Saturday, October 26, 2013

The GLOBAL Wealth Confiscation Plan!, MUST READ!!

The International Monetary Fund Lays The Groundwork For Global Wealth Confiscation - Forbes:

That this is not front page news in nearly every global media outlet should be a VERY strong lesson of exactly how Russia, Germany and China slipped into tyranny.

Note three takeaways. First, IMF economists know there are not enough rich people to fund today’s governments even if 100 percent of the assets of the 1 percent were expropriated. That means that all households with positive net wealth—everyone with retirement savings or home equity—would have their assets plundered under the IMF’s formulation.
Second, such a repudiation of private property will not pay off Western governments’ debts or fund budgets going forward. It will merely “restore debt sustainability,” allowing free-spending sovereigns to keep tapping the bond markets until the next crisis comes along—for which stronger measures will be required, of course.
Third, should politicians fail to muster the courage to engage in this kind of wholesale robbery, the only alternative scenario the IMF posits is public debt repudiation and hyperinflation. Structural reform proposals for the Ponzi-scheme entitlement programs that are bankrupting us are nowhere to be seen.
Got that??? The ONLY listed alternatives were confiscation of assets from EVERYONE with positive net worth, AND the ONLY alternatives where hyperinflation and debt repudiation!!! (so much for the "safety" of holding government bonds!!

This is the IMF being reported on in Forbes folks. This is not some gold bug newsletter.

BTW, it you did or can make it to 55 prior to leaving the employer that you built your 401K with, it strongly appears that it is completely open withdrawal at current tax rates right off the bat ... no penalties, no "5 substantially equal payments".

http://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2012/05/09/did-you-know-you-can-access-your-401k-penalty-free-at-age-55/

The last quote from the report in the linked article is very much worth reading to the bottom for!

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Friday, October 25, 2013

But I Thought They Hated Us BEFORE BO?

Merkel: US spying has shattered allies' trust - Businessweek:

I could have SWORN that it was W that the Europeans hated, and that when BO was elected they were ECSTATIC! In fact, I seem to remember he won a NOBEL PEACE PRIZE just for getting elected!

Wazup wid dis? Did they forget that he is THE ONE??? I mean, God is omnipresent and can hear their calls. I thought they felt that his Supreme Odiferousness, BO was similar in nature???

In my view he is The ZERO ... but then being "off by one" is a common programmer problem, and it appears that B ZEROCARE may well be a good example of A LOT of programming errors!

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Thursday, October 24, 2013

Rudeness, Progressive, Authoritarian

Sources: Word of alleged rude GOP comment came from WH deputy chief of staff – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs:

Wow, someone in Washington was RUDE! oops ... guess really not, false alarm! If someone was imagined to have ween "rude" to W? The nice thing is that we don't really have to wonder do we? While I was out looking a bit for specific quotes, I ran into this.

From Salon no less!
As this post demonstrates, long before Barack Obama achieved any significance on the political scene, I considered blind leader loyalty one of the worst toxins in our political culture: it’s the very antithesis of what a healthy political system requires (and what a healthy mind would produce). One of the reasons I’ve written so much about the complete reversal of progressives on these issues (from pretending to be horrified by them when done under Bush to tolerating them or even supporting them when done by Obama) is precisely because it’s so remarkable to see these authoritarian follower traits manifest so vibrantly in the very same political movement — sophisticated, independent-minded, reality-based progressives — that believes it is above that, and that only primitive conservatives are plagued by such follower-mindlessness.

The problem here is that "progressives" believe they are "smarter" because they belong to the dominant elite political party / class. "Authoritarian follower traits". Note how insidious ... the pour soul writing that column sees the danger, but doesn't understand that left is CONTROL and right is CHAOS. He still buys the formulation that the left created at WWII with "grand theft label" as they usurped "liberal" for their own use and labelled the far left control National Socialist (Nazi) Hitler government "right wing". A travesty of Orwellian naming!

When our labels no longer attach to the concepts that formed them ... eg. "liberal" root "LIBerty!" becomes detached from it's root and used in place of "statism, totalitarianism, authoritarian", is it any wonder that the Sheeple become confused? 

The quote from Thomas Paine that was added to that column is right on: 

UPDATE II [Thurs.]: Here is what Thomas Paine, in The Age of Reason, had to say about all of this: 
[I]t is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
As is true for so many things, Paine grasped the crux of the matter and expressed it as well as it can be expressed.

