The Story of Kenmore

The City logo of Kenmore, WA

All along the lake, east of Seattle, are mighty hills and muggy swamps, but there was one place in the far north, right where the lake ended, where the hills turned in to a plain. This spot had plentiful timber, and since it was the termination of the lake, and also flat, the first roads built eastward and northward ran through it. Further up the Sammamish River, which runs through it, was a great floodplain, but here, at this one place, the floods did not occur. Instead were great strands of timber, 20 feet in diameter and 300 feet in to the air.

A young McMaster from Kenmore, Ontario came to Seattle in 1889. A month after he got there, the city had burned down, and his future looked bleak. Kenmore, Ontario was in turn named for the Scottish village of Kenmore, on the Loch Tay in the highlands, by a McLaren who came there long before, from Kenmore, Scotland, and always had the Highlands in his blood. McMaster was not willing to throw in the towel, and heard tell of the great virgin timbers of the lakes northern shore, and knew of the roads that crossed there and the flat plains. He also knew of a river that, with the taming of the floodplains, was now deep enough for steamboats, and a canal they were building from the lake to the sea.

Not much later, he started a Shingle Mill at this point on the lake. There were many sawmills around, but shingle mills were less common, and greatly in demand as the population grew. He also built a great log boom, that both helped feed his shingle mill when demand was high, and helped feed sawmills on the lake when demand was low. Though the entire logging operation was abandoned in 1920, the growing community of Kenmore, named by McMaster for his former home, preserved the boom, maintaining it as a fishing and swimming dock for the good of all.

The community also took an abandoned barn, and in 1952, made it in to their first library. They built a school, and roadhouses, and restaurants, and expanded the road. They built parks, great ones that are still around, and preserved a beautiful old Mission style Seminary as part of St. Edwards Park. The road they maintained and expanded is now 522 Highway, a "State Route" that is a major eastward path in to Seattle. The road north, however, now runs further West, though the older road is maintained for local traffic as 527. St. Edwards Park is now a State Park.

In 1946, a swamp in Kenmore, unused for anything for many years, attracted the attention of three high school friends united after World War II. Jack Mines, Reg Collins, and Bob Monroe built a hangar in the swamp, and purchased a single plane, an Aeronca Model K. Over the years, service would increase in both volume and respect, and today, Kenmore Air is one of the largest seaplane operators in the world, and they are still based out of Kenmore, WA. The managerie of planes, dozens upon dozens of them, on the lot by the road is one of the richest sights you'll ever see.

In 1978, a science-based naturopathy university named Bastyr built itself in Kenmores southern outskirts. The university was started as extensive new legislation at both the state and federal levels had made times for natural medicine turbulent. With the National College of Naturopathic Medicines departure to Portland, Washington state legislators were threatening to suspend all licensing of naturopathic professionals as no college any longer existed in the state. A series of determined NCNM graduates understood that a school firmly built on scientific principles would not only save licensure in Washington, but grow respect for naturopathy nationwide. In the words of Dr. Mitchell, one of its founding fathers, "It was built on the best visions of what a really high-quality naturopathic institution could be." Far from being a stereotype, Bastyr sought full accredation and a scientific basis, and in my personal experience, also created one of the most helpful and down-to-earth professional climates I have ever found anywhere.

For many years they fared well with no city government, growing in population, wealth and serviceability, though they were recognized by the post office as an address, but in 1990, a bill by the Washington Legislature known as the "Growth Management Act" created development committees. These development committees told Kenmore that they would either start a city government, annex in to a neighbor, or let the county decide. The GMA also created a massive bureaucracy for the rezoning of land that leaves abandoned malls unused for decades and creates a major shortage of land for the kind of manufacturing and industry that any state but Washington would love to have. The GMA even, according to a farmer from Stanwood I spoke to, forces paperwork to be filed and consultation with bureaucracy to be made before any field larger then 10 acres can be tilled or planted. By 1998, against the will of its citizens, Kenmore was a "city," though it had been the size, stature and utility of a city for many years.

Despite the fact that Kenmore was built by individuals doing their thing and giving, voluntarily, to the communty, the State had to slip their greedy hands in to it. They forced Kenmore to do the "right thing" and waste tax dollars that never needed to be spent hiring people who never needed to be hired. And all in the interest of "Growth Management."

Sources: (In order of usage)

The public displays at Log Boom Park, Kenmore, WA

Kenmore Air Harbor Inc., "history"

Bastyr University, "At A Glance: Founding of Bastyr University"

Reagan Dunn, son of former Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn (R-8, till 2006), with regards to Totem Lake Mall and other underdeveloped or abandoned commercial properties. (GMA)

A farmer from Stanwood, WA with approximately 100 acres of vegetable growing land (GMA)

Image: Public Domain, official logo of city of Kenmore, click here for link.

The Vain Hubris of Sustainability

Whenever anyone talks about sustainability, there are three basic facts that need to be understood:

1 - Nothing you build will last forever.

2 - There's no such thing as something for nothing.

3 - Throughout history, industrial economies have changed from one resource to another, usually without so much as a headline in the newspaper.

Since number three is the fact that is most surprising to many, I will begin with it. 200 years ago, houses and buildings were constructed almost exclusively from wood and brick. In those days, efficient methods for making both were common, but steel took days to manufacture, and had to be made from already well processed pure iron. Both the fuel and time needs were tremendous to conduct two separate chemical processes each taking days. Further, the quantities made were whatever you could fit in a single crucible.

