Michael Moore's Michigan Mansion Up for Sale for $5.2 Million | The American Spectator:
Consistency is NEVER an issue if you are in the good graces of TP and the left. "Hypocrisy" is a term that simply does not exist as long as you are left -- Bill Clinton can be BOTH a serial abuser of women AND a champion of women! The concept of hypocrisy just doesn't exist for the left looking at the left. It isn't that they ignore it, it is that it has no meaning there. Like "wet / dry" to a fish!
However, someone not of TP, especially if they make any claim to holding any moral standards, is CERTAINLY a TOTAL HYPOCRITE by definition! It is inescapable, that is simply how the lefty TP mind works!
Thus, it is easy to understand Moore. It isn't possible for him to be a hypocrite -- the left in this mortal coil gives complete past and future redemption from needing to follow the rules that are applied only to those "not of the body", those terrible lost and unrepentant souls that fail to bow before the power of TP and "get their minds right".
Mikes mind is right -- so he can be BOTH a champion of the poor and filthy rich, heaping gobs of abuse on those of the wrong political persuasion that are wealthy. THEIR money comes at the expense of the poor and contributes to the horrible "inequality".
But not Moore's.
'via Blog this'
Thursday, August 13, 2015
WaPo Bit Chilly On Hilly Server
This e-mail story just keeps getting worse for Hillary Clinton - The Washington Post:
It is somewhat entertaining to watch the MSM Clinton shills do the weasel waltz and a bit of apparent hand wringing about the prospects that their "sure thing" will not be able to ooze her way to the White House, even with all their groveling, averting their eyes, and direct assistance.
"The Clinton Way" is followed so closely it is like a scripted Mob operation from the Godfather. In March there is the confident declaration of the crime as a non-crime "I used a private server, BUT ... there is nothing wrong with that (the BIG lie) ... besides, nothing classified, nothing of interest, etc ... and I wiped it anyway, so nothing to see here folks, all over, move along ... not taking any questions".
To anyone not of The Party or their thrall, who has seen Special Prosecutors all over the supposed "outing" of a CIA agent that drove to her office at Langley every day, as well as CBS News Anchors lose their positions over forged documents attempting to show how supposedly bad a fighter pilot a president running for his SECOND term was 30 years ago, the surrealism borders on a brain hemorrhage!
H E L L O !!!!! She releases forty e-mails out of 31,000 and **FOUR** turn out to be Top freaking Secret????!!!! ... that is 10% of of a sample of less than a thousandth of the total! (this is a FELONY BTW !! ... Felons don't get to be President!!!)
If H was an R, there would be two and only two non-exclusive possibilities:
1). She is completely corrupt and lies compulsively
2). She is incompetent beyond belief
In either case, if she was an R, she would be prosecuted and convicted as a FELON ... case closed. There aren't any excuses if you are an R ... corrupt, incompetent, liar ... who cares. Felon, have them eat off a tin tray!
To those of us that live in the real world, how DOES someone with an unlimited budget, connections beyond connections in computing, security, government, etc. claim "there was nothing secret on that server", then release a set of 40 e-mails that include 4 with top secret information? Does she not know? Does she not take the time to have some poor staffie look them over? Does she not care because she is completely certain that she is above the law and above scrutiny? Is this all just "beneath her"?
My guess is "all of the above". She is surrounded by toadies and sycophants, she was never that bright to begin with , has been phoning it in for a long time, and she has done so much illegal stuff and assisted her lip curling hubby with same, that she is 100% confident that no matter what, she will be fine.
Sadly, she is probably right. Trump is likely to run as a 3rd party, take 20% off the Rs, and she will win big. This WaPo story is just a lament ... their girl had to do what she said she would not do (give up the server), and they have some worries that the level of corruption, incompetence and disdain for the country and it's voters will be too much for them to even hide.
But it won't be. They are TP shills to the end, as is the whole justice department, NSA, FBI, etc. I have a strong belief that there really aren't any R's in office that TP doesn't control (have the dirt on). The recent Hastert indictment ought to be enough to put the bone chilling fear into the Boehners, McConnells and their lieutenants. A past speaker -- out of office since 2007, seen as worthy of a takedown because he chose to pay "hush money" for a long ago sin ...
Yet Al Sharpton regularly visits the WH with $5 MILLION in known unpaid taxes and a list of scandal a mile long -- drugs, extortion, sex. What makes people obedient is CONTRAST -- TP has the power to let the Clintons, Obamas, Sharptons, etc live above the law -- but the Cosbys, Hasterts, etc go down in shame. It is the type of lesson of which a Joseph Stalin or Adolph Hitler would heartily approve!
TP controls the whole vast government apparatus, and the past few years there have been some hints at just how vast it is. Go back enough years in the lives of especially the powerful, and "there has gotta be something" -- even if not, how hard do you think it would be for the NSA to put some texts, pictures, or something on your phone that would be horribly incriminating? Hint ... child's play, indeed there are probably a few students at the local high school that could pull it off.
So don't worry for Hilly and TP ... the fix is in. Acting a bit worried -- like the linked column, is most likely just a part of the Kabuki Dance.
Having top secret documents on a personal server is a FELONY ... but never mind. Old news, move along, say hello to Queen Hildebeast!
'via Blog this'
It is somewhat entertaining to watch the MSM Clinton shills do the weasel waltz and a bit of apparent hand wringing about the prospects that their "sure thing" will not be able to ooze her way to the White House, even with all their groveling, averting their eyes, and direct assistance.
"The Clinton Way" is followed so closely it is like a scripted Mob operation from the Godfather. In March there is the confident declaration of the crime as a non-crime "I used a private server, BUT ... there is nothing wrong with that (the BIG lie) ... besides, nothing classified, nothing of interest, etc ... and I wiped it anyway, so nothing to see here folks, all over, move along ... not taking any questions".
To anyone not of The Party or their thrall, who has seen Special Prosecutors all over the supposed "outing" of a CIA agent that drove to her office at Langley every day, as well as CBS News Anchors lose their positions over forged documents attempting to show how supposedly bad a fighter pilot a president running for his SECOND term was 30 years ago, the surrealism borders on a brain hemorrhage!
H E L L O !!!!! She releases forty e-mails out of 31,000 and **FOUR** turn out to be Top freaking Secret????!!!! ... that is 10% of of a sample of less than a thousandth of the total! (this is a FELONY BTW !! ... Felons don't get to be President!!!)
If H was an R, there would be two and only two non-exclusive possibilities:
1). She is completely corrupt and lies compulsively
2). She is incompetent beyond belief
In either case, if she was an R, she would be prosecuted and convicted as a FELON ... case closed. There aren't any excuses if you are an R ... corrupt, incompetent, liar ... who cares. Felon, have them eat off a tin tray!
To those of us that live in the real world, how DOES someone with an unlimited budget, connections beyond connections in computing, security, government, etc. claim "there was nothing secret on that server", then release a set of 40 e-mails that include 4 with top secret information? Does she not know? Does she not take the time to have some poor staffie look them over? Does she not care because she is completely certain that she is above the law and above scrutiny? Is this all just "beneath her"?
My guess is "all of the above". She is surrounded by toadies and sycophants, she was never that bright to begin with , has been phoning it in for a long time, and she has done so much illegal stuff and assisted her lip curling hubby with same, that she is 100% confident that no matter what, she will be fine.
Sadly, she is probably right. Trump is likely to run as a 3rd party, take 20% off the Rs, and she will win big. This WaPo story is just a lament ... their girl had to do what she said she would not do (give up the server), and they have some worries that the level of corruption, incompetence and disdain for the country and it's voters will be too much for them to even hide.
But it won't be. They are TP shills to the end, as is the whole justice department, NSA, FBI, etc. I have a strong belief that there really aren't any R's in office that TP doesn't control (have the dirt on). The recent Hastert indictment ought to be enough to put the bone chilling fear into the Boehners, McConnells and their lieutenants. A past speaker -- out of office since 2007, seen as worthy of a takedown because he chose to pay "hush money" for a long ago sin ...
Yet Al Sharpton regularly visits the WH with $5 MILLION in known unpaid taxes and a list of scandal a mile long -- drugs, extortion, sex. What makes people obedient is CONTRAST -- TP has the power to let the Clintons, Obamas, Sharptons, etc live above the law -- but the Cosbys, Hasterts, etc go down in shame. It is the type of lesson of which a Joseph Stalin or Adolph Hitler would heartily approve!
