If Liberal Policies Are So Great, How Come People Are Voting With Their Feet?

SEE HERE Now that's a good question. Not that liberals every cared whether anyone likes their policies. It's really a brain washing issue. If you're a liberal you're kind of a lobotomized zombie nodding vigorously when every liberal policy is brought up. But you might not notice that there are fewer and fewer people in the room. Nodding so hard tends to disconnect the brain stem from the peripheral sensors and pretty soon you've become a bobble-head. It's just one of those things that happens to the neuron deficient.

Shifting Gears: Global Cooling ... Much More to be Feared than Global Warming

SEE HERE The reality is that global cooling in the form of Ice Ages has been the norm. We're fortunate to be living in a relatively warm period but that may well be ending now. This is worth reading just to see the other side of the story. The science of Ice Ages isn't fully worked out but if we want to spend some money in climate research, I think I'd spend my money there. Until we can explain Ice Ages, all this talk about global warming is just so much hot air.

The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same

Rather amusing how prescient this Archie Bunker clip is. Does that mean we'll continue to muddle through or has the tipping point arrived?

What's an ETF? Find Out ... They're Cool!

SEE HERE There are a lot of interesting financial advantages of ETFs. ETF stands for Exchange Traded Fund, which is bundle of stocks that trades like a stock. That make complex investment strategies available to everyone no matter how small or large their portfolio. They are also fund to track. Learn something about investing by studying ETFs.

Bias In the News? Nah ... Really!!

SEE HERE I've reached the point of simply ignoring the news media for the most part. They are so biased and transparent as to be essentially useless. When I was in high school I wanted to be a journalist. I was the front page editor on my high school newspaper. We were taught that the news pages should be objective and about truth and that opinion and analysis was for the editorial pages. We didn't realize then that just deciding what story runs and the hype in the story was already a lack of objectivity. The media is agenda driven. And since I was trained as a scientist before big political science started to rule the day like it did in the Soviet Union and now seems increasingly to be doing on such political hot-button manipulative issues as global alarmism, I am outraged by agenda driven procedures except when you're engineering. If you're seeking truth then the only agenda is what is true and perhaps why it is significant. When instead you pick your truth ahead of time it's just an arbitrary preference and not truth at all. Why are unions supposed to be good for example? Do they actually live up to their advertising? Why is abortion bad? You won't be able to answer those questions is you already have the answers pencilled in on your agenda. Let me give you a couple of clues. Abortion kills people. Unions increasingly simply use force to get preferences that are unwarranted by the market so that they end up like parasites, killing their hosts. It seems odd that the liberals simply automatically salute unions and abhor pro life people. I guess the lesson to go away with is that they don't care about the truth or in that now famous line "Truth, you can't handle the truth."

If It's Really In Our National Interest then the Liberals Won't Be For It

SEE HERE Any vital interests at stake in Libya? I didn't think so. We can't even figure out who the good guys and bad guys are or if there are any good guys. Somehow we should hazard American fighting men for what? Hello! There is a serious neuron shortage in Washington in the Obama administration. Bush at least had real reasons for exacting violence in the region. This is nonsense.

Government Creates More Problems than It Solves

SEE HERE The problem is not that government doesn't solve some problems. It does. Generally however, for every problem the government solves it creates a bunch more. The reason is simple. Government solutions tend to empower a bureaucracy that is in control of the solution. This gives them a charter to solve that "type" of problem. Pretty soon they start discovering or creating similar, perhaps less serious by analogous problems that they insist have to be solved and this goes on ad infinitum. The results is a creeping seizure of power that grows and grows until they are telling you what food to have for dinner and what cooking oil to use to cook your french fries. The solution is to make a rule that there has to be a clear and present danger outside the ability of free men and women to control to justify government intervention. Without this kind of test the government will slowly but systematically grow until it controls every tiny aspect of your life and then you will no longer be free. It will be more like hell than heaven.

The Swarmy Slimy Sneaky Snarks of the Left

SEE HERE Is it any real surprise that a United States Senator would counsel his fellow senators and political allies to smear their opponents with charges of extremism? Is Chuck Shumer a liberal? It is essential to understand that liberals do not argue. They actually don't know how to. What they do is state positions (often quite ridiculous ones) and call those who don't acknowledge their positions as true, names, starting with what they think of as mild ones like racist, Tea-bagger, and going up to the more extreme ones like Nazi. Usually this doesn't take long because liberals are also incredibly impatient with any sort of disagreement or resistance. Afterall they are the truly anointed ones who purvey the wisdom of the ages to us lessor mortals. All hail the wise! Unfortunately their wisdom is only in their own opinion. Outside observers usually don't see it. Problem is likely a neuron deficiency on one side or the other. It looks like it is on theirs, but they think otherwise. RED STATE ON THE REAL EXTREMISTS

The Shite and the Sunnis Race for Nuclear Weapons

This is an older video but it is short and gives a chilling perspective on the motives between Iran and al Qaeda. Who gets to lead the apocalypse?!

Save Us from the Apocalypse!

What is Iran up to? SEE HERE Apocalypse! Check out an excerpt from the film about how we will all be destroyed and tell me again ... what is it? Oh yeah, how Islam in a religion of peace! The video details the expectations of Iranian Muslims for the end times which they see as imminent and the excerpts from the longer video emphasize the figures featured in the Hadith which are associated with the rise of the Mahdi a figure similar to Christ in the second coming but sounding more the the anti-Christ to Christian ears. This film was made for consumption among Muslims who believe they are in their version of the end times.

