Coming Out Is Hard To Do

Coming Out—This Time for Trump - WSJ:

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.

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TP Religious Hatred

Blog: Why the left hates Trump so intensely:

We've been over this more than a few times. The assertion is that "Secular Humanism", "The Party" (TP-D), "Blue America", "progressivism", etc, have become very much a religion, and not a particularly tolerant one. TPism is pretty much like Islam -- It demands that the State and the religion be one in the same -- in Islam, that is called "Sharia Law", in the TP Religion it is called "Secular Humanistic Administrative Law" with Political Correctness enforcement as one of it's branches.

Cults get very unhappy with members that leave, especially if they publicly say bad things about the cult -- and Trump was a definite member in good standing of the TP elite until he "went rogue'.

The whole linked article is not all that long, but still not very worthy, but I found the following to be the highlight:

Blue Team Progressivism is a church, offering you moral superiority and a path to spiritual enlightenment. As a church it's got a lot going for it. It runs religious programming on television, all day every day. Every modern primetime program is like a left-wing Andy Griffith show, reinforcing lessons of inclusion, tolerance, feminism, and anti-racism. 

Watching a 90-pound Sci-Fi heroine beat up a room full of giant evil men is as satisfying to the left as John Wayne westerns were for the right. 

The Blue Church controls the HR department, so even if you don't go to church, you have to act like a loyal churchgoer in every way that matters while you're on the clock. And off the clock, on any kind of public social media platform. 

Jon Stewart and John Oliver are basically TV preachers. Watching them gives the same sense of quiet superiority your grandma gets from watching The 700 Club. The messages are constantly reinforced, providing that lovely dopamine hit, like an angel's voice whispering, "You're right, you're better, you're winning." 

Hollywood award shows are like church talent shows - the skits and jokes aren't really funny, but it's fun to look at the pretty girls, and you're all on the same team.

When you have been ensconced in a blue bubble through all your educational years (and for many, in your comminity and job as well), fully assured that you were on the "right" (meaning correct) "side" of history and heading inevitably to nirvanah, an event like Trump can be REALLY disconcerting!

The "Blue Church" has it's own escatology (description of the "end times") that is rooted in concepts like the old Hegelian / Marxist Dialectic of "Thesis->Antithesis->Sythesis" or "Problem->Reaction->Solution". Since most of the post-moderns are not aware of much of history, theology or philosophy, many of them think this is also "new".

This all assumes that "history" somehow has some sort of "direction" apart for the one in Christianity. Historicism asserts that somehow, not just plants, animals, etc are "evolving" to a "better" state. How did it get this "direction"? ... big mystery. It "just is", or "somehow" in 10 to the 400th UNIVERSES, this one with all these cool Goldilocks characteristics also has some mysterious built in "random teleology" that pushes it toward "better", and "better" just happens to always align perfectly with whatever "progressives" are thinking as being "better"! A very very happy accident indeed!

The bottom line here is that as finite and very limited beings, ANY explanation of our existence is at some level "fantastic, improbable, paradoxical, etc" ... which is why when I went through my greatest faith chllenges, I eventually settled on belief in things that have a history (meaning 100's or thousands of years) of WORKING!
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Streep, The Standard Fake News

White House defends Meryl Streep's anti-Trump speech | TheHill:

The left got pretty excited about some "Fake News" (FN) stories from the right for the same reason that the government prosecutes crime -- they hate the competion.

This week shows us that we are back into the regular FN cycle. First of all "The Golden Globes".

A buddy and I working out at the local health club were asking each other what they heck they even are ... we knew they were an awards show for the entertainment types of some sort, but we didn't know. We suspected that they might be for women who were well endowed. Had to look them up, it appears that they are sort of the "Junior Oscars" where TV gets a award as well. "newsworthy" in the sense that People magazine and TV Guide are "news".

What we see though is the symbiotic relationship between entertainment and the media arm of "The Party" (TP-D). It would take 50 to 100 years of Republicans being dominant in order for a return to anything like "cultural equality". The entire federal bureaucracy, 80% of the media and academia are under total TP domination. Mere elections don't change that as the Streep FN incident shows.

I covered the manufactured story of "Trump mimics disabled reporter" before. I think the article linked from there does a good job of debunking that claim, but even if he did drop into mimicry as his opposition does of him all the time, or the left does constantly for the poor slobs who live in "fly over country", greater and lesser things have happened. Hillary mocked dogs, and if I was a dog lover, I'd be REALLY pissed about that! BO talked of "Special Olympics Bowling" ... as I covered in the Trump mimic link ... when you are TP,  apology always accepted, when you are not, don't misspell "potato'.

For the easily led, just create a negative narrative for the opposition, and historically it has been OVER. Trump has broken that mold -- perhaps we are in a new era where the stranglehold of TP and the MSM is weakened, or more likely Trump is just an exception, in either case it is fun to watch.

I do love the selective outrage -- Streep thought a child rapist was worth of a standing ovation. What a marvelous "moral sensibility"!

Let's face it, it will take a LONG time to get the Sheeple to even consider that thinking for themselves might be worth a shot!


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A Party Typo, "The least of these"

Democrats' Religion Problem - The Atlantic: 

Some of the mouthpieces of "The Party" (TP-D) are still doing some navel gazing, and this column is an example. For any actual practicing Christian that pays attention, it has been obvious for a very long while that it is impossible to be politically associated with a party that considers the killing of 60+ million babies in their mothers wombs a sacrament which competes in secular holiness with only homosexuality. Quaint ideas of God creating heaven and earth are constantly derided as "backward" in TP, and any concept that religion might have an impact in a believers life outside of the walls of an appropriately leftist church for an hour on Sunday AM on rare occasions is beyond the imagination of TP.

Thus, it unsurprisingly happens that even what a leftist liberal "christian" might assume would be a very important scrap of scripture plucked from an otherwise abandoned Bible is totally unfamiliar.

"Some of his colleagues also didn’t understand his work, he writes. He once drafted a faith-outreach fact sheet describing Obama’s views on poverty, titling it “Economic Fairness and the Least of These,” a reference to a famous teaching from Jesus in the Bible. Another staffer repeatedly deleted “the least of these,” commenting, “Is this a typo? It doesn’t make any sense to me. Who/what are ‘these’?”"

Well,  an example of "these" would be the 81% of evangelicals that voted for Trump because they really don't want to be forced to bake cakes for gay "weddings" or let men shower with their daughters in public locker rooms! Especially not while TP celebrates dress designers, entertainers, etc bragging about not working with the Trumps. Freedom of Association for all or for none!

