Reflections On Starr, Favre, Loss To Bears

http://www.startribune.com/green-bay-packers-fans-not-taking-thanksgiving-loss-to-bears-well/355900641/

For 90% of WI the only other team that matters is the hated Bears! GB has been playing them since Ft Snelling was the biggest thing at the confluence of MN and Mississippi rivers. Lots of Packer Fans had high hopes to even the million game series ... but not to be. The Strib article is like the girl the guy never noticed feeling all puffed up because he got dumped by the class vixen for most WI fans ... I'm different, I live here and have for nearly 40 years.

Seeing the two SB winning HOF QBs on the field at the half and the other on the field in a losing effort was less than perfect, and fortunately and unfortunately, GB fans have had so much success that many are definitely spoiled. Even storied Chicago only has one Lombardi ... and McMahon doesn't' really have the stature of Favre or Starr in the QB ranks.

The "can't score in the red-zone" goes back to the end of last year -- had we been able to do so, there would nearly certainly have been another trophy in GB. Had Seattle been able to do so after they beat us, it would be in Seattle.

I thought the issue was Rogers mobility at end of last year. Now, as an old O lineman, I blame the O-line losing the battle frequently, and almost never moving the opposing D back down the field -- but there is no doubt there is also a receiver - Rodgers issue or issues.

IMHO, fans need to appreciate how high the level of competition is in the NFL and how truly impressive it is to win ANY Superbowls, let alone back to back or numbers over a lot of years. If you have ANY weakness in the NFL, it WILL be exploited -- and that is how it should be. One might THINK that Vikings fans and their newspapers would get that REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY well ( note the FOUR REALLYS) ... but apparently not!

The Lombardi / Starr Pack was one of the historical great dominant teams -- and because they were the first in the SB era, they hold a special place and always will. Dallas, SF, Steelers and now the Patriots are certainly in that class and likely better (more dominance in tougher era). Neither the Favre Pack nor the Rodgers Pack has reached that level -- but naturally, fans can always hope -- and struggles like the last 5 weeks show that it will take a MIRACLE at this point for this team to make it to the top this year. 

Naturally, the pure fan part of me really hopes for a miracle -- maybe it is named Jeff Janis? He has had a couple of major runbacks and a few routes that looked good. Being a Packer Fan means never giving up! 

My memory is too good to get way carried away with wistfulness for Favre. Yeah, I loved the "gunslinger" ... but part of it is was that I expected that as he aged, he would mature and force in a low percentage pass ONLY on downs where it made sense -- 3rd downs when not in FG range, rather than first play from scrimmage in OT in a divisional playoff! 

Had Favre been able to tame the interception demon, GB would likely have beaten Denver in the 2nd SB ( he threw one that put Denver in position to go ahead, which they did), and who knows what else ... the Eagles game in 2002 was nearly as bad as last years Seattle game. **ALL** they needed to do was stop THE 4TH AND 26! ... a play so infamous it has it's own Wikipedia page! ... stop that and Favre never has to go out and throw the infamous 1st down duck in OT! 

That is the past. What the heck they need to do in the PRESENT is the greatest mystery of my football fandom. Ever since Favre, the Pack has always had a potent pass attack ... heck, they put up massive numbers against Detroit in 2012 with Matt Flynn playing rather than Rodgers -- in fact, he holds the single game passing record for the team with 480! It seemed that you could plug darned near any receiver into the Green Bay system and passing yards were pretty much a GIVEN! 

Until now ... broken routes, worst number of dropped passes in the league, INCREDIBLE ... "looked good in practice" seems to be the mantra since the first 3 games of the year. The O went bad in SF, and they have been basically bad (compared to normal FOR THEM) since. 

I suppose I could keep writing, but I doubt I'm shedding any light on anything even in my own mind. 

It is STILL great to be a Packer Fan ... there are really no other teams with anything like the history of the Pack, and the last nearly quarter century since Favre arrived has been pretty darned good as well. It is a DAMNED SHAME that GB couldn't punch it in from the 8 yard line and win that game with Starr and Favre in attendance, but it is what it is. Being grateful for what **IS** an often difficult but very worthy lesson! 

Abortionist Lives Matter, Colorado

GOP candidates condemn Planned Parenthood shooting but dismiss link to antiabortion rhetoric - The Washington Post:

Look into the eyes of the Colorado Planned Parenthood shooter and the predominant thing you see is the same thing you see in most of the mass shooters eyes of this day and age -- insanity. It is unsurprising because insanity is really the only consistent element in the modern Statist directed narrative.

