Riding, Helmets, Viva la Vida

Uneasy Rider: Boomer Deaths in Motorcycle Crashes Jump - WSJ:

A couple of things bring this topic up. The most recent is a 320 mi up and back Wing ride to Barron WI  on Sunday along with being in IA for the 4th weekend where the ABATE rally was being held at Algona in the area we were at.  Hundreds of bikers on the road without helmets.

Riding up to Barron and back via the scenic route I saw at least 50 bikes -- maybe a handful had helmets. I was most impressed by being behind a nice burnt-orange Harley Electra Glide style who was behind a slower vehicle in hard to pass country. When we finally got an opening, he pulled out and I hit the gas and immediately closed the gap and considered just going around him as well for a second, but decided "I'm already at 80 MPH ... where is the fire? So pulled in behind.

Helmetless, he apparently was headed for a fire -- I hung with him for a bit as he slowly crept the speed up to at least 90 -- I was already back in 5th and just went back down to 64.999999. He continued blasting down the highway and disappeared. Apparently as unconcerned about tickets as his head.

BTW, I was glad that I didn't do much for speeding this weekend -- on a road in IA with VERY little traffic where the speed trap was SHOCKING, there was a county mounty with the radar that gave me the flat hand pushed down and flipped the lights on but stayed sitting for my 64.9999 in the 55 in the Avalanche. Saw four other cops set up and met a few more in both IA and WI, so the troops were out of the 4th weekend!

The second incident of impetus was on the leg home as part of a nice 360 mile jaunt up to Barron a week ago with my wife that included a great run through Somerset WI, Hudson, River Falls, Prescott and down the WI side on 35. On the S side of Pepin WI, just after acclerating back up to 60ish, a white pickup made a swerve for me ... the snake brain (unconcious automatic reflexes) worked properly and rapidly, I swerved immediately right (I was in the left side of the S bound lane with wife on the right) and nothing happened -- good shot of adrenalin for both the wife and I, and life went on.

So a little data from the linked article ...

The number of motorcycle deaths per 100 million miles traveled trended down to 23.4 in 2012 from 38.8 in 2003, U.S. government data show.

The rate for cars is 1.5 deaths per 100 million miles -- so like at least 20x more dangerous to be on a bike in raw data. From other stats, one can cut the risk by close to half by wearing a helmet (10x), another close to half by not drinking (5x), and another close to half by not driving at night. So MAYBE something like 2.5x as risky -- MAYBE ... I'm being optimistic by addiung the effects. 10x is more likely as "safe" as a bike gets. 

But all that is not really how our human brains work.

My mental makeup is pretty close to the "scaredy cat limit for riding a motorcycle" -- my trust level for other drivers is darned near zip even in a car and approaches "paranoid" on a bike -- especially after things like the white truck incident.

I believe that people with the "fighter pilot, surgeon, NFL QB" kind of brain get MORE confident when they successfully avoid a "close one" like the white truck -- they look at it as "see, I have what it takes". I  look at it as "damn, I'm glad the snake brain didn't screw up THAT time, but I STILL don't trust it!".

I strongly suspect that the 90+% of the bikers with no helmets that I saw on the roads this past weekend enjoy their rides more than I do because they are confident that they will not be one of those bad statistics -- they will get their 10k, 50k, 100K, or even million lifetime miles on bike with nothing very bad happening to them because they are GOOD and LUCKY! -- but they mostly don't think about it at all and just enjoy the ride, which I actually believe is the much better attitude.

But that isn't me! I do enjoy the ride (with some fear) --- but what I REALLY enjoy are the glorious memories of the rides.The emotional joy of being able to completely beleive that "I'm going to be OK" and riding down the road with the wind in your hair (or your scalp in my case) is a joy that I'll never know in this life -- and I'm jealous of that on occasion, but I'm wired as I'm wired.

Statistics have real limitations for us as individuals -- cancer, heart disease, accidents, Alzheimers, etc -- none of us get out of life alive. So we live -- as best we can, but still imperfectly. Some may be certain that when that last moment comes that St Peter will (or won't) call their name, but I'll just have to go on in HOPE!  Such is the lot of the Moose, who most assuredly never has and never will rule the world.

"Viva la Vida" (Live Life) !

