Words, words, words.

Words have always been political. No language has more words than English/American. But with today's deconstruction and destabilization of the 19th century Marxist thinkers, you particularly have to be careful about words. Take no words home to meet your parents until you know what they mean to your grandchildren (my proverb I just made up).

"Gender affirming care" is actually legalized child abuse which includes toxic hormones for children, and amputation of body parts. Pay no attention to those "medical" associations that approve it. There are virtually zero/zip clinical or long term studies, only hunches and hopes, what these zombized lab specimens will be when they are 80.

"Respect for marriage act" is exactly the opposite. It intends to enshrine same sex or any sex or any number of genders or any species into formal, cultural recognition of a relationship which will criminalize you if you don't agree. The most primitive of societies in the most far reaching regions and religions always had a way to formalize a marriage between men and women. They weren't confused. They knew concubines, mistresses, male temple prostitutes and adolescent boys who were sex toys of older men were not marriage partners. They were sex objects. Marriage was for the creation of a family, for procreation, even if that culture had no knowledge of Christ, Moses or Mohammed or a named Hindu God or gods. There are some things pre-history people knew that we're trying to legislate away today in order to destabilize society.

"Inflation Reduction Act" is exactly the opposite. Only governments create inflation, and only governments increase inflation by expanding the supply of money. Both the Trump and Biden administrations threw unreasonable amounts of money at the pandemic on the advice of people who claimed to know how to stop a virus. They then burdened the people who make the money and give it to the government in taxes with lockdowns. Even churches took money to stay closed--the very people we trusted with our souls and our first amendment.

"Climate change" is one of those, of course it does, phrases. But the political meaning is very different than the words. It actually means there is a huge cloud of power hungry bureaucrats who have enlisted science, entertainment, information giants and massive corporations to convince you the tax payer to believe puny, insignificant people, can control the universe. These are the same people who can't define a woman or properly fund the police or can use an attack on Paul Pelosi while police were in house to accuse Trump supporters.

So that's my word story for today. Now a few words from a career librarian: to the victor belong the archives. If you have to go to the victor (Biden administration, Bush, Obama, Clinton, JFK, LBJ, FDR, etc.) to get your information (data, knowledge, news reports, archives), you better have your eye on a deeper understanding of TRUTH before you start your journey.

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"Gender affirming care" is probably the biggest lie, biggest inversion of language I can imagine. It's as fake as the penis that is inverted to create a vulva and then call the male victim an actual girl. You don't need a class or lecture in medical ethics to know that the doctors, nurses, and "counselors" are creating, not treating, Frankensteins. To call this abuse "bottom surgery" is absurd. If they actually told the truth of what they are doing, eyes would pop. And if you say "follow the money" and it enriches a huge chain of medical and support staff and leads back to the pharmaceutical companies who will then have a patient--or thousands of patients--for life with bad bones, bad kidneys, bad hearts from hormone blockers--the perps will pull out all those obfuscating terms for compassion and kindness and accuse you of being hateful, of being "transphobic." Would a ethical doctor amputate a leg if a patient demanded it? Why are they amputating breasts of young, under age girls?

And btw, why do lesbians and homosexuals want these goons and abusers in their camp? Haven't they spent decades claiming they are not pedophiles, and now they take the T and the Q into their acronym?

Nothing new for presidents

Politico--snarky, but most likely accurate: 

 

"Did you know, for example, that before they were presidents, John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford expressed support for the “America First Committee”? Or that before deportation became a dirty word, President Barack Obama was known as the “deporter-in-chief,” deporting more people than any other president in American history? Or that Harry Truman also had a “Southern White House” in Florida, spending a cumulative six months there during his time in office? Or that Warren G. Harding was denounced for his grammar and spelling, with H. L. Mencken once noting, “He writes the worst English I have ever encountered. . . Even Trump’s accusation that Obama wiretapped him has presidential precedents. As the Washington Post reported, Richard Nixon was convinced that his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, had bugged his campaign plane in the final days of the 1968 race. [I think I also saw that Hillary Clinton had the WH swept for bugging.] And don’t forget that Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama all replaced U.S. attorneys appointed by their predecessors. . ."

