Fauxahontis Warren, Shakespeare

Elizabeth Warren: The market is broken - Sep. 5, 2014:

Fauxahontis speaketh. (Pho-ca-hon-tis -- fake Native American princess whose real ancestors drove the real Cherokee on the trail of tears)

To a virus, disease is a simple matter of natural reproduction. Our pain is collateral damage from the virus perspective.

Warren believes that markets can be regulated, controlled, modified toward "improvement" and maybe even "replaced" through human ingenuity with something "better". Strange, without even looking, I can bet with nearly 100% certainly that she is opposed to GMO crops -- no doubt because she "lacks faith" in man's ability to modify nature, so is concerned about some "rouge strain" or "hidden threat" to humans. Even more strange, since in the early 20th century, eugenics along with Fascism and Communism was "just another good human idea" that the "progressives" firmly embraced -- no chance of "rogue strains" breaking out in THEIR "better ideas"! After 100's millions dead from the 20th century "isms", along with trillions spent keeping them from turning the planet into the ultimate "progressive" hell, viruses like Warren just see it as "evolving the strain".

"Progressivism" boils down to the belief  that "new ideas" (most them are actually not new) that they happen to stumble on are "better", and "progress". If one looks not very closely, the biggest piece of "better" to the "progressive" is that the new idea gans power for them against whatever structure currently is dominant -- which they label as conservative, or often "reactionary". Thus, as an example, the idea of scarcity, older than Malthus, which "demands" that government power control the use of resources, MUST arise in each generation --  control of air quality, natural resources, food, farmland, etc previously, "Global Warming" now. It never stops -- they are sure that if we only cede control to them, things will be "better".

Capitalism and markets are natural developments of groups of people interacting -- as are families, tribes and governance in general. The natural forces, many of which we dimly understand that operate on them are always operating and we can't stop them from operating. Competition is one of the mechanisms that we do have some understanding of, and as Warren unwittingly points out, it continues to operate no matter how centralized and controlled the market becomes -- what the "control" does is reduce the number of natural control inputs, increases the stakes for the remaining control inputs, and vastly reduces the efficiency of the market (or destroys it) ... hello virus.

So the "mouse type" she bemoans is a result of the powerful lawyer virus -- 70% of the politicians being lawyers, and leading sources of money for the politicians, competing successfully and getting their "pound of flesh" as they have since Shylock. The greater control applied to the markets, the greater the share that the lawyers get -- the US leads the world in lawyers per capita, Warren wants MORE control on markets, yet she laments "mouse type" -- the virus laments diarrhea, a result of the virus itself!

I love her analogy of "traffic works better with lights" -- welcome to the Elizabeth Warren Interstate System -- traffic lights every 5 feet, the more you add, the better it works!  The virus speaks! People and businesses are easier to control when they are hobbled,  sick and slow (even easier when dead!). America's economy was once the greatest economic super highway in the world, it is is now an over-regulated mess that looks like downtown traffic in a major city at rush hour -- with packs of government bureaucrat rats running out to streak your windows and demand payment under threat of damage to your business or person should you demur.

Certainly the system is RIGGED! It is RIGGED for THE PARTY (Democrat) and viruses like Warren -- preying on the weak, but as they gain strength, chasing the strong off to other habitat (eg. Burger King to Canada) and now more frequently catching a healthy business and taking it down as well.

The Financial Industry was the leading contributor to BO in '08, and by '12, Finance, Government, Universities and Law were all pouring lucre into the coffers of the virus in chief. No surprise that Finance was generously bailed out on the dime of the common man, university tuition and loans continue to skyrocket, and expensive regulation of all types continue to explode like traffic lights in city controlled by a mad idiot  that believes that more lights improve traffic flow!

America is sick and dying. Our healthy are starting to flee in the form of successful businesses and individuals leaving the country. Viruses like Warren, BO and Hillary don't give up just because their host is dying. The now less than 50% of the nation that is not sucking the the last of the life out of the dying body MUST figure out a way to turn this tide if the last dim hope of survival is not to be lost.

Sunlight and common sense. Expel the viruses, start running and removing stoplights, run over a few of the window streakers at the intersections and follow Billy's advice, "Kill all the lawyers, kill them tonight".

