Positive Waves

From time to time, Mrs. Utah chides me for being cynical. Everyone gets an opinion, and I value hers most among the people I know.

But she might be just wide of the mark.

The following is a comment left here, in response to a question about cultural evolution:

TmjUtah said...

The essential unit of human advancement is the individual.

Societies that nurture healthy, responsible individuals who are able to realize the benefits of their labors, inventions, or art... those societies leave the others behind.

Free men, in free markets, change worlds for the better. For themselves and their neighbors.

Until they forget that it is the individual that counts first.

Our FOUNDING PRINCIPLES pivot on the absolutely radical idea that before any strongman, before any chief, before any apparatus of The State, stands The Individual, who PERMITS the State to exist, and only exist to perform specific, enumerated duties.

But the individual must be of stern enough stuff to handle the responsibility inherent with being responsible for his own governance. Franklin and Jefferson and to a lesser extent Adams were all right; it would be failure of citizenship, not conscious machination of tyrants, that most threatened the Republic. They were simply off in their time frame.

Principles are just goals, and the absolute very best a mere human can ever hope to accomplish in pursuit of individual achievement is to make progress in the right direction. The pursuit of perfection to the absence of any other standard is always fatal. We are only men.

We are all expendable. But it was expendable men who built the pyramids, harnessed steam, and walked on the moon, too... so there is always that level of "just men" to aim for.

Have a fine week. Smile. It's contagious!

The Greatest Instapundit Post Evah!

Follow the linky.

Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act...

...isn't that like a Dillinger-Kelly-Floyd-Barker Bank Security Act?

Message for Mr. Cloward and Mr. Piven:

Your train is in the station.

I Could Take Subtitles For This...

Even French subtitles.

Looks like a hoot.

How Did THAT Happen???

Via Instapundit, John Hindraker opines that some folks might be catching on that the President might not be who he was represented to be...


... which indicates that a lot of them just might not notice being raped until the baby was delivered, as well.


In the words of the great tech support gurus: you must RTFB.

Summer Half Past

Still here. Still kicking the survey and layout gig up in Salt Lake.

I can't wait to see what happens next.

Easy Call To Make. No Good Outcome.

General McChrystal should be relieved, immediately.

Failure to do so is just icing on the cake of incompetence and and ineptness that is this administration.

The President of the United States has never hesitated to exercise civilian control over the military when the need was clear and present. Gen. McChrystal's public statements are disloyal to a degree that makes it necessary to relieve and retire him immediately. That the general's staff was poorly led enough to become ammunition in the same article is merely additional proof of the lack of leadership and absence of character that permeates the organization.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are lost. They are over as was the American involvement in Vietnam ended with the ink wet on the paper of the Paris Peace accords. No Democrat congress/Socialis Marxist administration has any interest in dealing with resurgent Islam; less even than in defending our sovereignty or our borders. All that remains where (UPDATE) Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran (END UPDATE) is concerned is to see where the political and human costs will be ultimately levied. A military leader in McChrystal's position, knowing this reality, had two options: push for militarily efficient retreat, and call it what it was, or to resign.

I have no clue what McChrystal thought whining to the Rolling Stone would do for himself, or for the military he thought he might be helping...

His actions make MacArthur's insubordination to Truman look like a class move.

Fire him, or just cement the accurate perception by the world that Obama is incapable of executive command.

Poorly Yet Honestly Presented

I believe the relationship that now exists between the citizenry and our government - state and local - has evolved to a situation strongly akin to the policy known as mercantilism that was in large part the proximal cause of our original revolution.

Our contemporary political class behaves more as rulers than representatives. Their observed conduct in economic matters defies logic; is it simple corruption, or merely ideological fantasy, that drives their agendas?

The incumbency rate of legislators coupled with the rise of power of public employee unions explains the vicious circle of payoffs to the latter in return for donations to the former. Yes, that's a quid for the pro...

I know the analogy is weak, but at bottom we have a ruling class that has defined the good of the nation as what is best for itself, right now. The elite act as if they are managers of a static environment, and the world is anything but. Something (more) is going to give, and soon.

