Trump and The Johnson Amendment

When Trump says he wants to expand religious freedom, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about - The Washington Post:

I got to listen to Mr Trump a bit on NPR the other day, a RARE opportunity to hear anything other than the specific soundbite they have selected in their unbiased fashion to BEST represent him! You KNOW you can trust NPR, they are funded by taxes and they are a 501c3 organization, meaning that they NEVER either endorse or oppose anything political!

Trump discussed removing "The Johnson Amendment" which I had never heard of, so here it is:

"in order to keep its 501(c)(3) status, a charitable organization may "not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office."

Simple. Churches are under exactly the same rules as NPR which is not only a 501c3, but tax funded (so even more rigorously restricted!) Universities are under exactly the same rule -- the Sierra Club is a 501c3 which makes no endorsements -- only here is their web page endorsing Hillary Clinton

Here is some detail on the Johnson Amendment including why it is so good -- because it applies EQUALLY to those secular organizations and the religious ones.

... the Johnson Amendment applies equally to religious and non-religious organizations. Secular universities and animal shelters, no less than churches, will lose their special tax status if they specifically endorse or oppose political candidates.

Stalin stated the obvious relative to voting -- it is meaningless, what is important is the COUNTING, who counts the votes?

"The Party" (TP-D) understands this relative to "justice" and "the law" as well. "The Johnson Amendment" (TJA) applies to exactly whom TP decides it applies to! You holding your breath for the Sierra Club or NPR to be prosecuted? I hope not, it isn't going to happen! Did you pay any attention to how the laws of the land were applied to Hildebeast? The only "law" remaining in this land is TP save for the armed populace.

That was why our founders declared in the first amendment that congress SHALL NOT pass ANY law abridging the rights of religion and speech. The IRS is one big hammer for TP punish their enemies and reward their friends. Our founders realized that government was INHERENTLY corrupt, so they wanted to LIMIT it -- that is why you see things like NO LAW and SHALL NOT!

So we have exercises in insanity like this from the WaPo linked at the top.

... Article VI leaves no room for misunderstanding: “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Anyone who cannot abide that standard has no business swearing to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution itself (Article II).

So deciding that Evangelical churches ACTUALLY ought to be treated like NPR, universities, the Sierra Club, Black Churches, etc, etc is a "religious test for qualification for office"??? Hello? See, TRUMP doesn't "know what he is talking about"! Why can't organizations be tax exempt merely because they are not PROFIT MAKING? It seems to be working pretty darned well for NPR, all the major universities and all the black churches who can say any damned thing they want as long as it passes the muster of TP!

Did you REALLY need to see Hildebeast "cleared" explicitly because she WAS Hildebeast to realize that there is no "blind lady justice with scales" in this country?  The Democratic Party (TP)  **IS** the "law", and things like TJA are how they enforce it upon who they wish and fail to enforce it where they don't

My fervent hope is that Trump will KEEP TALKING -- each and every day I realize more and more of just how TP managed to destroy America and create BOistan.

I have no idea if it is remotely possible to resurrect America, but let's at least put some lights on the walls and prison guards of BOistan!

Ginsburg Spins Head, Endorses Trump

Travesty of a Justice - WSJ:

I think I'm beginning to be able to understand why Scalia spent time in the company of Ginsburg -- it is similar to the reason that God was spending time with Satan and talking about Job in the book of Job.

God fully understands evil, "honest evil" is part of the physical universe -- there has to be darkness for there to be light, pain for there to be pleasure, death for there to be life. My belief is that the sin in the garden suddenly made perfect spiritual creation physical -- the physical requires the opposites. God IS ... ALL, the closest I can come to an analogy is everything is "running on God" as in a "simulation" of "life the universe and everything", but what we consider to be "more real" as in physical, computable, "empirical" is really FAR more **FALSE** -- see CS Lewis "The Great Divorce" for some thoughts on this vision.

Ginsburg  no doubt is very sad that Sotomayor has taken her place as the darling of the left, and thus decided to make it clear that she has no respect for keeping of the illusion of being "above politics" which is a thin remaining fig leaf of "equal treatment" left in the minds of some. The age of BO shows us clearly that there can be NO "rules / traditions / procedure / precedent / etc" that are "honored"  by the left. Indeed, the very concept of "honor" is to be laughed at and derided by those who claim POWER.  Thus:

“I can’t imagine what this place would be—I can’t imagine what the country would be—with Donald Trump as our president,” she said. “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be—I don’t even want to contemplate that.” 

It reminded her of something her husband, Martin D. Ginsburg, a prominent tax lawyer who died in 2010, would have said. 

“‘Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand,’ ” Justice Ginsburg said, smiling ruefully.

BOistan as it exists today is much MORE "unimaginable" than an America with Trump as president  for those of us in the small remnant that still cares about God, Family, culture and other old tired ideals of the nation that was once exceptional. For us, there is no "New Zealand", because the exceptional "shining light on a hill" that was America has been destroyed already. As painful as it would be for Ruth Vader, it is unlikely that Trump could even move it back to where it was at the start of BO's sorry reign if he was SURPRISINGLY effective -- assuming he actually wants to "Make America Great Again".

This election is "take a walk on the wild (unknown) side with Trump" vs "Kneel before Satan and his demons, abandon all hope and worship the Hildebeast!". Ruth apparently spun her head and it came up "Hidebeast".

