Dear Readers:
In our continuing essay on whether black is white, good is bad, up is down and right is wrong, I can only say with some certainty the the Right is usually wrong!
Here is an ultra Conservative web-site that attempts to explain how the poor, misguided Liberals can't do anything right, and don't have a handle on how the real world works!
The only problem is that it's really the Conservatives who are deluding themselves, and accusing the Liberals of all the stuff they have screwed up themselves! (In other words, wherever you see the word "Liberal" simply substitute it with "Conservative" and you will hit the nail right on the head!)
-Liberals prefer ‘trickle up poverty’ to ‘trickle down economics’
-Liberals define greed as wanting to keep what you have earned. In contrast, it is not greed if you wish to take what someone else has earned.
-Liberals believe that if you pass a law taking guns from law-abiding citizens, you can prevent criminals from using guns. They also believe that guns are inherently so bad that if you put them in the hands of good people they will be tempted to use them for evil.
-Liberals believe that to have a tolerant society, you must first silence those who disagree with them.
--Liberals believe that almost anything can be attributed to man-made Global Warming.
-Liberals believe you cannot reach compromise with conservatives. There is however hope of doing so with Al-Qaeda, North Korea, the Taliban, and Iran.
-Liberals believe they are the most compassionate people on the planet even though conservatives do most charitable giving.
-Liberals believe that after 15 trillion dollars spent on the “War on
Poverty” and no statistical difference in those living in poverty, that
they can achieve that same level of success with another 15 trillion.
-Liberals believe that since conservatives refuse to embrace bad-science, that they are automatically against all science. Despite their reliance on terms like unviable tissue mass and fetus, most liberals do believe that abortion results in the death of a baby. They simply find it preferable to a mother being inconvenienced.
-Liberals believe that ‘feeling’ right is the same as being right.
-Liberals believe that compromise means agreeing with them. The term open-minded will also work here.
-Liberals believe that diversity does not include women or blacks or Hispanics being conservative.
-Liberals believe that for every problem that exists, there is a government solution awaiting funding.
-Liberals pursue policies that are ‘nice’. Whether they work is of much less importance.
-Liberals believe in government spending and they are willing to tax you and run up as much debt to do it as they can.
-Liberals believe that high achievers cheated the system or simply got lucky. Their only useful purpose is that of donor for their programs.
-Liberals believe it is o.k. to discriminate by race as long as that race is not white.
-Liberals believe that only ‘whites’ can be racist.
-Liberals believe there is no crime that is so heinous that the punishment to fit that crime would be death.
-Liberals believe that if athletes or movie stars make large sums of money that no one is harmed but if a CEO does, then it is done at the expense of everyone under them.
-Liberals believe that all wealth, monies, property belongs to the government. What you have is simply what they have allowed you to keep through their generosity.
-Liberals believe that if people ‘need’ it then they have a ‘right’ to it. Once someone has a right to it, then someone else can be compelled to give it to them; usually the U.S. taxpayer.
-Liberals are only tolerant of religions that are not tolerant of Christianity.
http://lastranch.com/2014/06/28/the-liberal-mind/
--------------------------------------
Special Guest Post by Mark Bowden
I spent a long, awkward weekend with Donald Trump in November 1996, an experience I feel confident neither of us would like to repeat.
He was like one of those characters in an 18th-century comedy meant to embody a particular flavor of human folly. Trump struck me as adolescent, hilariously ostentatious, arbitrary, unkind, profane, dishonest, loudly opinionated, and consistently wrong. He remains the most vain man I have ever met. And he was trying to make a good impression. Who could have predicted that those very traits, now on prominent daily display, would turn him into the leading G.O.P. candidate for president of the United States?
His latest outrageous edict on banning all Muslims from entering the country comes as no surprise to me based on the man I met nearly 20 years ago. He has no coherent political philosophy, so comparisons with Fascist leaders miss the mark. He just reacts. Trump lives in a fantasy of perfection, with himself as its animating force.
Before I met him back in 1996, I felt bad for him. He’d had a rough 10 years. He had just turned 50 and wasn’t happy about it. He looked soft, from his growing jowls to the way his belt bit deeply into the spreading roll of his belly. As a businessman he had crashed and burned, rescued only by creditors who had to bail him out lest they be dragged down with him. His enterprises were being run by court-appointed managers, who had put him back on his financial feet mostly by investing heavily in Atlantic City, which was then on the rise.
