Brooks Brothers Brutalism (Cruz)

The Brutalism of Ted Cruz - The New York Times:

Remember, David Brooks is what constitutes a "conservative" at the NY Times -- and he voted for Obama in 2008!

Apparently he doesn't like Cruz very much -- and thinks he is "brutal". I suppose to a NY Times wealthy highly paid intellectual guy that is on NPR every Friday with EJ Dionne where they cover both the "left and the far left" of politics, it may seem that way.

I wonder how he feels about ISIS?

The opening salvo about how Ted Cruz as Solicitor General for the State of Texas ought to be called "brutal" because he took a case to the SCOTUS and **WON** 6-3 makes one wonder just a bit about the Brooksian universe. Justices in the majority included the BRUTAL Ruth Ginsburg, Sandra Day O'Connor, and that BRUTE, Steven Breyer!!!

Can you imagine an action movie with those three squaring off against a few hundred ISIS guys? Why, I'd feel incredibly sorry for the ISIS guys with that kind of "pagan brutalism, no hint of compassion, gentleness or mercy" arrayed against them. Imagine being attacked by JUST Ruth VADER Ginsburg!

I suppose you would be OK if you were in a population that she doesn't mind having a few more of ... which may well include ISIS I suppose, but woe be to you if you are in a population she doesn't like! To quote her on the subject:

"Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of."

So since Ginsburg, Breyer and O'Connor sided with the case that Cruz brought and won, would that make them "brutal"?

It would seem it would HAVE TO if you are David Brooks and not insane, but for the rest of us, it may just mean that being Solicitor General for your state means that you are the one that appeals cases that federal courts overrule to the SCOTUS if it is determined that they have LEGAL MERIT, and you argue such cases on their LEGAL merits. When the SCOTUS agrees with you, the assumption would be that the case and your arguments were in alignment with the laws of the nation.

The law certainly can be BRUTAL! I find abortion law to be VERY brutal, but Brooks and obviously Ginsburg do not -- well, Ginsburg possibly only finds it OK if it is applied to "a population we have too many of".

To the extent there is any meat to the Brooks hatred of Cruz, I suspect it is here:

Ted Cruz didn’t come up with this hard, combative and gladiatorial campaign approach in isolation. He’s always demonstrated a tendency to bend his position — whether immigration or trade — to what suits him politically. This approach works because in the wake of the Obergefell v. Hodges court decision on same-sex marriage, many evangelicals feel they are being turned into pariahs in their own nation.

I wonder if groups that Brooks or Ginsburg "don't want too many of", or "evangelicals", would ever have any right to "feel that they are being turned into pariahs in their own nation"? Probably not ... I'm sure if they listen to "The Party" and it's media outlets, they can all be "re-educated" to support the views that their intellectual betters like Brooks and EJ Dionne tell them are the right views!

I have no idea who the Republican nominee is going to be -- right now Trump, Cruz or Rubio would seem to be likely. When you argue that because a Solicitor General of a State takes a case to the SCOTUS that wins with 3 justices that nearly all would consider moderate to left siding with the majority proves someone is "brutal", it seems more than a bit on the "I really hate this guy and felt I HAD to come up with something that at least SEEMED objective to support my position" side.

It is very hard to believe that this is what masquerades as "a conservative view" at our supposed "Paper of Record"!

HAL, Google Click Brain

Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic:

I enjoy Nicholas Carr as a writer and it was fun going back and reading my Blog on "The Big Switch" from March of '08.  The world was a lot more positive back then, I was still more hopeful of technology advances helping our futures, and less worried about downsides. His predictions of computing moving to "The Cloud" are very much coming to pass.

I've also read "The Shallows" on which the linked Atlantic article is based, but did not blog on it (yet) ... I'm probably going to give that one a re-read, although it already obvious that the Atlantic article is a pretty darned good summary, right down to the "2001 A Space Odyssey" references ... in particular:

The Carr thesis, going back over a decade at least, is that our technology changes us in unpredictable ways, and we ought to be aware of that. His view on the Internet and Google in particular is that we are losing our capacity for "deep reading" and "deep thought", and are being "distracted". Like HAL, we are "losing our minds".

He recognizes that it goes back a long way. One of the fairly recent (in terms of history) pieces of technology that totally changed the world was the clock. To wit ...

The clock’s methodical ticking helped bring into being the scientific mind and the scientific man. But it also took something away. As the late MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum observed in his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, the conception of the world that emerged from the widespread use of timekeeping instruments “remains an impoverished version of the older one, for it rests on a rejection of those direct experiences that formed the basis for, and indeed constituted, the old reality.” In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.