 

The point is there’s very little Donald Trump has done that hasn’t been done, in some form or another, by others before him."

The immigration and refugee ban--Carter, Reagan, GWBush, Obama and Trump

White House documents show that former President Barack Obama banned people at least six times, 2011-2014; President Bill Clinton issued six immigrant bans; George W. Bush six immigrant bans; and former President Ronald Reagan four. And in 1980, former President Jimmy Carter banned Iranians after Tehran seized the U.S. embassy. (Washington Examiner, June 15, 2016)  We've had a Terrorist Travel Prevention Act since 1986. It was updated in February of last year (when Trump was not the President). "Have you traveled to, or been present in, Iraq, Syria, Iran, or Sudan on or after March 1, 2011?"

It was embarrassing. This morning  I watched Martha Raddatz interviewing/interrogating Sean Spicer, the president's spokesman. If she'd looked at the history of the law (those countries were designated by Obama) she could have looked alert and awake.

After decades of maligning Americans as homophobes and racists in school textbooks, films, theater, NPR, TV and internet, a nasty nation which stole the land from gentle aboriginals who only wanted to protect the environment and enjoy each other, after ginning up rape statistics to make us the most dangerous country on the planet and lying about poverty and income gap--now the left gets all kum ba ya, decides to read a few verses in the Bible after ridiculing Christians and stabbing Jews in the back, and says, "This is not who we are." All over a 30 year law which has been used by the last 4 presidents to fight terrorism.

 Calm down, Obama supporters, liberal pastors, and hysterical teachers and librarians. President Trump is only returning things to normal. Perhaps those waiting in line for years doing it the legal way will now have an opportunity. His "order temporarily halts refugee admissions for 120 days to improve the vetting process, then caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year. Outrageous, right? Not so fast. Before 2016, when Obama dramatically ramped up refugee admissions, Trump’s 50,000 stands roughly in between a typical year of refugee admissions in George W. Bush’s two terms and a typical year in Obama’s two terms." With the media so twisted and biased, you will have a tough time remaining calm and informed, but at least you'll know more than you did the last 8 years. There was more coverage of the 12 people detained in JFK than there was of the half a million people marching for life the day before. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444370/donald-trump-refugee-executive-order-no-muslim-ban-separating-fact-hysteria

 https://www.cbp.gov/travel/international-visitors/visa-waiver-program/visa-waiver-program-improvement-and-terrorist-travel-prevention-act-faq

What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted: 200 Years of Popular Culture in the White House by Tevi Troy

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15824285-what-jefferson-read-ike-watched-and-obama-tweeted

I was at Half-Price Books today and noticed this title on the Clearance shelf for $2.00.  I almost selected it because I like to read about readers. I looked at the chapter on President G.W. Bush, and was surprised to see the author got it right, whereas Bush detractors (most of the media) were totally off base.  Bush was an avid reader—he and Rove used to have competitions. 

Laura Bush’s recommendations

“Mr. Bush was more of a reader than many Americans imagined — he had reading contests with Karl Rove, his top political adviser, measured not just by the number of books finished, but the cumulative number of pages and even square inches of text. He was particularly drawn to Lincoln, reading 14 books about the Civil War president while in office.

His reading at times had impact. Natan Sharansky’s book “The Case for Democracy” helped inform Mr. Bush’s second-term focus on spreading freedom around the world.

And Alistair Horne’s history of the war in Algeria, “A Savage War of Peace,” taught Mr. Bush that more people died after the French withdrew — reinforcing his own reluctance to pull out of Iraq.

