Ellen DeGeneres, Gender, Get the Kids

Ellen DeGeneres' new GapKids line is an example of her brand relevance - Fortune:

On the way up yesterday I heard a story on MPR (or maybe it was WI Public Radio) on "gender neutral clothing for children".  The bottom line was that young parents these days are "sensitive" to dressing their children in clothing that might indicate gender, since they want it to be clear that they will support whatever gender their child turns out to be.

One of the leaders in this area is Ellen DeGeneres who received high praise on the show. I could not find the show, but I found the linked article which includes ...

"Yet despite all this, her personal brand remains authentic, says Ian Stephens, a managing partner at brand consultancy Saffron. And Ellen Show viewers seem to agree: According to a Nielsen report, she is 35% more likeable than the average talk show host, more than twice as likely to be considered both a trendsetter and funny, and 90% more likely to be considered a role model."

As I've covered many times, "progressive" requires that there ALWAYS be a new frontier of "progress",  so todays "liberals" are quite possibly tomorrows "reactionaries".

It seems like they are heard at work making early age gender changes become one of the "important issues" going forward.


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Darwin's Cathedral, Evolution, Religion and The Nature Of Society

http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Cathedral-Evolution-Religion-Society/dp/0226901351/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457489612&sr=1-1&keywords=darwin%27s+cathedral

After seeing the subject book by David Sloan Wilson referenced in a number of other books I've read, I finally got around to reading it. Certainly not a "page turner" -- lots of evolutionary terminology. "Group Selection" is the biggie -- the idea that when groups have characteristics that are more "adaptive", they will be "selected" -- meaning more babies, more babies that live, conversion of other groups, etc.

"Since Darwin's theory relies entirely on differences in survival and reproduction, it seems unable to explain groups as adaptive units. This can be called the fundamental problem of social life. Groups function best when their members provide benefits for each other, but it is difficult to convert this type of social organization into the currency of biological fitness". 

The author is attempting to resurrect "group selection" by putting it on a continuum called "multi-level selection theory" ... genes, cells, organisms, groups -- selection happens across any and all, but what is most interesting to the author is clearly groups, and how religion is a core mechanism of that selection.

 "Moral communities in larger than a few hundred individuals are "unnatural" as far as genetic evolution is concerned, because to the best of our knowledge they never existed prior to the advent of agriculture. This means that culturally evolved mechanisms are absolutely required for human society to hang together above the level of face to face groups. 

At least if you reject any potential for "divine revelation" -- just where DID Newton or Einstein come up with their initial hypothesis? ... just kidding, mostly. The point is, for a pure atheist scientist, there had BETTER be SOME explanation why "unnatural things" are happening with human groups!

The other big evolutionary discussion is the "argument from design" and "functionalism". Naturally, an atheist scientist assumes that the "design" is "random", relative to some function that is adaptive (as opposed to there being a "designer")  He uses the example of a can opener relative to functional design. "The design features that identify an object as a can opener provide such a strong argument that we don't even call it an argument, we call it self evident".  He then points out that a specific religion "Calvinism" is DESIGNED to provide the function of allowing a group larger than "natural" to function -- interestingly, "designed" by Calvin.

On page 228 he really gets down to brass tacks.

" It is true that many religious beliefs are false as literal descriptions of the real world, but this merely forces us to recognize two forms of realism; a factual realism based on literal correspondence, and a practical realism based on behavioral adaptiveness."  

"Rationality is not the gold standard on which all other forms of thought are to be judged. Adaptation is the gold standard against which rationality must be judged, along with all other forms of thought."  

and then ... "... factual realists detached from practical reality were not among our ancestors. It is the person who elevates factual truth above practical truth who must be accused of mental weakness from an evolutionary perspective". 

I could do a MUCH longer review, but I think this is the core. For those that assume there is no God, the fact that humans are able to function in groups larger than a couple hundred people at most is a HUGE problem. It clearly happened, but HOW did it happen?

The answer is just what I harp on -- religion. In the West, Judaism and Christianity -- which CLEARLY were the  "most adaptive", or "divinely inspired" if you are a believer. If you are an evolutionist, they realize that they had damned well better figure out that "practical realism" is FAR superior to "factual realism" (or at least what the consciousness that we have no clue as to what it is THINKS is "factual") from an ADAPTIVE POV!

 Having the "facts" right, but turning up dead (as in "our culture")  -- meaning that you are NOT "among the ancestors" of the future doesn't fit well with having a "superior" brain -- even if you DO feel really great about gay "marriage"! "Superior" means staying in the gene pool in the evolutionary world!No matter how "good" something may be for your own moral reasoning, if you drop out of the gene pool, your "good" fails the test of survival.

Is it even POSSIBLE to have civilization as we know it without a huge majority of the people in that civilization fervently believing that the basis for their civilization is divine and sacred, or at the very least "exceptional"?  From what we have seen to date, not without massive coercive force as in National Socialist Germany, USSR, China, North Korea, etc. It remains to be seen in a couple cases if brutal force can be a substitute for belief. Even if it CAN, is that REALLY what our "factual realist" scientists find to be a "good idea"?

All in all, a good book -- most could read the first 20 pages and the last 20 and get 80% of the value out of it. It is worth at least that effort.

Falling From God to Tyranny, Burke

From Edmund Burke, to a member of the French Assembly, 1791: 

Great nations have fallen before and they will fall again and again. The principles are well known, but readers of this blog realize that Western civilization has made a very conscious choice to bury the knowledge and principles that caused it to once rise.

In the excellent note linked above (just before the end), Edmund Burke has this to say:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

"Their passions forge their fetters".

The passion to be entirely free from moral strictures, free from work, free from a need to live within our means -- "free" in the sense of "free stuff", ignoring the facts of even science that "there is NO free lunch". Everything has a cost, and that which appears most "free" often has the highest cost!

