Wow

If you don't visit wannasmile on a regular basis, you should. Here's one reason why.

One of her regular series, "Zen Moment of the Day"

Vladimir Lenin, Pitchman

On Twitter, there are plenty of spam accounts constantly throwing out links to products and websites. I've recently been followed by a couple that mix "real" tweets with ads. The best of these is Vladimir Lenin's, @thresagu, which mixes Lenin quotes with ... well, you'll see. These two were back-to-back:

The revolutionist despises escapism; he is always ready for any psychological confrontation with capitalist ideals.
— Vladimir Lenin (@Thresagu) July 30, 2014

Tips to Keep Your Skin Clear - http://t.co/L309pnd9PI pic.twitter.com/IhkoAXbUU2
— Vladimir Lenin (@Thresagu) July 30, 2014

I guess it makes sense. After a long day killing all kinds of counter-revolutionaries, who wouldn't need a soothing facial massage?

The Tea Party Is Now Completely Out Of Control

Just look at these crazed, bigoted Teabaggers in their white KKK sheets with all kinds of weapons strapped to them. Sickening! Oh, wait. Those are Hamas guys. Never mind, we're cool with them because they're all ethnic and diverse and stuff.

Source.

The Gator Didn't Stand A Chance

Wow.

The Perfect Business Plan

Yesterday, my wife and I were looking at burial plots. Not for ourselves, but for a relative who had recently died. One of those we visited was deep in the hood. You didn't really feel safe driving to and from it. I came up with the perfect slogan for the place.

"Here at Restful Acres, we believe in preparing for the day when you're shot to death visiting Restful Acres."

Odds And Ends

Random tidbits and observations today.

You can't change other people, you can only change the way you interact with them.

A "Bovver boy" is a hooligan, sometimes a skinhead.

Google's excellent speech-to-text algorithm knows that when you say, "new paragraph," you want a new paragraph in your text.

Cute tweet seen recently: "The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club."

At Catholic Charities yesterday, one of our customers was a handicapped, probably mentally ill transvestite. He was treated with love and compassion and we were genuinely happy to serve him. Plenty of the progressives on Twitter would have been shocked to see it, figuring we'd pitch him down a flight of stairs and scream at him that he was going to hell.

Link Of The Day

Charles Krauthammer has hit the nail on the head today with this column. Here's one of the payoff bits:

Obama’s passivity stems from an idea. When Obama says Putin has placed himself on the wrong side of history in Ukraine, he actually believes it. He disdains realpolitik because he believes that, in the end, such primitive 19th-century notions as conquest are self-defeating. History sees to their defeat...

Remember when, at the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, Obama tried to construct for Putin “an off-ramp” from Crimea? Absurd as this idea was, I think Obama was sincere. He actually imagined that he’d be saving Putin from himself, that Crimea could only redound against Russia in the long run.

Italics in the original. If you're wondering why the US hasn't intervened in any meaningful way to stop Russia, ISIS, Syria or anyone else, it's because Obama thinks they've already lost. Like the Marxists, he seems to think that history is relentlessly moving in one direction, in this case towards freedom, civil rights and prosperity. All we have to do is sit back and watch them fail.

What's worse for them, these anti-freedom forces are getting a lot of grit in their eyes from blowing up buildings.

Gun Violence Is A Symptom

More shootings in Chicago. More every week. Last weekend, an 11-year-old was killed by stray bullets*. Some are calling for stricter gun control. Just how you'd get stricter gun control is something of a conundrum as Chicago already has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. The only thing I can think of is house-to-house gun confiscation searches done on a regular basis.

And after that, what? Do you think people are shooting each other, but aside from that, they're at home playing backgammon quietly in their homes after a long day of working hard to improve themselves?

I'm not sure what the ratio is, but I'm sure that child abuse rates, for example, are orders of magnitude higher than gun violence rates. Dittos for other crimes. That is, for every person killed by a gun, maybe 23 people are robbed, 37 people are beaten, 81 kids are sexually abused and so forth. If you stop the gun violence, you haven't changed any of those.

Ending gun violence will put a stop to finding bodies lying in pools of blood in the streets. I suppose that after that, we can all go back to watching Big Bang Theory with clean consciences. The people being beaten, robbed and assaulted can take care of themselves.

 * - Since this happens nearly every weekend, this post will be forever fresh. Yay.

Love Paramedics, Hate Guardrails

New blogging friend Trigger posted this bit on Conspicuous Forgiveness that's worth a read. It made me think of a sermon I heard recently letting us all know how important forgiveness was. The priest is a thorough lefty, so his sermons lean heavily to the forgiveness side and almost never touch on sin itself. Now that's all well and good and forgiveness is a big part of our faith, but it's only needed after you've screwed up.

In essence, forgiveness is the paramedics coming to patch you up after you've rolled your car and find yourself upside down in a ditch. Rules about sin are guardrails designed to keep you on the road and stop you from rolling your car in the first place.

Folks like that priest don't like it when we're judgmental of each other. They don't like to preach about rules and regulations or seem small minded. However, they also don't like to preach about the sins that led to little Taniqua Wilson being abused by her baby mama's live in boyfriend or the ones that led to Joe Smith's meth addiction. We hear a lot about forgiving Taniqua's mom and Joe, but some of us think it might be better to be asked to forgive just a little less often.



Still think you don't need guardrails?

Pink And Yellow

These are the flowers of some succulent out in our front yard. My wife and mom know what it is, but I don't. In any case, I was out there, fiddling around with my Nikon Artillery Piece and took this shot. I love it. I left it quite large, so I think it's worth a click.

Enjoy.

The Anti-Bullying Campaign Is Over

... and if your side is getting bullied, for the next two years it's going to be pretty awful.

For the first time in 1,600 years, Mass is not being said in Mosul: an ancient culture has been wiped out in a matter of weeks. It's a war crime that, strangely, no one seems to want to talk about. 

Mosul is the second-largest city in Iraq and the place where many Christians believe Jonah was buried. Since the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) rode into town, their faith has been forced underground. Bells have been silenced, the hijab enforced with bullets. Tens of thousands fled after being offered an unattractive choice: convert, pay a religious tax, or be put to the sword. 

