The "Dreams" Legacy

The Prisoner Swap Deal - Thomas Sowell - Page 1:

Once again, a pearl of great price from Sowell.

One of the problems of many fundamentally decent people is that they find it hard to understand people who are not fundamentally decent, or whose moral compass points in a different direction from theirs.

As I've said many times ... and as BO said in his "Dreams" book, I think he has been VERY successful relative to his objective of tearing down "The Colonial Powers / Western Civilization" ... Sowell just says it better: 

As for Barack Obama, you cannot judge any President's competence by the results of his policies, without first knowing what he was trying to achieve. Many wise and decent people assume automatically that President Obama was trying to serve the interests of America. From that standpoint, he has failed abysmally, both at home and abroad. And that should legitimately call his competence into question. 

But what if his vision of the world is one in which the wealth and power of those at the top, whether at home or internationally, are deeply resented, and have been throughout his life, under the tutelage of a whole series of resenters? And what if his goal is to redress that imbalance?

Who can say that he has failed, when the fundamental institutions of this country have been successfully and perhaps irretrievably undermined, and when the positions of America and its allies on the world stage have been similarly, and even more dangerously, undermined around the world?

As for Barack Obama, you cannot judge any President's competence by the results of his policies, without first knowing what he was trying to achieve.

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"Voter" Relocation?

Obama Admin to Dump over 1,000 Illegal Immigrants in AZ This Weekend:

The only plausible reason for not requiring a picture ID to vote is a large scale operation to fix the vote -- we all have either been IDed for many simple tasks -- sending UPS, getting a cell phone, getting a hotel room, getting on a plane, etc, etc.

The ONLY reason that it makes sense to be against ID is that either you KNOW that an honest vote in  this nation would change what is happening IMMENSELY, or you are very worried that it would. I really don't think there are much more than say "10%" of people that actually believe it somehow "restricts the right to vote" -- if it is, then our gullibility factor is already beyond hope.

So what are the mechanisms to get illegal voters to the proper polls? Maybe bussing them in and dropping them in places that the effect is needed?

I can't see how one prevents an underage person from voting when an ID is not required?

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HOW "The Party" Will LEGALLY Limit Speech! (Both MN Senators For)

Democrats Try to Repeal First Amendment | Power Line:

Here we see the ACLU detailing what kind of Amerika TP is intent on creating. Note at the end that the law got ONLY support from TP, although the ACLU generously (for TP) uses assumptions of how it might be used by Republicans to suppress speech. "It might, legally", but not likely in the current world that is dominated by TP media and academia.

What it WOULD do however is to completely legalize what TP members do all the time -- use their positions to harass opposition candidates and organizations through campaign finance laws! This is a tactic that has been, and continues to be used against Scott Walker in WI. Read and understand the Udall Amendment, and keep the phrase "suppression of conservative advocacy" firmly in mind for the real world, much less generous than the ACLU version of looking at this.

FORTY ONE sponsors!! All  DEMOCRATS want to gut the First Amendment by giving themselves vast powers to REGULATE POLITICAL SPEECH!!!  What kind of country have we become where Senators, including those up for re-election  like Franken, can come out in favor of blatant totalitarian control of political speech and correctly assume that the MSM and general sleepy nature of our population will insulate them from damage!

THIS is why we have slid so far from being "The Land of the Free", and continue to tumble. In the ACLU letter quoted below, they try very hard to be on-partisan ... when ALL 41 of the signers were Democrats! The continued slide into tyranny demands the removal of free speech -- the Democrats are all over it.

