Groundhog Day, Again

Groundhog Day -- A Movie for All Time

We started a new tradition tonight I hope. Watching "Ground Hog Day" on Ground Hog Day. This is always my favorite scene ... "Don't Drive Angry!".

NRO has a tradition of running the same Jonah Goldberg column every Ground Hog Day, and I think it is an excellent tradition.

I was raised Baptist, but one of the things now dear to me in the Lutheran Church is the Church Year and the various elements of the liturgy. The Bible says to not use "meaningless repetition" and somehow the Baptists applied that to the liturgy, but fortunately not to Christmas or Easter (they do those every year!).

Matt 6:7 "And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words."

As an Elder, I will be taking Communion to a dear shut-in woman with Alzheimers in February, and one of the lovely things is that she still remembers the Communion prayers and creeds -- not perfectly, but significantly. She tends to always say "I like that the whole church says and does these things ... I don't know why, it just feels right ..." The definition of "meaningless" doesn't include Christ instructing us on how to pray -- but we never did the Lord's Prayer in church when I grew up.

My cynical summary of Baptist theology was "If the Catholics do it, we don't".

BTW, I am NOT "anti-baptist, or even anti-dentite" ... like all human religion, Baptists have flaws, Lutherans have flaws, and mooses are the sum of all flaws!

You may not think of  the movie "Ground Hog Day" as a religious or philosophical movie, but I agree with Goldberg, it definitely is. Read the review, and if you get a chance, watch it ... again.

Perhaps when we "get it", then this life is taken from us -- and loving that it goes is part of loving it.

“The curse is lifted when Bill Murray blesses the day he has just lived. And his reward is that the day is taken from him. Loving life includes loving the fact that it goes.”

I hope you bless this Ground Hog Day!

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Air France 747, Goodbye To An Icon!

Stunning! This Is How You Say Goodbye To An Icon | All Things Aero:

A video that I enjoyed watching on the link. I used to watch the contrails from the farm as a kid, and on the rare occasions that I got to see a big city airport I always dreamed of getting on a 747.

It wasn't until my first over the pond business trip to England in late '80s that I rode one of the iconic double deckers from Minneapolis to Gatwick outside of London. The "ship of the skies" ... a slow and stately takeoff roll, a pretty level deck angle on climb. DC-10's of the era flexed and shook, with typically one or more overhead bins popping open. The 747 was solid, quiet and calm.

Sometime in the early '90s I read "Wide-body: The Triumph of the 747" a superb book. Remember, they built this beast prior to much in the way of computing power being available, and it was a REAL technological and business stretch. The book is also full of a lot of stories of the history of Boeing, including how the swept wing planes have a tendency to "Dutch Roll" which if not dampened can become violent.

On a customer acceptance flight, the customer pilot miscorrected and the roll became so violent that 3 of the 4 engines were thrown from the plane. It crash landed killing a high level Boeing exec and I believe their chief pilot -- 4 survived, largely because he was able to get the plane to the ground in a semi-controlled manner. "Bugs" in planes are often more costly than bugs in computers!

I definitely recommend the book if you have an interest in this industry changing jet.

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Minsky, Creativity, AI Koan

Marvin Minsky and the Creative Economic Mind:

This one is worth reading all of!

Marvin Minsky observations are common in physics books I like to read -- "Time Reborn" that I'm finishing up now has many.

The AI Koan covered in the column is:

In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. 

“What are you doing?” asked Minsky.

 “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe,” Sussman replied.  

“Why is the net wired randomly?” asked Minsky. 

 “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play,” Sussman said.  

Minsky then shut his eyes.  

“Why do you close your eyes?” Sussman asked his teacher.

 “So that the room will be empty.”  

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

Are you enlightened? It's a Koan ...

The column links together a lot of topics that I think are interesting, but the big points at the end are that government has a strong history of slowing down creativity and business in many and varied ways. He has a quote I think is worth remembering:

Government is what happens when the power to say no meets the power to move slow.

I'd argue that quote is only true relative to productivity and growth. Government can move VERY fast when increasing it's own power and destroying individual liberty!

