Stopped Clocks and Time Machines

Obama Beyond Bush - NYTimes.com:

The mental pain and gyrations that liberals are going through as they come to realize that BO is and always was a disaster, the world is blowing up all over, and the domestic economy is disastrously stuck in late '70s mode, is interesting to watch. I started this with a somewhat hopeful note for dawning reason in an obviously "progressive" ideological brain.

And with the Middle East, those defenders sometimes turn Bush’s epic mistakes into Obama’s hall pass. Perhaps he hasn’t figured out what’s right, but he isn’t guilty of the original wrong, which is constantly being litigated anew, as if a fresh verdict on the events of 2003 could alter the challenges and stakes of 2014.

It looked like this guy had figured out that any policy which requires a time machine to be successful is not very likely to be successful, but alas, this columnist is still stuck in his ideological cave, staring at shadows on the wall trying to make the shadows he sees fit his ideological model. He is in a bad way.

The I.R.S. scandal was not as bad as Watergate. (Nothing’s ever as bad as Watergate, which serves a nifty historical function as the gold standard of executive malfeasance and mendacity.)

NOTHING is ever as bad as Watergate? It is true that everyone believes in something -- Christians believe in the deity and saving Grace of Christ, some folks just "believe they will have another beer". I submit that "I believe I will have another beer" is INFINITELY better on the "gotta believe in something" front than "nothing's ever as bad as Watergate"!

Nobody died in Watergate, nobody even had their donor lists released or summarily audited on an ideological basis. Yes, yes, I understand that if your ideology rules all else in your brain, it is OK to see those that don't agree with that ideology punished by your party, but even worse than people dying? Try another beer

If we’re determined to glance back at a figure who flatters Obama, let’s really have at it and look all the way to Warren Harding. Golf wasn’t his only distraction. He also had a thing for poker. And when it came to seeming and feeling overwhelmed, the 29th president, an Ohio Republican, reputedly confessed to friends that he was lost in the job.

By that measure Obama is a rock. But it doesn’t make him a boulder.

How far the mighty have fallen. I understand that someone with the ideological model of this columnist MUST find a Republican rather than the actual 20th century gold standard for failed presidents, Carter, but to see the mental gyrations required is almost painful.

Harding and Coolidge presided over the "roaring 20's" a period of peace and prosperity in America. "Progressives" easily forget the harm an activist president can do, especially one that fails the Outlaw Josie Wales test ("A man's got to know his limitations"). This means they lack the understanding that a stopped clock is at least right twice a day, but a clock that is actively off is NEVER right.

"First do no harm" is an EXCEEDINGLY wise maxim, impossible for "progressives" to understand because they demand that "SOMETHING be done!". One would hope that maybe they won't forget it quite so quickly after BO., but I'm quite certain that is a vain hope.

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Fascism, BOism, The NFL

The left prepares to cash in on Ray Rice | Power Line:

The last couple of weeks it has become obvious that it is time to brush up on our "isms" ... Fascism and Socialism being the main ones that need to be re-understood from time to time, because the last thing The Party (TP) and guys like BO want is truth in political labeling.

If you tend to not believe a lot of what I say (ALWAYS a very wise decision!), you can access some of my own brush up source material from Thomas Sowell and Jonah Goldberg (his excellent book "Liberal Fascism"  (Moosetracks review) ought to be read by all thinking Americans).

First a simple way to sort these out ... and we will throw in Communism for good measure, is:

• Communism -- The State owns everything. No individual property. 
• Socialism -- The State owns "the major industries", you get to keep your house (maybe). 
• Fascism -- The State decrees and regulates business, private life, etc. but it doesn't "own it" ... only the credit when things go well, business owns the blame when it goes bad.
• Freedom -- The State is the servant of the people. It is limited by a Constitution to what it is allowed to do. Man is free because government is limited. (Reagan)  

I actually think that Fascism ought to be re-defined as BOism today, because he is really the perfect embodiment -- it could also be called "Scapegoatism". Here is Sowell on the subject:

What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.

Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from Obama's point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a scapegoat all the time. 