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23 down, 13 Up Verizon Tether


$30 a month Verizon 2GB data plan, Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0, Acer Chromebook sitting out 5mi W of Humbolt IA in a tractor ... 23MB down, 13MB up. Not too shabby!

Saturday, October 19, 2013

The Reality of Hopelessness

Barack Obama’s Era of Hopelessness | Power Line:

BO's 2nd autobiography was titled "The Audacity of Hope". Only certifiable narcissists write TWO autobiographies prior to age 50, but maybe our next potentate will have written even more than that ... Stalin, Mao and Hitler all had extremely high opinions of themselves as well.
So the Age of Obama has brought the percentage who think America’s best days are still ahead down from 45% to 31%, while the number who think our best days are gone has risen from 37% to 52%. Great work, Barry. This is your true legacy: hopelessness.
The MSM is WILD about negative polls when a Republican is in the WH ... when W was in we seemed to get the "right track / wrong track" and "W's poll numbers fall", etc with great regularity.

So people think that the US has very little future. Duh! We are over 17T in debt, have over 60T in unfunded liabilities. Our economy is anemic, our people have no sense that productive work is positive, and our population is just a bunch of drug addled aging geezers.

Bend over and kiss your "B(ack) Orifice" goodbye!


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Friday, October 18, 2013

The Illusion of No Limits

There's no actual debt ceiling right now | The Daily Caller:

There is no debt limit between now and February. BO can borrow and send money to his cronies with abandon.

The idea of "no limits" is a fundamental difference in human thinking. The conservative / constrained / "tragic" vision / world view is that man dies, man is limited and not perfectible, "progress" often isn't, and "new and improved" often isn't.

The liberal / unconstrained / utopian vision / world view is that man is infinitely perfectible. All problems, even death will be solved as time moves on through infinite "progress".

If you read this blog regularly, you are very likely "constrained". All Christians are constrained, because they believe that man is fallen and needs a savior as well as that God's laws are eternal so are "curbs" to mans greed, sloth, lust, covetousness, hubris, etc

 I cover the EXCELLENT book "A Conflict of Visions" on this subject by Sowell here.

It is also covered in significant scientific detail in "The Righteous Mind".

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Thursday, October 17, 2013

Settled Politics

A Teachable Moment - NYTimes.com:
 "This means that the still-ongoing intra-conservative debate over the shutdown’s wisdom is not, I’m sorry, the kind of case where reasonable people can differ on the merits and have good-faith arguments and ultimately agree to disagree. There was no argument for the shutdown itself that a person unblindered by political fantasies should be obliged to respect, no plausible alternative world in which it could have led to any outcome besides self-inflicted political damage followed by legislative defeat, and no epitaph that should be written for its instigators’ planning and execution except: “These guys deserved to lose.”"
Got that? Since this is NOT the kind of thing where "reasonable people" can have another viewpoint, it is like Global Warming. You MUST agree with our position or you are by definition INSANE (the more direct statement of "not reasonable")! It is only because of the current good graces of our ever benevolent left wing that even though we are 100% surveilled, they don't in fact lock up the insane opposition?

Having a budget worked though both houses and signed by the president? Insane!

Having checks and balances where people that vote in the opposite party into the House assuming that the House has "the power of the purse"? INSANE ... bring the King a clean resolution so he can spend as he sees fit. He need not deign to negotiate with the lowly House!

Running trillion plus deficits as far as the eye can see? REASONABLE ... why anyone would have to be insane to think otherwise!

Converting 1/4 of the US economy to a government directed system that is cronyized in the true "Chicago Way" with graft, exceptions, subsidies, etc for political friends, and mandates, penalties and fees for political enemies on a purely executive whim basis. VERY REASONABLE! Why this law passed by one vote in the Senate because it was part of the "budget" ... which was never passed. Get over it, it is INSANE to question the power of his supreme odiferousness BO!

Ah yes, the one must get their mind right!


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Your Spirit or Your Body?

Finally! The Republican Fever Is Broken - The Daily Beast:

There’s a scene in The Dark Knight Rises—the final film in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy—in which the villain, Bane, taunts the Caped Crusader before crippling him. “I was wondering what would break first,” he says, “your spirit, or your body!”
The left is feeling really good, they are identifying with Bane from "The Dark Knight Rises". Short of Lucifer himself, a pretty good pick for those intent on gaining all power and destroying those that dare to think for themselves.

