Repeating a Lie Doesn't Make it True

 

 

"Tucker Carlson lies," said my left-leaning friend. "I'm glad he got taken out."  Notice how the left talks about its opponents in terms of assassination and military destruction. It's as though they are at war with those who express any ideas, views or beliefs that disagree with theirs. They act as if we are germs who must be eradicated or at the very least, neutralized and silenced. An old Marxist/Nazi propaganda technique is to tell a lie over and over till it becomes the truth. There is an element of childishness in this. If you've had children of your own, you've seen the dear little cherubs stick to a lie when as my Mom once said, "The truth would suit you better." As we grow up, though, we learn the value of the truth, even when it contradicts your cherished opinions.

 

Saying that Carlson, Trump, Hannity, Limbaugh, or any of the thousands of conservative Amercans are liars over and over doesn't make it true. The left has this odd belief that anything that disagrees with Marxism or shows the progressive ideology in a bad light is a lie. The left has redefined the word lie to mean anything that doesn't fit my ideology. Toddlers are like that. Anything that contradicts their desires is mean, not fair and must be rejected with a stamp of the foot. The idea that we're all kind of stupid and need smart people to tell us what to do is appealing to people who believe they are the sort of smart people we need to obey. In school, I knew them as bullies.

Being a Christian and student of prophecy, I have a pretty good idea who wants us all to join hands in one global centrally planned society both politically and religiously. 

 

The papacy is calling for an end to Martin Luther's little protest and for the Christian church to come back to the mother church. The last couple of popes have called for one world government "with teeth" (their words not mine) and he wasn't talking about anything based on the bill of rights. The successors of John Paul have been practically socialist missionaries. The progressive left and it's allies in the religious left fantasize about global socialism with no evidence that their brand of Marxism won't turn out to be another wave of genocides. That's exactly what one of the founders of progressivism Charles Darwin predicted as the inevitable way to clean up the human race. 

 

People on the left claim I am a hater because I am a conservative with no evidence of my hating anyone. Despite my nearly half a century of working for children, seniors, low income families, oppressed minorities, people with disabilities , the abused and mentally ill, I am damned as a hater because I don't believe in powerful rulers and central planning. None of this matters to die hard leftists who are dancing in the streets because they think they have silenced someone who told things out loud that hurt their plans to take down America.

 

The pathetic thing is that these progressive foot soldiers are certain they will be rewarded with
snug positions with the leader class when the revolution comes. Perhaps they should read about what happened to the Brownshirts, the Mensheviks, the Italian blackshirts that got too uppity and the 65 million Chinese that Mao exterminated in his attempts to create the perfect communist society. So whatever you guys do, don't look at an actual history book. Read Howard Zinn or Saul Alinsky in order to feel good about lying for a "good cause." Pay no attention to the devil behind the curtain.

© 2023 by Tom King

Biden Compares Trump Supporters to Slave-Owning Confederates

Today the faux President told the nation that people who support Trump are worse than slave-owning Confederates and that the little dust-up on January 6 was the worst thing since the Civil War. And, he said, it was no hyperbole. That means "exaggeration" for those of you in Rio Linda.

Worse than World War I, worse than the KKK, lynchings, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the two Gulf Wars and 9/11?  Really Joe? And who was it started the very uncivil Civil War. Oh, well, my Democrat supporting friends will tell you, the parties switched in the 60s.

If you believe that I have a couple of bridges and some real estate in South Florida to sell you.

Nobody "switched" beliefs in the 60s; just tactics. Racism is still at the heart of the strategy of the party of the KKK, Jim Crow, segregation, poll taxes, church-bombings, the assassination of Dr. King, of abortion as a way to control "human weeds" and of the lynchings of black men and Republicans. But Democrats would have you believe in some kind of mystical mass conversion to goodness and light that happened in the 60s as a result of the riots, Woodstock, sex, drugs and rock n' roll.

It's all about power and how to gain more of it. Marxism, which is the engine that drives progressivism, would restore the old noble class and relegate the rest of us to the status of serfs in servitude to the state. The New People's Republic of Amerika would no longer be "of the people, by the people, and for the people." It would be "of the state, by the state, and for the state."  The Bill of Rights would be declared obsolete, a thing of the past, blocking the path forward to the new Utopia and the progressive Ubermen, or more accurately, Uberpersons (if they even allow the term person since part of that word is "son" and therefore genderism).  

It's all been a shell game all along. In the end, we will discover to the dismay of some and as no surprise to the rest of us, that there is no pea under any of the shells they've been shuffling all these years. There never was. It was just a way to fool you and take your money from you. The Cloward Piven Strategy was supposed to force anarchy among the poor, the failure of the economy, and dependence on a Democrat president and congress to save the new legions of the poor who were to become dependent on the welfare system. This would collapse the system under the weight of entitlements and bring about full socialism including policies like a guaranteed income, nationalized healthcare, and a massive redistribution of wealth to save the country,

The strategy was embraced by the left wing of the Democrat party and arguably brought about the breakup of black families and a massive debt burden for the United States and for taxpayers for many generations to come. There is an old politically incorrect metaphor about the pot calling the kettle black. The myth of Nixon's "Southern Strategy" (he lost the South in a big way), and the racist politicians all switching parties (only one did and he had a black mistress and child), is pure bunk. Of the crew of openly racist senators and congressmen, only one of their number switched sides, for the reasons I said. The rest remained Democrats and it took more than 30 years to flush them all out of office.

What we're seeing now is what I call the "New Deal" Racism. Joe Biden is doubling down on everything that has failed in the past along the march to progressive socialism. Shoot, Karl Marx couldn't even hold a job himself. His ideaology has cost hundreds of millions of lives, reduced billions to abject poverty, given us extermination camps, race targeted mass abortion of the unborn to reduce those human weeds Margaret Sanger used to talk about, gulags, bloody wars, deliberate mass starvation of further millions and a veritable plague of terrorism worldwide. But, sadly, as Harry Nillson's Rock Man told Oblio in Nillson's animated musical The Point....

