PJ, Riding Dead Horses

The Parallel NYT Universe, Where Hillary Is President and Yet Everything Is Still Terrible:



I've always loved PJ O'Rourke's wit and wisdom, and this column is no exception. My favorite was this:

There, she and her audience experience phenomena hardly imaginable to us. In U1 we sometimes beat a dead horse, but in UNYT they feed it and groom it and ride it around.

U1 is the universe the rest of us live in, UNYT is the bubble universe of the NY Times. The following is a classic liberals view that since the level of progress of some group has not reached their view of "utopia", the progress from where the disadvataged group were at is not to be considered with positive regaurd!

A feature called “Exposures” goes “Inside Bangladesh’s factories, where $2 shirts get made.” Working conditions are poor and pay is paltry. But, as I said, this universe has a different mathematics. Personally, I am more indignant about $20 martinis than $2 shirts. (Switching the price of these two items is, I gather, not an option in UNYT .)

However, to be fair, maybe UNYT has a different geography and a different history as well as a different mathematics. I spent some time in Bangladesh a quarter of a century ago, before the shirt factories arrived. In those days people (child laborers included!) didn’t have anywhere to work. Therefore the working conditions weren’t poor. And the pay wasn’t paltry because there wasn’t any. Bangladeshis were starving.

Definitely worth the read! 

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Fracking Deep State, Russian Funding

The 'deep state' is real. But are its leaks against Trump justified? | Jack Goldsmith | Opinion | The Guardian:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/07/anti-fracking-groups-russia-secret-funding-protects-kremlin-interests/

The top link is a Guardian article that is so even handed that it almost fails to say anything -- it does realize the obvious, a) There is and has been a Deep State for a long time b). Trump is fighting back against them. Beyond that, it assumes that the Russian connection with Trump MIGHT be legit, however is concerned by the following ...

The comparison is plausible in light of the extensive efforts soon after the election to encourage the bureaucracy, including the intelligence bureaucracy, to resist the Trump administration, and the evidence that there was in some agencies such resistance.
But while Hoover did many awful things in quiet, neither during his reign nor at any other time in American history have we seen such a profusion of sensitive leaks from the deep state with such an overtly political aim to bring down senior leadership.

 Ok, so we know the obvious -- the Deep State is made up of a bunch of Democrats who don't like Trump, so they are working like crazy in the open to discredit him.

The PROBLEM from my POV is WHY would the Russians have wanted Trump in the White House? The second link tells us another obvious point -- Russia is a huge energy producer and they HATE competition! They have been working around the globe for a LONG time to prevent the use of fracking ... spending millions (likely hundreds of millions) to do what they can to prevent the use of this technique which lowers the price of energy, which is BAD for Russia!

According to the reports, entities connected to the Russian government are using a shell company registered in Bermuda, Klein Ltd. (Klein), to funnel tens of millions of dollars to a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) private foundation, the Sea Change Foundation (Sea Change). This money appears to move in the form of anonymous donations. Sea Change then passes the money originating in Russia to various U.S. 501(c)(3) organizations such as the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, and others. These funds are dispersed as grants that will be used to execute a political agenda driven by Russian entities. The purpose of this circuitous exchange of foreign funds is to shield the source of the money.

Russia has been working through organizations to help elect DEMOCRATS for a long time because DEMOCRATS tend to oppose anything that allows the US to produce any energy. It's a "win/win" ... prevent the US from competing with Russia, AND weaken the ability of the US to operate militarily (solar powered fighter planes and aircraft carriers are a LONG way off).

Super bonus! Pay 10's of millions of dollars directly to the Clinton Crime Family to lock up 20% of the N American urainium reserves!

I'm fully willing to assume that the Russians are incompetent as well, however they are REALLY incompetent if they are paying 10's of millions of dollars both DIRECTLY to the Clinton Crime Family, AND to organizations that oppose fracking, and THEN, turning around and deciding that they want to "rig the election" to get PRO fracking Trump elected. Seriously?

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Why Isn't Everyone A Democrat?

Conservatives & Democratic Party: Why They Don’t Join It | National Review:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/the-gops-never-trumpers-are-really-just-never-democrats.html

One of the most basic, if not THE most basic element of the US founding was freedom OF religion (not FROM religion). It is codified in the 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

 Our founders -- even those who were Deists, realized that man does not live by bread alone. Whatever he holds as the "highest good" is "god" to him, AND, every man desires to look in the mirror and see himself as moral -- or at least "redeemed" if he is a Christian.

For 200 years we were largely a Christian nation. We believed that God in the form of Jesus Christ, Saviour of all willing to accept his Grace was of MUCH higher importance than government ... a typical personal priority order went something like "God, Family, Church,  Friends, Vocation, Community ... and then somewhere in there "country", although originally, "State" as which of the orignial 13 / now 50 states you lived in. "A proud Virginian", or "hailing from the great state of Ohio" was likely more important than the limited in power federal government.

Not today ... as Chait assures us in the second link...

Perhaps the Republican base as currently constituted is hopelessly immune to reason and a reasonable person such as Brooks should instead refocus his political energies on curtailing its political power.