"It's a complete capitulation by the Republicans". Oh joy of joys.

We don't need no stinkin budget, we can spend spend spend with impunity forever! They are fools to ever challenge our great BO! Let him reign as potentate forever. Let us grind the idiocy of "checks and balances" under our boots!

The parallel with "The Dark Knight Rises" is a little eerie ... Bane complains that nobody respected him until he put on a mask and became violent. Similarly, the Democrat party slow march to total control and wiping out those with other views really kicked into high gear when BO decided to ignore the constitution on budgets, use  IRS to do his bidding and put everyone under surveillance "just in case".

Will  the "Dark Knight" of the spirit of conservatism rise again? My view is that it is not likely until at least a couple generations of destruction have passed.

She is right, the forces of Bane are triumphant! Maybe I've got the "B" in BO wrong? Excuse me while I fail to cheer. It is kind of cool, BO being "the spirit" of the body.

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Conservatism Needs to Give Up

Fareed Zakaria: Conservatism needs to lighten up - The Washington Post:

I think this column covers the current dominant party/cultural view really well ... except a number of them would add "or else" at least under their breaths.

Things have been gong GREAT ... look at all the "progress" we have made! All these stupid conservatives have been trying to slow us down since William Buckley, but we keep winning everything and things are FINE! What is more they are going to STAY FINE ... we are like ... well, er, "Switzerland".

It is great to see him call out Reagan as some sort of an idiot for opposing Medicare, which is a major element in our 60+ TRILLION in unfunded liabilities along with FICA, but REALLY ironic to see him include the end of the USSR as one of the accomplishments of the left. Somehow I suspect he would have been just as quick to point out what an idiot Reagan was at the point of the "ash heap of history" speech. Being a "Party Member" allows one to think that way.

In the current US you can go to jail for an ever increasing pile of "hate speech" or have the IRS or NSA investigate you because you are on the "wrong list".  Remember, the maker of the anti Islam video that was the BO administrations original lie about the Benghazi attack is still in prison. Lefties will of course say "oh, that is on OTHER charges". Remember, TOTALITARIANISM is called that because ALL aspects of your life are under government control ... your health, your work, your income, your retirement, your speech, etc Breaking "laws" in any of those areas is enough to incarcerate you ... even installing a toilet that flushes too much water is crime in today's US.

But to Fareed, all of this is fine. I wonder when the last person was jailed in the US for anti-Christian hate speech? There is no problem losing your job in the US today for being too open about being against gay "marriage". You can be jailed in a number of US cites (DC, New York, Chicago), for even carrying ammunition, or as a legal firearm owner passing though with your weapon "not properly secured" (often meaning unloaded gun in locked case. Unloaded magazines in locked case, and ammunition in yet another locked case. This is in a country where "The right to keep and bear arms will not be infringed" is supposedly the law if the land.

I could keep going on and on, but what we have here is a fundamentally different view of what America is and was. There is a great book on the topic of Tipping Points ("The Tipping Point") but other than provide more detail, we all know about "the straw that broke the camels back".

There is no bold red line between liberty and tyranny that will be recognizable to all ... or even most. There were a great many defenders of the Soviet way of operation in the US at least right up to the day that the wall fell. College students ran around with Mao's "Little Red Book" in the 60's and 70's while millions were being slaughtered. Hitler was loved by the bulk of the German people.

Reading Fareed makes it clear that for significant parts of our society, we are not "near a tipping point", we are OVER it ... badly.

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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Go Ahead, Make My Day

Memo to GOP: If Obama Won’t Compromise, Don’t Raise the Debt Ceiling | Power Line:

In one of my favorite Dirty Harry scenes, the bad guy has his gun pointed at the temple of the innocent waitress and is staring at the business end of a .44 mag with a very relaxed but focused looking Harry Callahan on the trigger. In 5 short words Harry makes it clear that the only question here is 2 deaths or none, but Harry is completely fine with 2.

The linked column makes a good case for the Republicans making BO the same offer as Harry makes relative to the Debt Ceiling. It is long, as things must be in more complicated world, but I'll do the very short summary here and it is worth the read especially if you don't believe me.

No doubt you have heard that not raising the Debt Ceiling is UNTHINKABLE! Remember when Sequestration was unthinkable ... irresponsible, economy killing, etc, etc? Well we have been living under the horror of Sequestration since March 1! In the tradition of Democrat chutzpah very similar to Slick Willie crowing about "a balanced budget" after getting full political hay out of evil Republican cuts IN THE RATE OF GROWTH in federal spending, BO has been shamelessly crowing about the deficit being "under 4% of GDP" ... which it would not be without the "unthinkable" sequestration "cuts" in the rate of spending growth.


