Age Of Rodgers

Aaron Rodgers, Maybe the Best Ever, Makes Packers the Best Right Now | Bleacher Report:

When you live in Minnesota, you know that the warmth of summer is short and fleeting -- it makes summer special. People from Florida or California think we are idiots -- we may well be.

When we look back on life, most of us have moments of pure joy to look back on -- getting married, birth of a child, winning the big game, special degree, promotion, big fish, etc -- for a usually brief moment, the universe shone on us and "all was right with the world". As we age, we all realize that our lives are very much "lived in Minnesota". Death touches us -- grandparents, parents, friends, maybe even touches us closer -- spouses, children, near death diseases for ourselves or those close to us -- we meet the Reaper. We know that life is fleeting -- so usually, and wisely I think, we make like those of colder climates and resolve to live while alive.

Those of you that read this Blog know that this is NOT my strong suit -- I know it intellectually very very well, but my emotional makeup is that of the skeptic, the questioner, the cautious one who attempts to look at all sides of all issues. Accepting the gifts that life hands me for the moments in which they are present and being joyful and grateful for those moments -- as opposed to attempting to hold on to the fleeting, protect against the unforeseen and imagine all that can go wrong!

So we come to the linked article, "Aaron Rodgers, Maybe the Best Ever, Makes Packers the Best Right Now".  If you are a Packer fan, go read it ... over the top, yes, but you will get a smile for sure. A sample ...

As long as Rodgers stays healthy, two things are certain: Rodgers is better than anyone at the position playing now, even better than Tom Brady. And the Packers will be the best in the conference because he is the Escape Pod, whisking his team away from all flaws.
This won't change all year. 

We are in the era of Rodgers. God isn't a Packers fan. If anything, she's a Rodgers fan.

I'm blessed to be a Packer fan. It was random for me to be born in NW WI, and with my makeup, it is a certainty I would have become a fan of whatever team was prominent in my area -- my sense of tradition and loyalty to where I was planted is wired in. So being a Packer fan was a gift.

As a youngster, of course it was a dim awareness, but central to the idea was the known fact that the Green Bay Packers were the ultimate football team, Bart Starr was the ultimate QB and Vince Lombardi was the ultimate coach. Such things were obvious -- and they really were obvious to most everyone, even many who didn't like the Packers. On Lombardi at least, it seems the world decided it was indeed true.

Then, from the time I was out of Jr High until well into my IBM career, the Packers sucked! It was a soul crunching truth -- the assumption was that "small market teams" had no hope at all. The age of Dallas, Pittsburg, San Francisco, New York, -- certainly the Vikings fans were certain that tiny Green Bay would ever return to anything even respectable, let alone great! It seemed that my lot would be to always pine away for the "glorious past".

Then came the '90s ... Ron Wolf, Holmgren, Favre, Reggie White, a 3rd Super Bowl trophy and another Packer team in perennial contention. Then Rodgers, a FOURTH Lombardi Trophy, and here we are.

As the article says, "if he stays healthy" -- one of the many things that makes it hard for me to truly bask in the joy of what is happening right now. Much like MN summer or life itself, the very next play could easily be his last -- he has already had a couple concussions. But that is ALWAYS true ... for all of us. We kill the joy of the gift with that sort of thought.

The linked article makes some claims of his historical significance, and while I believe that what we are seeing at this moment is indeed the greatest example of what an NFL QB can be, he will not be remembered (by others) unless luck and fate hold out for some period of time and more trophies come to Green Bay. While Rodgers definitely pushes the envelope of possible artistry in the QB position, it is WINS that make "the greatest of all time".

Which brings us to the TRUE JOY ... the joy of POTENTIAL and anticipation, the joy of the child anticipating Christmas. While each game is a delight to be savored, the potential is so awesome that it makes one fearful to consider it.

He is 31. He claims to want to play to 40. As we saw in Seattle last January, the list of things that can go wrong is indeed infinite -- although I sincerely doubt we will ever go down again due to conservative play calling during the age of of Rodgers. I'm not going to guess a number of potential added Lombardis ... zero of course is the "smart number", but also the joyless number.

When Mr Rodgers takes the field, the number that comes to mind is ALL OF THEM!
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Pied Pontiff of Poverty

The Left Has Its Pope - Thomas Sowell - Page 1:

Not one of Sowell's best efforts IMHO, but then I hold him to a VERY high bar. It's a bit like a game when Rodgers doesn't break 100 QB rating ;-) Here is a very impressive nugget though:

Any serious look at the history of human beings over the millennia shows that the species began in poverty. It is not poverty, but prosperity, that needs explaining. Poverty is automatic, but prosperity requires many things -- none of which is equally distributed around the world or even within a given society.

The natural state of man is poverty, with equality being maybe the only sop to a life that is pretty much equally  "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". Everyone else is in the same boat, isn't that wonderful? A lot of folks seem to believe that Hell will be OK because everyone is in the same boat ...

So we developed social organization, which right off the bat means inequality -- somebody rules, somebody "keeps the order" ( using or at least threatening violence), labor gets specialized to tasks with different rewards, etc. Technology adds to the inequality -- some invent technology, some build and sell it some are experts in it's use, some never figure it out, some get addicted to it. Once humans have anything, inequality is guaranteed -- but the alternative is the "state of nature" -- poverty.

