Thoughts Shaken, Not Stirred

Interesting how neither JP2, Benedict, nor Trump could defeat their internal deep states. None could lift a finger against corruption despite three completely different skill sets/temperaments. Maybe the executive is impotent versus any bureaucracy? Or that we simply expect too much of our executive? 

Perhaps Pope Benedict himself kind of addresses this obliquely when he said a decade ago:  

“God grants to evil and to evildoers a large measure of freedom — too large, we might think. Even so, history does not slip through his fingers.”

That freedom God gives evildoers inevitably gives them power in the short-run. Is that power at all? The long run is where the power is. 

**

Interesting comment from a Catholic cardinal in a book I’m reading.  A reporter asked him, “what are we going to do about our Church?” And he replied, “The way you pose the question itself is wrong. You must recognize that this is not ‘our’ Church but ‘his’ Church. Christ said, ’This is my Church.’…” 

**

Heard Donny & Marie Osmond’s “Morning Side of the Mountain” song and thought about how it could be a model for the story of God and man except for missing the happy ending in the latter story. That song was kind of plaintive as a kid so it’s nice that now I can see it now as resolvable in the light of eternity. 

The song was written by a Jewish Russian emigre named Samuel Medoff in the 1950s. To read way too much into it, it’s almost like the lack of resolution between the morning side and the twilight side was a wait for the messiah! His co-writer, Larry Stock, was second generation via Hungary, and it might’ve been Stock who had the melancholic streak, as he was a co-writer of a more famous song: “Blueberry Hill”, with the lyrics: “The wind in the willow played / Love's sweet melody / But all of those vows you made / Were never to be.” 

I also listened to "Whiskey River” and there’s a riff in that Willie Nelson that sounded suspiciously similar to one in Barry Manilow’s “I Write the Songs” that came out two years later. I think The Beach Boys Bruce Johnston, who wrote the Manilow song, was listening to Nelson..

Obama's '13 Voting Commission & Jena Griswold

So let’s review the remarkable ascent of Colorado Sec of State Jena Griswold in light of the presidential commission on voting that Obama launched in 2013. 

The 2012 presidential election was presumably a closer call than Obama would’ve liked so only a few weeks into his second term he announced a committee to examine voting difficulties and voting technology. 

Obama’s panel was bipartisan in that it included Ben Ginsberg, a Republican lawyer who had just submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in favor of gay marriage. He was a Romney guy and as establishment Republican as establishment Republicans get.  

The team also included Tammy Patrick, the “compliance” officer for notorious Maricopa county. She was not in the compliance role in 2020 but Maricopa is the poster child for non-transparency and lack of vote-custody. Not a confidence-builder.  Also included are Larry Lomax from Nevada and Christopher Thomas from Michigan which means AZ, MI, NV - all swing states, two trending red - got represented.

Larry Lomax is noteworthy for seeing the key issue (unsure if he saw it 2013 but he certainly at some point). He says: 

 “The core problem for our fragile elections framework is secrecy: withholding from the public the evidence needed to authenticate whether results are true.”

In other words, we have an un-auditable system. 

He started an election watch website here.  (Naturally, Google search results have scrubbed blackbox voting from its results.  It’s the top hit for duckduckgo with term: “larry lomax blackbox voting”). 

Now just as the commission was starting its work Gov. Hickenlooper created a new position for Obama’s “voter protection” attorney Jena Griswold.  She was appointed as a “liaison to the federal government” and moved to D.C.

Hickenlooper likely became close with Obama when he was an executive member of the 2008 Dem convention hosted in Denver.  Hickenlooper didn't lack shyness in his partisanship. Wikipedia has it: “In a controversial move decried by critics as breaching partisan ethics, the Hickenlooper administration arranged for the DNC host committee, a private nonprofit organization, to get untaxed fuel from Denver city-owned pumps.” 

Griswold worked as liaison and then, according to a Colorado Democrat article, “work[ed] as outside counsel to a company she wouldn’t name and work[ed] on public policy issues as part of her firm, Griswold Strategies.”

Her juice, even as a 32-year old, must’ve been impressive (Obama-influenced?) because:

“The first-time candidate is one of two Democrats in the race to replace Williams but enters with the support of more than 20 current and former party officials, including Senate Minority Leader Lucia Guzman, former House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, House Majority Leader KC Becker, former U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey and former Lt. Governor Gail Schoettler.”

