Frediano

Ouch.

Can't picture 'cosmic foam?' The massive flat field of nothing? Neither can I, barely. But give it a try. Here is an imperfect model devoid of discussion of quantum effects. So, Einstein says matter and energy are related by delta-E = delta-M x C^2 (delta: change-in) If we believe that, then we can think of matter as condensed energy; alternately, we can think of mass as a potential source of energy, or we can think of energy as a potential source of mass. We also claim to observe something called 'anti-matter' in our universe of mostly matter. We accept that as 'real' in our observational physics, and we also observe when matter and anti-matter interact, they 'annihilate' each other resulting in a massive release of energy. No more matter, no more anti-matter, just energy (and I assume, anti-energy). So how to imagine energy and anti-energy(or lockstep, matter and anti-matter): Think of them as being 'out of phase' in some sense; opposites. A + -A = 0. The pile and the hole. Clockwise and counter-clockwise. OK, so then, what is this imagined 'cosmic foam?' Well, it is a uniform in all directions flat field devoid of gradient (difference). No matter where you imagine that foam, every region seems like every other region. Though, there is no need for it to be infinite in size. It could have a boundary, beyond which there was nothing at all. So it is ok (to me) to think of the cosmic foam as a hugest of huge cosmic derigible, floating in a sea of nothing. But within the cosmic foam derigible, there are no gradients of any kind, but it is a bubbling sea of pure energy + anti-energy, (piles and holes, out of phase). A massive 'jiggling' foam. Like being inside of a pot of boiling water, but not in a gradient field...there is no 'up'. It is just a massive sea of jiggling sameness, a constant rolling of the dice. All juiced up with nowhere to go. As an aside, picture the molecules of O2 in the room you are in. They are all just jostling around, they are at some finite temperature. When they collide with another molecule, they exchange energy and interact; if they lose, another molecule gains. Within the room, it is a closed system, and so the molecules just jostle randomly at some positions in the room. Why don't all the O2 molecules ever all congregate in a tiny layer next to the ceiling? They could. That is one of the possible arrangements of the O2 molecules in that room. Sort of like winning the lottery, only with odds far less than that. And yet, if you had an infinite amount of time to wait, eventually that random ticket could come up in that room. It might take waiting many multiples of the known age of the universe, but imagine waiting an eternity. Well, back to the cosmic foam. Randomly, 'jiggling' energy interacts in such a way as to locally condense into matter and anti-matter. But the matter and anti-matter also interact, and annihilate each other, releasing energy and anti-energy. The cosmic foam is a closed system. But it is constantly 'sparking' with these events. They are just mostly going nowhere. But just like waves in the ocean, occasionally there are peaks and troughs of these events, a local phased event; the dice continue to roll. What combinations of these events are the dice allowed to roll, given enough time and enough rolls of the dice? Or said another way, what combinations are prohibited to the dice, given enough time? Especially given all the time they need... Time and space don't have quite the same meaning in the cosmic foam, because it is totally void of all interesting gradients. Because of its lack of all gradient, there is no means to measure or detect the passage of time or any traversal in space. But imagine waiting for the -equivalent- of a period of time equal to many trillions of multiples of the age of our universe. How many? The answer is easy; as many as it takes. To do what? For the dice in the cosmic foam to roll a particular event; a net region of matter forming adjacent to a net region of anti-matter, resulting in an initial violent explosion that was sufficient to hurl the balance of matter and anti-matter away from each other and also away from mutual annihilation. A short lived burst of two expanding universes of interesting gradient, both on their way back to their own eventual death, but not before an interesting period of gradient in what was formerly a gradientless bubbling cosmic foam of sameness. Permitted because it is not forbidden by pure random chance. Rare, but finite. For us, our universe only had to happen once. Not created by a God, but with some irony, permitted because it was not prohibited by a God. The hard part of imagining this model is to not limit the sense of the possible by what is possible to us as short armed, short lived humans with big imaginations. Including, imagining the required passage of time for the dice to roll two universes out of none; even in our imaginings, we soon grow impatient and claim 'that could just never happen.'

You are crossing a room, not a measurement. Half way across you have the same distance still to go. It's like the rest of this mental churning and chewing--it's all in the head. --Brant Half way across, you have half the distance to go. You have the same distance to go as you've already travelled in finite time. You have already crossed an infinity of infinitely small intervals, and you've already done it in finite time. You have already proven that you can cross an infinite number of intervals in finite time. Just do it again, and you are done, in finite time. Zeno's Paradox is indeed 'all in the head' if that head has never studied calculus.

