Lileks Slips Surly Bonds, Falls to Hillary

SCREED 2016:

First of all, I'll go out tonight and cast my caucus chit for Ted Cruz. I believe in his principles and character. I understand he is hated by the R "establishment", which is a positive for me.

If I had to pick a 2nd place, it would be Rubio, because he is more likely to win against Hildebeast. He seems "decent". I disagree with his abortive attempts to deal with immigration and his stupid "penis jokes" in the past couple of days, but he is young, and his level of crassness is like junior high fart jokes next to the in your face "schlonging" of Trump. We "screwed the pooch" (following the Trump idiom, a phrase commonly used by test pilots) in the immigration act of '65 anyway. Immigration at this point is a HARD problem -- very close to insoluble.

I really like civility and reasoned discussion. I've realized over the years that since 90% of what people believe is emotionally based and primarily about "what their friends like", the idea that minds will be changed by discussion is a fantasy -- therefore, it really isn't worth a lot of profanity, name calling, blood being spilled, etc. Reasoned discussion isn't going to solve anything anyway. Events either eventually will or they won't. It is in God's hands.

I find Lileks to be wordy, purposely obtuse, and odd -- that doesn't mean I dislike all his stuff, it just means that he is not a thinker or writer that resonates with me most of the time.

This long windy piece ends as follows ... not including the weird old Star Trek clip that makes me wonder about Lileks backbone and real (if any) values ... I suspect it is "Trump Fear". Scott Adams and I cover "Trump Fear" here. I'd cast Trump as a Ferengi if I had to use a Star Trek clip ... but Lileks is a traditionalist -- he likely hasn't cracked STNG yet!

Sorry for taking the long way; could have just linked and agreed. But the author's points deserve interrogation. Short version: no. Long version: hell no. On the off chance history makes marks in a ledger: I will not support Trump if he is the nominee. I will not vote for him. The devil you know is still a devil, and worse yet: you don't really know him at all.

It's  still (for the moment)  a "free country" -- you can vow to not vote for Trump and allow Hillary to win. You can, but if you are sentient and are not committed to single party socialist rule with the Constitution continuing to be shredded and all remaining incentives to anything resembling economic growth being removed, you wouldn't.

Hillary has a plan. Her Masters Thesis was on Saul Alinsky, who dedicated his book "Rules for Radicals" to Satan. Then there is the "Cloward Piven Strategy" if you want to dig a bit more. The left KNOWS what it wants to do -- destroy America and create a totalitarian socialist state, They have been doing it since Wilson -- BO has moved the ball a LOT, Hillary may complete the task!

Do you think Trump has a "plan"? Hah! That is both his greatest weakness and his greatest strength! Hillary DOES have a plan, and if it succeeds, there may be ZERO chance of any hope of recovery at all. Is the Trump hope slimmer than slim? Sure. Is he the ugliest R candidate in memory? Well, McCain was pretty damned ugly -- but maybe.

The "I'm too pure to vote for Trump" is just "anger at the anger" or simple snobbery. You think America has any "class" left after Slick Willie and BO? That IS "bitterly clinging"! We are a stained blue dress that can't define "is".  Very charitably we are now the THIRD most powerful nation ... BO licks Putin's boots, draws laughable "red lines" in crayon and kneels to Iran.

We are a broken nation with bad options for leadership. BO succeeded in his "Dream" that he took from his father to destroy at least one of the "Colonial Powers" -- us! Do we want to go quietly into the gulag of Hildebeast, or do we want to at least make some noise if that is what it comes to?

I'm a "pry my cold dead hands" kind of guy. Trump may well be like that, but compared to Hildebeast?

 GLADLY!


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Too Tidy Evangelical Vote Split

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/431730/donald-trump-revealing-faultlines-evangelical-movement

The linked article has a nice tidy theory of "Evangelical voters".

