Politics That Makes Me Cry

10 Reasons Left-Wingers Cut Trump Voters From Their Lives - Dennis Prager:

I don't think there is a Christian or conservative parent that doesn't live in fear of the contents of this article if they have non-Christian children. In America, the nation I grew up in, the idea that children would keep their parents from their grandchildren over politics was unthinkable. In BOistan, it is very real.

In my current line of work I deal with people who were abused by parents with mental illness, substance abuse, and other issues. Forgiveness is not always possible -- but it is recommended, and with a lot more scientific backing than even global warming. If you don't forgive, you are letting the person who you don't forgive live rent free in your brain -- as bad as you may hurt them, you are hurting yourself worse. We live in a broken world, and we all know it has gotten FAR more broken in the last eight years (look at suicides, addiction and crime numbers).

For a Christian, we know it is a hurt that will live on for the prodigal in eternity if they cannot heed the yearning to come home. I know God will wipe my tears away some day, and I also know that I will continue to cry and pray a lot in this vale of tears.

Just go and read it ... it makes me weep for how we allowed our schools to be totally destroyed and created a system that indoctrinates fragile minds rather than building them into mature lifelong learners eager to be independent, caring,  discerning adults. A sample ...

9. The left tends toward the totalitarian. And every totalitarian ideology seeks to weaken the bonds between children and parents. The left seeks to dilute parental authority and replace it with school authority and government authority. So when your children sever their bond with you because you voted for Trump, they are acting like the good totalitarians the left has molded.

Prager happens to be Jewish, conservative, and a model of erudite intellect. Anything he writes is well worth the time to read. This one is way short and WAY worth it!

'via Blog this'

Replace Manly With Mature

Trump Apologies: Why the Media Goes Crazy | National Review:

The linked article needs to do a "replace all" of "manly" with "mature". One of the items sadly lacking in modern discourse is the idea of "maturity'. I used to hate that word -- because I was immature.

Maturity has a lot of aspects that used to be understood. The ability to recognize and deal with emotion, while at the same time being able to moderate it with reason and logic.

Perspective is another critical aspect. It isn't all about "me", or even "my group/tribe" -- there are ALWAYS larger issues. One of those issues is time. "The good" and "the moral" is timeless -- they apply a hundred years (or even a thousand) years in the past or in the future, and they apply NOW.

Trump seems to understand this, but the media don’t like forgiveness. It has that icky association with traditional morality, and it leaves the dirt, the most sensational parts of the story, in the past.

It brings to mind a quote from Mahatma Ghandi: “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

The dominant elite is built on weakness -- so they desire to use force to achieve their means. It is very dangerous for the weak to use force, but they tend to not understand that until it is too late.

'via Blog this'

Setting The Clear Election Victory Bar

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/442503/hillary-clinton-2020-because-america-hasnt-suffered-enough

Other than giving Jill Stein the most media coverage she has ever had, the biggest thing the recount effort does is set a new bar for "honoring a clear victory". It used to be that an electoral college landslide like what Trump pulled off would silence the most obtuse of election critics.

For a little history:

Recounts also typically don’t change the margin by an amount that would be large enough to affect the result of this year’s presidential election. The mean swing between the top two candidates in the 27 recounts was 282 votes, with a median of 219. The biggest swing came in Florida’s 2000 presidential election recount, when Al Gore cut 1,247 votes off George W. Bush’s lead, ultimately not enough to flip the state to his column.

So if these recounts were to have an effect, they would need to flip multiple states, all won by at least ten thousand votes -- more like 70K in Pennsylvania.

Trump was roundly chastised for saying that he wold "recognize a clear victory". Formerly, that would be something like a couple K votes in one state based on the Gore precedent.

No longer. What is a "clear victory" now? Clinton (or Stein, or Soros, or whomever) would need to flip MULTIPLE states, each with margins well outside the old high water mark.

But never mind. There is now a new bar for "honoring an election".

Oh, and which side is it that claimed prior to losing that "fraud is not a factor in US elections"?

There is NOTHING but politics and "spin" for "standards" in BOistan, and the wages of that is Trump.

Imagine how much the Democrats are going to enjoy the precedents they set by passing BOcare with "reconciliation" so they only needed 51 votes and establishing "The nuclear option" in the Senate for everything but SCOTUS during the reign of Harry Reid.

