Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies built on blockchains have a pretty decent potenital to finally replace fiat currency, which replaced gold, which replaced barter.
This is a pretty good little video on the subject I think:
The "value" is in the whole exchange system, which is decentralized, secure, open, and "smart" (contains logic / algorithms) and best of all, since it seems very likely that the fiat currency providers are all going to collapse, it has no central point of control.
Now, if we get blasted back to the stone age, gold is MUCH better, however, barring that, there seems to be solid potential for this over fiat currency, since "the full faith and trust" of BOistan is really not very comforting!
Not all that expensive to begin bitcoin mining! Like all mining, there is a lot of risk, but on the bright side you don't have to go down in a dark damp hole.
A good little summary of one of the Fake News techniques to fill dead air -- usually with an extremely partisan bent -- ah, the "fire hydrant of youth"! Pissing on each others tennis shoes and calling it "virtue"!
"What mainly drives the events of the “Denunciad,” as the gods do the “Odyssey,” is the media, which has discovered an endless fount of news—a sort of fire hydrant of youth. Suppose that Person X makes an inappropriate remark, and you are a news director charged with covering the story. By itself, it’s liable to fade pretty quickly, yet there are 24 hours of live updates to fill. But there is hope: Did President Trump denounce the remark by Person X? Did he do so quickly enough? Did he do so in the rigidly mechanical terms demanded? What about Senator Y? Did he denounce it full-throatedly? Did he say, verbatim, that “this is not who we are as Americans”?"
It is laughable how this scam works ... there are 100's of entertainers, rap artists, athletes, criminals, etc that are staunch supporters of "The Party" (TP-D) ... in fact, nearly every felon and certainly the vast majority of illegals in BOistan in general support TP. If you are a "D", you can say anything you want as long as it doesn't very directly go against TP doctrine, it is "A OK". And even if it does, as long as you are say black, female, a criminal, or some combination of that above, it is still OK.
Even if it isn't, the powers that be NEVER call on a TP politician of any level to repudiate it -- unless of course it is show for a "Sister Solja moment" as executed so smoothly by Slick Willie.
I often feel like a stranger in a strange land. How rare can it really be to look at a half full / half empty glass and think that there must be at least a few other ways to view it ... the engineering view "twice as big as it needs to be"; the scientific answer: "the glass is full as always, filled partially with gas and partially with a liquid, it appears to be filled with approximately equal parts of both. With testing, the exact quantities and makeup of both can be further determined"; the process engineer: "if filling, half full, if empying, half empty" ... one could go on.
The article author belives they have "proven" that when people feel "safe and secure" (ie. "smug"), they are more liberal. When they realize that they are never completely safe and secure and that they and their loved ones are constantly exposed to threats (eg. disease, accident, smug liberals spending their nation into bankruptcy, etc) they tend to be more conservative. The difference (as it always has been) is reality based or fantasy based!
In both instances, we had manipulated a deeper underlying reason for political attitudes, the strength of the basic motivation of safety and survival. The boiling water of our social and political attitudes, it seems, can be turned up or down by changing how physically safe we feel.
Certainly the wealthy students of Yale feel quite smug, so this seems completely reasonable to them, but SERIOUSLY? Can they not for just the merest second picture themselves up in a loud nasty bar in say New Hampshire, when a big bearded guy in a MAGA Hat and a 32oz mug of beer saunters up to them in their Pussy Hat and says, "hey, is that actually one of those Pussy Hat things? Why the hell would one wear one of those?" ... no doubt their amygdala would put on a major growth spurt like the Grinches heart, and they might even be hoping a conservative cop was close by!
Obviously, the super smug don't account for all the liberals, only for the elite. The rest of the liberals pretty much just want free things -- and will vote for whomever promises them the most free stuff to keep them "secure". They either lack the ability or the interest to think about what happens when the bill inevitably comes due on all that free stuff, because that requires facing tough questions and the real world, which is ALWAYS something that makes mortals feel much less smug once they consider it!
"The fear of God is the BEGINNING of wisdom!".
Oh, and being smug is NEVER wise! The level of smugness required to write and publish an article such as this makes me realize why we ended up living in BOistan.
A reasonable person can read this article and think, "yeah, that could work"! See the problem with that is that you likely actually have some sort of "honor, moral sense, belief in redemption, etc". "The Party (TP-D) has sworn off those things a LONG time ago!
See Teddy Kennedy, Barney Frank, Gary Studds, John Conyers, Slick Willie, Al Gore, Joe Biden, etc, etc
The BASIS of the D party relative to sexual morals is "If it feels good, DO IT!" If a baby results, KILL IT! One of the major purposes of TP is to stamp out morals and propriety -- 50+ genders "doing it" (whatever the hell that means with 50+ genders), GREAT! TP will fine you and throw you in jail if you are unwilling to celebrate every "gender" and whatever acts they might choose to engage in!
The author of the column feels that R's are again not being trusting enough of our D counterparts!
Sean Trende summarized a common argument in conservative circles: “(A) We fought a battle over whether character counts, and got our [tushes] handed to us and (B) liberal leaders always circle the wagons around their guys, and ours always cave.” This may or many not be accurate; we can think of cases where Republicans were caught in scandal and served out their term (Idaho senator Larry Craig) and we can think of cases where Democrats were more or less pushed out of office quickly (former congressman Anthony Weiner). Most partisans prefer to remember both the cases where their side acted honorably, demanding serious consequences for bad behavior, and times when the other side circled the wagons and defended the indefensible.
It's a bit on the laughable side that Craig is "the example" -- he lost his Senate seat over trolling for gay sex in a bathroom at the Minneapolis Airport! Gary Studds (D) OTOH, had sex with a male congressional page and never lost his seat. I have no problems with R's deciding to get rid of an unseemly senator for whatever they want, and D's keeping one around -- the point is that trying to use the term "morals" in concert with "Democrat" is false advertising. The big PLUS of the D party for a lot of their members is that THEY DON"T HAVE ANY STINKING MORALS!
AFAIK, Weiner - Holder is the TP ticket in 2020!
Those that want to trust the intentions of D's need to watch this video again! HOW many times to they have to screw us??? !!!!!
Perhaps the key slogan for a better 2018 would be “You can’t treat people like that.” But if character is going to count again, both sides of the ideological divide need to sign on.