Abortion may well be the root of at least a major part of the loss of sanity and it's close friends reason and consistency. We certainly know that the lives of the most innocent of all -- babes, that used to be "safe in their mother's womb",  DON'T MATTER to the tune of 50+ million of them, with their body parts being sold over wine and salad.

The abortionists lives however DO MATTER -- so much that videos of babies that might live outside the womb being dismembered alive for their parts need to be suppressed, because they may "set someone off".

In Roseburg Oregon we have a shooter as black as Obama (Obama's mother was white, father was black. Shooter's father was white, mother was black). Strangely, the race of the shooter was barely mentioned -- neither was the fact that the shooter singled out Christians.  Very little was said of this at all, and in many cases it was "softened" to being "he was against organized religion", or "he was troubled".  Indeed, and the PP Colorado shooter was not?

How frequently do we hear about how "hateful, hypocritical, etc" Christians are for not supporting gay "marriage", maybe in some cases not supporting Syrian refugees (although that case is pretty much just an extrapolation from the stereotype of "Red States being Christian", etc.

We see that many cases of anti-Christian rhetoric from all sorts of groups in the US is not linked in the least to a shooter in Oregon that EXPLICITLY selected Christians -- therefore we know that Christian lives DON'T MATTER.

We have covered the Black Lives before -- the ONLY case when they matter is when they are shot by police. There are big demonstrations in Chicago over a police shooting now -- not so much over gang bangers killing a 9 year old boy. Innocent lives tend to matter less and less -- the more innocent, the less they matter.

If you are high on PCP, breaking into trucks and carrying a knife and resisting arrest, you are NOT "innocent" -- it may not deserve to be shot and killed, but you are a LONG way from "innocent". Same thing up in the cities -- if you beat your girlfriend bloody, decide to interfere with the paramedics so they call the cops and then resist arrest, you are NOT INNOCENT ... again, you being shot may not be what you "deserve", but you deserved it much more than a 9 year old boy or a baby in it's mother's womb.  Making innocence murky is a consistent part of evil.

Besides, I'm guessing they don't make deals to sell the body parts of young black men shot by the police over salad and wine -- I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

Just to be clear -- if the insane guy in Colorado really was targeting people because of abortion, he was wrong to do so. To a Christian, ALL LIVES MATTER -- eternally!

The insanity is that a culture can start explicitly deciding that some lives matter not in the least -- as in babies in the womb. They may be killed for convenience and their parts sold, and anyone that questions that is going to be called out as almost an accessory to murder if some nut happens to kill an abortionist. The babies lives matter so little that protecting them can't even be DISCUSSED, lest some abortionist be injured or killed.

Meanwhile, people can be marching down streets saying "What do we want, DEAD COPS!" or "Pigs in a blanket, Fry-em like bacon!" and there is no connection whatsoever according to the media and the left when a cop gets killed in cold blood. It drops off the news in a day.

When it comes to life, the gross inconsistency of the left wing ideology is corrosively corruptive. It eats through morality and reason like acid through metal -- leaving behind the putrid sludge of evil insanity.

We live in the land of consistent unreasoning insanity.

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Keeping US Comforatble At End

Experts Say Best Option Now Is Keeping Nation As Comfortable As Possible Till End:



OK, it is the Onion ... but it is worth reflecting on a bit.

WASHINGTON—Saying there were no other options remaining and that continued intervention would only prolong the nation’s suffering, experts concluded Tuesday that the best course of action is to keep the United States as comfortable as possible until the end.

That is what America is about these days, right? Comfort, ease, security, entertainment, feeling good about ourselves ...



Since I'm a broken record on the Moon Landing, I really liked this section:

“We just need to remember all the good times we had,” Fischer continued. “Like the moon landing—that was really nice, wasn’t it?” 

Many of those with close ties to the United States said they were having difficulty coming to terms with the country’s imminent passing, but that letting it go peacefully was ultimately for the best. 

“At one point, I would’ve done anything if it meant having America around for just a little longer, but I can’t watch it slowly waste away like this anymore,” said Tampa, FL resident Kathy Muniz, adding that it “breaks [her] heart” when she sees how hard the U.S. struggles to put on a brave face and pretend that everything is fine. “The kindest thing now is to just do what we can to keep the nation’s spirits up while nature takes its course.”

“Really, I think any country in America’s position would want the same,” Muniz added.

