Government For Government's Sake, Ground Hog Eve

Global factories parched for demand, need stimulus | Reuters:

The linked article is a rundown of the generally bad global economic conditions, but the bottom line is the heading -- demand is low,  government needs to provide more stimulus!

When IBM got to the point in the late 1980's that the average "span of control" (people per manager) was 7, I used to comment that we had "management for management's sake". We had completely forgotten what the business of the company was -- PRODUCING innovative and high quality solutions that customers wanted to buy, and were instead bogged down in "process, corporate programs, tracking and bureaucracy".

By '93 when they brought in Gerstner we were bleeding red ink and rapidly nearing death. We now have arrived at "government for government's sake".

US GDP percentage officially spent by federal, state and local government is supposed to be around 35% now -- it was 40%+ in like '09-'10. In Europe and elsewhere it stays over 40%. I'm not really sure ANYONE has a good idea of how much of "production" is now government "stimulus".

In the 1980's, Ronald Reagan revved up the "engine of capitalism" for what might have been it's last run, and we grew nearly continuously from '82 until 2000. Does anyone remember capitalism? It gets a lot of blame now, but in '08 and '09 especially we took that golden goose of capitalism into the DC operating room and it didn't come out -- but it still gets blamed a lot.

As near as I can figure, the "new goose" is government. It prints money and shits it out all over the landscape, the sheep run out and gather up as much of it as they can, and try to buy a few things from the remaining evil "businesses". You know, those idiots that are taxed and maligned every day for doing grubby work of growing, cooking, building, etc.  They might WANT to be "capitalists", but between BOcare, EPA, IRS, AMT, minimum wage, etc, they are basically just "undocumented government workers".

The geniuses in DC seem to have stuffed the old capitalist goose,  dressed him up in a top hat like Scrooge McDuck, put him in a window on Wall Street and claim he is alive. They sprayed some extra cash around the street to keep the folks moving the money from one stack to another happy, with the agreement they would send some piles back to the politicians in DC for the favor.

We have an old hag worth $50-$100 million stumbling around the country cackling about "income inequality" -- she was a bag lady delivering cash to Wall Street and a good deal of her pile comes from having sticky fingers (no, not like the Stones, that is her husband).

The richest guys in the US, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, regularly go out and lament "income inequality" as well,  the public loves it and sees no problem with it. It gives the sheep something to do rather than listen to speeches about "the greatest problem of our generation" (climate change), or watching reality TV -- or politics, but I repeat myself.

They don't really need to do that anymore either though, because there is a new reality TV show that is pretty high in the ratings called "Running for Emperor" starring Donald Trump, that is picking up solid ratings. It's an odd time, one never knows what people will watch anymore.

Oh, and I heard that Doc Brown from Back to the Future, got lost in time, fried his brain on a Mr Fusion overload and is promising to use a "flux capacitor" to power the dollar presses to hyperspeed so EVERYONE can be rich! In the future, everyone is rich -- it's the only fair thing to do!

and that's the way it is, Ground Hogs Eve, 2016.



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After-Birth Abortion, The Next Frontier

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2012/03/after_birth_abortion_the_pro_choice_case_for_infanticide_.html

This article is from Slate, a far left publication, concerned that the fact that "moral" philosophers are starting to see that infanticide is quite "rational", and concerned that this is likely to cause outrage from anti-abortion people. The thesis for after-birth abortion:

When circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible. … We propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.

The arguments for "After-Birth Abortion" (infanticide) proffered are:

1. The moral significance of fetal development is arbitrary 
2. Prior to personhood, human life has no moral claims on us
3. Any burden on the woman outweighs the value of the child  
4. The value of life depends on choice
5. Discovery of a serious defect is grounds for termination 

Readers of this blog should not be surprised in the least. 

The gears of being a "progressive" grind in only one direction -- their "experts" will continue to define "right and wrong", "personhood" and "morality" in new, and in their minds, "more mature / rational / enlightened"  ways. 

They have already won on abortion and gay "marriage", but the wheel of totalitarianism will grind on unless it is met and contained by the only mechanism it bows to, which is power. 

Frightened By Choice, Education

‘What passes for acceptable school choice rhetoric is frightening’ - The Washington Post:

The linked piece is not long and it is worth reading to see just how angry the left is at ANY idea of actual "choice" in school. The left in this nation knows and has well taken to heart the words of Lenin: "Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted."