Epic Fail

First it was the boot on the throat posturing, now this.

Jimmy Carter cries tears of gratitude into his pillow every single night this national nightmare continues.

(via Drudge)

A Little Gratitude Here

Via Instapundit, I have been gently reminded (again) that we do in fact live in wondrous times:




Tomorrow, please honor those that gave all but always remember:

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."

George S. Patton

I live in a culture where the concept of heroism has been sufficiently corrupted so that not merely incompetent, corrupt (or both) men and women but even outright evil individuals and groups have risen to positions of national power.

In spite of that, we still do live in wondrous times. The fight isn't over until the your ashes are in the wind. Never, ever give up.

Return

We had a blast.

Mom sat in this guy's chair.

I sat in on the welcome aboard part of the tour and actually traded some "we had to do this" stories about construction with two Boeing engineers; if I remember correctly the younger of the two gentleman was the program manager for the SGANT system being installed on the ISS as we spoke.

Mom spoke with THREE astronauts. She has pictures to prove it, too!

I got to touch a moon rock. Still get shivers thinking about that.

Three thousand miles.

Mount Up!

Mrs. Utah has a slot at the NASA tweet up at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, Wednesday May 18th. They offered up one hundred seats and have over six hundred thousand followers. She won one! She's been following NASA since the sixties and this is the second to last shuttle mission; this is real bucket list stuff.

This was all so sudden that I didn't think I'd be able to swing (or afford) the time to go with her, but my boss got wind of what was up and kicked my ass off the job all next week. "Go with her, you moron, because we open the next project in June and we'll be back on fifty-five hour weeks, minimum."

And I was way too conservative on withholding last year, so Uncle Joe got to hold way too much of my money. The refund arrives in our account Tuesday so it's

ROAD TRIP!!!

time.

We will stop in Waco to visit my brother, and then on to Houston where we will be staying with one of Val's friends. I'm going to meet up with an hold high school buddy, too. When we last met, the Knack was bleeding edge.

Where does the time go?

We leave tomorrow at 0430. Y'all have a fine week.

Update

Just ducky.

Attitude Check

Happy as a clam.

Check

I believe that the timing of the Goldman Sachs suit is near the end of - and possibly the climax - of a decades - long list of actions planned, and now executed, by Leftist agents intent on destroying the Republic.

Destroy the national economy by accumulating debt four or five times greater than the annual GDP, compounded by unbelievably onerous taxation spiced with a shotgun blast of mandates, regulations, new entitlements, and oh by the way destroy the currency while they are at it...

Check.

Destroy the populations faith in free markets by regulating them out of existence over decades of incremental nationalization.

Then blame business for the collapse. Show trials to follow. Followed (immediately, as we have seen in the last couple of days) by even more onerous government siezure of control.

Check.

Destroy the faith of the citizenry in the representative republic form of government.

Well, if Obama, Reid, and Pelosi don't alarm you, you probably don't pay attention anyway...

Check.

Destroy the moral, ethical, and scholarly foundations of what a citizen should be, aiming instead, via public education, to create classes of victims conveniently manipulated as needed by whatever Leftist faction floats to the top of the current political cycle.

Go ask Bill Ayers what a Weatherman would do if he could end up writing curricula for public schools. Bring a camera; he'll be happy to talk to you.




Being right is supposed to bring ... joy? Satisfaction? Not here, not now.

Correspondence

To whom it may concern -

Today marks the last time I open a newspaper that I asked to be delivered to my doorstep only to be insulted. And then insulted again.

Our subscription is in the name (of my wife). Cancel it. We will be calling on Monday during business hours to confirm this change.

I used to open up those random copies of City Weekly I found blowing through the streets of Salt Lake just to read the breathless, trapped behind the lines editorials in the front of their cage liner. The casual hate and self righteousness was always good, too.

Your paper makes the vaporing of those overgrown dorm room communists look like journalism.

I'll have to go back to using junk mail circulars for fireplace tinder and drop cloths for painting/hobby projects. The average intelligence of individuals and grasp of current events by the occupants of this house will be vastly improved by the absence of your product from our home.

