WaPo: US Wrong In Syria

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/a-ferocious-assault-on-aleppo-suggests-the-us-may-be-wrong-on-syria/2016/09/23/909e33b0-80d9-11e6-9578-558cc125c7ba_story.html

The WaPo says the United States is wrong in Syria -- but not BO or Kerry! No, they are NEVER wrong -- nor can they POSSIBLY be responsible for disaster!

“Little by little, life will make everyone understand that it’s only together that you can fight terrorism,” Lavrov said. 

His comments, alongside the events of the past week, suggest that Russia and Syria still believe the war can be won outright, without recourse to negotiations that the United States has said offer the only way out of the Syrian tragedy.

"life will make you understand" -- indeed, reality is a stern teacher, but not if the stooges that create the policies fail to realize that they are responsible for the policies they put in place! 

Folks like the WaPo just can't face up to the fact that BO has bee WRONG -- here, there, EVERYWHERE! Most grievously wrong!

It is as plain to see as anything ever will be -- but they refuse to see it.

Decius, Eternal Principles

Restatement on Flight 93:

I must admit that I am really enjoying "Decius", we think MUCH alike, he writes better, and he is even wordier than I (ok, well maybe not by much). Most of my focus will be on our differences and some of the larger themes. My recommendation is to take the time to read him.

"One must also wonder what is so “immoderate” about Trump’s program. As noted, it’s to the left of the last several decades of Republican-conservative orthodoxy. “Moderate” in the modern political (as opposed to the Aristotelean) sense tends to be synonymous with “centrist.” By that definition, Trump is a moderate. That’s why National Review and the rest of the conservatives came out of the gate so strongly against him. I admit that, not all that long ago, I probably would have too. But I have come to see conservatism in a different light. To oversimplify (again), the only “eternal principle” is the good. What, specifically, is good in a political context varies with the times and with circumstance, as does how best to achieve the good in a given context. The good is not tax rates or free trade. Those aren’t even principles. In the American political context, the good is the well-being of the physical America and its people, well-being defined (in terms that reflect both Aristotle and the American Founding) as their “safety and happiness.” That’s what conservatism should be working to conserve."

In my view, the principles that a conservative seeks to "conserve" are eternal -- reverence for God, truth, wisdom, cultural heritage, family, community, and the ability to pass these from generation to generation. Animals "breed", man seeks to pass on transcendent meaning to successive generations. "The good" doesn't change, and "happiness" is at most a byproduct, and really never a goal for a Christian. Christ promises "peace" and "joy", but neither are really the sort of "peace and joy" that secular people imagine. They are more the sort of a joy a parent gets when their disabled child makes some progress, or the peace of exhaustion after a day of of chasing a toddler.

I'm not sure when "safety" ever became a supposed value. First or all, it is always an illusion, and secondly, the believe that you have it is like the rich man in the Bible that had stored up all sorts of earthy wealth and then finds his soul is required of him that very night.

It seems that Decius believes that a a secular good can suffice and somehow the old America can be rebuilt on that foundation. He definitely disagrees with the founders on that -- John Adams in particular. Yet, he links to an argument by John Marini which would seem to point out the perils of the secular bureaucratic rule of elite intellectuals. 

Understood in this way, what is central to politics and elections is the elevation of the status of personal and group identity to something approaching a new kind of civil religion. Individual social behavior, once dependent on traditional morality and understood in terms of traditional virtues and vices, has become almost indefensible when judged in light of the authority established by positivism and historicism. Public figures have come to be judged not as morally culpable individuals, but by the moral standing established by their group identity. Character is almost unrecognizable and no longer serves as the means by which the people can determine the qualifications for public office of those they do not know personally. As a result, it is difficult to establish the kind of public trust that made it possible to connect public and private behavior, or civil society and government. When coupled with the politicization of civil society and its institutions, the distinction between the public and the private or the personal and the political has almost disappeared. Anything and everything can become politicized, but things can only be understood and made intelligible—or made politically meaningful—when viewed through the lens of social science and post-modern cultural theory. In short, the public and private character of American politics has been placed in the hands of the academic intellectuals.

