Category Archives: View

Chaos Manor View, Sunday, February 14, 2016

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

The pledge drive week is ended, and thanks.

I was going to suggest that the best thing Trump could do to show he is a serious candidate would be to discuss his possible appointments to the Supreme Court, but he obviously understands such things: he has gone on record as saying we need someone just like Scalia. He named one possibility but made it clear he was looking for Scalia replacements: scholarly, conservative, and persuasive. He scores high with me in his answers on Meet The Press today, and was neither frivolous nor overly aggressive. He is no philosopher, nor claims to be; he remains a pragmatic populist.

And he certainly would not nominate Bill Clinton or Barrack Hussein Obama…

This will be a critical appointment to USSC; with Scalia gone, the balance is close. We have two Obama and two Clinton appointments; one remaining by Reagan; and three by Bushes. The next one will, like Scalia before him, be pretty well the tie breaker on Constitutional matters. God helps look out for fools, drinks, and the United States of America, and we really need Him on this one.

The Hon. Antonin G. Scalia, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, RIP.

<http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-antonin-scalia-20160213-story.html>

He will be missed.

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

I have some new stories about Computing at Chaos Manor, but it is for another time. Meanwhile:

Charles Murray on Trump’s America

http://www.aei.org/publication/trumps-america/

Phil Tharp

Is an extremely important essay by one of the few sociologists for whom I have any respect or regard, and I recommend it to all of you. It’s worth your time.

Jerry,

Via Instapundit, http://www.aei.org/publication/trumps-america/

Charles Murray, author of “Coming Apart”, methodically lays out where Mr. Trump’s current wave of support comes from. Long, and impossible to do justice to by a few short quotes, but here are a few anyway.

“If you are dismayed by Trumpism, don’t kid yourself that it will fade away if Donald Trump fails to win the Republican nomination. Trumpism is an expression of the legitimate anger that many Americans feel about the course that the country has taken, and its appearance was predictable.

It is the endgame of a process that has been going on for a

half-century: America’s divestment of its historic national identity.”

“The new upper class consists of the people who shape the country’s economy, politics and culture. The new lower class consists of people who have dropped out of some of the most basic institutions of American civic culture, especially work and marriage. Both of these new classes have repudiated the American creed in practice, whatever lip service they may still pay to it. Trumpism is the voice of a beleaguered working class telling us that it too is falling away.”

“Another characteristic of the new upper class—and something new under the American sun—is their easy acceptance of being members of an upper class and their condescension toward ordinary Americans.”

“For its part, mainstream America is fully aware of this condescension and contempt and is understandably irritated by it. American egalitarianism is on its last legs.”

“..the central truth of Trumpism as a phenomenon is that the entire American working class has legitimate reasons to be angry at the ruling class.”

Any Republican – any conservative, any American – who hopes to end this year with a chance to begin fixing the damage and pulling the country back together should read this piece and think hard.

I wrote recently about part of what Murray addresses, the erosion of our middle classes at the lower margin. My takeaway from this piece:

<bold>Our upper classes and their destructive cult of progressive virtue-signaling must also be addressed.</bold>

Not taxed out of existence to pay for far vaster entitlements as Bernie Sanders proposes – that simply won’t work. Nor are Mr. Trump’s current blunt repudiations of parts of their foolishness sufficient. Enjoyable and long overdue, yes, but not sufficient.

Our ruling classes, our self-anointed betters, require persuasive explanation of how far they’ve strayed from the essence of being American, along with a combination of shaming and cajolement to induce at least some of them to start rejoining the old ideal of the country.

The candidate that can do this, with that deft amiable Reagan touch (which as you point out, he made look easy, but it’s anything but) will burn Bernie, bury Hillary, out-trump Trump, and likely take 40+ states.

Not because he’ll immediately convince the ruling class – they took decades to drift into that state, they’ll take time to climb back out – but because a large majority of the country knows we’re crumbing but hasn’t yet heard a persuasively reasoned fix.

I wouldn’t rule out Trump being the one to do this. It’s a logical extension of what he’s been doing, and he is certainly a capable man.

It does require far more hard work (and risk) than he’s committed to so far.

Is there anyone else among the current candidates who also might gain then wield the bully pulpit thus? Cruz has the combination of deep intelligence and utter lack of need for establishment-approval it’d take. One or two others seem to have the intelligence…

Interesting times.

