BNSF pressured to deliver more coal | Star Tribune:
Happened to hear some of this on NPR this week. It seems that coal supplies in the Midwest and East are very low -- like 2002 low, and back then our belief in the likelihood of a mild winter was a lot higher, as well as our rail capacity to correct it. We know coal is bad, we know our use of electric power is bad -- we ought to be ready to slide quietly away into the night heat-less and powerless in a frigid Midwestern winter, freezing to death with a clear conscience, fully devoid of and sense of irony as we sacrifice ourselves to keep the planet from getting warmer.
But are we? Even MPR was concerned that the burden of much higher power costs might hit "the most vulnerable" harder as utilities paid high costs for transportation including trucking in the coal.
Shades of "Atlas Shrugged", the production of oil that could have been transported via the blocked Keystone XL Pipeline now has to use rail -- like all resources, a limited one. That same limited resource has to be used to transport the grain harvest. Then, there is the significant factor that hit hard last winter -- when temps are low and snow heavy, the capacity of the rail network is further reduced -- power producers like Dairyland Power in W WI had to truck in coal last winter because they could not get enough via rail.
We are mostly focused on giant climate marches in NYC complaining how warm it is and how warm it is going to be in 100 years, as well as some actions that may or may not be war against a foe that may or may not be Islamic half way around the world rather than out own coal stocks for this coming winter.
What was that old nursery rhyme about the ant and the grasshopper again? Oh wait, kids would likely protest being taught such a thing .. and we REALLY need to listen to such wisdom!
'via Blog this'
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Google and RDB Mated, TP CATALIST Is Their Offspring
Rule of Law » ‘CATALIST’: Obama’s Database for Fundamentally Transforming America:
A few years back we heard a decent amount about "Carnivore", an FBI terrorist search program that scanned vast amounts of data -- emails, texts, voice, etc looking for terrorist connects. The Party (TP-Democrat) hated it, W was president back then and it is always "chilling" if there are any "privacy issues" with an opposition president in the WH.
Small matter that 90%+ of those building and operating Carnivore were dues paying union TP members.
Well, there is a semi-private version of "Carnivore" now called "CATALIST" that is a "Big Data" program -- claimed to be fully legal, and may well be, that is wiring elections for TP. The linked article is pretty fair on the subject, I'll try to be really brief on the synapsis of the threat. A lot of formerly thought to be brilliant pollsters and pundits were blind sided by BO in '12 ... the numbers looked like Romney ought to win. The analysis is that CATALIST is the big reason he didn't and it may be a big reason why this election is another "surprise".
The big picture here is that we can understand the import here since the left already went bonkers on this as far back as Reagan in the form of the "Religious Right" was getting out votes for Reagan -- never mind that Unions, The Sierra Club, Black Churches, Universities, etc had been doing this for Democrats for eons. Word of mouth and peers is the BEST way to get your voters active and out -- negative advertising is like junk mail. It moves the needle a few percentage points AT BEST, and it costs a lot -- it is a shotgun approach, little targeting.
But programs like CATLIST that know if you shop at Whole Foods, have a family member with a mental illness, don't attend church, own a Prius, etc are able to target you in a way that was never possible without what the computer industry calls "Big Data" -- at a very simple level, Google and Relational Data Base (RDB) mated and their offspring is Big Data / CATALIST.
The ability to gather vast amounts of data on people, identify their "hot buttons", and LINK THEM to like minded political workers is HUGE. "God, Guns, Gays" was the old cry from the left as to how evil Republicans got elected. On the left it might be "Environmentalism, Atheism, Veganism, Pro "gay marriage", anti-gun ...". But the funer the appeal, and who it is that makes the appeal, the more powerful it is.
There are reasons that this is an asymmetric battle space with a huge advantage going to TP, I'll touch on a few here.
Domination of their true enemy -- conservative opposition in this country, is what TP does best. They may be unwilling and ridiculous when it comes to foreign enemies (like telling them what we WON'T do, eg "boots on ground") but against what they see as domestic enemies, rest assured they are positively ruthless.
'via Blog this'
A few years back we heard a decent amount about "Carnivore", an FBI terrorist search program that scanned vast amounts of data -- emails, texts, voice, etc looking for terrorist connects. The Party (TP-Democrat) hated it, W was president back then and it is always "chilling" if there are any "privacy issues" with an opposition president in the WH.
Small matter that 90%+ of those building and operating Carnivore were dues paying union TP members.
Well, there is a semi-private version of "Carnivore" now called "CATALIST" that is a "Big Data" program -- claimed to be fully legal, and may well be, that is wiring elections for TP. The linked article is pretty fair on the subject, I'll try to be really brief on the synapsis of the threat. A lot of formerly thought to be brilliant pollsters and pundits were blind sided by BO in '12 ... the numbers looked like Romney ought to win. The analysis is that CATALIST is the big reason he didn't and it may be a big reason why this election is another "surprise".
The big picture here is that we can understand the import here since the left already went bonkers on this as far back as Reagan in the form of the "Religious Right" was getting out votes for Reagan -- never mind that Unions, The Sierra Club, Black Churches, Universities, etc had been doing this for Democrats for eons. Word of mouth and peers is the BEST way to get your voters active and out -- negative advertising is like junk mail. It moves the needle a few percentage points AT BEST, and it costs a lot -- it is a shotgun approach, little targeting.
But programs like CATLIST that know if you shop at Whole Foods, have a family member with a mental illness, don't attend church, own a Prius, etc are able to target you in a way that was never possible without what the computer industry calls "Big Data" -- at a very simple level, Google and Relational Data Base (RDB) mated and their offspring is Big Data / CATALIST.