The following paragraph fully summarizes for me what happened to nearly all  actual practicing Christians in the 2016 elections. We realized that this was no longer "America", which WAS a Christian nation, and voted accordingly.

Many of those 81 percent are accommodating cultural changes in America that are deeply problematic. Liberals have been trying to convince Americans, and evangelicals in particular, that America is not a Christian nation. The 2016 election was evangelicals saying, “Yeah, you’re right! We can’t expect to have someone who is Christian like us. We can’t expect to have someone with a perfect family life. What we can expect is someone who can look out for us, just like every other group in this country is looking for a candidate who will look out for them.”

The whole article is worthy of a read. It makes what I regularly say in this blog clear ... TP is no longer interested in actual Bible believing Christians, only in "social christians". Since TP lives in it's urban bubbles, it doesn't realize how many actual practicing Christians there are, so it remains shocked it can lose an election. The article goes into some detail on the fact that it is impossible to be a pro-life TPer these days because TP no longer even affirms life. (and this is the ATLANTIC!)

One of the somewhat surprising but very true things about human nature is that we can know a truth at a very deep level, yet not apply it in some area because we are totally blind to it right in front of us. I'll use gayness as an example. NPR quite regularly talks about the importance of "gay outreach" -- making sure that people meet and know gays and have gays talk to them about how important gay "marriage" is to them because it "puts a face on the issue".

They regularly say this, yet the vast majority of them don't know a practicing Bible believing Christian ... and don't want to. Being gay is only of this world ... like being an alcoholic, workaholic, adulterer, etc.  If one is willing to humble themselves and seek repentance, our earthy demons can be battled and we are ultimately assured of victory, at least in eternity.  Belief in the saving power of Christ and Gods Truth is eternal -- so perhaps THAT is why they shy away from Christians. They seek "heaven on earth", and their "heaven" damned sure isn't the one that any Christian would desire.

I see us as at a new transition point. *IF* Satan has become real enough to the secular christian left that they can "walk in the garden" as Satan did with Eve, and converse with practicing Christians about how important it is to doubt God on issues like homosexuality and gender (did he REALLY say ... ?"), then there is a major prospect for the descent of this tribal territory (BOistan)  to continue and even accelerate no matter who is in political power. The "ace in the hole" of Christ in the modern world may well be that the dark forces are even more distracted by the physical "pleasures of the flesh" and world than the Christians. We can pray it is so -- secular "chrisitians" avoiding actual Bible Christians cuts off one avenue for Satan. Unfortunately it also reduces the chance for the prodigal secularists to return to Truth (Christ).

Secular "christians" being willing to sit down with Christians and do their best to convert them is more dangerous than having them disassociate, shun and unfriend them. Secular (social) "christians" are often very intelligent and well able to discuss and influence. As CS Lewis covered so well in the "Screwtape Letters", Satan and his demons are very willing to help those who serve him to believe that they are serving God and are oh so pious in their service of "the good of our father below".

What the article does not mention is Ephesians 6:12

12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Typing away on a laptop ready to post to a blog that lives in "the cloud" of the vast internet makes it seem surreal that this physical (and virtual) modern world is only a "lens", and not reality. Reality is eternal and spiritual.

We are spirits having a physical experience -- we need to remember that every day in fear and trembling. I love the main message of this old song ... it's particular theology is vague to non-existent (likely just as well), but it is basically true, assuming the "material" part is even what we think it is.

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If I Were Putin

One of my standard mental devices in understanding the world is to attempt to put myself into the minds of other people and think what I might try to do if I was sitting where they are. There is nothing "factual" about this, it is a pure thought exercise.

Given the BO / CIA opening to question the integrity of our election POST election, why would Putin NOT come forward in any manner he desires with "irrefutable evidence"  that Trump worked with the Russians to tilt the election to himself? Why not help his adversary throw itself into a complete rat hole, possibly even something approaching civil war?

My strong suspicion is that the actual Russian "involvement" in the US election was none to minimal. There are hackers acting for their own purposes around the world for as many reasons as there are hackers. In many cases it is a pure profit motive, in others it is loosely "political", but often only in the sense of being anti-political ... anarchist. Breaking "the system" -- both the technical one of networks and computers, but certainly the corporate, political and financial system as well. But that is all moot now.

My sense is that Putin is a ruthless power player that WELL knows the real world as a result of both his old KGB role and current and past leadership roles. He knows that both his own and the US governments are morasses of bureaucratic  intransigence impossible to "control" in the sense that common people believe and media organizations like to imagine. A brontosaurus with Einstein's brain is still going to look and act much like a brontosaurus -- even Einstein can't make it's vocal apparatus speak, nor it's giant appendages type.

Who leads the US, especially Trump vs Hillary, is nearly meaningless for Putin. Hillary attempted the odd "Russian Reset" in '08 for unknown reasons beyond an idiots attempt to put down "W" ( when our ham handed state department translated "reset" into Russian, they translated it as "overload"). The Clinton foundation accepted payments approaching at least $50million to transfer 20% of US uranium assets to Russia ... so it isn't like Putin didn't know how cheaply she was willing to sell out the US.

One would imagine that Putin assumes that as a businessman, Trump will be someone easier to deal with -- or who knows, maybe just "cheaper" in the sense that decent dealings won't always require transferring millions of dollars into the "Clinton Fund". Putin can talk to Trump as a fellow multi-billionaire as opposed to a grasping mere 100 millionaire. It may just be the desire to talk to a fellow NFL QB vs a junior college QB like Hillary (really more like a junior college water girl, but let's be generous).

If I were Putin, I would make sure that the CIA "found irrefutable evidence" that Trump made promises to the Russians for dropping sanctions, allowing them to annex territory and possibly even allowing them free reign in Europe. I see the left and the BO administration as willing to treat ANYTHING as complete gospel if it reflects negatively on Trump at this point, and it is completely obvious that the left wing of the Democrat party is more than ready to riot in the streets over Trump cutting a fart.

So I for one will be completely UNsurprised if prior to the inauguration, "definitive proof" of Trump negotiating with the Russians for "whatever" doesn't come to light. In fact, I will be somewhat surprised if it does not. If it does not, my guess is that Putin feels that his personal and business interests would be too negatively impacted by throwing the US into THAT much disarray -- which is also not that surprising.  BO has handled him the largest opportunity to sow discontent in BOistan that I can recall on the proverbial silver platter.