He discusses the removal of the "Prudent Man Rule" in '79 which allowed a burst of venture capital to be unleashed, and the allowing radio spectrum to be used under Reagan, which gave us cellular phones and WiFi.

He sums it up at the end with a paragraph that is worth pondering for a bit ...

Our current national mood is very grim: anti-immigration, because we fear foreigners will steal our jobs; anti–Big Business, which wants to help foreigners steal our jobs; anti-finance, because we fear Wall Street will somehow figure out a way to make money stealing our jobs; anti-technology, because we fear that robots will steal our jobs. And we are, too often, anti-entrepreneur, too, resentfully suspecting that somehow the men and women who create the things that we do not want to live without are somehow getting over on us.

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Lost Girlfriends and Muslims

Minnesota leaders' full-page ad decries bigotry toward Muslims - StarTribune.com:

I usually try to make my cases in clear points and reason, but this one hits me emotionally and I know the reason.

Sometime in late February early March of '76, forty years ago, I set off on a spring break to Indiana in a snowstorm with two young ladies my age to visit some people we had met in 4-H a couple years prior.  (we are supposed to get 8" of snow today)

Five years ago while driving north to snowmobile in a snowstorm with my son and wife sleeping while I drove, I finally realized that I was the most boring young man in human history! I'm a slow learner -- the mothers that allowed their daughters to go along with me knew what they were doing. I then understood a conversation with a young woman about why it didn't work out long ago. Her succinct reason -- "My parents like you better than they like me". (I'm sure they didn't, it just seemed that way to her). 

I feel the same way about the full-page Muslim ad as I did about that conversation. Why do our lefty neighbors choose Muslims over Christians? Why do our elites find Muslims "stylish" and Christians to be "hicks"? (bitter clingers)

Muslims share many of the elements of what secular society finds reprehensible about Christians. They are creationists, they hold homosexuality as a grievous sin, they believe that men and women have God given roles, they pray at work or school, they hold an ancient text as more holy than modern secular pronouncements.

They of course go far further than Christians. They make women wear hijabs and blame them for rape. They will kill homosexuals or adulterers if they become a majority. Once they do reach majority, they demand that the government be an Islamic State, by force if required.

The simple answer to "why" is CHRIST. He is, was, and always will be the DIFFERENCE. Islam may be far more restrictive and infinitely more violent than Christianity, but Islam rejects Christ, so the unholy totalitarian left is able to make it's peace with Islam but not Christianity.

Emotionally though, it hurts.

Emotions are like weather -- they pass. It is good to acknowledge them from time to time, but meaning of the sort to live by is a deeper truth. I'm convinced our cats have feelings, but other than Cabbage Cat (a feline philosopher that I consult with),  they don't reason much. Many "liberals" are similar ... without the soft fur and purr.

I cover  some reasoning on why "liberals" love Islam but hate Christianity here.  The embrace of "massive tolerance" for Islam feels somewhat the same as if the left leadership of MN put out a full page ad welcoming the Westboro Baptist Church to make their voices heard in MN. I'm not holding my breath on that ... though it would make far more rational sense than the Muslim ad.

If you want to cover a yet deeper philosophical understanding of why western secularism finds Islam preferable, it is covered in this post ... the punchline is that Islam and Leftism agree that "there is no truth".

So we Christians and believers in the exceptionalism of Western civilization have been jilted for Islam. It isn't new -- they love Communism and Fascism as well. (covered that recently here).

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

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Hilly Comes Clean!

http://nypost.com/2016/01/31/this-was-all-planned-former-ig-says-hillary-state-dept-are-lying/

The following is a transcript from the NSA interview with Hillary after putting her under the influence of truth serum so they could assess the damage to national security.

NSA: "Tell us about your home-brew email server."

Hillary: "What's to tell? I had it set up, I had people run it, I deleted all that I could. Nobody told me that you had to empty the trash! It's the damned stupid tech weenies fault!"

NSA: "Why did you set it up?"

Hillary: "Are you idiots? We run a major criminal operation! I can't be having my e-mails subpoenaed and viewed by some flunky prosecutor! I collect tens of millions in bribes and pay millions in bribes and hush money.  "BBB" (Bill's Bimbo Bill) alone runs into the millions every year, and that is petty cash!"

