A Trip to the Past

In view of the uproar about Carolyn Walker-Diallo's swearing in - she used a Quran - I started thinking about the January 2013 swearing-in of Obama.  Remember it?  He botched the words, so took the oath again, in a private ceremony.

I wondered at that time about the book that was contained between the covers - never did get an explanation.

Does anyone reading this know what that book was?

I've Been Busy At My Other Site

Right As Usual.

Do You Need a New Comeback?

Never Fear - Kathy Shaidle is here.

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What is Dumber Than a NYT Columnist?

The answer is:

Nothing.

Nothing is dumber than a NYT Columnist.

A perfect example of that is the mindless regurgitating of an academic study that explores why some people, in extreme situations, freeze in place.  The brain activity that causes it, the possible alternative ways to keep that from affecting peoples’ survival in crisis situations, and all of that other academic hedging is explained.

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Double Facepalm

I'm having a MASSIVELY difficult time trying to understand why the teacher, the principal, and the district didn't think this was a bad idea.

Students were given the assignment to write the Shahada in Arabic script, in their World Geography class.  I found this on Ace of Spades.

Loved one response:

 [Side note: for the life of me, I can't figure out why Ace isn't picked up as unacceptable on the work blocking software.  But, I'm glad it isn't.]  PJ Media reports the district response:

Augusta County School Board and Dr. Bond appreciate parents bringing concerns directly to our attention, and a constructive and respectful dialogue between school and community is always welcome. As we have emphasized, no lesson was designed to promote a religious viewpoint or change any student’s religious belief. Although students will continue to learn about world religions as required by the state Board of Education and the Commonwealth’s Standards of Learning, a different, non-religious sample of Arabic calligraphy will be used in the future.

Is there anyone so naive as to believe that self-serving statement (other than a Liberal)?

OF COURSE the curriculum is designed to separate the Believers from their heritage!  At least, the Christian Believers.  That's the whole point of a Modern Progressive Education (trademark pending).  It's a Virtual Democratic Manufacturing Machine!  (trademark refused).

What is 4G War?

It's the shorthand way of referring to 4th Generation War, and it may be the cutting edge of warfare in this country in the near future.

Declarations of war are SO 20th century.  They only work when the aggressors are directed by a nation-state.

Today's warriors are composed of loosely-allied, familial/religiously affiliated/politically aligned individuals.  Only the leadership has a long-standing relationship with each other - in other words, it's a war led by those who consider themselves political/cultural/social/religious elites.

Like The Weathermen in our country.  Or ISIS.  Or The Red Guard.  Or the IRA.

At the top - a ruthless core that is willing to sacrifice the "lesser" people who admire them and their cause.  At the bottom - the fungible masses who die/are dismembered/spend long years in jail at the whim of the leadership.

This may be the most hard-to-destroy enemy we've ever faced. They have managed to use the unemployed, poorly educated masses without wives/children essentially as Orcs.

What are Orcs?  From the Wikipedia description:

Orcs are aggressive scavengers and opportunistic carnivores (with a taste for both in-species cannibalism and human flesh). While possessing a low cunning and crude culture of their own, they are generally portrayed as a subject race used as soldiers (or battle fodder) by beings of greater power and intelligence. Violent by nature, they will fight ferociously if compelled or directed by a guiding will, but tend towards more chaotic behavior (including cowardice) if left to their own devices.

Emphasis mine.

Are we in danger in America with our native population?

Of course!  There are too many poorly-educated people who have no special qualifications in terms of employability, who rely on what the elites tell them to think, who have (as a result of our society deliberately keeping people from knowing basic religious tenets) no moral structure other than what the elites TELL them is moral - which, for some, is anything they FEEL like doing.

It does not make me happy to conclude that we are in DEEP $h!t for the foreseeable future.