Conservative parents are lulled, bullied, shamed and subsidized to send their children off to a socialist Democrat party indoctrination camp for TWELVE years, SIXTEEN if they go to college. The teachers are 90%+ Democrat and union, and by law the school will indoctrinate the children in a completely secular world view antithetical to Christian life.

The fact however that there exist A TINY FEW areas of where parents and have some level of choice, and that in some cases, vouchers are allowed, is positively frightening to the giant grinding wheel of the socialist political, media and union mechanism of the "The Party" (TP-D).

What I found instead was appalling to me. The Humphrey School’s event was billed as “bipartisan,” but I quickly realized how thoroughly that word has become cover for groupthink. If both Democrats and Republicans support the dismantling of our public institutions, then shouldn’t you, too?

Refreshing to see what the ruling elite of TP ACTUALLY think of "bipartisan"! The left view of "bipartisan" is you can call yourself anything you like as long as you either completely agree with the left position or SHUT UP! ... anything else is "appalling", "frightening", etc.

That’s it. This is the framework I have been looking for. What would our education policy discussions be like today, if America had turned out “less Reaganite” and “more Humphreyish”? The hammering narrative of failure, applied with force to our nation’s public school system, found fertile ground in the Reagan era, of course, through the hyped “Nation at Risk” report. That report helped propel America away from further investment in public schools, and towards school choice schemes (hint: privatization).

Here we sit, seven years into an administration farther left than Carter, the Constitution shredded, massive debt and taxation, government tentacles reaching into every aspect of life, a cratered economy with food stamps and welfare being the closest things we have to "growth industries", and it would STILL be much better if American and turned out LESS "Reaganite"!!!!

TP demands TOTAL CONTROL because it's programs DEMAND that none have any choice! How much choice is there? As of 2013 all of 5% of students were in publicly funded Charter Schools, and 10% were in private schools, largely Catholic, paying average tuition of $13,640 per student on top of their property taxes.

Fifteen percent of American youth not being 100% indoctrinated by TP. THAT is what TP finds "frightening"!

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Negative Interest Rates

Negative Interest Rates - Bloomberg QuickTake:

This past Friday, Japan took their interest rates negative and world markets reacted positively. Europe has been doing this for a year and a half now, even though Japan has been in economic recession for over a quarter of a century now and is possibly more desperate than Europe.

The move came 1 1/2 years after the European Central Bank became the first major central bank to venture below zero. With the fallout limited so far, policy makers are more willing to accept sub-zero rates. The ECB cut a key rate further into negative territory Dec. 3, even though President Mario Draghi earlier said it had hit the “lower bound.” It now charges banks 0.3 percent to hold their cash overnight. Sweden also has negative rates, Denmark used them to protect its currency’s peg to the euro and Switzerland moved its deposit rate below zero for the first time since the 1970s. Since central banks provide a benchmark for all borrowing costs, negative rates spread to a range of fixed-income securities. By the end of 2015, about a third of the debt issued by euro zone governments had negative yields. That means investors holding to maturity won’t get all their money back.

Even the linked Bloomberg article has no trouble pointing out that negative interest is DESPERATION!

Negative interest rates are a sign of desperation, a signal that traditional policy options have proved ineffective and new limits need to be explored. They punish banks that hoard cash ...

In case some US folks have the idea that "it can't happen here" ...

Janet Yellen, the U.S. Federal Reserve chair, said at her confirmation hearing in November 2013 that even a deposit rate that’s positive but close to zero could disrupt the money markets that help fund financial institutions. Two years later, she said that a change in economic circumstances could put negative rates “on the table” in the U.S. Deutsche Bank economists note that negative rates haven’t sparked the bank runs or cash hoarding some had feared, in part because banks haven’t passed them on to their customers.

We have a STRANGE situation going on.

•  Growth is low to non-existent ... and even that is cooked. 
• Inflation is SUPPOSED to be low, but that is cooked as well! 
• The global economy weak in Europe, Japan, and looking like China as well! 

It appears that "make sure you have a stockpile of food, water and ammo" situation that we suspected might happen in 2009 is returning for a fresh visitation!

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Inflation, NOT CPI !

If You Want To Know The Real Rate Of Inflation, Don't Bother With The CPI - Forbes:

The whole article is worth reading, but this part of it is so obvious it is worth a dope slap if you haven't realized it:

The CPI is tied to the incomes of about 80 million Americans, specifically: Social Security beneficiaries, food stamp recipients, military and federal Civil Service retirees and survivors, and children on school lunch programs. The higher the CPI, the more money the government needs to spend on these income payments to keep pace with the cost of living. However, this same government is about $17 trillion in debt. If the CPI is low, the less money the government needs to spend on cost of living adjustments, something seniors are astutely aware of.