Look into 'oscillons.' An accessible, obervational branch of physical phenomena on a gross scale obervable by direct human objservation(vibrating media or slurries)which hint at the concept of 'pile and hole' as being the ying and yang of states out of phase, creating something from 'nothing.' A + -A = 0. Oscillons exist at a larger linear scale than the scale of the vibrating media they exist in, and exist over longer periods of time than the periods associated with the vibrations of the media they exist in. They have separate rules of attraction and repulsion, like particles, and form chains and interact. Why? What's to stop them? This is observational physics, and only recently, computational physics. They exist because they can exist. Sort of like matter and anti-matter, energy and anti-energy, forming from a jiggling foam of energy devoid of gradient. So in this purely imagined explanation of what seems like a paradox if only part of the picture is imagined, what we call our Universe is a finite-lifed local interesting region of space time with gradient in what is otherwise a flat uninteresting field of uniform sameness that exists becuase it can exist. Ironically, not because of a God that made it, but because of the lack of a God that would prevent it.. So we should enjoy the ride. It could be exceedingly rare and short lived on a cosmic scale of time and space. And for all we know for certain, even if there is a God, that is our function in this Universe; to not know, and thus, to experience surprise. If an all knowing God created all, then for all I know, he created us to create surprise in his Universe. (He could otherwise not experience surprise himself, because according to the legend he knows the answer to every riddle and mystery and so, could not create 'surprise' in the Universe without creating us.) And so, for all I know, it is our function in this Universe to get our greasy little monkey sweaty ape prints all over it before it expands back to a flat uninteresting 3 deg K uniform flat field of sameness. The endgame of this expanding universe is apparently its own death in a final consumption of all gradient; the domination of ultimate equality, a flat mega-universe devoid of all gradient. The death of our universe. Or at least this cycle, the current lucky winner of the rare Universe lottery. So until then -- some far off future many times the current age of our expansing Universe -- for all I know its our job to enjoy this playground and bring 'surprise'into the universe. Somebody has to do that; it is one of the things an all knowing omnipotent God could not do by himself without self-deception(pretending He didn't already know what was behind the door he made.) I figure, if an unknowable God put me here, He had his reasons, so I might as well be grateful and live here.

The question based on Zeno's Paradox was just purely flawed logic, as well as a tautology; the questioner assumes finite time, then introduces finite time multiplied by an infinitiy of periods to imply infinite time as a consequence. He is mixing the concept of time in this universe, as an interesting universe of expansion and gradient, vs. the concept of immeasurable time in a flat cosmic field devoid of all gradient. His argument, to me, supports the idea of a megauniverse(the flat uniniteresting field devoid of all gradient) as opposed to the rare instances of universes of finite but cosmic duration filled with interesting gradient for as long as they are. The answer to his question is the same as the answer to Zeno's Paradox: mathematics is filled with examples of battling infinitities that result in finite results. Example: before crossing a room, you must cross half the room. And before crossing half the room, you must cross half of half, and so on, and infinitiy of halves must be crossed. But each one is crossed in half the time. An infinite number of intervals that approach an infinitely small duration to time to cross them. The result of those battling infinities is finite time to cross the room. Ditto, waiting for a Universe to erupt from a flat field of uninteresting gradient. The probability of a bubbling cosmic flat field of 'foam' erupting in an arrangement of two adjacent areas of net matter, net anti-matter, configured such that the resulting anihaltion propelled two net areas of matter and anti-matter away from each other before totally destroying each other, might be infinitely small, but if you throw an infinity of time at it, the result might well be a finite number of instances. It only has to have happned 'once' in order for our Universe of interesting gradient to have been created from a flat uniform field of bubbling non-gradient that always was and always will be-- as far as we are concerned, within our universe of interesting gradient, 'nothing' including no time and no space. But that is a parochial definition of time and space.

The primacy of existence is true if existence exists. The alternative is true if existence does not exist. If there is -only- consciousness, then the Universe is purely imagined by consciousness, and to create 'surprise' -- to actually experience a purely imagined universe, such a consciousness would by necessity need to do what we already know any schizoid can do, and that is, divide itself into consciousness that 'knows' and consciousness that doesn't know(else, how could 'surprise' exist in such a universe of pure consciousness? A singular creative consciousness that purely imagined the Universe would already know the answer behind every question, would know what was on the unopened side of every door.) So that is the essence of faith; do we believe that existence exists, or do we believe that all is nothing but consciousness? Which is more fantastic-- to believe in a consciousness that could create everything there is, and actually 'build' it, or a consciousness that purely imagined everything that is, but in order to enjoy its creation, became a massive schizoid? It would be far easier to imagine and become a schizoid than to imagine and actually build. The alternative is, a Universe that actually exists.

