QotD: Civilization Edition

Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.  —  Will and Ariel Durant

 I don't think it takes a century. Just a couple of generations.

OMFG

Just ran into this over at Quora.  Had to share.  Or run around screaming. The question asked was "Why is the US Federal Government incompetent?" Just read this answer:

US federal government programs are NOT incompetent. They are UNDERFUNDED.

What I mean is this. When the government first initiates a new program—any program—the program has to be written into legislation. That’s how it gets funded in the Congressional budget. Normally, when a new program begins, it’s given the funding (or most of it) that was estimated it would need to run the program. But every Congressional budget cycle thereafter has a tendency to trim the budget.

The problem is that the program’s charter is defined by law, which means the program’s management doesn’t have the ability to cut back services to match the cut they received in the budget. The program is still expected to perform all of the services they’re required to by law. It’s not like a private corporation that can make cuts in products or services until they become profitable. The government programs have to perform all of the services they are chartered to perform, UNLESS they are specifically given reprieve in the law. This does happen sometimes.

So as the budgets get trimmed year after year, these government programs will INEVITABLY become dysfunctional. They can no longer perform their services with the funding they receive. That’s why federal programs are so challenging.

The answer to this would be to require Congress to cut services as they cut the budget. This is happening more frequently these days, but it hasn’t always been the case.

(Bold my emphasis. ALLCAPS and italics, his.)

"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for." - Will Rogers. Only in Washington, D.C. is a 5% increase in a budget a "cut" when that program or department expected a 10% increase.

But this is how too many in the voting public THINK. This guy? "Campaigned (his) ass off for Bernie, from New York to Las Vegas."

My shocked face is worn out.

Your 38 Seconds of Zen

You Need to Read This

Duncan v. Becerra, United States District Court, Southern District of California.

When the decision begins:

Individual liberty and freedom are not outmoded concepts. “The judiciary is – and is often the only – protector of individual rights that are at the heart of our democracy.” --Senator Ted Kennedy, Senate Hearing on the Nomination of Robert Bork, 1987.

you KNOW you're in for a good read. Hat tip to Joe Huffman.

Edited to add this excerpt from page 62:

Ten years of a federal ban on large-capacity magazines did not stop mass shootings nationally. Twenty years of a California ban on large capacity magazines have not stopped mass shootings in California. Section 32310 is a failed policy experiment that has not achieved its goal. But it has daily trenched on the federal Constitutional right of self-defense for millions of its citizens. On the full record presented by the Attorney General, and evidence upon which there is no genuine issue, whatever the fit might be, it is not a reasonable fit.

vi. irony

Perhaps the irony of § 32310 escapes notice. The reason for the adoption of the Second Amendment was to protect the citizens of the new nation from the power of an oppressive state. The anti-federalists were worried about the risk of oppression by a standing army. The colonies had witnessed the standing army of England marching through Lexington to Concord, Massachusetts, on a mission to seize the arms and gunpowder of the militia and the Minutemen—an attack that ignited the Revolutionary war. With Colonists still hurting from the wounds of war, the Second Amendment guaranteed the rights of new American citizens to protect themselves from oppressors foreign and domestic. So, now it is ironic that the State whittles away at the right of its citizens to defend themselves from the possible oppression of their State.

It's good before page 62, but it just keeps getting better.

I can't imagine what the 9th Circus will do with this decision when it's inevitably appealed.

District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez for either the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court.

Why You Need a Gun

From Facebook:

A couple years ago I was working security at a bar in northern Virginia. I overheard a table of college kids arguing about gun rights and gun control and it was getting far too emotional so I did what any sane combat veteran would do and attempted to exfiltrate. I must not have withdrawn as surreptitiously as I intended, because I was stopped in my tracks when a 5-foot-nothing brunette seemingly leapt in front of me and blurted out "excuse me, can you help us?"

I'm sure I must have looked irritated as I cycled through the possible quips and excuses I considered available to me but being uncertain that she wasn't some Senator's daughter, I caved: "What's up?"