When evil starts cackling, it does tend to rather cackle on ...

“I’d love to see Citizens United overturned.” In that 2010 First Amendment case, the Federal Election Commission unsuccessfully claimed it had the authority to criminalize the distribution of a film critical of Hillary Clinton, whom Ginsburg has now implicitly endorsed for the presidency.

Yes, the FEC ought to be in charge of what political speech should be allowed. Speech as "free" as government bureaucrats decree. I'm certain that the Hildebeast court would be happy to make  death by slow torture the law of the land for any speech that offends the Hildebeast.

It seems that reality is SCREAMING to **VOTE TRUMP**!!!!!! at the very top of it's lungs. Maybe I'll go look at the actual green vomit Ruth Vader chose to spew in the Times after spinning her head like a whirly bird a few times for effect.

She told us as effectively as she could that a Hildebeast SCOTUS would a happy, open and direct part of "The Party" (TP-D).

So, to sum up: Ginsburg, in an on-the-record interview, took political positions on the presidential election and a Senate confirmation, indicated that she intends in future cases to vote to curtail constitutional rights, and violated the secrecy of the Supreme Court conference room.

I'm guessing that after the secrecy of the SCOTUS conference, she would really LOVE to get TOTALLY rid of "Patient Doctor" and "Priest / Confessor" as old tired ideas of "privacy".

Let's face it, TP wants your SOUL -- and what is "privacy" when your very soul is possessed in an intimate relationship with Pazouzu?
'via Blog this'

God's Plans

Marla and I received a stern reminder of the old saw "If you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans" Saturday evening I was off doing some volunteer work and rode my motorcycle home arriving around 8:20 with smoked ribs on my mind. No Marla in the house -- figured she was on the deck, but when I exited the sliding back door I heard her screaming like I've never heard her before.

I rounded the corner next to the firepit and there she was laying face down with her chin on the second small set of steps, her legs out and her arms crumpled beneath her. "I can't move, I've been here quite awhile, nobody could hear me".

Dialing 9-11 seemed to be in slow motion, making SURE they knew about MANOR COURT NORTH WEST vs just "Manor Court",  seemed like running through molasses in January. I'm guessing it was 10 min before they arrived, but it seemed like an hour or more -- I heard sirens almost immediately, my bad hearing amplified by nerves had me thinking that they were pulling up when they were crossing the bridge on 52 a mile away.

We both knew that I couldn't move her -- no feeling in her extremities, but feeling on her back. Lots of blood, but I knew not a life threatening amount. Since the front of her skull was directly against a concrete step, I wondered if the paralysis was due to brain injury rather than spinal, but she was conscious and completely cogent, so it was hard for my addled brain to make sense of it.

The EMTs and firetrucks arrived, she was loaded up and we headed for St Mary's level 1 trauma center where a team of 15+ masked and gowned specialists received her and I was ushered to a waiting room to wait for the first support to arrive. My brain was flooded with fear of still sudden death due to some bleed inside the brain, would we sell the house to deal with her being a quadriplegic? I needed to get rid of those motorcycles!  Too risky! Why wasn't I at home??? !!!

Five days later, my brain still has some of those thoughts, even though the belief is that her prognosis is excellent. When she hit the step with her chin she hyper-extended her neck backward ("whiplash"), fortunately "bruising" or "compressing"  rather than tearing or severing her spinal cord. She was startled by an old firework in a supposedly spent cake that she used to start a fire in our fire-pit going off and "just tripped" as she ran. Had the cord been bruised a bit more, her ability to breathe would have been suspended and she would have died -- as she would have if it had been severed at that level of the spine.

She underwent spinal column surgery last Sunday for 5 hours to make more room for the spinal cord and to fuse the vertebrae to better protect this area that was weak from childhood. She has had one of us with her in ICU since she was admitted since she is unable to push the nurse button. She now DOES have feeling in her hands and feet, major muscle movement on both sides, good toe movement on the left, SOME on the right, a little finger movement on the left, and a TINY bit on the right.

Recovery is likely to be very long. She got out of the ICU yesterday and "3 weeks" is considered an optimistic estimate for when she might be able to come home. Getting back to typing and other skills with her fingers is nearly certainly farther off than that.

She sold her Harley 3 weeks ago because it as too risky -- she nearly died on our patio next to our pond, a spot that I use in my mind as my "happy place"... a  "safe and calming place" to deal with anxiety. This universe is not ours -- human control and power are ALWAYS illusions. Either Trump or Hillary could trip walking down some steps, break their neck, and be gone in a few minutes -- or stroke, heart attack, car crash, plane crash -- the list is completely endless. Worse, any of us, or those we love could do the same. We don't make those decisions.

Do I literally think God might "laugh"? Sort of.  God knows how mundane all of what happens in the mortal coil other than coming to Gods Grace and redemption through Christ is. We are also created in his image, so we know that he has something like "humor".

I personally think our consciousness is traveling but one of MANY timelines, only one of which we "see" in what seems like the single path of this mortal life.  Since it was a "freak accident", maybe on nearly all of the paths, it never happened, or there was a much lesser injury, etc.. On some smaller set of even smaller paths, she died and I'm going to her funeral today or before the end of the week. Perhaps on "1" or a really tiny number, I died in a motorcycle crash on the way home and she is heading on with her recovery without me, or on another, the world is heading on without either of us because I died in a motorcycle accident the same night she stopped breathing due to a spinal injury. "What are the odds of that?" ... well, what are the odds we ever met at all?

