Chaos Manor View, Monday, July 4, 2016

 

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

 

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

 

A Fourth of July Thought

The entire world has a “Fourth of July”.  We have Independence Day.  Here is an Independence Day thought from the last great President, a President that loved his country more than himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKsW6c_CgFY

It is not as if we had no warning. Nobel Prize Winner Glenn T. Seaborg, GTS to those who knew him, signed a national blue ribbon commission report on American education stating that the system we had was indistinguishable from an act of war – of foreign occupation – back in 1983. We have the same system, deteriorated and much worse now than it was then, now, 33 years later.

We imposed it on ourselves. When I was growing up, education was a local matter. Local school boards ran the schools, paying for them with locally collected taxes. They varied considerably in quality, and the worst were considered abysmal, but some 90% of American males (according to the Armed Forces qualification test scores from draftees) could read, write, and cipher to some degree, and the vast percentage of those who could not read at all had either never been at school, or in any event had not completed fourth grade.

A few rural areas had no schools or had very primitive ones. When I went to school before and during World War II, Coleville Consolidated in Coleville, Tennessee, a rural community a dozen miles down Federal Highway 78 from Memphis, had four rooms and four teachers for 8 grades. Two grades to the room, about 25 pupils to the grade. My first year in school had been at St. Anne’s in Memphis; it too had two grades to a room. The Sisters were willing to let me enter first grade at age five (birthday in August) because I already knew how to read; the local public school, Messick, had only one grade in each room, but would not admit me to first grade; my parents sent me there for second grade, but it soon became apparent that even though we had one teacher and one grade, I wasn’t learning much, and I returned to St. Anne’s. When I was about to enter fourth grade we moved to the farm in Coleville, so from then on I was in a two grades to the room school. After I got out of the army in the early 50’s I went to the University of Iowa where I knew friends who taught in one-room schools, 6 grades in one room, in very rural districts.

Very few of these schools had four year bachelor degree teachers; most teachers were two year graduates of state teachers’ colleges. My mother was an executive secretary when I was growing up, but she had been a first grade teacher in Florida, graduating with a two year associate degree fro Florida States Teacher school in Gainesville. (It has later become a University of Florida, although I doubt the graduates know more than my mother did with her two-year degree; but that’s another story.)

The point here is that education was compulsory but free, and was taught by teachers the community could afford; and it was effective enough that for all practical purposes America had no illiterates, and 90% of Americans were employable in some capacity or another if they graduated from high school; and most of those who dropped out before high school still passed the Army’s literacy requirements.

Then came Sputnik, and there was a national movement to build schools we could be proud of. There was enormous debate over “Federal Aid To Education.” Proponents said we had no choice, our schools had to be much better; opponents said that nationalizing education and dictating requirements from Washington was a mistake, and would reduce the schools to a uniformly equal low quality.

By 1980 the nationalization was accomplished, and there were many books of the “Why Johnny Can’t Read” variety. It was the era of dick and Jane, and look-say reading instruction, which continues to this day in some colleges of education. It was a national disaster, and can be attributed entirely to the nationalization of the public schools. The “new look” in education was not invented then; it had been around a while; but it was concentrated in places dominated by educational theorists with great resources, and who managed by tutorial work to cover up just how awful their theories – which effectively set back English by two thousand years – were. Phonics were abolished. In effect we were learning to read words in ideographs. Old time teachers predicted disaster, sand wanted none of it, but Federal Aid had pretty well nationalized thing: everyone got the benefit of the new theories.

In about ten years the disaster was evident. We have not got over it yet. But we did one thing: we got used to our schools failing to teach. People could graduate high school totally illiterate; and there were tons of theories to excuse the teachers who had let that happen. It wasn’t their fault. We had gone from nearly 100% literacy to a literacy rate lower than some third world countries, and all this in the name of building school for the future. And the worst was that it was Federalized; it was national. While the schools remained local under local school boards there was a chance that some schools would resist the new intellectual theories (that had been around a while; they weren’t that new); but worth federalization the intellectuals were in charge.

And by 1983 Glenn T Seaborg could conclude that our education system should be considered an act of war.

Since then look-say has been replaced by new theories, none of which have produced the results we had before federalization. By now the Department of Education has been around long enough for the Iron Law of Bureaucracy to take hold. Reagan attempted to abolish it, but he had the Cold War to contend with as well as many other problems; and the Federal Bureau – oops, Department – of Education survived and thrived, and the Iron Law guaranteed that it would be a ship run for the benefit of its crew, not for the benefit of the passengers—students—or the owners (the American people).

‘Broadly missing is sufficient appreciation that this ignorance is the *intended consequence* of our educational system, a sign of its robust health and success.’

<http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/02/how-a-generation-lost-its-common-culture/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

I do not often read The Daily Beast, but I urge you to read this post by Joel Kotkin:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/03/brexit-and-beyond-the-great-unruly-rebellion-against-the-neo-liberal-crony-capitalists.html

It begins:

The People Speak

07.02.16 10:00 PM ET

Why the World Is Rebelling Against ‘Experts’

An unconventional, sometimes incoherent, resistance arises to the elites who keep explaining why changes that hurt the middle class are actually for its own good.

The Great Rebellion is on and where it leads nobody knows.

Its expressions range from Brexit to the Trump phenomena and includes neo-nationalist and unconventional insurgent movement around the world. It shares no single leader, party or ideology. Its very incoherence, combined with the blindness of its elite opposition, has made it hard for the established parties across what’s left of the democratic world to contain it.

What holds the rebels together is a single idea: the rejection of the neo-liberal crony capitalist order that has arisen since the fall of the Soviet Union. For two decades, this new ruling class could boast of great successes: rising living standards, limited warfare, rapid technological change and an optimism about the future spread of liberal democracy. Now, that’s all fading or failing.

Living standards are stagnating, vicious wars raging, poverty-stricken migrants pouring across borders and class chasms growing. Amidst this, the crony capitalists and their bureaucratic allies have only grown more arrogant and demanding. But the failures of those who occupy what Lenin called “the commanding heights” are obvious to most of the citizens on whose behalf they claim to speak and act.

The Great Rebellion draws on five disparate and sometimes contradictory causes that find common ground in frustration with the steady bureaucratic erosion of democratic self-governance: class resentment, racial concerns, geographic disparities, nationalism, cultural identity. Each of these strains appeals to different constituencies, but together they are creating a political Molotov cocktail.

This essay distills a great deal of truth into a couple of short pages, dealing with globalization, job exportation, and other causes of distress among the populace, all of which are ignored or unheard by the establishments of both parties. Djilas wrote of “The New Class” that ruled Tito’s Yugoslavia, and described a phenomenon that was taking control of not merely Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, but also the United States and Europe. Kotkin expands that description. I very much recommend it to your attention.

Marx wrote of the inevitability of class warfare, which would end by the concentration of all power into the hands of a smaller and smaller ruling class. The end of history would come with the inevitable Revolution that would come after the capitalists devoured each other. Lenin expanded that by adding a new phase: the dictatorship of the proletariat which would hasten that day.

Yugoslavia had its Revolution, and Tito was the Ruler; and as Djilas observed, what came next was a New Class which ruled in the name of the people, but which didn’t much listen to them: it was rule of the New Class, by the New Class, and for the New Class. The same thing evolved in Russia: the Communist Party became dominated and controlled by the Nomenklatura, who ruled without much regard to the wishes of a passive people, who said, in essence, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”

In the United States it is no longer legal to speak of divine providence, or say things like America is great because she is good, and if she ceases to be good she will cease to be great; that is a religious sentiment. It is only a matter of time before the Star Spangled Banner, with its phrases like “Praise the Power that hath made, and preserved us a nation” and “Then Conquer we must, for our cause it is just, and this be our motto, in God is our trust” will be declared unconstitutional, being an act of aggression against those forced to listen to it. First to be banned in public places, like mangers in the public square; then forbidden anyplace public at all lest someone somewhere be forced to hear it.

