Religion, Philosophy, Science and Scotch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conservatives Shalt Not Collaborate

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

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

I covered the Gestapo style raids here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Haunting The Old Mississippi

Link To Photos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who Will Watch the EPA?

Animas River fouled by 1 million gallons of contaminated mine water - The Denver Post:



So the EPA -- the guys that classify the CO2 you breathe out as a "pollutant", tell you how much water constitutes a flush in your toilet, and if you get to use plastic bags at the grocery or not (to just name a very few of the myriad of things they "regulate"), made a MILLION GALLON toxic waste mistake!



If they were a mining or oil company that ACTUALLY PRODUCES SOMETHING, what do you suppose the national media reaction would be??



Come on ... you know ... OUTRAGE! ... for days and weeks. "Put them out of business", etc



The age old question of big government (and all "watcher" groups)  is "Who will watch the watchers??" ... the watchers are not some super race, they are just plain old people, often less competitive people since they choose the safety of a government bureaucracy over the hurly burly of the private sector, but certainly "nothing special". Oh, possibly with the exception that they especially like having POWER over others based on POSITION rather than merit!



The myriad of alphabet agencies (EPA, IRS, NSA, FBI, etc) are a classic example of bureaucratic obfuscation of responsibility. The agencies have no official "party" affiliation even though the people that work in them are 99% Democrat. The executive branch has direct day to day "control" over them -- but as we have seen with the IRS investigation of conservative groups, that supposed chain of command is nebulous at best. Congress supposedly controls the funding and has "oversight", but one needn't look very hard at the budgeting operations or attempts at said "oversight" in the case of the IRS to realize that this is also toothless.



Giant incompetent hugely expensive bureaucracies running roughshod over productivity and individual freedoms without any real supervision.



And some people wonder why America died.







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Least Hurricanes "Ever"

No Major Hurricane Has Made Landfall In the U.S. In More Than 9 Years -- and That's a New Record - weather.com:

Like most current climate data, "ever" is from the carefully selectected end of the Little Ice Age in 1860. Perhaps warming climate caused the Civil War?

This is now the longest streak since hurricane records began in 1851. The previous record was a little over nine years, set from August 11, 1860 to September 8, 1869.

I've been blogging for 10 years. When 2005 was a record year for major hurricanes, especially after Katrina, scientists and the media were even more certain that their predictions on warming and large increases in the number of hurricanes were completely proven -- and we would definitely see more major storms every year. Here is a blog post from '06 pointing out that we had no major storms that year even after those confident predictions ... it is also funny to see what a broken record I am on thinking for yourself! 

Here we see a quiet little article from 2013 saying that we almost broke a record for latest hurricane in the season that had been set in 1851 ...

Or we can go back to a post from 2013 when the lack of warming finally fell completely outside of even the lowest possible predictions of the IPCC warming model. 

I wasn't blogging when the "certain truth" on oil went from "the world is out of oil" in the late '70s to "huh"? by 1983. I also wasn't blogging when "generally accepted public / media opinion" went from "OMG, Reagan is NUTS!!!!, he thinks the USSR can be defeated"!!!! in 1980, to "Well, the USSR is gone, we all knew that was going to happen and Reagan slowed it down" in 1989 (Berlin Wall falls) - 1991 (USSR officially ends).

I wasn't blogging -- but I was alive. I've seen how "certainty" turns to "the memory hole". Once confident front page news becomes articles buried or just not discussed.   People who once passionately told you that any disagreement with their dominant position was "crazy", "being a denier", "foolishly following right wing media" or some such, now basically just stare as cows at the passing train if their own formerly passionately held positions are mentioned.

It turns out that their passion was and is for being a sheep in lock-step with the current standard Party (D) and Media position -- and it is IMPOSSIBLE for them to conceive that people could think differently from that position and be correct. Therefore,  if necessary, history must be forgotten or rewritten so the standard Party/Media position is seen as correct -- always. Orwell covered this all long ago -- their minds are imprisoned in what they are told to believe. 

