NOT SO MUCH AS A BRASS FARTHING

Well it does appear that we are now on the verge of the fiscal cliff I mentioned a time or two in the past here. According to staff at the Senate Budget Committee the interest payments on the National Debt will exceed the budget of the Department of Defense in less than 5 years. We will be paying more for nothing than we pay for defense.

I don't heap criticism on this because I hate but because the evidence is really very clear that debt spending is not sustainable. Eventually this country turns into Detroit if we don't stop the government from increasing the amount of money it borrows and also stop it from printing worthless bills that will destroy the value of existing money. Gresham's law is far more real than man-made global warming and the damage inflicted really will be man-made.

Remember this old thing:

You don't even get a bomber with that anymore. Now you get nothing. Not even a cookie.

HOW CONDESCENDING BECOMES COMMENTARY

This article by Commentary Magazine captures the essence of Barack Obama and what a truly execrable man and president he is and always has been. If for nothing else, it has some good links to some points that should resound every time Obama or his crew open their mouths about anything, but most especially when they bleat about foreign policy and international relations.

And that’s the point, isn’t it? Our relations with nation after nation – from Afghanistan and Iraq to Russia and China, from Turkey, Jordan and Pakistan to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, from Japan, Taiwan and South Korea to India and Australia, from Honduras to Brazil, from Poland and the Czech Republic to Germany, Great Britain, Canada and more – are worse now than they were when Mr. Obama was sworn in as president in 2009. I’m not asking people to measure Mr. Obama against a standard of perfection; I’m asking them to measure him against his own promises, his own speeches, his own words.

Peter Wehner is not wrong in all respects when he goes on in the next paragraph to describe Obama's inept stupidity.

 Having been president for more than five years, we can now render some reasonable and informed judgments about Mr. Obama, including this one: he is an amateur on par with Jimmy Carter. And to see the crude and brutish Putin run circles around Obama—on negotiations over nuclear weapons, on granting asylum to Edward Snowden, on convincing Obama to undercut our allies in Poland and the Czech Republic, on establishing ties with Egypt, on strengthening the murderous Syrian regime, and now invading Crimea and threatening the rest of Ukraine—is painful for any American to witness. As House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers put it, “Putin is playing chess and I think we are playing marbles, and I don’t think it’s even close.”

How is that fair to either man? Obama and his fellow travelers all love to believe that Obama is the smartest man in the world, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. How could this towering intellect be so bamboozled by a "crude and brutish Putin?" No, the answer is much plainer than that. Putin doesn't even have to be a towering genius himself to demonstrate the ease with which he masters a tortuously stupid and arrogant Obama. Putin merely has to be smart and comfortable with the idea of working for a living and living his life as President and leader of his country to make the future brighter and more glorious for his country and his countrymen.

Putin is working hard to build a better tomorrow for Russians while Obama piddles at making a darker and more ignorant tomorrow for all Americans.

THE NEW CONFEDERACY

It is to laugh.

National Public Radio reached bottom many years ago but they just cannot keep from digging. I stopped giving money to them when I saw that all they did with it was go out and buy better shovels.

IN MEMORY OF A MAN I KNEW

He was a son of the South, a gentleman, a husband, a father, a naval officer and a pilot. He lived his life and embraced eternity doing what came as natural to him as breathing. He was a writer without peer, a compassionate honest man and lived more in any day than any other man lived in a week.  

He wrote down his philosophy and since I share it, I saved it. Here it is.

Beliefs

By lex, on October 22nd, 2003

As opposed to certainties…

    My son (17) is out tonight with his girlfriend and her mom. Wonderful people, liberal as they come. I’ve talked a couple of times with the GF, who has expressed to me a concern that she might offend me if she shared her political views with me. She deems me perhaps a right-wing knuckle-dragger, much given to the taking of umbrage. I am in the military after all – what else might one expect?

