Oikos Thoughts
Our Sin-Cosmos Demise
29/August/2010 13:30
“Nobody likes
me, everyone hates me, I guess I’ll go eat
worms!”
When I was just a wee lad, when forced to sit on my mother’s knee, because of one of my passing pouting natures, I was given the opportunity to repeat with her the above little limerick.
Until I began this article I did not know there were a number of verses in various renditions from both the United States and the United Kingdom. Nowhere have I found a reliable source for the history of this song.
A week ago Friday when I headed to Spokane for a yearly family reunion, I had Monday’s article, “The Specialization Racket” somewhat outlined. With a couple of introductory paragraphs, utilizing president Barack Obama as the world’s and history’s best political specialist, I believed I could knock it out in no time. I also had a topic for Wednesday’s Weekly Column.
As the weekend progressed nothing seemed to come together and for reasons unrelated to Wonder Springs, on Monday I needed to go to the headquarters of the Spokane Indian tribe in Wellpinit. Having not been to Wellpinit in recent memory, I decided to drive in through the back road, which crosses the Spokane River at the Little Falls Dam and then heads upland to the Spokane Reservation headquarters.
The reservation occupies a southern portion of Steven’s County bordering the Spokane River on the south, Lake Roosevelt (Columbia River) on the west, and Chamokane Creek on the east, a bastardized rendition of the name for the Tshimakain Mission that was established in 1838 on the east side of the stream. To the north the boundary seems to be a literal line in the sand to provide a buffer zone between the reservation and the upper reaches of the fertile Colville Valley. The topography of the reservation is essentially alluvial sand and gravel deposits created between the Pleistocene ice sheet and glacial Lake Columbia. What that means in a practical basis, is that the reservation is basically open Ponderosa Pine forest with vary little arable land.
After finishing my business at the tribe’s headquarters, I headed out the main highway, leaving the reservation at Ford. By then I was thoroughly depressed. My thoughts were basically, if you want to see the future of the United States under a system of government handouts and transfer payments just visit your nearest Indian reservation — but be sure to get a few miles beyond the casino, if one exists. (The Spokane Casino is located near Chewelah, along US 395 on tribal allotment land in the Colville Valley.)
The forcing of North America’s indigenous peoples, onto essentially worthless land, began about 180 years ago under the direction of president Andrew Jackson (1829 - 1837). When the Spokane Reservation was established some forty years later, you could probably eke out a living by hunting and gathering, with ample stocks of salmon from the Spokane River. Today, with no salmon, because of Grand Coulee Dam, you would quickly starve to death, without the government subsidies.
Read More...
When I was just a wee lad, when forced to sit on my mother’s knee, because of one of my passing pouting natures, I was given the opportunity to repeat with her the above little limerick.
Until I began this article I did not know there were a number of verses in various renditions from both the United States and the United Kingdom. Nowhere have I found a reliable source for the history of this song.
A week ago Friday when I headed to Spokane for a yearly family reunion, I had Monday’s article, “The Specialization Racket” somewhat outlined. With a couple of introductory paragraphs, utilizing president Barack Obama as the world’s and history’s best political specialist, I believed I could knock it out in no time. I also had a topic for Wednesday’s Weekly Column.
As the weekend progressed nothing seemed to come together and for reasons unrelated to Wonder Springs, on Monday I needed to go to the headquarters of the Spokane Indian tribe in Wellpinit. Having not been to Wellpinit in recent memory, I decided to drive in through the back road, which crosses the Spokane River at the Little Falls Dam and then heads upland to the Spokane Reservation headquarters.
The reservation occupies a southern portion of Steven’s County bordering the Spokane River on the south, Lake Roosevelt (Columbia River) on the west, and Chamokane Creek on the east, a bastardized rendition of the name for the Tshimakain Mission that was established in 1838 on the east side of the stream. To the north the boundary seems to be a literal line in the sand to provide a buffer zone between the reservation and the upper reaches of the fertile Colville Valley. The topography of the reservation is essentially alluvial sand and gravel deposits created between the Pleistocene ice sheet and glacial Lake Columbia. What that means in a practical basis, is that the reservation is basically open Ponderosa Pine forest with vary little arable land.
After finishing my business at the tribe’s headquarters, I headed out the main highway, leaving the reservation at Ford. By then I was thoroughly depressed. My thoughts were basically, if you want to see the future of the United States under a system of government handouts and transfer payments just visit your nearest Indian reservation — but be sure to get a few miles beyond the casino, if one exists. (The Spokane Casino is located near Chewelah, along US 395 on tribal allotment land in the Colville Valley.)
The forcing of North America’s indigenous peoples, onto essentially worthless land, began about 180 years ago under the direction of president Andrew Jackson (1829 - 1837). When the Spokane Reservation was established some forty years later, you could probably eke out a living by hunting and gathering, with ample stocks of salmon from the Spokane River. Today, with no salmon, because of Grand Coulee Dam, you would quickly starve to death, without the government subsidies.
Read More...
Special Report: The War Racket
16/August/2010 08:29
“Al Qaeda has won
the War on Terror!”
“But we haven’t had a successful large terrorist attack on America since 9-11.”
As they say in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, “Ya sure, you betcha! At what cost, monetarily, in regard to the lives of our troops, and the limitations of our personal freedoms?”
Putting this in a realistic perspective, it is reported that there are 100 Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, and maybe a few hundred more in Pakistan. Then there are bunches in Yemen and Somalia and scattered in other countries around the world. There are probably equal numbers in western democracies and in Islamic and developing countries. If we were to qualify only those who have both the desire and the where with all to directly attack the United States or European countries, adding in similar groups, the worldwide total of Islamic jihadis is probably less than 10,000.
So what does it cost to keep us safe from these hordes of wild extremists?
According to Wikipedia based on numbers from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, (SIPRI) the United States leads the world in military expenditures at $660 billion, followed by China at about $100 billion, France at $64 billion, the United Kingdom at $58 billion, and Russia at about $53 billion. You have to go to the SIPRI website to find out what their definition of what is a military expenditure.
One could assume from their definition that the $660 billion figure includes the wars in Iraq, and Afghanistan, but not Homeland Security and various transfer payments within and without the United States, not directly tied to the military expenditure definition. Since Wonder Springs has no way of quantifying that number we will take an educated guess of perhaps $440 billion, bringing the yearly total to a trillion bucks. That makes our War on Terror assessment equal to $10 million per really bad guy — per year.
Read More...
“But we haven’t had a successful large terrorist attack on America since 9-11.”
As they say in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, “Ya sure, you betcha! At what cost, monetarily, in regard to the lives of our troops, and the limitations of our personal freedoms?”
Putting this in a realistic perspective, it is reported that there are 100 Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, and maybe a few hundred more in Pakistan. Then there are bunches in Yemen and Somalia and scattered in other countries around the world. There are probably equal numbers in western democracies and in Islamic and developing countries. If we were to qualify only those who have both the desire and the where with all to directly attack the United States or European countries, adding in similar groups, the worldwide total of Islamic jihadis is probably less than 10,000.