In that case, no doubt a number of people on that timeline would be crying at our funerals (more for her than for me), but Marla and I would know the truth and understand that eternity is all that matters, and whatever the worst that life gives you is, next to eternity and THE TRUTH (Christ), the worst this world has to dish out is much less than the medical profession bills as  "just a little bee sting" or "you will feel some pressure now" ...

I believe we have FAR LESS than "no idea" on these things -- "free will", "predestination", the power of the creator of the universe, etc. "Far less" means that all of our ideas about "fate", "God's will", "Why do bad things happen to good people", etc. are likely so wrong as to make the worst description of a Saturn IV Moon Rocket internal operations by a tribesman in the bush somewhere seem like revealed genius by comparison. Just pause and consider the difference in knowledge scale between "all knowing" and any of our pitiful brains, even rolled into one!

I don't believe that God "wills" such things as happened to Marla, but he allows "free will" in the universe, which I see as a combinatorial explosion of uncountable pathways of "if". God is with us on all those paths, always seeking to save us -- he indeed knows all (since all the paths have happened, are happening, and always will happen) but we don't.

He DOES have a plan and it WILL be accomplished -- maybe even on "all the paths" for all I know, but like a parent letting a child learn to walk, he allows us to "go bump" in many many ways, even go through our "terrible twos" where everything must be OUR way!!! No matter how foolish and ridiculous that way is! Some of our "bumps", like Marla's, are just part of being a human living in a physical world marred by sin. It's like hauling 50 million gallons of shit in a fall pumping season -- maybe NONE of the 50 million is your shit, but you are still quite likely to "get some on you".

Of course, none of this dime store rambling "philosophy" or "theology", or more colloquially put "bullshit" means anything while waiting for the ambulance, or sitting with her at night while she is in pain, or watching her struggle to get her toes and fingers to move. Those are the moments that are what is "real" in the human physical sense that is what we call "life". We see through a lens VERY darkly, but we have faith that it all really does mean something SOMEHOW!

Sometimes the soul just cries out with feelings that are not expressible. She is a few feet away sleeping peacefully, THAT is a blessing beyond compare. Our boys, daughter in law and grandaughter visited us and are now home safely -- that is another blessing! Our Iowa family has rushed to our side and continues to. Our Rochester friends have already driven people to the cities multiple times, delivered food, visited, and are making themselves available. Our pastor brought us Communion in the ICU ... I could keep going on, but won't.

We like to kid ourselves that we have plans and control, but we don't . Life is learning to accept God's plan for our lives with the help of his Grace. It is ultimately a WONDERFUL plan, no matter how we might feel about it at a given point -- our goal is to accept that plan and accept that it is in fact God's plan and therefore wonderful. "Accepting" doesn't mean sitting back and saying "whatever" -- it means hard work, which Marla is FAR better than me, so has the best chance of recovering as far as is possible.

So please pray for us. It is always fine to pray for speedy 100% recovery. God knows that is very much what we want, especially for a specially loved person that constantly does everything for everyone else like Marla. But also pray that we can accept and find joy in God's will and plan in HIS time -- because ultimately, that is the only plan that counts,  no matter how hard that plan may be. I am just so thankful beyond words that I'm still living on a path WITH Marla ... "just" seeing her smile when Tula arrived is a gift beyond price.

Thanks to all who are praying, helping and caring -- perhaps that is "the reason" at some level.

It's Gods Plan, and God is Good -- ALL THE TIME!

Half Staff President

Ordering flags lowered for Dallas, Obama sets record:



BO has set another record! The flags at government buildings have been at half staff more during his administration than during any other. It is hard to imagine a more fitting record -- it would be even more fitting if the flags had been lowered to half staff when he took office and left there as decent Americans mourned the destruction of our Nation.



We elected a Luo Tribesman who had declared his desire to destroy the "colonial powers", and he has largely achieved his goals. We are torn by tribal strife, violence, and are completely at the mercy of our sensational media to instantly jump to the most sensational and upsetting conclusions before any facts at all have been presented.



Our flags are at half staff on the way to being lowered forever.



'via Blog this'

Iraq, Saddam, Trump, What You Should Think Now

Trump, Saddam and why people mistrust the media - The Washington Post:

It's time for a "reset" on Iraq it seems, and Hildebeast has spoken, so WaPo wants to make it clear that any confusion is the "fault of the media".

Trump thinks it was a mistake to go into Iraq and depose Saddam:

"Iraq used to be: No terrorism," Trump said. "He would kill the terrorists immediately. Now it's Harvard for terrorism."

Trump has consistently said that W made a horrible mistake when he went into Iraq. MANY "sources", including Hildebeast have agreed with that position MANY times -- "Saddam was a stabilizing force", "Al Qaeda wasn't wasn't in Iraq until W attacked", etc.

My view, Tony Blair's view, and W's was and is that Saddam and his sons were ruthless killers, willing to bargain with ANYONE that they thought to their advantage including al-Zarqawi, who was in Iraq in 2003 -- Saddam and family would have gotten a along well with Hildebeast or BO for that matter. Just like the Iranians.