She basically leads me to this table of 2 other females (probably both named Karen) and a very soft looking male.

Becky: "So, we were just talking about current events and, you know. So, you look like you're probably in the military, right? Like the Army?"

(When you accuse someone of being in the military you probably don't need to give an example)

Me: "Similar.. yea"

Becky: "Right. Okay. So, do you think civilians should be allowed to own guns?"

Me: "Most of us. Yes."

Becky: (clearly not happy with my answer) "Okay, so, why do you think you need a gun?"

(At this point it's almost 2am and I've just given up on patience. Hold my beer)

(With intentionally overt condescension): "Oh, honey, I don't. I don't need a gun."

Becky stares at me blankly, so I continue, but with a more serious tone:

"I could follow you home, walk up your driveway, and beat you to death with the daily newspaper.

I could choke you to death with that purse.

I could take a credit card, break it in half, and cut your throat open with it.

With enough time and effort I could beat your boyfriend here with a rolled up pair of socks.

I could probably dream up six dozen other ways I could easily end your life if you gave me an hour or so.

If I wanted to, I could wrap my hand around that beer mug and kill all four of you before you could make it to the exit. The worst part is, in your utopian little fantasyland, there ain't a thing any of you could do about it.

I don't need a gun.

You need a gun.

You need a gun because of men like me."

Call me a jerk, but if you want to keep your guns, these are the conversations we all need to start having.

Meanwhile in (Formerly) Great Britain...

Turn off your sound (fvcking autoplay...)  Defence secretary Gavin Williamson says military 'ready to respond' to knife crime crisis

The UK armed forces “stand ready” to intervene in the knife crime epidemic, the defence secretary has said.

Gavin Williamson said military personnel “would always be ready to respond” to calls for help while the Ministry of Defence “always stands ready to help any government department”.

No request has yet been made, Mr Williamson said during a question-and-answer session on Tuesday night.

He added: “I know that the home secretary is looking very closely at how he can ensure that everything is done to tackle this problem at the moment.”

Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, had said she would be willing to bring in troops to support her officers as they battle a spate of stabbings.

So, after making possession of pretty much any weapon for the purpose of personal defense illegal, after making it legally risky to actually defend yourself or someone else, even with nothing more than your fists, serious violent crime in the UK has risen to levels requiring ARMED MILITARY TROOPS ON THE GROUND.

This is my shocked face....

Quote of the Day - Education Edition

Victor Davis Hanson from his recent speech Two States of California (worth your time BTW):

When I went in (to the California State University system) in 1984 as a professor of Classics, the remediation rate - that was a fancy term for those who are admitted into the CUS system, the largest university system in the world, well over a quarter-million students - was 32%, and the graduation rate in four years was 51%. When I left 23 years later the remediation rate was 55% and the average for SIX years graduation was 49%.

How did California solve that problem? They just got rid of the word last year called "remediation." So rather than saying 60% of the students who entered the CSU system cannot take a college class because they don't qualify to be there in the first place and therefore you have remediated class - we used to call them "Bonehead English" and "Bonehead Math" - and you don't get college credit for it, we don't call it remediation anymore and they solved the problem. There's zero remediation now.

But believe me, if we're going to build a high-speed rail, who is going to pilot it? Who is going to engineer it? Somebody who is remediated?

So after saying that, to emphasisze this idea of schizophrenia, I go over to the coast and I'm at Stanford University. Last year the London Times Higher Education supplement - and was confirmed by the University of Tokyo - rated the greatest universities supposedly in the world. You'd think they'd all be Japanese and British since they were doing the surveys. Number one - CalTech. Number two - Stanford. Number four - Berkeley. Number ten - UCLA. Number fifteen - USC. FIVE of them were from California. California had more top universities than any other NATION except the United States, and yet it has a public school system where just 60% of people can't read or write. It's the same state, believe me.

See also this post from December of 2004.

