100 Million Deaths, DDT, Malaria, Value of Life

Rachel Carson's Deadly Fantasies - Forbes:

Readers of this blog know that I believe ALL lives matter, and that I am intrigued, dismayed, perplexed and frustrated by the WIDE variation in how much given lives in fact do matter! To that end, I've come back to the issue of DDT and Malaria.

To make the longer story REALLY short, DDT came online at just the right point in history -- right as WWII was getting underway, and from 1943 - 1960, it saved on the order of HALF A BILLION ... yes, you heard that right, 500,000,000 lives!!!  If you have time to read just the very early part of this article, it is WELL worth your time!

Then, along came "Silent Spring" -- a FICTIONAL work, that was supposedly based on science, but was not, that is credited with founding the environmental movement. The results of the world wide emotional backlash against DDT were immediately catastrophic, and if you must see the "punchline", at least 100 MILLION dead, making Carlson in the ranks of the greatest mass murderers in history:

In Ceylon, for example, where, as noted, DDT use had cut malaria cases from millions per year in the 1940s down to just 17 by 1963, its banning in 1964 led to a resurgence of half a million victims per year by 1969.[18] In many other countries, the effects were even worse.

By 1970, the National Academy of Sciences was worried, they tried to head off the rush to disaster with this:

To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. It has contributed to the great increase in agricultural productivity, while sparing countless humanity from a host of diseases, most notably, perhaps, scrub typhus and malaria. Indeed, it is estimated that, in little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million deaths due to malaria that would otherwise have been inevitable. Abandonment of this valuable insecticide should be undertaken only at such time and in such places as it is evident that the prospective gain to humanity exceeds the consequent losses. At this writing, all available substitutes for DDT are both more expensive per crop-year and decidedly more hazardous.[19]

But it was banned in the US anyway, and many other places to follow.

And even for those that did not, the halting of American DDT exports (since U.S. producers slowed and then stopped manufacturing it) made DDT much more expensive, and thus effectively unavailable for poor countries in desperate need of the substance.[25] As a result, insect-borne diseases returned to the tropics with a vengeance. By some estimates, the death toll in Africa alone from unnecessary malaria resulting from the restrictions on DDT has exceeded 100 million people.[26]

I did more reading this PM on DDT than I really wanted to ... the guy that wrote this article used to eat a teaspoon of it before his speeches! He died of a heart attack at age 84.

I could ramble on -- in general, danger to humans, very close to nil. Danger to birds, nothing if used in ANY sort of sensible way -- the issue of eggshells / eagles is from having it virtually POURED on fields for no good reason other than it was "cheap and effective so more must be better".

Back to the important point, LIFE!

No images of lilu in her outfit today guys! ;-(

So a woman writes a fictional story about birds being killed at just the right time so a bunch of lefties go off the deep end about a pesticide that has saved HALF A BILLION lives, and it is banned!  We finally start getting back to use it FIFTY YEARS  after it's banning has killed well over 100 MILLION !!!

I understand that most of the lives saved and lost were black, and I certainly understand that from the point of view of the left-liberal-progressives in this country, black lives are "pawns". They are CRITICAL as a voting block today, but as 6K young black men die in the streets here by shooting each year, those lives matter as much as the lives of babes in their mothers wombs. Abortion falls especially hard on the black, which was the intention of Margret Sanger and the eugenicists.

The gay guys that died from AIDs mattered HUGELY, although far, FAR less than a common street thug that attacked a police officer in Ferguson. His life approached the worth of an assassinated US president if one considers the amount of media time spent on it.

OTOH, many many thousands of deaths of poorly educated white people in an epidemic of suicide and substance abuse are worth even less than those of the young urban black men shooting each other!

My answer is that we have abandoned any sense of proportion, reason and morality and are being completely driven by a politically controlled media, government and educational monolith under single party (D) control that is 100% directed to gaining and locking in POWER.

I'd like to hear alternative answers.


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In Praise of Racism

How To Drive Right Wing Racists Insane With One Simple Question:

Racism --  (Google) The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

Edward O. Wilson, "The Meaning of Human Intelligence", p30 and 31, 

"A second overpowering human behavior is the overpowering instinctual urge to belong to groups." ... "A persons membership in his group--his tribe--is a large part of his identity. It also confers on him some degree or other of a sense of superiority".  

The text following this gives scientific backing to these statements, but I suspect we are all humans here, we know them to be true in our very souls. A little later, we find:

".... people prefer to be with others who look like them, speak the same dialect, and hold the same beliefs." 

Wilson of course knows he is on dangerous ground and attempts to couch his obviously true statements because he knows that the dominant culture thinks like the linked article. I really like this quote from early in "Meaning of Human Intelligence" :

"When Carl Sagan won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1978, I dismissed it as a minor achievement for a scientist, scarcely worth listing. When I won the same prize the following year, it wondrously became a major literary award of which scientists should take special note."

 A marvelous and HONEST statement of human nature! We love ourselves and we love our group -- either we were created that way or we became that way because it was adaptive. Either way, that is who we are for at least many tens and hundreds of thousands of years to come -- assuming we can survive.

The one modification easy to make to the definition is the "all" -- it is of course "most", and the fact that our natural feeling is that our group is superior can be intellectually and spiritually tempered. It will still exist in our hearts, because it is our wiring, but with the help of God it can be channeled as can the other parts of our fallen nature.

