#COUNTMEOUT!

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/09/thoughts-from-the-ammo-line-240.php

Just go read it -- she is open, honest, forthright, and RIGHT!

The Burden Of Tribal Proof

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/571021/?__twitter_impression=true

The linked article continues the thread covered here, how the "burden of proof" in BOistan has completely shifted for those who are not members of "The Party" (TP-D). When you are not a member of TP in good standing, you are presumed guilty.

The most basic fact of humanity is that we are ALL guilty of original sin at a minium, a cosmic failure worthy of an eternal death sentance without the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ. Dealing with this problem which we all share determines the fate of our eternal soul -- it is a problem that really will still matter to us in 100 years, a 1000 years, or 10¹⁰⁰ (a "google").

For earthy charges made from one sinner to another, the burden of proof has always been on the accuser since ancient times for obvious reasons. Proving a negative is notoriously hard -- PROVE that Earth has never been visited by aliens from space. Prove that you never did "x". Much like the right of self-defense, it is a basic human right.

Until the advent of BOistan that is! -- now the burden of proof is on the accused, and it is proudly trumpeted from the headlines of mainstream news rather than some backwater of internet fever swamps or academia.

Is BOistan Kennedy's "America"?

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/09/reflections-on-the-devolution.php

A worthy read that pegs the devolution of America into BOistan to the Bork hearings in July of '87. I agree this is a key event, however as I cover here I think Chappaqiddick is an even better point of inflection. Teddy's Bork rhetoric however still bears repeating as a lesson in rhetorical malpractice ....

Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is — and is often the only — protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy….

They didn't try their hand, but I will ...

BOistan is largely Teddy Kennedy's America. A land in which 60 million babies have been slaughtered and when deemed "inconvenient", their body parts sold to the highest bidder over wine and salad. The doors of conservatives homes are battered down in the early morning hours, children as young as kindergarten are schooled in anal sex, bakers and florists are charged with crimes for failing to perform their craft for political adversaries, simple speech is labeled "hate speech" and criminalized, even universities are no longer able to have even civil dialogue on political subjects, and the judiciary has become a politicized mockery always leaning to to the left, a scourge of the rights of any who fail to agree with "The Party" (TP-D).

Teddy predicted -- I report.

The Liberal Mind on ATVs

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/editorials/2016/01/20/editorial-ban-atvs-iowa-roads/79064158/

I'm re-reading the excellent work "The Liberal Mind" by Kenneth Minogue and plan to blog on it later. I originally read it in 2000 before I started blogging my books. The book is very academic / intellectual and points out that the roots of "liberalism" contain the strain of "libertarianism", and the book documents how the desire for "total agreement" has trumped the libertarian  strain over the years.

I ran into thos column while looking up the rules for riding UTVs on roads in IA and found it to be an excellent example of the liberal mind.

The modern liberal mind is often described as "ideas so good they must be mandatory!". On issues of "safety", "liberals" have long ago decided that they know better than any individual what trade-offs ought to be made in order for one to be made as safe as "liberals" deem ought be required.

From seat belts, air bags and a chorus of warning gongs and lights in our cars, motorcycle helmet laws, gas cans that don't pour, packages that don't open and various attempts to restrict fireworks to disallow even the lowly sparkler, "liberals" have our best interests in mind, and THEY know what those interests are FAR better than we do! In fact, they use the force of law to make CERTAIN that we follow their wishes, lest they be forced to fine or jail us "for our own good".

The linked article is fairly standard fare -- there are a bunch of ATVs/UTVs out there, people want to drive them on the highway, they aren't as safe as cars, CHILDREN might be hurt, THEREFORE, ban the them from the road! Simple.

As is pointed out in some detail in "Coddling", life is actually about more than "safety". Is it better to die in a recreational accident at 14 or commit suicide at 24? Obviously, we are thankfully talking about relatively small numbers for ATV/UTV deaths  ... order 500 deaths per year  ... for suicide, the numbers are not so small -- suicide deaths are order 45K a year and rising. What we are beginning to understand is that some level of risk taking may well be at least a near requirement for a worthwhile human life -- apparently sitting in your bedroom with a cell phone and a video game console, while "safe", is actually not actually "a life". Churchill said that "there is nothing quite so exhilerating as being shot at without effect". It may well be that without some actaul (NOT "imagined") exhilerating danger in life, either our spirit or our brains are tragically stunted.

The Iowa House of Representatives sided with the industry, approving the bill on a vote of 75-22. Thankfully, Democrats in the Iowa Senate believed the health and safety of Iowans was more important than the profits of ATV dealers and put a stop to the legislation. But that action did nothing with regard to county roads, which is why counties continue to pass ordinances allowing ATVs on their roads. 

State legislators should ban ATVs from public roads, and while they’re at it, they should take a hard look at the existing state law on age limits. Today in Iowa, a child of any age can drive an all-terrain vehicle of any size on private property, without regard to training, certification or parental supervision. That’s a prescription for disaster.

Letting people decide what their children are capable of doing on their own private property is "a prescription for disaster" in the liberal mind. Only the Nanny State may decide what is "good" and "prudent" in the liberal state. What they totally fail to understand is that "life" is not equivalent to "safety". One of the old benefits of Christian Faith was the idea that this mortal coil was only a prelude to a greater life to follow. It was a life to be LIVED in gratitude and joy, NOT a life to be hidden away by like the man that hid the talent in the parable of the talents (Matt 25 14:30).

