OWS and the Tea Party

SEE HERE "Nothing to see here. Move along." The mindless comparison of the Occupy Wall Street crowd with the Tea Party gets the send up it richly deserves by Washington Times correspondent Robert Knight. The fact of the matter is that the two groups could not be further apart in character and in goals. The OWS crowd is a group of wannabe hippies who missed the '60s and the Tea Party is a bunch of patriots that want the country to actually honor and follow the Constitution ... Wow! How radical is that?!

The Racism of the Left ...

This is the standard MO of the left. Namecalling and in this case calling a successful black man some kind of lackey. Gee, how does that work? CEO head of a large corporation and trade organization. Herman Cain is a man who was a mathematician and computer scientist. He's a real success story not some kind of phony like so many of those being critical of him. Let's get it straight who the racists really are ... it's the liberal progressive plantation owners who want to keep black people dependent on them. Check out the history of the left and compare it with the history of the right. The Republicans were the ones who supported the abolition of slavery and civil rights for the black population. The Democrats by contrast supported the Klu Klux Klan and maintained segregation. The sad thing is that people don't learn enough history to know the truth. Listen to Clarance Thomas on his treatment. This is what the left does to successful black people. Wake up!  ERICKSON

Muckraking as a Political Strategy

SEE HERE There is something distressing about the strategy of muckraking for old news that might reflect unfavorably on a candidate and then using it in an unremitting mudslinging fest.  It looks like Herman Cain is about to be given the treatment.  The hypocrisy of it is the first thing I tend to rise to.  I recall how ancient news about Barry Goldwater was used along with lies and fabrications to discredit him by the reigning Democrats.   The charges against Cain bear a noticeable resemblance to those made against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.  I always find it particularly ironic when the left which excuses every immorality in their own, choose to throw mud on others as if they are personally outraged.  Apparently the nation's moral sensibilities have declined to the point where we are expected to listen to the rantings of hypocrites.  RESPONSE I suppose it is a sign of desperation when the media has to dredge up unsubstantiated allegations from the past to slime the people they don't like.  Typical liberal progressive MO.  Welcome to what passes for political discourse in the United States these days.  And you want those people in office?  It's time for a change, a big change.  A LITTLE MORE  The failure to engage Cain on substantive issues ought to be more important than vague substance-less allegations that some women claimed to be uncomfortable with something he said.  In the timeframe of the allegations it was trendy for women to draw notice to themselves by accusing people of harassment.  I saw it happen several times where I worked in the 1980s.

Some Things Are Too Obvious ...

Approaching the Brink ...

SEE HERE The blindness of the vast majority of the people about what is going on is depressing and tends to suggest that we will not put the breaks on and go into reverse in time to avert disaster. The politics of personal destruction and suppression of any idea that actually requires more than two neurons has tended to reduce political discourse to something like a gossip column and the elections to a popularity contest. This will not produce leadership. Instead it tends to produce exploitation and venality. Good luck! You can do something but you have to let your voice be heard.

The Global Warming Fraud Unraveling ...

SEE HERE Here's another nail in the global warming coffin.  The data doesn't support the narrative.  Wow!  Is that a surprise?  Not really to anyone who has followed the scientific story closely.  The bottom line is that the model doesn't work.  The data doesn't support the models very well and it's all a matter of ad hoc curve fits to promote a political agenda.  The facts?  Sorry ... no global warming at all for 10 years while the CO2 levels are still behaving pretty much as they have since the data has been taken.  Moreover there are quite a few elements of newer science which points to the fact that we don't really understand the climate system enough to make any of these projections stick.

Handling the Issue of Presidential Eligibility

SEE HERE This is an amusing and informative imaginary dialogue between a newsman and Herman Cain on the question of presidential eligibility and frankly also on the question of whether the news media are doing their job. I'm not sure about the first issue. I think the birth certificates that have been produced are fraudulent, but that's not conclusive. What is clear is that the United States has not been confirming that candidates running for president are in fact eligible. That's not a hypothesis but a rather evident fact. The second part has a definitive answer: The news media is co-opted by the left and is totally unreliable. They are simply spinning the narrative to pursue their talking points and their agenda. You simply can no longer trust the news media to give you objective information. This has been coming on for a long time. I have always been interested in journalism and was the first page editor of my high school newspaper. I didn't major in journalism only because my father didn't like the idea. He said "If you want to be a writer, that's fine. But you have a good mind and you can learn math and science and that's a more reliable source of income than writing." Well I had to concede that and I went on to be a Physics and Engineering major for my undergraduate and masters degrees and then went on to be a professional scientist and later got a Ph.D. in Information Technology. But I still love writing and I'm quite disgusted with what has happened to journalism which used to be an honorable field.

Positive Proof of Global Warming

A friend sent me this picture which might really indicate a decline in public morality instead of an increase in global warming. But either way it's a fun picture!

Uncommon Knowledge Visits Hillsdale College

The Moral Decline of a Nation

It began with the Enlightenment, a light that did not illumine and it has come to this.  It will likely lead on to disaster so prepare to be persecuted because you cannot negotiate with evil.

The War of Ideas and the Disaster of Diversity

SEE HERE What is diversity anyway?  I'm not really sure.  It seems to be a commitment to the idea that differences among people don't matter and frankly that is preposterous.  Differences do matter.  Some differences matter a lot, and some don't matter at all, but as a general rule differences are what differentiate so diversity is not an unmitigated good, it just depends on the nature of the differences.  It would be nice to see the discourse controlled by reality and the reality is that the only thing that ultimately matters is the truth.  Truth and reality are really the same thing.  If you believe something, whether diverse or not, that isn't true, then sooner or later the fact that it isn't true will bite you.  False things lead to bad action informed by error.  So of all things the one that matters the most is to discover and hold to what is true.

