TP: Think By Numbers

Obama’s Goldilocks Approach to Terrorism [Updated] | Power Line:

I suppose those old paint by numbers pictures may just be a figment of my youth -- they put numbers on little parts of the picture that indicated what colors you ought to use.

TP (The Party-D) through their own instruction and especially given the megaphone of the media does much the same with the minds of the easily led. The linked article gives a few  examples which I'll touch on, but then continue for a bit. My sample will be minor -- really the whole landscape of modern thought is carefully and oppressively created and numbered by TP.

• Terrorism -- NOT a serious problem. It is like "random crime". NOT to be worried about! (Pay no attention to that young woman just killed!) 
• Climate Change -- SERIOUS PROBLEM -- everyone needs to get wildly excited about this! RIGHT NOW ... why, in 100 years, it could be as much as a degree or two warmer!! ( the fact that it hasn't moved in 18 years is meaningless) 
• Vaccinations -- Anti-Science! ... er, well now it is. Pay no attention to Marin County, noted liberal enclave having vaccination rates like Somalia ...
• GMOs? Now THAT is some science not to be trusted! Oh, and fracking isn't safe no matter what science might say -- get your mind right!  TP CHOOSES which science is "settled" and which is not. 
• Oh, 50 million lives lost to malaria due to DDT ban? Never mind -- those are black lives that DON'T matter, just like the 6K young black men that shoot each other in our TP socially engineered inner cities every year! 
• 18 Trillion and debt and rising -- No biggie. Remember back prior to 2009 when any deficit at all ... including the W $175 B in '07 was a HUGE issue? Wonder what changed? 
• "1 out of 5 women raped" ... this is a MONSTER issue, it even needs BO to break into the Grammy's to cover it, of course it is completely false, but see Global Warming -- trust in TP!  
• The US is out of oil! ... Oh wait, it has a lot of oil -- and it is all due to the policies of TP! 
• The Keystone Pipeline is bad, Fracking is bad! Oil is bad! ... oh wait, TP is good! You might have to kinda fudge that mental square ... oil and everything to get it is bad, but $2 gas is good and due to the TP policies -- "somehow". 

If you listen to NPR and follow some right wing media, this is pretty much what the mental landscape looks like -- including HUGE gaps like 50M and 6K a year lives lost that nobody talks about!  TP presents the pieces of the picture they want to present, AND tells you what to think about what they choose for you to see.

It is easy to understand why TP believers hate Fox News, Talk Radio and Blogs so much!

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Entitlement, It's Not the Plays Called, It's the Attitude Created

George Will: The harm incurred by a mushrooming welfare state - The Washington Post:

My analysis of NFC Championship loss by my beloved Packers is if you play so conservative that your DBs are sliding down with 5 min left to play, you deserve to lose. It isn't so much the conservative play calling as it the attitude in the team that is engendered by the calls -- they stop playing to win and start playing not to lose. Their mental energy is focused on NOT losing -- which is like NOT thinking about a pink elephant. Just as you immediately think of a pink elephant, the team becomes focused on LOSS, which is very commonly just what happens.

So to to the attitude engendered by "entitlement" in the US:

Transfers of benefits to individuals through social welfare programs have increased from less than 1 federal dollar in 4 (24 percent) in 1963 to almost 3 out of 5 (59 percent) in 2013. In that half-century, entitlement payments were, Eberstadt says, America’s “fastest growing source of personal income,” growing twice as fast as all other real per capita personal income. It is probable that this year a majority of Americans will seek and receive payments.

The explosion of "welfare" programs in the last 50 years as turned America from a vibrant merit based nation focused on growth, advancement, success and the future, to a declining debt ridden nation where over 50% of the people receive some sort of transfer payment and the exorbitant tax rates to pay for only a portion of the largess are paid only by the top earners. Never before have so few been so burdened so a corrupt political party could destroy the will to work of the majority of a once great nation!

More than twice as many households receive “anti-poverty” benefits than receive Social Security or Medicare. Between 1983 and 2012, the population increased by almost 83 million — and people accepting means-tested benefits increased by 67 million. So, for every 100-person increase in the population there was an 80-person increase in the recipients of means-tested payments.

Why do we do such things? Because 70-80% of those 67 million people vote for TP (The Party -D)!! This is vote farming! Much as we fill the news and march in droves over the lost lives of a couple black youth killed while resisting arrest, but totally ignore the 6K black youths killed in black on black violence every year, the cost for converting a nation to abject dependency is no issue all all. WHAT MATTERS are votes for TP!

... the structure of U.S. government spending “has been completely overturned within living memory,” resulting in the “remolding of daily life for ordinary Americans under the shadow of the entitlement state.” In two generations, the American family budget has been recast: In 1963, entitlement transfers were less than $1 out of every $15; by 2012, they were more than $1 out of every $6.

The government is great, the government is good, we thank it for our daily bread. God, fathers, and the family have been replaced by the "benevolent" government as being the source of bread. TP has succeeded in creating a nation of dependent children (many of advanced age) who are beholden to it for their very sustenance.

Like conservative play calling or NOT focusing on a pink elephant, human nature is sickeningly predictable. The primary cost is destruction of the winning attitude -- the destruction of the spirit of a people :

“... the issue of welfare is not what it costs those who provide it but what it costs those who receive it.” As a growing portion of the population succumbs to the entitlement state’s ever-expanding menu of temptations, the costs, Eberstadt concludes, include a transformation of the nation’s “political culture, sensibilities, and tradition,” the weakening of America’s distinctive “conceptions of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and self-advancement,” and perhaps a “rending of the national fabric.” As a result, “America today does not look exceptional at all.”

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The Pure Liberal Heart

A Year of Liberal Double Standards | National Review Online:

An excellent column pointing out a lot of the current crop of constant liberal double standards, but also taking on the important question of "Why?", especially in this quote:

If you work from the dogmatic assumption that liberalism is morally infallible and that liberals are, by definition, pitted against sinister and — more importantly — powerful forces, then it’s easy to explain away what seem like double standards. Any lapse, error, or transgression by conservatives is evidence of their real nature, while similar lapses, errors, and transgressions by liberals are trivial when balanced against the fact that their hearts are in the right place.

