Little late here as we had a thunder boomer come through with high winds and hail that knocked out power here at GOC Central. It was just restored a few moments ago. Anyway it is good ol’ “conservative” Chief Justice John Roberts who once again rescued Obummercare by rewriting the law for Obungler and the Dimocrats. I feel like I’m in Alice’s Wonderland where “words mean whatever I say they mean”. Didja ever notice that the justices appointed by a Dimocrat president never stab Dimocrats in the bat? They are always nice reliable rat bastard commies. The justices appointed by presidents from the Stupid Party will stab Republicans in the back. Justices like David Souter, Harry Blackmun, and John Paul Stevens. It must be sumpin’ in the water in DC. It was no surprise that Roberts voted this way since he had rewritten Obummercare once before. This time, he had Kennedy join him. Way to go John. Here’s your award.

As long as we’re banning flags why don’t we ban the Mexican flag? It’s every bit as divisive as the Confederate battle flag. Many of the groups flying it want to take over parts of the United States and return those areas to Mexico. That’s the goal of La Raza, which is a racist group. Oh. They’re not white so it’s OK. Only white people are bad in this country. Actually, only white males are bad in this country. Everyone else is a victim. And these illegals are in this country illegally looking for a better life so that’s OK. What’s funny is all of these people leaving Third World shit holes come to this country “looking for a better life” and then they want to turn this country into the Third World shit holes they left. And to you Mexicans, we stole those lands fair and square so STFU and go back to picking our crops, cleaning our houses, and mowing our lawns. And learn English! Yannow, back in the good old days that was the number one priority of anyone coming to this country. If I moved to another country, that would be my number one priority.

Do you know why a Mexican is like a cue ball? The harder you hit him the more English you get. Why are there no swimming pools in Mexico? Everyone who can swim is here. You’re here illegally so I’m gonna make fun of you.

Yannow what would be a hoot? Replace the Confederate battle flag with the real Confederate flag. No one would know it was the Confederate flag. BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, and one more thing. Yannow who put up all of those Confederate flags all over the South? Dimocrats. Yannow who enslaved all of those black people in the South? Dimocrats. Yannow what the Ku Klux Klan was? The militant arm of the Dimocrat Party. LBJ was president when the Civil Rights Act was passed and he couldn’t have done it without Republicans. Dimocrats were against it. The father of Pope Albert I of the Church of AGW voted against it. When he claimed that his father lost his Senate seat for voting for it he was lying through his teeth. And just look at what the policies of the Dimocrat Party have done to blacks over the last 50 years. Inner city schools suck. Who controls the schools? Dimocrats. 73% of black children are born of single mothers. LBJ’s Great Fucking Society destroyed the black family. Jim Crow couldn’t do it, Welfare did. If the KKK tried to come up with policies to keep blacks poor and uneducated they couldn’t have done a better job than the Dimocrat Party and their useful idiots of the Congressional Black Caucus who live like royalty while their constituents live in poverty dependent upon the gummint. No wonder they don’t want to teach history in school. What a scam the Dimocrats have come up with.

Toejam sent me this story.

A white Ivy League professor has taken to the pages of the Huffington Post to condemn her own race, declaring that she chose never to reproduce because her children would simply inherit white privilege.What do you think?

Ali Michael, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s (Penn) Graduate School of Education, was prompted to write by the Rachel Dolezal saga, in which the head of Spokane’s NAACP branch was revealed to be a white woman who simply identifies as black and has assimilated into black culture. Dolezal’s aspiration to forsake whiteness and embrace a new race, Michael says, is actually a routine one among whites who are repulsed by the racism and privilege they see all around them.

OMFG! WTF is wrong with this idiot?

Michael says that, like Dolezal, she has gone through an extensive phase of trying to eradicate her whiteness (or as she calls it, Whiteness)– one so severe that she decided she didn’t want to reproduce.

Yannow what lady? I’m glad you’re not reproducing either. You would pass the stupid gene on to your kids and we already have enough booger eatin’ moh-rons in this country. We don’t need any more of them. So thanks for deciding not to reproduce. Of course to reproduce you would first have to find someone dumb enough to boink you.

