What the bang dang diddly is goin on?

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Naysayers At The Top

It would be hard to find anyone in all of America who has been more wrong on the American energy story than Barack Obama.
Oil prices have fallen from $105 a barrel in the summer of 2014 to hovering at $35 a barrel today. That's a two-thirds reduction in the price, and the biggest factor is shale oil brought to you by fracking. In many areas of the country gas is now less than $2 a gallon, and it could fall further in the weeks ahead.
The falling price means, of course, an expanded supply. But now listen to Obama, who has lectured the nation on energy as if he were one of the top experts for the last eight years.
In a 2008 speech in Lansing, Michigan, presidential candidate Obama was all doom and gloom about oil, advising: "We cannot sustain a future powered by a fuel that is rapidly disappearing.
Then in 2010 from the Oval Office he solemnly declared: "We're running out of places to drill," and he jeered that the oil and gas industry might want to start pumping for oil near the Washington Monument.
During a 2011 weekly address he referred to oil and gas as "yesterday's" energy sources.
Then during a speech at Georgetown University, he pontificated: "The United States of America cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity, our long-term security on a resource (oil) that will eventually run out."
By the way, this discredited Malthusian belief that we are running out of oil is still widely believed by many scientists and pundits, too. The United States Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory stated in a report that "the world is fast approaching the inevitable peaking" of global oil production. Paul Krugman of The New York Times wrote in 2010 that "world commodity prices ... are telling us that we're living in a finite world."
That was when prices were abnormally high. So if high prices tell us we are running out, then obviously low prices must tell us supply is rising.
These stupid predictions of the end of oil have been going on for most of the last century. Just over 100 years ago, the U.S. Bureau of Mines estimated total future production at 6 billion barrels, yet we've produced more than 20times that amount. In 1939 the Department of the Interior predicted U.S. oil supplies would last 13 years. I could go on.
The wonder is that smart people such as Nobel Prize winners Krugman and Obama haven't learned anything from history and instead keep regurgitating these myths about "running out."
The folks at the Institute for Energy Research recently published a study showing three data points: first, the government's best estimate of how much oil we had in America 50 years ago. The second was how much U.S. oil has been drilled out of the ground since then. And the third is how many reserves there are now. Today we have twice as many reserves as we had in 1950. And we have already produced almost 10 times more oil than the government told us we had back then.
Technology and innovation account for the constant upping the amount of "finite" oil we can produce. We discover new sources of oil much faster than we deplete the known amount of reserves, and so, for all practical purposes, oil and natural gas supplies are nearly inexhaustible. Fracking is the latest game-changer and the access it gives us to shale oil and gas resources has virtually doubled over night. And this technology boom in drilling is just getting started.
My point is how absurd it is for Americans to blindly trust any "scientific consensus" on any of these natural resource or environmental issues. The credibility of the alarmists is just shot. In 1980, hundreds of the top scientists in the United States issued a report called The Global 2000 Report to the President, which was a primal scream that in every way life on earth would be worse by 2000 because the world would run out of oil, gas, food, farmland and so on.
My mentor Julian Simon and Herman Kahn challenged this conventional wisdom. Today they would be disparaged as "deniers." Yet on ever score these iconoclasts were right and the green scientific consensus was wrong.
Lately, even Obama doesn't make the ridiculous claim that we have to use green energy because we are running out of oil.
Instead he now says we should keep our super-abundance of oil "in the ground," even as he tries take credit for the low prices.
In reality, if we do what Obama wants, gas at the pump and electricity are going to be more expensive. If you don't like $1.89 gasoline at the pump, you're probably a big fan of the Obama energy/climate change agenda.
Hopefully, the neo-Malthusians like Obama will stop resorting to the century-long false fear that we are running our of oil as an excuse for using much more expensive and much less efficient "green energy."
Many years ago I was quoted in The New York Times as making this point about our infinite oil supply, and a high school science teacher wrote me and huffed: "Even my 14-year-olds know that oil is finite." This teacher is probably now a top science adviser to Obama. 