"Liberals" have a remarkable tendency to destroy all they touch -- as the suicide rate climbs we have excellent evidence that they have succeeded in destroying the joy in life itself!

Do Unto Kavenaugh

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/09/17/what-should-the-senate-do-with-brett-kavanaugh-219985

The most interesting thing about reading the linked article  is the utter predictability of responses from legal scholars of the left and right. In BOistan, NOTHING is more imprtant than one's political worldview, because in the absence of belief in a transcendent authority (God) -- all is politics, and there is CLEARLY no morality in politics. Obviously, the "rule of law" isn't any substitute for God at all -- even the top legal scholars simply twist "the law" to be what they want it to be.

The immediately obvious thing about the loss of God in this case is the loss of the "Golden Rule". I'm guessing that some people still recall it, though in this tribal state, rarely if ever apply it. The best place to read the basis for it is Matt 22:37- 39 Jesus declared, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.This is the greatest commandment, And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

These two verses get summarized in Matt 7:12 even more succinctly: "Therefore whatever you desire for men to do to you, you shall also do to them; for this is the law and the prophets." The "Golden Rule".

We all understand that when seeking a job, we would be completely aghast for someone to come out with a charge against us that they had never brought to our attention in 35 years.  When nobody else agrees with the accusers version of events  (of the 5 people supposedly at the party, none except the accuser says what was charged happened at all) .

In decent society for thousands of years we also understood how to deal with a sin against us. If possible, GO TO THE PERSON, if not, got to "authority" -- QUICKLY, because if this is really a serious matter, other young women might be harmed. When you fail to do this for "weeks, months, or ...", especially when you are talking about a 17 year old boy who is exceedingly well known, you make your charge under no threat of reprisal. We are not talking about the town tough who is going to be sure "you get yours", because he is certain he has no future anyway. Failure to come forward drops your credibility with each passing day. LONG before "35 years", your credibility is gone.

So what of "the woman"?  Given the amount of time, the fact that supposed corroborators swear under oath that what she claims did not happen, 65 women and many others coming forward to vouch for the character of the man she seeks to destroy, and the obvious politically motivated climate she came forward in, her credibility is ZERO.

Perhaps she was attacked when young once or multiple times and imagines that Kavenaugh was one of those attackers, or perhaps she only observed Anita Hill ($9 million net worth), and decided that she too could be a heroine to the left for a price. Women trading virtue for rewards is the oldest proffesion after all. In a world where honor and wealth are attached to calmuny, this is certainly well within the grasp of understanding. When there is no other world to come, the taking of easy wealth and fame in this one actually makes total sense. What would be against it? Morality? What a joke.

A country with even a hint of what used to be called "decency" would make certain that every Democrat up for election in November lost by historically unprecedented margins. If we were were a moral and religious people, that would be the certain case. As John Adams said,  "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other".

Clearly we are NOT that people, and since that state was founded on IDEAS, not territory, religion, ethnicity, etc, -- this is more proof that this is BOistan, not America. BOistan is in the process of development -- and as we see from Clarence Thomas and now Kavenaugh, it is not a good place to live if you are not a member in good standing of "The Party" (TP-D). On the TP plantation, you-uns gotta lay LOW if you don't kneel at the alter of the left.

As the charges against Kavenaugh show, liberty can't survive in such an environment because liberty requires the potential of leadership for people of more than one political stripe. We can run down a short list of men of the left NOT destroyed by charges significantly worse than this one even in the unlikely event that what the accuser says has any truth -- Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton are only the head of a sordid list from the left.

On the right? Well, Roy Moore is the most recent example of 35-40 year old "charges" being used to take him down. As I covered here, the Stupid Party (R) is reaping what they sowed. Now Kavenaugh. As the last entry in the linked article says ...

Ford, Kavanaugh’s accuser, maintained a stony silence on these allegations for more than 35 years. At no point did she raise them in connection with the Senate confirmation hearings before Kavanaugh was confirmed in 2006. Kavanaugh has categorically denied the allegations. Late last week, Mark Judge, his alleged accomplice, denounced the allegations as “absolutely nuts.” No other woman has ever made any allegation of this sort against Kavanaugh. and 65 women have written an explicit letter in his defense. Kavanaugh is right not to respond beyond his categorical denial, knowing full well that further comment would only draw him further into a vortex on which credibility determinations would be unending. And the Senate is right to continue with the confirmation vote. The institutional damage to the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the nation has already been enormous. What is left now is only the sorry task of damage containment. What sane judge would like to be the next Supreme Court nominee.

The author of that last piece (the best in the bunch) leaves out the obvious "What sane NON LEFTIST judge ...". The BO istan political buzzsaw really only cuts in one direction, and if you are willing to accept a nomination to a position which the left wants to block you from, not only will they try to block you, they will try to remove you from your CURRENT position -- unless you are a member in good standing of TP (The Party - D), it is best to keep your head down!

This nomination process cannot continue as it was before these grave and credible allegations became known. That would be a slap in the face to women and survivors of sexual assault everywhere. The question isn’t only whether Brett Kavanaugh can still be a Supreme Court justice; it’s whether he can still be a federal judge.

