Bilevel


Polistra is happy that the roulette tables in the Wall Street Casino are burning. Maybe it will finally bring some reality to the elite coverage of economic conditions.

No, it won't.

Nevertheless, we are still moving toward a two-part economy, like most Latin American and African countries, and like J. P. Morgan's 1890 America. The elite barons, both 'Left' and 'Right', live in gated compounds with private security, free to move to Dubai after they have shorted America into submission. The masses have their bread and circuses.

Yesterday the distinction between Upstairs and Downstairs showed brightly, with a glint of irony, when Glenn Beck interviewed Peter Schiff, a pessimistic expert.

Transcript of relevant section, from GlennBeck.com:

SCHIFF: Well, it`s going to be worse, certainly, than the 1970s. We -- we`re going to have to pay the price for years of living beyond our means, while we were spending all this money and consuming, our real industrial base was disintegrating beneath our feet. So we`ve been living off of borrowed money and an artificial standard of living, and that`s all going to come to an end.

Just like an individual, if you quit your job and live off of a credit card, eventually, you know, the bills -- the bills come due, and you have to downsize your lifestyle. That`s what`s going to happen. But you know, you talked about the 1930s, where if you were in cash, you did well.

Unfortunately, this time around, our money, the U.S. dollar, is going to collapse, as well. So simply having money in the bank...

BECK: Hold on. Hold on. Hold on just a second. Peter, you honestly are sitting here making the prediction that the U.S. dollar is going to collapse?

SCHIFF: Yes. I think it`s going to lose at least 50 percent of its value, maybe more.

BECK: In what time period?

SCHIFF: It could happen over the course of just a couple of years. Maybe even sooner.

Schiff's diagnosis is exactly right. Under both brand-R and brand-D "Free Traders", i.e. Chinese agents, we've sold our industries and patents to China, and allowed our own factories to disappear. The irony: this process actually does "hurt minorities and women most", because as I've discussed before, it removes low-skilled men from the pool of providers and decent husbands, leaving them no option but crime; which in turn removes low-skilled women from the pool of full-time mothers, requiring them to work at WalMart.

Well then, does Schiff have a good solution? Yes indeed.


BECK: I`ve got 30 seconds, and we could spend an hour on this. What exactly is the average person supposed to do?

SCHIFF: Well, I mean, what you could do is get rid of your dollars while you can. I mean, that`s what I`m helping my clients do at Euro Pacific. We`ve been doing that for years. We`re selling dollars, and we`re accumulating foreign assets. We`re investing in Asia and Europe. We`re trying to get rid of a currency that`s on the verge of a collapse.

BECK: Holy cow. Peter, thank you very much.

Get rid of dollars??? Sell dollars???

Telegram for you, Schiff: this phrase is not even comprehensible, let alone helpful advice, to the average man.

This may well be useful advice for the Wall Street Casino Bettors who are ready to move to Dubai, but it's several universes removed from the average man.

Labels: the broken circle

  ¶ 8:44 AM

  Solar chihuahua


Let's say you've been spotting dog poop in one corner of your yard. You suspect the neighbor's chihuahua, but you haven't actually seen him pooping. This morning you see him doing what dogs do, in the same corner of the yard where you've been seeing and smelling the poop. The next morning you see him in action again, and again the next evening.

A normal rational human, or a normal scientist, will conclude that the neighbor's chihuahua is the actual source of the earlier poops, which were small enough to be his product, not likely to be Great Dane poop. The scientist will use more precise measurements and more statistics, but the basic inductive reasoning is the same.

Not so for a Paranoid Religious Zealot. The PRZ will notice the chihuahua depositing poop, and instantly conclude that all chihuahuas have Jew-chips implanted in their tiny brains, which force them to poop in a Jew-coded way. He will then carefully scoop up the Jew Code Defecatorium, bring it into the house and try to decode the patterns, and (after appropriate rearrangement) the Jew Code Defecatorium will absolutely verify that the chihuahua is sending secret messages to be read by Jew satellites on Mars, thus passing orders to the guy across the street who is a 32nd Degree Mason and thus undoubtedly an Illuminatus.

= = = = =

Now for an article in latest New Scientist mag, headlined "Sun takes some climate blame, but most is ours."

Most is ours. Does this mean the "scientists" finally have any evidence of the connection between human activity and the earth's temperature? No, it refers to increased factual proof of the sun's connection to global temperatures, followed by a typical piece of Paranoid Religious Zealot "reasoning" by the "scientists".

The actual observation: "Planet-wide heating and cooling of the atmosphere during the 11-year sunspot cycle has been measured for the first time."

Evidence of longer-term solar effects has been clear for many years, but the fine-grained changes in the short 11-year cycle were not large enough to spot easily amid the huge variability caused by all sorts of other stuff. New research has managed to tease out the correlation between sunspot cycles and roughly 0.6 degrees of average variation.

If we had any actual scientists practicing in the climate realm, this observation should put the final nail in the coffin of the idiotic greenhouse "theory", but no.

Here we go on the paranoid merry-go-round:

"What will excite climate scientists most is that Tung and Camp are the first to measure directly how a given change in the amount of heat energy in the atmosphere translates into a change in [worldwide] temperature. Researchers call this the 'climate sensitivity' of the atmosphere, and it is a vital factor in climate research because it determines how fast the planet will warm as a result of climate change.

...

Tung and Camp say that [this correlation] shows that a doubling of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would cause a warming of between 2.3 and 4.1 degrees C within about a year. They say this makes the lower estimates of some models 'unlikely'. "

And this last point is what has the Gaia-worshipping PRZ's excited. More disaster! More apocalypse! More sin by humans! More reason to exterminate the entire human species! Oh boy!!!

Trying to pry this apart: The facts of this new factual discovery, if they were treated as facts, would help to knock down the global-warming hoax, because the facts make it clear that we are noticeably warmed and cooled by the 11-year solar cycle, along with the already-known longer solar cycles. Rational thinkers would treat this added evidence for solar influence as added evidence for solar influence, just as the observed squatting of the chihuahua is added evidence that the chihuahua is the main influence on your yard's odor.

In turn, this should decrease the credibility of theories about other influences (such as greenhouse gases) because those are not even theories; they are fraudulent superstitions based on a reverse reading of known data.

But that's not how the Gaia-worshippers see it. Instead, they treat these new facts as nothing more than a modified parameter for their fraudulent models, a new code to be fed into the same wild axioms, leading always to the pre-determined conclusion: Exterminate humans! Exterminate humans! Exterminate humans!
  ¶ 10:13 AM

  Dignity
Just a thought.

The brand-R politicians and commentators are all huffy about the "indignity" of answering Youtube questions. Romney said "I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman."

Okay, so what kind of question is "dignified" and "becoming"?

Well, we can take George W. Vichy's choices as a standard, since he's the champion when it comes to declaring actions as "unbecoming". He's so dignified that he won't do any of the normal things that leaders do ... such as telling the people what's going on, or telling us when our soldiers gain territory from the enemy.

So which kinds of questions does Vichy happily take? Which category of questioners does he cheerfully josh around and smile with?

Helen Thomas.

David Gregory.

Traitors who should have been imprisoned or hanged long ago.

So this is the Vichy standard.

Traitors are proper and dignified sources of questions, while animated videos are "beneath respect".








What's wrong with this picture, other than every goddamn thing?

= = = = =

Later: Huckabee, appearing on Laura Ingraham's show, separated himself from the defenders of the Imperial Presidency: "I don't mind. I've answered questions from far sillier people than an animated snowman." Must admit I didn't like him much at the start ... he seemed to be mainly about losing weight ... but he's definitely gaining points for leadership and clarity.
  ¶ 12:51 PM

  Two missionaries unmartyred


Via Chosunilbo:

Taliban kidnappers on Monday released two Korean hostages, Kim Gina (32) and Kim Kyung-ja (37), after 26 days in captivity in Afghanistan. Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Hee-yong on Monday officially confirmed the women had been released and handed over to Korean officials. Cho said the two women, who were reported to be ill, were now in a safe place under the protection of Korean authorities. He added that Seoul was relieved that some of the 21 surviving hostages have been released.
A government official said the two are in an area under the control of an allied forces reconstruction team in Ghazni Province.

The next part is not strictly newsworthy, but I find it interesting in two ways:

Kim Gina, who teaches computerized animation at a junior college, reportedly used her vacation to take part in a short-term missionary trip to Afghanistan. Her brother Ji-woong (35) said he was worried every time he saw media reports about the health of the hostages, since Gina had left for the trip before a back ailment was fully cured. “I was worried that she hadn’t brought enough medicine with her, even though she needs continuous treatment using painkillers.” Kim Kyung-ja had told her family she was going to Dubai to stop them worrying.

First, you'll find very few Christians, let alone saintly Christians, among computerized animation people in the West. Nearly all of them are orthodox West-hating Osama-loving Leninists. I wonder if the mandatory connection between art and Communism hasn't been formed in Korea? If so, it's another reason for us to listen closely to Korea.

Second, "Kim Kyung-ja told her family she was going to Dubai to stop them worrying."

