Trump Will Never Be President

I'm not as certain he will be as these folks were that he would not be -- he isn't inaugurated yet.

It is really worth watching. How are people EVER as sure of something as these people all are? Or are they really not that sure, but just lie so much that "staking their reputation" (what reputation?) on something doesn't really matter that much.

I like BO ... "The worst president in history" with his snarky "Well, at least I WAS president"! People that haven't learned to not believe ANYTHING that dufus says long before now are just not in the learning camp!

40% Of Americans Unemployable Due To Religion

The Culture War Expands | The Weekly Standard:

It has come to my attention "Post Trump" that apparently many BOistanis have lost the understanding of Freedom of Association as well as tolerance, both of which were critical in the mother nation that was called "America" (1776-2012).

While Associational Freedom is so obvious to most at most times that it is like "air", the US history of slavery and Democrat run Jim Crow in the south led to a dangerous precedent with "Brown vs Board of Education". For whites relating to blacks , Freedom of Association was suspended. It was NOT suspended in the reverse direction -- all black schools, all black organizations, etc were still and still are completely legal. The intent was to use this rather extreme measure to break an egregious case of racial apartheid that allowed institutionalized and political oppression in the old Democrat controlled US South.

Rather than clearly understand the specific abridgment of a deep and natural human freedom as a radical measure taken for a highly specific purpose, the same party that managed Jim Crow has seen fit to attempt to generalize the use of force to apply to other groups to gain further political power via Identity Politics. Women were rather quickly added, then minority religions, gays and now "transgenders".

Sadly, while the coercive totalitarian approach is gaining ground in forcing compliance on one side, the opposite is also taking place as "liberals" disassociate themselves with family, friends and businesses because they  "may have/did vote for Trump". Tolerance and Associational Freedom go together in a "classical liberal" Democracy/Republic ... they are part of "why things worked". In a totalitarian state, "tolerance" is replaced by government enforced compliance.

In the linked column we have the case of a young married couple who are practicing Christians. They have a hit show about fixing up homes (not all that sexual). Their church does not support gay "marriage" -- so it is time for them to be boycotted, taken off the air, etc.. If supporting gay "marriage" is a requirement to be employed, then 40% of americans (including me) are ineligible for employment today, or we need to stay quietly "in the closet" and hope nobody "outs us".

Think about that for a moment. Is the suggestion here that 40 percent of Americans are unemployable because of their religious convictions on marriage? That the companies that employ them deserve to be boycotted until they yield to the other side of the debate— a side, we should note, that is only slightly larger than the one being shouted down?

 We were once a Christian nation -- we had shared values that aligned well with our Constitution. Yes, in the South, Christian values were corrupted and used to further a cultural and political system of oppression. Just because an extreme measure was used to break a specific problem should not make that extreme measure now the norm. Unfortunately, the oppressor political party in the old Jim Crow case still has a political vision that requires oppression and lack of tolerance in order to flourish. The Unconstrained Vision of the world.

The idea of our framers was to LIMIT government so that it would never be big or intrusive enough so we even had to waste time on these discussions. The assumption was that free and reasonably well educated people would interact and work our such issues ON THEIR OWN in accordance with their generally Christian beliefs.

The question of a nation founded on ideas rather than territory, ethnicity, language, religion, etc surviving was one of the things (beside the concept of limited government) that made America exceptional. BOistan has an exceptional heritage it chooses to largely ignore, but it is on completely new ground relative to sustaining itself in a way that Europe does not. Eastern Europe shows us that nations founded on territory, religion, language, etc "survive" in a sense even when they are under totalitarian rule (USSR) for nearly a century. France is very likely to still be called "France" and have the same borders even if it becomes an Islamic state. Probably no wine though.

Americans knew who they were and what ideals they held to be sacred. BOistanis don't think much of all that -- they were certain that they were going to continue to hold political power and thus stamp out any remnant of America once and for all. Trump is at least a bump in their road.