The ability to gather vast amounts of data on people, identify their "hot buttons", and LINK THEM to like minded political workers is HUGE. "God, Guns, Gays" was the old cry from the left as to how evil Republicans got elected. On the left it might be "Environmentalism, Atheism, Veganism, Pro "gay marriage", anti-gun ...". But the funer the appeal, and who it is that makes the appeal, the more powerful it is.
There are reasons that this is an asymmetric battle space with a huge advantage going to TP, I'll touch on a few here.
- TP owns the universities and government. The brainpower to create and operate this kind of operation is pretty much in their camp.
- The agencies that hold the data are government and government IS TP. We likely see a tiny fraction of the situation with little hints like the IRS scandal. Your IRS financial data, your FBI data, your medical data -- they are all sitting in big government data bases. At the VERY LEAST, this can be "mined" (scanned for trends, correlations, etc without direct use of your ID) -- in the very likely case, items can be "leaked" across data bases with no record of "how we got that" WITH Idenity. We are only talking about "helping the voter connect with TP" after all -- a very good purpose if you are TP.
- Conservatives may well have an easier time building a big data operation to track terrorists or make a profit. Like ALL technology, there is a lot that can be done here that is "good" or at least innocuous, but when used by the government, conservatives tend to get nervous. Their level of trust of the government is FAR lower -- and in fact their trust of large organizations of people is FAR lower. It likely stems from remembering things like the USSR and Nazi Germany were government operations, and the core belief that mankind is fallen and not infinitely perfectible in this world.
Domination of their true enemy -- conservative opposition in this country, is what TP does best. They may be unwilling and ridiculous when it comes to foreign enemies (like telling them what we WON'T do, eg "boots on ground") but against what they see as domestic enemies, rest assured they are positively ruthless.
'via Blog this'
Monday, September 22, 2014
The Totalitarian Impulse
Liberals Want to Throw Us All In Jail. Or Worse. | Power Line:
I'd caution the guys at PL on "the one that loses all the arguments" -- as Orwell (and a host of real totalitarian leaders in the 20th and current century) showed us so well, while it is very true that "The Party" (D) is losing the argument compared with reality -- on Global Warming, on the efficacy of big government, on their effect on the US and Western economies, on Iraq, etc, reality is only part of the case -- especially as TP gains more power.
North Korea has certainly lost horribly on the reality front, but for the inmates in that asylum, questioning their Mad Hatter of a "Dear Leader" is definitely a LOSING proposition -- as the column points out, being right in the real world can very well mran being dead in a TP controlled environment.
'via Blog this'
We are living in perilous times. For the first time in America’s history, one of our political parties–the one that loses all the arguments–has given up on debate and threatens to use naked power to jail or otherwise silence those who point out the flaws in its theories. If we conservatives remain passive, there is a grave danger that our freedoms may be lost.Nothing new in that paragraph for regular readers of this Blog, but even iconoclasts like myself occasionally like to have some corroboration that our ideas haven't slipped the surly bonds of sanity.
I'd caution the guys at PL on "the one that loses all the arguments" -- as Orwell (and a host of real totalitarian leaders in the 20th and current century) showed us so well, while it is very true that "The Party" (D) is losing the argument compared with reality -- on Global Warming, on the efficacy of big government, on their effect on the US and Western economies, on Iraq, etc, reality is only part of the case -- especially as TP gains more power.
North Korea has certainly lost horribly on the reality front, but for the inmates in that asylum, questioning their Mad Hatter of a "Dear Leader" is definitely a LOSING proposition -- as the column points out, being right in the real world can very well mran being dead in a TP controlled environment.
'via Blog this'
MAVEN Mars CLimate Change Explorer in Orbit
MAVEN spacecraft enters Mars orbit - CNN.com:
Earth scientists are excited to try to understand why climate changed on Mars -- they believe it used to be wetter with more atmosphere, but something changed. The satellite will be looking for evidence of ancient Koch brothers oil refineries and the potential that there was a previous evil ruler there approaching the planet killing malfeasance of W Bush.
Scientists are baffled what could have happened to Mars. Prior to W and the Koch brothers, we know earth was graced with a 100% stable climate -- no heat waves, no droughts, no floods, no cold periods, just a perfectly stable Garden of Eden environment. We are 100% certain and settled on what happened here, and know that transporting 100's of thousands of people to NYC to carry signs on Socialism, Indian Rights, etc is certain to fix our problem.
Perhaps in a century or so we can organize a march on Mars to fix the climate there.
'via Blog this'
Earth scientists are excited to try to understand why climate changed on Mars -- they believe it used to be wetter with more atmosphere, but something changed. The satellite will be looking for evidence of ancient Koch brothers oil refineries and the potential that there was a previous evil ruler there approaching the planet killing malfeasance of W Bush.
Scientists are baffled what could have happened to Mars. Prior to W and the Koch brothers, we know earth was graced with a 100% stable climate -- no heat waves, no droughts, no floods, no cold periods, just a perfectly stable Garden of Eden environment. We are 100% certain and settled on what happened here, and know that transporting 100's of thousands of people to NYC to carry signs on Socialism, Indian Rights, etc is certain to fix our problem.
Perhaps in a century or so we can organize a march on Mars to fix the climate there.
'via Blog this'
Sunday, September 21, 2014
A Nation Without Thrones
Progressives Enthroned | National Review Online:
The US was founded as a nation without a king, but the natural desire of man is to crown a king.
