Monday, October 31, 2016
Holloween
Halloween
Robert A. Hall
It’s scary on all Hollow’s Eve,
Ye never ken who’s at the door—
It might be a ghost or the fairies—
Of the jealous husband of sweet Nellie Moore!
It might be the Loch Ness Monster
Come slitherin’ oot o’ the deep=
Or the brother o’ Margaret MacGregor,
Claimin’ there’s a promise to keep!
It might be a water kelpie
Come creepin’ oot o’ the sea—
Or a lass with a bonny wee bairn
Wi’ a faint resemblance to me!
It might be an old hangit man,
Come clawin’ up oot o’ the ground—
Or the terrible mean old faither
O bonny, young Miss Molly Brown!
It might be any kind o’ a monster,
A thief, a rapist, a killer!
It might be the Queen’s Excise Man
Who’s come to demand a’ my siller!
Aye, it’s scary in Bonny Auld Scotland
When the witches come wigglin’ through—
Not to mention the fitball supporters
Who stagger around a’ roarin’ fu’!
You never ken who’s at your door—
To open to a ghost would be risky.
And it might be the maist fearful o’ a’—
And Englishman after my whisky!
Mo the feminist
Huffington Post: Muhammad was a feminist, “explicitly taught the radical equality of women and men”
Excerpt: The Huffington Post continues its endless PR campaign for Islam. In reality, Muhammad never “explicitly taught the radical equality of women and men.” The Qur’an taught that men are superior to women and should beat those from whom they “fear disobedience”: “Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because Allah has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.” — Qur’an 4:34
Debate Questions
CNN cuts ties with Donna Brazile after hacked emails show she gave Clinton campaign debate questions
Abedin Emails
Justice Department obtains warrant allowing it to search Abedin emails
http://cbs4indy.com/2016/10/30/justice-department-obtains-warrant-allowing-it-to-search-abedin-emails/
Parris Island
Thursday, November 3rd, marks the 52nd anniversary of my graduation from Parris Island and earning the title Marine. I thank God for my DIs, Sgts. Ezekiel Owens, Michael Martin and William Harris every day. They gave me tenacity and self-discipline, which meant I had a very successful life. Semper Fi, Marines. ~Bob
More on Mcmullin
Evan McMullin against the Leviathans
Excerpt: “We” is David Evan McMullin, independent candidate for president, and his running mate, Mindy Finn, who are downing nachos during a brief visit with a handful of local supporters — the umpteenth stop of their day on a whirlwind campaign that launched two months ago and will end in less than two weeks, probably. “Probably,” because if McMullin wins Utah and becomes the first third-party candidate to win electoral votes in 48 years, and if Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the two major-party nominees, split the other 532, no candidate would achieve the requisite 270 votes in the Electoral College, at which point, the campaign would turn to lobbying the House of Representatives, which would be tasked with selecting the next commander-in-chief. This, at least, is the theory. McMullin is doing his part to make it reality. In mid October, polls suddenly showed a tight, three-way contest in a state that Republicans have not lost since 1964, with McMullin either in the lead or just behind Trump. That state of play appears to be holding. In case there was any doubt that the Trump campaign is concerned, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Lou Dobbs all spent time last week attacking McMullin (Dobbs, indulging in a refreshingly honest moment of unveiled bigotry, suggested McMullin was part of a “Mormon Mafia”), and on Wednesday, Mike Pence flew in for a rally in Salt Lake City.
McMullin in the CIA
Inside Evan McMullin’s 10 years undercover in the CIA
Excerpt: Conservative independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin is rising in the polls and stands a fair chance of stealing the red state of Utah from GOP nominee Donald Trump. So it’s no surprise that pro-Trump Republicans and others are raising questions about his record as an undercover CIA officer. Vetting a former spy for the nation’s highest office isn’t easy, considering the classified nature of his government service. This has left McMullin vulnerable to attacks he cannot publicly address. But I interviewed six former CIA officers who worked with McMullin during his 10 years inside the agency. What emerged was a picture of a young case officer who volunteered for duty in the world’s most dangerous places and had a unique talent for recruiting members of extremist organizations as assets. ... The CIA station chief who supervised McMullin in his first overseas assignment told me that McMullin stood out among all the new case officers because of his insistence on going outside the safe confines of the embassy to meet and develop human- intelligence assets. As a Mormon, McMullin could not indulge in the vices that often help to build such bonds, so he used his piousness and his experience before college as a missionary in Brazil to his advantage.
