Just a blog I like, and some thoughts on Trump

Miriam Sawyer has been blogging for many years. She's one of those very talented people that few have heard of, but whom no one would've heard of before the Internet, and blogging. So that counts for something.

She's written some very engaging stories about her crazy Jewish relatives, is a fine artist, and now offers up trenchant views on a stratified US. Here she noted that favorite hobby of rich lefties-virtue-signaling via Trump-bashing.

My own view on Trump is, I hope, a nuanced one. I take a (or "an", if you're hopelessly pedantic) historical view: Kennedy was a philanderer. LBJ was corrupt to an almost laughable degree. Obama sicced the IRS on his political opponents. Nixon was none too stable mentally. And so on.

Our presidents haven't exactly been a rogues' gallery, but they haven't all been Lincoln, either.

Trump fits right in.

Links-mostly controversial

It looks like Obama spied on Trump and his campaign, as he also apparently did on reporters like Sharyl Attkisson. There should be outrage from all sides on this, but we're past the point where anything but results matters to the Left.

A fun little plaything-CodePen chord progression arpeggio generator. I've wasted hours with this.

Ray Fair, an economist famous for his election models, shows you here how fast you'll decline in chess and sports as you age. It's not pretty.


Buying the iPhone X-an exercise in irrationality. 

Want to know exactly what Bob Dylan played on his XM Satellite and Sirius XM radio shows? Now you can, or at least "the Best of".


Cardinal Dolan wants liberals to like him a little too much. Bending over backwards to avoid the dreaded label of "Islamophobia" doesn't show much spiritual leadership, but then again most of our American bishops act more like administrators than spiritual leaders.

Lesley Garrett, "Jerusalem"

"Jerusalem" is from a poem by William Blake that references a mythical visit by Jesus to England. He re-sets the myth in Industrial Age England, hoping that Christ might come among the "dark Satanic mills" and establish The New Jerusalem, the heavenly city of history's climax. Music is by Sir Hubert Parry.

It is exquisitely beautiful.


UPDATE: If you'd like to know why Christianity is all but dead in Europe, a vicar has banned this gorgeous hymn for being excessively nationalistic.


FURTHER UPDATE: this reminds me a of a quote by CS Lewis, another UK'er, on the Second Coming, Progress, and what Barack Obama inaccurately calls "the arc of history that inevitably bends towards justice":

"The doctrine of the Second Coming is deeply uncongenial to the whole evolutionary or developmental character of modern thought. We have been taught to think of the world as something that slowly moves towards perfection....Christian Apocalyptic offers us no such hope. It does not even foretell a gradual decay....[I]t foretells a sudden, violent end imposed from without....a curtain rung down on the play-'Halt!'". The World's Last Night, 1952.


YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Here is the text of Blake's poem-

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spear! Oh, clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire

I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land!