So it wouldn't be difficult to imagine that Obama wanted, going forward, a more comfortable Democrat vote advantage and the route to that was understanding the machinery in order to leverage any advantage they could find (later: Zuckerberg dropboxes!).  Towards that end, Obama not only inaugurated a presidential commission but perhaps asked Hickenlooper to create a D.C. job for Griswold, his former voter protection lawyer, for mentoring and seasoning to prepare her to be the chief overseer of elections in the state of Colorado. 

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Trump

Joe Oltmann mentioned recently that he voted for Obama in '08 so there's been quite a political evolution for him.  To a lesser extent I had one too since I was anti-Trump in '15 and '16.  I wondered if I could pinpoint the moment I red-pilled and discovered: "Ah...so Trump is more sinned against than sinning. And he's not been bad with his judges and policies." Perhaps my experience is representative of the millions who didn't vote Trump in '16 but did in '20. 

I would've guessed the turn came when the "empty vault" Mueller report came out but it looks like it was well before then mainly due to the combination of Trump having decent policies and the shock and awe of a corrupt press / intel services that didn't give Trump a chance. 

A singular moment seems to have been the Kavanaugh nomination.  It basically hit both points simultaneously: conscienceless Democrats on the Judiciary combined with the perseverance of Trump in sticking with Kavanaugh. 

But the Russia collusion collapse - which occurred essentially late 2017/early 2018 when we learned the Steele dossier was a joke and that Strzok and Page were also a joke - really opened my eyes and was a huge civics lesson. No one teaches in school - yet! - about the fourth branch of government.  

(And I feel "better" about that to some extent simply knowing how it came to be, i.e. that intelligence became god when digital became king. See these paragraphs from above link:)

"Once you accept the digital-era intelligence apparatus of China, Russia, Saudi-Arabia, The United States and Israel, are now the primary national security mechanisms for stabilization of government; then you accept the importance of those intelligence operations.

Once you understand how foundational those modern intelligence operations have become for the stability and continuity of those governments…… then you begin to understand just how the United States intelligence community became more important than the government that created it."

But, moving back to 2017 and 2018, here was my evolution which was heavily influenced by media and Comey: 

1/18/17:

Electing Trump seemed like a turd sandwich but I do find it refreshing that someone isn't playing by the media handbook: Republicans generally act like eunuchs before the liberal media masters, but Trump sure has blown that up, sometimes for good, sometimes ill.  Falling Trump poll numbers are a puzzlement. He seems same Trump to me. If people expected him to change, then my approval rating of them (not Trump) sinks. 

His performance at the press conference was the stuff of wonder if only because he's taken authenticity and casualness to a new level.  Casualness with the truth, for sure, but also casualness as far as just being himself, not putting on airs, just acting like he wasn't at a press conference but at his backyard barbecue.  Only he was frying reporters, not burgers.  It's no small thing to be the first casual president. 

2/20/17:

The way I've been lately looking at it is Trump is entitled, so to speak, to be fallible. That I have to put up with him as president just as my wife has to put up with me. Not to overlook flaws certainly but at least to understand he has them and thus write them off to some extent. "He's just being Trump," I think. 

I have to say I love the way Trump thinks outside the box as far as skipping things other GOP folks would take for granted: like getting abused at liberal White House Correspondent's dinner (basically a commercial for liberalism given comedians are almost always lefties).

I think it never occurred to other GOP'rs because they have a case of Stockholm Syndrome and like getting abused by their media captors.

7/17/17:

I'm amused by the just desserts ol' Trumpenstein is receiving. Be careful what you wish for - in this case, the presidency.  It still rankles me that he brought up birtherism as a way to insinuate him into the hearts if not minds of primary voters, but anyway...

More to the point, he naively and blithely went into the election with things to hide (obviously) and figured his man Jeff Sessions would protect him from all harm.  Sessions doesn't play the game and recuses himself, opening the way for Comey to take over, leading inexorably to Trump firing him, leading inexorably to a special prosector, or for Trump a special persecutor.  That Trump would still be harboring an obsession against Sessions defies belief since no one cares about Sessions except Sessions' family (and Donald).

9/18/17:

With the Trump nomination, Republican primary voters finally got exhausted with the long project of trying to go along by getting along, by buying into the Democrat premise that Republicans needed to do better on diversity, racial accord, political correctness, such as how Romney could scarcely defend himself from charges he was involved in a war against women, which later was “confirmed” by stray comment showing his dedication to the Democrat ideal of patronizing women and minorities by saying he had “binders full of women” on his short list for some office. 