It seems like this may be the best theme for elections in 2016 ... Trump vs Sanders, get this over in a hurry!



One way or another!



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Spying On Iowa Shed

My set of readers is small enough that I'm trying an experiment. If you go to ip address 69.66.197.8:81 and use ID "guest" and PASSWORD "xyz", you may be able to bring up something like the following. It's a Dlink DCS-5010L if that helps.

Since it is unoccupied most of the time, in general you should see nothing too interesting, but if you have the proper technical inclination, camera viewer software, or are just handy with browsers and such, you can even move the camera around. It is IR, so things show up ghostly at night. The main purpose is to be able to read the big thermometer on the wall pretty must usually "dead ahead" of the camera to make sure that the place isn't freezing up ... but I like playing with internet cameras. I have a couple around the house here as well so I can look in on my kitties, get e-mail if there is motion around my gun safe, etc. 

My plan is to remember to kill the "guest" connection when we are down there as a public service -- seeing me running around in my undies would be hard to unsee! 

The connection down there is DSL, so I'm pretty sure the IP will stay fixed ... I did set up a remote Dynamic DNS URL ... "lakeplace.from-ia.com", that ought to work as well, but it has failed me a couple times -- might be propogation.  I'm pretty sure the IP is static on DSL anyway. 

Naturally, if you see like masked men, water running across the floor, are looking in the daytime and are able to see that the thermometer is pointing "straight up or trending leftward", an email to bilber@mac.com would be really nice! 

A small tech note for anyone trying to set up on at least Windstream or possibly any DSL, ** APPARENTLY ** ... my experience, and I've seen a couple posts to this effect, UNLIKE cable modem, if you try to access your internet IP from INSIDE your local modem firewall, you just get the modem / router no matter what you do! I wasted A LOT of time on that! 

My inside IP for the camera was a static 192.168.254.8 using port 81, and the modem/router was 192.168.254.254 usign port 80, and NO MATTER WHAT I DID, I could not get to the camera using the outside IP adress that I listed. 

FORTUNATELY I have a Verizon 4G data account, and thought "what the heck" and just gave it a try .. WALA, instant picture! ... we DON'T really want to talk about how much time I wasted trying to get at it using the Windstream DSL account at the shed ... yet another case where "the way it has always worked" on cable modems DID NOT work on at least the Windstream DSL connect. 

Our speed SUCKS ... like 384K up and 1.2 Mbits down, but "it works" ... hopefully speeds will be improving. "The plan" is to get two outside cameras ... one pointing at the lake, one pointing at the road in front ... those ought to be more interesting at least sometimes.  Is the lake frozen? Is the lake stormy? Is there snow? Is the farmer doing field work across the road? etc ... 

Anyway, that is the future ... for now, be a spy if you like! 

The Liberal T-Day Fight Plans

Dreams From My Uncle - WSJ:

Amazingly, the D's and the left at least CLAIM to think it is a "good idea" to attack known conservatives at the T-day table, and as liberals are wont to do, they figure that just a few "talking points" will utterly amaze the targeting conservative with their trenchant brilliance.  Their people all need "talking points" -- unfortunately for them, so do the people that write the talking points!

If all it took to convince everyone was reading talking points off a teleprompter, ISIS would have surrendered by now, BOcare insurance providers wouldn't be dropping like MN flies in November, the economy would be humming not sputtering, and gas would be at $10 a gallon where BO wanted it -- oh, and "Climate Change" would be solved -- whatever THAT might mean!

As it is we have this quote from the article to keep in mind ...

" Liberals have no monopoly on truculence, but the need to be told what to think does seem to set them apart. The left today is both doctrinaire and capricious; political correctness is unsparing in its demand for conformity to an ever-changing set of dogmas that frequently contradict each other, not to mention reality. "

The smart idea is to deflect the weasels as much as possible and treat them as the crazy or drug addled relative that has no grasp on reality --  hmm, maybe I repeat myself there! When you have to be told what you are supposed to say/think and what that is consists of a self-inconsistent set of beliefs that fail to match with reality, then what are you?

A liberal! ... but at least those that are crazy, drug addled or senile have an EXCUSE!

Ever since the older lefties had to deal with the death of the USSR, I've tried to be gentler with them -- it is pretty much similar to my view of Vikings fans after the Atlanta Metrodome debacle in the NFC Championship in '99 ... they have just never really been the same since then. Some pieces of reality just impinge on even the foggiest for outlooks.

