“If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.” Jay Leno
“The problem with political jokes is they get elected.” Henry Cate, VII
“We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.” Aesop
“If we got one-tenth of what was promised to us in these State of the Union Speeches, there wouldn't be any inducement to go to heaven.“ Will Rogers
“When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it. “ Clarence Darrow
“Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.“ John Quinton
“Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.“ Oscar Ameringer
“I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, Iwill stop telling the truth about them.” Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech,1952
“A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country “ Tex Guinan
“I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to beleft to the politicians “ Charles de Gaulle
“Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks“ Doug Larson
“If you want a real friend that you can trust in Washington, get a dog” Harry Truman
I had to laugh when the "black lives matters" astroturf group tried to shut down a fair in Minneapolis.
That's one way for them to make friends and encourage people to vote for Trump.
Uh, the AmerIndians, not blacks, are low man on the totum pole (/s) in Minneapolis. Ask any Objibwe or Sioux. And I suspect a lot of the "White" people who according to the press reports were kept out of the fair were Objibwes or Hmongs.
But what is really ironic is that the group hasn't noticed that there are two black "ethnic groups" in Minneapolis.
Many Somalis came here with “very negative perceptions” of African-Americans, their notions based on movies that cast African-Americans as drug addicts or killers, said Abdirizak Bihi, a Somali activist. For their part, some African-Americans feel the disrespect and perceive that the new Africans are getting a bit better treatment from the larger community.
Yeah. We see those US films here too. How much racism is spread via films and TV shows from liberal Hollywood? Yes, there are good films, but they are overshadowed by the crime stuff.
Films sort of distort one's ideas of other people.
I remember my black neighbors in the US warning us not to travel to Ireland on vacation because "you'll be shot". And I remember my fellow docs in Liberia warning me not to work with AmerIndians after I returned to the US for a similar reason.
The third floor apartment now has a door to keep us (and the dogs) from going up there.
Luckily we now wash the clothing downstairs instead of on the 4th floor roof, but the door, if locked, will stop them from hanging clothing in the storage area (which lacks windows) when it rains.
Oh well: guess we'll just hang them in the garden.
So where is the money coming from? One rice field was mortgaged. Sigh.
Joy and I will supervise the rice field that Lolo gave to Ruby. Part of Ruby's lot is used for veggies and not under our control. Robin owns part of the large lot too, but no word if she is getting a cut in the profits.
StrategyPage notes that both Israel and Egypt just found huge gas fields off their coasts:
August 30, 2015: Egypt announced the discovery of the largest natural gas deposits get found in the Eastern Mediterranean. There is up to 30 trillion cubic feet of gas, worth more than the existing (and quite enormous) Israeli discoveries. In late 2014 Israel announced a third major natural gas discovery off their coast. This one was worth over $100 billion dollars. The two previous ones are worth over a trillion dollars. These discoveries make Israel largely energy independent and a major exporter of natural gas. The Egyptian gas field could make Egypt much less dependent on oil imports and be a major boost to the economy.
Other news reports more unreplacable archeological sites being destroyed by ISIS.
Remember when the press hyperventillated over the "lost antiquities" in Baghdad, blaming the US troops. Many of these were not lost, just hidden by staff, of course, and the lack of troops (thanks to Turkish refusal to allow transit from the north ) meant stopping the destruction of the oil fields as was done to Kuwait in the earlier war, causing huge pollution problems, was a priority.
The few gay executions are getting UN attention: Just ignore the millions of Christian/Shiite/etc refugees and murders. They don't count.
Yes, I too remember all those trucks going into Syria before the invasion, but no one else seems to...
believing the narrative instead of the reality is a big problem here, he states.
And other stories (no link alas) suggests China too is believing the narrative not the reality about their financial fiasco.
Of course, when the feces hit the fan in China, all they have to do is invade the aggressive war mongering Philippines for attacking their military off the coast of Palawan. Nothing like a war to distract the naive.
