Civil War or Divorce ?

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448069/memorial-day-united-states-armed-services-unity-political-fragmentation-james-mattis

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448385/americans-left-right-liberal-conservative-democrats-republicans-blue-red-states-cultural-segregate

I spend a good deal of time ingesting media from the left and far left -- more than half of my media life, since knowing what those that I tend not to agree with are thinking is more difficult and less natural than listening to echoes of my own thought. I have a strong belief that spirit / thought / consciousness are what makes us uniqely and eternally human. To me, race, gender and sexuality are FAR less important. "Culture" is however critical, because everyone has one, and in the US, we now have two radically different cultures.

I find this quote from James Mattis from the top linked article to be spot on:

When I asked what worried him most in his new position, I expected him to say ISIS or Russia or the defense budget. Instead, he said, “The lack of political unity in America. The lack of a fundamental friendliness. It seems like an awful lot of people in America and around the world feel spiritually and personally alienated, whether it be from organized religion or from local community school districts or from their governments.”

Frequent readers of this blog understand that I consider meaning to be really the only thing that matters in human life -- and I regularly harp on "Man's Search for Meaning". I believe that the reason for the alienation in Western civilization is because we have put pleasure or "happiness" in the top position rather than meaning, so freedom has been corrupted to being "freedom to have as much pleasure as possible".

For a Christian, the realization of our ETERNAL purpose as serving Christ is the ongoing discovery of his eternal leading. As covered in Frankl, great suffering has far more meaning than even the most desireable pleasure in even the temporal sense, let alone the eternal.

Since personal pleasure has become the "holy grail" of the west, alienation is inevitable. Most people find it difficult to see "good" in people who do not share their world views. Christ's admonishion to love our enemies goes totally against our sinful human nature. When the highest goal is "happiness / pleasure", why bother to even associate with anyone who does not see eye to eye with us on virtually every detail?

When my own pleasure is the ultimate goal, then whatever gets in the way of that is clearly "evil". "Progressives" consider their chief recent accomplishments to be pursuit of largely sexual pleasure -- sex outside of marriage, abortion on demand, same sex relationships, gender bending, etc.  This is nothing new -- this script goes back to the Old Testament. Let's break out the golden calf and the ashera poles. In the search for pleasure. "Progress" is considered to be removal of restraint and ultimately all responsibility -- everything becomes "a right", including the "right" to not even be exposed to anyone who is not in lock step with your world view. (those people are intolerant!)

The "progressive" world view demands that those who do not agree be removed from any association with "progressives" -- the god of personal pleasure is CERTAINLY not in any way shape or form going to suggest that you "love your enemies",  but rather that you destroy your enemies -- cut them off by any means possible. Make no mistake, Christians are definitely the chief enemies of "progressives" in this world. Muslims are OK, but NOT Christians!

Tiny little things like a Constitution are not going to stand in the way of "progressives" rooting out Christian doctrine. Here is Bernie Sanders applying a religious test to someone nominated for office in BOistan. Bernie was especially offended by the nominee having written this line in an internet post:

“Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.”

BOistan has no operative constitution, so at least half the country has no problem with this. Christ states in John 14:6 "... I am the way the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me". Practicing Christians not only agree with Christ, they WORSHIP him! Bernie concluded his remarks with; “This nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about.”

America had a Constitution that demanded in Article VI:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

BOistan clearly does not honor the laws of the former Democratic Republic of America ... to "progressives", what was fundamental to America is now "not what BOistan is about".

David French concludes the second linked article above (both are excellent, well worth reading) with this:

If we seek to preserve our union, we’re left with a choice — try to dominate or learn to tolerate? The effort to dominate is futile, and it will leave us with a permanently embittered population that grows increasingly punitive with each transition of presidential power. There is hope, however, in the quest to tolerate. Our Constitution is built to allow our citizens to govern themselves while protecting individual liberty and providing for the common defense. It’s built to withstand profound differences without asking citizens or states to surrender their strongest convictions. We can either rediscover this federalism, or we may ultimately take a third path — we may choose to separate.

Is it remotely possible that the left will relent and decide that using the federal government to dominate is "futile"? As the Deep State, dominant media, legal system and educational system pull out all stops to overturn the presidential election, it seems awfully pollyannaish to me. Is it REALLY "futile"? The left has forced abortion on demand in all 50 states as well as gay "marriage", and they are pushing hard on the "whatever" vs gender front. Their climate doctrine is holy writ, well beyond Biblical levels of inerrancy for even most of the leftist post Christian "christian" churches. The Virgin Birth? Probably not ... Climate Change? Yea verily! ... oh, and forget that John 14:6 stuff, Muslims, Wiccans, "whatever" ... "it's all good'.

What I'd LIKE to believe is that we will have an honest to goodness REVIVAL of actual practicing Christainity in this failed area of N America. There ARE hopeful signs ... a person I work with attended the graduation at Liberty University this spring -- around 100K students enrolled on campus and online. Huge growth, Christ centered, very much appreciated and supported the graduation speech by Trump. Have attended a couple services at RedRocksChurch in Denver with our son ... packed services, all ages, very Biblically based with a young adult focus. Rapidly growing.

In general, the "sliding leftward" traditional protestant churches are dying. The Evangelicals, and to some degree Catholics are growing. Interestingly, Trump DID win the Catholic vote -- which is a story that is not talked about much. As I wrote about here, I firmly believe that 2016 was our first truly "post Christian Nation" election. Practicing Christians finally realized that we no longer live in "America", which culturally WAS Christian, but now live in BOistan, which desires to be pagan, and is more than happy to exclude any practicing Christians if possible.

I agree with Mattis. While I very much enjoy the free exchange of ideas and relish the chance to debate matters of religion, politics, philosophy, scotch, and cigars, we increasingly live in the age of shrinking tribal alienation. ALL relationships are increasingly "my way or the highway" ... friends, family, work, neighborhood, church, etc. I personally work to maintain relationships with people who do not share my world view, but in order to do that, the relationships become increasingly shallow. The worst thing about the Climate Change religion is that it has made even something as innocuous as the weather a religious issue. There is no god but man (man is the measure of all things), and even the weather is due to man's power in the climate religion.

I've been away from my blog for a bit while becoming grandpa x 2 with the birth Graham Walden in Denver, and I've rambled yet again. I believe that increasingly fractured lives are the wages of losing a shared transcendent vision of meaning ... we will atomize to ever smaller "tribes" if we don't "revive". Is that a "decision", or is that "Grace"? Given free will, I see it as both -- there must be a daily decision to stay in the Grace or to reject it in favor of man's "thought of the day".

My prayer for my "enemies" on the left is that even if you can't imagine loving those whom you disagree with, is it really too much to ask that you tolerate them rather than seek to dominate them to the point of preventing even a tiny "trim" of the massive Adminstrative State which rules BOistan?

When elections are not honored, the "separation" at a minium seems all but certain. Perhaps that is God's will. 

Powerful Women And Trump

Every man should have a woman who looks at him the way the President of Croatia looked at Trump | Conservative News Today:

The relationship of women to alpha males is sometimes complex, but not always subtle.

While modern "science" and certainly politically correct socialization would tell you there is no such thing as gender, men and women are the same and sexuality is entirely a social construct, etc etc, we do actually still have male and female plumbing fittings (I'm sure that would have been outlawed had Hildebeast prevailed), and procreation actually still involes a certain ordered fitting of body parts.