I consider BO to be intelligent. I simply can't imagine that he would come out with the "investigate the Trump / Russia connection" ploy AFTER the election if he did not see finding "evidence" of  Trump working with the Russians as "something he could benefit from".  He HAS to realize it it is a HUGE opening for a foreign power to have devastating short and  long term negative impact on the US, and this was one of the very few times he was willing to "lead from in front", even after declaring in October that what he just did is essentially treason of the worst kind.

BO made it clear long ago in "Dreams" that destruction of the US and it's conversion into BOistan was his goal. He succeeded at his goal, but Trump is certainly something that NOBODY expected -- he has a giant opportunity to turn us back toward someday becoming America again -- maybe even being "great" in a few decades.

I think BO has now shown us exactly how far he will go to maintain his legacy of destruction -- the only question remaining is if Putin finds an even more crippled BOistan to be in his best interests.

October BO vs December BO On Election Meddling

In last-shot bid, thousands urge electoral college to block Trump at Monday vote - The Washington Post:

Here is BO on Thursday October 20th, just over 2 weeks before the elction, lecturing about the danger of not having faith in elections.

“I want everybody to pay attention here. That is dangerous,” Obama continued, as supporters in the crowd cried out. “Because when you try to sow the seeds of doubt in people's minds about the legitimacy of our elections, that undermines our democracy. Then you’re doing the work of our adversaries for them. Because our democracy depends on people knowing that their vote matters, that those who occupy the seats of power were chosen by the people.”

You got that? BO wagging his finger and pontificating on the seriousness of questioning elections as being essentially treason ("undermines our democracy").

But wait!!!!  TP lost, so NOW we have BO talking "investigations" into "Russian election interference"and "retaliation" ... is that like a "red line"??? !!! The danger here is HUGE, if I were Putin, I would make CERTAIN that BO finds his "evidence" -- because it is harder to imagine a cheaper more deadly weapon to launch into the soul of the US. Talking to the bride about some concerns over the groom PRIOR to the wedding is dangerous, but could be required -- AFTER? Hello?

This is a great summary of how "The Party" (TP-D) operates.

"The role of elector has intensified this year, in the wake of a bitter election in which Trump lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by a margin of nearly 3 million votes and the revelation of a secret CIA assessment that Russia interfered to help Trump get elected."

First  we have the fake news ... Hillary won the "popular vote", which is meaningless because we have the Electoal College (EC). Always have, that is how we run elections, and that is how we ran this one. Change the rules, (smart) people campaign differently! Change pro-football so you win or lose on time of possession vs score, and teams play different! Duh!

But TP lost. So although they claim to want a popular vote election with no EC, they are perfectly willing, demanding even,  to try to use the EC to subvert the will of over 60 million people that took part in the election under the rules specified in the Constituion and in force for over 200 years.

In fact, TP, the party famous for using the Constitution to wipe their soiled asses, is now a YUGE fan of Alexander Hamilton! A Federalist that was far from keen on there being any sort of popular vote at all!

He looked to see Federalist No. 68, written by Hamilton to describe the need for the electoral college. 

“We have been getting a civic lesson we weren’t prepared to get,” Koller said. “They gave us the fail-safe emergency brake, in case the people got it wrong. And here we are, 200 years later. It’s the last shot we have.”

My God,! Trump is enough to get lefties to read Federalist 68! He is a total miracle worker! The next thing you know they will be reading Plato, or even the Bible! Holy crap, the American mind might be trying to open!

But it may well be shut HARD if Putin plays his cards smartly!

Public Union Bubble to Burst?

http://www.economist.com/node/17849199

Excellent article worth reading all of. A sample.

Many people have jobs for life and performance measures are rare. The result is a paradox: the typical public worker is better off than the people he is supposed to serve, and the gap has widened significantly over the past decade. In America, pay and benefits have grown twice as fast in the public sector as they have in the private sector.

 How much does all this cost us? Hard to calculate, but consider ...

It is impossible to calculate the cost of the unions' inflexibility. But several recent studies provide some indications. Policy Exchange, a conservative think-tank, calculates that people in the British private sector work 23% more hours than their public-sector counterparts over their lifetimes, thanks to public-sector strikes, sick days and early retirement. Barry Bluestone, a left-wing economist, calculates that the price of America's public services increased by 41% in 2000-08, while that of private services rose by 27%. Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford University, argues that replacing the bottom 5-8% of American teachers with merely average performers could move the United States from near the bottom to near the top of the international maths and science rankings.

If  Trump can accomplish a single thing, a huge weakening of public unions would be very high on my priority list!

BO Needs To Shut Up And Leave, Will He?

President Obama Promises Response To Russian Hacking In NPR Interview : NPR:

It started in from the left with W --  the idea he would create a fake crisis at the end of his term and hold on to power. During the W adminstration, something like 20% of Democrats believed that 9-11 was an "inside job" -- they were the "Truthers".  I actually ran into more than one of them, and the idea that W was a "Fascist" and would never allow elections again was common with them.

Unsurprisingly, this same sort of conspiracy theory about BO leaving office has arisen on the right, and I'm starting to wonder.

As I wrote about previously, why in the hell would any agency or ANYONE that wasn't thinking of nullifying a US election bring up theoretical Russian hacking AFTER the election? Especially if they made a big deal out of there being NO ISSUE prior to the election.

So now we have BO braying AFTER an election:

Obama said his goal is for a definitive White House report on the matter to be issued before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

Say what? Were anyone to have ANY remaining confidence in the crony state of BOistan they would have EITHER investigated and dealt with this PRIOR to the election, or they would have kept it under wraps until AFTER January 20th!

I can't even imagine if at the end of the W administration BO had won in a similar electoral landslide, but W was "investigating China, Russia, Cuba, or ???" potentially having "hacked the election", with the "definitive report" due prior to inauguration no less!  The MSM would have gone TOTALLY crazy!! If such a thing had happened, they should have! The coronation of BO was a major league cause for MSM and left US celebration -- it was like Princess Di getting married!

This rotten stench has been around WAY too long!!!! Time for strong cleansing of the swamp with a REALLY good air freshner  -- and I'm starting to wonder if we don't actually need a little "authoritarianism"!

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NY Times Truth, Trump Lost The Election

Buck Up, Democrats, and Fight Like Republicans - NYTimes.com:

This was the ad on FB today to purchase the NY Times. "Built on Paper, Based in Fact".

The NY Times was once at least real vs "fake" news. Extremely biased news, yes, but providing a view that had a connection with reality through the bias of the left. No more.