Our lives have been subsumed by the great political machine, and the experts are in charge, what is more, our past has been found to be a horror. 

Post-modern intellectuals have pronounced their historical judgment on America’s past, finding it to be morally indefensible. Every great human achievement of the past—whether in philosophy, religion, literature, or the humanities—came to be understood as a kind of exploitation of the powerless.

So we live in a culture and nation judged evil by it's own elites -- who run it, but like to pretend that they don't. 

Members of the vital center understand the world through their attachment to their professions: academia, science, economics, business, media, entertainment, and even religion. They often lack political consciousness of themselves as a class. Many of them do not even think of themselves as political. Their interest and loyalty is to what it is they profess to study and what they think they know, and what establishes their intellectual and political authority is their production of what is seen as useful knowledge in the administrative state. Indeed, it could be said that without the policy sciences, the administrative state would be almost impossible to operate. It is the technical requirements of the modern administrative state that have made it possible to politicize the elites in a manner that disguises their political role. When nearly every social, economic, scientific, religious, and political problem is decided in a bureaucratic or legal way—and always from a central authority, usually Washington, but sometimes New York or one or two other places

"The Party" (TP-D) really doesn't consider itself to be political, certainly not a party, and absolutely not a "class". It is is "correct" and it's hierarchy is based on "merit" -- 30% technical merit and 70% the merit to parrot the party line with conviction and even "leadership". 

It is not surprising, therefore, that few are willing or able to praise Trump in an unqualified manner. Insofar, as Trump has refused, to “walk on paths beaten by others,” as Machiavelli would say, “he has all those who benefit from the old orders as enemies, and he has lukewarm defenders in all those who might benefit from the new orders.” But it is not “fear of adversaries” alone that makes it difficult to bring about change, Machiavelli writes, but “the incredulity of men, who do not truly believe in new things unless they come to have a firm experience of them.” In our post-Machiavellian age, which is open to every kind of novelty, we are faced with a new kind of incredulity—one that prevents men from believing in the old things of which they no longer have any experience. It has become far easier for modern man to accept change as something normal, almost natural. What has become difficult to understand, let alone preserve, are things that are unchanging or eternal. History, understood in terms of the idea of progress in politics, economics, science, and technology, has made change, or the new, seem almost inevitable. As a result, the desire for the newest has become almost irresistible.

Since the moderns are steeped in the propaganda that the new is always better, and the latest drip from the still is better than 20 year old aged Scotch, Trump's slogan to "Make America Great Again" seems perfectly selected to anger the modern sensibility -- they have judged America and found it evil, and the concept of "greatness" in the past is antithetical to modern liberal dogma. 

The most controversial aspect of Trump’s campaign, his slogan to “Make America Great Again,” goes to the heart of the problem. Trump’s view presupposes that the old America was good and established the conditions for its greatness. Is this true? Or is America something to be ashamed of, as the protestors against Trump have insisted, having accepted the teaching of post-modern cultural intellectuals?

The standard left view is that America was the definition of immorality -- taking land from native peoples, slavery, unequal rights for women, income inequality, destruction of the environment, etc. It was NEVER great, and indeed BOistan is far greater.

Lincoln was aware that the only proper defense of the tried and the true—of tradition—was a defense of the unchanging principles of political right understood in terms of an unchanging human nature. This presupposed a distinction between theoretical and practical reason, which made it possible to distinguish unchanging principles from policies that must change according to circumstances. This understanding assumed the benevolence of nature and nature’s God, as well as the capacity of human reason to comprehend and impose those rational limits on human freedom that are necessary to ensure human happiness. It is only if the old can also be defended as the good that conservatism, or the tried and the true, can remain a living thing. The historicist understanding of freedom purports to reveal that nature itself is tyrannical, and has attempted the self-destruction of philosophic reason by liberating the creative individual from the chains imposed by nature and reason.

