Only my Kitties would try this

K-State offers bacon treat at games

I love this … and if they still are playing in Ahern Field House, I hope the ladies pack in the student fans.

Colombia says Russian bombers violated air space - New York News

Colombia says Russian bombers violated air space - New York News

Hmmm - Cold War Redux?

Now, I suppose that all those folks whose knickers are in a twit over US drones will let this pass without comment. I fully expect it.

You see folks, what bothers me with all the hue and cry about when the US does a or b, is that when anybody else does it, and they do - routinely, there is nary a peep.

The double standard just makes me so sick.

It is like the old bargaining stance that what is mine is mine and what is yours is negotiable. Of maybe it is "They are the bad guys so we don't expect them to play by the rules."

I am sorry, but I am tired of having to play by rules that nobody else is held to ... not when the US keeps getting asked to lead and to try to resolve this world problem or that world problem. There is an old saying from my military days that says "Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way!"

All these people who have all these moral problems with whatever it is they don't like about US policy this week, never seem to spend an equal amount of energy on those whose acts make US policy seem pale by comparison.

Moral values are good ... and we should do all we can to uphold them ... but they should not bind us into a suicide pact that allows those who don't have such moral scruples free to do whatever they want to do.

Yes, there is  place for law, but only when there is a recognized, competent authority to enforce the law, otherwise all you are going to get is a mockery of the law. Unfortunately, there is no real international law, despite what various people will try to tell you, because there is no competent authority to enforce the law. That, my friends, is the dying truth and you need to face that reality.

You cite the ICC or IWCT or any of any number of multilateral or UN sponsored venues and I would point out two points: One, they are not universal nor are they immune to political influence. Two: They really are Lilliputian efforts to tie down Gulliver. I wonder what will happen when the US is no longer strong enough to play the part of Gulliver. Who will protect the Lilliputians then?


Nuff said.

Interesting discussion

Linkedin discussion on the NSA brouhaha.

 

I have been involved in an interesting discussion over at Linkedin that those who follow me might want to take a look at.

I am explaining, from my point of view, to a non-American why I think the NSA thing really is more a tempest in a teapot than some real major crisis.

Summary: First, the NSA ain’t alone in the dock here, folks … or at least shouldn’t be … and the others are not being put in the dock.

Second: What the NSA is doing is little more than what internet service providers and social media providers, as well as credit card companies, telcos, and just about everybody else has been doing (like credit bureaus) in scooping  up personal information on individuals everywhere.

Third: You ain’t gonna be able to stop it, much less really control it. Look at the health record sharing plans … nope folks, welcome to the Brave New World.

Cats Win!

Kansas State 41

Iowa State 7

Just How Badly Has Snowden Wrecked American Power?

Just How Badly Has Snowden Wrecked American Power?

This is an awesome article.

Granted, a lot of people won't like its point, but its point is valid.

Unfortunately, for the US, it is hard to lead when there is nothing really to lead against, and that is the defining challenge facing the US. Unlike the Cold War, when there really were bad guys (even though there are enough people now trying to rewrite history to rehabilitate socialist ideologies) and they eventually collapsed as the tyranny they sponsored self-destructed (which tyranny is wont to do over time).

The point being is that the US really has been on the side of the rule of law and human rights (even as imperfect as our record is, really has anyone else done much better with polyglot mutt of a society as ours?).

No, Americans are not perfect and anyone who tells you so, either is ignorant or lying (I am not sure which), but as Winston Churchill said about democratic forms of government: All the others are so much worse.

It is hard these days to be proud to be an American ... especially when we see the country as a whole falling away from the precepts that made it what it is. Whether myth or reality, the idea that the individual was important; that the individual was at the heart of society; that without individual liberty and freedom of conscience, all else was irrelevant. Each person is endowed, as the that famous document is oft quoted, by their creator (for the uninitiated that means GOD by whatever term you want to use) with the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (otherwise known as property).

We own our own labor. Not the family or the clan or the community or the state or the nation. We deserve its rewards.

Yes, as members of all those levels human association, we do have obligations to each, but the choice to fulfill those obligations is ours and not the association's to compel. So, we have an obligation to defend our association, but the association can not compel us to do so. We still have the option to opt out. It is our choice.

You may not like that view point, but it is the one that works best for all those levels of human association.

Nuf said

Politics should stop being politics

Obama: Congress should stop bickering

The President thinks that the Republicans and Democrats should stop fighting and arguing over how the federal government spends its money. They should stop “manufacturing” crises and stop being “out of touch” with the American people.

TIME OUT!

Mr. President, what world are you living on, because it sure ain’t the same one the rest of America lives on.

Sorry, but the Republicans and the Democrats pretty much are doing what they are supposed to do: Represent the interests of the people who sent them there. Now that does not mean everybody in their district or state, but the people who voted and supported them. That, Mr. President, is how a representative democracy works. You don’t like that, then move to a different universe.

I know that I am a voice in the wilderness here, but, people, we have to understand that the US does not speak with one voice. It never has and it never will. Currently there are more that 310 million of us, each with our own mind and our own view of how things ought to be. Neither of the major political parties represents the view of the majority of Americans – especially on every issue. That is what makes politics politics.

