Understanding the liberal mind is one of my passions. The key is nearly always "consistency is NOT an issue" ... in fact, it is typically seen as something to be avoided from the left. It estabilishes truth as being contextual and fungible and therefore allows many times failed collectivist doctrines to be seen as "new and untried".
Consistency is a basic human problem/challenge -- the two logical ways to handle it are to attempt to achieve it, or deny that it is possible, and by extension to "feel good", not desireable.
In this case, nearly anyone that has scratched the surface of American HIstory, in which the Civil War looms large, has wondered "Why here?" ... slavery died around the world with increasing moral outrage and application of technology to slave tasks. Yet here it meant war.
The left TYPICALLTY finds war to be justifiably abhorrent -- nearly any level of negoitaion / bargaining / even capitulation is considered superior to the application of violence.
I DO understand the current level of left wing emotional hatred of Trump, and in this instance, that seems clearly operative. Trump said it, we hate Trump, ergo ...
I'm a follower of NPR as part of my balanced media diet. I commend them as to not being willing to abandon all intellectual honesty and even stand by quietly. because they know better.
The "dumbing down" of America since the 1950s has led us on a direct path to where we are today. The courage of those on both sides to do what NPR did in this case is probably the only way out without the current "Cold Civil War" turning unfortunately "hot". I pray that eventually we follow such wisdom.
This rather insane column is a solid insight into how the leftist mind works.
1. Hillary Clinton sets up an illegal private server in her basement that is thinly defeneded from hacking.
2. She uses the server during her time at the State Department to hide her illegal foundation activities in the "Clinton Fund" ... funds, for Clintons, as well as storing / transmitting multiple documents classified "Top Secret' ... an eat off a tin tray felony.
3. She repeatedly lies about was on the server "personal yoga schedules", NOTHING classified in any way, etc, etc.
4. So she gets investigated ... and any other American would go to prison. HOWEVER
The specific reason he cited: Bill Clinton’s decision to board Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s plane in late June, when their planes were both on a tarmac in Phoenix. “The capper was — and I’m not picking on Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who I like very much — but her meeting with President Clinton on that airplane was the capper for me,” Comey said. Comey decided to “step away” and announce, without consulting the Justice Department, that Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be charged.
Ergo ... "Hillary losing was Bill Clinton's fault"!!!!
Let's rewind -- first of all, I'm no fan of Slick Willie.
Second, even in the "proximate causes" area, are we expected to believe that the Attorney General of the US has no ability to decline a private meeting with the well-known husband of a target of an investigation by her own agency? Clearly Comey thought there was DEFINITE meaning in her decision ... My boss is willing to break protocol and publicly meet with the husband of an investigation target, ergo, we are NOT going to prosecute this particular target ...
But seriously folks. WHO is it that set up the server in the first place and willfully broke a ton of laws in the process? HILLARY CLINTON!!!!
In the lefty universe, there is no truth, so there can be no causality. It's "the Russians fault", "Comey's fault", etc, etc. Even someone running for the highest office in the US from the left does not bear responsibiliuty for their own behavior nor the operation of their campaign. In the lefty world, they are NEVER responsible!
My personal guess is that "Deploreables" cost her enough votes to lose ... along with fainting in public, lying repeatedly, rigging the primaries and getting caught, etc, etc. She has to be the most unlikeable person to ever run for the presidency and that is saying a lot!
The AMAZING thing is that even with all that, she still only lost by an electoral landslide -- which in my book is more indicitive of the level of vote fraud in the country than anything else. A lefty can be a complete charlatan, run as such, and because the "dead, imaginary and undocumneted democrat" vote still goes 100% for them, they still win the popular vote!
You have to love the media -- story after story about how "Trump can't stop talking/thinking about 2016" ... and they are certain that it is going to HURT him bigtime (you know how the MSM is always concerned about what is best for Trump!).
Here is the NY Times with BO in Missouri in July of 2010, a full year and 1/2 after his narrow loss in Missouri while taking the presidency in 2008. Strangely, the Times seems to be very OK with BO thinking about 2008 in 2010, and even making extensive trips to Missouri based on the 2008 results.
I suppose one conclusion could be that the media loves Trump and hated BO, so they are trying to help Trump now by pointing out the error of his ways, while back in 2010, they hated BO, so they faked like it was a good idea to waste time on Missouri based on 2008 results.
Or it might be the reverse -- which I believe.