So, sometimes powerful, confident females are attracted by males that stand above the other males both in physical and personal power. Obviously the women showing their "power" in pussy hats object to this sort of disply with the strongest whining they can muster.

It is as natural as "boy meets girl", which of course makes it abhorrent to the modern "progressive". Even worse from the leftist abandonment of personal responsibility standard, humans are entirely able (sometimes with significant difficulty) to not react to all our quite natural urges -- even on the left, the majority remain potty trained (so far), but same sex attraction is absolutely NOT controllable!

Since the left is certain that "Trump is Hitler", we might want to just consider the "small" difference between Trump and Hitler relative to his relations with the opposite sex. I understand that for the left, the only interesting sexuality is the current plethora of non-heterosexual options which of course are "major and defining" to every aspect of life, with no potential for character or conciousness to have an effect.

Here is a shot of the lefts favorite National Socialist with his final love interest -- you might want to look at a picture of Trump and Melania to see if you can detect slight differences.

Again, I realize that I am a moose of another time. Sexuality today is only significant when it is NON heterosexual, in which case it is the most significant part of a persons life and can't be ignored for even a second. I DO understand what I have been told -- it is just that the last shreds of independent thought have not quite been beaten out of me (yet)!

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The Party Declares It's Champion

James Comey and the Revenge of Washington’s Professional Class - The New Yorker:

Beginning with FDR, flexing it's muscles in Watergate, and growing more powerful ever after, The Party (TP-D) has created, nurtured, and made it's main instrument of power the Administrative or Deep State (DS). No matter what temporary occupant sits in the White House or party sits in control of Congress, the Deep State abides, and it is not a comfort to those that loved America, liberty, or morality. As the linked New Yorker column puts it:

Washington is a lawyer’s town, built on protocols and rules. If this tends to make happy-hour conversation in the city a little more pedantic than the American norm, then it also has its advantages, among them a fanaticism for records.

As I've often written, lawyers in the US are "The House" as in the gambling sense, and the number one rule of gambling is "The house WINS!". It has to, or there would be no Vegas, State Lotteries, or Casinos dotting the landscape. At any moment, lawyers are always the majority in all the legislatures and the US congress, plus they have their own branch of government, and since at least the early '70s, they also own the now most powerful "hidden in plain sight" branch of government, the Deep State.

The common thread is lawyers. Both political parties are significantly by and for lawyers, with TP being especially by and for lawyers. I'm not trying to say that lawyers are "bad people", merely that as lawyers, they have been schooled to view the world in a very specific way, and that way is not what America was -- lawyers are indeed people, but WE THE PEOPLE are not to be subserviant to a ruling lawyer class. This is why government was to be strictly LIMITED!

In addition to the question of whether Trump’s Presidential campaign colluded with the Russian government, there is now the question of whether he interfered to stop an investigation—whether he, as President, obstructed justice.

 As the excellent cartoon at the top reminds us, "obstruction of justice" is "TP normal". IRS decides to target conservatives ? Lois Lerner takes the 5th, a bunch of computers turn up wiped, and BO declares it over -- hey, don't expect the Deep State to investigate itself!

BO's justice department goes after a conservative reporter trying to find out about leaks?  Well, most people don't even know it happened -- and it is CERTAINLY no concern for goodness sake! The "good guys" (BO) went after the "bad guys", (Fox News) ... nuff said! What is the use of having a huge weapon like the DS if you can't use it to destroy your enemies?

Many "progressives" have pointed out how "scandal free" the  BO disaster was ... to the blind, coal tar and snow may as well both be pure white! BO decided the investigation of Hildebeast on 60 Minutes "She had no intent to break the law, and no secrets endangered national security" -- oh thank you great and powerful BO for decaring the conclusion of FBI "investigation" prior to it being over! (no "obstruction" there!)

BO ENDORSED HILDEBEAST ON JUNE 9th and Comey didn't fold the investigation until July 5th! Now, ostensivly, it was Slick Willie meeting with his boss on a plane in AZ on June 30th  that convinced Comey"it's over", rather than the POTUS endorsing a person under investigation by the FBI, but REALLY folks! The POTUS ENDORSES a person under active FBI investigation to take his job and that is NOT "obstruction"? Hello? Welcome to BOistan! Does not endorsing her for POTUS more than "imply" that "she is a nice lady and I hope the FBI can get by this so she can take my job". Even TP has not YET put in a CONVICTED felon ... many of them are felons, they just don't do the "conviction thing" because, well ... TP!

Anyone that is semi awake understands that in TP controlled BOistan, anyone that is not a TP member in good standing is someone that TP would see as needful of "investigation" -- and certainly, a  president that is non-TP REQUIRES "investigation".

Perhaps the "BOistan Constitution" should just say that "in the unlikely event that a person that is not a TP member in good standing is elected, a set of "Special Prosecutors", "Commissions", "Independent Councels", "Czars", etc  must be immediately appointed to investigate what are clearly "high crimes and misdemeanors", because someone not sworn to fealty to TP has ostensively gained power!" To TP, that is certainly a MAJOR crime!

We really didn't need to investigate BO ... his own book made it clear he wanted to destroy "the colonial powers" -- and he did a hell of a job on at least one of them!

Can Trump beat these bastards? Who knows, but BOistan  SUCKS!

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Nixon, Slick, Trump, Lucy

Trump-Russia scandal will stretch the supposed boundaries of bipartisanship | TheHill:

In the early '70s, at what then Democrats considered the nadir of their power, having fallen from owning the presidency, plus huge majorities in congress including over 60 votes in the Senate during most of the '60s, to losing the presidency in a landslide to Nixon for a second term, the Satanic Political Grail was discovered -- "Scandal and Coverup".

It is a brilliant strategy really -- always applicable as long as political power is your only objective and you are willing to destroy your very nation to get it. It only requires a "leak" (or a news outlet willing to imagine a "leak"), enough media and political people to keep the story going, a public willing to rely on the word of a felon (most of the base leaks are felonies) over the word of their elected officials, and as we have seen over the last 40 years, a political party stupid enough to not understand Lucy from Charlie Brown.

Sometime around '92 after "Iran Contra" had drug on from the '80s long enough for an indictment of Cap Weinberger to be issued 4 days before the '92 election, the Charlie Brown of political parties -- the R's, figured out that Lucy and the Democrats have similar interests.

One of the key "Lucy questions" is as follows":

"To the central question, are there Republicans who have the guts to challenge Trump and one day go to the White House la Nixon, like Barry Goldwater, Hugh Scott and Robert Griffith and tell him in person: "It's time to go.""

This is where Slick Willie enters the picture.  While Nixon may or may not have committed any crimes, the "standard" that the supposedly highly concerned and moral D's and the MSM had established was "lying to the public, and doing a coverup". Such a standard was asserted to be "patriotic and bi-partisan", however the Slick Willie affair (pun intended) would give us total proof it was not.