"You see what you wanna see and you hear what you wanna hear, you dig?"

© 2021 by Tom King

Resisting the New Normal

The New Normal?

As the leftist propaganda machine ramps up its efforts to "fundamentally change" American culture and values, it becomes increasingly dangerous to be a member of the resistance. Defending common sense and traditional values can cost you your job, your reputation and even get your kids taken from you. And, if you are the president of the United States, it can get you impeached - at least that's what the united progressives of the world are hoping. The latest flap over efforts by Donald Trump's INS to protect the US border is an example.

Yes, the US Immigration and Naturalization Service removes children from adult detention facilities and places them in Dept. of Human Services facilities while their parents, who have committed a crime by crossing the border illegally are being processed. Contrary to the narrative progressives are promoting, there are not a lot of "Family Jail Cells" at the INS where families can be kept together. Adult Illegal aliens are kept in what facilities there are while names are checked. This is a difficult process because undocumented aliens are, well, UNDOCUMENTED.

So instead of keeping them incarcerated with people who claim to be their parents (again no documentation) along with smugglers, sex traffickers, drug cartel enforcers, terrorists and drug mules, INS puts them into the custody of the Dept. of Human Services, an agency experienced in protecting children. DHS keeps the kids safe until their parents can be found or the adults they came across with can be identified as their parents (instead of child sex traffickers). Once everyone is identified and processed, the families are reunited and sent home to their respective countries. And the UN Human Rights Council, which condones massive assaults on the Israeli border by waves of women and children acting as human shields for terrorist assault forces, gets it's panties in a wad because we don't leave the kids in adult jail along with potential adult abusers.

The UN Human Rights Council is the same body of politicians who remain silent when authorities jerk kids out of happy homes because their parents don't want them to be propagandized by LGBQT propagandists in public schools. In Canada you cannot adopt a child unless you're willing to support a sex change operation for a four year-old. Quite frankly, in four decades of working among abused and emotionally damaged kids, it looks to me more like LGBQT advocates are more interested in increasing the numbers of potential sex partners in the coming years than protecting anyone's rights. 

I know that sounds harsh, but when you've seen fresh-faced kids come to town on buses with a piece of paper inviting them to come to the gay bars of the big cities, I have a hard time not doubting the motivation of the folk trying to "normalize" deviant sexual practices. There are, after all, only about 3% of Americans who embrace alternative sexual lifestyles. They must have a hard time finding partners. I sometimes wonder if the drive to encourage "alternative" gender identification in impressionable children is more about trying to grow the numbers of young sex partners than it is about protecting children from bullying.

After 40 years watching this sickness being pushed on us by government bureaucrats, the media and progressive activists, and seeing the horrors being perpetrated on innocent children and confused people with mental illness by these sexual bullies, I am frankly sickened by it all. People who casually go along with this kind of "fundamental change" in American values and culture, haven't seen the parade of victims of those promoting it. I have and I can tell you, you don't want to see the human wreckage left behind.

I love my friends who struggle with sexual identity issues. I spent years helping sexually abused kids try to come to terms with family's and friends' acts of perversion perpetrated on them when they were little. The trouble with trying to help these kids is that the LGBQT advocacy folks have convinced mental health professionals who ought to know better to go along with their efforts to force everyone to agree that sexual perversions are "normal".  Therefore scientists and counselors are forbidden to explore any possible treatments to help kids and adults who do not want to be slaves to their "alternative sexual proclivities." Why would people who write books like "Free to Be You and Me" object to folks who have homosexual proclivities, trying to get some treatment. People with bipolar are not forced to "embrace" their craziness, just because a lot of important celebrities have bipolar. And by the way the suicide rate among people with sexual issues is up there with that of people with untreated bipolar disorder. The only difference is that the political establishment of our country and a medical profession which has embraced politically correctness denies treatment to homosexuals, lesbians, trans-sexuals et al.

It's a real struggle to achieve some level of recovery from sexual deviance it's true, but don't let anyone tell you that you have to act on your impulses. Having everyone pretend that sexual deviance is normal and healthy isn't going to help the suicide rate any more taking guns away from law-abiding citizens will cause a mass shooter not to act on his impulse to mow down a row of school children. Impulses may be controlled, but it's difficult once they have found a seat within the mechanism of our brains. If you are denied any help for impulses you don't want, don't like and think are wrong, it's little wonder there is so much despair among those who suffer with this sort of mental illness. And, yes , I said mental illness. I have ADHD myself. It's a mental condition. I deal with it. I got some help. Everyone should be able to get help if they want it.

Thank God that He loves us and saves us from our sins. It's the last bit of hope in a world that devil wants to be as confusing and contradictory as possible. As an old rock song once opined, "Satan is my name. Confusion is my game." Look, if abused little girls can find peace after what they've gone through, so can other victims of sexual perversions. I've seen the horrific damage done to women in their childhoods and watched the heart-breaking struggle they go through to find peace and recovery. So why by all that's holy do we deny that healing and peace to those who are the victim of other forms of deviant sexual bullying?

Just sayin'.

(c) 2018 by Tom King

Humanitarian Crisis - True Lies?

Detained illegal immigrant kids circa 2014

My leftist friends say there is no justification for separating children from their parents like this. Let me give them some justification then:

(1) The parents are being detained with other adults in detention facilities wholly unsuited for children - e.g. adult jails. It takes a few days to process them, after which their actual children will be returned to them and the reunited families will be returned to their countries of origin. This is standard procedure when cops raid a meth-making house and arrest the parents of children in the house. DHS takes the kids and puts them someplace safe. Same thing INS is doing.

(2) Among these "parents" who have no documentation are drug mules, smugglers, cartel enforcers, sex traffickers and terrorists. Because they are undocumented, it is not possible to definitively identify whether the adults arrested are the "parents" of the child (see Stockholm syndrome). For the child's safety he is placed in the custody of the Department of Human Services, one of those government agencies you guys on the left are so fond of, which has extensive experience managing displaced children and the children of incarcerated parents. So what are you saying? What DHS does with the children of American criminals is okay, but not good enough for the children of people arrested for violating our borders?  Interesting?