The passion for an earthly savior -- "Hope and Change", with whatever imaginary policy or progrom one may choose to project on such vacuous words. "Make America Great Again" is "Yugely" specific in comparison -- it asserts a specific nation, with "greatness" for a goal, a specificity far beyond "Hope and Change", however it is still irrationally imprecise.

The slogans of BO and now of Trump are very thinly disguised appeals to hand over the nation to a "strong man". BO has already crossed the rubicon of usurping the Constitution on immigration and EPA regulation (stayed by the court for the moment). Trump. Hillary and Bernie have all declared they will do the same on various topics -- guns, income, jobs, walls, etc.

We are absolutely a nation that has lost the internal controlling power of religion -- 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"!

So deeply in debt, morally corrupt, and in mass, totally unschooled as to the the requirements of what keeping the nation bequeathed to us operating, we stumble toward an election which might provide us with the most vile alternatives in American history. It is a situation we richly deserve -- these things have been TOTALLY KNOWABLE for at least centuries, and to a significant degree millennia!!

We have no excuse!

The Joys Of Satan, Old But Not Eternal

How David Hume Helped Me Solve My Midlife Crisis - The Atlantic:

This rather long intensely selfish article might be an appropriate parable for the elite of our lost age. It opens with dissolution of family, depression, anxiety, but passes through the "Satanic Rapture" that nothing has meaning save sensual pleasure, breaking of taboos, and "irrational exuberance". Ah, the pleasures of leaving behind the awful "irrationality of God" for the "irrationality of self". Or perhaps the ultimate Satanic rationality of denying the existence of all -- there is no creation, no self, only illusion as in the Buddhist philosophy.

The article ends with this:

"In 2010, Alvy and I got married—the future reinvented. Once again, I was an exceptionally fortunate and happy woman, full of irrational exuberance and everyday joy. But that’s not all I was. I’d discovered that I could love women as well as men, history as well as science, and that I could make my way through sadness and solitude, not just happiness. Like Dolu and Desideri, the gender-bending abbé and the Siamese astronomer-king, and, most of all, like Hume himself, I had found my salvation in the sheer endless curiosity of the human mind—and the sheer endless variety of human experience."

I enjoy the vanity of the atheistic -- unburdened with the sense that they might have an audience infinitely more aware and existing more "solidly" as the pure spirit and source of all than the Buddha ever conceived in losing his soul to dissolution, they wax excessive about all sorts of details, nearly always focused on lost souls like themselves. When one is focused on something of supposedly cosmic import, need "gender-bending" be involved?

But it must, it must!  (apologies to "Blazing Saddles")  The perversion of the sexual is at the core of the Satanic impulse -- a place where the inversion of the male and the female and Gods created sexuality can be perverted in a myriad of easy ways, sometimes even pleasurable for a short season.

Reproduction -- one of the low but necessary functions of the fallen physical world, barely above respiration, consumption, defecation, etc, torn from it's intended purpose and trumpted as "freedom" -- from order at least, but blissfully unaware of service to chaos. Certainly we die when respiration or reproduction are prevented -- rather quickly in the case of respiration, in a couple of largely missing generations as we are finding in the west with reproduction.

I did have another insight here. We are told in these times of few "truths" beyond "Climate Change" being certain and settled, that sexual preference (unlike gender) is fixed very early in life.  In fact, it is already illegal in some states to even ATTEMPT to get a person to change their sexual preference from being gay to heterosexual. If the left has their way, it will be illegal nationally. While the left has extreme aversion to laws acting in the direction of nature to perversion, it is critical to get as many laws as possible operating to prevent the move from perversion to nature!

You see, if you are gay, THEN your "orientation is fixed" -- but if you are heterosexual, it is HIGHLY likely that you are actually at least bi, or maybe gay. "Nature" only made non-adaptive sexuality fixed. Non-adaptive sexuality can be changed at any point in life just like gender! Isn't that special?

See, at age 50, this former heterosexual spontaneously converted to being bi -- with no therapy at all (although I'm certain that such therapy is TOTALLY legal, likely encouraged, and probably required to be covered under BOcare!) -- if she had been homosexual, there may need to be an investigation to find out what horror could have instigated a shift to heterosexuality!

They were adventures with both women and men. In my period of crisis I had discovered that I could have deep, sustaining friendships with women, as well as romance. I had been wrong about that part of my identity, too.

It's a "secular miracle"! It's enough to make a person "leap for irrational exuberant joy"!  Does this woman really think there is anything new under the sun here? I suppose the "new" part is that if she and folks like her have their way, my ability to write such sacrilege as this will be declared "illegal" just like the idea that sexual preference (or at least the perversion of it) is FAR more a "choice" than a "characteristic".

See how much better that is than the church making laws and banning texts?

The saddest part of all of this is that if you are a person of intelligence and education with connections -- who knows what kind of support she had from her ex husband and kids, as well as her brother ... "Blake, an art historian who knows Italian (and French, German, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon), and got him to translate for me", on top of meeting the man that she married in that last paragraph, who was one of the founders of Pixar.

See, this woman is part of the "1%" -- or certainly the "5 or 10%" ... she has connections in major universities and corporations, lots of education. She can live the life of a dissolute bohemian and not end up as one of the statistics of addiction, mental illness and suicide like vast swaths of white middle America. Her "adventurous journey" can be proudly chronicled in the Atlantic rather than on the obit page of nowhere flyover country! 

In this world, the average schmo -- the "bitter clingers" REALLY needed those Bibles, patriotism, families, communities, jobs and stability to stay alive at all, let alone have a "good life", but those have all been flushed down the toilet of post modern deconstructionist tripe. "Without vision, the people perish" -- but without any meaning or structure at all, they die horrible lonely deaths, often at their own hands. 

Or they vote for Trump or Hillary!


