We live under simple MSM rules. In Katrina we learned that Mayors and Governors bear no responsibility -- "the fish rots from the head". Katrina was all about W.
Fast forward to the Flint Michigan water scandal, and it is ALL about the Governor! What is different? oh, wait, check the all important Republican / Democrat factor.
Something bad happened? Find an R, they are responsible!
Something good happened? Find a D, they are responsible!
In sum: The Democratic government of a Democratic city destroys that city’s finances so thoroughly that it must go into state receivership; a Democratic emergency manager signs off on a consensus plan to use a temporary water source; the municipal authorities in that Democratic city responsible for treating and monitoring drinking water fail to do their job; a state agency whose employees work under the tender attention of SEIU Local 517 fails to do its job overseeing the local authorities; Barack Obama’s EPA, having been informed about the issue, keeps mum.
Next to Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto, the ruling is one of Satan's favorite possessions.
The National Socialists lost in Germany (sad day in Hell), so their Holocaust stopped, and in this country we can still refer to the Nazi Holocaust and remember it. Denying it is reserved mostly for people in the Middle East these days, our "trusted ally" in nuclear disarmament, Iran, being the site of an annual Holocaust Denial Cartoon Contest -- those Muslims are people you can REALLY trust, and they LOVE free speech! Oh, and they are REALLY sophisticated in their appreciation of cartoons!
The linked article plots another proof point on the loss of freedom of speech in this country, as well as the turning of red Texas blue. Open borders build blue states in the southern tier, and once Texas is majority Mexican, it is game, set, match for TP. Our National Socialists foam at the mouth with glee as they anticipate the power they can wield against any who have not bowed to their will once TX is solidly blue!
You dare investigate TP's Baby Death Squads and flesh sales arm? Thou shalt be PROSECUTED -- and NPR and the TP media will leap for joy! In the words of a Planned Genocide representative from linked article:
“As the dust settles and the truth comes out, it's become totally clear that the only people who engaged in wrongdoing are the criminals behind this fraud, and we're glad they're being held accountable,” Ferrero said.
Ah, "truth". It is EXACTLY what TP says it is, no more and no less! Don't think you want to agree?
What part of 58, 586,256 *D E A D* is it that you fail to understand! Innocence? Genocide? Law? Decency? Mercy?
TP laughs at such -- those things are for the fools that fail to grasp POWER!
None may stand before the power of TP -- All will BOW OR DIE! Besides, if you can't quite get it, they will make a handsome profit on your body parts. A fitting tribute to the power of TP. 'via Blog this'
I've been moving around a bit -- IA over the weekend, up to Eau Claire to day to see my Dad in the hospital, so not a lot of "news depth".
I did see that Trump made a claim that he could shoot someone on 5th ave and that would not affect his support with his "core supporters".
Do we not know that to be completely true? Have the Clintons not proven then phenomenon over the past 25 years to everyone's complete satisfaction? Certainly her "core supporters" could care less about e-mail servers, top secret documents or Benghazi. It is not clear if they believe that any charges against her are due to a "right wing conspiracy", or more likely, they simply believe that she is the leader of their Tribe/team and they will simply listen to her. No matter what.
If we DON'T know that to be true, consider that a significant majority are ready to accept the word of a government that Global Warming is the "greatest challenge facing our generation", yet that same government is not competent enough to measure snow depth correctly!
It has become apparent this afternoon and evening, through multiple conversations with the weather observers at Reagan National Airport, that the snowfall totals submitted to the National Weather Service for that location have not been measured properly.
I want to believe that my Dad will come out of this OK, Trump supporters are angry and want a LEADER, Hilary supporters similarly have decided to trust her, and the Global Warming industry has a monetary agenda, while most of the believers simply don't want to be ridiculed as "deniers'.
We all have quite a lot that we desperately want to believe -- that we will get up in the morning, that our loved ones will be safe, that our future will not be some hell ... the list is long.
Belief is fine -- the issue of sanity used to be how do our beliefs "measure up" to reality? It seems many of us no longer subscribe to that standard.
Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for Trump and duly get pats on the head from him. Count us out. Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself.
The entire NRO lead editorial is well worth reading, loaded with excellent points. The largest point that I would add is that the time for excessive Trump bashing is past. I would have MUCH preferred if Trump had flamed out MUCH earlier, but the current reality "is what it is" -- he may well yet be defeated, but there is at least an equal chance he will be the nominee of the Republican party. The fact that the Republican National Committee (RNC) has dropped NRO from being a debate sponsor, apparently for the anti-Trump issue, even though the RNC response to the BO SOTU speech included a swipe at the Donald, their own frontrunner, shows how lost the RNC and really anyone who thinks themselves "conservative" is!
My observation is that for at least the last three years, we are a lost set of humanity with no shared principles, ethnicity, goals, vision, laws, religion, tradition, or culture living in the area once controlled by a great nation based on ideas asserted to be timeless, but now largely unknown to a disjoint and corrupted population and feckless leadership. For the tragic group of refugees from meaning and purpose stranded in this area of N America, there are no "self evident truths", nor "endowments by a creator", and for the small percentage of the population that even understands the concepts of freedom, equality of opportunity, rule of law, etc, we are faced to try to communicate with masses that have no "truth" and certainly not a "creator" upon which to base anything.
We have strongly declared ourselves to NOT be a "Christian Nation", to not be a "Nation of Law rather than men", and certainly not "the home of the brave". We are not a "nation" in anything save a largely unknown and heavily misappropriated "history". Strangely, there DOES seem to be an "evolving" (brewing?) consensus developing to replace "One Nation, Under God, With Liberty and Justice for All". I'd proffer "Random Godless People, With Free Stuff , Amorality and Political Correctness for ALL (meaning anyone that can schlep in over open borders).
The WaPo article is fairly forgettable, but I did like this view:
So far in this presidential election cycle, the front-running Trump has proven remarkably impervious to media criticism; if anything, he has been strengthened by negative press. His backers — a coalition of the disgruntled — seem to interpret every suggestion that electing or even nominating Trump is terrible idea as proof that it's actually a great one, kind of like the way my 1-year-old thinks everything I tell her not to put in her mouth must, in fact, be a delicious treat of which I am trying to deprive her.
Do you see what I did there? I insulted Trump supporters by likening them to a small child. But I did that for a reason. This, I think, is the great flaw in most Trump critiques: They're patronizing, and the people who have fallen in love with this billionaire's cavalier campaign can sniff out condescension like ... well, maybe it's best not to try another analogy.
Ah, "condescension". If BO was forced to remove the condescending "Straw Man" argument from his speeches, he would be left with only self glorification to open his yap for! Trump is a clear product of BO (condescension, raw partisanship, lawless, etc), the culture of celebrity, the loss of any shared national ethos, and the lack of any real Republican opposition to the BO disaster. The minority of people that wanted what was "America" to continue ("the bitter clingers") are of course sad, angry, disappointed, disaffected, and basically the equivalent of spiritual refugees living in the territory they once thought they were a part of in spirit as well as flesh.
Lest any fall prey to the now commonly held view that such a sentiment is a sign of "racism" or worse (if such exists), I include this, which I happened to read in a Jefferson Biography just yesterday ... the following is from Alexander Hamilton after some time of Jefferson's presidency, "What can I do better than withdraw from the scene? Every day proves to me more and more that this American world was not meant for me". (John Meacham, "The Art of Power", p 367)
The nation has gone through many painful changes -- but I would argue that the last seven years have seen the greatest loss of especially spiritual and cultural capital. America was an idea, but the idea is dead to a large majority of the people that occupy this spiritually desolate territory.
