Posts Tagged → nuclear
The drowning men of Europe
Most of Europe is drowning.
Drowning in debt they cannot afford, drowning in socialist economics like climate alarmism, drowning in power-mad authoritarianism that backwardly pits governments against the citizenry, drowning in cultural dissolution from uncontrolled mass migration by foreign people from failed nations who have zero interest in becoming European, but who simply want whatever quality of life goodies Europe can offer them for free.
Everyone around the world is watching this slow motion train wreck happen, and the worse it gets, the more the drowning governments refuse to change their policies to save themselves. This is the price of worshiping power and holding onto it at all costs. Drowning is the eventual cost.
Only a handful of European countries have resisted this drowning, namely Poland, Hungary, Russia. Border enforcement is the first and best method to ensure that Poland, Hungary, Russia remain themselves, and control their expenditures and streets. Russia obviously is a separate subject due to its invasion of Ukraine, but the fact is, Russia is still Russian, one of the greatest cultures in world history, in terms of art, literature, music, dance. There are no bongo drums at the Bolshei, yet, nor likely ever.
Spain, Ireland, England, and Germany are especially fraught, the water lapping at their lips, with their native citizens starting to engage in open street warfare with the invaders. But these same governments have strangely taken the side of the invaders, who do not pay taxes, commit endless violence, and are an unbearable financial burden. Censorship and repression of the native citizens for merely speaking about the lawless invasion is now common policy, so the governments can artificially, not legitimately, hold onto power. Everyone can see that confrontations between fed-up, repressed citizens and their corrupt governments are inevitable. And yet, the repression only tightens.
Governments in Germany, Spain, Britain, and France, especially, seem to be laser focused on Must…Hold…On…To… Power. At any cost. And so they continue to drown, going under from the weight of their increasing mistakes.
What do drowning people do, but grab onto anything or anybody around to keep from going under for the last time. A drowning person will pull down every rescuer with them, due to mindless panic and a primitive attempt at self preservation.
When I was young, I was a Water Safety Instructor. WSIs taught Red Cross lifesaving, and we certified lifeguards. I signed only those Red Cross lifeguard certification cards that I believed were truly earned. At any waterfront or pool, we WSIs were automatically the senior pro in charge, and I conducted many drills to prepare and train active duty lifeguards at many different lakes, pools, and beach fronts.
And I did rescue drowning people, many. Almost every time the drowning person would scratch me, claw at me, try to stand on me, in an attempt to climb on top of me so their lungs could reach the air. It is a dangerous moment trying to rescue a drowning person. Both the swimmer and the life saver can go down together, locked in a fatal embrace driven by panic.
The drowning men of Europe are doing the same thing right now as does a dying swimmer. They are all wildly splashing away at their own people, while trying to find something, anything, anyone, to prop themselves up onto. Here are some of the public policies the drowning men of Europe are doing that will in fact only hasten their death:
A) More unlimited mass migration, censoring and even jailing critics
B) More climate alarmism nonsense, censoring and even jailing critics
C) Siding with Islamic jihadis, the worst enemies of Western democracy, and thus pledging to “recognize” a new state of “palestine” in boundaries no one knows, under undefined conditions, with inevitably violent results. France, Britain, Spain, Ireland, and Germany are the leading proponents of rewarding jihadi terrorism by giving it another official place to call home. Just like they did with the new jihadi rulers of Syria.
That this new country would be created in the middle of an active war zone, not after the conclusion of a war as has been done in the past, does not daunt these drowning men. That it would be run by the avowed opponents of everything the drowning men used to stand on, does not daunt them. They are simply willing to sacrifice Israel and Middle East peace if it just buys them a few more minutes of life above the water closing over their heads.
I think Americans are going to end up riding in and saving Europe a third time, because the inevitable results of all of these self destructive policies by the drowning men is going to be that Europe goes under. And when Europe goes fully under water, all hell will break loose between the native Europeans and their would-be replacement invaders.
America is not going to stand by and let nuclear-armed England, France, and Germany become run by jihadis. Just ain’t gonna happen. We didn’t let Hitler drown Europe, and we sure won’t let the Mega Hitler jihadis do it, either.
Proving once again that Europe was always the rough prototype, and that America was the perfected implement, God’s gift to humankind.
