Based on the word's definition, it is Obama, Clinton and their supporters who are the fascists

    I’m not sure how many times I’ve heard Donald Trump being called a “fascist,” or even compared to Adolph Hitler over the past 12 months. Butthurt Democrats have gone into high gear since they learned voters don’t want the crap they’re peddling.
    The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Rockettes are scheduled to perform for Trump’s inauguration, but many of the Rockettes are being allowed to opt out (can you imagine if they refused to perform for Obama?). And Mormon choir members are free not to attend, but for one member, Jan Chamberlin, that wasn’t enough; she posted a long Facebook post explaining that she was resigning from the choir on the grounds that Trump was a “fascist.”
    In a now-private post (a copy of which can be accessed here), Chamberlin said, “I also know, looking from the outside in, it will appear that Choir is endorsing tyranny and fascism by singing for this man.” She also wrote: “I only know I could never ‘throw roses to Hitler.’ And I certainly could never sing for him.” Of course, she wasn't being asked to sing for Trump; she was welcome not to attend, but she wanted to make a big splash.
    Chamberlin is just one of thousands of people who are spouting off daily, calling Trump and his supporters “fascists.” The term is a bit nebulous, but let’s see if we can try to define it.
    I think we can all agree that a fascist is one who wants to rule dictatorially or autocratically. A fascist is prone to seize control of the military, or use it for his own ends. A fascist is one who threatens other countries without justification. Is that a reasonable definition?
    Now let’s look at the views of Donald Trump and compare them to our current president, Barack Obama, and his would-be successor, Hillary Clinton. In this way we can determine whether or not Trump is or is not a fascist.
    Donald Trump seeks to enforce our nation’s immigration laws and obey his oath of office. Barack Obama violated his oath of office by refusing to enforce our immigration laws, an autocratic, totalitarian, and fascist action. Hillary Clinton said she would do the same.
   The street thuggery we have seen this year has been organized by Clinton supporters. Violence at Trump campaigns was carefully orchestrated by volunteers and paid homeless and mentally ill people who were instructed to start fights where they would be sure to get press coverage. Trump supporters have been violently beaten throughout the nation. All of this is identical to the tactics used by Adolph Hitler’s Brown Shirts in the 1930s to intimidate political opponents. Once again, it is Hillary Clinton and her supporters who are the fascists, not Trump.
    Whatever one’s opinion on both Gulf Wars, both George Bushes only did what Congress told them to do, and acted pursuant to authorization of the U.S. Congress. In Libya, Obama sought and gained permission from the United Nations – but not the U.S. Congress – to establish a no-fly zone over eastern Libya in order to aid Al Qaeda terrorists seeking to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi (Nobody has adequately explained why our nation chose to aid Al Qaeda terrorists in a fight against a man who had become a stalwart ally in the war against terror). Obama chose, without authorization, to simply bomb all of Libya and murder Gaddafi, killing many of his children and grandchildren in the process; Libya thus became an absolutely ungovernable hellhole. Not only were his actions a violation of international law and war crimes, but Obama intentionally violated the U.S. War Powers Act by failing to get Congressional approval of his military adventure within 30 days of the commitment of American troops. Hillary Clinton supported this. This type of military adventurism, in contravention of both international and American law, is the very core of what fascism is. Trump opposes this type of military adventurism. Thus it is Obama and Clinton who are fascists, not Trump.
    I wrote more than five years ago, when I was vociferously opposing Obama’s insane Libyan massacre, that Obama was intentionally creating a regional war throughout the Mid-East that would have terrible consequences. You can read my entire blog post by clicking here, but it’s important to note that I wrote this FIVE LONG YEARS AGO, when “violence” in Syria was simply a few street protests:

There have been numerous reports that the violence in Syria has been fomented by American agents. It's also been encouraged by the NATO bombing of Libyan loyalists. Perhaps with good cause, as the Syrians have been a puppet of Iran and an enemy of the U.S., but the unrest in the Arab world has been carefully planned and calculated. Of course, when America murders Arab children – and make no mistake NATO targeted children – it's just war. When Arabs murder American children it's terrorism. I confess I don't understand the difference. Why does America want turmoil in the Mid-East?

    By supporting terrorists and intentionally causing the Syrian civil war Obama and Clinton are responsible for more than 300,000 deaths and the displacement of more than 10 million people. There is not one whit of difference in killing these people by supporting terrorists and in killing them by loading them on a train and sending them to a concentration camp. Obama and Clinton are fascists in the mold of Adolph Hitler; they are truly evil.
    All Donald Trump wants to do is to enforce our laws, bring the global corporations to heel, and seek world peace. Those who would call him a “fascist” do so only in an attempt to distract people from the thuggishness and fascism of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The behavior and belief system of Obama and Clinton is pure, crystalline fascism in its most evil form, and it is the duty of all real Americans to oppose it.
    We can start by calling these fascists and their supporters “fascists.”

Under Obama America has been a force for evil, while Putin's Russia has been force for good

    Despondent, deranged Democrats angry over the rejection of Hillary Clinton by America’s proletariat are blaming Russia for their party’s defeat at the polls. Without a shred of evidence they claim that Russia hacked various campaign servers and released truthful but damaging information about Clinton and her campaign.
    We repeatedly are reminded that Russia is our enemy. Clinton promised to start a war with Russia if elected and most Democrats, along with kooky John McCain, found that idea just peachy.
    We’re told that we should simply believe our government if it says Russia hacked Hillary Clinton’s illegal email server. This is the same government that was convinced our ambassador to Libya was murdered by a spontaneous uprising of citizens upset over a Youtube video; these people are clueless at best. As long as Clinton and Obama are anywhere near the levers of power, nothing coming out of Washington is to be believed.
    All of this Russian bear-baiting is dangerous; enough sabre-rattling can cause a war. Those who are living in the past believe Russia is our enemy. It isn’t. Russia and the United States have common interests and no reason for conflict.
    Those who think Russia our enemy should ask themselves exactly “why” Russia is our enemy. For roughly 60 years Russia was our enemy because it wasn’t so much a country as it was an ideological movement, with the mission of spreading Communism to every corner of the globe. It was the fight against Communism, and the fight against Communism alone, which made Russia our enemy.
    America won the Cold War; Russia and Communism lost. Today Russia is a nationalistic country, and that’s a good thing. Nationalistic countries act in a logical, predictable, and usually reasonable manner. Russia today seeks to advance its interests, not to export its vision.
    Over the past eight years Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have exported revolution and terror to the Middle East. They attacked our ally in the war on terror, Libya, and left that country a hornet’s nest of terrorists. They supported the overthrow of our ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, who was replaced by the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood. Obama howled with rage when the Egyptian military threw the  terrorists out and held a new election in which the people chose secular leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as president; thank goodness the terrorists were thwarted.
    And then there is Syria, which is under the leadership of Bashar al-Assad, a modern, secular leader. Five years ago the CIA and Saudi Arabia funded violent street protests by Islamic Extremists against Assad that Obama and various neocon warmongers carefully fanned into a civil war, which they continued to fund. The result has been hundreds of thousands dead and an immigration crisis that is tearing Europe apart.
    My gut feeling is that Russia was not responsible for providing the accurate material that Wikileaks released which showed the Hillary Clinton and her supporters were liars and crooks. But if they did, they deserve our thanks.
    It’s time for a scorecard: Obama and the Democrats interfered with the Israeli elections. Obama traveled to Great Britain to campaign against Brexit, and threatened to treat Britain like dirt if they voted to "leave." Obama orchestrated the coup in the Ukraine which led to that country’s civil war. Obama supported terrorists throughout the Middle East, including al Qaeda, with disastrous results. If it is wrong to interfere in the affairs of other countries, why did Obama do it so much?
    In 1983 Ronald Reagan famously called the Soviet Union an Evil Empire; it was at the time. Yet today it is the United States, under the leadership of Barack Obama and various neocon warmongers, which has become the Evil Empire.
    The Democrats seem puzzled why they are unable to whip Americans into a frenzy of Russia-hatred. The reason is simple: Under Obama the United States has become a force for evil in the world, while under Vladamir Putin Russia has become a force for good. Russia is not our enemy; Obama and the Democrats are.

