War On Carp and Sanity

Fervor in Oregon Compound and Fear Outside It - The New York Times:

"Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore"! As I've noted before, we also certainly aren't in anything that would have been called "America" or USA prior to 2008 anymore. WTFistan? It was "Changed", and it seems Hopeless ... but I think I could even take THAT a little better if I could even begin to understand how I might even imagine walking a few miles in the ruling elite's moccasins -- or perhaps wearing their tinfoil hats? What is going on????

In the linked article we find that a lot of strange people are running in and out of the remote wildlife refuge that has been "occupied", including somebody dressed like a Declaration of Independence Signer, some kids, reporters and ladies baking brownies. and a horse named "Hellboy".

Deeper inside, down an icy, tree-lined road, the group has seized about a dozen buildings, and the Bundy brothers have commandeered the cluttered office of Linda Sue Beck, a government biologist who had been leading a war on invasive carp before the occupiers took over. 

The heart of the protest, however, is a quarter-mile from the biologist’s office, at a bunkhouse with bedrooms and a large kitchen where women marinate chicken, grill salmon, bake brownies and organize a stockroom that swelling with donations from around the nation. To slip in, a reporter just has to ask.

I know I'm pretty concerned that the LEADER of the "war on invasive carp" has been sidetracked! Thank God we are still able to combat "Global Warming", the "challenge of our generation", as well as the other biggie "Income Inequality" ... I wasn't even aware we had declared war on carp.

So WTF? The NY Times clearly cares about this "occupation", although the federal government either completely doesn't care, is totally incompetent, or ??? I mean, 3rd grade snow fort occupation management 101 would be to RESTRICT ACCESS! In the event they have ANY future plans to take the government property back ... perhaps in a hurry because the carp have maybe captured a couple of our navy craft and we want our sailors back!

Or perhaps our leadership is looking to get a bunch of people in there so they can burn it up like Waco and make a bigger "statement"? Isn't there SOME limit on how much incompetence a sane person can buy into? I know that is "black helicopter stuff", but I simply can't figure out what the Feds are up to here at ALL, and I don't think the NY Times can either.

I WILL say however that watching Facebook, one sees how quickly the left goes to VIOLENT HATRED! There can be all manner of black riots, police killings, blacks blocking freeways, Islamic beheading, rapes, planes bombed, etc, and your average lefty is "keep calm, don't stereotype, be "proportional" etc.

Let a few cranks take over a remote wayside rest and the lefties want BLOOD and they want it NOW!!! TERRORIST is a word they are no shy about using at all in THIS case!

So on to the Iranians and the boats. We are expected to buy that our navy is SO incompetent that they "drifted into Iranian waters". This makes no sense.  The boats were stopped on the high seas for a great show of force over the US, especially the obviously false cover story plus BO and Kerry bowing and scraping.

Then we have the apology from the Navy Commander that is in direct violation of the code of conduct for our servicemen when captured! Huh?

I understand why Iran would like the show of force and slap in the face on the day of the SOTU and a couple days before sanctions are lifted, but why would BO and company play along? Even MORE surprising is that it seems that NOBODY is concerned at all about how completely off the wall this incident is. There are at least 10 sailors that know at least a lot of the story, and nearly certainly double, triple that or more on this side and who knows how many on the Iranian side. It would seem like the truth eventually will come out, but OTOH, the gigantic lack of curiosity is AMAZING!

Was the propaganda photo op something that Iran demanded to release the three hostages they have been holding forever?  I could see BO going for something like that for sure. Oddly, although the linked WaPo headline is ; "Plane with freed Americans leaves Iran; U.S. imposes new sanctions", the sanctions are not on Iran, but on the companies that helped them prepare their ballistic missiles that they have tested in violation of the agreement that the sanctions have been lifted as a result of them agreeing to ... and violating!

Again, What???? I have no idea what is going on -- the "ship of state" seems to just be completely drifting domestically and abroad, and it seems everyone is just watching the playoffs, TV and movies and surfing the net like cud chewing cattle.

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Stocks Extend Worst Start On Record ...

U.S. Stocks Extend Worst Start on Record With Weekly Tumble - Bloomberg Business:



2016 is off to a great start!