(originally Shakespeare, but the line is really from "Get Over It" by the Eagles, a favorite of mine) Get Over It Youtube

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Warming in Centrury, Cold Next Week, 1.3 Billion Without Power

Matt Ridley: Whatever Happened to Global Warming? - WSJ:

Good article that gives a rundown on the lack of warming for 16, 19 or 26 years depending on what model you want to pick. When it was 7 years worth, the Warmist Community wanted to hide it as a blip "Hide the Decline", but in their secret outed e-mails, predicted the game would be up if it went 15 years or more. Looks like they were pessimists, the hard liners are still believing along with 63% of Americans after 20 years.

In more immediate news, there is expected to be an early Polar Vortex the end of next week -- highs in the upper 50's here in MN, with temps as much as 30 degrees colder than normal west of the rockies. Predictions are looking like an earlier, colder and snowier winter than normal, possibly rivaling last winter. Oh, don't worry, USA Today assures us that the coming vortex is DUE to Global Warming ... so much for the Warmist worries that they would lose people if the temp didn't go up for 15 years!

Why do you think they re-branded to "Climate Change" from "Global Warming"?

I liked the last paragraph from the Ridley article. Think about all the hand wringing about oceans rising and possible weather effects around the earth, and how heartless you are if you don't care about the people that will suffer a century in the future.

If you compare the 1.3 B people with no electricity today with the prophesied damage from GW 100 years in the future, how would you square that calculation?? Compare how YOU would feel if it was say 2 degrees warmer today with how you would feel if you had no electricity today -- or any prospect for any in the foreseeable future.

Putting the icing on the cake of good news, Xianyao Chen and Ka-Kit Tung think the Atlantic Ocean may continue to prevent any warming for the next two decades. So in their quest to explain the pause, scientists have made the future sound even less alarming than before. Let's hope that the United Nations admits as much on day one of its coming jamboree and asks the delegates to pack up, go home and concentrate on more pressing global problems like war, terror, disease, poverty, habitat loss and the 1.3 billion people with no electricity.

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Hope is Theological, Not Political

CRB: On the slaughter bench of history | Power Line:



This is the second time in less than a month that I've run into Hegel's term "The Slaughter Bench of History" I'm concerned that events both domestic and foreign may make that a trend.



Maybe this will be the winter when I finally buckle down and read both the 3 volume biography of Churchill acquired from my father and some of his key works. He was part of and wrote of the tragedy that was WWI and it's even more horrible doppelganger, WWII, which destroyed much of the fabric of civilization that had gone before.  My reason for desiring to study this time is to try to understand how much of the godless nihilism operating in the tatters of Western Civilization today finds it's roots in the horror of the World Wars, and especially how we slipped from a time of relative goodness to a time of near total evil so quickly.



I found this quote from the linked article especially beguiling:

It wasn’t just lives that were destroyed: the very foundations of civilized life were splintered. Valiunas chronicles this in some of the best of the writers who experienced the carnage: “Many writers saw that men ground down by this combat of unprecedented savagery often ceased to care about their solemn vows to duty, honor, and country that had propelled them eager and heedless into war. These soldiers felt the pull of a new nihilism.” Convinced of the pointlessness of their sufferings, the writers “laid the foundation for a wholesale rejection of political life: men were no longer morally obligated to fight for the nations of their birth, or indeed to profess any loyalty whatsoever to these discredited relics.”

"The very foundations" -- in this I read the spirit, the "theological core" that was at the center of man and civilization for thousands of years, but has been corrupted by the idea that the political can replace the theological -- The State can take the place of God. The following gives the lie to BO's pronouncement of "Hope" -- hope if it comes at all, comes not from man, and certainly not from the state -- it comes from God, or we are indeed hopeless.

