The struggle--never ending

  

In summer we spend a lot of time reading books on our porch, 

then a short walk to the kitchen for a snack.

 

University of Virginia embarrasses itself

Infecting more minds of mush, The University of Virginia School of Law said Wednesday that Robert Mueller will participate in a class on his infamous investigation, which examined alleged ties between President Donald Trump and Russia, Russia, Russia. He probably won't reveal why, when they knew by the beginning of the investigation, that the whole FISA warrant was fake and illegal. Now if he were going to explain himself for that travesty, it might be a class worth attending. Otherwise, all it will be is an outline of how to drag in people on process crimes, and destroy the people's trust in the system. I don't know why a law school would demean itself by doing this, except he graduated there in 1973.

Biden in Tulsa

I see Biden was beating the racism drum again, promising more federal assistance to black businesses to close the wealth gap. This time he was in Tulsa, a terrible tragedy's 100 year anniversary, but in deaths and dollars hasn't matched the Year of Floyd. Biden's become rich in the business of politics for 45 years, he's contributed to so many of the inequities and "help" of the past, like trying to defeat black candidates, killing black babies in the womb, marginalizing and weakening the black community with years of "help" with promised federal money that bought nothing but votes. Even the current V.P. hand picked for color and sex called him a racist and sexist during the primaries. But, hey, it's worked before, why not use the same strategy to fool Democrats again?

How will police be replaced with social workers?

Perhaps you've wondered how Leftists are going to reimagine policing by sending in social workers? How will gun violence, breaking and entering, domestic violence (often the source of calls to police) and child abuse be handled? Your problem, like mine, may be we're thinking of the traditional social worker we knew years ago. Tsk, tsk. Now it's "radical social workers" who will be saving the homeless, the ex-con, and those others oppressed by white people. Notice, although whites are the majority of those in social dysfunction like crime, homelessness, and family distress, they are also blamed by the researchers and experts (who are also mostly white) for the "system." 

This is a review article called "The opposition." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6145824/ It cites the latest trendy academic sources to lead the unrest, division and violence. Learn the ever evolving language. The key word is "transformative." Transformative potential, transformative consciousness, transformative action. The author cites his own unpublished work and leans heavily on CRT. This article is 4 years old and predates the years of Obama and Trump, but you can see the ground work was prepared decades before for the year of Floyd. This "perfect storm" wasn't an accident. These ideas always spring from academe, not the grass roots or neighborhood.

The Marxist roots of critical race theory

"Critical race theory (CRT) was officially organized in 1989, at the first annual Workshop on Critical Race Theory, though its intellectual origins go back much farther, to the 1960s and ’70s. Its immediate precursor was the critical legal studies (CLS) movement, [which is] an offshoot of Marxist-oriented critical theory. "(Britannica)

"Critical theory (CT) is the Marxist-inspired movement (1920s) in social and political philosophy originally associated with the work of the Frankfurt School (also influential for National Socialism, aka the Nazis). Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, critical theorists maintain that a primary goal of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures through which people are dominated and oppressed.

 
Believing that science, like other forms of knowledge, has been used as an instrument of oppression, they caution against a blind faith in scientific progress, arguing that scientific knowledge must not be pursued as an end in itself without reference to the goal of human emancipation. Since the 1970s, critical theory has been immensely influential in the study of history, law, literature, and the social sciences." (Britannica)

The Germans involved in the Frankfort School left Germany and found positions of power in America's most prestigious universities in the 1930s-1940s from which many of the current problems stem.

New study from Europe suggests evidence Covid19 comes from lab

 An explosive new study claims researchers found 'unique fingerprints' in COVID-19 samples that they say could only have arisen from manipulation in a laboratory

DailyMail.com exclusively obtained the new 22-page paper authored by British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr. Birger Sørensen set to be published in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery

The study showed there's evidence to suggest Chinese scientists created the virus while working on a Gain of Function project in a Wuhan lab

 
Gain of Function research, which was temporarily outlawed in the US, involves altering naturally-occurring viruses to make them more infectious in order to study their potential effects on humans

 
According to the paper, Chinese scientists took a natural coronavirus 'backbone' found in Chinese cave bats and spliced onto it a new 'spike', turning it into the deadly and highly transmissible COVID-19

The researchers, who concluded that COVID-19 'has no credible natural ancestor', also believe scientists reverse-engineered versions of the virus to cover up their tracks

'We think that there have been retro-engineered viruses created,' Dalgleish told DailyMail.com. 'They've changed the virus, then tried to make out it was in a sequence years ago.'

