No Ground To Stand On, Post Modern America

How America Went Haywire - The Atlantic:

This somewhat longish column is a poster child for an attempted left wing analysis of "what went wrong"? How did they discover that something went "wrong"? Trump was elected. The wordy article leads us on a merry chase of how this terrible thing might have happened -- it is written by Kurt Anderson, who is a writer that graduated from Harvard and founded "Spy" magazine. An example of what "Spy" was about:

Founded by Kurt Andersen and E. Graydon Carter, who served as its first editors, and Thomas L. Phillips, Jr., its first publisher. After one folding and a rebirth, it ceased publication in 1998. The magazine specialized in irreverent and satirical pieces targeting the American media, entertainment industries and the mocking of high society.[4] Some of its features attempted to present the darker side of celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, John F. Kennedy, Jr., Steven Seagal,[5]Martha Stewart, and especially, the real-estate tycoon Donald Trump and his then-wife Ivana Trump.[6] Pejorative epithets of celebrities, e.g., "Abe 'I'm Writing As Bad As I Can' Rosenthal", "short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump",[7] "churlish dwarf billionaire Laurence Tisch", "bum-kissing toady Arthur Gelb", "bosomy dirty-book writer Shirley Lord" and "former fat girl Dianne Brill" became a Spy trademark.

Strangely, although Anderson finds Trump to be a disaster of the first order, a quick read of the paragraph would indicate that Kurt and Donald ought to be bosom buddies ... "former fat girl Dianne Brill"?  Indeed. So what IS the shape our peril according to Kurt?

By my reckoning, the solidly reality-based are a minority, maybe a third of us but almost certainly fewer than half. Only a third of us, for instance, don’t believe that the tale of creation in Genesis is the word of God. Only a third strongly disbelieve in telepathy and ghosts. Two-thirds of Americans believe that “angels and demons are active in the world.” More than half say they’re absolutely certain heaven exists, and just as many are sure of the existence of a personal God—not a vague force or universal spirit or higher power, but some guy. A third of us believe not only that global warming is no big deal but that it’s a hoax perpetrated by scientists, the government, and journalists.

Kurt certainly seems to have a solid view of "reality" -- to the extent we can discern it's base, the key point seems to be strong materialist atheism -- creation, angels, heaven, and "a personal God" (we will assume he means Jesus) come in for special snark. For those of us that believe in Christ being God made Man, the "Word of Kurt" (WoK) calling him "some guy" seems just a bit presumptions. Somehow, I'm guessing he is far less snarky about "allah" ... at least around Muslims. They don't love their enemies, they kill them.

Kurt goes on a long discussion of how "America" has gone "haywire". So why is it that Kurt's ideas on this are supposed to be of interest to anyone at all?  Kurt does a great job of answering the reason for that right up front -- there is really no reason to read the rest of it.

Why are we like this?

The short answer is because we’re Americans—because being American means we can believe anything we want; that our beliefs are equal or superior to anyone else’s, experts be damned. Once people commit to that approach, the world turns inside out, and no cause-and-effect connection is fixed. The credible becomes incredible and the incredible credible.

 So what are the qualification of one of the founders of "Spy" magazine to give us a psuedo-intellectual tour of history? He is admittedly Ivy League educated, but certainly not philosopher, theologian, scientist, political scientist, or even sociologist; on what does he stand to provide us the answer for the deep meaning of "haywire". Clearly KURT believes that Trump defines "haywire", however what expertise, philosophy, revelation, equation, data, "standard", dream, etc is Kurt standing on as he says it? I'd argue it is exactly like Potter Stewart's definition of pornography ... "you know it when you see it'.

Kurt HIMSELF has clearly stated "expert's be damned" -- The WoK is being proffered as useful because he himself finds his own views to be "equal or superior to anyone else's". He invalidates his own case right up front.

My view is that we forgot that "the fear of God is the BEGINNING of all wisdom". Transcendence, something unchangeable and beyond mere matter -- TRUTH. A book that points out where we left the track is from my perspective is "Ideas Have Consequences" and the point and which we first became unglued was in the 14th century.

"This was a change that overtook the dominant philosophical thinking of the West in the fourteenth century, when the reality of transcendentals was first seriously challenged."

Without SOMETHING that is at least very close to an eternal principle, we ALL lack any place to stand to make any sort of judgments at all! Science leaps from the precipice that says "the universe is ORDERED, and results that we see today are assumed to be repeatable across time and space". The foundation of science is INDUCTION -- "it worked today, it will work tomorrow, and it will work anywhere for all time".

The difficulty with this is PERSPECTIVE. The Thanksgiving turkey postulates that humans are a benevolent species that cares and provides for turkeys. On the very day in which the turkey's "proof" has gained the status of maximally proven scientific "fact", the induction crashes and the turkey finds himself at a meal in which he is the guest of honor. The turkey lacked the perspective of a larger view -- as do we humans relative to eternity.

The other problem is of course that right/wrong, beauty, consciousness, love, etc are completely outside the realm of science, as science is about STUFF ... material, matter. Human life is founded on human consciousness -- right, wrong, up, down, inside out, or non-existent, it IS what WE perceive as humans!

Kurt certainly views HIS consciousness as a superb basis for analysis ... as do we all unless we recognize a power greater than our own perspective (eg. "the fear of God" or maybe "fear of Kurt"??).

Let's look at Kurt's "analysis" a bit":

Meanwhile, over in sociology, in 1966 a pair of professors published The Social Construction of Reality, one of the most influential works in their field. Not only were sanity and insanity and scientific truth somewhat dubious concoctions by elites, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann explained—so was everything else. The rulers of any tribe or society do not just dictate customs and laws; they are the masters of everyone’s perceptions, defining reality itself. To create the all-encompassing stage sets that everyone inhabits, rulers first use crude mythology, then more elaborate religion, and finally the “extreme step” of modern science. “Reality”? “Knowledge”? “If we were going to be meticulous,” Berger and Luckmann wrote, “we would put quotation marks around the two aforementioned terms every time we used them.” “What is ‘real’ to a Tibetan monk may not be ‘real’ to an American businessman.”

Therefore, Kurt's "reality" would also be relative ... however, since he wrote this long article, we are to understand that it isn't really. Somehow, "The WoK" is privileged. (See "reality based" above}.

So what kind of heresy has failure to accept the WoK unleased?

Even the social critic Paul Goodman, beloved by young leftists in the ’60s, was flabbergasted by his own students by 1969. “There was no knowledge,” he wrote, “only the sociology of knowledge. They had so well learned that … research is subsidized and conducted for the benefit of the ruling class that they did not believe there was such a thing as simple truth.” 

Ever since, the American right has insistently decried the spread of relativism, the idea that nothing is any more correct or true than anything else. Conservatives hated how relativism undercut various venerable and comfortable ruling ideas—certain notions of entitlement (according to race and gender) and aesthetic beauty and metaphysical and moral certainty.

Ah, "simple truth" --- or as we can see from the column, "the WoK". Sadly, the evil American Right thought that there WERE ultimate truths ... like the Word of God, which included Genesis, now known to  fail the "reality based" test, according to the WoK. So the decried "relativism", as now apparently so does Kurt -- it's just that he finds any "relativism" according to the "Word of Kirk" to be bad -- therefore, he is a "rightwing fundamentalist" in relation to the "Word of Kirk"!

"Just before the Clintons arrived in Washington, the right had managed to do away with the federal Fairness Doctrine, which had been enacted to keep radio and TV shows from being ideologically one-sided. Until then, big-time conservative opinion media had consisted of two magazines, William F. Buckley Jr.’s biweekly National Review and the monthly American Spectator, both with small circulations. But absent a Fairness Doctrine, Rush Limbaugh’s national right-wing radio show, launched in 1988, was free to thrive, and others promptly appeared." 

