What the Benedict Option is like

If anyone knows what the Benedict Option is like it would be Rod Dreher, the man who invented it and lives it out day after day. So what's the Benedict Option like?

Let's let Rod tell us in his own terms.

Luxury hotel on Lake Louise, CA courtesy Rod Dreher

Isn’t that something, that view? That beer belongs to Peter Leithart, who was sitting to the left of the frame. I was drinking the same kind. What a gorgeous, gorgeous place. A group of us went walking in Johnson Canyon, part of Banff National Park, in the Canadian Rockies. Then we dropped by to see Lake Louise, which is still frozen over. We had a beer at the hotel on the lake.
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Man, did I ever have a great time with these Lutherans up here!

Man, I'll bet you did, Rod! Sign me up for the Benedict Option today!

Banff National Park has got to be one of the most beautiful vacation destinations ever, and you, too, can access it at its most spectacular if you play your cards right.

You just need to make some arrangements there that have a plausible connection to your business or church doings, then, while "thickening" yourself on a delicious craft beer, write off your expenses as tax deductions against your income or business revenue.*

Now, granted, Rod has the original Benedict Option book-to-be-written-somewhen as his hook, so you'll need to develop a derivative Benedict Option Tax Option of your own.

Maybe pretend to write a book about Rod's pretending to write his original Benedict Option book-to-be-written-somewhen, following in his footsteps as he himself followed Dante's on the Dante Trail when he vacationed in beautiful Italy. And then your friends could pretend to write a book about you pretending to write a book, and so forth. Naturally, as you can see above, there will be necessary expenses involved.

Or maybe something entirely different. You're really only limited by your imagination and the gullibility of the IRS.

The main thing to understand is - just as Rod tells us, over and over - the Benedict Option is not about pulling roots out of the ground and eating them raw in a field behind some nameless monastery outside Rump, Indiana like Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu. Dude! No way!

No, as you see can plainly see here, the Benedict Option is about cannily harvesting God's blessings as revealed through the U. S. tax code and living large - in praise of Him, of course.

The Benedict Option: Dum vivimus, vivamus, dude!

 *Note: nothing in the post is to be construed as offering professional tax counseling. See your own tax professional, and soon! April 15 is almost upon us.

A reason to really like Ted Cruz

Here is a reason to throw your support behind Ted Cruz for President. He is being advised by Frank Gaffney from CSP, Clare Lopez, Andrew McCarthy — in other words, people who really get it right with regard to our war against radical Islam. Excerpt:

Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has worked to distinguish radical Islamist ideology from moderate Islam and has dismissed the “Islam is a religion of peace” line – essentially the bipartisan position of the American political class since the Bush administration – as simplistic.

In fact, he noted in a 2014 forum that he found it “annoying” when President Bush spoke that way, and that the “average American thinks this is crap” because of the carnage they can see roiling the Islamic world.

Other names mentioned in the Bloomberg View article are three members of Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, former CIA officers Fred Fleitz and Clare Lopez and former Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Jim Hanson, in addition to former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy, who was one of the prosecutors of the first World Trade Center bombing.

Trump Roundup, Volume 1

Stephen Hayes's sensibilities which determine why he cannot vote for Trump are largely the same as mine. If I lived in Maryland or Texas where my vote didn't matter one way or another, I'd probably vote third party like Hayes says he plans to if the Donald is nominated. Excerpt:

....I care most about the two issues that directly threaten the continued viability of the American experiment: national security and the debt. My views on individual politicians are shaped mainly by their positions on protecting the country and reforming entitlements. Accordingly, the most promising policy development over the past decade was Paul's Ryan victory over the GOP establishment and its determined opposition to entitlement reform and the most worrisome was Barack Obama's abandonment of the war against the global jihadist movement.

A Trump presidency would be disastrous on both scores. Trump opposes entitlement reform, and it's unclear whether he even understands the central role entitlements play in our mounting debt. Trump claims Republicans lost the presidential election in 2012 because of Ryan's reforms. "He represented cutting entitlements," Trump said last month, pointing to the selection of Ryan by Mitt Romney as "the end of the campaign." Trump has said repeatedly that he won't touch entitlements. "The only one that's not going to cut is me."

