Of Minions and Servility

The Age of Minions | National Review Online:

I'm developing a little envy of Kevin Williamson's writing -- I know envy is sin, but he is good and I'm human.

I like this particular article mostly for entertainment --  Begala is an easy target for the minion label. He has that shifty weasel look that screams minion. I'm convinced that everyone in the Clinton Crime Family had to commit at least one felony to be accepted -- I'm guessing that Begala stole money from his blind Grandmother.

It is worth reading the whole thing for entertainment value --- by favorite zinger was this:

Some men are born servile, some achieve servility, and some have servility thrust upon them. There is something rank and defective in some men’s souls that simply needs to abase itself — not before God, or Nietzsche’s Abyss, or the Stoics’ clockwork universe, but before ordinary mortal men and women who might, had things turned out only a little differently, manage a Chipotle rather than use one as a stage for political theater.

Sadly, humor always has to rest on truth to have any bite, and I fear the article points to a monstrous truth. The reason that this is "The Age of Minions" here is because this is NOT America -- you remember it don't you? "The land of the FREE and the home of the BRAVE"!

Minions are neither free or brave, and those that willing accept that sort of drivel that seeps out of their mouths are not free or brave either. They are servile. America is over 50% servile.

Over 50% of our population now draws a "significant part of their living" from government! Sure, we  may have paid into FICA, Medicare, etc but the fact is that we paid in knowing that it was a corrupt program. We knew the money was being spent in lieu of what ought to have been higher taxes or debt, but we still voted the people running the program in over and over and made it "the third rail".

W courageously tried to touch that rail by converting part of the program into ACTUAL investment, but was soundly beaten. My belief is that a lot of the the opprobrium he reaped was actually due to that sin against all our corruption -- Iraq and Katrina were just excuses to help keep our national Ponzi Scheme rolling a bit longer.

FICA is the apple by which socialism has corrupted the very core of what was once America. Even people that believe they are "patriotic Americans" will howl "It is MY money, **I** paid it in, how DARE THEY claim that it is broke!!!!".

This is very simple. Freedom requires that enough people are reality based to keep the country free. Freedom requires that Government be LIMITED! It requires a majority of people over at least the long run to be willing to seek the truth of reality rather than allow themselves to be bribed by their own politicians with the blood and treasure of their offspring.

FICA is a bedtime fairy tale founded on the idea that at least half of the people pay into a big kitty and die before they collect -- age 62 was the average age of death for a man when FDR set up his scheme. Everyone likes to believe they are an above average driver, will live longer than the average age, and are certainly a bit smarter than average!

Government being as naturally corrupt as government is, they decided "Why bother to have any trust fund at all? We will just spend the money and future generations will have to pay it! We will buy today's votes on the backs of future generations!"

As long as the population and the economy were growing, this scheme looked like it could just keep going on forever, and in the 60's, the Democrats gave it a "kicker" -- they would sweeten the pie in the sky by and by pot with medical care as well!

We ABSOLUTELY KNOW that FICA and Medicare as well as US debt have crossed the rubicon from crisis to disaster. Why? Because nobody is talking about them -- the US is now like the Titanic after it hit the ice berg, but before it developed a very serious list. Go scan the internet -- articles about the financial state of the US Government are RARE! Perhaps one should look at the report from the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds

Neither Medicare nor Social Security can sustain projected long-run program costs in full under currently scheduled financing, and legislative changes are necessary to avoid disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers. If lawmakers take action sooner rather than later, more options and more time will be available to phase in changes so that the public has adequate time to prepare. Earlier action will also help elected officials minimize adverse impacts on vulnerable populations, including lower-income workers and people already dependent on program benefits.

That is just the summary ... it gets worse when one delves into it a bit. The SHORT TERM situation is really bad too -- like some benefits start not going out in 2016 !!

Let me explain the yellow a bit. Following the Titanic analogy, NOW is a great time to start getting some of the folks on the lower decks into some lifeboats! This puppy is GOING DOWN!