However, we just hit a "reset":

So what was different last night? Clinton's campaign said it was different. In Politico, we learn that Trump's Hussein praise "finally caught up with him" because "Hillary Clinton's campaign tore into his latest comments." NBC News notes that Trump said this at a rally with Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), which could lead to a clash and some awkward questions; otherwise, the only new thing is that "Hillary Clinton's campaign seized the opportunity to once more paint Trump as unfit for office."

When you are the candidate of "The Party" (TP-D), the TP media dances to your tune -- if you say "Deposing Saddam was a good idea" -- then dammit, IT WAS! Now you said the opposite before, anx naturally W is STILL WRONG / stupid, etc  -- that part didn't change, but Trump is VERY wrong, and whatever was said before is down the memory hole. Get your stinkin minds right you little people -- HILDEBEAST HAS SPOKEN!

But as WaPo points out, people DO get "confused". They vaguely remember that "going into Iraq was a TERRIBLE idea" -- and "Bush LIED", so somehow they were supposed to think that "lying is bad and Saddam was at least OK". Now here comes Trump that spouts just what TP and Hildebeast used to spout, but THEN, "Crooked Hillary" changes her mind! Right at the same time that even the director of the FBI says that she LIED ( A **LOT** ), but now lying is OK cuz Hildebeast does it, and nobody is going to prosecute her cuz she is Hildebeast -- and other people aren't.

So now "Bush who LIED" and made a horrible mistake by going into Iraq actually did a GOOD thing! Cuz crooked lying Hildebeast assured us that Saddam was BAD, and needed to be removed.

Well, as WaPo points out, it just gets confusing to "the little people" -- and that MUST be "the media's fault"!

And that is the way it is in BOistan today!

'via Blog this'

Little Weed In The Car, Four Lavishly Dead In "Shy-Ka-Go"

Explosive Video of Minnesota Police Shooting Gets Worldwide Attention | Power Line:

I'm an old enough fool to remember when "Four Dead In O-High-O" was a BIG DEAL!

See, over the 4th weekend, 64 were shot in Chicago, of which 4 died -- I'm not going to go to the racial profiling, but I think we all know what color most of them were. Their lives don't matter, they didn't fit the narrative.

I got to listen to about 30 min of the "special coverage" from MPR today -- somehow they didn't mention "the little weed in the car", nor the officer being "Chinese". I could swear the Chinese were used as "Coolies" or virtual slave labor in the West during the 1800's, but I must be wrong -- apparently the officers ancestors where racist Chinese "crackers" -- somehow I don't remember that many Chinese slaveholders from "Gone With the Wind", but I'm sure they were in there.

The MAIN thing that we ought all realize is that NOBODY knows a damned thing about this incident! MPR has the name of Philando Castile canonized beyond human standards, Philandro being the greatest human paragon to ever draw breath, gunned down in cold blood over a broken taillight. Jamar Clark was similarly wonderful -- and remains so in the minds of many in the media and black community. Beating women is OK in some cases.

Anyone with the tiniest bit of independent thought is totally aware of the fact that the bulk of the public is yet again being played like marionettes, with social media allowing the current simulacrum shadows of humanity to bleat in unison of how "shocked, saddened, outraged, etc" they all are at this certain miscarriage of "justice". Why BO himself, protector of serial liar Hildebeast, whose FBI flunky was up before Congress today (though nobody cares) is due to tell the wool bearers what are to be thinking this evening. The concept of "justice" and BO being uttered in any context gives surrealism a bad name.

In an age where even some tiny percentage of the public had even small shreds of "common sense", or "perspective" -- elements utterly missing from discourse today, nobody would be rushing to any sort of conclusions on the basis of a calm girlfriend named "Lavish" doing the play by play by play while her boyfriend bled to death in front of her. We have yet to hear word one from the "Chinese" officer -- though the court of media and our vaunted leader have made up the minds of the clueless already. 

Hey we are supposed to KNOW that they were "doing nothing wrong" -- "just a little weed in the car" you know? Heck, even BO was prone to a "lot of booze and weed, a little blow, but no smack"  (as discussed in his first autobiography) -- and we ALL know that "he is cool". 

The KEY here is that we are all to learn to be TOLD "What difference, at this point, does it make"???  We are all assumed to be so docile and stupid that we are ready to bleat whatever our "betters" tell us, and ignore everything else! 

It appears that for something over 80% of the nation -- that is the sorry state of what used to be independent "Americans". Gone -- and forgotten by most. 

America -- bled to death under BO, nobody even cared.

'via Blog this'

Long May Hildeast Rule BOistan

Comey comedy, Comey comity | Power Line:

Are your minds right yet folks?

1. Why would BO endorse Hildebeast while she is still supposedly under investigation of his justice department? There is no reason for him to do so, it looks TERRIBLE to anyone paying attention, but he did it anyway.
2. Why would Slick Willie meet with Loretta LynchMob in private when she is even closer to the FBI investigation? The optics were HORRIBLE, and they could have met at a 1000 secure locations and nobody would know. But they did it in the open so all would see.
3. Why would BO be traipsing around the country with Hildebeast  (BOII) on the very day the FBI is going to announce their decision on her crimes? Would tomorrow REALLY be "too late"?
4. Why would the head of the FBI admit that Hildebeast broke the law, but that they are not going to prosecute because she is Hildebeast? They could have just said "they didn't find anything". 

