To Believe

Upon the Stoa this day, I am pondering what it means to have beliefs.

One truth I do know is that it is easy to believe in something when you are comfortable. To have faith is easy when one's faith is not seriously challenged.

"It will work out, God watches over us." The operative word there is "watches". There is no promise that things will work out. It is hard to have faith when one is faced with homelessness.

It is hard to believe that one is special when every door seems closed to you.

The alternative, though, is to give up. This is not a viable alternative. One must press forward, regardless of belief or faith, or else failure in life is no longer a possibility but a certainty.

It is easy to have faith when one is comfortable.

Live well,

--Zavost

Just Pay Attention

Upon the Stoa this day I sit again in quiet contemplation.

A new film related to Islam and its prophet is out. You can guess what is happening now around the world.

From what I've read about the film it is accurate in every way. The rise of Islam and its sick prophet, all researched and vetted.

Now remember, Islam is religion of peace, even though in Arabic it means "submit". Film comes out, describes Mohammed as a twisted freak who created his own religion to justify his counter-culture activities, and the muslims riot. Someone makes a silly cartoon, muslims riot. Someone sneezes near a Koran, muslims riot.

Muslims wire 2,000 year old statues with C4 and blow it to hell and back and do the Buddhists riot? No, they bend their heads in sorrowful contemplation of the horror that has been done in God's name.

Someone draws a bug, puts a scarf on it and calls it a prophet and people's heads begin rolling.

Please people, pay attention. Look at what they do, not what they say.

Live well.

--Zavost

Playing it Forward

Upon the Stoa this warm and sunny day, I'd like to discuss music from the past decades.

This post is going to concern mostly my son and the music he listens to. No, not 90's pop/slut music. Not 00's Pop/slut music and not even the current, whatever it is. Hell, we are not even talking about music from the 60's or 70's.

My son has reached all the way back to the 20's through the late 50's for his music. He does not like big band music, he likes crooners and groups. Bing Crosby and Sinatra fan. Loves Martin and the Ink Spots. Those are only a few.

Why does he like them? He likes the music, he likes the singing, since it appears that those people actually knew how to sing. He also likes the stories they tell. They weren't just a few lines and phrases repeated endlessly, but a story that unfolded in the song.

He likes how it all comes together, behind the talent of the singer/songwriter. No sound booths to make your voice reverb.

He was introduced to this via video and computer games. Lacking creativity, many today turn to the past, to raid it for talent and independent thought. Frugalness made them go after songs that were not under copywriter any longer and this led to a re-introduction of songs to a generation of kids who might actually mistake them for original and recent.

Not so my brilliant son. He used the Internet to find out who these people were and learn about them. He downloads their music whenever he can.

They say computer games rot your brain, but in his case they have enriched it. The music and those games have given him a perspective on the world that many in his age group are unaware. It contrasts with the filth of today. The lack of individual creativity and the theft of intellectual property from the past is appalling.

Keep it up, boy. I may just get you a Sinatra download for Christmas...

Live well.

--Zavost

Have we lost our honor?

From the Stoa today, I symbolically tap a fake newspaper to my chin.

An article in the WSJ talked about how 20% or 12 b$ worth of contracts has been reneged.

What's that all about? Do people think that you can promise to buy a product at a certain price and then walk away when it actually does hit that price?

Do people take out loans on homes they know they cannot afford and then walk away from them?

Yes, seems to be the proper answer.

There was a time in this country where a hand shake was all that was required to secure a deal. A man's word was his bond. When did that stop being important?

There was a movie in the 1980's called "Trading Places". The end of the movie saw the antagonists of the movie, broken upon the wheel of a futures contract on Orange Juice. A century old firm was wrecked when it made a promise to pay for OJ at one price and sell at another.

So, apparently, someones' word was still important 30 year ago.

Just another change started in our culture by the Boomers. Thank you again, jerks.

Live well.

Zavost

Simple Choices

From the Stoa this day, I again embrace a new and wonderful day. Despite the rain of last night, the jaw-dropping back pain I endure, and the high likelihood of being forced to move into the slums, I still embrace this new day.

Every day allows us to start over. Yes, the day does carry baggage from the day before. This baggage is also called "consequences". Every day allows you to make better choices and to learn from that which you can not control.

In this Presidential election cycle, despite the lies and open book observable behavior, there are those that don't think Obama and his policies are openly "anti-american". If you have not noticed this, please be responsible and do not vote. You are not informed enough to vote for this position.

I like to call Romney "squishy" because of his ability to deform conservatism and duck leadership. Romney-Care was signed into law in his old state because he said that the "People wanted it". A socialist population passes socialist bills, and he simply signed them.