Dinesh argues that the 20th century was freed of religious influence. Nonsense. "Social Scientology", the religion that believes "S"ociety=God and the state is its proper church, was the most efficient killing machine mankind has ever seen. See Hitler and the Nazis, Stalin and the Commies, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and all those 'Tribe Uber Alles' killing machines.

God or an infinity of Universes? I don't think so. Those aren't the only two choices. We only need two. A + -A = 0. And within our Universe, we have direct actual evidence of anti-matter(and via lockstep, anti-energy.) We observe, locally, in our Universe, a pre-ponderance of matter over anti-matter. As odd as this sounds, there are actually folks spending money and searching, today, for signs of the early separation of these Universes; the 'Big Bang' as the energetic event that initially hurled these two regions of statistically allowable(if rare and infrequent)regions of net matter close to regions of net anti-matter. The annihilation would propel the two regions apart-- cutting off future interaction and mutual destruction. This event might be extraordinarily rare, but not prohibited by battling infinities: an infinity of time waiting for an infinitely rare event. A rare event. Our universe(s) won the Universe Lottery.

Interesting debate. My own ponderings straddle their positions, plural. I believe in a universe, as it is, that created me. I consider the scientific examination of that process to be orthogonal to the concept of God as a Creator; I think by definition, that concept of God is forever safely outside of the Universe we are in, and so, on that topic, I am a by necessity(of logic) a devout agnostic. I am certain religion is a man made concept. I am certain church is a man made construct. I am certain that by definition, the concept of God is forever safely outside of this Universe and beyond it, and whether it, too, is purely man made is forever safely unknowable within this Universe. My acknowledgement of the Universe, as it is, as my creator, is both not enough God for classic religionists/Christians, like my sister, and at the same time, too much God for devout athiests. I can live with that, it is my own assessment of a by definition singularity. But Universe from nothing? Why one Universe? Why not two Universes from nothing? 0 = 0. A + -A = 0 A = A From a flat uniform field devoid of significant gradient, a permitted by chance local fluctuation in matter and anti-matter, and by lockstep relationship, energy and anti-energy. "Normally' such fluctuations in a flat cosmic field devoid of significant gradient would annihilate each other. But from an initial 'explosion' two intact regions, one of net matter and one of net anti-matter, hurtling away from each other (and from mutual destruction of each other), in total not violating any conservative law. 0 = 0. A + -A = 0. A = A. Two for the price of None. All of our scientific conservative accounting laws taken care of. Each universe -- the universe of net matter, and the universe of net anti-matter, each in its own expansive phase, hurtling away from each other, each on its way back to a dim 3 deg K future of flat field non-gradient. Bernstein pointed out that 'energy and mass from nothing is a logical impossibility.' I agree. But matter plus anti-matter(or equally, energy and anti-energy) from 'nothing' is not a logical impossibility. It is semantics about what is meant by 'nothing.' In my (completely made up theory), 'nothing' is a flat uninteresting field devoid of interesting gradient. What our Universe is, is interesting gradient-- of predominantly matter. It is entirely possible that our Universe is completely balanced by another Universe of interesting gradient composed of predominately anti-matter. I can't prove anything like that. But I can easily imagine it. Just like others could easily imagine a God to explain the paradox of our Universe from nothing. But moot; for all I(or they)could know, this process of A+ -A = 0 is exactly how a God of pure conciousness got around the lack of a cosmic Home Depot preceding his wish to create 'a' Universe; he made two for the price of None. And for all I know, the manner that all knowing God chose to create 'surprise' in our universe was to do what any mere schizoid can readily do, and split his concsiousness into that which knows, and that which doesn't know(us.) Or, for all I know, it is all just that which is not prohibited. That which can be, can be, including A + -A = 0, and for example, from Wolfram's NKS, complexity from simple rules-- the simplest rule in our Universe also being the most well described and yet least understood-- gravity, which via simple rules, creates order out of chaos. Not just every element heavier than Hydrogen in this Universe of mostly Hydrogen, in the gravity fueled forges of stars long dead, but as well, in all those pools of muddy water along miles of ancient oceans, where gravity caused colloidal suspensions of species on solution to settle out by density, creating the miles and miles of gradient based chemistry experiments that resulted in complexity from those heavy elements, and ultimately, the buildfing blocks of self-aware heavy elements. All from 'gravity'. During the brief cosmic span of our interesting Universe of gradient, a process which has evolved beyond ordered planets and solar systems and heavy elements slowly disassociating, but self aware heavy elements as well. Is all that the process chosen by a God, or simply the result of a simple rule, gravity, applied to that which is not prohibited by any logic: A + -A = 0. When a pile is created on a flat uninteresting field, two things are created: the pile, and the hole. Over time, gravity will pull the pile back into the hole. But until that happens, there is interesting gradient in the flat field; both the pile, and the hole. A + -A = 0. Does any of that create or imply a limitation on any man made Rule for God? Hell no. I can't imagine, logically, how the merely created create a conditional rule for their own creation.