A Dose of Economic Reality

SEE HERE No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the people was something P.T. Barnum said, well approximately.  It helps if the people have not received much of an education and this is particularly true if they don't know anything about economics.  The sheer amount of misinformation, disinformation, total ignorance and stupidity about economics is on display everyday on the television and radio whether coming from talking heads or Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.  I suppose the reason for the ignorance is a failure of education, but whatever the reason we should be hesitant to act on emotion and instead learn what is being talked about.

Wealth is something which is the natural result of human work.  Some wealth can be accumulated and some wealth is very transient.  Food rots, houses fall into dilapidated condition, and this is true of most things.  So wealth tends to vanish over time even when held in the most durable goods.  One primary fallacy is that of "Zero Sum Game Thinking."  You hear it all the time since it fuels envy rather well.  The reason I'm poor is that the wealthy are hoarding all the money.  Well, sorry, but it doesn't work that way.  The reason anyone is poor is that they are too busy doing other things to focus on doing something actually productive.  To create wealth you have to do stuff and there is plenty to do.  You can mow lawns or as I did as a boy, deliver papers, or as my son did, work in a grocery store.  Generally you don't start at the top so you're not paid well at first.  But if you show a good work ethic and have talent you will rise.

We have a lot of people with an entitlement mentality in the country these days.  I'm always hearing people say they deserve this or that.  Well let me break it to you bluntly: You don't deserve anything that you have not earned.  Existence doesn't entitle you to anything.  Also feeling sorry for yourself is a great impediment to doing anything useful.  Get over it and get cracking!  You can do it, but only if you decide to.  Most people who say they can't do something have never so much as tried.  G.K. Chesterton, one of my very favorite people said,"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly!" and that's good advice because the first time you do anything you tend to do it badly.  The second time a little better and if you keep doing it and learning from your mistakes it gets better and better and better.  Pretty soon people are saying stupid things like "Wow, you're really good at that.  I guess you just have a talent for it."  You can smile and say something like "Thanks, I've been doing it a long time and I think I've finally gotten it right."

The Price of Government Irresponsibility? Inflation! Stand-by ...

SEE HERE  The economy is poised for a huge inflation bubble because the banks have all kinds of fiat money to lend but have been slowed down by fear and uncertainty.  As that abates suddenly all this money they have been sitting on which was created out of thin air will start to appear in the economy.  Then inflation is start heating up for real and could create a huge bubble.

Reality 101: The Nature of Being

SEE HERE What makes a thing the thing that it is? For Aristotle a thing was the combination of essence and matter (not matter as we normally think of it, for that matter already has an essence, but the potency that is the principle from which matter originates). A thing is what it is when it has received its form. Now in more modern language (largely flawed by a number of doubtful assumptions such as naturalism and methodological materialism) one might construct the essence or informing potency which makes of the matter what it is, in living things, the DNA which defines the construction so that when the DNA is present so is the being in potency and transforming in act.
I'm using language here that is invoking the potency and act language of Aristotle. All of us are formed of potency and act. Act is the principle that defines what we are right now, one might call it "actuality" and potency is the principle which allows us to change becoming either less or more than we are now. The combination is part of our essence and our job is to transform ourselves more and more into act, that is develop our potential to become as the Army recruiting ad says, "All that you can be."
Life is a continual journey then from potency into act but we are the being that we are at the moment of conception when our potency is formed and we first begin streaming into act. Modern philosophers who are mostly charlatans, have distorted these great insights and have created instead a barren sterile world of ideas that are not true. We always pay a price when we follow error and the state of the modern world testifies to this. Abortion is murder plain and simple.  COVERING UP IS SYSTEMIC MORE

The Warren Buffett Solution

1. No  Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman collects a salary while in  office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

2.  Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social  Security.
All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move  to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow  into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with  the American people. It may not be used for any other  purpose.

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan,  just as all Americans do.

4. Congress will no longer vote  themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower  of CPI or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care  system and participates in the same health care system as the  American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws  they impose on the American people.

7. All contracts with  past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12. The  American people did not make this contract with Congressmen.
Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in  Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers  envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their  term(s), then go home and back to work.

---

Sounds like it would be worth a try but you'd have to get it through Congress right? Fat chance! This is a constitutional amendment that would have to come from the states. One of the big problems we have is professional politicians. That was not how the system was envisioned and it corrupts the whole system.

Time For Someone Who Actually Knows How Things Work

The Difference Between Responsible and Irresponsible

SEE HERE Fair is fair.  The Tea Party is being discriminated against because they are law abiding folks and these OWS loons are not.  So let's either punish the guilty or reward the innocent.  It's called fairness and even handed justice for all.  ATLANTA

Ben Crystal Offers His Cain/Paul Ticket and the Dream Team!

SEE HERE This would cause all the liberals in the U.S. to go into fibrillation.  "Clear" put the paddles down.  "I'm sorry but we were too late the Liberal Progressives didn't make it."  What a relief!

Be Careful What You Wish For ... You Might Get It

SEE HERE G.K. Chesterton pointed out the unholy alliance between big government and big business long ago and he allegorized the two forces as Hudge and Gudge.  C.S. Lewis talks quite a bit about the Inner Ring, the desire to be on the inside of things and pull the strings of power.  The problem is that both of these elements which collaborate to produce a kind of tyranny are evils motivated by an excessive love of power, money, and influence.  They have brought down all the systems of the past and will bring down ours as well if we do not find a solution that allows for human freedom and the rights of individuals to the fruits of their labors.

Restore America! — End the Progressive Stranglehold

We are on the brink.  It is time to draw back and we have only on chance to do it and that chance may not occur again.   Where will the overweening expansion of Federal power end?  SEE HERE  Will we only wake up when we are finally and fully enslaved?

