Still Alive!

Plugging away in Utah. I hope your world is beuatiful.

Checking In

I have been inactive here since last Christmas, and blogger passed me by with platform changes and such. I will have to see about getting my blogroll recreated... All is as well as can be. I hope your world is okay, too.

News You Can Use

If you are making Krusteaze pancakes above 4000' add a quarter teaspoon of baking powder and a teaspoon of sugar per cup of mix. Make the water measure equal to the dry measure and combine until just wet all the way through. Lumpy is okay. I like to use our Orgreenic skillet for meats and breads but since I only have a ten incher that means it takes awhile to cook up silver dollar size cakes. If the Orgreenic coating isn't quite seasoned and you get sticking cakes, just chase a tiny bit of butter around the bottom of the pan with your turner and return to cooking. It doesn't take but a drop, and you might consider giving the cake a little more time to brown, too. Oh - and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Who Knew?

...the end of the rainbow is in Rock Canyon?

Independence Day, 2012.

Kind of hard to believe that our present situation began based on the ideas explained so clearly here. Liberty without responsibility never lasts.

The End of the Road to Serfdom

*

The Belmont Club Is Always Worth a Read

I am working up in Salt Lake again and have few hours to call my own. Richard Fernandez is always worth the time spent:

"Most of us express these choices by deciding what churches to attend or what practices to observe. And there’s an end to it. If “separation of Church and state” or “religious freedom” mean anything it is that there are no privileged points of view. Yet that’s the trouble. Some must always be more equal than others. Bill Ayers never loses an opportunity to tell people what they must and must not do."

One Slight Correction

"The US, Asia and Latin America are irked at the reluctance of Europe’s rich creditor states to put out the raging fires on their own doorstep. “The Europeans need to do more. That would unlock more support for the IMF from the other G20 countries,” said Augustin Carstens, Mexico’s central bank governor."

There are no "rich" countries in Europe. It's all paper and it's all inflated.

Reblog: "Everybody in my area was ready to go"

Do not measure us by our political leadership.

Shoes. Or, "How Did This Happen?"

"Have you ever wondered where your Flying Car is, now that you live in the Age of the Jetson’s, dead reader? Answer: you sold it for a mess of pottage. When civilization abandoned institutional Christianity for liberalism, then abandoned Christian notions of decency and individualism for socialism, and then abandoned Christian notions of chivalry and truth for political correctness, and then abandoned Christian notions of the objectivity of truth, beauty and virtue for the roaring abyss of nihilism, civilization lost the engine and motive of its progress."

Read the rest.

(via the Sidelines at American Digest)

The Big Game

Congratulations, New York Giants.

I bagged on the selection of Madonna for being the half time entertainer.

I was wrong. She put on a good show and didn't take herself too seriously.

Truthfully, I ask you, who cannot get behind "World Peace"?

Peace out, y'all.

Non Surprise Opportunity

You know it is going to happen.

At some point, it will become public knowledge that the Occupy brownshirts are taxpayer funded just like Acorn ( or whatever they call themselves now) was.

I Wonder Why He's Not On The Purser's List?

Gagdad Bob:

Now, what is truth? Well, for one thing, it is the thing that results in bad stuff happening if we fail to appreciate it. This applies to every level of reality, from the lowest (i.e., physics) to the highest (i.e., spirit). Ignore the law at your own peril, whether it is the law of gravity ("I can fly!") or the law of humility ("I'm a god!).

So, we are always free to disobey the law. But "Failure to teach and practice any of these principles can lead to an underestimation of human dignity, a decline in culture, the abuse of individuals and groups of individuals, and an underestimation of ourselves and our potential in life."

And "Failure to teach and practice several of these principles will most certainly lead to widespread abuse and a general decline in culture" (Spitzer).

Take the example of the Islamic world. Why is it so systematically f*cked up? Conversely, why is America that shining city on the globe? The latter (mostly) obeys the law (or used to, anyway, before the ascendence of the left). The former is a metacosmic scofflaw.

Via American Digest.

If I Had The Patience (Anymore)

I might write something like this:

And that is where the real concern arises. For those who wish an overturn of western culture and the rising of a worldwide Islamic "republic," these basic principles have to go. For the radical Islam growing in numbers and voice in Europe, particularly places like France and Holland, the concepts of western civilization are at odds with what they believe and wish to see implemented. For them, equality leads to corruption, democracy leads to the unlearned commanding law, and liberty leads to sin. It is "un-Muslim" to have a civilization based on anything but submission to Allah and his prophet.

