6 things you need to know about virtual reality (from the guy who’s doing it right)

From Ideas.Ted.com (June 12):

For all the hoo-hah and fanfare around next-generation technologies like Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard, it’s still early days for virtual reality. Sure, we’ve come a long way from clunky simulators (even ones with wind machines that blew back your hair), but the field is still pretty much open for all comers. Filmmaker Chris Milk (TED Talk: How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine) is bullish about the possibilities. Here, the man who melted the Internet with “have you seen it yet?” projects blending technology and music for the likes of Arcade Fire and Johnny Cash mulls the possibilities of the medium he’s betting on in a big way.

The key to VR? It’s the sound. When you think of virtual reality, you probably picture it: a 360-degree environment full of immersive vistas. But it’s the sound that makes it real, Milk says. He first grasped this while watching Hunger in Los Angeles, an early VR film by Nonny de la Peña, which places the audience in the middle of a street scene. It grabbed him immediately, but not for the reasons he expected: “The visuals were not photorealistic; she’d recreated the scene with blocky CGI characters,” he says. “But what really affected me the most was the audio, because it was real. Basically, she’d recorded a food bank line where somebody had a diabetic seizure and everybody was talking. You could walk around the characters and the scene, and it was really affecting.”

The old rules don’t apply. Like many VR pioneers, Milk has brought years of filmmaking experience to his work inside the goggles — and now he’s setting it all aside. “As a director, the main tools I use are framing, performance and editing,” Milk explains. “Through framing I show you exactly what I want you to see in the screen; I capture the performances using different angles of framing, and then I edit it all together into something. Those tools go completely out the window with virtual reality.” One by one, all the long-held rules of filmmaking fall away. “Everything’s a total experiment,” he says.  [read more]

Interesting article.

The New Congressional Plan to Repeal and Replace Obamacare

From Daily Signal.com (June 5):

A group of House Republicans unveiled a 192-page health care plan that fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with “patient-centered reforms” and “free-market solutions.”

Lawmakers released the plan Thursday as the GOP-led Congress prepares to attack the Affordable Care Act. Both houses of Congress have already signaled their intentions to repeal Obamacare by a simple majority vote using the reconciliation process—just as the law was passed in 2010.

The new GOP plan, American Health Care Reform Act, was written by Reps. Phil Roe of Tennessee and Austin Scott of Georgia. It has the backing of the Republican Study Committee, a caucus made up of nearly 170 members of the House of Representatives.

The American Health Care Reform Act covers four broad areas:

1. Encouraging Competition in the Health Care Market. The proposed legislation addresses this issue by allowing Americans to purchase health insurance products across state lines. Small businesses also are permitted to merge together to coordinate better rates.
2. Improving Access for Vulnerable Americans. Under the bill, premiums would be capped at 200 percent of the state’s premium average. Additionally, those with pre-existing conditions can alternate between health insurance markets, provided they maintain “continuous coverage.”
3. Supporting Medical Breakthroughs. The bill provides funding for an eight-year, $15 billion Medical Breakthrough Fund at the National Institutes of Health to develop cures for the top five causes of death in the United States: heart disease, cancer, strokes, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes. These conditions kill more than 1.5 million people each year.
4. Reforming Medical Liability Laws. Solutions include requiring review by an independent panel prior to malpractice discovery and a “voluntary right of removal to federal court so long as there is a federal payer or a federal statute.” Barr said that this reform increases the quality of care by establishing national guidelines for physicians to follow and helps reduce “frivolous lawsuits.”

[read more]

Well, it’s a good start. The lawmakers could add that if a person wants he/she can pay out-of-pocket their medical bills. Especially if the patient is rich, then they don’t need to or even want to purchase insurance. 

Buy why 192 pages? That’s still less than the 1,000 page boondoggle knows as Obamacare. Couldn’t the lawmakers get it down to 20 – 50 pages?

The question is if the bill passes Congress will Obama veto it? Probably. Obamacare is his baby and he doesn’t want his baby to go away. That’s why we really need a president that will sign into law this bill or a bill similar to it.

By the way, the pdf  link on the Daily Signal website is just a 9-page summary of the bill. The pdf link on this page is the full text.

The Coming of the Islamic State was Foretold 10 Years Ago. And No One Listened.

From The Blaze.com (June 8):

Although the birth of the Islamic State and the herald of the caliphate are often regarded as some of 2014’s “big shockers,” they were foretold in striking detail and with an accurate timeline by an Al Qaeda insider nearly one decade ago.

On August 12, 2005, Spiegel Online International published an article titled “The Future of Terrorism: What Al Qaeda Really Wants.” Written by Yassin Musharbash, the article was essentially a review of a book written by Fouad Hussein, a Jordanian journalist with close access to Al Qaeda and its affiliates, including the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who pioneered the videotaping of beheadings “to strike terror into the hearts” of infidels (Koran 3:151).

As Hussein explained in the introduction of his book “Al Zarqawi: Al Qaeda’s Second Generation”: “I interviewed a whole range of Al Qaeda members with different ideologies to get an idea of how the war between the terrorists and Washington would develop in the future.”

In what follows, I [Raymond Ibrahim] reproduce the seven phases of Al Qaeda’s master plan as presented in Musharbash’s nearly 10-year-old article, (emphasis added in bold) with my commentary interspersed for context. Phases four and five are of particular importance as they describe the goals for recent times, much of which have come to fruition according to plan.

The First Phase. Known as “the awakening”—this has already been carried out and was supposed to have lasted from 2000 to 2003, or more precisely from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 in New York and Washington to the fall of Baghdad in 2003. The aim of the attacks of 9/11 was to provoke the U.S. into declaring war on the Islamic world and thereby “awakening” Muslims. “The first phase was judged by the strategists and masterminds behind al-Qaeda as very successful,” writes Hussein. “The battle field was opened up and the Americans and their allies became a closer and easier target.” The terrorist network is also reported as being satisfied that its message can now be heard “everywhere.”

The Second Phase. “Opening Eyes” is, according to Hussein’s definition, the period we are now in [writing in 2005] and should last until 2006. Hussein says the terrorists hope to make the western conspiracy aware of the “Islamic community.” Hussein believes this is a phase in which al-Qaeda wants an organization to develop into a movement. The network is banking on recruiting young men during this period. Iraq should become the center for all global operations, with an “army” set up there and bases established in other Arabic states.

The Third Phase. This is described as “Arising and Standing Up” and should last from 2007 to 2010. “There will be a focus on Syria,” prophesies Hussein, based on what his sources told him. The fighting cadres are supposedly already prepared and some are in Iraq. Attacks on Turkey and—even more explosive— in Israel are predicted. Al Qaeda’s masterminds hope that attacks on Israel will help the terrorist group become a recognized organization. The author also believes that countries neighboring Iraq, such as Jordan, are also in danger.

The Fourth Phase. Between 2010 and 2013, Hussein writes that Al Qaeda will aim to bring about the collapse of the hated Arabic governments. The estimate is that “the creeping loss of the regimes’ power will lead to a steady growth in strength within Al Qaeda.” At the same time attacks will be carried out against oil suppliers and the US economy will be targeted using cyber terrorism.

The Fifth Phase. This will be the point at which an Islamic state, or caliphate, can be declared. The plan is that by this time, between 2013 and 2016, Western influence in the Islamic world will be so reduced and Israel weakened so much, that resistance will not be feared. Al Qaeda hopes that by then the Islamic state will be able to bring about a new world order. [read more]

Yea, all of the stages are pretty prophetic. The last two stages doesn’t get any better.

ISIS and the Sykes-Picot Agreement

From Glenn Beck.com (Sept. 9, 2014):

“I think this hour will change your perspective. It will also help you understand what’s really happening with ISIS and ISIL… What is the real objective,” Glenn said. “Out of all of the peace accords and the cease-fires and the nonviolent pledges, none of them ever get to the root of the problem, and that is the ‘why.’ Until the why is addressed, the cycle of violence and hate is just going to continue.”

