IRS, Outing Enemies

The Information-Revealing Service | National Review Online:

For you Non-Dominant Party members out there, this is the sound of the ratchet of tyranny taking a few more clicks.

We have been told what to believe about traditional marriage. The marriage of Christianity, of thousands of years of human culture. The foundation of Western Civilization. Defending traditional marriage is WRONG!

So here we have The National Organization for Marriage (NOM). An organization that already has 501c3 status

Their donor list, taken off their tax form, shows up on the website of a competing organization. There are really only two scenarios outside of space aliens that account for this. Either the IRS just leaked it as an organization, or an IRS employee committed a felony and leaked it.

This is very bad for freedom, but what is WORSE is that it is obvious that the Democrats in congress thought "NOM deserves it" ... they are a "hate organization" after all, right?? By wanting to keep marriage between one man and one woman, they have failed to leap on the current "progressive" train that first left the station in the Netherlands on April 1, 2001. (note, the first thing to go once one goes "progressive" is your sense of irony. April Fools Day in the "NETHERlands" ... "A fool says there is no God")

Marriage was marriage for millennia, then the "progressives" decide that it isn't one fine April Fools Day, and then it is downright evil to not have gotten the new word from the nether regions.

Now it is legitimate for a government agency to actively work to see that you are punished for not having your mind right on this issue.

When I was a kid, Americans discussed how the ACLU protected the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie IL even though in those days, everyone hated the Nazis.The Skokie marches were so well known that they included IL Nazis in the 1980 "Blues Brothers" movie.  The standard "end of the discussion" in those days  was "well, freedom of speech means that the rights of UNpopular speech have to be strongly protected".

People often ask, "how could something like Hitler happen"? It is pretty easy from where we are now.

• Give away power to your government.
  
• Let your government control which groups are "in" and which are "out". It felt "right" ... morally justified to be anti-semetic in 1930's Germany. The Jews had too much money. The Jews had strange religious ideas. The Jews exploited others. The Jews were bad.
  
  In the US today, "the Jews" are "The 1%", "The Religious Right", "The NRA", "Climate Deniers" or in this case "NOM".
  
• Make sure your education, media and popular culture are all "on message". People need to be made to feel uncomfortable about discussing anything that is "off message". Eg, questioning climate change when it is cold out, talking about "scandals" like the IRS, being overtly Christian, owning guns, etc
  
  Probably even MORE important is to make people feel positive, part of the group, "moral and patriotic" when supporting the "proper" policies ... supporting gay "marriage", removing gun rights, sanctioning groups that are not "correctly patriotic" (eg Tea Party)
  
• Increase the dependence on the government for daily life. People need to feel that the government is their only real protector and they need to feel a strong sense of unease if they are not in alignment with the government thought. It is CRITICAL that this be an every day thing -- their food, their medical care, their education, their information. All aspects of their life need to be seen as being tied to the goodness and approval of their benevolent government. 

Be your own judge of where we are at right now. "It can't happen here"?? I'd argue that it already has ... the 2nd Amendment and gun owners being the chief stumbling block to a "final solution".



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Worst Economic Performance in North America!

How Bad Is Obama’s Record on the Economy? This Bad | Power Line:

It is hard to overstate how damning of BO policies the chart in the linked article is. The once great US is underperforming Canada and Mexico!!

What is even harder to take is that like the various BO scandals, the "Dominant Party" absolutely does not care! One doesn't need to listen to very many of them for very long to realize that they are just fine with these results -- providing at least that "The Koch Brothers", "The Rich", "The 1%", the "Bitter Clingers", the "Haters" or whatever the whipping boy of the day "gets hurt the worst"!

It will take real loss of power, water and sewer and some hungry bellies before todays fully indoctrinated Sheeple start to realize that it is time for the people to rise up and throw off the new shackles of Bad King BO!

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Converted to Progressive!!!!

http://www.progressivesuspension.com/metric/gwmonotube/index.html

Well, for front suspension on the Wing that is! I'm a big believer in technologies capability to improve TOOLS, I just think it is absolutely inept and worse than powerless at improving MAN!

Things that make you go "Holy < expletive >"!!! I put the Progressive Monotube cartridges on the Wing, along with the "All Balls" tapered steering bearings http://wingstuff.com/products/21578-all-balls-gold-wing-steering-bearings?context=all_balls and the result is handling heaven!!