Israel is defending Western Civilization, say thank you
Forgive my long absence. Last week I had a careless tired body-tired mind workplace accident where I got to watch my body’s hydraulic fluid spray out like a hose from my leg. That scared me, and I drove myself to the ER forty minutes away, dodging possums, porcupines, rattlesnakes, and deer in the roadway the entire way. I got stitched up and am moving around, but one thing I am beginning to accept is that while I am still very strong, I am no longer forty or even fifty. And when I feel tired now, after working hard all day, it is time to put down tools and step away from the work site.
It is a pretty good reason for being a week overdue here on the blog. Really, you should have seen my place. It looked like a murder scene…blood everywhere. Took me hours to clean it up.
So, Israel is defending Western Civilization from Iran’s nuclear hungry genocidal Islamofascists, and all of a sudden I am surrounded by the “woke right.” As if genocidal dictators who have stated for almost fifty years that their intention is to force convert or blow up, destroy, and kill America and Israel, as well as the rest of Western Civilization, all infidels, should have nuclear bombs.
“If Israel has nuclear bombs, why can’t Iran?” goes a common question. Finding moral equivalence between one of the world’s few free democracies, Israel, and one of the world’s most oppressive, cruel, destructive, war-mongering, terrorism-exporting, deceptive theocracies, Iran, requires a person to make a huge leap in rational judgment and factual observation, and do so with a healthy boost of ridiculous raw Jew hatred.
Turns out the woke right, the fake Christians like Tucker Carlson, Patrick Bet David, and Candace Owens, understand that hating Jews is a good business. They get lots of online clicks and a decent angry support mob to follow them around. To win a policy argument about nuclear proliferation among genocidal regimes, versus the democracies being targeted by them, all the woke right people have to do is malign all Jews (not just the leftist ones, who we all must admit are especially aggravating because they are especially destructive when they of all people should know better), or ascribe malice to all things Jewish and Israel.
“America must stop fighting the Jews’ wars” or “Israel’s wars” goes another refrain, as the woke rightsters strut and preen, puffing up their supposed anti war chests, pretending to be superior while our Western Civilization is burning to the ground from within and without.
Never mind Iran’s (and China’s) public plan to destroy America, the Great Satan, which they could easily do with all of the jihadis they have hidden here in America. No, apparently all wars are started by “the Jews” because you know… it’s simply just “the Jews.”
Not Iran itself. Not jihadism. Not Islamofascism and Islamosupremacism as witnessed through a tremendous amount of violent jihadism focused on Israel and Jews worldwide. No, according to Tucker Carlson and his fellow woke rightsters, we are supposed to believe that a population of maybe ten or twelve million Jews total on the entire planet is manipulating and victimizing the two billion Muslims and one and a half billion Christians and one billion Hindus and one and a half billion Han Chinese who own everything and run everything. And so, accordingly these Iran Firsters say Iran must have nukes. Because the Jews.
This is humiliatingly lame Neanderthal stuff. It is intellectually indefensible. While I am proud to be MAGA since 2015, and I have all of the MAGA hats, tee shirts, socks, underwear etc of Trump MAGA Land, I am embarrassed to have to share one inch of ideological space with these woke right people. They are making common cause with true evil, and spreading evil and hate, while claiming to be real Christians, real Americans. Tucker Carlson is a fraud, I hate to say. I had been a huge fan of his for all of the right reasons (he was an excellent journalist who asked the right questions), and now I detest the guy, for all of the right reasons.
For the past year, Tucker Carlson has been warning that an Israeli war with Iran will result in World War Three and the end of the world. In the past few days his anti Israel scaremongering has been proven wrong, but he has not relented. He wants Iran to have nukes so Israel can be bullied and blackmailed and forced out of existence, if not blown out of existence. Never mind what happens to America in the process. Carlson is a Jew hating America hating Iran Firster.
If you hate Jews, you hate Jesus, and if you hate Jesus you hate Christianity. If you hate Israel so much that you are willing to sacrifice America, like Carlson, you are not MAGA, and you are not pro America. Being an America First conservative, as I am, means putting America before all other countries. But it does not mean crawling under a rock and hiding and pretending that the world outside is not happening. That is childish.
If you are that much of an isolationist, then you are a fool and you really do hate America, because you want America to fail. America is part of this world, and we must live within it, we must engage it. That means having alliances and relationships with other countries, and occasionally defending ourselves from other countries. The planet is a chess board on which we must occasionally project power. Failing to project power means that others will project power onto us, and America is not too big to fail.