The FDR series is a good example of the natural desire of the populace to exchange their freedoms for the worship of an earthy king. As Power Line said on the subject:
We have crossed that magic Rubicon where over 50% of the population takes from the other 50% and maybe more importantly, future generations. A Republic demands mature thinking people looking to the creation of a better future, not the corrupt looting of current and future producers in the name of more consumption for today. The Roosevelt's won, the "progressives" have been enthroned.
'via Blog this'
I Samuel 8, 6-9: But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. 7And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.”
The US was founded as a nation without a king, but the natural desire of man is to crown a king.
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports….Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”- George Washington, Farewell Address 1796
The FDR series is a good example of the natural desire of the populace to exchange their freedoms for the worship of an earthy king. As Power Line said on the subject:
The Roosevelts leaves us in the realm of hagiography. Seventy years after FDR’s death, it is apparently too soon to ask Burns et al. to strive for a balanced perspective on the Roosevelts. My mom was a teen-age girl who cried when she heard that FDR had died; Ken Burns essentially wants his viewers to retain the perspective of a teen-age girl circa 1945 on the Roosevelts. This is “history” for wide-eyed innocents.The perspective of a free people can not be allowed to be that of a crying teen, freedom demands much more responsibility than that. There was a time in the late 1700's when a group of men looked at history to date, the Bible, the world, and gave a people the great gift of a nation founded on rights of INDIVIDUALS endowed by THEIR CREATOR and UNALIENABLE, as Franklin warned:
The deliberations of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were held in strict secrecy. Consequently, anxious citizens gathered outside Independence Hall when the proceedings ended in order to learn what had been produced behind closed doors. The answer was provided immediately. A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.” (Benjamin Franklin)Or even more to the point:
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters. ” (Benjamin Franklin)
We have crossed that magic Rubicon where over 50% of the population takes from the other 50% and maybe more importantly, future generations. A Republic demands mature thinking people looking to the creation of a better future, not the corrupt looting of current and future producers in the name of more consumption for today. The Roosevelt's won, the "progressives" have been enthroned.
'via Blog this'
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Big Money Swaying Election
Karl Rove: Money Main Reason GOP Senate Majority Still in Doubt:
Swaying it to The Party (TP-Democrat), so very little is said about it. We do know that poll numbers are tightening while BO's numbers are tanking and the situation in the world as described by our SecDef as "exploding all over", SOMETHING must account for it.
I can only report on what I see directly. In IA, Joni Earnst is taking a 3 to 1 or worse negative ad hammering from TP ... and it STILL remains close!
TP relies on it's media arm doing most of the heavy lifting to keep the low information voter in the dark -- and then they have the steady stream of "Undocumented Democrats" living and dead that reliably come out of vote thanks to "mail it in", "no ID allowed" and a host of other techniques to (eg. bogus legal actions .
It's a miracle that there are still any opposition candidates elected ... a miracle that TP tirelessly works to suppress.
'via Blog this'
Swaying it to The Party (TP-Democrat), so very little is said about it. We do know that poll numbers are tightening while BO's numbers are tanking and the situation in the world as described by our SecDef as "exploding all over", SOMETHING must account for it.
I can only report on what I see directly. In IA, Joni Earnst is taking a 3 to 1 or worse negative ad hammering from TP ... and it STILL remains close!
For now, he writes, Democrats are spending more in such key senatorial races as Alaska ($6.4 million to $3.6 million), Arkansas ($6.2 million to $4.6 million), Colorado ($8.5 million to $7 million), Iowa, ($8.5 million to $5.6 million), Louisiana ($5.7 million to $5.6 million) and North Carolina ($17.6 million to $7.8 million).$5.6 vs $8.5 don't fully account for that, but I'm sure that all the "Dark Money" is not counted in those figures either.
TP relies on it's media arm doing most of the heavy lifting to keep the low information voter in the dark -- and then they have the steady stream of "Undocumented Democrats" living and dead that reliably come out of vote thanks to "mail it in", "no ID allowed" and a host of other techniques to (eg. bogus legal actions .
It's a miracle that there are still any opposition candidates elected ... a miracle that TP tirelessly works to suppress.
'via Blog this'
Mass Intelligence, 1982, 9-21-2014
Busy Days Precede a March Focusing on Climate Change - NYTimes.com:
Lack of perspective and hubris, two hallmarks of humanity that are often starkly displayed in the large -- hundreds of thousands of agitated, morally certain, angry, self righteous humanity displaying their certainty that the mob has to be right.
The linked article about the Global Warming (GW) march in NYC scheduled for this Sunday mentions a couple of times that this is expected to be the largest march since the nuclear freeze march in '82.
I was very alive n '82, it was my 4th year at IBM. There were people at IBM "10%?" that were VERY afraid of the "Reagan the madman" ... some had "bug out shelters" in NW WI, most were just afraid, honestly afraid. The HATRED of Reagan and Thatcher in the early '80s for a large segment of the population -- close in size and even more vocal than even the GW segment today was significant. Reagan was maligned by the press and intelligentsia worse than the Tea Party today -- there was no Fox News or Talk Radio to defend him.
"Reagan was going to get us all killed". They were CERTAIN of it. They were ABSOLUTELY certain not only that the USSR was going to be around "at least as long as the US, and likely longer", but they and NPR, NYTs, etc had a good deal of glowing coverage of life in the USSR -- free education, free medical care, total equality for women, abortion on demand for free ... only the "closed minded" in America could not appreciate the many advantages of their system. Daniel Ortega, Marxist dictator of Nicaragua was a cool celebrity -- a modern Che Guevera. He hobnobbed with Bianca Jagger.