Bessemer discovered a fast process for making steel in 1855, so fast in fact that it only took 10-20 minutes. The result was the first steel buildings and ships. With Steel, the size of structures increased tremendously, and the skyscraper, along with its steel elevator, became not only a possibility but something neccesary to provide commercial space for the fast growing cities. It also allowed for the internal combustion engine, whose fine moving parts cannot be made effectively from other materials, and with it the car and the airplane.

The Bessemer process could remove many impurities from the original iron ore, and together with the Blast Furnace, silion and silicates, manganese and permanganates, carbon, and sulfur could all be effectively removed. The one thing it could not effectively remove, however, was phosphate, so for the process to work, low-phosphate ores had to be used.

Unfortunately the world began running out of low-phosphate ores in the 1950's, so what did the invisible hand "do"? It introduced two new processes. The first was the Basic Oxygen Process, which took slightly longer (30-40 minutes) but could remove phosphate from the molten steel and had tighter control over the chemistry, allowing new alloys such as Boron Steel to be produced for the first time, and Stainless Steel (also known as Chromium Steel) to be produced inexpensively, and the exact carbon content to be dictated to a hundredth of a percent. The cost is a little higher, but you get higher quality with it. The second was the Electric Arc Process, which for inexpensive steel needs would recycle scrap metal effectively. Between these two, quality improved, new resources were used, and the world did not end, while the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur would set a record for the tallest building in the world a few decades later.

This is not the only example. When strikes and labor politics made the price of coal more expensive, Americans switched to heating with oil and natural gas. Before this, Europeans had switched from firewood to coal as the great forests of Europe were gradually axed away during the Middle Ages, but those castles, those great Cathedrals, and all the splendor of medieval art and music was made with fireplaces burning wood, and those were still around when the wood went away, and before then, it was far easier to go outside to axe a tree then to go underground and risk your neck mining for coal.

No power plant or road we build today is going to last 60 years, so why are we thinking in terms of 600? We should only consider what power sources will still be available 60 years from now when building that plant, and the free market has a device for that too, it's called a futures market. Investors buy up resources now to sell them later at a higher prices, creating a clean and smooth and flat distribution of resources when the market is sufficiently large and well informed, and they do try to be both for their own self-interest. And if people really will benefit from more expense now to avoid expense later (e.g. flourescents), they will buy them, but they probably don't, as they are already in debt and one dollar not repaid now will be a dollar repaid with interest later.

Lastly, and addressing number two, whenever something is used, something is lost, and that includes the materials to build solar panels, and the materials used to make the materials to make solar panels, as plastics and long complex molecules are almost always involved. There is always chemistry involved, and always wasteage, and the free market is a far better evaluator of what the true costs of that wastage is then some government bureaucrat whose never had a job outside of bureaucracy, or scientist specifically trained to only see from the perspective of his field. There is more to cost then electricity and fuel - even things like transportation, labor, land, and the space and finances lost from holding inventory are significant. The reality is that sustainability is not sustainable, as nothing is and we will see when the climate changes and the wind no longer blows where it did, or we run out of some chemical required in the manufacture of solar panels, or even great dust and ash from a supervolcano eruption block the sun. Everything must shift with its right and proper season, and this includes all sources of energy. Sustainability is a vain and impossible notion.

Vox Populi - A Socratic Rant

Open Clip Art Library, public domain.

In latin, "Voice of the People." Although seldom seen on any reasonable scale, the idea of the Vox Populi is an exploitable dream that has been dreamt by many and used to control large numbers of "ordinary guys" throughout time. Liberals claim it on welfare and taxing the rich, and (in the past more then now) opposing the norms of society, while conservatives claim it on social issues and representing the values of the working class, or the society which is made of most people. Perhaps most pecuiliar is when freedom or "hope" becomes intermingled with "being taken care of."

I was talking to a friend yesterday who told me I needed to take my mind out of its snare, to free myself of this idea of my life being cheap. I responded to him that you can't get much more free (cutting the nonsense) than being willing to die. Perhaps it is wasteful, freedom often is, but it most certainly is free. But that seems to be a common theme, the idea that people who don't agree with us are trapped in their own minds, and aren't really free, and therefore do not represent a voice of the people. I suspect I'm not alone in seeing how this can be exploited by bullies and malcontents against the people.

And then there's always the issue of education, but here we find a contradiction, for if people need be educated to be a voice, then you no longer have a voice of the people, but a voice of the educated. Worst, in some ways you have a voice of the educators, as their minds may well have been broken and molded to fit an academic "goal" or "proper behavior." When it comes to truly ensnaring a mind, there are few better people then educators, but even with this noted, we must be careful to not fall in to the trap of thinking we know that someone has been trapped. We don't, and if you trap yourself by thinking that you know where someone has gotten an idea without a logically-correct mathematical proof (pretty much the only methodology for properly recording the origin of ideas that man has ever created, and most people don't know how to write one) you will take away from yourself the power of whatever knowledge they may have that they are willing to give. Once you have taken away power beyond your own humble means, you will in turn be easily caged by the clever, the manipulative, and the "experts."

