CNN's Erin Burnett to Pam Geller: Do You 'Relish' Being Targeted for Beheading?:
It is hard to believe the hatred on the left for those that don't bow to Muslim demands because of the threat of violence. "Do you relish being targeted for beheading?".
Hmm ... how about rape? Do women that dress provocatively "ask for it"?
So if Christians took the same attitude as Muslims relative to gay "marriage", would that earn them the same sort of respect now given Muslims? After some Christian violence against a gay "marriage" supporter, would the reporter be asking a gay "marriage" proponent: "Do you relish being targeted for violence?"
Let's see. Changing your sex is "courageous". Speaking up for what you believe is "relishing being a target for beheading".
Yup, that is where we live!
'via Blog this'
Thursday, June 04, 2015
U.S. Productivity Falls 3.1% In First Quarter - WSJ
U.S. Productivity Falls 3.1% In First Quarter - WSJ:
BO says the economy is great, the nuke deal with Iraq is great, BOcare is great, and of course he is ABSOLUTELY GREAT!!!
Here is what the current Fed Chair says about productivity:
'via Blog this'
BO says the economy is great, the nuke deal with Iraq is great, BOcare is great, and of course he is ABSOLUTELY GREAT!!!
Here is what the current Fed Chair says about productivity:
“The most important factor determining living standards is productivity growth, defined as increases in how much can be produced in an hour of work,” Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said in a speech last month. “Over time, sustained increases in productivity are necessary to support rising incomes.”Is that really hard to understand? On average, the less you have to work to create a unit of output, the better your life. It is like horsepower -- it gives you alternatives. You can work less and have more time for leisure, family, education, etc. OR, you can work the same and get more.
Productivity data since the recession has been “disappointing,” Ms. Yellen said, though the cause is open to debate. One possible factor may be the recession, which pushed firms to slash spending on equipment, and research and development.Or ... it could be that since the US has the highest corporate tax rate in the world, increasingly regulation heavy and hostile to business, investment in US worker productivity is not taking place under the BO administration ... nah, can't be that, or I'm sure our media would be all over it. Right?
'via Blog this'
Wednesday, June 03, 2015
Hemingway Biography, By Jeffrey Meyers
http://www.amazon.com/Hemingway-A-Biography-Jeffrey-Meyers/dp/0306808900
Hemingway's life is full of excitement and interest -- the outdoor life in Michigan as a young man, wounded in WWI, running with the bulls and bullfighting, African Safaris, lots of hunting in the western US (Montana and Idaho), deep sea fishing, a succession of beautiful wives and mistresses, pals with James Joyce, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound ... soldiers, adventurers, hunters, fishermen ... and of course drinkers.
None of us knows what makes any of us tick -- including ourselves. We may think we know, sometimes especially about ourselves, and then find out we are surprised. Therefore, I take this epitaph from Norman Mailer with more than a grain of salt -- I suspect that Hemingway would call it shit (that is how he talked).
He showed the characteristic that I believe all imaginative people show to some degree -- a difficulty in separating the imaginary from the real. What he read, thought and wrote, melded somewhat seamlessly with reality -- so at one level, he was indeed a great liar, as all writers are. However, as in "myth", sometimes the "not factually true" is more true to what some of us believe is a universe more real than that which we can measure. I believe that Hemingway sensed that truth -- but failed to really connect with it. His hints of the "more that what we see" was enough to create some of the greatest art of the 20th century, and his grasping (in the wrong paths I think) created one of the more interesting lives of the 20th century.
Finished up the subject Ernest Hemingway biography. Well written book that gives a lot of insight into Hemingway the man, the image and the writer. He is indeed the model for the Dos Equis "World's Most Interesting Man". I found Churchill far more interesting, but Churchill did not have movie star looks and movie star sexual appetites as Hemingway did.
It IS very interesting though how both Churchill and Hemingway were extremely drawn to war, violence and risk, as well of course a lot of hard drink. Churchill drank a LOT for MUCH longer -- Hemingway being a hard drinker that eventually succumbed to alcoholism in his 40's to 50's ... drinking as much as a large bottle of hard liquor a day or more, and it being a major part of his massive decline in health along with his accidents.
I especially enjoyed reading of his Key West years, having visited Sloppy Joes and his home in Key West. I'd like to spend some more time there -- it is an easy place for the mind to wander to during a MN winter. The book didn't pay enough attention to his cats ... only one good "kitty porn" picture, and gave the author away as definitely NOT being a cat person, referring to Earnest's "dirty cats". A dirty cat is a VERY sick nearly dead cat! If you tour his place in Key West, you will likely meet some of his 6-toed cats. He used the lighthouse next to his home to help him navigate home from Sloppy Joes after "a few drinks".
Very hard for a Rochester MN resident to ignore this quote:
"Rochester is a depressing town, where the modern dance of death goes on in expensive hospitals. All visitors are either sick themselves or related to the sick. A grotesque spectacle of illness appears in the corridors and the streets as the modern pilgrims seek salvation in technology rather than in faith."At the very end of his life Hemingway received electro shock treatments at Mayo which were not effective, destroyed his memory, and likely contributed heavily to his suicide.
Hemingway's life is full of excitement and interest -- the outdoor life in Michigan as a young man, wounded in WWI, running with the bulls and bullfighting, African Safaris, lots of hunting in the western US (Montana and Idaho), deep sea fishing, a succession of beautiful wives and mistresses, pals with James Joyce, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound ... soldiers, adventurers, hunters, fishermen ... and of course drinkers.
None of us knows what makes any of us tick -- including ourselves. We may think we know, sometimes especially about ourselves, and then find out we are surprised. Therefore, I take this epitaph from Norman Mailer with more than a grain of salt -- I suspect that Hemingway would call it shit (that is how he talked).
"It is not likely that Hemingway was a brave man that sought danger for the sake of the sensations it provided him. What is more likely the truth of his own odyssey is that he struggled with his cowardice and against a secret lust to suicide all his life, that his inner landscape was a nightmare, and he spent his nights wrestling with the gods. It may even be that the final judgment on his work may come to the notion that what he failed to do was tragic, but what he accomplished was heroic, for it is possible that he carried a weight of anxiety with him which would have suffocated any man smaller than himself"I was struck by how often he worried about the "corruption" of wealth and fame -- but yet "Old Man and The Sea" was done after he had a achieved much wealth and fame. I believe he instinctively understood the danger of wealth and fame, yet he was driven to write -- without writing there was no life, and the fact that in his mind, the electro shock had killed his writing muse meant that for him life was over.
He showed the characteristic that I believe all imaginative people show to some degree -- a difficulty in separating the imaginary from the real. What he read, thought and wrote, melded somewhat seamlessly with reality -- so at one level, he was indeed a great liar, as all writers are. However, as in "myth", sometimes the "not factually true" is more true to what some of us believe is a universe more real than that which we can measure. I believe that Hemingway sensed that truth -- but failed to really connect with it. His hints of the "more that what we see" was enough to create some of the greatest art of the 20th century, and his grasping (in the wrong paths I think) created one of the more interesting lives of the 20th century.
Monday, June 01, 2015
Adventures In Mind Control, Modern Political "Science"
How a Grad Student Uncovered a Huge Fraud -- Science of Us:
This article is about how a grad student discovered that an oft quoted study covered in the NYTs as
Gay Advocates Can Shift Same-Sex Marriage Views was a hoax, but that is not really what I'm interested in.