It is tough when you can't think for yourself and reality doesn't match with your contradictory beliefs -- but to a true lefty, to learn and change is just WAY too painful to their shallow follow the crowd psyche.

So if attacked, smile warmly and treat the onslaught in the same manner as the 80+ year old relative telling you of their health issues or musty tales from the faded files of their memory. Humor them!

.... "How sweet! You are all grown up and have all sorts of new political thoughts.  I just agree with Monica in wishing Hillary luck this year -- "Don't blow it!".  "

Please pass the cranberry sauce.

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BO Has Just Begun

Obama's Most Dangerous Year | National Review Online:

The most damaging figure in American and quite possibly world history so far is just getting warmed up. A worthy read as the potential for Russia and Turkey to square off rises with the downing of the Russian fighter, and here close to home, "Black Lives Matter" fills at least the MPR airwaves 24x7 here in good old MN.

The times, they stinketh of BO. Read it and weep,

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Government In Action, The Criminal Neglect of Heather Curtis

Child's 'worst case of neglect' prompts $27M claim against DSHS:

Read it all if you have a strong stomach.

"I saw a young girl, thought she was a child, so small, skeletal like. And she was in nothing but a very, very soiled diaper," said Paredes-Garrett. "And she was wailing and moaning a sound I've never ever heard and the only thing I could compare it to would be a wounded animal."

Want to have the government in charge? Well, "Heather" could be an elderly you or someone that you love.

Break up families, churches and communities and then put a unionized government bureaucracy in charge, and Heather is what you get! We KNOW this ... USSR, National Socialist Germany, N Korea, Cuba, Venezuela ... don't avert your eyes! THIS is where we have descended to already, and we are hitting the accelerator for MORE!

Yes, socialists really really "care" ... about removing money from earners and transferring it to "whatever" to  increases their power. Anything else? Just imagine all the Heathers that aren't lucky enough to have someone call the cops and just die in filth and pain waiting for DSHS.

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Vote Sanders -- But Stockpile Toilet Paper

Laughing in the Face of Despair - WSJ:

PJ O'Rourke has a new book out ... no doubt I'll need to read it, but the column is worth the read for a little entertaining wisdom. The paragraph that led me to the title:

... His fellow travelers, on the other hand, were fans of the Soviet state, then under the enlightened leadership of longtime KGB thug Yuri Andropov. Yet Mr. O’Rourke, exercising profound investigative skill, spotted the chink in their ideological armor. These “were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.” Small details reveal large truths.

Here is a little bit of insight as to why Socialism fails ...

... Then, one day, I found myself beached on the shore of jobs and responsibilities and I was a Republican again.” His hippie friends, he adds, had become parasitical. “They continued to be convinced that everything was going to be shared soon, so they hadn’t gotten jobs.”

Humans are very adaptive -- give them an environment where being the best deadbeat allows them to flourish the best, and you get a lot of excellent deadbeats! It's adaptive! I'll close with the wisdom the column closes with -- a small item that is often forgotten by many!

“Jesus said ‘love your enemies.’ He didn’t say not to have any.”

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The Stab In The Back

Putin calls plane's downing by Turkey 'stab in the back' - CNN.com:

That particular phrase used today by Putin should sound familiar -- it was a common phrase used by Hitler as explaining Germany's loss in WWI, and figured significantly in the rise to WWII.

There is nothing surprising here -- WWI and WWII came about because the "Hegemon" of the 19th century, Great Britain, was fading and losing the ability to be the dominant world power. The greatest navy was no longer the trump card, both the British elites and the people were "tired of leading", or at least more interested in enjoying the fruits of their spoils and "security" than they were in bringing order and peace to the planet.

While the historical understanding of most Americans has sunk so low that even identifying the conditions under which WWI and WWII happened is beyond the education of well over half, even a tiny bit of historical insight shows that "The Age of BO" is likely the culmination of a similar period in the declining of the US and that "changing of the guard" on the world stage. Forbes charitably ranked his odiferousness third behind Putin and Merkel ... I'd put him well down the list, behind at least the leader of ISIS, the Chinese leader, and frankly a number of others -- the leader of Iran, leader of Turkey, for example have more impact on the current world stage which the US has purposely retreated from in disarray. We really no longer even rank as a "decent JV team", and deservedly so --  he was certainly elected by what is left of our tattered and corrupt election system. Remember, you need a photo ID to get a phone installed!

