Superman Would Always Be Busy

(Man hangs from side of building. Can't climb up or down. Street is 37 floors below him. He struggles to pull out his cell phone to make a call.)

"Hello, Superman? I need a rescue, quick!"

"You have reached the Superman rescue hotline. Please stay on the line and Superman will be right with you. You are number 43 in the queue."

"ARGH!"

(2 minutes of generic hold music.)

"You have reached the Superman rescue hotline. Please stay on the line and Superman will be right with you. You are number 42 in the queue."

"At least it's going down. I wonder if I can hold on long enough."

(2 minutes of generic hold music.)

"You have reached the Superman rescue hotline. Please stay on the line and Superman will be right with you. You are number 40 in the queue."

(2 minutes of generic hold music.)

"You have reached the Superman rescue hotline. Please stay on the line and Superman will be right with you. You are number 40 in the queue."

(2 minutes of generic hold music.)

"You have reached the Superman rescue hotline. Please stay on the line and Superman will be right with you. You are number 40 in the queue."

"Oh no."

(2 minutes of generic hold music.)

"You have reached the Superman rescue hotline. Due to high call volume and complicated rescues ahead of you, your wait time will be longer than normal. Please stay on the line and Superman will be right with you. You are number 40 in the queue."

(Man starts slipping. Clearly he's doomed.)

"This would never have happened if I had called Aquaman. He's never busy."

(Man falls.)

Organic Vegetables Should Be Sold Outside

... of supermarkets. Preferably in the alley behind the store, perhaps from the loading dock.

What a waste of space. Every time I go to the store to pick up some veggies, I'm confronted with all these duplicative vegetables taking up real estate that could be used to increase the variety of what the store carries. Tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, peppers and on and on, all of them looking (and tasting) just like the ordinary ones in the container down the aisle.

I'm completely in favor of vegetable segregation. Separate but equal for organic vegetables! Maybe we could keep them all at Whole Foods. I never visit the place and there aren't any in my neighborhood, so it would be a double win.

It's not much of a rant, I know, but some days I've got only a small amount of crazy in me.

By 2020, George W. Bush Will Be Psychically Crashing Trains And Airliners

Look, we all know that the disintegration of the Middle East into savage, chaotic, theocratic hellholes is the fault of George W. Bush and his invasion of Iraq. Everything we're seeing today, from the failed state of Libya to Boko Haram in Nigeria to the recent bombings in Brussels is derived from Bush's imperialism.

But did you ever stop to think about the direction things are going and project it into the future? Dig this.

Terror Attacks and Deaths Due to Terrorism Since 2001 | Graphiq

The farther away you get from W's presidency, the more pronounced his impact becomes. In just a few, short years out of office, he's managed to increase deaths from terrorism tenfold! The man is like one of those rapidly-evolving mutant super villains from a comic book. Just what will things be like in 2020? It boggles the mind.

Don't say you weren't warned.

60 Minutes Shows Us What Losing Looks Like

Here's a bit from a 60 Minutes segment in Sweden. The airbrushed blond airhead and her camera crew get attacked by Muslim invaders immigrants around 5:30 in the video below. After making a few, vague, mildly threatening motions, the 60 Minutes crew leaves.

My favorite bit: The blond has harsh words for her attackers. "There's no need to be unkind!" Ooh, that's gonna leave a mark!

Swedish Mechanized Infantry to the, err, Rescue: You couldn't ask for a more Mark Steynian intervention by a Euro than some handicapped (elderly?) dude on a mobility scooter coming to the defense of the 60 Minutes pansies. Several young, virile Muslims against one disabled Swede. If you watch carefully and listen to the soundtrack, I'm thinking the dude on the motorized wheelchair gets punched in the head several times as the 60 Minutes crew flees.

Summary: There was a fight. One side ran away. That's called losing.

So is this.

It's still losing even if you refuse to recognize you're in a fight.

When you can no longer protect your women in your own country without sheltering them behind walls, that's losing, too.