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Lutherans For Sharia

Fantasy Islam (Kafir Edition): Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota | Frontpage Mag:

I sometimes hesitate to call myself "Lutheran" due to the "Evangelical Lutheran Church in America" (ELCA) ... they may as well just change their name to "TP" (The Party, Democrat). They are on board with killing the unborn, gay "marriage" and climate change. It appears that Sharia Law for majority Muslim areas is just fine with them as well.

Christ said to love our enemies, he didn't say not to have any! (PJ O'Rourke)

We also don't need to PUBLISH works of fantasy about what we would imagine Islam to be if it wasn't actually Islam. This is obviously easy for the ELCA, as they have imagined a "christianity" that just happens to be the party line of TP -- they just have to stop saying "Christmas"!

Not much reason to read the attached -- the ELCA has published a booklet singing the praises of our wonderful (imaginary) Islamic neighbors. One of the Muslim leaders that is listed as "approving" of their fiction also happens to approve of Hamas, Jihad and Sharia Law ... no surprise at all.

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Trump Derangement Syndrome, Ghostbusters Election

For Trump Supporters, a Reckoning Is at Hand - Jonah Goldberg - Page 1:

I have a ton of respect for Jonah Goldberg, but it has become apparent that he has fallen to "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (TDS), a recent variant of "Bush Derangement Syndrome".  He definitely needs some "Whale Time" (see Bible) to reflect on deeper issues and a broader perspective.

What **IS** unique about this juncture is that TDS affects both sides of the political spectrum, so we are "crossing the streams".  If you read this blog, you know that I am WELL aware of the tragedy of BO, but in my disgust, I have forgotten that history repeats itself "First as tragedy, then as farce"! I have realized that we are in the "Ghostbusters Election"!

I'm a member of the closed group "Fans of Best of the Web", and what is going on out there is THIS!

In all seriousness, can't conservatives get SOME sense of perspective??? My God, we lived through Slick Willie staining dresses and ejaculating all over the Oval Office! The Democrats have killed 60 million babies in their mothers wombs, Facebook has 58 genders (they had 57, but they got Heinz 57 jokes so they added one), people are cheering over 7 year old girls changing to boys.  Sodom and Gomorrah were moral Amish Villages compared to America today, and people are worried about he "Republican Brand"?

Better the GOP do battle with a know-nothing bigot (and lose the presidency) than become the party of know-nothing bigots (and still lose the presidency). 

That's why I embrace the Twitter hashtag #NeverTrump, initiated by conservative talk show host Erick Erickson. For too long, Trump has benefited from the assumption that the non-Trump faction of the party will be "reasonable" and support the nominee. Such thinking paves the road to power for demagogues.

"We have met the enemy and he is us". Being conservative is to have a STRONG willingness to face reality. Did the "establishment" of the Republican Party really think that we were going to live in the "post stain cesspool" that is America and not "get any on us"? As I've said before, what part of "NO RULES" is it that purist Republicans are missing? Sure, Trump may WELL be the "form of our destructor" (this IS the Ghostbusters election after all).

Have we forgotten that we face Hildebeast? The Abomination of Desolation!

I really don't even find the KKK flap to be worthy of comment. Consider this. How likely is it that some reporter is going to talk to Hillary about the BLM protesters screaming "Pigs in blankets, fry them like bacon" and see if she wants to "repudiate them"? The fact that the MSM treats R's like that and the fact that not only OUR supposedly conservative commentators that know better fall for it (like NR),  is exactly why Trump is popular. People are so sick of the hypocrisy that they just want tough nasty in your face talk like BO and the entire left has been treating us "Bitter Clingers" to for 7 years and much longer.

They want to call us "racist" for saying "All" or "Blue" lives matter? Can any human NOT feel the "F you!" rise up in their craw when that happens? I **AM** PROUD to be a White American! I'm even proud to be a MALE -- and not "Cisgendered". TP and now apparently NR demand that half the country hang their heads and grovel. If that works, as it looks it will, we are even more "done" than I thought we were.

BO and "The Party (TP-D)" have been calling us out for a LONG time here. It has obviously made Mittens Romney and others "uncomfortable".

Take the "Rock Ribbed" pragmatic tough fight out of Republican and you REALLY have no "brand" at all remaining! Let THIS be the battle cry of 2016!

We came, we saw, we kicked their asses!


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Bush Derangement Syndrome (Way Back Machine)

Bush Derangement Syndrome - Charles Krauthammer - Page full:

I recalled this having been written, but it was "pre-blog". Let me count the ways I love the "Way Back Machine" of the Internet! (oh, BTW, if you take the time to watch this episode, you will notice a b number of "small historical issues" (stoplights and city traffic at time of Beethoven, 4th of July as a holiday in early 1800s Austria, etc) ... those were pretty standard for Mr. Peabody!

Just read the whole thing, it explains A LOT, and it is VERY FUNNY! ... unfortunately, it is also very true, very real, and it could have been applied to a lot of (nearly always right wing) politicians in the past -- Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan, Gingrich.

Bush Derangement Syndrome: the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush.

It will unquestionably be applied in the future as well ... like Trump, where it is happening on BOTH sides.

Now, I cannot testify to Howard Dean's sanity before this campaign, but five terms as governor by a man with no visible tics and no history of involuntary confinement is pretty good evidence of a normal mental status. When he avers, however, that ``the most interesting'' theory as to why the president is ``suppressing'' the 9/11 report is that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance, it's time to check on thorazine supplies. 

When Rep. Cynthia McKinney first broached this idea before the 2002 primary election, it was considered so nutty it helped make her former Rep. McKinney. Today the Democratic presidential front-runner professes agnosticism as to whether the president of the United States was tipped off about 9/11 by the Saudis, and it goes unnoticed. The virus is spreading.

Humans are NOT "rational", we are RATIONALIZING, and unfortunately, when the dominant liberal media starts chasing their own tail as primitive "whirling dervishes", they become IRRATIONAL!

When BOTH SIDES go irrational, well then  ....