He had insulated himself from failure with bluster. In public he was still The Donald—still rich, still working hard at being a symbol of excess. I was working on a profile of him for Playboy, which was his kind of magazine. He considered himself the magazine’s beau ideal, and was inordinately proud of having been featured on the magazine’s cover some years before. His then wife, Marla Maples, told him, sardonically, that he ought to buy the magazine: “You bought the Miss Universe Pageant; it’s right up your alley.” He must have figured it was a safe bet to agree to cooperate for my story. But well before I left him, we both knew he probably wouldn’t like the final product.
I was prepared to like him as I boarded his black 727 at La Guardia for the flight to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home—prepared to discover that his over-the-top public persona was a clever pose. That underneath was an ironic wit, an ordinary but clever guy. But no. With Trump, what you see is what you get. His behavior was cringe-worthy. He showed off the gilded interior of his plane—calling me over to inspect a Renoir on its walls, beckoning me to lean in closely to see . . . what? The luminosity of the brush strokes? The masterly use of color? No. The signature. “Worth $10 million,” he told me. Time after time the stories he told me didn’t check out, from Michael Jackson’s romantic weekend at Mar-a-Lago with his then wife Lisa Marie Presley (they stayed at opposite ends of the estate) to the rug in one bedroom he said was designed by Walt Disney when he was 18 (it wasn’t) to the strength of his marriage to Maples (they would split months later).
It was hard to watch the way he treated those around him, issuing peremptory orders—“Polish this, Tony. Today.” He met with the lady who selected his drapery for the Florida estate—“The best! The best! She’s a genius!”—who had selected a sampling of fabrics for him to choose from, all different shades of gold. He left the choice to her, saying only, “I want it really rich. Rich, rich, elegant, incredible.” Then, “Don’t disappoint me.” It was a pattern. Trump did not make decisions. He surrounded himself with “geniuses” and delegated. So long as you did not “disappoint” him—and it was never clear how to avoid doing so—you were gold.
What was clear was how fast and far one could fall from favor. The trip from “genius” to “idiot” was a flash. The former pilots who flew his plane were geniuses, until they made one too many bumpy landings and became “fucking idiots.” The gold carpeting selected in his absence for the locker rooms in the spa at Mar-a-Lago? “What kind of fucking idiot . . . ?” I watched as Trump strutted around the beautifully groomed clay tennis courts on his estate, managed by noted tennis pro Anthony Boulle. The courts had been prepped meticulously for a full day of scheduled matches. Trump took exception to the design of the spaces between courts. In particular, he didn’t like a small metal box—a pump and cooler for the water fountain alongside—which he thought looked ugly. He first questioned its placement, then crudely disparaged it, then kicked the box, which didn’t budge, and then stooped—red-faced and fuming—to tear it loose from its moorings, rupturing a water line and sending a geyser to soak the courts. Boulle looked horrified, a weekend of tennis abruptly drowned. Catching a glimpse of me watching, Trump grimaced.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/12/donald-trump-mark-bowden-playboy-profile
In our continuing essay on whether black is white, good is bad, up is down and right is wrong, I can only say with some certainty the the Right is usually wrong!
The only problem is that it's really the Conservatives who are deluding themselves, and accusing the Liberals of all the stuff they have screwed up themselves! (In other words, wherever you see the word "Liberal" simply substitute it with "Conservative" and you will hit the nail right on the head!)
-Liberals prefer ‘trickle up poverty’ to ‘trickle down economics’
-Liberals define greed as wanting to keep what you have earned. In contrast, it is not greed if you wish to take what someone else has earned.
-Liberals believe that if you pass a law taking guns from law-abiding citizens, you can prevent criminals from using guns. They also believe that guns are inherently so bad that if you put them in the hands of good people they will be tempted to use them for evil.
--Liberals believe that almost anything can be attributed to man-made Global Warming.
-Liberals believe you cannot reach compromise with conservatives. There is however hope of doing so with Al-Qaeda, North Korea, the Taliban, and Iran.
-Liberals believe they are the most compassionate people on the planet even though conservatives do most charitable giving.
-Liberals believe that since conservatives refuse to embrace bad-science, that they are automatically against all science. Despite their reliance on terms like unviable tissue mass and fetus, most liberals do believe that abortion results in the death of a baby. They simply find it preferable to a mother being inconvenienced.
-Liberals believe that ‘feeling’ right is the same as being right.
-Liberals believe that compromise means agreeing with them. The term open-minded will also work here.