We could re-write the racist definition as "Blacks believing that all blacks are superior and therefore black lives matter more than others".  It is totally clear that many current blacks are racist and extremely proud to be so, which I'd argue is the main reason that many whites are responding in kind in a world that has long left behind the unifying factor of Christian belief. Both blacks and whites are human, and barring belief and practice of a religion that specifies improved behavior, they behave accordingly.

The essence of the column above is our old friend the inversion. The "liberal" ideology/religion defines "minority" to be  "good" (even when they become the majority), and "traditional majority" (ie. white) to be "evil". This is directly in opposition to human nature, which "just is". Christianity seeks to IMPROVE on fallen human nature, not invert it. "Love your neighbor AS YOURSELF" doesn't say "learn to hate yourself, then your neighbor will seem better". It seeks to properly channel our fallen state back to God.

The purpose of leftism is to DESTROY the natural order.  Taking the natural inclination of people to love themselves (see previous Pulitzer prize) and to love their family, religion, race, ethnicity, tradition, etc and to INVERT it so that large groups are to be accepted in the new group/religion ("liberalism" / TP) by declaring their self-loathing for the natural order previously listed (self, family, etc). In order to be part of the "The Party"(TP-D), they are required to tell a lie against their very nature -- "Black Lives Matter -- but white lives do not!".

It is sad that such people as the author of the article never find me to interview -- the picture at the head of the article looks exactly like so many liberals that I have calmly explained my thoughts to. It is clear that their "tolerance" is extremely limited.

So, my off the cuff answer to "Why am I a proud white person"? The question from the article that is supposed to "drive me insane".

I believe that pride is natural but dangerous, I prefer to consider myself a BLESSED White Christian, but in the spirit of the question.

Christendom, Western civilization, the Constitution, Newtonian Physics, Albert Einstein, Edmund Burke, Winston Churchill, flight, the Moon Landing, electricity, clean water and sanitation, Scotch, Bourbon and the Green Bay Packers.

With the modifications above, I am a "proud racist" -- as a fallen human, as is the author of the article. They seek to deny their very nature and declare that they are no longer human. I seek to accept my fallen condition and become more like Christ with the help of the Holy Spirit.

As we watch the rest of  2016, we have a ringside seat for human nature and we can all see if it is redeemed by "liberalism" or if it could use some more of the help of God.

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BO Made Protesting Trump Illegal

Protesting Donald Trump is Now a Federal Crime - Hit & Run : Reason.com:

There is irony, then there is irony so rich that it defies description -- the punchline, HR 347, signed into law by BO in 2012 makes it felony with up to 10 years in prison to "disrupt" events where someone under Secret Service protection is speaking!!

What might be a surprise is the fact that quietly and right under our noses in 2012, Congress nearly unanimously passed H.R. 347 (a.k.a. the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act) which makes it a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison to "willfully and knowingly" enter a restricted area or to engage in "disorderly or disruptive conduct" that in any way impedes "government business or official functions." 

Signed into law by President Obama, this supposed tweak of a pre-existing law effectively criminalized protest of any person under the protection of the Secret Service, a select group which includes both major parties' front-runners for the presidential nomination. During the general election, the nominees of both parties are automatically assigned Secret Service protection, but Hillary Clinton, as a former first lady, is entitled to a Secret Service detail for the rest of her life, and Donald Trump has had a detail assigned to him since last November.

One has gotta love this! Every time I've been at any sort of Republican event that isn't just a local thing that isn't in the news, there have been protesters, picket lines or hecklers.  If you wanted to attend, you needed to not be intimidated. The left has a LONG history of using violence and intimidation to shut down speech that is not in agreement with them and to get their way.

This is a testament to the lack of interest in free speech in this country by BOTH political parties and a pretty good testament to why we may actually NEED Trump! I'm very surprised that BO signed this one -- he must have assumed that since the left controls the judiciary, cases from that side would just get thrown out.

Probably another asset to one party rule like the IRS. Prosecute the opposition if they demonstrate, make sure your thugs get a pass.

Want to bet how many of the felons protesting at Trump rallies get jail???

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Christianity Invented Children

http://theweek.com/articles/551027/how-christianity-invented-children

One of the major reasons that he left must destroy history is to destroy the historical record of not just Christ himself, but of the myriad of ways in which modern culture itself would not be possible without Christianity, and where we are already in the process of returning now that we have largely abandoned this main thread of what allowed Western civilization to once flourish.

I'm not really going to encourage you to read through this if you are bothered by disturbing facts, but, the bottom line is that abortion and homosexuality are only part of the horrors of paganism that we have started to sample -- it DOES get worse, including infanticide, abandonment of children and rampant sexual abuse of children.

The illusion that "modern is better" is one of the saddest of the lies taught by "progressives". It is possible that the very elite of the left believes that an "inner circle" of  erotic license is actually going to be "better" for them, but for the bulk of the population, pagan society is a dystopian hell of meaningless violence, hatred, hopeless debauchery and ugly early death. As Christianity rose, it gave the IMPRESSION of things improving only because Christianity is not only moral, but blessed. When we started turning from Christianity, Western civilization started declining, and the decline is getting steeper!

Good to at least be aware of the Christian Difference that is being destroyed so that "pleasure" can reign.

But really, Christianity's invention of children — that is, its invention of the cultural idea of children as treasured human beings — was really an outgrowth of its most stupendous and revolutionary idea: the radical equality, and the infinite value, of every single human being as a beloved child of God. If the God who made heaven and Earth chose to reveal himself, not as an emperor, but as a slave punished on the cross, then no one could claim higher dignity than anyone else on the basis of earthly status.

