Brians Blog: November 2016

Thursday, November 24, 2016

An Open Letter to the Pope

Your Holiness,

The Vatican

Rome, Italy

I hope that you’ll forgive the informal nature of this letter. I am not a Catholic, but I am a Christian and because of that most important faith we share as brothers, I wish to suggest a couple of things that will benefit that faith worldwide.

The most important message of all time and space is the divine mission of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, His birth, life, mission, atonement, resurrection and continuing work. I am sure that we both agree on that.

Here are my suggestions:

First, cleanse the church completely and thoroughly of abusers and molesters. Cooperate with civil authorities. Excommunicate them. As Jesus said it were better that a millstone were hanged about their neck and they were drowned in the depths of the sea. Then, develop strict policies to deal with abusers. Follow them every time.

Next, require that priests be married as husband and wife and have families (that means children) Priests who are husbands and fathers will know how to minister better to the believers.

1 Timothy 3:1 This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.

2 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;

3 Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous;

4 One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity;

5 (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)

Require tithing of your members and encourage donations. Begin again to build up your church.

Rebuild parochial schools and build new ones. Catholic schools were always superior to public schools, plus they taught the most important message of Jesus Christ.

Don’t dilute the message of Christ with climate change. Christ Rules in the heavens and the earth is his footstool. He created the earth that it be inhabited by his children. He foresaw all of this. The message of His divine mission and Sonship transcend climate change.

These changes will prompt growth in your church, to the glory of God and his Son and will benefit your Church and the entire world. Each soul of infinite worth that comes to know his or her Savior will rejoice with the believers.

Sincerely,

B. W. Rex

A fellow brother in Christ

Sunday, November 13, 2016

#Calexit

Let's start with the following assumptions that should be axiomatic:

Big government = big corruption

Small government = small or smaller corruption

When I said I was willing to donate to the #Calexit project, I wasn’t kidding.

A decent consideration for the opinions of others demands that I share my thoughts on this subject. I have friends and family that live in California, and I meant no disrespect to them.

Here’s how a see it. I buy things from nearly every country in the world. What difference does it make if California becomes one of those countries?

Just because I buy things from other countries, that doesn’t require me to adopt the politics and world view of that country. However, being politically aligned with California now means exactly that. Their laws are enforced in my state. Let’s be honest, some in California have views that are diametrically opposed to those I have. Let’s be grownups about it and each go our own way, politically. By all means, we will still be good neighbors, visit Disneyland, the beach, etc. And you folks should come to visit the natural wonders in Utah. Commercial relations!! Yes! Free Trade, Yes! Peace, Yes!

Here’s what I see as the benefits of Calexit. And BTW, the same benefits apply to any region or state, or whatever area secedes.

1. The Federal government becomes smaller

a. Small government = smaller corruption = more freedom

2. Both parties become somewhat more aligned with the interests of their respective citizens, aka, the people

3. Other states and regions can follow the example of California (ie. Peaceful secession)

4. The process continues, until maybe 3000 counties are independent states with the corresponding freedom accruing to all!

5. Power is decentralized and local politics is empowered

6. The rest of the world, threatened with the overlordship of the US federal government, military and nuclear war, breathe a sigh of relief.

What if there were 3,000 states where there used to be 50?

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Scribblings on Trump

Today is the day after The Donald was elected President of the United States. I voted for him. I am from a flyover state. (If only the meddling class would fly over with their meddling, also.)

I don't care for Hillary. I didn't vote for her. I thought she would win. She didn't. (Wasn't 8 years of her husband enough?)

I don't think that Trump is a savior of anything. I think he won because the "deplorables" are tired of the meddling class. I really don't want Trump to do anything, except to continue to irritate the media and the elite. (Elites, please do move to Canada. I might send a postcard.) Their apoplexy over Trump winning has been revealing.

If the moguls of Silicon Valley and the amoral Hollywood types wish to secede (#Calexit), please let me know where I can send my donation to assist their efforts.