The just powers of the government are, in American myth, derived from the consent of the governed, but in fact we are long past that. The governed consent to very little. They aren’t even asked to. Rule now is by consent of the governing; by consent of the New Class. Government has become a ship operated for the benefit of its crew. Not all – perhaps only a small minority – of that crew realize that. Most of those who go into government service do not do so for selfish reasons; the enlightened intellectuals at the top of this pyramid will never say so, and some may not realize it themselves; but they learn, over time.

˜Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
Eric Hoffer
I saw this on PowerLine. thanks and keep up the good work.
Rich Brown

Jerry,

Meta-thought: The biggest mistake you can make about this election is assuming the year is in any way normal.

Polls remain all-over-the-place, but tightening. Range over the last week is from Clinton +14 to Trump +4, with RCP average closing to Clinton +4.5, down from Clinton +7 a week ago. Still a Clinton landslide if voting were today, but less of one than a week ago.

It’s enough to damp down the Dump Trump surge a bit, at least publicly.

Which may be a Hillary agenda. Who else aside from Trump has larger negatives than her? My take is, she and her media allies are currently withholding fire while Trump’s nomination is still in doubt.

But that’s a dangerous game for her – if Trump gets too close, then she too may be dumped, via indictment. The timing I expect for that is still the Friday after the Rep Convention closes, July 22nd, with Biden/Warren parachuting into Philadelphia the following week.

I’m fascinated by the Bill Clinton – Loretta Lynch airport meet. Lots of people have said lots of things about it, but the leaks from the security staffers about the actual mechanics of the meet say strongly that Clinton initiated it and Lynch was surprised – she gets to Phoenix, her plane door opens and her staffers walk out, and suddenly there’s Bill Clinton climbing in the door.

If she *was* involved in arranging the meet, whatever secure comms channels she hypothetically used would have meant no need for the meet in the first place.

And Clinton CANNOT have thought this was a safely covert way to meet.

Never mind all the security people involved, there are dozens of ramp workers, other private pilots, and a state police station all overlooking the area, with the aircraft N numbers easily looked up.

So, it was Clinton’s idea. And either he didn’t care if the meet became known, he was desperate, or both.

My take is, both. I think he (and Hillary) are worried badly about Friday 7/22. They either suspect or outright know Obama has already decided to deep-six her regardless – a reasonable assumption if

(presumably) all the usual covert comms channels have closed. (If they haven’t, again, what need for this meet?) So this was a desperation attempt to either cut a deal with his old protégé Lynch, or failing that to compromise her and buy time. Apparently failed on both counts.

Porkypine

Coal Powers Move

If I worked for the Coal Powers, I would do this on general principle (not the layoffs, the timing):

<.>

Murray Energy Corp., the largest privately held coal miner in the U.S., has warned that it may soon undertake one of the biggest layoffs in the sector during this time of low energy prices.

In a notice sent to workers this week, Murray said it could lay off as many as 4,400 employees, or about 80% of its workforce, because of weak coal markets. The company said it anticipates “massive workforce reductions in September.”

The law requires a 60-day waiting period before large layoffs occur.

</>

http://www.wsj.com/articles/biggest-private-coal-producer-in-u-s-warns-of-massive-layoffs-1467412144

With this president’s war on coal, this will be a good hit for the industry. They can time this with the election and let it gel with the populist sentiment against trade deals, immigration, and everything that raises the specter of a loss of some aspect of lifestyle to an agitated electorate. If these were fastfood jobs, the Democrats would probably get the same benefit wouldn’t you think?

SEIU, isn’t it?

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

 

Disabled Teen Beaten Bloody by TSA Agents

 

Pathetic TSA

Officer training is pathetic in this instance. You’re supposed to be aware of or ask about medical problems so this sort of crap doesn’t happen. Yeah, I”m sure the half deaf, half blind, and paralyzed girl who just finished treatment for a brain tumor was pretty scary to some punk kid:

<.>

It’s a trip they’ve made for 17 years.

This time, an unarmed Hannah, set off the metal detector at a security checkpoint

“They wanted to do further scanning, she was reluctant, she didn’t understand what they were about to do,” said her mother Shirley Cohen.

Cohen told us she tried to tell TSA agents her daughter is partially deaf, blind in one eye, paralyzed, and easily confused, but said she was kept at a distance by police.

“She’s trying to get away from them but in the next instant, one of them had her down on the ground and hit her head on the floor. There was blood everywhere,” said Cohen.

Hannah was arrested, booked and on the night she should have been celebrating the end of her treatment, she was locked up in Jail East.

</>

http://wreg.com/2016/06/30/disabled-st-jude-patient-sues-airport-and-tsa-after-bloody-scuffle-with-airport-police/

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Why we voted Leave :Voices from northern England

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

Here’s a survey of Leave voters in Yorkshire. I think you will find it well worth your time, if you can spare the ten minutes to watch it.

https://vimeo.com/172932182?outro=1

Essentially, while immigration is a part of it the much larger part is that the English poor are on the losing side of globalization — their mines are drying up, their jobs are being exported. Their is a widening gulf between wealthy London, which benefits from trade, and the northern counties, which suffer the brunt of it. And if someone doesn’t like it, the Londoners don’t care — if you don’t like your job, there are millions of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis and everyone else who would crawl over nails to do it instead.

Leave was the north’s way of telling King’s Landing that the system is not working.

And there’s a great deal of irony in that high-minded Guardian readers and Labour party members, those who profess their concern for and solidarity with the working class, are the ones so determined to ram the [sour] sandwich called Remain down that same classes’ throat.

What was it Orwell said about the pigs in Animal Farm? Hard to tell them from the farmers?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

 

EU vs. Britain

It has begun. The EU leadership is declaring that there is no right to leave the EU and that the is no room for any such concept as Democracy. This is EXACTLY what Britain was and is escaping.

President Of The European Parliament: “It Is Not The EU Philosophy That The Crowd Can Decide Its Fate”

www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-27/president-european-parliament-it-not-eu-philosophy-crowd-can-decide-its-fate

Note that Deutsche Bank declares this Brexit vote is class warfare. The undertone is clear. If the British are allowed to leave the EU disintegrates.

The German elites seem to see the EU as their FINALLY conquering all of Europe.

The British citizenry seems to feel this is not a satisfactory situation. More power to them.

{^_^}

sc:bubbles]

Hopeless Focus on Race

Jerry,

Our Republic has been led down the hopeless path of the slicing and dicing of the Electorate by Race, Religion and anything else that might be seen as providing Political Advantage. We have been trained to see the minutia of our differences and forget the much larger body of our commonality. How did this happen and why have we allowed it?

I could see some of this back in the late 1960’s when I was completing College. There seemed to be the fear that the Cultures of minority groups would be lost if steps were not taken to make changes to the traditional approach to the Humanities. This fear failed to recognize that the American Melting Pot was doing an admirable job of including major portions of these minority cultures into what might be called the American Culture. These fears gained a strong foothold in Academia and started what I call the slicing and dicing of the Electorate by Race for Political advantage.

The Politics of Race have had a corrosive effect on our Country. Our unifying view that we are Americans first and foremost has been stolen from us by our Political Machines and our Academics. Rather than having open debate about the direction and future of our Country and Government, we engage in “my way or the highway” demands that the desires of scant majorities be shoved down the throats of all. (See the Affordable Care Act, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”)

What can we, as Citizens, do? The current situation may seem hopeless, but it is not. There are things that can be accomplished at the State level that can make significant changes at the National Level.

Unlike the arguments put forward to justify an active Judicial Branch that the Constitution needs to be a “Living Document” and reflect the current Mores of the Country, The Constitution is a “Living Document” through Article V that allows the Amendment of the Constitution. Yes, there is a way to reflect the “Will of the People” rather than the will of a majority of the unelected Supreme Court Justices. All that is required is for the Legislatures of 2/3 of the States to call for a Constitutional Convention and “We the People” can take back control of our Country.

Bob Holmes

Our public schools no longer teach that sort of thing, and you may be sure that the tax supported universities will explain to their students why consent of the governed is not really the same as “what they would consent to if they understood as well as we do”; which is of course what is taught in most university political science classes.

