Friday, September 28, 2018

Flake Lives Up to His Name

Yes, Flake flaked out.

Two posts ago I presented my views on the kerfuffle the Democrats have created around what should have been simply the confirmation of a new associate justice to the Supreme Court, basically turning it into a cesspool for purely partisan "gain."

That and the fact that the media has been burying us for days in an avalanche of more partisan Kavanaugh reporting is the reason I won't bother recapping.

Instead, I will say that, after the delayed confirmation was approved on the more than expected 11-10 party line vote, Sen. Flake, rather than bring it right to a vote by the entire Senate, bent to the will of the Fine Steen and pushed back the vote yet another week to have the FBI conduct a completely pointless "investigation" that will undoubtedly yield no additional information.

Meanwhile, Brett Kavanaugh and his family have to wait another week before, hopefully, the nightmare is finally over.

And believe me, for a church-going and very wholesome Christian family like the Kavanaughs apparently are, this ordeal has to be a nightmare.

This is a prime example of why, while I am very much against what today's version of the Democrats are doing to this country, I am not a registered Republican, either, haven't been since 2006.

Between January of 1995 and January of 2007, the Republicans held a stronger majority in both the House and Senate. Twelve years. Between January of 2001 and January of 2009 there was also a Republican president. Six years of a combined Congressional majority and same party president, and after the smoke cleared, the country had moved farther to the left.

This has very little to do with the will of the people, it has a great deal to do with the character of the politicians that the bulk of Republican voters keep sending to Congress and keep reelecting.

The Democrats no longer represent the American working class, they are hand-in- glove with elitist "progressives" who are, for the most part, wealthier than middle class. These people are, because they are more expensively educated and better "heeled," are in all too many cases  self-styled intellectuals who believe that members of their "enlightened" club are far more qualified to determine what is best for the rest of us.

This is where the leftists come into the picture.

These are well financed groups as well as individuals whose goal is to take down the American behemoth, render our Constitution moot and ease this great country, using the boiling frog method, into the arms of socialism.

Our gullible (Lenin called them "useful idiots") liberals, er, "progressives," were and are an easy sell for the leftists and at the same time, Democrat politicians, in fact the entire party structure, were and are taking large campaign contributions from the left.

Despite all the noble words heaped upon them by colleagues after they die, career politicians are, to get right down to it, whores. They take someone's money...

...and they have to sing for their supper.

The worst mix of leftist propaganda is the combination derived from said input and money with the liberal elitists who are most entrenched in the Democratic Party, already rich politicians like Nancy Pelosi or the Fine Steen.

The frog in their collective pot has mostly come to a boil. America is mired in destructive identity politics, our moral fabric has been badly frayed and the left, consisting now of the "progressives," the far left and bought & paid for Democrat politicians are attacking every American institution, fighting tooth and nail against every common sense policy and idea that presents itself.

The media is right there with them, lying to us just as the Democrats, from Obama to Pelosi to Hillary Clinton to the Fine Steen are lying to us, fighting desperately to either eliminate or belittle the positive changes the Trump Presidency has been overseeing, playing the filthiest and most dishonorable politics in the history of our country.

And the Republicans?

They, too, are whores, but unfortunately they are weak, rubber spined, gutless whores who, not wanting to offend anybody who might vote for them, are easily bullied by the Democrats.

All a Democrat has to do is call any Republican a "racist," a "facist," any kind of a "phobe" and that Republican instantly becomes the Democrat's snivelling, boot licking ass boy. What a way to win a war, just call the enemy names and surrender is imminent.

What I find most disturbing about them is that these Republicans are not stupid, all of them know the stakes at this stage of the game, yet they love their lifestyles and their status more than they love their country or give a damn about the people back home who elected and reelected their sorry carcasses.

So they aren't as willing to fight against what the Democratic Party has in store for us as the Democrats are willing to fight them, and by extension, us.

We, the People.

