DC Keeps Raking It In

The Permanent Boomtown - WSJ:



The government industrial complex is rolling in the dough ... 6 of the 10 wealhtiest coutines in the US are around DC.



BO brought home the bacon to DC. As the article linked at the top points out:

Not only are America’s 2.2 million civilian federal employees making more than their counterparts in the private market; the compensation gap is widening between the feds and the taxpaying public they allegedly serve. A new report from the Congressional Budget Office released this week finds that “the federal government paid 17 percent more in total compensation than it would have if average compensation had been comparable with that in the private sector.”

Will Trump be able to pop this balloon? As we can see, opposition from BOTH parties will be EXTREME! One might think that since 95+% of government workers vote for the D party, the R's might be more willing to trim the DC pork a bit, but that does not seem to be the case. When your pig gets as big as the DC pig is, it is just plain scary to reuduce it's rations!





'via Blog this'

Sin, BO, Money

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2017/04/barack_obama_is_taking_400_000_for_a_wall_street_speech_and_that_s_fine.html

I got to hear Mayo's top guy, Dr John Noseworthy, talk at a luncheon this past week -- looks like a CEO from Hollywood casting. Tall, thin, full head of just perfectly grey flecked hair, angular leading man good looks, and oh so smooth as a speaker!

He led off with a little story of silent Cal Coolidge. Cal goes to church, reporter asks him coming out what the sermon was about. Cal says "sin", reporter inquires further on what the minister had to say on that topic. Cal responds "he was against it".

Noseworthy's topic was a  "Strong Diverse Connected Community" ... he was for it. Very effective speaking device. I hope John is a great CEO ... I have a house I want to sell here in the next year or two!

The link is to a Slate article strongly defending BO taking $400K for a speaking fee -- well deserved, W only gets $100K (tsk, tsk). BO's first book post presidency deal is $65 million, that is also a good thing according to Slate. No surprise here ... if it were not for double standards, we know that humans sans religion would have no standards at all. Most everyone loves their own team.

Here is BO on the income topic ... His supporters would no doubt point out that he was indicating limits on what OTHERS should be satisfied with in earnings. As "The One", he is naturally exempt from limits .... being on "the right side of history" has it's privileges.

I got in a little chat with a guy on FB today about some cartoonist in IA supposedly being fired because he complained about CEO pay. I went out and took a look, and the CEO of John Deere makes $16 million a year ... Joe Mauer of Twins fame, $23 million a year, Clayton Kershaw (Dodgers pitcher) is the high in MLB, average salary is $4.5 million.  Noseworthy makes $3.8 million ... less than the average MLB player. Turns out it was last years news ... too old to even  be fake.

I can understand plain old envy -- people just not liking what others make, how good looking they are, their talents, their blessings, their oxen, manservants, maidservants, etc. Covetousness is an old problem ... the answer is to repent, focus on your own blessings and move on.

Who is being "hurt" by CEO or MLB salaries? For the MLB, it is fans buying tickets and possibly consumers buying products that are advertised when games are televised. For CEOs, it is the SHAREHOLDERS, not the employees -- they are not going to receive more salary because the business KNOWS pretty much what they contribute to the bottom line. Here is an article on this if you don't already understand it. 

Even if we assume that CEOs are all overpaid, the pay is not money taken unfairly from other workers. Rather, the undeserved pay is being taken from shareholders. When corporate boards overpay a CEO, it is shareholders who lose because profits that could have become either shareholder dividends or capital gains are instead going into the pocket of the CEO.

Do the fans and the shareholders feel hurt? Not as long as their highly paid star is performing.

Most of the CEOs are actually "progressives" as well ... so we have the odd case where "progressives" hate their own because in general they are unaware they are on their side -- like Oprah, BO, or "The Clinton Fund' (funds ... for Clintons). As the Slate article thinly disguises, what is important is for young "progressives" to understand that as long as they follow "progressive" dogma, both wealth and women are on the list of perks!

Christ died for the whole sorry bunch of us. He even dined with tax collectors -- the lowest of the low  in those times. Making the money, casting the stones, puffing up our chests in pride because what **WE** make is EARNED ... oh, and JUDGEMENT! We love to judge others!

Filthy rags -- that is what we are best at.

'via Blog this'

Marching Science Televangelists

Science & Politics -- Left’s Religion | National Review:

A quick review of the differences between rhetoric, dialectic and facts would be wise before delving into the linked  ... the REALLY tiny summary:

rhetoric -- sales speech
dialectic -- philosopher discussion speech
facts --  inductively verifiable pieces of data

Bill Nye and Neil "The Gassy" Tyson are Televangelists for the religion of Scientism -- the belief that 2+2=4, ergo "I am become god" (science as religion). Their stock and trade is rhetoric, not facts ... and I doubt if they would know dialectic if it bit them in the posterior.

The article does a good job of covering some of the seaminess of Scientism, I highly recommend it.

Freeman Dyson is an actual scientist, so nobody cares what he thinks ... he states the obvious that anyone with a junior high understanding of climate knows:

The most questionable of these beliefs is the notion that the science of climate change is settled and understood. The biggest of all climate changes have been the ice ages, which have covered half of North America and Europe with kilometer-thick sheets of ice. Ice ages happened repeatedly in the past, and we are about due for another one to start. A new ice age would be a disaster far greater than anything we have to fear from climate warming. There are many theories of ice ages, but no real understanding. So long as we do not understand ice ages, we do not understand climate change.

 In order for the left to win, ALL institutions have to be destroyed. If even 20% of the public understood basic philosophy, theology, politics, and junior high science, we would still live in America rather than BOistan.

Alas ... the set of people that have that level of understanding is more like 1% -- so we perish in BOistan ... but as always, the perishing scream and march loudly.

Oh, and if you are video oriented, go see what Scientism is peddling -- yes, Tammy Faye's makeup was horrific, but seriously?

'via Blog this'

A Nation Gone Under

https://www.facebook.com/Area51.US/videos/10154174843304555/

Go off and watch the little video ... the rest of this will make more sense.