How much is just anger at DC, period, and any incumbent in this totally out of control mess? Perhaps the TeaParty is not nearly radical enough to fully tap into the nation's growing disgust and rage. Maybe a full out 'Take an Axe to DC' party would sell better. It's platform could be summed up in a single image; a smoking crater in Northern VA before it is too late for this nation. We are well beyond the 'scalpel' stage of fixing this turd.

WHat will an embattled animal, trapped and fighting for its political life, not do in order to prevail in an existential struggle? Muddy the water with nonsense is the least of what such a trapped animal will do, fighting for its life. In this case, political life. Legacy. Place in history books. Or in the best tradaition of ratcake Chicago politico realpolitik, checking off promises made to a radical base. Maybe if he lets the top five go, there will be less sturm and drang over soon emptying out the whole rat's nest. Or, God help us, the realization that the end of the free pass inside the cookie jar will soon be over. We do notice, don't we, that this absurdity totally knocked the VA scandal off the front pages? Is there someone among us who thinks the explanation for the latest assault on rationality has to have any meaning beyond the political optics of the moment-- the need to take the Oxygen out of the fire of the outrage over the VA...on ad infinitum to all the other acts of daily incompetence carried out by this total poser? Go back not far at all to the polite just sunk a four foot putt for par applause given to the POTUS -- the POTUS -- during his appearance at West Point recently. Does anyone think there is any love lost between this POTUS and the US military establishement? We are once again being run by a regime that 'loathes' the military. The VA scandal and the in your face irrational trade doesn't need to be anything more than Mr. Chicago Politics saying 'f*** you' to the institution he loathes, the one that during every election the 'loathers' attempt to suppress the vote by mail vote from. To make more out of this than that petty politics is a fool's errand.

Economics as political science is, political argument taking on the veneer of spreadsheets and data and analysis and labcoats and statistics and formulas and models and ... putting on a voodoo witchdoctor show to huckster what somebody wants from someone else, period. I can't even pretend any more when I see these things. Does credibility never fade, after decades of failure? Do 'economists' get the endless benefit of the doubt, and every time an 'economist' shows up to push his political opinion, we are supposed to regard him as some kind of scientist pushing 'science' at us? Or is it time to just finally laugh these clowns out of the Assembly, as would have occurred in Athenian Democracy? Decades of failure: state of the art economic science can't even tell us what already long ago happened, much less, what is happening now or God help us, what will happen in the future if some Penguin armed constructivist get's too close to the Tribe's Magic Conch and blows it, which they often do. State of the art economic science is political argument, period. It is political science; politics: the art and science but mostly scamming of getting what we want from others using every scheme short of just smashing them over the head with a rock. There is liberal economics. There is conservative economics. The closest thing to agenda neutral 'economics' is called 'accounting'... Oh no, the voodoo practitioners assure us, their science is real science. Trust them. It just doesn't work worth a damn, but that's OK because we are so DC fatigued that we barely notice. Well, bullshit. Time to flush it all to the fiction section, where it belongs. Beyond the trivial banalities of Samuelson that not even Krugman can keep straight with his self serving 'Topsey Turvey' Economics, not buying it as anything other than never calibrated political opinions. aka, hogwash. And now, back to pretending otherwise when we don't just laugh at 'economists' and their 'economic' arguments. The Kerfuffle over Picketty seems just like Soviet Era street theater; it looks and smells like the same aparatchiks on both side of the Kerfuffle. They set it up and they knocked it down, and this nothingburger is supposed to mean what to any of us? Sell it to those who are buying.