War does not need to be conducted with American boots on the ground, or even by Americans. Being anti war does not mean just laissez faire letting things happen randomly, like letting Iran get a nuclear arsenal and then them bringing America-ending nuclear war directly to us. To every thing there is a season, a time for peace, and a time for war. Sometimes we just have to give war a chance. Smart Americans can define or implement war however they want, so long as our national interests are protected and our precious military personnel are not squandered.
In 1979, Iran openly declared war on America and Israel, and they and their allies have never missed an opportunity to burn our leaders in effigy and our flags in public. Iran’s war with Israel did not start a few days ago, it started in 1979. Now on the cusp of confronting nuclear powered maniacs who hate all of us Westerners, Israel is taking huge risks and making huge sacrifices to ensure that Americans sleep comfortably at night. Israel is taking a beating to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program.
If you are truly MAGA, and truly American, then you appreciate hard work and risk taking. Say Thank You to the Israelis, who did the heavy lifting that no one else was brave enough to do. Don’t be a mean spoiled brat, like Tucker Carlson. His behavior is not American.
Go see latest Mission Impossible movie
You should go see the latest Mission Impossible movie. You will not regret it.
About once per year I get to see a Hollywood movie. Not because of limitations on time, or money, but because 99% of what Hollywood produces is dreck, garbage, stupid, juvenile, destructive amoral nonsense. So sifting through the many no-go movies usually results in one that I will see, per year, and this year I went and saw the latest, and supposedly the last, Mission Impossible movie, starring Tom Cruise.
About Tom Cruise: I like him, because I like the values he showcases and promotes in his movies. His movies have plenty of action, and also pit good vs. evil, honesty vs. dishonesty, tradition vs. popular modernization, etc. Very few of Hollywood’s actors or movies are about good values. Most Hollywood movies are about silly, superficial entertainment, performed by actors who in their private lives lead silly, vacuous, superficial lives full of ridiculous childish drama and bad decisions. They make their money doing dress-up and make-believe. Then these same people are quick to tell working Americans how to live, what to value, and so on. They are disbelievable.
Tom Cruise is the complete opposite of 99% of the Hollywood goofs. He communicates his values and beliefs through his movies, and rare interviews, and leaves us peons (who are also his paying audience) alone the rest of the month.
For example, his movie The Last Samurai is the improbable but beautifully done story of a white dude roundeye who is captured by racist Samurai during the quite real Satsuma Rebellion. It all comes down to Captain Algren (Cruise) talking with Lord Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) around a campfire after escaping a false arrest (please accept my dialogue paraphrase that is close to the actual script):
Algren: “So That’s it. You will now just end it all, by your own hand, because of some supposed failure?”
Katsumoto: “Yes. It is our way of keeping our honor.”
Algren: “Honor? What better way to show honor than to live a life of service and sacrifice, as you have done your whole life?”
Instead of beating us over the head with political speeches on X Twitter, in just a little bit of movie dialogue, Tom Cruise shows us he values tradition, service, sacrifice, and personal honor. For all the people who dislike Cruise’s association with Scientology, why can’t you just accept him for who he actually is, and not what you merely suspect him of thinking? Based on what we see, the guy is A+ material.
His Mission Impossible series never failed to entertain, not the least reason being that Cruise does most of his own incredible stunts. Reportedly, he routinely breaks ribs, fingers, and damages all kinds of other parts of his body doing these stunts. How many other Hollywood actors do any stunts, much less real stunts that are really dangerous?
Ummmmmm… probably none.
And, how many other Hollywood actors bother to stay in great enough physical shape that they could do their own stunts, if they wanted to?
Ummmmmm.. probably a small handful. So I give Tom Cruise all of the credit he deserves for all of the rare stuff he does. He gives his all to his movie audience, which is much more than can be said for most actors who just stand in front of a green screen and pretend to fight an imaginary foe.
This last Mission Impossible ties together all the past ones. Kind of a high-tech version of the Sherlock Holmes movies mixed with James Bond. But also give Tom Cruise real credit for taking a huge risk with his pro-America, physical adventure-loving audience: His movie cast is a racial- and gender-diverse mix of people, who do not simply appear on screen because they have a certain skin color or boobs. Rather, Cruise has selected exemplars of each: The reliable old black guy sidekick is a tech genius, who goes down fighting, and whose genius level tech work saves the world. The lady SEAL looks like the unique lady SEAL would have to look, very muscular and tough. And so on.
