The Rise of Trump

Today, I’m going to attempt to explain why people are voting for Donald Trump.

I have in mind two groups for this explanation: the people out there that like the Republican Party as it is and the supporters of Ted Cruz.

First what is the phenomenon of Trump’s rise in popularity?
Part of Trump’s popularity is that he doesn’t take crap from anyone. He gives as good as he gets. If you attack him he will retaliate in kind. Look at the penis flap this week. Marco Rubio said that Trump had a little one at a speech that he made and Trump mocked him about it on national television. Was it crude? Yes, but it made Rubio look stupid.

Marco Rubio told supporters last week that GOP presidential rival Donald Trump is “always calling me ‘little Marco.’”

“He is taller than me, he’s like 6’ 2”, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5’ 2”,” Rubio joked. “Have you seen his hands? And you know what they say about men with small hands—”

The crowd erupted.

”—You can’t trust them,” Rubio said.

Rubio’s comment may come across tasteless for a presidential hopeful, but that was not the first time someone has questioned the size of Trump’s hands.

The article continues…

If you thought Rubio’s joke on the campaign trail last week would go un-answered by Trump—you were wrong.

Trump has brought up his hands up at least twice in the past 24 hours.

At a rally outside Detroit this morning, Trump said he would not sit back and be “presidential…when ‘little Marco’” talked about “the size of my hands.”

Trump held his hands up and said, “Those hands can hit a golf ball 285 yards.”

And at the Republican debate in Detroit last night, Trump said, “And I have to say this, I have to say this. [Rubio] hit my hands.”

“Nobody has ever hit my hands. I have never heard of this,” Trump continued, neglecting to reveal his repeated mailings to Carter.

“Look at those hands,” Trump said on the debate stage, holding up his hands to the audience. “Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands—if they are small, something else must be small.”

“I guarantee you there is no problem,” Trump affirmed. “I guarantee you.”

ABC News: The History Behind the Donald Trump ‘Small Hands’ Insult

Little Rubio, from Drudgereport 03/06/2016

Trump is taking a page out of a familiar playbook. “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.”
The Untouchables 1987

Ok, so contrast this with what the Republican Establishment has been giving us since 1989; especially at the presidential level and more recently in Congress.

George W Bush would never defend his policies; especially, going into Iraq. He would not defend himself, his administration, and by extension those of us that voted for him, period. He had some weird notion of turning the other cheek and hoping God would sort it out. When he wanted to do stupid stuff domestically, he ignored his base and gave us junk like the Medicare Part D, the bail-out, and other things that the Democrats wanted.

Neither McCain nor Romney would directly engage Obama when they ran for president. They were afraid; especially of being called racists for attacking Obama’s policies. As a result, they pulled their punches.

An alternate explanation is they knew they were lying when they tried to pass themselves off as conservatives when they were not. At some point each candidate didn’t have the heart to perpetuate the lie.

Was Sara Palin brought in so she could sound conservative so McCain would not have to?

George H. W. Bush gave us the American with Disabilities Act. This is by far the largest unfunded mandate in the history of the world—at least up to that time. It was poorly written and has cost both government and the private section trillions of dollars. It has been used as a club to destroy many small and medium sized businesses. On balance, it has hurt as many or more people than it has helped. This law was like doing open heart surgery with hand grenades; you might unplug the artery but what good is that if the patient doesn’t walkout of the hospital?

Bush also famously broke his pledge of no new taxes.

Republicans have owned the House for many years now and they can’t even pass a budget; which is their Constitutional duty. They said we are only one half of one third of government, we need the Senate if we want to get things done. Well, stupid us, we gave it to them and nothing has changed. They talk and talk but every time they have a chance to stand up to the President, they surrender without a fight. They are gutless, feckless, and spineless.

It took Newt and his boys tried three times to get welfare reform passed under Bill Clinton; but low and behold, Clinton finally signed it and then took credit for the idea. The thought of doing something similar to Obama is anathema to the previous and current Republican Leadership.

In short, it has been many decades since any Republican with vision, spine, and leadership has ventured into the public square to take on the Democrats or their enablers in the Republican Party. Reagan did it. Newt did it for the first hundred days and then a few times after that in the House. Republicans have never in my lifetime had a Senate Leader that was a Conservative.