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25 Reasons for BS

25 Reasons Why I’m Voting For Bernie Sanders:

You can go off and read the reasons if you like ... I have a few in the same vein that if I cease to be reality based, I could proffer as my platform ...

1) I believe that white teens should be able to walk through black neighborhoods late at night, drunk, carrying large amounts of cash in complete safety.

2). I have the death sentence on 12 systems

3). I've shook NRA members hands.

4). I believe police forces should be disarmed, carry rainbow flags and dispense GMO free granola.

5). I believe that everyone should vote early and often with no identification required.

6). I think we should pay students to attend free universities for as long as they like with no grades and pay for it with money -- prettier money, printed on colorful paper with a lot of unicorns on it!

7), I support mandatory voting for EVERYONE! If you don't vote, you go to a special camp where they convince you to vote! Coupled with #5, we should have turnouts in the 300-700% range!

8). I think everything should be free. Healthcare, nursing home care, housecleaning, lawn mowing, booze, drugs, Internet, Cable TV, movies, sports, masonry  ... It should ALL be FREE!

9). I'd filibuster FOREVER for having no taxes paid by anyone in the 99% ... have the 1% pay it ALL and just print the rest! Now that I think of it, this seems like a BASIC RIGHT! Oh, and make the money more colorful and prettier -- with unicorns.

10). Why are we talking chump change like $15 hr? Anyone that wants to work deserves at least $100 bucks an hour -- heck, why not $1,000? This also seems like a BASIC RIGHT!

11). A Trillion? Why so little? I raise him double and add $30 Trillion! oh, and I would demand that we get most of the work done by disabled ex-con MINORITY veterans that are addicted to at least alcohol and one other substance and are unsure of their gender! Take THAT BS!

12). Everyone is entitled to EVERYTHING! If they want to work -- ENTITLED! If they don't want to work ENTITLED! If they want to be CEO? ENTITLED! Everyone is entitled to everything. It's ... you guessed it, A BASIC RIGHT!

13). EVERYONE should be paid equally! Men, women, children, pets, undocumented Democrats ... EVERYONE IS EQUAL! ... It's a BASIC RIGHT!

14). Why limit funding for any great idea? Planned Parenthood? UNLIMITED FUNDING! When people have ideas of things that they want, those are the things they want!

15). Why would anyone limit family leave, vacation days, sick leave, etc? Everyone gets UNLIMITED PAID LEAVE! ... for whatever they want! Can't Bill Gates or Warren Buffet take time off whenever they want for whatever reason they want? Why the hell should they have an advantage over anyone else? See 13  ... being off work tends to cost more. Everyone gets unlimited leave AND double salary while on leave!

16). Why have any campaign grovel for donations? All campaigns are FULLY FUNDED! No more grubby "donations"!

17). Coach? Why should ANYONE fly coach? Anyone that wants to fly anywhere flies on the best private jets! Why limit ourselves? See 13.

18). Banks? Why bother with banks? In my administration everything is free and everyone makes gigantic salaries. Sure, we can have a lot of "regulators" as an excuse for paying more gigantic salaries, but you don't really expect them to waste time looking at boring records full of columns of figures in a nation where everything is free and everyone is RICH do you? I didn't think so.

19). Gay rights? Hey, there are over 50 genders on Facebook and incalculable sexual preferences -- every one of them is to be "special, protected, subsidized, celebrated, honored, etc" in my administration. We will have special days for all of them with big parades pretty much every day of the year! Imagine the joy of "National uncertain genders attracted to imaginary species day"! A great excuse to produce a bunch of free T-shirts and party favors!

20). I got into politics because I was sick of everything not being PERFECT!

21). There was an invasion in 2003? Bummer!  I oppose all war back to Sumer vs Elam in 2700 BC (first documented war)! My first act as President would be to outlaw War for all of time ... retroactively!

22). While I oppose war, I love veterans. In my administration anything to do with Veterans will have UNLIMITED FUNDING!

23). Oh, I love the Iran deal. I propose we "DECLARE PEACE"! ... with everyone! On second thought, this is redundant since I have already declared war illegal -- SO, I "DECLARE LOVE!" ... all people everywhere will LOVE EVERYONE!  Why didn't we do this before?