Cruise’s movie-wide racial & gender diversity is not painfully unrealistic and crammed down our throats. Rather, it is realistic enough for us not to have to suspend belief. This is exactly the kind of diversity that Cruise’s audience can accept, because we see it to some degree in our every day lives (not that any of us see world-saving superhero acrobatics play out, ever, but rather we see people like us doing exceptional things sometimes).
For example, I found myself alternately painfully gripping the poor Princess of Patience’s thigh, arm, and hand at different points in the underwater scene. Because in my youth I was a Water Safety Instructor, waterfront lifeguard, and very active SCUBA diver, I had experienced quite a few saves as well as close encounters. On one night dive in the Florida Keys in the mid 1980s, I had to tow my exhausted dive partner to the surface and back to the boat, which was marked only by a single underwater strobe light in the pitch blackness. Leaving my spear back on the bottom, and using an adapted rescue maneuver, I fought the same strong current that had caused him to run out of air in his dive tank, and run out of energy to do anything but slowly drown as a limp rag. Eventually I reached the boat just as I too was running out of energy, weighed down as I was by a tank, regulator, wetsuit, buoyancy compensator, and various kit.
It was a very close call that was suddenly brought back to life by watching Tom Cruise’s realistic near-drowning scene in the sunken nuclear submarine. With the jumbled torpedos laying and falling all about. As he is running out of air and time and body heat. Swim, Tom, swim up!
Anyhow, a bunch of Cruise’s acrobatic stunts in this unbelievably entertaining movie have gotten him Guiness Book of World record recognition, as well as Most Dangerous Stunt Ever, Most Ridiculous Stunt Ever, Stupidest But Coolest Stunt Ever, Most Incredible Stunt Ever…especially for a sixty year old white guy.
You gotta go see this movie, even if the rogue computer / rogue Artificial Intelligence plot has played out at least since War Games (1983), Dune (1984, based on the 1960s book), Terminator movies from 1984 to 2019, and many others, where humankind is almost the fatal victim of our own ridiculous curiosity. Mission Impossible is so good that we forget all that and buy deeply into the premise that our AI foe “The Entity” is about to destroy humanity, and so we must engage in or at least tag along on an impossible mission to destroy it and save humanity.
And one more thing about Tom Cruise: If he is actually deeply into Scientology, then it is treating him really well. Everything about the guy looks like success and contented happiness. We hear no stories about poor choices or destructve behavior. Most of Hollywood is a-religious or non-religious, and most of Hollywood’s people are morally relativistic and quite lost on this planet. Their private lives are a complete mess, and very few of them have any sort of moral compass or true north. Scientology may sound weird, but I think all religions and belief systems sound weird to some degree. Even if it is weird, wow, is it ever working for this super successful, happy guy, Tom Cruise….one of the few real working actors left on our entire planet.
Trump storms the Middle East
Awful lot of hand-wringing and anxiety over President Trump’s un-orthodox approach to the Middle East this week. Understandably. A lot is at risk if the president fails, and he is jumping head-first into a region that is already steeped in failure.
From the Sunna-Shia conflict that most recently showed up in Syria, where Sunni jihadists massacred thousands of Alawite (Shi’ite/Shia) men, women, and children, to the perilous position of all minorities (Jews, Christians, Yazidis, Druze, Coptic Christians) in a now overwhelmingly violent Islamic area, it just seems like the Middle East is a gigantic minefield where no matter where a person steps, the likelihood is high that an explosion will follow.
Into this minefield runs head-first our president, Donald Trump. His approach is probably completely different than anything done before by the West. It appears that Trump is forcefully grabbing everyone there into one gigantic bear hug, full of economic prosperity and political legitimacy. So long as they all participate on his terms.
Judging by the openly amazed smiles of the Saudi, Qatari, and Syrian leaders, as they stand shoulder to shoulder with President Trump, they are indeed surprised and also willing to be hugged. It remains to be seen if they truly understand what Trump wants from them, or if they think they can outwit him and get what they want, without having to give.
