Things - Funny and Otherwise

Senator Claire McCaskill, (D - MO) whose radio ad suggests "she's not one of those Crazy Democrats."

The new civility in politics.  Now the only thing with a shorter half-line then 7H (Hydrogen 7).

When did nationalism become synonymous with supremacy?

Beto O'Rourke, the next JFK, just without the Kennedy lineage, but Hollywood and impressionable young women love him.  I just don't know how many Hollywood types actually vote in Texas.

NASA wants to colonize the moon but doesn't know how best to gerrymander the congressional districts to ensure single-party dominance. So it will probably stop the effort.

Space-X's Tesla Roadster is approaching the asteroid belt, but it missed the turn at the Schlossen cutoff.  As a result, it may be delayed in arriving back home to earth.

It was almost cool enough to need a sweater this morning as I drove through the dark and fog to reach the pickleball courts.

Not me, but like me.

An Opinion on 29 October 2018

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The Government is Neither Moral or Immoral

“Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.”  Mahatma Gandhi

We gather today in outrage over the massacre of eleven people, killed because of their religion.  On a global scale this senseless violence is small and perhaps insignificant, but within our culture it marks yet another step in the polarization of the politics of incivility.

Today’s society demands we assign blame for these immoral acts to specific people whose life, political views, or access to power we disdain, rather than the individual who commits the offense.  The need to score political points, display political outrage and demand the government improve its moral approach outweighs any sense of grief, real or imagined.

In a very real sense, it is this society, not the government, which has created the conditions which foster the public violence we see.  The government is an entity, it has no morality, it has no sense of justice, it is an infrastructure and a vehicle through which our society functions.  I think this article from the Foundation for Economic Freedom written in 2011 captures my sentiments as they have evolved over the past decade or so.  As George Washington is credited with saying, “Government is not reason.  It is not eloquence, Government is force; like a fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

The young have willingly bought into the identity politics and rhetoric of those who are unhappy with the current reality of government and are seeking, through whatever means possible to overturn the choices made in the last general election.  Many have been led to believe President Trump through his social media and personal approach to celebrity has created the “toxic” environment we see today.  At the same time, they discount the personal attacks, vilification, outright falsehoods, and slander used by his political opponents as having any contributory impact at all.

It should be noted the idea of personality politics is nothing new for this nation.  We can trace the role of personality all the way back to our first president.  The difference, at least it seems to me, is we’ve found it more reasonable to attack the person who challenges the status quo than accept policies that fail.    As an example, let’s look at the success or failure of major metropolitan cities where unemployment, crime, and social disparity are the worst.  Most, if not all, have had an unbroken chain of Democratic Party Mayors and City Councils, all making promises they failed to keep while driving their cities into deepening debt.  Where their choices moral or immoral?  No, they acted in what they perceived to be their self-interest.  Unfortunately for many within the cities, their self-interest was really THEIR personal self-interest as in personal and family enrichment.

Perhaps sometime in the near future, we will ask our individual selves, "what can I do to alter the course of society and advance a course that reflects the desired moral standards we had believed to be the foundation of this country?"  Will our political outrage actually have a positive effect if we continue to apply it unevenly to the political parties and allow the social media to control the debate through limiting speech?

We are a nation of some 328 million and if we want society to improve it will take all 328 million to develop an intolerance to those who advocate for a one solution fits all society.

I Rise Today - A Celtic Prayer

As the ugliness of modern politics and a skewed society engulfs us I offer this Celtic prayer.

I rise today
in the power’s strength,
invoking the Trinity
believing in threeness,
confessing the oneness,
of creation’s Creator.

I rise today
in the power of Christ’s birth and baptism,
in the power of his crucifixion and burial,
in the power of his rising and ascending,
in the power of his descending and judging.

I rise today
in the power of the love of cherubim,
in the obedience of angels and service of archangels,
in hope of rising to receive the reward,
in the prayers of patriarchs,
in the predictions of the prophets,
in the preaching of apostles,
in the faith of confessors,
in the innocence of holy virgins,
in the deeds of the righteous.