 "Too many remained unconvinced. For most the supreme value was now life itself, splendid peaceful life, preserved at all costs, never again to be sacrificed to the Moloch of national pride or the Baal of individual vainglory. The civilized world averted its eyes as in Germany the worst of the immemorial passions revived and assumed a demonic intensity never seen before. Men of good will could only hope that the evil would not touch them; but hope is a theological virtue, not a political one. The supreme tragedy of the Great War is that it neutered the multitudes of decent men who ought to have prevented the rise of the foulest regime ever, and the eruption of another war so devastating that the evils of the erstwhile Great War came to seem acceptable by comparison. Never such innocence again, but with a violent turn of the screw: not the innocence of 1914 but that of 1918 and some years following, the innocence of believing that a war of attrition conducted by incompetents is the worst that men can do.​"

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Suicide Beats Out War and Natural Disaster Combined

More People Die from Suicide Than From Wars, Natural Disasters Combined:

It isn't just a western epidemic. As Robin Williams should show us, the wolf is always at the door.

The biggest known factor in reducing suicide on a general population scale is religious practice that is just one link, but we pretty much all know that as religious practice has decreased in the US, suicide has gone up. Or course, "correlation is STILL not causality" ... however in this case we can go look up a number of studies on church attendance, life having a purpose and meaning beyond our personal happiness, connection to something specific that is larger than ourselves, etc and make a pretty decent case.

The standard media position in the US is that Christianity could go away tomorrow with no negative effects -- focus on C02 reduction and income inequality reduction and we have a bright future to look forward to! Seems amazing that the event and the religion that gave us BC and AD has lost nearly all positive effect if you listen to the MSM ... oh, other than some pedophile Catholic Priests and Westboro Baptist, we need to hear more about them for sure!

Lots of people concerned about guns, lots of people concerned about police shooting black youth and TONS of concern over Ebola.

Suicide? Seems like the official position is to not talk about it and it may go away. Doesn't really seem to be happening does it?

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A Thousand Years of Darkness

A word from Ronald Reagan | Power Line:



One of those videos that ought to be watched every year or so. Burke said it well, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." 

Or maybe for feckless men to say "if we can get an international coalition we can shrink evil to a manageable problem". 

Each chain in the link of freedom is forged with a lot of blood, sweat and tears, but the step into darkness is an easy one. 

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Fox, Confirmation Bias, Nobody I Know Voted for Reagan

How Stupid Happens | National Review Online:

The human search for truth is immensely marred by selection and confirmation bias. The people we know are NOT a "random sampling" -- they were selected. Because of the schools went to, places we work, churches we did or did not attend, organizations we are or are not involved in -- PLUS, the fact that we at least get along with them well enough to remember that we know them.

In one of Bernard Goldberg's "Bias" books he talked about a dinner party in NYC of mostly CBS journalists, where "Nobody knew anybody that had voted for Reagan, how could he have won by a landslide"  -- thus showing that journalists are not generally very savvy on statistics, demography and certainly not selection bias.

The column does a good job of covering how statements like: “Fact-Checking Site Finds Fox News Only Tells the Truth 18 Percent of the Time,” “Analysis: Over Half of ALL Statements Made On Fox News Are False,” and “Fox News wins battle for most-false cable network.” happen.
Essentially, it is exactly the same way as "95% of scientists believe in Global Warming" -- first, select your scientists -- in the GW case, those that had published papers on Global Warming, then survey them -- wala! This case, select your "facts", then check them -- naturally with all your biases present at the "check".
In the Fox case, pick stories that you find to be "controversial" (selection bias), then go look at what you believe about the story, and where Fox is "wrong", (from the perspective of you and those that agree with you) they are "lying"!
Then there is plain old bias -- in case you don't get enough examples from this Blog: 

The deeper problem with PunditFact is the bias in how it evaluates statements. Consider two structurally identical questions: In the first, it considered Chris Wallace’s claim that Hillary Clinton had “defended Syria’s President Assad as a possible reformer at the start of that country’s civil war.” 

That statement, the editors decided, was only half-true, because that was “not expressly her opinion.” Rather, she had said that members of Congress of both parties who had visited Syria had suggested that Assad was a possible reformer. (Never mind that Mrs. Clinton’s claim is itself untrue, a three-Pinocchio offender in the Washington Post’s judgment.)

