Negative Interest Rates

Negative Interest Rates - Bloomberg QuickTake:

This past Friday, Japan took their interest rates negative and world markets reacted positively. Europe has been doing this for a year and a half now, even though Japan has been in economic recession for over a quarter of a century now and is possibly more desperate than Europe.

The move came 1 1/2 years after the European Central Bank became the first major central bank to venture below zero. With the fallout limited so far, policy makers are more willing to accept sub-zero rates. The ECB cut a key rate further into negative territory Dec. 3, even though President Mario Draghi earlier said it had hit the “lower bound.” It now charges banks 0.3 percent to hold their cash overnight. Sweden also has negative rates, Denmark used them to protect its currency’s peg to the euro and Switzerland moved its deposit rate below zero for the first time since the 1970s. Since central banks provide a benchmark for all borrowing costs, negative rates spread to a range of fixed-income securities. By the end of 2015, about a third of the debt issued by euro zone governments had negative yields. That means investors holding to maturity won’t get all their money back.

Even the linked Bloomberg article has no trouble pointing out that negative interest is DESPERATION!

Negative interest rates are a sign of desperation, a signal that traditional policy options have proved ineffective and new limits need to be explored. They punish banks that hoard cash ...

In case some US folks have the idea that "it can't happen here" ...

Janet Yellen, the U.S. Federal Reserve chair, said at her confirmation hearing in November 2013 that even a deposit rate that’s positive but close to zero could disrupt the money markets that help fund financial institutions. Two years later, she said that a change in economic circumstances could put negative rates “on the table” in the U.S. Deutsche Bank economists note that negative rates haven’t sparked the bank runs or cash hoarding some had feared, in part because banks haven’t passed them on to their customers.

We have a STRANGE situation going on.

•  Growth is low to non-existent ... and even that is cooked. 
• Inflation is SUPPOSED to be low, but that is cooked as well! 
• The global economy weak in Europe, Japan, and looking like China as well! 

It appears that "make sure you have a stockpile of food, water and ammo" situation that we suspected might happen in 2009 is returning for a fresh visitation!

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Inflation, NOT CPI !

If You Want To Know The Real Rate Of Inflation, Don't Bother With The CPI - Forbes:

The whole article is worth reading, but this part of it is so obvious it is worth a dope slap if you haven't realized it:

The CPI is tied to the incomes of about 80 million Americans, specifically: Social Security beneficiaries, food stamp recipients, military and federal Civil Service retirees and survivors, and children on school lunch programs. The higher the CPI, the more money the government needs to spend on these income payments to keep pace with the cost of living. However, this same government is about $17 trillion in debt. If the CPI is low, the less money the government needs to spend on cost of living adjustments, something seniors are astutely aware of.

Is it REALLY surprising that the largest debtor out there who ALSO has to pay a bunch of benefits and salaries that are supposed to be "inflation adjusted" would be interested in making the number artificially low?  They LOVE inflation (pay back debt with cheaper dollars), but why not have their cake and eat it too? If there was "inflation", they would have to pay a bunch of money on "inflation adjusted government bonds". When you leave the fox in charge of the henhouse, is it REALLY surprising that the chicken count is "suspect"?

Since retiring and paying more attention to SPENDING money than to MAKING money, it is become rather obvious to me that "real inflation" as in, "the cost of things you regularly buy" is and has been MUCH higher than what is being reported.

The more money that’s created and put into circulation, the less valuable it becomes. And the Fed has created a lot of money recently. The Fed’s unprecedented bond buying program, Quantitative Easing, created $116 million an hour for the entire year last year. It doesn’t make sense that the BLS’s measurement of inflation was only 1.5% last year, while at the same time, monetary inflation grew 4.9%.*

We are being told by the government that inflation is so low no COLA adjustments are needed. I know the MSM and D's have found the US government to be absolutely trustworthy the past 7 years, but let's see if there is an alternate view on these inflation numbers ...

Been out to eat lately? Pay for medical insurance, co-payments? Pay for your cell phone, internet, electricity, property taxes ... ??? I submit that blue line is MUCH closer to reality than the red one ... hmm, reality of "Red Lines"?

I think anyone with a moderate level of intelligence and common sense as been SURPRISED that things "seem to not be going as horribly as we would think" given the policies of the BO administration and the vast government bureaucracy that is a Democrat / Union hegemony.

The GDP numbers are fiction. It looks like the inflation numbers are fiction.

We know we have been had, but I'm beginning to think that the magnitude of the debacle is WAY beyond what we have been aware of!

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US 4Q GDP .7 ... Or -2.3%

US economy hits soft patch in fourth quarter as inventories, trade weigh:

4Q was .7% ... according to the government, we "grew" at 2.4% and "expanded" likewise in 2014.