I rise today
in heaven’s might,
in sun’s brightness
in moon’s radiance,
in fire’s glory,
in lightning’s quickness,
in wind’s swiftness,
in sea’s depth,
in earth’s stability,
in rock’s fixity.

I rise today
with the power of God to pilot me,
God’s strength to sustain me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look ahead for me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to protect me,
God’s way before me,
God’s shield to defend me,
God’s host to deliver me, from snares of devils, from evil temptations, from nature’s failing, from all who wish to harm me, far or near, alone and in a crowd.

Around me I gather today
all these powers against every cruel and merciless force
to attack my body and soul,
against the charms of false prophets,
the black laws of paganism,
the false laws of heretics,
the deceptions of idolatry,
against spells cast by women, smiths, and druids,
and all unlawful knowledge that harms the body and soul.

May Christ protect me today
against poison and burning,
against drowning and wounding,
so that I may have abundant reward;
Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me;
Christ within me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me;
Christ to the right of me,
Christ to the left of  me;
Christ in my lying,
Christ in my sitting,
Christ in my rising;
Christ in the heart of all who think of me,
Christ on the tongue of all who speak to me,
Christ in the eye of all  who see me,
Christ in the ear of all who hear me.

I rise today
in power’s strength,
invoking the Trinity,
believing in threeness,
confessing the oneness,
of creation’s Creator.

For the Lord belongs salvation,
and to the Lord belongs salvation
and to Christ belongs salvation.

May your salvation, Lord, be with us always.

It's A Russian Plot

I think the devices given to leading voices within the DNC were all made and delivered by the Russians.  Russians who couldn't spell very well, but wanted to make sure they had a chance to influence the mid-terms.

Despite CNN claims, this isn't really terrorism it is political hacking at the next level.

Will the FBI and DOJ crack the case before the mid-terms?  Inquiring minds want to know. 

Hillary Rodham Clinton

I don’t believe I’ve ever titled a blog post about a specific individual before, but there is a first for everything.  HRC is back in the news this week as she and her entourage float yet another trial balloon about a supposed third run at the office of President.  Once I stopped chuckling I thought about her life and legacy.  For Republicans she is the gift that keeps on giving.

Her thirst for power is such a remarkable quality she seems to US politics what Vlad the Impaler was to international diplomacy with the Ottoman Empire.  I am not sure if she is so ruthlessly calculating that she and her advisors have a true master plan, or she is so petty she intends to destroy what little remains of the old guard in the Democratic party as she slowly wilts away.  But I have to give it to her, she does have a Dorian Gray quality as she works so hard to market herself to the radical left.

I was driving yesterday when a song by Merrilee Rush came on the radio.  In the late 1960’s Angel in the Morning was a feminist anthem about how a woman was strong enough to accept the consequences of her actions regarding a one-night affair.  As I look at the modern movement that HRC has been such a central part of for almost 30 years, I can only wonder how we’ve evolved from that “free love” age to the “#metoo” generation and how her involvement in defending the predatory nature of fellow Democrats while using it as a club against her political opponents has really brought us to a point today where everyone is confused.

I am so old I can remember a time in the United States Air Force when Generals thought women were not suitable to fly airplanes.  This was well after the Amelia Earhart, the WASPs of WWII, and Jackie Cochran proved otherwise.  It was the same mentality that said Blacks should not drink at the same fountain as white folk.  That all finally changed in the 1970s and women have gone on to prove they are every bit the equal to men in the operation of complex equipment in demanding stress environments.  There remains a biological issue of the physical strength that would suggest there are some things that might be too demanding for the gender, but let’s not debate that here. 

There is no lack of study on the topic of feminism and woman’s rights, it’s been an on-going issue since its beginning in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848.[1]  The funny thing though is how the whole issue of equality has gotten twisted into one that mirrors the outrages of select groups in all social matters.  It also suffers from the fact a faction of the movement has pronounced themselves as the one true voice and are so narrowly focused on their political agenda they refuse to consider legitimate opposing voices within their own gender.