There aren't any Democrats that put the nation ahead of political power, so perjury, direct lies to the American people, any sort of "decency" as a presidential standard, etc went completely out the window in the late '90s. The D's and the MSM (but I repeat myself) made it clear that this idea of "courage" in this context was actually a one way street that they were willing to laughingly call "courage" when R's hung themselves, but nothing  that a D ever even considered. ("Democrat Morals" see situational, see oxymoron, see power)

So, under BO, lying about films causing Ambassadors to be killed, using the IRS to attack your politcal opponents, extra Constitutional exec orders, spending funds never appropriated by Congress, being sued, and losing, etc, etc became "business as usual". Not even worth having a discussion with the D's about enforcing the Constitution -- that isn't something they do. POWER is their game! 24K emails show up missing at the IRS and Lois Lerner takes the 5th? Ho hum ... what parts of Deep State, D,  and MSM do you not understand?

And thus we descended into and now live in BOistan.

Firing an FBI Director is actually completely within the scope of a president's authority -- if you check carefully, the FBI is under the executive branch. When Slick Willie fired William Sessions on July 19th, '93,  it was such a sad event that it caused Vince Foster to commit suicide. The Snopes attempt to call the FACT that the firing happened one day before old Vince turned up dead is a "mixture of true and false", BECAUSE there **IS** no suspicion involved! How true your "fact" **is** from the left depends on how unfortunate it may be -- if it is really unfortunate, enven direct facts like dates are only "mixed". (also, your definition of "is")

As my readers know, we live in a country where "facts" are now completely partisan. It is extremely true that correlation does not equal causality. It does not however follow that correlation is completely un-interesting when one party is involved and total proof of wrongdoing if the other is implicated.

In our present insane universe, "where there is smoke there is fire" has to first be poltically tested -- D involved? Smoke unrelated to fire. R involved? Truism stands -- GOTTA be SOMETHING there!

The Deep State is in "go for it mode" -- probably up to guys like "we do whatever it takes for the media to like us" Johnny McCain if they can take Trump down. We knew this would happen after all ...

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None Blacker Than 11, Comey

How much more black could this be? | Power Line:

The end of America and the entrance to BOistan was a painful time, however we have lived in a "joke of a stan" for at least 3 years now. If one can't enjoy dark political humor, there is really none left.

I found the BO years to be the "Wizard of Oz" presidency, perhaps "Spinal Tap" is the metaphor for this one. For those of you unaware, just watch it, a little refresher ...

The video in the linked article is a worthy watch for perspective -- or really for an introduction to lack thereof. If the "stupid party" (R) has learned anything since Watergate (and that is always doubtful) it ought to be that "The Party" (TP-D) assumes it is the RULING PARTY at all times, because if nothing else it owns the "Deep State" -- all the alphabet soup of agencies including DOJ, FBI, NSA, CIA, etc, and naturally, they are at WAR with Trump. If the R's don't stay solid, TP wins again.

McCain will blather -- he loves the sound of his own voice a little bit more when there is a microphone in front of him, and apparently his true genius is fratricide, but if the party has a LICK of sense, this will be a complete yawn -- go on with some boring "investigations", let the D's continue to stew in their own juices.

As soon as an R is elected, there ought to be a ticker running on the news stations all the time "Democrats seek Special Prosecutor" ... does the "reason" really matter?

Hey, at least we know "this is it", this is as dark as it gets ... "worse than Watergate", the previous darkest of all -- the sun actually came up here in Rochester this AM. I'm certain that DC looks like Mordor, I wish they would put out some video of the big eye on top of the Washington Monument, that would be COOL!

When Comey testified that he decided to close the investigation of Hillary because Slick and Lynch met, that was enough for me.

I find that Scott Adams has an interesting view as always here ...

Now we have a bizarre situation in which both sides (Demcrats and Republicans) wanted Comey fired, but they had different reasons for wanting it. Democrats were upset that he might have torpedoed Hillary Clinton’s campaign by talking about the Weiner laptop discovery of additional Clinton emails close to Election Day. And Republicans hated Comey for not pursuing a criminal case against Clinton for her email server misdeeds. That’s the perfect set-up for cognitive dissonance. I’ll explain: 

Democrats and the Opposition Media reflexively oppose almost everything President Trump does. This time he gave them something they wanted, badly, but not for the reason they wanted. That’s a trigger. It forces anti-Trumpers to act angry in public that he did the thing they wanted him to do. And they are.

I wonder along with I think everyone (Trump himself?) if he truly has an agenda beyond "stirring the pot and getting a lot of attention".  I agree he is a "master persuader" as Adams points out, the question is what is the persuasion about vs "hey, look at me!".

What Trump does every day is hold the mirror of our own national tribalism up to our faces as I covered here.


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The Weird Moment You Know You Are a Sheep

The weird moment on Colbert’s show that captured our political whiplash - The Washington Post:

The sheep have no mind of their own ... they follow their master. Which is GREAT if their master is Christ, but pitiful when their master is Steve Colbert, MSNBC, Fox, or NPR.

I'd argue that even though the media claims there to be many mindless Trump followers, there are few. The MSM has made quite sure that anyone that is not their abject follower has a mind of their own -- it is harder to make someone with a mind of their own become convinced that they oght to bleat however their shepherd asks. Christ is of  course the GOOD SHEPHERD ... bleating to his call is a joy. Steven Colbert? Well ...

The news of James Comey’s political demise had broken less than 10 minutes before Stephen Colbert began his late-show taping on Tuesday evening. And when he informed his live audience, trapped in a dead-zone soundstage — “the FBI director has just been fired by Donald Trump” — they initially reacted by breaking into cheers. 

This was a man, after all, that Colbert’s liberal-leaning viewership had viewed as a bad guy. He raised Hillary Clinton’s email scandal from the dead; he might have cost her the election. 

“Wow, wow,” Colbert said, appearing taken aback by the applause. “Huge, huge Donald Trump fans here tonight.”

The poor sheeple hadn't been told what to think yet, and they have no minds of their own. Their leadership had told them Comey was a BAD MAN ... he was one of those evil people that had cost St Hildebreast the office they had been assured she richly deserved and was guarenteed to get! Many TP leaders had called for Comey's ouster -- certainly the ouster happening must  be GOOD NEWS!

Much like retailiation for the use of  chemical weapons by Syria -- why the great BO had drawn a "Red Line"!! which would normally seem quite warlike if someone with testicles was saying it.

But wait, this was TRUMP -- and the Russians were UNHAPPY, but how can THAT be? Didn't TP and BO tell us that the now evil Russians formerly of "the 1980's called and wanted their foreign policy back", but now morphed into evil even though they keep us in space -- were the GOOD guys in Syria? Why BO and John Kerry assured us those same Russians had removed ALL the chemical weapons from Syria!

Why, it is as if TP and it's media arm are themselves confused -- certain, but certainly wrong -- and thus the masses sitting in the stands for "Bread and Circuses" become confused. Who do they cheer, and who do they boo? They certainly  no longer can figure it out for themselves, they must be TOLD!

And so they bleat.

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Mind Numbing Reality and Opposition

Donald Trump Administration: Hundreds of Key Government Positions Still Unfilled | National Review:

Before Trump was elected, I covered the fact that he would be strongly opposed from BOTH SIDES ... Democrats and Republicans have been in power in DC for a LONG time, and they BOTH like power. They also like to use that power to improve the lives of themselves and their friends, so lots of cushy appointed positions have been added to our behemoth federal ship of state.