The fourth-quarter growth pace was in line with economists' expectations and followed a 2 percent rate in the third quarter. The economy grew 2.4 percent in 2015 after a similar expansion in 2014.

As we keep track of here though, we changed the way we calculate this in July of 2015, so the number has ACTUALLY been "boosted" (manipulated) upward by as much as 3%! 

Meaning that GDP very likely SHRANK in 2015! 

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Friedman, Why Not Use Spoons?

Milton Friedman and the economy of spoons:

There is going to be an economic series of posts here with Japan going to negative interest, Marvin Minsky dying, Sanders running, and me running into things I thought I had posted on -- but hadn't. I read WAY more than I write (and that is a GOOD thing), but sometimes I forget what is only in my head rather than having found it's way to text. To wit, the linked article is on Milton Friedman, written before the 2012 election, but unfortunately even more appropriate today <go see if I have posted on Negative Interest yet>:

When he was told by government officials that it was better to dig ditches with shovels than bulldozers, because more jobs were created that way, Friedman asked, “Why not use spoons?” In no corner of the Earth, from alabaster Washington to the filthiest dungeon state, have central planners ever been able to answer that question. If Friedman had lived long enough to hear Barack Obama blame high unemployment on automated teller machines, he would have recognized a student in dire need of his teachings. 

As the rest of us watch the edifice of statist economics crumble, and prepare to rescue our nation from its tumbling wreckage, we could do worse than “Why not use spoons?” as our battle cry.

They can't answer because Milton is talking about reality and Socialism is a fantasy. It can only "answer" by silencing it's critics, which it has done many times, and we increasingly see yet again in this country in ever more cases.

Friedman is among the finest teachers for learning that everything government does is a form of compulsion. The acolytes of Big Government are always desperate to claim otherwise – they just want togive you stuff! They want to secure your “rights” to “access” goods and services they have deemed vital. They’re just looking to collect a “fair share” from those who would otherwise steal public resources and abuse them to create obscene profits. The public language of statism is always about giving, providing, and ensuring. Pains are taken to hide the taking and destroying.

Compulsion is not good or evil -- we are compelled to breathe, we are compelled to reproduce -- fortunately with less force than to breathe! Hiding the FACT of compulsion as well as it's source,  and calling it "giving, providing, insuring" is evil in the sense that all lies are evil. It prevents decent reasonable people from being able to make rational and informed choices.

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Megyn Kelly, Nice picture

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/28/the-real-problem-with-donald-trump-retweeting-those-provocative-pictures-of-megyn-kelly/

As if Trump needed any lessons on how to get his name in the WaPo. 

The WaPo is all bent out of shape about Trump posting and commenting on these pictures. They do at least mention for example the Scott Brown modeling pictures which the MSM had NO PROBLEM putting up all over when they were supporting Fauxahontis Warren! Kelly posed for those pictures and was paid to pose for them, as did Brown -- seems to me that people can judge what they think those pictures do for her credibility on their own! Or is there supposed to be a double standard for women as well as Democrats? 

They are very worried about what "foreign leaders will think" about Trump's "attitude toward women". Really? After ALL the Clinton years???? How stupidly biased can you be? Foreign leaders knew EXACTLY what Slick liked -- big hair and oral sex. Didn't we ALL get to find out ALL SORTS of details about that over and over and ... ??? 

Oh, did you ever read any MSM article on how they worried about what "foreign leaders" thought of that? No, in fact, they tended to report that "foreign leaders don't understand why we care about how he treats women". "Feminists" where FINE with it, as were "journalists" ... one female Time reporter even gushed that "she would be HAPPY to give him oral sex just to thank him"!

Is Trump tacky? Sure, but compared to THE CLINTON'S???? The tawdry population of this area of N America gave up ANY STANDARDS when we let that slimeball keep on ejaculating in the oval office!

We could go to BO's "Dreams From My Father" where he very presidentially says "gotta have pussy", uses the N-word a few times, talks about "booze, weed and blow but no horse (heroin)" and a few other very "down to earth" things like "filtering his mom's white blood out" ... **NO PROBLEM** !!!!  I guess I forgot the big "D" next to his name and Slicks as well -- totally different!

No, I don't like Trump, but SERIOUSLY???? The MSM expects us to get all bent out of shape about HIS antics, when we have been asked to completely look the other way in the past constantly for the Ds? 

It certainly isn't hard to understand how the Donald's supporters are ANGRY and support him MORE when the MSM goes after him! 

Destroying Male Instinct, The Dance of Death

The Hypnotic Dance of Death | Frontpage Mag:

One of the better descriptions of the power of "political correctness" to destroy even the basic instincts to protect women and children. Just go read the whole thing if you have ANY time, but this is the punchline. What happened to the men? In general, they no longer exist -- they have been brainwashed by political correctness and not even the cry of a helpless girl can wake their natural instincts. Essentially, this article answers my question from here on "how can the left not care?".