The Insanity of Liberals (continued)

SEE HERE  The sheer polarization between those who subscribe to the principles of the Founding Fathers and the current population of leftists is quite mind-boggling.  Ann Coulter has a gift for putting things in stark perspective.  The question is what possible ends can these people envision would be better than where we have come from.  The left always seems to have sympathy for murderers and rapists.  They are against the death penalty for criminals but cheerfully sentence millions of unborn children to a barbarous death pretending they care about women.  Women that kill their children have been sold a pretty evil bill of goods.  Each liberal "advance" has resulted in more and more destruction of the family and aggrandized government so that the nanny state now has its fingers in everything.

My life has been one of watching the freedom of the United States drain away as more and more impositions of government limited individual freedom.  I agree totally with Ken Cuccinelli's narrative about the Liberty pie and the slice dedicated to individual freedom has never been smaller in my lifetime than it is today and the pressure continues to make it smaller.  C.S. Lewis pointed out the obvious that if you're on the wrong road the only solution is to turn around and go back to where you went wrong and get back on the right road.  On the other hand, if you stay on the wrong road then a time will come when you can no longer go back.  We are approaching that point.

An Example of Progressive Drivel

SEE HERE Drivel is empty rhetoric that takes a position without defending it.  This is an example.  There isn't any significant data in this but name calling.  There is also quite a lot of factual misrepresentation.  The whole bit about the Republican Party rejecting the declaration of independence and the Constitution as well as being anti-science is pure drivel because not only is it name calling but it false on the evidence.

Darwinism is a theory and it is a theory with parts and parts of it are clearly wrong.  If that's the best example of anti-science she can produce then that's pretty sad.  Now Herman Cain is a real mathematician who calculated orbits for a living.  I rather doubt that this lady could tell a differential equation from an algebraic one and probably can't do either.  The problem is that every one reading this lady's tripe is likely to actually think she knows something when in fact it is all empty rhetoric and name calling.   Drivel!  The global warming "consensus" isn't ... it isn't a consensus and it isn't true that significant global warming is even happening.  Get ready for a cold Winter.

Thomas Sowell In His Own Speak

SEE HERE I guess anyone that has been hanging around here for a while knows by now that I really like Thomas Sowell.  I have almost all of his books in my library and if I'm missing any it is only by accident.  Sowell has one heck of a head on his shoulders.  I collect clear minds and Thomas Sowell is on my short list with folks like C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton who are also clear minds.  Clarity of thought comes from testing what one believes against the hard facts of reality and not submitting to wishful thinking.  It takes a lot of careful observation and testing of principles to arrive at the place you need to be.  I'm still working on it.  To make progress you need mentors and the clear minds that I attend to are my mentors.  Many are dead having proceeded into the mystery of beyond before me, folks like Aristotle, Aquinas, Jefferson, but some are very much alive.  I'm currently discovering Flannery O'Connor who died at the young age of 39 from lupis but whose spiritual insights are worth attending to.  You never stop developing in your lived life in this realm, or at least you shouldn't.  So perhaps you should be collecting your own mentors, people who speak wisdom to you and guide your development.

The Insanity of the Left

In this ad the spokesman for Herman Cain takes a puff of a cigarette at the end and it has all the liberal media in a tizzy.  This seems like the height of hypocrisy.  This is the half of the political spectrum that supports the killing of babies by the millions and the normalization of perversion and they take umbrage at a puff from a cigarette.  No question they are hypocrites and loons.  Listen to the message and take the country back!

Tyranny of the Majority— A Recipe for Collapse

SEE HERE You have to wonder what a lot of people are using for brains.  I'm afraid that the education system in the United States is so poor that people can't do arithmetic or look up financial figures or make head or tail of them.  If they could they could see that we are on the path of demolition.  What is most disturbing is that people who should be bright enough to see it are on the bandwagon. 

Time for a Change ... Long Since Time for a Change

Restore the vision of the founders of this great nation before the socialists take us down.

They Have Held Public Office Before ... How's That Working For You?

Send a Problem Solver to the White House, one that actually is a proven leader where it counts.

Hypocrisy ... the nature of American Politics

Here's a Herman Cain political ad.  I think it makes a valid point.  We are surrounded by hypocrisy in the political arena.  We need straight thinking and straight talk, not more of the same that has got us to this place.  Before the republic collapses from the hypocrisy and nonsense let's draw back from the brink and put some principled people in power motivated by freedom and love for the vision of the Founding Fathers.

The Mystery of Silk

SEE HERE This is a brief Delancey Place posting on the fascinating history of silk and the fragile nature of the silk worm.  It seems to me that there is a mystery wrapped up in the nature of the silk-worm which cannot exist in nature.  How long did its domestication have to go before this dependency on man was fully expressed?  It is difficult to see how such a fragile creature could always have been so fragile else it would not exist at all.  We are surrounded by mysteries and magic.  It is only necessary to open our eyes to see it.

Self-Directed Learning

SEE HERE The cost of a college education has reached simply astronomical proportions and it isn't clear that people think they are getting what they are paying for.  What is an education anyway?  I think I can tell you what it isn't.  An education isn't indoctrination in a series of subjects so that you know the facts and are issued a piece of paper that says you weathered the storm and survived the experience.  Certainly an education includes the knowledge that you gain by focusing on a major or a topic, but that's not the heart of an education.  As my mentors in high school taught me long ago, a real education is the development of the skills and the disciplines to be able to learn anything you want to learn by employing the learning skills that you have learned.  So learning how to analyze, how to critically think, how to research, how to take notes, how to practice and achieve mastery are the important skills.  Marks on exams are meaningless and forgotten almost as soon as they are taken.  The question is: When will the educational system return to true education?  Not soon enough for my taste.

Waking Up Is Hard To Do

SEE HERE I live in a very different world today than the world that I grew up in.  On my paper route I had forty two customers in Cleveland Heights, Ohio for the afternoon paper, a working class paper, The Cleveland Press.  It cost seven cents and I got two of those cents for delivering it.  There was only one divorced woman on my paper route and none of the women had jobs that I knew of.  But what did I know, I was just the paper boy.  Kids would ride their bikes all over for miles without thought of safety and most people left their cars and their houses unlocked.

