NASA Says Antarctica Gaining Ice, Packers Lose

Antarctica is actually gaining ice, says NASA. Is global warming over?

I very much question how any person with a hint of a scientific bent rather than a pure ideological, financial, or quasi-religious commitment to AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming)  could look at this information and call AGW "settled". It would be very similar to a Packer fan getting up this AM after the drubbing by Denver and saying that a prediction that Green Bay will win Super Bowl 50 is settled! 

The "fact" of rapid Antarctic ice loss has been a cornerstone of AGW orthodoxy. NASA is and has been a significant source of data presented as "proving" AGW. I find this quote to be especially telling:

"The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away," said Dr. Zwally. 

"But this is also bad news,” he added. “If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for."

So if you admit you haven't accurately measured the ice in Antarctica in the past, what makes it certain that you are accurately measuring it or global sea level NOW?

There MUST be another contributor? Just as measuring the total ice on a continent is way less certain than measuring the ice in your drink, precise measurement of global sea level is not the same as measuring out a shot of bourbon no matter how many times you claim to people that such measurements are "infallible". Infallibility is a stance of religion, not science. 

Of course, NASA could be wrong on this measurement and ice may being lost, or maybe it turns out that sea level is not in fact rising -- such is ALWAYS the case with actual science which is only called science because EVERY claim is "falsifiable", but never settled because of the problem of induction ... The Thanksgiving Turkey problem! 

Religion says that we live in a meaningful universe with a sovereign and all knowing God having ultimate and correct reasons and purpose for all, since he created it and us, it is perfectly reasonable that at least parts of it should be validly knowable by human minds. 

Science says that we have no clue on the knowability or repeatability of a completely random and capricious universe -- other than faith that it is knowable and repeatable. Which most scientists choose to believe for the same reasons that religious people believe in God ... "it makes sense to them", "it seems it HAS to be that way", "I feel it in my very core",  etc. Scientists are humans too -- their brains need a "reasonable story" (for them) to operate with so they naturally postulate a clockwork universe "just happened" if they decide that God is "too simplistic / imaginary". 

We can find "useful guesses that work over some domain of time and space" (hypothesis and theories), but like the turkey, we will never know what we don't know. There is no scientific reason to believe in "order", or even that what randomly selected or designed human minds happen to see as "order" is even meaningful -- unless we postulate some sense of "something" (meaning, order, rules, etc) beyond the physical artifacts that we perceive. 

We will never "prove" the existence or non-existence of "god" via science -- but we need look no further than AGW to know that man must have religion! 

BTW, my certainty in the Pack is a bit tattered this AM! 

The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt

http://www.amazon.com/The-Happiness-Hypothesis-Finding-Ancient/dp/0465028020

I blogged on this once before, but since only a couple of people read it at that time I decided to update and post again.  It is one of my favorite books relative to both ancient wisdom and what science is finding about the way our brains are organized.

The subtitle of the book is "Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom" and the author is Jonathan Haidt. I LOVED the recommendation from the father of the Positive Psychology Movement (Martin Seligman) who stated; "For the reader who seeks to understand happiness, my advice is: Begin with Haidt." ;-) (it actually isn't pronounced "hate", it is pronounced "height" ... but still funny)

I love the metaphor that he uses and the picture on the cover, a shadowy view of a rider on a swimming elephant. Haidt had gone for a trail ride in the mountains as a youth, and has the horse neared a particularly steep cliff, he panicked that he didn't have the horse under control and didn't know what to do. For a brief few seconds he debated jumping off as he realized what he thought was his peril. Of course, the old trail horse had done this trail thousands of times and had no interest in going off the cliff. She calmly negotiated the turn and life went on.

The analogy is to show the the relationship between our consciousness (rider), a fairly recent add to our wetware package (in the evolutionist view), and the vast majority of our mental apparatus honed by millions of years of successful selection. Our chances of controlling "the elephant" (subconscious) by force are zero. Our only hope is to learn how to lovingly train the elephant to operate more as a team with our consciousness. The theme of the book is how this has been relatively understood for millennia and there is much wisdom on how to do this which can now be validated and improved upon by modern science.

Shakespeare said: "There is nothing either good or bad but, but thinking makes it so". Buddha said: "Our life is a creation of the mind". Unfortunately, science shows us that we are biased to think the wrong things. We tend to focus on threats that aren't there and useless worry. Three techniques are proposed for dealing with this problem: Meditation, Cognitive Therapy, and "Prozac" (SSRIs Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor drugs). All of these work to varying degrees and all can work together. The objective is for the conscious mind and the "elephant" to learn to work as a team rather than fighting -- all three methods help calm a nervous or morose "elephant" (subconscious).

There is a chapter on reciprocity, which is basically "the golden rule". It turns out it really does seem to be written on our souls, and there is no better way to get people to do something for you than to do something for them (or in the case of politics, promise to force OTHER people do something nice for them!). One of the big problems with human society is that of the "free rider" -- someone that doesn't follow reciprocity. Sanctions, gossip, and possibly a lot of our brain size is involved in operating as a cooperative group, but minimizing "free riders" -- at least it WAS that way up until Bernie Sanders! ;-)

I liked the explanation of "naive realism". "Each of us thinks we see the world as it really is. We further believe that the facts as we see them are there for all to see, therefore others should agree with us." We see everyone else as impacted by ideology and self interest -- but WE are unbiased!  As I try to point out, this is INESCAPABLE -- the best we can do is be aware of it and do our best to understand the arguments our "opponents" use. If you are in the dominant ideology position, it is MUCH harder to see the "other side", since it tends to be simply discounted as it is less popular, and in modern times we have been drilled to believe that "the most votes is right! At least until they elect "the wrong guy", like Reagan -- then the masses are "manipulated", "poorly educated", etc. Our founders of course chose to form a REPUBLIC not a "democracy" because they agree -- the mass can be wrong!

Late in the book there is a chapter that discusses how we are "wired for religion". Since Haidt is an atheist,  and a pure evolutionist,  the reason we are that way must be "group selection". It turns out that religion and it's shared rules are an excellent way to make much larger groups of people operate more optimally. Even better when it is backed up by perceived supernatural sanction.

I chuckle a bit here -- sadly, that a brilliant pure evolutionist sees pretty clearly that large groups of people that believe in a supernatural God that has provided them with rules that they all must follow even when nobody's looking, and has eternal significance is BETTER, as in "more adaptive". So the universe "randomly" works out so that the most adaptive course of action happens to be belief in God -- so "smart people" should fight that naturally occurring adaptive concept! Perhaps they ought to give up sex as well? (it is also natural and adaptive)

Twist your head over to environmentalism and the LAST thing that ought to be done is "fighting nature"! If it is "natural", the assumption of the left (and science) is that "going against nature" is EVIL! The only consistency in situational ethics is that it is inconsistent.

While Haidt clearly doesn't say it, that means that that Christianity USED to have an "adaptive advantage", which we managed to kill in the west -- really a double advantage, since kids were a blessing and having large families was a good thing. Now Islam has that advantage -- and hmmm, it is on the rise! Doesn't seem that one would need to be a particularly brilliant evolutionist to explain that one!

In any case, the book is EXCELLENT! It is one of my top recommendations for understanding human nature.

50 Years of Democrats Selecting Voters

Ted Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration Act: The War On America Turns 50 | VDARE - premier news outlet for patriotic immigration reform:

Fifty years ago this week Teddy Kennedy and the Democrats passed legislation that moved America from being a predominantly European ancestry, to a nation that looked more like the rest of the planet  (other than Europe) -- predominantly non-white.

The fact of the legislation having the effect of changing American demographics and thereby culture is not in question -- "The Party" (TP-D) would say that "we were just unaware what would happen". Ignorance is always possible, but it was certainly willful ignorance if so, Customs and Immigration Services knew what was going to happen.

In 1965, the political elite on Capitol Hill may not have predicted a mass increase in immigration. But Marian Smith, the historian for Customs and Immigration Services, showed me a small agency booklet from 1966 that certainly did. It explains how each provision in the new law would lead to a rapid increase in applications and a big jump in workload — more and more so as word trickled out to those newly eligible to come.

In any case, it produced the country that used to be America that now sits between Canada and Mexico. A country with no identifiable people, culture, religion or shared values. A country whose only definition is geography and the fact that it is divided.

Republicans should be sweeping the country, but they aren’t, because of Kennedy’s immigration law. Without post-1965 immigrants bloc-voting for the Democrats, Obama never would have been elected president, and Romney would have won a bigger landslide against him in 2012 than Reagan did against Carter in 1980.

In 1965, TP was in total control of the country. I consider myself pretty well read, but I never understood exactly why my old home town is heavily Somalian, why the Twin Cities and even Rochester have large Somali populations, nor why every small town in IA has a decent Mexican restaurant. I thought it was somehow "unavoidable" given very long term US immigration policy -- as if the same laws that brought Germans, Swedes, Irish, etc just naturally allowed the Mexican, Somali, etc immigration we have seen in the last 50 years.

It wasn't, it was a specific decision made by specific people -- the Kennedy's being chief among them. Like a lot of TP actions, it was promised to be completely different than what happened, but in a rational world, we would evaluate politicians by what actually happens rather than what they promise will happen.