To give just a few hypotheticals of what would be possible in a world where the Udall proposal is the 28th Amendment:

•  Congress would be allowed to restrict the publication of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s forthcoming memoir “Hard Choices” were she to run for office; 

• Congress could criminalize a blog on the Huffington Post by Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, that accuses Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) of being a “climate change denier”; 

•  Congress could regulate this website by reform group Public Citizen, which urges voters to contact their members of Congress  in support of a constitutional amendment addressing  and the recent McCutcheon  case, under the theory that it is, in effect, a sham issue communication in favor of the Democratic Party; 

• A state election agency, run by a corrupt patronage appointee, could use state law to limit speech by anti-corruption groups supporting reform; 

• A local sheriff running for reelection and facing vociferous public criticism for draconian immigration policies and prisoner abuse could use state campaign finance laws to harass and prosecute his own detractors; 

• A district attorney running for reelection could selectively prosecute political opponents using state campaign finance restrictions

 And Congress could pass a law regulating this letter since it notes that all 41 sponsors are Democrats.  Such examples are not only plausible, they are endless.

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Freedom Summer II, Opportunity vs Outcome

Robert B. Reich: Freedom Summer II [Commentary] - baltimoresun.com:

Today, as then, a group of Americans is denied the dignity of decent wages and working conditions. Today, just as then, powerful forces are threatening and intimidating vulnerable people for exercising their legal rights. Today, just like 50 years ago, people who have been treated as voiceless and disposable are standing up and demanding change.

Yes indeed, millions of people are FORCED to work at Wally ... however, Reich does helpfully inform us "WalMart is no Bull Connor", gee, glad he covered that, I might have been confused!

Blacks demonstrated for equal OPPORTUNITY, current demonstrators want EQUAL OUTCOME  -- independent of their ability of lack thereof to achieve any sort of results at all. Now in theory they say "more equal", but why stop there? If $15 an hour is good, is not $25 OR $50 better? What principle would decide that number?

I've started a "balanced reading" of switching back and forth between Hayak's Fatal Conceit and Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century . Piketty may be against others making a lot of money, but his book is the most expensive I've ever bought on Kindle at $22.

I'll be doing a lot of reading, but basically Hayak's Fatal Conceit is the idea that things like culture, social structures, economics are "human created" and thus human understandable. He argues that they are emergent orders selected because "they work better" over eons of time, and when we meddle with things like "the market", we do so at peril to our economic well being and possibly even our civilization. Social Science fields tend to very much forget tghe "First, do no harm" maxim and assume that they can willy nilly play with the world economy to get their "desired results". Seems so reasonable to me that it is surprising that anyone even thinks of disagreeing.

Adam Smith no more "invented" the Invisible Hand than Newton "invented" gravity -- they both DISCOVERED them, with nearly zero idea of really "why" they work, only that they do.
But of course Piketty has a much higher opinion of his abilities, and KNOWS there is a huge problem with Capitalism called "inequality". Again, I'm mystified right from the start. If one compares me to the WORST brain surgeon at Mayo, or the WORST NFL QB, or the WORST opera singer, I'd assert that all the 1000x, 10,0000k and essentially infinite x comparisons of "inequality" are expressed very well. My contribution in any of those fields and MANY more is and would be even with significant effort so pitiful to defy mathematical comparison.

So why should the area of making money, creating wealth or investing be any different? Is it REALLY that surprising that Warren Buffet is a 1,000x of even a BILLION x better investor than 99.9999% of the population? To me it is not surprising at all.

And why is that bad? If Buffet allocates resources a billion times better than some idiot that say trades a deserter for 5 top notch terrorists (hypothetica), why NOT let Buffet do even MORE investing? His allocation is likely to generate WAY more wealth for the rest of us than we would otherwise have, even if Warren "takes" (a kind of fuzzy concept in a market economy) 90% of it! As long as we can eat, have a roof, buy some beer now and then, why exactly do we care what Warren does with his money or that he has more of it?

So essentially Hayak says that we are all bent on shooting our own feet off in attempt to "even up" economic allocation, and Piketty is INTENT to show us how to accomplish it!

People can write very long books over what seems obvious to me -- but I guess that just proves how stupid the Moose really is!

