Why I Fight for Causes I Know Are Lost

Daisy - The Best Dog I've Ever Known

This week my wife and I lost our beloved pet dog Daisy. She was the center of our lives and helped us hold it together through grief, loneliness, isolation and trials I'd rather not talk about. We fought hard to save her life, but we couldn't. I'm still glad we fought. It still hurts though. We've been crying for two days now and it's not stopping.

I've buried myself in something I absolutely despise doing - bookkeeping to try and get my mind on something else besides missing my puppy dog.  I have a whole system - I turn on the TV to something I don't have to think about: a TV series I like, or some movies I've seen and know. Even a few TV shows I like to watch help simply by going on in the background and occasionally

I am sick to death of people telling me how to think. I've stopped watching some favorite TV shows because they keep making my favorite characters gay or lesbian or whatever else weird sexual orientation they can think of. Why is it that less than 2% of people are gay and yet it's like 40 or 50% of TV and movie characters are? I'm tired of it being shoved in my face, demanding that I say it's normal and okay. It's bullying and bullying is wrong. I'm a live and let live person so long as you're aren't telling me how to believe. I won't have it. How about something on TV that we can just watch to help us think about something else when we're tired or stressed or in pain. Just a little diversion is all I'm asking for. Is that too much?  Do I have to be told over and over that something that I believe is wrong (not to mention icky) is okey dokey?  Love you guys just like I love adulterers.

But I won't vote for an adulterer and adultery and homosexuality is pretty much the same thing. Do what you want to do, that's between you and the Almighty, just don't expect me to watch you do it.

Also, being a political blogger, I subscribe to several conservative newsletter. Today I unsubscribed to two of them - Anne Coulter and Newt Gingrich. I canceled two others last week including the once-beloved Breitbart dot com. I deleted the bookmark to Matt Drudges website. These are folk whose opinions I once respected, but, like some of the Jedis in Star Wars, they went over to the Dark Side, so I have no further interest in hearing how I'm supposed to hold my nose and vote for a man I believe is not only entirely unsuited to be president, but who isn't even a Republican anyway. I already held my nose and voted for two "moderates" and we lost. Now they want me to hold my nose and vote for a serial adulterer, strip club owner, casino operator, real estate con man, accused racketeer and bullshit artist. I'm sorry for the ugly word, but there just isn't a polite one for what he does.

The man is practically a national socialist. Like Adolph Hitler in 1933 Germany, he promises to make the country great again. He makes airy declarations of what he can and will do and despite a stunning lack of evidence that he has any intention of doing any of those things, his followers hang all their dreams on him and ignore who and what he really is.  

And what reason do they give that I MUST vote for this slimy non-Republican?  So the party can hang on to power!  That's all that it's about.
 
AND THEY ARE CANCELING MY FAVORITE INTERNET TV STATION - PJTV. I should have seen that coming! For months half the staff have been converted to Donald Trumpism and the other half won't touch Trump with a ten foot pole. Fortunately, the guys I listen to and respect are still going to be putting up their old shows on BillWhittle.com and other places, and it will probably cost me more that way, but I don't care.

I'm going down swinging. This country and this way of life is worth fighting for. I may not count for much, my voice may be lost in the cacophony of cheering Trumpettes, but heaven is watching. I can do nothing less than serve God and do what is right.

Every day, I feel less at home in this nasty old world. There's good reason. If you are a Christian you are ever more an endangered species in this Brave New World. People can feel it coming. People in the grocery store checkout line are talking about Jesus coming. That NEVER used to happen when I was a kid. It seems that we all can all tell that something wicked this way comes. 

Let it come, I say. I'm going home soon anyway, so it won't matter if the bad guys win or the other bad guys win. They're all bad guys. Let God sort 'em out.

Just one man's opinion.

© 2016 by Tom King 

States People Don't Want to Move To

This seems to be the reason so many people are leaving California
Fat guys surfing - oh the humanity!

More Liberal Nonsense Disguised as "News"

You see ads on the Internet all the time for articles listing the Top 10 This, the Top 13 That, 8 Most.......whatever. You go there and it's a slow drag through 18 or 20 screens, each with a veritable blizzard of pesky pop-up ads and annoying videos for things you should NEVER eat, Dr. Oz's latest miracle cures and sleazy "dating" sites. These articles are time-consuming and carefully designed to put your eyes on as many advertisements as possible to generate ad revenue for the website.

