Curtis Dahlgren
Re: Pirates, merry men, "predatory politicians," and other Kleptomaniacs
By Curtis Dahlgren
"Do not become a beggar by banqueting on borrowing." — Ecclesiasticas (Apocrypha)
"Magna est veritas et praevalet" ("Great is truth and it prevails.") — Apocrypha (Vulgate)
"One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world." — Alexander Solzhenitzyn
FIRST THE FACTS, MA'AM: Do you know how much that $700 billion "bail-OUT" amounts to for every sleep-walking American? Since they rounded it off to 700 BILL, I rounded off the population of the U.S.A. to 300 billion and divided it into 700,000,000,000. The result?
On the average, every man, woman, and child owes an extra $2,333.00. For the average family of 3.5 persons, that amounts to $8,165! And the predators aren't done yet! They want a few more billion for this and a few more billion for that!
In the long run, of course, we are just borrowing it from our grand-"chillen," but in the short run we are borrowing it from the Chinese and people such as our crude oil suppliers (who can't even protect their oil tankers from pirates).
By the way, if I ramble you'll have to excuse me, but my mind has been boggled by the news that that one hi-jacked oil tanker had a pay-load of $100 MILLION (rounded off again). If that were the value at the current $50-some price of crude, does that mean that that one ship would have been carrying a $300,000,000 load when the price was over $150 a barrel (the price the Democrat Congress has been encouraging for the last two years)?
Just the other day I sent an e-mail to a friend in which I remarked that the environmentalists seem to prefer oil tankers on the high seas to safe pipelines (it's only 74 miles from the ANWAR oil to the existing Alaskan pipeline). Suppose the pirates scuttle the tanker into the oceans; where is your "clean air and clean water" then, you "environmentalists"?
On April 17, 2008 the Washington Examiner said:
"What's true in athletics is also true with energy production. You can't get good results if you don't do the drills."
Here's an excerpt from their article about our own oil in North Dakota and Montana:
"In 1995, the U.S. Geological Survey said only 151 million barrels were technically recoverable from the formation. But the same agency reported April 10 that new, horizontal-drilling technology [etc] now makes accessible 25 times that amount. That would make it by far the largest recoverable oil area in the 48 mainland states — and, if available all at once, it could replace every drop of American oil imports for about 10 months.
"But here's where the story gets even better: Estimates of total oil deposits in the Bakken Formation run between 170 billion and 400 billion barrels, or in other words, up to 100 times the size of even the new estimate of what is "technically recoverable." That's where the lesson really comes in: If, in 13 years, technology has improved enough to multiply the recoverable assets by 25 times, what's to say that technological advancements won't make available the rest of these vast reserves in an additional 10 or 20 years?
"Yet we can't get to any of the oil until we start drilling. Policy-makers must not allow to happen with the Bakken Formation what has occurred with the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, where 10 billion barrels of oil have gone untouched for a quarter-century because of utterly spurious environmental fears.
"Also, huge deposits of oil and natural gas continue to go untapped off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, again due to environmental hysteria. The truth is that leaks and spills from tankers carrying imported oil and gas exceed, by a large margin, the minuscule problems caused by the far safer use of pipelines from offshore drilling . . . "
YES, Truth doesn't always "rule," but it PREVAILS as long as 2 + 2 is allowed to = 4 (under the New Math, it may NOT)..
"An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children . . . this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble. The progeny of the Reagan Revolution will live instead in the universe that revolves around Hyde Park" — P.J. O'Rourke
During the recent election, those 18 to 20-somethings voted 2-to-1 to "make history" — for the candidate who won't allow drilling, but promises to pay for your doctor bills (and for your dentist's drilling?)! And he's going to pay for all that with WHAT?
Rush Limbaugh says that we now have an "opportunity of a lifetime" — because never before have conservatives had the chance to confront socialized government so DIRECTLY! But that presumes talk radio survives the first Executive Order of the Obama administration, or the first bill in Congress than bans freedom of speech.
