Rise of the Majority

An outdoor party, sun-dappled afternoon...

... a tuxedoed string quartet, chamber music wafting on the breeze.  Wine-sipped serenity, islands of polite conversation dot the expansive back garden of the five hundred year old estate.

Serenity, even as the collective western consciousness pauses every so often, a mental fidget, worrying over the inevitable march of the majority, trickling in, but soon to burst forth.

"But how can we begrudge those flocking to our doorstep?

"What human being, lost in the darkness, lonely and cold, would not be attracted to the farmhouse with glowing windows?"


"Exactly!" Cries a nervous man, crowding in at her elbow. "It's a disequilibrium.  A minority cannot monopolize the promised land forever, excess abundance thrown on trash heaps, milk and honey spilling on the ground, wasted, washed down drains." He quits as abruptly as he started, retracts himself from the conversation, self-conscious at his spontaneous outburst.  

The woman across from him, a cracked and faded portrait of youthful beauty, protests.  "No, no, we brought them Western Civilization, billions in aid..."

A bearded man, white trousers and blue blazer, regards the woman with sympathy.  He clears his throat and the chatting stops.

"The glory, the heady rush as your boots first stir the dust of an exotic foreign land, people peeking out at you from windows and doorways, everywhere eyes. Breathe in the air, shared by a hundred generations, and set to the task of pouring new wine into old wineskins."

An inhale, the conversation sits perched, then the man continues.  "The conquest, followed by foretold disasters, the shoulders shrug, a nation politely averts its eyes and celebrates a triumphant return anyway... Banners, parades, embossed medalions of base medal dangling from bits of colored ribbon ...  All for saving or destroying some far-away collection of people huddled in huts of mud and squatting around dung fires."

The old man casts his gaze past the white-tipped mountains, green and granite, over the fields and forests, past the roaring seas.  The far horizons he once patrolled lay splayed and sprawling before his mind's eye. "Then, they follow you home."

All Roads Lead to Germany...

... And England, Australia and the United States...

The World's Congested Migration Routes

Osmosis, inevitable,

Gravity most grave

Constantinople falls,

Nothing to save

National Geographic - The Worlds Congested Migration Routes

Ariel and Caliban: A Trans-Atlantic Anti-Love Story

Europe has come a long way since the middle ages...

Since medieval times, Northern Europeans have gradually grown less cruel, less violent, and more self-restrained. As society became more complex, it rewarded people who were more diligent, prudent and mild-mannered, and punished people with poor impulse control. ([Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker's] book on this subject, The Better Angels of Our Nature is essential reading.)

He reminds us that only a few hundred years ago, people tortured animals for fun, disemboweled criminals in the public square, and displayed the heads of their enemies on spikes. Murder rates were 10 to 50 times higher than they are today." (Margaret Wente - Globe & Mail)

That goes for Canada and the US as well.  We enjoy lower crime rates, more enlightened behavior, and everything else that goes along with a happy society.

Pinnacle:  Nowhere to go but Down

The United States should get a lot of credit for this.  We encouraged European liberalism and pacifism after WWII, and we succeeded.  Too well.  The liberal Europeans lounged under our security umbrella while cursing our ultra-conservative bellicosity.  But we kept the peace, dammit, and it allowed Europe to blossom and flourish in all its idealistic, altruistic glory.

Europeans grew urbane and soft on their beautiful old continent, and life was a dream.  Their governments contributed to global charities, Europe's good people warmly dilated on international solidarity and brotherhood as they interred Thomas Hobbes along with Jesus Christ. It was the end of history, no need for anachronistic militaries, restraining dogmas...

But now, Europe rubs the reverie from her eyes and awakens to the peal of the bell. Is it a tocsin, or a knell?

"If we want to keep the freedom of movement in the European Union, we have to protect the outer borders.'' Peter Szijjártó, Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade

If you're going to be soft on the inside, you better be hard on the outside, or they'll eat you alive.

Thank God For Capitalism

Photo: Korea.net Korean Culture and Information Service (Jeon Han)

How else could we possibly pay for this?

John Paul's visit to NYC in 1995 cost the city $4,401,714,  Benedict's visit cost NYC $6,584,637, the federal government's budget for "national special security events" is a mere $4,500,000.

Who's footing the bill?  Well as they said on Yahoo "The simple answer is everybody but the Vatican". 

To give you an idea of the logistics involved in events like this, the manning for John Paul's visit was: 36,713 people including 685 police lieutenants, 3,810 sergeants, and 32,218 officers.

