Thursday, May 31, 2012

What More Do You Need to Know?

Obama awards Medal of Freedom to avowed socialist
President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday to Dolores Huerta on Tuesday, May 9. Huerta is an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.  
President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday to Dolores Huerta, an 82-year-old labor activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers union.

Huerta is also an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.

DSA describes itself as “the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International.”

Huerta has claimed, “Republicans hate Latinos,” and has spoken fondly of Hugo Chavez’s despotic regime in Venezuela.

Our Nation's Future: Can We Overcome The Tragedy Of The Commons?

Why Obama Will Lose by the Gallon




Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler   
Friday, 01 June 2012

How many gas stations do you pass by on an average day?  For most folks it's several.  Dozens every week, a couple of hundred or more every month.  Every one of them throughout America is loudly displaying a campaign ad against President Zero.  Look at the next gas station you drive by and you'll see the campaign ad shouting at you - wordlessly, for the ad consists only of numbers.  It's the price per gallon.

This is the best campaign ad ever - a daily infuriating reminder of what a ruinous loser Zero has been as a president, and what his presidency is costing you in real money.  Plus it's free - neither the Romney campaign nor the GOP Super-Pacs have to spend a dime on them.  All they have to do is turn the negative ad against Zero into a positive ad for Romney.

The question is:  Can they do it?  Can Romney do it himself, and persuasively?

Recently, NPR compared his previous energy policy as Massachusetts governor (2003-2007) to today, claiming he has "shifted."  Back then, he focused on energy conservation and fuel efficiency, while seeming to buy in, at least partially, into "CO2 as a pollutant" warmism.  Today, instead, his emphasis is on energy production.

It would be hard, however, to characterize this (as NPR implies) as a flip-flop, as much else has "shifted" over the last several years.  Since then, warmism has been repeatedly exposed as a hoax, while new extraction technology has increased America's energy resources enormously.

Here is the Romney campaign's statement on enery policy.  It's not bad as a start.  Two of his regulatory reforms are critical:  yanking CO2 out of the Clean Air Act, and forcing enviro laws to do cost-benefit analyses.

The former ends carbon dioxide's demonization as a "pollutant," warmism's key contention.  The latter ends the application of enviro regs no matter what the cost.

His proposals to increase energy production focus exclusively on "carbon-based" sources, meaning oil, gas, and coal.  Not a word on ethanol, algae, wind, solar, and other "alternative" scams.  "Open America's energy reserves" means, "Drill, baby, drill," while special attention is paid to preventing "overregulation" of fracking (meaning, "Frack, baby, frack").

His R&D proposals are a clever finesse, shunting money now funding the whole alternative energy racket away from crony capitalists and giving it to the US military via DARPA.

So far, so okay-but it sure doesn't tap into the fury and frustration folks feel when they see those pump prices.  That's what he needs to do.

He stepped up his energy game today (5/31) with a surprise appearance in front of the shuttered Solyndra building in Fremont, California (north of San Jose).  Calling it a Taj Mahal built with taxpayer money, $500 million of which Zero poured into Solyndra, Romney said it's a symbol not of success, but of failure, an apt symbol of a failed presidency. 

Solyndra, he continued, "is also a symbol of how the president thinks about free enterprise. Free enterprise to the president means taking money from the taxpayers and giving it freely to his friends."  Mr. Obama doesn't believe in real capitalism.  He believes instead in "what I call ‘crony capitalism.' Give money to your friends who contributed to your campaign. That's crony capitalism."

Nailing Zero's utter failure on "green energy," and on being a corrupt politician - nice two-fer.  Yet that still doesn't fix the blame on Zero for those pump prices, nor does it clearly and forcefully explain what Romney would do to bring them down, way down.

How should he do that?  It's easy.

First, at every opportunity using maps, charts, precise data, experts' quotes, hammer it into voters' brains that America has the largest energy resources of any country in the world - dwarfing not just Saudi Arabia, but the rest of the entire world combined.

Earlier this month (5/11), the director of natural resources for the federal government's GAO (Government Accountability Office), Anu Mittal, testified at a Congressional hearing that one single region in the West (the Green River Formation where Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado join) contains 1.5 trillion barrels of recoverable oil, which is "equal to the entire world's proven oil reserves."

Here is a map and short description of the formation. Most of it is on federal land.  In 2008, President George Bush opened up 2 million acres of the Green River Formation for shale oil and tar sands.  One of the very first acts of Zero's Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in early 2009 was to block this, claiming that the leases must be reviewed.  Simultaneously, he encouraged environmental groups to file federal lawsuits to prevent its development.

Then, of course, there is natural gas, reserves of which have grown literally astronomically in just the last few years thanks to fracking.  The US consumes some 22 tcf (trillion cubic feet) per year now, and already drillers estimate US gas reserves are about 100 times that or close to 2.2 quadrillion cubic feet (100 years' supply) - with discovery of new plays outrunning increased consumption.