Health Update

I meant to do this a while back, but I've been busy and not particularly motivated to write.  Because so many of my readers obviously are interested in my health - you guys overwhelmed me with your donations - I thought I'd let you know how things are going.

I had my four month, 4,000 mile lube, oil change and tire rotation at Mayo earlier this month.  My A1C (90-day average blood sugar) was 4.2 - the minimum "normal" range - so I'm no longer diabetic.  My cholesterol, both good and bad, is excellent.  So is my blood pressure, though it drops pretty low from time to time when I'm standing and not moving around much.  My weight has stabilized at about 210lbs., a weight I haven't seen since I was about 19.  And my "low-mileage pre-owned Lexus" liver is functioning perfectly. 

That's the good news.  The bad news is, my kidneys are running at about 20% efficiency, and they don't appear to be coming back.  I'm anemic, and apparently will remain so until I get a functioning kidney.  Until then, I'm on dialysis 3.5 hours a day, three days a week.  I'm going to have fistula surgery on March 1, and about 6-8 weeks later it should be usable.  Some time after that, the catheter in my chest will be removed, and I'll be able to shower again without having to put a tarp over it.

My medical insurance company has approved me for a kidney transplant.  Now I have to go back up to Mayo for two or three days for further tests as part of the transplant evaluation.  However, because I recently received a liver, this moves me up the transplant priority list.

If this keeps up, I'm going to be the Six Million Dollar Man without the super-strength or the telescopic eye.

Anyway, there you go.  Thanks for being interested.

Quote of the Day - Sarah Hoyt Edition

I think the vast majority of people don’t feel the need to work above a subsistence level and that those of us who do are the mutants. - The Right to Go to Hell

Arguing With a Leftist

The writing bug is starting to bite again, so you may see some new content here, including (eventually) a mega-überpost I started back in October of last year, but for now just this little piece.

A few days ago someone at Quora tagged me with the question:

If both conservatives and liberals love USA, why there are such hostility and lack of trust towards each others?

I left an answer, but someone else left this one:

As a former Right turned Left, I assure you all there are smart and well educated people on each side. The difference is largely in an assumption or two.

The Right assumes people deserve and have a right to whatever assets they have, whether earned or given by prior generations. And this includes land, food, natural resources, water, etc.

The Left believes luck plays a big part in how wealth is currently distributed. They believe every human deserves some minimal share of water, food, clean air, and resources required to live. They point out that every business owes some of its success to the hard and soft infrastructure provided by governments.

I think I am being fair to both my former and current views here. All differences in political philosophy derive from the above.

I changed because I figured out I am a Liberal. Imagine a game of Monopoly where one player is given a pile of money, properties, houses and hotels by his father, along with some good game advice. The other players start with a few bucks and don't know what the rules are when they start out. Liberals don't think this is fair, Conservatives do.

I left this comment with the (forlorn) hope that it might generate a debate:

“Liberals don't think this is fair, Conservatives do.”

I disagree. We both agree it’s not fair. The difference is that Conservatives understand that the world is not fair.

“(Liberals) believe every human deserves some minimal share of water, food, clean air, and resources required to live.”

Conservatives know that the world owes us nothing. Liberals think they can make the world fair. All they need is the power to make it so.

Conservatives understand that the kind of power needed to “make the world fair” always ends badly.

Always.

Result? Crickets.  But I'd like to go ahead and unpack this - fairly accurate, I think - definition of the modern-day "liberal," née "Progressive."

The progressive complains that the world is not fair. They're absolutely right - it isn't. They believe that the Right thinks it is fair - we don't, but we understand that all the wishing in the world won't make it fair. Because they think the unfairness can be corrected, and the Right is opposed to making this correction, we're evil. That's where we part company. (There's more to it than that, but this I think is the fundamental disagreement.)  There's a disconnect at the very foundation of the ideological split between the two philosophies, and it goes back decades if not centuries.  After all, Kipling's The Gods of the Copybook Headings was published in 1919, just shortly after the Russian Revolution.