But let's face it, the percentage of people willing to face this fact is low -- so, for those of you who are, God, Guns, Gold, Gardens ... and maybe a place next to a lake in significantly out of the way fly-over country. It is going to get MUCH worse before there is any hope of improvement.

We have people like BO, Begala, Hillary -- the Williamson article christens her "Herself", very fitting, although I still kind of like "Hildebeast" which came from Michelle Obama's staff,  because we richly deserve them. As a nation, we would like to look at ANYTHING rather than the fix we are in -- Global Warming, the tiny number of incidents of white police shooting blacks, imaginary pay gaps for women, the Apple Watch ... ANYTHING!

It remains to be seen if any Republican is going to be willing to run on the TRUTH. I doubt it, and it is almost certainly a losing strategy anyway. HOWEVER, in my book it needs to be out there -- like Churchill crying in the wilderness in the 30's. Because when our situation becomes impossible to ignore, there will be millions of shell shocked people running around yelling "nobody told us"!!

That in itself is proof we are no longer free people -- free people SEEK THE TRUTH! But given that we are where we are, hopefully somebody will tell the servile masses just how bad the situation is, because that is one more way to be ready to pick up the pieces after the disaster.


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Lawfare, WI Conservatives Attacked At Home

Wisconsin’s Shame: I Thought It Was a Home Invasion:

The linked article is long, but it is WELL WORTH the read!

I've given to both Scott Walker and WI Club For Growth, so I suppose my home could be next. I'm not sure how well I would do in that scenario -- some chance I'd end up in a body bag, almost no chance I wouldn't be roughed up some.

THIS is what has happened to what used to be America!

Once these things happen and the government officials escape long jail sentences, they WILL happen again! I suspect that odds that they will get those sentences are VERY low, but that is SAD beyond belief! We now live in a country so politicized that the hatred for Scott Walker is enough that people are willing to stand by while their neighbors homes and lives are attacked by the very government that is supposed to serve them as an act of political vengeance!

Speaking both on and off the record, targets reflected on how many layers of Wisconsin government failed their fundamental constitutional duties — the prosecutors who launched the rogue investigations, the judge who gave the abuse judicial sanction, investigators who chose to taunt and intimidate during the raids, and those police who ultimately approved and executed aggressive search tactics on law-abiding, peaceful citizens.

No doubt a "progressive" reading this is CERTAIN that it will not happen to them! I tend to agree -- the odds against some sort of conservative usurpation of power that was equivalent to this is highly unlikely for the foreseeable future -- but anything is possible. Future Mormon and Hispanic Catholic coalition rises to over 50% of the voters and has their way? It IS unlikely -- but I'd ask "progressives" to consider -- What if it was YOUR home being invaded? !! Even if you truly believe that this won't happen to you, is it not pure evil to stand by and allow it to be done to others? How did we slip this far??

What is obvious from the article is that THE RULE OF LAW HAS BROKEN DOWN! If the prosecutors, judges and investigators that did this fail to get LONG jail sentences, then we have to all realize that this is going to happen more and more frequently and on a wider scale until any voices that oppose a single party system operated by unionized government workers have been silenced!

The CORE of this problem is the reality of public employees unionizing -- FDR recognized this danger, but he apparently failed to understand the problem with "progressivism" -- it MUST keep "progressing", there is NEVER "enough"!

"All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," ... "It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management."

"The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations,"

"The employer, is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters."

If the government can't be trusted to provide fair working conditions and wages for it's OWN employees without them needing to resort to a strike and collective bargaining, how could it possibly be trusted to administer the laws of the land, control commerce, trade, assistance to the poor, elderly, how much water your toilet flushes, declare the CO2 you breath out an environmental poison controlled by the EPA, etc, etc? In FDRs view, the Government was the "ultimate good" -- how could it possibly be OK for it's own employees to strike?

But the temptations of vast amounts of campaign contributions to be funneled into the Democrat party, along with a strong national organization that linked federal, state and local government workers into one giant voting and political action block was just too great to be ignored, so the monolithic AFSCME union was created.