All those 100's of thousands of people marching were absolutely certain that things like the MX missile, and any sort of missile defense system, "Star Wars" or other would absolutely get us killed! To think otherwise showed delusion, a total unwillingness to understand reality as it actually was. Intellectual weakness -- having been brainwashed by the evil Reagan and the "Military Industrial Complex" -- the elite in "The Party" (D), education and the MSM all KNEW that Reagan's proposals COULD NOT WORK. The USSR was (in their view at the time, thankfully) with us forever -- we would be better to learn from the many good points of their system than to malign it and pretend that it could be defeated as the idiot Reagan proposed.
So here we are today. Some of the same people that organized that march, certain then, and STILL certain -- their ability to question their predictions has not changed a bit in over 30 years. They were certain that folks that disagreed with their World View and predictions then were "stupid, deluded, not willing to see the real world, etc). They feel the same way now, and I'm quite certain they, and their intellectual offspring, will be just as certain on a new front 30 years from now.
There is a reason that our founders distrusted democracy and founded a REPUBLIC. Hubris and lack of perspective would be two of those reasons.
'via Blog this'
Lack of perspective and hubris, two hallmarks of humanity that are often starkly displayed in the large -- hundreds of thousands of agitated, morally certain, angry, self righteous humanity displaying their certainty that the mob has to be right.
The linked article about the Global Warming (GW) march in NYC scheduled for this Sunday mentions a couple of times that this is expected to be the largest march since the nuclear freeze march in '82.
I was very alive n '82, it was my 4th year at IBM. There were people at IBM "10%?" that were VERY afraid of the "Reagan the madman" ... some had "bug out shelters" in NW WI, most were just afraid, honestly afraid. The HATRED of Reagan and Thatcher in the early '80s for a large segment of the population -- close in size and even more vocal than even the GW segment today was significant. Reagan was maligned by the press and intelligentsia worse than the Tea Party today -- there was no Fox News or Talk Radio to defend him.
"Reagan was going to get us all killed". They were CERTAIN of it. They were ABSOLUTELY certain not only that the USSR was going to be around "at least as long as the US, and likely longer", but they and NPR, NYTs, etc had a good deal of glowing coverage of life in the USSR -- free education, free medical care, total equality for women, abortion on demand for free ... only the "closed minded" in America could not appreciate the many advantages of their system. Daniel Ortega, Marxist dictator of Nicaragua was a cool celebrity -- a modern Che Guevera. He hobnobbed with Bianca Jagger.
All those 100's of thousands of people marching were absolutely certain that things like the MX missile, and any sort of missile defense system, "Star Wars" or other would absolutely get us killed! To think otherwise showed delusion, a total unwillingness to understand reality as it actually was. Intellectual weakness -- having been brainwashed by the evil Reagan and the "Military Industrial Complex" -- the elite in "The Party" (D), education and the MSM all KNEW that Reagan's proposals COULD NOT WORK. The USSR was (in their view at the time, thankfully) with us forever -- we would be better to learn from the many good points of their system than to malign it and pretend that it could be defeated as the idiot Reagan proposed.
So here we are today. Some of the same people that organized that march, certain then, and STILL certain -- their ability to question their predictions has not changed a bit in over 30 years. They were certain that folks that disagreed with their World View and predictions then were "stupid, deluded, not willing to see the real world, etc). They feel the same way now, and I'm quite certain they, and their intellectual offspring, will be just as certain on a new front 30 years from now.
There is a reason that our founders distrusted democracy and founded a REPUBLIC. Hubris and lack of perspective would be two of those reasons.
'via Blog this'
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Stopped Clocks and Time Machines
Obama Beyond Bush - NYTimes.com:
The mental pain and gyrations that liberals are going through as they come to realize that BO is and always was a disaster, the world is blowing up all over, and the domestic economy is disastrously stuck in late '70s mode, is interesting to watch. I started this with a somewhat hopeful note for dawning reason in an obviously "progressive" ideological brain.
Nobody died in Watergate, nobody even had their donor lists released or summarily audited on an ideological basis. Yes, yes, I understand that if your ideology rules all else in your brain, it is OK to see those that don't agree with that ideology punished by your party, but even worse than people dying? Try another beer
Harding and Coolidge presided over the "roaring 20's" a period of peace and prosperity in America. "Progressives" easily forget the harm an activist president can do, especially one that fails the Outlaw Josie Wales test ("A man's got to know his limitations"). This means they lack the understanding that a stopped clock is at least right twice a day, but a clock that is actively off is NEVER right.
"First do no harm" is an EXCEEDINGLY wise maxim, impossible for "progressives" to understand because they demand that "SOMETHING be done!". One would hope that maybe they won't forget it quite so quickly after BO., but I'm quite certain that is a vain hope.
'via Blog this'
The mental pain and gyrations that liberals are going through as they come to realize that BO is and always was a disaster, the world is blowing up all over, and the domestic economy is disastrously stuck in late '70s mode, is interesting to watch. I started this with a somewhat hopeful note for dawning reason in an obviously "progressive" ideological brain.
And with the Middle East, those defenders sometimes turn Bush’s epic mistakes into Obama’s hall pass. Perhaps he hasn’t figured out what’s right, but he isn’t guilty of the original wrong, which is constantly being litigated anew, as if a fresh verdict on the events of 2003 could alter the challenges and stakes of 2014.It looked like this guy had figured out that any policy which requires a time machine to be successful is not very likely to be successful, but alas, this columnist is still stuck in his ideological cave, staring at shadows on the wall trying to make the shadows he sees fit his ideological model. He is in a bad way.
