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Perhaps It Is Too Late... Something to Think About

by; Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny

This will probably not be my last post, although if it were it certainly would be in my best interest. At least from a health perspective.

Reason in America has quite frankly jumped the shark. Politics, and by extension government has become a thing to be disdainful of. Personally all I have left for our politicians and GOVERNMENT is utter and complete contempt.

How easily and effortlessly the media, the politicians, the representatives, the senators, the political blogs full of partisan poisonous BS, the talking heads of FOX.. MSNBC.. Limbaugh... and more, all react to the strings their puppet masters are in control of.

Winning. Preserving the long held paradigm(s) of your chosen political ideology is ALL that is important.

Whether you be conservative, liberal, progressive, conservative, reactionary, libertarian, anarchist, socialist, communist, fascist, or whatever, you dare not risk it be said that you actually consider the issues and evident problem(s) in the attempt to find the best workable solution. It MUST first and foremost fit your long held paradigm(s) and resulting template.

There is a reason the American public holds Congress, and most everyone involved in governance in such low esteem. Those entrusted with the GENERAL WILL of the PEOPLE have failed to execute their charge.

However, having said the above here comes the core issue. The slap in the face if you will. Americans, by their own CHOOSING have failed to educate themselves on issues. They have chosen to believe the the "experts", the politically connected, the meaningless polls, the most charismatic speakers, the agenda driven talking heads. In essence the American electorate has allowed itself to lead because they simply have been too busy, or too lazy to identify for themselves exactly what their own rational self interests really are.

I only ask you to THINK about the above. Put the ideological paradigm(s) and the din of the self interested politically connected puppets and shills for all political ideologies and parties aside for the moment and consider what is ACTUALLY in the best rational LONG term interests of yourself, your family, and your nation.

Unless you act in your own rational self interests and that of your family and communities you are IN FACT allowing others to act on your behalf. As we know from historical realities POWER CORRUPTS and ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY.

The choice is yours, the responsibility is yours, and the results will be yours. Individuals do not exist in a vacuum. Society is a complex social construct. As a result living in society requires compromise. Effective compromise takes work, diligence, the ability to maintain an open mind, and it means NOT expecting you will win on all your cherished paradigms.

Progress is not anti conservative. Rather it is considered and cautious progress towards advancing the improvement of society overall and over time.

As I leave for a much needed emotional hiatus:

“When it shall be said in any country in the world my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government”

― Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

Continuing our head-long slide down the slippery slope of abortion

When people challenge and attempt to liberalize valued traditions, there is usually great concern that doing so is the first step down the "slippery slope," which ultimately leads to bad results. The “slippery slope” is considered a logical fallacy, but in the case of abortion, evidence supports that it is an apt argument.

We started down this slope when abortion was legalized 40 years ago. If it was not the original intention, abortion certainly has become a thinly disguised mechanism for after-the-fact birth control. Pregnancy is not a mystery; we know what causes it. There are numerous ways to prevent pregnancy whenever people decide to forego the one certain way to prevent pregnancy: abstinence.

Birth control devices, while not perfect, are very dependable when used properly. However, somewhere along the way it was recognized that there were a lot of people facing the eventual birth of an unwanted child, and some thought that society was obligated to find a way to relieve these folks of having to bear responsibility for their actions. Abortion became the solution for unwanted pregnancy, under the curious label, "a woman's right to choose."

Each now-pregnant woman and her male partner had the right to choose to abstain from sexual intercourse and chose not to. They had the right to choose to use birth control, and either chose not to, or chose not to use it consistently or correctly, or it just didn't work one time. In the great majority of cases, birth control measures do work when used properly, and that means that in the majority of cases the right to use birth control actually was not chosen.

The "right to choose" is little more than a mechanism for prospective parents to avoid creating a child at an inconvenient time: In 2004 fully 74 percent of women getting an abortion said a child would "dramatically change their life."

Since Roe v Wade imposed legalized abortion on the nation in 1973, 55 million abortions have been performed, and approximately 1.2 million future Americans were aborted in each of the last several years. Nearly half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended, and nearly half of those are aborted.

Planned Parenthood is the nation's most prolific provider of abortions, performing about 1-in-4 total U.S. abortions each year, chalking up 334,000 in 2011. It received $542 million from taxpayers that year, about 40 percent of its total revenues.

And since 1973 we have witnessed the slide down that slippery slope. It has been considered acceptable by a significant number of Americans to end a pregnancy anywhere from the morning after to the day when the baby should be born healthy and ready for life.