People hate the direction that this country is going and nobody will stand up for them. Trump has the reputation of looking someone in the face and saying, “F.U., I won’t do it”. Yes he is crude. Yes he gave protection money to Democrats; how else do you do business in New York. You pay off the unions and the politicians and then you get your project built. He knows how the game is played.

Trump is a scrappy guy with a New York attitude. To beat Clinton—and frankly to treat Hillary the way she deserves to be treated (like a piñata)—is not the job for a gentleman like Ted Cruz. Ted is right on more issues than Trump but we don’t want a professor for a leader, we want someone that can move the masses (low information voters) in a meaningful enough way to get them to defect from the Democrats and vote for the Republican. The electoral map is such that Democrats only have to win about three states out of fifty to win the presidency—or block the path for a Republican.

Second, it is not fair to compare Trump with other recent insurgents on the political landscape.

Trump is not Jesse Ventura, Ross Perot, Patrick J Buchanan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or other non-traditional candidates. Comparisons to these men fall short of meaningful analysis. While no comparison is totally accurate, in my mind you need to go back to Teddy Roosevelt to find some comparisons. Teddy was a populist. He loved his country and was willing to confront folks in both parties. A significant difference between the two men is that Teddy formed the Bull Moose Party and tried to get to the presidency thru a third party instead of finding a path thru the Republicans.

Trump found a path thru the Republicans. Trump was not taken seriously by the Republican Establishment until he started winning; first in opinion polls and then at the ballot box. He is not relying on the same apparatus that the Party has set-up: consultants, advertisers, polling firms, etc. Trump has spent a fraction of the money that Jeb Bush spent. (Bush spent over 160 million and couldn’t break out of single digits in the polls)

Not using the failed system set up by the Establishment, they didn’t see Trump coming. Reagan did a variation of this when he ran. Reagan got his marketing people from Madison Avenue instead of the political consulting world. As a result, Reagan’s messaging was more effective.

Third, the reaction to Trump is encouraging more people to support him and solidifying his position as front runner.

Rank and File Republicans Tell Party Elites: We’re Sticking With Donald Trump

From Michigan to Louisiana to California on Friday, rank-and-file Republicans expressed mystification, dismissal and contempt regarding the instructions that their party’s most high-profile leaders were urgently handing down to them: Reject and defeat Donald J. Trump.

Their angry reactions, in the 24 hours since Mitt Romney and John McCain urged millions of voters to cooperate in a grand strategy to undermine Mr. Trump’s candidacy, have captured the seemingly inexorable force of a movement that still puzzles the Republican elite and now threatens to unravel the party they hold dear.

In interviews, even lifelong Republicans who cast a ballot for Mr. Romney four years ago rebelled against his message and plan. “I personally am disgusted by it — I think it’s disgraceful,” said Lola Butler, 71, a retiree from Mandeville, La., who voted for Mr. Romney in 2012. “You’re telling me who to vote for and who not to vote for? Please.”

“There’s nothing short of Trump shooting my daughter in the street and my grandchildren — there is nothing and nobody that’s going to dissuade me from voting for Trump,” Ms. Butler said.

NY Times: We’re Sticking with Trump

This article from the New York Times captures much of the zeal for Trump but their attempts at analysis fall short. However two paragraphs deserve a closer look.

The furious campaign now underway to stop Mr. Trump and the equally forceful rebellion against it captured the essence of the party’s breakdown over the past several weeks: Its most prominent guardians, misunderstanding their own voters, antagonize them as they try to reason with them, driving them even more energetically to Mr. Trump’s side.

I wish to take issue with the assertion that “the party’s breakdown” occurred “over the past several weeks”. The Party has been broken for many years.

Look at us here in California. Republican registration has fallen to 27 percent. The State Party Chairman said a few weeks ago, that Republicans are the third largest party in the State. Numerically they are second but he looks at it in terms of Democrats being first at 43 percent, all others are 30 percent and then the GOP.

The Republican reaction in California is not to go to voters and see what’s changed and try to reconnect with the masses that have changed registration to Decline to State. No they have become more insular, less responsive to voters, and have adopted a “bunker mentality”. They have firmly affixed blinders and are charging around in the dark.