A deeper understanding of how Judaism and Christianity improved the lot of women and children is covered in the excellent column linked in this post -- it is also disturbing, but truth often is.

DC, A More Wretched Hive Of Scum and Villainy

http://m.townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2016/03/12/dcs-6-percent-of-gop-voters-will-get-chance-to-have-large-influence-in-campaign-n2131807

Only 27,000 of Washington, D.C. voters are registered Republicans - a total of 6 percent.

So 6% Petty Criminals, 94% Hardened Felons. (JOKE ... the 6% are likely a few local businessmen, military,  and Christian Clergy. All the actual government workers are Hardened Felons or they would be "swimming with the fishes" by now!

Unsurprisingly, that 6% went overwhelmingly for Rubio followed by Kasich, with Cruz dead last!

"Those that have eyes, let them see".

For the reality based, there are some very easy factual conclusions here.

1. For people that work in government, there is a VERY big difference between D and R! Democrats are 100% for more, more and STILL MORE larger government. Even the local businessmen and military don't want the gravy train really upset! 
2. For the TINY number of R's in DC, they hate Cruz most of all -- with Trump being hated 2nd worst, which is why I'm a Cruz guy, but am definitely Trump 2nd! 
3. DC is a HELL HOLE of corruption that makes Mos Eisley look a Bible Camp! 

WaPo Quotes Burke, Equates BO to Trump

Trump is the demagogue that our Founding Fathers feared - The Washington Post:

When the WaPo quotes Edmund Burke and even starts to wonder about democracy being good, you know you have fallen down the rabbit hole to a new level of Wonderland (as in Alice In). When they list the BO administration policies directly as being a "horrible danger" when Trump talks about them, you know that folks in Wonderland think that theirs is the only world.

Burke is about tradition, rule of law, aristocracy, the need for democratic inputs to a government to be STRONGLY controlled,  etc.

“The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.” (Burke) 

Indeed. Farhter on, the column quotes Federalist 10 of all things!

“Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people.” A representative government is designed to frustrate sinister majorities (or committed pluralities), by mediating public views through “a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country.”

"intrigue, corruption, or other means, first obtain the suffrages" Obtain the votes! How about just by not having to show an ID? The WaPo is favor of that after all. They are REALLY in favor of using government funds to buy the votes!

Our founders wanted to mediate the level of democracy they allowed through "a chosen body of citizens" -- meaning that to be allowed to vote, you had to meet some criteria! Like own land, have a certain level of wealth, a certain level of education, etc! The idea of "everyone voting" was crazy talk to our founders, and even then they wanted it FAR more limited than it is now!

The Senate was supposed to be appointed by the State, NOT elected by popular vote. The 17th Amendment screwed that up in 1913. The Constitution was to provide a rule of law that has been usurped constantly since the Warren court and continues to be desecrated today. Our slide into Mob Rule is all but complete -- and now WaPo is concerned as to what it really means to have NO RULES!

In 2008, a "sinister majority" voted for "Hope and Change", and a man that called broad swaths of the electorate "bitter clingers", and stood before faux greek pillars and declared that he would stop the rise of the oceans by his messianic presence.

With the theory of a presidential nominee as a wrecking ball, we have reached the culmination of the founders’ fears: Democracy is producing a genuine threat to the American form of self-government. Trump imagines leadership as pure act, freed from reflection and restraint. He has expressed disdain for religious and ethnic minorities. He has proposed restrictions on press freedom and threatened political enemies with retribution. He offers himself as the embodiment of the national will, driven by an intuitive vision of greatness. None of this is hidden.

Lets take this rather amazing near closing paragraph apart and show how the WaPO manages to totally point out that Trump = BO in all important aspects, just varying in the usurpation choices of what used to be America!

"Trump imagines leadership as a pure act" -- So BO has proudly used "executive action" in direct usurpation of the Constitution on immigration, EPA actions on climate change, and gun control. Both Bernie and Hillary explicitly promise more of the same on at least guns. So what is supposedly unique about Trump beyond the WaPo not liking his possible selection of where to be lawless? They have supported lawlessness for 7 years!

"disdain for religious and ethnic minorities" -- What part of "bitter clingers, clinging to their guns and Bibles" has been missed? Has not every Bible believing Christian that respects life and marriage as between a man and woman been maligned constantly and in more and more cases even lost employment with the sanction of the current administration? How many times does the WaPo expect us to be called all sorts of names including "racists" for not agreeing with BO on policy? How long do you need to watch BO to realize that disdain for his "enemies" is his standard mode of operation!

"restrictions on press freedom and threatened political enemies" -- Both the 1st and 2nd amendments are in the Bill of Rights.  BO has not only "threatened", he HAS restricted 2nd amendment rights by executive order!  He has openly espoused to the need to "control Fox News and Talk radio" on MANY occasions, and directly espoused the overturn of Citizens United which gives a tiny bit of ability for those not agreeing with government in all cases to have free speech that matters and costs money!

"He offers himself as the embodiment of the national will, driven by an intuitive vision of greatness." -- I haven't seen Trump use grecian pillars yet. I'm not even going to insult your intelligence with having to point out the finger wagging snobbish constant of his worshipfullnesss,  the brilliant, the totally superior, "the ONE", his supreme odifferousness --- BO!!!! that we have suffered under since '09!

