Month: June 2017

I was reading this treatment of the rules concerning Sabbath: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activities_prohibited_on_Shabbat

I would have been happy in such a world.  I am disputatious by nature, and love complex systems.  And I do feel I have been a Jew in at least one life, perhaps more.  I feel I have had many lives.  There is much within me.

But the point I wanted to make is that I have been experimenting with making Saturday the day of rest, and I have realized that it makes a WORLD of sense. I  have been working hard recently at my day job, and come Friday I am physically and emotionally worn down.  Calling it quits from 5 or 6 PM Friday through Saturday, even though it feels odd, works really well.  Sleep in on Saturday, not Sunday.

And if you think about it, 6 days of work is really not that onerous.  Work is really a big part of life.  What I am finding is that Sunday makes a fantastic entry point to the week.  Plan everything, get everything ready, get yourself ready.  Clean the house, sort out all the small details you would otherwise worry about during the week.  Most people do this on Saturday, but my take is I am TIRED on Saturday.  It is much more burdensome than doing it after laying around for 24 hours.

And what Jews are really taking a break from is CREATING.  Logically, this means that on all non-Sabbath, non-holy days, they are meant by their maker to be creating.  Create 6 days a week, then rest.  I like this.

I am of course breaking my own rules in typing this today, but it felt appropriate.

I have a lot more things I am working on, new approaches I am taking, but all in good time.  I am never still for long, and am nearly always trodding new ground.

My world is undiscovered.  Knowing that, all can be new.

I see no reason Trump should not pursue criminal charges against Hillary and Bill Clinton.  If the investigation into the Clinton Foundation has been ended for some reason, it needs to be begun anew.  And Bill Sessions needs to evaluate all possible criminal charges which could be brought against Hillary.  The evidence is the same.

I think Trump needs to understand that no matter what he does, he will be attacked.  He needs to at least get the satisfaction of fighting back, and of sending warning shots over the bows of the people betraying him and their country that they are not only not above the law, but that he is quite willing to use the laws in effect to send them to jail.

As things stand, my understanding of the whole Russian thing remains as follows.  Some Baltic state, I think it was Estonia but won’t swear to it, created what amounted to a blackmail dossier on Trump, which was at some point scooped up by British intelligence, then shared with American intelligence.  This dossier had no merit to it, and consisted in little but unsubstantiated and unsubstantiable rumors about things which (like pissing on a bed) were not even illegal.

This dossier, though, was enough for the Deep State to get authorization to initiate blatantly fascistic surveillance on Trump and his associates during and after the campaign, despite the fact that no wrong doing was ever found.

At some point–from what I read, perhaps immediately after Hillary lost the election fair and square–a political decision was made to claim that the Russians were the ones who hacked John Podesta, a claim without substance or even the flimsiest of evidence.

This claim was “buttressed” mainly by continual speculation by the complicit media, which first called it possible, then treated it as obvious, then finally came out as outraged about something which it never had any evidence happened in the first place.  This has all been made clear in recent days by the testimony of people who were and are in a position to know.

The only “evidence” of wrong-doing was the fact of an investigation, but as mentioned, that investigation was launched on the flimsiest of pretexts and ITSELF constitutes a cause for outrage.  Sitting Presidents should not be using the organs of government–particularly intelligence agencies not allowed by law to operate on American soil–to spy on their political opponents.  Nixon did nothing that extreme.

So now I read Mueller is investigating possible obstruction of “justice” in an investigation that never should have been initiated in the first place, and which, again, ITSELF should be investigated as the patent politicization of the law enforcement and intelligence gathering activities.

So we have the investigation of the “crime” of obstructing an investigation that never should have been launched in the first place.  You cannot by definition obstruct justice which was not happening in the first place.

In my view, if Mueller wants to surround himself with Democrats–which betrays partisan intent, which is antithetical to justice and professionalism–he should be fired.  He is not, in my understanding, a Kenneth Starr, who cannot be fired.  He is simply someone hired for a specific job.  If he construes that job as creating trouble for Trump, as leaking innuendo and rumor to create headlines for the hacks running most of the media in this country, I see no reason he should keep his job.  Sessions can fire him.

Ponder the stupidity of the Americans eating all this shit up.  Anyone that dumb will not be convinced even if Mueller spends the next year creating headlines at MSNBC and still turns up nothing.  Those people are gone.  Trump can’t speak to stupid.  They are gone.  Their cognitive sovereignty is muted and in most cases absent.  They believe what they are told to believe, and lack the critical faculties to do otherwise.

Here is the thing: media coverage for Trump will NEVER EVER EVER turn positive.  Not going to happen.  They would slime Mother Teresa.

I was watching a video today of Matt Bevin, who is the governor of Kentucky, making a video he posted on Facebook, where he calls out media coverage specifically.  He shows what he said, then shows in their own words how “journalists” covered him.  The bias and mean spiritedness are blatant and undeniable.  You can look him up on Facebook.

Trump needs to create something similar, which puts together videos detailing both his policy decisions, and showcasing media bias in their coverage of him.  Tweets are not enough.  He is the President, and he can do much, much better.