The whole column is well worth the time. Nothing really "new" to regular readers of this blog, but certainly very well done -- there is a reason Goldberg is editor of NR and I'm unknown!

In pretty much any place at time, we like to view ourselves in a somewhat heroic manner if there is any way at all we can rationalize that view. Since humans are rationalizing rather than rational creatures, we are almost always pretty darned good at seeing ourselves in a heroic positive light, and that goes at least double for the dominant religion of the day -- it is in a position to regularly heap accolades unto itself and opprobrium onto any that dare oppose it.

Today's dominant religion is Secular Humanism that decided to steal the term "liberal" from classic liberals -- those that believed in the liberty of the individual, property rights, small government, rule of law, etc.. Those in power get to do such things.

A very beneficial aspect of Christianity once being the dominant religion was that it put government in a subsidiary place and constantly pointed out that people WERE NOT supposed to be self satisfied -- in fact, people were supposed to be penitent and seeking redemption, seeing their work as a calling from God to be constantly improved along with their behavior and their caring for others. Your heart was never really "in the right" -- it was in fact "exceedingly wicked", and only by Grace, prayer and availing yourself of the sacraments and holy preaching could it stay in communion with the truly pure heart of Christ.

Secular Humanism is a far more smug calling. If you sign up for it, your heart is by definition "in the right place". I believe that the "bravery" sense of liberals that Goldberg mentions is the knowledge in their souls that they have sold out their eternal soul to bow to the graven image of the secular state, so their soul keenly feels that sense of eternal danger -- so they HOPE that they are "getting away with it". Being liberal might have somewhat the same feel as "Sr Skip Day".

The standard of God is a single standard. The standards of man are always at least double -- running down the endless litany of "liberal" double standards is always easy, because if it wasn't for double standards, they would have no standards at all!

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Peak Left?

Next Up in America: The Liberal Retreat - The American Interest:

I VERY highly recommend reading the attached article. I FERVENTLY hope it can be true -- that we can significantly turn the corner without things being much worse or even an ending of the US as we now think we know it.

I would love it to be so, but I think there are a few things that must be soberly considered:

• The political gains since BO have been in midterms. The bulk of the true low information and complete wards of the state voters don't come out in those elections. 
• Even Reagan failed to actually REDUCE government -- he slowed the growth, but he did not reduce it. 
• 40% of Americans now get over 50% of their income from some form of government transfer. Over 50% get a significant amount of their income via transfer. Those statistics and trends are not sustainable and must be changed for there to be an ACTUAL turn away from the left ditch. 
• The top income quintile now provides over 90% of net US tax revenue. The 2nd highest quartile provides a bit, but the bottom 3, 60% of the population are net takers vs makers relative to tax revenue. People have a tendency to vote where their bread is buttered --- thus, smaller government is at somewhere between a 60% - 80% current disadvantage. 
• 90%+ of government workers including teachers and university professors are left leaning Democrats who contribute millions to their employer / party via AFSCME, plus run the IRS, run any campaign contribution policing, and of course indoctrinate our kids that "left is best". We are perilously close to an effective single party run state. 
• Maybe worst of all, people like to believe what they like to believe. An ACTUAL change of direction is going to be painful -- we have all been embezzled to the tune of $120T in unfunded entitlements + $18T in on the books debt ... something like a $138T hole. I covered this here. 

I could go on, but the bottom line is that the "soul of the nation" has largely been turned from the basic principles of America -- a highly moral and religious people, strong work ethic, strong belief in individual responsibility and initiative, belief in ACTUAL Equal Protection (as in no "progressive" income tax), etc, etc to very much a "Statist" view -- highly centralized and powerful state with impacts on all aspects of day to day life, strong redistributionist / leveling economic policy and maybe worst of all, the State taking over as the center of life vs God / religion / local community.

Until we ACTUALLY make a turn, what might look like a "turn from peak" is really just a pause with no progress away from the abyss and often just a reduction in our headlong rush to totalitarian state control.

We must make an ACTUAL TURN away from the leftward totalitarian slide if we truly want to make this time to be seen from the future as "Peak Left".

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A Nice Simple Diagram of Liberal Inconsistency

The Law of Supply and Demand In One Venn Diagram | Power Line:

Replace "Krugman" with "liberals" and it just about covers it. It is much worse than this picture -- liberals are consistently inconsistent because they believe that they can take all sorts of actions in the real world and somehow pick and choose the results -- often claiming they will achieve the exact opposite result of what their actions are guaranteed to achieve in the real world. Or, they know what they are doing and simply want to create a dependent voter population that will keep them in power.

Thus, on one hand they claim that the ONLY effect of raising the minimum wage will be to help minimum wage workers by giving them more per hour. However, when the price of something is raised (labor), the demand for it WILL go down -- the only question is how much, which economists attempt to answer by "elasticity". Demand for cigarettes was often used as an example when I was taking economics, however there isn't anything that is perfectly inelastic -- it would have to have no substitutes and all consumers would have to have infinite wealth relative to the price of the commodity -- ie. be ABLE to pay whatever the price rose to.

But I digress. The fast food market is quite elastic and there are lots of substitutes -- technology being the obvious one, less people eating more expensive fast food, etc. Raising the minimum wage always reduces the number of people working -- a win-win for Democrats, since both the minimum wage workers and the unemployed tend to vote Democrat. BUT, the fiction given to the public is that raising the minimum wage will not cause more unemployment, when it is a given that it will.

Which as the chart points out, might mean that people that don't understand economics are fooled -- but the flip side means that can't be true. Cap and trade argues that "supply and demand works!" -- that by raising the price of using carbon, the demand for carbon will fall.

So if liberals were reality based, they would say that they are fine with the economy being vastly slowed by taxes and fees on carbon, because they care about warming in 100 years more than they do about jobs, income, etc today.

On the raising the minimum wage they would admit they are fine with a LOT less people having jobs as long as a few can have higher wages.. Or they would admit that they are absolutely fine with the lowering of productivity and national wealth via high taxes on corporate and personal income, because having everyone's standard of living being generally lowered by redistributing income so they are more government dependent is perfectly in line with their strategy to be a one party socialist state!