The rise of man is based on the rule of law and technology, but then you have those who don't like the fact that rising wealth means rising inequality -- when the income was zero, everyone was equal, the greater the income becomes, zero will remain zero and the natural wage for the very bottom is zero. Any wealthy nation will have significant inequality, the more wealth, the more inequality since zero remains zero.

So along come those that have no understanding of where all the wealth came from, and seek to redistribute it -- the socialists, communists, etc. They find that the goose laying the golden eggs is "doing it wrong", so they kill the goose to be able to use and distribute this wealth as they see fit. It is a very old story.

As I've pointed out before, this Pied Pontiff is not a Biblical man ...

Matt 25:28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Remember that "talent" in the Bible is a measure of money -- but like all scripture what it really shows us UNIVERSAL TRUTH. Think of the knowledge of reading -- without that, even the knowledge you have is likely to be "taken" -- because you can't write anything down and read it later, or just refresh and deepen what you have.  The servant that knows how to EARN in the parable is given more. The one who does not, loses what he has -- in the real world, to inflation of nothing else. 

The current pope was infected with "liberation theology", the more general version of "black liberation theology" espoused by BO's old pastor Reverend Wright (Reverend Wrong). Like all attempts to make the Bible say what it doesn't, these are heresies, profitable to destroy men and nations. 

Capitalism is the "Goose That Laid the Golden Egg" and the wise servant from the parable of the talents. It is the wisdom of EARNING vs the evil of theft and sloth! 

Matt 25:21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’

Or, in a more recent example, we have the parable of the lost pontiff's own Argentina ...

A scholar specializing in the study of Latin America said that the official poverty level in the United States is the upper middle class in Mexico. The much criticized market economy of the United States has done far more for the poor than the ideology of the left. 

Pope Francis' own native Argentina was once among the leading economies of the world, before it was ruined by the kind of ideological notions he is now promoting around the world.

What ruined Argentina is ruining Europe with Greece being one of the coal mine canaries. We see what is happening here in "Central North America".

 Let's not follow this Pied Piper into the sea of Socialist destruction!

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The Question Nobody Answers

The Question Candidates Won't Answer | National Review Online:

Readers of this blog know that the US is brokest nation on earth financially and there is no plan that is even REMOTELY viable in either party to address it.

The most likely "solution" remains the standard solution of governments through all of history -- massive inflation, debauching the currency so that tens of TRILLIONS of real debt piled up with valuable dollars can be paid off with worthless paper. Maybe some of it with a picture of a woman on the front! A few 100 trillion with Susan B Anthony, Harriet Tubbs or some such fine fine lady on the front ought to make everyone feel better about seeing a million dollars buy a loaf of bread!

The article isn't really all that much help -- means testing would be a tiny start, but let's face it, nobody is even going to propose that until this pig piles into the mud a whole lot deeper than it is already.

Ah, the "Jimmuh Solution" ... always good to go back and see the wisdom of Billy Carter's dumber brother!

Hey, I'd like to be a millionaire! Wouldn't you ???

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An Allergy to Political Alternatives

The Republican Party has an allergy to facts - The Boston Globe:

The specifics of what are in this column are really not all that important -- what is important is the assumption of the author, the editors, and no doubt a good many of the readers of the column that there is one truth, and "The Party" (TP - Democrat) is its prophet. Naturally, listening to infidels makes those faithful to TP become uncomfortable. A sample ...

I seethed as one candidate after another offered more heartless and uncompassionate plans for how to treat illegal immigrants.

Here is the "money paragraph" ...

It’s one thing to marvel at the unprecedented and stupefying levels of GOP know-nothingness on display this election season — the misstatements, the untruths, the exaggerations, the falsehoods, and the straight-up lies. But these vaccine comments represent a legitimate public health menace. And it’s indicative of the allergy to facts, data, and evidence that is the real story of the GOP debate, and indeed of the Republican nominating contest — and we need to be talking more about it.

Politics, branding, advertising, sales, mythology, story telling, etc, etc are ALL much less about anything like "facts" than they are about convincing others. Marxists believe that history is "wired" by "something" (they believe in no god) so that the "progress" to communism is inevitable. "Progressives" likewise believe in "progress" -- due to "something", we are guaranteed that history is somehow getting "better". We certainly don't know what that means -- having seen something north of 100 million people slaughtered in the 20th century due to the more "progressive" forms of government -- National Socialism, Communism, etc, but their faith is not shaken.

Certainly TP would like to tell everyone that "it has the facts" -- they were confidently sure we were out of oil in the '70s, even more sure the USSR would be around forever, Reagan would be an economic disaster, the age of big government was over, if we liked our healthcare we could keep it, red lines in Syria, ISIS was the "JV team" ... and on it goes.

The point here is more that those in the dominant political party -- TP, with the media like the Boston Globe and the universities generally on their side ACTUALLY BELIEVE that they have the "facts". The real truth is that there is NOTHING about the future that is 100% predictable, even that the sun will appear to rise tomorrow AM (see major meteor impacts, gigantic solar eruptions, etc) ... precisely NOTHING in this physical world is certain, so anyone that claims otherwise is doing politics, branding, story telling ....etc.