Like all human institutions though, these get muddy. Nationalism, a form of Tribalism is a endemic to all humans but especially Fascism. Christianity was a GIANT leap forward because it allowed all mankind to be part of a single "tribe" or "extended family" ... blood brothers in Christ's blood.  BO is an avowed Luo tribalist whose declared identity is in the anti-colonial tribalism of his father and grandfather ("Dreams FROM my Father").

For a long time I sat between the two graves and wept. When my tears were finally spent, I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America— the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I’d felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I’d witnessed in Chicago— all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain I felt was my father’s pain. My questions were my brothers’ questions. Their struggle, my birthright.
Obama, Barack (2007-01-09). Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (Kindle Locations 7524-7529). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition. 

In this post-Christian, post-Constitutional America, led by a Fascist Luo Tribesman, even the NFL feels the lash of the Fascist overlords. This is a quote from the linked article:

Whenever an institution becomes as massive as the NFL, the ideologically driven will attempt to enlist the institution for their own purposes. There was a time when some conservatives enlisted the NFL in an ideological sense as a symbol of American virtues. Nowadays, though, it’s the left that wants to use football, not as a metaphor for American virtue (in which it doesn’t really believe), but to advance specific agenda items and/or to shake the NFL down.

The  Powerline column is well done, but I fear it fails to make the proper connections ... in a Constitutional Republic America, there would be no such ideologically driven power, in a Socialist America, the government would own the NFL. Only in a Fascist America is what we see possible :

But the NFL is not in the message-sending business and has no duty to send correct messages to “society.” If the criminal justice system is functioning properly, “society” will receive the proper message about domestic violence. If it isn’t, that’s not the NFL’s fault.

Ah, but in a Fascist / Tribal society, it IS the NFL's responsibility! It is the responsibility of all in "the tribe" to be on the right message -- be that environmentalism, gay marriage, gun control or the war on big-gulps! In MN, Marx Dayton has similarly weighed in on Adrian Peterson.

The non-Christian reader might say, "Well, I don't see how being a Christian nation is any better than this, it is just different rules".

I'm not going to do a long answer to that, but for a few points -- Christianity is a couple thousand years old, Fascism is a "tribalism of the day / the man", it's rules are arbitrary in a way well beyond Christianity, even if you don't recognize divinity. Since Christianity is transcendent (at least in time for a non-believer), it is much more immune from the day to day whims of individuals and groups  -- it short circuits the "a lot of people agree with me" approach to "right" (just a version of might (numbers) make right) ... the question of right and wrong becomes more than only a matter of the biggest armies.

One of my favorite turns of history was Stalin's "How many divisions does the Pope have"?  It turned out, just enough to consign the USSR to the ash heap of history!

May we constantly pray that enough divisions rise up to do the same to modern BOism.

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A Little Unraveling from the New York Times

The Great Unraveling - NYTimes.com:



Nothing in this column that hasn't been predicted or observed in this Blog since at least 2006, but one by one the more idealistic of the left recognize the "unraveling", the rot, the decline, the inevitable slide when the people and policies they imagined to bring about a "brave new world" inevitably and inexorably fail horribly.



More poetic than my writing, and this is the New York Times. Reality gets us all ... eventually. They may not see their role in it, but as he mentions at the end, connecting those dots is especially hard when it is of yourself they speak.



Let's see, "The challenge of our time" is supposed to be Global Warming. Read the linked column and imagine where Climate Change is likely to be on the list of world issues if this "unraveling" continues.



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W Poll Numbers 124, BO 9!

MRC Study: TV Buries the Bad News on Obama’s Collapsing Polls:



In '06, the big three networks found W's sliding numbers to be worthy of 124 mentions, this year, BO's similarly sliding numbers are worth 9 mentions in the same period.

Media Research Center analysts reviewed every reference on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts to public opinion polls from January 1 through August 31, 2014, and from the same time period in 2006. Eight years ago, the networks aired 124 evening news reports which cited public opinion polls about either President Bush’s overall approval rating or his handling of specific policies. In 2014, those same broadcasts produced only nine reports which mentioned public opinion surveys related to President Obama. - See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/rich-noyes/2014/09/08/mrc-study-tv-buries-bad-news-obamas-collapsing-polls#sthash.HPgrpfIT.dpuf

We know the answer -- people are affected by continually hearing about a presidents low poll numbers. It creates a feedback loop and the poll numbers go lower -- Americans like winners, not losers, and when someone's poll numbers are sliding and you are asked what you think of them, 90% of people will go with the crowd.