The way back from BOistan is long and arduous at this point -- philosophy and religion, at least the language of both, have to return to be foundational for EVERY person that considers themselves "educated". REAL tolerance -- as in understanding the importance of tolerating, COMMUNICATING WITH,  and even respecting the rights of people who think differently than you is critical. The sad thing is that without divinely inspired, or VERY well thought out transcendent principles, such tolerance is impossible.

We are deeply broken -- we have been losing our way for over 100 years. We took huge losses in the 30's and 60's, and then the combination of decades of losses, mass media and BO pulled the last straw and we absolutely fell into the post-constitutional, post-truth failed state of BOistan. The greatest loss for humans is always meaning. Death is small next to that. As Nietzsche said, "He who has a why can endure any how".  Thus, the primary goal of the collectivist forces is always to destroy the why -- the meaning, and replace it with assimilation to the collective.

I could just keep writing, but will stop here  -- one book if you want to dig deeper ...  "Ideas Have Consequences".

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American Amnesia, 1/3 Through

https://www.amazon.com/American-Amnesia-Government-America-Prosper/dp/1451667825

I'm only 1/3 of the way through this pompous and ridiculously wordy leftist tome, but the thought has occurred to me that I may have been snookered. Supposedly, a lefty acquaintance read it, was really impressed, and was willing to read Thomas Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions" in a sort of a "ideological exchange". I'm hoping he didn't this book ... at least not too closely, and perhaps was feeling bad because some of his friends had so figured he would snooker me into reading it and writing a review to save him a lot of time wading through turgid prose.

The big picture summary so far seems to be (unsurprisingly) that "Government is God" ... little events like industrial revolutions, world wars, mass communication, computers, the internet, etc have minimal effects. The key to everything is a properly balanced "mixed economy" -- with government being the senior, virtuous, intelligent partner in the decidedly unequal "partnership" with greedy capitalists, biased research not properly funded via tax dollars, etc.

Ergo, the success of the US from 1946 - 1970 is PROOF that a properly balanced "Golidlocks"  mixed economy is what made this country rich! Simple.

The other leading world economies being bombed to ashes while we were unscathed save Pearl Harbor, and thus supplying damned near everything for their remaining populations to recover isn't mentioned -- so clearly not a factor. That time period being the rollout of all sorts of technologies, plus a burst of growing children (us, the vaunted "boomers") was also not a factor. Keep repeating GOVERNMENT!

Unsurprisingly, the book seems to lack a single chart (I have the Kindle version, so maybe that is the issue). You see the mixed economy was "balanced" until sometime around Reagan, and it has been grossly too small since then, thus accounting for all our problems -- well except for PeterPeterson and Ayn Rand, but I haven't gotten to the conclusion of their nefarious deeds yet. That is why you see in the following chart the huge and continuing drop in government spending as a percentage of GDP starting around 1980:

You don't see it? Well then obviously you are not a liberal, and likely under the influence of Ayn Rand or Pete Peterson -- perhaps you should seek psychiatric care. I must confess, I seem to have a similar issue. I'm guessing that means I'm a clear victim of "amnesia" -- perhaps the use of data and charts is a symptom?

Well, in my obviously incorrect world, government as a percentage of GDP has actually GROWN steadily! From just over 20% to just short of 40% today. To the extent it was "balanced" from 1945 to 1980 and we became amnesic about it, the proper level of spending would be "20-25% of GDP". Strange. 

Oh, they seem to think that MORE REGULATION will help ... so that must be much lower. Hmm ... 2015 was a record year for federal regulation, surpassing the old record set in 2010. Admittedly, that was a "scant" 81,611 pages -- expertly rolled out by an administration brilliantly led by Obama. I'm sure each of those highly effective contributions to the proper functioning of our mixed economy was a gem of great value! 

Now it could well be that pages of regulation as a percentage of population, GDP, or unicorn farts IS actually out of it's "proper mix". However,  other than "more, more, more", being nefariously blocked by Randian Republicans cruel and foul, actual assertions about "what is the goldilocks amount" (mysteriously achieved from 1946 - 1975) remains a mystery not deemed worthy of revelation in this lengthy tome. 