One can't be too "careful" ... thus we have this little $585K grant to the University of Michigan to study the "social media use of RIGHT WING organizations"! They didn't say if "right wing organization" in these days and times was going to be the Republican Party or just the Blue Dog Democrats, but one has to keep a close eye on such crazy thinkers!
'via Blog this'
This article is about how a grad student discovered that an oft quoted study covered in the NYTs as
Gay Advocates Can Shift Same-Sex Marriage Views was a hoax, but that is not really what I'm interested in.
Yes, yes it is interesting that a whole bunch of people can be taken in by what turns out to be a relatively obvious hoax, and that the act of debunking it was fraught with peril because questioning methodology in modern "political science" (as in "climate science") is not encouraged. We pretty much knew that.
What I wasn't really thinking about -- although it is pretty obvious once you think about it, is that our modern university Political Science departments are more like some Goebbelesque genetically mutated bastard child of marketing and psychology.
The 2014 election also helped focus Broockman and Kalla’s research agenda. They were convinced canvassing worked — at least to a point — and that politicians weren’t capitalizing on this fact nearly enough. After the election, they co-authored a November 2014 piece in Vox arguing as much. The pair wrote that “research has consistently found that authentic interpersonal exchanges usually have sizable impacts,” linking to a positive preelection Bloomberg Politics cover story about LaCour and Green’s research.See, why just STUDY how people think politically when you can take action to CHANGE how they think politically! Obviously to your own inherently superior "progressive" agenda!
One can't be too "careful" ... thus we have this little $585K grant to the University of Michigan to study the "social media use of RIGHT WING organizations"! They didn't say if "right wing organization" in these days and times was going to be the Republican Party or just the Blue Dog Democrats, but one has to keep a close eye on such crazy thinkers!
'via Blog this'
Is Rand Paul Insane? Has He Heard of IRS?
The real Rand Paul stands up | Power Line:
Rand Paul and the Patriot Act are back in the news.
First observation -- People LOVE to talk of closing the barn door LONG after the horse has escaped.
Rnad is worried about the government looking at PHONE RECORDS??? !!!!!
Has he ever heard of a little agency called the IRS????? All our bank statements, all donations, the checks used for medical, optical, dental, etc. If you paid a housekeeper, the kid next door, etc, etc.
Paul is worried about THIS ????
We have BOcare for goodness sake ... plus Medicare. The government has forms filled out on top of forms. If they want to look, they have all the data on your medical life a few times over!
For people that are concerned about the NSA I have one simple suggestion. Get on to abolishing of the IRS and instituting a FLAT TAX ASAP! Until the IRS is abolished, "privacy" in the US is a TOTALLY DEAD ISSUE. In order to determine what parts of your income/spending is taxable / deductible, and in order to determine it for every other person, business and tax exempt entity in the country, the IRS as total access to your financial life -- which is a very large hunk of your total life!
AFTER we realize that income tax is UNCONSTITUTIONAL because it violates the Equal Protection Clause, THEN we can start to get serious about reclaiming more obscure forms of privacy.
Until then, it is completely insane to be concerned about NSA phone records!
As PL points out, the ONLY reason for Rand to be running is if Republicans want to go farther back to isolationism. Prior to air power and nuclear weapons, one could almost believe that isolationism for the US was an option. With space (controlled by China and Russia), the Internet and total global trade, there are no rational isolationists left.
So Rand is barking up the wrong tree -- the D party is the party of the irrational. If you believe in isolationism, or that 2nd guessing decisions of over a decade ago (invading Iraq) are useful, then you ought to be running as a D!!!
'via Blog this'
Rand Paul and the Patriot Act are back in the news.
First observation -- People LOVE to talk of closing the barn door LONG after the horse has escaped.
Rnad is worried about the government looking at PHONE RECORDS??? !!!!!
Has he ever heard of a little agency called the IRS????? All our bank statements, all donations, the checks used for medical, optical, dental, etc. If you paid a housekeeper, the kid next door, etc, etc.
Paul is worried about THIS ????
determine your religion 85 percent of the time, who your physician is most of the time, what medicines you have. They can even tell when you go to the doctor, by interference, maybe what kind of procedures you’re having at your doctor’s office.If you pay taxes in the US there is a ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CHANCE that the IRS knows your church, who your healthcare provider is, when you go to the doctor, specifically what kinds of procedures you had, what drugs you are taking and MUCH MUCH MORE!!
We have BOcare for goodness sake ... plus Medicare. The government has forms filled out on top of forms. If they want to look, they have all the data on your medical life a few times over!
For people that are concerned about the NSA I have one simple suggestion. Get on to abolishing of the IRS and instituting a FLAT TAX ASAP! Until the IRS is abolished, "privacy" in the US is a TOTALLY DEAD ISSUE. In order to determine what parts of your income/spending is taxable / deductible, and in order to determine it for every other person, business and tax exempt entity in the country, the IRS as total access to your financial life -- which is a very large hunk of your total life!
AFTER we realize that income tax is UNCONSTITUTIONAL because it violates the Equal Protection Clause, THEN we can start to get serious about reclaiming more obscure forms of privacy.
Until then, it is completely insane to be concerned about NSA phone records!
As PL points out, the ONLY reason for Rand to be running is if Republicans want to go farther back to isolationism. Prior to air power and nuclear weapons, one could almost believe that isolationism for the US was an option. With space (controlled by China and Russia), the Internet and total global trade, there are no rational isolationists left.
So Rand is barking up the wrong tree -- the D party is the party of the irrational. If you believe in isolationism, or that 2nd guessing decisions of over a decade ago (invading Iraq) are useful, then you ought to be running as a D!!!
'via Blog this'
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Melted Quarter Minimum Wage
Economists have figured out who’s really to blame for exploding income inequality - The Washington Post:
"Income Inequality" is nearly as big a problem today as gay "marriage" -- which ought to be enough to tell even someone of minimal intellect and attention span that conditions are either extremely good, or we have totally lost touch with reality.
Definitely both. For thousands of years and for billions of people even today, food, shelter, BASIC medical care, uncontaminated water, safety from violent attack, etc are the consuming interests. Such could easily be the case in the US in a very short period due to many causes -- power grid failure, computer networks failure, famine, epidemic, major volcanic eruption, etc ....
"Wealth" and "income inequality" make assumptions about real value -- what it costs in some human measure to buy the basics of life. The stuff we REALLY need. One meme going around a bit lately is the relationship of 1965 minimum wage in 1965 silver quarters and our minimum wage today. The minimum wage was $1.25 then, and if you take 5 pre-65 silver quarters at a melt value of $3.03 each even given the fairly low current silver prices, the value of that wage in silver today would be $15.15 ... isn't it funny that $15 per hour is an quoted number! Maybe our problem is with the MONEY???
One of the earliest silver coins minted was a "denarius" which was considered the DAILY wage for an unskilled worker and with which they could purchase about "20 loaves of bread". Given no working women, no birth control / larger families, and the fact that "man does not live by bread alone", one can see that living on the "minimum wage" in 260 BC or so was likely a challenge.
A day of human labor and things like loaves of bread are something that we can look at in order to get some handle on VALUE vs "money". The greatest economic leverage for humans to provided by what Ricardo called "comparative advantage" which allows specialization, the ability for each to produce what they are optimally most able to, as individuals, locales and countries. Iowa does good at corn, Maine at lobsters for obvious reasons, and DC excels at "red tape";-) In order to specialize, we MUST have a "medium of exchange" which is as efficient as possible.