On Monday, members of the Electoral College will vote in Donald J. Trump as president. Though he lost the election by nearly three million votes and almost daily generates headlines about new scandals, the Democratic Party is doing little to stop him. If you’ve been asking yourself “Where are the Democrats?” you’re not alone.

The US, nor BOistan as of yet, has NEVER elected the president by nationwide popular vote. If we had, every election save maybe  1964, 1972, 1980, and 1984 would have been in nationwide recounts for months if not years.

Elections in the US have ALWAYS been run with the Electoral College (EC) system, and the candidates manage the campaign to win in the EC, not in the popular vote. Hillary's popular vote "win" and EC loss is proof that she mismanaged her campaign as she has everything else she ever touched.

In the NFL, the team with the highest number of points at the end of the game wins. The NY Times claim above is the same as a team that lost on points but had a greater time of possession for the game, claiming "they won".  The game would be played vastly differently if the rule was time of possession vs points scored for deciding victory. Elections would be run VERY differently if the popular vote was used to decide victory. Claiming that the popular vote is anything but meaningless is Fake News.

However, the insanity of the paragraph and column goes beyond that not so subtle point and points to the very heart of total liberal inconsistency. The claim of Hillary having "won" due to the popular vote is false BECAUSE we have an Electoral College, but that doesn't stop the liberal mind from saying -- so on one hand, we decry and refuse to accept the EC system, but on the other, we want to use that very system to overturn the election! The only thing consistent about liberal "thought" is the same as that of a two year olds "thinking" -- I want my way! End of story, period, full stop!

So the column continues with this fine paragraph

There’s no shortage of legal theories that could challenge Mr. Trump’s anointment, but they come from outsiders rather than the Democratic Party. Impassioned citizens have been pleading with electors to vote against Mr. Trump; law professors have argued that winner-take-all laws for electoral votes are unconstitutional; a small group, the Hamilton Electors, is attempting to free electors to vote their consciences; and a new theory has arisen that there is legal precedent for courts to give the election to Mrs. Clinton based on Russian interference. All of these efforts, along with the grass-roots protests, boycotts and petitions, have been happening without the Democratic Party. The most we’ve seen is a response to the C.I.A. revelations, but only with Republicans onboard to give Democrats bipartisan cover.

And we could look elsewhere in the MSM and likely the Times itself on the same day and see articles decrying "fake news", or the "post truth world". In fact, I entered the above, got into my car and headed for my workout with NPR on. They were in a full hour segment on "Fake News". Their advice? Listen to NPR and read the NY Times -- irony comes quick and thick in BOistan.

There is no longer a "paper of record". Yes, this is the "opinion page", but the editors of the NY Times think this is worthy of appearing in their paper. They don't see this as utter madness, but rather a "reasonable opinion".

If this "opinion" is taken seriously by a significant number of BOistanis, then violence will be the only way to transfer power away from the dominant party -- and make no mistake, "The Party" (TP-D) is STILL the dominant party. They own the bulk of the media, the vast federal bureaucracy, education, entertainment, and the bulk of the legal system.

Are we there yet? We are certainly close to that point for sure.

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Welcome To Post Truth WaPo

If Nothing Is True, Then Everything Can Be False | RealClearPolitics:

The election of Donald Trump has seen the flowering of the post-truth landscape. Emotion outranks fact; believing makes it so. We are all Tinker Bell now. Clap if you believe in voter fraud. Clap if you doubt a human role in climate change.

The leftist  myths of no such thing as voter fraud (except in Detroit)  and doctrine of HUMAN CAUSED climate change are the gold standard in lefty "truth"?  It seems obvious that the left needs to stick with the doctrine that all truth is relative until they get enough power to make it absolute.

How about barking as opposed to clapping? I like that better.

In the WaPo universe, whatever they say is "true", and it really MUST be believed -- because to them, it IS "truth" ... which is synonymous with power in their dogma.

With facts passe, the next, inexorable move is to reduce all news to the same level of distrust and disbelief. If nothing is true, then everything can be false. So #pizzagate, the dangerously false accusation of a child sex ring run by Hillary Clinton operatives, occupies the same diminished rung as a news report that fails to toe the official line.

Inside "The Party" (TP-D) bubble, "facts" have been passe for a very long time. "Narratives" have been king, and narratives have elements of truth and fiction interwoven to create a story that is highly plausible if you hear it enough. "The vast right wing conspiracy" of Hillary in the early 90's was one such narrative. I'll list a few here, but it the list is SO long and so deep that I'm likely missing some of the best examples.

"Bush Lied, People Died"? The fact that the  CIA said that WMD was a "Slam Dunk" was W's fault rather than the CIAs ... believing the CIA was a "lie" then, now what they say is gospel -- thus saith TP.

Forged documents to "prove" that W's boss when he was in the guard didn't like him? Well, Dan Rather lost his job -- nuff said. W was STILL not a good guardsman  according the the MSM -- not that it matters, but it did to them. The whole W guard thing was complete fake news.

Benghazi was caused by a movie? "What difference, at this point, does it make"? The media just reports that straight up -- no reason to claim that Hillary is somehow "post truth". Same thing with her long list of lies on the email. Nobody PROVED they were lies -- er, well, the FBI said they were lies, but not indictable, so really the same thing as truth if you are TP - in the old "pre-Trump post-truth" world.

"If you like your health insurance you can keep it"? Nothing untruthful there!

Ask the Rolling Stone about the veracity of the Virginia rapes that they and the entire MSM went bonkers on.

I could keep writing forever -- "truth" has been dead in the MSM and the US government for a good long while --  they just hate seeing it come home to roost. This is not new in any sense to readers of this blog -- that WaPo now sees it, but only sees one of the hands clapping, is somewhat new, but completely unsurprising.















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Trump vs Fidel, False Left and Right Personified

https://spectator.org/frightened-by-trump-inspired-by-fidel/

I find that contrast is a great way to understand the vast differences in world view -- Trump vs Fidel is a great opportunity. The top linked article is an  example of those contrasts.

Here, Roger Cohen, a NY Times columnist who has savaged Trump sings the praises of Fidel.

Fidel. A single word suffices to evoke the man who descended from the Sierra Maestra with his ragtag army to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, purge Cuba of American domination, proclaim the empowerment of the poor, and embody Latin America’s thirst for an end to government by the pampered coteries of imperialism.

Here Cohen talks of the joys of "the left".