There is an alternative ... actual skepticism. My belief is that the strongest earthly reason for religious faith is that it provides a grounding for the human psyche allowing one to look at everything else in the world as being less than certain. If you don't have faith in SOMETHING as being unshakably true, you are going to create something and invest your "faith neurons" in. The old saw "everyone has to believe in something, I believe I'll have another beer" is true -- beer is just a very flip alternate faith. Our brains our wired for belief and morality -- we need to put something in the "belief slot", or something will fall in that slot without us even realizing it. 

There are a number of books on this kind of topic, but a couple that I have blogged on are "The Righteous Mind"  and "Consilience" ... our problem is often that since we have no real idea of what our consciousness and many of our inner drivers really are at the base, so we make assumptions about things like religion, politics, culture, society, etc that while seemingly "rational", fail to realize that humans are NOT "rational", but rather RATIONALIZING beings. Our real drivers are feelings -- but we will often go to great length to try to convince ourselves and others that they are not.

Watching the AGW (Anthropomorphic Global Warming) theory slink off to oblivion gives another great opportunity to see how "what everyone KNOWS to be true" very often isn't ... the cholesterol shift is another recent one.

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Schumer, Republicans and Iran Hardliners Make Common Cause

Full Orwell - WSJ:

It gets very hard to make any sort of rational sense of the noxious emanations from BO's teleprompter these days. One thing is completely clear -- since he said the following, there are truly no standards left for the office of US President after the BO debacle (Trump has an open field):

Just because Iranian hard-liners chant “Death to America” does not mean that that’s what all Iranians believe.

In fact, it’s those hard-liners who are most comfortable with the status quo. It’s those hard-liners chanting “Death to America” who have been most opposed to the deal. They’re making common cause with the Republican caucus.

First of all, that is politically partisan calumny of the most rancid type typically only spewing from the far reaches of the left or the right crazy crowd, not from the Oval Office. What is the difference between "hardliners" and the leaders of Iran? You know the ones that signed the deal and gloated because they know what appeasement is and they like it better than sanctions, having $100 Billion frozen, military strikes on their facilities, and yes ... possible war??

Name a leader in Iran that has never said "Death to America". I sincerely doubt if there is one -- but certainly many of those involved in the "deal", including President Rouhani, DO so chant! and why not? Read BO "Dreams From My Father" -- BO himself seems in agreement with them! (he considers America as taking the mantle of colonial power from Britain, as do the Iranians!)

So what he says is false and rancid -- he is asserting that Republicans and "hard liners" prefer war. OK, so by that logic (as covered in the linked article), the Japanese and the US Congress were "making common cause" after Pearl Harbor, because they both clearly preferred war to peace. BO's "reasoning" is of the form "Hitler was a vegetarian, you are a vegetarian, therefore you are making common cause with Hitler".

But then we now see that Chuck Schumer, third ranking DEMOCRAT Senator from NY is also "making common cause" with "hardliners", Republicans, and possibly Hitler as well -- once you go down the BO sort of lying weasel rathole, the kind of vermin you get associated with is unpredictable.

BO's nutcase rhetoric notwithstanding, it IS actually possible for people that have rational minds to prefer sanctions, not giving supporters of terrorism over $100B, and even targeted military strikes to appeasement. Only in BO's fevered strawman imagination are "war or appeasement" the only options!

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Moby Dick, Melville

I finally finished my lengthy slog through the actual sea soaked tome in hardcover with some fine illustrations. It is a book that one has heard so much of, read in excerpt, heard quotes from, etc that it often seems that we all might have read it. The very symbol of obsession, vengeance and the scapegoat.

All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby-Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.

 In the following scene from "First Contact", my far favorite of the Star Trek movies, Picard with the bearing and voice only a Shakespearean actor could muster embodies the fine line between total dedication to a worthy cause and obsession to the exclusion of reality. It is a bit long, but wait for it ... it is worth it.

That fine and often questionably discernible line might well be the gossamer thread on which hangs the destiny of all humanity. We must have motivation and meaning -- but obsession is too far.  I often feel that "progressivism" is the "Borg" of our time, relentlessly assimilating the individual, the sacred, the human, into a "collective" of bleating sheep controlled by "The Party". Ah, the White Whale!

