Auto Deaths Down, Give Us Your GUNS!

Guns are now killing as many people as cars in the U.S. - The Washington Post:

In this age of the sound-bite, "Guns Kill As Many as Cars!" is no doubt what we will see often repeated. It is a tiny bit more "accurate" than "97% Of Scientists Agree on AGW!", but then "accuracy" isn't what matters today.

Highway deaths have been dropping -- less drunk driving, better safety features, better roads, etc. SO ... since highway deaths DROPPED, let's report the equivalence to guns! Simple!

But wait, SUICIDE accounts for more than half of the "gun deaths", and suicide is rising SO FAST that total suicides ALONE are a larger cause of death than  car crashes! But that isn't so much of a headline is it? "The Party" doesn't gain power by reducing suicide deaths -- in fact, TP is the party of death -- making suicide easy / assisted / etc is something they FAVOR!

While TP may occasionally try to correlate suicide with guns, they won't spend a lot of time on it since such gun happy locales as South Korea (#2), Japan(#17), Finland, Belgium, Iceland (#33-35) appear before the US at #50. We are however rising fast as TP rapidly sucks all meaning from life. They would be HAPPY with whatever suicide rate we ended up with as long as they could get the damned guns off the streets so their path to total power was at least cleared of that hurdle!

But no doubt we will get to hear about this "startling statistic" that "Guns kill as many people as cars!" ... possibly even MORE as suicides continue to rise and car deaths hopefully continue to fall.

No reason things have to make sense if they support the TP agenda!

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Allah Praised, Christ Removed

Virginia district cancels school over Islamic lesson anger - The Washington Post:

Imagine people being offended by their kids copying "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his  messenger"? How backward. How non-inclusive. How "un-american" -- or at least in opposition to what WaPo and TP have decided is supposed to be the "creed", "high mindedness" or "sophisticated educated thinking" of today.

Had somebody put up a Christmas Tree, had a Christmas Program, or (horror!) said "Merry Christmas" to their class, the ACLU would be involved, teachers and administrators would be being fired, sued, etc, and the national media would be screaming about Separation of Church and STATE with extreme umbrage and in total support of even a single complainer who was forced to (gasp) view a Christmas Tree!

As it is, WaPo is disappointed that people took offence in something as non-offensive (to them) as repeating what millions of Christians over the centuries  have died rather than repeat, and even today at least thousands are being beheaded, burned, stoned, etc for failing to comply with.

We have been treated to supposedly "righteous" outrage over manger scenes, The Ten Commandments, silent prayer and yes, even  "Merry Christmas" on a frequent basis, and especially in this season, for decades now.

Not ALL the sheeple appear to be completely ready for the next phase beyond the removal all connection to Christ in anything public, and replacement with "whatever", including Allah or Santa.  So WaPo is disappointed they have more "education" to do!

Every human has a religion. What is yours? Do you worship the State? Science? Money? Mother Earth? Your own ego? (I think they are trying to decide if that is called "BOism" or "Trumpist")

Here yet again, we see that it all comes down to Christ -- the ultimate divider and uniter. He divides the ages into BC and AD, and he unites mankind into Blood Brothers in Christ, or divides to all the various "doers" working to gain some sort of afterlife or to distract themselves to the belief that this is all there is. Not even the WaPo is offended by Allah or Mohammed ... they know they are dead and imaginary and so the idea of someone copying a statement of faith in them gives no offence.

But "Merry Christmas"? Or very recently even "Thoughts and Prayers" uttered by Christians is enough to bring out the torches and pitchforks and go on a hunt. Much fear in their reaction I sense! (it is Star Wars day ;-) )

TP hates Christ, so they hate Christmas.  It seems that the chief TP sacrament of abortion is their ritual of "remembrance in death" of the one infant that made it to the manger and to the cross that they would have MOST liked to abort. With each of the millions of deaths of the most innocent, their hearts quiver with renewed hatred for the spirit of that one babe they most wanted extinguished and they still fear above all else.