He doesn't really mean "perhaps", he can't imagine anything else. "Reasonable people" like Chait could see a continental glacier forming and yet be totally convinced of AGW. They likely still believe that "fracking will never lower gas prices", and "Reagan was an imbecile for thinking the USSR was EVER going away!". They are simply NEVER wrong -- they are after all "reasonable" and "scientific", and most of all INTELLIGENT  -- how could they be wrong?  So why do they hate Republicans other than them being "immune to reason"? Well ...

The answer is simple: Too many Democrats believe that the divide between Democrats and Republicans isn’t political. They believe instead that the divide reflects character itself. They therefore find it puzzling that non-Trump-friendlies — whom, they now assume, are “good people” thanks to their distaste for Trump — aren’t simply embracing the other good people, namely the Democrats. In the mind of many Democrats, Republicans aren’t Republicans because they’re in favor of limited government and inalienable, God-given rights. All that is merely a cover for cruelty and nastiness. So Democrats find it puzzling when Republicans who dislike Trumpian cruelty don’t immediately switch sides.

See the modern "moral person" not only believes in AGW as much as the US government believed that avoiding the evil cholesterol and making the base of the holy food pyramid to be those wonderful carbs, but they see the killing of 60 million unborn as a sacrament, almost as wonderfully moral as gay "marriage", and currently competing for extending the number of genders to an unknown number "higher than the 50's". We don't really know the next "moral frontier" ... polyamory? pederasty? There MUST be a moral frontier, for that is how they discern "progress".

They don't believe in any of these things as "choices", or "subject to scientific / psychological / sociological results", they see them all as the dogma of their religion, and they have returned more to the old time "burn the apostates at the stake to save their souls" kind of religion, rather than the short lived chimera of "tolerance' they used to peddle.

While every Christian is required to believe not only that they are NOT good, but in fact filthy sinners in need of salvation, they are also required to at least acknowledge that their creed demands they attempt to LOVE even their enemies. (look for THAT in any other religion!)

Secular Humanism has no such tenets -- "Win baby win" and "If it feels good do it" are pretty much their equivalents of "Thou shalt love God with all thy heart and all thy soul", and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself". Take the harsh judgement of the Scribes and Pharisees and combine it with the morals of Sodom and Gomorrah, and you pretty much have the modern Secular Humanist pegged.

Reagan used to say that "a liberal will defend your right to agree with them to their dying breath" ... apparently we are close to the place where they will defend that right to YOUR dying breath at either their hands, or more likely those of their proxies.

No society in history has survived as anything other than a tyranny unless it's population held to transcendent values that were higher than politics. Pray hard for a Christian revival!


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Decius Speaks On Administrative State

Michael Anton Addresses His Critics, Affirms Support for Trump - American Greatness:

Turns out that Michael Anton was "Decius" who authored a couple of well done "why Trump" columns in fall of 2016. My favorites here and here.

It is worth going off and reading the linked article (as it is the linked Decius posts if you have not already). He says a couple worth things about the Adminstrative State that I'll insert here.

 "Democrats are the party of government, no question. Given that, any Republican Administration begins from a huge disadvantage. You’re taking over an apparatus of enormous size that has institutional interests of its own that diverge from the Republican agenda, and that is staffed largely, if not totally, by people who don’t agree with that agenda. This is why some of us have been sounding the alarm for years about the “administrative state.” It’s a problem so large as to be almost intractable."

The second are employees who happen to be in place when the administration turns over This is inevitable given the nature of detailing and the constitutional presidential term. The presumption, or polite fiction you might say, is that everyone who works for the federal government in a nonpolitical position is a neutral, nonpartisan civil servant, or at least someone who keeps his politics out of his job. Certainly that is true of many people. But is it credible to believe that it’s true of all or even most? Given the direction we’ve seen the administrative state go over the last several decades?

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NYC Needs A Chick-fil-A Wall

Chick-fil-A’s Creepy Infiltration of New York City | The New Yorker:

I love the title -- a popular fast food outlet "infiltrated" NYC, and apparently PEOPLE LIKE IT!

Oh, the horror!

This emphasis on community, especially in the misguided nod to 9/11, suggests an ulterior motive. The restaurant’s corporate purpose still begins with the words “to glorify God,” and that proselytism thrums below the surface of the Fulton Street restaurant, which has the ersatz homespun ambiance of a megachurch. David Farmer, Chick-fil-A’s vice-president of restaurant experience, told BuzzFeed that he strives for a “pit crew efficiency, but where you feel like you just got hugged in the process.” That contradiction, industrial but claustral, is at the heart of the new restaurant—and of Chick-fil-A’s entire brand. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Cows.

What would something non-creepy from the left be? "To glorify Man"? Not far from "To Serve Man" as per a famous Twilight Zone, which turned out to be a cookbook. Perhaps "Glorified Man" could be served along with "Glorified Rice"?

When our perspective is reduced to our collective human navel, such "mistakes" are very common. The 20th Century saw the "humanist" (meaning godless) government forms of Fascism and Communism slaughter over 100 million people. Secular Humanism in the has US sacrificed  over 60 million babies on the alter of "convienience" to date and the deluge of innocent blood continues.