Here is what LBJ had to say when he signed the bill.

"This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions," Johnson said at the signing ceremony. "It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives or add importantly to either our wealth or our power."

I guess he was right about it not adding to our wealth or power!

TP firmly tells us through media and education that there is nothing that can be done about this now. It is over -- what was once America is dead and gone, and they and the people they have selected as voters are fast creating whatever they want to call the new nation. The culture will be what they say it is -- atheist, Muslim, totalitarian, 3rd world -- whatever. Those of us anachronisms that remember the old America need to just sit back and accept it. 

They may well be right -- but at least it is good to know exactly who it was, and when it was that they decided to stick the knife in the eagle.

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Thinking Like a Cosmologist

All Scientists Should Be Militant Atheists - The New Yorker:

This article is a bad example of thought, but a good example of the sort of thinking someone schooled in physics and not much else engages in. The base problem of human knowledge is that it is done by humans. There is only so much that a single person can know, no matter how brilliant they may be. When they focus on one thing to become very expert in it (a worthy cause), we know that they likely have very deep knowledge in that subject, so far so good.  The way the world works, that means their knowledge about most everything else is quite shallow.

Beyond that the shallowness, all but the wise fail the "Man's got to know his limitations" test -- absolutely everything "known" is "known" ONLY from the perspective of easily fooled and mortal man -- as evidenced by the author of the article, prideful beyond all reason. We could wax on at length about man's limits -- "when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail" is another good one to apply here -- if you are a scientist it is easy to think you have the most important knowledge, and it ought to be applied to the exclusion of other knowledge.

Being finite beings, we have a choice between being "Knowing everything about nothing, or nothing about everything". Unfortunately, even that is an inadequate description of our limits -- I'm closer to knowing nothing about everything, but even so, each day I find some part of "everything" that I was totally unaware of!

Here is a paragraph that illustrates some of this from the article .

The problem, obviously, is that what is sacred to one person can be meaningless (or repugnant) to another. That’s one of the reasons why a modern secular society generally legislates against actions, not ideas. No idea or belief should be illegal; conversely, no idea should be so sacred that it legally justifies actions that would otherwise be illegal.

The author has discovered the point (which even he claims to be "obvious") that "people see things differently" ... even more so, they see things as "widely varied in importance" (eg sacred, profane, good, bad, stupid, meaningless, etc).

So "modern society" legislates against "ideas vs actions". Can he name a society that didn't or doesn't legislate against actions vs ideas outside of George Orwell books or potentially our existing society with "hate speech"? The fact is that NONE of us know what others are thinking -- even speech is an "action", and if he believes that our "modern secular society" is somehow very "open" on that topic, he really needs to write an article on how it is OK to call other people N**S, Wetbacks, Faggots, ... etc. since those are "only words".

Therefore  his paragraph is nonsense -- nobody legislates against ideas, but US "secular society" comes as close as anyone has in a long time with their concept of "hate speech" and "hate crimes" ... so his supposed "model society" is a great example of what he claims he is trying to combat!

The government has a compelling interest in insuring that all citizens are treated equally. But “religious freedom” advocates argue that religious ideals should be elevated above all others as a rationale for action. In a secular society, this is inappropriate.

In what used to be the US, "The Government" was a servant of the people and was very limited in what it could do. When the government was limited, it was required to treat all people equally. If it was still so required there would be no "progressive" income tax, affirmative action. hate speech or crimes, etc. The government would be limited from doing a great many of the things that infringe on religious liberty today -- religious liberty supposedly guaranteed under that same Constitution that is no longer in force.

So in this paragraph, the author apparently finds one supposed "law of the land", ... religious freedom is inappropriate in a "secular society". Interestingly enough, since freedom of speech is under the same clause in the Constitution, is that ALSO disallowed in a "secular society"?

So what IS a "secular society"? He doesn't say -- it appears to have no "values", so one would assume no fixed rules at all. He does point out "The more we learn about the workings of the universe, the more purposeless it seems." So why did he not just stop the column there? If it is all purposeless and meaningless, why waste our time? Clearly he does not truly believe that -- because he hates God and religion. His hatred is at least enough to a motivator for him to write a column, so at least hatred still holds meaning for him in a supposedly purposeless universe.

He does say this at the end .

We owe it to ourselves and to our children not to give a free pass to governments—totalitarian, theocratic, or democratic—that endorse, encourage, enforce, or otherwise legitimize the suppression of open questioning in order to protect ideas that are considered “sacred.” Five hundred years of science have liberated humanity from the shackles of enforced ignorance. We should celebrate this openly and enthusiastically, regardless of whom it may offend.

So then holding NOTHING sacred becomes sacred -- we have seen this "Brave New World" before  -- eugenics? genocide? slavery? medical experiments on human subjects? the Gulag? ... the shop of horrors is endless. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot -- this is an old movie. God is dead, all praise the man with the strongest "Will to POWER" (Nietzsche) ! Why not? ... it is all purposeless -- so any purpose found must be from the bootstraps of a "Superman" -- he with the greatest will to power!

 Certainly a Constitution that limits the government can't be "sacred" -- as it is no longer is here, otherwise we would not be having this discussion. We would be having a discussion about a gay "marriage" amendment passing both houses of congress by 2/3 majorities -- followed by a discussion on it passing 3/4 of the states.

**IF** it passed -- and it seems highly likely that if there was to be ANY chance of that, it would have included some sort of allowance for the first amendment religious freedom that the column author hates, in order to make it able to pass. Those are the sort of compromises that were the essence of what was once America under rule of law.

But as it is, we have no "law" to be compared with "religion" -- because we ALREADY hold nothing sacred as a nation, so there is no Constitution as a basis for law, and therefore no law to followed save raw power.

Which apparently to this cosmologist is either "fine" or "unknown" ... since his thinking on these subjects of law, rights, politics, morals, etc is so fuzzy as to defy parsing for any real meaning beyond that he hates God and religion and is very confused about the other topics he covers.

One hopes he seeks out an oncologist rather than a fellow physicist if he ever needs cancer treatment!

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Muslim Flight Attendant, Kentucky Clerk, God's Sense of Humor

Muslim Flight attendant suspended for not serving alcohol:

"I don't think that I should have to choose between practicing my religion properly or earning a living," Stanley told CBS News. "I shouldn't have to choose between one or the other because they're both important."

Out in Denver we happened to hear the jailed Kentucky Clerk story covered on one of the "breakfast shows" -- probably "Today", followed without relationship or irony two stories later with the Muslim flight attendant with the lawyers quote above.

The position of the show -- and the left media in this country is pretty obvious. Clearly the KY clerk is a goat and the Muslim flight attendant is a hero! One has to be poorly trained at what is the "proper way to think" to not see that!

Make some accommodation for the Muslim, jail the Christian -- what part of recent propaganda from "The Party" (D) have you failed to understand??

God makes it easy for us to see how the world and tyranny operate -- I strongly suspect that he gets a little chuckle from the complete blindness (faking) of those that claim to see no irony in the juxtaposition of these two stories.

Dilbert saw this phenomenon clearly in one of my favorites, the "Powerpoint Oopsie" cartoon.

For anyone with ANY attention span and memory, there is a "bit" more needed than a "United Way Update" to clear the brain of the treatment of these two stories!

'via Blog this'

Sanders USSR Honeymoon, Moose Report, You Decide

The 25 best things we learned from Bernie Sanders' book | MSNBC:

George Will did a good little column on the death of Robert Conquest that mentions Sander's honeymoon in the USSR in 1988. I'd never heard that, so I did a bit of Googling ... noted right wing news source MSNBC reports (linked above) that this is covered in Bernie Sanders now very hard to get book:

19. Sanders honeymooned in the USSR. Sanders married his current wife, Jane, in May of 1988 and the next day left for their “romantic honeymoon” to Yaroslavl, in the then-Soviet Union. The trip was an official delegation from Burlington to cement the two cities’ sister-city relationship. “Trust me. It was a very strange honeymoon,” Sanders writes.

However, if you live in the strong "anti-Fox" area of the left wing universe, Bernie never went on his honeymoon in the USSR and it is all made up by "Faux News":

The problem is that, with Fox News, what you learn each day just makes you more stupid than you were the day before. 

The origin of the this made-for-Fox fallacy was a 2007 interview of Sanders’ wife, Jane, by Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility. In the interview she was describing how she and Bernie met and some of their early engagements which were almost entirely related to their shared interest in community affairs. They were so involved in these sort of activities that she joked…

“The day after we got married, we marched in a Memorial Day Parade, and then we took off in a plane to start the sister city project with Yaroslovl with 10 other people on my honeymoon.” 

The context was obviously humorous. Who could possibly read that and come away thinking that she seriously meant that they honeymooned with ten other people who were implementing a sister city project? Well, apparently Weinstein and others of his ilk came away believing just that. Weinstein likely picked up the lie from uber-conservative John Fund who wrote an article for the National Review containing the same misrepresentation of Sanders’ diplomatic trip. 

We are going to have to get used to wingnuts hyperventilating over the political labels attached to Sanders.

