knowing I have an influence on my grand kids can take many forms!

I've had the joy and excitement of having my two grand daughters come and spend a week with me during the past two summers in upstate New York.   Last year we went to Niagra Falls and other things, and this summer a week of non stop activities.
During both times, I tried to sit with them and talk with them about "life stuff" and just some simple things that they, and anyone, can do to make their lives better, happier, and healthier.

Sometimes when you talk to small children about life lessons you wonder how much they are really absorbing and how much they are just taking with a grain of salt from an old man?   This summer I taught them, among other things, how to remember and never forget the names of the Great Lakes, just using the word HOMES.   They still remember.

I also taught them about opening doors, and just showed them when we're somewhere to try and grab the handle by the bottom where fewer people's hands have likely touched it.  Or, if there are two doors, to open the door on the left, since fewer people are left handed.

Well?  I guess it would make sense then if there were two doors, to not only open the left door, but also the bottom of the handle on the left door.     I hadn't thought about suggesting that also.

Last week, their mom texted me and said my counsel had been put into action.   They were going into some store and my youngest Grand Daughter, Vivi, went to open the door and remarked, and quite seriously, at the time, that "she was likely to encounter dog germs at that level rather than human germs."     I had to laugh and still laugh.

But I guess sometimes the message does get through.   smiling

Seeking Peace through Violence?

This seems like a great ambiguity to me?

Unmasking Antifa:  Seeking peace through violence

Might some believe that the "ends justifies the means?"

3.5 million USA Ghost voters

By Deroy Murdock   August 11, 2017  
from the National Review

At least 3.5 million more people are on U.S. election rolls than are eligible to vote. Some 3.5 million more people are registered to vote in the U.S. than are alive among America’s adult citizens. Such staggering inaccuracy is an engraved invitation to voter fraud.

The Election Integrity Project of Judicial Watch — a Washington-based legal-watchdog group — analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011–2015 American Community Survey and last month’s statistics from the federal Election Assistance Commission. The latter included figures provided by 38 states. According to Judicial Watch, eleven states gave the EAC insufficient or questionable information. Pennsylvania’s legitimate numbers place it just below the over-registration threshold.

My tabulation of Judicial Watch’s state-by-state results yielded 462 counties where the registration rate exceeded 100 percent. There were 3,551,760 more people registered to vote than adult U.S. citizens who inhabit these counties.

“That’s enough over-registered voters to populate a ghost-state about the size of Connecticut,” Judicial Watch attorney Robert Popper told me.

These 462 counties (18.5 percent of the 2,500 studied) exhibit this ghost-voter problem. These range from 101 percent registration in Delaware’s New Castle County to New Mexico’s Harding County, where there are 62 percent more registered voters than living, breathing adult citizens — or a 162 percent registration rate.

Washington’s Clark County is worrisome, given its 154 percent registration rate. This includes 166,811 ghost voters. Georgia’s Fulton County seems less nettlesome at 108 percent registration, except for the number of Greater Atlantans, 53,172, who compose that figure.

But California’s San Diego County earns the enchilada grande. Its 138 percent registration translates into 810,966 ghost voters. Los Angeles County’s 112 percent rate equals 707,475 over-registrations. Beyond the official data that it received, Judicial Watch reports that LA County employees “informed us that the total number of registered voters now stands at a number that is a whopping 144 percent of the total number of resident citizens of voting age.”

All told, California is a veritable haunted house, teeming with 1,736,556 ghost voters. Judicial Watch last week wrote Democratic secretary of state Alex Padilla and authorities in eleven Golden State counties and documented how their election records are in shambles.

“California’s voting rolls are an absolute mess that undermines the very idea of clean elections,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton in a statement. “It is urgent that California take reasonable steps to clean up its rolls. We will sue if state officials fail to act.”