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Sanctuary, Shit and Sheep

The deep meaning of San Francisco | Power Line:

Detroit, Baltimore, Ferguson (St. Louis) ... we KNOW the results of the D policies, but somehow the descent of once great cities into reeking LITERAL shitholes on top of the death and despair is kept quite quiet.  When all that is meaningful in life is removed and replaced by depravity, the descent of the human animal nature into the lowest of forms is quick and certain.

So this past weekend we see 10 killed and 55 wounded on the streets of Chicago. The news of this and the young woman killed in SF by a 7 time convicted felon and 5 time deportee, walking the streets of a "sanctuary city" as an Undocumented Democrat (illegal alien). The city is a "sanctuary" for shooting innocents and shitting on the street -- decent folk need to get the hell out as they did from Detroit decades ago.

The linked article is well worth the read -- and even taking a quick gander of the articles it links to that show that some of the little folk in SF are getting to be a bit nonplussed at the results of their royalty left wing ruling class in the limos. The AC filters out the stench of the policies the left imposes.

40 years ago at the end of the sick, slimy sad seventies, people were finally FED UP! They were angry at the decline, the crime, the filth, the loss of US stature and the Carter statements of turning off your Christmas lights and turning down your heat because the world was out of oil.

Enough of the WWII generation was still vigorously around, and the Boomers were even able to put down the weed and the beads long enough to decide that maybe it was time to DO SOMETHING! Reagan was elected, the direction was changed and we had a 25 year rebirth of an America that was quite stunning -- it didn't reach the moon, but at least it tore down that wall!

But this time the fire seems to have gone out. One might think that Americans would be more inclined to stand up to rag-headed desert vermin that rape little girls and hack the heads off people in orange jumpsuits  than we were to stand up to Russian commies that built ugly walls but sent mostly their own people to die off in gulags for saying the wrong thing -- but one would be wrong.

Today, WE at least figuratively send folks off to the virtual gulag for not baking certain cakes (gay) or baking others (confederate) ... or saying the wrong word, flying the wrong flag, or such. Today we by and large do what we are told -- and that is NOT what it once meant to be an American! This little image covers it well -- being American once meant STANDING UP TO POWER -- now it means the silence and compliance of the lambs.

Superman once fought for "Truth, Justice and The American Way". Today "truth" is largely what the left says it is, and questioning it is a major social sin. "Justice" has been perverted into the government taking money from the people that earn it and giving it to those that don't. What WOULD the "American Way" be today? Certainly not working hard. Certainly not creating a successful business ("you didn't build that"). Absolutely not faith in God ... "Country"? What **IS** "country" with no respect for a written Constitution by the POTUS or SCOTUS?

So we are left with "Sanctuary and Shit" ... and the Sheep are silent in the belt of territory between Canada and Mexico.

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Sacred Elephant Facts Frames Emotions

Faith vs. Facts - The New York Times:

MOST of us find it mind-boggling that some people seem willing to ignore the facts — on climate change, on vaccines, on health care — if the facts conflict with their sense of what someone like them believes. “But those are the facts,” you want to say. “It seems weird to deny them.”

And yet a broad group of scholars is beginning to demonstrate that religious belief and factual belief are indeed different kinds of mental creatures. People process evidence differently when they think with a factual mind-set rather than with a religious mind-set. Even what they count as evidence is different. And they are motivated differently, based on what they conclude. On what grounds do scholars make such claims?

The big devil in the detail of all epistemology (study of knowing and what is knowable) is that it all must be done using human brains. We have no idea of how many vast unknown fallacies we face that are in the nature of the fish, or better yet, coral, contemplating the concepts wet/dry. All of our thinking about thinking is done with the same limited human brain.

I'm going to VASTLY oversimplify here, but maybe just a tiny bit less than the column author.

First of all, we ALL do our thinking from a specific "World View"  (WV) -- it is our "meta-model" of God and man, who we trust, our language, our culture, our values, our experiences, our friends, organizations we are part of, our politics, our gender, rural / urban, level of education and what form -- etc, etc. Our WV is essentially "who we are", and for all of us it is unconsciously there all the time, and for a few of us, we are able to at least recognize that it exists.