Legal corruption on a massive scale -- the prosecutors, judges, investigators and the street cops that kicked in the conservatives doors were either members of the union itself, or typically had family members that were. Walker took on a legalized MOB -- the State version of "The Godfather"!

Reagan said it best, "When government is not limited, man is not free"!

Take the time to read through the linked article. THIS is what those of us that have a tiny vestige of independent thought are up against -- and our odds don't look good at all!

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Narrative Fatigue, Good Men Do Nothing

Judith Miller Recants; Where's the Media? | RealClearPolitics:

Burke famously said that "All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing".

When we hear that, we tend to think in terms of good people standing by in Nazi Germany while millions of Jews were killed, or maybe the attack on the street of some vulnerable person while a crowd does nothing.

Unfortunately, it usually doesn't happen like that, and the reason is that the good people have simply been worn down by the banality of evil -- the day by day drumbeat of the media, the dominant party, and the educational system. Eventually, the people that need to put the brakes on the inexorable rise of government power just get beaten down and say; "I've HAD IT!"

And then the left has won.

I've written WAY more than I remotely care about on the whole Fitzgerald as Special Prosecutor, Valeria Plame, Joe Wilson, etc. -- the topic is maddening, arcane, surrealistic and depressing.

Here was how the media reacted when BO outed an ACTUAL undercover CIA agent (hint, they didn't care)

Here was a deeper discussion on how perjury is used in many cases and Clinton gives the false impression in the public mind that it isn't a big deal.

Here was some background on how we knew the whole thing was some sort of a setup by State -- there was NO NDA for Joe Wison!

There have been other mentions, but the bottom line covered in the linked article is that it appears that not even the perjury charge that Fitzgerald eventually made stick against Libby was actually legitimate -- THE WHOLE DAMNED THING WAS A LIE!

But then, to not realize that is to grossly underestimate the power of the left and it's control of the media.

Given that Fitzgerald’s three-and-a-half year-long investigation and prosecution of Libby riveted the nation’s capital and generated vast news coverage implying, when not outright declaring, that the Bush administration lied the nation into war, one might think that recantation of testimony by a pivotal prosecution witness would command attention and excite controversy.

Just imagine how the MSM would be howling if BO had been under a special prosecutor investigation for ANY of or each ---  Gun Runner, IRS targeting conservative groups, Benghazi, Hillary Clinton destroying e-mails, or a long list of others certainly more serious than the ABSOLUTELY NOTHING which was the surrealistic Plame affair. It would be easy to argue that each of the BO scandals is more serious than Watergate -- nobody died in Watergate, as they did in Gun Runner and Benghazi, and the separation of powers and destruction of evidence issues were far less in Watergate than in IRS and the Hillary e-mails.

But to even think along those lines is to completely miss the power of the left - D - media connection and how they operate in lock step! The PURPOSE of the Fitzgerald investigation was to cement the false narrative of "Bush lied, people died". There is no reason for any Special Prosecutors now, BO IS A DEMOCRAT!

People that had independent brains at the time knew that Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Colin Powell, British Intelligence, the UN, and EVERYONE knew that Saddam had WMD, had used them, and was constantly working to get more! Now we have even FOUND THEM ... as reported by the NY Times no less, so it MUST be true!

The key to fooling the masses is MISDIRECTION.

Make up a story about "Bush lied". Then assert that "he even lied in his STOTU address about yellowcake".  THEN, have a big investigation about how the evil Dick Cheney "outed" a poor little covert spy named Valerie Plame (the damsel in distress) -- why? Well to cover up the "lies", the idea of which was created by the D - MSM connection in the first place!

In "the media end", Scooter Libby was CONVICTED -- meaning that the ENTIRE BUSH LIED STORY IS TRUE! It is a variation on the old "A man accused of killing 3 men and a dog promptly produces the dog alive!" The actual "charge" was perjury -- easily explained by faulty memory. Like "the dog alive" saying NOTHING about the deaths of the 3 men, the Libby conviction for perjury said NOTHING about the "Bush lied" assertion.

