The Lucifer Principle, Howard Bloom

I'm thinking that I'll occasionally link to an "alternate review" for those that want more detail than I provide so here is an alternate view.

"Evil (Lucifer) is a by-product, a component, of creation. In a world evolving into ever higher forms, hatred, violence, aggression, and war are a part of the evolutionary plan." 

Plan? Higher forms? Bloom is an atheist, so he needs to realize the fact that his faith REQUIRES that there IS NO PLAN! There are also no "higher forms". A godless universe has no "preferences" -- slime mold is just as "good" as Einstein, and there IS NOT such a thing as "good / evil / Lucifer / etc" in such a universe. So his premise is completely flawed -- if there is no god, there is NO DIRECTOR FOR EVOLUTION ... it is RANDOM! What survives and breeds survives and breeds, and what doesn't, doesn't. No planner, no plan.

"Lucifer is the dark side of cosmic fecundity, the cutting blade of the sculptor's knife. Nature does not abhor evil, she embraces it."  

Again, no god, no plan, no "sculptor". Whatever form breeds best is just fine with the blind watchmaker. No consciousness in "nature", so no "abhor or embrace" -- it just "is".

The conclusion of the book is this:

Super-organisms, ideas [memes],  and the pecking order, these are the primary forces behind much of human creativity and earthly good. They are the holy trinity of the Lucifer Principle. 

Super-organisms are societies / groups -- the United States, Exxon, The NFL. The assertion is that each individual is like a "cell" in the super-organism in which they live.

Ideas / memes are things like Christianity, evolution, free speech, money -- ideas, beliefs, ideology, religion. The book espouses the theory that these "memes" compete for "the fittest" like genes -- memes are the "genes" of the super-organisms.

Pecking order -- goes back to chickens / barnyard. Dominance hierarchies of people and super-organisms. He goes over the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the British Empire, and the US Empire along with the rise of Islam as a "killer meme / super-organism". The book was published in 1995, his predictions on the rise of Islamic violence were right on.

The far left hated the book thinking it sounds "Fascist" as in "fittest survive, violence is part of nature / unavoidable / etc". It debunks the "nobel savage" in a number of ways -- one of the most colorful is the !Kung of the Kalahari desert -- very primitive, very warlike, lots of killing, lots of violence. No connection to "corruption" by the west -- they just naturally like to kill each other!

The book would really love to come up with some hopeful note. One example:

It is important that the societies which cherish pluralism survive. It is critical that they spread their values. It is vital that they not mistakenly imagine all other societies to be equal and their own inferior. It is imperative that they not allow their position in the pecking order of nations to slip and that they not cave to the onrush of the barbarians. 

Hmm. That is a very nice sentiment -- he likes "pluralism". Does he "like it" even if it isn't adaptive? I mean, what basis does he like it on? It feels good? He believes there is no god, so the ONLY standard is "what works" -- in evolution, what breeds. As I've pointed out, current "pluralistic", "relativistic", "post-modern" western society DOES NOT BREED! Islam does. Mormons do. Primitive backward groups in Africa do.

In the absence of a "divine meme" that is BELIEVED, then all civilizations really are "equal", because the universe has no order. At a number of places in the book, the above being one, Bloom clearly realizes at some level that "no rules means no rules", which means that the Western "pluralistic" societies may well lose out to societies of "true believers" that are interested in conquest while we are interested in getting men wearing dresses into the ladies room.

Gender uncertainty, homosexuality, abortion and birth control are not really the stuff of "healthy super-organisms" -- in fact, they are a pretty solid indication of a near death super-organism. Organisms that stop replacing their "cells" (eg stop having children), and spend their energy killing off unborn children and encouraging same sex unions really don't play in the godless naturalistic universe. "Pluralism" might feel nice to some authors, but it doesn't play well in the model universe he imagines we live in!

It is hard to recommend this book. There IS a lot of "interesting stuff" in it, some of which was new to me, but given it's flawed premises and rather dark with some "wishful hope" conclusions, it can pretty safely be bypassed for better fare. "Sapiens" would be a great example of that fare, along with "Darwin's Cathedral" to round out the "meme" part a bit.

Bloom manages to criticize "Closing of the American Mind" as "blaming our problems on progress". As you can see in my critique above, I think Bloom fails to understand the results of his own world view, so is casting around for whom he can blame -- "Closing" is just a random target.

I'm just going to stop here -- one can't love every book you read! I think the core issue is really just another attempt to get "Science" to carry the load of philosophy and theology.

Congress, Not BO, Shall Appropriate

http://www.wsj.com/articles/vindicating-congresss-power-of-the-purse-1463094840

The link to the article might not work for you. The WSJ puts a code in the link so that it is a one-time access -- at least for me. When that happens however, just Google "Vindicating Congress Purse" or some such and you will get access through google for at least one read.