So it was important for the MSM to pound on W's poll numbers as it is now important for them to say nothing about BOs -- they wanted Democrats elected in '06 and hammering on W's poll numbers was a good way to help that. This year they want to minimize Democrat losses, so keeping BO's numbers out of the news is the right strategy.



Oh, and maybe we ought to do somethings to make sure that nobody BUT the MSM gets to have a voice -- let's have a lot of campaign finance control to prevent any speech from the "wrong side" from leaking out!



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MSM Coverage, Palin vs Hillary

Democratic Party Media Run Interference for Hillary | Power Line:



The kind of simple easy analysis of the obvious that I believe we all need to do to keep a little perspective on how much our news diet is wired to what The Party and it's MSM arm want us to see and think.



So the Palin family gets in a brawl in Anchorage -- let's see, how much do we hear about John Edwards these days?? Nuff said.



Oh, State scrubbed a bunch of documents to remove anything that might embarrass Hillary? Now THAT is a story we DON'T need to hear anything about!



Think about how much coverage any rumor, innuendo, etc related to possible questions about how good an Air National Guard pilot GW Bush was in the guard from '68-'74. '74 - '04 is 30 years and it was a huge story -- huge enough to take down Dan Rather trying to peddle "fake but true" documents in an effort by CBS News to directly influence the '04 election. Any concern of a "Citizen's United" type about a major corporate media outlet directly trying to influence an election using forged documents? Nope.



Benghazi? That was 2012, Hillary was Secretary of State, our Ambassador was killed -- no story here folks,  move along. "Republican witch hunt".



The most insidious part of this is that "most people" -- 80-90%, don't want to be seen as "rocking the boat, not in the mainstream, etc". Questions about W's guard record become "normal day to day news conversation" ... exposure makes such stories seem perfectly valid. "There MUST be something there, or the media wouldn't cover it so much".  Ah, the credulous lambs -- exactly what TP and the MSM want to foster.



Then we have the reverse, the MSM basically carries the "What does it matter now" water for Hillary ... even days after the event it is "old news, nothing to discuss here", and to even mention the word "Benghazi" identifies you as somebody that is not following the "standard media narrative" -- a spot that 80%+ of people are uncomfortable with. They don't want to be an "outlier", so they stay quiet.



And so a once free and vibrant people is ground down to be afraid to stand up and question the message that TP and the MSM so carefully crafts for them, and freedom dies. This is exactly how a free people slowly slide to a totalitarian state with nary a whimper.



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BO ISIL, Definition Matters

Why Obama’s use of the term ISIL instead of ISIS is actually really important – Glenn Beck:

One has to laugh ... our former president was ahead of his time ... "Depends on what your definition of Is Is!"

Glenn covers what I've covered here before ... the Levant encompases Israel, BO DOES want "peace in the Middle East" ... have a Caliphate that runs from Egypt through Turkey and there will be peace!

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Fat Drunk and Stupid

We Have Always Been at War With ISIL! | Power Line:

The video at the link is from CNN, and it would make one roll on the floor and laugh if it was not so sad. BO has been very clear that "The War on Terror" is over. But now, we are doing "something" that Lurch (The French looking former Senator that served in Vietnam) characterizes as "A Very Significant Counter Terrorism Operation" (VSCTO) ... kind of reminds me of MUTO from Godzilla ... Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism".

The sycophants at CNN are having a hard time figuring out what the rulers that they are sworn to support and never question even WANT them to say. Is it a "war"?, is it a VSCTO? Is it with ISIL, ISIS, or as NPR calls it "The self-named Islamic State" ... no longer feeling good calling it ISIS after his Linksmanship BO said it was "Not Islamic and not a State", and continues to add credence to it's largest territorial claims as "The Levant" which is the whole Eastern Mediterranean including Gaza, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Cyprus, Iraq and Southern Turkey.