Michael: The polite, well meaning, well intentioned Social Democrats in Germany were not the enemy, either. But they were the enabling cheerleaders for the eventual enemy. The great Volkgemeinschaft festering in Germany was the fertile ground needed to unfetter that state and set it off marching across the world. How many times is it necessary to watch a tribe of people invite the inevitable unto themselves with precisely the same puddingheaded ideas running loose? It seems like an endless movie on a loop. It starts off, "Let's unfetter our state for this really, really good idea of ours." And that process is ratcheted; the state seldom re-fetters itself. It mostly grows. Expands. Until is it the state uber alles. And not all equally have courted that insanity. Some have actively campaigned for it. But that not all and some roam, because of a very loose grasp on American principles; note the current meme selling pure democracy/majority rule, the ethics of a gang rape as something innately 'American.' Where the Hell did that come from in this America? Or even Athens, as far as that goes. And yes, I blame the roaming 'some', intentions be damned. Although the cleavage helps a little. I 'saw' a radio interview of her from Oct 2008. Saw? Yes, it was on video, too, on youtube. And there again was the flashed cleavage. Not sure how that works on radio. Must be HD radio. Then again...I saw the interview. So that must have been planned. Fred

I've self edited my hyperbole to remove some of the most offensive derogatory terms, because there is a possibility that Michael is right. But I haven't changed the meaning, because there is a possibility he is not..

She loves to whip out the 'children of Holocaust survivers' card as the only visionaries of peril in the world. Please. I'm a child of a man who at the prime of his young life, lived in a trench filled with his own piss and shit for weeks in the Heurtgen forest risking his life and watching friends get blown to pink frothy mists because her dumbass social democrat parents were too fucking stupid not to court the unfettering of their state and visit the horrors of the state uber alles on the world. I would have preferred he didn't have to do that. I would prefer that the same abject stupidity loose in this nation for decades wouldn't succeed in unfetterng our own state for the latest really, really good cause, but apparently, some of their jackass children have been pushing the same bullshit here for decades, not having learned a fucking thing from Nazi Germany or the USSR or any of the state uber alles 'we really need the government' experiments in murdering millions over really stupid ideas. So there's me whipping out my card in return -- my "chidren of survivers who cleaned up the inevitable mess of state unfettering social democrats and their 'we really need government to ... ' sensibilities, who ended up in concentration camps as a reward for their abject stupidity in courting an unfettered state for any reason at all, requirung others once living in freedom to rush in from far over the horizon and futily attempt to put out the fire before it ate freedom everywhere in the world, nice try, but didn't happen' card. Smaller print, but it trumps the 'we brought it on once and we can sure as Hell bring it on again if you'll let us' card.

When it comes to Mr. Amazing No Short Term Memory Man-Itis, what is a cause for a bigger headslapper than going back to Oct 2008, a month before the election, and listening to Naomi Wolf go on about the armed military coup that George Bush had just pulled off, taking control of the US Military with the intent of ignoring any transfer of government order that would result from a loss by McCain in the 2008 election? I totally missed that coup. Hell, I wish it would have happened, at this rate. Gee, that was some timing. Makes me wonder if another election is coming up soon. Here she comes, right on schedule with her 'don't blame the President, we need the US Government to fight the real cabal." God, these commie Ivy League cupcakes can be insulting, especially when dressed in red and flashing cleavage. She should tagged team up there in the woods with Katrina Van Dan Clueless. Katrina could have worn the ref scarf and black leather. I didn't miss her characterization of Sarah Palin's political argument that the nation was in 'crisis.' Apparently, Palin's criticism of a government out of control was not as politically pure as Miss Manattanite's newly found criticism of government out of control. See, Palin was doing all that in support of some global cabal run by shadowy business types, while Naomi is now speaking out for decent folks. Hey Naomi; fuck you and your transparent as Hell late to the party frantic repackaging. I am not Mr. Amazing No Short Term Memory Man. You know what we need to get over real quick, like yesterday? Falling for your bullshit. It is exactly you and your social democrat-ish chearleaders for ever expanded government that enabled this bullshit for generations.. Don't need you screwing the pooch any more, it is long screwed. So what is this tour of the NH TeaParty? Is Naomi Wolf making a bid for the new, improved Brunette claiming this nation is in crisis? Is this a campaign to make us all ignore the nature of her frantic claims in Oct 2008, with GOP fascism imminently about to take over the nation, but now, in 2014, with Obama in office, we suddenly 'need the US GOvernment and don't blame the US President' aimed at the NH TeaParty? Did the yahoos at that meeting actually swallow that shit? Over a 'beer' no doubt. Appropriate, because at the very least, she's up there pissing on whatever embers of revolt against a government out of all control there might exist in the nation. Has now six years of absolutely nothing changed under Obama resulted in anything more than a sudden "We can't blame the US President" for the sad state of a government run amok? Not enough mea culpa, way too much repackaging and hit the reset button on the credibility meter going on. She got what she was campaiging so heavily for; Obama in office. Now what? And why should she be suddenly found credible on this or any issue?