What has happened to the world when men, women, politicians, and the elite betray their daughters and children in order to please newcomers with their baser instincts and a cult of male power? 

The answer is sad: the culture of postmodernism has managed to do what couldn’t be achieved even by the Communist propaganda machine. It has degraded the instinct of self-preservation, a natural reaction embedded in humans on a genetic level, the ability to feel compassion and protect a victim – a woman, a girl, a child. An abstract ideology has suppressed the mind and senses. I left the USSR as a hater of Soviet totalitarianism. Now I realize that the cultural totalitarianism of political correctness has turned out to be much more poisonous. 

The Soviet regime dictated harsh rules and established censorship. However, people remained normal human beings. They laughed at authorities, composed jokes about Brezhnev, made satirical films in spite of the censorship, and learned to read newspapers between the lines. Cultural totalitarianism succeeded much more. It affirmed a relentless self-censorship, turned people into sterile zombies, and exterminated basic senses of responsibility and dignity. It changed the very nature of man, and indeed, it was a unique experiment on their own people.  

There is a small carnivorous animal in Siberia – a stoat. It hunts rabbits and hares, which are significantly heavier, faster and stronger than the stoat itself. It doesn’t creep, doesn’t sit in ambush and doesn’t catch its prey on the run. It performs a hypnotic dance of death in front of it — with wriggles, acrobatic leaps and somersaults. The stoat dazzles the prey and, gradually approaching it, then grabs its throat. The rabbit dies from shock. Why does the prey allow the stoat to dazzle and kill it without resisting? Biologists are unable to solve the riddle of the stoat’s hypnotic dance. Western elites have foredoomed their own people by means of somersaults and acrobatic tricks, and doomed them to the same fate of the unfortunate rabbit.  

The hypnotic dance of death is gaining momentum.

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Roger Scruton, Thinkers of the New Left

Interview

Book on Amazon

First I read the Interview/Article in the top link, which is of reasonable length and I would recommend it to anyone who has a passing interest in the decline of our academic and general culture. I found this quote representative.

‘I agree there is a paucity of conservative thought. It is partly the effect of the dominance of the left. If you come out as a conservative in a university context, you will find yourself very much on the margins. But my main explanation of this is that conservative thought is difficult. It doesn’t consist of providing fashionable slogans or messages of hope and marching into the future with clenched fists and all the things that automatically get a following. It consists in careful, skeptical rumination on the near-impossibility of human existence in the first place.’

The "impossibility" plus the GRACE and the FRAGILITY of that Grace as it relates to culture and the potential for a meaningful relatively peaceful life.  The richness of Family, Faith, Community and Freedom of Thought. All items that the left continues to destroy. "The little Platoon" of Burke -- ruthlessly replaced by the cold totalitarian state. The result of this endless destruction is NOTHING ... as he puts it here:

So, what is all this Nothing-ness about? ‘My view’, says Scruton, ‘is that what’s underlying all of this is a kind of nihilistic vision that masks itself as a moving toward the enlightened future, but never pauses to describe what that society will be like. It simply loses itself in negatives about the existing things – institutional relations like marriage, for instance – but never asks itself if those existing things are actually part of what human beings are. Always in Zizek there’s an assumption of the right to dismiss them as standing in the way of something else, but that something else turns out to be Nothing.’

The book is not long, but it is intellectually challenging primarily because the "thinkers" of the left being dissected are nebulous and obtuse in the extreme, so although Scruton is relentless in his exposure of their nonsense, parts of their texts must be suffered through.

In many places he reaches basically this conclusion on the reason that leftism lives on even after the disaster of Fascism and the fall of the USSR:

"It also provides the exact equivalence of religious faith. As in Pascal's wager, believing becomes a kind of doing, and in this doing lies the moral salvation -- the inner identity with the revolution -- for which the intellectual craves."

In "The Closing of the American Mind", Bloom reports to us on "what happened" when the left took over the American university. Scruton plumbs the modern lineage of leftism, still based on Marx, but fermenting in it's fetid juices -- prominently in Paris:

"The effect was to destroy the conversation on which civil society depends. All the delicate ideas concerning law, constitution and the roots of civil order, all the ways in which human beings argue over rights and duties, honor their opponents and seek for compromise, were flattened by mathemes, deterritorialized, and buried beneath the debris of the great Event. This was the turning point in a battle that has been raging now for a century -- the battle to take possession of the culture by defining the intellectual life as an exclusively left-wing preserve."  

"mathemes" are an attempt to use the language of mathematics to make leftist thought more impressive -- and inscrutable. "The Event" is some version of "revolution" ... economic, political, intellectual.

Throughout the book are countless examples of methods, justifications, etc for wiping out all thought that is not against "capitalism, the bourgeoisie, religion, tradition, family, etc" and in support of the inevitability of "Marxism, the rise of the proletariat, communism, atheism, nihilism, etc".