BUT, "as possible" includes a reasonable expectation of "stable VALUE"! "Money" is NOT VALUE!
Which brings us back to "commodity money" of which gold and silver are only the most widely recognized. Historically, no government as been able to resist running up debts and "paying them off" by debasing the currency.
This is easy to understand -- inflate US currency to where the hourly wage is $18T and somebody can donate one hours worth of work to pay off the US debt!! No doubt a loaf of bread would cost in the the trillions, but hey, we would all be trillionaires!
If you read through the linked article to come to the sad realization that the folks at WaPO have come to a barely rudimentary understanding of comparative advantage and the value of specialization -- in a world with fiat currency, lots of technology and a government willing to allow financial industries to leverage themselves at an obscene level **AND* cover their losses when the leverage fails!!!!!, the big money is in FINANCE, and everyone that is good at it makes out like a bandit!
This is as hard to understand as the supposed response by bank robber Willie Sutton when asked why he robbed banks -- "because that's where the money is"!!!! We ALL have a basic intrinsic understanding of both value and comparative advantage -- a decent educational system would just put it into terms so that the average 5th grader would be smarter about this than the current WaPo reporters are.
That also explains why the fastest growing wealth area in the US is Washington DC ... THATS WHERE THE MONEY IS!!! Note ... it is NO LONGER WALL STREET, even though that is what the Ds and the MSM would like you believe! I've long believed that the separation of the financial center in NY and the government center in DC was an absolutely brilliant accident that allows those of us who want to pay some attention to see what is REALLY going on with a lot more ease.
I'd like to bring this to a simple and clear point -- but I can't come up with one quite as simple as I like, so I'll list a few:
We are all idiots in more than one way, this is just one of mine!
'via Blog this'
"Income Inequality" is nearly as big a problem today as gay "marriage" -- which ought to be enough to tell even someone of minimal intellect and attention span that conditions are either extremely good, or we have totally lost touch with reality.
Definitely both. For thousands of years and for billions of people even today, food, shelter, BASIC medical care, uncontaminated water, safety from violent attack, etc are the consuming interests. Such could easily be the case in the US in a very short period due to many causes -- power grid failure, computer networks failure, famine, epidemic, major volcanic eruption, etc ....
"Wealth" and "income inequality" make assumptions about real value -- what it costs in some human measure to buy the basics of life. The stuff we REALLY need. One meme going around a bit lately is the relationship of 1965 minimum wage in 1965 silver quarters and our minimum wage today. The minimum wage was $1.25 then, and if you take 5 pre-65 silver quarters at a melt value of $3.03 each even given the fairly low current silver prices, the value of that wage in silver today would be $15.15 ... isn't it funny that $15 per hour is an quoted number! Maybe our problem is with the MONEY???
One of the earliest silver coins minted was a "denarius" which was considered the DAILY wage for an unskilled worker and with which they could purchase about "20 loaves of bread". Given no working women, no birth control / larger families, and the fact that "man does not live by bread alone", one can see that living on the "minimum wage" in 260 BC or so was likely a challenge.
A day of human labor and things like loaves of bread are something that we can look at in order to get some handle on VALUE vs "money". The greatest economic leverage for humans to provided by what Ricardo called "comparative advantage" which allows specialization, the ability for each to produce what they are optimally most able to, as individuals, locales and countries. Iowa does good at corn, Maine at lobsters for obvious reasons, and DC excels at "red tape";-) In order to specialize, we MUST have a "medium of exchange" which is as efficient as possible.
BUT, "as possible" includes a reasonable expectation of "stable VALUE"! "Money" is NOT VALUE!
Which brings us back to "commodity money" of which gold and silver are only the most widely recognized. Historically, no government as been able to resist running up debts and "paying them off" by debasing the currency.
This is easy to understand -- inflate US currency to where the hourly wage is $18T and somebody can donate one hours worth of work to pay off the US debt!! No doubt a loaf of bread would cost in the the trillions, but hey, we would all be trillionaires!
If you read through the linked article to come to the sad realization that the folks at WaPO have come to a barely rudimentary understanding of comparative advantage and the value of specialization -- in a world with fiat currency, lots of technology and a government willing to allow financial industries to leverage themselves at an obscene level **AND* cover their losses when the leverage fails!!!!!, the big money is in FINANCE, and everyone that is good at it makes out like a bandit!
This is as hard to understand as the supposed response by bank robber Willie Sutton when asked why he robbed banks -- "because that's where the money is"!!!! We ALL have a basic intrinsic understanding of both value and comparative advantage -- a decent educational system would just put it into terms so that the average 5th grader would be smarter about this than the current WaPo reporters are.
That also explains why the fastest growing wealth area in the US is Washington DC ... THATS WHERE THE MONEY IS!!! Note ... it is NO LONGER WALL STREET, even though that is what the Ds and the MSM would like you believe! I've long believed that the separation of the financial center in NY and the government center in DC was an absolutely brilliant accident that allows those of us who want to pay some attention to see what is REALLY going on with a lot more ease.
I'd like to bring this to a simple and clear point -- but I can't come up with one quite as simple as I like, so I'll list a few:
- When our economy is working, it GROWS, so people can get richer but not take anything away from others (all boats rise). HOWEVER, due to the inverse magic of BO policies, our economy is essentially ZERO GROWTH, and in the first quarter of the last two years it SHRANK. This is very bad news. Washington is getting richer and the rest of us are getting poorer!
- Fiat currency and poor education on basic economic principles leave 80%+ of Americans in a state where they don't understand value, growth, comparative advantage nor much of anything about our economy. This leaves them completely at the mercy of "The Party" (D), it's media like the WaPo, and charlatans like BO and Hillary to lie to them on a daily basis.
- As the problems with economic mismanagement grow -- as they did under FDR, Carter and BO, one of the big mechanisms used is overt cooking the books to "hide the decline" as I covered here.
- Misleading the public, hiding real results, inflating the currency, encouraging dependence on government and having an education that fails to teach basic economics are all ways to increase government power so that the left can take total control -- in fact, so that most people will CLAMOR for them to take more control!
We are all idiots in more than one way, this is just one of mine!
'via Blog this'
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Conservative Commencement
Life lessons from Justice Thomas | Power Line:
We are all prejudiced.
I am strongly prejudiced in favor of Jews because of their chosen position as a people, the suffering they have endured and persevered through, and the fact that some of the highest quality people I ever worked with were those from Haifa, Israel. The last judgment may be influenced by prejudice -- I don't believe it is, but that is the nature of prejudice.
I'm strongly prejudiced in favor of Blacks that hold opinions even slightly in contrast to the 90% plus percentage who hold that Blacks are required to 100% be Democrat, in favor of massive welfare, affirmative action, and assign all poor behaviour by Blacks to "discrimination or slavery". Clarence Thomas certainly earns my favorable prejudice on that front, as well as Thomas Sowell, Bill Cosby ( a Democrat, but willing to state that Blacks must have some sense of personal responsibility if they ever want to succeed), Mia Love, Allen West, Tim Scott and others.