When I get behind on my blogging I put draft entries out that sit for awhile sometimes -- this ruling was in early May and it has NOT gotten much in the way of reporting. It is a SIGNIFICANT setback for BO, or would be if he wasn't above the law, because it says that if Congress does not appropriate money for BOcare he can't spend it -- which is what the Constitution has ALWAYS said, but is yet another place in which BO has explicitly broken his oath to support the Constitution.

Judge Collyer takes 38 pages to eviscerate the Administration’s claim that it can infer an appropriation if Congress has merely authorized a program. Congress authorizes all sorts of programs without spending money on them in one year or another. Presidents before Mr. Obama have understood that no money can be spent without an express appropriation.

This brings us to the Iran Contra debacle. The LEGAL issue at stake, and the one that TP was certain would have been impeachable had they been able to prove it, was if Reagan directed the funding of the Contras in Nicaragua when Congress had not appropriated funds -- and if Congress could control the executive movement of monies that were not directly appropriated, but in this case "black", as they came from the sale of arms to the Iranians.

"The Party" (TP-D) was 100% certain back then of "Constitutional limitations on executive power", and how CRITICAL it was to STRONGLY enforce such things against Reagan, up to and including IMPEACHMENT for transfer of money that may have been in violation of the "Boland Amendment",  an attempt by a Democratic Congress to limit Reagan that they repealed before it could be tested in the SCOTUS for Constitutionality. (the President can't spend money not appropriated, but can Congress explicitly control his FOREIGN policy via controlling even "off budget" spending? It gets into things like CIA, espionage, secret programs, etc -- before you say "we don't need them", consider the "Manhattan Project" which built the bomb ...

Strangely, BO smells differently to TP and it's media propaganda arm. In the Reagan days, the House of Representatives was POWERFUL. The head of the House Ways and Means committee, Dan Rostenkowski , was one of the best known names and most powerful men in Washington until he went to prison -- like many Illinois politicians.  Can you even tell me the chairman of Ways and Means? It's Kevin Brady -- I didn't know and you didn't know. The MSM doesn't talk about them because the Constitutional power of the purse no longer resides there -- it resides with BO!

Do you have any idea what the deficit is projected to be in 2016? I didn't, so I did a Google -- the MOST striking thing is how VERY few articles show up on the deficit. During the Reagan years and the W years, the deficit was one of the biggest stories going! EVERYONE knew how the "failed policies" of Reagan and Bush caused high deficits, which were VERY bad! It's supposed to be $544 B, up $104B from last year. Nobody cares!

The media is very strange on deficits, CONGRESS controls the power of the purse! Clinton gets credit for all the deficit cutting that Gingrich did, and Newt is blamed for being mean and nasty for cutting the budget. Similarly, W gets the blame for the rapid rise in budget deficits after the D's took over Congress in '06, yet once the deficits when over $1T and even to $1.6T in 2010, the deficit story simply disappears! The media however LOVES to call '09 the "Bush budget", with Nancy Pelosi running the house and Harry Reid the Senate, plus BO adding $900B of pork in March of '09 -- but hey, that is a BUSH budget!

The highest actual W budget was $413B in '04 -- when the same party is in the WH and Congress, THEN it is FINE to blame the President.  The R's took back the house in 2010, and by 2013 the deficit had dropped from the $1.6T in 2010 to $679B in 2013 -- and although we no longer heard about the deficit, we DID hear about how MEAN the Republicans were!

Up until BO started spending money on BOcare unconstitutionally, CONGRESS did ALL the appropriations! Now, since we no longer follow the Constitution, such a breach as BO has committed for BOcare subsidies is barely news, but at one time during Iran - Contra it was headlines news every day!

We live in a media echo chamber and we are fed what the media wants to feed us -- all of us, me too. Sure, I run across these things and blog on them, but it is humanly impossible to not be affected by the mass of people and our day to day interactions. TP has got us under their spell -- all of us, and unless there is a miracle of some sort of a "movement", "revival", etc, we will continue to fall prey to "well, this is just the way it is".

Kitty Lock Fever

This is "Cabbage", a poor kitty who had to be re-adopted from our son when his life situation changed. We call him "Cab" for short, but I typically call him "The Ferocious Cabadocious" because he still retains a tendency to suddenly bite or claw out of the blue while you are petting him. He has a complex personality, he can also be a real lover.

He has also become the "traveling kitty". He likes to sit on my knee right next to the drivers window as we are going to IA and back to watch the other vehicles -- he gets excited when we pass someone and gets unhappy when we are passed, although that behavior has settled down as he has gotten more used to road travel.

He tagged along last Friday - Saturday as we headed to IA and back to enjoy the cold and rainy weather with a view of the lake. About 10 min into the trip back on Saturday PM, the one side of the tailgate on our trailer popped off and drug in the pavement, so we had to pull over. A pin had come out, so we took care of that and went back to get going and .... the Avalanche was locked!

