Two Books In Flight

Winging my way toward LA from Minneapolis at midnight central time, 10 LA time. It would be nice to sleep, but Mooses and airplane seats aren't all that good a match. About half way through two very different books that I just started on this trip, but have gotten tired of reading in the dark with bleary contacts for now. "Blue Like Jazz", a very different sort of a Christian book by a youthful Christian male that is very honest and has a unique perspective since he spent some time at Reed College in Portland that is a private pagan school that pretty much explicitly worships "whatever feels good", but also is very demanding and full of very smart people.

The other book is Sam Harris, "Letter to a Christian Nation". I read his "End of Faith" a couple years ago. Sam is pretty angry and disappointed in America because of Christianity. To Sam there is nothing beyond the material world and his own intelligence. Religion is not just horribly stupid, it is horribly dangerous. It must be fixed, somehow.

Blue is pretty much the complete opposite in both message and attitude. An infinite God that is beyond our ability to understand loves us beyond our ability to comprehend. The material universe is far from "all", and in the eternal view of things only really counts in relation to that eternal. Harris isn't going to let a God that allows slavery, little girls to be raped and killed, tsunamis and Katrina to exist. Sam wills it to be abhorrent, and so it must be--to not agree is to not meet his standards of being "god", so therefore there can't be one. One of the bumper stickers the Blue author saw at Reed said "Let's Throw the Christians to the Lions"-Sam would seem to agree. Violence is bad, but Sam is very close to thinking that Christians are just so far out that it may be required in self defense.

The Blue author and his few Christian friends "came out of the closet" during the peak of the main "do what feels good" orgy at Reed when basically anything goes on campus and the local authorities are kept away. How they "came out" is to have a "confession booth", but the confession was for the Christians to confess how bad they were as Christians to anyone that anyone who wanted to stop. They failed the poor, they sinned, their churches didn't set good enough examples, there was an inquisition--they took all the blame and let the folks that stopped know they would do their best to love them, but they could never do it well enough since they were just trying to do the best "impressions of Christ" that a poor broken but forgiven human could do, and it fell way short of the kind of forgiveness that God becoming man had provided.

Sam is right, that kind of love is just as dangerous today as it was 2K years ago and Sam is very angry that anyone could be so irrational to believe in such a horribly foolish thing as something beyond the material world, let alone something beyond the material world that would love human beings specially. We are not special, the rest of "randomness" (what just happened without any reason) is every bit as special, and the only reasonable thing to do is to give up this foolish God stuff and love the randomness-and of course ourselves.

The contrast between the two books is very revealing. Blue is sure of his fallibility, the greater power of God and the trust that in the big picture, God and Grace are sure, and while useful and interesting (at least to us), whatever "amazing" achievements human kind has "created", they pale in scope and perfection next to the infinite. Harris is clearly "left", but the Blue book is anything but "right", unless the core of "right" is the belief that man and the material is NOT "all there is".

It seems to me that is the rub; at least true Christians are always sure that they are NOT the "final answer". They haven't fallen prey to the fundamentalist heresy by which everything that man needs to do is in or can be discerned from the Bible. Christ is alive to and in them, as The Word. A Word that is revealed as spirit and truth that is beyond just words.

The message of Christ speaking in parable and metaphor says that you CAN'T have a cut and dried answer in the same way as a fundamentalist would want. The method is a major portion of the message. The fundamentalist is forced to "fake righteousness" in the same way as the scribes and pharisees. Don't drink, don't smoke, don't dance, don't go to movies, don't watch TV, maybe avoid certain fashions ... the list of rules and regulations can go on endlessly, but when they are done, one prideful judgment, one momentary enjoyment of "I think I'm better than X", one self-centered moment of failing to love God with the whole heart is no different in ultimate terms than a lifetime of whatever you believe the worst sins to be. God and Grace is beyond our calculations - reason is very useful in this material world for getting planes in the air, cars on the road, the internet connecting and generally "keeping the trains on time", but compared to the infinite, it is less than spit in the ocean.