TP controls the whole vast government apparatus, and the past few years there have been some hints at just how vast it is. Go back enough years in the lives of especially the powerful, and "there has gotta be something" -- even if not, how hard do you think it would be for the NSA to put some texts, pictures, or something on your phone that would be horribly incriminating? Hint ... child's play, indeed there are probably a few students at the local high school that could pull it off.
So don't worry for Hilly and TP ... the fix is in. Acting a bit worried -- like the linked column, is most likely just a part of the Kabuki Dance.
Having top secret documents on a personal server is a FELONY ... but never mind. Old news, move along, say hello to Queen Hildebeast!
'via Blog this'
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Heresy, History, Theology
This is not a common topic for me, but I was recently exposed to "Rightly Dividing the Gospel" through a friend. Although I'm what might be called "well read", and have a varied background in Christian religion, this was new.
Raised as a Fundamentalist Baptist in a small association called "The General Association of Regular Baptists" in N Wisconsin; doing a good deal of study on the history of world religions during and after college; eventually finding a home in Lutheranism (although Catholicism might well be even closer to my thoughts); being exposed to a small sect called "Apostolic Christian" which has something on the order of 30K members in the US, ... plus reading a lot of books, and articles on religion, but I'd never run into the "rightly divided gospel" slant.
My first reaction when I see something like this -- in religion, in "get rich quick schemes", in "did you know that xxxx is a huge conspiracy"?, etc, etc is to try to be gentle. All humans want to be "special", and to have "special knowledge" -- Birthers, Truthers (9-11 was an inside job), Pierre Salinger Flight 800, The Da Vinci Code, etc, etc ad nauseum. Most all of us have been taken in by more than one, and have some sympathy for some others. Human nature LOVES "special knowledge", and while REAL "special knowledge" is very hard to get, taking years of study and effort, the kind we all like is ALWAYS easy -- "everyone else just missed it!". (that is a big clue to falseness)
There is a special name for special knowledge related to Christianity "Gnosticism" ...the specific version where the physical world is created by a "demiurge" is only one example. The concept of "special knowledge" permeates Zoroastrianism, Neoplatonism and everything up through Mormonism and New Age cults. Folks have been at this a LONG time.
So the first test is "is this REALLY something that has been around a LONG time (stood the test of time), and who are the smartest people that support it?". Who founded it?, when did they do it?, what is their character?, what were their credentials?, etc.
So now I'll be a bit flip -- since I have acknowledged that we all have this weakness.
....and Christ said“Upon this Brock (Robert C Brock)I will found my Church … in 1985, and here is it’s “Vatican”… or for MO Synod, “Holy City” (St. Louis).
Not all that impressive. Google and "Street View" take some of the cachet out of such things. The "core" of this "faith" is that God sent Paul to Gentiles and Jesus to the Jews, so "Gentiles" can just listen to Paul. This is more than a bit hard to take seriously right off the bat -- so did Christ die only for the Jews? Even for God, big time actions are pretty hard to ignore -- like dying for the sins of ALL. I could spend time going through each of the verses they take out of context to attempt to make their case, but I'm not wasting my time. A cursory search of the web didn't show that anyone with any stature has even found this blip worthy of rebuttal, so I'm not inclined to tilt at the windmill Don Quixote style.
Humans love fixation. Lutherans tend to be fixated on "Grace" -- if there is anything that is required of them for salvation they get testy. Taking regular communion, darkening the church door, forgiving little of others since MUCH has been forgiven for them, any sort of "work", etc, they balk -- it must ALL be GRACE! Thus saith Luther -- but not Christ IMHO.
Baptists are all decisions and don'ts (don't drink, don't smoke, don't play cards, don't go to movies, don't dance ... it varies, but ye shall know them cuz they don't!
Catholics are just Catholic -- you are or you aren't. They have the "one true church founded on Peter" verse to lean on, and as someone who cares about history, their claim resonates with me.
But -- Christ resonates more. I'm never going to be a "Paulist", I'm a CHRISTIAN!!! Christ not only spoke and speaks to me, he DIED for ME (and I'm not a Jew). The actions of almighty God seep through time and space -- as well as his words. TO ME!
Paul is great -- he has his problems with women, getting married and of course "his thorn". He is fine, but he isn't GOD, and certainly not the SAVIOR!
Heresy is an old and new problem just like other temptation, and it always be as long as some guy in the corner hands out a pamphlet giving you "the secret knowledge". So we have the the Apostles Creed (180 or so), the Nicene Creed (325), and the Athanasian Creed (6th century, But mostly from St Augustine, "On the Trinity" from 415). Not exactly "new knowledge".
We Lutherans may have gotten fixated on Grace (a very good thing in general), but at least we have not forgotten the creeds of the church that leads all the way back to the seminal moments of history where Jesus dies on the Cross and RISES from the dead! In case someone missed that, Paul didn't do that -- nor did he remotely claim to do so. Nor did he say "upon this rock (or even this "Brock") I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
Heresies, especially Gnostic types, are a dime a dozen. We can all feel that little pang of "I've NEVER heard about THIS before, MAYBE it is true and changes everything"! When we feel it, it is a good time to read a couple creeds and get over it -- maybe with a glass of OLD Scotch .. possibly older than the new "revelation" in some cases.
It is the siren song of the latest and greatest product, the newest "study" and "progressivism" itself, the leading snake oil of our time. It's new, but it is a very old story!
Don't be fooled -- wisdom is always old and eternity is always long.
Raised as a Fundamentalist Baptist in a small association called "The General Association of Regular Baptists" in N Wisconsin; doing a good deal of study on the history of world religions during and after college; eventually finding a home in Lutheranism (although Catholicism might well be even closer to my thoughts); being exposed to a small sect called "Apostolic Christian" which has something on the order of 30K members in the US, ... plus reading a lot of books, and articles on religion, but I'd never run into the "rightly divided gospel" slant.
My first reaction when I see something like this -- in religion, in "get rich quick schemes", in "did you know that xxxx is a huge conspiracy"?, etc, etc is to try to be gentle. All humans want to be "special", and to have "special knowledge" -- Birthers, Truthers (9-11 was an inside job), Pierre Salinger Flight 800, The Da Vinci Code, etc, etc ad nauseum. Most all of us have been taken in by more than one, and have some sympathy for some others. Human nature LOVES "special knowledge", and while REAL "special knowledge" is very hard to get, taking years of study and effort, the kind we all like is ALWAYS easy -- "everyone else just missed it!". (that is a big clue to falseness)
There is a special name for special knowledge related to Christianity "Gnosticism" ...the specific version where the physical world is created by a "demiurge" is only one example. The concept of "special knowledge" permeates Zoroastrianism, Neoplatonism and everything up through Mormonism and New Age cults. Folks have been at this a LONG time.
So the first test is "is this REALLY something that has been around a LONG time (stood the test of time), and who are the smartest people that support it?". Who founded it?, when did they do it?, what is their character?, what were their credentials?, etc.
So now I'll be a bit flip -- since I have acknowledged that we all have this weakness.
....and Christ said“Upon this Brock (Robert C Brock)I will found my Church … in 1985, and here is it’s “Vatican”… or for MO Synod, “Holy City” (St. Louis).
Not all that impressive. Google and "Street View" take some of the cachet out of such things. The "core" of this "faith" is that God sent Paul to Gentiles and Jesus to the Jews, so "Gentiles" can just listen to Paul. This is more than a bit hard to take seriously right off the bat -- so did Christ die only for the Jews? Even for God, big time actions are pretty hard to ignore -- like dying for the sins of ALL. I could spend time going through each of the verses they take out of context to attempt to make their case, but I'm not wasting my time. A cursory search of the web didn't show that anyone with any stature has even found this blip worthy of rebuttal, so I'm not inclined to tilt at the windmill Don Quixote style.
Humans love fixation. Lutherans tend to be fixated on "Grace" -- if there is anything that is required of them for salvation they get testy. Taking regular communion, darkening the church door, forgiving little of others since MUCH has been forgiven for them, any sort of "work", etc, they balk -- it must ALL be GRACE! Thus saith Luther -- but not Christ IMHO.
Baptists are all decisions and don'ts (don't drink, don't smoke, don't play cards, don't go to movies, don't dance ... it varies, but ye shall know them cuz they don't!
Catholics are just Catholic -- you are or you aren't. They have the "one true church founded on Peter" verse to lean on, and as someone who cares about history, their claim resonates with me.
But -- Christ resonates more. I'm never going to be a "Paulist", I'm a CHRISTIAN!!! Christ not only spoke and speaks to me, he DIED for ME (and I'm not a Jew). The actions of almighty God seep through time and space -- as well as his words. TO ME!
