Emancipation Proclamation

A recent exchange at www.Threedonia.com

Rufus

September 29, 2014 at 6:26 AM · Reply

An outstanding essay by Kevin Williamson at the National Review, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/388945/five-reasons-why-youre-too-dumb-vote-kevin-d-williamson
“If you would like to be filled with despair for the prospects of democracy, spend a few minutes attempting to decipher the psephological musings of Lena Dunham, the distinctly unappealing actress commissioned by Planned Parenthood to share with her presumably illiterate following “5 Reasons Why I Vote (and You Should, Too).” That’s 21st-century U.S. politics in miniature: a half-assed listicle penned by a half-bright celebrity and published by a gang of abortion profiteers.
… A people mature enough to manage the relationship between procreative input and procreative output without recourse to the surgical dismemberment of living human organisms probably would not find much of interest in the work of Miss Dunham. But we are a nation of adult children so horrified by the prospect of actual children that we put one in five of them to death for such excellent reasons as the desire to fit nicely into a prom dress.”
Read the whole thing, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/388945/five-reasons-why-youre-too-dumb-vote-kevin-d-Williamson

JimmyC

September 29, 2014 at 7:29 AM · Reply

Personally, I think they should raise the voting age to 40. I mean, if we’ve already established that you need to be of a certain maturity level, why not wait until the person has gained a certain amount of life experience? It would mean I wouldn’t get to vote in the next couple of election cycles, but I’d rather that than have my vote canceled out by some 19 year-old bong-smoking OWS jackhole in a Guy Fawkes mask who thinks he knows everything about politics after one semester of Ward Churchill’s class and one Howard Zinn book.

Eric

September 29, 2014 at 10:45 AM · Reply

I have no problem with that voting age, but only with exceptions for armed forces members under 40. Also think their drinking age should be lowered to 18, but that’s a tangent for another time.

Loyal Goatherd

September 29, 2014 at 6:11 PM · Reply

I have thought on this issue since I was a teenager and I, long ago, dreamed up a scheme to regulate the emancipation of youth into adulthood. Though not a fan of big government, the scheme did involve a government system to create a process to progress through levels of adult privilege. On a youth’s 13th birthday they are issued a photo identification card, not unlike a license to drive. A magnetic strip could encode a unique identification and an iteration of permitted privileges as well as a printed seal of endorsement to show those privileges. A quick scan at point of transaction could verify a legal proceeding. On their 15th birthday, the youth may choose any one of the following privileges:
The right to vote in all elections.
The right to work a job, jobs or military service (*).
The right to consume alcohol in a legal manner.
The right to smoke or chew tobacco or other substances permitted by the state of residence.
The right to operate a motor vehicle, subject to all laws applicable.
The right to marry.
The right of medical self-determination. (gold teeth, tattoos, piercings, abortions, elective surgeries)
The right of self-government. (the ability to choose your future privileges without parental consent, to enter into contracts, to international travel, to gamble, to possess or produce pornography, all, of course, subject to local laws.
Every 2 years, the youth may select another privilege, until their 19th birthday when they may choose 2 privileges and so forth, 2 privileges every 2 years until all endorsements are issued. At that time they are fully functioning adults. If a youth is found to have exceeded their privileges, that privilege is withdrawn and held until the last choice(the 23rd birthday). Then, full adulthood occurs at 23 years of age. If a youth continues to exercise a privilege they are not entitled to another 2 year waiting period may be imposed, indefinitely.
This process would allow the youth to customize his or her entrance to adulthood. The first privilege is subject to parental approval and all subsequent privileges are as well until the self-governing privilege is taken as a choice. *To join the military, the youth will have to have chosen the work privilege and will be rewarded with an additional privilege after one year of service.
The initiation of youth in to manhood and womanhood has been lost to us as a people for too long. There is something lost on today’s people that is important to each individual and that is a clear dividing line of adulthood, with its privileges and responsibilities. When the thirteen year old boys are kidnapped by their elders and made to perform as men before they are allowed to return to the village as men, they then are men! We need something akin to this!
Of course, such a system would never fly. But it did take up many a graveyard shift in my youth dreaming it up and tweeking the results. Submitted for your perusal and amusement.