If you want your mind numbed, read through the linked column of some of the "missing":

At the State Department, Rex Tillerson is operating with 110 fewer presidential appointees than he should be. He’s missing a deputy secretary, a chief financial officer, an undersecretary for management, an assistant secretary for legislative affairs, an assistant secretary for intelligence, a coordinator for counter-terrorism, a representative to the European Union, and a special envoy for North Korea. There are no ambassadors to Germany, Canada, France, the Holy See, India, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, or South Korea, and there is no permanent representative to NATO.

I'm not sure I can complete my day knowing that we are missing an ambassador to the Holy See!

This particular article is from National Review -- it is mildly suspicious of Trump's competence relative to this ... many of those on the left are SCATHING! Total confirmation that Trump is massively incompetent!

Usually, in order to judge something like this we need to ask the Henny Youngman question "How's your wife?" .... "Compared to what?". Due to the wonder of the internet, it is very easy to find such comparative material. Here is some from the NY Times, May 2nd 2013, a similar time into the SECOND term of BO.

Hmm, so we have media writing articles about something that looks to be an issue in at least all recent administrations, and we are to be concerned? So what do we glean from this?

1. Our government is so huge it is beyond human comprehension. EVERYONE is lost ... the media, the population, the government bureaucrats themselves, etc. 
2. Media primarily sells words and they have to keep churning them out all the time -- left, right, etc, it is words, words, words, and any level of PERSPECTIVE, let alone "wisdom" is completely lacking. 
3. So here we are, left on our own to try to figure it out ... therefore, NEVER trust the media, ANY media! 

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Trump, 2016 Election, Media

Donald Trump can't stop talking (and talking) about the 2016 election - CNNPolitics.com:

You have to love the media -- story after story about how "Trump can't stop talking/thinking about 2016" ... and they are certain that it is going to HURT him bigtime (you know how the MSM is always concerned about what is best for Trump!).

Here is the NY Times with BO in Missouri in July of 2010, a full year and 1/2 after his narrow loss in Missouri while taking the presidency in 2008. Strangely, the Times seems to be very OK with BO thinking about 2008 in 2010, and even making extensive trips to Missouri based on the 2008 results.

I suppose one conclusion could be that the media loves Trump and hated BO, so they are trying to help Trump now by pointing out the error of his ways, while back in 2010, they hated BO, so they faked like it was a good idea to waste time on Missouri based on 2008 results.

Or it might be the reverse -- which I believe.

Further evidence for either my view or the thought that the liberal press is of AT LEAST two minds is this artiicle headlined "Democrats Say They Know Exactly Why Hillary Lost". Hint, it's not Russians, it is low black turnout and BO voters that crossed over to Trump, possibly by way of Sanders.` I could SWEAR I've read more than a few retrospecitves of the 2016 election from the left. If they can't give up thinking about it is it REALLY any surprise that Trunp hasn't?

How many presidents quit thinking and talking  about their great victories before they die? I'd say NONE. Obviously, the MSM will continue remembering BO's victories as they remember Slick Willie's victories very fondly for a very long time. Reagan's victories, W's victories, and now Trump's victory are naturally hated.

What is new about any of this? Nothing ...

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Normalizing Trump

At the White House with Trump | Power Line:

One of the Power Line guys was at the WH for a conservative media briefing. Since I listen to MPR/NPR all the time, including snippets of "Indivisible", the thinly disguised left wing call-in for "The Resistance" trying to make sure that Trump is NEVER normalized, it is really strange to see him covered as "just another POTUS".

The MSM has spent most of the first 100 days running around screaming "the sky fell" as if nobody had ever read Chicken Little. Day after day, everyone finds themselves still here -- so it doesn't really seem like the world ended -- only America ended, but that is old news -- it turned into BOistan in BO's 2nd term. I understand that NPR is worried BOistan could be damaged, but as long as the BOistani Adminstrative State is still in power, BOistan will live on.

It's worth going and reading the article just because of how normal it is. It is like zillions of left wing friendly news outlets reporting on their meetings with BO -- a normal, intelligent guy that maybe makes one cringe from time to time about how many times he says "I" and everything being about him.

Strangely, BO and Trump are so similar on the narcissim scale it makes one wonder if narcissism isn't the main requirement for BOistani leadership.

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Russians or BO?

Trump's Wiretap Claims: What We Know and What We Don't | The Weekly Standard:

We live in largely separate echo chambers of media narratives, but Trump is breaking down those walls and causing general discomfort to most people in their comfy chambers hearing the narratives they expect with all the appropriate spin they also expect. Last weekend, Trump tweeted the obvious -- in order to gather all this supposed "information", the BO administration must have been investigating the Trump campaign -- Watergate where the FBI, NSA, CIA play the role of the "Plumbers".

The picture IS of an actual NY Times front page, but if you go off to Snopes, they will "explain" that the article has nothing to do with wiretapping of Trump ... so much for skimming NY Times headlines for "information" ... a headline in the NY Times stating Trump was wiretapped should NOT be construed to be "evidence" that he was wiretapped. So much for using the NY Times as a "source".

The right wing media got all wrapped around the axle about the Times "changing the headline" in the digital issue -- but in fact they just used a different headline when they put it up to digital originially -- a version of "a man accused of killing three men and a dog produces the dog alive" ... only in this case, he maybe comes up with a dead dog and the three men show up in court to testify that he murdered them. We have arrived at surrealism.

The Administrative State was clearly (and probably still is) investigating Trump -- otherwise we would not have all the "leaks". Either BO told them to, allowed them to, or was incompetent and simply had no clue about a major misuse of government power. He should be jailed -- ideally, he should be executed (slowly), but justice is so rare.


The following from this excellent article.

In short, the media and Democrats have been playing with fire for months. The use of law-enforcement and national-security assets to investigate one’s political opponents during a heated election campaign has always been a potentially explosive story. Let’s not kid ourselves: If the roles were reversed, and a Republican administration had investigated officials tied to the campaign of the Democrats’ nominee, we would be drowning in a sea of Watergate 2.0 coverage.

And all of a sudden, the Russian Narrative appears to have gone "poof". I suspect that the NY Times, WaPo, NPR, Nancy Pelosi, etc just realized when they saw the Trump tweets, that they don't officially have a single branch of government under "The Party" (TP-D) control. The Republicans CAN run an investigation of "Why was the BO administration or the Administrative State that they are supposed to be responsible for, investigating the opposition campaign?".

They looked around and decided, that BO and Hildebeast could just as well be targets as Trump and his administration -- and in fact, Trump is in the WH and Republicans are in both houses of Congress. Sure, TP still DOES own the Administrative State (AS) and the big media, but their "ownership" of the AS is supposed to be a "secret" -- it can be fully open when they own the White House, because in THEORY the president is supposed to be in charge of the AS, and **IS** when the president is TP. When the president is not TP, the AS needs to fake like it is under his executive authority!

I'd argue that the biggest challenge that Trump faces if he really does want to "Make America Great Again" is to put the ultimate control of the AS back under CONGRESS -- supposedly that is where their "law powers" are delegated from, since it is CONGRESS that can make law as well as control funding.

Trump ought to be able to hire and fire AS personnel at will, raise or lower their salaries, cut their benefits, etc. If they want to do things to cause him embarrassment or ignore his directives, he ought to be able to fire them just as Reagan fired PATCO. He is the CEO ... the alphabet government is supposed to be under his executive authority, with powers only delegated to them from congress.