The study also points to 'deliberate destruction, concealment or contamination of data' in Chinese labs and notes that 'scientists who wished to share their findings haven't been able to do so or have disappeared'

 
Until recently, most experts had staunchly denied the origins of the virus were anything other than a natural infection leaping from animals to humans

Earlier this week, Dr. Anthony Fauci defended US funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, saying the $600,000 grant was not approved for Gain of Function research

Chinese scientists created COVID-19 in a lab and then tried to cover their tracks, new study claims | Daily Mail Online

Memorial Day, 2021

 Our terrible storms on Lake Erie have cleared out (Port Clinton was in a state of emergency) and the holiday to memorialize the fallen heroes of our wars has appeared warm and sunny.

I walked to the Wellness Center on Sixth St. (about a mile) and then spent 3 miles on the exercycle.  The cycle had been moved (and maybe replaced, not sure) to a different window, so I couldn't see the pool.  However, I did see the small woods and open lot, and had the fun of watching a young deer nibbling tender shoots for breakfast.  I walked back home through the woods and Seventh Street rather than walk along the lake, the lakefront still being strewn with debris from the storm.  So I had five miles in before 8 a.m.

Then at 10:30 I went to the Memorial Day event on the lawn in front of the pavilion, and enjoyed it immensely.  We are usually not in Lakeside on this holiday, and I found the small town atmosphere with a mayor and city council (from Marblehead), and locals telling about the service of their fathers in WWII quite moving. One man's father had been in the Philippines waiting for the invasion of Japan, when the bomb was dropped.  He said there was much rejoicing--something we don't often hear about that terrible loss of Japanese people, yet it did save thousands of American lives. One woman told of her own father whose 4 year enlistment was up on December 8, 1941, so he was commanded to remain another 4 years. She was born after he returned after the war.  Bob Grim, head of the Lakeside Board also told of visiting Normandy with a 95 year old veteran who had been there when he was 19 years old. 

I sat next to a woman, my age or older, whose name was Nancy.  It was her first time in Lakeside and she was quite charmed by it all.

I took me back over 75 years, probably a year or so after WWII to the Memorial Day service in Mt. Morris.  The rifle salute scared me then as much as today, but I knew my Dad was home. I also thought about Uncle Clare, killed in 1944 in China and how my mom and grandparents grieved. Collecting My Thoughts: Remembering Uncle Clare on Memorial Day

Five characteristics of successful civilizations, guest blogger Michael Smitih

Earlier Michael wrote:  "It is hard for anyone with an open mind to look at the policies and executive orders of the Biden administration, contrast and compare them with those of the Trump administration, and not see the Democrat's total, unrestricted, all-out war on every aspect of America - what she is, who we are and how we live.

You can see the attacks accelerating, the condescension and threats are turning into actions - if they cannot bring us to heel with laws, rules, and regulations, if they can't make every single one of us a dependent beggar, they will make your savings worthless and break the entire country with spending and debt."

That passage made me think about how I once proposed that the most successful and long-lived civilizations of history have the five characteristics in common, that the loss of any one of the five results in decline, loss of more than one results the fall of the civilization. In these civilizations, the overwhelming majority of their members share:

• A common theism,
• A common ideology,
• A common culture,
• A love of the aforementioned, and
• A willingness to defend all the above (with deadly force and to the death, if necessary).

A common theism is important – to be a unified civilization and survive challenges from other, competing civilizations, there must be a unity at a spiritual level. Contrary to what our ruling class and the elite academia believe; the rise of Islamic terrorism is not driven by economic or political motives. Most academics and devotees of secularism deny that Islamic terrorism has a religious and spiritual genesis because they give little or no credence to their own spirituality and are motivated by a form of dialectic materialism rooted in their own fealty to socialism and communism. Jihadis come from all strata of Islamic and Western society, we have seen the wealthy and the poor, the educated and the ignorant become agents of human destruction. Islamists conceptualize this “struggle” as Islam versus the infidels – this is the only dimension they understand. If Western civilization cannot unite behind a single, motivating, spiritual organizing principle, it will fall. The Crusades are often thought of in pejorative terms but in more visceral times, the Islamic threat was far more obvious and therefore imminently more visible.