While I'd love to say that more right wing news sources are never wrong, I'd by lying. I'm sure there are some fables on even Moose Tracks, although I try very hard to check accuracy from multiple sources. I'd say that in general if you listen to a single source for your news -- ANY single source, or even just CURRENT news you will have a bit of the effect that the "Faux crazies" point out above ... "The problem is that, with Fox News, what you learn each day just makes you more stupid than you were the day before."

All sources are biased, and the MOST insidious bias is the progressive bias -- the idea that knowledge and history are moving somehow directly toward "better / smarter / fairer / more enlightened" (Whig Theory of History). The secular universe claims to be created by randomness -- random means random. It CAN'T have a direction! Not ANY direction!

We used to live in a teleological (directed ... by God) universe. In THAT universe, one could say that the future was at least part of "God's Plan" ... but a cursory study of eschatology (end times) tells the faithful that "Gods ways are not our ways" ... outside of the admonition to seek to assist in God's plan, there is ZERO reason to subscribe to "progress" = "better". It is a stated equivalence of two unknown terms.

Philosophy and Religion were once the center of what it meant to be an educated human. They were the center, because living every day without a creed of any sort is like travelling with no destination -- you have no idea of what transportation to choose, which way to go, or even to move or sit still. You are directionless.

The vast majority of modern man lives with no thought of where they are going nor what they seek -- except possibly "pleasure", or "ease" or some such vague awareness. No matter where they get their "news", they to a great degree "get stupider every day" simply because of information overload. They are bombarded with supposed "crisis", "breaking news", "historic events", etc, but they have no context in which to place these supposed momentous events.

So mostly, left and right, they assert the superiority of their tribe. Man without civilization is tribal, and civilization **IS**  Religion and Philosophy -- FOLLOWED by literature, music, art, politics science, etc. Even carefully studied and varied sources of "news" are only fitted into a tribal context of the kind from the "anti-Fox" source above -- one more opportunity to call the other tribe "stupid", while having no concept of what it really is that supposedly makes your own tribe "intelligent".

The saddest thing to me is what I slowly discovered starting in the '80s -- that Western civilization wasn't "declining" for me personally, it was DEAD -- or more accurately, it did not exist since I did not understand it!

When I first opened "The Closing of The American Mind", I realized I lacked the most basic of tools -- vocabulary, exposure to classic literature, basic concepts of meaning and philosophy, etc in order to even BEGIN to understand the very basics of the greatness of Western civilization that was supposedly my civilization. I was a college graduate, but really just a technician in a tiny corner of a very specific modern technology.

I've slowly clawed my way to a rudimentary (mis?)understanding of "a little", but it is all self-taught with all the dangers that entails ... and it is generally a very lonely road. Especially lonely because part of "liberalism" is to cut off people that disagree with you.  The forces of "progressivism" are so powerful they have thoroughly wrecked most of the community of wisdom -- a few lists of "great books", biographies of great men, and of course The Bible, are all that remain -- and memories, lots of memories.

Progressivism will continue to root out all of civilization it can -- for it primarily lives by stealth. Destroy meaning, destroy wisdom, return humans to blind tribes of savages -- all be it with Internet, MSM and public "education" (indoctrination) , rather than drums, witchdoctors and spears -- but tribal savages just the same. When life has no meaning beyond at most your tribe, then people are very easily led.

I'll report, you decide.

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Religion, Philosophy, Science and Scotch

I could throw Politics, Rhetoric and Dialectic in there as well, but I want to write a blog post, not a book! The motivation is somewhat random -- I see too many nominalists calling people of faith names, and most of them don't even know they are nominalists, let alone what the consequences of that are.

For the bulk of the history of Western Civilization, Religion held the top position in the pantheon of thought, and rightly so -- for it is about ultimate questions. Questions that can't be answered by man as only man because they are "leaps of faith", "revelation", "hypothesis", "guesses and wishes", etc. Why are we here? Is there a God? What is the good? What does it all mean? Wisdom -- what is it and how is it obtained? Religion was and still is for many that which is beyond the "stuff", but which gives our short corporeal lives meaning and connection to the infinite.

In legitimate and constant competition was Philosophy -- The secular version of asking the ultimate questions -- although often reaching the same God answer. Philosophy includes thought about thought - epistemology, thought about nature - science, thought about right and wrong -- ethics (morals), and thought about "what is" (being or ontology) -- metaphysics. Philosophy is the secular attempt to give meaning, morals and order to human thought and activity directed by it.

But something went wrong in the once thriving paradise of ordered western  thought. Dr's Frankenstein, Pandora and Evil (Austin Powers) declared themselves masters of the universe and rose up and smote both Religion and Philosophy. The branch of Science became the tree and first questions like; "What does it mean?", "Is it good?",  "Where does this lead us to"? etc became replaced by; "We have the technology!", "We can make it "better"/faster/cheaper/stronger/less filling! "Oh, What a brave new world!".

So today, a branch of Philosophy concerned with mechanism and entirely with "stuff" (matter)  vs thought, meaning, morality, ultimate causes and ultimate effects has usurped the thrones of Religion and Philosophy and the engineers  run the ship of society with the assistance of a set of "sciences"-- Political Science, Social Science, Psychology, Economics, Anthropology, etc. All with doses of at least statistical sleight of hand, and allusions to be be "hard science".  In the usurpation, being about "stuff" rather than thought became something seen as desirable. (Nominalism)

In order to usurp the throne of the kingdom of thought, Science had to kill the "ghost in the machine", the dualism that made man more than the beasts.  The witches of "science and pragmatism" have already given us the guillotine of the French Revolution, the gulag of the USSR, the gas chambers of National Socialism in Germany, and the millions lost in Mao's revolution and the Killing Fields of Pol Pot. "Parts are parts" -- mechanical parts, human parts, baby parts -- no ghost, just matter. When all knowledge is "bottom up", the bottom becomes "god", and the former rulers -- reason, wisdom, spirit, intellect, beauty, love and reverence become shit.

Naturally, Science will object -- their claim will be that "those were bad men!". Ah, but now that Science holds dominance over Religion and Philosophy, how is one to know the "bad"? Did not Science provide the tools for these "bad men" to carry out their progroms? Did not Scientists and Engineers willingly take part in the creation and the operation of the means of control, death and destruction of millions? How can one grasp the levers of great power, glory in the grasping, yet claim no responsibility when that power is used for evil? The rulership of Science cares not for values and meaning -- indeed, it washes it's hands of them like Pontius Pilate. "We only followed orders"!

Human appetites are insatiable. The higher appetite for true higher knowledge and wisdom is replaced with an all too natural appetite to worship the physical, but the physical speaks only to the physical and the spiritual part of man becomes insane, drug addled, suicidal. Idolatry is still idolatry even if the physical worship consists of theories, data, experiments, models and such. The worship of the physical is still the same -- still Pagan, and no different at all from a little stone statue. Converting the tool of Science into a god is simple idolatry.

As Earnest Becker puts it in "Denial Of Death".

Nature's values are bodily values, human values are mental values, and though they take the loftiest flights they are built upon excrement, impossible without it, always brought back to it. As Montaigne put it, on the highest throne in the world man sits on his arse. If we push the observation even further and say men sit... over a warm and fuming pile of their own excrement - the joke is no longer funny. The tragedy of man's dualism... becomes too real. The anus and its incomprehensible, repulsive product represents... the fate... of all that is physical: decay and death.

The solution for the scientific idolater becomes ignoring the spiritual deadness and impending doom of their existence with an overly cheery distracted whistle by the graveyard, or SOME sort of tranquilization.  From actual drugs to video game distraction to sex to any possible form of screen to keep that supposedly murdered spiritual part from clawing it's way back to consciousness! Often, just calling those who still worship more than shit a name or two helps salve the wounded spirit.

I am reminded again of one of my favorite books ... "Ideas Have Consequences", from which comes this quote on how man became convinced to worship matter vs transcendence:

The witches spoke with the habitual equivocation of oracles when they told man that by this easy choice he might realize himself more fully, for they were actually initiating a course which cuts one off from reality. Thus began the "abomination of desolation" appearing today as a feeling of alienation from all fixed truth".

None of this should be taken as me being an enemy of science! Far from it! I'm certainly not an enemy of good Scotch either, but it has it's proper time and place -- when Scotch becomes the center of your dietary intake, it is in the WRONG PLACE, and any that would tell you to put it there deserve to be the target of a blog at least as down on Scotch as this seems down on Science!

In their proper place, both Scotch and Science are worthy of praise -- for our society though, putting Science back in the proper place is going to be harder than a raging alcoholic giving up booze -- for much like the dieter, modern life requires, and is certainly enhanced by Science. Our task is more like dieting at Christmas ... and even worse, much of our society believes themselves to be happier (or at least suitably distracted / tranquilized) under improper influence of Science.

We have lost our way so badly one almost prays for a calamity like an EMP event, meteor collision, supervolcano eruption, etc, to potentially wake us from our stupor. Only a miracle of God can turn us from this course without major calamity.

Conservatives Shalt Not Collaborate

Wisconsin's Shame: New Audiotape Brings Terrifying John Doe Raid to Life | National Review Online:

The main focus of this particular article is pointing out fallacies in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's attempt to discredit one of the people whose home was invaded as part of the Milwaukee Prosecutors claimed investigation into "collaboration" among" conservative groups in Wisconsin -- amazingly, a "crime" if you are a conservative!