On national security, Trump says he'll be strong and frequently pronounces himself "militaristic." But he doesn't seem to have even a newspaper reader's familiarity with the pressing issues of the day. He was nonplussed by a reference to the "nuclear triad"; he confused Iran's Quds Force and the Kurds; he didn't know the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah. The ignorance would be less worrisome if his instincts weren't terrifying. He's praised authoritarians for their strength, whether Vladimir Putin for killing journalists and political opponents or the Chinese government for the massacre it perpetrated in Tiananmen Square.

Then Hayes basically reminds us of the steaming pile of crap and dead guts that represent the tip of the manure pile which is Donald Trump's thought process. The John McCain remarks, the Megyn Kelly remarks, the Carly Fiorina remarks, the Kovaleski remarks... He especially gives some insights to Trump's remarks about John McCain by relating that Trump's response to Hayes's question about "whether he'd read any accounts of McCain's time in captivity or was otherwise familiar with his experiences as a prisoner of war." Trump said "It's irrelevant." Really, he did.

If anyone wonders why Trump can't get to 50% anywhere and only wins open primaries, there's your answer. And speaking of 50%... For anyone out there who thinks that Trump's issue with women voters—which I blogged about earlier—is not a big deal, guess what? It's gotten worse. The Very Unfavorable camp has increased by 10 points since October. Excerpt:

Real estate billionaire Donald Trump’s coarse rhetoric has won him some fans, but there’s at least one large group in America that is increasingly unimpressed: women.

Half of U.S. women say they have a “very unfavorable” view of the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling, up from the 40 percent who felt that way in October. The survey was taken from March 1-15, and included 5,400 respondents.

I'm hoping Kasich stays in the race. He can take more of California away than Cruz can. I want to see an open convention at this point. Barring some type of strange intervention of Fate or something, he can't win.

Coulter: Trump campaign is like an "outlandish business idea"

No, not Trump-groupie Ann Coulter. Please. Mike Coulter is a friend of mine who I've known since we were in grade-school, and today he wrote a very practical piece explaining why Donald Trump would likely lose the general election if he is nominated. Excerpt:

But Trump claims—and Rush Limbaugh affirms—that he’s drawing independents and Democrats. He’s getting some of those voters, but the polling data suggest that it’s going to be very hard for him get enough independents and Democrats to win in the fall. A January poll from Gallup indicated that Trump had the worst favorability ratings among any Republican candidates among independents and Democrats. Trump was net -27 among independents (that is, his unfavorability rating was 27 points higher than his favorability rating) and -70 among Democrats. No other Republican was so far underwater with non-Republicans (Trump’s -97 combined was far worse than Huckabee, Cruz, and Bush, who were around -40). It’s not enough to get some independents and Democrats. For Trump to win, he gets a majority of independents and at least 20 percent of Democrats.

Trump, the businessman, should understand you need a plan for winning. When an entrepreneur seeks support for a new venture, he or she has to show how the business idea will attract enough customers. In presidential politics you need a plan for winning a majority of electoral votes because there’s only one winner. Attracting a dedicated minority of voters wins no prize.

The Trump campaign is like one of those outlandish business ideas, like personal travel to the moon, that has some potential customers, but it doesn’t have a winning business plan.

If you don't live in Ohio, don't read this

I'm voting for Kasich in the Buckeye State. And if you live here, you should to. Strategy is everything. Excerpt:

"I'm just stating the obvious," Conant argued. "If you are a Republican primary voter in Ohio and you want to defeat Donald Trump, your best chance in Ohio is John Kasich, because John Kasich is the sitting governor, he's very close to Donald Trump in some of the polls there."

Rubio later echoed those comments himself at a news conference in West Palm Beach, FL.

"Clearly, John Kasich has a better chance of winning Ohio than I do, and if a voter concludes that voting for John Kasich is our best chance of stopping Donald Trump, that's what they'll do," Rubio said.

Donald Trump answers the question: What is 2 + 2?

I got this from Facebook, a guy named Steven Edwards posted it. I don't know what the origin is. I find it hilarious.