And once again,  Zero and Salazar are encouraging enviro groups to file lawsuits to block fracking gas wells, as well as encouraging BM journalists to demonize fracking in scare "news" stories.

Not to mention Zero's hate of coal, of which we have staggeringly large amounts.  A hate that Coal Country in West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania return towards President Cowpie.

Put all this together, and it gives Romney an opportunity on a platinum platter to explain how he'll provide cheap and abundant energy for all Americans.  He'll issue EOs to dismantle all of Zero's and the EPA's rules and regs that stand in the way of lower gas bills, lower electric bills, lower pump prices. 

Everyone except enviro-crazies and eco-fascists wants to pay less, way less at the pump.  It's an issue that Latinos, Blacks, Whites, working class, middle class, just about all of us are on the same side of.  Romney needs to make it his issue, he needs to own it, with passion and drama. 

The price of energy affects close to everything in the economy.  Cheap and abundant energy makes widespread prosperity possible.  Costly and scarce energy makes widespread prosperity impossible. 

If Romney can make passion for the former a constant campaign theme, while showing how and why Zero is an ideologue for the latter, he will defeat Zero by the gallon.  For every time a voter drives by a gas station and sees the pump price display, his or her determination to vote Zero out will be reinforced - day in and day out, all the way to November 6.

Monday, May 28, 2012

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Neal Boortz Tells it Like it is in Aggie Commencement Address

Neal Boortz is a Texan, a lawyer, a Texas Aggie (Texas A&M) graduate, and now a nationally syndicated talk show host from Atlanta . His commencement address to the graduates of a recent Texas A&M class is far different from what either the students or the faculty expected. Whether you agree or disagree, his views are certainly thought provoking...

"I am honored by the invitation to address you on this august occasion. It's about time. Be warned, however, that I am not here to impress you; you'll have enough smoke blown up your bloomers today. And you can bet your tassels I'm not here to impress the faculty and administration. You may not like much of what I have to say, and that's fine. You will remember it though. Especially after about 10 years out there in the real world. This, it goes without saying, does not apply to those of you who will seek your careers and your fortunes as government employees.

This gowned gaggle behind me is your faculty. You've heard the old saying that those who can - do. Those who can't - teach. That sounds deliciously insensitive. But there is often raw truth in insensitivity, just as you often find feel-good falsehoods and lies in compassion. Say good-bye to your faculty because now you are getting ready to go out there and do. These folks behind me are going to stay right here and teach.

By the way, just because you are leaving this place with a diploma doesn't mean the learning is over. When an FAA flight examiner handed me my private pilot's license many years ago, he said, “Here, this is your ticket to learn.” The same can be said for your diploma. Believe me, the learning has just begun.

Now, I realize that most of you consider yourselves Liberals. In fact, you are probably very proud of your liberal views. You care so much. You feel so much. You want to help so much. After all, you're a compassionate and caring person, aren't you now? Well, isn't that just so extraordinarily special. Now, at this age, is as good a time as any to be a liberal; as good a time as any to know absolutely everything. You have plenty of time, starting tomorrow, for the truth to set in.

Over the next few years, as you begin to feel the cold breath of reality down your neck, things are going to start changing pretty fast... Including your own assessment of just how much you really know.

So here are the first assignments for your initial class in reality: Pay attention to the news, read newspapers, and listen to the words and phrases that proud Liberals use to promote their causes. Then, compare the words of the left to the words and phrases you hear from those evil, heartless, greedy conservatives. From the Left you will hear "I feel." From the Right you will hear "I think." From the Liberals you will hear references to groups -- The Blacks, the Poor, the Rich, the Disadvantaged, the Less Fortunate. From the Right you will hear references to individuals. On the Left you hear talk of group rights; on the Right, individual rights.

That about sums it up, really: Liberals feel. Liberals care. They are pack animals whose identity is tied up in group dynamics. Conservatives think -- and, setting aside the theocracy crowd, their identity is centered on the individual.

Liberals feel that their favored groups have enforceable rights to the property and services of productive individuals. Conservatives, I among them I might add, think that individuals have the right to protect their lives and their property from the plunder of the masses.

In college you developed a group mentality, but if you look closely at your diplomas you will see that they have your individual names on them. Not the name of your school mascot, or of your fraternity or sorority, but your name. Your group identity is going away. Your recognition and appreciation of your individual identity starts now.

If, by the time you reach the age of 30, you do not consider yourself to be a conservative, rush right back here as quickly as you can and apply for a faculty position. These people will welcome you with open arms. They will welcome you, that is, so long as you haven't developed an individual identity. Once again you will have to be willing to sign on to the group mentality you embraced during the past four years.

Something is going to happen soon that is going to really open your eyes. You're going to actually get a full time job!

You're also going to get a lifelong work partner. This partner isn't going to help you do your job. This partner is just going to sit back and wait for payday. This partner doesn't want to share in your effort, but in your earnings.