Ron in Ohio sent me an email telling me the picture of fakes I posted wasn’t complete. Here’s the updated version.

So Boner, how does it feel to stab your voters in the back you RINO hack? Did it feel good kissing Oboner’s ass? Or did you perform fellatio? Or did you do both? Do you know what the bird of true love is? Swallow.

Art sent me this essay that he wrote back in 2007. It is still very relevant today. Some of this stuff I have been preaching for years like people who advocate socialism and claim that the only reason it has failed everywhere it has been tried is that the right people have not been in charge. I could make a comment after every single paragraph in this essay but that would be stealing Art’s thunder so I will be silent. Take it away Art.

Resentment turned to anger turned to hate, along with fear, has become a political weapon. Hate and fear are dynamic while their opposites, love and contentment, are passive. So if you want to build a constituency and mobilize people you need only give them something to hate or something to fear. Love and contentment will result in their sitting back and enjoying their good fortune.

Because of this reality, politics has degenerated into the demonizing of opponents and scaring the public with issues for which no one has a viable solution. Then the demagogues can claim that they have the solution and that if you just throw out their evil opponents and give them control life will be wonderful.

They claim that if they are in charge they will ensure social justice, end poverty, homelessness, hunger, illness, crime and war. Oh, I forgot, and they would also guarantee total freedom. Wouldn’t that be paradise? If only you would support them and put them in charge.

This is how all the tyrants of the 20th century came to power, Lenin/Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro to name the most famous.

It’s interesting that in their rise to power they all had the support of academics and intellectuals both native and from around the world. Once they consolidated their power the first thing that they did was persecute, incarcerate or execute the native academics and intellectuals.

The question you must ask yourself is: How can these demagogues give you paradise without taking away your freedoms and making you totally dependent, which is the definition of bondage? They can’t.

Today’s left, the Progressives, are the current incarnation of the ancient Greek Sophists. (Sophist: A rhetorician skilled at making foolishness sound like wisdom.) Their Siren song permeates academia and the national media thereby luring their trusting victims into crashing on the rocks of subjectivity.

History shows that their goal all along is the wealth and prestige that accompanies power. In the words of Benjamin Franklin:

“Sir, there are two passions which have a powerful influence on the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of power, and the love of money. Separately each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but when united in view of the same object, they have in many minds the most violent effects. Place before the eyes of such men a post of honour that shall at the same time be a place of profit, and they will move heaven and earth to obtain it.”

The main difference between the Left and the Right is that the Left lives in a theoretical world while the Right tries to understand reality. The Left believes that more government is the solution, the Right believes that too much government is the problem. The world is a dangerous deadly place and the above listed tribulations will always be with us. The most we can do is try to minimize their impact on society.

Again, history tells us that the way to do this is to nurture a civil culture where self-discipline and a devotion to personal responsibility permeates: This was the teachings of Christ distilled to their simplest construct. Our Founders understood this. That is why, despite the corrupt history being taught today, they all supported the teachings of the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule and the Judeo/Christian Bible. To read their pronouncements, go here.

There is a subtle almost unrecognized conflict taking place in America. The conflict is between those who believe God is the ruler of the universe and those who think that man is. Those who believe in God’s law and those who believe in man’s law. God’s law is codified, divine and immutable. Man’s law is situational, emotional and subject to the whims of whoever happens to be in power.

While no law is without violators the efficacy of a law should not be judged by its violators but by its impact on society.

Man made law is subject to the passions and prejudices of those in power and therefore ever changing with the transfer of power whether peaceful or violent. This results in those in favor escaping penalty while those out of favor suffer persecution. This creates chaos the result of which is a tyrannical society that uses force to create order.

Natural law based on a set of principles the first of which is that all men are equal under the law. When the principles are codified in a constitution and taught and understood by all the result is a peaceful orderly society in which force is only needed for miscreants and enemies of the state. This was America until the ‘60s when the Corruption of the Constitution by the 16th and 17th Amendments and the Federal Reserve Act began to impact our society.