What IS very obvious to me at this point is that the authors of the book are very much in the "unconstrained" vision where the latest is the greatest (unless a Republican gets elected) and more government is ALWAYS better -- data and charts are a distraction. They are so smart that anyone not feeling grateful for their efforts in explaining all this is clearly a Neanderthal and likely voted for Trump. I did --- mea culpa, mea culpa! 

On to the rest of this brilliant treatise ... I'm sort of imagining a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" plot where Pete Peterson conjures the spirit of Ayn Rand and they hypnotize most of the population of the US to use numbers and data and such to attempt to understand reality -- thus becoming "amnesic" about the TRUE reality being described in the book. 

Well, back to the excitement! 

**** I am sort of joking -- I think the "slight" point they missed (or more likely just left out) is that the Democrat purchase of votes via FICA, medicare, BOcare, etc is sucking up way too much of the total government cash now and they need VASTLY more money to support the house of cards "entitlements", PLUS reign in those nasty capitalists. The actual "properly balanced mix" for "liberals" always ends up being 100% government control and guys like me either at room temperature or sitting in a gulag on the N slope of Alaska munching rat in a tent. 

Lacking A Need for Cognition

Stop Calling People "Low Information Voters" | Quillette:

A worthy read on the demon of the hour "the low information voter". Half of Trump supporters (or so) are "deploreables", but let's face it, the other half are "stupid" -- so euphemisms are in order. The WaPo had this fine effort.

Low information voters are those who do not know certain basic facts about government and lack what psychologists call a “need for cognition.” Those with a high need for cognition have a positive attitude toward tasks that require reasoning and effortful thinking and are, therefore, more likely to invest the time and resources to do so when evaluating complex issues.

Ah, "a high need for cognition" ... or as it was put in an Israeli news source ...

But there is one overarching factor that everyone knows contributed most of all to the Trump sensation. There is one sine qua non without which none of this would have been possible. There is one standalone reason that, like a big dodo in the room, no one dares mention, ironically, because of political correctness. You know what I’m talking about: Stupidity. Dumbness. Idiocy. Whatever you want to call it: Dufusness Supreme.

 In contrast, I love the credentials and attitude of philosopher Jason Brennan:

And while I no doubt suffer from some degree of confirmation bias and self-serving bias, perhaps I justifiably believe that I — a chaired professor of strategy, economics, ethics, and public policy at an elite research university, with a Ph.D. from the top-ranked political philosophy program in the English-speaking world, and with a strong record of peer-reviewed publications in top journals and academic presses — have superior political judgment on a great many political matters to many of my fellow citizens, including to many large groups of them.

That's really impressive. I enjoy how impressed Denzel's character is with the president of the entire drug cartel in the clip below.  If Jason got a chance to reflect on his superiority in a similar manner in the waning minutes of his life, he might have a significant epiphany on his actual worth in the real universe. I'd personally be willing to trade a thousand Jasons to ISIS for a single Marine -- and consider that our nation would be making superb deal for both ourselves, the current world, and history.

Professor Jason does start out correctly. He certainly suffers from "some" confirmation and self-serving bias -- in one of his books he suggests that "knowing people" like himself should get multiple votes, while lower classes ... like returning veterans, the people that pay the taxes to cover his university salary, and the supposed dolts in fly-over country that raise his food ought not be able to vote at all. "They are too driven by emotion".

The great twentieth century historian, Arnold Toynbee, theorized long ago that civilisations start to decline when their elite classes become parasitic. I can’t think of anything more parasitic than pseudo-intellectuals using other people’s money to write about feminist glaciology and the “whiteness” of pumpkin spiced lattes — and then being awarded more votes than returning military servicemen and women.

I'd certainly agree that uppity parasite class folks like Jason are a definite sign of civilization in decline -- but I think the rot is well set in a good deal before they show up. 

