Trump Gives Government Settlement Fees To Conservative Groups

The Death of Obama’s Slush Funds - WSJ:



Oh, sorry ... **BO** forced businiesses to send  BILLIONS to left wing organizations rather to the "victims" of whatever the Adminisrative State had "convicted" them of, or to the coffers of the US Treasury! Naturally, the fact this happened, and the fact that it has  been stopped will get VERY little MSM coverage!

Banks were made to fund left-wing activists such as NeighborWorks—though these groups were neither victims nor parties to lawsuits. In 2015 JP Morgan was required to pay $7.5 million to the American Bankruptcy Institute’s endowment for financial education. In 2016Volkswagen was required to invest $2 billion in zero-emissions technology and promote zero-emissions cars. Government enforcement became an income redistribution mechanism without having to go through Congress.

Renmember Iran Contra? The ENTIRE issue was about the question of Reagan being aware that funds from off-budget arms payments from Iran had been routed to the Contras.



This is just one of the MANY cases where BO took illegal unconstitutional actions and got off completely without even reporting of the crime!



'via Blog this'

Spaceman, Mike Massimino

https://www.amazon.com/Spaceman-Astronauts-Unlikely-Journey-Universe/dp/1101903546

A book that I suspect only relatively hard core space junkies will enjoy. There are some really interesting sections on the Hubble, spacewalking, the process of getting to be an astronaut, etc **IF** those things are of signficant interest to you.

Of most interest to me were:

• How much flying time riding as a back-seater in T-38s was REQUIRED even if you were a mission specialst that is never going to pilot anything -- psychological training!
• How strong the astronaut sense of community is and how heavily Christian oriented it is. When you you fly on a spacecraft, you are ready to go and ready to GO (permanently).
• How much less "star power" there now is in being an astronaut or ex-astronaut. Massimino is a professor at Columbia now, one of his astronaut buddies is a commercial airline pilot and another flies for FedEx. 
• "Experience vs Knowledge". Mike is orbiting at the Hubble spacewalking, looks around and EXERIENCES the billiant light of the stationary sun as the earth rotates out of darkness ushering in a new 90 min Hubble "day". Mike EXPERIENCED the fact that the sun is stationary (relative to earth) and the day and night are caused by the rotation of the earth. Of course he "knew" that, but experience is much more. Telling someone about being a grandparent is not the same as being a grandparent. 

Mike was a long shot for space -- somewhat weak qualifications considering the competion and very marginal eyesight for an astronaut. Good "never give up" motivational example.

Through a number of twists and turns, personality/connections and certainly some good fortune or "fate", he flew two missions to repair the Hubble that sits at a higher orbit than the ISS, 350 miles vs 250 miles, so the view is better, you see the whole earth "blue marble effect". His first flight was STS-109, which bumped STS-107 so that they had to wait. 107 was the last flight of Columbia, broke up over TX due to insulation damage to the wing on takeoff. Spaceflight is dangerous, and your number can come up, or you can just be "close". 

LOTS and LOTS of detail about spacewalking, Hubble, the difficulties of doing repairs, the expense but huge payoff in exploration of the Hubble. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but unless you are a significant space / engineering junkie, you are not likely to make it through. 

Comey, Profiles in Bureaucracy

Comey Ordered Leak of Own Memo to Spur Special Counsel Probe | National News | US News:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/06/should-trump-fire-mueller.php

The term "appparatchik" comes to mind as I observe Comey. It used to be a common term used relative to officials of the USSR -- strong Communist Party members that worked in the state bureaucracy. "The Party" (TP-D) is socialist rather than communist at this point, however they don't seem to have much love of private property, so I assume that socialist is just as far as they are willing to go at present.

If one wants to know what a DC swamp creature looks like, Comey is a great example. Self serving to a fault,  master at "CYA" (Cover Your Ass), lies impeccably and of course a loyal member of TP. Here is a more perfect picture of "apparatchik / swamp thing".