Experts should always be listened to, for in many cases they did earn their degrees through true excellence, but no one is right all the time, and least of all the people who decide who the experts are. The experts too are also sometimes wrong, and they're also sometimes greedy or evil. Further, in many cases even when the experts are right, if we are unwilling to question what they say, we will be unable to truly learn, on any deeper level, anything from them, but will instead only memorize shallow facts that we in turn, deprived of our roots, misinterpret and abuse, not only ruining ourselves, but tarnishing their good name with our stupidity.

Further, an expert in economics is not necessarily an expert in politics, and an expert in politics is not necessarily an expert in science. Indeed, even an expert in science may not necessarily be an expert in engineering. These peoples expertise may well be one dimensional, which makes it both useful and limited.

There are also people who claim greatness to themselves for selfish ends. Perhaps the lowest of this ilk (or close to it) are the older folks who cry "listen to your elders" while speaking of things of which they have no experience, or even talent. These people manipulate and contrive, hurt and disparage, and drive wedges between entire groups of people. They harm families, and provoke disrespect against others who did not earn it like they did. One must be very wary of people like this, though there are certainly true elders as well. Remember that no matter how many years one has had to experience life, a truly idiotic man will learn nothing from them, and there are many true idiots in this world.

Herman Hesse believed that at the end of childhood, one leaves the world of "light and warmth" for the world of "darkness." Today, we, the American People, are confronting the darkness of a government that does not care for us, a president that wishes to manipulate us, a congress that wishes to waste our money and plunge us in to debt, and vested interests, often moneyed interests, that try to buy elections. We are seeing that even "reputable scientists" are not necessarily of any well-earned repute. We see that histories can be distorted, books can be misrepresented, and the shepherds can fleece their flock, or make them in to lamb chops. We are seeing, indeed that no one can speak the Vox Populi but the Populi, the people.

At the same time as this has happened, small nonprofit organizations like the Mozilla Foundation, who makes firefox, the Open Clip Art Library, who provided the illustration for this post, small bloggers like myself and those more successful then myself, and public advocacy organizations that publicize the records of the organizations within our nation, are taking over many of the traditional offices of the elites. A growing number of people are going not to supermarkets and big chain stores, but ma and pa shops and neighborhood farmers markets, to buy the staples of life. Ordinary citizens like you and I are demanding electric cars and new kinds of energy to replace our polluting grid. An unprecedented level of discussion and thought is happening throughout our society.

Finally, with the growth of the Tea Party, we are seeing for the first time in a long time grass roots organizers finally listened to and political apparati organized from the smallest local level. We are seeing the people finally speak. The people are not used to speaking, so at first they will have much to learn, but I feel, now that it is possible, that it is the peoples birth right to decide their own destiny. The time has come for, as Arthur C. Clarke would put it, childhoods end. We have a great adolesecent - he will become a great adult, or he will disintegrate in to nothing. My suspicion is this will turn out well, and I know where we were headed before was oblivion, but even if I'm wrong, it is their birth right, let them have it, and let no man interfere with their share of the inheritance, for it is theirs, and what they do with it they shall live with, or die with.

Hold Your Nose and Vote for the Stabenow Bill

Cartoon by Peter Welleman. Public Domain.

Though in general I am adamantly opposed to any senator who supports the Fairness Doctrine, or any other attempt by the government to control the media, or believes in the Green Jobs Myth (I will reserve a response to that for another time,) this time, she does seem to have a bill that would fill a dangerous void in existing unemployment policy.

The Americans Want to Work Act has been introduced in congress and is being passed around the Committe on Finance right now. You can track its progress here. The full text of the bill, in its' present form, can be found at THOMAS.

So what exactly does this bill do? It extends unemployment benefits by up to 20 weeks. In addition, it allows for a "fourth-tier" benefit to kick in when bureaucratic delays relating to the application of this bill are reached. Considering the length of our current recession, this is an absolutely necessary act. One can debate for hours the practicality of unemployment insurance to begin with, but it is not sensible to go changing the world on families already hurting from a bust economy. Such debate is better reserved for the summer of economic growth, when private charity and families can take care of their own during the changeover period, rather then this horrid blizzard, where we would be ripping the coat off of their backs to face the bitter gales.

It also does something much less desirable. It extends the rather poorly thought out temporary subsidy for hiring. This will encourage businesses to act irrationally and hire workers they don't need, creating production that will likely go away when the subsidy does, assuming if it is ever created at all, and wasting tremendous resources that could be instead invested in the economy of our nations future. Even worst, it increases the size of the subsidizing for workers thus hired retained, increasing the effectiveness of this economic laser guided bomb. So why should the senate vote for this bill?

Because right now, the families of those 99ers are on the economic edge of oblivion. Private charity has dried up, the budget (and with it government jobs) are drying up, unemployment is at the point where they may not have relatives or a community that can support them, competition for jobs is fierce, and the government is, for better or worse, the last place they have to turn. It costs relatively little money, and it keeps these people going for 20 more weeks. Like it or not, we signed up to cover them. Sound economic policy, in this one rare case, will just have to wait, as we have to consider the culture of our country and how actual human beings will interact with the system, in this case, by not saving money as a result of the unemployment insurance that our democratically elected (by you and me) government created.