The event in Philadelphia alone is estimated to cost $48,000,000 and to their credit the World Meeting of Families has set a fundraising goal of $45,000,000 so far they've raised $30,000,000.  The city itself expects a $12,000,000 dollar bill.  The Philadelphia Convention and Visitor's Bureau has estimated that the event will bring (okay, I'll stop with all the zeroes, I think I've made my point) $418 million and many think that's an overly optimistic and unrealistic estimate.  Even if dead on and all that money is spent solely in Philadelphia the city's take will still be well short of its estimated $12M cost ($8.36M based on the city sales and use tax).  Hopefully the World Meeting will pitch in and make up the difference.

When asked about the cost most of the government agencies involved at all levels simply respond with no comment.  How's that for transparency?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to the Pope's visit but consider this... a Georgetown University study estimated that the Catholic Church's net Sunday rake each and every week here in the good old USA is $850,000,000 (Okay, I lied about the zeroes).

Fortune: Who will pay for the Pope's visit?

IB Times: How Rich is the Vatican

I'll leave you with this gem from the Fortune article:

NJ.com writes that some of the expenses will be covered by event organizers and the federal government, but taxpayers likely won’t be completely off the hook.

Uh...who do they think funds the federal government?

And to be honest, NJ.com didn't actually write that, Fortune did. 

So How About it Papa, care to go Dutch?
 

 

John Boehner Resigns

ONE DOWN, 434 TO GO

Celebrate, Cry, it doesn't matter.  The body politic is hopelessly corrupt and nothing's going to change. That's my heartfelt opinion and it would seem the opinion of a majority of Americans.  In a Gallup Poll released Friday 60% of Americans want a third party. The question asked was this:

“In your view, do the Republican and Democratic parties do an adequate job of representing the American people, or do they do such a poor job that a third major party is needed?” 

78% of Independents, 47% of Democrats (Do you find that surprising?), and 45% of Republicans want a third major party.  That ties back to the sentiment in a September 19th Poll in which 75% answered Yes to the question:

"Is Corruption widespread throughout the government in this country, or not?"

 It also explains why outsiders are dominating this election cycle amid a climate of apathy and disgust.

So John Boehner's gone and I'm pretty much indifferent to it, how about you?

il Papa II

Inno e Marcia Pontificale

(Papal Anthem)

Here are some of the other selections that will be played in association with the pontiffs visit.  Feel free to comment on the music or on anything the pope has said or done that you wish to comment on.

¡Albricias mortales! que viene la aurora

( by the Mexican composer Manuel de Sumaya)

Exsultate , Jubilate

(Mozart)

And I've heard the following will be performed by Sister Sledge and Aretha Franklin at the Festival of Families in Philadelphia

Me, I have to say I prefer the Exsultate Jubilate.

Demagogues' Dream

"It is not poverty, but prosperity, that needs explaining." 

"Poverty is automatic, but prosperity requires many things - none of which is equally distributed around the world or even within a given society."  (Thomas Sowell)

Sowell goes on to explain how geography, demographics, cultural and historical differences all mitigate against equality and fairness. Social scientists have documented the phenomenon of an inverse relationship between the natural resources of a country and its level of prosperity. Natural abundance can make a society lazy and dumb.

But which has a better track record of helping the less fortunate - fighting for a bigger slice of the economic pie, or producing a bigger pie?

By 2001, most Americans living below the official poverty line had central air conditioning, a motor vehicle, cable television with multiple TV sets and other amenities. 

A scholar specializing in the study of Latin America said that the official poverty level in the United States is the upper middle class in Mexico.

The much criticized market economy of the United States has done far more for the poor than the ideology of the left.

Pope Francis' own native Argentina was once among the leading economies of the world, before it was ruined by the kind of ideological notions he is now promoting around the world. (Thomas Sowell)

Rapacious Capitalism?

Matt Ridley, author of "The Rational Optimist," notes that coal supplanting wood fuel reversed deforestation, and that "fertilizer manufactured with gas halved the amount of land needed to produce a given amount of food."

The capitalist commerce that Francis disdains is the reason the portion of the planet's population living in "absolute poverty" ($1.25 a day) declined from 53 percent to 17 percent in three decades after 1981.

Even in low-income countries, writes economist Indur Goklany, life expectancy increased from between 25 to 30 years in 1900 to 62 years today.

"Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides derived from fossil fuels," he says, "are responsible for at least 60 percent of today's global food supply." Without fossil fuels, he says, global cropland would have to increase at least 150 percent - equal to the combined land areas of South America and the European Union - to meet current food demands.