There is that idea again, to "ensure human happiness". Even the founders only suggested the right to PURSUE happiness -- a quarry that slips from your grasp the more it is pursued. Human happiness is a SIDE EFFECT of family, community, worship of God, right living and a good deal of luck. For a Christian, the "pursuit" is better service to Christ -- only by putting Christ does "faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love" come into focus. Happiness doesn't even make the list.

It is possible that the Trump phenomenon cannot be understood merely by trying to make sense of Trump himself. Rather it is the seriousness of the need for Trump that must be understood in order to make sense of his candidacy. Those most likely to be receptive of Trump are those who believe America is in the midst of a great crisis in terms of its economy, its chaotic civil society, its political corruption, and the inability to defend any kind of tradition—or way of life derived from that tradition—because of the transformation of its culture by the intellectual elites. This sweeping cultural transformation occurred almost completely outside the political process of mobilizing public opinion and political majorities. The American people themselves did not participate or consent to the wholesale undermining of their way of life, which government and the bureaucracy helped to facilitate by undermining those institutions of civil society that were dependent upon a public defense of the old morality.

 America was founded on ideas, not territory, ethnicity nor religion. It is true that it developed a specific territory, it's main ethnicity was european, and it's religion Christian, but the idea of a government LIMITED by a written Constitution which created a separation of powers to hold government in check was an innovation in government.

BOistan has none of these -- save to some extent "territory", but even there, the borders are largely open. We are not ethnically European, we are certainly no longer a Christian nation, and BO has countervailed the Constitution through using the IRS as a weapon, creating a product that "must be bought" (BOcare), decrees on immigration and gun control, and spending money on BOcare never appropriated by congress (to name a few).

This isn't a crisis in "America", it is the creation of a new junta in this region of N America that I call BOistan.

Decius has apparently failed to perceive the level of destruction wrought by BO, or finds it far more reversible than I. He also apparently thinks that "the good" can be recovered without any transcendence, but rather through the pursuit of "happiness" with no reference to a religious or philosophic framework that provides a meaning to "happiness".

But he recognizes peril and perceives that something need be done -- we certainly have many areas of agreement.

I've very much enjoyed reading and commenting on these articles.
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The Flight 93 Election, Decius

The Flight 93 Election:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/an-attack-on-founding-principles-at-the-claremont-institute/499094/

This one is worth taking the time for some extended reading.

It opens with an analogy that I've used and one I haven't -- I still like the revolver vs the semi-auto a little better, but it is worth some thought:

2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees. 

Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.

The difference between the columnist "Decius" and I is that he still feels that we are HEADED over a cliff -- I  believe somewhere in the past 8 years we already went over it. I don't see this as America, I see it as BOistan.

If conservatives are right about the importance of virtue, morality, religious faith, stability, character and so on in the individual; if they are right about sexual morality or what came to be termed “family values”; if they are right about the importance of education to inculcate good character and to teach the fundamentals that have defined knowledge in the West for millennia; if they are right about societal norms and public order; if they are right about the centrality of initiative, enterprise, industry, and thrift to a sound economy and a healthy society; if they are right about the soul-sapping effects of paternalistic Big Government and its cannibalization of civil society and religious institutions; if they are right about the necessity of a strong defense and prudent statesmanship in the international sphere—if they are right about the importance of all this to national health and even survival, then they must believe—mustn’t they?—that we are headed off a cliff.

The term "conservatism" needs a precise definition. It IS NOT just hanging on to or pining away for "what used to be" as the article seems to veer close to at times, it the idea that "Ideas Have Consequences" and for humanity, what really counts are ideas, principles, values, meaning, culture, truth and wisdom. I've spent a lot of text on it over the years -- here are 10 principles that are at least a decent summary.

Whatever the reason for the contradiction, there can be no doubt that there is a contradiction. To simultaneously hold conservative cultural, economic, and political beliefs—to insist that our liberal-left present reality and future direction is incompatible with human nature and must undermine society—and yet also believe that things can go on more or less the way they are going, ideally but not necessarily with some conservative tinkering here and there, is logically impossible. 