Ronald Reagan’s California has devolved into a reliably far-Left stronghold. While pristine voter rolls should be a given in a constitutional republic with democratic elections, even that improvement might be too little to make America’s most populous state competitive in presidential elections.

The same cannot be said for battleground states, in which Electoral College votes can be decided by incredibly narrow margins. Consider the multitude of ghost voters in:

Colorado: 159,373

Florida: 100,782

Iowa: 31,077

Michigan: 225,235

New Hampshire: 8,211

North Carolina: 189,721

Virginia: 89,979

President Donald J. Trump’s supporters might be intrigued to learn that Hillary Clinton’s margins of victory in Colorado (136,386) and New Hampshire (2,736) were lower than the numbers of ghost voters in those states. Clinton’s fans should know that Trump won Michigan (10,704) and North Carolina (173,315) by fewer ballots than ghost voters in those states. It’s past time to exorcise ghost voters from the polls.

Perhaps these facts will encourage Democrats to join the GOP-dominated effort to remove ineligible felons, ex-residents, non-citizens, and dead people from the voter rolls — for all contests, not just presidential races.

“When you have an extremely large number of stale names on the voter rolls in a county, it makes voter fraud much easier to commit,” Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R., Kan.), co-chairman of President Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, told me. “It’s easier to identify a large number of names of people who have moved away or are deceased. At that point, if there is no photo-ID requirement in the state, those identities can be used to vote fraudulently.”

In fact, CBS’s Windy City affiliate last October compared local vote records with the Social Security Administration’s master death file. “In all,” the channel concluded, “the analysis showed 119 dead people have voted a total of 229 times in Chicago in the last decade.” KCBS–Los Angeles reported in May 2016 that 265 dead voters had cast ballots in southern California “year after year.”

Under federal law, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act and the 2002 Help America Vote Act require states to maintain accurate voter lists. Nonetheless, some state politicians ignore this law. Others go further: Governor Terry McAuliffe (D., Va.) vetoed a measure last February that would have mandated investigations of elections in which ballots cast outnumbered eligible voters.

Even more suspiciously, when GOP governor Rick Scott tried to obey these laws and update Florida’s records, including deleting 51,308 deceased voters, Obama’s Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit to stop him. Federal prosecutors claimed that Governor Scott’s statewide efforts violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act, although it applies to only five of Florida’s 67 counties. Then–attorney general Eric Holder and his team behaved as if Martin Luther King Jr. and the Freedom Riders fought so valiantly in order to keep cadavers politically active. Whether Americans consider vote fraud a Republican hoax, a Democratic tactic, or something in between, everyone should agree that it’s past time to exorcise ghost voters from the polls.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450413/election-fraud-registered-voters-outnumber-eligible-voters-462-counties?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202017-08-11&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives

Great Depression era black and white photos

Paraprosdokians

Paraprosdokians are figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected and is frequently humorous. (Winston Churchill loved them).

1. Where there's a will, I want to be in it.2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you ... but it's still on my list.3. Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.4. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong..5. We never really grow up -- we only learn how to act in public.6. War does not determine who is right, only who is left.7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.8. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.9. I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.10. In filling out an application, where it says, "In case of emergency, notify... " I answered " a doctor."11. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.12. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.13. I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.14. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.15. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian, any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.16. You're never too old to learn something stupid.17. I'm supposed to respect my elders, but it's getting harder and harder for me to find one now.

10 Worst States to retire from AOL

15.  Blink, and you might miss Connecticut. But you won’t be able to ignore the cost of living or tax rates in this tiny state, no matter how hard you try. Both WalletHub and Bankrate look down on its financial burden for retirees. But sufficient scores for culture, health, and quality of life shine through. So retirees must weigh the pros and cons of choosing this state as their retirement home.

14. There’s no specific category that makes Indiana stand out as the absolute worst. But overall lackluster scores across the retirement board are enough to land the state on our ultimate retirement cheat sheet. Many people would list health care as an important factor when choosing where to retire. And unfortunately, Indiana has some work to do in that respect.

