The Roman ruins at Palmyra, Syria, before the self-proclaimed Islamic State took control
Syria was always one of my favorite places in the world—an amazing mix of ancient sites that even despots couldn’t destroy until now.
When I worked for Newsweek and ABC News in the Middle East in the 1970s and 1980s, I spent many days there.
It was difficult to report in the police state of President Hafez al-Assad, who ruled the country until his death in 2000. He was a bad guy—perhaps even worse than his son Bashar, who now heads the country.
Nevertheless, Syria, the country, was always a nice place to visit. Damascus is considered the longest continuously inhabited city in the world—founded more than 3,000 years ago.
When you go to the old market or souk, you travel along the road where St. Paul was converted. Yes, it’s that road to Damascus. Nearby is thought to be the grave of St. John the Baptist.
The souk is one of the most amazing in the Middle East. I bought my first Persian carpet there, along with numerous copper and brass tables, plates and tea services from “Cha Cha,” a Syrian trader who was a favorite of the foreign community. He even found an old Russian samovar that still has a special place in our home.
The Roman ruins at Palmyra are among the most beautiful in the Middle East, with more than 150,000 tourists visiting the site before the civil war.
Some Arabic dishes in Syria have a distinctly different taste, mainly from a special red pepper from Aleppo, the city now in ruins from the civil war.
I worked on a variety of stories in Syria—almost always under the watchful eye of government censors and secret police. The last one was more than 30 years ago—an investigation of Syria’s connection to the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut that left 241 servicemen dead.
In 2011, I gave a speech in Beirut to a group of journalists. I argued that the civil war—only a few months old then—required U.S. boots on the ground. More important, journalists needed to document the atrocities of the Assad regime without any concern for objectivity, fairness and balance. Simply put, there were not two sides of the story—only the need to stop the brutality of government.
Two prominent journalists—one from The Washington Post and another from National Public Radio—disagreed with me. I hope they realize now how wrong they were to oppose the involvement of U.S. troops and the need to change from the neutral stance of journalists in covering the civil war.
In 2013 President Obama drew a line in the sand in Syria–a line that was quickly swept away by inaction.
Most people see the horror of what has happened in Syria as a result of the atrocities of the Assad regime and the self-proclaimed Islamic State. I’m glad I still have some good memories left.
Christopher Harper worked as a journalist for many years, including nearly a decade in the Middle East for Newsweek and ABC News. He teaches media law.
Well the Great Electoral College broo ha ha has ended as it was always going to with Donald Trump winning the presidency of the United States.
While this outcome is no surprise it did accomplish several goals of varying degrees of value.
For the Media it not only gave them content vital to keep from covering both the continued failures of the administration both domestically and abroad and the continued success of Trump to both please conservatives. It also gave them an excuse to continue to push the Russia Hack Meme that for some reason the administration doesn’t seem to want to brief congress on.
For the left it was also effective, it accomplished similar things, distracting the voters of the left from their massive electoral failures outside of the State of California, allowing them to push the Russia Hack meme distracting both voters in general and their own people that not only that the Wikileaks folks claim disgusted Dems gave them the info but that said hack, if it took place at all, publicly displayed not only the cyber security ineptitude of the party (and it’s nominee) and the fact that it put the mendacity and deceit of their leaders on full display, but most important it was a fundraising tool to get one last but of cash from gullible donors that they had failed under the guise of doing something.
But for us on the right and conservatives we had the best of all worlds.
It demonstrated that all the pronouncements of prominent leftists and pundits in media concerning faithless electors as the smoke and mirrors that it was.
It drew vital time and funds from the left that might have been used to actually combat our agenda.
It demonstrated the ineffectiveness of leftist professors, leftists pundits in print, digital media and on TV, and celebrities who loudly urged electors to defect.
It demonstrated the violent and undemocratic tendencies of the left by the bullying and intimidation attempts on electors which serves to further alienate voters from the radial left.
Its failure further demoralized a left already demoralized and will likely drive more ultra radical to the greens which will pay dividends in future elections.
And of course the best part….
It gives us one more reason to laugh at them.
As Rush Limbaugh often said, when liberals are in power, they’re scary, when their out of power, they’re crazy.
This flashback post stands up well because there is a reason why warranties are the length they are.
What a difference a year makes
When mentioning my Inspirion 1150 in the past I’ve said it never gave me any trouble. My warranty ran out three weeks ago.
On Saturday I installed a friends copy of CIV IV to see if the graphics card of my laptop could handle it and sad to say the wife will NOT be getting me it for Christmas (and as we’ve established I’m too cheap to buy a new pc just for a game).
This morning I was coming into work early to cover for a friend, booted up my laptop and rushed to do something that was going to take 10 minutes. I figured no problem, by the time I was back it would be booted and ready to log in. Instead I found a highly interesting blue screen of death.
If the problem persists I might reinstall the system files from the cd or run a sfc scannow
I restarted the system and it came up but the timing reminded me of this Day-by-Daycartoon below.
Eric always buys extended warranties with laptops, I didn’t. We will soon see if he is right and I am toast.
Posted by Peter at November 14, 2005 09:18 AM
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The Chris Muir Comment on that post is worth reprinting as well:
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Peter, as a product designer who is well-versed with production methods, I can tell you for a fact that products today are very carefully engineered for a certain amount of time and no more.
I can recall the good ol’ MaBell phones that would take a tank round before they’d break. No more, it’s all crap from China.
I thought I’d type this out quick like as the warranty on this Mac I’m using sta
Posted by: chris Muir at November 14, 2005 12:22 PM
SHREVEPORT – Finally, today, the Electoral College meets across the nation to name the next president. No one really expects any surprises to come of this process despite much whining and last ditch appeals from the left.
Yesterday on this blog, my colleague J. D. Rucker wrote about this process and touched on the absurd Unite for America video that began running last week in which a group of disgruntled has-been celebrities plead for the electors to “vote your conscience” and select someone other than Donald Trump for president. The first I heard of this video was last night; I was watching something on television and the ad popped up during the commercial break. I was half listening, checking my cell phone, when the gist of the video began to seep in. “What in the world?!….” I thought. Incredible.
At any rate, then I came across the plaintive plea by Michael Moore on Facebook in which he, too, pleads with electors “to vote your conscience and PLEASE do not put our nation in danger by choosing Donald J. Trump.” He goes on to insist that Trump cares nothing about being president and that he’s a danger to the country:
Trump, as I’m sure deep down in your heart you know, is never going to last the four years. He doesn’t care about the law or following the rules and this will eventually trip him up. You know how dangerous it is when any politician, Democrat or Republican, who’s a super narcissist is elected to office, they start making decisions that personally benefit themselves — and before you know it, they’re being hauled off to jail. Why not vote tomorrow for someone who’s going to finish her/his term? Why risk the volatile presence of Donald Trump in the White House — and help to guarantee another generation of Dems in the Oval Office?!
Really, I’m not sure Moore is known for this ability to see into the future, but perhaps he knows something we don’t.
The electors do seem to be prepared to fulfil their obligation to vote as directed, however, and the left will have to come to grips with it, just as Republicans did eight years ago. The pendulum always swings back.
We can expect this nonsense to continue throughout Trump’s presidency; he will be challenged at every step. Just as the right (myself included) railed against every Obama step, the left will do the same to Trump. Each side believes themselves to be justified in their indignation. It’s American politics. As citizens, we should always keep a wary eye on our political leaders; some of them are crooked and evil indeed. Some are not.
The day we let a bunch of washed up celebrities overthrow our great American political process, we are done. Their effort to stay relevant is depressing.
As Americans, the one thing we ought be able to unite behind is the sanctity of our transfer of power and the political process. There must be something that binds us.
A few weeks ago the Daily Mail ran an incorrect story concerning Mike Huckabee as the new ambassador to Israel and concluded that like the annual four year cycle of presidential candidates promising to move the US embassy to Jerusalem then backing out is about to end permanently:
Huckabee, an ordained Baptist preacher and electric bass player, will become the tip of Trump’s spear as he seeks to shake up U.S. foreign relations in the Middle East, beginning with relocating America’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
‘That’s going to happen,’ the transition official said. ‘Governor Huckabee is going to see it through.’
Well several weeks later we now know Trump’s ambassador to Israel is going to be David Friedman and it looks like while the Mail got the name wrong the end result might be the same:
Donald Trump’s choice for ambassador to Israel said he recognizes Jerusalem as the nation’s capital, breaking with longstanding U.S. foreign policy.
David Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer, said in a statement that as ambassador he would work to “strengthen the unbreakable bond between our two countries and advance the cause of peace within the region, and look forward to doing this from the U.S. embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem,”
And the left (particularly J-Street which in my opinion seems to have the same relationship with the arabs as the rebels and deputy governor Quinn did with the Daleks in Power of the Daleks) is melting down big over it:
David Friedman is a prominent and successful attorney in New York who has spent 20 years representing Donald Trump, among other clients. He is also a proud Jew who holds unapologetic pro-Israel views that are heretical in Times-world, and he has also expressed acid disdain for the kind of Jewish anti-Israel activism regularly glorified in the pages of the Times.
So he must be destroyed—and to destroy him he must be lied about. Which is what the Times did.
The report, by Matthew Rosenberg, is a caricature of political frustration and resentment masquerading as news. The headline, of course, is “Trump Chooses Hard-Liner As Ambassador to Israel,” the phrase “hard-liner” being an all-purpose Times denigration of anyone who holds political views anathema to liberals, but never as a description of liberals who hold views anathema to conservatives.
While the left would disagree the likelihood that “Next Year in Jerusalem” is actually going to be true as far as the embassy goes is brilliant for several reasons,
It puts all those crying “Trump anti-Semitism” into a bad box trying to explain to voters how this reconciles with their false meme of Trump the anti-Semite with this move. And while the MSM will likely endorse the spin given to explain it, it won’t fly with voters.
It takes advantage of the protests against Trump. Any such move would likely be greeted by loud objections by the press, muslims and arab nations, but when everyone is already protesting and yelling about your very existence, such voices are likely to not be heard over the already existing din. Perhaps Trump will thank these fools for ironically making the move easier for his administration.
While the MSM has not talked about it. The Democrat left and college campuses have become hotbeds of antisemitism on the left. This move will undoubtedly produce angry proclamations about Jews that will be most embarrassing to the left and easily thrown in the face of both the MSM and the Democrat party.
Before the election we saw businesses and nations which said things contrary to Trump’s positions suddenly change direction and embrace them. Once the US puts the embassy in Jerusalem it’s not only going to stay there but I suspect a lot of other nations are suddenly going to think that idea might have merit.
In short, it’s drives all the right people absolutely batshit crazy and apparently Trump is not going to play the old game:
With Obama and Kerry gone, Israel can respond with closure and ignore the U.N. Trump is not a gradualist who will insist on a ceasefire so the besieged bad guys can regroup. Finally, several Arab nations have lost patience with Palestinian intransigence.
It’s time for something new. Nearly a half-century of the “peace process” has failed. Give back Gaza, and you get infiltration tunnels and rocket attacks. Stop settlements, and it makes no difference. The Palestinians still teach school children hatred and violence. Their leaders diverted economic aid to Swiss bank accounts or making rockets and building infiltration tunnels. The Islamists don’t care about real estate; they want to kill the Jews, all of them.
What’s in Trump’s head? He sees Israel as an ally that Obama undercut. He believes peace is more probable if the U.S. supports Israel. He is sending a message, with this ambassador and with moving the embassy, that the proverbial train is leaving the station. Time is running out for the Palestinians to come to the table.With Obama and Kerry gone, Israel can respond with closure and ignore the U.N. Trump is not a gradualist who will insist on a ceasefire so the besieged bad guys can regroup. Finally, several Arab nations have lost patience with Palestinian intransigence.
This keeps getting better and better.
If you’d like to help support independent non MSM journalism and opinion like from writers all over the nation like Baldilocks, RH, Fausta,JD RuckerChristopher Harper, Pat Austin, and John Ruberry plus several monthly & part time writers working here and want to help pay their monthly wages (and the Cartoonist I’m looking to hire, details here) please consider hitting DaTipJar.
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Americans supporting candidates other than Donald Trump had 17 months to make the case to America why he shouldn’t be the next President of the United States. Based upon the rules set forth in the Constitution and subsequent election laws passed over the last 220 years that every candidate agreed to when they initiated their campaigns, Trump won the election. This matter is settled with one viable exception.
Before we get to that exception, let’s discuss the things that are not exceptions to the rules. They are relevant because they’re currently being used by the left in an attempted to sabotage Trump’s victory. As a proud member of the new Federalist Party, it disgusts me that so many Democrats are attempting to invoke the safeguards set forth by our founders to subvert the powers of the electoral college and prevent Trump’s ascension to office.
