Author: White Whale

Nice video.  Salient points: violent crime and homicides have dropped by 50% in the last twenty years.  Violent crime is 3.5 times higher, now, today, in England than it is here.  Put another way, Brits are much less safe, even though they are less likely to die from the violence visited on them.  Virtually all our crime is concentrated in cities.  If we cut out that crime, our crime rates would be equal to or lower than the countries the Left wants to compare us to.  Finally, only 3.5 %–roughly one in 30–homicides are committed with rifles, and the AR-15 and assault rifles generally are a subset of that.  The data is unambiguous that more guns equals less crime.

This is a set of three ideas, that as I contemplate them after what is for me a long day (I count anything longer than 12 hours as long, even though I know full well that by military and farm standards I’m a pussy) I think I am going to run together for simplicity.

First idea, which is a big one.  Yesterday, I got up, did my stretching, did my lacrosse balls . . .

[I need to do another post on them–hell, I may not: get 3 lacrosse balls, duct tape two together, and the smallest soccer ball you can find.  Use the single lacrosse ball on your traps, by leaning into the ball on a wall until it hurts.  Hold until it gets soft.  Repeat in another tight spot.  Do it on your shoulders, lats, chest (theres a spot just under your collar bone that will be interesting), your feet, your hips.  Then lay on it, with no weight at first, then after a few sessions whatever you can stand–I use a 40 lb. weight vest–and just find the tender spots, and stay with it till it gets soft.  The double ball you put on your spine, starting in your lower back.  Do a crunch of sorts, or whatever it takes to get weight on it.  Do many positions, and work your way up your spine.  Use the soccer ball for your hip flexors and upper thigh.  Doing this work, you will likely notice many memories and images popping up spontaneously.  I suspect that most people keep tension in some spots for years, even decades, and releasing it causes perhaps not accurate memories, but ones evocative of something long ago].

. . .then my Kum Nye exercises (I like to scent the room with rose essential oil.  Yes, I am heterosexual, decidedly so.  No, I do not have a satchel or a hairdresser.).  I was going to do some pushups and pilates, but decided to lay down again.  Some inner voice told me to.  As I lay sleeping/dozing, it hit me that there is a part of our brains which cannot tell the difference between TV and reality, with the result that many of us treat the real world, unconsciously, as a somewhat inferior version of TV. This spot is right in the middle of our existence.

The importance of this, I realized, is that existence is interactive, whereas artificial reality is not.  I realized this driving into a sunrise, and realized that for perhaps the first time ever I felt a PART of the scene in front of me.  It was not external to me.  The sun saw me even as I saw it, in some weird way.  We were connected.  I was a part of the context in a deep way of everything in front of me, in much the same way we are told Native Americans and other cultures looked at reality.  Those trees, those clouds: they are not fully “out there”.

TV dulls this.  Even books dull this.  Both act as intermediaries to experience.  Both give out, but do not return.  And I think living in either kills or numbs some part of our spirit.

Second point:  there is a violence in abstraction.  I have said this before, but as I contemplate it, reason itself consists in removing oneself from “flows” like water.  It consists in trying (I say “it”, and have in mind common sense–but in my view flawed–conceptions as iterated in modern scientism and socialism) to make all the currents of life stop, so they can be catalogued and analyzed.  It is like drying the ocean to see what is in it.

This is the emotional reaction Scientistic apostles have to RESEARCH, concrete empirical data that suggest the primacy of connection. of flow, and the illusory nature of object-hood.  It destroys their whole conceit.

It is sometimes logical to be illogical.   Specifically, what I have in mind is the NEED for emotional release, to sometimes allow oneself to completely lose control in whatever promptings are suggested in an ecstatic trance.  We have to balance the so-called Apollonian with the Dionysian.  I have said the before, but never seen it so clearly.  Quite literally, an overabundance of detachment leads to attachment.  Releasing emotional barriers is CONDUCIVE to the effective use of reason, and not at all an impediment to it.

I have in mind, of course, AT LEAST Grof Holotropic Breathwork, which is a time and space delimited experience that facilitates the eruption of whatever is truly deeply on your mind.  You can choose to attend.  You can choose to start, choose to stop.  You can attend once, or many times.  It is up to you.  But the experience is easy to induce, and should in my view become an integral part of any future global culture.