There comes a time when even conservationists no longer want to conserve the current environment. I thought Trump was a mistake until I began to marvel at a world in which a Republican president felt free enough to speak his mind with such candor (if not with overly much truthfulness). It was a modest revelation and a guilty pleasure. Trump reminds me of the citizen legislator who isn’t there for a career and is wiling to be unpopular. 

9/26/17:

Am enjoying the fix Trump is in way, way too much. He put himself into quite a pickle, one that money and power can''t free him from.  The wheels of justice are turning.  Character usually gets revealed, but rarely so quickly as in the case of Trump after he fired Comey and now wants to fire Sessions.  The anger at Sessions is a "smoking gun" inasmuch as Comey probably deserved getting fired while Sessions did nothing but do the honorable and customary thing and recuse himself given the conflict of interest. Even Breitbart and Limbaugh are troubled by his throwing Sessions under the bus. The country may get the best (and underserved) deal of all - neither Trump or Shrillary but Pence for much of the 4-year term.  

12/19/17:

I told Ron that Trump’s first year has been a pretty decent one. I may have to eat my words about my anti-Trumpism pre-presidency.  Especially since I don’t care about Trumpian tweets and I wish the media would just ignore them.  Of course still three years left, an eon in politics. But he’s proving anyone can do that job.  

1/17/18:

Read book with a clip in it about how Justice Scalia liked Trump run in ‘16, seeing it a refreshing turn of events in our heavily scripted, politically-correct time.

Indeed for me, the best thing about Trump is what upsets so many others - his candor, including the comment on “sh-thole countries”.  What bothers me is that he lies repeatedly, to put it mildly.  It’s ironic that from Trump you’re more likely to hear the truth or lies, compared to the lukewarm boilerplate of “real” politicians. 

1/26/18:

I continue to find nothing to listen to in morning politics - Morning Joe horrible, Fox and Friends boring.  Been listening to Breitbart radio some; sort of refreshing to hear something where Trump isn’t the lovechild of Hitler and the Devil.  I was very open to the whole Russian collusion thing and possibly throwing Trump out, but now I’m done and I think the country needs to move on and do four years with Trump. 

2/3/18:

Interesting summary from Ron’s friend on what looks like a scam: "All this Russia collusion is an attempt to cover up the fact that the Obama administration, the intelligence community, the DNC, along with the mainstream media used our nations surveillance as a political tool to try to get Hilliary elected President. This makes Watergate look like a kindergarten play."

5/2/18:

My feelings on Trump hardened early by a steady diet of National Review and Morning Joe.   (Although in fairness to me, the thing that initially turned me against Trump was his birtherism, which pre-dates the negativity from National Review & MJ. ) But there’s no doubt that hearing only the case against Trump was an imbalance that I’ve since tried to rectify in very small doses, by reading parts of positive books about Trump and his voters.  The plain fact is that I appear captured by the media.

7/10/18:

Ross Douthat in the NYT said that the Barrett interview with Trump reportedly went horribly (a credit to Barrett, ha) and Douthat said it’s not surprising to him that Trump and a devout Catholic mother of seven didn’t get along too well.

7/26/18:

France has been an interesting inversion of the Trump phenomenon. I started out in love with Pope Francis and now struggle to like him, while with Trump an initial strong loathing has become an acceptance of his faults.

They don't care what others think. Ultimately when you ain’t got nothing (meaning no love or respect from elites with Trump, and none from more “conservative” cardinals and bishops with Francis) then you got nothing to lose.

10/8/18:

Listened to more Morning Joe this morning and it occurred to me part of the issue is the criminalization of politics, how these senators don’t want a Trump pick on the Court and therefore want endless investigations to delay and destroy. They’re desperate to unseat Trump similarly by endless investigations. If you can’t get your way via the ballot box then the thinking is to use the court system or Justice department.  

I’m certainly on the Trump train now given the alternatives. I’d been skeptical of the notion that Republicans like McCain and Romney had been patsies by passively accepting the liberal media environment because it seemed a realistic strategy.  Live with the bias and try not to  “provoke the beast” and reap a whirlwind from those who buy their ink by the barrel, to mix metaphors.  But the problem with that is that it’s like paying protection money to a mafia goon - eventually they keeps upping the price. 

But Trump has shown “the art of the possible”, that it is possible to win the presidency without begging for crumbs of praise and recognition from Andrea Mitchell.  

