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Update:

The 5 year anniversary of the completion of the proton therapy has already passed.

Now it's like a dream.

The therapy can do just so much.  It can't fix everything.  Maybe some day.

The odds are against my still being alive without this care.

Speaking of odds, the odds of my getting this disease was one in a million.  The odds of getting it when I could get this kind of treatment is also pretty much against.  Wishbone says write a book.

I'm a ghost writer.  Yuk yuk.

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May 24, 2017

Decided not to stay in Dallas for another day.  Been back home since yesterday.   Couldn't post because of the phone problem.  The phone malfunctioned, and I replaced it with a new one.

Meanwhile, it was necessary to do a few things to get back into gear here.  Slowly coming around, and now it may be possible to pick up where I left off.

I've completed some of the stuff on my to-do list.  This morning was rather cool, so I may not need a shade soon.  But that will have to be done soon, because it is going to get hot around here.

Update (s):  17:30  

Now that I am back, there is a lot less data to play with.  Besides that, there's no TeeVee here, as I will not pay for that service.  Actually, I cannot afford the data nor the TeeVee.

Posts that relied upon information obtained from such sources will not be as often, nor as in depth.  Besides, my opinion of our popular culture is at the lowest point ever.  Fakery is everywhere in the political sphere.  Nothing that happens in DC is real, but they are reality, which is unfortunate for the rest of us.

For now on, I will tend to post more practical stuff.  The stuff, or another word starting with the letter "s", can wait.

Dubya speaks, sorry I listened

 

How the mighty have fallen. In Dubya's case, the fall wasn't too far. Maybe from the curb. His approval rating when he left office was even worse than Biden's is now.

The guy flubbed a line about Ukraine. He called it "Iraq". Here's a guy who said he looked into Putin's soul. He seems to have changed his tune a bit. Now Putin's a really bad guy.

An Iraqi threw a shoe at him once. Bugliosi wanted to throw the book at him. I wish he would remain consistent with himself and keep quiet. He was very quiet during Obama's regime. Nary a word in criticism. Now he can't keep his mouth shut. The talks when he shouldn't, and doesn't talk when he should.

He needs to rebuild his ratings, I suppose. Now the pinkos love him. He supports their every move. He's an embarrassment. I suppose he always was. But then, it was the choice between him and Algore. In 2004, the Dems nominated Franken Kerry. Well, at least the Dems made progress. They went from bad to worse.

The biggest mistake that Ronald Reagan made was to name George HW Bush as his running mate. That's what gave us the Bushes and the rest of this junk. If he named Dole as his Veep instead, he couldn't have done any worse than Bush. It might have been better.

The invisible talisman

The subject of such a talisman is discussed right off the bat in the book "Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude". I bought the book back in 1984. At the time, I felt I needed a boost. That book gave me one. But it didn't make me rich. Why is that? Is it even proper to want to be rich anyway? What is success? So many questions.

To start off to answer these, let's begin with what the word means. It is helpful to know what words mean in order to understand the ideas imparted. The wikipedia gave a definition that can be a starting point. But first, why did it take so long for me to look up this word? I wasn't clear on the meaning of it. It took me nearly 40 years to even know for sure what the word even meant. Perhaps there is a lesson in there somewhere.

A talisman, as I understand it now, is an object that has power to help or to harm. It may be religious or magical. Perhaps the use of those two words--magic or religious---is objectionable in some sense depending upon the audience. Let's say it has some supernatural seeming quality that can help or harm. What does this object have to do with us, then?

It is said to be, for the purposes of the book, invisible. Once you accept that, you can see that the definition fits. One's attitude IS invisible. It DOES have power to harm or to help. And the power is clearly in your own hands. Or to put it more accurately, it is all in your head. But is it supernatural? That will be a question beyond the scope of this ditty. Suffice to say that it can seem all powerful, and therefore, super- natural. It is the key to all things good and bad. And it resides within you, and it is under your control. You can really flip the talisman to positive or to negative. The choice is yours. It has everything to do with our lives, whether we know it or not.

