Have you seen the new Burger King Commercial?  It involves the”Burger King” debating some corporate stiff from an unnamed competitor.  The King brags about selling 10 chicken nuggets for $1.49.  The corporate stiff can’t think of a response so he just kind of sputters.

Whenever I watch this commercial I wonder who, exactly, is impressed with this ridiculous plastic King. He looks like a worn out cheap plastic manikin from a Christmas display left out doors at least one year past its prime.   Is anyone really impressed by this?  At first I thought this was a caricature drummed up by the competition.  Then I realized that somebody was paid big bucks for coming up with the “Burger King.”

To me, this commercial is a pretty accurate metaphor for the 2016 Presidential campaign.  The King (“Hillary Clinton”) is a soulless plastic figure, well past its prime, that no one could confuse with a real human being.  It is hard to imagine anyone impressed by this.  But then you check out the corporate stiff (“The Republican establishment”) and you realize there are people capable of actually losing a debate to a Hillary Clinton.

If we allow the RNC to choose the Republican nominee for President the election is likely to look a lot like this commercial.  We will all be drowning our sorrow next fall wondering how the American people could be so stupid, again. The RNC will deserve its fate, but what about the country?

TDM

I have made changes that makes it easier to subscribe.  Please let me know how it works.  Actually there are two kinds of subscribers.  Some are public and a lot more are private.  At last count there are over 3,000 subscribers.  I have no way of knowing how man of them actually read the blog.

Thought for today.  Both Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio seem to have taken stupid pills.  Rubio is trying to put down Ted Cruz for being almost as bad as Rubio with regard to illegal immigration.  Good luck with that!  Hillary Clinton is complaining because Bernie Sanders allegedly stole data from her private server.  Duh… Isn’t that the server she used to protect her e-mails?  Like I said; stupid.

TDM

Several years ago, in a weak moment, I taught some of my nephews the intricacies of politically correct profanity for the children of Christian parents.  I pointed out that books of the bible can be used effectively as a substitute.  For example:  “Genesis” used with the proper inflection takes on a whole new meaning.  There was added benefit of making it more difficult for Christian parents to level criticism.  This was developed with the realization that people are born with the need to express themselves extemporaneously when circumstances require.  That is why man invented profanity in the first place.  For example when someone hits their own thumb with a hammer the use of a more colorful verbal expression actually helps ease the pain.  This can also be an effective stress relief mechanism.  If my brothers and sisters were aware of the source of this development they were gracious to avoid blaming me.

I realize that I am hardly the only one to do this.  How many times have you heard someone say “sugar” when we know darn well what they really meant?  (Did you notice the “darn?”)  So I thought why not create a new, more appropriate word in honor of the season.  I refuse to say Happy Holidays because that is obviously an attempt to de-Christianize Christmas.  On the other hand I realize that there is a certain percentage of the population that begins to sweat profusely and suffer stomach cramps at the stress of hearing something as vulgar as “Merry Christmas.”  Clearly, something had to be done.

I have decided that the word “Merry” remains politically acceptable.  It is the word “Christmas” that is causing all the heartburn.  When you think about it, “Christmas” is kind of a poor choice any way.  We are not totally sure when that all started. I have yet to read any biblical passage using the word Christmas. In addition a lot of people say Christmas while deliberately ignoring the “Christ” part of the season. I mean how many times do we need to hear that “peace and love is the true meaning of Christmas” before we acknowledge that the word itself has lost all meaning.

So, I now say “Merry Chris Craft.”  If you are going to remove “Christ” from Christmas why not replace Him with something nice, like a boat?  I have fond memories of seeing some pretty marvelous wood boats cruising around Lake Michigan.  That causes me to smile, which is totally in keeping with the season.  If someone thinks I have said “Merry Christmas”, that is fine with me.  If they are offended, I am fully prepared to justify my politically correct holiday season verbiage. Hòa bình

Merry Chris Craft.

TDM

Abraham Lincoln did not with the Presidency in 1860, he won it in 1858.  There were a series of seven debates with Senator Stephen Douglas.  Douglas won re-election as Senator.  Lincoln won the Presidency two years later.  Lincoln asked Douglas the following question:

“Can the people of a United States territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution?”