So what does it cost to keep us safe from these hordes of wild extremists?
According to Wikipedia based on numbers from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, (SIPRI) the United States leads the world in military expenditures at $660 billion, followed by China at about $100 billion, France at $64 billion, the United Kingdom at $58 billion, and Russia at about $53 billion. You have to go to the SIPRI website to find out what their definition of what is a military expenditure.
One could assume from their definition that the $660 billion figure includes the wars in Iraq, and Afghanistan, but not Homeland Security and various transfer payments within and without the United States, not directly tied to the military expenditure definition. Since Wonder Springs has no way of quantifying that number we will take an educated guess of perhaps $440 billion, bringing the yearly total to a trillion bucks. That makes our War on Terror assessment equal to $10 million per really bad guy — per year.
Read More...
Special Report: Super-Bug Stupidity
09/August/2010 10:53
We
have all heard of the Super-Bugs, or drug resistant
germs, living in hospitals and other medical
facilities that have mutated or evolved to such a
point that our antibiotics are unable to control
their populations. The fizzled pandemic of swine,
or H1N1 flu was thought to be potentially a
Super-Bug virus that could devastate human
populations around the world.
There is so much to worry about in today’s world we really don’t have time to worry about these Super-Bugs germs unless we are in a medical facility where their threat is imminent. But if we broaden our perspective just a little we can use these Super-Bugs as a model, or an illustration, of what the social diseases that are infecting our world, creating the unfolding chaos we see virtually everywhere today.
Think for a moment about the American Congress as a Super-Bug. How about George W. Bush’s worldview as a Super-Bug, or Barack Obama’s Chicago political operations? If you ask their supporters without adding the complete context of what is really happening, they would probably say, “Cool we need more of that!”
Of course if everyone thinks what they believe, is far more Super-Bug than anyone else’s Super-Bug, you end up with chaos and the whole system collapses. This is the Cloward and Piven strategy that no one in the general population had heard of until Glenn Beck so kindly brought it to our attention. The real problem is however, you don’t need to be a Super-Bug to collapse the system, all you really need to do is to withhold the medicine and the epidemic will take care of itself. That is provided you have created the proper simple or monoculture environment.
The major strategic problem is not collapsing the system, but rebuilding a new economic, or human ecosystem on the ashes of the old. Super-Bugs don’t have the genetic code to pull it off. They can’t make it work in a natural world full of virtually unlimited human diversity. Of course we are not talking about true genetics, but really just environmental conditions, such as in a clean environment such as a hospital, a university, or a political body that allows this Super Bug intellectual cancer to exist in the first place.
Read More...
There is so much to worry about in today’s world we really don’t have time to worry about these Super-Bugs germs unless we are in a medical facility where their threat is imminent. But if we broaden our perspective just a little we can use these Super-Bugs as a model, or an illustration, of what the social diseases that are infecting our world, creating the unfolding chaos we see virtually everywhere today.
Think for a moment about the American Congress as a Super-Bug. How about George W. Bush’s worldview as a Super-Bug, or Barack Obama’s Chicago political operations? If you ask their supporters without adding the complete context of what is really happening, they would probably say, “Cool we need more of that!”
Of course if everyone thinks what they believe, is far more Super-Bug than anyone else’s Super-Bug, you end up with chaos and the whole system collapses. This is the Cloward and Piven strategy that no one in the general population had heard of until Glenn Beck so kindly brought it to our attention. The real problem is however, you don’t need to be a Super-Bug to collapse the system, all you really need to do is to withhold the medicine and the epidemic will take care of itself. That is provided you have created the proper simple or monoculture environment.
The major strategic problem is not collapsing the system, but rebuilding a new economic, or human ecosystem on the ashes of the old. Super-Bugs don’t have the genetic code to pull it off. They can’t make it work in a natural world full of virtually unlimited human diversity. Of course we are not talking about true genetics, but really just environmental conditions, such as in a clean environment such as a hospital, a university, or a political body that allows this Super Bug intellectual cancer to exist in the first place.
Read More...
Red Sky Morning
02/August/2010 11:00
For
some reason, early Friday morning I awoke, and
normally my first instinct is to look out the
window to see if it is still dark, then check the
clock. What I saw outside was an unusual pink glow
in the eastern sky. When I looked to the clock it
was about 5 AM. I confirmed the window view again
and decided this morning’s red sky was so intense I
needed to go outside and check it out further.
Out on the deck, to the South the sky was almost black, like it was about to rain heavily. To the North it was just and overcast gray, but that eastern red sky morning was still very intense, illuminating the summit of the mountain across the river, were the sun will eventually rise to the point where direct rays will hit my place about two and a half hours later. I stood there watching while the red slowly return to the normal predawn grayness. I decided to go back to bed.
As I lay there I began to think about the old sailor’s rhyme, “Red sky at morning — sailors take warning. Red sky at night — sailors delight.” It had been very dry and hot for the last few weeks, so I thought a little, or a lot of rain would be a relief, but I mused that natural red sky weather report may also be a reality report on our economic future.
Most of the procrastinators and the pundits have stated that the recession is over but slow economic growth seems to be with us for some time. Even FED chairman Bernanke coined a now oft repeated “unusually uncertain” term to describe this current morning. When you look towards the sky further to the South however, you hear the dark sky reports of the bad weather of a stormy future — of maybe even a double dip recession.
I guess what that all means is that all the people who make the big bucks and those who don’t, really don’t have a clue to what the future holds, and that is especially true in the unnatural world of global economics. It seems to me, if professionals, who spend their whole life trying to figure out the economy, should be able to do a better job.
Read More...
Out on the deck, to the South the sky was almost black, like it was about to rain heavily. To the North it was just and overcast gray, but that eastern red sky morning was still very intense, illuminating the summit of the mountain across the river, were the sun will eventually rise to the point where direct rays will hit my place about two and a half hours later. I stood there watching while the red slowly return to the normal predawn grayness. I decided to go back to bed.
As I lay there I began to think about the old sailor’s rhyme, “Red sky at morning — sailors take warning. Red sky at night — sailors delight.” It had been very dry and hot for the last few weeks, so I thought a little, or a lot of rain would be a relief, but I mused that natural red sky weather report may also be a reality report on our economic future.
Most of the procrastinators and the pundits have stated that the recession is over but slow economic growth seems to be with us for some time. Even FED chairman Bernanke coined a now oft repeated “unusually uncertain” term to describe this current morning. When you look towards the sky further to the South however, you hear the dark sky reports of the bad weather of a stormy future — of maybe even a double dip recession.
I guess what that all means is that all the people who make the big bucks and those who don’t, really don’t have a clue to what the future holds, and that is especially true in the unnatural world of global economics. It seems to me, if professionals, who spend their whole life trying to figure out the economy, should be able to do a better job.
Read More...