Fear of ridicule, harassment, persecution, or physical harm are not valid exceptions for electors to change their votes. It’s a sad state of affairs that we have to point this one out, but that’s the tactic that many Democrats are using today. Attempting to bully electors isn’t just immoral. It’s against the law, but it’s worse than that. It’s an action that eats away at the foundation of this nation.
Admiration of Hollywood celebrities and their “enlightened” perspectives is not a valid exception for electors to change their votes. The ridiculous video many of them put out in a plea for electors to change their votes is allowable and almost admirable… if you forget that it’s a ridiculous video. While I’m skeptical about its actual core intention, if we take it at face value, it’s still pretty silly. Again, the attempt would be admirable in a way because it’s a protected expression of an opinion, but in this case their opinion is futile. Even if their message succeeded, it wouldn’t change the result of the election.
Lastly, mass media anti-Constitution propaganda pushed from the highest office in the land and spread through the Democrats’ mainstream media minions is not a valid exception for electors to change their votes. We are a constitutional republic with an electoral college safeguard in place to make sure the worst-case scenario doesn’t happen. Trump may be the worst-case scenario in the minds of many Democrats just as President Obama was the worst-case scenario in the minds of many Republicans, but neither represented a true existential threat to America. Obama did damage, but we can recover. Trump will do some good and some bad, but it’s unlikely that he will single-handedly propel us into the abyss.
That brings us to the viable exception. Of the pieces of the Constitution that were debated by both sides, the electoral college was the most agreeable. It was called “excellent if not perfect” for one important reason. Their fear in the 18th century is possibly a relevant fear today. They believed that the electors could have the discernment necessary to make certain the next President wasn’t planted by a foreign power.
In The Federalist #68, Alexander Hamilton wrote:
Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention. They have not made the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes; but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America, to be exerted in the choice of persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment. And they have excluded from eligibility to this trust, all those who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the President in office. No senator, representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States, can be of the numbers of the electors. Thus without corrupting the body of the people, the immediate agents in the election will at least enter upon the task free from any sinister bias.
In short, the founders didn’t simply want to prevent a bad choice for President. They wanted to prevent corruption in any form but specifically corruption by foreign powers. While some might make the case that Trump has too many connections to Russia, it’s hard to imagine that he’s an actual foreign conspirator planted in office to bring down the country. I could easily make a case that Hillary Clinton was even more likely to be influenced by foreign powers had she been elected, but she thankfully was not. With that said, I have called on conservative media to help sort this whole Russia business out.
If electors truly believe that Trump is a Russian plant who will intentionally bring down the nation on orders from Vladimir Putin, they should exercise their rights as electors to prevent it. If they believe the more likely scenario that he’s a patriotic American who wants to forge a good relationship with Russia, then that’s simply not viable grounds to change their vote. For the sake of as smooth of a transition of power as possible, the electors should vote for whoever their state’s voters selected as President. The final tally should be 306 to Trump, 232 to Clinton.
A couple of weeks back I completed my latest television binge-watching quest, in this case it was the neo-western Longmire.
Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor) is the Rainier Beer-drinking, unshaved sheriff in the fictional county of Absaroka in Wyoming. He’s a widower putting his life and career back together after the recent death of his wife. It’s easy to imagine Gary Cooper paying this role. His deputies are the loyal Victoria “Vic” Moretti (Katee Sackhoff), Jim “the Ferg” Ferguson (Adam Bartley), and not-so-loyal Branch Connally (Bailey Chase), who runs against Longmire for sheriff.
The series is based on the Walt Longmire mystery books by Craig Johnson.
Originally an A&E show, the network, despite high ratings for the show, cancelled it after the third season. Netflix picked it up, airing the next two editions. It has been renewed for a sixth and final season. The books are set in Buffalo, which is coincidentally in Johnson County, Wyoming. In the show Durant is the county seat of Absaroka. So assuming that Johnson is Absaroka, that would give Longmire’s county 8,500 residents. And since, especially in the first four seasons, there is a murder in almost every episode, that could give this rural county a homicide rate higher than that of Chicago, perhaps, yes, even higher than the small Maine town where the television series Murder, She Wrote, was set. Recurring Longmire character Louis Herthum, has experience with this scenario, as he played a cop in Murder She, Wrote.
Also in Absaroka is a Cheyenne Indian reservation, which isn’t in Walt’s jurisdiction. But just as Captain Kirk was never supposed to violate the Prime Directive in Star Trek, circumstances often force Longmire to pursue police work on “the rez,” which for the most part annoys Mathias (Zahn McClarnon), a Bureau of Indian Affairs police chief. His predecessor, Malachi Strand (Graham Greene), was jailed after Longmire busted him for extortion.
By the third season the murder-a-week package is less relied upon as the events surrounding the death of Longmire’s wife, the release of Strand from prison, the building of a Cheyenne casino, and development projects in Absaroka driven by Deputy Connally’s father, Barlow (Gerald McRaney), collide with Walt and his best friend, Henry Standing Bear (Lou Diamond Phillips), the owner a local bar and restaurant. A Native American Longmire regularly tangles with is casino operator Jacob Nighthorse (A Martinez). Also captured in this web is Longmire’s daughter, Cady (Cassidy Freeman), an attorney who is more like her father than either character realizes, as she also discovers that doing the right thing is often an insurmountable challenge in an flawed world.
John “Lee” Ruberry of the Magnificent Seven
I thoroughly enjoy Longmire and I’m eagerly awaiting season six, as season five concluded with things in a very complicated state. As a western, the cinematography is of course superb, although the show is filmed in New Mexico, not Wyoming. Starting of course with the lead character, the acting is superb, and the story lines generally contain much depth. Although I am curious why Phillips’ Standing Bear character, like those in True Grit, particularly in the Coen Brothers remake, never uses contractions in his speech.
If you prefer westerns that aren’t “neo,” I still recommend that you give Longmire a look. Just imagine cowboy Walt riding a horse instead of driving a Ford Bronco, and replace moonshine with narcotics. And after all of these years there is still conflict between whites and Indians. And vigilantism is also a welcome plot development in any western.
Thats basically all I’m looking for so other than a good video card I’ll be easy to please.
If you want more detailed advice PC WORLD and CNET both have useful buying guides.
Posted by Peter at November 29, 2005 07:40 PMT
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Bit of Irony, a new laptop is on my Christmas list and while the DVD drive is not as important (I’m thinking of using this one as a dedicated iTunes machine and importing my Big Finish Dr. Who CD’s here) however one of my requirements is a machine that can pay Civilization six beyond the min requirements.
As yesterday’s big snow storm hit the eastern US I was seeing various tweets about the beauty of the snow and the winter wonderland and how lovely it will be to have a White Christmas.
Let me be a bit of a killjoy and remind you that if you are looking at a ton of snow, or even a few inches and talking about how lovely it is thank an oil man, a gas man a coal miner or an industrialist.
Because without them you would have to gather firewood to stay warm and toasty, you would need to chop that wood to make cords and cords of it and be ready to feed a stove or fireplace for basic heat.
And of course that wouldn’t heat the water for your shower, or your washing machine or your dishwasher, without the water heater built by a factory and powered by oil gas or coal you would have to heat water on that wood stove.
And not only would you have to heat it but before you bothered to do so you would need to have pumped it into your house from a well, but of course thanks to industrialization and devices that run on electricity (mostly generated by coal, oil nuclear etc) you don’t have to do this.
Did you go to the grocery store and stock up before the storm, well, you had better thank those industrialists and railroaders and trucker who got the products from all over the country to your local market or fueled the vans and planes that flew them from the Amazon pantry for home delivery.
And also of course the people who made your cars, your tires and delivered the fuel that gets your four wheel drive vehicle to the store in case you didn’t have a chance to stock up. Not to mention the plow drivers and those who made those heavy trucks and fueled them who cleared the roads so you could do it.
Otherwise you would be eating whatever you grew and could store on your own.
And we haven’t even gotten to the snowblowers, the oil & gas that runs them or even the plastic head on your snow shovel
Finally if you are reading this on the net or watching TV while stuck inside all of that is made possible by the industrial complexes that build TV’s, cable and wireless and beam it out to you.
Put simply for all the screaming of our eco friendly friends the only reason why they are able to agitate against all that oil, gas, coal and industry produce are because the conveniences brought about by these things allow them the free time to do so.
Otherwise they would be huddling in their hovels doing their best to stay warm, fed and alive.
I’ll give the last word to Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey with the addition of truck engines to his list
George Bailey:Do you know the three most exciting sounds in the world? Uncle Billy:Sure, “Breakfast is served, “Lunch is served, “Dinner is served.” George Bailey:No. Anchor chains, plane motors, and train whistles.
It’s a Wonderful Life 1946
If you’d like to help support independent non MSM journalism and opinion like from writers all over the nation like Baldilocks, RH, Fausta,JD RuckerChristopher Harper, Pat Austin, and John Ruberry plus several monthly & part time writers working here and want to help pay their monthly wages (and the Cartoonist I’m looking to hire, details here) please consider hitting DaTipJar.
Please consider Subscribing. Right now our subscribers consist of 1/50 of 1% of our total unique visitors based on last years numbers.
If we can get another 150 subscribers at $10 a month (another 1/10 of 1% of those who have visited this year) We can meet our annual goals with no trouble, with the same number of subscribers at $20 a month I could afford to cover the continual post presidential campaign meltdown of the left outside of New England firsthand and maybe hit CPAC this year
And of course at that price you get the Da Magnificent Seven plus those we hope to add on and all subscribers get my weekly podcast emailed directly to you before it goes up anywhere else.
A scientific experiment: “Come and see.” The Journey of the Magi (1894) by James Jacques Joseph Tissot.
Gerard Vanderleun on science, mystery, vision, the worship of false gods and of the true One:
It is a central tenet of our faith in science that the new will encompass the old in one endless and eternal conservation of sense and sensibility. In this cathedral we worship a database. We can see outward to the edge of what is, and downward into time was to (almost) the moment of Creation. We can see inward into (almost) the mute heart of matter. We have the proven method. We have the hard evidence. We know that nothing is, in time, beyond our knowing. All doubt has been removed. We are the Alpha and Omega. Our science is now as eternal and as deeply grounded in truth as… well, as astrology was in 5 B.C.
Somewhere around 5 B.C. three of the world’s leading astronomers/astrologers noticed something unusual in the sky. It could have been a comet. It could have been a supernova. It could have been a rare conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. Whatever it was, it was strange enough for them to travel towards it. Or so it is said. Or so it is written. Or so it is remembered from the time of myth.
Myth or history? What is the reality of this road trip towards an obscure birth in a wretched town, during a not very pleasant passage in history, over 2,000 years in our past?
We do not know. We cannot know. As it is in so much else that we ignore it is not given to us to know.
We have only shards of pottery and fragments of texts snatched from desert caves or teased out of the soil with tin trowels and brushes. We have only the sifted detritus of history; a global jigsaw puzzle where ninety-nine percent of the pieces have long gone to dust.
Our past is a handful of ashes. It is beyond our gift to ever know the difference between an inspiring folk tale and the eyewitness accounts of something that, even today, would occupy the realm of the miraculous.
As well-done a praise and worship for the Way, the Truth and the Life as any. Read the whole thing.
Note: I just saw Rogue One last night, and this post will not contain any spoilers. Go see the movie in theaters, it is awesome!
When I heard a remake of Ghostbusters was coming out, I was intrigued. I hadn’t loved the original Ghostbusters, but it had been a good enough movie that a reboot could be awesome. So I watched the trailer with my wife.
And we both were like…seriously? It was terrible. I had a few friends see the movie, and they hated it too. Rotten Tomatoes wasn’t kind, and if you click the Top Critics vs. All Critics, it gets worse. IMDB was even less kind.
But the criticism of what is obviously a terrible movie suddenly exploded into charges of sexism. Obviously male audiences rated the movie poorly because it had female leads. Obviously, males are inherently sexist and can’t stand to have a strong woman in a film. The same critics conveniently tied in Donald Trump as the continued their rage on the internet.
If you need a perfect counter example, see the recent Star Wars films. Both Episode 7 and Rogue One have female lead characters, and have done outstanding. Episode 7 had Rey, General Leia and Captain Phasma, and while you could argue that the movie splits attention between Rey and two male characters, Rogue One’s Felicity Jones is definitely the star and main focus of the film.
So why the difference? Why did Star Wars, which has a cult following like Ghostbusters, do much better? Sexism can’t explain it, but I think I can, contrasting Ghostbusters with Rogue One.