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Dialectical Freezing

Keep peeing in the pool?! Climate deniers lose their minds after new EPA rules - Salon.com:

BO has unilaterally declared that there will be a 30% reduction in C(2 emissions from coal plants. At least it is consistent with aborting 100's of millions of kids, they emit CO2 as well.

If our entire economy wasn't dependent on energy, and indeed for those of us in the northern climates, life itself, some of this would be of less interest. In this past year of "Real Current Global Warming Effect", even places as far south as Memphis would have had a lot of folks frozen to death without adequate power. Much like being a Veteran and relying on VA care doesn't exempt you from the harsh realities of the disaster of government run healthcare, even climate BELIEVERS turn into Popsicles  when exposed to temperatures below 32 for decent periods of time ... even if you are screaming IT'S GETTING WARMER in their ears!

The premise of "progressivism" is that the ends justify the means and that the means can be effectively ignored because of the wondrousness of the ends -- massive debts, no energy, shrinking economy, dwindling labor force and aging population, masses of non-working younger people, all of it makes no difference next to the majesty of the "progressive" vision.

All the government sponsored studies and "real science" (the kind funded by the government rather than folks that produce something) tell the "progressives" they are right. Not that they need to be told, they KNOW in the way that only those that ignore history, deny God, eschew results vs models,  and go to all ends to say "the vast majority of people agree with us" can be confident.  Hey, 97% of scientists agree with them, they MUST be right!

So we bray back and forth and call each other names, and even the little kid in the picture HIMSELF is "fouling the pool", since we too emit CO2. Meanwhile, the planet returns to a cooling trend and we set ourselves up for an energy crisis that is actually life threatening if you live in the center of the nation N of say Arkansas -- but no matter, the "progressives" have a wonderful vision of the future!

The title is a little snark at "Dialectical Materialism" the core of Marxism and Communism ... "mumbo jumbo"  is an adequate translation in the real world.

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Problems With Atheism

Paul Wallace: The Real Problem With Atheism:



I don't hugely disagree with much in the linked column, but it also isn't really aligned with my primary problems with Atheism:

1. Hubris -- There isn't a more narcissistic hubristic bombastic statement that a tiny, mortal, stupid, smelly human can make than "there is no God".  Death will certainly fix all those problems, and even a momentary reflection on that level of hubris makes one understand the sad reality of why Hell exists. Freedom is never free, and free will has ultimate consequences. 
2. Hopelessness -- We and all those we love die. There is no way to prove or disprove an afterlife. I believe that without God there is no love, and the desire of Atheists to do away with the hope to see those that they supposedly love in an afterlife comes close to a proof that without God there is no real love. 
3. Purposelessness -- Without a creator there can be no purpose. We and all we see happened through complete random chance and is utterly without purpose. As Shakespeare said in Macbeth: “Life ... is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” In such a universe, nothing ultimately matters -- which calls trusting an Atheist into question. 
4. Truthless -- One of the names of Christ is Truth. We humans are never trustworthy, even under pain of death and hell, BUT, there is some pretty good historical evidence that a belief in a higher power and ultimate punishment improves the odds of truth and trust SOME (and in this life, that is as good as it gets). Even if it doesn't, the humility, the hope for an ultimate future, the belief that this really does all have reason for being and we are part of that plan helps make believers better bets to trust (still sorry bets, but BETTER). This is one reason that I sincerely hope that we never sink so low as to even consider an Atheist for president! 
5. Destructive -- Human civilization clawed it's way up from the Hobbesian swamp of "Nasty, Brutish and Short" over thousands of years at great cost. What we see in the West is a direct result of Judaeo - Christian Religion melded with Greek Philosophy. The 20th Century saw the breakout of the great Atheist Humanistic "isms" --- Communism and Fascism, resulting in the killing of hundreds of millions of people. Without God there is no "Natural Law", there is no "These truths are self-evident" ... there is no Truth, no Purpose, no Meaning, no Love.
   