In the second instance, PunditFact considered a claim from Bill O’Reilly, made during an interview with President Barack Obama, that he had not accused the administration of obscuring the motive behind the Benghazi attack for political reasons. O’Reilly had in fact interviewed people who said that, but he himself had not made that claim. 

PunditFact nonetheless rates it “mostly false,” because O’Reilly had, in its view, “nurtured suspicion.” Mr. O’Reilly and Mrs. Clinton were engaged in precisely the same rhetorical strategy: the time-honored Washington dodge of using others to suggest indirectly what you think or suspect yourself, e.g. “it’s a serious charge,” “some have said,” “it has been suggested that,” etc. In both cases, the statement was made on Fox News, but Mrs. Clinton gets a pass (“not expressly her opinion”) while Mr. O’Reilly gets labeled a liar — for precisely the same thing. This is what simple bias looks like.

It's football season. Every week there will be calls seen differently by opposing teams and fans of opposing teams, and THAT assumes unbiased referees. As evidenced by the above, one can make no such assumption when it comes to "fact checking".

In general, very worth the read -- entertaining and generally informative.


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The Fading Memory of Christianity, The Giver

The Fading Memory of Christianity | RealClearReligion:



Very well written and SHORT article explaining how the film "The Giver" represents the loss to society of the Incarnation "God with us" and the descent into yet another dystopia.

And now we see that what makes the society in The Giver most like contemporary Europe is precisely the forgetfulness of Christianity. What the story suggests, quite rightly, is that suppression of the good news of the Incarnation is in fact what conduces to dysfunctional and dangerous totalitarianism. The source of the greatest suffering throughout human history is the attempt to deal with original sin on our own, through our political, economic, military, or cultural efforts. When we try to eliminate conflict and sin through social reform, we inevitably make matters worse. As Pascal said long ago, "He who would turn himself into an angel, turns himself into a beast.

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Moderate Islam, Multiculturalism Misspelled

Sultan Knish: Moderate Islam is Our New Religion:



There is no such thing as Moderate Islam. only the fervent liberal western wish that there must be.

Take Islam, turn it inside out and you have moderate Islam. Take a Muslim who hasn’t been inside a mosque in a year, who can name the entire starting lineup of the San Diego Chargers, but can’t name Mohammed’s companions and you have a moderate Muslim. Or more accurately, a secular Muslim.

Take someone raised a Christian that no longer believes in God, maybe goes to church once a year to please the family, and you have a secular Christian -- which is to say non-christian, just like the "Moderate Muslim". 



Fairly well written Blog -- little long but generally worth the time. 

Moderate Islam is a difficult faith. To believe in it you have to disregard over a thousand years of recorded history, theology, demographics and just about everything that predates 1965. You have to ignore the bearded men chopping off heads because they don’t represent the majority of Muslims. 

Neither does Mohammed, who did his own fair share of headchopping. 

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Welcome to Home Care America

Obama rallies the nation after second beheading: ‘Shrink’ ISIS until it’s a ‘manageable problem’ « Hot Air:

A good article, contrasting some words from former times with the much more advanced, intelligent "Citizen of the World" currently occupying the WH.

 "The American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.” (FDR) 

"We will bury the USSR in the Ash Heap of History" (Reagan)

“It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated,” (W) 

And finally, "The One", the greatest orator in the history of the world, Nobel Peacemaker ... BO!!! 

"We know that if we are joined by the international community, we can continue to shrink ISIL’s sphere of influence, its effectiveness, its financing, its military capabilities to the point where it is a manageable problem,”

The majesty!

I suspect it feels lot like being made aware that you need county assistance because you are now broke, and someone will be out to help make dealing with your new catheter "manageable".

Welcome to home care America.

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Liberals Discover They May Be Human

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-frimer/liberals-conservatives-conformity_b_5697849.html

We begin with a liberal hypothesis of why conservatives "are the way they are":

The way I saw it, this slavish obedience to authority and tradition on the part of conservatives was the true source of the culture war between liberals and conservatives over foreign war, abortion, same-sex marriage, gun control, and racial inequality. They way I saw it, conservatives clung to old, near-sighted ways of thinking and fell in line with the dictates of the "man in charge." If only conservatives would think for themselves -- like liberals do -- the war would be over and we could get on with life, governance, and progress. Or so I thought.