The ideals that I and at least what I have read of the NRO so far, believe in, no longer hold sway with an significant portion of the electorate. The NRC does not represent any coherent set of values or policy save holding the sliver of "power" they already do -- their morals are the same as "The Party" (D), with just different marketing for their corrupt lust for power. The R party is the party of "hold things to the current level of corrupt meaninglessness", TP is "stop all opposition and seize TOTAL power over all!!!". Neither believes in individual liberty, rule of law, limited government .. let alone pride in those ideals.
As I've said before, Trump is the anti-BO -- lawless, no experience in government, narcissistic, no agenda save winning and himself, race pandering (BO-black, Trump-white), "might as right" ... and onward. As the NRO seems to point out, as have I, nothing "conservative" about Trump whatsoever.
However, this is political season makes us one sure promise, as bad as Trump is, if he ends up as the nominee, he will be INFINITELY better than the TP alternatives -- a known criminal and an avowed socialist.
These days, that is what counts as a "sliver lining" I guess!
It's HuffPo, but I recommend it. It's rather infuriating if you even had wisps of tenuous hope that we had some shreds of a country left!
"Cruz has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way in D.C., whereas Trump hasn't, and Trump up until this year was pretty much a player," said Craig Shirley, a longtime GOP strategist and charter member of the establishment. "Ultimately, the Washington establishment deep down -- although they find Trump tacky or distasteful -- they think that they ultimately can work with him. Deep down, a lot of people think it is an act."
Are we electing someone to the Glee Club? Cruz "rubbed people the wrong way in DC"? Good God, I'm starting to think we would be better off carpet bombing DC than ISIS!
TRUMP is "tacky and distasteful"? What the hell did/do they think about the Arkansas HillyBilly's? Have they listened to the witch cackle about "all women should be believed"? Has either Trump or Ted raped anyone?
Who do you really want to deal with ISIS or the VAST stack of nasty problems now rotting and festering after the reign of stench?
Burt, or Ned Beatty?
Personally, I believe there are a few folks that would really be improved by broadhead ventilation through the thorax!
Yes, everyone assumes that Hillary is going to skate on her scandals, and everyone INCLUDING the Republican "establishment" is fine with Trump if it comes to that -- or even Hillary. How about Bernie? The MSM and the Democrats have assumed that Trump is beatable -- and even it if he isn't, he is "one of them", and "it's all an act".
There is ample reason for Republican insiders to feel more affinity to the real estate mogul than to the brash Texas tea party senator. As Shirley noted, Washington has spent decades doing business with Trump, if not personally begging him for checks.
The inside the beltway corruption is beyond what I had even imagined! We've got very very little but corruption left! (anything?) They are looking for "someone we can do business with"! The business of being many 10's of Trillions in debt and $120 T unfunded liability while transferring massive amounts of money from the productive to the non-productive or politically connected.
"I'm rooting for Hillary," said one half-joking somebody in the GOP establishment. "She can't win a mandate, so we hold the House and don't get slaughtered in the Senate. We will have a great midterm in 2018 running against her," he said, requesting anonymity for obvious reasons. "We are a great opposition party."
It is really looking like it is TIME for Rome (DC) to burn! ISIS makes some inbred gay hillbillies look like gender confused schoolgirls -- and DC wants somebody "the can do business with" and "doesn't rub them that wrong way". What are they, cats?
Well? Who is it that owns this shit-hole? It is WAY past time to get serious!
Things are a heating up, and the elite media are getting a little worried. Based on how this article, and some of the others I've seen from the left look, they still feel more comfortable with Trump winning the nomination -- at least he "wants to be liked". They understand that -- plus Trump has given money to Democrats, always been Pro-Abortion before, he is a New Yorker ... Trump makes sense to them.
Besides, they are still sure that either Bernie or Hillary beats him, so it really doesn't matter. Just win baby win!
But Cruz ...
"I knew before seeing Cruz on the stump that he is smart — dangerously so from my ideological perspective. I knew from watching him operate in Washington that he is ruthlessly ambitious. Seeing him in action, it’s clear he’s adept at retail politics as well."
That guy might actually have a shot, AND even the Republican establishment hates him and is worried about him.
The guy isn't willing to pander to IA farmers on ethanol! Holy Crap!
Not very long and worth reading if you ever liked Palin at all.
If it was Palin vs Hillary today, I wouldn't even blink an eye voting for Sarah. She isn't being investigated by the FBI, she has a human personality, she actually was a Governor, her marriage is like "Love Story" in comparison to Hildebeast's, and she knows how to shoot. AFAIK, her husband hasn't raped anyone, and of things that you can be metaphysically certain of, I think we can of that! If they could even find a girl from Jr High that said he "he kissed her too hard" we WOULD have heard about it -- IN DETAIL!!!
Yes, Palin has tried to make some money from her fame and we are supposed to be angry about that -- and completely unconcerned by the Clinton's greater than $100M acquired after they were "flat broke" leaving the White House.
Yes, Sarah has said some incoherent things in speeches and once said that "she could see Russia from her house" -- but Hillary stated she is named after Sir Edmund Hillary who was unknown when she was born, and she has assured us that there was "nothing classified on her private server", even though we now know that was massively either an "error" or a "lie".
The MSM did all they could to turn Sarah Palin into a laughing stock, just as each day they do all they can to cover for Hillary. The MSM hates Palin and loves Hillary -- that is enough for me to at least have significant respect for Palin.
Does her endorsement of Trump affect me? No. But neither am I going to see it as some sort of new reason to jeer and cat-call at her. There is no shortage of negative media attention to Sarah even though she is largely irrelevant at this point -- for the vast percentage of the public, the MSM accomplished their task with her.
We could use just a wisp of MSM concern for the Hildebeast -- for they are certainly intent to "accomplish their task" with her as well, and see her in the White House!
I was questioned in a discussion last night if Al Sharpton REALLY owed $4.5 M in back taxes ... and that if he did, "it was old news". This is Forbes, Feb of 2015
With about $4.5 million in tax liens, most taxpayers know they would be pushed and prodded to pay. Mr. Sharpton, however, seems graced by a kind of Teflon liturgical outfit.
The latest I could find online was something from Snopes last Sept ATTEMPTING to debunk a rumor that BO had forgiven the Sharpton tax bill ... they said "it is likely Sharpton is working with the IRS".
The bottom line here is that he has at least had MILLIONS of back taxes on the books for a LONG time, and it involves a lot of questionable things like "my tax records burned in a fire".
We have seen a goodly number of Democrats pop up from time to time with many 10's, 100's of thousands and millions of dollars of back taxes, but they are still walking around, where most of us know somebody that has owed a few thousand and ended up with their wages garnished, heavy fines, etc
It APPEARS that we have a situation where the IRS is now an arm of "The Party" (D), where people of the "wrong" political persuasion (eg. Tea Party, Lois Lerner) can get in trouble, while "members in good standing" can walk around with millions of taxes outstanding.
That DOES tend to be how things work when one party takes over the entire government as TP has all the bureaucracy of our Federal government -- with 99% of them both D and Union!
Well, my "soul" is against Trump as well. I guess I'm a Cuz guy, but this is REALLY getting nasty!
As you know, there are few people I respect more than Sowell. I will likely vote in the MN caucuses, but they probably won't matter anyway, so this is a horserace that I pretty much just watch.
Worth reading, but the last paragraph tells the story ...
Is that the emotional release that Republican voters will be seeking when they begin voting in the primaries? If so, Donald Trump will be their man. But if the sobering realities of life and the need for mature and wise leadership in dangerous times is uppermost in their minds, they will have to look elsewhere.