There is another way ... it is the best of seasons to allow that spirit to enfold you. It isn't just "captive Israel" that longs for his return in glory!

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Let It Burn

Jeb is not the most important Bush in the 2016 campaign - The Washington Post:

I look at the disarray in the world, the country, and the Republican party and the emotional response is definitely "let it burn". The use and reuse of the "Mission Accomplished" picture, when the banner was FOR THE SHIP, which they put up when they came back from one of the longest deployments in recent history is a mark of what passes for "journalism" in The Party (TP-D) controlled media, but is really just partisan propaganda.

 It's from OVER A DECADE AGO ... back then, both BO and Hillary were committed to being AGAINST gay "marriage", and BO was AGAINST raising the debt ceiling! But "old positions" for TP members are down the memory hole instantly, and propaganda pictures against the opposition are FOREVER ... embalmed and on display like Stalin in the old USSR.

We could take all sorts of FACTUAL things relative to BO ... like his voting against raising the debt ceiling as a senator and then his castigating Republicans for their concerns with his MUCH bigger deficits and "rub them in over and over" (if we had a conservative MSM), but the fact is that the majority of this country just doesn't care. They bleat to the TP drum and they will continue to do so until it gets REALLY bad -- and even then, my sense is that the will to "something better" if it involves work, risk, commitment, principles, etc as opposed to "give me free stuff and blame others" is that we no longer have what it takes to compete in the real world.

My summary of the BO debacle is this video:

When there is no such thing as "truth" or "responsibility" and a nation abandons its Constitution, there is simply nothing worth saving left.

We are still yammering about decisions and events of '03 ... that war was won, and then lost by BO in the meantime, and TODAY IS TODAY -- yet the sort of abject hypocrisy on display in the video is ignored and the MSM continues to focus on a moment that they actually know to be completely FALSE from 2003! It is what happens when nobody cares about their country -- only about "their side winning".

At some point if we were to still have a nation, we would have to go FORWARD toward "something" that a large majority of people would actually believe in! Something like a Constitution, or "self-evident TRUTHS", or actually being "under God" or "endowed by our Creator" ... something more than "give me my free stuff RIGHT NOW!".

But apparently, like the 1930's is it going to take  something BIG in our face like WWII --  9-11 to a 10, 100 or 1000x before either we capitulate for good or pull up our panties and DO SOMETHING!

I don't think we have a choice at this point but to just watch the current world and country burn, and then hope that something arises from the ashes. It may not, but it is clear that we are going to have to fall a LONG way more before a significant number of people face the reality of today.

I've never cared so little for politics since I got out of college. Perhaps a vote for Trump "gets it over with quicker" ... which unfortunately seems like the best of the very bad alternatives!

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Fact Checking the Left

Debunking 5 Phony Statistics Liberals Love To Toss Around - John Hawkins - Page full:

In the past couple of years, "Fact Checking" has become a cottage industry for the MSM. Naturally, they always conclude that Republican candidates are darned near "fact free", and left wing candidates "occasionally make honest mistakes". Shocking I know.

Five standard left wing "facts" that are COMMONLY used are debunked here:

1. 1 in 5 college coeds have been raped. 
2. Abuse of wives peaks during the Super Bowl (heard that one on MPR a couple months ago)
3. 50% of marriages end in divorce
4. 19% of the population is gay
5. 97% of scientists agree on global warming

I'd put #5 at #1 ... it is so ridiculous and SO commonly used that it deserves that spot. A good number of Republican "lies" / non-factual statements, etc come from them disagreeing on global warming. The left "declares it settled", so any Republican that disagrees is "lying" -- a tidy advantage of owning the media, the universities and the entire government bureaucracy!