Way to go morons-> German Railway To Launch Separate Carriages For Men And Women Because Of Migrant Sex Attacks… https://t.co/vSEeyVnYwN

— Cheerio (@Oxco) March 27, 2016

Also, a backdoor way for absolving European men from protecting their women. @BDaddyLiberator @ktcat https://t.co/C9bvTBcWv6

— D-Shifty (@deanriehm) March 27, 2016

When the casualties are happening on your territory and the other side's numbers are growing while yours are declining, that's also called losing.

Anyone want to take bets on what the European response will be to losing? My money is on "run away." I'm waiting for Belgian flight from Brussels on the order of the "white flight" from Detroit in the late 1960s.

Happy Easter!

I recently read a book by Peter Kreeft called Jesus Shock. It was quite good. Among many shocking things in the book was the realization that the Being who created Saturn's rings* took human form to teach us, die for our sins and be resurrected that we might know He was who He said He was. He could have been bopping around the Universe having a good time, but instead, He came to us.

He must love us very much, yes?

Happy Easter!

* - No, Peter doesn't use this as an example, it's what comes to my mind.

The Problem With An Increased Police Presence In Muslim Communities

... completely escapes me.

Seriously, I don't get it at all. Following the latest wave of attacks* Ted Cruz has come out in favor of having an increased police presence in Muslim communities. The media and his opponents are having rage spasms, sputtering at him that it's racist or islamophobic or whatever. Why? Just what is wrong with more cops in the neighborhood? What are they going to do to the residents other than keep them safe? If more cops are a problem, you've got bigger worries than Islamofascism.

Say you lived in a high crime area or maybe your neighborhood has experienced a wave of rapes and robberies. When the mayor and chief of police announce that they're going to step up patrols on your streets, do you react in horror? "Good Lord, don't send more cops! That's the last thing we want!"

When you drive through a neighborhood where everyone has bars on their windows and businesses have razor wire atop their fences, do you think, "Boy, I'll bet these people want the cops to just leave them alone?"

Under Islamic law, apostates are to be killed. That is, if you decided you want to leave Islam and become a Unitarian, your fellow Muslims are supposed to kill you. As in kill you until you die from it. If you think this is like one of those crazy rules in Leviticus that Jews and Christians ignore, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, around 90% of the population thinks this is a good thing.

Don't think this happens in Muslim communities in the West? Dig this.

A popular shopkeeper was stabbed to death by another Muslim in a "religiously prejudiced" attack hours after posting an Easter message on Facebook to "my beloved Christian nation".

Asad Shah, 40, a devout Muslim originally from the Pakistani city of Rabwah, had his head stamped on during a savage attack, according to one eyewitness.

Around four hours earlier the victim wrote online: "Good Friday and a very Happy Easter, especially to my beloved Christian nation. "Let's follow the real footstep of beloved holy Jesus Christ and get the real success in both worlds."

The assailant was just carrying out Sharia law. Sharia law is a central part of Islam. See how this works? It's like the Mafia. You can get in, but you can't get out and they'll use violence and intimidation to see to it.

If you lived in a community where that was prevalent wouldn't you want more cops on the street? If we're going to assume that most Muslims aren't completely mad, then you'd have to think that when threats and intimidation started, they'd want someone in authority to turn to so they could report it and expect a firm response. That would be a policeman, in case you were wondering.

So circling back around to the beginning, I don't get it. What's wrong with more cops on the streets in Muslim communities?

Here, a police officer recruits a young Muslim boy into the "Little Crusaders" program by giving him a candy in the shape of a cross and having him watch The Greatest Story Ever Told on an iPad.

* - Notice how I kept this blog post evergreen by not mentioning the location? With the Islamofascists, there's always a "latest wave of attacks."

You Can't Vote For Social Justice

... and think you're doing anything at all. Dig this.

Two students face felony assault charges in the beating this week of a Como Park High School teacher ... According to the charges, the two, who were not students of Rawlings, entered the classroom while class was in session and ignored his demands that they leave. When he tried to escort them out, one punched him on the chin, while the second punched him in the right eye ... The school’s assistant principal told police they learned that the two entered the classroom to assault another student over a marijuana transaction gone bad. The student said he expected one of the students to come looking for him and said that although he was in the classroom, he was wearing headphones and didn’t see or hear the assault.