Paul is great -- he has his problems with women, getting married and of course "his thorn". He is fine, but he isn't GOD, and certainly not the SAVIOR!
Heresy is an old and new problem just like other temptation, and it always be as long as some guy in the corner hands out a pamphlet giving you "the secret knowledge". So we have the the Apostles Creed (180 or so), the Nicene Creed (325), and the Athanasian Creed (6th century, But mostly from St Augustine, "On the Trinity" from 415). Not exactly "new knowledge".
We Lutherans may have gotten fixated on Grace (a very good thing in general), but at least we have not forgotten the creeds of the church that leads all the way back to the seminal moments of history where Jesus dies on the Cross and RISES from the dead! In case someone missed that, Paul didn't do that -- nor did he remotely claim to do so. Nor did he say "upon this rock (or even this "Brock") I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
Heresies, especially Gnostic types, are a dime a dozen. We can all feel that little pang of "I've NEVER heard about THIS before, MAYBE it is true and changes everything"! When we feel it, it is a good time to read a couple creeds and get over it -- maybe with a glass of OLD Scotch .. possibly older than the new "revelation" in some cases.
It is the siren song of the latest and greatest product, the newest "study" and "progressivism" itself, the leading snake oil of our time. It's new, but it is a very old story!
Don't be fooled -- wisdom is always old and eternity is always long.
BO Shooting Staffer Makes CNN
Police: White House staffer arrested after firing shot at lover - CNNPolitics.com:
As I commented on last night, it has made CNN ... although it isn't close to a headline and you have to look for it a bit.
I'm sure there is no bias involved -- a Deadliest Catch captain dying at Sturgis (the lead story) is more interesting than the WH liaison to the House of Representatives taking a shot at her boyfriend!
Oh! The diplomacy!
'via Blog this'
As I commented on last night, it has made CNN ... although it isn't close to a headline and you have to look for it a bit.
I'm sure there is no bias involved -- a Deadliest Catch captain dying at Sturgis (the lead story) is more interesting than the WH liaison to the House of Representatives taking a shot at her boyfriend!
Oh! The diplomacy!
'via Blog this'
Vindictive Protectiveness, Wisdom Meets PC
How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus - The Atlantic:
This is longish, but WELL worth the read! I love virtually everything Jonathan Haidt writes (if you scan the blog for his name, you will find a long list ...), and unfortunately, I've been exposed to Cognitive Therapy and Dr David Burns writings as progenitor of this approach. I say "unfortunately" because like being exposed to surgery means you have had a problem, likewise my exposure to Burns means battling anxiety and depression. While I don't enjoy those problems, I'm also aware that those problems for writers are possibly as common as knee injuries in football or shoulder separations in bicycling.
The base conclusion here is that the thinking patterns of the millennial generation are being driven toward de facto mental illness by the progression from "Politically Correct" to "Microaggression", and "Trigger Warnings" to create an environment of "Vindictive Protectiveness". Our schools have become a hostile environment for independent and mature thought.
The article does a masterful job of going through many of the 12 common mental errors made by people with a tendency toward anxiety and depression, and shows how they are the same errors used to convince students that none of their carefully constructed left wing politically correct thought need ever be questioned.
The 12 thinking errors are at the end -- even if you have mind like a steel trap, being aware of how these things can slip into your brain is worth the time, so I'll do a VERY quick synopsis here with a SLIGHT tongue in cheek political flavor. These errors are very common to ALL kinds of thinking!
'via Blog this'
This is longish, but WELL worth the read! I love virtually everything Jonathan Haidt writes (if you scan the blog for his name, you will find a long list ...), and unfortunately, I've been exposed to Cognitive Therapy and Dr David Burns writings as progenitor of this approach. I say "unfortunately" because like being exposed to surgery means you have had a problem, likewise my exposure to Burns means battling anxiety and depression. While I don't enjoy those problems, I'm also aware that those problems for writers are possibly as common as knee injuries in football or shoulder separations in bicycling.
The base conclusion here is that the thinking patterns of the millennial generation are being driven toward de facto mental illness by the progression from "Politically Correct" to "Microaggression", and "Trigger Warnings" to create an environment of "Vindictive Protectiveness". Our schools have become a hostile environment for independent and mature thought.
The article does a masterful job of going through many of the 12 common mental errors made by people with a tendency toward anxiety and depression, and shows how they are the same errors used to convince students that none of their carefully constructed left wing politically correct thought need ever be questioned.
The 12 thinking errors are at the end -- even if you have mind like a steel trap, being aware of how these things can slip into your brain is worth the time, so I'll do a VERY quick synopsis here with a SLIGHT tongue in cheek political flavor. These errors are very common to ALL kinds of thinking!
- Mind Reading -- You know what lurks in the evil mind of Condoleezza Rice. No need to have her speak!
- Fortune Telling -- If I read or hear about rape it will trigger all sort of bad thoughts, so the best idea is to not be exposed to the topic!
- Catastrophizing -- (mountains out of molehills) I saw a gun! I can't go on living in such a violent culture!
- Labeling -- He is a Christian, therefore he is racist, sexist, homophobic and loves only rich people!
- Discounting the Positive -- Sure W Bush did some AIDs stuff in Africa, but that was just an attempt to cover his true evil! (the reverse binocular trick -- you look at the positives with the wrong side of the binoculars)
- Negative Filtering -- Focus on the negatives, ignore the positives. Sure, the economy seemed good from 2002-2007, but it was all a sham.
- Overgeneralizing -- Produce a global pattern from one or a small number of incidents. Katrina proves that we will have lots of strong storms for years to come!
- All or Nothing -- Everything is stark with no gray -- for depressed or anxious people, usually BAD, and even the smallest thing is huge. "I can't love America as long as one person flies the Confederate Flag!"
- Blaming -- Republicans and Big Business have created a world where there is no hope for the little guy.
- What if? -- My favorite is "What if Napoleon had a B-52 at Waterloo?" What if I have a motorcycle accident? What if the Stock Market goes to $500? ...
- Emotional Reasoning -- Republicans make me feel bad, therefore they are bad.
- Inability to Disconfirm -- Global Warming is settled, nothing can convince me otherwise.
What you should really do is ignore what I say and take the time to read it. What Haidt won't say very directly but I will (though he comes very close as I show below), is that since our educational system is completely left wing, as well as most of our media and entertainment, what we are really looking at here is a problem of the left. Here I depart to charges of possibly justified paranoia in saying that I don't believe it is an accident. The Party explicitly wants a nation of sensitive followers rather than strong minded classically educated individuals. Religion, Philosophy and Classical Literature all create bulwarks against the kind of state sponsored "offendedness sweepstakes" we see today ... I'd argue that reality also argues against it.
If campus culture conveys the idea that visitors must be pure, with résumés that never offend generally left-leaning campus sensibilities, then higher education will have taken a further step toward intellectual homogeneity and the creation of an environment in which students rarely encounter diverse viewpoints. And universities will have reinforced the belief that it’s okay to filter out the positive. If students graduate believing that they can learn nothing from people they dislike or from those with whom they disagree, we will have done them a great intellectual disservice.
When the ideas, values, and speech of the other side are seen not just as wrong but as willfully aggressive toward innocent victims, it is hard to imagine the kind of mutual respect, negotiation, and compromise that are needed to make politics a positive-sum game.Haidt has managed to continue to use science and reason to create what I see as wisdom writing -- the largest single missing element in the modern world. Ignore what I say -- read his wise words.
'via Blog this'
Bread and Circuses Debate
A Debatable 'Debate' - Thomas Sowell - Page 1:
The other half was heavily on evidence in the "debate", the "shout show" format where Reality TV personalities like Trump do very well. The "circuses" that the populace demands to be entertained. As the quote above states, America is now like ancient Rome, where the populace wants just two things -- a full stomach and entertainment. There are no great visions of exploration, advancement -- even the goal of individual wealth, let alone family wealth, is heavily sanctioned and considered "selfish" and "greedy".
All are to sit back, eat their fill, be entertained, and most important of all, believe in what The Party says and do what little it says to do -- mostly just eat, drink an be merry, but occasionally get all excited over a police shooting, gay "marriage", a Confederate Flag ...or something else The Party holds up as the important topic for a week or so. "Conform Ye -- to the will of The Party" is the lead commandment.
The Sowell article asks a rhetorical question that unfortunately has a negative answer at this point.
… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses (Juvenal, AD 100)Reading the Sowell column reminded me of the old "bread and circuses" phrase from the decline of Rome. The bread was the "annona" which translates as "grain dole" -- entitlements (bread) are one half of why our founders did a Republic rather than a Democracy
The other half was heavily on evidence in the "debate", the "shout show" format where Reality TV personalities like Trump do very well. The "circuses" that the populace demands to be entertained. As the quote above states, America is now like ancient Rome, where the populace wants just two things -- a full stomach and entertainment. There are no great visions of exploration, advancement -- even the goal of individual wealth, let alone family wealth, is heavily sanctioned and considered "selfish" and "greedy".
All are to sit back, eat their fill, be entertained, and most important of all, believe in what The Party says and do what little it says to do -- mostly just eat, drink an be merry, but occasionally get all excited over a police shooting, gay "marriage", a Confederate Flag ...or something else The Party holds up as the important topic for a week or so. "Conform Ye -- to the will of The Party" is the lead commandment.
The Sowell article asks a rhetorical question that unfortunately has a negative answer at this point.
A poll taken after the "debates" showed that, of the 17 participants, the top 5 were all people who had never run a state government or a federal agency. In other words, those who came out on top in this battle of sound bites were people whose great strength was in rhetoric.
After more than six years of Barack Obama in the White House, have we learned nothing about the dangers of choosing a President of the United States on the basis of sound bites, with no track record to check against his rhetoric?'via Blog this'
Monday, August 10, 2015
HUH? BO Special Assistant Arrested??!!
White House aide arrested for assault:
Sounds like a hell of a diplomatic level headed lady for sure!
'via Blog this'
Barvetta Singletary, 37, is a special assistant to the president who handles President Obama's relations with the House of Representatives. Police in Prince George's County, Maryland say Singletary and the unnamed officer had a domestic dispute last Friday morning in the suburb of Upper Marlboro when she grabbed his duty weapon out of a bag and fired one round into the floor. No one was injured, police said.Say what? This is USA Today, so it is hitting the mainstream a bit at least. This woman handles BO's relations with the House???? HELLO ????
Sounds like a hell of a diplomatic level headed lady for sure!
'via Blog this'
America, Urine Trouble
Stench and the City: SF’s Summer of Urine | The American Spectator:
I've written to exhaustion on the fact that we have LOTS of actual results to show how well left wing policies don't work, but for "The Party", they could simply care less. Their rhetoric about "caring" is just that rhetoric! What they care about is power -- riots in Ferguson a year after their hoax of "Hand's up don't shoot" fit their agenda fine. It gets out the base!
If it also ignites violence across the country and hundreds or even thousands of young black men die, and many times that are imprisoned, they are fine with that. It is all do to the programs TP has put in place, but those programs give them what they really want -- VOTES ... which give them POWER! Even 50+ million innocent aborted lives are very good news when all you care for is power!
So the once great hope of the world slides to the nasty smell of the 3rd world under the same policies that keep the 3rd world the 3rd world ... and we decline, while only a small percentage knows what is happening, and even a smaller percentage care, because you have to be a "denier" of the greatness that we are told is BO to report it, and to read about it you might be labeled a racist.
'via Blog this'
How bad is the urine situation in San Francisco? This is not a joke: Monday night, a light pole corroded by urine collapsed and crashed onto a car, narrowly missing the driver. The smell is worse than I have known since I started working for The Chronicle in 1992.Unfortunately, it isn't just urine ... and it isn't just San Francisco.
I've written to exhaustion on the fact that we have LOTS of actual results to show how well left wing policies don't work, but for "The Party", they could simply care less. Their rhetoric about "caring" is just that rhetoric! What they care about is power -- riots in Ferguson a year after their hoax of "Hand's up don't shoot" fit their agenda fine. It gets out the base!
If it also ignites violence across the country and hundreds or even thousands of young black men die, and many times that are imprisoned, they are fine with that. It is all do to the programs TP has put in place, but those programs give them what they really want -- VOTES ... which give them POWER! Even 50+ million innocent aborted lives are very good news when all you care for is power!
So the once great hope of the world slides to the nasty smell of the 3rd world under the same policies that keep the 3rd world the 3rd world ... and we decline, while only a small percentage knows what is happening, and even a smaller percentage care, because you have to be a "denier" of the greatness that we are told is BO to report it, and to read about it you might be labeled a racist.
'via Blog this'
Religion, Philosophy, Science and Scotch
I could throw Politics, Rhetoric and Dialectic in there as well, but I want to write a blog post, not a book! The motivation is somewhat random -- I see too many nominalists calling people of faith names, and most of them don't even know they are nominalists, let alone what the consequences of that are.
For the bulk of the history of Western Civilization, Religion held the top position in the pantheon of thought, and rightly so -- for it is about ultimate questions. Questions that can't be answered by man as only man because they are "leaps of faith", "revelation", "hypothesis", "guesses and wishes", etc. Why are we here? Is there a God? What is the good? What does it all mean? Wisdom -- what is it and how is it obtained? Religion was and still is for many that which is beyond the "stuff", but which gives our short corporeal lives meaning and connection to the infinite.
In legitimate and constant competition was Philosophy -- The secular version of asking the ultimate questions -- although often reaching the same God answer. Philosophy includes thought about thought - epistemology, thought about nature - science, thought about right and wrong -- ethics (morals), and thought about "what is" (being or ontology) -- metaphysics. Philosophy is the secular attempt to give meaning, morals and order to human thought and activity directed by it.
But something went wrong in the once thriving paradise of ordered western thought. Dr's Frankenstein, Pandora and Evil (Austin Powers) declared themselves masters of the universe and rose up and smote both Religion and Philosophy. The branch of Science became the tree and first questions like; "What does it mean?", "Is it good?", "Where does this lead us to"? etc became replaced by; "We have the technology!", "We can make it "better"/faster/cheaper/stronger/less filling! "Oh, What a brave new world!".
So today, a branch of Philosophy concerned with mechanism and entirely with "stuff" (matter) vs thought, meaning, morality, ultimate causes and ultimate effects has usurped the thrones of Religion and Philosophy and the engineers run the ship of society with the assistance of a set of "sciences"-- Political Science, Social Science, Psychology, Economics, Anthropology, etc. All with doses of at least statistical sleight of hand, and allusions to be be "hard science". In the usurpation, being about "stuff" rather than thought became something seen as desirable. (Nominalism)
In order to usurp the throne of the kingdom of thought, Science had to kill the "ghost in the machine", the dualism that made man more than the beasts. The witches of "science and pragmatism" have already given us the guillotine of the French Revolution, the gulag of the USSR, the gas chambers of National Socialism in Germany, and the millions lost in Mao's revolution and the Killing Fields of Pol Pot. "Parts are parts" -- mechanical parts, human parts, baby parts -- no ghost, just matter. When all knowledge is "bottom up", the bottom becomes "god", and the former rulers -- reason, wisdom, spirit, intellect, beauty, love and reverence become shit.
Naturally, Science will object -- their claim will be that "those were bad men!". Ah, but now that Science holds dominance over Religion and Philosophy, how is one to know the "bad"? Did not Science provide the tools for these "bad men" to carry out their progroms? Did not Scientists and Engineers willingly take part in the creation and the operation of the means of control, death and destruction of millions? How can one grasp the levers of great power, glory in the grasping, yet claim no responsibility when that power is used for evil? The rulership of Science cares not for values and meaning -- indeed, it washes it's hands of them like Pontius Pilate. "We only followed orders"!
Human appetites are insatiable. The higher appetite for true higher knowledge and wisdom is replaced with an all too natural appetite to worship the physical, but the physical speaks only to the physical and the spiritual part of man becomes insane, drug addled, suicidal. Idolatry is still idolatry even if the physical worship consists of theories, data, experiments, models and such. The worship of the physical is still the same -- still Pagan, and no different at all from a little stone statue. Converting the tool of Science into a god is simple idolatry.
As Earnest Becker puts it in "Denial Of Death".
I am reminded again of one of my favorite books ... "Ideas Have Consequences", from which comes this quote on how man became convinced to worship matter vs transcendence:
In their proper place, both Scotch and Science are worthy of praise -- for our society though, putting Science back in the proper place is going to be harder than a raging alcoholic giving up booze -- for much like the dieter, modern life requires, and is certainly enhanced by Science. Our task is more like dieting at Christmas ... and even worse, much of our society believes themselves to be happier (or at least suitably distracted / tranquilized) under improper influence of Science.