Throwing ourselves over to the other side however and invalidating logic with pure human emotion is just as much a trap. Our emotions, especially love, may be very major hints to the nature of God, but they are only hints-in the same way as quantum mechanics is a hint that the universe is far more special than a "clockwork".

We arrived safely, and in fact it is now Saturday night after a fun day out in LA. Breakfast at a little open air place in Venice Beach, walking out on the pier and talking to the fishermen, talking to a Christian biker gang "Set Free Soldiers", driving around a lot of "just plain old LA", with a focus up in the Hollywood area. We spent a good hunk of time walking up and down Hollywood Boulevard with all the stars. Lots of wild looking people, shops and "glitter". Very crowded-Hollywood seems to be surviving the "Bush Horror" quite well.

Checked into the hotel down in Santa Monica, drove down and looked at some of the beautiful condos along Oceanfront drive, ate seafood for dinner out on the Santa Monica Pier, walked around a bit more, and here we are.

Hillary Not Swift Boated

I don't read Ann every week, but this week she is right on. The MSM is treating poor Hillary as an "honorary Republican". The MSM actually found the video of her landing in Bosnia with no gunfire and figures that if she isn't telling the truth, she must be lying. Why, this is almost how they would treat a non-Bush Republican! Except in the Bush case, when he takes action based on the same information as everyone else in the world that says Saddam has WMD and it can't be irrefutably proven by finding them in sufficient amounts, THAT means "Bush lied". As I've covered before, most people are held to the status of having to report correctly about facts that they actually know-like "gee, isn't amazing that the Secret Service let me get off the plane in Bosnia when we were under fire, I've been under Secret Service protection for a long time, and in general, they are really adverse to gunfire--no matter, it sounds great to have landed under gunfire, so I guess I'll just go for it".

Failing to accurately predict the future (especially when your prediction agrees with everyone else's) is not NORMALLY considered "a lie" ... but the MSM has made a pretty huge exception for Bush there, and the vast majority of the sheep are perfectly willing to bleat along. Normally, Democrats are immune from lying, and if proof is found that they did lie, the evil people that found the proof have to be investigated and a lot of stories written about how they must have had a political agenda to find things like the blue dress, that Nixon wasn't President in December of 1968, that Kerry's boat never went to Cambodia, etc, etc.

The whole column is very much worth a read this week-insightful and funny, but I copied a couple things out. Enjoy.

Welcome to AnnCoulter.com

Also, unlike Kerry, Hillary acknowledged her error, telling the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "I was sleep-deprived, and I misspoke."
(What if she's sleep-deprived when she gets that call on the red phone
at 3 a.m., imagines a Russian nuclear attack and responds with mutual
assured destruction? Oops. "It proves I'm human.")


The reason no one claims Hillary is being "swiftboated" is that
the definition of "swiftboating" is: "producing irrefutable evidence
that a Democrat is lying." And for purposes of her race against matinee
idol B. Hussein Obama, Hillary has become the media's honorary
Republican.

In liberal-speak, only a Democrat can be swiftboated. Democrats
are "swiftboated"; Republicans are "guilty." So as an honorary
Republican, Hillary isn't being swiftboated; she's just lying.

Indeed, instead of attacking the people who produced a video of
Hillary's uneventful landing in Bosnia, the mainstream media are the
people who discovered that video.

Bumper Sticker Chairity

I've commented on this before, and I really need to read this guys book. Liberals like to talk a great game, but the data is in-they don't put their supposed generosity where their mouths are in dollars, time or even blood. Apparently they look at charity like everything else, they want others to do it, but for themselves, never mind.

The whole article is worth going out and reading, and I'm sure the book is too. I find that people's behavior means so much more than their words. My guess is that at least some of the reason that liberals have 6% higher incomes is a higher percentage of dual income families, but they don't go into that. No matter, even though they have more to give with, they give less in percentage. I guess to them, "greed" is defined by not being willing to try force others to pay more in taxes, but with the dollars that are yours, just keep them.