Mr. President, you want Congress to pass a budget? Then call Harry Reid over in the Senate and tell him to pass the next budget bill that comes over from the House as is. Don’t play around with it, just pass it. And then you sign it. But, you and I know that isn’t going to happen.

And it hasn’t happened since the Republicans became the majority in the House. Every year, since 2009, the House dutifully passes the various and sundry authorizations and appropriations bills (like some 26 of them each year) and every year during that time the Senate has piddled and diddle and not one thing has it resolved. Why? Because the Democrats won’t accept what the Republicans have passed.

Every year, the Congress ends up passing a “continuing resolution” that, I guess, now extends all the way back to 2009 (it actually doesn’t but that is a different story). As Pappy used to say: That is one heck (he WAS a gentleman after all) of a way to run a railroad.

All continuing resolutions do is kick the can down the road to be dealt with again whenever it runs out.

So, the problem has not been in the House. It has been doing its job all along. And the problem is not with the Senate Republicans; they are just standing by what their House brethren have sent over. No, the problem lies on the other side of the aisle.

Now, I will guarantee you that you will not see it reported that way because it does not fit the establishment narrative of the problem.

I saw this back in 1994 when the GOP first took the House after being the minority party for more than 40 years. The establishment media was in a quandary. Over 40 years the reporters and pundits had established where they could go to get information and where the levers of power were. In an election, all that was washed away and it upset them. No longer could they go to the “usual suspects” and get the low-down on what was going on the backrooms and the cloakrooms of Capitol Hill. For a reporter who has spent years developing news source relationships, that is a very disconcerting feeling.

The new folks in power on the Hill, a bit chary of those who had developed such deep relations with their opponents, were less than welcoming to the established reporter and pundit class. So the feeling became mutual and the media bias grew to a deeper chasm.

Now, Mr. President, I know that neither you, nor any of your staff, or anyone else of note or power will read my ramblings (well, maybe someone at the NSA who is bored to death might), but please quit blaming others for your own lack of leadership.

The budgetary train wreck, the health care train wreck, the foreign policy train wreck, they are all your responsibility. Don’t slough them off on your minions. Don’t ask your co-equals in government (the ones who are to set the polices and priorities that you are to execute with the resources they give you) to do things that you apparently are unwilling to do.

Compromise is a two-way street and Congress is a co-equal with the Presidency (as is the Supreme Court). That is how the American republic was designed and how it is supposed to work. (Not by executive order and writ, as you just demonstrated with the setting up of new panels, etc., to sidestep the role of the uncooperative Congress – AND that is yet another rambling I will not digress into)

Nuff Said. Have a nice day. 

Now this is a threat I would take seriously ...

Sebelius Threatens To Put VA In Charge Of Obamacare If Critics Don’t ‘Back The Fuck Off’ (via http://www.duffelblog.com)

WASHINGTON, DC — Following yesterday’s disastrous Obamacare hearing on Capitol Hill, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has released a video message to Youtube where she warns: “Back the fuck off, or I’ll go nuclear.” The…

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Opening the mail

There is an old British diplomatic saying that allegedly goes:

A gentlemen does not open other gentlemen’s mail.

Well, guess what? Everybody does it.

I find the feigned anger and distress that the American technological spy agency, the National Security Agency or NSA, spies on “friends’, enemies and its own people just hilarious.

First, if you have the capability, you use it. If you don’t, then you are not human (look at the analysts who used the capability to snoop on girl and boy friends)… and probably derelict in your duties.

Are the leaders of these countries trying to tell us that they don’t conduct surveillance operations that target the United States? Get real folks. Yes, they do at what ever level of technology they can achieve.  They want advance warning if the US government is going to change a policy affecting them and they sure as hell want to see if they can crack some of the industrial secrets US companies have.

Second, are you trying to tell me that if these countries don’t have these national technical means (to use the euphemism for spying with machines) they are not trying as hard as they can to develop them? Get real folks. Of course, they are. Just like they would beg, borrow, steal, filch, etc., any other piece of technology they can snag for their own use.

Everything the NSA is accused of doing (and probably is doing) is absolutely logical and sensible from an intelligence point of view. (No, I am not saying it is wise policy, just a logical one when you are focused on accomplishing a particular purpose or mission to the exclusion of all else.)

You see the people at the NSA who are doing what everyone objects to (and you have to admit, other nations, groups and hackers are trying to do to us) are very intelligent people and probably very, very focused people. They are very serious in doing their job protecting their nation against all enemies, foreign or domestic (but particularly the foreign ones). It creates a form of tunnel vision or myopia that blocks out other considerations.

And you have to understand, everyone seems to want to take the United States down … and more than just a few pegs. All these leaders want to increase their power on the world stage and cutting back on the American ability to exercise the power it has held for the last 60 years or so, is to their benefit and their enrichment.

But to claim they are not opening other people’s mail? That is a farce.

Actually, Pappy would have put it much better when he would have called it “a tempest in a teapot.”