On that note, I did want to note that I have been searching for an alternative word to anarchy, since as all self proclaimed anarchists will tell you, they don’t want chaos.  I am of course sympathetic to the aim, even if most of them have done something close to no thinking as to how to bring it about.  To my mind, it is self evident that as the morality of a group or nation improves, the need for governance decreases.  So the logical task is to prevent the fucking bastards in the Academy and Wall Street from ruining our planet, while working to build increased moral virtue across the land.

Then I realized I already have the word: Telearchy.  That will work for a group of people of any size who have a shared goal, which I have repeatedly suggested ought to be qualitative joy, although eudaimonia would work well as well. 

Finally, since I have drinking to do and just realized my brain is full, I wanted to comment on the importance of curiosity.  As I realized yesterday, the HABIT of being interested is in itself something which will keep anyone, no matter their metaphysics or quality of their philosophy, moving forward.  Curiosity is reaching out to the world, touching it, interacting with it.  And as I noted several (some number) posts ago, when we reach out to the world through the sensations of interest and pleasure, we are reaching out to God through His creation.

If you eat a good meal and truly savor it with curiosity and attention, that is worship, in my view.  And it doesn’t need to be a simple meal.  Why not a great meal?  But my point is that a truly curious person, someone truly interacting with the whole of their perceptual being with their world, would also be able to enjoy a simple meal too.  I just want to note that I don’t think God has any desire to deny us pleasure on this earth, if we enjoy it with gratitude.

I will add as well that this whole concept of “mindfulness” works in concept, but it has never worked in reality for me.  You know, the whole “wash the dishes mindfully, etc.”  I can’t do it.  What I CAN do is enjoy the work, and in particular enjoy doing the work well and efficiently.  But there is nothing wrong with getting a broom that feels good in your hands, or selecting a very pleasant dish soap, or tableware you enjoy looking at, etc.

That is about half of what went on in my head today.  I just can’t contemplate the rest right now.  It will appear eventually, unless it doesn’t. 

Whiskey BOUND!!!  (but not hell-bent, if anyone was asking).

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/28-12-2012/123335-americans_guns-0/

He’s right. 

http://www.eutimes.net/2012/12/clinton-injured-us-navy-seal-killed-in-secret-us-mission-to-iran/

Add this: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/12/30/us-plane-reportedly-made-emergency-landing-at-iranian-airport-3-weeks-ago/?test=latestnews

The planes are different, but the timing is nearly exact with Hillary’s “fall”: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/12/15/167334538/hillary-clinton-falls-suffers-concussion

Dec. 15th the announcement is made.  Sixteen days from Dec. 30 is the 14th.  She does not attend John Kerry’s nomination.  The “suicide” announcement is made just before Christmas, but everyone involved in this thing would be sworn to secrecy.  It’s hard to get a dead man killed in action, and it doesn’t make sense to kill other people in a plane crash, so this must be what these geniuses came up with (if the story is true, which of course remains unproven and largely undocumented).

Let’s just play a bit with these facts.  What if the unnamed “intelligence source” on Benghazi was really RUSSIAN intelligence, perhaps operating under a false flag? They don’t want a war.  They don’t want to lose Syria.  And OF COURSE they have photos of the weapons shipments, which they could release if they so chose.

Are they using the threat of releasing their evidence of a massive coverup in Benghazi to weaken Obama’s support of the Syrian Islamists, and to put pressure on him to cut a deal openly with the Iranians?

Interesting possibility.  I don’t think that would be a bad play on their part, although of course there are worlds of details I’m not privy to.

Actually I will add that Russian intelligence DOES seem to be openly behind the story on the top.

Here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/29/marco-rubio-narrative-gop-story_n_2377748.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

Perhaps I am mistaken, but in my fantasy world I like to imagine there
was a time in our history when people had substantive discussions about
important matters in a mature fashion. An era when intellectual
tolerance was a habit, and debates sincere and rational, and erudite.