Here I think we arrive at the crux of the matter. As long as whatever was being stated was duly approved by a part of the Administrative State lodged comfortably in the womb of the Federal Communications Commission, all could be certain that only Administrative State, Union Approved, Ivy League vetted, Davos Certified, "truth" would be provided to the masses. Everything was "ideologically SINGLE sided", which was "the good", and the idiots that provided the alternative comic relief -- Bill Buckley and the American Spectator, were "fringe" --- as heretics ought to be!

Did his voters know that his hogwash was hogwash? Yes and no, the way people paying to visit P. T. Barnum’s exhibitions 175 years ago didn’t much care whether the black woman on display was really George Washington’s 161-year-old former nanny or whether the stitched-together fish/ape was actually a mermaid; or the way today we immerse in the real-life fictions of Disney World. Trump waited to run for president until he sensed that a critical mass of Americans had decided politics were all a show and a sham. If the whole thing is rigged, Trump’s brilliance was calling that out in the most impolitic ways possible, deriding his straight-arrow competitors as fakers and losers and liars—because that bullshit-calling was uniquely candid and authentic in the age of fake.

Perhaps there really were consequences to Slick Wille having BJs in the oval office, lying about it, and skating. Maybe calling a vast power grab and re-distribution scam called the "Affordable" Care Act, "affordable" even though it added a grab bag of new benefits to health INSURANCE thus being certain to radically increase the cost, was slightly disingenuous. However, saying that "If you like your doctor you can keep him", "if you like your insurance plan you can keep it", etc was TOTALLY a direct lie which anyone that paid any attention understood to be a LIE ... or to put it in Kurt's words, "a show and a sham".

I personally know MANY people that budgeted for retiring with healthcare TOTAL costs (insurance + deductables + co-pays) of $8K for a 60 year old couple, finding that they needed $22K for insurance along, PLUS, another 8-10K for deductables and co-pays. $30K vs $8K ... PER YEAR!

Slick Willie ushered in the age of fake. BO made it the standard.

So what do I believe caused America to "go haywire", and turn into BOistan?

We have to stand on SOMETHING! As John Adams said: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other". That morality was founded on Jesus Christ --  we never had any other rock to stand on, and sorry to say, the WoK isn't much of a substitute.

So what does the "word of Kurt" say on this point?

What is to be done? I don’t have an actionable agenda, Seven Ways Sensible People Can Save America From the Craziness. But I think we can slow the flood, repair the levees, and maybe stop things from getting any worse. If we’re splitting into two different cultures, we in reality-based America—whether the blue part or the smaller red part—must try to keep our zone as large and robust and attractive as possible for ourselves and for future generations. We need to firmly commit to Moynihan’s aphorism about opinions versus facts. We must call out the dangerously untrue and unreal. A grassroots movement against one kind of cultural squishiness has taken off and lately reshaped our national politics—the opposition to political correctness. I envision a comparable struggle that insists on distinguishing between the factually true and the blatantly false.

What is "reality"? Is it matter only, with meaning defined by induction? Kurt, founder of "Spy" magazine firmly believes in the "World of Kurt" ... if you follow Kurt, you too can be "reality based". Isn't that special?

Choose ye this day whom you will serve ... Kurt? or something larger? Trump is only a very temporary occupant of the highest office in what is at this point the failed state of BOistan. I believe that God is bigger than Kurt, Trump, and BOistan, so God is my choice as the basis for reality -- eternal reality. 

What about you? 

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Who Loves Russia? Poland, Missles, Obama, Trump

Our MSM tells us that the Russians love Trump -- always have, helped get him elected, he is in their pocket -- lots of MSM stories on that narrative. Reminds me of when Reagan was totally dangerous buffoon for suggesting that the USSR would be "consigned to the ash heap of history". Gotta love our media -- always certain, frequently VERY wrong. They do however really understand that everyone needs a narrative. Push theirs, block their opposition -- anyone not worshiping at the progressive altar. Simple.

Here we have a quote from a former Czech official decrying Obama's 2009 decision to abandon a missle defense system which included missles in Poland.

Alexandr Vondra, a former Czech deputy prime minister and ambassador to Washington intimately involved in the negotiations with the Americans, said he was surprised. "This is a U-turn in US policy," he said. "But first we expect the US to honour its commitments. If they don't they may have problems generating support for Afghanistan and on other things."

BO was certainly a reliable enemy to our friends and a reliable friend of our enemies.

Here we have an article covering Patriot missles being deployed in Poland, and a quote from Putin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has called the missile defense systems in Eastern Europe a "great danger." Putin also threatened to enhance Russia's own missile strike capability in response.

I have no doubt that Russia is always happy to cast doubt on our elections by any means possible -- leaking actual emails showing that Democrats rigged their primaries, colluded with the media on the debates,  and colluded with the media to have Trump as their opponent certainly doesn't make our poltical system look "fair and balanced". Those of us not in thrall to "The Party" (TP-D) pretty much knew that already.

My contention is that the Russians fully expected Hillary to win like everyone else. My guess is that they were much happier with that prospect than with Trump winning because of things like the above and the fact that his policies are much more likely to make them have to confront a srtonger BOistan.

No doubt what they are REALLY unhappy about with Trump is that he is certainly going to "drill baby drill", "frack baby frack", and even put in pipelines to transport the oil! As one of the big energy producing nations, Russia HATES competition, and has spent millions of dollars trying to stop fracking.

Their main mission on this front (and ours in reverse) is to make us weaker -- and making it look like our elections can be "manipulated" is a great way to do that. So relative to elections, Russion mission accomplished. Relative to actual interaction on the world stage, not so much.

A little more detail on the whole Russian nothingburger here ... obstruction of "justice" (witch hunt) is really all that remains.

I Still Love America, I Just Miss Her

America: Can You Stop Loving Her if She Changes? | National Review:

Jonah Goldberg is having a tiff with the editors of NR over "What is America" (Rich Lowrey is editor in chief). The editors declare they would still love America even if it had a completely different set of ideals -- and Jonah apparently doesn't realize that the area of N America where the nation of America used to exist DOES have a completely different set of ideals -- which is why I call it BOistan.

Rich started by saying that America is a nation, not an idea. He then went on to demonstrate the ways in which America is a nation (it’s got borders and a people and a culture and the like). That’s fine with me, I suppose. I concluded a while ago that the “Nation vs. Idea” argument is poorly framed. If all you have to do is cite borders, roads, and a post office to prove it’s not an idea, then what’s the point?

Every philisopher understands neccessary vs sufficent. Philosophers all breathe, sweat, defecate, etc -- which are neccessary conditions. NONE of those is SUFFICIENT to call yourself a philosopher. All nations have borders, people, culture, post offices, etc -- those are neccessary conditions, not sufficient to being called "America".

"Idea, ideals, values, principles" -- The TRUTHS that America held  to be self evident and endowed by GOD. To believe in America is to believe in divine founding -- else there are no transcendent truths, and America could not exist without transcendent truth. The founders certainly allowed people to live in the territory of America (the neccessary but not sufficient borders) without acknowledging God -- they were just to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and declare that the founding principles were self evident "just cuz" ... like created equal without any creator, rendering "equal" just another man made thought changeable by the only remaining moral authority when God dies -- power. "Might is right" with a ballot or a bullet.

Roe V Wade, Obergefell, BOcare, not impeaching Bill Clinton, 20 trillion in debt and a few hundred other things finally convinced me that "We weren't in Kansas (America) anymore".

The unwillingness of someone of Goldberg's stature to even recognize that we are fish swimming in a BOistani rather than American pond is traumatizing -- failure to recognize and accept reality is not a good sign for ability to remedy our situation. Jonah ends his column rather whimsically for such a serious matter.

Imagine one person tells you that his ideal form of government would be to get rid of the Constitution and make Kim Kardashian queen. You’d think that person is silly, probably even deranged. Now imagine that 270 million Americans believed that and, having the necessary supermajority to pull it off, voted away our Constitution. As the coronation of Queen Kim, First of Her Name, unfolded on every channel, would you not change your view of America, her culture, and her people? Might you not fall out of love with America as it is? 