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Conservatives More Liberal Givers

Don R. Willett, a justice of the state Supreme Court, has commuted behind bumpers proclaiming "Better a Bleeding Heart Than None at All," "Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Beauty," "The Moral High Ground Is Built on Compassion," "Arms Are For Hugging," "Will Work (When the Jobs Come Back From India)," "Jesus Is a Liberal," "God Wants Spiritual Fruits, Not Religious Nuts," "The Road to Hell Is Paved With Republicans," "Republicans Are People Too -- Mean, Selfish, Greedy People" and so on. But Willett thinks Austin subverts a stereotype: "The belief that liberals care more about the poor may scratch a partisan or ideological itch, but the facts are hostile witnesses."

-- Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).

-- People who reject the idea that "government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality" give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition.

The single biggest predictor of someone's altruism, Willett says, is religion. It increasingly correlates with conservative political affiliations because, as Brooks' book says, "the percentage of self-described Democrats who say they have 'no religion' has more than quadrupled since the early 1970s." America is largely divided between religious givers and secular nongivers, and the former are disproportionately conservative. One demonstration that religion is a strong determinant of charitable behavior is that the least charitable cohort is a relatively small one -- secular conservatives.

The Big Switch, Nicholas Carr

http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Switch-Rewiring-Edison/dp/039334522X

The subject book uses the history of industrial power from manual to water to steam to local generators to electricity supplied by utilities as a model for the ground covered to date and assumptions for the future of the move of computing power from individual companies and homes to the global "cloud or grid" of utility computing.

Carr believes that the Amazons, Googles, Yahoos and such are going to defeat Microsoft. In general, so do I, the model is changing. Software and solutions are already being delivered as services over the web with nearly zero impact on the client/user side. This Blog is done using Blogger, a free service of Google paid for by advertising. I happen to be typing it on a Mac computer, but that really makes no difference, the Firefox browser that the Blogger software runs within runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, and I'm sure a number of other platforms. This Blog is part of the cloud of the future.

He does some analysis of what we ought to all know to have been true since the first human whacked something with a rock or stick. Tools provide leverage; they allow one or a few people to create a lot more value than people without tools. They also move value around. Carr laments how small groups of people at YouTube, Facebook and such were able enlist vast groups of people to create all the content and then sell out to larger corporations for 100's of millions of dollars. He suspects more of this will happen and I suspect that he is right--I also suspect that a lot of other different large fortunes will be made in ways that are unforeseen to both Nick and I. If we DID foresee them, then I would guess we would go out and make them ourselves, or at least invest in those that will. He doesn't really say what he might DO about that, he just does some lamenting.

He ends up with a little ghost story about how the guys at Google want to create a computer smarter than we are, and they are really serious. In the epilogue he talks of how the move from candles to electric light caused us to "lose something" ... candles gave a glow, a reality that electric light did not. We have lost that. He laments that by the turn of this next century (2100), we will no longer have any people that had dealt with the world prior to the computer, and that will be a loss. He closes with this quote:

"As older generations did, they take with them the knowledge of what was lost when the new technology arrived, and only the sense of what was gained remains. It's in this way that progress covers its tracks, perpetually refreshing the illusion that where we are is where we were meant to be."

It is a nice wistful quote, but how about books? At least the Roman Catholic Church would argue that we suffered a great loss due to books, since the reformation would not have happened without them. Fire? I'm sure that life prior to man having fire was very different than life with control of fire. Anesthetic? Certainly not having that would allow us to be MUCH more in touch with our bodies during surgery!

I don't disagree with him that much, and I like his prose, I'm just left with the "and your point would be"? I don't think he is suggesting either that we should give up progress or that we ought to really slow it down.

Maybe it is sort of like "once the Christmas of your son or daughter being 6 is over, it will never come again, no Christmas will we really like that ... we should be aware of that".

Very true! So we are aware. Now let's get that superhuman computer built and create the equivalent of fire that we will be unable to imagine the world without it's existence!