Being a Lutheran, I recognize one of the other "big ones" as the printing press. Without it, Luther would likely have just been another heretic burned or hung to save his own soul at the behest of the Roman Church. Instead, 500 years ago in 1517, the printing press (invented 1436) allowed his arguments and eventually the Bible itself, to be put in the hands of the common people in their own language. The central power of Rome was de-centralized, and much of what happened with democracy, republican government, the rise of commerce and science, etc was a direct result.

However, as this blog laments, wisdom is much more dear than knowledge, and one of the many challenges with "artificial intelligence" is just what is "intelligence"? These are not new problems ...

In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” Socrates wasn’t wrong—the new technology did often have the effects he feared—but he was shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom).

Since 2008, I've become aware of at least SOME of the dangers of my own auto-didacticism (self teaching with no program of study) in the areas of philosophy, politics, theology and areas of science (primarily cosmology and mind / consciousness study).

I would argue that being "filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom" is pretty much the "disease of our day". I'm sure that the invention of writing was a contributor, but I'd argue that the abandonment of honor for history/tradition, infatuation with "the latest and greatest" as well as the pell-mell rush for "knowledge" (with abandonment of "values") and forced abandonment of "wisdom",  since it may slow the headlong rush, was a decision -- not "inevitable". As in the case of most of our modern decisions, it is hard to call it a "conscious decision" because we seem to firmly avoid thinking with enough depth to make those sorts of determinations, and have for a lot longer than the Internet has been around.

Some parts of the technologies are as McLuhan said, endemic ... "the media is the message". Mass radio and television begat mass marketing and everyone standing around the water cooler discussing what was on Carson last night. Airplanes trumped battleships and nuclear missiles made it clear that no visible nation could get away with isolationism unless you had "cover" (that used to be the US, prior to Obama). It seems that is a lesson that will apparently require a few more millions of deaths to re-learn.

While Carr seems to think that "technology is destiny", I prefer to believe that **IF** we, FIRST considered meaning, wisdom, culture, human frailty, Gods will, tradition, etc, and THEN made use of technology with those goals in mind and primary, we could avoid at least the most onerous of the losses due to technology.

We **CAN** still enjoy an evening around a crackling fire, and we can still shut off the lights and have a beautiful candlelight service at church, and as I often do, we can settle down in a nice easy chair in front of a big window looking over the backyard with a remote / thermostatically controlled fireplace to keep us warm while we read in depth.

It is completely true that before the invention/discovery of tools, fire, language, writing, printing, computers, Internet, etc, we had less choices and "things were different". What is far from clear however is that we can abdicate our responsibility for making appropriate use of technology and blame the problem on "the technology made us do it". I agree with the following quote from the column on the fact that we are creating a lot of "flat people" these days, but I find it to be a choice rather than our destiny.

Before even the first crude spear, God enabled us to have "Free Will" -- the rest of the creatures only have instinct on which to rely. We need to quit thinking we are "apes with tools" and recognize that we are uniquely blessed to be human with the divine gift of consciousness!

I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and “cathedral-like” structure of the highly educated and articulate personality—a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self—evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly available.”

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Detroit, Chicago, Venezuela

More Detroit Schools Closed; Mayor to Tour Some Buildings - ABC News:

"All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." (Burke) A corollary from the position of evil is that good men  must be kept from the truth! -- which is what this post is about. If the follies of Socialism were kept in front of the people, Bernie Sanders would never have been elected dog catcher -- as it is, he is neck and neck in IA and hugely ahead in New Hampshire of all ironic places! (Live Free or Die -- guess they are ready to die!) Perhaps another of Burke's quotes comes to bear in these times

... "The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."

Detroit should be kept in front of our minds at all times as "the wages of socialism" ... you can go to the top linked article and see the schools are in shambles, deep in debt, under state control and the union teachers have lots of demands, including raises. Greed is self limiting -- people can only work so hard, build so much, etc and they get "satisfied, tired, bored, etc". Not so with Envy! People can ALWAYS demand to be given more! About half of Detroit's schools were closed yesterday as a "sick out" is in progress by the teachers, a similar number are closed today.

We can go to that shining star of left wing policies, Chicago, with some of the strictest gun laws in the land. "Common Sense" anyone? Remember, our supposed "leader" hails from this cesspool, and his own ex chief of staff is the current sitting mayor -- until he is indicted at least.

As of Monday morning, at least 19 people have been killed in gun violence in Chicago this year and at least 101 more have been wounded, according to data compiled by the Tribune. This time last year, nine people had been killed and another 31 wounded, according to statistics kept by the Chicago Tribune.