Sure, TP will be signing up for that right away! The TP playbook is to push Rs to live TOTALLY up to their morals -- even when the "morals" are to be applied to 38 year old charges that have never surfaced until now!
Well, if I become convinced that the Democrats have ACTUALLY had a change of heart on Slick Willie, my call for Trump impeachment in 2030, a mere 6 years after he is out of office, would FAR exceed the virtue of the Democrats calling for the removal of Slick, who left office in January of 2001.
See, in a world of actual honesty, we could look at this and the D's could realize that there is a HUGE bump in virtue by impeaching someone actually in office! The Stupid Party (R), proved their stupidity by throwing Nixon to the wolves, the D's rubbed it in when Slick ACTUALLY stained the office, and now, it might make sense to get back to actual standards of some sort ... "eventually"!
You know, that weird little "justice" thing that is actually supposed to apply to ALL people, independent of party?
I'm not holding my breath, but I guess finally realizing that you showed ZERO moral principles nearly two decades later is superior to NEVER getting it! Except, I don't believe them now either -- they just hope to get the Stupid Party to trade a sitting president for one out of office nearly two decades -- oh, and if they get Trump? You can bet that when Slick goes off to his eternal "reward", the eulogies for his "greatness" will still be enough to make sane people barf!
A people with remote contact with morality would look at this and simply realize that we are totally lost, and need to fall to our knees and beg for forgiveness from Holy God.
I'm not holding my breath.
This was in 2015 folks -- if Hillary was elected, none of the "revelations" we are seeing now would be happening! "The right folks" (The Clintons) would be in power, and things would be as they were in March of 2015 -- "normal". We KNOW that to be true!
As Janice Min, the former editor of The Hollywood Reporter, told me, when Barack Obama stepped off a stage and into Weinstein’s arms for a big hug after giving a $400,000 speech as an ex-president in the spring, it sent a signal that the ogre was in a protected magic circle.
The video is not long -- look at the level of entitlement in these guys, they KNOW that they are UNTOUCHABLE! They are the ELITE! They take what they want and to HELL with the "little people".
Is Trump going to "fix us"? No, only GOD can fix us, but there is an outside chance that in "The Party" (TP-D) desperation to maintain control via the Deep State and Judiciaary, they may expose enough of the corruption so that WE ASK!
Unlike Kevin, Charlie and Slick, God doesn't force himself on anyone (well maybe Paul, sorta) ... we need to ASK!
BOistan is corrupt beyond understanding, pray for America, or at least "Fly Over America" to be restored ... perhaps Sodom could be the west coast, and Gomorrah the east? It seems very fitting!
The important thing to remember about "sexual harassment" starting in the '90s is that "the standard" is supposed to be that "if the woman feels harassed, then she was harassed" ... it could be words, could be looks, could be something that you wore, displayed, had tattooed, etc, could be ANYTHING! Including of course ANY sort of touching, bumping into, etc. I covered my personal experience with this here, as well as some discussion on who got off, and who didn't.
The most famous guy that got off totally is Bill Clinton. Clarence Thomas narrowly managed to make it onto the SCOTUS after being accused of ... well, "talking" ... mentioning some x-rated films and a potential pubic hair on a can of coke. Those were the CHARGES, and they almost did take him down, except that:
1). The charges were old (a decade or so when made)
2). The "victim" had followed him to multiple jobs since the charges supposedly happened
3). They could not get anyone else to come forth and make similar charges.
When they went after Harvey Weinstein, I was shocked -- having your way with women has been one of the perks of being a lefty in good standing for a LONG time. Situations like Slick Willie where the accusers were mercilessly abused and castigated by the press and Democrats made it clear that powerful lefty men were allowed "favors" without retribution. If a woman complained, she was destroyed.
The big choice in human life has always been first and foremost GOD ... and from thence, morality.
A shared belief in a God that was always watching and would sort things out for eternity has always been the gold standard for morals. It is what we do when we think we are going to get away with it that is problematic! Do morals backed up by an infinite all knowing God that will ultimately judge you ensure moral turpitude? Of course not! We are talking odds here -- strong religiously backed morals put you in the "80-90th percent reliable" area. FAR from perfect, but a high standard for this fallen world.
In a world with God as the standard, women would have come out EVEN IF their careers were going to be destroyed because IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO ... for your eternal soul, for your current female sisters, and for any female offspring you might care about. When you drop God, and especially if you start killing the unborn, "your career" is quickly the only thing that counts!
When morals fail, the next backstop is law and justice. It isn't nearly as good, because it requires some sort of "enforcers", "evidence", and if you don't get caught, then you are as good as guilt free. For all but murder if you are a D (see Chappaquiddick), there is going to be some sort of statute of limitations -- because the trail goes cold, and "proving" things after a decade or more can be really difficult. Oh, and especially nasty, law and justice require that they are applied EQUALLY in order to be respected -- power doesn't get to play.
That has always been a problem for Ds ... see Roy Moore. No way such "charges" would even arise against a D. "Old News" ... which in D parlance means that "we heard it before, maybe just last week". Thirty+ years for a D? Oh please!
As I've argued elsewhere, Chappaquiddick is as good a place as any to select as a point where pure POWER became the coin of our realm. That the incident included both sex and murder in one not very tidy tidal pool, along with America's most powerful political family, and a man who would become the "Lyin" Of the Senate, made it it especially full of damnation for America. Chappaquiddick established the "Democrat Standard" or rather "The Democrat Non-standard" relative to morals, law and justice. POWER is the godless Democrat standard.
The moral calculus since Mary Jo Kopechne as been that if a Democrat decides to have his way with a woman, just be glad and very quiet if he doesn't kill you (it is easy to be quiet if he does! Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment!) In the Slick Willie years the D sisterhood worked to establish a level of pride in providing services to prominent D's like Slick, -- "taking it for the right to kill babies", the ultimate sacrament of the Democrat party. It is hard to imagine that this sort of attitude did not engender more entitlement on the part of D men -- so most likely we are just seeing the very tip of the iceberg now.
The assumption was that the Democrats would always have enough power so that such sacrifices would be worth making to insure that the blood of the unborn continued to flow freely on the altar of Molech - Democrats. The whole idea of the sexual revolution was to give women POWER over their bodies -- certainly to murder their young, but also so that they could bestow sexual favors for their own pleasure, advancement, gain, etc -- for whatever suited them. That is what POWER is about! The charge of sexual harassment was the female equivalent of male physical power.