Liberal Facism, Jonah Goldberg

This is one of those books that I'm sure not many liberals will read, but for the few that actually care about America, they really ought to. The biggest point is that "Fascism", while it is probably the least well defined commonly used political term, is a lot more like "religion" or "desire for unity" than anything associated with a specific political party. The desire to "all be part of a national family, all be taken care of, all agree on nearly everything, feel safe, feel that we have a common purpose, feel that we are working for a cause" ... all those "nice human emotions" are what is subverted by Fascism. It doesn't HAVE to be evil, but it is always extremely dangerous because it destroys individual liberty and public skepticism.

The left in this country stole the term "liberal" in the 30's. Prior to the 30's, a "liberal" was like a "libertarian"--small government, low taxes, individual liberty. When the term "socialist" became unpopular because of association with the USSR, Germany and Italy, they decided to take over the term "liberal" and did so successfully.

What is less known and more insidious is that "Nazi" stands for "National Socialist Party". It doesn't take a lot of thought to realize that a revolutionary, totalitarian, anti-traditional, socialist, anti-Christian and dictatorial state isn't "conservative, libertarian or right wing" in any way. It is LEFT WING, and in fact prior to the holocaust discovery, the much of the left wing in this country revered both Hitler and Mussolini and vice-versa. Much of what both Hitler and Mussolini did was modeled on the Woodrow Wilson government in the US. Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson and FDR were all "progressives", which is close to "fascists". They were men of "collective action vs individual liberty".

Part of the confusion here is that the media and the left simply juxtaposes "facist, right wing, nazi, racist, militarist, evil, Republican, etc" in one tidy package and uses it for name calling, one of their favorite pastimes in lieu of rational discussion. Mussolini was certainly a totalitarian fascist-he created the term "totalitarian" to mean "the government takes care or your TOTAL life", but Mussolini was not anti-semitic or racist in other ways. Hitler was a fascist and he WAS racist. Franco was fascist and NOT racist. Racism is just another human problem, like flatulence, a fascist may have a problem with it, he may not. Same thing with Nationalism--Castro is very nationalist, but he would call himself a communist, as would most Americans.

Prior to the problems between Hitler and Stalin, there wasn't a lot of animosity between communism and fascism. Both were very much "workers parties", communism was just generally international, while fascism was generally nationalistic. The lefties of the world all correctly saw communism and fascism as pretty much the same thing -- heavier and heavier state control, less individual liberty, more collectivism, more central planning. When WWII happened, there was a rift between the USSR and Germany, so it tended to be couched in ideological terms. A lot of the book is spent on quotes and discussions from Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and others showing that they were part of one big happy movement -- until they decided that a bad thing had happened in Germany, and they didn't want to be part of that. So, they picked the obvious scapegoat, "the right", even though there is nothing about "the right" that would lead one to think that "National Socialism" would be found there.

The book is 405 pages long, and the history of progressivism -> liberalism in this country and socialism, communism and fascism world wide is covered in a good deal of detail. The main point is NOT to say that "liberals are Nazis", although the cute little cover with the smiley face with Hitler mustache is certainly going to make liberals think that. Goldberg makes it clear in the book that fascist does NOT equal Nazi -- Fascist is pretty much "why can't we just get beyond politics, find a 3rd way, and let the smart experts do what needs to be done so we can we healthy wealthy and wise". That isn't evil, it is just dangerous ... because if you believe that can actually happen, you are already not thinking very straight, and if you think that the attempt at it isn't going to have a horrible cost in individual liberty, then you have been a grass munching sheep for way too long already.

I could quote and quote, but I'll leave with this one:

In America, a conservative is one who protects and defends what are considered liberal (old style) institutions in Europe but largely conservative ones in America: private property, free speech, free markets, individual liberty, freedom of conscience, and the rights of communities to determine for themselves how they will live within these guidelines. This is why conservatism, classical liberalism, libertarianism and Whiggism are different flags for the only truly radical political revolution in a thousand years. The American founding stands within this tradition, and modern conservatives seek to advance and defend it.