So how do get to the root of the why? Glenn started with a timeline that many have probably seen before. It included the 2014 Israeli/Hamas conflict, the 2012 Gaza conflict, the Second Intifada (2000), the First Intifada, the 1968 Six Day War, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. While most timelines documented the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would end there, Glenn took it a step further – all the way to the beginning of World War I.

“The world is at war for the first time, and it is divided,” Glenn said. “You have the Allied Powers… and then you have in the purple the Central Powers. The Allies: U.S., Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Serbia. And then the Central Powers, the bad guys, if you will, of World War I: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire.”

“This is the last time the Arab world had a united Islamic state led by a religious leader, the Ottoman Empire, the caliphate,” he explained. “The Allies knew the Ottoman Empire could shut down key shipping routes effectively and then cripple Britain’s economy, France. So they knew the Ottoman Empire was going to be a problem. They had to neutralize it.”

Neutralizing the power of the Ottoman Empire was at the center of western strategy at this point in time. Great Britain sent an army officer by the name of T.E. Lawrence to the Middle East to convince Arab leaders to fight against the Ottomans.  [read more]

Lawrence promised the Arab leaders the moon and the stars including rule over a new united Arab kingdom of Greater Syria.

But Lawrence never kept his promise. He never intended to keep it.  Then enter the Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain, France and Russia which divided up the area. Ever heard the strategy divide-and-conquer? That’s exactly what this agreement did that the Arabs agreed to.

Here the key points when considering the history of the conflict:

1. The Sykes-Picot agreement
2. The desire for a united Arab kingdom
3. The western desire to maintain economic control of the Middle East
4. The quest to regain control of ‘Greater Syria’
5. The Jewish and Palestinian people are nothing more than pawns in this larger game

The Arab leaders new the only way to consolidate power (read: caliphate) once again was to unite around a common enemy, and that enemy was the Jews.

And to kill off the leaders of the countries in the region and have a Islamic revolution is also part of the strategy. Which is what ISIS is trying to do.  They know about the promise even if Americans including Obama don’t

So, what is President Obama doing about this crisis? Nothing. And what’s worse he admits he doesn’t have a strategy. Which is what he said back in 2014. He is either incompetent or doesn’t care. Maybe both.

In other news: Islamic State Working to Develop Chemical Weapons.

So, we have ISIS committing acts against humanity. And there is Russia acting aggressive. Can you say WWIII? Add China into the mix…

Russia’s Internet Research Agency

From The New York Times.com (June 2):

Around 8 :30 a.m. on Sept. 11 last year, Duval Arthur, director of the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness for St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, got a call from a resident who had just received a disturbing text message. “Toxic fume hazard warning in this area until 1:30 PM,” the message read. “Take Shelter. Check Local Media and columbiachemical.com.”

St. Mary Parish is home to many processing plants for chemicals and natural gas, and keeping track of dangerous accidents at those plants is Arthur’s job. But he hadn’t heard of any chemical release that morning. In fact, he hadn’t even heard of Columbia Chemical. St. Mary Parish had a Columbian Chemicals plant, which made carbon black, a petroleum product used in rubber and plastics. But he’d heard nothing from them that morning, either. Soon, two other residents called and reported the same text message. Arthur was worried: Had one of his employees sent out an alert without telling him?

If Arthur had checked Twitter, he might have become much more worried. Hundreds of Twitter accounts were documenting a disaster right down the road. “A powerful explosion heard from miles away happened at a chemical plant in Centerville, Louisiana #ColumbianChemicals,” a man named Jon Merritt tweeted. The #ColumbianChemicals hashtag was full of eyewitness accounts of the horror in Centerville. @AnnRussela shared an image of flames engulfing the plant. @Ksarah12 posted a video of surveillance footage from a local gas station, capturing the flash of the explosion. Others shared a video in which thick black smoke rose in the distance.  [read more]

To cut to the chase all of what you just read was a hoax perpetrated by Russia. Specifically, by their Internet Research Agency to try to destabilize America. To try to make anyone who uses the internet not to trust what they read.

What did you expect? Putin is ex-KGB. What this agency is doing is similar to what the KGB has done in the past.

Immigration Interview for America

Maybe America should have an immigration interview similar to job interviews. For instance these questions could be asked for all potential citizens:

• Why do you (the immigrant) want to come to this country? 
• What value can you can add to the country?
• What do you think of capitalism?
• What do you think of the concept of liberty?

When an employer interviews a job applicant one of the things the person is looking for how is the potential employee is going to fit into the culture of the company. Maybe we should look at how immigrants can fit into America. Like following the laws of the land. Not being anti-American.

According to Discover The Networks.org Mexico has similar guidelines for its country:

• Foreigners are admitted into Mexico "according to their possibilities of contributing to national progress."
• Immigration officials must "ensure" that immigrants will not only be useful additions to Mexico, but that they have the necessary funds to sustain themselves and their dependents.
• Foreigners may be barred from the country if their presence upsets "the equilibrium of the national demographics"; if they are deemed to be detrimental to "economic or national interests"; if they have broken Mexican laws; and if they are not found to be “physically or mentally healthy."

Evidently the Mexican gov’t  is not for open borders.

Under Canadian immigration laws if a person wants to be a permanent citizen he/she under what’s called the Independent class. The class is defined as a  “professional class or skilled worker class and the application is assessed based on a point system. An individual should make an application under this class if he/she wishes to come to Canada based on his/her qualification, work experience and knowledge of English or French language.” There is also the Entrepreneur class, investor class or self employed class if a person wants to start a business in Canada or just wants to invest in Canada without starting a business in Canada. Finally, there is the Family class where a person can immigrant if he/she has a close relative in Canada.

The immigration forms asked about your knowledge of English and French. Your education and jobs you have in the past 10 years. It even asks about your spouses employment history. The form also asks about net worth and any debt. Evidently Canada only wants the wealthy to come. Hmmm.

United Kingdom has similar classes but they call them “tiers.” “ Tier 1 (General) Migrant, a Tier 1 (Investor) Migrant, a Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) Migrant, a Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) Migrant, a highly skilled migrant, a Businessperson, an Innovator, an Investor, a self-employed lawyer or a writer, composer or artist, the applicant must have been employed in the UK continuously throughout the five years…” Tier 1 is the highest tier. It’s what UK calls the “high value immigrants.” No kidding. It’s interesting that they had to go into such detail about the Exceptional Talent. Was composer or artist really necessary?

Under UK’s point system you get more points: if you have a Ph. D., make a lot of money previously, and are under the age of 28. So, UK’s motto is: give us your intelligent, your rich and your young. Interesting.

Here’s France’s immigration policy: “[F]oreign-born persons may request to be naturalized if such persons have resided continuously in France for five years prior to filing of the request. French nationality in this case is given in the discretion of the French High Administrative Authority (Conseil d'Etat) if the French speaking person can show that his acts in France have been meritorious and contributing to French prosperity. The above-mentioned five-year period may be reduced to two years if the foreign-born person successfully performed two years of higher education in France. “

A Sample of The Savage Manifesto

Here is a sample of his manifesto I found interesting:

1. Make English the official language of the U.S.
2. Use illegal aliens to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, and then, repatriate them. Pay them a one-time worker fee.
3. Pull the troops out of Germany and S. Korea and put them on our southern border.
4. Mexico should pay one barrel of oil per month per illegal alien that sneaks into our country.
5. Strike down the anchor babies law.
6. Export jailed illegal aliens.
7. Use profiling to prevent terror attacks.
8. 10% pay raise for the military personnel.
9. Deny Ahmadinejad to enter our country. Implement strong sanctions against this rogue nation.
10. Impose tariffs on China.
11. Institute a flat tax.
12. Keep the estate tax at zero.
13. Reduce pay and premiums for civil servants.
14. Defend the defense of marriage act.
15. Create a marriage incentive through lower taxes for married heterosexual couples and a tax credit for each child conceived and carried to birth. Increase the subsidies for each year the couple remains married.
16. Make abortions illegal.
17. Require a gov’t-issued photo ID such as a driver’s license at the ballot box when voting.
18. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.
19. End the practice of short selling.
20. Privatize the regulation of Wall Street.