But I really think, and I’ve said this more than once, that until traitors start going to jail for breaking their oaths, the leaks will continue.  And I continue to fail to see a downside to the immediate prosecution of Bill and Hillary for crimes too numerous to mention.  Are we a fucking banana republic, or are we a nation of laws?  Trump was elected to prove it was not too much to hope that we were and remain the latter.

Can we just call it what it is?  Political MADNESS.

It is not even a rhetorical strategy.  It is an excuse for exclusionary political violence, used before, during and after the fact.

I am clearly not the only one who can easily envision many of todays crop of young, indoctrinated psychopaths administering Khmer Rouge style torture chambers, and mass executions.  They are literally INCAPABLE of seeing dissenters from their tribe–I don’t and can’t say ideology, because their ideas and goals change in demand to what their leaders want and need from moment to moment–as human, much less people with whom they could discuss, debate, and negotiate.

In my own self I have found very deep illness can hide behind a functional facade, but in the case of many of these people, even the facade is fucked up.  They wear their crazy as a badge of honor.

Impeachment is the opiate of the media.

“Tomorrow, Fascists and communists, both persecuted by the police, may arrive at an agreement, sinking their differences until the time comes to share the spoils. I realise that though there are no political affinities between us, there are plenty of intellectual affinities. Like them, we believe in the necessity for a centralised and unitary state, imposing an iron discipline on everyone, but with the difference that they reach this conclusion through the idea of class, we through the idea of the nation.”


Benito Mussolini


I have been saying the same thing for some time, as of course have many others.  Perhaps it is time for all of us who combat illiberal creeds to revisit the founder of Fascism, he who knew it better than any.


Allan Bloom recounts a leftist rally where a speaker trotted out the usual suspects (The time to act is now!!  The time for discussion had passed!!), and received continual applause until he noted the speech had been made by Mussolini.


It is farcical that people claiming to oppose fascism would don the black clothes if the ACTUAL Fascists. This is the thing: I doubt one in ten of these lunatics could give a passable account of the history of actual Fascism, or even National Socialism. They simply follow orders, and of course the Nazis did neither more nor less.

We speak by rote about psychosexual pathology, and we don’t mean erectile dysfunction. We mean relating to the other sex (or same).

I did not come up with the idea of the gut being an almost separate consciousness within us–neurologically, almost certainly to a much greater extent than the sexual instinct–and if we are to take this seriously, we need new words. I love to invent words the way women and gay men like to play dress up. Yes, all of them.

I was pondering this feeling within me which is easiest to call self loathing, and it really feels more to me like a chronically suppressed need for violence, to attack. Unexpressed anger easily becomes anxiety, and anxiety can easily be seen as intrapsychic violence.

We are social beings, but are we perhaps born somewhat like wolves, who instinctually want to hunt and eat in packs, or what we would call tribes?

What could be the fate of wolves born without packs, with the same hunger?

The need to feed is coeval with the survival instinct. It exists far down. Do we have instincts to eat a certain way? Are we born enjoying the feeling of killing our food and sharing it together?

To me, these are interesting questions.

Back to the ladder again.

It seems to me the white guilt movement uses the ideas and tactics of the Christian Churchbto denigrate, humiliate and shame individuals, but in so doing create a mediated means for them to be absolved, temporarily at least, of the shame those who run this operation do so much to inculcate. They create the disease so they can gain the power inherent in being able to administer the cure.

This is no more humanistic than Christian efforts to paint us all with Original Sin, and then claim sole ownership of the means to redemption, as the Catholic Church did and does.

It is all a very old story, told by cynics to nubile minds, and all with an Empire as an aim.

I was reading a brief commentary by Jack Kornfield on how amazed visiting Buddhist teachers were at the pervasiveness of self loathing/ hate among Western students. This feeling–which feels a bit like a continual intrapsychic attack for me, a stream of pain I cannot escape which seems related to shame–warrants sociological analysis.

In a society like our own, where normative standards of behavior have largely rejected, where “doing your own thing” constitutes a value of sorts–it is hard to attain a sense of dignity and personal honor and self respect. It is certainly true that the pressure to conform is creatively limiting in many ways, but what it does grant are clear standards which, having been attained, enable and foster self respect and a sense of honor and belonging.

Conversely, it seems obvious that where no clear standards exist, they must be invented within a dub-group–Leftism being the most obvious but certainly not only example–and where they neither exist in a group, and cannot be plausibly invented as personal myths by the individual–there must be a residual sense of isolation and disconnection which, from clear biological roots, must be felt as a latent or explicit sense of shame, for “crimes” unknown, uncontemplated, and certainly never committed.

We need myth, which I might here define as unchanging, deeply held, ideas about the nature of how to live, and modern Science really doesn’t see this. Science is a marvelous system for description, and for building useful things.

But what we really need is something prescriptive. We have that, of course, in psychology to some extent, in the interesting notion of “mental health”, which is defined quite narrowly compared to most other cultures.

