Category: history

Great Sayings – Who Is Rich? – Benjamin Franklin, But I Say Different

“Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.” – Franklin

I think this was referring to materialism  People always want more, even when they get what they want.

King Midas wanted everything he touched to be gold, but he couldn’t eat and lost his child who was turned to gold.

I read that 4 out of 5 NFL players go bankrupt after being multimillionaires.  Most lottery winners declare bankruptcy.  Steve Jobs, Rockefeller’s, the Rothschild’s, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes and all of the most wealthy died stinking rich but wanting more.

You can’t serve 2 masters.  It’s a quote in the Bible.  You will serve one or the other, God or money.  It also says that where your treasure is, so shall your heart be.

For some, it is not wealth, rather they seek fame or some hobby or a person.  None of that will make you rich.

I’ve already said above where to look for answers that will give you your only source of happiness.  It isn’t in material things, rather spiritual.   There is nothing wrong with having material wealth, just don’t worship it.

Good luck

Great Sayings – The Count of Monte Cristo

“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine!” —  The Count of Monte Cristo

This is one of my favorite books. I’ll be honest that I don’t remember this line, but when I came across it I found it to be the story of everyone’s life.

How you face adversity should be with the same intensity that you face success.  The emotion will be different, but the effort should be equal.

Your hopes will be dashed on the rocks more than once.  Learning how to handle that without being destroyed gets you through the next dashing.

Conversely, when you succeed, how you handle it should be as if you have done it before.  There should be internal satisfaction with no need to put down the opponent, other than the hurdle you overcame.

Great Sayings – Judging a Person By Who They Are, Henry Ward Beecher

“A man’s ledger does not tell what he is, or what he is worth. Count what is in man, not what is on him, if you would know what he is worth — whether rich or poor.” –Henry Ward Beecher

Steve Jobs died with 9 billion dollars. It does him no good now.  He built a dynamic company that employees thousands and touches millions.  He also refused to acknowledge his daughter when she was growing up.  Which is more important?

Many of us want to show off what we have or what we look like on the outside.  Look no further than the cesspools that are Facebook and Instagram.  No matter how good the lives look there, what do they look like on the inside?  Actually, most people reveal how terrible they really are on Twitter, but that is not a dress up platform like the others.

What is in you?

Great Sayings – The Bias That People Have

People only see what they are prepared to see.  – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

I’m not going to get political here because I think people should make up their own minds.  Most already have.  The problem with the MSM and Social Media is that you can confirm you bias, no matter what it is by going to what sources you feel comfortable to read.  That is your filter.

What I do think is that the actual smart people will have an open mind to both sides of any situation and look at the facts and ask questions.  We should challenge what is out there every time there is a “major issue” to see what the real answers are.

It takes time and you will have to have an open mind, but coming to the right conclusion instead of viewing a situation through the filter of what someone else says is the way to truth.

This is not easy.  What is easy is to fall back to your usual sources and just believe and regurgitate what is being said.

Take off the filter and evaluate like a detective.  Come to the right conclusion based on facts, not feelings or especially on what someone else said.

Great Sayings – How To Read The News (Or Don’t If You Don’t Have To)

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”

-Douglas Adams

I worked with the press/media for 3+ decades.  I know they don’t write the correct story and at best it is partially true.  It is also biased one way or another depending on the publication.

It seems these days that all we get is bad news.  There is an old saying for news outlets, “If it bleeds it reads”.  There is also the sex sells and others that are the same.

It might be best to not look at the news very much right now, at least until the election is over.

My other piece of advice is to not just read (if you have to) things that confirm your bias.  It won’t really inform you although it could make you feel better than what you don’t agree with.

The MSM isn’t going to write anything good or unbiased right now.  If you know that going into it, you can treat it with the (dis)respect it deserves.  Also, don’t even pretend to get proper information from social media.  You’ll drive yourself and others crazy.

To Tim O’Reilly, On Global Warming And Rising Tides When He Told Me We Were Doomed And Will Drown.

After reading a post that claimed rising tides threatened the world a while back, I suggested to him that the tides fluctuate. Science plus history prove the Statue of Liberty isn’t drowning, or Florida sinking like his hero Al Gore promised. I was pointing out the obvious to no avail. I’ve rarely encountered such an elitist, who was so wrong on a subject (except Al Gore).

check it out Tim, The tides aren’t rising in 500 years. Global warming science isn’t hard if you lie. I figured it out and so did you. I’m just the one pointing out the truth you don’t want to believe.
One of Al Gore’s Houses
Which came true Tim O, or James G or Tom R? You guys were nuts and wrong every time.

His argument was that climate science is hard. (It is when you only try to scare others with fake predictions and not facts to back up your position and then the scare never happens). It’s hard to defend when none of those descriptions of doom ever come true, hot or cold. The tweet below shows the Grand Tetons the same as they were 100 years ago

What is funny to me is that instead of decent discussion which I offered, I instead got an ad hominem attack on my character. It was an ill advised use of a bully pulpit as without any personal knowlege of me, I was told I was a typical Fox News watcher (I refuse to watch any news channel, especially FOX l as they all are biased in some way, read my blog and you’ll see). This is typical leftist behavior when they don’t get their way. Start saying they are racists, supremacists, Hitler, deplorable’s and so forth.

There were the other usual liberal attacks on me personally about beliefs I was accused of but don’t have, typical of when you run out of facts. I was this or that, because I wouldn’t worship Gaia and no mention of my knowledge of science and history, and especially facts. So he lied about the tides and about me. Good job there boy.

I also know that Carbon Dioxide is a nutrient for plants. That is the settled science. These idiots call it poison and wanted to tax it. Did anyone go to biology class?

The offer to talk is now rescinded because I don’t have time for Internet trolls like Tim or people who won’t get educated about what they spew. They aren’t going to believe facts and have adjusted it to fit their pre-determined outcome.

Evidence That Climate Change Is A Hoax Perpetuated By The Rich, your hero’s.

proof the rich don’t believe it either

So the Greenland Ice is growing and Florida is still there. The water around the statue is at the same level it’s been for 100 years and Tim is a troll it appears and is wrong. I’ve added at hastag for TIm, a social media terrorist.

THE PAUSE IN TEMPERATURE

I offer a few facts, something Tim didn’t have when castigating others on social media.

The New Pause paused last month because I was ill. Many apologies for the interruption. Now, however, it resumes – and it has lengthened from 7 years 7 months to the end of April 2022. To the end of June 2022, the New Pause is now 7 years 10 months in length:

This Pause, like its predecessor, which was an impressive 18 years 8 months (UAH), or 18 years 9 months (HadCRUT4), is, as always, not cherry-picked. It is derived from the UAH monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies as the period from the earliest month starting with which the least-squares linear-regression trend to the most recent month for which data are available does not exceed zero. Whatever the data show, I show. Or, in the immortal words of Dr Roy Spencer, speaking of his dataset, “It is what it is”. In that splendid dictum speaks all true science.

The least-squares trend, which Professor Jones at the University of East Anglia used to recommend as the simplest and most robust method of deriving global-temperature trends, takes due account of all monthly values, not merely of the starting and ending values.

It sucks when you are wrong. But the point of climate change isn’t carbon reduction (Trump reduced it more than any president), it’s controlling others and grifting money.

I feel sorry for people like him. It must suck to go through life choosing to be purposely ignorant about science. It must suck to be wrong and to not change, but when you are in that deep, there is no getting out. You’ve bought the lie hook, line and sinker.

The European Union’s parliament has decided that nuclear power and gas power from plants now qualify as “green energy.” The proposal passes the EU parliament as Russia is threatening to cut off all natural gas transit to Europe in light of the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The news was reported by Disclose TV on Wednesday morning.

JUST IN – EU Parliament declares nuclear power and gas as “green” energy.

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) July 6, 2022

“EU Parliament declares nuclear power and gas as ‘green’ energy,” the news account tweeted.

It was also reported by the Associated Press in a piece that reads more like an outraged editorial.

“European Union lawmakers voted Wednesday to include natural gas and nuclear in the bloc’s list of sustainable activities, backing a proposal from the EU’s executive arm that has been drawing fierce criticism from environment groups and will likely trigger legal challenges,” the AP noted.

Great Sayings – How To Play the Game Of Life

You can only win in the game of life if you play. Those who stand and watch others don’t get to play or live life.

 

Some sit on the sidelines and watch.  Some want to play but are too afraid.  Others jump in and never worry what happens and some can fall into a mud puddle and come up wearing a dry cleaned tuxedo.

Most of us do all of these things, but not trying is the worst sin of the above.  There is no shame in trying and failing if you learn and try again.  Use what you learn and apply it to the next situation.

Great Sayings – How To Deal With Change (Covid 19 edition)

For the timid, change is frightening; for the comfortable, change is threatening; but for the confident, change is opportunity. –

Nido Qubein

What goes with this saying is that change is the only thing that stays the same.  It’s going to happen so how you deal with it is how it’s going to affect you.

Being frightened isn’t bad.  It heightens your awareness (fight or flight) to notice it’s happening and allows you to deal with it.  Those who embrace it and see the upside will be better off.  Running away from it isn’t going to stop it.  Life goes on and so must you.

As we get older, we get more used to it or get more used to running from it.  It’s your choice.

Look around you right now.  It’s happening with Covid 19, the riots and political back biting.  Stay above it and don’t believe what is being written (actually don’t read the news or social media, neither of which are likely to tell the truth).  Decide for yourself.

Great Sayings On Moving Forward In Life, Despite Your Circumstances

Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start. – Nido Quebein

 

You can’t change the past, regardless of how it treated you.  You have to learn from it and move on.  You also have to realize that it happened to make you the person you are.  You will never be someone else so stop trying to be like them.  Being yourself and accepting who you are is a gift.  Many refuse that gift.

Social media is who people want you to think they are and want you to be.  It’s becoming mind poisoning for many.  Enjoy and be happy for others, but don’t let it define you.

This comes to today’s saying.  Whatever happened happened.  It’s time to take what you’ve learned and make the most of what’s ahead of you.  You don’t know how long you may have to get done what you need to get done.  Try to enjoy it along the way.  You never know what lesson today brings to help you the rest of your life.

This is the only description I know of the amount of life you have ahead of you, but it is not for us to know.  If we knew the ending, we might not live our life the way it should be lived.

Great Sayings – Einstein On Being A Genius

Don’t let others get you down.  Don’t live your life by others version of what you should be.  It’s hard to buck social peer pressure and be yourself, but that’s what it can take sometimes to find the real you.

Stop wasting your life on social media to define yourself by others.  In fact it looks like staying off of social media except for family and a few actual friends looks like it makes your life better anyway.

It’s hard to seek your dreams.  You have to pay the bills and raise the kids, so sometimes your dreams or reaching your capabilities doesn’t come in your 20’s like it did for Albert.

That doesn’t give anyone a free pass for not trying their hardest to do their best.

Great Sayings – Muhammad Ali On How To Train

I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.
Most of winning is done before the event.  Sure, some people occasionally bring a surprise to the fight but almost always the winner also won in training.
I strive to win everything.  I win practice before training.  I try to win training.  I then try to win the event.  It showed me that tenacity over talent can accomplish a lot.
When you feel like giving up, don’t. You won’t know what you can achieve until you push your limits.  This counts at work, in life, sports and almost anything.

Great Sayings – Shakespeare

We know what we are, but know not what we may be. – Shakespeare

 

Another version of this goes – You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.  That was either Gretzky or Jordan.

Some don’t try for fear of failure, some don’t try because they lack courage.  Both lose because there is a reward for winning and a reward for learning if you fail.  I heard Michael Jordan say that he took over 30 shots to win games and missed, but it didn’t stop him the next time.  He said when asked if he was worried he might miss and he answered that why would worry about something that hasn’t happened yet?

Don’t let your inhibitions keep you from excelling.  You never know what is inside you until you try.  Many times I haven’t felt well for an activity that I needed to be well conditioned for, yet wound up killing it because all I needed was a warmup.

Go after it today, then go after it tomorrow.  Keep going after it until you can go.  The reward is not a trophy, it is the sense of accomplishment that will help you try again the next time.

Finally, let it be the judge of who you are, not social media.  That is turning into a cesspool of being a time suck and dragging you down because you think something is different than it is.  Don’t be a sheeple.

Great Sayings – Ralph Waldo Emerson on Life

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

You take with you what you’ve been through as an education.  Hopefully you learn and don’t repeat the mistakes and instead, use what you learned for good.

Nevertheless, you may not realize your capabilities unless you stretch your goals and keep striving for more.

The bad guys in the media and those who are trying to re-shape the world in their image want to take away your hope.  Don’t ever give that up.  It’s what keeps us going and not fall into trap of complacency.

Great Sayings – What The Heck is Aristotle Really Saying?

“In the case of all things which have several parts and in which the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts, there is a cause; for even in bodies contact is the cause of unity in some cases, and in others viscosity or some other such quality.”

I got this from Mark Manson.  The original quote we think we know goes like this; the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.  Mark points out that almost nothing Aristotle says is all that understandable so I thought I’d give an example above.

Usually I have something pithy today, but I thought I’d throw in an example of something we think we know and really don’t, along with how little we pay attention to history.

