Barack Obama
Nature's negative rights myths
01/September/2010 15:20 Filed in: Weekly
Column
Barack Obama has become known for his description
of the US Constitution as a bundle of negative
rights, or liberties that limit government from
doing a lot of things that he believes the
government should provide. Since those negative
liberties are designed from the federal government
down through the states, to the individual, those
negative liberties are mostly focused upon limiting
national power.
Keeping with our last post on “Our Sin-Cosmos Demise” the increasing federal power over the history of the United States can be portrayed as the slow eroding of the essentially ex nihilo informational energetics of the nation’s founding. This erosion follows the first two laws of thermodynamics. If our sin cosmos analysis is correct, over time that created stasis will reach a point that without significant increases in thermodynamic informational energetics, the whole process will collapse in a manner similar to that shown in radiation half-lives.
Whether you believe that enviable collapse by that mechanism or not, there are a couple of natural laws that provide the basis for those federal limitations of Obama’s negative liberties. Both natural laws basically find their power from the negative reality of sin, but each law focuses on different ends of our created human spectrum of inalienable rights. Both are found in the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis.
Since the highly evolved collective elite considers the Bible essentially a book of negative myths of evolutionary history, the reality of their application is beyond the paradigms of their enlightened worldview. Irreconcilable variations exist between the evolutionary millions and billions of years contrasted with a Biblical constructionist need to compress the creation account and mans’ history into thousands of years. However when you look seriously at that debate, creation historical dates are just differing applications of our two underlying natural laws.
The first sin focuses on the individual and is found in Genesis 3; generally referred to as the fall of mankind, and the beginning of the Christian concept of total depravity. Stated in specific terms this is the individual desire to be like God, to know the difference between good and evil and to be able to define our own specific works as good.
The second is found in the Tower of Babel experience and the confusion of the human language into languages. Stated in Biblical terms, which we have no problem understanding, our highest community desires is to work together so that there is really nothing that human abilities cannot accomplish. That is especially true if we are able to evolve beyond these negative myths. Read More...
Keeping with our last post on “Our Sin-Cosmos Demise” the increasing federal power over the history of the United States can be portrayed as the slow eroding of the essentially ex nihilo informational energetics of the nation’s founding. This erosion follows the first two laws of thermodynamics. If our sin cosmos analysis is correct, over time that created stasis will reach a point that without significant increases in thermodynamic informational energetics, the whole process will collapse in a manner similar to that shown in radiation half-lives.
Whether you believe that enviable collapse by that mechanism or not, there are a couple of natural laws that provide the basis for those federal limitations of Obama’s negative liberties. Both natural laws basically find their power from the negative reality of sin, but each law focuses on different ends of our created human spectrum of inalienable rights. Both are found in the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis.
Since the highly evolved collective elite considers the Bible essentially a book of negative myths of evolutionary history, the reality of their application is beyond the paradigms of their enlightened worldview. Irreconcilable variations exist between the evolutionary millions and billions of years contrasted with a Biblical constructionist need to compress the creation account and mans’ history into thousands of years. However when you look seriously at that debate, creation historical dates are just differing applications of our two underlying natural laws.
The first sin focuses on the individual and is found in Genesis 3; generally referred to as the fall of mankind, and the beginning of the Christian concept of total depravity. Stated in specific terms this is the individual desire to be like God, to know the difference between good and evil and to be able to define our own specific works as good.
The second is found in the Tower of Babel experience and the confusion of the human language into languages. Stated in Biblical terms, which we have no problem understanding, our highest community desires is to work together so that there is really nothing that human abilities cannot accomplish. That is especially true if we are able to evolve beyond these negative myths. Read More...
A Redux Independent
18/August/2010 08:10 Filed in: Weekly
Column
Things are currently happening in America, that
aren’t supposed to happen. At least that is what we
have been told for at least a generation. We have
been given the story line, if we just do our job,
make reasonable expenditures to keep the economy
moving, and pay our taxes, tomorrow will be better
than today. That reality was said to be true not
only for us, but also our children and
grandchildren.
That reality has changed, and in our gut, we believe that it will be a long time, if ever, before we will be able to accept again as truth, that desire for security. The question then forms in our minds, “Were we lied to, or were our leaders just stupid?”
For the most part, I think the truth is that most of our leaders were just as ignorant as we were. Probably because they were so immersed in the political culture, they were even more enthusiastic. Sadly they also believed that what they were doing was responsible for our successes and hence, just as we did, never really looked beyond the security of their comfort zones.
Now the tendency is to look to those from the immediate past, blame them for the present, and make some boastful predictions that the future will make us more secure. All we need to do is to have hope that this will become true. However hope and faith are not forces, but realistic beliefs in external factors that will bring about our desires. During this last generation, but always present in the human psyche, we have replaced God as that redemptive ability, with our human governance and our materialism.
Coping with these changes I am in the process of redefining a lot of things in my life, and trying to figure out how I can adapt and provide positive guidance to others. In our sound bite — talking points world, one needs to have a handle that fits. Some concise description that you can defend, both in the sound bite world, but also, if need be, as the depth of your being. The descriptive term I finally have settled on is a Redux Independent.
Read More...
That reality has changed, and in our gut, we believe that it will be a long time, if ever, before we will be able to accept again as truth, that desire for security. The question then forms in our minds, “Were we lied to, or were our leaders just stupid?”
For the most part, I think the truth is that most of our leaders were just as ignorant as we were. Probably because they were so immersed in the political culture, they were even more enthusiastic. Sadly they also believed that what they were doing was responsible for our successes and hence, just as we did, never really looked beyond the security of their comfort zones.
Now the tendency is to look to those from the immediate past, blame them for the present, and make some boastful predictions that the future will make us more secure. All we need to do is to have hope that this will become true. However hope and faith are not forces, but realistic beliefs in external factors that will bring about our desires. During this last generation, but always present in the human psyche, we have replaced God as that redemptive ability, with our human governance and our materialism.
Coping with these changes I am in the process of redefining a lot of things in my life, and trying to figure out how I can adapt and provide positive guidance to others. In our sound bite — talking points world, one needs to have a handle that fits. Some concise description that you can defend, both in the sound bite world, but also, if need be, as the depth of your being. The descriptive term I finally have settled on is a Redux Independent.
Read More...
Special Report: The War Racket
“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...
Persons with common sense need not apply
11/August/2010 10:16 Filed in: Weekly
Column
Our new Wonder
Springs Intelligence email address just
received a memo from an undisclosed source that
said that there is going to be a Top Secret shakeup
of all federal government agencies and departments.
This will include the White House and Defense
Department, as well as Congress and the Federal
Reserve. Accompanying this Top Secret document was
a draft of a help wanted advertisement that will
run later this month in leading newspapers and
other established media outlets.
Uncle Sam needs your help! As you know things are not going like we hoped here at zenith of human enlightenment, so we are going to reorganize the totality of the Federal Government to better serve the needs of the American People. In that illumination we are currently seeking the smartest and the brightest from across the nation to help us create this positive change. Accepted applicants must demonstrate that the potential hireling be a team player with unquestioning loyalty to failed ideas of the progressive era. Formal education from the top universities is required, as well as extensive professorial experience at the same — a definite plus. Those hired will not have any tangible human leadership skills, but possess oratory skills to pontificate about things they know nothing about ad infinitum-nauseam. Special Note: Those persons with possessing something once called common sense — need not apply. Except for that Your United States Government is an equal opportunity employer.
