DC Keeps Raking It In

The Permanent Boomtown - WSJ:



The government industrial complex is rolling in the dough ... 6 of the 10 wealhtiest coutines in the US are around DC.



BO brought home the bacon to DC. As the article linked at the top points out:

Not only are America’s 2.2 million civilian federal employees making more than their counterparts in the private market; the compensation gap is widening between the feds and the taxpaying public they allegedly serve. A new report from the Congressional Budget Office released this week finds that “the federal government paid 17 percent more in total compensation than it would have if average compensation had been comparable with that in the private sector.”

Will Trump be able to pop this balloon? As we can see, opposition from BOTH parties will be EXTREME! One might think that since 95+% of government workers vote for the D party, the R's might be more willing to trim the DC pork a bit, but that does not seem to be the case. When your pig gets as big as the DC pig is, it is just plain scary to reuduce it's rations!





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Sin, BO, Money

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2017/04/barack_obama_is_taking_400_000_for_a_wall_street_speech_and_that_s_fine.html

I got to hear Mayo's top guy, Dr John Noseworthy, talk at a luncheon this past week -- looks like a CEO from Hollywood casting. Tall, thin, full head of just perfectly grey flecked hair, angular leading man good looks, and oh so smooth as a speaker!

He led off with a little story of silent Cal Coolidge. Cal goes to church, reporter asks him coming out what the sermon was about. Cal says "sin", reporter inquires further on what the minister had to say on that topic. Cal responds "he was against it".

Noseworthy's topic was a  "Strong Diverse Connected Community" ... he was for it. Very effective speaking device. I hope John is a great CEO ... I have a house I want to sell here in the next year or two!

The link is to a Slate article strongly defending BO taking $400K for a speaking fee -- well deserved, W only gets $100K (tsk, tsk). BO's first book post presidency deal is $65 million, that is also a good thing according to Slate. No surprise here ... if it were not for double standards, we know that humans sans religion would have no standards at all. Most everyone loves their own team.

Here is BO on the income topic ... His supporters would no doubt point out that he was indicating limits on what OTHERS should be satisfied with in earnings. As "The One", he is naturally exempt from limits .... being on "the right side of history" has it's privileges.

I got in a little chat with a guy on FB today about some cartoonist in IA supposedly being fired because he complained about CEO pay. I went out and took a look, and the CEO of John Deere makes $16 million a year ... Joe Mauer of Twins fame, $23 million a year, Clayton Kershaw (Dodgers pitcher) is the high in MLB, average salary is $4.5 million.  Noseworthy makes $3.8 million ... less than the average MLB player. Turns out it was last years news ... too old to even  be fake.

I can understand plain old envy -- people just not liking what others make, how good looking they are, their talents, their blessings, their oxen, manservants, maidservants, etc. Covetousness is an old problem ... the answer is to repent, focus on your own blessings and move on.

Who is being "hurt" by CEO or MLB salaries? For the MLB, it is fans buying tickets and possibly consumers buying products that are advertised when games are televised. For CEOs, it is the SHAREHOLDERS, not the employees -- they are not going to receive more salary because the business KNOWS pretty much what they contribute to the bottom line. Here is an article on this if you don't already understand it. 

Even if we assume that CEOs are all overpaid, the pay is not money taken unfairly from other workers. Rather, the undeserved pay is being taken from shareholders. When corporate boards overpay a CEO, it is shareholders who lose because profits that could have become either shareholder dividends or capital gains are instead going into the pocket of the CEO.

Do the fans and the shareholders feel hurt? Not as long as their highly paid star is performing.

Most of the CEOs are actually "progressives" as well ... so we have the odd case where "progressives" hate their own because in general they are unaware they are on their side -- like Oprah, BO, or "The Clinton Fund' (funds ... for Clintons). As the Slate article thinly disguises, what is important is for young "progressives" to understand that as long as they follow "progressive" dogma, both wealth and women are on the list of perks!

Christ died for the whole sorry bunch of us. He even dined with tax collectors -- the lowest of the low  in those times. Making the money, casting the stones, puffing up our chests in pride because what **WE** make is EARNED ... oh, and JUDGEMENT! We love to judge others!

Filthy rags -- that is what we are best at.

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Marching Science Televangelists

Science & Politics -- Left’s Religion | National Review:

A quick review of the differences between rhetoric, dialectic and facts would be wise before delving into the linked  ... the REALLY tiny summary:

rhetoric -- sales speech
dialectic -- philosopher discussion speech
facts --  inductively verifiable pieces of data

Bill Nye and Neil "The Gassy" Tyson are Televangelists for the religion of Scientism -- the belief that 2+2=4, ergo "I am become god" (science as religion). Their stock and trade is rhetoric, not facts ... and I doubt if they would know dialectic if it bit them in the posterior.