For 80-90-% of the population though the story is long over and they fully believe the MSM / Democrat version. From the POV of the left, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Leftist evil has triumphed -- good people have been either convinced of the lie or beaten down so they finally do what the left demands that all good people do -- SHUT UP!

... and that is why the masses stand staring blankly as the next victims of the state march off to the gas chamber.

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Islamists Keep Rolling

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/04/the-latest-from-the-religion-of-peace.php

The advance of Islam in the world, accompanied by  violence against Christians steadily increases, but with less and less MSM reporting. We have been told what to think. Islam is "the religion of peace". If there is any violence it is easy to explain because of "the crusades" -- or maybe "George Bush".

In any case, there is no story here --- ignore the rapes, the beheadings, the bombings.

Remember when not having a good enough plan to deal with what happened after you deposed a leader was a major news story? I think the line was "if you break it, it's yours"!  .... Libya, Gadaffi? .... Never Mind!

Incompetence, Against Our Nature

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131125-why-the-stupid-say-theyre-smart

Donald Rumsfeld  once made an astute observation once that included the phrases "known unknowns, and unknown unknowns" ... the whole quote bears repeating.

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

Naturally, the press found the whole discussion to be another "proof" of Rumsfeld's stupidity and ignorance. This article gives a good insight into the  basic science behind why they would react that way. (note, it isn't because they were correct in any way)

What the article covers is that when we are incompetent, we generally are not aware of it, and the more incompetent we are, the more our general tendency is to radically over-estimate our competence even when faced with evidence of our incompetence. To know and accept "unknown unknowns" is on the path to wisdom ... a path we are not wired to walk.

With a moments thought, the fact of our general incompetence is completely obvious. Let's name a few fields -- engineering, medicine, economics, plumbing, electrician, pilot, florist, motorcycle racer, farming and  bar tender.

We could go on for pages -- listing specialties, etc, but the above list ought to be enough to convince the non-politicians among us that we are grossly incompetent in more than at best a few listed, BUT, the article tells us we almost certainly VASTLY overrate our expertise in the ones we are least competent in! It's called "human nature" -- what we DON'T know VASTLY exceeds what we do know.

Rather than running around fully conscious of this massive inadequacy, we simply kid ourselves. Why feel like a total dunce just because you ARE a total dunce. Right? We LIKE to feel good -- so we lie to ourselves! It is something that humans EXCEL at. We are basically all certain that we are above average drivers -- which rationally makes no sense at all, but we ARE NOT rational! We are RATIONALIZING!

I poked fun at politicians above, but it applies equally well to media people, in general to managers and any sort of "leader".  NOTE, I'm NOT saying that we don't need leader types, nor that many of us don't need to assume those positions at times, only that like anything else that humans do, leadership / authority is strongly adversely affected by our basic natures.

BO more than once commented that he was better at any job that those that work for him.

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

BO is an especially egregious case, but we ALL have this basic problem, and it gets WORSE as people rise in power / leadership. Almost certainly you have hired contractors that you felt you "could have done as good or better a job as". My advice is to sheet rock, tape and paint a room yourself -- take your time, do the best job you can! To do it right, you need to live with that room a few years -- get to know the flaws. Remember how hard you worked to get it right.

Then, ideally, hire a set of Spanish speaking illegals to show up and sheet rock, tape/mud a much more complicated room. WATCH THEM ... and keep track of the time, then look at the finished job. After you get done crying, you ought to be significantly smarter about your incompetence! But it STILL will not be your nature -- that is wired in. It can't be fully fixed by mere experience.

The big civilization killing problem is that we end up with leaders like BO that have NO CLUE about their incompetence, and they are reported on by reporters who are just as blind!!!

Our founders understood this. They assumed a people that recognized God and thus had at least the base for wisdom. They provided a Constitution and separation to limit the damage that guaranteed incompetent leadership (there is no other kind, we use humans!) could cause. They tried very hard to protect us!

The senselessness of "progressive" thought -- the idea that the latest thought is always the best, as well as the extreme danger of government size and power growing can be easily understood by observing this one easy to understand and easily verifiable fact of our shared nature.