Since her rise to national prominence in the early 1990s HRC has been one of the key voices leading to this divide within the feminist culture.  A movement which now demands not only equality, but expects the government to fund their moral choices, and force those with opposing views do so as well.  She and her party have fostered voices that demean women who don’t fit within her political sphere and encourage abuse of those women for political gain.  For example, her current defense of her husband and why he was right not to resign fly’s directly in the face of the #metoo mantra that men in power who take advantage of that power to gain a sexual advantage are plain and simply abusers of the helpless and defenseless women.

Since she entered the national stage -- her views of the feminist movement seem to evolve with the political needs of the party. How she viewed her role as the First Lady was significantly different than all her predecessors, and successors for that matter.  We saw in her attempt to ram universal health care through the Congress during President Clinton’s first term that she viewed herself as an elected official, but without the legitimate clout or charisma to persuade even her own party of the value of such legislation.

Since those heady days of the Clinton White House, she has inspired others towards the extreme.  Take, for example, Kyrsten Sinema, Democratic Candidate for Senate in Arizona, who made this declaration in 2006, “These women who act like staying at home, leeching off their husbands or boyfriends, and just cashing the checks is some sort of feminism because they're choosing to live that life.[2]”  Making it clear that women who choose to be mothers aren’t really suitable to deciding what is and isn’t important to feminism.  By the way, she has also shown her disdain for the entire state she proposes to represent. The question for me is does she really enter into this political process to serve the needs of all the state, serve the needs of only a few, or to basically enrich herself?  At this point, she seems to be following in the HRC model where the office is a means to power and wealth, but that’s just my opinion.

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[1] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/seneca-falls-convention-begins

[2] http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/19/arizona-democrat-kyrsten-sinema-attacked-bullshit-stay-home-moms-leeching-off-husbands/

Pickle Ball (Fact and Fiction)

Now that I am settled into this retirement lifestyle I’ve taken up the obligatory game of PICKLE BALL, and in my search for knowledge I’ve decided to separate the fact from fiction. 

Family lore, passed down through the generations had told me the game was invented shortly after the Salem witch trials by Maniacs who were looking for something to do between the demanding Badminton and Wiffle Ball seasons.  The game, I was told, derived its name from the fact the founding fathers (their wives all having been found wanting at the witch trials) had taken the used wiffle ball away from the family pet (named Pickles) and using crude paddles fashioned from those used to discipline the children had found enjoyment in whacking Pickle’s ball back and forth.  I had carried this as truth until just recently when I found the “official site” of Pickle Ball on the world wide web of useless knowledge.

The official site[1] tells us three Congressmen from Washington State created the game in 1965 after they had completed a round of golf and arriving home found they actually had wives and children.  This is remarkable for two reasons.  First, it suggests politicians from Washington can actually accomplish something that does not involve increasing taxes, and they accomplish more at home than when being paid to attend the Congress.

The Equipment:

Think of the game as a cross between table tennis and badminton.  It is played on a badminton size court (in our case asphalt) with an extra area by the net.  For some strange reason this area is called the kitchen.  You can tell this game was invented by chauvinist men because you are supposed to stay out of the kitchen except on that rare occasion you find your pickle ball in it.

The paddles have evolved with technology and are now much bigger than those original ping-pong paddles (and more expensive).  They are about the size of a racket ball paddle and are handled similarly.

Pickle’s ball has also evolved and it is much stronger than the Wiffle ball that started this new sport that is growing into international prominence.  There are indoor and outdoor balls now and they come in a variety of attractive colors that help old people see them.

The net looks like a tennis net but is lower, reaching only two feet in the center and a little higher at the posts.

The Game:

The game is best enjoyed by four people (so you don’t have to move too much) and begins when one player yells at the other side “zero, zero, two.” He or she then smacks the ball diagonally across the net trying to get it into the rectangle past the kitchen.  The opposing player then whacks it back.

The ball must hit the ground at least twice, once on the serve and once on the return, before the players can move up to the net and try smashing it into the face of the opposing team.