It really doesn't take any courage to be for bigger government in America today, but it takes A LOT to be for smaller government!
The uneasy alliance between Republicans and Gasohol subsidies has been questionable for a long time -- and no doubt, the fact that Iowa has the caucuses has played a big part in calculations related to that.
Well, Ted Cruz has come out and said NO to Gasohol subsidies! Trump is all for them ... as are the other Republican candidates, and no surprise, Hillary and Bernie. Let's be honest, bigger government has been significantly bi-partisan for a long time -- sure, Democrats want MORE, but Republicans have definitely been pandering away with a "more as well".
Gasohol never made environmental or oil supply sense -- it takes about 1.3 gal of oil in fertilizer, diesel, electricity, etc to produce a gallon of ethanol.
What it DID make HUGE sense for was to help the price of corn go up and to build a lot of ethanol plants in MN, IA, IL, etc. It DID help the farm economy.
However, the farmers adjusted. The price of corn went up, so they planted more -- MUCH MORE, so the price has now fallen and the as with other "farm programs", removing this one now is going to be PAINFUL, just like the Reagan removal of some of the programs back in the '80s.
I love farming. I have loved ones farming. I love BIG TRACTORS! ... but the ethanol government program is just like all the other farm programs in the past. It is a lie. Gasohol isn't saving anybody anything, but it no doubt IS propping up the price of corn somewhat even at this low price level.
Government programs are like drugs or alcohol ... they may give a "boost" in SOME situations, but EVENTUALLY they ALWAYS cause despair. For some of them ... like FICA, that may take many decades, or even a century, but we can certainly see the end from here on that as well.
With a heavy heart, I support the Cruz position. It may well kill him in IA, but having the government create the winners and losers in the market simply doesn't work -- for anyone! It builds overcapacity and ends up causing oversupply, and then the government eventually decides or is forced by economic pressure to remove or modify the program anyway.
Politics SUCKS! ... that is why we need SMALLER GOVERNMENT!
I look at something like this and the fact we are still here and at least assured by BO and the MSM that we are "doing OK" after seven years of BO disaster makes me realize we may drop off this cliff as well. $14T in new taxes and or deficit spending, and these are the ROSY projections -- that include cuts in pay for everyone in medicine and "some rationing".
We used to hear about "debt and deficit" all the time. Gone. Military deaths -- even those of the 12 missing Marines after the loss of the helicopter in Hawaii would have caused some soul searching about "sacrifice, loss, and the incompetence of the W military" 8 years ago. That kind of reporting would actually be REFRESHING now!
The IA governor wanting to defeat Ted Cruz, Glenn Frey dying, and Dolly Parton's 70th B-day are on top of CNN right now.
Yes, there is a really angry set of people dedicated to Trump, but as I look around, it looks to me like we have settled in to the concept that "there is PLENTY of money around"! We can print it, borrow it, take if from the "1%" or certainly SOMEBODY.
Can you REALLY see anybody that doesn't have a "D" next to their name winning this next election? The nation has "gone for the stuff" twice now, but thrown R's in the Congress and a lot of state seats in hopes that they can find SOME way to at least pay for a little of it and pass it all out with some tiny level of competence.
We have killed any idea of consistency or reason. Liberty and Equality OF RESULT are TOTALLY INCOMPATIBLE!!!! Is that not obvious to all?
The idea was EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW -- as in you could not have a "progressive" income tax because it treated people differently! **LAW** was to be applied equally. There was NO CONCEPT of "equality of result". What the hell would "equality of result" even BE? We all make the same amount of money? We all live in the same cinder block USSR style flat? We all drive the same socialist "Dumb Car"?
Out nation was NOT a nation of ethnicity nor territory, it was a nation of IDEAS.
We don't even have a CLUE as to the ideas that created the once great nation we see falling apart all around us!
A little stale BO from 2012 ... he was of course "deriding Republicans", he does at least do that well :
At the Republican debate in Arizona on Wednesday night, Gingrich introduced himself by saying he had "developed a program for American energy so no future president will ever bow to a Saudi king again and so every American can look forward to $2.50 a gallon gasoline."
Without naming Gingrich, Obama appeared to target that remark Thursday, saying to cheers that "anyone who tells you we can drill our way out of this problem doesn't know what they're talking about -- or just isn't telling you the truth."
"It's the easiest thing in the world to make phony election-year promises about lower gas prices," Obama said. "What's harder is to make a serious, sustained commitment to tackle a problem. And it won't be solved in one year, it won't be solved in one term, it may not be solved in one decade. But that's the kind of commitment we need right now."
The truth is never likely to get close enough to BO to bite him in the ass, but if it did, he sure wouldn't recognize it! BO is the master at BOTH lying and "not knowing what he is talking about"!
But being loudly and arrogantly WRONG isn't enough for BO. No, he can BOTH call the other side names and then take CREDIT when what he called "not telling the truth" comes to pass!! Naturally the MSM is going to let him get away with it, and apparently the American electorate has a memory shorter than a late stage Alzheimer's patient! (from this link):
But virtually all of the increased oil and natural gas production has come from private and state lands, where Obama has no jurisdiction over approving drilling permits. Meanwhile, oil production on federal lands has floundered under Obama. From 2009 to 2013 oil production on federal lands fell by 11 percent and natural gas production fell by 28 percent.
He proudly held off the Keystone Pipeline and then cancelled it as well. BO has done all he could do to stop US and Canadian delivery of cheaper energy to Americans, but he shamelessly takes credit for it at the same time!
Our founders were right, we REALLY DO need an ADVERSARIAL MEDIA ... it is just too damned bad we don't have one when a D is in office! Just wait and see a completely insanely obnoxious completely adversarial media return if an R is ever elected president in BOistan!
One can't expect a lefty leaning person to really learn from experience, but if a corporation provided service this bad the Star Trib would almost certainly be demanding lawsuits, government action, etc.
Of course MinnesoataCare **IS** the government, and "they are here to help" ... but you would never know it from the phone exchange below (there is more in the top linked article):
I called often but the result was always the same: “We’re experiencing a high rate of calls. Please call again later.” **Click**.
I was foiled online as well, my MNsure account disabled by the usual cyberscape bouncer, System Administrator. On rare occasions I pierced the cones of silence that hung over their help desks. “Wait! I’m here!” I croaked. My throat dusty, forming words like a Bedouin straggling in from the Sahara. “I have copies of checks … Tax info …“They don’t match our records,” said the voice.
“How can you have records if you don’t send us invoices?”
“Mail in your payments anyway, without the invoice,” said the voice.
“I tried that, you guys applied them to the wrong account.”
“Mail them anyway.”
“You want me to mail money blindly, with no paperwork, to an agency I can’t call or contact?”
“Just put your ID number on the check,” said the voice.
“You mean this one?” I read the number.
“That’s not your number.”
“That’s my ID number from the last invoice you sent me. It says right here: ID number.”
I've heard a full crowd of lefties on MPR try to sort out why we have MinnesotaCare + MNsure, and how that all relates to BOcare, and it was obvious they were very confused, some of THEM even wanted to get rid of MNsure ... but naturally, since they were all lefties, there were a couple that were CERTAIN that MinnesotaCare's many problems (that they all agreed it had) would be worked out "soon". I believe I heard that last spring.
But who really cares? It is ONLY $44 Million, I mean it isn't like some CEO got that for a salary or the Koch brothers gave it to some campaign or something!
"As a result of the weak data, JP Morgan slashed its fourth-quarter GDP growth estimates from a 1.0 percent annual rate to only a 0.1 percent pace. Goldman Sachs cut its forecast by three-tenths of a percentage point to a 1.1 percent rate. The economy grew at a 2 percent pace in the third quarter."