The article does a good job of covering some of the seaminess of Scientism, I highly recommend it.

Freeman Dyson is an actual scientist, so nobody cares what he thinks ... he states the obvious that anyone with a junior high understanding of climate knows:

The most questionable of these beliefs is the notion that the science of climate change is settled and understood. The biggest of all climate changes have been the ice ages, which have covered half of North America and Europe with kilometer-thick sheets of ice. Ice ages happened repeatedly in the past, and we are about due for another one to start. A new ice age would be a disaster far greater than anything we have to fear from climate warming. There are many theories of ice ages, but no real understanding. So long as we do not understand ice ages, we do not understand climate change.

 In order for the left to win, ALL institutions have to be destroyed. If even 20% of the public understood basic philosophy, theology, politics, and junior high science, we would still live in America rather than BOistan.

Alas ... the set of people that have that level of understanding is more like 1% -- so we perish in BOistan ... but as always, the perishing scream and march loudly.

Oh, and if you are video oriented, go see what Scientism is peddling -- yes, Tammy Faye's makeup was horrific, but seriously?

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A Nation Gone Under

https://www.facebook.com/Area51.US/videos/10154174843304555/

Go off and watch the little video ... the rest of this will make more sense.

Reagan warned us that when we were no longer "One Nation Under God", we would be a nation "gone under". As per usual, he was right.

I could quibble with a lot in the video -- the profanity (although the "F word" is basically just a part of speech today). The statistics are mostly hooey ... take out the REALLY failed black Democrat sub-culture, and most of those clean up.

Infant mortality is a complete crock ... we count ANY baby "born alive" ... most of the countries on the planet just count "babies to term" ... they don't even try to keep many of the ones we do alive, and we do it even with the poor, the black, the fetal alcohol syndrome, crack, etc  -- compare "white middle class births within 3-4 weeks of term" and we are #1 ... damned close with life expectancy as well.

Defense? My book bill is pretty huge -- but compared to my income? Nothing of any interest ... same with the US. Compare defense to GDP and we are fourth ... behind Saudi Arabia, Israel and Russia ... India, France, UK and China are right behind us in the same ballpark. The official NATO goal that ALL the NATO countries are supposed to meet is 2%.

The fact remains, BOistan is NOT the greatest nation -- Russia, Israel, Iran and China would all be in the running ... maybe Germany. At least the rest of them have some pride in their own existence.

More education is no use ... knowing everything about nothing is counterproductive at best. WHY?? That is the question. What is it that is supposed to be unique about BOistan? We are the only nation where a majority of the youth have been taught (brainwashed?) to hate their own countries history? What would our goal be? Our people are absolutely the same and have no distinguishing features? We love everyone and believe everyone will love us because we love them? We are the only people that can't figure out if we are men or women -- or what it would even mean to "act like men"?

Perhaps our goal is "We are clueless, pity us" .... Maybe the "natural evolutionary path" of BOistan is to develop into a nation of leeches like the Pacleds from STNG ... "We look for things we need ... things to make us go .."

Kill The Innocent, Save The Guilty

Neil Gorsuch and the State’s Power to Kill - The New York Times:

I'm sure Satan regularly reads the Times, if he didn't write the editorial himself. Inversion is his favorite mode, and this column is a study in it.

First of all, it gives you the impression that the Constitution is against the death penalty, when it specifically allows it in the 8th amendment saying nobody can be  "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." ... if "due process" can't be handled in 22 years, then we don't have any "due process' at all, and even deprivation of "property" (taxes) is unconstitutional.

Then we have:

In short, the first significant decision by Justice Gorsuch, who was sworn in to office less than two weeks ago, was the most consequential any justice can make — to approve a man’s killing by the state.

Seriously? To affirm what the Constitution clearly says in the 8th Amendment so that a murderer found guilty over 20 years ago can finally receive his sentence is MORE important than Roe V Wade, which declared the death penalty for 60 million of the most innocent life imaginable?
The cackling in Hell at that howler must be deafening!



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Trump Seduced 15 Year Old At 39

A Strange Fact About Emmanuel Macron | Power Line:



Oh, oops ... it was what the media tells is the likely next first lady of France who picked up a 15 year old guy named Macron while she was his theatre teacher -- never mind.



I understand this is no issue at all -- we are SO uptight to even notice!