These are saints. That's all I can say.
  ¶ 11:11 AM

  Skousen's prophecies
A few days ago, someone at NRO mentioned W. Cleon Skousen as an important anti-Communist intellectual. I'd never heard of the guy, and his name was so wonderfully clattery that I just had to look him up. Turns out he was an FBI agent in the early '50s, who had helped to penetrate the Commies.

Later he left the Bureau and joined the Birchers, before the Birchers themselves were penetrated by the Party and turned away from effective anti-Communism to stupid CFR/Illuminati conspiracies.

Skousen wrote an astonishingly prophetic document, and I'm amazed that I haven't read it before. It seems to be distributed widely around the Web.

Callers to C-Span and various radio shows often read other lists of supposed Commie goals, which are either wrong or clearly fictional. This list is drawn from Skousen's FBI experience, its date of publication has been verified, and nearly everything in it has come to pass.

Many of the items were not at all obvious in 1958, and must have seemed like wild paranoid thinking to those who read it before 1970. A few items were specific to Soviet practice, and thus became obsolete when Reagan, the only pro-American president since 1958, tossed the Soviet Union into the dustbin of history.

= = = = =

Here's the list, with my comments in brackets after each item.

1958 CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

[Done!]

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

[Done, with cherries on top! See Comrade Bush dealing with Persia... ]

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament (by) the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

[Comrade Carter accomplished this task.]

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

[This has shifted from Russia to China. Both Bushes and Clinton have been working on this one with tremendous results for China's benefit.]

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

[Obsolete; the lend-lease program went away.]

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

[Done!]

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

[Comrade Nixon accomplished this one.]

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

[Done but obsolete]

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

[Done but obsolete]

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

[Done but obsolete]

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.

[See blue berets.]

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

[Obviously worked; CPUSA is still going strong, mainly doing business now as "United for Justice and Peace" or variations thereof.]

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

[Loyalty oaths were still in use in 1958, so this must have been accomplished later; I'm not sure exactly which Comrade was responsible. Wasn't terribly important in the big picture.]

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

[Shifted to China with enthusiasm, and added copyrights as well.]

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

[Done, again with the brief interregnum of Reagan.]

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

[This is the most dramatically prophetic item to my thinking. Was a completely alien concept in '58, and now it's the sole purpose of the Federal courts.]

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

[Done.]

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

[Done, but now being resisted in a minor way by 'alternative' conservative papers on some campuses.]

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs of organizations which are under Communist attack.

[Shifted in recent years from student riots to black riots, thanks to the great work of Comrades Piven and Cloward, implemented by Comrade LBJ.]

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

[Done.]

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

[Done. Not just key positions but all positions.]

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

[This one caught me by surprise. I thought the movement toward ugliness was a conformist tendency among the artsy types who also happened to be leftists. I didn't realize it was Party policy!]

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

[Redundant with 22. Done]

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

[Done. The comrades who sit in the Supreme Court building have been wonderfully busy and effective, haven't they?]

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.

[Again prophetic; not a visible trend in '58]

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

[This one is still being worked on, as you can tell by watching any and all TV programs; started later than most other goals.]

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

[Done, with a few temporary holdouts like the Baptists. The Party's modern Global Warming campaign seems to have finally knocked down the Baptists, who had firmly resisted the push toward gay ministers etc.]

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

[Done. Again not publicly known in '58]

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

[Done. Special credit to Comrade Breyer on the last bit. The black-robed saboteurs have thoroughly shredded all of the Constitution except the trivial details of "terms of employment": 2 years for House, 6 years for Senate, Pres must be natural-born, etc. For some reason they've never bothered to shred those bits, so I must assume that those bits are helping to bring down America. Black-robed saboteurs are thorough, meticulous and consistent; they never accidentally miss an opportunity to destroy the country.]

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

[Done and prophetic.]

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the grounds that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

[The latter part, emphasis on Russian history, is the only point in this list where Skousen missed. Or at least the only point that was never accomplished by the Party. Maybe it wasn't very important to the Party.]

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture - education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

[Done, mainly by Comrades Johnson and Nixon.]

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

[Apparently done, or at least such laws are no longer enforced.]

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

[Done. Skousen didn't see quite far enough on this one, since Congressional Committees now serve only to investigate and punish anti-Communists.]

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

[Didn't need to discredit; instead the FBI was turned into an agency to burn Christians and prosecute Americans who dare to oppose our internal enemies.]

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

[Happened, but unions were turning obsolete at the same time, so it didn't really matter.]

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

[Done and relevant.]

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand (or treat).

[Again wonderfully prophetic. This campaign didn't begin until the mid-70s.]

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

[Redundant with #38]

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

[Done and prophetic.]

41. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

[This one is subtle because the 'rising up' has never been part of the public front of the Party. If you watch Comrades Sharpton and Jackson in operation, you can see the results, though....]

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

[This was actively underway in '58, proudly and openly sponsored by Communists, so it's true but not at all prophetic. A few of those African nations are now starting to regret what Communism did to them, and considering re-colonization.]

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

[Thanks to Comrade Carter again.]

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.

[I don't know the Connally Reservation, but the latter part is obviously working out quite nicely.]
  ¶ 8:08 AM

  Bravo Newt
Newt appeared briefly on Prince Walid News a few minutes ago. Said that the only one of the [declared] candidates who is thinking boldly enough is Obama.

Bravo! All the brand-R politicians and talkers have been zapping Obama for proposing an attack on Pakistan; all say it's "irresponsible" because "Pakistan is our good ally and friend."

Any rational observer of facts can see perfectly well that Pakistan is our enemy. Though I suspect Obama's motives are not quite simple and factual, he has still spoken the truth on this one point. And Newt, whose motives are rational and factual, has the guts to acknowledge it publicly.

I AM SO GODDAMN TIRED OF DYNASTIC LOYALISTS WHOSE SOLE DEFINITION OF TRUTH IS "BUSH SAID IT, THEREFORE IT'S TRUE!" OR CONVERSELY "BUSH SAID IT, THEREFORE IT'S FALSE!"

Facts exist.

Facts can be observed by anyone.

If Bush happens to say something that agrees with the observed facts, well, that's sort of interesting because of its rarity, but it doesn't increase or decrease the truth of the observed facts.
  ¶ 9:38 AM

  When to hold, when to fold
While all the focus is properly on the hostages held by savage Mohammedans in Afghanistan, some interesting and hopeful things are happening within Korea itself.

Dear Leader Kim may be on the verge of quietly folding under a number of internal and external pressures. For one thing, he seems to be ill; rumors of heart attacks and long absences from public view. For another, he may be feeling the same shrinking sensation that the IRA and Qaddafi felt after 9/11. When faced with the unparalleled nastiness of Osama, other autocrats and terrorists find it hard to continue ... they must be thinking approximately: "Do I look like that? Do I really want to be remembered for looking like that? And if so, can I afford to outdo Osama?"

A new carrot-and-stick project from the South may give Dear Ronery Boy a way to save face by turning his country toward capitalism and modernity without immediately losing control. Much like the Chinese model.

From Chosunilbo:

...Ex-prime minister and a presidential hopeful Lee Hae-chan said, "North Korea hopes to establish industrial parks in Nampo, Wonsan, Shinuiju and Najin, and tourism projects in Mt. Baekdu, Mt. Myohyang and Mt. Guwol." He added it was “highly likely” that the two Koreas will agree on large-scale economic cooperation during their planned summit, which would lead to “an economic boom” in the North.

In a lecture on Wednesday, President Roh Moo-hyun’s special advisor promised the summit “will be a watershed that will end the economic division of the two Koreas and help revive the North Korean economy.”

In April last year, the Presidential Committee ... finished formulating an economic initiative for the Korean Peninsula. Its report to the president envisages developing five economic zones: a Kaesong (North)-Paju (South) zone, a Mt. Kumgang (North)-Mt. Seorak (South) zone, a Shinuiju (North)-Dandong (China) zone, and a Najin (North)-Khasan (Russia) zone.

Those crossover zones are especially interesting, offering a built-in 'gate' for learning and culture to China and the South. As Eastern Europe demonstrated, opening those cultural gates leads inevitably to collapse of totalitarian regimes. Result is not Young Democracy, just [comparatively!] decent and normal countries.

= = = = =

To be clear: The carrot is lots of money, food and petroleum. The stick is the requirement to open these economic zones.
  ¶ 8:41 PM

  Alliance update
Sure enough, Sarkozy wasn't in New Hampshire just for a vacation. Bush is going to be "taking his vacation" at Kennebunkport, and will be meeting with Sarko on Saturday. Something big about to happen?
  ¶ 10:53 AM

  Core wars, Bohr wars


Professor Polistra has solved a mystery.

She has been puzzled by the recent refusal to name the enemy or acknowledge the existence of war, and the apparent decision to stifle all discussion of possible enemy action or involvement in events like the Mpls bridge collapse.

She has been annoyed for a long time by the fake "measurement" of inflation used by official economists to set things like interest rates and Social Security income. "Core inflation" is "measured" by removing all the items that inflate, so you're left with the items that don't change.