(3) Detention facilities are overloaded because the former president's open borders catch-and-release policies has attracted so much illegal immigration during his administration. When Trump started talking about a wall to shut down illegal immigration, it triggered a flood of illegals attempting to cross the border before the wall goes up.

So what are you Democrats proposing? Should we go back to ignoring the problem and signing up illegals to vote Democrat? Ultimately, illegal immigration is a form of slavery. It provides chicken processing plants, dairy farms, rose nurseries and farmers with a cheap source of underpaid labor and Democrats with a voting block that works even better than copying names off headstones.

President Obama did the same thing Trump's INS is doing. Obama (and Bill Clinton) actually wrote the policy that separates children from adult detention facilities. While the mainstream media did react to the issue back in 2014, the furor over it was much muted. Now, President Trump is dealing with a sudden flood of illegal immigration and is stuck having to protect children with the DHS resources he has. Suddenly, in 2018, the mainstream media is howling.

The difference? They liked Obama. They don't like Trump

 And I've got to hand it to Snopes on this one. They accurately reported that the claim that Obama's INS separated kids from families is true. I know they didn't want to say this claim was true, given Snopes' liberal proclivities, but this piece is pretty honest. While the conservative counter-hyperbole does play loose with the facts just like the ongoing liberal hyperbole over the family separation issue, the true story is still damning. And hyperbole wars are notorious for stretching the truth on both  sides. There was some mainstream media coverage in 2014, but that paled beside today's media hysteria. The media, back when Obama was president, stopped reporting on the situation when it started to blow back on their beloved leader. Up beside the howl of despair coming from the MSM these days, the media was relatively careful in 2014 about using terms like "atrocity" and "humanitarian crisis" when a Democrat was president.

They've taken it too far, though, in their efforts to unseat Trump over this issue, to the point of proposing policies that seriously endanger innocent kids.  The media coverage is far more vocal about the situation these days, than they were back in 2014. And its not about a humanitarian crisis. The kids are being protected actually. It's about politics. It's about unseating a kind of conservative president that the progressive left hates because he used to be one of them.
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© 2018 by Tom King 

Filmmaking as Confused Propaganda

We get all sorts of dystopian and post-apocalyptic movies aimed at teenagers these days. They all have a theme - an oppressive large government controls everyone's life either before the apocalypse or after it. Either way, the brave young post pubescent teens run away or starts guerrilla warfare against the repressive government. Somehow the filmmakers throw in little suggestions that the evil central government is somehow Republican or conservative.

Case in Point:  The Thinning

This progressive filmmaker attempts to sell the idea that Texas has submitted to a United Nations demand that it reduce it's population by 5%. Really? Texas submits to a UN mandate? Then, the Texas governor institutes a system of culling through testing in schools. Low-scoring kids are killed (thinned). Everyone (in Texas mind you) goes along with the idea without a lot of fuss. Before the test, kids are shown a propaganda film (the sort liberals like to use to explain why capitalism is bad to school children).  Kids who fail are carried out of the test center by people in black wearing hockey masks.

They may have actually filmed it in Austin. After all, Austin is one of the cities where we store out liberals in Texas where we can keep an eye on them. But the idea that Texas has somehow disarmed its citizens and convinced them to quietly accept the systematic slaughter of their children is probably the most ludicrous premise for a film ever.  Eugenics is NOT a popular idea in Texas. Hell, we don't like abortion. The idea that anytime in the next 50 years Texas is going to go full eugenics under a conservative Texas governor is incredibly stupid. And to think the conservatives in Texas would put supposedly thinned kids into some corporate work program or organ harvesting program is ludicrous, though this is what the ending led us to believe.

I don't get it. The very people that make these types of films are the first to go out and vote for progressive Democrats, the same people who want bigger government, more population controls, and a more powerful regulations. Progressives have long been believers in "improving" the human race. The "message" in these kinds of films is so screwed up. F. Scott Fitzgerald, a progressive if there ever was one stated that it was a sign of intelligence to be able to hold two opposing ideas in one's mind at the same time and believe both. If that's true these rudderless filmmakers are freakin' geniuses.

Myself, I suspect these college brain-washed children have some vague idea that some smart people in government will take care of all their needs so they can indulge in sex, drugs and rock n' roll without having to take any real responsibility for anything. In such a world, anyone who advocates for a world that requires some kind of serious work for your reward is anathema. While such folks themselves put in an incredible amount of work it's true, they also see themselves as part of the privileged elite who will manipulate the dim-witted masses to keep them content and obedient. Like I said, I don't get it.

© 2017 by Tom King

 

There You Go Again.....

TRUMP IS THE SAME AS REAGAN?
Trump's PR Department Constructs New Meme

The Trump Machine scoured the picture files to find this pair of pics which equate
a Reagan thumb's up to a Trump thumb's up! They still wound up with a Trump smirk
alongside a genuine Reagan smile. Reagan's looking at people; Trump at cameras.

Here they tried to catch a Reagan smirk and pair it with
The Donald's famous smirk. The problem for the PR guys is
that Reagan looks like he shares and inside joke with his
audience. Trump here looks like he knows something that
you don't know and thinks you're pretty stupid.

I'm going to do this one in pictures so that the LIV Trump supporters at whom this is aimed may understand. I just hope they'll notice the captions or they'll miss the whole point, but seeing as how the true believers will follow Trump off a cliff, I don't suppose there's much hope of that.

True conservatives (whom Trump says he doesn't need) love Ronald Reagan. He's far and away our favorite president of the past century and a half. So (since they don't need us), Trump's minions (shown at the left) have begun constructing a new meme.  The old "lesser of two evils" meme has been successfully and widely debunked and is obviously not working with principled conservatives so they've taken a new tack. First it was the "devil you don't know is better" argument, which hasn't been as successful as they hoped, with Trump supporters beginning to jump ship lately as they realize that the devil you don't know is still a devil. Whoops!