I'm prejudiced against the left wing liberal establishment. People like Teddy Kennedy -- born to the most extreme privilege possible, a lifelong womanizer whose young secretary died in his car, in part because he failed to report the accident until the next morning -- who never the less, alone with former Kleagle of the KKK, Robert Byrd attempted a "high tech lunching" of Thomas in his confirmation hearings because of Thomas's courage to stand up for his convictions in the face of attack from TP - "The Party" (D).
I'm prejudiced against the arrogance of the left -- people like BO who talk of the common man as "... they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations". Or Hillary with her "the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president".
TP is the dominant power in the US by a wide margin, and with every added "entitlement", regulation, agency, interpretation of the "commerce clause", and Constitutional short circuit (immigration, BOcare, etc), they inch closer to totally UNLIMITED power. The Thomas hearings were a good example of how far they will go to prevent anyone who is not a "party believer" from being appointed to a position of power. Totalitarian power is the goal of the left -- to allow a "free and open sharing of ideas" or certainly power is anathema to leftist thinking.
The speech that Thomas gave to a graduating class at his alma mater in 2008 inside the linked article is a lesson in simplicity, humility, wisdom and extreme rarity -- as the LA TImes noted, the odds of having a conservative speaker at your commencement are at best 1 in 6, most years zero chance for the Ivy League.,
Men like Clarence Thomas are very rare and getting more rare. I still like to have hope, that maybe "being good, saying your prayers, doing your chores/homework, respecting your elders and doing your best" will become so absolutely countercultural that a generation will look a the fallen civilization that we have become and reject the lack of useful values. I'm not holding my breath, but hope does tend to spring eternal.
We all have our prejudices. My prejudice for men like Clarence Thomas is one that I think I'll keep!
We are all prejudiced.
I am strongly prejudiced in favor of Jews because of their chosen position as a people, the suffering they have endured and persevered through, and the fact that some of the highest quality people I ever worked with were those from Haifa, Israel. The last judgment may be influenced by prejudice -- I don't believe it is, but that is the nature of prejudice.
I'm strongly prejudiced in favor of Blacks that hold opinions even slightly in contrast to the 90% plus percentage who hold that Blacks are required to 100% be Democrat, in favor of massive welfare, affirmative action, and assign all poor behaviour by Blacks to "discrimination or slavery". Clarence Thomas certainly earns my favorable prejudice on that front, as well as Thomas Sowell, Bill Cosby ( a Democrat, but willing to state that Blacks must have some sense of personal responsibility if they ever want to succeed), Mia Love, Allen West, Tim Scott and others.
I'm prejudiced against the left wing liberal establishment. People like Teddy Kennedy -- born to the most extreme privilege possible, a lifelong womanizer whose young secretary died in his car, in part because he failed to report the accident until the next morning -- who never the less, alone with former Kleagle of the KKK, Robert Byrd attempted a "high tech lunching" of Thomas in his confirmation hearings because of Thomas's courage to stand up for his convictions in the face of attack from TP - "The Party" (D).
I'm prejudiced against the arrogance of the left -- people like BO who talk of the common man as "... they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations". Or Hillary with her "the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president".
TP is the dominant power in the US by a wide margin, and with every added "entitlement", regulation, agency, interpretation of the "commerce clause", and Constitutional short circuit (immigration, BOcare, etc), they inch closer to totally UNLIMITED power. The Thomas hearings were a good example of how far they will go to prevent anyone who is not a "party believer" from being appointed to a position of power. Totalitarian power is the goal of the left -- to allow a "free and open sharing of ideas" or certainly power is anathema to leftist thinking.
The speech that Thomas gave to a graduating class at his alma mater in 2008 inside the linked article is a lesson in simplicity, humility, wisdom and extreme rarity -- as the LA TImes noted, the odds of having a conservative speaker at your commencement are at best 1 in 6, most years zero chance for the Ivy League.,
Though there are many enticements and distractions, it is up to each of you to take care of your respective business. Remember, the rewards of self-indulgence are not nearly as great as the rewards of self-discipline.
But even as you take care of business, there are a few other necessities for the journey. At the very top of the list are the three F’s—faith, family, and friends. When all else fails and we feel like prodigal sons and daughters, they will always be there, even if we don’t deserve them. Having needed them, I know they will always be your saving grace.Our modern society is all about self-indulgence and the opposite of at least faith and family -- friends are OK as long as they are "the right kind" from the left viewpoint. One should have a group of friends that agree lock-step with the liberal worldview that has been hammered in each day by school, music and entertainment.
Men like Clarence Thomas are very rare and getting more rare. I still like to have hope, that maybe "being good, saying your prayers, doing your chores/homework, respecting your elders and doing your best" will become so absolutely countercultural that a generation will look a the fallen civilization that we have become and reject the lack of useful values. I'm not holding my breath, but hope does tend to spring eternal.
We all have our prejudices. My prejudice for men like Clarence Thomas is one that I think I'll keep!
Friday, May 29, 2015
Hide The Decline, GDP Measure Changes In July, 1Q -.7
Revising how the US calculates GDP will not have a happy ending | Heidi Moore | Business | The Guardian:
The US GDP for the first quarter of 2015 has now been officially adjusted to show a decline of .7 ... last year 1Q was also a decline. With a maximum of irony for the warmist administration, both bad numbers were partially blamed on cold and snow!
So what is a failed administration with failed economic policies to match it's failed foreign policy to do? Just what the warming crowd has done multiple times -- change the how the numbers are calculated, HIDE THE DECLINE!
Note that both of news of the decline in GDP and the change in the number calculation are from foreign news sources -- I can find them on known conservative sites in this country, but in general the MSM doesn't seem to be very interested in reporting this.
Too much important soccer news I guess!
'via Blog this'
The US GDP for the first quarter of 2015 has now been officially adjusted to show a decline of .7 ... last year 1Q was also a decline. With a maximum of irony for the warmist administration, both bad numbers were partially blamed on cold and snow!
So what is a failed administration with failed economic policies to match it's failed foreign policy to do? Just what the warming crowd has done multiple times -- change the how the numbers are calculated, HIDE THE DECLINE!
For the first time, the US is changing the way it measures its economic growth, the measure we call our gross domestic product. Starting in July, the keepers of US economic data at the Bureau of Economic Analysis will stand over the usual cauldron of GDP – a stew that includes how much Americans consume, government spending, investment, exports and imports. They'll begin to add new ingredients that, in a puff of smoke, will create a more favorable, higher gross domestic product.
The new ingredients include Hollywood royalties from TV, movies and songs – some Tinseltown magic, really – as well as revenues from scientific research and development. Like a feelgood movie, this will make us feel positive, briefly – boosting our GDP by as much as 3% from its currently anemic level of 0.4%.Won't that be nice! We add 3% ""growth" by waving a wand! Starting in July, unless you see the numbers next to a "historical GDP number", you have to subtract 3% to compare what is being reported with what you think GDP means.
Note that both of news of the decline in GDP and the change in the number calculation are from foreign news sources -- I can find them on known conservative sites in this country, but in general the MSM doesn't seem to be very interested in reporting this.
Too much important soccer news I guess!
'via Blog this'
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Bernie Sanders on Rape, Deodorant, and Economics
Sen. Bernie Sanders' Essay: Women 'Fantasize About Being Raped' | MRCTV:
I'm not really saying that this '72 piece ought to get a lot of coverage -- but then we KNOW how W's time in the TX Air National Guard, Romney's "bullying", some rock at TX gov Perry's DAD'S ranch, etc, etc have been treated and how various Republican "way old bad sayings" will get coverage.