2006 Wing, 52K miles on it, tires at "half tread". Night and day on the ride and handling! Turned the the front fork from a sloppy blunt instrument into a precision carving tool. Easy 10mph faster on a 40mph curve, feeling MORE comfortable than the previous slower pace. Better handling at all speeds, better ride at all speeds, INCLUDING over sharp bumps -- no "jiggle, rattle, stutter" over a nasty expansion joint, just a semi-pleasant and confident THUMP. Maybe Scotty was wrong when he said "they canna change the laws of physics"!

I think the All Balls helped, but my guess is that it is mostly the Progressives. At the price though, it seems very unlikely that tapered roller bearings could not help SOME over the stock crap little BBs (My GOD, why would they put that kind of wimpy bearings in a $25K+ bike???

All in all a VERY impressive upgrade! 

Models or Measurements?

Global Warming Alarmism In Twilight | Power Line:

Or, when the territory and the map don't agree, GO WITH THE TERRITORY!!

The chart in the article is pretty definitive relative to ALL the existing climate models. Their projections are not coming to pass, so their chief use is as a "learning exercise". The predictions of the sensitivity of the climate to CO2 have proven to be radically wrong, so now some actual scientists need to build new theories and new models.

They need to, but I'm much less convinced than PL that they will. My view is that we are firmly in Lysenko territory on warmism in the US and West. Much more damage will need to be done before science starts to win out over political power on climate.

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Stone Flavors

Fine Whining | Power Line:

A fun little article from PL poking a little fun at wine review pretensions -- "stone flavors". My suspicion is "stonED flavors" might be more to the point.

Anyway, it brought back memories of my dabbling in "High End Audio" ... sound stage, imaging, tubes, amps and cables better found on arc welders, insanely expensive everything, gigantic speakers with a "Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF) of 0.0 ... well, you get the picture.

The two main magazines were "The Absolute Sound (TAS)" and "Stereophile", which we christened "The OBSOLETE Sound" and "Stereo Pile".

TAS would brook no digital -- the sweet sound of vinyl and tubes were the only way to sound NERDvana. Digital and integrated circuits produced "a threadbare mid-range", "an emaciated mid-bass", and "lacked palpable presence".

None of us ever went completely whole hog, although a couple buds had very nice systems and there were certain songs that to this day remind me of us crowding together to try to get in "the sweet spot" ... "Riders on the Storm" by the Doors and "Fast Car" by Tracey Chapman leap to mind ... but there was a lot of Jennifer Warnes, some Pink Floyd and other interesting stuff as well.

Yes, there was pretension and quite a bit just imaginative posturing, but it was a lot of fun!!! Sometimes I think that my friends and I may have "grown up" just a bit too much!!

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Manufacturing Drops–Unexpectedly! | Power Line

Manufacturing Drops–Unexpectedly! | Power Line:

I've very much noticed the "unexpectedly" theme on NPR. When you believe that the BO policies are excellent and that government can solve all problems, how in the world can such a thing happen?? It continues to be AMAZING to these folks.

They were equally surprised when the economy did well after 2001 and during the '80s with Reagan.

How strange. It is like the USSR not turning out to work very well. An ongoing and forever unexplained SHOCK to the wise of the left.

Those of us who are fools see those things as "learning opportunities", the wise of this world see them as creation itself -- "unexplainable random happenings".

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Let's Civilly Murder the NRA

Left-wing journalism professor calls for mass slaughter of NRA | Human Events:

One of many of the common viewpoints of the "civil left", with this one just presented in print.

Those NRA guys are obviously completely nuts to suggest that there is support out there for the government to use violence to target people that make use of their Constitutional Right to Bear Arms. Oh wait, that is exactly what he is espousing -- he just has a very poor understanding of warfare.

One would REALLY think that after the Civil War, Vietnam, Mogadishu, Iraq, Afghanistan and a few others, that even the most daft of the US populace would get the picture that an armed populace is one of the LEAST desirable  things for any military to take on. (Check how well the French did in Indochina or the Soviets in Afghanistan).

My guess is that he would be much less sanguine about an F22 or M1A1 taking out his conservative neighbor if it were to happen, but then folks like him live in some universe that is very hard to capture the quantum shift zenith for.

Note how little we hear about "civility" these days. I actually like that part -- it is like the reprieve from "Global Warming" here in MN this spring. Oh, I know, like mosquitoes  the buzzing will be back, but those of us some small semblance of our own minds as free people need to find our small enjoyments when we can!

