Friday’s indictment of 13 Russians by the FBI was also an indictment on this entire fabricated collusion issue as well as a complete exoneration of President Trump and his administration. That certainly had to be an embarrassing announcement by a once venerated institution, which came on the same day it was revealed that the FBI had completely dropped the ball in the Florida school shooting. Maybe it is time to question the integrity of the “rank and file” of the FBI who the complicit agenda media has held up to such a high standard. It’s a little more than ironic that the progressive media is more than willing to question the integrity of policeman as they patrol inner city neighborhoods, but somehow the men and women of the FBI are beyond reproach? I don’t think so, and that kind of logic just exposes an agenda driven narrative. Of course that’s the only narrative the Democrats have anymore.

So what does the progressive media and the Democrats do now that their year long talking points have imploded? Why they double down on it, like Rep Jerry Nadler did yesterday:

“My reaction to the news is this is absolute proof of what we knew all along and what the president has denied, namely that we were attacked. This is a very serious attack against the United States by a hostile foreign power, an attack against our election process, our entire governing process. We know that the attack is continuing. And that our intelligence agencies tell us that it’s going to certainly continue through the next election. And the president and the Republicans in the House for that matter refuse, refuse to do anything about protecting us from an attack. Imagine if FDR had denied that the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor and didn’t react. That’s the equivalent.”

So 13 Russians creating fake Facebook accounts and trying to sow discord in our society is tantamount to Pearl Harbor? Is that where they are going with this? And isn’t this exactly what all progressive groups do daily? Try and sow national discord? Yes, it is, or do some people actually think that Antifa and Black Lives Matter are unifying groups. The entire Russia collusion narrative was a fabricated issue designed to cover the tracks of the unethical, and illegal activities of the Hillary Clinton campaign, which was also aided and abetted by the Obama DOJ and FBI. We also know now that the Christopher Steele did leak information to the media, who were more than willing to run with the story, and whose stories were used for corroboration of the dossier with the FISA courts, so the question now is, who in the media knew what, and when did they know it?

The next few years are going to be really interesting to see how the Democrats recover from trying to undermine our election process. Do they follow the lead of one of their more sane colleagues Joe Manchin? Or do they continue to pander to the far left extremists and follow the lead of Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Adam Schiff? I think we all know the answer to that.

On another note, has everyone been watching the Waco series? Very well done. The acting is superb and the storyline, if accurate, is disturbing. I understand the alleged crimes of polygamy, age of consent, and illegal weapons but did that really require the use of force by the ATF? David Koresh could have easily been apprehended on the many occasions that he went into town, or was on his morning jog, but the Clinton Admin. DOJ, led by Janet Reno thought otherwise and the result was horrific. Waco is a reminder of just how authoritarian leftists are, and why the second amendment is more important today than ever before. When any government tries to tell you that you don’t need guns – you definitely need guns.

Just my thoughts on the NFL:

I heard a report the other day that 10 years ago (I think) could be 5, but not too long ago, 75% of males 25+ said that they followed the NFL closely. Now, only 51% say the same. That’s a huge drop off, and I count myself in that group. Here are three reasons why my interest has dropped:

– The players have become activists and celebrities – these gentleman who play professional sports are gifted with physical talents few of us possess, and it is fun watching them perform at high levels but that is where it needs to end. If you want to protest and/or bling up and hang with celebrities, then do it on your own time. Don’t protest or wear your bling on the field. You’re not rock stars or high paid celebrities, you’re athletes and the field is your stage. Act like it and respect it.

– Too many flags – let the guys play. If the refs wanted to, they could call something on every play. There is always going to be contact violations if you apply a strict interpretation of the rules, so they need to find a better balance. I think that a flag should be thrown only if the violation was blatant and/or egregious, or directly impacted the result of the play. These calls for holding that are on the other side of the field and not even close to the action are ridiculous.

– THE DESIRE TO WIN – sadly I think that because of the money, many players no longer have their heart in the game. When you’re playing on a 4-11 team and still getting in your Ferrari and driving home to your estate at the end of the day, why push it? Why kill yourself when you don’t have to? Few players anymore in my opinion have that true competitive desire to just win. And this is where college ball is different. I am a BIG FAN of college sports because of the desire to win.