The author of the column ends it this way ...

We joke about this stuff, but after a while it’s no longer funny. The Republican Party is dominated by candidates who are proudly, even boastfully ignorant. Rejecting the clear science on vaccines or climate change is practically the price of admission even to be considered a legitimate presidential candidate. Playing on xenophobic fears of immigrants by lying about the economic costs and threats to American workers — pro forma. It reached a point Wednesday night when a candidate actually saying something true was an event worthy of note. 

But make no mistake, the descent of the Republican Party into dishonesty, lies, and cravenness is no joke. It’s a national crisis.

Sadly, I'm guessing he doesn't realize that a whole bunch of the things he believes are "true" are -- politics, marketing, myths, etc ... he is a TRUE BELIEVER!

I'm a true believer too -- in Jesus Christ. All other information is highly questionable, often inaccurate and in many cases downright false. Often intentionally so, but also often just because people have "good intentions" that don't work out. They (for some reason) were certain that if they raised taxes a lot on cigarettes they would drastically reduce smoking, but were equally certain that they could massively raise taxes on income and profits without having the taxes cause a reduction in income and profits. They believe taxes behave according to their wishes!

The author of the column is obviously a TP true believer -- he would find my statement about taxes having the effect of reducing income or profits to be as foolish as the idea that just because Global Warming predicted more hurricanes and we got less that it somehow reflects badly on Global Warming being "settled".

The point here is I have a Religion -- Christianity, and so does he -- "THE PARTY"! It turns out that the discussion on vaccinations is an old one -- and in fact the LEFT tends to be more inclined to have concerns, (I covered it here) ... if you really want to go off to the left wing tinfoil hat set, see GMOs. Unlikely the MSM will ask Hilly or BS any such questions though.

What the left has is a STRONG allergy to political alternatives. BO has been the farthest left since Carter -- it remains to be seen if any of the Republican alternatives even has a ghost of a chance as being as much of a turn back to the right as Reagan was. No doubt this columnist thought the '80s were a "disaster", but there are a lot of very real people and very real numbers that would call that view into strong question.

That is the difference between politics and what science USED to be (before it entertained the idea of being "settled") ... politics is NEVER settled, even after you start rounding up people and shooting them to get them to agree with you -- see USSR. The author of this column apparently doesn't understand that, and THAT is the dangerous problem -- because people that make politics their religion always end up shooting the infidels sooner or later.

The American difference is that here, we SHOOT BACK!
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Arrest Those Climate Skeptics! (Power Line)

Arrest Those Climate Skeptics! | Power Line:

Short, well worth the read. Bottom line, a set of Climate Scientists ... including one who was involved in the "Hide the Decline" email scandal, think that people who disagree with their positions on Climate ought to be locked up using the RICO statutes created to attack organized crime .... "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations".

As we know, the left doesn't like to see discussion, they like to see whatever their position is codified by law, and anyone who disagrees at least fined / fired / boycotted / etc .... and if possible jailed and ultimately killed.

The odds of them being able to pull this off YET are fairly low, but as we have seen in WI, they WILL try! They are often wrong, but they are NEVER in doubt, and their willingness to use force a critical hallmark of the left.

Read it all, but if you just don't have the time, the conclusion ...

I don’t think there is any serious danger that realist scientists (let alone oil company executives who have nothing to do with the debate) will be criminally prosecuted, but the fact that liberals are so anxious to shut up their opponents, with prison terms if necessary, is the ultimate proof of the bankruptcy of their ideas.

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Britain 49th Poorest "US State", Per Capita GDP

Why Britain is poorer than any US state, other than Mississippi - Spectator Blogs:

I've always liked to look at simple data with proper relative scaling. Just listing the GDP of the US is misleading, we have 320 million people, Germany has 81 million, England 65 mil, Sweden 10 mil and Norway only 5 million. If one divides the wealth of nations ... and states, how is everyone doing relative to others?

Turns out England is just ahead of Mississippi and just behind Alabama. Next to the bottom of poorest US states by GDP. Norway comes in between #7 Massachusetts and #8 New Jersey, Switzerland is next between #20 Virginia, and #21 Iowa.

The article promises to tell you "why", but it doesn't really -- it is written by a Brit last summer during the Ferguson debacle, it is really just admonishing Brits to not be so smug, since for all but the very poorest, every income group in America is doing better than their counterparts in England.

Readers of this Blog know why ... European countries have different cultures and have been playing with socialism for a lot longer. We know that socialism reduces GDP -- we have over a century of evidence. The THEORY is that the "more equitable distribution" of money under socialism is worth the cost. In countries like Norway and Sweden, there is some level of truth to that -- they have cultures of reasonably strong work ethic, they have cold winters that tend to encourage people to do something productive rather than sit in "the sun" (being "the dark" up there), and they are small enough where the temptations of the elite bureaucracy doing the robbing from the productive to give to the unproductive is limited by both proximity to those being robbed, and the "take" being smaller.

Even the Scandinavian nations however have been forced to make adjustments to be more business and work friendly over the past few decades, same with Canada. "The Ant and the Grasshopper" is a fairy tale, but it is a fairy tale grounded in real principles, unlike the tales told by socialists!