Source: Trickle Up Poverty: Stopping Obama's Attack on Our Borders, Economy, and Security (2010) by Michael Savage

Pretty good ideas and most are specific. The most original ones are 3, 4, 15, & 20. Not sure if 15 is a good idea. I am kind of against any kind of subsidy at all especially when the country is in debt.

Defense, State Department Documents Reveal Obama Administration Knew that al Qaeda Terrorists Had Planned Benghazi Attack 10 Days in Advance

From Judicial Watch.com (May 18):

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified “Secret” documents from the Department of Defense (DOD)and the Department of State revealing that DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by the al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman” (BCOAR), and had been planned at least 10 days in advance. Rahman is known as the Blind Sheikh, and is serving life in prison for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist acts.  The new documents also provide the first official confirmation that shows the U.S. government was aware of arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria.  The documents also include an August 2012 analysis warning of the rise of ISIS and the predicted failure of the Obama policy of regime change in Syria.

The documents were released in response to a court order in accordance with a May 15, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against both the DOD and State Department seeking communications between the two agencies and congressional leaders “on matters related to the activities of any agency or department of the U.S. government at the Special Mission Compound and/or classified annex in Benghazi.”

Spelling and punctuation is duplicated in this release without corrections.

A Defense Department document from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), dated September 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack, details that the attack on the compound had been carefully planned by the BOCAR terrorist group “to kill as many Americans as possible.”  The document was sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Obama White House National Security Council.  The heavily redacted Defense Department “information report” says that the attack on the Benghazi facility “was planned and executed by The Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman (BCOAR).”  The group subscribes to “AQ ideologies:”

The attack was planned ten or more days prior on approximately 01 September 2012. The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for U.S. killing of Aboyahiye ((ALALIBY)) in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 atacks on the World Trade Center buildings.

“A violent radical,” the DIA report says, is “the leader of BCOAR is Abdul Baset ((AZUZ)), AZUZ was sent by ((ZAWARI)) to set up Al Qaeda (AQ) bases in Libya.”  The group’s headquarters was set up with the approval of a “member of the Muslim brother hood movement…where they have large caches of weapons.  Some of these caches are disguised by feeding troughs for livestock.  They have SA-7 and SA-23/4 MANPADS…they train almost every day focusing on religious lessons and scriptures including three lessons a day of jihadist ideology.” [read more]

Ten days is plenty of time to beef up security for the embassy or even to evacuate the people in it. So, why didn’t the Obama administration do either choice? Well, either Obama didn’t care about the people’s safety in the embassy and cared only for his re-election, Obama didn’t believe the report (after all Obama is loved by the terrorists and they only hated Bush—or so Obama and most on the far-Left believes), or he is just plain incompetent. The reader can choose.

Another question is since Hillary knew about the threat will she be questioned about the report by the press that adores her? I think I just answered my own question.

Self-Driving Cars Are Already Getting Into Accidents

From Chicago Tribune.com (May 11):

Four of the nearly 50 self-driving cars now rolling around California have gotten into accidents since September, when the state began issuing permits for companies to test them on public roads.

Two accidents happened while the cars were in control; in the other two, the person who still must be behind the wheel was driving, a person familiar with the accident reports told The Associated Press.

Three involved Lexus SUVs that Google Inc. outfitted with sensors and computing power in its aggressive effort to develop "autonomous driving," a goal the tech giant shares with traditional automakers. The parts supplier Delphi Automotive had the other accident with one of its two test vehicles.

Google and Delphi said their cars were not at fault in any accidents, which the companies said were minor.

Since September, any accident must be reported to the state Department of Motor Vehicles. The agency said there have been four, but would not comment about fault or anything else, citing California law that collision reports are confidential.

The person familiar with the accident reports said the cars were in self-driving mode in two of the four accidents, all of which involved speeds of less than 10 mph. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the reports publicly. [read more]

Unless the self-driving cars have virtually no accidents a driver should still be able to control of the car if he/she needs to.

NASA Working on Something Straight Out of ‘Star Trek’

From The Blaze.com (May 1):

In March, NASA said the concept of “warp drive” was “impossible,” but news is swirling that it hasn’t stopped engineers from conducting tests that could someday allow for faster-than-the-speed-of-light travel.

Scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center tested an electromagnetic propulsion drive in a vacuum, according to NASASpaceFlight.com, an industry news website with a forum that it says is frequented by NASA and space industry professionals.

Nancy Smith Kilkenny with SGT Inc., an engineering firm with contracts for federal agencies, wrote on NASA’s website in March though that “warp drive” is currently “at the level of speculation.”

“The bulk of scientific knowledge concludes that it’s impossible, especially when considering Einstein’s Theory of Relativity,” she said. “There are certainly some credible concepts in scientific literature, however it’s too soon to know if they are viable.”

She said that NASA was working on ion propulsion for deep space missions, which she said was the “fastest and most efficient to date.”

“There are many ‘absurd’ theories that have become reality over the years of scientific research. But for the near future, warp drive remains a dream,” Kilkenny said. [read more]

Cool. If mankind is ever to travel the universe it will need near light speed velocity for its spaceships. Once that technology is tested and working NASA can next work on transporter devices like in Star Trek. One can only dream.

9 Reasons To Reject Hillary

From Dick Morris.com (Apr. 15):

Here are nine reasons why electing Hillary Clinton as president would be a mistake.

1. She is a hawk who will get us into another war.
2. She tends to follow certain advisers slavishly, almost to the exclusion of her own views.
3. She has no knowledge of economics, nor much interest in it. Economics has always been Bill Clinton’s turf.
4. She has no deep sense of who she is. Hillary Clinton is endlessly adaptable.
5. Her worldview is shaped by her grudges.
6. Her fundraising has totally compromised her freedom of action.
7. She is paranoid and suspicious.
8. She approved NSA wiretapping of foreign leaders.
9. Her contempt for the press is legendary and will lead to more and more secrets.

[read more]

Not a very good portrait of her but Dick Morris was with the Clinton admin. the last four years. The 2nd reason is particularly disturbing. A perfect cult follower. Reason seven is not better. That sounds like Nixon which the Left doesn’t want to hear. 

Report: ISIS camp just a stone's throw from U.S. border

From One News Now.com (April 16):

A public-interest group is very concerned about what's going on at a terrorist camp just inside Mexico, not far from a major U.S. Army installation. 

High-level sources in Mexico have confirmed to Judicial Watch that ISIS is operating a camp about eight miles from El Paso, Texas, which sits on the U.S.-Mexico border. The camp is located in an area (known as "Anapra") dominated by a drug cartel, making it an extremely dangerous and hostile operating environment for the Mexican Army and Federal Police operations.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, tells OneNewsNow this ISIS cell represents a clear threat to the United States.

"We're very much concerned obviously about what's going on," he shares. "Our understanding also is the 'coyotes' – those engaged in human smuggling – have helped move ISIS terrorists through the desert and across the border in New Mexico." [read more]

It’s bad enough America has drug gangs wanted to cross the border now it looks like terrorists are threatening America’s border. The border really needs to be secured.

The Progressive Income Tax

Since today being tax day, I would like to share a Prager University video about the Progressive Income Tax:

Dick Morris did a video about how prohibition caused the income tax.

President Lincoln created the first progressive income tax during the Civil War. The Revenue Act of 1862 was created to fund the war. The two-tier system highest tax rate was 5% (which the Left now days calls too low). If you made less than $600 you were exempted from the tax. According to Wikipedia, the tax didn’t fulfill its purpose. Most progressive taxes don’t.

It’s kind of a shame Lincoln had to create such a tax system because the progressive tax system (especially a heavy progressive tax system) is a Marxist idea. Although, he wasn’t the first person to reference it. The early Romans had progressive income tax. The tax rate under normal circumstances was 1% of property value, and could sometimes climb as high as 3% in situations such as war.

If America had a flat tax rate with no income exemptions then Congress would be less likely to raise it and keep the tax rate low otherwise they would be sticking it to the poor and not just the rich. Then again that would make the poor keep more of their own money (as well as every other tax payer). This would mean that the poor could someday become independent from the progressive politicians and not keep them in power. We can’t have that can we?