We were taught that if we worked hard and pulled together we could make things better, but that it was up to us.  Doctors weren't tied up with medical insurance and teachers were not unionized and schools actually taught things that were got for you and not just propaganda.  I learned to write cursive and my dad taught me the secret of learning to type in about ten minutes and when I applied the lesson vigorously I got to be a good touch typist.

Nowadays most folks can't add a column of numbers without a calculator and writing is pretty much a rare art done well.  We're spending more money then we ever did and getting less for it.  It's probably good that I'm getting old because I'm not sure I could bear watching the country go downhill for another twenty years.

9mm Traded In for a .357 Magnum

Steve Jobs Warts and All

"He was, in other words, a man of his time, a symbol of all that is great and all that is wrong with our culture." so Dan Lyons sums up Steve Jobs, a conflicted man who was brilliant and yet deeply flawed.  We should all look to our own houses and seek to read the fractured reality of our souls.  SEE HERE

Chuck Norris Thinks We Need An Eighth Miracle: Who Can Doubt It?

SEE HERE A thought to reflect on ... I was born on the day of the Battle of Midway so I was struck by that particular miracle and recall a conversation with a senior naval officer when I was a young research scientist working for the Navy.  He said that the battle of Midway truly was a miracle.  The Japanese had a much larger force and only the fact that we'd broken their code gave us any chance at all.  Who can doubt given the state of the world and our nation today that we don't need another miracle.  The United States has been and can continue to be the hope for freedom in the world, but only if we draw back from the brink of tyranny ourselves.  We will know soon enough.  I sincerely hope the answer is "Yes!"

Games the Government Plays

SEE HERE Frankly the whole shtick that churches and non-profits not engage in political speech is itself unconstitutional.  The whole idea is outrageous.  It's restraint of speech and it's a law which involves interfering with religion which is unconstitutional considered in the light of the intentions of the founding fathers.  In this particular case the point is that a Catholic who approves of abortion is ipso-facto not in union with the church and if he or she acts on their belief they are in serious sin and need to go to confession and repent.  If they are public figures then they are giving public scandal.  Frankly it's time a whole bunch of pseudo-Catholics get called on their phony baloney.  I think they should be excommunicated myself.  Then there would be no issue and it would be entirely appropriate.  You reap what you sow!  Responsible adults should be held accountable for their beliefs and actions.  This include the government when it gets into game playing using the courts to jerk people around.

This Is A Hoot or a Hee Haw: Elephants are so much smarter than Donkeys!

By Their Actions You Shall Know Them

SEE HERE Regulating the internet is code for censorship and just the ticket for all the authoritarian regimes who want to control the minds of their citizens. We should be very very concerned about this kind of stuff and if you wonder about freedom just think about the freedom encouraged by those states that want to control your communications and what you can read on the internet. How enlightened!

Uncle Tom Revealed — A Hero!

Herman Cain Brings A Breath of Fresh Air to the Race for the Presidency

SEE HERE The problem with the usual pundits is that they are part of the problem and not part of the solution. Business as usual is why we continue to go downhill. Herman Cain brings a different and more meaningful skill set to the problem. He is one of the few candidates that look to be able to make a real difference. That's important!

Cain "Imagine" ... there's no pizza ...

Herman Cain is a very versatile guy. I love this. Maybe he should do one that starts "Imagine there's no-Bama ..."

Truth Be Told

Government by Liars — DOE Caught Covering Up

SEE HERE If you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen. DOE caught red handed modifying previous press releases and pass the buck to a contractor. Really? So it is common practice to go back and retroactively change press releases? Fancy that!

Sigmund Freud meets C.S. Lewis

I use the PBS Series "The Question of God" in my PDP class because of the wonder short videos that collectively trace the life of C.S. Lewis. There are similar videos on the life of Sigmund Freud in the program as well as some interesting discussions among a group of diverse individuals. CHECK IT OUT

The Usual Talking Heads Trying to Fuddle the Issue

Killing an innocent human being intentionally is called murder, no ifs ands or buts. Does this make for hard situations sometimes? Life is full of hard situations and you have to live through it. No one promised you a rose garden. Abortion is murder!

Freedom Under Seige!

SEE HERE In case you have not noticed, welcome to the age of political correctness applied to all sorts of things that are intrinsically immoral. Morality is an objective science. Whoa! Science? Yes, science! A science is an organized body of knowledge which associates facts and principles. The so called "hard sciences" or "experimental sciences" are not the only sciences despite the tendency to think that way. Indeed, the experimental sciences span only a narrow range of reality. We live in an age that has forgotten the lessons of the past and are hell-bent on rediscovering them by sinking into the degradation that has stained so many past societies. Freedom of speech and freedom of conscience demands that a person be allowed to express their views and argue their case. Anything less is a tyranny of the mind, which is no less objectionable, indeed more objectionable, than the tyranny of the body.

Napolitano Levels with Beck — We're On A Downward Spiral

Authenticity is Faithfulness to the Truth

Michael Voris listens to those in El Paso who are supporting their priest who was disciplined for standing up for the truth. Apparently the bishop is prepared to sacrifice the truth to appease the Zeitgeist.

Cain Still Rocking ...

SEE HERE Herman Cain continues to rise in popularity. As he rises the RINO lovers start taking more potshots. It's interesting to watch but pathetic also. We need to stop playing politics as usual because politics as usual is what has brought us to this place which is the brink of national failure. Do you want to be free or do you want free twinkies. Robert Heinlein popularized, at least for me, the phrase "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" — TANSTAAFL. I believed it then and I believe it now. Those who have been gulled into thinking there is a free lunch out there are on the royal road to slavery. We will have this chance to turn it around and failing that we are on the road to the dissolution of the republic. I sincerely believe that. We've come too far down the economic path to disaster to draw back using politics as usual. We have to make a 180 degree turn and get back on the right road. The time to do that is now and it requires bold leadership and principled action. Romney represents neither. Cain looks pretty good and I'm up in the air on most of the others.

