Dumber than thou

If you want to figure out today's political scene, keep it simple and ask yourself: Who's better at the game?

The Democrats, having drifted en masse into Cloud Cuckoo Land, are the Stupid Party now (they claimed the title when they nominated the unelectable Hillary), so Trump's screwups, large and small, don't really hurt him.

It's not Trump as the Globetrotters vs. the Dems as the Washington Generals-more like a AA minor league baseball team vs. a high school team from Alaska. The minor league team may not be the best, but they'll beat the HS team every time.

Here are some things I really don't like

I don't mean to go all Andy Rooney on my readers (ah, the conceit that I have readers!), but it's a lot easier and more entertaining to write about things you don't like than those you do. (Right, Miriam?). Nobody wants to hear about how pretty the sunrise was, or that great dessert you had at Elaine's. (Elaine's is closed now anyway).


Nope-people want to hear why you hate Trump, or the Democrats, or kids driving around with bass blasters in their cars, or those little nasty yapper dogs, or people using their cell phones on speaker, or Jehovah's Witnesses (just tell them you didn't see the accident, as my late friend Rob used to say), or people who've had too much nip and tuck work, or people smoking pot at SEPTA stops that you're forced to ingest (the smoke, not the people, which would be even worse), or people on paleo diets, or vegans, or male white wine drinkers, or beer snobs (Can you imagine anything dumber to be a snob about? "I drink craft beer". Who cares? Beer ain't exactly upscale).....


No, I don't actually hate these people. I hope I don't literally hate anyone. But most of the people above really, really annoy me. I'm a conservative, so I believe in minimal government, but legislation directed at all of the above would have my full support.


Get cracking, McConnell.

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.

The bizarre ritual (anti-ritual?) of anthem protests

The phrase has a strange ring to it-"anthem protests". Who would protest the playing of their own national anthem? The anthem, after all, and the displaying of the flag, and any other civic ritual you could name, aren't some sort of declaration that a nation is flawless.

We celebrate America, or at least acknowledge its worth, as a sort of truism of shared values-that a people, with a given set of civic beliefs, have created and sustained a nation in line with those values. But what happens when those values are no longer widely shared?

I don't intend to wade into all the political controversies that have me convinced we're a nation in name only. I'll just mention that we have a founding document that establishes the rules of the civic game. Increasingly that document, and the laws that operate under it, are seen as just so many words on paper, when one side is unhappy with the results. When such a point is reached, where the consequences of a long-established democratic process are "illegitimate" because the wrong party wins or the wrong policy is instituted, we are in the process of rejecting what made America succeed. The entire system is based on the idea that the results of our political process are by definition legitimate.

The essential orientation of America-as a nation organized towards the promotion of freedom and prosperity-is now rejected by half the nation. Freedom is dicey because people can use it for purposes not tending towards "social justice". Prosperity-the creation of new wealth, with the ultimate purpose of starting and maintaining families-is irrelevant. Redistribution of existing wealth (with the exception of Silicon Valley's vast hordes of same) is paramount. The fact that greater redistribution doesn't yield greater economic equality is irrelevant.


So we have one side wishing to maintain the old order, and another rejecting it entirely. What the latter would establish may still maintain some of the forms of democracy, but they will be toothless relics. Whatever means necessary to get to nirvana will be acceptable.


UPDATE: Miriam has some interesting thoughts on what was intended to be a cost-free exercise in virtue-signalling.

FURTHER UPDATE: A further reason not to watch the NFL-an appalling percentage of these guys are thugs. Here are detailed NFL arrest records. 

ONE MORE UPDATE: "The brontosaurus in the room": Roger L. Simon on the lie behind the protests-the notion that cops are what's wrong with the black community.


AND FINALLY: No matter how you play with the numbers, it is black men who are doing most of the killing of black men.

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.

Trump tracking-down 4.1%

In the Real Clear Politics average of RV/LV, Trump stands at 42% approval.

This is down 4.1% from his election popular vote percentage, but up from 40% last time I checked this on September 13.


I track this not only because because I'm interested in this figure, but because I track all sorts of stuff-health numbers like blood pressure and resting pulse, twitter tweets per follower, a wide variety of baseball stats, etc. I do love numbers.

Built on a lie

It is always best, when possible, to seek simplicity rather than complexity. Complexity is often used to obscure, simplicity to illuminate.

