Look At It This Way (#LAITW)

“Once in office, his first order of business was an economic stimulus plan to spur on the economy and he moved quickly to adopt a universal, government-funded healthcare plan. His [key people] advocated organic farming and a reduction in chemical pesticides. They blamed major corporations for a decline in quality food. They wanted to raise taxes on the wealthy to fund greater social welfare programs for the poor and needy. They wanted to provide more affordable, if not free, access to college education. Just like…”

Who’s quoted? If you know your political history, you may have more than one name in mind. Tread carefully.

Read the article.

We’re getting a lot of it in Arroyo Grande, CA this season. And guess what, NO ONE was talking about a big rain year. There were no announcements last Fall of a big el nino or el nina or el nada or el anything{o|a}. But the year before… OMG. We were going to get an El Nino, hope was in sight. Batten down the hatches! And what happened that year – half of average, almost.

So what makes anyone think weather, let alone climate, can be predicted worth a damn?

In politics, in health, in sports, in everything… Much of the advice that gets dumped on us is worthless. And that’s hard to remember when “EVERYBODY AND EVERYONE” starts preaching something as gospel. Take antioxidants, for instance. Are you going to argue with the self-righteous, vegan, art history major at Starbucks that you need to get your antioxidants. Heck, look at how the food and supplement businesses have jumped on board that crusade – because you’ll buy it, literally. And guess what? It’s not only bogus, it might actually be UN-healthy.

Remember this next time you’re so sure of something…

Reference article about Linus Pauling and anti-oxidants.

Cultures aren’t equal. And the more we pretend they are, the worse things will get. Judgment is called for.

As Kira Davis (RedState.com) noted:

“If your culture promotes or tolerates old men marrying child brides, your culture is not equal to ours.

If your culture stones women when they have the audacity to get raped it is not equal to ours.

If your culture forces women to marry their rapists as an alternative to being stoned, your culture is not equal to ours.

If your culture welcomes the idea that anyone who draws a picture of your god is a blasphemer and deserves to be murdered, it is not equal to ours.

If your culture is so amenable to wife-beating that a local news crew does a story on make-up techniques to cover bruising, it is not equal to ours.

If your culture believes that a woman should be forced by law to cover every inch of her body so as not arouse the passions of a man, it is not equal to ours.

If your culture believes that disabled children should be euthanized or left to die after birth, it is not equal to ours.

If your culture believes that you are not entitled to the fruits of your own labor and your only purpose is to support a murderous dictator living in wealth and excess, it is not equal to ours.

If your culture believes in strapping down a 12 year old girl, cutting off her clitoris and sewing her vagina shut to prevent her from becoming a “slut” it is not equal to ours.

If your culture enforces homosexuality laws by throwing gays off of rooftops, it is not equal to ours.”

I concur.

I enjoyed my early childhood days in Pennsyltucky. My Mom and Dad used that word all the time to describe where we were from. If you’ve never been through the forested rolling hills of Pennsylvania, enjoyed collecting and jumping in the Fall leaves, hunted for sassafras roots to munch, a genuine earthy place, well, you should give it a go sometime. Some great historical sites, too, by the way.

Pennsyltucky is the “T” in Pennsylvania. Picture the rectangular state. In the lower right corner is a Philadelphia box. In the lower left (roughly) is the Pittsburgh (with an “h”) box. Both areas trend left. What remains is the “T”, the central band running from top to bottom and another band across the top. You might call this rural Pennsylvania. It’s the conservative Pennsylvania. It’s where my grandmother lived her entire 101-year life, in the same house since married, in Shamokin, PA. As my Mom would often mention to us kids learning to spell, “that’s Nikomahs spelled backward.” Reynoldsville. (By way of) Paxinas. Our last home in Pennsyltucky before leaving for Kansas was in Butler, an hour north of Pittsburgh. Not a long drive, but it was enough to shift political leanings from the left in Pittsburgh to the right in the “T”, Pennsyltucky. I always thought my parents were Republicans, and I actually think they were registered that way, but they definitely leaned more and more left as time passed (or at least that was my perception). Maybe they’d have stayed more “right” had we stayed in Pennsyltucky.

Until this morning, I didn’t know that Pennsyltucky is/was used to (often jokingly) refer to this “T”/rural/conservative area of PA. It was just where we were from, and I half-thought Mom and Dad coined the name somehow. I’m feeling oddly proud of that heritage today.

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t vote for either Trump or Clinton. Being in California, I had the luxury of using my vote in a totally principled fashion without worrying about affecting the outcome. CA was going blue no matter what.

But it was Pennsyltucky in the spotlight last night. Who’d a thought.

If lies were dynamite, the top two candidates for President would have been blown to kingdom come long ago.

This was one obvious point in an interesting article by Susan Wright on RedState.com. The title is “How Do We Vote The Bible?”. It runs down the Ten Commandments and “rates” each of the Donald and Hillary one by one. It’s about as bad as you might expect, though there are some landmines neither has really stepped on yet (or at least not very publicly).

But who is so old-fashioned to use the Ten Commandments as a measuring stick?! I am. And I don’t care what religion you are, or even if you’re religious at all. It would be pretty hard to beat this list as a “rules to live by as a good person” – no matter your world view.

So check it out. And if you’re really brave, take stock of how you’re doing as well.

Here’s the entire article. And here’s the Wikipedia rundown of the Ten Commandments.

Mickey White (at RedState.com) suggested #NeverAgain be a battle cry we can ALL get behind. We should ALL get behind. Eighty-plus percent of us are going to vote for a blustery amoral slimebag of a man or one of the most corrupt politicians of our time. THAT is despicable.

#NeverAgain. I support that.

Watch out. The lame ducks in the Senate (led by Mitch McConnel) seem to be planning to put through the Marketplace Fairness Act after the election. Sounds good, right? Who could possibly oppose marketplace fairness?! Be ye not fooled. Like lots of crap coming from DC, the gotchyas are under the hood. In this case, what is meant by fairness is that internet retailers will have to collect and pay sales tax to all the states from which their customers come.

There is no pot of money that will remain untaxed when a leviathan government is out of control.

We’ll set our clocks back by one hour come Sunday morning.

I wonder how far we’ll have set the country back by Tuesday evening?

For sure, things are not getting worse. Things are already worse. We’re beginning to uncover the magnitude of the problems. That’s better.