Status Update

I’d like to be more active in blogging, but, right now:

• We’re in the middle of renovating our house in Cleveland.  It’s been a LONG, slow process – with one major epiphany – Contractors LIE!  We were originally hoping to sell it, but our son needed a larger place in a safe neighborhood (his family will soon be expanding), so….
• My husband needed to work on his Master’s program, as well as a research program he is involved with, so-o-o-o, it was up to me to do more around the house and with the bills.  And,

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The Gathering Storm

In the aftermath of the recent shooting – both in America, and in the rest of the world (the media focused on Paris, but just about totally ignored the kidnapping of a Malaysian engineer, who has been reportedly beheaded) – the American people are nervous.

For a very good reason.

Unlike truly random attacks, the Islamic terrorists aim at maximizing Christian deaths.  It is for this reason

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What is an American?

I’ve written on this before.  It’s a subject that fascinates me, as I grew up in a working class neighborhood that, during my childhood, was apparently the destination of choice for many immigrants.

Some of the nationalities I’ve known in my younger days:

• English – my best pal’s father was a retired military man from England
• Irish – both Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland
• Yugoslavian
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Watching the Leftists Turn Upon Their Elders

I'm kinda torn - on one hand, it IS fun to see the Progressives slapped down by the kids (call them the New Young Turks).  On the other hand, those that will follow the current regime in the universities will make those that preceded them look like angels.

Read my take on the SJW uprising.

End the Subsidization of Our Own Downfall

The next President must dedicate at least a little energy to halting the free reign of 501(c)4 organizations.

They are organizations that are not supposed to be overtly partisan or political.  However

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I'm just going to recommend you look at my other site right now

Most specifically these: https://cmblake6.wordpress.com/2015/11/13/sonuvabitch-cbs/ and https://cmblake6.wordpress.com/2015/11/14/a-couple-of-excellent-observations-from-people-you-know/

To blow ones own horn is wrong, but to share brilliance one has discovered in others is only decency.

Candidates - Ted Cruz

This only focuses on Ted's immigration ideas - as he has more to offer than that, I'll be putting up a Part 2 sometime in the next week.

Candidates - Bernie Sanders

Check out my Totally Unbiased Evaluation and Recommendation here.

Some Catholic Things

I was watching a video from Word on Fire (Fr. Barron), and thought it was a useful explanation of the role of the Pope in the Catholic Church.  If you are not a Catholic (and, maybe, if you are/were), the authority of the Pope is not well understood.

Some non-Catholics think that we blindly follow every statement from the Pope (do those people KNOW any Catholics!), 

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One Approach To An Armistice In Our Social Wars

     Say, it’s Guy Fawkes Day, isn’t it? What better occasion on which to blow something up?

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     I am of the opinion that just about any insult, slander, or epithet can be detoxified by a simple technique: embracing it. Thus, it troubles me not at all to be called a racist, sexist, lookist, ableist, homophobic, Islamophobic, et cetera ad nauseam infinitam. I smile and say, “So what? Does that hurt your bank balance any?”

     Of course, you must have a certain confidence in yourself to do this. You must believe yourself to be a worthy individual who can’t be harmed by verbal assaults on your dignity. You must also be willing to stand against such a tide no matter how loud or raucous it becomes. And of course, you must discriminate carefully between accusations about your opinions and imputations about your actions. The former may be withstood with sangfroid; the latter must be counterattacked immediately and with all your forces.

     Needless to say – though, in time-honored Fran Porretto fashion, I’ll say it anyway – this is not the conduct that prevails in our time. Decent men quail from every sort of accusation, largely because they fear that others will believe it. Should some of those others be employers, customers, or otherwise important to one’s well-being, and should they be similarly lily-livered, unpleasant consequences could ensue. Thus, the willingness to accuse others of all sorts of naughty attitudes has become the coin of the realm. This has been particularly important – and especially irritating to me – in the matter of relations between the sexes and the associated social pathologies of our era.

     Gavin McInnes has addressed an aspect of this in an interesting video:

     I’ll refrain from commenting on whether babysitters earn enough to rule our economy. What’s absolutely beyond dispute is the arrant cowardice of innumerable persons, some of them on the boards of directors of major corporations, before the “prepubescent girls” and their idiotic opinions. (Yes, some of those “prepubescent girls” are in their forties and fifties. Says something about the prevalence of arrested development in the human female, doesn’t it?)