What goes around does indeed come around. Since Trump's margin was not a "clear victory", there really is no future standard for what a candidate can legitimately cry foul on.

Sailing The SS Mondale

Officials Behind $500 Million Vikings' Stadium Subsidy Get Free Luxury Box Tickets for Family and Friends - Hit & Run : Reason.com:

The only thing surprising here is that the Star Trib actually did an article on this little boondoggle.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that the six members of the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority (MSFA), the quasi-government agency created in 2012 to oversee the public subsidies for the building of U.S. Bank Stadium, get free tickets to two lower-level luxury suites for all events held there. Even though taxpayers covered more than half of the cost of the $1.1 billion stadium, which opened earlier this year, the public is being kept in the dark about who occupies those 36 seats and the adjoining luxury suites during Vikings home games and other events.

We are all rent seekers, and we ALL like to get paid. Nothing unusual there -- most of us don't get Vikings luxury boxes in payment, but then very few of us are named "Mondale" or descent from Wendy Anderson!

There is zero surprise that Ted Mondale would figure that a $20K+ a year benefit is highly deserved -- as he says, "he works hard on game days", and so it is important to have some of his family and friends share in those difficult times. I know my family and friends always enjoyed coming into IBM to help me work on a severity 1 problem! My brother in law pumps 50 million gallons of hog manure a year -- the family and friends are always fighting for a better spot to help out when a ripe new shed is all set to go!

The Vikes stadium us a glass $1.1 billion representation of a Viking ship. Glass is a good metaphor -- it is a lot like an NFL offense with no O-line.

The Star-Tribune says they were given the names of 12 current and former public officials who attended and paid for suite tickets to NFL games. After the initial request for information was made, several other officials—including the mayor of Minneapolis and her husband, several state commissioners, Minneapolis' city attorney, and city council members—also wrote checks reimbursing the board for the tickets they had apparently used.

I wonder why they wrote those checks? No doubt they had just "forgot" and finally got around to it.

The article is well worth the read -- one can only imagine how hard Ted worked on getting the multiple billion dollar light rail that covers a full third of it's OPERATING cost each year!

It's really all OK ... he's a MONDALE!

'via Blog this'

A Real Terrorist Exposes George W Bush (WaPo)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-horrifying-look-into-the-mind-of-911s-mastermind-in-his-own-words/2016/11/28/bf5827a8-b575-11e6-b8df-600bd9d38a02_story.html?utm_term=.50a741a7b9c3

Hee we have it right from the mouth of KSM, one of the honorable muslims falsely tortured by the Bush administration.

“Then he looked at me and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’” Mitchell writes. “KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.” He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned “by the ferocity and swiftness of George W. Bush’s response.”

America certainly had more coming that just 9-11, and there you have it! W and his violent measures prevented the "justice" that KSM and his Muslim brothers were intent to carry out. Thank goodness the left and our media rose up against W, or the whole justifiable terrorism industry might have been wiped out entirely like the USSR. Who knows what horrors a strong America might be capable of! Heck, they might even be able to put in a pipeline on their own land!

Nothing very new at all here for readers of my blog, just corroboration that when Islamic terrorists say "We want to convert you to Islam or kill you", what they mean is that they want to convert us to Islam or kill us. I understand that is hard for leftists who keep saying "we want freedom", but keep trying to jail people for trying to be free to bake a cake or not bake a cake to understand, but sometimes people DO actually mean what they say. (another hard to understand concept for the left)

But perhaps the most riveting part of the book is what KSM told Mitchell about what inspired al-Qaeda to attack the United States — and the U.S. response he expected. Today, some on both the left and the right argue that al-Qaeda wanted to draw us into a quagmire in Afghanistan — and now the Islamic State wants to do the same in Iraq and Syria. KSM said this is dead wrong. Far from trying to draw us in, KSM said that al-Qaeda expected the United States to respond to 9/11 as we had the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut — when, KSM told Mitchell, the United States “turned tail and ran.” He also said he thought we would treat 9/11 as a law enforcement matter, just as we had the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the USS Cole in Yemen — arresting some operatives and firing a few missiles into empty tents, but otherwise leaving him free to plan the next attack.