Hallelujah! Soon, very soon we are going to change the country and the world. Now there will be those detractors out there that say this employment opportunity will not exist once the Republicans take back both the house and the senate in the November midterm elections. However our anonymous Top Secret source has indicated that this employment advertisement passed muster with the Republican Party establishment, which signifies the whole of the nation’s political class are on board with this extensive governmental restructuring.
Of course the management here at Wonder Springs is concerned that nothing at all will change due to this restructuring of the status quo, we question if fact this restructuring is nothing but a form of a noise generating attempt to keep the American people in their current mushroom status. (Maintain the people in the dark and feed them horse manure.)
Thankfully for over a year now we have heard the president say that we are “back from the brink” economically. So the major question that no one seems to be asking, “Are we still just peering into the chasm or have we changed directions and headed what looks to be a endless barren plateau?”
Read More...
Uncle Sam needs your help! As you know things are not going like we hoped here at zenith of human enlightenment, so we are going to reorganize the totality of the Federal Government to better serve the needs of the American People. In that illumination we are currently seeking the smartest and the brightest from across the nation to help us create this positive change. Accepted applicants must demonstrate that the potential hireling be a team player with unquestioning loyalty to failed ideas of the progressive era. Formal education from the top universities is required, as well as extensive professorial experience at the same — a definite plus. Those hired will not have any tangible human leadership skills, but possess oratory skills to pontificate about things they know nothing about ad infinitum-nauseam. Special Note: Those persons with possessing something once called common sense — need not apply. Except for that Your United States Government is an equal opportunity employer.
Hallelujah! Soon, very soon we are going to change the country and the world. Now there will be those detractors out there that say this employment opportunity will not exist once the Republicans take back both the house and the senate in the November midterm elections. However our anonymous Top Secret source has indicated that this employment advertisement passed muster with the Republican Party establishment, which signifies the whole of the nation’s political class are on board with this extensive governmental restructuring.
Of course the management here at Wonder Springs is concerned that nothing at all will change due to this restructuring of the status quo, we question if fact this restructuring is nothing but a form of a noise generating attempt to keep the American people in their current mushroom status. (Maintain the people in the dark and feed them horse manure.)
Thankfully for over a year now we have heard the president say that we are “back from the brink” economically. So the major question that no one seems to be asking, “Are we still just peering into the chasm or have we changed directions and headed what looks to be a endless barren plateau?”
Read More...
Special Report: Super-Bug Stupidity
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...
The jobless times that vex the jobless soul
28/July/2010 09:14 Filed in: Weekly
Column
Welcome to jobless times that vex the jobless soul.
Welcome to the new decade of the early twenty-first century, where the future is based on hope. The hope that Christmas past will again invigorate Christmas present, or the hope that Christmas future cannot come too soon. Hope, hope everywhere and none of it changes reality, for we have no concept of reality, other than the future hopefully repeats or improves upon the past.
Japan has had a lost decade for the last couple, because their economy has developed permanent stagnation. So the country that just some twenty to thirty years ago was the business model for the world, now is just another economic player in a global community of lethargic materialism.
Europe for its part has done better than Japan, but it is sort of a unified Europe after all. But in the context of world economics, it seems that the proper concept is “Been there, done that, and got the shirt.” They seem however beginning to realize that loving one another, while better than war, still doesn’t necessarily make for a happy family.
Here in the United States we have recently made hope our God. Well if not really a god, hope in change seems to be a figment of perverse imagination, really creates nothing but more regulations, present deficits, and a future of higher taxes, coupled with either deflation or inflation.
The past is where we feel the most comfortable, so if we all hope together that past-future will evolve right before our eyes. Can I get a witness?
Read More...
Welcome to the new decade of the early twenty-first century, where the future is based on hope. The hope that Christmas past will again invigorate Christmas present, or the hope that Christmas future cannot come too soon. Hope, hope everywhere and none of it changes reality, for we have no concept of reality, other than the future hopefully repeats or improves upon the past.
Japan has had a lost decade for the last couple, because their economy has developed permanent stagnation. So the country that just some twenty to thirty years ago was the business model for the world, now is just another economic player in a global community of lethargic materialism.
Europe for its part has done better than Japan, but it is sort of a unified Europe after all. But in the context of world economics, it seems that the proper concept is “Been there, done that, and got the shirt.” They seem however beginning to realize that loving one another, while better than war, still doesn’t necessarily make for a happy family.
Here in the United States we have recently made hope our God. Well if not really a god, hope in change seems to be a figment of perverse imagination, really creates nothing but more regulations, present deficits, and a future of higher taxes, coupled with either deflation or inflation.
The past is where we feel the most comfortable, so if we all hope together that past-future will evolve right before our eyes. Can I get a witness?
Read More...
Change without direction
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...
Redux Rendezvous VI
30/June/2010 10:13 Filed in: Weekly
Column
When I completed Monday’s article
“In My Tent Leadership” on Gen. McChrystal
and the war in Afghanistan, I couldn’t help
thinking that to do this thing right we could have
the makings of a 30 year war, in a country that no
one thinks it truly is worth the bother. To my
surprise when I opened my emails Tuesday morning I
was hit with the headline
“The 30 Year War in Afghanistan.” As I read
the article from Stratfor, I began to understand
that their analysis believed that our war in
Afghanistan began in 1980, when we offered support
to the mujahideen to block Soviet advances. With
President Obama’s decision to escalate American
involvement when he took office, the war entered
Phase 4. It is now Obama’s war. This opens the
question will this be Obama’s Vietnam?
Over the weekend reports say that the Canadians spent a billion dollars to protect the G20 leaders from anarchists riots in Toronto, where 900 people were arrested. Maybe Afghanistan is not such a bad investment in that context.
In a developing story ten deep cover Russian spies were arrested in America just like in the good old days of the Cold War. We could go on, but rather than focus on war as and end, perhaps a better description of war is an attempt to control chaos. Chaos however begets chaos, and in the common sense definition of what is happening in the world, the change we were told we could believe in, is really chaos seemingly feeding upon itself.
Since the end of the Korean Conflict, for the United States our wars have been defined in terms of either insurgencies or counterinsurgencies. In Vietnam we were engaged in a counterinsurgency with the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese. In the Gulf War we fought a traditional war, and abandoned the war efforts before either term really applied. With the true Iraq War a similar result was quickly obtained, but pacifying the country quickly became counterinsurgency, against indigenous militias, foreign mercenaries, Al-Qaeda, Iran, and others.
It seems that the Iraq counterinsurgency is finally working, but many problems still remain. Afghanistan is still a very open and troubling question. Historically, the only truly decisive counterinsurgency victory was the British success in then Burma, where Black ops personnel basically hunted down the communist bad guys and killed them. Half a century later Burma is now Myanmar, one of the most oppressive communist régimes in history.