Sometimes being a leader means being alone in dissent. The policy is a bad policy whether it is passed by the people or not. He should have strangled that bill when it landed on his desk. Now we have Obama-Care.

But I digress.

Obama is painting Romney as "extreme". Really. The man I call "squishy" you are calling "extreme"? He'd have to invent a word to describe me, then.

To me the choice is clear and easy. One choice offers true hope, the other...well, lets just say, I'm not ready to practice Islam just yet.

Live well,

Zavost

The Hazards of Central Planning

From the Stoa this day I will shed some light upon the various crises going on around the world.

Too much central planning.

In France, a single cargo hauling union strikes and the highways shut down. Why? Because the unions in France, and much of Europe, are monolithic. Every truck driver is part of the SAME union. Then there are the sympathy strikes that then shut down the subways, buses, oh, and gas stations. No way to work now all because of one union.

Economics. In the good old days of Europe, everyone made fun of the Southern parts as corrupt and possessing poor currency. However, everyone loved to manufacture things down there, and their beaches were rather nice. Then, they decided to have one big currency with little central planning. Binge spending and debt ensued. Now they want full central planning. Not gonna work.

Banks are merging into super banks. When one goes down it will pull all the others with them. In America, in the past, banks were very regional, sometimes only within a portion of a State. If one went down, you went to the bank down the street. Now, 5 banks in the US hold over 7 Trillion in assets...other people's assets.

Congress keeps trying to do this and to do that. The Fed tries to do this and to do that. STOP. The Free Market knows just what to do. It knows what to price for and how. It knows what needs to be built and WHEN (and it is not Green Energy).

The market will punish the corrupt and the incompetent (I'm looking at you, GM and Chrysler). If you consolidate power you make that power vulnerable.

Lets think about that some more. If you put all the money in one place and that place gets swallowed up in the ground, where is all the money? If you have one union in a nation that controls the power grid, what happens if Barney doesn't get his raise? What happens if all the Doctors stop working (this happened in Slovakia this year). What happens if all the fuel trucks stop running?

It can happen and does. Military doctrine calls for centralizing only when going on the offensive, otherwise you just make a fat target. Centralizing any part of your society makes that asset vulnerable to disruption.

Just don't. Obama, stop playing around like you know what you are doing and just stop it. Same for you Congress. We the People know what to do and how to fix it. No more tax breaks and no more subsidies. You didn't invent the iPad or the cell phone, so don't try.

Leave it be and We the People will fix everything.

Live well.

--Zavost

The United Nations: Theater of the Absurd

From atop this Stoa, I would laugh at the absurdity that is the United Nations, but the tears turn the chuckles into chokes.

Only in the UN can Iran be in charge of monitoring Nuclear Proliferation, Ghadaffi to monitor human rights, and Mugabe set to monitor the political freedom of nations.

Syria has been gripped in the throws of civil war for over a year now, and the Red Cross has only just now decided that after the deaths of 30,000 people that just perhaps, Syria might be in a Civil War.

The blue helmets fret and rub their hands and try to stand between the combatants, only to be shocked when they come under fire as well. Dumb-asses.

So, to keep the Theater of the Absurd theme, I shall once again visit the great National Bar Room.

We go back in time though not too far. It is May, 2009 and America stands at a large table, his shirt tails are pulled out, his hair is a mess, and his coffee is both cold and weak. He is trying to tell the various member-States at the table that they can not afford what the new President is promising. Someone needs to work, someone needs to pay taxes, and someone needs to be productive.

The little man who was elected President completely ignores the rules of economics, confident in his ability to cast a glance wave a hand at the tempest and cause it to calm.

Likewise, his attitude is the same as it relates to foreign policy. Where America saw daggers in every shadow, this little man only sees misunderstood patriots. Where America saw people starving as dictators built palaces for themselves, he sees only leaders, struggling against an unfair world created by the United States.

In May, this little man invited Egypt to come over and have a talk about an upcoming speech in his country. The two conversed for some time before Egypt then back into the cauldron that was Middle East politics, you know, the corner of the bar farthest from the alcohol (though keg lines could be seen snaking under the carpet from time to time...

The little man then goes to Egypt the next month and gives a speech that is inspiring to the Muslim population. A speech so inspiring and full of Islamic references that the Secular Egyptian government begins to loosen their ties in discomfort. This was not the speech the little man had told Egypt he was going to give.

