Cassandra, Gayle Sayers

Donald Trump’s appeal explained in 1 very simple chart - The Washington Post:



Cassandra is the prophetess in Greek mythology that nobody ever believed. Gayle Sayers was a Chicago Bears running back that had the same knee injury I did and wrote a book "I Am Third" that was made into a movie, "Brian's Song".



The linked article "explains Trump" as an answer to "the loss of faith in US institutions", the Church, the Media and Congress being among the biggest losers. They don't point out that this "explanation" applied every bit as much to BO -- "Hope and Change" is even MORE vacuous than "Make America Great Again". BO promised to be "the one" -- to stop the rise of oceans, provide material security to all and most of all "heal the divisions'. Never mind, WaPo BELIEVED in BO, so voting for him seemed sensible.



Unsurprisingly, the media has become "Cassandra" (as have really all institutions)  -- less and less people actually believe what they say. Sure, a lot will still parrot it, but when pressed, they "heard it on the news / internet".  While the article considers Trump supporters foolish for listening to him, they loved BO supporters and were BO supporters themselves, and that didn't and still doesn't help their credibility any.



"I am third" meant, "God is first, my friends are second, and I am third".  The human tendency is to "look out for #1", being yourself as FIRST ... and usually by a WIDE margin. Putting God first gave people a lot of perspective -- it instituted the idea in the mind of "order" and of "categories". Attempting to put God first allowed perspective, and some thought to what the order ought to be. Friends? Family? other Christians?, Country? Fellow Man? ... the concept of it not being "every man for himself" was the space that allowed relationships, families, communities and countries to flourish.



The bottom line is that selfishness is a LARGE ingredient of human nature. The "value" of trading total selfishness on this earth for the promise of eternal life was a powerful idea, but when the American educational system, media and entertainment "killed god", they created MILLIONS of new "gods" -- with every man believing himself to be his own "god".



Without any ordering to the universe beyond "it is what I say it is and my "truth" is as good as anyone else's", people lose confidence in EVERYTHING -- because it is supposed to "all be about THEM", and of course no "institution" can be adequately about them to the degree that they believe it ought be. Oh, and by the way, it is THEIR OPINION that counts!



So as the Bible says, "the first shall be last" -- those who chose to usurp god put themselves in "last place" because there are now hundreds of millions of people who each believe they are in "first place" ahead of them.



Faith in leadership or organizations requires some sort of "order". When that is not divine,  the only way to implement it is force and fear.



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New Job, Blog Leaving Facebook

I've started a new job and have decided that at some point in the next week or so I will stop cross-posting the blog to Facebook. If you want to keep following the blog, go to an entry and click on the "email new posts" on the left. It will have you do a "captcha" and then you will get a message in email to click the link and you will be set. The blog is at http://www.moosetracksblog.com/ now, so easier URL to use "whatever" to get at it.

I may or may not talk about the specifics of my new job at some point. It is supporting and providing assistance to people with mental illness and or substance abuse issues 20hrs a week. We live in an increasingly broken nation, I'd love to see us fix that, but in the meantime, I hope I can help a few of the "walking wounded" casualties of the loss of religion, family, community, morality, personal responsibility, etc, as well as those like me that happen to have a mental health challenge.

I've not been secretive on the blog about my own "long term recovery" from issues with depression and anxiety, but OTOH, I don't dwell on it -- it's part of the hand dealt to me, I try to play that hand as well as I can, and I hope that some of my experience can help others.

The Blog is a bit better organized than it used to be. If you go look at the AAAA entries, they are mostly entries that have had high readership, along with a few that I feel are especially good (there are AAA, etc also if you want to "dig deeper" in that manner). The labels are in general more up to date than they used to be -- if you want to go follow some thoughts on "religion", "philosophy" or "American Decline", I think over 50% of the 3,700+ blog entries are labeled at this point. "Life" is the label for "stuff that happens to me".

I'd expect that blog frequency will not change much, it will remain "choppy".

Yes, the reason for stopping the cross-posting is the potential that "someone would be offended" relative to the new job. We live in a time where Christian, conservative, Constitutional, etc views are offensive to many. While I believe in people in the United States being able to have any view they want short of "pledging allegiance to ISIS" as in the case of the shooter this week, our current nation seems OK with ISIS supporters, but often offended with those who support Christ or the Constitution.