Re: this year’s Super Bowl, while I am not a big fan you have to admire Tom Brady. 40 years old and still picking apart defenses. He is the best QB to ever play the game and I say that as a 49er fan and former Joe Montana groupie. My hope is that Nick Foles and the Eagles will pull off the upset and prevent us all from having to watch another Bill Belichick press conference. Eagles 31 Patriots 27.

 

The progressive media is in hyper drive lately and doing their level best to paint the Trump administration and the GOP as a DANGER to our democracy by even questioning the integrity of the vaunted FBI. In fact former RNC chair and faux conservative Michael Steele was celebrated by the progressive media when he chimed in and said that Trump would “rue the day” he questioned the FBI. Faux conservatives and progressive pundits alike are mocking the Trump administration and dialing up the hysteria of the dangers to our republic, our standing in the world, the possibilities of war, and so and so on ……… WHY you ask? Because the noose is tightening on them and their empty cries of wolf are unsubstantiated and starting to go unnoticed, and that is what has them terrified.

But let’s just review a brief summary of the FBI’s “integrity” over the last year so we can all get a sense of who actually does pose a danger to our republic. First of all, AG Loretta Lynch met privately with former President Bill Clinton in June in Phoenix while his wife Hillary was under investigation. When asked why he was in Phoenix in June, Clinton replied that he was golfing. NO ONE GOLFS IN PHOENIX IN JUNE. The average temp is 110 degrees. Shortly after that meeting, the narrative of the investigation was changed from “investigation” to a “matter”. Secondly, despite the litany of obvious crimes related to the private unsecured server Hillary chose to use for her StateSec position, FBI director James Comey exonerated Hillary clearing her path to run against Trump. That exoneration followed the interviews of Hillary, Huma Abedin, and Cheryl Mills by FBI agent Peter Strzok, who has been exposed as a philanderer and purely partisan hack with a healthy disdain for Trump, and of whom changed the accusations leveled against Hillary from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless”. Additionally, Mr. Strzok and a handful of other FBI agents of “integrity” used a paid for and purely manufactured oppo research document, compiled by Russians, to secure FISA warrants to spy on private American citizens in the hopes of destroying a POTUS candidate, and/or to use as a basis to impeach should POTUS candidate win the election – “an insurance policy” if you will. Now this is just a brief and woefully incomplete summary of the issue which goes much deeper, but just a surface review of the FBI’s actions in this matter should alarm everyone. The fact is – the Obama’s and the Clinton’s weaponized the IRS, the EPA, the DOJ, the FBI, and every other agency they could to destroy their political opponents and retain power for generations. And that my friends is the real SECRET SOCIETY, and now the media has the unsavory work of trying to cover all this up ….. hence the hysteria.

For the record:

Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t think that Trump’s comments to the widow – if they were accurately reported – were offensive. I can just imagine my father saying pretty much the same thing had I died during my Navy service. I’ve read some comments from some veterans claiming to be offended and I’m not going to call them wrong for viewing it that way, but for me and the veterans I know, it was just a thing to be said. When we signed up, we all knew it was possible. To be sure, we all thought, if it came to combat, “it’ll be you and you and you, but not me”, but we also knew that the reality could be very different.

And it all got me thinking that we’re taking the whole thing of death a bit the wrong way. We all, as Shakespeare said, owe God a death. We hope to have our line of credit extended indefinitely (as Manchester in his autobiography about his war experiences put it), but death does come for us all in the by and by. And I think that, these days, we get entirely too maudlin about death.

I’m not thinking we should get all Spartan about it – “come home with your shield, or on it”; was what Spartan mothers would say to their sons going off to war – but, perhaps, a bit more Roman?

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods.”

Or another view, similar, which I’ve quoted here years before:

Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

That was Rupert Brooke, written as he went off to World War One. He got his death, and while very sorrowful for his many friends, it was still a glorious thing and he a man worthy of honor and remembrance. And I think that a lot of our people who seem ill at ease around death are those “sick hearts that honour could not move”. People who shrink from any real sacrifice – whether it is the sacrifice of merely having children and being decent parents; the sacrifice of keeping at a dreary job because one has responsibilities…or the sacrifice of one’s life in a cause.

