Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 15, 2022 19:41:19 GMT -8
I watched the entirely of Trump's announcement tonight. It was a speech that rambled and lacked focus and structure. It lasted about 70 minutes and its extensive laundry-list of goals reminded my of the typical Democrat state-of-the-union speech. You just know it's written to sound nice but no one could possibly do all that in one term or even two.
That said, I agreed with many of his points. But that's never been at issue. The point is will he do these things instead of talking about them.
And talk about building a wall (or adding to it) is moot. The deed (the crossings) have been done (and continue). There was no talk about ejecting the illegals out of the country who are already here (other than the criminal element...and they are all technically criminals to one degree or another because of breaking immigration laws). Build a wall, sure. But unless you deal with the illegals already here, then it's just more "Lock her up" smoke-and-mirrors.
Death penalty for drug dealers? Sure. Make more of our own energy? Of course. Stick a fork in "woke" culture and delouse the DOJ and FBI? Without a doubt.
But is this the man to do it? Almost certainly not. First off, it shouldn't be forgotten that he oversaw probably the greatest erosion of American freedoms since WWII (where there was good reason) by empowering Fauci and his ilk. His shtick during the first term was to topple the Deep State. But he was the co-author of a more massively deeper state.
Trump can't be trusted to maintain focus on these things any more than you can expect the attention-span of a five-year-old to carry him past the first chapter of Moby Dick.
But besides all that, there was zero Trump 2.0 on display. There was not a hint of a man who had learned his lessons and had learned to focus on anything other than how the entire world is parsed in accordance with how it reflects positively on Trump. I would not be electing a president for my needs. I would be empowering a narcissist whose goals would sometimes intersect with what was good for the country but more often than not would just provide unneeded and unnecessary static.
If you are Ron DeSantis watching this, you don't have the Fear of Trump giving you cold sweats. Frankly, Trump can be ignored. If anything came out of that announcement event it is that Trump is just no longer interesting (let alone inspiring), even as a side show.
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2024
Nov 15, 2022 23:16:30 GMT -8
Post by artraveler on Nov 15, 2022 23:16:30 GMT -8
A few relevant thoughts from American Greatness. amgreatness.com/2022/11/15/mob-rule-and-the-death-of-trust/For over six years, representatives of every established institution in the country have stereotyped Americans who voted for President Trump as bigots, idiots, ignoramuses, haters, psychopaths, and traitors. . .Anger breeds anger. Contempt breeds contempt. With Newtonian certainty, the disgust has become mutual
This asymmetrical assault is personal and profoundly alienating. Perhaps more than 100 million Americans now believe, with good reason, that they have been completely rejected by the nation in which they grew up. . . Trump’s instant and enduring popularity owes to the way he speaks for millions of people who feel betrayed by the institutions they need to trust. . . As this is written, a week after the November 8 election, there are still eight seats in the U.S. Congress that have yet to be called. Six of these eight are in California. Nothing to see here, folks. Poke around too much, and we’ll call you an “election denier.”
Examples of absurdity multiply in lockstep with demands we must accept all of it or live as pariahs. Mistrust grows, and morphs into fury. Americans who feel betrayed look for answers. That’s a normal and sane response. And the answers aren’t pretty.
America’s elites have used lies about race, gender, health, climate, environment, and energy to gut the middle class, explode the dependent class, and transfer trillions in national wealth upwards into their pockets. They’ve used the mob of aligned and very powerful institutions to enforce this, at the same time as they’ve manipulated social media and permitted brainwashed mobs of grassroots leftist activists to rampage through the streets.
Trust is lost whenever someone questions these dubious actions and assertions, and in response, the term “conspiracy theorist” is thrown at them, as if that terminates their credibility and ends the discussion. . .it’s no conspiracy that Americans are being betrayed, or that lies are necessary to sell the scam. It’s a consensus openly proclaimed by America’s elites and their international counterparts. They don’t think an American middle-class lifestyle is sustainable, and they want to take it away. That’s not a conspiracy. That’s the publicly acknowledged plan.
The anti-MAGA mob is attacking a way of viewing the world. It is a worldview that rejects the fear they’re selling: fear of disease, fear of racist and sexist oppression, and fear of an environmental meltdown. They are attacking a worldview that is practical and optimistic and embraces an economic and social strategy of abundance in all things, material and ephemeral. That joyful destiny, that broad-based prosperity and freedom, that unmanaged and pluralistic future, is a mortal threat to the established wealth and hegemonic power of America’s elites. All they offer is fear and the mob.
Almost a full article of pull quotes but the argument has some sense. We may not like it, we may not encourage it or ask for it, but like it or not we are at war with the left. And one of our generals is Donald Trump. Trump like Patton over 80 years ago is a warrior who is successful at striking terror into the enemy. He is a tool that must be used and controlled, if possible. The America we have known is dead and not likely to return. I am a Southerner and a Jew. The world I grew up in is long gone and the next one is questionable. All that is left are the relics of American civilization, family here and in Israel, and the belief that the current status of our government is tyranny. If after all the outrages of the past decade you don't feel orphaned from our government then perhaps you have not paid attention. It is the same feeling my grand sires must have felt after a decade of continuing outrages in 1861. We are all rebels now.