Let’s be very blunt here: if you genuinely think things can go on with no fundamental change needed, then you have implicitly admitted that conservatism is wrong. Wrong philosophically, wrong on human nature, wrong on the nature of politics, and wrong in its policy prescriptions. Because, first, few of those prescriptions are in force today. Second, of the ones that are, the left is busy undoing them, often with conservative assistance. And, third, the whole trend of the West is ever-leftward, ever further away from what we all understand as conservatism.

Decius is painfully close to the realization that I have had -- "We aren't in America anymore Toto", and in fact, neither whatever it is, nor Europe, is working very well. We part ways on the notion that the function of culture and government is to be "compatible with human nature". In my view, and I believe in the view of Burke, the Founding Fathers, and "conservatism", human nature is flawed and the result of a culture that is merely "compatible" with that nature will be significantly and probably fatally flawed as well.

As I've quoted to excess, in the words of John Adams, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other". The religion he had in mind, Christianity, does not say "I'm OK, you're OK, if it feels good do it".

How have the last two decades worked out for you, personally? If you’re a member or fellow-traveler of the Davos class, chances are: pretty well. If you’re among the subspecies conservative intellectual or politician, you’ve accepted—perhaps not consciously, but unmistakably—your status on the roster of the Washington Generals of American politics. Your job is to show up and lose, but you are a necessary part of the show and you do get paid. To the extent that you are ever on the winning side of anything, it’s as sophists who help the Davoisie oligarchy rationalize open borders, lower wages, outsourcing, de-industrialization, trade giveaways, and endless, pointless, winless war.

I need to devote more time to the "Davos class". The quick synapsis is that these are "the top 2,500 people" on the planet (by their estimation) and they know what would really be best for the rest of us. I cover a little more of "Davos Man" here.  Since Reagan, semi-real conservatism has returned to the position of the Washington Generals (the team that always loses to the Harlem Globetrotters).

This is insane. This is the mark of a party, a society, a country, a people, a civilization that wants to die. Trump, alone among candidates for high office in this or in the last seven (at least) cycles, has stood up to say: I want to live. I want my party to live. I want my country to live. I want my people to live. I want to end the insanity.

Go visit Ireland, Germany, England, or likely pretty much any other country on the globe. They are DAMNED PROUD to be Irish, English, German, etc -- and willing to tell you about it! If Trump manages to win, I believe that is why. There are a whole lot of people living in BOistan that actually LOVED America, and at least want to imagine that they can recover it! Some of them even believe it could be "Great again"! Which brings us to the other article linked above -- a rather long Atlantic piece lamenting that idea that anyone with enough education to write, would be writing something in support of Trump!

The essay is an attempt to change the minds of conservatives who refuse to support the GOP nominee. It doubles as a barely disguised rejection of conservatism itself, stoking panic in hopes that conservatives embrace what is essentially right-leaning authoritarianism. And it begins with an overwrought metaphor about the passengers on one of the planes hijacked during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The Atlantic definition of "conservatism" dovetails rather nicely with the Washington Generals metaphor from Decius -- the Atlantic wants "conservatives" that "win" by agreeing with the Atlantic, but primarily just lose -- quietly, and with the proper bows and scrapes to the Davos ruling class.

Even so, the apocalyptic rhetoric of Hewitt and Prager is forgivable in comparison to the more dangerous ideas put forth by Decius and elevated by the Claremont Institute. Decius is rejecting the adequacy of a Constitutional framework that survived a British invasion, slavery, the Civil War, the Great War, the rise of fascism and Communism, Jim Crow––and that will obviously survive four years of Hillary Clinton.

Decius and the Atlantic author seem to agree that "America" survived the IRS being used against political opponents with nobody prosecuted, immigration policy being issued by proclamation from the oval office, being forced to buy health insurance was a "tax" and the executive spending billions that were not appropriated by congress was now just fine.

In my view, that IS NOT "America" because it is not a nation of laws rather than men. It didn't survive 8 years of BO, so what Decius seems to fear, and the Atlantic author seems to think is impossible, has already come to pass for me.