Thanks for your attention, and I hope you make the move off the FB stream.

Tribal Violence, Gays and Islam

50 killed in Florida nightclub, shooter pledged ISIS allegiance - CNN.com:

I'm sure we will spend a lot of time on "what gun did he use?" since the killer was a person of color and indicated support for Islam and apparently BO. Muslims, blacks and gays are all part of "The Party" tent, so the only"foul" here is the weapon itself. Two of "their Tribes" had a disagreement.

In  Iran, Saudi Arabia and any country close to Islamic rule, homosexuality is a death penalty crime -- we are told not to talk or think about that. Islam is the "religion of peace", and their culture is to be respected. Christians on the other hand love gays, addicts, and even pedophiles (all have some level of genetic component), but hate their self and societally destructive behaviors. For the position on gays, Christians are often loathed by the left -- pedophiles are still not considered "natural and normal", but there are some movements in that direction on the left -- only being an addict is seen as a condition with a genetic basis to be treated / cured as opposed to embraced by both left and right.

In a nation that has killed 60 million babies in their mothers womb, life is clearly worth less than inconvenience -- even 9 months of inconvenience. If a person is part of a "good religion of peace" (not a BAD religion like Christianity), and that "good religion" teaches that homosexuals ought to to receive the death penalty, is it THAT hard to understand how such a person would see killing a number of them as a way to handle that? Perhaps a gay had inconvenienced them?

No doubt there will be lots of posturing and finger pointing -- "hate", "gun control", etc. No doubt Islam will be completely NOT an issue for the MSM and sitting politicians. Can you even IMAGINE if the shooter had been a Trump rather than a BO supporter?

We are a nation with no respect for life, so no respect for much of anything else. We elected BO, certainly the majority has no sense of what "America" even was. The best we have is a vacuous promise from Trump to "Make America great again!" -- whatever he means by that. Hildebeast is pledged to keep destroying it, and given that the country is largely controlled by TPs bureaucracy, I'm pretty sure that she can drive us deeper into oblivion than even BO.

Can Trump do anything positive? I have no idea -- but a nation that can't figure out what bathroom to use isn't likely to have any clues on preventing mass killings by Islamic terrorists!

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Conservatism As Mental Disorder

Epic Correction of the Decade | Power Line:

The left quite often points out the "settled science" of conservatism, Christianity, etc being some sort of "mental disorder" -- "those people" are prone to delusions, lower in intelligence, rigid, unable to process "facts", unable to deal with differing options, anti-social, have unattractive personalities, are prone to believe things that agree with their world view, etc, etc.

Since "The Party" (TP)  is dominant, outlets like the NY Times pick these "studies" up with gusto as justifying all the view they hold about conservatives and Christians with "science" ... only the study they thought was important turned out to point the finger at THEM -- so never mind.

Part of the "Christian delusion" is that ALL have sinned and fallen FAR short -- whatever we find to be objectionable in others is alive and well in our own souls. The splinter in the eye of "the other" is FAR more evident to us than the log in our own.

Don't worry, the left will not be changing it's mind -- since they KNOW that they are factually correct in their views and others are WRONG in theirs, it is only a small matter of "finding the evidence". They will keep looking -- this once great "research" is now "flawed and forgotten", but rest assured, they WILL "prove their point" -- all they lack is sufficient power.

Once TP achieves sufficient power, disagreeing with them IS a "mental illness" -- in the USSR in the past and in China today, it is complete gospel.

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La Raza Vs The Boy Scouts

Judges Can Belong To La Raza But Not The Boy Scouts | The Daily Caller:

It is extremely easy to see how at least millions of Americans will pull the lever for Trump on no other basis than they are completely fed up with the lying manipulation of our "elites".

The article points out that the judge Trump has criticized is a member of La Raza -- a pro-illegal immigration and anti-white / America group. But even supposedly "conservative" Republicans don't take the time to point that out.

OTOH, when the Scouts prohibited gay leaders, judges could not associate with them in California.

We have no laws, no borders and no country -- it is increasingly hard to even read the news, let alone care about it.

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BO "Worried" About GOP

President Obama Endorses Donald Trump Fallon:

"Obama said he's "worried" about the Republican party, saying "I am actually not enjoying, and I haven’t been enjoying over the last seven years, watching some of the things that have happened in the Republican Party."