BECAUSE THEY ARE SHOWING YOU THEY ARE NOT ONLY ABOVE THE LAW, THEY MAKE IT AND APPLY IT AS SUITES THEM! 

So if you have not bended your knee and shut up already, SHUT THE F**K UP! 

Readers of this blog know they are already doing "guilty until proven innocent" when it suits their fancy and beating in private citizens doors when they support the wrong folks (Non-TP). 

I still assume that there are a lot of people they will make examples of  before they come for me -- but NOBODY should be the least surprised when other nasty shoes start dropping. These folks LOCKED UP the poor schmuck they falsely blamed for the "Benghazi" mythological film. 

'via Blog this'

"Big Business" Now Good!

Hillary Clinton seizes opening as Donald Trump alienates big business - CNNPolitics.com:

When a state completely slips to Fascism, good becomes evil and evil becomes good.

"Wall Street" and "Big Business" have been synonymous with "evil" for the left for over 100 years -- but suddenly they are GOOD! since they are supporting Hildebeast.

In reality, "Big Business" has been pretty much wholly owned by "The Party" (TP-D) since WWII. FDR parlayed nasty rhetoric about "big business" and the "malefactors of great wealth" into sweetheart defense deals that lined the pockets of wealth, and for the time since, business and wall street have laughed all the way to bank as TP has castigated them, yet still gladly accepted their campaign contributions. It's a chummy club that both Trump and Hildebeast have been part of for decades.

Has Trump decided that he cares more about America than just continuing his "good life" all the way to the grave? Who knows. We CERTAINLY know Hildebeast's agenda however!

The fact that Trump is hated as much as he now is by the establishment in both parties and the media is the only positive sign we have that he MAY have decided that the 1% pool is too fouled even for him!

Sure, that is a THIN reed of hope, but in BOistan, that is as good as it gets!





'via Blog this'

How Badly Will Trump Hurt Himself?

How badly will Trump hurt himself with his choice of a running mate? - The Washington Post:

How badly will my friends daughter hurt herself with her choice of a husband? How bad will my wife and I hurt ourselves with our choice of our next vehicle? Inquiring minds want to know!

I'm waiting for the flip side -- "How much will Hillary's choice of VP HELP her?"

I know the the WaPo being a wholly owned campaign / policy sales arm for "The Party" (TP-D) is OLD OLD news ... but sometimes we just need to remind ourselves what "totally in the bag for TP" really means!

'via Blog this'

Independence, BO Has Made Us Safer

Baghdad bombing: Deadliest attack in Iraqi capital in years - CNN.com:

We all know what we are supposed to think. After 9-11, the US ought to have "focused like a laser" on Afghanistan, never opened Gitmo, never tried to gather information from "Islamic Terrorists" (they don't actually exist, just ask BO and the American media!), and generally kept a low profile.

Just like BO has done! He is "the one" -- the world is MUCH "better, safer, more just, more peaceful ... just "better""! W was a complete fool, BO is a total genius -- sure there are racists that don't like him, but they are just racists (and fools) -- nobody can have a different opinion from BO, it's "un-American!" -- and he is quick to point that out on many issues. To disagree with his stenchfulness is "not what America is about"!

How the hell did this nation ever have the gumption to break off from what as then the most powerful nation on earth and go off INDEPENDENTLY? ! What sort of nation was that one? Who WERE those people?

So we see more an more people gunned down in the US because "there isn't common sense gun control" -- Islam has NOTHING to do with it even if they scream Allah Akbar at the top of their lungs and pledge allegiance to ISIS in taped messages. It makes no difference -- only racists and fools would listen to anyone but BO and the media. Bombs are going off all over the world at an increasing rate, and that is just fine -- nothing to do with Islam, really nobody's fault -- maybe Israel, the Arabs have a good reason to hate them. Perhaps Iran having a nuke can solve that "problem".

You know, the old "Jewish problem".

"Independence" is a sign of insanity -- just look at the poor Brits! How COULD they do something so stupid and foolish as to leave the EU! -- larger and larger government, more and more regional and world associations are INEVITABLE -- nobody would want to be "on the wrong side of history" would they?

"independence" is a dirty word -- "You didn't build that yourself!". DEPENDENCE is now considered to be strength, intelligence, etc. Why does BOistan even have an "Independence Day"? Let alone one on which people explode stuff bringing to mind artillery and military strength. "What difference, at this point, does it make?" (Hillary) Why WOULD we want to remember the "bad old days" of thinking that independence was a  VIRTUE?

BOistan is a lot of things -- but celebrating "independence" in it is truly major league insanity!

WWI, Tolkien, One Ring, Brexit

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/opinion/sunday/how-jrr-tolkien-found-mordor-on-the-western-front.html?smid=fb-share&referer=http://m.facebook.com/

JR Tolkien understood the "will to power" -- he endured the effects that it can have on the "small" in the trenches of WWI. (the Hobbits were symbolic of the British WWI soldier)

Beside the courage of ordinary men, the carnage of war seems also to have opened Tolkien’s eyes to a primal fact about the human condition: the will to power. This is the force animating Sauron, the sorcerer-warlord and great enemy of Middle-earth. “But the only measure that he knows is desire,” explains the wizard Gandalf, “desire for power.” Not even Frodo, the Ring-bearer and chief protagonist, escapes the temptation.