There's no one out there with the will or the power to stop the bullying, whether it's from the Muslims, the Russians or the Chinese. If you're hoping America will step in anywhere, you're going to have to wait. Peggy Noonan penned an outstanding piece discussing President Obama's detachment from his job and how he's uninterested in any of these crises.

"The world seems to disappoint him," says the New Yorker's liberal and sympathetic editor, David Remnick.

What kind of illusions do you have to have about the world to be disappointed when it, and its players, act aggressively or foolishly? Presidents aren't supposed to have those illusions, and they're not supposed to check out psychologically when their illusions are shattered.

We've got at least two more years where Christians, among many others, will be murdered without a murmur of protest.

I don't know, he doesn't seem all that disappointed to me.

Beauty At The Living Coast

My folks took us to the Living Coast Discovery Center yesterday. A good time was had by all, but this had to be the highlight of the trip:

I have no idea who this boy was, but watching him with the tortoise was lovely.

It's Open Season On Christians

... because no nation will defend us. Burn down a mosque and tell Moslems to convert or die and you'll have several hundred crazies with guns and bombs slaughtering your citizens the very next day.

Breaking. #ISIS Islamists rebels just burnt the Assyrian Catholic Church in Mosel #Iraq. Completely lost. pic.twitter.com/U5GjRFYarN
— RealSy (@BBassem7) July 18, 2014

Q: What Invention Enabled Long-Range Ocean Voyages?

A: Sauerkraut.

I'm currently enjoying The Great Age of Discovery, Volume 2: Captain Cook and the Scientific Explorations after having made my way through the superb Treasure Island. The Great Age of Discovery is fascinating and it begins with one of the most interesting facts I've heard in a long time.

The book starts with a hideous, detailed description of scurvy, written by a mariner from the 18th Century. The author then goes on to describe various unsuccessful hypotheses and treatments developed by the British and the Continentals to deal with the problem. After a long period of study and experimentation, they discovered that the Scandinavians never contracted scurvy and that they always brought barrels of sauerkraut with them on their voyages.

Lieutenant Cook (later Captain Cook) made his first voyage to the Pacific with plenty of the stuff on board and lost no one to scurvy. Until that point, a ship's master could expect half of his crew to die from the malady on a voyage of that length and the remainder to be weakened or crippled.

So there you have it. Just as it did in the World Cup, pickled cabbage wins again.

Sauerkraut. Is there anything it can't do?

Addendum: Natural News calls sauerkraut the original probiotic superfood. Endorsed by rugged, manly seamen and hairy-legged, granola-munching, feminist crazies, you can't go wrong with a big bowl of sauerkraut!

Cheezburger of the Day

What I Saw While Drinking At An Irish Pub

On Saturday, I went to confession. After being shriven by the padre, I needed to sit with my German cookbook somewhere and pick out a recipe for the night's dinner, preparing as we were for Deutschland's World Cup game against Argentina.

Figuring I'd celebrate my newly scrubbed conscience with a pint, I wandered over to a local Irish pub and got a tall glass of Harp to quaff while I perused the recipes.

Howay the saved!

It was about 4:30 in the afternoon and while I sipped suds and flipped pages, a pair of young ladies came in and sat at the bar nearby. They had young children with them and it was clear they were regulars. They chatted happily with the barmaid about some adventure or another involving guys, booze and whatnot.

The ladies were sprinkled with tattoos, the kids were familiar with the bar and the topic of conversation was not one you'd associate with bankers, lawyers, captains of industry or their wives. Husbands weren't mentioned so it was a good bet the kids dads weren't in the picture. Be that as it may, they seemed like nice enough girls, if a bit wayward. Such girls have always existed and while we have more than our share these days, they're God's creatures just as much as, say, Cardinal Dolan of New York.

What did strike me was that thanks to our fiscal profligacy, much of it in the name of "compassion," each of them, ladies and children alike, owed $55,200+. The easy girls with children and no husbands from our past were never loaded up with that much debt. People make bad choices all the time, some worse than others. What gave the government the right to pile such a burden on all of them on top of the costs of their own mistakes?

I wished I'd had a congressman or Administration official in the bar with me. I'd have asked them, "What made you think you had the right to push all of that debt on top of them? Didn't you think they had enough problems without having to pay for you to look like a big shot?"

Caymanian Crab

The little fellow pictured below was smaller than your fist. He was also climbing up the wall of our house. I pivoted the image because it looked so odd the way it was naturally after I cropped it down to him.

I'm always surprised by crabs coming ashore. Here in San Diego, our crabs are rigorously aquatic. Crawling across lawns and up walls is simply unthinkable to them. Driving around Grand Cayman, we occasionally saw these fellows crossing the street and swerved to avoid them. The crab got a comment from someone in the car every time, too.

I left the image fairly large so it might be worth a click. The little arthropod has some interesting designs on the side of his head. Or is that body?

Where does the head stop and the body begin?

Looking For Comments On Some Self-Help Drivel

I threw this page together with a handful of suggestions for our kids. It's the three things I've found most helpful in my own meanderings - journaling, reading and stories of people who have overcome and accomplished more than could be expected. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Or if you don't want to click on the link, here's a repeat photo of our Maximum Leader keeping a watchful eye on the Catican Compound staff.

Willpower Is Overrated

... when you can just run away.

The best thing I read this weekend was advice to flee temptation. If you're trying to quit doing something and you find yourself in the perfect environment to do that thing, run away!



Exercising willpower takes a lot more energy than simply running away!

Inspirational Carpenter Story

I'm slogging through YouTube, building a list of inspirational videos for a friend who's going through some hard times right now. I came across this one and had to share it with you. It's pretty short and I think it's worth your while.

Enjoy!

This Is Why I Don't Trust Teachers

At a dinner party last night, I had a philosophy and theology discussion with one of our sons. The lad recently graduated from the University of San Diego, a nominally Catholic school*. Much of our conversation centered around how to understand a philosopher in his original context.

I argued that the great philosophers like Nietzsche, Aquinas and Locke could be understood independent of their time. Digestion of my favorite Christian authors, CS Lewis and GK Chesterton, might be improved with a small amount of context, but their work was perfectly comprehensible without it.

