The Nullification Principle: Nonbelievers Declare War

In arithmetic if you multiply anything by zero, the result is zero. Apparently certain atheist groups believe a similar principle should apply in public life.  If anyone, they argue, who believes in something "religious", crosses paths with someone who believes in nothing, then nothing in the way of belief may be expressed lest he who believes in nothing be offended. Recent lawsuits seem to indicate that offended nonbelievers trump offended believers in the new social order being promoted here.

Actually the Apostle Paul does counsel us to do our best not to offend our "weaker" brethren by the exercise of our beliefs so far as possible. I believe Paul may have anticipated a time when the very sight of the faithful or any symbol of faith would offend those who have no faith, but he writes about it elsewhere. Jesus warned us that if they did it to Him, we should expect that they will do it to us. By they, He referred to any militant religious force with a hunger for power.  From the Sanhedrin, to the god-emperors of Rome to the virulent anti-religion forces in this country, each has declared war on the Christian faith (and all other faiths for that matter at one time or another). They call, not for freedom of religion, but for freedom from religion or at least universal adherence to their brand of religiosity. As in the days of the Roman, German, Chinese, Russian, Cambodian, Rwandan, Sudanese and Serbian genocides, they are in deadly earnest about removing all trace of it from human cultures.

They aren't talking genocide yet, but wait for it.

Religion in militant atheist circles draws the blame for everything bad that has ever happened in the history of the world.  Religion is blamed for wars, for famines, for plagues pestilence and genocide. It matters not that each of these atrocities have been perpetrated almost entirely by governments -- frequently masquerading as acting on religious principles, yes -- but governments nonetheless. Let us remember the 21st century death toll credited to governments who formally proclaimed their atheism.  Between China and the USSR alone, some 200 to 300 million died to feed the paranoia of governments without a God.

Given the vehemence with which they go after even innocuous symbols of faith, one wonders what would happen if we gave them more power - oh, say a formally atheist socialist government.  Socialism/communism does seem to be the government of choice for the majority of the world's atheists these days.



© 2013 by Tom King

How DC Comics Should do the "Justice League" Movie

You know I really think DC Comics ought to go all out with a "Justice League" movie like Marvel did with the Avengers. Of course, you couldn't call it "Justice League of America". That would be too Americanish.


I know, We could call it the "Obama Justice League" after all the greatest president ever has been looking to start up a domestic security force with teeth to it. That would just about do it. They could be the president's own super-hero task force.

Casting is really important too.  They already have Ben Affleck as Batman (after all, he did such a good job of killing the Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan movie franchise, why not let him have a go at the millionaire weapons manufacturer/do-gooder Bruce Wayne).  They change out Superman for every film now, so isn't it about time to put George Clooney in the blue suit and cape or at least the latest version of it.


Jane Fonda simply must be Wonder Woman.  Okay, I admit she's a bit long in the tooth, but she still has all those workout videos, so she should be able to get back in shape if anyone can and you can bet she'd bring some feminist political sensitivity to the role.

The Flash should be Jim Carrey.  His recent anti-gun rant puts him in the perfect position to show us, as The Flash, that we don't really need guns. We just need to be faster than bullets.

Finally, though I liked Ryan Reynolds as the Green Lantern, he was just a bit too butch for the role, since it's now been revealed that the Green Lantern is, in fact, gay.  I say we slide Neil Patrick Harris into the role.  He's thin enough for the tights.

The rest of the League, we can fill out with Glee cast members.

That ought to just about kill any residual support in the comic fan community for the DC franchise, which is what the company seems to be working diligently toward. The one I really feel sorry for in all of this is Superman. He must be confused now that his raison d'etre is "Relative Truth, Selective Justice and the Progressive Socialist Way".

Hope this helps you guys over at DC!  Hmm. I just noticed that.  DC?  Same as the city. That could explain some things.......

© 2013 by Tom King

Telling the Truth While Lying - The Case Against Texas' Voter ID Law

Sherilynn Ifill

Well, the feds are suing the state of Texas for writing a law that says you have to show that you are who you say you are when voting.  The case, if you're a liberal, is compelling. Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund throws out a familiar liberal talking point on the subject.  "A Texas voter," she says, "Is more likely to be struck by lightning than to see someone attempt to vote fraudulently at the polls."

This argument is true in the strictest sense. It is also a lie in Truth's clothing. The key phrase here is "see someone attempt to vote fraudulently". 

1. First, you can't see dead people vote.
2. She never said you couldn't see someone "successfully" vote fraudulently.  If you did you would never know it was happening.  

So the chance that you would know someone voted fraudulently are slim unless someone caught them in the act doing it right in front of you.  The lightning stat is probably close to true. You are more likely to get hit by lightning than to actually see someone caught in the act of voting illegally. 

Which is sort of the point of the Texas Voter ID law. With the ID requirement, it will be rather easier to actually catch someone voting fraudulently.