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 16, 2022 11:05:17 GMT -8
Yep. And the rest is a heck of a summing-up.
But with all due respect to Mr. Ring, his under-the-article bio states:
As long as conservative "activism" is confined to the printed page, the Left will continue to eat our lunch. Think tanks, marketed books, and 15 cents still won't buy you a cup of coffee.
And if we simply (again) farm-out our anger and angst to Donald Trump (instead of doing something ourselves), we're going to get what we deserve.
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Post by artraveler on Nov 16, 2022 14:01:33 GMT -8
with all due respect to Mr. Ring Don't be too hard on people like Ring. We share many of the same qualities. True, we are much older and wiser having lived the life. But, my bug out bag is still packed. I may not be running anymore, hell I seldom walk further than to my car. I claim privilege, age and arthritis have slowed me a great deal. I don't think my mind has turned to dust -- yet. Speaking of minds, did you hear that the media wants to team up Biden and Fetterman for 24--they say it's a no brainer. Ring is an academic. I suppose you could call him an intellectual and we have need of people who can express true conservative/libertarian values convincing people of the justness and rightness of the cause. Let people like Ring do what they do best and let's work to just turn the ship away from the iceberg of civil war on the horizon.
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 16, 2022 15:37:10 GMT -8
The Narrow Bridge by Nefresh Mountain (from Beneath the Open Sky) seems to radiate with what you are talking about. I was listening to this album just now while outside and it seemed apropos. Not that I can tell anything to a Jew about troubled times. But maybe they can.
When the first light came in It was cold up north again And the frost slowly thawed in the dawn Takes a faithful breath To put a weary mind to rest And still remember the narrow bridge we're on
Troubled times, troubled times You don't ease a worried mind Troubled times, troubled times Just stay behind Troubled times, troubled times You don't ease a worried mind Troubled times, troubled times Just stay behind
It's not far from our homes Whеre the woods are turnеd to stones And the feeling of wonder is nearly gone But in the cracks of barren land The beauty grows unplanned So we just keep to the narrow bridge we're on
Troubled times, troubled times You don't ease a worried mind Troubled times, troubled times Just stay behind Troubled times, troubled times You don't ease a worried mind Troubled times, troubled times Just stay behind
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 17, 2022 12:30:30 GMT -8
Call him a liberal troll, I suppose. This was a comment to an article on NRO: There would seem to be a lot of truth to that. That along with "ballot lock" – laws that make it easier for voters (usually Democrat voters) to vote. But not all (or perhaps even most of this stuff) has to do with "stop the steal." It's about turnout and making it easier for your voters to vote. Trump wants to return to an all-paper ballot with all votes cast on election day. I'm fine with that. But it doesn't have a prayer of happening. Andrew Follett has a "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" article that probably is the more realistic option. My take on the centrality of abortion is that it absolutely required for feminism. It is the thing that allows women to deny their gender and to become mere economic creatures. For young men, the advantageous are obvious and liberal/licentious men have always been strongly in favor of abortion.
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Post by artraveler on Nov 17, 2022 18:34:12 GMT -8
"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" As a short term solution I agree. The best way to get the left to agree to change is for the right to follow the same tactics and be successful. There has always been some element of voter fraud in our elections. How can we forget Tammany Hall or the 1960, Kennedy/Nixon votes in Chicago. That single event threw the election to Kennedy. Nixon's staff wanted to have a recount and go to the courts, to his credit Nixon, never the most virtuous of politicians, declined. It was 40 years before another election was presidential election was challenged. Now every dog catcher and JP election is up for grabs. Everyone, even the leftists, knows the system as it now exists is broken. The question is not do we have a solution, but will the solution actually be implemented without violence. My guess is about a 20% chance of a peaceful solution. Every option I see on the horizon is clouded with violence in one form or another. At the center of American politics is abortion. Abortion has become a touchstone for the left. It goes beyond just the murder of an innocent life. Even the left, in their saner moments admit it is a life. It is a symbol of the leftist movement equivalent of the Jew hating Nazi. The death toll is even greater, it is a holocaust without victims ever able to speak for themselves. It will continue to divide the country, the states, counties and cities and families. These two issues, elections and abortion are the issues that divide the country to the point of violence. I can't predict when, or where the violence will begin without restraint but I feel sure it will. Thus, my belief that every citizen need be armed every time they are in public.
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2024
Nov 18, 2022 6:52:46 GMT -8
Post by artraveler on Nov 18, 2022 6:52:46 GMT -8
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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2024
Nov 18, 2022 8:42:46 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 18, 2022 8:42:46 GMT -8
That's well put and is certainly the case.
People on the right might fight for one issue or another. Possibly. Maybe. But I don't see the fighting spirit in them. They are all too polite. For most, bitching online is the extent of what they'll do.
You have to hand it to the Left, they know how to run a cause. They take no prisoners, are willing to fight for their beliefs in ways that matter, and give people a staunch sense of purpose (and of grievance, of course).