Due to the power of "The Party (TP - Democrat)" and it's control over the media and education, the vast majority of Americans have no idea of simple and widely available facts like this. They are told that everyone in Europe has it BETTER than they do, and that the policies of Europe relative to government, economics, etc pretty much put the US to shame.

We are indeed marching toward shame -- but our downward trend is still behind Europe. The US is large, and it had built up a powerful momentum over 200 years. It even got a super shot in the arm in the '80s with Reagan that delayed the demise by a good 30 years.

Most of the US population has no awareness of where we are actually at economically, no idea of how we got here, and absolutely no concept of where we might want to go. Our ability to govern ourselves relative to economics has been destroyed -- we know we need an economy, but generally have no idea of how an economy works! This is exactly what TP wants -- they are happy to continue to take total control.

So we have a real danger of going from BO to BS (Bernie Sanders).

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Muslim Clock Maker Shot by Pop Tart

Ahmed Mohamed's Clock | National Review Online:

A good column covering the obvious "made for outrage" coverage of poor Ahmed Mohammed for taking a bunch of circuit boards and wires to school around 9-11.

It is worth a read, it is entertaining ... it would be more so if what was once a nation peopled by massive common sense had not become such an asylum of the ridiculous. A teaser and the conclusion ...

This is an age of overreaction. It is, unhappily, also an age of race-hustling and grievance-mongering. Thank goodness that felonious Pop-Tart in Maryland was one of the strawberry-flavored ones with rainbow sprinkles and not brown sugar/cinnamon or marshmallow hot chocolate or another of the flavors of color, or we’d be having a national discussion about white-frosting privilege.

and the conclusion ... we are mostly a nation of fools, bouncing to the beat of a "made for left wing politics"  narrative.

Ahmed Mohamed was mistreated by imbeciles, and he’ll be famous for it, for 15 Warholian minutes, and then again for a 30-second spot when he graduates in a few years and goes off to MIT or wherever. The fact is that he is not worse off because his name is Mohamed, but better off: Nobody would be paying attention otherwise, and he might very well be in jail. Being mistreated by imbeciles is the sine qua non of American public education today, but that fact is of political use only periodically, as in this case.

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Hitler the Ecologist

Timothy Snyder's 'Black Earth' Offers a New Theory of Hitler's Anti-Semitism - The Atlantic:

I'm in the midst of "The Closing of the American Mind" ... it is my 3rd or 4th reading, but it has been over a decade since the last, or I'm sure I would have blogged it, although it will be HARD to summarize since it covers the breadth and a good deal of depth of all of Western Thought ... Plato, Socrates, Hegel, Weber, Heidegger, Kant, Hobbes, Locke, Calvin, Rousseau. Marx,  Nietzsche ... etc.

One of the fundamental things that must be understood is that "reason" is a TOOL that can be used to "rationally explain" most ANYTHING! What counts are "first principles" -- the "leap of faith" ... postulates that are not testable but taken as a priori FACT  like "the universe is predictable and understandable" ... the basis for science.

The other thing that is hard to accept, but I find very true, is that it all comes back to God or it comes back to Nietzsche ... who unfortunately, although NOT intentionally, led to Hitler. If you "kill god", then you enable new "Supermen" -- creators of new myth. Men who are "beyond good and evil", but rather DEFINE the new "values" (morality) -- using the "will to power" (the scare quotes are around the statements of Nietzsche).

“There is in fact no way of thinking about the world, says Hitler, which allows us to see human beings as human beings. Any idea which allows us to see each other as human beings … come[s] from Jews,” Snyder told me in an interview. As Snyder sees it, Hitler believed the only way for the world to revert to its natural order—that of brutal racial competition—was to eradicate the Jews.

Hitler saw the idea of "man as man" -- "universals" to be a "Jewish idea" -- the idea of abstractions being "beyond nature". Hitler was a naturalist ... an ecologist. He believed "survival of the fittest" and that humans were NATURAL ... not "chosen", "specially created", etc.

There is in fact no way of thinking about the world, says Hitler, which allows us to see human beings as human beings. Any idea which allows us to see each other as human beings—whether it’s a social contract; whether it’s a legal contract; whether it’s working-class solidarity; whether it’s Christianity—all these ideas come from Jews. And so for people to be people, for people to return to their essence, for them to represent their race, as Hitler sees things, you have to strip away all those ideas. And the only way to strip away all those ideas is to eradicate the Jews. And if you eradicate the Jews, then the world snaps back into what Hitler sees as its primeval, correct state: Races struggles against each other, kill each other, starve each other to death, and try and take land.

Hitler is very wrong of course ... the idea of the world as we see it being a "projection" of universals or "perfect forms" goes back to Plato ... but Augustine, in "City of God" synthesized the Judaeo / Christian vision with Plato ... Augustine realized that the God of the Bible was the reality of what Plato apprehended dimly.

He sees the Jews as being the thing which destroys the world, which infects the world. He uses the term “pestilence” in this sense—the Jews have infected the world. They’ve made the world not just impure in some kind of metaphorical sense—he really means it. And so the only way to purify the world—to make things go back to the way they’re supposed to be, to have a natural ecology, to go back to this struggle between races, which Hitler thinks is natural—the only way to do that is to physically eliminate the Jews.

