Bill's Comments

I have been reading an excellent history on the ten years preceding the Civil War and the war itself. The political and social issues of those days are frighteningly analogous to those of our current society. A number of issues could seemingly replace slavery as the cause celebre, but right now it is the issue of who is in charge of our lives, the government or ourselves and the resulting financial disaster.

It is entirely conceivable that the red states will eventually call a Constitutional convention or will call for succession leaving the blue states to their unsupportable policies. Should that occur it could indeed start a civil war, but I would not count on the survival of the blue states. The red states are who they are pillaging. When a government dominated by a political elite not answerable to the people continues to do as it pleases, the final answer may be revolution if the course does not change.

For almost as long as I can remember there have been arguments against the electoral college, which gives the smaller states a more than proportional say in our national election for President. There is a reason for that. The Founding Fathers realized that straight majorities can be tyrannical, and they were right, as witness the passage of Obamacare.

Now we find out that Massachusetts is following the lead of five other states and determining that the votes of its electors must be cast for the candidate with the greatest popular vote, not the candidate the people of Massachusetts voted for, and certainly not the candidate the elector would consider the best candidate.

The reasons for the electoral college are now lost to most people because of the failure to properly teach history and civics. Students are no longer taught what the Constitution says and why. The reasons given for promoting this change are disingenuous at the least and most likely an outright lie.

Supporters of the change say that the current Electoral College system is confusing and causes candidates to focus unduly on a handful of battleground states.

The dynamics of pure majority rule mean that candidates will only focus on a few large, safe states, knowing that they will control the vote. What will happen is that we will become a permanently blue-state country, as the total votes of the red states will never equal those of the blue, whereas their total electoral votes would.

This is a profoundly fundamental change to our entire electoral process and needs to be stopped.

This news item from ABC News is worrisome to chilling.

it wasn't his daredevil stunt that has the 25-year-old staff sergeant for the Maryland Air National Guard facing the possibility of 16 years in prison. For that, he was issued a speeding ticket. It was the video that Graber posted on YouTube one week later -- taken with his helmet camera -- of a plainclothes state trooper cutting him off and drawing a gun during the traffic stop near Baltimore.

In early April, state police officers raided Graber's parents' home in Abingdon, Md. They confiscated his camera, computers and external hard drives. Graber was indicted for allegedly violating state wiretap laws by recording the trooper without his consent. ...

Ford's lawyer, James Green, called videotaping "probably the most effective way to protect citizens against police officers who exaggerate or lie."

"Judges and juries want to believe law enforcement," he said. "They want to believe police officers and unless you have credible evidence to contradict police officers, it's often very difficult to get judges or juries to believe the word of a citizen over a police officer."

In Palm Beach County, Fla., Greenacres resident Peter Ballance, 63, who has Asperger's syndrome and has to record conversations to help his memory, settled a civil lawsuit for $100,000 last year. In August 2005, police officers tackled and arrested Ballance for refusing to turn off his tape recorder. ...

"Prosecution is only the most extreme end of a continuum of police and official intimidation and there's a lot of intimidation that goes on and has been going on short of prosecution," he said. "It's far more frequent for an officer to just say, 'You can't record or give me your camera or give me your cell phone and if you don't I'm going to arrest you. Very few people want to test the veracity of that threat and so comply. It's much more difficult to document, much more prevalent and equally improper."

When police resist being recorded in the execution of their duties, one can assume they are stepping over the line of permissible behavior. That this is becoming a pattern worthy of a major news item indicates that police abuse is on the rise.

There was a time when police were considered respected and honorable. With the difficulties of their jobs being made even worse by laws favoring criminals, not just the innocent, it is understandable, though not right, that they would attempt to compensate in other ways. A police state is the result of failure to provide respect for police and to properly administer justice.

Richard Fernandez at his famous blog "Belmont Club" discusses the Obama chances in the fall and ends with this quote:

And this is the writing that was inscribed: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, and PHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the matter: MENE, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; TEKEL, you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting; PERES, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians

Versions of this are always going around, but this is the best one I have seen.

Obamacare, Cap and Trade, illegal immigration, deficit spending, terrorism, and castration of the space program are all part of the paybacks to the boomer generation and its parents. As they now face a future with rationed medical care, high taxes, reduced pensions and income, and the possibility of dying in a terrorist attack here in the US, they need to understand that this is what they asked for.