13. Reality TV once made the Jersey Shore a popular tourist destination for beachgoers. But even before cameras and fist-pumping squirmed its way into this state’s legacy, the shore was packed with retirees passing the time on one of the many family-friendly beaches New Jersey offers. But both WalletHub and Bankrate would urge retirees to consider other locations to serve their latter years. Taxes are high, and the cost of living can do some serious damage to your savings.

12.  With a dismal “senior” metric, retirees in Maryland might have a tough time finding other retired friends to play tennis or golf with. Like many of the nearby states, the cost of living will be higher than most. Taxes are also quite high, according to a separate WalletHub survey based on the median U.S income. Residents pay $6,470 in annual state and local taxes. But if they have any money to spare, retirees can enjoy the waterways and coastlines of the Chesapeake Bay during the summer months.

11.  Of course, New Yorkers will never run out of things to do, and retiring here could be beneficial if you commonly crave Chinese food at 3 a.m. But for those living upstate or attempting to skate by on a tight budget, a typical New York lifestyle will be hard to maintain. High cost of living and even higher tax rates bring down the retirement group average, regardless of its top score for the culture metric. 

10.  The abundant California sunshine will come at a steep price, something many retirees fear on a fixed income. It has high taxes, bad health care, and a high cost of living. That might surprise some, as life expectancy is higher in this state than all others. So if you’re one of the few who feel financially prepared to support your retirement lifestyle, then California’s access to culture might outshine its pricey pads.

9.  Bluegrass, bourbon, and horse racing. Will there ever be a better combination? Those of you wanting more should consider retiring elsewhere. Despite its low cost of living, resident retirees might have trouble finding entertaining ways to enjoy themselves. What’s worse is Kentucky ranks quite low in health care quality and well-being, a big red flag for retirees.

8.  Bankrate scores Oklahoma well for affordability, from cost of living to taxes. But it’s falling short in all other imperative retirement categories. If your vision of an agreeable retirement includes a low life expectancy, high crime rates, and even worse scores for overall senior well-being, then pack a bag and head for the Sooner State.

7.  Arkansas is the state that gave us Wal-Mart, so we already know it scores big points for affordability. But the positives outweigh the negatives, as it has high crime rates, a low culture rating, and has been named one of the unhealthiest states in America. Retirees looking for a life of good health, entertaining nights, and a safe neighborhood to grow old in should look elsewhere.

6.  In West Virginia, residents enjoy the ability to live life on a fixed income. However, it’s unclear how much “living” you’ll get to do in this state with limited access to cultural amenities. Bankrate plants it dead last for well-being, too. And it has one of the lowest life expectancies in the country.

5.  Those placing precedent on money should consider moving to Mississippi. A low cost of living, ranked No. 1 by Bankrate and WalletHub, might be most important to budget-conscious retirees. But your quality of life might suffer as a result. So retirees who wish to have their cake and eat it, too, might want to relocate out of Mississippi. The state also scores dismally for categories, including health care and culture.

4.  For people on a fixed income, any cost that could raise monthly expenses is cause for worry. WalletHub reports Rhode Island has some of the biggest budget-crushing tax rates in the U.S. The average resident shells out$7,367 annually in state and local taxes. Throw a poor culture rating into the mix, as well as a chilly weather score, and retirees here will be longing for warm sunshine and white sand by November.

3.  Despite gorgeous weather year-round, utility bills in Hawaii are high, averaging over $187 a month for just electricity. Both WalletHub and Bankrate score this culture-rich state with the highest cost of living nationally. Still, this tropical oasis scores No. 1 for resident well-being.

2.  Yes, New Mexico might be on the podium for states with the best weather conditions. But its average temperatures get overlooked by seriously lacking health care and disheartening tax rates. Even worse, it’s ranked as the absolute worst state for crime, according to Bankrate, with WalletHub citing its property crime rates as dangerous. Cities, including Gallup and Espanola, are considered the most dangerous.