Francis grew up around the rancid political culture of Peronist populism, the sterile redistributionism that has reduced his Argentina from the world's 14th highest per-capita gross domestic product in 1900 to 63rd today. Francis's agenda for the planet - "global regulatory norms" - would globalize Argentina's downward mobility. (George Will)

If there were any examples of socialism and other redistributionist schemes actually lifting millions out of poverty, rather than miring hundreds of million in misery and despair, and killing over a hundred million more...  and if pigs had wings...

Has America done enough for the benighted of the world? 

 I'll close with the wise words of blogger buddy Z:

Another thought I had when hearing the Pope feels America must hold up its end "To those given much, much must be given", I couldn't help but think of all the work we do around the world for tsunamis, hurricanes, healing in Africa and teaching new ways of planting, finding water there, and WWII and Japan and saving so many people there, having taken in millions of immigrants since our founding....etc etc etc...the list is long....... And we haven't been 'given much,' we've worked hard to be get it...with God's help.

Pope Francis, show us a country which has always done more around the world in positive ways than America...

il Papa

Photo: NRMA Motoring & Services

Well the Pope has arrived in the US and was quickly spirited away in a Fiat 500, nice touch.

On the way over he denied being a leftist on the plane:


“Maybe some things sounded slightly leftish, but that would be the wrong interpretation.”

Things may have sounded slightly leftish, but he's had far more to say in condemnation of capitalism than communism.

Accused of being soft on the Castros he pointed out that the Vatican ambassador had invited dissidents to the cathedral in Santiago, which is true.  They were also promptly arrested by the Castro regime.

The political haymaking has begun in earnest with both sides trying to get him to line up on their sides on subjects as diverse as Abortion and Global Warming.  Frankly, I care little of what he has to say on either subject.  

The Pope is scheduled to give 18 speeches in the US, only 4 of which will be in English... what? None in Gaelic or Italian?  Perhaps a little Latin?  No, the majority of the Popes speeches in an English speaking country will be in Spanish and my Irish-Catholic upbringing precludes me from telling you what I think of that!

So he's here, what do you think of his car, his visit, his positions, and his inexplicable loss of the ability to speak English? While he is undoubtedly more comfortable in his native tongue, am I the only one that considers that extremely rude?

Pope & Change ?

The Future Looks Dhimm

The next Hagia Sophia?

Walter Russell Mead sums it up:

What we are witnessing today is a crisis of two civilizations: The Middle East and Europe are both facing deep cultural and political problems that they cannot solve.

In the Muslim World...

At bottom, we are witnessing the consequences of a civilization’s failure either to overcome or to accommodate the forces of modernity. One hundred years after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and 50 years after the French left Algeria, the Middle East has failed to build economies that allow ordinary people to live with dignity, has failed to build modern political institutions and has failed to carve out the place of honor and respect in world affairs that its peoples seek.

"In Europe and the West...

...the crisis is quieter but no less profound. Europe today often doesn’t seem to know where it is going, what Western civilization is for, or even whether or how it can or should be defended. Increasingly, the contemporary version of Enlightenment liberalism sees itself as fundamentally opposed to the religious, political and economic foundations of Western society. Liberal values such as free expression, individual self-determination and a broad array of human rights have become detached in the minds of many from the institutional and civilizational context that shaped them".

Add in how reckless military adventures and abuses in the name of capitalism have discredited our means of security and economic prosperity, and the crisis becomes even more profound.

There is no Going Back...  Time Only Moves in one Direction: Forward

Simple demographics is changing Western societies. Speyer’s Kaiserdom will have men in filthy beards shouting the Hate Whitey song in arabic from it’s Romanesque towers within the century.

Hopefully, the transition will be peaceful, and the good Muslims will allow us to warm our bleached flanks in the sun as our candle flickers in the twilight.

In the end, can we really lament a society so thin and so vapid that it has abandoned it's cultural heritage and its God, so guilty and ashamed that it cannot stand for anything as it sinks to its neck in the squishy bogs of Multi-Culti, "Tolerance," and "Diversity?"

Can we really lament the passing of a clapped-out collection of intellectually empty, morally degraded and financially bankrupt wage slaves, basement-dwelling gamers, slackers, inebriated sports fanboys, drug-addled loungers and pop culture gluttons grown obese and stupid on the dwindling bounty bequeathed them by their forbears?

We're too self-absorbed and flaccid to even propagate ourselves.

The future belongs to the brave and the strong. Look around and tell me who fits that description.

POX Americana

Pax Americana: A term applied to the concept of relative peace in the Western Hemisphere and later the world as a result of the preponderance of power enjoyed by the United States beginning around the middle of the 20th century. (Wikipedia)

Europe and much of the free world benefited from PAX Americana...