I've been shocked this week to see how quickly the whole MSM has shut up about Russia!  If this continues, I think we can be certain that BO in fact either ordered Trump tapped, or looked the other way as it happened, and the tweets hit a bit too close to the bone -- TP really doesn't want to see BO in prison.

Let's get the SCOTUS firmly switched, the AS defanged, and THEN maybe see if BO can't be put behind bars where he has belonged since he destroyed the health system and lied to the American people about how we could "keep our healthcare". I wonder if he would still wag his finger the same way behind bars?

Imagine a sample BO interview from prison.

"I am the greatest president to ever be in prison. Just today, I was telling some guards about how I know more about prison than any prisoner in history, I know more about being a guard than they do, I am simply smarter, smoother and better in all respects than even the warden. I should be warden ... I'm certain he agrees, I just need to explain it to him better. I've been explaining how to make this a better prison -- I know I have a lot to do, but I work hard and I simply think more and more deeply than anyone I've ever met. I know I will be remembered as I have said that I will be. I'm glad you gave me this chance to explain how great I am doing here and how I will continue to be the kind of success that only I can possibly be!"

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Bible For Today, A Prayer for Trump

My Bible reading today included Psalm 56. Even though our Pastor was to put it chairitably, "no friend of Obama", he would dutifully include him amoung the rulers to be prayed for in the prayers. I wonder how many liberal churches do the same for Trump?

56 Be merciful unto me, O God: for man would swallow me up; he fighting daily oppresseth me.
2 Mine enemies would daily swallow me up: for they be many that fight against me, O thou most High.
3 What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.
4 In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.
5 Every day they wrest my words: all their thoughts are against me for evil.
6 They gather themselves together, they hide themselves, they mark my steps, when they wait for my soul.
7 Shall they escape by iniquity? in thine anger cast down the people, O God.
8 Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?
9 When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me.
10 In God will I praise his word: in the Lord will I praise his word.
11 In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.
12 Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto thee.
13 For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?

Journalists and Lefties, Goose and Gander

If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama - The New York Times:

Naturally, when BO targeted the media, including jailing some, it was "all good", after all, his heart was always in the right place, and anyone that disagreed with him was racist, homophobic, etc ... you know, "deploreables".

When Mr. Obama was elected in 2008, press freedom groups had high expectations for the former constitutional law professor, particularly after the press had suffered through eight years of bitter confrontation with the Bush administration. But today, many of those same groups say Mr. Obama’s record of going after both journalists and their sources has set a dangerous precedent that Mr. Trump can easily exploit. “Obama has laid all the groundwork Trump needs for an unprecedented crackdown on the press,” said Trevor Timm, executive director of the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation.

BO also made it frequently clear how much he disliked Fox news. Naturally, since the left hates "Faux News", they approved heartily.

When one is a lefty, the assumption is not only that your positions are right/good/moral/etc, and the other side is wrong/stupid/evil/etc, but also (and importantly!) that you should be protected from even having to hear those positions, other than to be aware that "wrong/stupid/evil/etc" exist out there in "flyover country".

Your definition of freedom means freedom FROM having to be exposed to alternate viewpoints including signs and symbols of Christianity. Typically, you are so sheltered that as your own lefty president targets media, you are not even made aware by the same media that you believe to be "unbiased", and then you have a cat when the shoe is on the other foot.






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Krugman, In Praise Of Trump

Things Can Only Get Worse - The New York Times:

Or in this case, typically all of the above!

I love the title, a fantastic job by former Enron advisor Paul Krugman. The opposite of his predictions are to be firmly believed (night of Trump election, "the markes will NEVER recover").

He is consistently the sound of a left hand clapping, he is but a one handed cheerleader for the left.

Why does the Times employ a man whose modest claim to expertise died when he took 50 grand from Enron and wrote glowing about them -- and then they promptly collapsed. and he disparaged W for taking campaign contributions from Enron?

Because the NY Times and Krugman are of a piece. They are fake to their very core -- there is "no there, there" in either case. Their entire existence is to blow with a leftward breeze no matter is happening in the real world.

Their hatred of Trump is a major proof of his goodness. For a leader, having the right people hate you -- STRONGLY, is every bit as important -- and maybe more so, then having people who love and support you.

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Trump, The Joy Of Rebellion

Are Liberals Helping Trump? - NYTimes.com:

I remember the line from "Risky Business" quite well.

I'm not a huge fan of profanity, but there is definite truth there. One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things you have always done and expect different results.

When I went to see Risky Business in 1983, I was single, in my 5th year of employment at IBM and very much in the Tom Cruise mode as he gets this lecture of "not wanting to screw up". About this same time, a person that I knew would leave IBM to go to work for Microsoft! I thought they were CRAZY ... they may as well have gone out and hired a bunch of hookers to try to make a big monetary score. The person that left retired from Microsoft in their 40's with I'm certain 10's of millions of dollars.

At the time, IBM was TOTALLY SAFE ... nobody was laid off, salaries were rising. If you could hang around 30 years (and likely less), you could retire with 2/3 of your salary and full medical benefits for the rest of your life. Sometime in the late '80s a buddy and I were up fishing at Mille Lacs and ran into a couple of guys who had retired from IBM recently that were in their early '50's (I hit 30 years at 51) who had super nice motor homes, a great boat, and had been reeling in big walleyes on Mille Lacs for a MONTH STRAIGHT!

I certainly didn't want to "screw up", take risks, and jeopordize that! One would have to be a FOOL to do so!

By the time I was fired in '12, the pension had been cut to a scant 1/3 of salary with minimal medical benefits to pay for medical costs that were skyrocketing. My wife that started at IBM in '84, who I would marry in '85 will get like 1/10th salary when she retires.

In the late '70s, some of the people that had retired the early '70s were coming back to work. They had gotten what were SUPER pensions at that point that were not indexed for inflation (neither is mine). Thanks to Jimmuh Carter, their pensions were essentially worthless by '80 due to inflation, and anything they had invested (in other than IBM stock) had pretty much earned nothing in the stock market. The Dow hit 900 in January of 1965, in November of '83 it finally went above 1,000 ... stocks were not the answer in those days.

The linked NY Times article points out that politically, saying "What the F" on Trump is considered to be a lot more morally suspect by the left today than pimping for your high school buddies was in '83. Many males may not agree with the morality of buying a hooker, let alone being a pimp, but they certainly understood the concept. Something like half the country today finds the idea of even taking a shot at opportunity to be immoral in the extreme -- so extreme they often can't even associate with such a person.

How will Trump turn out? No idea. My "sense" is that he is a lot more like "going to work for Microsoft" vs sticking with IBM was in '83 than any of the other current analogies. Maybe he is more like hiring a bunch of hookers and charging your high school buddies for sex ... which if you believe the movie, might work out better than one would expect assuming an amoral world and nothing afterward. (which IS the standard assumption of post Christain BOistan).

However, if one believes the left, we live in a HIGHLY moral world. A world more like the Baptist church I grew up in, or even the Mennonite churches around where I grew up. You MUST be "morally pure" ... as in follow all the dictates of "The Party", or you need to be "shunned". Lose contact with friends, co-workers, possibly even family.