"Morality" is completely arbitrary in this world -- some locker room talk is unconscionable when we are told it is supposed to be, while BJs in the oval office with an employee are just fine when we are told they are. At Fox News -- oh, NOT there!



Get your mind right, THINK WHAT YOU ARE TOLD TO THINK ... your life may depend on it at any moment!



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Vet Dodges BOistan Prison for Flag Placement

75 year-old vet acquitted of placing American flag at VA facility | Power Line:



If you were raised in America, this provides you proof that you no longer live there.



In BOistan, the flag of the old US that has not yet been officially replaced is something that borders on hate speech. It is a symbol of what BOistan certainly is not; "The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave", or "One Nation, Under God".



BOistan is the land of the dependent and home of the snowflake. It is a failed tribal state, divided and in complete rejection of God. Many BOistanis find the flag of the old nation to be offensive -- almost "hate speech". Burning it is NOT "hate speech" ... displaying it borders on it.



Can Trump begin a restoration to the defunct Constitutional Republic? That is certainly the hope of most of those that voted for him -- the task has a long way to go, however at least not imprisioning a Vetern for displaying the old flag is a tepid sign that the precipitious decline may have been arrested.



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Normalizing Trump

At the White House with Trump | Power Line:

One of the Power Line guys was at the WH for a conservative media briefing. Since I listen to MPR/NPR all the time, including snippets of "Indivisible", the thinly disguised left wing call-in for "The Resistance" trying to make sure that Trump is NEVER normalized, it is really strange to see him covered as "just another POTUS".

The MSM has spent most of the first 100 days running around screaming "the sky fell" as if nobody had ever read Chicken Little. Day after day, everyone finds themselves still here -- so it doesn't really seem like the world ended -- only America ended, but that is old news -- it turned into BOistan in BO's 2nd term. I understand that NPR is worried BOistan could be damaged, but as long as the BOistani Adminstrative State is still in power, BOistan will live on.

It's worth going and reading the article just because of how normal it is. It is like zillions of left wing friendly news outlets reporting on their meetings with BO -- a normal, intelligent guy that maybe makes one cringe from time to time about how many times he says "I" and everything being about him.

Strangely, BO and Trump are so similar on the narcissim scale it makes one wonder if narcissism isn't the main requirement for BOistani leadership.

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Screaming Against Speech

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446995/ann-coulter-berkeley-speech-howard-dean-dubious-legal-argument-fighting-words?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Trending%20Email%20Reoccurring-%20Monday%20to%20Thursday%202017-04-24&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives

Good old "Scream Dean" is back saying that conservative speech ought to be banned. How wonderful it is of him to call out conservatives for saying what they want to say. "The Right loves to be able to say anything they like, no matter how offensive it is."

True, and so does the left -- the difference is that as in the case of offensive art and some of the things taught in public schools, the left believes that those that disagree ought to also have to pay for their speech (arts endowments), or be forced to listen to it as in the joys of gay sex for school children.

While the right has issues paying for the left's speech, or with the left forcing it into the public square, especially on minors, the left represented by Dean believes that speech the left doesn't like can be censored from being ALLOWED to be VOLUNTARILY viewed at a public institution.

Naturally, the legal precedent he quotes is as daffy as Dean himself and Geraghty covers that well in the article. Screamer would have us believe that burning a flag in the pubic square is Constitutionally protected speech, but a skinny blond woman talking in an auditorium where you can decide to attend or not attend is Constitutionally phrohibited because he doesn't like what she has to say.

There Will Be A Substantial Reward

Democrats Turned Off by Ossoff’s Falloff And Need for a Runoff Face-Off | National Review:

The column presents a little out of the box thinking relative to the Republican party being able to weed out meaningless candidates a bit sooner after 2016 and Georgia ... I think disitegrations would be OK. Why limit our options?

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US Debt vs Global Warming

The Problem No One in DC Wants to Talk About  |  Ricochet:

Does anyone want to bet what the biggest problem for the US will be for the next 20 years? Global Warming or Debt?

Well, we are still closer to an ice age than a record warm period accoring to the Greenland ice cores.

BOistanis in their wisdom however find that Climate Change is more important than the economy ... they don't really care if they are poor comparted to if they are cold. They want to be cold rather than warm at all costs!

I'm betting that they really haven't thought cold and poor through as much as they think they have, and that after a few brown outs, 50% inflation, 60% unemployment and such vs a few tenths of a climate degree, they will have second thoughts.

Let's hope it isn't too late.


