Christian, Conservative, Pro-Western Civilization,Pro-Original Intent Constitution, Pro-Life, Pro Family, Pro 2nd Ammendment, Pro Smaller Government, Pro Control of Borders, Pro Control of Deep / Administrative State, Pro At Least 2 viable political parties ...
In short, a very bad person in BOistan today, fondly remembering America!
Charles has passed on to his eternal reward -- I know that faith was hard for him, my hope and prayer is that since it is Christ's desire that "none should perish", we all get a final chance at Grace on the way out. I don't think anyone ought to hang their hope on that, but it makes me feel better to add that to my bag of hopes for others, especially those like Charles that I very much admire.
He passed within a week or so of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain who were in AFAIK decent health and had much to live for, yet they took their own lives. Charles, living in a wheel chair with at least limited use of his hands had no desire to die, yet it was his time. He made a wonderful life out of living with what for many would be a a tradgedy that would very much limit them. The column by Goldberg does a good job of covering some specifics.
I especially liked this paragraph ... the whole thing is worth the time. Having just finished "Suicide of the West", I must say I'm intrigued by "The Remnant" (also since I'm in Isaiah in my Bible reading). Some info on "The Remnant" is included in the linked column. No doubt more thoughts from / on Jonah to follow.
This morning, I was on Fox talking about Charles, and I got a little emotional towards the end. I am fully open to the idea that my remorse got in the way of my clarity. But the point I was trying to make is one I am happy to reiterate here: It’s great and good that people are praising Charles. But it would be nice if more people on the right thought for a moment about why his insights and contributions were so valued. Charles came to play. He brought facts with him and he never went beyond them. He never caved on principle, either. In short, he didn’t pander to his audience. He told them what he thought they needed to hear, not what they wanted to hear. Moreover, Charles was never mean or conspiratorial or demagogic. There was not an ounce of cruelty in Charles Krauthammer, yet we live in a moment when too many people think cruelty is a form of strength.
Having grown up in a fundamentalist Baptist church, I can assure you there is no limit to what level virtue signalling can be taken to -- not long enought hair for women, no pants siuits, no movies, no TV, teens not allowed to swim "mixed" (boys and girls in the pool), no dancing ... the list is totally endless, and each new virtue requires stong signalling and "separation". We can't associate with THOSE people!
Thus, BOistan reaches the point were the Press Secretary for the duly elected president of this failed state is denied service, because, well ... "virtue".
“I’m not a huge fan of confrontation,” Wilkinson said. “I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”
I've just started on what looks like an excellent book by Jonah Goldberg, "The Suicide of the West" ... which makes the point that we all know -- absent some shared transcendent values / morals, "morals" are purely situational and tribal. "Our morals" are the morals that our tribe says are important -- and the most powerful tribe gets to lord their "morals" over others. Kick them out of their restaurants even.
The nice thing about Biblical Morals was that they were written down and static -- you were not allowed to shit on your neighbor tomorrow because they "voted for Trump", or even if they happened to be his Press Secretary. In fact, you were supposed to not only TOLERATE them, but treat them with LOVE! Wow, what a far cry from throwing them out of your restaurant to show your virtue.
We are ALL driven by our human pride to want to trumpet our "virtue", which Christ declares to be "filthy rags". He spends WAY more time, and is WAY more direct in his condemnation of the pride of the Scribes and Pharisees than he is of common fornicators, adulterers, drunks, etc.
PRIDE is the killer because you are likely to proffer your sin in the Washington Post as virtue, and they are likely to agree with you -- "I passed judgement on my neighbor and threw them out of my business and I'm not only PROUD to have done it, YOU OUGHT to do the same thing too!"
And so it goes ... then someone has to blow up her little business to "make a statement", followed by more and ever escalating hatred and violence.
We once rose above tribalism, honored differences of opinion ... even REALLY nasty ones like slavery yes/no. We rose above tribalism on the Grace of God, and now we fight -- with the elites who are certain that tribalism is a virtue.