So to reach conservatives (whom Trump doesn't need in order to win), the Trump machine has resorted to resurrecting the corpse of Ronald Reagan and propping it up beside pictures of Donald Trump that they have tried to match expression and mannerism-wise so that the LIV crowd might mistakenly believe that Trump is a chip off the old Reagan block.

Trying to remember which expression to use
versus seriously presidential

 There are a whole raft of these Trump/Reagan "which of these things is just like the others" kind of photos on the web. A lot of them are png files which makes me wonder if the same Photoshop wizard is making them. I can hear the Trump PR department going, "Chuck, we need you to find some pictures where Trump looks Reaganesque and match them up with old Reagan photos. And we need those by tomorrow. Comparing him to the devil hasn't worked out so well...."


Here's some more that Bozo the Candidate's crack PR team came up with....

 Here we have the mouth open pose. I need hardly comment on which looks like a president and which like a side show barker.

Here we go, still trying to match the serious presidential face of Reagan. Best they could do is Trump's Monty Hall face doing "Let's Make a Deal!"

 Trying to show how Trump captures Reagan's energy. Looks more like the Donald is doing an advertisement for the Squatty Potty.

Still trying to match up the serious presidential expression on Reagan's face with something (anything) remotely similar from the Donald. I've seen Dana Carvey do that same expression in his Church Lady skit on Saturday.

"Now who could it be?"

Church Lady could tell you who it is. The face and eyes are the mirror to the soul. Does anyone beside me think that Trump and Clinton both are using practice faces trying to gin up some real human expressions. Do we have a pair of sociopaths running for president this November - people not capable of expressing genuine emotions. Isaac Asimov once wrote a story about an Android that ran for public office once. He pulled it off. I wonder whether the victory of the robot said more about how well the robot simulated human emotions and expressions or more about how poorly politicians do?

We've certain tossed out any real people from the candidate pool this time around. All we have left are con artists, criminals and criminal con-artists with the cumulative moral strength of a pigeon. Here's hoping there are more wise and principled Americans out there this fall than it would appear based on the quality of this year's top tier presidential contenders.

© 2016 by Tom King

Lest you think the Trump Machine's technique is new, here's a foreshadowing.
Here they compare Cruz to Nixon, Trump to Reagan and Rubio to Bush. We
are supposed to learn from this that Trump is Reagan. I'm not sure who they
are selling this balderdash to, but their collective brainpower could hardly
summon up the energy to light up a night light.

Please Don't Throw The Donald in That Briar Patch!

© the Walt Disney Co. - Song of the South

Does no one read the Uncle Remus stories anymore? Brer Rabbit and the Briar Patch? The story is that Brer Rabbit is captured by Brer Fox and Brer Bear and they are debating ways to kill him. Brer Rabbit spies a briar patch and begins begging that they not throw him in there and acts terribly afraid. So, of course Brer Fox throws him in the briar patch which is what Brer Rabbit wanted all along. Here's a clip of the story from Disney's sadly neglected Song of the South.

Okay, here's what that has to do with Donald Trump. There is currently a big hullabaloo going on over Donald Trump. Paid protesters have caused violence at his rallies, roughing up people and being roughed up in return. Every time they have such a violent protest, newly converted conservatives rise up and tell us we MUST vote for Trump because of these protests.

"You can tell Donald Trump is good because his enemies are so bad," they say. Well that screwed up bit of false logic is easily trumped if you've ever read the history of Adolph Hitler's rise. His greatest enemy was the evil Communist dictator, Joseph Stalin. Should we then have made friends with Hitler on the grounds that Stalin was worse?

As it turns out, the folk paying the protesters to hit the Trump rallies are FRIENDS OF DONALD TRUMP. George Soros is a huge contributor to the phony riots and, as it turns out Soros is such a good friend of Trump that Soros loaned Trump 600 million bucks to build Trump Tower Chicago (the city, ironically, where we saw the first big anti-Trump protest that netted Trump 80 million dollars in estimated free TV air time). Trump has all sorts of allies in Democratic ranks - he's been paying them off for years. These same people are now, through paid surrogates, making a big ugly fuss at Trump rallies. If they dislike Trump so much why would they want to spoil the Republicans' efforts, when they seem hell-bent on running the worst candidate possible for president?

So how would that help Trump?  Easy. The point is to do just what they are doing with the fence-sitting angry conservatives. They hope the violent protests will convince those who can be persuaded to fall for the "lesser of two evils" argument", to hold their noses and support Trump so that he will win the nomination. And the reason that so many are convinced appears to be...................wait for it. BECAUSE OF THE VIOLENT PROTESTS AGAINST TRUMP!

Do you guys not get it? Their "please do not throw the Donald into that briar patch" protests are a set up. They want Donald in that briar patch (the nomination). Once they've managed to convince us that Donald is the only man the liberal/progressive mob fears, they win exactly what they want - Donald vs Hillary.

Then, once his nomination is secure, watch the mainstream media bring out the dump truck loads of crap they have on Trump's "colorful" past and bury him in it. It's the surest way for the Democrats to insure that the Republican nominee will lose to the appalling Hillary Clinton in November. They WANT enough of us to react to all that fake liberal fear o' Donald and rally round Trump so he can win the nomination. They KNOW the best way to get that to happen is to create a lot of fake protests. 

Get it into your head people; they WANT to run the Hildebeest against the Donald in November. He's the only "Republican" on Earth with more negatives than Clinton. They've done the crossover voting and the media holding back the media tactic against the Republicans twice before now with McCain and Romney and then unloaded once their weak candidate of choice won the nomination. Are we going to be so stupid we fall for it yet again? God help us if we do.


So please, please, please don't throw Donald into that briar patch. I'm not kidding. That's just where the Clintonistas want him.

© 2016 by Tom King

10 "Shocking Facts" - Really?

