What I Took Away from the First 2016 Presidential Debate

I listened to the whole debate last night… while I cleaned my kitchen and worked on my computer and wrote a response for my blog and…

I have a few opinions/observations that I’ll share.

1. I didn’t watch the debate; I just listened. And I understand a lot of deciding who wins or loses is in the visual cues of the candidates. By listening (or reading) you can only judge by substance.🙂 There wasn’t much of that from either side.
2. I think it was a tie. Didn’t hear any real decisive moments or quips from either side.
3. The moderator was terrible. But what do you expect from the likes of Lester Holt (a member of the Main Stream Media). The bias was obvious… again.

Moderator not Fact-Checker
My first complaint about Holt was his challenging of answers given by Donald Trump. He didn’t do that to Clinton… at all… not even once. If you want to challenge the candidate you do that at the beginning of the question and leave it at that. For example you say “Mr. Trump… in 2003 you said to Bob Reporter that you thought the Iraq invasion was a good idea, yet you claim you were against it from the beginning; how do you reconcile that?” And that’s it. You let the candidate answer and you say nothing else. YOU are the MODERATOR… NOT the on premise, off-the-cuff (Republican candidate only) FACT CHECKER. That is the responsibility of the other candidate and actual fact checkers parsing through the debate you are supposed to be moderating.

One problem with leftist moderator’s real-time fact checking is that they often get it wrong (just like in their “reporting”). Candy Crowley got it wrong when she corrected Romney (siding with Obama) regarding Benghazi; and the Obama administration’s failure to identify it as terror (instead of a demonstration gone bad). The error is then out there… and a correction is never offered.

Stop and Frisk
Lester Holt did the same thing last night by stating that “stop and frisk” had been found unconstitutional. What does that mean to you the listener? If I heard that, I would think that it is settled law across the land and it’s unconstitutional. It all gets back to the leftist definition of what “is” is.

Here are the facts…

U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled in 2013 that New York’s stop and frisk practices, were unconstitutional. Wow that settles it right? Well actually there are two key phrases that are important here (that are totally ignored by the left in order to give a false impression). First is “New York” and the second is “practices”. “Practices” legally means that the judge didn’t strike down stop and frisk in totality, but only stop and frisk as specifically practiced by this city (New York) at that time. This only applied to New York and supposedly the city could have tweaked the way they practiced the procedure and tried again… but we’re talking New York here now under a new leftist regime; so it just settled the case.

Now understand this, leftist Judge Scheindlin would have loved to have struck down stop and frisk overall, but she didn’t… she couldn’t. Why? Because her bosses’ a few rungs up the ladder had already ruled on that question long ago and that ruling still stands. The Supreme Court ruled in 1968 in “Terry v. Ohio” that stop and frisk was constitutional. The Supreme Court has even confirmed and expanded on that ruling in other cases since. Stop and frisk IS constitutional. Yes, it’s being attacked by leftist judges across the land in individual cases, but it remains legal overall. Hillary (and Lester Holt) would have you believe a lie based on a half-truth and that Trump is an idiot for not know that. And they are largely successful thanks to the professional and intellectual dishonesty of the press (from which moderators are chosen).

Guess what the news stories will say today (right after the debate)? They will say that Trump was wrong and that stop and frisk was found unconstitutional. They will concentrate on this minor leftist nut-job of a judge and go no further? Why would they? Doing so doesn’t fit their narrative. It all gets back to partial truth used to sell a lie. It all gets back to weasel words. It all gets back to what your definition of “is” is. It all gets back to the left; which includes the main stream media and presidential debate moderators being so good at deception. It’s their job after all.

Call Out Trump Check – Call Out Hillary
My second observation is that Lester Hold asked Trump specific questions about his support of the birther conspiracy, his tax returns, his bankruptcies, and his early support of the Iraq invasion. Good for Lester… totally valid and tough questions and topics.

For the record… Trump is totally guilty on the birther thing… but Trump is also right that Hillary’s minions (Blumenthal and others) started the whole thing. They use the fact that these minions were not officially tied to the campaign at the time to claim plausible deniability. Again we see lies based simply on what your definition of “is” is. That’s good enough for the MSM, who will push the Hillary hook, line, and sinker.

Back to the main point. Lester hammered Trump with some tough questions. Again, totally valid… So did Lester ask Hillary about Benghazi? Did Lester ask Hillary about her email servers? Did Lester ask Hillary about the Clinton Foundation and “pay for play”? Nope… not one word. Crickets. The only way Hillary faced any touch issues all night, was for Trump to bring it up. (And he did a terrible job of it.) The left is practically never held to the same level of scrutiny as the right. This debate (hell all debates) is no exception.