Strange, al-Qaeda expected the US to behave has they had behaved before.

KSM explained that large-scale attacks such as 9/11 were “nice, but not necessary” and that a series of “low-tech attacks could bring down America the same way ‘enough disease-infected fleas can fell an elephant.’ ” KSM “said jihadi-minded brothers would immigrate into the United States” and “wrap themselves in America’s rights and laws” until they were strong enough to rise up and attack us. “He said the brothers would relentlessly continue their attacks and the American people would eventually become so tired, so frightened, and so weary of war that they would just want it to end.”
“Eventually,” KSM said, “America will expose her neck for us to slaughter.”

Did the Russians hack the CIA and tell Donald Trump that Islamic refugees were a danger to America or something? Well, no -- anyone that talked to a few Muslims from the middle east would know that KSM is just being honest. Just because Hillary is evil and lies all the time doesn't mean that everyone who is evil always lies. Many Muslims honestly believe in what they are doing and believe it should be done openly. They are proud of what they are doing. It would be like the 5 or ten proud Hillary supporters (if you could find them).

Are there any "liberals" that think like that? It seems obvious that "liberals" don't actually believe in "freedom" nor "democracy" since they are doing crazy recounts and talking about the Electoral College voting in someone other than Trump.

It's a shame that W and company waterboarded KSM, broke his resistance, and got him to work with us ... otherwise there could have been some more really exciting attacks like 9-11 that folks like BO's old pastor Wright could point to and let us know how much we deserved them!

KSM also described for Mitchell many of his as yet unconsummated ideas for future attacks, the terrifying details of which Mitchell does not reveal for fear they might be implemented. “If we ever allow him to communicate unmonitored with the outside world,” Mitchell writes, “he could easily spread his deviously simple but potentially deadly ideas.”

Trump The Sociopath

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/opinion/the-sociopaths-diary.html?WT.mc_id=2016-KWP-AUD_DEV&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=AUDDEVREMARK&kwp_0=198245&kwp_4=773630&kwp_1=388657

During the BO administration I speculated on wether BO may be a psychopath, the author of the column seems to think that Trump is a sociopath, but I'm pretty sure he is just mixed up.

Sociopaths have a hard time hiding their sociopathy from those around them -- they have a hard time having an inner circle of people that really like and admire them. Like BO and Hillary for example. From what we know about Trump, he isn't a sociopath, if he is anything, he would be a psychopath.

My speculation on BO was in 2014 after he had been president for 6 years. It is nice to see the NY Times being fair minded and diagnosing Trump prior to him taking office. Campaigning and governing are often different (they weren't for BO), campaigning always looks a little psychopathic.

The standard psychopath would be "smooth, no drama, very cool, always the smartest guy in the room". That sounds like someone we have had experience with -- but not so much like Trump.

But Trump certainly COULD be a psychopath -- anyone that wants to be president (or brain surgeon, or NFL QB, or fighter pilot ...) certainly has many characteristics that are going to at least border on narcissism and even psychopathy. Both pathologies lack empathy for others, lack much emotion at all, see themselves as "all there is" and lack any sense of conscience". One of the huge markers of the psychopath is that they are ALWAYS going to "get even", and they ESPECIALLY like it if it is in a way where only THEY know that they accomplished it. It isn't really very hard to look at BO relative to Hillary and wonder on that front.

What IS interesting about the column is look at what supposedly Trump thinks of BOistan:

Never had a problem with the press. They don’t get it. I’ve crashed the system. I’m using the press, every one of them! Schwartz did have one phrase I really loved in my book. He said “I play to people’s fantasies” by using “truthful hyperbole.” What he meant is I make stuff up. 

Sure. Nobody cares. They want to dream. They want a spectacle. They want gold and towers. They want me to get tough. Fact-checkers! Is that even a job?

I completely agree. The press constantly creates false narratives, and Trump used that against them -- he is using it now. The press is supporting recounts against Trump based on no evidence of any reason for a recount, so Trump counters that millions voted illegally with no evidence. If the name of the game is "no evidence required", if one side can base actual actions on the no evidence, then the other can certainly make claims without evidence! "Facts"? Get serious.