     I don’t know that I really am all that conservative – I like to think of myself as being more of a libertarian, with a slight conservative bent, but unchained by the orthodoxies of either political camp. I took one of those on line tests a few months back that basically confirmed that, on a four axis chart.

     So anyway, my mind wandered on the ride home this afternoon on what format a political discussion with the GF and her mom might take. The great fear of course, is that we’ll get to talking in general terms and pretty quickly it will degenerate into a name calling session. There seems to be so little give and take these days, all of the barricades are manned and the fields in the middle are mined.

     Unlike the USENET, where calling someone a Nazi theoretically wins the argument for the other side , it’s somewhat more difficult when face to face to let something like that slide, especially with domestic tranquility at risk. So anyway, I started to mentally categorize my beliefs, for posterity :

I believe that human life is sacred.

I believe that democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all the others.

I believe that liberals are builders, and conservatives are defenders. I believe that both are important.

I believe that government’s primary functions should be to defend the borders and deliver the mail in a timely fashion. 

Everything else is pretty much discretionary, open to debate and subject to revision. People don’t really want to be governed, but they need to be. Still, I believe that government is best which governs least.

I believe freedom is more important than equality. If the only way to make things more equal is to reduce freedom, I’m not interested. Human nature being what it is, equality will have to be enforced, while freedom will have to be defended. 

I’d rather be a defender than an enforcer.

I believe that taxes are a necessary evil. The fact that they are necessary should not obscure the fact that they are evil. You work to provide for your family, and the government asks a share of the bread wrung from the sweat of your brow. Societies have responsibilities, but only because they collectively choose to. There is a social contract in effect: We do owe our less advantaged brothers and sisters the chance to pull themselves up out of the mire. But they owe it to us to take that chance.

I believe that the taxation system is fundamentally coercive: It may be your money, you may have earned it through your labor, but if you don’t pay, eventually a man with a gun will show up at your doorstep and take you away.

I believe in privacy.

I believe in charity.

I believe in virtue.

I believe that charity is a private virtue.

I believe in personal responsibility.

I believe that choices are actions, and that actions have consequences. If you didn’t pick up on this growing up, you weren’t paying attention.

I believe that a market economy offers the best opportunity to live a good life to the most number of people. If you believe differently, I’d like to see your analysis.

I believe that if I choose to work hard in high school to get to a good college, work hard at my career in pursuit of a better life for my family, and save money for my retirement, that shouldn’t make me a piggy bank to plunder for those who didn’t make those choices. If you choose to teach or “help people,” because that’s important to you, you shouldn’t be surprised if the market disfavors those choices in favor of those who actually make tangible things for other folks to buy. That’s what markets do, and ours is a market economy. You should be content instead with the non-remunerative rewards of your chosen field.

I believe that if everyone took responsibility for those people and those things that they can directly impact (family comes to mind, friends and neighbors come next), that the world would be a far better place. Think globally, act family.

I believe it’s time for another beer.

I believe in sin.

I believe that envy is a sin.

I believe some people should be ashamed.

I believe that abortion is a sin. I am not sure it should be a crime, because I know that my beliefs are based on a religious philosophy, and not everyone shares that philosophy. My philosophy does not require them to.

I believe that legislatures should legislate, executives should execute, and judiciaries should interpret.

I believe that what any of the three branches of government usurp the role of one of the others we have in some measure ceased to be that which we were justifiably proud of having been – a glorious experiment in personal liberty by self-government which is not yet demonstrably and finally a success.

I believe that Roe v. Wade was poorly found. I do not think judges should emanate into the penumbra. I find nothing in the Constitution that permits them to do so.

Notwithstanding the preceding, I believe in stare decisis.

I believe that the principal element in “the freedom of choice” should involve choosing to keep one’s knees together. Get that one right, everything else falls into place.

I believe that humanity is not a birthright, but a testable proposition. Notwithstanding my belief that human life is sacred, 

I believe that society has the right to defend itself against people who commit horrible crimes, and punish them proportionately. I believe that right includes the ultimate sanction. I believe that there are those who look like us that are not of us, who by their acts of inhumanity have proven that they are not human in that fundamental way that separates us from other mammals. I shed no tears when vicious murderers are put down, pour encourager les autres.