I'm ancient enough to remember the good old days when Slick Willie and Janet Reno set the gold standard for child separation under direct orders from Fidel himself! Ah yes, in those days jack booted government thugs with assault weapons pointed at children were a thing of beauty for our betters on the left!
Now ... well, those times are down the memory hole, and the evil Trump is "just like Hitler". However, as the excellent linked article points out ...
The Trump administration isn’t changing the rules that pertain to separating an adult from the child. Those remain the same. Separation happens only if officials find that the adult is falsely claiming to be the child’s parent, or is a threat to the child, or is put into criminal proceedings.
Bottom line, you entered the country illegally, thus committing a FELONY.
If you commit a felony as an American and are incarcerated, you are ALSO separated from your children! **IF** you decide that it is your kids that are important to you, you leave the country WITH your kids. If you find that your own skin is of the greatest import to you and your kids can take some risk (something you already decided when you brought them with you on this illegal journey), then you get separated.
That’s because of something called the Flores Consent Decree from 1997. It says that unaccompanied children can be held only 20 days. A ruling by the Ninth Circuit extended this 20-day limit to children who come as part of family units. So even if we want to hold a family unit together, we are forbidden from doing so.
Welcome to the world of Fake News. Why didn't this show up under BO?
BO didn' t enforce the borders. If you had kids, he totally practiced "catch and release" ... he didn't even want to catch you in the first place! (why would he deport "Undocumented Democrats", one of his most loyal voting blocs?)
The economy sucked under BO ... the border pressure went way down. Why seek asylum in a broken nation moving toward being a "SH*T hole"? You might as well stay in your own.
It no doubt happened ... Hey, if using a jack booted thug with an AR is celebrated when a D is in the White House, it is **OK***!!!! ... anything BO did was GREAT! What part are you confused about??
For those of you withe the good sense not to listen to NPR and typical MSM outlets, this story has been a total soak up the whole news blitz. I got to hear an ACLU official tell how this is "exactly like Hitler", and Jewish Americans are living in fear. They saw it before, and it is BACK, this IS a Fascist nation!!! (wring hands and cry here)
Oh the poor lefty sheep -- they are even quoting Bible verses! You really know they want attention when they did out their Bibles! (I wonder if they wear gloves to avoid burns?) Why if we just told them that the kids were "inconvenient", they would applaud sucking their brains, throwing the remains in a dumpster, and demand it be done at taxpayer expense ... as long as it was duly carried out under control of "The Party" (TP-D) and documented as being "for their own good" on NPR!
A rather long and arduous attempt to blackwash the 9.9% of WEALTH holders below the top ".1%". Let's identify these nefarious people right off ...
As of 2016, it took $1.2 million in net worth to make it into the 9.9 percent; $2.4 million to reach the group’s median; and $10 million to get into the top 0.9 percent. (And if you’re not there yet, relax: Our club is open to people who are on the right track and have the right attitude.) “We are the 99 percent” sounds righteous, but it’s a slogan, not an analysis. The families at our end of the spectrum wouldn’t know what to do with a pitchfork.
Remember, the seive being used here is WEALTH, not income! The bottom half these deplorable cretins hold the vast wealth of $1.2 - $2.4 MILLION dollars! One is reminded of Austin Powers ..
For those that don't pay much attention, **IF** you could find a "safe investment" that would allow you to draw 5% from your vast “million dollar” fortune PLUS "keep up with inflation" (whatever that is, since they don't really track it anymore), you would be living high on the income of $50K a year -- or 9 grand less than the median income.
The column doesn't bother to inform you WHO it is that fits in this newest nexus of evil, but I'll cast my bets that it is primarily people that saved their whole lives, put the money in something that went up in value, and live a conservative lifestyle where they spend very little more than $50K a year minus taxes. Greedy geezers!
So other than work and save money, what kind of dirty deeds did these sheisters pull to gain their undeserved booty? The article is helpful ...