Our Redux Rendezvous emphasis today however, is not to promote or even describe warfare, but rather to focus upon major current worldviews that seem to be either insurgencies or counterinsurgencies in a world in which we all hope will return to order, rather than deepening chaos. In the broader picture this is currently not so much a guns and bullets war, but rather an economic war, or wars.
Read More...
Over the weekend reports say that the Canadians spent a billion dollars to protect the G20 leaders from anarchists riots in Toronto, where 900 people were arrested. Maybe Afghanistan is not such a bad investment in that context.
In a developing story ten deep cover Russian spies were arrested in America just like in the good old days of the Cold War. We could go on, but rather than focus on war as and end, perhaps a better description of war is an attempt to control chaos. Chaos however begets chaos, and in the common sense definition of what is happening in the world, the change we were told we could believe in, is really chaos seemingly feeding upon itself.
Since the end of the Korean Conflict, for the United States our wars have been defined in terms of either insurgencies or counterinsurgencies. In Vietnam we were engaged in a counterinsurgency with the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese. In the Gulf War we fought a traditional war, and abandoned the war efforts before either term really applied. With the true Iraq War a similar result was quickly obtained, but pacifying the country quickly became counterinsurgency, against indigenous militias, foreign mercenaries, Al-Qaeda, Iran, and others.
It seems that the Iraq counterinsurgency is finally working, but many problems still remain. Afghanistan is still a very open and troubling question. Historically, the only truly decisive counterinsurgency victory was the British success in then Burma, where Black ops personnel basically hunted down the communist bad guys and killed them. Half a century later Burma is now Myanmar, one of the most oppressive communist régimes in history.
Our Redux Rendezvous emphasis today however, is not to promote or even describe warfare, but rather to focus upon major current worldviews that seem to be either insurgencies or counterinsurgencies in a world in which we all hope will return to order, rather than deepening chaos. In the broader picture this is currently not so much a guns and bullets war, but rather an economic war, or wars.
Read More...
Redux Rendezvous V
23/June/2010 17:32 Filed in: Weekly
Column
In Monday’s
“The Chaos of American Energy” we used a
Vietnam era construction that said: 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.
Sticking with the Vietnam motif today we use another term from those bygone days that pretty much describes what is happening to the Obama Administration. That historic expression is Buzzard Luck, Can’t kill nothing, nothing will die. Perhaps a more contemporary definition brings fuller meaning. Everything that happens turns into a disaster.
My personal take on the subject is that there is no such thing as luck, even Buzzard Luck, and everything happens for a reason, including disasters. Since there is no such thing as a previous state of existence, karma does not apply either.
However before noon Pacific time, a soon to be published article in Rolling Stone in which Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal made comments that were not all that flattering to the President, his staff, and related support in theater. As a consequence the general is being summoned to Washington to explain his actions today and maybe get the opportunity to retire early.
Then a federal judge in New Orleans blocked the President’s off shore drilling moratorium. U. S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman stated that the moratorium was arbitrarily imposed because continued drilling posed no imminent danger. Arbitrary and capricious two wonderful legal terms which are almost impossible to prove the negative. Outstanding!
Who would have believed that just eighteen months into his Administration it seems like the Obama team continues to shoot itself in the foot. It kind of makes you nostalgic for the good old days of George W. Bush and even perhaps Bill Clinton. But alas, that is just ancient history.
We should however ask ourselves the question, “Is all this Obama’s fault, or is he just the man who volunteered to be the messenger?
Read More...
Sticking with the Vietnam motif today we use another term from those bygone days that pretty much describes what is happening to the Obama Administration. That historic expression is Buzzard Luck, Can’t kill nothing, nothing will die. Perhaps a more contemporary definition brings fuller meaning. Everything that happens turns into a disaster.
My personal take on the subject is that there is no such thing as luck, even Buzzard Luck, and everything happens for a reason, including disasters. Since there is no such thing as a previous state of existence, karma does not apply either.
However before noon Pacific time, a soon to be published article in Rolling Stone in which Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal made comments that were not all that flattering to the President, his staff, and related support in theater. As a consequence the general is being summoned to Washington to explain his actions today and maybe get the opportunity to retire early.
Then a federal judge in New Orleans blocked the President’s off shore drilling moratorium. U. S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman stated that the moratorium was arbitrarily imposed because continued drilling posed no imminent danger. Arbitrary and capricious two wonderful legal terms which are almost impossible to prove the negative. Outstanding!
Who would have believed that just eighteen months into his Administration it seems like the Obama team continues to shoot itself in the foot. It kind of makes you nostalgic for the good old days of George W. Bush and even perhaps Bill Clinton. But alas, that is just ancient history.
We should however ask ourselves the question, “Is all this Obama’s fault, or is he just the man who volunteered to be the messenger?
Read More...
Chaos in American Energy; and the world suffers
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...
Redux Rendezvous IV
16/June/2010 05:00 Filed in: Weekly
Column
A few years ago while looking for a place to
develop The Creation Leadership Center, my travels
took me to the small hamlet of Loomis, Washington.
Loomis sits in a long riff valley next to the
eastern slope of the Cascade Mountains and west of
the Okanogan River. Today the place consists of a
general store, a few houses, a small church, and at
the time of my visit a second hand store. In the
back room of that store in the used book section I
found a small saddle stitched booklet that caught
my eye. The title of the pamphlet was: “A
comparison of two primitive apples from two
continents” authored by one Vladimir Sekerfreevich.
From the description of the author on the back cover I found out that Dr. Sekerfreevich was a professional botanist and geneticist from the Soviet Union, who had defected in 1929 and purchased a small orchard on the shores of Palmer Lake a few miles north of Loomis. At the time Palmer Lake was one of the area’s prime orchard areas, but today being off the beaten track from the Okanogan Valley its contribution is diminished.
According to the owner of the thrift store, Sekerfreevich was essentially a hermit, who lost is family somehow related to a Stalin purge, but still was well liked in the community and help generously the other orchardists improve their orchards. So I gave the thrift store owner a dollar and purchased the booklet, probably the only one still in existence, took it home and promptly put it away, only to discover it recently while looking for something else.
In his little book Sekerfreevich said that when coming to America he was able to bring a small tin of apple seeds from the research center where he worked in central Russia. When he purchased his orchard he planted the seeds and grew them to the point where they began to produce fruit. Because of the difference in climate some of the seeds didn’t produce any fruit, but one particular tree looked very promising, so he grafted it to other rootstocks and rooted some of the canes. As a play on words he called the apples by the common name Russian Red.
Searching an expanded area around his home, on an abandoned homestead up in the Similkameen Valley near the Canadian border, he found a very unusual apple seedling quite different than any he knew back in Russia, or those that grew from his imported seeds, or any that grew in the commercial orchards in the Okanogan Valley. Like what he did with his Russian seeds, Dr. Sekerfreevich, grafted and rooted canes from this variety, defining the variety as Liberty Bell. Read More...
