http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/01/politics/trump-inauguration-gigapixel/
One of the rather amazing things of our time is the ability to shoot a picture with a BILLION pixels! You can click the link and go look around at the various people ... kinda funny to see some of the expressions and how much you can zoom in. I don't really care about the numbers. As the picture shows there were LOTS of people there, and LOTS of red "Make America Great Again" hats.
When I think of the effort required to attend such an event, it makes me realize that a LOT of people are a whole lot more dedicated to poltics than I am -- which I see as GOOD in both senses. It's great they care enough to be there, and it is especially great that I and millions of others feel we don't have to care that much. That is what freedom looks like.
America was a land of LIMITED GOVERNMENT, which meant that the level of intrusion of government on anyone's life was intened to be LIMITED. Both in the ability of the government to give you what you want and to force others to give it to you was to be strictly limited. Since the government does not produce anything, certainly not wealth, that is really the only question that needs to be considered. Who makes and who takes.
If the government has enough power to "give" you more than it takes from you for "some charge" to you, the only way that can happen is when it TAKES what is "given" to you from somebody else.
When you go to the grocery store, you understand the transaction fairly well -- you walk around the store, pick up what you want, and then pay for it as you leave. The money you pay keeps the store operating and returns some level of profit to the company running the store after the store has paid for it being built, keeping the lights on, employees to stock and do check out, and of course a large part of what you paid goes to the whole system that moves the products from farmers, fishermen, bakers, processors, etc through processing plants, trucking, packaging, advertising, etc, etc.
Everyone in that system makes some level of profit from what they do -- usually very low single digit percentages ... for groceries, it can be LESS than 1%, since 1% is the average. So if one guy owns the grocery store / chain, he needs to do 100 million dollars of business a year if he wants to have million dollar income.
Yes, some of what you pay in taxes goes for the government to make sure everyone "plays fair" and "plays safe" ... the folks that built the store, provided the power, grew the food, processed the food, etc, etc all live under some level of "regulation". Regulation is pure overhead, if everyone was honest, dedicated, competent, etc, there would be no need for regulation. Some of the money for regulation comes out of everyone's taxes, some of it you paid at the checkout because it was a "cost of doing business" for the myriad of "farmers, processors, truckers, etc" that it took to get those products on the shelf.
When Obama was elected, the vast majority of the people in the crowd were hoping that he would tip the scales so that they were going to GET more from the government than they had gotten in the past. I'm quite certain that the vast majority of people standing in red hats assumed that Trump was going to shift the balance so that the govenment TOOK less from them and the rest of the country on the assumption that lowering the overhead of govenment would allow them to keep more in their pockets, and hopefully GROW the overall economy at a higher rate than it has in the last 8 years so that the entire pool of wealth to be spent, re-distributed, wasted, invested, etc was greater.
That isn't a very high bar. Obama was the first US president in history to never have a year of 3% growth or better, and even that pitiful level was highly suspect given the amount of changes he made in how the calculations are done. My guess is that there was very close to ZERO actual growth if the lowered value of money (inflation from "stimulus", "quantitative easing", deficit spending, etc) was accurately figured in.
So did less people show up to support the opportunity to MAKE more than showed up in '08 to TAKE more? All the people that told us that Trump would certainly lose tell us that is that case. In many ways, I hope they are right -- if there is more opportunity now, it is better to be out creating wealth than standing and watching the new guy be installed to try to make that happen!
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Brokaw and the Liberal Detector
Tom Brokaw, liberal Democrat | Power Line:
Bill Buckley's boast that he could always detect a liberal got my brain a whirring. I've had one case for sure in my life where I had pegged someone 100% as liberal and turned out to SPECTACULARLY wrong. Nice looking, single woman few years younger than me, walked to work rather than driving a car, happy, outgoing, intelligent, obviously caring -- she just looked and seemed, well, "liberal". She was and is not -- mostly likely to the right of me a little bit (not that there is anything wrong with that)!
The term "Gaydar" might we related -- I've had to be told on multiple occasions "they're gay", when it never crossed my mind. Oh, sure, the flamboyant obvious case -- "Liberace, Elton John, etc", but Rock Hudson? Nope. Lesbian, no hope, I'm totally oblivious.
Here is what I believe.
I suspect that females have "Gaydar" that exceeds even the gay. They are wired to realize if they are "being checked out", and to realize if another female is being "checked out", especially by "their guy' (targeted or captured). Much like it is claimed that our 688 attack subs would figure out where our "boomers" (missile subs) were at because there was a "sonic hole in the water" (we built them TOO quiet, they were a sound screen), the "Gaydar" is really detecting that the male in question isn't giving off any level of female attention reading for ANY woman in the group ... ergo.
I believe that the default person is "liberal", meaning that they believe that humans are generally good, or if not good, easily educated to be good. When someone has been properly educated and socialized, they will as a matter of course be a fellow liberal. The more intelligence, communication ability, creative ability, artistic ability, social grace, etc a person has, the more likely it is that they are liberals. Liberalism is the natural state of political belief for a healthy happy human that wants to get along in society and be successful. Given basic intelligence, a normal desire to get along with others, and even fairly minimal education, any sentient person is liberal. It is a core liberal matter of faith.
As a conservative Christian, I agree liberalism is the natural human state. People like to see themselves as good, and they like to see those that agree with them as good. I was a liberal until I was 21 myself -- it is often said that if you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart. I agree with the generalization humor in that, but I disagree with the other part that if you are not a conservative by "40", you have no brain. I believe that high intellect and especially a high level of education, skill in a field, and even financial success (depends on type, small business will tend to turn people conservative) will generally encourage one to be and stay a liberal. The increasingly leftward direction of the US to BOistan, where liberalism is increasingly the state religion as well as just a good idea, makes it painful to not follow the crowd in especially the coastal areas and large cities.
My belief is that the biggest differentiator is belief in God ( the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God). Certainly not all conservatives are Christians, but in order to be a conservative, you need to hold to a set of values that can't be constructed by reason. They have to be, "felt, intuited, discrned". Modern brain science shows that unless we are a psychopath, sociopath, asbergers, etc person, we all DO feel the moral impulse.
Where does it come from? As we might all guess, that is a matter of faith. Hard work has been put into coming up with a narrative that might allow evolution to create it (eg "group selection"), however at best, that is always going to be highly speculative (as an atheist would say religion is).
Modern BOistan has gotten so lost that there are indeed a number of people who are supposedly God believing "christians" who don't believe much of the Bible or in the diety / redemptive power of Christ. Brokaw may even be one of those. It allows one to intellectually call themselves "chrisitan", while believing none of the tenets of the faith (Christ is Gods son, died for our sins, which we admit to, and will save us if we accept his life, death and resurrection and follow him as a result). The "secular christian" is essentially no different from the "secular humanist" in thinking that there may or may not be an afterlife, but since I'm certainly better than most people, I don't need to worry about it.
Again, this is a GENERALIZATION, so there are definiely "many" cases where it doesn't apply -- atheist conservtives, actual political liberals that somehow manage to correlate that with real faith (although I can't explain it, I'm not the judge, Christ is), the point is that in general, the conservative view follows quite naturally from "looking for God" ... or at a minium, the transcendent. The idea that this isn't all there is.
So as a conservative, I believe that man is flawed -- he has a moral nature, but he has an animal nature as well, and that is too prone to take over and cause short term evil that tends to begat longer term evil (cover-up, attachment to the evil, attempts to justify, etc). Also, without faith in a higher power, attention to long-term gain and willingness to accept short term pain for the long term benefit is difficult at best. Eternity is the longest of long term -- so foregoing questionable earthly pleasures in light of eternal gain makes a lot of sense to people with that outlook, obviously NONE to people without it.
If we didn't die, get sick, have to work in order to be fed clothed, etc, then liberalism would be the clear ticket. No responsibility (at least none except voting for "good people"). A world with a TON of "rights" ... freedom to say exactly what you want and recently to not have to hear anything that you don't like, free health, free education (to learn how to have greater pleasure ... like study the Karma Sutra), free shelter, free food, free beverages and recreational drugs (at least they SHOULD be covered!), guaranteed respect and participation trophies, freedom from war, violence (unless beating up a conservative for pleasure), etc, etc. A good reality if you can get it.
As PJ O'Rourke once said, liberals believe in Santa, conservatives belive in God. The only problem with liberalism is that there is no Santa!