Sure he is, that is why he just endorsed a known felon supposedly under criminal investigation by his own FBI. So much for fictions like having the head of the executive branch not show partiality to people under criminal investigation. Can't we just all completely cut the crap and admit that if you are a member of "The Party", TP-D in good standing, the only "law" you need consider is the law of TP! (meaning "all glory honor and power be to TP now and forever")



What does an "endorsement" from he of "red lines" not worthy of children's chalk, "if you like it you can keep it", or "I ended AND didn't end the war in Iraq".



I guess that it is only fitting that one incompetent congenital liar endorse another.











 

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Progressive Taxation and Equal Protection

Articles: Is a Progressive Tax Constitutional?:

Generally an excellent article, the answer of course is "no", but our Constitution is well shredded, so nobody cares that this is the case. My disagreement with the article is they get sucked a bit into the general concept of "equal protection" and "equal protection relative to LAW". On that not very subtle shoal, America was destroyed.

When we had a Constitution, it enforced equal protection BEFORE THE LAW. The Constitution was the supreme law of the land (when we had laws) -- it was color blind, wage blind, etc. relative to LAW.

So yes, the Constitution properly applied prevented "castes" or "classes" RELATIVE TO THE LAW, but we need to be clear it said NOTHING about "equality of RESULT" either inside or outside of the law. Individuals or groups of citizens that made unsuccessful choices relative to property, careers, gambling, substance abuse, etc could have VASTLY different outcomes relative to material success, length of life, values of their homes, etc. Some racial or ethnic group could represent say "20%" of the population, yet be convicted of 60% of murders, yet under the old system, that result was not indicative of anything other than that group committing far more murders.

Justice John Harlan, the lone dissenter in the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, understood that "[t]here is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful." And by equal extension, the most powerful ought to be the peer of the humblest, and receive the same protection. Harlan might as easily have said that our Constitution is wage-blind.


To deny one class equal protection of their property because of their success is logically no different from denying a different class an equal protection of liberty because of their color.

As I've said before, we DID at least have a Constitutional Amendment (the 16th) to allow an income tax, but it didn't allow a "progressive" income tax. In theory, all groups are to have "Equal Protection" under the law according the the 14th amendment (states) and since Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), those equal protection requirements apply to the federal government through the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment as well.

This has been carried even farther through the idea of the "privacy clause", which is imaginary, to cover abortion, gay rights, transgender, etc.

At one point, people LIKED the idea that blacks could be treated differently under the Constitution. Now they like the idea that people can be treated differently based on income. 

When you live in a lawless place, why not take money from one set of people just because you want to? How you "justify" it is immaterial -- race, gender, religion, philosophical beliefs, income, line of work -- what does it really matter? What is desired is some fig leaf of justification to treat some group of people differently to the advantage of some other group. 

"Progressive" taxation is a wonderful method for "The Party" to steal money from those that don't vote for them and buy the votes of others by using that money. What could be more reasonable?

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Xiuhtezcatl vs $146 Trillion

Meet the teens leading an unprecedented lawsuit against the U.S. government.:

Imagine naming your child "Xiuhtezcatl" ... pronounced "shu-TEZ-cuht".

We live in a world without any semblance of reason, so this "cuht" has spoken  before the United Nations . In Biblical times, David killed Goliath and cut off his head when he was probably younger than "Xiuhtezcat", and Goliath was 9' 9" tall! Today you get a lot of coverage for suing the US government -- or rather the broken and bankrupt facsimile remaining.

So the US combined unfunded liabilities and debt are $146 TRILLION according to the Star Tribune ... but both "Xiuhtezcat" and BO agree that the issue of our time is "Climate Change".

I guess that makes sense in some universe. During the next ice age, perhaps the "intelligent" can reflect on wisdom and priority.

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A Bit More Ed Force One

Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson gives tour of band's plane 'Ed Force One' | Daily Mail Online:

Believe it or not, there was a time I actually ran quite a bit -- up and down the hills to the east of Chatfield, probably 1990ish. This was one of the songs that I enjoyed having on my running track ...

The article is just more of the plane and the lead singer Dickinson piloting it on their tour.