A couple bucks thrown at the schools, the cops, the parents, the kids, whatever isn't going to change anything. When there are children who think nothing of wandering the halls of their school, looking for a pot dealer to beat him up, votes and laws and money and chanting and marching aren't going to accomplish a thing.

If you want social justice, however that's defined, you're going to need to get involved personally, one-on-one, with a child. Parenting can't be replaced by whatever it is you think is going to happen because of your vote.

You Had To See This One Coming

Instapundit linked to an article today about increasing violence in St. Paul, MN high schools. That article linked to an essay by a teacher which went into greater detail. Here are the payoff paragraphs for me.

There students are out of control and illiteracy is the norm.

On a daily basis, I saw students cussing at their teachers, running out of class, yelling and screaming in the halls, and fighting. If I had a dollar for every time my class was interrupted by a student running into my room and yelling, I’d be a rich man. It was obvious to me that these behaviors were affecting learning, so when I saw the abysmal test scores this summer, I was not surprised. Out of 375 students, only 14.3 percent were proficient in Reading, 9.6 percent in Math and 9.3 percent in Science.

The school administration is fudging the numbers they report.

I diligently collected data on the behaviors that I saw in our school and completed behavior referrals for the assaults. These referrals were not accurately collected. The school suspended some students, but many more assaults were ignored or questioned by administrators to the point where the assaults were not even documented. I have since learned that this tactic is widely used throughout the district to keep the numbers of referrals and suspensions low.

Racism gets the blame.

I blame the San Francisco-based consulting firm, Pacific Education Group (PEG). PEG was hired by SPPS in 2010 to help close the achievement gap. PEG makes no secret of the fact that its prescription for closing the gap is based on the Critical Race Theory. This theory argues that racism is so ingrained in the American way of life — its economy, schools, and government — that things must be made unequal in order to compensate for that racism. PEG pushes the idea that black students are victims of white school policies that make it difficult or impossible for them to learn. So, when a black student is disruptive, PEG, as I see it, stresses that it’s not their fault, and the student should just take a break, and then return to class shortly thereafter.

The author is black in case you were wondering.

None of this is a surprise to me. I figured it had to be this way, given the destruction of the traditional family. The rot is bigger and worse than we've been told. Way bigger and way worse.

Anyone want to take a crack at teaching remedial English and Math to about 320 students? Anyone want to guess at how much these illiterates will earn when they leave school? Do you think this is an isolated incident?

Street Racing In Europe

So Islamists have struck again, blowing people to bits in Europe. The responses have been predictable, with flags at half-staff and social media festooned with sad cartoons of French and Belgian flags crying and hashtags resolving to stand firm in our resolve to mumble mumble mumble.

That last bit is the thing that leaps out at me. This is a 4-way religious war. I used to say 3-way, but this time I'm giving the Jews their own side. All the talk about "cultural confidence" is really talk about evangelization. It's hard to evangelize when your religion calls for no evangelization like the secular Euros. It's primary tenet is multicultural acceptance. If you accept another's worldview as equal to your own, you're not likely to change their mind, particularly if their worldview says you're a big time wanker.

So, using a street racing analogy, here are the four sides.

Islam is a Lamborghini. Fast, aggressive, great for picking up chicks and getting laid (without protection, of course). It oozes confidence. Everyone better get out of the way when this bad boy comes roaring up behind them. (Everyone does.)

Christianity is a Nissan. Dependable, it gets you from point A to point B. Oh sure, there are cars that are lots more popular, but soon everyone will want to get back to driving at a safe and sane speed with their hands at 9 and 3 on the wheel. Best of all, it's inoffensive.

The Jews are escaping Europe in Amphicars as fast as the little, four-wheeled toads can take them. Sure, they look like dorks and the only people that like them are other Amphicar owners, but who cares? With those crazy Lambos all over the road, it's not safe for a little Amphicar any more.

Secular Europe is a VW bus coated in peace and love symbols. Inside, the passengers are toasted out of their skulls, playing bongos and talking about deep things like crystals, natural harmonic vibrations and organic hemp. The thing barely runs because none of them know how it works, much less how to fix it. They think the Lambos are cool as they blast by, but they hate the Nissan owners because they're, like, judgmental and stuff, man. Sometimes a secularist gets laid in the thing, but not often. They talk a lot more about the freedom to do it than they actually do it. In any case, when they do, it's always with 18 forms of consent, an agreement that men are pigs and three forms of protection, one of which is hairy armpits and no deodorant.