If this isn't the saddest bunch of left-wing/anarchist drivel.  This "share me" deal that is circulating on Facebook is an inverse manifesto for vegan progressive socialist anarchism. Look hard at what the "logical" response to all of these points are. While some of them are good things, notably the ones that represent conditions in heaven and the New Earth with sin well and truly gone, some lead toward an acceptance of some sinister principles.  Let me take them point by point:

(We prioritize money over......)  This is a broad statement and demonstrable untrue. Money for most of us is a tool whereby we obtain food, clean water, and a healthy place to raise our families. Without a viable way to exchange our labor for things we need, we regress to a hunter gather society, every man for himself, short miserably lifespans and violence at the hands of those not clever enough to grow/gather their own food, build shelter or figure out how to keep their homes clean and disease free. It's worded to make us feel guilty for the sins of the thugs and bullies of the world who do exploit people except nowadays they use money instead of simply murdering us with swords and clubs and taking our goods away.  At least we have lawyers these days to look out for us. I'd hate to see it go back to the club thing.

(Economic trading system that facilitates death...)  Please!  Yes, there are wars, and there are those who profit by keeping those wars going.  That's by no means "we".  And if they weren't providing guns and rockets, the same folk would be going at each other with clubs and spears.  The nations supported by that evil economic trading system also do intervene to try and stop the genocide on occasion (admittedly not often enough). What this writer doesn't point out is that the reason the US doesn't intervene in places like Rwanda, Chad and the Sudan where genocide is taking place is because people like this writer would raise blue bloody hell if they did so we only wind up going to war in places where someone else has provided them with enough money to get a lot of weapons that threaten us. We are forced by the peacenik faction to hunt only lions and to leave off protecting the sheep from the foxes.  Do away with the "trading system" and adopt, say, the socialist/communist system and all economic decisions are put in the hands of a handful of elite "leaders". Historically, doing away with capitalism has only resulted in a loss of motivation NOT to murder your customers en masse.

(We divide the land)  This is a thinly disguised appeal for the state-owns-everything (communist) model.  You work for the state, where the state wants you to, making what the state thinks is fair while enjoying substandard food, clothing, shelter, entertainment and healthcare in a polluted cesspool of an environment (ask the former Soviets what happened to the Aral Sea (hint - it went missing). If we have no land that is ours, then we have no security. We can be thrown off our land and out of our homes anytime someone more powerful (like the state) wants to. What a lovely model for a society of all homeless citizens.

(We call some people soldiers...) Fine, let's fire all the soldiers, stand down the military and that will make everything good....right up until the roving bands of thugs wipe out your town and indulge in a little freelance pillage, rape and murder.

(Animals)  We all become Vegans.  And all those, now useless animals out there consuming food that we have no use for?  Turn them loose to graze in people's yards and farmers' fields? Slaughter them all now that they are useless?  Universal veganism would throw the economy and the eco-system into a death spiral. You may not like it, but there are more cows and chickens in this country than there are people and what do you do with all those corpses?

(We send children to school)  What's she saying?  That we should stop teaching our kids.  Hey, the German school system is an idea introduced in the early 1900s by progressives who wished to use it to fill kids heads with socialist propaganda. They weren't successful at first, but the school system has become more "progressive" with each generation. I'd love to see that changed.

(We impose financial pressures on parents)  That, my dear, is a direct result of, not financial pressure, but social pressure applied by the rising feminist/progressive movement. We lower Dad's salary so women make equal pay which forces women to join the workforce to keep up.  It's social pressure that pushed women into the workplace, brought upon women by and large by people who vote to the left, support liberal causes and demand that you keep up with the latest fashions, and by feminists who made housewives and mothers feel ashamed because they don't have a career! So we've reshaped the economy where it takes two incomes to survive and virtually eliminated the wife and mother career track altogether.

(Thousands of religions...) This is presented by a bad thing - the old BS about how religion causes all our troubles.  They keep saying this hoping we'll believe it.  The problem is history. The societies which were officially religion-free over the past century committed all the genocide, killing hundreds of millions without any excuse of religion for it - their only excuse being that it was done for "the greater good".  One of the hazards of casting aside religious morality.

(Love and compassion are mocked?)  By whom. We honor those who protect our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which provide the setting for us to show love and compassion to our fellow humans. If the we is the U.S. we show more compassion toward our fellow man than any country on the planet. Our government gives billions to struggling nations. Our people (mostly Christians) give even more than the government does of our own free will and out of our own pockets.

(Anyone with a really useful invention)  She wants to get rid of patents. In other words, you may work for years and years to create a new and useful thing. On the day someone sees it, they may take your idea from you and if they have more money to promote it and sell it, you are flat out of luck. This person who wants to bring down the economic system apparently wants to return it to a feudal system where the guy with the most bucks and the biggest set of swords can take the fruits of your labor and not pay you a dime for it.

This manifesto is a ludicrous mess - the ravings of someone who believes in magical unicorns and the perfectibility of man.  It would no more give us a "free" world than resurrecting Atilla the Hun would give us a peaceful Eastern Europe.

I believe man is corrupt, held in check only by good people who band together to protect the rights and freedoms of all, by a self-governing economic system that protects the right to individual property, both physical and intellectual as well as to the fruits of their own labor. Evil must be held in check by strong, brave people who stand on the walls to protect us all from the savages that live in our world and would destroy us to take from us what they are too lazy or ignorant to make for themselves.

All that the author of this blather wants will be available when Christ removes the good folk and leaves the bad behind. After they destroy the world and themselves with it, we'll be the ones to clean it up and replant and rebuild.  THEN, we'll get peace and love and compassion. Soldiers will be gone. No more taxes, no more power hungry madmen, no more hate, fear or misery.  The laws and social systems we create are to protect us, not from "WE" who might actually feel a little guilt for doing all the things in this manifesto, but from those who feel no guilt for lying, stealing, greed, murder, exploitation and bullying.

No application of guilt of the sort the Free World Manifesto above represents will in any way be effective at changing the behavior of someone who has chosen to do evil. They will blow you off as a joke. But hey, at least you FEEL like you've done your bit for saving the world.