The Trump and Sanders phenomenon shows the distrust many – I’d say most – middle class Americans have in the Establishment. The voters gave the Republicans control of both houses of Congress and many state legislatures, but they used it to cement their own positions while “reaching across the aisle” rather than opposing the Democrat Establishment and crony capitalism.

Adam Smith warned that capitalists are prone to use government to raise the cost of entry into the marketplace, thus greatly restricting newcomers, and thus preventing innovative competition. The past 8 years with growing regulations are a good example of this; the Republican House gave the government the funds to pay all these regulators. This is known in the media as growing in office, or just more reaching across the aisle.

The Constitution provides for a new Convention, but who will the Establishments – Republican or Democrat – send to it? And the “Conservative” media, National Review and The Weekly Standard chief among them, are now acting to make certain that there will be no real change; they obviously prefer what we have.

If Benghazi doesn’t matter, what does?

by DR. ROBIN MCFEE June 30, 2016

For me, these names matter: Christopher Stevens, US Ambassador to Libya, Sean Smith, career diplomat, Glen Doherty,   former Navy Seal, and Tyrone Woods, former Navy Seal.  All died in the service of the United States. They left behind loved ones who are owed the truth, and the sincere support of a grateful nation. But are we grateful? 

In the last few days much of what I have heard has been disgusting. Comments like “it’s over” or “it is merely a partisan ploy to keep Hillary from the White House” or “mistakes happen in war, let’s move on.” 

I’m not sure what makes me sicker; the notion that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama allowed to die a US ambassador and brave Americans trying to protect him. Or the notion that both of them, Hillary especially, tried to cover up the mistakes, and activities that allowed Americans to be slaughtered, just to protect their campaigns, and legacy. Or the recognition my fellow citizens and much of the media are willingly providing political cover, excuses and support for Hillary Clinton – just so their candidate can win the presidency. 

To be sure, there were lots of mistakes made – from the Arab Spring to the disastrous efforts at nation building in Libya. But at the end of the day, leaders must always be mindful these immortal words of the late, great, Harry Truman, “the buck stops here” For better or worse, whether complicit, or buffoonery, knowing, or not, the captain of the ship, or leader of the enterprise is always responsible, and in this case, it was President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 

Watching CNN broadcast Congressmen presenting the final Benghazi report, you would think the investigation concluded without key revelations or damaging evidence how badly our leaders failed those they swore to protect – fellow Americans. The ticker tape message floating across the bottom of the CNN screen seemed designed to mislead; it conveyed all was well for Hillary and no new discoveries found against her. Beyond dishonest and biased reporting – shameful is a good word – is the callous disregard for their fellow citizens who were murdered, and their families. [snip]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/if-benghazi-doesnt-matter-what-does?f=must_reads
Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/if-benghazi-doesnt-matter-what-does?f=must_reads#ixzz4DTdrJnHX
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Benghazi doesn’t matter, neither does a private email server. What matters is preserving – Hope and Change?

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Road to Rationalia

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/437324/neil-degrasse-tysons-rationality-pipe-dream

[quote]

Professor Tyson, who may be the dumbest smart person on Twitter, yesterday wrote that what the world really needs is a new kind of virtual state — he wants to call it “Rationalia” — with a one-sentence

constitution: “All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence.”

This schoolboy nonsense came under withering and much-deserved derision.

Conservatives, who always have the French Revolution in their thoughts, reminded him that this already has been tried, and that the results are known in the history books as “the Terror.”

[end quote]

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Adventures with Windows 10

Jerry

Microsoft says it will support Win7 until 2020. Will you be using your machine then? I would have said no, but my wife is still using her 2008 machine. Hmm. Maybe I could save some money and convert us to Win 10.

After running Windows 10 on my laptop and my testing machine, I decided to try the free Microsoft gift and upgrade my upstairs machine. The difference is that those were Win 8, then Win 8.1 machines, so not only was the UI similar but Win 10 is a definite improvement over what they were running. My family room machines are different; they are Win7-64 machines. I have a Haswell. My daughter has my old i7 875. And my wife is running a Core 2 duo from 2008. We all have SSD’s. When I swapped out my wife’s half gig spinning disk for a half gig SSD, it brought new life to the thing. Now she won’t give it up.

So yesterday I swapped OS’s on my rig. Result? I reverted back to Win 7 today. Why? UI. As someone who has meddled with all sorts of UI’s since 1982, I can firmly say that they let children loose with no adult supervision on Win 10. The worst was that they removed choices. For example, when you import files on your flash drive, the only choice they give you is to ask you what you always want to do with the files, not what you do today (and tomorrow might be different). And memory cards! Well, I have a card reader for my cameras. There is an import pictures script, but it no longer lets you chose the folder’s name, or that of the incoming files. And it does not tell you when it was done deleting stuff from your card. These are things I didn’t do in the basement, so I didn’t test drive those features before I installed Win 10.

Win 10 is faster, but its UI is a regression. If you have the option of going with Win7, I would say to stay with it.

Ed

I have resigned myself to Windows 10 everywhere, although 7 with Office 2010 would be more than good enough.

Time for another diatribe

And this time I will lead with an EU story rather than a Mohammedan story. It seems the EU boffins in their infinite wisdom have decided that water does not provably prevent dehydration. I think dehydration means what they think it means.

EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8897662/EU-bans-claim-that-water-can-prevent-dehydration.html

And now back to the more usual agenda, that stellar peak of consistency and cogent ratiocination “The Religion of Peace”. It seems Malaysia, a peaceful loving Muslim dominated nation, decided to hold an interfaith event. But a hitch developed along the way.

Malaysia: Muslim/Christian interfaith event cancelled after threat to participating Christians https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/07/malaysia-muslimchristian-interfaith-event-cancelled-after-threat-to-participating-christians

This is the same nation in which you can lose your job if you are too accommodating to non-believers. But, trust me, these are nice pleasant neighborly Muslims, as Muslims go.

“Moderate” Malaysia: Mosque official fired for allowing non-Muslim into prayer hall https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/07/moderate-malaysia-mosque-official-fired-for-allowing-non-muslim-into-prayer-hall

Meanwhile, back in France, we notice that peaceful Muslims celebrating the renewal of their faith during Ramadan get slightly overly exuberant with some elements of their peaceful everyday attire.

Ramadan in France: Muslim couple screaming “Allahu akbar” stabs man in stomach https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/07/ramadan-in-france-muslim-couple-screaming-allahu-akbar-stabs-man-in-stomach

And in Bangladesh we learn that loving peacefulness does not need ISIS to incite it or commit acts of love, such as hacking a Hindu priest to death. Let’s see, is this “workplace violence”?

Muslims hack to death ANOTHER Hindu priest in Bangladesh http://pamelageller.com/#sthash.7hrM2MIP.dpuf

Of course Bangladesh and Malaysia are not backwaters of Islamic love. They are fully as au courant as these Egyptians who loved a Coptic Christian to death in a hail of bullets. Admittedly the Egyptians used more modern tools for their loving care. But the attitudes are fully the same. Perhaps there is something in Islam, one of the common factors here, that leads to this sort of kindness and tolerance?

Egypt: Coptic Christian priest killed in ‘hail of bullets’ outside church http://pamelageller.com/#sthash.7hrM2MIP.dpuf

I am pointedly not looking for what these kind people think of the death of Elie Weisel. Personally I feel the world has lost someone whose experience these loving followers of Islam tend to deny ever happened. May Mr. Weisel rest in peace in the lap of God.

{^_^}

‘NATO’s assumption that the war would gradually escalate to nuclear weapons would have been fatal against an adversary that planned to use them on Day One.’

<http://nationalinterest.org/feature/revealed-how-the-warsaw-pact-planned-win-world-war-three-16822?page=show>

I knew the Soviet ‘No first use’ pledge was nonsense from the start.

It’s depressing that NATO planners and member militaries bought into it.

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

For what it’s worth, none of us cold warriors in the force design and maintenance business took that pledge seriously. Our goal was to see that there never was a day when the PolitBuro could ask “Comrade Marshal, if the war started next week could we win it?” and hear “Da, Comrade Chairman.” Better would be if it was always obviously ridiculous to ask that question.

