Ken Nelson

Just when I start to question why we should be in or stay in Afghanistan, I read stuff like this:

Suspected Taliban militants have executed a 7-year-old boy, accusing him of spying for the government, officials in southern Afghanistan said Thursday.

But… does it talk about the Taliban, or the culture in the region? And if that is the culture, is it “salvageable”, or worth saving if it is?

I’m dubious.   And then I wonder about the 7 year olds we’ve drone bombed, not on purpose, but dead none the less, and I start to get into moral relativism infinite loops.

And I revert back to “this probably ain’t  worth doing”… especially when I consider that our current President would give all the sacrifice away in a heart beat if the SEIU asked him to.

We need to neuter jihadist Islam, and Taliban and Al-Queda need some serious killing, but I’m dubious places like Afghanistan or Iraq can be anything other than just  neutered.  I doubt their joining the league of effective democracies is really on the table.  Our military may pull it out, if anybody can, they can, but I’m starting to wonder about the cost.

If it were up to me, I’d kill their leaders and bomb/attack any terrorist concentrations, and also ban Muslim immigration to the US. I think that would work better and be a lot cheaper.

Whenever I write something damaging to a political office holder or candidate I get nasty messages saying “but they are brave to run for office” or “he’s done a lot for Utah” or “he may have issues but the other guy….”.

Whenever I write something damaging to those running in a primary, their supporters write imploring me to “be nice – we have to have a candidate in the general election”.

Sorry. But “good enough” isn’t “good enough” for me.

It isn’t brave to run for office. It may be stupid, but it isn’t brave. It maybe narcissistic, and not good for your family, but it isn’t “brave”.  Brave is Lech Walesa. Brave is Sam Adams. Brave is Nelson Mandela.   What’s brave about going for a job that makes most of its office holders millionaires?

I hold candidates to a George Washington test. Are they as honorable, as self-sacrificing, as noble or as humble, as George Washington?  If not, I don’t like them. 

The sad thing is that my test doesn’t exclude most Americans just most candidates.

Why don’t these modern George Washington’s run?  Because they, like me, think the system unsolvable, and they have just one life to live.   So we are left with people mostly running to exploit the system, not help it.

Update: Maybe Chris Christie meets the test.

Do you know what a negative versus positive right is? Here is wikipedia’s view of them:

Under the theory of positive and negative rights, a negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another person or group. A government, for example, usually in the form of abuse or coercion. A positive right is a right to be subjected to an action of another person or group. In theory, a negative right forbids others from acting against the right holder, while a positive right obligates others to act with respect to the right holder. In the framework of the Kantian categorical imperative, negative rights can be associated with perfect duties while positive rights can be connected to imperfect duties

Free speech is a negative right.  Free healthcare is a positive right.

Negative and positive rights collide frequently. For instance, I have property rights, except when my property is taken to pay for somebody else’s health care.

Put another way, positive rights ALWAYS take from somebody else who is providing the right.  Negative rights never do.

A more recent example of positive rights trampling negative rights occurred in New York this week.  Retailer American Eagle Outfitters was forced to modify their employee guidelines so as to permit woman to wear male clothing, and men to wear female clothing.   Their negative right to hire who they see fit and have them represent their company for best sales was trampled by politicians eager to soothe a constituency with American Eagle paying the bill.

Positive rights dominate the rights battle field now. Usually because they are politically advantageous to give out.   Negative rights lose, and are actually being removed, as in Obama’s recent health care bill which forces you to buy a product.

Positive rights  coerce. The more positive rights granted,  the less freedom we really have.

We would be freer if the government would stop giving us positive rights.

Take two pictures from 1935:

 
       Little Rock, AR                                                    Bethleham, PA 

It is really easy to hate this contrast – the poor tenant farmer’s child versus the affluent group of kids in Pennsylvania.   The hard part is to know what, if anything, to do about it.

Surely the kids in PA can lose the ties, or hats, and send something to the kid in AR? Right?

The trouble is that the centralized distribution system doesn’t know when to stop, and once the controls are in place, folks that will abuse it gravitate there.  We see this now, as our crony capitalism increases, and we face always more restrictive rules of what we can and can’t do. The new ObamaCare law even forges new territory by  forcing us to do certain things.  The only other example I can think of that is SelectService registration (which I disagree with).

Ultimately, given ethnic ferment and central control, you end up here:

It isn’t about a particular leader – Bush, Obama, Clinton. They play their roles, but we aren’t at the point yet where they can wreak havoc.  We approach it, I think. But not totally there  yet.  This is more about what happens in the long term trends of nations with centralized control – especially in culturally or ethnically diverse places.