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Sympathizer,” Viet Thanh Nguyen describes how, as Communist forces loyal to Ho Chi Minh advanced towards victory in Vietnam in 1975, his protagonist “longed to tell someone that I was one of them, a sympathizer with the Left, a revolutionary fighting for peace, equality, democracy, freedom, and independence, all the noble things my people had died for and I had hid for.”

One of Castro's many "achievements" accorting to the US press was lowering heart disease through famine and fuel shortages, causing his island prisoners to eat less and excercise more!

The food shortage was severe enough that per-person calorie consumption dropped to about 2,400 calories a day in the 1990s, and typical adults lost about 10 pounds. At the same time, they had to exercise more by walking or riding bikes instead of taking buses. The number of Cubans meeting exercise guidelines climbed to an impressive 80 percent.

Even a famine is cause for admiration when the dictator is Fidel!

Fidel was responsible for at least 10's of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees -- some of the people that fled Cuba no doubt helped Trump take Florida.

The key differences between "left and right" jump out here, and (as always) the confusion created by the wartime propaganda making Hitler and Nazi Germany "right", when in fact they were LEFT as all dictatorial and totalitarian regimes are -- the spectrum would better be called "Control vs Chaos" vs "Left and Right" (covered in detail here).

While the MSM in the US has been unremittingly disparaging of Trump, they at best can mount tepid criticism of Fidel. The closing paragraph of the Cohen article is an example.

Fidel was a flawed giant. By the end the only idea of his still standing was the anti-American nationalism taken on by the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. However, this is certainly not the moment to say his stand for the disinherited of the earth was unimportant. Nor, at a time when the United States has elected a charlatan as president, is it the moment to overlook the fact that Fidel was a serious and uncorrupt politician. Nor to leave unsaid the suffering he inflicted.

 For contrast, here is his article claiming Trump a sociopath. No explanation required on why Fido was a "serious and uncorrupt politician". From the left, mass murder does not corrupt you ... but surprisingly, living a hidden luxury lifestyle and being worth $900 million doesn't either! As we have discovered many times, being left means being incorruptible!

The themes that come out through a lot of the writing are:

1. The evil of historical America. Fidel thumbed his nose at America the capitalist/imperialist unjust nation. Putting America in "it's place" made Castro a hero to the left -- no matter the cost to his people. BO established relations between BOistan and Cuba at the end -- a victory for Fido.
   
2. The vision of the masses as "children" -- unable to care for themselves, they need a "strong man" to guide them -- "properly". But if that strong man is not a doctrinaire leftist, he becomes "dangerous", like Trump.
   
   It is here where the left/right dichotomy has some complexity. The ORIGINAL left / right of the French Revolution had "Church / monarchy" on the RIGHT, with "revolution" on the left. As I make clear in the "Left/Right" blog post linked above, my choice of the terms "Control vs Chaos" is obviously imperfect -- as any selection of a single axis to describe the complexities of ideology is bound to be.
   
   Religion is part of "natural" (in my world view). We are created with a spiritual hole to be properly filled by God -- on the left, that hole is filled by the state and leftist ideology. At the time of the French Revolution, the understanding of the "Natural Order" included God, The Church, and The Crown, "natural" was equal to "right" and thus included the church and state.
   
   Our founders separated church and state and allowed freedom of religion in what they saw as a "center-right" nation ... enough control to prevent chaos, but with the "divine right of kings" severed. The people gained power in the form of a democratic Constitutional Republic with a strict Constitution, separation of powers, and a number of anti-democratic measures to prevent shifting to toward democracy and the tyranny of the masses.
   

The MSM sees no danger in moving left continuously, and ideally by force -- you WILL bake a cake, you WILL let this man in the woman's locker room!, you WILL only contribute politically as we decree!.  Even slowing the slide to totalitarianism is seen as "fascist", thus the hatred of Trump. It is an article of faith for the left that "the masses" lack the intelligence and maturity to "make correct choices" without largely state controlled media, massive educational indoctrination, and  demagogic leaders like BO or Fidel -- thus, Trump must be destroyed at all costs. 

New Yorker, Tragedy of Trump

Presidential Election 2016: An American Tragedy - The New Yorker:

Mostly posed to enjoy the indignation of the effete snobs at the New Yorker.

"All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering."

The entire screed is no doubt comforting to the left -- shorn of power, but filled with double measures of hatred and disdain for those who failed to bow to their majesty. How the charge of "racism", the very favorite epithet  for the party of slavery and Jim Crow.

For eight years, the country has lived with Barack Obama as its President. Too often, we tried to diminish the racism and resentment that bubbled under the cyber-surface. But the information loop had been shattered. On Facebook, articles in the traditional, fact-based press look the same as articles from the conspiratorial alt-right media. Spokesmen for the unspeakable now have access to huge audiences. This was the cauldron, with so much misogynistic language, that helped to demean and destroy Clinton. The alt-right press was the purveyor of constant lies, propaganda, and conspiracy theories that Trump used as the oxygen of his campaign. Steve Bannon, a pivotal figure at Breitbart, was his propagandist and campaign manager.

I don't think the New Yorker likes Trump very much. How sad.


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Intel Not 100%, Fake News

The Comet Ping Pong Gunman Answers Our Reporter’s Questions - The New York Times:

The media is currently in the mood to do stories on "fake news" as if this was a new phenomenon -- and somehow significantly responsible for the election of Trump. Maybe we should belly up to the Fisher Price Happy Hour Playset and order a stiff one.

Fake news is not a new phenomenon ... in the '90s, Janet Reno went all in on it relative to "The Little Rascals" day care center, and people went to prison over fake news.

Dan Rather lost his job because he tried to use a forged document to influence the election in 2004 on top of the already fake, or at least manufactured "news" about W's career as a TX National Guard fighter pilot 30 years earlier.

Here, the NY Times reports breathlessly on the works of a gentleman who woke up one fine day and drove to DC to "investigate" if Hillary was leading a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor. He wanted to to "shine some light" on the sex ring, and on the "spur of the moment" he decided to take his AR into the building. He points out to the Times that "the intel on this was not 100%" ... news at 11. I'm glad they straightened THAT out! Certainly there is no chance that his mental state (or Janet Reno's in the '90s) had anything to do with his actions.

As Hillary (she of landing in Bosnia under sniper fire and reporting how Benghazi was caused by an internet movie) intoned; "One danger is the “malicious threat of fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year,” said Clinton. “It’s now clear that so-called fake news can have real world consequences” including for the “lives of ordinary people,” she said. “It’s a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly.”