So we wait and see on the sidelines if another world war starts -- we richly deserve it. The last 7 years of the American decline have been beyond stupid -- slipping into the ranks of criminal self indulgence and insanity.

It increasingly looks like BO either already has, or will fully achieve his stated goal of "destroying the colonial powers" before he leaves office -- assuming there is an office left to leave.

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Reagan, Sanders, Learned Helplessness

America has never recovered from Ronald Reagan. That’s why Bernie Sanders is so important. - Salon.com:



In my brain book reading, one of the big guns is Martin Seligman, whose concept of "learned helplessness" was one of big factors that destroyed at least the scientific basis for Behaviorism -- the idea that humans operate largely like Pavlov's dogs and all of our life is merely "response to stimulus".



Here is a link to an article on some of the base of Seligman's critical work, but here is the definition that counts for now:

[Learned Helplessness] "is being repeatedly exposed to an uncontrollable event, such as going on interviews or auditions and not getting called back. After many repeated and failed attempts to accomplish something while in an uncontrollable event, your brain "learns" that success is beyond your control, that you cannot affect the outcome. Once "conditioned" to this belief, the individual gives up hope and effort, even when later exposed to an event where control is possible. In effect, you've learned to become helpless."

The Salon article is eminently skippable ... "We have never recovered from Reagan, the Koch brothers are evil, corporations are evil, the free market is a disaster, government is great, government is good, we thank it for our daily bread, Republicans forebears are "fascists" (actually the Fascists were National SOCIALISTS!), etc, etc.



EVERYONE knows what the Salon article says -- it is the core dogma of "The Party" (TP-D), drilled into every school child from day 1 of nursery school until they graduate from state sponsored indoctrination at the end of their education, and reinforced in the mainstream media and entertainment every day. It is the dominant social message -- everyone is soaking in it 24x7 and 90% are not even aware that there may be an alternate message.



I submit that Learned Helplessness has become the dominant state of the vast majority of Americans of any age. We are nearly ALL convinced that we are completely helpless against the direction the country is headed -- constant vast increases in government programs, intrusion, debt, regulation, taxation, control of speech, religion, etc. The continued destruction of individual rights, responsibility, freedom and independence.



Now a little more than half of the population including Salon, TP, the media, the educational system and the legal system, finds this massive swing to government control, incentives, payments, regulation, etc to be POSITIVE -- but nevertheless, they certainly find it to be INEVITABLE -- as do I, and AFAIK pretty much anyone including the Koch Brothers. We dissidents may have hopes that it might be SLOWED to some small extent, but even the much demonized Reagan never REDUCED any of the government takeover -- at the very most, he only SLOWED THE RATE OF GROWTH.



We know how much the left has won when Salon is still gibbering about "not recovering from Reagan" nearly 30 years since he left office, having never managed to even gain ANY reduction in government, and only VERY slight reduction in the rate of growth that didn't last.



While science gave up on behaviorism by the late 1970's, Socialism, Communism and Fascism are behaviorist ideologies -- they assume that large masses of people can be controlled by "carrots and sticks". Typically, they start with more carrots (welfare, medical care, "free stuff"), and when the population is nearly universally impoverished by those efforts (other than the elites) and becomes peevish, they move to "sticks" -- locking dissidents up, sending more and more to the gulag, starving ethnic groups that "don't seem to get it", and often mass "purges" like Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc where millions are slaughtered -- if you kill enough people, behaviorism is BOUND to be declared correct! Even Global Warming can be a fact if you kill everyone that dares point out things like Antarctic glaciers growing and temperatures failing to rise.



The 2nd Amendment remains the last real obstacle to ultimate lefty victory -- an armed populace, even though beaten down by decades of socialist propaganda and policies is not TOTALLY helpless as long as they have their arms. It is the only exceptional ace that the Founders left us that keeps some dim spark of hope alive.





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BO "Betrayed Deepest Refugee Values" In 2011

Obama Admin Paused Iraq Refugee Program In 2011:
When "The Party" (TP-D) is talking, they make it up as they go and rely on the Sheeple having short memories. Given the constant media propaganda and most people's desire to be "in with the crowd", facts and even very recent history are completely absent.

Six month pause for IRAQI refugees ... many of which helped the US cause? NO PROBLEM!

Moral high horse if anyone suggests any delay now for Syrian refugees that are far more suspect? "Betrays our deepest values".

There is only one "deep value" for TP -- * * P O W E R ** !!!!!