I have to say a lot of people have been asking this question. No, really. A lot of people come up to me and they ask me. They say, "What's 2+2"? And I tell them look, we know what 2+2 is. We've had almost eight years of the worst kind of math you can imagine. Oh my God, I can't believe it. Addition and subtraction of the 1s the 2s and the 3s. Its terrible. Its just terrible. Look, if you want to know what 2+2 is, do you want to know what 2+2 is? I'll tell you. First of all the number 2, by the way I love the number 2. It's probably my favorite number, no it is my favorite number. You know what, it's probably more like the number two but with a lot of zeros behind it. A lot. If I'm being honest, I mean, if I'm being honest. I like a lot of zeros. Except for Marco Rubio, now he's a zero that I don't like. Though, I probably shouldn't say that. He's a nice guy but he's like, "10101000101", on and on, like that. He's like a computer! You know what I mean? He's like a computer. I don't know. I mean, you know. So, we have all these numbers and we can add them and subtract them and add them. TIMES them even. Did you know that? We can times them OR divide them, they don't tell you that, and I'll tell you, no one is better at the order of operations than me. That I can tell you. So, we're gonna be the best on 2+2, believe me. Ok? All right. Thank you.

I heard him give a speech in Maine the other day and he mentioned Ohio in passing and threw a lot of the same kind of meaningless verbiage into it. Something like "We're going to do great in Ohio. By the way, I love Ohio. Ohio is one of my favorites; there's a lot I love about Ohio. Ohio has always been great and the people there are great." Blah, blah, blah, no particulars at all. We think Ohio is great, but tell us why you like it. Why do you like Ohio, Mr. Trump? You don't know and you don't care. At least that's how you come across. At least ask your campaign aids to dig up a fun fact about Ohio and throw it out there, but you don't even do that.

I guess he thinks completely unprepared speeches are as good as any. Maybe he's right, and that is a scary idea to me. Maybe he's a blank white board onto which everyone projects their own hero. I haven't the faintest idea why he has so much support among smart people.

The following one is from David Alexander.

"I could do this all day."

Marvel supposedly makes its biggest cash hauls from a film if RDJ is in it. But IMHO, their best story-line and character development efforts are achieved when the main character is Captain America. So this thing looks like a winner from all sides. Of course, my favorite MCU flick so far was The Winter Soldier, and I'm including both Avenger movies in the comparison. So I'm optimistic going in that I'll like it.

Trump's oppenent will easily get the women's vote

One of my political beliefs is that it's never too early to think about the general election. We should be imagining a match-up between the front-runners at the very least, and it could end up being a choice between the first woman President, Hillary Clinton, and a new record-holder for bad treatment of women, Donald Trump. Here's a Nation Journal article running off a list of evidence for my claim that Trump might hold such a record, but don't worry if you don't have time to read it. There will be many more if Trump is the nominee. And if he isn't? Good; people of both genders will be able to forget this ever happened. And we'll all be spared the tawdry particulars of a press frenzy which will make Bill Clinton look like a piker in comparison. Excerpt:

The trove of in­cen­di­ary and of­fens­ive things Trump has said about wo­men dur­ing his dec­ades in pub­lic life is seem­ingly end­less. He’s dis­paraged wo­men for their looks, ranked which fe­male pub­lic fig­ures he’d sleep with on The Howard Stern Show, and once said in an in­ter­view with Es­quire, “You know, it doesn’t really mat­ter what [the me­dia] write as long as you’ve got a young and beau­ti­ful piece of ass.” In 2011, Trump called a fe­male at­tor­ney—a new mom—who took a break dur­ing a de­pos­ition to use a breast pump “dis­gust­ing.”

The con­sequences are evid­ent in Re­pub­lic­an primary exit polling and na­tion­al opin­ion polls, in­clud­ing a Feb­ru­ary CNN/ORC poll that found just 29 per­cent of re­gistered wo­men voters had a fa­vor­able opin­ion of Trump, while a whop­ping 68 per­cent viewed him un­fa­vor­ably.

By com­par­is­on, CNN’s fi­nal na­tion­al poll be­fore the Novem­ber 2012 pres­id­en­tial elec­tion found wo­men evenly split in their opin­ion of Mitt Rom­ney: 47 per­cent of likely wo­men voters viewed him fa­vor­ably, and 49 per­cent viewed him un­fa­vor­ably. Rom­ney ul­ti­mately lost wo­men by 10 points na­tion­ally to Pres­id­ent Obama, and lost them by an even wider mar­gin in a hand­ful of swing states.

It probably is a waste of time to relate these truths to some Trump supporters, but not all. I'm of the opinion that many of these people are truly good people who are just misguided followers of a raving strong man with a large ego and harem who has started a cult based on fear and bullying. I mean... we know plenty of good Muslims, do we not?