If we were rational beings, we could all agree on this -- but it is against our nature. We got to where we were when we landed on the Moon because well over half of us understood that "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom".

The scale has tipped the other way -- so now we foolishly decline.

Milwaukee, Brown Lives Don't Matter

Driver Who Hit Toddler Starts Events That Leave 4 Dead - ABC News:

This story didn't get a lot of national attention. Don't expect the race industry to show up here -- no diversity.

The driver of the van was even named Brown. Everyone dead is African American.

The van hitting the toddler was a tragic accident. The ex-con trying to assassinate the driver because he killed one of his nephews, but killing ANOTHER one of his nephews in the process because of his poor marksmanship is a clear artifact of "black culture".

TP ("The Party" - D) decided in the '60s that they would swap the voting block of white folks in the south that they had held since prior to the Civil War for black votes nationally. It was a political genius move if all you care about is politics.

They turned blacks nationally into a TP socialist experiment using welfare to buy votes as the cornerstone.  Socialism worked as it always does -- the black family was destroyed, all forms of crime and especially drug use soared. Detroit was destroyed, with DC, Chicago, LA, Memphis, Atlanta, St Louis, and a number of or cities also becoming centers of violence and hopelessness.

But there isn't a problem with that for TP. Over 90% of those people vote solidly D, and as BO pointed out, the only real issue is that not enough of them get out to vote -- ergo, mandatory voting is a good idea!

Stirring up some racial tension if a white officer happens to shoot a black is good for TP's game plan -- THAT gets a LOT of attention! Blacks shooting each other in the streets by the thousands? Who cares? Certainly not BO, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson or the media! They consider those lives "collateral damage for the greater good" .... to the very slight extent they consider those lives at all.

Losing a country to socialism has a lot of collateral damage.
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Death, The Victory of the Left

The Death of the Left:

The whole thing is an instructive read, but I found this to summarize it pretty well:

The left is at its best when it’s trying to take power. It unleashes its egocentric creative impulses, it writes poems, plays and songs as its heroes die in doomed battles or pump their fists at protests. And then they win, get rich and fat, the people grow poor and the country becomes a miserable dictatorship. Try putting a 300 pound Che on a t-shirt. Or get inspired by Obama lazily playing golf.

A successful leftist revolution quickly becomes indistinguishable from an ordinary oligarchy. Millions may die, but decades later all that’s left is a vast pointless bureaucracy that runs on family connections, an ideology no one understands anymore and an impoverished population ripe for outside exploitation.

For the religious or those that read the classics, this is simple. There is God (transcendence) -- the creative force, order, growth, honor, truth, wisdom.

Then there is the Devil -- the destructive force, chaos, death, dishonor, lies, foolishness.

God is RIGHT, the Devil is LEFT-- that is that, there are really no issues, it is just a simple matter of choice.

Now the leftists -- and Lucifer most of all, will often ask "why can't we all just get along?" "Let's find a middle ground ... a third way ... maybe we could just divide by 666?" ... Sure, let's make a compromise with evil. On the left, they think that is a GOOD idea!

Lucifer is ALL about "compromise". Did he REALLY say "you will surely die?" ... that seems awfully harsh, he CAN'T have meant THAT!

Europe chose death and so did we. God still and always can provide hope and redemption, but at this point it looks like we will see a lot more  corruption  before anyone thinks of redemption. First we just "compromised",  now we are all in.

The whole article is worth the time -- somehow the image of selling our few remaining children to peodophiles for the price of a "Happy Meal" is an epitaph for the road we chose that seems beyond fitting.

One little last quote from the article ... 

What stakes are to a vampire, victory is to the left. The left gains its creative energies from fighting against authority. Its entire reason for existing is to resist. In triumph, its writers become prostitutes for authority, its heroes become tyrants and its myths die on propaganda posters dissolving in the gutter.

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Republican Hillary?

So when you are a "progressive" it is understood that lying in the service of your "vision" -- a heaven on earth where government runs everything, is acceptable ... even desirable. BO said he was against gay "marriage" in '08, but the "progressives" knew he was lying, so it was OK. So that likely explains Hillary as well for them.