I believe in peaceful relations with all. I think they will make good neighbors and I might want to visit Disneyland and the beach with my grandkids, in the future.

You see, there is just no reason for my community to be bound politically with California. We have opposing world views. Opposing means not compatible. So let's just stop pretending that the social engineering (cheer led by Hollyweird) coming out of Washington is not an existential threat to me and my family.

I want the United States of my grandparents with no FED, IRS, FBI, CIA, DOD, DOE, DOEd, NSA, USDA, DOJ, DHS, DEA, NRO, EPA, and all the rest. Does that make me a hater, that I want the limited government allegedly bequeathed to us by the founding fathers? No!

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Cafe Racer

This blog is serious and fun. I have been quite serious lately, but now it is time for some fun.

My son and I have been working on a cafe racer he is building from a Honda CM450E.

Here are some photos of the project during some of the rebuild.

My only regret is that we didn't take enough pictures along the way.

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Culture

The self-educated individual – confident in his gender, his heritage, his religion, and the traditional culture that he seeks to project into the future – stands as a threat to the very existence of the state: He does not need its ministrations.

Where then to begin the creation of capitalist culture? The destruction of the moral pretenses of the state is the irreducible first step toward the realization of a capitalist culture….

Terry Hulsey

I would add:

The destruction of the moral pretenses of the state is the irreducible first step toward preserving traditional culture.

Delusionists

The delusionists are those who believe that the current system can be reformed, made more efficient, streamlined. The delusionists believe that government bureaucracies act on market-like incentives. The delusionists believe that those in government bureaucracy can be convinced to reduce their role and influence. The delusionists believe that the president is in control of the bureaucracies. The delusionists believe that government bureaucracies are led by good people just trying to do the right thing. The delusionists believe that individuals, acting as central planners, are even capable of identifying the right thing to do.

Bionic Mosquito

The State

"A state is absolute in the sense which I have in mind when it claims the right to a monopoly of all the force within the community, to make war, to make peace, to conscript life, to tax, to establish and disestablish property, to define crime, to punish disobedience, to control education, to supervise the family, to regulate personal habits, and to censor opinions. The modern state claims all of these powers, and, in the matter of theory, there is no real difference in the size of the claim between communists, fascists, and Democrats." - Walter Lippmann

Solving the Crisis of American Schooling

"The logic of compulsory schooling in the middle of a democracy is a contradiction of the original national charter; it breaks the contract of the Bill of Rights, using as its justification the excuse that kids can't learn any other way, that they can't be trusted with responsibility. The truth is exactly the opposite: unless they are trusted with responsibility they cannot learn much, and under the thumb of central compulsion the lessons they do learn are bad ones."

John Taylor Gatto, "A Different Kind of Teacher", pg. 193-194

Robert P. Murphy

In particular, the market interest rate coordinates the "intertemporal" (i.e., across-time) activities of investors, businesses, and consumers. If consumers become more future oriented and want to reduce consumption in the near term in order to provide more for later years, what happens in the free market is that the increased savings push down interest rates, which then signal entrepreneurs to borrow more and invest in longer projects. Thus resources (such as labor, oil, steel, and machine time) get redirected away from present goods, like TVs and sports cars, and the freed-up resources flow into capital or investment goods like tractors and cargo ships.

Now when the Federal Reserve artificially reduces interest rates below their free-market level, it sends a false message to entrepreneurs. Firms begin expanding as if consumers have increased their savings, but in fact consumers have reduced their savings (due to the lower interest rates). Businesses that churn out durable goods, such as furnaces, cargo ships, and, yes, houses will find business booming, because these sectors respond positively to low interest rates.