Veterans In MN School Too Political

Forest Lake event canceled; too political

It sounds like the issue is really "too confusing". These tender young folks have been fully brainwashed with the "simple truths" like "Bush Evil", "Iraq War Lost", "Military Bad", "America Bad", "Muslims Good", etc. Star Trib readers have to get pretty up in arms when some veterans show up with a more nuanced opinion. I mean, what do THEY know, they were only actually over there. Certainly their viewpoints can't be allowed to complete with those of MEA teachers and the unbiased folks at the Star Trib! It is worse than Fox News and talk radio, people can't be expected to deal with all these differing viewpoints, so best to just get it back to one way of thinking, then we can be CIVIL!!

This country was founded on the idea that political speech ought to be curtailed wherever possible. We really can't have divergent opinion running around.

US Ranks 24th, Britan 7th

I suspect that this might some play in the MSM because it fits with their model of the universe. Of course economic freedom, how GOOD the health care / housing / transportation / etc are are no doubt not taken into account. There is certainly no consideration to the population difference (50M UK, 300M USA) or vast land mass differences. How well would this REALLY match with what liberals think if they thought for a couple minutes? How much diversity is there in Sweden for example? How much "freedom from religion" in the Vatican?

A lot of these places I haven't been to, but I have been to the UK a couple of times. Anyone from the US that wants to go there better get used to a RADICAL reduction in lifestyle if the size of your home, space, roads, shopping after 5PM, interesting television, and a whole list of other things are part of your idea of "lifestyle". It IS true however that the beer is excellent and they figure you ought to drink LOTs of it, so maybe that is a point that really counted in their favor. On that front, they may well be #1 in my book!


Britain is world's 7th most stable and prosperous nation - Times Online

It looks like the big issue was really guns and drugs. Well, the dead are the MOST stable, so I guess "stability" isn't everything, in fact, how well does liberty mesh with stability, and which is most important?

Mr Le Mière said that the US had fallen down the scale, although it still
scored an average of 93 out of 100, partly because of the proliferation of
small arms owned by Americans and the threat to the population posed by the
flow of drugs from across the Mexican border.

I supppose it is pretty sad for a lot of liberals to see Iraq not make the bottom 10 ... indicating that even the UN sees progress there, I thought our MSM and Dems almost always thought the UN had it's head on straight ... I guess the idea that it shows progress in Iraq may be trump the lower rating for America, and we won't see it in the news much anyway.

I wonder how stable and prosperous Canada would be if the US actually became unstable and not prosperous? Supposedly Canada is 23rd to our 24th with a population of 33 million vs our 300 million. Guess there must not be any points at all for scale!

Guess That Party Game

Guess PowerLine plays the same game. It is a pretty boring game though. REPUBLICAN always shows up in the headline of anything bad, and it is hard to even find a little bitty "d" if the bad stuff is Democrat. If it is something good and there is an R involved, then it just doesn't get published at all.


Power Line: Guess That Party!

Typical White Person

I wonder if any Republicans could survive claiming that someone was a "typical black person" on video? Think not? Guess there is no bias in our world.

Obama typical white person
by dollarsandsense123

What We Miss

Just imagine what we miss when we try to be scientific and reduce the number of variables we have to deal with. How about when we only look at one side of an issue, or only look where the MSM or some candidate, party, friend, etc is telling us to look?

To be human is to have some very significant limitations. Even worse, other humans will often exploit those limitations. We don't know what we don't know, we are ALL suffering from only being able to see a tiny portion of reality. Humility is truly the foundation of wisdom.

Gunsmoke

Gunsmoke

Bill Kristol fumes a bit here on the Bush administrations silence on the leak of the "executive summary" of 600K documents related to Iraq / al Quaeda connections. The report says "no smoking gun", which the MSM translates to "no connection", and the Bush administration remains silent. This paragraph summarizes the Bush logic.

If you talk to people in the Bush administration, they know the truth about the report. They know that it makes the case convincingly for Saddam's terror connections. But they'll tell you (off the record) it's too hard to try to set the record straight. Any reengagement on the case for war is a loser, they'll say. Furthermore, once the first wave of coverage is bad, you can never catch up: You give the misleading stories more life and your opponents further chances to beat you up in the media. And as for trying to prevent misleading summaries and press leaks in the first place--that's hopeless. Someone will tell the media you're behaving like Scooter Libby, and God knows what might happen next.