A common ideology (and by ideology, I mean a concept of freedom, liberty, and the governance necessary to preserve them) is also necessary. A common understanding of the political process, the legal environment and a broad understanding of the governing structure is essential. To avoid an arbitrary and capricious nature of savagery, people must be able to predict how their interactions will affect others and what the reaction from those “others” will be. This commonality must also be as minimal as possible – for it to bind all the civilization, it must be simple and clear enough to be understood by the most common of men in that civilization.

Like ideology, a common culture is required – and this does not mean that it is unchanging or without variation, just that it is shared across the civilization as new, unharmful and enhancing aspects of other varying cultures are assimilated (and assimilated is the key point). Important aspects providing strength to a civilization are the stability and predictability brought about by the common bonds between its people – Rousseau called it a social compact or contract. It is the mutual understanding of how things are going to work in society and what are the expectations of, and duties between, members of the civilization.

It goes without saying that the members of a given civilization must love it – that is to be totally and completely devoted to it. Members must value liberty, the systems that protect it, the culture that drives it and the spirituality that preserves it. Absent that level of devotion, the final aspect of defense is impossible - the willingness to defend the civilization with force and with the risk of one’s own life.
For better or worse, it seems clear that Western civilization has witnessed varying degrees of success in the intermixing of these five characteristics. It is a personal belief that America’s success has resulted from

 a) Christianity, 

b) the classical liberalism of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, 

c) the unique American ability to assimilate the best of the world’s cultures and create a singular American culture, 

d) the nationalism and patriotism of American exceptionalism and 

e) the willingness to expend its treasure and give the ultimate sacrifice of American lives to defend the ideals incorporated in these five characteristics and to provide the opportunity for the rest of the world to benefit from them as well.

America’s decline is not an inevitability; it is a choice – we are choosing to violate the characteristics of success (or at least we are not stopping those who are).

Every single one of these five characteristics are under active (and passive) attack. Given that the failure of one set us on a path to destruction, it is not a stretch to imagine that multiple violations of all five will spell our end just as it has the great civilizations of antiquity.

Biden wants $2 Trillion for infrastructure

Who owns U.S. Infrastructure? Not the federal government. So with a $2 Trillion request from Biden for something it doesn't own, where is the money going? State and local governments and the private sector own 97% of the nation’s nondefense infrastructure, and they fund 94% of it. This is just a "green new deal" tax. In other words, a pay back to unions, oligarchs and party hacks for getting Biden into office.

Who Owns U.S. Infrastructure? | Cato Institute

Dave Ramsey says Millionaires are made, not born.

79% of millionaires in the United States didn't inherit ANY money.

Our team conducted the largest study of millionaires EVER. The top 3 careers of the over 10,000 millionaires we talked to were, 

1. Engineer 

2. Accountant 

3. Teacher. 

They became millionaires through consistent investing, avoiding debt like the plague, and smart spending. No lottery tickets. No inheritances. No six-figure incomes.

You have what it takes to build wealth and leave a financial legacy. Stay the course. You got this!

A look at Lakeside's weather for the holiday week-end

I read this on Facebook.  Temps have dropped (Thursday evening).

"For those packing for the weekend - here's a quick heads up that the weather starts off  HORRIBLE! Friday will be wet and cold and windy, with steady rain all morning turning to showers in the afternoon. High temps barely above 60 (so plenty of room at the pool.  Winds will be blowing steadily out of the northeast all day, turning quite strong by Friday evening with gusts > 35mph at times. So no dock walks either .

Saturday will still be chilly but drier with some sunshine (although the NWS still says there is a chance of showers until 2 pm, I just don't see that as much of a threat after sunrise at the latest.) Highs in the 60s.

Back to near 70 with sunshine by Sunday and well into the 70s and dry Memorial Day too."

When lie dresses like truth

The Lie said to the Truth, "Let's take a bath together, the well water is very nice. The Truth, still suspicious, tested the water and found out it really was nice. So they got naked and bathed. But suddenly, the Lie leapt out of the water and fled, wearing the clothes of the Truth.

The Truth, furious, climbed out of the well to get her clothes back. But the World, upon seeing the naked Truth, looked away, with anger and contempt. Poor Truth returned to the well and disappeared forever, hiding her shame. Since then, the Lie runs around the world, dressed as the Truth, and society is very happy...

Because the world has no desire to know the naked Truth.

Painting: Truth Coming Out Of The Well, Jean-Léon Gérome, 1896.

What is the Palestinian state?

