Alinsky works for us now!
While the white land matters movements settles in for the duration in Oregon, the woman formerly know as the Smartest Woman in the World runs smack into her the tactics of her hero, one Saul Alinsky.
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.
From Hill,
Donald Trump is challenging Hillary Clinton to “disarm” her bodyguards to demonstrate she doesn’t need guns for protection.
The Republican presidential front-runner took to Twitter to dare Clinton to put her money where her mouth is.
“Hillary said that guns don’t keep you safe,” Trumped tweeted Sunday. “If she really believes that, she should demand that her heavily armed bodyguards quickly disarm!”
“I can’t spare this man–he fights.”
I like Trump, he fights.
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What a novel idea. Throw rocks at law enforcement officers upholding their sworn duty. Where have I heard that before? Oh yes the later Yasser Arafat and the PLO, from Daily Caller:
Kenneth Stokes, a councilman in Jackson, Miss., told local news Thursday that black leadership should gather together and attack police who enter Jackson’s city limits.
“What I suggest is we get the black leadership together, and as these jurisdictions come into Jackson we throw rocks and bricks and bottles at them. That will send a message we don’t want you in here,” Stokes told WLBT-3 News.
Alas poor Mr. Stokes. He he claims to put god first:
Councilman Kenneth I. Stokes was born and reared in Jackson, Mississippi. He is a man who puts God first. He is also a devoted husband and father.
I’ll take Mr Stokes at his word that he puts his particular god first, but I have no idea what god Stokes professes to worship. Do you? It is unclear how the senior Stokes coaches his little darling to throw their rocks.
Then maybe Stokes is a member of the KwT. That would be the Klan with a Tan. He just advocates rocks rather than burning crosses.
Finally if Stokes were a man of pallor and he proposed assaulting citizens of color, Loretta Lynch would already be investing Stokes for hate crimes.
The Snark of the Day, Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart:
Social justice warriors have made themselves experts at ignorance. I mean, for instance, is there a class of people dumber and less well qualified to talk about gender relations than Gender Studies graduates?
It looks to be a memorable year, in the very negative sense. Might as well have some sport with the social justice warriors. In a world where perception is championed as reality, if you perceive a social justice warrior to be not just wrong, but stupid, who is he to say you are wrong.
To the GOP establishment…..
If you truly don’t understand why Trump is so popular with even supposedly your voters timer then you have much larger problems to deal with than Trump.
That is all.
The coveted Bitsblog Snark of the Year:
I am 100% against rape. I do say to women if they don’t want to have sex with a man, they should not be naked in bed w/him.
Well what do you know? There was a consensus on this after all.
I’ve already written as regards Cosby. And so has David, I see.
An interesting mix of these two points, I have seen discussed several times on the web in the last week or so. Apparently, some feel that this attack on Cosby is preparatory to tearing the Clintons down. Apparently there are some who feel that the White House is behind this. Certainly, there is something to be said for the idea that all this started happening the moment there was a Democrat owing his election to the National Party in the position of district attorney. However, I’m not convinced of this. We’re talking about a group of people that would screw up a free lunch if such a thing existed.
But even if so, that goes directly back to my point that this whole thing with ta be right now is political retribution.
Savannah Guthrie, “Today”, when the facts did not fit the narrative, did her best Candy Crowley imitation and tried to bend the facts to conform the Clinton campaign issued talking points, from Washington Examiner:
“You mention Monica Lewinsky,” Guthrie asked. “Are you saying an alleged extra-marital affair, that of course he has now admitted, is that fair game?”
“Is it alleged? I don’t think that’s alleged,” Trump pounced. Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky became clear after Lewinsky turned over a semen-stained dress of hers to investigators, and Clinton ultimately admitted an “improper” relationship with her in August, 1998.
Let the facts trump the narrative. Kudos to Donald Trump for refusing to be Crowleyed by Guthrie.
