Throw the Russian Hack Story in the Trash

The media will not let go of the story about the hacked emails of Democratic Party leaders and operatives. They and the political establishment continue to assert that Russia hacked the emails and likely used them to favor Trump’s election or to defeat Hillary Clinton’s.

The media effort seeks to brand the hack as an “election hack”, an equivocal term that many media readers/viewers/listeners mistake to mean that election machines or vote tallies were tampered with, an intentional manipulation of perception that is patently false.

The media cites a “report” by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. However, that report essentially provides no details to the press, naturally, to preserve security, choosing out of necessity to offer a summary of conclusions. Omitted are the details of what those agencies discovered, how their information was obtained, and how it was analyzed and interpreted to point the finger at Russia.

What and how much the president and president-elect have been told remains a secret. Perhaps we’ll learn more when the intelligence community briefs Donald Trump on Friday.

The president-elect Trump has disputed the intelligence findings, citing Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has said on multiple occasions that Wikileaks did not receive the hacked Democrat emails from Russia or from any “state party”.

In the analyses of what the intelligence community has reported, commentators have stated that the intelligence agencies made their conclusion in part based on certain digital “signatures” hackers use to gain access to computer users.

What I have not seen asked or answered is whether such signatures can be found out and duplicated by other hackers who want the trail to lead to another person or group besides themselves.

On the other hand, if Wikileaks did not receive the data from the Russians, it must be asked whether it was possible for a third party to deliver the data to Wikileaks after receiving it from the Russians and whether that happened.

The problem with the story is the political grandstanding it has created by both Democrat and Republican establishment politicians. All those officeholders want voters to think the election was hacked, that America’s security was breached, and that Americans and their democracy were endangered. They do so for individual and collective motivations, all unpleasantly selfish.

Whether you agree with or like Mr. Trump or not, his campaign and election smashed the iron grip the establishment and its media purveyors held on electioneering and American life. Campaigns of both parties had fallen always within a certain range of mutual acceptability, and the process was monolithicized to prevent outsiders from gaining sway and the American public from being heard, respected, and obeyed.

Instead, the establishment members transmogrified the elections of our democratic republic into their personal power scheme, where the issues they cared about were nurtured and nourished and the common American was manipulated or ignored. Americans had to adapt to the political establishment rather than the political establishment adapting to Americans. The result was massive disappointment, economic and cultural neglect, the diminishment of the desired quality of life, and the marginalization of the American public at large.

That establishment and media effort continues, and the alleged Russian hack is one of its cornerstones. Trump is bad, and by extension his nominees and his policy proposals are bad, because he is the reason democracy is in danger, they have said or implied. He’s a dirty cheat who did anything to get elected, and he suborned the Russian hack when he asked for their cyber help to expose Hillary Clinton’s dirty secrets, dishonesty, and hypocrisy.

That is how threatened the political establishment and the media are. Don’t believe them. They are the liars and cheats, and if Trump is the same, at least he is lying and cheating for us. They seek only their own benefit and ours collaterally, just enough to keep us quiet.

I believe Trump believes in Americans and America first. I have no reason to think otherwise, but those whose iron grip on power he has loosened have reason to want you and me to think otherwise: so they can steal back what they lost even though it wasn’t theirs to begin with!

Don’t fall for it.

The second problem with the story is that it undermines America’s response to the Russians if, in fact, they did hack a private organization. As a citizen, I don’t need a lot of fanfare and hyperbolic, faux congressional questioning and a huge, 500-page report no one will read. I want our intelligence agencies to quietly and patiently strike back at the right time, improving our security and breaking through theirs, which is what they have been doing (hopefully) all along.

We expect our enemies and competitors to spy on us, just as we are spying on them. For the grandstanders to act like the hack of Democrat emails was something shocking and dangerous to democracy is to diminish the significance of what a truly detrimental hack would be: on actual voting machines and vote tallies; on our power grid, knocking out electricity to whole swaths of the country in the dead of winter; on our nuclear and conventional arsenals, turning a simulation or a war game into an actual attack; on our nuclear power plants; on our banking, robbing people and businesses of their identities and their finances; on our air traffic and maritime and railroad and ground traffic controls and signals, to name just a few. Those could result in catastrophe: loss of life and destruction or disappearance of property on a massive scale.

The political establishment and the media want to direct your attention to fake news and to redirect your attention away from what is vital and critical: hackers threaten their machinations and help to upend their grip on power. Hacked emails reveal how they genuinely think and feel, the private persona that contradicts the phony public persona they portray to common Americans, like you and me. I don’t care what their political stripes are: they are liars and cheats hellbent on hoodwinking the American public and preserving their power.

What is the first thing the GOP tried to do when the 115^th Congress opened? Shut down the independent ethics counsel! How rotten was that? How impudent and imprudent was that? We have so many things to make right and to do to make this country great again, and the first thing the GOP house members try to do is rid themselves of the agency that investigates congressional misdeeds!

Do not be misled. Toss the Russian hack story where it belongs: File 13. Be watchful. Work to keep our republican democracy alive and healthy. Stay free and independent, my friends!

A Reply to Journalist Michael Voris

This piece is a response to an article written by journalist and Catholic Michael Voris on the website churchmilitant.com, so it would be well to read his writing first. The link to his article lies below:

http://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/too-many-secrets

I’m not sure how to take your article, Mr. Voris. I get the basic question: Why isn’t Raymond Arroyo reporting on the Catholic establishment’s partiality in the presidential election? Is it a sign that Arroyo is beholden to them and can’t or won’t?