The left is well on it's way to achieving it's goals -- inconsistency and force are the two cornerstones of leftward thought.
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Liberals Discover They May Be Human

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-frimer/liberals-conservatives-conformity_b_5697849.html

We begin with a liberal hypothesis of why conservatives "are the way they are":

The way I saw it, this slavish obedience to authority and tradition on the part of conservatives was the true source of the culture war between liberals and conservatives over foreign war, abortion, same-sex marriage, gun control, and racial inequality. They way I saw it, conservatives clung to old, near-sighted ways of thinking and fell in line with the dictates of the "man in charge." If only conservatives would think for themselves -- like liberals do -- the war would be over and we could get on with life, governance, and progress. Or so I thought.

Liberals do a lot of studies trying to prove that conservatives are somehow "inferior" -- not able to understand the facts, not able to question authority, fearful, etc. The list is long. When you are CERTAIN that you are right and in fact superior, but know that you are an extremely nice and caring person, then there MUST be some explanation for why the people you hate are so bad!!

The conservative view is really that BOTH (and all) sides are made up of inferior humans, and understanding that -- especially in relation to God, is the beginning of wisdom, a pearl of far greater price than intelligence, knowledge, or any other human characteristic like beauty or charisma.

Perhaps we have the merest inking of the beginning of liberal wisdom (oxymoron?) here:

If the two sides equally support obedience to their own authorities, how had I come to believe that conservatives are the ones that favor obedience to authority? We wondered if the asymmetry lay not in attitudes toward obedience, but in the nature of authority. Perhaps authorities tend to be conservative, and people know it.

This is what we found in a subsequent study. Americans completed a survey in which they named authorities (e.g., police officer) then indicated whether they suspected the authority figure was liberal, moderate, or conservative. People perceived authorities to be conservative. Bosses tend to vote Republican -- or at least most people suspect they do. My suspicion is that the stereotype is accurate: authorities really tend to be conservative.

I wonder if this is because conservatives are especially good at or motivated to gain positions of authority. Or perhaps gaining authority over others changes our ideology, making the boss conservative. 

We see that being wrong about the "conservatives can't think for themselves and are slaves to authority" stereotype didn't make the author any less confident in liberal stereotypes, and quickly ready to jump to the "authorities really tend to be conservative" view.

A short reading of Hayek "The Fatal Conceit" would clue her in that the smarter and better educated one is the greater their tendency to believe that "man is the measure of all things", "man is infinitely perfectible", "humans create human systems like capitalism, socialism, etc through reason", etc. In other words, the more likely they are to be "liberal" -- so the real world is the opposite of her stereotype. But, as in her original stereotype, that has never given an intelligent liberal a moments pause in being less certain of their next stereotype!

Humans are superb creators of all manner of stereotypes, narratives, models and myths to make "sense" of an infinite, complex and significantly unpredictable universe. "In general" (like all human rules, NOT 100%), the smarter you are, the greater your tendency to hubris and narcissism, with RELIGION, especially Christianity, being the great wild card transcendent model in history.

When super intelligent people have faith in an infinitely more intelligent God, especially if that God has died for them, it tends to engender some level of HUMILITY. Again, they are still human, so it is at best imperfect, but it adds another level that needs to be checked before "I'm SURE that I understand it all THIS time"!

She has mostly figured out that conservatives are likely not sub-human, but she has still not figured out that "Ideas Have Consequences" (another excellent book) ... the models we choose (or choose us), our "World View", has a profound effect on all we do, and when groups select an inferior World View, especially nation sized groups, the results are almost always disastrous.

Modern Western civilization was largely built because for a brief time (200 years), the majority of leaders were God believing to at least the Deist level, and generally Christians -- so they had a lot more understanding of the transcendent concept of wisdom, therefore taking a much more humble and reasonable view of what was possible and thus succeeding!

TP (The Party) as Medieval Indulgence

Liberals: Exempt from Scrutiny | National Review Online:

 "We are told that the Kennedys, the Pelosis, the Kerrys, and others like them are noble because they vote against their class interests. But they really do not; they vote for them. Liberalism is now the domain of the elite, and antithetical to the aspirations of the upper middle class that lacks the capital and tastes of the 0.1 percent. The higher the taxes, the more numerous the regulations, the greater the redistribution, so all the more the elite liberal distances himself from those less cool who breathe down his neck, and the less guilty he feels about the growing divide between him and the poor he worries about, but never worries about enough to associate with.

Liberalism professes a leftwing ideology, but these days it has absolutely no effect on the lives of those who most vehemently embrace it. In other words, being liberal is professionally useful and psychologically better than Xanax, but we need not assume any more that it is a serious belief."

Good column that covers some of the specifics of Kerry, Elizabeth Warren, Paul Krugman and others -- as I've often said, you CAN'T really be a hypocrite when you don't truly claim to believe in anything!

Little long for the benefit, but generally worth it.

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Fixing the WoW (War on Women)

Equal pay? Not on the basketball court – USATODAY.com:

I'm quite certain that BO is way out ahead of me on this one, after all, he not only cares far more deeply about women, but is a much bigger basketball fan than I am.

Certainly all the events and speeches and the touting of the "77%" number on "Equal Pay Day" -- one of those quasi holidays that THE PARTY runs to get the membership out and keep them touting the "flavor of the day", are going to be aghast at pay discrepancies in the the 200x vicinity!

There can be no question where BO is on this issue! I can't imagine him sitting down and enjoying another basketball game until this grossly unfair situation for women is remedied! Fixing this is simple and straightforward:

1. Immediately mandate 100% pay parity for all professional basketball players. This is simple and easy and there is no possible justification for allowing this clear case of blatant discrimination to continue An intelligent guy like BO can maybe suggest the proper percentage adjustments, but since male basketball players are obviously horribly overpaid (more than CEOs! and most CEOs "don't even got game!"), something like 80% cut in salaries for the males and then a 50x or so increase for women players should be in the general vicinity of fair. (no doubt BO can appoint a large "blue ribbon commission" meeting in all sorts of nice destinations for a few years to hone the numbers).
   
2. Most likely this is still not going to be economically sustainable, so it seems to me that we need "affirmative market action". Perhaps a digital device that tracks basketball viewing could be required, so that in order to watch the NBA, a viewer must first spend an equal time watching the WNBA! I can see this kind of solution providing a huge assist in achieving the kind of results that all right thinking Americans (especially BO) are in favor of! 