From the description of the author on the back cover I found out that Dr. Sekerfreevich was a professional botanist and geneticist from the Soviet Union, who had defected in 1929 and purchased a small orchard on the shores of Palmer Lake a few miles north of Loomis. At the time Palmer Lake was one of the area’s prime orchard areas, but today being off the beaten track from the Okanogan Valley its contribution is diminished.
According to the owner of the thrift store, Sekerfreevich was essentially a hermit, who lost is family somehow related to a Stalin purge, but still was well liked in the community and help generously the other orchardists improve their orchards. So I gave the thrift store owner a dollar and purchased the booklet, probably the only one still in existence, took it home and promptly put it away, only to discover it recently while looking for something else.
In his little book Sekerfreevich said that when coming to America he was able to bring a small tin of apple seeds from the research center where he worked in central Russia. When he purchased his orchard he planted the seeds and grew them to the point where they began to produce fruit. Because of the difference in climate some of the seeds didn’t produce any fruit, but one particular tree looked very promising, so he grafted it to other rootstocks and rooted some of the canes. As a play on words he called the apples by the common name Russian Red.
Searching an expanded area around his home, on an abandoned homestead up in the Similkameen Valley near the Canadian border, he found a very unusual apple seedling quite different than any he knew back in Russia, or those that grew from his imported seeds, or any that grew in the commercial orchards in the Okanogan Valley. Like what he did with his Russian seeds, Dr. Sekerfreevich, grafted and rooted canes from this variety, defining the variety as Liberty Bell. Read More...
Redux Rendezvous II
02/June/2010 14:25 Filed in: Weekly
Column
Negative metaphors, metaphors everywhere, and all
of them seem to work. Into such a simplistic
worldly description, we continue treading water
this week. Just like where do we begin?
News that the United States is about to become a model of a failing European state are grossly optimistic or pessimistic, depending upon your point of view. The reason behind all of this hoopla is simply the fact that the vast majority of the American people are unwilling to play the game. The importance of this gaming the people punditry is being broadcast into our homes and offices by those needing to sell ideas, but also products deemed to make the world better.
If you seriously look beyond the hype and hyperbole however, you see that life goes on. Furthermore a realistic look at the present vibrantly illustrates, that in a realistic context the present isn’t all that bad, and generally Americans may not control the future, but they still have a faith in the God who does. In that context, the plans by the mice who say they know what they are doing in that land back where the sun rises, doesn’t seem to relate to the men and women who daily go about their lives out here in the hinterland.
So in that context of American development, we all have truly become a nation of Native Americans, some of them we call Indians, in that respect the Canadian term First Nations, seems more appropriate, but only on the surface of the current progressive spin. A deeper look shows that the old concept of unity in diversity, or “Out of Many, One,” is still very appropriate. The reality is if the immigrants to these United States had wanted to be and remain Europeans, or Asians, Latin Americans, or even Africans, they could have stayed where they were, even if they died trying, or returned later.
The continents we call the Americas were the last place that people settled and we are all immigrants to these shores, with the time frame measured in thousands of years at most, no matter how you spin the origin.
On Memorial Day I had the opportunity that I had wanted to do for a very long time, that was to attend the service at a church in Sherman, about seven miles northeast of the town a Wilbur (population 914 in 2000). Sherman today consists of a small church, built in 1888, an old grange hall, now converted into a storage shed, one singlewide manufactured home, a couple of other farms within line of site, and a cemetery.
Read More...
News that the United States is about to become a model of a failing European state are grossly optimistic or pessimistic, depending upon your point of view. The reason behind all of this hoopla is simply the fact that the vast majority of the American people are unwilling to play the game. The importance of this gaming the people punditry is being broadcast into our homes and offices by those needing to sell ideas, but also products deemed to make the world better.
If you seriously look beyond the hype and hyperbole however, you see that life goes on. Furthermore a realistic look at the present vibrantly illustrates, that in a realistic context the present isn’t all that bad, and generally Americans may not control the future, but they still have a faith in the God who does. In that context, the plans by the mice who say they know what they are doing in that land back where the sun rises, doesn’t seem to relate to the men and women who daily go about their lives out here in the hinterland.
So in that context of American development, we all have truly become a nation of Native Americans, some of them we call Indians, in that respect the Canadian term First Nations, seems more appropriate, but only on the surface of the current progressive spin. A deeper look shows that the old concept of unity in diversity, or “Out of Many, One,” is still very appropriate. The reality is if the immigrants to these United States had wanted to be and remain Europeans, or Asians, Latin Americans, or even Africans, they could have stayed where they were, even if they died trying, or returned later.
The continents we call the Americas were the last place that people settled and we are all immigrants to these shores, with the time frame measured in thousands of years at most, no matter how you spin the origin.
On Memorial Day I had the opportunity that I had wanted to do for a very long time, that was to attend the service at a church in Sherman, about seven miles northeast of the town a Wilbur (population 914 in 2000). Sherman today consists of a small church, built in 1888, an old grange hall, now converted into a storage shed, one singlewide manufactured home, a couple of other farms within line of site, and a cemetery.
Read More...
Redux Rendezvous I
26/May/2010 08:00 Filed in: Weekly
Column
In Monday’s,
“The Wealth Creation — Tax & Debt
Redistribution Continuum” we offered the
thesis that wealth creation was an inalienable
right given to humanity by the Creator. We, who
have been blessed to be immigrant citizens to these
shores, also have the benefit of a codified
structure for national development, outlined in the
Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.
For a broader context we also posted this article
under the blog tabs at Deep Woods
Moola and The Creation
Leadership Center.
As a founding right, given to us by God, wealth creation belongs to the individual in the literal sense. We proposed that not only was wealth creation an inalienable right it is also a fundamental right of all Americans. Upon further reflection, it is not really a stretch at all to state that the wealth creation right, is essentially the Absolute inalienable fundamental right of all Americans, for the concepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness all flow through this highest of all birthrights.
We further proposed that new wealth is basically an ex nihilo creation in the mind of an individual that combines the energetics of faith with the information of the enterprise to form a wealth seed. Through the introduction of equity liquidity, meaning a total commitment, not just debt involvement, this seed can sprout and become a viable product, service, profession, or vocation.
Taxes and debt can serve as means to grow the germinated seed, either directly or indirectly, but contrary to what has been promoted through a half century of a diseased American Federalism, debt and taxes can only redistribute present and future wealth through money, they cannot create fundamental new wealth.
This wealth creation reality is part of the general revelation of God in nature; hence its status as the Absolute inalienable right, but it is also part of the specific revelation the Bible. Monday we used the Apostle Paul’s constructs of Faith, Hope, and Charity, found in 1 Corinthians 13. In the legal definition of a corporation, since it is a creation of man’s laws, it does not live outside of the legal code; therefore it has no real life, no soul, or true creative ability, except what is given it, through legal precedent. Only a real person in the natural sense, can plant the wealth seed in faith, hoping for a growing wealth producing plant, relying only on charity of others should the opportunity fail.
Read More...
As a founding right, given to us by God, wealth creation belongs to the individual in the literal sense. We proposed that not only was wealth creation an inalienable right it is also a fundamental right of all Americans. Upon further reflection, it is not really a stretch at all to state that the wealth creation right, is essentially the Absolute inalienable fundamental right of all Americans, for the concepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness all flow through this highest of all birthrights.