But now, we all suffer under POX Americana, a new era of toxic malfeasance ushered in by President Bush and brought to a full and pungent florescence by Obama's JV Team, led by John F. Kerry.

We can also thank the international firebugs and merry mischief-makers in Obama's Amateur Warlord Club, led by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Power, dunces all.

God rest your soul, Ambassador Stevens.  Was it simply Hillary's incompetence, or her callous disregard for your security requests, or something more sinister?  At this point, "What difference does it make?"

"Some people just want to see the world burn..."

Next, here's Hillary, a supposedly smart and serious person summing up the Obama Administration's brand of Chaos Theory.  Push PLAY, it's only 12 chilling seconds long...

We don't need a recap of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfelt Triumvirate's crimes...

Obama has already enumerated them, laid the blame, and apologized.  Then he quickly set about beating Bush's record for murder by drone, including ordering the assassination of an American overseas.

Other Obama Administration "Accomplishments"...

* The Obama administration was for the Muslim Brotherhood tipping over Egypt before it was against it.

* Destroyed Libya and turned it into another terrorist haven ala Somalia.

* Turned a blind eye to the Persian Spring, which the mullahs quickly snuffed

* Drew "Red Lines" in dry erase marker.

* Abandoned Iraq (yeah, yeah, yeah, Bush left the SOFA treaty undone, but Obama was happy to run away as fast as he could).

* After abandoning Iraq, Obama quietly sneaked US troops back in there (without a SOFA), so we're now teamed with Iran

* Destabilized Syria, and equipped, trained and armed the "good" terrorists who then took all those American-supplied goodies to ISIS.

* Dithered and blathered while ISIS metastasized

* Obama's "success story," Yemen, is in revolutionary flames as a result of his fumbling fudpuckery there...

* Failed to anticipate and care for the millions of refugees his bungling bastardry caused...

Refugee Chaos in Lesbos

POX AMERICANA

Europe suffers under its worst refugee crisis ever as a direct result of US foreign policy failure, and specifically that of the Obama Administration, including Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Europe doesn't need any more US "leadership" like this, and neither do We The American People.

Stand With Hungary

Map: Nuclearvacuum

The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees:

The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence. (Article 31, (1))

Sorry, but Hungary doesn't share a border with Syria.  Hungary shares borders with Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia.

None of the countries that Hungary shares a border with... shares a border with Syria nor, may I point out, does the EU.

Hungary is under no obligation to open its borders to Syrian refugees. 

The Ride

"There's nothing better for the inside of a man, than the outside of a horse."

Attributed to Ronald Reagan, though I recall reading a nearly identical sentiment expressed by Winston Churchill.

 My horses have been gone for years now, but the lessons they teach last forever. The world just looks different from the saddle and if you haven't known it you have deprived yourself of one of life's great experiences. Not a few circuits in  a dusty ring, but hours in the saddle on narrow paths through the woods, or mountain slopes where every turn in the trail reveals a new vista.

  There are lessons to be learned, and this song expresses one of the best.

 God bless Cris LeDoux  !!!

Bragadacious?

A few observations, a few remarks I liked, they may be paraphrased:

I forced myself to sit through the entire debate, took nine pages of notes while doing so, despite the fact that I have to say I agree with Kasich "If I were watching this I'd be inclined to turn it off", and I was.

Bragadacious?  I swear I heard Trump say that in his opening remarks... is that a word?

Christie: Take the camera off me and put it on the audience, are you better off now then when Obama took office... No hands... That's why I'm running.

Trumps opening attack on Paul was as Paul said "Sideways, off topic, and sophomoric".

Walker on Trump: We don't need an apprentice in the White House, we've had one for the past eight years.

Christie: I'm an outsider, I'm a Republican in New Jersey.

Fiorina: This isn't about changing D's to R's, it's about changing the system.

Huckabee: Obama treats the Iran agreement like it's the Magna Carta while Iran treats it like toilet paper.

Paul: Every time we've toppled a secular dictator we've gotten chaos and our actions have backfired. Thank you Captain Obvious... but I jest, if only more people could see the obvious.

Rubio: Iran chants death to all Americans, Kerry asks them if we can meet them halfway.

An observation: Candidates in favor of the 10th amendment when it comes to Kim Davis and Kentucky are opposed to it when it comes to Colorado and Marijuana.

Another observation: Statements about calling Obama's bluff and forcing him to veto bills seems to have consistently gotten the most applause from the audience.

Fiorina: Democrats don't want immigration problem solved, they want it as an issue.

Carson: Invading Iraq didn't cause the problem, withdrawing did.