I covered the Gestapo style raids here.

What we see happening here is that the onslaught of "campaign finance law" which started in wake of Watergate is has increasingly become merely a way to harass and sometimes actually prosecute the opposition (R) for doing what "The Party" (TP-Democrat) do as an open matter of day to day operation.

Government Unions, Unions, Teachers, Lawyers, Wall Street, Media ... you can go look at the lists here (go to the far right side and pick 100% Democrat / Liberal to rank those ... or go the other way and look at the list from the right. Maybe the single biggest revelation is that money is mothers milk to both parties as they seek to reach 300 million people. I agree that it is is too much money, but it IS relative!  ALL our national elections in 2012 cost $2B less than Halloween!

The reason that TP cries about campaign finance is to control and cut it off from their opposition is because they don't believe there ought to be any opposition to what they see as their completely correct positions. Collaboration, and it's flip side competition,  is part of any free human organization or activity. They come with the package like breathing, need for bathrooms, preening, bitching, gossiping, etc. They remain even in a totalitarian state -- but they can be highly regimented and suppressed. The general population not standing up for those that TP targets and always standing up for those TP approves ("Stand up don't shoot", Bruce Jenner, gay "marriage", confederate flag ...)

We were supposed to live in a REPUBLIC that had Democratic input and where government was LIMITED. If we lived in that nation, then spending less money and time on politics would be fine. Wonderful even!

However, we now live under significant bureaucratic dictatorship where  alphabet agencies like IRS, NSA, EPA, etc with  effectively no controlling authority" operate against individuals and groups that they find to be a threat to their power. These agencies are part of a massive government that consumes nearly 40% of our GDP and is nearing being $20T in bonded debt, and over twice that in unfunded liability (FICA, Medicare, etc).

While collaboration is 100% standard for TP as it is for all humans and human organizations, it uses it's dominant power in government and the justice system to attack any that oppose TP. The "crime" of Scott Walker and his supporters is that he opposes TP and was able to gain a TINY concession from PUBLIC unions in WI. This engendered riots, death threats, legal action -- and raids on supporters in the middle of the night.

"Man is not free unless Government is limited" (Reagan).

When government becomes unlimited and starts harassing the opposition and then breaking down their doors in the middle of the night, it is a strong sign that things are very far gone. The non-reaction of the the general public to this outrage shows that 2nd amendment supporters are very right -- the vast majority of people are already either under TPs thrall, influence or fear that they are perfectly willing to stand by silently while the opposition loses their right to fund their operations, collaborate, and ultimately their right to life.

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Haunting The Old Mississippi

Link To Photos

Marla and I took the boat down to Wabasha today. I Elderd at Church last night so it was a "free Sunday"!

We ventured through the Alma Lock (4), the Whitman Lock (5) and spent some time in pool 5A, held back by lock and dam 5A just above Winona MN.

Very early in my IBM career -- 79 or 80 I'm pretty sure, I started camping on the river with a coworker who had grown up on a farm near Goodhue MN and was very familiar with the 5A pool, always putting in at the boat harbor an Minnesota City.  We camped on the river a good deal -- watching the barges, ate sandy food, drank more than a few beers, did some fishing and water skiing. We even had a larger group camping outings over those early years of the '80s and I bought a bass boat -- that turned out to not really be the right kind of boat for EITHER my fishing or camping outings, but it was a case of "live and learn", and it was a boat.

When I met Marla, we would camp in that area of the river both pre and post children -- eventually moving up to the Lund Tyee 1850 in '92 that we were still using today -- although with a number of big changes, the biggest being the 130 HP Honda 4-stroke vs the old 150 Johnson 2-stroke.

I still love the river -- the bluffs, the locks, the current, the fact it rolls all the way from Itasca in N MN past New Orleans into the gulf. I've boated on it from Minneapolis to Guttenberg IA at one time or another, but the pools I know best are 5A prior to '92, and 4 ... North of Alma including Wabasha, Lake Pepin, up past Red Wing. Since '92, 80% of my river boating has been in that pool. I've seen the big river from shore at St Louis, Vicksburg where Grant laid siege, and of course the Big Easy ... down there the barges make ours look tiny!

We camped on the river a decent amount up until close to 2000 with friends from IBM, but about that time, river outings became day events -- Boy Scouts, too much gear to camp and ski on the river, and the advent of "the connected life".  Too much need to be connected to work, too many other activities -- and it just got harder to enjoy heat, humidity, fairly regular thunderstorms, loud partiers nearby, barges shining their lights at you, etc. .... but I certainly DID enjoy it when I was in my 20's!!

I'm no longer in my 20's -- but we rolled down the river, saw some of the old places we camped, including Bass Camp, where we stayed with Marla's folks and our nieces and nephews from that side -- including Mindy that we lost in the car accident in '08. We had a snack at the Wingdam Bar in Fountain City MN, the town I believe is the most beautiful on the river. We have been there before -- sadly a 21 year old Winona student lost her life in a freak accident involving a dumb waiter there last December

The picture of Fountain City doesn't do it justice at all -- and for me, I will always remember one night in the early 80's in a sleek Glastron I/O boat owned by a guy from IBM with a couple other folks going past Fountain City right at sundown at 50+ MPH on the water. It was one of those "perfect moments" for some reason in my mind, so it stays fresh yet today.

Seeing the Queen Of The Mississippi  today, a modern replica paddlewheeler launched in 2012 reminded me of the times we happened to see the Mississippi Queen or the Delta Queen on the river over the years. On one night in the very early '80s we followed it down to lock 5A from our campsite,  went ashore and walked up to the lock even though there is no official viewing at that lock. We were at the lower level of the ship, which is where the workers were at, and we chatted with some very interesting folks ... mostly from the deep south that worked the kitchens, tables, bars and gambling tables on the paddlewheeler.

Those were the days before all the "undocumented hispanic democrats!" ... most of them were white, a couple of them were black ... people showing up at a lock in the middle of the night and chatting was unusual for them, and for farm kid / recent college graduate / IBMers, it was a different outlook on life -- folks with a little jail time, ran away from home, ran out on a bad husband / wife -- lots of "stories" ... maybe true, maybe just stories, but interesting as stories ought to be!  80% of them smoking -- it was like 1980. Another time.

Lots of old memories -- some sweet, some bittersweet, some hard to even relate to from my older self. Will being on the mighty Mississippi be totally a part of the past as our place in IA becomes more and more the destination? Probably -- nearly so at least. Life has already gone on a long way from the pool 5A camping days -- like the river itself, it just keeps rolling along, although I'm sure that Old Man River will be still be rolling much longer than Old Man Moose!

Sanctuary, Shit and Sheep

The deep meaning of San Francisco | Power Line:

Detroit, Baltimore, Ferguson (St. Louis) ... we KNOW the results of the D policies, but somehow the descent of once great cities into reeking LITERAL shitholes on top of the death and despair is kept quite quiet.  When all that is meaningful in life is removed and replaced by depravity, the descent of the human animal nature into the lowest of forms is quick and certain.

So this past weekend we see 10 killed and 55 wounded on the streets of Chicago. The news of this and the young woman killed in SF by a 7 time convicted felon and 5 time deportee, walking the streets of a "sanctuary city" as an Undocumented Democrat (illegal alien). The city is a "sanctuary" for shooting innocents and shitting on the street -- decent folk need to get the hell out as they did from Detroit decades ago.

The linked article is well worth the read -- and even taking a quick gander of the articles it links to that show that some of the little folk in SF are getting to be a bit nonplussed at the results of their royalty left wing ruling class in the limos. The AC filters out the stench of the policies the left imposes.

40 years ago at the end of the sick, slimy sad seventies, people were finally FED UP! They were angry at the decline, the crime, the filth, the loss of US stature and the Carter statements of turning off your Christmas lights and turning down your heat because the world was out of oil.

Enough of the WWII generation was still vigorously around, and the Boomers were even able to put down the weed and the beads long enough to decide that maybe it was time to DO SOMETHING! Reagan was elected, the direction was changed and we had a 25 year rebirth of an America that was quite stunning -- it didn't reach the moon, but at least it tore down that wall!

But this time the fire seems to have gone out. One might think that Americans would be more inclined to stand up to rag-headed desert vermin that rape little girls and hack the heads off people in orange jumpsuits  than we were to stand up to Russian commies that built ugly walls but sent mostly their own people to die off in gulags for saying the wrong thing -- but one would be wrong.

Today, WE at least figuratively send folks off to the virtual gulag for not baking certain cakes (gay) or baking others (confederate) ... or saying the wrong word, flying the wrong flag, or such. Today we by and large do what we are told -- and that is NOT what it once meant to be an American! This little image covers it well -- being American once meant STANDING UP TO POWER -- now it means the silence and compliance of the lambs.

Superman once fought for "Truth, Justice and The American Way". Today "truth" is largely what the left says it is, and questioning it is a major social sin. "Justice" has been perverted into the government taking money from the people that earn it and giving it to those that don't. What WOULD the "American Way" be today? Certainly not working hard. Certainly not creating a successful business ("you didn't build that"). Absolutely not faith in God ... "Country"? What **IS** "country" with no respect for a written Constitution by the POTUS or SCOTUS?