Your new lifelong partner is actually an agent; an agent representing a strange and diverse group of people; an agent for every teenager with an illegitimate child; an agent for a research scientist who wanted to make some cash answering the age-old question of why monkeys grind their teeth. An agent for some poor demented hippie who considers herself to be a meaningful and talented artist, but who just can't manage to sell any of her artwork on the open market.

Your new partner is an agent for every person with limited, if any, job skills, but who wanted a job at City Hall. An agent for tin-horn dictators in fancy military uniforms grasping for American foreign aid. An agent for multi-million dollar companies who want someone else to pay for their overseas advertising. An agent for everybody who wants to use the unimaginable power of this agent's for their personal enrichment and benefit.
That agent is our wonderful, caring, compassionate, oppressive government. Believe me, you will be awed by the unimaginable power this agent has. Power that you do not have. A power that no individual has, or will have. This agent has the legal power to use force, deadly force to accomplish its goals.

You have no choice here. Your new friend is just going to walk up to you, introduce itself rather gruffly, hand you a few forms to fill out, and move right on in. Say hello to your own personal one ton gorilla. It will sleep anywhere it wants to.

Now, let me tell you, this agent is not cheap. As you become successful it will seize about 40% of everything you earn. And no, I'm sorry, there just isn't any way you can fire this agent of plunder, and you can't decrease its share of your income. That power rests with him, not you.

So, here I am saying negative things to you about government. Well, be clear on this: It is not wrong to distrust government. It is not wrong to fear government. In certain cases it is not even wrong to despise government for government is inherently evil. Yes, a necessary evil, but dangerous nonetheless, somewhat like a drug. Just as a drug that in the proper dosage can save your life, an overdose of government can be fatal.

Now let's address a few things that have been crammed into your minds at this university. There are some ideas you need to expunge as soon as possible. These ideas may work well in academic environment, but they fail miserably out there in the real world.
First is that favorite buzz word of the media and academia: Diversity! You have been taught that the real value of any group of people - be it a social group, an employee group, a management group, whatever - is based on diversity. This is a favored liberal ideal because diversity is based not on an individuals abilities or character, but on a person's identity and status as a member of a group. Yes, it's that liberal group identity thing again.

Within the great diversity movement group identification - be it racial, gender based, or some other minority status - means more than the individuals integrity, character or other qualifications.

Brace yourself. You are about to move from this academic atmosphere where diversity rules, to a workplace and a culture where individual achievement and excellence actually count. No matter what your professors have taught you over the last four years, you are about to learn that diversity is absolutely no replacement for excellence, ability, and individual hard work. From this day on every single time you hear the word "diversity" you can rest assured that there is someone close by who is determined to rob you of every vestige of individuality you possess.

We also need to address this thing you seem to have about "rights." We have witnessed an obscene explosion of so-called "rights" in the last few decades, usually emanating from college campuses.

You know the mantra: You have the right to a job. The right to a place to live. The right to a living wage. The right to health care. The right to an education. You probably even have your own pet right - the right to a Beemer for instance, or the right to have someone else provide for that child you plan on downloading in a year or so.

Forget it. Forget those rights! I'll tell you what your rights are. You have a right to live free, and to the results of 60% -75% of your labor. I'll also tell you have no right to any portion of the life or labor of another.

You may, for instance, think that you have a right to health care. After all, President Obama said so, didn't he? But you cannot receive health-care unless some doctor or health practitioner surrenders some of his time - his life - to you. He may be willing to do this for compensation, but that's his choice. You have no "right" to his time or property. You have no right to his or any other person's life or to any portion thereof.

You may also think you have some "right" to a job; a job with a living wage, whatever that is. Do you mean to tell me that you have a right to force your services on another person, and then the right to demand that this person compensate you with their money? Sorry, forget it. I am sure you would scream if some urban outdoors men (that would be "homeless person" for those of you who don't want to give these less fortunate people a romantic and adventurous title) came to you and demanded his job and your money.

The people who have been telling you about all the rights you have are simply exercising one of theirs - the right to be imbeciles. Their being imbeciles didn't cost anyone else either property or time. It's their right, and they exercise it brilliantly.

By the way, did you catch my use of the phrase "less fortunate" a bit ago when I was talking about the urban outdoors men? That phrase is a favorite of the Left. Think about it, and you'll understand why.

To imply that one person is homeless, destitute, dirty, drunk, spaced out on drugs, unemployable, and generally miserable because he is "less fortunate" is to imply that a successful person - one with a job, a home and a future - is in that position because he or she was "fortunate." The dictionary says that fortunate means "having derived good from an unexpected place." There is nothing unexpected about deriving good from hard work. There is also nothing unexpected about deriving misery from choosing drugs, alcohol, and the street.

If the Liberal Left can create the common perception that success and failure are simple matters of "fortune" or "luck," then it is easy to promote and justify their various income redistribution schemes. After all, we are just evening out the odds a little bit. This "success equals luck" idea the liberals like to push is seen everywhere. Former Democratic presidential candidate Richard Gephardt refers to high-achievers as "people who have won life's lottery." He wants you to believe they are making the big bucks because they are lucky. It's not luck, my friends. It's choice. One of the greatest lessons I ever learned was in a book by Og Mandino, entitled, "The Greatest Secret in the World." The lesson? Very simple: "Use wisely your power of choice."