Rubio on gun laws: Criminals by definition ignore the law. 

Fiorina on putting a woman on the 10 dollar bill:  I wouldn't change the 10 or the 20, it's a gesture nothing more, women are not a special interest group. (BRAVO)

I can't say there was any winner or really even any loser.  My opinion of Fiorina and Kasich went up, my opinion of Christie went down, I don't think anybody really swayed me.

What did you think?



 

 

 

 



 

The Outsiders

Photo: Michael Vadon

Photo: Gage Skidmore

Currently the top two contenders in the Republican Party primary race are outsiders.  From CBS to ABC, Monmouth to Quinnipiac they are the only ones with poll numbers in the double digits.

An RCP Average of the polls give Trump 29.8 and Carson 17.8, a significant margin over the next closest runner up Bush III at 7.8.  Together the two outsiders muster 47.6% of the support of Republicans, throw in another party outsider (Carly Fiorina) and you're over 51%.

This is a powerful message from Republican voters, do you think the Republican Party is going to hear it? Do you think it means anything?  Do you think it bodes well or ill?

A Kinder, Gentler Nation

I just finished, Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson. It is a well-written account of events in 1890's Chicago leading up to the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, better known as the Chicago World's Fair.

The book is a fascinating window into the past, revealing how much we have changed since then.

How Men took care of business, 1890's Style...

The Fair's directors planned on piping in water from Waukesha's famed springs, with the help of J.E. McElroy's Hygeia Mineral Springs Company of that same Wisconsin city, but they...

"…failed to anticipate the intensity of opposition from the citizens (of Waukesha) who feared the pipeline would disfigure their landscape and drain their famous springs."

And the opposition continued to build, so McElroy and the fair's planners had to be sneaky if they wanted that water.

On Saturday evening, May 7, 1892, McElroy loaded a special train with pipes, picks, shovels, and three hundred men and set off for Waukesha to dig his pipeline under the cover of darkness.

Word of the expedition beat the train to Waukesha. As it pulled into the station, someone rang the village firebell, and soon a large force of men armed with clubs, pistols, and shotguns converged on the train. Two fire engines arrived hissing steam, their crews ready to blast the pipelayers with water. One village leader told McElroy that if he went ahead with his plan, he would not leave town alive.

Soon another thousand or so townspeople joined the small army at the station. One group of men dragged a cannon from the town hall and trained it on Hygeia's bottling plant.

After a brief standoff, McElroy and the pipelayers went back to Chicago.

There are two kinds of people. Those who long for the good old days of direct action, and those who thank progress we have evolved to a kinder, gentler species.

Which are you?

PORN!!!

Content based Taxation

In an attempt to raise revenue and reconcile the budget against a massive shortfall the Alabama House Ways and Means Committee has passed (10-4) that in addition to any other applicable taxes, a 40% state excise tax will be levied on gross receipts from the sale, rental or admission charges of pornographic material. The bill heads to the Alabama House floor for a vote.

This presents an interesting constitutional question in regards to the first amendment... Can you tax the content of First Amendment protected material?

Now Arkansas tried this once already, although not on porn, imposing a tax on general interest magazines but exempting newspapers, as well as religious, professional, trade, and sports journals.  The Supreme Court held in Arkansas Writers Journal v. Ragland that the tax "burdens rights protected by the First Amendment by discriminating against a small group of magazines, including appellant's, which are the only magazines that pay the tax" the court also said that " its use here is even more disturbing because the Arkansas statute requires official scrutiny of publications' content as the basis for imposing a tax. This is incompatible with the First Amendment, whose requirements are not avoided merely because the statute does not burden the expression of particular views expressed by specific magazines, and exempts other members of the media that might publish discussions of the various subjects contained in appellant's magazine."  -Caselaw-

While I oppose social engineering through the use of taxation as it is not the government's job to tell us how to act, think, eat, drink, or what to do or not do behaviorally... at least taxation on cigarettes and alcohol can be partially justified on the cost imposed on society by their abuse (I don't support that position but I can understand it).  Alabama will be hard pressed to specifically attribute a cost to the use, viewing, or experience of pornography.

I think there are two things going on here, one is greed in the face of severe budget shortfalls, the other is the imposition of a religious moral restriction on pornography that is not reflected in the law of the land on material that is substantially protected under the First amendment. 