His response was that the teacher in his Pauline theology class had opened his eyes to the historical context of the writings of St. Paul and through that lens, the Letters of Paul seemed to have a very different meaning from what we give them today. In fact, there was some connection made between Hitler's persecution of the Jews and Pauline theology. He couldn't remember the precise connection, but he felt sure that Hitler had been heavily influenced by St. Paul's writings.

That, of course, is complete nonsense.

Hitler saw the Jews as a race, not a faith. That right there ends the discussion. To the Church, race and faith are orthogonal dimensions. In fact, that was one of the central tenets of St. Paul's writings - Christianity was universal and not Israel-centric. To the Nazis, everything was about race. As for the Final Solution in particular, the minutes of the Wannsee conference refer to Darwinistic thought directly, but never to anything even vaguely Christian.

Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.

The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as a the seed of a new Jewish revival (see the experience of history.)

Emphasis mine.

One of the things I learned when I went to college many, many years ago was that outside of the science and engineering departments, you couldn't trust a lick of what was being taught. Everything needed to be questioned and tested for bias. The bias was omnipresent and always in the same direction, too. Since then, the experiences of our children indicate the situation has only gotten worse.

St. Paul, Gauleiter of Magdeburg.

* - There aren't many "Catholic" schools left that have remained true to the Church. See also: 1887 Trust.

Religion Causes Wars

... in this case, it's a war between progressives and the religion is secular liberalism.

All blacks are "true" blacks only if they're baptized, confirmed and actively worshiping in the Church of Social Justice Fascism. Deviate from this as an individual and you are excommunicated from the race. Deviate from this as an organization and it's time for a religious war.

The Koch brothers donated $25M to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF). Apostasy! The Koch brothers are conservatives and libertarians! The AFSCME, orthodox and faithful to the Church, marshaled its forces, preached salvation to those who would fight under its banners and attacked.

In a letter made public Thursday, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said it will no longer partner with or raise funds for the fund, known for its iconic motto, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

AFSCME President Lee Saunders said the actions of the college fund’s president “are not only deeply hostile to the rights and dignity of public employees, but also a profound betrayal of the ideals of the civil rights movement.”

Roll that last sentence around on your tongue and savor it. The UNCF provides scholarships to blacks. The Koch brothers' money had the same value and would go to the same purpose as money from Nancy Pelosi. Young blacks going to college can spend a grant from the UNCF the same way no matter the original source of the cash. And yet, to the faithful, a young black going to college with this money is a betrayal of the ideals of the civil rights movement.

I've been steeped in Catholicism for decades and I've never experienced anything that esoteric and abstruse from the pulpit or the Catechism. Still, there's a certain theological charm to it and one can picture faith-crazed zealots nodding their heads and vowing vengeance on the heretics.

Taking money from the Koch brothers? If that's not a bugle call to the upright and virtuous, I don't know what is.

Here, the AFSCME does righteous battle with the UNCF. Note how the UNCF aren't really black.

Doom Or Growth?

The Fed has announced a schedule to stop, yes stop, their bond purchases. Is it the end of the world?

All along, my thinking has been that they couldn't stop buying bonds because there was no one else out there to sop up the roughly $600B of new bonds the government is issuing every year - about $50B per month. If there's no demand for short-term Treasuries which are practically zero percent investments, then interest rates are going to have to rise until it's worth buying the things.

I'm less pessimistic than I have been in the past, not because the fundamentals have changed, but because all of the predictions of doom I've read have yet to come true. That last is the classic profile of the late-to-the-party sucker who gets drawn into investing in a bubble right before it pops.

We'll see.

Not A World War, But World Turmoil

... or, perhaps, the 19th Century, revisited.

I've read a lot of blog posts and essays lately, upon the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI about how we might be heading into a global conflict now, too. That's silly.

China is squaring off with Vietnam and Japan, the Middle East has wars all over the place and Russia is flexing its muscles. That's not quite a world war. That's more like the conflicts that filled the 1800s. Small to medium-sized wars all over the world, ignited by local rivalries and ethnic tensions. Contrary to the childish views of Barack Obama and John Kerry, it's the way of the world when there's no global cop.

It's not stability, it's just normal.

A Caymanian Wasp For Tim

Even on vacation, we think of our blogging friends.

No trip is complete without an insect photo to share!

Cheezburger of the Day

Why San Diego Has Brush Fires

Our hillsides look like this. Crispy, dry bracken that you could use for kindling. Some hills are dotted with dry trees that act like bombs during a fire.

Channeling Old AC/DC

... is this track by the Newsboys. It sounds like AC/DC from the Bon Scott era.


Here's a studio version with Peter Furler singing lead instead of Michael Tait. That studio version really sounds like AC/DC. Here are the lyrics. I'm a big AC/DC fan and when I heard this on the "In the Hands of God" CD I got for Father's Day, the similarity jumped out at me immediately.

Enjoy!

Iraq Vs. Mexico

One more thing on the latest wave of illegal aliens. In Iraq, President Obama tells us that the Iraqis have to solve their own problems and there's no reason for us to get involved until they do. When it comes to the Mexicans and Central Americans, we need to be involved deeply and provide them a refuge from their wretched lives. Iraq has oil. Mexicans are voters, once they're granted citizenship.

No blood for oil. Blood for votes.

Update: Meanwhile, real, live Americans are going without water in Detroit because they can't pay their bills. Since they already vote for the Social Justice fascists Democrats, there's no reason to get all worked up about them. We need to concentrate on getting new voters.

Votes On The Hoof

... is the way Political-Americans seem to see Mexicans crossing our border. Which party is going to appeal to the Hispanics the most? Who is going to win the votes and give illegals the most goodies?

Above all, we need to be reminded on a daily basis how gosh-darned compassionate the progressives are as they hand out benefits, refuse to enforce immigration laws and fight protecting the border.

Maria Gonzalez*, formerly of La Trinitaria, MX and now resident of some warehouse in Brownsville, TX, was Maria Gonzalez before she crossed the border. Knowing the border wasn't enforced and the benefits were there, she ditched the lousy life in La Trinitaria and headed north.

A four star restaurant in La Trinitaria.

When she was robbed in Puebla, she was Maria Gonzalez. When she was assaulted in San Luis Potosi, she was Maria Gonzalez. When she nearly died of thirst in the back of a van in Tamaulipas, she was Maria Gonzalez.

