Saturday, April 26, 2014

Recap of the last week's posts 4/20 to 4/26/14

The Bundy situation has taken another twist.

Dueling ideologies:  An appeal to reason:  will it prevail?

More discussion of societal decay with an examination of a couple songs in two different eras.


Sometimes it pays to read lefty sites, part two

Another case that shows it can pay to look at the other side of an argument.  The left won't give up its "Bundy is a racist shtick", but Maha did come up with something significant about Bundy's claims to the land.

I don't know if this is accurate or not, but if it is, it looks bad for Bundy.  Keep in mind that that information could be inaccurate, as with all information, it has to be verified.

On the other hand, Maha pours it on, which only shows that she is primarily interested in winning the fight, but not necessarily in learning the truth.

If Bundy is wrong here, and I'm not saying that he is or isn't, then it shows one thing clearly.  That those who sided with him didn't do their homework.

As for me, I went by what I knew.  I don't think I ever claimed to know all the facts to the situation.  As with everything here, I go by what I know, and what I know is honestly presented.


Stream of Consciousness Post 4/26/14

I did one of these before, so what the heck, let's go for it again.  It made the "best of" list, but not exactly one of the biggees.

The thing here is that it is similar in its origin.  That last one, I got to thinking for a long time about something and then the post came together.

As I begin this morning, it has been several hours like that with me---thinking.  The thing I'm thinking about is that Whitney Houston song I wrote about a few days ago.  I asked a question in that post, but I didn't answer, although it may have appeared that I did.  The question is what is wrong with this song---Greatest Love of All.  The thing that is wrong with it is non-trivial and requires a more thoughtful answer than the snarky one I offered.

The answer is easy, the explanation for it is the hard part.

People don't like criticism.  It's a lot easier for someone to listen to somebody else criticize themselves, than to listen to somebody criticize you.  So, it is hard to listen to what a jerk you are, and it may please you to hear me describe how big a jerk I am.  It's kinda like Rodney Dangerfield.  He's in a tough neighborhood and he gets no respect.  The world is a tough place, and let me tell YOU.  I get no respect.  This is meant to be funny, but maybe it doesn't come across that way.  Pull up a YouTube video and watch Dangerfield talk like that and try to imagine me delivering that out loud and then you have what I intended.  I get no respect, it's a tough world out there.

At the risk of ripping off Dangerfield, I was born in a rough crowd.  A big family.  And I was one of the youngest.  Next to youngest.  So, you'd better have a sense of humor or you don't make it in a tough spot like that.  I still get no respect come to think of it.  That's kinda why I stopped talking to my mom a few years before she died.  But I forgave her, and now I realize she was probably right.

What does this have to do with the Whitney Houston song?  I'm getting to it.  I'm getting to it.

You have to careful how you approach people.  If you smack them upside the head, they will not like it much.  People love the praise, they hate the criticism.  They hate it even when it may do them a lot of good and they need to hear it more than they need anything else.

It's kinda like that with my mom and with a lot of other things that I've learned in life.  The tough things are often the best.  The easiest things are probably not that good.  Criticism is tough, but it may be good for you.  Praise may actually harm you even though you love it.

The thing that is wrong with Whitney Houston's song is that it is narcissism.  You may have guessed that already.  But maybe not.  Anyway, it isn't the greatest love of all, but the easiest.  And the easiest thing to do is to love yourself.  The hardest thing to do is to love someone else.  It has been in my experience at least.  That's where I'm coming from here.  Perhaps your experience is different, but it has always been hard for me.  Very, very hard.

This "love thy neighbor" stuff doesn't come naturally to me.  Come to think of it, it doesn't come naturally to anybody.  It's all a part of growing up.  A baby doesn't care about anyone but itself.  The baby will pull your hair out and not be sorry. It is easy to be a baby.  It's a lot harder to grow up.  Learning to love someone else is a lot harder than loving yourself.  Even a baby can love itself.  A child can do that.  Houston is appealing to the child inside, but that isn't growing up, it's growing down.  It is regressing back into childhood.