We have been treated to horrors such as partial birth abortion where the baby is allowed to be born, but not completely, with part of the child still in the birth canal so that a butcher with MD or DO after their name can kill the child before it is "born." This nefarious procedure takes hair-splitting to a new level.

A year ago a giant slide down the slippery slope occurred when two Australian ethicists – Alberto Giubilini with Monash University in Melbourne, and Francesca Minerva at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne – provided an answer to the question, "When does a fetus become a person?" Their answer: it doesn’t matter. They argued in the online edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics that if abortion of a fetus is allowable, so, too, should be the “termination” of a newborn.

This cold-blooded idea has now infected the United States. That same concept appeared in testimony at a Florida legislative committee that was considering a bill to require abortionists to provide medical care to an infant who survives an abortion and is moving on the table and struggling for life. A Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates lobbyist endorsed the right to "post-birth abortion." The lobbyist, Alisa LaPolt Snow, stunned legislators when she said that her organization believes the decision to kill an infant who survives a failed abortion "should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician."

This is nothing more than pre-meditated murder, and is not so different from first responders executing a seriously injured accident victim. And just how far does this "right" to post-birth abortion extend? The first birthday? The difficult years of adolescence? Or perhaps it will extend many years after the botched abortion when under as-yet-unknown elements of the Affordable Care Act bureaucrats may be in the position to determine that it will cost too much to keep an elderly patient alive.

Fortunately, the tide appears to be turning against the grizzly practice of abortion. Last June a Gallop poll showed that 50 percent identified themselves as "pro-life" compared to 41 percent who said they were "pro-choice." And, 51 percent said abortion is morally wrong, compared to 38 percent who said it is morally acceptable. And some state legislatures have passed tighter restrictions on the procedure.

This attitude favoring preserving life and restoring personal responsibility is one small ray of light in America's otherwise darkening culture.

U.S. is losing economic freedom and the prospect of women in combat

By James Shott

Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, Chile, Mauritius, and Denmark all beat the United States in the 2013 Index of Economic Freedom. The U.S., part of a group of countries termed "mostly free," scored 76.0 out of 100, dropping .3 from last year, compared with 89.3 for Hong Kong. The world average score of 59.6 is only .1 above the 2012 average. All free economies averaged 84.5, well above the U.S. ranking.

The Index is produced by The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation, and is based on Adam Smith's theory expressed in The Wealth of Nations in 1776. It covers 10 freedoms scored from 1 to 100, from property rights to entrepreneurship, for 185 countries, and has been published since 1995.

Economic freedom is defined as "the fundamental right of every human to control his or her own labor and property. In an economically free society, individuals are free to work, produce, consume, and invest in any way they please, with that freedom both protected by the state and unconstrained by the state. In economically free societies, governments allow labor, capital and goods to move freely, and refrain from coercion or constraint of liberty beyond the extent necessary to protect and maintain liberty itself." That definition applies less to the U.S. each year.

The U.S. has lost economic freedom for five consecutive years and suffered losses in the categories of monetary freedom, business freedom, labor freedom, and fiscal freedom. The U.S. did post an increase in one category, however: government spending, in which it scored lowest of the ten categories.

The poor U.S. position, the lowest Index score since 2000, is due to rapid expansion of federal policies, which have encroached on the states' ability to control their own economic decisions. The authors specifically mentioned the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial bill as having strong negative influences on economic freedom. They also noted that national spending rose to over 25 percent of GDP in 2010, that public debt passed 100 percent of GDP in 2011, and that budget deficits have exceeded $1 trillion each year since 2009.

"More than three years after the end of the recession in June 2009, the U.S. continues to suffer from policy choices that have led to the slowest recovery in 70 years," the authors wrote. "Businesses remain in a holding pattern, and unemployment is close to 8 percent."

Until government stops trying to regulate nearly every facet of life, its tinkering will continue to slow the economy and prolong suffering, and we will continue to fall in the Index of Economic Freedom.

* * * * * * *

The decision to put women in up-front combat roles is troubling, to say the least, perhaps more so to those of us who grew up and served in times when women played important roles in the military, but were not directly involved in combat, or even close to combat.

Fortunately, only a relative few females have been injured and killed in recent military actions, but if this decision stands those numbers will grow, and that prospect is a quite traumatic one for many Americans, and completely unacceptable for many others.

The critical factor in determining whether any group or individual serves in a combat situation is whether they are up to the daunting challenges that exist. Requirements for who fills combat roles must be maintained at levels that guarantee that every person in a combat role is up to it, man, woman, gay, straight or whatever.