History's greatest statistical graphic shows fate of Hillary Clinton's no-fly zone in Syria

    Some years ago I read that Frenchman Charles Minard's graphic of Napolean's march to and retreat from Moscow was the greatest statistical graphic of all time. Seeking to impress others with my high-browness, I purchased a copy, framed it, and hung it on my den wall; an English version is provided above.
    The graphic is impressive and I actually look at it quite frequently; what impresses me the most is the way it illustrates the magnitude of Napolean's failure. I consider myself more knowledgeable than most when it comes to history and knew of Napolean's ill-fated Russian campaign, but to see the disaster in graphic form is pretty amazing to me. You can click on the graphic above to enlarge it.
    Napoleon's problem was that he had no supply line; the Russians simply retreated and scorched the earth along the way. The French, amazed that the Russians would destroy their own country, starved and froze on the way in, and then starved and froze on the way out, with the Russians chasing at their heels the whole way. The graphic above shows that Napoleon began his campaign just east of Poland, with 422,000 men and returned with 10,000, one of the greatest military fiascos of all time (some put the death toll higher, but 422,000 is the number on Minard's graphic).
    The reason I bring this up is because Hillary Clinton has made it clear that she wants to start a war with Russia by declaring a no-fly zone over parts of Syria. For reasons that are a mystery to me the Obama administration has supported Al Qaeda and other terrorists seeking to overthrow the elected, secular government of Syria, which happens to be an ally of Russia.  In fact, the United States and Saudi Arabia ginned up this civil war; the Saudis wanted to install a Sunni Wahhabi state while the U.S. wanted to rid itself of an uncooperative leader. The problem with all of this is that Russia supports its ally, as well it should, and is willing to fight on Syria's behalf.
    The result is that we have a bunch of whining and complaining about terrorists who die in Aleppo with their families, who they have chosen to use as human shields. The global-elitist warmongers demand that we go to war. Of course, I can't help but note that if these terrorists would simply lay down their weapons and be good citizens the war in Syria would end. Nobody is forcing them to be Islamic terrorists; they can be good people any time they choose.
    Should we decide to get involved in any type of conflict with Russia in the Middle East, I would proffer another map. This map shows Russia and Syria in red. Iran, which has become an ally of Syria to counter Sunni militancy, is colored in green. I've also colored Iraq in green, because Iraq supports Syria; after all, how do you think all of Iran's support has been getting there? And I've also colored Azerbaijan green since it tends to support Syria.

Click to enlarge

    In the event of an actual proxy or real war with Russia that the United States decides to wage in Syria, I'm not going to worry about how Russia supplies equipment and troops; there are several routes available. What's important to note is that the distance from Russia to Damascus is roughly the same as the distance from Miami to Raleigh, N.C. or Columbus, Ohio to Boston. In terms of geography and supply lines, in any conflict with the United States Syria might as well be a part of Russia. Any attempt to enforce a no-fly zone in Syria is almost like an invasion of Russia, and thus doomed to failure.

Click to Enlarge

    There is a final exhibit I'd like to share, and it's only an Internet "meme." It's the photo of the Russian minister of defense alongside four European ministers of defense. I think most of us understand that the Russians have a better understanding of the necessity of ruthlessness in war; it enabled them to defeat Napoleon by destroying their own cities and it will enable them to defeat the west in any defensive war. These people are not to be trifled with.
    If the United States decides to impose a "no-fly" zone in Syria -- which by its nature entails the shooting down of Russian planes -- Russia will justifiably respond by destroying any U.S. ship or plane involved in this act of aggression. Russia cannot help but win in this conflict. The only option left to the United States at that point will be retreat or the threat of nuclear war and Mutual Assured Destruction, with its appropriate acronym of MAD.
    Do we really want to start a nuclear war in order to help Islamic terrorists in Syria? Wouldn't it be easier and better if Obama and our out-of-control State Department simply stopped supporting terrorists and started supporting responsible, secular leaders like Bashar al-Assad?
    I refer you once again, dear reader, to the graph at the top of this blog post. Study it well and don't allow history to repeat itself with Hillary Clinton being allowed to play the role of Napoleon.

Now we know why teen girl said 'I deserve it' when pepper sprayed at Trump rally

    Back in late March I got a kick out of a video of a Trump protester starting a fight at a rally in Janesville, Wisc. It ends up with the girl getting pepper sprayed, and as she runs away she can be heard to say, "I deserved that." There were a number of reports on this.
     Although the video shows nothing of the kind, the 15-year-old girl starts screaming that an older man has groped her in the chest. The man backs away and denies touching her and tries to deescalate the situation, but the protester was having none of that. She finally ends up punching the elderly man in the face, at which point a Trump supporter immediately shoots her in the face with pepper spray.
    Her statement that "I deserved that" makes sense now that we know that the Clinton campaign engaged in an organized campaign to start fights at Trump rallies, using both volunteers and homeless or mentally ill people hired off the street. Sometimes they would provoke someone to hit them, but failing that they would simply fake an assault, as this girl apparently did. This girl knew she had crossed the line and was admitting it to herself, without realizing that she was being captured by cell phone video.

Injured officer, Chicago rally

    Hillary Clinton's dirty tricks campaign has not been without costs. Many people have been injured, and it's lucky no one was killed. A number of police officers have been hurt dealing with fights  at these rallies deliberately started by Clinton employees or volunteers. Innocent people have been arrested on false charges brought by Clinton's goon squads; some may have even been forced to plead guilty rather than risk a more serious conviction.
    These types of dirty tricks are far beyond anything Richard Nixon engaged in. In fact, all of Hillary Clinton's crookedness is far beyond that of Nixon; and yet she has the audacity to run for president.
    The criminal thug caught in the undercover video admitting that he helped to organize this Brownshirt brigade said Hillary Clinton was fully aware of the project and that he was working closely with her campaign. If so, this is just one more crime for which Hillary Clinton should be tried, convicted, and locked up.
    Anyone who has been injured at one of these rallies because of one of these fights needs to sue not only the Clinton campaign, but Hillary Clinton herself. Ultimately she is responsible for all of this.

Why does Hillary Clinton dress like a mass murderer?

    Pol Pot killed about 1.5 million Cambodians, or 20 percent of the population. Mao's Great Leap Forward killed 45 million Chinese, with another 20 to 30 million dying during other grand communist programs. Kim Jong-un has racked up some spectacularly brutal executions, but his overall kill rate is fairly low, since he's only been in office a few years; but his father managed to kill about 1.5 million North Koreans.
    Does it worry anyone that a clearly power-hungry candidate for president of the United States constantly dresses like these people? It's not like this style of dress is fashionable; Hillary Clinton is the only person I ever see wearing these types of clothes
    The woman scares me no matter what, but her penchant for dressing like the world's worst mass murderers scares me even more.