It was a read that motivated me, so I made it through it rapidly and actually enjoyed it, but I can see that if I had not been exposed to a good deal of leftist literature in the past, as I have, it would also be easy to get bogged down. Worthy, but certainly not "required reading". While in the quote above, Scruton says that conservative thought is "difficult" -- I certainly don't find it difficult to read in comparison to the left, but I think his point is that it is not "stylish". It is often unpopular, indicating that man is limited (mortal even!) and in need of salvation by a power greater than himself.

Yes, that is "difficult" for many today -- but for me it is reality and grounded in eternal vs popular truth.

Tres Hombres Meal !

A ZZ Top Superfan Recreated the Delicious Tex-Mex Album Art From 'Tres Hombres' and Then Ate It - Maxim:

Wow ... LOVE that album and always dreamed of setting down to that meal! Sitting here in my ZZ Top T-shirt surfing and what should pop up!

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Propagandizing the German Holocaust

As a Holocaust Survivor, I Know This Small Action Is the True Antidote to Hate:

Articles like the linked are a sad commentary on the acceptance of ideology and propaganda in the US today. If we want to prevent a holocaust of the racial sort that happened with Hitler, the FIRST thing is to prevent the rise of totalitarian government. Totalitarianism KILLS!

Especially Socialism as in National Socialism or Nazi, and  Communism. These are the ideologies that killed over 100 million people in the 20th century including 6 million Jews.

In order to understand totalitarianism, you must understand that corruption of language is one of it's chief weapons. (what part of "total" is it that you missed?). By controlling language, thought itself is controlled, thus allowing evil to parade in plain sight calling itself "good". The greatest single piece of evidence for that is the appropriation of "left" to essentially mean "good, progress, benevolence, care, etc", and "right" to mean "evil, Hitler, backward, hatred".

This ideological language and thought control is an "inversion", one of the key elements of totalitarianism that I recently covered here.

Ideologues are masters of indirection of all types -- "someone else" is always "the danger", so the article maliciously attempts to smear  anyone against open borders into a "Nazi", while an avowed socialist is running for president!

In order to kill millions, you need to dehumanize your targets and devalue life. We already have killed over 58 MILLION babies, so we are WAY ahead of the old National Socialists on that front. To a totalitarian, is it "better" when you kill 58 million indiscriminately than killing 6 million mostly on the basis of race (although not entirely ... Gypsies, gays and others were also killed in Germany).

Apparently so -- in fact, wanting to control borders is worthy of a cautionary article in the Huffpo, while the left-control oriented media yips joyously for 1st amendment rights being turned into criminal behavior when the abortion butchers are exposed selling baby parts over wine and salad.

Government power in the US is already being used to prosecute it's "enemies" as in Wisconsin attacking Walker supporters, against Exxon in NY, the IRS attacking the Tea Party, etc

Ultimately, the only way to keep what happened in Nazi Germany from fully happening here is to defend the 2nd Amendment to the DEATH!

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Humboldt IA Destroyed by Hillary Supporters, Algona Next!

Retreating Clinton Campaign Torches Iowa Town To Slow Advance Of Sanders Volunteers:

OK, It's the ONION, but it **IS** funny. Especially because I know these towns pretty well, but not NEARLY as well was my wife or family members in the area know them.

It's short ... just go read it. My guess is that a small set of Hillary supporters would be lying in expanding blood stains and the rest would be whimpering in puddles of their own urine begging for their sniveling toady lives to be spared -- but that might make the piece less humorous.

But this probably seems plausible if you have never been to Humboldt!

On a serious note, if Slick Willie is with them, the women, children and farm animals need to be hidden.

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January 28, 1986 -- 30 Years Since Challenger

Space shuttle Challenger's final voyage is remembered, 30 years later - CBS News:

JFK Assassination, Moon Walk, Challenger, 9-11 ... those are the days I remember for sure right where I was and what I was doing from a "national event" perspective in my life so far.

Thirty years ago today we were married less than a year. I happened to be home from IBM sick at our place in Chatfield for one of the very few times in the first 20+ years of my career. I wasn't feeling good enough to be watching TV, so got a call from a friend at work that "people were saying something happened to the Shuttle. Those were the days before Internet and there were not any TVs around the site and radios were wither prohibited or frowned upon.

Being the space buff I was, it was shocking, but technically certainly not hard to believe. I understood that the Shuttle system was flawed at best -- solid boosters and tiles for re-entry being big examples. 2.5 million parts and 400K lines of code to keep it flying. There is some detail on the mission hardware and software here. I did feel horrible for the families -- but I can still remember feeling guilty for how sad I felt for the Challenger and the engineers. The shuttles were an embodiment of a spirit and capability that may never return to this nation. It was a privilege to be alive and experience both the highs and the lows of that era.

