Another Lost Generation

I am sadly coming to the difficult conclusion that the current generation of coming-of-age Americans has been so inculcated with PC hogwash and liberal newspeak that, as a group, their ability to think independently and affirm our nation's traditional values has been irreparably lost. Witness the recent mess at the University of Missouri.

The evidence is rife ... the plethora of popular bubble-headed glitterati, disturbing college campus demonstrations advocating repressive policies, the tidal wave of teenage illicit drug usage, the continued crowding-out of once-basic college education by meaningless feel-good courses, the youth vote helping to twice elect President Obama, the ennui and ignorance of this generation toward American history and our place on the World stage, and their overweening selfie vanity.

Yes, there was at least one previous American "lost generation" ... those born at the turn of the Twentieth Century. This group ushered in the Roaring Twenties and its consequence, the Great Depression. However, this, in turn, brought us to the Greatest Generation which turned our economy around and won World War II. So, all may not be truly lost. The legacy of this current bunch of misguided misfits might well be a reawakening of moral rationality and patriotic energy in those who then follow our current Lost Generation.

I certainly pray so.

Paper Doll

"I want to find a paper doll I can call my own ..." It is funny how life imitates art. Now a man in China with terminal cancer has married a blow-up sex doll so that, when he passes, he will not leave a grieving widow ... see: UK Mirror Article.

Predictably, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both have already Tweeted and posted on Facebook that they are "evolving" on human/sex-doll marriages.

Social Media POTUS

"The media is the message," so saith Marshall McLuhan. And President Obama gets the message. He now has a staff of around twenty dweebs who keep his image flooding all the social media platforms in order to connect with those who rely on this new communication technology to get their news and opinion ... see: New York Times Story. These message multipliers allow the POTUS (President of the United States) to reach, through stealthy surrogates, a far larger audience for his agenda. Even though he rarely performs these postings, they are made to appear so ... and this lends a super-human panache to our president.

Is this fair? In our new gimmicky world ...  unconstrained by a sense of proportion or priorities ... of course it is fair. NFL teams now charge our government millions to pay tribute, during their half-time shows to our fallen military men and women ... see: Huffington Post Article. So, if nothing is really now what it appears to be ... and our president doesn't write the Teleprompter speeches he performs ...why shouldn't his postings on social media also be an artifice?

Lies

If you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. -- Joseph Goebbels paraphrased


There seems to this observer to be more lies told these days than I can remember. And so, to honor this meme, I have, as is my habit, decided to offer up a taxonomy of this mendacity:

Fibs -- "No, I didn't eat the rest of the Oreo cookies."

White Lies -- "No dear, that pants suit doesn't make you look hippy."

Lawyerly Lies -- "I didn't have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, not a single time." ("Actually, I had sex with her multiple times.")

Political Lies -- "Under the Affordable Care Act, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor."

Self-serving Lies -- "I am 1/8 Cherokee Indian."

Popular Delusions -- "Carbon dioxide is a pollutant gas."

Propaganda -- "This agreement will prevent Iran from getting the atomic bomb."

Whoppers -- "This hamburger only has 125 calories."

Our Drug Scourge

Deaths from drug overdoses in the United States are far outpacing those from guns or auto accidents ... see: Breitbart Article. Isn't it interesting that President Obama is only obsessed with one of these societal scourges ... firearms ... which are protected by the Second Amendment of our Constitution ... and skipping illicit drug abuse... which isn't.

I could be wrong but I don't recall his highness ever focusing his steely gaze on our devastating and growing drug problems. Could this be because he himself once was also a major enjoyer of such illegal pharmaceuticals? Matter of fact, this administration is now hell-bent on releasing 6,000 three-time drug crime losers from prison ... I suspect this is politically motivated ... and a move that we might all come to regret ... see: New York Times Article. (And, as it turns out, the vast majority of these "drug user" prisoners were often violent drug dealers who plea-bargained down their sentences.)