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Berkeley Campus On Lockdown After WSJ Scare

Berkeley Campus On Lockdown After Loose Pages From ‘Wall Street Journal’ Found On Park Bench - The Onion - America's Finest News Source:

Apparently some pages of the WSJ were found lying on a bench on the campus -- serious stuff! ;-)

I believe we have a really good indicator of what "progress" means to "progressives" in BOistan. We are having a giant argument about wether a white woman that weighs all of maybe 110 lbs is too scary to put behind a podium at a major BOistan university. It looks like for the moment they are thinking that they will take this gigantic risk!

I look at the hordes of violent protesters dressed in black and wonder if we have forgotten what automatic weapons are for? Six hundred thousand Americans died fighting over slavery. If freedom of speech can be held hostage by mobs without order being taken back by whatever means are needed, what does "freedom" mean? As Jefferson put it "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants".

The tyranny of the mob certainly qualifes in my mind -- but maybe they are patriots? Either way, they are outside the law, and civilization demands law -- it certainly seems that our tree of liberty is very short on it's natural fertilizer.

Is BOistan even supposed to be civilized? It's founding principles outside of "destruction of America" are very unclear -- perhaps the biggest mob is an approved form of speech in BOistan?

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NYC Crosses, Easter 1956

The New York City skyline the evening of Easter Sunday in 1956. : nyc:

1956 was the America that I was born into -- we don't live there anymore.

Engle vs Vitale removing prayer from the schools would not be decided by 9 men in robes until 1962. In a nation with a Constitution and a Supreme Court that followed it, it would have taken a national discussion and a Constitutional Amendment to remove voluntary prayer from our schools.

Naturally, "progressives" (regressives) will talk of (Democrat) Jim Crow in the South, their gains in the killing of babies and the joyful life of gays in America ... about 4x more suicides than the general gay population, UP from 1956.

Regressives would tell us that "things were worse for gays in the 1950's" ... statistics would tell us that there is a marked increase in earlier suicides after 1970 ... actual results of the application of regressive beliefs is not one of their strong interests.

Despite the stable prevalence of reported parasuicide over the different birth cohorts of men studied, the trend for younger mean ages at first attempts and increased rates over time of suicide attempts before age 25 is striking. Although ample evidence documents a marked recency bias with respect to the recollection and reporting of serious psychiatric symptoms,74 this does not fully explain the dramatic decline in mean age at first suicide attempt after 1970. The increase in rates of attempted suicide noted among adolescents in the past several decades75,76 may play some contributing role but by itself does not seem sufficient to produce these changes. Although no evidence is available to explore this question, it is possible that historical context had an effect, given that the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots in New York City are widely viewed as a marker of the birth of the modern “gay liberation” movement.77 The parallel declines during this period in age at self-identification as gay or bisexual along with age at first or only suicide attempt48,57 provide further suggestive evidence relating suicide attempts to stresses associated with “coming out.” This evidence seems to run counter to expectations regarding the effect of an emergent gay culture and the prospect of earlier self-identification as gay or bisexual, including those expectations raised by Humphries78 2 decades ago.

To anyone familiar with human nature since Old Testament times, the results of the change from America to BOistan experienced over my 60 years are exactly what God and those that fear him understand always happens.

Things like the Voting Rights act would have broken the stranglehold of the Democrat Party in the South, and thus Jim Crow in fairly short order without SCOTUS further messing up States Rights. Has abortion made women better off? Was it worth 60 million lives for that "improvement"? How about the destruction of the family? Has that been a "big win"?

We have ALL sinned and come WELL short of the glory of God. Heterosexual sex within marriage is God's standard ... and lusting after the woman that wears her yoga pants well is just as eternally damning as a lifetime of gay sex -- sin is sin.

It is also not really our "desires" that are the issue. It isn't the alcoholic's desire for alcohol that is the problem -- it is that alcohol comes to control his life, so he must with the grace of God be able to resist that desire in order to live in this life. That has nothing to do with heaven -- I'm quite certain there will be many alcoholics in heaven that were not able to beat the bottle on earth, but relied on the grace of God and were most heartily sorry for their sin.

My belief is the same for divorce and remarriage. They are against God's will and remarriage is "living in sin" -- much as I have my own persistent sins that give me ample opportunity to be "most heartily sorry" at each communion. Even when I fully beat my sin of gluttony and approach the altar lean and with washboard abs, I can assure you that my contrition well will not go dry.

Perhaps the male whose eyes never settle too long and appreciatively on the female form can cast a stone here that my standards are set too low. For women, I do not know -- I have been assured that they don't sin and are always right.


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Democrats Winning Streak

Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, Narrowly Misses Outright Win in Georgia House Race - The New York Times:

The Democrats are on a winning streak that started last November when Hillary captured the all important popular vote. The hits keep on coming as a week ago, Democrats won by losting by 6 points in a district that Trump had won by 24.