It wasn't until she crossed into Texas that we cared about Maria. At that point, she became a trophy to our compassion. Speeches were made about Maria. Debates raged over Maria. Pundits pontificated about Maria. Of course, had Maria failed to reach the US because she died, ran out of cash or was enslaved on the way as were so many of her co-travelers, the Very Important People in America wouldn't have said a word about her.

It all started when she made the very reasonable cost-benefits decision in La Trinitaria, taking into account the lack of border enforcement and American government benefits. Until she crossed the border, she wasn't a potential vote.

* - If you're wondering, this name is just a proxy for any of the immigrants.

Trekking Across Mexico

... can't be very healthy for kids.

All of the conversations I've heard and read about the illegal women and children coming across our border focus on how to treat them humanely now that they're here. Everyone wants to wave their Compassion Flag as high as they can.

How was it compassionate to tempt them to come here in the first place? What horrible things happened on the way to the US?

Maybe the most compassionate thing we could have done would have been to control our border.

Your Daily Dose Of Soccer Fun

No matches today, but the Beautiful Game can still bring a smile to our face, thanks to McDonald's.

A Big Diamond In A Thick, Christian Rough

With the end of my daughter's school year, I'm looking at a big change in my life. I'm going to have a lot more free time, enough to take up a new hobby, develop new skills, find a new purpose or something similar. I've been reading several books on the topic of "How Do I Figure Out What I Want To Be When I Grow Up?" While some are good and some are merely adequate, even the marginal ones can have nuggets of wisdom.

I'm not usually one for religious self-help books. I find that merging the two subjects usually makes for an inferior treatment of each. While I'm trying to be a thoroughly Catholic nut case, I prefer my Catholicism to be foundational, informing all of my decisions*, but to leave the mechanics of my decisions to other approaches. Sifting through our library looking for material on this topic, I came across Max Lucado's Cure for the Common Life.


Max is a Christian writer and this is a very Christian book. His points are illustrated through the use of stories and excerpts from the Bible. That's all very well and good for Max, but for me, I felt the book wasted a lot of space on Biblical teaching that added very little to finding your calling. For me, a Rosary and Adoration Chapel would accomplish more than all the Bible quotes Max could find.

In spite of this, Max had two diamonds in his rough that changed the way I see my life. The first was to look back on your life to find episodes that had brought pleasure and fulfillment. In a perusal of my checkered past, I quickly saw that I was most energized when I was leading some kind of crusade, whether that was at work, with the family or in my hobbies. When I was trying to do something that was particularly difficult and perhaps never done before, I found practically limitless reservoirs of enthusiasm and determination.

Ironically, the second insight came from one of Max's Bible stories. He used the Parable of the Talents to say that God doesn't want you to think small.

While the rest of the book was skimmable at best, the first of those two nuggets was life-changing and the second reinforced it. When I try to sell people on reading self-help books, I frequently get push back - "Well, that may work for you, but it doesn't work for me. I find too much wrong in the author's work." That attitude is self-defeating and can cause you to miss marvelous nuggets of wisdom. No book has universal, total applicability, but most of them have something unique you can pluck out and use to improve your life.

Thanks, Max.

* - Informing isn't the same as doing. See also: sin.

Social Justice Fascism And Default Go Together Like Peanut Butter And Jelly

Our favorite fascists are at it again! In another series of crazy hijinks, those madcap Argentinians are about to default* on their loans, because ... they spent all their money on magic beans!

Argentina is on track to miss an interest payment on Monday, setting in motion a 30-day grace period for the country to make the payment and avoid its second default in 13 years. U.S. legal rulings bar Argentina from making payments to creditors that have accepted the country's debt restructurings since it defaulted in 2001, unless it also pays a group of hedge funds that have refused to sign off...

(I)nvestors say they are confident there will be a resolution because Argentina simply can't afford to default again. Another default could be disastrous for an economy that many analysts say entered recession this year because of raging inflation and shortages of U.S. dollars. The Argentine central bank's currency reserves, which the government uses partly to pay its debts, are at a 7½-year low of $29 billion.

Well, it wasn't exactly magic beans, it was actually Social Justice. In true Peronist, fascist fashion, they've sprayed money out of every conceivable government orifice, doing all of the things people like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich prescribe and the result has been the same as it always is. Default.

I love the bit above about default being disastrous for the economy. I didn't know impending disasters helped one come up with cash. I thought it was saving and investing that did the trick. Oh well, you learn something new every day.

Forward!

* - The WSJ is cryptic about whether this would be a selective default, a partial default, a semi-default or one of those "You stepped over the line while serving the ball" defaults. Like it matters. In reality, here's what kind of default it is: They. Spent. All. Of. The. Money.

Politics Is The Inverse Of Science

... it's the art of finding the right data points to support a hypothesis instead of developing a hypothesis to explain all data points.

The Solution Is Obvious: Buy Another Reading Chair

Our Maximum Leader has decided that the reading chair in our master bedroom is hers. Who are we to argue? We are but poor servants to her Serene Furriness.

White Cats Can't Jump

... but tabbies can. Dig this.

Regression Towards The Mean

As a pronounced fuddy-duddy, I wish things were the way they used to be. Not ever having experienced the way things used to be in the distant past, it's an admittedly ignorant opinion, but there it is.

Traditional things, whether they be marriage, saving and investing or military strength, were not crazy ideas dreamed up by some power-mad, racist patriarchy struggling to maintain power. The people of the past were no more able to organize and manage conspiracies than we are. Such traditional things were the creatures of society interacting with the reality of Man and nature.

For a time, one can deviate from these things. You can sneer at marriage, borrow and spend and emasculate your military and coast along on the momentum of previous generations, but in the end, society will regress back towards the mean.

Regression to the mean (RTM) is a statistical phenomenon that can make natural variation in repeated data look like real change. It happens when unusually large or small measurements tend to be followed by measurements that are closer to the mean.

In the cases given above, the small samples would refer to American society of the last few years versus American society since, say, 1776.

One can see RTM occurring right now in the collapse of Iraq and the ever-greater use of violence and force in the Middle East. Pax Americana, a more-or-less stable and peaceful world, was maintained by the overarching threat of American military might. As it has now become clear that American military might is no longer worthy of consideration, the world is regressing towards the mean - nations and organizations using force and violence to exert power over each other without regard to such phantasms as "world opinion."