That bum sitting on a heating grate, smelling like a wharf rat? He's there by choice. He is there because of the sum total of the choices he has made in his life. This truism is absolutely the hardest thing for some people to accept, especially those who consider themselves to be victims of something or other - victims of discrimination, bad luck, the system, capitalism, whatever. After all, nobody really wants to accept the blame for his or her position in life. Not when it is so much easier to point and say, "Look! He did this to me!" than it is to look into a mirror and say, "You S. O. B.! You did this to me!"

The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms.

Some of the choices are obvious: Whether or not to stay in school. Whether or not to get pregnant. Whether or not to hit the bottle. Whether or not to keep this job you hate until you get another better-paying job. Whether or not to save some of your money, or saddle yourself with huge payments for that new car.

Some of the choices are seemingly insignificant: Whom to go to the movies with. Whose car to ride home in. Whether to watch the tube tonight, or read a book on investing. But, and you can be sure of this, each choice counts. Each choice is a building block - some large, some small. But each one is a part of the structure of your life. If you make the right choices, or if you make more right choices than wrong ones, something absolutely terrible may happen to you. Something unthinkable. You, my friend, could become one of the hated, the evil, the ugly, the feared, the filthy, the successful, the rich.

The rich basically serve two purposes in this country. First, they provide the investments, the investment capital, and the brains for the formation of new businesses. Businesses that hire people. Businesses that send millions of paychecks home each week to the un-rich.

Second, the rich are a wonderful object of ridicule, distrust, and hatred. Few things are more valuable to a politician than the envy most Americans feel for the evil rich.

Envy is a powerful emotion. Even more powerful than the emotional minefield that surrounded Bill Clinton when he reviewed his last batch of White House interns. Politicians use envy to get votes and power. And they keep that power by promising the envious that the envied will be punished: "The rich will pay their fair share of taxes if I have anything to do with it." The truth is that the top 10% of income earners in this country pays almost 50% of all income taxes collected. I shudder to think what these job producers would be paying if our tax system were any more "fair."

You have heard, no doubt, that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Interestingly enough, our government's own numbers show that many of the poor actually get richer, and that quite a few of the rich actually get poorer. But for the rich who do actually get richer, and the poor who remain poor .. there's an explanation -- a reason. The rich, you see, keep doing the things that make them rich; while the poor keep doing the things that make them poor.

Speaking of the poor, during your adult life you are going to hear an endless string of politicians bemoaning the plight of the poor. So, you need to know that under our government's definition of "poor" you can have a $5 million net worth, a $300,000 home and a new $90,000 Mercedes, all completely paid for. You can also have a maid, cook, and valet, and a million in your checking account, and you can still be officially defined by our government as "living in poverty." Now there's something you haven't seen on the evening news.

How does the government pull this one off? Very simple, really. To determine whether or not some poor soul is "living in poverty," the government measures one thing -- just one thing. Income.

It doesn't matter one bit how much you have, how much you own, how many cars you drive or how big they are, whether or not your pool is heated, whether you winter in Aspen and spend the summers in the Bahamas, or how much is in your savings account. It only matters how much income you claim in that particular year. This means that if you take a one-year leave of absence from your high-paying job and decide to live off the money in your savings and checking accounts while you write the next great American novel, the government says you are living in poverty."

This isn't exactly what you had in mind when you heard these gloomy statistics, is it? Do you need more convincing? Try this. The government's own statistics show that people who are said to be "living in poverty" spend more than $1.50 for each dollar of income they claim. Something is a bit fishy here. Just remember all this the next time Charles Gibson tells you about some hideous new poverty statistics.

Why has the government concocted this phony poverty scam? Because the government needs an excuse to grow and to expand its social welfare programs, which translates into an expansion of its power. If the government can convince you, in all your compassion, that the number of "poor" is increasing, it will have all the excuse it needs to sway an electorate suffering from the advanced stages of Obsessive-Compulsive Compassion Disorder.

I'm about to be stoned by the faculty here. They've already changed their minds about that honorary degree I was going to get. That's OK, though. I still have my PhD. in Insensitivity from the Neal Boortz Institute for Insensitivity Training. I learned that, in short, sensitivity sucks. It's a trap. Think about it - the truth knows no sensitivity. Life can be insensitive. Wallow too much in sensitivity and you'll be unable to deal with life, or the truth, so get over it.

Now, before the dean has me shackled and hauled off, I have a few random thoughts.

* You need to register to vote, unless you are on welfare. If you are living off the efforts of others, please do us the favor of sitting down and shutting up until you are on your own again.

* When you do vote, your votes for the House and the Senate are more important than your vote for President. The House controls the purse strings, so concentrate your awareness there.

* Liars cannot be trusted, even when the liar is the President of the country. If someone can't deal honestly with you, send them packing.