Went on for some time now that the campaign of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is toast. But imagine my surprise when governor O’Malley from Maryland turns out to be drawing even less Support
He got exactly one person to show up to his Iowa Events. Yep. Count your nose, one. And even there he couldn’t get that one person to commit to vote for him.
Hat tip: Instapundit
Eric commented on the state of the electorate. The good news there a clear path to a GOP road to victory and if the nominee is not La Donald Trump, there is clear path for a conservative victory. Sadly for the fans of John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman et al, the road to the White House is not paved with media favor and guided by the principle of being nice to the democrats.
Being nice to the ‘rats have eight years of a supposed editor of the Harvard Law Review who never actually wrote an article for the Review. His anointed replacement is a lawyer too stupid to pass the District of Columbia bar exam, from Kurt Schlichter, Townhall:
That’s a little taste of what will[sic should] happen in the general election, but we conservatives have to face the heat and tell the truth. Imagine Supreme Court litigator Ted Cruz (or whoever) on the stage at a debate with Hillary, when everybody’s watching and she’s minimally able to rely on the media to save her. Hillary starts talking about what a friend to women she is, and Cruz comes back with her shameful treatment of the women her husband abused. Yeah, I expect the moderators to pull a Candy Crowley and screech and intervene to stop it, and the next day the mainstream media will be full of pearl-clutching outrage about the Republican daring to bring up a subject that they’ve decreed was off-limits. But normal people will ask. “Hey, wait a minute. Hillary did what? Why are we only hearing about this now?” And the fact that we have an alternative media – talk radio, Twitter, Facebook, the net in general, means that we can get our ideas and our views out there. They can’t gatekeep her track record of perfidy forever.
The lame streamers do not want to defend either B.J. or Mrs. Clinton. Rather, they rather declare the subjects of their personal character, or lack thereof, and the records off-limits. Go there and relish it.
One of the people I consider to be always worth reading is Don Surber.
He gets it mostly right here.
As The Donald laps the Republican field, commentators offer a variety of reasons for his popularity: He is a demagogue, a celebrity, an exploiter of anger, and supported by a bunch of nimrods.
Let’s put the name-calling aside for a moment and look at the fact that this is not a very good field of candidates. Doctor Ben Carson is in third-place in the daily Reuters Poll. Think about that. He is a brain surgeon, true, but he has never run anything larger than a department in a hospital, and is woefully behind in foreign policy. He has shown an inability to articulate his beliefs in an effective manner in five debates now. His campaign is in a shambles. But he is in third place in the Reuters Poll.
Forget Donald Trump. What does it say about such seasoned and polished political veterans like Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie that they are being whacked by a neophyte in the polls?
Yes, I get that the voters are pissed with the Establishment. Yes, I get that Trump is sucking all the air out of the room. Yes, I get that it is a weird year. But what I do not get is how an inexperienced and poor candidate named Ben Carson is ahead of them. John Kasich scored so low that he did not even make the top 10 (beaten out by “wouldn’t vote,” who finished fifth).
Every single one Republican candidate has had a year to establish himself (or herself in the case of Carly Fiorina) as the front-runner. If at this point “wouldn’t vote” is beating you, the time has come to cast your ego aside and pull the plug on your campaign because you ain’t the next Reagan; you’re Al Haig. There is nothing wrong with being Al Haig, a four-star general. You just ain’t gonna be president.
This election is becoming a referendum on Donald Trump. He may not be a giant. He might not be even average height. But he stands tall in this field — most of whom cannot beat Ben Carson.
The only reason that I can see that Surber is unable to determine why person is beating up on the entirety of the GOP establishment, is a lack of understanding of just how disconnected the voters are from said GOP establishment.
Amongst those disconnected from the GOP establishment comma in fact the majority of them, are people who simply don’t vote anymore, not having anyone to vote for.
The polling from the last few cycles, tells the story…The vast majority of Americans come down to the right of anything either party has puked up since Reagan. Which in turn is why most Americans no longer vote, feeling there is nobody to vote FOR. “I’m not Team D” isn’t enough to get out the vote…. the people are smarter than that.