Special Report: Times That Try Men’s Souls
26/July/2010 09:20
These are the
times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and
the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink
from the service of his country; but he that stands
it now deserves the love and thanks of man and
woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered;
yet we have this consolation with us - that the
harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: It
is dearness only that gives everything its value.
Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its
goods; and it would be strange indeed if so
celestial an article as freedom should not be
highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her
tyranny, has declared that she has a right not only
to tax but "to bind us in all cases whatsoever,"
and if being bound in that manner is not slavery,
then is there not such a thing as slavery upon
earth. Even the expression is impious, for so
unlimited a power can belong only to
God. Thomas Paine –
1776
Who would have thought two short years ago that the American people would be discussing revolutions in a somewhat serious context. The two revolutions most discussed are the American Revolution of which Founding Father, Thomas Paine gave us the above quotation from his pamphlets “The Crisis Papers.” The other revolution in this country relates to the Vietnam War, the last period of critical social distress. The important reference from that era that related directly to today is, “You Don’t Need a Weatherman To Know Which Way the Wind Blows.”
Adding to the national angst is the reality of actual wars. The Iraq War is in the process of hopefully winding down to a successful nation building operation. The War in Afghanistan is quite different. Iraq was a real nation in the twentieth century definition, at least since the end of WWII. The same cannot be said for Afghanistan, which is more akin to a historic tribal region, not successfully colonized by any western culture in its history.
Under the auspices of the War on Terror and after a traditional military invasion of Iraq the United States, became involved in a counterinsurgency to root out Al Qaeda, other foreign insurgents, and quench the historic conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
In Iraq and Iran the Shia are the majority of the population. In Afghanistan the numbers are reversed and the Taliban are essentially the Sunni insurgents to which the United States and a number of NATO allies, through the escalation of the Obama Administration, are now attempting to develop a successful counterinsurgency nation-building exercise.
Read More...
Who would have thought two short years ago that the American people would be discussing revolutions in a somewhat serious context. The two revolutions most discussed are the American Revolution of which Founding Father, Thomas Paine gave us the above quotation from his pamphlets “The Crisis Papers.” The other revolution in this country relates to the Vietnam War, the last period of critical social distress. The important reference from that era that related directly to today is, “You Don’t Need a Weatherman To Know Which Way the Wind Blows.”
Adding to the national angst is the reality of actual wars. The Iraq War is in the process of hopefully winding down to a successful nation building operation. The War in Afghanistan is quite different. Iraq was a real nation in the twentieth century definition, at least since the end of WWII. The same cannot be said for Afghanistan, which is more akin to a historic tribal region, not successfully colonized by any western culture in its history.
Under the auspices of the War on Terror and after a traditional military invasion of Iraq the United States, became involved in a counterinsurgency to root out Al Qaeda, other foreign insurgents, and quench the historic conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
In Iraq and Iran the Shia are the majority of the population. In Afghanistan the numbers are reversed and the Taliban are essentially the Sunni insurgents to which the United States and a number of NATO allies, through the escalation of the Obama Administration, are now attempting to develop a successful counterinsurgency nation-building exercise.
Read More...
Natural Law and Christianity
19/July/2010 12:30
Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and
to God the things that are God’s.
Mark
12:17, Matthew 22:21, Luke 20:25 ESV
Many years ago I was a team leader of a small group from our church that went out Monday evenings to call on visitors from our Sunday service. As we parked outside a small apartment in north Seattle, I couldn’t help making a stupid remark about the name of the person we were about to visit. Even with my ignorance, the visit turned out to be quite productive and the young woman became an active member of the congregation.
She moved away a year or so later and within a few years she returned for a visit. Through the course of events I learned at the very instant I was making a spontaneous remark that could be considered flippant, inside her apartment things were quite serious. Her remarks were much more prayerful, which went something like: “God I would like to believe you are real, but I am having a very difficult time. If you don’t show me some sign of your reality, I have no reason now to live and before morning I fear I will use this gun to commit suicide.” At that time, we a small group of, in the larger context, complete fools rang her doorbell.
When I learned the true events of that evening not only was I humbled, but I realized in our lost and dying world just how thoughtless is much of what Christianity and the church says and does. Put in the broader context of recent world events, the problems of the recent Great Recession, were not caused by the greedy money grubbers on Wall Street, financial institutions, and real estate, they knew no better, they were just sinners sinning.
The real problem that caused the current mess, was that Christians, as individuals and in community as the church, played religious games, and sought political power, while the world, as it should be, crumbled. The church of Jesus Christ has one calling, to proclaim the Good News of the redemption of the world found in Jesus Christ alone. Instead of proclaiming the gospel, and being the leaders of the common community, the church has attempted to become so earthly relevant that its of no earthly good. Instead of being a restraining force of evil, to use the words of Revelation 3, the post modern church has become tepid.
As I was watching Glenn Beck one day last week, he and Stephen Broden, a church pastor from Texas were talking about this very subject, when Glenn interjected a comment about church leaders needing to protect their nonprofit status. It was just a few, off the cuff words, and the conversation moved on. Those nonprofit status words however have stuck with me since that time and are the founding principle for this message today. Read More...
Many years ago I was a team leader of a small group from our church that went out Monday evenings to call on visitors from our Sunday service. As we parked outside a small apartment in north Seattle, I couldn’t help making a stupid remark about the name of the person we were about to visit. Even with my ignorance, the visit turned out to be quite productive and the young woman became an active member of the congregation.
She moved away a year or so later and within a few years she returned for a visit. Through the course of events I learned at the very instant I was making a spontaneous remark that could be considered flippant, inside her apartment things were quite serious. Her remarks were much more prayerful, which went something like: “God I would like to believe you are real, but I am having a very difficult time. If you don’t show me some sign of your reality, I have no reason now to live and before morning I fear I will use this gun to commit suicide.” At that time, we a small group of, in the larger context, complete fools rang her doorbell.
When I learned the true events of that evening not only was I humbled, but I realized in our lost and dying world just how thoughtless is much of what Christianity and the church says and does. Put in the broader context of recent world events, the problems of the recent Great Recession, were not caused by the greedy money grubbers on Wall Street, financial institutions, and real estate, they knew no better, they were just sinners sinning.
The real problem that caused the current mess, was that Christians, as individuals and in community as the church, played religious games, and sought political power, while the world, as it should be, crumbled. The church of Jesus Christ has one calling, to proclaim the Good News of the redemption of the world found in Jesus Christ alone. Instead of proclaiming the gospel, and being the leaders of the common community, the church has attempted to become so earthly relevant that its of no earthly good. Instead of being a restraining force of evil, to use the words of Revelation 3, the post modern church has become tepid.
As I was watching Glenn Beck one day last week, he and Stephen Broden, a church pastor from Texas were talking about this very subject, when Glenn interjected a comment about church leaders needing to protect their nonprofit status. It was just a few, off the cuff words, and the conversation moved on. Those nonprofit status words however have stuck with me since that time and are the founding principle for this message today. Read More...
