A few recent polls show Trump fading in Iowa and Carson surging – which makes sense just on the fact that Carson is a much better fit than Trump for the highly socially conservative Iowa GOP. Be that as it may, Trump is for real. I thought he was a joke candidate. Then I thought he was a candidate surging because of the fury the GOP base has against the GOP establishment. But now it is different – and watching Trump on the trail reveals a man who is a quick learner. He still has massive obstacles to overcome to attain the nomination, but he’s starting to look like a political tsunami…something akin to the way Andrew Jackson came out of nowhere to completely overturn the political establishment in 1828 (and he’s also quite a lot like Jackson – supremely self-confident and determined to have his way, without too much concern about the legal and social niceties). In all the good and bad you can have in a President, the best good is a quick learner…because there is always a learning curve and the best pick it up fast (Obama, like Carter, has not learned a thing – likely because, also like Carter, he doesn’t think he has anything to learn). It remains to be seen if he can navigate his way to the nomination and then to the White House…if he does, the crucial aspect of whether he’ll be a good President is that ability to learn…and if he’s really smart, he’ll learn that the only way an Executive gets the government to do anything is to ceaselessly pester it with Presidential directives (Churchill was one of the few who knew this – and all his “pray give me the facts on one sheet of paper” and “action this day” memos were his way of just giving the bureaucracy no rest until they darned will did what he wanted them to do). The bottom line here is that if the establishment or even insurgents like Cruz want to beat Trump, then they’re going to have to out-campaign him. I don’t think he’ll implode for our entertainment at this point.
The Japanese have a hotel staffed by robots. A look at the future, folks – we’re not replicating ourselves and so we’re building a completely artificial world. Hopefully, this is only a temporary thing and we’ll snap out of it soon.
Climate alarmism – it is designed to scare you into compliance.
Why would Orthodox Russia ally with Islamist Iran? Because they both need oil to be north of $100 a barrel. Please note that China would not be pleased with oil that pricey – if we had anyone in DC with any diplomatic ability, at all, we’d be making hay with this situation. Bismarck said that success comes with hearing the hoof beats of history and grabbing hold of the tail as it goes by…unfortunately, our foreign policy is run by faculty lounge pinheads.
Tony Blair, in what I suspect is an attempt to placate the left in a bid to save Labour from a drubbing next election due to their kook-left party leader, has apologized for the Iraq war.
The prospect of Ryan becoming Speaker is actually a signal that the GOP is uniting. Don’t pop too many bottles of champagne, folks, but it is the way it is working. I see it as this: the TEA Party and the Establishment are getting on the same team. This means we’ll have to put up with some RINOism, and they’ll have to put up with some actual conservatism. This is the way it works, folks – always has and always will. Half a loaf is better than none.
Blogs For Victory 
From the climate alarmism article:
People who are always looking for a crisis to solve are much like those who seek elective office because they want to “serve.” Their spoken motives are always a cover for the real agenda, which is so maligned that it is mentioned only by accident.
Another of Mencken’s famous quotes is “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
Anybody hear how the “strongest storm ever recorded” turned out? Me neither. Everyone has gone silent. If only that storm had landed in the US and killed some people, then the Democrats would really be happy.
It was downgraded from a Cat 5 to a tropical depression before the agenda media could say “climate change”.
I’m not convinced of the wisdom working to bring China into the Syria situation. Last tim all the World’s Powers built alliances focused on a regional battle it didn’t end well.
We just need a big can of Raid to solve the middle east infestation.
Things are starting out well in Canada
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/10/canadas_new_liberal_prime_minister_the_disaster_has_already_begun.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook
I didn’t see Ryan’s ultimatum as a negative, but a way to pull the GOP together. He has too much to do, to worry about some petty faction trying to unseat him, and he took a bold step to force all the factions to talk to each other, analyze their goals, and make a decision about uniting to get something done.
I have never seen Ryan as an egomaniac, and still don’t. On the contrary, I think he is a true public servant, but wise enough to not get sucked into the Same Old Same Old gameplaying and gridlock.
I still don’t think Ben Carson is the most qualified person to be president, but I am coming to the conclusion that I would be comfortable having him in the White House. (And not, as Bill Clinton would say, to serve coffee.) I cannot say the same about Trump.
When I think of Carson as President, I think of a calm, dignified, respectful presidency, of the United States represented by a man of honor and intellect and dignity. I think of a Carson presidency as a healing period in this nation, focused but not melodramatic. We could do what the Left has been doing and reject all criticism of everything he says and does as pure racism, which might force some people to rethink that meme and how recklessly it has been employed. I do think Carson is smart enough to know what he doesn’t know, and would have a cabinet that could handle anything that got thrown at him.