So Bernie Sanders had some off-beat ideas of women fantasising about gang rape during sex -- if we treated both sides the same, I'd be OK with just letting bygones be bygones. (although listening to the munchkin explain himself might be a hoot).
His KNOWN CURRENT ideas on economics are bad enough to make one cringe. The man pines away for the consumer approach of the old USSR:
We have BO in the WH -- we need all the deodorant we can get!
He wants to return to the 90% tax rate -- and probably not the fake old version with miles of loopholes so that nobody paid it. A real 90% tax rate would have the same effect on the economy that showing Sanders article on sex to a modern MSM reporter! (stop dead and stare blankly, "what am I supposed to do"?)
I will say one thing -- Bernie does truth in labeling. If the Democrat party simply called themselves the Socialist Party we would be working from a lot more truthful basis!
'via Blog this'
I'm not really saying that this '72 piece ought to get a lot of coverage -- but then we KNOW how W's time in the TX Air National Guard, Romney's "bullying", some rock at TX gov Perry's DAD'S ranch, etc, etc have been treated and how various Republican "way old bad sayings" will get coverage.
So Bernie Sanders had some off-beat ideas of women fantasising about gang rape during sex -- if we treated both sides the same, I'd be OK with just letting bygones be bygones. (although listening to the munchkin explain himself might be a hoot).
His KNOWN CURRENT ideas on economics are bad enough to make one cringe. The man pines away for the consumer approach of the old USSR:
You can't just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we are struggling with climate change and all kinds of environmental problems. All right? You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.The USSR used to have SOAP -- when they had it. You waited in a long line on a day when they were supposed to have some, and if they didn't, you did without. Oh, and at various times during the reign of those "socialists", something north of 30 million people STARVED, not "went hungry".
We have BO in the WH -- we need all the deodorant we can get!
He wants to return to the 90% tax rate -- and probably not the fake old version with miles of loopholes so that nobody paid it. A real 90% tax rate would have the same effect on the economy that showing Sanders article on sex to a modern MSM reporter! (stop dead and stare blankly, "what am I supposed to do"?)
I will say one thing -- Bernie does truth in labeling. If the Democrat party simply called themselves the Socialist Party we would be working from a lot more truthful basis!
'via Blog this'
Corruption, Thy Name Is Clinton
Where there’s corruption, there’s the Clinton Foundation | Power Line:
I have little interest in further revelations about the Clinton Crime Family -- anybody who remotely cares has known since prior to his first term as president that this couple had merged politics, corruption and crime into a noxious package that has been worked over and over to gain them power, privilege and wealth. I preferred the Kennedys -- at least they created their criminal wealth the old fashioned way -- by running booze!
This article caught my eye because of the vacuous nature of it and the little pulling back of the curtain to show Slick Willie's temper just a bit :
The most incredible thing to me is the incredible double standard. A CEO that makes 10's of millions for running a company with 10's and thousands of employees, 100's of billions in revenues and 10's of billions in profits is somehow considered "greedy" -- where the same folks that are incenses over the CEO are completely fine with the Clinton's using political positions to shake down organizations world wide for 100's of millions of dollars!
Being left means never having to explain yourself!
'via Blog this'
I have little interest in further revelations about the Clinton Crime Family -- anybody who remotely cares has known since prior to his first term as president that this couple had merged politics, corruption and crime into a noxious package that has been worked over and over to gain them power, privilege and wealth. I preferred the Kennedys -- at least they created their criminal wealth the old fashioned way -- by running booze!
This article caught my eye because of the vacuous nature of it and the little pulling back of the curtain to show Slick Willie's temper just a bit :
Bill Clinton looked anything but happy as he strode into the Savoy Baur en Ville hotel in Zurich in December 2010. The receptionists could tell he was irritated, but had no idea just how angry he was.
After closing the door to his suite, he reached for an ornament on a table and threw it at a wall mirror in a fit of rage, shattering the glass. . . .
‘Clinton was fuming,’ said one well-placed source. ‘He felt humiliated and felt the decision did not make sense.’Not a very pretty picture -- a former POTUS angry to the point of destroying hotel property due to an agreement over a SOCCER SERIES! Not exactly war and peace, life and death, etc. Were he not a left wing icon, such a temper might be called a "character flaw" -- but proper ideology trumps that!
The most incredible thing to me is the incredible double standard. A CEO that makes 10's of millions for running a company with 10's and thousands of employees, 100's of billions in revenues and 10's of billions in profits is somehow considered "greedy" -- where the same folks that are incenses over the CEO are completely fine with the Clinton's using political positions to shake down organizations world wide for 100's of millions of dollars!
Being left means never having to explain yourself!
'via Blog this'
Police Kill 9, Wound 18 In Baltimore
9 killed, 18 injured in weekend shootings in Baltimore | Maryland News - WBAL Home:
oops ... it wasn't the police, it was just regular folks shooting each other. Never mind, no news story here that people need to hear about!
'via Blog this'
oops ... it wasn't the police, it was just regular folks shooting each other. Never mind, no news story here that people need to hear about!
'via Blog this'
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
The Lessons of History, By Will and Ariel Durant
http://www.amazon.com/The-Lessons-History-Will-Durant/dp/143914995X
The subject and linked book is a bit like "Cliffs notes for history" ... with naturally the slant of the authors, but everything has to have SOME slant!
I found the following quote from comte de Saint-Simeon to the most useful in the book ...
Like all simplifications of something as vast as history, the organic / critical split is far from perfect. The US was "organic" on freedom, growth, advancement and "under God" from 1776 up until sometime in the early 20th century, but we were obviously "critical" on the question of slavery. The issue might really be if there is an "overarching set of principles" in which MOST of the elements of life are agreed. It doesn't have to be total.
A totalitarian state can use force to attempt to progress to some edicted goal by power, but that is far weaker than a real general consensus of "the good".
The other obvious points brought home by the book are:
The question is of course what to do about all of that -- deny it? Kill or strongly handicap the better selected? Deny that generations not bred or killed in the womb will fail to inherit the earth?
Again, for nearly 200 years the US largely lived according to "natural law". Freedom allowed the most successful competitors to succeed, have large families and to drive the nation forward generation by generation. Technology in the form of birth control and abortion gave both the means and the illusion that we controlled nature. What we "controlled" was the ability to modify our system to ignore the natural in microcosm, but in the macrocosm, nature still rules -- and for those willing to pay attention, that fact gets more obvious with each year as our system that was once aligned with principles that worked succumbs to those that don't .
A worthy read -- I have of course just scratched the surface of the book here, but it is not a long or hard read. Well worth the trouble -- a high rating on Amazon and deservedly so.
The subject and linked book is a bit like "Cliffs notes for history" ... with naturally the slant of the authors, but everything has to have SOME slant!
I found the following quote from comte de Saint-Simeon to the most useful in the book ...
The law of human development… reveals two distinct and alternative states of society: one, the organic, in which all human actions are classed, foreseen, and regulated by a general theory, and the purpose of social activity is clearly defined; the other, the critical, in which all community of thought, all communal action, all coordination have ceased, and the society is only an agglomeration of separate individuals in conflict with one another. Each of these states or conditions has occupied two periods of history. One organic period preceded that Greek era which we call the age of philosophy, but which we shall more justly call the age of criticism.