Change without direction
12/July/2010 08:40
One score months ago
the voters of America brought forth a new
presidential administration on this continent. The
stated goal of the election was to issue in a new
age of change we can believe in. That presupposes
either one of two alternatives. At that time number
one was, we were having change we didn’t want to
believe in, or two we didn’t want any change from
our vision of what we were told was a future of
human engineered eternal prosperity.
It seems in the intervening period that all change has accelerated rapidly and those changes are beyond anything we can believe in and furthermore most of the stupendous changes are only exacerbating previous problems.
For as long as I can remember American presidents have turned out worse than my predilections. My worries about George W. Bush was that he would be beholden to what we have recently publicly defined as crony capitalists to the default of other values of not only governance but also personal responsibility. So I voted for the guy twice, my public reason was we share the same initials, but the secret reason was I thought that both Al Gore and John Kerry were truly without hope for being effective leaders. But most liberal juice drinkers don’t like any reality with their cocktail, so voicing the truth really wasn’t worth the return of stressful noise.
So my more than worst fears of George W. Bush turned out to be true. Those fears manifested themselves in the financial meltdown which began in late 2007 and continues to this day. Essentially what we saw under the Bush administration was the continuance of debt financed consumption based upon real estate. Those inflated values are still highly leveraged over the current wealth of most of the folks, but that is another topic for another time.
So those twenty months ago, Barack Obama was elected president. I didn’t vote for the man, not because I am a racist, but I thought he lacked experience to handle the tough job of being president. I wasn’t all that keen on John McCain either, especially during the campaign where it seemed that his goal was to be the Republican nominee rather than getting elected. Perhaps during the campaign McCain was able to get a glimpse of future trouble and decided either he was not up to the task, or was aware that current American problems are beyond the pale of human leadership. That surely was not something that Barack Obama would ever discern.
Read More...
It seems in the intervening period that all change has accelerated rapidly and those changes are beyond anything we can believe in and furthermore most of the stupendous changes are only exacerbating previous problems.
For as long as I can remember American presidents have turned out worse than my predilections. My worries about George W. Bush was that he would be beholden to what we have recently publicly defined as crony capitalists to the default of other values of not only governance but also personal responsibility. So I voted for the guy twice, my public reason was we share the same initials, but the secret reason was I thought that both Al Gore and John Kerry were truly without hope for being effective leaders. But most liberal juice drinkers don’t like any reality with their cocktail, so voicing the truth really wasn’t worth the return of stressful noise.
So my more than worst fears of George W. Bush turned out to be true. Those fears manifested themselves in the financial meltdown which began in late 2007 and continues to this day. Essentially what we saw under the Bush administration was the continuance of debt financed consumption based upon real estate. Those inflated values are still highly leveraged over the current wealth of most of the folks, but that is another topic for another time.
So those twenty months ago, Barack Obama was elected president. I didn’t vote for the man, not because I am a racist, but I thought he lacked experience to handle the tough job of being president. I wasn’t all that keen on John McCain either, especially during the campaign where it seemed that his goal was to be the Republican nominee rather than getting elected. Perhaps during the campaign McCain was able to get a glimpse of future trouble and decided either he was not up to the task, or was aware that current American problems are beyond the pale of human leadership. That surely was not something that Barack Obama would ever discern.
Read More...
Freedom from My Own Bondage
04/July/2010 07:00
Two hundred and
thirty-four years ago today, the seed of the United
States of America was sown when our founders signed
the Declaration of Independence. The national
holiday still continues to be celebrated as the
concept of individual freedom.
Those who give speeches today will phrase their remarks along two philosophical paradigms. The first is, “I am free because I can do what I want.” The other is, “I am free because I am protected from the tyranny of others.” Both of those concepts are present in the Declaration of Independence, but today we have pretty much redefined those freedom concepts in terms of selfish materialism.
As a founding principle, personal freedom was defined basically as I am free to be what I was created to be and no wrongly appropriated divine right of some foreign authority has any jurisdiction on my ability to pursue that goal. Today we have dumbed-down that concept to mean I am free to what makes me feel good about myself and I should receive external rewards to help me achieve those ends.
Those rewards might be a trophy, or pay just for showing up on a somewhat regular basis, or receiving a right to something such as healthcare, a pension, or other security, simply because I did nothing or very little to deserve those rewards. In other words, I have substituted my personal divine will, into, and over the lives of others.
However there is another underlying principle within the American Declaration that was part of the founding genre that we no longer are willing to understand. The principle came from a natural or common understanding of the human condition that resurfaced during the Reformation and that principle was and understanding of the human will to sin. Martin Luther’s most famous written work is entitled, “The Bondage of the Will.”
What we are no longer willing to believe is that the greatest freedom a human being can obtain in this life is to be free from the bondage to my own selfish desires. That is the central theme of historic Christianity. Succinctly stated, that means the sinless life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the propitiatory and justifying sacrifice that absolutely provides the freedom for me to pursue the eternal personality I was created by God to be.
In the broadest concept possible, we all seek security to the maximum extent. The external imputed righteousness of Christ gives me eternal security and in the process allows me to accept temporal security in this life on a more transient basis. In other words, I don’t need to secure my own security and future, because I know the source of my security and know He directs my future.
Over the last few weeks I have heard again in various forums that the decline in American excellence began when we took the Ten Commandments and prayer out of our schools. I have a good friend that states the school decline was just the simple result of taking the Ten Commandments and true prayer out of our churches — years earlier.
What this really means is we like to blame all the problems we face today on those bad guys, the greedy, the selfish, the exploiters, the them. Who is never blamed in the American religion is the church that has become a cloister of the Pharisees. As such, not only has that been responsible for the faux creation of a political righteousness, it has also created physical divide between the enlightened Christians in contrast with the enlightened sinful heathens.
Instead of stating, “There by the grace of God, go I.” the proper response should be, “There by the grace of God alone, can I find true freedom from my personal bondage.” That is a much different and more humble message, than, “I don’t, do this and that, because I can,” but rather, “Any ability I have to do anything other than the wickedly perverse, is nothing but a gift of God’s grace.”
On this Independence Day, this Sunday, what this means is that the focus should be on the redemption and justification found in Jesus Christ alone, and not the national debt, socialism, and a whole host of good or bad things. If the focus of Christians is on Christ alone, then God will provide the power to change the culture, just as he did during the Reformation.
That Reformation time was not without turmoil, it was truly a revolution of human understanding. The same can be said of the American revolution. The result of the American revolution was freedom from the bondage of the culture to a foreign monarch, but the more profound result was the freedom of the individual to more deeply appreciate the gift of life provided to all from the God of nature, who is the same eternal personality as the God of the Bible.
So today, most people in America will celebrate the concept to be free to do what we want to do. The really blessed will be those who understand that true freedom, is to not be in bondage to your personal desires, but rather to make your life a gift to others, by God’s grace.