Leadership? TOTAL FAIL

SEE HERE Our policy in Libya is totally incoherent. The president's defense of it reflects this. Red State calls him out here and some of the twitters and comments are simply hilarious if this weren't putting Americans in harms way and serving our enemies so effectively. This guy is a disaster. Hope there is enough left by 2012 so we can pick up the pieces and move forward.

In Case You've Bought Into "Islam Is A Peaceful Religion" Check This Out!

SEE HERE There is nothing peaceful about Islam. It is actually a rather odd religion which probably represents an extreme form of Arianism from the 7th century rejecting the triune nature of God and any exalted, beyond human, nature of Jesus Christ. Beyond that it is a religion that is barbaric. You don't have to believe me, all you have to do is look at the newspaper and see the violence done in the name of Allah. Various apologists for Islam are always claiming that this isn't the real Islam, but that's where you have to get into the Muslim mind. It is OK for Muslim's to deceive their non-Muslim neighbors. They are encouraged to do that by the religion itself until they grow strong enough to get their way with political means or force. Read this about the Muslim brotherhood and ask yourself what we, as Americans, ought to do as we are infiltrated by a hostile group with these ends in mind.

What could possibly go wrong?

A comment on THIS STORY about the RNC Chairman, tickled my fancy so I'm going to give it below in full. The commenter is a guy who signs himself as "Raymond" which just happens to be my name, but I was not the author. I wish I were. Here's the comment (and it might not have been original with Raymond since I remember reading something like it some time ago.

---

Let me get this straight. We’re going to be “gifted” with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don’t, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it but exempts themselves from it, to be signed by a president who also smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that’s broke.

What could possibly go wrong?

---

Great comment huh? And BTW it seems as though all the cronies of the president are getting waivers from having it apply to them. Sure it's a great plan! NOT!!

Were You Planning to Retire Someday?

SEE HERE I'm 68 soon to be 69. I've saved and invested all my life in stocks, 401K programs, IRA's and I've got quite a bit saved and I'm not confident that I can retire because the way the government behaves is fundamentally destructive of savings and the value of money. If they were private individuals managing an investment account we'd put them in jail for malfeasance. That's really how bad it is. Learn some economics and get informed. We have to turn the way the government handles money around while we still have a government that honors individual liberty. The present administration shows every sign of actually working to bring down the economy. I wish I were kidding.

The Issue That Won't Go Away

Why is this still an issue? That's the question. The answer: "It is still an issue because President Obama doesn't want to release his birth certificate." Why not? Possibilities: 1) It doesn't exist. 2) It has some sort of embarrassing information on it. 3) He likes the controversy and has millions of dollars to keep it going. ... What are the other possibilities? Of these the most reasonable is simply number 1. And if it doesn't exist, then where was he born? Has a document that once existed disappeared? Then there are a bunch of other issues that call into question his citizenship including the allegations that he received educational aid as a foreign national when he was in college. Is this true? Is all the smoke due to bogus documents drummed up by anti-Obama forces? I don't know and of course that gap between what is suspected and what is actually known is what keeps this kind of stuff going.

The Liberal Understanding of Tolerance Is Intolerance of Any View that Disagrees With Theirs

Apparently YouTube took down the video (only allowed to show violence apparently when it is the right against the left ... odd! But the video still played from the link.
SEE HERE The homosexual agenda will destroy civilization. It is fundamentally antithetical of the family and marriage. Apparently it is also totally intolerant. Interesting to watch the frenzy caused by a simple assertion of traditional values. What kind of civilization is built on perversion? My own view is that sinfulness should be kept out of the public eye. If you have a sinful obsession keep it to yourself. There is something particularly problematical about wanting to trumpet your sinfulness. It's almost a demand that others redeem you by acknowledging that what you are doing is acceptable, perhaps even laudable. The problem is that reality is something tangible and, well, real. The truth is that these things are not natural. They are in fact abnormal and not in some abstract statistical sense. It's only polite and sensitive to other people's sensibilities to keep sinful behavior to yourself. You can't expect those who on traditional moral grounds know it is sinful to grace you with their approval, at least not those who really care about the truth. This kind of reaction can only be explained by the fact that they know in their hearts that they are wrong.

The Significance of Revolution Waves?

SEE HERE Delancey Place today features a short excerpt on the significance of waves of revolutions. I put it up for your consideration because thinking of revolutions as coming in "waves" isn't my first instinct, but it's clear that there is something to it. A while back all the liberals were making fun of George Bush the younger for statements he'd made about the infectious effects of democracy. I didn't pay all that much attention at the time. For one thing I have a distinct distaste for the word "democracy." It arises from the fact that democracy = mob rule. Aristotle and Plato were neither of them big fans of mob rule and the founders of the United States were not either.

Somehow the schools have been teaching that we're a democracy and we are not and I hope we don't become one. We are a representative republic and that is a very different thing. We have checks and balances to defend the rights of the minority. If we lose those we will indeed become a democracy and shortly thereafter a dictatorship as has happened to every democracy. So stop calling our form of government a democracy. Nevertheless, freedom is infectious, but is what we are seeing in the Middle East in all these uprisings something that has anything to do with freedom or is it just one set of thugs moving in to kick out the last set of thugs? We may not know for a while. Most Westerners have absolutely no idea of what motivates the people in the Middle East. They are Islamic. They tend to still exhibit tribal characteristics. They belong to factions that are mutually horrifically violent towards one another (the Sunnis and the Shia) and I know not very much at all about these and what I do know I know at a sort of intellectual level not at any kind of a visceral level. I generally don't view disagreement, even disagreement about religious issues I consider important, to be an adequate motivation for violence. These people do. So I think this idea of "revolution" may be quite an oversimplification of what is going on. LIBYA

Leadership? The Obama Administration ... Quite a Stretch!