  1. "Default" is an absolute LIE! The US still takes in plenty of money to service the debt! If BO is petulant enough to graduate from putting up "Barrycades" on uncontrolled monuments to purposely engineering a US government default, then there is no real reason to believe he would not start nuking US cities for "spite" ... give those "bitterly clinging" red state yahoos what BO sees as "justice". 
  2. We have no budget. We haven't had one for 4 years. This is al, immoral, stupid and a whole lot of other negative adjectives. The fact that less than 20% of American people (likely FAR less) have a clue about this whole mess shows that we can no longer self-govern. We have completely lost any semblance of truth based mass media, and the bulk of the population is so brainwashed by the combination of left leaning education and swimming in the MSM sewer that they are unable to function as citizens. 
  3.  Given the above, a "Cap" is the best that can be achieved. We are hemorrhaging red ink at a rate that were the other party in the WH would be a national scandal / outcry if the level that would be make Watergate, Vietnam and the OJ trial seems like small stories!



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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

"Dumb" Americans

Opinion: America's problem -- we're too dumb - CNN.com:

Since "dumb" really means "unable to speak",  my rule is that anyone calling anyone else dumb (unless they can't speak) should probably not be speaking themselves.

Some thoughts:
  • American's INTELLIGENCE is AVERAGE ... just like every other nation. 
  • Our problem is that we don't really do "education" anymore ... we do childcare, indoctrination, self esteem improvement and stifle independent thought (as you can guess, 90% of my teachers hated me!) 
  • Our founders, nor any actual student of humanity would ever suggest anything like a real democracy, which we keep slouching toward. Half if the population us BELOW average, and by following the kind of excuse for education that we have been for 60+ years ... left wing liberal union non-competitive democrat indoctrination, rather than actual LIBERAL education ... meaning multiple sided, grounded in REAL history rather than "victim oriented" history ... that "average" is dropping all the time. 
  • A REPUBLIC is supposed to let some proper "elite" rise to the top and run the country as "statesmen" rather than "special interest organizers". Sure, the "elite" get elected, but the assumption is that they would be oriented to STEWARDSHIP of the culture, society and history of the people and nation. Our "elite" are those that do an especially good job of soaking up the propaganda ... of which the column author clearly qualifies. We need a TRUE LIBERAL elite ... which means strong education in classics, history, religion, philosophy, business ... essentially Western Culture with a major in American culture. 
  • I thought we DIDN'T want to be "exceptional" in the old positive sense? In order to be at the top in these kinds of rankings we would have to have people motivated to think that competition and working hard were GOOD things, not "exploitation". We are totally reaping what we have sowed and now this columnist is complaining? Why, I'd bet dollars to donuts that he is NOT in favor of "exceptionalism". Try to be mediocre, and you usually end up lousy. 
  • His solution is to start the indoctrination earlier??? Hello?? This is the old blood letting logic ... if things are looking bad with the amount we are doing, let's do more!
Americans may well now be poorly educated and confused, but it is mostly BECAUSE of our education and media system, and the LAST thing we need is to double down on that disaster!

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Monday, October 14, 2013

Donkeys Hate RINOs?

George Will: Susan Collins’s fiscal compromise leaves Democrats exposed - The Washington Post:

Usually RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) like Susan Collins are the toast of Democrat and MSM Washington. "How reasonable", "How moderate" ... oh, if ONLY the evil Neanderthal  "Tea Party" sorts could be so brilliant and urbane.

Oops ... the Democrat extremism seems to be showing !

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Saturday, October 12, 2013

Lies, Truth, Shutdown, Sowell

Thomas Sowell: Who Shut Down the Government?:

I just love and respect this guy to the max!

He does a GREAT job of stating what is FACT and what is OPINION. This exactly what we need if we are ever going to return to the greatness that was once America!

Just read it!

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Barry's Brownshirts

From the Vietnam Memorial | Power Line:

It is hard to believe the combination of arrogance and petulance that brings the leader of what was once the greatest nation on earth to such overt and self defeating measures. If we had a Free Press ... meaning one whose brains could see sides of stories other than left, these kinds of actions would bring the ire of the nation down on BO.