As Janice Min, the former editor of The Hollywood Reporter, told me, when Barack Obama stepped off a stage and into Weinstein’s arms for a big hug after giving a $400,000 speech as an ex-president in the spring, it sent a signal that the ogre was in a protected magic circle.
He was, but the power behind the "magic" had already evaporated -- the ogre was exposed as an ogre. The D's are even all claiming to be having moral buyers remorse over protecting Slick Willie! As this column tries to tell us, "Hell froze over" ...
If the ground beneath your feet feels cold, it’s because hell froze over the other day. It happened at 8:02 p.m. on Monday, when The New York Times published an op-ed called “I Believe Juanita.”
Written by Michelle Goldberg, it was a piece that, 20 years ago, likely would have inflamed the readership of the paper and scandalized its editors. Reviewing the credibility of Broaddrick’s claim, Goldberg wrote that “five witnesses said she confided in them about the assault right after it happened,” an important standard in reviewing the veracity of claims of past sex crimes.
As any minor student of history, theology and philosophy, let alone a Christian believer will tell you, without God, there are no morals, no love, no consistency. The current calculus is very easy -- Roy Moore is a warm up for taking down Trump -- the D's seek to trade a sudden attack of feigned morality about an EX president for the hide of a sitting president.
It is not for nothing that the Republican party is known as "The Stupid Party" -- while there are actual honorable Republicans with principles, Reagan being a great example, and the party is the last refuge of people of faith in BOistan, it too has been corrupted by the loss of religious faith and the power of DC and Davos. Trump is shaking the DC foundations -- the R's may well go along with his removal, since Pence is FAR more to their liking! There are no morals left in the leadership of the R party either.
Many will be confused by the seemingly "honest" shedding of tears over Slick's victims 20+ years too late. Heck, I would not be shocked at this point to see the D's throw BOTH Slick and Hillary under the bus, and maybe BO as well! Any intelligent Democrat has to see the courts being mightily moved away from them and even their "firewall", the Deep State, now being assailed by Trump!
Power MUST be completely ruthless to survive unless it is divine! Communism killed over 100 million in the 20th century, abortion has killed 60 million and rising. One thing that Islam is right about is submission -- the word Islam means "submission", and the basic fact of human life is that peace requires submission. Submission to God, or submission to an all powerful state.
Don't be confused -- there is zero chance of the current Democrat party having an attack of actual morals (a Democrat getting morals would be like a vampire getting a tan!), what you see is what has been obvious since at least Wilson, Democrat = the worship of godless power!
Expect A LOT of bodies as the D's try to appear to "come clean" to have the "moral standing" to take down Trump!
The column is a worthy read for understanding how minds in power based culture that can't conceive of an alternative MUST operate.
Isn’t that hypocritical? I hear you asking, Because Republicans won’t do the right thing, we shouldn’t, either? But if the short-term “right thing” leads to long-term political catastrophe for American women, I think we need to reconsider our definition of the right thing. I am in no way suggesting that we decline to hold Franken accountable for his offenses — only that we think in terms of consequences that might actually improve women’s lives going forward.
Sentient people in such a culture MUST use the calculus that "sure they are evil terrible guys, BUT there are evil terrible guys on OUR side!". When POWER is the only thing that counts, that is the tribal calculus that operated for thousands of years prior to the rise of religion, and will continue to operate for pagans now unless religion revives. WE MUST PROTECT OUR TRIBE AND **W I N** THAT IS THE ONLY "MORALITY" THAT MATTERS!
Naturally, this woman is not going to accept Chrisitanity as a source of morals -- her reference to "Atwoodian Dystopia" would be to the show "The Handmaid's Tale" of a sort of Old Testament takeover of "America" by "Christians". Both the fact that this show is on current media, and that this column is being published in the WaPo would give sane people solid information that BOistan is FAR from such a portrayal. The rest of the column makes the author's limited connection with reality even more plain.
Without reference to a transcendent power however, one view is as good as another -- what differentiates them is how much power one can garner in support of your view. By argument, force, subterfuge, mass murder, sexual favors, or any means you can successfully gain power with. You might even want to claim your point of view is "good" and try to be "nice" ... whatever that means in a godless universe.
The author is correct on one thing however; we no longer live in a remotely Chrisitan Culture, so "Rape Culture" is as good a designation as any for BOistan. The Administrative State and media like the WaPo hold the bulk of the power, and they "have their way with" all who fail to kneel to their power. Sexual rape is just one use of power. In a godless world, there are no morals or meaning, so "rape" is simply what one without power might decide happened in a sex act -- the label is up to them, however their power will determine if they can speak it.
In Godly universe, such as the one which created the civilization that preceeded BOistan, discussions of things like "morals, consistency, hypocrisy, right/wrong, good/evil, purpose, calling, honor, agape, family, etc" are all topics which are reified ("made real") by the Grace of God and people living in his service.
Those of us who remember the last days of an America under God have that rememberance. Accepting the rape culture of BOistan has been difficult for us. however one wonders what the author of the column believes will happen, since men actually DO have more physical power than women.
I'd argue that a "Hugh Heffner Culture" is likely the best that women can hope for in BOistan, and I'd also argue that I have FAR more reality evidence on my side that the author does for her "Atwoodian Dystopia". (see Hugh Heffner, Ted Kennedy, Harvey Weinstein, Al Franken ... they are all actual people, Handmaiden's Tale? Not so much)
Unless you are real news hound, you likely don't even know that the jury trial of a SITTING BOistan senator, Robert Menendez of New Jersey is looking like a hung jury. We know that Bob took a whole bunch of campaign contributions from a FL doctor, had a bunch of extended stays and trips on private jets at said doctors expense, but the view is "it was just friendly" -- he is a D after all, likely no harm no foul. If you are D, you are likely fine with this (you likely don't even know), and in fact, you likely don't even know if you are an R -- it is just not very well known, because, well, this is BOistan and we are mostly sheep under the care of "The Party" (TP-D) and it's wholly (woolly?) supportive MSM.
OTOH, if you are drawing breath you are VERY aware of 38 year old allegations that JUST SURFACED against the Senate candidate for Bob Sessions seat in Alabama. The latest one is RAPE! Slick Willie was of course very creditably accused of rape much shorter than 38 years after the fact, but that got about the same coverage as Menendez. (see **D**!)