You see this all around you.  I drive for a living.  You see it in the way people drive.  They lack consideration for others.  They make it more dangerous and more tense that it needs to be.  Driving a car is dangerous, but people often do not treat it with the respect that it deserves.  I had a wreck once that could have killed me.  Wake up in a hospital with broken ribs and a concussion and maybe you might have more respect for the power in that car that you drive.

People go around pulling out each other's hair, in a manner of speaking, and give it no thought.  Then they are surprised when there is some road rage.  Some guy comes after them and they think--- this guy is crazy.  Yeah, but maybe you did something to him that set him off.  Chances are though, that you think you are innocent.  So much of life is like that.

In a larger sense, I think that is what is going wrong in our society.  People need to grow up. They need to listen to each other.  At least try to understand their point of view.  To do so is a sign of a civilized human being.  To not do it is a sign of an infantilized society if it becomes widespread.  I suspect that it has.

I'm not writing this because I'm sitting on my high horse telling you all what jerks you are.  I'm one of the worst offenders.  But I mean well.  But the road to hell is said to be paved with good intentions.  At least try to grow up.  Listening to songs like that do not help.



Friday, April 25, 2014

Cliven Bundy hero or monster?

American Thinker

An article that fleshes out the "conservative" viewpoint that Bundy is now "radioactive".

As an attempt to restate his argument into interrogatives that would seem to honor his thought process: would African American’s be better off if there had been no Civil War? Is it better for an individual to live as property? Supposing a man is not up to the challenge of freedom, is it then someone’s place to take it away once again?--- Tony Collins [ emphasis added to show that this was not what the author had in mind ]
Rhetorical questions that presume what the "right" answers to be.

As for the first question:  are Negroes better off if there had been no Civil War?  This presumes that the outcome that did occur was the best that could have been achieved.  But is that really true?  It took 100 years for the Civil Rights Era to bring them up to speed with the rest of the country in terms of their rights.  Over 100 years of second class status was not exactly an optimal result.  Why this happened is another question, but the answer is apparently not what the author had in mind.

As for the second question:  It also presumes that we are all free.  But what if we aren't really?  What do you say of a country that is single minded destroying the Bill of Rights?  Is that country still free?  Note that this doesn't concern just black people, it concerns everybody.  Of course people should not be property.  But where does Cliven Bundy say that it is better to be property than to be free?  He says that they are not really free NOW either.  Even less free than when they were slaves.  This point seems to go over the heads of the critics.  They are prisoners of their own delusions.

As for the third question:  He is slandering Bundy.  Where did Bundy advocate a return to slavery?  The author is making this up for rhetorical effect.

Why would American Thinker side with Harry Reid of all people?  Very questionable.


Articles: Vladimir Putin Caesar and Our Great Geo-political Turning Point

Articles: Vladimir Putin Caesar and Our Great Geo-political Turning Point

...the West is a gift that keeps on giving insofar as this goes. Our cultural Marxists are on the march, smell blood and will not stop. They will continue spending us into oblivion, perverting us into prone position, relativizing us into risibility and “immigrationizing” us into irrelevance. Even now, not satisfied with placing another great nail in marriage’s coffin, our militant secularists are making moves to legitimize pedophilia and bestiality. It’s onward Luciferian soldiers.

And for Putin, it’s onward Christian soldier
.---Selwyn Duke

Is there any way to stop our own fall and restore what we once had?

Not impossible, but not likely unless something really drastic occurs and soon.

Cliven Bundy and CNN

Oh, and CNN is THE AUTHORITY on everything.

Okay.

They've got the label on Bundy---  "racist".

Here's what Bundy is quoted to have said on CNN's own webpage.

"at least a half-dozen (black) people sitting on the porch, they didn't have nothing to do."