The I.R.S. scandal was not as bad as Watergate. (Nothing’s ever as bad as Watergate, which serves a nifty historical function as the gold standard of executive malfeasance and mendacity.)NOTHING is ever as bad as Watergate? It is true that everyone believes in something -- Christians believe in the deity and saving Grace of Christ, some folks just "believe they will have another beer". I submit that "I believe I will have another beer" is INFINITELY better on the "gotta believe in something" front than "nothing's ever as bad as Watergate"!
Nobody died in Watergate, nobody even had their donor lists released or summarily audited on an ideological basis. Yes, yes, I understand that if your ideology rules all else in your brain, it is OK to see those that don't agree with that ideology punished by your party, but even worse than people dying? Try another beer
If we’re determined to glance back at a figure who flatters Obama, let’s really have at it and look all the way to Warren Harding. Golf wasn’t his only distraction. He also had a thing for poker. And when it came to seeming and feeling overwhelmed, the 29th president, an Ohio Republican, reputedly confessed to friends that he was lost in the job.How far the mighty have fallen. I understand that someone with the ideological model of this columnist MUST find a Republican rather than the actual 20th century gold standard for failed presidents, Carter, but to see the mental gyrations required is almost painful.
By that measure Obama is a rock. But it doesn’t make him a boulder.
Harding and Coolidge presided over the "roaring 20's" a period of peace and prosperity in America. "Progressives" easily forget the harm an activist president can do, especially one that fails the Outlaw Josie Wales test ("A man's got to know his limitations"). This means they lack the understanding that a stopped clock is at least right twice a day, but a clock that is actively off is NEVER right.
"First do no harm" is an EXCEEDINGLY wise maxim, impossible for "progressives" to understand because they demand that "SOMETHING be done!". One would hope that maybe they won't forget it quite so quickly after BO., but I'm quite certain that is a vain hope.
'via Blog this'
Fascism, BOism, The NFL
The left prepares to cash in on Ray Rice | Power Line:
The last couple of weeks it has become obvious that it is time to brush up on our "isms" ... Fascism and Socialism being the main ones that need to be re-understood from time to time, because the last thing The Party (TP) and guys like BO want is truth in political labeling.
If you tend to not believe a lot of what I say (ALWAYS a very wise decision!), you can access some of my own brush up source material from Thomas Sowell and Jonah Goldberg (his excellent book "Liberal Fascism" (Moosetracks review) ought to be read by all thinking Americans).
First a simple way to sort these out ... and we will throw in Communism for good measure, is:
Like all human institutions though, these get muddy. Nationalism, a form of Tribalism is a endemic to all humans but especially Fascism. Christianity was a GIANT leap forward because it allowed all mankind to be part of a single "tribe" or "extended family" ... blood brothers in Christ's blood. BO is an avowed Luo tribalist whose declared identity is in the anti-colonial tribalism of his father and grandfather ("Dreams FROM my Father").
The non-Christian reader might say, "Well, I don't see how being a Christian nation is any better than this, it is just different rules".
I'm not going to do a long answer to that, but for a few points -- Christianity is a couple thousand years old, Fascism is a "tribalism of the day / the man", it's rules are arbitrary in a way well beyond Christianity, even if you don't recognize divinity. Since Christianity is transcendent (at least in time for a non-believer), it is much more immune from the day to day whims of individuals and groups -- it short circuits the "a lot of people agree with me" approach to "right" (just a version of might (numbers) make right) ... the question of right and wrong becomes more than only a matter of the biggest armies.
One of my favorite turns of history was Stalin's "How many divisions does the Pope have"? It turned out, just enough to consign the USSR to the ash heap of history!
May we constantly pray that enough divisions rise up to do the same to modern BOism.
'via Blog this'
The last couple of weeks it has become obvious that it is time to brush up on our "isms" ... Fascism and Socialism being the main ones that need to be re-understood from time to time, because the last thing The Party (TP) and guys like BO want is truth in political labeling.
If you tend to not believe a lot of what I say (ALWAYS a very wise decision!), you can access some of my own brush up source material from Thomas Sowell and Jonah Goldberg (his excellent book "Liberal Fascism" (Moosetracks review) ought to be read by all thinking Americans).
First a simple way to sort these out ... and we will throw in Communism for good measure, is:
- Communism -- The State owns everything. No individual property.
- Socialism -- The State owns "the major industries", you get to keep your house (maybe).
- Fascism -- The State decrees and regulates business, private life, etc. but it doesn't "own it" ... only the credit when things go well, business owns the blame when it goes bad.
- Freedom -- The State is the servant of the people. It is limited by a Constitution to what it is allowed to do. Man is free because government is limited. (Reagan)
What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.
Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from Obama's point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a scapegoat all the time.
Like all human institutions though, these get muddy. Nationalism, a form of Tribalism is a endemic to all humans but especially Fascism. Christianity was a GIANT leap forward because it allowed all mankind to be part of a single "tribe" or "extended family" ... blood brothers in Christ's blood. BO is an avowed Luo tribalist whose declared identity is in the anti-colonial tribalism of his father and grandfather ("Dreams FROM my Father").