 All our "big questions" of the day come back to "God or nature" -- Religion says God, ecology says nature. Hitler was an ecologist. One needed listen to an ecologist very long to hear that MAN is a "pestilence" -- Hitler was just a more selective ecologist. He felt that once the Jews were eliminated, nature would take it's course and the fittest would reign.

I worry a little bit now about, just very generally, that with the financial crisis; with the instability in the Middle East; with the Chinese economy tanking; with Russia breaking all the rules in Europe; and with people in Russia, in Europe, in North Africa more freely expressing anti-Semitic views—I worry a bit that we are tilting towards some kind of anti-globalization where the Jews, or somebody else, could become the explanation for why things are going wrong.

Humans LOVE to have a scapegoat! The Jews, the 1%, "the right", Christians, etc

Once you abandon God ... or the idea of  the "transcendent" if you just can't buy God, then you fall into what Nietzsche so courageously but tragically discovered -- the abyss. The utter meaninglessness of existence. Then you are DRIVEN -- to self destruction,  or to "the will to power" ... the creation of brand new mythology that comes from outside of reason.

A quick glance at mythology -- be it Nazism, Islam, Marxism, Progressivism, Atheism, Scientism, Historicism  ...  or from the non-believer POV, Christianity will inform you that they are not all "equal".

You WILL pick one ... or perhaps you have a great "will to power" and will invent your own, but it is at least incumbent on any thinking person to know what they serve.

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Trump Maligns Muslims With BO Libel

At Town Hall, Donald Trump Declines to Refute Voter Who Declares Obama a Muslim - Washington Wire - WSJ:

After years as a Birther, loads of misogyny along with making inane one-liners into a virtual Brand, "The Donald" went too far and the MSM is all over him! He libeled all Muslima by allowing the false charge that BO is a Muslim to stand! This is almost as bad as the "Hitler was a Jew" claim,

No race or group should have to carry the burden that BO is "one of them"!

Just listen to him for a minute or two -- he is FAR FAR FAR above ALL of humanity! BO is like the Cheese ... he stands alone! In the audacious odiferousness of his own mind.

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Philosophical Structural Trek Failure

How Star Trek Explains The Decline Of Liberalism:

This article is to philosophy as Boone's Farm is to wine. It attempts to burden the Star Trek universe with a heavy load of foggy metaphysics -- one can almost hear the "WARNING -- Structural failure imminent!" blaring in female computer monotone accompanied by klaxxon and flashing red.

If you are a significant Trekkie with a pretty good memory, it might be entertaining -- if not, don't bother.

The assertion of the article is that Star Trek had more philosophical underpinnings than I think it really had, but if it had them, it "evolved" from old relatively moral and hard headed "liberalism" to hippie age "tune in, turn on and drop out" escapism,  to the modern anarchy of lust, sensation, and total relativism.

This quote comes in discussion about the movie Star Trek VI, "The Undiscovered Country" where "peace at all costs" with the Klingons appears to be just fine. In fiction, such things sometimes work.

This represented an almost complete inversion of “Star Trek’s” original liberalism, and indeed of any rational scale of moral principles at all. At no point in the show’s history had Kirk or his colleagues treated the Klingons unjustly, whereas audiences for decades have watched the Klingons torment and subjugate the galaxy’s peaceful races

The article carries a rather mushy understanding of "old liberalism" -- which gets rather confusing, given the appropriation of the old term "liberal" via FDR and company in the '30s when terms like "progressive", "fascist" and "socialist" fell on rather hard times.  "Liberal" was once rooted in LIBERTY, as in LIBERTARIAN, meaning "right wing" with the left being tyranny and the right being anarchy. Then the Statists stole it -- theft being one of their "prime directives" (see "income inequality").

It is pretty clear that the author of the column pines away for a form of "liberalism" at least long dead, if not imaginary ...

Roddenberry’s generation emerged from World War II committed to a liberalism that believed in prosperity, technological progress, and the universal humanity they hoped the United Nations would champion. In the Kennedy years, this technocratic liberalism sought to apply science, the welfare state, and secular culture to raise the standard of living and foster individual happiness worldwide.

Ah, the optimistic world Statism of the Kennedy years! The dream of a Camelot that never was. One can dream of a "universal humanity" (no country to die for, and no religion too, (the Beatles Lennon) ...) ... let's throw in "the welfare state" and "secular culture" along with "technology" with LOTS of "hope" and call it "metaphysical hope stew"! What would a thinking person expect this stew to do rather than rot, or in his terms "evolve" into something even more random ... say the end which he closed the article with.

But that perversity is the natural consequence of the breakdown in the liberal principles that once guided the series. “Star Trek’s” romance with relativism gradually blotted them out until the franchise came to prize feeling over thought, image over substance, and immediate gratification over moral and political responsibility. What was once an expression of the Enlightenment faded “into darkness.”

Over nearly 50 years, “Star Trek” tracked the devolution of liberalism from the philosophy of the New Frontier into a preference for non-judgmental diversity and reactionary hostility to innovation, and finally into an almost nihilistic collection of divergent urges. At its best, “Star Trek” talked about big ideas, in a big way. Its decline reflects a culture-wide change in how Americans have thought about the biggest idea of all: mankind’s place in the universe.