As a veteran journalist, however, you should be aware of the tensions involved in reporting, the personal dimension journalists have and their right to act within it, and the process and techniques of developing a story.

Besides, your own story is unsourced. Were you there? Did you see and hear the things of which you wrote? You made no mention of that.

Is it possible that Mr. Arroyo is working on just such a story about a cabal of clattering clerics who were out to derail the Donald Trump train? Is it possible he does not have enough evidence yet that he can use? In another vein, don’t journalists agree to embargo information or to listen to sources off the record some of the time as they build their stories?

Journalists assume different roles within the profession. Some are field reporters; others, anchors. Some write features, entertainment, sports, business, tech, general assignment, etc., and some assume the role of investigative journalist. Working at EWTN (itself a bit rogue and not friendly to some of the new, dissolute theology of the church), Mr. Arroyo has become a jack-of-all-trades for the network in news and probably mixes in a fair amount of tact with his reportorial frankness.

Mr. Arroyo’s situation does not differ from that of any other journalist in the business. There is a balance to be found and maintained between what the journalist as professional deems worthy of pursuit and what his editors or the ownership of the organ for which he works deems worthy of pursuit.

Perhaps in a perfect world, these pursuits would be congruent; in today’s factious and truculent times, they loom nigh impossible.

So you’re right, Mr. Voris. It’s tough to report on your bosses, and Mr. Arroyo would not be anywhere near the first journalist to encounter that wall (hhhmmm… think about that, Francis). I have not watched Mr. Arroyo enough (though I did watch his Trump interview and the wonderful “bigly” or “big league” finish) to grade him on how well he has done. I did watch some of his coverage of the process by which Pope Francis was elected, etc., and thought he did well to identify different factions within the church and how they were jostling for position and controlling the flow of information.

This is what I would contend, Mr. Voris: You have a much deeper problem in journalism and in the church than you have in your elementary rebuke of Mr. Arroyo.

At one time, the facts may have reigned supreme. Today, message reigns supreme, and people, including journalists, cannot get out of the way of facts fast enough so they can write and speak their stories. The message is no longer tailored to the facts; the facts are tailored to the message, and when those facts are inconvenient, they are simply tossed into the rubbish and replaced with labels, vague ideas like “dangerous”, divisive”, and “xenophobic”.

In that light, Mr. Arroyo may not have fared as badly as you suggest.

That the Catholic hierarchy stood against Mr. Trump does not surprise me much. It seems a number of bishops and priests, not to mention Francis himself, have long derogated Mr. Trump and the policies he has been supporting, all the while turning a blind eye to faux Catholic Nancy Pelosi and anti-Catholic Hillary Clinton, the proponents and enablers of Molochian policies like baby-killing and draconian policies like sucking the financial life and self-esteem out of American middle class workers they’ve dumped on the unemployment line.

The church has a long and rich spiritual, scriptural, intellectual, and pragmatic tradition. That tradition has been and is being sabotaged by the currently accepted biblical criticism. This criticism, known as “historical criticism”, promotes the idea that each of the New Testament writers cooked up fictitious stories or details to get a message across. It is the message, taken as a vital spiritual truth that only can be ascertained and gleaned and communicated by the Magisterium, that is eternal and truthful, not the facts, er, fictions, used to convey it!

In fact, the vital spiritual truth in the message allows one to alter both the facts and the accepted understanding of the facts and to create new ones!

Thus, eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ isn’t eating and drinking his body and blood so God communicates the power of his grace to believers visibly and tangibly through his son’s unjust torture and execution; it is a community meal of love and warmth and mutuality, blah blah, in which we accept our humanity and the humanity of Jesus.

That same warped principle weaves its way through today’s news reporting and rhetoric in all their ramifications. I don’t know how many news people stated as fact that Mr. Trump said on the Access Hollywood recording that he groped women “against their will.” During the presidential debate he moderated, CNN’s Anderson Cooper claimed that Mr. Trump said he was sexually assaulting women, then asked him if he ever had. Fox News’ Megyn Kelly also used the phrase “against their will” on one of her shows and suggested Mr. Trump was a “sexual predator”, if he had practiced what he talked about on the recording.

On the recording, Mr. Trump states exactly and explicitly that women “let” him grope them because he was a star. “Let” means permission granted, allowed. That’s NOT against their will.

And Megyn Kelly’s use of the legal term “sexual predator” during an exchange with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, later despicably echoed by shill and outgoing Senator Harry Reid, was completely inaccurate and incorrect and unethical. She used the false label as a ploy to grab ratings and create the illusion of toughness. She claimed that if Mr. Trump was a sexual predator, then it was a huge story that should be covered. She then added that she did not know that he was a sexual predator. So she brought up the term, not to cover it because it was a fact, but because it was a conditional, which if it were a fact, would justify coverage. She was covering possibility so she could repeat the term.

It’s nothing more than salacious sensationalism, a message the embittered Kelly wanted to get out (likewise with Clinton surrogate Cooper on the network that gave Clinton debate questions in advance) to harm Mr. Trump and affect the outcome of the election.

Feel free to surf the archives to check for posts about faulty reporting where the message took precedence over the facts. It continues in this post-election frame.