Porkypine

As you say.  Interesting times.  What is certain is that this broken system of education cannot go on; and that, with a false philosophy required to be learned and believed in order to graduate, reminds us of other places in the past.  But not even the USSR required you to incur a lifetime of debt in order to take your four years of Marxism.

It’s Official, New Cold War with Russia

Well, it’s now official, once more we face the Red Menace:

<.>

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said his country is in a new Cold War with the U.S. and its allies, underscoring the tenuous level of trust that’s putting a day-old plan for a truce in Syria at risk.

</>

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-13/russia-sees-new-cold-war-as-nato-chief-criticizes-nuclear-threat

Thankfully, some of us experienced this; we’re ready for this. Or so we think….

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

It has been building since Clinton and Albright chose the anti-Slavic side in a Balkan conflicts they did not understand, and in which the United States had no discernible interest. They bombed Serbia, dropped the bridges on the lower Danube thus wrecking economies all along the river, and achieved little beyond angering the Russians and earning the hatred of Serbians. The cost of resurrecting SAC will be enormous, yet there must be a MAD component because we have not moved far enough toward strategic defense; meanwhile we have wasted much of the economy on nonsense like alcohol fuels – which are not all that useful for cars, but keep the price of corn and sugar high – and other expensive “renewable” energy. If renewable energy is the goal – and it is a worthy one – nuclear power is the best we know of now; but more is spent on regulations and lawyers than on research and development of nuclear energy.

ISIS is a common enemy of all Europe and America, but few seem to recognize it.

And now we have a new Cold War with Russia. A grand reset.

Well, this is interesting and I have comments:

<.>

Europe is facing a convergence of the worst crises since World War II, and the overwhelming consensus among officials and experts here is that the U.S. no longer has the will or the ability to play an influential role in solving them.

At the Munich Security Conference, the prime topics are the refugee crisis, the Syrian conflict, Russian aggression and the potential dissolution of the European Union’s very structure. Top European leaders repeatedly lamented that 2015 saw all of Europe’s problems deepen, and unanimously predicted that in 2016 they would get even worse.

“The question of war and peace has returned to the continent,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the audience, indirectly referring to Russian military interventions. “We had thought that peace had returned to Europe for good.”

</>

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-02-13/europe-s-convinced-u-s-won-t-solve-its-problems

First, we both know that Europe is a joke militarily. I sent you articles about how the British and French considered merging their navies since neither country really has one anymore. I also wrote about how the UK MOD said they cannot initiate or sustain wars as of more than 10 years ago. I also wrote about how the German NATO rapid strike force used mop handles in a comparatively recent exercise because they had no small arms.

Second, when I traveled, I got nothing but bullshit from young Australians, Canadians, Kiwis, Englishmen, and people I affectionately came to refer to as “Eurotrash” simply for being American. Oh, we’re so evil. We’re the source of all the pain and suffering in the world.

My feelings of “friendship” with Europe disappeared during my travels.

And after listening to English chavs denounce my country, the country that saved them from two world wars, I’m not interested in helping them out of the kindness of my heart either.

I am not surprised Europe is in the dying cockroach position and I find it amusing that it’s “America’s fault” for “not helping”. My interests in Europe are purely geopolitical. Their politics, their societies, and their attitudes are about as acceptable to me as those of the American left. Though I wouldn’t mind having a cottage in Switzerland and the Swiss were never rude to me about my nationality.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

“It is as though they all have some signs of being on an Asperger’s spectrum.”

<www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/02/25/we-are-hopelessly-hooked/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Having spent two generations sowing the wind, whirlwind reapings may be expected.

The earth’s core vs. climate

A geologist acquaintance of mine made the statement that earth’s core being a giant nuclear reactor is a major determinant of climate. That the internal heat thus generated is what makes our planet habitable and is the reason that Mars, lacking such, can never be made habitable.
I am at a loss as to where to turn to research this, I am not seeking to refute his position, simply to learn. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

John Pennell

I do not advise you to ask at your university; such questions are no longer appropriate. While climatologists have no explanation of El Nino, they use the El Nino warnings as explanations for why their climate models don’t work; but still they don’t. There now so many whose careers depend on manmade global warning that it is not even possible to discuss the subject in most universities; it is fatal to any academic success.