Excellent Blogging over at The Wilderness:

Obama’s Ego Creates Another Scandal:

So despite creating another situation from his own naive haste, Obama cannot be wrong about Bergdahl. Something else must now be responsible. Even after sending Susan Rice out (again) to prop up a narrative they know not to be true. Even after doubling down in Poland when asked if he was aware of Bergdahl’s anti-American beliefs. That “thing” is going to be war itself, more specifically, Bush’s war. The Bush war that Obama has vowed to end and seemingly any cost necessary.

 

It’s been on the tip of the tongue of Democrats for the past couple of years to start saying the Afghanistan war was unjust all along. This was not something they could causally say so soon after the Twin Towers collapsed. They smiled and played along. But in time and Bowe Bergdahl they finally now have that excuse. He shouldn’t have even been in Afghanistan to begin with.  Bush’s fault. If Chris Kyle and Marcus Luttrell are the proud faces of war on the right, Bowe Bergdahl will become the antithesis for the left.. This brave young man and future senatorial candidate, who stood up to his commanders in an unjust military occupation. The soldiers who died as a result of Bergdahl’s dissidence will become nothing more than #memes. It’s already starting.

Deserter Bergdahl will become the conscientious objector to Bush’s unjust war that Barack Obama is valiantly ending.

Go and Read it all: http://thewilderness.me/homeland-bound/

George W. Bush is Smarter Than You

This is a great post on George W. Bush by Keith Hennessey, one of his former economic advisers who now teaches at Stanford:

The new George W. Bush Presidential Center is being dedicated this week. This seems like a good time to bust a longstanding myth about our former President, my former boss.

I teach a class at Stanford Business School titled “Financial Crises in the U.S. and Europe.” During one class session while explaining the events of September 2008, I kept referring to the efforts of the threesome of Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Tim Geithner, who were joined at the hip in dealing with firm-specific problems as they arose.
One of my students asked “How involved was President Bush with what was going on?” I smiled and responded, “What you really mean is, ‘Was President Bush smart enough to understand what was going on,’ right?”
The class went dead silent. Everyone knew that this was the true meaning of the question. Kudos to that student for asking the hard question and for framing it so politely. I had stripped away that decorum and exposed the raw nerve.
I looked hard at the 60 MBA students and said “President Bush is smarter than almost every one of you.”
More silence.
I could tell they were waiting for me to break the tension, laugh, and admit I was joking.
I did not. A few shifted in their seats, then I launched into a longer answer. While it was a while ago, here is an amalgam of that answer and others I have given in similar contexts.
I am not kidding. You are quite an intelligent group. Don’t take it personally, but President Bush is smarter than almost every one of you. Were he a student here today, he would consistently get “HP” (High Pass) grades without having to work hard, and he’d get an “H” (High, the top grade) in any class where he wanted to put in the effort.
For more than six years it was my job to help educate President Bush about complex economic policy issues and to get decisions from him on impossibly hard policy choices. In meetings and in the briefing materials we gave him in advance we covered issues in far more depth than I have been discussing with you this quarter because we needed to do so for him to make decisions.
President Bush is extremely smart by any traditional standard. He’s highly analytical and was incredibly quick to be able to discern the core question he needed to answer. It was occasionally a little embarrassing when he would jump ahead of one of his Cabinet secretaries in a policy discussion and the advisor would struggle to catch up. He would sometimes force us to accelerate through policy presentations because he so quickly grasped what we were presenting.
I use words like briefing and presentation to describe our policy meetings with him, but those are inaccurate. Every meeting was a dialogue, and you had to be ready at all times to be grilled by him and to defend both your analysis and your recommendation. That was scary.
We treat Presidential speeches as if they are written by speechwriters, then handed to the President for delivery. If I could show you one experience from my time working for President Bush, it would be an editing session in the Oval with him and his speechwriters. You think that me cold-calling you is nerve-wracking? Try defending a sentence you inserted into a draft speech, with President Bush pouncing on the slightest weakness in your argument or your word choice.
In addition to his analytical speed, what most impressed me were his memory and his substantive breadth. We would sometimes have to brief him on an issue that we had last discussed with him weeks or even months before. He would remember small facts and arguments from the prior briefing and get impatient with us when we were rehashing things we had told him long ago.