I think the same thing has happened to the Party on a national level. Demographically, the country is changing—and not in a good way. Both Democrats and Republicans have turned a blind eye to following the Constitution. All three branches of government are perverted, un-moored, and outside of their Constitutional boundaries.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference, a long-running gathering of traditional conservatives, attendees feared that they were witnessing an event that has not occurred in more than a century: the breaking apart of a major American political party.

They spoke ruefully of “fidelity” lost and “values” forgone. They conceded a strange new feeling of powerlessness in the face of Mr. Trump’s ascendance. And they mourned for a 162-year-old party that is starting to seem unrecognizable to them.

The Republican Party has been broken for a long time, but the Establishment has not noticed because they were the only game in town if you wanted an alternative to the Democrats. Trump is an alternative to the status quo. Both Parties have been ready for a re-alignment but perhaps the Trump phenomenon will finally trigger its arrival.

This brings me to Immigration.

Our immigration system is broken and has been for decades. It’s getting worse instead of better.

I’m going to throw a new twist into the discussion of immigration. My assertion is that there are two components of immigration: the governmental system and the societal.

Dr. Michael Savage has made his thesis on this issue: Borders, Language, and Culture. My comments fall within this paradigm.

We need to secure our borders and set-up a guest worker program. I totally agree with Trump and Savage on this. However, this does not go far enough. There is a societal aspect to immigration that is also in need of reform. This reform is one that was once a core value of America, it was the dream of immigrants to be Americans.

People that come here now, no longer desire to be Americans. They don’t make the sacrifice of those before them to leave their old country and adopt America as their own.

I know when my wife’s ancestors came here from Germany, they were required to sign a document renouncing their German citizenship and any claim to property in their old country. This was required not by us but the German government. Once they got here they could not turn back. Once in America, they wanted to learn English and work to make a better life than the one they had left.

Now immigrants can stay here for generations and not be assimilated into an American culture. They get to keep all their cultures, customs, and traditions. Even if they speak English they identify with their group not with their new country.

I remember that many children of Mexican immigrants that I went to school with never knew Spanish. They were here so they were expected to learn our language. Not by our government but by their parents. They spoke English at home so they would be good at it and have a better opportunity to get a good job when they grew up.

Now, public schools are legally required to provide translators and other tools so parents will never have to learn English. Heck when you want to vote in my county—Sacramento—the government is required to provide the ballot in English, Spanish, and some flavor of Chinese.

We passed a ballot measure in 1986 that declared that English is the official language of California but you sure wouldn’t know it by looking at our State.

Savage is right, without a unifying language and culture, what binds us together? Nothing. We are just in an uneasy ceasefire with the strangers living next door to us. Often their allegiance is not to our country but to their old country and old way of life.

For example, I have a friend at work that was born here, her parents are from China. She occasionally goes to Church and calls herself a Christian. She cares only for the welfare of the Chinese Community. Her first language is Chinese. She spends much of her spare time promoting a Chinese language newspaper that serves various enclaves of folks from China that live in the United States. It is run by an arm of the Communist Chinese government. She will only listen to politicians that pander to her ethnic group or have a Chinese heritage. She will always support Democrats. Only once has she flinched on the knee-jerk impulse to support the Dems and that was when the Dems were trying to pass a quota bill to increase Hispanic attendance at California Universities. Nobody cared that it might promote less qualified Hispanic children over Whites but when the Asia folks figured out that they would be the most screwed group in this racially based scheme, they went ballistic. They banded together and stopped the proposed legislation but none of the folks in the Chinese community were bothered by the fact that the people from “their community” had aligned with the Democrat leadership to screw them over. Leland Yee and others got a free pass.

This girl would be considered one of the better out comes from immigration. Most just stay in their ghetto where they happily take whatever scraps the government sees fit to give them. None desire above all else to be Americans.