Reporter fails to report 'truth' about Trump in 2005 or 2015, but now wants us to believe her

    Several women stepped forward this week to say that Donald Trump made unacceptable sexual advances towards them 10 to 40 years ago. This was part of an elaborate setup involving Clinton campaign staffer Anderson Cooper and women who were willing to make up any story to harm the Trump campaign.
    Right before the second presidential debate, a recording was released of Trump talking into a hot mic with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush. Bush was encouraging him with a lot of sex talk, and Trump was going right along. It was certainly not presidential, but it was private, locker-room talk that Trump was goaded into making. As far as the Reprehensibility Meter goes, it certainly didn’t rise to the level of the many rapes and assaults that I believe Bill Clinton has committed, with Hillary Clinton serving as an accessory after the fact.
    When Clinton campaign representative Anderson Cooper kicked off the second debate with a question about sexual assault and kissing, I immediately suspected that it was already arranged for someone to step forward and make some type of claim against Trump. I was correct. What surprised me was how weak all of the claims were. Let’s examine just one of them, with more to come.
    Natasha Stoynoff is a reporter for People magazine who wrote a story about story about Donald and Melania Trump’s first wedding anniversary in 2005. Describing the alleged assault at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, she said, “We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat.” (It would be helpful if Stoynoff had specified exactly which room this supposedly occurred in, as several of the rooms have glass walls; of course, that may be why she was intentionally vague).
    Are we really to believe that a reporter for a national publication wouldn’t find this worthy of some type of mention in 2005? I simply can’t. I once was involved in sending a reporter to do a nice little story on Jerry Lee Lewis’ birthday party. During an interview, an inebriated Lewis chose to playfully point a pistol as our reporter a couple of times, which he found not amusing at all, and that became the most important part of the story. So instead of a nice, happy story on Jerry Lee’s birthday there was a story about how Jerry Lee is still running around drunk and unhinged these days. That’s what reporters do, and that’s what Natasha Stoynoff would have done if Trump had actually forced a kiss of this type on her. Even if she comes up with some lame excuse for not reporting the incident, it certainly was newsworthy a year ago, at the start of the presidential campaign. Why the silence until Anderson Cooper laid the trap?
    The fact that People magazine would go along with this shows that the media, for the most part, are no longer journalistic enterprises, but rather public relations outfits for the American left and the global elite. Like any good P.R. firm, they will share bad news about their product when forced to do so, but their job is one of promotion, not reporting.
    In the end there is no way for us to know whether some of these claims are true or not. In some cases there are factual inaccuracies that prove them impossible. But in other cases, such as the claim of Stoynoff, we have to just decide whether or not they are true based on their plausibility. For her claim to be true, she would have to be a really terrible reporter who chose to remain silent when her claim might have hurt Trump during the Republican primaries, but who suddenly felt the need to come forward when it was just a two-person race. Under these circumstances, I do not believe her.

    The American media simply cannot be trusted, as batch after batch of hacked DNC emails show collusion with various members of the Fourth Estate and the Clinton campaign. After the second presidential debate, NBC did a "Fact Check" on Donald Trump's claim that Hillary Clinton had "acid washed" her email server. With a graphic that said "NOPE," NBC corrected the record: "Clinton's team used an app called BleachBit; she did not use a corrosive chemical." This is not a joke. It's like saying, NOPE, she didn't murder the man with a double-barrelled shotgun; it was a single-barrelled shotgun. (For the record, sometimes "acid wash" is used as a generic term for permanently wiping a server, although dipping a server in acid will certainly do the trick, and is sometimes done).
    Perhaps someday we will again be able to turn on the television or pick up a newspaper and get truthful news coverage, but for now the Media, like the Clintons, exist only to serve the interests of the global elitists.

The sabatoge of Trump's campaign may result in two new political parties, defeat of GOP traitors

    There are accusations, which I believe, that House Speaker Paul Ryan and other top Republicans have been planning to sabatoge the presidential campaign of Donald Trump for weeks. The release of Trump's foul-mouthed tapes from years ago just hours before he was to appear at a rally with Ryan, and the coordinated response, is too convenient.
    The finger is being pointed at Dan Senor, an advisor to both Ryan and 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Whether or not Senor was behind the release of the tapes, he has been active on Twitter urging journalists to use them against Trump.
    In a conference call Ryan told Republican House members that he would no longer defend Trump, although he did not "withdraw" his endorsement. He did this the day after Trump absolutely slaughtered Hillary Clinton in a debate, in an effort to make sure that his campaign wouldn't recover.
    This isn't a campaign of Republicans against Democrats. This is a campaign of Globalists against Americans, and the Globalists are doing everything they can to subjugate the American people. The GOP leadership really doesn't care which party controls government, so long as it is controlled by Globalists.
    I don't particularly like Donald Trump; he is certainly an incredibly imperfect torch-bearer for the American cause. But he's what we have, and I support him. If enough Americans stand up and fight, he can still win.
    I think several of the Republicans who were so quick to pull their endorsements from Trump are going to go down this November. I suspect McCain is toast, and I've love to see Ryan thrown out. I think New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte is a certain loser after pulling her endorsement. Good riddance!
    There is a real possibility that after this election we could see the formation of two new political parties. The left wing of the Democrat party, consisting of socialists and welfare recipients, may break off and form an American Socialist party, leaving behind only a small number of global elitists who have been in control. Trump supporters are likely to leave the Republican Party to support an anti-war, American Nationalist party, again leaving behind a group of global elitists. Perhaps what is left of the Republican and Democrat party can then merge.
    A lot of people refer to the Trump movement as a "white" Nationalist movement. This is an intentional slander. The Los Angeles Times poll shows Trump getting 15 percent of the black vote and 35 percent of the Hispanic vote, far and away more than either Romney or McCain received.
    Nationalism is merely Citizenism, the belief that a nation exists to serve its citizens, not the interests of non-citizens or illegal aliens. There is no reason why law-abiding blacks or Hispanics would want to see their rights as citizens diluted by criminals any more than whites would. Nationalism serves all citizens.
    Our duty now, as Americans, is to identify anyone who has intentionally sabotaged the campaign of Donald Trump and work towards their defeat. There really is no difference between a Globalist Republican and a Globalist Democrat, but I'd at least get some satisfaction from the defeat of Globalist Republicans.
    Goodbye McCain, Ryan, Ayotte, and assorted other Judas-types.

Forget the achievement gap -- blacks in Oxford's Class of 2016 have great ACT scores