I don’t have much to add to this, but I bang this drum every chance I get. If there are any reasonable liberals left I’d share this with them. It is wasted on anyone blinded by hatred. Go read the rest.

This Post stolen Verbatim from: http://www.threedonia.com/archives/64420

Good Friday

Good Friday

I don’t think it too impious to compare the salvations we seek: In the first version, the Creator redeems his chosen from failed creation by extraordinary means and re-creates it in perfection.

Revelation 21
King James Version (KJV)

21 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
5 And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
6 And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
7 He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

In the second version, we evolved from lower forms of life by accident. We are so ignorant that we will surely destroy where we live without the “enlightened ones” among us teaching us how to save the planet. How will we save it this week?  Cow Fart Bags

Restoration 21
Al Gore Version

1 And I saw an old heaven and an old earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were restored; and there was no more polluting people.
2 And I Albert saw the holy planet, Gaia, quaking and erupting, prepared as a lion adorned for her supper.
3 And I heard a great voice out of Gaia saying, Behold, men have declared me God and am not even aware of them, and she will dwell with them, and they shall be her people, of whom she has no concern.
4 And Gaia shall wipe away all life that she can; and there shall be much more death, sorrow, crying, and pain: for the former sins of mankind she will continue to recompense.
5 And mankind will seek to appease Gaia by all manner of inanities. They that sat upon the throne said, Behold, we are yet too many, too wasteful, too uncaring. Let us not reproduce that Gaia may be happier with us.
6 And they said unto me, let the sterilizations begin anew. We will appease Her with our last breath. It is the beginning of the end. We will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life and a sterilizing agent freely.
7 He that is never born shall assuage our God.

Though we Christians are the superstitious idiots believing in fairytales, at least our beliefs are grounded on something greater than and outside of ourselves.

Symphonic Metal Ladies

Might as well get all my girl band favorites on one page for future reference:

                                     
                                          The Birthday Massacre: Looking Glass (Live)

                                          Delain: The Gathering

                                          Sirenia: The Other Side

Grand Dam Lana

Lana, the mother of Patience, Tommy, Valerie and Vanna, grandmother to Stella, Tinkerbell and Twinkle, great grandmother of Tecumseh and those are only the ones who are alive and remain here. Lana survived the winter, only to wither away this spring. She had successfully weaned her last two kids, but was unable to regain her strength. Rather than let her suffer, I promoted her myself, and she lies entombed in the dam of the pond from which she drew water. She was a special goat, one I don't mind calling a friend. She is missed. Her daughter Patience has assumed the mantle of Grand Dam. Her passing merits its own post.

                                      Lana (Center) with Patience (Left) and Sire Percival (Right)


                                                   God rest you, good and faithful servant.

Winter!

Well, the winter of 2013/2014 has passed. It was an exceptionally cold and wet one, for sure. The herd began kidding in early December and many kids succumbed to harsh conditions.

 Sire Percival:
 Born of Lana: Valerie & Vanna.
 Born of Nada: Uriah & Ursulla.
 Born of Patience: Vera & Veronica.
 Born of Ramona: Victoria.
 Born of Rapunzel: Uriel & Unity.
 Born of Sally: Ulysses & Uhura.
 Born of Stella: Valient.
 Born of Tabitha: Uzi & Urban.
 Born of Tinkerbell: Victor & Victim.
 Born of Twinkle: Vladimir.
 Born of Thalia: Una & Uno.

 19 kids in total birthed. We mourn the deaths of the following kids: Uriel, Ulysses, Valient, Victor, Victim,  Vladimir, Uno, Una, and Urban. An effort will be made this year to breed later so as to kid later, as well.

 To honor the fallen, and because I like the tune, Within Temptation's Ice Queen.

Whenever she is raging, she takes all life away!