Somehow people claim to love Dr. King but ignore the cornerstone of his belief that men should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

This Balkanization of the United States is a rather recent phenomenon. I bet that if you looked at the decline of immigrants desiring to be Americans as defined by learning English and enjoying freedom and this rise in immigrants clinging to their old ways and living off the government dole, there is a direct correlation with the increase in the popularity of soccer and decline of interest in baseball. Baseball was once the most popular thing exported by the United States. It was our goodwill ambassador to other nations. It was a welcome symbol of our country. Baseball, blue jeans and Bibles were once our biggest contributions to the world.

But back to Trump.
• Trump stands his ground, the Republican Establishment does not.
• Trump is a different type of political insurgent than anyone in recent memory. The Republican Establishment does not know what to do with him. To appropriate a phrase from Rush Limbaugh, they didn’t make him so they can’t unmake him either.
• Trump’s instinct on immigration is right. We only want people here that want to be like us, not those bringing their banana republic politics and ghetto mentality with them. The Republican Establishment has no plan but total capitulation on the issue.

How the Republican Establishment giving the Democrats a permanent majority for the next hundred years or more can be viewed as a victory on the issue is just baffling to rank-and-file Republican voters. Plans like Bush’s and Rubio’s are a suicide pact for the Republican Party. Furthermore, it’s a suicide pact for our nation.

Members of the military and those that have served in elected office take an oath to protect the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic. The domestic enemies of this country are the Democrat Party and the Republican Establishment. Neither group has any patriots left in them.

Supporters of Trump agree with him when he “calls out” both Democrats and Establishment Republicans. The ruling classes have no clothes. Trump is fearlessly confronting both.

Does he have the answers? Maybe not, but shining the light on the ruling classes and watching them scatter like cockroaches sure is entertaining. Hopefully it will wake-up enough folks to turn the country away from the destructive path it has been on.

Thoughts on Romney & Rubio

Rubio
Barack Obama was in the US Senate for three years—half of his six year term—before announcing his candidacy for President.

In contrast, Marco Rubio was in the US Senate for five years before announcing his candidacy.

Barack Obama’s early political career involved voting “Present” as a regular part of his tenure in the Illinois Senate.

Rubio on the other-hand can’t show up for work to even vote.

Romney
Why is Romney fighting so hard against Trump? If Romney had expended this much effort against Obama, he would be President now.

Also, have you noticed that Romney keeps claiming that he a conservative when making these attacks?

These Establishment guys are like Pharisees in Jesus’ day. Pharisees claimed to be the heirs of Moses but Jesus showed that they wouldn’t know the Law if it bit them on the butt. Likewise, the Establishment Republicans claim to be heirs of Reagan and Conservatives but by their actions repudiate the core values of both Reagan and Conservatism.

Romney is also trying to interject himself as the adult alternative that a split and fractured Convention should turn to for their salvation. Or to continue the biblical analogies, Romney is crying, “Follow me back to Egypt. We had it so much better there than following this Moses guy.”

Rubio Tantrum

I saw Marco Rubio on television last night. He was a petulant child and an embarrassment to the electoral process. His vitriol towards Trump was the stuff I would expect to see on late night television parody skits. That he really said it speaks volumes to me about his inability to act like an adult in public.

To a national audience, Rubio cried about Trump being a fraud and vowed to stay in the race just so he can deny Trump the nomination. In what universe Marco? Trump has the one thing you are incapable of getting, delegates. Your campaign rhetoric is the exact reverse of your voting record and you take offense when people point that out.

Rubio has gone to his patrons in Washington to get help. As a result, they are rolling out Mitt Romney tomorrow. Romney is a rich establishment guy who they think has the gravitas (oh how I despise that word) to go after rich guy Trump. Somehow this must have something to do with a supposedly brilliant strategy to invigorate Rubio’s lethargic campaign just in time for tomorrow’s debate.

Frankly, I think putting Romney on the board makes Rubio look like a pansy and his patrons look like dull, out of touch Washington Elites ( oh, they are).

Rubio is a dead man walking. Whatever happens, there is no chance in hell he is on the ballot in November.

Dr. Carson
has stepped aside. He should have done it sooner but it clears the lane for Cruz.

For the first time in about two years, I went out of my way to listen to Rush today. He said he found some pundit in Washington that said The Establishment is even considering going with Cruz to thwart Trump. Rush thought this was nonsense and I agree.