We have lost our way so badly one almost prays for a calamity like an EMP event, meteor collision, supervolcano eruption, etc, to potentially wake us from our stupor. Only a miracle of God can turn us from this course without major calamity.
For the bulk of the history of Western Civilization, Religion held the top position in the pantheon of thought, and rightly so -- for it is about ultimate questions. Questions that can't be answered by man as only man because they are "leaps of faith", "revelation", "hypothesis", "guesses and wishes", etc. Why are we here? Is there a God? What is the good? What does it all mean? Wisdom -- what is it and how is it obtained? Religion was and still is for many that which is beyond the "stuff", but which gives our short corporeal lives meaning and connection to the infinite.
In legitimate and constant competition was Philosophy -- The secular version of asking the ultimate questions -- although often reaching the same God answer. Philosophy includes thought about thought - epistemology, thought about nature - science, thought about right and wrong -- ethics (morals), and thought about "what is" (being or ontology) -- metaphysics. Philosophy is the secular attempt to give meaning, morals and order to human thought and activity directed by it.
But something went wrong in the once thriving paradise of ordered western thought. Dr's Frankenstein, Pandora and Evil (Austin Powers) declared themselves masters of the universe and rose up and smote both Religion and Philosophy. The branch of Science became the tree and first questions like; "What does it mean?", "Is it good?", "Where does this lead us to"? etc became replaced by; "We have the technology!", "We can make it "better"/faster/cheaper/stronger/less filling! "Oh, What a brave new world!".
So today, a branch of Philosophy concerned with mechanism and entirely with "stuff" (matter) vs thought, meaning, morality, ultimate causes and ultimate effects has usurped the thrones of Religion and Philosophy and the engineers run the ship of society with the assistance of a set of "sciences"-- Political Science, Social Science, Psychology, Economics, Anthropology, etc. All with doses of at least statistical sleight of hand, and allusions to be be "hard science". In the usurpation, being about "stuff" rather than thought became something seen as desirable. (Nominalism)
In order to usurp the throne of the kingdom of thought, Science had to kill the "ghost in the machine", the dualism that made man more than the beasts. The witches of "science and pragmatism" have already given us the guillotine of the French Revolution, the gulag of the USSR, the gas chambers of National Socialism in Germany, and the millions lost in Mao's revolution and the Killing Fields of Pol Pot. "Parts are parts" -- mechanical parts, human parts, baby parts -- no ghost, just matter. When all knowledge is "bottom up", the bottom becomes "god", and the former rulers -- reason, wisdom, spirit, intellect, beauty, love and reverence become shit.
Naturally, Science will object -- their claim will be that "those were bad men!". Ah, but now that Science holds dominance over Religion and Philosophy, how is one to know the "bad"? Did not Science provide the tools for these "bad men" to carry out their progroms? Did not Scientists and Engineers willingly take part in the creation and the operation of the means of control, death and destruction of millions? How can one grasp the levers of great power, glory in the grasping, yet claim no responsibility when that power is used for evil? The rulership of Science cares not for values and meaning -- indeed, it washes it's hands of them like Pontius Pilate. "We only followed orders"!
Human appetites are insatiable. The higher appetite for true higher knowledge and wisdom is replaced with an all too natural appetite to worship the physical, but the physical speaks only to the physical and the spiritual part of man becomes insane, drug addled, suicidal. Idolatry is still idolatry even if the physical worship consists of theories, data, experiments, models and such. The worship of the physical is still the same -- still Pagan, and no different at all from a little stone statue. Converting the tool of Science into a god is simple idolatry.
As Earnest Becker puts it in "Denial Of Death".
Nature's values are bodily values, human values are mental values, and though they take the loftiest flights they are built upon excrement, impossible without it, always brought back to it. As Montaigne put it, on the highest throne in the world man sits on his arse. If we push the observation even further and say men sit... over a warm and fuming pile of their own excrement - the joke is no longer funny. The tragedy of man's dualism... becomes too real. The anus and its incomprehensible, repulsive product represents... the fate... of all that is physical: decay and death.The solution for the scientific idolater becomes ignoring the spiritual deadness and impending doom of their existence with an overly cheery distracted whistle by the graveyard, or SOME sort of tranquilization. From actual drugs to video game distraction to sex to any possible form of screen to keep that supposedly murdered spiritual part from clawing it's way back to consciousness! Often, just calling those who still worship more than shit a name or two helps salve the wounded spirit.
I am reminded again of one of my favorite books ... "Ideas Have Consequences", from which comes this quote on how man became convinced to worship matter vs transcendence:
The witches spoke with the habitual equivocation of oracles when they told man that by this easy choice he might realize himself more fully, for they were actually initiating a course which cuts one off from reality. Thus began the "abomination of desolation" appearing today as a feeling of alienation from all fixed truth".None of this should be taken as me being an enemy of science! Far from it! I'm certainly not an enemy of good Scotch either, but it has it's proper time and place -- when Scotch becomes the center of your dietary intake, it is in the WRONG PLACE, and any that would tell you to put it there deserve to be the target of a blog at least as down on Scotch as this seems down on Science!
In their proper place, both Scotch and Science are worthy of praise -- for our society though, putting Science back in the proper place is going to be harder than a raging alcoholic giving up booze -- for much like the dieter, modern life requires, and is certainly enhanced by Science. Our task is more like dieting at Christmas ... and even worse, much of our society believes themselves to be happier (or at least suitably distracted / tranquilized) under improper influence of Science.
We have lost our way so badly one almost prays for a calamity like an EMP event, meteor collision, supervolcano eruption, etc, to potentially wake us from our stupor. Only a miracle of God can turn us from this course without major calamity.
Conservatives Shalt Not Collaborate
Wisconsin's Shame: New Audiotape Brings Terrifying John Doe Raid to Life | National Review Online:
The main focus of this particular article is pointing out fallacies in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's attempt to discredit one of the people whose home was invaded as part of the Milwaukee Prosecutors claimed investigation into "collaboration" among" conservative groups in Wisconsin -- amazingly, a "crime" if you are a conservative!
I covered the Gestapo style raids here.
What we see happening here is that the onslaught of "campaign finance law" which started in wake of Watergate is has increasingly become merely a way to harass and sometimes actually prosecute the opposition (R) for doing what "The Party" (TP-Democrat) do as an open matter of day to day operation.
Government Unions, Unions, Teachers, Lawyers, Wall Street, Media ... you can go look at the lists here (go to the far right side and pick 100% Democrat / Liberal to rank those ... or go the other way and look at the list from the right. Maybe the single biggest revelation is that money is mothers milk to both parties as they seek to reach 300 million people. I agree that it is is too much money, but it IS relative! ALL our national elections in 2012 cost $2B less than Halloween!
The reason that TP cries about campaign finance is to control and cut it off from their opposition is because they don't believe there ought to be any opposition to what they see as their completely correct positions. Collaboration, and it's flip side competition, is part of any free human organization or activity. They come with the package like breathing, need for bathrooms, preening, bitching, gossiping, etc. They remain even in a totalitarian state -- but they can be highly regimented and suppressed. The general population not standing up for those that TP targets and always standing up for those TP approves ("Stand up don't shoot", Bruce Jenner, gay "marriage", confederate flag ...)
We were supposed to live in a REPUBLIC that had Democratic input and where government was LIMITED. If we lived in that nation, then spending less money and time on politics would be fine. Wonderful even!
However, we now live under significant bureaucratic dictatorship where alphabet agencies like IRS, NSA, EPA, etc with effectively no controlling authority" operate against individuals and groups that they find to be a threat to their power. These agencies are part of a massive government that consumes nearly 40% of our GDP and is nearing being $20T in bonded debt, and over twice that in unfunded liability (FICA, Medicare, etc).
While collaboration is 100% standard for TP as it is for all humans and human organizations, it uses it's dominant power in government and the justice system to attack any that oppose TP. The "crime" of Scott Walker and his supporters is that he opposes TP and was able to gain a TINY concession from PUBLIC unions in WI. This engendered riots, death threats, legal action -- and raids on supporters in the middle of the night.
"Man is not free unless Government is limited" (Reagan).
When government becomes unlimited and starts harassing the opposition and then breaking down their doors in the middle of the night, it is a strong sign that things are very far gone. The non-reaction of the the general public to this outrage shows that 2nd amendment supporters are very right -- the vast majority of people are already either under TPs thrall, influence or fear that they are perfectly willing to stand by silently while the opposition loses their right to fund their operations, collaborate, and ultimately their right to life.