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Leviticus 19:15, Judgement , Inversion, Law

The title  verse:

"You shall do no injustice in judgement; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly." 

The Equal Protection Clause of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

In order to understand "Equal Protection", you need to also look at the 5th Amendment. The Magna Carta, clause 39 stated it:

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.

The 5th amendment merely says:

Nor shall any person be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law

 If the US was to have remained a Constitutional Republic, ruled by laws rather than men, people that voted should all be very aware of this "decent of law". They would at least understand what is behind the 23 Lawgivers around the chamber of the US House of Representatives in our capitol.

The judgement of all humans is corrupt, but we can look back through history to the Bible and see that the temptation is to judge unfairly, differently for "the poor or the great". Corruption is corruption, IN EITHER DIRECTION!

One of the spiritual rules of the universe is that when there is an inversion of meaning -- left becomes right, good becomes evil, evil becomes good, male becomes female and female becomes male, then you see the hand of Satan operating directly before your face. Let those that have eyes SEE!

The "Progressive Income Tax" in the US -- along with "Affirmative Action" and other such laws are examples of inversion! They EXPLICITLY celebrate the corruption of judgement as being a "good", when it is declared directly in the Bible as an EVIL. The corruption of judgement destroys and invalidates law. Without law, there is no civilization except that based on raw power and coercion.

The root of the end of America was the abandonment of God -- the increasing evidence of Satanic inversion is simply the proof of the fact that God's judgement is certain and as Reagan said:

Democrats Killing Blacks As Undesirables

http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/us/this-proves-once-and-for-all-that-conservatives-are-not-racist

It's OK folks, it's for a GOOD CAUSE! Convenience! Besides, one of the demigods of liberalism, Margret Sanger has this to say about the issue. I mean, if they were "desirable", why would you kill them?

“We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”

“They are…human weeds,’ ‘reckless breeders,’ ’spawning… human beings who never should have been born.”

“Birth control is nothing more or less than…weeding out the unfit.”

Suppose you will ever hear the MSM ask a Democrat candidate about Margaret Sanger? If you want to read a little more on the American genocide that makes Hitler look like a saint in comparison ... http://www.blackgenocide.org/black.html

Changing Your Seven Year Olds Gender

Why We Love 7-Year-Old Transgender Activist, Avery Jackson, And Her Incredible Family:

A few weeks ago, after hearing the term on NPR a few hundred times, I realized that my gender, and the gender of everyone I know had changed. We are no longer "Male and Female" as God created us, but those of us whose brains match our gonads are "Cisgender", often abbreviated "Cis". NPR uses the term pretty much all the time now.

I've commented in many posts that the control of language is one of the primary mechanisms of totalitarianism -- George Orwell in 1984 and Animal Farm is both a chilling and entertaining introduction to understanding this. Changing the meaning of words and creating and controlling categories destroys the ability of the masses to discuss what is happening.

They know something is wrong, but they can't "put it into words". They can't do that because the old words that would have let them communicate are no longer used, or in some cases not even "allowed", while the new or re-used words have changed the meanings of even the most basic things -- man, woman, marriage, family, truth, good, bad, war, peace, etc.

Avery Jackson is a 7-year-old transgender girl and she is blowing the Internet away with her amazing story of transition. The Next Family is so impressed with Avery Jackson’s spunk and courage and all that her parents have done in support of Avery’s transition that we just have to share with you 10 reasons why we love Avery and the Jackson Family.

Up until a few years ago, when your little Granddaughter or girl said "Mommy, why can't I be a boy?", or "I want to be a boy". It was cause for a little smile and a discussion about how both little boys and girls are special and how glad we are that God gave us a little girl!". Knowing that there may well be a "tomboy phase" to follow, or even that she may become an astronaut (oops ...  well, maybe if she lived in Russia or China!).

I've heard coverage of the "important new issue" of "transgender" children on MPR a few times. They are still "discussing" how mandatory it needs to be, but it is clear that if a little girl of boy makes their thoughts of possibly preferring the opposite gender known to school authorities, it is time for some SERIOUS thought! When a "liberal" has an idea that they believe to be "good", it is only a short step to it being "mandatory and paid for by the state!".

When I tell you that the destruction of civilization will leave us with NOTHING I sometimes realize that I can't come even close to imagining the level of depravity that consumes Satan and his followers. He seeks to utterly destroy ALL of creation!!  Even the term "meaning" becomes  dissolved into  chaotic gibberish.

As write away on my fiction, I become absorbed in the idea that creation might include infinite timelines -- those closer to the will of God being closer to Heaven, and those farther away from his will closer to Hell. Yes, it is fiction as far as I know, but sometimes I can't imagine how God has allowed evil to corrupt what we generally believe to be the single history of creation to this extent!










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Trump Four Hour Erection

Trump and the Rise of the Unprotected: | COP Message Board Posts:

We are ALL very aware that modern life in America is COARSE, profane, disconnected, uncivil. As I've said before, I never even figured out what "gay" was prior to college. I certainly knew what an erection was, but I could not even imagine that there would be constant commercials on TV doing the "in the event of ...".  I'm so thankful I got to grow up in that world!

At a male outing one time watching football, a buddy remarked "4 hours? Hell, I'd drive over and show that one to my neighbor!" ... A certain amount of coarseness was always to be expected in male culture, it has just become completely pervasive. So while we are at it, as a public service, if you ever need to go into the doctor for the dreaded 4 hour wood, this is what they show you ...

The linked article is Peggy Noonan talking about the elites and the "unprotected". Her theory is:

There are the protected and the unprotected. The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting to push back, powerfully. 

The protected are the accomplished, the secure, the successful—those who have power or access to it. They are protected from much of the roughness of the world. More to the point, they are protected from the world they have created. Again, they make public policy and have for some time.

I'd argue that the ONLY "protected" are those connected to government and the VERY rich. The current assumption is that "government is too big to fail", so any sort of teacher, city, county, state, federal, etc worker that has a government inflation adjusted pension plus great lifetime medical can feel "protected".