12/8/18:

I think Trump has been the best president we've had since Reagan (low bar). I think so far he's been far superior to W. Bush, Clinton, Obama. And broken promises don't bother me that much since I didn't expect them to be fulfilled (like the wall). 

Heard interview with Glenn Beck and how he found his way to Trump in '20 after rejecting him in '16. He said plainly that he had no record to go on with Trump before the first election and therefore was able to change his opinion as the Trump term went on. Seems Trump's actions with respect to Israel in late '17 and early '18 helped change his mind. Likewise his plainspokenness on abortion, etc... And, of course, the combination of someone in the GOP having a spine versus the radicalization of the Dem party made '20 an easy choice for him. 

Joe Oltmann on Susan Rice

I’d read that Susan Rice was dangerous and not to be trusted and so I was relieved when she wasn’t picked as VP.  Probably doesn’t matter given her influence is probably greater than Kamala’s now. 

Here is Joe Oltmann’s take:

**

“Here is something I know very well to be true. Susan Rice is a bad bad person. While at the UN after then Sudanese President Al Bashir slighted her attempts to interfere with the sovereignty of their nation, created the story of ethnic cleansing and genocide in Darfur, Sudan. That westerner story led to the development of Save Darfur, th sham organization that centered around saving what does not exist. To the tune of billions of dollars. It led to an ICC indictment for state sponsored genocide. An indictment that was ultimately dismissed, until… they could finally topple a nation with massive natural resources. Susan Rice is at the middle of many of the international fables that have led to death and destruction of millions of innocent people and the narratives designed to steal resources and rule over other nations. She is a demon among demons and was once described to me as a sociopath with no limits on what she would do for power. Fast forward to today… there is talk that Susan Rice is behind the Biden shell of a man. There is also talk of unity with Susan Rice. I cannot imagine a more demonic person.

Sanctions in Sudan led to the death of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese. Sanctions that were based on wars with South Sudan over the Christians verses Muslims battle, that was largely non existent. Sanctions over a lie in Darfur. Many do not know the truth… but I do. I was there. I spoke up then, I wrote white papers, I traveled without a passport, I was there under the mission of sharing Jesus. Yet that is not what I was doing… I was learning truth.

I wrote a paper on the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and another on whether or not their was ethnic cleansing and genocide in Sudan. I included information about the nearly 50 Darfurian rebel groups, the Janjaweed, Chadian rebels, Libyan army… and the tribal conflict of the region. I wrote a paper that said there was no ethnic cleansing. There was no state sponsored genocide. But the narrative in the US… set by the intelligence or lack there of. A CIA linked journalist said to me, “why can’t you respect the institution of government?” Well… I’ve seen them lie about everything and seen them kill children. I’ve seen them enact strategies that literally caused commercial planes to fall out of the sky killing innocent people.

So back to Susan Rice. She’s a very bad person. The institution of the deep state does not differentiate Republicans and Democrats… it is a cabal thirsty for power and money. Wings of the same bird…

Once you understand you are an inconvenient necessity for the institutions of power, you will understand that God is in complete contradiction to who they are and what they represent.

Become the person who chooses to stand against the establishment and with your fellow Americans. Choose God first, choose courage and choose to stand with each other in the gap and hold these evil terrorists responsible.” 

The Quaint Recording of Modern Presidencies

I recall learning about the presidents in school and being awed by the office and its history but I think something fundamentally changed in 1992 with Bill Clinton. If it wasn’t quite the end of history it was somehow the end of the presidency as we know it; even bothering to record the history now seems sort of quaint, as if we’re assigning more importance to them than is due. They are more or less just random people plucked out of obscurity, like American Idol singers.  It doesn’t help, perhaps, that their supporting cast of Congressmen and women have been like bad contestants on “The Gong Show”. 

Now the office looks small, the grandeur non-existent.  Clinton was smart of course, but also a sexual predator who seemed more interested in himself than America.  Then we had a lightweight George W. Bush who got high on his own supply of utopianism, followed by “an elite dude found randomly on the street” in Obama (his claim to fame having been not swallowing the Bush drug of utopianism on Iraq), followed by the ever cartoonish Trump, and now finally (appropriately?) the Weekend at Bernie’s president.  

Perhaps for everyone this is true, that you grow up esteeming leaders until you find they have feet of clay.  Certainly the reverence for JFK and respect for LBJ fell off a cliff by the ‘70s.  LBJ seemed like something of a vulgarian and JFK had his appetites.  