SEE HERE This whole Libya affair would be incredibly funny if it were not so deadly. We're hell bent on replacing one dictator with some oddball collection of fanatics who are engaged in slaughter. How is that an improvement? This whole thing smells of what it is, stupidity mounted on idiocy contriving to accomplish absurdity. Rube Goldberg used to make quite entertaining topsy pieces of complexity but at least they had a point. This is chaos compounded with catastrophe. Why don't we arm our enemies and see how long it takes the munitions to come home? Are we crazy or is it just the Obama administration?

Democrats Keeping Reporter In A Closet? Wow!

SEE HERE Can you imagine the screaming and yelling from the media if this was done to a reporter at a Republican event. What do these folks have to hide? I've never heard of something this bizarre in the way of treating the press like "the enemy." Often enough, if you're a Republican, they act like the enemy, but this is rather over the top. If they didn't want him there they should have told him he couldn't come in. FOLLOW UP

Taps: Moving Rendition

Freedom isn't free. I remember when I served they would play taps each evening. Of course it wasn't this extended version. Somehow the day wasn't complete until taps had been played.

One Of The Ways To Tell Science Is Phony

SEE HERE The one scientific mantra that I stick with is "Show me the data." Phony science is immediately evident if the data won't stand up. Now we see some of the climate alarmists trying to silence their critics in the courts. The solution to that is the same and in the case of any other science. Show us the data. Real science proceeds that way. You do experiments and you collect data and you interpret the data in the light of scientific models that are based on first principles and if the data fits the models you say the models have been validated (I might add that is not the same as saying they are right since the next data may not fit). If the data is changed to make the model work that is cooking the data. If the data is cherry picked so that only data that makes the model work that's another kind of cooking the data. The climate alarmists have done a lot of data cooking from the looks of things. If they are on the up and up then they should welcome scientific review, but that's not the way it looks.

If It Weren't for Double Standards, Liberals Would Have No Standards at All!

Here we go again... this is funny. Is Biden going to lead the effort to impeach Obama over the Libya attacks? Of course not! These folks are hypocrites. They wouldn't know a principle if it came down and hit them in the head. All they know is spin and vindictive. Given Biden's clear view that you have to consult Congress before launching an attack let's see if he calls out the president. Are you holding your breath? Are you turning purple yet?

Correcting Liberal Myths

SEE HERE The liberal progressive propagate many myths about their heroes and vilify their enemies. The truth is general sacrificed in both directions. Here we see that far from being the great savior of the economy that the progressives love to extol him as, FDR prolonged the great depression through his misguided economic policies. They're still spinning this one. Don't fall for it. Part of being a fully engaged citizen is actually learning enough economics to put a stake through the heart of this particular vampire. The same thing goes for their enemies like Joe McCarthy.

McCarthy is the most vilified politician in American history. There is only one catch. He was right. He may not have been pretty and he may have used alcohol to excess (who wouldn't with these demons on your tail) but he was right. SEE HERE
and HERE TOO

Iowa: The Run Up ...

The presidential hopefuls for 2012 are jockeying for position in Iowa. I personally think we need strong principled leadership and not some of these faces that have been selling us out for decades. So it will be an interesting run-up. To win we have to have someone who can connect credibly with the American people, someone who can run on strong Conservative principles and someone with real solutions that will not just tread water as the economic collapse brings down the country. Who that is, I don't know? Maybe we'll begin to find out soon. We certainly need principled leadership we can all get behind as Americans.

We Want To Help You: "Taxes Up ... and Up ... and Deficits ... " Game Over!

One ought to mention that often enough the programs designed to help all those poor people end up subsidizing really bad choices and cost the taxpayers a bundle. Build on a flood plane at taxpayer expense, over and over and over again. Katrina ... oh well, that'll never happen again right? Housing bubbles due to forcing banks to make bad real estate loans and then that leads to bundling bad loans as investments and pretty soon ... yeah, "Game Over!"

When You Kill the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg It's "Game Over!"

SEE HERE Liberals never cease to amaze me by the depth of their economic ignorance. You would think to listen to them that everyone lives in a zero sum world and the only reason there are rich people is because there are poor people because those evil, greedy, rich people have stolen what they have from the poor. Well, I'm sorry to advise you that the game doesn't really work that way. The way it really works is that people who work hard, develop personal discipline, learn skills that are valuable to others, take the initiative to start businesses and hazard the wealth they have earned actually build businesses that employ others and make everyone relatively better off. When you injure those people who have done that you are first of all doing something fundamentally unjust, but in addition you are putting many others at risk. If you take down the engine the car stops running. The engine that makes the economy go is the initiative of those who have built businesses. Take them down and all else comes down with them. "Game Over!"
"Oh drat! Press Start Doesn't Work Anymore."

Liberals are Fools and Hypocrites: "If it were not for double standards they would have no standards at all."

This little video shows how incredible the liberal blindness is. Sarah Palin has then pegged though when she said, "If it weren't for double standards they'd have no standards at all." I thought that was hilarious, mostly because it was so true. I've seen this little scenario played out over and over and over again. If a Republican does something they don't like we all hear how stupid and evil he is. When a liberal does the same thing or something worse, he's somehow suddenly insightful, awesome, incredibly prescient, or just (in the case of immorality) human and besides his private life shouldn't matter. Hypocrite is another word for liberal progressive.

The Cost of Modernism: 75% Loss of Faith, Loss of Values

I can't speak for other kinds of Christians. But I can confirm what Michael Voris says here about my own experience of Catholicism. When I was a boy, Pope Pius XII was pope. The mass was in Latin. I was a choir boy, a young soprano and I loved singing the high mass on Sundays to music written by the great composers, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, and on and on. Our choir director was a man with a name that seemed to just say choir director: Mr. Pereezi.