Was the author REALLY surprised that naming "prosperity, technological progress and universal humanity" along with "the welfare state" and "secular culture" as "PRINCIPLES" failed to work out and rather degenerated into what he laments? Not just for Star Trek, but more importantly for Western Civilization?

... or did he really hope that Star Trek would save us all?

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Melting Antarctica, Did They Say When?

Scientists confirm there’s enough fossil fuel on Earth to entirely melt Antarctica - The Washington Post:

Wow, ALL OF ANTARCTICA! But one needs to remember the issue of TIME ... the sun is predicted go out as well! If you don't list the time, that also makes a good headline .. except the current estimate is 5 billion years in the future.

If you go to a bit more detailed source, you find this.

But he's a scientist, and like all proper scientists he's willing to admit inconvenient truths. In this case, the truth in question is his own prediction that no matter what humans do in the way of carbon emissions, sea levels are not going to rise by more than 8cm this century due to melting Antarctic ice. For context, the seas have been rising faster than that for thousands of years. They rose 17cm just during the 20th century, and the Antarctic cap is far and away the biggest body of ice on the planet.

Just for "startling effect", there is 8cm ... by 2100! Think future technology MIGHT be able to handle that? Consider that the Wright Brothers first flew in 1903 and we landed on the moon in 1969 ... 66 years. We have 85 until 2100. Admittedly, we SUCK compared to progress in the 20th century so far in the 21st, but really. 8cm?

Want the get a meter of rise? Even according to their rather extreme burn rates and calculations -- 2200AD. I'm betting you don't make it. Your kids don't make it either.  Maybe you will have a really old grandchild? Oh, and that assumes that the models are a whole lot more accurate than the current "on pause and holding" for 18 years models -- let alone potential fluctuations in solar, less than precise calculations on atmospheric sensitivity to carbon, etc, etc.?

People that make predictions 100s and thousands of years in the future really ought to do what I did yesterday once in awhile. Sight in a new scope on a S&W .460 magnum pistol.

You boresight it with a laser in your basement. Then you try 10 yds -- good, pretty damned close. Then 25 yards, hmm ... need a few adjustments. Then 50 ... hmm, back to 25, then 50 again ... looking better, OOPS, ran out of ammo. This is off a bench rest -- so much for the cheap .45 long colt ammo, can't even keep a tight group at 25 yds ... gotta do the buck a round Hornady! Damn, just small variation gets BIGGER at just 50 yards with a pistol. I've had it hitting dinner plate groups at 100 before with good ammo, hitting a poster size "group" at 200 yds ... going to take a while to get back to there, and I may just end up going back to open sights. Scope eye relief on a pistol is REALLY a PAIN! Makes me wonder if I'm too old for this and just put open sights back on it!

Oh, BTW, a poster sized "group" is in no way "good", but if you were being shot at by a .460 mag at 200 yds with that accuracy, it would not be a good day!

I wonder what being off by a few thousandths does at a predictive range of 1000 years? I guess the nice part is that you KNOW that nobody that has ANY remote remembrance of anything about you or your "science" is going to be looking at your groupings!

Yet another case where how information is REPORTED makes ALL the difference!

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Get Informed, Or Don't Vote!

Thomas Sowell: Misinformed Electorate, Not Trump, Is Real Danger - Investors.com:



Read the whole column, very short and you will be VERY much rewarded for your time! A sample.

Despite many people who urge us all to vote, as a civic duty, the purpose of elections is not participation. The purpose is to select individuals for offices, including president of the United States. Whoever has that office has our lives, the lives of our loved ones and the fate of the entire nation in his or her hands.

Do you want to have a medical diagnosis based on a vote that seeks to get the highest turnout possible, or would you rather select a medical practitioner based on training, certification and experience to arrive at the diagnosis.



Our founders purposely DID NOT create a Democracy, but rather a Republic in order to have rule by laws rather than men. They DEFINITELY were not interested AT ALL in seeing if they could round up the illiterate, the criminal, the non-citizen, etc to "get out the vote".



The population in this area of N America is insane. Sowell is wise -- the contrast is painful!





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The Trump Temptation Close to Home

So Maybe I’m Starting to Like Trump. . . | Power Line:

OK, I assume that the PL guys are being a bit light hearted on this one given the excess of attractive femininity in the picture, but I gotta admit that I'm concerned. Power Line is my favorite general "not too out there but reasonably conservative go to blog". I've always found the Power Line Blog to be very well reasoned -- it is run by lawyers, lawyers who believe you need a written basis for law (the Constitution), and the need to run a  nation on laws rather than the whim of the masses de jour.

They put in  a link in the column to a litany of all the conservative commentators criticism of Trump. The specific one of which I find compelling is this one from Jonah Goldberg (the whole thing is worth reading).

If I sound dismayed, it’s only because I am. Conservatives have spent more than 60 years arguing that ideas and character matter. That is the conservative movement I joined and dedicated my professional life to. And now, in a moment of passion, many of my comrades-in-arms are throwing it all away in a fit of pique. Because “Trump fights!”