We are right back to the late 70s ... a nation so confused and out of touch with reality that we are ripe for any sort of major attack. We have no leadership and are in the situation of being the biggest guy in the bar dead drunk, stumbling around being stupid with our pants around our knees and just waiting for someone to kick us in the balls and get a cheer from the rest of the patrons.

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A Nice Simple Diagram of Liberal Inconsistency

The Law of Supply and Demand In One Venn Diagram | Power Line:

Replace "Krugman" with "liberals" and it just about covers it. It is much worse than this picture -- liberals are consistently inconsistent because they believe that they can take all sorts of actions in the real world and somehow pick and choose the results -- often claiming they will achieve the exact opposite result of what their actions are guaranteed to achieve in the real world. Or, they know what they are doing and simply want to create a dependent voter population that will keep them in power.

Thus, on one hand they claim that the ONLY effect of raising the minimum wage will be to help minimum wage workers by giving them more per hour. However, when the price of something is raised (labor), the demand for it WILL go down -- the only question is how much, which economists attempt to answer by "elasticity". Demand for cigarettes was often used as an example when I was taking economics, however there isn't anything that is perfectly inelastic -- it would have to have no substitutes and all consumers would have to have infinite wealth relative to the price of the commodity -- ie. be ABLE to pay whatever the price rose to.

But I digress. The fast food market is quite elastic and there are lots of substitutes -- technology being the obvious one, less people eating more expensive fast food, etc. Raising the minimum wage always reduces the number of people working -- a win-win for Democrats, since both the minimum wage workers and the unemployed tend to vote Democrat. BUT, the fiction given to the public is that raising the minimum wage will not cause more unemployment, when it is a given that it will.

Which as the chart points out, might mean that people that don't understand economics are fooled -- but the flip side means that can't be true. Cap and trade argues that "supply and demand works!" -- that by raising the price of using carbon, the demand for carbon will fall.

So if liberals were reality based, they would say that they are fine with the economy being vastly slowed by taxes and fees on carbon, because they care about warming in 100 years more than they do about jobs, income, etc today.

On the raising the minimum wage they would admit they are fine with a LOT less people having jobs as long as a few can have higher wages.. Or they would admit that they are absolutely fine with the lowering of productivity and national wealth via high taxes on corporate and personal income, because having everyone's standard of living being generally lowered by redistributing income so they are more government dependent is perfectly in line with their strategy to be a one party socialist state!

The left is well on it's way to achieving it's goals -- inconsistency and force are the two cornerstones of leftward thought.
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The Healing Power of Beheading in Islam

Beheading infidels: How Allah ‘heals the hearts of believers’ | Human Events:

Since we have now been schooled by BO that ISIS is NOT Islamic, this article is probably beside the point. If they WERE Islamic though, this article would really be helpful to our understanding since it uses the Koran, Sura and Hadith to explain how violence and beheading is pleasing to Muhammad and should be used by his followers to "heal their hearts".

This, then, is the true significance of Koran 9:14-15: “Fight them, Allah will torment them with your hands [mortally wounding and eventually decapitating ‘Amr], humiliate them [pulling his beard], empower you over them [standing atop him], and heal the hearts of the believers, removing the rage from their hearts [at the sight of his decapitated head].”

Islam teaches that all the behaviors practiced by ISIS are pleasing -- in fact the Angel Gabriel finds running a rope through a severed head to be quite humorous -- but that is from an ISLAMIC viewpoint.

We however know that ISIS is NOT Islamic, because BO has explained that to us -- so why THEY act as they do is still a mystery. Bad day on the links?

BO 666:666 "Thou shalt worship BO and his holy words. Lo, though he driveth through the rough, he will fear not, his weed and his blow (but no heroin) they comfort him, and he will make a table and hang with his personal gay chef for 4 or 5 hours if he needs to chill".

I'm glad we are not up against an Islamic enemy.

