I'm Leaving, On a Jet Plane...

At least, I will be, Wednesday evening. The Hubs is staying home.

My son-in-law has an operation on Friday, so I'm going to be staying there for a week or two, to help out with whatever is needed. My mobility is still sub-par, but I should be able to handle the limited amount of driving needed.

I'll be checking in here, but I don't plan on posting as often. My hope is to make some progress with my books - fiction, as well as non-fiction. Well, that, and - I hope - to take in at least ONE Cleveland Indians game. They're at home for the next 2 weeks, so it's likely that I'll be able to manage it. I may spend the cash to get a seat lower down, as I don't want to be trying to manage the cheap seats with a boot and cane.

I was able to get a straight flight, without stops, which will limit my time in transit. If an opportunity to get a better seat, without too much cash spent, comes up, I'm taking it. I'm already on aspirin, to reduce the chances of a blood clot. It's amazing just how many things you have to anticipate going wrong, when you get old.

For Those Who Have Asked (STICKY Until 05/13/2019)

     It’s here:

     It’s a collection of my essays on the subject, spread over the twenty-two years I’ve been writing for the Web: material many Gentle Readers will already be familiar with. After a bit of prompting from two dear friends, I was moved to compile those essays for this form of distribution. I hope you’ll find this compilation useful. Gil, Linda: Thank you, most sincerely, for your encouragement.

     Only $2.99 at Amazon.

The Divine Right Of Men

     [Christianity is] the most persecuted religion in the world today.” -- Glenn Reynolds

     There are days it all seems just too terribly clear.

     In the late M. Stanton Evans’ remarkable, critically important book The Theme Is Freedom, he develops a brilliant case for the proposition that political freedom depends upon the acknowledgement of an authority higher than any temporal authority: i.e., God. He further argues that of all the belief systems that have ever been followed, Christianity is the only one that emphasizes individual freedom as the rightful condition of men, to be protected from the encroachments of temporal powers. The United States of America, a near to uniformly Christian country for most of its history, is the modern society in which this coupling of religious belief to liberty has been most clearly demonstrated.

     Given that premise, does it not make sense that they who seek to eradicate human freedom should target Christianity first and foremost? Does it not suggest that anyone you hear ridiculing Christians or denigrating Christianity should be viewed with a degree of suspicion?

     That’s for openers, Gentle Reader. Whether you’re Christian or not, I advise you to give it some thought.

---

     If there should ever be founded a Hall of Fame for Sensible Men, I’d nominate Gilbert Keith Chesterton as its patron saint:

     The curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

     Chesterton was famous even in his own lifetime for his hard sense and good nature. The quote above, echoed in spirit by Henry Louis Mencken:

     Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

     …perfectly captures Christianity’s defense of human freedom: What it forbids are things we grasp intuitively to be evil. I have often confounded a militant atheist by asking him “Which of the Commandments do you find objectionable?” And answer comes there none. And this is scarcely odd, because…well, you can work it out for yourselves.

     (A quick digression: Christianity must not be confused with the doctrines propounded by nominally Christian churches or their human clerics. Christianity is entirely expressed by its Founder, Jesus of Nazareth, in the four Gospels that record His life, words, deeds, Passion and Resurrection. All else is an elaboration on those teachings by fallible men. Keep that in mind.)

     It is an irony to pin all the meters against their stops that they who denigrate Christianity cannot argue against it on any rational grounds. They denounce it as “superstition,” “fear of death,” and other irrelevancies. They refuse to treat with its prescriptions…because those prescriptions directly oppose what they seek: power for themselves and their fellow-travelers.

     God Himself has only ten rules for us. He asks nothing more. How dare any temporal authority suggest, explicitly or implicitly, that His rules don’t bind us? And how dare any temporal authority demand more than does He?

     Yet they all do.

---

     Allow me to revive one of my favorite Tom Kratman quotes:

     [I]t has been said more than once that you should choose enemies wisely, because you are going to become just, or at least, much like them. The corollary to this is that your enemies are also going to become very like you....

     If I could speak now to our enemies, I would say: Do you kill innocent civilians for shock value? So will we learn to do, in time. Do you torture and murder prisoners? So will we. Are you composed of religious fanatics? Well, since humanistic secularism seems ill-suited to deal with you, don't be surprised if we turn to our churches and temples for the strength to defeat and destroy you. Do you randomly kill our loved ones to send us a message? Don't be surprised, then, when we begin to target your families, specifically, to send the message that our loved ones are not stationery.

     The enemies of Christianity, one and all, are totalitarian in ambition. That is: they seek the power to decide what is compulsory and what is forbidden, without any boundaries to the scope of their authority. Christians know that this is wrong. We decry it. We protest against it. In reply, our enemies ridicule us, drive us out of the public square, criminalize living by our beliefs, and ultimately exterminate us.

     They are not wise. Tom Kratman has delineated the inevitable response from the world’s Christians: the rebirth of the Church Militant.

     It’s coming. I sense it massing: quietly for the moment, but the moment will arrive when it will make a mighty noise. It will defend the ultimate Authority and the divine right He has granted to us, His highest earthly creatures: the right to be left alone, also known as freedom.

     Be part of it.

     May God bless and keep you all!

Sunday Randomness - Mother's Day Edition

In an unintended twist on the day, I noticed this piece from Conservative Review, that has a judge ruling that non-doctors can perform abortions. I'm truly tired of the "Progressive" judges of this country making law out of their own a$$. There is a branch of government whose job it is to MAKE the laws - or NOT.

These guys need to stay in their own lane.

I wonder how this statistic has changed since cell phones introduced unlimited minutes?

In 1992, AT&T reported 83 million calls were made on Father’s Day, compared to 106 million for Mother’s Day. But 27% more of the Dad’s Day calls were collect.

Yes, call your mother this Sunday (and consider calling those who were not fortunate enough to have children, just to say you love them). But, on some other day, NOT Father's Day, give the old man a call. They might not say it, but it will thrill them.

But, watch what you write/post on social media! Wouldn't want to offend the wrong people! Many businesses providing services to the public are targeting conservatives - or, more fairly, non-Leftists - to be refused service. Reason Magazine has more here.

The question is, just how far do your rights to Free Speech extend? The Supreme Court sided with the NAACP in their landmark decision to shield the membership from public exposure, at a time when that information could have facilitated effective shutdown of their organization.

The bans - whether public and permanent, or temporary and sub-rosa - have hit even relatively mainstream bloggers/content providers, like Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, or Dennis Prager. And, the tsunami of banning is growing.

Communications law is quite clear - you may pass on content of any political persuasion without being sued, as long as your platform is neutral. That was the standard of the telephone company, and still is. They may pass on information about actual crimes, IF the government requests it in a properly-served warrant.

But, if they interfere in suppressing SOME communication, without an underlying crime, they lose that protection from lawsuit. Which appears to be where they are now - and, as far as I'm concerned, Let The Games Begin!

ARE the big social media companies unfairly biased? The answer is clear.

Have foreign countries helped Trump on social media? Possibly, but far more likely that they have engaged in massive efforts to push the Leftist agenda. And, to influence votes/opinion in other countries, as well.

The term "Hate Speech" has chiseled away at the 1st Amendment - and you should be concerned about that.

Yet Another Leftist Fake News Story - YALFNS. This time, using the tragic aftermath of the Puerto Rican hurricane to bash Trump.