Is it the same with the Iraq war? BO wasn't in the Senate yet, but he SAID that he WOULD have voted against it. Gee, that is an easy stand, right? So do "progressives" assume that Hillary voted that way because she assumed it would be a good political move? Her evidence would have been that some of the D's who voted against the first Gulf War later discovered was an expensive vote politically.

Once truth is not a significant value to a person, it becomes hard  to understand their thinking. As nearly as I can tell, neither the people of the left, nor their leadership are concerned by any level of lying as long as it is on their own side.

"Consistency" is not a virtue of the left.  Since "the latest knowledge is the best", the fact that many of their leaders positions "evolve" is seen as a positive, and makes the whole concept of a "lie" very hard to even identify except as a concept to be used against an opponent.

The "known leftist fact" was that "W lied, people died" (leftist "truths" are often slogans) when W, Hillary, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Tony Blair, the UN, etc, etc all thought that Iraq had WMDs. We later at least thought we learned they didn't when we invaded, but it was a "lie" for W because he is not a liberal. It turns out Iraq did have WMD, but apparently not in the exact quantities or  forms that those on the left approved of.

Had W been a liberal, his position would just have "evolved" with later information  -- like BO's position on deficits, gay "marriage", or "If you like your health insurance you can keep it". No doubit Hillary's position on Iraq "evolved", like her gay "marriage" position and that is fine with the left.

But what about "the 1%"? Well, like most everything on the left, that is ideological. Kerry was worth $800 million at the time he ran and that was not an issue. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, George Soros, the Hollywood elite, the financial mavens on Wall Street that were BO's leading contributors in '08, etc, etc are all filthy rich and it is just fine. When you are on the left, the ONLY thing that matters is ideology!

Which brings us to the "harassment of women". The fact is that if you are powerful enough and of the leftist ideology, you have carte blanche for pretty much any sin (see Teddy Kennedy drowning his secretary). So forget that.

A person of conservative thought -- who believes that facts matter, truth matters, consistency matters, and a whole lot of other strange fairy tales that the left has no use for, looks at a poster like that included and shakes their heads in marvel at how a left leaning person could possibly vote for Hillary.

It's easy -- she is the anointed candidate of the left!  That is ALL that counts for something like 50% of Americans, including 95%+ of the government union workers plus similar percentages of the media and academia.

For half or better of voters in what used to be America, this is how things work. Get used to it! We can expect it to go A LOT farther!

Resets, Red Lines, Rhetoric

Another red line done gone | Power Line:

Russia is going to deliver S-300 surface to air missiles  to Iran, thus making a military option to prevent Iran from getting the bomb more expensive, if not off the table entirely.

As the article covers, the BO administration once convinced Russia that these missiles were a "red line" -- something they trumpeted as a fruit of their "Russian Reset", supposedly one of the early examples of the brilliance of Hillary as Secretary of State.

So much for that.

Ever since our Supreme Odiferous Leader has declared the "Framework" to be identical to a "deal", he has responded to any foolish critics with his favorite argument -- SHUT UP!

The Supreme Leader of Iran however seems to have a completely different view of the "framework" -- or does he? To him, any sanctions need to be removed upon any signing (if not before, see S-300) and all military installations will remain off-limits to inspectors.

The Supreme Leader also regularly says "Death to America", so at least he and BO see eye to eye on that!

I'm not sure what either of them means by "America" -- it must be a land mass. When we were a nation of free men, "shut up" was not an argument, and we had no supreme leader that could unilaterally make agreements with a foreign power without the approval of the Senate.

So much for America.

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Loving Progressives, 277 Miles

http://www.progressivesuspension.com/

Readers of this Blog may believe that I'm biased against "Progressives",  but only in the concept of history, definitely NOT in suspension!

I put the Progressive fork setup on the Wing June of 2013 and loved it. I had ordered the rear spring that went with it winter of '14, but it got back ordered so it missed the rear tire replace for the big spring trip last year and I didn't get it installed until after we got back from our Ireland trip this spring. I had really only rode it a short distance since, so didn't have much to say until now. 