Liberals do a lot of studies trying to prove that conservatives are somehow "inferior" -- not able to understand the facts, not able to question authority, fearful, etc. The list is long. When you are CERTAIN that you are right and in fact superior, but know that you are an extremely nice and caring person, then there MUST be some explanation for why the people you hate are so bad!!

The conservative view is really that BOTH (and all) sides are made up of inferior humans, and understanding that -- especially in relation to God, is the beginning of wisdom, a pearl of far greater price than intelligence, knowledge, or any other human characteristic like beauty or charisma.

Perhaps we have the merest inking of the beginning of liberal wisdom (oxymoron?) here:

If the two sides equally support obedience to their own authorities, how had I come to believe that conservatives are the ones that favor obedience to authority? We wondered if the asymmetry lay not in attitudes toward obedience, but in the nature of authority. Perhaps authorities tend to be conservative, and people know it.

This is what we found in a subsequent study. Americans completed a survey in which they named authorities (e.g., police officer) then indicated whether they suspected the authority figure was liberal, moderate, or conservative. People perceived authorities to be conservative. Bosses tend to vote Republican -- or at least most people suspect they do. My suspicion is that the stereotype is accurate: authorities really tend to be conservative.

I wonder if this is because conservatives are especially good at or motivated to gain positions of authority. Or perhaps gaining authority over others changes our ideology, making the boss conservative. 

We see that being wrong about the "conservatives can't think for themselves and are slaves to authority" stereotype didn't make the author any less confident in liberal stereotypes, and quickly ready to jump to the "authorities really tend to be conservative" view.

A short reading of Hayek "The Fatal Conceit" would clue her in that the smarter and better educated one is the greater their tendency to believe that "man is the measure of all things", "man is infinitely perfectible", "humans create human systems like capitalism, socialism, etc through reason", etc. In other words, the more likely they are to be "liberal" -- so the real world is the opposite of her stereotype. But, as in her original stereotype, that has never given an intelligent liberal a moments pause in being less certain of their next stereotype!

Humans are superb creators of all manner of stereotypes, narratives, models and myths to make "sense" of an infinite, complex and significantly unpredictable universe. "In general" (like all human rules, NOT 100%), the smarter you are, the greater your tendency to hubris and narcissism, with RELIGION, especially Christianity, being the great wild card transcendent model in history.

When super intelligent people have faith in an infinitely more intelligent God, especially if that God has died for them, it tends to engender some level of HUMILITY. Again, they are still human, so it is at best imperfect, but it adds another level that needs to be checked before "I'm SURE that I understand it all THIS time"!

She has mostly figured out that conservatives are likely not sub-human, but she has still not figured out that "Ideas Have Consequences" (another excellent book) ... the models we choose (or choose us), our "World View", has a profound effect on all we do, and when groups select an inferior World View, especially nation sized groups, the results are almost always disastrous.

Modern Western civilization was largely built because for a brief time (200 years), the majority of leaders were God believing to at least the Deist level, and generally Christians -- so they had a lot more understanding of the transcendent concept of wisdom, therefore taking a much more humble and reasonable view of what was possible and thus succeeding!

Joe Biden: Take Back America!

Joe Biden: Take Back America–From Me! [Updated] | Power Line:

It's a shame that the left can't enjoy the humor of having a buffoon like Biden being VP. The sitting VP for nearly 6 years wants to "take back America"! egads!

The video is excellent as well -- the somber pronouncements that when used by the Tea Party, "take back America" was RACIST ... and then a litany of Democrats using it over and over.

Consistency is no concern of the left of course, and this is yet another case where they seek to maintain control of the meaning of the same words -- "Good for ME to use, but not for THEE" !

And, like all words, when they are used by Joe Biden, they have no meaning at all, but are merely random ejections from a incontinent mind -- unless he copied them from somebody, but even then, he as no more understanding of them than the teleprompter!