24). Here today I declare that the CLIMATE WILL NOT CHANGE if I am elected! Not now, not EVER! This is it! ... unless you want it turned down a few tenths or something. I declare that all energy will henceforth be free, completely non-polluting and like my budgets, UNLIMITED! I'm forming a task force so that everyone can have the weather they want every day!

25). "Immigrants"? Isn't that kind of exclusive? Executive orders? I'm sick of all this -- on my first day in office I will send Congress home! It will be dissolved! Our borders will be  COMPLETELY OPEN !  No more politics! What we will have is PERFECTION -- I came to abolish politics.

I guess I really like politics after all. In a world free of want and war where everyone not only has everything, but loves everyone, we will all live happily ever after. For CERTAIN!

It is always a mystery to me why intelligent guys like BS with obviously intelligent supporters stop so far short of getting to what they and we all REALLY WANT!

It's simple, PERFECTION IS A BASIC RIGHT!!

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A Census of Hell

The Population of Hell by Avery Cardinal Dulles | Articles | First Things:

Longish but worth the read if you have any theological bent -- what could be better than a discourse on Hell before a weekend which promises that there is a hope to see zero tomorrow, but the near certainty of a sub-zero high on Sunday! In the north, it is hard not to feel that God proved his mercy when he made Hell hot rather than cold!

It is a serious topic -- and a serious article. Considering that these doctrines are thousands of years old, and the idea of a "place of suffering" for the damned, crosses multiple religions and even non-religions, it is worthy of being aware of what such doctrines are, even (or maybe especially) for those who reject them. If you assume "it's all made up" ... as it MUST be if you are atheist -- somebody has been thinking these thoughts as "right" for a lot longer than whatever the latest thoughts are.

Consider Emerson on this topic ...

"All writers must submit their performance to the wise ear of Time, who sits and weighs, and ten years hence out of a million pages prints one. Again, it is judged, it is winnowed by all the winds of opinion, and what terrific selection has not past on it before it can be reprinted after 20 years, and reprinted after a century!" 

The "progressive mind" tells you that old is bad, new is good. Is Eternity old or new?

Is clearly understanding "the worst that can happen" if you go without insurance of most import to those that are insured, or those that are uninsured? That is not a bad joke about "fire insurance", it is a serious question.

Having been raised a Baptist, I was especially struck by this:

There has also been a healthy reaction against the type of preaching that revels in depicting the sufferings of the damned in the most lurid possible light. An example would be the fictional sermon on hell that James Joyce recounts in his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  This kind of preaching fosters an image of God as an unloving and cruel tyrant, and in some cases leads to a complete denial of hell or even to atheism.

It is absolutely certain that each of us will die -- the specifics of "how" can vary a lot. Each of us has likely been exposed to, conjured ourselves, or otherwise arrived at "the worst that could happen" -- usually a LONG, PAINFUL, and LONELY exit. For some reason on my long motorcycle trip I imagined running off a curve in the middle of nowhere, falling next to a stream with massively painful and immobilizing wounds, yet being able to get water so thus survive in great pain until infection from my wounds or starvation finally took me. Naturally, as a very svelte Moose, I would probably starve in less than a couple days, so I'm not sure why the water was even a consideration.

In any case, that might have slowed me down on some of the curves a bit, so maybe that WAS warranted ... if it had made me pull off the road and call for the psych medics, it would have to be judged too graphic.

The point (such as it is) is that a firm idea of "the bad" has an obvious place in molding human behavior, as well as the idea that no matter how bad somebody else has been, the thought of "ultimate justice" of a nasty sort can help us decide that we don't need to exact immediate punishment on them. Hell has it's purpose -- like death and all else in creation. Don't focus on Hell, but don't forget it is there.

I had never been exposed to the argument put forward by Hans Balthasar ... although I'm pretty darned certain the name has showed up in fiction ... "Balthazar" ?