1.  Alaska outshines its competitors by drawing consistently terrible scores in affordability, health care, culture, percentage of other retirees in the area, and crime. But worst of all, the dreary weather patterns will get you. Northern lights will only keep you sane for a few months before the snow and clouds push you over the edge. Maybe the Alaska weather is why retirees tend to fly south for the winter.

Freud and his nephew Bernays on Group Behavior and lack of Critical Thinking

If one can design propaganda or psychological operations that bypass the conscious and rational faculties of the individual, targeting instead suppressed emotions and hidden desires, it is possible to move people to adopt beliefs and behaviors without them being aware of the underlying motivations leading them on. Men are very largely actuated by motives which they conceal from themselves. It is evident that the successful propagandist must understand the true motives and not be content to accept the reasons which men give for what they do.
(Propaganda, Edward Bernays)

A group is extraordinary credulous and open to influence, it has no critical faculty.
(Group psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Sigmund Freud)

In identifying with a group, The individual subordinates self analysis and critical thinking, and a Discerning search for the truth in favor of maintaining group interest in cohesion.

By dividing a population along lines such as race class religion gender or political preference, or in other words into groups naturally prone to clash, the effects of group psychology render rational discourse and debate between individuals in the separate groups extremely unlikely. Each group considers its own standards ultimate and indisputable, intends to dismiss all contrary or different standards as indefensible. (Crystallizing Public Opinion, Edward Bernays)

Edward Bernays Compensatory Substitutes Why we want stuff?

"It is chiefly the psychologists of the school of Freud who have pointed out that many of man's thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which he has been obliged to suppress.  A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself. A man buying a car may think he wants it for purposes of locomotion.  He may really want it because it is a symbol of social position, an evidence of his success in business, or a means of pleasing his wife."

 

(Propaganda, Edward Bernays)

Getting out of the Paris Accord is good.

Editorial from the Editors of The National Review June 1, 2017

President Donald Trump has decided to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord. The United States never should have been in it in the first place, and it’s not even entirely clear that it ever was. In choosing American interests over Davos pieties — in the face of resistance from some within his own administration — the president here has made good on his promise to put America first.

The Paris Agreement is a treaty in all but name: The European signatories put it through their usual treaty-ratification protocols, but the United States did not. President Obama went to great lengths to pretend that the treaty was something other than a treaty because he did not wish to submit it for ratification by the Senate, which was almost sure to reject it — as, indeed, the Senate would likely reject it today.

In a government of laws, process matters. Substance matters, too, and here the Paris Agreement is deficient. Even if one accepts, for the sake of argument, the alarmist interpretation of climate-change data, the Paris Agreement is unlikely to produce the desired result — and may not produce any result at all. Two countries that are responsible for a large share of greenhouse-gas emissions — China and India, the world largest and fourth-largest carbon dioxide emitters, respectively — have made only modest commitments under the agreement, which puts most of the onus on the more developed nations of North America and Western Europe. Both would continue to emit more carbon dioxide through at least 2030, and both have chosen, as their major commitment, not reductions in total emissions but reductions in “carbon intensity” — meaning emissions per unit of GDP. But these improvements are likely to happen anyway, irrespective of treaties or public policy, due to ordinary economic changes, such as the growth of the low-impact services sector relative to heavy industry, the aging-out of high-emissions vehicles, and the replacement of antiquated infrastructure.

There may be a certain humanitarian appeal in asking the richer nations to pay the higher price, but the developed world already is far more efficient in its use of energy. If you measure greenhouse-gas emissions relative to economic output, the United States already is more than twice as green as China, and it is a middling performer on that metric: France is five times as efficient, Norway and Sweden six times. The real cost of marginal emissions reductions is necessarily going to be much higher in Switzerland than it is in Mongolia.