Now the big event, the one that Democrats really poured the money into. A Democrat ALMOST won a seat in Georgia! They now go into a runoff where their chances are not so good.

Listening to MPR has been like listening to "The Hopefull Gospell Choir" -- as each of these special elections came up, the ecitement built, because if the D's could only prevail it would mean; "A referendum on Trump"!, D's likely to pick up seats in 2018, Trump as a one-termer, people are "waking up" ... well, it would mean A BUNCH of good things!

For some reason though, when they lose, the story just goes away ... other than them quietly saying that they still "won". Because if a WIN would have meant all the things they told us about with so much excitement, then what does what actually happened mean?

Since they call each loss a "win", the media isn't saying -- reality is just not one of those things often don't have anything to say about.

Perhaps Osshoff leading all night and then fading at the end will endear him to Atlanta Falcons fans.

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Old News, Fake News, Good News

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2015/10/manuscript-evidence-nt-vs-plato-etc.html

The linked article covers a discussion on the evidence for Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and Christ. Rather unsurprisingly if one thinks for even a second, the evidence for Christ is huge in comparison. If one questions the existence of Christ, then Plato, Socrates and Aristotle are near certain fiction.

The graphic is from here, he didn't source it, however it aligns well with the top linked article which is excellent.

In Matt 28:12-14 we have the official tale of how the tomb came to be empty.

12 After the chief priests had met with the elders and formed a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money and instructed them: "You are to say, His disciples came by night and stole His body while we were asleep. 14 If this report reaches the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”…

To the casual observer, this piece of ancient Fake News is more reasonable than "You are to say the Russians did it", but it still has some rather large issues:

1.  We find that on the evening of the day of the resurrection, the supposedly brave grave robbers were in hiding. (John 20:19) On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" The Romans were the most feared fighting force of the day ... our intrepid disciples were in no state to take on that force prior to the Holy Spirit's arrival.
   
2. The penalty for falling asleep on guard duty for Roman soldiers was "Fustuarium" ... being beaten to death with a cudgel publicly. The logical thing to do if you were caught in dereliction of duty was to avoid the beating ... Acts 16:27 "The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped." (quick and private is better than slow and very public)

We all know that if the Jewish leaders had the body, the skull and bones of Jesus would have been prominently displayed! They would no doubt be a favorite Jewish artifact even today

As I've covered before, the air tight proof of Christ's resurrection is the fact that if it were NOT true, the disciples would have KNOWN it was a lie, and would not have each went to his death as a martyr for a lie.

Atheists will naturally say this is idiotic ... people go to their deaths for religious reasons all the time! They do indeed -- because they actually BELIEVE. They have had experiences, strong enough desire, are easily influenced, or whatever reason to be certain of their faith. We all live by faith -- the atheist stakes his eternal soul on not having one by FAITH.

That is COMPLETELY different from following a guy around for about 3 years, watching him whipped and crucified as a criminal and then taking part in some plot that SOMEHOW gave MANY people the impression that he had been resurrected.  (1 Corinthians 15:6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.)

Being willing to die for something you BELIEVE to be the truth is not that uncommon -- 10+ people going to painful deaths for what they knew to be a lie, totally aware that they hid the body some place and if any of them talks, it is a complete waste of time. (plus you have to pull off the "impersonation" to the 500)

We won't go into "the odds" that in addition to that air tight proof, a known persecutor of Christians would accidentally go insane on the road to Damascus and join up as a disciple, writing much of the New Testament and also going to his death as a martyr. In an atheist world, a TRULY miraculous coincidental happening that someone like Paul could have such a strange psychotic break and then live out his life traveling, preaching and writing.

Oh well, if you are a true atheist, your existence is based on odds of something like 1 in 10 to the 500th, so essentially, ANYTHING can happen in an atheist universe.

Fake News is some of the oldest news there is. The Good News of Easter is so well known that our calendars mark the new covenant of AD "anno Domini"  ... in the year of our Lord.

If you are determined that Christ and the resurrection are fiction, would it not be better to convince the rest of the world that Plato and Aristotle never existed, so the concept of Western civilization is a COMPLETE LIE! There never was any such thing as Western civilization ... there is no hope, no resurrection and no eternal life. Yes, that is a sad state, but if you worship only the physically provable, the Greeks need to go as well. Well, maybe none of us exist ...

Fortunately, the GOOD NEWS is TRUTH, and the Fake News is just Fake News.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed, Hallelujah!

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