Venezuela is a world example of socialism in action -- waiting in line for food is now the major occupation there. A decade ago, Hugo Chavez was hugely popular with the left in this country -- he said bad things about W, which was VERY popular with our media in those days! We pretty much all knew how "great" things were going in Venezuela, and how impressive a "man of the people" Chavez was. Now you can go and read a series of articles from a guy there for the NY Times about what a basket case it is. The Socialists are finally out of power, but the nation is a shambles.

We hear about the evils of "income inequality" nearly every day, yet the amount of bread lines in this country are pretty limited. Detroit is proof that it CAN happen here!, and Chicago is well on the way. DC, St Louis, Atlanta, New Orleans ... the majority of the large cities operated by TP are in very bad shape. The nation is in bad shape and sinking fast -- it may well be beyond hope already.

Destroy the drive of people to MAKE and convince them what is better is to TAKE, and pretty soon everyone is out on a "sickout" making demands on what they "ought" to be given.

We used to be able to look at East vs West Germany, Hong Kong vs China -- we can still look at North vs South Korea if we care, but NEVER expect TP controlled media in this country to help show the obvious.

SOCIALISM FAILS! One more Burke quote to end this lesson ...

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

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Go With The Fun!

The Fun Indicator | Power Line:



If you follow the link, you can read about a fun little anecdote about Nancy Reagan rolling an orange down the aisle on the Reagan campaign plane, and also realize that Trump is BY FAR having the most fun this campaign season. No matter how we might feel about it, at least somewhat often, the campaign having the most fun WINS! (can you imagine life (or their facsimile of such) on the Hillary or Bernie campaign? ... eek!)



I think that is often true for football teams as well. Seattle tends to have a lot of fun playing -- it doesn't mean they ALWAYS win (see Superbowl), but as the Vikings and Green Bay can testify, it means they pull some big games out where things just "go their way".



Green Bay decided to go into "avoiding losing" last year ... which led to them managing to NOT WIN! The 2nd half of the NFC championship OUGHT to have been FUN for the Packers and Packer Fans -- and I think it WOULD have been, had they only kept playing like it was a FUN GAME!



Miracle of miracles, the fun magically returned to the Packer offense after an 11 yard output 1st quarter that included a SAFETY. If it stays, I think we have a "punchers chance" in AZ -- they CAN be beaten, see their last game against Seahawks! (36-6, Seattle)



There is a lot of truth to this in life as well, with the important caveat that it won't ALWAYS be fun! The best projects / teams in my career always had some solid fun aspects involved. Yes, yes ... there are hard slogs involved, stuff that NOBODY wants to do, etc ... but when it is working, there is also some fun!



There is a lot of "big picture wisdom" in this little observation. The things we often believe (or are told) OUGHT to be FUN, rarely are. Partying, "laying on the beach", throwing away the "rules", etc ... they can be fun at times, but they tend to get stale pretty quickly as overindulgence, disorder, disarray, etc take their inevitable toll.



Is there really any group in America or Europe that is "having fun" right now? Maybe Islamists I guess ... they have a goal (world domination), and a reason to live (Allah and expanding his domination). Putin? The current whack job version of the "Kim Jong" inbreeding?



While "liberalism" is very dominant, it never seems "fun" no matter how much it "wins" -- the environment is too polluted, things are never equal enough, some group or another is "disadvantaged",  too much evil around -- corporations, the Koch brothers, Christians, white people, police, etc. Huge requirements for more government, more regulation, more laws, more taxes, more CONTROL! They may eventually FORCE us to have fun!



Maybe the "1%"?  ... they are busy at least, but as we see over and over in hollywood, sports, etc, that version of MORE, MORE, MORE! tends to be very self defeating. We are TOLD they have it "really good", but I'm not all that certain that many really believe it.



We do see that in the modern value free world, many still fervently hope for money to make them happy, thus the craze over the lottery that nobody seems to be able to win, now over $1 BILLION dollars!



I do think that we have more than ample examples that "building / doing stuff" has a lot more going for it than "taking / regulating stuff". My biggest opposition to us becoming a nation of takers vs makers outside of the fact that it doesn't work is that it is NO FUN to be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It is MUCH more fun to BUILD IT!!!!



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Crossing Einstein and Life

Einstein Cross - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Do I find these images to be "compelling evidence of God giving us a sign"?

No, I find them to be little hints that stir the soul -- like the little chrome or paint touch on a custom motorcycle, the "Easter Egg" in the game or other computer program or movie ... maybe. As always, God is a both a VERY showy God and a VERY subtle God. He BOTH lavishly stacks the deck to show he is there, yet he leaves enough room so that those who are determined to deny him are not absolutely forced (in this life) to admit the "obvious answer".  (Although, the more we learn, the harder atheism becomes ...)