Everything else is purely situational. In order to actually betray any values, you have to actually have some ... the left has ONE ... power.

'via Blog this'

Trigger Warning, Packer Lives Matter

I was forced to lodge a complaint with the local health club today, as when I went in for a workout I was faced with an employee of the club in an Adrian Peterson jersey! After 3 straight losses, including losing to Detroit in Lambeau since before the holy Cheesehead was invented, I desperately need my safe space!

I've got a number of other local Packer fans to go along with me and we intend to go out looting, blocking highway 52, and turning over a few cars if the league and the Norse don't do their job and let the Pack win on Sunday!

Sure, officials have provided some key roughing the passer and defensive holding calls at points that were helpful, and Detroit played with their usual recognition of Packer entitlement (missed extra points, recovered onside, etc), but that just isn't enough this year. It is RESULTS that matter!!

The Pack **IS** football -- Lambeau, Lombardi, the Frozen Tundra! To suffer the disappointment of the Seattle game last year and to now try to "soldier on" (he he) with three straight losses is simply grossly UNFAIR beyond any reasonable level that we as entitled Packer Fans should be forced to bear (or Bear even)! We are VICTIMS and we demand justice!

I can't imagine any decent unbiased human being not seeing this my way, but I'll leave you with this demand for justice. If the Pack doesn't win on Sunday, we will burn Lambeau, most of the city of Green Bay, and loot all of the big box and liquor stores of malt liquor and flat screen TVs! Nothing screams INJUSTICE like people destroying their own neighborhoods and looting these important items!

You have been warned! My anger at the health club knows no bounds. If their manager does not immediately resign, I will be forced overeat and skip workouts all next week to protect my fragile emotional state!

*** Notice, neither the Green Bay Packers or the NFL are responsible nor the content of MooseTracks. All opinions expressed are solely owned and the responsibility of the large land mammal known as "The Moose". ***

Arland , Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut)

This post may or may not be the start of my book and my blog becoming one. It's 3:15 AM ... the spirits that wake old men and speak to them in the middle of the night are at best untested.

As over 3K blog entries might tell you, I love to write ... or maybe more precisely, I HAVE to write. I also love to read ... as much as I love to write, I love to read far more. If I just wrote from now on I would never come close to writing as much text as I have read. Which is good I believe.

I don't like to proofread my own work, nor coherently organize disjoint chapters of it nearly as much.

I've read Vonnegut before. I find him cranky,  nihilistic,  disjoint and iconoclastic. I believe I share all of those save the nihilistic -- and that I fight with a passion because I believe that question of meaning or no meaning to be the true ultimate question of "Life, The Universe, and Everything", to quote Douglas Adams.

Vonnegut was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and ended up in a basement slaughterhouse numbered five in Dresden as a POW. Allies firebombed Dresden, killing 130K people ... the highest bombing total in history. More than Tokyo, more than either of the A-bombs, and likely more that both -- supposedly the A-bomb total for Hiroshima and Nagasaki together was 129K. In the book, Vonnegut would now say "and so it goes" ... because he decided to say that over and over after recounting death or deaths.

The slaughterhouse was basically an underground bunker, so the prisoners survived and ended up digging out bodies for days, and when that got too putrid to accomplish, digging holes and using flamethrowers to incinerate the corpses. Such things often have strong effects on people. In my universe, they are a message from God to "be ye not of this world", but to Vonnegut it seems to have explained this world as random, meaningless, and utterly lacking in even free will.

Part of his conception of the universe however weirdly lines up exactly with mine, which is the result of both imagination and actual physics. Vonnegut's main character, "Billy Pilgrim", travels through time and space randomly ... partially he exists as part of Vonnegut's group of prisoners in WWII, partially he is a man living a life in Illium NY at various points from his birth, marriage, life as an optometrist to his murder in Chicago IL after giving a speech. He also was kidnapped by aliens -- "Tralfamadorians" who explain one way that physics (and I) see space and time as "everything that happens has always happened and always will be happening". You can visualize it as your consciousness moving through a 3D movie, where your consciousness moving from moment to are the "frames" and which you see as "time".

Vonnegut stops there, but Hugh Everett, quantum computing, and myself believe that not only "everything" is happening always, but a very great number of options at every "decision point" are now, have always, and will forever be happening. For a programmer, what happens at these decision points is "simple" -- the Universe "forks", like a form of Unix process creation, and "everything is the same ... only different" in each of the now multiple universes ... as in different in that "both", or "N" of the "decisions" have ALL happened and are expressed accordingly in the now multiple universes.