One uncomplicated truth we might ponder-Life is better than death. When thinking about abortion, we hear it said that this is a nuanced issue, one whose many circumstances and intricacies must be dealt with before taking a position, on the issue in general, or any particular choice to sustain or destroy life.


But there is another uncomplicated truth here-abortion always ends an innocent human life. There are no exceptions. The victim is never a deserving one, regardless of the circumstances of conception.

The allegedly pro-choice position argues that the creation and sustenance of life are equally valid choices. It isn't hard to see that this is a barbaric position. Unless, of course, we prefer to believe a lie.

And it isn't hard to see that the main pro-abortion argument-it is a woman's "right to choose" (note the avoidance of the word "mother" in this context), because the decision affects her, and only her-is simply not true. Abortion affects the baby, the father, the grandparents, all other relatives, friends, the community, the nation, the world. All are wounded by this choice.

Lies must be challenged with truth, even when, as in this case, the truth is already known by all, in their hearts. Everyone knows what abortion is, and what it does. But it will never be time to stop uttering these truths, not until this practice is gone from the world.

The power of positive salesmanship, bigotry, and Sen. Feinstein

I ridiculed the Norman Vincent Peale "Power of Positive Thinking" way of thinking in my recent post on the value of "negative" emotions. Peale more than deserved deserved it-not only is it a silly worldview, if you could call it that, he was rather an anti-Catholic bigot, as evidenced by his comments in the 1960 election campaign.

But having mentioned Peale, Amazon's marketing bot keeps putting that book, which apparently is still a big-seller, in the ads you see here. I have no control over that, of course.


Peale's comments put me in mind of the recent controversy started by CA Senator Dianne Feinstein, who bashed Federal court nominee Amy Barrett for her unconcealed Catholicism. Peale and Feinstein would likely agree on little, but both seem to think a good Catholic is one who should, well, shut up in public if he is serious about his faith. Peale would censor Catholics; Feinstein both Catholics and Peale.

The Left now endorses a narrow "freedom of  worship", rather than our long-established "freedom of religion", in which you may attend any religious service you like, but had better not bring those views to the public square.

Feinstein and many of her Democratic colleagues advocate the notion that secular politics is "neutral" politics, that early 21st century deism is the default, unbiased view of thinking folks. But, to state the glaringly obvious, it is not a neutral view, any more than a Catholic, evangelical, Muslin, or any other more explicitly worldview would be.


It is not, to be sure, really a secular view. It is more of a seemingly unreflected-upon Moral Therapeutic Deism-it doesn't exactly deny God, since few Americans are atheists. Rather, MTD reduces Him to a figure on the periphery, a vaguely benevolent figure who wants us to be happy but is little involved in human affairs, and certainly not politics.

Trump tracking-down 6.1%

Trump's average approval among registered/likely voters (RCP) is 40%. He got 46.1% of the vote last year.

I've been tracking this and will update it on occasion.


By the way, the full breakdown of the vote totals by David Wasserman is fascinating, at least to politics junkies like myself.

September 11

On the "first" September 11, I was living in North Carolina. Somebody called and said, "Turn on the TV", and it was done. We witnessed the events. The day is otherwise a blur to me. I didn't watch the videos of the planes crashing into the buildings for many years. They still have an unreal quality to me, like a scene from a bad movie.
It is no good to pretend that in our modern world we have no enemies, that human nature has changed for the better, or that "the arc of history bends towards justice".
History, and the events of a mere sixteen years ago, teach us otherwise.

Trump steals black baby as trophy of TX trip, plans to make her White House mascot

As often as Trump says or does something beyond ridiculous, our "dispassionate" media will always out-Trump him. The two sides-the media, and Trump the media manipulator-truly deserve each other. They're basically Mo and Larry of the Three Stooges, poking each other in the eye on a daily basis. Enjoy the next three and a half years!

In any case, the above headline is a fake-I think. The difference between the National Enquirer and the New York Times is now more what schools the reporters went to than content.


We got Trump for a lot of nasty reasons, all of which are too unpleasant to detail, and he is no real antidote to any of that, but yes, Hillary would've been worse. That's what we're reduced to.

I didn't vote for him. I voted for Evan McMullin. The Mormon Roundhead.

Embarrassing.

Links-controversial and otherwise

Democrats' smears of GOP as racists, misogynists long predate Trump.