Ray Epps and the Life of Reilly

Kind of humorous how the “Where’s Ray Epps?” meme has gotten the attention of the bad guys (FBI and 1/6 committee).   The committee said, “oh, don’t worry about him, we talked to him back in November. Nothing to see here.”. Then with amazing speed a week later they reversed course and now Friday they’ll be speaking with him on the record.  As if that would happen without the rightwing laughter at their inattention. 

Epps is said to have called the FBI on his own on 1/8/2020 and the FBI was satisfied he was a good guy and they’d merely “forgotten” to take him off the Most Wanted list for six months -- that is until a week the Revolver story on Epps. 

You get the impression they’re all just winging it, just throwing a ton of lies out and seeing what will stick and what they’ll have to “massage”.  

The DOJ  also felt called upon to charge someone, anyone, with a crime higher than the small charges they’ve come up with so they went with “sedition” on an Oath Keeper after letting him run free for a year.  Quite the delayed reaction, especially given the enormous resources being expended on 1/6. 

I’m sure the government wants to make an example of the 1/6rs, a shown of power.  But it really shows weakness, just the pathetic actions of a bully against folks without money or decent legal representation.  

We’re also getting a window on part of why they’ve dragged their feet for so long - -they don’t want all the video evidence coming out to show the Feds were involved. An Ashli Babbitt video surfaced showing her chatting with police and trying to calm other protestors. 

As journalist (former National Review'r) Julie Kelly wrote today:

"As more people slowly accept the idea that January 6 was an inside job, they want Republicans to investigate the truth when they take the House this year. None thinks this Republican leadership will do it. That’s a huge problem.”

**

Civil wars rarely happen in aging societies so I suppose we’re all going to be together like it or not.  But the hope is what Joe Oltmann said the other day: 

“They said we are headed to a civil war. I would argue we are headed to a great reckoning of recognizing our leadership is the enemy, not fellow Americans.”

The Sharing Miracle at Cana

The gospel about the wedding at Cana must be especially mysterious given how many homilists have missed the whole point of it.  As a priest on Twitter wrote:

It’s one thing to say that Yahweh is Lord, the God who will free us from our enemies and lead us to the promised land. But it’s really something else to read the most mystical and erotic of books in the Old Testament, the Song of Songs, a long poem of romantic discourse between a groom and his bride, and believe it is rally to be about God’s love for Israel.

Not a book for children, this one. But a book for lovers, which is why it is in the Bible. Which is why saints and mystics over the years have judged it to be full of some of the greatest words in all of Scripture. 

The Miracle of the Wedding of Cana is not so much about thirst or party planning, but about the faithfulness of the bridegroom... We begin to realize: there is another wedding being alluded to here... when Jesus’ hour arrives and he offers his body and blood for his bride. 

**

Hmm.... so the miracle at Cana wasn’t just a lot of folks sharing from the wine flasks they had in their cloaks?  Asking for a friend. 

The Great Winnowing

I must be extremely naive because here is a list of people I've trusted in the past: 

---Dr Fauci in 2020, our likable trustworthy uncle. 

---Joe Biden, in 2020, whom I’d trusted to be a sane, moderate president.  

---Dr Francis Collins at NIH, a professing Christian. 

          ---George W. Bush on WMDs in 2003 and to not call Republicans terrorists in 2020. 

          ---Dick Cheney in 2000, who I thought was a wise and experienced leader. (Ha!) 

          ---The modern FBI - after Hoover left. 

---The crew at National Review, where I’d been a subscriber for two decades but no more. Particularly Rich Lowry, under whose editorship there was not a debunking of election fraud (which would’ve been helpful to sort the wheat from chaff) but utter indifference. Similarly a lack of outrage over the criminals in our government with 1/6 and the rioters. (Same with Jonah Goldberg & David French.)

Some serious egg on my face.  

Other shocks: 

---James Comey and Robert Mueller who, without a smidgeon of shame tried to ruin Trump’s presidency.  

---The FBI who now has entered the game of enticing and entrapping rioters for fun and profit and spies on its citizens including journalists like Tucker Carlson.  

---Dominion Voting, a company responsible for nearly a third of our voting, cared so little about democracy and vetting their security chief that they hired a psychopath and antifa member. 

---The stunning refusal of Maricopa county to comply with subpoenas which directed them to provide routers to ascertain vote fraud. Similarly, ballot images, election related databases, result files, and log files were deleted just before being handed over. 

          ---The January 6th committee: you'd need an electron microscope to find any credibility therein.  