Talking about low tax rates here an interesting and informative video about the Laffer Curve.

How America’s Next President Can Lead on Foreign Policy

From Daily Signal.com (April 5):

Talent matters. That holds true in foreign policy, as well as in sports. So there should be no surprise when a mediocre national-security squad suffers a string of foreign-policy setbacks. Top-rank talent may not guarantee any administration an unbroken winning streak in foreign policy, but it sure improves the odds.

So what should the nation’s next president be looking for when assembling his or her national-security team?

Start with Talent, Not Programs

Managing complicated foreign-policy conundrums requires talented people with insight and wisdom. They need to be skilled decision makers and effective leaders. Such people can be found in government. Unfortunately, government rarely empowers the right people at the right time.

If a president seeks to improve foreign-policy outcomes, simply rearranging the rusty chains that bind our national-security apparatus together does little to help. Jimmy Carter was one president who learned this lesson the hard way.

One of Carter’s campaign promises was that he would exercise better oversight of our foreign-policy machinery. In “Jimmy Carter: In Search of the Great White House“ (1980), Betty Glad documents Carter’s belief that the National Security Council Staff was out of control—an all-powerful cabal undercutting leadership from the top, but at the same time bureaucratic, burdensome and slow moving. Once in the Oval Office, he scrapped existing NSC processes, reorganized and downsized.

For all the rearranging, the Carter “system” didn’t produce better policy outcomes. A string of foreign-affairs debacles, like the botched decision to withdraw U.S. forces from South Korea, raised questions about the soundness of the president and his national-security team.

To manage mayhem, the first and most critical task for a new president is to pick the right people for his team.

The qualifications for any job are a mix of skills, knowledge and attributes. Being an effective strategic leader requires three core characteristics: character, competence and critical thinking. [read more]

So, true. Too bad Obama doesn’t have any of the core characteristics. Interesting essay.

How Self-Driving Cars Could Make You Sick

From The Blaze.com (April 10):

As self-driving cars become a more tangible reality for the future of road travel, their ability to let riders do something other than pay attention to the road is one of the main draws. But one detail might have been slightly overlooked on this front and that’s the factor of motion sickness, a new study says.

Anyone who has been a passenger on a road trip and has tried to read while riding has probably experienced some level of queasiness.

Researchers at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute surveyed more than 3,200 adults from six countries, including the U.S., about the types of activities they would do instead of driving in an autonomous car. More than a third said they would do things like read, text, watch movies, play games and work, a news release about the study stated. [read more]

Basically when cars drive themselves the driver becomes a passenger which allow him to look around and site see and not pay attention to the road. I am not sure it is a good idea to have the car totally autonomous though. Since self-driving cars are made by people and people are imperfect then self-driving cars will be too. A human should still be able to take control of the car if the cars goes out of control. What about ice, snow or even a downpour of rain? The car could hydroplane. I suppose a builder can put in sensors to handle that.  And what about driving around mountain roads? Can an owner trust a self-driving car to do that safely?

Then there is the issue of some malicious computer person hacking into the car’s program.  And then there are viruses and worms. The car owner would definitely want to keep your car’s software up to date.  If the car is going to use some sort of speech-to-text software to tell it its destination it better be really accurate or have someway for the user to input the destination.

Finally, Glenn Beck on his radio show brought up an interesting point. If self-driving cars become the norm will driver’s ed still be taught? And will the gov’t outlaw non-self-driving cars because they think self-driving cars are safer on the road? Surely race cars and demolition derby cars won’t be self-driving because that would be really boring.

Miscellaneous Thoughts Part 35

• America went off the gold standard. Hope we don’t go off the God standard.
• Obama said “No religion is responsible for violence and terrorism.” I beg to differ. The Aztecs, Satanists, and other pagan religions offer human sacrifices to their gods. He should have said peaceful religions don’t commit violence.
• A movie that should never be made: Indiana Jones and the Lost Golden Accordion.
• Someone should invent a computer mouse that goes to sleep when the computer turns off. That way the battery in the mouse is conserved.
• Dr. Kelly McGonigal’s three powers of willpower (I will, I won't, and I want) sound like Freud’s three parts of the psyche (ego, super-ego, and id).
• You can be a rich sob. You can be a poor sob. It doesn’t matter what your financial situation is—you’re still a sob. The only thing that matter in the end is your character and how you treat your fellow man. In the end that’s what really matters to God.
• Instead of chanting “no justice, no peace” maybe Al Sharpton and his henchmen should be chanting “no truth, no justice.” After all isn’t that why witnesses take an oath to tell truth during a trial? Then again the truth doesn’t matter to the far Left.
• If minorities according to the Left are always tolerant then what does that say about a Muslim baker not making a wedding cake for a gay couple getting married? Both are minorities. That actually happened. The lame-stream press yawned.
• The real reason why the Left didn’t trust the Tea-Party getting together was because it was spontaneous. It wasn’t planned by a community organizer. They don’t trust anything that isn’t planned.
• A prediction: Bill O’Reilly’s next book will be called Killing MLK or Killing King.

20 Reasons Why Hillary Would Wipe Her Server Clean

From The Hillary Daily.com:

Hillary is a hoarder. So is Bill. So if she actually removed everything from her server, she had to be convinced that it would be more dangerous to keep the emails than to ride through a scandal, no matter how rough.

This scandal isn’t about Hillary’s privacy, it’s about her self-preservation. So here’s what would make her do it:

1. The emails contained damaging information about Benghazi that conflicted with her testimony and statements.

2. The emails — and those of her closest aides — showed her improper use of her position to benefit the Clinton Foundation, Clinton Global Initiative, Teneo, and herself.

3. If she gave the Benghazi Committee electronic access to the emails, they could easily determine whether any had been edited or altered. It would have been extremely difficult to delete just some of the information in the emails. If she tried to doctor them, the system would likely show when it was last edited. Any edits after she left the State Department would be highly suspicious and the earlier versions could probably be retrieved anyway. So, it would be much easier to give out only hard copies, which can be easily doctored without detection and which would be difficult to search electronically.

4. The emails would show the improper coordination with the Clinton Global Initiative and U.S. corporations. Huma Abedin worked for the State Department as Clinton’s right hand person, Teneo, and the Clinton Global Initiative all at once. She used one of Hillary’s private email accounts on Hillary’s server. Were her emails deleted too? [read more]

Can you imagine Richard Nixon erasing all of his tapes? What are you hiding Hillary? God help this country if she ever gets elected president. I guess she is just following Obama’s lead by not being transparent.

Life in the USSR

The officials were still rounding up people on Saturday and Sunday to perform “friendly labor” in order to help out our “new government,” which by now was beginning to take over all the businesses and factories—it was to become the “power” to all the poor. It was also a time when new rules were being issued against all religions and all believers. Most of the young people were being watched, and the children in school were being taught that there is no God. Most of the churches were closed, except for two or three of the big Orthodox churches, which remained open. But only a few of the older people attended the services. The schoolchildren were instructed to tell on their parents if they practiced religion at home. The people were watched closely, especially at Christmas and at Easter time. I remember Mama and Papa hiding our small Christmas tree in the pantry, and on Easter the colored eggs were not displayed but were kept hidden from the neighbors. It was also a time when many people of intellect and affluence were being picked up and would never be seen again by their families.

It was a time when we children were taught to be silent and not to tell—outside of our home—about our family background or anything that we knew about our families. We were instructed to never talk about anything that happened or was said in our own home. I remember so well that Mama and Papa would tell us that the “walls have ears” and that we should whisper and never talk loudly. I didn’t understand what they meant. I would imagine that our walls could hear us and that there was something very strange about our home and its walls. When I would want to talk, I would look at the walls and ask Mama if I should whisper or if I could speak out.

Source: The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister (2011) by Nonna Bannister.

