NPR Against Fauxahontas Wealth Tax

Link to article.

Seems a little odd that NPR put this out there ... no doubt it won't get much airplay. Perhaps they are worrid that such a tax would impact one of the many foundations that are heavy contributers to their coffers ... "Arthur Vining Davis", "The Blandin", or one of my favorites, the MacArthur, whose goal is a more "Just, Verdant, and Peaceful Future" ... how can one argue with the mega rich funding such a pitctureesque utopia while they push policies to enslave the propagandized masses in to the massive state beauracracy?

The article is short and worth the read -- other than the wealth tax not collecting much money, high costs of attempting to collect the money, causing a mass exodus of wealthy, and negaltively affecting the economy, it is OK. Other than the patient dying, the operation was a success.

The Banality of Totalitarianism

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/todays-progressive-race-hate-moment/

Look at National Socialist Germany, the USSR, Mao's China, N Korea, Venezuala, etc and sane people wonder "how do things like that happen?". Oh if there were just one crazy simple "sure sign" that would allow us to innoculate against the totalitarian impulse!

There are all sorts of base reasons ... people lose a sense of history, of culture, the ability to understand what it is that their civililization and culture are about, they start to believe that "history has an arc" ... therefore what is new must be better, and the future better still. We could go on ... but the day to day reason is simply that nearly everyone wants to "go along to get along". Why have a conflict if you can find a way to fit in and go along with whatever the masses are saying is "correct".

The linked article covers the specific case of Esquire magazine doing a profile of a "typical white male  teenager in Trump country".

The linked is a bit long,  but I think it is worth it because it is all so ordinary ... banal. We see this sort of writing and thinking everyday, however if one reads something like the Gulag Archipeligo we realize that we are increasingly living in the conditions found in a totalitarian state already -- it is just that so far, unless you really stick your head up like Trump, the "enforcement" is via public shaming vs incarceration.

I think this quote from the article is a good example of what I'm talking about:

To explain the stultifying effects of Communism on the individual, he relates a story of the greengrocer who puts a sign in his shop window proclaiming, “Workers of the World, Unite!” The grocer doesn’t believe the Marxist credo. Rather, he displays the sign “because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble.” The sign, Havel writes, conveys the following message to passersby and society at large: “I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.” 

So much of what passes for journalism and political conversation today mimics the pathetic self-abnegation of the greengrocer. People are constantly writing and saying things of highly dubious merit — “Hannah Gadsby is funny,” “Islam is the religion of peace,” “Trans Women are Women,” “’Black Panther’ deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Picture” — as if they were religious incantations. The whole lamentable phenomenon is utterly totalitarian in spirit and has been abetted by social media, where one can instantly and constantly display his or her correct opinions and righteous outrage in the hope of keeping the wolves at bay. Depart from the consensus, fail to display the correct slogans in the proverbial shop window, and “there could be trouble.”

Demonizing The Opposition (NY Times version)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/us/republicans-democrats-messaging.html

How would you tell the difference between a Democrat campaign mailing and the NY Times? Possibly because the Times is more partisan and less glossy?

So we have a whole article on the idea that Republicans are trying to "demonize" Democrats over infanticide, socialism, and anti-semetic remarks. Wow.

I guess Democrats don't have to "demonize" Republicans because they support Trump who is racist, sexist, homophobic, nationalist, crazy, a liar, dangerous, etc..

They also don't need to mention that Republicans are religious zealots, anti-science, mysogynists, racists, gun nuts, uneducated, hateful, backward, uneducated, etc.

Why? Because the NY Times ... and NPR, WaPo, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, etc will do it for them!

Trump, Robert Kraft (Patriots Owner)

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/01/24/trump-called-new-england-patriots-owner-robert-kraft-every-week-for-a-year-to-console-him-after-his-wifes-death/23652031/

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2013/01/19/patriots-owner-robert-kraft-talks-about-life-loneliness-and-love/5SYgWQrDBwXGWgLZEnZVfL/story.html

Myra Kraft died in 2011 and Robert Kraft took the death very hard. One of the people that helped him through that time was Donald Trump. Here is what Kraft had to say in one interview ...

"When Myra died, Melania and Donald came up to the funeral in our synagogue, then they came for memorial week to visit with me," Kraft told the Daily News. "Then he called me once a week for the whole year, the most depressing year of my life when I was down and out. He called me every week to see how I was doing, invited me to things, tried to lift my spirits. He was one of five or six people that were like that. I remember that."

You know, Donald Trump the anti-semite.

Does this mean that Trump is a wonderful man? No, of course not. What it DOES mean however is that he is not the one dimensional force of evil that the media constantly paints him to be.

So he isn't the devil. I submit there is no way you can rely on the media to figure out how good he really is, but I think it is totally clear why Robert Kraft, and by extension, many in the Patriots organization are not going to buy the media charicature.

Why would you?

Churchill As Villan

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-16/churchill-was-more-villain-than-hero-in-britain-s-colonies

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and if you have the power of the #11 richest man on earth (Michael Bloomberg) behind you, you can even get it published. If it suited his fancy to increase his number one share, you could likely even get it published in the Washington Post owned by #1 Jeff Bezos.

So what is a "villain"? I guess in this case, it is whomever "Shashi Tardoor" thinks it is. In his "morality", pretty much anyone of the late 19th and early 20th century educated in the west would be "villain". Nearly all of them believed in Darwin for real -- not the modern watered down version of "survival of the fittest". They believed that "the fittest survive" ... meaning WIN, and that Western civilization had proven superior and thus risen to the top. They ALL "believed" this ... Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Margret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood), Franklin Roosevelt, etc, etc. They didn't even see it as a "belief" ... they saw it as "empirically proven by results".