Teams can only score points when they are serving and the game ends when either of these two conditions are reached.

a.  One team reaches eleven points and leads the other team by two points.

b.  One of the players passes out and an ambulance is called.

The Future:

I am told professional leagues have been formed, there is now a governing body setting all sorts of trivial rules, and it is only a matter of time until we have line judges and players yelling at them.  So everyone is really looking forward to seeing Pickle Ball on television where the drama and excitement will displace the NFL as a must watch TV event.  As far as I know no one has either played the national anthem before the match begins, or has taken a knee if it was played.  So we have that to look forward to.

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[1] https://www.pickleball.com/History-birth-of-pickleball-s/115.htm

Tomorrow - A Poem

I Can Almost See Tomorrow

In that time before the light

When the world is almost awake

The wind is gentle as if it too sleeps

The noises I hear are those made by man

For nature has not yet stirred from its rest

In those times, when all seems like peace

I can listen to my heart

And not my head

Wouldn’t be great if we could all see

Tomorrow

We would know what is important

We could choose what to forget

Strangers in their rush

Could pause and chat with us

If we only knew what was tomorrow

But tomorrow has not come yet

Its music unwritten

It is still for each of us

To add our lives to make it real

We each have a note to play

But in that time when the world is almost awake

When the wind is gentle

When I can listen to my heart

And not my head

I can almost see tomorrow

I Guess It's Political Evolution or Something.

I used to view myself as a fiscal conservative, meaning I wanted the government to live within its budget and not borrow money beyond its ability to pay back without putting existing programs at risk.  I also considered myself fairly liberal (or perhaps libertarian) in my view of the moral direction of society.  I didn’t think the government should be intruding into the sexual preferences of the average citizen, and there were good and just reasons for many of the social welfare programs, although they came at a cost, both in terms of total economics and social/family structure.  Essentially, I viewed my position as fairly mainstream middle-American.  If the government left me alone I would pay my taxes, live my life, and let others live theirs.  I would usually vote Republican in the Presidential races based their claims of fiscal responsibility, but not always.  On the local level up to Senator I often saw the Democratic candidate as a preferred option.

In the 2016 election I was faced with a difficult choice.  The two “mainstream” candidates were both unattractive to me.  One for his crass and demeaning manner, the other for her obvious flaws with regard to the telling the truth, her repeated hypocrisies, involvement in government subterfuge, abuse of her offices, and obvious sense of personal entitlement to the office she sought.  The third-party candidates were remarkable in their complete lack of vision for the nation.  As a result, I cast my first ever vote for “none of the above.”

On November 6, 2016 my political evolution began.  As I watched the political pundits, media, and Democratic party supporters come unhinged at the election of Donald Trump, I saw, for perhaps the first time, how truly unhinged the party and its activists had become.  I had disliked but accepted, for the eight years preceding the election, the rhetoric it had used to label the opposition as racist anytime someone was bold enough to criticize the President, the President and his party’s refusal to work in a bi-partisan manner, his placing of blame for all things on the GOP, and the fact he chose to publicly engage in the debate over local issues siding always with the minority versus the government, but figured his flaws were more ones of experience and a lack of real leadership rather than an all-out attack on the institution of our Republic.  I figured when the election was settled we would shift slightly and a continuation of the illusion of normalcy by the political elitists I had been lured into accepting would continue.  That all changed on the day after the election and has only continued to grow with each succeeding choice by the Democrats.  Their position is summed up pretty accurately with Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most recent position, saying the DNC cannot be civil until they are once again in power and can dictate the political debate.  If anyone truly believes that is the case then they are hopelessly uninformed.  If you think bullies change their approach when they are put in charge let’s look back on how the Congress last worked when the DNC controlled both the House and Senate.  Were they more civil then, or did the press just not highlight their partisanship?

I believe it was simply a matter of the popular media elites being totally onboard with the agenda being pushed by the DNC.  The elites, regardless of where they were, had all agreed to a single world view and it was nothing the hicks of middle American should have a say in.