Pax Americana allowed people to convince themselves that a new world had come about, one based on peace, love and understanding. The Age of Aquarius had arrived and all that 19th Century militarist jazz was in the past. Now, all across the world, in China vs. Vietnam, Russia vs. Ukraine, ISIS vs. Iraq and Israel vs. Everyone, it's falling apart.

Traditional things are never gone for too long.

The Leashes Are Really Off Now

Dig this.

Syrian government aircraft bombed Sunni militant targets inside Iraq on Tuesday, further broadening the Middle Eastern crisis a day after Israeli warplanes and rockets struck targets inside Syria.

Meanwhile, following the Kurds' practical declaration of independence, our Secretary of State had this to say.

“A united Iraq is a stronger Iraq, and our policy is to respect the territorial integrity of Iraq as a whole,” Kerry told NBC.

A good follow-up question would be, "Who cares what the US policy is?"

See also.

What I Learned On My Summer Vacation, Jet Ski Edition

1. Jet skis are fun.
2. They go fast.
3. More faster is more funner.
4. GoPro cameras can capture some of the fun.
5. GoPro cameras are limited by the quality of the lens and where and how you mount the camera.
6. Given that the GoPro isn't bought for it's great optical characteristics, using a GoPro is all about finding a comfortable and stable mount for it.
7. Jet skis are fun.
8. Enjoy.

We fly back home today. This has been a wonderful family vacation. We broke the bank on this one because it's the last one before one of the lads moves out for good after his college graduation a few weeks ago.

I hope you and yours have a great summer this year, too.

We're Hoisting Gay Pride Flags Over Our Embassies. They're Sprinting For The Weapons Locker

Three recent events to consider.

• Israel bombed Syrian positions. An Israeli civilian teenager was killed by assailants from Syria while driving in a car in the Golan Heights. Two other occupants of the car were injured. One dead, two injured Israelis earned Syria a major air strike where 9 targets were wiped off the face of the Earth with unknown Syrian casualties. The Israelis came out and explicitly said they didn't care who killed the teen, the Syrian government was responsible for attacks emanating from their nation. Israeli retribution was swift and overwhelming. I've no idea what the American ambassador's response was to the event or even if he's managed to get his thumb out of his mouth yet.

• A running theme in the news coverage of ISIS is how fast they've progressed across Iraq. Reading this wonderful bit by Mark Steyn, it occurred to me that if ISIS had decided to conquer Iraq and moved as fast as they could to gather, train, equip, plan and supply an army of 12,000 starting when America arrested the film maker in response to the jihadist attack on the Benghazi Embassy, it would probably have taken about this long to get the thing going. The question, "How are they moving so fast?" is the wrong one to ask. A far better one is the logistics one, "Working backwards, when did they set their supply train in motion and what caused them to get going?"

• In Tel Aviv, the Gay Pride flag was hoisted over the American Embassy.

Taking off my American blinders for a minute and looking at the world from the point of view of a warlord or national leader surrounded by enemies, it's obvious that there's no sheriff in town any more. None at all. In Benghazi, American territory was burned and Americans were killed. The response was so self-emasculating that I wonder if the warlords dove for their phones as soon as they read the Obama line of excuses and that an American film maker had been arrested. Those phone calls would have gone to their generals and weapons merchants. They must have been pressing the speed dial buttons so hard that they nearly broke their fingers.

If Benghazi hadn't been enough to convince them the leashes were off, then the red line in Syria did. By that time, anyone who was still scratching their heads, wondering if the Great Satan was still willing to wield a big stick were probably kicking themselves and dialing twice as fast, knowing the quicker ones had stolen a march on them.

If I were an arms dealer, I'd be increasing my sales staff and telling my suppliers to ramp up production. The global superpower has decided to focus on whether or not two men who sodomize each other can call themselves "husband and wife" while everyone else is arming, training, mobilizing, attacking and bombing.

They might also be thinking that they've got two and a half more years to redraw maps to their liking and grow too powerful to be pushed around easily. That's another reason to be sprinting. Anyone not running for the weapons locker now has got to be thinking they've waited almost too long.

Bonus Question: What if Obama suddenly came out of his choom haze, dropped the bong and found his inner Otto von Bismarck? How long would it take to bring a combat force of, say, 35,000 men into Iraq, complete with supplies, equipment and air power? The problem with sitting around arguing gender theory with each other while the rest of the world is showing young men how to sight an RPG is that the date at which we can affect events on the ground keeps slipping farther and farther into the future, giving our enemies time to grow ever more powerful.

Caribbean Reef Shark

A pair of these sleek beauties came by our dive group yesterday. They cruised around us several times. Maybe they thought there would be some spearfishing or maybe they were just curious. They're languid, graceful creatures. I thought their motions were kind of feline. Perhaps cat motions are kind of sharklike.

Two things to note in the video, which is in HD and worth the full screen effect. First, there's an instant where the shark looks like it has some kind of brief spasm. A mackerel had shot up, fast as a bullet, and eaten one of the tiny fish gathered around the shark's nose. The shark reflexively tried to bite the mackerel, but the mackerel was way too fast.

The other thing to note is the aforementioned cloud of tiny fish around the shark's nose. These guys are ride-alongs, waiting for the shark's messy meal so they can snap up the table scraps. The shark seems to ignore them as they're too small and too quick to be worth trying to eat. This shark had a larger, black fish following around his dorsal fin in addition to the cloud of tinies at his nose.

Enjoy.

Canyon Dive

Yesterday, we felt a lot more at home in the water and I spent a little more time with the GoPro. I discovered a few things about it.

1. You want to be pretty close to whatever it is you're trying to film.
2. It would work best if the camera was on a tripod. In the air, you can hold it steady. In the water, even calm water, you're bobbing around too much to keep it from bouncing. It does OK with long, slow swimming, but if you want to capture a scene, you need a steady, solid mount.
3. Forget photos. Underwater, there's so little light that the shutter speed is set too slow to get anything other than blurs.

The canyon below was how we got to the wall for our deep dive yesterday, about 100' down. It was great fun and we even saw a few sharks, one of whom I filmed and might post later. In any case, enjoy.