Trump is drawing those voters who are Evangelical but don’t see themselves as “Evangelical voters.”In other words, they’re not imposing faith-based litmus tests on candidates, they don’t care about candidates’ personal lives, they’re less concerned with social issues, and they’re more in line with old-school Southern populists. Oh, and they really, truly don’t like being told what they “should” be doing and strongly dislike moral scolds — especially politically-correct moral scolds. Many of these voters were equally comfortable going for Clinton in 1996 and Bush in 2000.


Cruz is pulling more from the voters who define themselves as true-blue (I’m sorry, true-red) Evangelicals and who are craving someone who shows that he has the courage to confront the establishment and the liberal media without compromising one inch on core principle. If you’re talking to a voter who’s concerned first and foremost not just with a candidate’s faith but also with their moral and political consistency, then you’re likely talking to a Cruz voter. If you’re talking to someone who feels like the GOP has exploited Christians for votes, only to abandon the fight at the first sign of resistance, you’re likely talking to a Cruz voter. 

Rubio, by contrast, is getting his share of voters who look primarily to a candidate’s faith, but he’s also drawing substantial numbers from Evangelicals who care deeply about a candidate’s manner. They want to see their candidate not just as a faithful Christian but as someone who can defend that faith in the public square in a particular way. They also tend to be more ambivalent about immigration — concerned about border enforcement, to be sure, but less closed to legalization. If you’re talking to an Evangelical who believes that their candidate can break down walls and expand the Republican constituency, you’re likely talking to a Rubio voter.

Tidy, but I don't buy it. Sure, like most theories, I suspect you can find SOME people that this would explain, but I think it misses the core of the Trump phenomenon.

Conservative Christian voters and MANY others have been disappointed by Republican Presidential options in the cases of HW Bush, Dole, McCain and Romney. W was "better", but a LONG way from Reagan! Add to that, absolute disgust with Republican House and Senate, plus party leadership since Newt, and you have a case where while they DETEST the Democrats, they have at best a STRONG DISLIKE of the Republican establishment!

As one ex Congressman said at a meeting I was at, "You have no idea how corrupt Washington is. It is is probably hopeless, but the best we can hope for is a LONG SHOT that Trump will "shock the system" enough to right the ship, otherwise, we are going DOWN!"

After an effective decade**  of Democrat rule, the conservative R's are DESPERATE! Their "strong dislike" for the Republican establishment is pretty much at DISGUST after 5 years of House control and a year of both House and Senate, anyone of a conservative bent can see that we have NOTHING to show for controlling one of the branches of government. As I cover below in **,  I can understand the reality of what is happening, but I can ALSO understand how R's FEEL, as well as have extreme disgust for the leadership in both House and Senate. Yes, they are likely to lose, but at least they could LOSE WITH SOME CLASS!

This situation has given us TRUMP. Rubio is "establishment", which is NOT popular, Cruz is hated by the establishment and doesn't come across as somebody that can win -- therefore Trump. (Cruz is still my guy -- Trump could always shoot someone, if that would even matter).

**NOTE, when TP controls ONE branch of government, since they control the media, they effectively control it all. If a a Republican president attempts to stop Congress from acting, he is considered to have "shut down the government", be "partisan/ideological", and "not willing to govern".  (see HW Bush vs congress for reference)

Reverse the situation with R's in control of congress and TP in the WH, and any attempt by congress to get anything done or block presidential action is "overreach, partisan, dangerous"! (see BO interactions with Republican Congress).

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:

A Career In Crime

Ain't it the truth! The private sector is a lot smaller and much more heavily regulated.

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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Call 911! Red Star Sniffs $$$ Reality!

Boomers, millennials need wake-up call on deficit - StarTribune.com:

Ok, apparently hitting the floor restarted my heart!

Whose face do you picture when you think of history’s greatest thieves? If you are an old movie buff, perhaps Butch and Sundance or Bonnie and Clyde come to mind. Maybe Bernie Madoff and his $65 billion Ponzi scheme? 

Well, even that staggering amount is paltry compared to history’s truly greatest theft. And the face of the greatest thief might surprise you. If you are over 50 take a look in the mirror. History’s greatest thief is you!

