For those of us in the Christian Right, we have known this since at least 2008, if not 1999 when we failed to impeach Clinton for perjury and the crime of sexual harassment that would have gotten any kids having sex at McDonalds fired. We could even go back to 1973 and say that when a nation embarks on a holocaust that quickly surpassed that of Germany, any person who still has a moral compass knows that war will eventually result.
There are those on both the left and the right who call for American “unity.” But these calls are either naïve or disingenuous. Unity was possible between the Right and liberals, but not between the Right and the Left.
How does one make "peace" with those who will kill 60 million innocents as has happened with abortion? By winning.
Liberalism – which was anti-Left, pro-American, and deeply committed to the Judeo-Christian foundations of America, regarded the melting pot as the American ideal, fought for free speech for its opponents, regarded Western civilization as the greatest moral and artistic human achievement, and viewed the celebration of racial identity as racism – is now affirmed almost exclusively on the right and among a handful of people who don’t call themselves conservative.
I think Praeger is a bit of a Pollyanna as he looks at "liberals of old". Certainly there WERE many such liberals, but even at the time of Buckley writing "God and Man at Yale", it was clear that belief in God was becoming unacceptable at "liberal institutions", and Marxism was considered the winning hand over Capitalism. He is certainly correct however that the modern US and European Left is against every one of those values in the paragraph above at this point.
As long as conservatism was losing, the war was covert -- but with the Trump win, we see it heating up. Can conservatism win without firing a shot as Reagan did against the USSR? I doubt it, but we can always hope. Apparently Praeger doesn't agree with me that the elected government of BOistan has become a SERVANT of the Administrative State and the courts. We shall see.
The article is not that long, highly recommend reading it all. This is how he closes.
With the defeat of the Left in the last presidential election, the defeat of the Left in two-thirds of the gubernatorial elections and in a majority of House and Senate elections, this is likely the last chance liberals, conservatives, and the Right have to defeat the American Left. But it will not happen until these groups understand that we are fighting for the survival of America no less than the Union troops were in the First Civil War.
If Trump was a Democrat, this would be VERY exicting news! As it is, it is awfully muted. As US News says though:
But the achievement wasn't tough to see coming, considering stocks have boomed in the aftermath of President Donald Trump's electoral victory. The Dow has climbed more than 1,600 points since Election Day – up more than 9 percent over the course of a little less than two months.
It is good to remember that one of the reasons for NOT voting for Trump was "econmic disaster". Over at the NY Times on election night when market futures went down, former Enron advisor and Nobel prizewinner Paul Krugman was certain they were going down and never coming up.
It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover?
Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty. The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.
Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.
The Times advertises all the time as "Truth" -- in this age of "fake news", one wants hard hitting accurate reporting from experts like Krugman!
He isn't the only one ... poor muti-billionaire George Soros managed to lose one of his billions betting against Trump markets, and a lot of millions supporting Hillary and other left wingers.
Ah yes, things that make you go "boo hoo".
Does this mean that presidents make markets? Certainly not before they are elected, no ... we are talking "sentiment" here. In the long run? Well, that is why we have the sentiment -- while Hillary was the darling of Wall Street and the wealthy, Trump has promised to bring back some economy for the little folks.
If he can follow through on that remains to be seen, but people are voting again with their money and driving the markets up at this point, while the elite wealthy like Soros are unhappy and grumpy.
More pardons than the last 12 presidents combined. BO wanted MORE gun control ... yet he pardoned many that used guns to commit felonies. "Law" is an oxymoron to the left -- POWER, that is their coin.
Worthy of a read. I have no understanding of gayness, but assume it is looking at a man like I look at a woman in "desire mode". There tends to not be lot of deep thought related to that ... looking at a tall cold glass of beer on a hot day comes to mind as a similar sort of non-intellectual endeavor. If the species needed very much intellect for feeding, fighting, fleeing and, er "procreating", we would likely either be a lot smarter or "not" (as in not existing).