Douglas was doomed.  He if said “no”, then he was admitting that the federal government could not stop slavery from expanding elsewhere.  That would be a fatal position in a Northern State like Illinois.  But if he said “yes”, southern Democrats would never forgive him.

Douglas said yes.  He won the election, but that answer cost him any chance at the Presidency in 1860.

During the Las Vegas debate Ted Cruz may have done the same thing to Marco Rubio.  Actually, to some extent, it may have been a self-inflicted wound.  The Republican Establishment believes that authorizing the NSA to monitor everyone’s phone some how keeps us all safe.  I personally question that.  So do a lot of other people.  Marco Rubio scored big time with the Republican establishment by bragging that he supported this.  But instead of getting defensive, Cruz pointed out, brilliantly, that if you try to investigate everyone you end up investigating no one.

That was not the only issue.  Cruz also got Rubio to double down on removing Assad.  Again, that sounds good to a lot of the Republican establishment, but Cruz has a point.  So far a lot of those “so-called friendly rebels have turned out to be Muslim Extremists.” Liberals ridiculed Cruz for saying the following:

“We keep hearing from President Obama, Hillary Clintonand Washington Republicans that they’re searching for these mythical, moderate rebels. They’re like purple unicorns. They never exist. These moderate rebels end up being jihadists.

To this rest of us this sounded a lot like the truth.

So far the pundits believe that Rubio and Cruz came out even during the exchange.  Rubio is very polished and he looked good.  But the pundits also thought that Douglas won the Lincoln – Douglas debates.  These things are almost impossible to fully comprehend as they occur.  For example, Lincoln’s Gettysburg address was widely panned, by many reporters at the time.  I suspect the more people understand what Cruz said the more it will matter.

TDM

In October 2011, Harry Reid the Democratic majority leader of the Senate adopted the “nuclear” option to by-pass Republican opposition to Obama’s socialist agenda.  Liberals rejoiced!  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/186133-reid-triggers-nuclear-option-to-change-senate-rules-and-prohibit-post-cloture-filibusters

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum.  Republicans ran the table in 2014 and the new Majority Leader was Republican Mitch McConnell.  The impact has been significant.  What goes around comes around.  The Republican controlled senate is now refusing to even take up a lot of the judicial and executive-branch nominations by Barack Obama.  This is proof of a complete breakdown of trust between the Obama administration and congress.  Harry Reid thought he was being really cute by shoving things through without even letting Republicans offer amendments.  President Obama thought he was brilliantly by-passing congress with executive orders.  Our system is not perfect, but the checks and balances put in by our founding fathers work brilliantly.  The days of Obama jamming things through with a rubber stamp by the Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s of this world are long gone.

It is sad to see it come to this, but Obama has left Republicans little choice.  Impeachment is really not an option for a lot of reasons.  While Harry Reid was gloating over his victory, he was actually providing Republicans with a blueprint to stop the Obama agenda.  Sometimes you can learn a lot from Reiding and Righting.

TDM

The San Bernardino mass shooting will not be the last terrorist attack.  Screaming for gun control isn’t going to solve the problem.  Neither will it help to prosecute anyone who dares insult Muslims. There are real terrorists out there and we will all hear from them sooner rather than later.  President Obama admitted that this was an act of terrorism. That, at least, is a start.

There are four stages to travel when things go wrong.  Stage one is denial.  Stage two is anger. Stage three is depression.  Stage four is acceptance.  It is only when we reach the level of acceptance that we can hope to find a solution.

We have already started to exit stage one, denial. That is not everything, but it is definitely something.  Soon denial will no longer be an option.  That is when we move to stage two.

I will quote Winston Churchill on this:

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” 

TDM

During November 2015 a little more than 2.2 million people bought a gun requiring a National Instance Criminal Background Check.  So far, there have been over 19.8 million checks this year.  This is not exactly a new trend.  There were over 21 million checks during 2013.

http://freebeacon.com/issues/gun-sales-set-another-monthly-record/

While the liberal left is screaming for gun control, honest citizens all over the country are buying guns.  We should put this in perspective.  During the November 2012 election there were approximately 235 million eligible voters and a little more than 129 million people actually voted.  In order to win an election, a candidate needs to collect 50.1% of the vote.  This means it will probably take a little over 65 million voters to win the next national election.   About 1/3 of that total bought a gun this year.  Since the 2012 election, close to 60 million people have bought guns.   Even if we assume a lot of duplicates, that is a lot of people buying a lot of guns.