"It should go without saying," but it must be said: The first signs of a dictatorship are the silencing of critics. "RED FLAGS" should be raised ("come the Revolution").
While the Leftists in Higher Education have long reveled in "Higher Criticism" of the Bible and Faith, now that the White House is "theirs" they will paradoxically say that the time for "Criticism" has come and gone (along with Reaganism and the Constitution and religion).
Dennis Prager reports that there's a coming 2-hour NOVA program debunking the whole history of our Judeo-Christian roots (coming out of slavery with God's help into Freedom). That "vestigial memory" is going to be replaced with a Princess Diana-type mass psychology, Obamaism. Everything from home-schooling to your hard-earned right to bear arms will be the only the only things worth "CRITICIZING" ANY MORE.
Many of the voters in this year's election were 18-year-old high school students who were "coached" to vote for the man who once bragged about hanging out with the Marxist professors during his college days (not that those 18-year-olds would have the slightest idea whom I'm talking about, but oh well . . ).
I can see it coming already: After the bail-OUT of the United Auto Workers union, there will be an indirect bail-OUT of the teachers' unions to reward their good behavior during the past election campaign (massive federal "aid" to the public schools, so they can spend even more money advertising what "GREAT SCHOOLS" we have).
Thanks to John Ziegler, a Zogby poll was taken to determine the knowledge of the "history making" Obama voters, and:
-97.1% of those polled were at least high school graduates, and 55% were college grads
-57.4% could not identify which party currently controls Congress
-82.6% didn't know Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot
-88.4% did not know that Obama said his policies would bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket [they knew which candidate had a pregnant daughter, but no clue as to possible results of even more one-party rule than we've had in the last 2 years].
BY THE WAY, some conservatives are saying that we should "wait and see" what he actually does as President before asking dumb questions, but I know better. Obama scoffs at the suggestion that he's going to take the country on a hard Left turn, but I've seen that tactic before. That's the kind of scoffing that scares me the most, because I've seen liberal "theologians" say the same kind of thing — immediately before making a hard Left turn!
And make no mistake, the War on Religion isn't waiting for January; it is in full swing already in California, Salt Lake City, and Lansing, for example. The combination of the Obama win and the defeat of Proposition 8 on "gay marriage" has given new meaning to the term Culture WAR.
Even as some 'republicans' are saying "it's time to lose the Culture War," the opponents of our religious ROOTS have shifted into Overdrive (and an attack on our ROOTS is an attack on YOU). They can't say one good thing about our Founding Fathers or the Constitution.
This is "counter-intuitive" to every cultural instinct with which this Judeo-Christian nation was blessed, going back to Old Testament times. As even the Apocrypha put it, "Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers who begat us."
The public schools now have a "short list" of famous men: Darwin, Freud, the Beatles, and so on. Columbus was a criminal, our Founders were frauds who used farmers for cannon fodder, etc., etc. The name of Christ is on the forbidden list. Talk about "book banning," we are about to see a wave of intimidation of social traditionalists such as has never been seen since the Declaration of Independence. In fact, if he were born today, Mark Twain would stand a much better chance of being arrested for "hate crimes" than of becoming a well-to-do author.
Matt Abbott wrote a succinct, cogent column recently about the war on Mormons, etc.
www.RenewAmerica.com/columns/abbott/181118
"Not surprisingly, one hears homosexual activists spout the usual mantra of "separation of church and state." Of course, the mantra is directed only at those who defend authentic marriage and the sanctity of human life; the pro-abortion, pro-sodomy "Christians" can talk about Jesus as much as they wish. Also, we really don't have separation of church and state; we have subordination of church to state."
He's absolutely right, of course; that's a distinction with a real difference, but it's the Traditionalists who are accused of being "simplistic." A degree from Idaho State or Eureka is considered worthless, but of course it takes common sense to recognize common sense. If you don't have common sense, you can't impress me with 3 or 4 degrees from Harvard or the University of Chicago.