Yes, there is real risk with Trump’s approach, but if nothing is risked, nothing is gained. Qatar is funding a great deal of the pro-terrorism unrest on American college campuses right now, as Qatar has also been the source of most Sunni-oriented terrorism around the planet. Home to Islamic propaganda outlet Al-Jazeera and Hamas leaders living in luxury, Qatar has never been a huge friend of the West, but rather an antagonist who has used the West’s openness against it. So, accepting an airplane from Qatar to serve as a government-owned makeshift Air Force One, as Trump has done, and standing with the emir of Qatar as chums, has blurry optics, let alone the probability the plane is loaded with Chinese spying devices that will undermine American security.
But…what if Qatar can be turned from its evil ways? Huuuuge win for world peace!
And Trump trusts American security personnel to sweep the Qatari Trojan Horse gift plane for spy devices, of course, and any that are found will probably be held quietly in reserve, in the event that Trump needs to reverse course with Qatar. Which is a real possibility, as Trump’s tariff negotiations have revealed: Today you are in like flint, tomorrow you are out in the cold, but the following day you are allowed back in the house because you did the right thing. Thus far, Trump has masterfully played tariff and international trade policy like a maestro conducting a symphony orchestra.
Let’s hope Trump can do the same magic in the Middle East, because recognizing as legitimate the bloodthirsty, murderous jihadis in Syria (who most recently axe murdered a bunch of Druze), and negotiating a doomed-from-the-start nuclear deal with ever-lying Iran, carries enormous risk, as does having all kinds of separate American relationships with the Saudis et al that do not include Israel. If Israel sees Iran gearing up for nuclear blackmail or all-out war, then Israel will have no choice but to strike hard.
So, it appears that suddenly Israel is the wild card here, not the evil nuke-happy Iran or jihadist Syria or terrorism-enabling Qatar. And yet, everyone knows Trump is already in like flint with Israel….
What a strange pattern we have here, as President Trump weaves a creative new web to capture and finally hold stable the most difficult and unstable region on the planet. Let’s hope he is successful, and that a Pax Trumpica can finally happen.
Are Israelis being tricked into another Roman Occupation?
Disclaimer: We don’t go down any rabbit holes here. This blog is filled with well-argued opinions and occasionally those of people who I believe need to be heard. My opinions are always backed by facts and Founding Principles, and if I can’t find facts to back up my particular opinion, then I fall back on principle (e.g. America is supposed to be a small government run by Constitutionally obedient and publicly responsive public servants). If no Founding Principle is at stake, then I usually don’t take a stand. Today, if you read further, you are joining me on my first ever rabbit hole exploration. But I am doing it out of commitment to truth, and I am asking questions that are the only questions that make sense to me.
Historically, about 2100 years ago, Israel/Judea became increasingly occupied by the expanding Roman Empire, because some Jews invited the Romans in to provide some protection from the invading Parthian Empire and to give some political stability among a divided Jewish populace. The rest is history, as it is said, as over the following decades the Romans increasingly asserted their own form of political control to the point where they ended up in a civil war with the entire Jewish population. The Romans destroyed the Great Temple in Jerusalem, as well as much of Jerusalem itself, enslaved and deported about half of the Jewish population, etc.
In their destructive romp across Judea and historic Israel, the Romans also unwittingly created two new powerful religions that would go on to shape the entire Western world, Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, but this is a subject for another time. The key here is that the Jews invited in the Romans for their promised political stability, and ended up getting destroyed by them.
Is the same process now repeating itself in modern day Israel? Is America the new Rome about to politically occupy Israel? I ask because the same historic dynamics are playing out.
Consider the following facts:
- Hamas launched a massive and massively barbaric suicide raid on southern Israel that was destined to fail itself and destined to bring huge destruction down on Hamas and Gaza in response. It is self-defeating. Makes no sense.
- Neither Hizbullah nor Syria have opened up additional fronts, though they logically should
- Israeli security along the Gaza border was essentially a Ring Doorbell camera every hundred yards? Really?
- Contrary to Military Operations 101 since organized militaries began operating about five thousand years ago, no sentries, no sentinels, no guards, no watchmen were posted along any of the Israeli outposts along the Gaza border. Not one. As a result, the few IDF soldiers posted there were literally caught asleep in their underwear and gunned down as they scrambled out of their beds.