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Saturday, October 29, 2016
Identity Politics
Donald Trump owes part of his rise to white identity politics,
in the form of the Alt.Right, white supremacists and other groups. But that have
gained prominence and supporters as a reaction to several decades of
progressives cynically seeking power by playing black identity polices. They
long ago abandoned the dream of a color blind society, and every action has a
reaction. They helped create Trumpism.
Cash from CAIR
Hillary Clinton accepts cash from Hamas-linked CAIR, leads 2016 list of pols getting money from Islamic supremacists
Germany
Tolerant Islam. Germany: Muslim children screaming “Allahu akbar” throw stones at Ethiopian priest
Friday, October 28, 2016
Hacked emails
If Russian hackers could get 50,000 of Clinton Campaign Manager Podesta's emails, why would anyone think they didn't get every classified email Hillary put on her secret server (the one Obama didn't know about but used a fake name when writing to).
Dem's failures
Democrats’ failures are lost in the glare of Trump’s personality. By Rich Lowry
Excerpt: Hillary Clinton may be the first candidate in American history to win a contest of personalities without having one. She’s been content to make the election all about Donald Trump’s character and Trump has obliged — because, really, what else would he consider as fascinating and important as himself? In a more normal year, ObamaCare would be a byword for the failures of liberal technocrat rule. Persistently unpopular and under-performing, the law has had a dreadful 2016. ... Instead, none of these issues has had the resonance of Donald Trump’s early-hours Twitter war with a former Miss Universe, or even his aside in the third debate that Hillary Clinton is a “nasty woman.”
Any more coming?
The Weiners come home to roost: FBI reopens Clinton probe after new emails found in Anthony Weiner case
If the Clinton Campaign has any more oppo research bombshells, Monday will be the time to drop it. ~Bob
Weird Things Happening
The Unravelling. By Jonah Goldberg, The Goldberg File
I can’t shake the feeling that all sorts of streaks are
coming to an end. Only thrice in the 20th century has a party held on to the
White House for three elections in a row. Harding (1920), Coolidge (1924), and Hoover (1928) strung
together three wins during the Roaring Twenties. FDR did it because he was
essentially president-for-life. George H. W. Bush did it because he was
standing on Reagan’s legacy and running against Michael Dukakis, a Black Swan
of dorkiness. Only two sitting senators were elected president prior to 2008,
when we had no choice but to elect one because both candidates were senators. Other
streaks are more ephemeral. Ronald Reagan was the first and only divorced man
to be elected president. Even so, there’s been a rule of thumb, which he
adhered to, that having an admirable married life — at least in public — was
essential to getting elected. That ends this year no matter who wins. The
related rule of thumb that you needed to be known as a person of reasonably
good character to win your party’s nomination, never mind the presidency, has
also come crashing down off the shelf — the magical pixie who guaranteed it has
flown out the window. I could do this all day. It used to be that religious
leaders at least pretended that a politician’s personal character and faith
mattered, even if they were a Republican. It used to be that kowtowing to
foreign despots meddling in our elections was a no-no, particularly for the
GOP. It used to be a vicious slander to suggest that Democrats were socialists
in disguise. But we spent the last year watching Democrats fall all over
themselves to insist there’s no meaningful distinction between them and their
socialist brethren. The fact that no one wrote such rules down was a sign not
of their weakness but of their dogmatic strength. No one ever bothered to write
down that candidates shouldn’t brag about the size of their penises either. And
I’m sure the jarred-spirit upholding that dictum was more surprised than anyone
when he was liberated from his obligations.