The Summer of '82

Link to Article ... 

In BOistan, "The Party" (TP-D) has established "standards" for anyone not in their good graces that disqualify any non-TP member from high office. As I said in December relative to Roy Moore, the sorts of "standards" of 35-40+ year old unsubstantiated "charges" mean exactly what TP wants it to mean. If you are not a member of TP in good standing, they will take you down, so "get your mind right boy".

It really doesn't matter that you can find 65 WOMEN willing to swear to the character of Judge Kavenaugh in High School!  That is completely beside the **MAIN** point is that if you are not a member in good standing of TP, you will be CHARGED ... as I cover in some detail in the linked post on Moore above, this "standard" is completely missing if you are a member in good standing of TP ... unless they are in some momentary "morality play" as they are now trying to denigrate Tump. If you are in TP,  you are simply immune from anything -- murder in the case of Ted Kennedy, rape in the case of Slick Willie!

BTW, the 65 women are BRAVE ... I can only imagine the sorts of suffering that is going to befall them from friends, co-workers and family. It would be completely unsurprising if some of them lost their jobs in the TP run slimepit of BOistan,  DC. 

I think we are effectively AT the point were only someone with the nasty comeback skill of a Tump has any hope of survival in public life outside of the protection of TP! Why be nominated to the SCOTUS? Even if you are absolutely pure, all it takes is a CHARGE! "Evidence"? That is of no concern!

After so many years, Ford said, she does not remember some key details of the incident. She said she believes it occurred in the summer of 1982, when she was 15, around the end of her sophomore year at the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda. Kavanaugh would have been 17 at the end of his junior year at Georgetown Prep.

A sketchy charge from when you were SEVENTEEN! Clearly, if you do not join TP, there is no such thing as being young! You give up all your "rights" when you fail to bow to TP -- if you get your mind right though, they may eventually stop hitting you!

Reagan's Letter To Dying Father In Law

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/opinions/wp/2018/09/14/ronald-reagans-letter-to-his-dying-father-in-law-annotated/?noredirect=on&__twitter_impression=true

Back before BOistan, in America, a great Christian country, we once had this man for president! God's blessings are for this life as well as the next!

Worth the read -- maybe once a year or so. I especially liked this section -- but it is all good, and a reminder of what a great country America was,  how great a president Reagan was, and a strong foreshadowing that if we have but a little faith, we will see Reagan in eternity!

The miracle is that a young man of 30 yrs. without credentials as a scholar or priest began preaching on street corners. He owned nothing but the clothes on his back & he didn’t travel beyond a circle less than one hundred miles across. He did this for only 3 years and then was executed as a common criminal. 

But for two thousand years he has … had more impact on the world than all the teachers, scientists, emperors, generals and admirals who ever lived, all put together. 

The apostle John said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that who so ever believed in him would not perish but have everlasting life.”

Google = "The Party"

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/09/its-official-google-is-a-democratic-party-front.php

You have to watch it here

We all know that Google is a far left company, if you need "proof" and have a strong stomach, you might want to listen to some of it. A few points:

• They feel that "their values" are sacred ... open borders, silencing of Christians and conservatives, destruction of the nuclear family, abortion, legalization of drugs, elevation of alternative sexual and gender lifestyles above "cis / hetero", etc  ...
  
• There is no sense that other points of view ... especially Christian ones, have any "rights". To "Googlers", the secular "values" that they have signed up for are "sacred" -- they are "certain" in that they believe that "history is on their side". Since they don't believe in any sort of divine power, they believe that "somehow", there is "somehow", randomly, an order and direction to history, and they are "on the right side".
  
• They are clear that they want to use their company to WIN! How can Google make certain that the "right side of history" wins!
  
• 3 things 1). We are a great country because we are a good country 2). Never stop believing that fighting for what is right is worth it! (and Google is going to FIGHT!) 3). A lot of people felt left out because of "rising inequality". ... "everyone at Google needed a hug"

I lasted up to the part about how Google was kind of treating the election as a "tragedy" ... special employee groups, counselling, etc. At Google they expect everything to go their way, and when the election did not, it was shocking. Certainly, for Christians and conservatives, things have not gone our way in general since maybe "FDR", with big disasters in the '60s, '90's and BO years. Losing is nothing new if you are Christian or conservative. 

"50% of googlers probably want to move to Canada". 

I WAS heartened that I lasted long enough to hear one of the speakers indicate that there might be some in the closet conservatives or even Christians at Google that expressed that they were feeling uncomfortable about the level of reaction. 

CEO Pay Falls Behind

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/09/ceo-pay-fails-to-keep-pace-with-average-workers.php

CEO pay as a giant multiple of workers wages is just another TP / MSM created lie to encourage you to vote for TP to allow the top of the top CEOs in TP controlled companies like FB, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, etc to continue to make vast multiples of their workers salaries!

In 2005, the median worker made $46,242 and the average CEO made around four times that amount, or around $180,000. In 2017 the median worker made a record $61,372 up around 33%, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average CEO made $183,270 in 2017 or just a 2% or 3% increase in twelve years. The average CEO today makes just three times the average worker, so why does media just repeat the lie? Obviously because they collude with Democrats heightening class resentments, and they don’t want the public to know the truth or they are too lazy to do the research.