I have no idea how our founders could have envisioned the polarization of a society as large as ours, but when they designed the relationships between the several states and our federal government, and then placed into the constitution the checks and balances they did it was absolutely brilliant.  Now we see the true colors of the Democratic party where increasingly louder voices are calling for the abandonment of the Constitution and the checks to power it provides.  Is the document out of date, or is it just it impedes their desire for unchecked power?

In about three weeks we will return to the polls to choose a new House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate.  Historically, the people have used these Presidential mid-term elections as a way to alter the course of what the federal government is doing.  If the economy is good and the majority is optimistic we see only minor change.  On the other hand, if things are not good the voters have historically altered the balance of power in the house and shifted the balance in the Senate. 

That lesson is not lost on either party, and the Democrats have been geared up to show how bad life is under President Trump, unfortunately for them the economic picture seems far better today than at any time during the Obama administration.  Then, of course, we have the pure political battles like the recent confirmation hearings for Justice Kavanaugh where the minority party pulled out every single thing they could think of to derail the confirmation.  In the process I believe they showed themselves to be unfit for office, but that is just my opinion.  We will see if others think as I do soon enough.

Perhaps the DNC is playing to what they perceive as their next generation political core, but until they can come up with another candidate like Barrack Obama who will say the right things, even if he doesn’t believe them, they will have little chance to convince middle America they should be in charge.  I think the DNC has two challenges ahead of themselves.  First, find a candidate that is not 70+ years old who can convince the big money donors they can bet on him/her.  Second, either find a way to get more millennials to vote as they are told or recognize their ranting about doing away with the Constitution is a losing proposition for people who do actually vote.

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A Question With No Answer

To borrow a line from JRR Tolkien, what follows the age of men?  As I sat with my coffee this morning, watching the sky lighten in the east I was struck by the two-edged nature of progress and how a good idea can turn disastrous in a twinkling of an eye, when compared to the estimated age of the universe. So, my question today is what will bring our role as the dominant species to an end?

Since the time of Homo Erectus mankind has developed tools to improve all aspects of their lives, but with each new invention there comes a down side.  As far as I can tell, with the possible exception of Velcro, there are no good ideas that can’t be turned into terrible abuses.

Someone discovers round wheels are better than square ones and we start down the path of using the wheel to make life better, but just a few millennia later we build gasoline powered cars and all the sudden we invent Global Warming where all the ice will melt and the seas will rise until the only cars left are those on really high bridges.

Alfred Nobel discovers the chemical compound C6H23CH3[1] and makes a fortune helping people blow things up.  Of course, it can also be used to kill people and he feels a little bad about that so he uses his fortune to create a set of prizes for people in the arts and sciences and allows the folks in Oslo Norway to pick someone who has done something good for peace.  Often though those folks pick people who’ve not so much improved the chances of peace but are making the politically correct statements about peace.

The world of the mind offers wonderful examples of good ideas that turn out to be really terrible in execution.  I think we can all agree someone with a mental illness should be treated and hopefully cured, but there is a problem.  First of all, who decides someone is mentally ill?  How do they go about diagnosing illness and the best options for curing it?  These are incredibly hard questions to answer with certainty as our history of dealing with people who don’t fit within the social norms has demonstrated.  We train people to supposedly be experts in the field, but what they know and how they use that knowledge is, of course, subject to their own biases.  The progressive thinkers over the past 150 years have come up with a whole myriad of good ideas on how to cure or deal with mental illness.  Their solutions range from locking them away, cutting out the bad part of their brains, sending electric currents through the brain to short circuit the bad circuits, providing drugs that will somehow compensate for the drug balances that are out of kilter, to totally ignoring the issue and releasing them to the streets where they can care for themselves.  So I wonder are we really any better off today with mental illness than when we expected people to be stoic and fit in, and if they couldn’t fit into society they were chained to a bed somewhere?