Further evidence for either my view or the thought that the liberal press is of AT LEAST two minds is this artiicle headlined "Democrats Say They Know Exactly Why Hillary Lost". Hint, it's not Russians, it is low black turnout and BO voters that crossed over to Trump, possibly by way of Sanders.` I could SWEAR I've read more than a few retrospecitves of the 2016 election from the left. If they can't give up thinking about it is it REALLY any surprise that Trunp hasn't?
How many presidents quit thinking and talking about their great victories before they die? I'd say NONE. Obviously, the MSM will continue remembering BO's victories as they remember Slick Willie's victories very fondly for a very long time. Reagan's victories, W's victories, and now Trump's victory are naturally hated.
Jonah gets into my topic a little bit in the linked column. We all understand that the term "denier" is intended to bring up the image of a HOLOCAUST "denier" and thus mentally put those whose opinions on climate change differ from those who see it as an immediate existential threat in the most horrid light imaginable.
The word "denier" ties people labeled with it to those who would deny the closest thing to metaphysical evil recognized in the post-modern, post-truth materialist west. It is the medieval equivalent of labelling someone "demonic or satanic" ... it is "beyond the pale", and any remotely decent modern person should be willing to do ANYTHING to avoid that label from the POV of the priesthood of the left.
But does it work?
It has an effect. As Orwell covered so well in "Animal Farm" and "1984", language control by the powerful has a HUGE effect on the human psyche. The level of indoctrination of the youth is certainly the reason we see riots at Berkley over the very IDEA that they would be "exposed" to the horrors of speech from people identified as being as close to metaphysical spiritual evil as our insane modern world can imagine.
So they riot. Their actions are similar to burning Joan of Arc or witches in the past. They see the horror of what has been conjured to be "the ultimate evil" as simply beyond their capacity to resist -- it must be STAMPED OUT! Like Odysseus having his ears plugged with wax and being tied to the mast so he would be saved from the siren's song, they do their modern version so they can resist the horror of Ann Coulter. What if some heard her siren wail? It is too horrible to even contemplate.
The insanity of this world however is that on one hand, post-modernism would tell us that words are only meaningful in terms of power. There is no "truth" ... not philosophical, not scientific and certainly not transcendent / theological. The only "truth" **IS** POWER, thus the riots.
Is the descent into violent physical power being the only coin of the realm being carried out by intellectuals that understand all of this, or is it merely an accident of leaving the world of transcendent meaning behind?
Since I refuse to look at my opponents on the left as idiots, I'm forced to pretty much assume malevolence on their part -- unless they can read, understand, and refute "Ideas Have Consequences".
BO brought home the bacon to DC. As the article linked at the top points out:
Not only are America’s 2.2 million civilian federal employees making more than their counterparts in the private market; the compensation gap is widening between the feds and the taxpaying public they allegedly serve. A new report from the Congressional Budget Office released this week finds that “the federal government paid 17 percent more in total compensation than it would have if average compensation had been comparable with that in the private sector.”
Will Trump be able to pop this balloon? As we can see, opposition from BOTH parties will be EXTREME! One might think that since 95+% of government workers vote for the D party, the R's might be more willing to trim the DC pork a bit, but that does not seem to be the case. When your pig gets as big as the DC pig is, it is just plain scary to reuduce it's rations!
I got to hear Mayo's top guy, Dr John Noseworthy, talk at a luncheon this past week -- looks like a CEO from Hollywood casting. Tall, thin, full head of just perfectly grey flecked hair, angular leading man good looks, and oh so smooth as a speaker!
He led off with a little story of silent Cal Coolidge. Cal goes to church, reporter asks him coming out what the sermon was about. Cal says "sin", reporter inquires further on what the minister had to say on that topic. Cal responds "he was against it".
Noseworthy's topic was a "Strong Diverse Connected Community" ... he was for it. Very effective speaking device. I hope John is a great CEO ... I have a house I want to sell here in the next year or two!
The link is to a Slate article strongly defending BO taking $400K for a speaking fee -- well deserved, W only gets $100K (tsk, tsk). BO's first book post presidency deal is $65 million, that is also a good thing according to Slate. No surprise here ... if it were not for double standards, we know that humans sans religion would have no standards at all. Most everyone loves their own team.
Here is BO on the income topic ... His supporters would no doubt point out that he was indicating limits on what OTHERS should be satisfied with in earnings. As "The One", he is naturally exempt from limits .... being on "the right side of history" has it's privileges.
I got in a little chat with a guy on FB today about some cartoonist in IA supposedly being fired because he complained about CEO pay. I went out and took a look, and the CEO of John Deere makes $16 million a year ... Joe Mauer of Twins fame, $23 million a year, Clayton Kershaw (Dodgers pitcher) is the high in MLB, average salary is $4.5 million. Noseworthy makes $3.8 million ... less than the average MLB player. Turns out it was last years news ... too old to even be fake.