My hunch is Rich et al. would still love America, but you know what America they would love? The America That Was. They might even join the resistance to the regime of Queen Kim (I’m fairly certain Charlie would) in an effort to restore self-government to America. And here’s the funny thing: They’d be fighting against the American nation in the name of that great and glorious cause, the American Idea. And that’s the crucial difference.

It would really be nice to have a discussion about what ideas/values/truths/etc that we seek to return to -- I think we need a much clearer picture of the America that we see receeding away from us ... sort of a philosophical version of this shot of Queen Kim ... only in this case a picture of  "The America That WAS" (TATW) receeding -- what would she look like in your mind?

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The Left Notices the Farther Left

How the Left Lost Its Mind - The Atlantic:

When you are the dominant political strain, you tend to spend the bulk of your time focused on those evil unwashed masses that hail from "the right" ... that strange set of morons that believe in God, freedom, families, hard work, personal responsibility, and trash like that. As William Buckly used to say of NPR, they were even handed -- they tended to cover both the left and the far left views with great detail.

Given US propoganda since 1950, it continues to mystify our media, educational institutions, entertainment industry and the vast state and federal bureaucracy that there STILL exist people out there in Red State flyover country that are not "of the body", better known as "The Party", TP-D. Why, it is almost like there is actually a God, and that people somewhere live in a reality with actual work and some divine grace bringing forth crops and energy to keep the lefties alive!

This article is a bit different -- it takes notice of the fact that there is a leftward fever swamp, and has been for a very long time. MoveOn.org, Daily Kos, Huffpo, Slate, etc. How odd for them to be bringing this up post Dan Rather letting the Fake News cat completely put of the bag back in '04, and just in the last couple of weeks, CNN giving 3 "star journalists" the heave ho over shall we say "imaginative reporting" on Trump / Russia.

The HuffPo was nice enough to take down the following ...

Just this month, editors were forced to delete a contributor post that began, “Impeachment and removal from office are only the first steps; for America to be redeemed, Donald Trump must be prosecuted for treason and — if convicted in a court of law — executed.”

Come on folks, we have seen the severed head, we certainly know that the left has wanted those that think differently executed since the French Revolution! Are we to think this is "new"?

It is WAY too long, and WAY too much navel gazing ... I got a good chuckle out of this:

Before we go on, let me try to quiet the cries of “False equivalence!” before they begin: No, these personalities and publications do not yet wield the same influence in the Democratic Party that their counterparts do in the GOP. But ignoring them would be a mistake.

Yes, those Democrats are might selective on their news sources -- I know they never stooped to Dan Rather in the past or CNN more recently. The big left wing fiction is that the NY Times is anything "better"  that the left wing poltical believer version of "AM Coast to Coast!"

The tinfoil hat on a pink background WAS a very nice touch for the lead though -- gotta give them credit for that degree of self awareness!

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Eat The Rich 1%! (... And The Next 19% Too)

Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich - NYTimes.com:

As someone that grew up in the lower 50% income strata and now fits in the upper 20% most of the time, this article is great reading. Socialism is never really satisfied until the 99% are "minimally fed, minimally housed, minimally educated (indoctrinated), minimally entertained, and maximally indentured to the perpetual service of the state. Hope is the eternal enemy of socialism, and the left is already WELL down the road to killing it.

The chattering classes and elite assume that they will be in that top 1% with ALL the power, privilege and perks, while the rest of the vermin will be suitably "classless" in all meanings of the word. Turns out that most of them are wrong about making the 1%, but typically they will find that out with a bullet to back of the head, so at least they will never have to admit they were wrong.

This article makes it VERY clear that the top 1% of the current "corrupt system" are not the only ones that have to give, and give mightily -- the other 19% that make up the top 20% have got to surrender as well! Viva La Sameness!

Progressive policies, whether on zoning or school admissions or tax reform, all too often run into the wall of upper-middle-class opposition. Self-interest is natural enough. But the people who make up the American upper middle class don’t just want to keep their advantages; armed with their faith in a classless, meritocratic society, they think they deserve them. The strong whiff of entitlement coming from the top 20 percent has not been lost on everyone else.

This article of course targets the "top 20%", but lets face it, the maw of socialism is not satisfied until there is an absolutely flat hopeless 99% totally unarmed and totally under "public" (1%) control. "Progressive" (regressive) policies have not run their course until 99% of the population is living in concrete mauseleums reeking of urine and standing slack jawed in line waiting the days vodka or weed ration and whatever meager scraps the state feels are a decent diet.

When I was growing up, my father told me that us little people never had a chance -- it was not possible to move up the economic ladder, it was rigged. Many people I knew in my youth believed that, and they likely still do -- such prophecies tend to have a way of being VERY self fullfilling. The elite would like to convince you that the only "just" society is one where only the elite gets to "have their cake and eat it to". And, naturally castigate even their fellow "20%ers" for not being pure enough comrades ... obviously those fools thinking that they can send their kids to expensive private schools and still retain full comrade status are not true to the cause and will be purged.

The only "merit" socialists recognize is being smart and ruthless enough to become one of the overlords like a BO or the Clinton Crime Family. You make any money outside of politics, and you ought not be able to lead because of the "emouluments clause" of the Constitution (man they LOVE obscure pieces of that document when they feel they suit them!) Why "emouluments" is almost as popular with the puppetmasters this year as "misogyny" was last year!

If you are above the bottom 20%, they will be coming for you -- just give them time. Ah, the smell urine, untreated sewage and miscellaneous smoke -- the smell of SOCIALISM!

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Yanez, The Memory of America Fades

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/448740/philando-castile-verdict-was-miscarriage-justice

In America, we had a court system that included "juries of our peers" and we honored that system because we agreed that was far more just than mob dscisions or some "pronouncement of the elite". In BOistan, everyone believes their opinion is "as good as the jury" who took 6 days from their lives to sit through testimony, then another 5 days to deliberate. They pull their favorite snippet from the proceedings and declare the jury wrong / racist / stupid / etc.

And even though any of us could be asked to sit on a similar jury, we assume we won't, and amazingly it is broadly OK to disparage the decision made by a jury of our peers, that was once cornerstone of America's legal system. That is what is shocking about the linked post above, it is from NATIONAL REVIEW, an ostensively conservative source, yet totally fails to understand that our criminal justice system is based on honoring a jury of our peers ... they cherry pick their "evidence", draw their conclusion, and decare "the jury is wrong", where in America, the jury was honored and RIGHT unless it could be overturned by new evidence / procedure.

America had a population educated enough in civics to understand that without respect for basic civil government and a legal system, anarchy or tyranny are the only possible outcomes.

Most of our population has no idea of what America even was. The idea of respecting ANY institution over their own "fresh off social media" meme level opinion simply never crosses their mind. They are "god", and they have an opinion, and with apologies to Baron Von Raschke, "that is all the people need to know".  I covered this lack of knowledge here. 

I do know that MPR really wanted this officers hide in the worst way. One comentator this week from one of the lefty schools in the twin cities (Hamline I think) felt that "the good of the community" should overshadow mere evidence here. They have been running excerpts from "74 seconds" a lot over the last 6 months. https://www.mprnews.org/topic/philandocastile

You get impaired on weed, go drive around with a kid in the car, get stopped, have a gun on your person, and then -- likely because of the impairment, fail to follow police orders relative to the gun EXPLICITLY and ... ??? Up to that point, the decisions are all yours, and you can take your time deciding the correct course.

I put myself standing outside that window, smell of weed reeking in nostrils, obviously stoned driver, says "I have a gun" and rather than leaving hands solidly on wheel in plain sight starts reaching in his pocket where I can likely see the gun ... what would **I** do?