Too often, we focus on how viewpoint suppression affect national figures. This story shows how the actions of social media are causing more problems for the local resistance to the Leftist juggernaut. I urge you to read it, as it clearly details the way that Twitter, YouTube, and other social media are protecting local Democratic control.

And, last - the cluelessness of this Hollywood Twit is staggering. Why, it's almost as though she had no understanding of the connection between sex and pregnancy!

Fight the Power!

Quickies: A Truism With A Nasty Laugh Embedded In It

     “The biggest voter suppression mechanism in American politics is Hillary Clinton’s personality.” -- David Forsmark

     Kick ‘em when they’re up; kick ‘em when they’re down.

Metrics

     Allow me to begin this tirade begin on a personal note: I’m overweight and have been for years. Not grotesquely, mind you; just about fifteen pounds. However, they’re inconvenient pounds, located in an inconvenient place that makes bending difficult. So I’m trying to lose them. As part of the effort, each morning upon rising I mount the bathroom scale and watch as it measures my current weight.

     In recent weeks that number has been trending downward, albeit slowly. That’s all right; a slow loss arising from a lifestyle change is more likely to result in an enduring improvement. So when I see a number lower than the one I saw the day before, I’m pleased. When the number is the same as the day before or higher, I frown.

     Does that behavior seem logical to you, Gentle Reader, now that you know of my aims? It should. But does it seem a complete measure of whether I’m progressing or regressing? If it does, you’re not thinking the problem all the way through.

     Why measure a particular thing? Indeed, why measure anything?

     A measure is normally tied to a goal. Imagine that there’s some goal you want to reach. If you can express that goal in measurable terms, subsequent measurements will tell you whether you’re getting nearer to that goal or farther from it.

     Any goal can be characterized in two ways:

1. Intermediate;
2. End-state.

     An intermediate goal is one we seek in advancing toward some other goal. An end-state goal is one we seek for its own sake. In the business world, intermediate goals are often called milestones, probably because we tend to trip over them for focusing on the end-state goal. The end-state goal will normally have direct relevance to the production of revenue: e.g., the release of a product for sale.

     The above might seem like “of course” material. In a sense, that what it is: the subconscious stratum of considerations everyone’s conscious decision-making is founded on. But now and then it should be hauled out of the shadows and examined in the light. Doing so can keep us from doing some silly, counterproductive, and outrightly destructive things.

---

     Many years ago, I formulated a schematic for all human action. I called it The Algorithm:

1. Select a technique that you think will get you what you think you want.
2. Will this technique cause you to lose body parts, go to jail, or burn in Hell?
   • If so, return to step 1.
   • If not, proceed to step 3.
3. Do a little of it.
4. Are you at your goal, approaching it, or receding from it?
   • If at your goal, stop.
   • If receding, return to step 1.
   • If approaching, return to step 3.

     That is how we do everything. There are no exceptions. But have a close look at step 4. It asks a question without propounding a method for answering it. What method should apply?

     In short, there must be a metric that will allow us to answer the question. The metrics best suited to some goals are more easily found than those that apply to others. Indeed, there are some goals for which the quest for the right metric is ongoing. But until the correct metric is chosen, whether we are progressing toward our goal or receding from it will be indeterminable.

     The critical word in the paragraph above is correct, as in “the correct metric.” Monitoring an irrelevancy won’t help. Indeed, by distracting us from what really matters it will likely conduce to failure.

     The central question in all of public policy has always been:

Given the goal we pursue,
What is the correct metric?

     In our time, that question is almost never answered correctly.

---

     Libertarian theorist and activist Kevin Cullinane once proposed a definition of progress:

     “Progress is the improved satisfaction of human desires, morally, with less effort.”

     Like “The Algorithm” of the previous segment, Cullinane’s statement implies a question: What is the proper metric for determining whether human desires are being satisfied in an improved degree? The answer is elusive for one giant reason: “our leaders” don’t want us to think about it.

     I know when my desires are being better satisfied than they were yesterday. I’d bet the mortgage money that you could say the same. But consider, as a trivial case (in the mathematical sense), the problem of marriage. How can Smith determine whether Mrs. Smith’s desires are being better satisfied today than yesterday?

     Any married man can tell you that the problem is stiff, as the married man will surely be before the answer comes to him.

     As the question is ramified by further collectivization – i.e.:

From individuals;
   to couples;
     to families;
       to neighborhoods;
         to towns;
           to counties;
             to states;
               to the nation;

     …all metrics become murky and indistinct, and all answers to the question in Step 4 of “The Algorithm” become indeterminate.

     That’s what “our leaders” don’t want us to think about. It’s also my major reason for writing, whether fiction or op-eds to appear here at Liberty’s Torch.

---

     On January 2, 2019, Tucker Carlson vented a subtly impassioned Jeremiad against the indifference of the “ruling class.” I didn’t see that segment of Tucker Carlson Tonight; I’m almost always in bed before 9:00 PM. Anyway, I seldom watch television other than a Yankees baseball game or a Rangers hockey game. My attention was drawn to it by a pair of opinion pieces:

1. This one of a couple of weeks ago;
2. This one of just this morning.

     Carlson’s soliloquy and the two articles it inspired put me in mind of the old poem about the blind men and the elephant:

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me!—but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!"

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried: "Ho!—what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 't is mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!"

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake: "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a snake!"

The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he;
"'T is clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

[John Godfrey Saxe]

     Saxe might have been amused at the passionate disputes of theologians, but the point is relevant to public policy as well. Numbers of many sorts are available to the policy-maker. Many a “policy wonk” will trumpet such numbers loudly, implying that they measure something “the government” should regard as important. But do they really? Indeed, do they measure anything of importance?

---

     It’s become clear that no purely economic metric – take the Dow-Jones Industrial Average as an example – really measures the health of our nation. Indeed, it might mislead us regardless of the purpose to which we put it. The DJIA is a composite based on thirty stocks. There are far more equities than that being traded. But even if they were all factored into the DJIA, what could it possibly tell us?

     Tucker Carlson’s focus is on families. It’s arguably a better focus, but one to which no imaginable metric could be applied. Rate of family formation? Interesting information, but what kinds of families are being formed? Reproduction rates? Again, very interesting, especially to demographers, but there are some pretty squalid, miserably unhappy nations with high reproduction rates. These numbers are of the sort some wag once compared to a bikini on a beautiful girl: “What it reveals is interesting, but what it conceals is vital.”

     A public policy supremely concerned with families would be no more likely than a purely econometric one to bring about a “happy, prosperous, stable nation.” There are no metrics that would reliably lead us to the goal we seek…because collective goals are always illusory:

     There is no half-baked ecclesiastic, bawling in his galvanized-iron temple on a suburban lot, who doesn’t know precisely how it ought to be dealt with. There is no fantoddish old suffragette, sworn to get her revenge on man, who hasn’t a sovereign remedy for it. There is not a shyster of a district attorney, ambitious for higher office, who doesn’t offer to dispose of it in a few weeks, given only enough help from the city editors. And yet, by the same token, there is not a man who has honestly studied it and pondered it, bringing sound information to the business, and understanding of its inner difficulties and a clean and analytical mind, who doesn’t believe and hasn’t stated publicly that it is intrinsically and eternally insoluble. For example, Havelock Ellis. His remedy is simply a denial of all remedies. He admits that the disease is bad, but he shows that the medicine is infinitely worse, and so he proposes going back to the plain disease, and advocates bearing it with philosophy, as we bear colds in the head, marriage, the noises of the city, bad cooking and the certainty of death. Man is inherently vile—but he is never so vile as when he is trying to disguise and deny his vileness. No prostitute was ever so costly to a community as a prowling and obscene vice crusader, or as the dubious legislator or prosecuting officer who jumps at such swine pipe. [H. L. Mencken]

     That’s what “our leaders” don’t want us to think about. Were we to embrace the truth in it, they would no longer be “our leaders.” Indeed, we would have no “leaders.”