See, Cab likes to press the buttons on the armrest on the drivers side, when I'm driving I have to watch if he gets over there and cover up the buttons, or a window will soon go down at 75mph on I-90. The vehicle was running in park, Marla's purse was inside, and we were sunk. We coaxed him up to the drivers armrest position, but after about 10 min or trying to randomly get him to move around by waving at him and tapping on the window to press the lock button again, we were calling a locksmith.

I'm sure we looked like idiots as well, but Kitty Lock Fever tends to cause that.

Suddenly, while Marla was looking for a locksmith,  I noticed him heading toward the back seat passenger side and realized that he had opened that window! I got around to intercept him and Marla was able to crawl in with some help and save the day -- not all that dignified, but saved!

Thus ends the story of Kitty Lock Fever -- a story which will no doubt make Cab immortal in Kitty fame at our place for years to come!

Pander, Cressida, Cause and Effect

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/eidos/2016/05/endurance-and-not-words-troilus-and-cressida/


The linked article is a great little article by someone that clearly knows WAY more Shakespeare than I do or will EVER know (see end note in link). If you liked my little post on Troilus and Cressida, this one fills in a tiny bit more detail on the actual play, but it contains an egregious example of getting cause and effect mixed up.

We can only know this when we endure, when we are unwilling to lie to others or to self in order to “win.” Pander, aptly named, says to the lovers:

Ah, well, the ORIGIN of "Pander" in the modern meaning is through this play by way of Chaucer, but most prominently in English, Shakespeare!  It is SO "apt" that it is the origin of the word!

While I'm in a little whimsicle mood, I never realized that the Toyota "Cressida" might be roughly translated out of the tale as "beautiful but unfaithful" -- maybe a more fitting name for an Italian car?

The linked article is short and worth the read, I was just struck by the cause and effect. I found the following paragraph especially worthy.

If we are not careful, we shall be like these fools: more interested in professions of love, than love. Christianity is odd in that it demands we love everyone, even our enemies. This is hard today and only great saints actually end up doing it, but the striving to do is good. Just as reducing from three packs a day to one cigarette a day is better than doing nothing, so hating a great deal less without achieving divine perfection is good for our community.

I Tell You The Truth, There Is No Truth

A Melancholy Calculation | PJ Media:

The title is a variation of "Everything I say is a lie ..... I'm lying." Covered well on the old Star Trek.

I've attempted to write quite a few posts like this, and will no doubt attempt many more, since I believe that the biggest question of our age is "Truth, does it exist, and allowing that, what forms does it exist in and how are those to be perceived". My short answer would be yes, transcendent -- as in eternal, metaphysical, God, scientific -- as in the best current approximation of physical phenomenon, and emotional -- as in the feelings perceived by humans for each other, God, community, country, etc.

I find this paragraph critical to his thesis.

Perhaps the most evident sign of civilizational devolution is the inability or unwillingness to acknowledge reality, to come to terms with things as they are, and to oppose the suppression of objectivity and its substitution by fantasy, illusion and wish-fulfillment. The resonating dictum of the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides from his fragmentary poem On Nature—variously translated as what is, is, and what is not, is not!—sounds like an empty tautology. But it has relevance for our present historical moment, with respect to the cultural and lexical inversions of contemporary thought and discourse. Apart from its metaphysical implications, which we won’t go into here, the Parmenidean maxim expresses the criterion for survival, the need to separate truth (aletheia) from opinion (doxa) and to recognize things as they are if an individual, a culture, a people is to transact successfully with the existing world. But when thought and action come to be governed by the anarchic principle that what is, is not and what is not, is, a process of social, political and epistemological disintegration invariably sets in. This is the condition in which the West finds itself today.

Today, outside science, there is only "doxa" (opinion), and each personal doxa is supposedly just as valid as anyone else's, but of course, there is the rub. POWER ... of media, of party, of public opinion, of money, etc is what REALLY makes some opinions to be "truth". If you fail to bow to them -- as in believe that men should stay in men's bathrooms even when wearing a dress, well then you have to be bludgeoned into agreeing with the POWERFUL opinions!

It is all well worth the read, I've come to see our present crisis as completely obvious, but I realize that is a minority option -- us cranks enjoy seeing the occasional apparently sentient human in agreement! I'll close with this for those of you not up to reading it all.

When a civilization, or its cultural and intellectual curators who wield the instruments of power and authority, re-interprets reality as merely discretionary, decline and eventual extinction are guaranteed, and the Angel of History will preside over the ruins. When pretending becomes believing, and believing becomes mandatory, and calling out the naked emperor is punishable by law or fine or ostracism or loss of employment or worse, and when the scale of such abuses becomes effectively global, the “lifeworld,” or communal nature of daily life, as we have known it has ceased to exist.