In news of the surreal, Brian Williams, he of "my chopper was shot down" also has entered the fray against the dastardly "fake news". How many times have I pointed out that living in a "post truth" era has "issues"? 

This is simple folks. NEVER trust a single source! EVER! If only one side of the ideological spectrum is reporting it, it is very likely fake. If the MSM is all over it, it is likely at least "unimportant" -- it may or may not be true that W Bush wasn't a real "Top Gun" 30 years ago, but it certainly wasn't important to his presidency -- especially for his SECOND TERM which is when Rather lost his job!  If a woman drives into Langley every day, her credentials as a "secret agent" are at least highly suspect and "outing her" is not very likely to be a matter of national significance -- in the old days, fake news used to be much father reaching than it has been during the 2016 election! 

We could go on, but if you read this blog, we don't need to. The current fake news "news" is obviously this weeks ploy for the left to explain Trump without having to engage in any soul searching as to their own policies, rhetoric, etc.  The more they avoid taking responsibility for the election the better -- when your opponent is intent on staying stupid, the best thing to do is agree with them! 

Trump Will Never Be President

I'm not as certain he will be as these folks were that he would not be -- he isn't inaugurated yet.

It is really worth watching. How are people EVER as sure of something as these people all are? Or are they really not that sure, but just lie so much that "staking their reputation" (what reputation?) on something doesn't really matter that much.

I like BO ... "The worst president in history" with his snarky "Well, at least I WAS president"! People that haven't learned to not believe ANYTHING that dufus says long before now are just not in the learning camp!

The Washington Post Oct 25, No Path To Trump Victory

There is no possible way Donald Trump’s team actually believes this is their path to 270 - The Washington Post: 

"But on Trump TV, viewers didn't get any of this “spin.” They just got the unvarnished truth, straight from the people responsible for getting Trump into striking distance: Trump’s in striking distance. On Nov. 8, I fully expect Trump TV to say that Trump actually won. After all, Conway said they would. Unequivocally."

For 38 years now, since I began to question the MSM, I've been mystified by why people still listen to them -- now, given Trump, I believe I finally understand.

ALWAYS CERTAIN, FREQUENTLY WRONG!

That is the key, but the element that Trump brings is that HE IS HIS OWN MEDIA.

When the WaPo is horrendously and totally wrong -- or BO is, or any part of "The Party" (TP-D), they simply "move on".  The linked column snarkly points out how "stupid" and "misleading" Trump's media is -- while they are naturally "completely truthful" and RIGHT!

But they were completely and totally WRONG! Never mind -- the readers of the WaPo still read and trust their reporting. The WaPo committed the same level of figurative outrage for an informations source as Trump would have were he to shoot someone in broad daylight in Times Square -- and as he said he would with his followers, the WaPo has gotten away with it!

So the total magic spell is "Always certain, and when wrong, LOOK AT THAT SQUIRREL!".

Both the MSM and Trump play this game constatntly. Today's media is built on !!!!!! BREAKING NEWS !!!!! .... !!!! THIS JUST IN !!!! .... the actual content is completely unimportant next to the shouting. Trump announces white supremacist for DHS!!! (Ben Carson) ;-) !!!!!

Since I've read both sides of news since '78, and believe that this life is only the pre-season for eternity, the MSM is "full of sound and fury signifying nothing". I'm firmly convinced that in order for our nation to return to greatness, we MUST build leadership with classical education that understands what the educated have understood for thousands of years:

• It's not about me or even us  (The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God)
• Both everything and nothing are about this moment. (right now is all we have, and it is a tiny piece of the always is, always was and always will be loaf of time) 
• Both I and we have a purpose, and the strengths to achieve that purpose. That is meaning. 

I stand by this being the Russian Roulette election -- we chose to take a shot with the Trump revolver rather than the Hillary semi-auto. At least there is some doubt in our future -- that was the best we could hope for given the 216 "moment".

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A Superb Statement on Voting Trump

Stolen  from "Friends of the Best of the Web" on FB. Very well done!

I think we understand that many (if not most) Hillary voters WANT the government stepping in all over -- and they don't particularly like elections, unless they go their way. However, if people DID believe in elections, the Constitution, American values, etc, this would be not just "right on", but actually likely to heal divisions. As it is, since the vision of the left is so at odds with the Constitution, American values, etc, it is unfortunately likely to make people of the left angrier.

I understand you’re angry. I understand you’re disappointed. I understand you feel like you don’t know your country anymore. But I need you to understand something.

It’s how I felt when you helped elect Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Believe it or not, I thought he was pretty-dangerous too. I thought he held some pretty radical points of view, too. Most of all, I dreaded what he had in mind for our country’s direction. And you know what? He succeeded in fomenting, presiding over, and implementing so much of what I feared.

My sister-in-law called two days before the election devastated her family of five’s private health insurance policy jumped $500 a month.

I’ve watched cops protested and assassinated while American cities roil and burn. I’ve watched people tie up traffic and “occupy” streets and places of business.

I’ve seen a chicken sandwich restaurant attacked because its founder supports traditional marriage and a beer company attacked because its owner supports a Republican candidate.

Some of my favorite comedians have complained their comedy is no longer welcome on college campuses because what was once a punch line is now “dangerous speech.” My favorite entertainers suggest because I don’t support their candidate, I’m somehow a racist, sexist, or a homophobe.

I’ve been told tougher screening of certain groups tied to terrorism and more secure borders is somehow anti -American while watching our citizens gunned down by radical jihadists is dismissed as “random acts” of “workplace violence.”

It took hacked emails to discover the nation’s media works directly with one of the nation’s major political parties to manipulate coverage of their opponents and curry favor for their chosen nominee.

College students now account for over a trillion dollars in student loan debt, while job prospects for them remain slim and low paying.

I’ve watched an IRS targeting certain political groups., an EPA that’s made our energy more expensive, a DOE which created a one-size-fits-all curriculum for my kids who all learn differently, a Veterans Affairs scandal that’s treated some of our heroes worse than animals, and a Secretary of State who created an illegal secret means of communication to enrich herself and provide favors with her office.

Perhaps worst of all, I’ve watched an FBI, DOJ, and Supreme Court become completely compromised by the politics of the day and not follow the Constitution and the rule of law. Without equal application of the law, we have no nation.