Obama hasn't done much to send a signal there that the US Navy will oppose them.
However, there are signs that Korea and Japan might help us (hint: they don't want China to control the sea lanes in the West Philippine sea).
A million people hyperventillated when Cecil the Lion (who was outside the protected park, i.e. a danger to locals) was shot. I suspect he strayed from his pack because a stronger lion was taking over his pride from him (and his brother). But lion vs lion violence is not noticed.
But how many care when inside that same park that Quinn Swales was killed by a lion trying to protect tourists from a lion attack?
Anyone?
No he doesn't count any more than the 3 million Africans killed in the various civil wars in Sudan and central Africa count.
But of course, this isn't just a "who cares" about black lives: The refugees from Syria don't count either...
Belmont club has an article noting a lot of refugee and other problems that are not being taken care of.
The hoards are coming, and it bodes ill for the rich and complacent.
And if I side with the hoards, it is because the Irish diaspora from famine and political oppression was similarly looked on with horror by the same types 100 to 150 years ago.
But the real backstory not being discussed is: watch what you wish for, because you might get it.
When the police, who when being demonized (for political reasons) have cut back on policing, the murder rate soared.
Similarly, we see the world who has happily demonized America the policeman, again, for political reasons.
Guess what? America is now no longer keeping the peace...and so now we watch the world descending into chaos as America the policeman no longer is there.
Watch what you wish for, because you might actually get it...
But who in the US is discussing this? never mind. Obama is black, so if you criticize him, you are racist.
No, don't ask me about Trump: He is nuts. But he has hit a nerve because there are a lot of folks out there who are tired of being made into the bad guy because they follow the rules, and like Rush Limbaugh he can articulate their thoughts.
Reminds me of the late 1960's, when leftist riots led to Nixon becoming president.
But this is worse: because back then, there was still a consensus that communism was evil.
Nowadays, ISIS and Iran just cause folks to shrug: You opposed the Pax Americana, so fight it out fellahs. Which side should we chose? (like Hitler vs Stalin in WWII, the lesser of two evils).
In this case, Obama is not doing a Munich and giving up for "peace in our time": he is tilting the scales for the lesser of two evils: let Iran get the bomb. Of course, he will sacrifice Israel to do so, but anyone who remembers history knows what will happen: Shiite Sunni war redux, with nukes.
And you Europeans who felt so superior to the cowboy USA, well, you can pick up the pieces when the Middle East falls apart (or when Iran and the Saudis nuke each other: Hey who cares? We have North Dakota and fracking).
Belmont Club's article reminds me of the fall of Rome: The German tribes, who were poor and saw Rome as a rich place for them to live, decided to cross the Rhine when it froze over. The Roman government, which had descended into chaos from various interfighting between emperors, had just moved East to get away from the chaos, and didn't have enough troops or money or the will left to stop them.
Freakonomics discusses if insurance companies should pay you not to get full treatment for what ails you, but get hospice instead.
One problem not mentioned: Good hospice care is just as expensive in many cases, since full treatment often lets you strong enough to recover, work and care for yourself... (and insurance companies don't count in the lost wages etc for family members who care for the dying patient in their homes). But I do agree that good hospice can let you live just as long in some cases, and that doing "everything" is sometimes absurd.
But it's not age as much as "comorbidity": If you have five or six things wrong with you, maybe chemo isn't the way to go. But if you are in good health otherwise, well, why not?
But when hospice only covers six months treatment, what happens when it disappears, and you are still alive? This is one reason that people often don't sign up until terminal.
the other problem is that a lot of the ICU etc type of care is done not on "hopeless cases", but in cases when there is a chance for recovery with a good quality of life.
Finally, minorities know that they could be offered less aggressive therapy due to racism. Which is why they hesitate to sign DNR orders etc. No, they are not paranoid: I've seen this.
StrategyPage points out that airlines are using Skydex to protect airplanes from small bombs packed in luggage.