Mr. Voris, please scrutinize the “message” state of affairs in both journalism and the church. Mr. Arroyo is hardly the problem. Some of those bishops and priests might be. What happens to the Catholic Church – what happens to believers – when someone’s message gets propped up by the ultimate justification: the notion of infallibility?

“Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!”

Do You Want Hillary to Sell Out America?

I have been telling you about the need to peel away the layers of BS that cocoon the candidates and which isolate you from the truth, crippling your ability to vote wisely.

This need to peel away the layers applies to both the candidates and the people who speak for them, as it does to the media which filters the information that reaches you.

Some of you may be aware already of the comments of legendary journalist Bob Woodward, who broke the Watergate story for The Washington Post in the 1970s. That story led to the downfall of then President Richard M. Nixon. Others of you will not be aware, because most of the media seem to have ignored or to given the most cursory play to what Woodward said in an interview Sunday with Chris Wallace of Fox News.

Please keep in mind that I think most people and journalists would consider Woodward a reporter who looks through a liberal lens.

So on Sunday, with news out from Wikileaks that the King of Morocco gave $12,000,000 to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for a visit from Bill and Chelsea Clinton, and perhaps other considerations, Wallace asked Woodward for his take on the accusations that the Clintons used their foundation as a pay-to-play scheme.

“It’s corrupt. It’s a scandal”, Woodward said in a quote provided by mostly secondary news sources but which was included in a story that appeared in the left-leaning Huffington Post. “The mixing of speech fees, the Clinton Foundation, and actions by the State Department, which she ran, are all intertwined. And it’s corrupt. You can’t just say it’s unsavory.”

That’s a damning judgment based on the facts, coming from a veteran, legendary journalist like Woodward.

We can extrapolate two things from Woodward’s judgment.

First, we see how the standards of journalism have changed. Forty years ago, the pattern of facts demonstrated by the Clintons, Hillary’s campaign, Hillary’s operation of the State Department, and their “charitable foundation”, would have undergone massive, relentless scrutiny by the press. Newspapers and TV networks would have pursued the story until they had uncovered everything. Character, or ethos, the ethical attitude given off by the person being examined in the public light, possessed a significance to news people and voters that it does not today. Hence, we see little meaty reporting on the Clintons.

Nonetheless, we arrive at our second and most important point, and it comes to you in a question: Do you really want to elect Hillary to sell out America?

Hillary is not going to change. She is not going to uncorrupt herself. She is not going to stop using elected office to enrich herself by selling what she can of her country. She cannot. Her habits have grown long, thick roots into her soul. She does not want to change. She could not change even if she wanted.

You can change, however. You can look the facts straight in the eye. You can acknowledge you have been misled, that a person you thought was good and well-meaning in fact was not. It’s a tough admission to make to yourself. I get it. The facts aren’t going to change for us, though.

Hillary says all the right things, but she does something different.

You can exercise your reasonableness and your foresight and say, “I cannot vote for someone of such weak and poor ethical character. I cannot vote for someone who bases her decisions on what will enrich her. I cannot allow Mrs. Clinton to expose our national security and our American lives to unnecessary danger. I cannot allow Mrs. Clinton to sell out my country.”

Join Americans of all political stripes, some who have not even voted in thirty or forty years, and take a stand.

“I won’t let Hillary sell out my country!”

The Elites Are Manipulating You

Thursday morning, MSNBC’s Morning Joe conducted its post-debate analysis of the final battle between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It was one of the better shows the program has put on in a while. Instead of the vanilla groupthink into which the show has been descending, opposition and even strong, sarcastic disagreement grabbed the participants. It was refreshing to see an actual discussion.

More than that, it provided viewers, and voters, with some vital information.

At about the 7:29 mark of the show, Joe Scarborough introduced political commentator Mark Halperin, an anti-Trumper who nonetheless retains a measure of objectivity and mental sobriety. He asked Halperin how he scored Wednesday night’s debate. Here’s Halperin’s reply:

“I’m fascinated by a parallel universe in which Trump hadn’t said what he said about respecting the results because he had a lot of good moments. I think he got more of his message out than he ever has. He had the demeanor that a lot of people wanted to see. But there’s no doubt that it’s the revenge of the elites. Elites do not accept that that was an appropriate answer. And it’s not just the coverage in the media aftermath of the debate, the coverage this morning; but until he explains it (his answer) and gets in sync with everyone on his campaign team, I don’t think he’s going to get to talk about much else. That means every bit of good he might have done last night with a strong performance, and her strong performance, I don’t think matters much.”

Scarborough then asked Halperin this question:

“How many people in Scranton, Pennsylvania, care about what he said in that answer compared to people in newsrooms that are (makes whining sounds) whimpering and whining with their, you know, their soy lattes?”

Halperin replied:

“That’s why I say it’s the revenge of the elites. Elites in both parties have been against Trump from the beginning…”

Mika interjected: “Yes, they have.”

Halperin continued:

“They look at this answer as wrong, morally wrong, against our traditions. And so, the elites have the power to make this the whole debate. You know, Kellyanne Conway and others came into the spin room afterward and said, Why are you seizing on one moment? Well, because it’s a moment that is out of sync with everyone else in his campaign. It’s a moment that offends the sensibilities of elites, and it’s a moment that will dominate forever what this debate is about. I think what he said was wrong and his tone was wrong. And it was an unforced error. But there’s no doubt, Joe, you’re right. Normal people won’t care about that answer. That’s why I say again, elites control a lot of this process. They don’t like that answer, and for good reasons. It was not an acceptable answer in the realm of American discourse.”

