SCOTUS "Fails To Act" Gambit

http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/433888/diskant-gobsmacking-stupidity?7QwhKPQ3FGF62LZi.01

I'm not going to spend any time on this other than to keep track of the insanity if it becomes more widely discussed. We already know that when truth, logic, morality, law, etc are all "questionable", there are NO LIMITS!

Liberals likely feel like conservatives did when Bork was rejected, BO was elected (twice!) and a thousand other little constant things like (unbelievably) a "new" calumny of Clarence Thomas!

The difference is that conservatives have to live with disappointment constantly, liberals believe they are entitled to always have things their way!

In his op-ed, Diskant—who is a lawyer with distinguished credentials—contends that the Senate can be deemed to have waived its “advice and consent” role on a Supreme Court nomination if it “fails to act” on the nomination within a “reasonable” time—and that President Obama could therefore proceed to appoint Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court without the Senate’s ever having confirmed the Garland nomination . (Or, to be more precise, Diskant, in an apparent effort to preserve his professional credibility, claims that “it is possible to read” the Appointments Clause that way.)

Deep Personal Beliefs, Liberal Logic

This one pretty much summarizes "liberal logic".

This one might be the lasting legacy of BO -- for some strange reason it involves bathrooms.

BS Calls Hildebeast "Racist"

Bernie Sanders calls out Hillary Clinton for "racist" language.:

The Sanders comment came when NY1 host and debate moderator Errol Louis asked Sanders why he had criticized Bill Clinton for defending his wife when confronted by protesters holding a sign that said “Black people are not super predators”—a term Hillary Clinton used in 1996 while campaigning for her husband and his criminal justice policies. “Because it was a racist term and everybody knew it was a racist term,” Sanders responded to applause.

The cool thing about being a Democrat though is that even messing around with the "racist" term is merely a matter of "interest". Let's face it, the MSM knows that those D's are all "really good people"!

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Zero to One, Peter Thiel

http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460935376&sr=1-1&keywords=zero+to+one+peter+thiel

A book that FAR exceeds it's promise. It has a LOT of great experiential documentation on startups, but the astute observations on attitudes around the world, misconceptions people have and just plain pithy contrarian wisdom is what really sets it apart. Thiel "failed" to get a SCOTUS clerkship (barely) and thus ended up founding PayPal which merged with Elon Musk's X.com to become a very successful business -- many good stories about how those things happened.

First the title -- Doing more of what we already know takes us from 1 to N, creating something new takes us from 0 to 1. "Today's "best practices" lead to dead ends, best paths are new and untried.

The question that Thiel asks when he wants to understand someone is "What important truth do few people agree with you on"? His answer is; "Most people think that the world will be defined by globalization, but the truth is that technology matters more".

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE technology, but I think the future of the world will be defined by MEANING -- the West won't survive Islam (or the next "meaningful opponent") if we don't define a meaning and purpose for our existence -- and yes, expansion. To have a purpose, you have to believe, and if you believe, you believe that others would be served by believing. "I'm OK, You're OK" is not a meaningful philosophy!

I loved this line: "Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in shorter supply than genius". Again, it IS TODAY, because bowing to the "standard PC position" is more important than it was prior to the Reformation! Modern thought turns smaller and smaller molehills into mountains -- see NC!

My top favorite big ideas of the book are:

1) Monopoly is GOOD, competition is BAD. (in a static world, monopoly would be bad) I'm not going to argue the whole position here, but he does it very well. "The history of progress is the history of a better monopoly business replacing incumbents".  Think about it -- when Apple came along and created the expensive iPhone, people got violent in waiting lines to get at it. THAT is monopoly power, and you in fact WANT it -- badly, and it is the only way that our world will improve (technology wise).  "Creative monopolists give customers more choices by adding completely new categories of abundance to the world".

2). You are not a lottery ticket --  but first a couple one liners (I love one-liners!) "Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them."  ... thus,  "All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past"

" ... if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you'll give up on trying to master it. Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what's most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance..."

HELLO -- see "diverse financial portfolio", "well rounded education", etc, etc.