The Clinton's are the modern embodiment of Sauron -- they serve their desire alone. In some ways we can be thankful to have such clear embodiment's of evil before us.

In the human soul’s struggle against evil, there was a force of grace and goodness stronger than the will to power. Even in a forsaken land, at the threshold of Mordor, Samwise Gamgee apprehends this: “For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: There was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.”

The Bible and Tolkien are right, we ALWAYS battle the forces of evil who seek to soak the individual soul into an amorphous cabal of raw power bereft of the spiritual, the moral, and the lovely.

In “The Lord of the Rings,” we meet Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee, Hobbits of the Shire, on a fateful mission to destroy the last Ring of Power and save Middle-earth from enslavement and destruction. The heroism of Tolkien’s characters depends on their capacity to resist evil and their tenacity in the face of defeat. It was this quality that Tolkien witnessed among his comrades on the Western Front.

The forces of "the mass", the removal of distinctions, the leveling of all thought, values and uniqueness into a gray goo of sameness with no divine beauty or excellence to be seen are always with us. Here on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, Britain has stuck a blow against those forces by voting for Brexit.

Will the US strike a similar blow with Trump? It remains to be seen, but we must realize that with Trump as with Brexit, the road is not a choice of "easy vs hard" or "wealth vs plenty" or "ease vs work", but rather a choice of "truth vs falseness", "good vs evil", "slavery vs freedom". Which does not mean that Trump  himself is "good",  but that ANY cause other than accelerated descent into "the amorphous mass" is "the good" -- ALL leadership is horribly flawed, Trump more than many, but compared to the Clinton's, even Sauron has his positive features. (he's more honest for one!)

The lure of "one ring to rule them all" is often a lure to what is "safer", that is approved by the "experts",  more "popular", and very likely **IS** easier, more predictable, less chaotic, etc.

The life of the sheep can be quite pleasant -- indeed, in Christianity it is the metaphor for how we follow our shepherd. The difference is that Jesus is THE GOOD SHEPHERD. The way he provides for his sheep is one of challenge, service and difficulty for a REASON ( showing his example to the world), but it is a way paved with GRACE and LOVE, and with eternal life at the end!

The life of "the mass" is one of addiction, moral depravity, falseness and rejection of even the existence of truth, meaninglessness and despair. But it is a prison that billions are prone to enter willingly for the false promise of "safety, predictability, "justice" and equality of outcome. There were many in the USSR that preferred a system where "nobody was successful". The fact tens of millions had to die and millions more had to rot in the Gulag was just "collateral damage".

The choices are as clear as they have ever been, but the temptations are at least as strong as they have  ever been as well. We need be willing to stand up to our jailers -- always a test of courage!

PBS On Quantitative Insanity

Column: The monetary bubble to end all bubbles is coming | PBS NewsHour:

We've been over the fantasy of "Quantitative Easing" a few times, but this Yogi Berra quote might help put the issue in common terms.

Yogi Berra famously said he wanted his pizza cut in four slices instead of eight. His “logic” was that he didn’t want to gain weight by eating a lot of slices. However, what matters is not the number of slices, but the total amount consumed.

I use this same "logic" with Fosters 24oz "oil cans". I enjoy Fosters beer and for some reason (conspiracy against me is the reason I believe), it is only available in 24 oz cans. So I like to say that "I've cut the number of cans of beer I drink in HALF!". I can also use the same excuse that "big economies" use -- I'm pretty much twice as big as everyone else, so my beers ought to be as well!

The article is from PBS, so they use "missiles in Afghanistan" as their "government good", but readers of this blog know that it would be FAR better to use "money transferred to voting blocks to buy votes" as the "good" -- over 3/4 of our budget, and those of the Europeans and Japanese as well is the transfer of money from young to old and successful to unsuccessful. The article also doesn't point out that ON TOP of the trillions in printing, all those governments are piling on trillions in debt!

... printing more money does not alter the size the economy; it simply reduces the value of each dollar. The seductive aspect of having the Fed pay for government expenditures is that, unlike taxes, the cost of printing money is invisible. Almost no one is even aware that they have paid for part of a drone strike.

"Fiat currency" -- what we call "money" has no intrinsic value, it is PURELY a "medium of exchange". It's "value" is constantly changing, relative to the price of EVERYTHING. We commonly see gas prices and say "the price of gas went up/down", but in fact it is equally true that the "value of our money relative to gas went up/down".

I've been talking about the "government bubble" for years now, and after a career in IBM I realize to a SMALL DEGREE how long disaster can be staved off in something large. IBM was around a 100 billion dollar a year in revenue company. It takes a long time for something that large to completely die even with horrible mismanagement. The US federal government is around $4T a year, PLUS it has a whole bunch of people here and around the world that would really really like for it not to fail. BUT, even though it is large, it isn't infinite, nor is it "magic".

Governments have two ways to pay for their expenditures. They can take the money from their citizens through fees and taxes. Or they can have the central bank create new money. (Borrowing the money can be thought of as a third way, or it can be viewed as simply deferring the choice between taxing and printing).