Pope John XXIII came along and called the Vatican II council and the liberals modernists saw their chance. Nothing in the documents of the council gave them the charter, but they created "the spirit of Vatican II" to create a shambles of church liturgy. church theology, church education, and on and on as if the trendy nonsense they were peddling had something to do with Christ and His message and calling we are all called to. You can't blame all the societal collapse on just this small coterie of wreckers. The culture needed a lot of other corruptions to bring about the collapse.

Chief among these was contraception which opened the way for "love" if you mean by love something rather more like the free rein of lust. Sex without consequences ... oops! Well let's just terminate that pregnancy and go back to "sex without consequences." Women as plastic Barbie's and the destruction of the family was on. We've seen all this now for some fifty years. It brings on societal collapse folks.

We've killed something like sixty million young children in the womb. We've created a society without vision or values and we are well on the way to killing what little is left as we sink into the featureless pit of "everyone's a victim and government will take care of you ..." but towering deficits and loss of initiative and will to excellence is killing the society in more ways than just religion.

Michael Voris is right on when it comes to the effect of modernism on the Catholic Church. But the effects of this plague are not limited to Catholics. It is a societal disorder, a social pathology, and it leads to dissolution and death of the American dream. We need to change course. We need to change course soon!

Palin Has More Class Than Maher: Is That A Surprise?

SEE HERE I'm not sure I'd classify Maher as a “mosquito” .. more a gnat frankly. He is not very funny and generally pretty stupid so it's hard to get too excited when he acts like an idiot since after all that's what he is. What would be surprising is if he actually said something truly insightful. Sarah Palin responded coming off her Israel trip with just the right tone. "Ignore the Wookie!" only in this case it's "Ignore the gnat." A wookie is hard to ignore.

Nuclear Power In Perspective

SEE HERE Nuclear power is safer than all the other kinds of power generation as measured in risk to human lives. Nuclear power mainly gets a bad rap because of irrational fears and linkage in people's minds with nuclear explosions which frankly have nothing to do with nuclear power. This piece puts the risks in a little perspective. Adding up all the fatalities from nuclear power ever experienced ends up with a relative handful compared with fatalities from other power generation sources, especially dam failures in the case of hydroelectric. People need to get rational and get the data. The Japanese reactor dangers were blown out of all proportion just as Three Mile Island was blown out of all proportion. We should get more nuclear not less.

Libya? Where's Libya? Do You Care?

Who elected this fellow? Not only is this adventure in Libya poorly motivated and totally mission-less but he goes around pretending it's superior to George Bush's military adventures. George Bush had the virtue of getting a whole lot more allies involved and actually attacked people who were real threats. Sorry Barack, but this doesn't go in the "Proven Leadership" file but in the "Totally Clueless" file. WHO ARE WE ALLIED WITH?

Where Do You Draw the Line?

SEE HERE The economic collapse of the United States seems inexorably linked to a failure of principle and nerve in the region inside the beltway. We will all pay a heavy price for this failure if it continues because make no mistake about it, this behavior is not sustainable and the day of judgment is at hand because of runaway entitlements and runaway spending producing unsustainable debt whose interest rates are sure to rise as the government prints more and more unbacked and unbackable money. The only question is whether the crash will be slow or fast. It's not even clear which would be better. Both would be painful and create great economic suffering.

This Is Weird!

SEE HERE A bunch of illegals in Marine Corps uniforms with a vehicle with a fake license plate but a number traceable to the U.S. Marine Corps. What is that all about? Trial run for something?

Decapitation as a Strategy

SEE HERE Today I bring you a Delancey Place you should sign up if you'd like to get a provocative and interesting excerpt from various featured books that makes you think. Today's targets the counter-terrorism strategy of decapitation. The question is whether it is a successful and useful strategy and the data that is in says, probably not. I'm inclined to think that the strategy itself gives too much credit to the idea that organizations are motivated primarily by their leadership and so if you cut off the head the organization is less effect and likely to shrink. That's probably simplistic thinking based on the analogy of a group to an organism. Any organization worth its salt has many leaders and many wanna-be leaders and taking out one leader may well merely make way for a more engaged and motivated leader. It will certainly anger the followers. Moreover it is a policy of assassination and this alone makes it highly questionable. A collective enemy should be seen as the collective not the leader and rabble. I think it is a fallacy especially on the left, but increasingly a modern fallacy, that a collective cannot be effective without a leader. The Tea Party is an example of a rather effective grassroots driven movement that has no particular individual leaders but many individuals with initiative.

A War By Any Other Name: Impeach Obama Now!

SEE HERE This is an example of the most egregious, misleading, dumbfoundingly stupid rhetoric on the planet. It could only have come from the Obama administration. "Kinetic military action" ... shooting a huge slug of cruise missiles into someone else's country is an act of war, pure and simple. If bombs were going off in New York or New Jersey we might find the liberals suddenly having second thoughts about this kind of stupidity.

Donald Trump To Obama: Show The Birth Certificate

Donald Trump To Obama: Show The Birth Certificate
This is rather funny as the "ladies" on the View go ballistic on Trump because he thinks Obama should show the birth certificate. Apparently calling someone a "birther" is a substitute for having to think. Trademark Liberal demonization. But the issue to me is the question: "Why is it a big deal?" There is something seriously wrong when someone simply refuses to show their birth certificate and spends a ton of money to keep it from being shown. What's to hide? Everyone has to show their birth certificate for one thing or another. Why does Obama get a pass? I think there are objective reasons for thinking this is very troubling. MORE

Awesome Video of the Impact of Modern Technology

Health? Technology seems to have influenced the wealth and the health of the world. Fascinating technical summary.