    There’s been quite a ruckus over a news story stating that the Oxford School District was considering the creation of a separate opt-in school, or school-within-a-school, for students on the federal school-lunch program in an effort to reduce the school's achievement gap.
    The Oxford School Board held a special meeting Friday, Sept. 30, to address community concerns, and released a press release apologizing, and stating that no separate school would be formed.
    The separate academy idea might be a good one for a district with 20,000 students. For a district with 4,000 it just doesn't work for a variety of reasons. I won’t address some of the comments made by Superintendent Bryan Harvey, save to say that they weren’t very well thought out. However ham-handed some of Harvey’s comments might have been, he and the school board do deserve credit for trying to provide the best education possible for every Oxford student. Their heart was in the right place even if their head wasn't.
    There is a huge socio-economic divide in the Oxford student body; although located in the poorest state in the nation, the median price for houses listed for sale in Oxford is almost $250,000. I suspect the disparities of wealth, which often fall along racial lines, cause some real problems when it comes to school management.
    Although the proposed academy was presented as a way to help low-income students, in reality it was almost certainly designed to reduce Oxford’s racial achievement gap, which is  the largest in the state. Last month the high school gave the school board the results of the junior ACT tests, which all students now take; the school ACT average was 22.2; white students had an average ACT score of 24.6 while black students had an average score of 18.1, which was a substantial increase from the year before. On its face this is a huge achievement gap, but when you analyze the reasons for the difference, these numbers are easily explained, and should be a source of great pride for Oxford.
    Oxford has has a tremendous number of near-geniuses; the school’s top quintile is probably equal to any school in the nation, including highly selective schools such as Stuyvesant, the Phillips schools, etc. Oxford is a medical, legal, and academic center, and as such attracts a large number of professionals, researchers, and college professors, along with their children. Most of these affluent, advanced-degree-holders are white or Asian. No matter where you are in the country, children of wealthy professionals or college professors tend to do very well academically. There is nothing that any school can do that will allow other students to "catch-up" to these students.
    Add to this the fact that because of its good schools Oxford has a reputation as a brain-cluster community. Most parents are able to perceive whether their children are far smarter than average at a fairly young age, and quite a number of these parents – overwhelmingly affluent and white – are moving to Oxford specifically to take advantage of Oxford’s quality schools. Again, these students are well ahead of the game when they move into the system. There is nothing the district can do that will cause other students to "catch-up" with them.
    All of these factors distort Oxford’s achievement gap. If you take out the disproportionate number of children of advanced-degree holders, much of the achievement gap simply disappears. Once you do this you can focus on something else, namely that based on 2016 ACT scores Oxford apparently does an outstanding job of educating its minority students.
    According to charts provided by the ACT, a score of 18 is in the 71st percentile in comparison to black students nationally. In Mississippi, the average black student ACT score is 16.6 while the average white score is 20.8. In other words, Oxford, with last year's average black ACT score of 18.1, is doing an outstanding job of educating its minority students in comparison to other Mississippi school districts, at least insofar as the Class of 2016 is concerned.
    I've tried to find the ACT average for black students at other Mississippi schools, but Oxford is one of the few school districts to have this information available online. It is possible, however, to compare the performance of Oxford's black students to the whole-school average of schools that are made up of 90 percent or more black students. Here are some of those figures: Aberdeen,  16.7; Ashland, 16.3; Clarksdale, 15.1; Greenwood, 15.8; Hazlehurst, 15.5; Holly Springs, 16.2; Jackson, 15.6; and so on. In fact, a majority of Mississippi school districts have an averageACT score of less than 18.1, regardless of their demographic makeup.
    I pointed out some years ago that a good school should cause the student achievement gap to increase every year. That's because such gaps are caused by some students being able to learn more quickly than others, whether due to natural talent or support at home. The only way to reduce such gaps is for a school to simply refuse educational services to its brightest students, which is child abuse. In the fable of The Tortoise and the Hare, the tortoise won the race because the hare took a nap. The only way to narrow achievement gaps is to make the fastest learners take intellectual "naps" by refusing them educational services.
    Oxford High School has an incredibly large clump of very high scorers on the ACT every year, and this elite group, made up almost entirely of white and  Asian students, causes a huge achievement gap in test scores. But the success of these mostly wealthy, near-genius students doesn't make Oxford's black students any less successful. Yes, there is room for improvement, but in comparison to other districts Oxford's black students are doing well, and the community needs to know that.
    The sad fact is that the Oxford School Board was taken in by a bunch of charlatans who convinced them there was a problem when none existed. An achievement gap isn't a problem. If black ACT scores drop back down to the state average, that's a problem.

Confederate flag resolution, Gaines election proof Saddlebackers in control of Southern Baptists

    The Southern Baptist Convention, led by its Pope of Political Correctness Russell D. Moore, passed a resolution in June denouncing the display of the Confederate battle flag, being the same flag patterned on the cross on which Andrew, Disciple of Jesus Christ, was crucified. This was just one resolution among many that suggest the church leadership is completely out of step with the church membership.

   Anyone doing a Google search will find as many or more photos of Klansmen carrying American flags than Confederate ones. To single out the Confederate flag for this type of denunciation is pure anti-Confederate bigotry and politically correct posturing. It is un-Christian. We need to either keep both flags or ban them both.
    The Southern Baptist church has apologized for its role in slavery, which is laudable. As someone who considers the Confederate flag a part of my Southern heritage, I want to add my voice yet again to those who say slavery was wrong. We shouldn’t abolish the Baptist Church because it once supported slavery, or because of the misguided actions of a few idiots. But we shouldn’t stop displaying the Confederate flag on these grounds, either. The same rules which apply to the flag should apply to the Baptist church; either keep both or abolish both.  
    The fact is that today you will be hard-pressed to find a Baptist who supports slavery. You will have an equally hard time finding someone who displays the Confederate flag who supports slavery. To single out the Confederate flag in this manner is immoral.
    I don’t believe race-hustler Russell Moore -- a really nasty guy -- or the delegates to the Southern Baptist conclave represent the views of the majority of Southern Baptists, whether the issue is the Confederate flag, economic migrants and potential terrorists from Syria, amnesty for criminal illegal immigrants, Donald Trump, or what have you. I say this as a former Baptist who knows lots of very sensible and very outraged Southern Baptists. And I find Moore’s attempts to change the church to make it morre appealing to the Starbucks set and Third-Worlders, such as his recent insistence that Christ was “dark-skinned,” to be offensive and without Biblical or factual support.
    So how did these left-wingers come to be in charge of the Southern Baptist Church? Most are adherents to the Saddleback Purpose Driven Church Cult, and have secretly and systematically wormed their way into positions of authority. In other words, these people have intentionally stolen the Southern Baptist Church. Interestingly enough, no person is a better example of that cult’s techniques of mind and church control than the new Southern Baptist president, Steve Gaines, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, but more on him later.
    The entire Purpose Driven Church Cult movement is based on the notion that church leaders should seize power, eliminate congregational control, and bend churches to their will, presumably to what they see as God’s will as well. In many cases God's first wish is that these pastors receive an incredibly large salary. This is what has happened to the Baptists, and why you see them passing resolutions that many rank-and-file members find to be outrageous.
    The methodology of the Saddlebackers is no secret, although they sometimes go back and erase their tracks. They have published their roadmap for pastors and people like Russell Moore to follow in an effort to subvert the Gospel and seize control of churches.
    How can you know if your church is being controlled by Saddlebackers or their ilk? Some of the main signs are the forced use of "praise choruses" over proper hymns, a "New Member's" Sunday School class, elimination of regular business meetings, tithing obsession, and use of words like "worship center," "campus," and "unchurched." The New Member classes are designed to isolate new members from the general church population so they can be indoctrinated by the seeker-sensitive leadership. (This blog post quotes quite a bit from various Saddleback and Willow Creek sources and is worth reading).
    To understand the techniques used by the Saddlebackers, I urge the reading of this post, which reprints a gloating (and infuriating) article written by a church "transitioner" who stole a church. Or this brochure. I also suggest this article, which describes the way Steve Gaines took control of the remnants of Bellevue Baptist Church, where attendance is down dramatically since his arrival.
    Now, a little about Steve Gaines. After arriving at Bellevue, Rev. Gaines was visited by a man in his late twenties, the son of Bellevue associate pastor. This man told Gaines that as a young teen his father had engaged in sexual intercourse with him on a regular basis over 12 to 18 months until the teen insisted that it stop. The man told Gaines that he did not allow his father to be around his own children unsupervised, and he did not believe his father should be counseling victims of sexual abuse, which was this pastor's role at Bellevue. Gaines spoke with the pastor and has said the man admitted to some type of improper conduct with his son, although Gaines did not specify exactly what that admission was.
   So what did Gaines do? Well, I'll give you three guesses:

Guess Number One: He fired the associate pastor.
Guess Number Two: He notified the police.
Guess Number Three: Not a blessed thing.