It is really quite simple.  If you wait for the police to get arrive on scene and save the day you are likely to end up dead. In San Bernardino the police responded in 4 ½ minutes.  By the time they got there the shooters were gone, 14 people were dead and many more injured.  The police got there they found a lot of people hiding in another room.  They were afraid to make an entry because they feared these people were being held hostage. Those of you watching this play out on the news will remember the “active shooter” reports etc.  If there had been an active shooter, it might have been quite a while before police determined it was safe to make an entry.  So, how long would you be willing to wait?

What would have happened if there had been someone there with a CCW.?  One thing is certain.  It could hardly have been worse.

The liberal left is convinced that a gun owner is more likely to shoot themselves than a criminal.  That is nonsense.  It ignores the simple reality that in most cases when an armed citizen draws a gun in self-defense the bad guys leaves. Most of the shootings are gang related. If you doubt that, watch the news for shootings in your area.  Check out how many are “gang related.”

Now tell me about the last time you heard about someone being shot with their own gun.  Don’t remember?  Tell me the last time you heard about a CCW holder shooting an innocent bystander.  Don’t remember that either.  If that was happening, you would know.  The liberal left would jump to exploit that the same way they reacted to the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown cases.

The question is this: “If you were trapped in a building and there was some terrorist shooting everyone in sight, would you rather have a gun or not?”  Last month more than 2 million people answered that by buying a gun.

A lot of those people are going to vote.  Democrats are rapidly running out of stupid people.

TDM

At times it sure looks like the bad guys are winning and nothing ever changes.  How else can one explain how a pathological liar like Hillary Clinton can be considered to be a viable candidate for President of the United States?  But, then there are those times when right actually does prevail.  Anyone remotely familiar with New York politics knows all about Sheldon Silver.  Everyone knew he was corrupt, but it didn’t seem to matter.  He was the ultimate Teflon man.  But then a miracle happened.  A new U.S. Attorney, Preet Bharara, arrived on scene who didn’t realize that he had no chance of convicting someone like Sheldon Silver.  This time, it looks like the good guys won a big one.

This wasn’t exactly the outcome most people expected.  Just last week a jury acquitted Vincent Asaro, who may have been the inspiration for the Godfather.  His defense argued, successfully, that the witnesses against him were professional liars willing to saying anything in exchange for leniency.  Even the Sheldon Silver case looked bad when jurors started asking to be excused.  But, that is not the end of the story.  On November 30, 2015 Sheldon Silver was found guilty of federal corruption charges.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/nyregion/sheldon-silver-guilty-corruption-trial.html?_r=1

“the charges of honest services fraud, extortion and money laundering stemmed from schemes by which he obtained nearly $4 million in exchange for using his position to help benefit a cancer researcher and two real estate developers.”

Here is what his defense lawyers argued, unsuccessfully:

“They look at conduct which is legal,” Mr. Molo told the jury in his opening statement, “conduct which is normal, conduct which allows government to function consistent with the way that our founding fathers of the State of New York wanted it to function, and they say this is illegal.”

Hmm.  Can you think of anyone else who has been “helping people” in exchange for “contributions?”  Shelton Silver will not be the first person too big to fail that ended up in jail.  He also won’t be the last.  Look for the Silver lining.

TDM

GIVE THANKS

Originally posted on December 3, 2013

Note:  I wrote this in December 2013.  I thought things were bad then.  If anything, it is even worse now.  Abraham Lincoln reminded us that there is always a good reason to give thanks, we just need to pay attention.

Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday.  He did this in the fall of 1863, when things were still pretty grim.  The Union Army had defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Gettysburg, but then the Confederate Army got away, again.  There was no evidence that the bloody civil war was about to end anytime soon.  So I had to ask, why was Lincoln so thankful?  He certainly wasn’t riding high politically.  Lincoln was facing opposition in both parties.  About the only thing people agreed on was that Lincoln was doing a lousy job as President.  He was so unpopular that he almost wasn’t even invited to speak at Gettysburg.  At the most he was expected to say a few, meaningless words.  Lincoln was still looking for a general who could lead the Union to victory.  So far, every General he had chosen was a miserable failure.  Even when the Union won a battle, the loss of life on both sides was beyond horrific.  Yet, Lincoln was grateful.  Following is the text of that Thanksgiving proclamation:

http://history1800s.about.com/od/abrahamlincoln/a/Lincoln-Thanksgiving-proclam.htm

Lincoln was thankful that the carnage of the civil war was unable to destroy the bountiful crops or the healthful skies.  He was grateful that no foreign country took advantage of our civil war to attack us.  He was thankful that the country continued to grow both in wealth and population and even the bloody civil war could not change that.  Lincoln recognized that these were unearned gifts from almighty God.

No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercys. 

It is so easy to point out everything that is wrong in the world today.  Only a naïve liberal fool would think that things are going well.  Pessimists are wondering how this country can even recover.  Our economy is pathetic.  We have become the laughingstock of the world.  The problems are very obvious and all too real.  But ultimately, God is still in control and what really matters will continue to matter tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and forever.  Our fields are indeed bountiful.  We continue to find the natural resources we need.  Men and women continue to marry, they continue to have children and they continue to raise families.  No government has ever been able to stop that.  While the world is truly a dangerous place, we live in a remarkably free society with a standard of living unimaginable in much of the world.  We are truly blessed.

Governments come and governments go.  No government is as strong as they think.   Good governments aren’t as great as we think and terrible governments aren’t as powerful as they seem.  All political power is fleeting.  The Bible reminds us that pride goes before a fall and a haughty spirit before destruction.  It was true in the past.  It will be true in the future.  It is true now.  It is true when Conservatives are in power and it is true when Liberals are in power.

For this reason, I choose to be thankful.  I am thankful that the things that really matter are not subject to the whims of mortal man.  I am thankful that God is still on the throne and the future continues to look bright and promising.  Give thanks for what really matters.  The rest is just temporary anyway.

TDM

Hillary Clinton has now decided to morph back into a Hawk.  She is literally proposing using ground forces against ISIS:

http://www.aol.com/article/2015/11/19/clinton-offers-more-hawkish-approach-on-isis-than-obama/21269162/?icid=maing-grid7%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl3%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D-1879552539

She said it is time for a “new phase” in the fight against Islamic State: A more effective U.S.-led air campaign that will “have to be combined with ground forces actually taking back more territory.”

The effort will require an “intelligence surge,” she said, involving more Arabic speakers with expertise in the area and technical assets. There also should be no-fly zones over Syria and safe zones for people fleeing the violence, she added.

Notice she says ground forces, not U.S. ground forces.  Another classic example of word parsing by the Clinton machine.  This is still evidence that Hillary is so desperate to become President of the United States she is even willing to risk doing the right thing.  Don’t be surprised when she starts opposing any more immigration from Syria. The main stream media won’t even notice that just a few days ago she wanted to bring in 65,000 more of them.

This would also be more impressive if she hadn’t displayed total incompetence during the Benghazi attack. That will be ignored by the main stream media who will gush over Hillary as the female reincarnation of Winston Churchill.

This will eviscerate both Bernie Sanders and Mark O’Malley, if that was even necessary.  But Hillary is forgetting the elephant in the room.  The Democratic Party is dominated by the extreme left wing.  This may be similar to 1968.  Hubert Humphrey had the nomination all wrapped up until the anti-war movement went nuts.  Hillary should know this history all too well. She was one of the nuts.  Robert Kennedy won the Primary in California and had a significant chance of snatching the Democratic nomination away from Humphrey.  Kennedy was assassinated on June 6, 1968 and Humphrey coasted to the nomination.  He was trounced by Richard Nixon in November 1968.

Wouldn’t it be sweet irony if Hillary Clinton, who brags about her anti-war protests during the Vietnam War, is done in by anti-war protests in 2016?  What goes around actually does come around on occasion.  It is a beautiful thing when it actually happens.

In the meantime, just enjoy the show while the main stream media buys this “new” Hillary; crook, lie and stinker.

TDM