From the pages of life itself ...

22 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

I recall telling you some time ago that Glenn Beck is a buffoon.  Are you convinced yet?

6 hours ago, Robert Campbell said:

On 4/24/2016 at 0:05 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

If fact, I will even admit if Drumpf, who I see as a solution, were not running, I probably would have occasional comments and stay in the same kind of complicitness I was before. 

When I look at my own attitude, I see a clear example that just because an environment has been engineered so that people are kept silent, that does not mean they agree with the engineers or their bosses. Silence does not obliterate one from existence.

And this is what is behind Drumpf's support.

Michael,

I had to think long and hard what to say in response.

And I'm going to do this in two parts.  (The section about hurting will come later.)

Now, after Donald Drumpf has cleaned up in 5 Eastern states and the triumphalism is in a mad crescendo, seems as good a time as any.

What you mean by "an environment has been engineered," I don't comprehend.

It's one of those mistakes-were-made constructions.  

Not an agent, not a human being in sight.  Who engineered this environment?  How did they do it?

The engineers are those faceless beings who engineered (whatever that amounted to, in more concrete terms).  

They have bosses, again unnamed, who boss them.

As for silent complicity, I was not aware that you were in a line of work in which it would be dangerous to utter political opinions of a certain kind.  Nor that anyone was keeping you quiet (are you telling me you had to discover Donald Drumpf, 2015-2016 edition, to find your voice on your own site?).

Why would you need Donald Drumpf to rouse you from your slumbers?

It doesn't matter all that much what the New York Times does, or what NBC does, or what Fox News does.  If you want to inform yourself, in this time and place, it isn't hard.  

I'm not questioning the instrumental rationality of remaining low-information (the one vote I will cast in November will be in a deep red county in a red state, which the Republican nominee, no matter who, is just about sure to carry; the one vote you will cast in November will be in a deep blue area of a blue state that the Democrat will have a lock on).

Just saying the obvious: that if it's important to you to find out what's going on, you will.  That was as true in 1999 or 2007 or 2011 as it is today.

Some people might want to stop you, but this doesn't mean that they can.

And if you weren't paying attention till Donald issued the call to arms, there's a good chance you won't recognize the existence of valid or reliable sources of political information, besides the candidate and those who in 2016 are among his more prominent supporters.

It's as though neither Donald Drumpf nor his present champions even had a politically relevant history, before July 2015.

Worse yet, anyone who was paying attention, politically, before The Donald launched his latest campaign becomes suspect.

For surely only operatives of the Establishment had any motive to do so.

Robert

13 hours ago, Roger Bissell said:

5 hours ago, Robert Campbell said:

Michael,

You took Glenn Beck way too seriously to begin with.

Robert

5 hours ago, Robert Campbell said:

Michael,

Did the presence of a Barbour family member on McDaniel's team make him an Establishment plant?

You've refused to say.

Here's what you're effectively saying your thinking consists of:

Whatever Cruz says is worthless, because Cruz is saying it.

Whatever Drumpf says can be ignored, because Drumpf's true essence escapes any formulation in words.  Not even in his own.

The words of both are discounted, nearly to zero in some cases.

But the effects of the discounting are differential:

Cruz is always far worse than anyone could have suspected.

Drumpf is always far better than anyone could have suspected.

I don't doubt that many others think the same way.

But this is a big country.  Your faction can number in the millions, and be outnumbered by another with lots more millions.

Obama led Romney by more than 10% just once after March 1, 2012.  That's where Hillary is against Donald, right now.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/no-trump-cant-win/article/2588132

Robert

Things I learned about George Soros on Objectivist Living ...

Quote

 

Posted 15 Feb 2011 

One of the first things I ever read about Soros was published in 2003 in Reason. Beck was still in rehab, Michael was still in Brazil, Adam was still in the penitentiary, and Carol Jane and I were still married and raising rabbits for food.

It was after Soros' interview with 60 Minutes -- in which he talked frankly about his experience as a teenage 'hidden Jew' in Budapest -- but before Ann Coulter called him a Nazi collaborator.

It's a good read, even if you hate Soros with every last fibre of your being. It puts some of the bizarre takes on Soros in perspective, whether the bizarreries emerge from the left (He's a capitalist arch-fiend), the right (He's a communist), the Iranians (He's a stooge of the CIA Imperialists), the non-Objectivish also-rans (He sold Jews to the Nazis), the Belorussians (He is an agent of the USA), or the Malaysians (He's a Zionist Moneylending Criminal).

If you would like a reasonably reasonable take on Soros, and the wackiness and rage Soros garnered before he turned into The Boogeyman, have a gander at the Reason article. I know reason is no substitute for addled speculation or frenzied denunciations, but it can still be fun to take a break from the Outer Limits, put a saddle on the hobby horse, and pause before dashing off in all directions.

If you are the kind of person who can draw a straight line from The Rothschilds to The Progressives to Timothy McVeigh without spilling your FourLoko, the Reason article is not recommended. You will have to buy a new 

 

23 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Peter,

Ha!

So you think [ ... ]