I loved it. My right-wing cronies dug it. But what mattered was when I got texts from people who don’t normally love politics. These are folks who look down on the whole enterprise as vaguely disgraceful, yet they loved it too.

Maybe it was because Trump was happy instead of grim, hysterical, and nuts. Happiness is the secret of America First. We’re happy people. We’re not always mad, we’re not always bitter, we’re not always complaining that everybody else is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and fatist. We enjoy life and want life to get better. And we have both the class and the commonsense to clap when a little cop cancer kid catches the spotlight.



Where Do Democrats Find These People?


Half the time I think the Democratic Party is the most destructive force on the planet, and the other half of the time I think they’re an improv comedy troupe doing an absurdist sketch featuring the most ridiculous ways a political party can implode. What they want to do legislatively firmly falls into the category of the former, how they go about it is all in the latter. I know where their bad ideas come from – anyone who knows history does – what I don’t know is where they come up with the endless stream of people willing to make complete and total fools of themselves in service to these policy objectives.

Democrats tend to come off as performance art – if you’ve ever seen an “artist” make a complete fool of themselves in public to the point that other people have to come along afterwards to “explain” how the stupidity you just witnessed was actually brilliant commentary on something or other. It’s what happened with the Super Bowl halftime show, where the performer slouched through choreography and recited unintelligible lyrics that allegedly accused someone else of child sexual predator (just screams football, doesn’t it?), only to later have smug TV personalities insist that the whole thing was a deep commentary on whatever racial gripes these millionaires had with the country.

At President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, many Democrats refused to show up. They weren’t missed. AOC, the fading media darling people think is pregnant (she’s not, she says she’s just swelling from food consumption) wasn’t there and it didn’t matter. 

For the first, and possibly only, time in her life, AOC did the smart thing. The Democrats who did show up made absolute fools of themselves. 

Who the hell doesn’t applaud a 13-year-old cancer survivor? Who sits on their hands as a high school senior learns he’s gotten into West Point? What kind of people will not honor murdered Americans by standing in applause when their family members are acknowledged, even if you hate the person acknowledging them?

Democrats, that’s who.

Doing something like that would never occur to a normal person raised by good parents. How Democrats managed to achieve 100 percent of their membership in Congress being devoid of human decency is an accomplishment in the way giving everyone who eats in a restaurant food poisoning, regardless of what they ordered, is.

Holding up paddles with little messages was another childish move Democrats did. Was it trivial night in Congress? It was silent, so there’s that, but it also didn’t make any sense. On the rare occasions the camera did cut to Democrats, those who didn’t have the appearance of someone who’d just been served with divorce papers or so old they made Joe Biden look young and spry, were waiving paddles with incoherent or out of context messages written on them. 

Holding up a sign reading “Musk Steals” as the President is reciting a laundry list of absurd and offensive projects the government spent our money on made about as much sense as arguing the surveillance video of you committing murder shouldn’t be shown to the jury because the lighting was poor and made you look fat.

Then there were the “Save Medicaid” signs. From what? They didn’t say. Nothing will save Medicaid more than ending the tens of billions in rip-offs that happen every year. Democrats oppose this. 

Then there were the “False” signs and the “Protect Veterans” signs. Democrats declare everything they don’t like to be false, so they rendered that meaningless from the jump.

It was kind of cute that they pretended to care about veterans for once. But what they really meant was people who served who are now in unnecessary government positions. While we appreciate their service, we can’t make the government an employment agency for them when we don’t need the position. It’s part of the left’s obsession with protecting the bureaucracy, but holding up a sign reading “Protect The Mid-Level Bureaucrat Even If They Incompetent At Their Job” would’ve made the font too small to read on TV.

I don’t know where Democrats find these people, so completely lacking in common sense and decency, but they appear to have cornered the market on them. That’s a good think. Having all the narcissistic sociopaths in one place makes it really easy to avoid them, as evidenced by the last election. Still, sick people.



🎭 π–πŸ‘π π““π“π“˜π“›π“¨ 𝓗𝓾𝓢𝓸𝓻, π“œπ“Ύπ“Όπ“²π“¬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, π“žπ“Ÿπ“”π“ 𝓣𝓗𝓑𝓔𝓐𝓓

 


Welcome to 

The π–πŸ‘π π““π“π“˜π“›π“¨ 𝓗𝓾𝓢𝓸𝓻, π“œπ“Ύπ“Όπ“²π“¬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, π“žπ“Ÿπ“”π“ 𝓣𝓗𝓑𝓔𝓐𝓓 

Here’s a place to share cartoons, jokes, music, art, nature, 
man-made wonders, and whatever else you can think of. 

No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

This feature will appear every day at 1pm mountain time. 


Democrats’ Biggest Problem Right Now Is That They Are Out Of Touch And Uncool


Do Democrats have a plan other than being awful and making fools of themselves?



I am a middle-aged dad, and to quote Abe Simpson, a minor character from a show that was popular 30 years ago, “I used to be with ‘it,’ but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it,’ and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me. It’ll happen to you!”

Obviously, I am no longer an arbiter of what’s cool, if I ever was one. If anything, my superpower is that I am old enough to be emotionally, socially, and financially secure, such that I get to care about things on the merits and am otherwise immune to feeling like I should approve of something because of its cultural cachet.