I'm just sure that any day now, thousands upon thousands of Lambo owners will give up their race cars for VW buses.

Really.

Little, Yellow Flowers

I think that after recent events, some pictures of little, yellow flowers are needed.

Lavender

Wife kitteh and I have been wandering around Paso Robles, Cambria and Big Sur for a long weekend and we saw these at a roadside inn / gift shop / beach access point. I really like the photo. I left it large, so it ought to be worth a click.

Enjoy!

About That Change In Tone

... between that blog post on touching the infinity of God and the one raging about the cultural decay that's led to Sanders, Clinton and Trump.

When I worked at Catholic Charities food resource center, we gave out food to people who didn't have enough. As in not enough to eat and no money to buy it. Many of those were elderly. Some days we turned people away as we could only serve so many in a day. We tried not to, but there's only so much you can do.

Detroit went bankrupt while I worked there. Elderly pensioners ended up with smaller pensions. Permanently. I wondered what it would be like to work in their Catholic Charities food resource center. They must have been utterly overwhelmed. They probably still are.

The Detroit bankruptcy was deliberate. Bankruptcy is simple mathematics and everyone involved in the budgeting process could see it coming a mile away. There was time to make changes and they chose not to do so. It was an act of intentional cruelty by people who had the personal resources to avoid the consequences of their decisions. They knew that elderly people would go hungry, but that didn't matter to them. They acted like big shots and threw around the last scraps of cash so everyone knew how "compassionate" they were.

Substitute children for elderly and destroying traditional morality for bankruptcy above and you get the same thing for our cultural elites.

So, for those of working to help the poor, the two sides of the coin are compassion for the victims and anger at the perpetrators. Sometimes that leads to incongruity on a blog.

They did what their progressive elites asked them to do - they got more involved in the political process.
Fat lot of good it did them.

This Is Just Wrong

It's not easy being Jabba. pic.twitter.com/NNnh76gNNe

— Bad Father Han Solo (@BadFatherHan) March 19, 2016

The Wages Of Sin Are Trump, Clinton and Sanders

First, a bit from Kipling.

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Kevin Williamson has penned a volcanic, brutal piece about the white trash component of Trump's legions. Using the depressed, dysfunctional town of Garbutt as an example, it thunders wonderfully with Copybook Headings goodness like this.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

If you want to live, get out of Garbutt.

In paragraphs prior, Kevin details the destruction of the white, traditional family which lags the obliteration of the black family only by years. It's a difference in amount, not in kind. Kevin's received a lot of flack over this, but methinks that if it was yet another piece on the effects of 75% illegitimacy in the black community, who support the Democrats, that would have been just fine. That he went after whites who support Trump is another story entirely.

To me, this election is indeed a paragraph from Kipling's The Gods of the Copybook Headings. Add up the voters for Sanders, Clinton and Trump and you get a majority of America voting for free stuff bought with printed money and a political strongman-Daddy. This is what you get when you wipe out the foundations of civilization, but you haven't yet had the Gods of the Copybook Headings return. We want our treats, but we don't want the self-denial they require.

So that was Kevin Williamson whacking the Trumpkins. Here's Ben Shapiro obliterating the Democrats' pet constituency whose horrific self-destruction has been excused and excused and excused.

Note how the BLM folks have no response. They're so used to being treated like privileged children and they've never encountered a dissenting opinion. The whole experience of someone like Ben tearing their fundamental arguments to shreds is new to them.

So on the right we have self-destructive whites angry that reality doesn't reward indulgence and on the left it's the blacks. Hurrah.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began —
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire—

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Touching Infinity

A while back I read The Boundless God by Adrienne von Speyr. It's deep theology and therefore not very accessible so I don't know that I would recommend it to a general audience, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.