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     Today, via Instapundit, we have a counterexample to one of the darkest of the threads wrapped around our societies’ throats:

     Pablo Picasso's former lover has sparked outrage following her claims that fewer women would be raped in France if they just smiled at men.

     Francoise Gilot claims people should just embrace the 'eroticism of the streets' rather than taking offence or being worried....

     'If a man whistles at you and you smile, that oils the social wheels and eases the tension between the classes and sexes…It's a kind of give-and-take that acknowledges that the other person exists, so in that sense it's not treating another person as an object.

     'To take offence all the time makes every relationship disagreeable,' says Ms Gilot.

     'Each time a man says something to me, if I take it as an insult, then I'll be insulted several times a day by strangers I'll never see again…Whereas if I smile vaguely and go my way, it doesn't cost me very much,' she claims.

     Admirable! Refreshing! Benevolent and civilized! And bound to draw the ire of the “angry ugly girls” (God bless you, Duyen) to whom it constitutes the rankest heresy, a clear declaration of Miss Gilot’s “gender treason.”

     In point of fact, the “angry ugly girls” are mostly angry because men won’t whistle at them as they pass by. Damned few of the gender warriors are pleasing to the eye. At 93 years of age, Miss Gilot is infinitely more appealing than any of them, largely because of her carriage and her self-command.

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     These past few years, a lot of pixels have been expended on concepts of “alpha males” and “beta males,” the latter term put into currency merely to denote those who don’t qualify for the former one. The “alpha” designation originated in the study of the behavior of pack animals. In a typical pack, there is usually a subgroup of “alphas” who do the pack’s hunting and fighting, protect its females, and generally assume its risks upon their own hides. The term was imported into contemporary horror and quasi-horror fantasy to denote the ruler of a pack of werewolves. “Alpha” status includes privileges as well as responsibilities; among other things, the pack’s females prefer them as mates.

     Though it’s somewhat variable in connotation, the “alpha” designation when applied to men seems to correlate with what I’ve promoted as the manly virtues:

     A man must learn "where the line is": the line that separates behavior that must be tolerated from behavior that must not be. He must be willing -- personally willing -- to fight in defense of the former and against the latter, though it might expose him to risk and cost him injury or death. He must be ready to swallow his distaste and protect the rights even of persons he finds repulsive, if they have harmed no other human being.

A man must learn proportionality and restraint. Biology has optimized the male body for purposive aggression, sudden acceleration and focused violence. These are not things to be deployed in their 200-proof strength against trivial or unworthy targets. A man doesn't kill the bounder who steals his parking space, his business idea, or his wife. Even a punch in the nose is excessive for infractions like these.

A man must learn never to shirk a freely contracted obligation. If you've said you'll do it, you do it. No excuses. Conversely, if you have failed to meet an obligation, you must admit to it and try to do better next time.

A man must learn not to whine about disappointments, reversals, or the ways of women. Especially about the ways of women. They're not men -- thank God -- and we can't fairly hold them to manly standards.

A man must learn reverence in the presence of the numinous. The fact that each of us is a part of an infinitely greater whole manifests itself in innumerable ways. Learning to let it in, to cherish it, and to use it to buttress oneself in times of darkness is critical to attaining the endurance the world expects from a man.

Last and most important, a man must transmit the manly virtues to his male children.

     Just as the manly virtues define the essence of respectable manhood, there are feminine virtues that define the essence of respectable womanhood:

• Nurturance of a man;
• Management of a household;
• The skills demanded of a mother.

     A woman who lacks those virtues isn’t merely a marginal creature, unlikely to contribute constructively to her society; she’s a disruptive and destructive force. A fair number of such women infest our society today. Worse, they’ve wangled special legal privileges that no one deserves nor should be allowed. In consequence, young men are being taught to fear: especially, to fear women. Young women are being taught to resent: especially, to resent men.

