A Declaration for Life

As our nation nears the terrible milestone of 50 years of legalized abortion—an era that has robbed an estimated 60 million Americans of their very right to life—we lament the extermination of an entire generation of talent, productivity, and potential. Now we face aggressive efforts to even expand this tragic practice. This is not progressive or compassionate; it is madness. Therefore …

WE PROCLAIM that abortion at any stage of development represents the taking of a human life. Science, reason, and common sense attest to this. Because this is true, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must extend to babies in the womb just as much as to every other citizen.
WE EMBRACE the indisputable scientific reality that life in the womb is worthy of protection from the moment of conception. The same DNA and genetic markers that testify to our uniqueness at birth are also present when we are conceived. Life in the womb is “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Sacred scripture and prenatal science both proclaim this.
WE DECLARE that legalized abortion is wholly incompatible with the virtues of compassion, freedom, and equality that characterize a healthy and just society. As state legislatures expand abortion up to the moment of birth and some leaders advocate outright infanticide, our culture’s decades-long embrace of legalized abortion has reached a tragic new low point.
THEREFORE, as concerned citizens, we are reinforcing our commitment to speak up on behalf of the most vulnerable among us. It is imperative that churches, individuals, and communities—people of faith and all people of goodwill—work together to end this tragedy.
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, do hereby affirm our commitment to: 1) advocate for pro-life legislation at the state level, including a ban on late-term abortions and those targeting babies on the basis of disability, sex or race; 2) promote the end of government funding of the abortion industry; 3) vote for candidates who respect the sanctity of life; 4) urge the appointment of constitutionalist judges who will protect the fundamental right to life; 5) support both women in unplanned pregnancies and their babies through the good work of Pregnancy Resource Centers; 6) encourage and promote the beauty of adoption; and 7) pray fervently for a nationwide reawakening to the value and sanctity of every human life.
Until that day comes, we will continue to push back against the culture of death. This is the moment we unite with one voice and proclaim, “No more.”
We are pro-life.

Source: A Declaration for Life.

So, only three democrats voted for Bill Protecting Babies Born Alive After Abortion? The rest are baby killers. That’s too bad. I guess the Left are modern day Moloch worshipers. "And I will set My face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile My sanctuary, and to pollute My holy name." Leviticus 20:3.

House Democrats Block 19 Times Vote on Bill to Protect Babies Who Survive Abortion

Fascism: Socialism with a Capitalist Veneer

From FEE.org:

As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism, with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie. Fascism substituted the particularity of nationalism and racialism—“blood and soil”—for the internationalism of both classical liberalism and Marxism.

Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.)

Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions.

Fascist Economics

Fascism is to be distinguished from interventionism, or the mixed economy. Interventionism seeks to guide the market process, not eliminate it, as fascism did. Minimum wage and antitrust laws, though they regulate the free market, are a far cry from multiyear plans from the Ministry of Economics.

Under fascism, the state, through official cartels, controlled all aspects of manufacturing, commerce, finance, and agriculture. Planning boards set product lines, production levels, prices, wages, working conditions, and the size of firms. Licensing was ubiquitous; no economic activity could be undertaken without government permission.

………………

Fascism embodied corporatism, in which political representation was based on trade and industry rather than on geography. In this, fascism revealed its roots in syndicalism, a form of socialism originating on the left. The government cartelized firms of the same industry, with representatives of labor and management serving on myriad local, regional, and national boards—subject always to the final authority of the dictator’s economic plan. Corporatism was intended to avert unsettling divisions within the nation, such as lockouts and union strikes. The price of such forced “harmony” was the loss of the ability to bargain and move about freely.

…………………….

The fascist leaders’ antagonism to communism has been misinterpreted as an affinity for capitalism. In fact, fascists’ anticommunism was motivated by a belief that in the collectivist milieu of early-twentieth-century Europe, communism was its closest rival for people’s allegiance. As with communism, under fascism, every citizen was regarded as an employee and tenant of the totalitarian, party-dominated state. Consequently, it was the state’s prerogative to use force, or the threat of it, to suppress even peaceful opposition.