How come our president so very often seems to be ignoring harsh realities and leading us, Pied Piper like, to remedy issues which are only high on his own political agenda? Is he so misguided and ideological that he can't emphasize our country's real scourges?

rewddit Gallery CCCXXXVI

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Norway Winter

Horn Bouquet

1959 Bowden Spacelander.

Tanzanite

Fancy Free

Global Cooling

Apparently, from the 3% of scientists who don't believe in the CO2-driven global warming mythology, there are some who believe that the ten year period from 2030 to 2040 will bring a mini ice age. This will be due to our sun going into its periodic quiet period ... see: UK Express Story. This freeze would mimic to a lesser extent the Maunder Minimum ... a seventy year period of extremely cold weather that occurred in the late 1600's when the River Thames was frozen solid.

The main author of this study, Professor Valentia Zharkova of Northumbria University (along with other associated researchers) have gone into hiding until after the upcoming climate change conference in Paris ... least she becomes the target of President Obama's wrath.

In a related story, it has now been revealed ... by NASA no less ... that the sea ice in Antarctica is growing rather than shrinking as many have reported ... and has recently reached a record high ... see: NASA Story.

I think I might go into hiding too.

Afterward: see also: Powerline Blog.

Tinfoil-Hat Time

An astrophysicist at CalTech claims to have found possible evidence of a parallel universe ... see: USA Today Story. Supposition of one or more parallel universes, with different rules of existence, have kept science fiction writers busy for decades. But, if this new evidence bears fruit, all types of new fanciful suppositions should now come bursting forth into the tinfoil-hat kook-a-sphere. For instance, how about the thought that, in this parallel universe, people can self-identify as black even though they have no African DNA. Or perhaps, men with penises can claim to be females and demand to be given access to women's locker rooms. Or perhaps one religion in this parallel universe can crucify apostates, burn them alive, enslave them, or demand tribute payments from them ... yet still be called a " religion of peace."

There, there might even be beings who chop up their unborn claiming that they are only hunks of protoplasm. Or, perhaps the prevailing economic rule states that "to each according to his need ... and, from each, according to his ability." In this wonderful parallel universe, the gas that is the fundamental basis of all life, such as our CO2, can be government-labeled a "pollutant." And there the wife of a former supreme leader might feel she should be the next supreme leader only because she lacks the equivalent of a Y chromosome.

This alternate universe surlely has a lot of strange goings-on.

Orange Jump-Suit Government

Our "uniter not a divider" president is just about to issue an executive order requiring those hiring new government employees to overlook prior criminal records ... see: Breitbart Article. Now this ukase makes perfect sense to me ... as a great many of those already in government service (including many elected members) seem to be of a criminal persuasion. Thus ... President Obama is only promoting homogeneity in the ranks of his underlings.

A Country for [Rich] Old Men

Once upon a time very wealthy individuals used their largess to endow libraries, concert halls and museums. Not so anymore.

It seems now that rich old men don't want to leave our world to itself. George Soros is suspected of being behind the massive immigration of Syrians into Europe ... see: Breitbart Story ... and Warren Buffet believes that that our supreme liar Hillary Clinton (or even Bernie Sanders) would make a crackerjack president ... see: Business Insider Story. And, of course there are Harry Reid's bugbears, the Koch brothers ... who want conservative principles to prevail once again in this country. Of course, there are many other people of wealth who believe that this money gives them license to run things politically.

And even our younger plutocrats are fighting the existing social order. Bill Gates strangely now believes that the only solution to our world's problems is Socialism ... see: The U.K. Independent ... and everyone knows how multi-billionaire Donald Trump is grabbing the headlines with his thoughts for national change.

How come amassing vast piles of money in business suggests to these folks that all their ideas deserve to be worshiped?.

reddit Gallery CCXXXV -- Halloween

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Halloween in Ireland

This Year;s Pumpkin Carving

Cheshire Cat

Jack o Lantern

Man in Mask

School Shootings

Liberals seem to have but three solutions to damp down gun violence at schools ... universal background checks, compulsory gun registrations and the outlawing of "assault" rifles with large magazines ... as if the gun commits these heinous crimes. All of these constraints would, in my opinion, do little to stop the rash of school shootings we have recently experienced ... and they would do absolutely nothing to retard the criminals and gang bangers from their wild-west mayhem.