But such visuals are fun ... and beautiful, and they give that little shiver of recognition of the work of the ultimate creative artist.

The top picture is the Einstein Cross and link takes you to more detail about it if you are interested. It is a visual of gravitational lensing predicted by the general theory of relativity.

The bottom is laminin protein molecule that literally "holds life together".

Both have been become somewhat popular in various Christian circles, but in general I find such things to be a danger if they are taken TOO seriously. The Bible is the Word of God -- it certainly tells us that God created us and holds us together physically, but much more importantly, spiritually and eternally. The creation will all pass away -- only the spirit is eternal.

But while we are here, God has blessed us with little "shivers of eternal awareness" to help light our way home to him.

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Understanding Islam, Rape as Reward

Cologne’s Rape Jihad: Muslim Migrants Crash Europe’s Fantasy Islam:

I've lost my ability to continue to try to understand how the leftist mind of "The Party" (TP-D) operates. On one hand, young women should be so protected that "ogling" is a crime no matter what they are wearing, "unwanted kissing" can be classified as "rape", and there is no such thing as "consensual sex" unless they sign the appropriate consent form -- all be it still difficult to discern if they have had anything to drink.

OTOH, when it comes to large groups of Islamic men forming circles and brutally raping women in the center as the police are blocked off -- well, then, women REALLY need to pay a LOT attention to what they wear (have they considered a hijab?),

Truth being the first casualty of war, it was left to Henriette Reker, the fantasy Islam–drenched mayor of Cologne, to blame the victims for their ordeal. Such assaults could be prevented, she declaimed, if German women adopted a “code of conduct” tailored to the Islamic culture, they could prevent future attacks. 

To even mention that such actions are occurring and rapidly expanding is suppressed by the western media.  We can't appear "unwelcoming" or be "profiling" after all ... but for those of you willing to risk your public standing by reading "subversive news":

The Muslim men used a tactic that has escaped the notice of fantasy Islam devotees but is well known to those of us who’ve followed the scant reports on the rape jihad as it has proceeded from Tahrir Square to Malmö to Rotherham: A group of men encircles the targeted woman or girl, trapping her while walling off police and other would-be rescuers. Knowing they are a protected class, the Muslim men have no fear of the cops — “You can’t do anything to me,” and “Mrs. Merkel invited me here,” are just some of the reported taunts. By the time “help” reaches one victim, the assailants have moved on to the next.

How DOES the mind of a person of the left operate? If they picture their own wife or daughter in the center of such a circle of taunting Muslim men, does it cause any protective emotion to rise, or are their brains so totally aligned with the "Word of TP" that such emotions are sublimated to "we feel only what we are told to feel"?  We live in a world where the "red and blue tribes" are so fully separated that the age old admonition to attempt to "see it from the other side" has become impossible for me.

There must be some place the mind goes where the baby in the womb, the thousands of young black men shooting each other each year, the lives of the police, and apparently now the young western woman being repeatedly raped by a circle of taunting entitled Muslim men, simply cease to matter. Once that happens, one can apparently feel morally superior and "good" as they look in the mirror in that they know they are aligned with TP and TP is always right!?  I assume they somehow see "the greater good of TP,  praise be to TP!!" but it is here that my ability to "put myself in their frame" is totally inadequate.

This is not isolated. No, it is completely KNOWN, written down, and STATED from many quarters that sexually taking women and children by force is a part of the Islamic plan of conquest:

As I’ve previously explained, when Muslims are seeking conquest, Islamic scripture endorses sexual assault as a weapon to establish their dominance. “O Prophet,” Allah is said to have announced (in the Koran’s sura 33:50), “We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou has paid their dowers, and those whom thy right hand possesses out of the captives of war whom Allah has assigned to thee.”

Once consistency is no longer an issue, it becomes a requirement that INconsistency be pushed to points previously unimaginable. In one context, "kissing is rape", in another, brutal multiple actual penetrative rapes are to be ignored and blamed on the victim.  To hold BOTH these views in the mind concurrently and claim that you are "in support" of both is what it now means to walk around as a supposedly sane supporter of TP!

Can anyone NOT now understand how Germans could gas Jews by day and go home to wife and family in the evening and feel like a "good man"? We now see that millions of people walking among us hold the opinion on rape outlined above at least implicitly. It is the official position of OUR government and that of the governments in Europe!