Since most of the media is left wing, the vast majority of the "fact checkers" are left wing as well, and unsurprisingly, they choose which statements ought to be "checked" and they "check" them with their biases firmly in place. Unsuprisingly, it certainly looks to THEM that Republicans are pretty much "liars", and Democrats are basically speakers of gospel! What a shocking surprise --- but of course if you dig just a tiny bit, who really needs to be checked are the "fact checkers".

There is a "truth gap" in Washington, but it doesn't exist along the lines the fact checkers would have you think. It was Obama who said you could keep the health care you had if you liked it, even if Obamacare became law. It was Obama who said the Citizens United decision would open the floodgates of foreign money into U.S. campaigns. It was Obama who said Benghazi happened because of a YouTube video. It was Obama's IRS that denied conservative political groups had been singled out for special scrutiny. And it was Obama who promised that taxes would not go up for any American making less than $250,000 per year.

 All of these statements and plenty more are demonstrably false, though some people still pretend there is truth in them. As the Lichter study demonstrates, it's not so much fact checkers that are needed as it is fact checkers to check the facts being checked.

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Dreaming Of Equally Lawless Destruction

Obama Power: Cruz or Trump Can Use It Too:

The main topic of the column is the old playground ethic of "anything you do to me I will do to you twice has hard and twice as nasty!" -- revenge, as the Klingon's say, "Is a dish best served cold" (so does "The Godfather" BTW).

The thing is, that conservatives tend to be aware that the ethics of the playground, as understood at least since ancient times, as in an "eye for an eye" needs to be LIMITED. You don't understand "an eye for an eye" as being limited? Oh, it IS ... VERY ... compared to "kill them all -- women, children, oxen, slaves, ....) People like BO ... who proudly claims that the true identity of being a Luo Tribesman, subscribe to the "law of the jungle", that of "tooth and claw", that which Hobbes claimed we created Leviathan with it's "law" to make more just, thus trading some of our freedom for the benefits of law.

Law found it's power in ancient things like "The Ten Commandments", or "Hammurabi's Code", and demanded to be revered -- but reverence is unknown on the playground, in the jungle, or with the tribe, so we have returned to our "roots" -- meaning NO LAW!

I really don't think it is very likely that ANY Republican will be elected next year, and I firmly believe that if that unlikely event happens and it is anyone other than Trump, the playground ethic of revenge from this column will hold no sway. Conservatives believe in not just the rule of law, but even in divine power beyond law,  precedence even, as in not overturning things like "Roe v Wade", even though they are noxious usurpations of the rule of law.

HOWEVER, if Trump is the whirlwind that we reap, then absolutely -- all bets are off, and our new King will behave much like BO. I'd see him as "better" than BO since a lot of what he might do would at least be AN ATTEMPT to "Make America Great" rather than "Attempts to make America Like Greece" as we have seen BO doing, but lawless just the same.

The sad thing is that once law is traded for power, we live in the jungle -- the path of restoration of law is very unclear at best, and most likely goes through things getting MUCH worse, followed by one or more revolutions, after which MAYBE our people come to their senses and realize that LAW means "agreed to LIMITS for ALL", not "if I can get MY judges, bureaucrats, lawless president, etc elected, then I will run roughshod over YOU with impunity".

TP (The Party) DID get all that, and they HAVE been running roughshod -- but at some point, it always slides into Totalitarianism. Trump may be that point, or it might be delayed a bit -- or Hillary may well be that point. She has declared that she will do "something about guns" via "
executive order", which means that she has promised to take an explicitly unconstitutional action, thus violating in advance the oath she would take if she won the office.

The "round up the guns" might bring on the war that officially ends the America that has already ended as a culture and an ideal.

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Gender Is Fluid, Orientation is Fixed

Why I Won't Label My Sexuality:

OK, COSMO was the ONLY article that I could find to anchor my "random neural firing of the day". On my way home from workout and running a couple errands ... a little slowly as the rain changed to snow during my workout and it is white now, I was treated to a conversation on NPR about how racist MN is.