I am getting old, now; not quite old, yet – but getting there. There is more time behind me than in front. I have done many things to be ashamed of, but there are a few things I’ve done which please me. I’ve kept my promise in some things, that is – and one of them was to be a Sailor in the United States Navy. Had I died as a young man in the Navy, I’d likely be nearly forgotten by now. Decades would have passed; my parents are now dead. My brothers and sisters would, at times, be reminded they once had a brother who is no longer there…but I wouldn’t be much more than a fleeting memory; a life cut short on this Earth. But, for all that, we are all doomed to be forgotten on this Earth. Whether one believes in the religious or the purely materialistic view of the world, eventually everything we do here becomes less than a memory here. We who have religion believe there is something much greater beyond this world, but even we believe that this world is doomed. You can take one of two courses of action in light of this: to either greedily grab on to every bit of life you can, or to merely try to do the right thing by others, even if it means you die and they go on. To those who greedily grab on to life, the fact that a life is cut short is the worst crime. To those who take the other view, it is the life that is poorly lived, long or short, which is the worst crime.

It is terribly sad for us – especially as we grow older – to see a young person die. Even for those of us with religious belief, there seems to be something very wrong in a young person, so full of promise, to be taken away from us. But there is something else to ponder about those who die young:

Right you guessed the rising morrow
And scorned to tread the mire you must:
Dust’s your wages, son of sorrow,
But men may come to worse than dust.

Souls undone, undoing others,-
Long time since the tale began.
You would not live to wrong your brothers:
Oh lad, you died as fits a man.

Now to your grave shall friend and stranger
With ruth and some with envy come:
Undishonoured, clear of danger,
Clean of guilt, pass hence and home.

Turn safe to rest, no dreams, no waking;
And here, man, here’s the wreath I’ve made:
‘Tis not a gift that’s worth the taking,
But wear it and it will not fade.

That is from A Shropeshire Lad – which is not exactly what I’m looking for, but it does address the issue of whether death is the worst thing which can happen. A man (or, these days, a woman) who goes to war is doing an act of sublime self-sacrifice. This is especially true in our modern age where we do not conscript people into war (and God grant we never do, again). That young man or woman who dons our nation’s uniform may have all sorts of bad in him or her. But by putting their lives on the line, they are balancing that bad – and if they do end up giving their life for their country, then they have carried out the greatest love of all, that a person should give his or her life for their friends. C. S. Lewis pointed out that had he, in his World War One service, shot a German in the same instant the German shot him, they’d both probably have wound up in heaven and had a good laugh about it. At such a moment, a person’s selfish desires are at their lowest ebb and their willingness to sacrifice to save others at the highest pitch. And as we must all die, why is this the worst way to die?

I would, of course, that all the young people today could live to a hundred and during their long lives have nothing but the blessings of peace, love and prosperity. But we all know that won’t happen. Even in the best of our lives, there is pain. And, at the end of it, death. We should avoid war because it is wrong to kill. But some times it becomes necessary to kill in order to defend what we hold most dear. And if we have to kill, it is certain that some of ours will be killed. To feel sorrow at their deaths is natural and beautiful – but to take their death and keep it separate from their courage is wrong. They, I think, would not want to be merely remembered as those who died, but as those who did something very special.

We really do need criminal justice reform. Robert Stinson spent 23 years in jail for a crime he did not commit: the evidence against him was some allegedly doctored-up bite mark evidence. Marcellus Williams has spent the last 16 years on death row: his scheduled execution the other day was stayed because new DNA evidence indicates he wasn’t the criminal…and his conviction seems to have been based mostly upon the testimony of his ex-girlfriend and a former cellmate, both of whom got cash rewards for their testimony.