The article is worth a read -- I don't think Jason will be getting his extra votes anytime soon.

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New SECDEF, Surrender Or Die

I Served With James Mattis. Here's What I Learned From Him: 

Our current SECDEF is ... uh, had to look it up -- "Ashton B. Carter". Sorta sounds like a frat boy being wheeled into the emergency room because somebody kicked his ass in a fight.

BO's cabinet tends to be completely forgettable. Oh sure, we remember Lurch Kerry cuz he looks funny and every once in awhile says something particularly stupid.

http://www.moosetracksblog.com/2015/03/kerry-learns-of-disbelief.html, but otherwise, when the president is s putz and the VP is a joke, the cabinet tends to "follow the LACK of leadership".

I'm betting everyone knows James "Mad Dog" Mattis before long. Here is an example of how to deal with your enemies:

“There is one way to have a short but exciting conversation with me,” he continued, “and that is to move too slow. Gentlemen, this is not a marathon, this is a sprint. In about a month, I am going to go forward of our Marines up to the border between Iraq and Kuwait. And when I get there, one of two things is going to happen. Either the commander of the Fifty-First Mechanized Division is going to surrender his army in the field to me, or he and all his guys are going to die.” 

Nothing much else needed to be said after that. 

Good article, great general, Trump continues to amaze.



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Be Poilite, Be Proffessional

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gen-james-mad-dog-mattis-7-memorable-quotes/

Man Crush On SECDEF

Viral James Mattis Email About Reading - Business Insider:



Wow, we may take over the world after all!

"The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience (or by your men’s experience), i.e. the hard way. By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men."

This guy appears to be the REAL real deal!



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Reality Is Experience

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/

A likely important article that I may return to and dig deeper into. Apparently, the physical universe can be replaced with "a conscious entity" and at least this new model "still works".

As a conscious realist, I am postulating conscious experiences as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world. I’m claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm. The experiences of everyday life—my real feeling of a headache, my real taste of chocolate—that really is the ultimate nature of reality.

"Ontological" -- being ... what IS.  The territory "real" as opposed to the map ... those being words like virtual, representation, metaphorical. This computer analogy gives a good idea why seeing "what is the most useful to the designer, or random chance" makes more sense than the "most realistic detail".

There’s a metaphor that’s only been available to us in the past 30 or 40 years, and that’s the desktop interface. Suppose there’s a blue rectangular icon on the lower right corner of your computer’s desktop — does that mean that the file itself is blue and rectangular and lives in the lower right corner of your computer? Of course not. But those are the only things that can be asserted about anything on the desktop — it has color, position, and shape. Those are the only categories available to you, and yet none of them are true about the file itself or anything in the computer. 

They couldn’t possibly be true. That’s an interesting thing. You could not form a true description of the innards of the computer if your entire view of reality was confined to the desktop. And yet the desktop is useful. That blue rectangular icon guides my behavior, and it hides a complex reality that I don’t need to know. That’s the key idea. 

Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. They guide adaptive behaviors. But part of that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to know. And that’s pretty much all of reality, whatever reality might be. If you had to spend all that time figuring it out, the tiger would eat you.

It's always intriguing to me that a super intelligent guy, so non-traditional he is willing to question the MOST fundamental aspects of the nature of existence, still finds "evolution " as somehow a worthy explanation for how we came to be (or maybe "not **BE** as in being physical", but rather "be" as experience only) in this non-physical reality. It is always possible that the computer desktop "just evolved" after all. Actually, if you are an evolutionist, the development of the computer and the desktop metaphor is simply evolution still operating in what we have no doubt mistakenly labeled "consciousness", meaning "something special", but in evolutionary "reality", just more evolutionary adaptive algorithms.

 (column author) But if there’s a W, are you saying there is an external world?

Hoffman: Here’s the striking thing about that. I can pull the W out of the model and stick a conscious agent in its place and get a circuit of conscious agents. In fact, you can have whole networks of arbitrary complexity. And that’s the world.