I know that in the age of BO, we are all supposed to listen in rapture while he pisses down our backs and tells us he made it rain, but I guess I just don't enjoy it that much!
DOES ANYONE IN THE US CARE ABOUT THE ECONOMY ANYMORE!!!!
So if the economy "grew" at 2% in 3Q, that may actually be a 1% DECLINE under the old measure.
Now 4Q is estimated to be a 2-3% DECLINE under the old measure.
I reported on the first two quarters here -- they originally reported 1Q as -.2 and then bumped it up when they reported 2Q with 2.3% "growth" with the new measure. So, if we take THEIR "adjusted measures" and apply the "new GDP math", we get +.6, -.7, -1, to a -1-2% 4Q! That
That folks is supposed to be a "good economy" in the age of BO!
Does ANYONE believe the inflation figures from the government anymore? Sure, gas is down, but food? medical? internet? TV? property taxes? any sort of "service" like car repair, tires, etc? anyone look at the price of a car lately???
I realize what a complete dupe I am holding some money in "inflation protected US Bonds" -- and WHO is it that I thought was going to calculate the inflation number? Talk about the Fox guarding the hen house!
The linked article makes a case that Mike McCarthy cost Aaron Rodgers yet another Lombardi last night. (I know, we only would have had to get by Carolina and then win the big one! Would have been NO PROBLEM! ) I especially liked this part of the argument ...
It's almost always better for the underdog to try to turn the game into a shorter contest. Taken to an extreme, if you're playing Steph Curry one-on-one and you start with the ball, it's better to play to one than 11, because you might fire off a jumper and get lucky, but you're not going to hit 11 shots over Steph without giving him the ball.
It's a good article on aggressive vs conservative coaching. McCarthy is pretty conservative coach at heart, and like everything, that has it's plusses and minuses. Oh yes, and "Monday morning QB" is ALWAYS a great place to be smug! Football is however a GAME, so if there is enjoyment in 2nd guessing, why not? Besides, there IS some worth worth to a post-mortem, and given my head, I'll be thinking SOMETHING about the Pack headed to next season.
I was surprised they didn't roll the dice on going for two after the big Hail Mary. We had the momentum, the birds were stunned, I think it was our best shot and a good one ... I think even a better one than what the article leans toward.
The best news of last night was Jeff Janis and Jared Abbrederis ... we have been waiting to see more of both of them since the O went south even before the break, and last night they both looked good. I'm certainly hoping we return to being loaded with good receivers next year!
I found this one to be WAY easier to take than the over conservative 2nd half with the surrealistic final minutes at Seattle last year. I was thinking of that kick today as Carolina did successfully field the onside!
I'm the kind of guy that likes to watch my team methodically run up 3+ touchdown leads and then do long grinding drives to leave the margin at that level! Last years mid-season Pack was PERFECT! Note, I don't like that in general -- I like to see everyone else play CLOSE! I almost turned off the Carolina - Seattle game in the fist quarter.
We're WAYYYYY DUE! Our season had huge issues, but we came back to life last week and ended up on the wrong side of one of the better playoff games one is likely to ever see.
This year has taught me to throw expectations completely out the window when it comes to football. I ALWAYS firmly held that relative to injuries, but this year I learned that at least the O can just suddenly "go to pot" and nobody can put their finger solidly on why?
Naturally, come September my hopes will be sky high again. I'm thinking Carolina beats the birds and goes to the big dance.
"Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore"! As I've noted before, we also certainly aren't in anything that would have been called "America" or USA prior to 2008 anymore. WTFistan? It was "Changed", and it seems Hopeless ... but I think I could even take THAT a little better if I could even begin to understand how I might even imagine walking a few miles in the ruling elite's moccasins -- or perhaps wearing their tinfoil hats? What is going on????
In the linked article we find that a lot of strange people are running in and out of the remote wildlife refuge that has been "occupied", including somebody dressed like a Declaration of Independence Signer, some kids, reporters and ladies baking brownies. and a horse named "Hellboy".
Deeper inside, down an icy, tree-lined road, the group has seized about a dozen buildings, and the Bundy brothers have commandeered the cluttered office of Linda Sue Beck, a government biologist who had been leading a war on invasive carp before the occupiers took over.
The heart of the protest, however, is a quarter-mile from the biologist’s office, at a bunkhouse with bedrooms and a large kitchen where women marinate chicken, grill salmon, bake brownies and organize a stockroom that swelling with donations from around the nation. To slip in, a reporter just has to ask.
I know I'm pretty concerned that the LEADER of the "war on invasive carp" has been sidetracked! Thank God we are still able to combat "Global Warming", the "challenge of our generation", as well as the other biggie "Income Inequality" ... I wasn't even aware we had declared war on carp.
So WTF? The NY Times clearly cares about this "occupation", although the federal government either completely doesn't care, is totally incompetent, or ??? I mean, 3rd grade snow fort occupation management 101 would be to RESTRICT ACCESS! In the event they have ANY future plans to take the government property back ... perhaps in a hurry because the carp have maybe captured a couple of our navy craft and we want our sailors back!
Or perhaps our leadership is looking to get a bunch of people in there so they can burn it up like Waco and make a bigger "statement"? Isn't there SOME limit on how much incompetence a sane person can buy into? I know that is "black helicopter stuff", but I simply can't figure out what the Feds are up to here at ALL, and I don't think the NY Times can either.
I WILL say however that watching Facebook, one sees how quickly the left goes to VIOLENT HATRED! There can be all manner of black riots, police killings, blacks blocking freeways, Islamic beheading, rapes, planes bombed, etc, and your average lefty is "keep calm, don't stereotype, be "proportional" etc.
Let a few cranks take over a remote wayside rest and the lefties want BLOOD and they want it NOW!!! TERRORIST is a word they are no shy about using at all in THIS case!
So on to the Iranians and the boats. We are expected to buy that our navy is SO incompetent that they "drifted into Iranian waters". This makes no sense. The boats were stopped on the high seas for a great show of force over the US, especially the obviously false cover story plus BO and Kerry bowing and scraping.
I understand why Iran would like the show of force and slap in the face on the day of the SOTU and a couple days before sanctions are lifted, but why would BO and company play along? Even MORE surprising is that it seems that NOBODY is concerned at all about how completely off the wall this incident is. There are at least 10 sailors that know at least a lot of the story, and nearly certainly double, triple that or more on this side and who knows how many on the Iranian side. It would seem like the truth eventually will come out, but OTOH, the gigantic lack of curiosity is AMAZING!
Was the propaganda photo op something that Iran demanded to release the three hostages they have been holding forever? I could see BO going for something like that for sure. Oddly, although the linked WaPo headline is ; "Plane with freed Americans leaves Iran; U.S. imposes new sanctions", the sanctions are not on Iran, but on the companies that helped them prepare their ballistic missiles that they have tested in violation of the agreement that the sanctions have been lifted as a result of them agreeing to ... and violating!
Again, What???? I have no idea what is going on -- the "ship of state" seems to just be completely drifting domestically and abroad, and it seems everyone is just watching the playoffs, TV and movies and surfing the net like cud chewing cattle.
You can go off and read the reasons if you like ... I have a few in the same vein that if I cease to be reality based, I could proffer as my platform ...
1) I believe that white teens should be able to walk through black neighborhoods late at night, drunk, carrying large amounts of cash in complete safety.
2). I have the death sentence on 12 systems
3). I've shook NRA members hands.
4). I believe police forces should be disarmed, carry rainbow flags and dispense GMO free granola.