A progressive spring is more compliant (soft) than stock at the top of it's range, but is constructed/treated in such a way that the more it is compressed, the former it gets. It is like the Incredible Hulk -- the greater the force applied against him, the stronger he gets! (which is why a battle between the Hulk and Superman would be such a cataclysmic event, but I digress).

In the real world, this means that you have an overall better ride, and as the bike is pushed in corners the suspension is firmer. Much like a stainless steel prop on a boat (better hole shot, better top end), the result is a rare engineering WIN WIN!

Anyone that has done any form of engineering knows how rare this is -- the typical situation is TRADE-OFF. You add power but it increases weight and reduces mileage, add speed to a chip but have more heat to dissipate, etc. etc.

Indeed, in both the stainless prop and the progressive spring, the trade-off is still there, it is COST.  My opinion on motorcycle suspension is that the cost is FAR outweighed by the benefit, but as in everything in the real world, THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH! Which is one reason why "progressive" politics fail, but this isn't about politics!

My verdict is that the front suspension change made a far bigger change than the rear in handling, but the rear is maybe of greater import on long rides / rough roads. It REALLY makes the bike ride nice. It perhaps adds another 3-5 MPH of confidence speed in curves as well. Which means that overall it is an upgrade that does tend to put a smile on your face!

My guess on the cornering aspects are that more aggressive riders would see more benefit because of the progressive aspect of the springs -- they push them harder, so they are firmer yet in their perception. Besides, I'm most often limited on my speed in corners primarily by either the speed limit on looser ones, or by how far ahead I can see on tighter ones -- in the moose brain, there is ALWAYS a big piece of farm equipment just beyond my line of sight!

No question I'm on the conservative side of the bell shaped curve of conservative to aggressive cornering, but based on the "catching up with riders vs  being passed" sample, probably very close to the middle. As always!  I'm generally the exact center of all bell shaped curves, although unlike the kids in Lake Woebegone, I'm VERY slightly BELOW average!

It was a superb day to be out for a ride. The roads seem to have all  been cleared of remaining winter sand on the route from Rochester up to Barron and back. My Dad was in a talkative mood, enjoying the "Last Lion: Defender of the Realm" book that I passed on to him and remembering that WWII history that he observed as a young man. His blood pressure kept him from going over, but his two brothers served. I had a nice visit and lunch that lasted a bit over 4 hours, made it back in time for the gun club meeting and still a little fire-pit time with Marla to end the day.

Spring AND "springs" are very nice.

Progressives vs Country Folk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's Just Get This Over With

I saw this one and decided that it completely captured the essence of the Hillary campaign -- inevitability, boredom and condescending entitlement.

The Masters was on today and thankfully Jordan Spieth  displayed very little of the pain that you sometimes see from leaders that are dying under the stress -- they want to just get it over with so they can be champions and enjoy the memory.

I will confess to WAY too much of that in my life. CERTAINLY High School and College, pushing to "get this over with" so I could get a real job and MAKE SOME MONEY! Certainly the same relative to some steps up the career ladder and the carrot of retirement hanging out there. Being prone to some significant levels of worry and anxiety, there are also elements of this prior to trips -- I tend to enjoy the memories more than the the anticipation for sure. Too many "what if ...." thoughts intrude.

Although I was somewhat smart enough to see in advance that "let's just get this over with" a poor strategy post-retirement, it still crosses my mind just how wired at least the current American culture seems to be to this forever living in the future. Our Pastor goes a bit nuts on it -- mentioning today that Memorial Day stuff is now out in the stores, followed by the 4th the day after Memorial Day, then Back to School, then Halloween, then  Christmas WELL before Halloween in some stores (Fleet Farm toys come to mind).

Keeping our minds in the present and ENJOYING the moment is obviously the right answer. It is one of the things I like about Rodgers playing QB and always liked about Favre -- he looked like he was having fun out there! Perhaps Spieth might have made 19 under and held the all time Masters record alone rather than sharing it with Tiger had he not started to relax and enjoy his walk up to the 18th green this afternoon. Even if that is true -- which I don't really believe, he still made the right choice.