So, a mathematic attempt to understand consciousness replaces "the world" with "a conscious agent" and it all works ... and it doesn't give him any inking that God would fill that "conscious agent" role quite nicely?

The discoveries of quantum mechanics, the mystery of consciousness and things like the insane small amount of information that seems to be coming in through our optic nerves for us to create what we are "seeing" all point to some fundamental misconceptions about what "reality" is -- if it "is" (ontology again) at all! 

"I think, therefore I am" was always tenuous -- perhaps, a universal consciousness is reality, and "I" am an illusion. Perhaps when God speaks to Moses and says "I am that I am" he was really de-referencing the THAT!  (C++ programming, the "this pointer" is the pointer to the object itself) "I'm THAT" I am" ... the ultimate base of existence.  You (Moses) are another "I am", created in my image.

Roger Scruton has covered this philosophically quite well. 

HuffPO, Overturning Elections

Hamilton v. Trump: The Case That Could Save America | The Huffington Post:

My my there was a lot of hand wringing when the Dems were sure they were going to win and Trump suggested that he would accept the result if Hillary had a "clear victory".

Where is the outrage? When the enormity of Watergate and its direct threat to the American system of government became clear, many Republicans joined with Democrats in denouncing Mr. Nixon and “All the President’s Men.” Yet now, as we face an even graver threat to our institutions—must we term it “Putingate”?—even most Democrats, let alone Republicans, seem to lack the courage and patriotism to stand up to the forces that threaten to invalidate the will of the voters, violate the clear intent of the Founding Fathers, and undermine the Republic they established.

Wow, the left showing situational respect for the founders, guys they have dismissed as dead white racists for years! They must REALLY care about BOistan! They feel it is "threatened"!

That paragraph shows us why Hillary needs to be put behind bars and then hopefully pardoned.

 Watergate was a 3rd rate burglary that Nixon covered up. Nobody died, and no national secrets were compromised -- it was all about the cover up and the fact that Nixon swore on the tapes. That, believe it or not, was "not presidential" back then.

We let Slick Willy stain the office both physically and symbolically. The lying was worse, the cover up was worse and illegal acts were committed by the president himself in the oval office.  Sexual harassment is a crime, and there is NO SUCH THING as "consensual sex" between a superior and subordinate at the office. In fact, although I guess it must be surprising to many BOistanis, sex with anyone at the office tends to be a firing offence. The Democrats yawned.

Hillary has been a noxious skid mark since the day she showed up in DC. She presided over the disaster of Libya from breaking it, to losing our Ambassador and three Navy Seals, to lying about it being "caused by an internet movie", to uttering "What difference, at this point, does it make?". The Clinton Fund -- cash, for Clintons, shows what the public version of organized crime looks like. Her abuse of national secrets requires punishment -- lest the idea that "some are above the law" be enshrined to an even greater degree than it is today.

When Republicans were willing to remove Nixon from office, they believed in principle over politics and assumed that Democrats had the same high ideals. The 50 years since Watergate have shown that they held their opposition in much too high esteem. To date, Democrats have been unwilling to ever place principle and respect for the Constitution, the nation, or even common decency over pure politics. I can only assume that they thought this because they never envisioned a time when all branches of government and the vast majority of state governments were in the hands of the other party.

They clearly lacked imagination.

We need to "book end" Watergate, or Democrats will keep bringing it up FOREVER! Prosecute Hillary, whose crimes make Nixon's pale in comparison, let her eat off a tin tray for a few weeks -- something like Scooter Libby, who suffered the fate for the crime of "perjury" for not remembering events in a proper date order. Hillary has turned perjury into an art form!

Then pardon her, as Nixon was pardoned. If Trump could put together a good speech that says something like; "we have closed the books on a sad period of American history where respect for the Constitution, the nation, history, our institutions and even truth itself was sacrificed for political gain. Let us resolve to move forward, together, rather than spinning in an ever tightening circle of recrimination" ... or something like that.