What Reagan realized that apparently Bush never has is that the MSM is going to say what they say, and there is nothing he can do about it. They have their agenda, they are going to follow it, and a major part of it is going to be to destroy a Republican President. What he needs to do is essentially what they will accuse him of doing anyway; he needs to claim what he wants to claim in very clear but GENERAL terms and let them spend time arguing about it. As long as they are arguing about how to "prove him wrong", he has won the battle.

When Bush said that "The British say that Saddam is trying to get yellowcake", he had the mistaken idea that since the statement was 100% true, it was safe. Clearly wrong, the MSM took the 100% true statement, and called it a lie. It didn't bother them to lie one little bit.

What Bush needed to say was; "Saddam is building nuclear weapons". They are going to accuse you of lying about that as well, but we might as well have the real issue in front of the American people. 90% of them don't even have and idea of what "yellowcake" is, and it certainly doesn't seem worth fighting a war over. The peoples brain space is very limited. There is NO DOUBT that Saddam had a program to build nukes, there is a ton of evidence to that -- exactly how soon, how big and what color has a lot of doubt. If the discussion had been about THAT vs "Bush lied over yellowcake because of a memo and Joe Wilson", the battle would have been much easier to win even with the much lesser speaking talents of Bush.

As a Republican, you have to realize that NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY, the MSM is going to call you a "liar", "evil", "incompetent", etc ... they did that with Reagan as well. The difference is that Reagan made his direct case to the American public like a media person, not like an "aw shucks, if I do everything right people will have to like me" honest guy. Don't expect the media to be fair, expect them toe be UNfair. Get THEM arguing about "well, the USSR really ISN'T an "evil empire" ... when Americans knew it was. If you are a Republican, you can count on the media trying to call up down if you call it up.

It is way too late for the Bush administration to make it's case, no matter what Kristol says. Reagan was such a genius. Did he believe that the USSR was an "evil empire"? Probably somewhat, but more importantly he knew how the media and the American people would react to his statement of a stark contrast. Even I can pine away for Reagan from time to time.

The Racism of BO

So did Obama manage to turn his racist church into "old news" today? The MSM will certainly try to help him all they can.

"I can no more disown [Jeremiah Wright] than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

So I suppose when you are a deity like BO, you DO pick your Grandmother just like your church / pastor, but he may have to explain that to some of us just a bit more before we get it.

Nice little video, be interesting to see if YouTube pulls it like they have been pulling quite a bit of stuff critical of the Hope Pope.

Facists On Guns

The Supreme Court heard arguments today in the "Heller Case" about the handgun ban in DC. One realizes very quickly that the gun issue isn't very rational -- the crime rate in DC very high and rising. Does that lead one to believe that a ban on citizens owning guns works? I guess it does if you are a criminal or a liberal (sometimes the difference can be hard to discern).

Here is a nice little Op Ed in USA today on the subject.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The fact that ALL American's don't inherently know what that means is beyond idiocy to me:

1. How can ANYONE believe that our founding fathers thought there needed to be something in the Constitution so the MILITIA could have guns? The idea was to FORM the militia from private citizens with guns. That is how they raised their armies in those days.
   
2. Has ANYONE read Jefferson? "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." The right to bear arms is EXPLICITLY in there to allow the PEOPLE to put together militias to ATTACK the Government! Those guys just fought a revolution against oppressive government. They understood the truth that power corrupts very well. They built a government full of checks and balances -- an armed populace was seen by them as just one more check. They well understood that liberty was something that was likely to require citizens to die to protect from time to time. They also understood that an armed populace just might deter some of the tyrants.
   
3. The Constitution was ratified in 1789, does ANYONE believe it would have been ratified if people thought that their guns could be taken away legally by the Federal government under that document?
   