"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea." (Matthew 18: 6, New King James Version)

Further, it's a very well-written bill. It covers the technicalities and exceptions even ones (example: Railroad Retirement Taxes) that most people have never heard of. It's clearly written by someone who understands bureaucracy. And yet, it's relatively short. I read it in under 30 minutes. And it doesn't create a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy. Good job Stabenow. It's the exact kind of bill we should encourage, on principle, to keep the elected leaders accountable to people like you and me. In conclusion, good tidings, but of the slightly smelly variety.

The Dangers of Bandwagons, or The Future of Haiti's Oil Industry

I was reading an op-ed in the New York Times today suggesting that Haiti become like every other country in the Carribean. Why do people never seem to learn?

A lot (though admittedly not all) of what caused the recent US economic crash was the inductive tendency. This is the belief that trends continue forever. Because the Dominican Republic has successful garment producers, lets build garment producers in Haiti! Because LA has seen its housing increase in price, lets build even more housing there. Because that other guy got rich (and served the poor) off of subprimes, I can get rich (and served the poor) off of subprimes too. There's this bizarrely inadequate idea that if we do exactly what the other guy did, it will work for us too. Did it ever occur to them that the need for garments is limited?

Further, demand for the most profitable kind of garment making for small manufacturers, luxury and designer label, is severely hurt by recessions, for the simple reason that people don't like spending outlandishly large amounts of money on a single dress when they don't have a job! It will be a long time before Americans are spending the same amount on designer clothes that they were in 2006, and I doubt it will be much faster for the rest of the world.

The Gulf of Mexico has signifcant crude deposits in it, as do Mexico, Venezuela and Texas. America has insufficient refining capacity to handle all its oil needs, and refuses to build more, and already has to ship some oil a much further distance to Japan. Haiti could also use the Panama Canal to bring in oil from (and send to) Southern California, Argentina, Western Venezuela and Chile. Brazil could also benefit from a Haitian oil terminal.

Oil Refineries would also create support services for other kinds of chemical industries, including Ammonium Producers, Cosmetics makers, Cement plants, Sulfuric Acid producers (which are neccesary for eveyr kind of heavy industry), and perhaps even Steel Mills and Metal Smelters. This could in the end allow Haiti to become the industrial motherland of the Carribean, much as Japan was in the West Pacific.

So why Haiti? Simple. Haiti's not a tourist destination, and even if it was, the tourists were good far to the North, to see the Citadel, Tortuga, and other valuable World Heritage sites and NOT Port-Au-Prince, except maybe the Airport, along with beaches facing open ocean with comparatively few people living near them, in the far North and South. There are some nice(looking) neighborhoods in Port-Au-Prince, but centuries of poverty have destroyed most of the neighborhood businesses that make such places more then a photo moment. As such, there is no economic cost to putting up NIMBY-type industry, of the kind that would kill half the economy in the Bahamas or Saint Thomas.

Further, the destruction in Port-Au-Prince has cleared massive amounts of land. Now, massive amounts of land having nothing in them does nothing good for light industry, which requires a lot of support services, but how many places left on earth are there that have large tracts of available land AND several million unemployed people available to work in your plant in the exact same point on earth. And by the coast too. Likely large enough, in fact, to build a 100-acre Oil Refinery!

Further, Oil Refining would also help repair Haitis infrastructure, both by creating, as a waste product, large amounts of asphalt, good for every kind of pavement including roads, sidewalks, ports, and airport tarmacs, and by using pent-up demand from eco-regulators in Western countries to create a mammoth industrialization involving every kind of support service and industry for these refineries as, building at nearly (but not past) break-even cost is still better then not building at all. This industrialization would also create a large demand for track-laying by railroad companies, in a landscape destroyed by quakes and thus with easilly clearable (and usable at little cost) right of ways.

The better infrastructure would aid in the development of Haitian agriculture and tourism to the North, and allow Port-Au-Prince to grow in to a major port, carrying much of the cargo for the Dominican Republic as well. Port-Au-Prince could build a passanger railway station, allowing for easy and cheap transportation of people throughout Hispaniola. This is especially possible because Port-Au-Prince is located centrally on a large bay that digs deep in to the Island, thus being the shortest railroute to the ocean on average for the entire island. PAP could easilly be the Chicago of Hispaniola, and we all know how much Chicago, Seattle, and San Francisco grew after their great fires, with the destruction as their benefactor, clearing way for better design and more profitable businesses like Chicagos great stockyards.

Oil refineries are also much higher profit margin factories then garmentmakers, allowing higher wages and lower unemployment for the Haitian working man in the near future, and gearing Haiti away from heavilly servile low-margin industry that can only lead to poverty for their workers. In the end, oil refining could help not only put Haiti back to work, but put it on the path to wealth and prosperity. After all, it's only been a few centuries since Scotland went from being the poorest nation in Europe to the third wealthiest in a very short period of time.

So why aren't people suggesting this? Because they've already seen the garment factories, and all they can think is, another Carribean Banana Republic.

The California Compromise

Vitrification, a common nuclear waste disposal technique. Image is public domain.

California is a catch-22. The USA already has serious economic problems, with unemployment now over 10% and allowing the destruction of Americas most populous state is only going to make this problems worst. On the flip side, if we do help them, it may encourage both them and other states to fail and get bailed out just like California did.