Anyone who has been paying attention should realize what's at stake. The folks on the left have given us fair and blatant warning:

An end to U.S. sovereignty via wide open borders/ sanctuary cities and states, unmitigated kowtowing to a U.N. that holds anything but an America First agenda at heart, rewriting most of the Bill of Rights to our detriment, including the rights to freedom of religion and the presumption of innocence, treating the taxpayers like an ATM while enacting socialist policies that will further degrade personal ambition, drive employers back offshore between suffocating taxation and regulation; They will preside over increases in crime and racial tensions, an education system deteriorating even further than it has, a weaker military and an open season for the corrupt.

We have already seen how the Democrats turned a blind eye to Hillary Clinton's corruption as Secretary of State, from her pay to play hijinx to the Uranium One episode, the way the Obama Adyministration dragged the Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA under its shameless umbrella of corruption as they gave Hillary Clinton a free pass on her email server "discrepancy" and illegally fabricated a Russia Collusion smear against President Trump that for some reason hasn't yet gone away.

We saw how Obama's first Attorney General, Eric Holder, managed to skate on the issue of his culpability for the "Fast and Furious" debacle, how Hillary's totally inexcusable Benghazi tragedy was simply swept under a rug by the Democrats, so that later she wasn't even criticized by her fellow Democrats when she said of the Benghazi affair, "At this point, what does it matter?"

We saw the "Affordable Healthcare Act," in which Obama said, "You can keep your health insurance" and later millions of working/middle class families lost their insurance because ObamaCare drove insurers' costs up astronomically. Before the vote, then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had said, "You have to vote for it to know what's in it."

We saw President Obama sign an agreement, without obtaining the required Congressional approval, called the "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action," JCPOA, that put a mere sunset clause on Iranian abandonment of their aggressive nuclear ambitions while bankrolling the ayatollah and friends with more than enough money, hard U.S. cash, to foment terrorism and insurrection throughout the Middle East and points south while their  citizens we're going hungry.

Then we saw Obama's other award winning secretary of state, John Kerry, acting as a "private citizen," travelling to Tehran to try and undermine President Trump's withdrawal from the bad deal. That was essentially treason, but the Democrats (and the liberal media) were completely silent about it.

Now, having said all of the above, think about this:

Having demonstrated that corruption doesn't bother them as long as another Democrat is involved and seeing the mess that socialism had made of certain other countries that were previously doing quite well and seeing also how corruption and oppression of those who disagree with the party in charge are part and parcel of a socialist government, coupled with what the Democrats have been up to, why would any American want to see that party come out on top? I mean last time I looked we were a capitalist republic, not a masochistic republic.

Which brings us back to the Republican Party. 

What are those people doing? Bringing a knife to a gunfight? Attempting to follow Queensbury rules in a street fight?

The Tea Party, whose people saw where things were going, had the right idea: Vote out ineffective or "lite" Republicans and elect candidates who would get up on their hind legs and fight for the principles that made America the greatest and most unique nation in history.

Once the Tea Party helped secure a new majority for the party, the establishment Republican politicians viewed them as a threat and shoved them aside.

Maybe we need the Tea Party back in full strength. Between them and President Trump, we could send the leftists back under the stone from whence they came and continue restoring America to the peak of greatness.

A Comment on the Anarchy Issue

In my last post I mentioned that I see Kalifornia as, because of the essentially "nothing too left" political environment, very likely headed for near total anarchy.

I see the Democrats, who are forever moving farther from American norms and more toward the totalitarian left, as being complicit, wittingly or unwittingly, with entities like George Soros who want to push us as far to port as they can.

Most of these are citizens who vote for Democrats because they've always voted for Democrats.. It's how they vote, period.

Many of the rest are what Lenin called western liberals: "useful idiots."

These are the ones the voters put and keep eternally in office, and the wealthy liberal elitists who, as a collective, are clueless as to where this all can lead.

If you've ever read The Scarlet Pimpernel, which is set during the French Revolution, remember all those hundreds of people the common, rank and file Frenchmen we're beheading on the guillotine?