He covers 4 basic global attitudes and makes EXCELLENT cases for each:

• Indefinite Pessimism -- something bad is going to happen but not sure what. This is where Europe is "Europeans just react to events and hope things don't get worse". 
• Definite Pessimism -- The future is bleak and we know why. China is the prime example -- they know they are copying, they don't see how they can innovate their way to true prosperity, so they try to get their money out of the country. 
• Definite Optimism -- The future is bright and we know why. Western Civilization from the 17th century to the Moon Landing. 
• Indefinite Optimism -- The future is bright but we have no clue why. "He expects to profit from the future but sees no reason to design it concretely". The United States today.  "Indefinite optimists are so used to effortless progress that they feel entitled to it". "A whole generation learned from childhood to overrate the power of chance and underrate the importance of planning". 

For those of you that were sentenced to serve in an institution like IBM for some period of time, there is this: "...arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future".  Oh, and you can "reorg" and have new buzzwords too! ;-) 

It's hard to believe this review is getting long. The whole book is a small 195 pages and I'm really only covering the first 75! IMHO, unless you are doing a startup, you COULD skip the last 90 or so pages, but that is not what I recommend. 

I'll close with what I think might turn out to the biggest mistake of human history so far -- Darwinism. "Actually, almost everybody in the modern world has already heard an answer to this question [how Indefinite Optimism MIGHT work] progress without planning is what we call "evolution"". 

Thiel goes on to point out that we may have a good deal more faith in this concept than is warranted. As I've pointed out, "it evolved" has become the modern answer to "it's God's will!", and while Western Civilization was optimistically marching to the real "God's Will" from the Reformation to the Moon Landing, we haven't really "evolved" all that well since -- or as Thiel puts it. 

"The smartphones that distract us from our surroundings also distract us from the fact that our surroundings are strangely old: only computers and communications have improved dramatically since midcentury."

He summarizes on Darwinism ... "Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best". Startups don't have a billion years to get it right ... does Western civilization?

I'm NOT doing the book justice -- he has some great stuff on "power laws",  computer "substitution" vs man / machine partnership (his company Palantir), what founders of companies (or lots of things) ought to be like, and some great thoughts on what kinds of futures we may be choosing from as we check our smartphones.

READ IT!

Top Gun To Top Ivan, Baltic Flybys

Russian war planes buzz U.S. destroyer in Baltic:

Back in 1986 when Tom Cruise gave the Bear the Bird, got the girl, faced down the death of his back-seater and blew away the bad guys, America was a different country. It is often hard to believe that I used to live there! It was a privilege.

Reagan's America vs BO's America. Sure, Top Gun was a movie, but is there ANY doubt about which direction we and our adversaries were going THEN vs NOW? Fortunately the Berlin Wall going down was NOT a movie, and equally unfortunately, the Russians increasingly playing "Top Ivan" against our forces is ALSO not a movie!

Just because you decide that "strength is dangerous" is no guarantee that everyone else will follow suit. I still maintain that when the offensive line of an NFL team walks into a bar, there aren't very many people that say "Hey, let's pick a fight with THOSE GUYS!"

Looks like Russia buzzed a plane in the Baltic today, so I'm guessing we will be pulling out of there. This all seems fine until they start buzzing your ships in the Gulf of Mexico -- but hey, look at Hillary and tell me that the Russians won't treat her with a WHOLE lot of respect! She at least looks a lot nastier than BO I guess.

Maybe THIS "America" will lodge a nice complaint with the UN if they SINK some of our ships in some gulf! I'm sure our adversaries are considering that as a reasonable possibility at this point.

Strength MIGHT get you into a fight YOU choose -- weakness gets your ass kicked by whomever decides to kick it.

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Brazil, "Kickbacks, Dirty Money and Lies"

How Brazil, the darling of the developing world, came undone - The Washington Post:

It seems that the economy in Brazil and that in the US have a lot in common. When innovation, productivity, growth, successful businesses, leadership and law are replaced with BOism -- pretty much defined by "kickbacks, dirty money and lies", then disaster awaits. In the case of Brazil, it didn't take long -- we hope that we don't continue our slide to their depths on a similar track.