The solution to the rash of urban drive-by shootings would be to start or reinstate stop and frisk ... and the discouraging of the "Black Lives Matter" anti-police movement.

But insofar as fixing the school shooting plague our society needs to focus on the shooter ... and this requires a trade-off between individual liberty and societal good. Thus, I have the following suggestions:

- Relax the HIPAA rules that prohibit mental health workers from reporting incidents of patients who have indicated that they want to kill others. This reporting could be done through a panel of mental-health experts who would review the evidence and decide if it met a threshold of sufficient danger that required further action. If so, then the proper authorities would be notified.

- All American social-media systems should be required to have filters in place that identify individuals who issue radical anti-social threats on their postings ... and then provide information to help law enforcement zero in on these possible killers.

- Existing gun registration systems should be scanned to identify individuals or relatives of individuals who are buying large quantities of guns and ammunition in a short period of time.

- School administrators should be asked to place in a database public data on possible nut cases under their authority ... excluding any information which had not been collected under strict formal disciplinary procedures.

A data mining system should then be constructed that melds the information from these four filters to rank threat levels for possible school shooters ... who then would be interviewed further to determine exactly how dangerous they are ... and incarcerated if necessary. Thus, authorities might proactively reduce or eliminate these school-shooting threats.
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Juxtaposition LVIII

Arab Immigrants in Slovenia

Aemy Ants

Am I Wrong?

According to Hillary Clinton's sworn testimony at last week's Benghazi hearings, Chris Stevens did not have her private e-mail address so that he might send a plea for extra security directly to her. However, it was also revealed during her testimony that Sid Blumenthal had sent Hillary e-mails to this same address that contained certain intelligence on Libya that Hillary then forwarded to Chris Stevens for comment. How in Lucifer's name could Chris Stevens reply with any comments to Hillary if he didn't have her return private e-mail address?

We all know how e-mail systems work. Apparently, Hillary Clinton has perjured herself again for the umpteenth time.

Am I wrong?

A Tale of Two Parties

The two party system in the United States is a sham. The Democrat party is no longer recognizable as the home of Sam Nunn, Herbert Humphrey, Barbara Jordan and JFK. This party, under the leadership of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid has successfully moved far left and is about to take this turn even wider. This party no longer wishes the United States to be the leader on the world stage (a stance once called isolationism) and has alienated many allies. It no longer wants a strong military ... witness our president's recent veto of the military appropriation legislation. It wants open borders with very loose enforcement of immigration laws. It is anti-capitalistic ... except for Mom and Pop capitalism ... according to Hillary Clinton in the recent Democrat presidential debate ... and crony capitalism ... according to our president. It favors single-payer health care. It desires European-style nanny-state Socialism with very high taxes funding an ever-growing welfare state. It tolerates repressive Communist governments in Cuba, Venezuela, and China. It has fully swallowed the myth of global warming as a way of expanding the reach of government. It embraces political mendacity ... now dismissed as "spin." It abets the Black Lives Matter movement ... clearly an anti law enforcement cabal.

The Republican Party, under the leadership of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, is effectively Democrat-light ... a bunch of prancing eunuchs. It only offers token resistance to all the excesses of the galloping Left. It lives in dread of the slings and arrows of the main-stream media (clearly an arm of the Democrat party). It can only give lip service to resisting the tax and spend policies of our fifth-column politicians ... in fact often adding its own precious ornaments to frequent congressional Christmas-tree legislation. It is a party that has lost its way after Ronald Reagan showed it how powerful conservative policies could produce domestic economic growth and international hegemony. Somehow, these lessons were submerged by their own success. Now, some on the Right have realized this backsliding and are trying to restore the idealism that wrought these national benefits. However, the old-time Republican establishment is resisting such a revitalization ... and would prefer the comfort of the current status quo.

Enter Donald Trump who has sensed the frustration of the conservative class in this country and has the communication skills to convince many of them that he can champion the roll-back of the Democrats' excesses. Whether he can or not seems unimportant to his acolytes as they see the demise of our national identity and are willing to grasp any avenue out of  this perdition.