5). I believe that everyone should vote early and often with no identification required.
6). I think we should pay students to attend free universities for as long as they like with no grades and pay for it with money -- prettier money, printed on colorful paper with a lot of unicorns on it!
7), I support mandatory voting for EVERYONE! If you don't vote, you go to a special camp where they convince you to vote! Coupled with #5, we should have turnouts in the 300-700% range!
8). I think everything should be free. Healthcare, nursing home care, housecleaning, lawn mowing, booze, drugs, Internet, Cable TV, movies, sports, masonry ... It should ALL be FREE!
9). I'd filibuster FOREVER for having no taxes paid by anyone in the 99% ... have the 1% pay it ALL and just print the rest! Now that I think of it, this seems like a BASIC RIGHT! Oh, and make the money more colorful and prettier -- with unicorns.
10). Why are we talking chump change like $15 hr? Anyone that wants to work deserves at least $100 bucks an hour -- heck, why not $1,000? This also seems like a BASIC RIGHT!
11). A Trillion? Why so little? I raise him double and add $30 Trillion! oh, and I would demand that we get most of the work done by disabled ex-con MINORITY veterans that are addicted to at least alcohol and one other substance and are unsure of their gender! Take THAT BS!
12). Everyone is entitled to EVERYTHING! If they want to work -- ENTITLED! If they don't want to work ENTITLED! If they want to be CEO? ENTITLED! Everyone is entitled to everything. It's ... you guessed it, A BASIC RIGHT!
13). EVERYONE should be paid equally! Men, women, children, pets, undocumented Democrats ... EVERYONE IS EQUAL! ... It's a BASIC RIGHT!
14). Why limit funding for any great idea? Planned Parenthood? UNLIMITED FUNDING! When people have ideas of things that they want, those are the things they want!
15). Why would anyone limit family leave, vacation days, sick leave, etc? Everyone gets UNLIMITED PAID LEAVE! ... for whatever they want! Can't Bill Gates or Warren Buffet take time off whenever they want for whatever reason they want? Why the hell should they have an advantage over anyone else? See 13 ... being off work tends to cost more. Everyone gets unlimited leave AND double salary while on leave!
16). Why have any campaign grovel for donations? All campaigns are FULLY FUNDED! No more grubby "donations"!
17). Coach? Why should ANYONE fly coach? Anyone that wants to fly anywhere flies on the best private jets! Why limit ourselves? See 13.
18). Banks? Why bother with banks? In my administration everything is free and everyone makes gigantic salaries. Sure, we can have a lot of "regulators" as an excuse for paying more gigantic salaries, but you don't really expect them to waste time looking at boring records full of columns of figures in a nation where everything is free and everyone is RICH do you? I didn't think so.
19). Gay rights? Hey, there are over 50 genders on Facebook and incalculable sexual preferences -- every one of them is to be "special, protected, subsidized, celebrated, honored, etc" in my administration. We will have special days for all of them with big parades pretty much every day of the year! Imagine the joy of "National uncertain genders attracted to imaginary species day"! A great excuse to produce a bunch of free T-shirts and party favors!
20). I got into politics because I was sick of everything not being PERFECT!
21). There was an invasion in 2003? Bummer! I oppose all war back to Sumer vs Elam in 2700 BC (first documented war)! My first act as President would be to outlaw War for all of time ... retroactively!
22). While I oppose war, I love veterans. In my administration anything to do with Veterans will have UNLIMITED FUNDING!
23). Oh, I love the Iran deal. I propose we "DECLARE PEACE"! ... with everyone! On second thought, this is redundant since I have already declared war illegal -- SO, I "DECLARE LOVE!" ... all people everywhere will LOVE EVERYONE! Why didn't we do this before?
24). Here today I declare that the CLIMATE WILL NOT CHANGE if I am elected! Not now, not EVER! This is it! ... unless you want it turned down a few tenths or something. I declare that all energy will henceforth be free, completely non-polluting and like my budgets, UNLIMITED! I'm forming a task force so that everyone can have the weather they want every day!
25). "Immigrants"? Isn't that kind of exclusive? Executive orders? I'm sick of all this -- on my first day in office I will send Congress home! It will be dissolved! Our borders will be COMPLETELY OPEN ! No more politics! What we will have is PERFECTION -- I came to abolish politics.
I guess I really like politics after all. In a world free of want and war where everyone not only has everything, but loves everyone, we will all live happily ever after. For CERTAIN!
It is always a mystery to me why intelligent guys like BS with obviously intelligent supporters stop so far short of getting to what they and we all REALLY WANT!
Longish but worth the read if you have any theological bent -- what could be better than a discourse on Hell before a weekend which promises that there is a hope to see zero tomorrow, but the near certainty of a sub-zero high on Sunday! In the north, it is hard not to feel that God proved his mercy when he made Hell hot rather than cold!
It is a serious topic -- and a serious article. Considering that these doctrines are thousands of years old, and the idea of a "place of suffering" for the damned, crosses multiple religions and even non-religions, it is worthy of being aware of what such doctrines are, even (or maybe especially) for those who reject them. If you assume "it's all made up" ... as it MUST be if you are atheist -- somebody has been thinking these thoughts as "right" for a lot longer than whatever the latest thoughts are.
Consider Emerson on this topic ...
"All writers must submit their performance to the wise ear of Time, who sits and weighs, and ten years hence out of a million pages prints one. Again, it is judged, it is winnowed by all the winds of opinion, and what terrific selection has not past on it before it can be reprinted after 20 years, and reprinted after a century!"
The "progressive mind" tells you that old is bad, new is good. Is Eternity old or new?
Is clearly understanding "the worst that can happen" if you go without insurance of most import to those that are insured, or those that are uninsured? That is not a bad joke about "fire insurance", it is a serious question.
Having been raised a Baptist, I was especially struck by this:
There has also been a healthy reaction against the type of preaching that revels in depicting the sufferings of the damned in the most lurid possible light. An example would be the fictional sermon on hell that James Joyce recounts in his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. This kind of preaching fosters an image of God as an unloving and cruel tyrant, and in some cases leads to a complete denial of hell or even to atheism.
It is absolutely certain that each of us will die -- the specifics of "how" can vary a lot. Each of us has likely been exposed to, conjured ourselves, or otherwise arrived at "the worst that could happen" -- usually a LONG, PAINFUL, and LONELY exit. For some reason on my long motorcycle trip I imagined running off a curve in the middle of nowhere, falling next to a stream with massively painful and immobilizing wounds, yet being able to get water so thus survive in great pain until infection from my wounds or starvation finally took me. Naturally, as a very svelte Moose, I would probably starve in less than a couple days, so I'm not sure why the water was even a consideration.
In any case, that might have slowed me down on some of the curves a bit, so maybe that WAS warranted ... if it had made me pull off the road and call for the psych medics, it would have to be judged too graphic.
The point (such as it is) is that a firm idea of "the bad" has an obvious place in molding human behavior, as well as the idea that no matter how bad somebody else has been, the thought of "ultimate justice" of a nasty sort can help us decide that we don't need to exact immediate punishment on them. Hell has it's purpose -- like death and all else in creation. Don't focus on Hell, but don't forget it is there.
I had never been exposed to the argument put forward by Hans Balthasar ... although I'm pretty darned certain the name has showed up in fiction ... "Balthazar" ?