President Reagan was an economics major at Eureka (and that helped him bring down the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union), but today even some RINOs scoff at him as "just" a social conservative. Well, as he would say (if he weren't rolling over in his grave), it's impossible to separate the Culture War from economics, because the bed-rock foundation of the American Revolution was that both Life and Property Rights were sacred!
Those Freedoms are the gifts of God, not human governments. I have quoted the Founding Fathers on this before, so I won't repeat myself, but this all brings us back to the title of this column:
"Re: Pirates, merry men, "predatory politicians," and other Kleptomaniacs"
"We need to soak the Rich, but not down to my pay-grade, of course." — Obamaism (paraphrased)
MAFIA DONS DON'T STEAL FROM THE FAMILY, though that may be their only exception. Drug addicts usually don't steal from their dope dealers, if they know what's good for them.
Most people don't believe in stealing from the POOR — except when it's through the lottery, the casinos, higher sales taxes, or the cost of petroleum products (by refusing to drill for oil).
Most people won't steal from the unemployed, unless it's through higher property taxes (directly or through higher rent). They won't steal from people making minimum wage (unless it's through higher payroll taxes).
Some people won't steal from anyone making less than $20,000 a year, unless it's through higher "fees" added to your water bill, garbage bill, or electric bill.
SOME PEOPLE don't believe in stealing (unless it's stealing from their grandchildren, or — by inflation of the money supply, by repaying good money with bad).
SOME PEOPLE promise us that they won't raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year, or maybe $200,000, or perhaps $120,000 or — oh well — $40K (and they want to be "perfectly clear" about that)!
Robbing Peter to pay Paulina to pay "everybody but the top 5 percent" is the oldest trick in the school of Houdini political science 101. Can you say "optical illusion," boys and girls? Can you say "mirage"?
Even if all this "worked," it would be unethical and immoral, but it doesn't "work" TO BOOT.
It's a TRICK. There simply aren't enough "RICH people" in the whole wide world to pay the BILL at the end of the Ball (didn't you notice? It's the "rich people" who are on "bended knee" before Congress begging for a "bail-OUT" already)!
CONCLUSION -
The "bottom line" is, in the words of Solomon, "The borrower is servant to the lender." That's "Natural Law," as expounded by America's Founders. There is no "PILL" we can take to escape the consequences of years and years of thumbing our noses at our Judeo-Christian principles.
The very concept of "equality" and human rights goes back to the "Old" testament practice of letting your servants rest on the Sabbath day, letting the land rest every seven years, plus the year of release, and the Jubilee year every 50 years.
In lieu of practicing these principles, our economy comes in for major "adjustments" about every 50 years (for example, 1930 to 1980). Our current "crisis" has come early, perhaps, because we have been so flagrant in thumbing our noses, not just at the Founders, but at God Himself.
The Left, now coming into power, doesn't hide its agenda; the "predatory leaders" openly intend to drive the Church underground — as it was in the old USSR. Since we "evolved" from animals, the humanists do not believe in "elevating humans above cockroaches" (as a caller to Dennis Prager's show stated).
As Prager reported, ads on public transit in Washington, DC during the holiday season are saying, "Why believe in God? Just be good for goodness' sake."
Humanist Association bus ads in London are saying, "There is no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."
As Prager said, "If there were no God, now would be the time to start worrying."
AMEN TO THAT! WHO'S GOING TO BAIL OUT UNCLE SAM, OR THE BRITS, WHEN THE CURRENT WAVE OF "BAIL-OUTS" HAS ENDED?
If this is "the moment the world began to heal," who's the Healer, the United Nations?
When getting "elected" trumps PRINCIPLES, you have neither principles nor victory. My final answer would be, "Put not your trust in Princes (or Camelot II). Let my people go and pray."