So there really isn't any difference between Churchill and Hitler ...

Nor can his views be excused as being reflective of their times; his own Secretary of State for War, Leo Amery, confessed that he could see very little difference between Churchill’s attitude and Hitler’s.

Strangely though, neither Stalin nor Mao are mentioned ... Communist leaders that butchered well over 100 million. Somehow I suspect that Tharoor would find them much more palatable. How might he put it? If you want to make an omlette ..

Thinking like this is why we have wealth like Bloomberg and Bezos and why it provides a platform for cultural relativists that want to do away with historical heros so that more people believe that those with the most money have the best right to shape opinion. Might ... and money make right!

I'm sure that Hitler, Stalin and Mao would go right along with Bezos, Bloomberg and Tharoor -- except unlike Churchill, who used words to win his arguments, Hitler, Stalin and Mao would be quick to put a bullet in the head of guys like Bezos, Bloomberg and Tharoor once they were no longer useful to them.

Was Churchill willing to use harsh rhetoric and even harsh methods when he believed required to defend the British Empire and the future of civilization? Especially the Civilization of the English Speaking Peoples? Certainly ... and without him we would likely be speaking German today.

Certainly people like Tharoor have a right to their opinion. That we live in a world where the richest people on the planet give them a forum to spew their opinion without even the merest semblance of conterpoint is great example of #FAKENEWS ... it may be fake, but those billionaires DO have a purpose. Their big purpose is to have you uncritically read such tripe.

In the world that Tharoor apparently imagines as "better" the caste system would still be ruling over millions dying in hopeless filth in India, and the Indians of N America would still be starving and warring with neighboring tribes, including the taking the scalps of even women and children as trophies.

If you want to see the "just like Hitler" calumny debunked, there is a decent job here ... as in biographies that are far from hagiographies.

The IMPORTANT thing to understand is how critical it is to modern "progressives" to destroy any great man of Western civilization. What they desire is to make "something new" that they promise will be "quite wonderful" ... just "tust them" -- oh, and be sure not to say anything they don't like lest they destroy you as well!

Hang on to your guns ... and your scalp!

Futility of Green Energy

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/01/why-green-energy-is-futile-in-one-lesson.php

The simple answer is that the sun never shines at night and some days it is cloudy, the wind also sometimes doesn't blow. News at 11.

So, in general utilities have to have 120% of their highest peak in capacity ... and against this, wind and solar can account for about 20% ... no matter how much wind and solar you have available.

So when it gets cold and it isn't windy ...

Because of the extreme cold, Xcel Energy urged its natural gas customers in Becker, Big Lake, Chisago City, Lindstrom, Princeton and Isanti to reduce the settings on their thermostats, first down to 60 degrees, then to 63, through Thursday morning to conserve enough natural gas to prevent a widespread shortage as temperatures remained 14 below zero. Some Xcel customers in the Princeton area lost gas service, and Xcel reserved rooms for them in nearby hotels.

So the greenies want to stop building pipelines, and they want to not have coal or nuclear provide power.

What they have been telling us since the '90s is that it isn't going to get cold anymore ... at least not "record cold", or the "subzero temps of old" here in the upper midwest. Hey! We are in a new warmer climate zone now! Back in 2012 they were telling us that we were going to have to start worrying about termites, because "sub-zero nights were a thing of the past" in the Twin Cities.

Well, I guess this is "back to the future"! 

National Emergencies, A Dime A Dozen

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/list-31-national-emergencies-effect-years/story?id=60294693

BUT TRUMP!

Otherwise ... well, no issue with 58 National Empergencies since the concept was created in 1976, 31 of them still active. All sorts of directed foreign policy against certain countries / dictators, property, funds, moves against cyber crime, etc ... a laundry list.

The wall? Even the 25 billion is basically chump change. The US Postal Service which is supposed to be solvent lost $5.5 billion in one year, the F-35 fighter, $29 billion a year, in 2013 Medicare made $45.7 billion in "improper payments".

A one time investment of $6, $16 or $26 billion to save a MINIUM of $54 billion a year is a damned good investment! Nobody knows how many illegals we have -- that is the point of "illegal", it is ALL estimates. Conservatives are going to estimate high, liberals are going to estimate low -- AND, they are going to value the contributions of illegals very highly.

Unless we have controlled borders, we will never know!

My preference would be to repeal the National Emergency law -- it is definitely a sign that the executive and legislative branches are unable to govern using the checks and balances that were intended to be used. Has it been, will it be misused? Absolutely -- it's a government law, it HAS BEEN, IS, and WILL BE misused! What part of the reason for smaller more accountable government are you missing?

That said however, the reality is that we DO have it AND the government has been broken for a very long time ... at least since Watergate. We have a royal unaccountable Administrative State that actually calls the shots. That Administrative State **OUGHT** to be under direct control of the executive branch ... it is an active function like the military. Congress is like the Board of Directors ... they control funding and they can pass laws to modify how the Administrative State functions -- but the President out to be able to hire, fire, furlough, etc like any other executive -- and as FDR realized, government employees should NEVER be unionized!

The current situtation is completely simple. "The Party" (TP-D) which controls the Administrative State, the media, most of the professions including law and judgeships, wants open borders to allow "undocumented democrats" to come in as voters and be included in the census (this is why they are fighting to avoid even having a question asking if the person is a citizen on the census!) to add to the already extreme power of TP.

TP is for open borders and against voter ID. Does it really get any simpler than that!