The Flight 93 column is well worth reading in it's entirety. The Atlantic one, not so much. In my world, America is already ended -- better choose a fascist that will have a lot of opposition, and that is CLEARLY Trump!

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Drugged, Drunk, or Sick?

Hillary's Bombing Response: Was She Drugged, Drunk or Just Sleepy? | Sunshine State News | Florida Political News:

So even though she calls it a "bombing", when asked about Trump calling it a "bombing", she indicates we should "wait until we know more". How many times do we have to say "support the first responders"?

In these days of the internet, hiding things just isn't as easy as it used to be!



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Jason Falconer, Michael Brown, Heroes (St Cloud)

Jason Falconer, Minnesota Hero, Shows Importance of Firearm Training, Protection | National Review:

Jason Falconer is the Concealed Carry permit holder that ended a pretty obvious Jihadi stabbing rampage in St Cloud MN. I say pretty obvious because the attacker made a reference to "Allah" during the attack and asked someone if they were "Muslim". Governor Dayton and Public Radio have not been able to come up with any possible motive for the rampage, or "tragic incident" ...

"I implore citizens of St. Cloud, and really, citizens throughout Minnesota to rise above this tragic incident and remember our common humanity, and our shared citizenship, and our shared desire to live together peacefully and constructively for the benefit of ourselves, our families and communities," Dayton said.

Here we are, all sharing this wonderful "shared desire", and somebody goes off and starts stabbing people and talking about "Allah" and "Muslim" for no reason at all -- but clearly the attack is completely unrelated to "Allah" and "Muslims".



We all know the name of Michael Brown -- the young black choir boy who was executed in cold blood while holding his hands up and saying "don't shoot"! The horror of this racist execution shocked the nation and started the "Black Lives Matter" organization. Brown's mother has written a book about his execution and the fact that white people created a bunch of lies about the incident -- she was on stage at the Democratic Convention this past summer. 



In the real world, Michael Brown was a huge kid living the thug life who knocked over a convenience store for a few cigars on, then fractured in bone in the officers face trying to get his gun away from him and ended up fatally shot -- it was investigated all the way up in the BO administration and the black Attorney General and the black President went with the "made up white folks story".



Jason Falconer will be pretty much unknown and St Cloud will be forgotten because it doesn't fit any narrative that is useful to "The Party" (TP-D) and it's wholly owned media. The linked article is well worth a read. We have imported and grown more than  enough Muslims already for us to have an increasing number of bombings, shootings, stabbings, etc where "Allah" is mentioned -- even thought TP is careful to tell us that "Islam has nothing to do with it".



It turns out that the mall at which the incident happened is SUPPOSED to be a "gun free zone", and technically, Falconer was breaking the law by carrying. I'm guessing that fact will get VERY little coverage, but why not?



Well, because the TP narrative is;

More guns make people less safe. You are safer in a  place with a sign that says "no guns" than you are in a place without such a sign. People that think a gun could possibly make them safer are being mislead by the NRA and the gun industry.   

Islam is a religion of peace and there is nothing we need to do to better control immigration of Muslims nor to watch any of the existing Muslim population for signs of radicalization. Anyone who suggests otherwise is racist, islamophobic, and not a real American.

We all know the narrative, and that narrative will go on -- just like Black Lives Matter and the "Michael Brown was a victim" narrative. Those are TP narratives -- they keep blacks in the TP vote column at something like a 95% rate. BOistan is run by TP, their narratives win.



"Heroism" is not something that TP is comfortable with. It smacks of individualism and individual training, action and responsibility. TP is about BIG government, big bureaucracy, "you didn't build that", collectivism, "Stronger Together". "Heroism" to TP is about things like your sexual preference or your gender -- "being open and honest", "standing up for your rights", "speaking out against Trump" ... that sort of thing.



Guys like Falconer are not something to be encouraged at all, and in fact, are downright scary! Oh, TP may say a couple nice things for a bit because they feel they HAVE to, but their narrative is still "gun free zones" and eventually a gun free country.



Michael Brown is a TP "hero". Jason Falconer is a name to be forgotten ASAP.