FlyBag is a further development of earlier blast absorbing technology. For example, after 2010 American MRAPS and Stryker wheeled armored vehicles had blast absorption (Skydex) panels added to their floors. Each 762x281x25mm panel (30x15x1 inches) weighs about one kilogram (2.3 pounds). The Skydex is actually a multilayer shock absorber that limits most of the blast shock from a bomb. Thus there are fewer casualties inside the vehicle, and troops are more quickly able to respond to the attack. The panels result in fewer casualties overall, and fewer severe injuries. The success of Skydex led to further research in the area of dealing with the many types of damage explosives inflict.
The perfect bedtime story lasts eight-and-a-half minutes and includes a dragon, a princess, a wizard and a fairy, research reveals.
And such knowledge might just come in handy because the survey also found that parents spend a total of one week a year trying to get their children to go to sleep.
While the ideal story lasting eight minutes and 36 seconds might have traditional elements, such as the backdrop of a castle, the hero should carry a thoroughly modern mobile phone as well as a magic wand.
well, that's how Tolkien got his start: Telling stories to his kid who was prone to nightmares.
And a quiz: which is your favorite film with a dragon?
strategyPage reports that one source of friction between North Korea and South Korea is....junk food: i.e.ChocoPies
August 28, 2015: As if North Korea does not have enough problems one of the most annoying has to do with South Korean snack foods getting into the country and becoming enormously popular. It got so bad that in June 2015 North Korea ordered South Korean companies operating in a special zone in the north to stop bringing in South Korean snacks as rewards for North Korean employees. This follows a 2014 ban of Choco Pies and the subsequent failure of a substitute made in North Korea
The petition, which was started by U.S. conservative group TFP Student Action, calls on the Pope to “clarify the growing confusion among the faithful” at October’s Synod of Bishops and “implores” him to “prevent the very teaching of Jesus Christ from being watered down”. [The issue is confusion, surely. The confusion is being created especially by Germans. We shall see if the Holy Father tamps it down.]The group accuses “dissident Catholic pressure groups” of attempting to subvert Church teaching on marriage
This is not about divorce, but about letting unrepentant sinners receive the Eucharist. Since Catholics believe the Eucharist is the body of Christ, it is holy... And having a non believer or unrepentant sinner receive is an insult to God and implies the Eucharist is just a symbol.
Of course, I should talk. Like most pre Vatican II catholics I support the law, but don't always follow it.
However, I do have a problem with the "I'm okay You're okay" idea that people are really good, and that they never do anything wrong when they steal/lie/cheat/sleep around/get angry/get high/abuse or neglect their children.... There is a difference between human frailty and sociopathy...
Wonder why they don't notice the other 9 commandments?
Did I mention that the corrupt mayor who ordered the hit on his rival (that killed our nephew) died and not only had a Catholic burial but the Knights of Columbus were there...
---------------------------
related item: Local cult shuts down streets when Gov't goes after their leaders for looting the till and harassing whistleblowers... it's not about stealing, hey it's about freedom of religion.
and all the crooked politicians who are also under investigation for corruption are backing the church members...
so it's not just Borgia popes, the Vatican bank and Televangelists who do good and get rich...
So should one go after churches, especially when sometimes what looks as fraud is just naive or bad bookkeeping? Ah, and who polices the policeman?
One African bishop mentioned the problem of couple forced to live apart because one has to find a job away from their families, in cities, mine or even overseas, as something that the conference on families needs to discuss...
The Katipunan was founded on July 7, 1892 with the singular goal of freeing the Philippines from Spanish rule. It was led by Andres Bonafacio, a warehouse clerk from a poor family, and recruitment from the working and middle classes was incredibly fast.
It led to the revolution to overthrow the Spaniards here.
Via AnneAlthouse: PeggyNoonan discovers that legal Hispanic immigrants dislike the illegals breaking the law to get in and many support Trump.