A new puzzle provided the key to all of this. Last week, Bush invited several loyal brand-R talkers to a confidential conclave, where notes and recordings were prohibited. Only feeeeeeliiiings could be conveyed to the proletariat. Glenn Beck was one of the invited insiders, and he said that Bush is sharp, incisive and harsh when in an unrecorded situation like this, but whenever he's being recorded by cameras he turns into the familiar bumbling idiot who can't speak English.

This bizarre scenario finally struck a note and connected all three mysteries.

Answer: Bush is running a Quantum Government.

All three mysteries resemble the familiar Heisenberg principle* by which an atomic particle exists only while it's being measured. By refusing to measure inflation, we can make it disappear. By refusing to name the enemy, we can make war disappear. By refusing to record Bush, we can magically transform him from a mental defective into a Churchillian leader who is never verified.

See how easy it is?

Of course all of this is bullshit. The mysteries and contradictions of quantum physics fall away if you abandon the notion of particles and treat everything as energy carried in wave-like patterns. Waves exist whether you're looking or not. Inflation exists no matter how you measure it. And we are really under constant attack by Mohammed-fueled Arabs and their allies, whether we name them or not. In each case, we will do a better job of answering reality and solving the problems if we get rid of the Quantum idea, no matter how exciting and avant-garde it may seem, and simply work with the dull old physical reality.

= = = = =

*Tech note: Prof Polistra knows that Heisenberg's theorem is really far more specific and narrow, but the common meaning of the Uncertainty Principle is a useful metaphor.
  ¶ 6:36 PM

  Bravo Sarko!



Bravo Sarko! He was vacationing in New Hampshire, and a couple of American Communists (called, for obscure historical reasons, "journalists") were harrassing him. They were actually following his boat. So Sarko turned around, boarded their boat and gave them a tongue-lashing in French. Full story here.

This man should be emperor of the world.

However! The most interesting aspect of this story is not Sarko's refreshing behavior. The most interesting thing is that he is in the US, apparently trying to keep a low profile until this incident. Not far from the Bush family retreat at Kennebunkport, which may be relevant.

Why would a French President take his vacation in America, when France has so many excellent resort spots? This gives credence to the growing sensation that something large is about ready to happen, something large enough to require participation of the full Alliance.

Reminds me of the secret shipboard meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill, near Newfoundland, on August 5, 1941. The Alliance was set up at this meeting.
  ¶ 7:58 PM

  1992 again: Confirmed.
Via the Jawa Report blog, from South Carolina:

GOOSE CREEK (WIS) - Authorities demolished a suspicious item found in a car that led police to close a highway outside Charleston Saturday night.

WIS News 10 spoke with officials at the Berkeley County Detention Center who said 24-year-old Ahmed Mohamed and 21-year-old Yousef Megahed, the occupants of the car, are still in police custody.

So far they have only been charged with possession of explosive devices, but the FBI is working to see if more crimes have been committed.

The Berkeley County Sheriff's Department tells WIS News 10 the two men are not US citizens.

From Reuters:

"There's no (terrorism link) that we've identified at this point," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko told Reuters.

"They got pulled over and had just enough suspicious things to warrant investigation. We don't think there's that much to it. They had some materials to make some pretty good-sized homemade fireworks but not bomb stuff."

No charges were filed in the case...

Yessir, Mister FBI man, we'll go along. This is just a couple of fine upstanding young Middle Eastern ENGINEERING STUDENTS with good old Quaker names, just out for a jolly time with a trunk full of fireworks. Why, I used to work with engineering students, and fondly recall how every Friday they would say "Hey fellas, let's all drive down to the nearest military base that stores nuclear weapons and has a jail holding enemy soldiers, and scare the crap out of them with heavy explosives!" A fine student lark, merry hi-jinks indeed.

Interestingly, this story seems to have been yanked down at Lucianne.com, which was covering it with the usual diligence until an hour ago. Might be a technical glitch, or something worse.
  ¶ 6:43 PM

  Must be something in the air ... or the culture ...


Calling Diogenes! The alleged and so-called "Moderate Muslims" or "Peaceful Muslims", so often falsely claimed, may actually exist. In Korea. Their imams came out strongly and firmly against the hostage-taking on the first day of the crisis, with no buts.
  ¶ 11:29 PM

  Ends and means


Polistra likes to learn from dogs, our perpetual teachers of civilization. Dogs get straight to the end. When the goal is truly important, a dog will take a straight line to reach it, regardless of obstacles. When there's a horse that needs herding, a border collie will leap through barbed wire to reach it. When there's a snake menacing a family member, a chihuahua will jump in front of it and take the bite.

Conservatives like to criticize leftists by saying "Marxists believe the end justifies the means." This statement is factually true but woefully incomplete. "End justifies means" is not a characteristic of Marxism; it's a trademark of Marxists because MARXISTS ARE SERIOUS ABOUT THEIR ENDS AND NON-MARXISTS ARE NOT SERIOUS ABOUT OUR ENDS. That's the difference.

Worst of all, non-Marxists generally get so tangled up in discussing and implementing the methods [e.g. insuring that judges have the last word even when we know the judges are enemy agents; following the Geneva Convention even though it was specifically meant to discourage terrorism, not to assist terrorists] that they forget about the ends entirely. Leftists are only too happy to assist our entrance into this briar patch, as when they get Nixon, Bush or Gonzalez immersed in discussions of that grand old question "What did you know and when did you know it?" This generates all sorts of defenses and research, and accomplishes precisely nothing except to move the enemy closer to his goal. The only appropriate answer to such questions is as follows, verbatim: "FUCK OFF, YOU GODDAMN COMMIE." Perhaps accompanied by an appropriate action, such as "Edward Kennedy, I hereby arrest you for treason. Marshals, shackle him. I will try and execute him immediately, here and now."

When I see THAT happen, I will know that we are finally serious about defending civilization. When I see THAT happen, we will finally have a chance of winning this war.

The Iraq section of this war has become pure process with no end at all. Its original plan, as formulated by those dreaded Neocons, did include a proper and meaningful goal: to show Arab tyrants that sponsoring terrorism was a futile course. As soon as we captured Saddam, we should have killed him on the spot and begun withdrawing, leaving Arab-on-Arab chaos behind. That would have accomplished the purpose of transferring futility to the enemy while leaving us free to fight in other ways and places. Instead, we're locked in an inescapable process with the nominal but worse-than-delusional goal of imposing Free And Fair Elections on Arabs. Worse-than-delusional because we've already seen that such "elections" lead directly to rule by the enemy. So we own all the futility.

As said before, the experiments of history have already been performed. We have the data. We know how to convince a fierce and determined enemy to stop. Oddly enough, the proper method is democratic in a way, though it has nothing at all to do with elections. Fact is, any successful tyrant rules with the enthusiastic consent of a majority of his people. When that consent disappears, his regime collapses, though not always immediately. We accomplished this collapse in 1945, after three years of killing soldiers and generals had failed to remove the people's consent. What finally did the trick? Killing huge numbers of civilians, with no regard for the traditions and laws of fighting. Churchill and Roosevelt violated all the rules of civilization for several months, used totally evil methods and means for a short time, because they were certain of their own good ends. They knew that Britain and its allies were the permanent carriers of humane civilization, they had tried all lesser methods without success, and they also knew that decency and goodness would leave this earth for a very long time if the Krauts and Nips continued their enthusiastic consent for imperial fascism.

We will have to do the same thing sooner or later in the current war, because we are the people who learn from dogs, and Mohammedans are the people who refuse to learn from dogs. If we continue to agonize about the Christian purity of our methods, we will simply die and there will be nobody left in the world to carry and defend Christianity.
  ¶ 6:30 PM

  Pons asinorum II
An extreme irony: As the bridge was collapsing, Rep. Oberstar (the NON-ENEMY congressman from the Mpls area) was on the House floor managing debate on a bill to increase funding for infrastructure on the upper Mississippi, and he was discussing problems with locks, dams and bridges. He really deserves to shout "I told you so".

More logical suspicion: The feds have ordered a crash program to "inspect" all similar bridges. First: this doesn't make sense from an engineering standpoint; these bridges were built at different times and experience different climates, different levels of maintenance and traffic conditions. Thus they shouldn't all be ready to collapse right now. The only reason for an emergency inspection of all such bridges RIGHT NOW is if we suspect the enemy has planted, shall we say, foreign objects, on all such bridges. Second: the inspection method doesn't look appropriate. Fatigue assessment generally requires a long-term set of precise measurements, as detailed in this research paper which happens to deal with the Mpls I35W bridge. You won't really learn much by a single visual inspection WITH BINOCULARS FROM BELOW, as the inspection teams are doing. The latter method would be highly effective for detecting foreign objects placed on the structure of the bridge.

The predictable: As usual the brand-R and brand-D politicos are using this event to create a false choice. D says we should be spending less on rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure and more on our own. R says we should be spending less on social programs and other 'pork'. In some ways both are right, but unfortunately neither side has any right to say it, because neither side has put any money into infrastructure for the last 20 years. Anyway, it's a matter of will, not a zero-sum game. For instance, Spokane is not a rich city by any means, but it has managed to rebuild three major bridges, pretty much from the ground up, in the last four years, using a mix of bonds, state and federal money. All without depriving other useful gov't programs of any funding.
  ¶ 7:56 AM

  Pons asinorum
Homeland Security "assured" us that the Mpls bridge collapse was not caused by enemy action. I note that Prince Walid News Channel has already taken this "assurance" for gospel, and has already totally excluded hostile action from their thinking.