I believe that the DH rule spoils the game.

I believe that not all change is progress.

I believe in the law of unintended consequences.

I believe in learning from those who went before: Quo desiderat pacem, para bellum

I believe in passion.

I believe that rational analysis will always win in an argument with passionate beliefs.

I believe that wrestling with pigs is counterproductive. You just get dirty, and the pig enjoys it.

I believe that people of good will may disagree. I believe the other guy often has a point. I think he probably got there through a valid process. I don’t believe that disagreeing with him necessarily makes me a bad person. I believe that anyone who truly believes that it does is not worth arguing with. If you don’t agree, please see preceding belief.

This is the day that I set aside each year for reflection.
 

non omnis moriar

TANJ

Without further ado, a conundrum.

RACIST DEMOCRATS VOTE AGAINST OBAMA NOMINEE

I couldn't be more shocked.  Senator Reid hinted that it was time for Reeducation Camps and additional stern measures to weed out this cancer of mindless opposition to the ruling party's decrees before  heading home to feed poor Republican children to his pet crocodiles.

OUR THOUGHTFUL PRESIDENT

A presidential speech

from an articulate man.

It was this or a sideways trip to Minas Ithil and I thought I'd spare both of my readers that trip today. The man could laugh at himself and he was not afraid of anything or anyone. He surrounded himself with bright men and women and I never had the impression that even one of the people who worked for him would pull anything like what happened with the IRS or INS or tolerate an Attorney General found in contempt of Congress.

Yeah, I miss him even if he was a fiscal bad dream.

HOMER SIMPSON SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY

It seems the Vienna Convention didn't have anything to say about astronauts left behind when war breaks out on earth so our diplomats at the UN cobbled up some language they thought satisfied the requirement for rescuing and returning distressed astronauts. They call it the Agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts, the Return of Astronauts and the Return of Objects Launched into Outer Space

Joyful Russian Cosmonauts return American Astronaut after Ukraine War Starts

It's a little vague on details.

THE LIGHT THAT FAILED SHINES ANEW

Ouch.

WHAT IDIOTS DO

Honest to God, don't they ever watch the movies? When is this ever a good idea?

A 30,000-year-old giant virus has been revived from the frozen Siberian tundra, sparking concern that increased mining and oil drilling in rapidly warming northern latitudes could disturb dormant microbial life that could one day prove harmful to man.

Isn't one 30,000 year old virus enough?

POVERTY AND ICY DEATH

Think about Poverty in just simple numbers. The first number is one that was addressed by George Carlin.

In the simplest terms, half the people are stupider than the other half. Half of those are even stupider. What kind of work can people that are truly stupid find and perform that would have any chance of lifting them out of poverty? I refuse to even try to draw any comparisons. Simply imagine how much money you would be willing to pay someone that must be watched/supervised continuously while they are on the job and whether or not it makes more sense to simply higher someone smarter to do the same job without that level of supervision?

Say what you will about the military but they defend the country by demanding that applicants have a clean record and a high school diploma. Think of the millions of Americans that don't have either and never will. What kind of effective anti-poverty program is there for them?  How can a nation with universal mandatory education fail to teach all of its children to read and write? [hint. It's not the teachers fault.]

The only successful anti-poverty program that appears to exist is to have the government steal some people's money in order to give it away to other people.  How long can a nation that has made an industry out of subsidizing poverty survive?

I'd like to end with a little note about Quayle. I don't know the merits of the arguments for or against the man, but I prefer him to the man who followed him who was also rejected by the nation and decided to retaliate by making every stupid person afraid of the earth. For the money that was in it.

Must be global warming

WE ARE NOT AFRAID

Some people can be terrifyingly stupid. Why do they become Secretary of State in this country?