'via Blog this'
The main focus of this particular article is pointing out fallacies in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's attempt to discredit one of the people whose home was invaded as part of the Milwaukee Prosecutors claimed investigation into "collaboration" among" conservative groups in Wisconsin -- amazingly, a "crime" if you are a conservative!
I covered the Gestapo style raids here.
What we see happening here is that the onslaught of "campaign finance law" which started in wake of Watergate is has increasingly become merely a way to harass and sometimes actually prosecute the opposition (R) for doing what "The Party" (TP-Democrat) do as an open matter of day to day operation.
Government Unions, Unions, Teachers, Lawyers, Wall Street, Media ... you can go look at the lists here (go to the far right side and pick 100% Democrat / Liberal to rank those ... or go the other way and look at the list from the right. Maybe the single biggest revelation is that money is mothers milk to both parties as they seek to reach 300 million people. I agree that it is is too much money, but it IS relative! ALL our national elections in 2012 cost $2B less than Halloween!
The reason that TP cries about campaign finance is to control and cut it off from their opposition is because they don't believe there ought to be any opposition to what they see as their completely correct positions. Collaboration, and it's flip side competition, is part of any free human organization or activity. They come with the package like breathing, need for bathrooms, preening, bitching, gossiping, etc. They remain even in a totalitarian state -- but they can be highly regimented and suppressed. The general population not standing up for those that TP targets and always standing up for those TP approves ("Stand up don't shoot", Bruce Jenner, gay "marriage", confederate flag ...)
We were supposed to live in a REPUBLIC that had Democratic input and where government was LIMITED. If we lived in that nation, then spending less money and time on politics would be fine. Wonderful even!
However, we now live under significant bureaucratic dictatorship where alphabet agencies like IRS, NSA, EPA, etc with effectively no controlling authority" operate against individuals and groups that they find to be a threat to their power. These agencies are part of a massive government that consumes nearly 40% of our GDP and is nearing being $20T in bonded debt, and over twice that in unfunded liability (FICA, Medicare, etc).
While collaboration is 100% standard for TP as it is for all humans and human organizations, it uses it's dominant power in government and the justice system to attack any that oppose TP. The "crime" of Scott Walker and his supporters is that he opposes TP and was able to gain a TINY concession from PUBLIC unions in WI. This engendered riots, death threats, legal action -- and raids on supporters in the middle of the night.
"Man is not free unless Government is limited" (Reagan).
When government becomes unlimited and starts harassing the opposition and then breaking down their doors in the middle of the night, it is a strong sign that things are very far gone. The non-reaction of the the general public to this outrage shows that 2nd amendment supporters are very right -- the vast majority of people are already either under TPs thrall, influence or fear that they are perfectly willing to stand by silently while the opposition loses their right to fund their operations, collaborate, and ultimately their right to life.
'via Blog this'
Sunday, August 09, 2015
Haunting The Old Mississippi
Link To Photos
Marla and I took the boat down to Wabasha today. I Elderd at Church last night so it was a "free Sunday"!
We ventured through the Alma Lock (4), the Whitman Lock (5) and spent some time in pool 5A, held back by lock and dam 5A just above Winona MN.
Very early in my IBM career -- 79 or 80 I'm pretty sure, I started camping on the river with a coworker who had grown up on a farm near Goodhue MN and was very familiar with the 5A pool, always putting in at the boat harbor an Minnesota City. We camped on the river a good deal -- watching the barges, ate sandy food, drank more than a few beers, did some fishing and water skiing. We even had a larger group camping outings over those early years of the '80s and I bought a bass boat -- that turned out to not really be the right kind of boat for EITHER my fishing or camping outings, but it was a case of "live and learn", and it was a boat.
When I met Marla, we would camp in that area of the river both pre and post children -- eventually moving up to the Lund Tyee 1850 in '92 that we were still using today -- although with a number of big changes, the biggest being the 130 HP Honda 4-stroke vs the old 150 Johnson 2-stroke.
I still love the river -- the bluffs, the locks, the current, the fact it rolls all the way from Itasca in N MN past New Orleans into the gulf. I've boated on it from Minneapolis to Guttenberg IA at one time or another, but the pools I know best are 5A prior to '92, and 4 ... North of Alma including Wabasha, Lake Pepin, up past Red Wing. Since '92, 80% of my river boating has been in that pool. I've seen the big river from shore at St Louis, Vicksburg where Grant laid siege, and of course the Big Easy ... down there the barges make ours look tiny!
We camped on the river a decent amount up until close to 2000 with friends from IBM, but about that time, river outings became day events -- Boy Scouts, too much gear to camp and ski on the river, and the advent of "the connected life". Too much need to be connected to work, too many other activities -- and it just got harder to enjoy heat, humidity, fairly regular thunderstorms, loud partiers nearby, barges shining their lights at you, etc. .... but I certainly DID enjoy it when I was in my 20's!!
I'm no longer in my 20's -- but we rolled down the river, saw some of the old places we camped, including Bass Camp, where we stayed with Marla's folks and our nieces and nephews from that side -- including Mindy that we lost in the car accident in '08. We had a snack at the Wingdam Bar in Fountain City MN, the town I believe is the most beautiful on the river. We have been there before -- sadly a 21 year old Winona student lost her life in a freak accident involving a dumb waiter there last December
The picture of Fountain City doesn't do it justice at all -- and for me, I will always remember one night in the early 80's in a sleek Glastron I/O boat owned by a guy from IBM with a couple other folks going past Fountain City right at sundown at 50+ MPH on the water. It was one of those "perfect moments" for some reason in my mind, so it stays fresh yet today.
Seeing the Queen Of The Mississippi today, a modern replica paddlewheeler launched in 2012 reminded me of the times we happened to see the Mississippi Queen or the Delta Queen on the river over the years. On one night in the very early '80s we followed it down to lock 5A from our campsite, went ashore and walked up to the lock even though there is no official viewing at that lock. We were at the lower level of the ship, which is where the workers were at, and we chatted with some very interesting folks ... mostly from the deep south that worked the kitchens, tables, bars and gambling tables on the paddlewheeler.
Those were the days before all the "undocumented hispanic democrats!" ... most of them were white, a couple of them were black ... people showing up at a lock in the middle of the night and chatting was unusual for them, and for farm kid / recent college graduate / IBMers, it was a different outlook on life -- folks with a little jail time, ran away from home, ran out on a bad husband / wife -- lots of "stories" ... maybe true, maybe just stories, but interesting as stories ought to be! 80% of them smoking -- it was like 1980. Another time.
Lots of old memories -- some sweet, some bittersweet, some hard to even relate to from my older self. Will being on the mighty Mississippi be totally a part of the past as our place in IA becomes more and more the destination? Probably -- nearly so at least. Life has already gone on a long way from the pool 5A camping days -- like the river itself, it just keeps rolling along, although I'm sure that Old Man River will be still be rolling much longer than Old Man Moose!
Marla and I took the boat down to Wabasha today. I Elderd at Church last night so it was a "free Sunday"!
We ventured through the Alma Lock (4), the Whitman Lock (5) and spent some time in pool 5A, held back by lock and dam 5A just above Winona MN.
Very early in my IBM career -- 79 or 80 I'm pretty sure, I started camping on the river with a coworker who had grown up on a farm near Goodhue MN and was very familiar with the 5A pool, always putting in at the boat harbor an Minnesota City. We camped on the river a good deal -- watching the barges, ate sandy food, drank more than a few beers, did some fishing and water skiing. We even had a larger group camping outings over those early years of the '80s and I bought a bass boat -- that turned out to not really be the right kind of boat for EITHER my fishing or camping outings, but it was a case of "live and learn", and it was a boat.
When I met Marla, we would camp in that area of the river both pre and post children -- eventually moving up to the Lund Tyee 1850 in '92 that we were still using today -- although with a number of big changes, the biggest being the 130 HP Honda 4-stroke vs the old 150 Johnson 2-stroke.
I still love the river -- the bluffs, the locks, the current, the fact it rolls all the way from Itasca in N MN past New Orleans into the gulf. I've boated on it from Minneapolis to Guttenberg IA at one time or another, but the pools I know best are 5A prior to '92, and 4 ... North of Alma including Wabasha, Lake Pepin, up past Red Wing. Since '92, 80% of my river boating has been in that pool. I've seen the big river from shore at St Louis, Vicksburg where Grant laid siege, and of course the Big Easy ... down there the barges make ours look tiny!