As I've covered in this blog many times, conservatism to me IS principle, and it is A LOT older than 60 years ... it is at least back to Burke, and really to the Torah and the Ten Commandments. It is the search for and the willingness to acknowledge, be enlightened by, and directed by THE ETERNAL!

Without transcendent ideas and principles there is no conservatism for me! (see "Ideas Have Consequences")

"Character" is a more fluid matter because of the fact of our humanity. To have standards is to live with some level of hypocrisy. A lot of good NFL football teams set out on the standard of the perfect season culminating in a Super Bowl win. In baseball, the perfect game is a goal for every pitcher.

The last perfect game in baseball was thrown by Felix Hernandez in 2012, the last perfect season in the NFL was Miami in 1972. The last perfect human life was Jesus Christ, AD 30ish -- absolutely unique, we separate history upon his perfection ... Before Christ (BC) and Anno Domini (AD) meaning "in the year of the Lord". To be a human that holds to high standards is to be some level of hypocrite. To the conservative, that is how improvement happens -- to the "liberal", the focus is to change everyone else, ultimately by force.

As the Goldberg article points out, it is not clear that Trump possesses any principles whatever beyond "win baby win", and his character is best summed up as "he's a fighter" -- certainly commendable, but the question of "for what"? must be asked. Money? That is clearly his track record. Fame? Power? Ego? None of these are inherently bad, nor disqualifying -- but to be a conservative, things like "smaller government", "rule of law", "sanctity of life", "religious freedom", "individual freedom", "the family", etc have to show up somewhere and at least compete strongly with the more common human motivators.

"Make America Great" is indeed a worthy objective, but the meaning of that for a conservative is a return to the lost principles that both once made "America" and then made it "great". There is no America without shared ideas -- America was a nation founded on ideas rather than mere territory or ethnicity. While the territory still exists, "America" is now only a reference to a glorious past.

Goldberg must have more faith in himself and in other humans than I do. Desperate people not infrequently even commit suicide. I'd like to completely believe that was impossible for me, but I'm not sure I know the pain that drives that permanent solution to a temporary problem -- I'm quite certain that their pain made them decide it was "the only option". I pray to never be put to that test.

That is roughly how I look at the Trump phenomenon among the thinking conservatives. These are desperate times and that makes for desperate people. The America that we once knew is GONE -- no respect for the Constitution, no respect for the separation of powers, government expanding and worming it's way into all aspects of life, the young and the old corrupted -- the young by indoctrination, the old by being bought off with "benefits". "These are the times that try men's souls" ... and for some, the goal of "winning at any cost" seems worthy. They have reached that dark night of the soul where truly ANYTHING is better than going on at the level of depravity we now see.

One of the major failings of "progressivism" is the giving in to the human temptation of "We HAVE to DO SOMETHING!". Wisdom says that often God has a plan that you may have driven you to panic, but a much more important maxim is "FIRST, do no HARM!" ... because you still believe that there is a plan beyond man's plan, so even though it appears there is no hope, God is still in his heaven. Lose that faith, and the human desire to do something --- ANYTHING, including elect a Trump, suddenly seems "good". (or the parallel analogy, take your own life)

"Progressivism" worships man -- and action. Conservatism worships God -- and ideas. "Progressivism" looks at man's navel, and at the earth -- matter. It is basic idolatry, the worship of man and material.

But all conservatives are human as well as conservative -- so when the chips are down, the temptation to fall to what is natural to fallen man is great and sometimes irresistible to many, really ALL without the help of God!  That is one of the dangers of "secular conservatism", it sounds good on paper, but in the long dark night of the abyss, it often turns out to be like Alcoholics Anonymous without the higher power. The human reaches for the bottle -- the action. The Trump!

I see the name itself as another proof of God's earthly intervention and eternal sense of humor. From the dictionary ...

trump -- any playing card of a suit that for the time outranks the other suits, such a card being able to take any card of another suit".
trump up -- to devise deceitfully or dishonestly, as an accusation; fabricate:

When I consider God's power and the fact that we know he has a sense of humor -- for we are created in his image, such things give me that little shiver of awareness. It isn't just the odds against a "Goldilocks Universe" that the atheist need compute! As I once answered a response to that linked post, I see (VERY  loosely, as an ANALOGY) our existence as a "Matrix" (of a far different sort than the movie) that is "running on God".

I can very much understand the Trump temptation (covered one aspect here), but temptation is still temptation. We must resist it with the help of God (or some other higher power) just like an alcoholic resists the bottle! Trump appears to be a solution, but he is a "Trumped up" solution -- devised deceitfully and dishonestly. We know that to be true because has no ideas and principles that he points us to, except his own image.

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CC Vs Gay "Marriage", Water and Granite

D.C. Chief of Police Won’t Issue Concealed Carry Permits… So, Why Isn’t SHE Thrown in Jail? | The PolitiStick:

The left wears away the rule of law like water wears away granite.

For YEARS we have been seeing the 2nd Amendment infringed on by government officials at all levels with no outcry from the left dominated media at all. In fact, officials who refuse to follow the LEGAL opinions of the court are treated as HEROES! I say "legal" because in Heller, the SCOTUS by a thin 5-4 margin merely upheld the plain language of the Constitution, in Obergefell vs Hodges (gay "marriage" ruling), the SCOTUS found an entirely new "right" to gay "marriage" in a Constitution that doesn't even mention marriage at all!