And you know who presided over all of these things? The man who made me feel for the last 8 years just the way you Hillary voters feel today. But here’s my promise:

My vote for Trump yesterday was to undo all of the things I just listed. I couldn’t care less about Trump the man. I’m not invested in him. I’m not wearing him on my shirt like you did Obama. I want Washington DC, corruption, bullying, chaos, and stagnation in this country to stop. I want to be left alone. I want you to be left alone, too.

I want my government to provide for the common defense and help put more disposable income in my pocket – that’s it. Leave me, my neighbors, my church, my community, and my state to run our own lives. That’s what I expect from Donald Trump. I don’t want and won’t support him “doing” anything to you or me.

Barack Obama, Washington D.C., and the elites of political parties, entertainers, and media companies have been dictating the terms of, and mocking American’s lives long enough. I’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with you in fighting Donald Trump should he engage in the same behavior.

But for now, understand this election symbolizes a nation full of people like me who feel like we’ve been getting the back of our presidents and government’s hand for eight long years.

Donald Trump is the response. He wasn’t elected to punish you, or judge you, or jail you, or mock you, or ridicule you if you disagree with him. That’s what the last 8 years have been.

I voted for him with the hope he moves Heaven and Earth to leave you and me alone to lead our lives as we see fit. If he strays from that, I’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with you to stop him.

I didn’t vote Trump because he’d inspire me or raise my kids or take care of me or influence my life in any way.

Donald Trump didn’t win because his voters thought he’d govern as a Republican Barack Obama. His voters hope he’ll govern just the opposite. If he’s successful and does it right, you shouldn’t know he’s there.

Mission Accomplished, Trump Mocked Disabled Reporter

The True Story: Donald Trump Did Not Mock a Reporter’s Disability – CATHOLICS 4 TRUMP:

We all remember how W put up the big banner "Mission Accomplished" on the aircraft carrier after Saddam was killed and Iraq liberated. Small problem, the banner was the standard banner that the SHIP used when they came home from another deployment, and the deployment they were coming back from was their longest deployment. No problem -- the media was able to bolster the myth of W's "arrogance and stupidity" for putting up the banner that he never put up. It worked for the media and "The Party" (TP-D) , that is all that counts.

So the media "has it on tape" that Trump mocked a disabled reporter. Did he?

According to the linked article, he did not. The thesis is the following:

1. The whole deal started with Trump's claim of Muslims celebrating 9-11 in New Jersey -- the media said he was crazy, never happened. 
2. The Trump team found an article in the WaPo talking about Muslims celebrating -- the reporter (the disabled one) tried to back away from his own story when it came to light. 
3. Trump made fun of the reporter backing away from his own story at a campaign event and the media got him on tape. 
4. The linked article found other examples of Trump mocking / impersonating someone on tape, and they all look the same -- apparently he isn't much of a mimic. 

Is this "proof"? No, certainly not, but I think we all understand why it is important for the media to create and maintain such stories. If we assume that Trump DID mock the reporter's disability, was it somehow "important to him" or was it a "slip"? Back when BO said that his bowling was "like the special olympics", he apologized and that was that -- no big deal. But you can't do that from the right -- you will be destroyed by misspelling "potato". So even if it WAS a slip, he can't apologize because he is on the "wrong side". 

What is true and what is false in modern BOistan is completely beside the point. It is what people BELIEVE is true! 60% of the population believes that human caused global warming (AGW) is a greater problem for us and our offspring than $150 trillion in debt and unfunded liabilities. It doesn't really matter what the truth is -- both are predictions about the future, there really isn't any "truth" about future predictions until they are proven true or false. 

We all heard all summer that Trump would lose by a landslide, the Senate would go Democrat and the Republicans would be lucky to keep the house. Those learned predictions didn't turn out to be so correct .. "truthful". 

BO stated in 2012 that anyone that claimed we could drill our way to sub $2 gas was "either lying or didn't know what they were talking about" ... we've been there before, we are there again. Nobody is asking BO "Which was it? Were you lying or are you clueless?". 

We could go on, but you get the pattern. I see the left holding up the "Trump made fun of a disabled person" meme as if it were some magic spell. Let's compare that to Libya and 4 dead including the Ambassador. Hillary famously uttered, "What difference, at this point, does it make?". 

One of those "differences" might be that Trump was elected. It seems pretty clear that "making fun of people with disabilities" was NOT part of the "Trump campaign strategy" (if he had one) ... so if he DID do that, it was a SLIP, like BO calling his bowling "Special Olympics". If we lived in a nation where an opposition candidate could apologize and move on, then apology would be good, but BOistan is not that place. 

While there is no way to KNOW the answer to this, it seems pretty clear that the media and the Democrats are the big winners in creating this meme (just like the "Mission Accomplished" meme). Based on the work done by the linked Catholic site, I think we have pretty good evidence that this is yet another case of a media created 'Fake News".

The difference seems to be that at least part of the country is sick of it. Many of us have simply been told too many lies by the MSM and TP to listen to anything they say anymore. It is certainly true that Trump may be a liar as well -- at this point, I'm very pleased to see some new lies rather than just the same old tired ones! 

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De-weaponizing Language, Death To Labels

I’m sure I’ll ponder this  some more, but on my IA journeys I believe I see the insidiousness of “Political Correctness” more clearly. 

In my youthful Baptist world, all one needed to do in order to dismiss people was to label them — “a drinker, a smoker, an evolutionist, worldly, etc”, and they were devalued. They were “not of the body”. I read Orwell and even a lot of deeper stuff (“Ideas Have Consequences”, “Road to Serfdom”) that make the power of words and labels eminently clear.  Then came Trump — racist, homophobe, misogynist (now THERE is a word that recently got A LOT of life!), imitator of people with disabilities, the next Hitler, etc.. 

A “new word” needed to be invented ....  “deploreables” — it was a complete orgy of labeling by the great dragon of PC, now possibly seriously wounded? Even mortally? 

Are we on the path of breaking free of simply labeling people and being done with them? I’m not sure the youth can imagine a world so strange that every human is a complex mix of good / bad / indifferent / paradox / hope / despair / love / hate / prejudice / fear / courage / compassion … etc, and it would be wrong to apply a label to someone and discount them as a human. 

It would be so HARD to deal with each other as flawed humans, but each worthy of diverse, complicated and imperfect thought! Much harder than applying a label and being done with them! (perhaps even, or especially? if they are a family member?)  

What if we found others worthy of respect even (and maybe ESPECIALLY?) when they disagree with our views?  What if a Muslim and a Christian that both believe through their religion that homosexuality is a sin, would be valued the same by a "liberal" ... as two humans with different, but in some ways similar religious beliefs?  