Starting to achieve a truce in this ghastly WoW in some relatively simple areas like sport that while popular, are not cornerstones of the economy is a great way to make real progress in an obviously important area of the push to fairness!

W-NASCAR, W-MLB, W-NFL -- the future looks bright for equality in American sport!

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How Leftists Fly

GOP Crocodile Tears Over Jobs | RealClearPolitics:

Since natural laws don't apply on the left, they simply grab their bootstraps and pull ... and then they fly! If you don't believe they fly, you are obviously a "denier" and should perhaps have your taxes audited!

See, the Republicans are complaining that the CBO says that raising the minimum wage will cost 500K jobs. They believe in the old time economics where each person employed has to bring in enough money to cover their wages, government mandated taxes, possible government mandated benefits or fines like BOcare, PLUS add enough profit to the bottom line to make it worthwhile to hire them.

In the modern Democrat universe however that is "foolish". Even though we have been following their policies since '09, and really '07 when they took over congress, we have 8 million LESS people employed than we did in '07!!!

But here is how they propose to "improve the economy" via the bootstraps from here:

The first thing to do is extend the long-term unemployment benefits that expired at the end of last year. According to the CBO -- whose word, apparently, is now holy writ among Republicans -- this simple measure would add 200,000 jobs, perhaps as many as 300,000. 

Then ... 

The CBO has estimated that canceling the across-the-board reductions in federal spending known as "sequestration" would preserve 900,000 jobs a year. 

and top it all off ...

That gives us more than 1 million jobs to replace the 500,000 lost from hiking the minimum wage. But Republicans wouldn't want to stop there. To maximize employment, putting as many people to work as possible, the GOP should obviously begin designing a new economic stimulus package, much like the stimulus Obama convinced Congress to approve five years ago. 

According to the CBO, the $800 billion stimulus -- much maligned by Republicans as a waste of money -- created or saved an average of 1.6 million jobs per year from 2009 through 2012. Now that most of the money is spent and the impact of the stimulus is waning, clearly it's time to give job-creation another boost.

Got that??? We have EIGHT MILLION LESS people employed than we did at the top of the last cycle, with millions more americans in the workforce, at least partially due to the policies that Democrats think are "helpful", and the way to get more jobs is to just spend more and more government money! You CAN fly by pulling on your bootstraps!! 

If only Democrats would become so convinced of their wisdom that they would jump off a cliff tugging on their bootstraps one by one until somebody had a "learning moment"!

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Nature and Neurosurgery

CARSON: A physician's view on the sanctity of life - Washington Times:

Dr Ben Carson is another of those cases (like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Condoleeeza Rice, etc) of a brilliant self-reliant black person that you are never going to hear utter "some people just hate me because I'm black") like the illustrious BO did just the other day. No, the entire media and the Democratic party hate them for  the fact that they are willing to THINK and act on their own convictions, something that "progressives" cannot allow to stand, especially for the black. No, they must be kept on the thought plantation or destroyed by one means or another.

We have known for thousands of years that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and exceedingly wicked" (Jer 17:9), and we have even known for over 2 thousand years that there is hope in Christ Jesus. In fact, Western civilization was built and matured in the Christian Faith.

But as things got better, the West became certain that it was really their own brilliance and goodness that had made the improvements. They were born on third, certain they hit a triple. So a civilization that had been prospering "under God" decided that "God was dead" in the 20th century and 100's of millions died as the godless Nazis and Communists expressed in action the true desires of the human heart.

Even after all of that, when Reagan and Thatcher were elected, and the West turned just slightly toward God and prospered once again for a short season. The majority were not swayed, and we quickly fell back into decay, worse in America then before because we failed to realize that liberty and justice are ALWAYS under attack!

Even 9-11, an obvious point where a false religion founded by a pedophile that subjugates women on earth and preaches that the same is going to happen in the afterlife (nobody seems to care what the 72 virgins for the martyrs think of the deal) was often embraced by the left, while the attack on Christianity intensified.

The scourge of abortion is a great example of how "progressivism" takes the natural desire to nurture and care for children and transfers it to killing hundreds of thousands of the children while falling faint at the prospect of even tiny fish being damaged by projects that could benefit man. The very folks that believe ENTIRELY in "natural selection" refuse to propagate the population bearing the memes that proved the most adaptive in history, thus ceding the future to those willing to raise up future generations.

and so we die.



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Abandoned Detroit, American Preview

Modern Ruins of Abandoned Detroit (PHOTOS) - weather.com:

Maybe some folks can understand what is happening only by looking at pictures? In 1950 Detroit was a bustling city with 1.9 million people, no3 714K at the last census. Detroit was the MODEL for Unions, Big Government and Big Business -- the Democrat view of what works!

But it DOESN'T work! We KNOW it doesn't work! We can look at the pictures and see a once great and vibrant city laid waste by the very policies that BO has put in place in the US.

Why or why must we charge over this cliff with the rest of America? It seems that there is a built in time clock for once great civilizations that causes them to die as all other organisms do so that the future can gaze on the ruins.

But does the future ever learn??

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The Great Liberal Death Wish, A Night in a 2nd Class Hotel

Malcolm Muggeridge -- The Great Liberal Death Wish:

This is one of those gems that one finds on occasion that restores your perspective. It is all worth a read, but the following are a couple teaser excepts that really struck home.

The following is relative to Dostoevsky "The Devils", which I clearly need to read:

To me, it's one of the most extraordinary pieces of modern prophecy that has ever been. Especially when Peter Verkovensky says, as he does, that what we need are a few generations of debauchery - debauchery at its most vicious and most horrible - followed by a little sweet bloodletting, and then the turmoil will begin. I put it to you that this bears a rather uneasy resemblance to the sort of thing that is happening at this moment in the western world.

I wish I had read the following years ago, America is well down the road to the vast masses converting the "2nd class hotel" to a Bowery Flophouse.