The plunge that Rousseff and the country have taken has laid bare the frailty of Brazil’s commodity-driven growth. Big parts of the Brazil model, it turns out, were glued together with kickbacks, dirty money and lies.

The false "success" of Brazil was commodity based, our current false success is debt based, but it is complicated because it was preceded by a long history of REAL productivity, including very recently from '82 up through '07. But debt is even a worse basis for success than commodities -- and even here, a lot of what has counted as "growth" was commodity based as in fracking for oil which was strongly opposed by BO, but naturally something else he is very happy to take credit for!

Yet there is little doubt that Rousseff would not be facing the mutiny if she were not so politically weak, with an approval rating of 13 percent. The country is facing a 3.8 percent economic contraction for the second year in a row.

It is very hard to even guess at what the actual economic numbers are in the US at this point -- the books have been cooked!  A 1-2% contraction for the past two years is a good guess.  If there was an R in the WH does anyone want to imagine what the approval rating here would be? 13% might be HIGH. 8 years of economic disaster, open borders, retreat around the globe, stupid "red lines", "deals" with Iranians thumbing their noses at us in one way or another every month or so -- if you add together the 30-40% of Republicans and similar number of Democrats that are screaming OUTSIDER for 2016, the "pissed off" percentage in this country must be 30-80%!

The "difference" is the media is VERY careful to not blame BO for ANYTHNG -- no, the Republicans are "out of touch", Hillary is a "bad candidate", Trump just "appeals to the stupid", etc ... all of which may be true, but I totally guarantee you that if there was an R in the WH it would be their fault!

The fish rots from the head!!!

Only it doesn't .. it rots from the belly, which is us -- the people. We are the real rot. The media is just another part of the odor.



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Saudi Arabia

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/433990/release-truth-release-redacted-28-pages-about-saudi-arabia-and-911

The last paragraph of this article is well worth reflecting on:

My general philosophy of the Middle East is simple — however bad you think the place is, in reality it’s far worse. Even our “allies” will constantly surprise even the most hardened cynic with their mendacity and double-dealing. We’ve long known that our so-called alliance with Saudi Arabia has put us in bed with the devil. It’s time the American people learned how evil that devil truly is.

It is pretty much the same as Washington DC -- no matter which party you tend to support, this election year makes it completely obvious that the corruption in DC is **FAR** worse than you can imagine! The reaction of BOTH parties to Cruz and Trump ought to be proof enough. BOTH parties would actually rather have Trump than Cruz, because he is more likely to carry on the corruption!

This past week I was at a discussion where an immigrant from Egypt and a refugee from Syria were present. They were both convinced that the Saudi corruption was the true core of the unrest in the Arab world.

• Saudi Arabia contains Mecca -- the site you must visit to attain paradise if you are not willing to be a martyr
• The House of Saud is a fabulously wealthy tribe that maintains total control and likes to dabble in as much western decadence as it can get away with.  
• "It's price" is support for the Wahhabi Sect of Sunni Islam which has been funded lavishly and world wide since especially the 1970's. 
• A look at the Grand Mosque Seizure in 1979 gives some idea of the dangerous tightrope the Saudi's walk, and how many of the responses they make increase the danger / tensions for not just them, but the rest of the world. 

The "big problem" as the west finally woke up to in 1100AD and formed the First Crusade is that Islam is at war with any who are not Muslims! Islam means SUBMISSION, after which comes "peace". So if you are not a Muslim, Islam is at war with YOU -- ultimately you can either defeat them or die. A little more detail on this here.

As I travel through the Old Testament in my Bible reading, I am consistently reminded that Christ is THE WORD ... ALL the Word, Old and New Testaments. Somehow the Son of Man that rebuked the wind, drove the money changers from the temple with a whip and simply walked back through a crowd intent on pushing him from a cliff in NEW Testament, as well as being the Word of Creation, death to Sodom and Gomorrah, the Red Sea washing over the Egyptian Army and so much more in the old Testament is somehow made to be a "pacifist". It's a TRINITY -- Christ is FULLY Yahweh, the OT God is not some "first draft", he IS Christ as well.