As I've commented before, I really don't know where exactly your wealth has to be in order to see yourself as "protected" outside of the previous paragraph  -- for me it would be AT LEAST 10's of millions of dollars.  I find prospects for high inflation likely, but even at this moment, it is hard to get much over 1% for cash, and as I've blogged on, you may soon have to PAY to stash cash! Anyone who thinks that a "broad based portfolio of stock and bond index funds" is "secure" is delusional. It could EASILY drop 50% or much more in the next five to ten years if not much sooner!

Certainly, vast swaths of America ARE delusional -- they actually do believe that "inflation / markets / interest / medical costs / etc" will follow "some reasonable model" that they have in their mind. This in a country with $19T in debt, $120T in unfunded liabilities, negative growth, uncontrolled borders and rapidly shrinking workforce participation.

Peggy also discusses "immigration"  ...

In wise governments the top is attentive to the realities of the lives of normal people, and careful about their anxieties. That’s more or less how America used to be. There didn’t seem to be so much distance between the top and the bottom. 

Now is seems the attitude of the top half is: You’re on your own. Get with the program, little racist.

Ah, the "bitter clingers". Here in MN, our own heavily medicated governor has declared that he wants anyone who doesn't want vast numbers of immigrants -- Muslims or whatever, to "leave"! Because see, MN has no workers left since birth control, abortion and gay "marriage" have been so "successful", so our future depends on it! Destroying America was actually simple for the left -- they just replaced the population!

The Republican establishment has pretty much decided that it is way too late to save America from a total change in racial demographics, they agree with the Democrats -- Republicans need to "get with the program" or they are GONE!

But perhaps they forgot about the coarse, profane, disconnected and uncivil nation they have wrought. If the vast majority of the white voters that are apolitical, or "blue dog" Democrats, the "Tea Party" Republicans who have had it with the "establishment" and even a significant number of blacks, who often don't have a lot of love for hispanics, along with no doubt a good percentage of even successful hispanics who see the continuing uncontrolled wave from Mexico as a threat to the lives they have built here, get riled up and behind Trump, then ????

As PowerLine argue here, it could be 1976 from a new slant ...

The genius of Jimmy Carter was to understand that after Johnson and Nixon, what the country wanted in a president was someone who taught Sunday school. The genius of Trump is to understand that after the unhappy Bush presidency and the divisiveness of Obama, a large plurality of Americans wants someone who will smash up the existing order—the details of how are not important.

In coarse reality TV, post stained blue dress, lets talk about gay sex, sex change and four hour erections america, it may be most important to the "mass electorate" that our next president match the culture that has been wrought -- and that they CERTAINLY have nothing to do with Sunday school!

The country the Trump voters knew is GONE and they don't recognize the one they are in. The people that have been telling them what to think for the last few decades while they took their religion, their decency, their values, their jobs, their pensions, their kids and even a remote sense that they lived in a country with any backbone or future of late. They have nothing at all to lose -- they are killing themselves after one fashion or another in increasing epidemic proportions.

In a country with no morals, no standards and a blatant pounding coarseness is not Trump the most perfect reflection of  "unprotected America" in the same way as Hillary is the perfect reflexion of "protected America" .... old, ugly, entitled, dismissive, criminal, false, depressing.

I believe this election is heading to  "choosing our destructor"!

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Intolerant left

http://dailysignal.com/2016/02/18/the-rise-of-intolerant-liberals/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonu6zLe+%2FhmjTEU5z16e0vUaC2gYkz2EFye+LIHETpodcMTcdjMrzYDBceEJhqyQJxPr3NLtQN191pRhLiDA%3D%3D

Nothing in the linked article is new if you read this Blog semi-regularly, but even I like to have corroboration sometimes.

For one thing, liberalism is no longer mainly about ideas. It is about power—as in who has it and who doesn’t. Believing they already know the answers to all questions, liberals view politics and governing as mopping up operations.

Never heard me say that have you? How about this one:

Today, there is virtually no government program that liberals won’t embrace. Clinton had his Sister Souljah moment when he repudiated extremism in his party. Today liberals can’t get close enough to the “black lives matter” movement.

The entire article is great -- but I'm the choir. It sounds like a good book coming out, but I'm afraid it will be low on my list. It sounds like a lot of ground that I've well covered.

There’s an old saying, he who controls knowledge controls power. Liberals get this adage instinctively. They treat truth not as wisdom—as something to be discovered—but as a will to power to be imposed by law and governmental fiat.

WaPo Trump Argument Ad Hitler, (Godwin's Law)

The moment of truth: We must stop Trump - The Washington Post:

Like any number of us raised in the late 20th century, I have spent my life perplexed about exactly how Hitler could have come to power in Germany. Watching Donald Trump’s rise, I now understand. Leave aside whether a direct comparison of Trump to Hitler is accurate. That is not my point. My point rather is about how a demagogic opportunist can exploit a divided country.

He opens with the argument from Hitler -- Godwin's Law, "Modern arguments eventually get to Hitler", however "that isn't his point".  Right. Mention Hitler and Trump in the same paragraph, but that isn't your point!

I believe that the truth in this is because all we have in modern times for a "metaphysical philosophical base" is Hitler, as in basically "What Would Hitler Do?" WWHD. This is because the positive role model for Western civilization, "What Would Jesus Do?" (WWJD) can't be used in meaningful ways other than when discussing with actual PRACTICING Christians -- as in Christ is real, Hell is real, abortion is murder and homosexuality is a sin (like adultery), these days. There aren't hardly enough of Christians like that left to even begin to make moral points.

Therefore, the ONLY remaining generally agreed cultural "transcendent value" is the negative of Hitler! Modern man has a hard time even recognizing evil, but when he does, he has no other referent than Hitler, and he has no generally agreed positive referent at all. As Nietzsche talks of "beyond good and evil", one might refer to this as "beyond fallen". A few moments of focus on this truth may help make sense of  "modern" or "post modern" (post truth, morals, reason).