* Don't bow to the temptation to use the government as an instrument of plunder. If it is wrong for you to take money from someone else who earned it -- to take their money by force for your own needs -- then it is certainly just as wrong for you to demand that the government step forward and do this dirty work for you.

* Don't look in other people's pockets. You have no business there. What they earn is theirs. What you earn is yours. Keep it that way. Nobody owes you anything, except to respect your privacy and your rights, and leave you the hell alone.

* Speaking of earning, the revered 40-hour workweek is for losers. Forty hours should be considered the minimum, not the maximum. You don't see highly successful people clocking out of the office every afternoon at five. The losers are the ones caught up in that afternoon rush hour. The winners drive home in the dark.

* Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.

* Finally (and aren't you glad to hear that word), as Og Mandino wrote,
1. Proclaim your rarity. Each of you is a rare and unique human being.
2. Use wisely your power of choice.
3. Go the extra mile, drive home in the dark.

Oh, and put off buying a television set as long as you can. Now, if you have any idea at all what's good for you, you will get out of here and never come back. Class dismissed"

Bill Clinton Removes any Doubt About His Presidential Stature

Click at your own risk!  LOL
 
 
What a low-life...

Friday, May 25, 2012

MEMETIC DEFECTS AND CULTURAL FAILURE


Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler   
Friday, 25 May 2012

Cap Haitien, Haiti.  On a steep mountain top three thousand feet high above the north coast of Haiti, stands this staggeringly gigantic fortress:

haiti_citiadelle1.jpg

It is the Citadelle Laferrière, revered by the left's professional distortionists of history as "the greatest monument to black freedom in the Americas."  What it really is instead is a monument to totalitarian insanity, and what makes such insanity possible-a culture's memetic defects.

To better understand what this means in general (and thus how it applies to the USA), let's take a quick look at the horrific history of Haiti.

Haiti is the western third of Hispaniola (next to Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean, about the size of South Carolina; the eastern two-thirds is now the Dominican Republic).  Spain colonized the whole island in the 1500s, but in the 1600s, French pirates took over the west.  Louis XIV formally got it for France in a treaty with Spain in 1697, naming it the colony of Saint-Domingue.

By this time, the pirates had turned into wealthy planters with coffee and sugar cane plantations.  By the 1760s, Saint-Domingue produced 40% of all sugar and 75% of all coffee consumed in Europe, making it enormously prosperous and providing France's single largest source of revenue.

All of this was done by African slave labor.  There were 40,000 wealthy white French colonists, and over 400,000 Black African slaves.  The French Revolution, with its language of the Rights of Man, bloody revolt against the rulers of France, and destabilization of the French colonial military, triggered a massive slave revolt in Saint-Domingue in 1791.  Over 20,000 French planters and their families were butchered; thousands more fled, particularly to America and New Orleans.

When Napoleon came to power in 1798, he was determined to get the colony back and resuscitate the sugar cash cow the slave rebels had killed. It had imploded into a murderous civil war of rival ex-slave armies that had divided the colony in two.  The economy had completely collapsed with widespread starvation.  In 1802, Napoleon sent 32,000 French troops to invade, then 12,000 more. 

Almost all of them died, mostly from yellow fever, malaria, and starvation as there was no food.  Napoleon lost more of his soldiers' lives in Haiti than he did at Waterloo.  For by the time he ordered retreat in late 1803, the victorious ex-slaves had renamed their new country Ayiti, meaning "homeland" in their Creole language.  His defeat had left him so broke he agreed to sell the French colony of Louisianne to the US for $15 million:  3 cents an acre for the Louisiana Purchase.

Haiti, meanwhile, was still divided in two.  The leader of the ex-slave army in the north was a fellow from the British island of Grenada who had adopted the French name of Henri Christophe.  He declared himself King Henri I of northern Haiti, his wife to be Queen Marie-Louise, his daughters to be Princesses Amethyste and Athenaire, his son Jacques to be the Prince Royal.  He anointed his cronies Dukes and Counts - with one couple having the title of the Duke and Duchess of Lemonade, another the Count and Countess of Marmalade.

He also proceeded to re-enslave his people.  With their slave labor, he built several palaces and chateaux - the most impressive being the marble-floored Palace of Sans Souci (Without Care), where his ersatz nobility wore the latest French fashions and gorged on the costliest of imported French delicacies.

That same slave labor was put to work in reclaimed sugar plantations, and to build La Citadelle, a bastion high above Sans Sounci to ward off another French invasion. 20,000 slaves died under the lash or from utter exhaustion building it, hauling hundreds of cannons, tens of thousands of cannon balls, and millions of bricks and rocks 3,000 feet up the steep slopes to the site.

Christophe murdered anyone who displeased him in any way - including Catholic priests.  In the fall of 1820, he collapsed in terror, screaming that he had seen the ghost of one of these priests warning him of the hellfire to come, and suffered a stroke that paralyzed half his body.