NRA Bans Concealed Carry at Convention

http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/04/11/media-fabricated-evidence-to-smear-gop-three-times-in-one-day/

And other lies ....

You can go read the linked article, but the short scoop is:

-- NYTs reported that NRA baned carry and "loaded guns" at convention.

-- Rand Paul walked off an interview in tiff and shut off the lights on the reporters. 

-- Nancy Reagan endorsed Hillary Clinton

I've seen and heard versions of these reported as "truth" around the the Internet, Facebook, etc the last few days, naturally all are false -- and the linked articles covers the origins, etc.

The point is that the conservative POV needs a vast amount of extra money to even come close to countering this kind of continuing bias -- the biased reporting of things that have some basis in fact is bad enough, but sometimes complete fabrications stick harder in the minds of the low -- or "standard MSM information only" voter more than just slanted reporting on actual issues.

If somebody is anti-gun, it is very easy to see how the level of hypocrisy that would be involved in the NRA banning carry holders from it's convention would leave a mental mark.

If any liberal wanted to have a SLIGHT bit of understanding on how the "other side" feels, they could consider how completely bent out of shape they get over "Faux News" and "Rush Limbaugh" who generally barely cover the news with as much slant as the standard left media does from the others side, let alone typically report completely fabrication as fact. (you can go here to get a perspective on that claim if you like)

Two Fakes and a Monument

Believe it or not, that was one of the official Easter pictures released on the WH stream.

Does it strike anyone else as a BIT bizarre?

It got no MSM coverage -- I suspect they have no idea what is supposed to be for either.

I'm left with the idea that "the real is blurred and the imaginary is sharp".

Who knows.

Nothing Stays The Same -- Economic Edition

On Secular Stagnation, Ben Bernanke’s Theory Meets Larry Summers’s Evidence - Real Time Economics - WSJ:



I wrote a little on the genesis of this here, but the controversy seems to have been joined.



You maybe should read the whole main link column, I'm sure there is a lot of good stuff in there more than I likely fully comprehend -- I'm just a dumb old country boy.



None of the experts really seem to point out the simple fact that NOTHING stays static -- certainly not on a ball of rock with a molten core spinning on it's axis every 24hrs, going around it's sun ever 365 and 1/4 days, as it's star travels in it's spiral arm around the center of the Milky Way galaxy -- oh I could go on and on, but I don't want  make you suspect that I've forgotten that marijuana isn't legal in Minnesota!



For something with 100's of millions of people linked to billions around the globe like an economy, it REALLY doesn't stay static.



So the economy has two modes, growing or contracting -- and then it has rate of growth or retraction.



I find the core of the article to be this:

There is little dispute that population growth has slowed in both rich and emerging economies. This depresses growth directly by reducing the supply of workers and, indirectly, by depressing investment because a smaller workforce needs less machinery and other equipment. It also depresses demand insofar as retirees consume fewer durable goods, and aging workers save more for retirement. (I suppose one could call this a demand, not supply, side effect.) 

Productivity growth has also slowed in most countries. This is partly the dampening effects of the financial crisis on capital spending. Those will eventually fade. But part of it also reflects less innovation. Firms may be investing less because they see fewer payoffs to new technology. These, and other factors such as education attainment no longer increasing, are advanced by Robert Gordon to explain why growth is so slow now, and likely to remain that way.

So it is either going to grow or shrink and there are TONS of reasons for it to shrink as listed above, and very few for it to grow -- everyone is at least giving lip service to "sustainable growth" which is really another term for "contraction", the populations of a lot of countries are shrinking, they are all getting older, they are mostly trying to work less and get more benefits from the people still working, we are to use LESS ... energy, water, land, ...



If you are dumb enough to try to take some risks in hopes of cashing in on some growing item, most all the governments of the world are on high alert to take a huge percentage of your profits to attempt to provide for those aging unmotivated people that already got the "sustain" message of the current times.



And these guys don't realize why economies are shrinking rather than growing? The value of high level degrees in economics really HAS shrunk!





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