...And it seems quite a toss-up whether you go back and resume full occupancy of your mortal body, or make off toward the bright glow you see in the sky, the lights of the City of God. In this limbo between life and death, you know beyond any shadow of doubt that, as an infinitesimal particle of God's creation, you are a participant in God's purpose for His creation, and that that purpose is loving and not hating, is creative and not destructive, is everlasting and not temporal, is universal and not particular. With this certainty comes an extraordinary sense of comfort and joy. 

Nothing that happens in this world need shake that feeling; all the happenings in this world, including the most terrible disasters and suffering, will be seen in eternity as in some mysterious way a blessing, as a part of God's love. We ourselves are part of that love, we belong to that scene, and only in so far as we belong to that scene does our existence here have any reality or any worth. All the rest is fantasy - -whether the fantasy of power which we see in the authoritarian states around us, or the fantasy of the great liberal death wish in terms of affluence and self-indulgence. The essential feature, and necessity of life is to know reality, which means knowing God. Otherwise our mortal existence is, as Saint Teresa of Avila said, no more than a night in a second--class hotel.

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As Clueless as Kluwe

Chris Kluwe: When They Come for You:

I wrote a long response to this one on FB, so thought I'd "dignify" this rather foolish column with some elements of that response.

First of all, the following paragraph is completely backward:

TREAT OTHERS THE WAY YOU WANT TO BE TREATED. If we do not make this the cornerstone of our society, if we do not understand that infringing on the freedom of consenting adults to live their lives (in whatever fashion that happens to be) is infringing on the freedom of us all, then we will eventually join other society, culture, and civilization that has ever existed, on the trash heap of history marked "Failure" -- brought there by conflicts those civilizations bred into being, conflicts between those lacking empathy and those desirous of freedom.

The Western civilization that makes the levels of freedom that made it possible for people to debate such issues as "gay marriage" has already committed suicide on the altar of contraception and abortion. Besides being broke, we don't have a replacement population. One can argue the future, but it will absolutely belong to those that show up. That is Muslims, Hispanic Catholics, and potentially African Christians. (one might give Mormons a charitable chance). Their positions on "gay marriage" are important for the next century, ours are really not. We already opted out of that century.

The "cornerstones of society/culture/civilization" are things that have proven true over thousands of years. Marriage, Family and the Christian Religion were key "cornerstones", along with Judaism plus Greek and Roman thought. The ONLY incidence of "gay marriage" was Nero and a few other Roman rulers proudly flaunting their immorality "because they could" and it was not coincidentally very near to the end of the Roman Empire. Nero would have laughed at the idea that it was "moral". He was powerful, and he enjoyed it, nuff said.

In the culture that WAS our civilization, mans life had meaning because it was part of an eternal meaningful existence that included transcendent values that engendered virtues. Faith, hope, love that went beyond physical and involved commitment, honor, civility and many others. Life was not only worth living, it was worth having children and believing that their future was going to be better than yours. People would never have considered it remotely "moral" to saddle future generations with massive debt. It was a world where a sneering profane diatribe by some plebeian sport figure would have never been published in any forum remotely public.

His quote of the Niemoller poem with people that disagree over re-naming the oldest of human cultural institutions to a new purpose makes brings to mind the sagacity of a couple of folks arguing Global Warming while freezing to death in a May snowstorm.

"They", already came in the form of reality. Those that believed 100% in the non-teleological survival of the fecund decided that not having kids was a highly "adaptive" course of action, thus passing the most natural of judgement on our civilization while remaining as clueless as Kluwe.

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Right Wing Mind Control

Opinion: Why terrorist bombings have been rare in U.S. in past decade - CNN.com:

From time to time we get treated to an indictment of Fox News, Talk Radio and "The Right Wing Echo Chamber" ... the absolute horror that some in the MSM feel "compelled" to carry some "fabrication" that got started in the "not-real news", oh I forgot, the "Blogsphere" is another part of that irresponsible media.

Here we have an article that has been out on CNN for a few days now explaining to us why there are relatively few bombings in the US. CNN is a "trusted news source" ... no bias there.

Of the 380 extremists indicted for acts of political violence or for conspiring to carry out such attacks in the U.S. since 9/11, 81 were able to obtain explosives or the components necessary to build a bomb, according to a study by the New America Foundation. Of those, 51 were right-wing extremists, 23 were militants inspired by al Qaeda's ideology, five have been described as anarchists and one was an environmentalist terrorist.

Wow, 51 of them were "Right Wing Extremists", wonder how THAT classification is reached?

The critical thinker ... of which the US has few remaining, would go look at "The New America" foundation, which Peter Bergen is a leader of, and which it is clear is properly named -- they don't like the "old America" much, the democratic republic one, with freedom, liberty, rule of law, and ESPECIALLY things like individual property rights.

One element that is NOT mentioned is that GUNS are more commonly used in the US by attackers, and BOMBS are more commonly used in European countries. The IMPRESSION is given that "since 9-11", explosives have been "too hard to get". Indeed. Very serviceable bombs can be made from LOTS of common household items, propane, and other chemicals easily manufactured. Has METH been controlled in the US??

Or there is black powder How to make Black Powder and how to get the parts ...

I know that "Right Wingers" are too stupid to figure out how to make a bomb, so the "better government control" MUST be the reason. Terrorists are just smarter in Europe ... so they build bombs.

I'm also not going to go into the selective nature of this article very much. Environmental Terrorists seem to like sabotage and especially arson. The animal rights types like to wreck labs and turn loose animals.

Can you list the 51 "right wing extremists" apprehended for plotting bombs in the US since 9-11? Whenever there is a SINGLE case that can somehow be labeled as "right wing", even though the important part of the perpetrator is that they are NUTS, we hear LOTS about it! Whereas when you have someone like the Unibomber -- who was totally lefty / anarchist, there is VERY little covered about him other than the NUTS part! (he was also a certifiable math genius, which is obviously why he would lean left!)

If you only read the MSM, it is pretty easy to see how one thinks as the majority of our population does. You have been carefully taught!

Beyond Gay Marriage

Opinion: Gay marriage, then group marriage? - CNN.com:

This article reinforces a couple of my  base views on "liberal/progressive" thought:

1. The "progressive / liberal" agenda never ends, one must ALWAYS ask "whats next?" They will continue to push toward an unstated "utopia" that is some foggy amalgam of zero personal responsibility but total "freedom" that lies in an undefined society somewhere between a primitive state of nature and a completely totalitarian state existence (maybe at the same time!). They are totally unsure ... but they are absolutely certain it isn't where they are now and it CAN be reached!
   