Today the law has become malleable with selective enforcement and executive orders and our market economy has become the victim of Crony Capitalism.

When Benjamin Franklin exited the Constitutional Convention, he was asked by a woman, “Sir, what have you given us?” His immediate response was, “A Republic, ma’am, if you can keep it.”

A very prophetic reply.

Historically man’s law results in a civic structure consisting of a ruling elite with all the power and wealth, a military to protect the ruling elite from foreign conquest and domestic rebellion, and the rest of the people who are considered subjects (slaves?) of the ruling elite and do not have the rights of property necessary for liberty. (Either all property belongs to the “king” (read ruling elite) or as in communism all property belongs to the “people” (read state).

In ancient times there was a sect called Jews that tried to live by God’s law. They pretty much worshipped and kept to themselves not assimilating into the dominate culture ruled by man’s law. Then the Jew Jesus was born and began to teach God’s law to the masses. As the numbers of his followers grew the world began to change from one of barbarism instructed by man’s law to one more civil instructed by God’s law.

Those who tried to live by God’s law tended to be persecuted: Sometimes by men using God’s name to justify man’s law.

A new land was discovered 3,000 miles from old world religious persecution. Those seeking freedom of worship (mostly Bible reading Christians) began to migrate to this new land. In time towns, counties, cities and states emerged with one thing in common: They tried to live their lives according to Biblical teachings.

The left thinks that they can pass laws to accomplish this so they spend their time passing more and more laws usually called man-made-laws. As a result it is almost impossible for an active person to get through a day without breaking some law even though he is not caught. This results in selective enforcement which is the main instrument of tyranny. Another problem with man-made-law is that it does not endure: It changes with each passing of power from one person or oligarchy to another.

Our Founders favored Natural law. Natural Law is immutable and defined as: A body of unchanging moral principles regarded as a basis for all human conduct.

This is not an argument for giving up and ending the fight to reduce these tribulations. Nor is it an argument for ending freedom. It is an argument for recognizing the complexity of the problem and rejecting simple, feel good solutions offered for the purpose of gaining political advantage.

Another problem with the Left is that once they formulate a theory they marry it. No matter how many times it fails, they cling to it “till death do they part.” A classic example is Communism (Socialism). Instead of questioning the theory every time it fails, the left just proclaims that it wasn’t done right but if they were in charge they would do it right.

Since the Left emerges out of the theoretical world of the university, their influence spreads even to the world of science. The most important attribute of a scientist is to be skeptical about his own findings. Due to the influence of the Left, scientists are more and more becoming advocates for their initial findings. Scientists tallking about a “consensus” is an oxymoron. Either the experiment rising from research can be consistently replicated or it can’t. If it can’t, then the theory that initiated the research is flawed and therefore should be discarded. There should not be a poll as to how many scientists agree with the theory. It is just as foolish to accept scientific evidence without question as it is to reject empirical evidence out of hand.

Finally, it has been my experience that any attempt to have a philosophical discussion with a Leftist is turned into a “right fight” by the Leftist. If you offer them an unassailable fact, they ignore it, go off on a tangent, or make an ad hominem attack (Bush lied, Bush is Dumb, etc.) They are right and anyone who disagrees with them is evil because they are just trying to make the world better. Of course whenever a theory fails, the theory wasn't flawed, it just wasn’t properly implemented.

So liberals progressives rat bastard commies now agree with the pope since he has become an acolyte of the Church of AGW. Howza ’bout that? The pope now worships another pope, Pope Albert I of the Church Of AGW. How do all of you Roman Catholics feel about that? And as Gateway Pundit asks, Why Does Pope Francis Hate The Poor? Why Does He Want Them To Suffer?

Even as gasoline prices plummeted and the overall energy price index calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics declined, electricity prices bucked the trend in the United States in 2014.

Data released this year by the BLS indicates that the electricity price indexes hit all-time highs for the month of December 2014 and for the year. 2014 was the most-expensive year ever for electricity in the United States.

The annual price index for electricity, published by BLS today, was 208.020. That was up from 200.750 in 2013.