    The answer, of course, is absolutely nothing, although Gaines said he did launch an internal investigation, during which which the man continued to carry out his church duties of counseling victims of domestic and sexual abuse.
    When this outrage was finally discovered six months later, Gaines' excuse was that he had understood that his predecessor, Adrian Rodgers, had known of the problem and approved of the pastor staying on. I absolutely don't believe this, but let's play this out. Gaines' position is that if it's okay with Adrian Rodgers for pastors to have sex with their teenage sons then it's okay with him. It's as if Gaines held there is no higher moral authority than Adrian Rodgers, which is ridiculous.
     At Bellevue, Gaines has operated according to the Saddleback formula with zeal. He has declared from the pulpit that those who didn't fully support him should just leave any position of leadership, such as Sunday School teacher. His tithing obsession is such that he's suggested that God might strike members dead if they fail to tithe. He's refused to follow church bylaws or to provide copies of them to members, and made it clear that he doesn't believe in business meetings. And of course he's driven off those who don't agree with him, some of whom have created blogs to vent their discontent, such as the erased-but-remembered Saving Bellevue blog, and the inactive New BBC Open Forum. These are interesting reading, to say the least. These blogs are inactive today because these former members have moved on; Gaines was successful in seizing control and running off the opposition.
    I should note that there is nothing inherently wrong with some of the things the Saddlebackers are doing, and if people can be reached with rock bands and coffee-house services, great. The sin is that these changes are being made secretly. If church members vote during a Wednesday night business meeting that the music director should replace traditional hymns with insipid praise choruses, then the music director should do exactly that. But for a pastor or music director to engage in this type of secret transitioning without the express request of the congregation is a sin. It's church theft.
    For people like Russell Moore, Steve Gaines, and the Saddlebackers, it's all about money and market share. If traditional hymns aren't popular among certain demographic groups they believe are needed for growth, throw them out and replace them with mindless chanting (ignoring, of course, the needs of the current members). If the word "church" isn't trendy, call it a "campus." The Confederate flag has fallen out of favor, so they they got their properly indoctrinated chanters to pass a resolution denouncing it in hopes of gaining favor with the liberal media.
    The Southern Baptist Convention is now led by a man who knowingly kept a child-molesting pastor on his staff as a counselor to victims of abuse for six months, and only let him go after a public outcry. The morally bankrupt people who elected this man had the audacity to tell the world that it's wrong to honor the memory of our ancestors and that we have a duty to throw open our borders to economic migrants, some of whom are bound to be terrorists.
    I'll not take advice on morality from this depraved bunch.

Interactive graphic shows transformation of Ole Miss, Alabama into regional, national universities

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   The Chronicle of Higher Education  has an interesting interactive graphic that allows one to see the geographic origin of the freshman class of almost any university in the United State from 1998 to 2014.
    As a parent with two kids doing college searches, it’s good to be able to see the makeup of the student body of various colleges. I also found it interesting to view the changes at two of the fastest-growing flagships in the country, Ole Miss and Alabama.
    Both Ole Miss and Alabama have exploded in size over the past 20 years, fueled in large part by out-of-state enrollment. These out-of-state students pay a large supplement, almost paying private-school rates to attend a public college. In other words, these students are a real profit center for the schools and subsidize the in-state students
    In 1998 Ole Miss was already attracting a fair number of out-of-state students, with 985 in-state and 824 non-resident freshmen, for an out-of-state percentage of 46 percent of a freshman class of 1,809. Almost a third of these were from Tennessee, and from my experience most were from Memphis or the Southwest part of the state; in some ways these Tennessee students weren't really from out of state, since Ole Miss was their closest flagship.
    By 2014 the freshman class size had more than doubled, to 3,809, with 1,688 in-state and 2,121 non-residents, or 56 percent out-of-state.
    One of the biggest changes in the composition of the Ole Miss freshman class is the increase in the number of students from Texas and Georgia. In Texas, the 10-Percent Rule (or Seven-Percent Rule, depending on the mood of the moment) has made admission to that state’s top schools almost impossible for good students from top school districts. In Georgia, the Hope Scholarship has encouraged the state’s best students to attend the University of Georgia or Georgia Tech, and made admission highly competitive (the average freshman ACT at Georgia is 29).
    The Texas and Georgia numbers are plain to see. In 1998, Texas sent 84 and Georgia 78 freshmen to Ole Miss. In 2014 those numbers were 353 and 295. In 1998 California sent four students; in 2014, 84. Connecticut went from three to 19. Massachusetts, one to 15. New Jersey, zero to 21. Pennsylvania, 3 to 23. Florida 23 to 99. And so on.
    Over at Alabama, the growth has been even more explosive and transformative. In 1998 Alabama had 2,616 freshmen with only 26 percent coming from out of state. So in 1998 Ole Miss was much more of a regional school than Alabama. By 2014 Alabama had 6,824 freshmen, 2,462 in-state and 4,362, or 64 percent, out of state. The growth in the number of Northeastern and far West students attending Alabama far exceeds the growth at Ole Miss. Connecticut went from five to 67 from 1998 to 2014. Massachusetts, two to 85. New Jersey, nine to 142. Pennsylvania, five to 123. Florida 71 to 386.
    Both Ole Miss and Alabama are using generous merit scholarships to attract top students from around the country. Students with a 32 on the ACT can attend tuition-free; at Alabama, if a student finishes in fewer than eight semesters he can use the scholarship towards graduate school.
    Alabama gets a lot more buzz over its Presidential Scholarship than Ole Miss does for its Academic Excellence Award, and the graduate school rollover certainly makes it a better deal. On the other hand, top students have a far greater chance of being able to stack scholarships and perhaps even get a full ride at Ole Miss.
    Of course, most out-of-state students don’t get scholarships; they pay their own way. Part of what attracts them to Ole Miss or Alabama is the desire to attend a relatively small, traditional Southern school.
    There can be too much of a good thing, though. If these schools keep going on their current trajectory, neither will be small nor Southern 20 years from now. And that’s not a good thing, in my view.

Record number and percentage of OHS seniors score 30 or higher on ACT test

     A record number and percentage of Oxford High School seniors scored a 30 or higher on the ACT this year.
    According to an ACT score report given to the Oxford School District board by the high school, 39 students from the Class of 2016 scored a 30 or above on the ACT. An additional 10 students scored a 29. This compares to 25 students with a 30 or higher from the Class of 2015, with an additional 10 members of that class scoring a 29.
    Some of the increase is due to a larger graduating class. The Class of 2016 had 247 students taking the test, versus 203 from the Class of 2015. But class size doesn't account for all of the increase. 15.8 percent of the Class of 2016 scored at least a 30, versus 12.3 percent for the Class of 2015 and 13.6 percent for the Class of 2014.

Click to Enlarge

    In any event, the Class of 2016 is the largest graduating class ever from OHS. Based on enrollment numbers from the state, the Class of 2017 will likely be even larger; and the Class of 2018 bigger still; the Class of 2019 even bigger. The Class of 2020 is likely to set another record, after which class size should drop by about 50 students for a few years.
    So why the sudden end to growth for the class of 2021? Well, my theory is that the housing and credit crisis slowed the massive movement of families with young children to Oxford. Subtract 13 from 2021 and you get 2008, the year Easy Money Died.
    I find looking at school enrollment numbers interesting, in that you can get a good idea of the overall health of various communities. You can review the Mississippi data for yourself by clicking here.