Rogue One stayed true to what made previous movies great. People like Star Wars because it has space battles, blasters, aliens and the occasional Jedi with a lightsaber. Rogue One never broke from this. They then created characters (bad and good) and pitted them in a good vs. evil environment, adding a few twists to keep you on your toes (did I mention you need to see the movie yet?).
Ghostbusters was a hit because it was a comedy. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and the rest of the cast are funny people, and their dry sense of humor appealed to audiences in the 1980s. The new Ghostbusters, while they tried to make it funny, focused too much about the fact they had a female cast. They added social justice to a movie where people wanted to watch a team of four people fight ghosts and save New York City. When people blatantly saw this in the trailers, they immediately turned hostile (the YouTube trailer has over 1 million down thumbs so far).
Rogue One had a diverse cast. Besides the aliens, it featured lots of non-white actors and actresses. But it doesn’t shove that in your face. It lets you draw the conclusion that the Rebellion embraces diversity while the Empire looks more uniform. Letting people develop their own answers makes them more powerful in the end than providing the “obviously” right answer. In contrast, Ghostbusters gives you the answer, and treats you like an idiot if you don’t like it.
The last point is that Ghostbusters did a terrible job using stereotypes. In Ghostbusters, the stereotypes are connected to the actresses gender and color. Patty Tolan, played by Leslie Jones, is a loud mouth black female because apparently that is how black females are, or at least that’s the stereotype we use to judge her behavior in the movie. Contrast that with Ernie Hudson’s character, who played a pretty upstanding guy in the original movie. Rogue One ties stereotypes to the character, not the actor. Jyn plays a hardened rebel. She’s tough, hates the Empire and has no problem shooting Stormtroopers. There isn’t any mention of her being a woman. Again, letting the audience come to the conclusion that a female lead is awesome makes the message more powerful.
My advice to aspiring social justice warriors trying to champion a cause is to stop shoving things down people’s throats. If you want to champion diversity and women’s issues, look to the example set by Rogue One before you make another terrible movie.
The views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, U.S. Government, Galactic Empire or the Emperor.
When I read this response from Mark Zukerberg to Brent Bozell’s worries about Facebook labeling news as fake:
I expressed grave concern with this decision and the liberal ‘fact-checking’ organizations Facebook has chosen. Mr. Zuckerberg assured me that his express aim is to eliminate only patently false news stories from Facebook. He underscored he has instructed these organizations to focus only on truly fake news and nothing of a political nature.
This is the last territorial demand I have to make in Europe, but it is a demand on which I will not yield. I am thankful to Mr. Chamberlain for all his trouble and I assured him that the German people wants nothing but peace, but I also declared that I cannot go beyond the limits of our patience. I further assured him and I repeat here that if this problem is solved, there will be no further territorial problems in Europe for Germany.
This is not to say that “fake news” doesn’t exist. Of course it exists. It always has and it always will. But the idea that it’s a major problem requiring limits on expression is crazy. Even the stories claiming it’s big news show that it’s not. Pew Charitable Trusts followed their progressive marching orders and did a poll on the matter. They spun it as dramatically as they could: “Many Americans Believe Fake News Is Sowing Confusion.”
But it actually showed that 84 percent of Americans are confident that they can detect fake news when they come across it. Their concerns about fake news are really concerns about the spread of false information — something that just as well describes mainstream media as sites that more overtly craft fake news.
IFCN is hosted by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. A cursory search of the Poynter Institute website finds that Poynter’s IFCN is openly funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, and the National Endowment for Democracy.
Poynter’s IFCN is also funded by the Omidyar Network, which is the nonprofit for liberal billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. The Omidyar Network has partnered with the Open Society on numerous projects and it has given grants to third parties using the Soros-funded Tides Foundation. Tides is one of the largest donors to left-wing causes in the U.S.
All of this comes down to what a Galenian, whose birthday we are celebrating a week from tomorrow, once said
A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not pick figs from thornbushes, nor do they gather grapes from brambles.
Now while I understand that Mr. Bozell as a Gentleman took Mr. Zuckerberg at his word
I will accept in good faith his commitment to address our concerns on this matter.
I trust he did so in the spirit of Churchill and not of Chamberlin and with the full knowledge that many below him in the Facebook hierarchy who will be actually making the decisions on what to flag and what not will take Mr. Zuckerberg’s statement to him with a wink and a nod.
As for me, my decision years ago not to join facebook, not even for the promotion of the site or radio show, is looking better & better.
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That a protestant reverend is going after the very first Christian, who said “Yes” to God makes it even more ironic.
Of course if you don’t like my suggest press release or don’t want to hit Amazon which might claim they have no editorial control you could go with this in English:
“Washington Post attacks devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe during the week of her feast”
Or in spanish:
“El Washington Post ataca a Nuestra Sra. de Guadalupe en la semana de su Fiesta”
The best part of such a PR release is it has the virtue of being true.
Oh and I’d repeat this is Spanish during the feast of Our Lady of divine providence (Nuestra Senora de la divina providencia) patron of Puerto Rico and the feast of Our Lady of Altagracia (Nuestra Senora de la Altagracia) the patron of the Dominican Republic too.
You know perhaps if the MSM had at least one or two devout daily mass Catholics they might have figured out this was a bad idea.
I’d suggest praying for the Reverend Everheart for relief of her trauma and ask Our Lady to help her, The Memorare would be appropriate:
REMEMBER, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly to thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother; to thee do I come; before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. Amen.
You can do the same for the editors at the Post and the folks at Amazon, you might think they are beyond Help but with God all things are possible.
My thanks to Fausta for the Spanish translations.
If you’d like to help support independent non MSM journalism and opinion like from writers all over the nation like Baldilocks, RH, Fausta,JD RuckerChristopher Harper, Pat Austin, and John Ruberry plus several monthly & part time writers working here and want to help pay their monthly wages (and the Cartoonist I’m looking to hire, details here)please consider hitting DaTipJar.
Please consider Subscribing. Right now our subscribers consist of 1/50 of 1% of our total unique visitors based on last years numbers.
If we can get another 150 subscribers at $10 a month (another 1/10 of 1% of those who have visited this year) We can meet our annual goals with no trouble, with the same number of subscribers at $20 a month I could afford to cover the continual post presidential campaign meltdown of the left outside of New England firsthand and maybe hit CPAC this year
And of course at that price you get the Da Magnificent Seven plus those we hope to add on and all subscribers get my weekly podcast emailed directly to you before it goes up anywhere else.
John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, is hoppin’ mad about the alleged Russian plot to hack Hillary’s campaign, and wails that Something is deeply broken at the FBI.
Where was Podesta in July and in November when the campaign was touting that the FBI had cleared Hillary of wrongdoing by focusing on intent – that is, by essentially rewriting federal law?
Podesta’s op-ed in the WaPo alleges (emphasis added),
I find it ironic that Podesta points to “tangled webs” with Russia, when the State Department, which his boss headed, approved hundreds of Bill Clinton’s speeches, which totaled millions of dollars for the Clintons’ foundation, including
In Russia, Bill Clinton gave two speeches for $625,000. One was to the Russian investment bank, Renaissance Capital, at a 2010 event titled “Russian and the Commonwealth of Independent States: Going Global.”
The State Department background memo described the bank as “focused on the emerging markets of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Sub-Saharan Africa.”
Regarding Podesta’s emails, Wikileaks has already asserted that (emphasis added)
“Our source is not the Russian government,” Assange told “The Sean Hannity Show.”
“So in other words, let me be clear,” Hannity asked, “Russia did not give you the Podesta documents or anything from the DNC?”
“That’s correct,” Assange responded.
Let’s also not forget that Podesta and Hillary didn’t care that she used, during all her years of tenure as Secretary of State, an unsecured server, making all her communications (and thereby the country’s national security) vulnerable to real hacking by not just Russia, but by anyone with enough talent and resources.
Rather than provide actual evidence that there was a) a Russian “covert campaign to elect Trump,” b) that was working in cahoots with the Trump campaign, and c) that Vladimir Putin personally directed the “covert campaign,” Podesta relies on links to the WaPo’s own articles on unnamed intelligence sources.
However, National Intelligence Director James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey and CIA Director John Brennan were too busy to brief Congress on any of this. John Hinderaker asks,
Who in the United States intelligence community has created the hysteria about Russian hacking, and what is the evidence of means and motive? House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes sought a briefing by National Intelligence Director James Clapper with participation from FBI Director James Comey and CIA Director John Brennan in a closed session yesterday. They, however, would prefer not to. USA Today reports that they refused to appear for the requested briefing.
What’s happening here? Megyn Kelly sought an answer from committee member Peter King (video below). Concerned citizens looking for answers won’t get much satisfaction here. “It’s almost as if people in the intelligence community are carrying out a disinformation campaign against the President-elect of the United States,” King said. “It’s absolutely disgraceful.”
“Somebody had the time to leak it to the Washington Post, but they don’t have the time to come to Congress. It is the House Committee on Intelligence that absolutely has the jurisdiction over the CIA and the intelligence community,” he said. “It is their job to come. They don’t have any choice.”
Mr. Scott:There’s an old old saying on earth: “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.” Mr Checkov:I know this saying. It was invented in Russia
Star Trek Friday’s Child 1967
They say those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
Just after the Islamic Terror attack on the gay nightclub Pulse, Facebook, you know those guys who insist they are not censoring conservatives, decided to take strong action…against one of the most prominent opponents and a onetime target of Islamic terror Pam Geller
Facebook doesn’t acknowledge a bias problem, the only see a “Trust” problem, thus they will hold “dialogues” in the hope of showing “progress” in the hopes that these visuals will cause conservatives to believe they are doing something.
Alas for facebook, not only is the bias problem real but as reported at The Lid , the Israel Law Center (Shurat HaDin) was able to prove it by setting up a pair of “hate” sites one anti-jewish & one anti Palestinians gradually ramping up the rhetoric on both until they both called for the death of their targets. Then they reported each site to facebook.
Speaking at Facebook’s annual conference F8 last week, Zuckerberg launched into an attack on Republican front-runner Donald Trump’s policies. It’s not surprising that Zuckerberg, who has been a big fan of H-1B visas that critics say hold wages down for programmers and software engineers hired by companies such as Facebook, doesn’t think much of Trump’s plan to limit immigration. But so what? Lots of people are for open borders, even people who, unlike Zuckerberg, don’t stand to make billions off of them.
Somewhat more troubling was that a bunch of Facebook employees asked Zuckerberg whether there was anything they could do to stop a Trump presidency: “What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent President Trump in 2017?”
And then I think ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
After all of these recent examples of Facebook bias could any sane conservative seriously consider trusting facebook to not use “fact checking” as a weapon to censor conservatives while promoting a liberal agenda?
If you do then then shame on you, Cue Scotty:
If you’d like to help support independent non MSM journalism and opinion like from writers all over the nation like Baldilocks, RH, Fausta,JD RuckerChristopher Harper, Pat Austin, and John Ruberry plus seveal monthy & part time writers working here along with Julitee and want to help pay their monthly wages (and the Cartoonist I’m looking to hire, details here)please consider hitting DaTipJar.
Please consider Subscribing. Right now our subscribers consist of 1/50 of 1% of our total unique visitors based on last years numbers.
If we can get another 150 subscribers at $10 a month (another 1/10 of 1% of those who have visited this year) We can meet our annual goals with no trouble, with the same number of subscribers at $20 a month I could afford to cover the continual post presidential campaign meltdown of the left outside of New England firsthand and maybe hit CPAC this year
And of course at that price you get the Da Magnificent Seven plus those we hope to add on and all subscribers get my weekly podcast emailed directly to you before it goes up anywhere else.
Back in 2005 when I worked for HiWired we started a tech blog that was unique at the time, providing some free tech advice to customers and non customers alike who needed it. Today I found myself looking at some old posts from the HiWired Blog and wondered how many of those posts stood the test of time. I think this one on trusting what you see on the net, particularly given the whole “fake news” debate, does, although some of the links are a tad dead.
Where are all the Moon Maidens?
For the fun of it I did a google search for “wireless network security” this is the result of the search.
You might notice that the #1 link is from a site called practically networked which is an excellent reference site, however when you read the article you will note that quite a few of the pieces of advice are contrary to things we’ve said before.
There was a time when this article would have been good advice but it’s old,that hasn’t stopped it from being #1 on the google list. If you hit the “I’m feeling lucky” button and followed the advice your system would be hackable in minutes.
If you are old enough you might remember the old Beverly Hillbilliesepisode where Jethro decides to go to the moon because it’s full of moon maidens. When Elly asks how he know this he says:
They wouldn’t print it in a comic book if it wasn’t true
Don’t be Jethro on the net.