I knew some kids like that from the Baptist church -- rebels. Openly drank, smoked, chased (and at least claimed to "catch") girls ... maybe even turned "atheist", or at least cursed the people who put all the moral strictures on them. I was of course quiet and bookish before I met my wife ... so we won't go into that here. I did however at least feel the thrill of rebellion -- I went to PROM, which involved DANCING, causing embarrassement for my father a deacon at church, and my mom a good baptist woman. Dancing, movies, smoking, drinking, long hair and a few other things were bigtime sins in the church ... I had long hair as well. I was a REBEL! (sort of ... a very limited rebel)

At age 60, it seems just plain surrealistic to see millions of people so locked into a secular humanist "morality" that they shun others over political views, or basically "taking a risk" ( on a 70ish multi-billionaire with great kids). I guess in a lot of ways I've never really changed -- mostly I keep my mouth shut about politcs day to day because I realize how bad it makes many people feel that someone they know would vote for Trump. I did the same back then ... I "sinned", but other than prom and long hair, I was pretty quiet about it.

In strange ways, my Christianity has become my "open rebellion" now. When I was in high school I was embarrassed about being a Baptist. I couldn't defend young earth creation, nor really understand why our church didn't allow dancing, drinking, etc and so many of the "world churches" did. Since I had been raised that way, it "felt" like the only way to escape hell was to be "saved" which if properly done would "change me" so I no longer desired any of the worldly things.

It never really seemed to "work" ...  "wanting" girls in the days of the miniskirt was an obstacle that prayers never fixed for me. I wanted to be somewhat popular at school ... and the kids that were able to do a better job of following the Baptist strictures were definitely UNpopular at school. The only "proper path" was to go to Pilsbury Baptist Bible College in Owatonna Minnesota to become a minister or missionary, or to settle in to farming or working at the turkey plant or some other local business, marry one of the good baptist girls, and settle in for what looked like a longer life at that point than it does now. Perhaps that WAS the only way "home" (to heaven) for me ... those were the cards that I was dealt by God and I walked away from the solution that was presented me -- I failed to honor my father and mother and follow the road that God put me on. "The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether".

I don't spend a lot of time on that -- it crosses my mind with a lot of other things. It comes with my belief that God truly is SOVEREIGN -- even if he puts me in Hell for eternity because I failed to follow the simple clear path he set before me since I felt I was "smarter than that". He is STILL sovereign! I don't feel / believe that will be the outcome -- I believe that Christ died with the promise to save me by GRACE, and those thoughts are just late night nightmares. It is part of honest thoughts that come form being raised as I was raised with the wetware and spiritware that I have.

While I went through a conversion to conservative, Lutheran "process Christian", philosphical wanna be, half the population (+ 3 million HRC voters, so a MAJORITY!)  formed a new religion that kinda reminds me of "Stranger In A Strange Land" which I just realized I ought to re-read. Perhaps Secular Humanism really is the Fosterite cult where all manner of sex, drug use, and wealth aquisition is "blessed" as long as the cult of government is held supreme, the planet at it's existing temprature or colder is venerated, Satan (Trump) is cursed, and those that refuse to kneel before the power of "The Party" (TP-D)  are cast out into utter darkness. There have been stranger religions.

Science fiction appealed to me a lot in high school and through college, but after my conversion to conservatism as a reaction to Jimmuh Carter, I've found history, philosophy, theology, physics, biographies and such to be much more surreal than what people can make up. From my perspective, we really are trapped on an ancient intellectual and spiritual starship with nearly nobody understanding how we got here.

Is Trump "risky business"? Sure, and maybe to some extent we Trump voters really did sorta say "WTF", but from most of our perspectives, we had an even worse choice than Tom Cruise. I wonder if the folks in the the Secular Humanist / Fosterite religion remember what it feels like to be a rebel? As they forgot their sense of small, did they also forget "the will to power" and decided to "play it safe" like I did at IBM?

For me, listening to lefties heads explode on MPR / NPR day in and day out is just TOO much fun! After 8 long years, it is now the lefts turn "In the Barrel", and it is impossible for even a 60 year old me to not take a good deal of joy in that!


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Gigapixel Trump Inauguration

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/01/politics/trump-inauguration-gigapixel/

One of the rather amazing things of our time is the ability to shoot a picture with a BILLION pixels! You can click the link and go look around at the various people ... kinda funny to see some of the expressions and how much you can zoom in. I don't really care about the numbers. As the picture shows there were LOTS of people there, and LOTS of red "Make America Great Again" hats.

When I think of the effort required to attend such an event, it makes me realize that a LOT of people are a whole lot more dedicated to poltics than I am -- which I see as GOOD in both senses. It's great they care enough to be there, and it is especially great that I and millions of others feel we don't have to care that much. That is what freedom looks like.

America was a land of LIMITED GOVERNMENT, which meant that the level of intrusion of government on anyone's life was intened to be LIMITED. Both in the ability of the government to give you what you want and to force others to give it to you was to be strictly limited. Since the government does not produce anything, certainly not wealth, that is really the only question that needs to be considered. Who makes and who takes.

If the government has enough power to "give" you more than it takes from you for "some charge" to you, the only way that can happen is when it TAKES what is "given" to you from somebody else.

When you go to the grocery store, you understand the transaction fairly well -- you walk around the store, pick up what you want, and then pay for it as you leave. The money you pay keeps the store operating and returns some level of profit to the company running the store after the store has paid for it being built, keeping the lights on, employees to stock and do check out, and of course a large part of what you paid goes to the whole system that moves the products from farmers, fishermen, bakers, processors, etc  through processing plants, trucking, packaging, advertising, etc, etc.

Everyone in that system makes some level of profit from what they do -- usually very low single digit percentages ... for groceries, it can be LESS than 1%, since 1% is the average. So if one guy owns the grocery store / chain, he needs to do 100 million dollars of business a year if he wants to have million dollar income.

Yes, some of what you pay in taxes goes for the government to make sure everyone "plays fair" and "plays safe" ... the folks that built the store, provided the power, grew the food, processed the food, etc, etc all live under some level of "regulation". Regulation is pure overhead, if everyone was honest, dedicated, competent, etc, there would be no need for regulation. Some of the money for regulation comes out of everyone's taxes, some of it you paid at the checkout because it was a "cost of doing business"  for the myriad of "farmers, processors, truckers, etc" that it took to get those products on the shelf.

When Obama was elected, the vast majority of the people in the crowd were hoping that he would tip the scales so that they were going to GET more from the government than they had gotten in the past. I'm quite certain that the vast majority of people standing in red hats assumed that Trump was going to shift the balance so that the govenment TOOK less from them and the rest of the country on the assumption that lowering the overhead of govenment would allow them to keep more in their pockets, and hopefully GROW the overall economy at a higher rate than it has in the last 8 years so that the entire pool of wealth to be spent, re-distributed, wasted, invested, etc was greater.

That isn't a very high bar. Obama was the first US president in history to never have a year of 3% growth or better, and even that pitiful level was highly suspect given the amount of changes he made in how the calculations are done. My guess is that there was very close to ZERO actual growth if the lowered value of money (inflation from "stimulus", "quantitative easing", deficit spending, etc) was accurately figured in.

So did less people show up to support the opportunity to MAKE more than showed up in '08 to TAKE more? All the people that told us that Trump would certainly lose tell us that is that case. In many ways, I hope they are right -- if there is more opportunity now, it is better to be out creating wealth than standing and watching the new guy be installed to try to make that happen!

Special Tribal Wars, Fix Your RINOs

Bring On the Special Prosecutor - The New York Times:

The "news" of the surreal keeps coming.