We have already crossed the rubicon that the WaPo now is concerned about. One can only guess as to their thoughts as to how to prevent those who they disagree with from having a voice. We see that violence is already being directed at Trump with outlets like the WaPo blaming Trump because he is being attacked. Do they also blame women that are raped for dressing provocatively?  It isn't hard to imagine all kinds of sanctions from the left against Trump and people supporting him -- the normal left wing argument is SHUT UP!!!!!  (or be dead if you refuse!)

WaPo can't understand why people would support him. For a large segment of our population dying in droves at a rate not seen since AIDs, all for the "crime" of being white and lower middle class at the time in which BO decided to squeeze them into dependency.

When God, Law, Tradition, Family, Work Ethic and countless other aspects of the fabric of society are torn apart, the results are unpredictable specifically, but predictably bad. BO showed many of us how bad such results can be -- we can rest assured that the lessons will go on in unpredictable and very bad ways!

The left's answer to this problem is historically "Kill the ones we don't like". We can get a good idea as to how they operate from TP running Jim Crow in the South for 100 years.

 The conservative / Christian / Founders reaction was "Religion, Rule of Law, Limited Government and Democracy, Individual Freedom and Responsibility, Family, Community and WORK".

We decided to go the left way as a nation. Readers of this blog should not be surprised at the outcome.

Trump, Hildebeast and BS all promise to continue the decent, the question is just who specifically gets bloodied during the fall.


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Franken Endorses Sucker Punch At Trump Rally

Trump followers defend the sucker punch: ‘Just a little poke on the beak’ - The Washington Post:

Way back in 2004, the (embarrassingly) current sitting Senator from MN, Al Franken, body slammed a heckler at a Howard Dean rally.  ... oh, never mind, no story there! (nobody made any deal about it then either -- Franken bragged about it!)

I can't imagine that Al would not be consistent on this, right?

A little contrast here. Some 78 year old guy punches a 26 year old guy at a Trump rally -- BIG deal in the media!

The reason they manipulate us is because it works! (generally)

Rule of law and consistency are how people live in peace -- either Franken and the 78 year old guy are right, or they are wrong when law and consistency hold sway.

When "The Party" and "situational ethics" hold sway, then "might is right" -- by ballot, by bully, by bullet, it is all just POWER!



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Trump, Rush, Media, Wet Fish

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/03/09/a_trump_schtick_explainer_for_experts

I've been driving back and forth to Barron a lot, so I've listened a lot more to Rush Limbaugh than I have in YEARS ... most likely since I was driving back and forth to Eau Claire and Bloomer in '03 when my Mom was dealing with two severe heart surgeries. You can read through the attached article on Trump -- it is wordy, and I'll try to explain it all here and more.

The CORE is "It's all an act" -- certainly in the case of Trump, Rush, all the media, BO, Hillary, etc.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. (Shakespeare) 

We live our lives entirely between our ears. The outside world comes in processed by our individual filters and models, making "sense" only as it fits into each of our unique world views -- that are indeed unique to some degree, but much more products of what we have cultivated as our model -- "liberal, educated sophisticate", "hard working, common sense, down to earth", "Christian, conservative, realist", "caring, compassionate, idealist" ... and on it goes. The basic types are very well known, and our identity, friends, family, employment, etc is wound into those thoughts. They are "us", and we are sure they are "real", but for the most part, they are only "really real" in each of our own heads.

All the word's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one main in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.  (Shakespeare) 

We play our parts -- the seven he refers to are infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, judge, "pantaloon" (money), old age (near death and death). But there are many more -- son or daughter, sibling, schoolmate, husband / wife, parent, friend, career person, church roles, medical patient, hunter, teacher -- a nearly endless list. Some roles are "real", they feel like "us", at least most of the time, but nearly all of us "play the part" at least at times, and in some roles, all the time.

None of this is new, but like a fish swimming in water, we often lose track of what it means to be "wet" on our stage and in our roles. "The map becomes the territory" -- which can be very good if we are truly engaged in something of real meaning and import. Those are the best parts of life!

For thousands of years, religion was the "anchor" that allowed nearly everyone to step off the stage and connect with what was felt to be a deeper "more real" reality -- for centuries, that was a truer sense of "It's got soul!" than any Blues vibe in the most real and soulful establishment known to man today. People entered the "Soul World" regularly.

The key book to visit on the dangers of not realizing that "your model has been messed with" (meaning "how you see the world", which IS the world in your head!) is "Ideas Have Consequences". It is CRITICAL to have some values and "transcendent space" that allows you to step back and realize what roles you are playing, what narratives you are buying into and who it is that is messing with your mind and why!

Note, many (maybe even most) of the people messing with your mind probably believe what they are selling, but a good many of the ones you believe are just good at telling "stories" (some parts may even be accidentally true). As Hillary said in the debate last night, "She is not a natural politician like Billy C or BO"! To the extent she was trying to tell the truth, that means she doesn't lie as well as they do. When she is mad, dislikes you, or finds you to be an idiot, she is not able to smile sweetly, curl her lip, slap you on the back and treat you like you are her best friend in the world like BO or Slick. I'm guessing that Slick might have lied to her rather impressively more than once.