All This Bickering Among Republican Candidates Is Nonsense

SEE HERE If you want to beat the liberal progressive Chicago-style, ACORN vote stealing slimeballs you actually have to sound like grown-ups. This constant bickering is just playing into the enemy's hands. Focus on the problems, be supportive of one another, and get the job done. This bickering shows that it is all nothing but a struggle for power and that's the problem not the solution. Show a common front and be professional.

Response from the Liberal Losers

Wild Bill points out the stupidity of the liberal opposition and their incredible egos which clearly reflect a lack of connection with reality. I can only agree.

Buchanan Sounds a Cautionary Note

SEE HERE Let's face it — most conservatives and the Tea Party is quite conservative, think that Mitt Romney is a RINO of the worst sort, a political bounder who changes his stripes to fit the audience. We used to just call such people unprincipled, but now they are the majority of the politicians so we call them moderates. They are still bounders and for sale. Buchanan may or may not be right about the Tea Party being stimulated to form a third party. If they do it likely would ensure that Obama is reelected and it is hard to imagine anything worse for the nation. We need a restoration of values, but perhaps we are too far gone. I'd certainly like to think that was not the case, but it is hard to look around and not suspect that it may well be. The timing is about right on a historical scale. Freedom never seems to last more than a couple of hundred years.

Critical Thinking In Short Supply but No Shortage of Morons

SEE HERE Ann doesn't even have to exercise many neurons to exposed the vacuous stupidity of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. This is a crowd who couldn't come up with a good argument if their lives depended on it. They are all emoticons and all from the angry, frustrated, bewildered, furious side of the emoticon spectrum. While they're at it they rage and defecate and generally sneer at almost anyone that comes by especially if asked questions that require thought in order to answer. It's scary that anyone gives these folks any credit for brains. Very few if any in evidence. When both the Nazis and the Communists endorse you then you're probably doing something wrong.

Ann concludes: "They either know that they are benefiting Wall Street looters or are utterly brainless."  My vote is for utterly brainless.  Is that the definition of a moron?

Before You Criticize the Free Market You Should Try It

SEE HERE

Criticism requires critical thinking which seems decidedly rare these days. The Occupy Wall Street crowd certainly doesn't seem to engage in any. The real question in my mind is how do they envision economic systems?

There are either free systems or controlled systems. Obviously mixed systems fall in between. A certain amount of labor is required to obtain any good whatsoever. You will not exchange that good which was created for less than its value to you which has to be at least the effort that you expended to obtain it. So unless you get something you value at the same level or more you will not voluntarily exchange the good. That's called freedom.

If someone comes and insists that you exchange it for less on pain of punishment then you may, but then you won't create anymore. If they force you to create more and exchange them for less, that is called slavery or tyranny. There is no way to get more than you deserve freely so if you have more and you have not exercised force then you deserve what you have. It is yours. You created it.

All this nonsense implying that if someone has something you want, then you have some sort of right to it because you desire it is a manifestation of greed and envy. Both have usually been seen as sins. Envy is wanting something because someone else has it. Greed is usually wanting more than you deserve, but you can't freely get more than you deserve without using force and that's stealing. The government is the one deploying the most force so they are to the extent they use force in unjustified ways, stealing and enslaving in however small a proportion. Since they then use some of the proceeds to pretend to be helping people they are buying accessories. This whole thing is quite marginal from a moral point of view. It is all clouded over with rhetoric. The problem is that the system is not as free as it should be. The result is a great deal of posturing by everyone who thinks they can benefit by manipulating the force of the government.

Meanwhile, how much of all this is a scam? SEE HERE

Straight Talk ...

This is a must listen.  She is a powerful speaker with a powerful message.  This is for America!  This is for the Future!  Want more?  Check out her WEBSITE

Her daughter who introduced her is pretty cool too!

Bob Goodlatte Comes Through for Virginia

Check out the fiscal responsibility of your state senators and representatives HERE A friend of mine sent me the link and I was delighted to discover that based on the CCAGW analysis my Congressman, Bob Goodlatte of Virginia's 6th district scored 93% which was in the "hero" range and he had the highest score in the state of Virginia! Thanks Bob!

This In Schools that Largely Don't Do a Good Job on American History

The Way It Is! No Surprises Here!

Courtesy of Patriot Post: A Little Humor

Random Thoughts from Thomas Sowell

SEE HERE Thomas Sowell is always worth listening to.  He's thoughtful and cogent and cuts to the core of things.  Here is a set of random thoughts, any of which could be expanded into an essay.  One off the wall one is:
I hate getting bills that show a zero balance. If I don't owe anything, why bother me with a bill? There is too much junk mail already.

And that resonates with me since I have a couple of credit cards that are always doing that and I wonder why waste the postage.  It's almost as bad as sending me blank checks in the hopes that I'll borrow money from the credit card company that sent them.  Not likely!

One of my pet gripes is getting phony surveys from folks that are really fund raising letters.  They really care what I think.  I'm inclined to fill them out without checking the little fund raising boxes and send them back in their postage paid envelopes.  The whole system has serious flaws.  Thomas Sowell sees most of them more clearly than others.

Will People Ever Learn?: The Government Two Step

SEE HERE Make a problem, solve the problem by making it worse, blame someone else for the problem and start over.  I am so sick of this government two step that I could just scream.  It's the ideal recipe for making government bigger and bigger, more and more bloated, less and less effective, and more and more of a load on the economy until we are all sinking under the burden.  It's time to make the government smaller, not bigger.

What Good Can You Say About "Occupy Wall Street"?