For reasons I detailed in yesterday’s post, I disagree with Halperin’s take that Trump’s answer was not an acceptable one in the realm of American discourse, that what Trump said was wrong, and that he said it in a tone that was wrong. More importantly, others who possess greater knowledge of history than I have flatly dismissed the kind of objection that Halperin made.

For brevity’s sake, I’ll simply point out the many times the Founding Fathers and others throughout our history, as well as in the history of other nations, have declared loudly the need for perpetual vigilance to safeguard our liberty.

“The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.” – Thomas Paine

“But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government.” – Andrew Jackson

“Free government is founded in jealousy, not confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind those we are obliged to trust with power…. In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” – Thomas Jefferson

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” – John F. Kennedy

So what can we take away from Halperin’s remarks?

First, and there is no getting around the terminology, our country has a class of elites who dominate both parties, the economy, the government, and society.

Second, these elites often work together for their common purposes, and they at the least, to quote Halperin, “control a lot of the process.” That “process” is the operation of the above named spheres and the dissemination or suppression of relevant information to conduct the operation of the above named spheres via the organs of mass media.

Third, because of that level of control, “the elites have the power to make this the whole debate”.

In other words, the elites can dictate what issues will be presented to you and the triggers and imagery they will use to capture and hold your attention; they will frame the issues, provide the scenery, and situate the perspective from which you will view; the energy and intensity and color of the kabuki theater spectacle will direct you to the proper emotional, “ethical”, and intellectual conclusions! They will make it seem so noble and so obvious!

It isn’t Trump’s job to assume the inviolability of an elitist principle of respecting the outcome. More importantly, it isn’t our job! We are supposed to assume the worst, and we should be constantly checking to see whether the election process is rigged or not; it isn’t our job to validate something without looking warily at it and testing it.

Liberty calls for vigilance! Liberty’s work is never completed, and its work cannot be approached with complacency or indifference or selfishness.

Yet if you watched any of the post-debate coverage, watched the next morning’s news programs, or read the newspapers, is that not exactly what you witnessed? Did you not see an outrage that anyone could call into question the outcome of an election? Did the media minions discuss the whole debate or did they concentrate on Trump’s answer on the election result and the significance they wanted you to take from it? What did the major newspapers headline? Did the TV and press journalists merely report what happened at the debate, or did they damn Trump’s remarks or claim how dangerous and unprecedented they were… and how dangerous Trump is?

It’s unfortunate, but our country has developed classes. The elites have the cattle prods; we amble about as confused members of the herd, if we allow them their way. We can take responsibility for our individual and collective actions and for the outcomes in our political lives. We can take the cattle prods away from them and restore genuine liberty and accountability.

To do that, we must oppose their machinations and their policies and their candidates. We must slap away the funnels through which they try to force-feed their ideas to us. According to our Forefathers, we should assume the elites intend to manipulate us and our system, perverting it into a new kind of tyranny. So we must stand against them and for godly moral, legal, and political principles that promote liberty and the common welfare. When they, or any one or group of us, try to violate or corrupt those principles, as men are wont to do, we must stop them utterly.

It will not come overnight, but it must begin. The first thing we can do is to vote for Trump. A vote for Trump – his election as president – becomes the first upsetting of the apple cart. It is only the first, but it’s a start. If Trump does not live up to his outsider status, to what he promised in relation to our liberty, our defense, our economy, and the destruction of special interests and those conveniences (perpetual terms in office) that facilitate their hegemony, then we will vote him out.

It’s as simple as that. We try him. If he doesn’t do what we want, we dump him and find someone else.

A vote for Hillary, however, restores or keeps in place the fullness of power Trump has threatened to dissolve, a power that is wielded by the elites and for the elites but often to our detriment and indebtedness, an indebtedness we exhaust our lives slaving to eliminate.

The candidate of the elites is Hillary. That’s why even Republicans have prostituted themselves to endorse her. She maintains the status quo that Trump threatens.

The choice is yours. Be manipulated and vote for Hillary and allow the manipulation to continue; or vote for Trump, shrugging off the manipulation and taking the reins to steer your, and your country’s, own political future.

Media Dishonesty Continues

The dishonest media barrage against Donald Trump and his bid for the presidency continues. The self-appointed monitors of righteousness continue to make a mountain out of the mole hill of locker room talk on a secret videotape. They follow the lead of Big Mother, the crone, Rotten Crooked Hillary, who should be singing from behind bars.

Unfortunately, too many voters can be duped. They will focus on sensationalism, pushed repeatedly by the media as if it amounted to anything, while the media ignores the substance of Hillary’s criminality and incompetence: vicious intimidation of sexual assault victims, reckless and criminal violation of the laws of handling classified information and both intelligence and presidential protocols, and causing, by reckless neglect, the deaths of an American ambassador and three Americans protecting him, and persistent, committed lying to the American public and a hiding of her corrupt relationships with greedy Wall Street.