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America, Love It or Pay to Leave

U.S. Hikes Fee To Renounce Citizenship By 422%:

Amazingly, in the early '80s I used to have to argue with a few people who claimed that "the USSR isn't any worse/better than here, it is just a matter of perspective". To which my easiest retort was "then why do they need a wall to keep people in and we need a wall to keep people out?". Naturally, nobody was ever convinced -- they typically actually or virtually did the equivalent of stomping off at that point.

At that point, I couldn't have even imagined that we would now be in the early stages of taking measures to keep citizens here!

The US no longer cares much for freedom, that which made it what it was when it went to the moon and consigned the USSR to the ash heap of history. Today, it is about taking money out of one set of pockets and using it to buy the votes of enough people to maintain the lifestyle of The Party and it's faithful.

We are unable to come up with any ideas to slow the tide of Undocumented Democrats streaming into the country to claim some of the declining spoils of a once great nation, but to those that seek a better life and see the writing on the wall for the the US, we are busily coming up with ways to prevent, or at least make their move to better opportunity more painful.

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No Strategy, No Problem

Political uproar over Obama's no Syria strategy comment - CNN.com:



BO's "no strategy on ISIS" comment was either just a gaffe, or yet another frightening exposure of the naivete of the current president / administration. I've read a few columns on the issue and the point that strikes me is how REALLY far modern American politics has gone down the road of "it is ALL about the perception that the MSM is going to spin".



If you heard about it at all on the MSM, you were treated to something like this column -- REPUBLICANS or "conservatives" are all bent out of shape, but to the "MSM narrative informed", this is just fine. We either don't need a strategy, can take our time, would be better off without a strategy, or some other construction that essentially says "no problem".



It is so amazing to contrast this with the amount of ink, angst and outrage spilled by the same media over "British intelligence has information", "Mission Accomplished" (never said by W), deficits approaching $500B, or even things like "misunderestimated" or in the dimmer past, Dan Quayle's misspelling of "potato".



We are long arrived at a point in American history where some sort of large event is going to be required to shake the mass of Americans from their addiction to the basically fact free highly selective fabrication of our current media, to an outraged demand for high test facts and a dialog of real options with costs and trade-offs (which all real options have).



I fear the sort of required events are of the order of economic collapse, war on the scale of at least Vietnam if not beyond, biological or other WMD attack on American soil killing at least tens of thousands or some other unforeseen large tragedy. It would be great if we could right ourselves with less drastic impetus, but it continues to look more certain that such is not the case.



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The Future Must Not Belong to Slanderers of Allah

Blog: When the Teleprompter Hits the Fan:

This article is written by someone too impressed with his usage of rhetorical devices and obscure words (eg. tellurians for just "earthlings", or better yet "people"), but I found the following thought provoking:

Actions speak louder than words, but if political speeches are preserved in National Archives, it’s because they help us learn our history and shape our future. President Obama said, “The future does not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” and President Reagan stated: “The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave….”  Every public speaker will either acknowledge his audience’s right to freedom of opinion and expression or learn it the hard way. 

The first thing it did was to send me looking for the context that BO uttered those words in, easy to find on the internet.

The speech was to the UN General Assembly and it is the usual BO fare that makes one wonder who writes this crapola. The whole applicable quote is.

The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. Yet to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see when the image of Jesus Christ is desecrated, churches are destroyed, or the Holocaust is denied.

My sense is that BO is intelligent, and fully understands the inanity of his remarks, but finds them to be effective in his "higher purpose" of an undefined secular future world utopia arrived at by indeterminate means. Heaven on earth with no religion too (John Lennon sort of)

The key problem with this vision is defined in the Bible "Man does not live by bread alone". Human kind is wired to require more meaning in our tenure in this mortal coil than "I was fed and entertained", or to put it in the Roman manner "bread and circuses".

Note that while I'm not going to cover it here, "I'm advancing" -- the "Star Trek philosophy" also holds no meaningful answer. It begs the question of "toward where or what?", and "that a way" is not enough to draw the human soul.

The idea "Muslims and Christians are one" juxtaposes the transcendent / spiritual with the corporeal / profane. "Humans are one", in their humanity, but it is the secular humanist that strives to make real that which as not been so since man first formed groups. The humans that made it through the last 500K years or so are those that put SOMETHING at a higher position in their minds than their day to day existence -- idol worship, animal worship, conquest, etc, and eventually Yahweh, Christ, Muhammed, etc.