More unacceptable news from our Federal Government:
…the BLM sold 1,795 federally-protected wild horses to a known kill buyer who sold them to slaughter,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/24/blm-illegally-sold-thousands-wild-horses-slaughter/
“Federally protected” has come to be an oxymoron, a phrase in which the words contradict each other.
Being “federally protected” is now meaningless, as we see the Department of “Justice” refuse to indict anyone in the infamous IRS abuse case, in which “federally protected” political speech was actually “federally targeted”, and in a national insurance scam which does nothing to “federally protect” the right to worship.
It’s just words now, just a series of sounds with no inherent meaning.
BTW, if your stomach can handle it, check out the barbaric and brutal conditions in those Mexican slaughterhouses, where sometimes a horse is merely stabbed through the bars of a cage until it is too weak to resist. And don’t forget the role of political whore Ken Salazar in all of this.
I know people who have had a hard time adopting wild mustangs, but someone politically connected could buy more than a thousand, for ten dollars each, and have the federal government (that is, you and me) pay to ship them to him, so he could make hundreds of thousands of dollars by having them tortured and slaughtered.
Hooray for the U.S. of A under Obama!
Slaughtering a wild horse is beyond the pale I once watched a large herd of them running across the desert outside of Phoenix at nearly full speed and it was an amazing site. They are majestic beings and should never be tamed or harmed.
In the same vein, lying to a parent of a military hero about the cause of his son’s death, is beyond the pale and sub human.
As a passionate horsewoman, as one who has spent many tens of thousands of dollars over the years rescuing, caring for and feeding abused and starved horses, as one who can look out her window now and see the two remaining aged pregnant mares I rescued and their two offspring, I have to say I can still understand the need for humane horse slaughterhouses in the United States. The simple fact is that when do-gooders got horse slaughterhouses shut down in the U.S., horses were shipped off to Canada, or far worse, to Mexico.
It is the shipping that is often the worst of the experience, horses crammed into slick-floored cattle trucks with no food or water for days when they are shipped long distances, slipping and falling on the slick floors, being trampled underfoot, etc.
The only thing I can think of done by Obama that I can agree with was his executive order making it legal to slaughter horses in the United States, again, where at least there are basic standards of humane treatment and some oversight by animal rights people. This also reduces the length of shipping time.
My objections to the sale of wild horses to be sent to Mexico for the brutal treatment horses are given there are not just the deaths of the horses. The wild horse herds are too big to be maintained healthfully on public lands, and unless we are willing to spend the money to trap, treat, and neuter horses and turn them back out into the wild we are going to have to cull the herds. That is just one of those facts of life that is unpleasant and hard to swallow, but without many options.
I object to: (1) The cronyism, the blatant defiance of the rules on adopting wild horses. This was a callous violation of the law, and to make it even worse it was based on a personal relationship between the buyer and government officials, evidently most of all that political whore Ken Salazar. (2) The callous looking the other way as these horses were abused, shipped hundreds or even more than a thousand miles, to endure brutal treatment and inhumane conditions that would terrorize even domestic horses used to human interaction and which had to be unbelievably traumatic for wild horses. (3) The use of government funds to ship these horses to the buyer. (4) the profit made, steeped in the blood of these innocent animals, for no reason but sheer greed. (5) The fact that honest, sincere people who truly wanted to adopt these horses were not able to, while they were sacrificed for profit.
The key term here was “federally protected” and these majestic creatures were not only not protected by the federal government, they were victimized by it, at several levels, and very single person involved all throughout the process ought to be in prison.
This wild horse story is a microcosm of the depths to which this once-proud nation has sunk.
It’s disheartening. We seemed to have lost our way.
Cluster, we can look at the wild horse program as just one of
hundredsthousands of examples of short-sighted “problem solving”. It is probably a human failing, but it is magnified to the nth degree by politicians, who see a problem, come up with a “solution” that while apparently dealing with the short-term problem has pretty predictable long-range consequences, but who go with the immediate “solution” and let future leaders deal with the fallout.(Then the issue is seldom actually resolved, but mere bandaids are slapped on to it to keep it “solved” till the next bunch of politicians inherits it, with its additional consequences. No one ever has the intelligence or focus or courage to go back to Square One, strip everything down to the base, and build a reasonable long-term solution.)
“Saving the wild horses” was a noble concept, but it failed to take into consideration the simple fact that horses make new horses, which leads to larger horse populations. This didn’t seem to be a big problem when the West was lightly populated, but overlooking the natural instinct of any animal to reproduce has led to a huge overpopulation of wild horses that cannot be sustained by their grazing areas.
Saving them is still a noble concept, and I support it wholeheartedly, but it requires some level-headed thinking. Right now thousands of these horses are kept in small pens, crowded together, sustained but not really living. A long-term solution might be to neuter most of them and turn them back out, perhaps culling the oldest and those least likely to survive anyway by humane slaughter and adopting out the youngest to homes where they will be trained and become part of peoples’ lives. (A famous dressage horse was a wild mustang.) There will be repercussions no matter what we do, as altering the physiology of any animal results in changes we can’t always predict.