Cruz is an ideologue and a self-proclaimed Constitutionalist. The elites would be better off with Trump.

Truthfully, the elites want the status quoi. This is the only option that voters find unacceptable.

The Republican Party is changing or going extinct; how that turns out probably depends on their treatment of Trump.

Thoughts on Super Tuesday 2016

Eight years ago the major political parties put up their worst candidates—John McCain and Barack Obama—for the Presidency. Their worst beat our worst and every day Obama continues to prove it.

Now in 2016, our loudest is going against their loudest.

Hillary Clinton—whose accomplishments are limited to sleeping with the President and killing people in Benghazi—is trying to crush Bernie Sanders tomorrow so she can have a clear shot at the Whitehouse; (FBI indictment notwithstanding.)

Meanwhile, the spineless Republican Establishment and certain conservatives in the Party are faced with the likelihood that Donald Trump will be their nominee. Trump has many flaws but sleeping with the President and killing American Ambassadors are not amongst them. Trump is rough around the edges but he has proven that he can achieve his goals.

Unlike the Clinton’s, Trump earned his money the old fashioned way; not as a result of screwing average America citizens and getting obscene amounts of money for speeches and libraries. The Clinton’s were dead broke when Bill and Hillary left Washington and now they have a net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Republicans have owned both houses of Congress for two years now and have absolutely nothing to show for it. It fact, the Democrats still run the place. The Republican leadership earned Trump as their candidate. They are a gutless lot. Republicans (and many Democrats) are tired of the political class being ineffective. The Congressional Leadership behaves like a simple minded dog that knows three tricks:
• How to play dead
• Roll-over
• And beg.

The biggest substantial difference between Trump and Hillary is this:
• Hillary will appoint people on the basis of political payoffs
• Trump will appoint people qualified for the job

The idea of Bloomberg or Romney coming in to save the Republican Establishment at the eleventh hour via a brokered convention is nonsense. Bush has been burned and Rubio is a clueless poser. It looks like the GOP Establishment has found someone they hate more than Ronald Reagan.

Washington is all about Power and Control—Hillary is both and Trump is neither.

Super Tuesday may be more than just the election that cements the field in November, it may be the cement that sinks the Republican Establishment, and that would be a very good thing.

81st Annual California Republican Assembly Convention

I went to the Convention this past week-end. It was held at the Knott’s Berry Farm Hotel.

I arrived about 2 p.m. and tried to check in to the hotel. This process took an hour, two calls to my bank and three trips thru the check-in line. As it turns out, the people at the front counter were not entering the transaction correctly and it was being refused on their end because they were trying to reuse a transaction number when running my card.

I went to my room, changed into swim attire and spent about half an hour in the pool. Then showered and went to the 4 p.m. CRA Board meeting. Much to my surprise, in attendance was John Briscoe and his partner in crime, Benita Gagne. I texted another person at the meeting and asked why Briscoe was there. His one word reply was “Spy”. Towards the end of the meeting, Briscoe asked the presiding officer for a copy of the final report for the committee investigating George and Aaron Park’s unethical activities during the prior year. Briscoe was told there was no written report, but it was read in its entirety at the Fall Board meeting—which he attended by the way. After witnessing this exchange, I thought that I might have seen the last of him, but he was in attendance for the remainder of the convention.

Benita had a cadre of ladies with her and was wearing a badge identifying her as a unit president. In response to their questions, she was instructing willing ladies how they should vote.

I had thought that maybe the presence of Briscoe and Gagne signaled that their experiment forming Impact Republicans was officially defunct. Today, I hear that they are trying to make another go at getting recognized by the California Republican Party at the upcoming Spring Convention. Clearly their identification as spies was the correct read on the situation. I guess my prediction of I.R. becoming a pay for endorsement racket is closer to reality.

The vendors at the Convention were few. Only two campaigns were present: Phil Wyman for US Senate and Ted Cruz for President. There was a booth by a group of crazy Christians from Orange County and some folks plugging some group for something else. I never heard of them before. I thought it strange that they had many books on their table by Phyllis Schlafly but it was not Eagle Forum. Also, there was a lady there selling a book on the conservative and Christian roots of America. There were a few other folks there but these made the biggest impression on me.