Pants-Suited Piranha

Hillary Clinton has had a very good week and a day. It all started with Bernie Sanders falling on his sword over Hillary's e-mail server problem in the first Democrat  debate. (I wonder what his reward has been promised for this bit of generosity ... Secretary of Labor?) ... and it ended yesterday when Joe Biden dropped out of contention for the Democrat nomination. (Here in Boston radio commentator, Howie Carr, wondered what racehorse gave its life and it's head to be found in Biden's bed.)

And today the pant-suited piranha goes in front of the House committee investigating the Benghazi murders to testify about her role in this sleazy matter. I am certain that any incriminating information that this committee has gathered has been fed to her by the committee's Democrats so that Hilary now has well-rehearsed answers.

And if anyone believes that the Obama administration's  FBI investigation into the Clinton e-mail server issue has not already been compromised by the Clinton Foundation political juggernaut, they have not been awake for these last seven years. Yes, it seems that the whole rationale for Hillary becoming our 45th president is her gender and our uninformed electorate might just buy into this bit of pop-culture inanity.

Nurses

Right before I recently went into the hospital, Joy Behar (Joyless Blowhard) made some disparaging comments about the nursing (non)profession on "The View" ... see: Breitbart Story. After an understandable outrage, she and her cackling brood had to retract these comments on a following day's show. However, witnesses profess that, even after this small backtracking, these hens continued their smearing during the show's commercial breaks. How very lowlife!

And I can attest by my recent medical experiences that nurses, nurses aides, orderlies, etc. play vital roles in the health-care field. Doctors, like quarterbacks, tend to grab all the headlines. But it is these Florence Nightingale stalwarts who really do the healing ... just like the linemen win or lose football games.

May I suggest that grandstanding on afternoon television with inane banter is the true non-profession?

Truth

"Truth is beauty and beauty, truth."  -- Keats

(This blog entry is only tangentially related to the Rathergate movie, Truth.)

Truth is an elusive elfin sprite. She is a Tinker Bell caught in a typhoon of ignorance, self-serving mendacity, superstition and media obfuscation. And often when this genie is captured in a bottle, she turns to dust with new information. This is because truth in one narrow context may not hold in a broader milieu. For instance while "turn the other cheek" may be fine for the individual, it may not be the best policy for a nation. But universal truth-telling is essential for truly successful governance ... and it is a very rare commodity these days in Washington.

Thus I am currently inclined to use veracity as a yardstick to measure our roster of candidates for president ... and, to me, the greatest truth tellers are Jim Webb, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, and Marco Rubio. Donald Trump might make the list if he constantly didn't engage of puerile put-downs of his Republican rivals. Guess who is on the bottom rung of this believability ladder ranking.among this bunch of wannabes? And, surprisingly, the one who captures my heart and my brain on the top rung is Dr. Carson ... for no other reason than he is willing to tell truths that go against the media meme ... and not back down when challenged.

Yes, my current favorite, if elected president, would find himself in a hornet's nest of backbenchers and backstabbers. But somehow I feel that he, like Abraham Lincoln, has the perspicacity to surround himself with learned deputies who would help him through the gauntlet of incompetence that is Washington.

In fact, if Ben Carson were lucky enough to make it as the Republican candidate, I would suggest he choose as his campaign's motto ... "The Truth Teller."

Out of Pocket

I will be blogger-less for a few days ... maybe more ... as I am going under the knife. If you get bored, please go back and read all my past blogs. There will be a quiz.

Even though I know what "out of pocket" means (away), I have no idea why it means it?

The Kite Runner

Anyone who has read or seen "The Kite Runner" will remember some of the more disturbing passages in which Afghani boys were repeatedly raped by sinister Afghani men. Supposedly this is a cultural norm in this 12th century country and so the United States military has taken the antithetical  posture of forbidding its personnel from interviening when they witness such evils ... even when they take place on our own military bases there ... see: New York Times Story.

I sure hope that this policy is questioned in the confirmation hearings for Obama's newly-chosen Secretary of the Army. And can I add this to my list of gay accommodations in The Obama Agenda? And yet we tweet with futility from the White House about #BringBackOurGirls! We are such unadorned hypocrites.