Those were these same liberal elitists, only in another country in another time.

Now, while I'd be the last person to suggest that anyone deserves to be thusly dispatched, or even harrassed for their political beliefs, I will say that they are actually very silly fools.

Why?

For one thing, this plunge into anarchy that is inevitable if we continue using illegal immigration as a political football instead of the threat it actually is from the standpoints of both economic considerations and public safety.

If we don't do something about the homelessness crisis, the opioid crisis...
...and it's not only a problem with opioids,  in Kalifornia there are meth heads running amok in cities like Los Angeles, Santa Monica, San Francisco... Used needles laying around on sidewalks, feces as well, raggedy tents lining city blocks, and a large percentage of the drugs being purchased on the street is financed by the taxpayer.

How?

Thousands of young people in their twenties and thirties, living on the streets, collecting welfare or Social Security disability and buying little other than illegal drugs, spending their monthly incomes in less than a week, then panhandling, shoplifting or whatever else they need to do to obtain their crank, crack or other contraband substances.

The social security administration doles out disability to non-disabled, "just lazy" or "too busy partying to be bothered with work" types.

Local liberal politicians ensure that their police forces "go easy" on such people.

Why?

Because, like all the other deviations from the norms, it adds to the anarchy.

Here is the problem with these leftists' lines of reasoning.

The purpose of creating a state of anarchy in a country is to eventually drive the masses to declare "enough is enough!" and demand that the government take control and rid society of the lawlessness.

In that way, a government can take control with the tacit approval of the people to take "extraordinary measures" to instill security and peace...

The government turns totalitarian, and by the time the people realize what they've allowed to happen, it's too late.

As is always the case with the left wing, like today's Democrats, they never take things like human nature or ultimate costs into account when they make plans for our future.

This is why I think they're collectively as dumb as a box of rocks.

What they don't get is that unlike in the past, "the people" in this case are not peasants of old. They, we, are Americans who would fight before we would submit to the kind of government the left wants to foist on us.

Unfortunately, when we reach the point where the left wants to take us, we would be in a state of complete ruin as a nation.

Jerry Brown Drops a Jaw or Two

I was surprised when I learned that generally left wing, pro-sanctuary state Kalifornia Governor Jerry Brown has vetoed SB 174, a bill that, had he signed it, would have made it legal for illegal aliens to serve on local boards, among other civil venues, and would have prohibited federal authorities from making arrests in Kalifornia court houses.

Jerry Brown, of all people!

More astounding, he gave as his primary reason that "I believe existing law, which requires citizenship for these forms of public service, is the better path."

For Brown to say that is nothing short of pure serendipity.

The Golden State is, in various places, enough of a mess as it is, but the way the left wingers here never seem to consider that maybe they've gone far enough, Kalifornia may one day soon descend into an abyss of pure, unmitigated anarchy.

It's nice to see this one sliver of common sense manifesting itself in the extremely wayward politics of Kalifornia.

The Kavanaugh Fiasco

Hopefully, this profoundly disgraceful chapter in the annals of the so-called "Resistance" is finally over and the Senate will finally return to the process leading to the confirmation of an eminently qualified judge to the Supreme Court.

It's really kind of tragic that the party I grew up in hasn't grown up as well. It's worse that they have grown to display so much contempt for not only the letter of the Constitution and any pride in being Americans, but also for concepts that are vital elements of the fabric that makes our country both unique and truly great.

Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the rule of law, civility...

None of these concepts apply to today's Democrats, just as unbiased, truthful reporting no longer applies to the liberal mainstream media.

This is not the first time the Democratic Party has employed drummed up sexual allegations to eliminate someone whose honorable and patriotic worldview didn't conform to theirs.

Remember when David "dirty deeds done dirt cheap" Axelrod falsely smeared 2012 Republican primary candidate Herman Cain? That was done because the last person Barack Obama needed running against him was a mega-successful black man who had grown up poor in the Jim Crow south.