There are also practical considerations when males and females are in combat situations in close proximity. Troops are often in sustained operations for extended periods, and living conditions offer no privacy for personal hygiene functions or sleeping. Finding ways to provide needed privacy during high stress and dangerous operations may very well put troops at greater risk. That is not acceptable.

A convincing argument against this is that the decision was made for the wrong reasons: it was driven by political and social considerations, not military need, according to Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, US Army (Ret.), who served for 36 years as an original member of the Delta Force and a Green Berets commander.

Some women believe that their chances of career advancement within the military suffer from being excluded from ground combat positions. And predictably, the American Civil Liberties Union, which frequently takes positions that make no sense in the practical world, agrees and has filed a lawsuit on their behalf.

The safety of our military personnel must not be put at risk in return for achieving some politically correct sense of fairness or even to allow female military personnel access to the career advantages that are available to males, as unfair as that may be. Fairness and equality sometimes must take a back seat.

Despite the strong desires of many Americans, men and women are by nature different biological creatures and distinctly not equal in important ways, one of which is that men are better suited to military combat than women. We shouldn’t fool with Mother Nature.

Cross-posted from Observations

US experiences warmest year in the history of recorded temperatures

By James Shott

"It's official: 2012 was the warmest year ever recorded in the contiguous United States,” according to a statement by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as reported by Scientific American.

"The average temperature in the lower 48 states reached 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit, shattering the previous record set in 1998 by a full degree," the story continued, noting that government temperature records go back only to 1895.

NOAA climate scientist Jake Crouch explained that "Climate change has had a role in this," cautioning that it is still hard for scientists to know how much of this year's warmer weather was caused by natural variability and how much was caused by man-made climate change.

The obvious question is, "how does the increased temperature in the US extrapolate to Earth's global temperature?" Surprisingly, it doesn't.

According to the UK Daily Mail, the world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, despite the US experience in 2012. From the beginning of 1997 until August of last year there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

"This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years," the British publication noted.

The new data from the British Met Office was compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, showing that global warming has stalled. Met officials say that by 2017, temperatures will not have risen significantly for nearly 20 years, and admit that previous forecasts were inaccurate. "That the global temperature standstill could continue to at least 2017 would mean a 20-year period of no statistically significant change in global temperatures," according to Dr. David Whitehouse, science adviser to the Global Warming Policy Foundation. "Such a period of no increase will pose fundamental problems for climate models. If the latest Met Office prediction is correct, then it will prove to be a lesson in humility" for supporters of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory.

Predictably, not everyone has accepted this news. Dr. Richard Allan of the University of Reading said: "Global warming is not 'at a standstill,' but does seem to have slowed down since 2000, in comparison to the rapid warming of the world since the 1970s." And Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, commented that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions.

However, supporting the view of skeptics of the AGW theory was Professor Judith Curry, the head of the climate science department at Georgia Tech, who said it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were "deeply flawed."

Along that same line of thinking is this from forbes.com: "Antarctic sea ice set another record this past week, with the most amount of ice ever recorded on day 256 of the calendar year. ... The mainstream media frequently publish stories focusing on ice loss in these two areas [West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula], yet the media stories rarely if ever mention that ice is accumulating over the larger area of East Antarctica and that the continent as a whole is gaining snow and ice mass."

You may have heard or read that polar bear populations are threatened by ice loss, but as the Forbes report showed, that is not the case in the Antarctic, and perhaps not in the Arctic, either. While environmentalists and animal rights advocates believe the polar bear is threatened, Alaska is fighting to keep them off the endangered species list, arguing that populations are "at an all-time high."

More bad news for the AGW faction comes from German researchers using tree ring data that is a key indicator of past climate. The study suggests Britain experienced a lengthy period of hotter summers than today as far back as 2,000 years ago.

The Earth has experienced warming and cooling periods throughout its history, and is currently experiencing a broad period of warming. It has not been satisfactorily proved that human activities have a significant impact on the global climate, and these new inconvenient truths support the position of skeptics who doubt the impact of human activity on the Earth's environment.

The Daily Mail article labels the data trumpeted by global warming advocates "flawed science," and explains that it has had a substantial negative effect on energy bills. It says that in response to the threat of manmade warming, subsidies paid to spur the renewable energy industry will cause UK households to see an increase in energy bills, and it predicts continuing increases.