© Curtis Dahlgren
November 20, 2008
"Do not become a beggar by banqueting on borrowing." — Ecclesiasticas (Apocrypha)
"Magna est veritas et praevalet" ("Great is truth and it prevails.") — Apocrypha (Vulgate)
"One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world." — Alexander Solzhenitzyn
FIRST THE FACTS, MA'AM: Do you know how much that $700 billion "bail-OUT" amounts to for every sleep-walking American? Since they rounded it off to 700 BILL, I rounded off the population of the U.S.A. to 300 billion and divided it into 700,000,000,000. The result?
On the average, every man, woman, and child owes an extra $2,333.00. For the average family of 3.5 persons, that amounts to $8,165! And the predators aren't done yet! They want a few more billion for this and a few more billion for that!
In the long run, of course, we are just borrowing it from our grand-"chillen," but in the short run we are borrowing it from the Chinese and people such as our crude oil suppliers (who can't even protect their oil tankers from pirates).
By the way, if I ramble you'll have to excuse me, but my mind has been boggled by the news that that one hi-jacked oil tanker had a pay-load of $100 MILLION (rounded off again). If that were the value at the current $50-some price of crude, does that mean that that one ship would have been carrying a $300,000,000 load when the price was over $150 a barrel (the price the Democrat Congress has been encouraging for the last two years)?
Just the other day I sent an e-mail to a friend in which I remarked that the environmentalists seem to prefer oil tankers on the high seas to safe pipelines (it's only 74 miles from the ANWAR oil to the existing Alaskan pipeline). Suppose the pirates scuttle the tanker into the oceans; where is your "clean air and clean water" then, you "environmentalists"?
On April 17, 2008 the Washington Examiner said:
"What's true in athletics is also true with energy production. You can't get good results if you don't do the drills."
Here's an excerpt from their article about our own oil in North Dakota and Montana:
"In 1995, the U.S. Geological Survey said only 151 million barrels were technically recoverable from the formation. But the same agency reported April 10 that new, horizontal-drilling technology [etc] now makes accessible 25 times that amount. That would make it by far the largest recoverable oil area in the 48 mainland states — and, if available all at once, it could replace every drop of American oil imports for about 10 months.
"But here's where the story gets even better: Estimates of total oil deposits in the Bakken Formation run between 170 billion and 400 billion barrels, or in other words, up to 100 times the size of even the new estimate of what is "technically recoverable." That's where the lesson really comes in: If, in 13 years, technology has improved enough to multiply the recoverable assets by 25 times, what's to say that technological advancements won't make available the rest of these vast reserves in an additional 10 or 20 years?
"Yet we can't get to any of the oil until we start drilling. Policy-makers must not allow to happen with the Bakken Formation what has occurred with the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, where 10 billion barrels of oil have gone untouched for a quarter-century because of utterly spurious environmental fears.
"Also, huge deposits of oil and natural gas continue to go untapped off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, again due to environmental hysteria. The truth is that leaks and spills from tankers carrying imported oil and gas exceed, by a large margin, the minuscule problems caused by the far safer use of pipelines from offshore drilling . . . "
YES, Truth doesn't always "rule," but it PREVAILS as long as 2 + 2 is allowed to = 4 (under the New Math, it may NOT)..
"An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children . . . this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble. The progeny of the Reagan Revolution will live instead in the universe that revolves around Hyde Park" — P.J. O'Rourke
During the recent election, those 18 to 20-somethings voted 2-to-1 to "make history" — for the candidate who won't allow drilling, but promises to pay for your doctor bills (and for your dentist's drilling?)! And he's going to pay for all that with WHAT?
Rush Limbaugh says that we now have an "opportunity of a lifetime" — because never before have conservatives had the chance to confront socialized government so DIRECTLY! But that presumes talk radio survives the first Executive Order of the Obama administration, or the first bill in Congress than bans freedom of speech.