Democrats - Protecting the voting rights of dead people since the 19th Century.

© 2013 by Tom King

A Species of Cowardice - On Defending the Muslim Brotherhood

My friends of the Ron Paul Libertarian fringe keep trying to find an excuse for the Muslim brotherhood - usually by declaring, "It's all America's fault." In a blog entry just last week, I called for prayer for Egyptian Christians during the recent political unrest in Egypt. This was just before the flames began to ascend from churches and orphanages. One of my Paulista buddies shot back: "Do you think the reasons they don't like us is because we prop up their tormentors? Their anger has little, if nothing at all to do with religion."

It was not unexpected. It's right out of the "Red Book o' Ron Paul Sayings", but it still surprises me when someone of passable intelligence goes there. But okay, let's take a look at the Muslim Brotherhood - the merry band of lovable Islamic Egyptian jihadists with the matches and the gasoline.

This group supports repression of women, Jews, Christians and anyone else who dares to disagree with them. Their take on Islam includes virulent misogyny, legalized pedophilia, brutal enforcement of arbitrary standards and the elimination of freedom of speech, religion, the press and virtually every other principle America stands for. And they use terrorism as a political tool.

No I do not think it has anything to do with us supporting the Muslim Brotherhood's tormentors. They have no tormentors. They ARE the tormentors. Their idea of a tormentor is anyone who will not "bow the knee to Baal" as Elijah so succinctly put it.

Let's look at Elijah while we're at. His story makes a nice parallel. Do you think it was Elijah's own fault that Ahab was trying to kill him along with most of the pagan priests and soldiers in Israel? Ahab called him a tormentor because Elijah had prophesied against him - just following God's orders - freedom of speech and all that. Elijah's continued existence was painful to Ahab and his wife, the ever-faithful, mother-goddess/Baal worshiping Jezebel. So they tried desperately to hunt him down and kill him.

Voltaire, whom I seldom quote, did have one thing to say about situations like Elijah's and the Christian church of the Middle East. "To discover who it is that rules you, find out first, who it is who cannot be criticized."

It is disturbing to me that Paulistas freely criticize Republicans, Christians, Jews, The Tea Party and conservatives, but every time you criticize a Muslim, these people try to shut you up or defend them by blaming it all on America. This is little more than base cowardice as far as I am concerned. It lets one put on a show of "bravery" by speaking truth to a power that you know won't hurt you. But when it comes to speaking truth to someone who will strap a bomb on a handy woman or poor person of any sex and send them to where you live to blow themselves and you up, if they don't like what you are saying.......speaking out is quite a bit more dangerous for yourself.

Well, that' s a totally different matter. Without the protection of the constitution, I suspect that it will soon deteriorate to that very state of affairs if the Democrats and President Obama have their way. The mainstream media already censors itself voluntarily where the president is concerned.

This is what troubles me about the Ron Paul libertarians. They spend an awful lot of time criticizing Republicans, Christians, Jews, the Tea Party and conservatives, but when it comes to Democrats and president Obama they are far less energetic in their attacks.  And when it comes to criticizing Muslims they're downright lethargic, preferring to defend the victimhood of jihadis, even when they are busily murdering their fellow Muslims and burning down Christian churches as they have been in Egypt lately.

NOTE TO AMATEUR RP/LIBERTARIAN PUBLICISTS:

• The "because we prop up their tormentors" meme only applies if you actually have tormentors. If you ARE the tormentor, not so much.
• The "It has nothing at all to do with religion" meme rings hollow when they call what they are doing a jihad. Look it up. Jihad means "holy war".
• Furthermore, It's hard to take the "nothing at all to do with religion" meme seriously when the Mullahs issue fatwah's commanding that someone be murdered for daring to criticize Islam or offend the prophet.
• It's even harder to buy that idea when they set up terror cells based out of mosques and press hard for the institution of "Sharia Law for All" in countries where they have immigrated en' masse and are fast becoming a racial majority.

Keeping quiet and/or defending the Muslim Brotherhood when they are burning and murdering, not Americans, but Egyptian Christians who are NOT Americans is feeding the alligator, hoping he'll eat you last.

Not only that, but it's cowardly. Man up you guys! For crying out loud.

I'm just sayin'

Tom

Why Private Sector Spending Improves the Economy and Public Sector Spending Doesn't

If, as conservative economists claim, spending by the public and private sector business improves the economy and like the proverbial rising tide, "floats all boats", then why doesn't government spending work the same way?  Surely, somebody out there is earning money from all that government spending.  Let me offer a simplistic example that might, perhaps, help those of us who didn't study economics in college to understand the fatal flaw in the Keynesian model - the economic model all the progressive nations use in determining public spending policies.