Reagan warned us that when we were no longer "One Nation Under God", we would be a nation "gone under". As per usual, he was right.

I could quibble with a lot in the video -- the profanity (although the "F word" is basically just a part of speech today). The statistics are mostly hooey ... take out the REALLY failed black Democrat sub-culture, and most of those clean up.

Infant mortality is a complete crock ... we count ANY baby "born alive" ... most of the countries on the planet just count "babies to term" ... they don't even try to keep many of the ones we do alive, and we do it even with the poor, the black, the fetal alcohol syndrome, crack, etc  -- compare "white middle class births within 3-4 weeks of term" and we are #1 ... damned close with life expectancy as well.

Defense? My book bill is pretty huge -- but compared to my income? Nothing of any interest ... same with the US. Compare defense to GDP and we are fourth ... behind Saudi Arabia, Israel and Russia ... India, France, UK and China are right behind us in the same ballpark. The official NATO goal that ALL the NATO countries are supposed to meet is 2%.

The fact remains, BOistan is NOT the greatest nation -- Russia, Israel, Iran and China would all be in the running ... maybe Germany. At least the rest of them have some pride in their own existence.

More education is no use ... knowing everything about nothing is counterproductive at best. WHY?? That is the question. What is it that is supposed to be unique about BOistan? We are the only nation where a majority of the youth have been taught (brainwashed?) to hate their own countries history? What would our goal be? Our people are absolutely the same and have no distinguishing features? We love everyone and believe everyone will love us because we love them? We are the only people that can't figure out if we are men or women -- or what it would even mean to "act like men"?

Perhaps our goal is "We are clueless, pity us" .... Maybe the "natural evolutionary path" of BOistan is to develop into a nation of leeches like the Pacleds from STNG ... "We look for things we need ... things to make us go .."

Kill The Innocent, Save The Guilty

Neil Gorsuch and the State’s Power to Kill - The New York Times:

I'm sure Satan regularly reads the Times, if he didn't write the editorial himself. Inversion is his favorite mode, and this column is a study in it.

First of all, it gives you the impression that the Constitution is against the death penalty, when it specifically allows it in the 8th amendment saying nobody can be  "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." ... if "due process" can't be handled in 22 years, then we don't have any "due process' at all, and even deprivation of "property" (taxes) is unconstitutional.

Then we have:

In short, the first significant decision by Justice Gorsuch, who was sworn in to office less than two weeks ago, was the most consequential any justice can make — to approve a man’s killing by the state.

Seriously? To affirm what the Constitution clearly says in the 8th Amendment so that a murderer found guilty over 20 years ago can finally receive his sentence is MORE important than Roe V Wade, which declared the death penalty for 60 million of the most innocent life imaginable?
The cackling in Hell at that howler must be deafening!



'via Blog this'

Trump Seduced 15 Year Old At 39

A Strange Fact About Emmanuel Macron | Power Line:



Oh, oops ... it was what the media tells is the likely next first lady of France who picked up a 15 year old guy named Macron while she was his theatre teacher -- never mind.



I understand this is no issue at all -- we are SO uptight to even notice!



"Morality" is completely arbitrary in this world -- some locker room talk is unconscionable when we are told it is supposed to be, while BJs in the oval office with an employee are just fine when we are told they are. At Fox News -- oh, NOT there!



Get your mind right, THINK WHAT YOU ARE TOLD TO THINK ... your life may depend on it at any moment!



'via Blog this'

Vet Dodges BOistan Prison for Flag Placement

75 year-old vet acquitted of placing American flag at VA facility | Power Line:



If you were raised in America, this provides you proof that you no longer live there.



In BOistan, the flag of the old US that has not yet been officially replaced is something that borders on hate speech. It is a symbol of what BOistan certainly is not; "The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave", or "One Nation, Under God".



BOistan is the land of the dependent and home of the snowflake. It is a failed tribal state, divided and in complete rejection of God. Many BOistanis find the flag of the old nation to be offensive -- almost "hate speech". Burning it is NOT "hate speech" ... displaying it borders on it.



Can Trump begin a restoration to the defunct Constitutional Republic? That is certainly the hope of most of those that voted for him -- the task has a long way to go, however at least not imprisioning a Vetern for displaying the old flag is a tepid sign that the precipitious decline may have been arrested.



'via Blog this'

Normalizing Trump

At the White House with Trump | Power Line:

One of the Power Line guys was at the WH for a conservative media briefing. Since I listen to MPR/NPR all the time, including snippets of "Indivisible", the thinly disguised left wing call-in for "The Resistance" trying to make sure that Trump is NEVER normalized, it is really strange to see him covered as "just another POTUS".

The MSM has spent most of the first 100 days running around screaming "the sky fell" as if nobody had ever read Chicken Little. Day after day, everyone finds themselves still here -- so it doesn't really seem like the world ended -- only America ended, but that is old news -- it turned into BOistan in BO's 2nd term. I understand that NPR is worried BOistan could be damaged, but as long as the BOistani Adminstrative State is still in power, BOistan will live on.

It's worth going and reading the article just because of how normal it is. It is like zillions of left wing friendly news outlets reporting on their meetings with BO -- a normal, intelligent guy that maybe makes one cringe from time to time about how many times he says "I" and everything being about him.

Strangely, BO and Trump are so similar on the narcissim scale it makes one wonder if narcissism isn't the main requirement for BOistani leadership.

'via Blog this'

Screaming Against Speech

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446995/ann-coulter-berkeley-speech-howard-dean-dubious-legal-argument-fighting-words?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Trending%20Email%20Reoccurring-%20Monday%20to%20Thursday%202017-04-24&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives

Good old "Scream Dean" is back saying that conservative speech ought to be banned. How wonderful it is of him to call out conservatives for saying what they want to say. "The Right loves to be able to say anything they like, no matter how offensive it is."