We have another major problem, energy. We do severe damage to our ecology, our air quality and our public health through the excessive use of coal in power plants. The more orthodox alternative energy sources -wind, solar, geothermal- are decades from being truly practical in the majority of locales, and would all require heavy subsidies. Many companies have already lined up to build nuclear reactors, even willing to pay to lobby for the right to do so, despite a horrific level of regulation and a public relations nightmare with the common voting public. Far from needing subsidies, they'll spend much additional capital beyond the market price to build these facilities in our country.

The inevitable question is, what about the waste? Yucca mountain would have been an ideal site, but politically, the people of Nevada have fought too well against it and the project is now dead in the water. There are deserts in California very similar to those in Nevada, and California needs us.

The less obvious question, but one every bit as important: who wants to live next to a reactor? Most states outside of the Southeast are not willing to allow Nuclear Construction, and Western states like Nevada, Arizona and Oregon are very far from the Southeast. I've also heard that California is a huge energy importer...

In addition, California has resisted allowing oil-drilling off their coasts. Beyond the humiliation factor, this would lower oil prices and boost domestic production, relieving our dependence on the Middle East for oil and lowering prices. If you don't like lower prices, we could collect a tariff on foreign oil. The tariff revenue would also help pay for the California bailout, while the land royalties that California would be allowed to collect, just like Alaska, would help them avoid a new bailout.

We also need more oil refineries, preferably in places with good weather. Our current refineries are on the gulf coast and get hit by hurricanes all the time, and no state in America allows you to build new ones.

All these proposals would create jobs in California through lower energy costs, the introduction of new industries (including Oil, Oil Platform Servicing, Oil Refining, and Nuclear energy related manufacturing and research.)

So here's the deal: California gets a bailout alright, in fact, in entirety, but in exchange, they must 1) dispose of our nuclear waste, 2) build nuclear reactors to power their cities and stop buying up the excess power reserves of the American West, and 3) drill oil off their coast and 4) build oil refineries on Californias sunny hurricane-free coast.

Thus we get past our Catch-22 by being exploitive jerks and manipulating California in to being the optimal economic citizen of the United States of America.

I don't think anyone will want a bailout after this!

Why the Confederate Flag?

Civil War Monument and Cemetery in Owingsville, KY. Attribution conditional Fair Use license by C. Bedford Crenshaw

You look out at the great sacrifices of the past, those who have come, fought and died for family, land and what they valued, for the old and the young, giving their lives when they had barely begun for a home they would never see again, entire generations massacred, their blood trampled in the wine press. Proud flags flying high over the hills, strong spirits screaming loud through the valleys, young men in their prime, following orders from generals who drive up death tolls because they don't understand that the protective formations they were taught so long ago are killing their men in greater numbers now. Deaths by the thousands, thousands of unique individuals destroyed from the earth, cast to the uncertainty of the cold grave with bullets in their chest, broken bones, agonizing infections and tears of terror and rivers of blood dripping down their face as they look up in to the eternal sky for their final moments on Earth.

It's no wonder that such a thing would leave an imprint on a people. And it's no surprise that those who lived took back both horror and pride at their ordeal and their survival. It is true that it has not been forgotten, though it is untrue that people are bitter - that's something Yankees like to think. But there is a proud rivalry, and like it or not, people down here think of themselves as American AND Southern at equal levels.

It is true that to some people find the Confederate Battle Flag offensive. It is also true that it stands for many things to many people.

To me, this symbol stands for the following: standing up for yourself, especially local vs. national, the cultures of the Southeastern United States, both refined and otherwise, rebellion from oppression, and standing up for the weak against the moneyed interest of Northern Industrialists, and a better, more honest America. There are two groups of people who object tot this symbol.

Addressing the first group: This symbol also stands for History, and who Southerners are as a people, and that's where I think some people, though they do not realize the source, object to it. Some people would erase the past. This is especially common among the white, educated wealthy Southerner who doesn't want to be associated with redneck land, slavery and past abuses. They would take all the pain, all the death, the agony, the abuses, and throw it out, but they don't realize it runs in their blood, and they don't realize that it's a complete package. You can't have a past and have no pain, you can't have a future and have no values, and values are rooted in the past as they have to be. You can't stand for something - and destroy yourself so someone doesn't get angry at you or feel hurt.

Some people would lie, and demand that others do so. The minute they here a criticism, an idea they don't like, they demand an apology, surrounding themselves with yes men. They demand conformity, comfort, and what isn't theirs. They don't care what's inside the dish, they never did and never will. To them, there's no value to anything that can't be seen and therefore doesn't touch their petty hearts. As we lie and lie and lie, our enemies become clouded in fog, our up becomes down, our down becomes up, our anger becomes passive aggression, divisions become permaneant as people are too afraid to express them, and they pass them on to their children and their friends to express themselves the only way they can. Lawfulness becomes a joke, and the individual becomes condemned to a spiral of delusion, deceit, and paranoid back watching.

But there's one other group, those who have memories of their own, and those who believe they are standing up for them. These memories are sad, and true, and I deeply regret what has happened to those people. But to allow these racial terrorists to steal symbols that stand for the South, good and bad, is to let them win. See, to let them steal our values, our past, our lives from us by the inevitable rubbing out that accompanies this silencing is to ennoble them, to promote them, to give them free space in our hearts and minds, in our memories and in our soul. You take the symbols, the analogies, the stories, the way of living, and you push it out of public sight, along with those who still cherish it lovingly delivered to Satan for his evil use. It is to give them, our Satan, Southern history, to give them Southern culture, to give them the South, along with many of the people who reside in it.