Imagine, if you will, it's the early 19th century. You are on a sail-rigged trading vessel off on a trading mission.  A sailing vessel is an immensely complex machine that requires many people with highly developed technical and physical skills to operate.  The captain runs the overall operations. There are navigators, rope-makers, sail-makers, topmen, officers, coopers, surgeons, carpenters and cooks, all working together to get the boat from one place to another with a cargo for sale.  Sell the cargo, the crew gets paid, resupplies itself, repairs its hurts, picks up another cargo and its off again across the sea.

If the ship is well run and no disasters strike it, a ship of this type is a happy ship and a profitable ship. The crew gets back to home port with money for their families, the shipowners make money which they, in turn, spend on new ships, homes, other businesses and on hiring people to work for them.

When fitting out and crewing a ship, the captain is careful not to hire too many people or he will find he has an over-abundance of "idlers", people who are off-duty or "unemployed".  Let's suppose our ship - call her the "USS Progressive" is captained by one of those new enlightened captains.  He has learned by watching that ships which do not flog their crews, treat them fairly and pay them well make more money than the old-fashioned brutal and exploitative trading vessels.  He decides to use the power of his position to make the crew even happier. (Secretly he's been skimming from the ships accounts and made himself rich and now has a big box of gold under his bunk and is terrified that the crew will mutiny and take it from him.) 

So, he skims more off the accounts and starts buying goodies like bonbons and rum for the crew and rewarding them for no particular reason.  He becomes concerned that the idlers might become restless so he hires the larger ones as extra "marines", the captain's law enforcement force. These marines require expensive uniforms and equipment and spend a lot of their time drilling and cleaning their weapons.  Because there are now fewer idlers available when the work picks up, the captain picks up some new idlers at the next port and stuffs them into the crews quarters which is beginning to get crowded. 

Because the idlers are still problematic, he hires any of them who can read to take care of the ship's paperwork.  The ship's paperwork begins to expand dramatically so that soon there are 20 or so "clerks" passing paperwork back and forth, largely generating work for each other and the crew who have to fill out forms and reports on virtually everything they do.  Now the ship has a record of everything that goes on aboard ship, every nail, every foot of rope, every potato in the food locker.  If anyone wants that information it can be delivered right to them after they fill out a form 233/c in triplicate, get it signed by the captain, authorized by the first-mate and submit it to the appropriate clerk who will then perform a file search, collate a report and have it back to you in a week.

The ship is still sailing along relatively efficiently although she recently found herself 200 miles off course because the navigator had neglected to properly file his Form 88-D Change of Course Directive and the Helmsman never received the proper order. The expanding bureaucracy keeps absorbing more idlers, creating even more idlers as ships operations gradually become more and more complex and time-consuming.

As ships operations become more inefficient, there is less to do.  There aren't enough people who aren't busy with paperwork to call on to make course corrections or reset the sails more efficiently so the ship alternately sits becalmed or races along at terrifying speed with all sails set in whatever condition they were before the last Form 777/A Set of Sails Advisory Notice was issued by the seriously overworked First-Mate's clerk.

To keep the ship from being beaten to death, the Captain decides to implement a make-work program for the increasingly mutinous idlers who fear the ship is about to be wrecked or driven under by the wind.  Since the boat is going too fast, the Captain decides that sea anchors should be made to slow the too rapid progress of the ship.  He puts the idlers, who have by now formed a union, to work making sea anchors.  In the interest of fairness he promises to pay them all at bosun's wages.

As the sea anchors are completed, the marines, who, by now outnumber the sailors, deploy the anchors off the stern of the boat, sailors and topmen being busy filling out their quarterly efficiency reports.   The boat slows satisfactorily increasing the ships passage from two months to four.  The ship gently strikes the coast of Guatemala three months later (dragging 33 sea anchors, she didn't have a lot of way on her).  The crew is either dead of starvation or killed in the bloody mutiny that saw the rest of the ship's stores and cargo thrown overboard by the frantic captain who reasoned that if there was nothing left to fight over, the fighting would cease.  He, of course, kept his gold well-hidden.

The ship owners go broke, the village loses a third of its menfolk and a troop of monkeys gets to the gold first and festoon themselves with the most attractive jewelry, thus sparking the legend of the lost tribe of rich and nattily-dressed little people of the Watoon Jungle.

Folks, the Guatemala coast is not that far off.......

© 2013 by Tom King

Sim City is Based on the False Premise that Central Planning Works

Manipulate conditions properly and your city prospers.....
Yeah, right!

It's fun to play God. The popularity of games that allow you to set yourself up as the Cheesus Maximus of your own private world plays to a rather sinister impulse in human beings - the desire to play God over other men's lives.  Now the popular Sim City allows you to even manipulate the emotions of the citizens of your city through the policies of your city government.  Does anyone else see where this is going?

The premise behind each of these games is that, some combination of providing goodies for your people, taxes that are high enough to support your government, your infrastructure, your wars or whatever your government is attempting to do, will make the people that you are the ultimate lord over happy and content and not rise up in the middle of the night and murder you in your bed. It treats people as mere automatons with little real will or purpose other than to serve the whims of the central planners who run their digital city.