Germany supported Hitler because he appealed to their pride as a people, the sense that they had been "sold out" by previous leaders, the Jews and the rest of the world. He promised to return them to the greatness that was their birthright as a people. **ALL** leaders appeal to various emotional aspects of the population -- FDR, Kennedy, Reagan and BO are all examples of previous relatively recent leaders that were in some sense "populist" and used their charisma to get into office.

The difference prior to BO was that our government was LIMITED by a written Constitution and congressional adherence to oaths to limit the power of the executive. BO broke that, so from here out -- unless by some miracle we come to our senses and return to rule of law and limited government, ANY president is dangerous!

The media created and nurtured Trump up until very recently. First through the very creation of the general public worship of "the lifestyles of the rich and famous" both in general and in specific "reality" shows -- the Kardashians, Apprentice, etc.  We have been traveling to the abyss for a long while -- Solzhenitsyn at Harvard 1978 is a worthy read to refresh your memory if you need it.

They LOVED Trump, because they assumed that he would create giant rifts in the Republican party, most likely resulting in him being a 3rd party candidate, taking "20%" of the vote and handing victory to Hillary or Bernie. Now, suddenly they realize they created a Frankenstein, and they may be totally unable to defeat him, so they want Republican help!

Since Republicans retain concepts of "long term view, morality, decency, etc", many may fall for such naked manipulation -- it will come from the right as well.  As I've said elsewhere, for anyone with true conservative principles, Trump is a hard pill to swallow.

The fact is that BO already destroyed what was America -- it's over, get used to it. Hillary or Bernie have BOTH talked about continuing illegal executive orders, with attempting to remove guns from private citizens in direct usurpation of the 2nd amendment. Hillary is a known criminal and congenital liar. BS is a socialist, do we really want to be Venezuela?

While Trump is crude, crass and historically anything but a "conservative", his personal accomplishments FAR exceed either Hillary or BS. Building businesses and making money is FAR more "reality based" than either of the candidates for "The Party (TP-D)". TP remains the chief KNOWN and STATED adversary of any vestige of what was America -- eg. private property, freedom of worship, freedom of political speech.

The concern about Trump will of course be even stronger from true practicing Christians -- here is an article in that vein.  Can anyone REALLY look at Hillary or BS and claim there is more "decency" there? We live in a nation that has murdered 60 million babies in their mothers wombs, condones gay "marriage", and currently is hard at trying to make it "normal" for parents to start gender change therapy if a little girl of boy of less than 10 years of age starts to identify as "the other gender". How long will it before it is MANDATORY for parents to support this? That is the standard path for "liberals" ... what they declare to be a "good idea" tends to quickly become mandatory!

Trump is at least a "wild card". We know what we get with a BS or Hildebeast, and I sure as hell don't want ANY of it!

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Revulsion for Scalia, Priceless!

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/antonin-scalia-looking-backward

I can imagine articles similar to the linked being written for Jesus after the crucifixion. "He mostly failed ...".  Given the direction of the country, I suspect they are right about Scalia, but God will provide the ultimate determination of that as well!

Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed.

I thought this was rich ...

His revulsion toward homosexuality, a touchstone of his world view, appeared straight out of his sheltered, nineteen-forties boyhood.

It turns out that when tested on a PET scan, even people that SWORE they were "perfectly OK" with homosexuality were betrayed by their own brains displaying "revulsion". From a Darwinian POV, it is hard to imagine something less "adaptive" to the species, so from a scientific POV, that our our brains would be  so wired is anything but a surprise. Not surprising from a created POV either! So Scalia was human -- and admitted it, which is VERY unpopular today! Lying about even what your basic cells believe is the price "honor in the modern moral cesspool

But it was in his jurisprudence that Scalia most self-consciously looked to the past. He pioneered “originalism,” a theory holding that the Constitution should be interpreted in line with the beliefs of the white men, many of them slave owners, who ratified it in the late eighteenth century.

Let's beat up on those dead white guys -- oh, and certainly trash what they bequeathed to us!  We are doing a hell of a job -- whatever they name the post-BO wasteland, it isn't "America"!

To be laid to rest after dying peacefully on a hunting trip at 79 and to have your Son preside at your funeral! It just doesn't get any better than that! I can think of nobody more richly deserving.

Oh, to have the kinds of enemies that wrote this column? PRICELESS!

Time Travel With PJ

Even Stoned And 16, I Couldn’t Have Imagined This Dystopian Election - The Daily Beast:

This is entertainment, PJ Style. Apparently the part about the illegitimate son is true... obviously, none of his voters care what he did in his past life anyway -- he is a D AND a SOCIALIST!  We are talking complete "get out of jail free"! If the mother was insane and he killed the kid, it would likely add 5% at least to his vote from the left!

I've started to like the Dead a lot better as an old guy -- MORE PATIENCE! But this is still pretty funny!

"Hillary Rodham has a longer radioactive half-life than the Grateful Dead, and half of them are—I regret to inform you—dead, gratefully or otherwise. But they’re still packing venues. (Joke from the future: “What’s a Grateful Dead fan say when he runs out of pot? ‘What a shitty band.’”) "

I also loved this section. My favorite reference to the "Port Huron Statement" is here ...

If Bring-Down Bernie gets elected, all of life will be like being trapped in a meeting of the Students for a Democratic Society writing the Port Huron Statement until the end of time.

He probably won’t get elected. But that’s only because of LBJ avatar reincarnation of Shiva the Destroyer Intercontinental Ballistic Sister Hillary Rodham.

You know that art major who chews her hair and thinks she’s a witch? Hillary is a witch. Wait and see the spell she casts on this guy Bill she’s going to marry who is the Town Dog-Catcher in East Jesus, Arkansas, or something, and the next thing he knows he’s on trial in the U.S. Senate for getting head. 