Fast forward to January, 2011. In America, there is a fire sale on foreclosed homes, dismembered businesses and an ever growing line of people arriving daily for food assistance. America swore that little man was making things worse, not better. He owed to creditors more money than ever existed in the world and the little man continued to preach about spending even more money that did not exist.

Egypt, fired by the passions of Islam and under the cloak of "Democracy", were making a hard left turn towards radical, Theocratic Islam (socialist). The speech that the little American gave was supposed to heal the wounds created by historic American policies, yet here was a country that was on the verge of coming apart from within.

It was not long before America saw the Egyptian leader, his suit torn and fouled, pulled down under a pile of arms and scarfs. In his place, a new man approached the table to sit. He was dressed in robes and wore his religion proudly upon his frame.

The little man grinned and wished that Peace be upon you, blessed be the prophet's name.

America, brow furrowed while handing out some more bread simply said, "What???"

Then Tunisia began to riot, the man in the suit being pulled down and replaced by a man in robes. The little man grinned.

Then, it was Libya's turn. The man in the suit hung in there, stronger than the rest and began to shoot the people trying to pull him down.

Now, this man was no friend to America, but anyone who could control radical Islam was at least doing us an indirect favor.

America looked to the little man and said, "you know what to do."

"I sure do," he said. The little man rallied the forces of NATO and began bombing the man in the suit. America slapped his forehead and yelled, "What the hell???"

Mauritania fell next, aided by the rebels from Libya. Another Western-style government ripped down and replaced by Islamists in the name of Freedom and Democracy. America got on eBay to find the little man a dictionary as the words he used bore little resemblance to his actions...

The bloodshed in Syria began at the same time as Libya began its tortured decent into Civil War. It did not make the news in America much, since the little man talked all the time and the sheeple who adored him followed every note of his pipping tunes.

The little man walked over to the UN table, which was set up in middle of the room and contained a representative from each country. One only had to look at the number of robes added since the Little Man's rise to power in America to see how things had changed. America tried to pay attention to the words he was saying even as another bank failed and then another ponzi scheme on Wall Street blew up.

The little man went to the table and looked over at the Middle East. The Syrian leader, impassive in his suit looked back. Around him, a dust cloud hung at waist height. Arms with rifles, swords, and severed heads rose and fell about him. Iran, that creepy fellow at the end of the bar had pulled a chair up beside the Syrian leader and whipped his arm back behind him, trying to hide the belt of ammunition he was slipping to the suited Syrian. The little man pretended not to notice.

The words he spoke to the group were the usual. I'm great, I know what to do, and the fault is all that of my predecessor. He asked Syria if he would stop killing his people, glancing over as he said this. The belt of ammunition that Iran was giving him was now behind the suited man as fresh sounds of gunfire and death ripped through the cloud around him.

The Syrian stared back at him impassively.

The little man grinned and asked the UN if there was anything they could do to help the situation.

China and Russia picked up their large heavy chairs and drug them around so that they sat between the UN and Syria. The bulk of their huge frames and those of the chair blocked the view of Syria from the rest of the world. Fresh weapons, ammunition and technical support flowed from Russia and China directly to the suited Syrian leader.

The little man, now unable to see Syria, grinned again, "Right!" and then walked back to the American table, even as another business had to close its doors and turn people to the unemployment line.

America just shook his head in disbelief.

Not long after that, some people in the UN decided that they would like to have a look for themselves at Syria. A previous leader of the UN took three hundred blue helmets with him over to Syria. He told the angry people in robes to stop fighting. He told the soldiers of Syria to stop shooting the robed people, and he yelled at Iran to stop sending soldiers, weapons, and ammunition into this. Its only making things worse, you know.

The previous leader ran out of the cloud with bullets winging after him. Blue helmets rolling on the floor.

The UN put hand to chin and thought about this situation. They really seemed upset about something. Perhaps if they sent in a letter first, telling Syria that they were coming. Thats right, they were probably just surprised by there appearance.

The letter went out and the impassive Syrian leader responded with a simple, "no". China and Russia simply shook their heads, "no".

The little man in America continued to ignore Syria and focus instead on eliminating all oil production in and around America. Canada was told to sell that filthy black stuff to China, they needed it more than America did.

45,000 more people now joined America at the food line.

While the UN gathered more Blue Helmets and Red Cross people to go back to Syria, the little man forced government people to drive the new Chevy Volt. GE, sucking up to the little man, forced their people to drive the car as well. Not bad at $250,000 per subsidized automobile.

America again shook his head and welcomed another 80,000 people to the food line.