It should be mentioned Nonna (the author) was describing her experience when Joseph Stalin was the leader. According to Henry Kissinger in his World Order book  Stalin “eliminated all of the other original revolutionary leaders in a decade of purges, and deployed a largely conscripted labor force to build up Russia’s industrial capacity.” A real nice guy. He did this to consolidate “socialism in one country.”

Also, according to Kissinger, Stalin also thought that the capitalist system inevitably produced wars; hence the end of World War II would at best be an armistice.

Franklin Roosevelt felt the USSR was ‘good guy’ who will respond properly and decently if you treat him right. Does that sound familiar? Apply that thinking to radical Islam. Then again most people back then thought this way about the USSR. After all they were America’s allies during WWII. Only a few like General George Patton didn’t trust the Soviet Union. He was proved right in the end.

Islam and Treaties

In the early Islamic system, nonaggression treaties with non-Muslim societies were permissible. According to traditional jurisprudence, these were pragmatic arrangements of limited duration, allowing the Islamic party to secure itself from threats while gathering strength and cohesion. Based on a precedent set by the early Islamic state in entering truces with foes it eventually vanquished, they were limited to terms of specific duration, up to ten years, that could be renewed as needed: in this spirit, in the early centuries of Muslim history, “Islamic legal rulings stipulate that a treaty cannot be forever, since it must be immediately void should the Muslims become capable of fighting them.”

What these treaties did not imply was a permanent system in which the Islamic state would interact on equal terms with sovereign non-Muslim states: “The communities of the dar al-harb were regarded as being in a ‘state of nature,’ for they lacked legal competence to enter into intercourse with Islam on the basis of equality and reciprocity because they failed to conform to its ethical and legal standards.” Because in this view the domestic principles of an Islamic state were divinely ordained, non-Muslim political entities were illegitimate; they could never be accepted by Muslim states as truly equal counterparts.

Source: World Order (2014) by Henry Kissinger.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, America, Israel and the western world are the dar al-harb. I wonder if the current leaders of Iran hold these views.

Well, this is what the Supreme Leader said about America in May 2014:

"The reason for the emphasis placed on the continuation of combat, is not because of the war-mongering of the Islamic establishment. It is only rational that for crossing a region filled with pirates, one should fully equip themselves and be motivated and capable of defending themselves.

"Under such circumstances, we have no option but to continue combat and allow the idea of combat to rule all domestic and foreign affairs of the country.

"Those who seek to promote concession-making and surrendering to bullies and accuse the Islamic establishment of warmongering are indeed committing treason.

"All the officials in the country in the field of economy, science, culture, policy-making, lawmaking and foreign negotiations should be aware that they are fighting and are continuing the combat for the establishment and survival of the Islamic system….jihad is never-ending because the Satan and the satanic front will exist eternally."

Hmm. Looks like the answer is yes.  ISIS surely does still hold these views. As well as the other Islamists.

By the way, Dar al-harb in Arabic means “house of war.”

Our Poop Could Be a Literal Goldmine Worth Millions

From The Blaze.com (Mar. 23):

It might not smell like roses, but sewage could be a goldmine, according to scientists who say that solid waste has a wealth of metals that could be worth millions if they were harvested.

Dr. Kathleen Smith with the U.S. Geological Survey revealed gold, silver and rare elements like palladium can be extracted from treated waste.

“There are metals everywhere — in your hair care products, detergents, even nanoparticles that are put in socks to prevent bad odors,” Smith said in a statement.

Smith, a presenter at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, explained that wastewater treatment yields treated water and biosolids. With more than 7 million tons of biosolids produced in the U.S. each year, the purpose of Smith’s research is twofold.  [read more]

Well, at least we can get some rare earth elements out of poop since China now, according to a 60 minutes story, basically cornered the market on rare earth elements. America was the leading source of rare earth elements in the beginning but a main plant shut down for a while because of environmental reasons and China took advantage of the situation. Rare earth elements are used a lot in electronics like cell phones.

What is Social Justice? video

Source: What is Social Justice? from Prager University.com.

Just like global warming no-one really knows what social justice means. The same with economic justice and any other term with the word “justice” at the end.  Justice is about righting an individual wrong. The key word here is “individual.” I don’t know how a person can right a wrong done to a group of people. It doesn’t make sense. Your are dealing with abstract concepts. Each person in that group may feel he was done wrong in different ways and different degrees and wants different justice done. The only way to make the concept work is if you ignore individual difference in the group. In other words, you stereotype the members. And that’s not fair to the group.

Informative and interesting video.

Israel only nation condemned in UN for women's right violations

From Ynetnews.com (Mar. 21):

Out of nine official documents produced from the UN's annual Commission on the Status of Women report, only one of the UN's 193 members were mentioned in regards to ongoing infringement of women's rights – Israel – in what Jerusalem says in another case of UN bias.

The document, titled the "Situation of and assistance to Palestinian women", slams Israel for the ongoing occupation of the West Bank, a situation which it says has led to "(h)igh levels of unemployment and poverty" among Palestinians, especially women.

"Palestinian women and girls still face significant obstacles in accessing basic services, health care, psychosocial support, water and sanitation, justice institutions and economic opportunities," the report noted.

It is worth noting that according to a 2014 World Economic Forum report, Israel ranked 57th out 137 for female political empowerment; the US ranked 54th and Saudi Arabia ranked 117th. Some 27 of Israel's 120 Knesset members are women.  [read more]

This report is pure B. S. The UN is a joke. Zell Miller is right UN is a useless nuisance.

Just so you know, Yemen, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF), is ranked last with the score of 0.515 (1 is the highest) for gender equality. So, if the UN is going to condemn a country maybe Yemen would be a better choice. I don’t what Palestine's ranking is. The WEF didn’t rank it.

EPA wants to monitor how long hotel guests spend in the shower

From Freebeacon.com (Mar. 17):

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants hotels to monitor how much time its guests spend in the shower.

The agency is spending $15,000 to create a wireless system that will track how much water a hotel guest uses to get them to “modify their behavior.”

“Hotels consume a significant amount of water in the U.S. and around the world,” an EPA grant to the University of Tulsa reads. “Most hotels do not monitor individual guest water usage and as a result, millions of gallons of potable water are wasted every year by hotel guests.”

“The proposed work aims to develop a novel low cost wireless device for monitoring water use from hotel guest room showers,” it said. “This device will be designed to fit most new and existing hotel shower fixtures and will wirelessly transmit hotel guest water usage data to a central hotel accounting system.” [read more]

Why stop there? Why not monitor showers in apartments and homes? Why not monitor all water usage like watering the grass and flushing toilets? Or washing clothes and dishes in homes?

This is a waste of tax payers money. This is pure fascism. If this was mandatory in homes, the elites’ homes would of course be exempted. After all they are special and they wouldn’t waste water (because they are enlightened and so intelligent). Then again since the masses are not so wise they would be wasteful. 

The ATF’s Ammo Ban Is Back…in the Form of a New Bill From Democrats

From The Blaze.com (Mar. 16):

Four House Democrats have taken the Obama administration’s idea of a regulation to ban a widely used kind of ammunition — one it had to pull back because it was so unpopular — and turned it into legislation.

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) introduced the Armor Piercing Bullets Act, which he said would ban the sale of “.223-dervied, 5.56x45mm NATO ‘green tip’ rounds” that are commonly used on the AR-15 rifle. That’s the same ban that the ATF proposed in February, through the adoption of a “framework” that would justify a ban on all bullets that can pierce police body armor.

The ATF’s framework prompted the submission of almost 90,000 comments, most of which opposed the plan as one that would ban a popular round used in a popular rifle. For years, these green tip rounds have enjoyed an exception from a ban on armor-piercing bullets, because they are generally used for sporting purposes.

But even when announcing that this framework would be indefinitely delayed, the ATF indicated it would continue to work on the issue and see if there’s a way to implement its framework. At a hearing last week, ATF Director B. Todd Jones said his agency was “figuring out how we do this rationally.”

Engel was more direct, and said the ATF had it right, and that it’s framework should now be implemented via legislation.