It is clear why the young tend to be liberal -- in BOistan up to 21, and lately even 26 and beyond, many of their lives are close approximations of the previous slightly whimsical description. For a wealthy guy like Brokaw, it at least "seems" like the proper alingment of large beauracracy just "might" be able to keep things rolling in general, and it has certainly worked out GREAT for him! Yes, the "sickness and death" thing has started to intrude, but modern medicine helps keep the sickness thing as somewhat less horrible than formerly, and at least mostly hidden. Death is a nagging problem, but it MUST be kinda OK -- everyone does it, certainly it has to be graded on a curve at the very least, and "I'm OK". Why, even if it did somehow turn out that I was "personally responsible" (insane, but this nagging feeling ...), hey, I talk way better than just about EVERYONE, and when you get right down to it, I AM a pretty darned nice guy!
After all, I turned down NIXON (of course) ... in the unlikely event there is a hell in Brokaw's mind, I'm certain he sees Nixon as justifiably there. He LIED to the American people! He erased a tape!
Do I think I can usually spot the conservative in the room? Sure, the same way as a 688 attack sub spots a boomer, or a woman a gay. Because there is the absence of "standard liberal chatter" from that person. They avoid politics just a little bit more than is even the average. They never bring up SNL, and laugh only uncomfortably about "the great skit that really put Trump / Sarah Palin / W in their place!"
For some strange roll of the dice, I'm an even rarer breed, the "conservative inconoclast'. I keep silent not because I would not be perfectly happy to have the give and take, but because of the level of discomfort, hatred, and down right leaving the room screaming that will be ingnited if I expose myself is truly terrible. For some reason, the comination of large size, relatively glib tongue, not being totally stupid, and being decently aware of liberal positions as well as COUNTER positions is especially incendiary. if I dragged my knuckles, they could look the other way and go cluck cluck, but as it is, well, "they can't normalize pure evil"!
My thinking is that the reason for this is that it makes them question their assumption that "anyone reasonably intelligent / well read / emotionally able to communicate", MUST be a liberal! Certainly they at some level know this is not the case -- Buckley after all was WAY more intelligent, well read, glib tounged, etc than I, but my sense is they feel that anyone with even a wisp of that sort of madness ought be clearly marked, and not allowed to just walk around in the open. Perhaps the "outlier conservative preserve" should be formed in the interest of keeping liberals safe.
So I stay stealthy. At my workplace, I'm sure there are suspicions ... they know that I'm an Elder and a LCMS church! They haven't heard me say anything nasty about Trump! I've only laughed minimally and probably detectably and uncomfortably at nasty things said about Trump and Trump voters at the office where politics are to be STRICTLY off limits! Of course the executive director went out and marched in the woman's march, a couple of the people have "Vote Democrat" on their cars and in some strategic not too public spots in their office. After all, when you ARE a good person, you have to be just a little proud of it!
... and that's the way it is! As another noted liberal used to say. As a rather funny postscript, I went off to find a Youtube of Walter doing the signoff (easy to find if you want), but instead explained that he came up with it because "other distinguished broadcasters had one, why shouldn't he?" even though his boss correctly pointed out that it might well not be true -- they may have made mistakes, not gotten all the information, drawn wrong conclusions, etc. But, "people liked it" -- as many DO tend to like "authority", so it became part of the liberal manufactured "reality" of the US -- "fake, but true", or at least accepted as "true". "Uncle Walter" was always right, and we could all believe him ... as he signed off each night with something that was suspect at best, and in many cases, a direct lie.
Americans have enjoyed fake news for a very long time!
'via Blog this'
Bill Buckley's boast that he could always detect a liberal got my brain a whirring. I've had one case for sure in my life where I had pegged someone 100% as liberal and turned out to SPECTACULARLY wrong. Nice looking, single woman few years younger than me, walked to work rather than driving a car, happy, outgoing, intelligent, obviously caring -- she just looked and seemed, well, "liberal". She was and is not -- mostly likely to the right of me a little bit (not that there is anything wrong with that)!
The term "Gaydar" might we related -- I've had to be told on multiple occasions "they're gay", when it never crossed my mind. Oh, sure, the flamboyant obvious case -- "Liberace, Elton John, etc", but Rock Hudson? Nope. Lesbian, no hope, I'm totally oblivious.
Here is what I believe.
I suspect that females have "Gaydar" that exceeds even the gay. They are wired to realize if they are "being checked out", and to realize if another female is being "checked out", especially by "their guy' (targeted or captured). Much like it is claimed that our 688 attack subs would figure out where our "boomers" (missile subs) were at because there was a "sonic hole in the water" (we built them TOO quiet, they were a sound screen), the "Gaydar" is really detecting that the male in question isn't giving off any level of female attention reading for ANY woman in the group ... ergo.
I believe that the default person is "liberal", meaning that they believe that humans are generally good, or if not good, easily educated to be good. When someone has been properly educated and socialized, they will as a matter of course be a fellow liberal. The more intelligence, communication ability, creative ability, artistic ability, social grace, etc a person has, the more likely it is that they are liberals. Liberalism is the natural state of political belief for a healthy happy human that wants to get along in society and be successful. Given basic intelligence, a normal desire to get along with others, and even fairly minimal education, any sentient person is liberal. It is a core liberal matter of faith.
As a conservative Christian, I agree liberalism is the natural human state. People like to see themselves as good, and they like to see those that agree with them as good. I was a liberal until I was 21 myself -- it is often said that if you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart. I agree with the generalization humor in that, but I disagree with the other part that if you are not a conservative by "40", you have no brain. I believe that high intellect and especially a high level of education, skill in a field, and even financial success (depends on type, small business will tend to turn people conservative) will generally encourage one to be and stay a liberal. The increasingly leftward direction of the US to BOistan, where liberalism is increasingly the state religion as well as just a good idea, makes it painful to not follow the crowd in especially the coastal areas and large cities.
My belief is that the biggest differentiator is belief in God ( the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God). Certainly not all conservatives are Christians, but in order to be a conservative, you need to hold to a set of values that can't be constructed by reason. They have to be, "felt, intuited, discrned". Modern brain science shows that unless we are a psychopath, sociopath, asbergers, etc person, we all DO feel the moral impulse.
Where does it come from? As we might all guess, that is a matter of faith. Hard work has been put into coming up with a narrative that might allow evolution to create it (eg "group selection"), however at best, that is always going to be highly speculative (as an atheist would say religion is).
Modern BOistan has gotten so lost that there are indeed a number of people who are supposedly God believing "christians" who don't believe much of the Bible or in the diety / redemptive power of Christ. Brokaw may even be one of those. It allows one to intellectually call themselves "chrisitan", while believing none of the tenets of the faith (Christ is Gods son, died for our sins, which we admit to, and will save us if we accept his life, death and resurrection and follow him as a result). The "secular christian" is essentially no different from the "secular humanist" in thinking that there may or may not be an afterlife, but since I'm certainly better than most people, I don't need to worry about it.
Again, this is a GENERALIZATION, so there are definiely "many" cases where it doesn't apply -- atheist conservtives, actual political liberals that somehow manage to correlate that with real faith (although I can't explain it, I'm not the judge, Christ is), the point is that in general, the conservative view follows quite naturally from "looking for God" ... or at a minium, the transcendent. The idea that this isn't all there is.
So as a conservative, I believe that man is flawed -- he has a moral nature, but he has an animal nature as well, and that is too prone to take over and cause short term evil that tends to begat longer term evil (cover-up, attachment to the evil, attempts to justify, etc). Also, without faith in a higher power, attention to long-term gain and willingness to accept short term pain for the long term benefit is difficult at best. Eternity is the longest of long term -- so foregoing questionable earthly pleasures in light of eternal gain makes a lot of sense to people with that outlook, obviously NONE to people without it.
If we didn't die, get sick, have to work in order to be fed clothed, etc, then liberalism would be the clear ticket. No responsibility (at least none except voting for "good people"). A world with a TON of "rights" ... freedom to say exactly what you want and recently to not have to hear anything that you don't like, free health, free education (to learn how to have greater pleasure ... like study the Karma Sutra), free shelter, free food, free beverages and recreational drugs (at least they SHOULD be covered!), guaranteed respect and participation trophies, freedom from war, violence (unless beating up a conservative for pleasure), etc, etc. A good reality if you can get it.
As PJ O'Rourke once said, liberals believe in Santa, conservatives belive in God. The only problem with liberalism is that there is no Santa!
It is clear why the young tend to be liberal -- in BOistan up to 21, and lately even 26 and beyond, many of their lives are close approximations of the previous slightly whimsical description. For a wealthy guy like Brokaw, it at least "seems" like the proper alingment of large beauracracy just "might" be able to keep things rolling in general, and it has certainly worked out GREAT for him! Yes, the "sickness and death" thing has started to intrude, but modern medicine helps keep the sickness thing as somewhat less horrible than formerly, and at least mostly hidden. Death is a nagging problem, but it MUST be kinda OK -- everyone does it, certainly it has to be graded on a curve at the very least, and "I'm OK". Why, even if it did somehow turn out that I was "personally responsible" (insane, but this nagging feeling ...), hey, I talk way better than just about EVERYONE, and when you get right down to it, I AM a pretty darned nice guy!