Liking beer, scotch, tobacco, chocolate -- or not, never seemed to be hugely intellectual to me either. There is the "addiction factor" of course -- I used to really enjoy smoking a pipe, but I gave that up and it wasn't too hard. I still enjoy the occasional cigar, but it doesn't average out to "weekly", so not much addiction factor. Eating too much for emotional reasons? BIG addiction factor -- really hard to give up eating though -- and it tends to not end well. Sometimes we have to totally fight STRONG urges to even survive, let alone be "moral". Just ask a "recovered" addict.
I can imagine that the "secrecy factor" can be significant -- the long term religious person doubting their faith, marital infidelity, being a victim of abuse, and likely an abuser, lots of addictions, etc. It would be interesting to note the percentage of the population that has "no secrets" vs "significant secrets" vs "secrets that are thought to be at an acceptable level"(whatever that means!). It's difficult to even put categories on such things. Having had some personal experience plus experience in talking to others, I'd guess that the totals for "having done or been the victim of something that has or occasionally causes moderate or greater guilt" is well over 50% of the population, possibly close to 90%? Who knows? They are called "secrets" after all! "Redemption" is an idea that doesn't apply if there is no sin -- and it doesn't apply politically. As Hillary reminded us, Trump voters are not merely "deplorable", but "irredeemable".
As the guy in the column says:
Worse than Mr. Trump’s inconsistencies, however, are those of his detractors. They cite his lack of inclusiveness yet discount that tens of millions of Americans voted for him, and he won 30 states. I am as afraid about acknowledging that I voted for Mr. Trump today as I was about being gay yesterday. There seems to be as little understanding of my political views as there was about my sexual orientation.
I suppose there is really no irony there at all, but it feels that way to me. If we take the old "10% gay" number that is thought to be VERY high (1-2% being closer to reality), 30 million out of our 300 million population would be gay. Therefore, that a significant percentage of 60 million Trump voters now feel reticent to "come out" would be considered to be "progress" by the Hillary voters. People feeling uncomfortable because they have desires that go against nature and human mores for thousands of years is "unacceptable" we must love the sin AND love the sinner. (actually, it often seems that the Christian ideal of loving the sinner is not really understood at all by non-Christians -- it is the sin that must really be loved)
However if 2x+ even the inflated the old number of gays have thoughts counter to recently expounded "progressive" positions, then they OUGHT to feel uncomfortable and be "closeted"!!! From the "progressive" POV, all that is required is to increase sanctions against them until they TRUELY "get their minds right" -- the idea that people would CONSIDER a position different from "progressive" orthodoxy is bad enough -- that they would find the gall go "come out" and admit it is totally beyond the "progressive pale"! It is as if the very worst of any sanctions formerly used against gays have suddenly become nearly mandatory from the left if used against Trump voters!
Certainly Trump supporters know that they are a "minority" in any way that counts, the much vaunted Hillary "3 million" more popular vote being the most meaningless part. As I lament to boredom, at this point, Trump support is DEFINITELY counter-cultural. You can lose your job, friends, social standing, etc -- and as "progressives" would say, that is only the beginning -- as evidenced this last weekend, they may want to attack you physically or even attack your kids. Proper thought must be maintained! My guess is that their big worry is that it might actually become acceptable to think differently from them! (the horror!!, I assume this is what they mean by "normalizing")
Is being a "minority" really bad? Women are in fact a MAJORITY, yet a million of them marched yesterday because they don't feel enough like a majority after the inauguration. The Davos crowd is in somewhat of a funk because Brexit and the US election didn't come out as they wanted. Eight of them have as much wealth as the bottom half of the planet, and if we counted the whole 3K attendees, it would likely be 2/3's or even 3/4s, yet they don't quite feel "powerful enough" since not everything is going their way.
My Packers are getting killed while I write this -- yet when Rodgers claimed they could "run the table", I thought he was crazy. They did WAY better than I would have expected getting to this point --- but since they didn't win it all, I feel the pangs of disappointment.
My current section of study in DBT -- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (a class I'm teaching) is "Distress Tolerance". Life is painful, sometimes very painful (like your spouse or child dying), sometimes ridiculously smallish painful (like your team losing). Even when you are part of an elite that has over half the wealth on the planet and fly around in beautiful private jets, life comes with "distress". The higher our expectations, the greater our distress. For the elite, the election of Trump is like someone dying ... even when discussed on a private jet flying to Davos.