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The Ruling Party Punishes On

IRS may have targeted conservatives more broadly | McClatchy:

Could we just all be a tiny bit honest about this as a nation? The ruling party (Democrats) by virtue of owning education, media and government workers Federal, State, and Local, could care less if some "conservatives" suffer because of their views. The official Party position is "they deserve it" -- a lot. Some of them are even standing up and saying "Thanks IRS"!! They believe this is appropriate!!

As Reagan long pointed out, the left feels that "Free Speech" is the right to agree with them in lock step politically and to offend people with any sense of propriety or Christians as much as desired. Naturally, offending Muslims, Gays, Blacks, Hispanics, Women, or any other "special group" is "hate speech". Pick on Christians, white males or gun owners if you want to hate somebody legally.

Since BO is Black, the difference between "Political Speech" and "Hate Speech" is especially blurred right now.

There are a lot of very sad stories n the linked article about military veterans that decided to support a conservative cause being targeted, pro-life groups being told how they could speak, etc. For those that believe in the Rule of Law and the Constitution, these things are "chilling".

The MOST "chilling" however is that we now have actual admissions by the IRS that specific groups were targeted on the basis of political views, and the general level of outcry in the American public is minimal. The left is fine with this. The left sees this as "just". The left doesn't want to discuss it and simply labels it as "partisan politics" and a "Republican Issue".

This ought to be an AMERICAN ISSUE, with 80-90% of the population DEMANDING immediate and strong action to find out exactly who is responsible, how high it went, and doing strong prosecution + new government controls to insure this never happens again! This is WAY bigger than any scandal in my lifetime. Watergate was a burglary that really affected nobody. Iran / Contra was internal executive / legislative infighting. Monicagate was only bad in that Slick skated on actions in the workplace that would get anyone else in the country fired.

This is the government attacking American Citizens because of their political views. This is a core attack on the meaning of what America once was.

We have `crossed a line where behavior by government that is very clearly UNAMERICAN in the strongest terms is now completely acceptable to at least half of the population as long as it is "groups on the right" that are attacked by the government. They believe that it is right for them to benefit because of their political views and for others to be punished because of their political views!

This is how things operated relative to the Communist Party in the USSR and the National Socialist Party in Germany! Now we have it here!

THIS is why the 2nd Amendment is worth dying for. We are in extremely dangerous territory.

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Good News Statistics

Charts That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity - Business Insider:

I look through these charts and here are a few things that come to mind:

• A lot of the best trends in these charts were due to the '80s in the US and the end of the USSR in '91. (looking at the Wiki entry with "USSR 1922-1991" still brings a smile to my face! A well deserved trip to the ash heap of history!) 
• We were complete idiots to vote for "change" in '06 and beyond. We as a nation had no clue how good we had it. 
• It is absolutely obvious that the "progressive" fetish with "environmentalism" and "guns" is simply about CONTROL -- the results have been GREAT on both fronts, but that doesn't stop "progressives" from demanding more control. 
• We had it too good for too long and while needs are finite, wants never are. One doesn't need a Gulfstream jet, but one can certainly want one and even feel it is "unfair" that others have one. We killed the goose of productivity that was laying the golden eggs because we demanded more RIGHT NOW!
• The big missing things on these charts are birth rate, single parent families, % getting government assistance, % working and % regular church attendance. Those are all in trouble and they spell our doom.
• In 20 years, those of us still living will be able to look back at '06 as the year that we "chose poorly". Will we be able to talk about it without being incarcerated or worse? 

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Must Read, Solzhenitsyn at Harvard 1978

Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Address:

I'd just started at IBM a few days before this address. Fresh out of college, other than a moderate level of Christian faith, a poster child for the materialist decadence Solzhenitsyn calls out.

This was the last time that Harvard allowed anyone that wasn't a "liberal in good standing", and usually an intellectual lightweight as well (this year it is Oprah) to take their "pulpit".  In 1978 the "Iron Information Curtain" fell one more notch after this speech. It continued the trend from "God and Man At Yale"  by Buckley in the '50s, and "The Closing of the American Mind" by Bloom documenting the '60s. The trend that would continue as religion was ever removed from the public square, and the voices of those that would stand for the necessary connection of man to God would be silenced in the academy as the once great America became ever more ruled by "The Party" (D).

This is all WELL worth the 20min it takes to read it. Solzhenitsyn was a prophet. He foresaw that the USSR was so corrupt it would not stand, and he foresaw that the west would lack the courage and conviction to deal with the terrorist/Muslim scourge. He saw the shape of our decline and suspected as I do that the odds against the recovery of civilization, at least without hundreds or thousands of years of a "Dark Age" ruled by evil were very long.