“Obama’s book selections have been harder to read,” said Mr. Troy, the author of “What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted.”  Obama’s book list

President GHW Bush’s summer list

Bush’s last year and WaPo finds out he reads

Suggested reading, GW Bush

Contrary to popular belief, Obama’s speeches rate at the bottom of the presidential scale

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/study-obamas-rhetorical-superiority-myth

I checked several sources for this story. The liberal ones claim that Bush and Obama were equally elementary in the speeches and today no one would be able to understand the complex speech and references of the pre-1920 politicians. But others say Bush's speeches were better. Actually, it's the speech writers, with the politician putting in his own touch. I find Obama's mannerisms, teleprompter dependence and stammering very distracting, as were Bush's facial quirks and folksy good ol' boy mannerisms. But Bush was an avid reader of history, biography and politics--Obama depends on hip hop music on his I-pod and it showed.

https://www.vocativ.com/interactive/usa/us-politics/presidential-readability/

I took a writing class a few years ago at Lakeside in which the instructor told us the most difficult vocabulary and complex constructions were on the sports page of the newspaper. I was once a speech writer for an Ohio female politician. It's not that hard to learn the cadence and style of a speaker by reviewing previous speeches. But you do need to consider the audience.  Speaking to a conference of state workers was different than speaking to a gathering of unemployed workers who were over 55 (the area I was working in).

The daily memo

The President apparently gets his daily briefings as memos rather than in person the way other presidents have done. Seems they pile up unread. WaPo reported 2 years ago: "During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting." That explains a lot.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-is-obama-skipping-more-than-half-of-his-daily-intelligence-meetings/2012/09/10/6624afe8-fb49-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_story.html

“. . . the former president held his intelligence meeting six days a week, no exceptions — usually with the vice president, the White House chief of staff, the national security adviser, the director of National Intelligence, or their deputies, and CIA briefers in attendance. Once a week, he held an expanded Homeland Security briefing that included the Homeland Security adviser, the FBI director and other homeland security officials. Bush also did more than 100 hour-long “deep dives” in which he invited intelligence analysts into the Oval Office to get their unvarnished and sometimes differing views. Such meetings deepened the president’s understanding of the issues and helped analysts better understand the problems with which he was wrestling.”

Like or hate Bush, he was more engaged and relied on a stronger base of knowledge than Obama, who seems to  believe he knows more than everyone in the room, or the world.

Ten, twenty, thirty and forty years of presidential popularity polls

An interesting look back through the polls. 10 years ago, Americans were clearly disenchanted with the Iraq War (supported by both parties originally) and GW Bush's approval was at 49%; 20 years ago, Americans were unhappy that Hillary had tried to take over healthcare, and President Clinton with approval ratings close to Obama's now signed the toughest anti-crime bill which probably accounts in part for a 20 year drop in gun violence; 30 years ago the U.S. was recovering from a recession and unemployment was still a major concern, and Reagan's approval rating was recovering at 55% but had been as low as 35%; 40 years ago Nixon resigned because of a cover up of a scandal (just one!) and his approval rating had been as low as 24%, which was still higher than Harry Truman's in the early 1950s. (Gallup.com June 6, 2014)

American royalty deserves the best?

George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation

Thanksgiving Proclamation
Issued by President George Washington, at the request of Congress, on October 3, 1789

By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and—Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favor, able interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other trangressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

George Washington

Presidents’ famous words

Divots on the golf course and pivots on the economy

"Because Obama speaks with such authority, it often takes several repetitions before I realize that what he’s saying is total nonsense." Caroline Baum, Bloomberg, on his "growing the economy" meme, A User’s Guide to Obama’s Inside-Out Economics, Aug. 7, 2013

He's pivoted again; it's back to the economy. The rich have recovered; the low income not so much. Five years and Obama can't fix it. The recession has been over since June 2009. Truman had a recession, Eisenhower had several, Nixon got a recession, so did Carter, so did Reagan, so did both Bushes, and all were brief and the economy quickly recovered. But then, they didn't try to take over health care and pay back and bail out unions and bankers. You have to go all the way back to FDR's mishandling of the Depression in the 30s, extending it a decade, to find a record this poor.