The Coddling Of The American Mind, Lukianoff and Haidt

https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2018/09/universities-and-the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/

I linked to a review rather than the book this time. I L O V E D the book! I consider it the 2nd important book of the year after "Suicide of the West" both are critical ... if you are more left / academic, read this one, otherwise Suicide if you can only do one, BUT, you kinda owe it to yourself to read them both!

They coin the term "safetyism" and they use the well known peanut allergy example. To oversimplify, it young kids get peanut exposure when infants, SOME (a small number) will have a reaction that is concerning but not life threatening. HOWEVER, by being "safe", we have RADICALLY increased the number of children with very serious peanut allergies , so a LARGER number is exposed to severe reactions up to and including death. By "trying to be safe" we create a larger problem.

This is one of the problems of mans greater ability to "take action" -- preventing forest fires is similar. We prevent them for a long time, and then when one breaks out, it is catastophic. Many of the plants in certain ecosystems REQUIRE regular fire in order for their seeds to germinate!

There is quite a long list of these sorts of issues ... the book "The Black Swan" and "Unfragile" are referenced in "coddling", and cover these issues in more detail.

For the really politically ideological, on page 216 the authors find it necessary to testify that "neither of us has ever voted for a Republican for congress or the presidency"! Essentially, one author is an avowed centrist, the other identifies as "left" -- a "centrist" in BOistan acedemia is a rare rare thing all on it's own! What they want to have is NOT a "political book" -- their purpose is the save the university along with a few young lives from depression, anxiety, addiction and suicide.

I STRONGLY recommend this book! In summary, it's points that resonated with me are:

1. We are greatly harming our young by preventing them from learning through normal youthful errors and social development through "free play". We don't know if this is even "recoverable" -- we strongly need to get kids out playing with each other and away from the screens! 
2. The universities are teaching three great untruths ... 1. That which does not kill you makes you weaker 2. Always trust your feelings 3. Life is a battle between good people and evil people  ... the picture below shows a nice chart from page 263 with these untruths and the proper ancient wisdom to answer them. 
3. Chapter 2 is devoted to how the great untruths lead to living life via "emotional reasoning" -- I feel anxious, therefore something must be happening "out there" that justifies my anxiety! (Always trust your feelings). This is what is known in psychology as a "cognitive distortion", and the very successful treatment approach of "Cognitive Behavioural Therapy" has been devoted to rooting out these thinking errors 
4. If we are to have a prayer of recovery, nearly ALL of our universities need to sign up for something like "The Chicago Statement"  the FOUNDATION of a university is free expression, civil dialogue, ability to air ALL points of view, ESPECAILLY those that are not popular and even abhorrent to groups of people. Words ARE NOT violence! We need to get over that great untruth! 

There is no doing a book like this justice in a short blog post. READ IT! If you really can’t, this Atlantic article gives the jist. The following picture is a great summary of a core of the book.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

"Impossible" Jobs Growth Has Happened!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/business/2018/09/09/under-trump-jobs-boom-has-finally-reached-blue-collar-workers-will-it-last/?utm_term=.c691d2437b45&__twitter_impression=true

"The experts" were happy to tell us that Trump was "lying again" ... there was NOT going to be growth in manufacturing jobs!

My definition of "expert" is "always certain, freqently wrong". It would be great if they were only wrong outside of their field of study, but in fact they are often most egregiously wrong IN the field of their supposed expertise. Some of the "big ones" of my lifetime ...

World Hunger -- This was a huge as I was growing up in the 60's and 70's (remember the starving children in India!) and had been an issue since Malthus. To claim that it was less than a crisis was to have no heart during ny school years. It was DEFINITELY going to get worse, MUCH WORSE! There was simply no denying it, the experts all agreed!

Cholesterol / Carbs / Food Pyramid -- If anyone cared, this government debacle has probably killed more people than any other policy outside abortion (60 million and climbing). If they did it now, fruits and veggies would be at the bottom, then likely meats and dairy, with carbs 2nd from the top and sugars taking the peak ... but millions have died from overweight and millions are still dealing with it. THANKS EXPERTS! They "knew what they were doing"! Load up on those carbs!

Peak Oil -- In the late '70's and early 80's you were more dense than a current climate change denier if you claimed that there was "plenty of oil". All the "experts" assured us that we were WELL past "peak oil", and we were just counting down to the end. Anyone foolish enough to question them was a dangerous idiot! This from here.

Global proved oil reserves in 2017 fell slightly by 0.5 billion barrels (-0.03%) to 1696.6 billion barrels, which would be sufficient to meet 50.2 years of global production at 2017 levels

 The end of the USSR -- When Reagan was elected and started talking about Communism and the USSR being well past their "Born on Date", he was universally maligned as an idiot, a dangerous warmonger, out of touch with reality, etc, etc The intelligencia were all completely certain that the USSR was AT LEAST as likely to be around for the long run as the US! Here is just one little quite from the NY Times about a Strobe Talbot book of '84 -- "Strobe" was a leading light of the day, MUCH smarter than Reagan!

He is particularly mocking of Mr. Reagan, who, Mr. Talbott writes, liked to give speeches on arms control, ''but behind the scenes, where decisions were made and policy was set, he was to remain a detached, sometimes befuddled character.'' Mr. Talbott says that even though Mr. Reagan presided at 16 meetings of the National Security Council on strategic arms talks, ''there was ample evidence, during those meetings and on other occasions as well, that he frequently did not understand basic aspects of the nuclear weapons issue and of policies being promulgated in his name.''