Persecuting climate skeptics: The cover-up continues

Not only are various state attorneys general seeking to target global warming skeptics using racketeering laws, they are engaging in what seems suspiciously close to racketeering themselves.

“But we’re doing it for your own good!” 

“Seventeen attorneys general got more than they bargained for when they held a March 29, 2016 “publicity stunt” press conference to announce, with former Vice President Al Gore by their sides, a campaign to target opponents of the global warming agenda under racketeering laws. 

It wasn’t long before several batches of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) emails, obtained by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) and Free Market Environmental Law Clinic (FME Law), revealed that the AGs were working behind closed doors with professional “climate” activists, from both pressure groups and law firms. If that isn’t bad enough, they also show a plan for the AGs to coordinate efforts to stonewall public records requests that threaten to expose their scheme.” [snip] http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/06/29/persecuting-climate-skeptics-cover-up-continues.html?intcmp=hphz05

But it’s all for our good. The experts – well, those that we talk to – all agree.

Thoughtpolice Update

We’re still closer to the Thoughtpolice. I’m awaiting an Executive Decree any day now:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/06/29/this-new-device-can-visualize-your-thoughts-sort-of/

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

 

Jerry

 

Ed

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Saturday, June 25, 2016

I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.

Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

I was going to write an essay on Consent of the Governed vs. “democracy”, but Microsoft decided to reset my system and I can’t find the templates I use to create these posts. Oh, I find one, but it is missing the aphorisms I usually have at the top; I removed them because they were getting old, and that is a reminder to change them , and that’s all right. I found a copy of TemplateView, got it – no aphorisms, but that’s fine – changed the date, saved it, then realized I had a

At this point I hit an unknown combination of keys, and the scroll wheel on the mouse started scrolling sideways rather than down the document. I wasted time and energy trying to figure out what happened. Eventually I tried View and got a menu I have never seen before and cannot retrieve, but which offered me the choice of “edit document”; I thought that was what I was doing, but certainly that is what I want to do, so I chose it, clicked, things swam around a moment, and I was back in Normal Word, and all was well again; I have no idea of what combination of keys produces a view of the document in which cannot edit and scrolls sideways, nor can I think of any reason any san e person would want a combination of keys that would produce that result, but perhaps there is someone, somewhere, who wanted it; but why Microsoft would think that all of us want to have a chance chat if we hit the wrong sequence of keys we will lose our ability to edit what we are writing is beyond my fathoming. It is the attitude that led Britain to Brexit, so it is relevant to my essay, so perhaps I ought to thank Microsoft. It is the attitude that “we are enlightened and know best for you, so we will do that without consulting you, since if you don’t want it that is a mistake, and we feel strongly that you must be protected from mistakes. You don’t have to thank us, but you should.” It reminds me of my parents telling me to eat English Peas.

Back to the introductory complaint about Microsoft. I found a copy of TemplateView, got it – no aphorisms, but that’s fine – changed the date, saved it, then realized I had a copy that included a great part of what I had written yesterday. That wouldn’t do. I found another, and used Word to open it. What opened was a copy of what I had just saved. OK, I didn’t really know where I was saving to – I never do under this brilliant new scheme they have in Windows 10 – so I looked for places I must have saved copies of the template file in past times; found one, double-clicked on it, and lo! A copy of what I had just saved appeared. Apparently Microsoft knows better than I do what I want. I spent the next few minutes trying to establish where I will save the Template for this, then where I will save the temporary work copy that will be copied to LiveWriter and once copied there can be the place I put tomorrow’s – well, you get the idea, and you don’t need a demonstration of how scatterbrained I have become, now that I tire more easily and have to stare at the keyboard when I two-finger type rather than watch the screen as I did before the stroke.

On reflection, Microsoft’s “We Know Best, Live With It” attitude is the problem of Consent of the Governed writ small. That is, you can, and some do, just say the devil with it and go to Word Perfect (George RR Martin still likes WordStar), or some .doc compatible editor; you’re not required to use Word.

Government is another matter. You can’t escape it. A simple parking ticket has behind it armed agents who will collect it whether you consent or not, and will result to force if need be.

Where does the power of government come from? One obvious answer is they have a monopoly on organized force and violence, and the willingness to use it against recalcitrant: you’d better obey. Your life ultimately depends on it. You need government: as Hobbes observed, life without government – in a state of nature – is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. You cannot live without some rules; even a pirate king is preferable to complete anarchy. Therefore, you pledge your loyalty to the king, and he protects you. If you a longer, and well written, exposition on Hobbes, I suggest the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Hobbes; it’s well written and goes through the moral problems with clear reasoning. At bottom, the question is, why do Black Lives Matter? Or Unborn Lives? Or, for that matter, small infant lives, deformed lives. Handicapped lives. White Lives, or any lives at all? Or do all lives matter, including Gorillas?

Outrage Grows After Gorilla Harambe Shot Dead at Cincinnati Zoo to Save Tot

We all say we want justice. Why? What is so good about justice that we must want it even if it is costly, even risk our lives for it? Where does justice come from, and has it a definition, or is the concept a mere fairy tale to make the interest of the stronger more palatable to the losers? Who deserves this justice? Blacks. Whites? Gorillas? Dogs? Rattlesnakes?

Hobbes was born in 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada, and lived through the Stuart Monarchy era, the Civil War, and the Restoration. He was a tutor in a great house, and these questions were in discussion; and he observed the execution of the King and the Liberation of England under Cromwell. Macaulay tells us what happened after that:

“From Ireland the victorious chief, who was now in name, as he had long been in reality, Lord General of the armies of the Commonwealth, turned to Scotland. The young King was there. He had consented to profess himself a Presbyterian, and to subscribe the Covenant; and, in return for these concessions, the austere Puritans who bore sway at Edinburgh had permitted him to assume the crown, and to hold, under their inspection and control, a solemn and melancholy court. This mock royalty was of short duration. In two great battles Cromwell annihilated the military force of Scotland. Charles fled for his life, and, with extreme difficulty, escaped the fate of his father. The ancient kingdom of the Stuarts was reduced, for the first time, to profound submission. Of that independence, so manfully defended against the mightiest and ablest of the Plantagenets, no vestige was left. The English Parliament made laws for Scotland. English judges held assizes in Scotland. Even that stubborn Church, which has held its own against so many governments, scarce dared to utter an audible murmur.

Expulsion of the Long Parliament

Thus far there had been at least the semblance of harmony between the warriors who had subjugated Ireland and Scotland and the politicians who sate at Westminster: but the alliance which had been cemented by danger was dissolved by victory. The Parliament forgot that it was but the creature of the army. The army was less disposed than ever to submit to the dictation of the Parliament. Indeed the few members who made up what was contemptuously called the Rump of the House of Commons had no more claim than the military chiefs to be esteemed the representatives of the nation. The dispute was soon brought to a decisive issue. Cromwell filled the House with armed men. The Speaker was pulled out of his chair, the mace taken from the table, the room cleared, and the door locked. The nation, which loved neither of the contending parties, but which was forced, in its own despite, to respect the capacity and resolution of the General, looked on with patience, if not with complacency.

King, Lords, and Commons, had now in turn been vanquished and destroyed; and Cromwell seemed to be left the sole heir of the powers of all three.

Cromwell ruled as Protector under a regime called the Commonwealth; but then came the disorder after Cromwell died. The New Model Army tried to rule without success. It failed, and the son of the executed King was invited to return. The Monarchy was restored, but it was a near thing, as Macaulay notes:

Cromwell was gone, but the army remained. “But, when the sword, which he had wielded, with energy indeed, but with energy always guided by good sense and generally tempered by good nature, had passed to captains who possessed neither his abilities nor his virtues, it seemed too probable that order and liberty would perish in one ignominious ruin.