---

     When we institute political conditions that embed specific incentives and constraints – and every political system does this – behavior emerges that exploits those incentives and constraints. This is, if you like, Political Ecology 101: the metaphysical law that no legislature can repeal or modify. Ayn Rand understood it well:

     [Dagny] knew that no train schedules could be maintained any longer, no promises kept, no contracts observed, that regular trains were cancelled at a moment’s notice and transformed into emergency specials sent by unexplained orders to unexpected destinations—and that the orders came from Cuffy Meigs, sole judge of emergencies and of the public welfare. She knew that factories were closing, some with their machinery stilled for lack of supplies that had not been received, others with their warehouses full of goods that could not be delivered. She knew that the old industries—the giants who had built their power by a purposeful course projected over a span of time—were left to exist at the whim of the moment, a moment they could not foresee or control. She knew that the best among them, those of the longest range and most complex function, had long since gone—and those still struggling to produce, struggling savagely to preserve the code of an age when production had been possible, were now inserting into their contracts a line shameful to a descendant of Nat Taggart: “Transportation permitting.”

     And yet there were men—and she knew it—who were able to obtain transportation whenever they wished, as by a mystic secret, as by the grace of some power which one was not to question or explain. They were the men whose dealings with Cuffy Meigs were regarded by people as that unknowable of mystic creeds which smites the observer for the sin of looking, so people kept their eyes closed, dreading, not ignorance, but knowledge. She knew that deals were made whereby those men sold a commodity known as “transportation pull”—a term which all understood, but none would dare define. She knew that these were the men of the emergency specials, the men who could cancel her scheduled trains and send them to any random spot of the continent which they chose to strike with their voodoo stamp, the stamp superseding contract, property, justice, reason and lives, the stamp stating that “the public welfare” required the immediate salvation of that spot. These were the men who sent trains to the relief of the Smather Brothers and their grapefruit in Arizona—to the relief of a factory in Florida engaged in the production of pin-ball machines—to the relief of a horse farm in Kentucky—to the relief of Orren Boyle’s Associated Steel.

     These were the men who made deals with desperate industrialists to provide transportation for the goods stalled in their warehouses—or, failing to obtain the percentage demanded, made deals to purchase the goods, when the factory closed, at the bankruptcy sale, at ten cents on the dollar, and to speed the goods away in freight cars suddenly available, away to markets where dealers of the same kind were ready for the kill. There were the men who hovered over factories, waiting for the last breath of a furnace, to pounce upon the equipment—and over desolate sidings, to pounce upon the freight cars of undelivered goods—these were a new biological species, the hit-and-run businessmen, who did not stay in any line of business longer than the span of one deal, who had no payrolls to meet, no overhead to carry, no real estate to own, no equipment to build, whose only asset and sole investment consisted of an item known as “friendship.” These were the men whom official speeches described as “the progressive businessmen of our dynamic age,” but whom people called “the pull peddlers”—the species included many breeds, those of “transportation pull,” and of “steel pull” and “oil pull” and “wage-raise pull” and “suspended sentence pull”—men who were dynamic, who kept darting all over the country while no one else could move, men who were active and mindless, active, not like animals, but like that which breeds, feeds and moves upon the stillness of a corpse.

     Rand said it so well in the above snippet that I can add nothing to it except this, from “humorist” P. J. O’Rourke:

     “When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”

---

     If what I write here is useful to anyone, it’s because I strive to see widely and to reason inclusively. Yes, I have a value of supreme political importance: individual freedom, as if you needed to be reminded. Yes, I have my own desires and a priority scale for them. But I would not imagine that many other persons would have values, desires, and priorities exactly identical to mine.

     No one has values, desires, and priorities exactly identical to yours. He who seeks to persuade you of the opposite is your enemy. Indeed, he might be a monster.

     Believe it or not, there are persons whose highest aim is the eradication of the overwhelmingly greater part of Mankind. Many of them are considered “respectable,” even purveyors of “wisdom.” They pass the streets in safety by not saying explicitly what they seek.

     Believe it or not, there are persons whose highest aim is the enslavement of the overwhelmingly greater part of Mankind. Many of them are considered “respectable,” even “statesmen” of importance. They pass the streets in safety by not saying explicitly what they seek.

     Believe it or not, there are persons whose highest aim is the impoverishment of the overwhelmingly greater part of Mankind. Many of them are considered “respectable,” even important “humanitarians.” They pass the streets in safety by not saying explicitly what they seek.

     All of these persons can be found in the corridors of power, or straining for admission to them. They greatly outnumber those of a genuinely benevolent nature. Yet all of them claim to have your well-being as their supreme value. And all of them are villains at best, monsters at worst.

     The simplest, the clearest, and the most direct route to assessing them, to knowing them for what they are rather than what they pretend to be, is to get them to state their metrics. If their metrics are collective in nature – and nearly all metrics offered in a political context are collective in nature – they are the enemy, to be feared and fought.

     “Do not say “Trust me; rely on my word.” Only politicians say that.” – C. Northcote Parkinson

     Trust no one. Think for yourself, always.

Oh, THAT constitutional crisis.

Both Attorney General William Barr and IG Horowitz appear to be fully committed to revealing the criminal leaks, the illegal electronic surveillance, the improperly obtained FISA warrants, and the multiple confidential human sources (spies) that were placed in the Trump campaign.^[1]

Taking the long view, I have to marvel how tendentious, vague, questionable, and foggy allegations of Russian interference now light the left up like a Winter Festival tree. However, when Joe McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities were highlighting actual, widespread Soviet penetration of the United States government the left denied that like Hillary is in denial about her electoral failure.

Notes
^[1] "Whitney: Judgment Day Looms For John Brennan." By Mike Whitney, ZeroHedge, 5/11/19.

What Makes an American?

I've written about this in the past, but The ZMan has a post on that concept that just has to be read.

The least understood part of nationhood is the part played by the culture. In traditional societies, the national culture is transmitted by the community of family and neighbors, as part of their identity. It may consist of their ethnicity, social/occupational class, religion, and established norms of their community.

When I was a child in America in the 1950s, divorce in my community was nearly unthinkable. Oh, sure, some celebrities got divorces, but your family, friends, and neighbors - seldom. It was Just Not Done.

Those who did divorce were excluded from the rest of the community. They might associate with them in barbeques or other communal social events, but...they were not part of the crowd's inner circle.

The divorced women were not invited to participate in most neighborhood get-togethers. For one thing, most of them had to work for a living. Others were forced to return to live with family members, due to finances. But, the biggest reason is that an unattached woman was a threat. She had nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by making a play for the men.