Great Sayings – Self Survival By Governments, Innovation and Those In Charge, but are not True Leaders

Hat tip to Moonbattery

For politics, we need balance.  History shows that too much dominance by any side makes for lack of clear vision as leaders.  Their goal becomes being re-elected instead of serving the office they were elected to.  There are plenty of examples.

In Companies, being the solution to a problem is one business model, until the problem goes away then so do profits.

The better model is innovation.  Not that I find it that innovative, but look no further than the iPhone as an example.  Conversely, we are still stuck with Windows however and I find no real innovation there.  I left that platform as quickly as I could

Then of course there is Facebook, Twitter, Google and host of other platforms that haven’t really offered a solution other than sucking the time out of your day and providing a place to move along anarchy.

Look at the motives of the person trying to offer a solution.  Are they selling you a bill of goods, re-election or innovation?

Great Sayings – JFK on Lying

“For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

President John F. Kennedy, Yale University Commencement, June 11, 1962

It’s hard to know what to believe these days.  The media (MSM) lies to us every time they communicate, politicians say what they think others want to hear (there are a rare few that don’t) and Social Media is just a group lynching now for whatever you say that more than 1 other person disagrees.  Worst of all are the celebtards who think they have a clue to what life is really about and get together to preach to the masses because they have a million Instagram followers.

The bottom line is if you don’t believe in something, you will fall for anything.  For me it is faith, but everyone has to find their own way and their own rock to anchor to.  Good luck.

If everyone starts repeating the same thing, use your critical thinking to decide whether it is worth going along with or if it is even true.  I question just about everything until I know the motive.  Also, I quit Twitter, Quora and only look at FAKEbook for group events that I’m supposed to show up at.

Great Sayings – Advertising vs. The News (both suck)

“Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.”

-George Santayana

Over the years, we’ve found ways to skip ads.  We record shows and fast forward through them to watch what we want.

Lately, I’ve been skipping the news because I’m sick of the biased reporting, from either side of the story.

Advertising somehow makes having hemorrhoids, toe fungus, yellow teeth and bad breath seem better.  All of it at the cost of the fast speaker at the end telling you all of the things that will harm you when you use the cure they are selling.

The news tells you all the harm that is happening to you to make you feel worse.  So advertisements during the news hour is a recipe for depression or anger.

I hope all of this crap is just the result of it being an election year and will go away after November.  Unfortunately, since they’ve already gotten rid of Brian Williams, Bill O’Reilly, Matt Lauer, Katy Couric and the rest of the losers and the news still sucks it probably won’t.

I just don’t watch now and I feel better.  Tell me when it changes.

 

Great Sayings – How To Succeed and Not Just Sit On Your Ass

It’s not just knowledge, succeeding is knowledge put into action.

 

There are a lot of smart people.  There are a lot of successful people that have lower IQ’s, but are smarter in life.  The difference is what they do with what they know.

The difference is putting yourself into action.  It’s also known as common sense.

I’ve worked with a lot of people who bitched that they never get ahead or that they are better/smarter/have been there longer/deserved it more than the person that got the promotion or the new position.  Almost always the person that got the prize was the one who took the chance and did the work.

Don’t sit on your ass.  Get out there and do something, then do more.  Rinse and repeat then watch the results.

There is too much history behind this to show that it works.  You don’t win every time, but that is why they play the game.  This one is called life.

Great Sayings – Life is Tough Buttercup

When you do things because they are easy or the easy way, life will be hard in the future. When you do things that are hard, life will become easy.

I remember in my early working days when I was busting ass on a Saturday.  A friend of mine was giving me a hard time about working while he was on his way to Hawaii because he only worked 2 weeks a month (he was a stewardess – his words).  He was flying there for free because he worked for the airlines.

I knew that I was making a short term sacrifice for a long term gain.  I couldn’t afford the trip both in terms of money or time off.

A few years later, he decided not to serve cokes in the air for a living, but had wasted 15 years of working experience.  I had committed to getting ahead early in my career to enjoy my time later in life.  That required me to work hard when I was younger and sacrifice some things.

Now, I go where I want, when I want.  I’ve long since retired and my friend is still catching up and will be working for a long time.  I can afford a ticket to wherever, usually on frequent flyer points.  Life is a full circle.

I’m not a fortune teller, but life is short and there is a time for work and a time to reap the rewards of that work.  I knew that early and instead of living for the moment I had to work hard and sacrifice to enjoy the fruits of that labor.

We all learn lessons in life, but the are eerily similar.  Few are sports stars, win the lottery or inherit their wealth.  You need to work tenaciously, suffer from some hard knocks and learn from your experiences.  I knew way back then that goofing off early in life when you should be building the foundation for your life was the right decision.

I decided not to rub it in with my friend now that we are on the other side of the equation.  He is suffering enough and it’s just not worth it to me.  The results speak for themselves.

Great Sayings on Discernment – Spurgeon

Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong, it is the difference between right and almost right.

Times are weird right now.  What once was considered wrong is now right, just because.  The reverse is also true.

Don’t let what is going on tear you from your principles or the ability to know what is right.  It is difficult and it is also hard to know if you are correct in your discernment.

History is a good teacher.  It is important to have principles and stick to them.  It’s just hard to do when the world is upside down.

 

Great Sayings – On Revenge

Revenge is taking the poison and hoping others die. Forgive everyday. – unknown

I really don’t mean the saying today for what has been going on the last week even though it applies.  It is a saying for all of life.  What happens this week will be over soon and there will be another issue to try and cause strife.

On a personal level, we all run into someone every once in a while who says something or does something that either causes harm or offends you.  It’s best to forgive and move on.  Whether you can forget is up to you, but the other person is probably not thinking about you.

I read the best revenge is not giving a shit.  Once you do that, you can forgive a lot easier.

Great Sayings – Alexander Graham Bell

People breakup in relationships.  They get laid off from work.  Those close to us die.  It happens to everyone sooner or later.

You will always keep that memory whether or not you want to, but moving on is part of life.  Yes, it takes time, more for some than others.  Some never move on as a loss is hurtful.

The best thing I can offer is that every experience can help you grow.  Try to look for the positives.  Try to remember those things or people that you lost for their positive influence on you.  Sometimes if you can’t move on, at least move along until the pain is less.

The other situation I often see is that you don’t get the dream job you thought would change your life.  There is always a next job if you keep seeking and no one thing is the panacea of life that will cause it to stop if it doesn’t go your way.

Great Sayings – What Your Enemy Fears

“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”

Eric Hoffer

Sun Zhu said something similar about noticing your opponents weakness and you will win the fight because they can no longer hurt you.Much of the strife we go through is fear based recently.  It caused us to leave life and self-quarantine, until it was ok to go out and riot.  It’s been going on for a week now an there will be plenty of data shortly as to whether we really need to social distance anymore, because they sure aren’t doing it in the riot cities.

Remember Greta Thunberg?  She’s not even a blip on the map, nor is global warming.  The scare mongers have moved on to the next issue. I haven’t been afraid of these things because the truth is that we live in the greatest times of mankind ever.  Yes we have problems, but that is life.

There is no need to be afraid and have unnecessary fears.  The glass is really half full.  These can be the greatest years of our lives if we stop buying into the crap that the media and social media tries to feed us.

If you put your faith in something that is a rock and then you won’t be afraid.  Think for yourself and look at the facts to decide if what is going on is real or someone’s agenda.I think we are going to become more numb to these repetitive scare tactics being thrown at us and we will stand up to scare tactics by those who are trying it.

Great Sayings – Aristotle on Anger

“Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.” — Aristotle

 

It’s hard to figure out who is angry and who is an opportunist with what is going on right now.

Some people can go from zero to life in prison in 2 seconds.  Others seem to be able to take more than most.  As I grow older and with more wisdom, I realize that a lot of things really aren’t worth getting upset over.  I realized this when I was younger, but usually after I got angry and did something I regretted.

Oh, this works for other situations also, like relationships and work situations also.

Sayings – Thank You Captain Obvious (Covid-19 related)

“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.” – Kilgore Trout

 

I didn’t label this as great.  It is however, a break from the anarchy going on right now.

About the only positive I can take from the rioting is that we’re going to see real quickly if social distancing is necessary anymore.  It’s surely not happening in a lot of places at once.

It seems like history is repeating itself.  There were protests in the 60’s at the same time we sent men to the moon.  Space-X just had a successful launch on Saturday.

Memorial Day 2020 Roundup – Freedom Is Not Free

I will continue to update this during the day as I run across relevant posts

 

The Patriot Post – Memorial Day

Lost Memories of The Black American Soldier

Memorial Day Lest We Forget

Memorial Day – Connecting The Past With the Present – American Thinker

America At the Crossroad on Memorial Day 2020

Happy Memorial Day 2020 – Freedom Isn’t Free – The Gateway Pundit

Normandy Speech – 40th Anniversary of D-Day – Proof Positive

The Fallen Soldier – Moonbattery

How Soldiers Die in Battle – The Art of Manliness

Memorial Day – Sacrifice, Legal Insurrection

Video’s for Memorial Day by the US Military

 

 

Great Sayings – Thomas Jefferson On Protecting Ourselves

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” – Thomas Jefferson

Remember, I’m an observer of trends and have taken a position of waiting to see where I’ll fall on any subject until enough facts are in.

Milton Friedman said people are greedy and power hungry when answering who would you trust to have power for your government.  We’ve had a test run on what would happen with the struggle to re-open the country after the Wuhan/Covid virus. (here is a brief clip, but the entire discussion is there if you want to view it).  He refers to Einstein, Henry Ford and others accomplishing what they did and how.

Some governors have shut down their states, while others are trying to re-open.  It’s too early to see who is right, but the trend is leaning towards the virus dying down in both.

What does this have to do with the right to bear arms? It gives us the right to protect ourselves from our enemies.  At the time it was referring to the oppressive British, but when setting the boundaries of what was to become the greatest nation ever, it was to protect us from an oppressive US government or any other government for that matter.

As always, history will show the outcome.

Great Sayings – Right vs. Wrong by William Penn

We are constantly being herded like sheep by the media, politicians, celebtards, sports stars, corporations and social media to the pen of group think.  Do what we say, not what we do.  Buy this and your life will be better.  Vote for me and I’ll do anything for you (until I get elected, then my goal is to get re-elected…not help you).  It goes on depending on their agenda.

We are born with a conscience.  Even Cain knew it was wrong to kill Abel before any law was handed down about murder.

So no matter whether or not you choose follow along like a sheeple, right vs. wrong still exist regardless of what we do to convince ourselves otherwise.

Critical thinking and being strong enough to stand up for what is right is hard when you are pressured to go along to get along.  Be strong and don’t be afraid to be right.  In the long run it is best.  You will also be able to live with yourself instead of second guessing what you should have done.

The Ten Commandments Of Logic

  1. Thou shalt not attack the person’s character, but the argument. (Ad hominem)
  2. Thou shalt not misrepresent or exaggerate a person’s argument in order to make them easier to attack. (Straw man fallacy)
  3. Thou shalt not use small numbers to represent the whole.(Hasty generalizations)
  4. Thou shalt not argue thy position by assuming one of its premises is true. (Begging the question)
  5. Thou shalt not claim that because something occurred before, it must be the cause. (Post hoc/False cause)
  6. Thou shalt not reduce the argument down to two possibilities.(False dichotomy)
  7. Thou shalt not argue that because of our ignorance, claim must be true or false. (Ad ignorantum)
  8. Thou shalt not lay the burden of proof onto him that is questioning the claim. (Burden of proof reversal)
  9. Thou shalt not assume “this” follows “that” when it has no logical connection. (Non sequitir)
  10. Thou shalt not argue that because a premise is popular, therefore it must be true. (Bandwagon fallacy)

Try telling this to the Press, celebtards, sports stars who try to cram their opinion on those because they are good a games or career politicians.  They are the worst offenders.

Great Sayings – Arthur Schopenhauer On Finding Happiness

Invariably, other people will disappoint you and things are transitory.  Most people don’t want to face their weaknesses, rather they mask them with whatever strength they currently or previously have had.

When you are comfortable with what you have, you can then look for happiness.  Some never find it, but I hope that most of you at least get on the path to it.  Here’s your hint of the day, stop caring about others approval of you.  You will stop caring what others think about you when you realize how seldom they do.