The author of the column is apparently not able to do so. Our WV **IS** our real religion -- we BELIEVE IT! All of us! She believes pronouncements of science on warming / vaccines and no doubt a number of things are FACTS. A few months ago when the NIH decided that cholesteral wasn't near as bad as they thought it had been for 50 years, she might have felt a "twinge" -- or even more likely, she just didn't pay any attention to it. It was for her exactly like a religious believer dealing with some doctrine of their faith that they find "troubling / questionable". I say exactly because we all consider our WV true by DEFINITION!

Everything we "know" is "known" and understood in some sort of a "Frame" -- which I covered relative to the book "Don't Even Think About an Elephant" ... and a number of other posts around that one.

For ANY of us to be able to critique our own WV or our various "frames" is like learning a new language, a new computer operating system, complex skill, etc -- it is PAINFUL! Rather than automatically "knowing the truth / facts", we become PAINFULLY aware that even the simplest elements of what we are CERTAIN of can be very very hard to defend if we are faced with either a real event that shakes our WV, or exposed to someone who brings some element of our WV into question.

You KNOW what red is, but to explain it to a blind person gives a little idea of how hard it is to step outside of your WV / Frames. 

For most of two thousand years the dominant WV with many interelated frames was "Western Christian Civilization" -- the universe was created by an omnipotent, omnicient, omnipresent God for a purpose -- partially to allow humans the joy of life and fellowship with God, and most likely for other purposes beyond the capability of man to comprehend from our mortal and fallen state. For myself, and other people that the author of the column looks down on, all that is still true.

For the column author -- and an increasing number of especially the political left though, god is dead, the universe is cold and beyonnd indifferent -- to man, life, or anything. There is no ultimate purpose save man getting "smarter" and creating "better stuff" -- technology, governments, pastimes, ideas about how to live -- on his own with no reference to history, philosphy, and certainly not to "religion". Any "heaven" to happen will be here on earth, due to "progress" -- of which the moderns like the author strangely believe is for somehow "destined" (randomly I guess) to "better", although it becomes harder and harder to imagine how one might arrive at that value judgement. (like what "values" count except power?)

No doubt for the column author (as for all of us), emotion is involved. I wonder how she thinks of GMO's? Many of the left have a reaction to them which is possibly more anti-science than questioning climate change -- humans after all CLEARLY created GMOs, climate historically changed a good deal without us.

As the GMO column points out, fear is possibly an explanation for the GMO reaction. It is also a common method used to hold people in thrall to beliefs like "Anthropogenic Gobal Warming" (AGW) -- "Thou must follow the high priests of AGW or thine children will burn in the hell of AGW"! A not too clever thinker might note that this sort of sermon varies little from "Sinners in the hand of an angry God" of times past.
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Since all religions are made up of humans, it is really not too hard to see parallels. In the liberal AGW religion, the flock need modify their lifestyle not at all for the forseeable future -- "the wealthy", or "the oil companies" or "someone else" will provide propitiation for their computers, internet, jet flights to warm climates for the winter (no irony there), etc.

To  be human is to have a religion (WV), worship and attempt to follow it's tenets. The PRIMARY tenet of all religions is to declare your faith! The author of the column is doing well at that. For many religons -- Islam, National Socialism, Communism, Secular Humanism, etc, disparaging, persecuting and even killing non-adherents is dogma. The author is doing a bit of that as well.

Christianity has a REAL difference there which held Western Civilization in really good stead -- "Love your neighbor as yourself". Now THAT is a REALLY different concept in a WV -- a damned inhuman one!

No matter what your WV, knowing you have one and trying to realize just how natural it seems, and how the Frames that you have picked up or had foisted on you force your brain down pre-determined paths. Magicians, marketers, politicians and many others know how to manipulate your WV and Frames -- you should know as well and understand what they are doing.

Don't even think of an elephant!

(bet ya did -- if not, please check in as not being human!)


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Cheering The Descent to Poverty -- Greece

These 7 Yanis Varoufakis Quotes Show Why We’ll Miss Him | TIME:

The quotes are kind of enjoyable -- as is the whole spectacle of Greece and the rest of the Western World slowly discovering the truths in simple nursery rhymes like "The Ant and the Grasshopper" and "The Emperor's New Clothes" or aphorisms like "Sooner or later you run out of other people's money" is at least comforting in that the world still works as we know it does.