The Paris Agreement fails to take that economic reality into account, and it does so in ways that could end up making emissions worse rather than improving them. For example, limiting the amount of coal consumed by North American power plants would not necessarily reduce the amount of coal consumed on Earth — and climate change is, famously, a planetary issue — but would instead most likely result in shifting coal consumption from relatively clean North American facilities to relatively dirty ones in China — the U.S. already is a net exporter of coal, and China is the world’s largest importer of it. Global energy markets are no great respecters of idealism, and the gentlemen in Beijing and New Delhi (and elsewhere) cannot reasonably be expected to adopt policies that will materially lower the standards of living of their respective peoples in order to satisfy the moral longings of Western elites. We don’t expect the powers that be in Washington to do so, either, and Trump here has chosen the right course.

The total costs of climate change to the United States would run less than 2 percent of GDP a century from now. If you consider climate change a moral issue — and acting on it a moral imperative — then the Paris Agreement might look attractive: The desire to do something, anything at all, is very strong in environmental circles. But the question is more intelligently viewed as a question of risk assessment and cost–benefit trade-offs, in which case planning for future adaptation programs is the more intelligent course of action. As the Natural Resources Defense Council estimates the costs (and NRDC is not exactly the Heritage Foundation), the total costs of climate change to the United States — expansively defined to include everything from hurricane damage to higher food costs — would run less than 2 percent of GDP a century from now. Other studies have produced similar findings.

Taking radical and expensive action in the present to avoid the possibility of a 1.8 percent hit to a GDP that will be much larger in the year 2100 than it is today is a losing proposition — especially given that the Paris Agreement is far from guaranteed to produce any meaningful results. Climate change presents the world with genuine risks, and there is of course room for international action in addressing them. But the Paris Agreement takes the wrong approach, committing the United States to a high-cost/low-return program that secures neither our national interests nor global environmental interests. It is part of the Obama administration’s legacy of putting sentiment over substance, and the United States is better off without it.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448208/paris-agreement-withdrawal-trump-made-good-decision

A short History of the Balkan War and the breakup of Yugoslavia

The former Yugoslavia was a Socialist state created after German occupation in World War II and a bitter civil war. A federation of six republics, it brought together Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Albanians, Slovenes and others under a comparatively relaxed communist regime. Tensions between these groups were successfully suppressed under the leadership of President Tito.

After Tito's death in 1980, tensions re-emerged. Calls for more autonomy within Yugoslavia by nationalist groups led in 1991 to declarations of independence in Croatia and Slovenia. The Serb-dominated Yugoslav army lashed out, first in Slovenia and then in Croatia. Thousands were killed in the latter conflict which was paused in 1992 under a UN-monitored ceasefire.

Bosnia, with a complex mix of Serbs, Muslims and Croats, was next to try for independence. Bosnia's Serbs, backed by Serbs elsewhere in Yugoslavia, resisted. Under leader Radovan Karadzic, they threatened bloodshed if Bosnia's Muslims and Croats - who outnumbered Serbs - broke away. Despite European blessing for the move in a 1992 referendum, war came fast.

Yugoslav army units, withdrawn from Croatia and renamed the Bosnian Serb Army, carved out a huge swathe of Serb-dominated territory. Over a million Bosnian Muslims and Croats were driven from their homes in ethnic cleansing. Serbs suffered too. The capital Sarajevo was besieged and shelled. UN peacekeepers, brought in to quell the fighting, were seen as ineffective.

International peace efforts to stop the war failed, the UN was humiliated and over 100,000 died. The war ended in 1995 after Nato bombed the Bosnian Serbs and Muslim and Croat armies made gains on the ground. A US-brokered peace divided Bosnia into two self-governing entities, a Bosnian Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat federation lightly bound by a central government.