Posted by Peter at August 15, 2005 04:51 PM
******************************************
I think I might repost more of these over time, I forgot just how much tech blogging I used to do when I wasn’t doing it for me.
Update:As if on cue, leftist-operated Facebook is turning to liberal “fact checkers” in their quest to quash the scourge of free speech fake news. As you read the article, keep this in mind because the drumbeat is getting louder every day. Folks, if conservatives don’t get louder, we’re going to get drowned out. Never underestimate the ability of leftist propaganda to turn good people to the left.
Liberal media is running with so many narratives right now that it’s getting hard to keep up. Russia rigged the election. Obama is leaving the economy in pristine condition. James Comey rigged the election. Snowflakes are being triggered by anything associated with Trump. Fake news rigged the election. Trump is going to take us to war against China, Iran, Mexico, North Korea, and everyone else (other than Russia). The electoral college needs to unrig the election.
Just when we thought that the floodgates of leftist propaganda was fully open during election season, the media has somehow opened them up even further. The sad reality is that if we, the conservative media and activists, don’t do something to stop it, their plan is going to work. We’re going to experience a liberal revival based on sheer brainwashing that hasn’t been seen since the Reagan era.
Things are actually much worse than they were in the 80s because now we have the internet and social media. Both venues are dominated by leftist ideology; for every conservative blog or news outlet out there, the left has a dozen to counter them. They have the advantage on social media sites, not because there aren’t enough conservatives using them but because their “algorithms” favor liberal perspectives.
The original reason I started my conservative news aggregator is the same reason I love writing for DaTechGuy. Conservatism needs more voices and it needs those voices to be louder in order to break through the false narratives perpetuated by the left. We are fighting a two-front war. On one hand, we have the known enemies on the left with liberal politicians, media, and individuals spreading their agenda. On the other hand, we have RINOs in office who are pushing the GOP to adopt more “moderate” policies, most of which would be considered outright liberal just a few years ago.
The modern conservative movement is in danger. While most of you are likely immune to the swarm of narratives the left is pushing right now, we have to acknowledge that most Americans are not. Just because they don’t trust the media doesn’t mean that the media doesn’t affect their worldview. We are all being bombarded with stories on television and the internet that tell us everything is going to fall apart with the GOP in control of the government. This “chaos strategy” works. As a strange man once pointed out, if you tell lies often enough, they become the truth.
We cannot be lazy. We cannot become complacent. We definitely cannot spend another moment basking in our election victories because the left is already hard at work trying to reverse them. They want to see big gains in 2018. They want to see bigger gains in 2020. To accomplish this, they will paint America as a nasty place that’s falling apart because of the Republicans. More importantly, they’ll blame conservative philosophies for every bad incident, herding as many Americans as possible into embracing their liberal ideology.
I have to do my part to stop this. YOU have to do your part as well. No, I’m not talking to everyone who’s reading this. Some people simply don’t have the time to invest into a political project and are lucky to have the time to even read the occasional article. There’s no fault assigned to those who are unable to help. On the other hand, those of you who have a voice need to make it louder. Those of you who can build a voice should start doing so now.
It doesn’t require starting a blog or a YouTube channel, though that would be nice. It can be done through word of mouth, social media, letters to the editors of local publications, or comments left in any of these venues. We need to call out the left’s lies. We need to highlight the right’s goals and perspectives.
Today is the day that conservatives need to realize the war is not over. We may have won some elections, but we’re still the underdogs. The left has more resources and advantages. We need to fight their propaganda even more tenaciously than we fought during the election. Otherwise, the gains that were made in 2016 can be easily wiped away in 2018 and 2020.
there is one thing that the President Elect can do that could turn Jill Stein’s Green Party fundraiser into a Democrat disaster.
If I was the Trump campaign I’d say: You want a recount? Fine, let’s assure the entire country that the election is on the up an up, lets add NY, and CA and NH and MH and Illinois.
I’m sure machine pols in NY, the folks using gang members turn out votes in Chicago the folks in Ca running up the Hillary’s popular vote score and the people who have bussed students to NH for years will be delighted to see scrutiny descend on them.
Let’s put everything on the table and see what’s there, I’ll bet it will be fun
Democrat Bosses in Wisconsin Michigan and Minnesota had no inkling that the election was close, that being the case there was no reason why, in an age where proof of a federal offense is a cell phone video away, Dem bosses in Detroit or elsewhere felt the need to take any risk. They figured those states were won (and they were right about Minnesota) and by election night it was too late to change it.
However that won’t be the case in 2020, I’ll wager that in 2020 the bosses in Milwaukee, Detroit, Madison and elsewhere will be ready, we’ll see plenty of mail in ballots and absentee ballots that we didn’t see before in those states and plenty of voters looking to go for the GOP will be in the same spot that Steven Kruiser was on election night.
We have four years to prepare for this so we’d better get ready
If we aren’t ready for it, then it’s our own fault.
Speaking of elections it seems there is a reason why Hillary’s folks keep talking up their lead in the popular vote:
Larry Lessig, a Harvard University constitutional law professor who made a brief run for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, claimed Tuesday that 20 Republican members of the Electoral College are considering voting against Donald Trump, a figure that would put anti-Trump activists more than halfway toward stalling Trump’s election.
Lessig’s anti-Trump group, “Electors Trust,” has been offering pro bono legal counsel to Republican presidential electors considering ditching Trump and has been acting as a clearinghouse for electors to privately communicate their intentions.
Frankly I think this is less about moving electors as it is about moving donors.
Mark Hemingway in his advice/snark for dems notes that the left has really changed its tune on Russia
It seems as if the media only cares about Russian threats insofar as they harm Democrats’ electoral chances.
Now, there is one tangible precedent for the Russkies intervening in our elections. That’s because Ted Kennedy actually asked them to interfere in the 1984 election. For some strange reason this revelation wasn’t the first thing that inexplicably failed to, uh, sink Ted Kennedy’s career. Rather, it’s a story most Americans never even heard about.
It seems as if the media only cares about Russian threats insofar as they harm Democrats’ electoral chances.
A Wikileaks envoy today claims he personally received Clinton campaign emails in Washington D.C. after they were leaked by ‘disgusted’ whisteblowers – and not hacked by Russia.
Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a close associate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, told Dailymail.com that he flew to Washington, D.C. for a clandestine hand-off with one of the email sources in September.
‘Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,’ said Murray in an interview with Dailymail.com on Tuesday. ‘The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.’
If this pans out it will be a stake in the heart of the Russian hacker theme?
FYI on the Democrat side Jazz Shaw notices a new definition of “defamation”
Despite all of the claims on the left that Congressman Keith Ellison is being smeared during his bid to become the next Chairman of the DNC, he’s clearly in trouble. The “smearing” mostly consists of people rudely pointing out things he actually said and did, such as his regular support for the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan, along with his rather blatant antisemitic comments.
In fairness this is the standard that got Stacy McCain booted from Twitter, quoting feminists in context.
Also at hotair Allahpundit in a pro-romney piece reaches one positive revelation about Donald Trump:
Incidentally, every source quoted in the piece (most of whom came from Romney’s circle) confirmed that Trump’s interest in him for the position seemed completely sincere and not part of some inane revenge plot, as Trumpers like to fantasize. That jibes with everything else written about this selection process. Evidently, for all of the hype about him being thin-skinned and vindictive, Trump was more willing to put aside personal slights and give Romney a second look on the merits than a lot of people in his orbit were.
Given that Trump’s background is business this should be no surprise as pragmatism is a vital attribute for a successful businessman.
An 18-year-old college student who claimed she was verbally and physically harassed by a group of white, male Trump supporters earlier this month has been arrested and charged with filing a false report.
If this was really going on people wouldn’t need to fake them would they? Of course if she wanted to avoid arrest she should have done this somewhere under the jurisdiction of Maura Healey.
Apparently not only are not all “hate crimes” created equal not all deflate gate scandals are created equal either
The NFL reportedly doesn’t see any wrongdoing by the Pittsburgh Steelers after being accused by the New York Giants for deflate footballs in DeflateGate 2. Shortly before kickoff on Sunday afternoon in Week 14, FOX Sports’ Jay Glazer dropped a bombshell about the New York Giants accusing the Pittsburgh Steelers of using under-inflated footballs in their Week 13 matchup in Heinz Field. The world was on the cusp of DeflateGate 2… However, minutes after kickoff on Sunday afternoon, the NFL dispelled the rumors of the Steelers using deflated footballs in their Week 13 win over the Giants.
That was fast, you mean we aren’t going to see a year of this stuff when the target isn’t Tom Brady and the Patriots?
The NFL’s statement makes it clear that, beyond any new or compelling evidence, this story is dead in its eyes. That wasn’t the case a little less than two years ago when reports came out about the Indianapolis Colts having similar suspicions about the Patriots. Night turned to day four more times before the league announced its stance on the matter. Go ahead and dream up whatever you want about what the NFL higher-ups were doing during that time. Meanwhile, the Patriots, who were already suspected of being a team that plays fast and loose with the rules, were left to squirm under the white-hot media glare as that story mushroomed by the day without clarity from the NFL.
Even if the facts in the cases were materially different, which they most likely were, the point remains that there will be no further action in the Steelers case now.
Can I get a great big “unexpectedly” here?
FYI did you catch this ad from Footlocker playing on the deflategate nonsense
For the record I think balls were deflated but it is NBD.
Finally it looks like Trump isn’t the only person our friends on the left are taking their anger out on:
I don’t think the left will ever forgive the Little Sisters of the Poor for standing up to the Obama Administration.
“..For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth, peace and goodwill towards men.’
“That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”
– Linus in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” 1965
The secular answer is that it’s a federal holiday, having been established as such (along with New Year’s Day and Independence Day) by an act of Congress in 1870 “to correspond with similar laws of … every State of the Union.” Ironically, the holiday that seems every year to cause such politically-correct angst amongst our friends on the left was originally enacted in part as an act of post-Civil-War unification. While it wasn’t always so, by the mid 1800’s celebrating Christmas was pretty much universal throughout the country. And since the First Amendment is exactly the same now as it was then, how can anyone seriously think that celebrating Christmas, even on public property, could be a problem?
Let’s be clear. As much as the secular, commercial view of Christmas as a Santa Claus-fueled gift-giving frenzy has become the norm, there is still an underlying reason for the season, even if not everyone remembers or is willing to admit it. As Linus so beautifully pointed out, on Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus. Yes, the celebration of this Holy day has taken on additional secular attributes over the years and as a national holiday it can, and should be, celebrated by believers and nonbelievers alike. There is nothing wrong with that. But Jesus’ birth is still the central point of the day.
When my children were little, like most of you we went along with the whole Santa Claus story, leaving cookies and milk out for Santa, and carrots for the reindeer. We even left “Santa’s hat” in the fireplace one year and had a friend call to ask our children to hold onto it so he could pick it up the following year. But our children always understood what we were really celebrating, right down to the baby Jesus appearing in the Nativity scene on Christmas morning. When they got older and we finally told them the truth about Santa Claus, they took it really well. In fact, my daughter said that she felt sorry for people who don’t understand the true meaning of Christmas because, once they find out about Santa Claus, they have nothing left. As a Catholic, I pray that everyone will eventually come to learn the Truth.
As we prepare to celebrate Christmas, I’d like to remind everyone of the message at the end of that passage that Linus quotes: “on Earth, peace and goodwill towards men.” Wouldn’t it be great if we could all, regardless of religious, political, or any other affiliation, embrace those words?
He rightly pointed out how awful it was, the implication being that we should (or should have) done something about it.
Forgetting for a moment that the name of the president is still a fellow named Obama and that it wasn’t all that many years ago in the days of the Soviet Union when the media repeatedly expressed the idea that the best way to deal with Russia was diplomacy without military confrontations, there is one overriding fact that matters more than anything else.
No Amount of sanctions of any type is going to stop the offensive in Aleppo. If Aleppo is to be saved it is going to involve Air Combat with the Syrian and Russian Air Forces to slow them up long enough for American Ground Troops to get there.
Furthermore the only way things are going to change in Syria is if we go in a-la Iraq, Take it over and stay two decades at least rather than cutting and running as we did under Obama.
Now one might debate if the ratio of the cost in cash and lives plus the risk of a military escalation with either Russia and/or Iran vs the benefit of a Syria pried from the Russians and Iranians, the Syrians not slaughtering their own people, putting an army on the flank of both Iraqi and Lebanese militants and the reviving of the flypaper strategy where instead of attacking vulnerable western targets ISIS sympathizers flock to Syria to confront and be destroyed by the best trained, best equipped and most deadly military in the entire history of history.
But none of that matters because of one simple fact.