Those who give speeches today will phrase their remarks along two philosophical paradigms. The first is, “I am free because I can do what I want.” The other is, “I am free because I am protected from the tyranny of others.” Both of those concepts are present in the Declaration of Independence, but today we have pretty much redefined those freedom concepts in terms of selfish materialism.
As a founding principle, personal freedom was defined basically as I am free to be what I was created to be and no wrongly appropriated divine right of some foreign authority has any jurisdiction on my ability to pursue that goal. Today we have dumbed-down that concept to mean I am free to what makes me feel good about myself and I should receive external rewards to help me achieve those ends.
Those rewards might be a trophy, or pay just for showing up on a somewhat regular basis, or receiving a right to something such as healthcare, a pension, or other security, simply because I did nothing or very little to deserve those rewards. In other words, I have substituted my personal divine will, into, and over the lives of others.
However there is another underlying principle within the American Declaration that was part of the founding genre that we no longer are willing to understand. The principle came from a natural or common understanding of the human condition that resurfaced during the Reformation and that principle was and understanding of the human will to sin. Martin Luther’s most famous written work is entitled, “The Bondage of the Will.”
What we are no longer willing to believe is that the greatest freedom a human being can obtain in this life is to be free from the bondage to my own selfish desires. That is the central theme of historic Christianity. Succinctly stated, that means the sinless life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the propitiatory and justifying sacrifice that absolutely provides the freedom for me to pursue the eternal personality I was created by God to be.
In the broadest concept possible, we all seek security to the maximum extent. The external imputed righteousness of Christ gives me eternal security and in the process allows me to accept temporal security in this life on a more transient basis. In other words, I don’t need to secure my own security and future, because I know the source of my security and know He directs my future.
Over the last few weeks I have heard again in various forums that the decline in American excellence began when we took the Ten Commandments and prayer out of our schools. I have a good friend that states the school decline was just the simple result of taking the Ten Commandments and true prayer out of our churches — years earlier.
What this really means is we like to blame all the problems we face today on those bad guys, the greedy, the selfish, the exploiters, the them. Who is never blamed in the American religion is the church that has become a cloister of the Pharisees. As such, not only has that been responsible for the faux creation of a political righteousness, it has also created physical divide between the enlightened Christians in contrast with the enlightened sinful heathens.
Instead of stating, “There by the grace of God, go I.” the proper response should be, “There by the grace of God alone, can I find true freedom from my personal bondage.” That is a much different and more humble message, than, “I don’t, do this and that, because I can,” but rather, “Any ability I have to do anything other than the wickedly perverse, is nothing but a gift of God’s grace.”
On this Independence Day, this Sunday, what this means is that the focus should be on the redemption and justification found in Jesus Christ alone, and not the national debt, socialism, and a whole host of good or bad things. If the focus of Christians is on Christ alone, then God will provide the power to change the culture, just as he did during the Reformation.
That Reformation time was not without turmoil, it was truly a revolution of human understanding. The same can be said of the American revolution. The result of the American revolution was freedom from the bondage of the culture to a foreign monarch, but the more profound result was the freedom of the individual to more deeply appreciate the gift of life provided to all from the God of nature, who is the same eternal personality as the God of the Bible.
So today, most people in America will celebrate the concept to be free to do what we want to do. The really blessed will be those who understand that true freedom, is to not be in bondage to your personal desires, but rather to make your life a gift to others, by God’s grace.
In My Tent Leadership?
28/June/2010 09:00
This last week, where
unflattering remarks by the staff of Gen. Stanley
McChrystal found their way into Rolling Stone
magazine, and led to his subsequent resignation
from being the commander of forces in Afghanistan,
I have reflected upon my military service in Europe
during Vietnam. Even though I was a reluctant
volunteer, compared with the reluctant draftee, I
have always looked at that time as a tremendous
growing experience, that in many ways I see as a
Divinely controlled adventure, giving me priceless
insight into strategic world events that could have
not been gained in such a brief encounter anywhere
other than that time and place.
I read the Rolling Stone article, which is quite long and detailed for what passes for twenty-first century journalism. It sounded to me to be a relatively good assessment of a highly motivated general officer with a very tight staff. All good things, when you have a mission to bring a war action in Afghanistan to a reasonable conclusion as rapidly as possible.
My dad was not a military person, he was 4-F when asked to serve in WWII, he had a strong heart murmur, but he was a very successful school administrator. I can say he only had one absolute rule when it came to people management. That rule was, “Always support your staff, no matter whether they are right or wrong. Always support your staff and let the chips fall where they may.” It seems that Gen. Stanley McChrystal lives by the same absolute.
When I was in ROTC in college, we had the opportunity to be taught the science behind the art of military leadership. Many of the questions we were tested upon, outlined a role, mission, or objective to be obtained, and a number of different means to obtain the required results. Maybe to keep things light, somewhere in the options was the always wrong response generally following the line “give and order and say, if you need me I will be in my tent.” In the Rolling Stone article you find out quite rapidly that Gen. McChrystal was and is not a, “I will be in my tent kind of leader.”
Read More...
I read the Rolling Stone article, which is quite long and detailed for what passes for twenty-first century journalism. It sounded to me to be a relatively good assessment of a highly motivated general officer with a very tight staff. All good things, when you have a mission to bring a war action in Afghanistan to a reasonable conclusion as rapidly as possible.
My dad was not a military person, he was 4-F when asked to serve in WWII, he had a strong heart murmur, but he was a very successful school administrator. I can say he only had one absolute rule when it came to people management. That rule was, “Always support your staff, no matter whether they are right or wrong. Always support your staff and let the chips fall where they may.” It seems that Gen. Stanley McChrystal lives by the same absolute.
When I was in ROTC in college, we had the opportunity to be taught the science behind the art of military leadership. Many of the questions we were tested upon, outlined a role, mission, or objective to be obtained, and a number of different means to obtain the required results. Maybe to keep things light, somewhere in the options was the always wrong response generally following the line “give and order and say, if you need me I will be in my tent.” In the Rolling Stone article you find out quite rapidly that Gen. McChrystal was and is not a, “I will be in my tent kind of leader.”
Read More...
Chaos in American Energy; and the world suffers
21/June/2010 17:23
Liebig’s law of the minimum, states crop yields are
proportional to the amount of the most limiting
nutrient. However that is just a subclass of a more
universal natural law, in that productivity of any
entity is limited to the extent of the limiting
contributor. Broadening that into the fields of
human enterprise it could read, wealth creation is
limited by the applications of energy, financial
liquidity, and information all functioning within
the limits of natural laws.
Now plug that concept into a Vietnam era saying:
We the unwilling, led by the incompetent, to do the impossible, for the ungrateful, have struggled so long, with so little, we are now able to create anything out of nothing.
That needs to be modified in the early twenty-first century to conclude: create nothing out of everything. The limiting factor? Basically human knowledge and wisdom! Put in an enlightened Green Street context, “The blowhards that are in charge, or think they know what is happening, are so full of themselves, that they are in the process of exploding human civilization with their excreted methane gas.”