Just sayin'

Tom

The Medal of Freedom Should Perhaps Be Renamed

Daniel Kahneman

Interesting - President Obama is awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Daniel Kahneman for Economics. Kahneman is a behavioral psychologist who has worked in something called "hedonistic economics". His work attempts to explain, in part, the mistakes people make when estimating the effects of different scenarios on their future happiness (also known as affective forecasting - predicting how feelings can be affected by illusion. The "illusion" occurs when people consider the impact of one specific factor on their overall happiness while ignoring other factors. In other words, give people a powerful enough illusion and they tend to greatly exaggerate the importance of that factor in their future happiness, while overlooking the numerous other factors that would in most cases have a greater impact.

In other words, whether that was his intent or not, Kahneman gave the propagandists a tool that teaches them how to fixate the minds of the masses on one big thing that is presented as the "key" to their future happiness so that they will ignore and dismiss other factors that are likely to be more important and may even undermine their happiness. For example, fix the public mind on the importance of universal healthcare so that they ignore the loss of individual liberty, the threat of massive debt, massive taxation and the loss of opportunity and freedom of action.

While Dr. Kahneman may be a lovely person who had no intent to aid in the downfall of America, perhaps "Medal of Freedom" isn't the write name for his award. 

Obama also included Bill Clinton, Oprah and Gloria Steinem in the group and, oddly enough, Loretta Lynn - though Lynn is an old pal of Jimmy Carter, so that probably explains it.

Ah, well, the politics roles on.

© 2013 by Tom King

Governments React Badly to Truths That are Really Inconvenient

1945 photo by James Gaussman, Army Pilot

I saw a post yesterday about efforts by the Chinese government to hide the fact that there are pyramids in China, complete with mummies, many of which have inconveniently Caucasian features. The Chinese government has planted forests and briar thickets over them and knocked parts of the structures down in order to obscure them.  The party line for ages has been that they do not exist or that only a few of the more "Chinese" ones - emperor tombs covered in the official histories. The photograph to the left was taken in 1945 by an American pilot, James Gaussman, of one very large pyramid that no one has quite been able to find since.  There are a lot of esoteric theories about the Chinese pyramids.  The Chinese government only says they have not been studied yet. Despite evidence of their existence, the Communists aren't much interested in talking about them.

Someone who read the post I saw had the temerity to ask, "Why?"

Since that person was an avowed progressive socialist, I thought I might answer the question and perhaps provide enlightenment as well.

So what is the point of the Chinese government hiding their ancient pyramids? Wouldn't it be a great archeological find and gateway to the door of their past as a nation?

Yup!

Aerial view of Chinese Pyramid network

That's precisely why they're hiding them.  The reason is simple. The existence of pyramids and Caucasians in ancient China, perhaps even as partial ancestors to the Chinese people, does not fit the narrative of the Middle Kingdom, an idea fostered in Chinese culture. Unforseen new "history" could be extremely inconvenient for the government and such governments as that which runs China have an almost pathological need to control the flow of information. China's bosses have a solidly set narrative about how things are and ought to be and they don't like surprises, even archaeological ones.


Henry Kissinger called this narrative "The Middle Kingdom Syndrome".  Chinese civilization has evolved into something like The Matrix.  While China is notorious for stealing ideas from other nations, they do so without any guilt about it. They don't see it as stealing. The Chinese do not merely copy external ideas or even external realities. They use these ideas and resources to create an ongoing reality that serves the notion of the superiority and privilege of the Middle Kingdom (China). The Middle Kingdom believes they have a right to anything they want or need, whether it be stolen satellite technology or a permanent trade imbalance in their favor. They believe the universe supplies the Middle Kingdom with what they need be it goods, technology, money, land or opportunities and see no problem with reaching out and taking these things when they obligingly present themselves.

Chinese leaders, the rightful rulers of the Middle Kingdom as they see it, believe this implicitly.  This is not propaganda, it's an article of faith with them.  China does not, for instance, see itself as "catching up" with modern technology.  Modern technology is simply providing itself to China in service to the Middle Kingdom's rightful destiny - as is only right and proper that it should.


Such delusional thinking is a problem with ANY large and intrusive government with vast power. Aldous Huxley and George Orwell both covered this problem in their books, "Brave New World" and "1984".  When you concentrate power in the hands of a few, those few, in order to cling to that power, must create a narrative - even a false history if necessary - to justify their continuing hold on all that power. This narrative must support their right to intrude on the lives of their subjects.  Anything which does not "fit" the narrative must be suppressed. 

The problem for them in the modern world is that people are not naive enough to let them get away with setting themselves up as gods with the divine right to tell the rest of us what to do. Stalin and Mao were probably the last to get away with doing so. President Obama's supporters would like to make him a Messiah figure, but most Americans are having none of it.  We know too much. We have too many different faiths for any leader to misuse religion to bolster his own power as the pharoahs and the Roman emperors used to. 

An alternative path to god-like power, then, is to destroy faith in anything except government and its more charismatic leaders.  They may allow a few religions which make a minor deity of government, but faith in something greater than themselves must be beaten down and made a mockery of.  As I've said many times, the problem with this world is not religion.  It's government.

These pyramids loom unmistakably real over the Chinese landscape

The first thing a government which has achieved great power must do is either suppress or co-opt any existing system of faith which does not acknowledge the government as supreme.  Any theology or philosophy which might ask awkward questions about the government must be suppressed or ridiculed into impotence.  That's why communist governments are so militantly atheist. If there is no God, then there is no one greater than themselves and thus, none to challenge the powers-that-be.

So it's no surprise the Middle Kingdom would react badly to the news that history might be rather different than the historical doctrine taught in their carefully constructed textbooks. Nations like the Soviet Union and Communist China, as well as WWII Japan and Germany, had to act as ruthlessly as they did against anyone who challenged the right of their leaders to exercise power as they did - no matter that it might be their own citizens they had to ship off to gulags, internment camps, "mental" hospitals and prisons.