The most sophisticated theological argument against the conviction that some human beings in fact go to hell has been proposed by Hans Urs von Balthasar in his book Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved?” He rejects the ideas that hell will be emptied at the end of time and that the damned souls and demons will be reconciled with God. He also avoids asserting as a fact that everyone will be saved. But he does say that we have a right and even a duty to hope for the salvation of all, because it is not impossible that even the worst sinners may be moved by God’s grace to repent before they die. He concedes, however, that the opposite is also possible. Since we are able to resist the grace of God, none of us is safe. We must therefore leave the question speculatively open, thinking primarily of the danger in which we ourselves stand.
"Dare We Hope" sounds interesting -- my reading list is a little long right now.
A summary -- if you are Christian, then Hell is real. God fervently desires that all be saved to the extent that he allowed himself in the form of Christ Jesus to be crucified, die, and descend to Hell to pay for our sins. He is a God of Love that allows or acceptance or rejection of this divine sacrifice.
I'm fine with kids being nice to Blair Walsh. I'd be fine even if the muff had happened to a Packer kicker in a big game -- it's part of football, part of being a kicker, and life is CERTAINLY more than football. It is also fine that the Star Trib covers it ... heartwarming article.
As near as I could find out on the web, an NFL kicker in 1965 made about $35K ... that was pretty good cabbage back then. When I started at IBM in 1978 I made $15,500 and that was considered an excellent starting salary. A starting teacher got like $9K in '78.
Walsh made $3,250,000 last year. That is a little less than 100x what a kicker made in 1965. Aaron Rodgers made $19.1 million for comparison.
We all know about the biggest CEO packages, but looking around the web I ran into a "real jobs site" in REAL CEO pay ... not the "Top 400 companies". It's kind of a laugher ... $160K average, $460K "high". The average for CEOs is $15.1 million, counting the big guys. So Aaron Rodgers makes $4 million more a year than the average CEO.
We KNOW what the Star Trib thinks of CEO pay, and we KNOW what they would say about a $3 Million a year CEO whose company lost money! I hate to tell them, but just as making kicks is not guaranteed in football, making money is not guaranteed in business!
I believe that all of us at some level are a little aware that "value" and "markets" are complicated and have WIDE variance. You can go down to Kwik Trip and grab a banana for about a dime, then walk over and grab a bottle of water for a little over a buck.
The banana grew on a tree somewhere in Central America, somebody cut it down, trucked it to some city, put it in a big container, put it on a banana boat, it showed up on likely the Gulf Coast, went through a shipping center or two, a truck or two, and found it's way over a couple thousand land miles to your Kwik Trip shelf. Simple.
The water probably came out of the ground within a few hundred miles and ended up in the close to zero cost plastic bottle in a palletized flat with nary a human hand touching it and was trucked to the same store.
The difference is of course "markets and marketing". The banana is a pure commodity. The water likely is too -- but it is getting a halo effect from the marketing of other bottled water. "Perrier, Dasani" ... you may not be able to recall them, but they are in your head, trust me!
The reason you think as you do about CEO pay differently than you think about Blair Walsh is the same as the reason that water and bananas are priced differently. Marketing. (or "propaganda" if you want to give it a more sinister spin)
You have seen hundreds ... maybe thousands of headlines, articles, political statements, digs in entertainment, etc on the horror of high CEO compensation. ALL of those statements focus on the very highest of CEO pay and the most egregious of CEO excess. CEOs, and corporations in general have been demonized more than the Nazi's were in WWII.
Why? They are MARKETED as "An enemy of The Party (TP-D)" ... and therefore "the common man". TP is ALL about "the common man" -- like the millions of blacks living in hopeless inner city poverty and 6K young black men gunned down in the street every year. They would be very happy for you to become their wards just like blacks already are! Just vote for them!
Just as TP isn't really a "friend to the common man", Corporations and CEOs aren't really enemies of TP -- CEOS and Corporations donate 10's of millions to TP, but what part of MARKETING don't you get? That bottled water at the Kwik Trip isn't any better than what you could have drank from a free water fountain, but you still bought it didn't you?
TP needs "enemies" like Hitler needed the Jews. Scapegoats. As I cover here regularly, "truth" is a very early casualty of the slide to one party rule. Constant control of the "message/narrative" keeps the masses of the sheeple firmly in the grasp of "the world according to TP".
The vast majority of the country and really the entire west is like an audience watching a magician on stage perform "amazing acts". I've come to believe that in this life, Christian faith provided the massive advantage to the western mind of making the masses of people skeptical of the claims of man and governments. "Render unto Caesar" indicated that government had a role, but that role was LIMITED and should always be viewed as SUBJECT TO GOD! TP has made sure that the masses have gotten "smarter" than to believe in the sovereignty of God vs TP.
In our souls, we all know this story, but given our nature, and the nature of evil, we forget it. We should all watch the following every now and then. This isn't so hard to understand -- GOD is the Master, we are the Apprentice and government, is the "servant" broomstick .... there is a tendency for our "servants" to get out of hand if you don't remember the "spell" to shut them down!
For those that read this blog, you are hopefully aware that I am a CONSERVATIVE, not necessarily a "Republican". I voted for Ross Perot after HW Bush broke with his smaller government promises and raised taxes. I'm not proud of that, but from it I learned that politics is nearly always the choice of "The Lesser of Two Weevils":
The two linked articles at the top of the post show that "the establishment Republican Party" and whatever one might like to call the more conservative wing ... let's go "militants" for now rather than "Tea Party" since I already use "TP" for a couple other things, are getting HOT, and it looks like change might be on the way.
I didn't watch the rise of Ronald Reagan, I was a Democrat to the small extent I cared until Carter convinced me that I'd rather not turn off the lights, put on a sweater, and say goodbye to America at the age of 21.
In retrospect however, it is obvious that the "Rockefeller, Country Club, Blue Blood, Coupon Clipping" former elite of the Republican Party were not enamored with Reagan. They found him shallow, a loose cannon and from the wrong side of the tracks. Their candidate was George HW Bush ... patrician, great blood lines, Yale, CIA ... "establishment". Needless to say, the left was in total agreement! Reagan was an "idiot", "warmonger" ... he was SURE to be a DISASTER, if not the end of the world in a nuclear battle with our then partner in stability, the USSR.
History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme. I would have LOVED to see Scott Walker -- we have just experienced 7 years of expensive on the job training for someone with no experience in leadership or governance, and aside from extreme expense, it has really only gained us the certain knowledge that some people can't be trained. For that reason I'm anything but excited about Trump, Cruz or Rubio.
Christie has too many skeletons in Jersey and we don't need a pol that is ham-handed enough to hug BO right before an election. I think Kasich is a great person and a good governor, but he has drifted left and doesn't really stand for anything in the small government arena.
So, I'm not excited, but I will vote for whomever 1) I see as most likely to limit government 2). Has a chance of winning. (Voting for someone that can't win is the equivalent of voting "present").
That said, I have to admit that craziness of the left and Republican establishment going after Trump and now even Cruz is making me give both of them a strong second look. I would assume that BO certainly realizes that his calling out voices like Cruz and Trump puts them in a better light with a large set of voters.
BO's approval ratings are well below 50%, it would have been like W Bush coming out and saying that "I really hope the Democrats don't go with a strident partisan like Obama" in the the spring of 2008 -- W would know that would help Obama, and I'm certain Obama knows that his comments help the more strident voices likewise.
The Republican establishment is a little easier to understand. They got back in the drivers seat after Reagan ... HW, then Dole, then W, then McCain, then Romney. Newt was more Reaganesque, but Speakers since have been establishment all the way.
Do I get mad at the Republican establishment and fervently wish for another Reagan? Oh, certainly I do, but a very large part of being a conservative is being reality based. Being mad and cutting off your nose to spite your face are two different things to a conservative.