-Liberals believe that diversity does not include women or blacks or Hispanics being conservative.
-Liberals pursue policies that are ‘nice’. Whether they work is of much less importance.
-Liberals believe in government spending and they are willing to tax you and run up as much debt to do it as they can.
-Liberals believe that high achievers cheated the system or simply got lucky. Their only useful purpose is that of donor for their programs.
-Liberals believe it is o.k. to discriminate by race as long as that race is not white.
-Liberals believe there is no crime that is so heinous that the punishment to fit that crime would be death.
-Liberals believe that if athletes or movie stars make large sums of money that no one is harmed but if a CEO does, then it is done at the expense of everyone under them.
-Liberals believe that all wealth, monies, property belongs to the government. What you have is simply what they have allowed you to keep through their generosity.
-Liberals believe that if people ‘need’ it then they have a ‘right’ to it. Once someone has a right to it, then someone else can be compelled to give it to them; usually the U.S. taxpayer.
-Liberals are only tolerant of religions that are not tolerant of Christianity.
http://lastranch.com/2014/06/28/the-liberal-mind/
--------------------------------------
Special Guest Post by Mark Bowden
I spent a long, awkward weekend with Donald Trump in November 1996, an experience I feel confident neither of us would like to repeat.
He was like one of those characters in an 18th-century comedy meant to embody a particular flavor of human folly. Trump struck me as adolescent, hilariously ostentatious, arbitrary, unkind, profane, dishonest, loudly opinionated, and consistently wrong. He remains the most vain man I have ever met. And he was trying to make a good impression. Who could have predicted that those very traits, now on prominent daily display, would turn him into the leading G.O.P. candidate for president of the United States?
His latest outrageous edict on banning all Muslims from entering the country comes as no surprise to me based on the man I met nearly 20 years ago. He has no coherent political philosophy, so comparisons with Fascist leaders miss the mark. He just reacts. Trump lives in a fantasy of perfection, with himself as its animating force.
Before I met him back in 1996, I felt bad for him. He’d had a rough 10 years. He had just turned 50 and wasn’t happy about it. He looked soft, from his growing jowls to the way his belt bit deeply into the spreading roll of his belly. As a businessman he had crashed and burned, rescued only by creditors who had to bail him out lest they be dragged down with him. His enterprises were being run by court-appointed managers, who had put him back on his financial feet mostly by investing heavily in Atlantic City, which was then on the rise.
He had insulated himself from failure with bluster. In public he was still The Donald—still rich, still working hard at being a symbol of excess. I was working on a profile of him for Playboy, which was his kind of magazine. He considered himself the magazine’s beau ideal, and was inordinately proud of having been featured on the magazine’s cover some years before. His then wife, Marla Maples, told him, sardonically, that he ought to buy the magazine: “You bought the Miss Universe Pageant; it’s right up your alley.” He must have figured it was a safe bet to agree to cooperate for my story. But well before I left him, we both knew he probably wouldn’t like the final product.
I was prepared to like him as I boarded his black 727 at La Guardia for the flight to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home—prepared to discover that his over-the-top public persona was a clever pose. That underneath was an ironic wit, an ordinary but clever guy. But no. With Trump, what you see is what you get. His behavior was cringe-worthy. He showed off the gilded interior of his plane—calling me over to inspect a Renoir on its walls, beckoning me to lean in closely to see . . . what? The luminosity of the brush strokes? The masterly use of color? No. The signature. “Worth $10 million,” he told me. Time after time the stories he told me didn’t check out, from Michael Jackson’s romantic weekend at Mar-a-Lago with his then wife Lisa Marie Presley (they stayed at opposite ends of the estate) to the rug in one bedroom he said was designed by Walt Disney when he was 18 (it wasn’t) to the strength of his marriage to Maples (they would split months later).
It was hard to watch the way he treated those around him, issuing peremptory orders—“Polish this, Tony. Today.” He met with the lady who selected his drapery for the Florida estate—“The best! The best! She’s a genius!”—who had selected a sampling of fabrics for him to choose from, all different shades of gold. He left the choice to her, saying only, “I want it really rich. Rich, rich, elegant, incredible.” Then, “Don’t disappoint me.” It was a pattern. Trump did not make decisions. He surrounded himself with “geniuses” and delegated. So long as you did not “disappoint” him—and it was never clear how to avoid doing so—you were gold.