Is it REALLY surprising that the largest debtor out there who ALSO has to pay a bunch of benefits and salaries that are supposed to be "inflation adjusted" would be interested in making the number artificially low?  They LOVE inflation (pay back debt with cheaper dollars), but why not have their cake and eat it too? If there was "inflation", they would have to pay a bunch of money on "inflation adjusted government bonds". When you leave the fox in charge of the henhouse, is it REALLY surprising that the chicken count is "suspect"?

Since retiring and paying more attention to SPENDING money than to MAKING money, it is become rather obvious to me that "real inflation" as in, "the cost of things you regularly buy" is and has been MUCH higher than what is being reported.

The more money that’s created and put into circulation, the less valuable it becomes. And the Fed has created a lot of money recently. The Fed’s unprecedented bond buying program, Quantitative Easing, created $116 million an hour for the entire year last year. It doesn’t make sense that the BLS’s measurement of inflation was only 1.5% last year, while at the same time, monetary inflation grew 4.9%.*

We are being told by the government that inflation is so low no COLA adjustments are needed. I know the MSM and D's have found the US government to be absolutely trustworthy the past 7 years, but let's see if there is an alternate view on these inflation numbers ...

Been out to eat lately? Pay for medical insurance, co-payments? Pay for your cell phone, internet, electricity, property taxes ... ??? I submit that blue line is MUCH closer to reality than the red one ... hmm, reality of "Red Lines"?

I think anyone with a moderate level of intelligence and common sense as been SURPRISED that things "seem to not be going as horribly as we would think" given the policies of the BO administration and the vast government bureaucracy that is a Democrat / Union hegemony.

The GDP numbers are fiction. It looks like the inflation numbers are fiction.

We know we have been had, but I'm beginning to think that the magnitude of the debacle is WAY beyond what we have been aware of!

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US 4Q GDP .7 ... Or -2.3%

US economy hits soft patch in fourth quarter as inventories, trade weigh:

4Q was .7% ... according to the government, we "grew" at 2.4% and "expanded" likewise in 2014.

The fourth-quarter growth pace was in line with economists' expectations and followed a 2 percent rate in the third quarter. The economy grew 2.4 percent in 2015 after a similar expansion in 2014.

As we keep track of here though, we changed the way we calculate this in July of 2015, so the number has ACTUALLY been "boosted" (manipulated) upward by as much as 3%! 

Meaning that GDP very likely SHRANK in 2015! 

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Friedman, Why Not Use Spoons?

Milton Friedman and the economy of spoons:

There is going to be an economic series of posts here with Japan going to negative interest, Marvin Minsky dying, Sanders running, and me running into things I thought I had posted on -- but hadn't. I read WAY more than I write (and that is a GOOD thing), but sometimes I forget what is only in my head rather than having found it's way to text. To wit, the linked article is on Milton Friedman, written before the 2012 election, but unfortunately even more appropriate today <go see if I have posted on Negative Interest yet>:

When he was told by government officials that it was better to dig ditches with shovels than bulldozers, because more jobs were created that way, Friedman asked, “Why not use spoons?” In no corner of the Earth, from alabaster Washington to the filthiest dungeon state, have central planners ever been able to answer that question. If Friedman had lived long enough to hear Barack Obama blame high unemployment on automated teller machines, he would have recognized a student in dire need of his teachings. 

As the rest of us watch the edifice of statist economics crumble, and prepare to rescue our nation from its tumbling wreckage, we could do worse than “Why not use spoons?” as our battle cry.

They can't answer because Milton is talking about reality and Socialism is a fantasy. It can only "answer" by silencing it's critics, which it has done many times, and we increasingly see yet again in this country in ever more cases.

Friedman is among the finest teachers for learning that everything government does is a form of compulsion. The acolytes of Big Government are always desperate to claim otherwise – they just want togive you stuff! They want to secure your “rights” to “access” goods and services they have deemed vital. They’re just looking to collect a “fair share” from those who would otherwise steal public resources and abuse them to create obscene profits. The public language of statism is always about giving, providing, and ensuring. Pains are taken to hide the taking and destroying.