Even if the conclusion was made that the cost benefit ratio to war justified it The American people do not have the will to fight.
This of course is due to the efforts of the left in the culture wars of the last 30 to 50 years (ironically supported by the soviets). Iraq was only possible because of the 9/11 attacks.
And it’s not like the left and the papers who are hitting Trump for trying make friends with the Russians were going to fight such a war themselves or even support such a war if proposed
Until such a time this changes, and such a change is at least a generation away, the best we can do is make noise to save face however both the Russians and the Syrians will recognize such noise for what it is.
On Twitter, many people call on others to “do something” about the destruction and mass killing of civilians in Aleppo, Syria. By “doing something,” they mean something other than posting about it on Social Media. Likely, these are the same people that bashed our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, short of taking up arms and hightailing over there to fight on one side or the other—an action which was which was criticized both in the current US administration and the one preceding—what exactly should be done?
One wonders whether the do-something people were the same ones who were eulogizing mass murderer Fidel Castro as a freedom fighter a few weeks back.
Aleppo is how most of the real world operates. A New York Times headline calls it an example of “humanity melting down”—as if no group of humans has ever murdered another group of humans until this week. (Maybe they still believe OG Fake Newser Walter Duranty’s report on Ukraine from the 1930s.)
What it is: an example of true, unconstrained human nature. That nature is thusly described: fallen. When individuals allow their nature to be unconstrained, we see murder, etc. When nations allow their policies to be unconstrained, we see genocides.
And on a biblical note, with Russia and Iran being the main actors in this violent play, I can’t help but think of the Isaiah and Ezekiel prophesies about war in Syria—and the roles that Russia and Iran play in that war and in other wars destined to occur in the Last Days.
Could we be observing a prequel—a staging of sorts? Probably.
Side note: on my old blog, I had a commenter who criticized me for “fear-mongering” when I talked about Bible prophecy. My response was that if she didn’t believe the Bible, then I could not monger fear in her; and if she did believe the Bible, then she should know that there is no reason to be afraid.
Side note #2: Read about the Great Revolt—the fall and sacking of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire, 66-70 A.D. People who don’t read much history and who live in the USA, Canada, etc. are always shocked at how Hobbesian the rest of the world is and always has been.
A student loan bailout is a dreadful idea–one that would cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
An estimated 5.3 million people are enrolled in repayment plans, with about $353 billion in outstanding student loans, according to the General Accounting Office. The GAO estimates that $215 billion, or only 61 percent of the debt, will be paid in full. Another $108 billion will be forgiven altogether, with the remaining $29 billion discharged because of death or disability.
As a college professor for more than 20 years, I understand that student debt is a serious issue. But it doesn’t make sense to let borrowers off the hook. Students and their parents signed a contract for a loan to get money. If they borrowed money to buy a car or a house, they would have to repay the loan.
As Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith put it: “Students who take out loans don’t tend to follow the strict rational decision-making process that economists often blithely assume. In other words, they fail to calculate carefully whether it’s worth it to take out the loans, and they don’t have a good idea of what it will take to pay off the debt. Students who take out loans don’t tend to follow the strict rational decision-making process that economists often blithely assume. In other words, they fail to calculate carefully whether it’s worth it to take out the loans, and they don’t have a good idea of what it will take to pay off the debt….That mistake is increasingly being encouraged, aided and abetted by the U.S. government.”
Individuals have an option if they cannot pay their loans: bankruptcy. That’s a difficult lesson, but it may get people to think twice about meeting their commitments in the future.
It is also important to look at the underlying causes of student debt, such as the government regulations that create bloated administrative staffs. Since I started in higher education in 1994, I have seen the expansion of administrative personnel to meet, in part, state and federal guidelines. For example, there were three administrative jobs at the first school I worked at. The second one had seven. My current school has more than 30 administrative staff members, including a dean, a senior associate dean, an associate dean, four assistant deans, a senior vice dean, a compliance officer and myriad other positions. Throughout the university, I have seen the addition of hundreds of people to fill administrative posts. It seems as though everyone has an assistant who also has an assistant.
Trump and his new secretary of education. Betsy DeVos, need to tighten the requirements to get loans and cut the federal regulations that result in colleges and universities expanding their administrative staff. Both of these actions would go a long way to reducing the cost of higher education and make students responsible for their financial decisions.
Christopher Harper worked as a journalist for more than 20 years. He teaches media law.
Sheldon Cooper:Actually, I’m here to file a complaint. Someone has used sexual language that I found to be offensive. Janine Davis:And who would that be? Sheldon Cooper:You, you dirty birdy! I’ve been thinking about those things you said to me yesterday, and I’ve come to the conclusion that they’ve made me very uncomfortable. So be a dear and grab me one of those complaint forms.
The Big Bang Theory: The Egg Salad Equivalency 2013
Shortly after the Election Glenn Reynolds wrote about how post Trump college campus have become kindergarten:
The response to the shock has been to turn campuses into kindergarten. The University of Michigan Law School announced a ”post-election self-care” event with “food” and “play,” including “coloring sheets, play dough (sic), positive card-making, Legos and bubbles with your fellow law students.” (Embarrassed by the attention, UM Law scrubbed the announcement from its website, perhaps concerned that people would wonder whether its graduates would require Legos and bubbles in the event of stressful litigation.)
Stanford emailed its students and faculty that psychological counseling was available for those experiencing “uncertainty, anger, anxiety and/or fear” following the election. So did the University of Michigan’s Flint campus.
Meanwhile, even the Ivy League wasn’t immune, with the University of Pennsylvania (Trump’s alma mater) creating a post-election safe space with puppies and coloring books:
A few weeks later (Yesterday that is) Reynolds talked about how colleges are making things difficult for conservatives on campus:
Harvard student Emily Hall watched the election results at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and, as one of the minority of Trump supporters there, saw her pro-Hillary classmates literally sobbing as the results came in. “I felt bad for them,” she told The Boston Herald. “But I also recognize that people would not have felt bad for me if I had been the one crying.”
At least sometimes people are honest. When SUNY Buffalo’s law school held a forum on the election and its traumas, the Dean, Jim Gardner, remarked that if someone else had won, “we would not be here.” But he then went on to attribute Trump’s election to “profound democratic immaturity,” implying, I guess, that Trump supporters are immature. I’m sure that made the Trump supporters among his faculty and student body feel included.
People who study patterns of discrimination talk about behaviors like “othering,” about marginalization, and about microaggressions. But in my experience, these behaviors are prominent in the world of academia, and they’re often aimed at conservative or libertarian students and faculty who depart from whatever the current left-leaning orthodoxy is.
This has been going on long before the election but some people are fighting back:
Attorney Jeffrey Robbins wrote to Babson’s lawyers yesterday saying the college’s handling of the incident “badly defamed” his client, and that Babson is “liable to Parker for the tort of defamation and, it would appear, for violations of the Massachusetts Civil Rights statute under the common law, for the intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.”
Robbins is calling for the college to retract statements its officials made impugning the pair, offer a public apology and withdraw internal charges of harassment and disorderly conduct.
And do you know what’s interesting about the various state and federal laws and campus regulations concerning defamation, emotional distress and unwelcome environments. None of these laws have the words: “These rules don’t apply if these acts are done against conservatives in general and Trump supporters in particular.”
So if you are a Trump supporter at a college who is doing this, or at a company like Kellogg’s and find yourself in a “hostile environment” remember all of these laws and rules are there for the using and the best part about it is as our friends Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson have demonstrated, Large Corporations and Colleges with deep endowments are the perfect targets for these type of complaints.
The Moral of the story , this now famous tweet
applies just as well to schools and states that have weaponized laws and rules for three to four decades.
Punch back twice as hard.
If you’d like to help support independent non MSM journalism and opinion like from writers all over the nation like RH, Fausta,JD RuckerChristopher Harper, Pat Austin, and John Ruberry plus seveal monthy & part time writers working here along with Julitee and want to help pay their monthly wages (and the Cartoonist I’m looking to hire, details here)please consider hitting DaTipJar.
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On the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe it’s appropriate to remind ourselves that it was before the image of Our Lady that Hillary committed one of the great cultural gaffes of her time as Secretary of State.
Hillary visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe and was shown the image of Our Lady kept there and asked this question:
After observing it for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked “who painted it?” to which Msgr. Monroy responded “God!”
1. There is no under-sketch or under-drawing on the image.
Infrared photography has demonstrated that there is no sketching on the image whatsoever. Dr. Philip Callahan, a research biophysicist from the University of Florida explains: “It is inconceivable that an artist in the 16th Century would paint a portrait without first doing a drawing on it.” Making an under-sketch prior to painting a portrait goes back to antiquity. Such an exquisite depiction on textile made from cactus fiber is inexplicable given the lack of sketching.
2. The image has lasted and shows no signs of deterioration.
Juan Diego’s tilma is made of a rough cactus fiber which normally disintegrates in 15 to 30 years. Yet, the image of Guadalupe has remained intact for 484 years without fading or cracking. Moreover, it was subjected to candle smoke for many years, which should have accelerated the process of deterioration.
In 1778, a worker accidentally spilled strong nitric acid onto a large portion of the image. To everyone’s astonishment, only slight stains appeared which can still be seen in the upper right side. Additionally, in 1921 a bomb concealed in some flowers was placed on the altar directly under the image. When the bomb detonated, the marble altar rail and windows 150 feet away were shattered, a brass crucifix was twisted out of shape, but the image was left unharmed.
3. The stars that appear on the image are astrologically correct.
In 1983 Dr. Juan Homero Hernandez and Fr. Mario Rojas Sánchez discovered that the stars on the image correspond precisely to the constellations of the winter sky on December 12th, 1531. Incredibly, the constellations are shown as viewed from outside the heavens, in other words in reverse. It is as if we have a picture from someone looking at it from outside the universe, it is a snapshot of heaven and earth from the very moment that Juan Diego saw Our Lady.
4. Mary’s eyes are astonishingly life like.
Of all the characteristics of the image, this is perhaps the most astounding. The microscopic likeness of a bearded man was discovered in the pupils of the Virgin; first in 1929, and again in 1951. The bearded man corresponds to contemporaneous pictures of Juan Diego. No human painter could have foreseen putting infinitesimally small images of Juan Diego in the eyes of the Virgin so that later advances in human technology could detect them. Furthermore, it is impossible for any human to have painted the images because they are simply too miniscule to produce.
Jose Aste Tonsmann, a Peruvian ophthalmologist, examined Mary’s eyes at 2,500 times magnification. He was able to identify thirteen individuals in both eyes at different proportions, just as a human eye would reflect an image. It appeared to be the very moment Juan Diego unfurled the tilma before Bishop Zumárraga.
Dr. Jorge Escalante Padilla a surgical ophthalmologist considers these reflections to belong to the type which have been described by Cherney on the back surface of the cornea and by Watt & Hess at the center of the lens. Such reflections are very difficult to detect. Dr. Escalante also reported the discovery of small veins on both of the eyelids of the image. In the 1970s, a Japanese optician who was examining the eyes fainted. Upon recovering he stated: “The eyes were alive and looking at him.” [Janet Barber, Latest Scientific Findings on the Images in the Eyes, page 90.] Incredibly, when Our Lady’s eyes are exposed to light, the retinas contract. When the light is withdrawn, they return to a dilated state.
You might think she would have known some background and quit while she was behind.
The version in the Mexican press is yet more cringe-inducing: After being told it was an apparition, Clinton apparently persisted, asking, “But who painted the painting, the roses,” before being informed again that God was the artist in question.
SHREVEPORT – As a high-school English teacher I have long struggled with the distraction of cell phones in the classroom. I know many teachers who have struggled with this issue and have found various ways to deal with it – most often simply incorporating that technology as an instructional tool. I’ve seen “Cell Phone Jail” jars and boxes on Pinterest and I’ve seen hanging shoe storage pockets used as charging stations, where the student can drop his phone in the pocket and leave it to charge all class period.
None of these have worked for me. The allure of that incoming text message or SnapChat photo is too powerful to ignore and invariably the student will check the phone, thus turning his attention away from instruction.
I was commiserating with another teacher about this one day in an attempt to find out what my colleagues do about this issue when someone suggested I read A Deadly Wandering by Matt Richtel. The book came out in 2014 but is based on the author’s 2010 Pulitzer Prize winning series for the New York Times. The book tells the story of a teenager who caused an accident while texting and driving which resulted in the death of two rocket scientists. It’s a compelling read and filled with the science to support the author’s thesis which is basically that cell phone technology has insinuated itself into our most basic instinct to pay attention in order to survive, except now we are paying attention to the incoming text message or email rather than the more important tasks at hand, like perhaps driving.