We camped on the river a decent amount up until close to 2000 with friends from IBM, but about that time, river outings became day events -- Boy Scouts, too much gear to camp and ski on the river, and the advent of "the connected life". Too much need to be connected to work, too many other activities -- and it just got harder to enjoy heat, humidity, fairly regular thunderstorms, loud partiers nearby, barges shining their lights at you, etc. .... but I certainly DID enjoy it when I was in my 20's!!
I'm no longer in my 20's -- but we rolled down the river, saw some of the old places we camped, including Bass Camp, where we stayed with Marla's folks and our nieces and nephews from that side -- including Mindy that we lost in the car accident in '08. We had a snack at the Wingdam Bar in Fountain City MN, the town I believe is the most beautiful on the river. We have been there before -- sadly a 21 year old Winona student lost her life in a freak accident involving a dumb waiter there last December
The picture of Fountain City doesn't do it justice at all -- and for me, I will always remember one night in the early 80's in a sleek Glastron I/O boat owned by a guy from IBM with a couple other folks going past Fountain City right at sundown at 50+ MPH on the water. It was one of those "perfect moments" for some reason in my mind, so it stays fresh yet today.
Seeing the Queen Of The Mississippi today, a modern replica paddlewheeler launched in 2012 reminded me of the times we happened to see the Mississippi Queen or the Delta Queen on the river over the years. On one night in the very early '80s we followed it down to lock 5A from our campsite, went ashore and walked up to the lock even though there is no official viewing at that lock. We were at the lower level of the ship, which is where the workers were at, and we chatted with some very interesting folks ... mostly from the deep south that worked the kitchens, tables, bars and gambling tables on the paddlewheeler.
Those were the days before all the "undocumented hispanic democrats!" ... most of them were white, a couple of them were black ... people showing up at a lock in the middle of the night and chatting was unusual for them, and for farm kid / recent college graduate / IBMers, it was a different outlook on life -- folks with a little jail time, ran away from home, ran out on a bad husband / wife -- lots of "stories" ... maybe true, maybe just stories, but interesting as stories ought to be! 80% of them smoking -- it was like 1980. Another time.
Lots of old memories -- some sweet, some bittersweet, some hard to even relate to from my older self. Will being on the mighty Mississippi be totally a part of the past as our place in IA becomes more and more the destination? Probably -- nearly so at least. Life has already gone on a long way from the pool 5A camping days -- like the river itself, it just keeps rolling along, although I'm sure that Old Man River will be still be rolling much longer than Old Man Moose!
Saturday, August 08, 2015
Who Will Watch the EPA?
Animas River fouled by 1 million gallons of contaminated mine water - The Denver Post:
So the EPA -- the guys that classify the CO2 you breathe out as a "pollutant", tell you how much water constitutes a flush in your toilet, and if you get to use plastic bags at the grocery or not (to just name a very few of the myriad of things they "regulate"), made a MILLION GALLON toxic waste mistake!
If they were a mining or oil company that ACTUALLY PRODUCES SOMETHING, what do you suppose the national media reaction would be??
Come on ... you know ... OUTRAGE! ... for days and weeks. "Put them out of business", etc
The age old question of big government (and all "watcher" groups) is "Who will watch the watchers??" ... the watchers are not some super race, they are just plain old people, often less competitive people since they choose the safety of a government bureaucracy over the hurly burly of the private sector, but certainly "nothing special". Oh, possibly with the exception that they especially like having POWER over others based on POSITION rather than merit!
The myriad of alphabet agencies (EPA, IRS, NSA, FBI, etc) are a classic example of bureaucratic obfuscation of responsibility. The agencies have no official "party" affiliation even though the people that work in them are 99% Democrat. The executive branch has direct day to day "control" over them -- but as we have seen with the IRS investigation of conservative groups, that supposed chain of command is nebulous at best. Congress supposedly controls the funding and has "oversight", but one needn't look very hard at the budgeting operations or attempts at said "oversight" in the case of the IRS to realize that this is also toothless.
Giant incompetent hugely expensive bureaucracies running roughshod over productivity and individual freedoms without any real supervision.
And some people wonder why America died.
'via Blog this'
So the EPA -- the guys that classify the CO2 you breathe out as a "pollutant", tell you how much water constitutes a flush in your toilet, and if you get to use plastic bags at the grocery or not (to just name a very few of the myriad of things they "regulate"), made a MILLION GALLON toxic waste mistake!
If they were a mining or oil company that ACTUALLY PRODUCES SOMETHING, what do you suppose the national media reaction would be??
Come on ... you know ... OUTRAGE! ... for days and weeks. "Put them out of business", etc
The age old question of big government (and all "watcher" groups) is "Who will watch the watchers??" ... the watchers are not some super race, they are just plain old people, often less competitive people since they choose the safety of a government bureaucracy over the hurly burly of the private sector, but certainly "nothing special". Oh, possibly with the exception that they especially like having POWER over others based on POSITION rather than merit!
The myriad of alphabet agencies (EPA, IRS, NSA, FBI, etc) are a classic example of bureaucratic obfuscation of responsibility. The agencies have no official "party" affiliation even though the people that work in them are 99% Democrat. The executive branch has direct day to day "control" over them -- but as we have seen with the IRS investigation of conservative groups, that supposed chain of command is nebulous at best. Congress supposedly controls the funding and has "oversight", but one needn't look very hard at the budgeting operations or attempts at said "oversight" in the case of the IRS to realize that this is also toothless.
Giant incompetent hugely expensive bureaucracies running roughshod over productivity and individual freedoms without any real supervision.
And some people wonder why America died.
'via Blog this'
Least Hurricanes "Ever"
No Major Hurricane Has Made Landfall In the U.S. In More Than 9 Years -- and That's a New Record - weather.com:
Like most current climate data, "ever" is from the carefully selectected end of the Little Ice Age in 1860. Perhaps warming climate caused the Civil War?
'via Blog this'
Like most current climate data, "ever" is from the carefully selectected end of the Little Ice Age in 1860. Perhaps warming climate caused the Civil War?
This is now the longest streak since hurricane records began in 1851. The previous record was a little over nine years, set from August 11, 1860 to September 8, 1869.
I've been blogging for 10 years. When 2005 was a record year for major hurricanes, especially after Katrina, scientists and the media were even more certain that their predictions on warming and large increases in the number of hurricanes were completely proven -- and we would definitely see more major storms every year. Here is a blog post from '06 pointing out that we had no major storms that year even after those confident predictions ... it is also funny to see what a broken record I am on thinking for yourself!
Here we see a quiet little article from 2013 saying that we almost broke a record for latest hurricane in the season that had been set in 1851 ...
Or we can go back to a post from 2013 when the lack of warming finally fell completely outside of even the lowest possible predictions of the IPCC warming model.
I wasn't blogging when the "certain truth" on oil went from "the world is out of oil" in the late '70s to "huh"? by 1983. I also wasn't blogging when "generally accepted public / media opinion" went from "OMG, Reagan is NUTS!!!!, he thinks the USSR can be defeated"!!!! in 1980, to "Well, the USSR is gone, we all knew that was going to happen and Reagan slowed it down" in 1989 (Berlin Wall falls) - 1991 (USSR officially ends).
I wasn't blogging -- but I was alive. I've seen how "certainty" turns to "the memory hole". Once confident front page news becomes articles buried or just not discussed. People who once passionately told you that any disagreement with their dominant position was "crazy", "being a denier", "foolishly following right wing media" or some such, now basically just stare as cows at the passing train if their own formerly passionately held positions are mentioned.
It turns out that their passion was and is for being a sheep in lock-step with the current standard Party (D) and Media position -- and it is IMPOSSIBLE for them to conceive that people could think differently from that position and be correct. Therefore, if necessary, history must be forgotten or rewritten so the standard Party/Media position is seen as correct -- always. Orwell covered this all long ago -- their minds are imprisoned in what they are told to believe.
It turns out that their passion was and is for being a sheep in lock-step with the current standard Party (D) and Media position -- and it is IMPOSSIBLE for them to conceive that people could think differently from that position and be correct. Therefore, if necessary, history must be forgotten or rewritten so the standard Party/Media position is seen as correct -- always. Orwell covered this all long ago -- their minds are imprisoned in what they are told to believe.
There is an alternative ... actual skepticism. My belief is that the strongest earthly reason for religious faith is that it provides a grounding for the human psyche allowing one to look at everything else in the world as being less than certain. If you don't have faith in SOMETHING as being unshakably true, you are going to create something and invest your "faith neurons" in. The old saw "everyone has to believe in something, I believe I'll have another beer" is true -- beer is just a very flip alternate faith. Our brains our wired for belief and morality -- we need to put something in the "belief slot", or something will fall in that slot without us even realizing it.