Last week as I watched President Obama’s address to the nation concerning the Gulf oil catastrophe, I ended up yelling that the television screen. Then while watching all the commentators after the President’s address I yelled even more. In that illumination I refer you to the Green Street context above!
One of the two things that I found worth repeating was Sarah Palin’s comment that, “You can’t trust oil industry information, you must verify it yourself.” Having spent the first years of my professional career embedded in the intelligence culture, that truth must become a Kantian universal law. In the Vietnam context, the industry spokesmen are relying on information provided by the unwilling, which they are incompetent to understand. Furthermore many times these unwilling don’t know the answer demanded of them, and for a multitude of reasons, they create something out of nothing.
The other speech rebuttal statement worthy of development is, “The United States doesn’t have a comprehensive energy policy even though we have been trying for over forty years.”
“Yep! The difficult we do right away, the impossible takes a little longer.”
So where do we begin?
Read More...
Now plug that concept into a Vietnam era saying:
We the unwilling, led by the incompetent, to do the impossible, for the ungrateful, have struggled so long, with so little, we are now able to create anything out of nothing.
That needs to be modified in the early twenty-first century to conclude: create nothing out of everything. The limiting factor? Basically human knowledge and wisdom! Put in an enlightened Green Street context, “The blowhards that are in charge, or think they know what is happening, are so full of themselves, that they are in the process of exploding human civilization with their excreted methane gas.”
Last week as I watched President Obama’s address to the nation concerning the Gulf oil catastrophe, I ended up yelling that the television screen. Then while watching all the commentators after the President’s address I yelled even more. In that illumination I refer you to the Green Street context above!
One of the two things that I found worth repeating was Sarah Palin’s comment that, “You can’t trust oil industry information, you must verify it yourself.” Having spent the first years of my professional career embedded in the intelligence culture, that truth must become a Kantian universal law. In the Vietnam context, the industry spokesmen are relying on information provided by the unwilling, which they are incompetent to understand. Furthermore many times these unwilling don’t know the answer demanded of them, and for a multitude of reasons, they create something out of nothing.
The other speech rebuttal statement worthy of development is, “The United States doesn’t have a comprehensive energy policy even though we have been trying for over forty years.”
“Yep! The difficult we do right away, the impossible takes a little longer.”
So where do we begin?
Read More...
The Summer of Progressive Ferment
14/June/2010 06:53
Speaker of the House
of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi was heckled
Tuesday at the America’s Futures Now conference in
Washington, DC. So the third person in line to the
Presidency, the queen of the attempted remake of
the nation into a warm fuzzy progressive utopia,
was hissed continually by what we normal folks
would believe should be her strongest supporters.
Where’s the love?
What we are beginning to see, not only with the Speaker, but also with the whole Obama team, is that their renaissance plans to transform American into the leader of a new universe of Oz, has been defeated by the natural law of inertia. All the lofty rhetoric, back room political deals, and hope in vapor, can’t do the heavy lifting. So the alternative is attempting to elevate the angst into chaos to see if any of the stress will create some composted material that may stick to the wall.
I have long stated if I had a donkey I would name her Patience, fully recognizing that patience is part of the human condition to know what we want, and we want it now. So while I can understand the impatience in the hecklers of the Speaker, I also realize that hope naturally becomes reality by persistence and hard work. Furthermore true miracles are impossible in the natural world of these Social Darwinists.
Over the last couple of months we have mentioned the present plight of the Social Darwinists and in the “The Social Darwinist Conundrum,” we explained the juxtaposed views of the religion, especially as it related to the formation of the Soviet Union. In that context we see communist collective as being the true antithesis of the views of Ayn Rand. Rand being the author of “Atlas Shrugged” and the philosophy of Objectivism, all behind the laissez faire tenure of Alan Greenspan at the Fed.
So in the struggle of worldviews within the evolving religion of the Social Darwinists, it doesn’t really seem to be that difficult to choose a winner between the academy gene pool of collectivists and the wild west greedy speculators. Show me the money will win out all the time, especially in the United States where our culture has always been tensioned, through design, between selfish self determination and the common good.
A common good defined as even a European social democracy is not part of the American subspecies of humanity. Furthermore it seems totally absurd, if not insane, to attempt a radical transformation into collectivism, when really the only true believer nations that remain are Cuba and Venezuela. Even more importantly nothing in Social Darwinism allows for the existence of God, or even gods for that matter. While I disagree with many that the United States was formed as a Christian nation, I would submit that the Founding Fathers definitely miraculously created a secular nation based upon Godly created natural law and Judeo-Christian moral values. They also further understood that that God centered reality was a necessity for the continued prosperity of the culture they created.
Read More...
What we are beginning to see, not only with the Speaker, but also with the whole Obama team, is that their renaissance plans to transform American into the leader of a new universe of Oz, has been defeated by the natural law of inertia. All the lofty rhetoric, back room political deals, and hope in vapor, can’t do the heavy lifting. So the alternative is attempting to elevate the angst into chaos to see if any of the stress will create some composted material that may stick to the wall.
I have long stated if I had a donkey I would name her Patience, fully recognizing that patience is part of the human condition to know what we want, and we want it now. So while I can understand the impatience in the hecklers of the Speaker, I also realize that hope naturally becomes reality by persistence and hard work. Furthermore true miracles are impossible in the natural world of these Social Darwinists.
Over the last couple of months we have mentioned the present plight of the Social Darwinists and in the “The Social Darwinist Conundrum,” we explained the juxtaposed views of the religion, especially as it related to the formation of the Soviet Union. In that context we see communist collective as being the true antithesis of the views of Ayn Rand. Rand being the author of “Atlas Shrugged” and the philosophy of Objectivism, all behind the laissez faire tenure of Alan Greenspan at the Fed.
So in the struggle of worldviews within the evolving religion of the Social Darwinists, it doesn’t really seem to be that difficult to choose a winner between the academy gene pool of collectivists and the wild west greedy speculators. Show me the money will win out all the time, especially in the United States where our culture has always been tensioned, through design, between selfish self determination and the common good.
A common good defined as even a European social democracy is not part of the American subspecies of humanity. Furthermore it seems totally absurd, if not insane, to attempt a radical transformation into collectivism, when really the only true believer nations that remain are Cuba and Venezuela. Even more importantly nothing in Social Darwinism allows for the existence of God, or even gods for that matter. While I disagree with many that the United States was formed as a Christian nation, I would submit that the Founding Fathers definitely miraculously created a secular nation based upon Godly created natural law and Judeo-Christian moral values. They also further understood that that God centered reality was a necessity for the continued prosperity of the culture they created.
Read More...
Special Report: Is the World Broke?
07/June/2010 07:30
Updated
07/June/2010 11:00
Late last week I tuned into the Fox Business Channel and at the bottom of the screen was the tag, “Is the world broke?” What little time I listened to the discussion, it seemed that the participants were questioning the broke concept as in bankrupt. However when you consider the concept of bankruptcy you generally link the term with being or running out of money. In a world in which nations print their own money either individually as in the case of the United States, China, and most other nations of the world, they can always print more money and devalue their currency, so broke in their literal sense is impossible.