Today MSNBC is running ticker tape “reports” that Trump’s “objectification of women” disqualifies him from becoming president. Really? Some bad language and objectification of women disqualify Trump in an election about Muslim terrorism, illegal immigration, massive job losses and personal and public debt, trade deals that facilitate job losses and loss of financial strength among common Americans while benefiting a few wealthy.

At least half the country objectifies men and women, and probably much more than that. And you can hear as filthy or filthier language at our deteriorating high schools.

Should women be objectified? No. Should we employ filthy language? No. But the sound and sight of Big Mother Hillary Clinton wagging her finger at Trump and everyone else to declare her self-righteous judgment is sickening enough to make one use such filthy language!

If that is the society and the country you want, Christian law replaced by Hillary’s profane social engineering law of fascist feminism, the entrenchment of special wealthy interests to the crushing of the common man and his loss of all self respect, and endless pandering to every minority she can find to the alteration of our genuine, long-held American values, then vote for the most corrupt candidate in American presidential history: Hillary Clinton.

Go Trump!

Is the Media Dishonest?

Is the media dishonest?

Okay. You know the answer already. Can’t say much new. Or can we? In our hope for a better world, or to think more highly of people and their organizations, we want to take them at their word. When their word proves false, it continues to astound us.

Examine how CNN headlined their article about who won the vice-presidential debate. “Pence Edges Kaine in VP Debate Instant Poll”. What was the score? Those polled thought Pence defeated Kaine by 48% to 42%. Other metrics described in the article showed even stronger gains and favorability for Pence, usually in the double digits. And a tweet covered in an article on Breitbart (granted, not exactly an unbiased source) pointed out that CNN has a greater number of Democrat viewers than it does Republican (caveat: though that sounds true, I don’t know that it is).

Yet CNN reports that Pence only “edges” Kaine! Wouldn’t a one percentage point win, maybe a two percentage point win, be an “edging”. How does six percentage points constitute an edging?

When CNN and other media report that Hillary leads Donald in the polls by 48 to 42 percent, or something similar, do they say “edges”? Or do they say Hillary leads Trump decisively in the polls? Or Hillary’s lead over Trump is outside the margin of error? Or do they say Hillary is almost at 50% and Trump can’t get beyond 42%; unless he gets beyond 42%, he’s screwed? Or do they say Hillary’s at 270 electoral votes even though she is NOT because not a single vote has been cast?

Just amazing. And just one of the reasons CNN is known as the Clinton News Network. She doesn’t stumble because she’s infirm; Hillary loses her balance because a current of air slams into her head, catching her by surprise! I’m just mocking. They didn’t actually report that. At least, I don’t think they did.

I read up recently on some of the history of Elizabeth Warren’s claim to be Cherokee and Delaware Indian. The falsehoods reported by lying news writers astounded me. Even The New York Times stated Warren was 1/32 Cherokee and thus met the requirements to be part of that tribe. False! The Boston Globe and other outlets defended her claim by citing bogus evidence that supposedly grounded her claim in genetic investigation. False! The Globe had to print a correction. Ha! Harvard University itself accepted her claim without vetting and touted her unproven Native Americanness.

You can’t prove a negative, so no proof exists that Warren isn’t Cherokee. As genetic testing increases its accuracy, perhaps one day it will prove or at least lend support for her claim of Native American ancestry.

The point isn’t a judgment on Warren, though maybe she should have prosecuted family stories about ancestry less vigorously in public. The point is the media lies. No longer are they a barometer for fact. It’s a free for all now, with every man for himself discovering the ingredients of truth.

It’s wearisome, but we the citizens have to keep peeling away the layers of bullshit the establishment elites and their media lackeys fling at us. Keep on your surgical masks and your gloves!

Lying, Two-face Politicians and Their Media Enablers

Listen to the politicians speak out of both sides of their mouths and the media let their utterances fly by in the air unchallenged.

The first offender: Mitt Romney. Mitt’s afflicted with his own rabid hypocrisy, more venal than Donald Trump’s rousing insults and remarks. Mitt campaigned openly for John Kasich in Ohio so the governor would win his home state and deny Donald Trump as many delegates as possible. At the time, Two-bit Mitt told his fellow American citizens in Ohio, “Unlike other people running, he has a real track record,” according to a New York Times article by Thomas Kaplan in its First Draft section posted on March 14. “He has the kind of record you want in Washington, and that’s why I’m convinced you’re going to do the right thing tomorrow.”

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/03/14/mitt-romney-campaigns-with-john-kasich-telling-ohioans-americas-counting-on-you/?_r=0

Romney’s “unlike other people running” clearly disqualified the other three candidates standing at the time because they lacked both sufficient experience and the quality of experience Kasich presented. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are freshmen senators; Donald Trump is a freshman politician but owns an extensive business resume littered with success.

Ohioans sponged up Romney’s false flattery and gave Kasich a plurality, though not a majority, of their votes, allowing him to gather all the state’s 66 delegates.

That was yesterday. It has been quite a different day since! Romney vomited this verbiage in Utah when he went to vote in what is now his home state: “I would have voted for him [Kasich] in Ohio. But a vote for Governor Kasich in future contests makes it extremely likely that Trumpism would prevail.”

That quote comes from a CNN article by Theodore Schleifer and posted on the news outlet’s website March 19.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/18/politics/mitt-romney-ted-cruz-utah/index.html

So much for Kasich being the only candidate with the needed quantity and quality of experience! Who’s the con artist, Mitt?