Now, to be sure, I’m betting that the overwhelming majority of those in jail are in there for a good reason – but we’re getting more and more of these cases where it is clear there are at least serious questions as to guilt, and some which work out to a gigantic miscarriage of justice. We are supposed to be small-government Conservatives…and we simply must stop trusting the government when it sends someone up for life, or to death row. The problem lies in two things in my view:

1. We have far too many laws and thus it is possible to nail just about anyone with a crime, if you really want to.
2. Prosecutors who do convict an innocent person don’t pay any personal price for their actions.

We need a year or two of just repealing laws at the federal, State and local level. And then we need to find a mechanism to make sure that the prosecutors have skin in the game: that if they are saying, for sure, they know someone is guilty, they are putting their own financial resources, at the end of the day, where their assertions are. Fine a couple prosecutors half a million bucks for false conviction a couple times and the message will get out there. It is better that a guilty man go free than ten innocents wind up in jail, after all. Always err on the side of innocence and mercy.

A foreigner attends an American university for a year:

…During my ‘Welcome Week’, for example, I was presented with a choice of badges indicating my preferred gender pronouns: ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they’ or ‘ze’?

The student in front of me, an Australian, found this hilarious: ‘Last time I checked, I was a girl.’ Her joke was met with stony silence…

Unless a kid wants to become a doctor or scientist, I highly recommend against sending them to college. Heck, I’m pretty certain if I had young kids, I wouldn’t even send them to middle or high school. Better they learn a trade than have to navigate the increasingly Orwellian world of higher education.

In the Great Statue Frenzy of 2017, the lunatics have vandalized a statue of St. Junipero Serra. Serra was one of them dirty, mean Catholics who went about converting the Natives to Christianity…so, he’s bad. They are also going after Columbus because, well, he got here…and, so, he’s bad, too.

A lunatic started shooting in Charleston today and Progressives were highly disappointed the shooter wasn’t a white guy.

A poll – which is probably an absurdity, given that it is, you know, a poll – shows that a plurality of Americans would be ok with banning Nazi speech in their local communities. For 1st Amendment purists, this is horrible…and, naturally, we should be wary of any attempt to limit speech. Except for one thing: I’m a Distributist. This means I am absolutely certain that Subsidiarity is the way to go…meaning the decisions on major issues should, as far as practical, be taken by the local communities. Ultimately, my view would be that the local community should decide – but not just on Nazi speech but what, broadly, goes on in the local community. The problem with San Francisco, after all, isn’t that it’s San Francisco…it is that the people who run the place want every other place to toe San Francisco’s line. I don’t give a darn, for the most part, what they do there: I just want them to not give a darn what we do here.

A federal law restricting something is one thing – a local law restricting it is quite another. The ultimate way forward for the United States – the way we keep ourselves a united, happy people – is to not just return to federalism, but to put federalism on steroids. An appeal to the federal power over a local law should be a rarity, and only taken up if the local action is an egregious violation of federal Constitutional provision. Federal cases deciding whether a local football team can have a team prayer before the game, for instance, are an absurdity. There is no real federal Constitutional issue which arises…no more than does a federal Constitutional issue arise when a more Progressive area of the country enacts a law providing for free birth control. It is just no one outside the local area’s business what happens in such a matter.

As it turns out, I don’t think that Mein Kampf should be available in my local libraries. But I also think that Das Kapital is not worthy of anyone’s consideration. And if I could convince, by free and fair argument, my fellow local citizens to enact a law removing said works from the library, it would be of no concern to anyone outside our local area. As long as people feel in their local communities that their ultimate destinies are in their own hands, they will feel largely content.

A feminist ponders:

It makes me wonder what happened to the Brave New World we’d envisaged for our daughters and granddaughters. A world of unlimited possibilities, choices and equality for girls to become or do anything?

A world I — like many women — fought for in the Sixties.

Has feminism made life worse, not better, for today’s generation of girls?

Certainly, women have never existed in such a bleak emotional landscape.