As it is, we have to rely on getting the news from a few bloggers that have left the left reservation.
At the Vietnam Memorial two park ranger goons stood at the entrance to the wall, near the requisite barricades. The intention clearly was to intimidate people from entering the memorial area. Fortunately, many people simply ignored Barry’s Brownshirts and walked down to the wall. My wife Thuy, who was born in Vietnam, accompanied me (photo above left).
These people in DC are dangerous, and we the people need to stand up to these attempts to intimidate and abuse us.

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Friday, October 11, 2013

Cooler Surrealism

Obama "Happy That Cooler Heads at Least Seem To Be Prevailing in the House" - Reason 24/7 : Reason.com:

This "cooler heads" comment was up at the top of CNN yesterday. It just seems completely surreal to me that a president whose position is "I won't negotiate", then says "I'll negotiate AFTER I get an extension with nothing attached", comes out with this "cooler heads" thing relative to the people he would actually be negotiating with.

The House is the origin of all budget bills. Budgets required negotiation, and we are required to have one by law. Only we DON'T!  So the Republican majority in the House that was just as "duly elected" as BO has only the lever of the Budget to use, and BO and the Democrats refuse to have one, so we have shutdowns!

The ONLY choice Republicans have is to be completely irrelevant, or use these few levers!

Would somebody that was actually going to negotiate come out with the "cooler heads" comment against the very people he is supposedly now going to negotiate with?

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The Creation of Pseudo Meaning

When liberals became scolds:

Good column by George Will. Without Religion and the "Chain of Life and Being" that says that the created universe is meaningful because God has a purpose for it, meaning is extremely hard to impossible to come by.

So what we have is human manufactured pseudo meaning, such as the assassination of JFK was meaningful in that it showed how horrible the "Right Wing" in America had become.

Got that? Lee Harvey Oswald had emigrated to the USSR and just a few months prior to the assassination, he had met with the KGB in Mexico City volunteering to be a spy. He was so hapless that they didn't even want to deal with him. He was as much a communist as any ideology, but he was primarily just a kook.

JFK may as well as fallen down in the bathtub, but of course that was unacceptable to the left, so they manufactured a very false meaning, but that is pretty much the standard for leftward thinking.

No God, no truth, no meaning, no peace, no morality. Nietzsche was right about the result if God is gone, WILL is all that remains, and the strongest WILL to create, dominate, propagandize, etc are what remains. For what purpose? To serve those with the strongest will.

Right now, in the age of BO, God seems to be losing and The Will of BO seems to be winning, but my allegiance is still to God. It looked a lot more grim at Calvary, but he won that one.

I disagree that liberals BECAME scolds at the point of JFK, that is one "another fine example". FDR was a huge scold, Wilson and Teddy were at least just as bad. "Progressivism" may as well be called "scoldism", because they are ALWAYS sure that they know better! I mean, don't the laws of physics and evolution guarantee that things will always get better?


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Thursday, October 10, 2013

Force, Syria, Negotiation, Debt Ceiling

Politics, Power, and Preventive Action » Would the Syria Deal Be a Coercive Diplomacy Success?:


Ok, which is it? Do deadlines and threats bring about negotiation or do they not??

Here is Jay Carney:

It was the credible threat of U.S. military action that led to the opening of this diplomatic avenue. There is no other explanation behind this rather remarkable change of position by the Syrians and no other explanation behind the decision of the Russians to seek a diplomatic resolution to the problem of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile…I think there’s no question based on what the Russians have said, and the Syrians said, and what we know that the credible threat of U.S. military action precipitated this. And I’m not sure what other source you ascribe it to or it could possibly be.  I don’t think there any doubt that this credible threat of force has produced this change in dynamic.
Seems pretty straightforward ... yet there we have Liar in Chief BO asserting the exact opposite in negotiations with congress. It sounds like they don't have a clue, or their lies have become so common that they can't keep them straight.  

I'd argue that COMPETENCE tends to bring about negotiation. If the administration had thought of brokering a deal through Putin without the abortive "Red Line" debacle, then that would likely have happened and BO and Clown Kerry might even have stumbled into looking like "statesmen". 

We haven't had a budget for 4 years, for the past 3, since losing the House, BO has completely failed to negotiate. Much in the same vein as "red line", the "No talks under threat" line has put BO in a spot that were he not a media favorite it would be impossible to save face from. Congress didn't threaten to bomb the WH, they said that after YEARS of not negotiating, you have to do it prior to this deadline. 