I really can't imagine ANYONE that would not "fear for your life" -- do you shoot? I'm not sure that any of us know that answer for ourselves, and likely it will vary "depending on" a huge set of variables along the lines of ; do you miss the deer that jumps out? lose control? ??? ... the real "action" wasn't in "74 seconds", it was in 1 or 2 tops.

A courageous, and I think honest jury. One guy is dead, destroying another life more than it has been won't bring him back. Unless you believe that he needed to go to prison "for the good of the community". It has seemed peferectly clear all along that Yanez was forced by Castile's decisions into a split second life and death call. There is no reason for anyone, permit or not, to put an officer in that situtation and hope they decide to risk their sober life for your impaired one.

What TP ("The Party" TP-D) wants to happen is that cases like this give the State more power. No more jury trial -- "the State", meaning the Administrative State, decides what outcome best meets their current political, economic, social engineering, etc objectives. The very idea of a "Jury of your peers" is totally out of line with TP anyway. The sad thing is to see that even NR has forgotten what America was, and are willing to disparage the decision of the jury without even a moment to honor their sacrifice and the system. 

74 Seconds: The death of Philando Castile and the trial of Jeronimo Yanez |…

MPRNEWS.ORG

Poor Marxmanship

Why You Can't Trust A Socialist With A Gun | The Federalist Papers:

Thanks be to God! Squeeky Fromme, John Hinkley, and now Hodgkinson, the disease ... Hodgkinson takes a booby prize though ... 50 some rounds with a RIFLE! If Socialists were talented in anything, we'd all be speaking German ... or at least Russian for sure.

I've not heard the term "Assault Weapon" used even once in the meda this time! -- no calls for bans on these horrible weapons, basically NOTHING! Was the gun not black? Why do we not know the brand, capacity of the weapon, etc? It nearly HAD to be effectively an "Assault Weapon", since it was semi-auto with apparently a hi cap mag in order to get off as many rounds as he did.

I think we all know that the level of "outrage" in the media is low for a good reason -- "their side" did some shooting at someone they basically believe ought to be shot, though they can't say it directly. He kind of "deserves what he got" in their mind -- "mean policies", pro-gun, hell, he probably STILL will not vote for a ban on the very weapon that grieviously wounded him -- the very definition of "stupid and evil" as seen from the left.

As the article points out, there is no evidence at all of "mental illness" in the shooter, other than being a Bernie Sanders supporter. He had been in the area a month, he was on Facebook groups that talked of killing Republicans and he had a list of some he wanted dead.

You have to love a media and political party (but I repeat myself) that is pretty much unconcerned when you see hashtags like #HuntRepublicanCongressman AFTER the shooting. Imagine if the Democrats had .0001% of the level of concern that they would have over #HuntMuslimTerrorists for such a hashtag? Why, if such a concern even registered at all with "The Party" (TP-D), we might actually be on the road to some sort of "comity".

We are ALL driven by emotion, and we seek to protect our tribe unless we worship a higher power -- say one that makes the truely hard command that we love our enemies. (and all of us fall short of that goal even when we pray and try) Hodgkinson is one of "The Party" and he gunned down one of their enemies. They know they can't cheer, but they are unable to display much in the way of concern -- in their hearts, it is "what do Republicans expect? They are evil racist people trying to harm others, how can they be surprised when violence results?".

"The Chicago way" is the TP way ... punish your enemies and reward your friends. Until Jesus hung on the cross, that was the ONLY way -- that is human nature, and the very thought of "loving your enemies" is INHUMAN (as in divine) in the extreme. TP seeks to celebrate the "natural angels" ... lust, hate, fear, pride, anger, etc. and to deny the existence of Christ and "higher angles". The leadership of TP fully understands that when those bitter angels take over, the chaos demands authoritarian rule, and that is fine with them -- that is why they are fine with Islam as well. When you believe man must be ruled by an iron hand, it makes no difference if it is Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Ayatolla whatever, Kim Jong whatever, etc ... or Satan.

Either there is an ulimate authority and morality, or there is not. If there is not, then might makes right and power IS "morality". You agree, or you die ... #HuntTPdeniers would be an honest hashtag.

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Comey, Profiles in Bureaucracy

Comey Ordered Leak of Own Memo to Spur Special Counsel Probe | National News | US News:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/06/should-trump-fire-mueller.php

The term "appparatchik" comes to mind as I observe Comey. It used to be a common term used relative to officials of the USSR -- strong Communist Party members that worked in the state bureaucracy. "The Party" (TP-D) is socialist rather than communist at this point, however they don't seem to have much love of private property, so I assume that socialist is just as far as they are willing to go at present.

If one wants to know what a DC swamp creature looks like, Comey is a great example. Self serving to a fault,  master at "CYA" (Cover Your Ass), lies impeccably and of course a loyal member of TP. Here is a more perfect picture of "apparatchik / swamp thing".

So he proudly volunteers! that he created a memo that was properly "declassified" and then  leaked it in hopes that it would initiate a special prosecutor! Marvelous. If anyone foolishly had any doubt that the Deep State alphabet angency arms of TP are manufacturing anything they possibly can to take down Trump, this is way more than plenty to show what the Deep State is up to!

Newt covers it well in this article, a teaser:

So, what we have here is a fired FBI director, who leaked private material to the press, so he could get his friend appointed as a special counsel in order to take retribution on the President – with the aid of a department full of federal lawyers who would have rather seen Hillary in the White House. And we are supposed to believe this will be an objective, unbiased investigation?

The unaccountable Administrative State breeds things like Comey -- it MUST be made to be accountable if we are to return to being America, let alone become great again!

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Civil War or Divorce ?

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448069/memorial-day-united-states-armed-services-unity-political-fragmentation-james-mattis

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448385/americans-left-right-liberal-conservative-democrats-republicans-blue-red-states-cultural-segregate

I spend a good deal of time ingesting media from the left and far left -- more than half of my media life, since knowing what those that I tend not to agree with are thinking is more difficult and less natural than listening to echoes of my own thought. I have a strong belief that spirit / thought / consciousness are what makes us uniqely and eternally human. To me, race, gender and sexuality are FAR less important. "Culture" is however critical, because everyone has one, and in the US, we now have two radically different cultures.

I find this quote from James Mattis from the top linked article to be spot on:

When I asked what worried him most in his new position, I expected him to say ISIS or Russia or the defense budget. Instead, he said, “The lack of political unity in America. The lack of a fundamental friendliness. It seems like an awful lot of people in America and around the world feel spiritually and personally alienated, whether it be from organized religion or from local community school districts or from their governments.”

Frequent readers of this blog understand that I consider meaning to be really the only thing that matters in human life -- and I regularly harp on "Man's Search for Meaning". I believe that the reason for the alienation in Western civilization is because we have put pleasure or "happiness" in the top position rather than meaning, so freedom has been corrupted to being "freedom to have as much pleasure as possible".

For a Christian, the realization of our ETERNAL purpose as serving Christ is the ongoing discovery of his eternal leading. As covered in Frankl, great suffering has far more meaning than even the most desireable pleasure in even the temporal sense, let alone the eternal.

Since personal pleasure has become the "holy grail" of the west, alienation is inevitable. Most people find it difficult to see "good" in people who do not share their world views. Christ's admonishion to love our enemies goes totally against our sinful human nature. When the highest goal is "happiness / pleasure", why bother to even associate with anyone who does not see eye to eye with us on virtually every detail?

When my own pleasure is the ultimate goal, then whatever gets in the way of that is clearly "evil". "Progressives" consider their chief recent accomplishments to be pursuit of largely sexual pleasure -- sex outside of marriage, abortion on demand, same sex relationships, gender bending, etc.  This is nothing new -- this script goes back to the Old Testament. Let's break out the golden calf and the ashera poles. In the search for pleasure. "Progress" is considered to be removal of restraint and ultimately all responsibility -- everything becomes "a right", including the "right" to not even be exposed to anyone who is not in lock step with your world view. (those people are intolerant!)