For a long time I sat between the two graves and wept. When my tears were finally spent, I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America— the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I’d felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I’d witnessed in Chicago— all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain I felt was my father’s pain. My questions were my brothers’ questions. Their struggle, my birthright.In this post-Christian, post-Constitutional America, led by a Fascist Luo Tribesman, even the NFL feels the lash of the Fascist overlords. This is a quote from the linked article:
Obama, Barack (2007-01-09). Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (Kindle Locations 7524-7529). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
Whenever an institution becomes as massive as the NFL, the ideologically driven will attempt to enlist the institution for their own purposes. There was a time when some conservatives enlisted the NFL in an ideological sense as a symbol of American virtues. Nowadays, though, it’s the left that wants to use football, not as a metaphor for American virtue (in which it doesn’t really believe), but to advance specific agenda items and/or to shake the NFL down.The Powerline column is well done, but I fear it fails to make the proper connections ... in a Constitutional Republic America, there would be no such ideologically driven power, in a Socialist America, the government would own the NFL. Only in a Fascist America is what we see possible :
But the NFL is not in the message-sending business and has no duty to send correct messages to “society.” If the criminal justice system is functioning properly, “society” will receive the proper message about domestic violence. If it isn’t, that’s not the NFL’s fault.Ah, but in a Fascist / Tribal society, it IS the NFL's responsibility! It is the responsibility of all in "the tribe" to be on the right message -- be that environmentalism, gay marriage, gun control or the war on big-gulps! In MN, Marx Dayton has similarly weighed in on Adrian Peterson.
The non-Christian reader might say, "Well, I don't see how being a Christian nation is any better than this, it is just different rules".
I'm not going to do a long answer to that, but for a few points -- Christianity is a couple thousand years old, Fascism is a "tribalism of the day / the man", it's rules are arbitrary in a way well beyond Christianity, even if you don't recognize divinity. Since Christianity is transcendent (at least in time for a non-believer), it is much more immune from the day to day whims of individuals and groups -- it short circuits the "a lot of people agree with me" approach to "right" (just a version of might (numbers) make right) ... the question of right and wrong becomes more than only a matter of the biggest armies.
One of my favorite turns of history was Stalin's "How many divisions does the Pope have"? It turned out, just enough to consign the USSR to the ash heap of history!
May we constantly pray that enough divisions rise up to do the same to modern BOism.
'via Blog this'
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
A Little Unraveling from the New York Times
The Great Unraveling - NYTimes.com:
Nothing in this column that hasn't been predicted or observed in this Blog since at least 2006, but one by one the more idealistic of the left recognize the "unraveling", the rot, the decline, the inevitable slide when the people and policies they imagined to bring about a "brave new world" inevitably and inexorably fail horribly.
More poetic than my writing, and this is the New York Times. Reality gets us all ... eventually. They may not see their role in it, but as he mentions at the end, connecting those dots is especially hard when it is of yourself they speak.
Let's see, "The challenge of our time" is supposed to be Global Warming. Read the linked column and imagine where Climate Change is likely to be on the list of world issues if this "unraveling" continues.
'via Blog this'
Nothing in this column that hasn't been predicted or observed in this Blog since at least 2006, but one by one the more idealistic of the left recognize the "unraveling", the rot, the decline, the inevitable slide when the people and policies they imagined to bring about a "brave new world" inevitably and inexorably fail horribly.
More poetic than my writing, and this is the New York Times. Reality gets us all ... eventually. They may not see their role in it, but as he mentions at the end, connecting those dots is especially hard when it is of yourself they speak.
Let's see, "The challenge of our time" is supposed to be Global Warming. Read the linked column and imagine where Climate Change is likely to be on the list of world issues if this "unraveling" continues.
'via Blog this'
W Poll Numbers 124, BO 9!
MRC Study: TV Buries the Bad News on Obama’s Collapsing Polls:
In '06, the big three networks found W's sliding numbers to be worthy of 124 mentions, this year, BO's similarly sliding numbers are worth 9 mentions in the same period.
We know the answer -- people are affected by continually hearing about a presidents low poll numbers. It creates a feedback loop and the poll numbers go lower -- Americans like winners, not losers, and when someone's poll numbers are sliding and you are asked what you think of them, 90% of people will go with the crowd.
So it was important for the MSM to pound on W's poll numbers as it is now important for them to say nothing about BOs -- they wanted Democrats elected in '06 and hammering on W's poll numbers was a good way to help that. This year they want to minimize Democrat losses, so keeping BO's numbers out of the news is the right strategy.
Oh, and maybe we ought to do somethings to make sure that nobody BUT the MSM gets to have a voice -- let's have a lot of campaign finance control to prevent any speech from the "wrong side" from leaking out!
'via Blog this'
In '06, the big three networks found W's sliding numbers to be worthy of 124 mentions, this year, BO's similarly sliding numbers are worth 9 mentions in the same period.
Media Research Center analysts reviewed every reference on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts to public opinion polls from January 1 through August 31, 2014, and from the same time period in 2006. Eight years ago, the networks aired 124 evening news reports which cited public opinion polls about either President Bush’s overall approval rating or his handling of specific policies. In 2014, those same broadcasts produced only nine reports which mentioned public opinion surveys related to President Obama. - See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/rich-noyes/2014/09/08/mrc-study-tv-buries-bad-news-obamas-collapsing-polls#sthash.HPgrpfIT.dpuf
We know the answer -- people are affected by continually hearing about a presidents low poll numbers. It creates a feedback loop and the poll numbers go lower -- Americans like winners, not losers, and when someone's poll numbers are sliding and you are asked what you think of them, 90% of people will go with the crowd.
So it was important for the MSM to pound on W's poll numbers as it is now important for them to say nothing about BOs -- they wanted Democrats elected in '06 and hammering on W's poll numbers was a good way to help that. This year they want to minimize Democrat losses, so keeping BO's numbers out of the news is the right strategy.
Oh, and maybe we ought to do somethings to make sure that nobody BUT the MSM gets to have a voice -- let's have a lot of campaign finance control to prevent any speech from the "wrong side" from leaking out!
'via Blog this'
MSM Coverage, Palin vs Hillary
Democratic Party Media Run Interference for Hillary | Power Line:
The kind of simple easy analysis of the obvious that I believe we all need to do to keep a little perspective on how much our news diet is wired to what The Party and it's MSM arm want us to see and think.