Compulsion is not good or evil -- we are compelled to breathe, we are compelled to reproduce -- fortunately with less force than to breathe! Hiding the FACT of compulsion as well as it's source,  and calling it "giving, providing, insuring" is evil in the sense that all lies are evil. It prevents decent reasonable people from being able to make rational and informed choices.

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Megyn Kelly, Nice picture

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/28/the-real-problem-with-donald-trump-retweeting-those-provocative-pictures-of-megyn-kelly/

As if Trump needed any lessons on how to get his name in the WaPo. 

The WaPo is all bent out of shape about Trump posting and commenting on these pictures. They do at least mention for example the Scott Brown modeling pictures which the MSM had NO PROBLEM putting up all over when they were supporting Fauxahontis Warren! Kelly posed for those pictures and was paid to pose for them, as did Brown -- seems to me that people can judge what they think those pictures do for her credibility on their own! Or is there supposed to be a double standard for women as well as Democrats? 

They are very worried about what "foreign leaders will think" about Trump's "attitude toward women". Really? After ALL the Clinton years???? How stupidly biased can you be? Foreign leaders knew EXACTLY what Slick liked -- big hair and oral sex. Didn't we ALL get to find out ALL SORTS of details about that over and over and ... ??? 

Oh, did you ever read any MSM article on how they worried about what "foreign leaders" thought of that? No, in fact, they tended to report that "foreign leaders don't understand why we care about how he treats women". "Feminists" where FINE with it, as were "journalists" ... one female Time reporter even gushed that "she would be HAPPY to give him oral sex just to thank him"!

Is Trump tacky? Sure, but compared to THE CLINTON'S???? The tawdry population of this area of N America gave up ANY STANDARDS when we let that slimeball keep on ejaculating in the oval office!

We could go to BO's "Dreams From My Father" where he very presidentially says "gotta have pussy", uses the N-word a few times, talks about "booze, weed and blow but no horse (heroin)" and a few other very "down to earth" things like "filtering his mom's white blood out" ... **NO PROBLEM** !!!!  I guess I forgot the big "D" next to his name and Slicks as well -- totally different!

No, I don't like Trump, but SERIOUSLY???? The MSM expects us to get all bent out of shape about HIS antics, when we have been asked to completely look the other way in the past constantly for the Ds? 

It certainly isn't hard to understand how the Donald's supporters are ANGRY and support him MORE when the MSM goes after him! 

Destroying Male Instinct, The Dance of Death

The Hypnotic Dance of Death | Frontpage Mag:

One of the better descriptions of the power of "political correctness" to destroy even the basic instincts to protect women and children. Just go read the whole thing if you have ANY time, but this is the punchline. What happened to the men? In general, they no longer exist -- they have been brainwashed by political correctness and not even the cry of a helpless girl can wake their natural instincts. Essentially, this article answers my question from here on "how can the left not care?".

What has happened to the world when men, women, politicians, and the elite betray their daughters and children in order to please newcomers with their baser instincts and a cult of male power? 

The answer is sad: the culture of postmodernism has managed to do what couldn’t be achieved even by the Communist propaganda machine. It has degraded the instinct of self-preservation, a natural reaction embedded in humans on a genetic level, the ability to feel compassion and protect a victim – a woman, a girl, a child. An abstract ideology has suppressed the mind and senses. I left the USSR as a hater of Soviet totalitarianism. Now I realize that the cultural totalitarianism of political correctness has turned out to be much more poisonous. 

The Soviet regime dictated harsh rules and established censorship. However, people remained normal human beings. They laughed at authorities, composed jokes about Brezhnev, made satirical films in spite of the censorship, and learned to read newspapers between the lines. Cultural totalitarianism succeeded much more. It affirmed a relentless self-censorship, turned people into sterile zombies, and exterminated basic senses of responsibility and dignity. It changed the very nature of man, and indeed, it was a unique experiment on their own people.  

There is a small carnivorous animal in Siberia – a stoat. It hunts rabbits and hares, which are significantly heavier, faster and stronger than the stoat itself. It doesn’t creep, doesn’t sit in ambush and doesn’t catch its prey on the run. It performs a hypnotic dance of death in front of it — with wriggles, acrobatic leaps and somersaults. The stoat dazzles the prey and, gradually approaching it, then grabs its throat. The rabbit dies from shock. Why does the prey allow the stoat to dazzle and kill it without resisting? Biologists are unable to solve the riddle of the stoat’s hypnotic dance. Western elites have foredoomed their own people by means of somersaults and acrobatic tricks, and doomed them to the same fate of the unfortunate rabbit.  