Things You May Not Know, Or Haven’t Considered Yet About Life (6 People Look Exactly Like You)

1. Your shoes are the first things people subconsciously notice about you. Wear nice shoes.
2. If you sit for more than 11 hours a day, there’s a 50% chance you’ll die within the next 3 years.
3. There are at least 6 people in the world who look exactly like you. There’s a 9% chance that you’ll meet one of them in your lifetime.
4. Sleeping without a pillow reduces back pain and keeps your spine stronger.
5. A person’s height is determined by their father, and their mother determines their weight.
6. If a part of your body “falls asleep”, you can almost always “wake it up” by shaking your head.
7. There are three things the human brain cannot resist noticing – food, attractive people and danger.
8. Right-handed people tend to chew food on their right side.
9. Putting dry tea bags in gym bags or smelly shoes will absorb the unpleasant odor.
10. According to Albert Einstein, if honeybees were to disappear from earth, humans would be dead within 4 years.
11. There are so many kinds of apples, that if you ate a new one every day, it would take over 20 years to try them all.
12. You can survive without eating for weeks, but you will only live 11 days without sleeping.
13. People who laugh a lot are healthier than those who don’t.
14. Laziness and inactivity kill just as many people as smoking.
15. A human brain has a capacity to store 5 times as much information as Wikipedia.
16. Our brain uses the same amount of power as a 10-watt light bulb!!
17. Our body gives enough heat in 30 minutes to boil 1.5 liters of water!!
18. The Ovum egg is the largest cell and the sperm is the smallest cell!!
19. Stomach acid (conc. HCl) is strong enough to dissolve razor blades!!
20. Take a 10-30 minute walk every day & while you walk, SMILE. It is the ultimate antidepressant.
21. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day.
22. When you wake up in the morning, pray to ask God’s guidance for your purpose, today.
23. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
24. Drink green tea and plenty of water. Eat blueberries, broccoli, and almonds.
25. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
26. Don’t waste your precious energy on gossip, energy vampires, issues of the past, negative thoughts and things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.
27. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a college kid with a maxed out charge card.
28. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
29. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Forgive them for everything.
30. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
31. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
32. Make peace with your past so it won’t spoil the present.
33. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
34. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
35. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: ‘In five years, will this matter?’
36. Help the needy, be generous! Be a ‘Giver’ not a ‘Taker’
37. What other people think of you is none of your business.
38. Time heals everything.
39. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
40. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.
41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42. Each night before you go to bed, pray to God and be thankful for what you accomplished, today. What if you woke up this morning and only had what you thanked God for yesterday? DON’T FORGET TO THANK GOD FOR EVERYTHING.
43. Remember that you are too blessed to be stressed.

Great Sayings – Daniel Patrick Moynihan on Opinion vs. Facts

Everyone has both.  Some choose one over the other.  Most mesh the two together.

The difficulty in this day of being barraged by social media and a 24/7/365 news hype cycle is that you can choose to go with your bias and only see one side of any story.  This is dangerous regardless of which side you view it from.

Don’t believe the scare tactics of the money hustlers who rush people into a position like sheep herders trying to corral the flock into group think.  The tactic is shame for not subjugating yourself to the PC position of the day.

It takes courage to step out and stand for what is right, especially in the start of a crisis or an event in time. This requires critical thinking as to discovery of the real facts and applying the necessary logic to come to the right conclusion.  It also can take time.  The media and politicians will try to rush us into judgement based on opinion.

As they said in Watergate, follow the money and you’ll usually see through those who are self-serving.

Most of all, don’t be a sheep.  Think for yourselves and don’t take anything you read online as gospel, except for the Gospel.

Sooner or later, time exposes the truth.  Whether you want to believe it or not is now up to you.

Great Sayings – Mark Twain on Facts and Statistics (Covid-19)

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.”

 

Doctors Fauci and Birx predicted gloom, doom and death with the China/Wuhan/Corona/Covid/Whatever virus.  They were off not by a little, but by millions.  History will show whether they saved a lot of lives or screwed the World’s economy.  Let that be the judge and not the media.

I have railed against the media because all of them now have stopped reporting the news and now make stuff up based on their position.  They mostly miss the mark on everything also.

The last time I recall missing the target this badly was the 2016 election where at 8 am Nate Silver at 538 had Hillary winning with a 95% probability.

I could go on and on with examples, but I’ll spare everyone because we all read the internet and judge it for ourselves (for those smart enough to have our own opinion and not believe what we read).

Wise up and don’t be a sheeple.  Twain is right so go with the facts.

Great Sayings – Blaise Pascal On What We Choose To Believe

“We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.”

 

Besides having a programming language named after him and a famous theorem, he points out the obvious.

You can’t tell most people anything.  They have to learn it themselves and usually the hard way.  Today’s toxic political environment is a perfect example, no matter which side you take.

It’s just how many times do you have to bang your head against the wall until you realize that it hurts?

Great Sayings – C.P. Snow on Obedience (Covid-19 meaning here)

“When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.”

 

We have some power grabbing governors vs. some who are trying to re-start their states.  Who knows which model will be correct.  Forcing people to close businesses and not being able to feed their families seems overbearing though.  It happened only a few miles from me to an honest fellow and it seemed unfair.

Who we trust in positions of authority right now and their limits of authority are certainly of interest.  Being a student of history doesn’t give me a real sense of hope or belief that many of them have our best interests in mind ahead of their sense of power.  My .02.

Great Sayings – How To Handle Failure

Failure is but a paragraph in the book of each human life. It is the pages that follow that ultimately define you.

 

I’m not sure who said this, but it is true.  If someone knows, please put it in the comments and I’ll give the proper attribution.

You can get back on to the saddle of life and and ride after you fail, or you can give up.  Treading water is as bad as giving up.

I’ve learned more by failing than succeeding.  I learned not to make the same mistake again and how to avoid similar potential mistakes.  Some never learn and repeat what doesn’t work.  Such is life for humans.

Great Sayings – Henry David Thoreau

“In the long run men hit only what they aim at.”
— Henry David Thoreau

 

You also miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.  Some wander aimlessly through life and wind up lost.  Some are too focused on their goal and miss out life.  Find the balance, but have a target.

Great Sayings – Robert Frost

Robert Frost – “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”

 

People with stress or anxiety about what will happen to them tomorrow should ponder this.  No matter how bad it is, most of the time there is a light at the end of the tunnel unless you close it yourself.

Great Sayings – Ferdinand Porsche

“If one does not fail at times, then one has not challenged himself.” -Ferdinand Porsche

 

People need to overcome challenges and problems in life.  They are handed to us everyday whether or not we want them.  That is just life and maintaining the balance that humans require.

To get ahead, you must step out, take a risk, use your talents and sometimes you won’t succeed.  When you do, you get a sense of satisfaction from overcoming or in the case of Dr. Porsche, you start an iconic car company.

 

Great Sayings – Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell – “Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”

 

Post Modernism has ruined the quality of life for us.  I know there is no going back, but there are but a few of us willing to fight for what is right rather than what the crowd tells us to do.  Just being socially accepted is not a reason for not doing what is right and good.

Sowell has said some of he most relevant and meaningful things that can be read.  I encourage others to heed his words

Great Sayings In Times of Peril (like Covid-19) – Lucretius

“So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains.” — Lucretius

 

Anybody can be good when times are good.  You see what someone is made of in the bad times.  How do they act?  How do they deal with the trouble, pain, hurt and adversity.  When the going gets tough, the tough get going as they say.  People are most honest when they are at their end and all the layers of the onion are pealed away.

Great Sayings – Solving Problems by M. Scott Peck

“It is in the whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn.” — M. Scott Peck

 

We all have problems.  Ignoring them won’t make them go away.  One must face them and solve them.  Every problem solved increases your arsenal of weapons to take on the next problem. Those who won’t face the issues or deal with them not only don’t grow, they go backwards in life.  Oh, and you will have problems to solve until the day you die, deal with it.

 

Great Sayings – When the Storm is Over, Haruki Murakami

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” — Haruki Murakami

 

We will be different when the China/Wuhan/Covid-19/whatever virus has run its’ course.  Some will act differently like washing their hands more or social distancing.  Some may travel less. The smartest of these will stay off cruise ships.  The wisest will decide who and what they believe in to as the rock to anchor their life on.

Great Sayings – Hope, G.K. Chesterton

“Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.” — G.K. Chesterton

 

Hope is what we have.  It is the one thing oppressive regimes try to take away from the people so that they will rely on the rulers in power.  This was the case in the USSR, currently the CCP and many other examples in history. If you have hope, you can make it through your trying times.

Who you put your hope in also can change the course of your life, your attitude and your day.

Great Sayings – Thomas Paine On Overcoming

“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.” — Thomas Paine

 

When I studied Martial Arts, my Sensei told me that the ones who quit are the ones that it comes easy too.  The ones who have to struggle or try harder persevere longer and achieve more.

Training for anything is necessary.  Enjoying the journey is how to best enjoy the process of overcoming.  That is the key to the above saying because life, happiness, freedom and other things we cherish are a journey, not an event.

Sayings – Do Humans Learn From Their Mistakes?

Douglas Adams – “Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”

 

I guess not.  I wonder what lessons we will have from the Corona/Covid/China/Wuhan/Whatever virus?  Probably not to trust the media and to carefully evaluate if Congress is working for us or themselves.

Another Great Saying About Winning, And Why We Try

Pain is only temporary, victory is forever -Jeremy H. Winning

 

No one wakes up and is the best at what they do by accident.  It takes training, study and perserverance.  The worst place in any competition isn’t last, it’s second because that is the first loser.  This goes with the Vince Lombardi quote a few days ago.

We as humans want to do our best, but some strive harder than others.  I’m not desparaging those who try their hardest, but someone was better, but no one remembers who lost the presidential elections, or got silver medals at the Olympics.

I know I strive to win anything I do.  I try to win practice for anything I compete in, not just the event.  I’ve even beaten the Kobayashi Maru, thanks to Captain Kirk.

Coved-19 and Essential Jobs

 

I love sports as much as any other red blooded American male.  I love both playing them and watching the best compete against each other.  I just wish they’d realize that with a very few exceptions, athletics is all they are qualified to pontificate on.  I’m tired of being lectured about their position on anything other than their sport.  I’m willing to bet that I’m not alone and in the majority.

I’ve already posted here that actors (celebtards) are the same. 

Even though the meme points to their salary, I don’t have a problem that they make a lot of money.  It doesn’t make them smart or qualified to tell the people with essential jobs how we should think though.  I’m glad that they worked their way to the top based on their skill and God given talent that they worked hard to perfect.  They should be grateful that they were born in a time and a place that allows them to succeed.  When anyone succeeds, the tide rises for all boats so good for them.

They are getting a lesson that while we enjoy being distracted watching them, we don’t miss their soapbox spoutings and are managing to survive just fine without them.

I hope they don’t forget that it’s the fans who pay them.  They work for the fans, not the other way around.

Great Sayings – Richard M. Nixon

“We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.” Richard Nixon

 

Sure, things didn’t work out so well for him at the end, but he’s not wrong about America or government.

Great Sayings – Covid-19 Edition by Maxwell Maltz

“Close scrutiny will show that most ‘crisis situations’ are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are.” — Maxwell Maltz

 

And now we will see who are the real leaders around the world. As always, some will be better than the others.  Some will be more decisive and others will reveal that they may not be leaders at all.  History will be the judge perhaps years from now.

Great Sayings – Simon Sinek

“Panic causes tunnel vision. Calm acceptance of danger allows us to more easily assess the situation and see the options.” — Simon Sinek

 

It’s a practiced skill, although true leaders seem to be born with it the ability to put aside feelings and deal with it.  It’s why Army Rangers and Navy Seals can enter a hostile situation and execute.  Many drives by sports teams to the winning score are by level headed leaders who see the goal and understand the situation. Adding perceived danger only clouds the situation and adds complexity.

 

Great Sayings – Jordan Peterson

“A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control.” — Jordan Peterson

 

Self control is a good trait.  The baddest man in the room never has to prove it, but should be able to defend himself and the weak when necessary.  This is not just a bare knuckles statement.  Being intellectually strong as well as spiritually sound are also strengths one needs.

None of these come for free.  You must work on them, and work on them constantly.  The world doesn’t stop and neither does evil.  Now go out and be dangerous to evil.

Great Sayings – George Patton

“I don’t fear failure. I only fear the slowing up of the engine inside of me which is saying, ‘Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?’” — George S. Patton Jr.

 

Love him or hate him, he got things done and was feared by the enemy, so much so that they had a respect for his command.  In these times of the Covid-19 virus, we need to keep going and not give up.  Stay on top and don’t give up.

Great Sayings – Abraham Maslow

“If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I’d still swim. And I’d despise the one who gave up.” — Abraham Maslow

 

I’ve been in some dark places before either in life or just competition.  They say in the Marines that there is always an end to whatever pain you are going through so don’t give up.  You’d be amazed at what you can accomplish.

They train Seals until exhaustion, but it’s said that they are only at their 60% level and have a reserve.  How do I know?  If someone pointed a rifle at them, they could still run some more.  It’s said if you get to your end and someone offered you $100 to go 30 seconds more, almost everyone can and will do it.

 

Great Sayings – Vince Lombardi

I’ve heard him being quoted with different versions of this one, so I’ll put in the ones that I’ve heard.

 

“Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.” — Vince Lombardi

If winning isn’t important, why do they keep score?

Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.

It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s whether you win.

The 10 Cannot’s – Inserting Reality Into Today’s Politics (And Woke Culture)

Some sanity and reasonableness should be considered when putting yourself out into the social media universe. Everyone seems to think that it is now their responsibility to tell us how to think, speak and act.

Here are 10 logical statements that are not new, but should have been taught to those who think they should tell us what to do, especially by politicians, the media and celebtards.  I wish George Orwell were alive today to see how right he was when he wrote 1984.

PC culture is ruining our society and frankly is taking the fun out of life for those of us who don’t get offended easily.