The United States is $18 trillion in debt, an amount that continues to rise at an alarming rate with no end in sight by anyone’s calculation. But that is dwarfed by the $128 trillion in “unfunded liabilities.” Unfunded liabilities are the amount by which future obligations exceed the present value of funds available to pay for them. 

To put that in perspective our nation’s unfunded liabilities come out to $1.1 million per taxpayer.

Folks, this is the RED STAR TRIB! Massive endorser and supporter of Wellstone, Dayton, Franken, Klobuchar, BO!  This column sounds like **ME** ... only I've been understating the unfunded liabilities as "$40-$60T"! I've lost touch with how bad this really is.

The CBO calculated that for debt in 2040 to equal the historical 50-year average of 38 percent of gross domestic product, Congress would need to cut spending by 13 percent or raise revenue by 14 percent beginning in 2016. Needless to say, neither of those is going to happen.

Right ... and if we had done something EARLIER, it would not be this bad, **BUT** the left and papers like the Strib have been demagoguing this for DECADES. Talk of imaginary "lock boxes", complete derision of plans like W's to privatize a portion of FICA, or against Paul Ryan's plan which was basically the idea that they now assert that Boomers need to adhere to.

Is there any way to save the millennials and subsequent generations from this continuing theft? The final irony is that the heroes must be the thieves themselves. It is up to the baby boomers to vote for politicians who will make the fundamental budgetary changes to alter the current path. But this is asking such voters to reject the political pandering that tells them government can keep expanding benefits without paying their full costs. 

I wouldn’t hold my breath. The older generations are addicted to receiving benefits without paying for them. The younger generations are being robbed blind and don’t even know it.

I covered the Madoff - FICA similarity back in 2008 in this blog -- now seeing the Red Star agreeing with me a mere 8 years later is enough to make me think I ought have just stayed on the floor!

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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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Jimmy Buffett's Plain Plane Buffet

Jimmy Buffett's New Toy The ICON Aircraft | All Things Aero:

I'm not a Parrot Head, but I do like some Jimmy Buffett. He is a big airplane guy and a major league environmentalist. He feels the rest of us need to get rid of our SUVs. The video in the attached shows him trying out a new plane and lists the planes currently in his stable.

I DON'T hate the guy at all -- it helps me realize what dealing with liberals is all about. Many of them are talented very happy and well meaning people who have not one single wisp of the concept "consistency", let alone any interest in dealing in any of it. I'm convinced it is one of the ways to be happy -- at least if your brain lets you compartmentalize well enough.

I wrote about his book "A Pirate Looks at 50" on my 50th birthday a decade ago. My seemingly wonderful life was about to fall into the abyss in less than two years from that post.


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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!

Trust, Security, Apple

We cannot trust our government, so we must trust the technology | US news | The Guardian:

First of all, I don't believe that the NSA or other US government agency can't break the iPhone security. Interagency, they may have decided that they don't really care about these particular people so they are not going to break THIS ONE, but if the top security apparatus of the US can't break into an iPhone, the idiots at the top are even more incompetent than I thought. (and that is INCOMPETENT!)

I used to work with security stuff at IBM. We had a couple of guys that would "go missing" for a few weeks, "on business", but with nothing more official than that. The "over drinks / wink wink nod, nod, I really need to shoot you now was" ... NSA. It was VERY clear that they could break whatever was "secure", and were going to continue to do so.

Beyond that, consider this from John McAfee ...

With all due respect to Tim Cook and Apple, I work with a team of the best hackers on the planet. These hackers attend Defcon in Las Vegas, and they are legends in their local hacking groups, such as HackMiami. They are all prodigies, with talents that defy normal human comprehension. About 75% are social engineers. The remainder are hardcore coders. I would eat my shoe on the Neil Cavuto show if we could not break the encryption on the San Bernardino phone. This is a pure and simple fact. 