The most sophisticated theological argument against the conviction that some human beings in fact go to hell has been proposed by Hans Urs von Balthasar in his book Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved?” He rejects the ideas that hell will be emptied at the end of time and that the damned souls and demons will be reconciled with God. He also avoids asserting as a fact that everyone will be saved. But he does say that we have a right and even a duty to hope for the salvation of all, because it is not impossible that even the worst sinners may be moved by God’s grace to repent before they die. He concedes, however, that the opposite is also possible. Since we are able to resist the grace of God, none of us is safe. We must therefore leave the question speculatively open, thinking primarily of the danger in which we ourselves stand.

"Dare We Hope" sounds interesting -- my reading list is a little long right now.

A summary -- if you are Christian, then Hell is real. God fervently desires that all be saved to the extent that he allowed himself in the form of Christ Jesus to be crucified, die, and descend to Hell to pay for our sins. He is a God of Love that allows or acceptance or rejection of this divine sacrifice.

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Of Kickers, CEOs, Bananas and Magicians

Vikings kicker Blair Walsh tells 1st-graders he'll 'cherish' their cards forever - StarTribune.com:

I'm fine with kids being nice to Blair Walsh. I'd be fine even if the muff had happened to a Packer kicker in a big game -- it's part of football, part of being a kicker, and life is CERTAINLY more than football. It is also fine that the Star Trib covers it ... heartwarming article.

As near as I could find out on the web, an NFL kicker in 1965 made about $35K ... that was pretty good cabbage back then. When I started at IBM in 1978 I made $15,500 and that was considered an excellent starting salary. A starting teacher got like $9K in '78.

Walsh made $3,250,000 last year. That is a little less than 100x what a kicker made in 1965. Aaron Rodgers made $19.1 million for comparison.

We all know about the biggest CEO packages, but looking around the web I ran into a "real jobs site" in REAL CEO pay ... not the "Top 400 companies". It's kind of a laugher ... $160K average, $460K "high". The average for CEOs is $15.1 million, counting the big guys. So Aaron Rodgers makes $4 million more a year than the average CEO.

We KNOW what the Star Trib thinks of CEO pay, and we KNOW what they would say about a $3 Million a year CEO whose company lost money! I hate to tell them, but just as making kicks is not guaranteed in football, making money is not guaranteed in business!

I believe that all of us at some level are a little aware that "value" and "markets" are complicated and have WIDE variance. You can go down to Kwik Trip and grab a banana for about a dime, then walk over and grab a bottle of water for a little over a buck.

The banana grew on a tree somewhere in Central America, somebody cut it down, trucked it to some city, put it in a big container, put it on a banana boat, it showed up on likely the Gulf Coast, went through a shipping center or two, a truck or two, and found it's way over a couple thousand land miles to your Kwik Trip shelf. Simple.

The water probably came out of the ground within a few hundred miles and ended up in the close to zero cost plastic bottle in a palletized flat with nary a human hand touching it and was trucked to the same store.

The difference is of course "markets and marketing". The banana is a pure commodity. The water likely is too -- but it is getting a halo effect from the marketing of other bottled water. "Perrier, Dasani" ... you may not be able to recall them, but they are in your head, trust me!

The reason you think as you do about CEO pay differently than you think about Blair Walsh is the same as the reason that water and bananas are priced differently. Marketing. (or "propaganda" if you want to give it a more sinister spin)

You have seen hundreds ... maybe thousands of headlines, articles, political statements, digs in entertainment, etc on the horror of high CEO compensation. ALL of those statements focus on the very highest of CEO pay and the most egregious of CEO excess. CEOs, and corporations in general have been demonized more than the Nazi's were in WWII.

Why? They are MARKETED as "An enemy of The Party (TP-D)" ... and therefore "the common man". TP is ALL about "the common man" --  like the millions of blacks living in hopeless inner city poverty and 6K young black men gunned down in the street every year. They would be very happy for you to become their wards just like blacks already are! Just vote for them!

 Just as TP isn't really a "friend to the common man",  Corporations and CEOs aren't really enemies of TP -- CEOS and Corporations donate 10's of millions to TP, but what part of MARKETING don't you get? That bottled water at the Kwik Trip isn't any better than what you could have drank from a free water fountain, but you still bought it didn't you?