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Impunity In An Amoral World, Shocking!

The age of impunity - The Boston Globe:

Impunity is epidemic in America. The rich and powerful get away with their heists in broad daylight. When a politician like Bernie Sanders calls out the corruption, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal double down with their mockery over such a foolish “dreamer.” The Journal recently opposed the corruption sentence of former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell for taking large gifts and bestowing official favors — because everybody does it. And one of its columnists praised Panama for facilitating the ability of wealthy individuals to hide their income from “predatory governments” trying to collect taxes. No kidding. 

So we live in a world that has no fixed transcendent morals and the Boston Globe is SHOCKED, SHOCKED I tell you! that people try to avoid paying taxes.

You see, in gambling, it is always clear who "the house" is. In a world where morality is no more, "the house" is the government, and while the Boston Globe may be "shocked", the fact that all real morals and obligations have been abandoned and supposedly "replaced" the the "sacred obligation" to pay exorbitant tax rates at the point of a gun, some people still try to avoid paying those rates.

Impunity is not an accidental or incidental defect of American society. It is a system foisted on us by the rich and powerful, and it continues to work its magic. It has enabled Hillary Clinton to come within reach of the presidential nomination without releasing the transcripts of her highly paid speeches to Wall Street banks. The Clintons long ago perfected the art of impunity, becoming rich and powerful by blurring the lines between their campaign fund-raising, public policies in office, Clinton Foundation work, big-money speeches, and off-the-record favors for foreign governments.

The Boston Globe believes that separating people from their money at gunpoint ought to be as easy as killing a fetus in it's mothers womb, taking somebodies property by "eminent domain" under Kelo or changing the timeless meaning of "marriage" at the stroke of a pen.

But some still struggle -- and unsurprisingly, in a country where "money" has become the major substitute for "meaning", the wealthy fight hardest of all. They especially have put the meaning of their whole lives in acquisition of more wealth, so they hold it dear -- as obviously does the government and the Boston Globe.

And they are SHOCKED that when the meaning of life for millions has been reduced to money -- and political power, the politically powerful fight to keep their money (and power), and many seek to convert parts of their power into wealth -- as the Clintons have done.

We have replaced values and truth with money and power -- and we are SHOCKED!

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Divorcing Truth and Bereaved Parents

I often wonder if a major piece in the lack of trust in institutions, candidates, or each other, we pretty much all now have,  doesn't go back to the rise of divorce. That was pretty much THE big sacred lifetime vow that most people made -- "till death do us part" before God, family and friends. Then it became common and socially acceptable to break it.

Nothing is that simple though. In making weekly trips to take my Dad to appointments or just visit since his prostate cancer diagnosis in January, it has occurred to me that the cultural shift that started with FDR, of the government being responsible for care of the aged, was a big enabler. Prior to that, in "good / lucky / typical" families, care of elderly parents was something that children did -- and it helped for both the parents and the children's marriages to be intact. Inheritance was also a factor -- "leaving something behind for your children" was considered honorable by nearly everyone ("honorable" actually used to be a word!).

"Freeing" everyone from their "family obligations" made "I'm spending my children's inheritance" sound like something one could be smug enough to put on a bumper sticker. So far, we haven't added "and spending 20% of my children's and grandchildren's income for FICA, Medicare, BOcare and Medicaid as well!!". It hasn't been added, but it is true. Many fathers also don't feel responsible to care for their children anymore either. The lefty way is that you are "responsible" ONLY to the government -- there are no other "obligations", it has all been outsourced!

Vocation, calling, responsibility, sacred duty, Gods Will, etc" become "hardships, burdens, toil, constraints, even enslavement ...". When life had a purpose beyond individual ease and happiness the world was a different place. As it is put in the old saw about Moses and FDR -- 5,000 years ago, Moses said, "Pick up your shovels, mount your asses and camels, and I will lead you to the Promised Land." When Welfare was introduced, Roosevelt said, "Lay down your shovels, sit on your asses, and light up a Camel, this IS the Promised Land."

As meanings become fluid and declared by the state or it's media, people who want to stay in the good graces of "The Party" and be seen as "intelligent, reasonable, "moral", etc" have to be able to change from one "factual statement" to it's opposite on a moments notice.

For example; how may "experts" told us that Ronald Reagan was CRAZY to believe that the USSR was EVER "going away"? Many ... hundreds, thousands even. When it DID go away, how many of those "wise men" lost face and realized that they ought not be making such pronouncements as such "certain truth"? Virtually none -- the "wise men" that are still living are STILL "wise", and the left is constantly working to re-write history to make Reagan  completely senile in his second term!