Moby Dick is a long book, and to some degree it has to be in order to convince both the dogged intellectual and the common man that within it's pages you will understand vengeance, obsession and the scapegoat in one not very tidy package. I'll give you a hint -- you will not, and you will also not really enjoy much of it as an entertaining memorable tale. Like converting "Titanic" to "Boy meets girl on ship, they fall in love, ship sinks, boy dies", Moby Dick can be summarized as "Storyteller goes on ship, meets captain whose leg was  taken by white whale, captain chases whale, whale gets captain and whole ship except storyteller". But isn't a page-turner, it is an epic of sometimes tortured symbolism and metaphor.

Or perhaps one needs to be an obsessive to read it through -- and the white whale is the book itself ... or age, time, wisdom, life, love, God  ... "A Six Blade Knife" ... one of my favorite Dire Straits songs.

The book is rife with maritime and whaling terms as well as whale lore and biology circa mid 1850's. The conjecture about the earth being riddled with sub-sea passages which allow whales to dive in the Atlantic and come up in the Indian Ocean by taking a shortcut through one of these portals is amazingly similar to the modern science fiction conjecture of the "wormhole". While the prose often just seems obtuse and ponderous, there are a fair amount of beautiful and thought provoking allegorical allusions such as the following.

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seems to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters’ Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams,  somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.

You know the story of Moby Dick, you no doubt have at least nibbled the edges of obsession, vengeance and entertained a scapegoat or two in your life. My advice, which like all likely good advice is very hard to take, would be to read it while young -- there is a chance that the experience of "bearing with" Melville on this long voyage of a book would impart a level of wisdom beyond the years of say a "twenty-something". Otherwise, if one of your whales is an obsession to write, Moby Dick will certainly help you avoid Dr. Johnson's charge ; "Never trust a man who writes more than he reads"!

I have to leave with the the other quote of Star Trek fame ... this one not credited directly in the movie dialogue.

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.

There is a very good reason that vengeance is mine saith the Lord ... lest we be consumed! Deuteronomy 32:35

To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.

Royko, Mencken, to Stewart, Journalism to Cronyism

Articles: What Mike Royko Knew that Jon Stewart and the Mainstream Media Don't:



A good article that documents just a little of the incestuous relationship between today's media and the ruling political class. In the days of Mike Royko, H.L.Mencken and Mark Twain, journalism was a hardscrabble profession made up of people from the lower class with little education -- learned by apprenticeship and hard knocks.



Still, they had to remember not to fraternize with the inmates! Royko's advice to young journalists;  “if you get too close, then you're going to feel uncomfortable when you have to stick it to them.”



Indeed -- imagine if how "uncomfortable" it would be for someone like George Stephanopoulos, who was a spokesman for the Clintons and continued to contribute tens of thousands of dollars to them after he was supposedly a "journalist"!



The BIG problem here is that the "mainstream" media is effectively an arm of the government -- NPR  is the only one that directly receives payments, but NBC, CBS, ABC, NYTs, HuffPo, etc follow the same piper -- back in the '00s we were treated to the fact of that with the "Journ -O- List" story being released showing a couple hundred reporters, columnists and other media coordinating activity to take down Republicans.



Fox news plays this game on the other side to varying degrees -- and the left is completely unhinged in their hatred for Fox. Their view -- and increasingly the Democrat Party view, is that it ought to be ILLEGAL for anyone but the left to do "collaboration" -- shades of the USSR and "Pravda" (Russian for "Truth").



While our nation is not a "Democracy" (yet), it has democratic input -- which requires an informed populace, which requires an INDEPENDENT and ADVERSARIAL press.



What we have now is Fox News and talk radio generally siding with Republicans, while all other news outlets are mouthpieces for the dominant left view of Democrats, education, government agencies, unions, and amazingly, WALL STREET (their only allegiance is to money, and the Democrats give them more of it!).



Possibly liveable if the general populace was aware of the situation, but since most still see the general media as "unbiased", a very negative state of affairs.