Well, when my oldest adopted son who lost his green card status is unable to visit his brother in the US (turned down by the embassy for a simple visitor's visa) it does sort of annoy me that those who follow the rules are punished, but those who break them get away with it.
No easy answer to this: I know too many hardworking people who came illegally when the rules were winked and except for papers do follow the law. They should get amnesty, as was done by Reagan... they are now are caught in the middle when Obama, instead of getting a just amnesty, just decides he will ignore the law.
This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
----------------------------
ah those nature loving Indians
most were young women with no evidence of violence (suggesting human sacrifice), but another grave were a more mixed group that had been violently killed. (criminals?POWS?)
Given the many massacres in the histories of Europe and in Asia, I am not condemning AmerIndians, I am only pointing out that the pc myth of the peaceful primitive man is bunk.
The statue is a gift from India, celebrating CERN's long association with India which started in the 1960's and continues strongly today. It was unveiled by the Director General, Dr Robert Aymar, His Excellency Mr K. M. Chandrasekhar, Ambassador (WTO-Geneva) and Dr Anil Kakodkar, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and Secretary, Dept of Atomic Energy, India.In the Hindu religion, this form of the dancing Lord Shiva is known as the Nataraj and symbolises Shakti, or life force. As a plaque alongside the statue explains, the belief is that Lord Shiva danced the Universe into existence, motivates it, and will eventually extinguish it. Carl Sagan drew the metaphor between the cosmic dance of the Nataraj and the modern study of the 'cosmic dance' of subatomic particles.
Yes, but it is also a god worshipped by millions. and not necessarily a "good" god, but one who destroys. (destruction is good because creation follows destruction).
When the ABomb went off, one physicist quote Shiva: I am death destroyer of worlds. So there is a long history of this.
They are saying it is that CERN put it there because of their links to India: But India is not exclusively Hindu, you know. It is the country with the second highest Muslim population.
So why is CERN singling out Indian scientists? What? no Jewish/Christian/Muslims working at CERN? No European atheists? No Russian Orthodox Christians? No Jews there? No Chinese Buddhists?
So why Shiva, and not a reclining Buddha or an icon of Michael the archangel?
And the "Dance" implies circular history: western philosophy is based on the idea of the myth of progress. The dance implies reality is illusion, western philosophy implies reality is real.
I had doctor's appointment. We have ordinary doctors here but for specialty care you go to Manila, where the medical care is US level.
We then went shopping. I tried on clothing but gave up, since most of the clothing is for H shaped women and I am shaped like a pear, so even if I find the right size it doesn't drape right. Guess I'll stick to used clothing from the US.
It's a four hour drive.
Joy and Ruby went back today for Ruby's homeschool programs again. They would have stayed overnight but I wanted to come back, so a lot of driving etc. for them.
The Hobbit 3 movie extended edition is being anticipated by a lot of fans, because despite too many action scenes that slowed down the plot there was a lot left out, such as the actual battle with Dain, Beorn and the Eagles, and a lot of the people oriented scenes to flesh out the plot, such as Bard being elected leader of Dale and Thorin's funeral.
well, now we hear the extended edition will be R rated.
Heh. Unless they include an R rated scene between Tauriel and Kili, I suspect this means more bloody fighting scenes.
(update: One comment notes that maybe they will include more comments by Dain... Dain's language is not PC, to say the least, but went over the head of Yanks.).
Sigh.
I love the trilogy, but you know, the fan "Bilbo only" version that is closer to the book is actually better in some ways.
So the Middle East conflicts may be killing thousand and displacing a couple million people but hey, there is less air pollution says the LATIMES.
The cleaner air is the result of “international boycotts, armed conflict and related mass migration of people,” said study leader Jos Lelieveld, director of the atmospheric chemistry department at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. “The changes are so large that they can be seen from space.”
-----------------
and it's not just war that will clean up the air. One major source of pollution is Chinese industry.