We have always known which side it is that seeks the abyss by not recognizing elections, using riots and violence as a tactic, and being willing to be utterly shameless in their inconsistency of using the Constitution for toilet paper when it suits them, then turning around and claiming to be defenders of the founders, tradition and sacred institutions like the Electoral College when it suits their quest for illicit power.

See, "reasonable Republicans" would hand the presidency to Hillary and John Kasich as a "unity government". What could be more "reasonable"?

That could open the way for patriots from both parties to come together and formulate a modern version of the Compromise of 1877 that would create a National Unity Government, for which the state delegations in the House of Representatives would be urged to vote in January. Such a Compromise of 2017 might include a President of one party and a Vice President of the other, both of whom meet the Framers’ goal of being competent and not beholden to a foreign power (perhaps Hillary Clinton and John Kasich, or Mr. Kasich and Joe Biden), a pledge by both not to run in 2020, a division of Cabinet posts between the parties, and agreement on certain policies to be enacted, including some of those that attracted voters to Mr. Trump, such as a massive infrastructure program to provide jobs and “draining the swamp” of influence peddling in Washington (which Mr. Trump plainly is not doing).

Republicans have played Charlie Brown to the Lucy ever since Watergate. It is time to close the books on this game!

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BO Says Trump A Job Magician

BO has always been certain that he is the smartest guy in every room. Here he is declaring that Trump would have to have a "magic wand" to keep jobs like the Carrier jobs in the US.

It is great to see an endorsement of Trump's ability to work magic by such a brilliant man! Look at that smiling lady in the background!

BOcare, Throwing The Patient (and Doctor) Out

The one thing missing from the debate over Obamacare, according to a top doctor - The Washington Post:

The headline should win some sort of award for being misleading. Sort of like "Great Funeral Only Leaves out One Thing" ... and then finding out it was "the corpse".

Noseworthy argues that the Affordable Care Act that expanded access to health insurance to millions of Americans did so without nearly enough input from the patient — or the doctor.

Actually, leaving out the doctor and the patient at one time would have been considered a  bad thing ... but hey, it was done by BO, so it HAD to be good! The WaPo and the head of Mayo didn't want to be called "racists" for opposing his stenchfulness prior to the election.

One of the biggest weaknesses of the Affordable Care Act, in Noseworthy's view, is that it expanded access to health insurance — in part by creating barriers to health care. Health plans have successfully controlled costs by restricting which doctors and hospitals patients can use and by shifting the upfront costs of care to patients through high deductibles.

Many of us Deploreables have harped on this for nearly 8 years -- our actual healthcare costs SKYROCKETED under BOcare, and our ability to go to the doctors needed to treat conditions was blocked. If the WaPo and the head of Mayo are able to speak freely now, perhaps the spell of BO really is broken.

Noseworthy is now willing to say that BOcare essentially needs to be scrapped -- and the WaPo is willing to print it!

The fact that access, which is pretty important to patients, is now being jeopardized and patients are feeling it — that has to be fixed. That’s really where the voice of the patient matters. The other, of course, is the unsustainability of the rise of the premiums for the middle class. 

Most Americans are paying more for health care, and they’re kind of figuring it out now. They’ve had the Affordable Care Act for a while, but they didn’t realize what high deductible health plans really were until they got sick. And they said, “Wait a minute — I have to pay the first $1,000, $5,000, $10,000? I don't really have insurance unless I have a catastrophic illness.”

He is also willing to admit what doctors and nurses have been saying is their biggest effect from BOcare -- PAPERWORK!

The Affordable Care Act and the changes that have come along with that have created a very stiff regulatory environment. It’s been very, very hard for health care professionals. And if you’ve been a patient or studied health care, you know that in today’s world, the patient is no longer at the center of the room. The physicians and nurses are spending a lot of time documenting the situation, rather than asking about and listening to. And that removes a lot of professionalism and joy of the work. 

For every hour a doctor spends with a patient, the doctor spends two hours documenting the one hour encounter. So the balance is off, and that’s created a huge threat to the profession.