Yet, we elect Democrats. Why? Well, ignoring vote fraud, which is another topic altogether, the answer is simple… there are no conservatives to vote for. So, the majority don’t vote, not wanting to sign their name to either liberal, or liberal lite as represented by today’s GOP.
Those that still do vote come down in the area of the radical left, which explains both congress and Obama. Though I note with satisfaction some disenchantment there. That disenchantment is totally understandable given the quality of the only two viable candidates in the Democrat crowd. Hillary Clinton, whose negatives are running in the high 60’s, and Bernie Sanders, likely the only candidate in the country who could actually come down to the left of the much despised Hillary Clinton.
I say again, there is no winning elections for the GOP, as a rule, unless and until they start offering real conservatives to vote for. And it is America that loses when the GOP fails to offer real conservatives on the ballot.
This is by no means to suggest that Trump, or Carson for that matter, are principled conservatives. What it does mean, is that they fill that role better than anything the GOP establishment has coughed up.
Edtor’s note:
Once again as in years past, I’ve found my inbox filled with messages from longtime readers who wonder if I’m going to be re-posting “A Bithead’s Christmas”, and begging me to do so.
As I believe I’ve told you in previous years, I get more email about this one single post, these 2900 or so words, then I have about anything else written here. And it happens every single year. Either this one post is particularly good, or the rest of it is comparatively bad. You’ll forgive me if in my vanity, I believe the former. I take that they’re using Email, instead of simply leaving comments, to mean that I’ve struck a very personal and private nerve. Touching people in that fashion is a very rare thing, and one I take very seriously, so the answer to the question is “Yes, of course I’ll run it again”.
Understand going in, it may not be politically correct. I seek no absolution, no forgiveness, for it’s being overtly Christian in nature, any more than I seek absolution or forgiveness for anything else that I put into these spaces. It is what it is, because Christmas is what it is, and because I speak my mind on the topic at hand, whatever that is.
Christmas, and thereby, Christianity itself, has been going on for a little over 2000 years, in spite of all the naysayers, protesters and government regulations that history has managed to toss up in those 2000- plus years. It does so, because at the core of it all, is a message…….. a message that all the naysayers, protesters and government hacks will never understand, much less conquer. It is a message that will survive the ravages of time, government, and liberals, fascists, and anything and everything else, long after you and I are no longer even a memory in this world. The Christmas message, you see, is eternal, and ever green.
(Evergreen. I am suddenly struck with the symbolism here)
There is something of a journalistic precedent for this as well. . . I do not pretend to hold myself quite so high in the world as these media outlets who have such traditions as “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”… but they’ve been getting away with such things for well over 100 years, so I suppose I can get away with it, here.
One of the things that man has always found fascinating about the Christmas story, is that you can reread it all your life, and every time you reread it, you find a new truth buried within it, so perhaps that’s WHY we get away with repeating such stories. It’s perhaps where such traditions come from.
So with all this in mind, and with the hope of helping you find new meaning in this season… and peace… a personal peace… in these troubled times, I will offer once again this year:
A Bithead’s Christmas
I find myself wanting to take more seriously, the challenge of writing to the subject of Christmas, today, than I have in years past. It’s not clear in my mind as to why, but this isn’t unusual… I never really do have a firm grip on why I want to attack a subject in these spaces. In fact, the writing of a coulmn for me has becomes more an effort of exploring a subject; the codification of random thoughts. The act of putting those thoughts into words on a screen allows me to think about, and RE-think about the subject at hand. My thoughts on a given subject often do not fully take shape until such time as I’ve re-written them twice. Often, indeed… usually, the ideas are already there, waiting to be cast into words, but not fully defined until the act of sitting down and typing them out. I suppose this subject is no exception.