But I co ti he to believe that any foundation built on anything but incorporating God, Connectedness, and an honest treatment of the soul as something which survived the death of the body, will be futile. Projects without these elements need to be built on self deception or cynical pessimism.

I also continue to believe it most useful–and, of course, I hope most accurate–to view humanity as at the BEGINNING of the interesting and generative phase of its existence, and not as a somnolent dying last glimmer of a failed idea.

And I would add that the so-called Singularity–even if it proves technically possible, which I very much doubt, since I think the locus of consciousness lies outside the brain–is no solution at all as to the point and purpose of life. Will human/machine hybrids love more deeply? Is that even a question being asked?  Will the great thrill of connection with Life as a whole be somehow more likely if one merely gains the ability to recite all of Shakespeare easily?

Few thought. I do t feel like working, so I am doing this. Back now to my ladder.

Is there any need for elites to be elitist?  Would this not depend on the answer to “elite in what respect?”, and does the answer to that question not depend on a foundational understanding of life, which guides one in one direction or another?

Islamist might best be understood as monocultural supremacism.

The opposite of the idea that there is One Big Unchanging Truth is not “There is One Big
Unchanging Truth and it is that there is no Big Unchanging Truth.”

Being confused about this seems to me to be close to the heart of our philosophical troubles over the past few centuries, which themselves underlie all the solvable political problems which never get solved.

The opposite is that there are, at any given time, knowable absolute truths, but that they are confined to time and place, which is to say SPECIFIC problems, for specific people.

I am tempted to say that prior to evaluating any aspiring philosophers ideas, one needs to know how they use their body, how much physical tension they carry, what types of brainwaves predominate.  In our present era there seems to be a strong correlation between high intelligence and stupid counterproductive beliefs.  Our culture, outside the realm of science, has largely lost the ability to select for the best and the Good.

This is not the fault of the masses, but rather that of confused and confusing intellectuals.

I have obviously talked about this many times.  I started this blog to do an in-depth analysis back I think in 2008.  Shit, I’ve been blogging nearly ten years.

In any event, after lots of wasted time dealing with irrelevancies, I have finally simplified my argument.  I have shared this simplification before, but thought I might again, given how much shrieking I hear in the air.

The primary Greenhouse Gas is water vapor.  It absorbs a very broad spectrum of infrared radiation, and does so at relatively low altitudes.  Adding CO2 near the surface does nothing, since that energy was going to get absorbed anyway.

Where CO2 has a marked effect is in the upper Trophosphere, and the much thinner air perhaps a mile up.  It can only absorb about 10% of the radiant spectrum, but that is still a lot of energy.  Without its effects, Earth would freeze and life would be impossible.

The entire argument for Anthropogenic Global Warming rests on the ideas that this layer of air can be heated enough that it warms the air below it, which warms the air below it, which warms the air at surface level.

Now, it is well known that as CO2 concentrations rises, the relative impact of each PPM diminishes.  For every doubling of CO2, the relative effect is cut in half.  Double CO2 once you get one unit of warming.  Double it twice you get a half unit of warming, for 1.5 units.  Double that, and you get .25 units, or 1.75.

It is easy to see that there is an asymptotic function here, where somewhere along the line CO2 really just doesn’t matter that much.

This link deals with this helpfully: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/10/the-diminishing-influence-of-increasing-carbon-dioxide-on-temperature/

As they point out, most of what CO2 COULD do it is already doing.

But the core point I want to make is this: in the same way that air does not easily heat water, due to their very different densities, the thin air where CO2 operates cannot easily heat thicker air below it.  This means that the AGW hypothesis REQUIRES considerable heating in specific places for any effect at all to be registered at ground level, and as it happens we have highly accurate satellite data for those regions, and have for at least 3-4 decades.  Those regions are not warming any faster than the rest of the atmosphere, which means that the AGW hypothesis has been falsified.

IF–and I am obviously speaking counterfactually here–AGW was in the main a truly scientific idea being advanced by honest scientists–there would be no land based measurements used at all.  The entire focus would be on the one place where we have good data, and which is critical to the validation–or as it happens, the empirical falsification–of the hypothesis.

I won’t go into all the methodological problems with land based data, but will simply note that for much of the Earth NASA simply invents data.  They don’t have many thermometers at the poles, or for most of the Artic and Antarctic circles.  They can’t measure the ocean temperatures very well.  They have no reliable means of correcting for the heat island effect for the many stations they have that actually are accessible.

So you have on the one hand satellite data which is highly reliable and relevant, and on the other ground data which is completely unreliable, and irrelevant.  Even if there is warming, there is no clear means of teasing out CO2 induced warming from other sources.

The ONLY reason they continue with this nonsense is that you can use statistical models to create any data pattern you want.  This is at least as old as Michael Mann’s infamous Hockey Stick, which was created using algorithms intended and programmed to create a specific result.  Anything that conformed to their goal they weighted, and anything which did not got minimized or deleted.

If I might amend Mark Twain: “Lies, damn lies, statistics, and Global warming”.

Trump unquestionably did the right thing.  The open question now is why so much of the rest of the world is so fucking stupid.