Sunday, November 15, 2015

One thing that you may be of unaware of when it comes to ISIS is that they’re obsessed with end times prophecy.
In fact, the terrorists who have come from all over the globe believe their jihad in Syria will help reign in the Apocalypse. To bolster the group’s recruitment efforts, the jihadists promote the idea that a final battlebetween the armies of the Muslims and unbelievers will take place in Dabiq, an area located in northern Syria.
As far as the outcome of the battle goes, ISIS believes that it will emerge victorious over those who oppose them.
Some have even compared the terrorist organization that controls areas in Syria, Iraq and Libya to a doomsday cult. However, there is a big problem with how selective ISIS is when it comes to their apocalyptic vision.
Business Insider reports:
ISIS (also known as the Islamic State) uses Islamic scripture and prophecies to bolster its assertion, but it conveniently ignores one particularly damning prophecy that could inherently challenge the legitimacy of its self-declared “caliphate” — the territory in Iraq and Syria it controls that is central to Islamic doomsday prophecies.
Will McCants, director of the Project on US Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution, mentions it in his new book, “The ISIS Apocalypse.”
“There is one prophecy about the Antichrist that the Islamic State and its fans have studiously avoided, even though it is in a collection of prophecies they revere: The Antichrist will ‘appear in the empty area between Sham [Syria] and Iraq,'” McCants wrote. “That, of course, is precisely where the Islamic State is located.”
Clearly, ISIS doesn’t include the prophecy about where the Antichrist will appear in its teachings is because it would severely damage their appeal to other radical Muslims.
The Hoover Institute revealed how members of the Islamic State are not in Syria to fight Assad, but because of their interpretation of the Qur’an:
ISIS is using apocalyptic expectation as a key part of its appeal. “If you think all these mujahideen came from across the world to fight Assad, you’re mistaken. They are all here as promised by the Prophet. This is the war he promised — it is the Grand Battle,” a Sunni Muslim told Reuters.
With ISIS, we are dealing with a group that strongly believes its carnage-based ideology will help usher in the end of the world, which makes them much more dangerous than a run-of-the-mill terrorist organization.

Before Saying, “I Support France,” Please Read This


parisviolence
Please don’t say things like, “I stand with France,” or “Those poor French people, victims of that attack!” unless you’re prepared to say and do the following things:
Stop saying “Islam” is about peace and love. It’s not. It’s about submission; the people who really get this are the ones who launch these attacks in the name of their religion.
Stop supporting politicians like Obama, who insist that Islamic nations like Iran have our same fundamental values and can be trusted with billions of dollars in unfrozen assets (Obama’s treaty), and who don’t mean what they say when they want to wipe Israel off the map.
Stop saying we don’t really need a strong military and we cannot, under any circumstances, use the full might of our military arsenal to do things to stop militant Islam in its tracks, to quite literally scare the Allah out of these people.
Unless or until you start to rethink your stance, you have no business expressing compassion towards the victims of people in attacks whose perpetrators – knowingly or not – you aid and support via your positions.
The president of France calls the attacks in Paris by militant ISIS supporters an “act of war.” Excuse me? Haven’t we been at war since at least 9/11? Even going back as far as 1979, when the first openly organized Islamic government, Iran, took Americans hostage and brutalized them for a year before setting them free?
We’re not supposed to admit we’re at war with Islam. But Islam has been at war with everyone else for decades now. And it’s not going to stop.
I am so sick of people saying, “We can’t fight terrorism with violence. We have to understand them and figure out what makes them act this way.”
Envy, brutality and collectivist/social/racial hatred are what make them act this way. They’re not going to change, and they’re not going to stop. By trying to appease and understand them every chance we get, they interpret this as weakness, because it is, from their point-of-view. They respond with more brutality. They’re not ever going to stop, any more than Hitler and the Nazis would have stopped if, instead of taking them on directly, we had said, “Let’s try to understand them.”
You cannot defeat a morally certain enemy without moral certainty. But we do not live in an age of moral self-assertion. It’s considered mean, unkind and politically incorrect.
You do not have moral certainty if you keep insisting that your enemy really does not mean it.
Stop waiting for the “moderate” or life-loving Muslims to come out of the closet and morally condemn their violent brethren. These moderates are nowhere to be found. Either they do not exist, or they’re too weak or frightened to take on the people who do these things in the name of their faith-based philosophy.
Obama has stated that these attackers do not share certain basic, universal values with the rest of us. But Obama is the one who insists we cannot really fight terrorists because they operate underground, without state-sanctioned armies, and the like. Obama is the same one who gave away America’s credibility and unfroze billions in assets to the government of Iran, the one actual government known to sponsor and morally support Islamic terrorism around the world. What business does he have expressing outrage and horror? He might as well be on their side. Because he makes life easier for them, through things like this insane treaty he rammed by the Congress.
So before you rush to show others how sad and angry you are about what happened in Paris, stop to think of the ideas, attitudes and elected officials you’ve been supporting.
Ideas have consequences, and if you support the wrong ones, this is what you get.