After all, I turned down NIXON (of course) ... in the unlikely event there is a hell in Brokaw's mind, I'm certain he sees Nixon as justifiably there. He LIED to the American people! He erased a tape!
Do I think I can usually spot the conservative in the room? Sure, the same way as a 688 attack sub spots a boomer, or a woman a gay. Because there is the absence of "standard liberal chatter" from that person. They avoid politics just a little bit more than is even the average. They never bring up SNL, and laugh only uncomfortably about "the great skit that really put Trump / Sarah Palin / W in their place!"
For some strange roll of the dice, I'm an even rarer breed, the "conservative inconoclast'. I keep silent not because I would not be perfectly happy to have the give and take, but because of the level of discomfort, hatred, and down right leaving the room screaming that will be ingnited if I expose myself is truly terrible. For some reason, the comination of large size, relatively glib tongue, not being totally stupid, and being decently aware of liberal positions as well as COUNTER positions is especially incendiary. if I dragged my knuckles, they could look the other way and go cluck cluck, but as it is, well, "they can't normalize pure evil"!
My thinking is that the reason for this is that it makes them question their assumption that "anyone reasonably intelligent / well read / emotionally able to communicate", MUST be a liberal! Certainly they at some level know this is not the case -- Buckley after all was WAY more intelligent, well read, glib tounged, etc than I, but my sense is they feel that anyone with even a wisp of that sort of madness ought be clearly marked, and not allowed to just walk around in the open. Perhaps the "outlier conservative preserve" should be formed in the interest of keeping liberals safe.
So I stay stealthy. At my workplace, I'm sure there are suspicions ... they know that I'm an Elder and a LCMS church! They haven't heard me say anything nasty about Trump! I've only laughed minimally and probably detectably and uncomfortably at nasty things said about Trump and Trump voters at the office where politics are to be STRICTLY off limits! Of course the executive director went out and marched in the woman's march, a couple of the people have "Vote Democrat" on their cars and in some strategic not too public spots in their office. After all, when you ARE a good person, you have to be just a little proud of it!
... and that's the way it is! As another noted liberal used to say. As a rather funny postscript, I went off to find a Youtube of Walter doing the signoff (easy to find if you want), but instead explained that he came up with it because "other distinguished broadcasters had one, why shouldn't he?" even though his boss correctly pointed out that it might well not be true -- they may have made mistakes, not gotten all the information, drawn wrong conclusions, etc. But, "people liked it" -- as many DO tend to like "authority", so it became part of the liberal manufactured "reality" of the US -- "fake, but true", or at least accepted as "true". "Uncle Walter" was always right, and we could all believe him ... as he signed off each night with something that was suspect at best, and in many cases, a direct lie.
Americans have enjoyed fake news for a very long time!
'via Blog this'
Saturday, February 18, 2017
Column That Agrees With ME On Tribalism
Why Both Left And Right Are Political Hypocrites And What To Do About It:
Most of us like to be agreed with. Nothing particularly interesting about this column, It could have been written by me ... just linking it here to show others are just as stupid, smart, right, wrong, as I am.
'via Blog this'
Most of us like to be agreed with. Nothing particularly interesting about this column, It could have been written by me ... just linking it here to show others are just as stupid, smart, right, wrong, as I am.
'via Blog this'
The Fourth Way, Hugh Hewitt
https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Way-Conservative-Playbook-Majority/dp/1501172441
I got sucked in on this one, not a bad book, but VERY wonky. It's objective is to present a clear path as to what Hewitt thinks will allow Trump to avoid losing ground in the midterms and to establish a lasting "Republican" majority. Strangely, it also talks about how likely it is that Trump will be impeached.
He bases that rather odd little chapter largely on a David Brooks column from Nov 11 that brought up impeachment (Brooks is the NY Times "conservative" columnist!), and the fact that "Republicans have done it before". The way Hugh wrote it I suspect that he is essentially threatening Trump to "keep his nose clean, or else". Yes, yes, we Republicans have principles, however in my opinion it is way PAST time to realize those principles are being used against us and become as Matt 10:16 "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." We need to focus a LOT more on the serpent part!
So Hugh's "plan":
And that is about it. Very ho hum. Not recommended.
I got sucked in on this one, not a bad book, but VERY wonky. It's objective is to present a clear path as to what Hewitt thinks will allow Trump to avoid losing ground in the midterms and to establish a lasting "Republican" majority. Strangely, it also talks about how likely it is that Trump will be impeached.
He bases that rather odd little chapter largely on a David Brooks column from Nov 11 that brought up impeachment (Brooks is the NY Times "conservative" columnist!), and the fact that "Republicans have done it before". The way Hugh wrote it I suspect that he is essentially threatening Trump to "keep his nose clean, or else". Yes, yes, we Republicans have principles, however in my opinion it is way PAST time to realize those principles are being used against us and become as Matt 10:16 "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." We need to focus a LOT more on the serpent part!
So Hugh's "plan":
- Do a "stimulus" that is 1/10th the BO stimulus, so $85 billion, and have it be "seed money" to get a bunch of low income clinics, basketball courts, swimming pools, etc built around the country in partnership with appointed "boards", majoring in low income areas. (this seems "fine")
- Do a bunch of navy ship building in the great lakes states that Trump flipped (fine)
- Do teeny tiny tweaky tax reform staying completely away from any sort of "flat tax". It needs to be read, but he makes a good case for not getting rid of home mortgage / chairitable deductions. In my opinion he makes a lot less of a case for continuing to allow state income taxes to be deducted. He asserts that it would "lose WI, IA, MI, PA etc, for what? Winning FL and TX TWICE?".
My thought would be that a lot of the Trump voters, and the most likely potential Trump voters to add don't pay much in state taxes anyway. In any case, I hope someone has a better plan than Hugh. - Appoint good judges (duh) He thanks Harry Reid for making it very likely that Trump can be successful at this. Yes, thanks Harry!
- He has a lot of tweaky defense ideas. I HOPE that Trump has some people that have a lot more innovative ones -- like massive containers full of 100's of thousands of tiny drones each with a little "c4" that can hit people, equipment, gang up and hit buildings, etc, etc with the computerized command and control capabilites to use them on subs, planes, and even from satellites.
And that is about it. Very ho hum. Not recommended.
Sally Yates Gets a Scalp, BOistan Cheers
Sally Yates’s legacy of injustice | Power Line:
Howard Root sinned agains the Administrative State. He created a medical device company with 650 US employees, a billion in sales, and over 100 new medical devices in it's product line. The Administrative State took a run at him last year and failed. He decided the deck was stacked against him, so he "retired" at 56 this year. A "win" for the Administrative State.
BOistan is a nation that encourages the productive to give up in any way it can, it has been quite successful at it.
It appears that the Dakota Access Pipeline is "safe" now via Trump executive order. Consider a nation where companies and investors put up $4 billion, get ALL the approvals to build a pipeline, and when they are down to the last few miles, a bunch of lefties show up, block it, and the "chief" of BOistan decides to side with the protestors and shuts it down.
Why are 3rd world countries 3rd world countries?
Because investing in them is a fools errand -- you NEVER know if your project with be stopped, nationalized, bombed or whatever.
America was a nation with a Constitution and the Rule of Law. If you followed the rules, got the approvals, built "things, value, inventions, etc", you had a decent chance of not only creating some wealth that you might keep, but also creating a business that paid taxes, employed people that paid taxes, built homes, had kids, that sort of old fashioned stupid stuff.
BOistan went a long way to stamping that out, and the election of Trump was a reaction -- but BOistan isn't going down without a fight. It HATES families, invention, success, education rather than indoctrinaton, building things, generating electricity and CERTAINLY the creation of good jobs in the private sector. The kinds of people involved in those activities tend to oppose "The Party".
Will Trump even get a chance to govern and shift to even a "slightly more predictable BOistan"? The jury is definitely still out and it is obvious that "The Party" is no longer interested in anything but 100% opposition to Trump. When you have been able to take down guys like Howard Root and put the fear of massive losses into the hearts of investors that want to put money into BOistan, TP has had a VERY good day!
The creation of a totally immoral and dependent population with their hands out for alms and their heads bent in subservience to TP is the goal -- and ANY means of movement toward that goal is all that matters to TP.
'via Blog this'
Howard Root sinned agains the Administrative State. He created a medical device company with 650 US employees, a billion in sales, and over 100 new medical devices in it's product line. The Administrative State took a run at him last year and failed. He decided the deck was stacked against him, so he "retired" at 56 this year. A "win" for the Administrative State.
BOistan is a nation that encourages the productive to give up in any way it can, it has been quite successful at it.