It’s time for a lot of people to grow up and act like adults.  Personally, I blame the educational system.  It has a considerable lack of diversity in terms of being able to view all sides of an issue before opening there mouths or post on Twitter, which I now call Hater.  Other platforms are becoming just as bad, but the hate usually starts there.

Rep. Stephen M. Young inserted into the Congressional Record, in 1950, an article from Harper’s magazine, written by a Lincoln scholar, Albert A. Wolman, listing most of the ”Ten Cannots” and other material falsely attributed to Lincoln.

The 10 Cannots:

1) You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

2) You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.

3) You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

4) You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

5) You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.

6) You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.

7) You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

8) You cannot establish security on borrowed money.

9) You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence.

10) You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

In Honor of My 600th Post, Here Is My To Do List

WordPress says this is my 600th post, but I know I lost the year 2007 when I switched from Blogger to WordPress because I avoid Google whenever possible.  I likely passed it a while back, but they are gone forever now.

I post a lot about IQ, intelligence, Introverts, tech and a lot of subjects that would provide a platform to post something meaningful, deep in meaning , intelligent, well thought out and well written.  As they say, the road to hell….

In that spirit, I give you a to do list that is sarcastic, funny to me and given the mood I’m in as I write this and very appropriate especially since my last name is Simonds (see number 8).

Humor On Getting Old

#1  I very quietly confided to my best friend that I was having an affair.
He turned to me and asked, “Are you having it catered?”
And that, my friend, is the sad definition of “OLD”.#2
Just before the funeral services, the undertaker came up to the very elderly widow and asked,
“How old was your husband?”
“98,” she replied: “Two years older than me”
“So you’re 96,” the undertaker commented.
She responded, “Hardly worth going home, is it?”

#3
Reporters interviewing a 104-year-old woman:
“And what do you think is the best thing about being 104?” the reporter asked.
She simply replied, “No peer pressure.”

#4
I’ve sure gotten old!
I have outlived my feet and my teeth,
I’ve had two bypass surgeries, a hip replacement,
New knees, fought prostate cancer and diabetes I’m half blind,
Can’t hear anything quieter than a jet engine,
Take 40 different medications that make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts.
Have bouts with dementia.  Have poor circulation;
Hardly feel my hands and feet anymore.
Can’t remember if I’m 85 or 92.
Have lost all my friends. But, thank God,
I still have my driver’s license.

#5
I feel like my body has gotten totally out of shape,
So I got my doctor’s permission to join a fitness club and start exercising.
I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors.
I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But, By the time I got my leotards on,The class was over.

#6
An elderly woman decided to prepare her will and told her preacher she had two final requests.
First, she wanted to be cremated, and second,
She wanted her ashes scattered over Wal-Mart.
“Wal-Mart?” the preacher exclaimed.
“Why Wal-Mart?”
“Then I’ll be sure my daughters visit me twice a week.”

#7
My memory’s not as sharp as it used to be..
Also, my memory’s not as sharp as it used to be.

#8
Know how to prevent sagging?
Just eat till the wrinkles fill out.

#9
It’s scary when you start making the same noises
As your coffee maker.

#10
These days about half the stuff
In my shopping cart says,
‘For fast relief.’

#11
THE SENILITY PRAYER:
Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,
The good fortune to run into the ones I do, and
The eyesight to tell the difference.

4th of July 2019 Tribute

 

It is the celebration of the birth of our nation.  People died for our freedom to start a new country that would arguably become the greatest ever.

My mom was born on the 4th of July.  Captain America, the comic book hero fittingly was also born on the 4th, in 1918.

Nothing is more patriotic to me than the Star Spangled Banner and the Stars and Stripe forever, so here they are.

God bless the USA

How To Talk To Generation Z Using Their Dictionary

Have you ever wondered what the f&*% the kids are talking about lately?  Do you parents want to decode your kids texts?

Below is the Generation Z dictionary distributed by a Mr. Callahan so I point to him if any Gen Z’ers have a problem with it.

 

When thinking about this, I’m sure every generation trashes the previous by describing them as not as learned and their improper use of grammar.  I’m also pretty confident that Shakespeare is rolling in his grave as he probably has done for each generation after him.

I’ve put some screenshots below and full link to the dictionary in PDF form to download.

What I fear is these people will be making decisions about my generation in a few years.

To fully honor this generation, I purposely didn’t put it in alphabetical order just to mess with them.

Generation Z Dictionary Link

Common Core Education, Failing our Kids

 

THE SETUP FOR THE DISCUSSION

I suppose every generation considers the learning of the next generation as inferior to theirs.  If we didn’t, why do millennials eat tide pods?  Why do parents talk about how better their education was and how soft they are on kids today?   There are many reasons for this including prejudice, standards, government intrusion into the learning system and deviation from what made our education system the one that led to more progress, inventions and breakthroughs than any in the history of man.

We’ve now potentially gone backwards and have therefore failed the following generations.

In working with public school kids, I observe that there are many reasons.  People are not equal and some are smarter and learn better than others.  Those with two parent families or with a single parent who is highly integrated in the student’s learning consistently outperform those who don’t.  The system has gone backwards due to interference from do-gooders, government (over)regulation and unions.  Note: that is my observation only.  I see kids rise above the system to achieve, but they have to swim upstream.  Most can coast their way through.

Conversely, children who learn under Classical Education have an advantage in learning as it is taught to a standard the kids must keep up with as opposed to teaching to the lowest common denominator so no one is left behind, penalizing those who could achieve more.

Further, Classical Christian education is an approach to learning which emphasizes biblical teachings and incorporates a teaching model known as the Trivium, which consists of the three stages of grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

Classical education complements a child’s natural development stages. Young children can memorize information easily. So, in the early years, learning is enhanced by songs, body movement, recitation, and exploration. This sets them up for success in their next stage of learning, critical thinking.

The critical thinkers are what companies want to hire.  They look at problems differently and come to the table with better skills for success.

They also have a distinct advantage over the public school system and the below discussion of how we are destroying learning.

WHERE EDUCATION HAS FAILED OUR KIDS

The biggest failure I’ve observed is the Common Core learning system.  It threw away the standards of learning that has proved to produce educated kids by introducing a system that borders on the ridiculous.

It was implemented by those we thought were helping us, yet it may have set us back for years.

Behind a lot of this is none other than Bill Gates, a man I’ve met and have mixed thoughts about.  Microsoft is far more successful than his support of Common Core.

From the American Thinker, I read this snippet:

But Bill Gates should have felt some uneasiness.  Common Core was untested, unproven, and micromanaged by David Coleman, a man with limited credentials but reliably far to the left.  Nobody in the business world launches a big new product without years of research and refinement.  Instead, Common Core was wrapped in $1 billion’s worth of propaganda and dumped on the country as a fait accompli.

The late, great Siegfried Engelmann, a real educator, was asked what he thought of this approach: “A perfect example of technical nonsense.  A sensible organization would rely heavily on data about procedures used to achieve outstanding results; and they would certainly field test the results to assure that the standards resulted in fair, achievable goals.  How many of these things did they do?  None.”

Did Gates realize that Common Core, supposedly a new and higher instruction, incorporates all the dubious ideas from decades prior?  New Math and Reform Math were the basis for Common Core Math.  Similarly, Whole Language and Balanced Literacy were rolled into Common Core’s English Language Arts (jargon for reading).  Constructivism, which prevented teacher from teaching, has been undermining American schools for decades.  Nothing new and higher about these clunkers.

An earlier generation of Gates’s business partners had created so much illiteracy that Rudolf Flesch had to write a book to answer every American’s favorite question: “why can’t Johnny read?”

I don’t hold Gates responsible except for his funding and use of his status to push this, but I hold those who pushed this system on the generation suffering from this learning standard.

The Thinker sums it up like this:

We have to wonder if Bill Gates performed due diligence, that being the care that a reasonable person exercises to avoid harm to other persons or property.  In other words, before putting your business funds to work on anything, you should make yourself an expert.  That’s what we need in this country: everybody becomes an expert.  For sure, nobody should trust the official experts.  If Bill Gates had observed that simple rule, he would still have a billion or two he doesn’t have now.  And the country would have tens of millions of better educated students it doesn’t have now. 

We need to stop this disservice to our kids and have them learn properly, and to learn to think critically.

Here is a video that shows just how far we’ve deviated from the learning system that invented computers, vaccines, technology that has helped mankind and sent men to the moon.  Go to 1:24 under Decompose to see how far we’ve digressed.

CONCLUSION

It would seem the dumping common core and putting real learning would be best for the kids.  The world is getting tougher and we need to give them every advantage possible.

 

 

What Are The Top 10 Things You Should Be Informed Of In Life

Again, these are not my answers, but are an interesting read on people.  It will offend some, but God is number one for me.  The rest of the lists below should offend someone or many.

1. Human psychology. It’s a young field, and no one has all the answers yet. But you can get a better understanding of why other people do what they do — and how to thread your way through life’s complexities — by studying at least a little of this field.

2. The basics of accounting. This will greatly reduce your chances of being swindled in life. It also will make it much easier for you to do some systematic planning, while keeping track of how you’re doing vis a vis your plans.

3. Music. It will calm you. It will inspire you. It will build bridges to a more interesting set of friends.

4. Your own family’s story. Where did your parents grow up, and how did that shape who they are? What are the formal or informal communities that help define your identity? (“We are athletes … we are Irish … we are restless spirits who move from city to city.”) Having an enduring sense of identity that goes beyond the ups and downs of your own life will be a source of comfort and motivation all your life.

5. The way your government really works. Find out why some laws are tightly enforced and others aren’t. Learn the best ways of influencing your government — whether it’s on matters of national significance or something as personal as winning a zoning variance for the cafe you run. Finally, gain some non-bitter insights about why society doesn’t always work the way you’d like.

6. Good nutrition and how to incorporate it into your life. Mike Leary is right.  In a poor society, this is the difference between life and death. In a rich society, it’s — surprise! — the difference between a long, robust future and chronic illness that can turn deadly far too soon.

7. Different cultural values. If you’re going to be effective outside a small cluster of people like you, you’ll need to understand and appreciate how other tribes work, too.

8. How to communicate your ideas to the wider world. Justin Freeman is right. Learn how to speak clearly and persuasively. Or to write well. Or to create useful and appealing computer code, video, music, etc. Pick the medium that works best for you, and make sure you don’t go through life being mute.

9. Effective parenting. Just because your parents didn’t quite get it right (no one ever does!) doesn’t mean that you can’t do better. Find your own style, stick with what works … but keep refining your approach as you learn from others. You owe it to the species.

10. Quora. It’s one-stop shopping for biased crap! Be aware of what’s on Quora, and you’ll know what not to believe.

Here’s another:

  1. Realize that nobody cares, and if they do, you shouldn’t care that they care. Got a new car? Nobody cares. You’ll get some gawkers for a couple of weeks—they don’t care. They’re curious. Three weeks in it’ll be just another shiny blob among all the thousands of others crawling down the freeway and sitting in garages and driveways up and down your street. People will care about your car just as much as you care about all of those. Got a new gewgaw? New wardrobe? Went to a swanky restaurant? Exotic vacation? Nobody cares. Don’t base your happiness on people caring, because they won’t. And if they do, they either want your stuff or hate you for it.
  2. Some rule breakers will break rule number one. Occasionally, people in your life will defy the odds and actually care about you. Still not your stuff, sorry. But if they value you, they’ll value that you value it, and they’ll listen. When you talk about all of those things that nobody else cares about, they will look into your eyes and consume your words, and in that moment you will know that every part of them is there with you.
  3. Spend your life with rule breakers. Marry them. Befriend them. Work with them. Spend weekends with them. No matter how much power you become possessed of, you’ll never be able to make someone care—so gather close the caring.
  4. Money is cheap. I mean, there’s a lot of it—about forty thousand billion dollars floating around the world, largely made up of cash whose value is made up and ascribed to it, anyway. Don’t engineer your life around getting a slightly less tiny portion of this pile, and make your spirit of generosity reflect this principle. I knew a man who became driven by the desire to amass six figures in savings, so he worked and scrimped and sacrificed to get there. And he did… right before he died of cancer. I’m sure his wife’s new husband appreciated his diligence.
  5. Money is expensive. I mean, it’s difficult to get your hands on sometimes—and you never know when someone’s going to pull the floorboards out from under you—so don’t be stupid with it. Avoid debt on depreciating assets, and never incur debt in order to assuage your vanity (see rule number one). Debt has become normative, but don’t blithely accept it as a rite of passage into adulthood—debt represents imbalance and, in some sense, often a resignation of control. Student loan debt isn’t always unavoidable, but it isn’t a given—my wife and I completed a combined ten years of college with zero debt between us. If you can’t avoid it, though, make sure that your degree is an investment rather than a liability—I mourn a bit for all of the people going tens of thousands of dollars in debt in pursuit of vague liberal arts degrees with no idea of what they want out of life. If you’re just dropping tuition dollars for lack of a better idea at the moment, just withdraw and go wander around Europe for a few weeks—I guarantee you’ll spend less and learn more in the process.
  6. Learn the ancient art of rhetoric. The elements of rhetoric, in all of their forms, are what make the world go around—because they are what prompt the decisions people make. If you develop an understanding of how they work, while everyone else is frightened by flames and booming voices, you will be able to see behind veils of communication and see what levers little men are pulling. Not only will you develop immunity from all manner of commercials, marketing, hucksters and salesmen, to the beautiful speeches of liars and thieves, you’ll also find yourself able to craft your speech in ways that influence people. When you know how to speak in order to change someone’s mind, to instill confidence in someone, to quiet the fears of a child, then you will know this power firsthand. However, bear in mind as you use it that your opponent in any debate is not the other person, but ignorance.
  7. You are responsible to everyone, but you’re responsible for yourself. I believe we’re responsible to everyone for something, even if it’s something as basic as an affirmation of their humanity. However, it should most often go far beyond that and manifest itself in service to others, to being a voice for the voiceless. If you’re reading this, there are those around you who toil under burdens larger than yours, who stand in need of touch and respect and chances. Conversely, though, you’re responsible for yourself. Nobody else is going to find success for you, and nobody else is going to instill happiness into you from the outside. That’s on you.
  8. Learn to see reality in terms of systems. When you understand the world around you as a massive web of interconnected, largely interdependent systems, things get much less mystifying—and the less we either ascribe to magic or allow to exist behind a fog, the less susceptible we’ll be to all manner of being taken advantage of. However:
  9. Account for the threat of black swan events. Sometimes chaos consumes the most meticulous of plans, and if you live life with no margins in a financial, emotional, or any other sense, you will be subject to its whims. Take risks, but backstop them with something—I strongly suspect these people who say having a Plan B is a sign of weak commitment aren’t living hand to mouth. Do what you need to in order to keep your footing.
  10. You both need and don’t need other people. You need others in a sense that you need to be part of a community—there’s a reason we reflexively pity hermits. Regardless of your theory of anthropogenesis, it’s hard to deny that we are built for community, and that ‘we’ is always more than ‘me.’ However, you don’t need another person in order for your life to have meaning—this idea that Disney has shoved through our eyeballs, that there’s someone out there for all of us if we’ll just believe hard enough and never stop searching, is hokum… because of arithmetic, if nothing else. Establish your own life—then, if there’s a particular person that you can’t help but integrate, believe me, you’ll know.
  11. Always give more than is required of you.