Though the roots of today's problems really started 160 years ago [a topic for another post], the major creation of them started about 80 years ago, when the country first bought into the pie-in-the-sky of FDR, and continued to believe the myths about his saving the country, long after historians and economists had debunked them. FDR created the illusion that the government could spend the country into recovery. Never mind that everytime the government meddled things got worse and they had to back off. The boomer parents remember FDR as saving the country.

After WW II, the boomer's parents remembered how hard life was during the depression and didn't want their kids to have to be deprived. Life did become easier during the fifties when they had the boomer generation, and between easier living, urbanization, and Dr. Spock, the boomers were raised with relatively little discipline, little necessity to work to survive, allowances and privilege. Additionally the parents paid little or no attention to what their children were being taught in school, trusting the schools to still be the same institutions that they attended. This last was only partly true, and under the surface, all the various forms of educational baloney were taking root.

The first payback was when the boomers became the children of the sixties, foul-mouthed, loud-mouthed, equating license with freedom. They actually believed the socialist crap they were handed in both high school and college. Mostly they thought whatever they wanted was to come to them, and that they should have the power to run things and destroy. The less obvious sixties children joined unions and believed that whatever they could get from their employers was deserved, under the belief in class warfare premises. They had not learned any economics in school. The ones that became managers simply thought the increased costs could be passed on, also ignoring economics and productivity.

The prolonged economic progress from the sixties to the end of the century hid the consequences of their actions from them. Regardless of warnings they could point to the Cassandras and say it's not happening.

By the time the boomer's kids were in school, the utopians had taken over social studies and were rapidly invading the science curriculum. The parents were taught how Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations was a failed dream, when in actuality, the Senate really had more sense. The parents were also taught that the UN was to be what the League of Nations could not become. So the lions, the lambs, the predators and prey, and the suckers to pay for it, all came together. The lions and the predators didn't have to chase their lunch, and got paid for it at the same time. Peace was presented, not as the result of winning wars, but as something that would avoid war. That peace at any price was to be the goal, and peace came to be defined as the absence of overt war, with no concerns for rights or justice.

At the same time multiculturalism reared its ugly head. Not the kind of multiculturalism that enjoys other people's clothing, songs, and activities, but the nasty, vicious, subversive kind that refuses to judge right from wrong, calling all cultures as equally valid. Along with it came political correctness--never say or do anything that might offend someone, unless it is the unfavored ones (Jews, Christians, Caucasian Males). Politics became the power wars of blocks, not the preferences of individual voters. Ideological dogma and cant replaced principle and platform.

By this point, it wasn't a matter of the parents trusting the schools, they simply didn't care as long as their child got into college. Grade inflation led to the the inanity of 14 Valedictorians in a class of 200. The only way that happens is when percentage grades are converted into letters. Where before it was possible to distinguish the best, next best and so forth, now all these poor little egos would be protected by having a meaningless distinction. Instead of being the top student, the best that could be gotten was in the top x%.

Even worse the content of those A's was meaningless. Political science was either non-existent or turned into ideological indoctrination. Science had become a celebration of diversity and the memorization of facts, not the requirement evaluate data and form conclusions, or to understand the principles by which things worked.

Politics for fifty years had nothing to do with what was best for the country, but with how much money could one state steal from the others. The grand champion of this just died last week, Robert Byrd. (I've ridden on one of his roads to nowhere, and seen an even more elaborate one under construction.) Along with the emphasis on getting with both hands was the idea that anything could be paid for by taxing the rich. This was a double failure in teaching in the schools, first because they were never taught that it requires riches to create the means to riches, and second because they had been taught that personal wealth was available cash, not invested money. With the failure to properly teach science, came the gullibility to accept any preposterous alarmist crap and believe it could be prevented by passing laws.

Just as they got whatever they wanted from their parents, so people thought they could get whatever they wanted from the government. Those in power loved it. Whether they delivered or not, they had the power.

So there you have it. We got what we asked for, whether we thought we were asking or not. It is a bit late to learn that there are no mulligans in life, everything is always for keeps. It is too late to do over, but not too late to undo, and do differently. Let's hope our attention span is long enough to get it done.

In a very accurate and politically incorrect academic discussion with extensive commentary, a very new and interesting perspective on President Obama is created.

Pres. Obama has made a recess appointment of his Health Care "Czar." [It never fails to amaze me that in the US, the supposed Land of the Free, the President's henchmen are labeled with the term for the ultimate in arbitrary dictatorship. The truth outing despite itself?] Every article notes that he is considered and expert on the rationing of health care and admires the British system for its methods of rationing care.

....just one man acting as God.