- Apparently, reportedly, Hamas has spent the past two years practicing their invasion and giddy child murders on a large mockup Israeli village. No one in Israel noticed this? No one in Israel thought this was strange, or a precursor or a warning?
- The Biden Administration just released Six Billion Dollars to Iran, for no good or logical reason, and to America’s serious detriment, which freed up Iran to spend their existing money on things like nuclear weapons aimed at America and arming Hamas and Hizbullah terrorists killing women and children in Israel (and probably coming to America soon through Joe Biden’s wide open southern border).
- Israel’s supposed “security failure” looks and smells and walks like an inside job by the security and military elites, who oppose Prime Minister Netanyahu’s popularism (just as the American elites and their pet security agencies like the CIA, FBI, DHS etc oppose President Donald Trump’s power-to-the-people popularism). Every day this supposed “failure” at Gaza appears more and more like an inside set-up of PM Netanyahu to blame him and turn the voters against him.
- Israel’s “security failure” at Gaza makes no sense on its face nor in hindsight. Israel can and usually does walk and chew gum at the same time. The IDF has always covered all three bases and Home Base simultaneously. Way way too many important parts of the Gaza security system failed all at the same time to be a mere coincidence. There has been no explanation for this failure, and indeed other than a deliberate act of self-sabotage and self sacrifice by Israel’s military and security elites (because of their power struggle with PM Netanyahu), there is no logical explanation.
- None of the senior officials responsible for Israel’s national security or for Gaza’s border have taken responsibility and resigned, as they normally would when committing such a monstrous failure in any other time. Hmmmmm, right?
- The defeat of Netanyahu and the elevation of America in Israel’s domestic politics would essentially place Barack Hussein Obama in charge of Israel’s next government.
- If in fact Hamas was allowed to go into southern Israel by Israel’s professional watchdogs, who are almost all Leftists loyal to the leftist elites, for basic domestic political purposes, it would be in keeping with the American Left’s practice of burning America to the ground in order to get and keep control of America. Examples of such treason in America include the 2020 “Summer of Love” Democrat Party violence, looting, burning, destruction of American cities, the allowed release of covid into the American populace by American health officials (Dr. Mengele Fauci) supposedly guarding us against such viruses, the deliberate destruction of law and order in many Democrat-controlled cities which has resulted in political and societal chaos in these same places, the suspension of electoral laws in 2020 that resulted in massive and brazen vote fraud in the most important swing states like PA, MI, AZ, GA, the continuing fraudulent and even illegal lawfare against President Donald Trump by the administrative state and Democrat politicians. I could go on, but we are on a time budget here. Looks like Israel just experienced her own “Summer of Love“.
So into this situation of Hamas possibly being goaded and sacrificed by Iran into its suicidal homicide attack sails the American navy. Into the Mediterranean Sea now comes a flotilla of American ships meant to buoy Israeli spirits and signal to American Jews that not only can the Democrat Party be occasionally trusted to help Israel, but today to actually save it. Recall that just weeks ago Joe Biden’s illogical payment of Six Billion Dollars to Iran signaled that the Democrat Party hates Israel and Jews and America because it is empowering their worst enemy, a nuclear powered Iran. Lots of “how the hell can any American Jew be a registered Democrat” arguments were resounding across American synagogues.
But now? We are shown that the Democrats actually looove Israel, and the actual savior of a democratic and secure Israel, PM Netanyahu, is cast as the bad guy who failed in Gaza.
Tell me this is not the beginning of the Roman Occupation of Israel Part Two. Nothing else makes sense to me.
And tell me this isn’t just too convenient of a relationship between the Biden Administration, which has spent the past three years destroying America, and a nuclear powered Iran, which was designated by Barack Hussein Obama to be the ultimate destroyer of America.
Americans, are you paying attention?
UPDATE: Yes, I am suggesting that the Biden/Obama Administration is working closely with Iran to remove PM Netanyahu, so Biden/Obama can install a puppet leader who will follow through on the failed Oslo Accords, implement a two-state “solution” and thereby gut and ultimately erase Israel as a sovereign nation, and certainly as a Jewish nation. Iran appears to be temporarily sacrificing Hamas and Gaza to achieve this goal, but they will certainly expect to get revenge on Israel’s Jews at some point in the future.
is Penn State for real?
I know, I know, PSU alum are not supposed to criticize our Mother Ship, Penn State University. But the cold hard facts are material, and it is important to at least raise one’s voice about important things.