True, and so does the left -- the difference is that as in the case of offensive art and some of the things taught in public schools, the left believes that those that disagree ought to also have to pay for their speech (arts endowments), or be forced to listen to it as in the joys of gay sex for school children.

While the right has issues paying for the left's speech, or with the left forcing it into the public square, especially on minors, the left represented by Dean believes that speech the left doesn't like can be censored from being ALLOWED to be VOLUNTARILY viewed at a public institution.

Naturally, the legal precedent he quotes is as daffy as Dean himself and Geraghty covers that well in the article. Screamer would have us believe that burning a flag in the pubic square is Constitutionally protected speech, but a skinny blond woman talking in an auditorium where you can decide to attend or not attend is Constitutionally phrohibited because he doesn't like what she has to say.

There Will Be A Substantial Reward

Democrats Turned Off by Ossoff’s Falloff And Need for a Runoff Face-Off | National Review:

The column presents a little out of the box thinking relative to the Republican party being able to weed out meaningless candidates a bit sooner after 2016 and Georgia ... I think disitegrations would be OK. Why limit our options?

'via Blog this'

US Debt vs Global Warming

The Problem No One in DC Wants to Talk About  |  Ricochet:

Does anyone want to bet what the biggest problem for the US will be for the next 20 years? Global Warming or Debt?

Well, we are still closer to an ice age than a record warm period accoring to the Greenland ice cores.

BOistanis in their wisdom however find that Climate Change is more important than the economy ... they don't really care if they are poor comparted to if they are cold. They want to be cold rather than warm at all costs!

I'm betting that they really haven't thought cold and poor through as much as they think they have, and that after a few brown outs, 50% inflation, 60% unemployment and such vs a few tenths of a climate degree, they will have second thoughts.

Let's hope it isn't too late.


'via Blog this'

Berkeley Campus On Lockdown After WSJ Scare

Berkeley Campus On Lockdown After Loose Pages From ‘Wall Street Journal’ Found On Park Bench - The Onion - America's Finest News Source:

Apparently some pages of the WSJ were found lying on a bench on the campus -- serious stuff! ;-)

I believe we have a really good indicator of what "progress" means to "progressives" in BOistan. We are having a giant argument about wether a white woman that weighs all of maybe 110 lbs is too scary to put behind a podium at a major BOistan university. It looks like for the moment they are thinking that they will take this gigantic risk!

I look at the hordes of violent protesters dressed in black and wonder if we have forgotten what automatic weapons are for? Six hundred thousand Americans died fighting over slavery. If freedom of speech can be held hostage by mobs without order being taken back by whatever means are needed, what does "freedom" mean? As Jefferson put it "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants".

The tyranny of the mob certainly qualifes in my mind -- but maybe they are patriots? Either way, they are outside the law, and civilization demands law -- it certainly seems that our tree of liberty is very short on it's natural fertilizer.

Is BOistan even supposed to be civilized? It's founding principles outside of "destruction of America" are very unclear -- perhaps the biggest mob is an approved form of speech in BOistan?

'via Blog this'

NYC Crosses, Easter 1956

The New York City skyline the evening of Easter Sunday in 1956. : nyc:

1956 was the America that I was born into -- we don't live there anymore.

Engle vs Vitale removing prayer from the schools would not be decided by 9 men in robes until 1962. In a nation with a Constitution and a Supreme Court that followed it, it would have taken a national discussion and a Constitutional Amendment to remove voluntary prayer from our schools.

Naturally, "progressives" (regressives) will talk of (Democrat) Jim Crow in the South, their gains in the killing of babies and the joyful life of gays in America ... about 4x more suicides than the general gay population, UP from 1956.

Regressives would tell us that "things were worse for gays in the 1950's" ... statistics would tell us that there is a marked increase in earlier suicides after 1970 ... actual results of the application of regressive beliefs is not one of their strong interests.

Despite the stable prevalence of reported parasuicide over the different birth cohorts of men studied, the trend for younger mean ages at first attempts and increased rates over time of suicide attempts before age 25 is striking. Although ample evidence documents a marked recency bias with respect to the recollection and reporting of serious psychiatric symptoms,74 this does not fully explain the dramatic decline in mean age at first suicide attempt after 1970. The increase in rates of attempted suicide noted among adolescents in the past several decades75,76 may play some contributing role but by itself does not seem sufficient to produce these changes. Although no evidence is available to explore this question, it is possible that historical context had an effect, given that the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots in New York City are widely viewed as a marker of the birth of the modern “gay liberation” movement.77 The parallel declines during this period in age at self-identification as gay or bisexual along with age at first or only suicide attempt48,57 provide further suggestive evidence relating suicide attempts to stresses associated with “coming out.” This evidence seems to run counter to expectations regarding the effect of an emergent gay culture and the prospect of earlier self-identification as gay or bisexual, including those expectations raised by Humphries78 2 decades ago.

To anyone familiar with human nature since Old Testament times, the results of the change from America to BOistan experienced over my 60 years are exactly what God and those that fear him understand always happens.

Things like the Voting Rights act would have broken the stranglehold of the Democrat Party in the South, and thus Jim Crow in fairly short order without SCOTUS further messing up States Rights. Has abortion made women better off? Was it worth 60 million lives for that "improvement"? How about the destruction of the family? Has that been a "big win"?

We have ALL sinned and come WELL short of the glory of God. Heterosexual sex within marriage is God's standard ... and lusting after the woman that wears her yoga pants well is just as eternally damning as a lifetime of gay sex -- sin is sin.

It is also not really our "desires" that are the issue. It isn't the alcoholic's desire for alcohol that is the problem -- it is that alcohol comes to control his life, so he must with the grace of God be able to resist that desire in order to live in this life. That has nothing to do with heaven -- I'm quite certain there will be many alcoholics in heaven that were not able to beat the bottle on earth, but relied on the grace of God and were most heartily sorry for their sin.

My belief is the same for divorce and remarriage. They are against God's will and remarriage is "living in sin" -- much as I have my own persistent sins that give me ample opportunity to be "most heartily sorry" at each communion. Even when I fully beat my sin of gluttony and approach the altar lean and with washboard abs, I can assure you that my contrition well will not go dry.