The sun’s quiet activity could trigger a mini ice age, researchers warn | Daily Mail Online

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3444633/What-happened-sun-Solar-activity-remains-quietest-century-trigger-mini-ice-age.html

Charles Brumbelow

At least we know how to throw another log on the fire…

The Last Bastion of the Liberal Left

“To legitimize itself, the Left needs to hide the truth that the central planning it loves only begets misery. So all it has remaining is trying to shut the rest of us up.”
“Government By ‘Experts’ Is Failing Everywhere”
“Social Science Has Moved On”
“Research Shows Strong, Traditional Institutions Matter Most”
“The Last Leftist Bastion: Environmentalism”
A good essay with these paragraph topics telling you where it’s going.
http://thefederalist.com/2016/02/12/political-correctness-is-a-mask-for-leftists-intellectual-insecurity/
Pete

Gravitational Waves and a Fish in Water

Jerry,

The euphoria about the gravitational wave detection reminds me of the fish that first heard the sound of the finger tap on the aquarium, but still has no understanding of, nor ability to comprehend water.

Cheers,

Jeff D

Nor have we; aether is still not falsified.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Sunday I broke a tooth, Monday was devoured by locusts and fiction, and Tuesday I spent the day at the dentist. No serious problem other than lost time and the finances, but it was annoying. The good news is I drove there, in my SUV, by myself and navigated from the parking lot to the dentist with a cane, not a walker. To those for whom this is a regular event, I can only advise you to be thankful, and contemplate that some years from now that ability may be a big deal; it certainly was for me.

Saturday night I went down to Author Services/ Galaxy Press, as a guest; they were doing a dramatic reading of L Ron Hubbard (writing as Rene Lafayette): the first Ole Doc Methuselah story, published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1947; I read it when it came out. I was in Christian Brothers College High School in Memphis at the time. The Brothers pretended not to notice I had Astounding inside one or another text book. Roberta wasn’t feeling quite up to going out, and I wasn’t daring enough to drive at night – still am not – so Michelle drove me in her car. Goo performances. Good show all around.

Having used up the day at the dentist, I’m obviously going to be brief.

The New Hampshire primary has one glaring lesson: Neither the Republican nor the Democratic voters are very interested in returning business as usual to power. An aging Independent Socialist Senator bested – thumped – Hillary, Mr. Trump won first place among the Republicans, and while Kasich was an unexpected second on the Republican side. The top three traditional Republicans together did not out-draw Trump even with a record turn-out. I wonder if the RNC got the message, and how they will act on it; probably by doubling down on their support for Jeb Bush.

In normal times, Bush would seem the most attractive candidate; his problem is that with Jeb Bush you get all his relatives, and all of their friends; you get the Republicans who got us in this mess in the first place. That, I think, just won’t do. Of course I am prejudiced; I was a Reagan Republican Party County Chairman, and Bush The First promised “Read my lips. No new taxes.” Then he fired every Reagan supporter he could find in the Executive Branch within hours of being inaugurated, and agreed to new taxes. Read my hips…

I notice that Jeb is bringing his mother to his campaign.

It’s late. I have a lot of interesting mail and hope to get some of it up tomorrow. I also have more on modern technology. Volume Nine of The There Will Be War anthologies will be released this week. Like all of the TWBW series, there is an introductory essay, and introductions to each story, all by me; as well as other non fiction. Volume Nine was compiled as the USSR was reeling, and the world watched: would USSR break up peacefully, or would there be nuclear war launched in the death throes?  Om Amazon sometime this week.  Look for it.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, February 03, 2016

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

I have been working on fiction all day; I was interrupted by a lack of laundry soap, and Roberta still reluctant to undertake outside expeditions, so I decided to try it: it was a beautiful day, I feel fine, and I drove my ancient SUV the few blocks to the local store. There were no incidents. I do not think I will try to drive at night, but I am now confident that I can do small routine errands.

I’m making much progress on other work; apparently I am completely recovered from my bronchitis. Roberta is recovering from pneumonia, slower that she would like, but quite well. We are approaching normality – at least as much as Chaos Manor ever approaches normality.

I have just finished a Preface to the 2016 edition of There Will Be War Volume Nine: After Armageddon.  Originally published in 1989, this edition will be released as an eBook next week.