Swedes, with their largely homogenous population, may not have to fear their socialism. But in America, with its many different possible sets of “less than humans” (as viewed by some other set),  centralized control might not end so nicely.

Given central control, at some point, somebody evil will take the reigns.  If we can say no to the person, who cares if they are evil?  It is when we can’t choose otherwise that the trouble starts.

So the question is… what track are we on?  Towards or away from the freedom to tell that evil leader to buzz off.  It seems clear to me… we head away from freedom and towards bloody disaster.

 
I’d like another choice for registering my car please

What does this sequence represent to you?

18,000, 19,000, 3141, 50, 1

It is the number of towns, then cities, then counties, states and countries found in  the United States.

Or the way, I think about it is that if I don’t like the town I’m in, I’ve got 17,999 others to pick from. Or 18,999 cities. Or 3140 counties, or 49 other states.

So when the Federal government does something – anything. I view that as reduction of the options I had.

Would I like it if there was only one online store?  Would it have good prices, provide what I want, or good service?  Nope. And I don’t like that the Federal government, of which I only have ONE to choose from. It’s price is too high. It doesn’t do what I want and it has terrible service. But …. I can’t choose another.

A very short list jobs needs to be done nationally. Anything else, if the Federal government does it, odds are they are doing it for political gain, they will do it wrong, poorly and inefficiently and you will be able to do NOTHING about it.

Joseph Stack’s straw broke today. He burned down his house, apparently with wife and daughter in it. They escaped. He then stole a small airplane and flew it into the IRS offices in Austin, TX. He died. Nobody in the building died.

His “manifesto”/suicide note can be read here. Some call it “insane”, and parts certainly are rambling and incoherent, but other parts cut right to the bone:

How can any rational individual explain that white elephant conundrum in the middle of our tax system and, indeed, our entire legal system?  Here we have a system that is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand.  Yet, it mercilessly “holds accountable” its victims, claiming that they’re responsible for fully complying with laws not even the experts understand.  The law “requires” a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that’s not “duress” than what is.  If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is.

Given how many “We can help you fight the IRS” ads I see on TV, and given my personal experiences with the IRS and their erroneous, evil, ways, I’m surprised we don’t have more Joseph Stacks.

I’m not condoning what he did, he does seem to have “snapped”, but I can sympathize, and empathize, with the stress and futility he felt.

You see, I too, believe that all this will end in violence. I’ve stated that fear many times on this blog, while at the same time stressing my personal situation didn’t warrant it yet.

So you can call Mr. Stack insane, or whatever your political sentiments rationalize, but you can’t hide that millions of people feel the same futility he did – and when situations become futile, violence is next.

So don’t condone it. Don’t support it.  But also don’t be surprised by it.

vs
Who has a better balance sheet?

Toyota struggles. It reminds me that no matter how good you have it, things could go severely haywire overnight. Everything could fall to pieces and you stand there wondering “what the hell just happened”.   I know, it’s happened to me. And I survived only because I’d prepared for just that occasion. Prepared emotionally (how to handle problems), financially (building up reserves), and in relationships (people willing to help). They all work together.

The point… Toyota will suffer, but survive and thrive. They have the corporate culture to do so – and.. .A VERY IMPORTANT AND… they have bazillions in the bank.

Compare and contrast to the U.S.     How does our culture look? Is it getting smart? Less corrupt? Which direction would you say our culture heads?  And how much, exactly, do we have in the bank? And what trend do our finances follow?

In other words, I’d bet on Toyota more than us right now.

I know it isn’t patriotic to say we suck, but looking at the details, I can come to no other conclusion. Sorry. 

Pollyannas will cry “this is the greatest country ever”. I’d mildly correct “was”.

 
Taxpayer debt better used elsewhere

Seth says:

We need to get past this idea of saving, because the status quo is leaving the building, and quickly. Not just in print of course, but in your industry too.

Wouldn’t the last few years have been different, and more productive, if we hadn’t “saved” the domestic unionized car industry? Or crazy risk taking banks? Or over the last decades if we hadn’t kept “saving” social security?

All these things mentioned must fail. The only question is when and who feels the pain. The ENTIRE game of the last 30 years has been politicians keeping the pain from their voters for as long as possible.

It would be better if those that failed felt the pain the most, don’t you think?  Instead we’ve wasted trillions and ensured that the ultimate failure will be felt extremely by everyone.

Wouldn’t it be better if the trillions of debt, assuming we were going to do it anyway – a safe assumption, had been spent on truly productive things and not temporarily saving failures?

I’ve told a fib or two in my day.  Mainly stuff like “what a cute kid”.  And I’ve changed my opinion on issues. And, in business, I’ve made promises I couldn’t deliver on. When that has happened, I’ve taken my lumps from customers.