One point that stuck with me the most was that Jesus was infinite God becoming finite, in part, so we could understand Him. It made me see the Old Testament in a new light. Had I been born a Jew before Christ, the concept of God would have been as impersonal as the constellations. God would be a cosmic being of incomprehensible size and power.

He still is, of course, but the gift of Jesus gives us a humanity with which we can relate easily. Like Spock said in Errand Of Mercy about the Organians, it's there to give us a convenient frame of reference.

This is a long, slow, narrative arc to bring me to my hour of insomnia last night. The Catican Guards sleep with us, usually tucked in against us. I lay there, around 2 AM last night, trying to pray and meditate to resume sleep while I stroked one of the dogs.

I tried to lose myself in the act of giving her love. I imagined what was happening inside her furry, little head, pleasure centers being stimulated, anxiety levels dropping and her happiness as full as a chihuahua's can be. I tried to stop existing and instead felt myself as an extension of her, there only to please her. My sleep didn't matter, only that hers was as content as possible.

I thought of Adrienne's book and our infinite God. Reaching out to someone else, even a little dog, is an act of extending yourself beyond yourself. Through love of others, you touch the infinity of God and become part of His desire. Sometimes when I sleep, I let a hand rest on my wife to show her that I love her and I'm there with her. It's the same kind of thing.

It occurred to me that in sin we shrink. That is, the Universe ceases to exist and we are all that matters. With porn or booze or anger, our view of the world collapses in upon itself and others fade to insignificance. The world becomes as small as it can be.

In love, we touch infinity. In selfishness, we shrink to a point.

A Super Duper Tuesday Hangover Bernie Sanders Conspiracy Theory

I didn't drink enough last night. No matter how much I had, it wasn't enough. Not that it matters all that much, given the nation's fiscal, cultural and diplomatic momentum. Turning this bad boy around is going to take a lot of work.

In any case, it's shaping up to be the criminal hag vs. the megalomaniac. Oh joy.

But wait! Is there something else lying in wait for us? How about this crazy idea -

The Democratic Party convention and the completion of the FBI investigation of Team Hildebeast's espionage crimes might just coincide. Let's say they do and we find out what we already know - Hagotron and her henchcreatures are guilty of mountains of felonies. The Administration stalls the indictment, but some FBI investigators resign in protest and spill the beans to the press. Unconvinced, Hillary's succubi in the media remain loyal until high-level, ultra-lefty members of the Administration begin a whisper campaign against her as well.

Hit from the left and the right, some of Hillary's newsmedia trolls, who secretly prefer out-and-out socialism to creepy, err, creeping socialism, turn on her and waves upon waves of revelations come forth. Drowning in a tsunami of her own filth, Hillary is pushed to withdraw in a screaming match with party elders* that is secretly recorded. The video is pushed to YouTube where the public witnesses Hillary behaving like a creature from the lower regions of Hell. Which she is.

The populists in the Socialist, err, Democratic Party then arise and demand Sanders be named head of the Politburo or whatever it is they call their nominee. Humiliated, Hillary steps aside, a broken harpy.

Bernie then goes on to trounce Trump triumphantly as the Republican party will have splintered and donors won't know which way to go. Trump's billions are revealed to be tens of millions and he can't finance his own campaign.

So practice saying it. "President Bernie Sanders."

Shortly thereafter, weed is legalized all over the country, giving us a much-needed escape from the ensuing insanity.

* - Can they get any elder than Hillary and Bernie? Not sure.

If Trayvon Martin Had A Son, He'd Look Like Donald Trump

So Trump has said he'll consider paying the legal bills of anyone who goes full Trayvon Martin on protesters at his rallies. In a previous episode, President Obama proudly told us that if he had a son, he'd look like some guy who slammed a Hispanic dude's head into the pavement until said Hispanic dude popped a cap in him.

My, aren't we having fun now!

Economics Didn't End Slavery

... because slavery didn't end.

The whole point of granite, that it is hard and durable, is also the reason it is difficult to mine and process. It has to be carefully removed from quarries in large thin slabs, so you can’t just go in with dynamite and bulldozers. Careful handling means handwork, which requires people with drills and chisels, hammers and crowbars gently working the granite out of the ground. And in India, the most cost effective way to achieve that is slavery.