What I Got from the Debate
So what is the main thing I took away from the debate last night? Lester Holt is a leftist, biased, hack (as if there were any questions going in). If Trump was going to have to debate both Hillary and Lester, why not put him behind a podium on stage and officially remove the illusion of objectivity.

More So

On the election… I take exception with people to complain that Donald Trump is unqualified to be President.

Compared to what? The bozo we’ve had in office the last eight years? Barack Hussein Obama was THE most unqualified person to ever seek the office, and we ELECTED HIM TWICE!

Now the narrative is that we must choose Hillary Clinton, because she may be a cold, lying, b!tch… but she’s competent? Huh?

Take away the three previous (very accurate) adjectives and look at Hillary’s record of accomplishment. Name one. One? Where is the competence? Libya? Benghazi? Syria? Abandonment of Iraq? Russian Reset? Selling State Department access? Her insecure hidden e-mail server? White House travel Office? Whitewater? Cattle futures trading? Hillary care? (list lifted from WSJ comment)

Her only displayed competencies are in lying, covering up, and organized crime… and granted, she is good at it. But these “competencies” also disqualify her from ever holding public office… ANY public office… more so than pretty well anybody, including Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is unqualified to be President of the United States? That may be true, but there is no way to utter those words without being a hypocrite without IMMEDIATELY adding the following…

But Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are more so…

Quote of the Week: Going to a Place

The election is heating up with the first debate fast approaching (4 days away, Monday the 26th 2016). I have to admit that I’ll probably watch it… or at least have it on in the background while I work on my computer. Granted, I don’t know how long I’ll last. I expect to release an exasperated primordial scream at some point in time, and only hope I have the emotional control to turn off the TV… instead of shoot it (Didn’t Elvis do that?)

This brings me to the quote of the week… by Peggy Noonan (in the Wall Street Journal). She’s talking about her conversations with complete strangers about the Presidential election…

“Under the smiles and beyond the reticence it is clear how seriously Americans are taking their decision, how gravely. As if it’s not Tweedledum and Tweedledee but an actual choice between two vastly different dramas, two different worlds of outcome and meaning. The cynic or the screwball? Shall we go to the bad place or the crazy place?”

I’m still not sure where we’re going. Right now, you guys will have to let me know in November. I refuse to be a part of this.

Oh, I’ll vote. I’ve never missed a major election (and very few minor ones) and I never will as I draw breath. But I can’t see myself voting for either of the two party candidates. $#@^, I can’t even see myself voting for any of the top four or five party candidates. Gary Johnson (Libertarians), is a fiscal embarrassment by his party’s standards (and that would have been the only chance the Libertarians had to get my vote, me being a social/fiscal conservative in that order) WaserName (Green Party) is from the Green Party… enough said…

Right now (and this could change), I’m stuck between two write-in candidates; “None of the Above” or “Giant Meteor”. It’s going to be a game-day decision.

Lynn’s Pickup – Bumper Stickers

Drowning Your Own Child in the Name of Political Correctness

The New York Times recently published a piece by a parent who recently accepted/encouraged her son to become a trangendered girl. The article was titled “From He to She in First Grade“. It was supposed to be a feel-good, look how open-minded we are and how you should be story. Naturally that’s not what I got from this step by step progression. I got a story about society so degraded, that it not only accepts, but celebrates child abuse and neglect.