That ruin was happily averted. It has been too much the practice of writers zealous for freedom to represent the Restoration as a disastrous event, and to condemn the folly or baseness of that Convention, which recalled the royal family without I.146 exacting new securities against maladministration. Those who hold this language do not comprehend the real nature of the crisis which followed the deposition of Richard Cromwell. England was in imminent danger of falling under the tyranny of a succession of small men raised up and pulled down by military caprice. To deliver the country from the domination of the soldiers was the first object of every enlightened patriot: but it was an object which, while the soldiers were united, the most sanguine could scarcely expect to attain. On a sudden a gleam of hope appeared. General was opposed to general, army to army. On the use which might be made of one auspicious moment depended the future destiny of the nation. Our ancestors used that moment well. They forgot old injuries, waved petty scruples, adjourned to a more convenient season all dispute about the reforms which our institutions needed, and stood together, Cavaliers and Roundheads, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, in firm union, for the old laws of the land against military despotism. The exact partition of power among King, Lords, and Commons might well be postponed till it had been decided whether England should be governed by King, Lords, and Commons, or by cuirassiers and pikemen. Had the statesmen of the Convention taken a different course, had they held long debates on the principles of government, had they drawn up a new constitution and sent it to Charles, had conferences been opened, had couriers been passing and repassing during some weeks between Westminster and the Netherlands, with projects and counterprojects, replies by Hyde and rejoinders by Prynne, the coalition on which the public safety depended would have been dissolved: the Presbyterians and Royalists would certainly have quarrelled: the military factions might possibly have been reconciled; and the misjudging friends of liberty might long have regretted, under a rule worse than that of the worst Stuart, the golden opportunity which had been suffered to escape.

A very near thing:

That there would be a restoration now seemed almost certain; but whether there would be a peaceable restoration was matter of painful doubt. The soldiers were in a gloomy and savage mood. They hated the title of King. They hated the name of Stuart. They hated Presbyterianism much, and Prelacy more. They saw with bitter indignation that the close of their long domination was approaching, and that a life of inglorious toil and penury was before them. They attributed their ill fortune to the weakness of some generals, and to the treason of others. One hour of their beloved Oliver might even now restore the glory which had departed. Betrayed, disunited, and left without any chief in whom they could confide, they were yet to be dreaded. It was no light thing to encounter the rage and despair of fifty thousand fighting men, whose backs no enemy had ever seen. Monk, and those with whom he acted, were well aware that the crisis was most perilous. They employed every art to soothe and to divide the discontented warriors. At the same time vigorous preparation was made for a conflict. The army of Scotland, now quartered in London, was kept in good humour by bribes, praises, and promises. The wealthy citizens grudged nothing to a redcoat, and were indeed so liberal of their best wine, that warlike saints were sometimes seen in a condition not very honourable either to their religious or to their military character. Some refractory regiments Monk ventured to disband. In the mean time the greatest exertions were made by the provisional government, with the strenuous aid of the whole body of the gentry and magistracy, to organise the militia. In every county the trainbands were held ready to march; and this force cannot be estimated at less than a hundred and twenty thousand men. In Hyde Park twenty thousand citizens, well armed and accoutred, passed in review, and showed a spirit which justified the hope that, in case of need, they would fight manfully for their shops and firesides. The fleet was heartily with the nation. It was a stirring time, a time of anxiety, yet of hope. The prevailing opinion was that England would be delivered, but not without a desperate and bloody struggle, and that the class which had so long ruled by the sword would perish by the sword.

Happily the dangers of a conflict were averted. There was indeed one moment of extreme peril. Lambert escaped from his confinement, and called his comrades to arms. The flame of civil war was actually rekindled; but by prompt and vigorous exertion it was trodden out before it had time to spread. The luckless imitator of Cromwell was again a prisoner. The failure of his enterprise damped the spirit of the soldiers; and they sullenly resigned themselves to their fate.

You will note the presence of an armed militia in Macaulay’s account.

It is no longer required that the history of the English Revolution, Commonwealth, and Restoration be taught; but it was always in the minds of the men who led the Revolution. Who cares for justice? What do we need to assume for justice to prevail?

Jefferson and Adams attempted it in the Declaration: rights came from a Creator.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

But the first principle in this declaration is not self-evident in any way. Leaving out the lack of self evidence of a Creator (I do not mean to deny that He exists, but I do deny His existence is self-evident), and conceding that all men are created, if anything is self-evident it is that men are not equal. An Olympic athlete is not the equal of a Down’s Syndrome child (called in those days a Mongoloid Idiot; one in a thousand children are born with this condition), nor are many of us the equals of Stephen Hawking or Mohammed Ali. It is absurd to say that all men are created equal except in a religious – you might say mystical – sense. Simple observation falsifies this self-evident presumption.

But this is an axiom; all men are equal and have certain inalienable rights, which they acquire as a gift from their Creator. To secure thee=se rights, governments are implemented among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

For nearly two hundred years – perhaps a few years longer – we acted as if these words were true; but now we obviously reject them. I will give you one obvious example:

Exclusive Video: Veteran Forcibly Dragged from Air Force Ceremony for Mentioning God. I don’t bother with more, but they are easily found.

SO: in England, for hundreds of years, the answer to the question of justice was that the king was the fountain of justice as the anointed of God, and criticism of the King was made in the Name of God, as Nathan rebuked King David over his treatment of Uriah the Hittite. We have rejected that premise.

Can we save the principle of just powers granted by the consent of the governed? Yes, but only if we agree on what we have consented to; and that was the rock on which the notion of a national unity foundered in 1787, and continues to founder to this day. The great rock in 1787 was Slavery. It was solved by the Connecticut Compromise, under which each State had equal representation in one House of Congress, and representation by population in the other: and the 3/5 of the slave population was counted as population. It was not loved by any and liked by but a few, but it did serve to allow the Union.

Those matters in which the States disagreed were left to the States to decide. Congress, with its two Houses, determined matters of national interest, but its powers were limited. It could not establish a national church, nor could it disestablish any of the seven churches by law established among the States, nor could it bully the states about the compromises they made with various religions. The Founders were well aware that some among them considered slavery too important to tolerate; but the Constitution was more important.

The Civil War settled the question of slavery, not without leaving considerable resentment in the defeated South; and the Voting Rights Act solidified it.

And all through this lies the fundamental fact that most of the nation had similar ideas about quite a lot of things. We were almost unanimously agreed that law ought to protect the innocent; that there was no legal protection for male relatives why murdered their female relatives for losing their virginity outside marriage; that religious organizations did not have any right to crucify people who ate during decreed fasting times; and a lot of other principles growing out of the Judao-Christian ethics.

That period is now ended.

But most of the nation does not consent to Sharia Law; indeed, most of the country would not tolerate its imposition within a narrow are of jurisdiction, especially if it would be applied to everyone of any conviction whatever who resided or passed through that jurisdiction; just as Massachusetts would not tolerate slavery in Louisiana.

There is more. But the governed do not concede the superiority of the Enlightened, or of the Progressive, or for that matter of the Blue Belly Baptists as having a great Truth to impose on everyone.

I beg pardon for the length of this, and I understand that some people my age will wonder why I am telling them things they learned in 5^th and 6^th grade; but alas, even our best schools have abandoned much of our history as the annals of the unenlightened, and many of our citizens no longer know what every voter knew in 1789.

Graduation day in Gaza

Islam, the “religion of peace” – read the Koran, there will be no peace until 1) Islam rules the world (the entire universe?), or 2) it is totally annihilated. 
“Option two” is the only logical solution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM07qFvcTE8&feature=youtu.be

“Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.”  Mark Twain

Militia

Looking at the State Guard Association of The USA site, there seem to be fifteen active “state guards”. Among them, CA, IN, MD, OH, SC, TN, TX, and VA have web sites. They are all commanded by the governors of the respective states, and controlled by the adjutants general. They are authorized by Title 32 of the U.S. Code, and sometimes authorized in the state’s constitution, as in the case of the New York Guard. In other cases the states have passed authorizing legislation.
The best way to learn about the Texas State Guard seems to be through the Texas Military Department site: https://tmd.texas.gov/texas-state-guard
I am retired from the New York Guard. We were activated for various storm and flooding events, the TWA 800 downing, and 9/11.
Ted Ung

Norway and its oil

Just sent you the Norway 10 commandments of oil. We were at the petroleum museum of Norway. I saw examples of the kind of hard core, lets go get it done engineering we want to see in space. It was truly impressive.