In the old world, where there were actual religious values and people believed that their immortal soul was at peril, lying was harder. The consequences of being caught were also greater, PLUS, there were the "weekly" or more frequent times when everyone went down to church and admitted to their sinfulness, begged for mercy, and promised to repent. Certainly, everyone still fell short, but it is the difference between having a speed limit and not having one. Today there is no moral speed limit! "Truth is relative"!!!

 Back to Rush. He has CONSISTENTLY made it clear to his frequent listeners (and in his books) that he is "playing a part" -- he is like "Steven Colbert" before Steven Colbert thought of being the fake comedy conservative. That doesn't mean he is "the same" as Colbert, it means that all his "talent on loan from God", "drive by media", "EIB research", "dittos", etc is his "schtick". His listeners "get it", but in general the rest of the media and politicians do not. It is a MAJOR part of the fun -- like being a "Packer fan", able to recite most the lines from some stupid movie, communicate back and forth in titles from classic rock, baseball stats -- again, the list is ENDLESS, but "special knowledge" (gnosticism), being an "insider" in SOMETHING is a major part of being a normal healthy human.

It is a normal part, but historically, in every case but religion -- and the special case of that was that most / many / nearly all the people ACTUALLY believed that at least some of the time! 

But today, there is no "greater truth", there is no point at which you "get dry" from the myriad of roles and narratives you live in as a "wet fish".  You are "inside". You are "wet" all the time. You have no time to "examine your life" -- to make your life the kind  that Socrates said WAS worth living, as opposed to the "unexamined life is not worth living". Today, few even know who Socrates was, what he had to say, much less, what it MEANT!

So in the modern distracted irreligious completely unreflective life lived by a huge percentage of our population, people are totally unaware of what "stages, roles, actors, narratives, etc" make up what they think is reality. The college students stopping speech they don't agree with is a symptom. College was to be a place for "the free exchange of ideas",  but they want to INVERT (there is that word again!) that and make it a place of absolutely controlled speech that fits with their pre-packaged view of "correct".

THEN CAME TRUMP!

As Rush points out, he is CLEARLY playing a role! His supporters are his "insiders" -- he gives them inside clues that the MSM and opponents THINK that they have "picked up on", but in fact they are outsiders and  ("wink, wink, nod, nod"), his supporters know exactly what he is doing". Rush has a decent example in the linked article above, but I like this one better.

In his victory speech in Nevada, he said "I love the poorly educated." The MSM and TP went BALLISTIC, it was ALL OVER! The assumed that such and utterance would KILL HIM!

The full context of what he said was:

"We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated."

He was responding to exit polling. His supporters know that he DOES (at least in the role he is now playing)  "love the poorly educated" -- meaning those without degrees or even high school diplomas. He is clearly their champion, they are hopeless and dying in droves and he LOVES THEM (at least in his role)! He didn't call them  "low information voters" (like Cruz called Trump voters today), he didn't call them ignorant or stupid. He said they were "poorly educated" -- which they know they are, and so are MANY more due to the sad state of our Democrat union controlled public schools -- even if they DO graduate and have a degree!

But neither the Republican establishment nor "The Party" (TP-D) media and minions can get out of their own "stages, narratives, roles, etc" to see that Trump is using THEM, the supposed "overlords"  to help him build his own "Trump Stage" -- with caring for the "poorly educated", the "angry", those "sick of being ignored", etc.

Is any of it "real"?  It is AT LEAST as real as "if you like your healthcare you can keep it", "red lines", "wipe it with a cloth", and a myriad of false promises about how important it was to get "both houses" from the Republican establishment.

As I've pointed out with boring frequency, the vast number of Americans have lost all contact with what reality might even be -- and the left keeps changing names on things like "marriage", "gender", "life", "truth", "theft vs success", etc. We live in such a house of mirrors so that the standard American's grasp on anything "real", let alone "lasting" has been completely unmoored by the dominant TP surrealism machine. They want it that way -- but like ALL ideas, it has CONSEQUENCES and definite costs!

I'm coming to understand that it probably HAD to be someone like Trump who knows how to manipulate symbols, the media, and TP itself to help build his mass. As I've said before, it IS certainly dangerous, but BO has been a complete unmitigated DISASTER, and many don't even know that! Hillary is clearly pathological. When one is living in wonderland, danger goes with the territory!

Potentially Trump is enough to get at least a FEW more people to understand what stage we are on and what roles we and our "masters" are playing. There is a whole lot of waking up to be done, is Trump the hard slap in the face that I really really thought BO would be enough to accomplish for our sleepy US electorate ???

We so very very much need to WAKE UP!!!!!! 

Science, Philosophy, Fundamentalism, Ignorance.

http://theweek.com/articles/610948/why-many-scientists-are-ignorant?google_editors_picks=true

I hate the title "Why are so many scientists ignorant", not because it is incorrect, but because it will cause an emotional reaction. "Why are so many scientists poorly (or narrowly) educated?" would be better. The short and flip answer is because they have to be. Human brains, even genius ones have severely limited capacity compared to all the knowledge that there is. We all make choices in the Hobbesian bargain of choosing to "Know everything about nothing or nothing about everything".

If we are very smart, we can "cheat" and know "a lot" about some special area and still know a bit about a quite a few things, but since the body of knowledge is so large and the depth of any area is so deep, the effect is that all of us are at BEST "experts" in a narrow range, and ignorant about virtually everything else. It isn't an insult, it is just the way things are.

The problem in being ignorant about philosophy is that in order to even BEGIN to make any sort of value judgements about the possibilities of knowledge and the types thereof, you have to DO philosophy!