It appears that the Dakota Access Pipeline is "safe" now via Trump executive order. Consider a nation where companies and investors put up $4 billion, get ALL the approvals to build a pipeline, and when they are down to the last few miles, a bunch of lefties show up, block it, and the "chief" of BOistan decides to side with the protestors and shuts it down.
Why are 3rd world countries 3rd world countries?
Because investing in them is a fools errand -- you NEVER know if your project with be stopped, nationalized, bombed or whatever.
America was a nation with a Constitution and the Rule of Law. If you followed the rules, got the approvals, built "things, value, inventions, etc", you had a decent chance of not only creating some wealth that you might keep, but also creating a business that paid taxes, employed people that paid taxes, built homes, had kids, that sort of old fashioned stupid stuff.
BOistan went a long way to stamping that out, and the election of Trump was a reaction -- but BOistan isn't going down without a fight. It HATES families, invention, success, education rather than indoctrinaton, building things, generating electricity and CERTAINLY the creation of good jobs in the private sector. The kinds of people involved in those activities tend to oppose "The Party".
Will Trump even get a chance to govern and shift to even a "slightly more predictable BOistan"? The jury is definitely still out and it is obvious that "The Party" is no longer interested in anything but 100% opposition to Trump. When you have been able to take down guys like Howard Root and put the fear of massive losses into the hearts of investors that want to put money into BOistan, TP has had a VERY good day!
The creation of a totally immoral and dependent population with their hands out for alms and their heads bent in subservience to TP is the goal -- and ANY means of movement toward that goal is all that matters to TP.
'via Blog this'
Special Tribal Wars, Fix Your RINOs
Bring On the Special Prosecutor - The New York Times:
The "news" of the surreal keeps coming.
We knew during the election that the left had gone around the bend, this is really not that surprising. The question that begs is if the Republican party wants to allow a twiddle of the dial from BOistan back toward the Constitutional Republic we used to have ... "America" I think it was called, or if they really want to sign on fully for the slide to a total pagan tribal state.
Based on the tail spreading of the peacock John McCain, it is certainly easy to see how a few RINOs could easily side with "The Party" and snatch a defeat of gigantic proportions from the infant cries of a new administration that won a victory of truly epic proportions.
As he as evidenced over the last 30 years though, John McCain is a man of a extremely strong principle -- he only has one. It's all about John, and John ALWAYS knows best. He is VERY loyal to John -- everyone else ... meh.
What he loves best is attacking a president of his own party -- he was fine with BO destroying America and creating the tribal state of BOistan. If BO's campaign plane had crashed in '08, McCain would have probably have renamed the country "John" or possibly "Songbird", supposedly his nickname at the Hanoi Hilton because he liked to talk to the Viet Cong so much. It is no wonder he likes "The Party" -- he probably thinks Schumer is Ho Chi Min.
Damn. If Trump is really a bad ass, finding a nice skeleton in McCain's closet and getting him drummed out of the Senate would be one of the very best ops to pull. Arizona is reliably Republican, it wouldn't change the balance in the senate.
It's been obvious since at least February 12 1999 (the day the senate failed to convict Slick Willie) that it is time for desperate measures ... the past 8 years made that abundantly clear.
Now, there is a chance, all be it a slim one, of moving the dial away from our current failed tribal state. We have to expect the dominant tribe, TP to fight hard and DIRTY. It's all they know. Baggage like McCain needs to either muzzled TIGHTLY and QUICKLY, or better yet, removed.
Fix McCain, Collins and Murkowski, and I think we could reliably tell the NY Times to take a timeout with Fauxcahontas.
'via Blog this'
The "news" of the surreal keeps coming.
We knew during the election that the left had gone around the bend, this is really not that surprising. The question that begs is if the Republican party wants to allow a twiddle of the dial from BOistan back toward the Constitutional Republic we used to have ... "America" I think it was called, or if they really want to sign on fully for the slide to a total pagan tribal state.
Based on the tail spreading of the peacock John McCain, it is certainly easy to see how a few RINOs could easily side with "The Party" and snatch a defeat of gigantic proportions from the infant cries of a new administration that won a victory of truly epic proportions.
As he as evidenced over the last 30 years though, John McCain is a man of a extremely strong principle -- he only has one. It's all about John, and John ALWAYS knows best. He is VERY loyal to John -- everyone else ... meh.
What he loves best is attacking a president of his own party -- he was fine with BO destroying America and creating the tribal state of BOistan. If BO's campaign plane had crashed in '08, McCain would have probably have renamed the country "John" or possibly "Songbird", supposedly his nickname at the Hanoi Hilton because he liked to talk to the Viet Cong so much. It is no wonder he likes "The Party" -- he probably thinks Schumer is Ho Chi Min.
Damn. If Trump is really a bad ass, finding a nice skeleton in McCain's closet and getting him drummed out of the Senate would be one of the very best ops to pull. Arizona is reliably Republican, it wouldn't change the balance in the senate.
It's been obvious since at least February 12 1999 (the day the senate failed to convict Slick Willie) that it is time for desperate measures ... the past 8 years made that abundantly clear.
Now, there is a chance, all be it a slim one, of moving the dial away from our current failed tribal state. We have to expect the dominant tribe, TP to fight hard and DIRTY. It's all they know. Baggage like McCain needs to either muzzled TIGHTLY and QUICKLY, or better yet, removed.
Fix McCain, Collins and Murkowski, and I think we could reliably tell the NY Times to take a timeout with Fauxcahontas.
'via Blog this'
Friday, February 17, 2017
Fake News Vs Imaginary News
Imaginary News | Scott Adams' Blog:
A good one from Scott Adams.
Essentially, all any of us ever sees of ANYTHING is "imaginary". Science is now fairly certain that the data arriving to our brains from our eyes, ears and other senses is WAY too sparse to create the movie, much less that meta-narrative that we are all CERTAIN that we "see". We are all living in our imaginations.
For 10's of thousands of years, our movie was our own little area of nature, our family, our tribe, our meta-model of how the "gods", "spirits", etc that surrounded and even lived in us interacted with all that was part of our existence. Everyone we contacted in other than a battle shared our model ... and if they didn't, they were typically sent packing or simply killed.
It was an incredibly rich model ... everything fit together. Our place, role, task, meaning, understanding, destiny, purpose, etc all made perfect sense to ALL of our tribe. We lived, we died. Our prey and the plants lived and died, the seasons lived and died. The stars and symbols they represented lived, died and came back each year! Our lives might go on in a "happy hunting ground", or our spirits might return to inhabit the area we lived, the creatures we hunted, or even other family members in future generations. We KNEW our place and our destiny!
Or we were created a shorter time ago, or by a longer term directed process with the same "wetware / spiritware / consciousness" ... we will never know the answer to that question in this mortal coil.
What we do know is that we were NEITHER evolved or created for the "reality" we find ourselves in. If we consider "The Matrix", a Black Lives Matter march, Obama promising over and over to "close Gitmo on day one", the media level of certainty that it was impossible for Trump to win, or virtually any discussion with Trump, it should be very clear that we no longer live in a "shared reality".
Not so long ago we were a Christian nation, we nearly all lived in a created universe that had meaning and purpose. Families were generally made up of two parents, a man and a woman, men were men and women were women. There was once a time when CBS news would not even consider using a forged document to take down a sitting president, and a president having oral sex with an intern in the oval office was unthinkable, and certainly career ending were it to occur.
We don't live there anymore. We live in a tribal state where "truth" is tribal -- as it was for most of man's history if you are an evolutionist. In any case, our nature and grasp of reality is very oriented toward tribal truth. There are now no transcendent values, so there is no transcendent truth -- truth is whatever your tribe says. You have to agree with that, or you are no longer part of your tribe.
So, as I've beaten to death, in one tribes imagination, how good a fighter pilot W was 30+ years ago was "news", while in the other tribe it was a matter of no concern. 25% of the Democrat tribe considered 9-11 to be an "inside job". A similar number of the Republican tribe considered BO to be a Kenyan (according to his book, he was a Luo tribesman, but who knows, it's all imaginary anyway). We were once told that "if we liked our healthcare, we could keep it". In various imaginations, all of these things were "real / true / important / etc" ... and some of them still are. It all depends on what the imagination of your shaman is.
Outside of trivia like "2+2=4", reality is actually quite obscure and "culturally (tribally) determined". In Native American culture, hearing voices is a GOOD thing -- not so much in what used to be Western civilization ... I'm not all that certain in "post Western civilization" that it won't be just fine again.
So which press conference did YOU see? It is all a matter of your "tribe". I didn't watch the whole thing, but what I saw I kinda liked. The other tribes heads seemed to be exploding, which in a tribal state is always a good thing! (as long as it is the OTHER tribe!)