However, later on I was reading the extensive time table of Norway’s oil development. They carefully set things up to benefit Norway and not let the big oil companies gain control. When Norway joined the EU, all of that went down the drain. They lost control of their oil licenses and found things were run from Brussels. They have also become obsessed with man made global warming. Sounds to me they should nexit!

—

Phil Tharp

Fred Reed, and Walter Williams

Jerry,

Fred knocks it out of the park! When I was a young sprout in California, there was no problem in getting kids to learn the 3 R’s at a good level, even the so-called “slow learners.”

“Something is wrong somewhere….”

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

<http://fredoneverything.org/the-racism-racket-in-the-schools/>

Walter Williams, Catholics, the Projects, and Schooling for Blacks: Something is Wrong Somewhere

“Posted on June 23, 2016 by Fred Reed

The CIA and our enemies

Dear Jerry,

I don’t quite know what to make of Joshua Jordan’s claim that the CIA overthrew the Shah with Khomeini as the tool, based on hearsay and some rumors.

If the Shah became persona non grata among his “benefactors” (the CIA and British intelligence) shortly after they reinstated him in power in the 1953 coup that overthrew Mossadegh, it certainly took them a long time to boot the shah, as in twenty-five plus years from 1953 to the Shah leaving Iran for good in January of 1979. Not to mention that for a “persona non grata” with the CIA, the United Sates government seemed oddly happy to sell the persona non grata Shah’s regime billions and billions, in sixties and seventies dollars, of our most advanced weapons, such as the F-18 fighter and it’s Phoenix missile system. That sort of gear was generally restricted to NATO allies when it came to foreign sales, but the Shah got an exception. Does not sound very “persona non grata” to me.

As for intellectuals and higher socioeconomic class people finding assertions of CIA being behind ANY major international incident, historical occurrence or actions, that’s par for the course with these people.

Such folk are generally left of center, with the typical leftist intellectual predisposition to believe the CIA is both Evil Incarnate and Supremely Capable. Intellectuals and their confreres are quite susceptible to leftist “Fever Swamp“ concepts. How else could you, for example, explain the popularity of such buffoons as Oliver Stone and Michael Moore?

If the ridiculous and/or illogical is presented to this class of person as “Something Every Informed Person Knows”,with “The CIA did it!” tacked on for effect, they buy it.

They have no greater fear than being thought to be so “uncool” as to not accept such assertions unquestioningly.

I was in Army intelligence for a time, and we had a rule of thumb, and it has served me well over the years: When it comes to intelligence matters, in general, those who talk a lot know precious little. On the other hand, those who know a lot, talk precious little. Heavily discount those who tell you they “know the secret: and are willing to share it with you. They’re generally moonbat’s, or will pretty soon ask you for your credit card information.

As for the CIA having contacts with Khomeini: I should hope so! It’s CIA’s job to talk to anyone they can get useful intell from, and dissidents who might affect the future policy of major allies, such as Iran, would be at the top of any list of contacts CIA would want to have a back channel to. Also, the CIA used Iranian clerics in the 1953 coup to mobilize mobs for street demonstrations/riots, and according to at least one source the CIA right up until Carter took office paid about

400 million dollars annually in”subsidies” to Iranian clerics as part of a program to prevent communists gaining a foothold in Iranian society.

One explanation for the Iranian clerics turning so vehemently on Carter was that he was “Shocked to discover there was gambling in Casablanca!”, and ended the payoff’s to the mullahs.

Bottom line, CIA talks to a lot of iffy folks, as does any intel agency.

Nations always talk to their enemies, officially and informally. In World War One the Chief of the German Navy, Von Tirpitz, carried on a steady correspondence with his old chum Jackie Fisher, who was the head admiral of the Royal Navy. It’s part of The “Great Game”, and those who can be shocked by it ought to remain in the sitting room with the children while the adults settle matters for them.

Petronius

Dear Sir,

I commend to you this post regarding what it means to be an educated citizen in the Republic:  https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2016/06/atul-gawande-mistrust-science/

“Even more than what you think, how you think matters. The stakes for understanding this could not be higher than they are today, because we are not just battling for what it means to be scientists. We are battling for what it means to be citizens.”

Respectfully,

Origin of the second amendment, 

Jerry

How far back does the Second Amendment go? According to David E. Vandercoy (http://www.constitution.org/2ll/2ndschol/89vand.pdf),

Blackstone credits King Alfred, who ruled England from 871 to 901 A.D., as establishing the principle that all subjects of his dominion were the realm’s soldiers. Other commentators trace the obligation of Englishmen to serve in  the people’s army to 690 A.D. Regardless of the beginning date, an Englishman’s obligation to serve in a citizen army is an old proposition. Coupled with this obligation to defend the realm was the obligation to provide oneself with weapons for this purpose. …

Charles  II  disbanded  the  army  except  for  troops  he  believed  would  be  loyal  to  his government. Parliament assisted by enacting the Militia Act of 1661 which vested control over the militia in the King. Charles II began molding a militia loyal to the throne by directing that his officer corps assemble volunteers for separate training and “disaffected persons … not allowed to assemble and their arms seized.” In 1662, the more select militia was authorized to seize arms of anyone judged dangerous to the Kingdom. In addition, gunsmiths were ordered to report weekly on the number of guns made and sold; importation of firearms was banned.

A move toward total disarmament occurred with passage of the Game Act of 1671. The Game Act dramatically limited the right to hunt to those persons who earned over £100 annual income from the land. More importantly, and unlike any prior game act, it made possession of a firearm by other than those qualified to hunt illegal and provided for confiscation of those arms.

Charles II’s successor, his brother James, pursued the disarmament. James, however, was the object  of  suspicion  because  he  was  Catholic.  As  King,  James  was  also  the  official  head  of  the Anglican Church. He sat on the throne of a country that barred Catholics from holding appointed office. …

James continued disarmament by enforcing it in Ireland. The common perception was that James was disarming Protestants in Ireland and the new Whig party that opposed him. James then asked Parliament to repeal the test acts that precluded Catholics from holding office, to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and to abandon the militia concept in favor of standing armies. Parliament refused.

James responded by having his Judges find that the laws of England were the King’s laws and the King could dispense with them. The King replaced Protestants with Catholics at high government posts, including the military; he then placed 13,000 men of his army outside London. In 1688, James’s son-in-law, William of Orange, a Protestant, landed in England with a large Dutch army. James’s army deserted him and he fled to France.

William and Mary became sovereigns in 1689. Parliament restricted their powers by adopting the Declaration of Rights. William and Mary were required to accept the rights enumerated in the Declaration as the rights of their subjects and to rule in accordance with Parliament’s statutes. The Declaration  recited  the  abuses  by  James,  including  the  raising  and  keeping  of  a  standing  army without  Parliament’s  consent,  quartering  of  troops  in  private  homes,  and  disarming  Protestant subjects. The declaration set forth the positive right of Protestant subjects to have arms for their defense, suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law.

Well, there you have it. I have read this elsewhere, so it is not just one guy’s notion of history. The Founders wrote the Second with history and past abuses in mind.

Further, in a series of essays collected in A People Numerous and Armed, John Shy makes the case that it was the militia who won the Revolution. Wherever the Brits ventured the Militia rose up and fettered them, preventing them from gathering fodder and food, even fighting with them. When you think about it, that’s just the way it happened: they left Boston and took over NYC. Yet (as detailed in Washington’s Crossing, by David Hackett Fischer) the New Jersey militia made any extension to NJ impossible. And when they leaped down to Charleston, the militia and the Swamp Fox slowed them, pestered them and hobbled them.

So with both negative and positive examples to guide them, the writers of the Bill of Rights wrote this amendment, and placed it second, following only the amendment concerning the freedoms of speech and religion.

It makes sense when you look at it this way.