Without rational and CONSISTENT thought, there are NO LIMITS on what humans can do and believe they are "in the right"! What part of NO LIMITS is it that we fail to grasp?

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Worst Stock Market Opening Week EVER

Stocks close out week with worst start to year ever:

Hey, BO gets another "first" to add to his list!

He ought to be in big favor of this -- one of the best ways to decrease the scourge of "income inequality" is to take the Dow to zero! Ah, the utopian BO dream where the 99% are all fighting over rats to eat and he is golfing with Trump and Slick Willie laughing about the chumps that let him fix all that "inequality"!

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Promises, The Political Currency

A Republican Cure for Liberal Failures on Poverty - WSJ:

A good column by Speaker Ryan.

President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty in 1964. Since then politicians have won votes by creating new federal programs, without bothering to check whether they work—because in the political market the currency is promises, not results. The federal government now runs more than 80 different antipoverty programs at a cost of about $750 billion a year. Yet 46 million Americans are poor today, and the poverty rate has barely budged: from 19% in 1965 to 14.8% in 2014. If you were raised poor, you’re as likely to stay poor as you were 50 years ago.

It's worth the read ... not very long. How many times have we heard some inflated figure on how much the Iraq war cost us and how it "bankrupted the nation"? Try 50 years of poverty programs that managed to lock tens of millions into a cycle of poverty,  despair, and violence while wasting something like $40 TRILLION inflation adjusted dollars over that period.

Oh, I know, GREAT deal for Democrats! Second biggest vote buying program in history -- with FICA/Medicare taking the TOP spot!

We have reached the point where we deserve the government we have because the government bought all our votes!

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Warming? CA Methane Leak, 6 Million Coal Cars?

A natural gas leak with seemingly no end | Marketplace.org:

I'd barely heard about this, but low and behold, "Climate Cast" on NPR talked of it yesterday.

On the show, and in this quote from here, they discussed it as being like "six coal fired power plants" -- one wonders if that is LIFETIME or one year? Six power plants each burning over a million cars of a coal in a year sounds WAY off to me, so it almost has to be lifetime.

O'Connor, of the Environmental Defense Fund said the gas gushing from Aliso Canyon is roughly equal to that emitted by six coal-fired power plants or 7 million extra cars. "I think we have found a regulatory gap," he said.

So one would think that if you were a warmist, this would be right up there with Exxon Valdez or BP and Deepwater Horizon in the gulf. Lots of people are being evacuated, planes re-directed, the governor has declared a state of emergency, it is going to be going on for at least MONTHS more and the end is uncertain! How can this NOT be a top news story??!!  I mean, come on, "Climate Change" is the "Greatest Challenge Facing our Generation"!

So I checked just a bit of "follow the money" just cuz I figure there has to be SOME explanation,  and "amazingly", governor Browns sister is involved with the owning company, AND, they have been very generous in donations to Brown.

Kathleen Brown was paid $183,000 last year as the director of Sempra Energy, according to a Wednesday report in the Boston Environmental Policy Examiner. She also managed to score $400,000 in stock in the much-maligned energy company, according to financial statements. 

Worse still, critics say, is the fact Gov. Brown owes a debt of gratitude to Sempra, as the governor has received more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from his sister’s company.

I'm guessing we could find even more connections ... BO maybe? Who knows.

The beauty of environmental law, IRS audits, "coordination" under Citizens United, hate speech, sexual harassment and a whole lot of the other current "left wing causes/laws" is that they invert the old "innocent until proven guilty" idea and rules of evidence at that same time. They are like weapons that ONLY KILL YOUR ENEMIES! They are the very best sort of "smart weapon" in that they are "ideologically based".

It is rather ingenious really. Harming the environment is a BIG DEAL when it is made to be a big deal because it fits the left narrative or the "cause" is someone that hasn't greased the proper palms to the proper amount. But it is selective -- if you are the "right folks", or "pay appropriately", you get to avoid the issue. Getting your mind right and being on the "right side" (meaning left) has it's perks!

When you live in a single political party controlled totalitarian state, it is ALL about politics. When something bad happens, the FIRST question that is asked is: Which Tribe? Red or Blue. If red, go for the jugular ... if blue, then no matter how HUGE it is, sweep it under the rug.

It makes the "rules" a lot easier to understand!

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Liberal Theology, The Problem of Evil

The Liberal Theology of Gun Control - WSJ:

I'm getting pretty sick of this latest round of the endless gun control debate, but the linked article does a good job of pointing out how liberal theology makes sense -- to liberals. In the bigger context of how liberals think, this really does make sense.