This paragraph is just a teaser. I strongly recommend reading it all!

 "To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth. Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections."

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Why We Lost Western Civilization

Articles: Winning the Long War:

The simple answer is that the "progressives" incrementally turned public education into collectivist indoctrination. Allan Bloom sounded this alarm strongly and unequivocally with "The Closing of the American Mind", but the standards had already sunk so far that only a few could hope to begin to understand what he was saying.

This article is EXCELLENT and well worth the time to read it.

Some "cheat sheet" on the subsequent paragraph, the article is generally easy to read, don't be put off ...

• ethics -- right/wrong, What we would have learned in Sunday School, from our parents, and nursery rhymes in a free country. Today what is taught is environmentalism, political correctness, re-distribution (robbery, or "fairness") and the worship of man and the state. 
• epistemology  -- the study of knowledge, what is known and what is knowable. Western civilization arose on the idea of perfect and transcendent  forms (Plato) and a rational universe -- typically assumed so because it was created by a God that is reasonable (a God of order). "irrationalism" essentially says; "it all happened randomly, and except for being skeptical and possibly believing your senses when they are not in conflict with "progressive" dogma, whatever you think is as good as what anyone else thinks." 
• metaphysics -- religion/theology being the former name and what most readers of this blog will at least have heard of. If there is a God that is reasonable, he has a purpose for us, so our mission is to find that purpose and do it well as we worship him. It there isn't a God, this whole idea of "finding what you were intended to do" is rubbish. There is no "intention". Life has no meaning or purpose, which is nihilism".

I spent 16 years in state schools prior to ATTEMPTING to read "Closing of the American Mind", and then studying on my own, and then attempting again, then studying some more, and repeating a couple of times. I feel that I now understand a good deal of that book. My "cheat sheet" above would have not been possible without decades of self-study and hundreds of books and articles.

The state educational establishment relative to Western Civilization is much like the Catholic Church was prior to the reformation relative to the Bible. They really don't want you poking around on your own, you are likely to come up with some questions that are going to be VERY hard to answer!

The reason that I often come close to despair is that there are so few Americans that can even really read and understand well enough to even grasp the danger. The advancement of technology is a two edged sword. Will this descent into darkness be a millennium? Could it be shorter because the technology can empower renaissance  as the printing press once did? or will the technology enable "Big Brother" to lock the culturally lobotomized drones in a "Matrix" forever? I certainly don't know, but I know the danger is very real and very urgent. Read ... and maybe weep.

 "Civilization -- all of it -- is currently under the domination of progressive collectivism in ethics, authoritarianism in politics, irrationalism in epistemology, and nihilism in metaphysics. The architects of this calamity have paved the road to the devil's dominion over several generations. Their recent boldness, moving in for the kill on the last, crumbling bastion of principled resistance, America, shows that they believe ultimate victory is at hand, which, in human terms, means we face a thousand years of darkness."

and this gem is so on target it must be seen ... 

Men capable of living independent, confident and self-reliant lives grounded in their own skills, their own interests, and their own minds, are a threat to the authoritarians, mainly because what such men naturally crave -- more freedom -- is precisely the opposite of the desire progressivism seeks to foster in every child, namely the desire of a helpless dependent for perpetual security, to be provided by the all-knowing, all-caring über-parent, Government.

You OWE it to yourself to read this article. You are still alive in one of the brief flickers in history where the level of freedom for this to be seen is allowed! Savor that knowledge before the Gulag!

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Remembering America

America’s honor | Power Line:

The linked article is excellent, just read it all, and shed a tear for a once great country suffering a long road to death, as my mother suffered the past 10 years. Sadly, I'm nearly certain that the final moments of America will not be peaceful with adoring children at it's side.

My Mom was struck down by a dissection of one of her aortas, which medicine did it's best to repair. She lived, but while miraculous that she lived at all, her remaining life was spent in a nursing home and much less sweet than that which had come before.

America was struck down by leaving God behind and deciding to worship at the alter of human "progress". An idea that darkened Russia and Eastern Europe for 70 years, turned the German nation into an instrument of evil, and killed hundreds of millions of born and unborn over the course of the century in war and "peace" (Satan is always at war with life).

Man was given the gift of fire (technology) to be used in his service while man worked in the service of God. We took that gift and replaced the worship of God with the worship of ourselves, our pleasure, and our feeble technical toys.