The Founder of Fascism

Both nations [Germany and Italy] exhibited elaborate planning schemes for their economies in order to carry out the state’s objectives. Mussolini’s corporate state “consider[ed] private initiative in production the most effective instrument to protect national interests” (Basch 1937, p. 97). But the meaning of “initiative” differed significantly from its meaning in a market economy. Labor and management were organized into twenty-two industry and trade “corporations,” each with Fascist Party members as senior participants. The corporations were consolidated into a National Council of Corporations; however, the real decisions were made by state agencies such as the Instituto per la Ricosstruzione Industriale, which held shares in industrial, agricultural, and real estate enterprises, and the Instituto Mobiliare, which controlled the nation’s credit.

Hitler’s regime eliminated small corporations and made membership in cartels mandatory. The Reich Economic Chamber was at the top of a complicated bureaucracy comprising nearly two hundred organizations organized along industry, commercial, and craft lines, as well as several national councils. The Labor Front, an extension of the Nazi Party, directed all labor matters, including wages and assignment of workers to particular jobs. Labor conscription was inaugurated in 1938. Two years earlier, Hitler had imposed a four-year plan to shift the nation’s economy to a war footing. In Europe during this era, Spain, Portugal, and Greece also instituted fascist economies. [read more]

EXCLUSIVE: Special ops to turn focus from war on terror to China, Russia

From The Washington Times.com (Feb. 24):

America’s elite special operations forces are getting new marching orders as the Pentagon moves away from its post-9/11 focus on radical terrorist groups and trains its eye on big-power rivals such as China and Russia.

In a major shift of mission, officials at U.S. Special Operations Command are drafting new guidance to reorient its cadre of top-tier military units to fight the expanding armies and navies of what U.S. strategists call “near-peer” powers.

Under the guidance, which is still pending approval by command chief Gen. Raymond A. Thomas III, U.S. special operations fighters will be taking a larger role in cyberwarfare, information and “influence” — digital age propaganda — operations, sources say, as well as training allies in the new skills.

“It is fair to say you will see a rebranding of special operations forces,” Andrew Knaggs, deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism, said earlier this month. “Our problems will not be addressed through conventional deterrence alone.”

Since 9/11, U.S. special operations forces have been at the forefront of the U.S.-led global war on terror, from leading the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001 to taking the fight to the Islamic State’s “caliphate” in Syria in 2014. But the new Pentagon National Defense Strategy, fashioned in large part by former Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, is ushering in a shift away from the fight against nonstate radical terrorist groups to traditional big power rivals.

Under the new strategy, Europe and Asia once again become the “priority theaters” for U.S. forces. The Middle East will become a theater to be managed, not a region of consuming focus.

Whether that shift is an opportunity or an attempt to clip the special operations forces’ wings is a matter of sharp debate in military circles. The combined special operations forces, including separate arms of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, grew from 45,000 in 2001 to an estimated 70,000 today, and some critics say the expansions in size and mission have not been healthy. [read more]

This is all good and well, but America still shouldn’t forget about the crazy Islamists.

11 Economic Stats That Tell Venezuela's Story

From FEE.org (Mar. 8):

A tragedy common to human history is unfolding in Venezuela. It’s impossible to predict how it will end or what the human toll will be.

As we watch events and hope for a peaceful resolution that restores liberty in Venezuela, here are some noteworthy facts about the Land of Grace.

1. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. While the US is the top producer of oil, its total reserves represent a mere fraction—roughly 10 percent—of Venezuela's 300-plus billion barrels of oil. (Source: UPI)
2. In Venezuela today, the median monthly income is $8. (source: FEE)
3. A two-pound bag of onions currently costs about $2 in Venezuela. (source: FEE)
4. In 2016, the price of a gallon of gasoline in Venezuela was less than one cent per gallon. (source: Washington Post)
5. Roughly 90 percent of Venezuelans today live below the poverty line. (source: The Borgen Project)
6. In 1950, Venezuela ranked among the top ten most prosperous nations in the world. (source: Human Progress)
7. In 2018, inflation in Venezuela topped 1 million percent. (source: Reuters)
8. Economic projections show inflation in Venezuela is expected to hit 10 million percent in 2019. (source: Miami Herald)
9. In 1959, the Venezuelan GDP per capita was 10 percent higher than America’s. (source: Human Progress)
10. As of June 2018, about 2.3 million people had emigrated from Venezuela following its economic collapse, or 13 percent of its population. (Source: The Panam Post)
11. When Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999, the Venezuelan GDP per capita was 27 percent higher than the average in Latin America. (source: Human Progress)

[read more]

The story of how socialism can screw up a once productive country. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen to America.