So he proudly volunteers! that he created a memo that was properly "declassified" and then  leaked it in hopes that it would initiate a special prosecutor! Marvelous. If anyone foolishly had any doubt that the Deep State alphabet angency arms of TP are manufacturing anything they possibly can to take down Trump, this is way more than plenty to show what the Deep State is up to!

Newt covers it well in this article, a teaser:

So, what we have here is a fired FBI director, who leaked private material to the press, so he could get his friend appointed as a special counsel in order to take retribution on the President – with the aid of a department full of federal lawyers who would have rather seen Hillary in the White House. And we are supposed to believe this will be an objective, unbiased investigation?

The unaccountable Administrative State breeds things like Comey -- it MUST be made to be accountable if we are to return to being America, let alone become great again!

'via Blog this'

The Arab Descent Into Darkness

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/05/the-arab-world-has-never-recovered-from-the-loss-of-1967/

I suspect that the intellectual author finds Christianity and Judaism to be just as "atavistic" (ancient / backward) as Islam. When there are three great monothistic religions, two of which DO worship the same God (the Father), and one who does not, intellectuals see the failure of the imposter as reason to indict the other two as well. It was what they see as "equality" -- we know religion is bad, if one out of three monotheistic religions is a disaster and the other two are huge successes, it "proves" that religion is bad! Simple.

It's a good visitation of Arab history post '67 anyway ... an excerpt.

Fifty years after Azm and other Arab intellectuals started to mercilessly deconstruct their ossified political orders, reactionary and primitive religious structures, and stagnant societies, the Arab world has descended further into darkness. Physical, intellectual, and political desolation has claimed many of the once lively metropolises of the Arab region — Damascus, Aleppo, Baghdad, Mosul, Cairo, and Alexandria — with only Beirut still resisting, albeit teetering on the edge. For centuries, these cities constituted a rich human and linguistic mosaic of ancient communities including Muslims, Christians, Jews, Druze, Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, and Circassians. In modern times, they were joined by Greek, Armenian, and Italian communities. A vibrant cosmopolitanism found home in the port cities of Alexandria and Beirut and the cities of the hinterland, such as Aleppo, Damascus, and Baghdad.

Portland Attacker Bernie and Standing Rock Kind of Guy

No one should be surprised the Portland attacker felt the Bern | Intellectual Takeout:

Naturally, the left wing media peddles the story that the attacker was a racist Trump supporter -- this VOX column is headlined with themes of "Increasing racial attacks following Trump's election".

The top linked article covers the obvious themes that I have covered many times -- "fascism" is driven by massive government control of business and cronyism with business, but not government OWNERSHIP of business. Very few people in the US have any comprehension of anything other than throwing labels around that they hear ... confusion is the order of the day.

Certainly the anti-Trump "resistance" forces are more than happy to resort to violence and have many times across the country. I'm certain there will be some actual Trump supporters that become violent. Given the rhetoric and the incendiary media against Trump, the general level of restraint from the right is admirable.

Remember when Sarah Palin was virtually indicted in media for the shooting of Gabby Giffords because Sarah had used "crosshairs" on her web site! Oh! how that incited violence compared to ...

How standards have changed! Remember when a poor rodeo clown wore an Obama mask? OH! The HORROR!

via Blog this'

Civil War or Divorce ?

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448069/memorial-day-united-states-armed-services-unity-political-fragmentation-james-mattis

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448385/americans-left-right-liberal-conservative-democrats-republicans-blue-red-states-cultural-segregate

I spend a good deal of time ingesting media from the left and far left -- more than half of my media life, since knowing what those that I tend not to agree with are thinking is more difficult and less natural than listening to echoes of my own thought. I have a strong belief that spirit / thought / consciousness are what makes us uniqely and eternally human. To me, race, gender and sexuality are FAR less important. "Culture" is however critical, because everyone has one, and in the US, we now have two radically different cultures.