First, liberals don't believe that there are evil people:

Put simply, today’s liberalism cannot deal with the reality of evil. So liberals inveigh against the instruments the evil use rather than the evil that motivates them.

Not criminals, not terrorists, not even the USSR in the cold war was evil. No doubt anyone who "seems evil" (with the exception of conservatives) had bad childhoods, people treated them unfairly, or they just lacked "the proper education". Liberals are CERTAIN that with just a wee bit more "education", they can fix ANYTHING! The following paragraph is in reference to liberal views on Reagan as he tried to end the USSR rather than do what the left wanted ... sign another fake "arms control" agreement:

Two things especially irked them: He’d called the U.S.S.R. the Evil Empire, and he was skeptical about arms control for the sake of arms control.

Liberals are fine with communism, crime, or even (amazingly) islamic extremism. They LOVE to "do things" though -- and "arms control" and "gun control" are the kind of thing they LOVE to do. They are things that tend to be counterproductive, but that is more than fine with liberals!

Bad regimes are like bad guys in this respect. They’ll take a deal they know has no teeth. But they will accept a genuine arms reduction only when the good guys put them in a position where they have little or no choice. 

This helps explain why, for example, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi turned over his entire nuclear program to George W. Bush—and why the Iranians happily agreed to a deal with President Obama that puts them on the path to a bomb. 

Meanwhile, we’ve just endured what may be the first successful ISIS-inspired attack on the homeland. And like her former boss, Hillary Clinton is demanding the government “take action now” on guns.

It isn't like those of us with a memory don't recall other "nuke deals" that we were told were just peachy and ended up going "boom" ... like BIG BOOM as in H-bomb! Here is old Slick talking like a true Clinton in '94 ... why is it that we conservatives are skeptics on what liberals say???

"Liberal" is about ending things like "the Constitutions" and replacing them with a totalitarian central government. That government may be communist, criminal, or even Islamic ... "liberals" are actually VERY LIBERAL on that issue! It is the POWER that they demand -- how it gets in their hands is "just mechanism".

In the meantime, they are fine with North Korea and Iran having nukes as well as terrorists and criminals having guns. They really aren't stupid, they are aware that terrorists and criminals don't follow laws, and bad regimes don't honor "agreements". Taking YOUR guns and de-stabilizing the nation and world plays into their hands, so they are all for it, and they will use any propaganda they feel will work to reach their goals. They never claimed to believe in anything other than power -- certainly not "truth" which is defined to be "whatever they say it is".

They do FIRMLY believe the last vestiges of the US and western civilization must be destroyed by ANY MEANS, because they are CERTAIN that once they start all over, they will definitely build utopia!

Utopia, "heaven on earth" is the end that justifies all means.

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Slick Willie Rape, Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others

The rape allegation against Bill Clinton, explained - Vox:

A rather longish article from the progressive site Vox that essentially ends up at the obvious -- if you are going to take rape accusers seriously as Hillary and others have said, you would be FORCED to take Juanita Broadderick seriously.

But whatever the merits of that view, adopting it would be a big pivot for Hillary Clinton, given that just a couple of months ago she was tweeting, "Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported." There's no easy way to reconcile that view with her allies' dismissal of Broaddrick's allegations.

Such a thing must be like "intellectual rape" for "The Party" (TP-D), because they are the ones that USE force ... not the ones who are forced to face any truth, reality or reason! They are the definers of what we ought all think, and what they demand that we think includes massive inconsistency by design. They want it that way, and we all need to remember the immortal words from "Animal Farm" since their meaning is now regularly and obviously on display here in what used to be America.

"All animals are equal. Some animals are more equal than others!".

Obviously, Slick Willie is a "more equal animal" -- than say, Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby was ONCE in the same class as Slick Willie ... he was a famous black who was assumed to be liberal, so whatever his sins may have been, they were to be ignored -- and were.

But he fell from grace -- in pain over the massive killings of young black men and the wanton looting and lawlessness of those of his race in riots and violence, he raised his voice. He demanded that blacks take responsibility for their actions, and in the left religion, that is grievous SIN! Blacks are to be slaves on TP Plantation -- it is their role! For some uppity black like Cosby to have the gall to question the ruling of TP is a sin that must be punished!

Those on the right may be accused by "anonymous sources" and that is considered a "serious matter".  On the left, the aggreived can come forward, be known, submit testimony, and it is STILL ignored as "not important".

Some animals are more equal than others.

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Vox Explained

National Review Online:

I've seen Vox show up a few times on FB and other places now, and since I'm about to use a link from them in another post, I thought I'd check them out a bit.