We worked VERY hard to get here. No shared transcendent truth! Everyone is FREE, FREE, FREE! If Bernie was elected, even the beer and weed would be FREE, FREE, FREE!
It is all just grand! We have been assured for decades that this is exactly the way it "really is". Truth is an illusion. Your imagination is REAL! Long live Post-modernism and the fruit of it's loins -- Trump!
** Note, again, as a Christian Burkean conservative, I don't REALLY have a tribe. However, I AM a human being -- so I certainly feel the pull of the tribe, just as I get a shiver at Lambeau when the crowd chants "Go Pack GO!". When we used to have a nation to be proud of, I got that same shiver when Star Spangled Banner was played. I'd love to see is get down to the hard business of moving BOistan back toward what we once were ... I have no idea if that is even possible, let alone if there is a ghost of a chance for Trump to start that journey. The fact that pretty much half the country has decided to not honor an election isn't a good sign however.
'via Blog this'
A good one from Scott Adams.
Essentially, all any of us ever sees of ANYTHING is "imaginary". Science is now fairly certain that the data arriving to our brains from our eyes, ears and other senses is WAY too sparse to create the movie, much less that meta-narrative that we are all CERTAIN that we "see". We are all living in our imaginations.
For 10's of thousands of years, our movie was our own little area of nature, our family, our tribe, our meta-model of how the "gods", "spirits", etc that surrounded and even lived in us interacted with all that was part of our existence. Everyone we contacted in other than a battle shared our model ... and if they didn't, they were typically sent packing or simply killed.
It was an incredibly rich model ... everything fit together. Our place, role, task, meaning, understanding, destiny, purpose, etc all made perfect sense to ALL of our tribe. We lived, we died. Our prey and the plants lived and died, the seasons lived and died. The stars and symbols they represented lived, died and came back each year! Our lives might go on in a "happy hunting ground", or our spirits might return to inhabit the area we lived, the creatures we hunted, or even other family members in future generations. We KNEW our place and our destiny!
Or we were created a shorter time ago, or by a longer term directed process with the same "wetware / spiritware / consciousness" ... we will never know the answer to that question in this mortal coil.
What we do know is that we were NEITHER evolved or created for the "reality" we find ourselves in. If we consider "The Matrix", a Black Lives Matter march, Obama promising over and over to "close Gitmo on day one", the media level of certainty that it was impossible for Trump to win, or virtually any discussion with Trump, it should be very clear that we no longer live in a "shared reality".
Not so long ago we were a Christian nation, we nearly all lived in a created universe that had meaning and purpose. Families were generally made up of two parents, a man and a woman, men were men and women were women. There was once a time when CBS news would not even consider using a forged document to take down a sitting president, and a president having oral sex with an intern in the oval office was unthinkable, and certainly career ending were it to occur.
We don't live there anymore. We live in a tribal state where "truth" is tribal -- as it was for most of man's history if you are an evolutionist. In any case, our nature and grasp of reality is very oriented toward tribal truth. There are now no transcendent values, so there is no transcendent truth -- truth is whatever your tribe says. You have to agree with that, or you are no longer part of your tribe.
So, as I've beaten to death, in one tribes imagination, how good a fighter pilot W was 30+ years ago was "news", while in the other tribe it was a matter of no concern. 25% of the Democrat tribe considered 9-11 to be an "inside job". A similar number of the Republican tribe considered BO to be a Kenyan (according to his book, he was a Luo tribesman, but who knows, it's all imaginary anyway). We were once told that "if we liked our healthcare, we could keep it". In various imaginations, all of these things were "real / true / important / etc" ... and some of them still are. It all depends on what the imagination of your shaman is.
Outside of trivia like "2+2=4", reality is actually quite obscure and "culturally (tribally) determined". In Native American culture, hearing voices is a GOOD thing -- not so much in what used to be Western civilization ... I'm not all that certain in "post Western civilization" that it won't be just fine again.
So which press conference did YOU see? It is all a matter of your "tribe". I didn't watch the whole thing, but what I saw I kinda liked. The other tribes heads seemed to be exploding, which in a tribal state is always a good thing! (as long as it is the OTHER tribe!)
We worked VERY hard to get here. No shared transcendent truth! Everyone is FREE, FREE, FREE! If Bernie was elected, even the beer and weed would be FREE, FREE, FREE!
It is all just grand! We have been assured for decades that this is exactly the way it "really is". Truth is an illusion. Your imagination is REAL! Long live Post-modernism and the fruit of it's loins -- Trump!
** Note, again, as a Christian Burkean conservative, I don't REALLY have a tribe. However, I AM a human being -- so I certainly feel the pull of the tribe, just as I get a shiver at Lambeau when the crowd chants "Go Pack GO!". When we used to have a nation to be proud of, I got that same shiver when Star Spangled Banner was played. I'd love to see is get down to the hard business of moving BOistan back toward what we once were ... I have no idea if that is even possible, let alone if there is a ghost of a chance for Trump to start that journey. The fact that pretty much half the country has decided to not honor an election isn't a good sign however.
'via Blog this'
Making Sense of God, Timothy Keller
https://www.amazon.com/Making-Sense-God-Invitation-Skeptical/dp/0525954155
My love affair with the writings of Timothy Keller continues. I covet his level of intellect and especially his ability to lovingly yet strongly make significant philosophical and theological points with absolutely no regression to snark and put-downs. It is a level of intellectual maturity that I gaze in wonder at, and which puts me to such shame that I cry out for God's help to better emulate Reverend Doctor Keller's example.
For those familiar with how I read, this book now has a forest of tabs sticking out of it, and the inside is extensively marked. I find it to be nothing less than a potential basis for a igniting a new 21st century revival in the west to correlate with the rapid rise of Christianity in China, South America and Africa. The brokenness of North America and Western Europe in spirit, philosophy and community is glaringly obvious. This book provides a strong laymen's case for:
1). Why belief in God is rational as a basis for society
2). What happens when such belief wanes
3). Why the specific God -man Jesus Christ is the only basis for faith that works in our age (or any age)
The book is heavily sourced, so I'll try to give pages for specific quotes that will often have been sourced into the book ... I'll leave it up to the interested to run down the original authors.
Everyone needs to spend some quality thought time on the idea of the "Critique of Doubt" on page 38. Were this understood, everyone's level of smug would have to drop a ton, and that is ALWAYS great for the prospect of community!
Page 74 reaches the following sad summary of current western culture than goes into a few pages of how it is that Christ is the "logos" (meaning) the Greeks intuited ... to which I would add "Man's Search For Meaning" as a worthy sourcebook.
On page 105, in the midst of discussing why our attempt to make "freedom" the only moral value ... "Today, it is said, the only moral absolute should be freedom and the only sin should be intolerance of bigotry.", Keller points out ... "Even in our supposedly relativistic culture, value judgements are made constantly, people and groups are daily lifted up in order to shame them, public moral umbrage is taken as much as ever. It is hypocritical to claim that today we grant people so much more freedom when we are actually fighting to press our moral beliefs about harm on everyone."
As Reagan put it, the secular left will "defend your right to AGREE with them to their dying breath". They will however not acquiesce to your right to DISagree with them, and will seek to silence you by any means including violence -- because your lack of agreement is a threat to them and makes them feel moral umbrage. They have no admonition in their secular religion against judgement -- in fact, their judgement is one of the things they are most certain of.
On page 125, "We need someone we respect to respect us. We need someone we admire to admire us. Even when modern people claim to be validating themselves, the reality is always that they are socializing themselves into a new community of peers, of "cheerleaders", of people whose approval they crave."
Even more sadly, the requirements of conformance in your secular group are always increasing -- maybe you were fine with everything up to gay "marriage", or even transgender", however you were uncomfortable with that next step. Perhaps you are an atheist who finds Islam no more, and possibly less acceptible than Chritianity. You looked at it's tenets and see that as crusade era Chrisianity was, Islam can be violent, and you feel that it is obvious that a "progressives" should point that out.
You will likely run into this situation somewhere and find that compliance is NOT optional -- if you want to continue to be accepted by your group, sworn to the statement that "individual freedom is all that matters", you MUST comply with ALL their positions! Typically, you most often will shut up and comply, but at least subconciously you no longer really believe the group practices what they preach. (No Christian church or Christian does either -- that is why we repent and take communion over and over, we accept that perfect human consistency is impossible).
I'm getting long. The SUMMARY of this book is "simply":
My love affair with the writings of Timothy Keller continues. I covet his level of intellect and especially his ability to lovingly yet strongly make significant philosophical and theological points with absolutely no regression to snark and put-downs. It is a level of intellectual maturity that I gaze in wonder at, and which puts me to such shame that I cry out for God's help to better emulate Reverend Doctor Keller's example.