Later a new doctrine arose, ran through different phases of elaboration and completion, and finally established its political power over Western civilization. The constitution of the Church began a new organic epoch, which ended in the fifteenth century, when the Reformers sounded the arrival of that age of criticism which has continued to our time….
In the organic ages all basic problems [theological, political, economic, moral] have received at least provisional solutions. But soon the progress achieved by the help of these solutions, and under the protection of the institutions realized through them, rendered them inadequate, and evoked novelties. Critical epochs— periods of debate, protest,… and transition, replaced the old mood with doubt, individualism, and indifference to the great problems…. In organic periods men are busy building; in critical periods they are busy destroying. 69 Saint-Simon believedThe highlighted quote is the core ... man needs SOME provisional idea of "what is the good" before masses of people can be expected to FREELY build toward some goal. Absent that agreement, effort is essentially based on "destruction" -- division, protest, debate -- in short, lack of agreement on "the good".
Like all simplifications of something as vast as history, the organic / critical split is far from perfect. The US was "organic" on freedom, growth, advancement and "under God" from 1776 up until sometime in the early 20th century, but we were obviously "critical" on the question of slavery. The issue might really be if there is an "overarching set of principles" in which MOST of the elements of life are agreed. It doesn't have to be total.
A totalitarian state can use force to attempt to progress to some edicted goal by power, but that is far weaker than a real general consensus of "the good".
The other obvious points brought home by the book are:
So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition. Competition is not only the life of trade, it is the trade of life— peaceful when food abounds, violent when the mouths outrun the food.
The second biological lesson of history is that life is selection. In the competition for food or mates or power some organisms succeed and some fail. In the struggle for existence some individuals are better equipped than others to meet the tests of survival.
The third biological lesson of history is that life must breed. Nature has no use for organisms, variations, or groups that cannot reproduce abundantly.Nothing at all newsworthy for regular readers of this blog -- nor one might argue to anyone that observes the world as it is.
The question is of course what to do about all of that -- deny it? Kill or strongly handicap the better selected? Deny that generations not bred or killed in the womb will fail to inherit the earth?
Again, for nearly 200 years the US largely lived according to "natural law". Freedom allowed the most successful competitors to succeed, have large families and to drive the nation forward generation by generation. Technology in the form of birth control and abortion gave both the means and the illusion that we controlled nature. What we "controlled" was the ability to modify our system to ignore the natural in microcosm, but in the macrocosm, nature still rules -- and for those willing to pay attention, that fact gets more obvious with each year as our system that was once aligned with principles that worked succumbs to those that don't .
A worthy read -- I have of course just scratched the surface of the book here, but it is not a long or hard read. Well worth the trouble -- a high rating on Amazon and deservedly so.
Lack of Will, Having Another Beer
The Iraqis’ “lack of will”. . .and Obama’s | Power Line:
Last week, our Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, said that the Iraqi army "lacked the will to defend Ramadi".
That is hardly surprising really. Iraq was a country drawn on a map by Winston Churchill (and others). It is made up of Sunni and Shia Muslims as well as Kurds. It never had any great historical common ground -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident" kind of stuff. It might as well be split into parts of Iraq, Turkey and who knows what. A lot of the countries over in the sandpile are just lines on maps, and often not even lines along any natural boundary. The IA - MN border is a bit hard to pick out when driving. Most of WI - MN is pretty easy. It makes a difference.
The obvious irony of our SECDEF saying the Iraqis "lack the will", when it is abundantly clear that our current administration for sure lacks the will big time is uncomfortable and sad.
Does America lack the will, or just BO? The evidence is strong that we as a nation now do -- there is no real outcry against BO's feckless foreign policy. On momentum we still have troops in South Korea and Germany along with many other places as remnants of WWII and the age when we were the "exceptional dominant superpower", but those seem anachronistic.
Historically, the superpower list is a short one ... Egypt, Greece, Persia, Rome, "The Barbarians" -- Genghis Khan, Visigoths, etc, then the British Empire, then the US -- contested with the USSR for 45 years, but then the sole remaining.
"Everyone has to believe in something -- I believe I'll have another beer" might best summarize the current American outlook. We are certainly not superman "Truth, Freedom and the American Way"! We are definitely not "God and Country" ... it would likely be a federal crime to try to make that a slogan! We are certainly not "The New Frontier" -- we have given up on frontiers, space is left to Russia and the Chinese.
America today is a lot like a large family where a once prosperous last grandparent has passed on, trying to split up the remaining assets without out too much rancor. Can the blacks, whites, browns, old, young, more prosperous and less prosperous find some mostly equitable way to hack up the old family business / farm / legacy, because it is clear nobody wants to dirty their hands running it, and they sure as hell are NOT going to be trying to expand it!
Why would they do that? It was "imperialistic", "created on the backs of the poor, the black, etc" ... besides, BUILDING something is HARD WORK! Even worse, while the vision of building perfection and certainly the criticism of what was built before seems clear, doing yourself is fraught with issues of imperfection, "unfairness" ... "inequality" ... Pass the beer!
Lacking will when what you were bequeathed is a pile of sand with a bunch of unrelated tribes on it is understandable. Lacking will when you were bequeathed the greatest nation on earth, shining city on a hill, one nation under God, liberty and justice for all, sea to shining sea, amber waves of grain and all that is a WHOLE lot sadder.
Where does "will" come from in the liberal mind? "I gotta get me what that other guy has!"?
'via Blog this'
Last week, our Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, said that the Iraqi army "lacked the will to defend Ramadi".
That is hardly surprising really. Iraq was a country drawn on a map by Winston Churchill (and others). It is made up of Sunni and Shia Muslims as well as Kurds. It never had any great historical common ground -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident" kind of stuff. It might as well be split into parts of Iraq, Turkey and who knows what. A lot of the countries over in the sandpile are just lines on maps, and often not even lines along any natural boundary. The IA - MN border is a bit hard to pick out when driving. Most of WI - MN is pretty easy. It makes a difference.
The obvious irony of our SECDEF saying the Iraqis "lack the will", when it is abundantly clear that our current administration for sure lacks the will big time is uncomfortable and sad.
Does America lack the will, or just BO? The evidence is strong that we as a nation now do -- there is no real outcry against BO's feckless foreign policy. On momentum we still have troops in South Korea and Germany along with many other places as remnants of WWII and the age when we were the "exceptional dominant superpower", but those seem anachronistic.
Historically, the superpower list is a short one ... Egypt, Greece, Persia, Rome, "The Barbarians" -- Genghis Khan, Visigoths, etc, then the British Empire, then the US -- contested with the USSR for 45 years, but then the sole remaining.
"Everyone has to believe in something -- I believe I'll have another beer" might best summarize the current American outlook. We are certainly not superman "Truth, Freedom and the American Way"! We are definitely not "God and Country" ... it would likely be a federal crime to try to make that a slogan! We are certainly not "The New Frontier" -- we have given up on frontiers, space is left to Russia and the Chinese.
America today is a lot like a large family where a once prosperous last grandparent has passed on, trying to split up the remaining assets without out too much rancor. Can the blacks, whites, browns, old, young, more prosperous and less prosperous find some mostly equitable way to hack up the old family business / farm / legacy, because it is clear nobody wants to dirty their hands running it, and they sure as hell are NOT going to be trying to expand it!
