By Nathan Barton

Good morning this weekend.  Have you thought about your own freedom today?  About having and using liberty?  If you don’t use it, you lose it.

Here are a few news stories to remind us to think about how we need to be (and stay or get) free, to live our own lives and be able to choose our destinies.

A NASA-sponsored study has said that Western Civilization is going to collapse because of “unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.”  The study has all the usual attributes: references to Rome, “new” analyses and models, all kinds of “experts” AND how we must change our societies fundamentally to keep this from happening.  Gee, doesn’t all that sound familiar?  Malthus, Gibbons, Swift, Ehrlich, even Hal Lindsey and Herbert W Armstrong have all written similar babble over the past several centuries.  It is a steady diet in Science Fiction from Asimov and Heinlein to our esteemed publisher and Boston T. Party and Don Lobo!  BUT the big difference is that all these people did it on their own: paid for it themselves or got private sponsorship to dish out their doom and gloom and demands for a new order.  This is NSF and NASA – and what does THIS have to do with getting to Mars or BACK to Luna?  Not a single thing: it is all about “science” serving political ends: no different than Hitler-sponsored “racial science” or Stalin-ordered psychology: bogus, fraudulent and as accurate as a stopped clock (analog).  Some libertarian and right-wing blogs have condemned the study as “promoting communism as our salvation,” but more importantly, it is steal money to do whatever it is: I don’t care if it is promoting premillenialism or adding babies to stew, just don’t make me or 300 million of us pay for it

Frankly, Western Civilization is overrated, in my opinion:  when the American West was “uncivilized” we seemed to have a lot more liberty.  Same in other places around the world from Uratu (Ararat and Armenia) to Canaan to Scotland and Ireland.  No massive disconnect and inequality between the Elite and the Commoners, because when the Elite stopped being amusing, the Commoners voluntarily and not necessarily cooperatively took the Elite down.

“We are not going to be getting into [a] military excursion in Ukraine,” the Fuehrer told San Diego’s KNSD-TV “What we are going to do is mobilize all of our diplomatic resources to make sure that we’ve got a strong international correlation that sends a clear message.”  The real question is, why?  If this is so critical, if Putin is irrational and rebuilding the Soviet (or Czarist) empire, if our “friends” in Ukraine need us so bad, if Crimea is a victim of evil invasion and intimidation, then WHY?  Because the US is now too weak?  Because they REALLY believe this garbage about sanctions?  Because it is all a play, a game?  Or because they are all idiots?  (I vote for the last, but it’s been a stressful week.)

In his latest warning against surveillance, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called for the creation of a bipartisan, independent committee to investigate if the CIA and the National Security Agency have violated the Constitution.  I suspect that he already knows the answer (as do I), but must go through the motions; and besides, he gets more publicity this way.  Will it make any difference?  Ha!

The nation’s largest staffing firm released results of a survey showing that 38% of firms paying minimum wage will lay off workers if the minimum wage goes up to $10.10.  54% will reduce hiring, and 65% would raise prices.  Admittedly the survey takers are being self-serving with their answers, but this SHOULD be a wakeup call to even many DP members. The math is simple:  unless you can increase worker productivity – by making and selling more – you can’t afford to pay some people more without (a) raising prices and volume or (b) cutting costs.  And the easiest way is to cut costs:  If minimum wages go from 8 to 10 dollars an hour (20% increase), the fastest way to be able to pay for it is to eliminate one in five minimum wage employees.  That is basic, and doesn’t take into account that everyone that had been making $10 an hour NOW wants to make another $2/hour so that they are not themselves “minimum wage.”  My boys understood that when they were ten years old, Congress and the idiot Fuehrer don’t seem to get it.

A plurality of Democrats supports the building of the Keystone XL pipeline, though support is much lower among wealthier, more liberal and more educated members of the party, according to a new poll. The Pew Research Center poll, as with other polls, shows broad support, which the White House is still reviewing. 61 percent of people (not DP members) favor building it, while just 27 percent oppose it.  Notice the screaming panic of the elites about this.  They have, sadly, still convinced too many AmerInd nations to oppose it:  they make good shills.

Mama’s Note: I would not have any problem with such a project or pipeline except for the use of eminent domain to obtain the “right of way.” That’s a real problem, and I don’t believe I’ve seen any real discussion of it or possible alternatives.

In Minneapolis, city employees “voluntarily” participated in a “Hijab Day” promoted by Somali immigrant employees.  A hijab is an open religious garment, similar to wearing a yarmulke (for Jewish men) or a crucifix or cross necklace: garb which has been prohibited from many (or most) public/government office workplaces in Tranzi states (like Minnesota) because they “promote religion.”  Of course, some religions are more equal or tolerated than others: Islam being the perfect example.  I suspect that for a christian to wear a tee-shirt with a Bible verse on it to work in municipal offices would immediately trigger ACLU and atheist protests and even lawsuits.  So why not THIS?

By the way, that NASA study doesn’t seem to take a good look at OTHER civilizations that wasted their resources and had insane disparities in income and wealth but still hung around for centuries, like Egypt under the Pharaohs and the Muslim empires and their civilizations.  Wonder why?