This top-down approach in games like Sim City, Age of Empires, Civilization and others is based on an old pipe dream that has come down to us in the 20th century as Progressive Socialism.  The premise says that a group of smart elite people can centrally plan virtually every aspect of human endeavor and do so in a way that makes everyone happy.

Since Satan in the Garden of Eden, humans have made the erroneous assumption that somehow they could take the place of God and make a perfect world for themselves all on their own hook. Unfortunately as millenia of human history has shown, the top down approach doesn't work well when the one on top is a human being.

Central planning could work, don't get me wrong.  The problem is that the only one that could do it is a person (or persons if you go the politburo route) with certain superpowers:

1. Omniscience - The leader would have to be able to track everything that is going on without being intrusive.  This is where statist nations get into trouble because people don't like high levels of surveillance over their private lives.  
2. Precognition -  The leader would not only have to see the future, but be able to manipulate the present so that the future would come out well.  This is where visionary governments get into trouble.  They cannot be sure their ideas or their manipulations of the economy, the fates of specific individuals or public policies will all come out well.  Usually they just implement them and later, when they inevitably fail, they pretend they didn't fail and execute anyone who notices.
3. Omnipresence - The leadership would have to be everywhere at all times to make sure everyone was following the plan perfectly and even then, without precognition, the leaders couldn't be sure the plan would work.
4. Perfect Altruism - The leadership would have to be utterly selfless and love the people so much that, if necessary, the leader would sacrifice his own life or interests for his people.  The problem with that is that the kind of power needed to make a centrally planned society work inevitably attracts corruptible people (see Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.).

In all the history of the world, I've only known one God capable of that.  He governs, not from the top down, but from the bottom up.  He holds us up, rather than expecting us to hold Him up. He loves without condition. He gives us free will and expects us to take care of ourselves and treat others the way we would like to be treated.  He writes His law upon the hearts of "the people", not in fat journals to be kept in oak-paneled libraries for the use of prosecutors and judges to force "the people" to behave from on high.

Me I'll wait to try central planning until someone a lot more competent than any mere human is in charge of the planning.

© 2013 by Tom King

Progressive Fantasy - All War Banned

All equal should not be all the same - progressives don't get that.

Got some fake news about ten years ago from one of my Paulista buddies out on the liberal conservative fringe out on the edge of reason.  It was titled "Newsflash:  All War Banned".  It includes this link to a fake news story in which Desmond Tutu becomes UN General Secretary and all the peace-loving countries of the world (like Iran, Russia, Egypt, Libya, Venezuela, Chad, The Sudan, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Chechnya, China and Serbia) vote to " declare America and Israel pariah states."  It goes on with this fantasy about accusing Israel and the US of state-sponsored terrorism and prosecuting Obama, Bush, Cheney (the only non-head of state they mention by name for some reason), Clinton and Netanyahu.  That this drivel comes from a Ron Paul fan is not surprising. The radical right has backed so far from the center that they've pretty much backed round the world and bumped butts with the fringe left and they all find themselves humming Kumbaya without knowing exactly why.

If they could dig up Ronald Reagan, I'm sure they would have included him on the extermination list as well.  Now Donald Trump would be their favorite bug bear and, sure enough, they are frantic to take him out too, even to the point of encouraging lunatics to try and assassinate the former president. Of course, this radical approach to creating what would amount to the great socialist utopia, would likely leave the US without leadership since all of the people running things would have to be jailed as unreliable - infected with free market capitalism, imperialism and the heretical idea that government draws its power from the people than the true socialist belief that people only draw their freedoms, rights and lives from the all-powerful state. I'm sure, however, the revolution could find someone like, oh, I don't know, Ron Paul? (Except he's closing in on 90 and they just had the embarrassment of mumbling Joe Biden so Ron is no longer a viable dear leader). The progressives would be thrilled to have a turncoat Republican to kind of cleanse their palates after losing Donald Trump's contributions to the DNC. Whoever they might shoehorn into the White House, they fondly believe could save America from it's imperialist ways by teaching us pure Marxism. The whole thing is a progressive socialist's wet dream and a nightmare for freedom loving people everywhere.

It amazes me that anyone with half a brain could support this horror of an "idea whose time has ostensibly come".  This utterly simplistic idea is based on assumptions built upon utterly naive socialist fairy tales designed to deceive the immensely gullible to trade their birthright for an illusion.

This anti-American, anti-Israeli mess of an idea is little more than an exercise in Progressive Socialist masturbation. What amazes me is that the Ron Paul libertarians once loved this idea. It may have something to do with their plans for abolishing the world bank, destroying evil corporations and ending the war on drugs. Free pot for all seems to be an idea my Paulista buddies can always get behind, which could explain some things. 