You can't destroy everything just because of a flaw, for if you did, the fires would burn the entire Earth to ashes, for there is nothing that is flawless on Earth. There is still a lot that is beautiful about the South: the millitary tradition, the sense of honor, the hospitality, the delicate style and refinement of Southern art, architecture and design, an extremely open society that includes people much more readily then it excludes them, the sense of history and the deeper side of life, and a quiet stubborn strength that will not submit to anyone, under any conditions, often to the aggravation of Dixieland itself!

Those whose character is destroyed have no values, no roots, no sense of history or depth, no idea of who they are. Maybe they can discover it, but that takes years, years wasted, years lost, years never seen again. Why waste the youth of our children over pettiness? Especially since they may well turn out exactly like we did anyways.

We can't just abandon our past. It is part of us, and we are a product of our past more then anything else. The Confederate Flag will continue to be the standard of this website, for now and the future to come, exactly because I hope to promote its use as a symbol of the South and Culture in general.

Lehman Brothers Burns in Hell

In honor of the mighty fall of a mighty bank, almost exactly (less one day) a year ago. Dedicated to the way the very fabric of our society has been torn to tatters by these and similar rogue companies. And dedicated to all those who have suffered or will suffer as a result of this tragedy of human hubris and pain intolerance.

Image Courtesy of David Shankbone, cc SA 3.0 & GNU 1.2 Licenses under condition of attributing the artist and share alike.

I read an article in the NYT the other day about how Lehman Brothers had to die for the financial sector to live. The crux of the argument is that without Lehman there would've been no federal bailout. This is certainly true. But, did the federal bailout really help us in the end?

Not long after the federal bailout was authorized, AIG gave huge bonuses to their executives. They apparently did this with the full-hearted agreement of certain not-to-be-named Obama cabinet members (okay, it was the Treasury Secretary), and mystified many, who saw this as rewarding the very people who started the crisis. The companies, under intense pressure from the President, underwent the supremely hypocritical and politically caniving action of demanding that the executives give the bonuses back (?) as if they have the right to ask such a thing when it was the company's own sleaziness that distributed the bonuses to begin with. Notice any trends? Perhaps a little systematic incompetence and corruption? A particular AIG exec, Jack DeSantis, wrote a rather impassioned letter pointing out the supreme level of hypocrisy and irresponsibillity involved in such a transfer of blame, especially when his sector of the company was one of the few strong points, and was derided at by a hyperbolically riduclous American public who could not see beyond the size of his bonus. Which brings us to our next point.

What was the very intention of the bank bail-out? What was the point? What's the big idea? Well, Obama said they were "too big to fail" and that rather then letting nature take it's course on these corrupt, tyrannical, unclean, and generally absurd willfully sinning banks, we should come in and save them, both financially, and from themselves.

And here's the big dilemma: if we don't do interfere in their affairs, the natural corruption and self-congratulating nature of these banks up way past their bedtime will cause this to happen AGAIN. And if we do interfere, these mediocre, socialistically controlled banks will stifle all competition and innovation in the financial sector by way of their immense government investments and protections, removing one entire potential for American growth, stunting the development of financial cities like NYC, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago and Dallas, and making us completely dependent upon London & Frankfurt for the financial side of our growth. In particular, we can kiss the supremacy of the Dollar goodbye - now it'll be the Euro that's the world's chief currency! Just like rent controls pushing the development out of historic Manhattan to the edges, this bailout will, by way of similar controls, push financial innovation and new markets to other continents.

If we had let these banks fail, there would've been no liquidity in our economy and the price of taking a loan or converting assets would shoot through the roof. Ah, but here's the good news: the high price of loans and low price of assets would create a massive incentive, a veritable gold rush, on the part of private investors to build their own banks. It would also stimulate small business, as new companies could still acquire financing (and through it cheap assets) through selling their original stock on the NASDAQ. Just like how San Francisco, within two years of it's great 1908 earthquake, had rebuilt the city completely (though rents did briefly shoot through to three times their original price), our financial sectors own immense price gouging would rebuild Manhattan, both literally and figuratively, and in the end create a more stable, meritocratic, compartmentalized, dynamic, innovative, and small-business geared economy.

New banks, new financial centers, new small business, new great cities, and new organizations that no longer work on the handshake, wink wink, nudge nudge system. That would be America's financial future. But not now - now that Banks are too big to fail, the market is too crowded to succeed! We've got ourselves a corporate traffic jam, and all 12 lanes on this freeway are packed with old clunker cars that are twenty-feet long, weight 100 tons, and crash every five feet, so prepare for a slowdown and eventually being overtaken by Europeans riding horses.

Maybe part of the problem is we don't appreciate Hell enough. Don't get me wrong, Heaven's great, but sometimes you just need a trashcan or a cattleprod, and hell serves both these. Fear can be quite stimulating, and sometimes things just reach their condemnation. Like Pharoah in Exodus, they run out of chances, their heart is too hard, their actions too geared along the track of evil, destruction is the only place they can go, and if we do not put away "the evil from among us," it will corrupt the hearts of us all who are left and put us in a position where we can't be righteous even if we want to (like Jack De Santis). I was thankful to see this happen with Lehman's, and regret that more unrepentant sinners did not find their demise. Even worse, by not punishing or threatening in any credible way bad behavior, those who have already begun to take this road will never fork off of it, but take it straight to it's scarlet conclusion, destruction, for them or all.