Ed

Actually, they had cannon, too; you can still see some of them on courthouse lawns…

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Friday, June 24, 2016

I have a new script that successfully turns off alt-spacebar, a combination that I unfortunately hit quite often. I installed it yesterday and it seemed to work well, but while trying to do this column today I hit something – I don’t know what – that simply locked the system. Keyboard, mouse, didn’t respond to any of them. Control alt delete didn’t work. Tried alt-spacebar and got a blue screen telling me that I had crashed. The system reset itself. Needless to say, all I had been doing was lost.

I have started to run the script again – it turned itself off in the crash – and so far no problems, so perhaps that wasn’t it. Alt-spacebar can produce some disastrous results if you are staring at the keyboard two finger typing and don’t see to popup on screen, so you just keep typing; and since you intended to hit space, it can come at any time. Best disabled if you have to look at the keys.

I am in the habit of accumulating a lot of links I intend to investigate and pass them along to you, but when Firefox restored my “session” there weren’t many of them, and some I had deleted several days ago, and a lot of recent one I had recently deleted were back. It was all messed up. Don’t use Firefox tabs as a memory augmentation device. It’s, alas, not reliable. I have not much experience with Microsoft’s new browser. Firefox has always been unreliable on restoring sessions after an unexpected shutdown, and probably isn’t worse now; but once you have three rows of tabs, you cannot rely on Firefox to keep track of them and restore after a crash, and crashes get more common; coincidence? I don’t know. I just use this stuff now.

And a big new keyboard, very klacky, big keys, no alt next to the spacebar, just came, and I am trying it out. It’s bigger, and the keys are brightly labeled, feels a bit awkward but I am not used to it. So far I have not hit too many multiple keys when trying for one, but it’s early times. It’s noisy, but I can get used to that. We’ll see. The keys are not as large as the ASUS Zen, and I am pretty sure I like the ASUS better. It just told me I was in an alt e sequence whatever that is, but escape will cancel it. Of course it’s tempting to attempt touch typing, but no, I seem to have lost the ability. Ah, I have now twice hit uparrow-space which has me merrily typing in the line above the one I think I’m typing on. Ungood. Ugly. I am definitely slower with this. I’ll try again tomorrow, but it doesn’t seem to be working better than the Logitech K360, and sometimes worse. Sigh.

Back to the K360 for a while. As I think it over.

England may withdraw from the European Union, but Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay in the EU – could it be there will always be an England, but not a United Kingdom? The Act of Union was, I think, 1704 and some Scots still don’t accept it. And of course some Brussels Sprouts are saying that this means curtains for England. I seem to recall some States in North America wanted to withdraw from the Union, but now aren’t allowed to fly the old battle flag, just like in the days before Hayes-Tilden ended Reconstruction. Will they send French or German soldiers to try to force England to Remain! It was of course inevitable that the EU Bureaucrats would start to put the EU itself ahead of the member states. Iron Law and all that, you know. Perhaps they can talk the Danes into sending an invasion force? To preserve the Union. And Norway/Sweden can claim Shetland and the Isle of Mann.

California going no-nuke

You’ve probably already seen this.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-diablo-canyon-nuclear-20160621-snap-story.html

PG&E is closing the Diablo Canyon plant, allegedly because it (1) is close to a fault line and (2) gets in the way of running renewable energy systems.

They’re replacing it with a portfolio of green stuff.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.  I suspect it won’t be fun for California, but, as someone once said, people get the government they deserve, and they generally get it good and hard.

–John

Well, Barrack Hussein Obama is consistent. There is a massacre in Florida, so the solution is to disarm the people of the United States. There is a water shortage – read power shortage, as the Pacific Ocean had a lot of water, but desalination takes power – so the solution is to close down the nuclear and coal plants. That will fix everything.

But when we disarmed, they sold us, and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the gods of the copybook headings, said stick to the devils you know.

Consistent.

I store up interesting places as Firefox tabs, but after a while there get to be to many of them, and Firefow becomes soggy and hard to light . 

http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2016/06/20/islamic-state-crucifies-lashes-ramadan-fast-breakers/

Islamic State ‘Crucifies,’ Lashes Ramadan Fast Breakers

 

The Times of Israel reports: Reports have emerged that Islamic State enforcers lashed and crucified three people in Syria for breaking the Ramadan fast.

The people were said to have been held in cages for hours prior to receiving their punishments at the hands of IS’s Daesh al-Hisbah religious police last week.

 

 

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/06/20/global-migrant-tide-swells-record-65-million/

 

Global Migrant Tide Swells to Record 65 Million

 

 

AFP – The number of refugees and others fleeing their homes worldwide has hit a new record, spiking to 65.3 million people by the end of 2015, the United Nations said Monday.

Europe’s high-profile migrant crisis, its worst since World War II, is just one part of a growing tide of human misery led by Palestinians, Syrians and Afghans.

Globally, approaching one percent of humanity has been forced to flee.

“This is the first time that the threshold of 60 million has been crossed,” the UN refugee agency said.

The figures, released on World Refugee Day, underscore twin pressures fuelling an unprecedented global displacement crisis.

 

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/06/20/exclusive-video-veteran-forcibly-dragged-air-force-ceremony-saying-god/

 

Exclusive Video: Veteran Forcibly Dragged from Air Force Ceremony for Mentioning God

 

When a veteran started offering traditional remarks at a military flag-folding ceremony, several uniformed airmen assaulted him, dragging him out of the room because his remarks mentioned God. Now First Liberty Institute lawyers representing retired Senior Master Sergeant Oscar Rodriguez are demanding that the U.S. Air Force apologize and punish those responsible or face a federal civil-rights lawsuit.

 

Makes you proud to be an American.  Or makes someone proud.  Doesn’t it? Can’t have the final flag folding eremonies we used to have, even if we have to use force to stop it. This is America, after all.

 

 

http://fredoneverything.org/hussein-obama-50-america-0more-adventures-in-multiculturalism/

Orlando? So what else is new? Why the excitement? I am puzzled that everyone is  distraught over a perfectly ordinary act of terrorism by a perfectly ordinary Muslim terrorist. We have seen these attacks before and will see them again. They grow monotonous, like car crashes. They are as interesting as a commercial break.

 

Fred is not politically correct, and hecsays things no one else will say. 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/04/vaginal-knitting_n_4386419.html

ARTS

‘Vaginal Knitting’ Is Here To Make Everyone Afraid Of Performance Art Once Again (NSFW)

Two words: Vaginal. Knitting.

This curious form of performance art comes to us courtesy of feminist artist Casey Jenkins, a self-professed “craftivist” who is knitting using wool placed — you guessed it — inside her vagina. [ship]

 

There was a time when we would have thought siuch daring to be decadence, but now we know it’s progressive.  As is sowing the wind.

Nothing escapes the attention of the progressives. We can rest easy knowing that.

 

E9kNmZDNmhhejlGNU9WXC9CVzdzVWtzMlhXUitHZUxvZmNsVktQb0x2WUJYZzRnRlVZSmM9In0%3D

 

 

 

Kaeley Triller Haver is no stranger to the transgender bathroom debate. After being sexually assaulted as a child and going public with her story, the single mom from Washington state now opposes shower, locker room, and bathroom policies that she believes leave her and her daughter vulnerable and unsafe.

So earlier this month, when she found out that Washington public schools quietly adopted a new set of health education standards that include teaching kindergartners about gender expression and identity, Triller Haver was shocked she wasn’t involved.

“The only way I found out was through a Facebook post,” Triller Haver told The Daily Signal. “Not really the way any parent should discover information this critically important to their child’s life.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

911 Transcript Redactions

I was going to write a piece on this but then I decided against it.

Then I saw this and something has to be said even though I’ve completely given up on the left and expect nothing less:

<.>

Fine: President Obama wants to make this about gun control, not terrorism — but ham-handed editing only calls attention to what you’re deleting, and to Obama’s peevish rules against uttering terms like “radical Islam.”

Just look at the redactions:

Mateen: “I pledge of allegiance to [omitted]. “I pledge allegiance to [omitted] may God protect him [in Arabic], on behalf of [omitted].”