Lots of liberals accused President Bush of “lying”. “Bush lied People died” they chanted. But I’ve never read or seen any account of an actual lie by President Bush.  Policy differences aren’t lies. Bad intelligence isn’t a lie.

Yet, with our current President, lies happen like snow. He literally cannot tell the truth about anything.

And he gets away with it.

Victor Davis Hanson documents 13 lies. He could have documented hundreds. I’ve written dozens of “Casual Lies”  posts, and I’ve never had any of my liberal readers correct any of them.  I’ve been called names, but never corrected.

The man lies, about everything.

And that bugs me a lot. It bugs me that liberals I respect, like my Dad, seem to ignore or tolerate it. It bothers me that other political “leaders” don’t call him on it. It bugs me that the media doesn’t call him on it.

But what really bothers me is that we now live, apparently, in a country filled with people that find such blatant, obvious, lying okay and a normal part of their political process.

Something ain’t right in this country… I’d like to think we don’t deserve Obama, but deep down, I suspect we really do.

From adversity springs opportunity

I don’t know much about Haiti. Long ago I did an area study of Haiti for an Army unit I was in. But the details have long skipped my brain.

What I do remember is that Haiti is corrupt. Haiti is uneducated. Haitians speak Creole. Most good land in Haiti is used to grow exported food items.  None are these traits seem useful for building a country.

Tyler Cowen speculates that Haiti, as a functioning country, no longer exists and that it is just a matter of time til the US or UN come in and govern it.

Should that happen it isn’t inconceivable that the Haitians of 20 years hence have much better lives and view the earthquake as the start of the new Haitian beginning.

No matter where you are, you have to start from there. So once we get past helping people survive, what is the future for Haiti?

I don’t know, but I seems that unless we nation build it, it doesn’t have one.

I’m not advocating we do so, yet anyway. It just seems that we can’t have something that bad, so close to us, and not firmly address it.

That said, I have full faith that President Obama will do whatever is right for US unions in this matter.

We got George, an 8 to 9 year old Black Lab, from Best Friends a couple of years ago. He was overweight when we got him.  We got some off, but it was hard because he just was having trouble exercising.   I’d actually given up taking him on walks because he couldn’t go very far, maybe 1/2 a mile. He looked to be in such pain, I didn’t think it was really doable. The Vet gave us medicine for him, but it seemed to do little good.

But this school break I decided to walk him, and me, twice a day. Going as far as either of us could manage. I’ve got lower back problems, walking hurts. And I’m  taking medicine for pre-diabetes, rapid heart rate, and high blood pressure. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’m a wreck (largely due to an accident a couple years back).

But, I figured,  we will just see what either of us can do.  I had two goals… get George “frisky” again, and get me off my meds through diet and exercise.

This was George, this morning, about 3.5 miles into a river walk:

And once I took him off the leash, he led the way, ranging here and there. Like a dog. Two weeks ago, he would be on leash, 30’ behind, struggling just to move one foot in front of the other.

Congratulations George!

As to me…. well, the resting heart rate just before I wrote this was 101, the BP 190/87, and well… I’ve got a ways to go. I suspect, due to a broken pituitary gland (courtesy the afore mentioned accident) that my body chemistry is just screwed up and though I may be 45 years old,  6’, 180lbs, 13% body fat, my innards will not function well no matter what I do. 

C’est le vie!  I enjoy the walks and will continue to do them as long as I can.  I think this afternoon we will strap on the leash again and walk to Chili’s (about 2 miles) for dinner.

BTW: Fritz, our 2 year old dauschund, easily ranges 3 miles for every mile we walk. His legs may be little, but he has abundant energy.

Email is a communications medium, not a collaboration medium. When confused as a collaboration tool, efficiency plummets.

Ben Casnocha

Did survivors and their kids squander their sacrifice?

Last week my brother recommended I catch up with the History Channels ‘WWII in HD”.  It shows new footage of World War II, much in color, and in high definition.  The show is excellent, and I’ve watched 7 of the 12 episodes… but I stopped.

Why?

I couldn’t bear to watch the effort, suffering, misery, and anguish knowing what lay ahead. I felt so bad that the World War II’s generation that survived and their kids had screwed up so badly what the folks I was seeing had fought for.

I’m curious as to what the surviving veterans think of the state of the country they fought for now?  When I talk to them, as I do to most I see wearing a Veterans jacket or hat, they don’t seem particularly thrilled.  I’m not sure if the negativity is a function  of where I live (conservative southern Utah), or if it applies across the board.