“As the ATF rightly pointed out, these rounds can easily be loaded into concealed pistols and other short guns, making them particularly dangerous to police officers,” Engel noted. “The well-being of the men and women who protect us should not, and need not, be a partisan issue. I encourage all of my colleagues in Congress to support this obvious measure that will, if enacted, save lives.”  [read more]

I doubt it would save lives. How can you prove that anyway? The criminals would still find a way to get the bullets anyway and they are the ones who would use them especially the gangs. The Fraternal Order of Police isn’t worried about this type of bullet so why should these Dems be worried?

You got to give it to the Dems though. They don’t give up. Their war on the 2nd amendment continues.

Myths, Lies and Capitalism video

Source: Myths, Lies and Capitalism from Prager University.com.

Interesting video that dispels the myths (actually lies) that the Left spreads about the free-market system. Most of these myths are based on emotion specifically envy.

Pakistan: Can Sharia and Freedom Coexist? video

Watch and find out.

Source: “Pakistan: Can Sharia and Freedom Coexist?” from Prager University.com. 

The Nazis wanted to pure the races, the Communists wanted to pure the classes, and the Islamists want to pure the belief systems. If Islam wants to join in the civilized world it has to reform like Christianity did. But if the moderates, modern, or even the traditionalists in the religion don’t speak out it will never be able to.

Freedom House.org currently rates Pakistan partly free. The country does not have freedom of the press or internet freedom.

Economically speaking its freedom score is 55.6. It’s property rights score is 30. It’s fiscal freedom is 77.0. According to the Heritage.org’s line graph its economic freedom slightly improves. Let’s hope that improvement continues. Now, only if its civil liberties would get better.

Christianity versus Islam

Novelist Brad Thor on his Facebook page had an interesting observation about the spread Christianity and the spread of Islam. He said: “In Christianity's first four centuries, it spreads peacefully and converts the Roman Empire. In Islam's first four centuries, it spreads violently and triggers the Crusades.”

Make sense to me. If you force, bully, or coerce someone to belief your way, then that person will resent you and even be angry at you.  He might not even keep your belief system. There is even a better chance he will rebel against your belief system. The Crusades is a good example of this rebellion.

On the other hand, if you honestly persuade someone to your belief system then that person will make it part of his belief system. He will more than likely keep it and be at peace with it. Yes, persuasion takes longer and requires patient than forcing someone, but if your goal is to convert someone and have that conversion take hold for a long time then persuasion is your best bet. Keep in mind before the Roman Empire was converted they were pagans. The Empire persecuted Christians until Constantine was converted.

10 Principles for Replacing ObamaCare

From FreedomWorks.org (Feb. 24):

1. Health care decisions should be made  between patients and doctors—the  government should never have a say.
2. Increasing access to health care is about  letting markets provide lower costs for  higher quality of care—not just having an insurance policy.
3. Tax policy should not favor individuals or companies with regard to purchasing health insurance.
4. Regulation of private health insurance should be done by the states.
5. Medicare should allow all seniors a choice of plans in a competitive market and the option to opt out altogether if they choose.
6. Medicaid should move towards a state-controlled model—one in which states have flexibility to innovate and find ways to deliver better quality care with their Medicaid dollars.
7. Patients should be incentivized to save and spend their own money (tax free) on health care through health savings accounts.
8. The abuses of the medical malpractice system must be addressed by the states.
9. Individuals with pre-existing conditions should be accommodated at the state level.
10. ObamaCare must be dismantled entirely.

[read more]

A great plan. Basically let the states handle the healthcare. For those Leftists who say republicans and conservatives don’t have a plan—here is one.

The problem with the healthcare system is prices. No-one knows what the prices of services and equipment are. If consumers know they are purchasing, prices would come down naturally.  Also, we should be able to buy health insurance across state lines like we do with other insurances. It’s stupid we can’t do that.

Father’s Devastating Testimony on Illegal Immigration: ‘Do Black Lives Really Matter?’

From The Blaze.com (Feb. 25):

Jamiel Shaw, whose son was murdered by an illegal immigrant in 2008, blasted the Obama administration’s immigration policies during a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing on Wednesday.

“My son, Jamiel Andre Shaw II, was murdered by a DREAMer, a DACA recipient, a child brought to this country by no fault of his own,” Shaw began. “My family’s peace and freedom was stolen by an illegal alien from Mexico. He was brought here by his illegal alien parents and allowed to grow up as a wild animal.”

He continued: “Some people believe that if you are brought over by no fault of your own that it makes you a good person. They want you to believe that DREAM Act kids don’t murder. I am here to debunk that myth.”

Though Shaw’s son was murdered in 2008, before Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was implemented, he said his son’s killer would likely be qualified under DACA.

Shaw then delivered a gut-wrenching account of how his son was murdered by an illegal immigrant with a criminal record.

“My son, Jamiel Shaw II, was murdered while walking on his own street, three houses down from his home. An illegal alien on his first gun charge was visiting a neighbor when my son was coming home,” he said. “He shot my son in the stomach and then in the head, killing him.”

“Do black lives really matter? Or does it matter only if you are shot by a white person or a white policeman?” Shaw asked.  [read more]

Evidently the illegal alien didn’t know “black lives matter.”

Not every illegal (sorry, I meant to say “American-in-waiting”. Geez, another stupid useless term from the regime) is law abiding. They break America’s laws by coming over hear illegally in the first place. I believe it is called trespassing.  Anyway, if they had any respect for America they wouldn’t be doing that in the first place. Then again who knows what Mexican schools teach about America.

FCC Approves Net Neutrality in Straight Party-Line Vote

From The Blaze.com (Feb. 26):

In what one Republican called a “monumental shift toward government control of the Internet,” the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday approved a proposal granting the federal government the authority to regulate Internet broadband providers under the same law as public utilities.

The five commissioners voted 3-2 along party lines in favor of the proposal known as net neutrality. The 317-page plan, which has not yet been publicly released, bans broadband providers from blocking, throttling or prioritizing certain Internet pages over others. The FCC has said the proposal will not seek to impose any new taxes or fees.

The three Democrats voiced their support of the measure while the two Republicans dissented. Democrats say they have the authority to impose the new regulations under under Title II of the Federal Communications Act of 1934.

In his remarks, Republican Commissioner Ajit Pai called the plan a “monumental shift toward government control of the Internet” and a “rapid departure” from market-oriented approaches.

Wheeler said the new regulations will make America “more competitive,” not hinder its ability to compete when asked by a reporter after the meeting to respond to such claims. [read more]

File this plan under “if you like your internet you can keep it.” And like Obamacare no-one knows what’s in the plan—I guess you have to pass it to know what is in it. Internet it was good to know you. Goodbye conservative blogs, goodbye Rush Limbaugh.com, Fox News.com, Hannity.com, The Drudge Report.com, etc. Basically, any website that doesn’t tow the line for the regime or doesn’t contribute money to the Dems. Am I being over-reactive?  We’ll see, but if the plan is great then why was it kept secret before it was enacted? Also, expect to see slower download speeds and buffering.

You can read Freedomworks.org article on what Net Neutrality does.

The internet bothers the Left just like cars bother the left. They both represent liberty.

One other thing. Net Neutrality hurts poor minorities.

Obama to ban bullets by executive action, threatens top-selling AR-15 rifle

From Washington Examiner.com (Feb. 27):

It's starting.

As promised, President Obama is using executive actions to impose gun control on the nation, targeting the top-selling rifle in the country, the AR-15 style semi-automatic, with a ban on one of the most-used AR bullets by sportsmen and target shooters.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives this month revealed that it is proposing to put the ban on 5.56 mm ammo on a fast track, immediately driving up the price of the bullets and prompting retailers, including the huge outdoors company Cabela's, to urge sportsmen to urge Congress to stop the president. [read more]

This is a roundabout way of banning guns. Definitely a war on the 2nd Amendment. The Left think if people don’t have guns then crime will go away or be diminished. I don’t think so. Tell that to Britain and France. Especially that cop that got mowed down by an militant Muslim. The police officer didn’t have a gun to protect himself.