All the omissions did was make Team Obama look determined to keep its head in the sand about the nature of the enemy.

</>

https://nypost.com/2016/06/20/obamas-war-on-omitted/

This makes me wonder what they’re doing that we do not know about.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Consistent.

‘In short, the Marines bet their whole tactical aviation future on the JSF.’

<https://warisboring.com/the-u-s-marines-are-pulling-old-f-a-18s-out-of-desert-storage-a9b2febe3d64>

Boyd wept.

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

what to call them?

Dr. Pournelle,
You wrote: “The goal is to have a well regulated militia available at a minute’s notice. I wonder what we can call them.”
Recommendation: Citizens.
For some, this will probably begin to too much resemble the fictional society described by Heinlein’s much maligned “Starship Troopers,” but I reckon it’s about time.
(Msgt USAF, ret)
-d

Jerry Pournelle wrote:

Obviously I had Minutemen in mind, but yes…

Re: what to call them?

Dr. Pournelle,
I agree with the sentiment.  Having once worked on Minuteman Missile, and at times visited bars, dry cleaners, neighborhood groceries, and barbershops around Boston with the name, my personal feeling is that “Minuteman” may be overused.  Perhaps I’m jaded.
The various authorized “real” state militias, having been Federalized under the National Guard system, have also appropriated the minuteman silhouette symbol.  I feel it might be better to avoid outright identification with Federal authority — after all, there may easily be conflicts with the official policies of the government (e.g. the President’s prohibition against the Governor’s use of National Guard to quell rioting in Ferguson).
Such an organization should have a charter and code of conduct, but obedience to the orders of the President of the United States, or authorities appointed by her/him, should not be in that code.  Given this, perhaps the first requirement challenge will be to avoid membership bias by association with any political party while still developing strong bipartisan political support at local levels.
-d

Soros Threatens UK

This guy is like the prince of darkness:

<.>

The world’s most famous currency speculator has warned that a vote on Thursday for Britain to leave the EU would trigger a bigger and more damaging fall for sterling than the day he forced Britain out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism almost a quarter of a century ago.

George Soros, writing in the Guardian, said a Brexit vote would spark a ‘black Friday’ for the UK, but the devaluation of sterling would bring none of the benefits to the economy that it enjoyed after it dropped out of the ERM on 16 September 1992 – Black Wednesday.

He said that, as in 1992, there would be big financial gains for speculators who had bet on the UK leaving the EU but that such an outcome would leave “most voters considerably poorer”.

</>

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/20/brexit-would-trigger-sterling-fall-worse-than-black-wednesday

Be sure you didn’t miss “the day he forced Britain out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism”. This isn’t the first time England has their hindquarters soundly handed to them by a financier. The last major fire sale was after the Battle of Waterloo. I wonder if Soros is working with the red shield?

I note the red shield has many recent op eds on Brexit; this is the

latest: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/all-the-evidence-shows-that-brexit-would-be-a-disaster-7vg3zks35

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Well, Britain – or at least England – has exited. Now we see. Crony capitalists will have a round, but at least the survivor in England won’t have to bow to France/Belgium.

China builds world’s fastest supercomputer without U.S. chips

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3085483/high-performance-computing/china-builds-world-s-fastest-supercomputer-without-u-s-chips.html

But surely God looks after fools, drunks, and the United States of America…

Two aircraft carriers just went to PI. The ChiComs are not happy:

<.>

Conveying a so-called message about security through the exhibition of military might,and furthermore describing the events as an act of deterrence is something that the U.S.has done far too many times.

Regardless of how many times it may have gone smoothly in other parts of the world the U.S. has chosen the wrong opponent by selecting China for this type of game. Behind all of this is lack of patience and brassy moves and it also reveals nature of hegemony beneath the surface.

Statements from high ranking officials in the U.S. military as well as the aircraft carrier drills themselves once again demonstrate that the U.S. is definitely not a regional security safeguard, and instead precisely a trouble maker. In the regard of the South China Sea issue, the U.S. is playing an extremely destructive role.

</>

http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0622/c90000-9075995.html

Keep in mind, this is the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. I’m pretty sure this reflects the positions of the ChiComs on the CMC.

And this is happening just as the US and China are doing joint (cooperative not competitive) military exercises and both forces are heading to Hawaii.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/chinese-warships-join-forces-massive-8255107

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Surely

US Government Pays CNN for Propaganda!

The details of this article are, most likely, worth your time if only so you can refresh your data pool. I suspect you’re not shocked by any of this but it’s always nice to have someone on the inside confirm suspicions.

I conjectured — through investigation — this was happening and I knew this would become open after becoming legal with the repeal of the propaganda law. Of course, I was called crazy. Journalists are all wonderful people who just tell us the news. They’re not biased, in fact, they’re not even human since all humans have biases according to their illogic.

So, when I read stuff like this, I’m not only thinking of the trendy, urbanite who thinks that meat magically appears in the supermarket.

I’m also talking about the small town dweller who thinks that everyone

in the world has their best interests in mind…. Both are naive, in

their own fashion and both are being taken advantage of:

<.>

According to Amber Lyon, a three-time Emmy award winning journalist, CNN is routinely paid by the US government and foreign governments to selectively report on certain events. Furthermore, the Obama administration pay CNN for editorial control over some of their content.

</>

http://yournewswire.com/cnn-journalist-governments-pay-us-to-fake-stories-shocking-expose/

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I’m shocked. Shocked…

Piper on YouTube

Dear Jerry,

Knowing, thanks to a panel talk you gave some years ago on H. Beam Piper, something of his life and career, I am not sure if I am happy that his books are this easy to find, or sad that they are being given away like this.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=H.+Beam+Piper

Have his works gone into the public domain? One of the very best Golden Age writers, and sadly underappreciated by many. I still recall fondly your closing toast to his memory at the panel talk, when you poured his tumbler of whiskey into the water pitcher as you raised yours in salute.

Damn few like him!

Petronius

Beam’s widow sold all of Pipers works to Ace Books for a flat fee. Beam’s works were under the old copyright act, 28 years renewable in (and only in) the 28^th year. When the 28^th year rolled around, all of Beam’s works fell into the public domain. Think of it as Piper’s legacy to his fans? Of course that also freed Piper scholars such as the team John Carr heads to write their own extensions of Beam’s works.

Dear Jerry,
Your correspondent Chuck Anderson wished for a Kindle edition of The Prince “because my hard copy is falling apart.” The individual novels in the omnibus volume are available on Amazon.com, or in a bundle along with other J.E. Pournelle, et al, works from Baen Books.
CODOMINIUM FUTURE HISTORY BUNDLE: http://www.baen.com/codominium-future-history-bundle.html
High Justice
West of Honor
The Mercenary
Prince of Mercenaries
Go Tell the Spartans
Prince of Sparta
King David’s Spaceship
The Mote in God’s Eye
The Gripping Hand
I’ve enjoyed it having it.
Greg Hemsath

Alas the link leads to a notice that the bundle is no longer available. I did some new scene in The Prince that are not in the original novels which The Prince collects together to make up the Falkenberg/Lysander saga. I am negotiating for a kindle edition to be published.

The Cost of Leftist Government

Was this all so the DNC could get new voters? If so, would this make those decision makers worse than the several diseases they bring, if only through their clumsy touch?

<.>

Six diseases that were recently near eradication are making a comeback in the United States, as the taxpayer funded refugee resettlement industry launches a propaganda blitz about the so-called World Refugee Day this Monday.

The returning diseases are;

1. Tuberculosis

2. Measles

3. Whooping Cough

4. Mumps

5. Scarlet Fever

6. Bubonic Plague

The near eradication of these diseases in the United States during the twentieth century was a remarkable accomplishment of American civilization. Until recently, most Americans believed these diseases were gone from our shores for good.

But a politicized public health system, and a rise in the subsidized migration into the United States, however, have combined to reverse a century of progress.

</>

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/06/19/diseases-thought-eradicated-world-refugee-day/

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Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

You can’t make omelets without breaking eggs.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.