I can understand plain old envy -- people just not liking what others make, how good looking they are, their talents, their blessings, their oxen, manservants, maidservants, etc. Covetousness is an old problem ... the answer is to repent, focus on your own blessings and move on.
Who is being "hurt" by CEO or MLB salaries? For the MLB, it is fans buying tickets and possibly consumers buying products that are advertised when games are televised. For CEOs, it is the SHAREHOLDERS, not the employees -- they are not going to receive more salary because the business KNOWS pretty much what they contribute to the bottom line. Here is an article on this if you don't already understand it.
Even if we assume that CEOs are all overpaid, the pay is not money taken unfairly from other workers. Rather, the undeserved pay is being taken from shareholders. When corporate boards overpay a CEO, it is shareholders who lose because profits that could have become either shareholder dividends or capital gains are instead going into the pocket of the CEO.
Do the fans and the shareholders feel hurt? Not as long as their highly paid star is performing.
Most of the CEOs are actually "progressives" as well ... so we have the odd case where "progressives" hate their own because in general they are unaware they are on their side -- like Oprah, BO, or "The Clinton Fund' (funds ... for Clintons). As the Slate article thinly disguises, what is important is for young "progressives" to understand that as long as they follow "progressive" dogma, both wealth and women are on the list of perks!
Christ died for the whole sorry bunch of us. He even dined with tax collectors -- the lowest of the low in those times. Making the money, casting the stones, puffing up our chests in pride because what **WE** make is EARNED ... oh, and JUDGEMENT! We love to judge others!
rhetoric -- sales speech
dialectic -- philosopher discussion speech
facts -- inductively verifiable pieces of data
Bill Nye and Neil "The Gassy" Tyson are Televangelists for the religion of Scientism -- the belief that 2+2=4, ergo "I am become god" (science as religion). Their stock and trade is rhetoric, not facts ... and I doubt if they would know dialectic if it bit them in the posterior.
The article does a good job of covering some of the seaminess of Scientism, I highly recommend it.
Freeman Dyson is an actual scientist, so nobody cares what he thinks ... he states the obvious that anyone with a junior high understanding of climate knows:
The most questionable of these beliefs is the notion that the science of climate change is settled and understood. The biggest of all climate changes have been the ice ages, which have covered half of North America and Europe with kilometer-thick sheets of ice. Ice ages happened repeatedly in the past, and we are about due for another one to start. A new ice age would be a disaster far greater than anything we have to fear from climate warming. There are many theories of ice ages, but no real understanding. So long as we do not understand ice ages, we do not understand climate change.
In order for the left to win, ALL institutions have to be destroyed. If even 20% of the public understood basic philosophy, theology, politics, and junior high science, we would still live in America rather than BOistan.
Alas ... the set of people that have that level of understanding is more like 1% -- so we perish in BOistan ... but as always, the perishing scream and march loudly.
Go off and watch the little video ... the rest of this will make more sense.
Reagan warned us that when we were no longer "One Nation Under God", we would be a nation "gone under". As per usual, he was right.
I could quibble with a lot in the video -- the profanity (although the "F word" is basically just a part of speech today). The statistics are mostly hooey ... take out the REALLY failed black Democrat sub-culture, and most of those clean up.
Infant mortality is a complete crock ... we count ANY baby "born alive" ... most of the countries on the planet just count "babies to term" ... they don't even try to keep many of the ones we do alive, and we do it even with the poor, the black, the fetal alcohol syndrome, crack, etc -- compare "white middle class births within 3-4 weeks of term" and we are #1 ... damned close with life expectancy as well.
Defense? My book bill is pretty huge -- but compared to my income? Nothing of any interest ... same with the US. Compare defense to GDP and we are fourth ... behind Saudi Arabia, Israel and Russia ... India, France, UK and China are right behind us in the same ballpark. The official NATO goal that ALL the NATO countries are supposed to meet is 2%.
The fact remains, BOistan is NOT the greatest nation -- Russia, Israel, Iran and China would all be in the running ... maybe Germany. At least the rest of them have some pride in their own existence.
More education is no use ... knowing everything about nothing is counterproductive at best. WHY?? That is the question. What is it that is supposed to be unique about BOistan? We are the only nation where a majority of the youth have been taught (brainwashed?) to hate their own countries history? What would our goal be? Our people are absolutely the same and have no distinguishing features? We love everyone and believe everyone will love us because we love them? We are the only people that can't figure out if we are men or women -- or what it would even mean to "act like men"?