    Enrollment in the Oxford School District has increased from 3,320 in 2006 to 4,250 in 2016. That's an increase of 28 percent in 10 years. Schould this rate of growth continue for 20 more years the school district will have 7,000 students. Of course, it's got to end sometime, although that sometime doesn't appear to be in sight right now.
    There are a lot of ways to interpret data, but when a large enrollment increase is accompanied by an ever larger increase in high-end test scores, the most obvious conclusion is that an unusually high number of people moving to Oxford have very bright children. That's a sign of a robust and thriving community. I've referred to this trend in the past as "Brain Clustering."
    A score of 30 on the ACT is in the top five percent, so a nationally representative sample of 247 students would have 12 or 13 students with a 30 or higher. With 39 such students, Oxford has three times more very bright students than the national average.
    Congratulations are due to a lot of OHS students as well as the high school. May the numbers go ever higher

   

Thanks to estate-sale armoire, I now have plenty of storage for my 'stuff,' at a reasonable price

My new armoire storage and my tiny, old chifferobe shelves

    I recently purchased a large armoire at an estate sale. It's not a "fine antique," but it's an old piece of furniture that looks nice. And it's big; five feet wide by seven feet tall.
    I was desperately in need of more storage space. The rule in our house is that Jinny gets whatever storage space she needs and I get what's left. We had been sharing a small chifferobe that, in my view, is so small it's hardly worth a nickel. (I also have a bachelor's chest and a closet for storage, so I wasn't living out of three shelves and a drawer!).
    I put the armoire in place more than a month ago, but haven't gotten around to making use of it until this week. I considered trying to install a ShelfTrack system that would have given me lots of shelf space, but decided that cost too much and might tear up the back. I also considered drilling holes and putting in shelving, but that would be fairly expensive as well, not to mention a lot of work.
    I ended up buying two 24"x14" wire shelf sets for $19.95 each. They took perhaps an hour to put together, but only because I took one of them back apart and reassembled it to change the shelf heights. The inside width of the armoire is just over 58 inches, so there's a 10-inch gap between the shelves, which works out fine.
    There was a place for a clothes rod at the top, so I paid $14 for an adjustable rod. I couldn't figure out exactly how to use it, so I just put it in place and taped the seam with duct tape to keep it from contracting. Good ol' duct tape.
    I'm going to use the armoire to hang my short-sleeve button-downs and trousers; my long-sleeved shirts, suits, and rarely used items will remain in my regular closet. There is only enough room for a few pairs of shoes, so I will keep some of my favorites in the armoire and the rest in my closet. And in the 10-inch gap I mentioned earlier, I was able to store a couple of pairs of boots, and there's room to hang a couple of long overcoats.
    On my left shelf I have socks, short-sleeved "polo"-style shirts, and long-sleeved sweatshirts and sweaters. On the right shelf I have printed t-shirts I like, colored tees to wear around the house, a shelf of white t-shirts, and a shelf with some shorts and really old ragged t-shirts that I can't bear to throw away. There's also a tie-rack on one of the doors that will hold about 25 ties or belts, which will come in handy.

My old t-shirt collection
(Click to enlarge)

    The left bottom drawer is devoted to white socks. The right drawer contains all my old Phi Tau and Cavalier Shoppe t-shirts. These are priceless!
    We didn't get rid of the chifferobe; we just moved it to the other side of our bedroom fireplace. And Jinny now gets the whole thing to herself, which gives her some more storage, which will be overstuffed within a week.
    I can't remember the exact price I paid for the armoire; it may have been as much as $325, which is a good deal for a functionable piece of furniture. The storage racks and clothes rod cost about $54, so for $380 I've solved a lot of storage problems, with a piece of furniture that I'm happy to look at.
    Believe it or not, I actually have a good bit of empty storage in an old bachelor's chest that I have. I'm sure I'll fill it soon. One of life's rules is that possessions expand to fill all available space.

Ol' Stompy Foot finally got up the nerve to say 'radical Islam,' but it upset him greatly

James O'Keefe, dressed as Osama bin Laden, crossing the Rio Grande

    President Stompy Foot finally got up the nerve to say Voldemort.
    Actually the words he dared to use are “Radical Islam,” which up until now he has avoided like a Hogwarts student afraid to say the name of “He Who Must Not Be Named.” Obama insisted that the use of the phrase doesn’t matter; but it does matter, a lot.
    Honesty from our elected officials is important. The Obama administration has repeatedly tried to declare that acts of terror committed by radical Islamists are in instead simply garden-variety crimes. So he told us, with a straight face, that our ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were murdered by citizens upset about a Youtube video, rather than admitting it was a planned terrorist attack. When a Muslim army major in regular contact with Islamist extremists murdered 13 of his fellow soldiers at Ft. Hood, Texas, while shouting "Allahu Akbar!,” the administration refused to label the attack terrorism, calling it instead “workplace violence.”
    And now we have the murder of 49 people in Orlando, murdered by a man who cheered the 9-11 attacks, who recently took two expensive trips to Saudi Arabia, and who pledged allegiance to ISIS during the murders. Obama blames the murders on a lack of gun control. And Obama insists that immigration wasn’t a factor in the Orlando shootings since the shooter was a native-born citizen. Of course, the man’s father, who has been known to support the Taliban, immigrated to this country from Afghanistan, and if he hadn't been allowed to do so his son would never have been a citizen; another reason to do away with Birthright Citizenship.
    The problem isn’t Youtube, an unfriendly workplace, or the administration’s inability to confiscate all of our weapons. The problem is that Obama and Hillary Clinton have done very little to stop terrorists, and in many instances have actively aided them. And we have no control whatsoever over our immigration process, as Obama simply refuses to enforce our laws. Our borders are so unguarded that filmmaker James O'Keefe was able to wade across the Rio Grande border wearing an Osama Bin Laden costume. He wasn't stopped, because we have virtually no border security.
    Libya was a success story of the Iraq war. When Muammar Gaddafi realized the United States meant business he agreed to give up that country’s weapons of mass destruction. While maintaining innocence, Gaddafi paid the family of each victim of the Pam Am Lockerbie bombing $10 million in compensation. Libya became a reliable ally of the United States in the war on terror.
    When the Arab Spring movement began, rebel groups with strong ties to al Qaeda began attacking government troops in eastern Libya. Obama immediately came to the aid of these terrorists, and used NATO to get the United Nations to authorize the use of force to create a no-fly-zone for eastern Libya; this was the only use of force the U.N. authorized. NATO immediately violated this order and began attacking the entire nation, as well as making assassination attempts on its leader. In one of these murder attempts NATO bombed the home of Gaddafi’s non-combatant son – killing several young children.
    The War Powers Act requires a president to seek Congressional approval for any military action lasting more than 30 days. Obama ignored this law, as he ignores most laws; it was more important to help terrorists than to obey the law. Obama won, Gaddafi was captured, sodomized, and murdered with his help, and eventually our ambassador to Libya would be murdered by some of the same terrorists that Obama supported. Libya is now and ungovernable mess and serves as a organizing point for ISIS. This was completely foreseeable, as I noted at the time.
    In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak had been one of our country’s strongest allies in the Mid-East. When the Arab Spring protests began, Obama rushed onto television to say that he must immediately be removed. With Obama’s support, the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood moved into action and was able to gain control of the government. When the military was able to remove the terrorists from office, Ol’ Stompy Foot really stomped his foot. He was furious that the terrorists that he had supported were no longer in charge of Egypt.
    Then there is Syria. I wrote five years ago that the Obama-Clinton team seemed determined to throw the entire Middle East into armed conflict. I pointed out the danger that Syria might descend into civil war. Everything I said would happen has happened. Obama and Saudi Arabia continue to support terrorists who are trying to topple Syria’s secular, elected government and replace it with a Sunni, Sharia-law regime.
    It is out of this huge power vacuum that ISIS was born. Even now the Obama administration continues to support Syrian terrorists; the result has a monumental disaster, as millions of refugees are trying to pour into Europe, or worse, the United States. There is no way to screen these refugees for ISIS agents or other extremists.
    Obama threw quite a tantrum over the fact that he was forced to say the words “Radical Islam.” But he finally said it! He told the truth, which for both he and Hillary Clinton is quite a difficult thing to do.
    To prevent future acts of terror we have to control our borders and limit immigration of those who might do us harm. We need a leader who will be honest and tell the truth. Clearly honesty and border control are beyond the Obama-Clinton pay grade. We need someone who can do the job.

Baptist leader Moore goes off the tracks with heretical attacks on Donald Trump, immigration

Yazidis give us a clue to the appearance of ancient Jews.