   
2. "Progressives / liberals" think like a psychotic shotgun "Doctor" that never went to med school, cracked an anatomy book, and is 100% arrogant in the face of the complexity of the human body with no concept of "First, do no harm".  Doing a removal of the brain to "cure" a hangnail would be taken on with relish and utter confidence. If the results were less than optimal, they would unabashedly say "well, we HAD to try SOMETHING"!!! while rushing off to proudly dissect the next patients heart on a complaint of bunions.
   
   The only problem with this analogy is that it is far too kind.  There are about the same number of neural connections in one of our brains as there are atoms in the universe. Human thought, consciousness, interaction and culture are so much more complex and less understood than our physical bodies and universe. Thus,  the "Doctor" analogy is WAY too simplistic by many orders of magnitude.
   
   This means that the odds of "good outcomes" as liberals randomly hack at whatever cultural artifacts currently fail to suit their wishful fantasies make my "Doctor" seem intelligent and prudent in comparison. 

The obvious is stated near the end of the article:

Redefining marriage would, by further eroding its central norms, weaken an institution that has already been battered by widespread divorce, out-of-wedlock child bearing and the like.

Well, duh! One of the favorite liberal taunts about "Gay Marriage" is "Why are you so afraid of it? It isn't going to have any effect on YOUR marriage"!! 

Indeed. Letting the "Doctor" in my analogy above work on masses of people ... say "the Jews", isn't going to "hurt me" either. Well, not physically at least -- but one would hope that adults might think just a bit deeper than the philosophical equivalent of a playground taunt. "Liberals" are really Statists, and Fascism is a form of Statism as is Communism, so we have already lost 100's of millions of people to "liberal social Doctors"  in the last century. Liberals seem appalled at losing 20 kids in Connecticut, yet the loss of 100s of millions through their random cultural experimentation gives them not a moments pause, let alone the loss of 60 million to abortion. 

As I watch the liberal agenda careen around the landscape, I struggle to maintain the maxim "never postulate malicious motives when mere stupidity can possibly suffice".  It is the randomness of their positions that forces me to wonder if they don't HAVE to actually be trying to commit the cultural / political equivalent of mass serial killing, as if my "Doctor" above took an axe to millions to "heal them". 

To wit: 

• On the environment we must be absolutely conservative on the basis of theorized warming on the smallest of even theorized warming degree potential (eg. < 1 degree in next 100 years)  -- the planet is FRAGILE!
• On things like gay marriage, economic motivations for work, the destruction of religion, etc we can be agressive and BOLD ... culture and human behavior is uncomplicated and infinitely malleable. Even though the planet with life on it has been here for billions of years, we humans with multiple cultures, at best a few thousand years old are FAR more resilient !!
• On abortion, there is no such thing as "killing", and we can abort for any reason whenever  "the woman chooses" ... and they always choose wisely! For killing animals, changing habitat, etc though we must be VERY conservative -- and increasingly it ought to be flat out prohibited!. Animal life deserves total foreknowledge and the most restrained policies imaginable. 
• "Tolerance" is critical! Especially when applied to the most INtolerant of current religions, Islam. However, in the case of Christianity, it is OK to be 100% INtolerant as a culture -- it isn't really "freedom from religion" that is sought, it is "Freedom from CHRISTIANITY"!! ... but that is just fine and gives no liberal any pause at all. 

One could go on forever, but all this basically just confirms my bedrock understanding of the liberal mind; CONSISTENCY IS NOT AN ISSUE!! 

Again, except when making the application of the hypocrisy charge against a conservative and especially a Christian! But that just proves my point!  The concept of consistency just doesn't exist in a liberal brain -- mentally, they simply lack a mirror when it comes to consistency.

Thus they choose policies and positions as a puppy chooses what to chew on, but  once selected, they hold each with the reverence of the most holy writ! 

'via Blog this'

The Right of the Left

Newt Gingrich New Hampshire Event Disrupted By Occupy Protesters:

I often hear people get all bent out of shape about "the shout shows", or "the blowhards on conservative radio" -- sometimes they say things like "why do conservatives support that stuff??".

I went to hear Newt Gingrich speak in Rochester about 15 years ago -- not long after the Republicans took over the house for the first time in over 40 years. In order to get in, my friend and I had to walk right through a loudly chanting union picket line being led by a Democrat that ran for the congressional seat here a number of times. We didn't mind, both of us solidly over 6' tall and 200 lbs, we figured they would stop and let us pass without problem, and they did. No question however that they were loudly and directly trying to intimidate people.

Fast forward close to a decade, and it is '02, a Senate debate in Rochester. Paul Wellstone and Norm Coleman are there. The crowd is of course admonished to not demonstrate and not interrupt the speakers. The Republicans followed that with the exception of some clapping and a few cheers. The Democrats??? Even people that I recognized from work or retirees were wildly booing and screaming in a manner that went beyond even what you typically see out of drunk fans at a game. They cheered with such joy for "their guy" and booed and yelled derogatory things at the Republican with such fervor you could tell that the "snake brain" was fully in charge. Their politics was a blood sport of a sort that I have no personal understanding of. I know we are not to talk about "Nazis", but the films of the Germans were the only reference point I had to that level of emotion being attached to politics.

There have been a few other cases over the years where I've observed such things -- even on the media. "Code Pink" for example disrupted both the '04 and '08 Republican conventions. I'm sure that nasty left-wing demonstrators will be heavily in evidence around, and likely breaking into this years Republican convention as well.

I checked around the web a bit. CNN has nothing on the disruption of the Gingrich event. I know when any Tea Party people at all showed up at Obama events -- even though they were quiet and I don't believe there has had to be a single arrest at one of their events,but never the less the media tended to look at the Tea Party as "threatening". This weekend was the anniversary of the AZ Giffords shooting -- we all remember that the media went INSTANTLY to WILDLY blaming Sarah Palin and the Tea Party without a single shred of evidence. They were 100% wrong, but that is so standard for the MSM, it really wasn't news.