This is especially true for the younger generation – those who have grown up with this technology in their hands their entire lives.
Richtel cites science that explains how the phone works sort of like an immediate gratification system and that positive reward releases dopamine in the brain each time you use the device:
“…You hear the ping of an incoming text or call, you respond; the ping happens, you respond. And each time you respond, you get a hit of dopamine. It’s a pleasurable feeling, a release from the reward center. Then it’s gone. There is no incoming text, no stimulation. You start to feel bored. You crave another hit.”
The result is now we have a generation of kids who find it “hard to sustain periods of attention” and who “are less tolerant of waiting for delays.” Most telling to me, and what I see in my classroom is Richtel’s point that “Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task, but for jumping to the next thing.”
So while this book is a fascinating read and does help me understand a great deal about how the brain works and how addicted we are to our devices, it still doesn’t tell me how to manage this issue in my classroom.
I had a conversation with a student one day recently along these same lines. We had been reading Macbeth and she was amazed that an actor could memorize so many lines of Shakespearean dialogue in order to perform on stage. I pointed out that it seems that our brains have evolved over time to adapt to our changing society; once traveling scops could recite 3,000 lines of Beowulf but you might be hard pressed to do that these days. And when I explained to her how we had to do research papers without internet and without computers (remember the old Reader’s Guide?) she was astounded and shook her head in disbelief. And then her phone vibrated and her eyes dropped to the screen to see who was messaging her. End of conversation.
Since I’ve been reading Richtel’s book, I’m much more conscious of my own cell phone tendencies. I even laughed at the irony of my stopping reading long enough to message the friend who had recommended the book to me.
As I said, I still have not found a classroom management strategy that will work in my room as far as the phone issue goes, but I think I’m getting closer to it by having read this book. At least now I understand that it’s a much bigger problem than I realized.
You know that Taiwan animator video I posted yesterday, there is a sequel prequel
Like I said this is going to be a must watch site.
Also Tucker Carlson is becoming must watch
Noting hurts liberals more than quoting them in context. Why do you think Milo & RS McCain were banned by twitter
Is radical feminism and the left’s unwillingness to have sex post Trump the ultimate proof of natural selection? I’m thinking so more and more.
Speaking of RS McCain & feminists I think we should start a twitter list of the feminists he highlights on his blog and pray for them daily. AFter all with God all things are possible.
You know I thought the MSM would all become Jake Tappers after the election now that there will be a GOP president, instead they have all become David Brocks. It takes effort to be that bad.
Saw Doctor Strange with my son, it’s one of the few movies with heavy CGI that I don’t mind, after all it’s supposed to be a non-real world.
You want to see how movies were made go watch Gunga Din and read this post on it, though written in 2011 you’ll see Trump themes in it
We still don’t know if Trump will be a good president but listening to Evan McMullen lately I’ve concluded he is a nut who is sounding as bad as the MSM. What is it about Trump that makes people insane?
Looks like the Pats control their destiny for home field with 4 games left. Does this Brady ever get tired?
FYI some day Boston will not be constantly in Championships again, and we will miss the Brady/Ortiz era and realize how spoilt we are.
Over the last few years, we’ve seen a dramatic shift in the way the abortion debate has been framed by the left through their mainstream media proxies. What was once a battle about “choice” has now been retooled to be about “reproductive rights.” This is going to become louder once Ohio Governor John Kasich decides which abortion ban he signs, which will likely happen this week.
Personally, I’d like to see him sign the Heartbeat Bill, but as long as he signs one of them, the conversation will reignite around the concept of reproductive rights. This is usually frowned upon by conservatives as it touches on a point that we hold dear: personal liberties. We don’t like that the left is using one of our tools against us. Rather than attempting to shift the conversation away from this talking point, we should embrace it.
It has become the most powerful weapon used by the pro-abortion crowd because the conservative perspectives surrounding personal liberties resonate with the majority, even Democrats (once you clear away the minutia they use to cloud the issue of freedoms). They are pulling at our political heartstrings when they make the claim that any attempts to take away a woman’s right to an abortion is an attack on her freedoms. For this reason, the pro-life movement has turned to other methods for fighting their battles: religion, post-abortion depression, touching stories from abortion survivors, and scientific technicalities are just some of the tools pro-lifers use to wage war on abortion.
We’ve allowed the left to co-opt our most powerful weapon and use it against us. This needs to be reversed. Abortion is absolutely about personal liberties. There is no better argument than protection of freedoms and our God-given rights when combating the plague of abortion. All we need to do is focus on the other side of the coin. Just as pro-abortion groups tout the individual liberties of pregnant women by focusing on reproductive rights, pro-lifers should engage in the same way by hammering the rights of the preborn.
Yes, babies have rights, too. The question of when the baby gets rights is the only thing in question. The left will tell us that up to a certain point, a preborn baby is simply a conglomeration of cells that are actually still part of the woman, so their existence falls under the jurisdiction of her individual rights. Just as she can choose to have her tonsils removed, the left wants us to believe she has the right to have the unwanted grouping of cells in her uterus removed.
Science is on our side. The reason the Heartbeat Bill has its name is not symbolic. The bill bans abortions once a heartbeat can be detected by the doctor. This happens around the six-week point following conception. It may be hard to convince people on the fence that the standard ban on abortions held by most states of 24-weeks needs to be brought up to the six-week mark, but knowing that the preborn baby’s heart is already beating at that point is a powerful argument for life.
When does a preborn baby acquire the rights of every American to be allowed to live? For some of us, the answer is at conception. For others, it’s at a certain point between conception and birth. The key for this battle is to understand that if Americans are made aware of the science behind reproduction, the left’s narrative of “reproductive rights” can be quickly shifted in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans to be about a preborn baby’s right to live.
The left is fighting a losing battle if we take the battle to them instead of tiptoeing around the other strategies that we’ve created. Modern science allows us to get up close and personal with preborn babies. Share those videos. Share the stories of how preborn babies feel pain, dream dreams, and experience emotions in ways very similar to how they act once they’re born. There’s a reason that the left is so against simple measures such as the burial of aborted fetuses. Their narrative falls apart once a preborn human is humanized in the eyes of the masses.
With the assumption that pro-life judges are about to fill the benches of courts around the country, including the current and upcoming open Supreme Court seats, the pro-life movement has never had a better opportunity to move the needle. We can save millions of babies who haven’t even been conceived yet. To do this, we need to stop renouncing our best weapon and take it back from the left. Personal liberties resonate. We simply need to remind people that preborn babies deserve liberties as well.
Saturday night news broke–that has not yet been confirmed–that President-elect Donald Trump has chosen ExxonMobil chairman Rex Tillerson to be his secretary of state.
Predictably, the mainstream media is pouncing on this selection, zeroing in on his ties to Russia that go back to the Boris Yeltsin era. Russia of course is a major energy producer, it’s quite understandable that ExxonMobil would have a stake there. In 2013 Vladimir Putin honored Tillerson with its Order of Friendship.
This criticism folds neatly into the controversial CIA report that Russia tried to influence the presidential election, presumably to boost Trump. Of course the increasingly marginalized media is still trying to make sense of Hillary Clinton’s loss, even though the evidence is abundant and easy to understand.
On the campaign trail Trump promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington. And one way to do so is to bring in some outsiders, people like himself, to find a better way to run America.
On Fox News Sunday, in an interview where Trump told host Chris Wallace that he had yet to choose his secretary of state, the president-elect said of Tillerson, who has never worked in the public-sector, “In this case he’s much more than a businessman. He’s a world-class player.” Tillerson can point to decades of experience of negotiating deals with foreign governments, which is something his two predecessors did not have, unless you include Hillary Clinton’s shady doings at the Clinton Foundation.
It’s time for the amateurs and the Model United Nations role-players to exit Washington–the people have spoken. Trump values accomplishments. DC needs more men and women like Tillerson.
John Ruberry, who has never been employed by the private sector, regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.
Hoping that President Obama is not injured by one of these on January 20.
North versus South
One more play of the Race Card™ by President Obama before exiting stage left.
President Barack Obama’s election in 2008 broke a racial barrier that set soaring expectations for an era of improved race relations.
Now, as he departs office, those hopes have largely evaporated. Tensions between African-American communities and police departments have deteriorated following a slate of high-profile shootings of unarmed black men. The man who will replace Obama in January was a leading peddler of the racially-tinged “birther” myth [see RELATED below]. A majority of Americans now say relations between blacks and whites have worsened since Obama took office.
Obama has said he never believed his election could completely erase centuries of racial conflict in America. But the decline in racial ties is nonetheless an ironic legacy for the first African-American president, one Fareed Zakaria explores in the CNN Special Report “The Legacy of Barack Obama” airing Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET.
In interviews, Obama and those who worked closely with him identify a strain of racial bias that hardened against the President, even as his election crumbled a historic racial wall.
“I think there’s a reason why attitudes about my presidency among whites in Northern states are very different from whites in Southern states,” Obama told Zakaria.
Here’s what I know about the difference between the North and the South, especially with respect to race relations between black and white. Since the Civil Rights Era, the South has been transformed. In the North? Not so much.
As is so for any true upheaval within a given social fabric, that transformation required pain and sacrifice. That happened in the South. One of the things that I noticed repeatedly down there is that black-white neighborhoods are very common. Another thing I’ve noticed over the years is that, in black-white interracial marriages, the white spouse is often from the South. Those two anecdotal facts are related.
Oh sure, Northern liberals were happy to assuage their white guilt by voting for the first viable black presidential candidate. But they only want to live next door to a certain kind of black if at all–if Chicago is any indication. Voting for him was a method of cheap grace for the kind of Northern Liberal both he and I are observing.
The CNN piece continues with incident after incident, attributing any political or social opposition by white persons to President Obama’s words, deeds and action to racism without describing any connection between the opposition and racism, because, of course, no description of the kind is necessary…
Because no reasonable person could oppose him or his policies for any other reason other than racial hatred/supremacy. That’s the implicit takeaway.
How do I know this? Because there is not one rhetorical question as to whether the man named Barack Obama is the problem–nothing about his personality; no evaluation of his policies on a true qualitative basis. He won’t take responsibility for the state of race-relations nor will his sycophants attribute its devolution to him. To his sycophants, all problems in this country are the fault of others, especially whites who will not support him.
And that last part is the most racist thing of all.
If you’d like to help support independent non MSM journalism and opinion like from writers all over the nation like RH, Fausta,JD RuckerChristopher Harper, Pat Austin, and John Ruberry plus seveal monthy & part time writers working here along with Julitee and want to help pay their monthly wages (and the Cartoonist I’m looking to hire, details here)please consider hitting DaTipJar.
Please consider Subscribing. Right now our subscribers consist of 1/50 of 1% of our total unique visitors based on last years numbers.
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And of course at that price you get the Da Magnificent Seven plus those we hope to add on and all subscribers get my weekly podcast emailed directly to you before it goes up anywhere else.
So there I was, in a shouting match with one of my Sailors about his latest evaluation. Suddenly, he pulled out a gun and shot me. Twice. As I fell to the ground and slowly bled out, I watched him proceed to walk through our office and shoot other Sailors.
Except it wasn’t real. It was our first active shooter drill.
The news tends to sensationalize active shooters, like it devolves into some sort of action video game. Nothing could be further from the truth. After the drill, my team watched our security camera footage to see what really happened. We also had someone following the shooter around and take notes.
The first thing that jumped out at me was the difficulty realizing you were in an active shooter situation before it was too late. The shooter has ALL the advantages. Even though we used a cap gun that simulated the sound and smell of a 9mm pistol, the sound doesn’t always carry down a hallway. Plenty of people heard popping, but only a few realized it was a shooter. By the time they realized it, the shooter was pointing a gun at them at close range.
I can validate Fry’s thoughts on this…
The Department of Defense provides active shooter training. Once you realize there is an active shooter, if you can’t escape your goal is to barricade yourself into a room, lock the door and stay quiet. That works surprisingly well. Our shooter, intent on finding easy victims, got bored banging on doors that wouldn’t open. It also delayed him, giving base security more time to respond.
Stopping the shooter because you’re Superman? Unlikely, at least in the initial moments. The shooter already has the aspect of surprise. Unless you catch him reloading, he can kill you in a fraction of a second. Watching our surveillance footage, any Sailor that came within arms reach of the shooter was shot before he could react. When I go back and read other people’s accounts of active shooters, the ones that tackled the shooter typically did so while the shooter was reloading, or it was after the initial shock was over.