The news that the monster could no longer rule spread like wildfire.  On October 8, a huge mob stormed the gates of Sans Souci and his troops deserted him.  Knowing that the mob would literally rip his body apart, Christophe took his favorite pistol and fired a bullet into his heart.  He was 53 years old.

His wife and daughters, terrified of what the mob would do to his body, fled with the body carried by assistants up the trail to  the Citadelle. The mob followed them.  Reaching the fortress, in the courtyard was a huge vat of liquid lime, used as building mortar.  The ladies and their assistants shoved Christophe's body in, where it dissolved.  The only thing recovered were the buttons on the monster's uniform.

The mob spared the ladies (they were allowed to flee to Europe), but when they found Prince Jacques, he was promptly bayoneted. The mob then burned Sans Souci down.  Here is what it looks like today:

  haiti_sans_souci.jpg
The Citadelle has been a deserted ruins ever since.  I was the only visitor there.  It is an incredibly impressive monument to insanity, breatakingly large, with walls 130 feet high and 16 feet thick:

haiti_c2.jpg

haiti_c3.jpg

haiti_c4.jpg

The holes in the wall are not windows -- they are cannon ports. Hundreds of cannons and thousands of cannon balls lie untouched:

haiti_c5.jpg
  
The solidified lime vat is still in the courtyard:

haiti_c6.jpg

haiti_c7.jpg
  
So much for "the monument to black freedom."  Haiti has never experienced a day of freedom.  It's been an unending series of dictatorships and coups ever since, like the horror of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier from 1957-1971.  In 2004, there was yet another coup, resulting in the takeover of the country by the United Nations (UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti or MINUSTAH). 

The UN takeover was made complete after the earthquake disaster of 2010.

Haiti, in other words, is not only a failed state - for over 200 years, it has always been a failed state.  Its memes are defective.

You may be familiar with the term. "Meme" (rhymes with seem) was coined by Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins to conceptually reframe our understanding of the beliefs and values commonly accepted by members of a given community. Memes are cultural genes, the social equivalent of chromosomal genes.

A gene is a set of instructions for making (mostly) proteins, stored in the DNA in people's cells, and replicated through sexual reproduction. A meme is a set of instructions for making belief or behavior patterns, stored in the neuronal pathways in people's brains, and replicated through imitation.

Just as the sum of a species' genes or genetic information is called its genome, the sum of a culture's memes or memetic information is called its memome. Just as a species has genes that promote its health and survival, so a culture has memes that do the same. And just as there can be defective genes, so can there be defective memes.

A genetic defect can prevent an organism from being healthy, can cause its death, and if spread across its species, can cause a species' extinction. A memetic defect can do the same for members of a culture and the culture itself.  This is what is defective about Haiti. It's not a matter of intelligence, nor of race or ethnicity.

Take a look at the Country IQ list compiled by the world's expert on IQ, Richard Lynn.  Haiti's is 72.  Right next door, the Dominican Republic's is 84 - not a lot higher, but the cultural difference is vast, night and day.

Haiti has completely trashed its environment with giant piles of rotting rubbish everywhere, and deforestation like you wouldn't believe - entire mountain ranges are simply denuded.  The DR is clean, neat, and with flourishing forests.  It's just one example.  Haiti and the DR are literally like night and day.

Or for an even more dramatic contrast, check out the Koreas:  the North's average IQ is 105, the South's is 106.

Just as Haiti's memetic defects cause its cultural failure, so do memetic defects cause the failure of certain parts of American culture.

What prevents, for example, so many Inner City Blacks from prospering is not anything genetic. It is a functionally deficient culture that contains a number of defective memes - such memetic flaws as racial paranoia, racial rage, overdependence on government, and the repudiation of standard English and academic achievement as "acting white."

In sum, what is being repudiated are the memes that created America and enabled her success.  Memes like individual freedom coupled with individual responsibility, the memes and values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.  Abandon those memes, and you get Detroit.  You get Zero's America.

Conservatives have been bemoaning their abandonment for half a century, and with good reason.  For decades, they've been pining for the wholesome decency of the Leave It To Beaver - Happy Days 50s.  Well, they just might get their wish.

The consensus wisdom is that the overriding issue that will decide the November outcome is the economy.  There's a good argument for that.  But how, then, is it possible that Zero and Romney are tied in the polls over who can best fix it?  This is nuts - clinically deranged. 

The guy who has put millions out of work, a socialist who hates and knows nothing about business, versus a brilliant businessman with an extraordinary track record of success?  This is a no-brainer - a tie on this means half of America has no brains.

Or a defective culture.  It may really not be about the economy.  The real issue is the culture - the memes of personal responsibility versus gimme-gimme, of personal decency and integrity versus degradation, or earning what you have versus crony parasitism.

November is a contest between America's memes - the defective versus the effective.  If the defective set wins, America's culture fails - and as a consequence, so does the economy.  If the effective set wins, both succeed.