   But death, there is LOTS of death because Atheists tend to attack and destroy. One doesn't need to spend much time reading or listening to them to hear their nasty sneering derision of believers, often times directed even more strongly at (soon to be former) friends or family members that they know will be hurt especially badly by it. Why not? It is a hopeless, purposeless, truthless, loveless nasty universe in which all that ultimately counts is the hubristic and narcissistic view of the atheist. There will be no ultimate judgment of their actions in their view, so why not try to beat the "false" hope, truth, love, etc out of those  "believers"? 

We humans always worship something. God is the worship of "that greater than which can not be imagined" -- truth, love, wisdom, hope, beauty, kindness, humility.

Atheism is very sad, but perhaps even sadder are the prayers of believers for those they love lost to this spiritual cancer. 

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US WILL Negotiate and Trade Hostages With/For Known Terrorists!

Taliban becomes our latest enemy to play Obama for a patsy | Power Line:

It is a great time to be an enemy of the US! Seize a "US Serviceman" (in name only, see some of his statements on the US and fact he likely deserted here) and trade him for FIVE big time terrorists from Gitmo!!! Man, I wonder what you could get for a busload of American school kids these days ... or maybe a planeload of US citizens headed to Disney ... BO in the WH for terrorists is basically a GEICO commercial "Happier than a witch in a broom factory"! Time to get some "chips" and reel in some goodies from the US!

The MSM is treating this with the kind of fawning admiration that one would expect for a TP administration in complete disarray, shedding the head of the VA in hopes of nipping that scandal in the bud and having jettison Carney the press secretary on the same day in hopes of keeping down VA disaster coverage.

A "helpful press" is VERY helpful to a bumbling idiot of a president, but it is very UNhelpful to the poor Americans that will pay the price for the establishment of the US as a great target for selective kidnapping.

Although perhaps it only works if the person taken has politics that agree with BO?

Bergdahl, "solider" released quote: "I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools. I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting."

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TP Propaganda In Action

The Most Epically Hypocritical Democratic Party Smear Ever! This Is One for the Record Books | Power Line:



I've documented a lot of examples of how TP (The Party - Democrat) uses it's near total media dominance to manipulate the public. What TP hates about Fox News is that it does similar ops on the conservative side on a much smaller scale and that should NOT be allowed! TP can ultimately only rule when there are NO ALTERNATIVES -- meaning the people who think differently are in the gulag or dead!



 If there are alternatives, then things like the VA, the ongoing tragedy of BOcare, the Climate Hoax, etc will be pointed out and it will  be clear to far to many people that TP is like the Wizard of Oz ... a fake and a humbug, and unlike the wizard, actually BAD!



The Koch brothers REALLY ARE demons! Pay no attention to the fact that the guy taking time out to castigate them and the Ordway  for putting on a children s theater day was not that long ago trying to do a couple million of business to point out how environmentally responsible they are!



Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!



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Economy Down 1% First Quarter

The Economy: Don’t Look Now, But . . . | Power Line:

So now we find that 1Q 2014 was negative growth -- if BO was an R, that would be a RECESSION! It used to be 2Qs of negative GDP for either party, but TP decided that the new rule is apparently AT LEAST 2 quarters if TP is in power, and 1Q of "something like negative growth" in the unlikely case of an R in the WH!

Not that it makes much difference, what counts for "growth" under BO is so tepid and so weighted to a few states that have economic policies in direct opposition to BO, that we have been basically in a recession all along.

Apparently, some are blaming the cold winter. I suppose that can be marked down as an example of "climate disruption"?

I heard on the news this AM that consumer spending was DOWN in April -- a normal sign of recession under way, so we will see. I'm sure that the general media will be doing all they can to minimize people's knowledge of the state of the economy as much as possible, as they have been doing since BO took over.

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Private Space Capsule Looking Good

BBC News - SpaceX unveil 'no runway' Dragon V2 space capsule:





NASA is one more giant government agency to flame out spectacularly ... it got us to the moon, which was amazing, but it only gives one more example of what government CAN do, all be it usually quite inefficiently and often with GREAT expense in both money and lives.