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Most Important Election, Voting 3rd Party Is Voting For Hillary, and other Myths

Wilson County News - Commentaries - Sorry Friends, If You Are #NeverTrump Then You Are #4Hillary:

Nothing special about the linked column, "Not voting for Trump is voting for Hillary, the future of America hangs on this election".

America was founded on the idea that there would be an "elite" of "like minded individuals" like the founding fathers that were educated, accomplished, men of reason, dedicated to their nation above their own self interest, that would provide PRINCIPLED leadership to the nation. The "principles" were "self evident truths" of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc -- I've written elsewhere that the principles were not "perfect", but they existed and were respected in their time and for a good period of time after.

Perhaps Lincoln is the last president that pretty much everyone can agree on carrying "the burden of office", not because of his own personal drive for fame, fortune, and immortality, but because it was a tough and critical job and he believed it was his destiny to serve. I'm actually not a big Lincoln fan at all -- I think Reagan was "good enough", or even HW and W Bush -- they were "honorable men" that SERVED even though they new they would be maligned and challenged. Perhaps LBJ was the last honorable Democrat -- I pretty much disagreed with 100% of his policies, but I think he saw the presidency as a critical burden rather than a "prize".

More important than "principled servant leadership" was the Constitution. Prior to Roe V Wade, you could argue that we nominally had a Constitution, after Obergefell (gay "marriage"), it's gone.

So the basic idea of a decent character and even slight competence has been removed post-BO, and there isn't any law to restrain the president. The idea of "saving America" made some sense in '08, and even maybe a TINY bit in 2012 if you were REALLY optimistic. Sorry, that casket is already buried.

Not electing BO mattered, but we failed that. I'd argue that Trump is marginally better than Hildebeast, but really, it is a bit like if Cleveland loses in 4 or 5 games in the NBA Finals at this point!

Sure a vote for some "third party" is effectively a vote for Hildebeast -- but the people that vote for 3rd parties aren't the logical type anyway! You may as well try to use "reason" to convince Charlie Manson that he isn't Jesus than try to convince a third party person that they are voting for Hildebeast. Voting is a simple preference selection method -- there is no "message", or "statement".

The odds your vote will be the deciding vote are roughly 1 in 60 million  ... or about 3x greater than your odds of winning the Powerball. CERTAINLY, anyone that says "my vote doesn't matter" ought NEVER play Powerball -- see "humans are not rational".

We have no principles as a people or we would not have elected BO twice. There are no "important elections" left in this sorry place -- hope for a civil war, complete economic collapse, or some sort of big natural disaster. MAYBE those are things that might cause a return to something like America -- but for a good long time it looks like BOistan and likely worse from here on out.

Get used to it.






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Losing Two Thirds Is "Success" On Light Rail

Joe Soucheray: In their universe, a costly train is success – Twin Cities:

The left LOVES trains! I think it is a control thing -- the train runs on it's schedule and you figure out how to work your schedule so you can meet it. The left loves that -- people need to be compliant. Trains employ a bunch of people that vote Democrat, and they lose a bunch of money, increasing the percentage to the economy under government control -- WIN, WIN!

Cars are bad. Some rich guy can decide to drive a Yugo and you can't soak him like you want for transportation. WORSE, he can drive ON HIS OWN SCHEDULE! That gives the "illusion of self determination". Naturally, the left will point out that the roads are PUBLIC -- but paid by massive gas taxes which are really "user fees". The PROBLEM is that those fees are NOT based on income! The rich guy in the Yugo might pay LESS than the Hispanic in the low rider ghetto cruiser in actual dollars, and of  course MUCH less in terms of percentage of income! Rich people ought not have that kind of freedom!

So light, heavy, fast, slow, dangerous, expensive, etc, the left LOVES trains! Having the train is SUCCESS! Why? Because it is a giant trophy that shows that they can get what they want even though it hurts everyone, including the constituency that they claim to be serving! (a better bus system would serve more people that need it FAR better for a FRACTION of the cost).

BUT, it makes them feel good and superior -- and in the final analysis, that is what "liberalism" is all about; feeling smart, good, in with the in crowd and SUPERIOR!