There are a number of books on this kind of topic, but a couple that I have blogged on are "The Righteous Mind" and "Consilience" ... our problem is often that since we have no real idea of what our consciousness and many of our inner drivers really are at the base, so we make assumptions about things like religion, politics, culture, society, etc that while seemingly "rational", fail to realize that humans are NOT "rational", but rather RATIONALIZING beings. Our real drivers are feelings -- but we will often go to great length to try to convince ourselves and others that they are not.
Watching the AGW (Anthropomorphic Global Warming) theory slink off to oblivion gives another great opportunity to see how "what everyone KNOWS to be true" very often isn't ... the cholesterol shift is another recent one.
Watching the AGW (Anthropomorphic Global Warming) theory slink off to oblivion gives another great opportunity to see how "what everyone KNOWS to be true" very often isn't ... the cholesterol shift is another recent one.
'via Blog this'
Friday, August 07, 2015
Schumer, Republicans and Iran Hardliners Make Common Cause
Full Orwell - WSJ:
It gets very hard to make any sort of rational sense of the noxious emanations from BO's teleprompter these days. One thing is completely clear -- since he said the following, there are truly no standards left for the office of US President after the BO debacle (Trump has an open field):
Name a leader in Iran that has never said "Death to America". I sincerely doubt if there is one -- but certainly many of those involved in the "deal", including President Rouhani, DO so chant! and why not? Read BO "Dreams From My Father" -- BO himself seems in agreement with them! (he considers America as taking the mantle of colonial power from Britain, as do the Iranians!)
So what he says is false and rancid -- he is asserting that Republicans and "hard liners" prefer war. OK, so by that logic (as covered in the linked article), the Japanese and the US Congress were "making common cause" after Pearl Harbor, because they both clearly preferred war to peace. BO's "reasoning" is of the form "Hitler was a vegetarian, you are a vegetarian, therefore you are making common cause with Hitler".
But then we now see that Chuck Schumer, third ranking DEMOCRAT Senator from NY is also "making common cause" with "hardliners", Republicans, and possibly Hitler as well -- once you go down the BO sort of lying weasel rathole, the kind of vermin you get associated with is unpredictable.
BO's nutcase rhetoric notwithstanding, it IS actually possible for people that have rational minds to prefer sanctions, not giving supporters of terrorism over $100B, and even targeted military strikes to appeasement. Only in BO's fevered strawman imagination are "war or appeasement" the only options!
'via Blog this'
It gets very hard to make any sort of rational sense of the noxious emanations from BO's teleprompter these days. One thing is completely clear -- since he said the following, there are truly no standards left for the office of US President after the BO debacle (Trump has an open field):
Just because Iranian hard-liners chant “Death to America” does not mean that that’s what all Iranians believe.
In fact, it’s those hard-liners who are most comfortable with the status quo. It’s those hard-liners chanting “Death to America” who have been most opposed to the deal. They’re making common cause with the Republican caucus.First of all, that is politically partisan calumny of the most rancid type typically only spewing from the far reaches of the left or the right crazy crowd, not from the Oval Office. What is the difference between "hardliners" and the leaders of Iran? You know the ones that signed the deal and gloated because they know what appeasement is and they like it better than sanctions, having $100 Billion frozen, military strikes on their facilities, and yes ... possible war??
Name a leader in Iran that has never said "Death to America". I sincerely doubt if there is one -- but certainly many of those involved in the "deal", including President Rouhani, DO so chant! and why not? Read BO "Dreams From My Father" -- BO himself seems in agreement with them! (he considers America as taking the mantle of colonial power from Britain, as do the Iranians!)
So what he says is false and rancid -- he is asserting that Republicans and "hard liners" prefer war. OK, so by that logic (as covered in the linked article), the Japanese and the US Congress were "making common cause" after Pearl Harbor, because they both clearly preferred war to peace. BO's "reasoning" is of the form "Hitler was a vegetarian, you are a vegetarian, therefore you are making common cause with Hitler".
But then we now see that Chuck Schumer, third ranking DEMOCRAT Senator from NY is also "making common cause" with "hardliners", Republicans, and possibly Hitler as well -- once you go down the BO sort of lying weasel rathole, the kind of vermin you get associated with is unpredictable.
BO's nutcase rhetoric notwithstanding, it IS actually possible for people that have rational minds to prefer sanctions, not giving supporters of terrorism over $100B, and even targeted military strikes to appeasement. Only in BO's fevered strawman imagination are "war or appeasement" the only options!
'via Blog this'
Thursday, August 06, 2015
Moby Dick, Melville
I finally finished my lengthy slog through the actual sea soaked tome in hardcover with some fine illustrations. It is a book that one has heard so much of, read in excerpt, heard quotes from, etc that it often seems that we all might have read it. The very symbol of obsession, vengeance and the scapegoat.
That fine and often questionably discernible line might well be the gossamer thread on which hangs the destiny of all humanity. We must have motivation and meaning -- but obsession is too far. I often feel that "progressivism" is the "Borg" of our time, relentlessly assimilating the individual, the sacred, the human, into a "collective" of bleating sheep controlled by "The Party". Ah, the White Whale!
Moby Dick is a long book, and to some degree it has to be in order to convince both the dogged intellectual and the common man that within it's pages you will understand vengeance, obsession and the scapegoat in one not very tidy package. I'll give you a hint -- you will not, and you will also not really enjoy much of it as an entertaining memorable tale. Like converting "Titanic" to "Boy meets girl on ship, they fall in love, ship sinks, boy dies", Moby Dick can be summarized as "Storyteller goes on ship, meets captain whose leg was taken by white whale, captain chases whale, whale gets captain and whole ship except storyteller". But isn't a page-turner, it is an epic of sometimes tortured symbolism and metaphor.
Or perhaps one needs to be an obsessive to read it through -- and the white whale is the book itself ... or age, time, wisdom, life, love, God ... "A Six Blade Knife" ... one of my favorite Dire Straits songs.
The book is rife with maritime and whaling terms as well as whale lore and biology circa mid 1850's. The conjecture about the earth being riddled with sub-sea passages which allow whales to dive in the Atlantic and come up in the Indian Ocean by taking a shortcut through one of these portals is amazingly similar to the modern science fiction conjecture of the "wormhole". While the prose often just seems obtuse and ponderous, there are a fair amount of beautiful and thought provoking allegorical allusions such as the following.
I have to leave with the the other quote of Star Trek fame ... this one not credited directly in the movie dialogue.
There is a very good reason that vengeance is mine saith the Lord ... lest we be consumed! Deuteronomy 32:35
All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby-Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.In the following scene from "First Contact", my far favorite of the Star Trek movies, Picard with the bearing and voice only a Shakespearean actor could muster embodies the fine line between total dedication to a worthy cause and obsession to the exclusion of reality. It is a bit long, but wait for it ... it is worth it.
That fine and often questionably discernible line might well be the gossamer thread on which hangs the destiny of all humanity. We must have motivation and meaning -- but obsession is too far. I often feel that "progressivism" is the "Borg" of our time, relentlessly assimilating the individual, the sacred, the human, into a "collective" of bleating sheep controlled by "The Party". Ah, the White Whale!
Or perhaps one needs to be an obsessive to read it through -- and the white whale is the book itself ... or age, time, wisdom, life, love, God ... "A Six Blade Knife" ... one of my favorite Dire Straits songs.
The book is rife with maritime and whaling terms as well as whale lore and biology circa mid 1850's. The conjecture about the earth being riddled with sub-sea passages which allow whales to dive in the Atlantic and come up in the Indian Ocean by taking a shortcut through one of these portals is amazingly similar to the modern science fiction conjecture of the "wormhole". While the prose often just seems obtuse and ponderous, there are a fair amount of beautiful and thought provoking allegorical allusions such as the following.
There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seems to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters’ Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.You know the story of Moby Dick, you no doubt have at least nibbled the edges of obsession, vengeance and entertained a scapegoat or two in your life. My advice, which like all likely good advice is very hard to take, would be to read it while young -- there is a chance that the experience of "bearing with" Melville on this long voyage of a book would impart a level of wisdom beyond the years of say a "twenty-something". Otherwise, if one of your whales is an obsession to write, Moby Dick will certainly help you avoid Dr. Johnson's charge ; "Never trust a man who writes more than he reads"!
I have to leave with the the other quote of Star Trek fame ... this one not credited directly in the movie dialogue.
Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.
To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.
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