Why would they do that? It was "imperialistic", "created on the backs of the poor, the black, etc" ... besides, BUILDING something is HARD WORK! Even worse, while the vision of building perfection and certainly the criticism of what was built before seems clear, doing yourself is fraught with issues of imperfection, "unfairness" ... "inequality" ... Pass the beer!
Lacking will when what you were bequeathed is a pile of sand with a bunch of unrelated tribes on it is understandable. Lacking will when you were bequeathed the greatest nation on earth, shining city on a hill, one nation under God, liberty and justice for all, sea to shining sea, amber waves of grain and all that is a WHOLE lot sadder.
Where does "will" come from in the liberal mind? "I gotta get me what that other guy has!"?
'via Blog this'
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Benghazi Boredom Story, E-mail Edition
Hillary Clinton 2016: The 15 Benghazi emails you need to read - POLITICO:
After over a century of expert mass media/advertising manipulation you would think that Americans would be the most sophisticated and cautious information consumers.
But we are clearly not.
We love a "story". We ought to know by now that we love a story, and given our weakness for such, advertisers and media people work very hard to give us what we want. Naturally, with the content that THEY want!
Story of the Iraq War -- "Bush lied, people died" ... everything else from the MSM fits on that theme and supports it. Information that doesn't fit that theme -- and may make people think that it isn't that simple at all, or the theme is far from correct, is simply not reported, or reported in a way that seems to support the theme. (eg, WMD found in Iraq or Syria today are "just there")
Story of Watergate -- "Nixon broke the law in coverup, courageous media defeated evil liar". On NPR, this story gets trotted out a couple of times a year as bigger than WWII. For the left, it was -- it was at least as good as the Berlin Wall falling was for people of the right. Again, a strong theme ... reported often over decades becomes a simple established fact.
Nobody is going to tell you to go off and read 15 e-mails on Bush going to Iraq or the Watergate story -- my God, in a nation of where "Hope and Change" works, 15 emails is beyond "War and Peace"!
Libya could easily be done as Iraq and Watergate (and many other things have been).
"Obama and Hillary broke Libya and thousands of lives, including the US Ambassador were lost". I'm not a marketer ... the "Dardanelles Disaster" was often called "Churchill's Folly" ... the double D's work well. Rhyming is very good. Get the "hook" right and the narrative fits neatly ... like a popular song.
As one of the e-mails referenced shows, Hillary was big in the Libyan "strategy". BO and Hillary, with no congressional vote, destabilized Libya and took down Gaddafi who had become remarkably well behaved after he saw what happened to Saddam. Gaddafi had unilaterally gave up his WMD programs and opened for inspection. That tidbit was of course one of the little facts that did not fit well with "Bush lied, people died", so there was not a lot of coverage for it.
"O-Hillary broke Lib - I -yah, now they own it!" ... in which case things like thousands of refugees dying in trying to escape via the Mediterranean, Christians beheaded in Libya, the death of the Ambassador and Navy Seals, etc would be seen as an ever growing "bill for damages" for breaking a nation for reasons that nobody seems interested in even asking -- to the extent that the BO administration has had an answer it is something like "Arab Spring". "Get rid of the dictator and good things will happen".
The other e-mails in the list that would fit a narrative very well (if there was one) are the ones about that relate to Sidney Blumenthal "Sid Vicious" every evil one has to have "henchmen". Bush - Cheney - Rove for example. Blumenthal fits such a role exceedingly well -- if anyone cared even slightly about the story of Libya and Benghazi. But, since any hint of a narrative has been scrupulously avoided, there is no story.
Which is really the eternal question. To create a story or not? There can easily be a story built on nothing -- The "outing" of Valerie Plame was a story with no real basis, yet it occupied a Grand Jury and much media time from 2003 - 2006. There was no "outing" because she wasn't a secret agent -- but if she had been, it was confirmed it would have been Richard Armitage that outed her, and he was considered one of the "good guys" against the Iraq war, so nobody would care if he accidentally did.
ALL stories from the real world are over-simplifications of facts. "Kennedy got us to the moon" and "Reagan ended the USSR" are both simplifications, but stories with significant basis in the real world. None of our stories are completely true -- no human has access to anything even close to all the facts, and even if we did, without significant moulding of the picture of reality it is impossible for us to process.
The DEFINITION of human understanding is very close to "having a narrative". Can I give you an "elevator pitch" on what happened in Vietnam, how I met my wife, how the Internet works, why I think Obama is a bad president ... and on and on to infinity. For things we truly understand at a deep level, we have non-story subconscious "core truth", but we can't communicate that -- that is why the super smart programmer often comes across as "not having a clue", because he can't make a "story" out of his understanding, it is too detailed and deep.
So "The Story" of Libya and Benghazi is a boring non-story. "A bunch of Republicans trying to pin something on Hillary or BO". Most of this is just due to the big capable story telling guns in the MSM not being on the job telling the tale, some of it is due to the decline of America.
In 1979, when Iranians took the US Embassy in Tehran, the nation was riveted. Some of this was no doubt due to the fact of hostages being held, but a good deal of it was due to A UNITED STATES EMBASSY having been overrun. Even after Vietnam, many Americans still saw this nation as the top Superpower -- ahead of our nearest competitor the USSR. Seeing us unable to defend our Embassy in what we saw as a small backwater nation was something that hurt the pride of people proud to be Americans.
That is probably the real basic story here. We are no longer the nation we were in 1979. Seeing an Embassy destroyed, the US Ambassador killed and body desecrated, brave Navy Seals calling for support with no response from our leadership has no effect on 80% of Americans today. We are not a nation that believes that we are exceptional. We believe that it is possible to care only for our ease in the manner of cows chewing our cuds.
Today we like stories that make us feel good. It is too much trouble to test their truth or consider their dark sides.
'via Blog this'
After over a century of expert mass media/advertising manipulation you would think that Americans would be the most sophisticated and cautious information consumers.
But we are clearly not.
We love a "story". We ought to know by now that we love a story, and given our weakness for such, advertisers and media people work very hard to give us what we want. Naturally, with the content that THEY want!
Story of the Iraq War -- "Bush lied, people died" ... everything else from the MSM fits on that theme and supports it. Information that doesn't fit that theme -- and may make people think that it isn't that simple at all, or the theme is far from correct, is simply not reported, or reported in a way that seems to support the theme. (eg, WMD found in Iraq or Syria today are "just there")
Story of Watergate -- "Nixon broke the law in coverup, courageous media defeated evil liar". On NPR, this story gets trotted out a couple of times a year as bigger than WWII. For the left, it was -- it was at least as good as the Berlin Wall falling was for people of the right. Again, a strong theme ... reported often over decades becomes a simple established fact.
Nobody is going to tell you to go off and read 15 e-mails on Bush going to Iraq or the Watergate story -- my God, in a nation of where "Hope and Change" works, 15 emails is beyond "War and Peace"!
Libya could easily be done as Iraq and Watergate (and many other things have been).
"Obama and Hillary broke Libya and thousands of lives, including the US Ambassador were lost". I'm not a marketer ... the "Dardanelles Disaster" was often called "Churchill's Folly" ... the double D's work well. Rhyming is very good. Get the "hook" right and the narrative fits neatly ... like a popular song.