Go to the link above, there is more.

Add more in comments if you have a better suggestion than these.

How Do High IQ People Read Books

Note: intelligent people generally read a lot.  There are many ways to read a book.  Authors read for story arc’s, character profile and emotional connection.

Many people learn from textbooks, but for general reading, here is a good list I found on how high IQ people read:

1) Find a personal angle: You need to relate to what you’re reading

2) Get a bird’s eye view: Get the basic outline of the book by skimming through the table of contents (and the rest of the book); try finding a central theme

3) Drum up curiosity: Draft a few “curiosity questions” based on the theme; consider these questions as you read the book

4) Create your own structure: Identify key points in the book and leave space for you to take in-depth notes

5) Record key insights: Take in-depth notes based on the elements you mentioned in Step 4; think about what the “Takeaway Message” is.

6) Review your notes: Now that you have a summary you have created in your own words, it’s now time to review; try to remember the details related to the messages you recorded 10 minutes, 2 days, 1 week after finishing the book.

7) Repeat with another book.

Here is the link to this list.

The Circle Game – Childhood Games That Are Still Fun, Punch You I Will

Even though I like to write about intellectual subjects, this one will have nothing to do with that.

Disclaimer: This game has been around for decades.  It is not the somehow now bad OK sign that the evil PC police have condemned.  When it was invented, no one cared about the OK sign.  FWIW, the circle is upside down in this game.  The PC SJW’s are dumbasses because a Reddit joke that trolled people by saying it was some supremacist sign.  The woke fell for it immediately because they want to cancel any fun.

If you know or have played the game, you will get this whole post without reading it, but I’m posting for those who do not get it.

I searched this on the Interweb and it stated that this started in the 1980’s.  Since I was in middle school way before this I’m calling BS and guessing that those before me have played it for 50 years.

So when I saw these examples, I knew what it was and it took me back to childhood, but I understood it without explanation.

The rules of the game are here:

Basically, you get someone to look at the circle below your waist against their will and you get to punch them.

It’s a game designed to be able to hit your friends and have them be ok with it.

The link provides other instructions like breaking the circle and not brushing it off, but they are just variations on being able to punch your friend.

We took it to all kinds of limits like drawing circles on the floor and other variations, but it’s simple.

I like all of these meme’s, but Darth Vader is my favorite.  Readers like the volleyball girl the best if you look at how many times it’s been downloaded off this post.

I think the girl is giving a sign as to the play to make, but if not, it’s a really good Internet punch.

The Walmart guy is funny on many levels.

The black hole circle is a Universal punch.

The duck is just funny.

I found a new one that isn’t really meant to be in the circle game, but is.

Actual Maps of Where The #Shitholes Are – An A-Polititical Post On Where They Exist

First, I am not going to weigh in on what a world leader has said.  Every time I have ever tried it, nothing is gained as everyone has their own opinion and trying to sway it is not what I care about.  Enjoy your center, left, right or whatever political position you wish.

I was looking for whether this actually exists.  Here is what I’ve found.

UPDATE: Portland is the newest shit hole. Click on the link: Portland: American epicenter of degeneracy, depression, and ANTIFA.

Here is a link and a screenshot of a map from the Rice Institute based showing countries with the most open defecation.

Forbes published a list of the world’s dirtiest cities.  Without passing judgement, they seem to line up with the shitholes in the map so the facts seem to be in order.

Next, is it possible that the United States has places where there is open defecation?  I found that map also.

Below is the link and screenshot also, but in case you don’t recognize it, this is San Francisco.

Now, after reading this, one can add it to their travel plans to go and help, or avoid for sanitary purposes, you choose.  If you go to San Francisco, zoom in and you can see where to not step in a pile of poop.  As I type that, I realize that it is sad for what is supposed to be one of the leading cities of the US, and one so close to silicon valley.

It also gives everyone equal political fodder to take shots at whomever.  In these days of political partisanship, nothing or nobody is safe by the 3rd or 4th comment, so I expect the same.

I just got curious and I wondered if what was said was true or not. Apparently it is.

Here is the link to the recent study of sanitation including feces, used syringes and other disease carrying trash in the heart of San Francisco.  It’s a shame since it is in the heart of the restaurant and hotel area.  You’d think that the tourism officials would do something about this, but looking at the graph indicates the problem escalating.

UPDATE: San Francisco is getting over 80 calls a day to report human feces for clean up.  In the same report were almost as many instances of needles despite the fact that there are safe injection spaces for shooting up an illegal drug that destroys lives.

 

UPDATE: It turns out that Denver is now officially classified as a shithole also.  They passed an act that you can drop trou and pinch a loaf right on the street.  Here is the story and the reason why they passed the law.

UPDATE: It looks like Hawaii isn’t as pristine as one thinks of it.  The cesspools and the water around the islands are contaminated enough to make it a shithole also.  There is a link within this link that goes to the WSJ.

Video Update: A large portion of Orange county is now a 3rd world shithole also.

After all is said and done, I thought that having to have a map to not step in a pile of human feces makes a city the biggest shithole.  It turns out that I was wrong.

According to the Government services including the EPA, ACS and the Census bureau comes this little gem:

The City that Never Sleeps ranked the highest in three out of five categories, placing it as shittest-city-in-the-nation of 427.9 on Busy Bee’s “dirtiness index.” The next closest competitor for all the wrong reasons is Los Angeles, which has a dirtiness index of 317.8. To complete the top five list, the remaining dirtiest cities are Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

So not only do you have to pay way more more to live in these places, they have worse air, bigger rats and more cockroaches, they turn out to be the shitholes that we all thought they were.  Why anyone would choose to live there knowing there?

Schaeffer’s Law’s of the Digital Age – The Non-Racial Master/Slave Paradigm Through Digital Monitoring

Schaeffer’s First Law of the Digital Age:

The Global Digital Infrastructure (GDI) connects all human life on the planet into a single, giant, metastasizing organism throbbing with incredible potential for advancing human good, expanding knowledge exponentially, invading our lives with unimaginable malice and evil, and transforming unsuspecting users into helpless and obedient cyborgs.

Schaeffer’s Second Law of the Digital Age:

Each breakthrough in utility deriving from advances in the Global Digital Domain is accompanied by equal or greater vulnerabilities and potential detriments to quality of life.  Anything that can do amazingly great things for you can almost always do terribly awful things to you as well.

Schaeffer’s Third Law of the Digital Age:

It’s impossible to make or enforce laws to guard the people against the dangers of global digital power and impossible to prevent exponential growth in this power.  The Zuckerbergs and Bezoses and Googles of the world may propose to use their power benevolently, but they plan to use it and grow it without limit.  They claim they’ll be good masters, but they mean to be masters.

I’m not a conspiracy person, rather an observer of trends and patterns.  Haven’t we been down this path before in history where there are classes of people?  This time, they start as digital helpers like Alexa, Echo, Google assistant or Siri, but at what point are they re-directing our lives?  Aren’t there always people who try to control your lives thus enriching their lives both in money and power.

Since there are hackers constantly attacking the cloud, where your data is stored and accessible, when you lose control over your life?  The digital hacks can be found at Krebsonsecurity.com.

It has already begun with your digital footprint being tracked, monitored and being sold off to advertisers, but where does it stop, the Jetson’s?

I advise that you carefully monitor who is monitoring you, even the government.

Now for fun, why is that in the movies that the robots always try to take over the world and kill humans?

The Real Nature Of Freedom, Economic and Political and the Interrelationship Between The Two

In these days of divisiveness, there are some facts based on economics that are hard to refute, even if you don’t want to admit it.  I enjoy discussion by people of high IQ and of great wisdom, something the world of Political Correctness is sadly overlooking.

What You Had To Know In 1910 To Pass The 8th Grade Test

For my fellow High IQ readers, see how you would do on this test.  It’s not are you as smart as a 5th grader.  No, it’s much tougher.  No wonder that our public school system is turning out under educated students.  It appears that not only did our ancestors have to walk to school in the snow, they had to actually learn more than google on a smart phone.

Perhaps if they could pass this test, they wouldn’t have as much time to spend on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

Press on.

Indicator That Harvard Might Not Be A Good Place To Study For Intellectuals

This post was supposed to fall in the intellectual category for people to decide if Harvard has the qualities that high IQ people still desire (such as being able to see/argue multiple sides of an issue).  They have managed to ruin any hope of defending both sides of an issue given the updates as you read them below.  I’ll leave it for those who may be on the fence, and wish them the best in their decision.

Original Post Begins Here

If you look at the previous post, you will see some of the traits you might have indicating a high intellect.

One of them is the ability to see and argue from multiple perspectives.  To have this trait, you have to shut out ideological thinking or persuasiveness of others before developing a hypothesis.  Many have preconceived thoughts on a subject, political stance or values influenced by others rather than examining all aspects of a subject.  In other words, they read one side of a subject on the Internet and believe what they want to.  Everyone has a bias, but one needs to come to problems with an open mind and use facts and history to evaluate the solution otherwise you run at least a 50% chance of being wrong.

Harvard has released their list of Fake News sites.  This is a popular subject given the 2016 Presidential election.  If you look at the coverage and predictions of the various news sites, you can come to a conclusion which ones were actually wrong (based on forecasts, coverage and predictions) and if their coverage was biased or indeed “Fake News”.  You have to make up your own mind where you stand on this.  I am not saying their position is necessarily wrong, rather questioning their intelligence.

The list is decidedly one-sided, showing a bias.  This is unfortunate.  Again, readers have to decide if this is correct or not.  No one or news institution is right or wrong 100% of the time.

In fair disclosure, one trait may indicate nothing, or it may be the bread crumb down the trail of truth if they are the institution they claim to be.  Once more, each must reach his or her own conclusion.  I show later in the post how I came to my decision about the title based more on empirical evidence.

Given the perceived prestige that comes with a Harvard degree (note: I did not say education), one would hope that the inflated price for such would be well spent money.  It would appear that their logic in such a one-sided position on what is “Fake News” doesn’t indicate that they show this intellectual trait.  You take a chance where to get an education or where you send your kids.  One just hopes that it is the right decision.  Since almost every decision is a cost/benefit analysis in your mind, one now must question if it is worth it.  Maybe your kid isn’t really an intellectual so the point might be moot.

I realize that you can develop relationships with power people at college that can advance a successful career.  It is not the point of this discussion.  I am merely observing a perceived status and whether it is justified or not.

Worst Update: Harvard is one of the top 10 suppressors of free speech, a further indicator that they are pushing away one of the attributes of intellectuals

Update: Harvard now supports segregation.  MLK would not have wanted this.

Update: Harvard Grad students have organized themselves to start a resistance school.

Update: Students don’t understand the danger of ISIS.

Update: You can now submit a rap album as a senior thesis instead of actual academic work.

Update: Harvard discriminates, avoids meritocracy and endorses legacy of the privileged

Update 2: Apparently, they have now abandoned diversity and have become racist, albeit not in the traditional way.

The grad students, who consider themselves a progressive version of “Dumbledore’s Army,” have enlisted former Obama staffers to teach the class sessions. The syllabus includes readings on “Black-Palestinian Queer Reciprocal Solidarity.”