Turns out it is MORE racist than Mississippi and Alabama BECAUSE, some of the statistics -- like gap between white / black on test scores, gap in income, prison population, getting arrested, etc are WORSE in MN, but PR believes that CAN'T be true, because MN is "progressive". I'm not going to spend time on this (little things like if MORE white people are earning more and there is a LOWER percentage of black people, it seems like the numbers might be skewed), but "whatever". For the blacks in the conversation it was ALL due to white racism, and to the progressives, it HAD to be something else, but they were at a loss to explain it ... such is the left.

Somebody commented on a post on FB that "gender is fluid, and it is WRONG to try to make it fixed", and my brain fired, did a Google, and here I am.

Is it not ALSO wrong to try to assert that sexual orientation is "fluid"? Is not the idea of counselling to change from gay to straight one of the "new abominations" (the old ones are all now legally protected classes!) I could swear that in the same universe that I'm currently occupying people recently said things like "a person that is gay is exactly the same as people that are heterosexual, only with the orientation to being gay -- and it is ALWAYS going to be that way for them! It is COMPLETELY FIXED and they MUST act on it, or they are not true to themselves!

NOTE:: This is completely different for alcoholics, who we are told also are "made that way", but for them, nobody that I know suggests that "They MUST drink, to not drink would be a LIE!  They would not be being true to their NATURE!" ... Just for the record, my belief is that we ALL have "tendencies", to A LOT of stuff, good, bad, or indifferent. Our genetic tendencies, our upbringing, our choices, chance, etc and a whole set of factors make for "behaviors" to arise from "tendency". While some tendencies are VERY strong, "compulsions" even, WITH THE HELP OF GOD (or "higher power" it you must), we all have hope of being "more than our tendencies".

We used to have "GLBT" ... which was Gay, Lesbian, BI-sexual, and Transvestite ... and they have completely the same "rights" as the tired old "H" for Hetero ... and boring "He made them male and female". (although exactly what "Bi-sexual marriage" was or is (since it IS a "right"), is not really defined).

But already we now have "GLBTQ" where "Q" is typically either "Queer" or "Questioning". A "definition from proximate link:

"Queer retains that critical edge against regimes of the normal of assimilation and privilege," Octavio R. González, an English professor at Wellesley College told USA TODAY Network.

I'd have to say they have possibly arrived at the best "definition" of what it means to exist in the broad swath of N America between Mexico and Canada today. "Critical edge against regimes" -- I certainly feel that against the TP (The Party-D)  regime of BO! ... "the normal of assimilation and privilege". Hmm, I'm guessing he doesn't mean "the normal" of universities, the MSM, entertainment, government bureaucracy and the domination of TP, but what does he mean? "White people"? or just heterosexuals? I'm not in favor of the current regime, and I definitely don't want to be assimilated into TP, so maybe I'm "Queer"??

As you might guess, Q is not likely to be the last letter ... "A" is either "asexual" as in not having any, or "allies" meaning whatever someone comes up with (assuming it isn't something weird like Christian heterosexual), you are "allied". There is also "I" for "intersex" which at one time covered the tiny percentage of people who really do have crossed sexual organs, but now apparently includes people like "Bruce/Caitlyn" Jenner who are modifying themselves ... as opposed I ASSUME to "transvestite" who are dressing only, or "Queer" which is "defined" above  ??? ... I think I'll go with Young Frankenstein on what it actually means.

There are a lot of letters left in the alphabet ... when there is no truth, only relative opinion, then truly none of us can "know" anything relative to the ever changing "culture". There are a lot of letters left in the aphabet and we will probably run out, or have to use each for multiple meanings like we already are for the A and the Q. Your first reaction might be that I'm being facetious here, but remember, Facebook has 51 genders!

The words of Lewis Carroll explain it well:

"‘When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'
‘The question is,' said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things."
‘The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master—that's all.'"