As always, Reagan had some of the best words possible and remembrance of him certainly brings back nostalgia for that spacefaring nation of heroes that built and flew marvelous machines.

In 1986, Japan was flying high -- you can glance at one article here, but the assumption was that they were an unstoppable economic force ... better methods, harder working labor force, better social programs,  you name it. We HAD to copy Japan, or they would just buy us up.  Japan's economy has been essentially in a recession since '92 -- it turns out their sure fire policies that we were supposed to copy didn't pan out so wall. Starting in '06 with Democrats taking over both houses of Congress, we finally started to copy them.

I'd say the Japanese policies DO "work"! It's just that the definition of "work" isn't maybe what some had thought!

Kids were still in the future in '86, now a Grandchild is the earthy center of our universe. There was lots of IBM career ahead in '86, now it is in the rear view mirror.

Time marches on for the living. The USSR is dead ... but then, the US that we knew and loved in '86 is dead too. Now we have no space capability and hitch rides with Russia, whose leader is listed as the most powerful man in the world.  (BO was third, indicating stench isn't everything!)

My tendency to pine away "for the old days" is getting stronger -- I must REALLY be getting old!

If you are feeling as nostalgic for that time as I am, I might suggest checking out the book "Riding Rockets"

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Left and Right Explained

From time to time it becomes clear that the commonly used terms "Left and Right" need to be disambiguated. That time has come again.

The origin of "left and right" goes back to the French Revolution, where those loyal to the king and the church sat on the right and the revolutionaries sat on the left. 

Control of language is a critical aspect of ideology, and using meaningless abstraction vs meaningful terms  to describe something is proof of ideological language manipulation (see Ethics Of Rhetoric).

In order to proceed, we need to all agree on the loaded term "ideology". Ideology is a system of ideas and values that people believe in. It is exactly like religion except religion typically has a claimed supernatural root. For nearly all religious people, their religion holds a higher place of value in their worldview than whatever ideology they may subscribe to. For the non-religious, their ideology IS their religion, though typically they would argue that their ideology was "true" and religions were "false" until they actually face death (or maybe until Judgement Day ... when they will claim it is "unjust")

Trying to summarize political thought and world view in a single dimension is obviously a vast oversimplification, but we humans love to do such things.  Since we ARE doing this ALL THE TIME, a sane person chooses meaningful terms for the dichotomy, limited though it is. 

A reasonable labeling is  "Control vs Chaos" (It's a "Get Smart" world). The "Left" is CONTROL, the "Right" is CHAOS. The US was founded as a "center right nation" meaning "a little bit toward chaos from the center". It was founded this way because we had just come from being ruled by a King (Monarchy) ... TOTALITARIAN is all the way "Left", ANARCHY is all the way "right". 

Hayek, "Road to Serfdom" covers the co-opting of the term "liberal" and discusses the problem with WWII and the largely "marketing split" between the two modern brands of heavy state control (Statist), Fascism (National Socialism) and Communism. Even though Communism, Socialism and Fascism are all LEFT, we certainly wanted to be the GOOD GUYS, and we were fighting with the Communists as allies (USSR) ... so Nazi became "Right/Evil".

Historically, to the ancients, Left was evil and Right was good. Jesus sits at God's right hand. Left was the "bad hand" ... you did your bathroom cleaning with the left hand and shook hands with the right.

The way the terms are used today is INTENDED to be confusing for ideological purposes. It is a way of manipulating the population and at the same time breaking connection with the ancient, natural and sacred. The ancient order has been reversed and "Right" is "Nazi / Racist / Reactionary / EVIL", while "Left" is "Modern, Democratic, Progressive, Socially Responsible / GOOD. 

Note also the overloading of "conservative" -- when the USSR was falling, the "hard liners" were "right wing" -- even though they clearly wanted communism,  commonly located as "left" on the modern spectrum. Same for "revolutionary" -- in the original French context, that was "left", but in modern times if there is a "bad revolution", it will be termed "right wing" by the dominant elite.

Our brains (for good and ill) are wired to "like like". Most people are RIGHT handed, so the timeless natural bias is to call the good "the right" and bad/evil "left". Simplistic and prone to prejudice, but "natural" and "human" -- not confusing. We innately believe that "right is right" ... our language and history wire it into our brain (or it is divinely there as I believe). 

Ecclesiastes 10:2 "The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left."

Satan seeks the  INVERSION of nature  ... right becomes left, good becomes evil, and death is worshiped over life -- thus you see lots of killing of babies, tattoos of skulls and demons, etc. The goal of  Satan is to invert the natural order -- natural sexuality inverted to homosexuality,  natural gender denied, the mothers natural desire to protect her baby inverted to abortion,  etc.