Sorry, that doesn't work. You simply cannot reach that conclusion within the first few hours after the destruction. First, the Mpls-StPaul metro area is a hotbed of enemy agents, so hot that they've even elected their own enemy penetrator to Congress. Second, we know that the enemy has been trying to target bridges, and has cased and examined many of them. Third, the collapse happened suddenly and nearly simultaneously, after reports of "jackhammer" sounds. This pattern resembles a deliberate explosion more than a typical structural failure, though the latter is certainly not excluded.

An official in DC could reach a positive conclusion instantly if he had info about the activities of local enemy groups, or perhaps a verified claim of responsibility. But he could only say immediately that this was not an act of war if he had continuous security footage of all sides of the bridge for the last few years, showing conclusively that nobody had planted any foreign objects on the bridge. Such footage might exist, but I severely doubt it.

= = = = =

Friday: It still wouldn't be possible to determine for sure that no explosives were used. I'd guess it will be several days before the wreckage is even stable enough to permit that sort of search. Nevertheless, we see the crawl on the cable stations running like this : " ... CAUSE OF DISASTER UNKNOWN ... DISASTER NOT CAUSED BY TERRORISM ... NICOLE RICHIE PREGNANT ..." Doesn't the juxtaposition even catch anyone's attention? Am I the only one in this country with a functional brain? If the cause is UNKNOWN you can't say the cause is NOT TERRORISM.




Obviously we're back in 1992. Bad things just sort of happen, and we are forbidden to even consider the possibility that we have an enemy. All we can do is put teddy bears on the owies and hope the Dow keeps climbing.
  ¶ 7:45 AM

  Our dear Young Democracy friends


Won't see this picture on the Nightly News.

Might help us realize who the enemy is.

Can't have that, now can we?
  ¶ 3:30 PM

  Why do they hate us?
As I've said many times before (but not lately!), this is a bad question, a weakening question.

In all periods of human history, half the tribes and nations hate the other half. If hate were the relevant variable, all nations would be at war all the time. In fact war is relatively rare and isolated, so hate is simply not the relevant variable when your goal is to maintain peace.

War starts when Nation A decides that Nation B is weak or distracted, and when Nation A can gain something - land, resources, power, macho mojo - from the attack. This can happen with or without hatred.

Nevertheless, sometimes the question just can't be avoided.

I've mashed together two pictures here: the Korean mission school in Afghanistan, and a Mohammedan mission school (madrassa) in Tanzania.



See the difference? All the kids have head coverings, but the kids being taught by Christians have something else as well.

Joy.

This also explains why Western Leftists are Allah's best allies. Both of their gods (Gaia and Allah) are strictly concrete gods, who reside in specific places. Gaia lives in the entire earth, and Allah lives in Mecca. Concrete gods order their believers to worship in concrete ways: avoid certain substances and sacrifice real innocent human beings.

For Gaia, the substances to avoid are tobacco, carbon dioxide and meat. For Allah, it's pork and alcohol. For Gaia, the sacrifice is abortion, euthanasia, and ultimately the entire human species. Allah's sacrifice is less universal but more dramatic: Jihad. Both gods hate capitalism, banking and Jews. And above all else, both gods hate Joy.
  ¶ 7:46 AM

  Martyred 2


The sub-bestial Mohammedan camel-humpers have martyred a second member of the Korean missionary team. This time it's Sim Sung-Min (심성민) who is the second man from left in the group picture below.

There's some indication that Korea is getting angry enough to do something about it. Let's hope so, since we're not going to do anything about it.
  ¶ 9:42 PM

  Skirts, cars and 202s
I'm alternately annoyed and amused by Hollywood's tendency to miss the culture and style of earlier periods.

The most annoying and universal tendency is pure Socialist Realist propaganda: they depict the normal taboos and prejudices of the earlier era as evil and repressive, by contrast with the Ahead-Of-Her-Time Heroine who proudly carries this month's rigorously orthodox Leninist taboos and prejudices. She manages to Re-Educate the more Enlightened Ones of the Evil and Repressive Natives in that Horrible Time, and the remaining normal people Nazis continue to Heil each other in their Swastika-bedecked Pigpens.

Hollywood's errors in style are not so intentional or heavy-handed, but still annoying. Can't they hire someone who lived through the '50s or '60s? Surely some of their writers and producers are old enough to remember these things accurately.

Focusing on this point today for two reasons:

1. The new series Mad Men on AMC refreshingly avoids the standard propaganda tricks. Mad Men depicts the taboos and prejudices of 1966 with amazing accuracy and sympathy, and doesn't shove modern taboos and prejudices down our throats to Raze Our Consciousness. The show even distinguishes between 'enlightened' and 'less enlightened' views by the actual standards of a 1966 adult, leaving the viewer to decide which era's peculiar bigotries are preferable.

Despite such careful objectivity, Madmen misses the mark on style. The female hairstyles belong in 1959, and some of the clothing dates from 1948. The cars are also too old on average. It's true that 50's cars were still around, but only in the hands of teenagers and old ladies. No self-respecting social-climbing businessman would dare to keep a four-year-old car, let alone a 25-year-old clunker. This failure is especially puzzling because the three-year obsolescence cycle was created by the same admen featured in the show!


*** Much later note: As I was searching for something else, I noticed an error in this entry. For some reason I thought Mad Men was set in 1966. In fact the first year of the series was set in 1960, so the 1959 hairstyles were just right, and the 1958-59 cars were also within the 3-year obsolescence cycle designed by the ad men. In other words, the show is 100% accurate! ***


2. I've acquired a little more sympathy for the writers and producers, after encountering a period puzzle of my own.



Polistra is displaying a digital model I'm building: a Western Electric 202 phone. It's destined to become part of the furnishings in my version of Nelson's Dream Village Motel, a Route 66 landmark in Lebanon, Missouri. The Dream Village grabbed my esthetic soul for some reason, and I've been working on it sporadically, as a background project when other work wasn't pressing, for quite a while.

Here's the puzzle. Nelson's Dream Village was built in 1934, and its heyday was in the late '30s. When I set out to give the cabins a room phone, I knew that the 'candlestick' phone was still common at that time, but wasn't sure if the newer square style would have been available. Perusing online sources, I found the 202 was supposedly the most common phone in the '30s.

Yet I've never seen a real 202 before, and I'm reasonably certain that it wasn't used in Missouri or anywhere in the Midwest. Why certain? First, before the ATT breakup most folks kept their phones forever. It was just too much trouble and expense to switch the company-owned phone. I saw plenty of candlestick-style phones still in use through the '50s and '60s, but I never saw a 202. Second, I've been focused on electrical gadgets since birth, and spent a fair amount of money and time collecting old phones and radios. If this strikingly beautiful phone had been in a house or motel anywhere within my travels, I would have remembered it with affection; if it had been in an antique shop or auction, I would have bought it with joy. So I'm sure it wasn't used by Bell in the central part of the country, but it must have been common elsewhere, perhaps in the Northeast, judging by the number of 202's available on eBay.

Well, what to do? I finally decided to include it in the Dream Village model on the shaky grounds that it's the sort of thing Colonel Nelson would have wanted in his motel. He had an eye for style, and if this phone had been available from Bell, he certainly would have used it. (No, the actual reason is that it's the sort of thing I like, and I enjoyed building it!)

= = = = =

Much later note: The 202 ended up as part of the Arcade Hotel set, after the Nelson set didn't sell well.
  ¶ 12:58 PM

  Imposing your morality....
Listening to C-Span interview with Romney, in which Mitt was given several of the Youtube questions from the last brand-D debate. Inevitably, one of the questions was about torture, and Mitt gave his standard answer again: Never, not under any conditions at all.

Why doesn't anyone ask the followup? Like this: "Okay, so you're perfectly willing to sacrifice the lives of 300 million Americans to satisfy your own personal ethical standards. You will knowingly allow complete national destruction to preserve your own precious pure-as-the-driven-snow conscience. What kind of twisted conscience is that? How dare you impose your morality on the lives of 300 million people????!!!!"

= = = = =

As said before, I deeply appreciate Brownback's true and valid morality on this question [it's better to sacrifice one evil life than many innocent lives] and I'm sad to see that Brownback has essentially dropped from the race. His campaign website has been static for more than a month.

Labels: Ethics

  ¶ 6:34 PM

  Korea's Dan Rather
Apparently Korea has its own problem with elite media sophisticates. While reporting on the martyred missionaries in Afghanistan, MBC's main anchorman Um Ki-Young (엄기영) switched to a remote report and didn't realize he was still visible on a split screen.

He leaned over and laughed to a colleague, as if vastly enjoying the plight of the martyrs. MBC was quite appropriately barraged with nasty emails!