Perhaps the male whose eyes never settle too long and appreciatively on the female form can cast a stone here that my standards are set too low. For women, I do not know -- I have been assured that they don't sin and are always right.


'via Blog this'

Democrats Winning Streak

Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, Narrowly Misses Outright Win in Georgia House Race - The New York Times:

The Democrats are on a winning streak that started last November when Hillary captured the all important popular vote. The hits keep on coming as a week ago, Democrats won by losting by 6 points in a district that Trump had won by 24.

Now the big event, the one that Democrats really poured the money into. A Democrat ALMOST won a seat in Georgia! They now go into a runoff where their chances are not so good.

Listening to MPR has been like listening to "The Hopefull Gospell Choir" -- as each of these special elections came up, the ecitement built, because if the D's could only prevail it would mean; "A referendum on Trump"!, D's likely to pick up seats in 2018, Trump as a one-termer, people are "waking up" ... well, it would mean A BUNCH of good things!

For some reason though, when they lose, the story just goes away ... other than them quietly saying that they still "won". Because if a WIN would have meant all the things they told us about with so much excitement, then what does what actually happened mean?

Since they call each loss a "win", the media isn't saying -- reality is just not one of those things often don't have anything to say about.

Perhaps Osshoff leading all night and then fading at the end will endear him to Atlanta Falcons fans.

'via Blog this'

Old News, Fake News, Good News

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2015/10/manuscript-evidence-nt-vs-plato-etc.html

The linked article covers a discussion on the evidence for Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and Christ. Rather unsurprisingly if one thinks for even a second, the evidence for Christ is huge in comparison. If one questions the existence of Christ, then Plato, Socrates and Aristotle are near certain fiction.

The graphic is from here, he didn't source it, however it aligns well with the top linked article which is excellent.

In Matt 28:12-14 we have the official tale of how the tomb came to be empty.

12 After the chief priests had met with the elders and formed a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money and instructed them: "You are to say, His disciples came by night and stole His body while we were asleep. 14 If this report reaches the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”…

To the casual observer, this piece of ancient Fake News is more reasonable than "You are to say the Russians did it", but it still has some rather large issues:

1.  We find that on the evening of the day of the resurrection, the supposedly brave grave robbers were in hiding. (John 20:19) On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" The Romans were the most feared fighting force of the day ... our intrepid disciples were in no state to take on that force prior to the Holy Spirit's arrival.
   
2. The penalty for falling asleep on guard duty for Roman soldiers was "Fustuarium" ... being beaten to death with a cudgel publicly. The logical thing to do if you were caught in dereliction of duty was to avoid the beating ... Acts 16:27 "The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped." (quick and private is better than slow and very public)

We all know that if the Jewish leaders had the body, the skull and bones of Jesus would have been prominently displayed! They would no doubt be a favorite Jewish artifact even today

As I've covered before, the air tight proof of Christ's resurrection is the fact that if it were NOT true, the disciples would have KNOWN it was a lie, and would not have each went to his death as a martyr for a lie.

Atheists will naturally say this is idiotic ... people go to their deaths for religious reasons all the time! They do indeed -- because they actually BELIEVE. They have had experiences, strong enough desire, are easily influenced, or whatever reason to be certain of their faith. We all live by faith -- the atheist stakes his eternal soul on not having one by FAITH.

That is COMPLETELY different from following a guy around for about 3 years, watching him whipped and crucified as a criminal and then taking part in some plot that SOMEHOW gave MANY people the impression that he had been resurrected.  (1 Corinthians 15:6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.)

Being willing to die for something you BELIEVE to be the truth is not that uncommon -- 10+ people going to painful deaths for what they knew to be a lie, totally aware that they hid the body some place and if any of them talks, it is a complete waste of time. (plus you have to pull off the "impersonation" to the 500)

We won't go into "the odds" that in addition to that air tight proof, a known persecutor of Christians would accidentally go insane on the road to Damascus and join up as a disciple, writing much of the New Testament and also going to his death as a martyr. In an atheist world, a TRULY miraculous coincidental happening that someone like Paul could have such a strange psychotic break and then live out his life traveling, preaching and writing.

Oh well, if you are a true atheist, your existence is based on odds of something like 1 in 10 to the 500th, so essentially, ANYTHING can happen in an atheist universe.

Fake News is some of the oldest news there is. The Good News of Easter is so well known that our calendars mark the new covenant of AD "anno Domini"  ... in the year of our Lord.

If you are determined that Christ and the resurrection are fiction, would it not be better to convince the rest of the world that Plato and Aristotle never existed, so the concept of Western civilization is a COMPLETE LIE! There never was any such thing as Western civilization ... there is no hope, no resurrection and no eternal life. Yes, that is a sad state, but if you worship only the physically provable, the Greeks need to go as well. Well, maybe none of us exist ...

Fortunately, the GOOD NEWS is TRUTH, and the Fake News is just Fake News.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed, Hallelujah!

'via Blog this'

Death, Life, Politics

I’m Supposed to be Dead Today | The Resurgent:

A good column for Good Friday -- I had to look up the author, conservative NeverTrumper ... not that it matters. Here is the closing paragraph ... don't use your floor wax for a desert topping and don't use politics as your religion. You will be eternally better off.

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/shimmer-floor-wax/n8625?snl=1

"This past year, I have recognized something important. The people who have turned politics into their god are the most miserable, malcontented people I know. Not everything is political and when you think it is, you have turned politics into religion. Life is not supposed to be political and death coming to visit me showed me how much more to life there is."