Naturally, those on the left do not believe in the surly bonds of reality -- here is a link to the debt crisis explained in less than 100 words... but it really takes less than that.

1. Greece has a nice socialist economy -- lots of aid to poor-middle class, lots of cushy high paid government jobs, tough on business and wealth. 
2. Business and wealth flee the country -- and what doesn't hunkers down. 
3. Financial crises comes (2008) ... income dries up even more, more people in trouble -- need loans and "bailouts". 
4. Creditors demand change -- less government spending, higher broader based taxes. 
5. Anger, denial, the vote this past weekend. 
6. Poverty 

It's a very old story in many forms from individuals, businesses and governments. Living high on the hog on credit is good until the bills come due.

They always come due.

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Will Israel Save America? A Worthy Read

Will Israel Save America? – Tablet Magazine:

This is worth taking the time to read -- real thought, real history, real unavoidable truth for consideration by mortal people to humble themselves enough to at least recognize their mortality and their limits both individually and collectively. History is full of examples of the pain caused by humans failing to do this -- to choose "men as Gods" (kings -- dictators, 5 people in robes).

A little teaser -- but the essence can't really be shortened very much.

One does not have to view Israel’s accomplishments through a theological mirror to understand what the Jewish State tells us about statecraft. Freedom does not arise from the mere presence of democratic institutions, as we learned in Iraq, or from bursts of popular enthusiasm, as we learned in the Arab Spring, or from participation in elections, as we learned when Hamas swept the 2006 West Bank elections. It depends on the radical commitment to the premise that a higher power than human caprice is the ultimate arbiter in civic life. It requires willingness to take existential risk. That is the Jewish principle in politics, the civil content of the Sinai covenant, and the basis for the American Founding. To the extent we have forgotten this, the people who stood at Mount Sinai still are there to remind us. If we reject this reminder, we will un-choose ourselves as Americans.

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Mindless SCOTUS / Religion Meme

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10207283969040245&set=a.1082209898215.2014464.1315355655&type=1&fref=nf&pnref=story

This has popped up on a few lefties FB feeds. It is inane, pedantic and false -- so appealing to leftists, but it may confuse some, So a few words.

First the really easy standard lies:

In fact, one religious party believing they know the truth for all humans is how terrible oppression starts - that is how Naziism started, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, the Klu Klux Klan, Al-Qaeda and now ISIS - the most destructive, hateful, murderous periods of human history have arisen directly out of one religious group (ironically, most of these examples were lead by Christians) believing their religion and religious beliefs were THE truth, and therefore they had the right to take away the rights (and lives) of those who lived or believed differently than them.

Naziism had nothing to do with religion other than Hitler hated Jews -- but as a "race", not particularly a religion. The Crusades were a DEFENSIVE action -- Islam was the aggressor party, once they were in France, Christendom finally woke up. The other items listed are pretty much "noise" -- humans like to do stupid and often violent things independent of creed (read the column), we could point out equal and longer lists on the left -- without even counting abortion.

The bottom line is this paragraph shows the author as a hater of Christians so her comments directed at such ought be taken in that context. The LEFT (meaning centralized state control) is the champion killer by FAR after the 20th century with over 100 million dead -- Communist, National and other Socialists. They KNOW they have "the truth" -- just like the column author, and their "truth" quite commonly sets millions of souls free from their earthly body in a violent fashion. Why not? They have no moral foundation beyond "might is right" -- and the author wants to make sure there is no "law" save power to stand in the way of their promethean objectives.

The problem with the whole article is just that -- "truth and power". The old US was founded a set of ENUMERATED WRITTEN RIGHTS that were "endowed by our creator" -- therefore transcending human power. Without something being transcendent -- God, a document, laws, then POWER is what determines "morality" -- might **IS** right! The SCOTUS gay "marriage" ruling is pure POWER. Our "truth" once transcended "man" (as in 9 in robes) -- and the earthy power was reserved to the people (often people too "Christian" for the author's taste, thus the preference for statist power)

"Marriage" was not one of those enumerated rights in our Constitution  -- so it was therefore left to States and Localities to determine. **IF** it was determined that a Constitutional Right to marriage was desired, the procedure to attain that in what was America was a Constitutional Amendment -- 2/3 of both houses of congress (or a convention), ratification by 3/4ths of the states. That was law.