---Pope Francis, overseeing a church that is falling apart, goes out of his way to crush the Latin Mass. 

But there be heroes: 

---The heroism of folks like Eric Metaxas, Mike Lindell, Joe Oltmann and Lin Wood who gave up their professional reputations and much of their current earning potential in order to exercise their first amendment rights. 

---The stellar investigative reporting from Julie Kelly and others on 1/6. 

---The inspiring concern of Matt Braynard towards the political prisoners held in D.C.

---The courage of President Trump in not meekly accepting the double-standard that applies to all conservatives, up to and including not accepting election results, something Gore, Clinton, Abrahms and many others on the left have done in the past. 

---The many parents who have run for school board or gone to school board meetings to speak.  

          ---Priests who held masses and heard confessions during covid lockdowns. 

---The countless hours spent by so many volunteers in attempting to do a forensic audit in Arizona.  

The Bubbling Up of Truth

Kind of heartening to see that truth, like water, manages to make its way despite the obstacles and dams our elites put up.  Interesting to see the chain of information work its magic even without the help of conservative or mainstream media.  At least now we have a U.S. Senator (Ted Cruz) grilling the head of the FBI about who Ray Epps is and how many FBI people were aiding and inciting violence on 1/6. Theatre, for sure, but it's got to start there. 

To watch how the info bubbled up is interesting. No conservative magazine let alone liberal outfit would touch the Ray Epps story or how there were FBI inciting rioters to crimes.  It all fell to a rinky-dink website called “The Revolver”. But that unknown site caught fire.  It slowly made its way up Trump-friendly media. It got picked up by American Greatness. It got picked up by the fearless Tucker Carlson, who mentioned Ray Epps to Ted Cruz.  And Cruz, whether playing simply for the crowd or not had some words for the FBI head. Likely nothing will come further since the FBI is impervious to discipline. I mean, if they used a dossier they knew was fake to try to bring down a president, then what would they fear from a congressman?  

But the lesson is that without fringe, alternative news sources there would be no questions from Cruz on it. National Review is an example of respectable but useless publication since if they can’t feign interest in civil liberties and protection of citizens from the state then what good are they? 

The money quote is from Julie Kelly on the Eric Metaxas show: 

"There’s no condemnation from National Review of this abusive, punitive, prosecution of hundreds of Americans in a political prison in the shadows of the U.S. Capitol...I think a lot of it is laziness. I think these people are just in their safe little sinecures, they get paid by big donors, they don’t have to do the detailed investigative work. I don’t think anyone at National Review has listened to one court hearing about January 6th. Their reporting on this is very thin and to the extent any is involved it condemns Donald Trump and Republicans.” 

Seems a reasonable deduction. I came to a similar conclusion during the post-election when they had zero interest in the subject of election fraud despite at least 70% of Republicans being very interested in it.  If they weren’t lazy, they’d serve their readership. Or perhaps they did serve whom they were interested in serving: their big donors. 

National Review went from being anti-Trump in ’15 and then coming around during the Trump years in defending him to some extent. They turned on him the minute he left office. Less about truth than politics.  But that’s a defining characteristic of our time - it’s extremely difficult to treat corruption used in service of defeating an enemy as anything less than good.  It's shame on all of us. 

This has certainly broken my own partisanship. I would vote for Tulsi Gabbard or Andrew Yang or Bernie Sanders before Bush, French or Kasich.  That is certainly a new attitude for me.  I've finally come around to the view the great Tom of Disputations had many years ago: vote for the person with the best character regardless of party. And there are few tests of character more obvious than how you view the least of our brothers being stripped of due process.

It's likewise a test of character to take the concerns of the "deplorables" about election fraud seriously. It's a test of character when you promote trade policy that kowtows to China and makes millionaires into billionaires while stripping thousands of blue collar jobs. 

Ideally election security would be of interest no matter who the candidate was.  Likewise you’d think the story of the Feds helping to trigger a riot would be interesting no matter how repulsive the political rioters. Obviously that’s not the way the real world works. But National Review showed itself as indifferent to the rule of law and there’s the rub - it used to be their brand. 

Serving Your Humor Needs

Funny cartoons (click to enlarge-ify).  I think if non-programmers could see some of the code that is holding our society together like bailing wire, well… 

And another one, that expresses the log4j bug well: 

 

Electronic voting is perfect petri dish for suspicion of fraud because it’s proprietary, un-auditable code.  The ultimate black box upon which you can project any number of crimes or fantasies. 