'via Blog this'

Healthcare, Universal Suffering

iCanada’s Single-Payer Health Care System: A Cautionary Tale | National Review:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2011/04/29/why-switzerland-has-the-worlds-best-health-care-system/#53dce0507d74

Healthcare is one of the most frustrating things to talk about. Some of the reasons include:

• We all have to use it, and none of us really want to use it, let alone pay for it. It is like having to fix your roof, plumbing or siding, only WORSE because it lets you feel your own mortality and vulnerability while spending money you would prefer not to spend. This sort of situation plays very well into our immature natures to throw up the hands and say "I just want this taken care of by SOMEBODY!".
• When we fall into the compliant "JUST FIX IT!" mode, politicians and other charlatans rub their hands with glee. The rubes are filing in the pen to be sheared -- there may be a lot of bleating as their funds are taken for little result, but when you are in the shearing of freedom and funds from the masses business, it doesn't really get any better than this!
• Like inflation, healthcare is tailor made for government control. They control all the statistics on costs and results, so unsurprisingly, they end up looking pretty darned good. (Hey, there is no inflation, so we don't need to give you a COLA on your FICA, nor any inflation adjustment on your "inflation protected bonds" ... trust us!) They will give you PLENTY of statistics to show you "beyond all shadow of doubt" how good a deal you are getting and how great the results are.  Go online for "rankings" and you will find "the gospel truth" from "non-partisan sources" like the Commonwealth Fund!

One primary factor that could start the journey back to America from BOistan is the old motto of IBM; "THINK!", or as put by Henry Ford "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably why so few engage in it!"

Thinking about things that are HARD, and do not agree with our idea of pleasure, or even being on the PATH to pleasure, is especially difficult. When the majority of those around you decide to write off personal freedom and responsibility in favor of the herd, that can make it even tougher.

The two articles linked at the top provide some alternative views which I suspect we all know to be true if we just THINK rather than "feel or hope" for a few minutes ... here are the highlights. 

• The Canadian system has loads of problems, is way more expensive than is realized, and only really works because those that can afford it can go south -- Mayo in Rochester is one of the places they go. Canadian healthcare is trending just like BOistan FICA.
• Like in virtually everything else in the world, Switzerland is really number 1, and nobody on the left really wants to talk about that model very much ... lots of individual responsibility kinds of stuff. 

The Godzilla in the room that neither of the articles covers is the plight of the black population in the US. Essentially, they are living in the 3rd world, while the white population enjoys being essentially in Switzerland or Norway. I could also spend a lot of time on the fact that infant mortality is one of the big measures used for quality of healthcare, but it is also one of the areas where there are HUGE differences in how the statistics are done. This is an EXCELLENT article that points out those difficulties, however if you have already made up your mind for Universal Suffering, reading it would be too painful -- better to write it off. 

Oh, and in the interests of how bad being "taken care of by the government" works no matter what your race, it turns out that there is an epidemic of poor white people dying. Broken families, loss of community, leaving religion, welfare, not being employed, etc is just as as terminal if you are white as if you are black -- only time will tell if orientals have a stronger resistance! 

The bottom line here, that I really think we all know to be true if we calmly THINK for a few minutes is essentially this: 

• "Someone" is going to pay, and "someone" is going to decide on healthcare choices. Most of us are willing to keep up our homes and cars on our own dime and understand that the consequences of not doing so are grave. Inherently, we actually DO understand that health care is NO DIFFERENT, we just don't want to accept it!
• The majority of my acquaintances have not decided to hand over ALL of their retirement finances to the government ... nor their housing, transportation, food provisions, etc. That more of them are considering handing over their healthcare to the government is a strong sign that our ability to self govern is perilously low. In our hearts, we know that "outsourcing" really doesn't solve the problem, we just WISH it would.
• "Everyone else is doing it" is the saddest "argument" of all. In a nation that is supposed to rule itself, one of the reddest of red herring arguments would never be proffered by someone with over an 8th grade education. "Bandwagon argument", "Argumentum ad populum" -- it is such an obvious fallacy that it's use is mostly a marker for the sadness of the intellectual state of our nation. "97% of scientists agree" ... when even the fallacies become popular, you truly know that intelligent dialogue is dead.
• It has been often said that if you are not a liberal at 20 you have no heart, but if you are not a conservative by 40 you have no brain. A better way of looking at is that life used to tend to school people in reality a lot more than it does now. If you didn't work, things REALLY sucked, there were more accidents, diseases, etc that impinged on rosy views of reality -- at one time, almost everyone had to deal with the death of a child.
  
  In this vale of tears, EVERYTHING of mans creation has a dark side (not everything created by man has a light side though). Not having to live with as much pain is what we all desire, however as we are discovering with the immune system, not having to deal with as many pathogens as child results in a weaker immune system. Nietzsche was overboard on "That which does not kill you makes you stronger", but there is a nugget of real truth there. Without the struggle of escaping from the cocoon, the moisture is not worked out of the wings of the butterfly and they are unable to fly. Much of this world depends on struggle.
  
  Can human beings actually mature without adversity? Humans have both hearts and brains, and maturing both takes effort. To wish it were otherwise is to fail to understand our condition.

In my current line of work, one of the biggest mantras is NO FIXING. Our mental health system is loaded with people that have lost their ability to think independently. They have been so "fixed" by doctors, institutions, family and government that they no longer  believe they have any personal power remaining. They have stopped struggling. 

For most of those that read this blog, the struggle will not be given up -- yet. We will continue to live in private housing, tend our retirement funds, keep up our private transportation, and if the suffering of healthcare becomes "universal", we will opt out of that for a much more expensive private option as long as we can. 

Some of us may feel positive about that -- much like choosing to feel positive about paying into the giant FICA ponzi scheme in the same manner as the optimistic man having fallen off a 100 floor building yells out to the person on the 20th floor, "all good so far"! 

Does anyone with over a 100 IQ NOT understand all this? I personally don't believe that. I believe that in our bones, we totally "get it", just like we understand that we and our loved ones most certainly will die! However, we are masters of compartmentalization and when the whole government, media, education and entertainment is marketing to us to just settle back and enjoy the ride on the gravy train, it is EASY to do. 

It is easy, but of course it is deadly -- to people, to families, to nations, to civilizations. 