As we have known since Genesis, our nature is to believe that each of us has a right to "be like God" -- or at least like what we assume God is like. When others are not what we want -- they vote for Trump, they cheer for another team, they don't worship as we do, they practice something (typically sexual) that makes our skin crawl, they don't "look like us" (they are way too fat, way too beautiful. the wrong color, smelly, etc), we feel various levels of "discomfort, disgust, hatred, anger, etc".
DBT would tell us that "our feelings are valid" -- they ARE the feelings we have. Claiming that we "shouldn't" have them is counterproductive. Nobody as ever used reason to create love or remove disgust. Most all of us have tried to overcome feelings with logic and reason, and we can often do a darned good job of "faking it" -- or at least we think we can. Usually, everyone pretty much "knows" at some level so we are really ALL just thinking we are faking everyone else out while everyone else actually knows about the faking. We live in an age where "The Emporers New Clothes" is no longer cautionary, but rather "kill the little kid being honest! He is a deploreable!"
In DBT, the idea is to "breath deeply", allow time to pass, "allow the solution to find us". This somewhat mumbo jumbo is called "wise mind" ... we all know what they are reaching for. (2:50 is the admonition from Obi Wan if you are in a hurry).
Christ went over all this 2K years ago and offered to change us so that our "still small voice" was aligned with good rather than evil. So aligned in fact, that it was just barely possible to see the potential to ACTUALLY love our enemies!
Search your heart -- what do you "know to be true" about the "million woman march" or the protests at the inauguration? Do you feel the love and understanding for the vast majority of those 60 million Trump voters by the marchers/protesters, and a strong encouragement for them to "come out" so they could practice "radical acceptance" of their views of religious freedom, the need to maintain a culture that can somehow be identified as "American", the value of hard work, thrift, as much self determination and responsibility as possible? How about the radical concept of local and even individual control of who uses a bathroom or even associational freedom as to if you need to bake a cake for a wedding that is against your religious sentiments vs selling a dress to Melania Trump that is against your political sensibilities?
What is "progress"? Having 60 million in the closet vs 30 million? Who decides that is "progress"? Davos Man? The New York Times? Harvard? George Soros? How many people you can get to march or break windows and burn cars? It looks like the left no longer even wants to honor elections? How are things decided when elections are no longer honored?
Will there ever be diversity of thought and love for even our enemies on a broad spectrum, or is "war" either via politics or direct means the lot in life of the failed state of BOistan forever? Reason will never get us out of our pit -- yet Christ created a way.
Rev 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
The NY Times is all "just the facts you decide" on a physical attack of a Trump supporter during an interview. They usually aren't much for that sort of angle -- rather preferring to tell their readers exactly what to think. We can be pretty sure that they are just not QUITE ready to say directly "violence against Trump and his supporters is A - OK".
Their headline proudly proclaims that Richard Spencer is a Nazi -- he might be nationalist, not clear at all he is socialist.
Will it escalate? It is hard to see what "The Party" (TP-D) position on this really is. Ever since the election there has been a sense that riots, looting, violence, etc are at least "understandable".
The rather tepid "Tea Party" opposition that arose around tax day in '09 was quickly labeled strongly as "racist, unhinged, un-American, etc. BO was just too good to oppose!
The left is still on the "no opposition will be allowed" path. How much farther will they push it?
MN has two left handed Senators that we so richly deserve -- this is a state that needs to spend a decade or so to try to earn it's way back to being worthy of having a voice!
Franken digs the hole deeper here -- he thinks having a tobacco stock in a mutal fund is a sin ... and then finds out that HE has a tobacco stock in the mutual fund.
Naturally, Senator Clowns situttion is DIFFERENT ... he is a left handed clown, so his tobacco stock is just fine!
Male or female, we have all experienced the noxious skidmark on the skivies. Our national skidmark ends tomorrow, saints be praised!