The focus of two booths was a rabid hatred for Common Core. Nobody can say why they hate Common Core, they just expect that you have to in order to be a conservative. One booth left me with the impression that you couldn’t be a Christian and support Common Core. It was God’s will that I oppose it. Echoes of Greg Hardcastle were going thru my head as I looked at their paraphernalia. Of course they have nothing to offer in its place.

Conservative hatred of Common Core and Obamacare in California is just stupid. Obamacare was the law in California before Obama was elected President—thanks Arnold—but nobody ever acknowledges this fact. Somehow, they always aim their disdain at Washington and not Sacramento. Ditto for Common Core. It was established as the law in California years ago but Conservatives direct their ire to the Department of Education—a federal agency—and somehow the State is off the hook. Truth is that Conservatives were asleep at the wheel and let this happen under their noses and did nothing to stop either.

Republicans have owned both Houses of Congress and so far have nothing to show for it. They can’t even pass an honest to goodness budget. Just a series of continuing resolutions and fights over the mythical budget ceiling.

The more I watched CRA in action, the lamer they seemed. The endorsement votes for President and US Senate were a joke. The job of nominating Trump fell to me because nobody even wanted to mention his name. CRA was so in the tank for Cruz it was amazing. No candidate got over twelve votes in a room of about 160 people. Cruz’s name came up last and the room went crazy (I’m using that word a lot in this blog). He got way over the required 2/3 vote for endorsement.

There were eight Republicans that spoke to the CRA Convention that were seeking their endorsement for US Senate. A few were legit but several were not ready to run for school board let alone a statewide election. I was amazed that Tom Del Baccaro got the CRA endorsement on the first ballot. Tom was on the record to stop Common Core and I guess that’s all it takes in this group. He never seems to say how he plans to do this. Tom has a record of platitudes but never quite seems to be able to back them up with deeds. My sources tell me he pile-drived the Contra Costa Republican Party into oblivion; but somehow he was able to leap from that job to CRP Chair.

My favorite part of the Convention was the time I spent with Dana Rohrbacher’s eleven year old daughter. She was pushing for Cruz every day in front of his booth. She’s the most extreme Type A kid you will ever meet. At a Cruz reception on Saturday night—non-believers like me were invited too—she stole the spotlight. My favorite exchanges were these:
Girl “Who are you supporting for President”
Me “Donald Trump”
Girl “Why?”
Me “Because he has nice hair.”
Girl “Yeah, I like his hair too.”

A few minutes later, Tom Del Baccaro walks into the room. The little girl points to Tom and says, “See that guy.” I then look at Tom, and she continues, “He’s evil.”

I did find it disturbing that she was demanding to watch Saturday Night Live when it came on. My son is the same age and he goes to bed between 8 and 9. He’s never even heard of the program.

CRA is recovering from the Park brothers but I don’t know how much more growth they will experience.

The last thing of note during the Convention was the talk by current CRP Chairman Jim Brulte. Brulte classified voter registration in California like this. First is Democrats with 43% registration, second is DTS and all others, and Republicans were in third place with 28%. Brulte has hopes of blocking the Dems from getting a 2/3 super majority in either house of the California legislature. At best maybe a one seat pickup.

I’m glad to be off the CRA Board and look forward to following Dave Ramsey’s advice to pay down my debts instead of spending the cash on long weekends tilting at windmills.

Glen Beck Attacks Trump

Two very different articles today have appeared about discrimination and Christianity.

First, Glen Beck has launched a full-on attack of Donald Trump as a fraud who has never opened a Bible and is a fake Christian.

“too many people are looking at Trump and believing that man has ever opened a Bible…that’s the biggest crock of bullcrap I’ve ever heard”
– Glen Beck 02-11-2016

Glenn Beck On Trump’s Christian Faith: ‘Biggest Crock Of Bullcrap I’ve Ever Heard’

Glenn Beck floats Trump’s Christian faith as fake

Mr. Beck’s personal beliefs on religion are rather out of the mainstream so I find it interesting that this is the area that he has chosen to attack Trump. Beck is a Mormon that likes to borrow ideas from Evangelical Christianity. There is no clear record that Beck could rightly be called a Christian—as defined by the Historical Creeds.