Kasich himself, as with the other candidates in this race, gorged himself on hypocrisy, too. Kasich has bashed Trump for his temporary ban on all foreign Muslims entering the United States as a tool to help prevent terrorism. Trump wants to institute effective vetting procedures first. The criticism by Kasich and others is that you can’t lump all Muslims together, though their scriptures call for them to act hatefully and violently against “infidels”.

So, did the candidates say the same thing when they presented themselves before the giant Jewish lobby, AIPAC? Did they decry individual Palestinians (and Israelis) who committed violent acts?

Naw! Spluttering about the American-Israeli relationship, Kasich asserted there was “a Palestinian culture of death.” He added the spark of Palestinian attacks on Israel was “a culture of hate that Palestinian Authority has promoted for 50 years.”

Granted, Kasich did not mention Islam, but what stands as the greatest influence on Palestinian culture? Certainly, sociological work is needed to make a scientific analysis, but can we not say that Islam provides a profound motivation to those who place their trust in it? What is the result of telling people over and over that God wants them to torture and kill the infidels and that failure to do so is itself apostasy?

Even Trump pandered to the AIPAC crowd. As an American, I was sickened. What is it exactly that America gets out of its relationship to Israel? Is not one of the causes of the Middle Eastern turmoil the creation of a Jewish state where none existed?

Much to say there is, if I may wax Yodaic, but such is fodder for another day.

Does Islam Promote Hate, Torture, and Murder?

Wittingly or not, Donald Trump has once more identified the prime issue in U.S. – Middle East relations and a key issue in both legal and illegal immigration.

In an interview with CNN Host Anderson Cooper, Trump stated frankly that he believes that Islam hates us. Below is my transcript of the initial question posed by Cooper, Trump’s response, Cooper’s clarifying question, and Trump’s added response:

COOPER: “Do you think Islam is at war with the West?”

TRUMP: “I think Islam hates us. There’s something [pause], there’s something there tha- that is a tremendous hatred there. There is a tremendous hatred there. We have to get to the bottom of it. There is an unbelievable hatred of us.” [Trump begins another word but Cooper interrupts to ask his qualifying question based on Trump’s last sentence.]

COOPER: “In Islam itself?”

TRUMP: “You’re going to have to figure that out, okay? You’ll get another Pulitzer [Prize for Journalism], right? But you’re going to have to figure that out. But there is a tremendous hatred. And we have to be very vigilant. We have to be very careful, and we can’t allow people coming in to this country who have this hatred of the United States and- and- and of people who are not Muslim.”

COOPER: [After initially talking over Trump’s last sentence]: I guess the question is, is there a war between the West and radical Islam, or is there a war between the West and Islam itself?”

TRUMP [After stopping the start of his answer to Cooper’s last question before Cooper had finished asking it]: “It’s radical, but it’s very hard to define. It’s very hard to- to separate because you don’t know who’s who.”

The buzzards of political correctness are once again putting us at risk and vilifying Trump for what they consider a bigoted and divisive statement. Trump’s statement comes on the heels of his proposal to temporarily ban all Muslim entry into the United States until effective vetting procedures are established.

Lost in such derision lies the fact that many, if not perhaps an overwhelming majority, of Americans get the same impression. The media itself has reported constantly since Iran took American hostages in the late 1970s the remarks of a variety of Islamic leaders and protesters pronouncing, shouting, or holding high banners that proclaim the United States is “the Great Satan”, “Death to America”, “Behead Those Who Insult Islam”.

Protesters in the Middle East have burned the flag of the United States repeatedly. News Reports have shown or revealed to Americans and Westerners cruel acts of ritual mutilation of female genitalia, the rape and or molestation of women and young children, the senseless brutalizing of al Quaeda and ISIS victims, beheadings of innocent people and children, including many Westerners, sneak attacks and bombings of school buses and stores and other public places, endlesss wars, and cruel genocides of Christians.

Buddhists aren’t committing these acts against Americans or the West. Confucians are committing these acts against them. Hindus aren’t committing these acts against them. Atheists aren’t committing these acts against them, etc.

In vilifying Trump, the media, politicians, and pundits vilify Americans: we who observe the same difficulty and think and speak frankly. They not only stifle free speech, they stifle and manipulate the natural thoughts and feelings that arise from witnessing such empirical realities. We begin to throttle the natural course of human feeling and reasoning within ourselves because we are told it’s inappropriate, wrong, and un-American. When that doesn’t work, the political correctors create “hate” laws to make sure they suppress free expression. It’s like Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Most importantly, we lose sight of the identification of the problem, the resolution of it, and of the affirmation of our Americanness.

Americans stand for liberty. Therefore, we stand against those who oppose liberty and who would do violence to our foundational principle of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If our Founding Fathers waged war against the tyranny of the Mother Country, how much more should we, receiving the torch they have passed on to us, wage war against those who seek our personal destruction, the destruction of our faith, in whatever that may be, and the destruction of liberty?

So the specific identification that needs to be made, and to which Trump spoke in his interview, is what lies in Islam that plays a role for so many of its adherents, actively or passively, to hate Westerners, and Americans in particular, and to incite Muslims to a savage frenzy. There may be other, contributing factors to their displeasure. At the root, however, is there something essential to Islam that breeds fanatical hatred in its followers?