So the Palin family gets in a brawl in Anchorage -- let's see, how much do we hear about John Edwards these days?? Nuff said.
Oh, State scrubbed a bunch of documents to remove anything that might embarrass Hillary? Now THAT is a story we DON'T need to hear anything about!
Think about how much coverage any rumor, innuendo, etc related to possible questions about how good an Air National Guard pilot GW Bush was in the guard from '68-'74. '74 - '04 is 30 years and it was a huge story -- huge enough to take down Dan Rather trying to peddle "fake but true" documents in an effort by CBS News to directly influence the '04 election. Any concern of a "Citizen's United" type about a major corporate media outlet directly trying to influence an election using forged documents? Nope.
Benghazi? That was 2012, Hillary was Secretary of State, our Ambassador was killed -- no story here folks, move along. "Republican witch hunt".
The most insidious part of this is that "most people" -- 80-90%, don't want to be seen as "rocking the boat, not in the mainstream, etc". Questions about W's guard record become "normal day to day news conversation" ... exposure makes such stories seem perfectly valid. "There MUST be something there, or the media wouldn't cover it so much". Ah, the credulous lambs -- exactly what TP and the MSM want to foster.
Then we have the reverse, the MSM basically carries the "What does it matter now" water for Hillary ... even days after the event it is "old news, nothing to discuss here", and to even mention the word "Benghazi" identifies you as somebody that is not following the "standard media narrative" -- a spot that 80%+ of people are uncomfortable with. They don't want to be an "outlier", so they stay quiet.
And so a once free and vibrant people is ground down to be afraid to stand up and question the message that TP and the MSM so carefully crafts for them, and freedom dies. This is exactly how a free people slowly slide to a totalitarian state with nary a whimper.
'via Blog this'
The kind of simple easy analysis of the obvious that I believe we all need to do to keep a little perspective on how much our news diet is wired to what The Party and it's MSM arm want us to see and think.
So the Palin family gets in a brawl in Anchorage -- let's see, how much do we hear about John Edwards these days?? Nuff said.
Oh, State scrubbed a bunch of documents to remove anything that might embarrass Hillary? Now THAT is a story we DON'T need to hear anything about!
Think about how much coverage any rumor, innuendo, etc related to possible questions about how good an Air National Guard pilot GW Bush was in the guard from '68-'74. '74 - '04 is 30 years and it was a huge story -- huge enough to take down Dan Rather trying to peddle "fake but true" documents in an effort by CBS News to directly influence the '04 election. Any concern of a "Citizen's United" type about a major corporate media outlet directly trying to influence an election using forged documents? Nope.
Benghazi? That was 2012, Hillary was Secretary of State, our Ambassador was killed -- no story here folks, move along. "Republican witch hunt".
The most insidious part of this is that "most people" -- 80-90%, don't want to be seen as "rocking the boat, not in the mainstream, etc". Questions about W's guard record become "normal day to day news conversation" ... exposure makes such stories seem perfectly valid. "There MUST be something there, or the media wouldn't cover it so much". Ah, the credulous lambs -- exactly what TP and the MSM want to foster.
Then we have the reverse, the MSM basically carries the "What does it matter now" water for Hillary ... even days after the event it is "old news, nothing to discuss here", and to even mention the word "Benghazi" identifies you as somebody that is not following the "standard media narrative" -- a spot that 80%+ of people are uncomfortable with. They don't want to be an "outlier", so they stay quiet.
And so a once free and vibrant people is ground down to be afraid to stand up and question the message that TP and the MSM so carefully crafts for them, and freedom dies. This is exactly how a free people slowly slide to a totalitarian state with nary a whimper.
'via Blog this'
Monday, September 15, 2014
BO ISIL, Definition Matters
Why Obama’s use of the term ISIL instead of ISIS is actually really important – Glenn Beck:
One has to laugh ... our former president was ahead of his time ... "Depends on what your definition of Is Is!"
Glenn covers what I've covered here before ... the Levant encompases Israel, BO DOES want "peace in the Middle East" ... have a Caliphate that runs from Egypt through Turkey and there will be peace!
'via Blog this'
One has to laugh ... our former president was ahead of his time ... "Depends on what your definition of Is Is!"
Glenn covers what I've covered here before ... the Levant encompases Israel, BO DOES want "peace in the Middle East" ... have a Caliphate that runs from Egypt through Turkey and there will be peace!
'via Blog this'
Fat Drunk and Stupid
We Have Always Been at War With ISIL! | Power Line:
The video at the link is from CNN, and it would make one roll on the floor and laugh if it was not so sad. BO has been very clear that "The War on Terror" is over. But now, we are doing "something" that Lurch (The French looking former Senator that served in Vietnam) characterizes as "A Very Significant Counter Terrorism Operation" (VSCTO) ... kind of reminds me of MUTO from Godzilla ... Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism".
The sycophants at CNN are having a hard time figuring out what the rulers that they are sworn to support and never question even WANT them to say. Is it a "war"?, is it a VSCTO? Is it with ISIL, ISIS, or as NPR calls it "The self-named Islamic State" ... no longer feeling good calling it ISIS after his Linksmanship BO said it was "Not Islamic and not a State", and continues to add credence to it's largest territorial claims as "The Levant" which is the whole Eastern Mediterranean including Gaza, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Cyprus, Iraq and Southern Turkey.
We are right back to the late 70s ... a nation so confused and out of touch with reality that we are ripe for any sort of major attack. We have no leadership and are in the situation of being the biggest guy in the bar dead drunk, stumbling around being stupid with our pants around our knees and just waiting for someone to kick us in the balls and get a cheer from the rest of the patrons.