Spaying mares has been problematic—-it is expensive, requiring surgery, and the hormonal changes are not desirable, especially in an animal that needs its wild instincts to survive. But now there has been work in neutering female horses that leaves the ovaries intact but puts a small silicone plug in the fallopian tube. If we are dedicated to saving wild horses, we need to commit ourselves to a long-range humane program that allows for reduced breeding so the herds can be maintained at sustainable levels.
Castrating wild stallions poses other problems, as castrated males, or geldings, might not do well in populations with intact males who fight for dominance. It would be worth some field work to find out if castrated males continue to function in bachelor bands, as intact young males live now until they challenge herd stallions for dominance, able to live relatively natural lives.
But what we do now is pay lip service to “saving the wild horses” while the BLM quietly, and under the radar, submits these horses to horrible conditions, whether penned up and fed sustenance levels of food, without shelter in the heat or winter weather, or sent off in cattle cars to provide profit for well-connected profiteers and led to horrible lives and deaths.
BTW, when we talk about the need to rein in government agencies, the BLM is right after the EPA as far as I am concerned.
Just think about this for a minute: Can you imagine the reaction of the Founders, or any human being alive at the time of the founding of this nation, if someone were to tell them “There will be a time when the government of the United States will give money to people who tear apart living babies, and dissect them while their hearts are still beating, to sell their parts for profit”?
Or: “There will be a time when the government of the United States will pay someone to profit by the agonizing and brutal and savage killing of thousands of wild horses”?
Or” “There will be a time when Christianity will be under attack by the federal government in this country, where children are not allowed to pray in schools, where the word “Christmas” is not allowed, where Christians who want to practice their faith are punished by the government”?
Or: “There will be a time when the Executive Branch of the federal government will condone violent groups issuing bounties on the heads of people who have been convicted of no crime”?
Or: “There will be a time when the federal government will use its might and power to attack, intimidate and punish people for their political beliefs”?
Or: “There will be a time when, while Christianity is under attack by the federal government, it is supporting and defending Islam”?
Or: “There will be a time when the President of the United States simply ignores, or overrules, Congress and issues his own laws, or directives to ignore legislated laws”?
Or….but this exercise is too depressing.
The answer, by the way, is that anyone saying any of these things would at the least be laughed out of town and probably put in a loony bin, because for the first
hundredtwo hundred years of this nation, none of these atrocities would even be considered a faint possibility.This all leads to the next question: Does any one of these changes in the United States make it a better nation, much less all of them?
Better – if your goal is an Orwellian nightmare.
We’re hard-wired to believe – and if we won’t believe in God, love, justice and mercy…then we’ll believe in their opposite.
Doing some early morning reading over a cup of coffee, I encountered a name new to me—Lysenko—and the government support for his pseudo-scientific ideas because they were in line with Marxist ideology. The parallels between Lysenkoism and the current AGW hysteria, complete with demands that people who do not go along with the political agenda of AGW be prosecuted as some sort of criminals, are chilling. I know that any comparison between the old Soviet Union and today’s USA are usually just dismissed without consideration, much as parallels between Hitler/Nazism and Obama/the New Democratic Party are, but this deserves a serious look. Note that this was written at the beginning of 2012.
Lysenkoism And ‘Global Warming’ by Professor Cliff Ollier
2012/01/28
A Lesson From History: Parallels With Lysenkoism (An excerpt)
“We should not forget a basic fact, namely that the one villain of the piece – and the one that is costing billions of dollars – is anthropogenic carbon dioxide. This is the equivalent of ‘vernalisation’ in the Lysenko era.
In summary, the comparisons between Lysenkoism and ‘Global Warming’ can be rehearsed as follows:
1. Work first through political organisations;
2. Claim that the science is settled. There is nothing to debate;
3. Disregard, or deny, all the accumulating evidence that the predictions might be wrong;
4. Demonise the opposition (Mendelian geneticists; ‘Global Warming’ Deniers);
5. Victimise the opposition (execution and exile; loss of jobs or research funds, public and media humiliation);
6. Relate to a current ideology (Stalinism; Environmentalism);
7. Support a vast propaganda machine; and,
8. Create a huge bureaucracy where many people have careers dependent upon ‘the ruling concept’.
The parallel can be seen perfectly in a work by Helena Sheehan(1), who wrote of Lysenkoism:
“What went wrong was that the proper procedures for coming to terms with such complex issues were short-circuited by grasping for easy slogans and simplistic solutions and imposing them by administrative fiat.”
Lysenkoism was eventually replaced by real science. The same will happen to ‘Global Warming’, because real science will not go away.”
http://omnologos.com/lysenkoism-and-global-warming-_by-professor-cliff-ollier