If you don’t have a gun, you wind up like the guy on the floor. Image from Wikipedia
An active shooter is absolutely terrifying to contemplate, but inside the situation it’s actually more confusing than anything else. I’m glad to see the DoD is now allowing personnel to carry weapons on base, because it is frightening how quickly someone can kill multiple people before the police show up. Our shooter was only walking and had to reload manually, yet he managed to kill a lot of people before the police response time. Luckily, we identified areas we can fix, and I think the body count the next time won’t be so high.
My only wish at the end was that I share my experiences with non-military members, so that if they found themselves facing an active shooter, they could learn from my drill mistakes and perhaps save their life.
This post represents the views of the author and does not represent the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy or any other agency. Please pray for the victims of active shooters, including the knifing victims recently at Ohio State. And if you’re in the military, take your Active Shooter training seriously…it might just save your life!
The election is over and so is Brandi Miller’s religious affiliation.
“On Nov. 8, white evangelical Christianity and I called it quits,” she wrote in a message posted on Facebook. Ms. Miller, a campus minister at the University of Oregon, says that exit polls showing that 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump revealed a divide over race that she, as a biracial woman, can’t condone.
“Evangelicals have decided who and with what they will associate,” wrote Ms. Miller, 26 years old, in an online magazine and on Facebook. “It’s not me.”
As I mentioned above, if you decide to drop out of your book club or the local bowling league because you’re teamed up with some intolerable idiot who voted for (insert name of candidate you didn’t vote for here), that’s probably not the end of the world. But when people are walking out on their house of worship the country’s divisions have gone past the point of being toxic.
I think Jazz is missing the most important aspect of this story, it’s not that liberals continue to melt down over Trump it’s that this person never had faith to begin with.
As I’ve said many times at this site the only reason to be a Christian in general and a Catholic in particular is because it’s true. If it’s not then Christians are simply an Elk’s club that meets on Sundays.
This person has apparently decided that her belief wasn’t in Christ but in something else, thus it took very little effort to reject her faith-based on a electoral matter a faith that weak was likely not worth the effort to destroy.
Now of course she might go faith shopping to see if she can find a church that is politically acceptable to her, in fact given the empty pews at most denominations that have abandoned the tenets of Christianity to please the world it might not be all that hard.
But my advice is for this lady and any other like her that are considering abandoning Christ over election results find themselves a divine mercy chapel go inside and spend a holy hour praying for discernment, because in the end her soul like all souls, is a thing of great value that is worth saving.
You know a lot of people today laugh at the idea of Christian sexual morality, and the idea of looking for a husband or a wife rather than just a hook up.
So we had a couple of drinks, and played a bit of Buck Hunter. A couple things came up as we were getting to know each other. I was probing a bit because I knew he was from Texas, and I wanted to find out if he was a Republican, or a bad person. (Not that the two are necessarily one and the same.) It turned out he was pro-choice and an atheist, which was good. We disagreed on gun control, because he’d served in the Marines. San Diego is a big military town, so there are a lot of those types of people around.
So her first test for a guy is “are you anti-God and is it OK if I kill the kid if you knock me up”. It gets better
But the night progressed. We went out to some other bars, had some more drinks, and he invited me back to his place. I was super excited, because I was really into this guy. We hooked up, and it was incredible. There was a lot face-touching and intense eye contact. He was cool as hell. I was completely smitten.
Just a reminder this was the very first time these two people met.
But things turned south as soon as she saw his bookshelf post sex contained books by Trump and Ann Coulter, they started talking politics and it went downhill from there:
He started talking disparagingly about Black Lives Matter. This entire conversation happened in five minutes, while I was frantically getting dressed to leave. I wasn’t there to argue, and I felt deeply uncomfortable.
I got a Lyft home and I thought I was done with him.
Because nothing says: “This guys not a keeper” like opposing people who cheer the murder of cops.
Now lets forget the whole hooking up at the first meeting paradigm and consider for a second. You have a woman in her late 20’s who meets a strong handsome man who she is sexually compatible with and served in the marines which means he is tough and trained in responsibility and would have advantages in securing a job etc. This would seem like the best possible fish she is going to catch and she tossed it back, but it gets worse:
The next day he messaged me on Tinder. He said, “Hope you’re still not upset over politics LOL.” I explained that it’s hard for me to remain attracted to someone whose views are so different from mine, and who believes in bigotry and xenophobia—which sucked, because the sex was amazing.
Then he said, “Not accepting other people’s beliefs is the definition of bigotry.”
So apparently it was my fault.
So this guy is willing to overlook the argument and looks for a second date but she’s still in full SJW mode and passes.
Now most sensible men would have moved on but he must have seen or felt something he liked because he gave it one more shot a week later.
He sent me a “hey” message a week later, which I never replied to.
And thus the story which concludes with a self-righteous rant about never sleeping with a Trump supporter again ends.
The really sad part, this is likely the best guy this woman was ever going to find, moreover he was willing to overlook their political differences for the sake of getting together, which is key because the real secret to a successful marriage or a relationship if you aren’t interested in one, is the ability to put up with the person you are with.
He had it, she didn’t so at age 27 she tossed her best shot away.
As a Catholic we don’t do fortune-telling but this woman’s future can be predicted in a single image.
Now it’s of course possible that this woman dodged a bullet, that the only reason why this guy was interested was he had established that she was available for risk free sexual release, but I have a funny feeling that twenty years from now she’ll find herself reading and re-reading that post over and over mumbling under her breath the word “stupid” over and over again.
The Darwinist would celebrate this result as an affirmation of natural selection but as a Catholic I’m required to pray for both of these people, because even though her future would be apparent to any member of the greatest generation who held Christian sexual morality in high regard, in the end with God all things are possible and their disbelief doesn’t make that statement any less true.
And after all it’s Christmas time, and I always prefer a happy ending.
Nine or so years ago I spent an afternoon at the Princeton Public Library watching two American-made Cuban propaganda films. One of the films was titled The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.
The film praises the virtues of Medieval agriculture as practiced in modern-day Cuba, including the return to the use of oxen, and how superior plowing a field with two oxen is, compared to using tractors. My late father, who was not Cuban, had a farm and if he got wind of that he would have turned in his grave.
After I posted that, a historian friend joked that the agricultural practices I described date back to the Iron Age, if not earlier, so let’s not give the Middle Ages a bad name.
Tourists are quite literally eating Cuba’s lunch. Thanks in part to the United States embargo, but also to poor planning by the island’s government, goods that Cubans have long relied on are going to well-heeled tourists and the hundreds of private restaurants that cater to them, leading to soaring prices and empty shelves.
Yes, foreigners and anyone else paying in dollars eat better than ordinary Cubans (be assured that the regime’s elite are not going hungry). As in healthcare, the dictatorship has an apartheid system against its own people.
Otherwise, like Rick in Casablanca, Mr. Ahmed was misinformed:
“Castro, whose ruined nation shipped $780 million worth of vegetables, sugar and agricultural exports to the U.S. in the 1950s, has turned his nation into a lunar wasteland over his 48-year dictatorship, its famous sugar industry now gone. Does Castro take responsibility? No. He blames global warming, not his disastrous decisions.
“But Cuba’s land lies in ruin not because of bad weather but because its massive propaganda-driven ‘great sugar harvests’ of the 1960s ruined the land in the name of making Castro’s arbitrary quota — and because no citizen can own or trade land for its most efficient use. Now, Cuba grows so little food it must import it from the very nation its leader denounces and undermines and blames.
“In fact, it’s Castro’s dirty secret: The U.S. is Cuba’s food lifeline. The U.S. sells $340 million in food a year to Cuba just so its ration books can be worth the paper they’re printed on.
“The U.S. is Cuba’s top trade partner, but Cuba ranks only 32nd on the U.S. list.”
All U.S. agricultural goods must be sold to one state-owned company, Alimport, and many Cuba observers generally believe the Castro regime uses it as a political lever. During much of the 2000s, Alimport purchased U.S. agricultural products from dozens of states with the hope of garnering support from the states’ respective lawmakers to repeal the embargo.
The purpose of this lobbying initiative pressuring Congress to end what remains of the embargo? To guarantee the survival of the Communist dictatorship.
“Cuba’s Surge in Tourism” is not what “Keeps Food Off Residents’ Plates;” what’s keeping food off residents’ plates is Communism.
Fausta Rodriguez Wertz writes on U.S. and Latin American politics, news, and culture at Fausta’s Blog.
As we’ve noted many times here there are two ways media bias works.
The first, and most common is bias of comission where the MSM/left promotes stories or meme’s to attack the right, usually as wikileaks confirmed at the direct behest of the left. A great example of this are the attacks and ridicule of Ben Carson on CNN.
Removing all pretense of substantive discussion, Don Lemon, Marc Lamont Hill and Peter Beinart began openly mocking the nomination of Dr. Carson for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
The scope and severity of the exhibited ridicule was so over the top, fellow CNN panelist Brian Stelter was both visibly trying to hide his glee and simultaneously uncomfortable joining in amid the laughter and mockery.
If this was any other media panel mocking and ridiculing a black nominee for an Obama administration the calls of racist outrage against the network would be overwhelming. However, as customary within their hypocrisy, the pontificating left-wing ideologues cannot even fathom anyone taking exception.
Once again proving that if the left didn’t have double standards, they would have no standards at all.
But the greatest sin of the media is the ability to define a story as not worthy of promotion as a national story, like this one:
Germany’s leading news programme has been slammed for failing to report the rape and murder of the 19-year-old daughter of an EU official by an Afghan ‘refugee’.
The Tagesschau show, produced by ARD, the world’s largest public broadcaster, claimed that the story was “too regional”. Others, however, blame political correctness and an establishment desire to silence criticism of mass migration.
Last week’s revelation that 19-year-old Maria Ladenburger – a medical student, migrant home volunteer, and daughter of a prominent European Union (EU) official – was attacked and killed by a recently-arrived 17-year-old migrant shocked the nation.
Despite having a budget of €6.5 billion (£5.5 billion) and 20,617 employees, the public broadcaster decided not to allocate resources to bringing the story to national attention.
ARD’s editor-in-chief, Kai Gniffke, played down the decision, arguing they “very rarely report on individual criminal cases”.
By deciding this news wasn’t fit to print, german media were basically protecting Angela Merkel and her supporters from the consequences of their open borders policy.
Merkel, who recently announced plans to run for a fourth term in September, has seen her popularity plunge in the last year in large part due to her staunch refusal to accept demands from her party’s right wing to limit migrants entering the country to 200,000 per year.
She did not comment on the slaying in Freiburg and has remained determined to keep Germany open to refugees.
That’s the real reason why the MSM hates Breitbart news and Trump’s twitter account. Liberals like the Kellogg’s people want to delegitimize Breitbart because they dare report stories like this that don’t fit the MSM narrative:
Immigration advocacy groups are asking California Attorney General Kamala Harris to “block federal access” to the database containing names of gang members in the state. The goal is to block access before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in, thereby preventing his administration from seeing the names of individuals who could find themselves on a the deportation short list.Immigration advocacy groups are asking California Attorney General Kamala Harris to “block federal access” to the database containing names of gang members in the state. The goal is to block access before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in, thereby preventing his administration from seeing the names of individuals who could find themselves on a the deportation short list.
Yeah because nothing would unite the rest of the country against the rule of California Liberals like protecting gang members here illegally from deportation.
And they really hate Trump and his tweeting because in 140 characters he can force a story like the Steinle murder onto the national stage that the MSM is determined to bury.
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This is the first of three guest posts I did for Ladd Ehlinger’s site back in late 2011. I’m reprinting them here (With Ladd’s permission) because I think the election of Donald Trump is a significant event in the culture wars and these posts (and the follow ups that I intend to write) serve to explain what happened to our friends on the left who are still pulling out their hair over the events of November. While Ladd’s old blog isn’t there you can find the original piece via the wayback machine.
“The trouble is you don’t want a man for a husband! You want a coward who will run out on his friends! Well, that’s not me, never was, and never will be. I don’t care how much I love you! And I do very much. I’m a soldi… I mean I’m a man first!”
Even a person with a casual knowledge of movies knows the number 1 movie of 1939, because “Gone with the Wind”is the highest grossing movie of all time. If you asked them what picture was number 2 that year, odds are they haven’t heard of RKO’s “Gunga Din”.
A 70 year old action picture is unlikely to generate a lot of interest from the denizens of the CGI-YouTube era and with the left practically owning film studios, a period piece depicting the British Empire suppressing a murderous cult in colonial India is not going to be high on the view lists of professors.
This is a shame because it’s a movie that deserves attention from viewers, not only for conservative themes, but on its technical merits, historical influence, strong cast and the story itself.