Delusions

Detention upsets Greenpeace activist

I read this article about a young Greenpeace activist arrested protesting Russian oil exploration in the Artic and all I could do was shake my head with the naiveté of his civil disobedience.

First of all, when a person conducts civil disobedience to protest something in a country not his own that person should suspect that conditions following his or her arrest will not be a vacation.

First of all kids, civil disobedience is not a game. It is not a romantic adventure and you will not wind up being housed in the honeymoon suite at some grand hotel. It absolutely amazes me that the innocents who follow various charismatic environmental movement people are shocked when they discover that if they get arrested, particularly in most jails, they are going to find their lives becoming very uncomfortable.

Such befell the young man who wrote a letter from a Russian jail cell that it was unfair that it was cold, damp and he essentially was being kept in isolation. In addition, the food was worse than that served to hospital patients.

Pray tell me, what was he expecting? To be picked up and transferred to a four-star hotel pending deportation? I don’t think so.

Where are we getting these delusions? This young man is lucky he is in isolation, rather than jammed in a cell with a hundred other bodies, some of whom will be intent on raping him at the first opportunity.

I continually am amazed (I know, you would think I would learn) how many people in North America seem to think that the way things are here are just like the rest of the world. That the rights and privileges that we enjoy here, apply everywhere.  Wrong answer, kids. It ain’t that way and the sooner you grasp that fact, the less shocked you will be by the conditions you find yourself being thrown in during your misadventures.

People who really understand the cost of non-violent civil disobedience know from the get-go that it very likely will result in unpleasantness being visited on your body … regardless of how polite you are or even cooperative. No, the odds are that you will get the shit kicked out of you, thrown in hell holes masquerading as jail cells, with little edible to eat and less potable to drink. Your cellmate and jailors definitely will not be someone you would meet in your Internet Café and probably would kill you if  you look at them cross-eyed.

For instance, I constantly am amazed that the folks involved in the Whale Wars TV series haven’t found themselves literally getting blown out of the water by Japanese Self Defense ships. I mean, the “romantic” characters admit what they are doing is essentially piracy and they are pushing the limits of safety and civil behaviors. Granted, I understand that they oppose the practice, but it is legal under international law and they need to accept that rather than play stupid games where eventually people are going to start getting killed because of their romantic notions of fighting the good fight.

The kid being held in Russia is learning what the world really is like … unfortunately … and it is not really a pretty place.

Nuff Said.

Next logical step

Here comes polyamory ... or is that polygamy?

Well, Katy bar the windows, they are coming through the doors.

The above story is about polyamory, a domestic living arrangement that permits multiple partners. Without being coy about it, we are talking about polygamy under a different name. Literally, from its Latin roots, “polyamory” should mean “many love” (poly = many, amor = love).

Well, once we condoned homosexual relationships and decided they were acceptable, then multiple relationships was the next obvious step.

It is not that either is unnatural, because they aren’t. Homosexuality has been less accepted in human societies, but polygamous and polyamorous relationships have been and still are acceptable in a good number of societies around the world.

Now, given that we living in an instantaneous communication and gratification society, it is no small surprise that coming so quickly on the heels of acceptance of homosexuality as a positive norm that the next logical step to multiple, multi-sexual relations be advocated for acceptance. I mean we see a form of polygamy exercised in our culture in the serial marriages in the lives of our opinion makers and cultural leaders, if not just serial relationships and to heck with the institution of marriage.

Of course, those who wish to see the overthrow of all traditions will greet this development with open arms. It frees them up to focus on their satisfaction, regardless of the consequences to society.

Therein, I propose, is the problem. You see, change is not necessarily bad. Far from it, actually. Change is a natural part of the evolution of human existence. However, uncontrolled change can create havoc and conflict as those who are comfortable with the status quo seek to protect its status.

So, I am not opposed to change (although a lot of people seem to think I am) but I always question the necessity and rational for any changes and often ask troublesome questions like “What if … ?”

It is all well and good to want to change society, to change social structure, change the way we do things or the way we are governed. But one must be wary when proposing grand sweeping changes because the law of unintended consequences (as President Obama’s signature Patient Protection  and Affordable Care Act is providing ample illustrations) has not been repealed.

I was just reading the fall news letter from my local state senator (a Democrat in a state where the Democrats control both houses of the state legislature and a Republican sits as governor) where he was lamenting the fact that government gridlock was limiting changes to small incremental things (with special interest groups of all shapes and sizes doing all they could to protect their vision of the status quo). He was hoping that there could be broad and sweeping revisions and change. To me, that man is dangerous.

He may tout bipartisanship, but broad changes usually are only reflective on one world view (Much like the PPACA) and not of a consensus.

Governing by consensus, rather than just majority rule, usually is slower, but it usually brings with it less strife … and less hate and discontent among those being forced to accept the changes being imposed by those whose vision of the world and how society is different from those who are being asked to accept the changes.

It is something I think Americans would do well to ponder as we look around the world and see the fruits of rapid and uncontrolled changes. Is that what we want? I don’t think so. It is not our style.

I hope it gives you something to think about.

Nuff Said.