I only knew a few classmates whose parents were divorced. My mother - a warm and compassionate woman - once encountered one whose mother was unable to come to Parent's Night as school. She volunteered to be his "mom" for the evening.

She also befriended a next-door neighbor who was not only divorced, but raising a teenage brother. Such actions were criticized, but Mom was a strong-minded woman with her own conception of morality, and was not bothered by their protests.

I used to think the other women were needlessly cruel, but I've since come to see their reactions as protective. They banded together to keep potential rivals ruthlessly excluded from close contact. That's what women do. They use their group actions to enforce conformity to the prevailing culture. That's the force that keeps communities together, by re-affirming the common culture, and punishing by exclusion those not conforming to it.

Did such exclusion cause pain to those outside the circle? Sure. But most of the community benefited from the strong cultural norms.

Women who have chosen to place "tolerance" above conformity are one of the major factors affecting the disintegration of culture; they have abandoned their traditional role of keeping the culture intact. Many women discount the value of the cohesiveness of cultural norms - by doing so, they have neglected one of the most important tasks of womanhood.

They have left their children adrift, without firm foundations helping them to manage their interactions with peers and superiors, random strangers, and potential lovers. Today's children are often clueless of the expected norms of society; few can afford to flout customs without consequence.

Employers complain that younger employees are ignorant of expected etiquette. They leave a bad impression of their company behind.

By rejecting cultural norms, women have created a nation that lurches along without commonly-agreed-upon ways of interacting. This causes every interpersonal encounter to resemble a contact with an alien civilization. The protocols must be tediously, laboriously negotiated anew. Each new contact is ripe for misunderstandings, offense, and reprisal for not meeting the unspoken expectations.

In short, today's world - chaotic, prickly, and contentious.

Moron America.

Headlines:

Pentagon Approves $7.4M for Troops to Feed, Care for Border Crossers ... will also include busing and transporting border crossers.^[1]

Joe Biden Claims U.S. ‘Obligation’ to Give Illegal Aliens Free Health Care.^[2]

Notes
^[1]  By John Binder and Kristina Wong, Breitbart, 4/29/19.
^[2]  By Warner Todd Huston, Breitbart, 5/9/19.

H/t: Yer Ol' Woodpile Report .

Some Innovators Should Be Hanged

     …perhaps with a noose made from their “innovations,” if that can be managed.

     We’ve known for centuries that “newer” isn’t always “better.” When Robert Owen first proposed socialism in the early 19th Century, it was newer than the free market, at least as an abstract conception. It certainly wasn’t better, as the endless attempts at it have demonstrated. Neither is the “smart home,” a clever scheme for implementing universal surveillance, better than the “un-smart home,” even if you have to open the refrigerator door to compose a shopping list, program the microwave from the touch pad, and laboriously turn the thermostats up and down by hand.

     Yes, I have a tale of woe for you today. Most ironically, it centers on Joy, my 2009 Corvette convertible that I love dearly.

     At some point in the 2000s, the folks who run the Corvette subdivision of Chevrolet decided to embrace a curiously seductive idea: the “drive by wire” automobile. Microprocessors and the actuators they can control had become very inexpensive, the notion of a central command and control system for all of a car’s functions seemed worthy for diagnostic purposes, and wasn’t everything on Earth going digital anyway? Perhaps it also simplified a lot of the design decisions to have the whole car, instead of merely part of it, controlled and monitored through a single master computer. I have no insight into that set of considerations. So they designed the 2009 Corvette, and possibly other cars, along those lines.

     And lo! The 2009 Corvette was made entirely “drive by wire,” just like the Space Shuttle. You remember the Space Shuttle, don’t you? Before NASA retired that design and all its instantiations, it managed to kill fourteen astronauts. Couldn’t keep the heat-ablation tiles attached to the fuselage, but there were computers everywhere. Great design.

     Not to go too far afield….I was on my way back from Mass yesterday morning when I stopped at a local convenience store for a half-gallon of milk. You remember milk, don’t you? The perfect food! Makes ice cream possible and cold breakfast cereals scrumptious! It’s also arguably responsible for the radical reduction in infant mortality in the early decades of the Twentieth Century. Never mind about your “lactose intolerance.” Ignore the cows lowing about how we should “eat mor chikin;” they’re always cranky at this hour of the morning.

     Whoops, there I go again….To return to the main drama, I paid for my milk, got into Joy, closed the driver’s side door snugly behind me, fastened my seat belt – always fasten your seat belt before burning rubber out of a convenience store parking lot – and pressed the Start button. Nothing happened. Not even a click to indicate the engagement of the starter motor. I tried again. Same result.

     I muttered an oath, released myself from the embrace of the seat belt, and let myself out of the car. That is, I tried to let myself out of the car by pressing the button that releases the door latch. Nothing happened. I tried again, and again, and again. No dice.

     The doors are “drive by wire” too. Whatever had failed had operated just long enough to let me into the car before it crapped out. My Corvette had imprisoned me.

     No, the convertible roof wouldn’t retract. It’s as “drive by wire” as the rest of Joy. I could release the interior latch – that, at least, is a manual operation – and push the roof back about eight inches. That was all.

     A relevant digression: I hate cell phones. I absolutely loathe and despise them. But I have one: an old flip-phone my wife insists I carry. It can take and make calls and nothing else. I just about never turn it on. Who would want to communicate with me through an antediluvian device that can’t even receive a text message?

     I fished that old flip-phone out of my pocket and called my preferred mechanic. I described my plight to him and pleaded for rescue. Fortunately, he likes me. When he got there he diagnosed a complete electrical failure. But he was as defeated by the problem as I. What could he do? The hood release seemed not to function, though that later proved to be because of an error on my part. He went back to his shop for a 12-volt adapter, in the hope that by pumping current in through a convenience outlet he could get Joy’s systems to respond.

     There are many motivators in a man’s life. Some are more immediate than others. In that time and place the one that loomed largest in my priority scale was an ever more urgent need to pee.

     I became desperate. I released the roof latch, forced the convertible roof back as far as it would go, and forced myself through the opening. It was a near thing, but I made it. I clambered out onto the hood and breathed a sigh of partial relief. (Partial because the convenience store had no rest room.)

     The one remaining trick available was the “trunk bypass.” It’s possible to release Joy’s driver’s-side door latch from the trunk, if one can open the trunk. To do that, one must use the “emergency” key in the smart-fob to open the trunk, using the secret passage concealed in the license-plate indentation. Inside the trunk is a pull-tab that opens the driver’s-side door.

     Once released from durance vile I was able to crawl far enough under Joy’s dashboard to find the proper lever and open the hood. My mechanic arrived with reinforcements shortly thereafter.

     What had happened to my beloved Joy to cause it to imprison me? Why had it threatened to embed me in automotive history as the first man ever to starve to death inside his own Corvette? Quite simply, the positive-side battery cable had come loose. It seems a pair of minuscule nuts responsible for maintaining the cables’ grip on the battery terminals had been omitted at the factory. A UAW member went on break and forgot to install them when he returned, no doubt.

     Imagine the above scenario with either of two variations:

• A fixed hardtop rather than a retractable roof;
• No cell phone.

     As the title says, some innovators should be hanged. But not drop-hanged; strangle-hanged. With a rope long enough that their toes can brush the ground. In public. Complimentary lawn chairs and free refreshments to be provided to all attendees.