    Neo-liberation-theologist Russell Moore, who is doing his best to turn the Southern Baptist Church into a Communist-front organization, has declared that true Christians shouldn't support Donald Trump for president. Moore is president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public-policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.
    Oh, and in a New York Times article Moore declares of Trump supporters that, "A white American Christian who disregards nativist language is in for a shock. The man on the throne in heaven is a dark-skinned, Aramaic-speaking 'foreigner' who is probably not all that impressed by chants of 'Make America great again.'"
    For the record I don't consider either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton to be particularly Godly people. I was, and still am, a Ted Cruz supporter, but I vote for my candidates on the basis of their political positions, not on their religion. As a strong supporter of religious liberty, I certainly thought Cruz would have been a far better candidate than Trump. But it is apparently not to be. On a personal level, I don't like Trump, but I support some of his policies.
    If you Google Moore's statements over the past couple of years, what you'll find is there isn't a leftist cause he doesn't like; this blog post doesn't allow time to refute it all, so I'll limit myself to Moore's comments on Donald Trump.
    First, Moore blasts Trump's "Nativism." The first Google definition of "nativism" is "the policy of protecting the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against those of immigrants." I think a more accurate definition, particularly to describe nativist thought in the current election, is "The policy of protecting the interests of citizens against those of non-citizens or illegal aliens." Given this definition, I am a proud nativist, and I would hope most American Christians would be as well.
    Jesus is recorded in Mark 12:27 instructing that we should show fealty to our earthly sovereign: "And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marvelled at him."
    We American's don't have a Caesar; we have no king, no emperor, no ayatollah, no pope. We The People are sovereign, and our fealty is owed to our fellow citizens, pursuant to Christ's command. Moore's assertion that favoring citizens over non-citizens is somehow wrong is in direct conflict with the instructions of Jesus Christ. It is heresy.
    Moore has repeatedly criticized Trump for his statements concerning "immigrants." Of course, when Moore says Trump has made these statements he is bearing false witness, because Trump's comments have been directed almost entirely at illegal immigrants, not legal immigrants. There's a big difference.
    Let's look at some of Trump's "objectionable" statements concerning immigrants:

As has been stated continuously in the press, people are pouring across our borders unabated. Public reports routinely state great amounts of crime are being committed by illegal immigrants. This must be stopped and it must be stopped now.

We're going to bring people in, but we're going to bring people in legally.

When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best. . .They're . . .sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists and some, I assume, are good people, but I speak to border guards and they're telling us what we're getting.

    Here are the facts: Central America, the source of the bulk of illegal immigration, used to send us their best and brightest, who were often denounced as traitors for leaving their home country. No more. We now get far more people likely to end up on welfare.  Immigrant households use welfare at twice the rate of native-born citizens, and illegal aliens with children have an even higher welfare rate. If we were getting the best and brightest, as we used to get, the immigrant welfare rate would hover around zero.
    The crime rate of illegal immigrants is a major problem, as the left-leaning Atlantic pointed out in a July 29, 2015 article. As that article reports, in 2011, there were an estimated 42,000 robberies, 70,000 sex crimes, 81,000 auto thefts, 95,000 weapons offenses, and 213,000 assaults committed by illegal aliens in this country.
    So let's get this straight. Moore bore false witness against Trump by indicating that his comments were against all immigrants and not just illegal aliens. This is a direct violation of Exodus 20:16, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."
    Even worse, Moore has criticized Trump for telling the truth. And yet Jesus advocated the telling of the truth: "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (John 8:32). To attack trump for making a statement without first addressing the veracity of the statement is a direct, frontal assault on the teachings of Christ.
    When it comes to racial issues, Moore is no less obsessed than a Klan Kleagle in reverse. Thus we get Moore's claim that Christ "is a dark-skinned, Aramaic-speaking 'foreigner'."
    I don't believe Christ is going to have a skin color in Heaven, but I do think it's important to address the poison that Moore is spreading. We really can't know what Christ looked like; but we can make educated guesses. In all likelihood he didn't have long hair as always shown in the paintings, as men didn't wear their hair long in that time.

Bashar al-Assad

    But the people of the Middle-East are not necessarily dark in complexion. Some have light skin and deep, blue eyes, such as Syria's Bashar al-Assad (A clue, a clue!). And many Jews have blond or red hair; their skin is not particularly dark (A clue, a clue!). It is quite possible that many people who now live in the Mid-East may have dark skin due to intermarriage with other groups. I visited with a  newscaster for Al-Arabya some years ago, and in conversation he described a "true Arab" as having blond hair (his hair was not blond).
    The most endogamous group in the Middle-East is quite possibly the Yazidis, an Aramaic(!) group that lived directly to the northeast and east of the Roman-recognized state of Israel. Yazidis only marry each other, and therefore give us a clue (A clue, a clue!) as to what Jesus might have looked like. Yazidis often have fairly light skin tone and blond or reddish hair; sometimes they are darker.

Another clue as to Christ's appearance!

    With all of this said, even if Christ should have had a darker skin tone (and given exposure to the sun, he would have had a very deep tan regardless of his genetic makeup), what does it matter? Does Russell Moore really think it matters to anyone? Most of us have friends who are Lebanese, Syrian, Greek, Italian, and Hispanic. Many members of these groups have the type of darker skin that Moore is insisting that Christ had. So? Jesus is Jesus, regardless of what He looked like, so Moore just needs to stop race-baiting.
    I do agree with Moore that Donald Trump is a pretty awful person morally. I feel the same way about Hillary Clinton. As much as I dislike Trump, his political views are the most consistent with my own of the two likely major-party candidates, and I intend to vote for him if he is the Republican nominee.
    The most Christian thing any American voter can do is to vote for the candidate who will show fealty to our earthly sovereign, the citizens of the United States. I'm going to vote to elect a president who will best serve the interests of my fellow citizens, not a Sunday School teacher.

Liberals have specious arguments against border fence; all they want is more welfare recipients

    One of the things that America’s sheltered elites just don’t get is that most Americans want a wall built on our southern border to keep unskilled workers and terrorists from pouring into the country. And should people start pouring in from the north at some future time, we will want a barrier there as well.
    I remember as a young kid being asked to pass some item at the dinner table to one of my brothers. My response was to lean back just as far as I could in my chair and declare, “I can’t reach it!” I’m reminded of that as border security opponents bleat out specious reason after reason why we can’t have a border fence.

Specious Reason 1: Jesus is against it

    The most annoying anti-fence excuse is the religious argument: Jesus tells us to help the poor, therefore we can’t have secure borders and have to allow people to break the law. Even if this was Jesus’ teaching, which it’s not, America is not a theocracy; we are not ruled by priests, rabbis, or ayatollahs. Every decision of government should be made based on what is based on what is best for the American citizenry, not on somebody’s misplaced religious belief.
    But for those who insist on invoking Christ, I must point out that illegally entering a country is a form of theft from the legal citizens of that country. All a border wall would do is assist people in obeying the Ten Commandment prohibition against theft, in the same way that banks help people not to steal by keeping their money in a vault. I cannot believe that Christ would find such efforts anything but laudatory.
    Mexico isn’t exactly Somalia or Bangladesh. Although a developing country, Mexico’s per capita income has more than tripled in the last 15 years. In the bigger scheme of things Mexico is a wealthy country; it’s just not as wealthy as the United States. When compared to the rest of the world, Americans have average incomes in the top one percent. Mexicans are in the top three percent. Oh, cry me a river!
  