For the record, I do not hate Penn State, though I have severed my commitment to PSU football because of the brutally unfair way the PSU board treated my hero and universally admired icon coach Joe Paterno. No, the opposite is true, I care very much about PSU. I am grateful for the stellar undergraduate education I received there. In fact, I received as good or better an education at PSU as or than available at supposedly elite Ivy League schools. That is because PSU is so large, has so many facilities and professors, that anyone who really wants to be educated, to talk with their professors, to spend time debating and studying with like-minded students, can spend all their time as a student being educated. If they but want to.
Which is pretty much what I did there. I served on the Student Senate, ran for student body president, engaged in all kinds of political activism, and studied, studied, studied. My professors, notably Art Goldschmidt, Jackson Spielvogel, Jim Eisenstein, and especially Ed Keynes, helped me grow as only a devoted educator can do. I served many of my best professors as a teaching or research assistant. They each studied me, saw my strengths and weaknesses, and challenged me in ways and in areas where I needed to grow the most, and where that growth would matter the most to my eventual debut as an educated adult.
On the other hand, my impression of Ivy League schools is that they are so one-dimensional and politically correct, that one must only gain entry and then spend four years parroting and agreeing with one’s professors to get out with a degree. No growth, no challenge, no self-development at the Ivy league schools, just indoctrination by the staff and parroting back by the students. Where is the value in that?
So what the hell is going on at Penn State with the sky-high tuition? At $38,000 a year IN STATE tuition, PSU ranks right up there with many private schools as well as public universities OUT of state.
Being run now strictly as a profit-loss bottom-line business, as opposed to an educational institution, PSU sets tuition fees that are affordable only to wealthy students, crazy parents, foreign students backed by foreign governments, and the children of PSU employees. Ye olde regular American or Pennsylvanian family simply cannot afford the Pennsylvania STATE university.
This situation is exacerbated by a so-called professional caste of elected officials, state representatives and state senators, who tell us all the time that they are professionals and they know what they are doing. What they are doing with PSU is constantly shoveling into its gaping maw more and more taxpayer money, with zero strings attached. No special scholarships for highly qualifying Pennsylvania students. No accountability to the taxpayers, no service to the Pennsylvania public.
And for those who justify this unfair situation because PSU is a big research station, OK, you name the program and let’s look into it. Some are pretty good, and some are worthless. For example, PSU has its own breeder reactor, so we know the PSU students of nuclear physics are probably getting cutting-edge education from nuclear physics researchers there. On the other hand, fake “climate researcher” Michael Mann was just hugely discredited in a court of law, and ordered to pay big legal fees as a result. Mann could not produce in court the data he used to make his name peddling phony science. As we all know, science is totally about reproducability, the ability to reproduce experiments and outcomes that other scientists have claimed. Mann cannot do that. Mann has been a political activist first and foremost, and has besmirched PSU’s good name as a research institution.
Maybe Mann can be now sued by Pennsylvania taxpayers for his fraud, and compelled to create a scholarship fund with his many ill-gotten gains.
We can call it the “Penn State Real Science Scholarship Fund.” And if it has only five bucks in it, it will still be a hell of a lot more than PSU has so far designated to supporting qualified in-state students who want to study real subjects.
People ask me why
For some people, politics and political activism are their bread and butter. Politics pays their bills. With the right clients, they can make millions of dollars out of politics as a business model.
For me, politics is about personal liberty, freedom, opportunity and many other inspiring principles behind the founding of America. It is also about the little freedoms we have that emanate from the bigger ideas: The freedom to drive or walk somewhere without having to prove that you belong there, the freedom to choose where to live, the ability to select from a wide assembly of fresh food, to name a few popular ones.
Call it an innate sense of justice and right and wrong, which family and friends have said I’ve had since I was a little kid, or call it a lack of patience, an inability to watch, participate in, listen to, or tolerate BS/fluff/empty slogans/lies/self-interest, whatever it is that motivates me, I am passionate about good government.
Good government has been a passion of mine since I was a teenager, when I first got involved in political campaigns. Back then, I was horrified at the way abortion-on-demand was changing our culture, I was against gun control, and nuclear missiles scared me. Later on, watching police beat non-violent pro-democracy marchers in South Africa motivated me to put my voice behind change there (note that now the monumentally corrupt and un-just African National Congress government there is hardly better than the overtly racist apartheid government it replaced). Age, paying taxes, and work experience have a way of shaping political views for normal people, and I was no exception.