If you read this column, you will get an impression on the charges against Moore are a bit different from what is being hammered by the MSM 24x7 at this point.
I agree with Paul that the Washington Post’s allegation that Moore tried to seduce a 14-year-old girl 38 years ago is more likely false than true, particularly given the gaping hole in the accuser’s story that has been attested to by her own mother. Beyond that, I question whether a newly-surfaced, 38-year-old allegation should ever–short of murder or something nearly as heinous–be grounds for defeating a political candidate.
There is a reason why our criminal laws include statutes of limitation. After decades have gone by, it is often impossible to prove (or disprove) an allegation. The accuser in the present case remained silent for 38 years, during most of which time Moore was a prominent figure in Alabama politics. Now, a few weeks before a U.S. Senate election, at the importuning of a team of reporters from the Washington Post who are obviously determined to bring down the candidate, she sees fit to accuse Moore. One of the kinder words we apply to this sort of conduct in the law business is “estoppel.” It is much too late to dredge up an accusation from the 1970s.
To save you some time, "estoppel" -- the principle that precludes a person from asserting something contrary to what is implied by a previous action or statement of that person or by a previous pertinent judicial determination.
In this case, you failed to make a charge for 38 years during most of which the person you are charging was in public life. You waited too long! It's kind of like the folks on the left get tired of hearing that Teddy Kennedy left his secretary in his car parked upside down under water and she died -- Democrats find that to be "old news", and they could care less, even though in that case, a life was involved.
Naturally, very few people will read the analysis on the blog which I reference. One of the brilliant things that the MSM does is 24x7 carpet bomb one side of a story with no context and then start asking Republicans who have no real skin in the game to "virtue signal" how much they are against 30 something guys making propositions to teen women -- they get "free virtue" for siding with the MSM against their own political party, *OR* they lose "virtue" for not deploring, not being harsh enough, timely enough, etc. A nice MSM version of "Heads I win, tails you lose!".
Contrast this with for example Menendez. Very few people even know he is on trial, less have any idea fo the circumstances and charges in the case, and I'm pretty sure not a SINGLE Democrat has been asked to make on comment on how much they approve or disapprove of taking all sorts of gifts sex parties with young girls, etc -- hey! that could make a DEMOCRAT look bad, and let's face it, that is NOT what the MSM is about!
The thing I miss about the old pre-political NFL was the absolute tribal fandom on display. You could be with a group of opposing fans and watch the same play in ultra slow motion and 80% of the fans on both sides would come down on the side of whatever worked out better for their team. THAT is human nature in a nutshell. ALL of our human natures!
"The trick" of the MSM has been to convince a significant percentage of the sheep that they were "the refs", and were not partisan in the political game. What has changed is that as of 2017, the number of Republicans that trust the media is 11% vs 34% of Democrats. Apparently, enough of the R sheep have been eaten so that the bleating is getting a bit more silent, and it is pretty obvious that the D's know which side the MSM is on. I suspect the reason that they have dropped some is because they just don't see them as calling enough of the "news" their way to keep Trump out of office.
The confusing part for some these days is that the RINO section of the Republican party is still out calling people names for not buying into the MSM narrative on Moore and even Trump. It seems that at this late date, a set of imaginary Scribes and Pharisees has arisen in the #nevertrump movement to claim the "moral high ground" in supporting the MSM in it's "estoppel".
We all know from past experience that in the MSM / Democrat world, any charge older than a few months is "old news", and no to be considered! (Paula Jones OLD NEWS! ... Juanita Broderick? OLD NEWS ....) 38 years? If the roles were reversed, anyone bringing up 38 year old charges would be laughed out of town even if they COULD show a body!
If you don't know the details of the Menendez case, but you want to virtue signal about Roy Moore, then you are a sheep plain and simple. If you DO know, and you want to virtue signal, then I HOPE that you were completely up in arms about Teddy Kennedy from Chappaquiddick on!
Otherwise, you are either a Democrat or a hypocrite, but I repeat myself.
As I cover to exhaustion in this blog, in BOistan, there are no morals, only POWER. You may not have chosen to live in BOistan, but since you do, it would behoove you to act accordingly. WISHING that the other side played by rules will only eventually get you killed.
Everyone that reads this blog should be aware of Trumpy Bear.
I was not, but my father, soon to be 91, wants one for his B-day. I can't divulge if he is going to get one yet, since he may read this blog, however the site and videos MUST be viewed!
If you have not been exposed to this little piece of propaganda yet, take a look. Amazingly it seems to be flowing around rather freely on social media. "Fake News" isn't nearly the threat to to life that long term propaganda and mind control are -- we need the all powerful Administrative State to "investigate"!
First, when you see a video like this, THINK! It is exactly like "Tastes Great, Less Filling", "Hope and Change", or "Make America Great Again"! It is MARKETING -- it is selling you a narrative. A story that someone wants you to put in your brain. Again -- "marketing" isn't bad in itself, it is WHAT is being marketed and WHY!
I'm old enough to remember the 1960s when the "progressives" were pushing birth control, free love and divorce as the way to happiness. One would not want to raise kids in a home where there was no "passion" between mom and dad! You "owed it to them" to get divorced so they could live in a "loving home". "True love" (good sex in the liberal parlance) conquers all! Agape? What does that mean? Seems like an awfully difficult Greek word for people to even think about!
It is sadly laughable that today's leftys make the first element of supposed "privilege" to be living in a traditional family, and the second being having a "father figure" in the family .,.. forget "ACTUAL father", that is just TOO far out in the wondrous "progressive" (regressive) world which the left has given us! Your parents failed to buy what we were selling in the 1960's, so please listen to us while we sell you "privilege" now! In 1960, 73% of kids had that kind of "privilege", today only 46% do. Marketing works!
80-90% of the "privilege" is right there -- living with your birth parents! Such families are much better off economically -- something in the 40-60% range of our "income inequality" is due to children out of wedlock and broken homes. Thanks "progressives"!
Many of the "privilege steps" are even MORE laughable. I had no access to private education, but that was before the progressives destroyed the public schools! They threw out prayer, moral teaching, discipline, academic rigor and STANDARDS, and replaced it with social engineering, union/political proselytizing, and putting condoms on cucumbers. YES, that makes private schools a huge advantage! Thanks "progressives"!