A short FLV video of the chortle is in the middle of this webpage.
  ¶ 3:22 PM

  Crackin' those ACORNs
While the national political mechanism collapses, states are carrying on in their usual fashion, which is sometimes pretty damn good. Here in Wash, the state is finally prosecuting the Communist-front group ACORN for voter fraud, which probably led to the election of brand-D Gregoire in 2004. Can't undo the election, but it's mighty satisfying to see a Leninist group get crunched.

ACORN has been causing nationwide mischief for 35 years, while rarely gaining publicity. It was founded as part of LBJ's welfare entitlement, to help organize welfare recipients into a private army for The Party. It has faded since Clinton phased out the entitlement, but it's still around and still making trouble.

From the Seattle Times:

Workers accused of concocting the biggest voter-registration-fraud scheme in state history said they were under pressure from the community-organizing group that hired them to sign up more voters, according to charging papers filed Thursday.

To boost their output, the defendants allegedly went to the downtown Seattle Public Library, where they filled out voter-registration forms using names they made up or found in phone books, newspapers and baby-naming books.

One defendant "said it was hard work making up all those cards," and another "said he would often sit at home, smoke marijuana and fill out cards," according to a probable-cause statement written by King County sheriff's Detective Christopher Johnson.

Prosecutors in King and Pierce counties filed felony charges Thursday against seven employees of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, claiming they turned in more than 1,800 phony voter-registration forms, including an estimated 55 in Pierce County.

This is a good example of a phenomenon I've discussed before: each state has a permanent political culture, either honest or dishonest, totally uncorrelated with party affiliation. Wash is on the permanently honest side, which means that voter fraud by the Left gets harshly punished by a totally Dem state government.

I made this observation as I moved back and forth between Kansas and Oklahoma over the years. Kansas gradually shifted from R to D, and Okla shifted the other way, but Kansas remained culturally honest and Okla remained culturally dishonest. Such basic cultural factors are never mentioned, perhaps not understood, by the usual experts and commentators, even though they explain trends and behavior far better than "the issues" or ideology.
  ¶ 12:06 PM

  Fairness pt III
Not necessarily an objective judgment, because I'm a bit crankier than usual lately for no particular reason. Maybe a gut feeling of impending disaster.

Subjective or not, it seems that the brand-R talkers are just begging for the Fairness Doctrine to be reimposed.

Normally, when you get a 'warning ticket' indicating that the gov't is about to come down on you, what's your response? You clean up your act just a bit. You slow down, or park away from fireplugs, or mow your lawn more often, or in this case you would try to make your opinions and talk more substantial, less trivial, less brazenly monomanical.

Nope, that's not how the talkers are behaving. With a couple of exceptions, they are accelerating the raw ego, turning up the blind Bush-loyalty, screeching the Hate Hillary feedback, amping the Ayn Rand. They are converging toward a single line of squawk, which goes something like this:

"I am Lord of Lords and God of Gods. I contain all galaxies and universes within my Mighty Soul. I know everything; nothing which was created was not created by Me. You tiny atomic particles out there, I can scarcely see you, but I know that you are all Weirdos, Perverts, and Losers Losers Losers Losers Nyah Nyah Nyah! Losers, Losers, Losers!!!!!! I need nothing except Zero Taxes. When I have Zero Taxes, the world will be perfect."

Even a normally loyal conservative loses patience with this bizarre and ferally contemptuous verbiage, and wishes for something different, even something diametrically opposite, in its place.
  ¶ 3:55 PM

  Martyred


One of the Korean missionaries has been martyred by the savage subhuman Mohammedans in Afghanistan.

= = = = =

Update: This first martyr was the group's pastor and the founder of the church, Bae Hyung-kyu (배형규). He's the one standing on the right side, slightly separate from the three rows, in the group picture below.
  ¶ 2:55 PM

  Spokane: Boom! Dallas: Boom! Where next?
A big explosive fire in Dallas is all over the TV this morning.



On Monday, Spokane had a very similar and equally dramatic explosive fire, which didn't make the national media for some reason. [Actually the reason isn't mysterious: there was a vastly more important story about some Paris Hilton-type celebrity critter, which pre-empted all minor trivia such as disasters and wars.]

A fuel distribution company caught fire with a tremendous mushroom cloud, and continued exploding and burning wildly for several hours as thousands of oil drums ignited individually. They had to call in a foam-spraying "crash truck" from the airport to calm it down. Several nearby businesses were damaged or destroyed, but no injuries or deaths.

Investigators quickly decided it wasn't an accident, but they haven't found - or at least haven't announced - a suspect yet.

KREM has lots of videos and pictures and the latest dope.

Are we seeing a planned cross-country bomb-fest? Is this a test of a technique to divert the crash facilities from airports?

= = =

Later: Tie this in with today's TSA warning about "dry runs" for bombs on airplanes and it gets real interesting. Fox mentioned that none of the people who brought "blocks of cheese with wires and batteries" to airport checkins had been arrested. This tells me with 100% certainty that the dry-runners are clearly identifiable Mohammedans. If any of them had been Christians or (heaven forfend) conservative Christians, they'd be in the Seventh Circle of Supermax, getting the 24-hour waterboarding treatment. Mohammedans are, as we all know, naturally immune from arrest.
  ¶ 8:26 AM

  Hunter & Kaptur on SPP
Very interesting bit of discussion in the House, shown on C-Span a few minutes ago. Duncan Hunter teamed up with Marcy Kaptur of Ohio to introduce an amendment relating to the "Security and Prosperity Partnership", the giant borderless highway from Mexico to Canada. Their amendment is primarily aimed to eliminate spending for various stages of planning and design on the SPP, but the stated secondary motive is to bring some kind of Congressional oversight on the SPP.

Hunter and Kaptur described the project and its likely security problems quite accurately. They were opposed by Knollenberg, brand-R from Michigan, who called the project "mythical", and by some old guy named Olver, brand-D of Mass, who simply appeared to be senile.

This [the amendment, not Olver's senility!] is especially interesting in two ways. First, whether the amendment passes or not, it plants the existence of the SPP into the record, with two solid "witnesses" behind it.

Second, watching Hunter and Kaptur work together leads me to think that the real "partnership for security and prosperity" would be Hunter for Pres and Kaptur for VP. Both have long records of favoring American blue-collar workers and heavy industry against the inroads of Mexican and Chinese semi-slavery. Both are strongly in favor of maintaining sovereignty and security. Back in 1996, I think, Kaptur was considered for VP on the Perot ticket; I don't remember if she got nominated or not. And of course Hunter is the only brand-R candidate who accurately understands our current situation.

= = = = =

Later: the amendment passed 362 - 60! Though it's only a cut above symbolic, such a huge majority represents a sound rebuke to the Borderless Establishment, by most members of both parties.
  ¶ 3:49 PM

  Amok
The phrase political correctness run amok is being thrown around every hour or so in news broadcasts and various discussions. Those who use the phrase seem to think it's a tough and hard-minded form of expression, but in fact the phrase is itself a euphemism.

This phrase is generally used in describing situations like the Flying Imams, where our government allows the enemy to use all the weapons of Due Process and Rights against us. These situations are far more serious than the self-censorship properly denoted by political correctness. These situations are in fact forms of surrender to the enemy in time of war.

Our current enemy, Arabs and their allies fueled by Allah, is perfectly willing to use our court and political mechanisms against us. Their political branches, such as CAIR and ACLU, know how to run these mechanisms. Their internal agents, such as Keith Ellison and Abu Hussein Obama, are in a position to take over these mechanisms. When we allow this to happen, it's not political correctness run amok, it's aiding and abetting sabotage.

= = = = =

Later: On this same topic, I just noticed something in the previous entry about Korean missionaries ... something that should have caught my attention but didn't.

The Taliban spokesman said: "Afghanistan is an Islamic republic where conversion from Islam or attempting to convert Muslims is regarded as a serious crime in several areas."

And just who set up this republic? We did. Good old helpful Uncle George, always ready to assist the enemy in achieving his goals.
  ¶ 9:17 AM

  The new Noah will be named Kim or Choi.
Koreans are probably the most serious and most exemplary Christians in the world. I've been noticing this for a while, and now it shows up in a news story.

A large group of Korean missionaries were captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan on Thursday. The kidnappers claim that they want Korea to remove its small contingent of troops from that country, but I suspect the missionaries themselves, not the troops, are the irritant. If anyone can manage to convert Mohammedans to Christ, it's Koreans that will do it.

Here are the 23 young missionaries just before they left for Afghanistan:



In an interview with the Arabic satellite TV channel Al Jazeera on Saturday, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a purported spokesman for the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, said that the detained Koreans were carrying out "missionary activities." He added, "Afghanistan is an Islamic republic where conversion from Islam or attempting to convert Muslims is regarded as a serious crime in several areas."

And here's the school where they were planning to work:



A kindergarten in Kandahar, Afghanistan which a missionary group from the Saemmul church in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province planned to visit before they were kidnapped. Since its opening in 2005, the kindergarten has admitted about 100 war orphans and children from destitute families. Two classrooms and the teachers' room were burned down in an arson attack last year.
  ¶ 7:41 AM

  Time capsule: Pangborn and the Kamikaze


In 1935, America was fully preoccupied with its own problems. FDR had made a bad start on fixing the Depression (National Recovery Administration), and his second try (WPA) hadn't quite taken hold yet. Europe was starting to boil over but hadn't yet exploded into open warfare. As I've detailed before, the isolationist mood was nearly universal until 1940.