For those familiar with how I read, this book now has a forest of tabs sticking out of it, and the inside is extensively marked. I find it to be nothing less than a potential basis for a igniting a new 21st century revival in the west to correlate with the rapid rise of Christianity in China, South America and Africa. The brokenness of North America and Western Europe in spirit, philosophy and community is glaringly obvious. This book provides a strong laymen's case for:
1). Why belief in God is rational as a basis for society
2). What happens when such belief wanes
3). Why the specific God -man Jesus Christ is the only basis for faith that works in our age (or any age)
The book is heavily sourced, so I'll try to give pages for specific quotes that will often have been sourced into the book ... I'll leave it up to the interested to run down the original authors.
p13 "The ideals of freedom ... of conscience, human rights and democracy are the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. ... To this day, there is no alternative to it".What we believe is always built on faith in SOMETHING. Morality must be based somewhere or it does not exist. What the west holds to be "self-evident" is only so because of our Judaeo Christian heritage.
Everyone needs to spend some quality thought time on the idea of the "Critique of Doubt" on page 38. Were this understood, everyone's level of smug would have to drop a ton, and that is ALWAYS great for the prospect of community!
"Polanyi agrues that doubt and belief are ultimately "equivalent". Why? "The Doubting of any explicit statement denies one belief in favor of other beliefs which are NOT doubted for the time being." You can't doubt belief A except on the basis of some belief B you are believing instead at the moment. So for example, you CANNOT say, "No one can know enough to be certain about God and religion," without assuming at that moment that YOU know enough about the nature of religious knowledge to be certain of your statement!
Page 74 reaches the following sad summary of current western culture than goes into a few pages of how it is that Christ is the "logos" (meaning) the Greeks intuited ... to which I would add "Man's Search For Meaning" as a worthy sourcebook.
"Western societies are perhaps the worst societies in the history of the world for preparing people for suffering and death, because created meaning is not only less rational and communal, but also less durable."Why is this the worst? Because without shared meaning, there is nothing to say to the suffering, dying, and bereaved. There is no shared community meaning of life, but rather the lack of shared meaning kills any sense of even real community. Thus, many suffer completely alone, bereft of even family as they struggle to seek blessing from the faceless government bureaucracy they realize they ended up worshiping by accident.
On page 105, in the midst of discussing why our attempt to make "freedom" the only moral value ... "Today, it is said, the only moral absolute should be freedom and the only sin should be intolerance of bigotry.", Keller points out ... "Even in our supposedly relativistic culture, value judgements are made constantly, people and groups are daily lifted up in order to shame them, public moral umbrage is taken as much as ever. It is hypocritical to claim that today we grant people so much more freedom when we are actually fighting to press our moral beliefs about harm on everyone."
As Reagan put it, the secular left will "defend your right to AGREE with them to their dying breath". They will however not acquiesce to your right to DISagree with them, and will seek to silence you by any means including violence -- because your lack of agreement is a threat to them and makes them feel moral umbrage. They have no admonition in their secular religion against judgement -- in fact, their judgement is one of the things they are most certain of.
On page 125, "We need someone we respect to respect us. We need someone we admire to admire us. Even when modern people claim to be validating themselves, the reality is always that they are socializing themselves into a new community of peers, of "cheerleaders", of people whose approval they crave."
Even more sadly, the requirements of conformance in your secular group are always increasing -- maybe you were fine with everything up to gay "marriage", or even transgender", however you were uncomfortable with that next step. Perhaps you are an atheist who finds Islam no more, and possibly less acceptible than Chritianity. You looked at it's tenets and see that as crusade era Chrisianity was, Islam can be violent, and you feel that it is obvious that a "progressives" should point that out.
You will likely run into this situation somewhere and find that compliance is NOT optional -- if you want to continue to be accepted by your group, sworn to the statement that "individual freedom is all that matters", you MUST comply with ALL their positions! Typically, you most often will shut up and comply, but at least subconciously you no longer really believe the group practices what they preach. (No Christian church or Christian does either -- that is why we repent and take communion over and over, we accept that perfect human consistency is impossible).
I'm getting long. The SUMMARY of this book is "simply":
- It is every bit as "reasonable" to believe in God as it is to be an atheist. Increasingly, even MORE reasonable if one is bothered by the "anthropic argument" (we are here because we are here), or the latest physics asserting that there "must" be something like 10**500 UNIVERSES in order to support our existence being "likely".
- If you want community and morals, there is scant basis for these elements of human existence outside of religion, and in the format we are familiar with in the west, outside of Christianity. Throwing the "baby" of shared values and community out with God/Christianity for the hope of "perfect freedom" is fraught with peril.
- It's all about Christ. There is a really good reason that history is split into BC and AD. That difference is the divine person of Jesus Christ.
Outside of Christ, the world quickly descends into weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's going on all around us today -- families fall apart, people kill themselves to end meaningless lives, any tiny sense of community is trashed over smaller and smaller issues -- it is the politics that makes me cry when I look away from Christ. The Jim Jones cult of our age is the worship of the secular state.
Christ is the BEST summary of the book -- keep looking at Christ and the Cross. Pray for your family, friends and community who have fallen into faith of the secular.
The Truth Lament Strolls On
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/opinion/sunday/why-nobody-cares-the-president-is-lying.html?mc=aud_dev&mcid=fb-nytimes&mccr=FebPostElectionSubs&mcdt=2017-02&subid=FebPostElectionSubs&ad-keywords=AudDevGate&referer=http://m.facebook.com
I've been observing for a very long time that the concept of "truth" in the West has fallen on hard times. Knowledge of Philosophy and Theology are at all time lows. Very few can tell much about the relation between fact, dialectic and rhetoric, understanding of which would help the author of this column a good deal.
Exactly, always has been, always will be. What difference did it make if W Bush was a great national guard fighter pilot or a mediocre one? None, but the idea of it was enough to take down Dan Rather. What difference did it make if someone "leaked" that Valeria Plame, who drove into CIA HQ everyday actually worked there? None ... but it occupied a lot of media pages for over a year anyway.
The point of rhetoric since Plato and Aristotle has been to convince humans at a level "beyond factual" ... because humans actually never do anything for purely rational and factual reasons, and they never have. As long as "your side" is winning, the standard human tendency is to never even observe the difference between factual basis and rhetoric.
When "your tribe" loses and you understand nothing about truth, philosophy, dialectics or rhetoric, you are suddenly adrift. Your "moorings" are slipped, and it is obvious to you that "the others" have somehow changed.
It turns out that everybody has always had their own way of interpreting wether a "fact" was true or not -- it's just that the column author recently notices that less people than he thought were navigating the shoals of truth and falsehood based on the rhetoric of the NY Times.
I've been observing for a very long time that the concept of "truth" in the West has fallen on hard times. Knowledge of Philosophy and Theology are at all time lows. Very few can tell much about the relation between fact, dialectic and rhetoric, understanding of which would help the author of this column a good deal.
During his first week in office, Mr. Trump reiterated the unfounded charge that millions of people had voted illegally. When challenged on the evident falsehood, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, seemed to argue that Mr. Trump’s belief that something was true qualified as evidence. The press secretary also declined to answer a straightforward question about the unemployment rate, suggesting that the number will henceforth be whatever the Trump administration wants it to be.So in a nation where many states have no voter id, what would qualify as "evidence". Here is some from a 2012 Pew Study:
- About 24 million voter registrations are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.
- More than 1.8 million dead people are listed as voters.
- Approximately 2.75 million people are registered in more than one state.
So that is an OPPORTUNITY of 27 million. If 10% of the opportunity voted, that would be 2.7 million. Up to now, nobody has really looked for voter fraud, nor do we still have a good mechanism. My son voted in Colorado, when I voted in MN, there was his name right above mine. MN requires no voter ID ... anyone that knows his name and the fact that he is registered could have walked in, voted as him, and be completely secure against prosecution and likely detection (they would have to do a cross-check between MN and CO).
Of course, if one knows about fact, dialectic and rhetoric, they realize that is NOT the point. What Trump engages in, what the linked column engages in is rhetoric -- unidirectional convincing speech. If the author of the column and I engaged in a debate, that would be dialectic, and in both, we may or may not attempt to use "facts". I used a few (assuming you accept Pew as a source) in my response to his rhetorical response to Trump's rhetoric in which BOTH of them conclude that "the number will we what **I** say it is!" ... NY Times columnist asserts zero, Trump and minions assert "millions".
NY Times columnist asserts that he is believable and Trump is not based on -- er, well, "bluster". A very common tool of rhetoricians.
The Russian dissident and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov drew upon long familiarity with that process when he tweeted: “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”
Exactly, always has been, always will be. What difference did it make if W Bush was a great national guard fighter pilot or a mediocre one? None, but the idea of it was enough to take down Dan Rather. What difference did it make if someone "leaked" that Valeria Plame, who drove into CIA HQ everyday actually worked there? None ... but it occupied a lot of media pages for over a year anyway.