In a 2012 debate,  BO taunted Romney saying "the '80s wants it's foreign policy back" for thinking that Russia could be a major threat. BO is still "wise", Russia IS a threat, but BO is undiminished by his error. TP tells you what to think.

How many times in the 1970's did we hear that "We are out of oil, gas is ALWAYS going to go up in price, and anyone that says otherwise is an IDIOT"! Uncountable -- it was the "standard wisdom", more "settled" than Global Warming is today. Then we heard "It will NEVER go below $2 again" from the great and powerful BO himself, but it did. The people that claimed it would go below $2 were complete fools or liars, but when it DID got below $2, the "fools and liars" remained "fools and liars", and BO remained "honest and brilliant". For the believers in TP, the "important fact" never changed -- TP is STILL right!

The Democrats, media and even BO declared Iraq to be "lost", then BO declared it to be "won" before he lost it. The MOST critical thing about being on the side of  TP is that when you and their pronouncements are "proven wrong", they are STILL right! Past statements simply disappear and the new statements that contradict them -- sometimes multiple times, are now "truth". We live in an OZ where the man behind the curtain is exposed but 80% of the people still believe in the wizard of TP!

Which brings us to Trump -- doesn't it ALL come down to Trump these days?

How many pundits told us "Trump will NEVER be the Republican nominee"! Only he is. Now the SAME "experts" are telling us with the SAME confidence, "Hillary will win by a LANDSLIDE!". That may well be true -- TP is powerful. They own both the virtual and the dead vote, so if it is even close, we may have queen Hildebeast. But I do believe I detect a bit of nervousness on the part of the TP faithful. If we are to lack confidence in Trump because "he isn't reliable", how are we to have confidence in the many "wise men" that are certainly not reliable?

For this world, the most adaptive part of religious belief is that believers have a core transcendent belief that is NOT OF THIS WORLD. "God is good, ALL the time"! That is a FAITH statement, and people WILL live by faith, sometimes in the face of horrible diseases, economic collapses, war, or even having a fight with their spouse and not getting divorced. The strength and weakness of transcendent truths is that they are "true by definition", they can't be "proven false" ... nor true in a "scientific" way. (of course NOTHING can ... scientific "truth" is always provisional on the next experiment.

TP on the other hand claims to be "better" because it's wisdom IS of this world and CAN be shown to be both true and false! However, when it is proven false, that is to be ignored and the NEW "truth" is to be taken as "truth" -- and NOT questioned!

 Eternity provides perspective -- but a little earthy perspective is OK as well.

It appears that there are about 80 million children < age 20 in the US. From age 5-14, 13 per 100K die each year. From age 15-19, 50 per 100K die each year. If we just pick "40" per 100K, that is 40 x 10 per million = 400, so 400 x 80 for the US, or 32,000 new bereaved parents EACH YEAR. Every 10 years, that is 320,000 bereaved parents!

How much do we care about them compared to say "transgenders"? Of maybe the 10 or so blacks killed by police in any sort of "questionable circumstance" each year? Or how important do we think TP being "always right" is to those parents? Is TP REALLY the "ultimate issue"? Do we ever consider their feelings say as much as "Caitlyn Jenner"? No, pretty much, we "think and feel" (to the extent we still know what that is) pretty much as we are told by TP on a day to day hourly basis as long as nothing like personal death, disease, etc collapses the TP view-screen. Even those of us that fight TP can no more escape from it's effects than we can from breathing.

We have largely destroyed the perspective of the eternal, the family, the community, the historical and even the very simplest things like our gender. Most have lost ALL perspective other than the false perspective of TP.

But now, there arises Trump, who challenges the "truth" of TP, and is even willing to challenge the whole concept of "truth" in the same way as TP has done increasingly for years. He says exactly what he wants to say and changes his position at the drop of a hat -- just like TP and the TP candidates. In method, presentation, arrogance, showmanship, derision of his opposition, etc -- in pretty much ALL ways, Trump **IS TP**!!! When there is no truth and no values, ALL that matters is "perception and POWER". TP has made that clear, and the vast majority have no perspective at all to make sense of "what is trump" (in the card sense).

What is truth? Trump or TP? In a world with no truth, does it matter?

Fundamentally Transforming Gender in BOistan

White House stands up for transgender students - POLITICO:

The Education and Justice Departments this morning sent a Dear Colleague letter to every public school district in the country reaffirming the administration’s interpretation of sweeping protections for transgender students under Title IX — including a transgender student’s right to use a bathroom or locker room that aligns with his or her gender identity.

Got that? The "fundamental transformation" of "America" into "BOistan" has just taken another giant step. While I suppose the gays were not included, I can't think of a High School male that didn't have recurrent dreams of the scenic beauty of the girls locker room and shower! Now, all it takes is having the balls to "get confused" for a day and you have the FEDERAL RIGHT!