The Truth About Border Walls’ Effectiveness

From The Daily Signal.com (Feb. 10):

Schumer and his House counterpart, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., are entitled to their opinions about Trump’s proposed border wall, but they aren’t entitled to their own facts.

In their rebuttal to the president’s Jan. 9 nationally televised address outlining the need for a border barrier and his request for $5.7 billion in funding for them, both described the proposed wall as “ineffective”—Pelosi once and Schumer twice.

In her rebuttal to Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, 2018 Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams didn’t echo Schumer and Pelosi’s “ineffective” claim, but she advanced an argument that was equally fallacious.

……………

Walls along four Customs and Border Protection sectors—El Paso; San Diego, California; and Tucson and Yuma, Arizona—have reduced illegal immigration “by at least 90 percent,” according to the Republican National Committee’s Borderfacts.com page.

Byron York of the Washington Examiner recently cited figures from the Center for Immigration Studies showing that before construction of border barriers in Yuma, the Border Patrol apprehended 138,438 illegal immigrants in 2005, compared with 26,244 last year. While not 90 percent, that’s still a dramatic drop.

The comparable before-and-after figures for the San Diego sector, according to the Border Patrol, were more than 565,581 in 1992 and 26,086 in 2017—a 95 percent reduction.

Meanwhile, USA Today reported last May that “[s]ince the start of Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015, at least 800 miles of fences have been erected by Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Slovenia, and others.”

Do Schumer and Pelosi know something all these other countries don’t? Not according to Hungary, which said that fencing on its border with Serbia helped reduce illegal immigration by nearly 100 percent since 2015, according to the USA Today report.

Israel’s fencing along its borders with the Gaza Strip and West Bank, as well as with Egypt and Jordan, has likewise all but eliminated illegal immigration and terrorist attacks. (The Jewish state announced Feb. 3 that it was beginning construction of an additional 40 miles of 20-foot-high, state-of-the-art fencing.) [read more]

The only walls the Dems like are the ones around their homes. They use those to keep out the irredeemable deplorables or if the reader prefers the “common man.”

Worried About Privacy? Worry More About Your Data

From News Max.com (Feb. 4):

Facebook isn't some Big Brother or HAL 9000 listening to your every conversation like you probably fear, tech experts say.

Actually, they warn, it's far worse.

"Privacy as we normally think of it doesn't matter," Aza Raskin, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, told NBC News. "What these companies are doing is building little models, little avatars, little voodoo dolls of you. Your doll sits in the cloud, and they'll throw 100,000 videos at it to see what’s effective to get you to stick around, or what ad with what messaging is uniquely good at getting you to do something."

Though it may seem like Facebook and other social media sites are listening to your conversations about, say, your car problems, then try to sell you a new car, in reality they've simply built such a perfect simulation of who you are it literally knows what you'll do or think before you do it, says Raskin.

"Imagine it's a stick figure at first, and as you use the system, it's collecting fingernail scraps and bits of hair," he said. "What do you care that you lost a fingernail scrap? But they’re putting it together into a model of you."

Facebook, Raskin notes, "has one of these models for one out of every four humans on earth. Every country, culture, behavior type, socio-economic background.” [read more]

Creepy.

Failing Forward

Characteristics:

• Taking Responsibility
• Learning from Each Mistake
• Knowing Failure Is a Part of Progress
• Maintaining a Positive Attitude
• Challenging Outdated Assumptions
• Taking New Risks
• Believing Something Didn't Work
• Persevering

No enterprise can exist for itself alone. It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others; or failing therein it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist. – Calvin Coolidge

Seven abilities needed to fail forward:

1. Achievers reject rejection.
2. Achievers see failure as temporary.
3. Achievers see failures as isolated incidents.
4. Achievers keep expectations realistic.
5. Achievers focus on strengths.
6. Achievers very approaches to achievement.
7. Achievers bounce back.

The benefits of adversity:

1. Adversity creates resilience.
2. Adversity develops maturity.
3. Adversity pushes the envelope of accepted performance.
4. Adversity provides greater opportunities.
5. Adversity prompts innovation.
6. Adversity recaps unexpected benefits.
7. Adversity motivates.