This theory "explains" quantum effects because rather than there being "spooky effects at a distance" (which Einstein loathed) when there is a quantum "entanglement" (superposition) which "collapses", or "resolves", in the Many Worlds view, the apparent instantaneous effects that violate the speed of light limit are not needed ... at the "slight cost" of the creation of another universe where any set of entangled potentials have each happened accordingly!

From a philosophical POV, the single universe theory negates free will -- everything just IS, always has been, and always will be. We are, always have and always will be doing whatever -- it just "is that way", and it could be no other way. We have no "free will".

In my universe(s), our decisions create new universes, including new copies of us.  I believe our consciousness "forks" along with the universe -- and that is a base premise of MY book, and to some degree starts to make me a philosophical anti-Vonnegut.

Anyway, back to Billy Pilgrim ... he keeps popping back and forth in time in his life, including being mated to a porn star also kidnapped by the Tralfamadorian aliens in a "Zoo" on Tralfamadore. The tale is full of gallows humor and dark satire as Vonnegut is wont to be. I find him moderately entertaining ... as a "guilty pleasure" when I was younger, and with a decent amount of pity for his soul now that I am older.

So what woke me up is that the working title of my book is "Arland" ... as in a play on "Our Land" and "Are Land", and also because it is the name of the Township I grew up in, as well as that of tiny town that used to be a church or two, couple bars, store, etc, but is now very close to being a sign on  county trunk "D".

PERHAPS I will have the "courage, gall, stupidity, "testicular capacity" to start dumping snippets of what bangs around in my head with dreams to be a book out here tagged as "Arland" to be "assembled later". Or probably not ... the whole thing seems to be less "stunningly brilliant" than it was an hour ago when the muse told me I was not getting back to sleep until I wrote it down.

I'm tired now.

Syria, Obama Lying, or Just Wrong?

President Obama’s Cynical Refugee Ploy - The American Interest:

The linked column  is a good one, but I'm not going to talk about it much -- I'm stealing Mead's thesis and clothing it with somewhat different support. His thesis is that if BO and his Sheeple were REALLY the "caring, virtuous, brave, etc" folks that they are now proudly strutting about as, we would have seen a bit of evidence A LOT earlier! Remember this picture that I blogged on in March of 2014? What we see now is a distraction, that is taking us deeper into the destabilization of the whole planet, rather than "merely" the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

When your ideology is firmly based on hubris, then truth, reality, reason, common sense, etc all dissolve in the fog of rhetoric, propaganda, scapegoating and wishful thinking. Like the adult that "blames their parents" for their ills, the majority of the population behaves as fake adults who are really stuck in childhood, "blaming Bush", or "corporations", or "Capitalism" or some other bogeyman, while they ignore even the most basic of facts passing by their closed minds on a daily basis in favor of the utterances of their "messiah", now plainly fallen to all who retain any independence of thought.

The bulk of the US media however is still primarily in thrall to BO, so the number of people that might otherwise have figured out that this emperor is not just naked, but also either a raving lunatic or megalomaniac, is large!

Taking in 10K, a 100K, or even a million refugees from Syria at this late date is a laughable measure -- "pissing in the ocean" of a US and global foreign policy disaster on the scale of foreign policy mistakes that caused World Wars I and II. The idea of "having a discussion" about refugees is a smokescreen like discussing "saving" (slowing the rate of growth) a few tens of billions on a now nearly $20 TRILLION US debt. It is the equivalent of a magician's scantily clad assistant -- such diversions scream to free people that still retain independent thought to WAKE UP AND PAY ATTENTION!

Pulling the troops out of Iraq, destabilizing Libya, Egypt, Syria and giving $100 billion+ and the bomb to Iran are all part of either the most gross string of incompetence barely imaginable since at least the fall into WWI, or part of the plan of a madman intent on restructuring the world so that it is more "fair and equitable" to "proud Luo tribesmen from Kenya" (being "from Kenya" at least spiritually as stated by what he claims to be his own words ... assuming you can trust him on ANYTHING).

If anyone had any desire to help "ease the Syrian refugee crisis" they would have been setting up safe zones, feeding stations and driving back ISIS **LONG** ago. They would in fact never have pulled troops out of neighboring Iraq when Syria was already in chaos in 2011 due to the "Arab Spring". They would have had some sort of coherence relative to Assad.

