Several things come out of the primary in Iowa, which Trump won going away.
The first thing that it suggests is that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is done. He may or may not pull the plug on his campaign tonight, but he will within the next week. I still think he’ll make a good vice president if he can ever get over himself, but I wonder if he can.
The second thing is that, mercifully, Nikki Haley is also done. She may try to pick up her home state, but the fact is that in the ultimate rejection of the GOP establishment that Nikki Haley embodies, Trump is going to walk away with that one too. The American people have come to realize what I have been saying for some time now… That the American experiment faces two major problems. The GOP establishment, who is so interested in bipartisanship and getting along with the Democrats that they don’t really care about how our country is being burned to the ground so long as they get to rule over the ashes of it, and the Democrats who are holding the torches. And that’s why Donald Trump is so heavily supported, and will in fact be the nominee.
Ramaswamy has already dropped out, apparently having realized the above, and has endorsed Donald Trump. My expectation is he will play large in a Trump administration and deservedly so.
I hesitate to call this primary a waste of money and time as some have but I understand the sentiment. Still, it’s time to get over it and admit that Donald Trump is the victor, and we’ll also be the Victor in the general election.
Meantime Joe Biden’s approval rating is 32%
No one wants to hear about “threats to Democracy” from people who thought the best treatment for a cold was Fascism.
Follow me here,…. All four (4) indictments against Trump were filed AFTER he announced he was running again
Oh… and all four (4) indictments were brought by DEMOCRAT prosecutors…
Now what do you suppose the purpose of those indictments is?
Nothing says “I support democracy” then trying to keep the guy you’re losing to off the ballot.
It appears there’s trouble in the Democrat bubble
“Co-incidental to her zeal for prosecuting front-running presidential candidate Donald Trump, Fulton County, Ga., DA Fani Willis hired herself a special prosecutor with benefits, according to a new court filing. ”
I’d say offhand the Georgia case will quietly be buried very shortly… Along with the career of Fannie Willis.
Just go and read it.
It’s a fascinating aspect of this recent conflict; the American left who has been busy for decades now calling those who don’t fall into line with the goose stepping left, “Nazis”, and who are now trying to convince us that as regards Jewish people, Hitler had a point all along. The cognitive dissonance required to make that leap is scarcely to be to believed. It leads one to believe that their stated objectives are not their real objectives.
And speaking of cognitive dissonance, let’s please consider those Jews who insist on voting Democrat. The recent action of the Democrats would seem to render Jewish people voting for them to be well beyond the borderline of insanity… And at least self-destructive.
I suspect it is no accident that October 7th didn’t occur until such time as Joe Biden was in the white house. The same could be said for Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine. Predators, you see, seek out weakness, and capitalize on it.
Editor’s note:
Once again as in the 15 or so 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 Children find 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.
of the two the GOP establishment is the more treacherous. The Democrats at least aren’t pretending to be conservatives. The GOP establishment is more interested in”Bipartisanship’. .
Bipartisanship is when the GOP establishment (who really doesn’t care about the furtherance of the American culture so long as they get to rule over the ashes of it) and the Democrat party (who is actively seeking to destroy it) get together and agree on something.
Under those conditions it’s pretty much a guarantee that the American people are not going to be well served by such an agreement.
That combination is precisely why the American voters nominated and elected Donald Trump who was neither of those things. And why the government, at least parts of it, are working so feverishly against him.
They know if he gets back in the gig is up
Once you get that through your bean, the rest of this is going to make sense to you.. but not until.
From Jonathan Turley last night:
The Colorado Supreme Court has issued an unsigned opinion disqualifying Trump from the ballot: “The sum of these parts is this: President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three; because he is disqualified.”…courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file
And the thing is they’re acting on something they don’t have any jurisdiction over, yet, if they ever will.
The Colorado supreme Court is acting on a conviction that hasn’t happened, and it’s looking increasingly doubtful that it will… And it seems likely that’s why the court, or whatever political entity is pulling their strings, decided to act when they did.
And there’s something else here as well. This action by the Colorado Court shows clearly that the fix was in.
It also shows that the Democrats really don’t care about the will of the people.
This is not going to withstand review. Once the US supreme Court gets a hold of it it’s going to go down in flames, and the president’s people have already suggested that they are going to appeal to the ussc.