If "the world" really tried to do this and, God forbid, succeeded, the vast majority of the human race would be reduced to the status of pod people within a generation (except of course for the "Dear Leader" and his cohorts. This whole Utopian fantasy is based on the repeatedly discredited idea that if we just had the right smart person in charge (in this fantasy it was Desmond Tutu of all people) and we gave him ultimate power, we could create a world government "with teeth" with the power to enforce goodness, prosperity and peace everywhere. That phrase "with teeth" keeps cropping up a lot as it is wont to in socialist planning. Pope Benedict in a Christmas encyclical, used it several years ago when he too called for a world government "with teeth" that could force powerful nations like the US to do its bidding. Pope Francis loves the idea and with his Jesuit background, he knows ways of encouraging the masses to behave. Like so many others these days, even this latest Pope has been caught up with the idea that we could somehow create a benign powerful force in the world that could make us all behave ourselves.

Communism promised a prosperous people's state before murdering
tens of millions of "the people"  - particularly those who found
the Communist state to be less than perfect and said so out loud.

It is a sad little pipe dream that crops up generation after generation once a few years have gone by and the horrors of the last round of socialist bloodshed, murder and genocide has been forgotten and the last "perfect leader", reduced in memory to little more than a nursery room bug-a-boo. How quickly they forget what happens when you set up a man as God. Even the mighty Albert Einstein, who escaped the gas ovens of Auschwitz by but a hair's breadth, himself, fell prey to wondering why we couldn't get a bunch of smart people together and figure out how to make everyone happy, safe, well-fed and productive. The problem is that everyone who embraces the progressive socialist fantasy that some brilliant elite human leader could make the world good for the rest of us is falling for an old lie - one that dates back to a garden and a serpent and a gullible woman.

"You shall be like gods."

That lie has led to almost endless suffering throughout history as one man after another attempts to achieve Earthly godhood. The simple truth, however, is that Man cannot perfect himself, the World Economic Forum's Great Reset notwithstanding. It's sad that we've never learned that from all the failed attempts at a Man-as-God Utopia that so-called civilized man has made over the past 7000 some-odd years. It is interesting that whenever you see a picture of someone's utopia, there's always a high wall around it. It's unclear whether the wall is to keep people out or to keep them in. Either way, I don't like it!

We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic
system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its
unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being
according to wealth and property instead of responsibility
and performance, and we are all determined to destroy
this system under all conditions - Adolph Hitler

They always mean well, the progressives, socialists, utopians and advocates of the new religion - scientism. Every government ever established had the intent of making the world a better place for the people of whatever nation-group, tribe or city-state they created. The God-kings always promised that the lives of the people would be perfected. And the same thing always happens. Creating a government creates power.  Power attracts corrupt men who seize that power and in short order start plundering the citizens, enslaving and abusing them once "the people" realize that the whole thing isn't working like they said it would. To maintain his power, the God-king must then silence any voice that dissents and control the flow of information lest "the people" discover that their human god is a false god and his ideas don't work.

The world's oldest profession isn't what you think. Seizing power and murdering people to maintain it is the real world's oldest profession. The Devil got the ball rolling a long time ago  with Cain and the whole nasty mess keeps rolling on through history, gathering more weight the longer it keeps rolling. Every generation that uplifts a God-king, be it Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Desmund Tutu, Joe Biden or Kamala Harris as the various fantasy scenarios propose, in the end creates a slightly worse monster.  One day we will create a monster who will roll over us completely and in so doing, destroy the Earth. We now have the nuclear weapons to do just that.

Remember, this. The Second Coming is not a pat on the back to mankind for writing laws that ban war and legislate universal peace, prosperity and health care.   The Jewish leadership expected that the first time Jesus came and they were wrong. Christ's coming this second time is also not a conquest. It's a rescue mission designed to pluck the remaining loyal children of God from the Earth before all that's left are the ashes and wreckage that man has made of the Earth in the process of trying to prove on behalf of Lucifer, that he was right all along; that mankind can't be trusted with free will and that we need the firm hand of the former director of the angel choir. Turns out he merely thought that he should be the god of this planet without any help from He who made the Earth in the first place.

Tom King
© 2013, 2024

There's Nothing More Dangerous Than a Panicked Bureaucrat

In times of crisis, government functionaries
excrete massive piles of paperwork

 Government Programs Are Immortal
© 2013 by Tom King

I received an email from the Social Security Administration last week advising me that it's easier than ever to draw a disability check when you're in your 50s. This week I saw a news story reporting a sudden surge in applications for disability.

Coincidence? I don't think so.

The same thing happened about 13 years ago in Texas when local efforts by food banks and churches to provide food to the hungry through church food pantries were blamed for an $800,000 budget cut in the federal appropriation for the Federal Food Stamp program. The Food Stamp office in Texas started a $300,000 "Food Stamps are not part of welfare reform" advertising campaign and "Surprise!", food stamp apps went up again, wiping out what East Texas conservatives had seen as a tangible gain in the war on hunger.