“See the little girl playing with the hammer?” asked a local investigator. “Along with the child, the size of the hammer grows, and that’s the only progress in her life.” Slavery in granite quarries is a family affair enforced by a tricky scheme based on debt. When a poor family comes looking for work, the quarry bosses are ready to help with an “advance” on wages to help the family settle in. The rice and beans they eat, the scrap stones they use to build a hut on the side of the quarry, the hammers and crowbars they need to do their work, all of it is provided by the boss and added to the family’s debt. Just when the family feels they may have finally found some security, they are being locked into hereditary slavery. This debt bondage is illegal, but illiterate workers don’t know this, and the bosses are keen to play on their sense of obligation, not alert them to the scam that’s sucking them under.

Where do they get slaves? Refugees of natural disasters are one source.

Especially in countries where corruption is rife, slavers act with impunity after environmental devastation, luring and capturing the refugees, the destitute, and the dispossessed. This has happened in countries like Mali, where sand dunes drift right over villages, forcing the inhabitants to flee in desperation, seeking new livelihoods, only to find themselves enslaved.

In my previous post on Christianity and the end of slavery, I had thought of modern slavery in the "entertainment" industry - sex slaves for one. My other thought was that in the absence of Christian influences on our culture, our recent fascination with Mixed Martial Arts matches where one combatant typically ends up beaten senseless is only a tiny nudge away from Rome's gladiators where the loser ended up dead. Do away with Christianity and you're left with ... why not?

In any case, slavery is going on now because in industries that involve high levels of risks from toxins or accidents, you need life to be very, very cheap.

Orange

As in, "Orange you glad you clicked on the link to get you to this image?" You'll be even happier when you click on the image and see the larger version.

Enjoy!

Way To Go, Lefties

Keep at it and you're going to get that American Mussolini elected.

Packs of pampered, sheltered progressives used violence and intimidation to shut down a pair of Trump rallies last night. Genius. After all, it's been working so well on the campuses and in cities run by progressives where authority belongs to masses of hyper-sensitive, aggrieved pantywaists. Too bad their environs don't reflect the real world. Maybe if they didn't shut down anyone with a differing opinion, they'd have known how badly this is going to backfire.

I would guess that, given the nature of the Trump voters, attendees at subsequent events will be, err, prepared. Unlike individual conservative speakers at their universities or the conservatives who live tens of miles away from their self-segregated urban enclaves, they'll find that the Trumpkins have resolve the likes of which they've never experienced in their soft, unrestrained lives.

Because they're never asked to produce anything, they don't have to work at maintaining civilization in any way. They have no clue at all that we need societal structures so we can spend our days working to support them. By taking their tantrum act out of their playpens, which the rest of us pay for, they've reinforced the notion that what this country needs is order. Someone willing to take action the old-fashioned way. Were you raised on stories of dogs and fire hoses, snowflakes? You've never really seen them in action? You will, you smug, preening losers.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will watch as the Republic is handed over to an authoritarian goon with less intellect and less purpose than the original Mussolini.

“We have buried the putrid corpse of liberty” – @realDonaldTrump #MakeAmericaGreatAgain

— ilduce2016 (@ilduce2016) March 11, 2016

None Of Hillary's Emails Were Marked Classified

Here's a little (and incomplete) primer on classification markings. Each paragraph in a classified document is marked with a letter inside parentheses at the beginning. Like so.

(S) This paragraph contains secret information.

(U) This paragraph does not contain secret information.

Now this is where it gets tricky and I have to use a little scientific and technical jargon with you. I hope you can keep up. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

These days, documents are what we call "electronic." They can be "edited" using a special machine called a "computer." We can even delete individual characters to change information contained in a paragraph. For example, we can delete the first three characters of each paragraph in the example above and end up with this.

This paragraph contains secret information.

This paragraph does not contain secret information.

Note that the paragraph containing secret information is still considered classified, but it's no longer marked as classified. If someone, say, a henchman, perhaps, had access to a "computer" and deleted the initial three characters of each paragraph and then emailed them to Hillary, Hillary would receive classified information, but none of it would be marked classified.

So, in summary, it is possible for two seemingly contradictory things to be true at the same time.