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Hillary, Sid and Birtherism

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article102354777.html

Nixon had Hunt, Colson and Liddy -- "The Plumbers", Hillary has Sidney Blumenthal -- that we know of, the Clinton Crime Family (CCF) is a lot more secretive than Nixon was, and at least 10x as paranoid. Hey, Nixon never had ANYONE to compare with "Commander Cue-ball", drag a $50 bill through a trailer park James Carville.

Unlike Benghazi, nobody died in Watergate, and there was just a little tape erased rather than THOUSANDS of emails.

So Trump says Hillary started "the birther thing" -- and there are at least two sources that agree. Not that we are likely to hear much about either.

I'd say that BO -- or a "clerical error" started "the birther thing". Here is HuffPo explaining the fact that a publishers memo for BO's book "Dreams From My Fathers" listed his birthplace as Kenya.  Maybe the publisher was owned by Trump so it was all part of a conspiracy to elect a president so bad  that Trump could take over and blow up the world!

Man that Trump guy is EVIL! I wonder if he has a white cat?

Just imagine if W had been a Democrat and the whole "W was AWOL" -- or whatever the problem with his record as a fighter pilot was supposed to be, and Dan Rather eventually admitted that "heck, I guess he served honorably in the National Guard just like his discharge says".

Not that I'm waiting around for that, but really, how stupid does the media really think we are?

If Fox News had forged a Kenyan birth certificate, got caught, and Bill O'Reily had been forced to resign over the debacle, I'd say "even steven".

The Donald just played them like a fiddle, and they apparently can't even figure out that he is pulling their strings!

Hillary Equal Opportunity Thief

Exclusive: Hillary Clinton Campaign Systematically Overcharging Poorest Donors | | Observer: 

Everyone knows about The Clinton Fund -- Funds, for Clintons, but even her supposedly legit campain steals from her hapless small time donors. The only "access" involved in their small donations is for her campaign to illegally siphon extra money out of their accounts -- and we know that the Clintons are all about money and power!



This isn't new behavior, she did it in her first campaign as well.

"The New York Times reported in 2007 that Clinton’s first presidential campaign had to refund and subtract hundreds of thousands of dollars from its first-quarter total often because donors’ credit cards were charged twice. Additionally, it was reported that Clinton had to refund a stunning $2.8 million in donations, three times more than the $900K President Barack Obama’s campaign refunded."

What a wonderful woman -- shaking down sheiks for 10's of millions of dollars on one hand, while stealing from poor old grandmas with the other!



Hildebeast is an equal opportunity thief! I guess that is what "equal opportunity" has always meant to "The Party" (TP-D).

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Godless Cultural Suicide

Western Culture – Moral Suicide | National Review:

Just read it -- and weep, if you have soul. If you have no soul, you are not likely don't read this blog anyway ... I assume this "decline" seems positive to you, so masturbation on a public street is a "step forward".

I'll include the close, but it is short, sad, and worth realizing that we threw it all away. As I've said elsewhere, Christianity is growing in China, South America, Russia and Africa. I expect the Blessing of the Lord will bring one or all of those places to become the locus of goodness in the world.

There is no way to prove that God exists. But what is provable is what happens when societies stop believing in God. They commit suicide.

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Fallon Trump Ruffle, TP Media Control Fail

People Are Justifiably Infuriated With How Jimmy Fallon Handled Trump | Huffington Post:



You have to LOVE the editors note from the Huffpo story:

"Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S."

No real need to respond to any of them, but the last is especially pungent  -- he promised to ban new immigrants, UNTIL we could figure out how to vet them. Something that European countries are now doing realizing they imported a bunch of terrorists. "Serial liar"? The left often claims there is no such thing as "truth", so what would a "lie" be again?



If Trump's hair had turned out to be a toupee or obvious hair weave, or a solid sprayed chunk, or anything remotely embarrassing, I suppose Fallon would be a hero. Sad that the world can't work so you have absolute control over EVERYTHING -- the left pines away for the day (likely not far away) where they have a 2-min delay on the national news feeds, cut them off if anything like Hillary's stumble happens, and claim it never happened -- under penalty of interrogation, torture, concentration camp, or death to any that claim otherwise.