When Christ heals the Centurion's servant, he responds to him with " When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith"" ... not a word about "leaving the military". Likewise, when John the Baptist was approached by some soldiers; "What should we do?" asked some soldiers. John replied, "Don't extort money or make false accusations. And be content with your pay.""

If the west had not finally rose up and defended itself in 1100, Islam would most likely have destroyed Christianity in Europe -- or God would have intervened there or some other way. I'm often reminded of the old Jewish Lottery joke:

“There is this very pious Jew named Goldberg who always dreamed of winning the lottery. Every Sabbath, he’d go to synagogue and pray: “God, I have been such a pious Jew all my life. What would be so bad if I won the lottery?”
But the lottery would come and Goldberg wouldn’t win. Week after week, Goldberg would pray to win the lottery, but the lottery would come and Goldberg wouldn’t win.
Finally, one Sabbath, Goldberg wails to the heavens and says: “God, I have been so pious for so long, what do I have to do to win the lottery?”
“And the heavens parted and the voice of God came down: “Goldberg, give me a chance! Buy a ticket!”

I don't believe that God ONLY helps those that help themselves -- but I believe that if we listen well and by TAKE ACTION, we provide a much better chance for his blessing!

YOU LIE! The Take Care Clause

Obama’s Unconstitutional Immigration Order | Hoover Institution: 

My guess is that if Scalia was still alive, we would all understand the "Take Care Clause" in the Constitution by the end of the summer. As it is, it most likely will be a 4 to 4 to forget about clarifying why we used to have a Democratic Republic, but now have something closer to an actual Monarchy like the one we once rebelled against. 

"The Take Care Clause, found in Article II of the Constitution, the Executive Power Article, is comprised of only nine words: the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” But an understanding of those nine words requires an appreciation of their roots in English history. Like many other structural features of the United States Constitution, the Take Care Clause derives from the long struggle between Parliament and the Crown over the extent of “prerogative powers”—that is, the monarch’s asserted powers to create laws or otherwise to act unilaterally."

The BO reign is loaded with examples of explicitly NOT enforcing MANY laws, with immigration just being one example. Marijuana? I'm ALL in favor of making MANY of our federal laws into state laws -- drugs, abortion, gay "marriage", gender in bathrooms, etc, but NOT "who is a citizen of the US"! But as is usually case, BO goes even father than KINGS have for a good long while.

Things came to a head in 1215 at Runnymede. Faced with armed insurrection, John agreed to The Great Charter, which established the principle that the king is not a law unto himself; even the king must act through settled law to bind his subjects.

So what BO now declares is his power to be MORE THAN A KING! Cannot ALL AMERICANS agree that if the next president is a Hillary, Trump or Cruz we DO NOT want them to be more than a king?

The President was correct in October 2010 when he recognized that only Congress can lawfully effectuate DAPA. As he said then: “I am president, I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself.” Indeed, even James II could not do these things by himself. The Framers adopted the Take Care Clause to ensure that the executive in this republic is likewise forbidden to make law unilaterally. That is why the duty to “take care” means so much.

How many times did we hear "Bush lied people died?". In the MSM, we NEVER hear that BO lies -- though he does of course, constantly and in our faces. One primary example was at a SOTU when he lied to our faces and said that BOcare "would not apply to those that are here illegally" -- which of course is EXACTLY what BO's DAPA order enables.

Read the linked article and then decide if you believe BO or the heckler was being truthful!

Ban NC, Qatar OK!

Days after barring city employee travel to anti-LGBT states, Santa Fe mayor to travel to Qatar | KOB.com:



The uninitiated think that lack of consistency is a bug, but actually it is a HUGE feature! It shows that the left has the POWER to define "reality" any way they want! The point they make by these actions is POWER! They can declare NC to be "off limits" because men need to use men's bathrooms and women women's, but at the SAME TIME as banning travel to NC, they are willing to go to Qatar, where you damned well better choose the right bathroom, and if you are gay and not "diplomatically protected", get ready to be STONED (and not in the "Colorado sense") or "thrown from a high place".