The timing and details involved in the three attempts by the Democrats to destroy Brett Kavanaugh's reputation, career and family life were so obvious, to anyone who thought about it, as to show us "average Americans" how little respect they have for our intelligence.

The Fine Steen and her cohorts have also shown us how little respect they have for the overall process of confirming an associate justice to the highest court in the land.

I watched Judge Kavanaugh give his very strong, sincere testimony before the committee today, and whenever the face of Dianne Feinstein came on camera, you could see nothing there but pure evil.

Like everything else that these people have made a mockery of, they've now politically weaponized the Me Too movement.

These are people who are so despicably bent on taking control of our government and imposing a new order that any true, liberty loving American will not like even one bit.

They have shown themselves of late to oppose virtually every concept of American sensibility, love of country and morality.

I fervently hope that the majority of voting Americans realize what's very definitely at stake, at this point in time, when they go to the polls in November.

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Music

My tastes in contemporary music, with a few early 1980s exceptions, are mostly from the Progressive Rock genre:

Yes, Focus, early Genesis (with Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett), Triumvirat, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, Mystery, Asia, Druid  and of course, Renaissance.

I'm also a fan of the Marshall Tucker Band, the Allman Brothers, Charlie Daniels, 1970s-80s Country and Cajun Zydeco music, accordions, washboards, fiddle and all...

Some say the latter is an acquired taste, but having spent a lot of time in New Orleans, I've had a lot of exposure to it and have a few favorites, like Fontenot and Buckwheat Zydeco as well as great club bands such as one I was partial to years ago called Mamou.

Then there are some fellow old folks, at least two of whom are unfortunately deceased; Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, Peter, Paul and Mary...

... and I've downloaded some Bach, Handel and Mozart, three of my favorite Classical composers, though I'm having trouble trying to get a Corelli download I want.

Life's tough, what can I say?

Having lost a phone recently, I've been  downloading a lot of replacement music into my new Motorola, which Metro PCS gave me a generous upgrade on, the new one also coming equipped with 16 gigs of storage space, most of which is already filled with downloaded music, and I haven't yet added an SD card.

I have no qualms about downloading free, since virtually every album is one I've previously purchased in more than one form: vinyl, then cassette, then CD and most through venues like defunct Yahoo! Music.

I haven't yet found any music newer than the mid 1980s that has appealed to me in the slightest.

When I was in my preadolescent years, I was exposed to quite a bit of live opera as well, but the only one I can say that I came away enjoying, for the songs, orchestration and the story, was Carmen.

Even then, the only version I'd really want to own is a filmed BBC version, conducted by Zubin Mehta, in which the awesome Maria Ewing sings Carmen. So far, I've been unable to find it, and then mostly in pieces on YouTube, and the volume of the video is somewhat lower than I'd like.

Since I tend to do a lot of traveling and a lot of getting around wherever I happen to be, my phone is a combination communications tool, office, internet access/ reference library, filing cabinet, entertainment center and work space all rolled into one, and I'm still learning how to use everything I need to, being as I am...

...an analog man in a digital world.

Thursday, September 20, 2018

A Line of Thought

After the first Republican primary debate going into the 2016 elections I was 100% sure that "The Donald" was not only going to win in the primaries, but that he was going to be the next president.

Why? you ask.

Because, I answer...

... Ever since the so-called "Bush Derangement Syndrome" plague of 2000 to 2008, much has occurred in the realm of the Democratic Party.

While they had become gradually more difficult to maintain any kind of balance with after Gore lost to Bush , balance meaning openness to realistic negotiation based on the fruits of mutual respectful discourse, under the Obama Administration they soared to new heights of what any of America's founders probably would have considered heart wrenching, an unmitigated "our way or the highway" approach to politics.

In 2006, after the Democrats had won both the House and Senate majorities, Nancy Pelosi famously told the GOP, "We have the majority now, we don't have to listen to you anymore!"