Beck was campaigning for Ted Cruz when he made his comments. Cruz has lifted the banner of Christ as his rallying point. This is curious to me when Cruz is unwilling to model public policy after Biblical Law.

I have reluctantly come to agree with Gary North’s assertion that Christians are not ready to lead. I have been in, under, and around Christians in politics for over thirty years, and this is long enough to follow several movements from start to finish, everything that Christians touch in the political arena, they screw-up. The latter state is worse than the former.

In the 1990’s, Evangelicals took over the Republican Party in California and made a huge mess out of it. Look at the Moral Majority, Christian Coalition, Capital Resource Institute, and a host of similar groups. They all end-up not bringing their faith and applying it to the political landscape but copying the power politic tactics of their enemies—they know no other paradigm—and adopting them as their own. Baptizing Power Religion does not make it Christian.

I don’t know where Trump’s heart is; only God does. I am not aware of any “fruit” to which I could point that says, “There’s your proof” but so what? I think of him as a typical American Roman Catholic. He has some incomplete knowledge of God and likely lacks a personal relationship with him. Trump needs your prayers—whether or not he is elected.

For Beck, Cruz, and Trump, I think of verses like this:

It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains.  But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.
Philippians 1:15-18

The second story which I will only mention briefly is about a BBC news anchor (presenter) Dan Walker. Walker is under fire for believing that Genesis is true and refusing to work on Sundays. (Chariots of Fire anyone?)

The bulk of the article is an attack on Walker by London Telegraph columnist Rupert Myers. Myers’ real problem is with God. Myers appears to be a typical humanist who is openly hostile to Christianity.

The gist of the matter is that because Walker is a Christian, he cannot be trusted when interviewing people on issues of science, education or technology.

If it weren’t for Christianity and the belief that God is knowable and his Creation is orderly and not random, we would have no basis for science but why let history get in the way of prejudice? Education in the West was the product of a Christian worldview.

Clearly Myers sees his chance to become the next Christopher Hitchens.

New BBC anchor takes heat for Christian faith

NARAL: Fetal Parody Tantrum

The National Abortion Rights Action League took issue with a Doritos advertisement that aired during Super Bowl 50 and made total asses out of themselves in the process.

I thought the ad was slightly offensive for making fun of a baby inside the mother but I never expected that the pro-abortion crowd would actually take this as a serious affront to their right to kill babies. I’m sure Doritos is happy about the publicity and doubly happy at how stupid NARAL looks to the rest of us. Thus no grounds for a corporate apology.

In the ad, the mom, a doctor and the father watch as the fetus moves to and fro in its mom’s tummy in an attempt to get closer to a chip wielded by the father.

When the exasperated mom flings the chip across the room, the baby follows – exiting the ultrasound frame and, apparently, the womb. The last bit is only intimated, as the camera pans to the horrified faces of the mom, dad and doctor as the Doritos logo flashes on the screen.
NARAL Article on FoxNews.com

NARAL stupidity on Twitter

Here are a few choice—can I use this word when attacking abortion rights folks who think they own it—quotes from the Fox New article.

“If NARAL is scandalized by the notion that a human fetus is human, then they are scandalized by science,” Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow with The Catholic Association, said in a statement to FoxNews.com.

McGuire’s statement continues:

“We know children in the womb have distinct and human DNA. We also know that they exhibit all sorts of human behaviors in the womb such as yawning, thumb-sucking, and even dancing thanks to tremendous advances in ultrasound technology.

“But groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood rely on a denial of these scientific realities better suited to the Dark Ages to maintain their rabid insistence that those unborn babies are undeserving of basic human rights.”

Rush Limbaugh is right, Liberals have no sense of humor.

Myth of Solar Energy

Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord, But a just weight is His delight.
Proverbs 11:1

I have a few older stories that I’ve been saving to comment on later; The State of Nevada and Solar Power is one. As is often the case, you must go outside the United States to see what’s going on in our country since our media is so reluctant to report the news instead of regurgitating press releases from their Liberal friends.