What any law abiding person -- Christian or no, should be concerned about is the SCOTUS itself being lawless as it has on this and other cases -- Roe V Wade being the prime example. Slavery was abolished by the 13th-15th Amendments -- the law of the land was followed! Women received the vote via the 19th Amendment ... legally! To compare what just happened with real rule of law is dangerous ignorance -- or possibly blatant lies to mislead the less intelligent.

The gay "marriage" ruling was NOTHING to do with "church and state" nor the establishment clause -- and the SCOTUS never claimed that it did. Purely a fantasy of the author of the piece. Lots of wasted text.

The combination of lack of knowledge and basic reason on the part of the author of the piece is breathtaking -- although, I strongly suspect that a thinly veiled rage against Christians is really what is speaking here.

Rights are not and should not be up for a popular vote or up to the states to determine. Rights are absolute and cannot be dependent upon anything other than the fact that the person is a human being and is a citizen of the US. If those two conditions are met, YOUR belief system about what is MORALLY or spiritually right or wrong does not matter and should not. You should be glad that is the case, because it would be just as easy for another religion to take over and curtail your rights as a Christian (something that has happened throughout history).

If the author has a belief system, it must be that "government is great, government is good -- and we trust that it and it's practitioners are omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent".  We DID have a written Constitution based on "self evident truths" and "being endowed by our creator". We HAD a rule of law, not of men -- complete with a known procedure to amend the sacred document if such was needed over time -- and we DID it for things like slavery and women's suffrage!

To equate 5 people in robes conjuring a new "right" out of thin air with the actual amendments that abolished slavery and women's suffrage is to show a level of willful ignorance that proves us to no longer be worthy of the freedom to govern ourselves. "Religion" is not what the winsome lass ought be concerned about -- what 5 people in robes giveth, 5 people in robes can take away! Without respect to anything save raw power, and THAT is the power that definitely corrupts!

When we had a country called America, the authors concerns about "somebody's morals mattering" were pretty much correct -- it was LAW that mattered, and if you wanted a RIGHT, there was a LEGAL PROCEDURE to achieve that called a Constitutional Amendment.

What the author of the piece exhibits is a bigoted and poorly informed outlook with little ability to reason. It is no wonder -- our schooling has for the last 50-100 years been turning out robotic crowd following mental serfs with no concept of critical thought -- and often even no thought of doing even a Google on a fact or two rather than just making it up. Memes like this are driven by nothing deeper than knee jerk adherence to the mass "word of the day" in true Orwellian fashion.

"It made me feel good when I read it, so it MUST be true!".

So, if you see this noxious meme -- now you know a bit more of the truth. That such things can be taken seriously in this now lawless area of North America, formerly the USA, is yet another reason to wax nostalgic for the wisdom of our founders and the country we once had.

Pope Slips Surly Bonds of Sanity?

Unabomber or Unapapa? | Power Line:

I commented last week that the pope excommunicated Christ -- which seems like a bad idea to me.

Now he seems to have crossed that odd boundary where his writings are indistinguishable from the Unabomber -- a bit like Al Gore, not a good sign!

The fact that what you are saying sounds exactly like someone who is certifiably nuts isn't certain proof you are in a bad mental state -- but it is enough to give sane people pause and good reason to check with the nearest planet for confirmation one is still at least within radio range of sanity!

No word if there has been a radio check from the pope -- or perhaps we just don't have any antennas pointed his way and set to deep space!

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Gay Pride, A Pagan Two-for

Love Among the Ruins - WSJ:

The linked article shows that I'm not the only one that sees the world we are living in at this moment as completely surreal.

The rainbows flowered all over FB and even at the WH -- what was the official position of BO on gay "marriage" in 2008 BTW? Oh, never mind, the idea that there should be any remote semblance of consistency in any form from ANYONE on the left is completely absurd -- being left means never having any consistency beyond "leftward ho"!

As the article points out, people were being beheaded and blown up, and gays were being thrown to their deaths elsewhere, but all that counts here in lala-land is that a few hold out states in the already leftist gay riddled and dying US were now forced by 5 people in robes to create a new right to something with no definition (follow the link -- or just just try to define bi-sexual "marriage", no definition beyond "it's legal!")