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Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Explaining Darwinism’s Many Problems – With a Bicycle Lock?


By Eric Metaxas | October 21, 2015 | 11:19 AM EDT
Darwinian Evolutionary Theory (Wikimedia Commons Photo)
You know Darwinism has problems, but how do you explain them to your friends and family? Well, look no further than a bicycle lock.
What’s the greatest discovery in the history of biology? If you said “seedless watermelons,” you’re close. Actually, it’s probably the discovery of DNA.
It’s hard to imagine in this age of genetic engineering, but scientists in Darwin’s time saw life as quite simple. Cells were thought to be blobs of primitive chemicals called “protoplasm.” But as technology advanced and scientists were able to peer inside the cell, they discovered something amazing: Every living thing actually contains intricate, microscopic machines, performing functions without which life would not be possible.
The real breakthrough, came in 1953 when Watson and Crick uncovered the structure and function of DNA—the molecule that programs and regulates cells. It revolutionized our understanding of life. And it stretched Darwin’s theory to the breaking point.
DNA is essentially a form of incredibly efficient digital code, uniquely suited for storing the blueprints of living things. And for something microscopic, it’s huge. The human genome contains over a gigabyte of data! Of course, like digital code on a hard drive, DNA can be corrupted. The most recent iteration of Darwin’s theory claims that these corruptions—called mutations—are the engines of evolution. But here’s the problem: We don’t have a single example of a mutation resulting in a net gain of information. Not one.
As intelligent design theorists have pointed out, unguided, natural processes always degrade information—they never increase it. If life at its most fundamental level is a digital code, then mutations are glitches that, if they accumulate, will eventually kill the organism.
Information is at the heart of life, and our uniform and repeated experience tells us that matter, by itself, never produces information. The only known source capable of producing information is a mind.
Okay, fine, you say, but how do I explain this over the dinner table? One great place to start is a new video from the Discovery Institute that condenses the main argument for intelligent design to a snappy 20 minutes. It’s called “The Information Enigma,” and features noted ID authors Dr. Stephen Meyer and Dr. Douglas Axe.
Here are the basics: Using an analogy from Dr. Meyers’ book, “Darwin’s Doubt,” the video compares DNA with a bicycle lock.
“The reason a bike lock works,” explains Meyer, “is that there are vastly more ways of arranging those numeric characters that will keep the lock closed than there are that will open the lock.”
Most bicycle locks have four dials with ten digits. So for a thief to steal the bike, he would have to guess correctly from among 10,000 possible combinations. No easy task.
But what about DNA? Well, in experiments Axe conducted at Cambridge, he found that for a DNA sequence generating a short protein just 150 amino acids in length, for every 1 workable arrangement of amino acids, there are 10 to the 77thpossible unworkable amino acid arrangements. Using the bicycle lock analogy, that’s a lock with 77 dials containing 10 digits.
Thus, as the film states, it is overwhelmingly unlikely that a random mutational search would produce even one new functional protein in the entire history of life on earth. In other words, random mutation is not driving the biological bicycle.
It’s a powerful argument, and one I’d love you to understand and use. Come to BreakPoint.org, click on this commentary, and I’ll link you to Discovery Institute’s excellent new video. Then share it with your friends, and start some intelligent conversations about intelligent design.
Eric Metaxas is the bestselling author of “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy.” He is the radio host of “The Eric Metaxas Show” and the co-host of “BreakPoint.”
Editor's Note: This piece was originally published byBreakPoint.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Gentle Ben Continues to Befuddle Them with Logic and Intelligence