In England, an enterprising younger person, asked WWII veterans to write him about this topic:

But was it worth it? Her answer – and the answer of many of her contemporaries, now in their 80s and 90s – is a resounding No.

They despise what has become of the Britain they once fought to save. It’s not our country any more, they say, in sorrow and anger.

England is further on the path to ruin than we are, especially with regards to poor immigration policies – which was a common theme of what the veterans wrote about.

Anyway, maybe I’ll get back to WWII in HD…. eventually.  Right now, it is too hard to view.

 
An inspiration to gangs? Maybe.

A new trend is on the rise… Black gangs attacking whites while videoing the assault for resale later.

"They knock a young white guy out with one blow to see if his knees will wobble and surround them and take their money," said the Rev. Leon Kelly, who runs a Denver gang-prevention program. "It’s a joke."

I’m not sure what he means by joke… but if this happens to me,  or near me, I intend to respond very seriously. Fifteen of them are going down, permanently.    Why 15?  That is how many .45 ACP rounds are on me at the moment.

I wonder if Obama’s election has something to do with this trend?   If he can inspire militias, maybe he can inspire gangs too?

I noticed, for instance, when in D.C. recently, that many black people were rude to me.  I’d lived there in years past and found that, except in the case of the criminal element, black people were polite, family oriented and quite kind.  I don’t recall any rudeness the years I lived there, except during pick up basketball games – when I gave as good as I got.

But in the days I’ve been in DC since Obama, I’ve been treated rudely by blacks several times and in oddly mundane situations.

Perhaps his election empowered regular blacks to act out repressed dislike for my race?  And perhaps the same effect has been magnified by the criminal element within black culture and channeled into gang assaults on whites?

I don’t know. Am I even allowed to talk about it?   Can I say that a surprising number of black people were rude to me my last trip to D.C.?   It is true. It happened.  Dare I speak it?

I recall wondering where it was coming from.  Since the town was adorned with Obama everything it wasn’t hard to think of him as a possible source.  Since I traveled all over the country this year, including recently to Atlanta, and the rudeness was not encountered again -  I suspect it was a DC thing.

Well, more power to them, they can find out the benefits or drawbacks from being rude to people.  And I can handle a little rudeness from folks feeling their oats.  

But I draw the line at gang assaults. 

Benign                               Dangerous

Reporters writing about stuff they know nothing is always good for a chuckle.  I know this because I know a lot about computers, software, guns, and the military. When reporters write about these things they almost always make big mistakes.

Take this article on a perceived increase in militias in the United States. Why would there be more militias now (if there are – and I don’t know if there are)?

If the words sound familiar, there is good reason. It is rhetoric that was typical of the so-called patriot movement of the 1990s, amid similar circumstances: A Democrat, Bill Clinton, was in office. There was heightened interest in gun control legislation. Veterans were returning from the first Gulf War. Elaborate conspiracy theories were spreading.

<sarcasm>Hmmm… those darned pesky VETERANS again.  Why can’t we just animate them when we have a war and then put them in cold storage so they don’t come home and run rampant killing people and joining militias. What can we do about those dangerous VETERANS?</sarcasm>

Hey Reporter… these open militias are just wacky people, similar to eco-kooks, Dead Heads, nudists, and other eccentrics.  The ones you have to worry about will not be in a compound or running about in camouflage. The government has awesome guns and guys eager to use them. The government has air power! Fighting the government with guns is stupid.

The militias you have to worry about will plan, quietly, and then strike precisely at the soft underbelly of government.  Probably via assassination of openly corrupt politicians (can you name a few?) as well as with precise attacks on the infrastructure of government oppression.  I suspect they would go after the fuel of oppression….  our money.

What might that involve?   I suspect they would infiltrate key software engineers within the IRS information systems, and on signal cause mass confusion and distrust of the tax system. Externally and internally they would wage total war on IRS IT infrastructure. The goal would be to sow such distrust that it would cause massive non-compliance.  Would it work?  Sure. Especially so if they had people on the inside.  Nary a gun required – and much more effective.

Our government is big because it has access to our money. Take the money away, it shrinks. Simple.

But hey, this is just me thinking aloud and war gaming what would be effective. Don’t worry… I’m not planning anything personally. I’m not happy with our direction, but my personal situation is fine and requires no revolution.

But it only makes sense that somebody out there is contemplating similar.

Would Al-Qaeda do this?  Absolutely not. This would be HEALTHY for us, and they like our current self-destructive path.   The old adage of not getting in the way of a self-destructing enemy applies to them.

So, Reporter, it isn’t the wacky militias you see that will undermine your socialist utopia.   And if you really care about the country, Reporter, you would focus more on the government’s problems and not on eccentrics running around in the woods.