The core human failing always has been and always will be PRIDE! The Bible makes it clear that "the BEGINNING of wisdom is the fear of God" and the core of Christianity is the acknowledgement that we are sinners in need of a Saviour to pull us up from our broken condition. To be human is to know pride, to be a Christian is to know that pride is a deadly sin.

"Gay Pride" VERY proudly trumpets two mortal sins -- equal sins. The pride is just as much and no more sin than the gay. No Christian would hold pride up as a virtue -- "Gay Pride" is pagan two-fer. It really ought to be PRIDE!! -- Gay Edition.

But watching social and public media erupt with cheap and exuberant pride of those feeling superior because they have followed the winds of the crowd. "If all your friends jumped over a cliff would you follow them?" used to be a parental admonition to stand on your own feet and think independently. That used to be an American value -- independent thought, independence, being willing to stand on your own two feet!  It is one of the many things that died as America died.

Now the masses chests swell cheaply with pagan pride, totally unaware of what they are even uttering beyond it being popular. When the gates are opened and vice becomes virtue, there is no moderating force beyond raw dictatorial power and violence. This is completely known and old as man -- see Pandora and Prometheus.

For thousands of years civilization tamed the chaos of the human soul, with great cost and effort -- most effectively with Judaism and Christianity. Even up to the middle of the 20th century many at least recognized what we had and why we had it ("God and Man at Yale" is a very worthy read on that topic).

It is obvious to those few of us that still have a very tenuous connection with the wisdom of the ages that the Furies have been released -- and the masses cheer to "Give us Barabbas"!!, because as always, they know not what they do.

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Gay Victory, The Next Frontier

It Begins: Pedophiles Call for Same Rights as Homosexuals « Pat Dollard:

"Progress" can never stop for "progressives". If the perfect world that they promise ever became a reality, then they would become "conservatives" -- and we know THAT isn't going to happen!

"Conservatism" is "sustainable" -- because it does not rule out "change" or ACTUAL "progress", it is a BIAS toward the tried and true over the latest and greatest. It prefers the devil we know to the one we don't on the assumption that all things human are flawed, and the "latest and greatest" will prove to have a whole bunch of negatives than what currently have and know to be working at some level. Conservatism is a slow selection between imperfect alternatives.

My summary is that conservatism has enough wisdom to prefer 20 year old Scotch to the most recent hootch to drip out of the still. Only the very young or the very stupid REALLY believe that the latest is the greatest -- no matter what they might say to attempt to impress those around them.

So now that being "gay" is completely as normal as being heterosexual, there MUST be a new frontier! The linked article asserts that one of the pushes will be pedophilia -- which it may well be, but is is certainly not a "new" idea. Very old ... like homosexuality itself in fact. Many primitive tribes, the Greeks, the Romans -- this is both very old and VERY "natural".

The idea of normalizing it here is also not new -- this article from 1993 was one of the reasons I cancelled my over a decade old subscription to "Time" back then. The article pointed out how "small minded" one would have to be to think that a gay teacher that was an active member of "NAMBLA" (North American Man-Boy Love Association) might be a threat to young boys he was teaching. From the article even then it was clear that only some sort of backward prude would question the advantages of gay men having sexual relationships with young boys.

As they say in the linked article:

B4U-Act calls pedophiles “minor-attracted people.” The organization’s website states its purpose is to, “help mental health professionals learn more about attraction to minors and to consider the effects of stereotyping, stigma and fear.” 

In 1998 The APA issued a report claiming “that the ‘negative potential’ of adult sex with children was ‘overstated’ and that ‘the vast majority of both men and women reported no negative sexual effects from childhood sexual abuse experiences.”

You may think to yourself "that is unthinkable, crazy, can't happen!" -- but then try to think back to 2000 -- or even 2008 when BO stated that he was not in favor of gay "marriage"! The idea that gay "marriage" would be legal ANYWHERE in the US in 2000 was no more "thinkable or sane" than the idea that pedophilia could be legal today.

What "progressives" call the process by which they make that happen is "progress".

What it is in reality though is regression to primitive chaos and depravity.