To this effort, some blogs, this time of year will quote the great Gospels of Christ’s arrival, and expound on that. And that’s worthy, and right. Some others will take the secular angle of the holiday and go off on that. That too, is fine, though frankly it’s always for me missed the core of the topic, a little.
But not me, for either of those tacks. Not this year. I’m going to go off the beaten path, for this post, at least in context of this blog, given it’s Christmas, and off the beaten path in terms of the Liturgical calendar, given it’s me. I’m going to stick with the meaning of Christmas, but to point it up, I’m going to turn to something a little later… about 30 years later… for my subject. I trust you’ll see why when I’m done.
This story is in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We’ll use Luke’s version for the purpose.
In Luke 18 it reads:
15 Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. 16 But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. 17 Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”
Now, all three versions add a little something to the story, and I suggest you read them yourself to get it all.
Most times that Christians hear this text or read it, a child is being baptized. The apparently intended thrust of reading it in those situations is to make a loose connection with the Children being accepted by Christ. And, that’s a valid angle for the story. But, think about the story line, here, so you can get the flavor of what I’m going to describe to you. There’s a far bigger angle that many miss.
See, Christ has been playing “superstar” for a while, now. He’s been attracting flat out huge crowds wherever he goes. The disciples are starting to become concerned for the (human) well being of Christ. Children are, then as now, a source of some stress to adults already under stress, so the disciples decide, wordlessly to give the Lord a break. But Jesus says.. “Hey… No.. Let ’em come… It’s OK. ” Apparently, seeing some remaining resistance in their eyes, he reinforces the command with a statement that must have shaken them badly. “It’s to the likes of these as belongs the Kingdom of God.”
Now, It’s not hard for us to imagine what’s going on in the minds of the disciples…. They must have felt a little put back… While not saying so, they must have figured they had an inside track to Heaven. (Shrug) It’s human nature.
The passages don’t record if they said anything, but you just know what they’re thinking, here… “Comon, Jesus… We’re tryin’ to give you a break here! And you elevate these lowest of low, mere children, into the ownership of heaven? You raise a polite nothing to a path to heaven and eternity? What’s THAT about?”
And you know, Jesus knows it too. He knows full well what they’re thinking, because watch what he comes back with: “I’ll tell you the truth;”, he says, “Unless you change… Unless you transform, and accept the kingdom of heaven like a child, you’ll never enter it.”
But what does he mean, here? He’s talking, I’m afraid, about how you lose touch with happiness and the sense of wonder, as you become an adult. That loss prevents us from seeing the Kingdom of heaven as it is.
For most of us, the happiest times of our lives was when we were children. When we’re younger, we have less in the way of cares, and troubles. Let’s admit, too, that as we get older, we become aware of, and allow more and more sadness into our lives.
It’s true; It’s a hard world out there, and being adults we’ve come to understand this, in a way of understanding that only long exposure and experience… and lots of scar tissue, can bring.
It seems that every year we have more worries and concerns.
Oh, yeah, do we EVER worry. We worry about our health, and those concerns increase with advancing age. We worry about our jobs, about our investments, our savings, about the future in general. Retirement is a concern. Will we have enough? We’re too fat, we’re too skinny. We’re too tall, we’re too short, our once wavy hair is still waving… Only, it’s waving bye-bye. We worry about the future our kids will have and the normal growing up problems, but we also worry about the future that we’ve left our kids. We look at the news, and we wonder what kind of a world have we left them? We even worry if we worry too much.
We’ve seen marriages and relationships we thought would pass the test of time, pass away, instead. Things we had hoped would come to pass, didn’t, and those we’d not dreamed, in our wildest nightmares would happen, did. We see loved ones die. Jobs disappear. Hearts get broken.
And friends, those are just the hum-drum... The everyday worries that every generation has had, since Cain bopped his brother’s bean with a rock. Then you get into the problems particular to us and our times; AIDS, oil shortages, cancer, drugs, the way our own technology seems to be spiraling out of our control…And Islamofacists.