We knew during the election that the left had gone around the bend, this is really not that surprising. The question that begs is if the Republican party wants to allow a twiddle of the dial from BOistan back toward the Constitutional Republic we used to have ... "America" I think it was called, or if they really want to sign on fully for the slide to a total pagan tribal state.

Based on the tail spreading of the peacock John McCain, it is certainly easy to see how a few RINOs could easily side with "The Party" and snatch a defeat of gigantic proportions from the infant cries of a new administration that won a victory of truly epic proportions.

As he as evidenced over the last 30 years though, John McCain is a man of a extremely strong principle -- he only has one. It's all about John, and John ALWAYS knows best. He is VERY loyal to John -- everyone else ... meh.

What he loves best is attacking a president of his own party -- he was fine with BO destroying America and creating the tribal state of BOistan. If BO's campaign plane had crashed in '08, McCain would have probably have renamed the country "John" or possibly "Songbird", supposedly his nickname at the Hanoi Hilton because he liked to talk to the Viet Cong so much. It is no wonder he likes "The Party" -- he probably thinks Schumer is Ho Chi Min.

Damn. If Trump is really a bad ass, finding a nice skeleton in McCain's closet and getting him drummed out of the Senate would be one of the very best ops to pull. Arizona is reliably Republican, it wouldn't change the balance in the senate.

It's been obvious since at least February 12 1999 (the day the senate failed to convict Slick Willie) that it is time for desperate measures ... the past 8 years made that abundantly clear.

Now, there is a chance, all be it a slim one, of moving the dial away from our current failed tribal state.  We have to expect the dominant tribe, TP to fight hard and DIRTY. It's all they know. Baggage like McCain needs to either muzzled TIGHTLY and QUICKLY, or better yet, removed.

Fix McCain, Collins and Murkowski, and I think we could reliably tell the NY Times to take a timeout with Fauxcahontas.


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Fake News Vs Imaginary News

Imaginary News | Scott Adams' Blog:

A good one from Scott Adams.

Essentially, all any of us ever sees of ANYTHING is "imaginary". Science is now fairly certain that the data arriving to our brains from our eyes, ears and other senses is WAY too sparse to create the movie, much less that meta-narrative that we are all CERTAIN that we "see". We are all living in our imaginations.

For 10's of thousands of years, our movie was our own little area of nature, our family, our tribe, our meta-model of how the "gods", "spirits", etc that surrounded and even lived in us interacted with all that was part of our existence.  Everyone we contacted in other than a battle shared our model ... and if they didn't, they were typically sent packing or simply killed.

 It was an incredibly rich model ... everything fit together. Our place, role, task, meaning, understanding, destiny, purpose, etc all made perfect sense to ALL of our tribe. We lived, we died. Our prey and the plants lived and died, the seasons lived and died. The stars and symbols they represented lived, died and came back each year! Our lives might go on in a "happy hunting ground", or our spirits might return to inhabit the area we lived, the creatures we hunted, or even other family members in future generations. We KNEW our place and our destiny!

Or we were created a shorter time ago, or by a longer term directed process with the same "wetware / spiritware / consciousness" ... we will never know the answer to that question in this mortal coil.

What we do know is that we were NEITHER evolved or created for the "reality" we find ourselves in. If we consider "The Matrix", a Black Lives Matter march, Obama promising over and over to "close Gitmo on day one", the media level of certainty that it was impossible for Trump to win, or virtually any discussion with Trump, it should be very clear that we no longer live in a "shared reality".

Not so long ago we were a Christian nation, we nearly all lived in a created universe that had meaning and purpose. Families were generally made up of two parents, a man and a woman, men were men and women were women. There was once a time when CBS news would not even consider using a forged document to take down a sitting president, and a president having oral sex with an intern in the oval office was unthinkable, and certainly career ending were it to occur.

We don't live there anymore. We live in a tribal state where "truth" is tribal -- as it was for most of man's history if you are an evolutionist. In any case, our nature and grasp of reality is very oriented toward tribal truth.  There are now no transcendent values, so there is no transcendent truth -- truth is whatever your tribe says. You have to agree with that, or you are no longer part of your tribe.

So, as I've beaten to death, in one tribes imagination, how good a fighter pilot W was 30+ years ago was "news", while in the other tribe it was a matter of no concern. 25% of the Democrat tribe considered 9-11 to be an "inside job". A similar number of the Republican tribe considered BO to be a Kenyan (according to his book, he was a Luo tribesman, but who knows, it's all imaginary anyway). We were once told that "if we liked our healthcare, we could keep it". In various imaginations, all of these things were "real / true / important / etc" ... and some of them still are. It all depends on what the imagination of your shaman is.

Outside of trivia like "2+2=4", reality is actually quite obscure and "culturally (tribally) determined". In Native American culture, hearing voices is a GOOD thing -- not so much in what used to be Western civilization ... I'm not all that certain in "post Western civilization" that it won't be just fine again.

So which press conference did YOU see? It is all a matter of your "tribe". I didn't watch the whole thing, but what I saw I kinda liked. The other tribes heads seemed to be exploding, which in a tribal state is always a good thing! (as long as it is the OTHER tribe!)

We worked VERY hard to get here. No shared transcendent truth! Everyone is FREE, FREE, FREE!  If Bernie was elected, even the beer and weed would be FREE, FREE, FREE!

It is all just grand! We have been assured for decades that this is exactly the way it "really is". Truth is an illusion. Your imagination is REAL! Long live Post-modernism and the fruit of it's loins -- Trump!

** Note, again, as a Christian Burkean conservative, I don't REALLY have a tribe. However, I AM a human being -- so I certainly feel the pull of the tribe, just as I get a shiver at Lambeau when the crowd chants "Go Pack GO!". When we used to have a nation to be proud of, I got that same shiver when Star Spangled Banner was played. I'd love to see is get down to the hard business of moving BOistan back toward what we once were ... I have no idea if that is even possible, let alone if there is a ghost of a chance for Trump to start that journey. The fact that pretty much half the country has decided to not honor an election isn't a good sign however.

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Goldberg, Confidence, Memory, Meaning

Donald Trump’s 4D Chess, Political Master Myth | National Review:

Here is what I consider to be Golberg's central pontification of the linked column:

But I’d like to inter a different common retort: that Trump is playing ten moves ahead; that he’s playing 4D chess; that he’s brilliantly distracting the media by creating this or that controversy. I’m willing to concede that there are times when he’s deftly sent the media chasing their tails. But the idea that Trump’s brilliant master plan is unfolding just as he intended is frick’n bonkers.

First, let it be said that I admire Jonah Goldberg and am even significantly jealous of him -- multiple books, respected journalist at the magazine founded by Buckley, who I nearly idolized.

I realize that in order to operate in life in the position he is in, he needs to:

1. Take firm interesting positions 
2. Always be confident no matter what  

To some degree, that is what it takes for "good mental health", even a "good Christian life". Living boldly in the present, forgetting  / forgiving ones past errors, enjoying and continuing to live boldly in the future present moments with no concern for the morrow. 

My position on Trump definitely "evolved" -- I thought he had no chance, I was aghast when it became obvious that he did, etc. I essentially went through the stages of grief. (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) as we ALL do sometimes many times in a day over matters great and small in our lives. I could go back and link some of my blog entries together and likely chart the progression (with some regressions) relative to Trump. 