I'm sure kids are WAY more "mature" these days, but I can only imagine the "I dare you" on both sides of the genders. I'm pretty sure there would have been a handful of girls in our HS that would have really enjoyed a few showers with the boys. Or from the male side, you want to see a girl you find to be especially attractive naked? All you need to know is when her gym class is and "get confused", simple.

The irony of this new "right" being found under the  imaginary "privacy clause" of the Constitution is simply too much. Privacy? Oh, we HAD to have gay "marriage" so the government wasn't "peeking in your bedroom"! Yup, consistency is definitely not an issue.

Can this be Trumped????

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NY Times, NOT Pimpin4Paradise786

Corrections: May 10, 2016 - The New York Times:



That is a heck of an editing error! Does that handle for an imam give a NY Times editor pause? Apparently not!

Because of an editing error, an article on Monday about a theological battle being fought by Muslim imams and scholars in the West against the Islamic State misstated the Snapchat handle used by Suhaib Webb, one of the Muslim leaders speaking out. It is imamsuhaibwebb, not Pimpin4Paradise786.

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Jobs, Reality Distortion, Dilbert, Trump

Donald Trump will win in a landslide. *The mind behind ‘Dilbert’ explains why. - The Washington Post:

I think Scott Adams has as good a handle on the Trump phenomenon as anyone, the whole article is worth a read.

Steve Jobs famously aimed to create “reality distortion fields” to meet his needs and achieve his ends. Trump employs similar techniques, and apparently can be similarly thin-skinned when his “reality” is challenged. “The Master Persuader will warp reality until he gets what he wants,” writes Adams, noting that Trump is “halfway done” already.

I once worked with a guy that had one of those fields. When you were in the room with him you REALLY believed that the stuff he was talking about was extremely possible to do, AND, you believed that YOU could do it! When he left the room, everyone looked at each other and said "What the hell did we just sign up to do?.  The problem, as I often point out is that we are NOT rational, but rather we are rationalizing entities! Emotion drives our decisions -- science now knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you lose your emotional sense, you can't decide what to have for dinner, what to wear, or ANYTHING. If you have ever dealt with depression or someone that is depressed, you have gotten a tiny bit of insight to this -- "nothing sounds good to me", "what difference does it make?".

“The most important thing when you study hypnosis is that you learn that humans are irrational,” Adams tells Comic Riffs. “Until you understand that, hypnosis is hard to do. … For me, it was this great awakening to understand that humans are deeply irrational, and it’s probably the greatest influence on me in terms of my writing.”

Guess what, Trump understands this, but Hillary does not. It is kind of surprising, since Slick Willie certainly DOES understand it as well -- but then it is never really clear to me that he actually wants Hildebeast to win the presidency.

I don't watch much Fox, but I noticed the Meghan Kelly hairstyle change and wondered what was up (I didn't like the new one, I guess I like the WRONG kind of hair style in a woman!)

“Do you think it is a coincidence that Trump called Megyn Kelly a bimbo and then she got a non-bimbo haircut that is … well, Trumpian?” Adams writes. “It doesn’t look like a coincidence to this trained persuader.”

The summary is pretty much here -- and I think Adams is on to something. I can't imagine a SINGLE "Alpha Male" voting for Hildebeast ... nor any that even have a "dream" of being alpha anything. The symbol for Hildebeast has always been pretty clear!

Writes Adams: “Identity is always the strongest level of persuasion. The only way to beat it is with dirty tricks or a stronger identity play. … [And] Trump is well on his way to owning the identities of American, Alpha Males, and Women Who Like Alpha Males. Clinton is well on her way to owning the identities of angry women, beta males, immigrants, and disenfranchised minorities.

The key will be the dead and virtual vote. "The Party" has a LOCK in those areas, and they are NOT affected by emotion or even "hypnotism" ... but if it is a "landslide", they can only stuff the ballot box so much and get away with it.

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Wife Cheated, Dating Hooker

The earthquake and the aftermath: Charles Krauthammer:

Charles, like many, is in a real quandry trying to understand the Trump victory.

More fundamentally, Trump has no affinity whatsoever for the central thrust of modern conservatism — a return to less and smaller government. If the establishment has insufficiently resisted Obama’s Big Government policies, the beneficiary should logically have been the most consistent, indeed most radical, anti-government conservative of the bunch, Ted Cruz.

So some guy marries the "good girl". She turns out to not be all that "good" and sleeps around. News at 11, he complains about her and starts dating a hooker.

HW Bush, W Bush, the Republican congress from 2000-2006, and then the House from 2010-2016 and Senate from 2014-2016 -- they ALL "slept around" with "big government", more regulation, not standing up to BO, raising taxes, etc, BIG TIME!