The fundamental split is that one side thinks that - given sufficient power (in the right hands, of course) - the world can be made fair.  That there doesn't need to be winners and losers. (Thus "participation trophies" and sports "games" where no one keeps score.) That it is the job of "society" to make everyone absolutely equal.  The other side believes that the world is fundamentally unfair and it's up to the individual to overcome that inherent unfairness.

Let's look a the literature throughout history.  Kipling in 1919.  Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron from 1961.  George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949).  The Greek fable of the Procrustean Bed from ancient history.  They're all warnings about trying to build Utopia.  What does the Left have?  So far as I can tell, Star Trek from 1966 where they don't use money, everyone has their needs met, and anyone can pursue whatever they like or do nothing at all.  Exactly what Karl Marx promised would be the outcome of Communism in The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867) - two other fantasies.   We saw this most recently in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (AOC) "Green New Deal" where she promised "Economic security to all who are unable or unwilling to work." (My emphasis.)

Remember Kipling?

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

Let's return to our new Leftist's assertion:

The Left believes luck plays a big part in how wealth is currently distributed. They believe every human deserves some minimal share of water, food, clean air, and resources required to live. They point out that every business owes some of its success to the hard and soft infrastructure provided by governments.

And:

The Right assumes people deserve and have a right to whatever assets they have, whether earned or given by prior generations. And this includes land, food, natural resources, water, etc.

What are you to assume from this? That the "hard and soft infrastructure provided by governments" unfairly benefits some, no? And therefore those beneficiaries then owe some of their unfairly gained wealth to those not so fortunate. Am I misunderstanding the "logic" here?

As economist Walter Williams has asked, how much of someone else's property is "your fair share"?  Who decides?  As others have asked, why is robbing someone at gunpoint illegal, but threatening someone with arrest by an armed agent of the government if they don't cough up money not?

This goes back to my constant harping on education.  I ran across this cartoon Facebook today:

Between 100 and 200 million, in point of fact.

Like they teach that these days.

Hell, they don't even teach about the Holocaust these days.  Why would they teach about socialism's other lethal failures?  Instead the schools indoctrinate students in Leftism and the result is that a majority of young people today view socialism favorably.  WaPo columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. recently wrote "Trump's War on Socialism Will Fail."  Of course it will.  The Long March Through the Institutions has worked out wildly better than either Rudi Dutschke, Antonio Gramsci or any of the members of the Frankfurt School could have imagined. (Two people and one organization that the Millenials don't know anything about, either.)

And we're paying for it now.

Many years ago Chris Byrne wrote "There can be no useful debate between two people with different first principles, except on those principles themselves." As illustrated above, our first principles are completely divergent, and there is no debate - useful or otherwise - anymore. Charles Krauthammer's observation that the Right thinks the Left is stupid, but the Left thinks the Right is evil was correct when he made it back in the 1990's, but today the Right is beginning to wake up to the fact that what the Left wants to accomplish - and is willing to use violence to achieve - is evil. When both sides "other" their opponents, can open warfare be far behind?

Quote of the Day - Stephen Green Edition

Once you’ve convinced yourself that your job is to protect the proles from themselves, any foul action you take becomes excusable, or even noble. That’s progressivism in a nutshell.

Yeah, I'm still here.

Your Moment of Zen

Been awhile:

Thanksgiving

Considering the fact that I'm upright and still breathing, I have a lot of thanks to give.  I thank all of the people at Mayo who took care of me. I thank my family for supporting and caring for me.  I thank the company I still work for.  And I thank all of you out there who prayed, wished me well, and even donated to the GoFundMe my daughter ran - that was pretty damned humbling, y'all. 

But most of all, I thank my wife for taking care of me throughout the last 23 years - and the last year especially. 

So this Thanksgiving think about all the gifts you have every day - a family to care for and care for you, a roof over your head, food on your table, a job to go to, and - especially - your health.  If you have these things, you are rich indeed.

And a further bit of advice:

Happy Halloween!

