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User Journal

Journal Journal: Oligarchy sucks 8

Good article:

When our current President was elected, many progressives saw the dawning of a new epoch, a more egalitarian and more just Age of Obama. Instead we have witnessed the emergence of the Age of Oligarchy.
The outlines of this new epoch are clear in numerous ways. There is the diminished role for small business, greater concentration of financial assets, and a troubling decline in home ownership. On a cultural level, there is a general malaise about the prospect for upward mobility for future generations.

Read the whole thing.
I know there are some on here who like to equate this oligarchy with "conservative" politics, though I disagree with that entirely.
Past all that, though, what matters is what we're going to DO about it.
If Mississippi teaches us anything, I submit that http://conventionofstates.com/ is the way to go. Forget DC, and its Progressive overlords.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Why capitalism works 66

A better model of the human condition:

The case for free enterprise, for competition, is that it's the only system that will keep the capitalists from having too much power. There's the old saying, "If you want to catch a thief, set a thief to catch him." The virtue of free enterprise capitalism is that it sets one businessman against another and it's a most effective device for control.

Anybody who buys the con that "government" == "virtue" is a fool.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Chronicle: Listening to MP3s in the car (2)

After searching for an MP3 player on the car i bought a cheap player and a harness. After finding a howto video onYoutube i went ahead and installed the radio.

I lost two screws during the installation. The previous radio had a piece of metal that attached to the radio and to the car, each side with two screws. I lost one of each. How? I'm glad you asked. The attach-to-the-car screws were too hard to unscrew with the Phillips screwdriver, so i used another screwdriver that i got at Dollar Tree to go around the sides of the screw. That worked. The first came out nicely. The second did too, except (for some unknown reason) i stopped in the middle and continued by hand, which ended in a lost screw.

The attach-to-the-radio screws were simple. I had this great idea to attach the piece to the new radio. There was only space for one screw, but who cares, one is better than none. So, i tried installing the radio with dangling metal piece in the car. Wondering why i could not find the piece from under the dash, it hit me that the radio, being half the length, would not reach the bar. Duh! Seriously. I knew it was half the size, i even took pictures of it being half the size. But it still didn't dawn on me that half as long meant it would not reach to the same distance. Anyway, upon removal of the radio the screw fell. I now have two screws loose in the car. During the installation, when taking one of the panels off, a Canadian nickel fell out of a drawer which i dutifully put back. Too bad it wasn't a dollar. Had it been a dollar you could say there's a loony in my car with a couple of screws loose. Come to think of it, you can say that now anyway. Hmm... if i listen to music, we could work tune-ey into that pun. And yes, the former was probably the main impetus of writing this JE. I admit it.

The USB worked. Well, i thought it worked until it started playing the same mp3 over and over again. So, i re-downloaded LoTR, this time including The Silmarillion by another reader. Once at it, i downloaded The Hobbit by the same reader, in preparation for an upcoming trip. On a side note, i realized these are actually for sale at audible:

Unfortunately, those are expensive. LoTR itself would be over $100. Being i liked the recording so much, and now i now it is still for sale, i would think of paying for it. But not at that price! I would rather not have listened to it at all for that, or just use some cheaper. So, what will i do for The Hobbit? But, i digress.

I tried listening to the mp3s. Previously, i deleted all mp3s except the appendix, which is what i am up to. The player played the first one over and over again never advancing to the next file. So, last night, not finding LoTR on my computer, i downloaded LoTR (including the Silmarillion) and The Hobbit, and put them on the USB (i deleted the earlier files forgetting they now existed in .Trashes) as there is no reason to split the mp3s anymore. On the way to office it played the introduction to the appendix over and over. Using next or the +/-10 didn't help. Random did, but only while random was selected. Deselecting it made it repeat what file it was on (unless it was the appendix that it played). Perhaps this is due to having more than one level of sub-folders.

I really need to leave hidden files showing on my mac. Now to delete .fseventsd, .Spotlight-V100, .Trashes, ._.Trashes, ._.DS_Store and .DS_Store from the usb key. Done. The next test will be on the ride home.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Interesting 12

Jay Carney: I Never Told A Lie
I am seriously interested, as an intellectual matter, just what the man's definition of 'lie' is.
There are national security matters that are off the table--got it.
Then there is carrying out orders--understood.
I guess the only way I can buy Carney's line is if the scope of the statement pertains solely to any matters of personal opinion into which he ventured while on the job.
User Journal

Journal Journal: why shouldn't it work both ways 20

Stossel's show was irritating tonight. The topic was Conservatism vs. Libertarianism. As a Libertarian, Stossel misrepresented Conservatism, and various Conservatives were on appealing to the same things Lefties appeal to; the greater good, majority norms.

Stossel said he used to be a Liberal, so that explains enough of an inability to think straight about things to be able to be a Libertarian. But it's shocking how Conservatives seem blithely unaware that effectively saying it's okay to legislate morality, means then the other side can legislate its morality on us. (And where we're only for it in certain cases, the Left is for doing it all but a few cases. I.e. it's a patently dangerous idea, and used vastly more against us than in what we favor.)

I might journal about some of the topics later (maybe if I can find a refresher of my memory of it on youtube), but the show spurred a chain of thinking on a particular topic that led me to the following.

Let's say I'm a landlord, and I'm also bigoted against homosexuals (which I am, but not in the following way), and refused to rent to them. Most people would say the government should step in and force me to rent to them. I.e. Despite homosexuals offending my sensibilities, I should be forced to associate with them anyways. Because otherwise they could potentially have a hard time finding a rental place to live.

Now let's say that instead I'm a landlord, and I don't refuse to rent to them, but I'm a very outspoken disparager of them in the region, and the homosexual community knows it. And let's say the homosexual community represents a significant %-age of the region. What if I'm having trouble keeping the complex full all the time? Should the government force some homosexuals to live in my complex and pay me rent, despite my offending their sensibilities?

And what about quotas. Lefties say that if a community is 10% Black, then roughly 10% of the programming jobs in that community must be filled with Blacks. Else there's racial inequities.

Well janitorial jobs, at least around here, seem to be disproportionately filled by Hispanics. Should the government tell Black people in that area that 10% of them need to switch careers into the custodial arts?

It seems like either quotas are a good idea or they aren't. And it seems like if it's good to force association between parties when one desires not to do so, then it's good.

If it's one thing I can respect Libertarians for, it's at least they're consistent*

*Well, except for their being pro-choice, which flies squarely in the face of being for individual rights.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Like so much of the baseless crap happening in the comments 20

The New Republic article is titled, "The Unelectable Whiteness of Scott Walker," with the sub-heading, "A Journey Through the Poisonous World That Produced a Republican Star."

This is completely insane. I have followed Walker's career for a long time, and there is nothing in his record that can plausibly be given a racial tinge. What does TNR have on him? He supports voter ID legislation. That's it. Of course, every Republican politician supports voter ID, as do a lot of Democratic pols. As for voters, I believe most polls show around 70% support. All of which is to say that the New Republic's smear is pathetic, made up out of whole cloth.

I'm moving to a theory that carpet bombing with falsehood is all the Progressives have left. A good, but painful data point on the road to recovery.

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