Both our leadership and at least parts of our press used to ascribe to actually being educated and caring about ACTUAL truth -- not "97% of scientists" polling sorts of "truth", but Biblical, Platonic, Classical historical TRUTH. The mass of people have always wanted to "dream, have spectacle, gold and towers" -- since Babylon, Rome with "bread and circuses". What the author of the column pokes fun at is actually the known truth of history and human nature, but he fails to realize it.

That’s easy. I know what Americans want. They don’t want truth. They want excitement, disruption. They want to be led. They want authority. They want victories. They want parades. They want a wall at the Mexican border — so let them think I really might build one! You think they’re happy with Obama’s managed decline? Give me a break!

When you take away truth, culture, values the sacred, the Constitution, the separation of powers, that is EXACTLY what you get -- raw unvarnished human nature, and it wants "excitement, disruption, authority, VICTORY"! Promise them they will have an extra $2,500 a year in their pockets and be able to keep the healthcare they have now, or promise them a wall on the Mexican border.

So as I've pointed out, we are in a dangerous place. Our "elite" doesn't know the difference between sociopath and psychopath, and is unwilling to even look it up. If the elite cared about truth, culture, history, the sacred, etc, we would have never had BO and Bill Clinton would have been impeached.

Our founders well understood the dangers of what kinds of leadership one is likely to get in an office like president, so they produced a written constitution, separated the powers and LIMITED government so the possible mischief was as contained as possible.

Over the past 100 years we have shredded that document and the separation and grown a leviathan government so massive it makes Godzilla seem like a gerbil.

Yes, we are in grave danger -- but we have been there since at least 2008, and we DID pick the only option that we could guarantee would be heavily opposed.

The True Believer, Eric Hoffer

https://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-Thoughts-Movements-Perennial/dp/0060505915

The subject book is a classic published in 1951 by a rather interesting gentleman who was once homeless as well as being a longshoreman, self taught, read massively, and went on to win the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983.

He believes that all mass movements are interchangeable in that they are driven by the same human needs. He considers the Roman Empire, Christianity, Islam, the Reformation, the Puritans, the US revolution, the French revolution, the communist takeover of Russia, and others to be "interchangeable".

...the vigor and growth of a mass movement depend on it's capacity to evoke and satisfy the passion for self-renunciation. When a mass movement begins to attract people who are interested in their individual careers, it is a sign that it has passed it's vigorous stage. 

He argues that mass movements depend on the "frustrated". Those that see their lives as somehow "spoiled" and they crave a "new life", a "rebirth". The mass movement let's them lose their spoiled selves in a cause.

"Those who clamor for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society."  

"Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority. Equality without freedom creates a more stable social pattern than than freedom without equality" 

In the old USSR there was a lot of "equality" and the small cadre of the "elite" had freedom. Here, at least in BOistan, the constant cry of the supposed mass was for "equality", while the "elite" like Hillary were able to be free from even the law.

"The poor who are are members of a compact group -- a tribe, a closely knit family, a compact racial or religious group -- are relatively free from frustration and almost immune to a mass movement." 

Therefore, those trying to move the mass into their column attack the family, the church and the community and attempt to balkanize races and other identity groups so people are "all alone" except in relation to the mass movement.

"The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority of the middle."

By "best" he doesn't mean "morally best" -- he means powerful, educated, those with resources. "The elite". The elite are "true believers" because they will get the power, the poor are the "true believers" because the elite have promised them the spoils. The "silent majority" are a bunch of stooges still working hard, trying to keep their families together in the face of attacks by the elite, often going to church. You know them -- "The Basket of Deploreables".

"The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole -- the church, party, nation -- and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in loose and relatively free society". 

.... when the frustrated congregate in a mass movement, the air is heavy laden with suspicion. there is prying and spying ...  

The surprising thing is that this pathological mistrust within the ranks leads not to dissension, but to strict conformity. Knowing themselves continually watched, the faithful strive to escape suspicion by adhering zealously to prescribed behavior and opinion. Strict orthodoxy is as much the result of mutual suspicion as of ardent faith.   

I could go on quoting at length -- it is full of them. He was writing assuming that communism was likely implacable and would nearly certainly "win", but as always (in his mind), it's success would breed complacency in it's upper ranks which would finally be detected as weakness by the masses and result in a new mass movement.

