Right As Usual

This bad.   Found on Cold Fury.

Today's post covers a wide range of topics: Oil, the Election, and the Economy The always-great Chicago Bois has a LONG post dealing with - among other things - oil, and how the Fracking Revolution will ALSO change our politics. President Ronald Reagan colluded with the Saudis to collapse the Soviet Union through low oil prices. This extended fracking technique means, given the political will, the USA doesn’t need the Saudis to do the same to Russia, Iran, Venezuela… and the Saudis! (Long term, the Saudis need $100/barrel oil to support their current population.) One of my email contacts made this Schadenfreude-rich statement: “ Prince Mohammad bin Salman is reported to have placed a great emphasis on Saudi domestic non-oil economic development last fall , after having been appointed as the country’s Gorbachev earlier in the year. “ POLITICAL ECONOMY AFTER BIG OIL The domestic and geopolitical implications of an energy-independent USA are huge and profound. Since I’ve already touch...

I was fooling around with the theme today - I had been unhappy with it for some time.  I think I've got a basic set up that I can live with for a while.

First, a little Etta James! And, now - the moment I've been waiting for! The House on Wednesday passed a bill that would make it easier to fire employees at the Veterans Affairs Department. Despite a veto threat from the White House and widespread opposition from federal employee advocates, lawmakers approved in a 256-170 vote the 2015 VA Accountability Act , which would give the VA secretary much more flexibility to demote and fire corrupt or poor-performing employees, not just top officials. The bill essentially would expand to the entire VA workforce the authority of the 2014 Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act, which made it easier to get rid of senior executives engaged in wrongdoing at the department. But WAIT!  That's not ALL! Something I've LONG said should be done: The chairman of the top House investigative panel introduced a measure Wednesday to censure IRS Commissioner John Koskinen -- and remove him from office without a pension -- in the latest b...

In my previous post, I mentioned that a one-day boycott of Facebook might be useful to prod them into realizing the numbers of people that they are dismissing through their biased pushing of Leftist News. I decided to start the action myself.  Therefore,  No FB  is a word doc.  Feel free to copy, turn into a picture format, whatever.    

Actually, it started a long time ago, with the fringe monthlies that didn't kowtow to the Established Thinking.  There have always been those, largely mimeographed sheets of paper staples together, circulated by the convicted. Don't know what a mimeograph is?  Ask your granny - maybe your great-grandpappy. Or, just Google it. The Samizdats did it, even earlier, with their revolutionary documents re-typed, from one to another.  Think of the work it would take to reproduce a book by re-typing it, or copying the book into longhand. I teach American kids for whom cut-and-paste is too much work. The trend accelerated with the introduction of fax machines.  What, they're lame technology?  Tell that to the Chinese youth that spearheaded the Tiananmen Square revolution.  They did that armed largely with fax machines to spread the word. Oh, sorry, you probably CAN'T tell them - they are dead, in prison, or cowed into submission.  A few are still under house arrest or living abro...

I'm living in SC, surrounded by "Bible Christians" and an ever-increasing number of pagans - those who were never baptized nor exposed to Christian ideas. As a Catholic, I do spend some time explaining that: Yes, Catholics ARE Christians No, we don't "worship" Mary - we do hold her under higher regard than most people, as befits her life on Earth No, we don't blindly follow whatever the Pope and the priests tell us to do - I imagine that Fr. Fabio and Fr. Paul in my church would laugh hysterically at that concept We do believe in knowing Jesus Christ - and God and the Holy Spirit - on a personal basis, but we haven't said the MAGIC words that allow Fundamentalists to accept that We DO read the Bible - not only the many, including me, that are currently on a journey through the entire Bible, but also - because in a 3-year cycle, we hear during Mass just about the entire Bible (well, except for the litany of the Begats) Yes, we are forgiven...

I was reading Fred on Everything (he is interesting - an ex-cop with a jaundiced view of some of them, an expatriate living in Mexico, who contradicts many of the stereotypes about Mexicans, etc.), and he posted on a hot topic - police presence in Black neighborhoods.  His take is - refreshing. Another column of his that is worth reading is his analysis of how America is already in the dumps - BEFORE Trump.  We've already been taken over by special interests, and no longer live in a democracy (or republic). If, like me, you want to return to a time of more freedom, pre-Federal-government-runs-everything, we might want to start planning how to take the Feds down - NOT with warfare, but with resistance, tactical refusal to give them our money, and state-by-state resistance.  I'm NOT talking revolution - that's a dead idea.  Instead, let's work incrementally, to chip away at Leftist strongholds. Some starting points: Stop sending them money.  Find work that can be done...