What was clear was how fast and far one could fall from favor. The trip from “genius” to “idiot” was a flash. The former pilots who flew his plane were geniuses, until they made one too many bumpy landings and became “fucking idiots.” The gold carpeting selected in his absence for the locker rooms in the spa at Mar-a-Lago? “What kind of fucking idiot . . . ?” I watched as Trump strutted around the beautifully groomed clay tennis courts on his estate, managed by noted tennis pro Anthony Boulle. The courts had been prepped meticulously for a full day of scheduled matches. Trump took exception to the design of the spaces between courts. In particular, he didn’t like a small metal box—a pump and cooler for the water fountain alongside—which he thought looked ugly. He first questioned its placement, then crudely disparaged it, then kicked the box, which didn’t budge, and then stooped—red-faced and fuming—to tear it loose from its moorings, rupturing a water line and sending a geyser to soak the courts. Boulle looked horrified, a weekend of tennis abruptly drowned. Catching a glimpse of me watching, Trump grimaced.
“I guess that’ll have to be in your story,” he said.
“Pretty much,” I told him.
This apparently worried him, because on the flight home a day later he had a proposition.
“I’m looking for somebody to write my next book,” he told me.
I told him that I would not be interested.
“Why not?” he asked. “All my books become best-sellers.”
The import was clear. There was money in it for me. Trump remains the only person I have ever written about who tried to bribe me.
As I’ve watched his improbable political rise, it is clear that he hasn’t changed. The very things that made him so unappealing apparently now translate into wide popular support. Apart from the comical ego, the errors, and the self-serving bluster, what you get from Trump are commonplace ideas pronounced as received wisdom. Begin registering all Muslims in America? Round up the families of suspected terrorists? Ban all Muslims from entering the country? Carpet-bomb ISIS-held territories in Iraq (killing the 98-plus percent of civilians who are, in effect, being held hostage there by the terror group and turning a war against a tiny fraction of the world’s Muslims into a global religious crusade)? Using nuclear weapons? The ideas that pop into his head are the same ones that occur to any teenager angry about terror attacks. They appeal to anyone who can’t be bothered to think them through—can’t be bothered to ask not just the moral questions but the all-important practical one: Will doing this makes things better or worse? When you believe in your own genius, you don’t question your own flashes of inspiration.
I got a call from his office some days after my profile of him appeared in the May 1997 issue of Playboy. I had already heard how he’d blown his stack to Christie Hefner. I was traveling at the time, working on my book Black Hawk Down. The call came to me in a motel room in Colorado, from his trusty assistant, the late Norma Foerderer.
“Mr. Trump would like to talk to you,” she said.
I waited, sitting on the edge of the bed, bracing myself.
Foerderer came back on the line. She said:
“He’s too livid to speak.”
“Pretty much,” I told him.
This apparently worried him, because on the flight home a day later he had a proposition.
“I’m looking for somebody to write my next book,” he told me.
I told him that I would not be interested.
“Why not?” he asked. “All my books become best-sellers.”
The import was clear. There was money in it for me. Trump remains the only person I have ever written about who tried to bribe me.
As I’ve watched his improbable political rise, it is clear that he hasn’t changed. The very things that made him so unappealing apparently now translate into wide popular support. Apart from the comical ego, the errors, and the self-serving bluster, what you get from Trump are commonplace ideas pronounced as received wisdom. Begin registering all Muslims in America? Round up the families of suspected terrorists? Ban all Muslims from entering the country? Carpet-bomb ISIS-held territories in Iraq (killing the 98-plus percent of civilians who are, in effect, being held hostage there by the terror group and turning a war against a tiny fraction of the world’s Muslims into a global religious crusade)? Using nuclear weapons? The ideas that pop into his head are the same ones that occur to any teenager angry about terror attacks. They appeal to anyone who can’t be bothered to think them through—can’t be bothered to ask not just the moral questions but the all-important practical one: Will doing this makes things better or worse? When you believe in your own genius, you don’t question your own flashes of inspiration.
I got a call from his office some days after my profile of him appeared in the May 1997 issue of Playboy. I had already heard how he’d blown his stack to Christie Hefner. I was traveling at the time, working on my book Black Hawk Down. The call came to me in a motel room in Colorado, from his trusty assistant, the late Norma Foerderer.
“Mr. Trump would like to talk to you,” she said.
I waited, sitting on the edge of the bed, bracing myself.
Foerderer came back on the line. She said:
“He’s too livid to speak.”
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/12/donald-trump-mark-bowden-playboy-profile
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