Specious Reason 2: People will find a way to get around a wall

    We’re told that some people might be able to breach a border fence. Yup, they sure will. But a fence will stop the majority of those who just dash across the border. If we can successfully stop most of the border jumpers we’ve accomplished our goal.
    Remember Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption? He managed to excavate a tunnel out of his prison cell with a little rock hammer. It only took him 17 years. So he is clearly an example that walls, no matter how carefully constructed, can be breached.
    And yet, the prison walls held him for 17 years. They continued to contain all of the other prisoners. Does it really matter that one guy managed to escape after 17 years if all of the other prisoners remained locked up?
    Walls are effective most of the time.

Specious Reason 3: Border jumpers are only one source of illegal immigration

    Border jumpers only account for half of illegal immigrants in the United States. The rest enter legally and overstay their visa. Therefore a fence won’t completely solve the problem of illegal immigration.
    So what? It will solve half of it!
    And at least those who come in through the visa process have received some type of government scrutiny that presumably is designed to keep terrorists out of the country. A visa gives us a paper trail to use in tracking down and deporting illegal infiltrators, which we cannot do with unknown people who slither across our border undetected.

Specious Reason 4: We can’t possibly afford it!

    This is perhaps the most annoying excuse of all. The worst-case scenario for a border wall/fence is $25 billion. If for some reason we can’t afford that, we could at least put up a wall in all of the places where there are currently illegal border crossings, and they are legion.
    Given that illegal immigration costs federal, state, and local governments more than $100 billion Every Single Year, $25 billion to cut the number of illegal immigrants in half seems like a bargain.
    And for what it’s worth, I would guess that those who are just walking across the border are far more likely to end up on welfare or have uncompensated care at our hospitals than those who arrive by airplane, which makes a border fence an even greater bargain. A fence will keep out the worst illegal immigrants.
    So a border fence costs absolutely nothing, since as soon as it is built the taxpayers start saving massive amounts of money. We can afford to build it, since we will actually be paid to build it – it’s better than free.

The Real Reason Liberals Oppose a Fence

    We all know the real reason liberals don’t want a border fence. A large majority of those coming across the border are going to be multi-generational welfare cases. Since the Democratic party has become a party of fringe groups and welfare recipients, liberals have an interest in bringing in as many illegal aliens as possible.
    Think about it; in order to retain or gain control of government, Democrats are willing to destroy our nation, even to the point of having no barrier to terrorists entering the country. We can stop these people, or at least slow them down, and a border wall is the first step.

Boeing's Dreamliner is appropriately named, as nightmares are dreams, too

    I’ve just flown the Edsel of the skies: the Boeing 787 Dreamliner that I flew on LOT Airlines to get to Europe. I’ve been wanting to fly on one of these; that desire has now been forever extinguished.
    The Dreamliner is a beautiful plane. It’s big and tall, with lots of bin storage; and it reportedly maintains a higher cabin pressure during flight, while means passengers will suffer less dehydration. Because of its large size, there is far less turbulence. And although the food was lousy, the LOT Airlines stewardesses wear little caps, which is a neat little throwback to the olden days of aviation.
    In fact, everything about the plane was great except for one thing: LOT Airlines, like almost every airline, is flying the Dreamliner with a nine-across seat configuration which results in a seat width of 16.9 inches – just about the narrowest airline seat in the air. These planes were originally designed with the idea that they would have 8-across seating.
    The trend towards super-narrow airline seats started a few years ago when some greedy airline decided to replace the 9-across, 2-5-2 seating on their 777 airplanes to 10-across, 3-4-3 seating. Seat width on these 777 airplanes decreased, from a somewhat generous 18.5 inches to 17 inches. Presumably this made the airline more money, but it did little for passenger comfort. Most airlines have adopted the narrower 777 seats with the exception of Delta. So if you want to fly the 777 in comfort, fly Delta (United was 9-across on the 777, but they have started to switch to the dreaded 10-across seating).  With the 787 Dreamliner, there are almost no exceptions to the super-narrow-seats caused by the nine-across format. As a result, if you fly this plane in coach, you will be miserable.
    At 200 pounds I am admittedly on the fat side. But I’ve flown far fatter and been far less uncomfortable. I’d grateful that I’ve lost some weight over the past few months, or otherwise my misery would have been compounded. I’ve simply never had a flight before where I was so aware of how uncomfortably narrow my seat was. No person will find a 16.9-inch wide seat comfortable, no matter how thin they are.
    The solution to this problem is to avoid it in the first place. Seatguru.com does a pretty good job of describing what the various seats are like on different airlines, including information about seat pitch (legroom) and width. I suggest never flying a long-haul on a plane with less than a 17.9-inch seat width. That’s only one inch wider than LOT's Dreamliner seats, but that one inch makes a big difference.
    I knew when I booked my ticket on the LOT 787 that the seat would be narrow. I just wasn’t aware of how miserably narrow it would be. Of course, when you’re trying to get a super-cheap fare to Europe, sometimes it entails some misery.
    I’m surprised Boeing allows the airlines to operate its airplanes in this manner. On one hand, it makes sense for them to just sell the planes and allow the airlines to use them as they will. But when everyone who flies a certain type of aircraft has an unpleasant experience they avoid it in the future, thus reducing that model’s lifespan. The Dreamliner could have been one of the greatest planes of all time, but by overstuffing it with seats the airlines have made it one of the worst. I know I will avoid it in the future, and anyone reading this would be wise to do the same.
    Most airlines allow overweight flyers to buy an extra seat. On the 787 everyone is overweight. In cases where major discounts are offered, it might make sense for two people flying together to buy an extra seat; since the planes operate with a 3-3-3 configuration, two people could just have an empty seat between them.
    I would advise my friends to never fly on a 787 Dreamliner if another plane is available at a similar price. If pursuing a hot bargain, couples should consider buying an extra seat, which would turn a miserable experience into a enjoyable one. You can contact the airline for information about how to do this.
    As I’ve mentioned, we paid $625 for a round-trip flight to Europe. At that price we really couldn’t complain even if we were forced to share a crate with a bunch of chickens. Even so, I’ll fly the Dreamliner one more time, and that’s to get home; after that, only if I fly with someone and share an extra seat.

Thanks to a $625 airfare, we're off to Germany for Spring Break

    Thanks to a $625 round-trip airfare Ash and I are headed to Germany for Spring Break. We’re joined by his classmate Dylan Howard.
    Of course, to get a $625 round-trip fare to Germany the airplane doesn’t exactly pick us up at the Oxford International Airport. That would be too easy. A $625 round-trip ticket requires a sort of around-the-world trip all its own.
    Our flight was out of Chicago. Memphis never has cheap flights. So we had to drive for 10 hours. With cheap gas and a cheap hotel room, that didn’t add too much to the cost of the trip. And we plan to visit Northwestern and the University of Chicago campus before we return. Instead of flying directly in and out of Germany, we’re flying into Vienna and out of Prague; that was the only way to get the cheapo fare. We’re only spending four to five hours of sightseeing on each of these cities, split between evening and morning. They aren’t what we came to see, although I confess I will savor the four-hour glimpse as I’ve never seen either.
    The goal of this trip, besides just having fun, is to allow Ash and Dylan to actually hear and speak some real German. They are on their third year of high school German, and so ought to be able to speak a little. My understanding is that nobody in Germany actually speaks the formal German taught in the classroom during everyday life, so it will be interesting to see whether they will be able to communicate at all.
    In keeping with the educational nature of the trip, I had high hopes that I would be able to browbeat the kids into listening to a number of lectures from a Great Courses series called “Turning Points of American History.” They listened to exactly one before Ash revolted. But if their AP U.S. History exam in May has a question about the Great Epidemic that wiped out the Indians, they will be well prepared. Hopefully I’ll get them to listen to a few more before our trip is over.
    We’re at the airport as I write this, waiting for the boarding door to close. I’ll update after we hit Europe.