Michael: Here is another example from the 90s. I don't remember the Naomi Wolf's of the world much complaining about such tactics. The following is an excerpt from a discussion of an ex Navy Seal named 'Smith' who claims that the current administration is deliberately shaping the officer corps of the current military by asking candidates if they would accept an order to disarm American citizens on American soil. Answer wrong, he claims, and careers go down the tubes. (Such a policy, in advance of such an order being given, would result in only one thing, I am certain: History's biggest rash of fraggings, because they aren't asking the same question to those E1s who would actually need to execute the order. And deservedly so.) A similar thing happened in the IRS in Clinton administration 90's, and without an adequately politically shaped IRS, resulted in something quietly called 'The IRS Street Revolt.' I saw this first hand, not something that was told to me. Shorty Reich as head of the Department of Labor was in charge of overseeing all regulated pension plans, including, small business self-employed business plans. As part of Gore's 'Reinventing Government' initiative, all cabinet level departments had to come up with 'metrics' which described what a good job they were doing for taxpayers. The metrics that Shorty Reich chose for the DoL included the dollar amount of all small business self-employed pension plans that were declared 'non-confroming' that were clawed back as taxes and penalties and interest, even if same put the small businesses out of business. The 'infractions' were bogus technicalities on 'information only' returns -- the 'non-tax' 5500s that all pension plan administrators must file. Hidden in the inscrutable 'when to file' rules was a trap over 'Top Heavy Plans' -- defined as, more that 50% of assets in the name of corporate officers only and not employees. The IRS -- and only the IRS -- interpreted the self-employed -- who were both sole corporate officers and also sole employee -- as running 'Top Heavy Plans.' Non Top Heavy Plans were required to file the first 'information only' 5500 in the year that plan assets exceeded $100,000...while Top Heavy Plans had to file the 'information only' return starting in year one. There was no tax associated with the 5500...it was just a disclosure of plan assets and activity during the year, period. So Shorty sends IRS Agents(IRS is in Treasury, not DoL, but IRS enforces the plan requirements)out to 'expose' all these technical filing violations. What IRS agents were supposed to do was say "You filed in year 2, but needed to file in year 1. This is year 5. Your first return is over 1800 days late, and your plan is non-conforming. You owe $X for every day the report is filed late, plus since your plan is now non-conforming, you must redo 5 years of corporate and personal tax returns, declaring those assets as income. You owe back taxes, penalties, and interest. X: The IRS penalty for late filing of a return is $25 per day, up to a maximum of $15,000. The DOL penalty for late filing can run up to $1,100 per day, with no maximum. 1800 days would be about two millions dollars in late filing fees alone, never mind the taxes and penalties due for the five years of reclassified contributions now classified as income. Not satisfied with just clawing back the contributions into the plan, the DoL was just asking some poor schmuck trying to provide for himself independent of SS with under half a million in a pension plan to cough up 2.5 million in penalties for doing so, even if it meant losing his pension, business, and other assets. So, because of a spurrious interpretation of 'Top Heavy' that no sane CPA would apply to the self-employed, the Clintonista/Shorty Reich run DoL was tooling around in '95 trying to put every self-employed person in business with a pension plan out of business. NOBODY interpreted 'self-emploed' as 'Top Heavy' ... except the IRS and DoL, but they were judge and jury and appeal court. The IRS field agent who explained all this to me in '95, two days before Xmas when I was audited, also ended it by saying "And you and I both know this is total b.s. so we aren't enforcing it. But management is pissed, is insisting we go out and do this. The field agents are refusing. There is no way I'm going to look at some self-employed business man trying to provide for himself and his family and tell him he is ruined over a strange interpretation of 'Top Heavy' on an 'information only' return." IRS Street Revolt, 1995. Unfortunately, I think this latest left wing infestation learned its lesson from that. Todays IRS appears to be much more highly politicized and 'right thinking' on these issues. Germany's military took orders that were unfathomable. There is no magic talisman safe from all abuse that is protecting America from the state run amok insanity that almost destroyed the world last century. Why wouldn't his claims be investigated by a press doing its job, either way? Because 90% of the press is OK with the idea. In fact, thinks its a good idea; use the military to sweep the nation and defang the 2nd Amendment by Executive Order enforcing some half-cooked emegency powers act. We are very close to that nation today. Look at our poliical discourse. A someday 51% could readily sign off on that, and that is all it would take in this out of all control environment. A left wing infestation that could do what they attempted to do in '95 would have no compunction about shaping the military to the cause. You and I might not like to believe this is possible in this America, but it clearly is possible in this America. Fred