"Because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?" he added in comments first reported by the New York Times and later seen on video. "They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton.

"And I've often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn't get no more freedom. They got less freedom
."--- Clive Bundy quoted from CNN

Let's see--- during slavery, they knew how to raise crops and chickens and had a family life.  Compare that with today.  What do these people on foodstamps know how to do?  Can they feed themselves?  They end up in jail and abort their babies.  How is this a good thing?

Note that Bundy isn't condemning the black people.  That's being read into his statement.  They just can't abide his statement that the blacks aren't better off today.  But aren't these people always complaining about this very thing?  Who put them in that condition that they are in now?

Prediction: If the GOP doesn't get a backbone soon, they are finished

Two examples
  1. Bundy---- They should at least find out what he meant with his words.  They should at least find out the truth.  Otherwise, they will be in service to a LIE and must not be trusted.
  2. Illegal immigration--- The President won't enforce the law as is.  Is this a reason to cave in to him and give him what he wants?  If it means a cave in, then what good is the GOP?  They may as well be Democrats.
There may be other examples.  But these two are front row and center right now.  If they fail on these, they may fail on just about everything else.


Brace For ObamaCare

dick morris

According to Morris, the troubles are just beginning.  Well, the stories about the exchanges are off the table for now.  New stories are about to emerge.  Death panels, anyone?


Another one bites the dust



Harry Reid Issues Statement On "Hateful Racist" Cliven Bundy


A few thoughts on Cliven Bundy

Looks like Bundy has croaked himself with that last remark about slavery.  I think his words are being twisted, but maybe not.  I've read them, but not studied them.  It looks like he's saying that blacks were better off as slaves than the way they are now.  What does this mean?

Did he really mean to say that slavery should return?  No, I don't think he meant that.  But it is being taken that way.

It looks like Bundy could use some help.  But he's not the kind to seek it.  So he's an easy target.  They can pick him off and so they have.  Now Bundy has been labeled a racist and is hereby an object of scorn.  Anybody who associates with him is guilty as well.

But nobody on the so-called right will try to understand that what he said was an indictment of the current system.  That's how I see it.

The current system is no good for anybody---- white or black.  If he had said it that way, it would have been easier to defend.  But the way he said it made it easy for the GOP to run away from him like a scalded dog.

The GOP is useless and gutless.


Thursday, April 24, 2014

Home again, home again 4/24/14

Been awhile since I did one of these.  This is like the motivation to make a post as soon as I got home.  Today, not quite so eager, but eager nonetheless.

It's about the immigration thing.  I'm being pushed for contributions to a drive to get the government to stop doing something really stupid and destructive.  So this made me think a bit.  What I came up with is this:  the Democrats have a political strategy.  It is immigration until they own the vote.  They'll swamp the polls with their own people and then they'll own the country.  In contrast, the GOP can only go along for the ride.  There's no difference on the immigration issue at the top levels.  It's only the grassroots that wants to oppose immigration.  Thus, without their own immigration strategy, the GOP is a dead duck politically.

It makes me wonder:  why write about politics at all?  The Democrats are going to get what they want.  The GOP will do nothing substantive to stop them.  Besides, they have no strategy to counter the Democrats immigration strategy.  None at all at the highest levels.  The only thing they can come up with is something that won't make them seem so mean to "minorities".  Incidentally, "minorities" will become majorities before too long if this keeps up.  Why would it not?  There's nobody stopping it.

You can argue the issues like Perry Mason in a courtroom, but that will avail nothing at all.  This is a pure power play.  The Democrats are going to ignore you because they don't have to pay attention to you.  When they say "the debate is over", they are really serious about it.  They are going to redo this society into whatever they want it to be.  The GOP is going to be a non-entity throughout.