 Yes, Reagan thought that WINNING was an objective -- Strobe was certain that was crazy talk. It can be an really great thing when the experts are CERTAIN that the president is "crazy".!

The WaPO article is a classic example of "good news" when TP is not in power ... "Will it last"? "Is it REALLY bad news is we look deeper", "Can we trust the numbers" !!!

All those would be REALLY good questions if they were applied to BOTH sides of politics!

"Unexpected" Best Wage Growth Since 2008

http://fortune.com/2018/09/07/us-wages-jobs-report-august-2018/?xid=fortune-amp-fbshare

Any kind of good news with a "non-TP" (The Party TP-D) in the WH is always "unexpected" to the MSM ... and when TP is in control, bad news is equally "unexpected". Ho hum! It reminds me of the 1980's ... cut taxes so that business has more money to invest, AND more incentive to invest. Likewise, workers have greater prospects to keep more of what they earn if they go out and get a job or ask for a raise, and "unexpectedly", the economy improves! How can that be?

Clearly the MSM, the Administrative State, and the vast majority of "economists" at universities believe that moving more money into government and the Administrative State and the universities is the sure way to ignite growth! Well -- they DO believe it will provide THEM with higher salaries and more power, so in their mind ... GROWTH!

The dumb people that run businesses and work for wages? Let them lose their jobs and vote for more TP folks to up their welfare benefits! Tax the bastards until they STOP and GIVE UP HOPE!

Events like the current state of the economy do nothing but make our elites hopping mad!

NYT: The Deep State Is In The Room With Space Aliens

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html

Whether the 1980's has gotten it's foreign policy back is still an open question, but clearly the mood of the press and the Deep State has returned to the age of Reagan ... you remember, the bumbling, senile, loose grasp on reality idiot that constantly needed to be "saved from himself" as he "sleep walked" through a presidency with no success and soon to be ended by impeachment (1986 and on) -- at least that was the "reality" that the "voices of reason" from the administration,  anonymously speaking through a media that believed even worse assured us of!

The primary answer to this article is again, "Space Aliens" ... your source is an obviously disloyal person that ought to RESIGN and then tell any tales they want! Having said that, it is rather amazing that they are as positive as they are, AND have enough self awareness (or cluelessness?) to admit this ...

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

Thanks be to Satan, the Administrative State is in the room! And, like "father" in the 1950's, "they know best"! I suppose if you thought the old USSR had the right idea, and government bureaucrats from the Administrative / Deep State  are the "kind of people you trust" (even though they are obviously proven weasels as the existence of this column shows), then you are "comforted" that there is swamp weasel in the Trump administration willing to try to stab the president in the back anonymously rather than resign and tell us "the facts" as seen through their beady little weasel eyes.

We know nothing of the private internals of the Trump administration -- other than the Deep State has at least one mole , and likely more than one along with continued monitoring of ALL communications by the NSA / CIA etc constantly looking for ANYTHING that could be exploited to remove Trump from office! Hey, he froze their salaries while BO era inflation continues unabated -- you KNOW they want him out and DEAD, along with his family, friends, and his voters!

What else would one do with an "irredeemable deploreable"?

Sasse On Civics, Administrative State, SCOTUS

Well worth the time to watch ... perhaps a future president?

It is a good video -- it would have been great if he was a little stronger on the purpose of the SCOTUS  being ORIGNIAL INTENT of the Constitution, otherewise we need neither a written Constitution nor a SCOTUS.

Oh, and it would be fine if the legislature did their jobs and reined in the Deep / Administrative State as well!

Neil Armstrong, Citizen of the World

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/09/a-useful-reminder-that-liberals-dont-like-america.php

The left doesn't like the idea of any form of "nationalism", and the idea of planting the flag of the old America on the moon will soon be disappeared like some confederate monument if they manage to take over the whole show. "The State" is "god", and what The State says about everything, including "history" is "truth".

BO would no doubt tell us that "America didn't go to the moon" ... those were GERMAN engineers, proud remnants of the Third Reich! ... oh wait, strike that part ... "Europeans, probably descended from some member of Genghis Kahn's Mongols! Why, it was the Chinese who invented rockets in the first place! The moon landing was a global achievement!

And so it goes ...  never mind reality, whatever The State tells you is what you need to agree with!

Illinois, Venezuala Of The Midwest

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-dissolving-illinois-kass-met-20170620-column.html

We really don't need to look all the way to South America to see the disaster of socialism ... Illinois is a basket case right in the bread basket of BOistan!

Crying For SCOTUS Standards

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/03/opinion/supreme-court-kavanaugh-partisan.html

Ah, the NY Tines laments the politicization of the court! They ought to read Scalia ... he predicted the obvious long ago. When the Warren court denied the people, the states, and the nation the proper discussion required to make murdering the unborn a "right", they sowed the seeds of exactly what this article laments. The court decided to take political action in legislating from the bench, so the people decided that the justices needed to be poltically vetted and screened so that they would take their political actions in the direction of the people who voted for presidents in order to get "their" judges on the SCOTUS. 