 While the inversion makes everyone "feel wrong" (because "right is right" is wired in from God), that "wrongness" also feels "subversive, rebellious,  impudent, proud, exciting, etc" -- which can easily be mistaken for "good"  (like riding a roller coaster) -- evil is often exciting, easy, and in modern times, actually culturally approved! (if it feels good, do it) 

Did God REALLY say? Gen 3:4-5 "The serpent said to the woman,You surely will not die 5 For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

So now you know left and right. Can you figure out good and evil?

AL-Mageddon Has Arrived! We're Cooked!

Michelle Malkin | » Al-mageddon hath arrived: A decade ago today, Gore issued his 10-year doomsday warning:

Ten years ago today Nobel Prize winner Al Gore predicted that unless "drastic measures" were taken by this date on CO2, it would be "past the point of no return".

Whew! It's OVER! We can party like it is the end of the world because it IS the end of the world!

I'm not in a mood to re-hash any climate stuff this week other than to say that I'm really not in any doubt at all about 2016 being, "The Warmest Year EVER"! ... where "ever" is REALLY hard to pin down. Maybe since 1860 .. but likely even more recently "ever" than that ... for a little background, I covered 2014 being the warmest EVER here ...

But hey, no more need to worry -- Al Gore says it is too late to fix it now anyway!

Party on!
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Parental and National Decline

I may be more morose than normal for awhile. My father is in the hospital and it it is looking like prostate and bladder cancer. Lots of things will be uncertain, likely for a few weeks at least, and I will have more 2 hour road trips for my mind to ruminate, listen to some NPR and likely (a rarity for me) some talk radio.

In the natural way of things, most of us watch our parents age, decline and die. The specifics vary -- sometimes it is sudden, often there are "scares" before the end, sometimes it is a painful long goodbye with enough pain for them and empathetically for us, so it is relatively easy to say at the end that they have gone to a better place. As a parent myself, I certainly pray that "the natural way" holds relative to our boys.

Seeing the mortality of those that gave you physical life causes reflection on our own mortality -- for some of us, that has been pretty common anyway, but being with a parent that has been part of your life from the first second increases a lot of complex emotional content. We love to deny the reality of both decline and death, but by age 59, we see it in ourselves plainly as well.

When we share faith in Christ with the parent, the dearness of that faith is made more precious. We feel there is a greater purpose and meaning to the pain and struggle, and the fact that we are all here for "but a little while" is made plain. Yet another thing that really tends to not sink in until 50 or so at least.

As I listen to the news and catch a few glimpses of the political and national landscape it is hard to not feel a parallel.

Last year I finished the last book in the Churchill trilogy and in so doing I had a front row seat for how the previous dominant world power went from it's zenith to being "one of the top 10 countries". It's decline and death as world leader was eased by the fact that it's offspring, the United States was in it's prime and took of the mantle in a bi-polar world to battle the collectivist enemy in the form of the USSR with many of the same philosophical values as Mother England.

February last, I finished Augustine "City of God" . While the blog I did on it was theologically focused, the book after the fall of the secular Roman Empire in transition to the period where the Catholic Church would be the overarching institution until the Reformation, which we will celebrate the 500th anniversary of next year.

Since 2008, I've been writing about the specific BO malignancy, but the end of the US really got it's start in at the same time the pathogen entered England. Call it socialism, collectivism, liberalism, progressivism, communism, leveling, or whatever, but it's purpose is antithetical to God and freedom. Freedom and equality of result (though not OPPORTUNITY) are completely oppositional concepts.

Equality of result is completely unnatural and can only be imposed by greater and greater application of power, thus reducing liberty. Science shows us that both the physical and the biological universe operate on DIFFERENCE and COMPETITION ... "all things being equal" is death. When your body temperature equalizes with the ambient environment, you are DEAD.

The leveling force is the death force. Evil.

The force of creation, growth, difference, uniqueness, liberty is the force of God -- GOOD.

To those that have Faith, such is so completely obvious that it seems unbelievable any would support the path to known destruction. While "greed" is certainly a sin, it doesn't appear directly in the Ten Commandments, where Envy (covetousness) is quite clear. God gives us all the same OPPORTUNITY for salvation, but Christians know for certain that not all will have the same RESULT of Eternal Life with God.

The Bible talks of different gifts and order in the Church:

1 Corinthians 12:27-31
27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31Now eagerly desire the greater gifts. And yet I will show you the most excellent way.

Science tells us that our solar system could not support life without the very unequal sized gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, as they suck up the debris that would create too many impacts for Earth to support life. Without the tides caused by the moon, evolutionists would tell us that life could not have "sprung up". Competition and DIVERSITY as in REAL diversity with A LOT of "difference of outcome" is the cornerstone of evolution -- the dogma of the very same "socialists, levelers, "progressives", etc" that tell us that everyone in a country should have "equality of OUTCOME"!

As we and those we love, age, we are forced to face the reality of life passing and death coming. As a Christian, we are "part of something larger" -- the body of Christ, which is an eternal body.