TP needs "enemies" like Hitler needed the Jews. Scapegoats. As I cover here regularly, "truth" is a very early casualty of the slide to one party rule. Constant control of the "message/narrative" keeps the masses of the sheeple firmly in the grasp of "the world according to TP".

The vast majority of the country and really the entire west is like an audience watching a magician on stage perform "amazing acts". I've come to believe that in this life, Christian faith provided the massive advantage to the western mind of making the masses of people skeptical of the claims of man and governments. "Render unto Caesar"  indicated that government had a role, but that role was LIMITED and should always be viewed as SUBJECT TO GOD! TP has made sure that the masses have gotten "smarter" than to believe in the sovereignty of God vs TP.

In our souls, we all know this story, but given our nature, and the nature of evil, we forget it. We should all watch the following every now and then. This isn't so hard to understand -- GOD is the Master, we are the Apprentice and government, is the "servant" broomstick .... there is a tendency for our "servants" to get out of hand if you don't remember the "spell" to shut them down!

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Trump, Cruz, Weevils

Haley’s plea for tolerance draws cheers and jeers, revealing GOP divide - The Washington Post:

The Stupid Party Get's Stupider

For those that read this blog, you are hopefully aware that I am a CONSERVATIVE, not necessarily a "Republican".  I voted for Ross Perot after HW Bush broke with his smaller government promises and raised taxes. I'm not proud of that, but from it I learned that politics is nearly always the choice of "The Lesser of Two Weevils":

The two linked articles at the top of the post show that "the establishment Republican Party" and whatever one might like to call the more conservative wing ... let's go "militants" for now rather than "Tea Party" since I already use "TP" for a couple other things, are getting HOT, and it looks like change might be on the way.

I didn't watch the rise of Ronald Reagan, I was a Democrat to the small extent I cared until Carter convinced me that I'd rather not turn off the lights, put on a sweater, and say goodbye to America at the age of 21.

In retrospect however, it is obvious that the "Rockefeller, Country Club, Blue Blood, Coupon Clipping" former elite of the Republican Party were not enamored with Reagan. They found him shallow, a loose cannon and from the wrong side of the tracks. Their candidate was George HW Bush ... patrician, great blood lines, Yale, CIA ... "establishment".  Needless to say, the left was in total agreement! Reagan was an "idiot", "warmonger" ... he was SURE to be a DISASTER, if not the end of the world in a nuclear battle with our then partner in stability, the USSR.

History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme. I would have LOVED to see Scott Walker -- we have just experienced 7 years of expensive on the job training for someone with no experience in leadership or governance, and aside from extreme expense, it has really only gained us the certain knowledge that some people can't be trained. For that reason I'm anything but excited about Trump, Cruz or Rubio.

Christie has too many skeletons in Jersey and we don't need a pol that is ham-handed enough to hug BO right before an election.  I think Kasich is a great person and a good governor, but he has drifted left and doesn't really stand for anything in the small government arena.

So, I'm not excited, but I will vote for whomever 1) I see as most likely to limit government 2). Has a chance of winning. (Voting for someone that can't win is the equivalent of voting "present").

That said, I have to admit that craziness of the left and Republican establishment going after Trump and now even Cruz is making me give both of them a strong second look. I would assume that BO certainly realizes that his calling out voices like Cruz and Trump puts them in a better light with a large set of voters.

BO's approval ratings are well below 50%, it would have been like W Bush coming out and saying that "I really hope the Democrats don't go with a strident partisan like Obama" in the the spring of 2008 -- W would know that would help Obama, and I'm certain Obama knows that his comments help the more strident voices likewise.

The Republican establishment is a little easier to understand. They got back in the drivers seat after Reagan ... HW, then Dole, then W, then McCain, then Romney. Newt was more Reaganesque, but Speakers since have been establishment all the way.

Do I get mad at the Republican establishment and fervently wish for another Reagan? Oh, certainly I do, but a very large part of being a conservative is being reality based.  Being mad and cutting off your nose to spite your face are two different things to a conservative.

The list of things I detest about Trump is lengthy, but I DO very much enjoy how mad he makes both the left and the party elite. I had never really noticed Cruz much -- yet ANOTHER lawyer Senator with no leadership experience! David Brooks going after him though is a good sign that there might be some "there there"! Anyone with a shred of either patriotism or conservatism has to be completely disgusted about where we find ourselves after 7 years of the stench of BO!