So we are left with "Sanctuary and Shit" ... and the Sheep are silent in the belt of territory between Canada and Mexico.

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Mindless SCOTUS / Religion Meme

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10207283969040245&set=a.1082209898215.2014464.1315355655&type=1&fref=nf&pnref=story

This has popped up on a few lefties FB feeds. It is inane, pedantic and false -- so appealing to leftists, but it may confuse some, So a few words.

First the really easy standard lies:

In fact, one religious party believing they know the truth for all humans is how terrible oppression starts - that is how Naziism started, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, the Klu Klux Klan, Al-Qaeda and now ISIS - the most destructive, hateful, murderous periods of human history have arisen directly out of one religious group (ironically, most of these examples were lead by Christians) believing their religion and religious beliefs were THE truth, and therefore they had the right to take away the rights (and lives) of those who lived or believed differently than them.

Naziism had nothing to do with religion other than Hitler hated Jews -- but as a "race", not particularly a religion. The Crusades were a DEFENSIVE action -- Islam was the aggressor party, once they were in France, Christendom finally woke up. The other items listed are pretty much "noise" -- humans like to do stupid and often violent things independent of creed (read the column), we could point out equal and longer lists on the left -- without even counting abortion.

The bottom line is this paragraph shows the author as a hater of Christians so her comments directed at such ought be taken in that context. The LEFT (meaning centralized state control) is the champion killer by FAR after the 20th century with over 100 million dead -- Communist, National and other Socialists. They KNOW they have "the truth" -- just like the column author, and their "truth" quite commonly sets millions of souls free from their earthly body in a violent fashion. Why not? They have no moral foundation beyond "might is right" -- and the author wants to make sure there is no "law" save power to stand in the way of their promethean objectives.

The problem with the whole article is just that -- "truth and power". The old US was founded a set of ENUMERATED WRITTEN RIGHTS that were "endowed by our creator" -- therefore transcending human power. Without something being transcendent -- God, a document, laws, then POWER is what determines "morality" -- might **IS** right! The SCOTUS gay "marriage" ruling is pure POWER. Our "truth" once transcended "man" (as in 9 in robes) -- and the earthy power was reserved to the people (often people too "Christian" for the author's taste, thus the preference for statist power)

"Marriage" was not one of those enumerated rights in our Constitution  -- so it was therefore left to States and Localities to determine. **IF** it was determined that a Constitutional Right to marriage was desired, the procedure to attain that in what was America was a Constitutional Amendment -- 2/3 of both houses of congress (or a convention), ratification by 3/4ths of the states. That was law.

What any law abiding person -- Christian or no, should be concerned about is the SCOTUS itself being lawless as it has on this and other cases -- Roe V Wade being the prime example. Slavery was abolished by the 13th-15th Amendments -- the law of the land was followed! Women received the vote via the 19th Amendment ... legally! To compare what just happened with real rule of law is dangerous ignorance -- or possibly blatant lies to mislead the less intelligent.

The gay "marriage" ruling was NOTHING to do with "church and state" nor the establishment clause -- and the SCOTUS never claimed that it did. Purely a fantasy of the author of the piece. Lots of wasted text.

The combination of lack of knowledge and basic reason on the part of the author of the piece is breathtaking -- although, I strongly suspect that a thinly veiled rage against Christians is really what is speaking here.

Rights are not and should not be up for a popular vote or up to the states to determine. Rights are absolute and cannot be dependent upon anything other than the fact that the person is a human being and is a citizen of the US. If those two conditions are met, YOUR belief system about what is MORALLY or spiritually right or wrong does not matter and should not. You should be glad that is the case, because it would be just as easy for another religion to take over and curtail your rights as a Christian (something that has happened throughout history).

If the author has a belief system, it must be that "government is great, government is good -- and we trust that it and it's practitioners are omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent".  We DID have a written Constitution based on "self evident truths" and "being endowed by our creator". We HAD a rule of law, not of men -- complete with a known procedure to amend the sacred document if such was needed over time -- and we DID it for things like slavery and women's suffrage!

To equate 5 people in robes conjuring a new "right" out of thin air with the actual amendments that abolished slavery and women's suffrage is to show a level of willful ignorance that proves us to no longer be worthy of the freedom to govern ourselves. "Religion" is not what the winsome lass ought be concerned about -- what 5 people in robes giveth, 5 people in robes can take away! Without respect to anything save raw power, and THAT is the power that definitely corrupts!

When we had a country called America, the authors concerns about "somebody's morals mattering" were pretty much correct -- it was LAW that mattered, and if you wanted a RIGHT, there was a LEGAL PROCEDURE to achieve that called a Constitutional Amendment.

What the author of the piece exhibits is a bigoted and poorly informed outlook with little ability to reason. It is no wonder -- our schooling has for the last 50-100 years been turning out robotic crowd following mental serfs with no concept of critical thought -- and often even no thought of doing even a Google on a fact or two rather than just making it up. Memes like this are driven by nothing deeper than knee jerk adherence to the mass "word of the day" in true Orwellian fashion.

"It made me feel good when I read it, so it MUST be true!".

So, if you see this noxious meme -- now you know a bit more of the truth. That such things can be taken seriously in this now lawless area of North America, formerly the USA, is yet another reason to wax nostalgic for the wisdom of our founders and the country we once had.

Gay Pride, A Pagan Two-for

Love Among the Ruins - WSJ:

The linked article shows that I'm not the only one that sees the world we are living in at this moment as completely surreal.

The rainbows flowered all over FB and even at the WH -- what was the official position of BO on gay "marriage" in 2008 BTW? Oh, never mind, the idea that there should be any remote semblance of consistency in any form from ANYONE on the left is completely absurd -- being left means never having any consistency beyond "leftward ho"!

As the article points out, people were being beheaded and blown up, and gays were being thrown to their deaths elsewhere, but all that counts here in lala-land is that a few hold out states in the already leftist gay riddled and dying US were now forced by 5 people in robes to create a new right to something with no definition (follow the link -- or just just try to define bi-sexual "marriage", no definition beyond "it's legal!")

The core human failing always has been and always will be PRIDE! The Bible makes it clear that "the BEGINNING of wisdom is the fear of God" and the core of Christianity is the acknowledgement that we are sinners in need of a Saviour to pull us up from our broken condition. To be human is to know pride, to be a Christian is to know that pride is a deadly sin.

"Gay Pride" VERY proudly trumpets two mortal sins -- equal sins. The pride is just as much and no more sin than the gay. No Christian would hold pride up as a virtue -- "Gay Pride" is pagan two-fer. It really ought to be PRIDE!! -- Gay Edition.

But watching social and public media erupt with cheap and exuberant pride of those feeling superior because they have followed the winds of the crowd. "If all your friends jumped over a cliff would you follow them?" used to be a parental admonition to stand on your own feet and think independently. That used to be an American value -- independent thought, independence, being willing to stand on your own two feet!  It is one of the many things that died as America died.

Now the masses chests swell cheaply with pagan pride, totally unaware of what they are even uttering beyond it being popular. When the gates are opened and vice becomes virtue, there is no moderating force beyond raw dictatorial power and violence. This is completely known and old as man -- see Pandora and Prometheus.

For thousands of years civilization tamed the chaos of the human soul, with great cost and effort -- most effectively with Judaism and Christianity. Even up to the middle of the 20th century many at least recognized what we had and why we had it ("God and Man at Yale" is a very worthy read on that topic).

It is obvious to those few of us that still have a very tenuous connection with the wisdom of the ages that the Furies have been released -- and the masses cheer to "Give us Barabbas"!!, because as always, they know not what they do.

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Escape Mass Delusion, Love and Laughter

How To Escape The Age Of Mass Delusion:

A very important article that I suspect points to an important book, "The Rape of Mind" by Joost Meerloo.

Meerloo testified to this feeling of disorientation: “Many victims of totalitarianism have told me in interviews that the most upsetting experience they faced in the concentration camps was the feeling of loss of logic, the state of confusion in which they had been brought – the state in which nothing had any validity.” 

That’s because in the mass centralized state, “peaceful exchange of thoughts in free conversation will disturb the conditioned reflexes and is therefore taboo.” On a hopeful note, Meerloo writes that “love and laughter break through all rigid conditioning.”

I bring up "Man's Search for Meaning" a bit too often -- but it also makes that point, that it is REAL MEANING that is what ultimately makes life worth living. It is much more FUN with more people sharing the same meaning, but if you lose the meaning, you have lost life.  I find the following hits far too close to home:

As more people succumb to PC conditioning and cede their freedom of thought, it becomes more difficult for the rest of us to maintain integrity of mind. Our audience shrinks. As we encounter more and more drone-like personalities in daily life, the world seems to sink into surrealism, like so many in Rod Serling’s old “Twilight Zone” episodes.

 The line that anyone that is still not under the spell of the totalitarian state probably finds most sad is: "That’s because in the mass centralized state, peaceful exchange of thoughts in free conversation will disturb the conditioned reflexes and is therefore taboo.” Few things are more sad at the end of freedom and culture than this somber truth.

We see it happen to friends and family members one by one. They lose the old meaning of life, the ability to "peaceful exchange of thoughts in free conversation", because they MUST follow the absolute strict dictates of the State, or lose what they have now taken to be meaning -- the advancement of state power over all aspects of life and their relations with others of that belief.