It is misleading to think that assortative mating is symmetrical, as in city mouse marries city mouse and country mouse marries country mouse. A better summary of the data would be: Rich mouse finds love, and poor mouse gets screwed. It turns out—who knew?—that people who are struggling to keep it all together have a harder time hanging on to their partner. According to the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, 60 years ago just 20 percent of children born to parents with a high-school education or less lived in a single-parent household; now that figure is nearly 70 percent. Among college-educated households, by contrast, the single-parent rate remains less than 10 percent. Since the 1970s, the divorce rate has declined significantly among college-educated couples, while it has risen dramatically among couples with only a high-school education—even as marriage itself has become less common. The rate of single parenting is in turn the single most significant predictor of social immobility across counties, according to a study led by the Stanford economist Raj Chetty.
A strange thing happened when more women started completing college and entering traditionally male careers. Nature being what nature is, this unholy thing called "assortive mating" happened ... it turns out that couples tend to "sort" by where they work, who they socialize with, what kind of events they attend, etc. Who knew? In the bad old days, there were things like churches, neighborhoods and various social clubs that would allow people of less similar economic status to "mix" and nature to take it's course, but we killed them off in favor of big government.
WORSE, these educated people are STAYING MARRIED -- even though they have been indoctrinated to believe that such things are completely not in their interest of getting all the pleasure they can in this short life prior to oblivion. So the contagion spreads! Not only do THEY acquire more assets, their children are beset by a stable home which likely leads them down the evil path of responsibility, education, stable marriage ... more income inequality!
Most important of all, we have learned how to pass all of these advantages down to our children. In America today, the single best predictor of whether an individual will get married, stay married, pursue advanced education, live in a good neighborhood, have an extensive social network, and experience good health is the performance of his or her parents on those same metrics.
Something MUST be done about this! Take the kids away from the parents to "Youth Camps" where they learn the benefits of sloth, addiction, promiscuity and a sense of entitlement? Hitler gave that one a good shot, and I understand the old USSR did as well ... however it created a population that pretty much just wanted to drink and smoke. There is an old inappropriate joke about two ethnic groups integrating in a neighborhood, and the kids became “too lazy to steal”. Enough totalitarianism and the populace becomes too lazy to breed!
Near the end of the article after discussing what other possible taxation and other regulations could be heaped on this hapless 9.9% aristocracy, the column arrives at ...
Yes, the kind of change that really matters is going to require action from the federal government. That which creates monopoly power can also destroy it; that which allows money into politics can also take it out; that which has transferred power from labor to capital can transfer it back. Change also needs to happen at the state and local levels. How else are we going to open up our neighborhoods and restore the public character of education?
When the answer to everything is the Federal Government, it isn’t really surprising that is the answer here as well. We have been growing the Federal Government forever, and rapidly since FDR, through LBJ, and of course BO ... how much of that lamentable “aristocracy” lives in one of the 6 of the top 10 wealthiest counties around DC? Do the authors care?
Of course not ... the universal answer is “more government” — until, well, until everyone gets their mind right and just agrees with all the doctrines of “The Party (TP-D). Abortion, gay rights, transgender rights, immigration, global warming, etc ... ALL purely mechanisms to be used to gather POWER to the central government!
Link one takes you to Power Line coverage of the presidential visit to Duluth, link two takes you to the Rolling Stone coverage of same.
Minnesota’s lonely island of electoral blue in the midst of Donald Trump’s upper Midwest Republican bloodbath was on the minds of nearly everyone inside Duluth's Amsoil Arena Wednesday night. Every speaker, including President Trump, referred to it, though perhaps no one quite as dramatically as state GOP chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan, who warned the thousands in attendance about a “red tsunami rolling across Lake Superior.” (Just add it to the list of greasy Wisconsin imports, I guess.)
One of the things about the left, "nice", in any form, "Minnesota" or otherwise fails to come to mind.
By the time Trump reached the end of his speech, it felt familiar even if you hadn’t heard it before. The phrases had the too-neat, predictable parallelism of a jingle: “We will never give in, we will never give up ... we will never stop fighting for our flag, or our freedom. We are one people, and one family, and one nation under God.” The last lines were chanted out in half-unison, half-hum, the way you might mumble-vamp through the verse of “Sweet Caroline” only to land with ecstasy at the chorus: “We will make America safe AGAIN! We will make America strong AGAIN! We will make America GREAT AGAIN!”
