Standing Rock and Mars

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/11/when-did-nasa-go-to-pot.php

In these days of insanity it boggles the mind to try to figure out what is "real" vs "fake", and if even the supposedly "real" has any sort of relationship with actual reality vs the fake reality generated by "The Party" (TP-D) and the Adminstrative / Deep State which is a major part of it's power.

Here we have a NASA administrator talking about problems with going to Mars ...

Lucianne Walkowicz: I can’t give you an example of what a decolonized Mars looks like, but it starts by having multidisciplinary conversations about the things that happen here on Earth. I often give examples of Standing Rock as an Earth-based example of interests colliding, where you have indigenous people opposing a large-scale project that, much like space exploration, ...

Sadly the techical difficulties of Mars colinization are WAY bigger than the question of wether or not the Martians are going to set up a camp and protest. 

As Power Line pointed out, today's NASA  could not have gotten to the moon -- certainly not technically, and politically they would still be arguing over how to not offend the USSR, or appear "competitive".

BOistan has a LONG way to go before there is any danger of us being remotely "competitive" again. We will likely need at least 50 years of Congressional Republican dominance as TP had from the mid 1950's to 1994, plus some 70 vote majorities in the Senate and maybe a 3 term R president like FDR in order to destruct BOistan and get a start on rebuilding something like "America" -- to the extent anyone remembers what that even was!

I think the odds are pretty solid against it!

Trump Accuses of "Mommy Issues"

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/11/barack-melts-down.php

Never mind ... it was BO.

Obama, speaking at the Obama Foundation Summit on Monday night, said the answers already exist to solve many of the problems facing both the U.S. and the world, but that the nation was not making progress “because we are still confused, blind, shrouded with hate, anger, racism, mommy issues.”

So what is a "mommy issue"? Taking care of your kids? Getting up in the middle of the night when they are sick? Wiping their tears, etc? Always seemed to me that BO was really really big on the " Mommy State" --  taking responsibility away from independent Americans and telling them what to do from cradle to grave. BOistan is a lot like "Neverland" ... nobody ever grows up.

Let's see "confused, blind, shrouded with hate, anger, racism" ... sounds like '09-'16 to me. We got over that, and thank God we don't need to listen to BO bray in his condescending sneer very much these days. BO talked about "filtering his mothers white blood out of his veins" in "Dreams" ... glad we don't hear much of that sort of racism these days!

Oh, BTW, BO and Mooch are now a "Billion Dollar Brand" ... isn't that special! Remember, BO said there is a point where YOU have made enough money ... not HIM! ... and he is happy to condescend to tell you just how much money it is that is enough for YOU!

 

Less Important Politics, Less Political Violence

https://reason.com/archives/2018/10/30/make-politics-less-important?fbclid=IwAR2P70A5QtV_Z9JYiWUJLVMKC3r4wXl0UdmN8BQjlwg0MfPB-DCpKkmMVns

As the reach of government has grown ever larger, it's ability to have huge effects, both positive and negative on peoples lives has grown exponentially. Worse, government must be adminstered by HUMANS who are absolutely as capable of being self centered, tribal, greedy, vindictive, etc as anyone else -- and possibly more, since their work and personal lives are lived in massive beauracracies located in cities that are the seats of political power, thus very aware of the side in the "more or less government" debate.

As the article states ...

Officials can be vindictive creatures, eager to use the power of the state to penalize those whose lifestyles, economic activity, and political affiliations they dislike. Tax power was long ago turned to such misuse, probably because tax collectors had authority to intrude into people's lives before other government employees gained such clout. "My father may have been the originator of the concept of employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution," Elliott Roosevelt observed of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Obama used "The Chicago Way"  ... "reward your friends, punish your enemies". This is ALWAYS one of the ways that people in power will operate -- and the more power we give them, the more it is worth fighting, up to and including violence to get "your side" in power!

Khashoggi, Reality, Virtue Signalling

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/opinion/trump-saudi-arabia-khashoggi.html?fbclid=IwAR0SBsXnC7IDZ3BJOtx0rBVOvAqm70KkmLKxSeYis0yA9XlK-Um-jJ4A1Iw

In an age without religion, fake virtue signalling is the primary measure of "morality". Over and over many on the left and on the right signal their virtue by ranting against the "hypocrisy" of Trump stating "maybe he did, maybe he didn't" ... but Saudi Arabia remains an ally.

As the NY Times opinion piece concudes, OF COURSE that is the case!

The murder of Mr. Khashoggi was a brutal and grotesque act. The United States has registered its feelings loudly and clearly by putting sanctions on the 17 men who were directly involved in the killing. Punishing the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia will not bring justice for Mr. Khashoggi, nor will it make Saudi Arabia a more dependable ally. It will simply diminish the influence of the United States and embolden its enemies. 

The biblical advice to be as “wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” offers sound counsel to anyone who seeks to see their principles influence the world. The advice of Mr. Trump’s critics is long on abstract morality but lacking in strategic wisdom.

It is very hard to imagine "what everyone knows" these days -- so much reasoning is purely emotional and tribal. It is hard for me to imagine that ANYONE seriously wants to give up Saudi Arabia as an ally in the Mideast, especially over the murder of a single journalist. If we wanted to have a serious disagreement, it might be over Yemen for example, but I for one am not interested in going out and trying to figure out the "right" answer to that situation. 