The hypnotic dance of death is gaining momentum.

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Roger Scruton, Thinkers of the New Left

Interview

Book on Amazon

First I read the Interview/Article in the top link, which is of reasonable length and I would recommend it to anyone who has a passing interest in the decline of our academic and general culture. I found this quote representative.

‘I agree there is a paucity of conservative thought. It is partly the effect of the dominance of the left. If you come out as a conservative in a university context, you will find yourself very much on the margins. But my main explanation of this is that conservative thought is difficult. It doesn’t consist of providing fashionable slogans or messages of hope and marching into the future with clenched fists and all the things that automatically get a following. It consists in careful, skeptical rumination on the near-impossibility of human existence in the first place.’

The "impossibility" plus the GRACE and the FRAGILITY of that Grace as it relates to culture and the potential for a meaningful relatively peaceful life.  The richness of Family, Faith, Community and Freedom of Thought. All items that the left continues to destroy. "The little Platoon" of Burke -- ruthlessly replaced by the cold totalitarian state. The result of this endless destruction is NOTHING ... as he puts it here:

So, what is all this Nothing-ness about? ‘My view’, says Scruton, ‘is that what’s underlying all of this is a kind of nihilistic vision that masks itself as a moving toward the enlightened future, but never pauses to describe what that society will be like. It simply loses itself in negatives about the existing things – institutional relations like marriage, for instance – but never asks itself if those existing things are actually part of what human beings are. Always in Zizek there’s an assumption of the right to dismiss them as standing in the way of something else, but that something else turns out to be Nothing.’

The book is not long, but it is intellectually challenging primarily because the "thinkers" of the left being dissected are nebulous and obtuse in the extreme, so although Scruton is relentless in his exposure of their nonsense, parts of their texts must be suffered through.

In many places he reaches basically this conclusion on the reason that leftism lives on even after the disaster of Fascism and the fall of the USSR:

"It also provides the exact equivalence of religious faith. As in Pascal's wager, believing becomes a kind of doing, and in this doing lies the moral salvation -- the inner identity with the revolution -- for which the intellectual craves."

In "The Closing of the American Mind", Bloom reports to us on "what happened" when the left took over the American university. Scruton plumbs the modern lineage of leftism, still based on Marx, but fermenting in it's fetid juices -- prominently in Paris:

"The effect was to destroy the conversation on which civil society depends. All the delicate ideas concerning law, constitution and the roots of civil order, all the ways in which human beings argue over rights and duties, honor their opponents and seek for compromise, were flattened by mathemes, deterritorialized, and buried beneath the debris of the great Event. This was the turning point in a battle that has been raging now for a century -- the battle to take possession of the culture by defining the intellectual life as an exclusively left-wing preserve."  

"mathemes" are an attempt to use the language of mathematics to make leftist thought more impressive -- and inscrutable. "The Event" is some version of "revolution" ... economic, political, intellectual.

Throughout the book are countless examples of methods, justifications, etc for wiping out all thought that is not against "capitalism, the bourgeoisie, religion, tradition, family, etc" and in support of the inevitability of "Marxism, the rise of the proletariat, communism, atheism, nihilism, etc".

It was a read that motivated me, so I made it through it rapidly and actually enjoyed it, but I can see that if I had not been exposed to a good deal of leftist literature in the past, as I have, it would also be easy to get bogged down. Worthy, but certainly not "required reading". While in the quote above, Scruton says that conservative thought is "difficult" -- I certainly don't find it difficult to read in comparison to the left, but I think his point is that it is not "stylish". It is often unpopular, indicating that man is limited (mortal even!) and in need of salvation by a power greater than himself.

Yes, that is "difficult" for many today -- but for me it is reality and grounded in eternal vs popular truth.

Tres Hombres Meal !

A ZZ Top Superfan Recreated the Delicious Tex-Mex Album Art From 'Tres Hombres' and Then Ate It - Maxim:

Wow ... LOVE that album and always dreamed of setting down to that meal! Sitting here in my ZZ Top T-shirt surfing and what should pop up!

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Propagandizing the German Holocaust

As a Holocaust Survivor, I Know This Small Action Is the True Antidote to Hate:

Articles like the linked are a sad commentary on the acceptance of ideology and propaganda in the US today. If we want to prevent a holocaust of the racial sort that happened with Hitler, the FIRST thing is to prevent the rise of totalitarian government. Totalitarianism KILLS!