Characteristics of Don’t-Dare-Miss-It People:

1. They find opportunities.
2. They finish their responsibilities.
3. They feed on impossibilities.
4. They fan the flame of enthusiasm.
5. They face their inadequacies.
6. They figure out why others failed.
7. They finance the cost into their lifestyle.
8. They find pleasure in the goal.
9. They fear futility, not failure.
10. They finish before they rest.
11. They follow leaders.
12. They force change.
13. They fish for solutions.
14. They fulfill their commitments.
15. They finalize their decisions.

Steps to Failing Forward:

1. Realize there is one major difference between average people and achieving people.
2. Learn a new definition of failure.
3. Remove the "you” from failure.
4. Take action and reduce your fear.
5. Changing your response to failure by accepting responsibility.
6. Don’t let the failure from outside get inside you.
7. Say good-bye to yesterday.
8. Change yourself, and your world changes.
9. Get over yourself and start giving yourself.
10. Find the benefit in every bad experience.
11. If at first you do succeed, try something harder.
12. Learn from bad experience and make it a good experience.
13. Work on the weakness the weakens you.
14. Understand there is not much difference between failure and success.
15. Get up, get over it, get going.

Source: Failing Forward. Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success (2000) by John C. Maxwell.

Artificial intelligence is learning not to be so literal

From Science News.org (Feb. 5):

HONOLULU — Artificial intelligence is starting to learn how to read between the lines.

AI systems are generally good at responding to direct statements, like “Siri, tell me the weather” or “Alexa, play ‘Despacito’.” But machines can’t yet make small talk the way humans do, says Yejin Choi, a natural language processing researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle. When it comes to conversational nuances like tone and idioms, AI still struggles to understand humans’ intent.

To help machines participate in more humanlike conversation, researchers are teaching AI to understand the meanings of words beyond their strict dictionary definitions. At the recent AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, one group unveiled a system that gauges what a person really means when speaking, and another presented an AI that distinguishes between literal and figurative phrases in writing.

One key conversation skill is picking up on subtext. Someone’s facial expression or intonation can significantly change the implication of their words, says Louis-Philippe Morency, an artificial intelligence researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Describing a movie as “sick” with a grimace conveys something totally different than calling it “sick” with an excited tone and raised eyebrows.

Morency and colleagues designed an artificial intelligence system that watched YouTube clips to learn how nonverbal cues, like facial expressions and voice pitch, can affect the meaning of spoken words. [read more]

More AI news:

• Is Skynet a reality? As Trump signs executive order on artificial intelligence, tech giants warn of danger
• This AI is so good at writing that its creators won't let you use it
• At this fast food drive through, the person taking your order might not be a person at all
• Report: Home Assistants with ‘Moral AI’ Could Call Police on Owners
• Why a data scientist warns against always trusting AI’s scientific discoveries
• Creepy AI will reportedly spot shoplifters before they steal

Bees Can Solve Math Problems That Would Stump the Average Toddler

From Live Science.com (Feb. 6):

Bees don't just buzz around and make honey; they also do math problems in their free time that would stump the average 4-year-old.

Last year, a group of researchers in Australia reported that bees understand the concept of "zero." Now, a new study by the same group suggests that the insects can also do basic addition and subtraction. The team reported its findings today (Feb. 6) in the journal Science Advances.

A couple of decades ago, scientists thought that such higher-level processing was limited to human and some other primate brains. But then, researchers looked a bit closer, finding that dolphins could understand what zero meant and that Alex the parrot (and even some spiders) could do basic arithmetic.

The findings called into question the "position that there's something special about the human brain," said the new study's senior author, Adrian Dyer, an associate professor at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. [read more]

That’s pretty cool. But can bees solve differential equations or understand tax law? I don’t think so.

CS Lewis on Equality

The demand for equality has two sources; one of than is among the noblest, the other is the basest, of human emotions. The noble source is the desire for fair play. But the other source is the hatred of superiority....

Equality (outside mathematics) is a purely social conception. It applies to man as a political and economic animal. It has no place in the world of the mind. Beauty is not democratic; she reveals herself more to the few than to the many.... Virtue is not democratic; she is achieved by those who pursue her more hotly than most men. Truth is not democratic; she demands special talents and special industry in those to whom she gives favours. Political democracy is doomed if it tries to extend its demand for equality into these higher spheres. Ethical,  or aesthetic democracy is death.