The article interjects Bush V Gore as a smoke screen -- we might still be litigating the 2K election if the SCOTUS had not put an end to it! Naturally, it was the NY Times "loss", so they need SOMETHING to seem like a "conservative win" in the political court. 

The reality is that there are essentially NO "conservative poltical wins" by the SCOTUS because the judges that conservatives want are strict constructionist / original intent judges that DON'T legislate from the bench. Thus the difficulty in overturning even egregious rulings like Roe or Kehlo that ARE "legislating from the bench". Once the court has ruled, "Stare Decisis" taken seriously by converservative judges tends to make the ratchet of judicial activism always tilts left. 

Even worse, the conservatives on the court tend to defer to the other two branches -- so cases like BOcare forcing people to buy insurance still get decided in favor of the left. 

Naturally, the NY Times likes to have "The Party" (TP-D) always control ALL branches of government, including especially the 4th extra-Constitutional Deep / Administrative State. The idea of the SCOTUS not being in firmly left wing hands is enough to make the Times pine away for a totally non-political court. Their assumption is that there are no principles higher than politics, so conservatives are just as likely to make law from the bench as "progressives". 

Most likely not -- and if they get control of the court again, they will be more than happy to see laws that put Christians in jail for failing to celebrate a gay "marriage", genders yet unimagined, sexual practices to make a Roman blush, and government invasions of all manner of property, thought, and faith! 

Naturally, to the NY Times, that is just "progress"!  No need to have a SCOTUS unless it is fully under control of TP! 

The McCain Matrix, TP Good Old Days

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-mccain-funeral-dc-20180901-story.html#

"Eras" in the BOistan technoworld seem to last minutes ... remembering "all the way back to 2008" is like eternity, but supposedly that is the time for which "The Party" (TP-D), and it's adjunct the MSM want to paint a misty portrait of with the now "great man", John McCain looming in the background. My, my, how times change ... here is a quote from WaPo in April of 2008.

It was early 1992, and the occasion was an informal gathering of a select committee investigating lingering issues about Vietnam War prisoners and those missing in action, most notably whether any American servicemen were still being held by the Vietnamese. It is unclear precisely what issue set off McCain that day. But at some point, he mocked Grassley to his face and used a profanity to describe him. Grassley stood and, according to two participants at the meeting, told McCain, "I don't have to take this. I think you should apologize." 

McCain refused and stood to face Grassley. "There was some shouting and shoving between them, but no punches," recalls a spectator, who said that Nebraska Democrat Bob Kerrey helped break up the altercation.

McCain is Trump with a worse temper and a lot less money. His ONE advantage over Trump is his service -- something TP gives ZERO respect to when he failed to do their bidding.

He has ALWAYS been an angry prima donna, demanding to be at center stage and unwilling or unable to deal with those who fail to bow and worship at the altar of McCain ... or "McNasty", his old nickname.  I love this one from the article -- talk about "karma" relative to the Trump digs at McCain ...

Smith, whose service in the Navy included a tour on the waters in and around Vietnam, said he stood stunned one day when McCain declared around several of their colleagues that Smith wasn't a real Vietnam War veteran. "I was in the combat zone, off the Mekong River, for 10 months," Smith said. "He went on to insult me several times. I wasn't on the land; I guess that was his reasoning. . . . He suggested I was masquerading about my Vietnam service. It was very hurtful. He's gotten to a lot of people [that way]."

Trump and McNasty ... peas in a pod. Vain, narcissistic, hot tempered, profane, womanziers, etc ... no wonder they didn't get along. McCain ESPECIALLY liked to **WIN**, and no doubt that is the BIGGEST single thing he and TP hate about Trump. "Winning" is of course the ONLY thing that matters to the underdog in BOistan ... and it also matters that you support someone who can win even a tiny bit against the TP behemoth.

 I liked this meme for those whose memory has been dulled enough to think the MSM always thought McCain was "great'.

Think it's just a foolish meme? Here is a link to at least one such article ... isn't interesting how Republican candidates always suffer from Alzheimers or some other mental illness? From TP's POV, opposing TP is either a sign of low intelligence or insanity, so it is a small wonder they see the world this way.

I don’t take the subject of Alzheimer’s lightly. My grandfather died of complications from the disease, and I watched his mind waste away over a period of several painful years. But it’s a question that must be asked in view of John McCain’s age. If elected, he would be the nation’s oldest president in history.

If you read this blog you are aware that you live in a TP/MSM (but I repeat myself) created imaginary narrative that bears very very little resemblance to "reality" -- to the extent that exists in this TP, Davos, Deep / Administrative State, made to mislead the sheeple so they believe it is in their advantage to cede more and more of their power and critical thinking to the elites. So was "America" ever great? According to McCain's daughter, yes ...

When she fiercely declared that "the America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great," the generals, senators, former presidents and other world leaders who filled the pews burst into applause.

Really? BO now thinks that "America" was "always great"? Here he is in New Hampshire in 2008

We are ready to take this country in a fundamentally new direction. 

That's what's happening in America right now; change is what's happening in America.

You, all of you who are here tonight, all who put so much heart and soul and work into this campaign, you can be the new majority who can lead this nation out of a long political darkness.

"Fundamental new direction"  ... "out of a long political darkness" ... doesn't really sound like something a "great nation" would require. Michelle Obama was never proud of America until BO was elected -- but there she was, getting candies from W at a TP staged funeral where the elected president of the people who oppose TP was not invited!