Especially Socialism as in National Socialism or Nazi, and  Communism. These are the ideologies that killed over 100 million people in the 20th century including 6 million Jews.

In order to understand totalitarianism, you must understand that corruption of language is one of it's chief weapons. (what part of "total" is it that you missed?). By controlling language, thought itself is controlled, thus allowing evil to parade in plain sight calling itself "good". The greatest single piece of evidence for that is the appropriation of "left" to essentially mean "good, progress, benevolence, care, etc", and "right" to mean "evil, Hitler, backward, hatred".

This ideological language and thought control is an "inversion", one of the key elements of totalitarianism that I recently covered here.

Ideologues are masters of indirection of all types -- "someone else" is always "the danger", so the article maliciously attempts to smear  anyone against open borders into a "Nazi", while an avowed socialist is running for president!

In order to kill millions, you need to dehumanize your targets and devalue life. We already have killed over 58 MILLION babies, so we are WAY ahead of the old National Socialists on that front. To a totalitarian, is it "better" when you kill 58 million indiscriminately than killing 6 million mostly on the basis of race (although not entirely ... Gypsies, gays and others were also killed in Germany).

Apparently so -- in fact, wanting to control borders is worthy of a cautionary article in the Huffpo, while the left-control oriented media yips joyously for 1st amendment rights being turned into criminal behavior when the abortion butchers are exposed selling baby parts over wine and salad.

Government power in the US is already being used to prosecute it's "enemies" as in Wisconsin attacking Walker supporters, against Exxon in NY, the IRS attacking the Tea Party, etc

Ultimately, the only way to keep what happened in Nazi Germany from fully happening here is to defend the 2nd Amendment to the DEATH!

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Humboldt IA Destroyed by Hillary Supporters, Algona Next!

Retreating Clinton Campaign Torches Iowa Town To Slow Advance Of Sanders Volunteers:

OK, It's the ONION, but it **IS** funny. Especially because I know these towns pretty well, but not NEARLY as well was my wife or family members in the area know them.

It's short ... just go read it. My guess is that a small set of Hillary supporters would be lying in expanding blood stains and the rest would be whimpering in puddles of their own urine begging for their sniveling toady lives to be spared -- but that might make the piece less humorous.

But this probably seems plausible if you have never been to Humboldt!

On a serious note, if Slick Willie is with them, the women, children and farm animals need to be hidden.

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January 28, 1986 -- 30 Years Since Challenger

Space shuttle Challenger's final voyage is remembered, 30 years later - CBS News:

JFK Assassination, Moon Walk, Challenger, 9-11 ... those are the days I remember for sure right where I was and what I was doing from a "national event" perspective in my life so far.

Thirty years ago today we were married less than a year. I happened to be home from IBM sick at our place in Chatfield for one of the very few times in the first 20+ years of my career. I wasn't feeling good enough to be watching TV, so got a call from a friend at work that "people were saying something happened to the Shuttle. Those were the days before Internet and there were not any TVs around the site and radios were wither prohibited or frowned upon.

Being the space buff I was, it was shocking, but technically certainly not hard to believe. I understood that the Shuttle system was flawed at best -- solid boosters and tiles for re-entry being big examples. 2.5 million parts and 400K lines of code to keep it flying. There is some detail on the mission hardware and software here. I did feel horrible for the families -- but I can still remember feeling guilty for how sad I felt for the Challenger and the engineers. The shuttles were an embodiment of a spirit and capability that may never return to this nation. It was a privilege to be alive and experience both the highs and the lows of that era.

As always, Reagan had some of the best words possible and remembrance of him certainly brings back nostalgia for that spacefaring nation of heroes that built and flew marvelous machines.

In 1986, Japan was flying high -- you can glance at one article here, but the assumption was that they were an unstoppable economic force ... better methods, harder working labor force, better social programs,  you name it. We HAD to copy Japan, or they would just buy us up.  Japan's economy has been essentially in a recession since '92 -- it turns out their sure fire policies that we were supposed to copy didn't pan out so wall. Starting in '06 with Democrats taking over both houses of Congress, we finally started to copy them.

I'd say the Japanese policies DO "work"! It's just that the definition of "work" isn't maybe what some had thought!

Kids were still in the future in '86, now a Grandchild is the earthy center of our universe. There was lots of IBM career ahead in '86, now it is in the rear view mirror.