Hoffer considers mass movements to "just be" -- Luther, Hitler, Stalin, Cromwell, George Washington, Jesus, Mohammad -- all "merely mass movement leaders". Sorting out the details on "good or bad" is not his real purpose -- just pointing out that the "active phase" as the movement is growing is "messy", maybe even "evil" (one could think of it like childbirth), but what comes after varies a lot.

I think it is clear that the left in this country has been on a sputtering attempt to create a mass movement in the US since at least FDR, and probably Wilson.

The most decisive for the effectiveness of a mass movement leader seem to be audacity, fanatical faith in a holy cause, an awareness of the importance of the close-knit collectivity, and above all, the ability to evoke fervent devotion in a group of able lieutenants. 

 The biggest thing missing in Bill Clinton, Obama and Hillary was "fervent able lieutenants".  There were simply none to name. It is ironic that Nixon, Reagan and W all had their "fervent able lieutenants", but lacked a "holy cause" and certainly any concept of "close knit collectivity".

Trump? Well, it remains to be seen -- "Make America Great Again" isn't exactly 99 theses!

The book is a classic of political philosophy. As an atheist, Hoffer naturally discounts the idea that "Jesus is different", but as mass movements go, Christianity has been around a LONG time, and actually encourages it's adherents to be worthless but redeemed with infinite worth in Christ. They can "lose themselves" in Christ who is fully God and fully Man, without having to lose themselves in some "mass movement" -- rather than "suspicion, prying and spying" (definitely a factor in hyper fundamentalist sects), they can be blood brothers, watching carefully for the log in their own eye, and being redeemed without losing themselves in some earthly "perfection".  It's only 170 pages long, and more meaty than I can cover in this blog length.

Well worth your time, highly recommended.

Krugman -- Coup Vs Just In Case

Paul Krugman Illustrates The Damaged Political Psyches Of The Left:

Conservatives (me included) have a terrible problem understanding how absolutely blatant and direct inconsistency is not disqualifying.

Got that? When a Republican challenges the results of an election, it’s a “coup.” When the loser is a Democrat, however, such a challenge is absolutely necessary, “just in case.” The next four years are not going to be kind to Paul Krugman and to people like him: they are going to discredit themselves even more thoroughly than they already have, all under the auspices of an insufferable, smarmy intellectual superiority. Can you imagine what it will be like for them when Trump wins a second time?

I'm certainly not ready to predict Trump will win in '20 -- it is not hard at all to imagine that he will have had enough of the pounding he is going to take and will retire to his towers, mansions and resorts. While the Clinton's grasp and claw for their next 100 million, and BO embarks on what I predict to be a money grab that will make the Clinton's seem frugal in comparison, even the lowest estimates of Trump's wealth put it in billionS plural. Obviously, given the "Clinton Fund", one of the big things the Clinton's were in the political game for was financial gain. Trump could be too -- but he as a bigger base to start from.

Former Enron advisor Paul Krugman is no stranger to massively incongruous positions. Any deficit under W was an economic disaster, a horrible example of incompetence and malfeasance, while under BO, all deficits -- even the 1.6 Trillion, were "much too tiny".

The point I disagree with on the article is that somehow gross inconsistency will suddenly become obvious to the masses and their positions will be discounted as a result. Based on past history, not likely.

'via Blog this'

Hypocrisy? Not A Liberal Possibility

Trump portrays Clinton as a hypocrite for recount effort - POLITICO:

I love the headline. THE GALL! Calling a "liberal" a hypocrite ... it can't be done! They are already certified to have no standards whatsoever, they are absolutely immune to charges of hypocrisy!

Then the article lists all the times that Hillary talked of the horror of questioning election results (as the Democrats did in '00 and '04), how she has already conceded, including saying in the concession speech that; "We have to accept the results and look to the future, Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead."

The recounts are of course NOT about changing the outcome of the election. They, and the meaningless "Hillary won the popular vote" stories are about casting a pall over the Trump presidency before he ever takes office. This is the way that "The Party" (TP-D) plays -- they don't accept ANY results, not even MASSIVE defeat in state races, congress and the senate.