For the Eurozone going broke makes a little more sense in the fact that certain countries may run out of Euros and other countries or financial institutions fail or refuse to give them anymore. In that sense the Euro only will continue to work, if its support is linked to the willingness of all parties to adopt a somewhat consistent approach as far as spending and taxes.
In the United States we are told that it is impossible for the states to go broke literally, as in bankrupt. Since they cannot create their own currency however, that makes for the between a rock and a hard place a reality that many states now face, but as of yet are unwilling to create the austere conditions to bring into harmony unsustainable spending and limited revenues. This means that eventually they will come to the Federal government for funding not all that different from what is now faced by Eurozone countries.
However, there is another definition of broke, that as of yet none of the world’s political leaders, business moguls, spin merchants, or any other group that claims some sort of elitist power or authority, will admit. That is the world in which they say they created, know what is going on, or hope again to set on the right path is truly broke, like broken, it no longer works.
Last December in “Humpty Dumpty in a New Century” we describe Humpty Dumpty in American terms, but now we see that good old Mr. Dumpty has returned to his continental roots as well. Just as in the American story, the refrain remains pretty much the same. “If we, all the kings horses and all the kings men, all come together and work diligently we can surely put Humpty Dumpty back together again!”
The question no one is asking today is, “Could the reason Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall in the first place, is all the kings horses and all the kings men are responsible?” If that is the case and you just replace Humpty Dumpty on a shaky wall of the world’s financial condition, even if for the short term, things might get a little better, but there are really only two alternatives for a long lasting solution.
Read More...
Late last week I tuned into the Fox Business Channel and at the bottom of the screen was the tag, “Is the world broke?” What little time I listened to the discussion, it seemed that the participants were questioning the broke concept as in bankrupt. However when you consider the concept of bankruptcy you generally link the term with being or running out of money. In a world in which nations print their own money either individually as in the case of the United States, China, and most other nations of the world, they can always print more money and devalue their currency, so broke in their literal sense is impossible.
For the Eurozone going broke makes a little more sense in the fact that certain countries may run out of Euros and other countries or financial institutions fail or refuse to give them anymore. In that sense the Euro only will continue to work, if its support is linked to the willingness of all parties to adopt a somewhat consistent approach as far as spending and taxes.
In the United States we are told that it is impossible for the states to go broke literally, as in bankrupt. Since they cannot create their own currency however, that makes for the between a rock and a hard place a reality that many states now face, but as of yet are unwilling to create the austere conditions to bring into harmony unsustainable spending and limited revenues. This means that eventually they will come to the Federal government for funding not all that different from what is now faced by Eurozone countries.
However, there is another definition of broke, that as of yet none of the world’s political leaders, business moguls, spin merchants, or any other group that claims some sort of elitist power or authority, will admit. That is the world in which they say they created, know what is going on, or hope again to set on the right path is truly broke, like broken, it no longer works.
Last December in “Humpty Dumpty in a New Century” we describe Humpty Dumpty in American terms, but now we see that good old Mr. Dumpty has returned to his continental roots as well. Just as in the American story, the refrain remains pretty much the same. “If we, all the kings horses and all the kings men, all come together and work diligently we can surely put Humpty Dumpty back together again!”
The question no one is asking today is, “Could the reason Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall in the first place, is all the kings horses and all the kings men are responsible?” If that is the case and you just replace Humpty Dumpty on a shaky wall of the world’s financial condition, even if for the short term, things might get a little better, but there are really only two alternatives for a long lasting solution.
Read More...
The Wealth Creation — Tax & Debt Redistribution Continuum
24/May/2010 09:49
Give
me that old fashioned (like last year), change we
can believe in. Last Tuesday’s primary elections
signaled, throw out all the bums, and let us choose
the less — most desirable between who is left. The
grizzly bears moved back to a very realistic
position on Wall Street. The Senate finally passed
a financial reform bill which will help the 2 Big 2
Fail, sort of, not change a whole lot and provide
bennies for some others to continue to over
leverage our worthless money supply. On Sunday we
heard from the Feds, that if BP continues to miss
the deadlines on stopping the Gulf oil spill that
they are going to take over. That will surely help,
I’m sure?
Through it all Americans continue to learn about, and demand a redux of our founding constitutional principles, but all the pundits, spinners, commentators, and politicians think this will help them, when in reality the issue really is much more complex than can be articulated in a brief media story. Furthermore even if they could, their spin is so dumbed down and politically correct, that it could be shown that they would be quickly eliminated from the TV show, and then must announce that they are not smarter than a fifth grader.
So in the finest efforts of the Texas Board of Education’s textbook curriculum revisions, let us develop some context of what is really happening.
Way back in Colonial days, the people of the revolutionary era were very religious and in the process of writing a formal constitution they did a miraculous job of creating a secular government based on Absolute Christian religious principles.
Today we live in a very secular world and what we are trying to do is to take secular principles and redux them to Absolutes that will provide security in a rapidly changing world. In simple terms, back then most were committed to their religion, and a very few were secular. Now most are very secular, and a very few are committed to religion. Read More...
Through it all Americans continue to learn about, and demand a redux of our founding constitutional principles, but all the pundits, spinners, commentators, and politicians think this will help them, when in reality the issue really is much more complex than can be articulated in a brief media story. Furthermore even if they could, their spin is so dumbed down and politically correct, that it could be shown that they would be quickly eliminated from the TV show, and then must announce that they are not smarter than a fifth grader.
So in the finest efforts of the Texas Board of Education’s textbook curriculum revisions, let us develop some context of what is really happening.
Way back in Colonial days, the people of the revolutionary era were very religious and in the process of writing a formal constitution they did a miraculous job of creating a secular government based on Absolute Christian religious principles.
Today we live in a very secular world and what we are trying to do is to take secular principles and redux them to Absolutes that will provide security in a rapidly changing world. In simple terms, back then most were committed to their religion, and a very few were secular. Now most are very secular, and a very few are committed to religion. Read More...
The World’s Moola Redux
17/May/2010 08:14
It was
only a week ago when we woke up to understand that
with a little encouragement from President Obama,
European countries had come up with a trillion
dollar plan to save the Euro and everything would
soon be back to change we can believe in. One week
later, we are wondering compared to the dollar how
far the Euro will fall, or even if the currency
will continue to exist.
Then there is all that dirty air over there, caused by that pesky volcano in Iceland. How in the world are we supposed to fly around from here to there, showing everybody how wonderful all the stuff we have created is doing, when we are thwarted by our efforts by some tiny airborne particles of abrasive rocks?