Not quite universal, though. Here's an NBC commentary by Edwin Hill, December 1935, which sounds a lot like us modern hawk types. Hill complains that American diplomats are naive and innocent, always expecting other nations to behave decently, and always shocked when other nations behave like nations. "Good old Uncle Sam, always hopeful, always patient in the face of European skulduggery."

Hill also mentions a Congressional hearing in which the noted aviator Clyde Pangborn warned us about Japan's real intentions. "America is threatened by only one enemy, and that enemy is Japan. Japan has perfected man-operated aerial torpedoes in which the plane and the bomb are one, an instrument deadlier than any known weapon. Certain to bring death to the operator, yet thousands of Japanese have already volunteered for the honor of dying as pilots of these infernal modern weapons."

We had plenty of warning, just as we had warning of the Mohammedan version of the "man-operated torpedo".

There's one important difference, though. In 1941 FDR, learning from Churchill and from Canada, was cured of American naivete and decided to fight the war with total 'skulduggery' and nastiness; decided to get through the war quickly so that we could resume our natural decency. In 2007 George W. Vichy has learned nothing. He is still Shocked! Shocked! Shocked! that our enemies are not Episcopalian Gentlemen, and still cannot bring himself to fight effectually. His idiotic "long twilight struggle" is a guarantee of defeat, a guarantee that we will never be able to return to normalcy.


Listen to Edwin Hill.

= = = = =

Update 7/23: Now "good old hopeful Uncle Sam" is talking with the Persians. According to a report on Prince Walid News (aka Fox) just now, "US diplomats hope to get the Iranians to help stabilize Iraq, which is in Iran's best interests. Meanwhile, evidence mounts that Iran is responsible for helping to destabilize Iraq."

Aside from the basic idiocy that "stability" should be our goal, this is just silly and self-contradictory. In the first sentence Fox says that "stability" is in Iran's national interest, and in the second sentence we hear that Iran is helping to "destabilize" Iraq. Can't we understand that other nations always act in their own interest? Can't we learn something from this?

If we had any sense at all we'd understand that an "unstable" Iraq is in EVERYONE'S best interest, and we'd throw millions of weapons into the mess then stand back and watch the fun. THOSE ARE ARABS KILLING EACH OTHER. ARABS ARE OUR ENEMIES. IF THEY KILL EACH OTHER, IT SAVES US THE TROUBLE AND EXPENSE.
  ¶ 7:49 AM

  Breaking science: Natural gas is a RENEWABLE resource!
There has been a lot of disputation about the idea that oil is constantly produced by bacterial action; the conventional wisdom is that all fossil fuels were laid down in Fred Flintstone's era, so the supply is strictly finite.

Apparently liquid oil is still dubious, but it turns out that a significant portion of natural gas - maybe 20% - is known to be generated steadily and presently by bacteria. This fact is not publicized for some reason, and I'd never heard it before, but it's settled science.

"In 1993, researchers with the USGS reported pockets of biogenic gas across the US and predicted that 20 percent of all known natural gas deposits worldwide were formed by microbes."

Jennifer McIntosh at the Univ of Arizona is trying to determine whether the right kind of microbes can be injected into shale deposits that bear a likely combination of hydrocarbons. Goal: start methane generation where it isn't already occurring!

From New Scientist, 7/21/07 print issue.
  ¶ 2:52 PM

  Dammit, Roger!
Normally I find Roger Hedgecock to be superior to Rush when he substitutes.

Today he's missing the point badly, and I'm sure intentionally.

On the question of giving citizens immunity from enemy lawsuits, which is being pushed by the heroic Peter King, Hedgecock is strictly blaming the Dems in Congress for obstructing the law.

In almost the same breath, Hedgecock knocks Congress for trying to pull us out of Iraq, saying CORRECTLY that Congress isn't supposed to run the war.

Yes, the executive is supposed to run the war.

So why in the hell isn't the executive protecting citizens from enemy lawsuits? Bush could enforce this by executive order.

Instead (breaking news just this moment) he has IMPOSED THE GENEVA CONVENTION ON OUR INTERROGATION OF TERRORISTS BY EXECUTIVE ORDER.

Well, anyone with half a brain can no longer wonder about it. Bush is on the other side. He enthusiastically prosecutes our soldiers and border guards when they dare to do their job; he allows the enemy to use courts against Americans; and he orders our interrogators to stand down. He uses up our treasury and our military in an effort to accomplish a goal that no rational human believes to be possible.

How much more evidence do we need?
  ¶ 10:50 AM

  Visually impoverished
I've pet-peeved for many years on the odd lack of visualness in television. Even though each subject has thousands or millions of photographs and clips available, news stories use precisely one standard 'icon' for each subject. If a story involves DNA, we see a technician using a pipette to fill a grid of gels. If a story involves smoking, we see the side view of a cigarette assembly line, and we see a closeup of some old unshaven dude smoking. If a story involves obesity, we see fat people without heads walking down the street. If a story involves an Amber Alert, we see a teddy bear. You know the pictures I'm talking about, because you see the same ones on your TV no matter where you live.

In other words, TV might as well be radio. It was intended to bring us actual pictures of events, but instead it brings us a standard font of icons, with as much visual meaning and variety as the desktop icons on a computer screen.

And for a story about al-Qaeda, we see tall Osama with his scepter of authority, walking grandly through the mountains, and Soldiers of Allah being trained on jungle gyms and martial arts.

Think for a moment about the jungle gym and martial arts. Does this bear any relationship to even one known attack by the Army of Allah? Has any Christian or Jew been knocked down by a flying ninja kick? No. All attacks to date have been high-tech attacks, using airplanes, cars, bombs, and guns. No athleticism required. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to use clips of actual attacks for the stories about Mohammed's Military? Clips of stockbrokers jumping from the WTC, beheadings, cars smashing into innocent college students ..... Those clips would keep us mindful of the specific forms of attack we can genuinely expect.
  ¶ 10:01 AM

  Teams again
Listening to Bill Bennett interviewing Tony Snow ... Snow says he is about to start giving our side of the war, using facts and graphics. Bennett says Okay, fine, glad to hear it.

This is a perfect example of the cheerleader phenomenon.

In a war that involves propaganda more than any previous war, our side finally decides to gingerly tippy-toe into the water, to start telling our own side, after five long years of dead silence, five years of letting the enemy possess the media, five years of letting internal enemies leak with no punishment.

Those of us who want our side to win have been screaming at the TV for five years now: "What's wrong with you, George Bush? What's your defect, Snow? This isn't complicated or mysterious, dammit! Your job is not to pal around with Helen Thomas, your job is to tell us what we're doing and why! Look at what FDR did in WW2!!! He took full control of the media, and WE WON THAT WAR!!!!!"

But the people who were in a position to carry those complaints to the administration have never done it; they just said "Yay Bush! Yay Bush! Bush is God! Hillary is Satan! Bush is God! Hillary is Satan!" It would have been far more helpful to the team if people like Rush and Medved had asked the hard questions directly and publicly.

Briefly: I don't expect people to be heroic. I do expect them to use their resources and position for good ends. If you are in a position to speak directly to administration officials, you must use that position to give them honest information, and to ask the questions they won't hear from Helen Thomas or David Gregory. You're not entitled to simply complain and moan like any ordinary citizen.

  ¶ 5:42 AM

  Fairness, part II
Excellent rant by the 2nd-string talk host Jerry Doyle tonight.

His point: Republican talk radio has done more to ruin the Republican party than anything else.

His basic argument: When was the last time the R brand won in a landslide? Reagan in 1984. When did the current model of talk radio start? Roughly 1988. And what's happened since then? Talk radio and talk cable TV have turned into a sporting event rather than a discussion, with two teams. Team R cheers for everything the Republican party does; Team D cheers for everything the Democrats do. There is no flow of advice or information; nothing to guide the politicians. Just cheering for the mere existence of each team. So the teams have deteriorated, lost their principles, until both sides are just playing to waste time and money.

Reagan won because he had no automatic cheering section. He couldn't count on loyal courtiers to take his side no matter what he did, as e.g. Michael Medved does for Bush. Reagan had to craft a solid message that could break through the filters, so that's exactly what he did.

Picasso said "There is no great art without a resistant medium." True of any craft or discipline. If you want to create a meaningful product, you need to fight your way through obstacles, thus learning new facts and techniques.

This ties with my recent essay on the Fairness Doctrine. I was mainly talking about cultural matters, but it applies equally to politics. When every station has to devote a certain amount of time to covering public affairs in a factual way, competition leads to quality. When that requirement is gone, political coverage depends purely on ratings, which leads to bottom-feeding and triviality. When serious commentary is required by license, stations will offer serious commentary.

I think the Web also contributes to the team effect. For reasons I've never plumbed, all discussion on the Web is crammed into a two-team template. Whether the subject is software, sex, spirituality or spam, every online forum splits into Team A and Team B, with precise lists of permitted statements on each side. Woe betide the discussant who tries to speak between or outside the bounds. If you try to show that a third position exists, or that A and B are both false, or A is right for B's reasons, you'll be beaten with four-letter sticks and stones until you leave.
  ¶ 8:19 PM

  Scary predictive ? dream
Putting this down for the record, regardless of meaning.