It is obvious that the NYT wants to make Lehman Brothers Christ, but these, these banks, they be willful sinners, the unrepentant kind, the rebels without a cause, the apostates. We should've sent these guys to HELL!!!!

Courtesy of The Immaculate Heart, image shown by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917

Sex, Virginity and Raunchiness

Adam & Eve by Domenichino , Grenoble, Musee de Beaux Arts, courtesy wikimedia

Ah the good ole SVR! How thankful we are for thee. You break our hearts, intoxicate our minds, dominate our lives, give us wives and children and bequeath on us one of the greatest single pleasurable moments of existence. You are, in many ways, the essence of the flesh. We were born as a result of you and, for many of us, die inside through your obsession or are destroyed in horrific relationships seeking you. You are a humbler, a destroyer of dignity, something that sinks us to our lowest moments and we cannot open the door to let others see us in our horrific, grotesque perversions - but we're smiling anyways.

Some of the stupidest things people do as a result of sex. Walking the rails on cruiseships, crude indignified jokes, trouble with the law, pick-up lines, referring to genitalia by pet names, humiliating yourself in public places, submitting to strange satanic rituals, or, in some rare cases, even letting someone suck your blood or lock you in a cage. But sex can also be the center of true love, an almost mystic, magical experience between two people who truly love each other. It can be the deepest, most powerful relationship you ever have, something that builds you, strengthens you, defines you.

It can also be a cheap joke with the laugh on you, as denoted by the marker and pancake syrup on your face. I suppose lust can be an advertiser, something that forces you to get to know someone better and thus forge that true relationship, but it is a hard road, a painful road, one that I would not wish for anyone. Yes, there is a better way.

I know it is unfashionable to speak of monogamy in this day and age. Maybe that says something about this day and age. That close relationship can exist outside of marriage, but it is rare, and the fact that you have not been given to anyone else before does help in all ways. Marriage is about, more then anything, loyalty and sacrifice, and it is from great sacrifice that great commitment is forged. We live in a very superficial time where dignity is a non-issue, but a great joy comes from it, and I wish for those who read my blog a better way of life.

If you've already been engaged in raunchy behavior, and have lost your cherry, don't fear. Beyond the fact that it won't help, it is NOT impossible to find that deeper bond, it just becomes more difficult. For those who have not yet done such, I advise you to continue your current good behavior and look for love, not lust, in those you date.

A New Mindset on Gun Regulation

There is a tendency on the American "right to bear arms" debate to simplify the sides to "more order, more regulation" and "more freedom, more weapons." But there are several kinds of firearm restriction:

1.) Weapons restrictions - prohibiting weapons that fire automatically, semiautomatically, beyond a certain caliber, or prohibting broader categories of guns such as rifles, shotguns, pistols, machine guns, and howitzers (exploding shells).

2.) Ownership restrictions - prohibiting certain kinds of people, like mental patients and former criminals, from owning weapons.

3.) Usage/Carrying restrictions - prohibiting weapons in certain areas and under the influence of drugs, alcohol, et cetera. Might theoretically also include certain weather conditions, like fog, or certain seasons to prevent poaching out of season in forested areas.

Even the most ardent/extremist gun rights activist (like me) would generally support some degree of (2). (3) would be acceptable in certain kinds of places to nearly everyone, including me, though for me the list may not be as extensive as some would require. It is (1), the debate of the kind of guns you can own, that generally is the source of debate.

The trouble with the debate on (1) is that the result of banning assault weapons is to make single individuals helpless against a mob. There is a reason why infantry began fighting in smaller squads once assault weapons came out. The less abillity to spray fire that a particular gun grants, the more limited you are in your abillity to engage groups.

Now, it is true that most of the time the criminal would win anyways, but if an innocent had even a 10% chance of defeating his assailants with his assault weapon, innocents would, as a corporate, have the edge, as an innocent must only face this situation, at most, once every few months, even in the worst parts of town, but said streetgang will likely have to face this every night, meaning that, on average, they die in 10 days!

It should be noted, however, that this situation only works well if some degree of semi-millitary training is required for all participants in assault weapon ownership, as it is in most countries (like Switzerland) that allow such. This also provides a great opportunity to catch criminals, as they need only make one slip of the tongue or act suspiciously once during training to become automatic suspects. The training would be funded, of course, through an assault weapons ownership fee and held at local police departments.

(Howitzers, however, may create too much spray and property damage potential, and there is nothing that can be done with a howitzer in a normal person-to-person setting that could not be done with an assault rifle much more safely.)

Cap-And-Trade Roll-Call - Naming the Guilty

In this weeks house roll call vote to push through Cap and Trade, the democrats passed the bill 219-211. But 8 GOP congressmen defected! Now, this is still considerably less then the number of Dems who defected (hence the margin being narrow) but nonetheless, it is clear that some of our conservative friends should have a guilty conscience. If only four of those GOP congresssmen had stuck to their side of the aisle, the vote would have been a tie. Three of these GOP congressmen are from New Jersey.