Famed neurosurgeon and 2016 presidential contender Dr. Ben Carson faced-off against the women of “The View” on Tuesday after he decried abortion and said that “we’re killing babies all over the place.”
Dr. Ben Carson
Dr. Ben Carson on “The View” (“The View”/YouTube)
“In my case, I spent my entire career trying to preserve life and give people quality of life,” he said, explaining his past operations on premature babies and babies still in the womb. “There is no way you’re going to convince me that they’re not important, that they’re just a mass of cells.”
Host Whoopi Goldberg countered by asking whether Carson has “met with the women who have to make these horrendous decisions,” and questioned whether the Republican candidate is empathetic — to which he said that he is.
Carson then explained his belief that the private sector must provide adequate daycare so that mothers who choose to have their babies can get GEDs and finish their education.
“You’re assuming that these are mothers who aren’t educated,” Goldberg countered, with the crowd gasping and moaning when Carson said that most of them fit that description.
“A lot of those young girls who are having babies out of wedlock — when they have that first baby, they stop their education and that child is four times as likely to grow up in poverty,” Carson said. “We, as a society, have an obligation to do what’s necessary to stop that cycle.”
That’s when Joy Behar stepped in to defend Planned Parenthood against recent Republican attacks.
“So, how important is birth control then to the Republican Party?” she said. “They should be out there applauding Planned Parenthood for supplying birth control, mammograms and everything else.”
It should be noted, as TheBlaze previously reported, that Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards confirmed during a congressional hearing last week that none of her organization’s 650 to 700 clinics across America has a mammogram machine.

Saturday, October 3, 2015

This Is Important...Stay Tuned


Tau protein is shown in red in these neurons grown in tissue culture and stained by immunofluorescence. Tau normally stabilizes microtubules in neurons, but when it becomes disorganized can accumulate in toxic clumps.
Tau protein is shown in red in these neurons grown in tissue culture and stained by immunofluorescence. Tau normally stabilizes microtubules in neurons, but when it becomes disorganized can accumulate in toxic clumps. — Gerry Shaw/Wikimedia Commons
This article has been updated toward the end with an evaluation from a second scientist.
A chemical relative of aspirin is potentially useful in treating a neurodegenerative illness like Alzheimer's disease and possibly Alzheimer's itself, according to a study by California scientists.
In a mouse model of frontotemporal dementia, giving salsalatereversed memory loss and protected the hippocampus, a part of the brain essential for memory formation. The drug appears to work by reducing toxic buildup of tau, a protein also implicated in Alzheimer's.
Most Alzheimer's research has focused on tau's more famous cousin,beta amyloid, long the prime suspect in Alzheimer's. Both are abnormal forms of normal proteins. When altered, they become toxic and damage neurons, leading to their death. Several drugs targeting beta amyloid have reached the clinic, but none to date have been proven effective.
Salsalate is now being tested in several clinical trials, including one for another tau-related neurological disease, progressive supranuclear palsy, or PSP.
Meanwhile, no drugs targeting tau are available for Alzheimer's, say researchers led by scientists from the Gladstone Institutes at UC San Francisco.
The study was published Monday in Nature Medicine. It is available online at j.mp/alzsalsalate.
Salsalate inhibits a process called acetylation, which makes tau more toxic, the study found.
"One of the main enzymes that acetylates tau is p300, which can be inhibited by salicylate or SSA, an ancient drug commonly used as anNSAID," the study stated.
"Pharmacokinetically, SSA is quickly metabolized into its active component, salicylate. Unlike salicylate, aspirin (acetylsalicylate) leads to higher levels of ac-tau in cultured neurons. SSA and aspirin have been widely used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and related illnesses in the past decades, and work presumably via inhibition of cyclo-oxygenase (COX). Interestingly, patients taking NSAIDs, including salicylate and derivatives, have a reduced risk of AD."
Trials with more specific inhibitors of COX didn't find a protective effect against Alzheimer's, the study noted. That could be explained if the protective effect is actually due to inhibiting p300.
"Targeting tau acetylation could be a new therapeutic strategy against human tauopathies, like Alzheimer's disease and FTD," said Dr. Eric Verdin, a co-senior author, in a press release. "Given that salsalate is a prescription drug with a long-history of a reasonable safety profile, we believe it can have immediate clinical implications."
However, Dr. Paul Aisen, director of the University of Southern California's San Diego-based Alzheimer's Therapeutic Research Institute, said it is unlikely that the approach will succeed.
"Interesting but very preliminary," Aisen said by email. "In my view, the likelihood that salsalate will prove to be an effective therapy for AD or other tauopathies is small. It is misleading to say that this work has 'immediate clinical implications.' ”
Aisen is a proponent of the theory that beta amyloid is the main driver of Alzheimer's. He is leading a study funded by Eli Lilly & Co. that uses an experimental Lilly drug to reduce amyloid accumulation in people with signs of amyloid buildup, but who have no Alzheimer's symptoms.
Aisen led the study at UC San Diego, but after he left for USC in June, Lilly transferred its funding to follow him. Another component remains at UC San Diego.
Like Aisen, Dave Schubert, a Salk Institute scientist researching Alzheimer's drugs, said the study's conclusions went beyond the evidence given.
"My impression is that it is an interesting study, but likely with overstated conclusions with regard to therapy and even mechanism," Schubert said by email.
"The claim in the press release 'We identified for the first time a pharmacological approach that reverses all aspects of tau toxicity,' can not be true because in the mouse model and humans nerve cells die, and unless salsalate induces the production of new nerve cells to replace the old ones, there is now way to 'reverse' the pathology."
Schubert said the study didn't show that the acetylated tau hypothesized to harm neurons is concentrated in human neurons or synapses. Moreover, there are safety concerns about using salsalate against Alzheimer's.
"While salsalate has been used for years as an anti-inflammatory, it is quite toxic at high doses over extended periods of time as would be required for a chronic disease like AD," he wrote. "Also, as the authors point out, there are a lot of other potential targets for salsalate that could account for the animal data.
"As with all drug candidates, the only way to find out if they have any therapeutic value it to get them into people with the disease in a clinical trial."
The salsalate study was funded by the Tau Consortium and the National Institutes of Health.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Beware of the false prophets

"Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits." (Matthew 7:15-16)
Major newspaper editorials and some columnists have their knickers in a twist over remarks by Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson. Appearing last Sunday on "Meet the Press," Carson was asked by host Chuck Todd whether he believes Islam is consistent with the Constitution. "No, I don't," he said. "I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation." Asked whether he could vote for a Muslim for Congress, Carson said Congress is a different story, but that it "depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are."
Carson critics are quick to mention Article VI of the Constitution, which prohibits a "religious test" for office, but that means no one can be barred from office because of their faith; it does not and could not prevent citizens from voting for or against someone for religious reasons.
Two years ago, The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom reported that 10 of the 15 "worst violators of religious freedom" in the world are nations in which Islam is the dominant religion.
If you prefer the thoughts of a cultural icon, consider what singer Art Garfunkel said. As reported on Daily Mail.com, Garfunkel noted that Muslims are transforming Europe. He referenced "Reflections of the Revolution in Europe," a 2009 book by Christopher Caldwell, which argues, "that mass immigration by Muslims is altering the culture of Europe because of their reluctance to join the culture of their new homelands." The book claims Muslims do not so much enhance European culture as supplant it, and are "patiently conquering Europe's cities, street by street."
Is that bigotry, or reality? Is it bigotry to quote what various Islamic leaders say are their intentions when it comes to establishing a worldwide caliphate and replacing the U.S. Constitution with Sharia Law, or is it a warning we should take seriously and respond to as we would react to any other invasion?
"Mina" (not her real name to protect her family) is a U.S. citizen and longtime friend who was born in Tehran and still has family there. She wrote me about the intentions of the mullahs and their nuclear deal with the U.S. and five other nations: "The mullahs are buying time ... (to) finish their nuclear program. Americans underestimate these people. It will be Hezbollah, ISIS, or al-Qaida doing their dirty work. They will give them the nuclear bomb. They are very shrewd. They'll sit back and watch."
"Mina" says the Iranian regime has been a huge supporter of President Obama, whose name in Persian, she notes, translates as "he is with us." She asks why Arab and Muslim countries don't take in the migrants now fleeing their native lands for Europe (and now thanks to President Obama the U.S.). It's a good question and the answer ought to be obvious to anyone not afraid of being labeled a "bigot." They support the invasion.
While not all Muslims are terrorists, Breitbart recently revealed a startling statistic. "In a recent survey conducted by AlJazeera.net, the website for the Al Jazeera Arabic television channel," it writes, "respondents overwhelmingly support the Islamic State terrorist group, with 81 percent voting 'YES' on whether they approved of ISIS's conquests in the region." Eighty-one percent.
We are at war with a radical ideology that wishes to destroy the West and drastically alter our way of life. That is what Ben Carson was getting at when he made his remarks about a Muslim president in the White House.

What Is Your Sign ?