Dream happened this morning (Thu 7/12) about 5 AM Pacific time. In the dream, a bomb was narrowly averted when a little old lady driving a '62 Rambler started to drive across it; she noticed it, got out of the car and started to move it out of the road. I recognized it as a bomb (it seemed to be sort of L-shaped) and shouted her away from it. The bomb was supposedly meant for a red-haired "candidate" ? whose name was Smithfield or Maxfield, or perhaps the name of the constituency or district was Smithfield or Maxfield. The named district would imply Britain, because our congressional districts have numbers, not names.

In my "mental iconography", the '62 Rambler undoubtedly means Romney, but the rest doesn't make any particular sense. (Especially the part where I was the hero ... that part doesn't make a lick of sense!!!!)


= = = = =

A bit of Googling finds that there isn't a Smithfield constituency in Britain, but there is one in the Australian state of New South Wales, and the MP from Smithfield (in the NSW state assembly) is an Assyrian Christian named Ninos Khoshaba.
Assyrian Christians are definitely endangered by Jihadis, who consider them to be traitors to the Arab cause. I've never heard of this Khoshaba and never paid any attention to New South Wales, but I do pay attention to dreams that have the asterisk of significance.



  ¶ 5:26 AM

  Chertoff's gut
Homeland Security head Chertoff says he has the gut feeling that an attack is coming soon.

Refreshing! Our gov't and corporate officials have fallen into the habit of saying only what their lawyers approve, which means a narrow range of verbatim boilerplate phrases like "Out of an abundance of caution" or "We have no specific credible information". Such meaningless phrases form a huge part of our loss of trust ... we sense that leaders don't respect our intelligence enough to speak to us as adults. So I congratulate Chertoff for treating us with respect and giving us his human judgment. This is closer to the way Roosevelt and Churchill spoke.

For what it's worth, Madame Polisztra isn't getting the same dire sensation, and her gut is usually pretty accurate.

= = = = = = = = = =

Wednesday: I spoke too soon. It turns out that Chertoff was not really offering a bit of genuine human feeling; he was trying to pre-empt or soft-pedal a report that he knew was coming out today. The report says that every bit of our war effort has been completely pointless and misdirected. Spending trillions of dollars and thousands of American servicemen has accomplished precisely zero. Al-Qaeda and other divisions of Allah's Army have rebuilt to their original strength while we were trying to impose Free And Fair Elections Monitored By Jimmy Carter on fucking Arab savages. In other words, the report says exactly what we hawk-types have been saying for the last three years.

Will the administration change course and start fighting? Of course not.


Please, Lord, send us a Pinochet before it's too late.
  ¶ 9:04 PM

  Spirit of a sissy, part II
Continuing this theme........

I used to think the Episcopalians had "gone about as fur as they could go" along the road of turning Christianity into a social club for Communists, lesbians, and enemies of civilization. Surprisingly, it looks like Rome is grabbing the prize from the Piskies.

This story from the Seattle Times:

The Rev. Ann Holmes Redding, a local Episcopal priest who announced she is both Muslim and Christian, will not be able to serve as a priest for a year, according to her bishop.

During that year, Redding is expected to "reflect on the doctrines of the Christian faith, her vocation as a priest, and what I see as the conflicts inherent in professing both Christianity and Islam," the Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolf, bishop of the Diocese of Rhode Island, wrote in an e-mail to Episcopal Church leaders.

...

Redding, who until March was director of faith formation at Seattle's St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, has been a priest for 23 years.

In June, she announced publicly that, for the past 15 months, she's also been a Muslim — drawn to the faith after an introduction to Muslim prayers left her profoundly moved.

Ah, but she's found a new "spiritual" home:

Redding is scheduled to start teaching part time as a visiting assistant professor at Jesuit-run Seattle University this fall.

What's that high-pitched screeching sound I hear? Oh, it's the gyroscopic spin of Ignatius Loyola's ghost. Loyola founded the Jesuits to be literal soldiers of Christ, and their main campaign in his lifetime was to convert Mohammedans to Christianity.
  ¶ 6:55 PM

  No stars, no stripes


Polistra finds nothing to celebrate today. US and UK are led by mental defectives. Our leader spends our entire army and treasury on a completely pointless war, which accomplishes nothing except to spend our entire army and treasury. Britain's new leader thinks the enemy will go away if he doesn't name it. Rome is eagerly embracing Mecca. Among the consequential nations, only France and Australia are truly and honestly on the side of civilization.

September 1939 wasn't this bad.
  ¶ 6:50 AM

  England is dead.
From the Daily Express:

Gordon Brown has banned ministers from using the word “Muslim” in ­connection with the ­terrorism crisis.

The Prime Minister has also instructed his team – including new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith – that the phrase “war on ­terror” is to be dropped.

The shake-up is part of a fresh attempt to improve community relations and avoid offending Muslims, adopting a more “consensual” tone than existed under Tony Blair.

I thought there was something exceedingly odd about PM Brown's first public statement; he uttered a few Bushian platitudes about "being vigilant", but didn't say anything meaningful. Blair would have told the straight truth, in language that would brace the nation for whatever needed to be done. I was willing to tentatively forgive Brown on grounds of newness and perhaps a different style.

Then I thought Jacqui Smith's statement "These terrorists are criminals" was even more wrong-headed. Again I was ready to discount for inexperience and accidental word choice.

But I didn't realize just how bad it is. This is not inexperience, this is intentional and premeditated total surrender.

This is so utterly cowardly, so completely suicidal, that it should call for an instant correction from the throne, even a takeover from the throne. Elizabeth Regina, are you there?



  ¶ 7:35 PM

  Pius XIII


Here's the man who should be Pope. He has the same kind of guts as Pius XII, the kind of guts needed to lead the Church Militant when a true Crusade is called for. Benedict has unfortunately shown himself to be just another standard EU bureaucrat, eager to surrender to Allah.

Here's the kind of man the world needs:

Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, has openly called for the overthrow of the government led by President Robert Mugabe.

In an interview with the Sunday Times of London the archbishop said: "I think that it is justified for Britain to raid Zimbabwe and remove Mugabe."

Archbishop Ncube later told BBC that while he suggested intervention by Great Britain, the former colonial ruler of the African country, he could justify action by any other power to ease the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe. Some action is required, he said, to oust "a government which is ready to sacrifice the lives of its people."

"We have to choose between two evils," the archbishop explained. He said that Zimbabwe is facing a desperate situation, with widespread crop failures aggravating an economic disaster that has seen the annual inflation rate rise toward 15,000%.

...

Archbishop Ncube has said in the past that he is prepared to face death in order to bring about change in his country. Now he told the Sunday Times, "I'm ready to lead the people, guns blazing."

His logic is easy to follow: A pastor is shepherd of his flock. Sometimes a shepherd has to shoot wolves. That's how a pastor becomes a Crusader.
  ¶ 8:32 PM

  Shocked! Shocked! Shocked!
Headline on Prince Walid News Network, aka Fox:

"Today residents of UK woke up to the shocking news that two of the terrorists are doctors; that they don't fit the usual model of disaffected youth."

What goddamn usual model?

Al Qaeda is an army of doctors and engineers. Doctor Zawahiri invented it, Engineer bin Laden funded it, and all of the 19 soldiers who pulled off 9/11 were professional-class men. That's exactly why al-Qaeda is so dangerous and successful.

The "newscasters" have been reading these facts for several years now, with no exceptions. Why does this idiotic poor-and-disaffected idea persist when it has never been supported by a single fact?

Serious terrorists, even before the current Mohammedan set, have always come from upper-middle class backgrounds. The low-level recruits in a place like Palestine may be poor and disaffected youth, but that situation is more of a guerrilla army than a band of terrorists.

= = = = =

And while I'm growling and grumbling: Why in the hell are the terrorists still described as "alleged attackers" and "suspects"?????

When you have footage of a man covered in flames crawling out of a burning car, and he pushes aside people who try to put him out, while shouting "Allah! Allah! Allah!" ... this man is not an alleged suspect. He is an enemy soldier.

The continual use of these legalistic terms keeps our response locked in the court model. The military model does not assume enemy soldiers to be "innocent until Mike Nifong decides they are guilty"; the military model assumes the enemy soldier needs to be killed until his commander or national leader surrenders completely.

One more thing: the fact that he was shouting "Allah! Allah! Allah!" has been completely censored from all American coverage of this event. His Mohammedan loyalty has been tossed in the Memory Hole. Censorship is needed in a war, but the correct job of censorship is to prevent the enemy from knowing our plans, not to prevent us from recognizing the enemy.

= = = = =

Later: Now that we have at least three MDs involved in this plot, my suspicions about biological agents are tingling wildly. Wonder if any of these docs are specialists in bacteria?