Remember, it was Obungler who promised that electricity rates would skyrocket under his plan (one of the few times he has actually spoken the truth) but the American public was dumb enough to vote for this SCoaMF not once, but twice. Now we have the pope of one of the largest religions in the world supporting the same policies to combat mythical man caused global warmingclimate change. Liberals progressives Rat bastard commies now think the pope is a great guy. Ex-Speaker Blinky is praising him to the skies. So, does that mean they’re now behind him on abortion, especially late term abortion which is actually infanticide? Just akin’.

John Paul II is prolly spinning in his grave under St. Peters. We now have a communist pope, which is not surprising since he is from South America which is a hot bed of communism. How’s that woring out in South America in countries like Venezuela and Cuba? Once again, we see the massive failures of communist policies yet there are still people, like Pope Francis and Obumbler, who actually think they can make it work since the only reason it has failed (and miserably failed I may add) is that the right people haven’t been in charge and finally, after all of these failures, they are the right people who will finally make it work. What is it that Einstein said about insanity? And, of course, once again it is time for the Heinlein quite,

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

Yep! Bad luck. That is what happened in the USSR and all of the Warsaw Pact nations, like East Germany. That is what happened in Zimbabwe after the socialist gummint killed or drove off all of the white farmers and wealthy Rhodesia, which was once the bread basket of Africa and exported food, became Zimbabwe, which is now one of the basket cases of Africa and has to import food. We have side by side comparisons of capitalism versus communism. South Korea which is prosperous and North Korea which is poverty stricken where the populace starves due to “bad luck”. We had prosperous West Germany versus poor East Germany. The differences are so obvious only liberals progressives rat bastard commies can’t see them. Only Dimocrats and RINOs can’t see them. But I repeat myself. Is it the water in Washington DC that affects our politicians of both parties? Is that why members of the Stupid Party break campaign promises and become RINOs?

Many readers have sent me this one.

Click on image to enlarge.

Michael sent me this one.

In Pompeii, in 237 B.C., Flavius Romulus produced in his garden, a strawberry of prodigious proportions. Word soon got out that there was a strawberry well worth seeing at a house in the Via Ladra. Flavius carefully placed the berry on an ornate marble pedestal in the center of his courtyard. Crowds thronged to the house and each passerby tried to outdo his predecessor in lavish praise of the berry.

Neighbors, some very well connected, quickly tired of the chariots, the horse droppings, all the noise and commotion and they complained to the authorities.
Soon, a Centurion and his squad barged in, and set up a perimeter around the pedestal.

When Flavius asked the Centurion, “Did you men also come to praise my berry?” the Centurion replied, (more…)

Once again, not metal, but since I had Steve Howe for my Saturday Guitar, I figgered I’d do Yes for Sunday Metal. This is one of my favorite Yes songs.

If you listen to the original on the Close to the Edge album you’ll notice that Steve Howe’s steel guitar playing has improved as he does some of the melody that Wakeman’s used to play on keyboards. Also, Squire’s harmonica part is new. And, at the 9:00 minute mark either there is another keyboard player off stage or there has been a pre-recorded keyboard part since there are two parts and only Wakeman’s right hand is playing.

I saw them play this live outdoors in the summer at SIU Edwardsville, right across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. It was right after the Close to the Edge album came out. They played the entire album in addition to some other songs and for their encore, they played Roundabout. This was when they had their best lineup, before Bill Bruferd left and was replaced by Alan White. Bruford didn’t like structured playing and preferred improvisation. He joined Robert Fripp, of King Crimson fame and that was pretty much the end of his commercial career. Speaking of King Crimson, I saw them live once and they sucked. Fripp played sitting down. They didn’t even play their best known work, In The Court of the Crimson King. It was like seeing Arlo Guthrie and him not playing Alice’s Restaurant. That happened to me as well. At the end of his set, the audience yelled, “Play Alice’s Restaurant!” and he yelled back, “See the movie!” What an asshole!

Mood For a Day by Steve Howe of Yes.

He’s self taught. Never had a lesson. Can’t read a note of music and he can write and play sumpin’ like this.