I know I'll get a lot of hate for this, but I think someone needs to say it anyway. We are not primitive pagan astrologers. We don't need to derive superstitious omens from natural solar and lunar cycles to know what God is saying. God's word is not a divining rod - it's a "Lamp for our feet and a light for our path." Yes, the signs of the times are all around us, clearly proclaimed in Scripture. But this sensationalism masquerading as "prophecy" needs to stop. I would encourage our leaders to be more grounded than this.
I still remember the 88 reasons book (“88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988”). Everyone was terrified, altars were flooded, but the author was wrong. He made a lot of money on people’s gullibility and fear. But rather than apologize, the next year published a sequel, “The final shout: Rapture report 1989” - predicting that the rapture would take place in 1989. Can you believe, people still bought into it?! This latest round of predictions will be another one we look back and shake our heads at down the road.
In the meantime, cynics will be made, hearts will be hardened to the true signs and the credibility of men of God will be undermined. Nineveh didn’t repent because Jonah preached to them about blood moons. Jeremiah didn’t use solar eclipses as evidence that God’s judgment was coming. This sort of superstitious nonsense has no precedent in Scripture. (Joel does say, “The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.” [Joel 2:31] But Revelation also says of that event that the stars will fall from the sky, the heavens will recede like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island will be removed from its place [Rev. 6:12-14]. This is clearly speaking about something extraordinary, not a normal astrological event as predictable as seasons and lunar cycles.)
John said, “Little children, this is the last hour…” That was 2000 years ago. If that was the last hour, we are living in the last second of the last minute of the last hour. This is enough knowledge for me to work even harder to preach the Gospel and “occupy” till He comes.
When the disciples asked Jesus after His resurrection, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus said, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:6-7). In other words, Jesus said, these things are not in your power. You can’t do anything about them. Your job is to preach the Gospel until I return.
If you say, “We need to recognize the signs so that we can be ready for His return.” I would say, 1) we should stay ready anyways and 2) there are plenty of legitimate signs of the times, clearly outlined in Scripture. Then again, these signs won’t sell as many books so I doubt anyone will bother.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Monday, September 21, 2015

GOP's Muslim Moment: Why Trump, Carson Are So Unsettling To Party

The presidential race’s “Muslim moment” has arrived, and it is graphically laying bare, once again, the Republican dysfunction that is convulsing American government.  On the face of it, Mr. Trump’s refusal last week to silence a supporter who called Muslims a “problem” – and added that President Obama is a Muslim – would seem to have little to do with the potential gridlock in Congress this week. Nor would presidential candidate Ben Carson’s comment to NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.”  And yet these snapshots of Trump and Mr. Carson both have at least one thing in common with House Republicans’ threats to shut down the government – this time over federal funding to Planned Parenthood, an abortion provider. They drive establishment Republicans fruitcake.





Fundamentally at issue in both the new shutdown talk and in the insurgent candidacies of Trump and Carson is a tension that has driven Republican politics since the tea party revolution of 2010.  Establishment Republicans want to win elections, Republican voters want to feel they are being heard.
Recent evidence suggests that, at crucial times and in important ways, the two goals have been mutually exclusive. But they are clashing dramatically on the presidential campaign trail and in Congress this week.  Recent polls have found that 43 to 54 percent of Republicans think Mr. Obama is a Muslim, and only 45 percent say they would vote for a Muslim. Some 63 percent of Republicans want the main focus of United States immigration policy to be stopping the flow of immigrants and deporting those already here. And 53 percent support defunding Planned Parenthood.
All are in contrast with the broader American population, and by wide margins.  In other words, to give many Republican voters what they want on several key issues is a recipe to win House races in safe, localized districts, but to risk losing broader races for the Senate and White House. Indeed, Republicans’ success in the 2014 Senate elections began with rigorously weeding out antiestablishment tea party candidates.
Now, Trump and Carson are giving frustrated rank-and-file Republicans their voice again. And in doing so, they are forcing the Republican Party to come to terms with its own contradictions – an uncomfortable discussion the party has hoped to avoid for years.  Trump’s “willingness to say what other Republicans won’t has forced out into the open genuine policy debates among Republicans that had previously been shrouded in vagueness or imprisoned within party orthodoxy,” writes Greg Sargent of The Washington Post’s “Plum Line” blog.
Recently, the Republican establishment had also sought to tamp down potentially inflammatory talk on abortion. Comments about abortion likely lost Republicans Senate seats in Missouri and Indiana in 2012 and fed Democratic claims of a Republican “war on women.”  But a video from an antiabortion group has stirred the issue again, leading to calls for shutting down the government if Planned Parenthood is not defunded. The video shows a Planned Parenthood official talking about selling tissue from an aborted fetus. The process is legal as a part of scientific research, but the video – and the revelation of the practice – shocked many viewers, particularly for the casual tone of the conversation.
House Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio is strongly against abortion. But he sees more political damage than gain in shutting down the government over the issue.   So as he tries to head off a shutdown that he believes could damage the Republican brand more broadly, Republican leaders and strategists stand appalled by a Trump campaign they believe could damage the Republican brand more broadly.
The deeper concern is that there is no obvious “solution” to the disconnect between the Republican Party and many of its voters. The party cannot abandon its most passionate, partisan supporters, who can be reliably counted on to go to the polls, even in low-turnout midterm elections. But the direction of the country appears to be moving inexorably away from the worldview of these voters.  Latino voters were not a decisive voting bloc in the 2012 presidential election, an analysis by The New York Times found, but they tipped several key states into Obama’s column. And their influence is growing.
Meanwhile, Millennials, now the largest generation in the country, are significantly left of Republican orthodoxy on immigration, gay rights, business profits, and environmentalism, one Pew Research Center studyfinds. Another suggests that such differences might be culturally ingrained and persist even as Millennials age.
In other words, there is evidence that what many Republicans of today want on a host of key issues runs counter to what the emerging America of tomorrow would appear to want. Establishment Republicans want to start pivoting to that potential future with candidates like Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio. Many Republican voters are having none of it.
Almost always, the establishment wins. But this year, the supporters of Trump and Carson – like the candidates themselves – are making a bold and unapologetic statement.   USA POLITICS