This has all been known since before BOcare was "approved" by 51votes using "reconciliation" -- surprise surprise, it was a scam from the start and now that BO is about to leave office (oh happy day!) people can  admit that in public without being labeled "racist" -- Trump has already had a hugely positive impact on freedom of speech!


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Governor Goofy Has A History Fit

Dayton’s stormy Tuesday | Power Line:

Looking at Dayton's eyes makes one glad that a governor has very little authority to do violence to others. Storming out of a meeting over Civil War paintings is indicative of the kind of "leadership" that at least managed to put both the MN House and Senate in Republican hands.  We can thank him for that.

He doesn't like Civil War paintings in "his" ceremonial governors office at the capital because they don't represent "all Minnesotans",  and when his hand picked "commission" voted against him, he stormed out to make his level of maturing clear.

The left generally hates history. It shows "heritage", it gives a sense that everything might not be about today, and the promised future "progressive" utopia. Civil War history is even worse -- it seems to document hundreds of thousands of white people giving their lives to abolish slavery while preserving a nation that was the precursor to BOistan. Best to forget both the war and that old flawed nation.

I covered Gettysburg by Sears here, and by Coddington here. I also read Pale Horse at Plum Run but failed to blog on it -- the story of the 1st MN at Gettysburg. Without the 1st MN, it is very likely the South would have won -- it could be the reason Dayton is pissed, the South was Democrat after all!

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Attack By Racist Trump Supporter Injures Ten

Attack by Somali immigrant puts 10 in hospital | Power Line:

We all understand that had the Ohio attacker been even marginally a Trump supporter we would be besieged with media reports of a horrible "hate crime", and how Trump has caused a rise in hatred in the nation,  no matter the mental state or history of such an attacker.

Any possible "incident" of obnoxious Trump support gets in the headlines, like this guy, filmed on a flight using profanity and claiming that "Trump was the president of everyone on the plane". He was banned from flying Delta for life for making such outrageous claims.

Or this woman, who got irate in a store and happened to be a Trump voter. I understand that anybody that is not in an approved discriminated against group -- blacks, hispanics, women (oops, LIBERAL women), gays, trans, Muslims ..., MAY NOT feel "discriminated against". Everyone knows that all human feelings spring entirely from reason, so the idea that some Trump voter could possibly feel like they are being discriminated against beggars the imagination.

Trump voters clearly need to accept that they are an irredeemable basket of deploreables and keep very still. The woman that won the popular vote gave them that label to simplify their lives -- it is pretty hard to wear a button that says "racist, homophobe, denier, misogynist, poorly educated, Islamophobe, Transphobe ..." The print just gets too small, and it takes too long to explain who you are.

I'm not going to go back and point out lists of anti-Bush or pro-Obama / anti-Republican rants from all sorts of sources -- stages of award shows, athletic fields, etc that have gone by the boards in the past 16 years. Do I "like"  obnoxious Trump supporters? Of course not, they are EXACTLY like obnoxious Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, Code Pink, kneeling NFL players, anti-Trump college demonstrators ... etc, etc? No,  they come with living in a free country -- one which, at least for now, seems to have obnoxious people on both sides of the political spectrum. I tolerate them.

The point is that the Ohio attacker turned out to be Somali with a long Muslim name, so his motive is a complete mystery. "Workplace violence" seems likely. Oh sure, in some backwater conservative source we may find out in a few weeks or months that he was "radicalized", but the story is already gone. It is COMPLETELY wrong to draw any conclusions about any Muslims because they are Muslim.

OTOH, the MSM is chomping at the bit to get any story it possibly can to can on "violent and dangerous Trump supporters" -- and if they can't actual violence, they will put up drunks on planes or disgruntled customers and call them "dangerous". They have already stereotyped and labeled appropriately. All that is needed now is for a deplorable to step forward and REALLY do something seriously evil!

Hopefully the Ohio officer doesn't end up prosecuted for shooting a black man who was ONLY armed with a knife!



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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!

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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.

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