Time marches on for the living. The USSR is dead ... but then, the US that we knew and loved in '86 is dead too. Now we have no space capability and hitch rides with Russia, whose leader is listed as the most powerful man in the world.  (BO was third, indicating stench isn't everything!)

My tendency to pine away "for the old days" is getting stronger -- I must REALLY be getting old!

If you are feeling as nostalgic for that time as I am, I might suggest checking out the book "Riding Rockets"

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Left and Right Explained

From time to time it becomes clear that the commonly used terms "Left and Right" need to be disambiguated. That time has come again.

The origin of "left and right" goes back to the French Revolution, where those loyal to the king and the church sat on the right and the revolutionaries sat on the left. 

Control of language is a critical aspect of ideology, and using meaningless abstraction vs meaningful terms  to describe something is proof of ideological language manipulation (see Ethics Of Rhetoric).

In order to proceed, we need to all agree on the loaded term "ideology". Ideology is a system of ideas and values that people believe in. It is exactly like religion except religion typically has a claimed supernatural root. For nearly all religious people, their religion holds a higher place of value in their worldview than whatever ideology they may subscribe to. For the non-religious, their ideology IS their religion, though typically they would argue that their ideology was "true" and religions were "false" until they actually face death (or maybe until Judgement Day ... when they will claim it is "unjust")

Trying to summarize political thought and world view in a single dimension is obviously a vast oversimplification, but we humans love to do such things.  Since we ARE doing this ALL THE TIME, a sane person chooses meaningful terms for the dichotomy, limited though it is. 

A reasonable labeling is  "Control vs Chaos" (It's a "Get Smart" world). The "Left" is CONTROL, the "Right" is CHAOS. The US was founded as a "center right nation" meaning "a little bit toward chaos from the center". It was founded this way because we had just come from being ruled by a King (Monarchy) ... TOTALITARIAN is all the way "Left", ANARCHY is all the way "right". 

Hayek, "Road to Serfdom" covers the co-opting of the term "liberal" and discusses the problem with WWII and the largely "marketing split" between the two modern brands of heavy state control (Statist), Fascism (National Socialism) and Communism. Even though Communism, Socialism and Fascism are all LEFT, we certainly wanted to be the GOOD GUYS, and we were fighting with the Communists as allies (USSR) ... so Nazi became "Right/Evil".

Historically, to the ancients, Left was evil and Right was good. Jesus sits at God's right hand. Left was the "bad hand" ... you did your bathroom cleaning with the left hand and shook hands with the right.

The way the terms are used today is INTENDED to be confusing for ideological purposes. It is a way of manipulating the population and at the same time breaking connection with the ancient, natural and sacred. The ancient order has been reversed and "Right" is "Nazi / Racist / Reactionary / EVIL", while "Left" is "Modern, Democratic, Progressive, Socially Responsible / GOOD. 

Note also the overloading of "conservative" -- when the USSR was falling, the "hard liners" were "right wing" -- even though they clearly wanted communism,  commonly located as "left" on the modern spectrum. Same for "revolutionary" -- in the original French context, that was "left", but in modern times if there is a "bad revolution", it will be termed "right wing" by the dominant elite.

Our brains (for good and ill) are wired to "like like". Most people are RIGHT handed, so the timeless natural bias is to call the good "the right" and bad/evil "left". Simplistic and prone to prejudice, but "natural" and "human" -- not confusing. We innately believe that "right is right" ... our language and history wire it into our brain (or it is divinely there as I believe). 

Ecclesiastes 10:2 "The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left."

Satan seeks the  INVERSION of nature  ... right becomes left, good becomes evil, and death is worshiped over life -- thus you see lots of killing of babies, tattoos of skulls and demons, etc. The goal of  Satan is to invert the natural order -- natural sexuality inverted to homosexuality,  natural gender denied, the mothers natural desire to protect her baby inverted to abortion,  etc.

 While the inversion makes everyone "feel wrong" (because "right is right" is wired in from God), that "wrongness" also feels "subversive, rebellious,  impudent, proud, exciting, etc" -- which can easily be mistaken for "good"  (like riding a roller coaster) -- evil is often exciting, easy, and in modern times, actually culturally approved! (if it feels good, do it) 

Did God REALLY say? Gen 3:4-5 "The serpent said to the woman,You surely will not die 5 For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

So now you know left and right. Can you figure out good and evil?