I believe every human knows that "deadlines, being under the gun, etc" DO push individuals and organizations to get busy, especially with hard things. Is that not completely obvious? 

The Debt Ceiling is a DEADLINE, not a "threat" ... of Congress taking some action. It is completely INSANE that CNN even prints such drivel and some percentage of people believe that not raising a debt ceiling is a "threat". 

BO is a "Community Organizer", NOT a politician. These two elements make that obvious. In order to understand what a Community Organizer is you need to read Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals", or at least my summary of same. Here and Here ... 

Alinsky dedicated "Rules" to Lucifer, and our current president venerates Alinsky. Need more really be said??



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Kneeling at the Barrycades, Yes We Cone!

Mark Steyn: Manning the Barrycades of punitive liberalism | government, budget, shutdown - Opinion - The Orange County Register:

It is a crying shame that the MSM cannot appreciate and shields the public to the best of their ability from the irony of a president with a name selected for the moment of his getting aid as a foreign student 20's being so fake and small minded as to close an open monument at greater expense than leaving it as it was.

"Normandy wasn't officially open either". Uttered by a WWII vet to the hapless Park Gestapo. Priceless! Indeed ... the kind of spirit that BO and his minions are golfing tirelessly to stamp out.

The true motto of the BO administration is not really "Change"!  but rather "Kneel"!

Of course as the feds ventilate some poor whacked out woman last week we see some difference in the ideas of "use of force". Black kid on top of you wailing on you with blows and swearing he is going to kill you??  Better just take it and hope for the best. Woman driving around in a car playing Barricade Bumper?? Extreme prejudice baby!

My personal shutdown favorites are the "Barrycades", "Spitehouse" and "Yes We Cone!"


Good Steyn column, take the time.

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Wednesday, October 09, 2013

Raise My Debt Limit

Raise My Debt Limit | Power Line:

Worth taking the time to watch ... puts the arrogance of the "just give us a clean CR" in some perspective. This was put out at the time of one of the other "serious crisis".  At the end it shows the relationship to the US government. What it doesn't adequately show is how many generations we are passing the buck to ... the little girl's kids and grandkids are going to be debt slaves.

Oh, but why can't we just keep borrowing???

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Thou Shalt Not Covet (Scalia)

In Conversation With Antonin Scalia -- New York Magazine:

The man is crazy intelligent and crazy direct. I shall not covet his gifts! (keep repeating)

It is long, but very very well worth the time. For me, his discussion on Heaven, Hell and the Devil is the best part. The reporter is shocked that an intelligent person would believe at all, let alone ADMIT that he believes. One of the benefits of lifetime appointment!

Other than that part, I loved this:
Had you already arrived at originalism as a philosophy? 
I don’t know when I came to that view. I’ve always had it, as far as I know. Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn’t change. I mean, the notion that the Constitution should simply, by decree of the Court, mean something that it didn’t mean when the people voted for it—frankly, you should ask the other side the question! How did they ever get there?
Indeed, if words don't have meaning, why bother to write anything down?

Monday, October 07, 2013

The Crime of Existence

Stephen Hawking’s Warped Moral Calculus | National Review Online:

The Jews have been a thorn in the side of much of the world for millennia. The original "chosen people" ... Jewish exceptionalism is very old.

Partially due to the innate nature of Jewishness, and partially due to the "Boy Named Sue" factor of being constantly hated, there is good reason for their difference and distinction.They learn multiple languages as part of a standard education to be able to read and understand their religious texts ... ancient and modern Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Yiddish, etc along with the multiple languages associated with being a "nation without a homeland" for nearly 2K years. Typical family members would have Russian, English, German, Spanish, etc language roots.

One of the best predictors of someone being good at writing software is being multi-lingual. It certainly helps in world commerce and general brain flexibility. On top of that, having a strong religious base for thousands of years has held the Jewish culture in good stead.

So people hate the Jews, and apparently Stephen Hawking is no exception.

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Stealth Ranger Black River Falls, Spooner








After being more tied down than a retired Moose ought be caring for dogs this past week, I flew the coop for a whirlwind tour over to Black River Falls in WI on Friday to see what the Ranger could do on some more extensive trails. It was so much fun Marla and I headed N for a Bona Casa feed with Dad and some Cherry Nut Cake, followed by a day of riding the "long straight trails" up N of Spooner as far as Gordon.