the GOP
Barbara Comstock: The New Face of the Republican Party. By Mona Charen
Excerpt: omething quite startling happened in a close House race in northern Virginia this year. The Washington Post endorsed the incumbent Republican, Barbara Comstock. Comstock has been a familiar figure in the region for decades, but not in a way that would typically earn the Post’s admiration. In the 1990s, as chief counsel to the House Oversight and Reform Committee, she made the Clintons sweat with investigations into their hydra-headed scandals. She served three terms in the Virginia House of Delegates, winning each time in a district that leaned Democrat. In 2014, she ran for and won the seat she now holds by a 16-point margin. In a year when the two major-party presidential nominees are dismaying and demoralizing, it’s a relief to pay tribute to a politician who is honorable, able, and worthy.
For-Profit Politics
Sponsored Links by Trump’s For-Profit Campaign
Excerpt: t’s as if Bob Dole began doing ads for Viagra before the 1996 election was over. With less than two weeks before Election Day, Donald Trump evidently wants swing voters to know that the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort got recognized by Successful Meetings magazine for its renovation, among many other honors and distinctions. This is something genuinely new under the sun: Abraham Lincoln didn’t use the 1860 campaign to promote the fine legal representation available through the firm of Lincoln-Herndon. Mitt Romney in 2012 didn’t try to persuade investors to go with Bain Capital.
Still fall here
We may not be New England, but our neighborhood has a lot of orange-red maples. Took this today, October 28, 2016.
From my friend Del
For whatever it's worth, here is something I put together for my adult children, who so far have maintained a deep mistrust of the media (see, I did raise smart kids) and skepticism about politics. But I wanted to get some basics registered with them to think about sooner or later. I can only hope it will be useful to them.
Del
==============================
Dear ****************,
Both of you prefer not to talk about politics, at least not to me, and I try to respect that.
However, the saying that "you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you" does apply, and what goes on in the state capitol and DC ultimately affects your lives and the lives of your children and how our whole society functions. So for what it's worth, I'd like to give you some basic thoughts to just file away until you feel like thinking more about them.
What was in a way special about the American Revolution was that it was NOT a revolution to overthrow the whole order of things and create a new society with totally new rules, as for instance the French revolution and the communist revolution in Russia were, and how so many other revolutions have been. The colonists actually had experienced a lot of freedoms, more than most of the people of Europe at the time had, and had vibrant, fairly prosperous societies going in all the 13 of them, if slightly different in some points. But they didn't have quite all the freedoms that the citizens living in the UK did, and that got to be a bone of contention over time, and the more objections there were, the more the King told his agents to clamp down, and things spiralled down until the first shots were fired at a tiny town in Massachusetts.
Even then, among all the colonists it was roughly a third who supported the revolution, a third who wanted to just stay out of it, and a third who remained loyal to the King (called Tories), and in parts of the colonies, like here in North Carolina, the first years of the war were more or less a civil war with the revolutionary militias fighting the Tory militias and some British troops. But in the end the, sheer determination and brilliance of the leaders like Washington and others, plus the help of the French, outlasted the ability of the UK to continue to support the war, and it ended.
But what the Founders wanted was not to totally remake the society, but to safeguard it largely as it was, and put in a form of government that they hoped would always serve the people rather than rule them. It was a fantastic, wonderful idea and it worked out overall very well. Yes, it wasn't perfect at all, there were all the biases and injustices common to all the societies of those times, but bit by bit progress towards the ideals of the Declaration of Independence has been made, and we have had the most individual freedoms and highest prosperity of any nation ever on earth. Your great grandparents arrived here with nothing, in those times there were zero social benefits for immigrants, and they successfully made new lives for themselves that led to the lives your grandparents, your parents, and you have had since. This is a success story than cannot be neglected.
What the Founders always feared was the growth of government, since their studies of history had made them understand that as government grows its appetite for power grows too, and ultimately it will steadily eat away at the freedoms of the people. Huge bureaucracies have been the bane of people for millennia, that's just part of natural events when humans are involved.