G. K. Chesterton answered the question long before the feminist was born:

Now I have only taken the test case of Female Suffrage because it is topical and concrete; it is not of great moment for me as a political proposal. I can quite imagine anyone substantially agreeing with my view of woman as universalist and autocrat in a limited area; and still thinking that she would be none the worse for a ballot paper. The real question is whether this old ideal of woman as the great amateur is admitted or not. There are many modern things which threaten it much more than suffragism; notably the increase of self-supporting women, even in the most severe or the most squalid employments. If there be something against nature in the idea of a horde of wild women governing, there is something truly intolerable in the idea of a herd of tame women being governed. And there are elements in human psychology that make this situation particularly poignant or ignominous. The ugly exactitudes of business, the bells and clocks the fixed hours and rigid departments, were all meant for the male: who, as a rule, can only do one thing and can only with the greatest difficulty be induced to do that. If clerks do not try to shirk their work, our whole great commercial system breaks down. It is breaking down, under the inroad of women who are adopting the unprecedented and impossible course of taking the system seriously and doing it well. Their very efficiency is the definition of their slavery. It is generally a very bad sign when one is trusted very much by one’s employers. And if the evasive clerks have a look of being blackguards, the earnest ladies are often something very like blacklegs. But the more immediate point is that the modern working woman bears a double burden, for she endures both the grinding officialism of the new office and the distracting scrupulosity of the old home. Few men understand what conscientiousness is. They understand duty, which generally means one duty; but conscientiousness is the duty of the universalist. It is limited by no work days or holidays; it is a lawless, limitless, devouring decorum. If women are to be subjected to the dull rule of commerce, we must find some way of emancipating them from the wild rule of conscience. But I rather fancy you will find it easier to leave the conscience and knock off the commerce. As it is, the modern clerk or secretary exhausts herself to put one thing straight in the ledger and then goes home to put everything straight in the house.

This condition (described by some as emancipated) is at least the reverse of my ideal. I would give woman, not more rights, but more privileges. Instead of sending her to seek such freedom as notoriously prevails in banks and factories, I would design specially a house in which she can be free. And with that we come to the last point of all; the point at which we can perceive the needs of women, like the rights of men, stopped and falsified by something which it is the object of this book to expose.

The Feminist (which means, I think, one who dislikes the chief feminine characteristics) has heard my loose monologue, bursting all the time with one pent-up protest. At this point he will break out and say, “But what are we to do? There is modern commerce and its clerks; there is the modern family with its unmarried daughters; specialism is expected everywhere; female thrift and conscientiousness are demanded and supplied. What does it matter whether we should in the abstract prefer the old human and housekeeping woman; we might prefer the Garden of Eden. But since women have trades they ought to have trades unions. Since women work in factories, they ought to vote on factory-acts. If they are unmarried they must be commercial; if they are commercial they must be political. We must have new rules for a new world—even if it be not a better one.” I said to a Feminist once: “The question is not whether women are good enough for votes: it is whether votes are good enough for women.” He only answered: “Ah, you go and say that to the women chain-makers on Cradley Heath.”

Now this is the attitude which I attack. It is the huge heresy of Precedent. It is the view that because we have got into a mess we must grow messier to suit it; that because we have taken a wrong turn some time ago we must go forward and not backwards; that because we have lost our way we must lose our map also; and because we have missed our ideal, we must forget it. “There are numbers of excellent people who do not think votes unfeminine; and there may be enthusiasts for our beautiful modern industry who do not think factories unfeminine.” But if these things are unfeminine it is no answer to say that they fit into each other. I am not satisfied with the statement that my daughter must have unwomanly powers because she has unwomanly wrongs. Industrial soot and political printer’s ink are two blacks which do not make a white. Most of the Feminists would probably agree with me that womanhood is under shameful tyranny in the shops and mills. But I want to destroy the tyranny. They want to destroy womanhood. That is the only difference.

Whether we can recover the clear vision of woman as a tower with many windows, the fixed eternal feminine from which her sons, the specialists, go forth; whether we can preserve the tradition of a central thing which is even more human than democracy and even more practical than politics; whether, in word, it is possible to re-establish the family, freed from the filthy cynicism and cruelty of the commercial epoch, I shall discuss in the last section of this book. But meanwhile do not talk to me about the poor chain-makers on Cradley Heath. I know all about them and what they are doing. They are engaged in a very wide-spread and flourishing industry of the present age. They are making chains.

Hope you all have a wonderful new year!