Posted at the Thomas Sowell Foundation:

“A crash course on history of PALESTINIAN STATE:

1. Before Israel, there was a British mandate, not a Palestinian state
2. Before the British Mandate, there was the Ottoman Empire, not a Palestinian state.
3. Before the Ottoman Empire, there was the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt, not a Palestinian state.
4. Before the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt, there was the Ayubid Arab-Kurdish Empire, not a Palestinian state.
5. Before the Ayubid Empire, there was the Frankish and Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, not a Palestinian state.
6. Before the Kingdom of Jerusalem, there was the Umayyad and Fatimid empires, not a Palestinian state.
7. Before the Umayyad and Fatimid empires, there was the Byzantine empire, not a Palestinian state.
8. Before the Byzantine Empire, there were the Sassanids, not a Palestinian state.
9. Before the Sassanid Empire, there was the Byzantine Empire, not a Palestinian state.
10. Before the Byzantine Empire, there was the Roman Empire, not a Palestinian state.
11. Before the Roman Empire, there was the Hasmonean state, not a Palestinian state.
12. Before the Hasmonean state, there was the Seleucid, not a Palestinian state.
13. Before the Seleucid empire, there was the empire of Alexander the Great, not a Palestinian state.
14. Before the empire of Alexander the Great, there was the Persian empire, not a Palestinian state.
15. Before the Persian Empire, there was the Babylonian Empire, not a Palestinian state.
16. Before the Babylonian Empire, there were the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, not a Palestinian state.
17. Before the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, there was the Kingdom of Israel, not a Palestinian state.
18. Before the kingdom of Israel, there was the theocracy of the twelve tribes of Israel, not a Palestinian state.
19. Before the theocracy of the twelve tribes of Israel, there was an agglomeration of independent Canaanite city-kingdoms, not a Palestinian state.
20. Actually, in this piece of land there has been everything, EXCEPT A PALESTINIAN STATE.”

A day of small pleasures, May 25

Beautiful day in Lakeside with a walk through the neighborhoods to observe the new builds and remodeling, and lunch on the deck.  The internet down for 5 hours, just as were admiring all the work our daughter had done to add new features to our Roku and get everything up and running. We are planning to try out the Slack House historic cafe this evening. It's named for an old residence/former boarding house that was removed in the early 60s when the mentality was tear it down and build something new. Now it's in the building that replaced it. Each generation and director has fresh ideas--some work, and some don't. I visited the new archives site today, in the location of the old "Shadetree" a store of many evolving tastes.  I will miss the former archivist, Dakota. I also visited the Memorial Garden on my morning walk where Phil's ashes were placed last August. I can find the spot because of the dwarf iris which bloom early, are hardy and carefree, and the young oak shading the spot. It was lovely and quiet at sunrise.

First day back at the lake May 22, 2021

We ran into the usual detour on Rt. 4—but every year in a different place, so we get to see something new. This time we were routed through Bellvue on 269. Many people always take that route, but it is 6-7 miles longer. More scenic, however.

Sitting on the porch last evening we saw and talked to as many people in one evening as we would in a week or two in Columbus. Scott and Carol our neighbors next door, Ross our neighbor across the street, both Bob and Martha neighbors half a block south of us, Tom and Lori almost neighbors 2 blocks, Jon and Katie neighbors one block north, and we saw Don, a former neighbor in Columbus who has moved further to the east of us here, out jogging while we ate dinner on the deck. Today I ran into Steve, our neighbor who is a retired antique dealer and getting ready for next week’s sale. Stopped at the Patio Restaurant and bought 4 donuts and saw the owner’s son. Walked to the little grocery store and saw Ray, and got a free cupcake from his granddaughter’s graduation party last night. Yes, there are many people around this week-end.

One block to the east of us is Lynn Avenue, and we found out 3 male neighbors died over the winter. One was going through an incredible remodeling—turning a very modest cottage into something quite spectacular—even moved the house briefly and put in a basement. Our properties almost touch although we’ve only met them at one party when Scott and Carol were celebrating their 50th. So now his widow is left to see this through without him, and he was only 55. Last year it was our street. Our son Phil died, Jan’s niece whom I remember from when she visited as a child, Jon and Katie’s daughter in law, Claude’s wife Brenda across the street, and another neighbor we always spoke to as she walked her dog, but didn't know her name.