To argue that philosophy is useless is to do philosophy. Moreover, some existential questions simply can't be escaped, and philosophy is one of the best, or at least least bad, ways we've come up with to address those questions.

I am reminded of listening to MPR one day when they had a statistician on to discuss the lottery and gambling. A caller, clearly very sure of themselves, called in and said "I'm really glad you are having this show! My brother in law is REALLY stupid,  he always picks 1,2,3,4,5 with a Powerball of 6. What are the odds of THAT happening"?!

There was a long pause, "thanks for your call", and the statistician explained as nicely as he could that the odds were 1 in 292 million or so, exactly the same as the odds of any other set of 6 numbers being selected! The caller had a lot of confidence, but no demonstrated knowledge of statistics relative to his supposedly "stupid" brother in law.

So, Bill Nye, Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Stephen Hawking -- among many others end up sounding like the MPR caller as they call philosophy "useless". Hey smart guys, if it is so useless, how come you are attempting to DO IT??? !!!!

I've attempted to cover this ground in many ways on this blog, but I think the article is worth the read -- here is the part I liked best:

Instead, we've become a philosophically illiterate culture at large. Seemingly every day, you can find examples of people displaying stunning cultural illiteracy — people in positions where that simply should not happen. The great philosophical tradition that our civilization is built on is left largely untaught. Even "liberal arts" curricula in many colleges do not teach the most influential thinkers. If our elites aren't being taught this great tradition, then it should come as no surprise that some subset of that elite — experimental scientists and their hangers-on — don't know it.

That's part of the problem. But it's just a part of it. After all, as a group, scientists have an obvious objective interest in experimental science being recognized as the only path to valuable knowledge, and therefore an interest in disdaining other paths to knowledge as less valid. People who listen to scientists opine about philosophy ought to keep that in mind. 

And then there's another factor at play. Many, though certainly not all, of the scientists who opine loudest about the uselessness of philosophy are public atheists. The form of atheism they promote is usually known as "eliminative materialism," or the notion that matter is the only thing that exists. This theory is motivated by "scientism," or the notion that the only knowable things are knowable by science. Somewhat paradoxically, these propositions are essentially religious — to dismiss entire swathes of human experience and human thought requires a venture of faith. They're also not very smart religion, since they end up simply shouting away inconvenient propositions. 

Fundamentalism is not a belief system or a religion, it's a state of mind. There can be fundamentalist religion, fundamentalist atheism, fundamentalist socialism, fundamentalism libertarianism. What all of them have in common is, in David Bentley Hart's words, "a stubborn refusal to think." The fundamentalist is not the one whose ideas are too simple or too crude. He's the one who stubbornly refuses to think through either other ideas, or those ideas themselves.

We ALL have vast swaths of ignorance, but not knowing enough to get in out of the rain or not play in the middle of the freeway are critical bits of knowledge for even the most brilliant and focused of scientific or other prodigies. Not knowing enough about philosophy to understand that being a fundamentalist eliminative materialist is no "smarter" philosophically than being a fundamentalist Muslim or Christian makes one look as intellectually lost as the "smart guy" lottery caller.

"Post-modern" man tends to fall prey to this because of the removal of the humility of "the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God", coupled with the extremely oppressive and rigid set of rules of the modern religion of "secular humanism / liberalism". Where humility is a requirement for all practicing Jews and Christians, smugness is a requirement of followers of the inverted religion of "liberalism".

So there we see it yet again -- inversion, the mark of Satan. Is it any wonder that this world is starting to look like Hell?

Ellen DeGeneres, Gender, Get the Kids

Ellen DeGeneres' new GapKids line is an example of her brand relevance - Fortune:

On the way up yesterday I heard a story on MPR (or maybe it was WI Public Radio) on "gender neutral clothing for children".  The bottom line was that young parents these days are "sensitive" to dressing their children in clothing that might indicate gender, since they want it to be clear that they will support whatever gender their child turns out to be.

One of the leaders in this area is Ellen DeGeneres who received high praise on the show. I could not find the show, but I found the linked article which includes ...

"Yet despite all this, her personal brand remains authentic, says Ian Stephens, a managing partner at brand consultancy Saffron. And Ellen Show viewers seem to agree: According to a Nielsen report, she is 35% more likeable than the average talk show host, more than twice as likely to be considered both a trendsetter and funny, and 90% more likely to be considered a role model."

As I've covered many times, "progressive" requires that there ALWAYS be a new frontier of "progress",  so todays "liberals" are quite possibly tomorrows "reactionaries".

It seems like they are heard at work making early age gender changes become one of the "important issues" going forward.


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AA, BOcare, Drugs

The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous - The Atlantic:

Reading through this I find a couple of threads:

1. BOcare has mandated that all insurance policies include 30 days of treatment for alcohol, so there is more money in the alcohol treatment bucket than ever before. Money as always is "good and bad". True, more people may get treatment -- OTOH, it is likely there will be a bunch of "standards" that may or may not be that helpful to people that need help -- but they will certainly direct money to "the right pockets" as determined by politics. 
2. Folks like the Atlantic HATE anything that smacks of "higher powers", so AA makes them VERY uncomfortable! 

That said, I can't imagine anything outside of God that can't be improved. It turns out there are a couple of drugs that are approved for treatment of alcohol abuse. 

I researched this article, I wondered what it would be like to try naltrexone, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved for alcohol-abuse treatment in 1994.