Impressions Positive:

  1. It STILL rides like a dream
  2. The suspension takes out all that old "don't let me hit a hole with one wheel" fight that I remember from driving the Jeep CJ-7 off the road. Very independent independent suspension, hitting something nasty with one wheel is a real "ho-hum". 
  3. The Clark and Jackson County trail system in WI is INCREDIBLE. If you have UTV or an ATV, just get your butt over there! 
  4. Whatever the manual says about "low range is the primary range", it doesn't cut it on trails like those ... primary speed 15-25MPH. It is too much RPM and howl at anything over 20 in low, so unless I'm going to poke along, it's HIGH!
  5. AWD vs 2WD (turf mode) is a bit of a tough decision. Slightly more speed in 2WD and REALLY nice on blacktop since neither differential is locked. OTOH, in sandy banked corers where you want to be 
  6. It will go very close to 50, but 30 is "happy cruise", 40 is "high speed cruise". It is easy understand how people keep going for more power, speed, comfort, etc ... but I mostly want to run things that are more twisty, so 15-25 is more my standard speed range. 
  7. The Spooner and N area railroad bed trail system is like an interstate ... 3-400 mile days would be easy even in the 800, in a 900 or 1000 RZR, one could be screaming along at 80 and have a 500+ mile day ... providing you didn't hit anything or anyONE. 
  8. WI certainly caters to ATVers! Lots of accessible watering holes, fuel stops and dining. 
  9. Having a full cab and roll up windows + heat on cold rainy days tends to get a few "longing glances" from people on out in the open ATVs!
Impressions Neutral / Negative:

  1. It is easy to understand why people complain about the heat and the noise in the 800s. In our case, the heat is really not an issue since if it really nice out, we will be using the boat or the motorcycles. The noise is "relative" ... these things are where sleds were in '90. Torque converters work extremely well and are efficient, but they have belt noise. I'm sure moving the running gear under the back like the 900 definitely helps. If I was going to primarily use this thing every day on roads or be a long straight trail rider, then  reducing noise would be a big deal. As it is, I'm happy with it. 
  2. Turn signals are high on my list of things to add. Even if not required, I'm reaching for them all the time, and they ARE required in IA for road use, plus some other states, so I'll be going that way. 
  3. The fuel gauge is paranoid. I carry a 2.5gal flatpack for reserve. We went on "blinking empty" about 40 mi before we got gas. Put in 7.4 gal in the 9.0 gal tank. I fueled at "a little less than half" indicated in BRF, put in a little under 3 gal. 


It was a fun weekend ... something like 200mi of riding, no problems. Lots of rain and cool, but it "keeps the riff raff off the trail!".

Reality, Politics, The Left

The Emerging Offer | National Review Online:

Good little article covering the current REAL negotiations between the House and Senate. Worth a read, some thoughts:

  • POLITICS is part of the reality of a Democratically elected Republic. The budget is to be a MAJOR part of those politics. 
  • The solution to politics is Dictatorship ... which is what BO, Reid, and the MSM want. A "Clean CR" simply writes the House out of the process. The people that voted to elect a Republican House would have NO VOICE, and according to the Constitution they ought to have at least a 25% voice ... 50% BO, 25% each for House and Senate ... SCOTUS being "the referee" 
  • Most sane people hate politics ... it is like not wanting to be a mortician, or a sewer guy, or a used car salesman, etc. But diversity of thought being a reality, SOMEBODY wants to do every distasteful job  ... and in the back of our minds we know that dead bodies piling up or having a dictator are the outcomes of going with our collective "common sense" ... or at least we USED TO on the politics. 
  • Were the House in Democrat hands and the WH in Republican, the media would be LOUDLY making the point that the Democrat Majority (in this example) was every bit as much elected as the President and in fact, since there were MORE OF THEM, and they were "the underdog", maybe a bit more! 

If people ever come to their senses, the kind of reporting in this column might be a good alternative to the current general drivel ... it is pretty much just reporting on what is happening. Doesn't tell you how to think about it, doesn't try to make it dramatic ... "just the facts" like old Joe Friday.

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Thursday, October 03, 2013

Perspective: Thirty, Fourteen hundred, Four Hundred Thousand ...

The Meteorologist’s Meltdown: Eric Holthaus on Deciding to Quit Flying - The Daily Beast:

I grew up in a fundamentalist church that believed that the earth being 6K years or so old was pretty much a tenet of christian faith. Believe it or burn.