Now we have the internet of all things, which has become sort of the global town square where anyone with an opinion can climb onto his, her, or its soapbox and yell that opinion to the world.  Those who are of like opinions can join in until they form a group (or mob) and they can shout all the louder for it.  Those who disagree can stack up their soap boxes until they are able to form their own group (or mob) and yell all the louder that their opinion is right.  Sooner or later all this yelling is bound to have an obvious impact on those who listen to it.

We have scientists who are now working towards a day when men are not needed for reproduction, and of course we have the feminist movement where its radical elements are blaming men (and conservative women) for all the evil in the world.

Some of us Homo Sapiens believe global warming will destroy us, others believe insects will take over, still others think we will destroy each other through war and a nuclear exchange, and many of us believe the we will fall victim to mean talk and dissenting opinions. 

Whatever it is, I hope the next species decides the internet is not worth the hassle.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT

What's Next?

         It really shouldn’t be hard to know right from wrong, but it sure seems to be getting that way.  The airwaves, including the world-wide net of everything, has opinions blasting at us non-stop 24/7/365, all variations on one of two themes “We’re right” or “They’re wrong.”  It doesn’t matter the subject; the public faces of whoever will weigh in with why it is right or wrong and the public faces on the other side will counter with why the first faces are stupid.  It will go that way, back and forth until it’s time for the next news cycle.

         People are now being whipped into a frenzy by those who know very little but sound like they know everything.  It is almost as if those who call themselves journalists have taken a page from the announcer’s script at a WWE match.  In their efforts to become rich and famous they are willing to cast anyone as the bad guy, broadcast opinions as facts, or ignore the duplicity of one side or the other.  Don’t even get me started on the entertainment industry.  When you’re listening to someone who happens to have a stage and an opinion telling us that he or she knows best, or is famous as a singer or an actor (neither of which requires a degree in “being brilliant”) then you’ve given up your right to free will.

         Chuck Schumer (D-NY), has claimed the Kavanaugh confirmation signals the end of bi-partisan confirmations.  I’m sorry Chuck that boat left the dock in the 1980’s with Ted Kennedy’s attack on Bork, it left the harbor during the Obama administration, and reached the open sea back in 2016 when the people chose to elect Donald Trump to the White House and the DNC chose to encourage as much anti-Trump hate as possible.  From his selection of Neil Gorsuch until today I ask, has there been one iota of democratic support or any kind of thoughtful deliberation on a middle ground that is best for the nation?  I can say this for Senator Schumer, he is easy to understand.  His words today, or any-day, have little to do with reality, they are scripted simply to gain media and supporter attention and keep him with as much power with the party as possible.  But I digress.

         The original idea of the #MeToo movement was a good one.  Encourage women who had been victims of sexual harassment and abuse to report that abuse, to highlight an unfortunate reality in the law enforcement agencies and courts who often show far more concern to the abuser than to the victim, and to help others understand how sexual abuse affects those who’ve been caught up in it.  The unfortunate reality is it became a political tool almost immediately with very little effort to remain non-partisan.  Its spokespeople chose to hold one political side to one standard while allowing the politicians they like to get a pass.  In so doing it has opened itself up to all the backlash we see today.

         Here are my takeaways from the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, but I doubt those screaming in the streets will see it the same way.

a.     Victim Rights (regardless of sex) should be protected and defended.  The victims should be listened to with all the humanity possible, and their stories investigated with as much rigor as we would a murder. 

b.    To be effective that investigation must be done quickly, quietly and outside the public forum.  Once anyone involved chooses to make that investigation public the victim and the accused become part of a public circus (in the sense of a Roman Circus) where the rights of neither are protected and both are subject to intimidation and/or character assassination.  The counter-argument for this is it would allow the legal process to cover up abuse, as it has in the past.  That is a human problem I am not sure how to fix.  The choices are a process supported by our constitution or a public lynch mob.  For me the constitution wins out.  (note:  If you claim to be concerned with a past abuse and wait until that abuse can be used as a political club than are you really all that concerned about the victim?)

c.    False accusations occur and if you believe one gender or the other is always right or always wrong then you are a sexist and you don’t make your choices based on reason and fact, but rather on totally irrelevant emotional beliefs.  Any process that assumes guilt as an entering argument is flawed and runs contrary to what our forefathers believed to be a fundamental right for its citizens.