The time to address this is now.  However, nothing much is going to happen because there are plenty in the GOP who think a good argument is going to make a difference.  So they'll argue and it will be ignored.  Like the wolf and the lamb in Aesop's fable.  The wolf will do whatever it wants because it is bigger and meaner than the lamb.  Doesn't matter if the lamb can defend itself with words, it is more important that the lamb is helpless in the face of the wolf's aggressions.  The GOP is like the helpless lamb in that fable.  They are going to lose the argument no matter how well they argue.  The only way to win an argument with a wolf is to out wolf the wolf.


Firework -- Katy Perry

Katy Perry is a beautiful girl.  But beauty is only skin deep.  This song bugs me.  Could anyone who reads this blog understand what I find wrong with it?

I think the song is an example of our failing culture and the Death Cult that produced it.  Note that over 4 million views of this colossal failure of philosophy and alleged art.

It seems to say over and over again --- "I'm great!"  But greatness has a cause and it isn't self-deception.  There is no knowledge here, just a lot of shouting of slogans and over-hyped feeling.  There isn't a ounce of enlightenment in the whole piece.




Betsy's Page: Cruising the Web

Betsy's Page: Cruising the Web: The Obama administration has tried to deny that any employer would adjust hiring behavior to make sure it didn't have to provide insuran...

Betsy has something in this post that I want to comment on.  It's the failure of the young to connect their circumstances with the policies that are causing it.  In other words, why do young people vote Democrat when its those very policies that are harming them and their futures?

My theory on that is that Democrats run the educational system and their crowning achievement there is to turn people into morons.  People may be "instructed", but they are not educated.  For if they were educated, they could "connect the dots" between their pessimism and what's causing it.  The inability to think for oneself is being drummed out of the kids.  Also, the ability to distinguish one thing from another is being drummed out.  "To discriminate" is a bad thing, but it is necessary in order for someone to be intelligent.  To wit: everyone is said to be "equal", but everyone is not equal.  Equivalencies are being made that do not exist.  History is not taught.  Math is not taught.  Hell, nothing is taught that is worth anything.  What is taught is how to be confident, while that is perhaps a good thing, it means nothing if one is incompetent.

Perhaps the tombstone upon which is written the epitaph of the American Republic will have the inscription:  "Died of ignorance" upon it.


Wednesday, April 23, 2014

View From The Porch: You have got to be $#!++ing me.

View From The Porch: You have got to be $#!++ing me.: Via this satire post at Rational Gun , I discovered that the Navy of my country is naming a ship after Gabby Giffords, apparently for doing ...

It's getting more and more ridiculous all the time.  This one goes past the idiot limit by a wide margin.   "Gutter Republic"?  No, Loon Republic.

A Navy ship named after a woman who got herself shot?  Beam me up Scotty!  No intelligent life here.


Ray Moore Is Right!

Ray Moore Is Right!

Moore is an advocate of Christian education and a supporter of the homeschooling movement who believes — as do I — that the public school system is hopelessly broken and incapable of reform.--- Stacy McCain
Free publicity for Moore, says McCain.


Ultracapacitor breakthrough?

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1322050

Could be a big deal.

Why I don't join the ObamaCare propaganda wars

Is also why the blog's numbers are lower than what they could be.  Seems that's all people care about is what's going on inside their own skins.  I'm not different.  I chose to sign up for Obamacare and so far so good.

No, I don't consider myself a "traitor".  I think Obamacare is bad, and I can definitely live without it.  So, I don't care if it gets repealed or not.  At this point, I'm not dependent upon it.  However, over time, that will change as it will change for the people who are using it.  Then, you've got a political problem if you are opposed to it.

No, what I've said all along is to fight it when you've got the chance, which is exactly what the GOP leadership is not doing.  They've got the House, and that means something.  Except these people won't use that power that they already have to do what they claim they want to do.

So, what are they actually doing?   They are fueling this propaganda war in order to fire up their respective bases.  There are those who have been hurt by Obamacare.  They'll respond to the one side of the argument.  There are those who benefit from it and they'll respond to the other side of the argument.  The thing that happens is that the politicians win and the people lose.  The people lose because bad legislation is enacted and that's what's killing this nation.