The list of things I detest about Trump is lengthy, but I DO very much enjoy how mad he makes both the left and the party elite. I had never really noticed Cruz much -- yet ANOTHER lawyer Senator with no leadership experience! David Brooks going after him though is a good sign that there might be some "there there"! Anyone with a shred of either patriotism or conservatism has to be completely disgusted about where we find ourselves after 7 years of the stench of BO!
If you aren't disgusted, you have to REALLY not be paying attention, or you are a Statist / Socialist at heart and need to start "Feeling the Bern"! BS is the obvious successor to BO.
Sadly, with the look of the markets, Europe, Iran, crime, ISIS, etc, it may just come down to "Who do you think our enemies are the most afraid of"?
Fishing along, having a brew on a sunny day and observing with a philosophical tone "Oh! Look! THAT is what Nietzsche meant by a "Pair O Docks"! (paradox) ... I'm so intelligently humorous it is simply amazing!
Well, I'm still not smart enough to be a Liberal, so there is that.
The linked article is worth the time, it points out what I regularly do, that "morality" is "whatever the dominant liberal elite decides it is" -- but these days there are a lot of protected non-violent Muslims raping young women or blowing stuff up, which we know has NOTHING to do with Islam, and as the article does a good job of enumerating, the list of such paradoxes is very long.
It seems that the fact that man has GOT to believe in SOMETHING, and that only works if at least the vast bulk of people take that something to be "divine, eternal, omniscient, etc" is very much coming home to roost.
In the Christian age in the US, the dominant culture was "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant". In the post-christian age, that mantle is "liberalism/progressivism". Problem is, "WASP" had CHRISTIAN and WESTERN (as in EUROPEAN) written all over it, and they had a pretty solid track record -- it was the "Divine Right of Kings" passed down through "endowed by their Creator" on the way to making a nation sacred, and exceptional.
Our current foes in Islam, Putin or China have no trouble believing in their divine, historical, philosophical, etc exceptionalism and mandate to rule.
We however seem to have gotten lost somewhere between the martini and the joint (marijuana) and now discover that while the old WASPism was replete with privilege, boorishness, hypocrisy, etc, the new liberal country club seems to be populated with the same sorts of issues ...
In truth, party-line, elite liberalism is mostly about careerism and embracing a loud ideology that trumps every other progressive and identity-politics agenda. Politically correct leftism is a career investment — a sort of insurance that indemnifies one against every sin, from carbon-spewing travel and politically incorrect gaffes to Wall Street profiteering and 1950s-style sexual loutishness. To borrow from Tolkien, the assertion of leftism is the “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.”
A bit intellectually stilted, but worth the read. If you keep up with this blog you have read it all here in my own tech-weenie autodidactic intellectual wannabe prose -- these guys are the real deal.
Some priming before you begin ...
"Westphalian" -- Peace of Westphalia, 1648. The end of the 30 years war, the agreement between Rome and the European States to recognize and respect the state as the source of government. Could look at it as the REAL end of "The Holy Roman Empire" and the rise of the Protestant dominated nation-state west.
"volkerwanderung" -- "The Migration Period". From the perspective of Roman Empire, the invasion of the barbarians ... with the obvious metaphor to today.
The end follows. I maintain that we DID (or at least W did) however make a SUCCESSFUL but very expensive "turning point" from 2001-2008. If the path set had been maintained, the world may well still be at peace, ISIS never rising, and Iran contained. The left could still lament a small contingent of troops in Iraq with deaths on the order of what we see in Afghanistan and claim "it was all unnecessary" -- but instead ...
And turning points were not recognized or taken, most notably the moment in late 2015 when the U.S. could have inventoried the region to determine those states and parties in or on the side of world order and those who would destroy and replace it so as to firmly support the former and resolutely oppose the latter.
It was not to be. The collapse of the Westphalian state system meant that the foundations for the values they upheld—open trade, open expression, consent of the governed, and universal human rights—crumbled as well, and the remaining states of the core region of the world withered away.
As the historian Edward Gibbon mused when writing about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, perhaps the time would come when the interpretation of the Koran would “be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mohammed.”
I sincerely hope that this meme was put up by somebody just having fun rather than being serious, but it is certainly going around.
Of course, everyone actually gets $4.30 ... sort of.
What is REALLY scary is that if you DID get $4 MILLION as a young person and decided to "live off the interest" from an FDIC account you would get LESS than 1% ... so < $10K per million, or a total of $40K a year -- less than the median income! Talk about "living like a millionaire"!
So most of us have a lot of money in market index funds and bonds. To the extent that the "BO economy" has done ANYTHING the past 7 years, it has pumped up those funds with a lot of freshly printed money. Take a look at China, take a look at the stock market so far this year -- or go back and look at 2009. You can do MUCH worse than a 1% return on your money!
As I've said a number of times, the "bottom bottom" line is always the same -- the MAJORITY of the population has to be involved in MAKING (building, inventing, manufacturing, writing, growing, producing, etc) something that OTHERS WANT TO BUY.
AND ... in order to continue to be prosperous, INVESTING a significant portion of the value of that production in SOMETHING THAT GOES UP IN VALUE!
Taking stuff out of some peoples pockets and putting it in other peoples pockets, printing money, giving speeches, passing laws, "regulating", having "programs", etc serve the same function as the scantily clad magicians assistant. They draw your attention so the house (government) can fleece you a bit more while the ship sinks.
The top linked article closes with the following and some of the problem is simply that "millions and billions" are just too large for the human brain to deal with ... let alone trillions and if you combine debt and unfunded entitlements, approaching 100 Trillion!
There's a relevant Richard Feynman quotes about big numbers. "There are 1011 stars in the galaxy," Feynman once said. "That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers." That was at least three decades ago—the annual deficit is at about a trillion now.
People have trouble conceptualizing numbers as big as a thousand, let alone a million, billion, or trillion. They listen to Bernie Sanders and come to the conclusion if only government took more money from "billionaires" it could fund everything for everyone. Appeals to reason and math are discounted as right-wing propaganda.
Let's face it, any appeal to reality is "right wing propaganda" these days!
I'm sure this one is going to be GONE very quickly!
So TWO US military boats end up "drifting" into Iranian waters and are "rescued" by our "friends" the Iranians, who manage to violate the Geneva Convention by showing photos of the sailors in captivity (as covered in linked article).
Hmm ...
I used to go out on big water with my 1850 Tyee ... I had a GPS, a handheld GPS, marine radio, and of course cell phones. Are we to believe that TWO Navy craft can't navigate well enough to avoid getting within 12 MILES of shore? We used to find spots out in the middle of Mille Lacs that were 10 to 20 FEET across with NO PROBLEM with units that cost well under $1K when purchased 20 years ago!
Oh, "maybe they ran out of gas". BOTH OF THEM???? !!!! Did they forget a tow rope? Are we to believe that between BOTH boats there was no operative communications gear?
Not much makes any sense here other than GROSS incompetence.
It seems nearly certain that this was some sort of ill conceived Special Forces Op, which doesn't make you feel very confident in the current state of our Special Forces. One certainly HOPES that they were within the 12 mile limit by design and simply got caught. Getting caught definitely doesn't reflect well on Special Ops, but it is a hell of a lot better than "getting lost and running out of gas", which sounds more like a couple of carloads of teens drinking beers on the backroads kind of "operation".
I'm reminded yet again of the "Jimmuh Carter Desert Classic", the perfect Democrat military operation where nobody but Americans and the stature of the American Military died -- no Iranians were harmed or even stressed in the debacle!