The whole "Occupy" movement has been nothing but a stream of ill-formed obscenities aimed at some chimera of "anyone with any money" --- although most of them seem to have smart phones, laptops and other baubles, they do seem committed to a solidly slacking lifestyle. The media certainly has no trouble with them shouting, blocking things, swearing, beating drums, carrying signs that talk about violence, etc. -- from the MSM POV, there is nothing remotely threatening about OWS -- in fact, the most common comparison is "Arab Spring".

It seems that any form of "protest", including wild statements by entertainers at awards shows, shouting down people, blocking people, defacing all manner of property, burning flags, etc is somehow "positive grass-roots democracy in action" as long as it serves Democrats. 

On the other hand, Fox, Rush Limbaugh, etc -- money making media formats with really not very much actual "shouting", and certainly no profanity, calls to violence, etc are somehow "bad / dangerous / childish / liars / etc".

I truly believe that the well reasoned intellectual position of the left relative to the thoughts and speech of the "right" is "SHUT THE F**K UP!!!!" ... and they remain ever more angry that the nasty folks on the right don't just do so. 

Meanwhile, whatever they want to do -- shout down folks, try to intimidate and block people, spend billions of dollars collected by public unions for and against whatever they want, overturn elections via recall efforts ... "whatever", is completely protected and "good news".

No double standard here.

The left has a "right" to pretty much do anything they want to impose their politics from the point of view of the establishment ... the right has the "right" to remain silent, or preferably dead. 

'via Blog this'

The Mother of Truth

Inside the GOP's Fact-Free Nation | Mother Jones:

When one sees "Fact Free" and "Mother Jones" in close juxtaposition, one can be certain that a fact free screed is at hand. Anyone that has spent a couple of hours trying to get a basic flavor of rhetoric or epistemology will understand that "facts" are a rare thing indeed. There are mathematical and philosophic / logical facts -- like "red is red", but there are no scientific or political facts. In science they are all hypothesis, some reproduced by experiment many times, so outside the danger of inductive weakness, "assumed factual" -- others (and usually the ones held most dear by non-scientists) are not provable and in some cases, not even falsifiable (global warming and evolution would fall in those camps).

In all human camps, what passes for "knowledge" and "fact" is often more akin to a bedtime story than hard cold fact. Go to the neighboring tribe where the bedtime stories are different, and the "facts" are different as well. Such is the case with both the liberal and the conservative tribes, but apparently those smoking the peace pipe around the liberal campfire have forgotten the limits of their own mythology.

The article does do a great job of a short and amazingly honest appraisal of a core liberal myth:

"Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer from Plains, swooped in from nowhere to take the White House on the strength of the modest slogan 'I'll never lie to you.' And during his presidency, one of the grand, founding lies of western civilization itself—that there need be no limits to humans' domination of the Earth—was questioned as never before.

The truth hurt, but the incredible thing was that the citizenry seemed willing to bear the pain. All sorts of American institutions—Congress, municipal governments, even the intelligence community (the daring honesty of CIA Director William Colby about past agency sins was what helped fuel the Church and Pike investigations)—launched searching reconstructions of their normal ways of doing business. Alongside all the disco, the kidnapped heiresses, and the macramé, another keynote of 1970s culture was something quite more mature: a willingness to acknowledge that America might no longer be invincible, and that any realistic assessment of how we could prosper and thrive in the future had to reckon with that hard-won lesson.

Then along came Reagan."

In the dim and distant past, long before there was any evidence  like modern medicine, spaceflight, nuclear power, or the pop top beer can, God declared man to have "dominion over the earth". Cain, being the first liberal, was unhappy, but it was a long time -- in fact until the 1970's as documented above, before liberalism reached the pinnacle of having Jimmuh Carter tell God he was wrong.

Jimmuh Carter, slayer of bunnies and architect of the "Jimmy Carter Desert Classic" attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran, as well as the ever popular "Rose Garden" political strategy. He was a one term abortion of a president, but he was smarter than God on the truth of man's position -- but then all liberals are very certain they are smarter than God.

Now, while Carter was truth, beauty and victory -- for mother earth and the less fortunate of the planet, Reagan was satan. It is all clear ... in a liberal sort of way, including the final paragraph.

Sure, there will always be liars in positions of influence—that's stipulated, as the lawyers say. And the media, God knows, have never been ideal watchdogs—the battleships that crossed the seas to avenge the sinking of the Maine attest to that. What's new is the way the liars and their enablers now work hand in glove. That I call a mendocracy, and it is the regime that governs us now.

Got that? The man asserted by the left to be the greatest president in US history sits in the White House. Harry Reid sits as majority leader of the US Senate, BUT, we are governed by a "mendocracy"! Why? I guess because Republicans have the house and Fox news is still on the air. Please, recognize once and for all that "liberal truth", it is the kind that can only reign without opposition.

Understand that the objective of liberalism is as stated above -- the destruction of the US and the return of mankind to a pre-Genesis "mother earth centric" model. They are convinced they know the only "facts" that matter, THEIR FACTS!! They are perfectly convinced, and very willing to force their "only correct view" on the world at the point of a gun, in the gulag, in the gas chamber, via starvation, infanticide (China today), or by any other means they are able to wield. Because, they are CERTAIN they are right!!!

Journolist

Raw Journolist emails on ‘Palin’s Downs child’ | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment

Truth is often far stranger than fiction. While liberals are up in arms at the "unfairness" of the edited tape of Sherrod and how it "mislead" the poor NAACP and BO administration, the Journolist story just goes on and on, getting stranger and stranger.

Now they didn't happen to come out and call Fred Barnes a racist as they were discussing, but it makes one realize why they are always railing against the "vast right wing conspiracy" and "coordinated conservative attacks". They assume it must be true, because that is how THEY operate!

The difference is that if some "RightRlist" with a bunch of conservatives that contained a lot of hypothetical ideas of how to damage BO or some Democrat rights theft dejour, the MSM would go positively whack job nuts! Many of them already are over just an edited tape and the subsequent over reaction by their own beloved BO.