Apparently, the SSDI folk have instructions to ramp up the number of Americans on disability.  Maybe all that Obamacare we haven't got yet has cured or prevented too much disability and the department was in danger or getting its appropriation cut.

This is why new government bureaucracies are forever. Once a government bureaucracy is created, I've yet to see one "Go gently into that good night" when it was no longer needed. And woe unto you if you threaten their existence in any way or do anything which might make them irrelevant. They will come after you.  It's not accident that people, who have made some government agency or functionary angry, will joke half-seriously about getting a vengeful tax audit. We've already learned just how likely that is with the recent IRS scandals.

We meddle... People don't like to be meddled with.
We tell them what to do, what to think, don't run, don't walk.
We're in their homes and in their heads, and we haven't
the right. We're meddlesome..   - River Tam (from Firefly)

I still maintain that part of the reason the TV series Firefly was canceled was because it criticized big government's "meddling in people's lives".  Such a thing cannot be allowed, not even by a science fiction TV show.  Look how many socialist and totalitarian countries banned the release of the followup movie "Serenity".  Bureaucrats are danged touchy when you criticize them.

Voltaire said that "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." It's a thing Joss Whedon, an avowed "progressive" and the creator of the Firefly series, seems to have difficulty getting his head around. He believes in progressive-socialist principles, but he still manages to criticize them in his TV shows and movies and to draw down the wrath of the "true believers". Whedon even has the audacity to point out how very dangerous are the true believers, who wholly and without question embrace the power of government as the only means to change people, to make them good and to create a "better world".  The true believers do not like that sort of thing. I know, having been set upon by true believers during my advocacy career. Whedon has this kind of split personality about his own beliefs and the beliefs of his characters as he approaches the idea of personal liberty. It's why his work has so many fans on the right and critics on the left, despite the fact that he keeps telling the left, "Hey, I'm with you guys."

Finally, if you don't believe in the immortality of Earthly things or you're one of those true believers, who does believe in the inherent goodness of government, try and close down a government bureaucracy sometime. It's an eye-opening experience. Bureaucrats are a mighty vengeful lot when you threaten them and they hang on to life and power with a tenacity that is breath-taking.

The plague-like almost biological persistence of government in and of itself explains why God will have to one day burn the whole place down, if He is going to successfully clean the Earth up and establish a truly better world.  I personally think God won't have to so much as strike a match. I believe the whole rotten mess will soon spontaneously combust like a big pile of oily rags in a hot garage.

Tom King

I Demand My Rights as a Hyphenated-American!

In this age of hyphenated citizenship, I'd like to proudly proclaim my membership in several minority groups which, I believe, should receive special dispensation.  I am:

• A Bearded-American
• A Cracker-American
• A Texan-American
• A Dog-Loving-American
• A Poet-American
• An Honor Student-American
• A Writer-American
• A Nerd-American
• And, sadly, part of a shrinking minority - The Christian-American

I have, throughout my life, been the target of bullies, jocks and cheerleaders because of my hyphenated status - pushed into reviled minority groups by the cliques, good old boy networks and self-appointed celebrities in my little corner of the world. I believe my minority status should be formally recognized as a disadvantaged/frequently threatened group.

So when can we get started with the affirmative action programs, the special provision for our groups in federal grants-in-aid and the protection from criticism for our own stupidity by the mainstream media?

I demand my rights!

Just sayin'

Tom King © 2013

Oh Those Global Warming Scamps!

The white box on the pole is a NOAA weather station
in Hot Springs, VA.  The gray box below it to the right 
is a steam vent. How's that for accurate climate data?

Don't ya' just love government scandals. Now it's NOAA being accused of"cooking" the books on climate data. This isn't new news, it's been a documented problem for years with stations near power plants, in the middle of asphalt parking lots, next to steam walls and industrial sized AC unit heat vents. These spots are called heat sinks because they warm the air in the immediate vicinity. The good news is that they have identified and are finally closing not 6, not 60, but 600 weather stations situated near heat sinks that could be giving climate change scientists distorted data.

Of course, it wasn't NOAA that actually figured out about the heat sinks problem.For more than a decade, honest scientists not invested in shilling for the global warming consortium have questioned whether anyone was checking to see if NOAA's weather monitoring stations were up to snuff scientifically.  A group called SurfaceStations.org  has been collecting photographs of NOAA weather monitoring stations all over North America. A quick scan through their picture collection reveals stations with white gravel bases (white gravel reflects heat upwards around the weather instruments), near heat pumps, AC units, nice warm industrial piping, asphalt parking lots and other sources of heat.

Finally, NOAA has had to fess up and take down the more egregious offending stations. It would be interesting to go back now and remove the data from all those stations for the past decade and see what difference it makes to the "undisputed proof that global warming is real".