Saudi Arabia and Iraq are locked in a political and Sunni vs Shia religious war in the Mideast that is somewhat comparable to the Cold War with the USSR and the US. They largely fight by proxy, and fighting by proxy tends to be very messy (see Tom Clancey and other novels of the US - Soviet Cold War).

The question in my mind is how many people these days actually believe what they tweet, post, etc about how they are SHOCKED at such things as Trump's comments on the Kashoggi murder!

Fake Manipulation

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/11/the-ultimate-fake-news.php

One of the reasons that we live in such a fractured and failed state is that "The Party" (TP-D) which consists of the MSM, the Administrative/Deep State, academia,  and of course the Democrats (but I repeat myself) can create "facts" out of nothing and convince near majorities that the fabrication is true!

And yet, two-thirds of Democrats say it is either “definitely true” (31%) or “probably true” (36%) that Russia tampered with vote tallies. Women are especially gullible; 48%, across all party lines, have fallen for this fake news. Sadly, 70% of blacks have bought it hook, line and sinker. The Northeast is the country’s most ignorant region, apparently: 47% of Northeasterners have fallen for the hoax. 

So the Democrats, by their constant hysteria and innuendo, have convinced a large majority of their followers, and 42% of all Americans, of a palpable falsehood that was fabricated in order to assure Hillary Clinton’s election and then, when that effort failed, perpetuated in an attempt to cripple President Trump’s administration.

As I've written on this before, two weeks prior to the 2016 election when it was all but certain that Hillary would win, BO himself assured us there were NO ISSUES AT ALL with any sort of "Russian Meddling", let alone modifications of vote totals.

If we had anything remotely close to even just a moderately biased media in this country, TP would be losing by double digits in all elections but those in the core inner city and richest counties. Sadly, what we have is truly the "Enemy of the People", #FAKEMEDIA!

12 Rules To Live By, An Antidote to Chaos, Jordan B Peterson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/jordan-peterson-new-york-times-hostility/

This is the first book (other than the Bible) that I've read and then just turned around and read it again. As the linked review indicates, for a practicing Christian or Jew, a lot of what Peterson covers is pretty basic, but for many modern secularists, it is a bit like Dr Strange discovering that maybe they missed a couple things on their way to their assumed total intellectual victory party.

If you are not a reader, then this video covers the high points of the book quite well. 

The message is very old and very simple -- MEANING is what is important to human life rather than "happiness", which is at best fleeting. What the meaning of your life is to be is the one great question posed by the universe(the Holy Spirit for Christians, Satan for others) to each of us (see "Man's Search for Meaning"). Once we find that meaning we have RESPONSIBILITY to be TRUE to it! 

Meaning, responsibility and truth (the wisdom triad), rather than happiness, rights and tribalism (the leftist triad). Simple, but extremely powerful for lives worth living vs lives ended in despair -- too often by their own hand.

Peterson is an engaging author and speaker, so there is really no excuse to not hear what he says. Yes, of course he has been politicized, only because EVERYTHING is part of a zero sum tribal political game in the failed "liberal" West. From a traditional rendering of knowledge however, there is nothing political about him. He is as basic as Socrates, Jesus or Buddha -- What is the good? How are we to know it? How are we to practice it? How might we live our lives? Is this all there is?

My favorite quote from the NR review linked above ... 

And so, as the secular Left pressed up against the church, it looked behind and saw the flames in its own camp. Peterson held the match, but the kindling was all around him. It’s not that men (and many women) failed to adjust to the new gender ideologies, it’s that the new gender ideologies too often fail to reckon with our deepest human longings and fail to recognize our fundamental human nature. As Peterson writes in 12 Rules, “We cannot invent our own values, because we cannot merely impose what we believe on our souls.”

What kind of a world might we live in if the small phenomenon that is Jordan Peterson grows and matures? Perhaps one where a majority finally accepts that we are not soulless automatons! Perhaps one rich with meaning and truthful relationships!

A worthy prayer!

Racial Bigotry At Harvard

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/11/racial-discrimination-harvard-style.phpv

Words do make a difference. Any tiny hint of "discrimination" against Blacks is immediately "racism" or "bigotry" -- incendiary words among the worst labels that can be applied to a person in the modern west -- right up there with "Nazi"!

"Racial preferences" are obviously discrimination (by definition), however when they are applied to a MINORITY group, are they not also bigotry? When a 6% minority of the US population performs via merit at a level that would otherwise make them an over 50% majority of the Harvard Freshmen, how can we use anything less than "bigotry" as a label?

Under Harvard’s current admissions regime, according to an analysis of the data by SFFA expert witness Peter Arcidiacano, a GPA-test score combination that would give an Asian-American applicant only a 25 percent chance of admission would give an otherwise identical African-American a 95 percent chance, a Latino a 77 percent chance, and a white a 36 -percent chance. Asian Americans, though, are a far larger percentage of Harvard’s admitted students (22.7 percent this year, for example) than of the college-age U.S. population (about 6 percent). This still does not preclude a finding that Harvard discriminates against Asian Americans. 

They are so much stronger academically than all other racial groups that the SFFA estimates if “Harvard admitted students based only on their academic index, Asian Americans would comprise over 50 percent of the admitted class.” (The school has increased Asian-American admissions substantially since the lawsuit was filed in 2014, which the plaintiff dismisses as a litigation strategy.)

MLK had a drream for his four little children ... "I have a dream that my four little chi1dren will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the conte·nt of their character"!

I imagine that dream did not include little oriental, hispanic, or even white children being ALSO judged by the color of their skin vs the content of their character!