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The US Is Not Norway

Why Norwegian-Style Socialism Will Never Work in the US - The Last Resistance:

Reasonable people might ask why the hell I think posting this is remotely needed. If you think that, you have not been paying attention for a LONG time -- and certainly not in the last couple of weeks. This country is NOT being run by "reasonable people", and judging from a lot of what I see and hear, "reasonable people" are an endangered species in the US!

The whole article is worth reading, but the bottom line is that Norway is a tiny country with a VERY homogenous population and a HUGE amount of yearly oil revenues -- in fact, everyone that lives there is a millionaire in shared oil wealth! This can be contrasted to the US where each man woman and child is $56K in shared debt, growing every day.

The article is worth a read if your reason is failing these days -- and whose isn't? These are NOT "reasonable times"! The bottom line is that in Norway, almost any "system" would work, even socialism!

If you are a tiny country with 3.5% unemployment, almost no immigration, an extremely tiny population of people under the poverty line, little to no diversity of opinion and lifestyle, and a publicly-held oil trust that makes each of your citizens millionaires… Well, I think socialism might just be able to work for you. The system itself is not really working. Because systems are measured by the problems they can overcome, not by the favorable conditions over which they are able to preside. In Norway, there is almost no system that wouldn’t work.

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Age and Sentiment, Kipling

Aging and sentimentality in judges | Power Line:



As we age our energy level drops, we are less combative and more willing to avoid a fight -- the urge to "go along to get along" rises.



William F. Buckley once said that his magazine, National Review, "Stood athwart history yelling STOP!". People of a certain age tend not to stand at all, never to stand over much of anything, and they generally don't shout.



As the country slides deeper and deeper in the leftward ditch, add simple age to the forces pulling down the nation more and more rapidly.



The country was founded as a center-right nation -- and since it came complete with a written constitution, three branches of government purposely set at odds with each other, and the vast bulk of rights reserved to the individuals and STATES before the feds even had jurisdiction, it was wired to be conservative. As people got older, almost all of them became more conservative -- conservatism was the "default choice" ... it was learning to swim WITH the tide!



But now the default choice is very left wing state-ism, bent on destruction of any value that is remotely conservative. So being conservative involves constantly swimming against the cultural current -- making waves, standing out. Increasingly, with more and more bribery of the old -- FICA, Medicare, housing, etc, where once elderly depended on some combination of lifetime thrift and the success / good graces of their children, now Uncle Sam is the all-purpose caregiver. To still stand for God, Freedom and some shred of moral propriety is to bite the hand that feeds not only you, but all the people around you in your age cohort.



The article talks of the specific case of SCOTUS justices -- but anyone over 50 feels some level of the beginning fatigue of standing increasingly alone as the leftward slide gathers pace. Why bother? Just shut up, give up, and let it all careen into oblivion -- it is essentially there already anyway and it becomes more and more obvious that not only is any sort of individual resolve to hang onto some minor semblance of anything righteous and decent increasingly futile, it's a damned lonely and energy draining activity to boot!



So we should not be surprised when voices like Kennedy give up the fight and slide softly into the waiting arms of the tyrants of the left. The darkness is oppressive and powerful -- it takes the utmost in courage, resolve and most of all God's Grace to keep faith when all around are losing theirs.



The words of Kipling are very appropriate to aging conservative Christians today:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

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The Rule of Five, Dropping The Torch

A Question For Those Who Celebrate the Gay Marriage Decision | Power Line:

When there is no remaining Constitution, there can no longer be any surprise at any usurpation of power by any branch of government. The SCOTUS has long ago given up it's standing as the interpreter of the written rule of law. Their legitimate power flowed from the Constitution -- now they have destroyed that document -- the total conjuring of a "right" to any form of marriage being just the latest example.

We have no Constitution, so there is very little reason to have a SCOTUS at all -- and as the leftward slide continues at greater and greater speed, we are nearly certain to see them totally ignored by a "progressive" president, rather than just attacked during a SOTU address as they were in 2010.

The linked article asks the simple question: "If you like the current ruling on gay "marriage", what if they had decided the opposite 5-4? (that gay "marriage" was UNconstitutional)?