Perhaps even worse is the pace of research on drugs to treat alcohol-use disorder. The FDA has approved just three: Antabuse, the drug twhat induces nausea and dizziness when taken with alcohol; acamprosate, which has been shown to be helpful in quelling cravings; and naltrexone. (There is also Vivitrol, the injectable form of naltrexone.)

AA, because of the "anonymous" part can at least seem somewhat secretive, and at least some of the AA people tend to be "anti-substance" -- as in "if you are taking ANY drug, that is "the same" as being addicted to alcohol". Of course, that is an oversimplification -- any relatively loose organization like AA is going to have SOMEBODY that says damned near anything.

I don't draw any conclusions from this. Alcohol is a drug, so it doesn't seem impossible that some drugs might help reduce cravings for it. As a fat guy, I noted with more than a little interest that naltrexone might curb cravings for food.

Personal aside. Apparently a guy that I have known for around a decade committed suicide over the weekend -- not local, not completely sure, friendship had been reduced to FB except for me seeing him on my long motorcycle trip in 2013. Few other things going on -- my Dad's issues being one.

Girl Scout Cookies were brought into the house. I resisted them for a couple of days, but in the presence of nice cold milk mid-afternoon, I succumbed. End damage, a row short of a whole box. I really had no intent of eating that many, it was purely "one more ... oh, there is some milk left ... oh, I need more milk ... and ... repeat".

The snake brain is a scary scary thing -- given the right circumstances I am DEFINITELY powerless against Girl Scout Cookies. I once heard of someone who could eat ONE -- she ought either be killed or put in  control of the universe,  I'm not qualified to state which!

Keep the damned things OUT OF THE HOUSE! ... there but for the grace of God!

Anyway, "addictive behavior" --- food, video games, drugs, alcohol, smoking, gambling --- is certainly part of the human condition. The drugs and alcohol are currently at epidemic proportions and killing over 50K people a YEAR.


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54 Private Jets To Stop Trump

HuffPo's Grim: 54 Private Jets at Meeting to Stop Trump - Breitbart:

Haven't been able to do as much verification as I would like -- up in Barron, slow connection.

I certainly know that LOTS of the "rich and powerful" from BOTH parties want to stop Tump. At a minimum it seems certain he would "shake things up".

That is what the one "Washington Insider" that I saw face to face had to say -- "You have NO IDEA how corrupt DC has become. MAYBE the shock of Trump might "somehow" shake things up enough to give us a tiny chance".

It seems worth considering ...



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NPR, Glenn Beck, Election Coverage

Another Primary Night's Results Confound (At Least Some) Expectations : NPR:

I got a chance to listen to a good bit of NPR and a good bit of Glenn Beck (first time I've heard him on radio) on the way up to Barron today. "Educational and surreal", welcome to campaign 2016.

NPR is supposed to be "unbiased". Anyone that listens to them at all and believes that needs to be sure to get some gullibility defensive training and try to avoid Nigerians trying to repatriate money to the US with your help!

NPR knows they need to line up behind Hillary, and they generally do -- they DEFINITELY don't want to hear ANY more about her e-mail, and her "truthfulness" is gospel for them. They do however wistfully look at Bernie. Free everything! Lots of money for anything "public"! (almost certainly including "Public Media"). Maybe the Koch brothers could be imprisoned and the destabilizing nasty media like "Faux" and Talk Radio finally put back in the Pandoras box that flew out of after the "Fairness Doctrine" was removed. It would CERTAINLY be "fair" then!

They were in many ways "happy" that Bernie pulled out Michigan, but they know it is a proportional state and it was close, so it doesn't REALLY help him that much -- maybe it will help Hillary add more free stuff to her promises! They know they are stuck with Hillary -- sort of an "arranged marriage" to a "sturdy, plain and rumored to be reliable" woman.

They were of course DISTRAUGHT over Trump taking 3 contests! I had listened to them some yesterday and they were expecting  Kasich to do VERY well in Michigan  and MAYBE EVEN WIN!  They were CERTAIN that the "Trump momentum" had been stopped over the weekend. Kasich would be a heavenly R candidate for them -- very much like McCain and Romney were -- "Democrat lite and easy to roll" -- and even better unlikely to win! Kasich came in 3rd, Trump won big. The despair was palpable.

In honor of the Trump win, they had "reports from foreign countries" about how horrible it is that Trump is even running, let along doing well and hard to even IMAGINE the disaster if he were elected!! We had a lot of these same reports of W back when he was in office, how TERRIBLE NPR felt about the rest of the world "laughing at us" over having W as president. I can still remember their horror at Reagan -- warmonger who INSANELY thought that the USSR would ever go away! How stupid can you be? They were CONVINCED he was an idiot.

The ability of the liberal mind to be totally wrong and not learn a single thing from the experience is their hallmark -- if Christians could live by faith that was 20% as unshakeable as that of the left, Christ would have returned by now because the whole planet would be converted!

The surrealistic part was switching over to Glenn Beck. He was APOCALYPTIC  (that is the only mode he has) about the Trump wins. He has been running and continues running specific shows on various negative aspects of Trump each and every day! Business issues, statements he has made and changed his mind on, racist statements, statements against women, inaccurate statements -- Trump is THE END of all that is holy and conservative. The Republican party will not survive him as the nominee, and if by some miracle he is elected, the nation will not survive!