Want to fix something? Read the manual.

Sunday Reflection: When muddling through is the best you can hope for | Glenn Harlan Reynolds | Columnists | Washington Examiner

Sunday Reflection: When muddling through is the best you can hope for | Glenn Harlan Reynolds | Columnists | Washington Examiner

Happy New Year folks.

If the world situation was the result of mere opportunism and political corruption I might be more in agreement with the Blogfather.

I believe that Western Civ may well be suicidal. Our American political class is a fail across ethical, technical, and competence measures. The fault is no "them" to levy blame for any specific failing. We have failed as a nation, failed in the primary duty born by citizens.

Being free means being responsible. The founders built our republic on that foundation. We have walked away from the rock and now swim in a swamp of our own making.

The future is not written.

If You Doubted The Country Was Under Attack...

LightSquared.


I've commented on many different subjects in this space over the last few years, and many of those times were merely subjective rants.

The threat to national security and our economy presented by LightSquared is a different breed of cat entirely. The first time I saw a demonstration of GPS was probably 1986 or 7. At that demonstration multiple receivers were set up over both known and unknown points and then allowed to observe the GPS constellation for several hours over two days. This was because there were very few satellites up at that time, and solutions required at least four satellites in view.

It wasn't only the observations that took a long time. The tech rep running the demonstration had the first 286 PC I had ever seen, and it took him hours to reduce the raw data to positional information.

The GPS spectrum is a national security asset. It is as critical to our "just in time" national logistic system as is the internet. Real time, accurate ground navigation makes many businesses not only profitable, but possible.

LightSquared's technology is no different than any other cellular service. By being given access to the same frequency spectrum that GPS lives on LightsSquared avoids the costs paid for bandwidth any other broadband outfit has to pay.

But by being Friends of Democrats they are angling to enter the arena on the backs of the U.S. taxpayer. They (LightSquared) know full well their technology has been proven to disrupt GPS service (go back and read the article) but they don't care.

Solyndra wasn't about solar power. The GM/Chrysler bailout wasn't about jobs, and neither was the stimulus.

A coup. Not an administration.

Back to the Future

When I was a newly minted Marine running around Camp Pendleton in 1980 I noticed you couldn't march ten feet in a straight line without tripping over a Chrysler Dodge vehicle. GSA cars, M880 pick up trucks, Ram Chargers in grim OD paint jobs...

But there were also dozens, scores, hundreds of D50 pick up trucks, and later K cars and Rampages. The Feds bailed out Chrysler in '79. 60K automotive jobs went away, never to come back, but Chrysler did return to profitability in the mid eighties and ran that way until the Great Recession.

The news that Chrysler "paid back" their bailout seven years early was no shocka to anybody working for the feds.

Now I find that the public (cost to you and me, whether we ever sit in a Volt or not) cost for each Chevy Volt works out to about $250,000 each, what with subsidies and current Federal purchases.

That's pretty spendy for a coal fired golf cart that sometimes bursts into flames three days after a fender bender.

I keep hearing "What cannot go on forever, won't" but I'm really beginning to wonder what that bubble is going to sound like when it pops.

Merry Christmas.

Feel Good Post of the Day!

Beginning of my comment on Jeff Goldstein's post on Attorney General Holder's latest appearance before Congress:

"Even at this late stage of collapse most Americans just sort of assume that when an especially egregious and blatant crime is committed that there will in fact be rough men with badges, guns, and who are possessed of a strong sense of duty who will stand up and bring the perpetrators to justice."

Septermber 22, 2011

Richard Fernandez:

The market is writing down the value of the world economy. Right across the board. It is making a judgement on what they think the future is worth. By recent numbers, not much. Not just because policymakers have gotten it wrong about the “root cause” of terrorism, or the Euro; but also about “Too Big To Fail”, population policy, multiculturalism, a crippling environmentalism and Global Warming, to name a few. The financial, national security and educational systems of the world are in utter collapse because they are stuffed with lies, which even when they are shown to be obviously false suck up trillions of dollars in their pursuit . And nothing will turn the global elites from continuing their ruinous path until they have spent the last nickle and dime they can lay their hands on.

got food?

(via American Digest)

Required Reading : Jerry Pournelle

An essay that drips great steaming piles of common sense.

Do not despair.

Here's the link. (Via American Digest)