Enemies Foreign and Domestic

Every member of Congress, every elected official, and most Federal employees have to swear an oath before taking office. That oath requires them to swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Every single Democrat who wants to eliminate or circumvent any portion of the Constitution without going through the proper amendment process as established BY the Constitution is by definition a liar, and an enemy of the state.  They have used the Supreme Court to effect the changes they could not get through legislation, and now that power is threatened by the elevation of Judge Kavanaugh to associate justice. If Trump is able to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg with the Senate solidly in the control of Republicans, the Left will come completely unglued, I think.  As Vanderleun said in my previous post:  "From the Left’s point of view, it’s either accept defeat at the hands of people they truly believe are subhuman or start shooting the subhumans."

Those on the Left have repeatedly bemoaned the fact that the Constitution stands in the way of the "Progress" they are pushing - the Electoral College, for instance, Article II, Section 1, Clause 3.  Want to abolish it?  Amendment process:  Article V. The way they've always accomplished end-runs around the Constitution has been not through the Legislative and Executive branches - their ideas tend to be unpopular and so cannot gather sufficient votes - but through the Federal Courts, and the Supreme Court in particular.  If Notorious RBG is replaced by a strict Constitutionalist, then that avenue will be cut off for the next couple of decades at least.

If you want an example of the "Living Document" perversion of the Constitution, I give you the Fifth Amendment's 'Taking" clause:  "...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."  When written, the original public understanding of "public use" meant for roads, sewers, etc. - things the .gov had to do to improve access or services for the people.  Just three Supreme Court cases gutted that.  The first, Berman v. Parker (1954) changed the definition of  "public use" to "public benefit."  In 1984's Hawaii v. Midkiff, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's first majority opinion, redefined "public benefit" to "fairness."  The outcome was not what was intended. (This is my shocked face.)  The third case, Kelo v. New London (2005) redefined it again to mean "increased property tax revenue."  That one didn't turn out as intended either. In fact, a sitting Connecticut Supreme Court Justice apologized to Suzette Kelo for his vote on the case in the aftermath.

Just three court cases altered the meaning of the "Takings" clause of the 5th Amendment, by redefining the meaning of the words "public use" - that's the "Living Document" process, which the Supreme Court is there to STOP, not enable.  As Justice Scalia once asked,

What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean?

Apparently. One little nibble at a time.

ETA:  See this post from 2011. Howard Dean: "Progressives are the only ones to ensure there is no going back to business as usual. The cooperation between our parties has intensified significantly in the last two-and-a-half years, with regular contact at Congress, Senate, Party and Foundation levels. Efforts have been remarkable on both sides.  The attendance of both President Clinton and myself at the Global Progressive Forum World Conference in Brussels in 2009 I think is eloquent and proves this point very well.  Many common initiatives have been launched."  This announced the Democrat Party as a domestic enemy, as the establishment of a socialist system requires the complete eradication of our Constitutional Republic in favor of a global socialist government.

They are all in violation of their oaths. 

I'm Afraid, Part II

Gerard Vanderleun at American Digest has written a very frightening post entitled "Civil War? If It Starts It Will Be Uglier Than Anyone Can Imagine." Excerpt:

How does it start? Nobody knows but given the misappropriation of power to the USSC, and wholesale cultural revolution that has been imposed through the USSC over the past 60 years, this is likely the flashpoint. Kavanaugh is the primer, and the main charge will be when Trump replaces Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Left is going to come completely unglued since they know that they will be closed off to cultural imposition through the courts for the lifetimes of everyone in the “back 9” of life.

They will be all-in on the Brown Wave voting them into power, to which DJT is a direct threat.

I’ve tried but failed to recall a single secular-progressive political movement of any note that has accepted defeat at the ballot box and supported the electoral results. Our Sec-Progs are on the cusp of realizing such a defeat.

That’s why I think we are close. From the Left’s point of view, it’s either accept defeat at the hands of people they truly believe are subhuman or start shooting the subhumans.