The "progressive" world view demands that those who do not agree be removed from any association with "progressives" -- the god of personal pleasure is CERTAINLY not in any way shape or form going to suggest that you "love your enemies",  but rather that you destroy your enemies -- cut them off by any means possible. Make no mistake, Christians are definitely the chief enemies of "progressives" in this world. Muslims are OK, but NOT Christians!

Tiny little things like a Constitution are not going to stand in the way of "progressives" rooting out Christian doctrine. Here is Bernie Sanders applying a religious test to someone nominated for office in BOistan. Bernie was especially offended by the nominee having written this line in an internet post:

“Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.”

BOistan has no operative constitution, so at least half the country has no problem with this. Christ states in John 14:6 "... I am the way the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me". Practicing Christians not only agree with Christ, they WORSHIP him! Bernie concluded his remarks with; “This nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about.”

America had a Constitution that demanded in Article VI:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

BOistan clearly does not honor the laws of the former Democratic Republic of America ... to "progressives", what was fundamental to America is now "not what BOistan is about".

David French concludes the second linked article above (both are excellent, well worth reading) with this:

If we seek to preserve our union, we’re left with a choice — try to dominate or learn to tolerate? The effort to dominate is futile, and it will leave us with a permanently embittered population that grows increasingly punitive with each transition of presidential power. There is hope, however, in the quest to tolerate. Our Constitution is built to allow our citizens to govern themselves while protecting individual liberty and providing for the common defense. It’s built to withstand profound differences without asking citizens or states to surrender their strongest convictions. We can either rediscover this federalism, or we may ultimately take a third path — we may choose to separate.

Is it remotely possible that the left will relent and decide that using the federal government to dominate is "futile"? As the Deep State, dominant media, legal system and educational system pull out all stops to overturn the presidential election, it seems awfully pollyannaish to me. Is it REALLY "futile"? The left has forced abortion on demand in all 50 states as well as gay "marriage", and they are pushing hard on the "whatever" vs gender front. Their climate doctrine is holy writ, well beyond Biblical levels of inerrancy for even most of the leftist post Christian "christian" churches. The Virgin Birth? Probably not ... Climate Change? Yea verily! ... oh, and forget that John 14:6 stuff, Muslims, Wiccans, "whatever" ... "it's all good'.

What I'd LIKE to believe is that we will have an honest to goodness REVIVAL of actual practicing Christainity in this failed area of N America. There ARE hopeful signs ... a person I work with attended the graduation at Liberty University this spring -- around 100K students enrolled on campus and online. Huge growth, Christ centered, very much appreciated and supported the graduation speech by Trump. Have attended a couple services at RedRocksChurch in Denver with our son ... packed services, all ages, very Biblically based with a young adult focus. Rapidly growing.

In general, the "sliding leftward" traditional protestant churches are dying. The Evangelicals, and to some degree Catholics are growing. Interestingly, Trump DID win the Catholic vote -- which is a story that is not talked about much. As I wrote about here, I firmly believe that 2016 was our first truly "post Christian Nation" election. Practicing Christians finally realized that we no longer live in "America", which culturally WAS Christian, but now live in BOistan, which desires to be pagan, and is more than happy to exclude any practicing Christians if possible.

I agree with Mattis. While I very much enjoy the free exchange of ideas and relish the chance to debate matters of religion, politics, philosophy, scotch, and cigars, we increasingly live in the age of shrinking tribal alienation. ALL relationships are increasingly "my way or the highway" ... friends, family, work, neighborhood, church, etc. I personally work to maintain relationships with people who do not share my world view, but in order to do that, the relationships become increasingly shallow. The worst thing about the Climate Change religion is that it has made even something as innocuous as the weather a religious issue. There is no god but man (man is the measure of all things), and even the weather is due to man's power in the climate religion.

I've been away from my blog for a bit while becoming grandpa x 2 with the birth Graham Walden in Denver, and I've rambled yet again. I believe that increasingly fractured lives are the wages of losing a shared transcendent vision of meaning ... we will atomize to ever smaller "tribes" if we don't "revive". Is that a "decision", or is that "Grace"? Given free will, I see it as both -- there must be a daily decision to stay in the Grace or to reject it in favor of man's "thought of the day".

My prayer for my "enemies" on the left is that even if you can't imagine loving those whom you disagree with, is it really too much to ask that you tolerate them rather than seek to dominate them to the point of preventing even a tiny "trim" of the massive Adminstrative State which rules BOistan?

When elections are not honored, the "separation" at a minium seems all but certain. Perhaps that is God's will. 

The Costs Of BO

The $600 Billion Man - WSJ:

If you cared about the country formerly known as "America", it's murderer, BO is already a name clouded in stench. This article gives some numbers to go with the smell.

$1.9 TRILLION is spent by BOistanis every year to comply with the reams of regulations spewing from the federal maw. BO added $600B to that yearly total!

2016 was the all time record for pages of new federal regulations, 95,894 pages. “Of the top 10 all-time-high Federal Register page counts, seven occurred under President Barack Obama,” 

The three best words to describe BO? Stink, Stank and STUNK! 

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The Party Declares It's Champion

James Comey and the Revenge of Washington’s Professional Class - The New Yorker:

Beginning with FDR, flexing it's muscles in Watergate, and growing more powerful ever after, The Party (TP-D) has created, nurtured, and made it's main instrument of power the Administrative or Deep State (DS). No matter what temporary occupant sits in the White House or party sits in control of Congress, the Deep State abides, and it is not a comfort to those that loved America, liberty, or morality. As the linked New Yorker column puts it:

Washington is a lawyer’s town, built on protocols and rules. If this tends to make happy-hour conversation in the city a little more pedantic than the American norm, then it also has its advantages, among them a fanaticism for records.

As I've often written, lawyers in the US are "The House" as in the gambling sense, and the number one rule of gambling is "The house WINS!". It has to, or there would be no Vegas, State Lotteries, or Casinos dotting the landscape. At any moment, lawyers are always the majority in all the legislatures and the US congress, plus they have their own branch of government, and since at least the early '70s, they also own the now most powerful "hidden in plain sight" branch of government, the Deep State.

The common thread is lawyers. Both political parties are significantly by and for lawyers, with TP being especially by and for lawyers. I'm not trying to say that lawyers are "bad people", merely that as lawyers, they have been schooled to view the world in a very specific way, and that way is not what America was -- lawyers are indeed people, but WE THE PEOPLE are not to be subserviant to a ruling lawyer class. This is why government was to be strictly LIMITED!

In addition to the question of whether Trump’s Presidential campaign colluded with the Russian government, there is now the question of whether he interfered to stop an investigation—whether he, as President, obstructed justice.

 As the excellent cartoon at the top reminds us, "obstruction of justice" is "TP normal". IRS decides to target conservatives ? Lois Lerner takes the 5th, a bunch of computers turn up wiped, and BO declares it over -- hey, don't expect the Deep State to investigate itself!

BO's justice department goes after a conservative reporter trying to find out about leaks?  Well, most people don't even know it happened -- and it is CERTAINLY no concern for goodness sake! The "good guys" (BO) went after the "bad guys", (Fox News) ... nuff said! What is the use of having a huge weapon like the DS if you can't use it to destroy your enemies?

Many "progressives" have pointed out how "scandal free" the  BO disaster was ... to the blind, coal tar and snow may as well both be pure white! BO decided the investigation of Hildebeast on 60 Minutes "She had no intent to break the law, and no secrets endangered national security" -- oh thank you great and powerful BO for decaring the conclusion of FBI "investigation" prior to it being over! (no "obstruction" there!)