Oh, those global warming guys. They're all such scamps.

(c) 2013 by Tom King

Postscript:  I did notice that the SurfaceStations.org website is reporting that there has been a concerted hacker attack on their servers in the wake of the announcement by NOAA of the station closings. Why does that not surprise me?  This is not about science, it's about ideology and for some reason the guys on the left really don't like to let go of such a powerful tool for social change as "global warming".

Pick Your Wardrobe Wisely: A Lesson in Racial Politics

Rodney King famously said after his beat-down by LA cops 

and the ensuing riots, "Why can't we all just get along?"

Probably not a Sunday School Teacher - One of theproblems we face when choosing our wardrobe.

 

In the wake of the recent racial unrest over the Florida courtroom drama surround the Trayvon Martin shooting, the political ideologues have fired up their spin machines. Both have come out in support of their own rigid ideologies, of course, but what's been appalling about the whole thing is how little regard is being paid to what we are teaching our kids with all this rhetoric about race.

Like Mr. King's question suggests, it ought to be a simple thing. Let's focus on fixing the problem rather than fanning the fires of hatred based on skin color.  But both sides are doing it. It would be nice if we could get everybody to back off the angry rhetoric and be nice to one another. Unfortunately, it's hard to do that when people see only what they want to see! A million black mothers see in Trayvon Martin their 12 year old child's face. Their real child may be 38 years old and a steel worker, but to his mama he will always be that little innocent boy going to the store for some candy and a Coke.

But a bag of Skittles can be a candy treat or a key ingredient in a vicious street drug called "purple drank" that makes you paranoid and aggressive if you add Arizona Watermelon Drink and a bit of cough syrup.

On the other side, millions of non-blacks see the carnage in places like Detroit, Chicago and L.A. and the gangs of young men in hoodies and sagging pants committing violent crimes and react with fear and with sympathy for George Zimmerman. Many wonder if they should get that conceal and carry permit for themselves.

It's hard to forgive and forget when you are so angry you see only what you want to see and only from your own perspective. It's true, when young black men protest that not everyone who dresses like a thug is a thug. This is no less true than the idea that everyone who dresses and talks like a preacher is a man of God. Evil people like Jim Jones and David Koresh dressed themselves up like preachers in order to make people think they were men of God and then stole from them, raped them, abused them and even got them all killed.

The message of the recent Martin/Zimmerman tragedy should be one that speaks to self-preservation. It's a message I used to try to get across to the kids I worked with. If you don't want people to think you are dangerous, don't dress like a dangerous person, don't act like a dangerous person and don't take substances that make you paranoid and aggressive.  If you do, then you frighten people and frightened people can be far more dangerous than you are, as that poor boy found out. Someone should have done a better job of teaching lesson to Trayvon.

But isn't this a free country?  Shouldn't I be able to dress like a thug if I want to and shouldn't people not assume that I am a thug no matter how I dress?

Well, let's look at that idea a bit.  I, for instance, have every right to put on a KKK hood and walk down the street,  But does it follow, using the reasoning above, that black people should not assume that I am actually a member of the KKK even though I'm wearing a Klan hoodie?  And furthermore, do I have the right to be surprised if black people become angry and feel threatened if I confront them wearing that kind of outfit? 

Of course not. There are thugs and there are thugs.  The Klan guys are thugs as much as any Italian, black, Russian or Hispanic gang member.  Thugs wear outfits that make them look like thugs so people will fear them. There really isn't any good reason to dress like a thug. If there were a war going on and I wasn't a soldier, I certainly would not put on a soldier uniform and go out on the battlefield - not if I expected to live. It wouldn't matter that I wasn't "really" an enemy soldier. It would only matter that I looked like one.

If we lived in a kinder gentler world we could all dress like we wanted to and no one would think any the worse of us. But we live in a world full of real threats to our lives and safety.  In a world where people who dress like thugs often attack you, shoot you or rob you, we are conditioned to treat such people as a threat. It would have taken a huge leap of faith for Mr. Zimmerman to assume Trayvon wasn't going to kill him when the young man was on top of him administering what his girlfriend called a well-deserved "whoop a@#$%" and beating his head against the sidewalk. It's probably a bit more than anyone of any race has a right to expect.



Alright, I get it. Black people have a lot of anger over how they've been treated by white people. But is fanning that anger in our communities, and particularly in front of impressionable children, any way to end the hatred? And if you fan the anger of blacks against whites and say things like, "Sure Zimmerman is half Hispanic, but it was his whiteness that made him murder that boy," are you not inviting a violent reaction from the white community? Not everyone in the white community is over racism yet and most of us, even those who do find racism reprehensible, aren't prepared to submit to, as Martin's girlfriend, Rachel Jeantel, so colorfully put it, the "whoop a@#$%" we deserve.