They have decidedly taken a position of only viewing issues from one side.  One should greatly question the concept of critical thinking ability being taught there.  For those of us who can balance multiple views of the same subject, it is clear that these snowflakes will be under-educated and might be damaged goods in the marketplace of talent.

I formed my own opinion having worked for decades with Ivy League educated employees, albeit somewhat weighted towards Harvard and Columbia.  It was made exceedingly clear by a PR flak who after having worked with a number of Harvard MBA’s stated that they had obviously wasted their money on their education.  We were working for a prestigious company that attracts genius level talent.  She showed remarkable intuition that caused me to further observe the Ivy’s. The majority didn’t last as they had a piece of paper saying that they should be smart, but lacked an education in people or the understanding that life is a series of challenges and hurdles.

Some of the most successful executives and workers I’ve encountered didn’t rely on their degree in school, rather what they learned in life and how they applied it to the next problem.

While history reveals that many leaders and intelligent people came from Harvard, the direction they are heading and the principles that they now uphold should add some cost to the side of the cost/benefit decision making process.  I hope it’s worth it if you choose it as your place for an education.  You will apparently get an institution that has a bias.

December 7th, 1941; Sex, Drugs and Incompetency In Washington

pearl202a1.jpgRevelations of what happened leading up to and following this tragic day inform us of  a backstory of the events that took place in Washington.

Let me go on record to state that I am patriotic and an avid admirer of what the men of our nation did to overcome the tyranny of the Japanese and Germans in WWII.  If you click on the military category of my posts, you will see that when I get cut, I bleed red, white and blue.  I believe in the greatness and considerable achievements of the United States as well as it being the largest contributor for the betterment of others by any country in history.

However, as an amateur historian and an observer of the (in)competency and motives of bureaucrats  in Washington, what our government did leading up to and on that day shows the weaknesses of humans. It should be noted that the Americans and more especially the soldiers who fought the war are held as honorable in my opinion.  This post is not written to tear down any of the bravery accomplished during the war.  They fought valiantly and protected freedom with the Allies.

This event brought together the country so that good overcame evil and I have the utmost respect for what was accomplished in that war.

Much of this was inspired by “History Honors Pearl Harbor” on the History Channel as well as other documented sources.

A historical documentation and the actual speech can be found here.

Incompetency

America was woefully unable to protect itself by December 6, 1941.  It is not unlike today, December 7, 2016, as our current military has been decimated, or the decay of the military before the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center Towers by the administration in charge during the decade of the 1990’s .

On the day of the attack, Roosevelt was viewed by his son as frozen at times because of the thought of what it would do to his legacy.  Just like the 42nd and 44th president, their legacy was more important than the nation.  The worst attack on American soil would be under his watch and he would be unprepared to deal with it.  Fortunately, by 8 am on 12/9/41, brave young men around the country were lined up at the draft offices, but it would take the monumental effort of the country to overcome the government’s lack of responsibility to have a force that could protect our borders.

Next was the communications between Pearl Harbor and Washington.  Roosevelt couldn’t get information about what was happening.  Granted, the communications infrastructure was not what it is today, but there weren’t even secure lines or even direct lines to Washington. The Naval commander in Hawaii who tried to communicate information to the Chief Naval officer Admiral Stark at the War Department couldn’t give specifics as he wasn’t sure if the Japanese were listening in.

Further, the American leadership greatly underestimated the mental acuity of the Japanese thinking that they weren’t technologically capable of such an attack.  It was speculated that the Germans had given them assistance.  Hitler later admitted he had no idea that the Japanese were planning to, or had attacked Pearl Harbor despite what was taught at Faber College.

Douglas MacArthur couldn’t be reached in the Philippines for most of the day.  General Marshal of the Army tried for the better part of the day to warn him of the happenings in Hawaii and to prepare for a similar attack.  Washington wasn’t sure of where he even was or if the Japanese had already attacked.  MacArthur boasted that he had special insight into the oriental mind. When he finally was reached, his response was that he was on full alert and that “We are ready, we have our tails in the air”.  History documents that the Japanese attacked and drove him out of the Philipines shortly thereafter as MacArthur did virtually nothing and lost the islands in an embarrassing defeat.  He was woefully unprepared, but his ego wouldn’t let him admit it.

Finally, the government couldn’t spend more than $750 on an automobile so they couldn’t get a bullet proof car for the President to be transported from the White House to the Capitol to give the speech.  The Treasury Department had confiscated Al Capone’s car earlier so that one was used instead as they couldn’t be bothered to have proper protection for the leader of the free world.  That would haunt Washington as recently as November 22, 1963.

Roughly 6 hours after the attack, FDR approved Executive Order 9066 which imprisoned 92,000 Japanese to internment camps for no reason other than their might be a fifth column attack within.  It was supposed to be limited in scope to arrest any spies but morphed into what was one of the lowest points of FDR’s term of leadership.  Little to no evidence is ever recorded that there was any treason on their part and no one was convicted of espionage or disloyalty.

They were deemed guilty rather than innocent in one of the greatest acts of prejudice by an administration.

MORE INCOMPETENCE AND DID WASHINGTON KNOW ABOUT THE ATTACK BEFOREHAND?

As I’ve stated, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I am for facts.  FDR ordered an investigation headed by Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts of the attack 18 days after the attack.  Some interesting things were revealed.  You can read further about it in the book A Matter of Honor, Betrayal, Blame and a Family’s Quest for Justice.

Admiral Kimmel, head of the Navy in the Pacific had asked Chief of Naval Operations Harold Stark six months before the attack to keep him apprised of latest intelligence regarding what the Japanese were up to.  Washington knew that Pearl Harbor was vulnerable to attack as early as November 1940.

Stark held back the information that aerial torpedos capable of being deployed in waters shallower than at Pearl were being used, despite Stark reassuring Kimmel that the water in the harbor was too shallow for a torpedo attack.  How this wasn’t an act of treason is curious.

The FBI had intercepted information that the Japanese had made inquiries as to the depth at Pearl and whether anti-torpedo nets had been deployed there, but again Kimmel was never informed.  Not sharing this with the command was grossly incompetent or an act of political chess.

Code-breaker Lawrence Safford visited Kimmel after he had resigned.  He then told Kimmel about project Magic that broke coded Japanese diplomatic messages.  Washington failed to inform Kimmel what they knew prior to the attack. It reveals the Japanese had spies informing the Imperial Forces where the exact location of the ships anchored as recently as 3 months before the attack.  The code breakers who discovered this in Magic was only shared by as few as 10 men who couldn’t or wouldn’t tell anyone else.  It was a power play by political operatives in Washington instead of military strategists who would have warned the fleet in Oahu and had the capability to defend against a surprise attack.

A message to the Japanese embassy was decoded instructing them to move to negotiations that had to be completed by 11/5/41, or things will happen automatically beyond that.

The Japanese fleet set sail on November 25th.  There was no turning back at this point.

FDR was aware that the Japanese were going to break off negotiations and 10 days prior to the attack, Admiral Stark issued a warning that there could be an attack, unfortunately not mentioning or notifying the Hawaiian Islands that they were a possible target.

Three hours prior to the attack, Stark received a message that indicated what was about to happen but failed to notify Kimmel.  By the time the message was placed into Kimmel’s hands, it was 8 hours after the attack and was not marked priority.

The intelligence was available, but Washington failed to connect the dots.

I hope that the administration which has meandered it’s way around the safety of our country hasn’t set the table for a repeat by those who have lost their respect for our capability to defend ourselves.

SEX

Missy LaHand, FDR’s assistant for 21 years contacted him on December 7th.  She was closer to the president than Eleanor during that time, some speculate in many ways other than a secretary.  With everything that was going on, the last thing he needed was to hear from a woman he’d had a relationship with.  Eleanor allegedly pushed for a divorce after discovering hat FDR had an affair with her social secretary,  so the last thing he wanted to do was push the envelope unnecessarily by contacting her.  With the decisions that would change the world in front of him, all he needed was additional drama from his wife and another woman.  He decided not to return her call from Warm Springs where she was recovering and it devastated her so greatly that she attempted suicide shortly thereafter.  Presidents have had trouble keeping their pants zipped.

As a side note, but belonging in the sex category, Edward R. Murrow interviewed FDR that night.  Not that it has anything to affect the situation, Murrow carried on a wartime affair with Churchill’s daughter-in-law Pamela Digby Churchill when he was a reporter in London.  He had a close relationship with the Leaders of the Free World and an even closer relationship with some of their relatives.

DRUGS

Roosevelt had a chronic sinus condition from which he suffered most of his life.  Shortly after the attack, he had a headache and was congested, so he was wheeled into the office of his physician, Dr. Ross Macintyre where he was treated with cocaine.  It can be argued that it may have affected his decision-making that day.  Since it was legal, it wasn’t an issue.  Drugs used to be a political show stopper until Obama, who admitted he snorted it got elected.

ROCK AND ROLL

Fortunately, the attack woke up the nation and kick-started the industrial might the US.  Some of the greatest human, scientific and technological achievements happened during the war.

Most important though was the lesson on how wars should be fought and won, something that has been lost on the leadership today.  You fight to win and settle only  for unconditional surrender.  At that point, you set the terms of how the relationship will proceed.  Germany and Japan have become industrial and world leaders, built up by the USA after the war unlike Vietnam and the middle east where our troops were strangled by congress rather than let soldiers fight the war.

Women Now Swear More Than Men

flashing-updateA unique survey of the swearing habits of men and women over the past 20 years has revealed that not only is the English language constantly discovering new ways to be rude, but women are using the f-word more often than men.

According to the Times from this link, women (mostly British in this study, but listen to YouTube to realize the U.K.  doesn’t have the patent on this) have potty mouths now worse than men, except for maybe James Governor.  The study, conducted by researchers from Lancaster University and Cambridge University Press, also found that women were ten times more likely to say s–t than men.

But it wasn’t always this way. According to studies from the early 1990s, men used ‘f–k’ 1,000 times out of every million words they said; while women said it 167 times.  They should get a better vocabulary I guess.

I’ll speculate that men have been told to watch their mouths and women think that it makes them empowered.  In reality, unless you are very creative with your speech patterns, it’s not very linguistic to speak like this.  It’s not like everyone hasn’t thought it or said it, but to legitimize it on this scale is disturbing.  It also brings down a population segment.

I also find women with higher IQ’s use considerably less foul language than wannabee’s.  Conversely, celebrities and entertainers seem to be trying to legitimize this type of speaking.  It seems that the female politicians have taken to this trend also.

Maybe that’s why there is an attraction to intelligence?

You all should be ashamed of yourselves. 😉

 

How The Income Inequality Jihad Will Likely Hurt the Poor

The brilliant John Hawkins presents the facts about this subject.  It is to be the 2014 top priority from our executive branch.  Readers should evaluate the facts and judge for yourself if this is good for the country or not.  Park your ideology at the door (regardless of its source) and think through the argument.  Your beliefs are yours, just make sure to check with history to see what information it supports

The truth is that income inequality is of minimal importance in a nation like America, where so many people already move between classes, where the poor are doing so much better than they used to, and where our poor already do so well compared to the rest of the world. “Among children from families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution, 84 percent of those who go on to get a college degree will escape the bottom fifth, and 19 percent will make it all the way to the top fifth.” During the Great Depression, more than 60% of Americans were living below the poverty line. Over the last 50 years, that number has generally ranged between 12%-15% — and even that dramatically overstates the number of poor Americans because it doesn’t take into account government assistance that’s being paid out. On top of all that, liberals get so angry when people point out that more than 80% of poor Americans have cell phones, televisions and refrigerators while “most Americans living below the official poverty line also own a motor vehicle and have more living space than the average European.” Yet, they don’t take into account the fact that almost half of the world’s population still lives on less than $2.50 a day. In other words, if you are poor, you can live better and have more opportunity to advance in America than you will anywhere else. That’s why immigrants all across the world still want to come to this country.

1) The higher the government mandated minimum wage/living wage, the more people it prices out of jobs: When you force businesses to pay people more than they can return in value with their work, companies tend to respond either by hiring better quality people, replacing the jobs with automation, moving the posts overseas or by looking for opportunities to get rid of the positions entirely. The higher the wages and benefits the government insists on, the more stagnant it makes the labor market for the people who need to build their skills the most. If your goal were to deliberately put as many young, unskilled single mothers out of work as possible, the best politically feasible way to do it would be to jack the minimum wage up into the stratosphere.

2) It emphasizes making people more comfortable, not helping them succeed: There is no shame in taking any honest job, but you’re not supposed to make a living pressing the button that drops the fries into the grease at McDonald’s. If you work long enough at an entry-level job to worry about raising the minimum wage, you’re failing your family, your society and yourself. Instead of encouraging minimum skill workers to demand that the government force businesses to give them more money than they’re currently worth, we should be encouraging people to build their skills and move up, move on or start their own business. Want poor people to be eligible for more education or training? Want to give them micro-loans? Want to make it easier for them to create small businesses? Those are policies that make poor Americans more valuable. That’s good for them and the country. On the other hand, trying to redistribute income ultimately brings everyone down, especially the poor Americans who lose their drive after becoming dependent on it.