BO ENDORSED HILDEBEAST ON JUNE 9th and Comey didn't fold the investigation until July 5th! Now, ostensivly, it was Slick Willie meeting with his boss on a plane in AZ on June 30th  that convinced Comey"it's over", rather than the POTUS endorsing a person under investigation by the FBI, but REALLY folks! The POTUS ENDORSES a person under active FBI investigation to take his job and that is NOT "obstruction"? Hello? Welcome to BOistan! Does not endorsing her for POTUS more than "imply" that "she is a nice lady and I hope the FBI can get by this so she can take my job". Even TP has not YET put in a CONVICTED felon ... many of them are felons, they just don't do the "conviction thing" because, well ... TP!

Anyone that is semi awake understands that in TP controlled BOistan, anyone that is not a TP member in good standing is someone that TP would see as needful of "investigation" -- and certainly, a  president that is non-TP REQUIRES "investigation".

Perhaps the "BOistan Constitution" should just say that "in the unlikely event that a person that is not a TP member in good standing is elected, a set of "Special Prosecutors", "Commissions", "Independent Councels", "Czars", etc  must be immediately appointed to investigate what are clearly "high crimes and misdemeanors", because someone not sworn to fealty to TP has ostensively gained power!" To TP, that is certainly a MAJOR crime!

We really didn't need to investigate BO ... his own book made it clear he wanted to destroy "the colonial powers" -- and he did a hell of a job on at least one of them!

Can Trump beat these bastards? Who knows, but BOistan  SUCKS!

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Word Deniers, Meaning Deniers

Climate Changes Activists: Science Deniers | National Review:

Jonah gets into my topic a little bit in the linked column. We all understand that the term "denier" is intended to bring up the image of a HOLOCAUST "denier" and thus mentally put those whose opinions on climate change differ from those who see it as an immediate existential threat in the most horrid light imaginable.

The word "denier" ties people labeled with it to those who would deny the closest thing to metaphysical evil recognized in the post-modern, post-truth materialist west. It is the medieval equivalent of labelling someone "demonic or satanic" ... it is "beyond the pale", and any remotely decent modern person should be willing to do ANYTHING to avoid that label from the POV of the priesthood of the left.

But does it work?

It has an effect. As Orwell covered so well in "Animal Farm" and "1984", language control by the powerful has a HUGE effect on the human psyche. The level of indoctrination of the youth is certainly the reason we see riots at Berkley over the very IDEA that they would be "exposed" to the horrors of speech from people identified as being as close to metaphysical spiritual evil as our insane modern world can imagine.

So they riot. Their actions are similar to burning Joan of Arc or witches in the past. They see the horror of what has been conjured to be "the ultimate evil" as simply beyond their capacity to resist -- it must be STAMPED OUT!  Like Odysseus having his ears plugged with wax and being tied to the mast so he would be saved from the siren's song, they do their modern version so they can resist the horror of Ann Coulter. What if some heard her siren wail? It is too horrible to even contemplate.

The insanity of this world however is that on one hand, post-modernism would tell us that words are only meaningful in terms of power. There is no "truth" ... not philosophical, not scientific and certainly not transcendent / theological. The only "truth" **IS** POWER, thus the riots.

Is the descent into violent physical power being the only coin of the realm being carried out by intellectuals that understand all of this, or is it merely an accident of leaving the world of transcendent meaning behind?

Since I refuse to look at my opponents on the left as idiots, I'm forced to pretty much assume malevolence on their part -- unless they can read, understand, and refute "Ideas Have Consequences".


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Sin, BO, Money

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2017/04/barack_obama_is_taking_400_000_for_a_wall_street_speech_and_that_s_fine.html

I got to hear Mayo's top guy, Dr John Noseworthy, talk at a luncheon this past week -- looks like a CEO from Hollywood casting. Tall, thin, full head of just perfectly grey flecked hair, angular leading man good looks, and oh so smooth as a speaker!

He led off with a little story of silent Cal Coolidge. Cal goes to church, reporter asks him coming out what the sermon was about. Cal says "sin", reporter inquires further on what the minister had to say on that topic. Cal responds "he was against it".

Noseworthy's topic was a  "Strong Diverse Connected Community" ... he was for it. Very effective speaking device. I hope John is a great CEO ... I have a house I want to sell here in the next year or two!

The link is to a Slate article strongly defending BO taking $400K for a speaking fee -- well deserved, W only gets $100K (tsk, tsk). BO's first book post presidency deal is $65 million, that is also a good thing according to Slate. No surprise here ... if it were not for double standards, we know that humans sans religion would have no standards at all. Most everyone loves their own team.

Here is BO on the income topic ... His supporters would no doubt point out that he was indicating limits on what OTHERS should be satisfied with in earnings. As "The One", he is naturally exempt from limits .... being on "the right side of history" has it's privileges.

I got in a little chat with a guy on FB today about some cartoonist in IA supposedly being fired because he complained about CEO pay. I went out and took a look, and the CEO of John Deere makes $16 million a year ... Joe Mauer of Twins fame, $23 million a year, Clayton Kershaw (Dodgers pitcher) is the high in MLB, average salary is $4.5 million.  Noseworthy makes $3.8 million ... less than the average MLB player. Turns out it was last years news ... too old to even  be fake.

I can understand plain old envy -- people just not liking what others make, how good looking they are, their talents, their blessings, their oxen, manservants, maidservants, etc. Covetousness is an old problem ... the answer is to repent, focus on your own blessings and move on.

Who is being "hurt" by CEO or MLB salaries? For the MLB, it is fans buying tickets and possibly consumers buying products that are advertised when games are televised. For CEOs, it is the SHAREHOLDERS, not the employees -- they are not going to receive more salary because the business KNOWS pretty much what they contribute to the bottom line. Here is an article on this if you don't already understand it. 

Even if we assume that CEOs are all overpaid, the pay is not money taken unfairly from other workers. Rather, the undeserved pay is being taken from shareholders. When corporate boards overpay a CEO, it is shareholders who lose because profits that could have become either shareholder dividends or capital gains are instead going into the pocket of the CEO.

Do the fans and the shareholders feel hurt? Not as long as their highly paid star is performing.

Most of the CEOs are actually "progressives" as well ... so we have the odd case where "progressives" hate their own because in general they are unaware they are on their side -- like Oprah, BO, or "The Clinton Fund' (funds ... for Clintons). As the Slate article thinly disguises, what is important is for young "progressives" to understand that as long as they follow "progressive" dogma, both wealth and women are on the list of perks!

Christ died for the whole sorry bunch of us. He even dined with tax collectors -- the lowest of the low  in those times. Making the money, casting the stones, puffing up our chests in pride because what **WE** make is EARNED ... oh, and JUDGEMENT! We love to judge others!

Filthy rags -- that is what we are best at.

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A Nation Gone Under

https://www.facebook.com/Area51.US/videos/10154174843304555/

Go off and watch the little video ... the rest of this will make more sense.

Reagan warned us that when we were no longer "One Nation Under God", we would be a nation "gone under". As per usual, he was right.

I could quibble with a lot in the video -- the profanity (although the "F word" is basically just a part of speech today). The statistics are mostly hooey ... take out the REALLY failed black Democrat sub-culture, and most of those clean up.

Infant mortality is a complete crock ... we count ANY baby "born alive" ... most of the countries on the planet just count "babies to term" ... they don't even try to keep many of the ones we do alive, and we do it even with the poor, the black, the fetal alcohol syndrome, crack, etc  -- compare "white middle class births within 3-4 weeks of term" and we are #1 ... damned close with life expectancy as well.

Defense? My book bill is pretty huge -- but compared to my income? Nothing of any interest ... same with the US. Compare defense to GDP and we are fourth ... behind Saudi Arabia, Israel and Russia ... India, France, UK and China are right behind us in the same ballpark. The official NATO goal that ALL the NATO countries are supposed to meet is 2%.

The fact remains, BOistan is NOT the greatest nation -- Russia, Israel, Iran and China would all be in the running ... maybe Germany. At least the rest of them have some pride in their own existence.