For a lot of my life, the nation was also "something larger" that it was a blessing to be a part of. It looked like that might end in the late 1970's, but then we revived under Reagan. Now it looks MUCH darker than it did then.

A nation doesn't have to decline and die on a specific schedule like a person, but if it ignores God and reality, it dies as well.

Reagan put it best ... "If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, we will be one nation gone under"!

MPR On Marx, Corporations, Politics

Why are 2016 voters so angry and anxious? | Minnesota Public Radio News:

Got to hear part of this this on MPR yesterday. The part I heard is near my bottom point's summary ... I bolded it.

MPR/NPR often do a pretty good job of covering "both the Left and the FAR Left" ... or in terms of "Blues Brothers",  ALL KINDS, we got BOTH your Country AND your Western!

I especially liked the references to Marx -- if Sanders gets elected, that book author guest might be in the administration. I wonder if "The Communist Manifesto" will be required reading in middle school in the Sanders Regime?

I wrote down some of the high points, little fragmented because I was only going to listen to this tripe once through or my brain might rot and run out my ears. My comments are mostly in parens ... but it is hard not to get a little irreverent of National Socialist Radio at times!

• Voters entirely helpless because the government is only operated by large corporations and the wealthy. (like Hillary?) 
• Tax rate under Eisenhower ... 90% tax rate. (You have to listen to NPR to believe that somebody PAID that rate!) 
• Somebody making a billion dollars now is paying the mere 39% tax rate like somebody making $250K and struggling!  
• Republicans appeals to uneducated whites racism to get them to vote against their economic interests. 
• Some 60% of uneducated whites think there is discrimination against whites. (they are wrong of course!) 
• Now working class whites are less than 50% of the population ... they need to get used to it. 
• Working class whites have "nostalgia" ... the idea that we can go back AT ALL. ("progressives" ALWAYS go forward. No chance that this < 50% group will get power back)
• The upside of the "great recession" is that middle class whites were hurt now realize that the only way to deal with this is 
• 90% of the recovery went to top 1% of the Americans. This happened during BO's administration because "he couldn't get all he wanted to do done!" ... not his fault, damned Republicans! 
• BO was no FDR, only an "Eisenhower". He didn't CHANGE IT! (not his fault, damed Rs!) 
• "people don't have career paths" ... jobs are part time, no benefits, people need to work three jobs. (you might think we had two terms of an R in power, but nope ... it is the fault of CONGRESS!!!) 
• BS is talking about "what's fair" 
• "Until we have fair clean elections, where poor and black voters are no longer suppressed for voting for Democrats" 
• "The root of the evil is campaign money ... my first act as president would be to take the $6 Billion subsidy that we give to oil companies and fully fund our elections" 
• President Obama HAD the potential to get the special interests out -- until he ran into the special interests and poor BO looked "shell shocked" after a few months. (note, this was with a big majority in the house and 60 votes in the Senate!) 
• "There is only so much BO can do because of GLOBAL CAPITALISM ... our government is limited in what it can do. Trump wants us to be a "global bully". Even if we had total control in THIS country, we would still need to stop GLOBAL CAPITALISM! 
• "When I was in college I read a lot of Karl Marx, lots of things he was right about ... there will come a day when national boundaries don't matter because of multinational corporations ..." 
• Out problems are lack of unions ... those DAMNED large multinational corporations!! 
• This all started under Reagan ... the illusion of deregulation, all covered in "Inside Job" ... need to incarcerate more bankers! The problem is not enough regulation! 
• In 2015 you have 72% of people saying the country is still in recession (not a poll that you hear very much!) They of course said that BO was right about the recovery ... yet another case where 72% of our public is wrong. 

Just a little sampling of the sort of bilge that I force myself to be aware of. To THINK, people of sound mind and reason are FORCED to pay for this through government, including a portion of a Constitutionally mandated sales tax here in MN!

We actually didn't beat the Nazi's and the Communists, WE JOINED THEM!

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A Little Nuclear XP Insanity

Britain's Doomsday Nuke Subs Still Run Windows XP:

I'm not THAT concerned about Windows XP on a nuke sub from a "virus / hacking" POV.

A). Of all the Windows OS offerings, XP was "as good as it got".

B). It isn't very hard to "harden" a nuke sub against outside hacking -- like, it would be the BEST definition of a "hardened ENVIRONMENT" around. They don't do Facebook and games because they don't have an Internet connection ... outside network connect, is not really a problem. You don't drive up to one and sniff the WiFi!

But from an OPERATIONAL POV ... as in, if I or somebody I loved was on one of these, YES, I'd be concerned and TICKED!

That said, it is a pretty good example of "government in action". My expertise in cellular telephone networks is pretty minimal -- little over a year putting together the pieces for an IBM project that we got to proof of concept demo before they cancelled it.