The IRS Is Laughing At You

Instapundit posted this as "Paul Ryan goes off on the IRS" or something like that, but the most amazing thing about the video is how the IRS guy is laughing at the congressman. He clearly thinks the whole thing is a waste of time and Congress can't touch them.

Check out his sneering responses around 0:55.

A Quiver Of Stingrays

... in a feeding frenzy of fun a Stingray City in Grand Cayman. They're soft and smooth and they love to come up to see if you have any delicious squid treats for them. This is an HD video, so if might be worth putting it full screen.

Back To School

... go the fish!

I'm tired from this morning's dives and I've got a night dive tonight, so I didn't identify these guys. Oh well. I still think the image is worth a click to see the larger version. Enjoy.

Greetings From Grand Cayman, Proper

Many decades ago, when I was just a boy, I had dreams. Chief among them, I wanted to scuba dive among coral reefs and I wanted to see the Monkees in concert, specifically to see Mike play Papa Gene's Blues. Later, I added seeing a New Orleans Saints game at the Superdome, visiting the Vatican and going to Ireland to the list. These weren't worthy goals, they were just tidbits of pleasure on my bucket list*.

Thanks to my wonderful wife, after this week, only a trip to Ireland will still be on the list.

We haven't gone diving yet (videos to follow when we do), but we've checked in to one of the best vacation rental houses we've ever had.

The house next to us has a boat, but we don't. We've got a pair of kayaks which is plenty of awesomeness for us.

The house is right on the beach. This is the view from the second story balcony.

The water outside our back door is a lagoon. Surf breaks on the reef a ways out. We can walk out and snorkel right here.

This trip is going to be epic. Having said that, trips or no trips, Mike's words ring true. "I have no more than I did before, but now I've got all that I need, for I love you and I know you love me." Thanks, honey.

Important Aside: So what's the "proper" part in the title? Grand Cayman is part of Her Majesty's domains, the UK, and it seems to take that quite seriously. We landed in Grand Cayman yesterday afternoon and in the airport is a sign, right behind the Customs agent's desk. It tells you that among crimes for which you can be arrested and imprisoned are foul language and insulting a woman's modesty. I thought of the screaming such laws would cause in the US and then wondered why. Despite my chosen affectation of having a foul mouth, I could live my whole life without swearing and insulting women and have a good time of it at that. Frankly, I'd be a much better person if I did obey that law.

* - I've never been a fan of making a big deal of your bucket list. To me, it just seems like a lot of shallow nonsense. Once you've cliff dived into the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, then what? Do you get up from the emergency room operating table where the doctors have miraculously pieced you back together, grab a pen and scratch it off the list? It seems so anti-climactic. Instead, I'd suggest that your bucket list is empty calories, a dessert menu to sample after you've finished your delicious main course of serving God and serving others.

Climate Change Caused The Current Iraq Crisis

As we all know, the descent of Iraq into Islamofascist chaos is not the fault of President Obama. If his predecessors had not been so stupid, none of this would be happening and the Iraqis would be living lives of personal fulfillment, taking classes in critical race and gender theory at their local community colleges and building renewable energy systems out of recycled, organic materials. It is a well-known fact that President Obama is the first occupant of the White House not to inherit a perfectly stable world that required no American effort to keep peace and prosperity flowing in the form of water and fertilizer to golf course fairways and greens.

Since we cannot affix the blame with President Obama, who or what can we blame? Global Warming Climate Change, of course! It all started in the Uruk Period, around 3500 BC. "(C)ommentators have associated the end of the Uruk period with the climate changes." Because subsequent American administrations failed to deal with climate change and show sufficient sensitivity towards diversity, things went progressively downhill until we got to where we are today, a kinetic disturbance in reaction to an Internet video American imperialism.

It was all there, written out plainly, but Chimpy McBushitler and his gang of oil-looting murderers were too busy looting oil and murdering to notice. 

Have You Ever Noticed How Obama Always Wins?

That crafty Bismark of the Beltway, President Barack Hussein Obama, is about to do it again. He's about to win in Iraq.

He won in Libya by teaming with the rebels.

He won in Egypt by teaming with the Facebooky crowd and then with the Islamofascist thugs and then with the Egyptian Army.

He won in Syria by teaming with the Russians.

He's now about to win in Iraq by teaming with the Iranians.

With worries continuing to mount over the Baghdad government's ability to counter the threat posed by ISIS, a U.S. official said the U.S. and Iran may hold talks as early as Monday on the spiraling violence there.

All that macho, "American" cowboyishness is for losers. Flexibility, open-mindedness and cooperation is what gets you ahead.

It's all about playing on the winning team. Forward!

One For My Dad

I meant to post this yesterday for Father's Day, but life got away from me and I didn't get to it.

This blog is one of the many things my father has given to me. I didn't realize it until I went with him to his West Point class reunion a few weeks ago. He was sitting with some of his classmates and they were chatting away about what they were doing these days when I realized that he was still working hard to improve and many of them were simply finding ways to amuse themselves.

When my dad retired from the military, he took up painting. Over time, he has become an accomplished artist to the point where some people only know him for his art and not for his substantial accomplishments serving our country. My mom continually strives to improve herself as well and has similar achievements. Growing up with such parents, continual improvement and work becomes second nature. It's inconceivable to me that you would do anything else.

This blog has been an educational tool, used more for learning than for picking up hits and readers. To feed it, I've read and pondered history, theology, economics, sociology, photography, videography and writing. The work I've done to cultivate The Scratching Post has been natural, flowing from who I learned to be growing up with my mom and dad.

Thanks, Dad.

Why The Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong About The Iraq And Afghan Wars

... it's because no one seems to understand Military Science at all.

Iran is our biggest global threat. Unlike Russia or China who are content to be regional hegemons and are sane enough to eschew the use of nuclear weapons, the Iranians have continually told us, quite explicitly, that they intend to not only obtain nuclear weapons, but make use of them.

In the absence of Air Force bases within range of Iranian targets, strike missions into Iran would have to be carried out by carrier-based aircraft. The only strike aircraft of any note is the FA-18. The FA-18 has a combat radius of 390 miles.