'via Blog this'

Dowd: Her Little Basket of Deplorables

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/opinion/sunday/election-therapy-from-my-basket-of-deplorables.html?ref=opinion

Apparently Maureen's family is largely conservative -- poor woman. She lets her conservative brother write her column every T-Day, it is usually the best one of the year. It is largely a repeat of things I've written or posed already, but I include it largely for the "poor me" sympathy plea that a NY Times columnist that meets with the incoming president and obviously gets teased is willing to make. Kevin's column is good though if you want to go give it a read.

First I had to deal with the president-elect scolding. 

During his interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Donald Trump chided me twice for being too tough on him. 

Sitting next to our publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Trump invited everyone around the table to call him if they saw anything “where you feel that I’m wrong.” 

“You can call me, Arthur can call me, I would love to hear,” he said. “The only one who can’t call me is Maureen. She treats me too rough.”

Then I had to go home for Thanksgiving and deal with my family scolding me about the media misreading the country. I went cold turkey to eat hot turkey: no therapy dog, no weaving therapy, no yoga, no acupuncture, no meditation, no cry-in. 

The minute I saw my sister’s Trump champagne and a Cersei figurine as the centerpiece — my brother, Kevin, nicknamed Hillary “Cersei” during this year’s brutal game of thrones — I knew I wasn’t in a safe space. 

My little basket of deplorables, as I call my conservative family, gloated with Trump toasts galore, and Kevin presented me with his annual holiday column with an extra flourish. 

My colleague Paul Krugman tweeted Friday that “affluent, educated suburbanites” who voted for Trump are “fools.” What else is there to say, he asked. 

Well, here is what Kevin, an affluent, educated suburbanite, has to say in his column, titled an “Election Therapy Guide for Liberals”:

The Washington Post Oct 25, No Path To Trump Victory

There is no possible way Donald Trump’s team actually believes this is their path to 270 - The Washington Post: 

"But on Trump TV, viewers didn't get any of this “spin.” They just got the unvarnished truth, straight from the people responsible for getting Trump into striking distance: Trump’s in striking distance. On Nov. 8, I fully expect Trump TV to say that Trump actually won. After all, Conway said they would. Unequivocally."

For 38 years now, since I began to question the MSM, I've been mystified by why people still listen to them -- now, given Trump, I believe I finally understand.

ALWAYS CERTAIN, FREQUENTLY WRONG!

That is the key, but the element that Trump brings is that HE IS HIS OWN MEDIA.

When the WaPo is horrendously and totally wrong -- or BO is, or any part of "The Party" (TP-D), they simply "move on".  The linked column snarkly points out how "stupid" and "misleading" Trump's media is -- while they are naturally "completely truthful" and RIGHT!

But they were completely and totally WRONG! Never mind -- the readers of the WaPo still read and trust their reporting. The WaPo committed the same level of figurative outrage for an informations source as Trump would have were he to shoot someone in broad daylight in Times Square -- and as he said he would with his followers, the WaPo has gotten away with it!

So the total magic spell is "Always certain, and when wrong, LOOK AT THAT SQUIRREL!".

Both the MSM and Trump play this game constatntly. Today's media is built on !!!!!! BREAKING NEWS !!!!! .... !!!! THIS JUST IN !!!! .... the actual content is completely unimportant next to the shouting. Trump announces white supremacist for DHS!!! (Ben Carson) ;-) !!!!!

Since I've read both sides of news since '78, and believe that this life is only the pre-season for eternity, the MSM is "full of sound and fury signifying nothing". I'm firmly convinced that in order for our nation to return to greatness, we MUST build leadership with classical education that understands what the educated have understood for thousands of years:

• It's not about me or even us  (The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God)
• Both everything and nothing are about this moment. (right now is all we have, and it is a tiny piece of the always is, always was and always will be loaf of time) 
• Both I and we have a purpose, and the strengths to achieve that purpose. That is meaning. 

I stand by this being the Russian Roulette election -- we chose to take a shot with the Trump revolver rather than the Hillary semi-auto. At least there is some doubt in our future -- that was the best we could hope for given the 216 "moment".

'via Blog this'

Identity Politics To Blame?

The End of Identity Liberalism - The New York Times: 

The recriminations on the left continue, this article focuses on "divide and conquer" not working as well as they hoped.

"But how should this diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing."

