April 2019 Archives

An anti-Trump cabal in the American government played the media for fools for the past three years, and journalists can't stop patting themselves on the back.

The Mueller report makes clear reporters were sold wolf whistles over and over, led by reams of unnamed official sources who urged them to see meaning in meaningless things and assume connections that weren't there. ...

More than anything, reporters should be furious at the many sources close to the various investigations who (it now seems clear) must have known pretty early there were serious holes in many areas of this story, and that a lot of these "dots" were dead ends, but didn't warn their press counterparts. For instance, the papers should be mad those who supposedly had misgivings about the Steele report didn't warn them earlier.

But they're not mad, which makes it look like a case of intentional blindness, in which eyes and ears were shut among other things because the Trump-Russia conspiracy tale made a ton of money. Media companies earned boffo ratings while the Mueller probe still carried the drama of a potential spectacular ending, with blue-state audiences eating up all those "walls are closing in" hot takes.

This fiasco will surely end up being a net plus for Trump. The obstruction parts of the report make him look like a brainless goon and thug, but the absence of what Mueller repeatedly calls "underlying crime" make his ravings about an elitist mob out to get him look justified. This is not an easy thing to achieve, but we're there, and the press is a big part of that picture.

Politicians use this sentence to express general agreement with an idea while maintaining plausible deniability in case the idea becomes unpopular.

It's not just voting voting rights for terrorists. Saying you're willing to "have a conversation" about any issue is implicit support for the underlying idea. The only question is whether you believe it's politically feasible. Would Harris have a conversation about legalizing fully automatic firearms? Of course not. Would she be open to having a conversation about banning post-20-week abortions? No. Harris won't even have a conversation about banning post-abortion abortions. Any deviation from wild-eyed progressivism has the potential to brand you a heretic in this environment.

Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have been the leading instigators of this dynamic, but they're not alone. It's a group effort. Every time a candidacy lags, the contender will offer a new attention-grabbing plan to confiscate wealth for some socialistic policy proposal. Want to form a commission to develop slavery reparations proposals? Let's have a conversation. "Free college?" Let's talk. Nationalize the entire health care industry? Let's start a dialogue. You want to pass a law that guarantees every American a job? Yep, let's huddle on it.

How about a plan that eliminates all fossil fuel energy production, the lifeblood of American industry and life, and replace them with windmills, bicycles, and choo choo trains? Nearly every Democratic Party presidential hopeful--including Harris, Sanders, Warren, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Julián Castro, and Beto O'Rourke--says we need to get a conversation going.

The underlying issue at the moment is that the Democrat party has been captured by radicals who won't tolerate compromise. Democrat politicians need to pander to radical zealotry without sabotaging their chances in the general election. This dilemma presents an opportunity for triangulation by Republicans.

At this point, Republicans should figure out ways to pose questions to Democrats in public and stimulate extremist contagion: Do you support allowing non-citizens voting rights? Do you believe all abortions should be paid for by taxpayers? Do you believe that border walls should be torn down? Do you think it would be okay for presidents to unilaterally institute bans on fossil fuels to save the earth if Republicans had "refused to act"?

Wow, I love this euphemism! Government agencies don't break the law, they simply under-comply!

Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Russell Vought is issuing new guidance to all agencies on complying with the Congressional Review Act, a 1996 law that requires "major" rules be submitted to Congress at least 60 days before they take effect.

A senior administration official told The Washington Times that the Trump administration has found, with Government Accountability Office reports, that "agencies sometimes under-comply with CRA."

"We decided that some additional guidance from OMB is necessary to the agencies to help them comply with the law," the official said in an exclusive interview. "Many agencies often don't know how the CRA works. Agencies often don't even know to ask."

I wonder how far a citizen would get with this approach? "Actually officer, I wasn't speeding, I was merely under-complying with the speed limit."

Anyway, good on President Trump for reining in these executive agencies.

Sometimes early Christianity is criticized for not explicitly condemning slavery or demanding its elimination, but instead "merely" recasting slaves as valuable to God and worthy of equal human dignity. I think this criticism is unfair for many reasons which I won't outline here. I want to highlight a verse that I recently discovered which does point to the inherent evil of slavery, surprisingly from the book of Revelation, chapter 18. The chapter is about the destruction of Babylon / Rome, and calls out all the evil people who are lamenting the loss of their nexus of sin. Skipping down to verse 11, we get to the merchants:

And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her [Babylon / Rome], since no one buys their cargo anymore, cargo of gold, silver, jewels, pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet cloth, all kinds of scented wood, all kinds of articles of ivory, all kinds of articles of costly wood, bronze, iron and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and slaves, that is, human souls.

The word "slave" there is sōma: "the body both of men or animals".

The word "soul" there is psychē: breath, life, soul, that in which there is life.

You can see the contrast. These vile merchants act as if they are trading mere bodies, without recognizing that the slaves are living souls created in the image of God. The cargoes that make up the majority of the paragraph are morally neutral: wood, metal, trinkets, treasures. Nothing inherently good or evil, until final words: you merchants buy and sell human souls.

The wealth of Rome was built on slavery, and the Bible identifies that evil and condemns it.

Mike Pence doesn't seem so paranoid anymore, does he?

On March 29, Democrat Lucy Flores accused former Vice President Joe Biden of acting inappropriately toward her in 2014 with an extended kiss on the back of her head. Biden, a probable candidate for the 2020 presidential election, has denied any wrongdoing, although he is known for treating women in an overly affectionate and sometimes downright creepy manner. At times, he steps over the line of decorum into the realm of the unwanted and awkward. This is common knowledge. ...

The vice president [Mike Pence] has very strict, personal standards concerning how he interacts with those of the opposite sex. Without a doubt, they leave no room for misconduct. By doing so, he respects women in general and most importantly, his wife, Karen. Despite the good that this personal code does, the media has run a campaign of ridicule that includes articles like How Pence's Dudely Dinners Hurt Women, Mike Pence poses biggest threat to women in a generation, say campaigners, Mike Pence's Marriage and the Beliefs That Keep Women from Power, and a piece from mid-March about a current Democratic candidate's feelings on the subject entitled Harris says it's 'outrageous' that Pence limits one-on-one meetings with women, just to name a few.

Apparently, respecting your wife and other women too much, enough to remove any past, present, or future doubts, is a bad, bad thing. In the #MeToo era, where there is a range of improper behavior on a scale of Biden to Weinstein, society at large could actually use more of Mike Pence's attitude. Shouldn't the absence of indecorous conduct be a thing to applaud?

I've written about Mike Pence and the Billy Graham rule before. It's important to always treat women (and men!) with respect, and it's also important to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

The CIA offers a sabotage guide for ordinary citizens who want to undermine their country in support of America. Here's a selection of tips from the link.

1. Managers and Supervisors: To lower morale and production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.
2. Employees: Work slowly. Think of ways to increase the number of movements needed to do your job: use a light hammer instead of a heavy one; try to make a small wrench do instead of a big one.
3. Organizations and Conferences: When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large and bureaucratic as possible. Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.
4. Telephone: At office, hotel and local telephone switchboards, delay putting calls through, give out wrong numbers, cut people off "accidentally," or forget to disconnect them so that the line cannot be used again.
5. Transportation: Make train travel as inconvenient as possible for enemy personnel. Issue two tickets for the same seat on a train in order to set up an "interesting" argument.

You can download the whole 40-page guide here.