If we grownups in the community are not careful there is going to be blood in our streets and I will grieve just as much over the blood of black and Hispanic children caught up in the violence as I will for white children. Jesus, Martin Luther King and Ghandi all taught that the way to respond to racism was to resist nonviolently. If there is still racism in our country and my black brothers and sisters wish to resist it nonviolently, I will once again stand beside them.

I'm afraid though that those with an interest in fomenting violence over race in this country are not trying to end racism at all. I think they are trying to use it as a means to seize political power. I don't think they care who gets killed to feed their ambitions and lust for power. Such people do not serve God, I promise you that, whether they have Reverend, Senator, Congressman or President in front of their names or not.

The moral of the story here? If you don't want to be treated like a dangerous thug, don't dress like one, talk like one or act like one. Let your words be "yes" and "no" without all the name-calling and labeling. Don't be afraid to stand against even your loved ones and closest friends if it is the right thing to do.  It's that simple and a lesson that can be learned by both sides in this conflict.

© 2013 by Tom King

Protect Our Bears - Move a Democrat to Seattle

Recent efforts by the city of Seattle to legislate political correctitude by banning from use words like "citizen" and "brown bag", have made people wonder just what those people have been smoking up there in the Pacific Northwest. Just for clarification, I'd like to explain the phenomenon of liberal loonification that is apparently going taking place in places like Seattle and Olympia.

In Washington State, we like to keep all our Democrats in large "sustainable" cities like Seattle and Olympia.  We also tolerate a manageable population in Tacoma and Forks (liberals do love their vampires for some reason and they whine if you don't let them live near pretend ones).

In any case, we dare not let them loose in the surrounding forests and wilderness areas. It's not that we worry about them getting lost or anything. We can afford to thin the herd a bit anyway. What we are concerned about mostly is that they might be mistaken for food by our wild bears and be accidentally eaten. The bears would be in danger of death by food poisoning, should they inadvertently ingest a Democrat due to the high-toxicity levels often found in Democrats, particularly those from Seattle; especially those of the Lyndon LaRouche sub-species.

We love our bears up here in Washington and we try to protect them from harm so far as possible. Once in a while, though a liberal will sneak past us and drive out into the country, get naked and wander off into the forest on a "spirit quest" or some other such nonsense. Sometimes they take cameras with them, presumably to take pictures of the bears and mountain lions. These liberals often do not come back, not that it's a problem for us mind you. We just have to hope that the bear population is robust enough to handle the occasional toxic take-out dinner that comes their way.

(c) 2013 by Tom King

So Tell Me What's Wrong With This Shirt

Available at Apocalypse Gear

Alright, I admit it. This design is supposed to be provocative. I would feel a wee bit uncomfortable wearing a shirt that says "Cracker American" across the chest in certain neighborhoods (and not all of them in America).  What I'd like is a reaction from my friends who read this. Tell me why this T-shirt (yes it's a "hoodie") should be offensive?  We'll start with my reasons as to why it should not.

Reason 1:  Sauce for the Gander

Apparently it is okay for a racial slur to be used by a person of the race in question to refer to himself or his fellows of the same race.  It is not okay for someone of another race to use that term.  Therefore if the term "cracker" is a disparaging term for white people, is it not okay for white people to use the term to refer to themselves?  If not, why not?

Reason 2: Neutralizing Hate

If someone uses hate speech against you and you turn such speech into a joke, does this not neutralize hate speech. So if someone were to use an ugly racial epithet against me, what if I ignored the hatred behind the word and made the word mean something else more benign. What if I embraced the word with pride.  Then, isn't the only reason anyone ought to be at all angry about that is because it robs the word of the power of hatred against my race; a tool they wished to retain?

Reason 3: Racial Disarmament

If I am not hurt, but rather am amused by the racial epithet "cracker" does that make certain people angry because I am not hurt by the racial epithet? Is this not why, when you ignore an insult or a slur, the bully using it inevitably screams at you, "Hey @#$$%!  I'm talkin' to you!" Is the source of their anger at the message on the shirt above because it shows that calling me a "cracker" doesn't bother me? I'd like to know.

Reason 3: Managing Agreement

So if I wear a shirt proclaiming proudly that I am a cracker, why should that make anyone mad? I am agreeing with them. I am quite obviously of the race called "cracker" by certain people.  I am proud of who I am, although I'm really Scotch-Irish-English-German-Cherokee, but "cracker" is far shorter. Shouldn't any person of any race be entitled to be proud of their race. If I agree with you that I am, in fact, what you say I am, (a cracker) should that not make you happy instead of making you want to get three or four friends and beat me senseless in a back alley?

These are questions that trouble me. If you have answers, I'd like to hear them. Really. And before I go, I want to point out that I do not think being a cracker makes me superior to anyone. Just equal as it says in the Declaration of Independence.

Only equal.

© 2013 by Tom King