A loud ruckus erupted from the side of the room where Syria hid. Rumors of Chemical weapons being brought out of storage began to circulate. Armored units that kept an eye on Israel began to pull back and head to the capital of Syria as fast as their treads would take them.

The little man was barking something about the rich opponent trying to unseat him for the Presidency, despite the $11,000,000 bank account that he possessed. While another thousand people died in Syria, the little man pointed out that the rich white guy put his dog in a carrier strapped to the top of a car.

The rich white guy countered with, "at least I didn't eat it!"

A head rolled out from between Russia's feet, which he was then quietly scooted back under the chair, eyes looking around to make sure no one noticed.

This play still has another act to go, unfortunately. There is so much more going on that is destabilizing and we have no one but the Little Man to thank for it.

Thank you, dumb-ass.

--Live well.

Zavost

Control your Reality

From the Stoa this wet Wednesday, I will discuss our perceptions of fate and destiny. No, we will not get lofty, but will seek to keep it grounded in our day to day reality.

When I was younger, everyone always said to step forward take your punishment if you did wrong. Take responsibility for your mistakes. Of course most everyone I knew...scratch that, EVERYONE I knew attempted to avoid their punishment.

They would expend vast amounts of energy and accumulate stress just to avoid a punishment. More energy and more stress then they would endure if they just took their medicine.

With age comes, I hope, wisdom. Wisdom enough to understand the truths behind these easy to remember "wives tales" of duty and obligation to the truth.

When one gets older they begin to see the complex connections in every day life. Complexity upon complexity...driven from the basic components of simple human interactions. We have the power to "fix" our own futures. I do not mean "fix" as in "repair". No ,I mean "fix" as in "to set". I also sometimes believe that this is why the older one gets, the more time they spend in church. I believe that they are seeing so many connections within the webs of complexity that they go there not out of fear of mortality, but awe.

An example: A factory worker is hearing about from the news that their plant may close due to the bad economy. The family worries if it will be able to pay its bills. The rest of the workers worry about it as well. Their union tells them that all will be well and that they will fight to keep the plant open.

This person has several choices. He can HOPE that the faith he places in the unions will be enough to keep the plant open, he can work actively with the union to keep the plant, or he can take the time he has left to retrain for another vocation. Fix your own future. Don't be carried along by it.

Unions have a poor record of keeping anything open. Working with the union to keep a plant open expends vast amounts of energy and time that, in the end, bear no fruit. By taking the harder choice of the three, he teaches himself a new skill, a skill needed by someone who is willing to pay them money for their services.

Hope and change. Futility. He can HOPE the plant will stay open, but if it does not, he is on the bottom of a bad situation. If he works to keep the plant, then he will feel both rage and disappointment that it all came to nothing. This can have a negative effect on family, friends, and his soul.

By taking control of the situation, he jumps from a vehicle who's course, though not certain, will certainly take it into either a wall or a ditch. Better to chart your own path.

He has spared himself the uncertainty and worry that can cripple a person. This uncertainty and anxiety express themselves in alcoholism, divorce, child abuse, and suicide. Taking control has its own risks, but at least you can go down knowing you did your best, and victory will taste that much sweeter.

Another example:
A person is working in a job that causes stress and anxiety out of proportion to what one would expect. Stoicism teaches that stress is caused my a mis-match in nature. If you live according to your nature, your character, then you will not experience stress that you can not control.

So, do you take extra schooling, employ tutors, work 16 hour days to make your company happy with your output, or do you take a breath and think about where the stress is coming from?

Rather than expend a mountain of energy maintaining an untenable situation, take that energy and pivot your life. Move it into a direction that is more in line with your nature. Your character. Many in the business world call this "fit".

Very little in life can carry a guarantee or promise of success. Heck, that is part of the joy of life. To strive against something to accomplish. No one likes "God" mode on a game all the time. Pivot your life, learn from your actions, and work to match your life as close to your personal nature as possible.

The theory is simple, the application is difficult. We all have our excuses, therefore we must carry our own stresses, ultimately. Regret over life's choices must be your burden and your burden alone.

Think hard on that last sentence.

This was not a blog on futility, but one of hope and real change. Think on that, too.

Live well.

--Zavost

I was there

Storms rage around the Stoa this day. It feels appropriate. Storms always signal change. Hot to cold, cold to hot. Dry to wet, stuffy to fresh.

I have always liked storms. On an instinctive level I admire the discharge of electrons and the thunder of tortured air being shoved violently aside. Change.

This post is similar to my last one in that I will recount events that I have borne witness to. In my relatively short life I have seen the eddies of time. Events that eventually reset and replay. Time may or may not be linear, but humanities observation of its effects on our culture demonstrate it to be full of backwash.