So if the very core of your supposedly "virtuous conservative party" is corrupt, and make no mistake, the core of the Republican party hated Cruz worse than Trump, then why does anyone believe you ought to cozy up to them YET AGAIN if you are a "conservative"?

Maybe "conservative" DOES mean "stupid"!

Cruz being embraced by Walker, and VERY tentatively by the R "establishment" during and especially after winning Wisconsin is what I believe was the kiss of death for him. It had me tentatively thinking that he was done -- but he wasn't.

When you prefer another candidate, it is VERY easy to imagine that things are going to turn out your way.

When you DON'T like a candidate -- like Charles here, it is really easy to fall into thinking that everyone that does like him is "stupid".




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34707 Island View Lane, Emmetsburg, IA 50536

That is the address of the lake place.

If you have the Google Maps application on at least Mac and type that address in, it will give you the satellite view of the IA property as of summer of 2014. You can see the neighbors house south of our lot with big "U" dock with lift and cover in center, our dock is in, and the brother in law's camper is on our lot and their is a camper on the lot to the north of us.  It looks MUCH different now, with a shed taking up the northern third of the lot!

For some reason, Google Earth and the web version seem to have older shots, so properties out in our area of the development don't show up everywhere.













If you have the right browser or IP camera viewer you can go to 69.66.197.8:83, enter "guest" for ID and "guest" for password, and you ought to see something like the following if everything works right. It's a little wet down there now and there seems to be some drops on the camera lens. This cam is a "temp", I'm playing with a higher resolution model that has zoom and remote panning to allow different things to be viewed. HOPE to get that installed the end of the week.

The place is MUCH more fun this year with the dock already in (thanks to the IA Bruellmans for getting that done!) and of course the shed operational from the summer get go.

Argument With My Sowell

An Unmitigated Disaster - Thomas Sowell:

Regular readers know that there are few men whose wisdom I respect more that Thomas Sowell, but then you also know I'm something of an iconoclast, so disagreement is to be expected!

Generally, I agree with him that Trump vs Clinton is some level of "disaster", but where I differ is that electing BO TWICE was already a level of disaster that makes future disasters pale in comparison. America WAS an optimistic forward looking nation for all but a brief time in the late '70s when Jimmuh put on his sweater and told us that the world was too short on energy to have Christmas lights!

BO did him one better -- he convinced most Americans that we were no longer exceptional, and to focus on "security", "fairness" and Global Warming as our main concerns.To the extent we have "mood' now, it is resignation, feeling

If nations cannot have confidence in American commitments and American leadership, we are not likely to get their cooperation. And the stakes are life and death.

Sowell argues that Trump might cost us this, but one can't lose what is already lost. BO has MORE than proven that the US is untrustworthy and useless as an ally. Iraq, the deal with Iran, the Chinese building bases in the South China Sea,  his failures in Afghanistan and Eastern Europe being stark examples. It is "possible" that a Trump or Clinton could hurt our standing more, but the horse has left the barn ... anybody that trusts us today is a fool.

It is just barely possible that Trump is crazy like a fox on places like South Korea. If they want to be defended, they can damned well pay a hefty price -- if we don't at least THREATEN to leave them on their own, we likely can't get much of a deal. I can believe that Trump is looking to make a deal with S Korea and other places, and that is fine with me!

Oh, and we ought not to elect Trump because they might use him against us for a long time? Hell, they are still using Hoover, McCarthy, Nixon and now W against us and I don't expect them to stop. They are even still out trying to cement that case that Reagan was senile in his second term and did all sorts of supposed "damage".

If Republicans start worrying about what the Democrats will make up / hold against us, we may as well just give up right now. I can GUARANTEE that NOTHING will turn out to be BO's fault if you listen to the media, nor will ANY Democrat, past nor future be expected to shoulder and blame. That is what the media believes that Republicans are for!




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NY Times Reports Iran Nuke Deal A Sham

The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru - The New York Times:

The linked article is not a bad read. The punchline is that America's foreign policy is being run  by a wanna be novelist who has mind melded with a community organizer and are purposely misleading everyone else about what they are up to.

It opens with the drama of said novelist (Rhodes) trying to manipulate the press on the day of BO's SOTU address when  "our friends" the Iranians have taken a couple patrol boats and ten sailors.

"Now, from the flat screens, a challenge to that narrative arises: Iran has seized two small boats containing 10 American sailors. Rhodes found out about the Iranian action earlier that morning but was trying to keep it out of the news until after the president’s speech. “They can’t keep a secret for two hours,” Rhodes says, with a tone of mild exasperation at the break in message discipline."

If we lived in a real world everyone would know what is obvious -- the idea of "hard liners" and "moderates" in Iran is complete fiction. Here is Leon Panetta, who served as both CIA director and Secretary of defense under BO when asked about said fiction:

“No,” Panetta answers. “There was not much question that the Quds Force and the supreme leader ran that country with a strong arm, and there was not much question that this kind of opposing view could somehow gain any traction.”