Rather boring isn't it? In fact, government is not magic AT ALL! It actually only has ONE way to pay for expenditures -- IT TAKES MONEY FROM IT''S CITIZENS!!!! Taxes are right up front -- the government takes your money. Borrowing takes either your money or your children's money in the future (with interest), printing money lowers the value of every dollar in existence. No magic -- everything the government promises to you is paid for by citizens.

Naturally, the government attempts to hide this any way they can, and they ALWAYS try to tell you that SOMEONE ELSE WILL PAY! ... "the rich, the banks, the corporations, ...". But of course they won't -- the rich, the banks, the corporations HAVE THE POWER. They ARE "The Party" (TP-D) The Clinton foundation alone takes in over $200 million every year! They are the ones primarily benefitting from the giant Ponzi scheme!

"So the ECB program transfers money from European savers to the largest, richest companies in the world. What was the response to the ECB’s bond buying plan? Was there outrage at this transfer of wealth? Did Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders lead “Occupy ECB” marches? No, exactly the opposite happened: Stock markets around the world rallied after the announcement of more European printing."

With Christ, the population was "like sheep who have gone astray", without Christ (religion, culture, values, tradition, family, community, truth, etc), we ARE SHEEP!

It's a bubble, it WILL burst -- the question is not "if, but when". So HEDGE ... have some metals in your portfolio, and maybe a lake place where you can catch catfish off the dock! ;-)
'via Blog this'

The Atlantic Semi Spots The Chaos

How American Politics Became So Ineffective - The Atlantic:

According to science, language, like life, is an "emergent phenomenon" -- which is scientific for "damned if we know where it came from"! They like to sound more sophisticated than that -- it "emerged" via "memes" in populations where some forms of wording conveyed proper meaning better than others and thus "were selected". How? Well, like the Heisenberg compensators in the Star Trek transporter, "very well".

Whole rafts of things in human existence are unsurprisingly "emergent", since according to Darwin, all life is emergent, and thus humans themselves are an example of "stuff that showed up because it must have worked better than other stuff".

Free Markets are emergent. Culture is emergent. Darwin's Cathedral tells you that religion is emergent. The linked article tells you that political parties were emergent from the basic framework of the Constitution. So far, political scientists have not tried to assert that the Constitution "emerged" from some primordial soup of ancient memes and the "founders" are merely "myth", but give them time.

In any case, Trump has the folks at the Atlantic trying to figure out "what went wrong?", and it is entertaining at least to observe their thinking.

"Americans have been busy demonizing and disempowering political professionals and parties, which is like spending decades abusing and attacking your own immune system. Eventually, you will get sick."

See, political parties, "middlemen", local hacks, toadies, sycophants and all sorts of flora and fauna "emerged" to magically make the American political system work -- but we failed to understand that you can't have a "political market" without "market makers", and thus "attacked our immune system" (the "political professionals" acted as gatekeepers) ... an "immune system" if you will.

The middlemen could be undemocratic, high-handed, devious, secretive. But they had one great virtue: They brought order from chaos. They encouraged coordination, interdependency, and mutual accountability. They discouraged solipsistic and antisocial political behavior.

Ah yes, "order from chaos". Me thinks that the column authors targeted a WEE bit too precisely here. In a truth free, value free, culture free nation, do you really expect that "political parties" can bring "order from chaos"? My assertion is that we attacked our CULTURE -- which was based on RELIGION, and the problem that the Atlantic perceives with "political parties" is just a SYMPTOM ... like "liver spots" on the skin being a sign of a failing liver -- but they want to treat the spots!

Middlemen have a characteristic that is essential in politics: They stick around. Because careerists and hacks make their living off the system, they have a stake in assembling durable coalitions, in retaining power over time, and in keeping the government in functioning order.

It used to be that religion, culture, community, family, truth, values and a whole lot of other stuff including the Constitution "stuck around". The columnist has a pretty high expectation of the powers of "political middlemen".  The article writer actually gets it right early on in the article:

The core idea of the Constitution was to restrain ambition and excess by forcing competing powers and factions to bargain and compromise. 

The Framers worried about demagogic excess and populist caprice, so they created buffers and gatekeepers between voters and the government. Only one chamber, the House of Representatives, would be directly elected. A radical who wanted to get into the Senate would need to get past the state legislature, which selected senators; a usurper who wanted to seize the presidency would need to get past the Electoral College, a convocation of elders who chose the president; and so on.

If you summarize the relatively long article, the author is really attempting to constrain democracy by party political patronage!  Naturally, as a liberal, he is only REALLY worried about Trump, but he DOES point out that Bernie, Cruz and Trump are all "political psychopaths" -- meaning that they don't care what their political parties think.

The problem is in the paragraph I quoted above -- we were NEVER intended to be a "democracy" AT ALL!  but rather a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC. The ONLY "democratic election" was to be for the HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES! There would be no need to try to hack political parties to subvert the democracy needed to elect the House!  The death of party politics is just one more symptom of the chaos engendered by directly electing the Senate, neutering the Electoral College,  and abandoning the Constitution with it's amendment process!

The left is unable to see that ever more massive government is NOT American, nor even sustainable ANYWHERE -- no matter how much party patronage you have. He can only see that "parties losing power" (the Republican party) has given rise to two "pathogens" in his mind -- the Tea Party and Trump. Take a look around. Are brontosauruses still in existence? Are blue whales being replaced by "mega blue whales"? SCALING PROBLEMS EXIST! Bigger IS NOT always better!