From the perspective of the column author, nothing competes with the terror of a corporation that wants to "glorify God" ... a "god" whom the columnists  faith demands be ficticious, sexist, homophopic -- and subtley, anti Islam (thus the 9-11 allusion). While strangely, Islam is also sexist, homophobic (to the point of killing gays), yet they have what must be the ultimate "saving grace" to the left in that they ALSO seek to kill Christians -- those "creepy" Chick-fil-A sorts.

As the US and Britain practiced in WWII, "The enemy of my enemy is often my friend" ... even though that "friend" is also extremely willing to kill YOU right after your common "enemy" is gone. I wonder if the author of the column would find an NYC under Sharia Law to be preferable to having to deal with the current creepy infiltration of Chick-fil-A? Possibly, at least Sharia is totalitarian, and I have a sneaking suspicion that in the left's idea of "community" the MOST important think as in the USSR, China, or National Socialist Germany, is that there is NO POLITICAL DISAGREEMENT!

Chick-fil-A has the audacity to talk of "community" -- their restaurants are FRIENDLY, like that same sort of "friendly" that is witnessed in red state fly-over country. They are the sort of "fake people" that would fail to cry during "Broke Back Mountain", yet pull you out of the ditch, and refuse to accept payment -- you know, "those kind of people".

The kind that need to be either forced in re-education camps to never connect Caitlynn Jenner to whatever "her" former name was, and celebrate whatever gender "she" might decide to settle or not settle on -- even if it is a gender that is unigue to "their self". The sexual self is "sacred'.

To think that genders are limited, or "fixed" is morally wrong and reprehensible in NewYorker religious canon, even though it is what science says. Science MUST be absolutely ignored on this point -- and to a lesser degree on GMO crops and immunizations. On all these issues, shared progressive morality must be adhered to, lest you be judged "deplorable'. "Individuals have a RIGHT"!

OTOH, in the case of Climate, Science is god, and must not be questioned -- thus saith the dominant Secular Humanist Religion as held forth by theologians such as those at the New Yorker.

Oh, and "consistency" is whatever the Secular Humanist elite tells you it is! At least there is nothing "creepy" about that!



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Monetizing Hatred, Democracy Dies Without Perspective

The past couple of days have given us a couple points to plot on why so many people just can't get along.

Point A. Two black customers arrested at a Starbucks in Philly  Total NPR / MPR freak out ... interviews, "shopping while black", etc, etc

Point B. Fresno State Professor glad Barbara Bush is dead. Lots of mostly right wing outrage, twitter storm, etc.

In a semi-sane world, both of these stories would be LOCAL stories at MOST!

Some worker at a Starbucks over reacted, and some cops likely over reacted as well -- or maybe the two black men got in the cops face. I don't really know, nor care to know. There is no Starbucks nor national police policy on such things, it was AN INCIDENT! Yes, I understand that the BLM race industry tribe sees this as a great manipulation opportunity, so they are using it to the max -- to create conflict, cement a narrative, etc. That is what happens in a tribal state where nobody has a sense of perspective, or an interest in getting along rather than their tribe "winning'.

Ditto the Fresno State proffessor. Of course she is a hateful shrew -- nothing new about there being people like that, the problem is IT GETS MADE INTO A NATIONAL STORY! And the right side tribes make use of it to stir up their troops, get the hate a flowing, get clicks, donations, people on lists, etc. It just weaponizes abject stupidity and lack of any sort of moral decency -- very standard human failings, which no tribe has any corner on at all.

In a CHRISTIAN nation, neither of these stories goes anywhere -- because Christians see these as localized, standardized run of the mill human behavior -- to be locally dealt with, and to say a silent prayer of "there but for the Grace of God ...".

Democracy REQUIRES a population that has a sense of perspective. As John Adams put it:

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

BOistan lacks morality, religion, perspective and even an honored written Constitution. So we fail!

How To Destroy Conservatives, MPR / Edina Edition

Minnesota Public Radio: Anatomy of a Smear | Power Line:

The linked article is worth the time to go follow. The quick facts are this:

• The Edina public schools are  a left wing indoctrination system as opposed to an educational institution in which intimidation and bullying are part of the agenda. This has been well documented.
  
• The story has been picked up by long list of media outlets -- of course, most of them with some level of conservative bias. Fox, Weekly Standard, Hot Air, etc
  
• MPR chooses to cover it and says it has been picked up by sites like "Brietbart and Daily Stormer" ... clearly working to associate it with fringe groups, especially "Stormer", hard to even find, and with white supremacist connections.
  
• When Hinderocker goes to great lengths to get MPR to just DISCUSS that they are engaging in a complete smear, he is totally rebuffed, so MPR listeners / believers can go on thinking that there is really "no story here, move along", and that the "Center of the American Experiment", a moderate right think tank is more like looney right / white supremacists. 

Remember, in MN, it is CONSTITUTIONALLY mandated to fund the arrogant and egregious smear tactics of MPR! 

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