With the economic slowdown in China, expect this industrial pollution to get better.
Of course, an economic collapse may hurt a lot of folks, and not just in China, and even lead to civil insurrections, but hey, the air will be cleaner...
"The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered… in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.” — C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
The phrase "Banality of evil" is usually misunderstood as saying evil deeds such as genocide are banal and not evil.
But Hannah Arendt was talking about the phenomena of plain, ordinary folk discussing doing evil deeds coldly and routinely, as if it was just a normal ordinary thing.
Discussing murder over lunch as if it were nothing.
or the Planned Parenthood videos of selling dead baby parts.
Me, I wonder: Since these are late term abortions, why were the abortions done? If for fetal abnormalities, the tissue would be useless, since often DNA etc. is bad.
If for social reasons, then I suspect a lot of them were done on minority teenagers, and one doubts they were asked to donate the parts, because the information that they would be killing a baby that looks like a baby would horrify them...
Often teenagers blank out that they are pregnant, (which is why they get late term abortion instead of the simpler first trimester abortions). They then blank out that it looks like a baby. They just want the problem to go away...
which is why we see teenagers, even in today's world, who come in the office or emergency room in labor and insist they couldn't be pregnant...
and of course, to deliver baby parts that can be used for scientific research, it often means doing a more dangerous method of delivery for the mom, or risking the "complication" of a live birth...but no one is discussing this either.
IO9 has an article complaining about the attempted hostile take over of sci fi award the Hugo.
Sarah Hoyt has a lot of articles (her latest) about how she and others got disgusted at the PC takeover of sci fi and attempted to stop the takeover by a small group of experts aka SJW.
The short version of my comments is: Sad Puppies which is a loosely connected (we’re not organized) group of fans (some of us are writers, but fans first) suspected that a small clique (whether motivated by power or politics, we don’t care) held sway over the Hugos. This was in part because so few people voted in the award. So we set out to increase the voter pool and we called attention to supporting/voting memberships and a group of people we thought were deserving of the award. The reaction from the clique was one of fury and name calling. (For details look herehttp://accordingtohoyt.com/2015/08/12/the-goat-kicks-back/.)
so Hoyt said they tried to increase the voters who decided what to award, and got kicked out and screamed at in all sorts of mainstream journals and called names.
I stopped reading sci fi years ago because it got too nihilistic. (I gave up Game of Thrones after ten minutes on HBO).
So I am not making judgements in this matter.
But one little item in the IO9 article made me sit up and notice:
Based on the newly released statistics, Brandon Kempner of Chaos Horizon has a good analysis of the Hugo vote, (as does Nicholas Whyte in From the Heart Of Europe)—they estimate that the Rabid Puppies bloc was composed of 550-525 voters, while the Sad Puppies bloc made up 500-400 voters: around 20% of the 5,950 total voters.
5900 votes total.
In other words, this is about a tiny number of people, not about ordinary fans.
And these 5900 voters can have a huge impact on sales (especially to libraries) and a person's career and his ability to write for a living.
So who decides who votes? If I have it right, it seems if you join the organization you can vote.
In other words, a self selected group. And easy to manipulate by anyone: which is the accusation of both the sad/rabid puppies who object to the coterie who runs the award program, and those who object to outsiders trying to change thing.
For example, BoingBoing dismisses them by saying that the various puppies (i.e. dissadents to the mainstream types who run the Hugo awards) are only one third of those who voted, so why worry about them?
Translation: Ignore them and they will go away.
Alternate translation: Geeks have other interest and are harder to mobilize to stop the SJW who can spread two minute hate message to millions on Facebook before anyone bothers to check the truth.
So the mainstream response is to keep them out. Change the rules.
Again, from BoingBOing:
At today's Worldcon business meeting, members of the Worldcon will consider a significant rule-change for Hugo nominations and voting, co-designed by Bruce Schneier, crafted to make the Hugo nomination system harder for small groups to sweep through slates. Update: It passed. It will need to be ratified at next year's Worldcon business meeting to take effect.
so all we need is for geeks to go to the meeting and vote against it, right?