The (pretty well predictable) readers digest version of this tale of woe follows:
1. Parents buy chest of dress-up clothes
2. To encourage creativity they include female clothing. “we didn’t want his or his castmates’ creative output to be curtailed”
3. The boy gravitated to a particularly frilly dress.
4. The boy became fascinated with the dress. “He put on the sparkly green dress right away. In a sense, he never really took it off.”
5. The open minded parents allowed him to wear it at home and eventually in public. “Eventually he stopped changing out of it. He wore it to the grocery store and when he had friends over.”
6. This open display of their open-minded credentials stroked their leftist egos and sense of superiority. “My husband and I were never of the opinion that girls should not wear pants or climb trees or get dirty, or that boys should not have long hair or play with dolls or like pink, so the dress did not cause us undue alarm or worry.”
7. School was about to start though, so the parents fretted about what to do… they didn’t fret too long though… pausing in the middle of the road (rationality) before quickly turning left. “The former (letting the boy wear dresses to school) had the advantage of being fair, what we believed, and what would make our child happiest. The latter had the advantage of being much less fraught (with people who aren’t as superior and enlightened).” (Of course “happy” is relative to the here and now, vs the well being and development of the child as he progresses to adulthood. A child may be happy in the here and now if you let him play in the street… in the long run it may not be such a good idea. It’s called parenting.)
8. So they let the kid decide (which by general definition is really, really bad parenting) “So we asked him, ‘What do you think you’ll do with your dress when school starts in a couple weeks?’ We said: ‘You need new clothes for the new school year. What should we buy?'”
9. The kid chose dresses. (Receiving absolutely no guidance of outdated ideas of right or wrong from the parents.)
10. They prepared the kid for the troglodyte children. Asking “What do you think other kids will say tomorrow if you wear a dress to school?”
11. They made sure the teacher was a fellow leftist. “I hadn’t met his new teacher yet, so I sent her a heads-up by email… She emailed back right away, unfazed, and she promised to support our child ‘no matter what.'” (She was leftist, otherwise this story would have been about lawsuits)
12. They went school shopping and bought his “appropriate” (non frilly) dresses for school.
13. They paused once more in the middle of the road (rationality)… before turning left. “My husband and I took deep breaths and walked him to school. For my son’s part, he fairly floated, seemingly unconcerned. Having decided, he was sure.”
14. They were aghast that “yes” there were troglodyte children at the school who teased their son… but it wasn’t as bad as they had feared. “That lasted longer than I had expected, but it was mostly over within the month.”
15. They now take pride in the wisdom of the son (ooops daughter). “He had already decided. He didn’t think about that anymore. And he — she — never looked back.” (Did you notice the emotional, teary transition there… how could that be wrong?)
16. Now they have the means to continually display their open-minded credentials, stroke their leftist egos and sense of superiority. “And we, as a family, decided to be open and honest about it, too, celebrating her story instead of hiding it.”

The moral of the story is that if after reading this tripe you don’t unconditionally support their decision and their “daughter” then you are a bigot and should be ashamed of yourself. Regardless of your position, you will be expected to either 1) voice your unconditional support or 2) shut the hell up. The fact that you don’t want your kids exposed to this crap is IMMATERIAL. The fact that you don’t want this boy in your daughters dressing room in a few years is IMMATERIAL. If you are a bigot, your concerns are and always will be IMMATERIAL. Society must literally progress…

What this story says (besides identifying us bigots) is that society has degraded beyond the point of no return and the rate of degradation seems to be exponential. Western and American society is collapsing (and this is just a symptom of that). Objective truth and reality are being tossed aside for self indulgence and feelings.

What if this young boy decided to stop being a boy in a skirt and transitioned to being a fiddler crab in a skirt instead? No really, what if he decided he was a girl fiddler crab and insisted on scuttling sideways and pinching things… in a dress? What if he decided he must be true to this feeling about himself and do this in public and at school? What if in his heart of hearts he really believed he is a fiddler crab? By leftist standards, self indulgence and feelings trump everything (even logic and reality). Would feelings (and support from his parents) make him a fiddler crab by today’s enlighten standards?

The question and the idea behind it is absurd… but no less absurd than the “reality” these parents and their leftist compatriots INSIST that we accept as truth. This boy is no more a girl than he is a fiddler crab. Feeling things are or ought to be does not make them objectively true.

The world says you can be anything you want to be if you just believe hard enough. Having parents who shirk their responsibility helps; not to mention enablers in the form of family and friends and those with social agendas (like teachers). And finally shaming those who would dare point out the emperor has no clothes is the order of the day. Love and compassion are now defined as pretending (or actually convincing yourself) that a lie is truth and that objective truth is a lie.

Telling a drowning man that everything is fine is no mercy (nor compassion). Sending your child into the water with a stone tied around his neck is unconscionable.

The world says to thine own self be true, embrace who god or nature or made you. That, to be honest with you, is the last thing we should do.

A wise man (God himself) tells us to do the exact opposite. He tells us to “deny” ourselves, to deny our nature and instead to seek something better, something not of this world… Him. That is one of the hardest things to do as a human being. And part of being a good parent is preparing our children not to embrace every whim or nature we experience, no matter how fashionable or enlightened.

Quotes from George Orwell concerning the truth in society, or the lack of it and men to speak it.

Our Shame on 911

It’s the fifteen-year anniversary of 911. We should never forget… but we have as a nation… years and years ago.