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Don't Screw The Ayatollah

Kerry warns Congress: Don’t screw the Ayatollah « Hot Air:

The Secretary of State of the US actually said "The ayatollah constantly believed that we are untrustworthy, that you can’t negotiate with us, that we will screw them. This will be the ultimate screwing."

REALLY? How many times did we hear about "misunderestimated" or whatever relative to W?

THIS is what constitutes "diplomatic language"?

Forget that the whole "deal" is a delusional nightmare for the US ... abject surrender.

Kerry has always been a very dim witted narcissist tool ... just more proof.

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Zebras, Jack, Cecil -- "I'm Glad You're Dead!"

A little humor and perspective. For some strange reason Jack Nicholson seems to have a very good handle on playing a character a few cards short of a full deck. I liked his Joker better than Heath Ledger's. 

Think of a nasty Zebra commenting on the death of Cecil kind of like Jack! 

Dead Officers, Dead Babies, Dead Animals

The Memphis police officer was the 18th officer shot and killed so far this year - The Washington Post:

What makes humans different is a moral soul. Suppress or corrupt that and we are mere ciphers -- nothing more than the computers we calculate on. Figures on paper -- aside from emotional attachment, moral feeling, grief, outrage, anger, shock, media manipulation, political movements, etc, lives lost are mere numbers. (eg. National Socialism killed 6 million Jews in WWII Germany)

Last summer at this time we were immersed in "Black lives matter" because of Michael Brown in Ferguson MO and Eric Garner in Staten Island. We were inundated by the media and The Party (Democrat) by this story for months. We were told complete lies about the actual situations, designed to make the "victims" (young men shot by police) seem innocent and the police seem like racist thugs. A courageous BLACK reporter for the liberal WaPo covered the fact of the Michael Brown lies here.

We have been manipulated nationally to be on an emotional hair trigger relative to young black men being shot by white officers. (but totally unconcerned when they shoot each other) The Memphis shooting - killing of a white police officer by a black man has no such national emotional content. The linked article gives some numbers -- 18 officers shot and killed in the line of duty this year, slightly down from last year, we have been seeing about 50 shot and killed every year for quite awhile, down from where it used to be. No media presented emotional content to the officer being killed -- not part of TPs narrative!

Numbers -- if the officer was your father, brother, husband, friend, etc, that would make a GIANT difference. As it does when the car crash victim is a loved one rather than just a number. This has all been well understood by the wise for likely most of human history. To paraphrase Adam Smith  "... if all China were swallowed up tonight, we would be more afflicted by the knowledge that we were to lose our little finger tomorrow than by that great calamity." The actual Smith quote is at the end of this blog post if you want to check my paraphrase.

We have an inherent understanding of this fact as humans if we STOP AND THINK, but the reason that our founders created a Republic, NOT a "Democracy" (mob rule) was because masses of common people, busy with their daily lives and wanting to "fit in" are far far too easy to manipulate. Reacting as we are told to react is easier, and as the societal drive to conform becomes greater, and often even safer.

Smith understood that humans can't be otherwise than to be more affected by their PERSONAL situation than by global calamity, because it is our nature. So markets naturally developed which operate based on actual (not the desired) human nature. Smith didn't invent capitalism, he discovered and documented it. It is also true that an extremely painful finger is likely to make you forget about A LOT, and inherently disrupt your rational thought.

Marx, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, BO, the NYTs, Satan, Madison Avenue, etc discovered that constant bombardment by specific messages, especially when coupled with appropriate rewards and punishments ( free stuff vs higher taxes for BO, life vs death for Hitler, etc) could make most people follow a political regime that promised immediate and PERSONAL benefit to them for following. The "benefit" might be as small as "if you think this way, you will be in alignment with the forces of good / progressive / intelligent / popular / proper thought". If you don't think that way, you will be "bad / reactionary / stupid / unpopular / improper". The "promise" hasn't changed much at all ... "You surely will not die! "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."…

You will be "like God(s)" ... at least in comparison to the "bad / reactionary / stupid / unpopular / etc".