     And how was your Victory in Europe day?

Why I Never Went into Finance Dept.

Trend Followers Capitulate: CTAs Flip "Max Short" In The Russell.^[1]

Notes
^[1] By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 5/9/19.

Are You a Boy, Or Are You a Girl?

"With your long brown hair, you look like a girl," as the old song said.

Wonder no more - a person is the "gender" he/she/xer SAYS h/s/x is!

This is a terrible way to deal with the rare individual who is sometimes called 'intersex'.

Those calling themselves men, who are intersex, have the usual problems of any individual with non-standard plumbing. But, they pose no problems for sports competitions, as they have no advantage over most males.

That's not the case in women's sports. Some of the intersex individuals have a clear advantage. It's not just the matter of reducing their production of testosterone for competition. They benefited from the hormone long before puberty - it's what gives them broader shoulders, narrower hips, and proportionately longer legs and arms - as well as height. Add to that greater muscles, along with the supporting tendons and ligaments, larger heart/lung capacity, and you have a truly unfair advantage over natural women.

Perhaps women's sports will never be able to solve this issue to everyone's satisfaction. Many methods have been tried - see the history at the link.

This is a different issue from those men deciding that they "really" are a woman, who take hormones to produce more feminine contours and appearance. Again, they benefit from the prior testosterone-fueled body structure. To allow them to compete with women is just going to shut most women out of the field.

Even limiting competition by weight, as is common in some sports, such as wrestling or weightlifting, means that those individuals who have proportionately greater muscle mass for their size - i.e., men - will dominate.

I doubt that ANY means of clarifying this situation will ever deliver a fair solution. The only other way to deal with it is to limit women's sports to XX women, and have upper limits on testosterone levels. Have a separate competition for the trans/intersex, and call it a day. Again, this is not really fair to the intersex-by-birth, but, then, nothing will be.

Otherwise, women's sports is dead.

Coin Of The Realm

     “There is an old song which asserts that ‘the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted... and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears. Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain.”

     [Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers]

     A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only last until the citizens discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that the Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, to be followed by a dictatorship, and then a monarchy. – Alexander Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee

     It is a besetting fault of our species to denigrate, and often to discard, the insights and wisdom of those who have gone before us. We have a number of rationales for it:

• “Times have changed.”
• “We know more than they did.”
• “There’s no longer a need for that.”

     …and so on. The ultimate consequence is always the same: we dismiss what our forebears learned, often through painful experience, and go our own way…and so suffer the very same pains they suffered, sometimes at a far greater intensity.

     I have a name for one category of this madness. My tag phrase for it is “The Land of Should.”

     When I was an engineer, I often had the care and feeding of major computer systems as one of my charges. In consequence, other engineers would come to me wanting to know why this or that thing they tried had failed. In a depressing number of cases, the plaint was accompanied by the phrase “Well, it should have worked.”

     My reply came to be a rather cynical one: “Ah, so we’re back to the Land of Should, where all programs work on the first try and no one ever runs out of RAM or disk space!” The point was seldom lost on my victim. After a few years of that, most of those engineers knew better than to use the word should in my hearing.

     This “should” crap has been a feature of human thinking since the origin of our kind. It’s nearly always a route to disappointment, often brings humiliation in its train…and is nowhere so pervasive as in contemporary politics.

     I could go off on a tangent about the subjunctive mood and why it doesn’t belong in a serious discussion of public policy, but I’ll spare you. The important thing about “should” is how the political flacksters who use it absolutely and utterly avert all responsibility for the consequences when their “shoulds” turn out to be fairy tales – indeed, fairy tales with dragons’ teeth. It’s part and parcel of a pernicious concept that originated with the Benthamite Utilitarians and seems destined to be with us forever: the utterly specious notion of the common good.

     There is not one shred of objective meaning in that phrase. They who wave it at us know it full well. It’s nothing but a bludgeon, used to batter us into surrendering our rights and property. Alternative formulations such as “the greater good,” “the public good,” “social benefits,” “the rights of society,” and so forth have the same objective content: zero. They’re camouflage for some hustler’s desire to take what is yours and mine by right and dispose of it however he desires.

     I know some Gentle Readers will argue the point. They’ll talk about the “social contract” and similar phantasms free of objective content. Here’s my rejoinder: I didn't sign your “social contract.” When it was being negotiated, I didn't have a seat at the table. End of discussion.

     The Heinlein quote at the top of this tirade is the key. Nothing of value can ever be free of cost. That’s why men must be free: so each of us can decide on his own value and priority scales and negotiate with others to mutual benefit. Freedom is the Ubervalue, without which no other values can be pursued.

     I’ve been much given to writing about money and currency, and why the U.S. is in its current fiscal / financial mess. Those screeds have often focused on the nature of money itself, how it differs from a currency and why the distinction must be honored. But what’s often lost in such discussions is the most important question about money and what it makes possible: How did money come about?

     Money was an invention of what Murray Rothbard and other intelligent students of the phenomenon have called spontaneous order. Monies have always arisen through the completely decentralized processes of free persons with two common desires:

• The desire to save for the future;
• The desire to trade with others.

     Societies throughout history tried monies of various kinds, often in competition with other monies. Over time one of the possible monies would emerge as the champion, displacing the others from the marketplace – because free people preferred it.

     Stable, reliable money is an emergent phenomenon of freedom. Freedom is the Ubervalue. Freedom makes all other values possible.

     But freedom has an implacable enemy. That enemy campaigns against freedom under banners emblazoned with The Common Good, or one of its equivalents. Ask such an enemy “But what if your ‘common good’ turns out to be not so good when it gets here? Will we get a refund?” He’ll denounce you in the harshest imaginable terms. In the words of a clever friend, he’ll call you “everything but white.”

     You might be wondering what set me on this course on this fine Victory in Europe day. Mostly it’s because of my morning news sweep, which was replete with nonsense from all the usual suspects about how this or that abridgement of our rights or truncation of our incomes would conduce to “the common good.” Most of them are on the Left, of course, but don’t be deceived: the Right has its own share of “common good” hustlers. They’re just as greedy for our rights and wealth as any socialist. Their fingers are just as sticky, too; consider the seeming permanence of ethanol subsidies if you doubt this.

     There, I think that’s out of my craw for the moment. Just remember:

Freedom is the Ubervalue.
Freedom is what makes other values achievable.

     And keep your powder dry. Present trends continuing, you’re going to need it. Ask the Venezuelans.

When You Are Feeling as Though You Haven't Accomplished Enough

...This thought should cheer you up.

In all seriousness, I've been remarkably productive in the last week. I'm getting around better, have managed to work for brief periods. and am finally getting back to writing. I finished one short story, haven't gotten it put into the format for publishing yet.

I'm back to making progress on my Leftism for Beginners series. When I do complete a chapter, I'll put a link here. The individual chapters will be free downloads, for the most part. The eventual book will have its price set to a reasonable amount, and will be available on multiple platforms.

I'm feeling pretty good, so this is a good time to link to a truly disturbing post about Ebola. Raconteur Report has been updating the progression of the disease, and is - as far as I can tell - medically accurate, a rarity in the blogging world. No hype, but - grim prognosis.

RR's point about the homeless is important. The entire West Coast may, at some point, have to be quarantined from the rest of the country, if not the planet. Even after the population dies out, there may be pockets of the disease in animal vectors.