The Iranian Navy and coastal defense system has been designed to defend the Persian Gulf with the goal of sinking American aircraft carriers. Contrary to the opinions of the racists who write for the major newspapers, the Silly, Little, Brown People With Funny Names Who Live Far Away are actually quite sophisticated and good at their jobs. Only an idiot wouldn't expect them to carry out their missions successfully. Unless you had no problem with losing several aircraft carriers, you'd have to launch carrier strike missions from the Indian Ocean.

Now take a look at the map of Iran. (You'll have to click on it and open it in a separate browser window because I'm too lazy to resize my central column to fit a reasonably detailed map.) Notice how the high value targets are the ones farthest away from the Indian Ocean.


Using my fingers on the computer screen because I'm likewise too lazy to install Google Earth on my recently reformatted laptop, it looks to me like the farthest north you'd be able to hit from a reasonably safe Indian Ocean launch point would be Kerman and even that's quite a stretch.

"But we have all those flying, refuely things!" the gay marriage experts who write for the newspapers will wail. Right. And they launch from ... where? And they connect with your FA-18s ... where? We no longer have bases in Saudi Arabia, Iraq or Afghanistan (very soon). Turkey is Islamist and recalcitrant. Pakistan isn't going to stick its neck out for some pusillanimous waffler who draws red lines one day and wanders off to the golf course without doing anything when the lines are crossed the next.

In any case, have you ever seen a KC-135? They're ponderous monsters. You'd have to refuel in Iranian airspace. Good luck with that. Iran has been building air defense systems for quite some time and they can do the same range calculations you can. The Silly, Little, Brown People With Funny Names can be pretty clever once they finish with their rustic, native dances.

Not to worry, the Silly, Little, Brown People With Funny Names will only be able to furiously wave their pointed sticks at our Mighty Jets as they fly overhead. At subsonic speeds. In straight lines. For long distances. Our, big, fat, slow, unmaneuverable, Mighty Jets.

So now look at the map again and imagine trying to solve the problem from the Iranian point of view with lots of American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Air Force bases, too. And bases in Pakistan because the Pakistanis know we're a serious nation since we were willing to stick it out for the long haul in both those countries. Until we left Iraq and Afghanistan, the Iranians were totally screwed.

By pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan, we've completely neutered ourselves with respect to Iran. They are now free to do whatever they want, whether that's turning New York City into a sea of fire or slipping a few nukes to Islamist crazies with only the most nebulous ties back to Tehran so the Islamist crazies can turn New York City into a sea of fire.

Note to any MSM folks who might read this: I apologize for not covering an important topic like gay marriage, racism or social justice in this post. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm sure if you go to your browser's favorites, you can quickly click back to the Huffington Post and calm yourself by reading about how Tea Party Christians are crazy, racist homophobes.

Nature Abhors A Vacuum

... which is the missing concept in the progressive foreign policy world view.

The concept that undergirds Obama foreign policy, as best as I can understand it, is that if we just leave people alone, things will be fine. The worst thing America can do is take a leadership role anywhere in the world outside of our own country. If circumstances force intervention in East Blargistan, for example, the only way we can intervene is with a bunch of other countries, preferably with someone else in the lead role.

This assumes that the countries wanting to intervene have the same ends in mind as we do. In Iraq right now, the country most wanting to intervene is Iran and it's doubtful that even the Light Worker will be able to find much common ground with them.

Backing up one step from our Prime Directive of Intervention: Don't Lead, it's apparent that there are some places in the world where leaving people alone will result in bad things. The power vacuum left by America when we pulled the last troops out of Iraq was not, as the progressives imply, going to continue indefinitely. Lambs were not going to frolic on springtime meadows while rustic herdsmen played their flutes and rustic women pursued advanced degrees and positions of national leadership while instituting strict laws against smooching without written consent in triplicate, filed with the Bureau of Fornication.

Instead, Islamofascist forces quite predictably (they had predicted it themselves in simple, easy-to-understand manuscripts, videos and, one presumes, sidewalk puppet shows) saw the power vacuum as their opportunity to seize power. Once in control, they've done exactly what they told us they would do which was to institute hardline Sharia Law.

This caught the Obama Administration by surprise because, as I said before, they feel that power vacuums can continue indefinitely and they hold a frankly racist view of the Little Brown People Far Away Who Say Funny Things Sometimes. When the Little Brown People tell us they hate us with every fiber of their being and hope to kill us all, the progressives want to smile and pat them on their heads and give them juice boxes because, as any Ivy League graduate knows, they just long for their simple, rustic lives where they live in harmony with the Earth.

Fortunately, the Islamofascists have said nothing at all about developing nuclear weapons and turning both Israel and the United States into seas of fire, so we don't have to worry all that much about power vacuums anywhere else.

Is Iraq Japan's Black Swan?

Foundational concepts:

• A "Black Swan" is an unforseen event that cause significant disruptions in an economy
• Iraq is falling apart as al-Qaeda militants are taking over key cities and moving towards the capital, Baghdad
• Iraq produces a lot of oil
• So do Libya, Venezuela and Nigeria - all of whom are in dire straits
• So does Iran whose oil-producing infrastructure is rickety
• Japan is living on the knife's edge with a debt surpassing 200% GDP
• Japan imports all of its oil

If the price of oil jumps because Iraqi production facilities are disrupted, Japan is going to be hurt worse than most nations. Japan already has a negative balance of payments and this would exacerbate that. Enough to cause a loss of faith in their ability to cover their debt payments? Maybe.

It's certainly not happening yet.

A shift by investors into haven assets boosted the yen Wednesday after the World Bank cut its forecast for global economic growth.

The War On Women Myth Obliterated In One Chart

Traditional relationships with marriage first and babies second are unquestionably superior. It's almost like the Catholic Church was tipped off 2000 years ago or something.
Source.

Behold! Pegasus, Servant Of Greek Heroes!

What would you think of someone who kept insisting this was Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology?

My Life In Just A Few Days

... will be like this.

Cheezburger of the Day

Finals Are Next Week

... and we're into the last, frantic rush of studying here in the Catican Compound. I'm feeling pretty good about my daughter's chances. If she can survive her Junior year and pass her classes she's pretty much home free. Her Senior year will only have two substantive courses. We can't wait for high school to be over. School has been 11 years of torture. The real world will be much, much easier than this.