There is no way for them to maintain faith in God, love of family, tradition, history, personal responsibility, character and certainly not truth under that onslaught. Any step away from complete State orthodoxy on gays, warming, gender, taxation, choice of media outlets, God, or values brings the glazed eyes, and the end of conversation.

Like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"  they one by one succumb to the new popular mob acceptance -- they are "proud of Jenner's courage", they "don't see why Indiana can't love everyone" ... and then they are lost to any real conversation and contact. Conversation with them becomes a minefield with an ever increasing set of items that are off-limits -- "the peaceful exchange of thoughts in conversation" has died. All that remains is extremely bland talk, if any contact can be maintained at all. The effect to a still free-thinking religious traditional American is as if the former friend or loved one had "joined a cult".

But the minority and the "cult" is clearly those of us who retain even the thought that the weather is just the weather, or now that boys are boys and girls are girls. Such ideas mean that we are now "not of the liberal body", and therefore not worthy of being truly accepted by those who ARE of the liberal body. The pressure to remove all references to anything not in alignment with the state grows larger with each day as the purview of "safe speech" gets smaller -- along with the knowledge  that "hiding out" is not really an option.

Maybe it is your kids lecturing on gay "marriage", or Jenner's "courage"-- or some friend that you "thought was still reasonable" doing the same  -- but at some point, you at least wrestle with the idea that maintaining your connection with God, tradition, country, self-respect, truth, etc is becoming too expensive.

Then the first steps are taken. Mostly first, just silence -- "if I don't speak up maybe they won't notice". Then the tacit little "yes, I agree ... with something".  The "something" may be "many definitions of courage", "we can never know how someone else feels", "there are lots of views on that" ... but certainly there is no defense of "God created us male and female, some things are not man's to change". We start by failing to stand, then we fall. Each step is small, and they become easier.

You feel you MUST "get along with the people in the majority" -- after all, they were your friends and still are your family, although relations with them have become strained and distant. So with each small step the change becomes more "natural" -- soon you find yourself saying things like "I can understand how it must have been difficult for Jenner" -- and feeling a lot less concern or understanding of  the runner up for the "courage award", a tri-athlete who lost an arm and leg in combat. We all have gender -- and have sometime wondered what the other gender feels like. Very few of have lost multiple legs in combat -- the "Mass Delusion" is so much more ... "accessible".

It is indeed VERY "accessible" -- in fact EFFORTLESS! It takes no courage at all to follow whatever whim rises up from the cesspool of the human heart and have your picture draped on the cover of a magazine. Any idiot knows you **MUST** want that, or your picture would not be there! The Mass would like to convince you differently, or that someone that is willing to risk violence to show pictures of Muhammad must "want to be beheaded". The Mass LIVES by getting it's followers to acceed, even violently, to things that they know to be false.

The supposed happiness of the mob is never real. Our souls aren't made to worship the mob, and the mob has ZERO real interest in our souls (or their own -- they gave their souls up to join!). Screw up relative to the mob and there is no "forgiveness" or consideration of "I will stand by him, I've known him for years", or even "that is my mom or dad". No, when you buy the meaning of the Mob, you buy **ALL** the meaning -- which means no honor save compliance, no independence (you say what the mob says), no freedom (you follow the mob), no true emotion (your emotions are what the mob tells you). And no love.

You certainly can't be a Christian and declare gender changes to be "courageous", nor stand up for gay "marriage", nor abortion. God is nothing if not wise. You CAN'T serve "God and mammon" -- the Mob and it's sin is what he wants to save you from!

So as our family, friends and even children turn to the Mob, what they most need is for us to continue to stand as an alternative. While the Mob will never repent, INDIVIDUALS can repent -- they can turn from serving mammon and return to actual love and laughter. BUT, there has to be somebody that hasn't given in to the Mob.

John 4 verses 7 and 8:
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love

A person not of the Mob but of Christ can (and WILL) painfully continue to love those who have left Christ and joined with the Mob. The Mob will love nobody -- ever.

I use the Bible and Christian images because that is who I am. One could use the Constitution, the writings of Hayek, Orwell or Burke. Even of Solzhenitsyn.  Find SOMETHING!

Most of all ... "Never, never, never give up!" (Winston Churchill)

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Progressives vs Country Folk

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/416830/skewed-view-america-inside-progressive-bubble-jim-geraghty

Reading the linked article reminded me of a journey to drop off a car for repair in far Southern MN about 35 years ago. A girl that happened to be a friend (she had already decided Mooses were only appropriate as friends) decided (or maybe he decided) to bring along her new somewhat smallish ( < 6', maybe 150 lbs ... I'm a bad judge of size) boyfriend for the journey. He may have not believed the "just friends thing" -- who knows.

Anyway, he was a raging liberal, back to nature sort who always thought it would be easy to "prove" one point or another to an obviously less intelligent nasty corporate type. He hated corporations, "loved the land" (he thought) -- he tended to  be unemployed a lot and pretty much lived off the aforementioned girl, but he was very sure of his superior intelligence and had a very solid vision of "what people that lived on the land were like" -- in his vision, they were something like a cross between Thoreau, Jefferson and a modern hippie.

Needless to say, he often got so mad around me that his head would come close to exploding. The friend was concerned he might take a swing at me sometime, but I assured her I wouldn't hurt him in the unlikely event his brain attempted to override physics. The trip went about like usual until on the way back the girl needed a restroom, so we pulled into an out in the country tavern.

Naturally, I felt it was a good opportunity for a libation, so the crew headed in. Nice place -- jukebox, some sporting event on, pool table, lots of light beers, good crowd of folks in John Deere, Harley, NASCAR, etc caps, shirts. I struck up some "how are the crops doing around here" sort of conversation with a couple folks, had a brew -- and was by the estimation of "boyfriend" was WAY late for the door. Can't have been over 30 min, I'm pretty sure I held it to one  beer.

When we were in the car and moving the admirer of "those that work the land" EXPLODED --- "I can't stand those kind of IGNORANT HICKS!! They are so stupid and uneducated it makes me sick!!! etc, etc."

I let him unreel for a bit before informing him that he had just met the folks that he thought he admired -- and I'd been in similar places in Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, New Hampshire, Texas, etc, and he had just hit a superb sample of what Americans that work the land are like. I advised him that he needed to come up with a new imaginary group of people to admire -- cuz he had just met his old dream team and found them wanting.

Short bit of half hearted attempted rebuttal followed by uncomfortable silence on his part -- the young lady did have the good sense to ignore prince oblivious poutings and chat amiably the rest of the way back I recall.

Fox news, Talk Radio and the Red State / Blue State divide came well after that night -- "progressives" are at this point pretty much agreed that they hate people like those in the country bar with a passion -- "bitter clingers" was BO's  label for them. They know whom they hate now -- they may have some imaginary reasons like the false reporting on the NRA, but as the article points out, they are certain of their hatred.

Hillary nor 90% of the Democrat party have any interest in those voters -- "fly over country". Hillary needs to scrounge up enough votes to "win" the IA primary against somebody nobody ever heard of if current trends continue. Perhaps she might lose to "anyone else"?

Mostly the divide is so big that the government itself (all union workers), media, education and Democrat party simply loathes the tiny number of people that produce their food, and the now less than 50% that work for a private living rather than be paid off, work for,  or in some way are significantly supported by the government.

From their POV, the trash that works the ground, drives the trucks, attends church most Sundays, has guns, listens to Country Music, etc are beneath contempt -- and probably dangerous. The "Red Staters" clearly "haven't gotten their minds right"! And the "progressives" really want to change that -- SOMEHOW. They have tried to be "reasonable" ... maybe it will take force.

Which means the guns can't be given up under any circumstance. The situation is pretty much exactly like the old MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) of the nuclear age. As much as the left would love to round up all the guns, the bulk of gun owners MUST make sure the "progressives"  believe that it would be a bloodbath that would exceed the Civil War by at least 10x if not 100x ( 6 million or 60 million casualties).

Those numbers may be too small if the left believes they can win. The combination of Nazi Germany, the USSR and China ran up over 100 million in the 20th century. Statism has no qualms about mass murder -- it is a fact written in the blood of the greatest slaughter in history by far. The big wild card would come down to law enforcement and the military -- the left makes it abundantly clear that they hate those institutions as well. Will the police and soldiers serve the master that hates them to destroy their own families and communities? The last thread of liberty may well hang on that question.

The sad state of affairs is that the most law abiding, God fearing, generous, decent people in the country need to also be 100% clear that they WILL stand their ground on the 2nd Amendment. The Constitution, Separation of Powers, States Rights and Equal Protection are all gone -- the Right to Bear Arms is the last right that still stands. We are no longer a nation of laws -- only the guns are keeping the BOs and Hillarys from completing their progrom now.

Forcing Blacks To Celebrate the KKK

The War on the Private Mind:

“I expect to die in bed,” Francis Eugene Cardinal George famously remarked. “My successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.” Perhaps it will not come to that. But we already are on the precipice of sending men with guns to the homes and businesses of bakers to enforce compliance with dictates undreamt-of the day before yesterday.