Liberals Have A Cozy Relationship With Corporate Cronies

SEE HERE The idea that government has a clue about what to develop or how to develop it is really funny if it weren't so serious. As someone who worked for the government for a long time as a research scientist as they increasingly turned all the real scientists into contract administrators (anyone who really wanted to do science left), I think I can speak a little for the kind of science the government generally does. I think it is called trendy junk science frankly. I trust the science done in the private sector much more. Government "science" always seems to end up as justification for policies decided on before the science was done. Remarkable how prescient all those politicians and bureaucrats are right, they knew what needed to be funded before a bit of science was done. Central planned has not worked anywhere that it has been tried. We're not going to be the success. It's a recipe for total disaster economically speaking, poor and expensive solutions.

Government wisdom, case in point, HEALTH CARE

The Lunatic Left! Science: Only If It Agrees With Their Prejudices

SEE HERE Ann Coulter points out that with liberals biases trump science. That's just the way it is. Look at global warming as an example, or alar on apples or any of a zillion other liberal love to hate things like DDT but no concern for babies or for malaria sufferers. Liberals are deadly, very deadly. When they say how much they care, what they mean is that if you're suffering they'll kill you to do you a favor.

When You Subsidize Something You Get More of It and the Price Becomes More Fluid Upward

SEE HERE Pell grants are a nice idea as are all the good sounding things government wants to do with your tax money, but they commonly have unfortunate and unintended side effects as Red State notes here.

Red State's Theory: "Wag the Dog"

SEE HERE Yeah I think so too! There is no reason for this military action in Libya except to try to make Obama, the most indecisive man on earth, look like he's a man of action. But he's a vacillator and unprincipled scoundrel and all this posturing isn't going to make that any the less true. We'll see how "gracefully" he extricates himself from the unnecessary action he's started.

An Impeachable Offense? You Bet! Let's Stop This Now!

SEE HERE The United States was not attacked. This is an unprecedented use of arbitrary presidential power to launch a military adventure without provocation. It is an act of raw imperialism and needs to be reined in. HERE's A LINK "The War Powers Resolution of 1973 (50 U.S.C. 1541–1548) was a United States Congress joint resolution providing that the President can send U.S. armed forces into action abroad only by authorization of Congress or if the United States is already under attack or serious threat." from WIKIPEDIA So is this "war" with Libya an abuse of presidential power? I think so, but who knows what others may think?

It's not exactly like he didn't know. SEE HERE

What American Interests Are At Stake In Libya? None ... short answer.

SEE HERE Was this war begun with due process? Probably not so let's get some legislative action going to rein in an out of control president. Why are we attacking an foreign nation engaged in a civil war? Let them fight their own war.

Is This Why We Have Problems In Education?

This is a video that is a couple of years old. It's about a controversial professor up in Canada and I've not done a lot of research on him since I only stumbled on him because of his position on Climate Alarmism. But I share many of his concerns that students are not learning as effectively as they should be. I don't know if I'd go as far as he does in condemning grades as the culprit, but there is a problem and his position is coherent and not unreasonable. So what should we do? I think we should be doing something!

A Leftist Critique of the Climate Change Nonsense

SEE HERE Even some liberals are honest. Here's a fellow who is using his neurons to good purposes and discovering in a very methodical way that, "Wow! Golly Wilikers Batman! Climate Science is a fraud!" Well I could have told him that but thinking it through is an important exercise.

Disrupt How the System Works ... Find a Really Good Company to Hate

SEE HERE The Alinsky-ites are getting ready to start a revolution. Be on the alert. The question is can they really demonize and create the kind of mindless hatred they envision? The more I see of all this the more it looks like coordinated activity to bring down the nation. First we create an unsustainable housing bubble by forcing banks to give bad loans. Then we exacerbate the problem by printing vast amounts of money so that the money is destabilized. Then we blame it all on the usual suspects, those evil bankers who are hoarding the money (what money, that stuff they just printed?) and the narrative is that evil bankers are at fault. Pick one to be the target (straight Alinsky) and get a lot of rage going. Then force even worse policies on the banks that trigger the collapse. Doesn't that look like organized demolition? We'll see I suppose. May you live in interesting times is supposed to be a Chinese curse (apparently that is an urban legend) but in fact our times are about as "interesting" in that sense, as they get. Stand by for the roller coaster ride of your life.

Government Is Doing the Wrong Things (As Usual) and Stand By for Commercial Real Estate to Tank!

This is an interesting interview which suggests 1) that the housing industry has bottomed out, but 2) that there's a major one Trillion Dollars worth of bad debt in the Commercial Real Estate market that hasn't fully hit the wall. 350 thousand people have left Detroit making it a poor rich for housing investment until demand returns. But that requires jobs and the policies of the Federal Government are keeping banks from loaning money to exactly those sectors which most help the job market. Go Figure! Meanwhile let's have new war! Yeah, that's the ticket! I am so sick of this administration I'd like to get into a time machine and jump forward except I'm not sure I could handle the devastation.

Now That We're Getting So Good At Regime Change Maybe We Should Try The Bay of Pigs Again?

SEE HERE George Will highlights the creeping imperialism that we seem hell bent on as we widen the involvement in various Middle East regime change impacting actions. Does any of this really make sense? I'm not very hopeful that it does.

Has Anyone Figured Out What We're Doing This For?