NSA: "What about National Security?"

Hillary: "It can be lucrative at times, sure, but I make more money on just plain old quid pro quo."

NSA: "You sell national secrets?"

Hillary: "I sell everything. I buy a lot of stuff too."

NSA: "Aren't you concerned about treason? Agents and others losing their lives because of leaks?"

Hillary: "People die all the time, you expect me to worry about that? Nobody is going to prosecute us! There is NOBODY of any level of power that we don't have the goods on, and that includes the scum in my White House and his ugly wife that has the gall to call me "Hildebeast". Her days are numbered!"

NSA: "What about the information you are giving me now?"

Hillary: "You really don't get it do you? We own judges, prosecutors, heads of agencies -- the head of YOUR agency! You remember Ron Brown? He forgot who owned him! This interview is OVER! Jack ... "

..... sound of silenced gunshot.

Hillary: "Thanks Jack. Pity to see a decent young guy who doesn't know the ropes have to take his own life like that. He could have learned what matters with a little more time. Slow learner, wrong place at wrong time."

"Take me home. I need a warm bath and a good glass of wine ... oh, and get, ah, Ken ... er"

Jack: "You mean Keith Alexander, NSA head?"

Hillary: "Yes, him ... I want him at my hotel at 8 sharp. We are going to make sure that this kind of screwup doesn't happen again! ... oh, and Jack ... make sure someone cleans up this mess. "

Jack: "Yes, ma'am!'

******** end transcript

From the article:

Either way, there would be an audit trail for investigators to follow. The SIPRNet system maintains the identity of all users and their log-on and log-off times, among other activities. 

“This totally eliminates the false premise that she got nothing marked classified,” Krongard said. “She’s hiding behind this defense. But they [emails] had to be classified, because otherwise [the information in them] wouldn’t be on the SIPRNet.” 

Added Krongard: “She’s trying to distance herself from the conversion from SIPRNet to [the nonsecure] NIPRNet and to her server, but she’s throwing her staffers under the bus.”

We ALL know that the only reason she set up a private server was to avoid prosecution for her "business as usual". She also happens to be incompetent -- so she didn't get it really wiped and some e-mails got out. She STILL was allowed to go through them and pick which ones "could be released", and yet she allowed some of those to be Top Secret after testifying there was no "classified information" on that server.

The bottom line is that the Clinton's are above the law. All of this stuff was well known way back in the '90s, but nobody cared then as nobody cares now. If you want to run down the rabbit hole, here is a link http://www.arkancide.com/. Sure,  there are complete cranks, conspiracy theorists and a host of other folks "out to get the Clintons", but how many people can die around a couple "accidentally"?

I did look up a few of the deaths back in the '90s -- at least many of them ARE real people that suddenly stopped being alive. Just scan down the list and think about how much national attention was given to W Bush being in the TX National Guard 30 years before his presidency. How about the amount of time spent on Valerie Plame and the fact that it turned out that they even got to the bottom of it and it was Richard Armitage who accidentally leaked her name ...  he wasn't one of the guys the Democrats wanted to take down, so the investigation was over at that point!

It isn't just a "double standard", it is a complete takeover by a single corrupt political party  ... and I think  anyone that has paid MINIMAL attention knows that. The fact is that in general, we are so corrupt as a nation that nobody cares -- keep us entertained and distracted, keep the free stuff coming. Our only values are dollars and comfort -- gladiator Rome was a fount of virtue compared to America today.

God Help Us!

The BS Revolution

Bernie Sanders's Political Revolution - The Atlantic:

Time to "smash the old system" with BS. BO was a bit "airy" ... time to get down to the real "free shit"!

“I think he’s more radical than the other people we’ve had, and I like that about him,” Taylor Raska, a 28-year-old bartender with a nose ring, mismatched earrings, and lines of cursive writing tattooed on her arms, told me. An ardent environmentalist who’s tired of politicians, Raska believes the old system must be smashed for a new order to take its place. “Everything’s going to change!” she said, savoring the beautiful thought. “We are in this amazing period—it’s awesome to be a part of. Everything is changing!”

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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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