But I could join in the propaganda wars, but I won't.  I tell it like I see it, but nobody's much interested in that.  Nope.  They want to participate in the propaganda wars that don't benefit anybody but the politicians.  The politicians only care about what's good for themselves.  This is why problems don't get solved and why they don't serve us, but seek to serve themselves only.  The truth doesn't get served because nobody is interested in that.  That's why my audience numbers suck.  If I joined the propaganda wars, I'd have better traffic.  Principle doesn't work in the real world, does it?


Sometimes it pays to read lefty sites

Hey, there's a war against the left that I didn't know about.  Funny how that works.  The Koch brothers are said to be behind it all, but I never heard of it until I read the Mahablog.  Almost all my reading is on right wing sites, but this one was a new one to me.  Hey, I guess the Koch brothers are running the right wing sites without my knowing about it.

This story from Maha is great news.  It's got the left in a state of alarm, so it must be a good thing.

If there’s anything that liberals and conservatives ought to be able to agree on, it’s the benefit of renewable power. It’s as close to a no-brainer as you can get. But President Obama made green programs part of his stimulus package, and that was that. When tea-party hysteria took over the conservative movement, renewable energy became one of its pariahs. Griping about Solyndra is ancient history. Today’s conservatives oppose renewable energy for the same reason they’ve gone nuts over Benghazi and the IRS and Syrian rebels: to show solidarity to the cause. Welcome to modern American politics.--- quote of David Drum from the Maha site
Oh, yeah.  I didn't know that I had been drafted into the secret Koch army.

Windmills and solar power are ridiculous.  They can never work, which is why the left loves them so much.


Attacking climate change?

Thomas Friedman wants to cut corporate taxes to fight so-called climate change.

Well, the first thing we would do is actually slash income taxes and corporate taxes and replace them with a carbon tax--- via Coyote blog

Actually, slashing income taxes is a good idea.  But corporate taxes should be HIGHER, not lower.  Fighting climate change is like fighting windmills, a completely idiotic idea.

If you really think carbon is a problem, develop the molten-salt reactor.  It can eliminate the need for fossil fuels altogether.

But no.  We must have our windmills and solar panels.  Beam me up Scotty!  No intelligent life here.

Radical environmentalists deem people as the top environmental problem

There are just too many people for our natural world to endure. We must drastically reduce the world's population at all costs.



One way to reduce population is to line up all the leftists and shoot them.  The Earth will thank you.




Next Big Future: America's Middle Class is no longer the Richest in...

Next Big Future: America's Middle Class is no longer the Richest in...: America's middle class is no longer the richest in the world. Median per capita income was $18,700 in the United States in 2010 (which...


Article discusses how the middle class has suffered in this country recently.  But who has been president for the last 5 years?


Stunner! Benghazi Was a Base for Illegal Arms Shipments to Syria

Illegal arms were shipped to Syrian rebels from Libya and this could be the reason Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton lied and claimed the attack on the consulate was the result of a video....  Seymour Hirsch published an investigative report


Tuesday, April 22, 2014

The Fixx - One Thing Leads To Another

A look at songmeanings website yields no clue to this song's meaning.  A lot of retarded interpretations.

It's just common sense.  One thing leads to another.  It's not rocket science.

Great song, very infectious beat.



The Year Without Summer: 1816

In their excellent book, The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History, William and Nicholas Klingaman relate the history, causes, and effects of the record cold that gripped the northern hemisphere in 1816...


More than one explanation can be made for climate change.  Not only that, here's an example of a direct cause and effect, which is stronger than what is the usual fare of climate change rhetoric.