Which brings me to the Democrat party. I have a decades-long written record of disagreeing with their policies on the merits, and they’ve become so uncool I actually feel bad for them. I can’t watch them right now without experiencing second-hand embarrassment. Now I’m sure there are many fine folks on the former bird app who are willing to angrily disabuse me of the notion I should feel bad for Democrats, and fair enough. But great Odin’s raven, what are Democrats doing to themselves? (If you’re keeping score, that reference is 21 years old.)

On Tuesday night, Rep. Al Green, a 77-year-old congressman from Houston, was ejected from Trump’s speech to Congress for repeatedly interrupting Trump by yelling and waving his cane at the president. Suffice to say, this image made Green temporarily the face of his party, and that face looked an awful lot like a doddering old fool. In fact, I wasn’t the only one thinking about Abe Simpson after Trump’s speech:

And it’s not just that Green is some ill-tempered, senile outlier. Coming into the speech, senate Democrats all released videos to social media repeating the exact same message, and they were swearing, so you know they’re serious:

As Western Lensman went on to note, “Coordinated messaging strategy is expected. Ham fisted execution of cringe repetition like this is telling. There is so much wrong here.” This time I’ll reach back 46 years for the appropriate cultural reference:



But while most of us remember the cultural dominance of the Obama White House, that’s really an aberration. We can’t expect lawmakers to be “cool” or necessarily do a good job with messaging. Fortunately, Democrats have always been aligned with Hollywood.

In a speech where Democrats collectively chose not to applaud or stand when Trump made a dream come true by making a black kid with brain cancer an honorary Secret Service agent; announced we had caught the terrorist responsible for killing 13 Marines during the withdrawal from Afghanistan; told a teenager who’s father recently died that he’d gotten an appointment to go to West Point, making him the fourth generation of his family to serve; honored the families of two young women killed by illegal immigrants; honored the wife of a cop killed in the line of duty, etc., here’s the joke that celebrity talk show host Jimmy Kimmel went with about the speech: “You can go back to Mar-a-Lago and shove your head down that gold toilet for a few months, we’d like that. Maybe you’ll find those secret documents you flushed.”

According to HuffPost, Kimmel “brought down the house.” I’ll have to take their word for it, but based on his ratings, there’s no shortage of us who don’t think he’s funny. And elsewhere in leftist corporate media, MSNBC host Nicole Wallace said she hopes the 13-year-old honorary Secret Service kid doesn’t kill himself after defending the U.S. Capitol against Trump supporters. Maybe J6 is fair game for the left’s commentariat, but dragging the kid into it? Given the almost unprecedented approval ratings of Trump’s speech, I think I speak for America when I ask, what the hell is wrong with these people? The problem is ultimately not just that Democrats are uncool, it’s that they’re also being just plain awful.

Somehow we reached a point where Democrats don’t know how to do anything other than act out in increasingly absurd and performative ways. (Yes, Trump is also absurd and performative but he’s very uniquely good at it.) At one point as Trump was walking into the House chamber to give his speech, New Mexico Rep. Melanie Stansbury stood by the president holding a sign that read “This is not normal.” She was right, but only insofar as Trump was the one who went on to make Democrats look like malcontent weirdos.

Trump stood up there in front of the American people and said, “I look at the Democrats in front of me, and I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy or to make them stand or smile or applaud, nothing I can do.” Democrats heard him say this and refused to stand and applaud kids with cancer and the parents of murder victims.

The one Democrat who did seem somewhat normal was Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who had the thankless task of issuing the official Democrat response. She made the most of it, which wasn’t much. But weirdly, to the extent her speech was effective, it was because the former CIA agent — so consider any attempt by Slotkin to be “normal” a psyop, I guess — presented herself as a Liz Cheney Republican. Her criticism of Trump on Ukraine and foreign policy was from the right, for instance.

“As a Cold War kid, I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s. Trump would have lost us the Cold War,” she said. Of course, that line is utterly incoherent if you’re a Biden supporter, who was around and would likely have lost the Cold War if given the chance — just to start, he was a prominent mouthpiece for Jimmy Carter’s ill-advised rapprochement plans with the Soviets that ended in the invasion of Afghanistan. And let’s not get into the fact she caucuses in the Senate with a guy who honeymooned in Moscow in 1988.

Praising a beloved and long-deceased Republican president might have been a step toward appealing to moderates, but she woke up to various attacks from leftists over that line. The lesson here is that a Democrat who wants to seem normal has to find creative ways of disowning the party’s identity without alienating its left flank. Good luck squaring that circle, Elissa.

The crazy thing is how many examples of this stuff are out there right now. It’s counterproductive Democrat theatrics all the way down. Even reliable Democrat turnspits, aka Politico columnists, are saying things such as, “If Democrats think standing up and walking out is their best path back to power, rather than adopting a more strategic approach to their Trump resistance, it could be a long four years — and possibly beyond.”

It’s safe to assume the pendulum will swing back sooner than overconfident Trump supporters would like, but at an event a day after publicly humilating themselves in front of the whole country, incredibly, Democrat leaders took no questions from the usually obsequious press.

But speaking as someone who’s been writing professionally about politics since The Matrix was in theaters (that’s 26 years), for the first time, I don’t know how the Democrat Party is going to become relevant again. And it sure looks like they have no idea what to do, either.