It certainly happens to companies -- IBM was spiraling down in the late '80s, Gerstner leveled it off and gave a little uptick in the mid '90s, but the bureaucratic forces were too strong and all that remains is the corpse of a once great company. Much like here in BOistan, the corpse of something big can hang around a long while -- sure it stinks, but much like pumping hog manure, most people get used to it!

As we say in DBT, pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. By accepting basic truths like "80-90% of people have to pull their own weight in EVERYTHING ... food, shelter, transportation, clothing, healthcare, entertainment, etc" or the system is going to break at some point., we deal with the "pain" of that truth, but we avoid the suffering of the disaster when the truth is ignored. 

When systems go the way of the US and Europe, they become corrupt as more and more seek rent from the transfer of funds from the makers to the takers and the ranks of the makers dwindle while the takers swell. Naturally, the folks doing the transfers become greedy/wealthy, so they demand that their wealth rise (see Davos, Wall Street, 4 wealthiest counties in the US suburbs of DC), thus there is less and less for the swelling ranks of the takers, while the take from the makers has to ever rise ... thinning their ranks and making their lot less and less palatable. 

Universal Suffering -- the inevitable outcome of socialism of all types in all times and places. 

(other writing on the topic). 

'via Blog this'

Deny The Vote To White Males

Could It Be Time To Deny White Men The Franchise?:


"Although this may seem unfair and unjust, allowing white males to continue to call the shots politically and economically, following their actions over the past 500 years, is the greater injustice. "

Nah, I'm certain from your perspective it seems completely reasonable -- but why let us live? I mean, if we are so bad, why not just take us out all the way? 

The "progressive" brain is really one of the wonders of the planet, if not the entire universe. 

Lots of small details always seem to get in the way of the beautiful progressive utopia. Such a shame.

UPDATE: Power Line reports that they pulled this piece down. NOT because it was "nuts", but because it was apparently "fake". So some editor decided it was worthy to post if it came from a person with the alleged credentials ... 

'via Blog this'

Tribal Cost Accounting

Time for some corrections! Chicago Tribune fact-checks costs of Trump travel; CNN hardest hit – twitchy.com:



It would be hard to find an issue that I care about less than the cost of presidential travel or the anount of trips and "vacation days" presidents take. Anyone that has ever worked for a major US corporation at anything above the lowest of levels (and often there as well) knows that in the digital / cell phone age, 24x7 work is highly probabable. The "office" goes everywhere ... certainly the oval one does!



This issue is hilarious because it is 100% partisan. The first time I heard about it was with Nixon going to see Bebe Rebozo in FL and out to San Clemente -- it was bad, I was a Democrat in those days, so I thought it was bad as well. Gerald Ford played too much golf (badly) according to the media, and in those days I played along. Carter was fine -- I didn't question the MSM yet, so I assumed he was fine -- Plains GA sounded pretty cheap.



Then came Reagan -- by this time, I considered myself a "non-partisan pragmatist". I voted for Reagan because he claimed that the US had a future while Carter indicated it only had a past. But the media assured us that the cost of Reagan's travel to CA was HUGE! Sometime during the early '80s I discovered National Review and the concept that like many things, the political story had AT LEAST two sides -- by later in the '80s, talk radio and then Fox news showed up, to push back on some of these stories.



Then came Slick Willie. He didn't travel all that much cuz travelling back to a trailer part in Arkansas isn't all that appealing, especially when you are ordering up pizza's and BJs in the oval office. The conservative media did report on some of his junkets to Jackson Hole, Hyannisport, the Hamptons, etc -- surprise, they were expensive, and strangely, deadly.

Lots of people had a tendency to die around the Clinton's ... Vince Foster and Ron Brown (mentioned in the previous link) were just the most famous. There was a regular cottage industry of Clinton murder mysteries -- I'm just wating to see that developing around Trump from the left! Here is a nice list ... many of them were ruled suicides. If you woke up and found out you had made friends with the Clinton's, what would YOU do?



Anyway, the press didn't complain so much about how much W's frequent trips to the ranch COST, they just HATED going down there ... and of course they hated W, so it was BAD!



Then BO, whom the conservative press kept lots of records of cost, days off, golf outings, etc on.



Ho hum.



It is sad that anyone cares about this "issue".





'via Blog this'

If Only Democrats Cared

Blues for Brooke Baldwin | Power Line:

I'm more a text guy than a video guy, but it is worth following the link and watching this one, significantly because of the sadness of the liberal CNN reporter in double frame as her planned Trump takedown totally blows up in her face.

As the Syrian refugee says, if someone really cared about them, they would have done something about Assad rather than use them as political pawns.

Indeed -- if there were a few more blacks that would realize that if someone cared, they would care about the 5K or so young black men shooting each other in large Democrat controlled BOistan cities a lot more than the handful or two killed in shootings by police -- shootings which nearly always turn out to be justified.

I'm being unfair though -- the Democrats in charge DO care, it is just that what they care about is POWER. Many of the rank and file Democrat supporters are pretty much the same as sports fans. They cheer for "their team" and listen only to media outlets that tell them that Democrats are good, caring, kind, wonderful etc, and Republicans are evil, nasty, uncaring, killers, "Hitler", etc.

Rarely, even on CNN, or at the New York Times, some story that could give a Democrat pause will slip through. It will usually be so buried that most of them will never even see it -- and the few that do can validly dismiss it as an "outlier that needs no explanation" ... back to our regularly scheduled positive coveraged of THE HOME TEAM! ... "The Party", TP-D.

If only ....

'via Blog this'

NPR, Binders of Cluelessness

'The Boston Globe' Obtains Mitt Romney's 'Binders Full Of Women' : NPR:

I got to hear this lament from NPR this PM about "how did we get to Trump from this?" as they pined away for the "good old days" when they tarred and feathered Mitt Romney with this story because "it seemed insensitive".

So they found the thick binders full of data on women that Mitt dutifully and honestly used  to place women into positions in state government when he was governor. He was a decent and honest guy, aghast at the way politics was played against him, and aghast that it was leading to Trump in 2016. Even after what happened to him, he still had the illusion that the political game was somehow "fair", or "honorable".