Since there is no "right", nor prohibition to any kind of marriage in the Constitution, the country that used to be America would have worked it out on a state by state basis democratically -- as it was doing. The court could have just as easily ruled that gay "marriage" was not Constitutional and stopped it everywhere. Would these people putting up rainbow colors all over be as happy then?

When you give your power away, you give it away! It is GONE -- for some reason people don't realize that when they see the sovereign acting in concert with their "happy idea of the day". They stand and cheer that the state by state democratic process has been usurped. Confident that things will always go their way as "law" becomes a distant to non-existent idea. Where there is no law, there is no predictability of life -- when I was married 30 years ago, the idea of gay "marriage" was as far off as the idea of marrying your sister, parent or dog is today. Given the absence of written law, there is no reason to expect that anything on that list, nor things not imagined today would be a "right" 30 years hence.

As an aside,  "libertarians" applauding 5 people in robes ability to shut down the democratic process in states makes one question both the sanity and basic intelligence of such people. How can any sentient person call themselves a "libertarian" and call it "liberty" when 5 people in robes take the right to democratic action away from 330 million?

Scalia said it best “Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court.”

We are no longer a "united" states -- when the rule of law is abandoned, then power is all that counts. We need a new nation -- perhaps the Red States can form such. The old nation is now something else than America -- the "Socialist States" or "Progressive States".

The torch of liberty has been dropped.

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George Will On BOcare Ruling

On Obamacare, John Roberts helps overthrow the Constitution - The Washington Post:

George Will provides a more in-depth discussion on the end of the Constitution than I touched on yesterday.  

Thursday’s decision demonstrates how easily, indeed inevitably, judicial deference becomes judicial dereliction, with anticonstitutional consequences. We are, says William R. Maurer of the Institute for Justice, becoming “a country in which all the branches of government work in tandem to achieve policy outcomes, instead of checking one another to protect individual rights. Besides violating the separation of powers, this approach raises serious issues about whether litigants before the courts are receiving the process that is due to them under the Constitution.”

As great nations decline, there are many milestones on the descent. One day the freedoms will be completely gone and some will wonder how it all happened.

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Saving Your Enemies

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/06/have-republicans-saved-the-obama-administration.php

One can look at the results of today and draw the conclusion that Republicans care more about avoiding short term pain than they do about saving the nation.

BO is happy, the MSM is happy, so we know that America just took a couple big torpedos amidships.

That BOcare survives is bad enough. What is worse is that congress can now write ANYTHING in a "law", and wait until it is passed, put in practice however the bureaucrats see fit, and there is no need to even go back and see what the law actually said. Republicans  may well pass something in the future that says "thou shalt not provide Social Security benefits to Illegals", and when the Democrat operated union bureaucracies get through with it, they do precisely what the law said NOT to do -- but given the "leeway" now provided on BOcare, the vast bureaucratic system as carte blanche to do whatever they want.

Law is dead, long live the bureaucrat!

The R's happily handed BO fast track authority -- and got NOTHING! He will treat them like the doormats he always has, and why not? If no respect is demanded, none is given by the left -- so the doormats have proven to be worthy of the name and his treatment of same.

The article is worth a read. Read it and weep.

History and Hillary, Sowell

Thomas Sowell: History and Hillary Clinton | New Hampshire:

Well written, concise, entirely factual and well reasoned -- and sad. Sowell does it again.

The saddest point he makes is at the end.

A President of the United States — any President — has the lives of more than 300 million Americans in his or her hands, and the future of Western civilization. If the debacles and disasters of the Obama administration have still not demonstrated the irresponsibility of choosing a President on the basis of demographic characteristics, it is hard to imagine what could. 

With our enemies around the world arming while we are disarming, such self-indulgent choices for President can leave our children and grandchildren a future that will be grim, if not catastrophic. 

Putting another disaster in the WH after the disaster that is BO seems unthinkable, but then BO seemed unthinkable TWICE!

Like all once great nations, the decline phase seems to become inevitable. If we hang around long enough we watch our parents, friends and even children age and die, and ourselves as well. For at least the greatness of nations, the same seems inevitable -- Greece, Rome, England and now the US in turn, rise -- then fall. Maybe the nation still exists, but it is the nation in name only.

The greatness is gone -- like BO in the wind!





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