3) The more government becomes involved, the more it stagnates the economy: As John F. Kennedy said, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” The stronger the economy is, the more jobs it creates and the more everyone — poor, middle-class, or rich — benefits. How do you make the economy stronger? You keep the government small, taxes low, and regulations light. That’s a proven formula that has worked time and time again. On the other hand, if you want to constipate the economy, you make the government bigger, increase taxes and pour on the regulations. How did that latter set of “solutions” work out for Detroit?

4) The more the government focuses on income inequality, the harder it is to get ahead: As Thomas Sowell likes to say, “There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.” You can see this very clearly with Obamacare, where a few people are getting subsidized care, while tens of millions more are losing their health care and paying considerably more to make up for it. It works the same way with income inequality. Want to make Wal-Mart pay all its employees twice as much? Then that means all the poor Americans who shop at Wal-Mart will have to spend more of their limited incomes to pay for it. Want to give more tax dollars to the poor? Then the rich and middle class will have to pay more in taxes. So, the moment that poor American is making enough money to get into the middle class, he’s hit with a bigger tax bill that makes it harder for him to ever get ahead. In other words, the more resources we put into “helping” the poor, the harder we ultimately make it for those very same people to ever permanently escape poverty and live the American Dream.

5) It ignores the real causes of poverty: The real causes of lasting poverty in America are not greed, the rich, racism, America being “unfair,” or any of the other excuses that you hear so often. Instead, the harsh truth that so many people don’t want to hear is that if you stay poor in America, it’s usually because you made bad life choices. Via Walter Williams, here’s what you have to do in order to avoid poverty in America.

“Complete high school; get a job, any kind of a job; get married before having children; and be a law-abiding citizen. Among both black and white Americans so described, the poverty rate is in the single digits.”

Instead of lying to destitute Americans and telling them that the rich became wealthy by stealing the money that the poor never had in the first place, why not tell people the truth? Yes, it might make some poor Americans feel bad, but do you think welfare, food stamps, and living in a housing project do wonders for people’s moods?

What Alexis de Tocqueville Said About America, The USA

It is interesting to think of what he observed in the mid 1800’s vs. the country we have in 2014.  Here are his comments based on a visit:

Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that stuck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things.

In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of Freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America I found they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country.

Religion in America…must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom; it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point -of -view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief.

I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion—for who can search the human heart?  But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of cities or a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.

The sects that exist in the United States are innumerable. They all differ in respect to the worship which is due to the Creator; but they all agree in respect to the duties which are due from man to man.

Each sect adores the Deity in its own peculiar manner, but all sects preach the same moral law in the name of God.

Moreover, all sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity and Christian morality is everywhere the same.

In the United States the sovereign authority is religions…there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility and its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.

In the United States, if a political character attacks a sect [denomination], this may not prevent even the partisans of that very sect, from supporting him; but if he attacks all the sects together [Christianity], everyone abandons him and remains alone.

I do not question that the great austerity of manners that is observable in the United States arises, in the first instance, from religious faith…its influence over the mind of woman is supreme, and women are the protectors of morals. There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is more respected than in America or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated.

In the United States, the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people…

Christianity, therefore, reigns without obstacle, by universal consent; the consequence is, as I have before observed, that every principle of the moral world is fixed and determinate…

I sought for the key of greatness and genius of America in her harbors…; in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and the institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution.

Not until I went into the chutes of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.

America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law as well as the surest pledge of freedom.

The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.

Christianity is the companion of liberty in all of its conflicts–the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.

They brought with them…a form of Christianity, which I cannot better describe than by styling it in a democratic and republican religion…From the earliest settlement of the emigrants, politics and religion contracted an alliance which has never been dissolved.

The Christian nations of our age seem to me to present a most alarming spectacle; the impulse which is bearing them along is so strong that it cannot be stopped, but is not yet so rapid that it cannot be guided; their fate is in their hands; yet a little while and it may be no longer.

Read the rest of this PolitiChicks.tv article here: http://politichicks.tv/column/2014-alexis-de-tocqueville-esque-year-restoration/#5ulfUJKsDb9hcb3G.99

MY FAVORITE PR STUNT OF ALL TIME – THE WORLD’S FIRST LOW TECHNOLOGY ARTIFICIAL REEF

HOW IT STARTED

This story actually began with the unplanned running aground of the Mercedes I in Palm Beach.  It desecrated the private holy grounds of the hoity toity for over a hundred days in late 1984.   They eventually towed it away and made an artificial reef making almost everyone happy.

About the same time IBM introduced the PC-AT, billed as the most powerful personal computer ever built.  It had one problem though as internally sat a 20 MB disk drive made by CMI.  It was based on stepper motor technology and it both failed at alarming rates and was as slow as cold honey.  It was that flaw which helped give birth to the drive aftermarket in the PC industry and caused one of the biggest black eye’s to the PC’s reputation.

CORE INTERNATIONAL TO THE RESCUE

A small storage company in Boca Raton – the home of the IBM PC saw the obvious problem and created a marketing campaign which recalled the IBM drive.  It then sold you a 40 MB drive made by Control Data Corporation and rebadged as CORE product for $2,595, gave you a $1000 rebate and ran an ad claiming it was going to build an artificial reef out of the CMI drives (you can buy gigabytes now for less that $100).  CORE was making over 100% profit so the perception of value is greater than reality.  The users still paid one of the highest cost per byte of storage possible.

Here is  a portion of the ad which created a sensation in the print media, as both IBM and the PC had been infallible up to this point.

PC MAGAZINE CATCHES ON

At this point Paul Sommerson, Bill Machrone, Bill Howard and other writers contacted CORE and asked for pictures of the reef being built.  The company owner confided in me that he had a contract to send the drives back to CMI for a rebate  and to not lose too many, we staged the entire event.  We took his boat, the MEGABYTE out of Jupiter (not Boca) and made it look like we were really dumping the drives into the water.  I’m sure the Nanny state EPA would have been all over us had we really done it, but the rest of the story is that we only dumped the drives in the picture (note the false bottom).  We tried hard to drop a drive on a string while posing with the box in the picture, but all that produced were lame results.  I finally convinced him that we needed to actually throw some drives overboard and that one shot is now etched into PC history.  It was the last picture on the roll of film (if you remember film).  We tried fishing for sharks after the shoot to put a drive in one of their mouths for the table of contents.  We had one on, but it bit through the line and we ran out of time.

The film was immediately Fed-ex’d to NY as they were on deadline for what is known as the Fire Ax issue.  The title was “Is Your PC Safe”, but there was a fire ax coming down on a PC-AT and the picture was in both the table of contents and the article.

It should be noted that neither CORE nor PC Magazine was trying to attack IBM products.  The owner at CORE was excellent at marketing and had big balls to do this stunt.  It paid off handsomely both in dollars and visibility.  PC Magazine was at the height of their prowess as journalistic leader of the PC industry.  Kudos should be given to Bill Machrone for approving a story that would never have a chance at seeing the light of day in this day and age.  He was a visionary at the publication.  IBM did themselves in by releasing a defective product and not being nimble enough to deal with the issues.

Both parties were able to take advantage of the arrogance (some say ignorance) on IBM’s part for not ensuring quality control of their product and suppliers.  Further, the moribund IBM PR machine, having used their death grip to the throat of PC journalism to direct results they wanted (because they were the 800 lb. elephant in the room) didn’t know that the journalists were ripe for this.  They never saw this coming and were ill-equipped to deal with it.  The result was that both the reputation of the PC and IBM PR was tarnished.

It should be noted that the Wilmott’s were related to the Ziff’s, who owned PC Magazine.  It took me 30 years to make that connection,

THE AFTERMATH

As I mentioned earlier, the boom of peripherals was starting and this poured gasoline on that fire.  CMI went out of business after losing their contract with IBM and CORE shipped hundreds of drives while becoming famous.

I personally conducted many interviews discussing drive technology and the stunt (if I recall, the story became far better than the actual event) and the owner had to move his boat.  He had rented a slip from an IBM’er in Boca, but due to the kerfuffle he was asked to find another docking space.

IBM had a PR nightmare on its hands now.  I’m told that Lou Gerstner’s personal speech writer was called in to clean up the mess.  CORE (meaning me as I handled all of PR by this point) got years of mileage from this event.  I developed relationships with the leaders in PC journalism as they were happy to have a person to talk to rather than an army of IBM suits that outdid the White House press corps in obfuscation. We even took a drive to trade shows and put it into a fish tank with fish.  Everyone in the industry knew about it and we even had hats made up saying things like:

My drive won’t stay up, I built the PC that IBM didn’t, My Drive is bigger than your drive and others.

We gave away thousands.  In fact I think we invented the show hat give away in the mid 80’s (one time while leaving the show, we saw a drunk bum outside a convention center at with a CORE hat on).

The owner made show participants suffer through a sales pitch they didn’t care about, but the rest of us just gave them away.

EPITAPH

It is funny to me that I was hired by IBM to do PR for them 14 years later, and even did a stint in the PC division.  I wonder if they had known it was me that helped cause one of the great PR nightmares for them, would I have gotten the job?

IBM had dropped to 6th place in PC’s by then and the PC PR department was led by two nincompoops when I got there (Mike Corrado and Ray Gorman).  I always chuckled when the story came up at IBM and enjoyed the looks on their faces as they found out my part in this event.  I was never involved with anything this creative while doing PR at IBM (see the moribund part), although I used some tactics from this event to be successful, so long as I didn’t tell IBM communications “leaders” about it until after the fact.

Now, did anyone read to here and notice that for a while I misspelled artificial in the title? It was a PR project for you.

The Next Financial Crisis Worse than 2008? Which Politician Will Expose it?

I have always been warned of the great wealth transfer from the middle and lower class to the wealthiest.  I first thought it would be through the devaluation, then revaluation of gold, but I didn’t realize that it was engineered through Washington programs, financial crisis, stock compensation and accounting tricks.

I have been reading and found this.  Attribution is below and comments should consider this if you get upset, especially if you lose your shirt.  Here are some excerpts:

“Corporate earnings reports for the fourth quarter are pretty much in the books. The deception, falsification, accounting manipulation, and propaganda utilized by mega-corporations and their compliant corporate media mouthpieces has been outrageously blatant. It reeks of desperation as the Wall Street shysters attempt to extract the last dollar from their muppet clients before this house of cards collapses.”

“The previous all-time high in stock buybacks occurred in 2008 at the previous peak. That brilliant strategy led to 50% shareholder losses in a matter of months. No Board of Directors fired any CEO for these disastrous strategic blunders. These cowardly ego maniacs didn’t buy back any stock in 2009 and 2010 when they could have made a killing with valuations at decade lows. After the stock market recovered by 100%, these stooges then began borrowing and buying. It has now reached another all-time high crescendo.

Dividends and stock buybacks in 2015 topped $1 trillion for the first time according to S&P Capital IQ Global Markets Intelligence. As CEOs have borrowed billions to buyback their inflated overvalued stock, they have put the long-term sustainability of their firms at extreme risk.”

“The 2008 Wall Street created financial crisis will look like a walk in the park compared to what’s coming down the pike now. We now have a bond bubble, stock bubble, housing bubble, commercial real estate bubble and central banker confidence bubble all poised to pop simultaneously. The negative interest rate and banning of cash schemes will be dead on arrival, driving a stake into the heart of the Fed vampire.”

“

Even the billionaire oligarch crony capitalist Warren Buffett addressed this despicably flagrant flaunting of basic accounting principles to mislead shareholders in his annual letter last week:

It has become common for managers to tell their owners to ignore certain expense items that are all too real. “Stock-based compensation” is the most egregious example. The very name says it all: “compensation.” If compensation isn’t an expense, what is it? And, if real and recurring expenses don’t belong in the calculation of earnings, where in the world do they belong?

Wall Street analysts often play their part in this charade, too, parroting the phony, compensation-ignoring “earnings” figures fed them by managements. Maybe the offending analysts don’t know any better. Or maybe they fear losing “access” to management. Or maybe they are cynical, telling themselves that since everyone else is playing the game, why shouldn’t they go along with it. Whatever their reasoning, these analysts are guilty of propagating misleading numbers that can deceive investors…. When CEOs or investment bankers tout pre-depreciation figures such as EBITDA as a valuation guide, watch their noses lengthen while they speak.

Buffett’s words are borne out in the chart below. Based on fake reported earnings per share, the profits of the S&P 500 mega-corporations were essentially flat between 2014 and 2015. Using real GAAP results, earnings per share plunged by 12.7%, the largest decline since the memorable year of 2008. Despite persistent inquiry it is virtually impossible for a Wall Street outsider to gain access to the actual GAAP net income numbers for all S&P 500 companies. With almost $500 billion of shares bought back in 2015, the true decline in earnings is closer to 15%.”

I do not support any politician in my blog.  I’m generally not happy with any of the current crop.  One is called out in the following paragraph that causes problems with Wall Street….