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Not On Our Side, Tribal Intelligence

The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb. — Medium:

A useful short read, but I suspect most of the group that reads my blog will feel a bit like me. When you are on the "minority team", you HAVE to hear "the other side" -- pretty constantly. Now I go out of my way to NPR, Slate, etc, so get a MEGAdose of what the "other side" has to say, but we are all soaking in the dominant culture.

"When someone communicates that they are not “on our side” our first reaction is to run away or dismiss them as stupid. To be sure, there are hateful, racist, people not worthy of the small amount of electricity it takes just one of your synapses to fire. I’m instead referencing those who actually believe in an opposing viewpoint of a complicated issue, and do so for genuine, considered reasons. Or at least, for reasons just as good as yours. "

The other missing item in the article is that at one time we as a culture DID believe that "Western civilization" -- which included Christianity was "better", and there was a good deal of evidence. Europe once "ruled the world", capitalism advanced the condition of people around the planet, rule of law and just basic civic decency was common, people believed that hard work and personal responsibility were virtuous, the family is the cornerstone of  society, children were a blessing and the promise of the future, etc.

The "big divide" is now between pretty much everyone except a few "radicals" agreeing with the previous paragraph, and today's world where "the winning side" believes that god is dead, all values are relative, man is an animal, the environment (and animals like gorillas or even snail darters) are more important that human life, Western culture is decadent / corrupt / evil, Islam is the "Religion of Peace" and Christianity died with god and survival in a godless world goes to those who can prevent the births of their succeeding generation.

The "old values" people are largely the ones dismissed as "backward, stupid, reactionary, bigoted, etc". Sure, with the advent of Trump, the "todays world" people are taking some "abuse", but that is a pretty new phenomenon.

Never the less, being able to at least MAKE the points that the other side makes is worthy. I believe that we will actually have to AGREE on some set of transcendent values though before we return to actually "making progress" and truly "getting alone". The article not so subtly makes the point that there is "no real truth", it is is all relative.

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Gorillas and Guerillas In Gaza

http://www.themideastbeast.com/israel-place-gorillas-near-gaza-hopes-intl-community-will-care-rocket-attacks/

Israel putting gorillas in Gaza so world cares about rocket attack deaths.

Sadly the 18-22 bracket in the US tends to not mature until much later these days.

If one of our rockets were to kill a gorilla, we would completely alienate our core support base of 18 to 22-year-old left-wing American Facebook commenters,” one senior Hamas official told The Mideast Beast off record. “That’s not a risk we can take lightly.”

Hillary Bubble Boy

http://www.dailywire.com/news/5830/media-have-unintentionally-destroyed-hillary-ben-shapiro#.Vz0U6TLxW6c.twitter

The thesis is that the media have propped up the poor Hildebast for years, but head to head with Trump they can't help her. She would need to stand on her own tentacles.

As a candidate, Clinton is like the Bubble Boy: She's been placed inside the warm cocoon of an all-embracing leftist establishment, never exposed to the normal viruses of everyday politics. The minute she exits that protective bubble, she's hit with those viruses -- and she has no immune system to help her fight them.

 It's short and worth the read.

The media subsidized Clinton into a position of power. She's now so vulnerable that a 74-year-old charisma-free socialist nearly took her down. Now she's got a worse virus: a case of the Trumps. Her immune system has been so compromised that she may be politically terminal.

Books, Tolstoy, "The Cossacks"

It's just a paragraph -- but there is reason that Tolstoy is one of the greatest.

'Three months have passed since I first saw the Cossack girl, Maryanka. The views and prejudices of the world I had left were still fresh in me. I did not then believe that I could love that woman. I delighted in her beauty just as I delighted in the beauty of the mountains and the sky, nor could I help delighting in her, for she is as beautiful as they. I found that the sight of her beauty had become a necessity of my life and I began asking myself whether I did not love her. But I could find nothing within myself at all like love as I had imagined it to be. Mine was not the restlessness of loneliness and desire for marriage, nor was it platonic, still less a carnal love such as I have experienced. I needed only to see her, to hear her, to know that she was near--and if I was not happy, I was at peace.

 I think that rings true for at least any male that has ever been in love. No idea how it works for a woman  -- is there a female writer with the kind of insight of Tolstoy? Could I understand it if there was?

The character "writing the letter" is a wealthy Russian noble, somewhat "looking for his head" in the military -- it seems that his heart found him first.