          

How Obama stays popular with the uninformed

Obama has two very successful methods for staying popular as a leader. 1) Focus on Bush's mistakes, and 2) ignore his own.

Which was a bigger error, the Abu Ghraib abuses by military guards which Bush probably knew nothing about, or the fumbling of the closing of Guantanamo prison on which Obama campaigned in 2008?

Which is a bigger scandal, the passing of the Patriot Act after 9/11 with bipartisan support and debate under Bush, or its expansion in secret under Obama?

Bush supported traditional marriage and was consistent regardless of political attacks; Obama publicly supported traditional marriage until he was pushed into applauding same sex marriage in order to get gay support for the 2012 election.
Bush expanded government health care (Pt. D drug coverage in Medicare for 40 million seniors) with strong bipartisan support; Obama got no support from Republicans for Obamacare (estimated to eliminate employer coverage for 40 million), which increasingly is proving to be horribly more expensive and invasive to privacy (IRS) than he promised.

Bush was criticized for not offering war time detainees at Gitmo protections afforded American citizens; Obama has been slicing, dicing and trashing those freedoms we all should have as Americans. He and his cronies not only claim the 5th (the only amendment they like), they claim ignorance, absence and Cincinnati for their illegal behavior.

There is only one little difference between these two crooks

Nixon accepted the responsibility and did the honorable thing.  Obama knows nothing of honor, patriotism, honesty, hard work, or history.

A Decalogue of Canons for observation in practical life

A Decalogue of Canons for observation in practical life.
by Thomas Jefferson written to Thomas Jefferson Smith, Feb. 21, 1825

1.  Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.
2.  Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3.  Never spend your money before you have it.
4.  Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
5.  Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.
6.  We never repent of having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8.  How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.
9.  Take things always by their smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.

Bread and Circuses

Mona Charen writes:

"Mrs. Obama has been all over pop culture. Her Oscar outing followed hard on the heels of a mean “mom dance” on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Her husband, meanwhile, has been golfing with Tiger Woods. Some members of what used to be (long ago, boys and girls, when non-cool presidents were in office) the adversarial press corps joined forces to chant a question at the returning President Obama after his golf outing. They had lodged complaints with the press secretary about lack of access, apparently crestfallen that the White House refused to permit pictures of Obama and Woods on the course. Their shouted question wasn’t about the sequester, or Benghazi, or Syria, or Hagel; no, the pressies chanted in unison (Occupy-style) “Did you beat Tiger?” Their crush on Dear Leader is undiminished.

The president makes himself available to friendly questions from the press — see the latest 60 Minutes interview — and is always available to chat about his basketball final-four picks or what’s on his iPod. In short, both he and his wife have mastered the art of being celebrities-in-chief. The man who wrote two autobiographies before he was 45 (earning a tidy fortune in the process) is a genius at marketing himself. Together, the Obamas provide “circuses” aplenty for the masses. As for bread, that’s another matter."

Did you know that in order to coerce the Republicans into higher taxes and no cuts, they are releasing criminal illegal immigrants due for deportation as an early sequestration move?  But dance on Bo.

Wise words

Except.  Be cautious, Conservatives.  Obama knows exactly what he is doing.  He isn’t really trying to build up the weak by pulling down the strong—he’s trying to pull down everybody. 

Obama and FDR

           

We scratch our heads that people still support Obama despite his failures in the domestic economy and the foreign scene, particularly the Middle East where he’s interfered in civil wars and lost more American soldier in 3 years than Bush did in 8 . Yet, Americans kept reelecting FDR during the Great Depression (including my sainted mother), and unemployment was as high as 25% and in 1942 he imprisoned or put in camps almost a million Americans of Italian, German and Japanese ethnicity. There's just no accounting for political blinders.