Consistency is not an issue, WHO IS MASTER is the issue! So there are more genders than letters in the alphabet, and they are FLUID, but sexual orientation is FIXED ... genetically, and it CAN'T BE CHANGED! Thus saith "the masters".

Wonderland was a very reasonable place compared to whatever the current madhouse we exist in might be called!

Hell?

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Clinton's Love Child -- Rubio!

The Half-Hearted Case for Rubio - The Daily Beast:

I'll admit it, I really like Scott Walker, and I HOPED (too much) that he would be the candidate. I also held out some lesser hopes (very faint) that there was some TINY shred of decency and character left in "The Party" (TP-D), and that the combination of a sneering, arrogant, unlikeable, congenital liar, felon, idiot,  combined with what used to be the biggest political sin of being completely unlikeable and a terrible campaigner, would give us an easier TP candidate -- BS is as good a designated initial as one could imagine for a TP candidate!

But no, it is Hildebeast, and it looks like Trump will be hanging around for awhile yet. I still REFUSE to believe that I will have to choose between Trump and just staying home -- which is probably not going to happen, so in that universe that I refuse to visit yet, I will vote for Trump -- BECAUSE, we have SEEN how bad Hildebeast is at merely being Secretary of State! At least we haven't SEEN Trump as president (not that I want to) ... but in a world of picking between a "likely disaster" and a "KNOWN disaster", I have to go "likely". Besides, there were Top Secret e-mails on her private server, which is a FELONY ... and I still believe in laws even if the rest of the country does not.

It is what it is ... which means that LAUGHTER is even MORE critical, so thusly I encourage you to go read PJ and get used to the idea of Rubio. I find the assertion that Rubio was fathered by Bill Clinton to be pretty much a certainty next to "there were no classified documents on my e-mail server" (which we KNOW to be false, and disqualifies her all by itself!) !

So I guess I'm a Rubio guy ... maybe a little more tepid than PJ, but he makes a "good case" ...

Rubio was born in May 1971. Do the math. 

In September 1970, where was Bill Clinton? 

Maybe in Miami on Yale Law School’s extra-early Spring Break? 

You heard it here first. It’s the kind of news that will get Marco the media attention he needs. He’ll be on all the morning talk shows and Ellen and The View talking about overcoming emotional obstacles in his journey to reach closure with his personal issues and accept himself for who he really is.

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Hate Crimes Against Muslims

Jews Are Still the Biggest Target of Religious Hate Crimes - News – Forward.com:

We have been admonished a good deal the past week to be VERY careful about what is said about Muslims.  The following graphic gives an interesting view of Hate Crime statistics, at least as gathered by the FBI in the US.

Strangely, at least in 2014, Hate Crimes against JEWS led by a WIDE margin with basically 60%!!

Anyone hear BO chiding the US to be less hatful of Jews? ... No, I didn't either.

Also, if you add "Catholic", "Anti-Protestant" (I wonder if the "Hate Crimes" against Catholics are non "anti"???), plus "Anti-Multiple Religions", you get 14% ... same as anti-Islamic.

I'm not really interested in digging into this a lot, but since there is yet another category for "anti-other", when the whole chart is purported to be Hate Crimes due to "religion", can we surmise that "anti-multiple" is actually throwing the rest of "Christian" into a bucket, or is Christianity ALL "Protestant or Catholic"? Could be, but anyway, there as AT LEAST 10% against Christians, which is pretty darned amazing when you realize that the US was once a "Christian nation"!

(it is gratifying to see the big 1% applied to Atheism as a "religion" ... it is, but a lot of Atheists are unhappy with that).

This is from a pro-Jewish source -- something in itself which "The Party" (D) tends to take with MORE than a grain of salt, as opposed to say from an "Islamic source", which is pretty much treated in TP and the media as gospel -- "racist" or "Islamophobic" to think otherwise!

Jews OTOH ... well, we KNOW about THEM, don't we?  ... as BO's old Pastor Reverend Wright, or Louis Farrakhan  might say, "never trust a Jew!".