Secretary of State John Kerry, who will travel to Kiev Tuesday, promised harsh consequences for the Russian government if it continued its aggression in Ukraine—and hinted at the economic retalation to come.*

“There could even be, ultimately, asset freezes, visa bans. There could be certainly disruption of any of the normal trade routine. There could be business drawback on investment in the country. The ruble is already going down and feeling the impact of this,” Kerry said Sunday on Meet the Press.  “And the reason for this is because you just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests.”

Wasn't Obama going to order our Army to invade Syria unless Assad caved and let the Iranian backed terrorists and Al Quaida kill him in a gory pointless horrific way?

Could we trade Kerry for one of NASA's highly trained chimpanzees? I'm sure the least of NASA's astronauts has more smarts and international savvy then John Kerry.

We showed Japan just how serious we were about their aggression by initiating an economic war against them and stupidly persisted in the idiot belief that war by another name is not war. It took Pearl Harbor to convince some morons that war means war. Kerry wouldn't know anything about that though since he qualifies as terrifyingly stupid. He's probably hunting around right now for the reset button he saw his predecessor holding onto during her conversations with the Russians.

*My colleagues in the Newsweek neighborhood of the press business are not so smart with the proof reading. You can see all their other gaffs if you visit the link.

NATO REALIGNMENT

As we pointed out several years ago, the United States has formally adopted the same stance as its NATO partners. It's not a very wide stance and it isn't one that will find sighs of admiration from outside observers but it is the new face of American anti-imperialism.

Rejoice World. You won't see Americans do anything like this again in your lifetime.

In another 3 years we'll be just like the rest of NATO and sit down and haggle over our 'fair share' of any future military adventures. It won't be about sending brigades, it will be over whether we send one or two companies and one or two helicopters.

I trust that the rest of the world has now seen what the implications have been since the fall of the Berlin Wall for taking back the rest of Europe. Any country that was once part of the Soviet Block remains part of the Soviet Block. A fight over Ukraine was never going to happen but neither is a fight over Poland or the Baltic countries.

As the object in the White House has now proven repeatedly to the former friends and allies of the United States, our interest in what happens outside the beltway has dropped to a low not seen since this flag flew over America and we kicked muslim ass in the Barbary Wars that ended in 1815.

If you don't see your star or bar on that flag, you better arm yourself.

A SNIPPET OF THE MORNING

On desperate wings and strong,
Two bells within my breast,
I breathed again, I breathed again—
West of the Universe—
West of the skies of the West.

Into the black toward home,
And never a star in sight,
By Faith that is blind I took my way
With my two bosomed blossoms gay
Till a speck in the East was the Milky way:
Till starlit was the night.

We reached the daytime happily—
We reached the earth with glee.
In an hour, in an hour it was done!
The wings in their morning flight
Were a thousand times ten thousand times
More swift than beams of light.

--and so home again. 

TASTE THE IRON

It's not all that often one gets to see the Irony in action. Nobody says it better than spike.

HEADING FOR THE COAST

We are heading for the coast for the next few days. Have a good Polar Vortex.

ONLY YOU CAN HELP CUBA!

Socialism

makes their clothes fall off.

ON THAT LETTER

I have a raft of these. I look through them from time to time and think about how different the world back then was from the world today. In many ways nothing has changed between then and now. I think that perhaps the point of departure between civil discourse and ugly hate was more refined a hundred and fifty years ago but I could be wrong. There are whole topics today that one cannot even hint at discussing without inviting some really ugly and mean critters into the house. We decided early on that our rules here would be the rules of the mess. We eschew the ugly and the mean.

There are words most dare not even breath lest some idiot take them down to the foundry, cover them in molten metal, and then swing them most enthusiastically at one's head. It strikes me that much of the innerverse has become a series of closed tidal pools which are excessively intolerant places and where the occasional dissenters get eaten alive. I particularly noticed this in some of the book forums where there is literally no civil discourse. I accept that. It's easy to allow people to find their own ways to damnation and people these days generally take the freeway.