Clearly the very limited government of 1782 is not appropriate or sufficient for 2016, the changes in society and the world have been enormous and government must evolve as a result. We do need a departments like Environmental Protection, Occupational Health and Safety, Federal Drug Administration, etc. Maybe not some, like Education, but for sure we don't need federal agencies that get so large and powerful they don't seem to answer to anyone and instead of being religiously apolitical allow themselves to become tools of politicians.
And that is exactly what we've been seeing happen for a long time, starting perhaps with Andrew Jackson, really developing with FDR, and most recently under Mr. Obama. The federal government has been issuing literally thousands of new rules and regulations every year, and anyone in business can tell you how this has added up to far more downsides than any benefits. Scandals with federal agencies like the IRS, the ATF, the FBI and the EPA have occurred, which undercuts our confidence on those who are supposed to be serving and protecting us.
Worst of all, at least in terms of what the Founders ever wanted, our electoral process has been corrupted by money and manipulation and irresponsible media, and a professional political class has been created that works far more for their own good than for ours. The frustration and concerns of so many about this are part of what has, allowed demagogues to take over campaigns and led to the horrendous choices we have in the current election. Our society is now badly polarized, divisiveness has grown tremendously, and various kinds of excesses are tearing at the fabric of the nation.
Meanwhile, the world has become a very dangerous place, and we have little to no control over that, other than to make sure we have the best military in the world. But our military has been badly damaged in the past years, so that's another concern.
I don't bring all this up to upset, scare, or depress you, but only to provide a picture that you should be aware of. We have to hope and pray for a lot better leadership than we've had for some time, we need healing in our society and a coming together rather than the divisiveness, and, I believe, a movement to trim government agencies and their power and make them again responsible to the people. And ideally, some reforms in our political system, like term limits and election reform, and demand our representatives make their first job to be working carefully and sensibly for the long term of all of us.
So when you start to think about whether to vote and how to vote, I hope some of this may be helpful. Right now I am profoundly unhappy with both political Parties, but keep praying at some point leaders will arise who will be a whole lot better for us than what we've seen lately. Ultimately in a democracy we get the government we deserve, even if we make the wrong choices because of biased media and manipulated inputs and smooth liars, so we need to be very careful in what we research and how we consider the actual facts rather than the smoke&mirrors the politicians put out.
Good luck with all this. Keep an eye on events, and if/when they start to really worry you about the future, apply yourselves carefully to whatever preparations you can make for the long term good and safety of your families.
Dad
Would you vote for this guy for mayor?
Do you support this
guy for mayor? By Robert A. Hall
Let's say that you've lived in a town for over 30 years. And
let's say you love dogs. You own three who sleep with you and your wife on your
king size bed. Your wife works at a shelter and often brings home strays to
foster. You spend all your free time walking with, training or playing with the
dogs. Lucky for you, most people in your town, at least 70%, love dogs.
Except, of course for that guy two houses down on the other
side of the street. He hates dogs. He
yells at you if your dogs do their business on his curb, even though you pick
it up. He leaves nasty notes in your door and calls the cops to complain about
your dogs barking at night, though they sleep in your room, so you'd know. He
writes anti-dog letters to the paper. He lobbies the council for higher
licensing fees and anti-dog ordinances.
That is, until last year he when decided to run for Mayor.
Now he loves dogs. He bought a Golden Retriever he takes everywhere. He
promises that if elected he will lower licensing fees, build more dog parks and
make all city buildings dog-friendly. He promises to expand the shelter and
make sure only no-kill shelters can open in your town.
Do you believe he now loves dogs? Do you get on his
political bandwagon and slam anyone who opposes him?
So now comes Donald
Trump. For over three decades, Trump has:
- Contributed big money to Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Rahm Emanuel and other liberals to keep them in office.
- Praised gun-grabber Mayor Michael Bloomberg and said about guns, “Nothing I Like Better Than Nobody Has Them.”
- Said
Hillary Clinton was a great senator, a great Secretary of State (after
- Said he was 100% pro-choice, including on partial-birth abortion, and that his sister, a radical pro-abortion judge, would be great on the Supreme Court. And said that Planned Parenthood does some good things so he wouldn't cut off funding.