And not to be outdone, check out this hot mess from 1970, in response to a recession in which unemployment -peaked- at 6.1%, caused by economies with insufficient workers needed to grow fast enough to meet the hurried demand of trying to market and sell to a young Boomer demographic that had not quite fully entered the workforce, but who represented a much sought after target demographic. And that 6.1% wasn't the same 6.1% reported today; the government has since redefined the definition of unemployment. Michael, since long before you and I were born, this rot has advanced beyond simple remedy. Fred

Here we go; 'bipartisan agreeement' on trading freedom for safety. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/28/opinion/life-and-liberty.html

Opposite ends, even. But they kind of come full circle, don't they? And yes, Peikoff's work drew comparisons, but looked ahead with optimism and concluded 'but not likely here', whereas Naomi observes 30 years later 'already well established here.' To me, even as she observes the results, she still clings to the same agenda that empowered it; unfettering the state for a really good cause. Her appeal in her talk -- I don't think I misunderstood her -- was that now the good cause was to 'save' us all from an even larger murky uber- state that poor Obama just could not deal with. And what gas rendered Obama impotent? If you listen to her closely, it is some cabal that has taken over the NSA, that has absolute knowledge of every private act of every citizen, like poor Switzer or Wiener, and no doubt Obama, too, because we are all human. The NSA is 'controlling' via that information -- can take down even secret service agents. And yet, let's distinguish that from a national media that 'controls' dissemination of information unfavorable to whoever their candidate du jour is and leads a nation around by the nose. As if we should all have a preference of one group of elitist Ivy league pricks over another when it comes to serving their paternalistic megalomania. See, in WWII, in order to fight totalitarian statists, America had to unleash corporatism/fascism in the form of a fast tracked 'Arsenal of Democracy.' It was an existential necessity. And the result ever since has been, corporatism/fascism in America. For a really good cause; the state uber alles. But cleavage....the male mind will always be befuddled by cleavage. You know, when you flirt with a contractor, they will tell you anything. See, there is this separate species of mankind; they are 'contractors' and 'bureacrats' who run government spy agencies and multinational corporations. And then, there are the virtuous rest of us, who just want to raise our families and live our lives. So, if only we peopled things like governments and contractors and businesses with the right species of mankind, then it would be OK to unfetter government and encourage cozy relationships between the guns of government and businesses -- because it is only the bad species that messes that idea up, not the good species. See, we just need to get the good species into those positions of absolute power over others, and then all will be fine. Bush in wake of 9/11? Ha. She thinks all of us are Mr. Amazing No Short Term Memory Man. What about Clinton and especially Schumer in wake of Oklahoma City? I still have Schumer's piece sround here from the Times in the wake of Oklahoma City. Incredible. All kinds of power being advocated by the left to empower the surveillance of American citizens; the Schumer's of the world, including many of Naomi's 'multinational' battling friends in Manhattan, were not nearly as Nazi fearing when they thought all that power was going to be aimed at reigning in the folks struggling to conduct international business with those Cayman's Corps, in spite of the hostility in the US to Americans doing international business. Naomi and friends are a little late to the 'maybe unfettering the state is not such a hot idea/limited government' party. But perhaps there is not quite such a zealot as a convert. Or not. Because she is still singing the government is the solution song, in even the wake of what she has seen. There are converts, and then, there are converts. Fred