When TP and the media are merrily manipulating us, what they DON'T talk about is very often even more important to be aware of than what they do.

Happy Hanukkah!









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Can the Left Love ISIS?

Can the Left Learn to Love ISIS? | Frontpage Mag:

An interesting discussion of similarities between the embrace of Communism in the past and the developing comity between the left and ISIS.

Islamic terrorism is excused on the same grounds that Communist terror was excused; as a response to our imperialistic foreign policy, as the outcry of the oppressed and an attempt to secure equality. Some atrocities are dismissed as myths, worries over terrorism are written off as fearmongering and terrorists are transformed into victims who were singled out by paranoid politicians for their political beliefs.

The left is using the same exact playbook on Islamic terrorism as it did on Communism.

America was founded as a Center RIGHT Republic (Left being control, right being chaos)  -- The Left continuously grows the centralized power of government until that power is TOTAL (thus "Totalitarian"). The "faith" of the left is that once complete centralized control is achieved, "utopia" is sure to result. The objective is POWER, the means are completely unimportant, and as has been seen around the world again and again they often include the killing of huge numbers of people, torture, oppression, imprisonment, etc -- ALL methods are permissible (even REQUIRED) in the creation of "heaven on earth".

Obama and Hillary contend that ISIS cannot be defeated militarily. And if it cannot be defeated militarily, the only options are Cold War containment or diplomatic outreach. It’s not too hard to imagine the arguments that will be made for the latter at the expense of the former. They were the same arguments that were made and are still being made by the left for engagement with Communist terror regimes.

 ISIS has not done anything that the Soviet Union did not do. Its ideology is thoroughly different, but both were built on swamps of atrocity, mass murder, mass rape, ethnic cleansing and raw butchery. If the left could serve the Soviet Union, who is to say that it won’t learn to love the Islamic State?

How often do we hear today that "Fighting/resisting ISIS is the worst thing we can do! They use it as a recruiting tool!" ... translation, they MUST be accommodated, we have no other choice! The refrain is exactly the same as that heard about the USSR up through the Reagan administration, when any attempts at showing strength were "playing into the hard-liners hands and going to get us all blown up!". "Better Red than Dead!"

Of course when the USSR fell, while the left tried to be as quiet as they good be as they sobbed and cried alligator tears, they attempted to calmly confuse us "oh, we KNEW this was going to happen all along! Reagan and the warmongers just slowed it down" ! (sob, sob, please pass a Kleenex, my cat just died! ....)

How often were Republicans accused of "playing into the hard-liners hands" as BO worked out handing the Bomb to Iran so they could eventually give us the "Missile Finger" with a mushroom tip!

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Creating Racists and Hate Crimes

Scalia and the MSM — a mismatch [UPDATED] | Power Line:

TP (The Party-D) needs lots of demons to keep its masses fired up. It is easy to see that they operate this way because the idea of Republicans using "fear" (as in "Homophobia", "Islamophobia", etc) is a daily staple of the MSM news feed and TP party Talking Points.

The linked article covers tarring SCOTUS Justice Scalia as a racist because he discussed "mismatch" -- the situation where you bring an unqualified student into an Ivy League school through affirmative action and they don't do well.  The left DEMANDS that the world operate as they want, so to point out that when students don't have the preparation needed to compete and are shoved into an environment due to a preferential treatment, they often fail.

The core of TP doctrine is established by the average 2-year old -- "The world MUST conform to MY view ... NOW"!!! Full stop, end of story ... "Make it so".

So when little things like reality get in the way, the problem must be IGNORED ... and anyone that points out the nakedness of the Emperor needs to be labeled with a nasty name, in this case RACIST!

Once you are established as a Racist, the next step is to catch you in a "Hate Crime" ... and the definition of that is ALSO conveniently whatever TP deems it to be ... as we see in the recent case of the lawyer being asked if he was a "refugee" at a Vikings game.