In other words, if Romney wins, we are going to see a cultural reawakening in America.  Romney is a Square, right out of the 50s.  If you want a cultural revival, a return to America's basic norms of decency (which hipsters deride as squareness), he's your guy.  This is a fascinating cultural phenomenon we're going to witness, folks.  Ozzie & Harriet, here we come.

That's if, of course, the memetic defects destroying our culture don't overwhelm us.  It's up to us to make sure they don't.  NObama 2012.

Obama's Second Term Transformation Plans

May 8, 2012
 

The 2012 election has often been described as the most pivotal since 1860.  This statement is not hyperbole.  If Barack Obama is re-elected the United States will never be the same, nor will it be able to re-capture its once lofty status as the most dominant nation in the history of mankind.

The overwhelming majority of Americans do not understand that Obama's first term was dedicated to putting in place executive power to enable him and the administration to fulfill the campaign promise of "transforming America" in his second term regardless of which political party controls Congress.   That is why his re-election team is virtually ignoring the plight of incumbent or prospective Democratic Party office holders.

The most significant accomplishment of Obama's first term is to make Congress irrelevant.  Under the myopic and blindly loyal leadership of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats have succeeded in creating an imperial and, in a second term, a potential dictatorial presidency.

During the first two years of the Obama administration when the Democrats overwhelming controlled both Houses of Congress and the media was in an Obama worshipping stupor, a myriad of laws were passed and actions taken which transferred virtually unlimited power to the executive branch.

The birth of multi-thousand page laws was not an aberration.  This tactic was adopted so the bureaucracy controlled by Obama appointees would have sole discretion in interpreting vaguely written laws and enforcing thousands of pages of regulations they and not Congress would subsequently write.  

For example, in the 2,700 pages of ObamaCare there are more than 2,500 references to the Secretary of Health and Human Services.  There are more than 700 instances when he or she is instructed that they "shall" do something and more than 200 times when they "may" take at their sole discretion some form of regulatory action.  On 139 occasions, the law mentions that the "Secretary determines."  In essence one person, appointed by and reporting to the president, will be in charge of the health care of 310 million Americans once ObamaCare is fully operational in 2014.

The same is true in the 2,319 pages of the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act which confers nearly unlimited power on various agencies to control by fiat the nation's financial, banking and investment sectors.  The bill also creates new agencies, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, not subject to any oversight by Congress.   This overall process was repeated numerous times with other legislation all with the intent of granting unfettered power to the executive branch controlled Barack Obama and his radical associates.

Additionally, the Obama administration has, through its unilaterally determined rule making and regulatory powers, created laws out of whole cloth.  The Environmental Protection Agency on a near daily basis issues new regulations clearly out of their purview in order to modify and change environmental laws previously passed and to impose a radical green agenda never approved by Congress.  The same is true of the Energy and Interior Departments among many others. 

None of these extra-constitutional actions have been challenged by Congress.   The left in America knows this usurpation of power is nearly impossible to reverse unless stopped in its early stages.

It is clearly the mindset of this administration and its appointees that Congress is merely a nuisance and can be ignored after they were able to take full advantage of the useful idiots in the Democrat controlled House and Senate in 2009-2010 and the Democrat Senate in the current Congress.   

Additionally, Barack Obama knows after his re-election a Republican controlled House and Senate will not be able to enact any legislation to roll back the power previously granted to the Executive Branch or usurped by them.  His veto will not be overridden as there will always be at least 145 Democratic members of the House or 34 in the Senate in agreement with or intimidated by an administration more than willing to use Chicago style political tactics.

The stalemate between the Executive and Legislative Branches will inure to the benefit of Barack Obama and his fellow leftists.

The most significant power Congress has is the control of the purse-strings as all spending must be approved by them.  However, once re-elected, Barack Obama, as confirmed by his willingness to do or say anything and his unscrupulous re-election tactics, would not only threaten government shutdowns but would deliberately withhold payments to those dependent on government support as a means of intimidating and forcing a Republican controlled Congress to surrender to his demands, thus neutering their ability to control the administration through spending constraints.    

Further, this administration has shown contempt for the courts by ignoring various court orders, e.g.  the Gulf of Mexico oil drilling moratorium, as well as stonewalling subpoenas and requests issued by Congress.  The Eric Holder Justice Department has become the epitome of corruption as part of the most dishonest and deceitful administration in American history.   In a second term the arrogance of Barack Obama and his minions will become more blatant as he will not have to be concerned with re-election.  

Who will be there to enforce the rule of law, a Supreme Court ruling or the Constitution?  No one.  Barack Obama and his fellow-travelers will be unchallenged as they run roughshod over the American people.

Many Republicans and conservatives dissatisfied with the prospect of Mitt Romney as the nominee for president are instead focused on re-taking the House and Senate.   That goal, while worthy and necessary, is meaningless unless Barack Obama is defeated.  The nation is not dealing with a person of character and integrity but someone of single-minded purpose and overwhelming narcissism.   Judging by his actions, words and deeds during his first term, he does not intend to work with Congress either Republican or Democrat in his second term but rather to force his radical agenda on the American people through the power he has usurped or been granted.