In August 1995, the Croatian army stormed areas in Croatia under Serb control prompting thousands to flee. Soon Croatia and Bosnia were fully independent. Slovenia and Macedonia had already gone. Montenegro left later. In 1999, Kosovo's ethnic Albanians fought Serbs in another brutal war to gain independence. Serbia ended the conflict beaten, battered and alone.

Cultural Appropriation in Oregon. Shut those white imperialists Burrito makers down now!

The owners of a Portland, Ore., small business called Kooks Burritos have shut down their business after an interview detailing their trip to Mexico to learn about the burrito-making process resulted in a debate about “cultural appropriation.”

Kooks Burritos owners Kali Wilgus and Liz “LC” Connelly spoke with the Willamette Weekly about what sounds like, essentially, a fact-finding trip to Mexico in search of the best burrito.

Some have called it “polite white supremacy.”

Here are the pieces of the interview that sparked outrage online and effectively closed down the business:

CONNELLY: I picked the brains of every tortilla lady there in the worst broken Spanish ever, and they showed me a little of what they did. They told us the basic ingredients, and we saw them moving and stretching the dough similar to how pizza makers do before rolling it out with rolling pins. They wouldn’t tell us too much about technique, but we were peeking into the windows of every kitchen, totally fascinated by how easy they made it look. We learned quickly it isn’t quite that easy.

On the drive back up to Oregon, we were still completely drooling over how good [the tortillas] were, and we decided we had to have something similar in Portland. The day after we returned, I hit the Mexican market and bought ingredients and started testing it out. Every day I started making tortillas before and after work, trying to figure out the process, timing, refrigeration and how all of that works.

The Willamette Weekly has since added a note at the bottom of the story, saying, “Kooks Burritos has closed.”

The reaction on the internet has had everything to do with it.

Consider Mic’s headline, “These white cooks bragged about stealing recipes from Mexico to start a Portland business.”

Or the Portland Mercury’s headline, “This Week in Appropriation: Kooks Burritos and Willamette Week.”

Here’s how that piece began:

Portland has an appropriation problem.

This week in white nonsense, two white women—Kali Wilgus and Liz “LC” Connelly—decided it would be cute to open a food truck after a fateful excursion to Mexico. There’s really nothing special about opening a Mexican restaurant—it’s probably something that happens everyday. But the owners of Kooks Burritos all but admitted inan interview with Willamette Week that they colonized this style of food when they decided to “pick the brains of every tortilla lady there in the worst broken Spanish ever.”

The fundamental contention of both articles is that white Americans went to Mexico and exploited the labor and methods of people of color without compensating them, in typical colonial style.

There is even a Google document circulating that lists restaurants in the Portland area that aren’t appropriative.

“This is NOT about cooking at home or historical influences on cuisines; it’s about profit, ownership, and wealth in a white supremacist culture,” the note at the top of the list says.

Almost as soon as the owners of Kooks Burritos expressed excitement about the prospects of their business — “The second we had the tortilla, we were like, ‘We’re doing this'” — the excitement was over.

The business is dead.

I am an anarchist. This is good. And peaceful. Not chaos.

“My political opinions,” J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control, not whiskered men with bombs).

“The most improper job of any man,” Tolkien went on, “is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.”

“A consistent peace activist,” philosopher Roderick T. Long wrote, “must be an anarchist.”

“Anarchism,” said Edward Abbey, “is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.”

Anarchism, I’m sure you know, has a bad rap.

In fact, I’m sure most people would be appalled at the above quotes… and the mere thought of anarchism being a “good thing.”

(Especially when they find out that the Lord of the Rings mastermind considered himself an anarchist!)

The collective consciousness holds the belief -- with the help, of course, of the media and Hollywood -- that anarchy is synonymous with chaos, destruction and terrorism.

More and more, however, despite that big red flashing sign from the mind-molders which reads “STEER CLEAR,” we find ourselves dipping our brains into the philosophy…

There are two sides, we realize, of any story. And anarchism, at least this week, is sunnier than most think.