What you have just published is a piece that might be titled “The
Marketing of Marco Rubio”. You have virtually nothing about his ideas,
or how they might be superior or inferior to those of whoever he runs
against. You have said nothing about our looming fiscal disaster (this
is about as short as the case can be made: https://moderatesunitedblog.com//2012/12/true-deficit.html

In short, what you are contributing to is the dumbing down of America.
You are asking us to value polish and appearance over substance. You
are telling us that Obama’s marketing talent is a virtue, when in fact
all it did was enable a mediocrity about whom we can verify virtually
nothing (Trump’s $5 million remains unpaid) to ascend to the White
House. For people who only care about their side winning, perhaps it is
understandable to view this as a good thing.

But this is not a football game, and the consequences of our looming national failure will affect everyone.

I got this email from Barry Joe McDonagh.  His Panic Away program is excellent.  I have never had panic attacks, per se, but I have had attacks of grief that were so intense they were functionally identical.  I would encourage anybody barely holding on, and afraid of getting pushed over the edge to get his program. It’s quite simple, but effective.  It gives you defensive tools that are well worth the investment.

Importantly, it was with hearing his approach–welcoming and encouraging negative emotions–that I realized how to process my own emotions.  You have to go through them. You can’t go over or under them.

In any event, this is a cut and paste, and looks like a good idea to me:

This is the world’s most powerful 60 second habit:

Get a small notebook and within 30 minutes of
waking each morning write down just one thing you
are grateful for.

Just one thing and it should not take you longer
than 60 seconds to write it down.

Done. That’s all you have to do.

This one simple habit is worth more than
bars of gold. I am very serious about that.

Data Point One: Last post, in which the data CLEARLY shows that even the most draconian tax increases imaginable would not come CLOSE to closing the gap between projected liabilities and income.

Data Point Two: Read this article.  Salient quote: “In 2009, foreign purchases of U.S. debt amounted to
6 percent of GDP. The current percentage has fallen by over eighty
percent to 0.9 percent of GDP. So who’s picking up the slack? The
Federal Reserve, which is buying a mind-blowing 61 percent of
government debt issued by the Treasury Department. ”The Fed is in effect
subsidizing U.S. government spending and borrowing via expansion of its
balance sheet and massive purchases of Treasury bonds. This keeps
Treasury interest rates abnormally low, camouflaging the true size of
the budget deficit,” wrote Lawrence Goodman, former Treasury official
and current president of the Center for Financial Stability, last March.”

Data Point Three: “Basel III  is a global regulatory standard on bank capital adequacy, stress testing and market liquidity risk agreed upon by the members of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in 2010–11, and scheduled to be introduced from 2013 until 2018.^[1][2] The third installment of the Basel Accords (see Basel I, Basel II) was developed in response to the deficiencies in financial regulation revealed by the late-2000s financial crisis. Basel III strengthens bank capital requirements and introduces new regulatory requirements on bank liquidity and bank leverage. The OECD estimates that the implementation of Basel III will decrease annual GDP growth by 0.05–0.15%.”

Basel III will be deflationary, as it will require higher reserve ratios.

First, I want to note in passing that the Federal Reserve is owned and controlled by large banks, and has complete secrecy with respect to its actions, and has no legally enforceable fiduciary duty to anyone–although, self evidently, the self interest of member banks will no doubt be paramount.

Secondly, though, it submits to what I might term the “council” of the members of the Bank of International Settlements, even though it is clearly “primus inter pares.” It is a sort of shadow world, like the council on the Avengers, that reports to no government.

To the point: currently, over half of our borrowing is being enabled by the Federal Reserve.  As banks have less money to lend, as the economy slows for a variety of reasons, as tax receipts decline even at higher rates, and as spending GROWS, the relative importance of the Fed will skyrocket.

It would likely not be exaggerating to say that TODAY we are at a point where our government quite literally cannot operate without Fed money, and this process is increasing in scope, and will continue to in a virtually exponential fashion for the foreseeable future.

This state of affairs means that ALL politicians will have to kowtow to the Fed, or risk ruin.

Keynesian Fascism is based on this basic process, in which the government gets its hands into everything, such that it is a web from which it is impossible to untangle functional, meaningful economic liberty, or truly free markets.

The Fed is buying the government.  It is using inflation–always a wealth transfer, remember–to buy influence at  the highest levels.