The point of rhetoric since Plato and Aristotle has been to convince humans at a level "beyond factual" ... because humans actually never do anything for purely rational and factual reasons, and they never have. As long as "your side" is winning, the standard human tendency is to never even observe the difference between factual basis and rhetoric.
When "your tribe" loses and you understand nothing about truth, philosophy, dialectics or rhetoric, you are suddenly adrift. Your "moorings" are slipped, and it is obvious to you that "the others" have somehow changed.
This may explain one of the more revealing moments from after the election, when one of Mr. Trump’s campaign surrogates, Scottie Nell Hughes, was asked to defend the clearly false statement by Mr. Trump that millions of votes had been cast illegally. She answered by explaining that everybody now had their own way of interpreting whether a fact was true or not.
It turns out that everybody has always had their own way of interpreting wether a "fact" was true or not -- it's just that the column author recently notices that less people than he thought were navigating the shoals of truth and falsehood based on the rhetoric of the NY Times.
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Oroville Versus Flint, $840 Billion
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0131-highsmith-flint-water-crisis-20160131-story.html
It appears that loss of the Oroville dam in CA will be headed off. The 200K people that were evacuated have returned, we hope for good. Interestingly, the population of Flint Michigan was once 200K people as well.
Remember 2009 when BO assured us that he was going to "invest" $840 billion in "shovel ready" projects? We never really did hear a lot about what happened to that money "Cash for clunkers", $500 million lost on Soyndra, a few crony payoffs to ACORN and others. While the media is quick to find the shortest path between a government failure and a Republican in office, $840 billion can be thrown to the winds of political graft by a Democrat and nobody even expects that it will be linked up to fixing things like water systems in Flint or giant dams in California.
It isn't hard to find out a trail of what has happened at Oroville.
In 2005, DWR applied for a renewal of its operating license for the Oroville hydroelectric generating facilities. During the relicensing process, Friends of the River, Sierra Club, and the South Yuba River Citizen's League filed a motion to intervene in the relicensing. These groups alleged that the emergency spillway in Oroville should be classified as an "operational/auxiliary" spillway and should be armored with concrete, citing the potential for erosion and downstream runoff impacts. During the proceeding, FERC confirmed that the emergency spillway was properly designated and that it met all FERC engineering guidelines.
We all know the government of California is 100% lefty ... yes, yes, they elected Schwarzenegger, however he ran and governed as a Democrat with an R next to his name, and since the legislature was all Democrat, he really had very little choice. Unsurprisingly, Oroville is a near disaster that seems devoid of political recrimination. The other underlying reason that we hear little about it is because the "extended drought in CA due to global warming" has been in the news for years, and they haven't figured out how to spin the end of it yet. The Oroville situation shows that the drought is over, which if one was rational and consistent would be a statement on global warming. It is of course not to be taken as such -- drought proves global warming, heavy rain proves global warming.
How is it though that when organizations like the Sierra Club are filing suit in 2005, such a project never gets funded as $850 billion is getting sprayed around? Nobody cares -- "BO was a great president, Trump is a disaster", thus saith the NY Times.
Michigan government is more varied than I would have assumed -- a pretty decent mixture of D and R. They voted D for president from '92 on up to Trump. So since '92 they have been considered mostly a blue state. However, after the really heavy D cities -- like Detroit and Flint, went into bankruptcy (how does THAT happen?), they ended up electing an R (Snyder) to clean up the disaster as governor. Part of that cleanup involved putting managers in to try to fix the city finances, which resulted in moving to Flint river water in 2014 that ended up leaching lead out of old pipes -- which nobody expected.
Naturally, since a Republican was in the governors office, perfect knowledge of potential problems is supposed to be assured, and when something bad happens it is nearly assuredly due to "racism" -- NPR liked to run shows with crying black mothers talking of how the Republicans purposely poisoned her children. What would one expect?
The moral of the story? Government screws up a lot -- and often in BIG ways. It's a bi-partisan problem -- but don't expect anyone to connect at least half the dots for you.
Prediction though -- if Trump does any sort of a "public works / stimulus, etc", it will be a DISASTER according to the news!
When R's screw up, the media lets us know -- it is because they are nasty, racist, incompent, etc.
When D's screw up it isn't really a "screw up" --- it is like an "act of God", except D's generally don't believe in him, so it is "bad luck". Nothing to see here folks, move aloing.
A cynic like me looks at this and says "elect Republicans" ... at least they will get a TON of oversight from the media, and there is a "chance" they might improve because of it. They will still be working with a unionized beauracracy with no competiiton, protected jobs, etc, but at least THEIR jobs will not be guaranteed, so they might yell lounder at the union folks that they can't fire!
It isn't much, but at least it is SOMETHING!
'via Blog this'
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Goldberg, Confidence, Memory, Meaning
Here is what I consider to be Golberg's central pontification of the linked column:
But I’d like to inter a different common retort: that Trump is playing ten moves ahead; that he’s playing 4D chess; that he’s brilliantly distracting the media by creating this or that controversy. I’m willing to concede that there are times when he’s deftly sent the media chasing their tails. But the idea that Trump’s brilliant master plan is unfolding just as he intended is frick’n bonkers.
First, let it be said that I admire Jonah Goldberg and am even significantly jealous of him -- multiple books, respected journalist at the magazine founded by Buckley, who I nearly idolized.
I realize that in order to operate in life in the position he is in, he needs to:
- Take firm interesting positions
- Always be confident no matter what
To some degree, that is what it takes for "good mental health", even a "good Christian life". Living boldly in the present, forgetting / forgiving ones past errors, enjoying and continuing to live boldly in the future present moments with no concern for the morrow.
My position on Trump definitely "evolved" -- I thought he had no chance, I was aghast when it became obvious that he did, etc. I essentially went through the stages of grief. (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) as we ALL do sometimes many times in a day over matters great and small in our lives. I could go back and link some of my blog entries together and likely chart the progression (with some regressions) relative to Trump.
Here is Goldberg in an NR column "Operation Destroy The GOP" in October of last year.
I feel like Charlton Heston screaming at the Statue of Liberty on the beach. You people blew it all up. You embraced a man who has no serious allegiance to the ideals you got rich peddling and who had a vanishingly small chance of winning in the first place — even if he had been the disciplined candidate he deceitfully vowed he would be. Trump is now an albatross on the party and he will leave a Cheeto-colored stain on both the GOP and the conservative movement for years to come.
Goldberg was one of the founders of the #nevertrump movement on the right. He was CERTAIN that not only was Trump going to lose, but that his loss (and the very likely loss of the Senate with it) was "the end of the GOP" for at least the foreseeable future. Based largely on my reading of Scott Adams and the fact that I had COMPLETELY underestimated Trump relative to the nomination, I was "mildly hopeful" on election day, but far from certain that he would win.
When he started to look like he might win the nomination last spring, I started looking for "other information". It was a tiny example of the same logic that led me to find National Review in the late '70s when I realized that I wasn't ready to turn off my Christmas lights, put on a sweater and accept that the best days of America were behind us.
When I realize that I'm wrong, I like to do a reset and look for "other information". Apparently that is even odder than I realize.
I've been wrong too many times to believe that I KNOW that Trump is not playing "4D Chess" -- or to think that he is a bumbling corrupt idiot savant that happened to luck into the White House (maybe with Russian help). I firmly believe that it is possible that he is a genius with a master plan that STILL makes mistakes and can lose "battles" while still winning the war. Back in August, I was getting more convinced he had to be a "plant". Hell, maybe he WAS a plant, and in trying to throw the election he accidentally won because Hillary is such a putz. We have been living in insane times for certain at least since Slick Willie was able to skate with BJs from an employee in the oval office (or was that "oral office"?).
Goldberg is a smart person, WAY smarter than me. Does he realize that even his supposedly educated conservative readers have such short attention spans that they have forgotten what he wrote last fall? or is it simply true that nobody cares about such tired concepts as "truth", "consistency", etc? If that is true however, what is the objection to Trump? Or anything really -- if BOTH sides (all sides?) have abandoned consistency, truth, "history" (of even the less than 6 months sort), then what exactly do words mean?
Perhaps I missed the memo and everyone else but me decided that it IS actually true that we each defined our own meanings of all words -- including "IS" ... so we have passed through the looking glass, and everything operates with each of us playing Humpty Dumpty ...
"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master— that's all."
One With $1 Million or a Million with $1?
http://www.businessinsider.com/check-cashing-stores-good-deal-upenn-professor-2017-2
Sort of like "Trump voters". If you are doing pretty well in BOistan, the big banks and institutions seem "safe, sane and secure". Increasingly, unless you are in the "upper 50% or so", that isn't your world.