“The establishment is aghast that Donald Trump is storming towards the presidency. They are blind to the fact their unconcealed felonious actions rise to the level of treason in the eyes of average hard working Americans. The fabric of this country is being torn asunder by a contemptible class of corporate fascists, ego maniacal bankers, shadowy billionaires, and media titans. They have reaped billions of profits since 2009 as the Fed and politicians in D.C. rolled out “solutions” designed to enrich them. They are confident their failures will be shifted to the American people again. The American people may have a different opinion this time. Pitchforks and torches are being readied.”

I found this article from The Burning Platform which was entitled the Great Corporate Earnings Fraud.

Where Have You Gone Al Gore? #climatechange and #globalwarming Are Calling You On the Day You Predicted The Doom of the Earth

al gore doomsday clockIn the song Mrs. Robinson is a line that states, Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?  I wondered the same about Al Gore.  He went from front page man on global warming to I don’t hear anything about him anymore on #AGW.  I wondered where he went and why?

It’s ironic that the biggest snow storm to ever hit NYC on the weekend of his predicted destruction instead of the Statue of Liberty being under water.

al gore effect

There is a famous statement that goes: Where your treasure is, so will your heart will be also.  I thought his heart was with global warming, but he’s no where to be found, so I looked for what his treasure was. If it wasn’t really global warming, what was it?

He enrolled in Divinity school so it appeared that he was looking for his treasure from God, but he didn’t finish his degree either.  So what has he been chasing his whole life, really?

The rest of this post is merely an observation based on his actions throughout the years.  Some will disagree, others will identify and most won’t care.  No judgement is being passed, merely a commentary on the general state of man with the public record as documentation.

If you disagree or want to get into an ideological debate, please see the comments policy on the right.

Note from Investors Business Daily on the end of the earth:

According to Anthony Watts, one of the most trusted sources on Climate issues, “While preening at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2006 during the premiere of his An Inconvenient Truth fib-umentary, Gore made his grand declaration. The former vice president said, in the words of the AP reporter taking down his story, that unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return.” In Gore’s own words, he claimed we were in “a true planetary emergency.”

Further on December 13, 2009, he predicted that the Arctic would be ice free in 5 years.  

10 years later, there has been no measurable change in the Arctic ice.  As with most of the climate predictions, it was based on prediction models.  Anyone who has watched the weather knows that it is rarely right 5 days from now, let alone 5 years from now, yet he sold this snake oil and it was drunk by many or used as a political tool.

HIS EARLY TREASURE

It is common knowledge that he was funded by coal and tobacco, but people repent and so I supposed this was the case also.  As of the latest search, he still hasn’t sold his fortune in Occidental stock and dividends he receives.  It is nebulous as to whether he has or not, so we’ll give him a pass on it, although he’s  earned $500,000 from zinc royalties (which causes environmental issues to produce) as of the last documented tax return that is public. Perhaps it is a legal reason that prevents him from selling this asset.  Armand Hammer, the head of Occidental was well known for his communist ties to the Soviet Union was close to the Gore family.

There is also the Elk Hills case that allowed oil pipelines to run, ensuring a stream of money to both the Hammer’s and the Gores.

Nevertheless, it appears that before global warming, it was MONEY that was more important than anything else.  In the overall realm of things, climate issues appear to have only been a means to the end, or his treasure and not the end itself.

Most of what is below are documents from Climate Scientists or court records.  I don’t challenge the views on climate on either side as minds are already made up.  My thesis is that he was after money more than protecting the planet.

THE PATH OF HIS POLITICAL CAREER

He of course was a Senator and a Vice President for which he should be commended for serving his country.

It sticks in the craw of the Gore acolytes who generally are Bush 43 haters, that he lost.  No matter how many times the media recounted the votes in Florida, Bush still won every recount.  This signaled the end of his political career, but it wasn’t the treasure he was really seeking.

One thing that dogged him was that he had a low net worth compared with the other politicians who were his compatriots.  I point to the fact that he wasn’t an astute investor given the fore-knowledge congress has of bills that affect corporations.  They are not subject to insider trading laws, so just by being there any idiot should increase their wealth at an exponential rate as almost all have done.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

statue-of-liberty-is-drowning-c

This film got a lot of play despite blatant errors which were discovered in court, but then Hollywood rarely gets the truth right and a politician making a movie sort of dooms it’s necessity for truth from the beginning.  It did finally start the ball rolling  for his money making from global warming, a cause he had pushed uphill for years.

free nobel peace prize

He also won a Nobel Peace Prize.  They soon after gave one to a President who had accomplished nothing up to that point.

On January 25th, 2006, while at the Sundance film festival screening “An Inconvenient Truth”, Al Gore said this as chronicled in an article by CBS News:

The former vice president came to town for the premiere of “An Inconvenient Truth,” a documentary chronicling what has become his crusade since losing the 2000 presidential election: Educating the masses that global warming is about to toast our ecology and our way of life.

Gore has been saying it for decades, since a college class in the 1960s convinced him that greenhouse gases from oil, coal and other carbon emissions were trapping the sun’s heat in the atmosphere, resulting in a glacial meltdown that could flood much of the planet.

Americans have been hearing it for decades, wavering between belief and skepticism that it all may just be a natural part of Earth’s cyclical warming and cooling phases.

And politicians and corporations have been ignoring the issue for decades, to the point that unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return, Gore said.

He sees the situation as “a true planetary emergency.”

“If you accept the truth of that, then nothing else really matters that much,” Gore said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We have to organize quickly to come up with a coherent and really strong response, and that’s what I’m devoting myself to.”

al-gore-fire-300x222Nothing gets lost now thanks to the internet which he invented.

Unfortunately, here are 9 proven lies of the movie regarding the settled science based on a computer model.  The court ruled:

“Al Gore is the principal prophet of doom in the global warming debate, and the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth is his gospel to true believers. But Gore has misled them.”

Two years ago, British High Court Justice Michael Burton characterized Gore’s film as “alarmism and exaggeration in support of his political thesis.” The court, responding said the film was “one-sided” and could not be shown in British schools unless it contained guidelines to balance Gore’s attempt at “political indoctrination.”  This is the antithesis of the scientific method which requires independent proving of a hypothesis to be true science.

Here is how the 97% of scientists agreeing that global warming was caused by men was derived. 

Since then, he’s reiterated 8 facts of climate doom that never happened, never got close and are now past their sell by date.

Some of these are the decline of Arctic ice (there was a huge re-freeze in 2015), the decline of polar bears and the rising sea level.  I was called a flat-earther for questioning the rising tides by a believer in the global warming religion, Tim O’reilly.  When I asked for any proof, I received the statement that climate science is hard.

What is hard is for the weatherman to get the forecast right next week.  How in the world can you predict 10 years from now?  The answer of course has proven to be quite obvious.  If you go to the link starting with since (above) Tim, you’ll see that this is bunk. I’ve started to look at the climate change worshipers as the real flat-earther’s now.  They seem to be equally as wrong.

HE WAS PROTECTED BY THE MEDIA

The Press Protected His Cause nevertheless as errors weren’t generally reported, and despite trying to kick start the alternative energy sector, most companies didn’t succeed in the free market economy, rather used government subsidies and regulation to survive.  He was wise to benefit from the government backing, increasing his fortune.

money-down-toilet

Al was the nameplate for global warming until that name got tarnished.  It morphed to climate change and whatever name that didn’t lose PR favor, but it was still the same gaia cause and Al was the figurehead.  It didn’t matter what he said as he had the media covering for him on this initiative.

What did the media decide what to cover and what not to cover?

Unfortunately, he predicted the “end of the planet or that we would reach the point of no return” on January 25, 2016.

As it turns out, it is cooler now than on the day he received his Nobel prize.

THE FINAL FRONTIER, HOW HE FOUND HIS HEART’S TREASURE

He started a TV channel, sat on the board of Apple (for which he benefited handsomely) and other money making ventures.  While it did nothing to affect Climate change issues to speak of, this appears to be the treasure he was really seeking.  He sold Current TV to Al-Jazeera, an oil funded carbon spewing country  for hundreds of millions, and that was the antithesis of what he was preaching to the warmers.  Al-Jazeera has closed doors on this project in 2016 having not been able to gain an audience in the US.  Again, the media was mostly silent, he was one of theirs.

Al jazeeraPhoto courtesy of DMF.

In selling the network to the huge oil producing carbon emitters, he Found the treasure he sought, but sold Out his followers in a big way.  It doesn’t matter because what is done, is done.  His record is there for history to judge.  He is a rich man and now he is seeking ways to release his inner chakra, too bad for Tipper.  Name calling for anyone who challenges the “settled science” has been the norm, but it turns out that they are the real flat earthers as they love to call anyone who doesn’t agree with them.

SO WHAT WAS THE REAL TREASURE IN HIS HEART?

Here is where we get to the answer.  He was after the money, that was where his treasure really was, gathering wealth.  The reason we haven’t heard from him is he is rich and got people to buy into what he was selling.  He has big houses with carbon footprints of cities.  He flies on private jets to conferences and stays in huge suites, and harass massage therapists.

You can see images of his massive mansions here.

al-gores-home-in-nashville algoreshome

He got his real treasure which was the dollar, and is riding happily into the sunset a very rich man.

Just like the Mayan calendar in 2012, the earth didn’t end or drown, but we won’t hear anything on Al flying in private jets either.  It seems he is the biggest flat Earther of all.

Update 8/3/17:He recently traveled 3000 miles on a carbon spewing plane for the promotion of his new movie to tell people that they should reduce carbon emissions.  It was at that conference that it was revealed that one of his houses emits 34 times the carbon emissions of a regular house.

Maybe the delusional devotees  who have bought into the weather lie include Tim O’Reilly, who could only tell me that climate science is difficult when he couldn’t explain why the oceans aren’t rising when I asked him.  Perhaps he will look past his devotion to this Gaia worship and see the facts, although I don’t expect him to admit both the error in judgement and the fact that he has completely shelved science for ideology.  Other devotees like Tom Raftery at GreenMonk have gone out of business because they couldn’t make enough money (bilk companies) or get enough government subsidies.  James Governor who helped found Greenmonk told me that he would “save” the planet or make money trying. None of these new Flat-Earthers can explain why it is cooler now than when Al received the Nobel Prize.

They have bought into the lie that Al was peddling and should have invested with him since he was after the money and would do or say whatever he needed to do to achieve it.  James in fact never either saved the world or got rich trying.

This was years before Al Gore’s revelation that he was just after the money, so it seems that the climate changers are really just greedy.  That makes them the real “Flat-Earthers”.

Here is a recent protest by the Climate change supporters:

al gore prostesters

#Barbie Update Since She is Now Middle Aged, Plus: San Francisco Barbie With Homeless Kit

Finally a Barbie to relate to! At long last, here are some new Barbie dolls to coincide with her (and our?) aging gracefully. These are a bit more realistic…

If you are easily offended, stop and go away.  This is a joke that was sent to me and there is sarcasm and political incorrectness for some below. Save the hate comments, you’ve been warned.

For those with a sense of humor, please continue.

barbies50th

  1. Bifocals Barbie. Comes with her own set of blended-lens fashion frames in six wild colors (half-frames too!), neck chain and large-print editions of Vogue and Martha Stewart Living.

 

  1. Hot Flash Barbie. Press Barbie’s bellybutton and watch her face turn beet red while tiny drops of perspiration appear on her forehead. Comes with hand-held fan and tiny tissues.

 

  1. Facial Hair Barbie. As Barbie’s hormone levels shift, see her whiskers grow. Available with teensy tweezers and magnifying mirror.

 

  1. Flabby Arms Barbie. Hide Barbie’s droopy triceps with these new, roomier-sleeved gowns. Good news on the tummy front, too — muumuus with tummy-support panels are included.

 

  1. Bunion Barbie. Years of disco dancing in stiletto heels have definitely taken their toll on Barbie’s dainty arched feet. Soothe her sores with the pumice stone and plasters, and then slip on soft terry mules.

 

  1. No-More-Wrinkles Barbie. Erase those pesky crow’s-feet and lip lines with a tube of Skin Sparkle-Spackle, from Barbie’s own line of exclusive age-blasting cosmetics.

 

  1. Soccer Mom Barbie. All that experience as a cheer-leader is really paying off as Barbie dusts off her old high school megaphone to root for Babs and Ken, Jr. Comes with minivan in robin-egg blue or white, and cooler filled with doughnut holes and fruit punch.

 

  1. Mid-life Crisis Barbie. It’s time to ditch Ken. Barbie needs a change, and Alonzo (her personal trainer) is just what the doctor ordered, along with Prozac. They’re hopping in her new red Miata and heading for the Napa Valley to open a B&B. Includes a real tape of

“Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.”

 

  1. Divorced Barbie. Sells for $199.99. Comes with Ken’s house, Ken’s car, and Ken’s boat.

 

  1. Recovery Barbie. Too many parties have finally caught up with the ultimate party girl. Now she does Twelve Steps instead of dance steps. Clean and sober, she’s going to meetings religiously. Comes with a little copy of The Big Book and a six-pack of Diet Coke.

 

  1. Post-Menopausal Barbie. This Barbie wets her pants when she sneezes, forgets where she puts things, and cries a lot. She is sick and tired of Ken sitting on the couch watching the tube, clicking through the channels. Comes with Depends and Kleenex. As a bonus this year, the book “Getting In Touch with Your Inner Self” is included.

And finally,