1. Hillary Clinton did not receive any emails marked classified and
2. Hillary Clinton is guilty of thousands of crimes, put the nation at risk, betrayed all of us to sworn enemies and deserves to spend the rest of her life in a maximum security prison sharing a cell with a violent lesbian named Big Flo.

Anything Is Better Than Giving Up Power

From today's WSJ:

FRANKFURT—The European Central Bank unveiled a major new stimulus package on Thursday that included a mix of interest-rate cuts, additional bond purchases and ultracheap loans for banks, signaling its determination to bolster the eurozone’s fragile economy and combat stubbornly low inflation.

It's almost comical to see the ECB continually thrash about with interest rate cuts, money printing and asset purchasing, trying to get the Euro economy to move. Maybe if they untied the thing it would finally get going.

Nah. Untying it would have to take the form of removing regulations and each regulation is a bit of sweet, delicious power the governments have over people and businesses.

Christianity Was A Necessary Condition For Ending Slavery

I'm not sure on this one, so I'm open to counter-examples.

First, note that there is a difference between necessary and sufficient. I'm suggesting that Christianity was a necessary, but not sufficient condition. Slavery was ended by British Evangelicals who made a tremendous political stink about the practice. That story can be seen in the movie Amazing Grace.

In any case, I saw this suggested in a Peter Kreeft book. Thinking about it, I couldn't think of a counter-example from a major league society. And, no, I don't want to hear about some Caribbean tribe of 140 people living in peace and harmony with nature. I'm talking nations on the order of Greece, Rome, Babylon, the Aztecs, the Ashanti and so forth. As far as I know, they all had slaves.

Going further, one might be able to suggest that given enough time, one of these groups would have eliminated slavery. Fair enough, but if you want to make that point, you  need to show the first principles that would have led them to do so. Slaves are awfully convenient, particularly for those in power. Who wouldn't want a few concubines laying around the house to keep you amused when you get home from work as the CFO of Babylonian Rubber and Tire Company?

So go for it, folks. I'm not emotionally invested in this, so any argument in the comments can be completely collegial.

I Never Did Reach The Pot Of Gold

Dig this shot taken with my phone as I drove around San Diego yesterday. I left it very large, so I think it's worth a click. Enjoy.

Simply Writing This Is An Act Of Cultural Imperialism

... and by "this" I mean this: "Glaciers, gender, and science, A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research." Dig this part of this from that.

Feminist glaciology is rooted in, and combines, both feminist science studies and postcolonial science studies to meaningfully shift present-day glacier and ice sciences. While feminist science studies focuses explicitly on gender and the place (or absence) of women in science, it can neglect specific analyses of the social relations of colonialism and imperialism, emphasizing instead Western women without sustained attention to indigenous, non-Western, and local knowledge systems that are the centerpiece of postcolonial science studies

Since pre-colonial civilizations were, for the most part, illiterate, isn't the fact that this article is in writing an act of colonial, imperialist, patriarchal hegemony?

Here, the academic review panel for Progress in Human Geography ponders whether or not to publish this submission.

Yellow

... or maybe YELLOW! I left the image large, so I think it's worth a click. Enjoy!

The Perfect Scenario For October 2016

... would be for Donald Trump to lose his Trump University lawsuit in a yuuuuge way and go bankrupt while Hillary Clinton is hauled off to jail on espionage charges.

Hey, I can dream, can't I?

Just Outside The University

... lies a land of free speech where people can say things like, "the free market isn't perfect, but it's the best economic system out there" and "I think people should be judged by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin."

I was watching some short YouTube video the other day, I think it was about the University of South Carolina*, where students and faculty were melting down over something so innocuous that I can't even remember what it was. It suddenly struck me that perhaps 50 yards away, there was freedom from their reflexive spasms of intolerance.

When I went to UCSD, we spent a lot of time off campus. That's where the bars were and where the girls wore tight skirts and there was this one time that this really hot chick and I ... Hmm. I seem to be getting off topic. Where was I? Oh yeah, off campus.