A Muslim can NEVER say "No man cometh unto the Father but by Me", nor can a Christian say "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet".  They are both human, but in what gives their life meaning beyond food and entertainment, they are explicitly NOT "one" in religion, which they hold ABOVE their humanity!

It is quite possible that the question of the 21st century is "Is it possible for Muslims to allow Christians and Jews to exist peacefully without attacking them?" The 20th century -- and really the last 500 years, have shown that the Christian / Jewish answer to that question is definitively "yes with proof of history".

The other likely question that may be answered this century or later is "Can secular humanists allow Christians and Muslims to worship and live peacefully in their states and around the world without overt harassment?"  Historically and currently -- USSR, Nazi Germany, China, increasingly in the US and Europe, the answer is "NO!!!".

Reagan was naturally right -- the future always goes to the brave, especially those brave enough to have enough children so their viewpoint is around to see it -- yet another area that the secular humanist view fails. If the purpose of your life is to "have a good time", children don't make that cut in any advanced society, so such views are self-limiting on the multi-generational scale.
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Walker, Unions, Act 10, Campaign Truth

Small Ball in Wisconsin | The Weekly Standard:



A good little article, on the long side, making a couple of points that ought to be understood by all.



First, Act 10 has worked, and worked so well that Burke is not talking about repealing it, and in fact not wanting to talk about it at all. Remember that The Party and it's union labor arm ran Walker and WI through an expensive recall campaign trying to get Act 10 repealed in 2012 -- now, two years later it has worked so well that they simply avoid the issue. Their media arm is strong enough and it appears that the typical low information voters memory is bad enough that they are getting away with it.

Burke didn’t explain what was so bad about the schools in Neenah, a city of 25,000 people about 40 miles south of Green Bay, but the district certainly isn’t having a hard time finding good teachers in the Walker era. “We probably get a couple hundred applications for every opening,” John Lehman, vice president of the Neenah school board and a Republican, told me. “After Act 10, we increased our starting salary from $34,000 to $40,500.”
Because of Act 10, Lehman said, the district reopened two elementary schools that had been closed after earlier budget cuts. Budget constraints were forcing the district to lay off 10 to 12 teachers each year. How many teachers have been laid off since Walker’s Act 10? “None,” said Lehman. The middle school has even begun offering Chinese language courses.
Neenah’s story is typical of districts across the state: Walker’s reform gave administrators the freedom to make modest changes to benefits and work requirements—most of which Burke says she supports—so they could balance their budgets without firing teachers, raising taxes, or hurting students. It’s little wonder Burke has dropped the issue of Act 10: The law is working.

Second, even though the WI picture mirrors the national one, essentially a "jobless recovery" where unemployment drops because less people are working, the fact that TP and it's media arm don't talk about that issue nationally allows their state apparatus to make it seem like a "local problem", and again, the only audience that they really need to convince is the low information voter anyway.

Burke’s campaign has relentlessly attacked Walker for falling short of a 2010 pledge that Wisconsin would create 250,000 jobs during his first term. The unemployment rate has dropped to 5.8 percent, but only 100,000 new jobs have materialized. Walker countered by pointing out that when Burke was secretary of commerce under the previous Democratic governor, the state lost 133,000 jobs.

When you own the media, a comparison of actual results -- plus 100K for Walker, minus 133K for previous Democrat, is not something that the press would like to talk about. When it comes to "breaking campaign promises", failing to reach the number of jobs expected would see less in control of the executive than "If you like your healthcare you can keep it", but then we wouldn't really expect TP's media arm to look at things in that kind of light would we?



My bottom line here is that as a Conservative, I can be highly disappointed in WI voters, but the fact is that "it is what it is". We have allowed generations of children now to be more brainwashed than educated by largely leftist union hacks in K-12, and their more elite, but same ideology counterparts at the universities. In many ways, it is amazing that it isn't a worse situation than the actual bad one we see. 



An emotional aside is that while I see Walker as a superb Governor, it seems that he lacks the kind of personal charisma and political genius needed to win the Presidency. 



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