Ah, yes, there’s nothing at all, to my mind, like the specter of 3000 plus people dying on national television, in Washington, NY and Pennsylvania… while we watch, to remind us that we’re not in control.
And yes…. it’s all about control, if you think on it for long. All these things I’ve listed are worries about things we cannot control, try as we might.
The list of these reverses, these scars, gets longer as the years progress, and it starts eventually, to break down the positive outlook in every one of us… Each according to their ability to resist. Each step, each worry, each bit of emotional scar tissue, if you will, moves us farther away from the relative joy of our comparatively carefree childhood.
By now the sharper among you will notice where I’m going with this; This is where Christmas comes in. This is why Christmas holds a special place in our hearts, and our traditions.
You see, even for the not-so-religious, it is a time of renewal of our fragile human spirit. All of the hurts, small and large, become less pronounced, and fade under the soft glow of the lights, the candles, the fireplace, and the smile of the children.
Have you ever noticed that it’s the children, in fact, that do us the most healing? Christmas, it’s said, is for the children. Presidential speechwriter and WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan noted recently about some of the qualities of children:
“They are susceptible to wonder. A child can look at a red toy car in the red-green glow of Christmas tree lights and imagine an entire lifetime. A child can play with a new doll and smell good things being cooked and hear sweet music and it can make that child imagine that life is good, which gives her a template for good, a category for good; it helps her know good exists. This knowledge comes in handy in life; those who do not receive it, one way or another, are sadder than those who do.”
Of course, we move away from that ability as we grow older. Our long experience has hardened us to the realities of the world around us, and perhaps jaded our point of view. But here comes Christmas, which gives us, individually and collectively, the chance of looking at the world through the wonder-filled eyes of a child once again… Becoming childlike ourselves in the process, and becoming healed and renewed.
The experience is a far deeper one for those who have accepted the Christmas promise, and it’s meaning. Reacting to that promise includes allowing someone else to run the controls of our lives. Remember I said it was all about control? Well, I want you to think about the features of being a child. It was Randall Jarrell, I think, who once quipped:
“One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.”
Well, let’s remember.
You’re NOT in control of much of anything. Someone who knows better, and is by far more powerful than we, is running things. And looking back, I’m sure most of us would conclude that having that situation back would be of comfort to us. Haven’t we all wished to resign from the world of adulthood at times?
I guess this would be a good place to slip in a parallel story.
Consider the fictional person of Ebeneezer Scrooge. Think about how the story develops; He’s had some serious emotional setbacks in early life… and those have become a self-feeding, never ending circle by the time we meet him, 7 years after his best friend’s death.
All these setbacks have made him cold, and hard, and for all outward appearances, non-feeling. He’s covered with emotional scar tissue. Being hard, is his way of dealing with what he cannot control. Only after his overnight experience do all these cares get swept away, along with his anger of not being able to control his situation…. The realization comes to him that he never really WAS in control in the first place, so stop fretting about it all… Think about what are essentially the first words out of his mouth as he realizes that the weight of his worries.. Not unlike worries you and I have had, are gone; “I’m as light as a feather….” The weight of that scar tissue… And all the concerns they represent having been lifted off his shoulders…
“…and as giddy as a Schoolboy!”
Like.
A.
Child.
“I’ll tell you the truth”, he said, “Unless you change.. Unless you transform, and accept the kingdom of heaven like a child, you’ll never enter it.”
Amazing parallels, aren’t they?
I’m reliably informed that Charles Dickens was not as a rule what one would call very religious. Yet, in looking at the parallels in these two story lines, I must wonder in all honesty if he didn’t have some help with “A Christmas Carol”.
Now, you’ll notice I took some liberty with the way the Biblical text was quoted. Some liberty, I say, but not very much, really, since it’s long been pointed out by Bible scholars that the word that earlier versions of the text had as ‘change’ were really translated from the ancient Greek word for “transform”. This is a major point, because it demonstrates what the first step is, and whose it is…yours.