The human condition is one of generally "weak" or "selfish" moral sentiments, which are fairly easily manipulated. Western Civilization was based on the success of Judaism and Christianity to provide a very strong moral framework that gave the common man a set of "higher objectives" relative to his eternal soul, making human life sacred, promoting hard work, respect for parents, ancestors, tradition and the value of caring for others in our community. We once had a strong Judeo - Christian moral compass of our own and were able to resist (to some degree with Gods help) Serpents, Democrats and Media.

We now have The Party -- the dominant media / educational / political system that most values conformance and tells us what to think about all issues and happenings, and more importantly, which to focus on, 24x7. That is why I heard a segment on "Marketplace" last evening discussing how various animal parts -- polar bear and lion being chief, were now on the "no fly list", and how wonderful that was. Animal parts are now sacred ... baby parts are legitimate objects of commerce. Thus saith the "progressive moral compass" today.

As is typical of the "progressive compass", they didn't mention if a rabbit's foot, beef jerky, or halibut shipped back from Alaska would be prohibited -- consistency, practicality, cost, common sense, etc are never part of the "progressive" thought process -- FEELING GOOD (self righteous) about something new is the primary objective, sticking it to some new sub-group is usually a secondary objective. Feeling good to the "progressive" involves feeling superior to somebody -- and usually expanding government or societal power over somebody.

ALL human life being sacred, special, worthy of protection, etc was the old moral compass setting. The "progressive" setting is that those in power (The Party!) selects which lives matter, and are "sacred" in their profane sense. Criminal lives matter, but the most innocent of lives do not, nor do those of those who take up the task of being on the police force. Muslim lives matter -- but US soldiers lives do not. Illegal immigrant lives matter, but people shot and killed by them do not. In general, like all pagan morality, the pagan/progressive moral compass points the opposite way from the old Christian moral compass.

When the vast bulk of the population has no moral compass but the one that is presented to them through The Party and it's media / education / entertainment arms, they must wait to be told what to think about everything, as well as being told what is of importance to them and what is not.

That is most certainly where we are at.

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PJ, Democrats Hate You (Individually)

They Hate Your Guts | The Weekly Standard:

PJ O'Rourke has a great name and a wit to match. The whole thing is pretty funny, but like much of PJ's stuff it is not only funny, but makes a very serious point.

Politics is about POWER, not about people -- people are a MEANS to the politicians goal of power.

Democrats are very good at politics. Republicans -- with the now deceased exception of Ronald Reagan, SUCK at politics! So they are a better choice for office -- they hate you less!

I thought this little section was especially pungent -- but just a teaser, the whole thing is worth the time.

Democrats are particularly infatuated with the demographic group of voters who are poor. Democrats provide many social programs for the poor. If you happen to be poor, you know what these social programs do. They pay you to stay poor. 

Democrats favor a higher minimum wage. And they’ll make sure you get a minimum wage. Forever. 

Democrats want to give you health care that’s free—and worth it.

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63% Inflation, 234% College Inflation

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/were-making-life-too-hard-for-millennials.html

Hopefully I can manage to clip a chart from the article at some point and insert it here -- but for now you will have to either believe me or go look at the article. It is the NYTs, they didn't really mean to make the point they made, but here it is:

• Inflation since '93 is 63% ... so your '93 buck is worth .37 cents. That is what a debtor nation calls LOW inflation! 
• College costs have gone up 234% since '93! Think about this for a moment. College is HEAVILY state sponsored, HEAVILY regulated, nearly 100% UNIONIZED, 99% DEMOCRAT in administration as well as educators, etc. Do you REALLY want to give the government MORE things to manage???? 

The government is a huge debtor, so it wants LOW INTEREST and HIGH INFLATION ... the number that counts is really the DIFFERENCE between the interest rate and the inflation rate. Inflation seems "low" at "a couple % a year", but the interest rate being paid on savings is actually less than the inflation rate! Just like it was under Jimmuh Carter. 

The difference -- as some of the charts show, is that nobody is making any money because we have no growth. "The problem is the recession" the article says -- the recession supposedly ended in June of 2009! The PROBLEM is that the "recovery" has been "tepid" to say the least -- and if they hadn't fudged the numbers, we would be in a new recession right now! (2 consecutive quarters of negative growth). 