Having a computer and a cell phone are more like DISadvantages without really good parents -- they are much like the "advantage" of birth control -- tools that require much more responsibility than youth can possibly muster, thus putting even MORE load on the vanishing traditional family. Helping mom and dad with the bills is also an ADVANTAGE -- learning the value of money and RESPONSIBILITY!
They don't quite have the chutzpah to mention it, but a sense of responsibility for your own self and action is a HUGE "privilege" -- however, then you would be unlikely to blame "privilege", because to the extent it existed, it would just drive you to overcome it! NOT what "progressives" sell!
In what universe is having the level of athletic ability to have your college covered NOT a "privilege"? Sure you worked hard, however without God given talent that you were blessed with through no merit of your own, you don't get full-ride college scholarships! Thanks be to God!
I'm not going to bother to keep going. The narrative being marketed here is meaninglessness and state control. CULTURE WORKS! Or at least did work, so it must be destroyed and replaced by a culture of dependence on the state! The "progressive" left has been at war with the family for 60 years -- they have turned 73% being "privileged" into 46% being "privileged" to grow up with their parents, and now they want the survivors of the culture wars to feel guilty about surviving! Why?
It is so extremely simple it is hard to imagine the BOistani ability to think even a tiny bit critically has been so damaged. THEY WANT TO GET TO A 100% MINDLESS DEPENDENT POPULATION THAT BELIEVES THIS!
If you train young minds to feel guilty about coming from the tatters of a culture that worked, and that there is no merit in the personal responsibility and hard work they no doubt are building and doing, then their efforts are meaningless! At the same time, the "progressives" convince those that are not performing as well that it is all due to the "privilege" that they lack, so there is therefore "nothing they can do about it" -- please stop working, you are too far behind!
The saddest part of this propaganda is the sick attempt to align it with Christian values at the end. The people driving this HATE GOD AND CHRIST, you know it because they are in constant warfare with any hint of religion in the public square, and labor tirelessly to destroy any hint of values and decency in the society. They don't want you to PERSONALLY do anything to help others, they want you to outsource your money and power to THEM, so they can continue to destroy the culture!
I'm proud to be the kind of fool that looks critically at all that man has to say -- especially when they throw in a Bible verse at the end. Hopefully you will look at me just as critically, so here is my verse.
Proverbs 26:11 "Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly".
They sold you the broken family already. Are you going to call it "privilege" when parents resisted, and now buy into them telling us that the "privilege" you supposedly got from parents who resisted makes hard work and personal responsibility null and void?
THINK! Thinking, reading your Bible, praying, working hard, being responsible, delaying gratification, staying married, etc -- that is the eternal "resistance"! If you do those things you WILL get out and help others PERSONALLY, because you will have the MEANS in character and maybe money, and most importantly, the love of Christ will be in your heart!
Either more of the the Republican party will eventually "grow a set", or it will continue to fade. I sat in a cafe this AM and the TV was 100% various hand wringing about the 35+ year old "acusations" aginst Roy Moore. A couple of weeks ago we had FBI documentation that the Clinton's and BO sold 20% of our urainum reserves to the Russians for north of $100 million to the Clintons alone, plus a bunch of sordid kickbacks, payoffs, etc. Not really MSM newsworthy -- certainly no wall to wall coverage.
Then we had other FBI information showing that the DNC paid to work with Russians to dig up dirt on Trump to influence the election -- the DNC in fact admitted it. Not really newsworthy -- certainly not a "scandal".
Slick Willie received much fresher charges of RAPE, along with all sorts of groping, dropping trou, etc, etc, but all those were of no concern because they were "just sex". God only knows what he did decades prior to being Arkansas governor -- nobody really cares. He is a D. Oh ... and he as been on the "Lolita Express" a whole bunch, but that is just "circumstantial" ... he has certainly never shown any pattern of liking younger women! Oh, the Lolita Express thing isn't really "news", because it is only on "biased sites" .... and we KNOW that the MSM is not biased!
Can Trump manage to fashion a party that at least folds like damp cardboard rather than like a wet paper bag? Certainly I don't expect that one would even want to create a party as shameless as the D's, but does it REALLY damage you to AT LEAST question accusations that are over 35 years old and have never surfaced before?
The ONLY thing that the RNC ought to care about in Alabama is JUST WIN BABY! Trump campaigned for Moore's primary opponent. Look at the charges, decide if Moore still has the best chance or not, and then DECIDE!
Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES however does it make sense to run like 14 year old girls from 35+ year old charges. What were Democrat Senators doing 35 years ago? Hey, go out and at least make up a charge so they can deny it! Politics is STILL not bean bag!
Should Republicans have "higher standards"? SURE! But unless they are killing their current young secretaries, that really isn't much of a bar to get over is it?
Oh the sanctimony --- you CAN'T be a "Christian / Conservative / principled / etc" if you don't rush out and gratuiously castigate Roy Moore even if you don't live within a thousand miles of Alabama! Really? Do Republican idiots REALLY want to subscribe to the "standard" that 35 year old charges that have never shown up before and can't possibly be "proven" are an appropirate litmus test for a candidate???
Who amoung us is secure from some woman coming forward and making such a charge? Remember, she would be a DEMOCRAT -- the sort of women that said they would be happy to give Bill Clinton a blow job anytime while he was being charged with a long list of harrassment charges. Do you REALLY think that such a woman is going to pause for one second to make an old charge against an R to take them down? Who is even going to run for a party stupid enough to throw in the towel because "the charges sound bad" ?
The Democrat party is PROUD to have ZERO standards other than WIN! We just need an opposition party that sets the bar higher than proven sex at the office, killing your secretary, and not selling major US assets to our enemies for payoffs.
Why is our nation $20 Trillion in debt? One of the big reasons is the "Non-Partisan CBO".
Why is it "non-partisan"? Well, because the media almost always puts that lable on it! It MUST be so!
The following paragraph shows how the sausage gets made -- or not made, in DC.
"Because the CBO has very likely overestimated the coverage loss associated with repealing the mandate, the alleged several hundred billion dollars of savings might well be mostly mythical. However, Congress operates in the CBO’s imaginary universe, as Levin puts it. If CBO estimates are to used authoritatively in the Obamacare debate to pump up the lost coverage numbers, it’s fair to use them authoritatively in the tax reform debate to pump up the savings numbers. Indeed, it would be unfair not to."