SEE HERE Ben Howe has an interesting take here on the Occupy Wall Street thing and makes a lot of sense.  We need more visibility of those whose ideological bent is as self-preoccupied and parasitic as the Occupy Wall Street crowd, if for no other reason than to reveal clearly to everyone what it is really all about.  We have suffered too long apologizing for having values.  It is time to trumpet values and live them so that however the world turns out we at least can say that we were there.  We were represented.  We showed the flag and made our arguments heard.  We were not just whining about not being given enough by those who work hard enough to actually have something.

Liberals Have No Sense of Humor — Actually They Also Have No Sense

SEE HERE I guess a joke isn't funny if your target audience doesn't get it.  The problem is that Liberals don't really have much of a sense of humor especially when they're in frenzied mob mode as they currently are with Occupy Wall Street to well ... occupy them!  So Cain's little joke about the border fence raised all sorts of hackles.  Back to the drawing boards Liberals.  Get a life!

Without Honest Elections the System Is Doomed

SEE HERE This whole election fraud issue is being treated with far less seriousness than it deserves.  The bottom line is that without honest elections you don't have a representative republic at all, you have a tyranny disguised as a republic.  Increasingly that is what it is looking like we're headed towards.  We need to put severe and focused constraints on elections to ensure their honesty.  We also need to increase the penalties for conviction of election fraud.  This stuff isn't funny.  It's fundamental.

Oldie But Goodie from 2009 — Still True!

The medicine has become the disease. In case you wonder some of the reasons the Crusades were fought VIEW THIS

The More We Know the More Ridiculous It Gets

SEE HERE This stupid alledged Iranian plot is starting to sound more and more like another inept Obama administration set-up.  How stupid are we supposed to believe the Iranians are?  We know the Obama Administration is stupid so in a toss up I'll go with the Obama numbskulls and say this is a decoy operation intended to get the media off "Fast and Furious."  Now we have two numbskull things to think about.

How Cain Stacks Up Compared to Obama

One Liberal Hoax After Another

SEE HERE Thomas Sowell points up the hunger in America liberal hoax, simply one of many.  Liberals just invent stories.  They don't need data, not with a gullible press to confirm for everyone how brilliant and caring they are.  The problem is that the only thing they are brilliant about is inventing lies to feather their own nests.  Whether it is DDT killing the ducks, or climate alarmism that is going to drown the planet or fry the planet or turn everything to ice or everything to desert (we've had both), or alar on apples or any of a dozen more lies focused on getting more power and spending more government money.  Save the starving children is always a good story as was the one about the old people being so poor they were reduced to eating dog food (obviously no one peddling that story had bothered to price dog food lately).  It goes on and on and the gullible public swallows it whole and we get ever nearer to total tyranny.  Thomas Sowell calls them like he sees them and is an insightful and knowledgeable guy.  He does his homework and calls them based on data.  He doesn't just spin up a story.

Apocalypse Rising!

SEE HERE Apocalypse is one of those cautionary words which has eschatological significance.  The one apocalyptic capability in the world without question is all out nuclear war.  MAD was the strategy that prevailed during the "cold war" — Mutual Assured Destruction.  That is hardly a sane strategy because it commits the players to destruction.  However only if good will prevails can one trust the holder of thousands of nuclear weapons not to use them as a lever to conquer the world.  We can hardly be expected to trust adversaries that don't recognize any morality but power.  We too are becoming less trustworthy as we lose our once strong Judeo-Christian grounding in morality.  Unilateral disarmament is a recipe for subjugation none the less.   Weapons with the awesome devastational power of nuclear fission and fusion can hardly be deterred in any other way than the possibility of reciprocity.  It behooves us to maintain our readiness.  The alternative is surrender to those less scrupulous that we.

Covering Up? Hard to tell ... probably!

SEE HERE  How far should executive privilege extend?  The whole Solyndra debacle smells of intentionally throwing away taxpayers' dollars to a company known to be in the process of failure.  So where did the money go and who was involved and who knew what when?  It appears that the venture was doomed from the beginning and so the natural suspicion is that the money was not an investment but a payoff of some kind.  This seems to be the MO (modus operandi) of this administration which seems on track to be declared the most corrupt in the history of the United States which is quite an achievement.

A Few More Thoughts ...

A Few Thoughts ...

Paul Ryan on Solutions

The Conspiracy the Administration Conducted Against Americans

SEE HERE VIDEO This is typical of this administration.  They scheme to undermine the American system and when they are caught they hide, cover-up, lie, and pretend it just wasn't important that thousands of gun were intentionally put into the hands of Mexican criminals so the administration could work against the second amendment.  This was criminal and evil and now the guilty are covering up.  A Federal Agent is dead and the people responsible are lying and lying and lying.  People should go to jail over this.  Think about it.  This is fundamentally evil in conception and shows what kind of administration we have.  MORE

Some Big Name Backing Rolls Out for Cain's 9-9-9 Plan

SEE HERE This is another of those put up or shut up deals.  The tax system is broken, seriously broken and all we get are people complaining that Cain's 9-9-9 plan isn't perfect.  Well the system we have in not only not perfect but it is seriously broken so that it's a mish mash of craziness.  It's time for something to fix it and soon while there is still time.  So if Cain's plan isn't perfect maybe we should improve it instead of tweeking the broken system some more.

Freedom Is About Options

SEE HERE This measure in Arizona gives parents more educational options for their children.  It's likely a program that would warrant study and imitation.  We need to end the government monopoly on education.  It is destroying the children.

This Gal Can Have My Back Anytime!

SEE HERE Stand up and be counted.

The Difference Between Patriots and Parasites

SEE HERE The difference between the Occupy Wall Street losers and the Tea Party reminds me of the old joke about "What's the difference between catfish and lawyers?"  The answer was that one was a bottom feeding scum-sucker and the other was a fish.  The difference between the Wall Street protestors and the Tea Party is pretty much summed up that way.  The Occupy Wall Street crowd appear to be mostly folks that are disappointed that they don't get the world given to them on a silver platter with no effort on their part.  The Tea Party by contrast is composed of mostly middle class Americans who are dismayed as they see the freedoms they once had being drained away by a run away government.  One group is evidence of the problem and the other evidence that we still have Americans that remember what this country is actually about.  If the Tea Party goes down, then America as we have known it goes down with them.