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The Most Important Historical Fact

Christianity grounded in the historical fact of the resurrection | Human Events:

The whole article is good, but if you have time to just read one paragraph, this is it:

It’s one thing to suggest that someone would die for an ideology he believes in even without physical evidence; it’s altogether another to contemplate that men would die for something they absolutely knew to be false. For if Jesus Christ had remained in the tomb and had not appeared to them, they likely would have believed their earlier hope had been for naught, but in any case, they wouldn’t have manufactured a mythical story that they had seen him alive when they hadn’t just so they could have the pleasure of dying for nothing. Dwell on that for a moment — seriously.

This is the one historical fact of eternal significance. Without it, all of history, past, present and future  is a meaningless joke ... a tale,  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. 

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Devout Christian Tea Party Mass Killer Arrested

Jihadist Serial Killer? Ho Hum! | Power Line:

Oh, ooops Devout MUSLIM ... non story, nothing to see here, move along.

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Not-War, Not-Coalition, Not-Islamic, Not-State

Obama assembles non-coalition to fight not-war against ISIS | Human Events:

Good article. I'm reminded of my "B ZERO" designation for Obama -- The NOT President really showed his stripes this week!

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Straw War, Slow Surrender

http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-to-assure-nation-that-isis-campaign-will-be,36898/

We hired a community organizer to be a president and that has been heavily on display the last couple of weeks. The best article I've seen covering the speech is the linked from the Onion: "ISIS Campaign Will Be Drawn-Out Ordeal We’re Used To" One of the rules of the organizer is to "define your opponent" -- so he tries to build the straw man that ISIL is neither Islamic or a State.

As an aside, BO tends to use "ISIL"  -- Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" bs "ISIS" - Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The general term is ISIS, he persists in using ISIL. Two likely explanations are 1). The "Levant" is much bigger -- Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Cyprus, Southern Turkey, so maybe he wants to draw attention away from Iraq and Syria, two areas his foreign policy failures are especially glaring 2). As having been a strong supporter of Islamic conquest (eg. Muslim Brotherhood), I suspect he sees "The Levant" as all legitimate Muslim territory, including Israel, so it is natural for him to use that term

In community organizing or politics, especially with a helpful media, defining your opponent is a great thing -- thus we have Tea Party Racists, Republicans against ALL taxes, women, working families, Hispanics, the environment, etc and a host of other solid TP / media arm definitions -- they are false, but when you control the media, the majority can be largely confused. ISIS however, exists outside of our media fishbowl and trying to define them as just another BO straw man only highlights the glaring naivete of this JV president.

Telling your adversary what you WON'T do is foolish -- even if you can't be trusted. BO is already sending in "military advisors", no doubt there are special forces on the ground for at least target designation, so of course the "no troops" statement is a lie from the git go  -- which both we and they know by now since his lips were moving. We and they also know that his weasel words will limit his ability to "do what is required" in the unpredictable future -- at least some, besides, he is always a tentative weasel.

Taking things off the table aids nothing but the enemy in the battle -- but it may assuage your political base, and both we and ISIS know that is what BO really cares about . It would better for ISIS to at least worry that we might lob a tactical nuke into Tkrit in the right situation -- a Predator fired nuke would be a good thing to show them, if for no reason but to give them something to think about at bedtime. NOTHING should be "off the table"!

W bore the burden of "going it alone" -- our TP controlled MSM constantly reminded us of this. America was "alone and misled".  The ruse required not recognizing Britain a country, but when TP needs to make a false case,  reality must suffer. Actual W coalition?  37 nations, 25K troops http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/059/59-3-1/CMH_59-3-1.pdf Want to place any bets on the numbers in the BO Straw Coalition?

It isn't a "war" ... BO ends those. So what is it? Slow Surrender?


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Rapid City, Earliest Snow Record

Summer Snow: Record-Early Snowfall Hits Rapid City, South Dakota; Boulder, Colorado; North Platte, Nebraska - weather.com:



Just a little reporting balance -- if we ever see any record warmth again, I know the media will cover that extremely well !



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The Republican Brain

Amazon.com: The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science- and Reality (9781118094518): Chris Mooney: Books:

I just ran into this, I suppose I'll have to wait for the price to drop before I decide to read a little humor.

It doesn't take too much to know what this claims. Rewritten just a bit, "Republicans reject the ideological reality that we have completely defined for them, it is like they don't understand the basic facts of Lysenkoism!"

Indeed.



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