If you aren't disgusted, you have to REALLY not be paying attention, or you are a Statist / Socialist at heart and need to start "Feeling the Bern"! BS is the obvious successor  to BO.

Sadly, with the look of the markets, Europe, Iran, crime, ISIS, etc, it may just come down to "Who do you think our enemies are the most afraid of"?

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Liberalism, WASPism, Pair O Docks

Doctrinaire Liberalism: Paradoxes:

Fishing along, having a brew on a sunny day and observing with a philosophical tone "Oh! Look!  THAT is what Nietzsche meant by a "Pair O Docks"! (paradox) ... I'm so intelligently humorous it is simply amazing!

Well, I'm still not smart enough to be a Liberal, so there is that.

The linked article is worth the time, it points out what I regularly do, that "morality" is "whatever the dominant liberal elite decides it is" -- but these days there are a lot of protected non-violent Muslims raping young women or blowing stuff up, which we know has NOTHING to do with Islam, and as the article does a good job of enumerating, the list of such paradoxes is very long.

It seems that the fact that man has GOT to believe in SOMETHING, and that only works if at least the vast bulk of people take that something to be "divine,  eternal, omniscient, etc" is very much coming home to roost.

In the Christian age in the US, the dominant culture was "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant". In the post-christian age, that mantle is "liberalism/progressivism".  Problem is, "WASP" had CHRISTIAN and WESTERN (as in EUROPEAN) written all over it, and they had a pretty solid track record  -- it was the "Divine Right of Kings" passed down through "endowed by their Creator" on the way to making a nation sacred, and exceptional.

Our current foes in Islam, Putin or China have no trouble believing in their divine, historical, philosophical, etc exceptionalism and mandate to rule.

We however seem to have gotten lost somewhere between the martini and the joint (marijuana) and now discover that while the old WASPism was replete with privilege, boorishness, hypocrisy, etc, the  new liberal country club seems to be populated with the same sorts of issues ...

In truth, party-line, elite liberalism is mostly about careerism and embracing a loud ideology that trumps every other progressive and identity-politics agenda. Politically correct leftism is a career investment — a sort of insurance that indemnifies one against every sin, from carbon-spewing travel and politically incorrect gaffes to Wall Street profiteering and 1950s-style sexual loutishness. To borrow from Tolkien, the assertion of leftism is the “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.” 

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The End of Modernity

The End of Modernity | Hoover Institution:

A bit intellectually stilted, but worth the read. If you keep up with this blog you have read it all here in my own tech-weenie autodidactic intellectual wannabe prose -- these guys are the real deal.

Some priming before you begin ...

"Westphalian" -- Peace of Westphalia, 1648. The end of the 30 years war, the agreement between Rome and the European States to recognize and respect the state as the source of government. Could look at it as the REAL end of "The Holy Roman Empire" and the rise of the Protestant dominated nation-state west.

"volkerwanderung" -- "The Migration Period". From the perspective of Roman Empire, the invasion of the barbarians ... with  the obvious metaphor to today.

The end follows. I maintain that we DID (or at least W did) however make a SUCCESSFUL but very expensive "turning point" from 2001-2008. If the path set had been maintained, the world may well still be at peace, ISIS never rising, and Iran contained. The left could still lament a small contingent of troops in Iraq with deaths on the order of what we see in Afghanistan and claim "it was all unnecessary" -- but instead ... 

And turning points were not recognized or taken, most notably the moment in late 2015 when the U.S. could have inventoried the region to determine those states and parties in or on the side of world order and those who would destroy and replace it so as to firmly support the former and resolutely oppose the latter. 

It was not to be. The collapse of the Westphalian state system meant that the foundations for the values they upheld—open trade, open expression, consent of the governed, and universal human rights—crumbled as well, and the remaining states of the core region of the world withered away. 

As the historian Edward Gibbon mused when writing about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, perhaps the time would come when the interpretation of the Koran would “be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mohammed.” 

It has come to pass.