While on my excellent adventure to West Virginia, I purchased the book, Coal Trains: The History of Railroading and Coal in the United States, by Brian Solomon and Patrick Yough, Voyageur Press, 2009, (list price, $37.00). This is an excellent book for the railfan that knows some history, but needs more general background on some of the main themes in railroading. For those who have a tremendous wealth of knowledge, garnered over years of reading, this may provide a good organizing structure for that knowledge, especially for coal roads and the coal industry.

The focus is on how the railroads and coal were, and are, in a symbiotic relationship. In the late Nineteenth Century railroads often owned some of the mines they serviced. Mine ownership of railroads seems to be a Twentieth Century phenomenon. And if it weren't for the availability of coal, the tremendous growth of rail would never had occurred, not even oil could provide the convenience and concentrated energy of coal for producing steam.

The book is a class production. It is coffee-table format, with heavy glossy pages, and quite a few pictures. However, the book is not an excuse to publish pictures, there being plenty of well-written text to go with them. The only deficiency in my opinion was insufficient maps, especially in the Pennsyvania coal-fields. The interactions, overlapping and competition really need to be understood in the geography of the area. I would strongly recommend reading a good book devoted to the coal industry as a companion. It provides additional knowledge that, though not critical to understanding, can greatly enrich one's understanding.

I was also impressed with the book list in the back flap of the jacket. Voyageur Press appears to publish quite a lot of interesting titles.

"Purifying the World: What the New Radical Ideology Stands for" is the title of an article in the journal Orbis published by Foreign Policy Research Institute. The author, Ernest Sternberg, teaches at the University at Buffalo, Stte University of New York. In this article, Professor Sternberg presents a convincing picture that the apparently disparate leftist, liberal, environmentalist, climatist, jihadist, etc., are becoming enclosed under an implied to explicit ideological umbrella that has as its goal completely remaking the world into a totally different place where all of their fondest dreams come true.

What is most important about this paper is that Professor Sternberg shows that like all other ideologies of its type, it is leading to tyranny, not the supposed freedom that they claim they want. It is long, (26 pages) but not a difficult read. The only thing to watch out for as you read it is his summarizing the stance of the these ideologists from their viewpoint. It is not endorsement but an attempt to most accurately describe what their goals are.

Here is the link. Real life will provide the exam.

My friend Kevin Kim posted a note on his run-in with hornets while cutting the grass. It reminded me of an experience I had years ago with bumble bees.

Many years ago, about thirty-five, I moved into a garage apartment. It was a very nice one bedroom over a two-car garage. One side of the garage had a door and the other did not. I decided that the apartment would be much warmer in winter if both sides of the garage were closed, so I bought some wood with which to construct a closure.

I'm all ready to start construction when I notice a pile of old car mats in the middle of the floor. I start to poke it with a rake, and an ominous buzz comes forth. Watching it for a while, I see bumble bees flying in and out of the mess. I then decide I need to declare war.

Understand that I am afraid of bees, wasps, yellow jackets, hornets, and any other arthropod that stings or bites, yes, including spiders. So I plan a campaign. Having been an agricultural chemist in a previous life, I know that Diazonon is extremely deadly for bees. In fact that is a warning on the container. So I buy a can of Diazonon, a pump sprayer (the old flit-gun type) and prepare for attack.

I first attend to my armor. A large grocery sack with holes cut out that just match my glasses goes over my head. I wear a heavy winter coat, and work gloves. The rest was my work pants and steel-toed shoes. I advance on the nest, and start spraying. Bees start coming out and swarming at me. I am feeling pretty good that I am protected when one finds a hole smaller than a dime in the end of my gloves and nails me. That was the only wound I receive, but it was memorable. At the time I didn't care, but imagine what I must have looked like to the neighbors--with a paper bag over my head, gloves, and a heavy winter coat-in the middle of July.

I waited until near sunset, and looked in on my garage. There were a smattering of dead bees on the floor, and no buzzing when I poked the nest. I hauled the nest out onto the alley with a rake, fired up my blow torch, and set it on fire. It burned quite well, and when the cover burned off, I saw for myself that bumble bees do not make combs for storage, they make pots about a cubic inch or slightly more in capacity. The memory is still vivid.

The rest of the summer was uneventful and the next tenant had a well-winterized apartment to live in, as I moved out at the end of the summer. But a strong lesson remains: Nature is fierce and persistant. The bees were not intimidated by a monster thousands of times larger than themselves. They attacked without any thought of survival, and did score damage. If I were not protected I would have been driven off.