I have nothing to add at this time, but I will return to this in my next überpost.

Quote of the Day - 4/11/13

From an LA Times Op-Ed by Burt Prelusky:

Frankly, I don't know what it is about California, but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I'm not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we're Number One. There's no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Maxine Waters, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on "Macbeth". The four of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of blab. You don't know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words.

A Half-Bubble Off Plumb?

Okay, this post is about how I can believe in the power of prayer and still remain a small "a" atheist.

I am alive today, I am completely convinced, because thousands of people who I know and who I am completely unfamiliar with were pulling for me to survive. They prayed, they thought hard, they all wished me to recover.

I cannot believe in a God that allows young children to suffer agonizing death. Nothing in me can find justification for that to occur. Therefore I must believe that whatever "greater power" exists in the universe, it must be unconscious, uncaring, in fact not a thinking being at all. It's just a mechanism inherent in the design,if you wish to call it that, of the universe.

The three laws of thermodynamics state in effect:

You can't win
You can't break even
You can't get out of the game.

Those are the laws of entropy, the measurement of total disorder in a closed system. However if this were factually accurate then stars and galaxies could not form in our universe. All it would have is a cloud of cooling gas. So in localized areas, reversal of entropy is possible as long as the total entropy of the closed system continues to be the same.

Now It gets weird.

In subatomic physics they have broken the components of atoms down to particles called quarks. Each particle has multiple dimensions described by physicists with names like flavor, color, spin, etc. If two such quarks share precisely the same dimensions, as I weakly understand it, and one quark is affected by an outside influence, its matching quark, no matter how far away, responds as if it has received the same influence. It does not matter how far apart the two quarks are.

This is the idea behind Science Fiction's instantaneous communicator. It violates Einstein's "no faster than light" limitation. It means that instantaneous communication across vast distances is possible. It has been tested in laboratories and is freaking out the physics community. It may mean that faster-than-light travel is possible.

Here's my theory: 

We as thinking beings are able by thinking the same thing at the same time, to affect local entropy levels and reverse entropy in a localized space. In my particular case, me.

Scott Adams, author of the Dilbert comic strip, set himself a goal through what he calls "the power of positive thinking" to become the highest-paid cartoonist in America. The odds against him were astronomical, but apparently he pulled it off. By himself. (But maybe his fans helped.)

I am firmly convinced that all these people out there wishing me best, praying for my recovery, and asking thousands of others who do not know me at all to do the same are responsible for reversing entropy and saving my life.

You can accept that or reject it, I do not care. This explanation works for me. I cannot stop thinking in a manner I consider to be rational.

Please argue away in the comments.

American Politics

Charles Krauthammer: "To understand the workings of American politics you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil."




You don't discuss with evil, you don't debate with evil, you don't listen to evil. You destroy evil. Unless we convince that small minority - 10 maybe 20 percent of the population convinced that only they know what is right for everyone else - to shut up and sit down and let the adults talk, things could get really really ugly. Oh they'll get their Marxist-promised Revolution, but they don't realize they'll be the first against the wall.

I'm Afraid

After following he Kavanaugh hearings I see both sides of the aisle do what they do best. Unfortunately what they do best has very little to do with reality.

About 20% of the population of this country believes that they know what is right for everyone else. Another 20% believes that the first 20% is insane.

Instead of what we had in our first Civil War which was state against state over a specific ideal, what we have now is urban versus rural and I don't think the urbans realize just how many rurals there are. The rurals do not wish to be controlled by the urbans. And we will not put up with it if they try to impose their will on us.

What I am afraid of is that the Left believes that they can get the Marxist revolution that they were promised would lead to their inevitable socialist  utopia. They're out of their minds. What they're asking for is a bloodbath that they don't realize is coming. When the food shipments stop going into the cities it's going to get very, very ugly. The leftist do not consider the people who live in flyover country to be human beings. But we're the ones armed to the teeth who will not put up with being controlled.

I'm sorry to say I don't see any way out of this, and it scares the shit out of me.