Anarchapulco, according to its website, is “the world’s first and largest international anarcho-capitalist (ancap) conference.

“Held yearly in Acapulco,” the website reads, “ancaps from around the world gravitate to Mexico for three days of speeches, presentations, panels, debates, musical acts, parties and networking with the intention of creating a freer world and seven billion governments on Earth.”

So… what is anarchism?

It’s derived from the Greek anarchos, which means to “have no ruler.”

 For that reason, says Doug Casey in an interview with International Speculator, “Anarchism is the gentlest of all political systems.

“It contemplates no institutionalized coercion. It’s the watercourse way, where everything is allowed to rise or fall naturally to its own level.

“An anarchic system is necessarily one of free-market capitalism. Any services that are needed and wanted by the people -- like the police or the courts -- would be provided by entrepreneurs, who’d do it for a profit.”

In free-market anarchy, says Casey, all usual functions of the state (yes, all) would be run privately, including police and courts: “the police would likely be subsidiaries of insurance companies, and courts would have to compete with each other based on the speed, fairness, and low cost of their decisions.

Bomb-throwers and chaos inflictors, says Casey, are not anarchists: “Chaos is the actual opposite of anarchy. Anarchy is simply a form of political organization that does not put one ruler, or ruling body, over everyone in a society. Whether that’s actually possible is a separate matter. This is what it means. And I see it as an ideal to strive for.

“But,” he concedes, “I never said a truly free, anarchic society would be a utopia; it would simply be a society that emphasizes personal responsibility and doesn’t have any organized institutions of coercion. Perfect harmony is not an option for imperfect human beings. Social order, however, is possible without the state. In fact, the state is so dangerous because it necessarily draws the sociopaths -- who like coercion -- to itself.

“What holds society together is not a bunch of strict laws and a brutal police force -- it’s basically peer pressure, moral ‘suasion, and social opprobrium. Look at a restaurant. The bills get paid not because anybody is afraid of the police, but for the three reasons I just mentioned.”

What’s your take? Could we survive without a state? Is the complete absence of government superior to limited government? Are you, as they say, a “minarchist” who believes in limited government? Or do your sympathies lean, like Tolkien, to the anarchist?

It might have been

a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest of these are "What might have been?"

Be Honest and True boy

“Be Honest and True” by George Birdseye.

Be honest and true, boys!
Whatever you do, boys,
Let this be your motto through life.
Both now and forever,
Be this your endeavor,
When wrong with the right is at strife.

The best and the truest,
Alas! are the fewest;
But be one of these if you can.
In duty ne’er fail; you
Will find ‘twill avail you,
And bring its reward when a man.

Don’t think life plain sailing;
There’s danger of failing.
Though bright seem the future to be;
But honor and labor,
And truth to your neighbor,
Will bear you safe over life’s sea.

Then up and be doing,
Right only pursuing,
And take your fair part in the strife.
Be honest and true, boys,
Whatever you do, boys,
Let this be your motto trough life!

Nothing really changes in Washington, Red or Blue. Crooks are crooks.

Why do things never seem to change no matter who we send to Washington? It seems like for decades people have been trying to change the direction of this country by engaging in the political process. And then election day comes and one group believes that "finally" real change will come.   And then the loosing group believes that the country will go to hell in a handbasket.   But no matter how hard they try, the downward spiral of our nation just continues to accelerate. Just look at this latest spending deal. Even though the American people gave the Republicans control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, this deal very closely resembles “an Obama administration-era budget”. It increases spending even though we have already been adding more than a trillion dollars a year to the national debt, it specifically forbids the building of a border wall and there are dozens of other concessions to the Democrats in it. These “negotiations” were a political rout of epic proportions.

Perhaps many being highly unrealistic when they expected that Donald Trump could change things. Because fixing America is going to take a lot more than getting the right number of “red” or “blue” politicians to Washington. Rather, the truth is that the real problem lies in our hearts, and the corrupt politicians that currently represent us are simply a reflection of who we have become as a nation.