What I DO know however that something called "Open Carrier Grade Base Platforms" exist! Hardened Linux base OS in different flavors set up to be multiply redundant and fail-over for "all hardware and software eventualities" ... naturally, like all human efforts, this isn't "perfect", but it gets you up in the .9999(?) kinds of failure probability. The number of "9's" is a serious technical question ... they really DO want to come as close to KNOWING what they odds are, because it probably means another level of complete backup solution for "graceful degradation" (meaning it doesn't just stop, it "limps").

These sorts of systems relate to XP as Air Force One relates to an older radio controlled model airplane ...

The fact that government military even considers "COTS" (Common Off The Shelf) software for applications like these is a testament to the complete insanity at the interaction of "Politics / Lobbying / Lowest Bidder / Government Employee Unions".

It isn't just the Brits ... at least in '98, the US Navy had NT problems on a ship -- NT might be "better", but still a FAR cry from "Carrier Grade" (a bit funny if you read that in a Navy context ;-) ).

Can "free / democratic" governments survive? My usual issue is if voters can be informed enough to select reasonable leadership, or not just try to vote themselves a lot of "Free Stuff" out of the pockets of others. (Gee, did I hear that BS is in the lead in IA?)

Looking at decisions like using XP proves that the list of reasons that the answer to that may well be NO includes simple organizational incompetence on technical matters!

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Flint MI vs Katrina

Flint Lead/Water Scandal Was Caused by Democrate:

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.

Republican scandal!

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TP Denies Holocaust

Grand jury in Texas indicts activists behind Planned Parenthood videos | Fox News:

The German National Socialists were mere amateurs. The American Socialist, TP -- "The Party(D)" just celebrated the 43rd anniversary of the legalized murder of babies in their mother's womb -- a butchery of 58,586,256 and counting. BO managed to celebrate this grizzly "right" without ever mentioning it's name, even though the ruling which spawned the demonic death culture mentions it 150 times.

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.
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Trump Shooting, Hillary Top Secret, DC Snow Measurement

Washington, D.C., snowfall total called into question after improper measurement - The Washington Post:

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.



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Free Stuff, With Amorality, and Mandatory Political Correctness For All

A YUGE number of conservatives just shredded Donald Trump in the National Review - The Washington Post:

The WaPo link at the top is their spin on the NRO Issue "Against Trump", the NRO excellent concluding paragraph:

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!


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Trump? Cruz? Squeal Like A Pig!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gop-establishment-donald-trump-ted-cruz_us_56a058e0e4b0404eb8f04d0a?utm_hp_ref=dc&ir=DC&section=dc

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!

WaPo Cruzin

What makes Ted Cruz truly dangerous - The Washington Post:

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!

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Palin, Trump, Hillary

Defending Sarah Palin's Endorsement of Donald Trump:



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!



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Al Sharpton's $4.5 Million Tax Debt

Eric Holder Defends Al Sharpton's Ties To White House, Despite Tax Debts - Forbes:

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!

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Sowell Against Trump

What Are Elections For? | The American Spectator:

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.

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Iowa, Ethanol, Cruz

Iowa governor Terry Branstad wants Ted Cruz defeated - CNNPolitics.com:

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!

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Berning Through $28T

Bernie Sanders' Single-Payer Health Care Plan Would Increase Federal Spending By At Least $28 Trillion - Forbes:

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".

Sure our workforce participation is at historic lows, sure we are most likely actually in a recession but we have fudged the numbers, high school educated middle-aged white Americans are dying in droves and the general view forward for Americans is dismal, but really, who cares? Oh yes, I could go on a lot longer litany, but does it really matter?  It isn't like the vast majority of Americans have any thoughts about doing anything but pulling more dollars out os someone else's pockets for some "free stuff".

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!

BO, Can't Lower Prices By Drilling, He Lowered Prices by Drilling!

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/23/politics/obama-energy-speech/

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!

Strib MinnesotaCare

MinnesotaCare was great, until the invoices dried up - StarTribune.com:

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.

Here is another article on the subject ... "Faulty Billing Costs State $44 million".

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!

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Jail'n N Fail'n, Freud Attacks Hillary!

Blog: Hillary’s subconscious acts up in Dem debate, provides 6 words that will haunt her:

Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. As the article said, she seems to lack a conscience, but apparently she has a subconscious!

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4th Q, Recession Deepens?

Weak U.S. data deluge points to sharply slower growth | Reuters:

"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!!!!

 I had to go to REUTERS to even see this! I needed an article from the Guardian to even get a TINY amount of data on the US changing the way we measure GDP as of July 1!!! 

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! 

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Dancing With The Coach That Brung Ya

An aggressive Bruce Arians got his win and Mike McCarthy should learn from it - NFL:



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.

Hopefully more aggressively. GO PACK GO! 




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