Creating a legal right to gay "marriage", or changing the clear text of the Constitution require Constitutional Amendments in a nation ruled by law. That is not the nation we live in.

In Heller the court merely ruled that the 2nd amendment says what everyone knew it said for 200 years. If the 2nd amendment was to actually be amended to say that "Only citizens in the US Armed Forces or official police forces may carry weapons" one could legally remove the arms from the citizenry and still have military and police forces with weapons. But if Heller had been found against the plain text of the Constitution, then any group that DID retain the right to bear arms would need special political authorization.

The OPTIMUM for the left is another SCOTUS decision overturning Heller that sets a precedent saying that citizens have no Constitutional right to bear arms, thus allowing differential treatment for "special groups" (military, police, government agencies, certain private security agencies .... ???) driven by political power.

The right wants EQUAL PROTECTION under LAW, the left wants CONTROLLED RESULTS under POLITICAL POWER because that allows them to dole out political favors which increases their political power. Our national arguments often come down to equality of opportunity and treatment under law applied to ALL, vs equality of results as mandated and determined by political POWER.

Law vs Power.

The idea of America was to radically reduce the power of politics -- allowing personal freedom, individual virtue, religion, individual work ethic, local organizations, business and entrepreneurship to thrive and create the greatest nation in the history of the world made up of individual free men. Naturally, the left, the power of tyranny, has hated the Constitution from the start -- so they attack it by all means possible, slow wearing constantly and nuclear strikes when possible.

If the left, already with very near complete control of the legal system which is no longer founded on a written Constitution can dole out the power of armament as it sees fit -- a future arm of "The Party" can issue a decree that "TP leaders in good standing can carry arms" -- but opposition would be unarmed of course. By this path a single party gains total control of a nation.

We live as boiled frogs in a TP / media thought controlled environment where MANY sheriffs / police chiefs / local bureaucrats  have refused Concealed Carry permits -- a basic right guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment and further codified by state law. Here in MN, when the CC law passed, country and city officials finding ways to subvert the law were in very good standing with left wing media outlets like MPR.

"Consistency is not an issue" is one of the most powerful weapons of Lucifer and the left. The ability to deal in radically differential treatment depending on the issue and clouding the minds of people so they are unable to connect issues to see plain violation of any semblance of equal treatment under the law keeps the vast majority in a state of darkness.

We are still at the stage where "the truth is out there" -- it CAN be discovered, exposed, and understood, but it now takes HARD WORK. We have slipped to where this kind of reporting and writing becomes more and more rare -- when it is gone,  the masses shuffle under the lash of tyrannical evil and wonder "How could this happen here?".

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The BO Crime Wave

America’s Legal Order Begins to Fray - WSJ:



The damage that BO has wrought is local, national and global. Surging crime is one of the local effects.

Homicides were up 76% in Milwaukee, 60% in St. Louis, and 56% in Baltimore through mid-August, compared with the same period in 2014; murder was up 47% in Minneapolis and 36% in Houston through mid-July.

Even here in sleepy Rochester we saw a young hispanic empty a large cap mag into a group playing basketball near a school in broad daylight, killing one and wounding two others.



When the President, Attorney General, and the Justice Department largely side with the thugs, the thugs get braver and law enforcement takes cover. The reverse of what law abiding citizens want.

The lawful use of police power is being met by hostility and violence, often ignored by the press. In Cincinnati, a small riot broke out in late July when the police arrived at a drive-by shooting scene, where a 4-year-old girl had been shot in the head and critically injured. Bystanders loudly cursed at officers who had started arresting suspects at the scene on outstanding warrants, according to a witness I spoke with.

I wrote about this earlier this summer as it started to be reported in the some right wing press -- now it is up to the WSJ editorial pages -- about as good as it gets for right wing reporting. The MSM is still pretty mum -- crime is now surging. People are aware only anecdotally.



The saddest part of left wing policies and evil in general is how quickly destruction comes vs how long and arduous the path of good! After the destruction wrought by the left in the 60's, cleaning up the US cities was a HARD, SLOW and EXPENSIVE process that started in the '80s with increased policing, longer sentences, more prosecution of petty and "gateway crime", and "fixing the broken windows". We stuck to it through both the Clinton and Bush administrations and saw many previously unsafe areas of our cities become safe once again. It was not easy!



Now BO has reversed the trend, and discredited the hard work done by so many by all but directly calling it "racism". The highest percentage of the crimes were always committed by Blacks and Hispanics -- so cleaning up that crime meant jailing Blacks and Hispanics. It was ALSO Blacks and Hispanics that were MOST BENEFITED by the reduction in crime -- lives saved, property saved, property values increased as the areas that they live in became more liveable. Now they suffer the most as the progress is reversed.



The wages of BO are ultimately death -- locally in crime, loss of jobs, self reliance and self respect and the wrecked healthcare system. Globally in instability, the rise of bad actors in Libya, Egypt, Syria ... and the enhanced power of bad actors in Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, Cuba, etc. How much death? Like Pandora, once released, how far the stench of evil reaches is very hard to predict, but the time of prophesying evil is now over -- it is now on the rise for any with eyes to see.

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