Single focus, TIME LIMITED projects --- War, Building a nuclear weapon (Manhattan Project), "Getting to the moon by the end of this decade" ...



When the project is open ended and less than PRECISELY defined -- "have a space program", "make people happy", "end poverty",  "provide health care",  the result is always disaster ... slow expensive crushing embarrassing disaster.



The NASA shuttle was a damned impressive thing in that it was huge and it worked at all, but it was obviously flawed from the start -- tiles and giant solid boosters tacked on the side ... both of which caused catastrophic failures with total loss of crew and craft. From the POV of any engineer, those items were "hacks" at best.



How good will Dragon be? No idea, this is the marketing release -- of course it looks good! But it does look very cool. Being able to land vertically sure sounds wonderful -- but having to carry enough fuel to do it back through the atmosphere at re-entry temps still makes me wonder if given chemical propulsion, parachutes aren't good enough ... maybe a parasail with some control and some thrusters to make a ground landing at a more predictable location and softer.





But at least it is private -- which makes the chances that they know what they are doing better.



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When TP (The Party) Attacks, You Are to SHUT U{P!

Reporters Shocked When Their Targets Talk Back | Power Line:



What TP (The Party, Democrat) hates the WORST about the Koch brothers! When you are slandered and attacked you are to SHUT UP! and the Koch brothers have the unmitigated gall to FIGHT BACK!



Our education and media system works long and hard in "the public service" to make it ABSOLUTELY CLEAR that if you don't tow the party line they will take your NBA team, your job and your reputation! You will be friendless and ostracized -- the IRS, NSA or other agency will be forced to go after you! You MUST SHUT UP!



Are people daft? If TP can't control people by "civil means", the US will be FORCED to go the same way as every other totalitarian government in history -- people like the Kochs are a THREAT TO AMERIKA! Are people too foolish to realize that if this "Fascism with a smiley face" doesn't work, TP is going to have to put some people down by "stronger means" .... clearly for the good of "all of us"!



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Support for Norms Is Not Exceptional

Obama’s insulting version of American exceptionalism | Power Line:

BO likes to SAY that he is for American exceptionalism ... we know he is not, and if it wasn't for the MSM, his attempts to claim that he is would be a laughing stock of the highest order.

In short, LIMITED GOVERNMENT is what once made America exceptional ... liberty that released  unprecedented human energy, innovation, prosperity and unprecedented wealth for a huge middle class!

America WAS once both Exceptional and GREAT! Now what we have is "history" ... and a strong case of BO.

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Another HUGE Antarctic Ice Melt! (9-19K Years Ago)

Antarctic Ice Sheet - It's Never Been Very Stable:



So why is it that the closest we can pin down a PAST event is within a 10K year window, but we have SETTLED a future event knowing that global temps will rise so many tenths of a degree in a century and a sea level rise of so many feet is CERTAIN in the next two centuries?



If there were "skeptics" in science or the public these days, one would think that a HISTORICAL event hitting a 10K window would be nigh on embarrassing. Could it be that the scientists that make OBSERVATIONS based on DATA have a lot less confidence in their infallibility than the ones that look at MODELS on their computer screens?



One almost wishes some of the latter would head out on the road armed with a google earth model and no windshield and see how that worked out for them!

The study in Nature documents that the Antarctic ice sheet is unstable and can abruptly reorganize Southern Hemisphere climate and cause rapid global sea level rise. 

Ya don't say! So much for "climate stability"! 



So sea levels abruptly rose 4 METERS in 100 years due to cave men lighting fires one can only assume! 



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Freedom = Inequality of Outcome

bob lonsberry dot com:


Nothing new here for readers of this blog ... just better said!

a teaser ...

And in a free society, free choices will lead to different outcomes.

It is not inequality Barack Obama will take away, it is freedom.

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Lake Superior Memorial Day Ice

Sometimes pictures are worth more than lots of reports and words.