One would really like to believe that the preachers and practitioners of the worshipful voice were out there on the Sabbath preaching the unifying theory of togetherness, all God's creatures, we can all get along, but sadly, I know that's a lie.

I don't believe that the major moral movements that made America have completely flamed out. The flickering candles still appear at the odd little rally of hopeful types who join John Brown and his abolitionists in believing that if enough of the sovereigns in this country get together and unite, they can pass laws that will rebind this country to the moral path they believe was laid out for it at its founding. They don't realize that a judge will just toss out the law. They want to heal the world, heal the nation, heal the sick, comfort the poor, educate the illiterate, save the unborn, abolish slavery, end the war. You know, all the things that the Church used to do

These people are at the fringes of society where they are hanging on grimly so society doesn't entirely cast them out as society has been trying for just about always. Some of them are kooks. Some are idiots. Many are the worst sort of orcs and trolls. Quite a lot are saints and the kind of people you pray to come by and offer a hand when you need help. Unfortunately, many have become tainted and stained by devotion to unworthy causes, unsavory science, and addicted to every dollar you ever made in your life. Everything you have is theirs and they'll suffer to let you have only so much of yours as they see fit.

Everybody declares that the best approach is compromise but surely they don't mean that because if they did, how monstrous is that? There is dead and there is alive. There is no place that straddles life and death. How exactly would you compromise with the great evils in the world? Many people thought that Compromises and Treaties were just the thing to keep everybody happy...except the ones who saw all they had and ever would have, traded away for Peace in our Time.

This envelope still contains the letter that was mailed over a 150 years ago. It was mailed before computers and zip codes and it passed through a country fully engaged in a Civil War and yet see how it is addressed:

Every man knew his neighbor. This was addressed to a man using only the county and state for his address and it made it there without delay. Seemingly all of the letters mailed by this man's young son made it to his home. It was enough that the letter make it to the right county. Imagine getting a letter today addressed to you by name and nothing else but the county you live in. [This might be worth spending whatever it costs to mail an actual letter and finding out if it ever shows up at your door.]

I don't think our country is ripe for any kind of civil war. Nope. I think if some parts of it wanted to secede right now, many of the rest would get behind and push. In a way, I admire the folks of Great Britain. What other kind of fools would allow the Act of Union to be torn asunder by the vote of one half of the Union without counting the votes of the other members of the Union and yet turn about and deny the whole of the Union, the right to vote on staying within the Concert of Europe?  I think if I was English that I would hire me some ACORN managers to organize the turnout in support of division.

MODERN NAVIGATORS OFF THE BEATEN PATH

Our man of the Klystron Amplifier and Traveling Wave Tubes had a post up yesterday about some navigators. I couldn't quite see what he was talking about since there were a couple of guys in the way.  Anyhow, here's a couple of fine modern navigators that people don't see everyday.

The little bit on the pointy end opposite is the navigator of this little pencil of death known as the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile. The navigator was especially trained to drop bombs on the enemy at just the right spot. This navigator takes long cruises every year on seagoing ships that travel the world in mixed company. It is only good for one shot but it has lots of company and the vast majority make it to their final destination where they are frequently met by fireworks displays and great commotions.

The big fellow on the right is the navigator on a Minuteman III ballistic missile. This navigator can navigate in space and spends most of its time living in a very expensive hole in the ground under 20 feet of snow and ice. Polar bears roam the land above to keep people away. It is very lonely and under-appreciated.

LEADING TO TROUBLE CAUSES TROUBLE

:UPDATE:

The navy revealed that the smaller ship shown below momentarily fetched up on the rocks during this little protective sojourn. In terms of "providing security" it was kind of like the President's advanced security detail of Secret Service agents ending up fired for consorting with members of the opposite sex while not on duty. The Navy has inarticulately fired the ship's Commanding Officer because, "The investigation hasn’t turned up any egregious mistakes by Volpe," said Navy spokeswoman. "So far Volpe is the only person implicated."