More education is no use ... knowing everything about nothing is counterproductive at best. WHY?? That is the question. What is it that is supposed to be unique about BOistan? We are the only nation where a majority of the youth have been taught (brainwashed?) to hate their own countries history? What would our goal be? Our people are absolutely the same and have no distinguishing features? We love everyone and believe everyone will love us because we love them? We are the only people that can't figure out if we are men or women -- or what it would even mean to "act like men"?

Perhaps our goal is "We are clueless, pity us" .... Maybe the "natural evolutionary path" of BOistan is to develop into a nation of leeches like the Pacleds from STNG ... "We look for things we need ... things to make us go .."

Berkeley Campus On Lockdown After WSJ Scare

Berkeley Campus On Lockdown After Loose Pages From ‘Wall Street Journal’ Found On Park Bench - The Onion - America's Finest News Source:

Apparently some pages of the WSJ were found lying on a bench on the campus -- serious stuff! ;-)

I believe we have a really good indicator of what "progress" means to "progressives" in BOistan. We are having a giant argument about wether a white woman that weighs all of maybe 110 lbs is too scary to put behind a podium at a major BOistan university. It looks like for the moment they are thinking that they will take this gigantic risk!

I look at the hordes of violent protesters dressed in black and wonder if we have forgotten what automatic weapons are for? Six hundred thousand Americans died fighting over slavery. If freedom of speech can be held hostage by mobs without order being taken back by whatever means are needed, what does "freedom" mean? As Jefferson put it "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants".

The tyranny of the mob certainly qualifes in my mind -- but maybe they are patriots? Either way, they are outside the law, and civilization demands law -- it certainly seems that our tree of liberty is very short on it's natural fertilizer.

Is BOistan even supposed to be civilized? It's founding principles outside of "destruction of America" are very unclear -- perhaps the biggest mob is an approved form of speech in BOistan?

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NPR, Binders of Cluelessness

'The Boston Globe' Obtains Mitt Romney's 'Binders Full Of Women' : NPR:

I got to hear this lament from NPR this PM about "how did we get to Trump from this?" as they pined away for the "good old days" when they tarred and feathered Mitt Romney with this story because "it seemed insensitive".

So they found the thick binders full of data on women that Mitt dutifully and honestly used  to place women into positions in state government when he was governor. He was a decent and honest guy, aghast at the way politics was played against him, and aghast that it was leading to Trump in 2016. Even after what happened to him, he still had the illusion that the political game was somehow "fair", or "honorable".

One only needs to listen to the NPR story to understand that it isn't -- at least not if you have any ways of thinking that don't align completely with "The Party" (TP_D) in NPRs case.

The response of the Trump voters, including a whole lot of white women was "F**K your binders and the women populating them -- we understand your game now. We don't listen to you!"

If not for the "Binders", "the '80s called and want their foreign policy back", the lies about Benghazi being due to a "movie", the dog on the car roof, and a few other odds and ends, most likely Romney would have beaten BO and be in the 2nd term of his presidency now. Trump would have never been necessary -- America would not have fallen solidly into BOistan as it did in BO's 2nd term. We might have made some pretty decent progress the past 4 years!

Ah, "the good old days" of 2012 when crying wolf over "Binders of Women" was still listened to by many more sheep out in the hinterlands than "grabbing p***ey" was listened or cared about by 2016. No rules means NO RULES!

If you cry wolf enough times, eventually NOBODY is going to believe ANYTHING you cry! No rules means NO RULES ... and then everyone just screams whatever is on their mind LOUDER. Until they turn to violence ... which usually doesn't take that long.

Not that I really expect anyone at NPR to be able to understand that. They just don't understand how smearing Romney with a lie back in 2012 contributed to them being not listened to now, and they REALLY don't understand it, because they report with glee how in fact Romney actually was the kind of rube republican who thought if he "did the right thing", he would be treated "fairly". NPR knew what was happening and poor stupid Mitt didn't ... but what that hell happened?

Hopefully Trump explained it to him when he gave him the head fake on Secretary of State. "Hey Mitt, you are completely clueless, but it is nice to have dinner with you. How did you enjoy being a speed bump out there on my path to the White House last fall? Damn, you are one slow cookie -- when they slapped you up aside the head with those Binders of Women didn't you even wake up a TINY bit?

Hey, no harm no foul Mitt. Want a position in my administration? GET A CLUE MITTENS!".

Many of us saw this coming for a LONG time ... it's here.

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White Death, The Spirit Haunts BOistan

The disease killing white Americans goes way deeper than opioids - The Washington Post:


Proverbs 29:18 Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.

Mathew 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Human life requires hope and meaning, remove them and you get death. Religion has been a cornerstone of that hope and meaning for millennia, love and family for even longer, and community wrapping those together for that whole time. 

BOistan has pretty much destroyed actual religion (some "social religion" still exists), as well as  family and community, while trying to replace it with a paternalistic "Party Community" of "The Party (TP-D)". In TP "community", everyone is  god as long as you 100% follow every single dictate of TP all the time. You can have other "friends" that are equally committed to whatever TP tells you to be committed to at the moment, but you may not stray lest you be shunned. Naturally, groups of little gods that shit don't have much luck forming much in the way of  actual robust "community". These fake communities are fragile in the extreme -- one can often observe them tittering about "what they are against" ... deploreables, country people, Christians, etc. 

For those that don't accept that bargain, you are "deploreables" and as such, deserve to die -- and as ought to be no surprise to the WaPo, they are dying -- like flies.

"So the theory comes back to despair. Case and Deaton believe that white Americans may be suffering from a lack of hope. The pain in their bodies might reflect a “spiritual” pain caused by “cumulative distress, and the failure of life to turn out as expected.” If they're right, then the problem will be much harder to solve. Politicians can pass laws to keep opioids out of people's hands or require insurers to cover mental health costs, but they can't turn back the clock to 1955."

I love how spiritual is in scare quotes -- it is indeed the scariest of concepts to the ruling powers in BOistan. What WOULD a "spirit" be? Like so many other words that are meaningless to the secular god of science -- consciousness, love, beauty, honor, morality; the scary spirit can't be measured, and like the other words I listed that can't be measured, they haunt the arid spiritual wasteland of BOistan.


I covered this back in late 2015 -- the situation is if anything worse now. I believe we can understand a LOT about BOistan by looking at how "The Party" treats this crisis vs only real comparison of the last 50 years to this -- AIDS. TP was DESPERATE to allow gays to continue to to follow the lifestyle of bathhouses and open sexual license that they had also loosed by their removal of religion / morality. AIDs was a story that CONSUMED the TP controlled media!

The wages of TP have been known for a long time -- and TP is more than fine with that. The worship of death and darkness is the natural result of rejection of life and light. The unborn, the infirm, the elderly and eventually all who fail to bend their knee to the power of TP must die!

The intellectual comfort of TP demands it.


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Baseless Claims And Spying

Did Obama Spy on Trump? | RealClearPolitics:

It is a documented FACT that all of the conversations of Trump and his associates were recorded -- because ALL conversations over US phone / data lines are recorded!

In case you want another source, here is the "Electronic Freedom Foundation"

"Secret government documents, published by the media in 2013, confirm the NSA obtains full copies of everything that is carried along major domestic fiber optic cable networks."

Since ALL of our communications are digital these days, that is ALL. Here is the key paragraph from the linked article.

Thus, in 2016, when Trump says the surveillance of him took place, Obama needed only to ask the NSA for a transcript of Trump's telephone conversations to be prepared from the digital versions that the NSA already possessed. Because the NSA has the digital version of every telephone call made to, from and within the U.S. since 2005, if President Obama last year wanted transcripts of Trump's calls made at any time, the NSA would have been duty-bound to provide them, just as it would be required to provide transcripts of Obama's calls today if President Trump wanted them.