Patent protection

Is Biden discouraging patent protection? "The announcement that the United States might waive intellectual property rights could stymie the discovery and deployment of new vaccines; returning us to the same vulnerable position we occupied in the closing days of 2019. All the wiser and yet, somehow, not. While I remain firmly in the camp that the patent system needs to be updated and reformed, we must appreciate that patents do indeed provide an incentive for innovation."

Unintended Consequences: The Risks of Vacating COVID-19 Vaccine Patents | Technology Networks

Catalog browsing--Uline

I just love sitting down with the 800+ page Uline catalog. Oh sure, you can read it on line, but it brings back the memories of the old Sears and Roebuck, or the Montgomery Ward catalogs. Mom would give us the old one for craft and paper doll projects when the new one arrived. (Yes, and in the 40s some still used them for t.p.) The real name of the family is Uihlein, but it's been simplified for customers. Everything from pegboards to zippered partitions, from key holders to trash cans, from stretch wrap to label guns, from respirators to wall clocks. And the packages and tape to ship them. They've got boxes to ship your art, guitar, unicycle, dishes, wardrobe, wine, and drum set.

I've written about this catalog before. Collecting My Thoughts: Enjoying the Uline Catalog

Collecting My Thoughts: Thank you, Uihlein family

Liz, the president, writes interesting tidbits. In 2019 she compared Texas and California where they have companies, and California didn't look too good because of taxes, regulations, cost of living and gas prices. This year it's China, Covid and U.S. policy. She is very pro-American, and admits it's hard to compete with China, although about 20% of their products come from China. She says publicly held companies are too concerned about their stock share price and don't invest enough in new equipment and up date their plants. She liked Trump's support of American companies, and his "America First" philosophy. She wants a clearly defined policy because Democrats are trying to undo the lower taxes, increase in tariffs, Trump's new trade deals, and stopping the endless wars which were bad for security and the economy.

She writes, "America sorely needs a coherent, largely united trade policy. If we don't get this done, this century belongs to the Chinese."

You go girl--you make more sense than most of Congress.

Joe Biden mixes family with fuel

In 2004 and 2008 Joe Biden told conflicting stories about coal mining in his family, and now he's done it again at the Ford Electric Vehicle Center in May 2021. Actually, I don't care what his grandfather did, just like I don't care if your great great grandparents who were freed black slaves, owned slaves themselves as many did. I do know the media would have taken Trump to the woodshed for a whipping, if he'd flip flopped on important union and fossil fuel issues.

Flashback: Joe Biden Lied About Family’s Coal Mining Ties (breitbart.com)

Biden delivers remarks at Ford Electric Vehicle Center – Whatfinger News' General Dispatch

Supporting the Democrats on abortion

On Resurrection of the Dead day you'll be asked about your support of the party that has killed millions of helpless babies, because Jesus IS coming back. He said there are sheep and there are goats. He has said some go to Hell and some go to Heaven. By their own actions he'll know who has done what. Matt 25 makes that clear.  You've said you don't approve, yet you support the Democrats and all the media that push abortion for any reason and any stage of life. No one gets elected as a Democrat if they don't support the euphemism "Women's health," or "Women's right to choose." Pelosi and Biden defy their church's teaching, yet you support them. And the Bishops who look away will have to answer to Jesus some day.

According to CDC in a decade 143 babies were born alive during an abortion out of about 9 million. Is 143 struggling, squirming live babies left to die OK with you? If you include the previous decade the number is 362. What number is good for you? And those 8 or 9 month aborted developed babies, not born alive whose brains were sucked out or limbs sliced off in utero so they wouldn't be "born alive" and therefore legal. Their body parts are sold. Do you go along with Democrats on that? If you read through the Gospels, Jesus can ask some really tough questions. I don't think "I don't vote" or "I didn't approve" is going to get you past that judge.

Is the First Amendment bonkers?

I think the conservative news media are being too hard on Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, for his bonkers comment about the First Amendment. We've got Big Tech shutting down our First Amendment Rights claiming they can do it because they aren't "government." They behave like a public utility then claim their first amendment rights to shut down a sitting president and his 75,000,000 supporters. You've got to admit, that sounds bonkers to all of us who aren't Democrats. We've got governors declaring our churches as non-essential, while allowing tattoo parlors to stay open. That's bonkers. Our freedom of assembly went right out the window at the say so of minor government civil service employees in departments of health. That's bonkers, too, so let's give Harry a break if he finds our First Amendment has no teeth, no consistency and is being tossed about as a political football.