What if the associational freedom for a designer to be able to decide if they wanted to design a dress for Michelle Obama but not for Melania Trump, or for a musician to play for Hillary Clinton but not Donald Trump would be thought of the same as for a baker to bake a cake for a Christian wedding, but not for a gay "wedding"? 

At one time, it was allowed to simply label a person an "N-word", Jew, etc and dismiss them. We supposedly passed from that into what I think all hoped was a better world where labels were not acceptable. Sadly, the labels returned, proliferated and begin to be hurled at larger and larger groups of individuals -- each unique, and NOT defined by the labels increasingly applied to them. 

Was "basket of deploreables" the point and which the magical power of labels "jumped the shark"? Might we have hit "peak labeling"? One can only hope. 

It would be wonderful if the great dragon of Political Correctness has been mortally wounded and we start dealing with people as people as opposed to labels. 

Such a subversive thought for our times!

"Once you label me, you negate me". (Kierkegaard) 

Hillary Chose Trump As Opponent

WikiLeaks Reveals DNC Elevated Trump to Help Clinton | Observer:

I'm not going to go back and find the proof that the Carter team was GLAD that Reagan was the choice for them to run against rather than George W Bush in 1980, but it is out there ... you can likely find it as easy as I.  I don't believe the system was quite as rigged then, so I don't think Carter and the media really purposely helped Reagan win the primaries.

I think many  people are aware that Clinton (and the DNC, and the media) WANTED to run against Trump -- they saw it as "certain disaster" for the Republicans -- as did the RNC and big swaths of "Never Trump" Republicans (many of them still do ... they preferred Hillary).

According to an email from Marissa Astor, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook’s assistant, to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, the campaign knew Trump was going to run, and pushed his legitimacy as a candidate. WikiLeaks’ release shows that it was seen as in Clinton’s best interest to run against Trump in the general election. The memo, sent to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) also reveals the DNC and Clinton campaign were strategizing on behalf of their candidate at the very beginning of the primaries. “We think our goals mirror those of the DNC,” stated the memo, attached to the email under the title “muddying the waters.”

None of them learned their lesson from Reagan -- because frankly, they never DID like him. Most RNC people are "big government lite", the Democrats, media and academia would have been happy without the Reagan economic growth, the end of the USSR, lower gas prices, etc -- it is POWER they care about, not what happens to the electorate as a result of their machinations.

All the Clinton campaign had to do was push the mainstream media in the general direction of covering and attacking Trump as though he was the star of the Republican presidential primaries. As the presumed Democratic nominee, whomever she decided to dignify by responding to—whether the comments were directed at her or not—would be presumed to be the spokesperson, or nominee, of the Republican Party.

This time, the "deplorable" pawns beat the queen.



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BOistan Speaks, Who Cares?

As I cast my vote for Trump today I thought back to 1976 when I voted for Jimmy Carter. I was completely confident then -- my family always voted Democrat, I had been schooled to vote Democrat and pretty much everyone on campus voted Democrat. Let's face it, unless you were filthy rich or some sort of a knuckle dragger, why would you ever vote any other way? Nixon was evil -- he was only voted in because Johnson was a warmonger. He lied -- US presidents didn't lie then, it was an impeachable offense.

Then, on March 18th, 1977, Jimmuh spoke of "The Moral Equivalent of War" (MEOW) and I bought a cat and started reading National Review. You see, the "greatest challenge since WWII" wasn't warming then -- it was the FACT that the planet was OUT OF OIL. Only idiots believed otherwise.

By 1980 I was firmly resolved to vote for a MADMAN -- Ronald Reagan, a one of least intelligent people that ever lived (Carter was a certified genius)  that considered the USSR to be an evil empire that could be defeated. The idiocy of Reagan and his "totally misled or evil" followers was a danger to the entire world. The "Doomsday Clock" ticked closer to midnight. Reagan was a complete embarrassment -- a foolish actor, a mere marionette to powerful interests that would destroy the economy and likely our very lives!

I was a lot less confident then, but I cared.

Fast forward 40 years to this AM. If someone would have told me that 40 years later I would be voting for another Republican candidate, almost as maligned as Reagan was back then, I would have asked what kind of weed he was smoking. (back then weed was illegal) In 1980, we actually still believed in amendments to the Constitution -- the Equal Rights Amendment didn't time out until 1982 -- probably the point where "The Party" (TP-D) decided that they were going to use the SCOTUS to make whatever wholesale changes they wanted without any more amendment attempts.

America was still a great country -- people worked, we flew in space -- even to the moon. We believed our children's lives would be better than ours. We revered God, American History, and I think a strong majority even believed that truthfulness, rule of law, the Constitution, hard work, personal responsibility and independence were good things. Character was important for even the common man -- demanded for leaders. The idea of a "government handout" was considered to be justifiably stigmatized -- you worked for what you had, and if you couldn't afford it, you didn't get it.

Sure, the 30's and the 60's  plus Roe V Wade had injected some serious poison into the American system, but I don't think any of us thought that America would perish in our lifetimes -- let alone less than 40 years later.

I expect Hillary to win tonight, but I'm not really watching -- I'll go to bed early and the answer will either be done or not by the AM. I stayed up all night for Bush vs Gore -- lot of good THAT did me!

We know that Hillary will "bring the country together" -- the question is just how much force she will use.

If by some miracle Trump beats the rigged system, I have no expectations. I sincerely doubt he will accomplish all that much, but potentially the movement he muddled into will bring the spirit of the Tea Party back to life and there will at least be a discussion about some semblance of rule of law, fiscal responsibility, incentives to work and grow and yes, some small measure of control of our borders. 70% of the population sees the country as in decline -- if he could move that number up to only 60% that would be a very credible presidency. Optimism used to be one of the hallmarks of America -- heck, if he got to only 60% I might think there was a chance that we could get back to over half of the country feeling we were moving forward!

I leave you with this parting video that I don't believe because this is a cynical time. It does make me wonder however -- if such a video could have been manufactured for one honest life that Hildebeast had touched, does anyone really think it would not have been and every one of us would know the story?

The fact that it exists at all about Trump and we have not read a story of how it is "all fake, lies, disgusting, etc" is at least intriguing. I certainly understand why I have not seen it other than having it pointed out to me on YouTube if it is true.

Could it be true? If there was anything remotely this touching about Hildebeast, would we not ALL be so sick of the story we would be ready to barf? Think about it.