What do you think?

burdens rights protected by the First Amendment by discriminating against a small group of magazines, including appellant's, which are the only magazines that pay the tax. - See more at: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/481/221.html#228

burdens rights protected by the First Amendment by discriminating against a small group of magazines, including appellant's, which are the only magazines that pay the tax. - See more at: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/481/221.html#228

burdens rights protected by the First Amendment by discriminating against a small group of magazines, including appellant's, which are the only magazines that pay the tax. - See more at: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/481/221.html#228"

Your Fat, Irresponsible Uncle

If people were hit directly with the full costs of $950 billion farm bills and $1 trillion foreign wars, they would grab their pitchforks and storm Capitol Hill. But the citizenry hasn’t resorted to pitchforks yet because politicians use “fiscal illusion” techniques to hide a lot of the costs. (Downsizing Government)

What If?

What if government had to balance the budget each year, either by cutting, or by billing each taxpayer?

What if, instead of having taxes withheld throughout the year, you had to tally it up at tax time and write a big check?

What if, before embarking upon an Iraq-like foreign adventure, government had to cost it out and inform the public that taxes would go up to pay for the endeavor?

Is it possible to run the United States government on a balanced budget? How?

Or, why not?

September 11, 2015

Lest we forget.

Remember

Photo: Michael Foran

Since Friday is reserved for musical posts I offer you this today.

On September 10th, 2001 I flew into Boston on an afternoon flight.  On the morning of September 11th, I was in meetings at a company in New Hampshire when the news broke.  Three of the employees of that company were on the LA flight, all acquaintances.  

It started as a brief interruption, "a small plane had flown into one of the towers", that was the initial story.  It started by running out to the reception desk for a few minutes while taking a break, it ended with us returning to our meeting for a few minutes after spending most of our time at the reception desk and the small television they had there.  That was when we just gave up and called it quits for the day at lunchtime.  

I spent the afternoon with a coworker in a pub outside of Merrimack, NH... the TV running footage constantly, my fellow Yankee patrons becoming more and more incensed.  By the time we decided to call it quits there and get some dinner there was a spirit of camaraderie amongst us not normally found in American bars.

I didn't manage to get in touch with my sister, who lived on the Upper East Side until close to midnight.  She lived in Manhattan and worked in Brooklyn and was passing underneath the towers on the subway or around the time of the first plane strike.  Aside from the spotty phone communications in the city at the time, the reason it took so long to get in touch with her is she walked, home from Brooklyn and over the famed bridge back to her apartment, nothing else was moving.

I had been in New York a few weeks earlier to visit, sometime in the early afternoon we were in Battery Park when my sister asked if I wanted to go up in the towers.  "Nah, I casually replied... already been up there".

In the aftermath we lingered in New England for a little while before giving up on the possibility of a flight out and driving back across the continent.  It was an interesting experience, people waving flags and hanging banners off of interstate overpasses, we were somewhere in the Midwest when flights resumed yet we continued our automotive trek back home.  Somewhere around Kansas City we met a woman in a gas station who noticed our Massachusetts tags... "You're from New England", she asked, "I'm trying to get back home there now".  We admitted that we were from Colorado, coincidentally the license plate her rental wore.  We made the requisite jokes about trading cars to avoid the drop off fee and then went on our way.  It was a long and sobering drive.

Where were you between 08:46, 09:03, 09:37, 09:59, and 10:28 September 11, 2001?  

"It's Later Than You Think"

French Author Jean Raspail

So, we have poor people escaping the misery of their third-world toilets and beating down our doors. As I've said in other forums, I don't blame them.  Were I in their situation, I'd be scrambling my ass to Germany, too.

It is a matter for debate whether this is an inexorable torrent that dooms Western Civilization, or merely a drip, drip, drip that we as a rich and humane collection of northern nations can and must welcome and assimilate.

I want to stipulate a few points:

* An idea or philosophy is not discredited simply because evil people grasp them for their own nefarious motives.  Grotesque monsters have killed over 100 million people in the name of Karl Marx, but that does not discredit Marx's keen social observations or make him complicit in communist mass murder.  Hitler appropriated Nietzche and Wagner, but neither man would have countenanced Hitler's horrible weltanschauung.

* We have a moral imperative to help those less fortunate than us. How we do that is the thorny question.

Please pause here and read Jean Raspail's Introduction to 1985 French Edition of Camp of the Saints.


For the impatient, I post the salient points from the author's essay.

* We are enduring a "peaceful invasion."

"What’s to be done, since no one would wish to renounce his own human dignity by acquiescing to racism? What’s to be done since, simultaneously, all persons and all nations have the sacred right to preserve their differences and identities, in the name of their own future and their own past?"

* The author's comment on the broad sweep of human history:

"The confrontations that flow (and have always flowed) from this, are not racist, nor even racial. They are simply part of the permanent flow of opposing forces that shape the history of the world. The weak fade and disappear, the strong multiply and triumph."