Hitler and Environmentalism

Nazism was another type of socialism practiced by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (aka the Nazi Party), led by Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Hitler’s Nazis held many key tenets in common with the philosophy articulated by Marx. They believed in a government-regulated, planned economy. More important, though Hitler was agreeable to the limited private ownership of property, he was against capitalism and those who sought undo personal profit. During his reign of terror, a popular government slogan was “Fixing of profits, not their suppression.”

Hitler also believed capitalism was created by the Jews and once told Italian Fascist dictator Mussolini, “Capitalism has run its course.”

So determined was Hitler to eliminate excessive profit that execution or imprisonment in a concentration camp was the punishment exacted for any business owner who pursued his own self-interest, instead of the interests of the state. This official decree was stamped into the rim of the silver reichsmark coins issued during the Nazi reign: “Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz,” or “The common good before self-interest.”

Additionally, like Marx, Hitler saw nature, not humankind, as supreme. He also insisted that the environment be protected from commercial development, stating, “Man must not fall into the error of thinking that he was ever meant to become lord and master of Nature.”

Like his communist cousins, Hitler perceived pollution as the direct result of capitalism and, as a fellow materialist who spurned belief in the supernatural (despite occasional vague rhetoric about “Providence”), he was completely opposed to the harvesting or mining of natural resources, stating, “The German countryside must be preserved under all circumstances, for it is and has forever been the source of strength and greatness of our people.”

Following Marx, Lenin, and Hitler, a new generation would go forth to further unfurl socialism’s green flag, and they would achieve great success with their devious agenda...even in America.

Source: Eco-Tyranny. How the Left’s Green Agenda Will Dismantle America (2012) by Brian Sussman.

So, Hitler wasn’t a socialist huh? In his book Mr. Sussman also gives a 12-point plan on how to dismantle the eco-tyrannists plans. Like, for instance, abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, repeal the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, abolish the Department of Interior, repeal the Endangered Species Act (he says this can be handled by the states) etc. Those acts by themselves will give the environmental extremists a stroke for sure.

Feds: America Should Adopt ‘Plant-Based’ Diet

From Freebeacon.com (Feb. 20):

The federal committee responsible for nutrition guidelines is calling for the adoption of “plant-based” diets, taxes on dessert, trained obesity “interventionists” at worksites, and electronic monitoring of how long Americans sit in front of the television.

The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) released its far-reaching 571-page report of recommendations to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Thursday, which detailed its plans to “transform the food system.”

The report is open for public comment for 45 days, and will be used as the basis by the government agencies to develop the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The guidelines are used as the basis for government food assistance programs, nutrition education efforts, and for making “decisions about national health objectives.”

DGAC proposed a variety of solutions to address obesity, and its promotion of what it calls the “culture of health.”

“The persistent high levels of overweight and obesity require urgent population- and individual-level strategies across multiple settings, including health care, communities, schools, worksites, and families,” they said.

In response, DGAC called for diet and weight management interventions by “trained interventionists” in healthcare settings, community locations, and worksites. [read more]

What will be next? Make mandatory aerobic exercise? When you let gov’t take over the healthcare system you let them take over your health—ie your body. And the Left is worried about gov’t banning abortion. This is far worse.

Well, at least the militant vegetarians are happy.

Congress Is About to Impose Another Unfunded Mandate on Doctors

From The Daily Signal.com (Feb. 19):

Doctors in their day-to-day practice already face a mound of federal regulations.

Now, starting Oct. 1, doctors will face a new unfunded mandate as they will be required to transition to a costly and complicated coding system for payment.

While the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) system was originally designed specifically for disease classification, since the 1980s, public and private payers alike have required that health care providers use the ICD-9 system when they file reimbursement claims. If, for instance, you go to the doctor’s for treatment for the flu, the doctor’s office will use the ICD code for flu when billing your insurance.

But unless Congress acts, the current ICD code will be replaced Oct. 1 by the vastly more complex ICD-10.  [read more]

Another example of the gov’t making life more complicated than necessary.

Frederick Douglass

This being Black History Month I would like to talk about Frederick Douglass.

Here are the Frederick Douglass’ twelve principles to leadership and success:

1. The Proper Use of Power Is To Promote the Common Good.
2. Give Up Something You Want In Order To Help Someone Else.
3. Overcome Doubt and Fear.
4. Understand Why and How To Control the Human Ego.
5. Do What Is Right and Proper Even If No One Is Looking.
6. Use Knowledge and Understanding Wisely.
7. Overcome Indecisiveness.
8. Make Gratitude a Part of Every Thought And Action.
9. Practice the Skill of Listening Carefully Before Making Judgments.
10. Remain True To Your Word.
11. Hold a Vision For the Desired Future.
12. Recognize That Your Success Is As Much a Motivation To Others As To You.

Pretty good principles to live by. It sounds like he might be a conservative.

Here are some quotes of his:

People are asking me about the race problem.... I know of no race problem. The great problem that confronts the American people to-day is a national problem -- whether this great nation of ours is great enough to live up to its own convictions, carry out its own declaration of independence, and execute the provisions of its own constitution.

It's easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.

I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.

I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.

Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

….The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us….I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played mischief with us. Do nothing with us….And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! ….[Y]our interference is doing him positive injury.

Yea, this guy was definitely a conservative. A better role model for blacks than Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton will ever be.

CIA Bought Hundreds of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction in ‘Operation Avarice’

From The Blaze.com (Feb. 16):

A mysterious seller.

Internationally condemned chemical weapons.

Until recently, the whole thing was a secret — and even now the Pentagon is cagey about its involvement.

Working with the U.S. military, the CIA purchased some 400 Borak rockets from an Iraqi seller between 2005 and 2006, uncovering and destroying reserves of sarin nerve agent, the New York Times reported.

The name of the program: Operation Avarice.

According to the Times’ report, Operation Avarice revolved around a single Iraqi who sold the weapons to the Americans in batches.

Run by the CIA office in Baghdad and the Army’s 203rd Military Intelligence Battalion, the program destroyed most of the rockets it recovered — along with thousands of other chemical weapons recovered throughout the American occupation of Iraq — though some rockets were tested in rudimentary ways that may have exposed soldiers to dangerous chemicals.

One source said operatives would place warheads in “an old cast-iron bathtub” and drill through the metal exteriors to extract the liquid sarin nerve agent within.

Manufactured by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1980s, the Borak rockets were found to contain surprisingly pure sarin despite their age, the Times reported.

Sarin gas is a lethal chemical used by Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s — with occasional CIA guidance — and more recently in fighting in Syria.  [read more]

The Modern Little Red Hen

A modern fairy tale by Ronald Reagan told Nov. 16, 1976:

Once upon a time, there was a little red hen who scratched about the barnyard until she uncovered some grains of wheat. She called here neighbors and said, "If we plant this wheat, we shall have bread to eat. Who will help me plant it?"

"Not I," said the cow.
"Not I," said the duck.
"Not I," said the pig.
"Not I," said the goose.

"Then I will," said the little red hen. And she did. The wheat grew tall and ripened into golden grain. "Who will help me reap my wheat?" asked the little red hen.

"Not I," said the duck.
"Out of my classification," said the pig.
"I'd lose my unemployment compensation," said the goose.
"Then I will," said the little red hen, and she did.

At last it came time to bake the bread. "Who will help me bake the bread?" asked the little red hen.

"That would be overtime for me," said the cow.
"I'd lose my welfare benefits," said the duck.
"I'm a dropout and never learned how," said the pig.
"If I'm to be the only helper, that's discrimination," said the goose.

"Then I will," said the little red hen. She baked five loaves and held them up for her neighbors to see.

They wanted some and, in fact, demanded a share. But the little red hen said, "No, I can eat the five loaves."

"Excess profits!" cried the cow.
"Capitalist leech!" screamed the duck.

"I demand equal rights!" yelled the goose.
And the pig just grunted. And they painted "unfair" picket signs and marched round and round the little red hen, shouting obscenities.

When the government agent came, he said to the little red hen, "You must not be greedy."

"But I earned the bread," said the little red hen.