I find this quote from James Mattis from the top linked article to be spot on:

When I asked what worried him most in his new position, I expected him to say ISIS or Russia or the defense budget. Instead, he said, “The lack of political unity in America. The lack of a fundamental friendliness. It seems like an awful lot of people in America and around the world feel spiritually and personally alienated, whether it be from organized religion or from local community school districts or from their governments.”

Frequent readers of this blog understand that I consider meaning to be really the only thing that matters in human life -- and I regularly harp on "Man's Search for Meaning". I believe that the reason for the alienation in Western civilization is because we have put pleasure or "happiness" in the top position rather than meaning, so freedom has been corrupted to being "freedom to have as much pleasure as possible".

For a Christian, the realization of our ETERNAL purpose as serving Christ is the ongoing discovery of his eternal leading. As covered in Frankl, great suffering has far more meaning than even the most desireable pleasure in even the temporal sense, let alone the eternal.

Since personal pleasure has become the "holy grail" of the west, alienation is inevitable. Most people find it difficult to see "good" in people who do not share their world views. Christ's admonishion to love our enemies goes totally against our sinful human nature. When the highest goal is "happiness / pleasure", why bother to even associate with anyone who does not see eye to eye with us on virtually every detail?

When my own pleasure is the ultimate goal, then whatever gets in the way of that is clearly "evil". "Progressives" consider their chief recent accomplishments to be pursuit of largely sexual pleasure -- sex outside of marriage, abortion on demand, same sex relationships, gender bending, etc.  This is nothing new -- this script goes back to the Old Testament. Let's break out the golden calf and the ashera poles. In the search for pleasure. "Progress" is considered to be removal of restraint and ultimately all responsibility -- everything becomes "a right", including the "right" to not even be exposed to anyone who is not in lock step with your world view. (those people are intolerant!)

The "progressive" world view demands that those who do not agree be removed from any association with "progressives" -- the god of personal pleasure is CERTAINLY not in any way shape or form going to suggest that you "love your enemies",  but rather that you destroy your enemies -- cut them off by any means possible. Make no mistake, Christians are definitely the chief enemies of "progressives" in this world. Muslims are OK, but NOT Christians!

Tiny little things like a Constitution are not going to stand in the way of "progressives" rooting out Christian doctrine. Here is Bernie Sanders applying a religious test to someone nominated for office in BOistan. Bernie was especially offended by the nominee having written this line in an internet post:

“Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.”

BOistan has no operative constitution, so at least half the country has no problem with this. Christ states in John 14:6 "... I am the way the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me". Practicing Christians not only agree with Christ, they WORSHIP him! Bernie concluded his remarks with; “This nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about.”

America had a Constitution that demanded in Article VI:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

BOistan clearly does not honor the laws of the former Democratic Republic of America ... to "progressives", what was fundamental to America is now "not what BOistan is about".

David French concludes the second linked article above (both are excellent, well worth reading) with this:

If we seek to preserve our union, we’re left with a choice — try to dominate or learn to tolerate? The effort to dominate is futile, and it will leave us with a permanently embittered population that grows increasingly punitive with each transition of presidential power. There is hope, however, in the quest to tolerate. Our Constitution is built to allow our citizens to govern themselves while protecting individual liberty and providing for the common defense. It’s built to withstand profound differences without asking citizens or states to surrender their strongest convictions. We can either rediscover this federalism, or we may ultimately take a third path — we may choose to separate.

Is it remotely possible that the left will relent and decide that using the federal government to dominate is "futile"? As the Deep State, dominant media, legal system and educational system pull out all stops to overturn the presidential election, it seems awfully pollyannaish to me. Is it REALLY "futile"? The left has forced abortion on demand in all 50 states as well as gay "marriage", and they are pushing hard on the "whatever" vs gender front. Their climate doctrine is holy writ, well beyond Biblical levels of inerrancy for even most of the leftist post Christian "christian" churches. The Virgin Birth? Probably not ... Climate Change? Yea verily! ... oh, and forget that John 14:6 stuff, Muslims, Wiccans, "whatever" ... "it's all good'.