Today on September 11th, 2016…
• We just funded terrorism to the tune of $1.3 Billion dollars (via planeloads of untraceable cash) in hostage payments.
• We draw lines in the sand that mean nothing (and our enemies know it).
• We ink deals with our enemies that give us temporary peace (if that) at the cost on long-term security.
• We create vacuums of power by overthrowing tyrants with no plan for what comes afterward, so we get a regime of terrorists.
• We have “allies” (rebels in Libya and Syria) who are in bed with other enemies (al-Qaeda). As is often the case with dealing with Islamic factions, there are no good guys.
• We appease and grovel before enemies who take our soldiers hostage for propaganda purposes.
• We turn a blind eye to enemies who badger our ships and taunt a paper tiger (created by our leaders).
• We continue to lose respect on the world stage; no fear from our enemies, no trust from our allies.
• We abandon those who help us kill terrorists to rot in prison after the deal is done (no wonder no one trusts us).
• We release terrorist prisoners of war for no other reason than appearances of closing a detention center.
• We shame and label (as Islamophobic) those who mention Islam in connection to this (and other) terrorist atrocities.
• We bully and extort those who would expose the truth behind global terrorism (Islam).
• We pretend Islamic terrorism will go away if we just stop talking about it (or reporting it).
• We come up with new politically correct phrases for terrorism to hide the truth. (“workplace violence”, “man-caused disasters”)
• We invite thousands of refugees (however needy) into our country who carry the seed that seeks to destroy us (Islam).
• We allow hundreds (possibly thousands) of terrorist’s access to our country through porous borders in the name of cheap labor, and illegal votes.
• We create moral equivalence between Islam and Christianity even if we have to reach back a thousand years to pull off the comparison.
• We allow the cover-up of a terrorist attack on one of our embassies (that killed an ambassador and three other Americans) and label it a protest of a YouTube video, all for political expediency. (We then demean the families of those who want answers.)
• We pretend that Islam and the terror it spawns is not an existential threat to us or Western civilization.
• We are about to elect a woman (Hillary Clinton) as our national leader who is the embodiment of all of these things.

Willful blindness. Compelled blindness. If that’s not forgetting… I don’t know what is.

Shame on us; we deserve this.

Why Not Trump

This is one of the better articulated explanations of why I do not support Trump…

That brings us to the real reason to oppose Trump’s candidacy: the attempt to turn the conservative movement into a nationalist populist one, complete with shilling for Trump’s incomprehensible decisions and statements. If you believe that the only solution to America’s problems is true conservatism, your greatest fear is not a Hillary presidency: It’s the perversion of the conservative movement itself, the corruption of conservatism in favor of power. Hillary Clinton’s presidency does not snuff out conservatism, even though it provides a serious danger to the republic. Trump’s presidency does. — by BEN SHAPIRO August 3, 2016

To reiterate…
The only hope for the republic is conservatism.
Hillary is a real danger to the republic (as all progressivism is).
Donald Trump is likely a lesser danger to the republic but is an greater (existential) danger to the only hope of the republic (conservatism).

To expand on…
I can understand the fear of what Hillary will do to this nation to the point of voting for the lesser of two evils. I’ve been in that place (mindset) before… I’m just not there anymore. I’m especially not at a place where I can ignore the glaring deficiencies of the Republican nominee; the narcissism, the petty tweeting, the politics of personal destruction…

Don’t get me wrong, this is not the same as agreeing with Barack Obama or Hillary or the left concerning these deficiencies. Barack Obama is the biggest boob to ever hold the office. No man was ever as ill prepared than him. Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt, dishonest, and immoral person to ever hold or seek the office in our lifetime (and considering LBJ, that says a lot). Trump’s deficiencies are of character and ideology (not conservative) and pale in comparison to Obama and Clinton.

Hey, Hey We’re the Monkeys

If you start with a cage containing four monkeys, and inside the cage hang a banana on a string from the top, and then you place a set of stairs under the banana, before long a monkey will go to the stairs and climb toward the banana. It is then that ALL the monkeys are sprayed with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with same result. As soon as he touches the stairs, you spray ALL the monkeys with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put the cold water away. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new monkey. The new monkey sees the banana and attempts to climb the stairs. To his shock, ALL of the other monkeys beat the crap out of him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original four monkeys, replacing it with a new monkey. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm– because he is now part of the “team.”

Then, replace a third original monkey with a new monkey, followed by the fourth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Now, the monkeys that are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs.

Finally, having replaced all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys will have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, not one of the monkeys will try to climb the stairway for the banana. Why, you ask? Because in their minds, that is the way it has always been!

This is how today’s House and Senate in the U.S. Congress operates; and this is why, from time to time, ALL of the monkeys need to be REPLACED AT THE SAME TIME!

This is meant as no disrespect to monkeys. You can never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.

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Humor aside, I’d actually be in favor of doing this. Not just term limits (which are also a good idea); but set a time frame (like years ending in 00, 25, 50 & 75… or whatever time period) AND on those years ALL House and Senate members are replaced. When those years roll around, no one who has ever held a position in the House or Senate is ever eligible to hold either of those offices again. That would include all current office holders and would mean that House members could not just run for Senate (and vice-versa). We basically clean house (pardon the pun) ever quarter of a century. This would work even better in conjunction with term limits.

Isn’t it great what stupid monkey’s can teach us.