Pretty much the same phenomenon explains why the elites were wrong on Brexit and on Trump ... the "smart money", the "big bets" were against -- the greater number of tiny bets were FOR. How many more people turned out in the well off counties of the nation (or at least appeared to turn out) really doesn't matter. It's like winning the football game time of possession by a full 15 min quarter, but losing by 1 point. You lose.
We all tend to assume that those that disagree with us are "stupid" -- they very rarely are. The actual difference in "raw general ability" between an 80 IQ and 160 IQ isn't worth much on the street. SURE, it is worth a TON inside the DC beltway, universities, law, mass media, corporate boardrooms or the operating room. Most 160 IQ PHDs are smart enough to realize they don't want to take on a street-wise 80 IQ thug in his element. Their 160 IQ general smarts are enough to avoid the encounter and that is all that is required.
Typically, the 160 IQ person has leveraged their advantage to know "everything about nothing" in their specific domain. They know how to do brain surgery really well, but they have no clue to do anything but call AAA if their car won't start. The 80 IQ guy is forced to do the reverse, he knows "nothing about everything" that matters in HIS domain.
We tend to be amazed at tricks a trained animal can do. Even the very smartest apes barely make 40 relative to a human IQ, and that is only in very limited and highly trained/specialized domains. The 40 IQ ape is more like the 160 IQ PHD. The ape is out of his domain and struggling to compete on a scale that he is not genetically predisposed to compete on. So too the 160 PHD -- humans were designed or evolved to be "hunter gatherers" -- the street is much more like the jungle than a courtroom, executive office or medical operating room. The 160 IQ PHD would lose to the ape in the apes environment as well without weapons -- so probably would the 80 street smart guy, but he would have a better chance.
"Genius" is often like being a virtuoso violinist -- take away the violin and your skill is worth very little. The Davos assumption is that we need just a few more 160 IQ virtuosos -- and to hell with the 80-100 IQ "proles".
Where are you placing your bets?
"Banks want one customer with a million dollars. Check cashers like us want a million customers with one dollar," Coleman, the RiteCheck president, said in Servon's book.Good article, a little longer than it needs to be. For those of us who can afford to park $10-20K in a bank in order to get "free" checking and a bunch of "free" services, as well as being able to accept the fact that the money from checks we cash isn't "available" until the check clears, the bank is a "no brainer", and people that use check cashing services seem "stupid".
Sort of like "Trump voters". If you are doing pretty well in BOistan, the big banks and institutions seem "safe, sane and secure". Increasingly, unless you are in the "upper 50% or so", that isn't your world.
Pretty much the same phenomenon explains why the elites were wrong on Brexit and on Trump ... the "smart money", the "big bets" were against -- the greater number of tiny bets were FOR. How many more people turned out in the well off counties of the nation (or at least appeared to turn out) really doesn't matter. It's like winning the football game time of possession by a full 15 min quarter, but losing by 1 point. You lose.
We all tend to assume that those that disagree with us are "stupid" -- they very rarely are. The actual difference in "raw general ability" between an 80 IQ and 160 IQ isn't worth much on the street. SURE, it is worth a TON inside the DC beltway, universities, law, mass media, corporate boardrooms or the operating room. Most 160 IQ PHDs are smart enough to realize they don't want to take on a street-wise 80 IQ thug in his element. Their 160 IQ general smarts are enough to avoid the encounter and that is all that is required.
Typically, the 160 IQ person has leveraged their advantage to know "everything about nothing" in their specific domain. They know how to do brain surgery really well, but they have no clue to do anything but call AAA if their car won't start. The 80 IQ guy is forced to do the reverse, he knows "nothing about everything" that matters in HIS domain.
We tend to be amazed at tricks a trained animal can do. Even the very smartest apes barely make 40 relative to a human IQ, and that is only in very limited and highly trained/specialized domains. The 40 IQ ape is more like the 160 IQ PHD. The ape is out of his domain and struggling to compete on a scale that he is not genetically predisposed to compete on. So too the 160 PHD -- humans were designed or evolved to be "hunter gatherers" -- the street is much more like the jungle than a courtroom, executive office or medical operating room. The 160 IQ PHD would lose to the ape in the apes environment as well without weapons -- so probably would the 80 street smart guy, but he would have a better chance.
"Genius" is often like being a virtuoso violinist -- take away the violin and your skill is worth very little. The Davos assumption is that we need just a few more 160 IQ virtuosos -- and to hell with the 80-100 IQ "proles".
Where are you placing your bets?
The Chisago Resistance On Hold
Chisago County special election has DFLers hoping for rebound - StarTribune.com:
MPR was rather giddy about this prospect on Monday as well --
Ah, a "pause" in the resistance!
'via Blog this'
MPR was rather giddy about this prospect on Monday as well --
“People sense a real opportunity to start showing Republicans that Democrats are frustrated and they are going to stand up and resist Donald Trump,” he said, “and this is a perfect opportunity to do that.”
Ah, a "pause" in the resistance!
'via Blog this'
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Fascism, You Keep Using That Word
| National Review:
Fascism is one of those terms that fits in with "Hitler" on the hit list of left wing name calling that is constantly used by people that don't understand what it means -- they may as well just say "bad", or "evil" to anyone that knows history at all.
While we are at it, let's make sure everyone is on the same meme page. The reference is from "The Princess Bride", the link gives a little background.
I've covered this umpteen times, using "Fascism" and "Hitler" to refer to the political RIGHT is like walking up to me and calling me "Miss" ... for those that don't know me, 6'4", 300ish, bald and bearded. I covered left vs right in detail here all the way back to the French Revolution.
The linked Sowell article has the following:
The bottom line here is that in a post-truth tribal nation, the best myths win, so there is NO WAY the leftist tribe will be giving up the left-right inversion, Fascism, Hitler, etc mythology. They are not about to own "National Socialism", let alone Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, North Korea, etc ...
I'm not sure if Trump will be able to establish any really good mythology that works, but he certainly keeps throwing stuff at the wall. The best myths have very tiny pieces of truth and give those that believe in them a "slam dunk" -- "truth" at a general level is antithetical to myth making, since the truth is very rarely anything even close to a "slam dunk" on anything more complex than 2+2=4.
"97% of Scientists" is a great example.
If you want to explore, where you are on a slightly more sensible scale than MERELY left and right, this is an interesting site -- CERTAINLY far from any sort of "perfection", however I think an INDICATOR worth considering. Here is my result.
'via Blog this'
Fascism is one of those terms that fits in with "Hitler" on the hit list of left wing name calling that is constantly used by people that don't understand what it means -- they may as well just say "bad", or "evil" to anyone that knows history at all.
While we are at it, let's make sure everyone is on the same meme page. The reference is from "The Princess Bride", the link gives a little background.
I've covered this umpteen times, using "Fascism" and "Hitler" to refer to the political RIGHT is like walking up to me and calling me "Miss" ... for those that don't know me, 6'4", 300ish, bald and bearded. I covered left vs right in detail here all the way back to the French Revolution.
The linked Sowell article has the following:
Unlike the Communists, the Fascists did not seek government ownership of the means of production. They just wanted the government to call the shots as to how businesses would be run. They were for “industrial policy,” long before liberals coined that phrase in the United States. Indeed, the whole Fascist economic agenda bears a remarkable resemblance to what liberals would later advocate.The article also references the excellent work "Liberal Fascism" which I have reviewed.
The bottom line here is that in a post-truth tribal nation, the best myths win, so there is NO WAY the leftist tribe will be giving up the left-right inversion, Fascism, Hitler, etc mythology. They are not about to own "National Socialism", let alone Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, North Korea, etc ...
I'm not sure if Trump will be able to establish any really good mythology that works, but he certainly keeps throwing stuff at the wall. The best myths have very tiny pieces of truth and give those that believe in them a "slam dunk" -- "truth" at a general level is antithetical to myth making, since the truth is very rarely anything even close to a "slam dunk" on anything more complex than 2+2=4.
"97% of Scientists" is a great example.
If you want to explore, where you are on a slightly more sensible scale than MERELY left and right, this is an interesting site -- CERTAINLY far from any sort of "perfection", however I think an INDICATOR worth considering. Here is my result.
'via Blog this'
Sunday, February 12, 2017
Tim Scott, Black Republican Senator on Tolerance
There is nothing very surprising about the video -- I prefer text, but very little reporting has been done on this from any source, left or right. What I learned from it was this:
- Scott has the ONLY black chief of staff in the US Senate.
- Scott is one of three black Senators in the current US Senate (I looked this up) , here is one of the others ... I'll let you make you make your own determination on her "level of blackness"
- He was nice enough to not read the ones that had the "N word" in them
- The media is a lot more concerned about what happens to Faux Native American left wing women Senators than they are about Republican Black male Senators.
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