RIP Ed Mitchell
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/astronaut-edgar-mitchell-6th-man-moon-dies-florida-n512511

Dave Kenny

When I was President of the Science Fiction Writers of America about 1973, one of my duties was to arrange the annual Nebula Awards presentation. At that time we gave a dramatic presentations Nebula, and I was able to enlist the support of the Hollywood studios for the event. They bought several tables and gave us some money to hire a name speaker; not much money, but Dr. Ed Mitchell, sixth man on the Moon, agreed to come down and present the awards as well as make a keynote speech. I don’t have a transcript; this was years before personal computers and easy copies of documents. We got him to come without a fee because he was an admirer of science fiction and thought it important.

He was also involved in ESP research, partly at Stanford; these were the days of Dr. Joseph Rhine, who had been experimenting with ESP since 1928, and Rhine Card experiments were very popular on college campuses: with tens of thousands of unsupervised experiments it is statistically certain that some improbable events would occur—after all, if the odds are 100 to 1 against something and you run the experiment 200 times—but Ed was not a naïve believer, at least when I met him; he hoped it was all true, but he was fairly rigorous in his experimental protocols.

I didn’t know him for long or all that closely, but I was impressed, and I have been rather glad that someone of that stature has been warning us that we don’t know everything. The US government spent some $10 million dollars on remote viewing research; given the value of the payoff if it had been successful, I cannot quarrel with that appropriation, even if the final conclusion was that they had found no useful results. Ed Mitchell was heavily into remote viewing, but the experiments he conducted were fairly rigorous in protocol, not stunts. The results, as have been all the results of that sort of experiment, were ambiguous at best and not repeatable.

I’ve had no contact with Dr. Mitchell for decades; I gather he was still interested in weird experimentation; but so far as I know he was quite rational about it. We need a few people of stature to head such to introduce rationality and some rigor in testing the limits of our knowledge; or I have always believed so. Requiescat in Pace.

Think of this as a substitute essay by me; not that I agree with everything in it, but much is self evident and draws intelligent conclusion about the strange phenomena we are experiencing.

Erosion Of The US Middle Class

By Porkypine

 

Jerry,

In the recent Iowa caucuses, of the people motivated enough to show up, 50% of Democrats (Sanders) and 66% of Republicans (Cruz, Trump, Carson, Paul) voted for candidates who are explicitly running against the current Establishment. Moreover, in recent Rasmussen polls, 67% of US likely voters are somewhat-to-very angry about Federal government policies, and 81% think the Feds are somewhat-to-very corrupt.

I recently listened to a Bernie Sanders stump speech and found myself surprised. I agree with him on the problem: The US middle class has been under prolonged attack, is already seriously damaged, and it’s only getting worse. (Mind, the moment Sanders started proposing solutions, I was reminded of H.L.Mencken: “For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong”.)

Given the modest but real chance that an anti-establishment candidate who actually means it will wake up in the White House a year from now, a quick review of the US middle class’s actual problems and some practical solutions is in order. Much of this will be rehashing of to-us obvious points, some of it perhaps not. I don’t have time to make this definitive anyway – I’ll be happy if it merely starts wiser heads thinking more thoroughly.

First, though, let me digress briefly to WHY fixing this erosion of the US middle class is vital. Recently, I wrote you about the role of a healthy middle-class majority in making democracy a stable and practical form of government. My main thrust was Western elites’ destructive foolishness in pushing democracy in places where it would predictably lead to some flavor of one-man-one-vote-once tyranny, but in the buildup I mentioned this:

“My take is, what actually makes for the stable prosperous societies many in the West currently take WAY too much for granted is middle-class rule, not democracy per se, with ‘middle class’ defined as those who tend to plan for their next generation, not just for their next week.”

“Consider the US, where the vote was originally pretty much restricted to settled property owners, and the Founders agreed “there never was a democracy that didn’t commit suicide.” We continued to do OK as the franchise was expanded for so long as this coincided with the expansion of a reasonably informed and forethoughtful middle class. Now that we’ve spent a couple generations simultaneously destroying our educational system and insisting that anyone who draws breath (and many who don’t) should vote, things are getting a bit dicey.”

My take here is, it isn’t just overseas where our self-appointed betters in the bipartisan establishment elite are screwing up. They’ve also spent decades imposing destructive policies on us here at home. Now, finally, what’s left of the country’s real ruling class, our middle class, seems to be catching wise, and we may – may – have one last chance to fix things before we’re history.