TP understands this pattern VERY well, it is THEIR PATTERN ... it has been used before, once specifically from "the right", "McCarthyism" is the horror of a case where for a short time it was almost somewhat effective using the definition of "Communism" and then attempting to criminalize Communists.

TP didn't like their favorite technique being used against them very well, and the term "McCarthyism" is still trotted out when someone asks them a question. Meanwhile,  for TP it is "Standard Operating Procedure" (SOP)  ... Racist!, Sexist!, Homophobe!, Islamophobe! ....

We live in a world where things are precisely what TP says they are ... no more and no less!
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Obama Announces New Policy for Seniors!

https://www.facebook.com/CarbonTV/videos/403997546475360/

Choose Your Destructor!

Glenn Reynolds: Liberals have chosen The Donald as their 'Destructor':

For those unfamiliar with the reference ...

It's kind of funny for an old OO programmer ... a Destructor is a method that is automatically called when an object is destroyed ...

In this case, the "Object being destroyed" is what is left of the US ...

And there’s a lesson for our ruling class there: Calling Trump a fascist is a bit much (fascism, as Tom Wolfe once reported, is forever descending upon the United States, but somehow it always lands on Europe), but movements like fascism and communism get their start because the mechanisms of liberal democracy seem weak and ineffectual and dishonest. If you don’t want Trump — or, perhaps, some post-Trump figure who really is a fascist — to dominate things, you need to stop being weak and ineffectual and dishonest.

Having BO stop being "weak and ineffectual and dishonest"  might get Reynolds on the Secret Service list as threatening the president! BO is only going to "give up" being weak, ineffectual and dishonest when he reaches room temperature!

The closing is rather good ... it really all is. Recommended!

Hearing that Yale professor Erika Christakis won't be teaching at Yale because of the abuse she received over a respectful but non-PC email, former DNC chair Howard Dean tweeted: “Free speech is good. Respecting others is better.” To his credit, CNN’s Jake Tapper responded: “Of course only one of them is enshrined in the Constitution.” 

But Twitter humorist IowaHawk had the last word: ”With the exception of POTUS, the Atty General, both leading presidential candidates, the media, and universities, Americans love free speech.” 

If you wish to hold fascism, or even just Trumpism, at bay, then we need elites who are trustworthy, who can be counted on to protect the country, and who respect the Constitution even when it gets in the way of doing something they want to do. By failing to live up to these standards, they have chosen their "Destructor." Let’s hope that they haven’t chosen ours, as well.

Oh, and this!

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Opening The Overton Window

Donald Trump & The Overton Window --Resetting America's Political Debate | National Review Online:

Another thing I had never heard of, the Overton Window:

... the “Overton Window.” Developed by the late Joseph Overton, a former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the “window” refers to the range of acceptable political discourse on any given topic. As the Mackinac Center explains, “the ‘window’ of politically acceptable options is primarily defined not by what politicians prefer, but rather by what they believe they can support and still win re-election.” The key to shifting policy lies not so much in changing politicians but in changing the terms of the debate. In other words, “The window shifts to include different policy options not when ideas change among politicians, but when ideas change in the society that elects them.”

The column is a good one, it points out how well the left, with control of the media, the arts, the university and the government bureaucracies federal and state has been able to RAPIDLY move the window in areas like abortion, restricting Christianity, gay "marriage", nationalized healthcare and transgender. Eg.

The Overton Window moved even faster on transgender rights. Ten years ago the notion that a man with emotional problems and breast implants could be named “Woman of the Year” was unthinkable. Now, in some quarters it’s just as unthinkable to refer to Bruce Jenner — Bruce Jenner! — as a man.

Right now, they are pushing the window on gun confiscation, but along comes Trump and gives it a mighty shove in the direction of restricting immigration of Muslims.

While many of Trump’s actual proposals are misguided, nonsensical, or untenable, by smashing the window, he’s begun the process of freeing the American people from the artificial and destructive constraints of Left-defined discourse.