Ezra Klein is the editor in chief of Vox. He is a PROGRESSIVE writer / blogger that worked for the WaPO doing "Wonkblog". He was an associate editor at American Prospect (progressive) and a contributor to MSBC and Bloomberg news ... if you follow the link in his name above you will to go the Wikipedia entry for him. He is VERY left wing.

The NRO article is quite long and exhaustive -- the basic purpose of Vox is "in depth reporting" kind of like National Public Radio. I suppose in their universe, both consider themselves "unbiased" in that they make the sound of one left hand clapping. As I like to say of NPR, "They cover both the left and the far left"!

After the linked article goes through a citiqueing a few Vox stories both positive and negative, it ends up with the following, which I agree with -- since we know their biases, we can likely glean quite a few unintended facts from them even with the bias, and it is ALWAYS good to have a reasonably deep understanding of the other sides arguments!

If you’re going to tell someone what they should think about something under the guise of “here’s what you need to know about” something, it really ought to include . . . everything you need to know about something. That’s nearly impossible, of course, which is why most people trying to persuade you are a little more upfront about it. This new venture isn’t going to do that, but that doesn’t mean it can’t sometimes be a useful resource and a helpful corrective.

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Loss and "Closure"

Link to WSJ Article

Ran into what I found to be a fairly short description of dealing with death and loss on WSJ that seems very worth of consideration for those of us forced to deal with this topic -- which is ALL of us until we exit this mortal coil.

Every person and every loss is unique. Some may want to have some sort of "closure" (no matter what the article says) ... possibly for "always", or they may change their mind on the topic in the same night ... both directions. Emotion, grief, loss, death -- these are not topics that lend themselves to pat answers or "one size fits all" templates for how they "should" proceed.

Be there for those that have lost that are grieving and try to support them in what they are going through as best you can understand what they need  -- and pray that there will be someone that does the same when it happens to you!

NEVER make statements like "You OUGHT to ..." Ought, should, so and so did, etc relative to someone dealing with loss are minefields. Just avoid walking into them.

OTOH, when it is you that is in grief, TRY to forgive those that are trying to help even if they are doing it horribly.  Even perfect support can at times fail miserably because ... well, because things like logic, rules, guidelines, reason, common sense, etc really don't count for much when facing the permanent (for this life) loss of part of one's very soul.

I liked the following paragraph even though I think it as well can be wrong in some cases. The article is worth the short read.

The reality is that closure is a myth. My personal and professional experience with those who have lost friends and family, including children, has taught me that going on with life is not the same as gaining closure. The wound of loss is a part of each person’s life forever. We continue to think about those dear to us, though perhaps not every day or with the same intensity. Recollection is sometimes provoked by a date on the calendar or, less predictably, by a sight, sound, aroma, melody or place that evokes the missing person.

Dunning-Kruger Effect Revisited

Revisiting why incompetents think they’re awesome | Ars Technica:

I ran into this and remembered that I had covered this in the past at this link. Since nobody read that one, I did some editing and am going to include what I wrote in this post. The basic idea is that in many areas people are "unconsciously incompetent", or basically "too stupid to know how stupid they are, so they assume they are intelligent".

As Darwin put it, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge". The Dunning-Kruger (DK) study seems to prove it and shows the following:

1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

It seems obvious in looking at those that narcissists would be an extreme case -- and also not very likely to be trainable. Obama is pretty much the poster child. A quote from the linked article:

Dunning believes there are two key issues: first, critical thinking skills, applied to your own knowledge, as well as everything else, are vital. But, importantly, if you don't exercise critical thinking skills, they will fade, leaving you with a false impression of your own abilities.

Naturally, the Moose is immune to DK effects because the Moose is AVERAGE, and the problem with DK begins because people (as opposed to mooses) believe they are above average!

I maintain that the BIG problem with DK is "The Party (TP-D) Standard Knowledge". No need to think if you agree with "the 97%" as one recent supposed "expert" did before congress.  The left often likes to assert that such loss of critical thinking happens to "conservatives" with the "FAUX News Effect", but considering that most every other outlet plus the universities tend to lean left, they for some reason are never worried that their own "critical thinking" might have a small chance to atrophy.

We see a bit of that atrophy in the author of the column where he says:

That said, spotting an expert outside of one’s field is a task one can become better at. And that’s important, given just how much information, good and bad, is not available to people. For example, is the expert associated with a university (a good sign) or some 'think tank' (a bad sign)?" Again, though, this takes experience and expertise. Groups like think tanks try to give themselves the trappings of expertise in a move specifically designed to fool us into trusting their statements.