We further proposed that new wealth is basically an ex nihilo creation in the mind of an individual that combines the energetics of faith with the information of the enterprise to form a wealth seed. Through the introduction of equity liquidity, meaning a total commitment, not just debt involvement, this seed can sprout and become a viable product, service, profession, or vocation.
Taxes and debt can serve as means to grow the germinated seed, either directly or indirectly, but contrary to what has been promoted through a half century of a diseased American Federalism, debt and taxes can only redistribute present and future wealth through money, they cannot create fundamental new wealth.
This wealth creation reality is part of the general revelation of God in nature; hence its status as the Absolute inalienable right, but it is also part of the specific revelation the Bible. Monday we used the Apostle Paul’s constructs of Faith, Hope, and Charity, found in 1 Corinthians 13. In the legal definition of a corporation, since it is a creation of man’s laws, it does not live outside of the legal code; therefore it has no real life, no soul, or true creative ability, except what is given it, through legal precedent. Only a real person in the natural sense, can plant the wealth seed in faith, hoping for a growing wealth producing plant, relying only on charity of others should the opportunity fail.
Read More...
The Christian Redux
12/May/2010 08:00 Filed in: Weekly
Column
Anymore every time I hear the word “change,” I
cringe. Still I find it amazing that most of the
time the user of the change slogan is trying to
paint change in a positive light. Like they want me
rush to their simplistic point of view and
acknowledge the enlightenment they are peddling.
The problem is that the world is to such a point that the status quo is just as unacceptable. The old saying, “Stuck between a rock and a hard place.” seems to apply. Except for the reality that “between” only encompasses two real directions, it’s more like being ground to dust in the interface of a glacier and a mountain, except that also is terribly abstract and impersonal.
In all this, we long for the good old days, but back then we also had problems. When you come right down to it however, if we could use those nostalgic times and make them better, perhaps that will help us design the future in a positive way, for wandering into a chaotic future makes no sense either. Hence the concept of redux. Redux comes to us from the Latin and literally means lead from the past, or more commonly brought back or revived.
The whole world needs a lot of redux, for the alternative is anarchy or chaos. It is also true that those who don’t learn from the past are destined to repeat those mistakes. So how far back do we go, on which to begin the building process?
Last week in the Christian Diaspora we basically developed the context that construction or creation-wise, God works from the universal to the individual. From the solely human perspective we find the Babylonian model that builds from the individual to the collective. That clash of those two creative constructs has brought us to the place in which change is only something we reluctantly accept.
Read More...
The problem is that the world is to such a point that the status quo is just as unacceptable. The old saying, “Stuck between a rock and a hard place.” seems to apply. Except for the reality that “between” only encompasses two real directions, it’s more like being ground to dust in the interface of a glacier and a mountain, except that also is terribly abstract and impersonal.
In all this, we long for the good old days, but back then we also had problems. When you come right down to it however, if we could use those nostalgic times and make them better, perhaps that will help us design the future in a positive way, for wandering into a chaotic future makes no sense either. Hence the concept of redux. Redux comes to us from the Latin and literally means lead from the past, or more commonly brought back or revived.
The whole world needs a lot of redux, for the alternative is anarchy or chaos. It is also true that those who don’t learn from the past are destined to repeat those mistakes. So how far back do we go, on which to begin the building process?
Last week in the Christian Diaspora we basically developed the context that construction or creation-wise, God works from the universal to the individual. From the solely human perspective we find the Babylonian model that builds from the individual to the collective. That clash of those two creative constructs has brought us to the place in which change is only something we reluctantly accept.
Read More...
The Social Darwinism Conundrum
28/April/2010 11:27 Filed in: Weekly
Column
How many times in these United States have you gone
to visit someone and were admonished at the front
door, “We don’t allow the discussion of politics or
religion in this house!”
Even if it is an unspoken rule, the lack of discourse of both politics and religion and how they are related, dare I a say as a civil discussion, is what has gotten America into our current position.
Just mention Sarah Palin and a volcano of anger or praise erupts almost instantaneously and soon volcanic ash threatens to block out the sun. If someone doesn’t change the subject pretty soon, air traffic will have to be diverted around the area.
Underlying all this joy and mirth is the clashing of worldviews.
One view believes that there is a God, who created everything not all that long ago, and mankind was created in the image of God.
The scientific worldview does not believe in god, maybe aliens, but nothing exists but the natural material reality that evolved by quantum leaps of intellectual complexity over millions and billions of years.
A third worldview states that they believe in God but are agnostic on how it all came to be and where we are going, because they just have enough trouble dealing with daily life.
The forth group believes essentially that they are the zenith of evolution, and because of their superior intellect, the rest of us should acquiesce to their understanding of how it all works, and likewise thank and serve them for being so very magnanimous. These are the Social Darwinists, who now are the dominant religion in America, but as we will see as we continue, are facing a conundrum of epic proportions, that will very soon lead to a battle to the finish among the members. The survival of progressive evolution is at stake and to victor belong not only the spoils, but the vanquished will be eliminated from the gene pool.
So if you happen to be in one of the first three religious groups, for the time being, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, sit back, relax, turn on your television, open a cool one of your choice, and watch the battle unfold.
Well just between you and me, the battle has been rigged, because both of the participants have already been found to have fatal weaknesses, but that does not mean that this sport will not be worth watching.
So let the battle begin!
Read More...
Even if it is an unspoken rule, the lack of discourse of both politics and religion and how they are related, dare I a say as a civil discussion, is what has gotten America into our current position.
Just mention Sarah Palin and a volcano of anger or praise erupts almost instantaneously and soon volcanic ash threatens to block out the sun. If someone doesn’t change the subject pretty soon, air traffic will have to be diverted around the area.
Underlying all this joy and mirth is the clashing of worldviews.
One view believes that there is a God, who created everything not all that long ago, and mankind was created in the image of God.
The scientific worldview does not believe in god, maybe aliens, but nothing exists but the natural material reality that evolved by quantum leaps of intellectual complexity over millions and billions of years.
A third worldview states that they believe in God but are agnostic on how it all came to be and where we are going, because they just have enough trouble dealing with daily life.
The forth group believes essentially that they are the zenith of evolution, and because of their superior intellect, the rest of us should acquiesce to their understanding of how it all works, and likewise thank and serve them for being so very magnanimous. These are the Social Darwinists, who now are the dominant religion in America, but as we will see as we continue, are facing a conundrum of epic proportions, that will very soon lead to a battle to the finish among the members. The survival of progressive evolution is at stake and to victor belong not only the spoils, but the vanquished will be eliminated from the gene pool.
So if you happen to be in one of the first three religious groups, for the time being, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, sit back, relax, turn on your television, open a cool one of your choice, and watch the battle unfold.
Well just between you and me, the battle has been rigged, because both of the participants have already been found to have fatal weaknesses, but that does not mean that this sport will not be worth watching.
So let the battle begin!
Read More...