As far as her Amerikkkan History class goes, it dawned on me yesterday that it wasn't history so much as critical race theory mixed with political cheer leading. That explained why the book slaughtered every narrative arc and why it's been so difficult to study. There's no plot to the thing at all. Each event is merely a chance to discuss racism and government expansion. Each plot point drowns in a sea of propaganda.

My Daughter's High School English Class Remembers D-Day

... by reading about discrimination and African-Americans.

Her American history book's chapter on WW II has a good 5-6 full pages on discrimination and African-Americans in the war. D-Day through to the Normandy breakout gets three very brief paragraphs.

The whole book is one ginormous ad for the Democratic Party. The Crash of 1937 and the FDR Recession aren't even mentioned in the chapter on How Totally Awesome FDR And The New Deal Were.

Update: On a hunch, I went back through the textbook. There is no mention of the strategic bombing of Germany for obvious reasons. None.

Can you spot the reason why groups like 8th Air Force weren't mentioned in the book?

It's Not That Hispanics Are Different

... it's that the technology allows them to maintain connections in ways that other immigrant groups could not.

Yesterday, I had the good fortune to have breakfast with a professor of theology from Notre Dame. He spoke at great length about the Latino Church in America and how it was different from everything else. For the life of me, I can't figure out just what makes it so different aside from the language, but I do recognize that they think it's different and perhaps that's the difference right there.

In the conversation, he discussed how Latinos maintain strong bonds with their countries of origin. They send money back, they keep in touch by phone and email and even continue to participate in local gossip. That's when it hit me - it's not the culture, it's the technology.

If you've ever been to an Irish pub on a weekend night, a pub that's really hopping, you'll find all kinds of Irish-Americans and wannabe Irish-Americans trying to immerse themselves in a bit of the old sod. You can't convince me that some Hernandez from Oaxaca loves his old home more than an O'Brien from Limerick loved his in 1845 when he came to America to escape the famine. Given the patriotism of the Irish at that time, fed by British repression, I'd argue that the O'Briens might have had even more love for the Emerald Isle.

The difference is communications. When you came to America in 1845, it was like Cortes burning his ships when he landed in the Americas in 1519. Once you got here, there was no way to get back and no way to even communicate with the old country short of spending a lot of money to send a letter. Gossiping with old friends still in Ireland? What a laugh. Wasn't going to happen.

Lads, it's time we gave up soccer for baseball.

Maybe the reason that Mexican-Americans boo the Stars and Stripes when Mexico plays the US in soccer here in the States is the cell phone and the Internet. Maybe the Irish would have done it, too, had they been able to Skype their mates in Ireland every day.

On the whole, I think the Irish got the better end of the deal. In the past few months, I've fired two Mexican gardeners who couldn't speak English despite having lived here for years. They kept their culture, but lost out on earning my money. Try feeding your family with Hispanic pride, hombres, and see how far it gets you. Meanwhile, the Irish are doing alright.

"So You Won't Give People Jobs, Eh?"

The European Central Bank has crossed into uncharted territory, setting it's overnight deposit rate at -0.1%. That means if you are a bank and you store some cash with the ECB overnight, when you wake up in the morning, you'll have less than you originally deposited.

Yes, you heard right, banks will be punished for storing money with the ECB. At the press conference announcing this additional move of government intervention in the market, some interesting things were said.

But of course. It had to happen. Eventually a journalist had to ask about the fate of German savers. And lo, it has come to pass. Mr. Draghi’s response: the rates have been changed for banks, not for people. This is aimed at restoring jobs and promoting recovery.

Of course. It's all about promoting recovery. No mention is made of the hopelessly anti-business regulations that have crushed the recovery and led to this punishment. Except in the WSJ live blogging, of course.

What is the tipping point for European banks? At what moment does their cost of funds get so low that they can’t afford NOT to lend to homebuyers in Spain and small businessmen in France? This is the question the ECB is exploring.

As eye-catching as negative rates and a new LTRO are they are still only incremental moves in search of that elusive tipping point. Unless they are willing to pull out a giant bazooka of deeply negative rates and outright bond purchases – would they ever? – the risk is that they never find that point.

Broken record warning: The real problem there is that Europe’s political and structural reform process has stalled. The micro ingredients for growth are not there. You can make the cost of funds insanely cheap in nominal terms but if root demand is being squeezed by other forces, it will still be too expensive.

So, to recap, the French government, to take one example, has made creating jobs and running  business incredibly difficult. It's far better just to stash your cash than to risk it creating something. Now the ECB is punishing you for stashing you cash.

In effect, the ECB is driving banks and businesses out into the open where they can be harvested by the national governments in the name of Social Justice.

Tally ho! Let the hunt begin!

The World's Most Boring Cats

It might be because I'm punch-drunk from lack of sleep and I'm finding everything funny right now, but I thought the video below was hilarious. As soon as our animals let me get a decent night's sleep I might find it boring and tedious. In the meantime, enjoy.

Buying Education On The Installment Plan

As my daughter's school year is drawing mercifully to a close, I'm helping her review her Amerikkkan History in preparation for her final exam. In the chapter on the Depression, they blame it partially on easy consumer credit, where consumers were bamboozled by greedy businesses.

No mention is made in later chapters of modern government programs being funded in the same way. Well, it's the same way except for the fact that under the installment plan created by bloodsucking corporations, the debt was actually paid off over time instead of growing, growing, growing.

And This, Dear Readers, Is How It's Done

Contrary to popular belief, we Catholics don't spend all of our time worrying about what homosexuals are doing. In many decades of going to Mass, sometimes daily, I can't recall more than 5 times that the topic was even raised and then only obliquely within the context of a larger moral issue. While the broader culture obsesses on it, we don't.

Someone called the parish and asked, "do you allow Sodomites in your Church?" I responded, "if they have a valid Passport." Weird.
— Father Dan Beeman (@inthelineofmel) June 1, 2014

Cheezburger of the Day

... features our very own Maximum Leader. She's gotten it into her furry, little head to snooze out in the Catican again. One of her favorite spots is inside my project car*. Her sleeping spots change throughout the Catican Compound from time to time and it's best to let her have her way.

After all, she is our Maximum Leader.

* - Yes, I know my project car, a '73 MGB, has been under construction for a long time. Unfortunately, my daughter's high school studying has taken precedence.