* The West accomplished much, through science, inventions, literature and arts, and yes, military conquest, but the tide has turned:

"Now that the relationship between the forces has been diametrically reversed, and our ancient West — tragically now in a minority status on this earth — retreats behind its dismantled fortifications while it already loses the battles on its own soil, it begins to behold, in astonishment, the dull roar of the huge tide that threatens to engulf it. One must remember the saying on ancient solar calendars: ‘It is later than you think…’"

* Raspail catalogs the factors and players in this drama of global demography's shifting tectonic plates: The stream of immigrants jumping multiple centuries, radicalized immigrant communities, the "strong psychological impact of human rights organizations, the inflamed evangelism of the religious leadership, a hypocritical purity of consciences, refusal to look the truth in the face."

Demographics is Destiny

"It’s enough to go back to the scary demographic predictions for the next thirty years, and those I will cite are the most favorable ones: encircled by seven billion people, only seven hundred million of them white, hardly a third of them in our little Europe, and those no longer in bloom but quite old. They face a vanguard of four hundred million North Africans and Muslims, fifty percent of them less than twenty years old, those on the opposite shores of the Mediterranean arriving ahead of the rest of the world! Can one imagine for a second, in the name of whatever ostrich-like blindness, that such a disequilibrium can endure?"

"The West is Empty"

Raspail has been unfairly damned as a racist. He is not. Rather he is a Frenchman who wants France to endure as his forefathers passed it on to him, but he senses that it is too late, and he damns his fellow westerners:

For the West is empty, even if it has not yet become really aware of it. An extraordinarily inventive civilization, surely the only one capable of meeting the challenges of the third millennium, the West has no soul left.

"At every level — nations, races, cultures, as well as individuals — it is always the soul that wins the decisive battles. It is only the soul that forms the weave of gold and brass from which the shields that save the strong are fashioned. I can hardly discern any soul in us. […] They are content to just endure. Mechanically, they ensure their survival from week to week, ever more feebly. Under the flag of an illusory internal solidarity and security, they are no longer in solidarity with anything, or even cognizant of anything that would constitute the essential commonalities of a people. In the area of the practical and materialistic, which alone can still light a spark of interest in their eyes, they form a nation of petty bourgeois which, in the name of the riches it inherited and is less and less deserving of, rewards itself — and continues to reward itself in the middle of crisis — with millions of domestic servants: immigrants. Ah! How they will shudder! The domestics have innumerable relatives on this side and beyond the seas, a single starving family that populates all the earth. […]

But the petty bourgeois, deaf and blind, continues to play the buffoon without knowing it. Still miraculously comfortable in his lush fields, he cries out while glancing toward his nearest neighbor ‘Make the rich pay!’ Does he know, does he finally know that it is he who is the rich guy, and that the cry for justice, that cry of all revolutions, projected by millions of voices, is rising soon against him, and only against him. That’s the whole theme of Camp of the Saints."

What Say You?



Related: Radish - The Camp of the Saints

Decline and Fall

The world is going through an epochal change

The West is intellectually, morally and financially bankrupt, and our native population is shrinking because we do not reproduce.

Morally flaccid, we stand for nothing and collapse into a servile, defensive crouch at the onslaught of foreigners busting down our gates and making demands they would never think of making in their native lands.

Millions of third-world poor are burgeoning and spilling out of the toilets that spawned them. Can you blame them? I can't.

Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld:  The Beginning of the End

This particular crisis across the Mediterranean is a direct result of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld. I still can't decide if they were acting with malice and aforethought, criminally negligent, or insanely arrogant.

George Bush:  Middle Eastern Christian's Worst Nightmare

What a supreme irony that uber-Christian George Bush is directly responsible for the rape, murder and Exodus-scale displacement of Middle Eastern Christians and other religious minorities.

If Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld had even an ounce of shame, a twinge of remorse, or even two squirming molecules left in their ossified consciences, they would climb the tallest skyscraper on Wall Street and plunge to their deaths.

But they haven't even issued an apology.

Obama's International Firebugs:  Finishing the Destruction Bush Began

Next, Obama and his Sophomore Girls Amateur Warlord Club did the seemingly impossible: They created even more chaos and destruction in the Muslim world than Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld.

We created this gusher of human misery by thinking we could "manage" the Middle East and "remake" it.

Sure, the ultimate authors of Muslim misery are the Muslims themselves, but they were a self-contained bag of putrid, malodorous crap, and then Bush stuck his sword into it, and now it's all spilling out.