Why Me? Trekking to Gomorrah
21/April/2010 12:06 Filed in: Weekly
Column
This week we bring you the final installment of
this series of, “Why Me? A Novel — Novel of
Historic Apprehension.” In keeping with the novel –
novel theme we have looked at some of the major
theses, or paradigms of historic western culture
and how many times it was the antitheses of these
original beliefs that brought about change,
sometimes stupendous change. And amazingly in this
historic context, much of this change can be
considered beneficial.
In closing this series, all of our readers, whether in the United States, or elsewhere in the world, recognize that the changes we are experiencing are what we describe as stupendous. In that light the concept of “change we can believe in” seems grossly simplistic if not truly oxymoronic. As a result we all sense an excitement, but at the same time an anticipation of apprehension that mankind has truly never past this way before, especially when that concept is enlarged, as we are asked to “think globally.”
The title to this chapter is an adaptation of the title of a book by Robert Bork entitled, “Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and the American Decline” first published in 1996. Bork was one of Ronald Reagan’s appointments to the Supreme Court, who never made it through the Senates conformation process, because he was vilified by his opponents as being an extremist. From that process came the invention of the term “borked,” which seems amazingly close to what is happening currently to the American people, by what is now being called “crony capitalists — media — politicians.”
Slouching is one of the most enlightening books I have ever read, and the title shows historically how we have pretty much through just passive neglect dumbed down the world in which we live, to the point that we will someday face destruction similar to the Biblical Gomorrah.
The divergence in the world today and the world over a decade ago, is that a slow slothful meander towards oblivion has been replaced with defined action, as if we just can no longer wait to get to Gomorrah, we have the city in our sights and together with all our baggage we are hell-bent to get there as soon as possible. In many ways Gomorrah has become our biblical replacement of the shining city on a hill, representing a New Jerusalem of many of America’s Christian founders.
Read More...
In closing this series, all of our readers, whether in the United States, or elsewhere in the world, recognize that the changes we are experiencing are what we describe as stupendous. In that light the concept of “change we can believe in” seems grossly simplistic if not truly oxymoronic. As a result we all sense an excitement, but at the same time an anticipation of apprehension that mankind has truly never past this way before, especially when that concept is enlarged, as we are asked to “think globally.”
The title to this chapter is an adaptation of the title of a book by Robert Bork entitled, “Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and the American Decline” first published in 1996. Bork was one of Ronald Reagan’s appointments to the Supreme Court, who never made it through the Senates conformation process, because he was vilified by his opponents as being an extremist. From that process came the invention of the term “borked,” which seems amazingly close to what is happening currently to the American people, by what is now being called “crony capitalists — media — politicians.”
Slouching is one of the most enlightening books I have ever read, and the title shows historically how we have pretty much through just passive neglect dumbed down the world in which we live, to the point that we will someday face destruction similar to the Biblical Gomorrah.
The divergence in the world today and the world over a decade ago, is that a slow slothful meander towards oblivion has been replaced with defined action, as if we just can no longer wait to get to Gomorrah, we have the city in our sights and together with all our baggage we are hell-bent to get there as soon as possible. In many ways Gomorrah has become our biblical replacement of the shining city on a hill, representing a New Jerusalem of many of America’s Christian founders.
Read More...
Happy Days Again? Not Here, Not Yet!
19/April/2010 11:18 Filed in: Special
Report | Week in
Review
>>PDF copy
Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of the domestic terrorist attack on the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Subsequent to that act an unrepentant, Timothy McVeigh, was found guilty and was executed. There is a very old saying that goes, “Actions speak louder than words.” Last week former President Clinton made remarks saying that he saw similarities between the words of Tea Party participants and that bombing which took place on 19 April 1995. Of course there has been a lot of media attention to those remarks, but none seem intelligent enough to see perhaps a link to the words and maybe the actions of then President Clinton, which may have contributed to McVeigh’s actions just a little over two years after the President began his first term.
Also last week, here in the USA, land of liberty, home of the free and the brave, President Obama made somewhat similar condescending remarks about how funny traditionally minded Tea Party participants were acting. In the context that he has fixed America’s continuing problems; with programs more outmoded than any our Chinese government partners could envision. Once we sock it to those Fat Cat bankers, and create all sorts of user fees for everything under the sun, it will be nice to know that the President has not raised the income taxes on those Americans who make less than $200,000.
I do have to agree with the President however, if the Tea Party people think that by attending some rallies, carrying some signs, and even electing some more conservative Republicans, to replace those awful liberal Democrats, they will in someway change the politics in Washington and business on Wall Street, then that is really a ironic joke. Sad, definitely true but still despairingly amusing.
Listening to the President, his staff, and his media amigos, happy days are here again. Rah! Rah! Rah! Well happy days may be back for Wall Street and federal workers, but those happy days here, are about as far away as the distance to New York City and Washington DC. Here in the Northeast corner of the other Washington (State) things are as bad as they have ever been and that may include the Great Depression.
Of course any of those people who were alive during the Great Depression and old enough to remember the details of those hard times; they are now dead. Back then those people who lived out west were a pretty much self sufficient lot. Everyone grew most of their own food, raised their own meat, and canned or put it up for the winter. There might not have been a lot of variety in the daily table course, but people didn’t go hungry, and if someone was in need their neighbors helped them out. Read More...
Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of the domestic terrorist attack on the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Subsequent to that act an unrepentant, Timothy McVeigh, was found guilty and was executed. There is a very old saying that goes, “Actions speak louder than words.” Last week former President Clinton made remarks saying that he saw similarities between the words of Tea Party participants and that bombing which took place on 19 April 1995. Of course there has been a lot of media attention to those remarks, but none seem intelligent enough to see perhaps a link to the words and maybe the actions of then President Clinton, which may have contributed to McVeigh’s actions just a little over two years after the President began his first term.
Also last week, here in the USA, land of liberty, home of the free and the brave, President Obama made somewhat similar condescending remarks about how funny traditionally minded Tea Party participants were acting. In the context that he has fixed America’s continuing problems; with programs more outmoded than any our Chinese government partners could envision. Once we sock it to those Fat Cat bankers, and create all sorts of user fees for everything under the sun, it will be nice to know that the President has not raised the income taxes on those Americans who make less than $200,000.
I do have to agree with the President however, if the Tea Party people think that by attending some rallies, carrying some signs, and even electing some more conservative Republicans, to replace those awful liberal Democrats, they will in someway change the politics in Washington and business on Wall Street, then that is really a ironic joke. Sad, definitely true but still despairingly amusing.
Listening to the President, his staff, and his media amigos, happy days are here again. Rah! Rah! Rah! Well happy days may be back for Wall Street and federal workers, but those happy days here, are about as far away as the distance to New York City and Washington DC. Here in the Northeast corner of the other Washington (State) things are as bad as they have ever been and that may include the Great Depression.
Of course any of those people who were alive during the Great Depression and old enough to remember the details of those hard times; they are now dead. Back then those people who lived out west were a pretty much self sufficient lot. Everyone grew most of their own food, raised their own meat, and canned or put it up for the winter. There might not have been a lot of variety in the daily table course, but people didn’t go hungry, and if someone was in need their neighbors helped them out. Read More...