If we had a Republican in the WH the NYTs would be APOCALYPTIC about this economy -- not just feeling a bit sorry for a few "millennials"!

The Difference Between A Democrat and a Socialist

Debbie Doubles Down (on Socialism) | Power Line:

You can go off to the link and see that the head of the Democrat party just isn't going to answer this question! She is as busy as the MSM making the claim that Donald Trump is what Republicans really are. In fact, Trump is more like what Democrats used to be. He is socially liberal, loves the limelight, and would like Oprah Winfrey for his running mate. He is pretty much exactly like a lot of Democrats -- a LOONY that just wants people to notice him!

A Socialist is really an honest Democrat.

Give all power and wealth to the State and let them hand it out as political favors. Promise the poor the moon, kill the golden goose of the producing class, and spread the rotting corpse on the poor and call it good! Leaves a stench, but all the Socialists / Democrats really want is the power -- they are going to blame others for the disaster anyway, just like they always do. Being a Socialist/Democrat means somebody else is always at fault!

Welcome to Greece -- it doesn't take long to run out of other people's money when you are the size of the US. A tick, leech, or other parasite like Greece can survive a long time on a host (like the EU), because even blown up to grossly big, it is still relatively small.

A Socialist US would be like a parasite the size of a blue whale! Pull that off with a tweezers!

It really does seem to be getting more insane and a faster rate now.



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Samaritan Shooter "Tired of Waiting Around"

Jesus Deniz Mendoza, 18, accused of killing Montana Good Samaritans - CBS News:

Two people that stopped to help a person along the road in Montana are dead -- the 3rd, their daughter age 26 is in the hospital. The shooter was "tired of waiting around".

"Deniz told the interviewing agents that he shot the victims because he was getting tired of waiting around, and because the daughter had laughed at him," the statement said.

One can't find out from the news if the shooter was an Undocumented Democrat (formerly Illegal Alien), but from the name it seems unlikely he is a "White Hispanic" like George Zimmerman.

One of the articles I read said that the youngest sibling of the still living victim is in High School -- but it is hard to find any of that information. No need to show a lot of flattering pictures of the victims, how much of a loss they are, etc in this case!

Anybody else tired of "waiting around" and being played like fools by the media? When the murder fits the "approved narrative", we get all sorts of pictures of sobbing relatives, outraged community members and high ranking administration officials somberly telling us how we MUST think about it!

When it doesn't fit the narrative ... small little stories, side of the page, nothing to glorify the victims, nothing to demonize the shooter -- in fact, it can be hard to find out ANYTHING about the shooter.

In the age of the internet we can "go hunting" to find out a few things ... apparently the shooter's page was linked to "Brown Pride". Is that bad? I really have no idea -- nor do I much care, but anyone with a brain needs to be fully aware that the media has 90%+ of the nation dancing like marionettes! Does it matter if the shooter might have had a Confederate Flag, or even had links to some "White Pride" site.  We are TOLD that it matters, but it doesn't.

When it DOES matter is if the shooter has links to a group that is world-wide in nature and explicitly wants to kill Christians, White People, Non-Muslims, Americans, etc .... Islam, Al Qaeda, Hamas, ISIS, Al Shabab, etc, etc

But we are told that all the Islamic groups DON'T matter ... just like all the black and brown groups. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). If the reverse is racist to even say ... "NAAWP", then you don't live in the country that was founded as America. We need a National Association for the Advancement of AMERICAN People", but it is impossible. Our president doesn't much like THAT idea of "America" -- liberty and justice for ALL, equal treatment for ALL -- even the "rich", limited government and all that jazz. We can't advance "America" because there isn't any agreement on what that is. Apparently, to the media, it is "making the wealthy whites, police, red states, etc PAY ... with money, lives, crime, etc, while advancing blacks, illegals, hispanics, muslims, etc.

We are told what to think -- and in "polite company" it is very wrong to even bring up news that is not "appropriate" ... like the policeman gunned down in Memphis by a black man for interrupting a drug deal.

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