We won't go into the "background" our chief of foreign policy has other than a Masters Degree in Fiction and smoking a lot of weed -- just like our President.  But at least according to this NY Times writer, he DOES have power!

On the largest and smallest questions alike, the voice in which America speaks to the world is that of Ben Rhodes.

If you ever wondered about the veracity of the Iraq Study Group and 9/11 Commission, wonder no more ... FICTION! He did fiction well, so he was a great person to work with BO -- the fictional leader! 

“The idea of someone with a masters in fiction who had also co-authored the Iraq Study Group and 9/11 Commission reports seemed perfect for a candidate who put so much emphasis on storytelling.”

Readers of this blog already know the following paragraph, but now the NY Times concurs: 

The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country — was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal. Even where the particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often misleading or false. Obama’s closest advisers always understood him to be eager to do a deal with Iran as far back as 2012, and even since the beginning of his presidency. 

So Congress, Israel, the UN and the American people were purposely misled by the BO administration, and now the NY Times is even willing to report it! Still, it seems that nobody cares. 

So when Panetta talked to Israel about the nuclear deal, here is what they wondered if BO could be trusted to stop a nuke from being produced. He after all as SAID that he would take action many times. It is one of his "red lines", and we KNOW how much he can be trusted on those!  

“They were both interested in the answer to the question, ‘Is the president serious?’ ” Panetta recalls. “And you know my view, talking with the president, was: If brought to the point where we had evidence that they’re developing an atomic weapon, I think the president is serious that he is not going to allow that to happen.”
Panetta stops. 

“But would you make that same assessment now?” I ask him. 

“Would I make that same assessment now?” he asks. “Probably not.”

So Leon Panetta, past head of CIA and SECDEF and lifelong Democrat does not believe that BO would act to stop an Iranian nuke and the freaking NY Times is willing to print it! And STILL, nobody cares! 

Iraq is his one-word answer to any and all criticism. I was against the Iraq war from the beginning, I tell Rhodes, so I understand why he perpetually returns to it. I also understand why Obama pulled the plug on America’s engagement with the Middle East, I say, but it was also true as a result that more people are dying there on his watch than died during the Bush presidency, even if very few of them are Americans. What I don’t understand is why, if America is getting out of the Middle East, we are apparently spending so much time and energy trying to strong-arm Syrian rebels into surrendering to the dictator who murdered their families, or why it is so important for Iran to maintain its supply lines to Hezbollah. He mutters something about John Kerry, and then goes off the record, to suggest, in effect, that the world of the Sunni Arabs that the American establishment built has collapsed. The buck stops with the establishment, not with Obama, who was left to clean up their mess.

 See, BO was all about "Hope and Change", and he was an "outsider" before Trump came along. If it wasn't for BO, Trump would be horribly inexperienced. Compared to BO, Trump with his years running business as an executive is a model of solid experience! Compared to Slick Willie, and even Hildebeast, Trump is a pretty much a paragon of virtue. 

One thing we are certain of, NOTHING is BO's fault! With BO, the buck NEVER stops! All of this was known in general (not the details) by anyone paying attention. What is new is that the MSM is apparently a TINY bit concerned that they too were played for patsies -- although not all that concerned. They have loved the stench of BO from the start.


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Left Republican Apocalypse Analysis

The Four Horsemen of the Republican Apocalypse - Bloomberg View:

I cover this one for a couple quick reasons:

1. Again, we discuss the "demise of the Republican Party" ... we certainly did after Goldwater and after Nixon as well. The Republicans have been a minority party since FDR. I too believe that at some point "The Party" (D) may succeed in wiping out the minority opposition, but it will be due to first amendment issues -- "campaign finance", "coordination", "fairness doctrine" types of attacks as we have seen in Wisconsin, not who they nominate. 
2. He points out that Trump is a "celebrity candidate" -- he doesn't mention that Arnold and Jessie both WON against all the pundits assuring us it could not happen. 
3. He never mentions Republicans making lots of promises if they got both houses, and then disappointing tremendously. 
4. The dream of Rubio was stillborn due to his "gang of eight" mistake. It may have simply been a rookie mistake, but it was a bad one, especially as he was snookered by Chuck Schumer who is well known as one of the most slithery of snakes in the leftist swamp. 

The theory that if "the right guys had got out quicker" Trump would have been prevented, is shaky at best. An "outsider" candidate was likely to win the R nomination this year because the party pissed off the base so badly. When the "establishment" tepidly embraced Cruz after WI it did more to enhance the appeal of Trump to the elements of the base energized in anger.

The people who have run the Republican Party into the ditch are John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney and John McCain. Trump is a symptom, not a cause!

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