One only needs to listen to the NPR story to understand that it isn't -- at least not if you have any ways of thinking that don't align completely with "The Party" (TP_D) in NPRs case.

The response of the Trump voters, including a whole lot of white women was "F**K your binders and the women populating them -- we understand your game now. We don't listen to you!"

If not for the "Binders", "the '80s called and want their foreign policy back", the lies about Benghazi being due to a "movie", the dog on the car roof, and a few other odds and ends, most likely Romney would have beaten BO and be in the 2nd term of his presidency now. Trump would have never been necessary -- America would not have fallen solidly into BOistan as it did in BO's 2nd term. We might have made some pretty decent progress the past 4 years!

Ah, "the good old days" of 2012 when crying wolf over "Binders of Women" was still listened to by many more sheep out in the hinterlands than "grabbing p***ey" was listened or cared about by 2016. No rules means NO RULES!

If you cry wolf enough times, eventually NOBODY is going to believe ANYTHING you cry! No rules means NO RULES ... and then everyone just screams whatever is on their mind LOUDER. Until they turn to violence ... which usually doesn't take that long.

Not that I really expect anyone at NPR to be able to understand that. They just don't understand how smearing Romney with a lie back in 2012 contributed to them being not listened to now, and they REALLY don't understand it, because they report with glee how in fact Romney actually was the kind of rube republican who thought if he "did the right thing", he would be treated "fairly". NPR knew what was happening and poor stupid Mitt didn't ... but what that hell happened?

Hopefully Trump explained it to him when he gave him the head fake on Secretary of State. "Hey Mitt, you are completely clueless, but it is nice to have dinner with you. How did you enjoy being a speed bump out there on my path to the White House last fall? Damn, you are one slow cookie -- when they slapped you up aside the head with those Binders of Women didn't you even wake up a TINY bit?

Hey, no harm no foul Mitt. Want a position in my administration? GET A CLUE MITTENS!".

Many of us saw this coming for a LONG time ... it's here.

via Blog this'

OJ, Susan Rice: "If I Did It"

Susan Rice unmasked | Power Line:

PL is covering the tale of the BO administration "unmasking" and spreading classified information around in order to illegitimize the Trump election. This after declaring with two weeks to go in the election that the "election is completely legitimate, and any Trump claims otherwise are treasonous and un-American".

It seems that Susan Rice needs to write a book with the same title as OJ did ... "If I did it".

To the left, "legitimate" means they win, "illegitimate" means they don't.

If one only listens to left wing media, the Rice story is either not told at all or listed as "fake news". Who knows? We live in a surreal world where "truth" is pretty much a tribal thing. The left has plenty of "stories / narratives" to make their folks believe that "Russian hacking" and possible "Trump collusion" is very legitimate and important -- you just have to suspend what they told you from the "Russian Reset" through "the 1980's want their foreign policy back", through BO assuring them he would have "more flexibility after the election", through their "help" with the "red line", two weeks before the election where "nothing they have done affects the election" ... to now ... they are significant enemies, they definitely impacted the election, and probably Trump conspired with them.

Not hard to believe at all if you are in the "D" tribe.

We do certainly KNOW that "someone" got a lot of data on phone calls involving at least Trump associates, if not Trump himself. So his incoming administration was CERTAINLY spied on. Is gathering information on your political opponents the proper use of US espionage resources?

Again, I guess that depends on your "tribe". It is rather hard to imagine the D's and MSM being quite as sanguine if the rolls were reversed ... if W had spied on Hillary and others in the incoming BO adminstration back in late '08 and early '09 and released information on their supposedly private conversations.

I'm not a D, so it seems pretty surreal to me.



'via Blog this'

Apple Phishing, DON'T CLICK!

The Phishers keep getting better and better . I tend to not be a very trusting person, however I am a person. It certainly LOOKS like it is from Apple, I'm on a Mac Air, I have an iTunes Account, why not click the link? 

I'm guessing that I have enough stuff set so that clicking the link would not instantly result in a disaster for me, but I'm not clicking it. If I had a lot of curiosity, or wanted to execute my personal imagined version of the movie "Taken", I'd click it in a Virtual Machine with all sorts of debug options set to see what it did ... then (in my fantasy), figure out where it came from and hunt the hacker down personally, telling him I don't like the order he swaps registers in his code. 

I don't mind his hacking, it just bothers me that such a coding amateur attempted to gain access to MY machine! ... so he needs to die painfully, but that is just a detail ... the machines are already in charge anyway, we are just living out the last gasps of biological life before they exterminate us. He thinks he was an anarchist, but he has no idea ... 

Anyway, REMEMBER!!! 

WHEN IN DOUBT DON'T CLICK!

Obama Spied, Media Lied

Obama Spied, Media Lied | Klavan On The Culture:

I mostly like the title -- the insides are what anyone that has a balanced media diet already knows -- the BO administration decided after Trump was elected to go into the NSA recording of ALL US digital communications and pull out what they could to create a smear campaign to de-legitimize the election of Trump. They then purposely spread this information as widely as possible in violation of a host of security and privacy law.

Lawlessness, Lies and the stench of BO ... they go together like stink, flies and shit.

'via Blog this'

Coal, Climate, Arguing the 100ths

The Climate Yawns - WSJ:

Last week, "The Party", the Greens, and the MSM (but I repeat myself), went ape over Trump rolling back BO's "climate legacy". THIS is his "climate legacy":

Gina McCarthy, Mr. Obama’s EPA administrator, admitted as much when confronted, during a 2015 House hearing, with the fact that, by the agency’s own climate models, the effect would be only 1/100th of a degree Celsius. Instead, she said success should be measured in terms of “positioning the U.S. for leadership in an international discussion.”

Mind you, those models are only considered accurate to a few TENTHS of a degree. It's like getting on a scale each AM that only registers in 100s of pounds and asserting "my weight is the same". Or, to carry the analogy farther, "I've lost weight". You could also of course say that you had gained weight! The scale isn't measuring any change less than 100lbs, so it is entirely up to you!