The critical thing is that everyone that lacks complete alignment with The Party and it's power structure is to GET OUR MINDS RIGHT!



THE PARTY declares what is and is not "good, acceptable, right"!



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Ed Force 1 Lands At SEATAC

Iron Maiden flies their own 747 to Seattle airport | KGW.com:



I'm fascinated by the story of Iron Maiden's tour 747 flown by one of their singers Bruce Dickinson that is a fully rated commercial pilot. In the linked story, they land in Seattle and meet up with the exec from Boeing that is in charge of the 747 program. Name? Bruce Dickinson of course!


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A Little Pistol Refresher

Graphics Show 10 Things Not Everyone Thinks About When Shooting a Pistol:

Took the Wing to the health club today so spring must really be here! Time to get back to the range and knock the rust off -- BRAS! ... No, not those ... "Breath, Relax, Aim, SQUEEZE" (not "slap, pull, etc ..)

Excellent summary -- finger on trigger position, grip, sight alignment, FRONT SIGHT.

Fire Away!



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Vanquishing The Trump Monster

Bill Maher Mocks Michelle Fields: "Oh My God It's Like The Zapruder Film If Nothing Had Happened" | Video | RealClearPolitics:

It seems that the arrest of the Trump campaign manager, his comment on there needing to be a "penalty" for women murdering their babies, poor "inside party politics delegate ground game" and then just "Wisconsin" has been enough to do Trump in -- lots of slightly premature sighs of relief from especially the Republican Establishment and magazines like National Review.

 It remains to be seen how many Democrats will cross over to vote for him in NY and CA. My guess is that number is more a function of the D's that want to vote for Bernie, so not being willing to cross over and vote for Trump who they see as the weakest R candidate.

The fact that the arrest was "Trumped up" is obvious to anyone that took the time to look at the tape:

"That tape was released by Donald Trump and the campaign. It was from our ballroom at Trump Jupiter. We wanted people to be able to see the tape because after the event she said she almost fell down. This is also a reporter who has said she's been abused by the NYPD and groped by a war hero, Allen West," Dean said. 

"She has a history, like Brian Williams, of inserting herself into the news," Dean also said.
Maher defended Lewandowski and said the video shows he should not have been charged with misdemeanor battery.

"If you cut in line at a bathroom at the nightclub and somebody did that to you, would it be an assault charge?" Maher rhetorically posed.

I was unaware that this reporter had previously made similar accusations, but it is not surprising. The bottom line is that in aggregate with the abortion penalty comments and the fact that D's in WI were excited to vote for BS so didn't cross over, it appears to have mortally wounded Trumpzilla.

I find Cruz to be the much better candidate and presidential prospect, so this is fine with me. I DON'T trust the Republican establishment, and would be unsurprised to see them attempt to sneak Kasich in, which in my book would be a WORSE disaster for both the party and the nation.

This election makes clear that there between 30-60% of the country that is angry and feels disenfranchised. My sense is that the BS voters are primarily the young and current government dependents who want a "bigger cut" taken from the productive. The Trump voters are largely those hanging on by their fingernails just about the welfare / government dependency level and have the character to not want to go there. They see the corruption and cronyism between big government, elite media, big business and Wall Street as having destroyed their livelihoods and self-respect, which for them was work based.

I think the Trumpkins are right, I just don't think that Trump would be able to deliver on his promises. What this election year has made obvious however is that the "national good feeling" presented by the TP controlled media in the dregs of the BO regime was an illusion. Somewhere around half -- or possibly over half of the electorate is PISSED. Most of them are pretty unclear of exactly why, but raw emotion never really needed much for a basis.

There very likely may be much more to happen!

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White Spiritual Crisis

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/433920/white-working-class-deaths-spiritual-crisis

A good article detailing the fact that poverty levels in America in the "good old days" of say "the '50's", were HIGHER than they are now, and then spending on the LOWER level of poverty is much higher than it was then. However, less educated whites are dying in droves.