So in High School I got to do a lot deeper thinking on ice ages, continental drift, carbon dating, number of impact craters on the moon, etc. The mantra of the day from science was "human perspectives are WAY too short" ... Carl Sagan loved to do the "billions and billions" a few years later and the time that humans had been on the earth was a few seconds if the life of earth was compressed to a year.

My how "science" has changed. Now 30 years, or even 1,400 years are VERY significant. Really? We know that 500K years ago the south pole was at least very nearly ice free, since that is the extent of the Vostok Ice Cores.

Polar bears are supposed to be able to evolve from grizzly bears in something like 100-150K years ... so, they lived through the last really big warming period about 125K years ago, a couple degrees warmer than now.

As always, I'm more worried about what happens AFTER those temp spikes ... no matter what causes them! I have a hard time understanding the apocalyptic thought process that gets one to stop flying on the basis of cyclical planetary worming that happens every 100-150K years with or without man doing anything.

It seems to be a short term perspective that makes young earthers look positively "big picture" in comparison.



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Shutdown Theatre

http://touch.humanevents.com/humanevents/#!/entry/shutdown-theater-update,524da046da27f5d9d02cc3e4

Good little summary of just how stinky his Royal Highness BO really is. There was a damned good reason for checks and balances!

Maybe Presidents Are Supposed to Lead?

There Are Those Who Say Lord Obama Has No Responsibility for Gov't Shutdown - Hit & Run : Reason.com:

We know the actual algorithm used by the media is much simpler ... Republicans are at fault. When there were shutdowns in the '80s they were Reagan's fault, when there was near shutdown under HW Bush, it was his fault. When there was a shutdown under Clinton, it was Gingrich's fault ... and etc.

In the early 2Ks it was even very legitimate to hold the government hostage on the debt ceiling ... no less an authority than BO himself voted against raising the debt ceiling with a lot of sanctimony on the evils of deficits. It is fortunate that it is metaphysically impossible for Democrats to by hypocrites!

Converting the House of Representatives responsibility into mailing in "Clean CRs" would seem to grab more people as something rather odd, but apparently we have slipped a very long way.

Anyway, the column is worth a read.

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When Government Shutdowns Were Common

Shutdowns have been frequent tools of police. Just ask Reagan. - The Washington Post:

Ah yes, the roaring '80s, a time when government shutdowns happened very regularly due to the intransigence of the the evil Ronald Reagan.

Amazingly, the media somehow realized that the power of the purse was a very legitimate power of congress and never suggested that it was somehow petulant to use it to shape government policy. Imagine that!

Not covered in this article is "The Boland Amendment" a direct challenge to Reagan's right to conduct foreign policy! Wow, wouldn't doing something like that with BO in office be considered AWFUL ... I mean, he "won re-election".

Strangely, Reagan winning every state save losing MN by a small margin was never considered as a "mandate". The House had been in Democratic hands since the 50's and it was assumed would always be ... since "all politics were local" and people voted for Democrats to bring home the bacon and for Republicans to keep the pig alive. "The loyal opposition" was completely honorable in those days, and even manufacturing likely unconstitutional tactics like the Boland Amendment (they repealed it before it made it to the SCOTUS).

How far we have fallen.

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Wednesday, October 02, 2013

Why Help Kids With Cancer? There Are Union Gov Workers on Furlough!

Harry Reid, the Gift That Keeps On Giving | Power Line:

The PL guys forget that over 90% of Americans will ever see this.

"Why should the House get to pick and choose"? Why indeed ... because the House of Representatives by law has the main power of the purse if we operated under the Constitution, which we HAVEN'T been for four years now! Thus the "Continuing Resolution" and "Debt Ceiling" debacles. There IS a process to negotiate this ... it is just that his Highness BO and his Co-conspirators in the Senate have illegally failed to follow it.

Kid with cancer? Who the hell cares, there are government workers that are big Democrat supporters on furlough!! Let the damned kids die!

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Amoral Atheism

A Response to Richard Dawkins | RealClearPolitics:

Short, well reasoned, well supported and well written. Just read it.

My line has always been: If you have to be dropped on somebody's doorstep, naked, blindfolded and gagged with $10K taped all over your body, and you can pick one moral / religious aspect of the person owning the property, do you want to show up on an atheists doorstep, a gays, a democrat, an Amish? ... or do you have another brilliant idea?

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