Here in the good old USA the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill continues, with no apparent understanding of how well the funny pipe thing fix installed yesterday is going to work. So in the absence of any news on that front, concern has shifted to what is happening to all the oil that is now floating around. Should we use dispersants that may cause more ecological problems than the oil itself? How far will the oil go, how fast? Can BP even continue to exist as a company in light of all the expenses and legal claims? One thing I did learn is that deep sea water is about 3 degrees Celsius, (35 Fahrenheit), and at those depths and pressures that is really a different place than what we naturally can understand, so perhaps we should cut those engineers a little slack.
Less we forget, there is no real news on what caused the near 1000 point fall in the Dow a week ago last Thursday. There was some discussion of a big trade(s) made by somebody about that time, but whoever they were, denied that they had anything to do with it. So the search goes on, but with markets being controlled by computers using models based upon past histories and triggered by various algorithms of risk, we should really have nothing to worry about. That is especially true if we are big and sophisticated enough to buy some credit default swaps, to insure our leverage, so that the white holes in the universe that spew out money will remain our back stop.
Let’s see what else caught our attention? Out of Washington, if Elena Kagan becomes the next Supreme Court Justice, this Washington state’s governor, Kristine Gregoire is favored to be the next Solicitor General. That would be a real blessing out here, for after her life as both a mediocre state Attorney General and Governor, the best we could ever hope to do is shuffle her off to that other Washington and get her out of the state, hopefully for good.
Then again maybe she could replace Eric Holder as the national Attorney General, she is wise enough to understand before you go spouting off about the Arizona Immigration Law, she would have read the 16 or 10 pages of the Arizona bill, before and after amendments. Read More...
Then there is all that dirty air over there, caused by that pesky volcano in Iceland. How in the world are we supposed to fly around from here to there, showing everybody how wonderful all the stuff we have created is doing, when we are thwarted by our efforts by some tiny airborne particles of abrasive rocks?
Here in the good old USA the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill continues, with no apparent understanding of how well the funny pipe thing fix installed yesterday is going to work. So in the absence of any news on that front, concern has shifted to what is happening to all the oil that is now floating around. Should we use dispersants that may cause more ecological problems than the oil itself? How far will the oil go, how fast? Can BP even continue to exist as a company in light of all the expenses and legal claims? One thing I did learn is that deep sea water is about 3 degrees Celsius, (35 Fahrenheit), and at those depths and pressures that is really a different place than what we naturally can understand, so perhaps we should cut those engineers a little slack.
Less we forget, there is no real news on what caused the near 1000 point fall in the Dow a week ago last Thursday. There was some discussion of a big trade(s) made by somebody about that time, but whoever they were, denied that they had anything to do with it. So the search goes on, but with markets being controlled by computers using models based upon past histories and triggered by various algorithms of risk, we should really have nothing to worry about. That is especially true if we are big and sophisticated enough to buy some credit default swaps, to insure our leverage, so that the white holes in the universe that spew out money will remain our back stop.
Let’s see what else caught our attention? Out of Washington, if Elena Kagan becomes the next Supreme Court Justice, this Washington state’s governor, Kristine Gregoire is favored to be the next Solicitor General. That would be a real blessing out here, for after her life as both a mediocre state Attorney General and Governor, the best we could ever hope to do is shuffle her off to that other Washington and get her out of the state, hopefully for good.
Then again maybe she could replace Eric Holder as the national Attorney General, she is wise enough to understand before you go spouting off about the Arizona Immigration Law, she would have read the 16 or 10 pages of the Arizona bill, before and after amendments. Read More...
America’s Moola Redux
10/May/2010 10:04
It
only took a week for Federal government officials
to determine that the 1 May terrorist attack in New
York’s Time Square was not the work of a lone
disgruntled new American citizen, but that he had
training, finances and other resources at his
disposal from Pakistan’s Taliban. So again we see
that even though America’s politically correct do
not believe that Islamic jihadis are trying to
create chaos here in the United States, it is just
those poor misguided religious people just don’t
understand how warm, caring, we infidels really
are. It is such a shame that they are too primitive
to understand our evolutionary scheme, not only for
America but the whole world.
Likewise on Sunday we learned that the Obama Administration’s homeland security and counterterrorism team has no evidence that Thursday’s near 1000 point drop of the Dow Jones was caused by any cyber attack. So from the guys that were behind the lone disgruntled bomber spin, we are to believe that they finally got something right. Just like they were busy with the Gulf oil spill, “From day one.”
It is just nine days until the world celebrates the 110th anniversary of the publishing of the prophetic book “The Wonderful Wizard of OZ.” For now it seems the Wizards of Washington and the Wizards of Wall Street want us to believe that they are not part of that fable, but for now they are not doing a very good job. So we are told to believe some computer glitch somewhere somehow was responsible for the mystery of the disappearance of roughly a trillion dollars and then a return of a good chunk of it a few minutes later. We could blame it on an act of God, but that would require a belief in a Supreme Being and since that is currently un-American we will have to leave that Godly interpretation in the hands of Islamic human caused disaster creators.
So today business is back to our usual yellow brick road to a unified kerfuffle theory and we will have to wait until we learn what really happened as America’s financial wizards try to determine what really happened last Thursday — from day one. Meanwhile over in Europe the wizards of the European Union have come up with a trillion dollar plan to stabilize the Euro as Greece continues to hemorrhage financially and physically. So that they don’t feel lonely the citizens of Great Britain have to wonder when their election results will finally lead to a new Prime Minister wizard, who will cobble together a government.
Maybe a stupendous tornado will come about and we can be all transported back to Kansas, 110 years ago!
Read More...
Likewise on Sunday we learned that the Obama Administration’s homeland security and counterterrorism team has no evidence that Thursday’s near 1000 point drop of the Dow Jones was caused by any cyber attack. So from the guys that were behind the lone disgruntled bomber spin, we are to believe that they finally got something right. Just like they were busy with the Gulf oil spill, “From day one.”
It is just nine days until the world celebrates the 110th anniversary of the publishing of the prophetic book “The Wonderful Wizard of OZ.” For now it seems the Wizards of Washington and the Wizards of Wall Street want us to believe that they are not part of that fable, but for now they are not doing a very good job. So we are told to believe some computer glitch somewhere somehow was responsible for the mystery of the disappearance of roughly a trillion dollars and then a return of a good chunk of it a few minutes later. We could blame it on an act of God, but that would require a belief in a Supreme Being and since that is currently un-American we will have to leave that Godly interpretation in the hands of Islamic human caused disaster creators.
So today business is back to our usual yellow brick road to a unified kerfuffle theory and we will have to wait until we learn what really happened as America’s financial wizards try to determine what really happened last Thursday — from day one. Meanwhile over in Europe the wizards of the European Union have come up with a trillion dollar plan to stabilize the Euro as Greece continues to hemorrhage financially and physically. So that they don’t feel lonely the citizens of Great Britain have to wonder when their election results will finally lead to a new Prime Minister wizard, who will cobble together a government.
Maybe a stupendous tornado will come about and we can be all transported back to Kansas, 110 years ago!
Read More...