'via Blog this'
The video at the link is from CNN, and it would make one roll on the floor and laugh if it was not so sad. BO has been very clear that "The War on Terror" is over. But now, we are doing "something" that Lurch (The French looking former Senator that served in Vietnam) characterizes as "A Very Significant Counter Terrorism Operation" (VSCTO) ... kind of reminds me of MUTO from Godzilla ... Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism".
The sycophants at CNN are having a hard time figuring out what the rulers that they are sworn to support and never question even WANT them to say. Is it a "war"?, is it a VSCTO? Is it with ISIL, ISIS, or as NPR calls it "The self-named Islamic State" ... no longer feeling good calling it ISIS after his Linksmanship BO said it was "Not Islamic and not a State", and continues to add credence to it's largest territorial claims as "The Levant" which is the whole Eastern Mediterranean including Gaza, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Cyprus, Iraq and Southern Turkey.
We are right back to the late 70s ... a nation so confused and out of touch with reality that we are ripe for any sort of major attack. We have no leadership and are in the situation of being the biggest guy in the bar dead drunk, stumbling around being stupid with our pants around our knees and just waiting for someone to kick us in the balls and get a cheer from the rest of the patrons.
'via Blog this'
A Nice Simple Diagram of Liberal Inconsistency
The Law of Supply and Demand In One Venn Diagram | Power Line:
Replace "Krugman" with "liberals" and it just about covers it. It is much worse than this picture -- liberals are consistently inconsistent because they believe that they can take all sorts of actions in the real world and somehow pick and choose the results -- often claiming they will achieve the exact opposite result of what their actions are guaranteed to achieve in the real world. Or, they know what they are doing and simply want to create a dependent voter population that will keep them in power.
Thus, on one hand they claim that the ONLY effect of raising the minimum wage will be to help minimum wage workers by giving them more per hour. However, when the price of something is raised (labor), the demand for it WILL go down -- the only question is how much, which economists attempt to answer by "elasticity". Demand for cigarettes was often used as an example when I was taking economics, however there isn't anything that is perfectly inelastic -- it would have to have no substitutes and all consumers would have to have infinite wealth relative to the price of the commodity -- ie. be ABLE to pay whatever the price rose to.
But I digress. The fast food market is quite elastic and there are lots of substitutes -- technology being the obvious one, less people eating more expensive fast food, etc. Raising the minimum wage always reduces the number of people working -- a win-win for Democrats, since both the minimum wage workers and the unemployed tend to vote Democrat. BUT, the fiction given to the public is that raising the minimum wage will not cause more unemployment, when it is a given that it will.
Which as the chart points out, might mean that people that don't understand economics are fooled -- but the flip side means that can't be true. Cap and trade argues that "supply and demand works!" -- that by raising the price of using carbon, the demand for carbon will fall.
So if liberals were reality based, they would say that they are fine with the economy being vastly slowed by taxes and fees on carbon, because they care about warming in 100 years more than they do about jobs, income, etc today.
On the raising the minimum wage they would admit they are fine with a LOT less people having jobs as long as a few can have higher wages.. Or they would admit that they are absolutely fine with the lowering of productivity and national wealth via high taxes on corporate and personal income, because having everyone's standard of living being generally lowered by redistributing income so they are more government dependent is perfectly in line with their strategy to be a one party socialist state!
The left is well on it's way to achieving it's goals -- inconsistency and force are the two cornerstones of leftward thought.
'via Blog this'
Replace "Krugman" with "liberals" and it just about covers it. It is much worse than this picture -- liberals are consistently inconsistent because they believe that they can take all sorts of actions in the real world and somehow pick and choose the results -- often claiming they will achieve the exact opposite result of what their actions are guaranteed to achieve in the real world. Or, they know what they are doing and simply want to create a dependent voter population that will keep them in power.
Thus, on one hand they claim that the ONLY effect of raising the minimum wage will be to help minimum wage workers by giving them more per hour. However, when the price of something is raised (labor), the demand for it WILL go down -- the only question is how much, which economists attempt to answer by "elasticity". Demand for cigarettes was often used as an example when I was taking economics, however there isn't anything that is perfectly inelastic -- it would have to have no substitutes and all consumers would have to have infinite wealth relative to the price of the commodity -- ie. be ABLE to pay whatever the price rose to.
But I digress. The fast food market is quite elastic and there are lots of substitutes -- technology being the obvious one, less people eating more expensive fast food, etc. Raising the minimum wage always reduces the number of people working -- a win-win for Democrats, since both the minimum wage workers and the unemployed tend to vote Democrat. BUT, the fiction given to the public is that raising the minimum wage will not cause more unemployment, when it is a given that it will.
Which as the chart points out, might mean that people that don't understand economics are fooled -- but the flip side means that can't be true. Cap and trade argues that "supply and demand works!" -- that by raising the price of using carbon, the demand for carbon will fall.
So if liberals were reality based, they would say that they are fine with the economy being vastly slowed by taxes and fees on carbon, because they care about warming in 100 years more than they do about jobs, income, etc today.
On the raising the minimum wage they would admit they are fine with a LOT less people having jobs as long as a few can have higher wages.. Or they would admit that they are absolutely fine with the lowering of productivity and national wealth via high taxes on corporate and personal income, because having everyone's standard of living being generally lowered by redistributing income so they are more government dependent is perfectly in line with their strategy to be a one party socialist state!
The left is well on it's way to achieving it's goals -- inconsistency and force are the two cornerstones of leftward thought.
'via Blog this'
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