Unless you make her chill out.

Just read it if you like PJ, if you don't like him, AVOID IT! I'm a conservative, not a liberal, I actually think it is good that not everyone enjoys what I do!

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The Top 1% In Each State

http://mentalfloss.com/article/61362/what-youd-have-make-be-top-1-each-state

A little perspective on the evil 1% in each state. In Arkansas, you can get there with $228K. Sure, that may sound like "a whole lot" to a bunch of you, but consider that for the vast number of people that hit that lofty "top 1%", it is for a year or a few years at most. Perhaps they had a stock that did really well, got some significant award or bonus from work -- or got "bought out" so they are not likely to be working for the same amount of money for awhile, if ever.

While the "malefactors of great wealth" get LOTS of abuse these days, you don't fly around in a private jet on $228-$500K or so even if you make it for a FEW years!

American has always allowed you to hate these horrible folks all you want. What is new in this non-Constitutional mobocracy is that now it is perfectly legitimate to loot any amount wished up to ALL OF IT from these nasty high earning beasts!

In olden times, we used to have "Nursery Rhymes" like the "The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs" in which even small children learned that when the envious or greedy decided that they would cut open the "Goose" to get it all right now, they discovered that they destroyed the natural order of things and they ceased to receive the bounty they were already receiving.

But I'm certain there is no lesson there for the rush to socialism we see today!

BO, In His Own Actions

http://www.westernjournalism.com/watch-krauthammer-just-pointed-out-exactly-why-obama-skipped-scalias-funeral-with-3-words/

Anyone that cares already knows what BO thinks about "traditions", "honor", "respect" and all that "stupid stuff".  Whatever he "says" -- and how could ANYONE care what the incontinent gasbag "says" any more, need only to look at his ACTIONS to realize the truth of what I've been saying since 2008.

He wrote it in his book for goodness sakes!!!!!!

The reaction to BO is precisely TRUMP! Will Trump fix anything? Most likely not -- in fact, he will most likely make it worse, but once once people are completely angry, they "just want revenge". Maybe stupid, maybe destructive, maybe even terminal, but after a certain point, it just doesn't matter.

As I've wrote more than a few times, "Let It Burn" being one that springs to mind, after a certain point,  one needs to accept the inevitable!

BO doesn't give a RATS ASS for "civility", "decency", "statesmanship", or "being president" -- he is and always has been in it to "destroy the colonial powers" -- and pick up as much as he can for himself while he is doing it.

The saddest part is that we live in an area of N America where well over 50% of the population doesn't care enough to know, and if they DID fully know, their biggest concern would still align with BO pretty well -- What's in it for them!!!

NPR Keeps On Borking

Robert Bork's Supreme Court Nomination 'Changed Everything, Maybe Forever' : It's All Politics : NPR:

Robert Bork died the Wednesday before the Saturday Scalia died. The following Monday I went up to help move my Dad to a nursing home for what we hope will be a short stay and got to hear a LOT of NPR. One name I heard very little of was "Bork". When a name becomes a verb, as in "Borking", we know that something major happened.

Whenever a liberal judge dies with an R in the WH, the press pretty much goes berserk about "maintaining the balance in the court" -- how critical it is, and how virtually any action taken by whatever D's are in opposition is completely justified. Somehow I doubt there will be much of that discussion this time.

One of the COMMON things of which we are now reminded is that Democrats confirmed Anthony Kennedy in '88, an election year, and that is a "precedent", but the only reason the confirmation was in '88 is because the Bork debacle had happened in '97. Note as well that the Democrats were able force Reagan a two term VERY popular president, to appoint a clear moderate that is today a standard "swing vote" on the court, and completely rejected a totally solid candidate on an ideological basis only, thus setting the precedent for exactly what we have today!

Simply reporting that fact isn't good enough for NPR even today, thus they persist in "Borking"  ...

He opposed the Supreme Court's one man, one vote decision on legislative apportionment.

To understand this, you need to go to "Reynolds vs Sims" (1964) and "Baker vs Carr" (1964). Everyone got to vote in all cases, the issue was how equal the numbers in districts were and if the question was a legislative, judicial federal or state question. Those rulings gave us the strange geometry to congressional and state districts that we see today. Both decisions also had Constitutional intent and States Rights issues. It had NOTHING to do with each person getting to vote!

He wrote an article opposing the 1964 civil rights law that required hotels, restaurants and other businesses to serve people of all races.

While "liberals" love the use of coercive FORCE to achieve their visions, conservatives like to use persuasion and market forces, plus they like to have people make decisions by vote at the lowest level possible. The feds allowed states to decide on discriminating against smokers on a state by state basis. Currently, they are doing the same with marijuana. The court could have allowed states to continue to decide how to regulate abortion in each state.

NPR then and NPR now wants to justify "Borking" because he was "a racist". What he was, like Scalia, was a man who believed in rule of law, as did our founders. They EXPLICITLY wanted the states to be allowed maximal freedom from federal coercion, so that each would be a "laboratory" where laws and polices could be "tested" and people could "vote with their feet" if they like the policies of some states better than others!

He opposed a 1965 Supreme Court decision that struck down a state law banning contraceptives for married couples. There is no right to privacy in the Constitution, Bork said.

Again, he was against the FEDERAL government FORCING states to comply! Which is what the Constitution is against as well -- because the Constitution was explicitly written to LIMIT  centralized authoritarian government because it is an extreme danger to liberty!

As I've written before, any that want to read the Constitution will find that Bork was right, there is no "right to privacy" in the Constitution ... all "penumbra"!

CERTAINLY if we as a nation wanted to create a federal level "right to privacy", we could write a Constitutional Amendment for it, debate it, and approve it, and THEN there would be a "Right to Privacy" ENUMERATED in the Constitution!