Well, one truly guilty face is Seattle's own Dave Reichert. Representing the 8th District, and the only Republican congressioanl district West of the Mountians in Washington State, Reichert has long been known to be considerably more environmentalist then is normal for a Republican. In a previous life, he was awarded Sheriff of the Year in 2004 for his exceptional conduct as King County Sheriff, including catching the Green River Killer, but has since held few significant policy stands or achievements.

Another guilty face is Matt Kirk in his district to the north of Chicago. Like Reichert, he too has been known to support environmentalism. His agenda, however, is much more clearly suburban. Both Reichert & Kirk's districts are Obama Republican, meaning that despite a Republican congressman, they voted for Obama in the Presidential election.

Mary Bono Mack's district in Southern California also voted for Obama, but by only 51%, unlike 60% for each of Reichert & Kirk's districts. The district used to be clearly Republican, but in recent years has slid more and more liberal. She is a fiscal-environmentalist conservative who has won simultaneous awards from both Sunline Transit Agency & Americans for Tax Reform.

Our fourth fiend is Mike Castle from Delaware's At-Large district. He's mostly a social conservative anyways, representing a state that is liberal to the bone, a district even more liberal then those previously mentioned.

Chris Smith of New Jersey's 4th has considerably less of an excuse. His district voted a comfortable 52% for McCain in 2008 and 56% for Bush in 2004. He, however, is primarilly a social conservative, being a major figure in the pro-life movement and the author of several antiabortion bills. He has strong ties to ORGANIZED LABOR, and as such can be considered a member of the Christian Left.


Congressman John McHugh represents the 23rd District of New York as a Republican moderate. He recently received several earmarks in a defense appropriation bill that he celebrates on his website...

Representative Lance of New Jersey's 7th votes with his party 88% of the time, making this particular exception somewhat odd. On his website, he justifies this vote with his strong commitment to renewable energy. Overall, however, he has very little policy information (total: 10 long sentences, though 4 on the environment) on his website (circa 06-27-09) and so one finds his sincerity of intent questionable. His district is obviosly very gerrimandered, like an ameoba on his district map, and has not had a Democrat representative since 1980. Its' median income is 75 grand.

Lastly, Representative Frank LoBiondo of New Jerseys 2nd (includes Atlantic City) voted in support of this bill. LoBiondo is a member of Newt Gingrich's freshmen class, having taken his seat in the 1994 congressional sweep after a failed 1992 run. He is a member of the moderate "Republican Main Street Partnership." Unlike Lance, his policy stands are very detailed, almost too detailed, and his "news" section on his website holds very candid and angry stands on almost every detail of Economic, Energy, Defense, Veterans, and legislation related to local beaches.

Ahn Cao, interestingly, did not vote for it, despite being a moderate republican from an obscenely liberal district (Downtown New Orleans, voted 85% for Barack Obama, 65% African American). He also did not vote for the stimulus, and, according to Orange Juice, may be facing a recall attempt as a result. This immigrant came to America as the son of a former South Vietnamese army officer, attended law school after almost becoming a Catholic Priest, and built his own law firm in New Orleans.


CONCLUSION

Of the 8 who did vote for Cap and Trade, Smith, Bono Mack, Lance, and McHugh would probably have been the easiest to persuade. Reichert is a maybe, as is Kirk. The other two could not have been persuaded, as one district was too liberal.

What is a conservative?

Note: We are working exclusively with the Anglo-American and Sino-Korean conservatives (they are nearly identical) and not the European or Islamic kinds, which may be very different. Likewise, we are working with Anglo-American liberals.

People tend to look at liberal and conservative as simple bullet points of policy. This makes no sense. It makes no sense because that is not the way people view the world. It takes the extremely cynical (and extremely wrong) view that people find a random set of issues to vote a certain way on and follow through with them, or that each group just watches the same news channels, but people look for the news channel that agrees with them.

Kathleen parker nailed it when she wrote this article: "Mars and Venus Collide." Liberals also nail it when they call themselves "progressives," Conservatives when they call themselves "strict constructionists." These are not lies, there is more truth to them then nearly anyone can know.

The difference between a liberal and a conservative is the difference between ideals and opposing goods. A liberal believes that there is a goal, a hope, a specific place that we should shift our entire society and everyone in it towards, while a conservative believes in a natural balance created by our competing desires, motivations, and intellects, opposing opposites, and leaves ideals for individuals. Your right-winger believes that if everything in society (including government) is in the proper place in which it fits, and those in power essentially keep their hands off, we will find tranquility, prosperity, and enlightenment (scientific progress) on a higher level then the liberals foolhardy extreme, and then the individuals can step forward with their own ideals, and shift themselves among the boxes as they please and their abillity allows them. Conservatives may still believe in ideals, but they are individual ideals, and NOT goals for society.

Now keep in mind that not everyone who is a Republican is a conservative, and that Democrat and liberal are not interchageable either, for the political parties truly are just policy points (as they would be, since they need to win elections and stay in a pack for power) and you would find in the Republican tent many libertarians, populists, moderates, Christian theocrats (who may be a different kind of liberal), et cetera. In the Democrat tent you would find labor unionists (who may be a different kind of conservative), anarchists, moderates, and environmentalists who may or may not be liberal.