"It should go without saying," but it must be said: The first signs of a dictatorship are the silencing of critics. "RED FLAGS" should be raised ("come the Revolution").
While the Leftists in Higher Education have long reveled in "Higher Criticism" of the Bible and Faith, now that the White House is "theirs" they will paradoxically say that the time for "Criticism" has come and gone (along with Reaganism and the Constitution and religion).
Dennis Prager reports that there's a coming 2-hour NOVA program debunking the whole history of our Judeo-Christian roots (coming out of slavery with God's help into Freedom). That "vestigial memory" is going to be replaced with a Princess Diana-type mass psychology, Obamaism. Everything from home-schooling to your hard-earned right to bear arms will be the only the only things worth "CRITICIZING" ANY MORE.
Many of the voters in this year's election were 18-year-old high school students who were "coached" to vote for the man who once bragged about hanging out with the Marxist professors during his college days (not that those 18-year-olds would have the slightest idea whom I'm talking about, but oh well . . ).
I can see it coming already: After the bail-OUT of the United Auto Workers union, there will be an indirect bail-OUT of the teachers' unions to reward their good behavior during the past election campaign (massive federal "aid" to the public schools, so they can spend even more money advertising what "GREAT SCHOOLS" we have).
Thanks to John Ziegler, a Zogby poll was taken to determine the knowledge of the "history making" Obama voters, and:
-97.1% of those polled were at least high school graduates, and 55% were college grads
-57.4% could not identify which party currently controls Congress
-82.6% didn't know Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot
-88.4% did not know that Obama said his policies would bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket [they knew which candidate had a pregnant daughter, but no clue as to possible results of even more one-party rule than we've had in the last 2 years].
BY THE WAY, some conservatives are saying that we should "wait and see" what he actually does as President before asking dumb questions, but I know better. Obama scoffs at the suggestion that he's going to take the country on a hard Left turn, but I've seen that tactic before. That's the kind of scoffing that scares me the most, because I've seen liberal "theologians" say the same kind of thing — immediately before making a hard Left turn!
And make no mistake, the War on Religion isn't waiting for January; it is in full swing already in California, Salt Lake City, and Lansing, for example. The combination of the Obama win and the defeat of Proposition 8 on "gay marriage" has given new meaning to the term Culture WAR.
Even as some 'republicans' are saying "it's time to lose the Culture War," the opponents of our religious ROOTS have shifted into Overdrive (and an attack on our ROOTS is an attack on YOU). They can't say one good thing about our Founding Fathers or the Constitution.
This is "counter-intuitive" to every cultural instinct with which this Judeo-Christian nation was blessed, going back to Old Testament times. As even the Apocrypha put it, "Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers who begat us."
The public schools now have a "short list" of famous men: Darwin, Freud, the Beatles, and so on. Columbus was a criminal, our Founders were frauds who used farmers for cannon fodder, etc., etc. The name of Christ is on the forbidden list. Talk about "book banning," we are about to see a wave of intimidation of social traditionalists such as has never been seen since the Declaration of Independence. In fact, if he were born today, Mark Twain would stand a much better chance of being arrested for "hate crimes" than of becoming a well-to-do author.
Matt Abbott wrote a succinct, cogent column recently about the war on Mormons, etc.
www.RenewAmerica.com/columns/abbott/181118
"Not surprisingly, one hears homosexual activists spout the usual mantra of "separation of church and state." Of course, the mantra is directed only at those who defend authentic marriage and the sanctity of human life; the pro-abortion, pro-sodomy "Christians" can talk about Jesus as much as they wish. Also, we really don't have separation of church and state; we have subordination of church to state."
He's absolutely right, of course; that's a distinction with a real difference, but it's the Traditionalists who are accused of being "simplistic." A degree from Idaho State or Eureka is considered worthless, but of course it takes common sense to recognize common sense. If you don't have common sense, you can't impress me with 3 or 4 degrees from Harvard or the University of Chicago.