d.    Public media, and its “journalists” have absolutely no desire to seek or know the truth, although some will claim that is their role.  Their singular purpose is to make themselves as famous as possible, make money, and perhaps rake some muck along the way.  Anything that suggests otherwise is simply chaff.  This holds true for any and every medium from the print to the internet.  It is as true for FOX as it is for ABCNNBCBS/MSNBC.  It’s as true for the NY Times as it is for The National Enquirer, and it as true for Huffington Post as for Breitbart.  Of course, they all hire inspiring writers who all tend to think alike and believe they know what is best for all the rest of us.  These same reporters will sacrifice any victim without a second thought if it will further their storyline, although they like to play the role of guardian and will from time to time protect their sources, this choice is also a selfish one, for they know their access to gossip and unsupported storylines depends on people thinking they can keep secrets.

e.     The young in our society no longer seem to understand why our government exists, how it should work, and what binds us together as a nation.  They have been taught that everyone has a right to a participation trophy, and if they don’t get their way they should have a public tantrum to show how unhappy they are.  As a result, they willingly join in with those who have an agenda to overthrow the society we have and create something where those with the agenda will be swept into power and enriched.  Their loyalty is usually based on emotional promises and little else.  (BTW this is what swept the communists into power as they overthrew the corrupt government of the Czars.  The communists shaped the USSR at the cost of some 62-millions[1] of its citizens as they made the ruling class rich within the workers’ paradise.

f.     The left talk quite a bit about how angry and evil the right is, but all the public information supports the idea this is simply a transference of their own anger and incivility to those who don’t agree with their positions.  I haven’t seen a lot of reports of conservatives hounding public officials out of restaurants, protesting the right of free speech on college campuses, pushing claims that speech they don’t like is really hate-speech, but perhaps I am living in a sheltered world where I miss all those angry conservative protesters in the halls of Congress, or the twitter feeds filled with profanity aimed at our legislators from such political commentators as Kathy Griffin.

g.     One of the original fears in the Kavanaugh confirmation process was the claim he would shift the political balance of the court and they would overturn the courts 1973 decision in Roe v Wade and remove a woman’s right to abortion on demand.  This is a big dollar issue for both the left and right, as evidence with how much money Planned Parenthood spends on candidates who support the abortion industry.  This is such a “hot topic” issue we have the likes of Chelsey Clinton claiming as a deeply religious person it would be un-Christian of her to limit the rights of a woman to abort her fetus.  Of course, there are other deeply religious woman who are not democrats and believe the rights of a fetus capable of sustaining life (or upon conception) should be equal to the rights of the woman.

         Justice Kagan made an interesting point recently, she bemoaned the loss of Justice Kennedy as a middle ground for the court and its shift toward the conservative right.  The question this raised was why should it be the conservative who is the middle ground?  Why couldn’t a liberal?  That kind of sums up the whole world of the progressive left.  They can’t be the middle ground.  It also reflects the problem with knowing good from evil for the left.  When the goal posts keep moving it is impossible to have a consistent good.

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[1] https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM

Trump Loves Hate

Okay, now you’re just being silly.  As the Democratic extremists continue to argue against Kavanaugh, and suggest that if this or that was done it might change their position it has reached a point of absurdity.  On the bright side, it seems they and their tactics may just make this a mid-term to remember.  Six months ago, all the alleged experts were calling for a blue wave where incumbent Republicans would be tossed out and the Democrats would sweep into power to impeach and convict the President, thus removing him from office.  It appears that may not be as dramatic as the media would like it to be.  In fact, there may be a political red tide in lieu of a blue wave.

Diehards within the activist’s groups in the DNC don’t know how to quit, but the responses to their outrageous behavior are certainly getting easier for those who must confront them.