- Bragged publically about cheating on his wives and privately about sexually assaulting women.
- Said Romney lost to Obama because the GOP was too harsh on immigrants and that the "Dreamers" had convinced him.
- Advocated
single-payer (it works so well in
- Advocated raising the minimum wage.
- Made himself popular among the so-called “alt-right” made up of KKK, neo-Nazis, and fascists. These are the same groups (John Birchers) that William Buckley expelled from the conservative movement.
- Lambasted big business and advocated protectionist policies–the GOP used to be the party of business.
- Accepted
and offered praise from and to Vladimir Putin, the biggest threat to
- Criticized
John McCain saying, "I like guys who didn't get captured," after
avoiding military service in
- Said he learned more about the military in prep school than most guys do in the service.
- Said he has never repented or asked God for forgiveness because he doesn't make mistakes.
- Said
that sex and not catching VD was his personal
- Said that Oprah would make a great VP.
- Ran a scam university and made money by stiffing investors through bankruptcies and stiffing workers.
- Worked
with mob guys, like Anthony “Fat Tony”
- Said George Bush was evil and praised Barack Obama.
- Used illegal immigrants in his businesses, taking jobs from American workers.
As a candidate, Trump
has:
- Mocked a disabled reporter.
- Said we could pay off the National Debt by printing money, a policy far to the left of Jill Stein that would destroy savings and IRAs.
- Pledged to punish the press and individuals who opposed him.
- Demonstrated an abysmal ignorance of the constitution, the military, foreign policy, how government works and the economy. He said he consults himself on foreign policy because, "I have a very good brain."
- Promised to self-fund and then reneged, leaving the GOP far behind in campaign funds.
- Spent more time attacking conservatives and Republicans than Democrats, and said he doesn't need conservatives. He even accused Ted Cruz's father of being involved in the JFK assassination.
- Disdained to develop a data-driven ground game.
- Spent time and effort in hopeless states like NY.
- Promised to release his tax returns but never has, though he demanded them from his VP list.
- Directed campaign funds to his own businesses, which charged more than market, thus squandering the donations he has gotten.
- Said
he would not rip up the
- Said the abortion laws are set.
- Said
he'd be neutral on
- Opposed free trade like Clinton and Sanders have.
But you're all in for Trump because he's a conservative, and
tells it like it is? Well, he said he doesn't need my money or my vote as a
conservative, and he didn't get it.
I voted for Evan McMullin for President.
22 Reasons Principled Conservatives can Never
Vote for Donald Trump. By Robert A. Hall
(And Hillary is just as bad, though it's a toss up which will be worse
for the country.)
Coming soon to a neighborhood near you
Christian refugees threatened with beheading for being 'unbelievers' by Muslim migrants
Too funny
Satire: Early voting data shows World War I veterans overwhelmingly support Hillary Clinton
Clinton Leaks
The Top 100 Most Damaging Wikileaks (so far)
Someone has gone to the trouble of putting together this list of Wikileak released e-mails, etc, that show a very detailed picture of the deceptions, misinformations, manipulations and lots of flat out lies told by Hillary, her staff, supporters, and others. Wow..... Doesn't leave a smidgen of room for doubt about how these people operate! Pass on to your Liberal friends still supporting the Dems and Hillary if you want to really tick them off. Or just send the link and dare them to read any of it. --Del
Stunning
Stunning victory for protesters of federal land management: These are the guys who temporarily took over a federal office out West, as part of the long fight about how the federal Bureau of Land Management has been trampling the rights of ranchers and farmers there. They were guaranteed to be convicted of multiple charges, but somehow the jury saw it differently, in a huge setback for the government prosecutors. Maybe this is really a good thing for the nation, it is long past time for the huge federal agencies to get some limits put on their powers. --Del
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Gun sanity?