The real honest TP answer to "Make America Great Again" is that "America was never great!" ... slavery, discrimination, not enough equality in income, not kind enough to the environment, too warlike, took the country from natives, etc  ... "The Party" (TP-D) since at least FDR has ALWAYS been about LOTS of "change" ... always in the direction of more government, more regulation, higher taxes, being more like Europe, restricting speech, less individual rights, less Christianity, etc.

Cuomo is taking some heat for stating the obvious TP position for some reason this week. Must be "America was always great" week for TP. 

Thinking people certainly understand the reality here. At the time of Nixon, the Deep / Administrative State plus the combined power of TP and the MSM became powerful enough to take down opposition that did not behave in a manner they found acceptable. **ALL** elected officials served at the pleasure of TP! Nixon was proof, that is why his impeachmet is maybe the greatest TP rememberance next to Roe! 

Reagan was an anomoly -- such a great man and such a great communicator, he was well into his 2nd term before TP was able to suitibly damage him. Even then, he destroyed one of TP's most powerful allies, the USSR, a crime for which they will always hate him. 

HW was a complete TP cutout -- heart of a RINO, former CIA director -- 4th branch Deep / Adminstrative State swamp creature from way back.  

Under Slick Willie, Newt Gingerich gained power by appealing to the Reagan / eventual Trump "real American" constituency -- people that thought that the 4th branch could be controlled and reduced, and people that believed that presidents of BOTH parties were under the law. TP proved again that it could protect it's own as it had with Teddy Kennedy  ... as it would do again and continues to do with Hillary Clinton. If you are a TP person with power, you are above the law, and if you are in opposition to TP, there are no lengths they will fail to go to in order to destroy you, your family and your friends! 

We now officially know that W, like his daddy and the whole Bush family was nothing but TP lite. 

BO was to be "The One", the culmination. He DID succeed in making it very clear that TP was in control. The Constitution was abandoned, the separation of powers was ignored, and the new rule of became "a pen and a phone". 

From the POV of TP and no doubt Meghan McCain, 1986-2016 were when "America" was "great", because it was really BOistan ... at least "in waiting". As Trump has made clear, from the start of 1986 when Iran Contra put Reagan in a box, up to 2017, TP has called the tune. RINOs faked being a "nice opposition" so that TP would not destroy them, and people that cared about tired old things like God, morality, Constitutions, limited government, laws that applied to all, etc were faked into thinking they still had some voice. 

McCain was the perfect RINO -- he loved to venemously attack semi-real Republicans in order to be honored by TP and it's spokesman the MSM. The years of "greatness" were the effective BOistan years from '86 - '16. Reagan had been kind enough to fix the economy so there was a lot of money for most of it, and then BO stole enough from the few remaining workers in BOistan and the future to at least make it seem "stable". Hey, "2%" of cooked numbers "growth" became what BOistanis accepted as "sustainable, realistic, environment friendly, psuedo growth". 

According to Politico in 2016, growth like 4% isn't even POSSIBLE any more, and back then, economic performance was apparently a lot of what they saw "greatness" to be. 

Yet that hasn’t stopped a bidding war of unrealistic promises, beginning with Jeb Bush’s claim that his economic proposals could raise U.S. annual GDP growth from 2.5 percent in 2015 and 2.4 percent in 2014 to 4 percent—a rate much higher than the rate under Obama (2.1 percent), George W. Bush (1.6 percent), Bill Clinton (3.7 percent), George H. W. Bush (2.0 percent), and Ronald Reagan (3.4 percent).

See, "2 something" (after juicing the number by 2-3% in 2015) is all the real experts say is possible. Get used to it you stupid sheeple! Pay no attention to that 4.2% 2Q 2018 ... hell, we may have even just had an ACTUAL 1-2% GDP growth since TP last took over the full reins in '06! 

TP's idea of "greatness" is no, or fake opposition. McCain and his band of fake RINOs were PERFECT! When BO was in power, TP was well down the road to jailing Christians for their religious beliefs and stamping out the speech of everyone who failed to bow to whatever TP declared to be "moral" -- all while McCain and his merry RINOs cheered them on! 1986 to 2016 were their "good old days", and they get especially misty eyed for '06-'16! 

If only Hildebeast was in the WH, Slick would be doing more than just enjoying a "look" at one of Ariana Grande's many good sides ... 

Note, while the media finds it very sad that Slick is appreciating her, I would not want to be subjected to such constant filming -- as I often say, I may be old, but I'm not dead ... there is actually nothing much more natural than a male noticing a pretty woman, especially when she has not wasted a lot of material in providing length to her skirt. I know, I know ... "women can wear WHATEVER they want, or very close to nothing, and in the modern world it is SICK for men to notice. OTOH, any male that doesn't CELEBRATE a gay kiss is ALSO "sick" ... it is just the world that we are told we live in.

It takes a good deal of effort to retain your memory and observe how we are all being fed a narrative with an agenda that is TOTALLY not your agenda if you are remotely Christian or conservative. This past week was a major climax in the TP story line  -- a new dead hero was created out of smoke and mirrors with  basically no connection to the actual man, nor the real times that he and we lived through. That is BOistan -- it is one big made for propaganda funhouse.