We didn't end up eating roasted rat as I suspected we would -- Gods mercy is indeed beyond measure. BOistan is a failed state wholly undeserving of that mercy -- yet as evidenced by Christ, Gods mercy flows to the totally undeserving. Praise be to God!
We know that the stench of BO will linger -- but it's power has received a major freshening blast. Can the noxious stench ever be removed? Through God all things are possible!
Will Trump be an improvement? I really have no idea -- he will be DIFFERENT, and that is to be praised at this low point!
In the old military saw, the good news is that everyone is getting a change of underware. The bad news is that you change with the person on your left.
At worst we just pick up a new skidmark. Given the past 8 yars, that is wonderfully positive news!
Appartently Trump is considering brilliant Jewish Yale PHD David Gelernter, who was injured by the leftist Unibomber, for National Science Advisor. Anyone that has a wisp of independent thought is "anti-intellectual" to the WaPo, because we know that if you are intelligent and well educated, you are ipso facto left wing!
I've got a good start on the first book in the Churchill series on WWII, "The Gathering Storm". Winston is even more fun to read than he is to read about!
The linked article is a common sense discussion of how the Davos elite could decide to work WITH the disgruntled world wide "Bourgoise" if they so desired. Still have "trade deals", just make them "good deals", not 100% optimized to line the pockets of the Davos elite and their most favored friends. Much as in the Bible, let a few crumbs fall from the table to the hard workers who just want to maintain some Christian values and keep their families together.
Will it be so? It certainly could be -- as WWII would have been so easy to stop for 10 years when it was obvious as to what was coming to anyone that had bothered to read "Mein Kampf" as Winston had. Here he is on page 55:
"All was there -- the programme of German resurrection; the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combatting Marxism; the concept of the National Socialist State; the righttful position of Germany at the summit of the world. Here was the Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with it's message."
Those of us that had read BO's "Dreams" equally knew that BO would do all he could to destroy the "The Colonial Powers", and based on his fealty to Saul Alisnsky, to attack the Consitution, the Separation of Powers and Chrisitanity in the US.
There is ALWAYS a "Gathering Storm" -- today it is Islam, Iran, North Korea, China, and probably Russia in that order. I've been reading through Samuel, Kings and Chronicals the last few months -- a repitition of serving the Lord and prospering, failing to serve the Lord and being utterly destroyed. Most of the Kings opt for utter destruction -- we are fallen by nature, and the "Fear of the Lord" is not the natural oath, hubris and our own way is.
It's a good article. The Davos people are generally very high in IQ and unfortunately equally high in hubris.
BO put us in a very bad place -- as has the EU, the global climate industry, the UN and a few others. It is a LONG way to dig out from here and a great time to be get busy!
As the end of the stench comes blessedly closer, NR reviews the scandal list. My comments are:
The WORST scandal is that this was the presidency in which the MSM and "The Party' (TP-D) ... but I repeat myself, went "all in". They utterly didn't care about long list of scandals of BO -- they were BO's "plumbers", always busy on the coverup.
The BO scandals turned the corner where TP under the direction of BO routinely used the power of the government against their poltical opponents -- IRS being a large one in that column, but there were others. Nixon WANTED to use the IRS against his enemies, BO was able to.
In the case of Begnhazi, people died and it was STILL not of any concern to the MSM.
The article is worthy but a bit long. I wanted to have it int he blog for future reference.
Democrats can't really say that the idea of calling a Republican "illegitimate" is new -- they did it with W in '01 as well
But this is also part of a pattern. Lewis and Lee, along with some other Democratic lawmakers at the time, also boycotted to make a point when President George W. Bush was inaugurated in 2001. The Washington Post reported at the time that Lewis "thought it would be hypocritical to attend Bush's swearing-in because he doesn't believe Bush is the true elected president."
Naturally the Democrats have all sorts of excuses! The Republicans opposed BO! Er, well, none of them boycotted his inaugurations, but McConnel said he wanted to make him a "one term president"!
Notice any difference with statements relative to Trump?