I disagree that the NSA would currently provide the information to Trump ... at least not without leaking that they provided it and that Trump is misusing the security apparatus of BOistan. I believe the Administrative/Deep State (ADS) is the last (and arguably the most important) Democrat held part of the US government. The ADS may or may not be the "enemy of the people", but it is certainly the enemy of Trump! (and Republicans)

So Trump needs "evidence" to make the claim that BO spied on him. The FBI is investigating Trump for possibly having "connections to Russia". EVERYONE ought to have this video locked in their brain!

So did the FBI investigate Obama? In 2013 he WELCOMED the Russian proposal to get more involved in Syria. I assume the FBI has LOTS of tapes from conversations between BO and his surrogates on the topic of Russia, "Red Lines" and Syria! Why were none of those "leaked"?

Hillary, Podesta and the DNC set up insecure servers and they were hacked. The PROBLEMS came from:

1. Hillary clearly stated there was nothing secret on her server (because it was illegal for there to be anything classified on the server) -- there were at least 10's, if not hundreds of documents found to be classified on the server AFTER Hillary had made multiple illegal attempts to "wipe" it. For anyone else, this was JAIL TIME for a FELONY!
   
2. The problem with what was leaked was THE CONTENT for the DNC and Podesta. It proved they rigged the primary for Hillary, cheated on the debates, that the "Clinton Fund" was a quid pro quo "diving for dollars" for the Clintons, and a bunch of other seedy stuff. 

Did "the Russians" even do the hacking? If the MSM had covered the latest Wikileaks dump of CIA capability, pretty much nobody would be thinking that any more.

One of the most interesting disclosures concerns how the CIA can cover its tracks by leaving electronic trails suggesting the hacking is being done in different places — notably, in Russia. In fact, according to WikiLeaks, there’s an entire department dedicated to this. Its job is to “misdirect attribution” by leaving false fingerprints. If you’ve been at all skeptical about the recent levels of Russia-related hysteria, promoted heavily by U.S. intelligence agencies, alarm bells are probably going off in your head.

So BO directly tells the Russian ambassador in '12 that he is going to "have more flexibility after the election". Gee ... Did he know he was going to win? Maybe the Russians were helping him. Why not? Is this the sort of accusatory stream that only runs one way? What "evidence" did anyone have about Trump INFLUENCING the supposed "hacking" prior to the eavesdropping on the phone conversations -- which BTW didn't provide any evidence of "collusion" either.

And what would "collusion" be? "I'll have more flexibility to work with you after the election"?

WHOMEVER did the hacking and leaking of Hillary, her staff and the DNC, it was the result of:

1. Either their illegal servers, or their insanely poorly protected servers.
   
2. The ISSUE was about what was ON the servers and in the emails -- that they had classified documents on private servers, shook down campaign contributors and rigged their own primary for starters.  

In the case of Trump however, he and his incoming administration were using phone lines that OUGHT to not have been tapped -- or even if you are OK with the government recording all the calls and emails that flow, should not have been EXPOSED -- the leaks were from THIS country, and in the BO administration / Administrative Sate. Were there to be any sort of even handed treatment here, the PROBLEM (according to the media and the D's) would be the SOURCE OF THE LEAKS, not the CONTENT. BO DEFINITELY relaxed classified restrictions, basically encouraging "leaks", and the source is the NY Times.

As Inauguration Day approached, Obama White House officials grew convinced that the intelligence was damning and that they needed to ensure that as many people as possible inside government could see it, even if people without security clearances could not. Some officials began asking specific questions at intelligence briefings, knowing the answers would be archived and could be easily unearthed by investigators — including the Senate Intelligence Committee, which in early January announced an inquiry into Russian efforts to influence the election.

The "blaming the Russians" for "manipulation" is blaming their (supposed) intelligence gathering -- we are supposed to pay no attention to the content of what was leaked in those cases. 

In the Trump case, there has been NO CONTENT beyond "they talked", and that "looks bad" -- to Democrats, the left, and cranks like McCain. 

So where was that standard when the video above was happening? 

'via Blog this'

The TP Coup

A Liberal Coup Is In Progress | Power Line:

My view is that this is not new -- the coup completed sometime in BO's second term and this is BOistan -- no law, no Consitution, no morals, nothing but warfare for raw power, currently being fought in the streets, the judiciary and the Administrative State.

The battle lines are clearly drawn. What Watson has done has nothing to do with the law. It is a partisan coup, and must be resisted.

Welcome to the fight John (Hinderaker) ...

'via Blog this'

Gigapixel Trump Inauguration

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/01/politics/trump-inauguration-gigapixel/

One of the rather amazing things of our time is the ability to shoot a picture with a BILLION pixels! You can click the link and go look around at the various people ... kinda funny to see some of the expressions and how much you can zoom in. I don't really care about the numbers. As the picture shows there were LOTS of people there, and LOTS of red "Make America Great Again" hats.

When I think of the effort required to attend such an event, it makes me realize that a LOT of people are a whole lot more dedicated to poltics than I am -- which I see as GOOD in both senses. It's great they care enough to be there, and it is especially great that I and millions of others feel we don't have to care that much. That is what freedom looks like.

America was a land of LIMITED GOVERNMENT, which meant that the level of intrusion of government on anyone's life was intened to be LIMITED. Both in the ability of the government to give you what you want and to force others to give it to you was to be strictly limited. Since the government does not produce anything, certainly not wealth, that is really the only question that needs to be considered. Who makes and who takes.

If the government has enough power to "give" you more than it takes from you for "some charge" to you, the only way that can happen is when it TAKES what is "given" to you from somebody else.

When you go to the grocery store, you understand the transaction fairly well -- you walk around the store, pick up what you want, and then pay for it as you leave. The money you pay keeps the store operating and returns some level of profit to the company running the store after the store has paid for it being built, keeping the lights on, employees to stock and do check out, and of course a large part of what you paid goes to the whole system that moves the products from farmers, fishermen, bakers, processors, etc  through processing plants, trucking, packaging, advertising, etc, etc.

Everyone in that system makes some level of profit from what they do -- usually very low single digit percentages ... for groceries, it can be LESS than 1%, since 1% is the average. So if one guy owns the grocery store / chain, he needs to do 100 million dollars of business a year if he wants to have million dollar income.

Yes, some of what you pay in taxes goes for the government to make sure everyone "plays fair" and "plays safe" ... the folks that built the store, provided the power, grew the food, processed the food, etc, etc all live under some level of "regulation". Regulation is pure overhead, if everyone was honest, dedicated, competent, etc, there would be no need for regulation. Some of the money for regulation comes out of everyone's taxes, some of it you paid at the checkout because it was a "cost of doing business"  for the myriad of "farmers, processors, truckers, etc" that it took to get those products on the shelf.

When Obama was elected, the vast majority of the people in the crowd were hoping that he would tip the scales so that they were going to GET more from the government than they had gotten in the past. I'm quite certain that the vast majority of people standing in red hats assumed that Trump was going to shift the balance so that the govenment TOOK less from them and the rest of the country on the assumption that lowering the overhead of govenment would allow them to keep more in their pockets, and hopefully GROW the overall economy at a higher rate than it has in the last 8 years so that the entire pool of wealth to be spent, re-distributed, wasted, invested, etc was greater.

That isn't a very high bar. Obama was the first US president in history to never have a year of 3% growth or better, and even that pitiful level was highly suspect given the amount of changes he made in how the calculations are done. My guess is that there was very close to ZERO actual growth if the lowered value of money (inflation from "stimulus", "quantitative easing", deficit spending, etc) was accurately figured in.

So did less people show up to support the opportunity to MAKE more than showed up in '08 to TAKE more? All the people that told us that Trump would certainly lose tell us that is that case. In many ways, I hope they are right -- if there is more opportunity now, it is better to be out creating wealth than standing and watching the new guy be installed to try to make that happen!