As one of the e-mails referenced shows, Hillary was big in the Libyan "strategy". BO and Hillary, with no congressional vote, destabilized Libya and took down Gaddafi who had become remarkably well behaved after he saw what happened to Saddam. Gaddafi had unilaterally gave up his WMD programs and opened for inspection. That tidbit was of course one of the little facts that did not fit well with "Bush lied, people died", so there was not a lot of coverage for it.
"O-Hillary broke Lib - I -yah, now they own it!" ... in which case things like thousands of refugees dying in trying to escape via the Mediterranean, Christians beheaded in Libya, the death of the Ambassador and Navy Seals, etc would be seen as an ever growing "bill for damages" for breaking a nation for reasons that nobody seems interested in even asking -- to the extent that the BO administration has had an answer it is something like "Arab Spring". "Get rid of the dictator and good things will happen".
The other e-mails in the list that would fit a narrative very well (if there was one) are the ones about that relate to Sidney Blumenthal "Sid Vicious" every evil one has to have "henchmen". Bush - Cheney - Rove for example. Blumenthal fits such a role exceedingly well -- if anyone cared even slightly about the story of Libya and Benghazi. But, since any hint of a narrative has been scrupulously avoided, there is no story.
Which is really the eternal question. To create a story or not? There can easily be a story built on nothing -- The "outing" of Valerie Plame was a story with no real basis, yet it occupied a Grand Jury and much media time from 2003 - 2006. There was no "outing" because she wasn't a secret agent -- but if she had been, it was confirmed it would have been Richard Armitage that outed her, and he was considered one of the "good guys" against the Iraq war, so nobody would care if he accidentally did.
ALL stories from the real world are over-simplifications of facts. "Kennedy got us to the moon" and "Reagan ended the USSR" are both simplifications, but stories with significant basis in the real world. None of our stories are completely true -- no human has access to anything even close to all the facts, and even if we did, without significant moulding of the picture of reality it is impossible for us to process.
The DEFINITION of human understanding is very close to "having a narrative". Can I give you an "elevator pitch" on what happened in Vietnam, how I met my wife, how the Internet works, why I think Obama is a bad president ... and on and on to infinity. For things we truly understand at a deep level, we have non-story subconscious "core truth", but we can't communicate that -- that is why the super smart programmer often comes across as "not having a clue", because he can't make a "story" out of his understanding, it is too detailed and deep.
So "The Story" of Libya and Benghazi is a boring non-story. "A bunch of Republicans trying to pin something on Hillary or BO". Most of this is just due to the big capable story telling guns in the MSM not being on the job telling the tale, some of it is due to the decline of America.
In 1979, when Iranians took the US Embassy in Tehran, the nation was riveted. Some of this was no doubt due to the fact of hostages being held, but a good deal of it was due to A UNITED STATES EMBASSY having been overrun. Even after Vietnam, many Americans still saw this nation as the top Superpower -- ahead of our nearest competitor the USSR. Seeing us unable to defend our Embassy in what we saw as a small backwater nation was something that hurt the pride of people proud to be Americans.
That is probably the real basic story here. We are no longer the nation we were in 1979. Seeing an Embassy destroyed, the US Ambassador killed and body desecrated, brave Navy Seals calling for support with no response from our leadership has no effect on 80% of Americans today. We are not a nation that believes that we are exceptional. We believe that it is possible to care only for our ease in the manner of cows chewing our cuds.
Today we like stories that make us feel good. It is too much trouble to test their truth or consider their dark sides.
'via Blog this'
Monday, May 25, 2015
Proof Of God, The Inhumanity of Western Civilization
Dennis Prager -- Judaism's Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism (and then Christianity) Rejected Homosexuality:
This is a somewhat longish but highly important article, VERY worth the time to read. It is uncomfortable, because it paints human (especially male) sexuality in a light that we would prefer not to be painted -- but it makes a very strong case for the truth of that painting.
The basic proposal of the article is that Judaism created the concept of "homosexual" -- in all other ancient life, sex was a power relation between penetrator and penetrated. Gender was just one of the many things that didn't matter to the ancient male.
I've often stated the things that most convince me of Christianity:
Just as we can look around us at the universe and know in our soul that this was created, even more so, we can realize that without the hand of God, none of what we call Western Civilization today would exist. Thanks be to God that he has promised that his Word and Church will endure, so it will not ALL be lost -- but only the most blind can fail to see that massive pieces of the once great civilization are falling around us.
As Praeger says in another part of the article, even if most people were blinded, we will never look at blindness as "normal"!
'via Blog this'
This is a somewhat longish but highly important article, VERY worth the time to read. It is uncomfortable, because it paints human (especially male) sexuality in a light that we would prefer not to be painted -- but it makes a very strong case for the truth of that painting.
The basic proposal of the article is that Judaism created the concept of "homosexual" -- in all other ancient life, sex was a power relation between penetrator and penetrated. Gender was just one of the many things that didn't matter to the ancient male.
The revolutionary nature of Judaism's prohibiting all forms of non-marital sex was nowhere more radical, more challenging to the prevailing assumptions of mankind, than with regard to homosexuality. Indeed, Judaism may be said to have invented the notion of homosexuality, for in the ancient world sexuality was not divided between heterosexuality and homosexuality. That division was the Bible's doing. Before the Bible, the world divided sexuality between penetrator (active partner) and penetrated (passive partner).Prager covers a lot of ground in the piece -- the ancient civilizations and sexualized religions that surrounded the Jews as well as the Greeks, the Romans and others. Quite in contrast to the idea that Judaism and Christianity "subjugated women", he points out the obvious fact that males are more powerful -- they take what they want by force, and what they often want is sex. Without restraint, the world they create bears little resemblance to Western Civilization -- even in its rapidly declining form.
I've often stated the things that most convince me of Christianity:
- Nobody dies for something they know to be false. Many of the disciples that bore witness to the Resurrection would have had to know it to be false if that were the case, yet they went to their painful deaths as martyrs testifying to it as truth. Not human behavior if it were not true.
- Nobody would make up the New Testament -- it is full of things that are simply extremely poor salesmanship. Peter denying Christ, the bickering among the disciples, the differences in the accounts. Including the testimony of women as witnesses (they didn't get the vote in the US until 1920, their status in the 1st-2nd centuries was nada). Sure, TODAY, we understand that a too pat story with too perfect hero's is a sign of fabrication, but the ancient world did not see that -- they wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey, Gilgamesh, etc ... a suffering saviour that dies a horrible death on a cross? Not a good founding story for a religion!
"In all my research on this subject, nothing moved me more than the Talmudic law that Jews were forbidden to sell slaves or sheep to non-Jews, lest the non-Jews engage in homosexuality and bestiality. That was the world in which rabbis wrote the Talmud, and in which, earlier, the Bible was written. Asked what is the single greatest revelation I have derived from all my researches, I always respond, "That there had to have been divine revelation to produce the Torah." The Torah was simply too different from the rest of the world, too against man's nature, to have been solely man-made."We can pick up a living thing and instantly know "this is not of human construction". Or we can go to any of our stores and pick up items that are clearly "not a construction of nature".
Just as we can look around us at the universe and know in our soul that this was created, even more so, we can realize that without the hand of God, none of what we call Western Civilization today would exist. Thanks be to God that he has promised that his Word and Church will endure, so it will not ALL be lost -- but only the most blind can fail to see that massive pieces of the once great civilization are falling around us.
As Praeger says in another part of the article, even if most people were blinded, we will never look at blindness as "normal"!
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