"The Party" (TP-D) is all about power all the time. The ONLY thing that is "legitimate" for them is 100% TP power 100% of the time. They consider anything else illegitimate.
So 8 billionaires have as much wealth as the poorest half of the planet. They are:
Bill Gates (US): co-founder of Microsoft (net worth $75bn)
Amancio Ortega (Spain): founder of Zara owner Inditex (net worth $67bn)
Warren Buffett (US): largest shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway (net worth $60.8bn)
Carlos Slim Helu (Mexico): owner of Grupo Carso (net worth $50bn)
Jeff Bezos (US): founder and chief executive of Amazon (net worth $45.2bn)
Mark Zuckerberg (US): co-founder and chief executive of Facebook (net worth $44.6bn)
Larry Ellison (US): co-founder and chief executive of Oracle (net worth $43.6bn
Michael Bloomberg (US): owner of Bloomberg LP (net worth $40bn)
They are likely all at Davos this week, and in general, while the media might report the 8 having the same wealth as about 3.75 billion people, they are all pretty well liked. Ellison maybe not so much, but Gates, Buffett, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Bloomberg are seen as "decent progressives" that support "the right causes".
Bloomberg is kind of an interesting case. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about his wealth:
In March 2009, Forbes reported Bloomberg's wealth at $16 billion, a gain of $4.5 billion over the previous year, enjoying the world's biggest increase in wealth in 2009.[25] At that time, there were only four fortunes in the U.S. that were larger (although the Wal-Mart family fortune is split among four people). He had moved from 142nd to 17th in the Forbes list of the world's billionaires in only two years (March 2007 – March 2009).[26][27] In September 2013, Forbes reported Bloomberg's wealth as $33 billion and ranked him as the 13th richest person in the world. In March 2012, Forbes reported Bloomberg's wealth at $22 billion, ranking him 20th in the world and 11th in the United States.[14] In September 2015, his net worth was $43.3 billion, ranking him the 6th richest person in the United States
I'm wondering if Trump enjoys the world's largest increase in wealth in any of the years of his presidency if it might hit the press at all? Probably not ... we know they are "fair and balanced". Strangely, I could find nothing on the business genius that Bloomberg had run all his businesses when he fully divested to be Mayor? They must have been a real financial wizard to have him enjoy the WORLDS biggest increase in wealth in '09!
This sort of thing is what knuckle dragging Trump supporters and stupid Brexit types get angry about. As I've mentioned before, Davos man wants to see the masses of Americans drastically "lower their expectations for life" as I've written of before.
See, our betters in TP ("The Party"(D)" and the MSM know what would be better for us, and they LOVE the Davos sorts. Those folks are "the right kind of rich" -- no need to put any taxes or controls on THEM!
There are two possible stories -- one of them simple, but false, the other more complex but quite obviously true.
1). Comey and "Russian Hackers" torpedoed Hillary and gave the election to Trump.
2). Hillary and her party were extensively corrupt and criminally careless, but BO and company "ran cover", jerking Comey around, giving him pieces of this and that, denying him others, all the while certain that Hillary was going to win, so none of this would matter.
The Inspector Generals investigation of COMEY, as well as the related investigation of "Russian Hacking" are nothing but misinformation campaigns designed to de-legitimize Trump's election.
The only hope here is that a large enough segment of the US population TRUELY has correctly decided that TP and the MSM are one entity, united in bullshit, and they aren't going to bother to listen to them.
The article is long, but it does explain it pretty well if you want to understand the sordid details.
I saw the Bleacher Report article and it saddened me at the time. I've long said that I worried about what sort of "problem" existed in Rogers life, because he seems WAY too perfect and we all know that such doesn't exist in humanity.
"Ed Rodgers described as accurate a Bleacher Report article published in November, which revealed, among other things, that Rodgers had not spoken to his family since the end of 2014, a few months after he began dating Munn, who has appeared on “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, in “The Newsroom” on HBO and in the film “X-Men: Apocalypse.”"
I have no idea what the problem is, but in my book there are no valid excuses for not speaking to your family since 2014 outside of "fear of violence".
It is just sad to see. I pray that he works it out.