One would think that a state that is mostly desert, heat, and sunshine would be a leader in solar energy; however, this is not the case. Like their neighbors in California, the politicians in Nevada have decided that killing the “Golden Goose” is better than slowly bleeding it.

Although Nevada is one of the sunniest places in the world, there has recently been a dark cloud hovering over the rooftop solar industry in the state. Just before Christmas, Nevada’s public utility commission (PUC) gave the state’s only power company, NV Energy, permission to charge higher rates and fees to solar panel users – a move that immediately shattered the rooftop solar industry’s business model.
theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/13/solar-panel-energy-power-company-Nevada

That’s right, at a time when Obama and company are trying to pile drive fossil fuels into the ground and Saudi Arabia has declared economic war on US energy companies, Nevada Power has killed the alternative energy market and effectively nationalized all privately owned solar cells in the state.

The money quote in the article is, “People would pay more for going solar rather than less. It has left companies no choice but to stop doing business in the state.”

Instead of Nevada Power paying fair market value for excess power that they purchase from solar customers, the utility says it will pay only 2.8 cents per kilowatt and then they will sell it for 13 cents. They also will be charging solar customers more for electricity that they buy on nights and cloudy days. This is in addition to charging each solar customer a $40 per month fee just to be hooked up to “the grid”.

The article concludes, “Not only that, if they are going to give us 2.8 cents a kilowatt and then sell it for 13 cents, basically 17,000 Nevada homeowners built a solar farm for Nevada power. I don’t think that can be right.”

For those of you that think commercial solar power is the answer, take a look in your favorite Internet search engine. Enter this criteria: California solar farm gross polluter

On the first page, you will begin to see mention of Ivanpah solar farm. Yeah, solar power is a gross polluter. Why? Because they need to burn large quantities of natural gas. big solar big gas Ivanpah

As its name implies, the Ivanpah Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Plant in the Mojave Desert is supposed to provide renewable energy from the rays of the sun.

But on March 26, 2014, Ivanpah applied to the California Energy Commission and the California Air Resources Board to increase, from one to five hours, its auxiliary gas-fired boiler’s use of pre-warmed fluid for its steam generators.  Ivanpah generates power for about 12 hours of solar insulation each day, of which four to five hours are peak generation. Ivanpah is projected to generate electricity for 249 days each year due to cloud cover, desert windstorms, nighttime and other constraints.
Ivanpah morphs into gas solar hybrid

“The moral of the story? Expansive government is good at merely shifting environmental and economic problems around from one political constituency or region to another, while claiming it has solved such problems.”
—Master Resource article.

I recall seeing another story which stated that a solar farm in California was classified as a “gross polluter’ because they use too much water to scrub their solar panels. Sorry but I can’t find the reference to this story.

I did however find another solar related article.

A PV solar panel is not “pollution free”, just the opposite, it carries with it a very large carbon footprint and a trio of toxic emissions unique unto itself. A solar panel is a product manufactured by energy rich fossil fuels and lots of them, and that manufacturing process creates additional bad guys unique unto itself. Quote from Ozzie Zehner new book “Green Illusions”: “Not only are solar cells an overpriced tool for reducing CO2 emissions, but their manufacturing process is also one of the largest emitters of hexafluoroethane, nitrogen trifluoride, and sulfur hexafluoride, chemicals used for cleaning plasma production equipment, these three gruesome greenhouse gases make CO2 seem harmless. As a greenhouse gas, hexafluoroethane is twelve thousand times more potent than CO2, is 100 percent manufactured by humans, and survives ten thousand years once released into the atmosphere. Nitrogen trifluoride is seventeen thousand times more virulent than CO2, and sulfur hexafluoride, the most treacherous greenhouse gas, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is twenty-five thousand times more threatening. The solar photovoltaic industry is one of the leading and fastest growing emitters of these gases, which are now measurably accumulating within the earth’s atmosphere, recent studies on nitrogen trifluoride reports that atmospheric concentrations of the gas have been rising an alarming 11 percent per year.”
Go solar California Information

I’ve been hearing the praises of solar power since Jimmy Carter was President but it still doesn’t seem ready for primetime.

The truth is nuclear can be safer, cheaper, and more available but one Jane Fonda movie and some stupid government regulations ruined the industry.