The linked column is well worth reading. Another good quote from it:

Adlai Stevenson famously offered this definition: “A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.” We do not live in that society.

For the thinking person, the facts of this direct attack on private religious thought stretches the application of "never assert malice when stupidity can provide explanation".

Tim Cook is gay and not stupid. A gay man running what may well be the most powerful corporation in America goes to battle against little bakers, florists and photographers who might still hold as part of their private religion, morals that were the standard of all of civilization for over two thousand years. REQUIRING at penalty of loss of their pitifully insignificant businesses and livelihoods next to his 700+ BILLION market cap Apple and his personal $400 millon and rapidly rising wealth, that they CELEBRATE a marriage ceremony that is in direct opposition to their religions views and the views of all mankind for all of human history up to the last decade.

The mind boggles. This is compared to Jim Crow in the old south? The comparison is apt only in that Jim Crow was run by the Democrats and this attack on the private religious freedom of the powerless "bitterly clinging" common people is also being run by the party of state power -- the Democrats. Tim Cook is the modern Bull Connor -- only far more powerful and ruthless. Are the masses really so far gone that they can't see who the powerful and who the powerless are in this battle?

Since at least Cook is not stupid, we must assign the motive for this attack to something else. Jim Crow was in some ways benign relative to the modern assault on private thought. Bull Connor and his like did not demand that blacks thoughts align with theirs, only that they stay in their place. That was sufficient, they didn't need to bow on bended knee and swear their fealty to their betters -- only comply in the physical sense -- their minds were still their own.

Leviathan has grown enough that such is no longer sufficient. We are now told to "get our minds right" -- on your knees naive! We are no longer granted the privacy of our thoughts and beliefs, for the all-powerful State has expanded to where it is no longer going to whisper about "bitter clingers" at private campaign events. It has now stepped over the line to where economic warfare will be used to coerce those that fail to worship at the state altar to do so or pay -- first with their livelihoods, then with ??

We know where this goes. Once the path to thought coercion is taken, the drive for that coercion to be 100% successful increases as the set of those that resist gets ever smaller and the level of coercion to reach that absolute gets ever more oppressive until "No one stands against us!!!!!" (they have all been annihalated, and if you decide to get off your knees, so will you)

But then, as in Rome or as in Nazi Germany, the level of the perversion and the blood lust to demand that ALL bow to declare the perversion sacred continues. For the lusts of the human heart are not limited -- in fact, the unrepentant heart of man is exceedingly wicked. There is a good reason that BC and AD are separated by Easter.

Christ is the difference in world history, but unrepentant man can not accept that difference. This is as old as Romans 1:28 "Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done."

As with the rise of the "isms" in the 20th century, the world seems determined to worship the idol of "Secular Humanism". How many millions will die this time before we repent and the Church picks up the shards?

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Coke, Bud, Jack, KFC

Some observations from Ireland and England -- may be applicable to the continent as well, dunno. It is just an observation ... nothing meaningful.

Coke is everywhere, Pepsi is pretty much MIA.

Every Pub has Bud ON TAP! **AND** people sit in Irish Pubs with Guinness, Murphy's, Beamish, etc and drink BUD! They also have Heineken in every Pub we saw ... so two taps pretty much down with beer that I don't want to drink when I'm across the pond. Fortunately, many places have a good number of taps, and the Guinness there is heavenly -- positively creamy, and the US Tenders really need to learn to put a shamrock in the foam!

Oh, I do drink Bud in IA when the choices are Bud Lite,  Coors Lite, Bush Lite, Miller Lite and Nite  Lite  ... or Bud!

And JACK! Every pub had Jack Daniels -- and sometimes Makers Mark and usually Canadian Club -- which was enough for me to look up the list -- Jack, Johnnie Walker, Jameson, Canadian Club (that explains it!) ... interestingly, Ballantines, Japanese brands I'd never heard of, plus Jim Beam (expected it to be higher on list) as well as Crown and Black Velvet appear in top 10.

McDonalds is there of course -- isn't it everywhere? But I was shocked by the prevalence of KFC -- both in Ireland and England. Apparently the folks on the isles find it finger lickin good!

Oh, and at the Jamison distillery, Marla, who just isn't into even triple distilled ultra smooth whiskey neat, went for the Jamison, Ginger Ale and a lime twist ... Now THAT could get a person into trouble! Smooth Jamison with it's little appleish-citrus tang accentuated by the lime, plus the Ginger Ale light ginger sweetness ... very nice! But possibly a little TOO subtle!

Eggs More Complex Than Entire Planet

The U.S. government is poised to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol - The Washington Post:

“There’s been a shift of thinking,” he said. But the change on dietary cholesterol also shows how the complexity of nutrition science and the lack of definitive research can contribute to confusion for Americans who, while seeking guidance on what to eat, often find themselves afloat in conflicting advice.

No, actually there tends to be ZERO "conflicting advice" among at least government funded "experts" ... they weren't in ANY doubt about cholesterol being bad! The rule of the "expert" is "Always certain, frequently wrong". Often, they are even willing to tell you "it's settled" -- not that we ever hear that in these "enlightened times".

No doubt this will go the way of "wait an hour before swimming or you will get cramps" -- absolute gospel back when us Boomers were kids, forcing us to sit on the shore for the mandatory full hour after lunch!

The list is a long one -- parents being told their babies MUST be on their BACKS ... an especially sore point for our family since 25 years ago it was every bit as COMPLETELY CERTAIN that kids MUST sleep on their STOMACHS! Naturally, our first son HATED to sleep on his stomach, so we had rolled towels alongside him to keep him on his stomach.

Crib death ... like autism and vaccines, or like early heart attacks is something that we believe "there must be a reason for", so we are very suggestible when someone gives us one. Our brains are wired to "look for solutions / rules of thumb" and IN GENERAL that is a highly adaptive trait.

A place it breaks down however is dealing with rare events, or events that take place over long periods of time.

Crib death is (thankfully) rare ... like plane crashes. Any new parent is afraid of crib death, so very suggestible. They want to do "everything they can" -- so they are prone (as we were) to believe what the "expert" tells them. BTW, there is some evidence that SIDS may be caused by the same gene that makes one susceptible to dying in sleep apnea.

When something is rare, it is harder to pin down a "cause", and indeed, the incidence may be so low as to not allow a "cause" to be found. The theory at the time we had our son was that the baby spit up and choked on their vomit when they were on their back ...

The danger of "the expert" like all con artists and confidence men is greatest when one assumes their own ignorance -- the idea that "the expert", MUST know more than "poor little me".

ALWAYS look for alternative views, historical wisdom, "laws of large numbers" , ie if the condition is very rare, then any attempt to "fix it" is highly questionable. If something like climate is known to shift over many thousands of years, then someone making claims of "climate shift" in a period of 100 years or less is lying to you for certain.

We could go on ... but for now, enjoy those eggs in good health -- turns out we are back to being as smart as we were 45 years ago.

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Losing Your Sense of Small, Bump World GDP by 20%?

Billionaire Greene Bets on U.S. While Bemoaning Jobs - Bloomberg:

“America’s lifestyle expectations are far too high and need to be adjusted so we have less things and a smaller, better existence,” Greene said in an interview today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We need to reinvent our whole system of life.”

Billionaire Jeff Greene flew to Davos on a private jet with his family and two nannies. He really feels that the little people in American have WAY too high of expectations. He and BO may have a slightly different view of "hope and change" than what a lot of Americans were thinking -- but don't expect the MSM to be helping that to be recognized!

Something like 1700 private jets flew into Davos to discuss pressing issues like Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and Income Inequality -- Slick Willie, former fornicator in chief of the US, whose primary area of expertise is walking the halls of power with his pants around his knees, spoke on income inequality while wearing a $60K watch. Hypocrisy is not one of the topics on the agenda.

Here is another great article from NRO on the conference that is well worth reading. Davos is a great way to get just a little bit of insight into how much contempt the world wide elites really hold those of us that can't even afford a limo, let alone multiple nannies, high class homes around the globe, and a beautiful jet at our beck and call to take us wherever we desire.

These ridiculous hypocrites deserve every syllable of abuse that comes their way. I instinctively write off all denunciations of the wicked 1 percent coming from anybody unwilling to live at or below the median U.S. household income, which amounts to less than Clinton’s Rolex is worth. But there is something worse at work here than hypocrisy: stupidity. And stupidity is, like private-jet travel, shockingly expensive.

The primary reason to read the NRO article is Williamson's attempt to deal with the horrible issue that I so often try to deal with here -- just how stupid even the smartest of humans are, and even worse, the nasty phenomenon that the smarter one is,  the greater the temptation to believe in your own smartness. Couple that with a level of intelligence that is enough to fake your brilliance to a higher and higher percentage of people, add in power and wealth, plus the fact that enough similarly "smart people" will turn into toadies around you and you have a recipe for historically large egos and massive Dunning-Kruger effect!

Even worse, as evidenced the 1,700 private jets, which universities they attended, what they eat, what they wear, etc, etc, a LOT of those "elites" think very much alike -- they are pretty darned sure that is because there aren't all that many options on how to think once you are so super smart.

Perhaps if you don't  lay out at night with a couple of beers staring at the stars, you lose your sense of small?