Who’s Watching You?

     We are involved here in a far reaching conspiracy to undermine our most basic beliefs and sacred institutions. Who’s behind this conspiracy? Once again ask yourself who has the most to gain. People in high places, their names would astound you! People in low places, concealing their activities beneath a cloak of poverty! People of all walks of life, left wing and right wing. Black and white. Students and scholars. A conspiracy of such ominous proportion that we will never, never know the whole story and we'll never be able to reveal all the facts! We are readying mass arrests. I am going to see that you people get every possible break. If there is any information you would like to contribute at this time, it will be held in the strictest confidence....

     [From Jules Feiffer’s play Little Murders]

     Conspiracy is currently one of the hottest words / concepts in the American lexicon. Everyone is accusing everyone else of conspiring at something. We hear of plots, counterplots, camouflage, espionage, sabotage, and intrigue of all sorts. You can hardly say “good morning” to a neighbor without seeing him pull the face that says “What did he mean by that?”

     People love this stuff. I can’t be sure why. My currently favored thesis is that it’s “devil theory” stuff. If something’s wrong – that is, if there’s something about “things” that you dislike and would prefer to be changed – the explanation that satisfies best is that some person or agency deliberately brought it about. Find the “devil” and kill him, and thereafter all will be well!

     Devil theories are most comfortable within a theological framework. They’re as unfalsifiable as any other claim about the supernatural. But when advanced as the explanation for large-scale political, sociological, or economic developments, they tend to be dubious. Moreover, they tend to make the proponent look ridiculous.

     Devil theories underpin a lot of popular fiction. A dramatic clash of good against evil is hard to bring off without a discrete enemy to carry evil’s banner. For the really big evils, you need more than one individual devil. A conspiracy is a good fit to that bill. If you’ve read Robert Ludlum’s novel The Matarese Circle, you’ll know what I mean.

     As Murray Rothbard wrote in For a New Liberty, a conspiracy theory must involve the perception of a common motive. Moreover, that motive must be strong enough to animate action. But another element is required to produce a functioning conspiracy: coordination. If those animated by the common motive don’t work together, what you have isn’t a conspiracy but a social, economic, or political trend.

     The John Birch Society, of which I was briefly a member (and of whose overall philosophy I still approve), is closely identified with conspiratorial thinking: specifically, that a great part of our troubles can be traced to one or more functioning conspiracies. This is not perfectly correct. The Society does advance the concept of the powerful or influential insider, who shares a principal motive with other insiders and who works to advance that motive through political mechanisms. However, it allows that such persons might not conspire in the classical sense. Simple commonality of motives among a significant number of powerful or influential persons might suffice, especially if those motives are venal and therefore must be shielded from popular scrutiny.

     But that’s not sexy. It can’t be made into a best-selling novel or a blockbuster movie. If you don’t have evil persons working together – preferably in secret, around a rickety table in a darkened room lit by a single guttering candle – you don’t have an identifiable agency that can be exposed and destroyed by the good guys…whoever they are, and how come nobody ever calls them a conspiracy?

     The strangely paradoxical role of contemporary digital technology deserves mention here. The Information Age, especially as enabled by the Internet and its most prominent subcategory, the World Wide Web, was supposed to be a liberating force. The more people know, runs the theory, the more effectively they can arrange to protect themselves while they pursue their individual interests. And indeed it is so…but what’s this? Has a shadowy group of Big Tech magnates conspired to control the flow of information while herding us all into a single corral? Are we being made into a nation of sheep, our every emission curated by faceless censors as we’re monitored by the ubiquitous digital “conveniences” we’ve so eagerly embraced? Sound the general alarm!

     It could be that way. There are days it seems more likely than not. But commonality of motive, without actual coordination among the Big Tech firms most commonly cited in this connection, would also suffice to explain their behavior. Not to mention that they hardly trouble to conceal with they’re doing, whether it’s to us or for us.

     What I’m saying here is that while conspiracy is a possible explanation for many developments, it’s seldom the only one, and in many cases is not the most plausible one.

     As far as popular consumption goes, that’s essentially irrelevant. People prefer conspiratorial explanations over the more depersonalized sort. It gives them hope that the evils they see can be traced to specific evildoers, who can then be eliminated, solving the problem for all time (or until the next batch of conspirators gets its engine running). They who promote conspiracy theories are aware of that. They don’t need to believe their own formulations, as long as it gets them nearer to their ultimate goals. Why, as a method for galvanizing popular support, it constitutes a clever innovation, a breakthrough in the technology of mass manipulation. I’d name names and provide dates and places, but they might take it badly.

Pearls of expression.

Comments on "Bolton Announces Carrier Strike Group Deployed In 'Message' To Iran." By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 5/5/19:

Giant Meteor:

Gulf of potemkin ..

And Curb Job's comment:

Curb Job:

John Bolton should be released from his position as National Security Advisor,

preferably from a altitude of 30 000 feet

And these guys:

Chartdawg:

This is why I just sent a 12000$ check to the IRS ? So we can police the world ? It buys like one lug nut on an F35.

Giant Meteor:

Lug nuts are important. Thank you for your service ..

Congregations: A Sunday Rumination

     The following is taken from Meditations Before Mass by the late Father Romano Guardini:

     When we say that Holy Mass is celebrated “in church,” we are including something more, the congregation. “Congregation,” not merely people. Churchgoers arriving, sitting, or kneeling in pews are not necessarily a congregation; they can be simply a roomful of more or less pious individuals. Congregation is formed only when those individuals are present not only corporally but also spiritually, when they have contacted one another in prayer and step together into the spiritual “space” around them; strictly speaking, when they have first widened and heightened that space by prayer. Then true congregation comes into being, which, along with the building that is its architectural expression, forms the vital church in which the sacred act is accomplished. All this takes place only in stillness; out of stillness grows the real sanctuary. It is important to understand this. Church buildings may be lost or destroyed; then everything depends on whether or not the faithful are capable of forming congregations that erect indestructible “churches” wherever they happen to find themselves, no matter how poor or dreary their quarters. We must learn and practice the art of constructing spiritual cathedrals.

     Father Guardini died in 1968. I don’t know exactly when his book was published; I would guess that it was during the era of the Tridentine or Latin Mass rather than the Novus Ordo Mass that has replaced it. Whatever the case, his statement above resonates with important truths, both explicit and implicit.

     Before my return to the Church I had very specific convictions about proper conduct when at Mass attendance, whether during the ritual or before it begins. To be brief, I believed it to be important that one attempt, in silence, to prepare oneself to receive the Body of Christ at the climax of the rite. These days silence is the last thing anyone should expect from a gathering of American Catholic churchgoers. There’s a considerable amount of conversation, not to say commotion, among the attendees before the opening “Please rise” and the entrance of the celebrant. I strive not to let it distract me, but with limited success.

     Another phenomenon one can observe in many a Catholic parish is the ubiquity of cliques. The clique isn’t just a high-school occurrence. It can develop wherever people gather for any purpose. Even at Mass, people cluster into enduring cliques that stoutly resist penetration by new arrivals. The pervasiveness of this behavior once caused a visiting friend to ask me if my parish had assigned seating. Ponder that.

     Compare these observations to the insights of Father Guardini.