Will the "Reality TV" background of Trump allow him to survive and even thrive in this left leaning matrix? 

Perhaps, if more people take the Red Pill!

BOistan, Opposition Presumed Guilty

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/trump-russia-probe-robert-mueller-time-for-truth/

The linked article is an excellent SHORT summary by the almost always excellent (but not always short) Victor Davis Hanson. If you read this blog, you know that the entire Mueller probe is a travisty, but one of the underlying issues is the unraveling of a basic human value -- the presumption of innocence. 

Instead of presuming Trump innocent unless he finds evidence of Russian collusion, Mueller started with the assumption that the reckless raconteur Trump surely must be guilty of some lawbreaking. Thus, it is Mueller’s job to hunt for past crimes to prove it.

Getting Americans to buy fully into the idea that members of TP ("The Party"-D) are inherently innocent, or if not innocent, "absolved" (see Slick Willie, Hildebeast, BO, the Kennedys, etc). To be in "opposition" to TP is itself a crime in BOistan, so the task is reduced to "finding the specifics". They already know you are guilty of not being a member of TP, the unforgiveable sin, the only question now is; "What ELSE are you guilty of?".

BOistan is charting new waters here -- it is proving it is a "crime" simply to win an election and not be TP (or a suitably TP-like RINO). 

No president has ever faced impeachment for supposed wrongdoing alleged to have taken place before he took office — not Andrew Johnson, not Richard Nixon, and not even Bill Clinton, who lied about his liaisons with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. With the effort to go back years, if not decades, into Trump’s business and personal life, we are now in unchartered territory.

There are LOTS of new waters in BOistan ... if you want to run in California and have a 501C, all it takes is someone to ACCUSE you of "coordination", and the burden of proof is on YOU to "prove yourself innocent" rather than on the state to prove you guilty! Welcome to the gulag combrade!

Victor would like to see some of the FBI agents and even Hillary investigated for a few of the crimes already uncovered and KNOWN relatrive to coordination on the Steele Dossier, wiretapping and spying on the Trump campaign. That would be an excellent idea -- if we ever again live in a state not ruled by TP!

No Elites For Mollie

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/08/who-controls-the-executive-branch.php5e

This fine column points out that FICA and the IRS refuse to cooperate with Immigration and Nationalization Services -- thus folks like Mollie Tibbett's killer roam free to predate on prey like Mollie. Deep / Administrative State agencies could care less -- "Undocumented Democrats" are just as good a members of "The Party" (TP-D) as the documnented sorts, so a little "collateral damage" is fine wiht TP.

We live in a completely tribal nation where any sense of proportion or reason has been completely lost. Observe "common sense gun control", "build the wall", and "reproductive freedom".

In the case of the last "right", the Constitution is invoked as "sacred" -- the "constitution" with a "prenumbra" that contained some fairy dust recognizeable by liberals providing a "right" heretofore totally unknown! By the logic of Roe, there is no need for a 19th Amendment (nor any other amendment). The SOCTUS can conjure any right out of some mysterious reading of the Constitution.

Moving to the right to bear arms, we have the inverse. An acutal enumerated right considered by the Founders to be 2nd in priority only to freedom of speech and religion. And correctly so -- for without the 2nd, none of the other rights are worth the paper they are written on. What does the left think of THAT right? it doesn't exist! "Common sense" is that the government decides who may have a "gun" of whatever kind they decree -- much of their "common sense" would indicate a muzzle loading musket would be the only kind appropriate.

Like everything in the liberal mind, the Constitution is "sacred" relative to killing the unborn, even though there is no such right actually found in the Constitution. Guns OTOH, although a clearly enumerated right, are a right that is unrecognizeable to the liberal mind.

"Build the Wall" means "control the borders". Having a nation at all requires having control of your borders. BO may be a "citixzen oif the world" in his own mind, but a check of reality will show there are NO "citizens of the world" ... like many things BO believes, it is a peer fantasy, nothing but words.

Will building a wall stop all illegals? Certainly not ... will forcing people to pay for seat belts, air bags, beeping gongs, flashing warnings, etc prevent all auto deaths? If only! The usual standard for liberal "safety" is "if one child's life can be saved". Naturally, they murder babies by the 10's of millions for convienience, and care nothing of the actual cost of illegal immigration because they love the Undocumented Democrats. If they were consistent, they would not be "liberals".

Just as the name Kathryn Steinle, the woman killed by an illegal in SF in 2017 has been forgotten, Mollie Tibbets is already being erased. TP finds her to be expendable in the name of adding more Undocumented Democrats to the no-ID voting roles. Kathryn and Mollie are just a tiny tip of the iceberg of illegal immigrant crime the TP controlled media can't hide. One needs to go foreign to get any sort of numbers ... Sweden is a good case in point. I love how they quote that "violence is actually going down BUT ..." ... in the US, after the last mass shooting, they just fail to report that gun violence is actually going done ... which is true here as well -- it all depends on what way the media is trying to influence how you think. They just aren't much for "we report, you decide": these days.

It's the little people out in "fly over country" that care about deaths like Mollie and Kathryn, merely because those deaths are especially painful because they are SO avoidable!  The elites always have a "higher purpose" for their "caring", and when you look closely the answer is that what they really do honestly care about is that their wealth and power continues to increase.