They pine away for the level of control of old National Socialist Germany, USSR or today's China. Shouldn't Google only show you GOOD things about Hillary and bad about Trump? People can get confused otherwise!



So apparently Trump came off like a regular guy on the Fallon show, and after all the abuse of his hair from MANY quarters, it looked pretty darned real ... so Fallon is a goat with TP.



How sad. So the Huffpo pines away for Letterman, and no doubt Pravda.





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Divided

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/in-virginia-a-state-of-political-separation-most-clinton-voters-dont-know-any-trump-voters-and-vice-versa/2016/09/14/f617a2b8-75e8-11e6-b786-19d0cb1ed06c_story.html

Joshua McDonald, a conservative Christian who lives in reliably Republican territory between Washington and Richmond, supports Donald Trump for president. He doesn’t know a soul who’s for Hillary Clinton. 

Ellen Tobey, an office manager in the liberal college town of Charlottesville, will vote for Clinton. She knows of no close friends or relatives planning to push the button for Trump.

We increasingly live in a country where we don't know each other. People sort themselves by their political leanings and refuse to associate with those who think differently from them, and we increasingly think that is OK. Our humanity can be reduced to our worldview, and those that are not of our tribe are not worth knowing.

When the vast majority believed that this vale of tears was only a "preseason" for eternity, such an attitude was simply unacceptable. Family relationships, community proximity, traditions, culture, "good fellows well met" were FAR more important than the myriad of petty political squabbles that were ultimately of no real importance. But no longer.

Somewhere on the road to supposed "utopia" of every man being his own priest, philosopher and bartender, we became islands. Once, "no man was an island", but now we increasingly are -- not only "islands", but our own planets, or even universes. The pain of trying to understand those that could think differently is simply too much to contemplate.

We were once a "melting pot" -- with a set of shared values and an identity that surpassed our own perspective. No longer -- now our "tribe" is all there is, and "the other" must be shunted aside lest we are "triggered" to attempt to defend our fragile tribal identity.

Our sexual preferences are "out of the closet", but our fragile world view is completely closeted and confined to our ghetto of like minded tribe members -- and this is "progress".

BOistan is a house completely divided -- and it has fallen.

Flags, Songs and the Constitution

Obama: Kaepernick ‘exercising his constitutional right to make a statement’ - POLITICO:



Unsurprisingly, BO finds Colin Kaepernick's "protest" to be just fine.

“My understanding at least is he’s exercising his constitutional right to make a statement. I think there’s a long history of sports figures doing so,” he said.

Indeed ... so would a Confederate Flag be similarly protected? How about someone who doesn't believe that gay "marriage" is a "right" not baking somebody a cake? Or even someone so backward that they believe men should use men's bathrooms and women use women's?



The Constitution was once about EVERYONE having the right to their views -- even Illinois Nazis. The idea of a "pluralistic society" was that people were allowed to think differently, and it went deeper than the "law". Independent and ESPECIALLY unpopular thought was part of America.



We no longer live there.

If Kaepernick wants to wants to "protest", he certainly can, but nothing about "freedom of speech" means "freedom from consequence". The NFL could easily tell him that if he wants to take a seat, he can stay seated -- as in not come on the field of play again.

What we have now is a country where "The Party" decides what is acceptable speech and what is not. Increasingly, the consequences of that speech are handed down by party leaders, and the vast majority of the cowed populace follows in lock step. They await their "signals" from on high and they follow compliantly like the sheep they have chosen to be.

The don't want to get a label -- racist, homophobe, islamophobe, denier, etc because those labels have teeth. They can lose friends, family, even their jobs. Independence is no longer valued -- compliance is valued, and independence is seen as dangerous. Something that needs to be removed from sight. If TP says what you do is OK, it is ... if not, you suffer the consequences.