With all that understanding, or supposed understanding, I should be rich. But I'm not. Well, I can take a joke. I think I can take a joke. Ah! Going into Hank Kimbal mode again.

As I observe the world around me, I can see that all of what I've written above is true. You can apply these ideas yourself, and see for yourself. Check it out. That's the scientific method. A theory can be replicated in the laboratory. Your laboratory is the way you live your life. Me too, by the way. I seek to do the best I can. But I stumble along the way.

I can see that the book is valid and meaningful. It may be old, but that doesn't matter. Some concepts are without time limits. It will always be true. The trick is in its application. Information without knowledge is useless. Knowledge without action is also useless. In the final analysis, it is what you do with what you have that matters.

Now is as good a time as any to get busy.

Not about left v right, but about slavery v freedom

So Dan Bongino says that he won't waste your time. The show today doesn't do anything but play on the left's battlespace that they've defined for us. To play on that battlespace is to accept their premises. You end up as a loser before you even start. After 5 minutes, I shut the program down. Wrong track there, Dan Bongino.

Why is it so hard to understand? He starts out with the correct observation that the left is trying to claim the "center". But there's no "center" in this argument. The left-center-right paradigm is just another means of fooling the public. Bongino is correct to go after the duplicity of the left, but wrong to call conservatism as part of the "right". To do so is a mistake. The correct paradigm is about freedom versus slavery. If you argue on those premises, you are on better ground. To argue about who is closer to the center, the left or the "right", is a guaranteed loser argument. At best, you get a draw. For the Democrats and the leftists, this would be a win. The left has no business winning in this environment. They cannot run on their record, but they can run on fear of the "other".

If you argue about freedom versus slavery, you can note that the left has been the party of shutdowns, masks, and censorship of those who disagree. None of these positions are about freedom nor truth. Bongino gets it right when he says that fear is the coin of the realm of the left. They have to make you afraid of the "other". The other is anybody not left. Anybody not left is a fascist to these people. A fascist is someone to be feared. The left needs people to be afraid, just as Bongino says. That much he says is right on target. But the left-right-center paradigm has to go. It enables them to engender fear in the public. If that succeeds, all the reason and evidence won't matter.

Why is this so hard to understand? Is it because that it pays more to play their game? Is it really about winning the argument, or is it really about making money?

It is okay to make money. But it is not okay to deceive people. To argue as being part of the right is just playing into the hands of the left. You cannot be serious about defeating their arguments by playing their game. Playing their game just wastes MY time. Thumbs down to his show today for that reason. Sorry I have to come down hard on somebody who I'd like to think is on my side. But this is too damned important to screw up like this.

Unrest in Sri Lanka

Seen on Instapundit 4 horsemen ready to ride

Thanks to some very questionable decisions by the leadership in Sri Lanka, the situation there is becoming dire. The public is taking it out on the leadership.

Seems like I heard of that somewhere before....

Lots of stuff pointing to a developing situation all around that might suggest that what's happening there isn't unique... In other words, it's coming to a country near YOU.

Maybe it is all a plan, like the Great Reset. The more chaos, the more chance for a strongman to emerge. If you wanted to destablize the world, you would do exactly what they are doing now. NONE of their ideas work. That is the point. Once enough people figure that out, and figure that the leadership is really trying to harm them, then what would you expect people to do? Exactly what they are doing now in Sri Lanka.

The question is: "What comes later?"

What matters anymore?

People need to get a grip. There's way too much emotion out there. It's thick enough to cut with a knife.

It's only May, but you'd think we're in the middle of a national political campaign. This kind of stuff shouldn't be happening this far out, but since it is, there must be a reason for it.

It's getting to where I don't like to read those on the conservative side any more than I like reading the other side. News? Forget it. There's no news anymore. There's a tsunami of emotional outbursts. It's washing over an increasingly anxious land.

The agitation is coming from both sides. It's to be expected, but one can sense that this time may be a bit different. Why the intensity if that is not the case? Campaigns are never ending. The same was true during the Weimar Republic, before it fell to the Nazis.