The governmental structure of the United States was set up by the founders in the hope that over the years only those people of high moral character and integrity would assume the reins of power.   However, knowing that was not always possible, they dispersed power over three distinct and independent branches as a check on each other.

What they could not imagine is the surrender and abdication of its constitutional duty by the preeminent governmental branch, the Congress, to a chief executive devoid of any character or integrity coupled with a judiciary essentially powerless to enforce the law when the chief executive ignores them

Conservatives, Libertarians, the Republican Party and Mitt Romney must come to grips with this moment in time and their historical role in denying Barack Obama and his minions their ultimate goal.   All resources must be directed at that end-game and not merely controlling Congress and the various committee chairmanships. 


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/obamas_second_term_transformation_plans.html#ixzz1vw9CfMcD

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Great News for America (But Not For Unions)!

PUBLIC UNIONS FACE A RECALL, NOT WISCONSIN’S GOVERNOR
Written by Jack Kelly   
Wednesday, 23 May 2012

You should be careful what you wish for.  What may be the most important gubernatorial election ever will take place in Wisconsin June 5.  The labor unions who forced it must now regret having done so.

Forty four states face budget shortfalls in the 2012 fiscal year (which for 46 states began last July 1).  Wisconsin was the 6th most troubled, according to a 2009 analysis.

For decades, spending by state governments has risen faster than the income of taxpayers.  Pay and benefits for government workers is, after Medicaid, the biggest reason why.

The average compensation per hour worked of state and local government workers is 45 percent higher than the average for workers in the private sector, according to a Cato Institute analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

This is because of a cozy arrangement between Democrats and public employee unions.  Politicians get votes and campaign contributions from the unions, then pay off the unions from the public treasury.

Taxes in Wisconsin in 2009 were among the highest in the nation, so when Gov. Scott Walker took office in January, 2011, he planned to close the $3.6 billion deficit he inherited by cutting spending, and by requiring public employees to pay 12.6 percent of their salaries for health insurance (private sector workers pay, on average, 21 percent), and contribute 5.8 percent toward their pensions (most private sector workers don't have employer funded pensions).

His budget reform bill also restricted collective bargaining to wages only.  This was necessary, Gov. Walker said, because the teachers' union was requiring school districts to buy very expensive health insurance from a company the union owned.

The left exploded in outrage.  Gov. Walker was compared to Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini.  Democrat state senators fled the state to block a vote.  Protesters occupied the state capitol.

The budget reform bill is "the most bald-faced assault on America's middle class I've ever seen," said AFL-CIO chieftain Richard Trumka.  President Barack Obama sent political operatives to Madison to help organize the protesters.  In the battle to get public employee unions to live within our means, Wisconsin was Ground Zero.

Labor and liberal groups spent millions to defeat the budget reform bill, then millions more on failed attempts to recall Republican legislators and defeat a conservative state supreme court justice.

Undaunted, unions spent additional millions to force the recall election, and to support their preferred candidate in the primary  May 8.  She was drubbed by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, about whom some labor leaders are so unenthusiastic a post-primary unity rally had to be cancelled .

Gov. Walker got more votes than the leading Democrats combined.  That's chiefly because the bad things Democrats said would happen didn't.  The only school districts where layoffs are likely are those which didn't take advantage of his reforms.

The budget is balanced.  Property taxes -- which had risen more than 40 percent since 1998 -- went down.  The unemployment rate dropped from 7.7 to 6.8 percent.  Wisconsin moved up 21 slots in an annual CEO survey of the best states in which to do business.

So even though it's the reason for the recall election, Mayor Barrett rarely mentions the budget reform bill.  He's been hammering away instead on a BLS report indicating Wisconsin lost 29,000 jobs last year.  Mr. Barrett lost his hammer May 16. Wisconsin has gained 23,321 jobs, according to the state's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.

The BLS figure was derived from a sample of just 3.5 percent of employers, and is "subject to significant revisions,"  noted the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.  The Quarterly Census is a hard count of 95 per cent of Wisconsin employers.

"The total workforce has expanded, number of people employed has expanded, and the number of people unemployed has fallen -- sort of the ideal situation that you want," said Wisconsin's chief economist.  Which could be why the state's leading newspaper, the lefty Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has now endorsed Scott Walker.

Polls indicate Gov. Walker leads Mayor Barrett by more than the 6 percentage point margin by which Mr. Walker beat Mr. Barrett in 2010.  The mayor's prospects were not improved when he was accused of awarding illegal no-bid contracts to a campaign donor.

It may be the only way to get Scott Walker out of the statehouse is if Mitt Romney makes him his running mate.


Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Old Chinese Proverb...and Current Version

Chinese Proverb

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

2012 Version

Give a man a welfare check, a free cell phone with free monthly minutes, cash for clunker autos, food stamps, section 8 housing, free contraceptives, Medicaid, a hundred weeks + of unemployment checks, a forty ounce malt liquor, access to drugs, and designer Air Jordan shoes and he will vote Democrat for a lifetime.