It seems daily their bad behavior is now displayed even on the most bias of social and public media.  It doesn’t matter if it is some guy with a roundhouse kick to knock out some poor pro-life girl with a camera, or the idiots who are yelling out the FBI investigation was incomplete.  For the average middle of the road voter, they are now getting a sense of how dangerous it would be to restore power to the extremists who’ve become the face of the Democratic party.

For those complaining the FBI didn’t interview Professor Blasey Ford or subject Judge Kavanaugh to a lie detector test, I offer two simple observations.

a. Professor Ford and her lawyers had over six months to come forward and didn’t.  She and her lawyers sought to control and limit her exposure to questioning by the Judiciary Committee where they had every opportunity to lay all their substantiation on the table.  They and the minority members chose not to -- believing uncorroborated claims would be enough.  Not one Democratic member chose to ask probing questions that would have perhaps filled in some of the corroborations.  They chose instead to praise and glorify her victim status since they had already made up their minds.  Because of the testimony, there was zero reason for the FBI to interview her, despite the claims by her lawyers she could offer corroborating evidence.  It seems interesting a recently retired law professor from UW Madison wrote on her blog today.  "There's so little honesty in law and politics. I sometimes feel like retreating from all of it and..."

b. The American Psychological Association^[1] says this about Polygraph (lie detector) tests. “Polygraph testing has generated considerable scientific and public controversy. Most psychologists and other scientists agree that there is little basis for the validity of polygraph tests. Courts, including the United States Supreme Court (cf. U.S. v. Scheffer, 1998 in which Dr.'s Saxe's research on polygraph fallibility was cited), have repeatedly rejected the use of polygraph evidence because of its inherent unreliability.”  So, any call for the Judge to take a polygraph test is either coming from a useful idiot or would be immediately questioned as bogus if he were exonerated.   This call is simply another red herring thrown up by those who don’t want President Trump to win.

I am surprised I haven’t heard how many people will die if he is appointed.  Oh wait, I have.  Never mind.

Maybe someday, perhaps not in my lifetime but someday, the DNC will actually have good ideas to make America Great and not just resort to ad hominin attacks on those who would like to live in a great country.

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[1] https://www.apa.org/research/action/polygraph.aspx

You Lost Me at "People Will Die"

I only pause to catch my breath as the political hyperbole spins out of control.  It’s as if everyone thinks their opinion matters.  It may – to a friend, or even your family, but beyond that not so much.  Unfortunately, it seems we’ve created a whole generation that has been indoctrinated to believe certain opinions are more important than fact, and reality is just an illusion based on societies loudest opinions.

“There are more than two genders,” throughout the annals of recorded history, science (when it actually became science and not just good religion) has defined mammals in two genders, male and female.  Now thanks to modern social science we have all sorts of genders and we, not biology, get to choose what gender we want to be.  (Apparently, gender is not distinctly different from sexual orientation/preference.)

“The science is settled,” and if you question the science you are a “science denier” (caveat:  This only applies to things vocal activists want it to apply to, and is not to be applied as a universal standard (see above).)

“If they go low, we’ll go high” – perhaps one of the most misunderstood phrases in the 2016 political campaign.  Who knew this really meant “If they elect Trumph we will go so low their heads will spin.”

“We must believe the victims” unless we don’t want to because they are accusing people we like.

“I did not have sex with that woman.”  A gem from the archives, which in today’s world would be a tweet countering “we must believe the victims.”

“I’m not a crook.”  Another gem from the archives.  In today’s world anytime, someone has to say this it must be assumed with 100% certainty they are.

“Black Lives Matter.”  But only if you want to vilify the police.  It sure seems, on the whole, people who say black lives matter don’t care about the lives lost to inner city crime/gang violence where the value of black lives are heavily discounted.

“You’re a Nazi.”  Usually said by someone who employes the same tactics as the Nazi Brown Shirts (e.g. Kristallnacht) and Mussolini’s Black Shirt Fascists to beat or intimidate people who disagree with them.  Cleverly they call themselves Antifa (for anti-fascist) but to paraphrase Inigo Montoya (The Princess Bride) they keep using that word.  I do not think it means what they think it means.