SEE HERE This Libyan exercise is about the most feckless thing I've ever seen. This president is an incompetent dolt. If Ralph Nader were not such an idiot I've be thrilled to join him in calling for the impeachment of this president. Was there any rationale for leaping suddenly into sending cruise missiles and bombers and fighters into Libya? This sounded and still sounds like a pretty vanilla local civil war. What is our stake in this cat fight?

This is Amusing! Operation Aimless Fury has a nice ring to it!

SEE HERE Patriot Humor comes floating into my email on a schedule I've not kept track of but it's often quite amusing. I like this one so take a look and see what you think.

Weapon Smuggling Into Gaza

The Israeli Defense forces are faced with the constant thread of terrorism from weapons smuggled in to terror forces in Gaza. This is one video showing the kind of problem this represents. Just think of how you would feel if there were people constantly targeting your families by smuggling weapons in to attack you. This is the reality of Israeli life.

Another Reason for Defunding NPR: They're Not Funny!

SEE HERE Aside from being in the usual poor taste, the NPR's idea of humor isn't even funny. It's no wonder that a network with such poor judgment should be defunded. If they need funding they need to earn it the way the rest of the radio networks do.

The Government Has No Right to Tell Us What to Buy

One can only hope that this legal ruling will carry the day. The nation needs to pull back from the brink before we tumble down into the abyss of Federal slavery where some bureaucrat tells you how to live every element of your life, whether it be your health care or the kind of oil used to cook your french fries. Americans are a free people, not subservient to any government be it community, state or federal. They are supposed to represent and serve us, not lord it over us. It's time to return to that vision.

Obamageddon? Do We Still Have Time To Turn This Around?

SEE HERE I try not to be an alarmist. But the problem is that I am alarmed. I'm alarmed at the fact that a man that I didn't think could be nominated because of his lack of experience doing anything was nominated. I didn't think he could be elected since, well he had no experience worth mentioning that would qualify him to run the largest and most powerful nation on earth. But he was elected and with an unprecedented amount of money of doubtful origins spent on his election. ACORN was out drumming up votes. Students in many venues seemed to maybe have voted more than once. It was hard to credit that the American public was this stupid, but maybe they just wanted to prove they were not racists.

Then this fellow who is a student of Saul Alinsky starts making moves that seem to make no very good sense and are calculated to spend more money that we can support blows up the deficit more than anyone else on record in the shortest time on record. Where's the money all going? There's no accounting for it apparently. How many people are experiencing payback on the backs of the taxpayers like the Republican GM dealers got payback when the dealerships were closed. This administration is in the running for the most corrupt ever and it has the media in its pocket. How does that all work? Why? What has the guy done that makes him the Teflon president? Is he just a pretty face reading a teleprompter? I think a lot of people are concerned and the statistics suggest that they should be. 2012 can't come quick enough for me. I want this guy out of office while we still have a nation that is a representative republic and not a socialist banana republic with money that isn't worth the paper it is printed on.

The Naval Ambitions of the Chinese

SEE HERE George Will reflects on the emerging Chinese navy. Naval power is a fundamental component of geopolitical power. One of the missions of the United States Navy is projection of power. This would be no-less true of the Chinese navy.

Cost Of Living At All Time High — I'm Not Surpirsed, Are You?

SEE HERE Let's see now ... the government is printing money at record rates unbacked by anything but their good looks which aren't so good. We're in the midst of several international crises which will drive energy costs up and likely promote troublesome regulations in misguided efforts to do something, anything, and then we just started bombing Libya. What could go wrong? Don't shout "everything" everyone. I mean this is obvious, and this is only the beginning, perhaps only the beginning of the beginning. More will follow and it likely won't be pretty.

Ohio follows Wisconsin ... Is Your State Next?

This whole thing is interesting to me since when I graduated from college I went to work for the Federal government and the Civil Service was not allowed to strike. Some of you probably remember what Reagan did when the Air Traffic Controllers walked out illegally. Public employee unions don't strike against their employer because their employer is the state toadies that are in league with them against the interests of the people. Unions are always about less work for more money, shoddier work for more money, fewer hours for more money. All the time they talk about quality, but the only quality they care about is fewer obligations and more compensation. That's a recipe for just what you see unions producing everywhere: lower quality and ultimately fewer jobs as they sink the companies they work for. In this case it is sinking the state governments.

What's The Federal Government Doing? As Usual, Something Crazy!

Do We Really Need the Federal Government to Address Bullying?

SEE HERE Insanity! The Federal government has no business entering the bullying discourse. Bullying is a problem. Another problem is civility and respect which isn't demanded either. So the government has already been involved in making the bullying worse by creating an atmosphere which tolerates and empowers it.

What is required is some sanity, but that is exactly what you never get from government. Instead we will get all kinds of bureaucracy jammed down our throats with all kinds of high sounding rhetoric which on balance will be socially destructive. That's what we've gotten ever since the government has been in the education and other businesses they don't belong in, one steady downhill trend.

I know. Why don't we just strap all the little kids in their seats while they are being indoctrinated and then put them in handcuffs before they get on the bus to go home. Sure that's crazy, but then so is suspending a kid for bringing a 1 1/2 inch keychain gun ornament to school or confiscating his feather collection because some of the feathers were from songbirds (birds do shed feathers and maybe we should arrest cats for eating birds while we're at it). Both of those were cases that I personally read about.

Bureaucracy knows no common sense bounds at all. They pass rules and then the mindlessness begins even if the rules don't seem mindless at first. I think that is a form of bullying too.

The Danger of Government Trendy Regulation

SEE HERE Government regulation is a double edged sword. One of the problems is that regulation can sound so benign and well motivated that many people are lulled into thinking that the government is trying to help them. In some cases this is quite true. Lots of regulations that help to ensure truth in advertising, accuracy in labeling, and such are helpful and not too intrusive and expensive. But an awful lot of government regulation doesn't make that standard and is just intrusive, objectionable, costly and destructive of both wealth and freedom. The EPA is a good example of an agency that dabbles all too often in the kind of regulation that is expensive and frequently wrongheaded and pointless.