The Problem

I think it comes down to six things: Spending, taxation, regulation, education, and expectations. The sixth thing? A horrible result of these first five (though they do damage in other ways too.) To quote that eminent natural philosopher James Carville, “it’s the economy, stupid!”

Since the housing bust, GDP annual growth has been just over 2% – half the average rate for post-WW II recoveries. Unemployment is only “low”  because so many have given up looking, and of the jobs available, far too few are full-time at wages that will actually support a minimal middle class existence.

But that’s pretty abstract. I deal with the blue-collar lower margins of our middle class a lot. A few are doing OK, most are hanging on by their fingernails, and every year a few more fall off the edge. When they do, it tends to be ugly. The “safety nets” don’t help as much as you might think, as these are designed for stable clients. People whose lives have just exploded but who aren’t yet resigned to clientude can fall a long long way and hit very hard indeed.

More patches to the safety net won’t save our republic. We must remove a lot of the accumulated progressive dreck that makes it so hard to hang on in the first place. [emphasis added by JEP]

Spending

Federal revenues as a fraction of GDP seem prone to stabilize at around 18%, regardless of nominal tax rates, since shortly after WW II.

Revenue sees temporary peaks in boom times, temporary drops during busts, but always returning to the same ~18%. (I wouldn’t go so far as to call this some sort of natural law, mind – it’s more likely a matter of a natural inflection in the curve of American resistance to paying more taxes.)

18% of an $18 trillion GDP is a lot of money. Unfortunately, over the last eight years, Federal spending has averaged almost 22% of GDP (21% in 2015, but alas rising again from 2014.)

This level of spending has been sustained since the Dems lost control of Congress in 2010 by amazingly unscrupulous maneuvering – Harry Reid’s deliberate crippling of the normal Congressional budget process, and see also the recent revelation that Treasury knew all along how to avoid default in the various “shutdown” confrontations with Congress – IE, the White House threats of disastrous default were barefaced lies.

Assuming Republican control of both Congress and the White House next year, one of the first things to watch for is whether they get serious about bringing Federal spending swiftly back under 18% of GDP. It will be ugly, it will be painful, but it’s vital.

Taxation

Overt taxation at the bottom margins of the middle class is currently quite low. In fact, go low enough and EITC makes it outright negative – albeit on a one-“refund”-per-year basis that encourages a jackpot mindset unconducive to working back up into the middle class. This is worth fixing – if we’re going to subsidize lower-income workers with families anyway, we might as well figure out a way to do it per-paycheck instead.

Get into the broad middle of the middle class, and overt taxation rises to a substantial slice. Outrageous, no, but substantial. This is probably inevitable as long as we insist on government continuing to do most of the things it currently does, as the middle class is still where the bulk of of the money is. We’ll be lucky to succeed in stopping further national debt growth and paying for the middle-class entitlements we’re already committed to. Significant middle-class tax relief on top of that probably can’t happen until we have quite a few high GDP-growth years behind us.

Covert taxation is another matter entirely. There are any number of things that, by government policy, we pay a great deal more for as soon as we start putting some daylight between ourselves and the official poverty line.

Some of this is obvious: The various explicit subsidies for the government-client underclass that go away fast as income rises. It’s not news that there’s significant pressure at the lower margin to just give up and slide into being a government client rather than continue struggling to be an independent citizen. Tinkering at the margins can actually be quite effective here, as witness the ’90’s welfare reform.

A bit subtler is Obama care, where the majority of the middle class is only now discovering that it’s us paying for all the new mandatory expanded benefits, via outrageously higher premiums for anyone moderately healthy who’s above the not-very-high subsidy cutoff. A free market in insurance, plus a formally subsidized high-risk pool, would get rid of this covert taxation, and allow rational decisions on both how much coverage we need, and on how much charity, how paid for, we can actually afford.

Other examples abound, any place the government mandates that we buy more than we might otherwise choose. Now, many of these we might not want to change. For instance, I find modern auto crash-worthiness quite comforting, compared to some of the deathtraps I drove when I was younger. (Modern fuel-economy standards, on the other hand, I think have led to all sorts of pernicious nonsense.) But, my opinions aside, all such mandates should be reviewed for which are cost-effective in terms of supporting the overall well-being of our average citizens, and which aren’t, with ruthless pruning of the latter.