---

     Christian worship takes many forms. The form dearest to me, the Mass, commemorates the Last Supper, at which Christ instituted the sacrament we call the Eucharist. Inasmuch as the Eucharist is His Body in the form of bread and wine – that’s what we mean by the Transubstantiation – you would think that serious Catholics would show it both inward and outward respect. Sadly, this is less often the case than it should be.

     A fair number of persons, once they’ve received a Host, march directly out of the church. They don’t kneel and commune with the Son of God, Whose flesh they have just consumed. They don’t even return to their pews for the conclusion of the ceremony. No, it’s get out of the nave, get clear of the doors, and above all get out of the parking lot before the mad rush begins. And check the cell phone for incoming texts, of course.

     I can’t see that as worshipful, especially given the gravity of the gift we receive.

     I wrote some time ago about the Christian inversion of the “food chain” that dominates temporal life. I regard its thesis as supremely important. Anyone who hopes to grasp the stunning power of Christ’s Sacrifice of Himself for our sakes could do worse than to meditate on it for a minute or two. The “gods” before God were consumers who demanded to be fed. Some of them demanded human flesh. God demonstrated His singularity by feeding us. The Old Testament tales of manna from heaven were the first manifestations of His nourishing nature; the willing sacrifice of His Son was the climax.

     This isn’t just a matter for silence and solemn prayer. It should inspire awe that eclipses any purely human experience. Why doesn’t it?

     I’ll grant that some people are armored against religious awe. They think themselves “too smart” for such things. Faith, you see, is not for hard-headed realists who can see the world as the tough and merciless son of a bitch it really is. It’s for those of us who “need an imaginary friend” to buttress us against the fear of death. But then, you’d never find their sort inside a church building.

     What about the rest of us? We who believe in the Transubstantiation? We who strive – nominally at least – to meet Jesus’s standards for salvation as He expressed them in His time on Earth? Oughtn’t we to be a tad more respectful than the attendees at an open air picnic or a sporting event? Oughtn’t we to strive to be congregants in Father Guardini’s sense, silent, still, and spiritually unified with those around us?

     It seems worth the effort to me, but it also seems that mine is a minority view.

     I shan’t belabor the point. It will stand on its own.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Plumbing the depths.

My last post, " A peroration on populism," basically expresses my growing realization that the ruling elites in the West have nothing but contempt for the people of the nations in which they reside and that pursue policies that are astoundingly contrary to the wishes and interests of those peoples. Moreover, Westerners have been slow to appreciate the danger that we are in because there's no historical analogue to which we can refer where our ancestors encountered such utter malevolence on the part of the elite.

Someone has observed that communist propaganda was not devised to convince the people that such and such a proposition was true but to humiliate people by forcing them to publicly express their belief that, say, the dictatorship of the proletariat with a leading role for the Party was a necessary temporary measure until the state would wither away.

That very same assault on Westerners' self respect and sanity is at work in every Western nation. Is America a white, European nation that once embarked on an experiment in liberty for all? Or is it a "nation of immigrants" rooted in the oppression of colored people aided and abetted by a mere piece of paper drafted by slave owners and the moneyed interests that can be shredded piecemeal with the aid of fantastical verbal gymnastics?

Can fundamental rights be found in the emanations from the penumbra of a certain clause in the Constitution? Is an exaction in aid of a vast federal health care scheme both a tax and not a tax? Do the words "health care" appear in the list of enumerated powers granted to the United States? Does the phrase "interstate commerce" signify "every activity known to man"? Is a stock pond on a farmer's land akin to the Gulf of Mexico affecting the jet stream, the coming of spring, and tornadoes three states over?

Is an Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq applicable to a possible military intervention in Venezuela 16 years later? To intervention in Myanmar? Yemen?

Does black underclass culture have anything to do with why blacks as a whole cannot get a grip on what it takes to create and maintain healthy and productive lives? Do whites achieve, build, and thrive simply because they enjoy "white privilege"? Is the XY genetic combo in fact the XX one? Should women athletes just suck it up because a Used-To-Be-A-Guy "female" athlete can beat them in any event?

Do the notions of "patriarchy" and "structural racism" adequately explain every instance of personal failure and unhappiness? Or does being a fat cow or growing up in a home with a slattern for a mother and no father have anything to do with it?

Is anal intercourse something to be legally incorporated into the most sacred of human institutions? Is cavorting on the asphalt in a jock strap with green, spiked hair an indication of the health of homosexual culture and the desirability of the homosexual agenda?

Was America deeply penetrated by communist spies and agents of influence in the last century and arae we saturated with communists even now?

Are massive deficits and crippling, astronomical debt evidence of wise political leadership? Was it a good idea to send tens of thousands of U.S. manufacturing plants to the shores of a communist dictatorship and thereby enable it to become a strategic, military threat and economic competitor to the United States? Is the presence of foreigners of any stripe whatsoever always and forever an unalloyed blessing to the historic people of the United States or are they a source of resentment, sedition, crime, dependency, and massive, leftist, electoral distortion?

You and I know what answers the corporate media (and the political elite who controls them) will supply to these questions and those answers individually and collectively make it clear – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that America will never be great again so long as we continue to sail on this ship, as we do, with the daily flood of lies and insults sloshing around our knees. Nothing is being done to return this country to anything resembling normality and there is nobody in national life with the remotest chance of effecting a course change, at least in the absence of an outpouring of rage from the bourgeoisie and the yeomanry. No answer to any of the questions I pose will reflect anything other than our fervent embrace of degradation for whites and our culture and of national suicide.

"Solid men to the front!" should be the cry on every lip. And "Remember Vicki and LaVoy!" But they aren't and our treasonous elites take pride in the fact that the giant con and fleecing are firmly in place.

This is a short take on the moral, political, and intellectual assault on the white backbone of the country. One additional point needs to be added to the foregoing list of stupidities and that is the deliberate "misunderstanding" of the economic system. Factories are off-shored, millions of low-wage third-worlders are imported to drive down wages of Americans, onerous taxes and regulations are imposed, profits are privatized but losses for the business and financial giants are socialized, competition is hampered, monopolies thrive, inflation is deliberately pursued, educations costs are driven through the roof, and the threat of "discrimination" suits guarantee that incompetents and malcontents will be hired with munificent salaries. Think Michelle Obama and her half-time bonanza at that Chicago hospital. Pinata party!

This zombified version of "an economy" is what is known to the left and legions of moronic "commentators" as "capitalism." Yes, what we have now is to real capitalism what someone on life support is to a Bolshoi ballerina. As such, this favored target of the left and ultra-left, this "capitalism," becomes an loathsome excrescence the only solution for which is "socialism." All the actual manipulation, skimming, concealment, and price suppression of our present bastard economic system are laid onto the earlier untrammeled and arguably more transparent system of free markets.

Debate may be had on how transparent or fair those earlier markets were but, hands down, they were not anything like the system of today. And millions of people prospered and built grand lives for themselves in a sane country that didn't worship foreigners, minorities, and homosexuals, live on debt, and hate its ancestors.

Chris Martenson has a most troubling article on the theft going on in our day. He discusses the exploitation of the "company store" scam that some employers used and how the correctives thereto merely led to more recondite systems to accomplish the same fleecing:

This [56% inflation since 1998] is a low-end estimate of how far food has actually advanced in price due to inflation over the past 20 years, as the CPI persistently underestimates inflation.