A government serves its people so long as its power is limited.  As well-meaning people try to extend the power of government in order to make the lives of all citizens "better", the process inevitably reaches a tipping point - a point of no return if you will. You can see it approaching. The signs look something like this:

1. A movement begins that promises to change the world for the better - usually to make the lives of a powerful bloc of citizens better.
2. True believers in the movement worm their way into public office with promises of rewards for "the people" if they support them.
3. The movement co-opts the universities and turns them into propaganda machines, teaching students how to think properly; training more true believers who train more true believers and on and on.
4. The media, trained in pro-movement universities, chooses sides with the government which is by now heavily pro-movement.
5. The media supports government programs and initiatives uncritically. 
6. Education is altered, textbooks revised to support a pro-government narrative.
7. With the support of the growing number of pro-movement voters, vast new programs are initiated that promise to end hunger, to conquer poverty and to give everyone a job.
8. The number of poor does not decrease, unemployment climbs and hunger and homeless become rampant.
9. A segment of citizens are vilified, singled out as "the problem", in order to focus attention away from the fact that the government is failing. 
10. A lot of speeches get made about duty, service, collective action and collective responsibility.
11. Internal "security" forces are beefed up.
12. Pretty soon, it's off to the gulags for anyone who points out that the emperor has no clothes.

As we look around us and see a heavily biased core media in this country, the federally mandated "Core Curriculum" movement, a faltering economy, polarization of our country and the president making state of the union address calling for "collective action", I fear we are rapidly approaching a tipping point.  It will be interested to see what a nation, built upon the principle that all men are created equal, does when it becomes apparent that their government not only no longer believes in that principle, but actively is working to insure the permanent superiority of and rule by a privileged elite class.

When they start telling you that you're not smart enough to understand why the government is doing to you what they're doing to you, and to shut up and go along with it, you'll pretty much know the tipping point has been reached. Unless I tip over face first in my soup pretty soon, I fear I'll live to see it.

© by Tom King

The Paradox of Major General Butler

Progressives and Ron Paul Libertarians love to post quotations by two-time Medal of Honor winning Marine General Smedley Darlington Butler an outspoken critic of U.S. military adventurism, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. They always quote the part where he accuses US "capitalists"of using the military to clean up messy countries so our companies can go in and make money in those places.  Then they attempt to make the correlation between these evil war-mongering capitalists and conservative Republicans of today.  What they don't tell you is that Major General Butler was a REPUBLICAN!

And what he said was true. General Butler's service was during a time when corporate corruption was at its height under the Robber Barons.  The military WAS being misused in support of American business interests.  Here's the passage from a speech by the General that is most widely quoted.

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

Butler's quote was first published in a socialist magazine during the 30s. The socialists embraced Butler for his supposed "pacifism". He supported the Bonus Army march on Washington and turned against Hoover for his treatment of WWI veterans and supported Roosevelt.  Unfortunately for Roosevelt, Butler also opposed the new president's policies and got in trouble with the socialists over his negative comments about Benito Mussolini (the then darling of the socialists who were busily carving statues of him in East Coast parks.
Butler accused several wealthy Americans including JP Morgan and a retired Army general as well as a cabal of Jewish bankers of fomenting a plot  against the government, which they invited him to lead.

The Democrat controlled congress did hearings, slapped some hands and buried the names of those involved. The Democrat press branded the whole thing a hoax and General Butler a tool. 

History is a funny thing.  If you'll look for the name of the presidents who tried to break up the power of the Robber Barons around the time of General Butler's service, you'll find Teddy Roosevelt (Republican) leading the charge.  The Democrat Party was up to their eyeballs in efforts to use the military to benefit their wealthy friends.  Later, it was Dwight Eisenhower who warned us AGAINST the military-industrial complex.  He was a REPUBLICAN too. 

A recent study found that some 80% of those surveyed who were classified as RICH supported the Democrat Party and President Obama financially.  Yet the progressive apologists would have us believe that it is Republicans who support the greedy capitalists and vice versa.

What do you suppose that those greedy capitalists know that we don't that would cause them to invest that much money into the Democrat Party?

"Oh, but that all changed after Abraham Lincoln," the progressives will tell you.  "The Democrats have switched roles with the Republicans."

Progressives maintain that the Democrat leopard, author of the Jim Crow laws, segregation, poll taxes and supporter of the robber baron monopolies has change its spots.  Well, folks, I don't buy it.  Leopards cannot change their spots, except, of course, for the so-called black panther which is really a leopard without visible spots unless you look close.  The panther hides his spots and in the process turns almost completely black in one of natures more interesting parables.  Whatever the liberal progressive Democrat coalition may say, history says different.

• Democrats say Roosevelt saved the country during the Depression.  History says he lengthened it and made it worse.
• Democrats say Republicans start wars.  History shows that in the past hundred years, WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam were all started under Democrat presidents. And before you point out Grenada and Panama and the two Gulf Wars, let me remind you about the debacle in the desert under Carter, the Yugolsavian distraction under Clinton and the Libyan Adventure under Obama.  
• Democrats say Republicans fight wars to support business interests.  History says American troops helped stabilize the governments where we intervened and the increased trade improved standards of living for the citizens of those "Banana Republics" AND we didn't occupy them, we helped them set up governments and left.
• Democrats say Republicans are rich, greedy capitalists, yet the majority of actual greedy capitalists support Democrats heavily.
• Democrats say they are the party of the "working man".  History shows that the working man of the heartland votes conservative by and large.
• Democrats say that government is sneaky and evil AND that more government is the solution to the problem!

Okay, I still don't get that one. I'm verklempt.

Talk amongst yourself.

(c) 2013 by Tom King

The Rich People We Hate Avoid a Tax Increase

Obama's Tax Raid on the Rich Only Impacts the Working Rich

(c) 2012 by Tom King

Did anyone notice that the only "rich" people that got a tax increase were the working wealthy - the ones that actually draw a paycheck or make a profit.