Whether the Dominion machines were fraudulent is in some ways beside the point. The new instrument of our democracy - voting machines - are not calculators, or tabulators, but highly sophisticated computer systems involving thousands of lines of code that no one but a few engineers understand. Even states purchasing the software can't look at the code. 

The Order of Tragedies on 1/6

I rank the Trump supporters who entered the Capitol at only number 6 of the worst aspects of the events of 1/6.:

1. That our gov’t helped foment a riot on the Capitol.

2. That those held in D.C. jail are held in inhumane conditions without speedy trials. 

3. That the process of counting electoral votes was interfered with and delayed. 

4. That the government and press is covering up Fed role in the riot. 

5. That Ashli Babbitt, although involved in a crime, was killed without even a misdemeanor charge brought against the perpetrator. 

6. That hundreds of rioters broke windows and entered the Capitol illegally. 

7. That our national reputation with elites in Europe took a hit. 

8. That someone put his feet on Nancy Pelosi’s desk. 

9. That AOC was fearful. 

The Wild West Days of Catholic Blogs

It's funny how back in the mid-2000s I thought the Internet couldn't be tamed.  I thought it was stable in its instability, that the "Wild West" aspect was a permanent feature.  But China has been able to do it to a great extent and in America we see control asserting through the intermediaries of Facebook and Twitter where the NY Post was banned for publishing a story on Hunter Biden's laptop. 

Even voting, once blessedly (and cursedly - see Chicago) local, has been centralized via the software of three large companies. 

Communication on the 'net seems to want to centralize and therefore monetize. There's a market for providing a curated and pre-approved experience. 

We saw it back in the day even in the tiny world of Catholic blogs where the antiquated “blogroll” list was trumped by paid platforms like Patheos and National Catholic Register. Star bloggers were hired and sometimes fired, the latter in the case of Mark Shea and Simcha Fisher who did not quite understand their new role as paid eunuchs. Twitter is now firing folks it doesn’t like as well. Bye Trump and MTG.

Fortunately fearless voices are still finding a way via Substack, Telegram, and others.  Ideally free speech on the ‘net is like water, which often finds a way through despite dams and other obstructions. The taming of the Internet is not complete despite the centralization; after all, there would be no UK Daily Mail story on Ray Epps without the water of free speech getting through to enough people to reach the Mail. 

Still, it's likely some in the regime are looking at the Ray Epps story and learning lessons or coming up with strategies on how to suppress future Eppsies. The FBI is too big to fail.  Just ask Ted Cruz. 

How the Internet Ruins Novel-Reading

This is how the 'net is terrible for my concentration. I read a line from a Colson Whitehead novel about a jewelry store on 47th street in Manhattan between 5th and 6th and immediately think: hey, that’s around where the Gotham Book Mart was. So of course I have to google it and sure enough it’s there on 47th between 5th and 6th, or rather was there when I went there lo these many decades ago. 

I was young with a full head of Irish-black hair. I’d foolishly believed the iconic sign “Wise Men Fish Here” out front, not realizing that wisdom is rarely found in avant-garde literature. Youth is wasted on the young. 

Naturally this reminiscing led me to look up the Wiki entry on Gotham, which led naturally to trying to find the streaming availability of a documentary of the bookstore owner’s life, which naturally led to me reading her NYT obituary, which naturally led to me considering the book I'd bought at the place, poems by Diana Der-Hovanessian (say three times fast) which, at the time, caused me to be instantly smitten by her.  So naturally I had to look her up as well, thinking almost certainly she had died and indeed she did, in 2018 at age 83. 

Things change, especially in the Big Apple. The Gotham shop eventually was sold, then eventually moved to a new building, and then eventually went out of business. 

When I think about the decline and fall of that bookshop as well as the larger arc of the decline and fall of our country, the one consolation is that it’s all in God’s plan. St. Augustine wondered at the why of it: 

Why is this, God my Master, given that you, in yourself, are eternal joy for yourself; and that certain creatures, gathered around you, always rejoice in you? 

Why is it that our part of creation swings between decay and growth, pain and reconciliation? Perhaps because this is the proper mode of being for these things and with this alone you endowed them when from highest heaven to the lowest places of the earth, from the dawn of the ages to their end, from angel to tiny worm, from the first stirring of change to the last, you assigned all classes of good things and all your righteous works to their appropriate places, and activated them at their proper times?

More Ah-ha Moments on the Feds

Have updated my post with new info related to the puzzle of why the Feds got so riled up about rightwing groups that they were willing to put the Capitol at risk. 