The unwillingness to deal with this question riles American citizens who have heard or read that The Koran is littered with core religious tenets that promote hatred and violence against Americans, Westerners, and non-Muslims generally.

I have written previously that one may perform a DuckDuckGo search of “verses of violence in The Koran” to find reliable websites that can help answer that question. I will offer just a few below for the readers’ consideration.

I own a Penguin Classics edition of The Koran, translated by N. J. Dawood, an Iraqi Jew born in Baghdad who became a translator of Arabic classics like The Koran and the Thousand and One Nights. The edition I own is from 1999, contains an introduction, a note to the general reader, a chronology of events in Muhammad’s life, the main text of 114 chapters or surahs, some of which are less than a page long and others longer, some notes, and an index.

Keeping in mind the difficulties inherent in translation and the context of what is written, the sitz-im-leben of the author/speaker and any intervening redactors, I will attempt to present some verses honestly and accurately.

I do not condemn any person who thinks differently from me; as a freeman, I reserve the right to condemn actions that threaten, harm, or destroy the lives of me and my fellow citizens, and I make no apology for that. Elected and appointed officials owe Americans a duty to protect them, to consider and promote their interests and well-being before those of any others. That’s the basis for and the purpose of the formation of our American government.

So, when Trump states “I think Islam hates us” and that “there is a tremendous hatred there”, is he correct?

This is from the chapter called “The Spoils” and begins at what is marked 8:12 through about 8:16:

God revealed his will to the angels, saying, “I shall be with you. Give courage to the believers. I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads! Strike off the very tips of their fingers!”

That was because they defied God and his apostle. He that defies God and his apostle shall be sternly punished by God. We said to them, “Taste this. The scourge of the Fire awaits the unbelievers.”

Believers, when you encounter the infidels on the march, do not turn your backs to them in flight. If anyone on that day turns his back to them, except for tactical reasons, or to join another band, he shall incur the wrath of God and Hell shall be his home, an evil fate.

It was not you, but God, who slew them.

Let’s break this down, admitting that with more knowledge and scholarship, our understanding may change.

First, because these verses reveal God’s will, they relieve the Muslim of moral responsibility for his actions. God directs the angels, who in turn encourage the believers. God casts terror into the hearts of infidels. The believer decapitates the infidels, but it is God who slays them.

Second, the objects of wrath deserve the terror and horrible deaths they receive. They are infidels in relation to Islam, kind of like a bed-hopping wife is an infidel in relation to her husband. Infidel comes from the Latin infidelis, “in” (not) “fidelis” (faithful). Contrast that with the Marine Corps. motto, semper fidelis, shortened to “semper fi”, always faithful. In the eyes of the Muslim, those who do not believe in Islam defy God and his apostle with their infidelity. Not only must the infidel taste horrible torture and slaughter here on Earth, he can expect more in the next life, where the scourge of the Fire waits to engulf him.

Third, failure to comply with the directive to torture and slaughter itself merits damnation. The only reason a Muslim should walk away from a fight is to regroup or to gain a tactical advantage. If he walks away for any other reason, he shall incur the wrath of God and Hell shall be his home.

Pretty strong stuff, eh?

So when Trump judiciously, if not grammatically, says that “Islam hates us”, he identifies a prime if murky problem for our representatives, one that is not helped or solved by the venom of the adherents of political correctness who terrorize our thought and speech and whose emotional instability propels them and the nation to rash judgment. Nor is it solved by pretending what The Koran says is not what The Koran says.

We should not avoid the problem out of fear, but we should engage in a healthy national debate. Do Muslims believe those verses are true, or do they now, in the 21^st century, reject them? Are the so-called radical Muslims really radical, or do they just believe exactly what The Koran says?

Those are essential questions.

We should address the problem honestly and openly and rationally and, when needed, with emphatic and successful military force, with the eye toward affirming and securing our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

Down with the buzzards of political correctness! Let’s answer the question of whether Islam fosters hate, torture, and murder. If the asnwer is affirmative, we take the appropriate actions that protect American citizens.

Don’t Let Them Make You Feel Guilty

Watching Morning Joe this Tuesday morning on MSNBC, I heard Joe Scarborough comment on the ridiculousness of some people and media outlets. Those people or media outlets, or both, had been taking snapshots of Donald Trump’s campaign rallies.

The snapshots were usually taken when Trump jocularly got the attendees at his rally to raise their right hand and take an oath to vote for him.Once the oath was done, Trump told his audience members they had to vote for him, then said they didn’t have to do that.

It’s just kind of a fun thing that Trump does, and the members of the audience seem to enjoy it. They are hooping and hollering all along.

However, the little vengeful ones, the establishment lackeys, Romney’s Robots, have been using the snapshots to describe a “Hitler-like salute” as Trump holds a fascist or white supremacist rally.

The effort comes on the heels of a Saturday Night Live skit that portrayed all Trump supporters as swastika-wearing white supremacists.

Frankly, it is part of an alarming, chilling effort to discredit people who have legitimate political, economic, and cultural concerns about this country, and effort to shame them into voting for the candidate the discreditors want them to elect.

Call it mind manipulation.

Mitt Romney shoulders much of the responsibility for this turn (although the liberal media was happy to push it on) after he spat his venom against Trump and, by implication, his supporters, with his unChristian harangue last Thursday.