Green Racism? What? The Punishing Effects of Economics

SEE HERE Thomas Sowell points out the inevitable effects of liberal policies. Racist? Who us? might say the liberals. But environmental policies have consequences and some of them have definite racial overtones. Republicans support a whole lot more level playing field than liberals, who are after all 'sniff' "the anointed", do. Here my very favorite economist and all around clear minded individual, Thomas Sowell, nails it again.

A Common Misconception and Deception

SEE HERE Deception? Well it's quite common for people to give the president that was in power when various things happen the credit or the blame for things like increasing deficits or on the positive side economic growth. That's extremely deceiving and highly unlikely as Walter Williams shows here. It's Congress, Congress, and Congress that votes on taxes and spending. The general ignorance that puts the credit or blame in the wrong area is part of why we get the kind of propaganda that we do. Democratic Congresses are always increasing taxes more than Republican ones and quite often when economic things go well it is because the Republicans are controlling the purse strings. But generally politicians are bad stewards of the people's treasure. When the founders decided where to put the money they put it in the hands of the part of the government that was supposed to be most responsive to the people. It's time the people called them to their duty.

To Whom Much Has Been Given Much Is Expected

"A New Nation Conceived in Liberty and Dedicated to the Proposition that All Men Are Created Equal ..." not some people in Washington dedicated to power and their own aggrandisement.

Alinsky Means the Death of Freedom

SEE HERE I think it's important to understand what is going on in Wisconsin. It's a textbook case of the Alinsky method in action. This is what agitation, lying, protesting, organized thuggery is all about. It is as far as you can get from the vision of the founding fathers who saw freedom as the cooperation of a virtuous people who valued excellence and sought to cooperate with one another to bring about liberty. This is about thugs having their own way. If you can't tell the difference you are already part of the problem.

Calling Out the New York Times — Spin Doctors for the Left

SEE HERE Sarah Palin points out the fact that the NYTs can't get it right because they never consider anything but the "facts" fed to them from the left. The problem of course is that all you get from the left is spin. Now the right does some spin too, but it takes habitual lying to get good at it. The left has been lying so long they think they are telling the truth. That's the nature of the big lie, told over and over and over again. It finally is thought to be true through the sheer weight of repetition. That's what they are trying to do to Sarah Palin. Ridicule long enough and people think that where there is so much smoke there must be some fire. Too bad that people are so easily led and manipulated.

The Party Is Nearly Over

SEE HERE June? Is that when the inflation will really kick in? Who knows exactly? The fact is that the inflation is certain, it's only uncertain when it will fully express itself. Inflation is caused by too much money chasing too little goods. The constant floating of new unearned money into the economy by the Fed will become inflation as it all sorts through. Keep a careful eye out. Meanwhile, from an investment point of view you might want to consider something of intrinsic value or a staple that everyone needs.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

My son graduated from ET/Com school at New London CT Submarine Base, Groton, CT. We are very proud of him and the graduation ceremony was quite moving. To get on the base we had to present driver's licenses, evidence of insurance and our sailor. He was required to accompany us. We didn't have any problem with that the first day. We toured around the area and drove back on base and dropped him at his barracks and drove off the base.

The second day was actually the day of the graduation. We followed him onto the base after signing in again (they made us sign in at security each day) and we attended the ceremony. Then he came off base with us and we drove around the area and later took him to a very nice dinner at the Koto Japanese Steak House. It couldn't have been a nicer day until we went to take him back on base.

The crew at gate 7 had changed I think from military to civilians, but I can't be sure since my recollections are clouded by outrage and anger. We came back on base as we had several times on that trip already and even more times since we'd been at the base some months before when he graduated from sub school This time all we wanted to do was take him back to his barracks and drop him off and go back to our hotel.

The gate guards told us that we'd be committing a felony and that they'd see that we spent 50 days in prison or something like that. We couldn't believe it. They said we could drove onto the base with him and over to the other gate but he would have to walk back to his barracks and we'd have to leave. We did that but we told the young man at the gate there that we were very angry at how we had been treated. We are the parents of this sailor. We had driven 488 miles to come to his graduation. We had formerly had two other sons in the military, one Marine who served in Desert Storm and one son who served in the Army. I served in the Army and my brother served in the Air Force and my father was Naval Academy class of 1940 and had risen to Rear Admiral. We were treated like terrorists and potential criminals.

My wife and I both told the sailor at the main gate that we were incensed. We had dropped our son at his barracks the day before and driven off base. But then that day no-one threatened us. Now frankly I served as a civilian scientist for the U.S. Navy from about 1962 when I was a student trainee to 1977 when I left the Civil Service to work for Sperry Univac Defense Systems Division. I had a Top Secret clearance and had been on and off Naval Air Stations and bases often. I told the young man that this was a lousy way to treat the family of sailors and it could hardly be good for retention. I think the policy just stinks. If they don't want us on their damn base they should hold the graduation ceremony off base. We're planning to protest our treatment. Bureaucracy being what it is, I don't expect much but more abuse. Someone needs to start reminding the Government that they work for us. The young man had the audacity to say that he was protecting me because of 9/11. I didn't feel protected. I felt abused and insulted. This isn't the way parents of three military sons should be treated. I might add that my sole daughter is married to a sailor that just completed his twenty years of service. If this is the way you treat your own, then you likely won't have as many recruits in the future.