Turning now to the farmer, how have the prices received for their products fared over that same stretch of time? In the case of corn, not one single bit. A bushel of corn sells for the exact same (nominal!) price today as it did back in 1996[.]

* * * *

Run this scam [price suppression] long enough and one day we’ll discover that the banks and their proxy agents - private equity funds, hedge funds, endowments, and family offices, etc - own all of the productive farmland, all of the mines, all of the oil wells, all of the timberland, and every other means of primary wealth production. ^[1]

To drive the point of insider manipulation and advantage home (as if Hillary's "pay-to-play" Clinton Foundation weren't convincing enough), recall La Hillerita's phenomenal success as a commodity trader:

On October 11, 1978, the future First Lady, a neophyte investor with an annual income of $25,000, opened a commodity-futures account [in Little Rock, Arkansas] with a deposit of $1,000. Her first trade was the short sale of ten live-cattle contracts at a price of 57.55 cents a pound: a commitment to deliver in December of that year 400,000 pounds of cattle with a market value of $230,200. One day later, she bought the contracts back at a price of 56.10 cents, just 0.15 cent above the low of the day, pocketing $5,300 for a return of 530 per cent.

Mrs. Clinton continued to be a net winner at the game. By the time she closed her trading account ten months later, she had racked up $99,541 in profits, a spectacular 10,000 per cent return on her initial investment of $1,000. Either Mrs. Clinton was a better trader than the legendary George Soros, whose best-ever annual return in thirty years of trading was 122 per cent, or she was led by an invisible hand.^[2]

If I correctly recall the device used by the commodities trading firm to engineer such spectacular returns, the price at which Hillary's trade was official executed on any one day was at or near the very peak or the trough of that day's trading, whichever was the price most favorable Hillary's particular trade. An amazing feat on her part, really, which she initially ascribed (1) to her close attention to the financial pages of Wall Street Journal, published on the day after trades were made let it be said, and, when this ludicrous explanation became untenable, (2) to the abilities of her broker(s). That Hillary! A natural to be our Secretary of State or even our president. We can NOT get enough of that double-X chromosomed fireball of competence (FOC).^[3]

The whole shooting match is corrupt to the core, hopelessly distorted by (1) the banksters, (2) our corrupt corporate media, (3) our electoral system characterized by (a) persistent vote fraud on an industrial scale and (b) our sacred one-dollar-one-vote system that so ably makes clear what "our democracy" is all about. It is that democracy that we hold out to corrupt dictators as their political lode star and to Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Yemenis, Iranians, and Venezuelans, inter alia, as justification for their personal sacrifices on our behalf. Sorry about your mom!

Notes
^[1] "'Big Money Coupled With Cheap Money' Never Ends Well...." By Chris Martenson, ZeroHedge, 5/4/19.
^[2] "Herd instincts: Hillary's investment profits - ethics of Hillary Clinton's cattle futures investments." By Caroline Baum and Victor Niederhoffer, National Review, 2/20/95, reproduced at Find Articles (emphasis added).
^[3] Note too that, in fact, the brokerage firm stole the benefit of the trade allocated to Hillary and foisted it off on some schlub who took the loss or the reduced gain as the case may be, none the wiser about his or her screwing.

Humor Is Where You Make It

     At 9:00 PM yesterday, May 4, Glenn Reynolds posted:

     PARTY ON: Wildlife in British rivers test positive for cocaine, pharmaceuticals.

     At 9:30 PM yesterday, Glenn Reynolds posted:

     OPEN THREAD: Party like you’re wildlife in British rivers.

     My neighbors dislike my habit of laughing raucously at 4:30 AM. I can’t imagine why.

There Is a Case to be Made for Supporting the Outcasts

The ACLU USED to do it - support people, regardless of their politics or personal characteristics, in order to defend a principle that could later be turned on others.

Activists have targeted Mastercard, to force a vote at their annual meeting, which would set up a committee that would force the company to stop processing payments for certain individuals - who, of course, are expressing an opinion that the activists don't like.

The proposal aims to see Mastercard establish an internal “human rights committee” that would stop designated white supremacist groups and anti-Islam activists, such as Tommy Robinson, from getting access to money sent from donors using the company’s card payment services.

 Here's some of the details about SumOfUs, including who pulls the strings behind the scenes:

SumOfUs’s Executive Director and Founder, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, is a dual Australian-American citizen with online organizing on four continents and at the global level, including at Avaaz.org, GetUp.org.au, MoveOn, AccessNow, 350.org, Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection and others. She was born in Australia, and currently lives in Washington, DC.

MoveOn.org is the founder of Avaaz (along with Res Publica). MoveOn is the US version of the Australian GetUp! AccessNow is affiliated with Avaaz co-founders. AccessNow.org is endorsed and supported by Avaaz, MoveOn.org, Witness.org, Blue State Digital and GetUp!

The AccessNow International Advisory Board includes Andrew MacLaughlin, vice president of Tumblr; Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook and director of online organizing for Obama’s Presidential Campaign; Joe Rospars, new media director for Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign and founding partner of Blue State Digital; Scott Heiferman, CEO and co-founder of Meetup; and many other prominent technologically savoir-faire “leaders” in the world of social marketing.

SumOfUs is a 501c(4) non-profit incorporated in Washington, DC, with a 501c(3) fiscal sponsorship arrangement through the New Organizing Institute Education Fund (a George Soros entity).

Well, what do you know! George Soros is found behind the curtain - again!

I took ONE concrete action. I bought ONE share of stock in Mastercard - didn't bother looking to see what it's performance was, didn't care. It's not about getting a return on my investment.

It's about the right to vote. One share buys you a place at the table in the annual vote by shareholders. It also gives you information about the company that will assist in future battles - and yes, the Leftists WILL return for more. It also allows you to identify yourself as an interested party, and contact the boards of investors, including banks, insurance companies, and retirement funds - I'm getting funds from two retirement systems, and I think the board needs to know how I think on this issue.

Activists have done this before. But, this time, the stakes are MUCH higher - they are trying to build a structure in the money flow industry that could keep disfavored people - potentially ALL of us - from getting income streams through those credit processors. The Federal Government did this before - Operation Choke Point - and it was quite effective.

Here's a link to SumOfUs. BTW, they claim to represent over 15 million people - seems wildly exaggerated, doesn't it?

One of the board members, Emma Prest, is the Executive Director of DataKind UK. That organization has ties to MasterCard.

It's been suggested that MC and other processors want to institute controls over the politics of their users, and that this action is but an excuse (I didn't WANT to do it, but the shareholders FORCED me). All the more important to contact any bank or investor that you have a relationship with, to register your extreme displeasure. Letter is best, as hard copies tend to be taken more seriously. But any contact is good. Spread the word as well.

Others on the board are connected to ColorOfChange. That organization's membership figures are likely to be highly inflated, as it is online. I've checked out their Team page, and there seems to be a LOT of people working there, for a mere 1.4 million CLAIMED members. Why, it's almost as though this was a Shadow Organization, designed for several things:

• Put talented or influential people on the payroll, to keep them going until they are needed for future political action
• Create an assumed footprint, with an inflated staff, and membership numbers that are bloated beyond believability, in order to create more heft when approaching corporate leaders
• Funnel dark money through them, to the local action centers, and allow them to hide the actual source of the money

FWIW, the benefits package is unusually generous for a non-profit.