There is no need to hype the situation. Biden may not be popular, but there's no reason to cite polls that frequently have an agenda behind them. Rasmussen has Biden steady, and he may be rising a bit. That should put to rest the idea that this is going to be a cake walk. The Democrats are going to fight pretty hard. If only it could be an honest and fair fight. Sadly, that is not the way it works. Especially these days.

I don't get the feeling from reading the "conservative" side, that they aren't do anything fundamentally different from what the Democrats do. Hyping things so that they are totally out of proportion, is not what the "conservatives" should be doing. The facts speak for themselves. When I read about all this business that this is going to be a blow-out, I get suspicious. Who gains from this? What is the gain? Why would they do this kind of hype? To get us overconfident? You see the phrase "dont' get cocky". Why would anybody be doing that?

A big win would be really nice. However, the GOP is making its usual mistakes. They don't call it the Stupid Party for nothing.

Of course, there's always this tendency to adopt all the ways of the left. Such as their re-definition of the language. The word "gay" didn't always mean homosexual. Those who change the language are the same ones who topple statues. One should ask why are they doing this. How much different is it to topple statues and to topple the World Trade Center Towers in New York City on September 11th, 2001? The motivations behind it are similar. But we get polls and polls and polls. Questions beg for answers, but will you find any answers in these polls? Perhaps answers are not sought.

Notice who the terrorists are now. The language changes, statues are toppled, and the roles are reversed. Has this country really changed that much? If it has, then where were the defenders? That role falls upon the GOP, but they seem to be too quiet while all this is happening. I suppose, before you know it, they'll be ratifying these things just like they ratified the rest. The commies claimed that they take us over without a shot. They must have been thinking about the flaccid GOP. The GOP looks as tired and desperate as the Dems.

Stop acting like the "other", and then pretending to be different. But I suppose that is just more of my wishful thinking. People are getting caught up in the hype. The larger view would show that a change in direction would be a miracle. The direction is down, and everybody knows it. It's been that way for many years now. Who gains from pointing fingers at the "other"? More importantly, who loses, and how much?

It isn't a matter of not knowing, it is a matter of not caring

Once upon a time, there was a Red Diaper Baby who turned "conservative". This dude's name is Horowitz, and he has a web page called Frontpage. (just so you know who this is about). Anyway, Horowitz once said that "conservatives" don't know how to fight these leftists. That assumes that they are trying to fight them at all. It seems like they fall all over themselves rubber-stamping whatever the commies talk about.

If the pinko media doesn't want to acknowledge certain facts, then perhaps the "conservatives" would take the cue and refuse to acknowledge what the pinkos say. Why amplify what the pinkos say? After all, isn't that the tactics that the pinkos themselves are using? If the pinkos don't like certain facts, they ignore them. Why not just ignore what they like to run they jaws about?

Could this be the reason the "conservatives" are always reacting to everything? It goes from one shitshow to another. Meanwhile Rome is burning, and these guys are just fiddling around. Don't know how to fight? It seems like they are part of the problem. After all, they aren't called "RINOS" for nothing.

This repetition of narratives helps the pinkos push forward their narratives, and suppresses yours. If they had any intention to fight, they'd have your ready-made narratives at the ready every time the pinkos opened their lying pie-holes.

Incidentally, someone may think that this is bashing the GOP. Well, no. If the GOP is really a bunch of RINOS, then there isn't really an opposition party. As soon as they start acting like an opposition party, then they might be worth supporting. You can't bash what doesn't exist.

Also, once the pressure gets put upon the GOP, they start acting better. After all, they got rid of Liz Cheney once they figured out that her schtick wasn't going over too well with the rank and file.

All this means is that the so called "Partisan Divide" is just a big show. In the end, the GOP will do whatever they are told to do. If they were a real opposition party, people would sit up and take notice. On the other hand, since they won't actually oppose the commies, it won't change a thing even if they do win in November.

Before you can learn how to fight, you first have to make up your mind that you're going to fight. The trouble with those who call themselves "GOP", and "conservative"; is that they really won't fight at all. It isn't a matter of not knowing, it is a matter of not caring.