So why pray tell does grant money from a government or some very possibly biased other source going to a researcher at a university have less effect on what kind of research they do or the conclusions that they might come to than funding at a "think tank"? As I pointed out in the FAUX link above about "Media Matters", their whole schtick is looking for "conservative" bias. It would be a rare university indeed where you find any of THAT!

In any case, the following is copied from the 09 post that nobody read -- so I cheated!

We **ALL** fall prey to DK, since we are all OFTEN incompetent!  In fact, for ALL of us, our areas of incompetence VASTLY exceed those areas where we are competent, and the worst problem tends to be those areas where we are "unconsciously incompetent". We are too stupid to know that we don't know!

If you are more intelligent than the average person, you can commonly "make something up" that will sound plausible to all but the more intelligent or the better trained in some area that you happen to drift into. Even worse, if you couple high intelligence with argumentative ability, you are likely to intimidate even those who really DO know from pointing it out since you will STILL be hard to argue with / convince. (If you are REALLY bad, you will just call them "racist" if they point out where you are wrong!)

A near certain sign of a vast level of ignorance and high level of the DK  effect is the belief  that "Someone that was "smart" could explain this to me SIMPLY (meaning "simple" to the person that wants the explanation)". Often this comes with the corollary that "If it can't be explained (to the person) "simply", NOBODY  understands it very well and all views (certainly MINE!) are pretty much "equal"".  The simple answer to this is Quantum Physics -- geniuses like Feynman knew that if you weren't confused, you REALLY didn't understand it!

The core of this idea is viewing ones self as the center of the universe to an extraordinary degree -- why is it that all phenomena ought to be easily explainable to YOU (if indeed to ANYONE)? It is a piece of unfounded faith that shows extreme ignorance coupled with hubris, but remember, it is very possible to couple extreme ignorance with high intelligence. Narcissists are often exactly this case -- convinced they are the only one that really matters, and their special knowledge, opinion and perspective is really the only one that counts! Obama may be the greatest example of this in history!

High Dunning-Kruger and great communication skills is especially dangerous. "See Obama". Note, Reagan had great communications skills, but very low DK -- he clearly knew what he didn't know and acted accordingly. Bush had poor communications skills, and I'd argue a low DK problem as well -- he also was willing to bring in expertise that he knew exceeded his and support them. BO has no clue about economics, mideast history, running car companies, what it takes to win against terrorists, or apparently even Constitutional Law, which was SUPPOSED to be his specialty!  -- but no matter. He is absolutely convinced he can do all of them because he has a law degree from Harvard and worked as a Community Organizer for awhile!

Very much thought about this and the term "chilling" doesn't really do it justice!

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Sowell, BO's Theater, Gun Marker

Showman-in-Chief - Thomas Sowell - Page full:

For an EXHAUSTIVE view on the studies, surveys, research, etc relative to guns, and the huge difficulty of making any sense out of it statistically, I recommend this.

The Second Amendment was plain and clear in the US Constitution for over 200 years, but by 2008, our nation was so screwed up that the Supreme Court had to get involved to "interpret" the plain text of the Constitution lest it be taken to mean "our soldiers can carry guns". Even then, it was 5 to 4 -- when a nation goes dim, it seems to go very dim very fast!

The president used to be sworn to uphold that Constitution, especially after the SCOTUS has recently ruled, but BO doesn't care about anything in that old document -- separation of powers, limited powers, rights of citizens, etc ... BO is certain he is THE supreme authority, and since "The Party" (D) is not going to stand up for their oaths of office either, the lawless regime slithers on.

TP is not going to rest until the guns in private hands are rounded up, one way or another, because their power will never be total until that happens, and they are not going to stop short of TOTAL POWER!

However, this is WAY past "statistics". As Jefferson said; "No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms". Without the rule of law, we are down to the bitter end of the freedoms that our founders bequeathed us. They understood that freedom is NEVER free, and unfortunately, either the last ember left here will finally die, or it will be "refreshed with the blood of patriots".

In the meantime, the Sowell article is excellent reading -- oh if only Sowell could have been our first Black President, we would be a great nation once more!

Those who have been marveling at Donald Trump's political showmanship were given a reminder of who is the top showman of them all, when President Barack Obama went on television to make a pitch for his unilateral actions to restrict gun sales and make a more general case for tighter gun control laws. 

It was beautifully choreographed, like a great ballet, and performed with consummate skill and understated eloquence. First of all, the scene was set with a room full of people who had lost loved ones to gun violence. A father whose son had been gunned down made a long introduction before the president showed up, walked down the aisle and up on to the stage to growing applause. 

As political theater, it put Donald Trump's rantings in the shade.

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