Michael: Thank you for posting those. There is a kind of slow convergence going on, a realization that the two forever sides of the stands are battling the wrong foes. Since, at the very least, Eisenhower and JFK; this nation shattered when JFK was assassinated. This has been 50+ years of circular firing squad rot, while LBJ and Nixon and a parade of clowns did little to defend the idea of freedom in the world. Naomi's argument has changed somewhat since (rightfully) criticizing Bush for being the latest in generations of presidents to sell out freedom. Now that she has witnessed this trend doing nothing to reverse itself under Obama, she is appealing to 'not blame the US President' and 'we need the US Government to fight this ..." her favorite political symbol of evil in the world. The GOP is not the exclusive enemy, and the Democrats are not the answer. The Democrats are not the exclusive enemy, and the GOP is not the answer. A pox on both their houses. It is the exclusive choice between those non-choice choices that has neutered American politics for well over 50 years. What and how DC does what it does has little to do with the now endless pony show fed to us by CNN, Fox, MSNBC, the networks. That is the circus. Her "ten things" is important testimony to the gross signs of the unfettering of our state. But Peikoff wrote "The Ominous Parallels" at the beginning of the Reagan Era, and provided far deeper detail and analysis. I don't fault Peikoff for the optimism with which he ended his book, perhaps he was responding to Reagan's charisma, which he was loaded with. I wonder, if Peikoff had written the same scholarly work today, would he have ended the book with the same optimism, especially given Naomi's 'ten things' testimony? (He basically ended his book with something like 'probably not in this America, the urge for freedom is too strong.') The Teaparty movement is an upswelling of awareness that there is something rotten in the state. It has a decidedly anti-government/minimalist government bent to it. It wants to carry an axe to DC, not a scalpal. It wants to build a new smoking crater in DC, not polish a few dusty monuments. It is as reviled by the GOP as it is the Democrats. And so, when Naomi in her red dress and cleavage courts the Teaparty in NH, and argues that 'we need the US government' to 'fight the multinationals' after all but choking out a throw away endorsement of the 2nd Amendment, after seemingly about facing from 'Bush is Hitler' to "don't blame Obama/the US President', it makes me wonder if a red Wolf in Wolf's red clothing has really turned her Manhattan-ite fear and loathing into a false flag visit to the enemy, But hey...cleavage. So why not? Maybe not. When she realizes that it was exactly the polite enabling cheerleader Social Democrats in Germany who wooed the unfettering of the state that brought on the inevitable meat eating statists, I'll applaud her change of heart. I see the same things she sees, and agree with most of her conclusions. Except her sudden new found faith in the US Government and the cancer in DC that has brought the nation to its knees. What unites us is our freedom from each other, except under rules of free association. Polite human interaction, not -any- form of forced association. What should unite is our freedom from each other. It is an idea worth mobbing up to defend, including, with folks who we don't like or agree with but who we politely share our joint freedom from each other with, but unlike fighting and waging WWII, let's not forget why we are mobbing up; to defend our right to be free of the mob. Not to establish a new mob by way of a new forced association, no matter what the endless remarketers call it after the latest human tribal catastrophe. We didn't win the Cold War, we caught the Cold. We are currently coughing up phlegm. Taking only half our antibiotics is not going to cure the nation.

Corporations or unions have no means to coerce without the guns of government. Fetter that, and corporations are simply the consequence of free association in commerce.

The bigger issue is SinglePointOfFailure. Getting it all wrong at once. Monolithic system design, Building 'the economy' instead of 'the economies.' Look at the Sears Tower. It is not 'a' tower; it is nine towers in parallel. That is what makes the aggregate strong, resilient. Same thing with a suspension bridge cable. We are not smart enough to constructively design 'the' curriculum. This is lousy system design on its face, no matter the content. The phrase is 'United We Stand.' Not 'United It Stands.' The balance of the tribe is allowing a significant fraction of the tribe to fully cave in to its atavistic herd mentality genes; this is a massive step towards stupid.

It's hard to fathom the depths of that kind of cowardice. What drives a person there? It obviously(love that word)isn't the strength of their position or convictions. There must be a self-help book published somewhere for paternalistic megalomaniacs that is pushing self-therapy like that. (Who else would it be for????)

As I've said before, the reason I limit B's choices in that way is simply because, in real life, currently, there are no laissez-faire governments in the world which he can move to. He can't hide in plain sight? Be neither an employee nor employer? Refrain from building factories and a large business, paint the target on his own back? No way to do that in this world? The Hell you say. Produce no more than he needs or wants? Choose other values other than the offered rack or free-for-some? 'Take' less of that mythical pie that some believe falls from the sky, unabetted? Gee. Where have all the good paying jobs in the US gone? More unions, please. Got a sign in my office, "unionize this." Please raise the MW even higher. I'll cheer. Do you have to refine your allowed choices further? Perhaps, hand out his sentence on the rack back in HS, when he takes his SATs? You will let him know what he can and can't do in this world. And to the best of his abilities, not yours, he will fully accept your premise. So, let me know. Also, let me know when he builds that time machine for you; the one you are going to need to limit my choices 30 years ago, fresh out of grad school. Are you loving the new economies? The ones with these two choices that you claim are the only ones avaialble? Enjoy. They're all yours. You and yours are earning every facet of them. They are rapidly becoming the remarkable face of Social Justice. I'd love to go back and ask those left wing flakes from Disneyland days; "So, this is where you wanted to take the nation?" No. you're right; more please. Take all the time you need to figure it out. If this is a class war, I know who is taking it up the butt, and that is exactly Social Justice.