BO and company have regularly used the Constitution as toilet paper -- what counts as a "constitution" today is essentially "whatever TP says it is". They invoke it when they feel like it, and ignore it completely when they don't .



So in BOistan, you stand, sit, talk or shut up at the pleasure of TP -- and unless there is a miracle soon, that is the way it is going to be for a very long time.



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I've Got the Blue Dress Pneumonia

Hillary Clinton Health: Dishonesty Is Now Established | National Review:

A good article on how the Clinton lie machine and the MSM create the falseness that swirls around the Clinton Crime Family.

It is interesting to revisit the story of the blue dress, since that one went through a couple of "spin cycles".

1. Dress rumor came out, Clinton camp panicked, hunkered down. 
2. Time passed while Monica negotiated to get immunity from the fact she had perjured herself saying "there was no relationship". The dress was part of that negotiation. 
3. Clinton camp decides there is no presidentially stained dress, thinks it is a great idea to use this "crazy story" against the "vast right-wing conspiracy". 
4. Dress shows up, Clinton credibility shot, BUT, "new story" spun out  -- poor Slick Willie was "entrapped" by Monica -- 21 year old intern "takes advantage" of supposed leader of free world. Being a Clinton means you NEVER take responsibility! 

We see the same pattern here -- anyone who claimed her health was an issue was "a conspiracy theorist", crazy, sexist, etc ... oh, OOPS ... 

A nation not propagandized to the level where 90% of the folks are afraid to utter anything not in lock-step with "The Party" and it's MSM, would laugh out loud at the keystone cop Clintons idiotic crime family. Sure, they kill some people -- but so did Charlie Manson, and that certainly didn't make him a genius! 

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Hildebeast Avoids Water

The inside story of Clinton’s sick day - POLITICO:



I've joked about Hillary and the Wicked Witch of the West for years -- but it turns out that I may have been right. No matter how the press tries to humanize her, the stories of her tirades, nasty language, browbeating staff and sometimes actual violence like throwing things have become rather well known even with a media fully intent to hide her negatives.



Now we find she doesn't like to drink WATER??!! It is so unbelievable as to make one question the sanity of reality. A woman who is supposed to be a legitimate contender for the presidency of a nation of over 300 million people is so out of touch with her humanity that she doesn't want to drink WATER and her staff struggles to get her to do so ????

"The real issue is chronic dehydration, exacerbated by her lung problem and Clinton’s reluctance to drink water, which has become a source of tension with her staff. “She won’t drink water, and you try telling Hillary Clinton she has to drink water,” said a person in her orbit – who described a frenzied rehydration mission that included multiple bottles of water and Gatorade."

When a nation forsakes God, it is given over to the perversion of it's own desires -- even to the point of avoiding water it appears. Other than trying to avoid breathing, is there ANYTHING more unnatural than a human who avoids water?



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A Sowell That Matters

Thomas Sowell: Education, and other racial issues | New Hampshire:



Just go read it, it is brilliant. I've made attempts to discuss all these issues in this blog, but I lack Sowell's intellect, education, writing talent and standing as a black man to discuss them. He covers minimum wage, police interaction and education with a force I will never muster.

A teaser:

Despite all the dire social problems in many black ghettos across the country, problems that are used to excuse widespread academic failures in ghetto schools, somehow ghetto schools run by KIPP and Success Academy turn out students whose academic performances match or exceed the performances in suburban schools whose kids come from high-income families. 

What is even more astonishing is that charter schools are being opposed, not only by teachers’ unions who think that schools exist to provide guaranteed jobs for their members, but also by politicians, including black politicians who loudly proclaim that “black lives matter.”

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Parasitic Worm Named After Obama

Top Feel Good Story of the Day | Power Line:

No, really ... truth is often stranger than fiction.

Other presidents have mountains named after them. They’re the namesakes for high schools, boulevards, space centers, libraries, airports, and elk. George Washington has the capital of our country named for him, for crying out loud. 

But how many of them have the dubious honor of being the namesake for a parasitic worm?

No word on if the parasitic worm finds this objectionable -- talk about only caring what our own species thinks about things!



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