Here is Goldberg in an NR column "Operation Destroy The GOP" in October of last year.

I feel like Charlton Heston screaming at the Statue of Liberty on the beach. You people blew it all up. You embraced a man who has no serious allegiance to the ideals you got rich peddling and who had a vanishingly small chance of winning in the first place — even if he had been the disciplined candidate he deceitfully vowed he would be. Trump is now an albatross on the party and he will leave a Cheeto-colored stain on both the GOP and the conservative movement for years to come. 

Goldberg was one of the founders of the #nevertrump movement on the right. He was CERTAIN that not only was Trump going to lose, but that his loss (and the very likely loss of the Senate with it) was "the end of the GOP" for at least the foreseeable future. Based largely on my reading of Scott Adams and the fact that I had COMPLETELY underestimated Trump relative to the nomination, I was "mildly hopeful" on election day, but far from certain that he would win.

When he started to look like he might win the nomination last spring, I started looking for "other information". It was a tiny example of the same logic that led me to find National Review in the late '70s when I realized that I wasn't ready to turn off my Christmas lights, put on a sweater and accept that the best days of America were behind us.

When I realize that I'm wrong, I like to do a reset and look for "other information". Apparently that is even odder than I realize.

I've been wrong too many times to believe that I KNOW that Trump is not playing "4D Chess" -- or to think that he is a bumbling corrupt idiot savant that happened to luck into the White House (maybe with Russian help). I firmly believe that it is possible that he is a genius with a master plan that STILL makes mistakes and can lose "battles" while still winning the war. Back in August, I was getting more convinced he had to be a "plant". Hell, maybe he WAS a plant, and in trying to throw the election he accidentally won because Hillary is such a putz. We have been living in insane times for certain at least since Slick Willie was able to skate with BJs from an employee in the oval office (or was that "oral office"?).

Goldberg is a smart person, WAY smarter than me. Does he realize that even his supposedly educated conservative readers have such short attention spans that they have forgotten what he wrote last fall? or is it simply true that nobody cares about such tired concepts as "truth", "consistency", etc? If that is true however, what is the objection to Trump? Or anything really -- if BOTH sides (all sides?) have abandoned consistency, truth, "history" (of even the less than 6 months sort), then what exactly do words mean?

Perhaps I missed the memo and everyone else but me decided that it IS actually true that we each defined our own meanings of all words -- including "IS" ... so we have passed through the looking glass, and everything operates with each of us playing Humpty Dumpty ...

"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." 

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master— that's all."

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Trump The Warmonger

Yemen Raid: Questions Swirl About Trump's First Military Operation : Parallels : NPR:

Executive orders are now a TERRIBLE thing ... when they were WONDERFUL just a few months ago. What changed?

Protests are now hugely to be applauded. Remember when the rather mild Tea Party gatherings in '09 were "chiling and racist"?

Oh, miliary casualties? Back on the front page. More soldiers died in Afghanistan under BO than under W, but one would be hard pressed to know that from reporting. What happened to the anti-war movement that was only operating under "conscience"? Crickets ... perhaps it was more politics than conscience?

The first serviceman died under Trump a couple weeks ago  -- big news on NPR, they even had the heartwarming story of family and friends from his hometown. Totally predictable. This is the way i think it ought to always be -- service lives lost with a Democrat in power are every bit as precious as those lost with a Republican in the Whitehouse. If your son or daughter dies under a Democrat president, that sacrifice is every bit as worthy and heart rending as if an awful Republican orders them to their death.

That isn't what it is about though. Obama spent more on war than Bush did according the the liberal Atlantic:

Over the course of his presidency, though, the U.S. military will have allocated more money to war-related initiatives than it did under Bush: $866 billion under Obama compared with $811 billion under Bush.

Again, this is not a story that the left wants published, so it only shows up in the middle of obsture articles. The cost of the "Bush wars" is often listed in the trillions ... naturally BO bears no responsibility for what happened on his watch.

The adversarial press is definitely back. It is a shame they don't realize that the reason they are supposed to exist is to counterbalance BOTH SIDES! Partisan opposition is just partisan opposition, not fullfilling what was once supposed to be the reason for having an "independent" press!

If you want to go into more depth on how special forces raids are planned and carried out, this is a good article. If you don't believe that this would have happened just as it did if Hillary had been taking over and that the news in the press would have been "muted to none", well then you are not a reality based person.

'via Blog this'

Promised Immigration Order, Demonstrating Ignorance

Over the weekend, Trump made good on his promise to restrict Muslim immigration and increase vetting. As with most of what he did in week one, this was following through on clearly made campaign promises. The nation has become so expectant in campaign promises being completely meaningless, or just out and out lies, following through on them is shocking!  (eg BO, "I'll close Gitmo on day one!". "If you like your health insurance you can keep it!"). It's now a shock to the nation to see a successful candidate do what they said they would do.

There were demonstrators out in Rochester and accross the country, special call in shows on NPR, and the lefties on Facebook blew up in anger, sadness, fear, etc. Over?

So what do we need to know about this order?

1. Like anything in the first week or two of a new president's adminstration, it is largely based on things that BO either did or did not do during his administration. He did a similar ban on Iraqi refugees in 2011, he discriminated against Christians (Trump is mildly reversing that).
2. The "ban" is TEMPORARY, and the kinds of numbers Trump is talking about are very much in line with historic US immigration. Yes, BO was opening the floodgates to Muslims and excluding Christians ... and the left loved it. This is one of the reasons Trump won.
   
   "On the whole, 2016 was the first time in a decade when the United States let in more Muslim than Christian refugees, 38,901 overall, 75 percent of them from Syria, Somalia, and Iraq, all countries on Trump’s list — and all countries in which the United States has been actively engaged in drone strikes or ground combat over the past year. Obama had been planning to dramatically expand that number, to 110,000, in 2017 — only after he was safely out of office."
3. What he is doing is in line with what he has done all through the campaign, written about in his books, and used during his business career -- staking out a position beyond what he expects to get and negotiating. Scott Adams covers that in detail here. 

Most people are completely unaware that BO executed a similar order in 2011 because BO did it, so it HAD to be good!

I highly recommend to read the Adams link. While I am still not convinced that Trump is playing 3-dimensional chess while the rest of the world is stuck on Tic-Tac-Toe, it IS possible.

1. You start the negotiation by throwing a cherry bomb into the room -- because it puts everyone off guard and it makes them LOOK at you.
   
2. You take a position that 70-80% will think is "crazy", but 20-30% will think "did not go far enough" -- eg, why not Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries as well? The 20-30% will see the rest of the world going nuts over what they think is not enough and realize that Trump tried very hard to give them what they wanted, but it was a bridge too far.
   
3. Because everyone is looking at you and thinks you are crazy, things will come out that would not have otherwise; BO's Iraq order, the discrimination against Christians, the fact that BO had radically increased Muslim immigration on the books for this year, what our historic rates have been, etc. 

I would like Trump to do a speech focused on the the 40K over the last decade and the over 100K planned for this year alone and say; "BO pulled the pin on an immigration bomb and left it in the Oval Office. I fell on it as soon as I found it and there is collateral damage. I can live with that, my mission is to protect the American Peoople."

Much like during the campaign, the most entertaining thing about Trump is to watch the fireworks. I've always enjoyed fireworks!