Amidst Utter Chaos, One Gun Poll Shows Actual Sanity
Anyhow, it appears that there is at least one emerging sign of plebiscitary sanity amidst a tsunami of quasi-apocalyptic moral turpitude. It seems that Americans really do not approve of the purely symbolic and utterly stupid 1994-2004 federal law that banned “assault weapons” guns the Left thinks look scary. Here is the upshot, per Sean Davis at The Federalist:
"Support for a so-called assault weapons ban in the U.S. just hit a record low of 36 percent, according to a new Gallup poll released on Wednesday. The poll showed that 61 percent of American adults now oppose a ban. That level of opposition is the highest ever recorded. Increasing opposition to the 1990’s-era gun ban isn’t just limited to Republicans. Gallup’s data show that opposition to the ban has increased across the board. Barely 50 percent of Democrats currently support the ban today, compared to 63 percent support from Democrats in 1996, just two years after the federal ban was signed into law. Less than a third of independents currently support a ban, while Republican support hovers at 25 percent. An assault weapons ban is also widely opposed by those who don’t even own guns. Gallup’s latest survey found that only 45 percent of households without guns support the ban, compared to 26 percent support among households with guns."
Good. The ban on the cosmetically amorphous and logistically-impossible-to-intellectually-coherently-define sub-class of rifles frequently lambasted by Leftists as “assault weapons” is probably one of the single most overtly impulsive, senseless, liberty-depriving, legislate-because-it-makes-us-feel-good pieces of drivel to emerge out of Congress over the past three decades.
the Conservative Candidate?
On Video, Donald Trump Says Bush Is “Evil”. Obama is “Inspirational” And Will “Bring Back Love”
Promise?
Wisconsin: Dem Feingold Broke Promise To Limit Outside Funds In Senate Bid to Unseat Johnson
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
No longer trying?
The Trump-Pence Campaign Scheduler Isn’t Even Trying Anymore. By Jim Geraghty, Morning Jolt
Yesterday, Donald Trump held a campaign event at his golf course in National Doral Golf Club in Miami. Today, he attends the ribbon-cutting ceremony for his new hotel in Washington, D.C. and on Friday he’s holding a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, a state he has never led. Meanwhile, Mike Pence is in Salt Lake City, Utah, today, trying to hold off Evan McMullin, spending Thursday in Omaha, Nebraska — presumably to keep Hillary from winning any one of the congressional districts and stealing an Electoral Vote, the way Obama did in 2008 — and then spending Friday in Pennsylvania, a state Trump has not led any poll in since July.
political instincts
WikiLeaks reveals fears and frustrations inside Clinton world
Excerpt: The emails show that while aides struggled to get past the public controversy, they also expressed exasperation at each other and, at times, at Clinton — both for her decision to use the server and for the way she handled questions about it. Several exchanges illustrate fears among some top advisers that Clinton and other aides were demonstrating the very traits that polls suggested made her vulnerable: a penchant for secrecy and a hesitancy to admit fault or error. “We’ve taken on a lot of water that won’t be easy to pump out of the boat,” Podesta wrote to Tanden in September 2015, at a time when Clinton’s campaign feared that Vice President Biden was about to enter the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. “Most of that has to do with terrible decisions made pre-campaign, but a lot has to do with her instincts.” Tanden responded, “Almost no one knows better [than] me that her instincts can be terrible.”
Last Ditch
McMullin Scenario a Last-Ditch Hope for Dismayed Voters
My wife and I voted Monday for Evan mcmullin and Mindy Finn. ~Bob
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Collusion
We've all seen articles about the various problems this nation has been facing, but this writer has done the most thorough job I've seen of putting it all together. It does paint so grim a picture of where we are, where we've been headed, and where Hillary is going to keep taking us that it does make Mr. Trump the far lesser of two evils. I go to vote today, and while fighting depression about it, will make the choice that seems like the only one possible to give us any hope for the future. --Del
Dangerous Collusion. By David Limbaugh
Excerpt: I've never been much of a conspiracy theorist, but I don't know how reasonable people can fail to recognize the overt collusion of the Obama administration, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Party and the liberal media to shield Hillary Clinton from accountability for her many misdeeds and abundant corruption.
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