Those are the painfully obvious points. People are constantly getting "right and left" mixed up in this country because the media insists that "right is bad, left is good". Actually, left means big government and little liberty, right means little government and big liberty. The only "liberty" that you get on the left is "liberty" from individual responsibility, morality beyond what the state decrees, and religion. Nazi Germany was LEFT, not RIGHT ... it was the National SOCIALIST Party. The left likes to call it "right" because it was supposedly "patriotic" (and of course evil)-only, really it was only "pro-Nazi" and white supremacist. Sort of like Obama is Black Supremacist. Folks like to claim that it was "the RIGHT" that was racist and Jim Crow. Actually it was DEMOCRATS. Roosevelt held power by supporting Jim Crow! Yes, yes, Eleanor gave a few speeches, but FDR did nothing to do away with Jim Crow, and the people that made threats on her life were ALL DEMOCRATS. Being a Republican in the South for a long time was about as popular as being Jewish, Catholic or Black.

There are plenty of racist lefties -- Hitler, Obama, Mao, Stalin, etc. Being racist has NOTHING to do with being "right wing".

What do Nazi's have to do with guns? Well, just like other lefties -- USSR, China, etc, one of the first things they like to do is round up the guns. The idea of an armed populace doing a little refreshment of the tree of liberty with their tyrant blood isn't all that appealing to them.

So, back to USA today:

"Banning civilian ownership of all automatic weapons and all semiautomatic weapons that hold more than six rounds of ammunition. Six rounds is enough for any serious hunter, let alone a gangbanger."

"A ban with no loopholes or grandfather clauses on any gun that doesn't meet these standards or isn't brought into compliance within two years, with the penalty thereafter of a hefty prison term for anyone found with such weapons."

"An improvised explosive device is a weapon of terror; so is a military-style assault rifle in a civilian's hands. It's time we treated them the same, and the Supreme Court is not going to be of much help on that."

So, I have a 10/22 that is semi-automatic and intrinsically holds 10 rounds in it's magazine. It ought to be banned and I ought to go to prison if I don't give it up? I'm not even sure an IED is a "weapon of terror" -- is C4? is a grenade? Any CAN be, but I see nothing intrinsic in either the IED or an assault rifle. How about a semi loaded with liquid natural gas? How about an airplane?

One can tell a facist because they see "civilians". We are CITIZENS, we are the PEOPLE from which what government we have is to receive it's power. The government is to have it's power at our pleasure, not the other way around. Weapons in the hands of the wrong government have FAR more terror potential than weapons in the hands of CITIZENS.

Obama's Racist Church

Hard to get a lot of detail in the MSM, and no doubt a lot of it will be cleaned up since Obama took his ex-minister off his campaign as an offical advisor. It is a matter of public record that his church supports Louis Farakien, who is an avowed anti-semite. Jeremiah Wright after 9-11 said "God Damn America" from the pulpit and that "our chickens have come home to roost". There is no other way to describe the views of the church as "Black Racist". If a white candidate attended a church that was even a tenth as much white racist as Obama's is Black Racist it would be the only story in the MSM 24x7 and the videos of the pastor screaming racist remarks from the pulpit would be in front of our faces every second - as they should be, in that case and in this case.

Ashland and Keweenaw Snowmobile Trip

The Movie Version:



My wife and I returned a bit after 11PM last night after a 3-day whirlwind end of the season snowmobile trip with another couple that was overall great fun and just a "tish" on the "doing a whole lot in a short time" side.

We took off at 9:30 Thursday AM in two vehicles with two sleds in each unit and rolled to Ashland WI, arriving at a bit after 2 even though we were slowed by some difficulty getting trail permits. It was 55 degrees and there was some group question of how good the trails would be, so we had a nice leisurely lunch at the Best Western Holiday House in Ashland that we were staying at. Take a look this Google Map with points of interest included.

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See more pictures from the trip here.