What I'd LIKE to believe is that we will have an honest to goodness REVIVAL of actual practicing Christainity in this failed area of N America. There ARE hopeful signs ... a person I work with attended the graduation at Liberty University this spring -- around 100K students enrolled on campus and online. Huge growth, Christ centered, very much appreciated and supported the graduation speech by Trump. Have attended a couple services at RedRocksChurch in Denver with our son ... packed services, all ages, very Biblically based with a young adult focus. Rapidly growing.

In general, the "sliding leftward" traditional protestant churches are dying. The Evangelicals, and to some degree Catholics are growing. Interestingly, Trump DID win the Catholic vote -- which is a story that is not talked about much. As I wrote about here, I firmly believe that 2016 was our first truly "post Christian Nation" election. Practicing Christians finally realized that we no longer live in "America", which culturally WAS Christian, but now live in BOistan, which desires to be pagan, and is more than happy to exclude any practicing Christians if possible.

I agree with Mattis. While I very much enjoy the free exchange of ideas and relish the chance to debate matters of religion, politics, philosophy, scotch, and cigars, we increasingly live in the age of shrinking tribal alienation. ALL relationships are increasingly "my way or the highway" ... friends, family, work, neighborhood, church, etc. I personally work to maintain relationships with people who do not share my world view, but in order to do that, the relationships become increasingly shallow. The worst thing about the Climate Change religion is that it has made even something as innocuous as the weather a religious issue. There is no god but man (man is the measure of all things), and even the weather is due to man's power in the climate religion.

I've been away from my blog for a bit while becoming grandpa x 2 with the birth Graham Walden in Denver, and I've rambled yet again. I believe that increasingly fractured lives are the wages of losing a shared transcendent vision of meaning ... we will atomize to ever smaller "tribes" if we don't "revive". Is that a "decision", or is that "Grace"? Given free will, I see it as both -- there must be a daily decision to stay in the Grace or to reject it in favor of man's "thought of the day".

My prayer for my "enemies" on the left is that even if you can't imagine loving those whom you disagree with, is it really too much to ask that you tolerate them rather than seek to dominate them to the point of preventing even a tiny "trim" of the massive Adminstrative State which rules BOistan?

When elections are not honored, the "separation" at a minium seems all but certain. Perhaps that is God's will. 

Peter Singer Leads Atheist Intellectual to Christ

How Oxford and Peter Singer drove me from atheism to Jesus - The Veritas Forum - The Veritas Forum:

Well, he didn't intend to, but sometimes hearing evil incarnate proudly declares it's bloodlust has that effect.

Well worth the read, a teaser.

I remember leaving Singer’s lectures with a strange intellectual vertigo; I was committed to believing that universal human value was more than just a well-meaning conceit of liberalism. But I knew from my own research in the history of European empires and their encounters with indigenous cultures, that societies have always had different conceptions of human worth, or lack thereof. The premise of human equality is not a self-evident truth: it is profoundly historically contingent. I began to realise that the implications of my atheism were incompatible with almost every value I held dear.

'via Blog this'

The Costs Of BO

The $600 Billion Man - WSJ:

If you cared about the country formerly known as "America", it's murderer, BO is already a name clouded in stench. This article gives some numbers to go with the smell.

$1.9 TRILLION is spent by BOistanis every year to comply with the reams of regulations spewing from the federal maw. BO added $600B to that yearly total!

2016 was the all time record for pages of new federal regulations, 95,894 pages. “Of the top 10 all-time-high Federal Register page counts, seven occurred under President Barack Obama,” 

The three best words to describe BO? Stink, Stank and STUNK! 

'via Blog this'

Powerful Women And Trump

Every man should have a woman who looks at him the way the President of Croatia looked at Trump | Conservative News Today:

The relationship of women to alpha males is sometimes complex, but not always subtle.