In the original BOcare scoring, the "non-partisan" CBO used 10 years of revenues to fund 6 years of benefits to show that BOcare was "deficit neutral" ... so the sentate could pass it with 50 votes.
So the Republicans would like to use the current estimate of the huge number of people that the CBO says would be using the BOcare subsidy to save money by cutting the subsidy. Small problem -- the CBO no longer stands by it's estimate -- it isn't being used to advance their agenda, so it is no longer "real".
Until the worldwide government debt bubble bursts, we live in a fantasy where electricity can be generated from unicorn farts and money falls from the sky just as valuable as the sort worked for by the sweat of the brow.
Here we have CNN doing a "conversion story" for a local person in Tucson based on the Giffords shooting that is a couple of years old.
Growing up in a Baptist Church, the "testimony" was a major part of religion, and especially good if you were formerly extra bad in your former life -- drunk, drug addict, jail would be excellent. Extra points for having a tattoo.
So why would a political party be like that? Especially in the US, a country that was to be as close to freedom FROM politics as was possible? At most, parties should be like products, or maybe even closer, "brands". ANY US poltical party should have total support for the Constitution -- especially the 1st Amendment and the 2nd Amendment which makes the first real. The "conversion" would be like going from "Miller to Bud".
I was a Republican at the time, but less than one week after the buyback, I chose to switch parties. I believe there is a centrist element among the rank and file in the GOP, but the leadership is led by the far right and openly beholden to the NRA and the gun lobby. It is that rigid ideology that is driving the party into irrelevancy.
This post is from 2013 -- I just never hit "publish" until I ran into it today, 4 years later. In 2013 CNN and the author of the peice were convinced that pro-gun was becoming "irrelevant". Today? I'd guess not so much.
If EITHER party wants to change the 2nd Amendment (or other parts), there is a known procedure called Constitutional Amendment. In America, if you wanted the Constitution amended, but knew that your amendment would not pass, then you kept SELLING -- looking for an actual "reasonable compromise". Not so in BOistan -- you seek to bypass the clear text with all manner of infringements and then seek to overturn it using the SCOTUS as an extra-Constititional power. That is what lawlessness looks like.
Hopefully the column author is still smugly enjoying his "conversion" to the party with no rule of law.
One of the big problems with Artificial Intelligence (AI) is motivation. What is it that AI would be motivated by? We sincerely hope it would not be stamping out competitors in the field of "intelligence" -- - our parochial view being "we have some of that!".
Perhaps AI would question if our existence was actually "real" ... sort of like many humans like to question the existence of a creator and assume they "just happened" ... but I digress.
The Vegas shooting, and now the attack on Rand Paul seem to be somewhat of a watershed in "action without motivation". Even more amazing, the speed with which our media can determine with complete certainty that the action at least lacked any POLITICAL motivation is a scientific breakthrough! We can understand human motivation instantly -- I'm guessing it is a new kind of brain scan? Perhaps the "MET" rather then the "PET"? "Motivation Emission Tomography".
It has gotta be extra special technology -- given Vegas, it must work even on a deceased brain! Wonderful!
I've heard of people being friends, or even married for years, and not having complete awareness of their political thoughts. I once questioned how the powers that be were so able to get people to work in the "NON-PARTISAN CBO"! Where did all these non-partisans come from? and why don't we meet more of them? How did they become non-partisan? Were they raised by wolves in an apolitical family? Were they sequestered from mass media at birth?
There MUST be a way -- because NPR (in whom we trust) never says "CBO" without the non-partisan label!
Now, we have a Vegas shooter who was certified to have no political or religious motivations less than 24 hours after anyone at the national level had become aware of his existence! Then, only a little over a month later, Rand Paul is attacked by a neighbor who has posted MANY vehement political opinions on social media, however, he suddenly decided to blindside his neighbor over a "long standing minor (non-political) issue" with enough force to break 5 ribs.
The biggest news to me is that 5 broken ribs is a "minor injury". I've had a mere 3 broken ribs and found it extremely debilitating for over 2 months. Reporters are so strong. I'd enjoy breaking 5 ribs on one of them so they could confirm to me that it was a "minor injury" ... nothing here folks, move along.
I'm trying to imagine if a Democrat Congressman had been gunned down over the summer by a Republican voter who was specifically targeting Republicans (Scalaise), and then a Republican neighbor of a sitting Democrat US Senator attacked them on their lawn and broke 5 ribs, what the media outcry would look like?
We have a pretty good idea -- some of us can remember back to Gabby Giffords and the "chilling" effect of the Tea Party having the gall to protest people being forced by law to purchase health insurance, and yearly deficits of $1.5+ Trillion dollars! The idea of opposing the policies of the duly elected president was nigh on treason in '09-'10!
I wonder what changed? Perhaps we could "MET scan" a couple reporters? 'via Blog this'
It amazing how much honesty you can find even in the NY Times. The rest of the article is typical trash that mixes suicide and murder, doesn't even consider the effect of the big US Democrat controlled murder cities. We don't really have a gun or a murder problem, in GENERAL, we have a Democrat problem.
Here is the unexpected (and unintended) honesty:
"“In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate,” Dan Hodges, a British journalist, wrote in a post on Twitter two years ago, referring to the 2012 attack that killed 20 young students at an elementary school in Connecticut. “Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”"
Indeed it was ... Roe V Wade, January 22, 1973.
Once the government sanctioned the killing of children and went so far to DEMAND by law that all 50 states participate, and then increasingly pay for it, "it was over". Roe marked the end of the debate on respect for life -- the SCOTUS decided NOT to respect life, and demanded that every state participate in the mass slaughter on the altar of convienience. Respect for life was NOT ALLOWED!
When you are willing to kill the completely innocent for convienience, and even celebrate it as essentially a secular human sacrament, there are no remaining acts too evil to contemplate.
Roe is one of the major milestones on the way to BOistan. A "Christian Nation" would never allow such evil to consume 60 million innocent babes with the endless death toll rising every day. Hitler was a complete amatuer, and actually much more decent than BOistan. Hitler KNEW that what he was doing was wrong and worked very hard to hide it -- BOistan celebrates it's Holocaust!
If sanity, empathy, morality, law, decency, etc ever rise again, everyone will look at videos like this, build memorials to the 10's of millions slaughtered, and celebrate the few survivors! We might even re-create something like America if this ever comes to pass!