Of course, the crapulent, bloated Middle Eastern billionaire grandees are sitting on their fat asses laughing. Who can't enjoy seeing arrogant idiots getting their comeuppance?

What Now?

What do we do?

Is there anything we can do?

Where's the Beef?

The Department of Injustice Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices is objecting to non-US citizens being targeted because of their citizenship status.  The investigation found that Nebraska Beef required non-US citizens to present specific documentary proof of their immigration status to verify employment eligibility.

MOTHER OF GOD

 CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT ?

A US Company verifying employment eligibility?

WAIT, IT GETS BETTER

The Department of Injustice claims that this could constitute a violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act because its anti-discrimination provision prohibits employers from making documentary demands based on citizenship when verifying an employee's authorization to work.

ARE WE INSANE?

Apparently so... Nebraska Beef was slapped with a $200,000 civil penalty and must set up an uncapped back-pay fund to compensate individuals who claim they lost wages due to an inability to prove they were eligible to work in this country...AND Nebraska Beef will be required to undergo compliance monitoring for two years, train employees on the anti-discrimination provision of the INA, and revise policies in its office.

WE'RE NOT JUST INSANE

WE'RE BLOODY EFFING NUTS!  

HAPPY LABOR DAY!  

Musical Friday

I heard this on Sirius back around the 4th of July, it's typical fare for the 4th of July but a slightly less common (original) choral version of the 1812 Overture.  Enjoy.

SECRETS?

US LAUNCHES SECRET DRONE CAMPAIGN TO HUNT ISLAMIC STATE LEADERS IN SYRIA!

Read the headline in the Washington Post.

Hmmm, I guess it's not a secret anymore! 

So Greg Miller, whose side are you on anyway?  Do you think this aids our nation in its efforts or hinders them?  Do you think Islamic State leaders might alter their behavior due to your revelation?  I'm sure they would have figured it out sooner or later, thanks for making it sooner.  I suppose had you been a reporter during WWII the headline would have read:

SECRET US STRIKES AGAINST 

JAPAN TO LAND IN BURMA 

Well Greg, you've earned the Western Hero Award:

 

Is Donald Trump Serious?

* When I wrote this last week, I was leaning toward "yes, he is serious."  But since then, he has gratuitously bashed Megyn Kelly (which made him look like a petty, bitter churl), and embraced Sarah Palin (don't get me started...) -- Kurt Silverfiddle 

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog post...

Like most, I though his GOP candidacy was one more publicity stunt at the expense of others, but news sources report that he is spending some serious cash and standing up robust grass-roots organizations in key states.

He may not go away.  He may really want to be president..

How can we tell he's serious?

$ If he continues building up campaign staff around the US and brings in some heavy hitter campaign organizers.

$ He tones down his language and becomes more disciplined.  Not his manner, but rather stops the poor word choices.  Trump must be a disciplined man, and if he is serious, I predict the same Donald, the same candor, but lacking the gratuitous insults.

$ Polling.  If he starts pulling in so-called Reagan Democrats (obviously not the same people, but disaffected middle of the roaders unhappy with what the Democrat party has become).

$ He starts promulgating substantive issue statements.  Did you see how he defended his immigration policy against the hapless Chuck Todd?  Serious, sober, and not backing down one inch.

Can Trump Win?

Reagan Democrats, the disaffected and previous non-voters hold the key.  If he gains the nomination, he cannot win without cross-overs.

Can Trump Govern?

Say trump becomes president.  Would he be a good president?  I say yes.  He knows how to run organizations and do big things.  I predict he would bring first-class people to his staff, and he would do so without regard to party or ideology.  I predict some serious DC crockery would get broken.

Also, unlike Obama's weak-kneed sister brigade led by Heinze-Kerry, America would again conduct hard-nosed negotiations with other nations.

Obama Vs McKinley

Do you Care?

And why Denali (Proper spelling: Deenaalee)?  That's only one name of nine given by different tribes of local Athabaskan people? Why not Dheenadheet? Or perhaps Dghelay Ka'a? Denali is great if you're Koyukon, perhaps not so hot if you're Holikachuk or Ahtna. 

According to the Alaska Native Language Center there are only 2,300 Koyukon in Alaska, far fewer in number than the school children who will undoubtedly fail future geography tests on the subject. All in all, according to the native language center there are a whopping 5,235 Athabaskan speakers in all of Alaska, so keep that in mind when Obama talks of "many Alaskan natives".  

Me, I could really care less but it is comforting to know that our President doesn't have far more serious issues on his plate that would be distracting him from this pressing subject.

So when are we renaming Pike's Peak "Heey-Otoyoo"?