"Distorted liberalism's message"?  I searched for any sense of what that message was supposed to be, and I believe I found the authors view here:

By the time they reach college many assume that diversity discourse exhausts political discourse, and have shockingly little to say about such perennial questions as class, war, the economy and the common good.

"Class, war, the economy and the common good". We've come a long way from "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness (purpose)". The "pursuit of happiness" is a HUGE mistake ... happiness is a SIDE EFFECT of doing what you were meant to do! I HIGHLY recommend Dennis Praeger's book, "Happiness Is A Serious Problem" on this topic.

The column is longer than it needs to be. It is human nature to want to be "moral" (or at least more moral than the next guy), and the main "morality" that the left thought they discovered was diversity -- feminists, blacks, hispanics, muslims, gays and most recently, the 58 genders of Facebook, became the heroes, replacing the founding fathers, religious saints, the successful, etc.

The basic liberal argument is "more free stuff" -- Bernie was certainly on that theme, and had Hillary and the DNC not cooked the books, he might well have beat her using the old standard lefty theme. Maybe not -- the last big dump of "free stuff", BOcare had shown itself to be VERY expensive to the us poor schmucks that had to PAY for the 20 million who got the BOcare for "free".

Given the number of people that I've personally been made aware of that are as MAD AS HELL that their insurance costs went up by thousands of dollars a year due to BOcare, I'd guess that for the 20 million votes BO bought with BOcare, he probably lost 20 million at least in people that had to pay dearly to purchase those votes.

BOcare broke one of the BIG Democrat rules -- rob from the UPPER quintile! Convince the bottom 4 quintiles that they really can get lots of free stuff and SOMEONE ELSE will pay. It's ok to try to make that sound as "moral" as you can ... "It's not FAIR that those people have all that money, so taking it at gunpoint is very "moral""-- but you don't want to get too detailed about that sort of moral posturing.

The nice thing about fake focus group "morality" is that you can change it with a memo -- the bad thing is that sometimes people catch on that it is just a bit shallow.

Probably better to return to the old standards of FREE STUFF, envy and OTHERS being responsible for everything bad / perceived inadequacies of the Democrat chosen group. Class warfare and envy are the staples of "liberalism" for a very good reason -- they work!

'via Blog this'

An Alternative 12-Step Response to Trump | PJ Media

An Alternative 12-Step Response to Trump | PJ Media:



Just go read it, short and worthy.



'via Blog this'

3rd Party Recount, The Candidate You Most Oppose

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/us/politics/vote-count-hillary-clinton-trump.html?_r=0&referer=

The linked article in the NY Times talks of the need for re-counts and possible "voting irregularities" now that Trump has won. I'm quite sure that the election was "rigged" in the same way it usually is -- but sometimes in a storm, even the rigging fails.

But that has not quieted Mrs. Clinton’s supporters, who see the inequity of her growing lead in the national popular vote, which is now more than two million votes, or 1.5 percent of all ballots cast, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which regularly updates its count as states continue to tally and to certify votes.

The popular vote discussion is like the Vikings arguing that it is unfair they lost to the Kitties on T-Day because they had the ball 31 min vs the Kitties 28 (time of possession). You can bet your bottom dollar that if football was played for time of possession vs points, it would be PLAYED DIFFERENTLY ... same with elections.

Isn't it just a TINY bit funny though to hear Democrats who were telling us that any sort of claim that US elections could be anything but completely fair was "crazy, dangerous, etc" -- and who typically, while fighting off the idea that people need IDs to vote claim that "there is no such thing as voter fraud"? Their only accidental act of consistency is to be consistently inconsistent! Favorite standard media/Democrat pre-election or voter ID quote "There is no voter fraud!".

EVERY human system has some level of corruption ("bezzle") in in it, I wrote one of my most read blogs on it was called "Tiger And The Bezzle". Since the entire election apparatus is mostly operated by government workers, and the "system" is tilted to allow fraud (no ID, mail in voting, etc), the highest percentage of the "bezzle" tilts left. It's always there, so it tends to be like "inflation / gravity / taxes" -- it just "IS", and has to be dealt with in every election.

Unsurprisingly, we see "Hillary's popular vote margin" rising. In the areas where she won, the bezzle is strongest -- they are working feverishly to "make every vote count". In the vast areas where Trump won, the election is over -- absentee, provisionals, etc are of no interest. When there are less "possible votes" in the stack than the margin of victory -- the election is over, no need to count them.