Chuck Norris on the Public Indoctrination Centers Pt 2

SEE HERE If you ever wondered what your students are learning in school maybe watching the events in Wisconsin has piqued your interest. Chuck Norris has a few thoughts worth considering. You might ask your students to write cursive for a while or see who many books they've read and whether they can write grammatical sentences. Interacting with your students should tell you something about what they are learning. Is it what you expected?

Is It Still Philantrophy When It's Giving Away Someone Else's Money?

SEE HERE Think about this! We have a society that it full of theft for allegedly good purposes. You might call it the Robin Hood Society. Steal form Peter to pay Paul and then congratulate yourself on you generosity. The problem is that it isn't generosity when you're giving away money that doesn't really belong to you. Whether you're ripping off taxpayers or shareholders the principle is the same. It's too bad that most people don't seem to get it. We might be able to fix it if they did. When the money runs out as it surely must, then we'll no doubt be told it was all those greedy shareholders and taxpayers whose greed made everything fail. The ignorance is really overwhelming.

What Part of Phony Don't They Understand?

SEE HERE A debt is not secured by an IOU, even an IOU from the government when the government is rapidly going bankrupt. One has to wonder just how long the general public can be fooled into thinking that the money is worth anything or that government promises are worth anything or that the so-called "Trust Fund" is anything more than a promise that is unbacked by anything but the overtaxed tax payers going forward.

And The Beat Goes On

SEE HERE Well this ought to be interesting. A stay based on a legality. This likely won't change much since it can just be done all over again. Meanwhile the unions keep doing things that make it more and more obvious that a measure like this is necessary. Connivance and political manipulation by organized thuggery as the unions have been practicing it needs to be eliminated.

The Nature of the Wisconsin Reforms

SEE HERE Public unions and Democratic politicians are in a cozy relationship focused on making Democratic majorities a matter of course despite those pesky things called elections. It's time to reform the system so that money exacted from the people is not used to bribe politicians and fund a never ending program of union corruption. A Representative Republic needs to have elections free of these kind of influences. As a minimum this business of negotiating never ending increases in salary in benefits beyond what those in the public sector make should end. They should be working for us not for the politicians.

You May Be Poorer Soon Thanks To Government

SEE HERE It must be nice to be one of those people who manufacture money out of the clear blue sky and float it out to the rest of us. Free money. Money that doesn't reflect any productivity whatsoever. We're given nice sounding names "quantitative easing" ching and "QE2" ching and we subsidize corn to make a poor substitute for gasoline which when added to gasoline makes fuel less efficient and more expensive both in terms of lower mileage and engine damage and drives the price of corn up, corn which is a basic food staple worldwide ching. When you add up what your paycheck could buy maybe you noticed it was less than last month and substantially less than last year. Don't hold your breath for it to get better. As long as the printing presses run your money will get less valuable and the government will blame it on anyone but themselves. It would be nice if they had to work for a living.

Reality: Something Government Routinely Gets Wrong

SEE HERE Perhaps the saddest ignorance that the American public suffers from is economic ignorance. It isn't my idea to try to correct that here, except to note that it exists. I don't have time to try to correct all the stupid things that I hear from folks all the time about economics and how government needs to shield us from greedy corporations or whatnot.

The reality is that if we foster diversity in the economic sphere the competition among those seeking to serve us will be far more effective than government. But government benefits from the idea that they are benefactors and so encourage the idea. The reality is that everything that government touches, regulates or controls costs more. Some regulation in the form of standards is important and helpful, but most simply functions like gum in the gears of production and makes things more expensive and scarcer.

In some cases government manages through punitive taxes to destroy whole industries. Most of what was once flourishing small aircraft manufacturers and luxury boat manufacturers in the United States were destroyed by luxury taxes. It killed the businesses, created unemployment and the rich simply went offshore for their boats and aircraft. The less rich learned to do without. This is the kind of thing that is always going on when the government helps us.

Some Things Are Too Good Not To Share

Divorce Agreement

Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:

We have stuck together since the late 1950's for the sake of the kids, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has clearly run its course.

Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right for us all, so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:

--Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a similar portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.
--We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them.
--You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU.
--Since you hate guns and war, we’ll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.
--We'll take the nasty, smelly oil industry and you can go with wind, solar and biodiesel.
--You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell. You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them.
--We'll keep capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street.
--You can have your beloved lifelong welfare dwellers, food stamps, homeless, homeboys, hippies, druggies and illegal aliens.
--We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks.
--We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood.
--You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.
--You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.
--We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values.
--You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism, political correctness and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N. but we will no longer be paying the bill.
--We'll keep the SUV's, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars.
You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.
--You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors.

We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right.

--We'll keep "The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and "The National Anthem."
--I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute "Imagine"; "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing", "Kum Ba Ya" or "We Are the World".
--We'll practice trickle down economics and you can continue to give trickle up poverty your best shot.
--Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like-minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you answer which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely,
John J. Wall
Law Student and an American

P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Barbara Streisand, & Jane Fonda with you.

P.S.S. And you won't have to press 1 for English when you call our country.

Forward This Every Time You Get It! Let's Keep This Going, Maybe Some Of It Will Start Sinking In. To Share Just Send This URL http://tinyurl.com/5src24u

In Time of Peace Prepare for War

SEE HERE George Will's column should remind us that the world is not a safe place. The primary purposes of government are two, to defend the citizenry from enemies from without and within. The most successful strategy for the first of these missions is to have a military second to none. We forget that at our peril. We live in a world that is not safe and we have many enemies because we are affluent and our nation is rich. The world is not a zero sum game. We earned what we have, but there are those who envy us and would like to take us down. Make no mistake about that. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.