And no, change and transformation are not the same thing. The best description I’ve ever thought of to explain the difference between the two, runs along these lines:
If I take a rock, and in the other hand I take a large hammer, and I hit the rock with the hammer, and break it, I’ve changed that rock. If I take that same rock, and take a small hammer and chisel, and very carefully, perhaps over a period of decades, sculpt that rock into a flower, I’ve still merely changed that rock.
Transformation, on the other hand, is when the rock itself, as a matter of responding to it’s own will, becomes a flower. And of course that’s beyond the normal power of the rock, by any standard we know.
What Christ therefore is saying is, that we must become children, as of a matter of our own will. Which is, as I say, impossible by any standard we know…. Which in turn leads us to the source of all things, who teaches us how, and gives us the power to do it.
You see, the externalities I mentioned, the lights, the fire, the children…and that which Dickens writes of… the giving, the being open to what joys are around us, and so on, helps toward the goal of understanding the Christmas promise, but it’s not the whole deal.
At the core of it all… (and this is a connection that, alas, many people never make…) is that the one whose birth is being celebrated every December the 25th, is the one who takes over that long list of worries. But understand, here…THAT’S WHY WE CELEBRATE!!
With those worries removed, lives get changed, hearts mended, child-like perspectives restored in a way that the lights, carols and greenery can never do on their own. And the newly remade Childrenfind that the authority and responsibility and all the ponderous weight connected with them, are taken away by the one who said “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”.
Now, I must warn you; There are those who will resist being told all of this… to the point of removing such joy as they find, wherever they may find it, often using the power of governments, and force of arms to have it removed from town squares and schools, mocking, persecuting and yes, even killing those responsible for the spreading of the news of this miracle.
It’s a sad truth, that a world used to darkness, you see, will continually fight to see the darkness continued. That warning given, however, I will say to you also, that it’s no accident, Christmas being called the season of light, and that Christ is called the light of the world.
If I have one wish for this Christmas, it is that you will be open to the light…. With the wondering eyes of a child.
The Snark of the Day, from Ed Driscoll, Instapundit:
It’s interesting watching Hillary run simultaneously on nostalgia for her husband’s two terms, while disavowing all of his policies.
Merry Christmas.
The lame stream media takes pot shots at the children of conservatives. So why does the same media declare the sexual peccadilloes of the Rapist in Chief and husband the democrats’ presumed nominee somehow off-limits, Ann Telnaes, Washington Post:
There is an unspoken rule in editorial cartooning that a politician’s children are off-limits. People don’t get to choose their family members so obviously it’s unfair to ridicule kids for their parent’s behavior while in office or on the campaign trail- besides, they’re children.
Sobeit, while Mrs. Clinton may not have chosen her children, she did, I think, choose her husband. So by the Telnaes Rule, the Rapist in Chief, to wit B.J. Clinton is fair game, video:
Hat tip and BSWK, Kate, Small Dead Animals.
Mrs. Clinton wants to run of her husband economic record. So why not discuss her husband’s criminal record?
Remember when Mrs. B.J. Clinton used to be called the “Smartest Woman in the World?” Well no more. Mrs Clinton, after all her yet to be explained falls with the associated brain damage, can no longer, assuming she once could, perform even basic high school math, from Just One Minute:
‘I Wouldn’t Keep Any School Open That Wasn’t Doing A Better Than Average Job’
Reax, Tom Maquire:
Half the schools will be below the median level by definition. As to mean and mode, that will depend on the distribution of whatever the heck we might be looking at on these hypothetical school report cards. In any case, this is all very hard to conceptualize – a Democrat threatening to close schools? Pigs will fly to algebra class first.
To parse the grandma with fat thighs statement with a fine toothed comb, by definition, at any given time over half of all schools are average or below.
Further, given the democrats dependence on public employee labor unions, I can’t see any democrat president firing unionized school teachers. Yes close the failing schools, but keep all the unionized teachers. Does that sound like smart leadership to you?