The thing that hits me the most is how completely out of touch they are with what something around 50% of Americans are like. We ALL know what liberals are like -- we see them on the news all the time, watch their movies, listen to their songs and get to hear them pontificating on the stupidity of religion, the nuclear family, people working to support themselves, monogamy, heterosexual lifestyles, having (and no doubt falling short of) moral standards, and all sorts of things "liberals" find to be abominations. There is nothing in the Journolist that I really find "surprising" -- it just provides extra clarity for "why they are as they are".

It isn't hard for a conservative to understand their thinking at all -- "there but for the grace of God". If I wasn't "saddled" with the belief in an immortal soul and eventual judgement, I would enjoy a whole lot more smugness and witty attacks of all sorts. It is very human to enjoy being "in with the in crowd", and Journolist is clearly that -- these are folks that KNOW of the rightness of their ways. No need to try to interpret the wishes of some infinite God or anything, just go with what seems like a fun approach to taking down the folks you hate --- forget "truth". Edit a tape where someone is talking to put them in a bad light? Why bother, just make up stories out of whole cloth -- that shows off a whole lot more of your "creativity".

The wages of complete fabrication is that it becomes the standard. BOTH SIDES will fall to this "standard", and when they do, the left will of course LOUDLY lament that the right has fallen to their standard.  The IDEA of standards and the CONSISTENT application of them to everyone indendent of "race, religion, color, creed" or even political party, is that everyone benefits from the civility and predictabilty. When once side goes "JournOList", it is only a matter of time before the other side does as well.,

And who will the REALLY be to blame then?

Loss of Trust

RealClearPolitics - The Eradication of Trust

I like the honesty of this column, it provides a lot of insight into the liberal mind. 

Trust might as well be a four-letter word. American public opinion seems to have become an unguided Weapon of Mass Suspicion, and it's not hard to understand why. But those who would exploit distrust, dissatisfaction and anger for political gain had better worry about collateral damage.

I'm quite certain that Robinson looks back on Bush being "unelected", "blood for oil", "politics of Mass Deception", the HORRIBLE deficits of the early '00s, "Cheney and Haliburton", the supposed failure of the Bush admin at New Orleans, etc, etc as simply "factual" -- in his mind all those elements were NEEDED to give people the "TRUTH" about "the worst administration ever" ... loaded with incompetence, corruption, lies, cronyism, gross partisanship, and all manner of evil. I imagine he sees no irony whatsoever that now that the shoe is on the other foot, he finds "distrust of government" to be a very bad thing.

The overhyped tea party phenomenon is more about symbolism and screaming than anything else. A "movement" that encompasses gun nuts, tax protesters, devotees of the gold standard, Sarah Palin, insurance company lobbyists, "constitutionalists" who have not read the Constitution, Medicare recipients who oppose government-run health care, crazy "birthers" who claim President Obama was born in another country, a contingent of outright racists (come on, people, let's be real) and a bunch of fat-cat professional politicians pretending to be "outsiders" is not a coherent intellectual or political force.

Had there ever been a war protest that even accounted to 1/10th of the Tea Party movement, we would have never seen anything else on TV. When poor deranged Cindy Sheehan was pretty much sitting alone outside Bush's ranch in Aug '05, she was one person national news! Millions of common working Americans with lots better things to to spend their time on getting out and protesting deficits in the $1.5 Trillion range for as far as we have estimates are of course "racists" -- there is simply no other reason one could be against those numbers. $400 Billion under Bush though?? HORRIBLE -- I'm sure I could go find Robinson screeching "Armageddon" back then as I've done pointed out forKrugman. What a difference a change of party makes to a true partisan.

The liberals always want us to note how "uncivil" anyone that disagrees with them is -- I'm sure all the depictions in Robinson's paragraph above are just 100% facts ... like the Michael Moore movies and the "Truthers" during the Bush admin.

Another story that won't go away is the pedophilia scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. On Sunday, during a visit to Malta, Pope Benedict XVI prayed with eight adult victims of childhood sexual abuse by priests and reportedly expressed his "shame and sorrow." But practically every day, there are new revelations of pedophile priests having been transferred to other parishes rather than being defrocked and reported to authorities.

It seems just a little disjoint to bring in the old Priests and boys story. This is a problem that pretty much goes back to the Greeks, and I'm sure before. There have been plenty of REPORTED "page scandals" in our own hallowed congress. The usual situation is as per normal "If Democrat, then "boys will be boys" --- or in this case, "some types of men like boys". If Republican, then horror, hypocrisy, out of office, maybe we ought to prosecute". Catholics generally vote Democrat, apparently them being a religious organization means that they have to be treated like Republicans by Robinson.

Republicans have been actively encouraging this groundswell of distrust on the theory that it's bad for incumbents, meaning Democrats. Indeed, the approval rating for the Democratic Party has plunged to 38 percent. The problem is that approval of the Republican Party has also fallen -- to 37 percent.

The moral here, for giddy GOP strategists, is the one about people who live in glass houses.

Now, when it was Democrats encouraging the "groundswell of distrust", did they not live in a glass house? or is Robinson's assertion that Fox and a few Tea Partiers are more mighty than the Democrats, MoveOn, the whole MSM and the code pink sort of movements put together?  More likely, like many in the culturally dominant liberal 20%, he simply believes he is completely right and the 80% is completely wrong. Like a fish, he can't define "all wet".

Krugman Vs Krugman

Op-Ed Columnist - Fiscal Scare Tactics - NYTimes.com

Here is Krugman in 2005

And so it has turned out. President Bush has presided over the transformation of a budget surplus into a large deficit, which threatens the government's long-run solvency. The principal cause of that reversal was Mr. Bush's unprecedented decision to cut taxes, especially on the wealthiest Americans, while taking the nation into an expensive war.

Here is Krugman today:

Yet they aren’t facts. Many economists take a much calmer view of budget deficits than anything you’ll see on TV. Nor do investors seem unduly concerned: U.S. government bonds continue to find ready buyers, even at historically low interest rates. The long-run budget outlook is problematic, but short-term deficits aren’t — and even the long-term outlook is much less frightening than the public is being led to believe.

See, not to worry. Deficits in the low 100's of billions in a growing economy under a Republican president "threaten long-run solvency". Deficits in the trillions in a stagnant to falling economy under a Democrat are really no big deal at all. Simple.

No need to ask multiple economists to get multiple opinions with Krugman around, just switch parties and the whole world is different!