Regulation

The regulatory metastasization-induced cratering of the small-business startup rate and (related) of overall economic growth has obvious implications for availability of middle-class jobs. Housing is also made more expensive by a range of government policies – largely local till recently, but increasingly national, with multiple new federal power grabs by the current administration underway.

There’s also the regulatory drag on individual initiative. If I start a craft guitar shop, will I go to jail for importing the wrong exotic wood? And on political participation – do my chances of going to jail for importing the wrong wood go up if I donate to the wrong cause?

Overall, regulation greatly overlaps with the “covert taxation” I’ve already described. One solution is the same: An ongoing review for which regulations are cost-effective in terms of supporting the overall well-being of our average citizens, and which aren’t, with an effective mechanism for removal of those that don’t make the cut. Another

solution: Mandatory sunset period for all new regulations. Another: No new regulation becomes final without resubmission to the Congress for an up-or-down vote.

The US middle class can’t afford Federal bunny inspectors any more.

Multiply that by a thousand and cut, and it’d be a start.

Education

The nationalization and homogenization of US education to provide full employment for a politically-connected credentialed educrat class whose fads and fashions are increasingly unconnected to actual learning has been well covered elsewhere, and the solutions are generally obvious.

Painful and politically difficult, but obvious.

My major beef here is that basic teaching of children HOW to be middle-class has been not just neglected but actively sabotaged. The basic math skills to plan ahead, the basic logic skills to spot deceptive sales pitches, the basic historical knowledge to spot political knavery, the basic practical and technical skills to work productively, the basic personal discipline to apply all of these to leading a stable and decent life – the parts of our middle class strong enough to pass these skills on in-family survive, while those at the margins crumble ever faster into government clienthood.

Let’s not even mention US higher education coming to combine the worst aspects of debt-peonage and Maoist reeducation camps. Some things are just too depressing.

Expectations

Curated this, organic that, free-range food, helicopter-parented over-scheduled designer kids – all these elite establishment cultural expectations hugely increase the cost of having a middle-class family.

It’s easy to dismiss all this as passing upper-class faddism – but increasingly it’s being applied to all by government mandate. As witness, parents being charged with neglect for allowing kids to walk to school alone, or schools being forced to switch to “healthy” foods the kids won’t eat (with the definition of “healthy” changing like the wind.) Much is curable faddism, of course – minimum “acceptable” houses growing ever larger, minimum acceptable media access growing ever more immersive, frenetic, and expensive.

Cultural counterpressure is the answer, of course, though blest if I know how to produce that. Beyond, that is, writing screeds like this and hoping for the best.

Porkypine

 

I note with interest that while Newt Gingrich – who, after all, as Speaker was able to get a balanced budget from Clinton – has not exactly endorsed Mr. Trump but has taken him seriously and has not joined the ritual attack machine.  As I say, I find it interesting.  And I do not expect Mr. Trump to tell me a lot of technical details; he will accomplish his goals (or not) the way leaders have always accomplished goals – by ordering them done by people he has a reasonable expectation of having the ability to do them, and seeing that they have the requisite resources.  He could not tell you how he built Trump Tower; and few of you could do so either.

You say we should not mention the utter destruction of the free public education system that took this nation from farmers to a middle class as our vanished apprentice system made for a blue collar middle class; but it is important. We cannot thrive if the cost of an education is a lifetime of debt.  We do not owe our academic masters a lifetime of luxury which they “perform” by abusing academic “adjuncts” and other minions. I agree that the system which produced me – financed by the Korean War GI Bill – was deliberately sabotaged, and credentialism has made essential a gang of academic thugs called administrators as well as given faculty. once accustomed to an adequate but not luxurious life, poppycock dreams which have been fulfilled.

The Ministry of Empty Gestures Wants You

Dear Jerry:

What do Al Gore , Darth Vader and the Animal Legal Defense League have in common ?

An advertising consortium with enough clout to commandeer the Eiffel Tower

http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2016/02/now-all-they-need-is-secret-handshake.html

Shades of Kornbluth and Max Headroom !

—

Russell  Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics Harvard University  

Sunday Evening:

You’ll see this again:

by the numbers 

Seen on twitter

 

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.