While modern "science" and certainly politically correct socialization would tell you there is no such thing as gender, men and women are the same and sexuality is entirely a social construct, etc etc, we do actually still have male and female plumbing fittings (I'm sure that would have been outlawed had Hildebeast prevailed), and procreation actually still involes a certain ordered fitting of body parts.

So, sometimes powerful, confident females are attracted by males that stand above the other males both in physical and personal power. Obviously the women showing their "power" in pussy hats object to this sort of disply with the strongest whining they can muster.

It is as natural as "boy meets girl", which of course makes it abhorrent to the modern "progressive". Even worse from the leftist abandonment of personal responsibility standard, humans are entirely able (sometimes with significant difficulty) to not react to all our quite natural urges -- even on the left, the majority remain potty trained (so far), but same sex attraction is absolutely NOT controllable!

Since the left is certain that "Trump is Hitler", we might want to just consider the "small" difference between Trump and Hitler relative to his relations with the opposite sex. I understand that for the left, the only interesting sexuality is the current plethora of non-heterosexual options which of course are "major and defining" to every aspect of life, with no potential for character or conciousness to have an effect.

Here is a shot of the lefts favorite National Socialist with his final love interest -- you might want to look at a picture of Trump and Melania to see if you can detect slight differences.

Again, I realize that I am a moose of another time. Sexuality today is only significant when it is NON heterosexual, in which case it is the most significant part of a persons life and can't be ignored for even a second. I DO understand what I have been told -- it is just that the last shreds of independent thought have not quite been beaten out of me (yet)!

'via Blog this'

Mike Pence's Son Attacks Peaceful Protestors, Resists Arrest

Tim Kaine's son Woody Kaine charged in Trump rally protest:

Oh wait, it was Tim Kaine's son and it was right up good old St Paul last March -- I didn't even know, which I'm SURE would be the case if it HAD been Pence's son!

Sounlds like some great folks ... people simply marching in support of Trump, this group maces some of them in the face, pushing, screaming at them and then trying to flee and resist arrest violently.

Lovely. Hopefully some tin tray time in store -- be nice if we were more aware of the sort of thugs we "deploreables" are up against!

'via Blog this'

The Office Of Ecclesiastical Purity

Anatomy of a Deep State - WSJ:

Reading this article gives a little bit of insight into why even SKIMMING the swamp in DC is a task of difficulty levels that defy imagination.

There are few better examples than the EPA post of Scientific Integrity Official. (Yes, that is an actual job title.) The position is a legacy of Barack Obama, who at his 2009 inaugural promised to “restore science to its rightful place”—his way of warning Republicans that there’d be no more debate on climate change or other liberal environmental priorities.

When the State **IS** the "church" and one of it's major tenets is faith in "Anthropogenic Climate Change" (ACC) ...  I still await the "official encyclical" which replaces AGW "Anthropogenic Global Warming" with the more current ACC, since ANY difference in "weather or climate" (interchangeable when used by proper "scientists") is now assumed to be anthropogenic.

The huge CA drought was due to ACC, now the heavy rains are also due to ACC. We assured that AGW caused Katrina and that we would be breaking hurricane records until it cooled -- only then we broke records for NOT having hurricanes, which was also attributed to ACC. From heavy snows to no snows, or from record breaking cold to record breaking warmth are due to ACC. What part of "change" is it that you are missing?

More weather instability is due to ACC as is more stability (like droughts lasting years). ACC explains everything!

When you run a religion (especially one without a Living God) keeping your message pure is critical. Apostates, heretics, deniers, and other vermin must be rooted out at all costs, and if possible made to suffer. Certainly this has been well understood since ancient times, so it is no real surprise to see it ongoing in the case of "The Party" (TP-D) and its State Religion of "Progressivism (regressivism)".

You have to love the left -- they pull no punches and there is no amount of other people's money that they will not spend in their cause -- and why not. It has always been so for true believers.