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Everyone Gets $4.3 Million

Powerball Meme Mathematical Illiteracy Illustrates Bernie Sanders' Appeal - Hit & Run : Reason.com:

I sincerely hope that this meme was put up by somebody just having fun rather than being serious, but it is certainly going around.

Of course, everyone actually gets $4.30 ... sort of.

What is REALLY scary is that if you DID get $4 MILLION as a young person and decided to "live off the interest" from an FDIC account you would get LESS than 1% ... so < $10K per million, or a total of $40K a year -- less than the median income! Talk about "living like a millionaire"!

So most of us have a lot of money in market index funds and bonds. To the extent that the "BO economy" has done ANYTHING the past 7 years, it has pumped up those funds with a lot of freshly printed money. Take a look at China, take a look at the stock market so far this year -- or go back and look at 2009. You can do MUCH worse than a 1% return on your money!

Royal Bank of Scotland says to sell everything! Are they right?

Walter Russel Mead has some sobering coverage of what is going on in China. He believes that the reason that we see the commodity market crash is that China is already trying to do what the US did in the 1980's ... move from a manufacturing economy to a service / knowledge / financial economy.

As I've said a number of times, the "bottom bottom" line is always the same -- the MAJORITY of the population has to be involved in MAKING (building, inventing, manufacturing, writing, growing, producing, etc) something that OTHERS WANT TO BUY.

AND ... in order to continue to be prosperous, INVESTING a significant portion of the value of that production in SOMETHING THAT GOES UP IN VALUE!

Taking stuff out of some peoples pockets and putting it in other peoples pockets, printing money, giving speeches, passing laws, "regulating",  having "programs", etc serve the same function as the scantily clad magicians assistant. They draw your attention so the house (government) can fleece you a bit more while the ship sinks.

The top linked article closes with the following and some of the problem is simply that "millions and billions" are just too large for the human brain to deal with ... let alone trillions and if you combine debt and unfunded entitlements, approaching 100 Trillion!

There's a relevant Richard Feynman quotes about big numbers. "There are 1011 stars in the galaxy," Feynman once said. "That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers." That was at least three decades ago—the annual deficit is at about a trillion now. 

People have trouble conceptualizing numbers as big as a thousand, let alone a million, billion, or trillion. They listen to Bernie Sanders and come to the conclusion if only government took more money from "billionaires" it could fund everything for everyone. Appeals to reason and math are discounted as right-wing propaganda.

Let's face it, any appeal to reality is "right wing propaganda" these days!

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Two Boats, 10 Sailors

Iran's Propaganda Victory in One Illegal Image:

I'm sure this one is going to be GONE very quickly!

So TWO US military boats end up "drifting" into Iranian waters and are "rescued" by our "friends" the Iranians, who manage to violate the Geneva Convention by showing photos of the sailors in captivity (as covered in linked article).

Hmm ...

I used to go out on big water with my 1850 Tyee ... I had a GPS, a handheld GPS, marine radio, and of course cell phones. Are we to believe that TWO Navy craft can't navigate well enough to avoid getting within 12 MILES of shore? We used to find spots out in the middle of Mille Lacs that were 10 to 20 FEET across with NO PROBLEM with units that cost well under $1K when purchased 20 years ago!

Oh, "maybe they ran out of gas". BOTH OF THEM???? !!!! Did they forget a tow rope? Are we to believe that between BOTH boats there was no operative communications gear?

Not much makes any sense here other than GROSS incompetence.

It seems nearly certain that this was some sort of ill conceived Special Forces Op, which doesn't make you feel very confident in the current state of our Special Forces. One certainly HOPES that they were within the 12 mile limit by design and simply got caught. Getting caught definitely doesn't reflect well on Special Ops, but it is a hell of a lot better than "getting lost and running out of gas", which sounds more like a couple of carloads of teens drinking beers on the backroads kind of "operation".

I'm reminded yet again of the "Jimmuh Carter Desert Classic", the perfect Democrat military operation where nobody but Americans and the stature of the American Military died -- no Iranians were harmed or even stressed in the debacle!

We knew the military would decline rapidly under BO. There was apparently enough momentum to carry out a successful op to get Bin Laden in May of 2011. Things have obviously gone down hill a good deal since then!

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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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