The only advantage for the Democrats at this point (and they must have known this) was that it creates a negative headline with Trump’s name attached to it.
What they have not calculated with is that in turn it’s going to lead to more solidification of Trump’s lead over Joe Biden. That’s been the pattern for months now, as real clear politics has been showing..
Oh one more thing, Laura ingraham on her show tonight suggested that if Colorado can capriciously write an opinion that keeps Donald Trump off the ballot can’t we do the same with Joe Biden?
* The concept of hate speech is generally put forward by people who cannot control the conversation by logical means.
* You certainly have the right to pretend to be whatever you want. Where you’re going to run into trouble with that is expecting everybody else to play along in your fantasy.
* Large numbers of people rightly condemn Hamas for beheading infants in their attacks on Israel and yet planned Parenthood which they support does that all the time.
* Speaking of Hamas, I find it fascinating that so many college students in the ivy leagues received pro Hamas talking points on October 8th… the day after the attacks. And disturbing that nobody seems tremendously interested in knowing where those talking points came from. It seems clear that there was a pre-planned public relations effort here.
* Intriguing that so many people who have been calling conservatives Nazis for years now are now making noises which suggest Hitler had a point about the jews, all along. Interesting also, that so many of those college students started backing away from those pronouncements upon getting called out on them. Almost as if they didn’t reason it out before parroting what their betters told them to say
* I find it fascinating that no women are coming forward to accuse Barack Hussein Obama of sexual misconduct with them. I suppose the reasoning for that is blatantly obvious.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D), announces via executive order that she is deploying the AZ National Guard to the AZ border, saying “the federal government is refusing to do its job to secure our border.” She adds that Biden admin hasn’t responded to her reimbursement request..
Don’t fall for this move. Biden is pulling in the low 30s these days, and this is about nothing more than saving his candidacy. If Hobbs doesn’t do this, she would no longer get support from the DNC. That’s how this Nazi stuff works.
But let’s look a little deeper at that. What specific actions of Biden brought about the invasion of the Ukraine?
Two things.
First, Putin understands that unlike Trump, Biden will never responding to direct fashion militarily to Russia’s expansionism.
The other reason is the price of oil.
Do a little research on the time frames when Russia invaded one of its neighbors, the Crimean region for example. If you’re Sharp enough, you may noticethat every time the price of oil went up, Vladimir Putin invaded somebody.
8 years of Obama, oil prices high, (mostly because of the myth of global warming and the government responding to that with after having created that myth.) We all know Vladimir Putin’s actions during those years.
Donald Trump comes along, and opens American production of domestic oil and gas causing not only providing a very strong American economy, but the price of oil worldwide drops precipitously. Vladimir Putin stays home.
( And by the way, even with oil consumption up America’s carbon footprint still went down quite a bit. It’s going back up since the shortsightedness of the Democrats has taken hold of our government.)
Joe Biden who like Obama, worships on the altar of the myth of global warming, that tells us no more oil companies.. no drilling, no fracking, no permits. The government starts pushing at his behest, electric cars. And in his myopic vision everything runs off of electricity.
What happens? Price of oil skyrockets, and along with that happening Vladimir Putin getting militaristic and invading Ukraine.
If I remember correctly it was John McCain who once remarked that Russia was it gas station masquerading as a country. In my view, it’s one of the few things at that idiot ever got correct. That said, Vladimir Putin understood that equation long before John McCain did.
In reality the same thing can be said about Iran, Saudi Arabia and so on. Each has certainly been more active on the world stage with the increased price of oil.
Put another way, with cheap oil to megalomaniacs and the dirt scratchers in those countries are contained. When the price of oil starts going up in response to the shortages created by our government, they’re able to fund their warlike intentions.
My friends, the conclusion is obvious that the world is a much more dangerous place because of the energy policy of the Democrats. It’s really that simple and that’s straightforward.
Add to that the consequences to these United States and the rest of the world economically, and you have ample reason for turning the situation around by turning the valves open on American oil and gas.
The Democrats aren’t going to let that happen while they have the power to stop it.
It certainly pertinent to ask whose side they are on. Certainly, not yours or mine. Certainly, not America. Certainly, not a peaceful world.