The problem is NOT material, it is spiritual.

This is a textbook illustration of the spiritual and moral crisis – the loss of core values – that has slowly poisoned American culture over the decades. Marriages take work. Restless spirits have to be tempered with self-control. To declare these obvious truths isn’t cruel. Indeed, to relieve people of responsibility for their actions is to treat them like children. It’s the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”

The basic answer is the same old answer as is all of history -- God, Family, Community, all of which have been heavily damaged and in many cases destroyed for many individuals by "The Party".  One place I cover this is here.

Furiously Happy Suicide

http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/08/why-some-people-commit-suicide-without-warning/

I'm doing a "combination", yes, I know the title is odd ... so was the book!

I read the book "Furiously Happy" by Jenny Lawson a while back and was torn about how to review it. I know WAY more about suicide than I would like to from experiences that are WAY too personal as well as reading a good deal about it as a result of those experiences.

Here are some things from Furiously Happy that spoke to me:

I feel successful 3-4 days a month. The other days I feel like I'm barely accomplishing the minimum or that I'm a loser. I have imposter syndrome so that even when I get compliments they are difficult to take and I feel like I'm a bigger fraud than before" ....  

.... "I'm hoping that by writing this and posting this it will make me face this head-on and make some changes in forcing myself to change the way I see success, or in forcing myself to get shit done and stop feeling such dread anxiety every day." ... 

Life passes. Then comes the depression. That feeling that you'll never be right again. That fear that these outbreaks will become more familiar, or worse, never go away. You're so tired from fighting that your start to listen to all the little lies your brain tells you. The ones that say that you're a drain to your family. The ones that say that it's all in your head. The ones that say that if you were stronger or better this wouldn't be happening to you. The ones that say that there is a reason your body is trying to kill you, and that you should just stop all the injections and steroids and drugs and therapies.  

Last month, as Victor drove me home so I could rest, I told him that sometimes I feel like his life would be easier without me. He paused a moment in thought and then said, "It might be easier. But it wouldn't be better"  

I remind myself of that sentence on days when the darkness seems like it will never end. But I know it will pass. I know that tomorrow things will seem a little brighter. I know that next week I'll look back on this sentence and think, "I should stop listening to my brain when it's trying to kill me".  

Mostly the book was not my cup of tea -- too madcap and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), lots of disjointed but semi-related thoughts and activities that seemed just "too much" for me. My guess is that much of it might appeal to women more than men (PROOF that I'm a sexist!)

Oh, I DID like her names for her cats "Hunter S Thomcat" (Hunter S Thompson), and "Ferris Mewler". I also liked her discussion of "how many spoons" relative to energy. If each thing you do takes a "spoon", how many are you going to have for that day? One of the major questions for people that have depression issues for sure is "how many spoons today"? Complicated with "what is depression and what is just laziness". As I get older, there is also the question of "What is just being older"?

My Dad always had a TON more spoons than nearly anyone, while my Mom had "less than average". My wife generally has like "more than my Dad in his younger years" and I'd like to think that when things are going OK for me I'm maybe "average" to just possibly a tiny tweak above for a 59 year old guy.  The issue is often HOW DO WE FEEL about our "spoon allotment"? As in the quotes above ... and in the quotes below from the article, are we able to "come to peace" with the "spoon allotment", or do we just continually beat ourselves with "gotta do more, get better, I'm lazy,  etc"?

I especially like her "my brain is trying to kill me". Most people with anxiety and depression have brains that "don't shut off well" -- they have a very hard time "compartmentalizing" ("Just quit thinking about it!"). My personal brain model is SUPERB at running many, many, many scenarios on LOTS of things, most of which run toward the negative, but not all. This can be superb in doing design or writing, although it can also very easily cause personal "analysis paralysis" where a "combinatorial explosion" of thought stops all progress. Or writing / blogging for "a few minutes" becomes HOURS.

From the Federalist article, which purports to be about people with "absolutely no mental illness" here is the core meat ...