Gads! It just makes you want to run down to the nearest recruiting station and sign up doesn't it?

----------------------------------------------

One of the articles that caught my eye this morning was from the world famous Navy Times. I admire the Times for its ability to choke on every real news story and inflate, conflate and mistake everything else.

Two navy warships have entered the Black Sea to assist the Russians with Olympic security. Here they are:

The Fleet's Flagship from an era when we had a Mediterranean Fleet

The US Mediterranean Fleet in the shape of a fine little ship which is rivaled in size by its flag

These will be a comfort to Americans in Russia should something go awry in Sochi. One is stuffed with senior officers and very little else and has no other purpose but to move officers around. The other is an escort class ship to see that little or no harm comes to the first ship. As you can see from the article, they are there to offer "security assistance." This is becoming a joke isn't it? Whenever our government or State Department speak you can feel their tongue probing your pocket, leaving a trail of slime behind and you know they are being dishonest and deceitful.

MINDS BENDING JELLO

From VDH today:

What goes through the mind of an Al Gore? Does he ever wake up and muse, “My God, I just made millions through the con of selling a broke cable network to a dictatorship in the Middle East, desperate for entry into the U.S. TV market to spread its hate-filled Islamist and anti-Semitic propaganda”?

No.

DIDN'T EVEN SLOW HIM DOWN

Joe Biden told the women of America to go out and buy a double barrel 12 gauge shotgun to protect themselves. He might have said something about it fitting neatly into a bag.

Remember the former VP? He shot a lawyer with a 12 gauge shotgun and it didn't even slow the lawyer down.

ADRIFT IN AN IDLE SEA

An interesting note from gcaptain.

The U.K. Maritime and Coast Guard Agency is warning mariners to keep a close watch for shipping containers floating in the English Channel after hundreds of boxes fell from the deck of a Maersk cargo ship last week.

Earlier this week, Maersk Line said that as many as 520 containers had been lost from the deck of the ship as she sailed through the Bay of Biscay on her way to Colombo, Sri Lanka. Maersk Line noted that that 85 percent of the containers were empty and that none of the filled containers carried hazardous materials.

85% of the shipping containers outbound from Europe to Sri Lanka were empty when they washed overboard. Trade takes many forms and there are all kinds of reasons why a country exports containers full of goods and receives back deck loads of empty containers. It doesn't take a master of the dismal science to explain how empty ships can return to overseas ports; there to load goods to take back to the people with money. Spain was once the greatest practitioner of such an arrangement; boatloads of men to the new world on ships that returned laden with nothing but gold and silver.

Spain reaped such a profit on the deal that it became the richest and most powerful country in Europe.

I'LL RAISE MY GLASS

Mark Steyn has embarked on a legal counter-attack on a rather loathsome man who had the opportunity to watch and admire Steyn as he eviscerated the muslim despoilers of truth and freedom of speech in Canada who brought suit against him there for speaking no less than the truth about islam. This noted academic unquestionably knew what he was dealing with when he decided to sue Steyn for attacking his pet political theory but went ahead anyway and filed a lawsuit against Steyn and entities that used to matter when it came time to stand up and be numbered with Truth, Justice and the American Way of life. In other words, the idiot knew he was smearing himself in BBQ sauce prior to throwing himself into a pool filled with piranha and went ahead and did it anyway.

I enjoyed watching Steyn wage a war against seventh century muslim thugs and their government enablers in Canada. Canada had sunk to such a low estate I did not think that he would prevail. I don't know how anybody with an academic bent of mind could rationalize filing a law suit against the man who prevailed in the kangaroo courts of Canada.

Glasses up,

"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all."

Journals and journalists carry libel insurance as a matter of routine. Do you suppose professors at Penn State are in the habit of carrying any kind of legal insurance to pay $10 million dollar legal judgements against them? Yeah, me neither.

FIRST OF FOOT RIGHT OF THE LINE

 BZ gentlemen. Keep up the good work.