2 Big 2 Work!
12/April/2010 08:48 Filed in: Special
Report | Week in
Review
The bellyachers are
giving me a headache. Well, actually they seem to
be more akin to a pain at the end of the alimentary
canal, but unless it is phrased in that way, it
becomes politically incorrect. Let me see if I have
got this straight? You have a beef with the fact
that you have to pay way too much income tax when
you and yours gross six figures a year and nearly
half of the American households pay nothing.
It is really too bad that your mortgage is upside down by about 50% and your 401k and the rest of your investments lost about the same, and you still are not back on track to retiring early, with only your four thousand square foot McMansion in the ‘burbs, and your two thousand square foot second home in the foreign paradise. You can cry me a river, but I really don’t care. Welcome to the real world.
Bah! Bah! Bah! You went to work everyday, did the best you could, never took any real risk and suddenly you were a millionaire. Well, at least you were a millionaire. Nobody ever called you a sheep, sheep can’t leverage a mid-level professional job, with really only bureaucratic skills, into a million bucks. Truly this was an absolute miracle, helped along with cheap credit, marketing, and educational propaganda. After all you are worth it, and you have the room full of seventh place trophies to prove it.
Suddenly the 2 BIG 2 work vultures from the government want you to pay what they call your fair share. It isn’t just the Feds, it’s the state, the county, and the city too. Even the home owners association wants more money to keep the water feature pumping. Just like me, they all don’t want to hear your story of an American Dream of a pampered upbringing turned into gentrified nausea. You had it all, peaches and cream, and now it is time to pay the dues.
Perhaps you didn’t DVR Alan Greenspan on C-Span last week when he said he thought he was doing the right thing during lllooonnnggg his term at the Fed, and now in hindsight there may have been just a few tweaks of the economy that might have led to a continuing-continuum of eternal prosperity. However now that this bubble burst and after ObamaCare has passed, old Alan has some fresh insights that we might not be able to pay for everything at the same time.
Maybe you should send him one of your seventh place trophies for a reward!
Read More...
It is really too bad that your mortgage is upside down by about 50% and your 401k and the rest of your investments lost about the same, and you still are not back on track to retiring early, with only your four thousand square foot McMansion in the ‘burbs, and your two thousand square foot second home in the foreign paradise. You can cry me a river, but I really don’t care. Welcome to the real world.
Bah! Bah! Bah! You went to work everyday, did the best you could, never took any real risk and suddenly you were a millionaire. Well, at least you were a millionaire. Nobody ever called you a sheep, sheep can’t leverage a mid-level professional job, with really only bureaucratic skills, into a million bucks. Truly this was an absolute miracle, helped along with cheap credit, marketing, and educational propaganda. After all you are worth it, and you have the room full of seventh place trophies to prove it.
Suddenly the 2 BIG 2 work vultures from the government want you to pay what they call your fair share. It isn’t just the Feds, it’s the state, the county, and the city too. Even the home owners association wants more money to keep the water feature pumping. Just like me, they all don’t want to hear your story of an American Dream of a pampered upbringing turned into gentrified nausea. You had it all, peaches and cream, and now it is time to pay the dues.
Perhaps you didn’t DVR Alan Greenspan on C-Span last week when he said he thought he was doing the right thing during lllooonnnggg his term at the Fed, and now in hindsight there may have been just a few tweaks of the economy that might have led to a continuing-continuum of eternal prosperity. However now that this bubble burst and after ObamaCare has passed, old Alan has some fresh insights that we might not be able to pay for everything at the same time.
Maybe you should send him one of your seventh place trophies for a reward!
Read More...
Why Me? Sheep to wolves
31/March/2010 12:19 Filed in: Weekly
Column
Sheep: What a stupid animal,
so nondescript we really don’t know if you are
talking about a sheep, or a herd of sheep.
Wolf: A complex community forming wild dog that hunts with strength and cunning. Wolves form a community so socially complex that the pack has served as the survival model for indigenous people groups.
Left to our own wants and desires, we all evolve from a complex community of wolves into isolated, wayward, and lonely sheep.
We begin to wrap up this “Why Me?” series this week, moving from the historical context of what got us into this mess, to what we can do to move from our fears into a world in which our fears are suppressed, because of the vision of an external responsibility that in some unknown way, gives reason to all the chaos that surrounds our world.
When I was stationed in Germany during the rise of the environmental movement, without a television, I had time to read a lot of books. My educational training outside the military at that time was in secondary education and sciences. The focus of that training was in terrestrial ecology and chemistry.
Reading the environmental books that were then available I quickly became disillusioned with the whole process. Virtually all of the books began with the premise that the world was going to hell, time was of the essence that we do something about it, and then the writer appended a couple of simplistic chapters about their preliminary thoughts, that might lead to a change in the current direction.
What I have learned in the passing of time is that this type of bloviating is truly the American genre of communication, not only in writing, but also in speeches and preaching.
Did you know that before he began any speech Adolph Hitler would come to the stage, gaze into and through the crowd for two full minutes before he uttered a word? This was preceded by at least a half an hour of appropriate music to get the crowd ready for de fuehrer.
The question I have never bothered to research, did Hitler gain his speaking prowess by adapting the style of American revivalist preachers of the Second Great Awakening?
Read More...
Wolf: A complex community forming wild dog that hunts with strength and cunning. Wolves form a community so socially complex that the pack has served as the survival model for indigenous people groups.
Left to our own wants and desires, we all evolve from a complex community of wolves into isolated, wayward, and lonely sheep.
We begin to wrap up this “Why Me?” series this week, moving from the historical context of what got us into this mess, to what we can do to move from our fears into a world in which our fears are suppressed, because of the vision of an external responsibility that in some unknown way, gives reason to all the chaos that surrounds our world.
When I was stationed in Germany during the rise of the environmental movement, without a television, I had time to read a lot of books. My educational training outside the military at that time was in secondary education and sciences. The focus of that training was in terrestrial ecology and chemistry.
Reading the environmental books that were then available I quickly became disillusioned with the whole process. Virtually all of the books began with the premise that the world was going to hell, time was of the essence that we do something about it, and then the writer appended a couple of simplistic chapters about their preliminary thoughts, that might lead to a change in the current direction.
What I have learned in the passing of time is that this type of bloviating is truly the American genre of communication, not only in writing, but also in speeches and preaching.
Did you know that before he began any speech Adolph Hitler would come to the stage, gaze into and through the crowd for two full minutes before he uttered a word? This was preceded by at least a half an hour of appropriate music to get the crowd ready for de fuehrer.
The question I have never bothered to research, did Hitler gain his speaking prowess by adapting the style of American revivalist preachers of the Second Great Awakening?
Read More...
Why Me? A Hundred Year Bad Marriage
24/March/2010 10:31 Filed in: Weekly
Column
So you think your marriage is great, that is
wonderful!
If you think your marriage is awful and you want or need a divorce, sorry about that!
But the really sad thing is if you are married to another party for over a hundred years and then you find out that the troubles you have been experiencing for most of a century are rooted in a mutual codependency. You seemed to want the same thing but you never really understood why you were always arguing about virtually everything in life. It took a hundred years and you recently found out by reading this Wonder Springs article that you have totally incompatible religions. You always thought that you were progressing towards the same goal, and now after all this time you realize that you need to split the sheets.