A truly democratic education--one which will preserve democracy--must be, in its own field, ruthlessly aristocratic, shamelessly 'high-brow'.... Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves.
--‘Notes on the Way', Time and Tide (29 April 1944)

Here Are 3 Cyber Takeaways From the Recent Report on Global Threats

From The Daily Signal.com (Jan. 31):

The United States is facing a wave of new threats from abroad. Unlike in previous decades, some of the most serious of these threats are cyber-related.

On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats released the intelligence community’s annual Worldwide Threat Assessment, which identifies and evaluates these various threats to the nation.

Here are three key cyber-related takeaways from the report.

1. China and Russia have unprecedented power to target our infrastructure and population.

America’s global rivals, especially China and Russia, are aggressively challenging us economically, socially, and politically—and they’re doing so effectively. Just consider these conclusions from the report:

• “[T]he innovations that drive military and economic competitiveness will increasingly originate outside of the United States as the overall U.S. lead in science and technology shrinks.”
• “We assess that China’s intelligence services will exploit the openness of American society, especially academia and the scientific community … .”
• “Moscow is now staging cyber-attack assets to allow it to disrupt or damage U.S. civilian and military infrastructure during a crisis and poses a significant cyber influence threat … .”
• “China has the ability to launch cyber-attacks that cause localized, temporary disruptive effects on critical infrastructure—such as disruption of a natural gas pipeline for days to weeks—in the United States.
• “U.S. adversaries and strategic competitors almost certainly will use online influence operations to try to weaken democratic institutions, undermine U.S. alliances and partnerships, and shape policy outcomes … .”

Note especially that Russia and China are not simply trying to establish the capability to attack our critical infrastructure and to influence our population. The intelligence community states they can undertake those attacks today.

2. Economic health and competitiveness are critical to national security.

The director of national intelligence’s assessment clearly explains that the technology sector is a key battleground in this strategic competition.

• [T]he U.S. economy will be challenged by slower global economic growth and growing threats to U.S. economic competitiveness.”
• “China will continue to use legal, political, and economic levers—such as the lure of Chinese markets—to shape the information environment.”
• “[F]oreign actors [will] increase their efforts to acquire top talent, companies, data, and intellectual property via licit and illicit means.”

Bottom line: The American private sector is now a decisive actor, capability, and battleground in the modern national security context.

3. The age of cyberwarfare is here, and the scale of the threat is outstripping our ability to defend.

In addition to the statements about Russia and China’s current capabilities mentioned above, the Worldwide Threat Assessment reports the following:

• “China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea increasingly use cyber operations to threaten both minds and machines in an expanding number of ways—to steal information, to influence our citizens, or to disrupt critical infrastructure.”
• “For years, they have conducted cyber espionage to collect intelligence and targeted our critical infrastructure to hold it at risk. They are now becoming more adept at using social media to alter how we think, behave, and decide.”
• “As we connect and integrate billions of new digital devices into our lives and business processes, adversaries and strategic competitors almost certainly will gain greater insight into and access to our protected information.”

Having served as an intelligence officer for more than 15 years, I can attest that our intelligence community is not prone to hyperbole. They understand very well that their words and analysis shape life-and-death decisions as well as billion-dollar budgets.  [read more]

Under Trump, US Economic Freedom Rises Significantly

From The Daily Signal.com (Jan. 25):

The U.S. economy is roaring like no other time in recent memory. The job market is hot, unemployment is down to record lows, and small business optimism is soaring.

But this newfound dynamism didn’t come from nowhere. It required a package of market and consumer-friendly reforms passed by Congress and adopted by the Trump administration. These reforms have boosted economic freedom.

According to The Heritage Foundation’s 2019 Index of Economic Freedom, America’s economic freedom has seen a dramatic boost—from 18th place in the world to 12th place in the span of just one year. America’s score ticked up by more than a full point from last year, reaching the highest level in eight years.

The annual index—now celebrating its 25th year—provides an overall snapshot of almost every country’s level of economic freedom. It takes into account a variety of factors, like taxation, regulation, and trade. It is relevant to our job prospects and the prices we pay for goods and services, not to mention what kind of appliances and cars we can choose and buy.  [read more]

Nice to know. Will the lame-stream-press report this? Probably not.