Opus 2017-033: Headlines: You’re Fired!

I expect to see this everywhere.  I want to see this everywhere.  Possibly the most famous words of Donald Trump from his TV show and now we hear them in real time.  I wish I had a meter to see how many times this phrase will be posted in the next few days.

Too bad he can’t say the same thing to a nosey ex-president who won’t go away.  So much for the dignity of the office.

homo unius libri

Opus 2017-032: Just Around the Corner

Racist History Month is coming.  Many of you call it February.  Racists.  Privilegests.  

I am being reminded of this on a regular basis every day.  “Are we going to study Black History in Black History Month?”  I have had students ask me that question right after we watched a video about Harriet Tubman.  How can this be?  Because they are not interested in learning about the history of black people in the United States.  What they want is to get out of work that involves learning something new and go back to the three or four things they know.  For the average student of any color today Black History is confined to Martin Luther King, Jr, Rosa Parks and slavery.  If you get beyond that you are off the reservation. 

These kids think the only slaves that have ever existed were black people who were kidnaped from Africa by white people.  They are ignorant of the reality of slavery in every culture through history.  They deny that black people sold their ancestors to the white traders.  They refuse to listen when you tell them that there were black people in Louisiana who owned plantations and black slaves.  In a nutshell it isn’t about learning history.  It is about sticking in a thumb, pulling out a plumb and saying, “Oh, what a good boy am I.”

It fascinates me that we need a month to “celebrate” black history when we can cover the Irish with St. Patrick’s Day, the Mexicans with Cinco de Mayo and have nothing to remember the French, Germans, Croatians, Serbians, Persians, etc.

It all starts in your public schools on February 1.  I am waiting for someone to complain that they picked the shortest month.  It must be racist.

homo unius libri

Opus 2017-031: Headlines: Mystery Killings

One of the things I do as I am waking up is check the weather for the day on my smart phone.  I then scroll down to see what kind of headlines they have decided I am interested in.  One of the leading bits of news was a shooting at a mosque in the French part of Canada.  A couple of observations that reflect on the unrepentant behavior of the media.

Although two people have been arrested there is not word on who they were, what they looked like or what their motive was.  That tells us that it was not white males from the local Baptist church.  I wonder who it could be.  Any suggestions?

They also tried to blame Donald Trump for the killing.  After all, if he had not blocked the easy access of more terrorists then this would not have happened, right?  I am assuming that the terrorists who hit San Bernardino and Paris had the gift of seeing the future.  That must be why they were angry.

To their credit article did note that much of the time this kind of violence is between Sunni and Shia Muslims and they did indicate that it might have been a terrorist act but those comments were many paragraphs down in the article.

It is a shame that six people died from violence.  It is a bigger shame that the media use the tragedy to try to score political points.  It used to be called being a liberal or leftists.  Now it is called being Progressive.

homo unius libri

Opus 2017-030: Headlines: Leaky Weeks

On the Powerline Blog the subject was the leaked tapes of the supposedly secret meeting of the GOP last week.  What struck me was that this person infiltrated a supposedly secure location with false ID.  She passed all the hurdles that were put up to keep things secure.  The political aspect is business as usual.  There is no integrity when it comes to gathering news.  We should be used to that by now. 

What about the security angle?  If it is this easy to infiltrate a meeting with very exclusive membership what does it say about national security.  This woman had the credentials.  She went through all the hoops.  She still got in and it never occurred to anyone when she was “escorted” out that she might have recording she was not supposed to have?

What if she had been a terrorists instead of a reporter? 

homo unius libri

Opus 2017-029: Headlines: Awards

As I was reading about some of the protests against President Trump I wondered what they were complaining about.  I wasn’t reading about any of his actual actions.  I was reading about all of the fear mongering that is so popular.  I was reading how he was going to put women in jail who had abortions and how he was going to deport the parents of my students.  All nonsense but very loud nonsense.

It struck me that there was a similarity between Trump and Obama.  Each was being rewarded for things they had not done.  We have the Hitler Award to Trump for atrocities he has not committed.  We have the Nobel Peace Prize for Obama before he is even in office.  His big accomplishments were writing two autobiographies about a life that showed no accomplishments. 

Neither one has done anything to deserve the awards.  It is like me being awarded the Miss America crown.

homo unius libri

Opus 2017-028: Headlines: What Is Your Favorite Baloney?

As I took a quick look at the headlines today I saw the usual divide in headlines:  Hysteria on the left and balance on the right.  I concede that at this point I only looked at two headlines but I think it is safe to assume that the pattern will hold.  Since I am taking the Drudge Report with a grain of salt I was not surprised to see that their lead story was headlined, “Refugees Blocked from USA” and that it linked me to the New York Times.  The picture was a lonely woman sitting in a very American dining room dressed in very American clothes waiting for her husband who is detained in New York.  It focused on all the wonderful people and organizations that were being discriminated against by this executive order “enacted with the stroke of a pen”.  No comment on whether the flood of potential terrorists was initiated by the stroke of a pen.

Then I went to the Washington Times where the headline read, “Trump hits pause button on refugees, puts immigration from terror regions on hold”.  That is a slightly different picture.  The Times points out “But the policy signed Friday does not single out a religion, instead going after programs that Mr. Trump says have loopholes that terrorists could exploit.”

I have a feeling that in spite of the gnashing of teeth on the left this will only serve to raise Trump’s approval ratings.  Will some people be inconvenienced?  Of course.  Will it make all of us safer?  Probably.  Will it be administered with compassion?  We are Americans.  If we do anything to extreme it is mercy.  Will it take away or liberty as Americans?  That is the big question.  I am not so worried about people trying to get to freedom as making sure that they have some freedom to come to.

Stay tuned.  Don’t rely on the media, which means consider the sources and keep your baloney detectors in extreme mode.

homo unius libri

Opus 2017-027: A Supreme Court Perspective

What kind of changes will Donald Trump bring about in how we do business in Washington.  We tend to live in today and lose the perspective of history.  We think big changes have never been done before.  I came across the plan of Thomas Jefferson while reading a book about John Marshall.  Jefferson is the father of the Democratic party.  The current party is the direct descendant of the group he brought together.  It was originally the Democrat-Republican party and later dropped the Republican but in this quote when you read Republican understand that it is talking about the historic Democratic party. 

See what Jefferson had planned for the Supreme Court.

“‘The Federalists,’ wrote Jefferson, ‘have retired into the judiciary as a stronghold ... and from that battery all the works of republicanism are to be beaten down and erased.’  Therefore that stronghold must be taken. Never was a military plan more carefully devised than was the Republican method of capturing it. Jefferson would forthwith remove all Federalist United States marshals and attorneys; he would get rid of the National judges whom Adams had appointed under the Judiciary Act of 1801.  If this did not make those who remained on the National Bench sufficiently tractable, the sword of impeachment would be held over their obstinate heads until terror of removal and disgrace should render them pliable to the dominant political will. Thus by progressive stages the Supreme Court would be brought beneath the blade of the executioner and the obnoxious Marshall decapitated or compelled to submit.”

This is playing hardball.  I have heard nothing to compare with it in my lifetime.  There is little that Trump could do that would even come close to the precedent established by Thomas Jefferson.  Later he will try to railroad a Federalist justice with impeachment.

We live in boring times.  Grab hold and hang on for the ride.

Albert J. Beveridge.  The Life of John Marshall (Volume 3 of 4) Kindle Location
      555-563, from Gutenberg Project download.

homo unius libri