To those of us that still use our minds, the spectacle of the very same people who wistfully pine away for the "peaceful, better days" when the glorious Saddam Hussein and his benevolent sons presided over a "much better" Iraq, now demanding petulantly that "Bashar Assad must go!" is surreal.

Indeed. Is not the entire thesis of the BO and leftist thinking that "W made a "GRAVE mistake" by removing benevolent and just Saddam and destabilizing Iraq? Pray tell then, why was not aiding in the destabilization of Libya with ZERO attempt to re-stabilize it, cheering the destabilization of Egypt and assisting in the destabilization of Syria by arming rebels against Assad NOT a "mistake" of much much greater import? Can one really make any sense of this other than either; A -- insanity, B - an interest in seeing the world re-structured through regional and likely global destabilization? The old leftist view of "blow it up and something better MUST arise from the ashes"!

Again, the BASE of this whole charade is the idea that "It was W's fault". However, in December of 2011, Mr "If you like your healthcare you can keep it" said this:

It’s harder to end a war than begin one. Indeed, everything that American troops have done in Iraq -– all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training and the partnering -– all of it has led to this moment of success. Now, Iraq is not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people. We’re building a new partnership between our nations. And we are ending a war not with a final battle, but with a final march toward home.

Was he lying, or was he just wrong? With BO, those are really the only two choices nearly all the time. I don't know how any sane person can at this late date not wonder about which of those two options we are hearing every time he opens his arrogant trap.

We EITHER are witnessing a level of incompetence in the creation of regional and possibly global instability equal to or possibly greater than the descent into WWI, **OR** we are witnessing the acts of a madman intent on avenging the "dreams of his father" on a naive and willfully ignorant world.

Paris and an airliner in the last couple weeks. Mere snippets of the noxious fallout of the disaster that is BO.

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Not As Legitimate As Hebdo

John Kerry’s Freudian slip | Power Line:

There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo [and what happened in last week’s Paris attacks], and I think everybody would feel that. [In the Hebdo case] [t]here was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, okay, they’re really angry because of this and that.

When Republicans say something off the cuff that can be taken out of context and misconstrued, it is a done deal that the slip was the "real truth", and no apology or explanation can recover the situation. The recent Kevin McCarthy "everyone thought Hillary was unbeatable" or the classic of Trent Lott making an offhand unscripted remark at a birthday party for an old man about "the country being better off if Thurmond had been elected president" come to mind. The comparison to the national firestorm when Todd Akin talked about "legitimate rape" is just a bit too close to "even a legitimacy" from Kerry, but let's be realistic -- nobody in national party controlled media is interested in taking down John Kerry. He is one of their own ...

I'm sure that if it was a written speech, Kerry would have worded it differently, but when BO said "the future does not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam", it WAS in a prepared speech! I think the situation is a bit worse than the analogy given in the linked piece; "rape of a woman in a short skirt is understandable, but not a pants suit". "Infidels" are an abomination to strict Islam -- as are non-theocratic governments, voting or even RECOGNIZING governments that are not the Caliphate. If you are not one of them, you are better off dead -- you don't have to be a cartoonist, just not in support of the Caliphate to be a "legitimate" target for them!

As Golda Meir put it -- "Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us."

One doesn't need to listen to BO, Hillary, Kerry or a whole lot of Democrat elite to realize that they see Republicans as their real enemies and Muslims as their friends. They believe that by controlling speech -- labeling it "hate speech" --  putting the guy who made a movie that want to use as cover for their Islamist friends killing the US Ambassador to Libya in jail, having NY State prosecute Exxon for not agreeing with Global Warming, harassing people in WI that had the gall to contribute to Scott Walker ... the list is already very long ... they and their Islamist friends can have centralized power states that will work out just fine. At least they think that ... but then as Reagan said : “It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”

The left tends not to think very much about "unintended consequences", "collateral damage" in destroying the existing western culture, nor in embracing other cultures that they find "stylish". So it causes them some confusion ... and often lots of deaths. Like WWII, China, Pol Pot, etc ... Paris and 9-11 are just tiny things compared to Iranians with nukes and ICBMs. They are sure that Islamists are "reasonable people" -- Islamists like to run tightly controlled totalitarian governments, so they have a lot in common with "liberals".

Good luck to Lurch Kerry in figuring out how to appease Iran so they don't get "really angry" with us when they have the bomb. If you have a little time, Rubio puts it pretty succinctly without notes or a teleprompter.

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