President Reagan was an economics major at Eureka (and that helped him bring down the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union), but today even some RINOs scoff at him as "just" a social conservative. Well, as he would say (if he weren't rolling over in his grave), it's impossible to separate the Culture War from economics, because the bed-rock foundation of the American Revolution was that both Life and Property Rights were sacred!
Those Freedoms are the gifts of God, not human governments. I have quoted the Founding Fathers on this before, so I won't repeat myself, but this all brings us back to the title of this column:
"Re: Pirates, merry men, "predatory politicians," and other Kleptomaniacs"
"We need to soak the Rich, but not down to my pay-grade, of course." — Obamaism (paraphrased)
MAFIA DONS DON'T STEAL FROM THE FAMILY, though that may be their only exception. Drug addicts usually don't steal from their dope dealers, if they know what's good for them.
Most people don't believe in stealing from the POOR — except when it's through the lottery, the casinos, higher sales taxes, or the cost of petroleum products (by refusing to drill for oil).
Most people won't steal from the unemployed, unless it's through higher property taxes (directly or through higher rent). They won't steal from people making minimum wage (unless it's through higher payroll taxes).
Some people won't steal from anyone making less than $20,000 a year, unless it's through higher "fees" added to your water bill, garbage bill, or electric bill.
SOME PEOPLE don't believe in stealing (unless it's stealing from their grandchildren, or — by inflation of the money supply, by repaying good money with bad).
SOME PEOPLE promise us that they won't raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year, or maybe $200,000, or perhaps $120,000 or — oh well — $40K (and they want to be "perfectly clear" about that)!
Robbing Peter to pay Paulina to pay "everybody but the top 5 percent" is the oldest trick in the school of Houdini political science 101. Can you say "optical illusion," boys and girls? Can you say "mirage"?
Even if all this "worked," it would be unethical and immoral, but it doesn't "work" TO BOOT.
It's a TRICK. There simply aren't enough "RICH people" in the whole wide world to pay the BILL at the end of the Ball (didn't you notice? It's the "rich people" who are on "bended knee" before Congress begging for a "bail-OUT" already)!
CONCLUSION -
The "bottom line" is, in the words of Solomon, "The borrower is servant to the lender." That's "Natural Law," as expounded by America's Founders. There is no "PILL" we can take to escape the consequences of years and years of thumbing our noses at our Judeo-Christian principles.
The very concept of "equality" and human rights goes back to the "Old" testament practice of letting your servants rest on the Sabbath day, letting the land rest every seven years, plus the year of release, and the Jubilee year every 50 years.
In lieu of practicing these principles, our economy comes in for major "adjustments" about every 50 years (for example, 1930 to 1980). Our current "crisis" has come early, perhaps, because we have been so flagrant in thumbing our noses, not just at the Founders, but at God Himself.
The Left, now coming into power, doesn't hide its agenda; the "predatory leaders" openly intend to drive the Church underground — as it was in the old USSR. Since we "evolved" from animals, the humanists do not believe in "elevating humans above cockroaches" (as a caller to Dennis Prager's show stated).
As Prager reported, ads on public transit in Washington, DC during the holiday season are saying, "Why believe in God? Just be good for goodness' sake."
Humanist Association bus ads in London are saying, "There is no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."
As Prager said, "If there were no God, now would be the time to start worrying."
AMEN TO THAT! WHO'S GOING TO BAIL OUT UNCLE SAM, OR THE BRITS, WHEN THE CURRENT WAVE OF "BAIL-OUTS" HAS ENDED?
If this is "the moment the world began to heal," who's the Healer, the United Nations?
When getting "elected" trumps PRINCIPLES, you have neither principles nor victory. My final answer would be, "Put not your trust in Princes (or Camelot II). Let my people go and pray."
© Curtis Dahlgren
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