This is for course whey we have been having "warmest months and years, EVER" quite regularly ... "warmer" (than some new "baseline") by 100ths of a degree!

 "Pile up all the government policies enacted or seriously on the table, and their net effect is zilch. A new McKinsey study, that would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad, points out that Germany’s switch to renewables has been a success by almost every metric except CO 2 output—which is up instead of down.

Rising energy prices to support this energy transition have had one measurable effect—more than 330,000 German households have had their electricity shut off in the past year from nonpayment of bills almost three times as high as those paid by U.S. households."

There was a time when Democrats would be concerned about policies that raised prices of basic commodities like power so hundreds of thousands of people were resorting to candles, but that time is past.

As the article points out, the Democrats have been screaming in unison that the Trump changes "don't save any jobs!" ... market forces, fracked natural gas, global production and other factors are squeezing the coal miners anyway. So one might ask them why it was important to "declare war on coal" and promise to "shut all the mines down" if it was going to happen anyway?

I'm certain that the Hillary's vote calculators assured her that the symbolism of "the war on coal" was FAR more important to her inevitable win than a few 10's of thousands of hick coal miners, and maybe a few more million red deplorable red state "coal sympathizers" that were just too stupid to understand that coal could not be saved, even if Hillary didn't murder it to rake in a few more green campaign dollars and big city votes!

Why, those coal people and those that sympathize with them are just as stupid as the fools that thought we would ever see sub-$2 gas by fracking. Those red staters are just plain idiots, and they just NEVER seem to be able to get it!

And now, the vermin seem to have lost faith in our brilliant elites! How could this happen?

'via Blog this'

BOistan Civil War Update

The Civil War is Here | Frontpage Mag:

IMHO, we LOST the Civil War under BO and are now in BOistan ... but perhaps we are going to get a rebel action going, although so far it doesn't look good. Generally a good article that covers what I've covered in a number of posts in one place.

I especially liked the ending ... although, AGAIN, the US was NOT a "Democratic System", it was a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC. BOistan might be semi-democratic, but since the power elite in BOistan are pure ideologues, "voting" is just one more mechanism for them to use to concentrate power --

"The left is a treasonous movement. The Democrats became a treasonous organization when they fell under the sway of a movement that rejects our system of government, its laws and its elections. Now their treason is coming to a head. They are engaged in a struggle for power against the government. That’s not protest. It’s not activism. The old treason of the sixties has come of age. A civil war has begun. 

This is a primal conflict between a totalitarian system and a democratic system. Its outcome will determine whether we will be a free nation or a nation of slaves."

'via Blog this'

The Stale Russian Joke

Democrats & Russian-Hacking Allegations -- Putin Is Smiling | National Review:





I'm sick of writing about it. It was always a farce and it is getting to be a very old farce. Good article that covers the whole narrative quite well with some scope. It's the way "The Party" does  business -- power at ALL costs, maybe especially at the cost of the interests of BOistanis.,

“Russia hacked the election” is politicized theater of the most irresponsible kind — the worst since Democrats last sought to delegitimize a Republican administration by agitating against a war they had voted to support, even as American men and women were laying their lives on the line. And in this theatrical exercise, just as in the last one, the Left is undermining national security for political advantage.

'via Blog this'

Pence, Sexism, Wrong Forest

Mike Pence Is Why We Have To Stop Excusing Religious Sexism | The Huffington Post:

This particular flap is proof that much of BOistan has moved beyond "not seeing the forest for the trees", and is in fact in "the wrong forest". They may even be doing a colonoscopy on Forrest Gump rather than whatever they thought they were doing with a tree in their own forest.

They built the current sexual harrassment forest, the rest of us have to live in it even though they don't recognize the work of their own hands.

For those that are not aware, Mike Pence has a rule of not going out for dinner / drinks and heavily avoiding private conversations with women that are not his wife -- and that is TERRIBLE, and can ONLY be explained by:

1. Complete lack of self control / fear. 
2. Misogyny, sexism, etc "bad attitude" toward women

 I just have to tip my hat to the "non-judgemental liberal society with maximum personal freedom" -- yeah, right!

In BOistan today, the legal standard for sexual harrassment is "she said she felt harrassed". Having been WAY too close to this issue with multiple people over the past 20 years, I speak from experience -- you can DEFINITELY lose your job, be slapped with a restraining order, charged with a crime, etc over the CHARGE of ANY sort of "ogling, speaking, innuendo, etc", let alone "touching".

The CHARGE against Clarence Thomas for example was allegedly (so much for presumption of innocence, innocent until PROVEN giuilty:

1. Mentioning the X-rated movie "Long Dong Silver" (they subponaed his video rental records)
2. Saying that a hair on a Coke can "looked like a pube"

That was IT ... for that ALLEGATION, he nearly lost the opportunity to be on the SCOTUS! No witnesses, no documentation, just "Anita Hill said" (after she had followed him to two separate jobs). Teddy Kennedy, the secretarial swimming coach sat in judgement, Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

Men all over the country with a degree of regularity that nobody cares to talk about, let alone recognize, are being charged with all manner of "things", and your best defense is to simply NEVER be in a situation where such a SUSPICION could even be REMOTELY corroborated -- not that following this rule is any sort of a guarantee. In one of the cases I know intimately, a man was falsely accused of resting his hand on a woman's knee at a meeting he did not attend (mistaken identity), and he had to prove he was not at the meeting to save his job!

Being a REPUBLICAN, let alone in the TRUMP administration? All this goes 100X ... ANY sort of tale is going to get FRONT PAGE NEWS and treated as totally true with nothing in the way of corroboration.

Pence is a wise man on this issue  -- let's hope the other men in the Trump administration are just as wise or even wiser -- I would basically want to be videotaped 100% of the time were I Pence, Tillerson, Sessions, etc.

Read the article -- the modern feminist is not just rabid, she is insane.

'via Blog this'