But we are not that kind of people anymore. Even the "history" of 1987 and 1988 needs to be re-written to supposedly support whatever the current desires of "The Party" might be. NOTHING -- not words, not events, not lives, not even living or recently dead people are allowed to have a separate "truth" from the narrative of "The Party". **ALL** ... truth, meaning and life must be sacrificed at the alter of "The Party" and whatever it's current holy writ is freshly minted to be!

Reality has died under the effects of being constantly "Borked" each and every day. Thus, we have TRUMP, and the media and TP wonder how it can be that people seem to believe him even when he is "not factual"!!

When there is no Way, Truth or Life, the people create idols, and lo, they bowed before the orange god of Trump (Baal)! ... not surprising since many had previously bowed before the mulatto god of BO!



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Scalia Spectacle

Scalia, the Senate and the Media: A time for hypocrisy | Fox News:

We have no respect for even the dead -- be they babies torn from their mother's womb, or great jurists that come along only once ever few decades. Scalia was a mind and a spirit so far above the "average" that all those scurrying about braying nonsense about "replacing him" are cast in clear light as mental pygmies!

There is no "replacement" for Scalia! There wasn't for Reagan, for Churchill, for Einstein, or for other such giants. An infinite God gifts us with a few great men, and when they pass, we need to have a reasonable time to bless the gift and mourn the loss. We live in a fallen world that is temporal because it is fallen. Scalia understood that -- in his very soul. The most important thing that happens here is infinitely less important than  anything that happens in the spiritual realm! I wrote a bit about Scalia here, and there is a link in that post to an excellent interview with him. One little quote from that interview ...

Isn’t it terribly frightening to believe in the Devil?
You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.

I'm not sure that the interviewer was convinced that there were currently or certainly in the past, any people more intelligent than him. Maybe Einstein -- but that is probably just a sop to false humility. It is left wing dogma that "all are equal" -- removal of standards and hierarchy enables them to replace all the wonderful complex relationships of family, friendship, community, nation and religion with raw unmitigated power. A day listening to NPR is enough to convince anyone with a shred of faith in God left that the Devil is alive and well and having a field day!

Where do Republicans get such ham handed disgusting politicians as Mitch McConnell? Kentucky I guess. He needed to say something nice about Scalia, that was all. Let BO make the first move! Sure, I'd assume that he will nominate someone too far left to be a replacement that a Republican controlled Senate should accept. SUPER ... drag out the confirmation hearings and reject them in "August"! Then it WILL be too late!

I got to listen to a lot of NPR yesterday. When a nation has been destroyed it has no memory or attention span. I must have heard the "precedent" of Justice Kennedy being confirmed in an election year 20 times. I maybe heard the name Bork twice, but it wasn't connected with the Kennedy confirmation. The Democrats owned the Senate and they forced Reagan to accept a very moderate justice that is now a "swing vote" after rejecting Bork in one if not THE battle that soured politics in the US to it's current sorry state. I answered my own question -- we get guys like McConnell because we have made politics into the most dishonorable profession possible!

The nations memory goes as it is destroyed because memory becomes tragic and painful. When a Republican is making a nomination -- even when they are in control in the Senate, the media spends much time and ink on the extremely important issue of "balance in the court" and "no litmus tests" and the CRITICAL importance of "Stare Decisis" (precedent). For NPR and the NY Times, these STRONG principles are most holy when a Republican is making a nomination!

Yesterday it was made clear multiple times that BOTH Hillary and BS would demand that any nomination they made would absolutely vote to overturn Citizens United!

Well, we got no class, and we got no principles ! Perhaps we need to replace the old national anthem with this ... more appropriate to what we are now!

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Dilbert On Trump

Scott Adams Blog:

I used to love the Adam's cartoon strip, "Dilbert" when  I worked at IBM. It was almost spooky how well he understood the typical mindless inanity of modern corporate life. He understood it because he was an engineer at AT&T and at least smart enough to make "Mensa" ... so maybe not a genius, but smart.

He opens with the following:

It isn’t unusual for members of the public to hate politicians. For example, lots of people hate President Obama. Some of that hatred is because of his policies, some is because of racism, and I assume there are a few other reasons. But I have never seen anyone who was literally afraid of him on a visceral level. 

Trump, on the other hand, actually scares people. I have seen people’s bodies twist up and go into full panic at the thought of him being president. I’m talking about actual, literal, bodily fear, as if a monster is already in house and you don’t know where it is hiding. Even professional members of the media feel this fear. 

And yet I feel none of that fear – not even a trace amount. To me, Trump looks like the safest candidate in the history of presidential elections, and I don’t even share his politics on a number of topics. So I have to ask myself why I have zero fear of Trump while so many others are in full panic mode. Should I be more afraid?

Adams never seems to "figure it out" in the column ... as an intelligent engineer, he is trying to be logical. Fear may have a logical basis, but it is only an emotion.

People that hated W or hate BO are not afraid that either of them would directly take them on and cut them down to size if they tried to heckle them. People DID fairly regularly scream things at W, and I'm not sure he ever took on a heckler.

If you hate Trump, unless you have a BIG ego and lots of skills, loud voice, etc, it is nearly certain that if you took your hatred up against him, he would chew you up and spit out out like used sunflower seeds! So they feel fear!

The other aspect I think is that Trump is an "unknown". I certainly was very concerned about what BO would do, and unfortunately those concerns proved to be largely founded -- BOcare, gigantic debt, disregard for the Constitution. loss of US stature around the world, terrible economy, and awful decrease in number of Americans working. I'm concerned about Trump, but policy wise, mostly because he is unknown.

I strongly dislike Trump because he is obnoxious, has no conservative credentials that I can identify, is more concerned about himself than anything else, and he coarsens an  already nasty US political stage.

The column is a worthy read though -- Adams is not the only very intelligent person that I know that is excited about and backing Trump. I think their hopes are FAR too high, in a very similar way to the hopes that the Obama Zombies had in '08.

Human "saviors" are never real!

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