Second, consider the scale of the film. Over and over you see groups of hundreds of men in formation, both marching and on horseback with great sweeping views over spectacular landscapes. For people used to CGI it’s quite a change to see real people and real animals reacting in real ways. This is 1939. What we would call “computers” were two to six years in the future and where they would exist was the size of Cuba. If you wanted a shot of a group of men charging on horseback, you needed…a group of men charging on horseback, if you wanted an incredible background vista, you either had to have incredible background paintings, or actually shoot at a such a location. And a fall off a roof meant someone actually had to take that fall or you needed good modeling. For the modern filmmaker or student used to manipulating massive groups with a click of a mouse, the concept of having to control hundreds of men and animals for a shot is way above their pay grade.
Third, check out this cast: Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; a legendary name who, in a few short years after this film would match his on screen valor in actual combat. Victor McLaglen; a two time Oscar winner who had faced two heavyweight champions in the ring and fought in Iraq before he ever appeared in front of a camera, and Cary Grant, acknowledged as one of the greatest actors who ever lived. Talk about holding three aces in a hand.
Finally there is the story, and what a story: After a patrol and a village drops off the map a force is needed to repair the telegraph lines and investigate. Three sergeants freshly pulled from a brawl are assigned to lead the party which includes a regimental bhisti (water bearer) named Gunga Din. While the troops begin repairing the line at the village the sergeants start searching the village and come across some suspicious characters whose arrest is a prelude to an ambush.
After a running fight the sergeants get their surviving troops out and report. Their commanding officer recognizes a captured weapon as a sign of the murderous thuggee cult that the British had suppressed decades ago (funny how things like the thuggee cult, the slave trade, Caribbean piracy and Suttee were all suppressed only by the actions of those evil colonial Brits)
A new advance force is prepared sans Ballantine, (Fairbanks Jr.) who is due to marry and leave the army in six days. In a hilarious scene, Cutter (Grant) & MacChesney (McLaglen) manage to temporarily incapacitate his replacement forcing Ballantine into the expedition. When they reach the village and set camp, Cutter, after being locked up to prevent it, sets off to find a temple of gold that Din, (Sam Jaffe) who dreams of being the company bugler, has told him is nearby. Din and Cutter find the temple beyond a mountain pass which turns out to be the base of a thuggee army they are looking for led by the cult leader (well played by Eduardo Ciannelli). Cutter prepares to send Din back to get with the exit blocked deliberately gets himself captured to clear the way.
With the prospect of his friend in deadly danger, MacChesney sets off with Din after him. Ballantine, end of enlistment or not, insists on joining them over the entreaties of his fiance. (Joan Fontaine, the only cast member still alive). They blunder right into the Guru’s trap hoping to lure the regiment to an ambush in the pass.
The following passages contain major spoilers, if you don’t wish to know how the movie ends, skip the following two paragraphs.
The heroes manage by means of a ruse to grab the guru and find themselves in a Mexican standoff that persists until the guru, after a speech that could have been made by any of the heroes in the pictures, sacrifices himself in order to allow the attack to go forward. With their hostage gone the thuggees take the Brits, bayonetting both Din and Cutter in the process.
The thuggees ignore the wounded Cutter and Din and drag Ballantine & MacChesney to the edge of the parapet to watch the ambush of their regiment. As the guards concentrate on their impending victory, Din, still bleeding from his wounds with bugle in hand slowly climbs to the top of the temple dome and blows “stand to arms”. He is shot down but he manages it long enough for the regiment to deploy, avoiding the trap and allowing the army to rout the thuggees. Din is given a hero’s burial and posthumously made a regimental corporal listed “on the rolls of our honored dead.”
Through the entire picture manly virtue is celebrated: It’s celebrated when the survivors of the first battle, after an arduous trek bearing their wounded, form to march into the camp parade in good order. It’s celebrated as Din, with Cutter’s support, dreams of being a soldier instead of a water bearer. It’s celebrated when Cutter allows himself to be taken so Din can give warning. Ballantine refuses to leave his friend in the lurch even for the woman he loves. Cutter and MacChesney endure torture, Din gives his life to warn the regiment, and even the villain of the piece sacrifices himself in the hope of victory for his cause.
These manly values are not only conservative values, but are instinctive human values that since 9/11 the left has been unable to suppress. It certainly isn’t matched by the left protestors who cry oppression if they are evicted from other people’s property at little personal risk.
But what about colonial cultural inequality? I’m glad you asked, let’s look at the first battle scene again.
While the men are repairing the telegraph wires (and given water by Gunga Din) the sergeants search the village for clue to what happened. Ballantine finds a first a single man then a group he is trying to conceal. When they fail to convince him they are poor villagers who survived the raid, one tries to jump him. He finds himself in an outnumbered brawl. Cutter and MacChesney enter, and rather than drawing weapons join in the brawl till the men are subdued. Our politically correct friends might point to this one might question one European handling a group alone, but only if they didn’t pay attention to the larger British group they handled at the film’s start. When they fail to provide adequate answers, they prepare to take them back when the leader lets out a cry signaling a group of snipers on rooftops to fire and a wave of riders to pounce upon them.
The entire British force other than the sergeants consists of Indian troops, yet nowhere in the scene from the start to the end is there any sense that these troops are different than any other. They fight as a unit, throughout the running battle and retreat through and over the rooftops the town against overwhelming odds. The sergeants lead from the front, take the biggest risks and you will note are the last to make the jump that predated Redford and Newman’s by 30 years. Just before the last of them jumps, he checks on a fallen private soldier to see if he’s can be saved, and when the survivors march into camp, they march in together with heads held high.
There was a time when this message was the norm, and it’s not a coincidence that it was also the time of the greatest generation. When we ceded the culture wars we ceded our message, the message of Judeo Christian values, the message of a shared culture and belief in not only right and wrong but what makes a culture and a people thrive as our forefathers did. If we are unwilling to fight the culture wars by supporting our own cultural message, then we need to remember those who already did so effectively in years gone by.
In short, many religious Christians of a traditionalist bent believed that liberals not only reduce their deeply held beliefs to bigotry, but want to run them out of their jobs, close down their stores and undermine their institutions. When I first posted about this on Facebook, I wrote that I hope liberals really enjoyed running Brendan Eich out of his job and closing down the Sweet Cakes bakery, because it cost them the Supreme Court. I’ll add now that I hope Verrilli enjoyed putting the fear of government into the God-fearing because it cost his party the election.In short, many religious Christians of a traditionalist bent believed that liberals not only reduce their deeply held beliefs to bigotry, but want to run them out of their jobs, close down their stores and undermine their institutions. When I first posted about this on Facebook, I wrote that I hope liberals really enjoyed running Brendan Eich out of his job and closing down the Sweet Cakes bakery, because it cost them the Supreme Court. I’ll add now that I hope Verrilli enjoyed putting the fear of government into the God-fearing because it cost his party the election.
I said the very same thing in my endorsement of Donald Trump before the GOP convention.(emphasis mine)
I know that there will be times that Donald Trump will disappointment me just as I expected Mitt Romney to disappoint me on social issues and John McCain to disappoint me on immigration and George W Bush who disappointed me on spending and the bank bailouts.
But while Trump will occasionally disappoint me (when he does I’ll call him on it) I am convinced he will neither persecute me nor strip me of my rights for holding my Conservative Catholic beliefs and acting on them.
I am very sorry to say I can not make that same statement about Hillary Clinton, and I’m even sorrier to see the day when I would say this about a presidential candidate.
This I believe is the real reason why so many of us couldn’t get the #nevertrump people,particularly religious ones. A Hillary Clinton win would have meant persecution on a grand scale. Donald Trump’s Election has prevented this.
To me everything else (including the liberal angst) is gravy.
Media outlets across the country have been buzzing about “fake news” being a problem ever since the Democrats’ plethora of losses on election day. This problem didn’t pop up because of the election. It was rampant well before the first batch of candidates announced they were running in early 2015. In fact, it’s been around since the early days of the internet. The fact that it has such a prominent spotlight on it today is a bitter response by the left to point a finger at anyone other than Hillary Clinton and Democratic leaders.
That’s not to say that the problem isn’t real. As someone who reads every headline from over a hundred sources every day for my conservative news aggregator, I can verify that fake news has been an actual problem for a long time. It comes in different forms, the most prominent being the spinning of minor news into apocalyptic click-bait headline writing by sources desperate for advertising dollars, but the core problem is universal: the only way for smaller publishers to compete with bigger ones is to be very aggressive with their bullhorns and quite loose with the truth.
The biggest problem is that it works. Medium-sized sites like Salon and Conservative Tribune are building little empires from it. Bigger outlets like Buzzfeed and Breitbart are getting rich from it. While I’m personally not crazy about the technique, it’s effective and as a small-government Federalist I will defend their right to present their version of the news any way they wish. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t a problem.
Our society has been conditioned to search for solutions whenever there’s a problem to be solved. That’s natural, but for whatever reason most have missed the obvious one. It shouldn’t require sites like Facebook or Google to censor news from this site or that one, though as private businesses it’s their prerogative to do so if they wish. There’s no need for people to publish blacklists to help “victims” avoid the embarrassment of sharing stories that aren’t completely true. It definitely doesn’t require the government to step in and decide what to consider fake news and what to consider real. That’s a form of censorship that would take us all down a very dark road.
The solution is simple. Just like we should let the business world work out its problems through free market capitalism, we should allow the media to work out its own problems with free speech journalism. Let the media police the media. Let the people make decisions based upon trust and research. Just as someone can choose whether or not to buy at Walmart or Target, they can also choose whether they want to read their news on the New York Times or Infowars.
Sites like Newsbusters and Media Matters work the “truth beat” for their respective ideologies. Newsbusters points out the flaws of mainstream media and leftist media propaganda. Media Matters highlights every conservative perspective and tries to spin it as evil. That’s free speech journalism. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
Instead of trying to find solutions to the fake news problem, the media needs to police itself and the people need to be discerning. Just as “caveat emptor” has been a call of prudence for consumers, perhaps “inspectoris discernerem” should be the rallying cry for news consumers to be more careful with what they read and share.
Non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, have been around for decades. Politico just discovered them, now that Donald Trump is the President Elect, complete with a Grumpy Trump photo:
Trump transition team members had to sign a code of ethics with a pretty significant lobbying ban, but they’ve also had to sign a non-disclosure agreement to make certain they keep all of their work confidential, according to a copy obtained by POLITICO.
The agreement legally bars transition staffers from disclosing info about major portions of the transition work, like policy briefings, personnel material, donor info, fundraising goals, budgets, contracts, or any draft research papers. It also demands that if anyone on the team suspects a colleague of leaking material, he or she must tell transition team leadership. And it gives the Trump team grounds to tell those who run afoul of the rules: “You’re fired.”
That’s usually the case when you don’t honor an NDA: you lose your job.
Politico asserts,
This practice of using a non-disclosure agreement dates back to the Trump campaign and even his businesses.
Well, heavens to Betsy!
Politico’s staff and writers may not be familiar with NDAs, but they are common practice in the private sector, and have been for years. There are jobs where I had to sign an NDA in order to apply, due to the sensitive nature of the job. To this day I still abide by those NDAs.
Politico’s unnamed “good government experts” bemoan
the way Trump’s prolific use of non-disclosure agreements in business and the campaign could hurt government transparency if the pattern continued. the way Trump’s prolific use of non-disclosure agreements in business and the campaign could hurt government transparency if the pattern continued.
even while they admit that (emphasis added),
the Trump transition’s application page indicates: “One should assume that all of the information provided during this process is ultimately subject to public disclosure, if requested under the Freedom of Information Act.”
No NDA is going to protect you from FOIA. No NDA places you above the law, either. You don’t need to have a law degree to know that.
However, it makes you wonder if Politico and their “good government experts” are displeased that they can not easily place one of their employees in Trump’s transition team.
The guys at Jezebel (look them up, I’m not linking) are frazzled and say “this is not what a democracy looks like. This is something far worse.”
I wonder where their outrage was while the Dems locked out the GOP when they passed Obamacare.
Does anyone for one moment believe that the same Fr. John Jenkins, who had no problem with Barack Obama, Joe Biden or Wenday Davis despite their direct opposition and active efforts against the teaching of the Catholic church, would have shown the slightest hesitation to invite Hillary Clinton her to speak at the 2017 commencement if she had been elected?
I’m old enough to remember when Notre Dame was a Catholic College.
If I was Donald Trump or the head of the RNC that’s the Press Release I would be issuing in English and spanish. The Spanish version saying:
The Tagesschau show, produced by ARD, the world’s largest public broadcaster, claimed that the story was “too regional”. Others, however, blame political correctness and an establishment desire to silence criticism of mass migration.
Even a person with a casual knowledge of movies knows the number 1 movie of 1939, because 