What struck me about the video was how tiny these islands of academic insanity are. If you zoomed out on Google Maps, the University of Crazed Progressives would look like a teensy-weensy dot in a vast tract of urbane urbanness. Does it ever occur to the residents of these 4-year madhouses that they live on tiny islands in a sea of insensitivity? What happens when they go out to a club and someone says something like, "I like Ted Cruz?" Are they shocked when university administrators don't swoop down on the person and force them to recant?

In short, how do they reconcile the wild differences in culture?

Maybe they never go out.

* - South Carolina of all places!

Eunuch Europe

... is unable to cope with the invaders.

-or- "You don't always get a good option when you have to make a decision."

When you step back and think about it, the solution to the "refugee" problem in Europe is obvious. The Euros need to go into Syria in force, declare it a protectorate and impose order. Once done, the refugees need to be resettled. The Euro presence would have to be, for all intents and purposes, permanent. Local customs in Syria would have to be subordinated to European ones because it's clear that the residents can't manage the place on their own without mounds of corpses and rivers of refugees.

No, that's not a good option. The other option, however, is worse. Dig this.

Greece has now de facto become the collecting point for the vast majority of refugees heading north. The country, says one EU diplomat candidly, "is turning into a single enormous hotspot," referring to the plan to establish central refugee registration points on Europe's periphery. Greece has been in the throes of a deep economic crisis for years and is now completely overwhelmed by the task of providing food and shelter to tens of thousands of refugees. Some 12,000* migrants are currently stranded in the country and the four official camps are hopelessly overcrowded. A spokeswoman from Doctors without Borders says that if Afghans continue to be blocked from continuing northward, the system will collapse "in just eight days." Because there is "no realistic emergency plan," she says, her organization is preparing for the worst. The European Commission is likewise developing emergency aid so as to prevent the collapse of the state on the Turkish border.

So somebody is going to get occupied, controlled and have their local customs washed away. It's either going to be Syria or Greece. Why selecting Greece is the best choice is beyond me. It's only the best choice if you're such a total pack of pansies and so completely filled with self-loathing for your culture that you can't stomach even the smallest of colonial actions.

On the plus side, if the British get involved, the Syrians can be introduced to cricket.
Oh, come on. It took off in India, didn't it?

Too Late

Of course, it's too late for this to be done. Now that the Russians are there, a European invasion would instigate a much larger war. It's telling that the Euros did what they always do, they mistook talk for action and wasted their chance to take decisive steps to cut off and reverse the refugee flow in favor of a lot of blathering in meetings.

* - 12,000 is a delusionally optimistic number. This morning I've read 30,000 elsewhere and that's just at a single border. Given the current flow equations, the number must be much,much higher.

Martin Van Buren Dog

The smallest of the Catican Guards, one Lilly by name, a chihuahua mix, has a great set of muttonchop whiskers. We* call her Martin Van Buren Dog. I chose the nickname as a homage to the very brief cameo of Martin Van Buren in the Monkees episode Dance Monkee Dance. Here's the clip, below is a side by side of the two of them.

I'd say that's a pretty strong resemblance, wouldn't you?

* - Well, to tell you the truth, I really call her that, but my wife plays along because she loves me. I'm the Monkeephile in the family.

Too Insane For A Title

It's like something out of a Keynesian's dream. Negative interest rates for the government.

TOKYO—The Japanese government is now getting paid to borrow money, after selling benchmark bonds with a negative yield for the first time Tuesday.

No, really.

(T)he Ministry of Finance sold 10-year bonds with an interest rate of 0.1% at the average price of ¥101.25, producing a yield of minus 0.024% if held to maturity.

Someone on the web said that the only governing principle of the Democrats here in America is "more." More spending, more regulations, more borrowing, more, more, more. It hasn't resulted in anything good, of course, but one of the advantages of being a secular postmodernist is that icky things like objective measures of success no longer apply. There's no reason why that governing principle doesn't apply globally. More borrowing, more spending, more, more more.

6,000 years of human experience that led people to conclude that best way to prosperity was creating, saving and investing has been discarded in favor of more, more, more. Well, what did they know? They didn't even have iPads!

In any case, that particular Rubicon, negative interest rates for the government, has now been crossed by an ostensibly first-world country.

Why not? Seriously, why not?