Those of us who paid attention saw the Democrats, who comprise leadership of our education system from Kindergarten through most of our Universities, the lion's share of the media, the entertainment industry and the high tech sector, which in turn, today, controls vast social media.

We have seen all these mediums become highly political in a leftward direction, seen them actually edging out or, in the case of search engines, back burnering URLs expressing conservative opinion or even reporting or discussing anything that might disparage any aspect or member of the Democratic Party.

We have seen college students, politically indoctrinated by their professors and their high school teachers before them, engaging in violently obstreperous behavior in an effort to deny conservative speakers to express their opinions on campus.

We have seen the First Amendment rights of religious individuals and groups violated because today's Democrats are not exactly representative of the rights to practice ones religion or freedom of speech that doesn't agree with their own doctrine.

We have, most disconcerting I think, a Democratic Party that has forsaken its responsibility to uphold or even respect the Constitution which, through thick and thin, has been the sole reason this country is so rich and so powerful, and a country that people from all over the world aspire to immigrate to. Yet there is a huge spoiled class in this country, young people who take everything they have been blessed with for granted and yearn for a socialism whose track record they don't even  stop to consider. We are a great and successful nation because we are a capitalist republic. These young people need, seriously, to stop contemplating their navels and begin contemplating that there might be a valid reason that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin referred to Western liberals as "useful idiots."

Maybe they see it as a nuance issue. They think Lenin was "just kidding." Yeah, he was a great guy, just folks, y'know.

Reminds me of President Obama sending pallets of greenbacks to Iran while the ayatollah and president gleefully shouted "Death to America!"

Otherwise, we'd seen an awful lot of corruption and miscellaneous malfeasance moving right along during the Obama years, unpunished, unchecked and to all intents and purposes ignored by the "progressive" mainstream media.

We had seen what was, for most Americans living, working, raising families in the non- coastal, non wealthy and non- liberal elitist necks of the woods, more than enough to decide they could no longer stomach Obama's vaunted "change "

Now we come to the Republicans, whose own shortcomings can be listed in much less space.

They haven't yet learned, and these are supposed to be smart people, that nice guys definitely do finish last in light of the climate today's Democrats have brought to Washington. They play the moral, reasoned gentleman or woman role, Marquis of Queensbury rules, while their Democrat colleagues sucker punch them  and kick them in the groin.

That all said, one of the bi-products of the Republican spine softening was that the political predators on the left, not only elected officials but also entrenched bureaucrats, were unhindered in their pursuit of bringing to fruition ideals whose effect was detrimental to millions of Americans, both financially and in aspects of their individual liberty.

And the Republicans just sat there and let it all happen, like quivering children afraid to anger the schoolyard bully.

The American people were, for the most part, tired of a government that ignored most of them unless it was tax time or someone needed their vote.

On the dais during the primary debates, most of the lineup looked, spoke and acted exactly like "business as usual," same politicians, same demeanors, same empty promises...

...and then there was Trump. Plain spoken, witty, addressing problems that voters care about...

The fact of his being a builder and an employer instead of some lawyer or a useless "Political Science" PhD.

He was what most Americans had been wishing for; an actual achiever, a can-do type who would do more than just talk about getting things done.

I knew that I was looking at not only the candidate who would get the Republican nomination, and that was a done deal for the general election because the Democrats were putting up either their socialist, Bernie Sanders, or their corrupt, business as usual Teflon® lady, Hillary Clinton, neither one of whom could beat a force of pure energy like Trump, who had sworn to drain the swamp, create jobs through tax reform, appoint Constitution respecting justices to the Supreme Court and do what he was going to do despite political considerations.

Hillary Clinton and the DNC literally cheated Sanders out of the Democratic Party nomination, not that it mattered.

They, together with the media and scores of talking heads "established" that Trump would be badly thrashed in the election so that the prevailing wisdom was that come January of 2017, Hillary was going to be in the White House, this time with Bill as First Man.

Throughout the campaign season, I maintained that I knew Trump was going to win... Which he did...

...and the Democrats went berserk!