Base camps

An analogy to mountain climbing as applied to space travel.  Plenty of analogies can be made, not just this one.  For example, aerial refueling in the military.  There's even talk about the Navy making its own fuel so they don't have to carry it around everywhere.  In situ resourcing and refueling are game changers in space as well as on the ground:

...destinations are less important than capabilities. Put an off-planet space-transportation infrastructure in place, and the entire solar system (including Europa and Enceladus) is opened up to us--- Rand Simberg

To add my own comment to this, I've suggested using the big SLS rocket to emplace some of the architecture needed for these "base camps".


Pants on fire

Looks like Obama has gotten quite the rep as a liar

...it almost goes without saying, is the very tip of the proverbial iceberg. Barack Obama has been lying — lying, not “mis-stating,” not somehow getting it wrong because he was misinformed, ill-advised, out to lunch — no, he has been lying to the American public since 2009.--- Roger Kimball

Plenty of evidence too to back that up.

Senate Committee Reveals CIA Cover-Up In Benghazi – Dick Morris TV: Lunch Alert!

Senate Committee Reveals CIA Cover-Up In Benghazi – Dick Morris TV: Lunch Alert!

Morris says that there was a Senate finding that the administration was involved in an arms diversion operation to the al Qaeda groups in Syria using captured Libyan weapons.  He compares this to Iran-Contra in the eighties.  He adds that it may be an impeachable offense.






Monday, April 21, 2014

True or Not True

At this website, it is asserted that water vapor accounts for 95% of global warming.

Water vapour was responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which was vital to keep the world warm, he explained.--- quote by Noel Sheppard of Augie Auer, New Zealand meterologist

True or Not True?

It turns out that water vapor does account for that, but global warming theory is based upon positive feedbacks.  If those positive feedbacks cannot be proven, global warming theory goes nowhere.


6,000 lbs of food on 1/10th acre - Urban Farm - Urban Homestead - Growing Your Own Food ( reposted from 11/9/13 )



Note:

This is the kind of thing the government should be encouraging.  Not foodstamps!!!!


The repost follows directly below....


How about that for some "creative destruction"?  By the way, there are lots of videos like this on YouTube.

Update:

The man's name is Jules Durvaes.









Some tidbits courtesy Free Republic

Homosexual activists want to find out where people live.  Why?  To harass them?

A Muslim who shoots several people isn't a terrorist, but those who supported Bundy are according to Harry Reid.

People who think Obama is a crypto-Muslim are ridiculed, yet he says strange things like this.

An argument made that challenges Federal ownership of land in question in Nevada.



Back to the future?



This Is Madness!


Books to read

I've noticed a few books out there that I may be reading some time in the future.

This post is to list those books

What Works by Cal Thomas
The Death of Money  by James Rickards
Twilight of Abundance by David Archibald

With respect to Archibald, there's no shortage of negative stories about the theories he's espousing with respect to so-called climate change.

Perhaps I'll add more books if I come across interesting titles.  The trouble is finding the time to read them.  In addition, is there really any more need to amass evidence to support an active opposition to liberalism?





Sunday, April 20, 2014

Jesus with a whip

American Thinker

Anyone interested might consider this video.


Depends upon who Harry Reid thinks of when he says "we"

In this quote, Harry Reid may be giving away his game

“These people think they’re patriots, and they’re not. If they’re patriots, we’re in big trouble.”

Their game is to make themselves the patriots and those who oppose them as the traitors.  The truth is that if you support the Constitution, you are a patriot.  If you think the current crop of politicians as the "government", that is wrong.   The Constitution is sovereign, not the officials who are merely temporary custodians of power.  That's a distinction that needs to be made.

What really happened at the Bay of Pigs | Human Events

What really happened at the Bay of Pigs | Human Events

Yeah, and not too long later, there was the Cuban Missile Crisis.  A show of strength could have avoided that, but instead, weakness almost invited a nuclear war.

If you don't learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it.


Spaceflight Now | Falcon Launch Report | SpaceX achieves controlled landing of Falcon 9 first stage

Spaceflight Now | Falcon Launch Report | SpaceX achieves controlled landing of Falcon 9 first stage



More news about the mission.