  ¶ 8:06 AM

  "Amateurish"
Listening to some of the "terror analysts" being interviewed, particularly someone named Bill Durodie on Fox. Durodie pulled a classic bit of leftist bad logic, and didn't get called on it. He said we need to avoid over-reacting; we need to be careful about closing down public places or detaining suspects without warrants. Those are two precisely opposite actions. Closing down public places without specific reason is indeed over-reacting, and does indeed fall into the category of "letting them win", though I find that phrase abhorrent. Detaining suspects without jumping through all the legalistic hoops is NOT over-reacting. The distinction is obvious. Closing down or over-tightening public places would interfere with INNOCENT people and would weaken our culture and economy, which is what Osama wants. Interning everyone who ever attended a mosque would amount to taking the GUILTY out of circulation, which will increase our security without interfering with any innocent people.

We are in a war, dammit. After six years, we still haven't figured out who the enemy is, and what we're fighting for. Or rather, we [the people] have figured it out just fine, but our governments haven't.

Another piece of bad logic is the notion that these particular attackers in London and Glasgow are "amateurish". We don't know that at all, and the continued use of that term will cause us to underestimate the enemy. The Mercedes near the nightclub was a fully professsional bomb, which would have caused huge damage if it hadn't been detected and disarmed. That's not a failure or bad engineering; it's a case of excellent and courageous police work. The threat was absolutely professional, but the police were more professional and perhaps a bit lucky. The Glasgow car-into-airport appears to have been less effective in causing death and destruction, but it still succeeded in closing down the airport indefinitely. That's not a failure, and it may have been the fully intended plan.

Reminder: In a war, not every shot or bomb hits a target. In WW2, it's estimated that 10000 bullets were fired for each achieved death, and 100 bombs were dropped for each achieved death. War is inefficient.
  ¶ 12:55 PM

  The 5% Solution
It's well known that Saudi Prince Walid bin Talal bought a 5% interest in Fox News a couple of years ago. Until now, the effect of his part ownership wasn't obvious to me. As of this latest London incident, the effect has become blazingly clear. Maybe he has increased his stake recently?

Comparing Fox with MSNBC and CNN, the distinction is now very clear. The other two nets, while normally leftish in their general slant, are nevertheless covering this set of events evenly, referring to Jihadis when appropriate. Fox has been exceedingly delicate and euphemistic in contrast, hitting the "tiny minority" theme as hard as possible. Fox hosts have shushed experts who tried to describe Jihad accurately. Right now (Sat morning), Fox isn't even touching the story of the bomb attempt in Glasgow, while CNN is carrying coverage from Rupert Murdoch's Sky News!

= = = = =

Update: My first thought on the flaming car in Glasgow was that it might be a bio-bomb rather than a bang bomb... that the flames were meant to distract from a sprayout of smallpox or anthrax or something. Now we hear that the hospital where the driver was taken has been evacuated. Hmm.
  ¶ 8:46 AM

  Integration
Headline coverage of the recent Supreme decision on school integration reveals a sometimes hidden truth. The decision is a good one, making it harder to discriminate, yet all the newscasters say the following, nearly verbatim:

"Cities will have to find new ways to achieve diversity in the classroom."

Thus acknowledging, without even needing a pullquote or a fact-check, that the sole purpose of government is to advance Stalinism. No balance needed here; nobody even says a nice polite compromise phrase like "Cities will have to consider the possibility of stopping their official discrimination." That's so laughably absurd that we don't even have to think it.

We're always told that the latest Supreme decision is "The Law Of The Land", but it's obvious that "The Law Of The Land" only holds valid when it agrees with Stalin. On these once-in-a-lifetime occasions when the Supreme Court happens to agree with the Constitution, the decision is immediately declared invalid by the rest of the government, and the proper duty of all officials is to disobey the Court. Anything else is DoubleplusUnthink.

= = = = =

Despite all that, the decision is correct, and does agree with the actual Constitution. Schools should not favor one race over the other.

My point here: it's correct but unhelpful.

And the discussion of the decision on both sides is incorrect and unhelpful, because both sides are talking about the inputs (what we do to the students while they're in school) rather than the outputs (what we expect the students to do when they're finished with school). Both sides assume that the current structure of public schooling, where we trap kids inside a building with "School" on its signboard for 12 years, is God's Law, Eternally Unalterable.

And of course, both sides are jumping around like crack-smoking crickets to avoid the most important fact, which is that Blacks, Whites, and Orientals are different. People from Africa have stronger muscles and weaker minds; Orientals have stronger minds and weaker muscles; and the average Caucasian is in the middle on both scales.

If we're going to get this right ... if we want genuine equal opportunity in life, not just in the 12 years of captivity ... we have to start with the facts, and we have to decide what output is really needed, decide whether and why we need anything resembling public education. When we see these accurately, we then have to reshape a few other things along with public education to get the needed result.

How do we measure or quantify the desired output from schools? It can't be a certain number of grades completed, because that number means something different for blacks and whites. It can't be a test score, because blacks will perform poorly on a test. All of our attempts to match the races on these measures have failed and will always fail.

Peel the onion down by layers. First we have to ask: Equal opportunity for what? The Declaration gives us the deepest answer: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have somehow translated this to mean "Equal opportunity to receive a piece of paper called a Diploma from Harvard." All of our legal decisions are based on this bizarre re-interpretation. Every decision along the way must be focused on a Diploma From Harvard. Perhaps such a Diploma is an ingredient of the pursuit of happiness if you're going to be a federal judge; perhaps these sheltered people can only see into their own past. But the pursuit of happiness means something very different for nearly all ordinary Americans, and specifically for males with low academic potential. It means being able to raise a family. Able to provide a home, cherish and protect a wife and kids. That's what it means, and that's the output we need to be watching as we redefine the government contribution toward that end.

Peel one more layer. What's the minimum expectation of any public tax-funded utility? Though the Constitution doesn't go into detail here, I'd say public utilities provide the basic means for a safe and dignified life. They provide the bare underpinnings for civilization, but not much more. We don't expect a water system to include coffee, tea and Chivas; we don't expect to have a personal policeman constantly at our side. A street system should carry most vehicles without ruining them, but if you want to ride a donkey or run a Maserati at 150 MPH, you have to do it off the streets.

By that standard, how much of the public education system is capable of carrying most vehicles without ruining them?

We know the answer. The first four grades. Reading and writing and nothing more.

Beyond that point the average black is incurably lost, and beyond that point the average Korean is incurably bored. In fact, beyond that point almost nobody is gaining knowledge or experience that couldn't be gained far better elsewhere. For most kids, trade schools and apprenticeships should kick in from age 10 to 17, with at least token wages paid from the start and increasing with experience.

If you have a truly special talent or skill, you already know it by that point, and your parents should be able to find a school or situation to develop it. Every biography of a notable politician, pianist or preacher contains the same line with minor variants: "At age 9 I found a way to practice my profession." Sometimes it's through a mentor or apprenticeship, sometimes it's more of a play situation, but the real expert always starts practicing at 9.

By keeping all the kids in school all day after that point, we are only taking away time from such play-practice, for all but the richest. And by keeping those with less specialized skills out of the world of work, we are depriving them of a sense of usefulness and worthiness.

= = = = =

Now, how about the "few other things"?

Look at these pictures.




This is a 1919 Dodge ad. If you can suppress your modern conditioned eye-rolling response to the "stereotypes", you might notice something more interesting. Who's got the dignity in this picture? Who has a sense of usefulness and service? And who's lollygagging around doing nothing?

Got it?




This is a 2007 ad for something or other. I think he's a rapper. Who's got the dignity here? Nobody. Who's doing the service? Maybe the ho. Who's lollygagging around doing nothing?

Got it?



Now this is a graph of black poverty through part of the 20th century. Note the steady decrease, clearly beginning before 1959, and the flatline from about 1970 until the 1996 welfare reform broke the pattern. What caused the steady decline in poverty? Henry Ford and FDR, working in different ways and for different motives, brought blacks off the plantation and into industrial jobs where their particular combination of physical and mental skills was ideally suited and well paid. And what caused the flatline? Two things, again simultaneous but unconnected: the loss of industrial jobs to Japan and China, and LBJ's Marxist/Maoist decision to create a victim class and maximum chaos. We stole both the pay and the respect from the kind of job a black man could do well, and we substituted welfare and Ludacris expectations. He's no longer able to provide for a family, and he's not expected to do anything but commit crimes and look cool.

Got it?

Moral of the story:

We need to take back our industries from China. Obviously we need to do this for a thousand other reasons, such as national defense, an unpoisoned diet and national survival. But maybe, just maybe, we'll do it a little faster if we realize that a vibrant industrial sector is the best way to restore the dignity and fatherhood of black men. We owe it to them, since LBJ, operating under the theories of Comrade Frances Fox Piven and Comrade Richard Cloward, deliberately stole it from them in 1965.

And as we revive our industries, we can shape the trade schools, both private and public, to meet their needs.

= = = = =

Edit: The economic side of this discussion also applies to white kids with lower academic skills. They are equally damaged by an economy that considers college degrees to be the sole meaningful credential and brings in Mexicans to lower the wages of physical jobs. But the cultural and welfare pressures are exclusively racial, so the problem weighs most heavily on young black men.

Labels: Experiential education, skill-estate

  ¶ 11:30 PM