FDR particularly hurt blacks and poor with minimum wage legislation which is always a job killer at the bottom ranks; lots of minor taxes that hurt the poor the most—like movies and candy; also wouldn't support anti-lynching legislation, snubbed Jesse Owens and Joe Lewis, allowed unions to keep out blacks; manipulated public works programs for votes. But . . .to this day he is revered by blacks and minorities. It seems people found him charming and believed his lies. Sound familiar?

Obama meets with historians. . .

I don’t know if this happened.  Ed Klein says it did.  Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michael Beschloss, Robert Caro, Robert Dallek, Douglas Brinkley, H.W. “Billam” Brands, David Kennedy, Kenneth Mack, and Garry Wills met with Obama and staffers.  He wanted to know his place in history. It sounds like the Obama we’ve come to know through the news media—the ones that support him with unflinching loyalty.

“When one of the historians brought up the difficulties that Lyndon Johnson, another wartime president, faced trying to wage a foreign military venture while implementing an ambitious domestic agenda, Mr. Obama grew testy. He implied that he was different, because he could prevail by the force of his personality.

He could solve the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, put millions of people back to work, redistribute wealth, withdraw from Iraq, and reconcile the United States to a less dominant role in the world.

It was, by any measure, a breathtaking display of grandiosity by a man whose entire political curriculum vitae consisted of seven undistinguished years in the Illinois senate and two mostly absent years in the United States Senate.

That evening he revealed the characteristics — arrogance, conceit, egotism, vanity, hubris and, above all, rank amateurism — that would mark his presidency and doom it to frustration and failure.”
 Obama Will Be Presidential Failure Like Carter, Historian Says

Architecture of Thomas Jefferson

Here’s an index of the architectural designs of Thomas Jefferson.

Today I noticed an article about two Utah architects running for Congress.  “Søren Simonsen, 44, is an architect and city planner from Salt Lake City, where he serves on the city council. He’s running as a Democrat in Utah’s 3rd Congressional District. Republican Stephen Sandstrom, 48, is an architect from Orem who was elected to the Utah House of Representatives in 2006. He recently resigned to run in Utah’s newly created 4th Congressional District. Both face June primary challenges from other candidates.” 

And that’s wonderful.  But what I found amusing was that the lede called Jefferson an amateur.  Have you seen some of the designs of the 21st century?  Who’s calling who an amateur?

Thomas Jefferson may be the most celebrated American architect, albeit an amateur one, to lead a political life, and he certainly wasn’t the last. But oddly, there are no architects currently serving in the U.S. Congress, and according to the AIA, there was only one during the entire 20th century. This year, however, two architects are running for Congress, and they both happen to be from Utah.

"Jefferson believed that architecture was the heart of the American cause. In his mind, a building was not merely a walled structure, but a metaphor for American ideology, and the process of construction was equal to the task of building a nation. The architecture of any American building should express the American desire to break cultural--as well as political--ties to Europe. American architecture, Jefferson believed, would embody the fulfillment of the civic life of Americans, and he sought to establish the standards of a national architecture, both aesthetically and politically." From Thomas Jefferson, the Architect of the Nation

Adjusting to the poor house

The Obamas’ adjusted gross income was their lowest income since 2004 when he wrote his best-selling memoir, “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.” This was the first year since 2006 that the Obama family income dipped below $1 million. In 2010, his adjusted gross income was $1.7 million; in 2009, it was $5.5 million.

I wonder how much the fabulous vacations they’ve had since January 2009 would rack up in any other family’s budget, the incredible state dinners, the gifts of clothing from designers, the servants to attend to every need, the limo service and celebrity entertainment?  I’m sure it’s a stressful job, but for the wife and kids, it’s pretty nice—especially considering how that life style is condemned almost weekly in his speeches. If we elect Mitt Romney, I’m guessing he’ll pay his own way for many of the perks Michelle has come to demand.