Which brings me to "libertarians", for which I use scare quotes because they are basically "None Of The Above" voters -- they have even less specific agreed to policies than Trump -- which is REALLY saying something! Had the "Big Johnson" vote gone for Trump (as most of it would have), we would not be having this "whole popular vote sideshow".

Libertarians had HIGH hopes this year -- maybe they would approach Ross Perot sorts of numbers around "20%".  I could have imagined them breaking 5%, but they didn't ... 4 million measly votes nationwide. Possibly because I worked in computers for over 3 decades, the "number of choices" doesn't resonate with me at all. Computers do everything with two, on and off -- nobody is out there pushing for 3 or 4 -- although quantum computers collapse a superposition from like 10 to the 400 options so there is that to consider. Since there are only like 10 to the 80th atoms in the universe, representing truly significant higher numbers of candidates could be difficult -- but I digress.

I don't believe that most libertarians are the sorts of people that do "sober postmortems", but if they were, they might want to do one.

1. Until a known party platform is created, accepted and understood by millions of voters, there really isn't a "party", only a protest vote. ACTUAL positions on taxes, roads and bridges, defense, laws (or repeal thereof), borders (yes/no/ ??), foreign policy yes/no/??, etc. 
2. Once that is done, CANDIDATES need to be ELECTED on the basis of a KNOWN PLATFORM ... at least a few hundred in state houses, mayorships, governors, US house of representatives, etc. There needs to be actual known Libertarians that have GOVERNED AS LIBERTARIANS (and a platform so you can tell!). 
3. Form a solid NATIONAL party that has a MESSAGE ...  "Make whores legal again!"? (it has to be a simple message).

I could go on, but it isn't worth the time -- perhaps they could come up with "libertarian values" to appeal to the "values voter" ... I'll offer "Whatever" as the most recognizable libertarian value. 

Note, I didn't say they would WIN ... only that those are some of the steps if they ever want to be taken as anything than people that just vote "NOTA" and complain a lot.

Addendum: As PowerLine points out here, if Jill Stein had not run and all her voters turned out for Hillary,  Hillary would have won Wisconsin and Michigan (on the college and elderly hippy vote no doubt). So there you have it from the left and the right! Third parties DO matter, they allow the candidate you most oppose to be elected! 

Democrats Officially The Party of Money?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/22/donald-trump-lost-most-of-the-american-economy-in-this-election/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_economy-1125a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

The divide is economic, and it is massive. According to the Brookings analysis, the less-than-500 counties that Clinton won nationwide combined to generate 64 percent of America's economic activity in 2015. The more-than-2,600 counties that Trump won combined to generate 36 percent of the country's economic activity last year. 

Clinton, in other words, carried nearly two-thirds of the American economy.

I can tell by their headline, "Trump Lost Most of the Economy In This Election", that they think this is bad for Trump and good for Hillary.

So is their point:

a). Democrats ARE the party of wealth and privilege and proud of it.

b). The wealth in the country is concentrated already, if we can concentrate it more, we can COMPLETELY ignore the rest of the country!

c). We're still feeling REALLY bad, so we don't much care what we say as long as it sounds like Hillary ought to have won.

I'm not really sure, but they at least seem to realize that the people with all the wealth are much more likely to vote for the status quo and candidate of "stay the course", while the "have nots" are much more likely to vote for a candidate who promises change.

The one point they don't make is that many of the areas that voted for Clinton are BOTH the poorest and the wealthiest -- yes, the big urban areas have most of the money -- because it is in finance, government, professions and knowledge workers, but they ALSO have most of the worst poverty and crime. NY has Manhattan, but also has Brooklyn, Queens, Harlem, Staten Island, The Bronx, etc ... Likewise LA, San Fran, Chicago, etc. While there is a lot of wealth in Chicago for example, it is also in the running for murder capital of the nation most years.

Democrat policies concentrate wealth and spread POVERTY. The government can only "give" you hopelessness in the form of tiny checks and aid as you supplicate yourself to a myriad of government functionaries. You trade your self respect for the "largesse" of the government, and that is a VERY high price indeed!