Sincerely,

A.R. Jones
Orem, Utah

(Edited slightly)

*UPDATE*

"This message is a confirmation that we have received your transaction request. Your request will be completed within two days. Thank you for the opportunity to be of service to you.

Customer Service Department
Newspaper Agency Company"

In Other Venues

Mr. Cobb asks a question I have addressed repeatedly over the last few years:

"I want to know the financial meltdown scenario that makes domestic politics turn violent.

What do you think? Why is nobody thinking the unthinkable?"

See Van Der Luen's Sidelines for more comment.

The socialists are way, way past being out of other peoples' money.

Now we just wait.

It's Official!

Worst.President.EVER.

The way a strategic deterrent works is that you publish the rules and then follow them. Simple rules. Known consequences. The dead certainty that actions will bring crushing retaliation.

Say goodbye to all that. I believe that this president has never won a fist fight. He might have scuttled the odd career or assassinated a character or two on his way up the thug life ladder in Chi. But the President of the United States has just telegraphed to the world that he thinks that "smart" or worse, "clever", counts for something on the field he's just stepped upon.

Simple. Known. Accepted. Well, we'll see how high the pile is, I guess.

At least now I understand now why Joe Biden is the vice president. Barak Obama picked the Senator from Delaware because Obama valued his keen intellect.

Somewhere, Jimmy Carter is weeping quiet tears of gratitude. He's off the hook.

Will the Democratic congressional caucus be able to fill a bridge table after 2012? If the world was fair - no, not a chance... but the only way out for the Dems is to be ready to impeach Obama at the drop of a hat, and then drop it themselves. And that's not going to happen - not with O being the second black president and all.

Not that the Republicans have anything going for them. But not being a Democrat might just be the most important quality a candidate or incumbent can have going into 2010 and beyond.

I've sold my old burb to the recycler, FedExed oldest Goddesses' long board to the East Coast, and repaired a niggling bolt issue on a good friend's Mosin Nagant M44.

Have a fine evening.

Batching It

Mrs. TmjUtah and the Last Goddess are on the road to Cabo!

My youngest daughter pulled almost 4.0 the last two years of high school and has been taking college courses this last year as well.

Mrs. Utah and I decided that special effort and results demanded recognition and reward beyond a nice dinner out or a reasonably used economy car... so the Goddess is cruising the Mexican Riviera for seven days, and Mom gets to get out of the house during the last snows of the winter.

Me? I get to finish my garages. The one spanning Block 75 just off Temple Square in Salt Lake, and the modest cinder block affair off the back of the Home of the Team here in south Orem.

I have BIG PLANS... but to name them would kill them. Look for an update in these spaces.

Off to the vet to get our allergy cat shot (with her SERUM. Geeze. Happens every Saturday, folks.)

I'm still looking for a buyer for my old 'Burb; want a parts price (it runs) and then I'll change that gelt right into Mosins or bulk ammo.

On the road....

21 March 2010

You may have woken up this morning to enjoy your rights and privileges as a citizen of the world's most successful and powerful republic. Make no mistake about it: your status is not what it was when you were enjoying your waffles and coffee. Citizen? Not really; your ability to pursue your happiness, your responsibility for your own freedom, has been denied by The State.

Subjects? Serfs? I'm not sure what we are now.

Citizens were understood to have rights inherent and inviolable; rights granted by a creator. Government was to be an expression of the people, established to execute those activities generally beyond the scope of the individual. Government was defined by the Constitution, and its duties enumerated.

And all other powers reserved to the states, or the people.

That's over now. We have arrived at that moment where the government that promises to give everyone everything they desire gets down to the business of taking everything we have. Don't know if we are subjects. Merely wards of the state? But we're not citizens. Not in the eyes of the Democratic executive and legislative office holders who earlier this evening nationalized our health care sector.

Oh, and the financing of higher education.

There are judicial challenges on the horizon, for sure... but I've got two words for you: Eric. Holder.

Welcome to the Coup.

I don't feel fine. Not at all.