THEY ARE NOT LEGITIMATE NEWS. Nor, for that matter, are they in any sense accurate. Once in a while I go to one of these sites, just to keep abreast of the genre. I do my own occasional top ten blog on my site "Listing to Starboard" in case the mood strikes me to judge something or someone unfairly by my own personal standards.

So I boot up my computer and catch a title on my home page sidebar that says "Top 13 States No One Wants To Move To Anymore". I smelled a rat. Looking for blog material, I click on the link. Sure enough, most of the states listed were actual liberal hell holes like California, New York, Illinois and Michigan, but in the interest of fairness, it seems they also included several popular conservative bastions like Arizona, Texas and Florida in the list. For good measure they included Georgia, and Mississippi in the batch, apparently because Georgia is getting too crowded and Mississippians are a bunch of racially prejudiced rednecks.  Now they don't actually use any statistics, relying on breezy "facts", in Arizona's case, where they cite the state's "anti-immigrant laws" as a reason why "people" (whoever they are) don't want to move there. Apparently attempting to stem the tide of drug runners, terrorists and assorted illegal aliens pouring over it's borders somehow makes Arizona unattractive to college graduates who may worry that bong supplies may be difficult to obtain in such a repressive environment.

My favorite "reason" no one wants to move somewhere is the one they give for "Texas". The author admits Texas is in the midst of a population boom, attracting college graduates and those same illegal immigrants that Arizona insists on passing laws to keep out. But apparently Texas "tops the charts" as the "least desirable place to move" so the article confidently predicts Texas will soon experience a "drop off". They don't say what these "charts" are or where to find them, but we can trust them. After all, they are Answers.com. Laughably, they later cite the attractiveness of hipster places like Austin, (which happens to be the capital of Texas) as one of the reasons these mythical "people" don't move to New York where high cost of living, traffic, trash and noise has reduced the "quality" of life. They don't mention New York's ludicrously high tax rates, high crime rate and growing number of embarrassing incidents of official corruption in the article.  But then, I suppose, they didn't want to appear too harsh lest New York readers, in a fit of pique, stop clicking on "next". 

Florida's alligators and hurricanes and spring breakers are what are apparently spoiling Florida's attractiveness to "people" (whoever those creatures are). Not that Florida's population is decreasing mind you. Oddly enough the reason that California, the #1 state people don't want to move to, is not explained at all. The author may have hinted at a reason, perhaps, in the picture which illustrates the state - a photo of an overweight, middle-aged surfer (see above). Apparently the beautiful people ain't so beautiful anymore but they still insist on appearing in swimsuits on California beaches. The only excuse in the writeup for California's #1 status is some vague something about California's population growth mysteriously having slowed to a crawl after doing so well for so long. No reason why. No mention of taxes, floods of illegals, high taxes, insane laws, higher taxes, restrictive business climate, more taxes, astronomical cost of living, luxury taxes, and the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. The have-nots are the "proletariat" for you UC Berkely graduates in case you are confused or too busy packing to move to Austin or Portland to pay attention. There is no mention of the fact that the number one place businesses move to when they leave California is..............Texas!  Sort of a Wagons East proposition. Imagine moving from liberal heaven to conservative hell. It must be terrible for "people" (whoever those are).

You will notice I didn't include a link to the article. I do that because the point of this article is to help you not to waste your time with stuff like this. Answers.com apparently isn't worried about giving you accurate answers, just a reason to keep clicking "NEXT" and running up someone's advertising bill.

The folk advertising there should know that the bombardment of ads on the site only irritated me and I don't remember a single one of them, so they wasted their money.  Which is why I don't go to those top ten lists.  If you want to go to a top ten list, you can go to mine at Listing to Starboard.  It's not often that I add a new entry and I don't pretend it to be straight news. It's my opinion and mine alone.  That said, my blog also doesn't have a lot of pop-up ads and you will find it difficult to actually open a loud and obnoxious advertisement. And you can comment your head off. So far the Top Ten Hardest Musical Instruments To Play has been the busiest comments-wise.

Just so you know.


© 2016 by Tom King