A few powerful words from Pastor Frank Pomeroy after 26 people in his church are killed by a gunman, including his 14 year old daughter.
Christ is going to be lifted up And that’s what I am telling everyone. You lean in to what you don’t understand, You lean into the Lord. I would submit this to everyone—my family here and you guys there Whatever life brings to you, lean on the Lord, rather than your own understanding. I don’t understand….but I know my God does. And that’s where I’ll leave that.
Pastor Frank Pomeroy, First Baptist Church
The sermon from the week before was on Proverbs 3:5 "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;"
It starts about 28 min in ...
I don't understand, and I know that my God does. Strong words to both live and die by.
The Donna Brazile book gives us more insight into how BOistan actually runs.
The "narrative" is that BOistan was "attacked" by the nefarious Russians working in concert with the Trump campaign to subvert our previously sacrosanct elections -- you know, the ones you don't need to show an ID to vote in because ... er, well, because it might be "chilling" to show an ID to vote even though you have to show one to get on a plane, check into a hotel, get a cell phone, send something UPS, cash a check, etc, etc.
Our Deep State is totally controlled by "The Party" (TP-D), and they are major players in this "plot". How do we know they are controlled by TP?
Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson testified to the House Intelligence Committee this past June that the DNC declined help from the FBI after it was hacked.
Got that? The Deep State is hot on getting to the bottom of this nefarious Russian plot, but the DNC "declined help", so the FBI never looked at the servers that the horrible Russians hacked.
So who does the FBI work for? Obviously, it works for TP -- as all of us do. TP said no, so the answer is no, and not the media, nor certainly the Deep State is even remotely interested in changing the way things work. We are all "wet fish" and have no idea we are wet with TP corruption.When TP speaks, we all just listen -- but some of us like to pretend otherwise.
"Elections"? I would be completely unsurprised if the Russians, the Chinese, or just about anyone had hacked our elections (especially the DNC) -- my guess is that TP has had their finger heavily on the outcomes for a long time and trying to make a case for "Russian interference" makes the obvious conclusion a bit foggy. Good thing if you are cheating!
I covered the excellent "Stealing Elections" by John Fund back in 2005. It explains how Gore nearly "won" FL quite nicely. In Palm Beach county, 15k Republicans apparently came out and voted a Republican ticket, yet failed to vote for Bush -- OR, someone took a bunch of ballots and shoved a rod through the Gore punch. When you do that, you either insure a vote for Gore, **OR** you create an "overvote" if the voter voted for someone else. There were 19K "overvotes" in Palm Beach county.
"Stealing Elections" documents a pretty good case that Democrats have been stealing elections for a LONG time. Naturally, their efforts are heavily centered in urban areas, so when you look at the BOistan red/blue maps, it is easy to understand why you see what you see. Their weakness -- as is so often the case, is the Constitution and the founders wisdom in not making this a "pure Democracy" (The electoral college, congressional districts, 2 senators from each state).
The point is that if stealing elections is possible, it is possible in a lot of ways -- including ways that even TP is not aware of.
The really funny part is that TP is so powerful and embedded in all our alphabet agencies, the media, education, etc, that the DNC just said no and that was that. 99.9% of us don't question what we see relative to things like this because "that is just the way things are".
An excellent column that helps us remember that killing America had a history -- Bork was 30 years ago this fall, in 2019 it will be 50 years since Chappaquiddick, which should have ended Teddy Kennedy and prevented the "Borking" wound to America from ever happening. React to Chappaquiddick as a nation with any morals, and Borking never happens -- perhaps the horror of Roe is even overturned 30 years ago, millions of unborn survive, law, decency and life are honored, Slick and BO never happen, and America lives. My thesis is that America didn't HAVE to die, it died by CHOICE ... a number of them, with Roe being a gigantic one.
America was a great nation, so it didn't die suddenly. The following paragraph shows the lie that Bork was "out of the mainstream", no matter what Teddy Kennedy thought -- Teddy was wrong on a lot of things beyond where he last left his car parked upside down under water with his young secretary in it.
During his tenure on the DC Circuit Bork had written or joined 416 opinions, many of them on the same side as fellow DC Circuit Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Bork’s three-judge panels were unanimous 90 percent of the time, and Bork was in the majority 95 percent of the time. The Supreme Court had reversed not a single majority opinion Bork wrote or joined, while in six cases the Supreme Court had adopted a dissenting opinion of Bork’s. Bork’s critics said he was hostile to minorities and civil rights, yet he sided with minority plaintiffs in seven out of eight cases that came before him as a judge. As political scientist Aaron Wildavsky noted, “How could a superb legal craftsman be outside the mainstream when he was one of the leaders in determining what constituted excellence in legal reasoning [as a professor at Yale Law School and Solicitor General of the United States]? How could a judge who had written some 150 opinions, and had never been reversed by a higher court, be outside the mainstream?”
The whole concise column is well worth the read -- "Borking" was a point at which "The Party" (TP-D) flexed it's connection with the corrupt groups whose thirst for sexual gratification was partially slaked by the sacrifice of millions of unborn on the altar of "choice". The Constitution said that the president was allowed to appoint qualified men to the court, but Teddy and the TP cabal said otherwise, and they won!
The application of TP power to trump law, decency, comity, tradition, etc was a giant step toward BOistan. Evil won the day, and the soul of America turned blacker.
Solipsism is the theory that only The Ferocious Cabadocious Kitty can be proven to exist -- sometimes generalized by foolish humans to be "the self is all that can be proven to exist", which Cab will promptly DISprove by biting the fool who asserts that!
Cab exists, and you are a figment of his rather fertile imagination. He is the foremost feline authority on all topics philosophical, with epistemology -- the study of why Cab knows everything, and how he knows it, being his foremost area of expertise!
BO now has his own "Foundation", or as I like to call them ... "funds", because what they really do is provide massive amounts of tax free cash, living expenses, private jets, etc for those whose name heads up the "foundation", or "fund". The linked article touches on a nice kickoff meeting in Chicago with BO himself there -- a place for the elite self-satisfied to believe they were in the "sanity bubble"
The sanity bubble! What a perfect label for the environs of the self-satisfied and righteous, the elegantly appointed ballrooms where the high and mighty, silhouetted in magenta up-lighting, nod reverentially at clichés mouthed by the latest faddish “thought leader,” before tucking into, say, a caprese salad with arugula and pesto, followed by spinach and gorgonzola tortelloni with caramelized pears and bleu cheese cream. Within the sanity bubble life is pleasant, comfortable, and agreeable, its niceties and pleasures and fixed ideas interrupted by only the maelstrom of political and economic change outside.