I signed up for IBM because I really thought that a large corporation had distinct advantages -- it did, but it also had big DISADVANTAGES -- as does big government, or the EU, or ANY large organization or organism!

What he fails to see is that when there is no culture, no truth, no standards, no shared common values, then for a nation founded on IDEAS, there is NO COUNTRY -- just a rotting massive hulk where EVERYTHING is rotting, and the political parties are just one small example!

Trump, Hildebeast, BO, Bernie, political middlemen,  etc are ALL just symptoms!

via Blog this'

Fraudulently Losing

http://www.unionleader.com/Thomas-Sowell-The-fraud-goes-on-06292016

Pretty much all of us except the MOST highly gifted have experienced the shock of being a fairly big fish in a smaller pond, moving up, and finding that we were not as special as we thought. Maybe we were hot stuff in a smallish high school and breezed through -- got up to college and discovered the first semester that the competition was a lot tougher. Maybe we were so smart we made it out to the world of work before we realized that "book smart" wasn't everything, and a few years of experience put us in our places.

Such experiences are pretty much good for us and a "right of passage", when they force us to "kick it up another notch", but most of us also know that a whole bunch of freshman headed home after that "bad semester" or "bad year" -- for whatever reason, they were not able to find that extra gear.

Universities bring in thousands of new freshmen every year -- they have a very good handle on who is "MIT material" and who might do better at a "Nice Big Ten School", or maybe two years at a community college to hone the skills a bit.

"Affirmative Action" doesn't allow that. Some set of students of color MUST be admitted, so the standards need to be lowered. Those students may be very excited to be "accepted at MIT", but if they struggle and fail there, they may fail to recover and thus fail to get the education that would have enabled them to succeed -- they WERE smart enough to succeed, just not at MIT!

Meanwhile, some other student -- these days likely a person of Asian decent, possibly even a female, who DID have the grades and would have succeeded, is denied that chance.

But minority students admitted to institutions whose academic standards they do not meet are all too often needlessly turned into failures, even when they have the prerequisites for success in some other institution whose normal standards they do meet. 

When black students who scored at the 90th percentile in math were admitted to M.I.T., where the other students scored at the 99th percentile, a significant number of black students failed to graduate there, even though they could have graduated with honors at most other academic institutions. 

We do not have so many students with that kind of ability that we can afford to sacrifice them on the altar to political correctness.

If the US was still winning at global competition, perhaps we could afford that loss of skill, but we have succeeded in making ourselves noncompetitive on the world market!  Naturally, uttering this is "racist" -- even if the student not getting the slot is an Asian female!

The costs of our foolishness are high and we are LONG past being able to afford those costs!

Extreme Tribal Logic, Pro-Choice, NRA

The Gosnell Memory Hole | commentary:

When all issues are primarily political and most of the population is a member of a political tribe that gives no quarter to the other tribes, then sort of discussions or reasoned debate become nearly impossible.

The linked article calls out how the recent widely hailed SCOTUS decision in Whole Women's Health vs Hellerstedt in TX that essentially outlaws state regulation of abortion clinics completely fails to recall the horror of Kermit Gosnell and his putrid house of horrors killing full term babies and women seeking abortions in Pennsylvania. The Gosnell story received very little coverage even though he was convicted and women lost their lives -- the BIG issue is "abortion always easy, close to free or free in cost, and very very available". To the extent possible, WITHOUT REGULATION! (could be the last thing that "liberals" think that about -- they are intent on regulating how much your toilet flushes for example!).

If the general public could think of the MSM on the issue of abortion like they are schooled to think of the NRA on the issue of guns, they might start to sense the world of tribal extremes.

Forget "common sense" -- we have two ideological camps that increasingly hate the other camp and want to see them "defeated / dishonored / destroyed ... preferably DEAD". Kill the NRA, kill anyone that wants to restrict / regulate / control abortion, etc.

The NRA of course doesn't ACTUALLY expect everyone to have a gun including felons, nor is it against ANY registration of guns -- or certainly not against guns functioning properly and being "safe" to the extent that they don't blow up and injure the operator.

But the abortion rights people ARE there! They explicitly don't care if places that provide abortions are regulated to be safe in their practice of medicine, clean, or even be run by a doctor that has proper credentials and is allowed to see patients at a nearby hospital! No, as long as that baby can be murdered, they want NO RESTRICTIONS -- and they mean NO RESTRICTIONS!

In comparison, the NRA is positively "progressive" -- it CERTAINLY wants guns to be regulated to be safe, accurate, reliable, etc, it STRONGLY supports training for everyone that uses guns in safety procedures, range rules, etc, etc., and it is even very active in trying to have CURRENT registrations / background checks, etc ENFORCED with ACTUAL PENALTIES -- but as we see over and over again, violators of current gun laws -- straw purchasers, etc are let off with little or no enforcement.

We live in the age of insanity -- there is really no other explanation for people who are supposedly "pro-woman" applauding the removal of any sort of regulation on procedures to be carried out on their bodies for the pre-medicated murder of their children. They don't care if "reasonable medical procedures" are followed, they just want those babies D E A D -- and that is ALL that matters!



'via Blog this'