And why do the best hackers on the planet not work for the FBI? Because the FBI will not hire anyone with a 24-inch purple mohawk, 10-gauge ear piercings, and a tattooed face who demands to smoke weed while working and won't work for less than a half-million dollars a year. But you bet your ass that the Chinese and Russians are hiring similar people with similar demands and have been for many years. It's why we are decades behind in the cyber race.

If you don't know what "social engineers" are relative to computer security, they are "con men, grifters, pickpockets". If you want to get a little humility on how good such can be, take a look at this.   McAfee is VERY different ... he is running for president on the libertarian party this year ...

The top linked article is quite sad, but maybe the saddest part is this:

Perhaps most importantly, we need to end the culture of impunity that protects people who run illegal programs and continue to thrive in their careers after they are exposed, but vindictively pursues the whistleblowers who expose that illegality. 

Only such a system, that offers transparently meaningful oversight and real consequences for those who violate our trust, has any chance of being trustworthy enough to remove the persistent global demand for platforms that preserve user privacy and security even at the expense of weakening the capabilities of their policing and national security agencies.

Seriously? With BO in the White House and Hillary Clinton running for president? With the guys that exposed Planned Parenthood's  selling of body parts under indictment?  Why just a few years ago the MSM had a cow over tracking who was calling the cells of known terrorists! Now they want "more trust"?

What part of THERE IS NO TRUST are these people missing?  In order to have such a thing as trust, one would need shared values, say Christianity. A written Constitution that was actually followed would be good. Perhaps after a few decades of return to such, some level of "trust" in organizations and governments might recover.

Those are gone ... learn to be as untrusting and independent as you possibly can be, and then learn some more!

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Stealing Your Attention, Or Your Wallet

A Pickpocket’s Tale - The New Yorker:

One of the regular themes I return to is that one of the most dangerous of human  weaknesses is that ALL OF US look at things from a human perspective! It is a weakness that shows the old "how stupid could people be to assume the earth was the center of the universe" hubris ding to be an even worse hubris ding at a higher level!

Well, they used their natural brains, just as you are using yours now! What is it that you expected them to do?

Case in point, pickpockets. I love the opening of the linked article:

A few years ago, at a Las Vegas convention for magicians, Penn Jillette, of the act Penn and Teller, was introduced to a soft-spoken young man named Apollo Robbins, who has a reputation as a pickpocket of almost supernatural ability. Jillette, who ranks pickpockets, he says, “a few notches below hypnotists on the show-biz totem pole,” was holding court at a table of colleagues, and he asked Robbins for a demonstration, ready to be unimpressed. Robbins demurred, claiming that he felt uncomfortable working in front of other magicians. He pointed out that, since Jillette was wearing only shorts and a sports shirt, he wouldn’t have much to work with. 

“Come on,” Jillette said. “Steal something from me.” 

Again, Robbins begged off, but he offered to do a trick instead. He instructed Jillette to place a ring that he was wearing on a piece of paper and trace its outline with a pen. By now, a small crowd had gathered. Jillette removed his ring, put it down on the paper, unclipped a pen from his shirt, and leaned forward, preparing to draw. After a moment, he froze and looked up. His face was pale. 

“Fuck. You,” he said, and slumped into a chair.

Robbins held up a thin, cylindrical object: the cartridge from Jillette’s pen.

The whole deal is worth a read, but the bottom line is that our attention can be controlled -- advertisers know it, politicians know it, the media REALLY knows it, magicians obviously know it, and a world class pickpocket will take what he wants EVEN IF YOU KNOW WHAT HE IS DOING!

The absolute dumbest thing any of us have is confidence! It is true that we can't live without SOME, but it is also critical that we know our limitations! 

Those that are manipulating you know that your attention can be manipulated. You can't stop them ALL, but you can do MUCH better if you are aware!

"But physical technique, Robbins pointed out, is merely a tool. “It’s all about the choreography of people’s attention,” he said. “Attention is like water. It flows. It’s liquid. You create channels to divert it, and you hope that it flows the right way.”"

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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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