Well said! What has counted as "debate" in this country since at least the '60s and to some degree ever since Woodrow Wilson has been a discussion of "just how far left are we going on THIS issue".  The very THOUGHT of say, reducing the size of government, or (gasp!) unravelling parts of the "Great Society" directly responsible for the yearly 5-6K violent deaths of young black men have been "radical, reactionary, unthinkable". I mean, why would you reconsider programs just because they result in 50-60K untimely violent deaths over each decade??

the Left’s very success at defining the terms of discourse meant that the price of civility and unity was all too often an acceptance of liberal norms and manners. It meant swallowing liberal pieties and confining your discourse to Left-approved terms. In other words, it often meant surrender.

Surrender is FAR too high a price for "civility". While I am now, and I'm sure very few others were aware of the Overton Window concept, it shows one benefit of Trump. We MUST get out of having the left completely declare the shape of the battlefield and ever more consistently the terms of conservative surrender if there is to be ANY hope of recovering America, and indeed of "Making it great again".

I remain convinced that Trump is the WRONG fighter, but he IS a fighter -- and he HAS changed the terms of the battle. Without "outlandish positions" being declared on the right, there is no hope at all that some of those positions can slowly seep into the consciousness of the public and people running for office and eventually have a chance.

It's definitely time for our national "window" to be a LOT less open on the left and a lot MORE open on the right!
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XB-70

The Aviationist » Impressive video of an XB-70 Valkyrie Mach 3 bomber’s emergency landing:

Worthy read and an impressive video in linked article. The only remaining copy of this VERY impressive aircraft sits in The National Museum of the Air Force at Wright Patterson, Dayton OH.

I've been there and plan to go again. It is VERY impressive ... the XB-70 is off display right now, back on in June of '16 when they open a new building.

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In Praise of Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss' Political Philosophy: Reviled But Redeemed | RealClearPolitics:



I used one of my favorite Strauss quotes today ... "If all values are relative, then cannibalism is a matter of taste", so I did some looking on which of his many books and articles I really need to read. I haven't picked yet -- surprisingly my reading list remains very long, but this column is an EXCELLENT synopsis of why he is so important and so reviled in the modern left wing only academy.



He is mentioned a good deal in "Closing of the American Mind" and many other conservative works. Modern "liberalism" demands the ending of dialogue and fealty to power -- as in, they will demonize you, slur your good name, etc, but they generally will not engage in intellectual and reasonable debate with a man of Strauss stature because they deny that "truth" even exists.



A quote from the article, but it is short and WELL worth just reading.

In article after article and book after book, he argued that contemporary scholars were enthralled to “historicism” and “positivism.” Historicism holds that ideas and principles are nothing more than an expression of their time and cannot transcend the historical era in which they arose. Positivism decrees that the natural sciences offer the only legitimate form of knowledge and adds that since the natural sciences cannot distinguish between good and evil, all value judgments are subjective. (Postmodernism radicalized this sensibility by denying that science itself yielded objective knowledge.) 

In much of the academy, historicism and positivism came to be taken as self-evident truths. That both imply moral relativism, which means that there is no rational basis for judgments about right and wrong, was seen by many of Strauss’s colleagues in the university world as an important contribution to progress. 

Left-liberals regarded the supposed discovery of moral relativism as a blessing because they believed it bolstered pluralism and toleration. If there is no truth about the moral life, then custom and tradition lack authority, individuals are freer than ever to make their own choices, and society can dedicate itself to letting a thousand flowers bloom.

Indeed, and in a completely relative world with no objective truth, how does one identify "progress", or a blooming "flower" from a blooming "weed"?



As readers of this blog know, and is evident from the article, BY POWER! In this case academic power "97% of Political Scientists say Strauss is "wrong, dangerous, anti-intellectual, etc" and DEMAND that nobody read or teach his material!



The base "liberal" argument -- shut up!



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