The two twentieth century religions that are in the process of breaking up after all this time are evolving atheistic materialism and Christendom; better known as those who promoted a social gospel, Protestant liberalism, or in some extreme cases, social justice, and Liberation Theology. Those who were around at the beginning of the marriage believed that it was a marriage made in heaven. After all both parties in that early relationship were interested in creating a utopian city here on earth. A shining city on a hill to show the world how well Christians could get along with pagans and in turn everyone would turn their hearts to Jesus.
The problem that both participants in the marriage did not understand was the vision of creating heaven on earth is really the only religion of man for all of recorded history, with very few exceptions. If you take the Bible, not as a holy book, but rather just a brief synopsis of human history virtually every story is about someone intent on creating the kingdom of God in the here and now. A utopia is the goal, it really doesn’t make any difference on the means required to get there, if we all just work together there is nothing we can’t do.
Read More...
If you think your marriage is awful and you want or need a divorce, sorry about that!
But the really sad thing is if you are married to another party for over a hundred years and then you find out that the troubles you have been experiencing for most of a century are rooted in a mutual codependency. You seemed to want the same thing but you never really understood why you were always arguing about virtually everything in life. It took a hundred years and you recently found out by reading this Wonder Springs article that you have totally incompatible religions. You always thought that you were progressing towards the same goal, and now after all this time you realize that you need to split the sheets.
The two twentieth century religions that are in the process of breaking up after all this time are evolving atheistic materialism and Christendom; better known as those who promoted a social gospel, Protestant liberalism, or in some extreme cases, social justice, and Liberation Theology. Those who were around at the beginning of the marriage believed that it was a marriage made in heaven. After all both parties in that early relationship were interested in creating a utopian city here on earth. A shining city on a hill to show the world how well Christians could get along with pagans and in turn everyone would turn their hearts to Jesus.
The problem that both participants in the marriage did not understand was the vision of creating heaven on earth is really the only religion of man for all of recorded history, with very few exceptions. If you take the Bible, not as a holy book, but rather just a brief synopsis of human history virtually every story is about someone intent on creating the kingdom of God in the here and now. A utopia is the goal, it really doesn’t make any difference on the means required to get there, if we all just work together there is nothing we can’t do.
Read More...
The ObamaCare Wildfire
22/March/2010 09:00 Filed in: Special
Report | Week in
Review
Late last evening the
United States of America passed an ObamaCare reform
law and simultaneously unleashed a wildfire in the
country that will affect the country for years if
not decades to come. A wildfire, many times human
caused or even designed is an uncontrollable
reordering of the future by destroying the past and
creating opportunities for new growth to rapidly
occur out of the ashes of the old. Many times human
started controlled burns suddenly erupt into
uncontrollable wildfires and greatly change an
environment, well beyond the carefully laid plans
of the fire planners. Welcome to healthcare reform
circa 2010.
For over a year, off and on the healthcare debate has slowly intensified and generally revolves around both the cost and the constitutional question, if human governments can create rights, rather than being a gift of Natural Law given to humans by God. As of yesterday the debate was codified into law and started the wildfire which we will discuss briefly.
There are those who will continue to fight the hot spot battles related to human rights, the American federal government’s ability to create and to tax, and the continued desire to live beyond our means. Just as in a wildfire you will be able to tune to your favorite news channel, talk radio, or podcast and hear the yin and yang to support or defame your paradigms, but Washington DC this time next year will be a very different place than it is today. It will look like a wildfire passed through the capitol and there will be new shoots of growth beginning to sprout from the ashes, but still a lot of dead wood around, some of it standing some not. When you get out into the country those changes will begin to be seen also, but not the effects that the ObamaCare supporters had hoped.
Wildfires are frightening things, extremely rapidly they can change what has stood strong and relentless for centuries, and in a few minutes it is all gone. But if you look beyond the visual changes, what a wildfire does is fundamentally change the energetics of the ecosystem, including human ecosystems. You probably will only hear about the energetics of the ObamaCare wildfire here at Wonder Springs, so pass this to others.
Read More...
For over a year, off and on the healthcare debate has slowly intensified and generally revolves around both the cost and the constitutional question, if human governments can create rights, rather than being a gift of Natural Law given to humans by God. As of yesterday the debate was codified into law and started the wildfire which we will discuss briefly.
There are those who will continue to fight the hot spot battles related to human rights, the American federal government’s ability to create and to tax, and the continued desire to live beyond our means. Just as in a wildfire you will be able to tune to your favorite news channel, talk radio, or podcast and hear the yin and yang to support or defame your paradigms, but Washington DC this time next year will be a very different place than it is today. It will look like a wildfire passed through the capitol and there will be new shoots of growth beginning to sprout from the ashes, but still a lot of dead wood around, some of it standing some not. When you get out into the country those changes will begin to be seen also, but not the effects that the ObamaCare supporters had hoped.
Wildfires are frightening things, extremely rapidly they can change what has stood strong and relentless for centuries, and in a few minutes it is all gone. But if you look beyond the visual changes, what a wildfire does is fundamentally change the energetics of the ecosystem, including human ecosystems. You probably will only hear about the energetics of the ObamaCare wildfire here at Wonder Springs, so pass this to others.
Read More...
Week in Review – February 21-27, 2010: Olympic bobsleds, Chile earthquake, Obamacare
01/March/2010 12:31 Filed in: Week in
Review
Three
obtusely related things peaked our interest this
week. Those three were an episode from the
Vancouver Olympic Games, the earthquake in Chile,
and Obama’s healthcare summit in Washington DC.
Now you may be asking yourself how these three events are related at all, even if the obtuse modifier is used? The thing that ties together all of our points this week, relate to how people respond to an opportunity or a crisis, in our terms stupendous change.
Our zenith of this report was the results of the four man bobsled event at Whistler in which the United States won its first Gold medal since 1948. While that was a worthwhile achievement, what I found really interesting was what happened after the medals presentation, where the Americans were joined by the Silver medal winning Canadians and the Bronze medal Germans.
Before TV cameras all three teams sort of scrunched together for a group photo and in the process you had over 1000 kilos (2200 lbs.) of competitive alpha males getting up close and personal, all smiling like they sort of liked one another. I have searched for a picture of that happening but it doesn’t appear to have gotten significant press attention.
Read More...
Now you may be asking yourself how these three events are related at all, even if the obtuse modifier is used? The thing that ties together all of our points this week, relate to how people respond to an opportunity or a crisis, in our terms stupendous change.
Our zenith of this report was the results of the four man bobsled event at Whistler in which the United States won its first Gold medal since 1948. While that was a worthwhile achievement, what I found really interesting was what happened after the medals presentation, where the Americans were joined by the Silver medal winning Canadians and the Bronze medal Germans.
Before TV cameras all three teams sort of scrunched together for a group photo and in the process you had over 1000 kilos (2200 lbs.) of competitive alpha males getting up close and personal, all smiling like they sort of liked one another. I have searched for a picture of that happening but it doesn’t appear to have gotten significant press attention.
Read More...