The Problem Is Government

SEE HERE How long is it going to take before people recognize that the problem is not the rich who in general have earned what they have by hard work and a little serendipity and they've parlayed that into large corporations which employ a large fraction of Americans.  Steve Jobs could be a poster child for them.  The problem is the psychology of entitlement which has fueled the growth of government to a size that is simply unsustainable.  Pretending that it's the rich and that they are greedy and somehow the cause of the problem is to practice economic blindness and ignorance of the actual numbers and the way the system actually works.  Demonizing and punishing the productive to retain your power for a time is the recipe that has taken down all great empires.  Ours is currently being tested on the chopping block of history and so far it looks very much like we're failing the test.

The Government Is More a Nuisance Than a Help

SEE HERE I'm not sure where we got the idea that government should interfere in every dimension of our lives.  It certainly wasn't that way when I was a boy back in the 1950s although we had our own examples of intrusive government.  But by today's standards they were not even on the radar screen.  Somewhere between then and now we got it into our head that government could solve all our problems.  The reality is generally that every time the government "solves" a problem they create several new ones and our freedom pays a price.  We are well on the road to having little freedom left at least by the traditional standards of America.  I'm personally sick of it.  I'm constantly being told what I can't do by government whether it's plant trees or build sheds or how big my trash cans have to be or what I can eat or what I can't eat and whether I have to get some fool vaccination that the government has decided will help a drug company.  Maybe they should just butt out.

Funny Enough to Repeat

I have often wondered why it is that Conservatives are called the "right" and Liberals are called the "left."

By chance I stumbled upon this verse in the Bible:
"The heart of the wise inclines to the right,
but the heart of the fool to the left."
Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)

"A wise man's heart is at his right hand;
but a fool's heart at his left"
Ecclesiastes 10:2 (KJV)

Thus sayeth the Lord. Amen.

Can't get any simpler than that. Now some fun:
Subject: Spelling Lesson

The last four letters in American..........I Can
The last four letters in Republican.......I Can
The last four letters in Democrats..........Rats

End of lesson. Test to follow in November, 2012

Cain Looking Better and Better

SEE HERE Well this poll places Cain significantly ahead of Romney and Perry.  Truth be known I find Romney almost as objectionable as Obama except that at least he's vaguely Republican.  Calling him a conservative always strikes me as a real stretch.  If there are any conservatives in Massachusetts they've long ago been driven underground.  Perry's better but is a bit troubling on a number of issues.  I just like Cain.  I think he's a what you see is what you get candidate and I'm so sick of phony baloney candidates like Romney who's been on every side of every issue that you know he doesn't have any principles at all.  I'm for Cain!  I might settle for some of the others but Romney is definitely not on my short list.  SOME MORE

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

SEE HERE The sheer inane stupidity of the Occupy Wall Street movement moves George Will to hope it continues.  The big question is why it has continued as long as it has since it is a sort of mindless and mindnumbingly pointless protest motivated by people who don't seem to know where wealth comes from because they've never really earned any.  Keep showing your face to America and the Tea Party will only grow larger and stronger because those are the people who have families and struggle every day to pay their bills.  These clowns are upset because they don't have enough freebies.  What have they ever done to deserve any freebies?  "Deserve" is probably a word they really don't understand.

Erickson's View of the Campaign

SEE HERE Is Bachmann really chopped liver?  Sometimes I wonder about all these pundits on the track of all the candidates.  I'm in Cain's camp mostly for one reason and that's that he's not a politician.  I am so fed up with politicians and what they're doing to the country that I'd vote for a slate of random Americans as long as they actually had jobs and earned a living.  So I'm not sure how much of this political pap I can stomach but here it is for what it is worth.

The System Is Broken

SEE HERE OK Herman Cain 9-9-9 plan is unrealistic because it depends on Congress to pass it.  What plan a president proposes isn't on this argument?  Realistically the system is totally broken.  If we continue on the path we are on there is no solution except the economic collapse of the United States.  That's not the solution we are looking for.  If you do what you've always done then you'll get what you always got.  We are in big big trouble and everyone except Cain is whistling past the graveyard.  His plan is not perfect.  I think we have to couple it with constitutional amendments that fix the problem we have, but it's a start and one test for Congress people should be that they sign on to solve the problem.  The current liberal mantra is tax the rich and that isn't going to work because they are already taxing the rich and pretty soon there are no rich to tax.  The riches the rich own are mostly stock and brick and mortar, the actual means of production of small and large companies.  When they've finished raping them for the last time we can all sit around and share the squalor.  We need a solution and not more fatalistic words from the people who brought us here.

Airheads at Occupy Wall Street Clueless About the Facts

Apparently this bunch of mushheads have just been brainwashed to believe that people with a lot of money didn't earn it so (not sure how this is supposed to make sense) therefore they should just give it to them for education or whatever.  This is mere mindlessness.  It isn't even clear that it is ideological.  It's more stupid than that.

Ann Coulter Weighs In on The Liberal Mob Mentality

SEE HERE Ann Coulter is one smart lady and she has the liberal's number big time.  Here she nails it as usual and the hippie wannabes embarrassing themselves up on Wall Street because of stupidity and ignorance get a little of Ann's attention.

One other thing Ann weighs in on is the sheer historical ignorance of the electorate that the Democrats have anything to do with civil rights.  The Republicans were always the party of civil rights.  It's sheer stupidity to attempt to read history any other way.  But then it has always been a talent on the left to rewrite history frequently to try to spin up the story that they were always on the right side of it, when the reality is that they have always been on the wrong side of it.