All that conservatives have is a holding action. We can't (or don't) make the big, fat utopian promises of the Left. We're more Churchillian. All that we offer are blood, toil, sweat, the Constitution, and the pursuit of happiness. But we don't guarantee happiness, for we understand that to live life is to chart your own course, not to be one of a million brain-dead cultish minions beholden to the state for a sense of self.
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2024
Nov 18, 2022 10:01:09 GMT -8
Post by artraveler on Nov 18, 2022 10:01:09 GMT -8
People on the right might fight for one issue or another.
Indeed, the resort to violence on the right is well known. The left keeps poking and prodding on every issue and the pushback, if any, is always tame. The same tactics the left uses is seldom used against them. This is where Trump comes in. His rhetoric does inspire action. Look at the whole effort to turn 6 Jan 21 into an actual rebellion, it wasn't. What will the left do if confronted with a real rebellion?
Just started Ship of Fools on Amazon, some lessons for all of us.
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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2024
Nov 18, 2022 14:04:01 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 18, 2022 14:04:01 GMT -8
The Stanley Kramer film with Vivien Leigh? I've found that one on Amazon and I'll give it a go.
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 18, 2022 15:17:15 GMT -8
I like the character played by George Segal: The socially-conscious liberal who is really a prick.
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Post by artraveler on Nov 18, 2022 20:08:33 GMT -8
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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2024
Nov 19, 2022 8:27:07 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 19, 2022 8:27:07 GMT -8
Happy Thanksgiving as well to all. And that's one of my favorite songs off that album. I'll be going over to my little brother's for Thanksgiving. His girlfriend and her mother are both good cooks.
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Post by artraveler on Nov 28, 2022 7:42:36 GMT -8
A few reflections on Florida vs California in 2022.
Most of all, FL is clean. That is not to say there are not spots where homeless, crazy drugies hang out but they are few and far between, mostly in Miami.
Even after two hurricanes in northern FL there is little evidence of the storms. However there is a lot of standing water.
The stores are open with selves full, there was lots toilet paper and general supplies.
We traveled from Deltona to Jacksonville by freeway. The roadway was free of potholes and had been designed for traffic flows to match, even the days before Thanksgiving traffic flows were efficient and smooth, no undue holdups. I won't give DeSantis credit for the efficiency of the freeways. What exits today is the result of good planning by republican and democrat governors. DeSantis deserves kudos for expanding the planning. The cleanup after the hurricanes was on going and the beaches had taken a lot of damage but it was a work in progress.
We did not visit the theme parks but we did visit Universal City Walk. Full of stores and restaurants worthy of a separate visit. No rides but lots of shopping and places to eat an d lots of people. I was wearing a Marine cover and almost had my hand shook off by vets and the general public. We got a 15% military discount from Hard Rock Cafe.
On the whole it was great to spend time with grandchildren and great grandchildren Florida is not Arkansas but it defiantly not a socialist paradise, aka California.
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 28, 2022 8:26:20 GMT -8
Welcome back, Artler. I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving. It sounds as if your trip was a good one.
The challenges of a governor in a hurricane state far exceed those of, say, Washington where the worst you might get is a once-in-three-century volcano.
It makes one think that our governor (or California's) cannot deal with the "homeless" problem while Florida's governor(s) regularly deal with cleaning up literally a thousand times the amount of detritus and dealing with far more displaced or inconvenienced people.
Obviously the liberal ideology constrains what they can do. Liberal ideology not only creates victims but in its world view they must have them. And "the homeless" are an opportunity to show the supposed superiority of liberal compassion. How anyone in their right mind can equate compassion with facilitating living under freeway underpasses in a cardboard box is beyond me. But that is the reality of what I consider a sick religion.
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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2024
Dec 14, 2022 10:06:01 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 14, 2022 10:06:01 GMT -8
A poll:I totally agree with the point that Biden's best chance for reelection is against Trump.
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Post by artraveler on Dec 14, 2022 16:01:15 GMT -8
Irony is a factor that leftists have surgically removed at birth. They hate Trump on such an irrational basis that they cheer the arrival of DeSantis, who is a much better, smarter, and more electable republican. Given a choice between DeSantis and Trump, today or in 2016, I go with DeSantis, but I have to give credit to Trump for beginning to step away from the abyss that American politics has slouched to. Will change come? Yes invariably, but will that change be the kind that enhances freedom and liberty for us all? Maybe, but I fear there will be blood.
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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2024
Dec 14, 2022 19:00:49 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 14, 2022 19:00:49 GMT -8
Ohhh…you’ve been watching too many Rambo movies Wait. No. That’s me. Let’s just hope this holiday season that we have more intersection with real Messiahs and not fake ones. And, no, that’s not an opening for a discussion of Jesus. But we’d all love a Messiah to help lead us out of this. I’d take a Second Coming or even a third one. But a second term for Trump is looking problematic, although it’s right to be skeptical of polls.
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Feb 16, 2023 10:12:39 GMT -8
Kurt Schlichter does not have a high opinion of Nikii Haley:
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