In fact, the Left's inability to make an argument for their position instead of libeling their opponents along these lines goes all the way back to Harry Truman.


Many people, Right and Left, now decry "mass incarceration". But unpleasant though it is, it means less crime. 

The New Atheists made the mistake of slamming Islam as well as Christianity, and have been bodily removed from the lefty funhouse. 


A "map of the soul": Michael Egnor, Professor of Neurological Surgery at Stony Brook University, says neuroscience confirms Aquinas' notion of will and intellect as immaterial things. 

List of the oldest living people. Violet Brown of Jamaica is the winner, at 117 years, 177 days. My Grandmother on my mother's side, who lived to 102, was a piker compared to these women (not many men in the bunch).

Miriam on the perils of the art business. 


Whose voices are you listening to? The search for worthy role models. I note, in pondering the conclusion reached here, that GK Chesterton was quite hefty.


Several of the links above come from this article by philosopher Edward Feser.

No politics, for a day

Over on twitter, my meager musical contribution to a politics-free Friday.

A few good links

Some worthwhile reads:

Lynn on enjoying the eclipse, and also enjoying things that we see every day. Which makes me think of this: click it! (TY Dustbury.)

Ann Althouse on the outrageous Trump. 


Terry Teachout names his favorite big band tracks. Well, there are no tracks by Maynard Ferguson, Don Ellis, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Buddy Rich, or Thad Jones-Mel Lewis, but it's still a nice grouping.

Edward Feser and Joe Bessette present the Catholic case for capital punishment. It's impossible to argue, from a Catholic perspective, that CP is intrinsically wrong, like abortion or euthanasia.


Megan McArdle-"As a woman in tech, I realized these are not my people". Reflections on the Google memo.

Cartoons can be useful. 

"God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another"-Hamlet. The Bard might wonder at some current lunacies, like presto-chango sexes.


Father Mitch Pacwa, no longer SJ, is tossed out of the Jesuits after being caught with a Catechism.



538 has the Dodgers getting to 114 wins, two shy of the record.

Tear 'em down?

There is, you may noticed, some controversy over the Confederate statues that are found all over the South (having lived there, I can tell you every town has one), and even the US Capitol.

I'm 57 and do not recall any uproar over the statues until quite recently. So-have we suddenly come to some profound new understanding of what the statues' continued existence means? Or, do the statues, which denote an unavoidable fact of history that has had an enormous impact on life both North and South, lack in themselves any particular moral meaning or message as regards the justness of the Confederate cause as such?

As you may have guessed by the way I have framed the question, I am not persuaded that removing the statues amounts to anything more than virtue-signaling. The monuments may have been erected to, in various cases, celebrate slavery, honor the "valiant" fight against Northern oppression, or even (most likely I imagine) to merely commemorate the dead and wounded of virtually every Southern town.

I think the most important question, though, is-what do the statues mean NOW? Are they treated as shrines to The Lost Cause? Do people gather around them to ponder the halcyon days of the antebellum South? No-the memorials just note that the War we read about in books and on Wikipedia really did happen, and that it had a real effect on the towns and cities they're found in.

Ultimately, I ask: Why didn't we hang Jefferson Davis? We didn't hang him because you allow the defeated some measure of dignity, and allow history, rather than brute force, to settle issues where possible.

We all know the Confederate cause was a stupid one, in that it was both economically backwards and required the continuation of an evil institution. The point hardly needs to be reinforced.

Anti-social media

I haven't posted on twitter in months. Most of what I post on facebook is just youtube music clips, though I do occasionally annoy people there with my right wing views. I also vex people with comments on the Phillies, in various places, such as here. 

I have at times had semi-popular blogs that people with discriminating taste read ignored. I have no real desire to chase that dragon once again, but I would like to keep this blog updated once in a while. There might be someone out there who would like to read it and say, "Damn, this dude's more f-ed up than I am." That's the kind of service to mankind I'd like to provide.


Really, I can never can decide what to with my writing. I've written poetry, stories, lyrics to songs (including the only really funny song ever written about Prozac), blogs, and once had a fairly substantial number of jokes written for a comedy act I was working on. The character was to be a total loser-i.e., strictly autobiographical. You see, I'm the kind of guy who can calculate the most arcane baseball statistics in his head, but can't figure out a restaurant tip, because I can't get a girl to go to a restaurant with me. The main idea was, Here is a comedian you can't heckle, because I'm up here HECKLING MYSELF. "Is this thing off? Good."