Like a self-righteous coward, Romney hurled rocks at Trump, hoping to kill his candidacy. Romney is an elitist who refuses to allow the establishment to lose its iron grip on the Republican Party and on what he defines as conservative.

Envy had something to do with it, too. Romney greened as he saw Trump’s astonishing successes. He did not want Trump to succeed where he, Romney, had failed so miserably.

Among Romney, the Republican establishment cartel, and the liberal media abides a desire to paint hardworking white people, and any race or ethnicity that joins them, as fascist or white supremacist. It is in a way funny, because in the clip Morning Joe showed were black people at the Trump rally raising their hands to take the oath.

Facts never get in the way of media fiction, however, and the effort is charging ahead full steam to discredit Trump’s campaign and his supporters as fascists or white supremacists.

Don’t let them shame you! You have nothing of which to be ashamed. Don’t let them make you feel guilty! You have nothing about which to feel guilty.

Increasingly in this country it seems like white people – and it probably isn’t accurate to use that phrase – are being derided for looking at life through the Anglo-Saxon lens, even though that is our heritage and the foundation for our country.

I am half Hispanic and half Celtic, and I may have a touch of Jewish in me by way of my Spanish side. So I am quite diverse in myself. I am sure there are other “whites” or members of other races or ethnicities who could say they are even more diverse. Tiger Woods used to say he was a “Cablinasian”: a mix of caucasian, black, and asian heritage.

I am proud of what I am. But I am also proud of my country’s Anglo-Saxon influence, and while that influence has been and can be seasoned by other cultures or subcultures, I hope it remains the predominant influence.

Yet that influence and the people who represent it are savaged for being themselves and for standing up for this country, these United States, born of Great Britain and her Christian beliefs and rationalist philosophy.

When they want immigration laws enforced and borders secured, they are called fascist. When they want to temporarily ban entry to the country by Muslims, the group that generally spawns and supports terrorists, until effective vetting procedures are created and put into place, they are called racist or white supremacist. If you are pro-life, you want to trample on women.

Romney, the Republican establishment cartel, and the liberal media employ the rhetoric of extremism. A fellow citizen disagrees with a liberal or a Romneyan, so he shames him into agreement. Paint him as a Nazi, or a closet member of the Klan, or as a “throwback” to all that was evil in this country and in the world. Condemn his frank speech, because it is impossible to condemn the wisdom of the policies proposed.

Once shamed, the fellow citizen shuts up, and the members of the establishment on both sides, Republican and Democrat, get opposition out of the way and get what they want, which is to maintain control.

Don’t fall for it. You aren’t a Nazi or fascist or white supremacist or whatever because you support Trump, or even Cruz, who would probably be getting the brunt of the attacks if he were in the lead.

You aren’t evil because you see life through an Anglo-Saxon lens. Just the opposite. Be proud of what our heritage has accomplished, which means even if you aren’t Anglo-Saxon, you can be proud of that national heritage and make it yours. (That’s what integration was supposed to be about.) It’s what makes us American.

Deliberate Subjectivity

News reporting continues its slide into partisanship and deliberate subjectivity.

Many media outlets reported that Fox News won the ratings war over Donald Trump because more people watched the debate than watched Trump’s event for veterans, thus generating a conclusion such as Fox News did not need Donald Trump to earn high ratings or Trump failed to punish the network for its failure to remove Megyn Kelly from her position as moderator.

Such reporting propped up red herrings for readers, viewers, and listeners. Trump’s event to obtain donations for our war veterans was not a scheduled program and was only “covered” intermittently during the debate by Fox competitors MSNBC and CNN.

A comparison of the ratings for Thursday’s last debate before the Iowa caucuses and previous debates on Fox and on other networks provides the ratings gauge. In that regard, Fox News scored an audience of 12.5 million, almost half of what it had for its first Republican debate. The Jan. 28 debate earned the second lowest rating of all the debates on all the networks.

You decide what impact Trump’s dumping of the debate had on Fox News.

Is Megyn Kelly unfair? She did not have Trump to zero in on at Thursday’s debate, so she provided montages of flip flops by two candidates: Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Why montages of only those two? When we will see and hear tough questioning of Jeb Bush after montages of his stripping teachers of their rights in Florida, his government intrusion into the Terry Schiavo case, and his throwing brother George under the bus on Iraq, even as he painted a warm fuzzy about him at Thursday’s debate? The establishment certainly has its preferences, doesn’t it? Are Fox News and Megyn Kelly merely an arm of the establishment?

Why do Jeb Bush and some other Republicans and many Democrats keep insisting that Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the country is bigoted, wrong, and won’t succeed? The duty of the president is to protect Americans. Banning the entry of a group of people who have spawned tens of thousands, if not millions, of terrorists who want to murder and destroy Americans and America cannot be considered bigotry, and thus wrong, because it is designed to protect Americans temporarily until effective vetting procedures can be created and applied.

When Bush or others object on the grounds that such a ban will prevent a common effort with Muslim countries to extinguish ISIS, he both leads away from the first objective (keeping terrorists out of these United States) and props up a false condition for an alliance: Muslim countries will not join us if we ban Muslims temporarily.

Muslim countries will join a United States led effort to eradicate ISIS because it is in their interest to prevent a reign of bloody terror in their own countries by ISIS and having ISIS take over their countries. In fact, even without the U.S. leading, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, for instance, are fighting the ISIS terrorists at the southern end of the Arabian peninsula.