"Exactly,” said the agent, "that is the wonderful free enterprise system. Anyone in the barnyard can earn as much as he wants. But under our modern government regulations, the productive workers must divide their product with the idle."

And the lived happily ever after, including the little red hen, who smiled and clucked, "I am grateful. I am grateful."

But her neighbors wondered why she never again baked any more bread.

Source: Reagan In His Own Hand.

Free Enterprise

Another speech by Ronald Reagan about free enterprise April 16, 1979:

Our free market system is usually termed capitalism and by that definition capitalism has hardly been around long enough to deserve all the evil for which it is being held responsible.

Most of us aren’t really conscious of how recently the capitalist system came into being. Possibly we look back and think of the extravagant luxury of kings and emperors and see that as capitalism. We have a modern counterpart today in the rulers of Marxist nations.  Maybe our trouble is caused by the term capitalist itself. Actually all systems are capitalist. It’s just a matter of who owns and controls the capital--ancient king, dictator or private individual. We should properly be looking at the contrast between a free market system where individuals have the right to live like kings if they have the ability to earn that right and government control of the market system such as we find today in socialist nations.

We have a very visible example of the contrast between the free market and government ownership in a household necessity we take for granted. The invention of Alexander Graham Bell--the telephone offers us irrefutable proof of the superiority of the free market.

As recently as 1880 there were only 34,000 miles of telephone wires on the whole North American Continent. There were dozens and dozens of small telephone companies using several different kinds of equipment and there was no inter-connection between these different companies. The same situation prevailed in all the other so called advanced nations.

If someone had openly advanced a plan to put a phone in every home, on every farm, in every hamlet and city and hook them all together I’m sure someone would have said, “only government has the resources to do that.” Now strangely enough in most other countries government did take over the telephone system and to this very day the telephones in a great many countries are part of the postal system. In America the government wasn’t bulldozing it’s way into the free market place as it is today. For that we can be grateful. The scattered, competing phone companies were left to the magic of the market place. And that magic worked as it always does.

We take the phone so much for granted it’s hard to realize things weren’t always this way. We can dial directly to any point in the country and to a great many outside the country.

With no intention of insulting anyone I have to say it only takes a few days trip in many of those other countries to where the telephone is a government service to realize there is a difference. A long distance call there can be quite an adventure--so can getting a phone installed.

But here we have them in our cars if we like, in private or corporation owned executive planes and on boats. We bounce long distance calls off privately owned satellites and use telephone lines for network radio and remote broadcasts of sporting and special events.

And all of this came about because private individuals wanting to make a profit for themselves kept thinking of better services to offer, confident that we’d want that better service.

Source: Reagan In His Own Hand.

The Hope of Mankind

Here is another speech Ronald Reagan did Sept. 21, 1976:

Every once in a while all of us native born Americans should make it a
point to have a conversation with one who is an American by choice. They
can do a lot to firm up our resolve to be free for another 200 years.

In a dinner at Mt. Vernon back in revolutionary times, Lafayette  turned to his host and said “General Washington you Americans even in war and desperate times have a superb spirit. You are happy and you are confident. Why is it?” Washington answered “There is freedom, there is space for a man to be alone and think and there are friends who owe each other nothing but affection.” So simple an answer and so true.

Now 200 years later our self respect as a nation has undergone a strain. At times it has seemed as if the symbol of American power has become our departing ambassador, flag under his arm boarding a rescue helicopter.

But there is an awful lot of that other America still around. Like beauty it may be in the eye of the beholder. A few years back a woman who had fled from Poland wrote a letter and said, “Among some of our American born friends it is not fashionable to be enthusiastic about America. There is V.N. drugs, urban and racial conflict, poverty and pollution. Undoubtedly this country faces urgent and serious problems. But we newcomers see not only the problems but also solutions being sought and applied.

I love America because people accept me for what I am. They don’t question my ancestry, my faith, my political beliefs. When I want to move from one place to another I don’t have to ask permission. When I need a needle I go to the nearest store and get one. I don’t have to stand in line for hours to buy a piece of tough, fat meat. Even with inflation I don’t have to pay a days earnings for a small chicken.

I love America because America trusts me. I don’t have to show an identity card to buy a pair of shoes. My mail isn’t censored and my conversation with friends isn’t reported to the secret police.”

More recently On July 5” the “London Daily Mail” filled it’s editorial page with an article by Ferdinand Mount in which he sharply criticized his fellow Britons and other Europeans who delight in lambasting the U.S. He said: “What the world needs now is more Americans. The U.S. is the 1st nation on earth deliberately dedicated to letting people choose what they want and giving them a chance to get it. For all it’s terrible faults, in one sense America still is the last, best hope of mankind, because it spells out so vividly the kind of happiness which most people actually want, regardless of what they are told they ought to want.  We  criticize,” he said, “copy, patronize, idolize, insult but we never doubt that the U.S. has a unique position in the history of human hopes. For it is the only nation founded solely on a moral dream. A part of our own future is tied up in it and the greatest of all the gifts the Americans have given us is hope.”

Source: Reagan In His Own Hand.

Sadly, Obama and people like him don’t think America is the “best hope of mankind.” And because of that belief they want to remake America in their own twisted image.

More Excerpts from Ronald Reagan’s Speeches

America’s Strength. Dec. 22, 1976:

Our productivity is phenomenal. We raise 37% more wheat per acre than the national average. We are 6% of the worlds population on only 7% of the worlds lands but we produce almost half the worlds corn, 2/3 of the soy beans, 1/3 or more of the world’s paper, electrical power, college graduates and almost 1/3 of the farm machinery. Just to round it off we make more than 2/3 of the computers and 80% of all the passenger aircraft.

We lead the world in advanced technology; in telecommunications, drilling and mining equipment, medical science and agri-science.

All of this is because our system freed the individual genius of man. Released him to fly as high and as far as his own talent and energy would take him. We allocate resources not by government decisions but by the millions of decisions customers make when they go into the market place to buy. If something seems too high priced we buy something else. Thus resources are steered toward those things the people want most at the price they are willing to pay. It may not be a perfect system but it’s better than any other that’s ever been tried.

No Pay, No Vote.  April 3, 1978

It goes without saying that the US has proven again and again it’s generosity. Other nations owe us tens of billions of dollars but they aren’t asked to pay up. We are first on the scene to bring aid when natural disaster strikes and our Marshal plan and subsequent foreign aid program are unique in all the history of mans relation to man. We helped allies and erstwhile enemies alike with need the only criteria. All of which qualifies us now to make a long overdue move in the United Nations.

Source: Reagan In His Own Hand.

It’s too bad Obama can’t say these things and mean it. I am not saying he should completely emulate President Reagan. No one can do that. A president should be himself. All I am saying is that it’s too bad he can’t love his country faults in all. Even Woodrow Wilson and FDR loved their country in their own big gov’t progressive way.

Ronald Reagan on Peace

This is from a speech he did in April 1975:

It has been revealed that for twelve years, a behavioral scientist at the University of Hawaii has headed up a team of distinguished colleagues in a Federally-Funded, computerized study of International behavior. Summed up in one sentence they have learned that “to abdicate power is to abdicate the right to maintain peace.”

The study focused mainly upon Red China, Russia and the US. Every bit of data from trade to tourism—from threats to treaties—was fed into the computers. The findings prove conclusively that what Laurence Beilenson wrote in his book “The Treaty Trap” is true. “Nations that place their faith in treaties and fail to keep their hardware up don’t stick around long enough to write many pages in history.”

According to the report “It is not equality in power,” “that reduces hostility and conflict. Rather it is power dominance or submission.”---Peace is purchased by making yourself stronger than your adversary—or by dismantling power and submitting to one’s enemies.”

Power is not only sufficient military strength but a sound economy, a reliable energy supply and credibility—the belief by any potential enemy that you will not choose surrender as the way to maintain peace. Thomas Jefferson said “The American people won’t make a mistake if they are given all the facts.”

Source: Reagan In His Own Hand. The Writings of Ronald Reagan that Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America (2001) by Ronald Reagan.

So true now as it was back then. Sadly, Obama and the Left will never get this fact—that evil exists in the world.