The generations of people that founded this nation and established it as the greatest republic that the world had ever seen had far different values than most Americans do today.

So until there is a dramatic shift in how most of us see the world, it is quite likely that not much in Washington will change.

Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump spoke about “draining the swamp”, but this spending deal very much reflects the swamp’s priorities. The Washington Post has published a list of eight ways that “Trump got rolled in his first budget negotiation”, and the Post is quite correct…

1. There are explicit restrictions to block the border wall.

2. Non-defense domestic spending will go up, despite the Trump team’s insistence he wouldn’t let that happen.

3. Barack Obama’s cancer moonshot is generously funded.

4. Trump fought to cut the Environmental Protection Agency by a third. The final deal trims its budget by just 1 percent, with no staff cuts.

5. He didn’t defund Planned Parenthood.

6. The president got less than half as much for the military as he said was necessary.

7. Democrats say they forced Republicans to withdraw more than 160 riders.

8. To keep negotiations moving, the White House already agreed last week to continue paying Obamacare subsidies.

In essence, the Democrats got virtually everything that they wanted, and the Republicans got next to nothing.

Trump and the Republicans are promising that they will fight harder “next time”, but Republicans year after year going all the way back to 2011 have said the same thing.

Among many other conservative pundits, author Daniel Horowitz is absolutely blasting these “weak-kneed Republicans”…

Now, with control of all three branches and a president who sold himself in the primaries as the antithesis of weak-kneed Republicans who don’t know the first thing about tough negotiations, we are in the exact same position. Last night, President Trump signaled that, after not even fighting on refugee resettlement and Planned Parenthood, he would cave on the final budget issue – the funding of the border fence. But fear not, he’ll resume his demand … the next time!

This degree of capitulation, with control of all three branches, is impressing even me … and I had low expectations of this president and this party. They have managed to get run over by a parked car. It’s truly breathtaking to contrast the performance of Democrats in the spring of 2009 with what Republicans have done today with all three branches. At this time in 2009, Democrats passed the bailouts, the stimulus, the first round of financial regulations, an equal pay bill, SCHIP expansion, and laid the groundwork for other, bigger proposals, such as cap and trade and Obamacare. Then they got everything they wanted in the March 2009 omnibus bill, and a number of GOP senators voted for it. We, on the other hand, are left with nothing.

And even the mainstream media is admitting that the Democrats made out like bandits in this deal.

Just check out the following quotes…

• “Overall, the compromise resembles more of an Obama administration-era budget than a Trump one,” Bloomberg reports.
• The Associated Press calls it “a lowest-common-denominator measure that won’t look too much different than the deal that could have been struck on Obama’s watch last year.”
• Reuters: “While Republicans control the House, Senate and White House, Democrats scored … significant victories in the deal.”
• The Los Angeles Times describes the agreement as “something of an embarrassment to the White House”: “Trump engineered the fiscal standoff shortly after he was elected, insisting late last year that Congress should fund the government for only a few months so he could put his stamp on federal spending as the new president.”

If Trump can’t get his priorities funded now, do you think that the Democrats will somehow become more agreeable after he has spent a year or two in the White House?

Of course not.

If there ever was going to be a border wall, it was going to happen now.

The next “big battle” is going to be over a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, but the truth is that “Trumpcare” is going to end up looking very much like Obamacare.

Instead of repealing it, the Republicans are trying to “fix” Obamacare, and that is kind of like going to the dump and trying to “fix” a big, steaming pile of garbage.

But like I explained earlier, we should not expect things to move in a positive direction in Washington D.C. until the values of those representing us change.

At this point, there are only a few dozen members of the House and a handful of members of the Senate that even give lip service to the values of our founders.

And until our values change, we are not going to send representatives to Washington that share the values of our founders.