We finally got up to the Pub and Grub West of Washburn and on the trail just before 4. There were a lot of slushy areas, some plain old nasty mud and water in some areas, but there were also some really nice areas with long stretches of perfectly smooth and fun to ride stuff. We made it up to Herbster for some sodas, then drove down to "Old Baldy" to get a nice overlook in without having to brave the cold winds that are often the case up there. Made it back to the Pub and Grub shortly after 7, just barely dark for around 70mi for the short day. Had an excellent meal there and reached the conclusion that since were this far, we just had to go up to the Keweenaw and sample the conditions there.

Spent a short night at the hotel and hit the road at 7AM. By 10:30 we were unloaded at Krupps in Twin Lakes and out on the trails. The conditions up there were FANTASTIC ... generally perfect trails on the 13 loop down to Greenland. We cut off on the "newer tail" just N or Mass City off the Nichols (20?) and had some very high speed running over to N of Sidnaw. I discovered that in order to keep up with my wife on the '97 500cc Classic with something like 60 HP with my 120HP '06 Fusion HO I had to put some more throttle in it. She claimed 85, but I looked down and was floating over 90 catching her.

We had a bit of trouble stopping for gas enough-we ought to have gassed up in Greenland, but we came to the conclusion that we had to go down to Sidnaw and fill up. We came back N and ran "the whoops" heading toward Baraga-a series of quick rises and drops on a very straight run in which it one tends to get a little high-speed air or at least very significant track unloading. We OUGHT to have just reversed our course back out of there on the newer trail back over to the Nichols, but fell to the siren song of "maybe the trail to Alston will be improved, everything else has been so good"--well, it was in as good a shape as it probably could be, but narrow and super-twisty still gets long.

Stopped in at Krupps for tasty Pasties, took a spin N to S Range and stopped in front of the John Dee trail cam and found out there is no gas in S Range anymore, so rather than taking a shot at the Freda Loop we drove back down to Krupps, loaded up and headed in to the Ramada at Hancock. Had a decent (but not special) meal at the hotel a couple of beverages, and turned in fairly early.

Saturday we hit the road at 7:30 (central time, never changed to the UPs Eastern) up to Phoenix where we parked and unloaded. The trails were SUPER ... we were the first sleds out on a groom that had set up better than it usually does up there, they must have gotten the groomer out early. The temp was around 20 and the amount of snow is incredible -- no signs of spring up there. We ran up to LacLabelle and found that they no longer do any coffee / rolls stuff there, but have the bar/grill only that opens at noon.

Shot over the mount Bohemia and then N for Copper Harbor. Discovered that the trail out to the tip of the peninsula was fresh groomed for the ONLY time in 10 years of going up there that I have seen it any better than a kidney liquefying mass of moguls. It was perfectly groomed with no tracks so we went in and met the groomer coming out. I ought to have backed up, but thought I could get by him parked and banged up my knee and foot a bit, but nothing that seemed serious at the time ... little stiff and black and blue today, but able to walk and work out, so hopefully nothing.

The end of the peninsula is pretty cool with wind and waves coming in and a lot of hunks of ice grinding together. Standing there it hit me that if things work out well I'll be standing on the Santa Monica Pier in two weeks watching the Pacific waves crash in. Full scale winter in the center of the continent on sleds to "summer" on the W coast--naturally, it would be possible to just run the sled down to the Keweenaw airport, hop on a plane and be there in something like 5 hours, but two weeks is enough contrast for me.

We continued on to the top of Brockaway Mtn to look at the steep drops, feel the high winds and see the view out over the very cold Lake Superior with lake effect snows swirling around. Then down to Copper Harbor to the Mariner N restaurant for some good sandwiches and soup for lunch. Back on the sleds, over to Eagle Harbor to stand on the observation deck next to the lighthouse for another view of the "ice water mansions". I've been up there in early March when one could lay back on the already melted bench and catch a nap-not this year, it would be a chilly and windy nap.

Drove the sleds down to Phoenix, loaded up, fired up, and headed south at 2:30 central. Not a lot of moss grew on us as we motored toward home and walked in at a bit after 11PM, tired but happy to have had a fun little adventure with the sleds to end the season.