Living the 23rd Psalm

Former President Jimmy Carter is dying from cancer. He is 91 years old, so something was likely to cause his demise sooner rather than later, but as Cal Thomas notes in his nice piece about Carter, knowing your expiration date tends to focus one's mind and the minds of those around you.

I voted for Carter in the aftermath of Watergate, the one and only time I have ever voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate. I actually shook his hand at North Salem High School when he made a whistle-stop tour of Salem in 1976. Unfortunately, his presidency was a disaster and the country paid the price until Regan was elected in 1980 and cleaned up the mess.

That said, Carter is a man of faith and Thomas comments on his inner peace as he calmly discussed his impending death. Politics most definitely is not everything. I pray that President Carter and his family enjoy his final days in this life and that the Lord cleanly transports him to the next when that time comes. Blessings.

townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/2015/08/25/jimmy-carters-peace-n2043075

Life Matters.

Could It Be?

The 3% Lie

3% is what Planned Parenthood says is the extent of its abortion business. Only if you consider performing a $950 abortion and handing out a condom as equivalent "services." Let's see some figures for revenue per patient instead by service. And that doesn't even include the backdoor business of selling dead baby bodies and body parts. A "Misc." revenue column I'm sure.

www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/05/planned-parenthoods-great-big-enormous-3-lie/

We're From the Government and We're Here to Help You!

The lovely mustard color of this Colorado stream comes from 1million or so gallons of mine waste that "specialists" from the EPA accidentally dumped into the creek from a storage pond. With friends like that ... Wonder if they'll fine themselves? Nah.

www.wnd.com/2015/08/epa-turns-river-yellow-orange-with-waste-spill/?cat_orig=us

The Obama Legacy

U.S. intelligence delivered satellite photos showing that Iran is already cheating on nukes at a military site. "Yawn" was the reaction from the WH. 

They say that mushroom clouds are really quite beautiful in their symmetry and color if you ignore what is going on. This Administration has no problem in that regard. 

www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/08/05/u-s-has-photographic-proof-iran-is-trying-to-cheat-on-the-nuclear-deal/

Keep 'Em Coming!

Both New Hampshire and Louisiana have canceled state funding of Planed Parenthood. Keep up the good work! 

www.lifenews.com/2015/08/05/new-hampshire-cancels-650000-in-planned-parenthood-funding-after-it-sells-aborted-babies/

Thus Saith King Obama

"Verily, thou shalt close all the nasty coal-fired power plants henceforth!" the King has decreed. Magna Carta time: And on what authority of law does the King saith this? "Why my own infinite wisdom, knave!" "Nay", saith Laurence Tribe, Harvard University Law School Professor of Constitutional Law and King Obama's professor of same. Saith Tribe:

"The brute fact is that the Obama administration failed to get climate legislation through Congress. Yet the EPA is acting as though it has the legislative authority anyway to re-engineer the nation's electric generating system," says Tribe. "It does not."

At last report, the learned Tribe has been taken to the dungeon of the King to "stretch" his perspective and is awaiting his final fate. 

townhall.com/columnists/betsymccaughey/2015/08/05/obamas-climate-hubris-n2034679/page/2

Where's the Beef?

Or gnu, gazelle, whatever. Here's Nelson Mandela with one that he personally popped on a game preserve. Apparently this is routine in Africa when a species gets over-populated. But no great outcry here from the world unlike the dentist who whacked Cecil the Lion. I wonder why? Only kidding. Make no mistake, I don't personally hunt big game (or even small or intermediate game) but the hypocrisy of the selective outcriers of this and other countries is tiresome. Crucify Nelson! Probably not gonna happen, nor should it, but a little fairness please. 

townhall.com/tipsheet/andrewalker/2015/08/04/liberal-hypocrisy-over-mandela-game-hunting-n2034492

Housing Bubble 2

Yup, it's happening again. Yup it's for the same reason - cheap government loans. Yup, it's gonna crash again. But in the meantime, politicians will be re-elected, local property taxes will go up due to increased values, and sellers are happy as long as they take their capital gains and get outta Dodge. As Kevin Williamson says in his piece, last time it almost broke the whole financial system. He's waiting with baited breath for the Part Deux Grand Finale.

www.nationalreview.com/article/421990/housing-bubble-2-count-on-the-crash

Where the West Has Left Israel

"The Israelis have taken to heart lots of lessons over the last 70 years. They have concluded that often the world quietly wants Israel to deal with existential threats emanating from the Middle East while loudly damning it when it does. They have learned from the experience of the Holocaust that, for good or evil, Jews are on their own and can never again trust in the world’s professed humanity to prevent another Holocaust. And they are convinced that they can also never again err on the side of the probability that national leaders, with deadly weapons in their grasp, do not really mean all the unhinged things they shout and scream about killing Jews. 

Given all that, we should conclude that any deal that leads, now or in the near future, to an Iranian bomb is unacceptable to Israel — a nation that will likely soon have no choice but to consider the unthinkable in order to prevent the unimaginable."    Victor Davis Hanson

www.nationalreview.com/article/421969/israeli-preemptive-action-western-reaction

Oopsie!

Great story well worth the read. Welcome to the Law of Unintended Consequences!

"Three months ago, Mr. Price, 31, announced he was setting a new minimum salary of $70,000 at his Seattle credit card processing firm, Gravity Payments, and slashing his own million-dollar pay package to do it. He wasn’t thinking about the current political clamor over low wages or the growing gap between rich and poor, he said. He was just thinking of the 120 people who worked for him and, let’s be honest, a bit of free publicity. The idea struck him when a friend shared her worries about paying both her rent and student loans on a $40,000 salary. He realized a lot of his own employees earned that or less.

Yet almost overnight, a decision by one small-business man in the northwestern corner of the country became a swashbuckling blow against income inequality.

What few outsiders realized, however, was how much turmoil all the hoopla was causing at the company itself."

Hoopla indeed. How about losing two of your key employees who thought it was unfair to pay new hires the same as experienced people who were not getting raises? Or customers who bailed anticipating (probably correctly although denied by the company) price increases? Oh well, at least unlike socialism these guys are only running out of their money.

www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/02/gravity-payments-ceo-suffers-massive-backlash-after-raising-minimum-salary-to-70000/

Do No Harm

Google Fiber is an ongoing effort by Google to deliver internet services to consumers with speeds roughly 100 times faster than most users experience today but at a comparable price. In the areas it is being introduced, competitors like Comcast or others large providers are forced to compete or perish. Google took an interesting approach, however, by building on a proprietary model rather than using existing facilities wherever possible. The reason? Avoiding open access. 

Open access is at the center of President Obama's National Broadband Policy and it basically says that you, as a company, use your assets to build a national network and then everybody gets to use it at the same price. Cool. So FedEx buys a fleet of planes and delivery vehicles, not to mention several huge and highly automated sorting centers, and then has to offer its service to all comers, whether they want their package there overnight or don't care when it arrives, all at the same price. There's a lot of incentive there to innovate! 

This article critques the National Broadband Policy from this perspective and finds it wanting. Google asks that government at least not throw roadblocks at companies trying to innovate. That is definitely a sound policy for government to follow! The simple fact is that private investors are not going to sink their dollars into any venture where there is not at least a reasonable possibility of a decent rate of return on their money. "Open Access" is one of those policies that if money were free and available for the picking, it might work. Since that is not the case, however, we might at least get out of the way when people with money are willing to take risks with it to innovate new products and services, like Google Fiber, that benefit the entire economy and eventually all consumers. "Do no harm." applies to more than the field of just medicine. 

www.cnet.com/news/what-have-we-learned-from-google-fiber/