That’s the way the end of democracy sounds, I think: People so eager to join a chant they do it before they know all the words.
Well, we were supposed to be a Republic, not a "democracy", but one really would not expect to have a lot of detail on such topics from the Rolling Stone. Who is reporting on "sex, drugs and Rock and Roll" now days? Wasn't that their mission?
Actually, tribalism is exactly what you get in "democracy", and we have slid long that way save for basically the Senate and the Electoral College, which of course the Rolling Stone would like to abolish. Yes, tribes know their chants "Hope and Change"! Comes to mind -- at least "Make America great again" has a subject. "We are the ones we have been waiting for!"????
Political rallys have never been much in the way of intellectual pursuits -- unlike rock concerts of course!
I kinda like this one ...
... like his riff about “elites”: “You ever notice they always call the other side ‘the elite’? The elite! Why are they elite? I have a much better apartment than they do. I’m smarter than they are. I’m richer than they are. I became president and they didn’t.”
As recently as "God And Man at Yale", in order to be a US "elite", you needed a blood line, some old money, some classical education, an upper New England accent, and such. Now, Trump is right -- other than money and a posh address, the only real qualification is to parrot all the lefty positions that you can read in "The Rolling Stone"! No standards means no standards ...
Free thinking blacks of any gender are high on my list of people to be admired. It takes tons of COURAGE for these free thinkers to be willing to step out and speak, knowing that they will be vicously attacked and maligned by "The Party" (TP-D) and very possibly personally ruined as "things come out" about them. You know ... things they may have done when younger, things they never did but someone is willing to "swear to" -- the power of TP and the Deep State is unlimited.
Candace Owens is bright, witty, and a hightly capable communicator -- a nightmare for TP! Keeping blacks on the 90%+ TP support plantation where they can safely be ignored and huddled in crime ridden neighborhoods supposedly because of "white privilige" has been a cozy reality for TP since the late '60s. As the linked article put it .,.
The Left’s desperation is evident on a number of fronts these days, but its determination to keep blacks on the liberal plantation is at the top of the list. Candace Owens is on the cutting edge of freedom for African-Americans. Her battle is vitally important to all of us.
The video in the linked is well worth the time -- I expect to see lots more from Candice unless TP silences her.
The subject book is an easy and fast read that covers a lot of the same ground that I've covered before in a somewhat more nasty (although not as nasty as "The God Delusion", or "The End of Faith") ... DeStefano doesn't want to do away with atheists, he just wants to talk about what he sees as their thinking.
He is concerned that "Christians have been too nice", although that is pretty much what Christ requires of practicing Christians, so it can't really be seen as unexpected.
His chapters focus on key aspects he sees atheists as presenting -- arrogance, ignorance, ruthlessness, intolerance, shallowness, cowardice, death worship, faithfulness, and malevolence. Essentially, "human nature" -- which is precisely what one would expect from people who are proud of having no higher standards than naturall, non-redeemed human nature!
You might be surprised that he sees athesists as faithful -- I see them that way as well. FAITH is the foundation of human life ... faith in your next breath, faith that the universe is rational, faith that your basic model of thought (world view) is at least not insane, faith that there is actually some reality rather than just a one of "matrix" of some sort where maybe you are all there is (or if you are a Solipist, faith that you ARE the only existing mind!).
The core of atheist faith is on page 121, "They believe that organization came out of chaos, that life came out of lifenessness, that consciousness came out of unconsciousness, that reason came out of irrationality".
None of those beliefs can be proven -- nor can it be proven that an eternal, just, ordered, intelligent and loving creator built a universe with order, life, consciousness, reason and love (echos of his nature). Both are matters of faith, and always will be until we meet God, or will be until the lights go out on humanity if there isn't a God.
It is an easy and sometimes guilty pleasure sort of a book, but it is quite shallow. I'd very much recommend "The Reason For God" instead.