So here I am, living a life that has meaning for me, trying to shape Pennsylvania and American politics in ways I believe are healthy, necessary, and just. The citizens and taxpayers who are supposed to be served well by their government (of the people, by the people, for the people) are not being well served today. This is why I am involved in politics. That is why I will not go away, at least not until things are fixed to my satisfaction.
Ukraine: Obama batting zero, his cheering section still loud
Math was not always my strongest interest (although I did self-learn calculus in graduate school), so disregard the headline here. Obama’s foreign policy is such a catastrophic failure that he is way in the negatives; he is not at zero. Being at Zero would actually be a success.
Here is a partial list of countries and peoples seeking freedom from tyranny who have had the rug of American promises pulled out from underneath them by Obama:
Poland (defensive missiles).
Georgia (South Ossetia, invaded by Russia).
Israel.
Iranian citizens.
Syrian citizens.
And now it’s Ukraine that has learned the hard lesson of Obama’s recklessness. Whatever promises were made to get Ukraine’s nuclear weapons, like protecting Ukraine from Russian imperialism, have been openly tossed out the window by an Obama administration bent on destroying America from within. Wrecking America’s international standing is one way to destroy America at home.
Allowing aggressive imperial powers like Russia, China, and Iran to willfully expand their spheres of influence and domination lets Obama off the “aggressor” hook. He can claim he’s no “warmonger.” But his inaction and failure to live up to his own red lines and promises of American protection have created a vacuum into which the aggressors, the real warmongers, have stepped.
Growing up in a pacifist household, I used to ask the hard questions that no one could answer, like Why should someone not actively oppose an Adolph Hitler and a Nazi Germany? Answers were hard to come by, because there are no substantive answers to these questions.
Pacifism is evil because it legitimizes evil. Pacifism equates doing nothing with active aggression, imperialism, domination, subjugation, tyranny and all the barbaric cruelty that goes along with them. By failing to act, by failing to confront evil in a meaningful way, pacifists lend credibility to the aggressors. If Russian imperialism in the form of subjugating Ukraine is not confronted and thwarted, then it must not be so bad. Such is the message from Obama and other pacifists, intended or unintended.
This unwillingness to act creates a vacuum, and this vacuum is seen correctly as weakness. It invites even more aggression. History is replete with examples, so an Obama would have to willfully ignore the obvious historical truth in order to do what he is doing (and not doing) now.
I know Obama has his cheering section. That is the greatest sadness of all, because those same people claim to be ethical, humane, loving. So strong is the messianic love for this charlatan among his believers, that they will forgive and forget his greatest deceptions, his greatest failures, the trail of destruction and misery in his wake. Other people, other families, then pay with their lives, at best to be the subjects of pity by groups like OxFam and Rotary, intent on picking up the few broken pieces later on.
For shame.
Obama abandons western civilization
If anyone had any questions left about Obama’s loyalties, tonight’s state of the union speech should have clarified that this man is at war with western civilization.
Pledging to veto stronger sanctions on Iran means that Obama is now openly aiding and protecting Iran in its rush to build nuclear bombs.
Obama has now openly broken his pledge to faithfully defend America. Time is now for this dangerous charlatan to go.
The end of 215 years of American tradition
Early in America’s youth, a rule in the US Senate was established that recognized minority rights.
By setting a higher threshold for confirming federal judges, US senators had a chance to seriously consider judicial candidates, who serve for life and can only be impeached for serious crimes.
Today, the US Senate majority changed that 215-year-old rule, no longer allowing filibusters for extreme candidates. Now, judges will be voted for confirmation by a simple majority.
When the other party had control of the senate, and the present majority engaged in filibusters, it was business as usual. Now, the majority wants absolute control. No forced debate.
Now what happens when this majority is in the minority? Will they whine, moan, and cry about not having the filibuster at hand to stop or slow down judicial nominees they strongly oppose? Probably. And the sense of irony will be ignored.
Their friends in the mainstream press will take their side, and it’s up to us citizen journalists to get the word out about how serious this is.
A political tradition lasting 215 years must have been worthy. Now we see a huge power grab by one party. What will you do about it?