Except
In other news: Helsinki was selected as the site for Worldcon 2017.
Helsinki? Why not Ulan Bator?
-------------------------
well, anyway: the fight reminds me of how political correctness types slowly take over institutions.
The political enthusiasts with an agenda join a group (or some people for various reasons are converted while members).
Because they are politically active in the organization (while the rest of us have a life to lead) they end up in leadership positions.
They then make a lot of decisions (putting out opinion statements in the name of the organization, as if the membership agreed with them, deciding who writes in the publications read by the members, deciding who to give awards or who needs to give talks to their membership meetings).
As a result, a lot of people quietly vote with their feet and leave the organization.
Others just stay for other benefits while ignoring the politics. (e.g. professional organizations like the AMA)
Still others are too busy to even notice what is going on.
Voila, the elites take over of cultural institutions and use them to push a larger agenda, as if the members agree with them.
As I said: The AAFP members opposed Obamacare, but it didn't stop the bureaucrat from pushing it in congress, even to the effect that he was there when the bill was signed. A similar ploy was done by the nun in charge of the Catholic health organization. Agenda before representing the interests of your members.
So how can you oppose those in power?
Well, When the elites start the takeover, if you point out they are a minority, and they should not push their agenda on the rest of us, they object we are wrong and insist they are on the side of the future, so resistance is futile.
When dissadents wake up and realize what is going on, and try to stop them, the dissadents are stopped, called names, ignored or otherwise ostracized.
This is true be it the AMA and the AAFP or the politically correct nuns of the catholic health organization, but it is also true in the US Catholic Bishop's Conference's various committees. Heck, it is true even in the Vatican, (as shown when a report changing Catholic dogma was released, never mind that no one had voted on this).
One also see it in the the "Leadership" conference of Catholic new age nuns (who support policies against traditional life, i.e. no prayer, no community, no poverty, and do your own thing,policies that drove out most of the Catholic sisters, which is why there are so few left). And I suspect it is true in many of the mainline churches.
These are the groups that I am familiar with.
You could probably think of quite a few others.
Yet a small group that stays committed to truth can keep the faith alive, and it springs up in the most unlikely places.
If the Catholic church in the US stays christian, it might be because a crippled Italian American cloistered nun in Alabama was invited to give talks on a small local Christian radio station, and decided to spread the gospel via the media.
The rest is history. And yes, we get EWTN here in the Philippines.
The Little Sisters of the Poor noticed the takeover of the sister's organization, and started their own group to represent Catholic nuns in the USA. They rarely get noticed in the MSM, but they tend to be younger and more traditional. Another 20 years and you might just see nuns wearing veils again.
In the AMA etc. the bad news is that there are yet splinter groups for dissdents: This bodes ill for you, because the newly trained doctors are being taught to obey the flowcharts of the bureaucrats rather than to actually take care of you. Which is why alternative medicine is thriving.
As for the media: There are now alternatives.
The internet allowed Andy Weir's book The Martian to be read by thousands of fans: started as a serial on the internet, published on line, and then self published on Amazon, and only later did someone bother in a publishing house to read it. It is now a paperback bestseller and now a movie.
self publishing music and art and writing on line will spread to others with a love of art and music that will not pass through the gatekeepers because it is not what the public wants (or rather what those in charge of the culture thinks the public wants)
In literature, the Tolkien phenomena is a good example of how the disdain of the politically correct could not stop a book that spoke to people's hearts.
So take heart, puppies and non puppies. If the story comes from your heart (and not from talking points to please the powerful) your story/music/art will reach those who want to hear or view it.
the phrase "spoke to somebody's heart" comes from Alan Sherman in this witty album, from the Boston Pops, about censorship of artists. Watch/listen to the whole thing.