Obama Wants to be a Dictator

This is not a president.  His whole demeanor is that of a dictator.  He wants to do what he wants to do and congress be damned.  The incredible thing is that the American people voted for this empty suit.

Perversion Instead of Virtue: The National Tragedy of American Education

Think about it and pull your kids out of the school system.  "Drive the liberals back into the stupid closet they crawled out of." great idea from Wild Bill.

The Media Bias

The Failure of the Vetting Process

SEE HERE Before television and radio the only mass media was newspapers and they provided a more discursive and ample venue for candidates to air views of substance and range.  Today we have "debates" which are vapid affairs with nonsense questions, often softballs, and only providing a forum for short and very shallow answers.  This proposal offers at least something analogous to a real exploration of a candidates ideas and depth.  We plan to turn the nation over of one of the people who survive this process and go on to the general election.  Wouldn't it be nice to find out who they really are?

Greed! More Properly Understood ...

SEE HERE There are seven deadly sins we are taught by our ancestors anger, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.  Men come into this world with a propensity to be sinful.  We all have mixtures of these seven sins and some of them are in dynamic tension.  Greed and Envy for example complement one another since one of the motivations of greed is envy of others and the desire to have more than they do.  Both play into the commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods.  Part of the kind of politics we see around us today is exploiting human sinfulness to gain power and influence.  The devil must be quite pleased with himself.

Frankly, After a While It Just Looks Like Looting

SEE HERE Here's another green solar fiasco that smells to high heavens of corruption.  Is anyone following the money on these crooked deals?  Who is watching the store in Washington these days or are they just all thieves?

Interesting How the Wall Street Occupiers Meet the Tea Party! Wow! The Intellectual Mindlessness of the Left is Awesome!!

This is funny except that it's pathetic!

This Is Worth a Replay: The Beginning of Totalitarianism Usually Looks Like This

Hank Williams Puts It to Song!

Days after being dropped from ESPN’s “Monday Night Football,” Hank Williams Jr. fired back at that network, “Fox and Friends” and what he called the “United Socialist States of America” in his signature style — a song bellowing biting lyrics in between guitar licks.  SEE HERE

Getting a Pass from Your Army of Hooligans

SEE HERE Isn't this just special!  I guess some millionaires are more equal than others ... wasn't that what George Orwell said in "Animal Farm"?  Some animals are more equal than others.  In case you didn't notice the Wall Street Occupiers are very selective in the dudgeon.  They are really just 1960's wannibes looking for a Woodstock and a collectivist cause of their own.  They probably should be working for a living but undoubtedly have doting parents who think they're sweet.  Half the protesting in the world seems to be due to the guilt that rich kids have who never earned a thing in their lives and were give everything.  So naturally they think they are qualified to claim that wealth should be taken from those who have earned it.  It's due to not having a clue what earning something is about.  I think Barack and Michelle are in that group too.

Stand Up and Be Counted!

SEE HERE Sorry the deal was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!  You have to draw a line in the sand sometime and now appears to be the time.  Morality isn't for sale.  Morality is also not something that is decided by passing a law.  Morality is based on laws laid down before man came to be.  We either live by them or we don't.  Increasingly as our society becomes more decadent more and more people are ignoring morality.  You see it every day.  The immoral call the moral judgmental and that is true because we still have judgment.  Those who don't think that something is right if they want it.  Sorry, that is what libertines think.  The nature of freedom is not to do anything at all just because you want to, but the ability to do that which you ought to do.

The Lunatics Are Out In Force

SEE HERE There's just too much wealth in America and it shows.  With all this spare time the spoiled brats who don't really want to work for a living and would rather compulse over the fact that some people are actually wealthier than they are are busy trashing Wall Street instead of working to create more wealth in America.  Wealth is created by hard work and focused innovation.  It is created by finding better ways to do traditional things.  It is not created by sitting on your duff and complaining that you are under appreciated.  When you tear down the productive you reduce the amount of net wealth that exists and harm the economy however marginally.  Most of these folks have been given everything they have all their lives and now they're complaining that they have not been given enough or that some have more than they do.  Poor babies!  So the solution is to go and steal from those who have to distribute to those who have not.  That is pure Saul Alinsky zero-sum game thinking.  When the sun sets on that scenario everyone will be scrapping for the last scrap of food in the hopes that they will be among the privileged few that will not starve to death.  There is only one recipe for wealth and that is work.  As the Chinese fortune cookie says: "No workie, no eatie."

The Wall Street Mob Thinks What They Are Doing Is American?

Sure it's American to shout people down and chant over them and make it impossible to have a conversation.  Sure it is American to accuse someone you've silenced of lying.  This is about as American as all the other leftist mobs that get in your face and act like barbarians.  This is the face of anarchy and proto-totalitarianism.  That's where this kind of stuff goes.

Herman Cain Tells It Like It Is

SEE HERE Capitalism, or as I prefer to call it, "Free Enterprise" is the economic system that has made America the leader of the world.  The socialist progressive liberal whiners have been running it down for generations because it doesn't require some bunch of Harvard educated numbskulls to decide how to run things.  Free enterprise runs by letting free men and women make their own decisions.  We've been chipping away at that for several generations now and it shows.  If you actually study the results you'll find that it's been a slide ever so slightly but systematically from more prosperity to less.  The game playing with the numbers doesn't change the reality that one wage earner used to be enough to have a great standard of living in the United States.  None of the women on my paper route worked when I was a kid because they didn't have to.  But as we systematically but slowly destroyed the family we converted the United States into a nation of two wage earner families and acted as if it was an improvement.  The result is a nation of broken homes and busted families and latch key kids that have identity problems.  Maybe we should actually try free enterprise again.  I like Herman Cain.  He speaks his mind and doesn't put his finger up in the air to decide which way the wind is blowing before he speaks.  He's not a politician.  What a breath of fresh air.  MORE