The opening paragraph is haunting. The stories are somewhat like looking at the Apollo Moon Rocket or Mount Rushmore. We were once great. We rose up and stood as that "Shining City on a Hill" for a season, but no longer. Now we die, and worse, we die with no meaning. By our own hand in slow suicide. No God, no heroes, no purpose, no creed. Just sad pleasure seekers sorry that no more pleasure could be stolen.

Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, for our todays. But in a world saturated with selfhood, where every death is by definition a death in vain, the notion of sacrifice today provokes puzzlement more often than admiration. We support the troops, of course, but we also believe that war, being hell, can easily touch them with an evil no cause for engagement can wash away. And in any case we are more comfortable supporting them as victims than as warriors.

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157 to 1

Shulman had more White House visits than any Cabinet member | The Daily Caller:


157 to 1 is the ratio of visits by IRS chief during  4 years of BO administration vs # of visits during 4 years of W administration.

How curious is the press about this rather large discrepancy? Are you kidding? It doesn't PROVE anything, and with BO in the WH, there isn't going to be any interest unless something is PROVEN!!

Investigate? You would have to be a racist partisan political hack to have any sort of suspicion of anything relative to the BO WH. The job of the press is to protect the president!

Obviously  BO just liked to talk to the IRS chief personally. Maybe they golfed together?
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Mom, Home Forever

As many of you likely know, my Mom passed away peacefully this past Friday surrounded by her three children. http://rauschandsteelfuneralhome.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=2101088&fh_id=12239

 It has been a long road from two heart surgeries the summer of '03, either of which by all rights ought to have killed her, through nearly 10 years in a nursing home, now to her home in Heaven.

I love to read, think, comment, and sometimes have the lack of humility to think that my insights have merit. Death and eternity always remind me of the foolishness of man, Every, man, ME!!!

Especially me.

My original title for this was "No Wisdom, Just Humility", but it had to have Mom in it.

Pastor Darrel Robinson, the minister at the First Baptist in Barron was wonderful. Wonderful at the hospital the day of her passing. Wonderful during the arrangements and AMAZING in doing the service. He sang the two songs that she had requested beautifully, and gave a message that I know Mom would have loved.

Very simple, very honest, very caring. God has given us Grace in the person of Jesus and lovingly pleads with us to leave our pride behind and walk to eternity with him. It sounds so easy, but for man, it is IMPOSSIBLE without the assistance of God.

Many people say, "if there is a God, where is he"?? We live in a world where we expect "in your face" everything, so we miss a lot of great opportunities to feel blessed by the hand of God.

In this case:

• All of us expected her to be gone TWICE in the summer of '03. While the way we got her back was not the way any of us would have hoped, it was an important reminder that "our ways are not God's ways". Who knows how many lives were touched in eternally important ways by her sojourn though the nursing home.
• The Barron Hospital was full ... but that meant she went to Bloomer where my sister lives, and the rooms and care were much better than we have experienced in Barron. It was a much better place for her to be for her last days and passing.
• Since she passed away Friday the weather has been unbelievably gloomy as it is now and was as we drove to Barron yesterday am. 15 min before her service, the sun came out and it remained glorious through the burial.
• I saved the slideshow that I had done from my iMac to an MP4, but when I put it up on a laptop screen it looked so bad that I ended up redoing it and showing it on my Air at the visitation. When I put it up on the computer at church, it looked just as bad as it did on the Air -- and then I projected it and it looked great. It is the first time I've seen something that looked better blown up to the big screen than it did on the small!

Oh, I'm very well aware that there are "reasonable explanations" for all of the above. I no doubt could do tests and "figure out" what happened with my MP4, but you know, that really isn't the point. "**I** by my own reason or strength" have no answer. Naturally, as is the way of modern man, I could honor random chance. It would be more "scientific".

We have ALL seen "unexplainable things" that felt miraculous to us. Maybe we eventually "figured it out", but that is a bit like guessing the lottery number after the lottery. We don't even understand if we are made of waves, particles, strings, "branes", or something completely different. Oh, and while we are at it, we absolutely don't understand our "brains" wetware, and have even less concept of what our consciousness is.

But most of us believe that we do in fact exist and are even conscious. Often with a good deal of false pride.

So, the fact is that of our own reason and strength we know nothing, which everyone knows in their heart when they stand next to their mother's grave.

The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

The past few days has been a time for me to remember that, and to follow "Be still and know that I am God".

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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