On the other hand, other sectors don't need to contract, because (unlike the scenario of genuine savings) nobody is cutting back on consumption. This is precisely why the Fed-induced boom is unsustainable — real resources have not been released from consumer sectors in order to fuel the expansion of the capital sectors. Because modern economies are so complex, the charade can continue for a few years, with entrepreneurs cutting corners and "consuming capital" (i.e., postponing necessary replacement and maintenance on equipment) while both investment and consumer goods keep flowing out of the pipeline at increased rates. But the music eventually stops, since (after all) the Fed's printing of green pieces of paper doesn't really make a country wealthier. When the Fed "cuts interest rates" it isn't really creating more capital for businesses to borrow; it is instead distorting the signal that the market interest rate was trying to convey.

From mises.org

Gary North

Gary North recently wrote a great article on the politico-economic outcome caused by the anti-nuclear media forces following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami:

"Energy is the key to output. This has been true for over 200 years. To control a primary source of energy is to get rich. China will be able to buy uranium by means of its output from uranium. It will convert uranium into wealth. It will do so with the lowest energy cost-per-output ratio of any nation. Its people will find employment.

I think this has shifted the balance of economic power away from India. India will face public resistance to nuclear power. China will not. India has a lot of advantages: English, the legal system, the free flow of ideas, and a lot of motivated, well-educated people. I am not saying that India will fall behind the world. It will advance. But with respect to the job market for millions of recent arrivals from rural districts, nuclear power will give China the edge.

The anti-nuke forces will never talk about this in public. They will never say publicly, "We have delivered the world's economy into the hands of China." But they will have done just that."

Lew Rockwell - again

The beauty and glory of economic science is that it consists in a series of laws and principles that do not change according to time and place. The prescription for prosperity and stability and human economic flourishing is always and everywhere the same: freedom of association, freedom of contract, freedom of enterprise, freedom to trade across borders without penalty, sound money that is redeemable in something besides paper, private property rights, wages and prices that adjust by market conditions, and a legal structure that shores up these institutions rather than undermines them.

James H. Polve

“Mechanical engineers design and manufacture machines, machines to help mankind, to ease his burden and to make like more abundant. Machine work supplants slave labor and provides power far in excess of muscle power to free men from hard labor and yet provides the means to accomplish. Automobiles, airplanes, tractors, electrical and nuclear power plants, steam plants and many other similar kinds of plants and machines are typical examples of design and manufacture by the mechanical engineer. His special abilities are aimed at coupling natural laws with natural materials to produce work. He channels energy available on earth, and wherever possible in the universe, through devices into more usable forms to aid man. He can multiply man’s strength and quickness through hydraulic, pneumatic, and electrical devices. He can transport men and goods faster, further, and more efficiently than man can walk or carry. He provides for warmth in the winter and coolness in the summer. He is aided and yet constrained by the physical laws and the characteristics of resources that surround him; and yet he has made great advances to free men somewhat from the edict ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, til thou return unto the ground’ (Gen. 3:19).”

Ted Rockwell - The Best Quote Ever

That tactic, of making problems out of advantages—making sow’s ears out of silk purses, I call it—permeates the whole nuclear enterprise. The advantage that radioactivity continually and automatically gets less and less toxic every day, is converted to, “it stays toxic for thousands of years.” And this is implied to pose an unprecedented problem that humanity is not equipped to deal with. And breakable light bulbs containing mercury are called “green,” and radioactivity is called uniquely hazardous.

http://www.nucleartownhall.com/blog/townhall-qa-rickover-to-the-renaissance/

Thesis Topics for Research

How much money will UTOPIA ultimately consume? Currently they have spent $516 million. I bet the total goes over $700 million before bankruptcy is declared.
Why does lightning occur with earthquakes? Is Harold Aspden's theory about this correct?
Where was Joseph, the Carpenter when Christ was crucified? Had he already died?
What was it like to be a Christian in the 1st century, when the Apostles were still alive?
What influences Americans against nuclear power?
Chinese Trade - what was it paid with in AD 800?
History of Property Taxes in Utah. When Brigham Young said "This is the right place", there weren't any property taxes.
What determines left or right-handedness?

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