The total loser part turned out to be all too accurate, when I lost the ability to access the tablet the jokes were in due to a dead battery that proved impossible to recharge. WTF? Who does that happen to? I guess I could've gotten a new battery, but only about half of the jokes were good.


So I guess I'll write some more self-deprecating material. Which raises an interesting question....is that an indication of really lousy self-esteem, or really good self-esteem? If Bob Uecker says, for example, "You know, people had divided opinions on my career in baseball-half thought I was awful, the other half thought I was a disgrace to the uniform"-is he saner than the rest of us? Or closer to the edge?

We slouch, exhausted but unified

Yes, Americans are in agreement about something, amazingly enough in these ultra-polarized times. Everybody but everybody agrees that 2016 was a cosmically awful year, the sort of year that must be punishment for something. Scandals, terrorism, ugly elections, foreign intrigues....God really piled it on in 2016, didn't He? We get it, Lord, we get it.

Or do we? I won't even speculate what the ill-treatment might be a result of. We all have our favorite pop culture or political targets, and most of them deserve all the scorn that can be thrown at them. But a loving God doesn't allow the unworthy success of a talent-free rapper or blowhard politician to be cause for an unrelieved twelve months of misery.


No, it must've been big this time. God really doesn't want to get into the backseat where the kids are, like a Cosmic Father pushed too far, but He will do it when it's called for. But we weren't just spilling soda back there or playing that damned awful music too loud.

I don't really have any answers, other than that our slide into post-Christian anything goes continued at its usual hurried pace this past year. But, nostalgia aside, that's nothing new. People have been bitching about the secularization of Christmas, say, since the first one, when I understand the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce hit on the idea of having guided tours of the stable where Christ was born for a mere five shekels a pop.

Nope, it's nothing new. But maybe we've reached a tipping point. I don't know how you'd know such a point has been reached, and I'm more than aware that talk like this always spawns the "everything's cyclical, everything can't go downhill at once" response. Maybe.


The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. 

We must not question

To foster social harmony, the results of elections must be accepted unquestioningly by all parties, each and every time the Democrats win.

Thanks a hell of a lot, Trump voters!

Those of us who are pro-life, those of us who are conservatives on most issues-we're not crazy about the Trump takeover of our party, which for all its flaws, did provide a real ideological contrast to the contemporary version of liberalism, which is merely authoritarianism in a Brooks Brothers suit.

So, what to do? Well, I only have one vote, so it doesn't matter much in the larger scheme of things-but I won't be a party to setting back the pro-life cause. No Bleeping Way. So Hillary's out. Next: Is  Trump's pro-life "conversion" sincere? Is anything about Trump sincere? Could we assume, as so many do, that Trump would at least appoint better judges, ones more likely to not be avowedly pro-abortion, than Mrs. Clinton? Who knows? There are many Trumps, all of them unsavory.


And so it seems to me, at least at the moment, that Clintonism-rather than Hillary-is the real threat. As I implied above, I'm not at all sure Hillary would be a worse President on a whole host of issues, since A), Trump's history & instincts aren't right wing on much of anything; and B), a Trump win would eviscerate the conservatives in Congress and elsewhere-he'll owe them absolutely nothing.

By Clintonism I mean the rampant lawlessness and endless ethical quagmires Bill and Hillary drag themselves, and their supporters and friends, and all of us, into. Much more is yet to come on the server, the Foundation, etc. I have decided I will vote for neither, but will focus my vast influence (heh-I do have 6400 followers on twitter) on defeating Hillary. I want Hillary to lose but don't want Trump to win.

Hey, I voted for Cruz. I don't like being put in this position.

A Small but Welcome Dose of Sanity

I notice that Miles Davis' 1959 classic, Kind of Blue (vinyl) leads Amazon's jazz CD/vinyl sales rankings. 

In a world where Kenny G is considered a jazz musician, and Donald Trump is thought of by some as Presidential timber, any note that indicates the culture is not in utter collapse is wonderful.

1959, besides being the year of my birth, was a cultural milepost. The 60's were the Kid Decade, as William F. Buckley, Jr, aptly termed it, and in '59 popular culture was still, well, good. Miles, Sinatra, Brubeck; Hitchcock and Billy Wilder-music and movies were more than assaults on the senses.