It's satisfying to read those who have cracked this whodunit or rather "whydunit".  (Latest is that Ray Epps is being subpoenaed! Brilliant.)

The gist of it seems to be that our discredited dominant media are *very* credible to the elites in law and government.  I'm kind of blown away by the extent of their influence.  Declining ratings and readership is far less meaningful than one might think. 

A lot can be traced back to Charlottesville in 2017.  The media narrative focused like a laser mostly on Trump, of course, and they covered themselves in the usual disgrace.  But what I missed at the time was that they omitted the real story: that of how the police let the two groups battle it out.  And then I missed how the media subsequently praised and approved Antifa, which set us up nicely for the summer of brotherly riots in 2020.  (It also may've given the impression to rightwing rioters leading up to 1/6 that political violence was acceptable.)

So now the whole picture is becoming clearer. One takeaway for me is that just because I've "moved on" from the dominant media doesn't mean those in power have - which, naturally, makes the media very influential.  They punch far above their weight. The other takeaway is the relationship between the deep state and the the dominant media is far more symbiotic and friendly than I'd imagined. 

The press also seems to know they have a powerful new tool in their tool shed: that of omitting news rather than just straight propaganda.  We saw that with Hunter Biden's laptop and now with the FBI connection to 1/6, but we also saw it back in '17 with the lack of outrage and demand for accountability over a lack of police control in Charlottesville.  That foreshadowed today's lack of media interest in police control over the 1/6 rioters. 

Here's an interesting quote from a professor in Colorado, Mark Holowchak, who noted that Thomas Jefferson was concerned about the press potentially becoming "sycophants of government":

Thomas Jefferson had an ambivalent relationship with the press. That ambivalence expressed itself in an unflagging theoretical commitment to free presses with growing practical recognition as he advanced in years that free presses seldom concerned themselves with truth. Thus, while he recognized that public papers were often put to use for political posture, in spite of the strictures of the First Amendment, he also recognized that a Jeffersonian republic—republican government consistent with Jefferson’s political philosophy—needed free presses. Without free presses, there could not be an informed citizenry, and without an informed citizenry, the likelihood of abusive governors and corrupt government would decouple. So, presses in a Jeffersonian republic had to be free. That is duly noted in the secondary literature. Yet he also came to recognize that the gazettes of nations with a commitment to free presses were vehicles of “inculpation”—not only the politics-sanctioned censors of government, but also politics-sanctioned sycophants of government. Thus, there is the intimation that their potential for public harm through political bias and libel far exceeds their potential for public good through dissemination of useful, fact-based information. That is often overlooked in the secondary literature. So too is the tension between Jefferson’s experiences with presses and his theoretical commitment to their indispensability in a Jeffersonian republic.

If the press was bad in Jefferson's day when Christianity was still regnant how could we not expect them to be worse today? 

And as our country falls apart, it falls apart in every way.  It's systemic. It was always going to be impossible to hope the press would do its job when every segment of society is in steep decline.

So at lot of this speculation about the pernicious FBI, or election fraud, or the media is, admittedly, like being offended by dinner assignments on the Titanic. 

Even if the media wasn't a punchline it couldn't save us. Only a spiritual revival, another Great Awakening, can. 

Sympathy for the David French (and me)

David French had a good piece today on respecting sources of information from "strange messengers" (although I took it not in the way he intended). 

I’ve certainly learned to be less allergic to strange messengers over the past few years and have long been disdainful of conspiracy theories - perhaps because they come from unvetted, non-expert “strange messengers” - but after the Epstein death/Hunter laptop/covid lab leak theory/dominant media not taking election fraud seriously and now 1/6…. well….it made me a consumer of sources I used to think were “icky” like Steve Bannon, the Revolver, Epoch Times, and the Daily Mail.

The real problem is obvious as the nose on our faces: sources for truth are scattered in a million different publications and fringe Twitter feeds, partially because there is no publication wealthy or impartial enough to do the sort of investigative reporting needed on institutions often huge and morally bankrupt. 

The money quote from 2021 from Clear Talk Media host Monica Matthews: “This year taught me one thing. Trust no one.” 

It’s impossible to know what to believe or trust, so in that respect we all should have pity on each other since we’re all in the same boat whether we know it or not.  David French and I may *think* we know the truth, but we're both navigating the choppy seas of increasing governmental corruption combined with the rot of the traditional watchdogs, the media.