Now, none of the people involved need money.  These companies have asset portfolios that would dwarf the wealth of most nations, and their CEO’s make hundreds of millions over their careers.

It does seem likely that power mongers at the highest levels–aided and abetted by amoral thieving academics like Paul Krugman–have a plan for us to reach a place where we BEG for government.

I will note, too, that since banks create most price inflation. the fact that their reserve ratios are going up will in part mask the inflationary effects of all the new money being put into circulation by the Fed.

Quantiative Easing is really simply a mask for this process, and economic decline is actually a good thing for them, since it masks both inflation, and the actual motivation for the money creation.

Everyone who has kids or claims to care about the future needs to read this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323353204578127374039087636.html

Data Point One: actual accrued liabilities are kept off our Federal balance sheets, in a manner that would be illegal for almost all private businesses and public pension funds.

Data Point Two: if we accrue them honestly, they amount, approximately, to some $86 trillion.

Data Point Three: “When the accrued expenses of the government’s entitlement programs are
counted, it becomes clear that to collect enough tax revenue just to
avoid going deeper into debt would require over $8 trillion in tax
collections annually. That is the total of the average annual accrued
liabilities of just the two largest entitlement programs, plus the
annual cash deficit.”

Data Point Four: “According to the most recent tax data, all individuals filing tax
returns in America and earning more than $66,193 per year have a total
adjusted gross income of $5.1 trillion. In 2006, when corporate taxable
income peaked before the recession, all corporations in the U.S. had
total income for tax purposes of $1.6 trillion. That comes to $6.7
trillion available to tax from these individuals and corporations under
existing tax laws.”

Conclusion One:  “if the government confiscated the entire adjusted gross income of these
American taxpayers, plus all of the corporate taxable income in the
year before the recession, it wouldn’t be nearly enough to fund the over
$8 trillion per year in the growth of U.S. liabilities. Some public
officials and pundits claim we can dig our way out through tax increases
on upper-income earners, or even all taxpayers. In reality, that would
amount to bailing out the Pacific Ocean with a teaspoon. Only by
addressing these unsustainable spending commitments can the nation’s
debt and deficit problems be solved.”

Conclusion Two (my own): not only is Granny CERTAIN to go over a cliff–not only are substantial cuts to the programs going to essential for national survival–but our kids are going to go over a cliff as well.

There will come a time–assuming we don’t fall into a history-deleting tyranny–when  the idiocy and short-sightedness, and simple greed of this period will be seen with the contempt they well warrant.

From here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/30/president-obama-fiscal-cliff_n_2384230.html

The situation is simple: we have two groups of lunatics arguing over whether we should continue to increase unsustainable spending quickly or slowly.  What they in fact are arguing over is whether we want a complete fiscal collapse in ten years, or if 5 years would be more congenial. 

There are only a couple sane people in all of Congress.  Rand and Ron Paul are the only ones who come readily to mind.  We are borrowing over a trillion a year.  Obama wants this number to go up by increasing taxes and increasing spending even more. 

We are already some 86 trillion in the hole with respect to Social Security and Medicare.  This means THE MONEY WILL RUN OUT.  THE MONEY WILL RUN OUT.

Our children–well, let me be more specific–YOUR children are going to hate you.  They are going to ask how you could be so callous, selfish and irresponsible as to fail to make plans for the future, how you could be so blind.

This is well worth the watch.  Very well done (although I wish he had linked his sources at the end)  If I had put a presentation together, this is about what it would have looked like.  He gets into ALL aspects of the issue, dealing statistically not just with gun ownership (30% lower homicide rates in Conceal Carry States; 42% less violent crime), but also social issues.  He makes the excellent point that much of our violent crime traces to the perverse incentives created by our drug laws, which–just as happened in Prohibition–actually facilitate violence by literally making crime pay.  Or the War on Poverty: if people married at 1970 rates, most urban poverty would disappear.  85% of prison inmates come from single parent homes.

The thing is logically coherent, fact filled, and lucid.

I am going to send it to a couple local school districts, and perhaps a few randomly chosen college professors.  It is that good.  I would encourage anyone reading this to post it on their Facebook, then email the link to a few people.