Friday, September 11, 2015

BassAckward!!!!

  
     At one time we were not taxed on our income, property, clothes, medical 
items including drugs, gas, and it goes on and on. Just think our former citizens of this 
great country rebelled because of a tax on their tea. 
  
    What in the world has happened to us? How did we reach such a state of 
affairs? 
  
    Just ask the big bankers all over the world. I think they just might have 
the answer.  
  
    From A Florida Doctor,  
  
    I live and work in a state.....which is now, completely overrun with 
illegal's. 
  
    They make more money having kids than we earn working full-time. 
  
    Today I had a 25-year old with 8 kids - that's right 8, all illegal anchor 
babies and she had the nicest nails, cell phone, hand bag, clothing, etc.  
She makes about $1,500 monthly for each; you do the math. (That's 
$12,000 - plus what she personally gets for own "benefits" !!) 
  
     I used to say, "We are the dumbest nation on earth," Now I must say and 
sadly admit:  

WE are the dumbest people on earth (that includes ME) for we elected the idiot 
ideologues who have passed the 
bills that allow this. Sorry, but we need a revolution. 
  
     NOW, GET THIS: 
  
    If the immigrant is over 65, they can apply for SSI and Medicaid and get 
more than a woman on Social Security, who worked from 1944 until 2004. 
   
    She is only getting $791 per month because she was born in 1924 and there's 
a 'catch 22' (notch) for her.  
  
    It is interesting that the federal government provides a single refugee with 
a monthly allowance of $1,890 . 

    Each can also obtain an additional $580 in social assistance, for a total of 
$2,470 a month . (Seeing RED yet ????)  
  
    This compares to a "legal American Citizen single pensioner ", who after 
contributing to the growth and development of America for 40 to 50 years, 
can only receive a monthly maximum of $1,012 in old age pension and 
Guaranteed Income Supplement. ( Seeing more RED? )  
  
    Maybe our pensioners should apply as refugees! Consider sending this to all 
your American friends, so we can all be ticked off and maybe get the refugees 
cut back to $1,012 and the pensioners up to $2,470. Then we can enjoy some 
of the money we were forced to submit to the Government over the last 40 or 50 or 60 years.  
  
    PLEASE SEND THIS TO EVERY AMERICAN TAXPAYER YOU KNOW! 

Sunday, September 6, 2015

That Dog Does Hunt

Gun manufacturer Spike’s Tactical has introduced a new AR-15, which it is determined to keep out of the hands of Islamic terrorists. To that end, they etched the magazine with a bible verse.
Oh, and the AR-15’s name is “The Crusader.”
Company spokesman Ben “Mookie” Thomas, a former Navy Seal and former Blackwater security contractor, explained:
“Right now and as it has been for quite some time, one of the biggest threats in the world is and remains Islamic terrorism. We wanted to make sure we built a weapon that would never be able to be used by Muslim terrorists to kill innocent people or advance their radical agenda.”
The semi-automatic rifle’s magazine is etched with the words of Psalm 144:1:
”Blessed be the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.”