Add enough money, power, intelligence, safety in the herd, etc mentality, and you ALSO can get 2,633 of the (at least in their own minds) "most important people on earth" in a little town in Switzerland at the same time. It is as if all the trophy bucks had an annual ritual where they were all congregated in a small area -- a trophy hunters dream!

I can imagine that security is "stellar", but then I would have never imagined that a guy could jump the fence at the White House and get in the front door, nor would I have imagined that White House computers could be hacked and down for a significant amount of time.

Obviously a very small nuke could take out the whole kit caboodle, but who knows ... a few well placed charges for an avalanche? any dams in the area? I'm not a very malevolent sort and I don't have much interest -- heck, maybe they are their own best protection!

The smart bad guys all realize that taking out the entire Davos herd would likely raise the world economy by 20%!

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Entitlement, It's Not the Plays Called, It's the Attitude Created

George Will: The harm incurred by a mushrooming welfare state - The Washington Post:

My analysis of NFC Championship loss by my beloved Packers is if you play so conservative that your DBs are sliding down with 5 min left to play, you deserve to lose. It isn't so much the conservative play calling as it the attitude in the team that is engendered by the calls -- they stop playing to win and start playing not to lose. Their mental energy is focused on NOT losing -- which is like NOT thinking about a pink elephant. Just as you immediately think of a pink elephant, the team becomes focused on LOSS, which is very commonly just what happens.

So to to the attitude engendered by "entitlement" in the US:

Transfers of benefits to individuals through social welfare programs have increased from less than 1 federal dollar in 4 (24 percent) in 1963 to almost 3 out of 5 (59 percent) in 2013. In that half-century, entitlement payments were, Eberstadt says, America’s “fastest growing source of personal income,” growing twice as fast as all other real per capita personal income. It is probable that this year a majority of Americans will seek and receive payments.

The explosion of "welfare" programs in the last 50 years as turned America from a vibrant merit based nation focused on growth, advancement, success and the future, to a declining debt ridden nation where over 50% of the people receive some sort of transfer payment and the exorbitant tax rates to pay for only a portion of the largess are paid only by the top earners. Never before have so few been so burdened so a corrupt political party could destroy the will to work of the majority of a once great nation!

More than twice as many households receive “anti-poverty” benefits than receive Social Security or Medicare. Between 1983 and 2012, the population increased by almost 83 million — and people accepting means-tested benefits increased by 67 million. So, for every 100-person increase in the population there was an 80-person increase in the recipients of means-tested payments.

Why do we do such things? Because 70-80% of those 67 million people vote for TP (The Party -D)!! This is vote farming! Much as we fill the news and march in droves over the lost lives of a couple black youth killed while resisting arrest, but totally ignore the 6K black youths killed in black on black violence every year, the cost for converting a nation to abject dependency is no issue all all. WHAT MATTERS are votes for TP!

... the structure of U.S. government spending “has been completely overturned within living memory,” resulting in the “remolding of daily life for ordinary Americans under the shadow of the entitlement state.” In two generations, the American family budget has been recast: In 1963, entitlement transfers were less than $1 out of every $15; by 2012, they were more than $1 out of every $6.

The government is great, the government is good, we thank it for our daily bread. God, fathers, and the family have been replaced by the "benevolent" government as being the source of bread. TP has succeeded in creating a nation of dependent children (many of advanced age) who are beholden to it for their very sustenance.

Like conservative play calling or NOT focusing on a pink elephant, human nature is sickeningly predictable. The primary cost is destruction of the winning attitude -- the destruction of the spirit of a people :

“... the issue of welfare is not what it costs those who provide it but what it costs those who receive it.” As a growing portion of the population succumbs to the entitlement state’s ever-expanding menu of temptations, the costs, Eberstadt concludes, include a transformation of the nation’s “political culture, sensibilities, and tradition,” the weakening of America’s distinctive “conceptions of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and self-advancement,” and perhaps a “rending of the national fabric.” As a result, “America today does not look exceptional at all.”

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When Reagan's Approval Hit 35% and the Left Was Right

Robert Samuelson: Volcker, Reagan and history - The Washington Post:

I remember these times very well -- Reagan was the first Republican I had voted for. I listened to A LOT of NPR in those days since I drove more, and their positions on Reagan were quite simple -- idiot, warmonger, destroyer of the economy, etc. Of course their positions on America were pretty much as they are now -- too wealthy, too much consuming, too much income inequality, too much military, too many stupid red state people that don't know what is good for them, too much religion, best years behind it, etc.

At that point in my life I had suspicions that NPR might be right, but being in your early 20's is a time when it is hard to look at the future as a "deserved decline" to everyone living in European sized condo flats, no consumer type toys (boats, snowmobiles, etc), dinky little cars, no real reason to look to "advance" in your career since any increase would just go to tax, etc..

But in '82, it looked like NPR was right and "Reaganomics" was a huge disaster.

Reagan rejected this futile path. As the gruesome social costs of Volcker’s policies mounted — the monthly unemployment rate would ultimately rise to a post-World War II high of 10.8 percent. Reagan’s approval ratings plunged. In May 1981, they were at 68 percent; by January 1983, 35 percent. 

Still, he supported the Fed. “I have met with Chairman Volcker several times during the past year,” he said in early 1982. “I have confidence in the announced policies of the Federal Reserve.”

I can remember listening to NPR, seeing the evening news, and reading "Time" magazine thinking that I was learning an important lesson -- the High School and College instructors really had been right!  In the "modern world", massive government was the ONLY way -- the buying a home and having it go up in value, or investing in the stock market era was over. The best years of a more economically free and vibrant US economy were behind us -- time to turn down the thermostats, shut off the Christmas lights, and learn the life of austerity.

The US stock market had been essentially flat from '62 - '82. The home I would finally purchase at 12.5% interest in '83 was built in '60 and was still "current" in '82, other than the electric heat, which meant I lived in the basement and very cold to save money. The fact that in the '60s the "experts" were so certain that electricity was going to be "too cheap to meter" was a little reminder that the "experts" always quoted by NPR were not ALWAYS correct as I shivered under my blanket reading "Time" in the basement.

But NPR, Time, NBC, ABC, NY Times, etc could not ALL be wrong, could they? It was obvious the climate was cooling at the time, we had harder and harder winters pretty much every year. We CERTAINLY were out of oil -- of that there was ZERO doubt, only a complete idiot would think otherwise, and hunger + "the population bomb" were the issues that would CERTAINLY be gigantic issues the next decade. ("The Population Bomb" had been published in '68, and was known by anyone with any education).

Then of course, the USSR was on the march ... Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Africa -- the inevitability of communism was well, "inevitable". NPR regularly covered with glowing and gushing terms the marvelous healthcare in the USSR and Cuba, the superb free day care for kids, and the complete equality of income. Why should the US even have ANY defense budget agains the inevitable?  The inevitable that was in fact better!

Reagan was not only a fool -- the disaster of "Reaganomics" had been proved by '82, but he was DANGEROUS. To claim that the US would consign the mighty USSR, the inevitable winner of the cold war to "the ash heap of history" was simply insane. The ONLY way that would happen is by a nuclear war that would destroy the planet -- winter was a big theme in those days, so "nuclear winter" fit right into the cold and getting colder ambiance of the time.

But as we know now, the "certainty" that all the experts, media and academia were completely certain of was 100% false. The "stupid actor from California" was WAY smarter than all the PHDs, pundits, economists and columnists. By '84, it would indeed be "Morning in America", and not even the MSM could fight the reality. Reagan would be re-elected by a landslide.

I learned TWO giant lessons:

1). The obvious -- the "experts" are always certain and frequently wrong. If you just have your eyes open that will be obvious MANY times in the course of a lifetime.

But maybe more importantly!

2). The objective of TP is POWER -- not success for the nation, better conditions for the people, or even the continued existence of the US in anything like the state it was founded to be. The expectation that that "the experts will learn", or even that the people that support the "Standard Media Narrative of the Day" will learn is completely false. They will not! "Learning" has never been on their radar except in the case of better ways to gain POWER!

TP (The Party-D) and their supporters in the MSM  learned precisely NOTHING about communism, oil, climate, economics or anything else from the '80s, '90s, and the continued growth of the US up to 2008. Because all of those things that I thought were important -- jobs, homes, economic growth, etc. were not even on their objective list!

They learned nothing because their desire is for POWER and that means MORE GOVERNMENT! No matter who that hurts, how much freedom is destroyed, no matter if people go hungry,  no matter if thousands of young black men kill each other every year, no matter if the nation is sold off in pieces to the Chinese or whomever,  or simply ceases to exist as an entity as it sinks under a horde of illegal immigrants and debt.

For TP, POWER is the ONE singular driving lust that trumps all else, and "facts" relative to things like strong families, individual rights, economic growth, opportunity, innovation, a meaningful life, etc for the masses,  will NEVER mean anything.

The masses living in government mandated cinder block high rises riding public transportation, getting public healthcare with no alternatives, watching government run media and entertainment -- maybe even "enjoying" a 5th of vodka or even few joints as "recreation", while the "deserving" TP elite have their "Dachas" in the Hamptons, Palm Springs, Upper East Side, etc and live the deserved life that elite "servants of the people" ought.

That is the "utopia" that TP sees, and no mere "facts" are ever going to change their minds!

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