I live in the bubble. Always have, even if I have come to disagree with what my college professors would call the “hegemonic discourse” of postmodern liberalism, and to gag at the vanity and solipsism of many of my fellow residents. But never, especially after the 2016 campaign, would I mistake the confines of the bubble for the whole of reality. That is the mistake Hillary Clinton made when she decided that she could win the presidency without the support of a white working class mangled by economic stagnation, family breakdown, and drug addiction. And it is the same mistake the Democrats at the Obama Foundation and on Capitol Hill are making now, in real time, as they wrap themselves in the illusions that growing minority populations will carry them ineluctably to power, and that identity politics is somehow an electoral winner.
The Davos controlled beltway denizens and the Administrative State have no time for the "Bitter Clingers" or "Basket of Deplorables" ... they only acknowledge the existence of such people through denigration. While Cab is picky, he will tend to acknowledge all who feed him or properly pet him -- although, he may well bite the in the next second -- Cab and fate have that in common.
The elite are certain they are of ultimate importance, but Cab would be happy to bite them to make their "sanity bubble" just a tiny bit more "sane"!
Godless Communism, merciless killing -- 100 years of it, and we still have China, North Korea and Cuba.
I've covered this a lot, however anniversaries of disasters that kill 100 million people should not be forgotten. Would legalized abortion ever have happened in this country without the influence of Godless Communism? I doubt it ... add 60 million of the most innocent of lives there, plus not doubt a coulpe hundred million more across China and the old USSR.
Communism -- destroyer of life, morality, faith, families, intellectual honesty, and so much more. A grim anniversary indeed.
But the Bolsheviks’ influence was not limited to these countries. In the West, communism inverted society’s understanding of the source of its values, creating political confusion that persists to this day.
In a 1920 speech to the Komsomol, Lenin said that communists subordinate morality to the class struggle. Good was anything that destroyed “the old exploiting society” and helped to build a “new communist society.”
This approach separated guilt from responsibility. Martyn Latsis, an official of the Cheka, Lenin’s secret police, in a 1918 instruction to interrogators, wrote: “We are not waging war against individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. . . . Do not look for evidence that the accused acted in word or deed against Soviet power. The first question should be to what class does he belong. . . . It is this that should determine his fate.”
I've covered the insanity of the Urainium 1, Fusion GPS, Clinton, Comey and Mueller gyrations -- the following paragraph is about as good a summary of the tangled web as I have seen.
Even the most febrile conspiracy theorist could not make up such a convoluted story. It is bunk, rubbish, a Babylonian ziggurat of pompous and officious suppositions and confections that, when it is explained in its correct sequence as above and as simply as possible, no sane person could take seriously. One candidate paid for a smear job by a group of foreigners on her opponent, lost the election, and now screams of collusion by the foreigners she has been paying to defame her opponent; the FBI chief who saved her candidacy by not prosecuting her for serious offenses, when fired, after leaking an unprobative and self-serving memo, secures the appointment of a special counsel to investigate her opponent’s relations with the country with which she has collaborated, and that investigation is conducted by the very same mentor of the fired FBI chief who whitewashed her in her latest and greatest controversy (emails), after he and the person who appointed him had whitewashed the losing candidate in the greatest previous controversy of her career (Uranium One). (This leaves out of contention for that distinction the latest allegations that Mrs. Clinton arranged her selection as Democratic nominee by violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act in rigged primaries, as claimed by a former party chairman: the imposing but unfeasible Donna Brazile, who had been such a fervent supporter that — while acting in a journalistic capacity — she passed Mrs. Clinton questions in advance of a presidential debate.)
I have a huge respect for Gelernter and his work. He is a brilliant and world renouned computer scientist who was injured by the unibomber, has written a number of excellent books, and who I have a 2nd hand personal connection with (covered here if you have an interest).
To anyone with intelligence that is left wing, Gelernter is a big problem -- he is brilliant, AND he generally supports Trump, for the simple reason that if you care about freedom, you had and have no rational other choice.
I'll copy the transcript of the Gelernter comments in an interview with Bill Bennet here ... it is self explanatory.
People on the left find Trump not merely objectionable on principle but they hate him as a person. They find him grating and annoying and he drives them crazy. I understand that. He often drives me crazy. Obama had the same properties….He was such a pain. I think there is nothing worse than a combination of patronizing arrogance and insincerity. Whenever he opened his mouth, your stomach turned over. It was painful to hear him talk. Now I understand that people — my friends on the left — have the same reaction to Trump, but the remarkable thing is what this says about the way the country swings and why did we elect Trump? The left and academia [are] too busy hating him to ask why their countrymen were
The American people know perfectly well what is due to the office of the presidency. I think Trump is undignified in a lot of ways. I think Trump falls short in a lot of ways and I think that is absolutely as clear to a farmer in Alabama or a cowboy in Wyoming as it is to the Washington Post.
People were driven to elect Trump not because they deemed him a perfect candidate to be president but because they were angry, they were incensed, they couldn’t stand where the country was going and the analysis that should follow upon that isn’t there. I mean, it goes on in conservative circles but it ought to be the number one topic in the study of American government, in the study of American history all over the world, and it’s not, of course. Needless to say.
I remain absolutely a supporter and a sympathizer of Trump. And you know, no president checks every box. I think his virtues far outweigh his faults. I do wish he would take the office and the history of the office more seriously than he does…
Just the fact of getting elected was an extraordinary accomplishment. I mean, you could say it was the most culturally democratic moment in the history of the world. Never before has a great power spurned everything the elite — the intellectual and the social elite — knows, left and right, about who should be running the country. Never before has a great power said to hell with that. The dignity of the country is important and has a lot to do with the power of the country, but this is an emergency and we’re going to make use of the best candidate who’s out there. And the implications are enormous. The left believes that, since it refuses to report on the right, the right doesn’t really exist, that it’s just a bunch of uncollected morons with no serious thought.
We all know this. We’ve reached a point where the left’s blindness is aiding the collapse of the intellectual structure built up since the rise of Marxism….The left is too arrogant, too complacent, too self-satisfied to notice it or do anything about it — I hope.