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     Teaching the manly virtues to his sons was once a father’s principal parental duty. Teaching the feminine virtues to her daughters was once a mother’s principal parental duty. I maintain that though the practice has deteriorated, the moral and social obligations of fathers and mothers have not.

     If the manly virtues are the qualifications for “alpha” status – and I can’t think of any better ones – then every man can aspire to that status. Indeed, for several decades all American men were regarded as alphas by the rest of the civilized world. The status was well deserved then, less so today.

     Am I proposing a return to “masculine roles” and “feminine roles” as practiced among our forebears? Why, yes: I am. They worked. They produced the country our social strife has come near to ruining. And despite the propaganda of the angry ugly girls, both men and women were far happier when they predominated.

     So here’s my prescription for an attenuation of our social wars:

• To men: Be masculine men:
  • Learn the manly virtues.
  • Then live them – and ignore their detractors.
  • If you can’t or won’t, then have the decency to stay out of the way of the rest of us.
• To women: Be feminine women:
  • Learn the feminine virtues.
  • Then live them – and appreciate masculine men as such.
  • Learn to be candid about what you want, and stoic if you fail to get it.
  • If you can’t or won’t, then shut the fuck up. You’ve already caused enough harm.

     That’s all. Where do you stand, Gentle Reader?

Self-Education on Election Issues/Candidates

I'm starting a series that focuses on what each candidate is FOR - something the media seems loath to let be known.

I plan to post about 1-2 times a week on this topic, as my schedule allows.  ALL candidates will be included, even the marginal, of ALL parties.

You see, I really do believe in the value of a Free Press.

Here's the first.

Benghazi Bull$hit

I tried out a new tool - Genius - it allowed you to annotate selected text.  When you move your mouse down the text, highlights alerts you to the annotated text.

Here's the intro to Hillary's testimony.

You Tell Them, Bill!

The remarkable Bill Whittle - Talking Revolution!

The social wrecking ball -- destroyer of liberty.

The crime issue is a good example of how public policy is always about trade-offs, Swing the wrecking ball through a social institution and something replaces it. It’s also an example showing how American Liberalism will inevitably end in authoritarianism. As traditional institutions are destroyed, the state flows into the void. The existing organic institutions grow weaker relative to the state, making them easier to knock over.^[1]

The left loves to undermine, change, deride, neutralize, distort, and destroy in aid of trashing tradition, custom, law, and racial identity.

However, leftists are deluded when they think they (1) can identify what is good for other people, (2) know how to achieve their goals,^[2] and (3) know exactly what the costs of their destructive (but beneficial!) policies will be.

But, especially, the costs of pursuing goals that leftists swoon over is not only unknown to them but never even considered by them. Only good can flow from "good" intentions and "right" thinking. Fallible people handed government power will exercise it dispassionately and justly because, well, because they are not rightists. The possibility of psychopaths and neurotics wielding power? Remote. End of discussion.

But authoritarian power is enabled by every stroke of the wrecking ball as the Z Man notes. The Constitution was trashed when its requirement that the president be a natural born citizen was ignored. Now we have a freakish man who ignores the Constitution in turn by conducting wars without the consent of Congress and who willfully declines to exercise his responsibilities to defend our borders against invaders.

The possibility of total power falling into the hands of lunatics or monsters is not considered. I have never, ever in my entire life heard a leftist in my presence express even so much as an awareness of the ghastly crimes of the left in the last century. And, yes that includes the crimes of the National Socialists who chose the word "socialists" for a reason. Can anyone guess why?

Toying with powerful government is every bit as dangerous as beginning an affair with your boss's wife. As that excellent question of the age of the internet goes, "What, in either instance, could go wrong?" The leftists' answer is, it will not surprise you, is "Nothing whatsoever. Not a damn thing."

Notes
^[1] "Crime & Society." By The Z Man, 10/14/15.
^[2] For leftists, achieving any goal must necessarily involve government action and only government.