Perhaps our goal is "We are clueless, pity us" .... Maybe the "natural evolutionary path" of BOistan is to develop into a nation of leeches like the Pacleds from STNG ... "We look for things we need ... things to make us go .."
I'm sure Satan regularly reads the Times, if he didn't write the editorial himself. Inversion is his favorite mode, and this column is a study in it.
First of all, it gives you the impression that the Constitution is against the death penalty, when it specifically allows it in the 8th amendment saying nobody can be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." ... if "due process" can't be handled in 22 years, then we don't have any "due process' at all, and even deprivation of "property" (taxes) is unconstitutional.
Then we have:
In short, the first significant decision by Justice Gorsuch, who was sworn in to office less than two weeks ago, was the most consequential any justice can make — to approve a man’s killing by the state.
Seriously? To affirm what the Constitution clearly says in the 8th Amendment so that a murderer found guilty over 20 years ago can finally receive his sentence is MORE important than Roe V Wade, which declared the death penalty for 60 million of the most innocent life imaginable?
The cackling in Hell at that howler must be deafening!
Oh, oops ... it was what the media tells is the likely next first lady of France who picked up a 15 year old guy named Macron while she was his theatre teacher -- never mind.
I understand this is no issue at all -- we are SO uptight to even notice!
"Morality" is completely arbitrary in this world -- some locker room talk is unconscionable when we are told it is supposed to be, while BJs in the oval office with an employee are just fine when we are told they are. At Fox News -- oh, NOT there!
Get your mind right, THINK WHAT YOU ARE TOLD TO THINK ... your life may depend on it at any moment!
If you were raised in America, this provides you proof that you no longer live there.
In BOistan, the flag of the old US that has not yet been officially replaced is something that borders on hate speech. It is a symbol of what BOistan certainly is not; "The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave", or "One Nation, Under God".
BOistan is the land of the dependent and home of the snowflake. It is a failed tribal state, divided and in complete rejection of God. Many BOistanis find the flag of the old nation to be offensive -- almost "hate speech". Burning it is NOT "hate speech" ... displaying it borders on it.
Can Trump begin a restoration to the defunct Constitutional Republic? That is certainly the hope of most of those that voted for him -- the task has a long way to go, however at least not imprisioning a Vetern for displaying the old flag is a tepid sign that the precipitious decline may have been arrested.
One of the Power Line guys was at the WH for a conservative media briefing. Since I listen to MPR/NPR all the time, including snippets of "Indivisible", the thinly disguised left wing call-in for "The Resistance" trying to make sure that Trump is NEVER normalized, it is really strange to see him covered as "just another POTUS".
The MSM has spent most of the first 100 days running around screaming "the sky fell" as if nobody had ever read Chicken Little. Day after day, everyone finds themselves still here -- so it doesn't really seem like the world ended -- only America ended, but that is old news -- it turned into BOistan in BO's 2nd term. I understand that NPR is worried BOistan could be damaged, but as long as the BOistani Adminstrative State is still in power, BOistan will live on.
It's worth going and reading the article just because of how normal it is. It is like zillions of left wing friendly news outlets reporting on their meetings with BO -- a normal, intelligent guy that maybe makes one cringe from time to time about how many times he says "I" and everything being about him.
Strangely, BO and Trump are so similar on the narcissim scale it makes one wonder if narcissism isn't the main requirement for BOistani leadership.
Good old "Scream Dean" is back saying that conservative speech ought to be banned. How wonderful it is of him to call out conservatives for saying what they want to say. "The Right loves to be able to say anything they like, no matter how offensive it is."
True, and so does the left -- the difference is that as in the case of offensive art and some of the things taught in public schools, the left believes that those that disagree ought to also have to pay for their speech (arts endowments), or be forced to listen to it as in the joys of gay sex for school children.
While the right has issues paying for the left's speech, or with the left forcing it into the public square, especially on minors, the left represented by Dean believes that speech the left doesn't like can be censored from being ALLOWED to be VOLUNTARILY viewed at a public institution.
Naturally, the legal precedent he quotes is as daffy as Dean himself and Geraghty covers that well in the article. Screamer would have us believe that burning a flag in the pubic square is Constitutionally protected speech, but a skinny blond woman talking in an auditorium where you can decide to attend or not attend is Constitutionally phrohibited because he doesn't like what she has to say.
The column presents a little out of the box thinking relative to the Republican party being able to weed out meaningless candidates a bit sooner after 2016 and Georgia ... I think disitegrations would be OK. Why limit our options?