The already rich, the hereditary rich and those who have already made their pile (all of whom heavily support President Obama) didn't get any kind of meaningful tax increase because capital gains only went up 5% and manipulating and hiding capital gains earnings is really the easiest kind of income to avoid paying taxes on when you have teams of tax accountants and lawyers.

So Warren Buffet didn't get a tax increase even though he asked for one.  George Soros didn't get a tax increase even though he asked for one. The Kennedys, the Rockefellers, the Chases, the Morgans and the Astors didn't get a tax increase.  Most of the rich people who supported President Obama's campaign heavily didn't get a tax increase.

Oh, what a surprise!

I'm just sayin'

Tom

Penn, McCain and Feingold - Oh My!

Sean Penn Movie Handily Skirts McCain-Feingold Just in Time for November Elections

Once again Sean Penn and company have dragged poor old George Bush's dessicated political corpse out of the land of political make-believe where they keep it stored in case an election looks like it's going badly.  Last time it was the dismal "W". They once trotted the Al Gore opus "An Inconvenient Truth" around the track to try and influence public opinion. Then there's always Michael Moor who's good for a "timely documentary". Then there was Nicholson Baker's liberal fantasy novel "Checkpoint" in which he has George Bush assassinated. That one kept many a Democrat up late with their flashlights and a bottle of hand lotion.

And now, just in time to sway the ignorant masses before an election, comes "Fair Game", a fictionalized account of the outing of Valerie Plame for which Bush aide, Scooter Libby, took the fall after an artificially outraged media conducted a witch hunt that lasted for months. I probably should have capitalized the "F" in fictionalized.  Just from the trailer, you can tell it got the full liberal conspiracy theory treatment.  It looks like they turned Valerie into a CIA version of Jane Bond and transformed Sean Penn into her "good as gold", highly moral, man-of-the-people, hubbie the disgruntle ex-ambassador, who attacks the Bush administrations "evil" plot to overthrow that nice man Saddam Hussein in Iraq, who, of course, has absolutely no plans to develop nuclear weapons or, for that matter, any weapons of mass destruction at all.  After all who could doubt the "truth" on which this movie is based.  Sean Penn, playing Joe Wilson in the trailer says, "It is my opinion that a sale that size, could not have happened!" and in the liberal-cum-socialist community, opinion is everything--so long as it's the opinion of someone with the right (actually left) ideology.

Next thing you know, the president (George W. Bush-Republican) is going after poor old Joe's wife.

The Bush administration (surprise and shock) comes off badly in this Hollywood propaganda opus. It's not out yet, but the film company is planning a November 5 limited release, 3 days after the election.  This gives them a month to pummel the voters with ads for the movie. The ads I've seen are basically 30 and 60 second commercials casting Republicans as bad people - especially George Bush.

I wonder if John McCain regrets the whole McCain/Feingold thing yet.  My bet is, that after this election he will. The movie is, in effect, going to attempt to influence an election for the Democrats by smearing good old George Bush again. The trailer makes the case in short order that the Republicans deliberately risked the life of an intrepid CIA agent, her family and Iraqi agents working for her in the Middle East in order to pull a fast one over on the American people and start a war.

McCain/Feingold prohibits "soft money sources" from running issue-oriented ads in support of political candidates or parties 60 days before a general election, precisely the time frame in which "Fair Game" trailers will be hitting the airwaves and theaters nationwide. What's even more fun is that if a "soft money source" like, say, George Soros decides to "invest" in the film, he could pay for as many ads as he wants to run and McCain-Feingold be damned.

I teach a class for 6 to 11 year olds at my church.  Psychologist Eric Erickson, in his "Stages of Psychosocial Development" calls the issues addressed at this stage of a child's development "Industry vs. Inferiority".  At this ages kids learn "what happens if..."  A nine year-old tends to be really concrete in his thinking - very little abstract thinking goes on.  They want to know the rules.  They want to know what happens "if".  The only thing is that in my experience they mostly want to know the rules so they can figure out a way around them.  I promise you if you catch a nine year old breaking a rule, he's got an argument all prepared about how it doesn't violate the letter of the law at all.  "You said I couldn't have a cookie. Those are 'tea cakes' and you never said I couldn't have a tea cake."  Nine year olds are not very big on the "spirit" of the law. 


Reminds me of liberals. They reason like nine year-olds.  If a liberal want to make the rules, you can bet on it that they have already figured out a way around them.  If they want to tax luxuries like yachts, you can bet they have their own 60 footer safely docked at a marina in Rhode Island for repairs (where by sheer coincidence the taxes aren't so high).  If they want to hit the "rich" with high taxes, you can bet that for some reason, they are exempt from paying it. If they make a rule stifling free speech, you can bet they've got a way around it that only they have access to.

This is a brilliant bit of dithering on the part of Penn and Company. By opening the movie after the election they can say they weren't trying to influence the election at all.  "We didn't open it till AFTER the election." they will point out.  While technically true, what they hope you don't notice is that they get to run ads for the movie BEFORE anyone actually sees the movie. That way bad reviews and dismal box office numbers for the film can't dent the Bush-bashing impact of the commercials as it did in the case of "W".  It's a movie that doesn't have to even be any good to accomplish what the Hollywood glitterati hope to accomplish - preserve Democrat seats in the house by frightening voters with the specter of a resurrected George W. Bush.

Sadly, for the liberal establishment, talk radio and growing conservative news source haven't been given the "Fairness Act" treatment yet and the point that the libs are skirting the intent of McCain/Feingold will be made - unless, of course, they throw themselves on the "Fairness Doctrine" hand grenade hoping it won't blow up.  The question they have to ask themselves is "Are enough of these sorts of work-around media blitzes coming to quiet the proletariat again and encourage the huddled masses to, once again, return the 'People's Party' to power?"

I wonder what those rascals are going to do next.  Maybe they'll release a new cleaning product - "Libbo, the soap so powerful it can even get a Republican's hands clean?"

I wouldn't put it past 'em.

I'm just tellin' ya' what I think.

Tom King

Enigo Montoya on the word "Fair"....

   "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

                                                                                    - from "The Princess Bride"