Adaptability seems to be the outstanding difference in the link between perfectionism and suicide. As was mentioned earlier, four defining characteristics emerged from Kiamanesh’s research: 1) success-driven personality, 2) fear of failure, 3) keeping up false appearances, and 4) rigidity.

The author does a summary of sorts in this paragraph.

While knowing the four features of maladaptive perfectionism is not a guarantee you’ll stop someone in time, it is a start. Hopefully it will at the very least increase your awareness. We all have perfectionists in our lives, and though I’m not advocating we interrogate them with our newfound knowledge, I am saying we should start paying attention for signs of unhealthy expectations, rigidness, fear of failure, etc.

At this point I feel duty bound to point out that she is all wrong about the Hemingway suicide ... if you care, you can see that here.  I think the four characteristics are useful, but I'm not sure I buy the "no mental illness" -- it is kind of like physically "perfectly healthy", or possibly even MORE rare than that! The human brain is the most complex thing in the universe that we know of -- by definition it would seem to be at "the limits of possible". A top fuel dragster is ALWAYS running on the razor edge of complete destruction. The fact they do runs WITHOUT blowing up is miraculous.

Our brains were not built for the modern world -- by design or by chance. The fact that there is WAY too much mental illness, suicide, unhappiness, loneliness, etc is actually EASY to understand -- the miracle is that there isn't MORE. (and sadly, with the decline of religion, loss of close families and communities, lack of even any interest in meaning or philosophy of life, etc, all those bad brain problems ARE getting worse!).

To the extent that any of this can be simplified, my current advice would be to read "Happiness Is a Serious Problem" -- it covers these issues extremely well.  If you are VERY low on time, read "Man's Search For Meaning" -- it gives the underlying philosophy very well, and next to the life described in a Concentration Camp, maybe we don't really have it as bad as we think.

My short and stolen wisdom in the interim:

• Acknowledge and seek a "higher power". IMHO, Christ is the only one that REALLY matters ... but if you feel he is a step too far, just accept that there is a power beyond yourself! 
• Be grateful for any "spoons" you have -- just the energy to draw breath if need be. 
• As hard as it is when times are bad, ANYTHING is better to ruminate on than yourself! 
• REACH OUT ... or at least "get out". Go sit in a coffee shop or a bar rather than your place alone if things are really bad. Even being AROUND people is worth something. 
• MOVE!!! For me, exercise is critical ... I'm still big and fat, but moving around makes me FEEL a lot better. 
• Get a cat -- or a dog I suppose, if that is the kind of person you REALLY are ;-) 

The US Education Cartel Centennial

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/433744/education-research-radical-politics?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=570a79ea04d3014e2a25a9de&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook

One of the MANY areas that I'm aware of severe problems in, but unable to spend the time to really go in depth is the sorry state of education in the US. I have to admit that given the level of union / "The Party" (D-TP) control, the only viable alternatives seem to be private schools and home schooling to keep some TINY semblance of a few minds that have had a background for critical thought, values and independence. Here is a post that covers how hard the left fights even the TINY amount of choice there is in education today.

The linked article covers the travesty of 20K education "researchers" of the "American Education Researchers Association" (AERA) descending on Washington for their century conference. As the linked article states:

In fact, AERA has a long history of scholarship that seems more interested in promoting personal political agendas than in actually researching education.

Right. The article is worthy of a read if you are not familiar with some of the tripe that counts as "research" for this group of propagandists, here is a sample:

More than a decade ago, we started occasionally highlighting some of the work on display at AERA’s annual fête. Many of the scholarly offerings were so sad they were funny. Over the years, we flagged such priceless gems as “Cyber-Sista Cipher: Black Female Students’ Color Consciousness and Counterstories as Hush Harbor in and for Universities” and “The Formation of the Subjectivity of Mail-Order Brides in Taiwan and Their Educational Strategies Toward Their Children.” If that is not the American academy at its finest and most relevant, it’s hard to know what would be.

I have a post that covers ONLY the fact that our schools are completely wired for the WRONG ECONOMY. Yet another area we are in terrible shape!