We knew the military would decline rapidly under BO. There was apparently enough momentum to carry out a successful op to get Bin Laden in May of 2011. Things have obviously gone down hill a good deal since then!
Remember, David Brooks is what constitutes a "conservative" at the NY Times -- and he voted for Obama in 2008!
Apparently he doesn't like Cruz very much -- and thinks he is "brutal". I suppose to a NY Times wealthy highly paid intellectual guy that is on NPR every Friday with EJ Dionne where they cover both the "left and the far left" of politics, it may seem that way.
I wonder how he feels about ISIS?
The opening salvo about how Ted Cruz as Solicitor General for the State of Texas ought to be called "brutal" because he took a case to the SCOTUS and **WON** 6-3 makes one wonder just a bit about the Brooksian universe. Justices in the majority included the BRUTAL Ruth Ginsburg, Sandra Day O'Connor, and that BRUTE, Steven Breyer!!!
Can you imagine an action movie with those three squaring off against a few hundred ISIS guys? Why, I'd feel incredibly sorry for the ISIS guys with that kind of "pagan brutalism, no hint of compassion, gentleness or mercy" arrayed against them. Imagine being attacked by JUST Ruth VADER Ginsburg!
I suppose you would be OK if you were in a population that she doesn't mind having a few more of ... which may well include ISIS I suppose, but woe be to you if you are in a population she doesn't like! To quote her on the subject:
"Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of."
So since Ginsburg, Breyer and O'Connor sided with the case that Cruz brought and won, would that make them "brutal"?
It would seem it would HAVE TO if you are David Brooks and not insane, but for the rest of us, it may just mean that being Solicitor General for your state means that you are the one that appeals cases that federal courts overrule to the SCOTUS if it is determined that they have LEGAL MERIT, and you argue such cases on their LEGAL merits. When the SCOTUS agrees with you, the assumption would be that the case and your arguments were in alignment with the laws of the nation.
The law certainly can be BRUTAL! I find abortion law to be VERY brutal, but Brooks and obviously Ginsburg do not -- well, Ginsburg possibly only finds it OK if it is applied to "a population we have too many of".
To the extent there is any meat to the Brooks hatred of Cruz, I suspect it is here:
Ted Cruz didn’t come up with this hard, combative and gladiatorial campaign approach in isolation. He’s always demonstrated a tendency to bend his position — whether immigration or trade — to what suits him politically. This approach works because in the wake of the Obergefell v. Hodges court decision on same-sex marriage, many evangelicals feel they are being turned into pariahs in their own nation.
I wonder if groups that Brooks or Ginsburg "don't want too many of", or "evangelicals", would ever have any right to "feel that they are being turned into pariahs in their own nation"? Probably not ... I'm sure if they listen to "The Party" and it's media outlets, they can all be "re-educated" to support the views that their intellectual betters like Brooks and EJ Dionne tell them are the right views!
I have no idea who the Republican nominee is going to be -- right now Trump, Cruz or Rubio would seem to be likely. When you argue that because a Solicitor General of a State takes a case to the SCOTUS that wins with 3 justices that nearly all would consider moderate to left siding with the majority proves someone is "brutal", it seems more than a bit on the "I really hate this guy and felt I HAD to come up with something that at least SEEMED objective to support my position" side.
It is very hard to believe that this is what masquerades as "a conservative view" at our supposed "Paper of Record"!
I enjoy Nicholas Carr as a writer and it was fun going back and reading my Blog on "The Big Switch" from March of '08. The world was a lot more positive back then, I was still more hopeful of technology advances helping our futures, and less worried about downsides. His predictions of computing moving to "The Cloud" are very much coming to pass.
I've also read "The Shallows" on which the linked Atlantic article is based, but did not blog on it (yet) ... I'm probably going to give that one a re-read, although it already obvious that the Atlantic article is a pretty darned good summary, right down to the "2001 A Space Odyssey" references ... in particular:
The Carr thesis, going back over a decade at least, is that our technology changes us in unpredictable ways, and we ought to be aware of that. His view on the Internet and Google in particular is that we are losing our capacity for "deep reading" and "deep thought", and are being "distracted". Like HAL, we are "losing our minds".
He recognizes that it goes back a long way. One of the fairly recent (in terms of history) pieces of technology that totally changed the world was the clock. To wit ...
The clock’s methodical ticking helped bring into being the scientific mind and the scientific man. But it also took something away. As the late MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum observed in his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, the conception of the world that emerged from the widespread use of timekeeping instruments “remains an impoverished version of the older one, for it rests on a rejection of those direct experiences that formed the basis for, and indeed constituted, the old reality.” In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.
Being a Lutheran, I recognize one of the other "big ones" as the printing press. Without it, Luther would likely have just been another heretic burned or hung to save his own soul at the behest of the Roman Church. Instead, 500 years ago in 1517, the printing press (invented 1436) allowed his arguments and eventually the Bible itself, to be put in the hands of the common people in their own language. The central power of Rome was de-centralized, and much of what happened with democracy, republican government, the rise of commerce and science, etc was a direct result.
However, as this blog laments, wisdom is much more dear than knowledge, and one of the many challenges with "artificial intelligence" is just what is "intelligence"? These are not new problems ...
In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” Socrates wasn’t wrong—the new technology did often have the effects he feared—but he was shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom).
Since 2008, I've become aware of at least SOME of the dangers of my own auto-didacticism (self teaching with no program of study) in the areas of philosophy, politics, theology and areas of science (primarily cosmology and mind / consciousness study).
I would argue that being "filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom" is pretty much the "disease of our day". I'm sure that the invention of writing was a contributor, but I'd argue that the abandonment of honor for history/tradition, infatuation with "the latest and greatest" as well as the pell-mell rush for "knowledge" (with abandonment of "values") and forced abandonment of "wisdom", since it may slow the headlong rush, was a decision -- not "inevitable". As in the case of most of our modern decisions, it is hard to call it a "conscious decision" because we seem to firmly avoid thinking with enough depth to make those sorts of determinations, and have for a lot longer than the Internet has been around.
Some parts of the technologies are as McLuhan said, endemic ... "the media is the message". Mass radio and television begat mass marketing and everyone standing around the water cooler discussing what was on Carson last night. Airplanes trumped battleships and nuclear missiles made it clear that no visible nation could get away with isolationism unless you had "cover" (that used to be the US, prior to Obama). It seems that is a lesson that will apparently require a few more millions of deaths to re-learn.
While Carr seems to think that "technology is destiny", I prefer to believe that **IF** we, FIRST considered meaning, wisdom, culture, human frailty, Gods will, tradition, etc, and THEN made use of technology with those goals in mind and primary, we could avoid at least the most onerous of the losses due to technology.
We **CAN** still enjoy an evening around a crackling fire, and we can still shut off the lights and have a beautiful candlelight service at church, and as I often do, we can settle down in a nice easy chair in front of a big window looking over the backyard with a remote / thermostatically controlled fireplace to keep us warm while we read in depth.
It is completely true that before the invention/discovery of tools, fire, language, writing, printing, computers, Internet, etc, we had less choices and "things were different". What is far from clear however is that we can abdicate our responsibility for making appropriate use of technology and blame the problem on "the technology made us do it". I agree with the following quote from the column on the fact that we are creating a lot of "flat people" these days, but I find it to be a choice rather than our destiny.
Before even the first crude spear, God enabled us to have "Free Will" -- the rest of the creatures only have instinct on which to rely. We need to quit thinking we are "apes with tools" and recognize that we are uniquely blessed to be human with the divine gift of consciousness!
I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and “cathedral-like” structure of the highly educated and articulate personality—a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self—evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly available.”