I'm trying to triangulate the horror here -- the assumption with Reagan was nuclear war and the end of the entire world. Students in the US and Europe as well as most of the media and Democrats signed up for the "nuclear freeze movement". The Soviets were all in favor of that as well.  They had a huge made for TV move "The Day After" ... the film was shown on ABC with a lot of promotion in November of 1983, as an "early re-election gift" for Ronald Reagan. (for some reason, there was no outcry about "big money in politics".

I've not heard that Trump threatens the end of the world yet -- so maybe this is a lot less of a risk than Reagan was!

I'm still a Cruz guy, but if BOTH Glenn Beck and NPR hate someone as much as they do Trump, that certainly makes me like him a good deal more!

It is hard to imagine how many tears NPR would shed over "the destruction  of the Republican Party"! (I'm thinking the party they would throw would require a LOT more beer than kleenex!)



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Iran -- Missiles and Threats, US Whimpers

Iran Threatens to Walk Away From Nuke Deal:

Iran is firing missiles and the US is whimpering again -- oh, and Iran is threatening to just walk away from the "deal" if we do more than whimper.

In the past seven years we have become exceptionally good at whimpering -- perhaps "America, exceptional whimpering"  as a motto?  EVERY nation is exceptional at something! Even Greece has the gyro!

If Hillary gets in we can combine whimpering and whining! She whines exceptionally well I think.



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Darwin's Cathedral, Evolution, Religion and The Nature Of Society

http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Cathedral-Evolution-Religion-Society/dp/0226901351/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457489612&sr=1-1&keywords=darwin%27s+cathedral

After seeing the subject book by David Sloan Wilson referenced in a number of other books I've read, I finally got around to reading it. Certainly not a "page turner" -- lots of evolutionary terminology. "Group Selection" is the biggie -- the idea that when groups have characteristics that are more "adaptive", they will be "selected" -- meaning more babies, more babies that live, conversion of other groups, etc.

"Since Darwin's theory relies entirely on differences in survival and reproduction, it seems unable to explain groups as adaptive units. This can be called the fundamental problem of social life. Groups function best when their members provide benefits for each other, but it is difficult to convert this type of social organization into the currency of biological fitness". 

The author is attempting to resurrect "group selection" by putting it on a continuum called "multi-level selection theory" ... genes, cells, organisms, groups -- selection happens across any and all, but what is most interesting to the author is clearly groups, and how religion is a core mechanism of that selection.

 "Moral communities in larger than a few hundred individuals are "unnatural" as far as genetic evolution is concerned, because to the best of our knowledge they never existed prior to the advent of agriculture. This means that culturally evolved mechanisms are absolutely required for human society to hang together above the level of face to face groups. 

At least if you reject any potential for "divine revelation" -- just where DID Newton or Einstein come up with their initial hypothesis? ... just kidding, mostly. The point is, for a pure atheist scientist, there had BETTER be SOME explanation why "unnatural things" are happening with human groups!

The other big evolutionary discussion is the "argument from design" and "functionalism". Naturally, an atheist scientist assumes that the "design" is "random", relative to some function that is adaptive (as opposed to there being a "designer")  He uses the example of a can opener relative to functional design. "The design features that identify an object as a can opener provide such a strong argument that we don't even call it an argument, we call it self evident".  He then points out that a specific religion "Calvinism" is DESIGNED to provide the function of allowing a group larger than "natural" to function -- interestingly, "designed" by Calvin.

On page 228 he really gets down to brass tacks.

" It is true that many religious beliefs are false as literal descriptions of the real world, but this merely forces us to recognize two forms of realism; a factual realism based on literal correspondence, and a practical realism based on behavioral adaptiveness."  

"Rationality is not the gold standard on which all other forms of thought are to be judged. Adaptation is the gold standard against which rationality must be judged, along with all other forms of thought."  

and then ... "... factual realists detached from practical reality were not among our ancestors. It is the person who elevates factual truth above practical truth who must be accused of mental weakness from an evolutionary perspective". 

I could do a MUCH longer review, but I think this is the core. For those that assume there is no God, the fact that humans are able to function in groups larger than a couple hundred people at most is a HUGE problem. It clearly happened, but HOW did it happen?

The answer is just what I harp on -- religion. In the West, Judaism and Christianity -- which CLEARLY were the  "most adaptive", or "divinely inspired" if you are a believer. If you are an evolutionist, they realize that they had damned well better figure out that "practical realism" is FAR superior to "factual realism" (or at least what the consciousness that we have no clue as to what it is THINKS is "factual") from an ADAPTIVE POV!

 Having the "facts" right, but turning up dead (as in "our culture")  -- meaning that you are NOT "among the ancestors" of the future doesn't fit well with having a "superior" brain -- even if you DO feel really great about gay "marriage"! "Superior" means staying in the gene pool in the evolutionary world!No matter how "good" something may be for your own moral reasoning, if you drop out of the gene pool, your "good" fails the test of survival.

Is it even POSSIBLE to have civilization as we know it without a huge majority of the people in that civilization fervently believing that the basis for their civilization is divine and sacred, or at the very least "exceptional"?  From what we have seen to date, not without massive coercive force as in National Socialist Germany, USSR, China, North Korea, etc. It remains to be seen in a couple cases if brutal force can be a substitute for belief. Even if it CAN, is that REALLY what our "factual realist" scientists find to be a "good idea"?

All in all, a good book -- most could read the first 20 pages and the last 20 and get 80% of the value out of it. It is worth at least that effort.