In the US the Obama administration's war on coal has cost thousands of jobs and caused great pain in coal state economies, all because of policies based on the theory that burning coal and other fossil fuels is wreaking havoc on the environment. This idea is increasingly challenged by newer scientific data that strongly contradicts the AGW theory.

What we need in Washington is to replace ideological zeal with common sense policies that do not cause more harm than good.

Cross-posted from Observations

Some important issues deserving attention as the New Year begins

By James Shott

With the country facing the $16.4 trillion debt limit in two months – which works out to about $52,000 per man, woman and child – and with the government spending about a third more than it collects every year, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Friday that president Barack Obama should invoke the Constitution to raise the debt ceiling on his own, circumventing Congress. “I would do it, in a second, but I’m not the President of the United States,” Mrs. Pelosi said.

She believes the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states that the validity of U.S. public debts “shall not be questioned,” gives Mr. Obama all the authority he needs to raise the ceiling.

That’s just what the country needs: the biggest spending president in the history of the nation by far – with trillion-dollar-plus deficits every year of his presidency – having the ability to unilaterally increase the amount of money the country borrows whenever he wants to.

Barack Obama is an irresponsible spendthrift who has shown no capacity for fiscal matters, and therefore needs a mechanism, like Congressional intervention, to keep him from bankrupting the country. Congress must not allow him to invoke the 14^thAmendment.

Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is quoted as having said something like “never let a good crisis go to waste,” and anti-gun zealots have thus initiated new efforts to ban scary looking so-called “assault weapons,” or even repeal the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to prevent future mass murders like the Newtown, CT school incident in which 26 people were murdered by what most people understand was a crazed individual.

Other Americans are justifiably concerned about such violence and also support those measures. But those prescriptions miss the point: The factor responsible for this horrible incident was the state of mind of the murderer, not guns or the 2nd Amendment. What we must focus on are mental health issues, our dramatically devolved culture, and providing better school security.

The Founders, who had just put their lives on the line to gain independence, understood that Americans must be guaranteed the right to defend themselves with weapons equal to those that may be used against them. Some states felt so strongly that certain rights, like the right to bear arms, needed to be explicitly guaranteed that they would not ratify the Constitution without the Bill of Rights being included.

If measures such as those that are being advocated were in force in the 1770s, we would be singing “God Save The Queen” as our national anthem.

One of the reasons our country is in such horrible condition at this time is that some of our elected representatives have been in office for decades, during which time their perspective has most often changed for the worse. Long tenure in office is contrary to the concept of citizen leaders who serve their country for a short time, and then return to civilian life, as it was early in our history. This same problem exists for presidents as well as Congresspersons.

Even if we have someone a majority of Americans regard as a good president in office, removing the ban restricting his or her tenure to eight years opens the door to eventually having a “president for life” which is not so different from being ruled by a king. That didn’t work out so well prior to 1776, and there are examples throughout history where people stayed too long in office to their country’s detriment.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected four times, and his policies extended the Great Depression by several years and deepened its effects, increasing the suffering of the people who elected him. When the U.S. Supreme Court decided FDR’s Agricultural Adjustment Act was unconstitutional, he attempted to overcome the Court’s opposition by increasing the number of Justices, and doing so by adding appointees favorable to his policies.

His behavior prompted the proposal for and the adoption of the 22^nd Amendment, which is one of the best things resulting from FDR’s presidency.

Eight years is enough for a president to hold office. Leave the 22^nd Amendment alone.

As 2013 begins the country still languishes in non-recovery from the 2008 recession, President Barack Obama gave a New Year’s gift to returning members of Congress, federal workers and Vice President Joe Biden by signing an executive order ending a years-long pay freeze.

Federal employees are already paid more than their private sector counterparts. “The federal government paid 16 percent more in total compensation than it would have if average compensation had been comparable with that in the private sector, after accounting for certain observable characteristics of workers,” the Congressional Budget Office reported.

Government employees at all levels exist to serve the public. They should not be treated less well than private sector workers, but sometimes when circumstances warrant, they must make sacrifices, like everyone else has to do. And considering the nation’s critical fiscal condition alluded to above, any additional non-essential spending is plain foolish.

The House of Representatives has voted to rescind Mr. Obama’s Executive Order.

Cross-posted from Observations

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Perhaps It Is Too Late... Something to Think About

Continuing our head-long slide down the slippery slope of abortion

U.S. is losing economic freedom and the prospect of women in combat

US experiences warmest year in the history of recorded temperatures

Some important issues deserving attention as the New Year begins

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