BO vs Trump, A Case Study

Trump Critics Left & Right Want Him Removed | National Review:

A little long, but well worth the time. I've covered most of it, but Hanson lays it out very well showing why is an accomplished "somebody" writer and I am a nobody. Lots of it is worth the time ... a teaser.

Obama was degreed but not educated; he could not pronounce “corpsmen,” had no idea how many states there were in the Union, and thought Hawaii was in Asia and the Falklands Islands off the coast of India. The media demurred — based in some cases on the finery of Obama’s pants crease or his rhetorical ability to cause electrical sensations in one’s leg — and announced him a god, the smartest president ever to enter office. Obama himself in 2008 buffoonishly announced his power to lower global temperatures and the seas, and declared himself more adroit than all his own political handlers and aides in all of their respective jobs.

'via Blog this'

Anonymous Sources, Not Interested

"... according to two current and two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications with the president."

I've reached the end of any interest in "anonymous". If they don't have a person with a name that it can be attributed , I have LESS than no interest. The "former officials" are supposed to be BO officials. They have bad things to say about Trump? REALLY? And they are not willing to be named? What the Hell! They would be HEROES for their tribe if they only identified themselves! Of course then their story could be checked out ... uh, oh.

So why not just make up some specific text of "collusion"? I've long suspected that the "Dan Rather memo" was an in-house CBS creation that they got caught at. I mean can't the Deep State just produce a "transcript" and say the digital call record was "lost"? Heck, the IRS "lost" 24 THOUSAND e-mails to save the IRS when they targeted conservatives. ANYTHING can be "lost" in the Deep State.

What part of NO FAITH AT ALL in government is it that is hard to understand? Do I "trust Trump"? Not really -- I don't really "trust" anyone that would take a job in BOistan government. We are in a DEEP hole. Do I WANT to believe that Trump is a "great guy with a vision that can slay all the Deep State dragons and get us out of this hole?" Sure ... and I want to believe that my Blog will be "discovered" and somebody will start paying be $200K a year to write a column a week too!

I've had a lot of "wants" over the years ... and am practical enough to realize that mostly they are not going to be reality!

Why DO we even allow "anonymous sources"? If we all quit accepting ANY media story that credits such against ANY target as anything but fiction, we would all be better off. If you follow FAR more than "anonymous sources" against Slick Willie, he would definitely be eating off a tin tray and have bunch of  very real loving boyfriends. 

So from now on, I replace "anonymous sources" with "space aliens". I don't care if you have 1 of them or 100's. If they are anonymous, I don't care no matter what the charge -- rape, murder, etc. I accept no testimony from space aliens.

Pirsig Passes

Uneasy Rider Won Acclaim for ‘Zen’ Novel but Yearned for Respect From Philosophers - WSJ:

"Mr. Pirsig died April 24 at his home in South Berwick, Maine. He was 88."

A freshman college writing course included reading and discussing "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence".  I found it to be an interesting book -- bit of shallow philosophy on "quality" and some good tales of riding motorcycle -- Harley vs BMW.

I also read his book "Lilah" ... it wasn't as good as Zen, but it wasn't terrible.

Anyway, he is gone ... and I note his passing. 88 is certainly not a bad age to live to.

'via Blog this'

Trump in Riyadh, POSITIVE NEWS!

Trump in Riyadh: Speaking of reset | Power Line:

Trump is having a good first trip. BO dug us a deep hole and Trump has to fight not just enemies abroad but enemies at home to start the long road back. BO liked to claim that he had somehow similar problems, but like pretty much anything else he said, that was just a lie.

By contrast with President Obama’s Cairo speech, representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood were nowhere to be seen. The fake history served up by President Obama in that speech was abandoned. Indeed, the nemesis of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt — President el-Sisi saluted President Trump just before the speech: “You are a unique personality that is capable of doing the impossible.”

He is certainly a uniqe individual ... I pray he is capable of doing the impossible!

'via Blog this'