I was there when Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford for the Presidency. I watched the backlash against Watergate and the Nixon Pardon.

I was there as hundreds in my home town, dependent on the Auto Industry lost their jobs in the great Carter Malaise.

I was there when Reagan defeated Carter in a monumental landslide. I watched as Reagan made us feel good about ourselves again and reminded us of just who we were and what our role in the world was. Thank you, Ron.

I was there when an Apollo Capsule docked with a Soyuz Capsule in orbit, demonstrating that though our governments and ideologies were different, the Soviets and the Americans were both human, and therefore, adventurous.

I was there when the Space Shuttle Enterprise was dropped by a modified Boeing 747 to prove that the Shuttle could maneuver in the atmosphere upon re-entry and land at a long airfield.

I was there, also, when President Obama killed NASA and relegated our national dreams to the history books. The money needed elsewhere for his welfare programs.

I was there when the Berlin Wall collapsed and millions demanded their freedom. I was also there when the Supreme Court gave President Obama the power to order me to buy things, anything, or pay a tax. Most Americans did not even understand that the noises they heard over the cheering and jeering were the tax shackles of slavery.

I was there in 2008 as the world economy vaporized. I was also there as the Federal Government used it all as a vehicle for tyranny, having largely caused the destruction in the first place. Wish you were still here, Ron.

I was there when medical technology was so advanced that we needed more precise legal definitions of what was "alive" and what was "dead". I was also there when ObamaCare was passed and upheld, with the new definitions being who gets to "live" and who will be permitted to "die".

I was there when the GI Generation had ambition enough to build orbital colonies and send manned missions to Mars in the 1970's. I was also there when Obama devolved our space travel capabilities so much that we are now unable to put a man into space any longer reliably.

I was there to see the rise of the Princess of Wales, Diana, and here death. I was also there when Michael Jackson accidentally died of a drug overdose. Now, his daughter looks to be the next Paris Hilton.

I was also there as Prince Charles cheated on Diana with an older woman. The scandal. I was also there as my father did the same thing to my mother, only she was not killed running from the Paparazzi.

I was there when Nixon was driven out of office for covering up Watergate. I was also there when Congress stood powerless to hold Eric Holder and Obama in Contempt for covering up "Gun Walker".

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

We have always been who we are. The cast of players change, the outcomes change, but the came always remains the same.

In my relatively short time on this world, I have already the the beginning and end to cycles, and the re-start of those cycles with different faces and different scandals.

I wonder what else I will be here to see in the future.

Live well,

--Zavost

I remember...

From atop the Stoa this day, I sit, elbow to knee and hand to chin, thinking about continuity, time, people, events, and their places in our collective memories.

Rush Limbaugh made a great observation many years ago. He stated, basically, that "One's view of history begins with the year of their birth." Or something close to the effect.

He is right on. People always look to the times just around them to draw conclusions to a future that they can know nothing about. History was simply a stupid class in school that the teachers used to push modern environmental and socialist agendas, leaving out the context from virtually everything and ignoring that which would have been too difficult to fit into their templates.

I am a Gen-Xer. Born in 1969, several weeks before the moon landing. I don't remember that. I have vague remembrances of helicopters evacuating Saigon and sharper memories of burned out helicopters and decomposing bodies in the Iranian desert. I remember the landslide victory of Reagan in 1980.

I remember my father selling our broken boat to an out of work autoworker for a penny.

I remember my stern Grandfather on my mother's side who could keep the peace in the house by simply bending the corner of his newspaper over, fixing us all with his glare.

I remember him crying at the dinner table as death crept ever closer to him. I also remember his funeral.

I remember the Challenger exploding during launch. I was in High School and struck dumb with silence, as was everyone else around me.

I remember graduating from high school. It was a warm night. I spent time standing in the parking lot, talking to my other set of Grandparents.

I also remember each of their funerals as well.

I remember my first job. Washing dishes at a local restaurant. I remember my second job even more...heavy construction on the New Jersey shore during the height of summer.

I remember laying on a pontoon platform out in Lake Erie, late one night, with most of my childhood friends. It was our last night together and we all knew it. The moon was full and the sky was partly cloudy. We lay on the platform talking about life as we knew it then.

I've never been with more than one of them at a time since then.

I remember basic training in the US Army. The endless days and nights of discipline, regimentation, and fatigue. I am a far better man for having endured that experience.

I remember meeting my future wife for the first time. Language barrier or not, I was taken aback by how fiercely intelligent she was and how she effortlessly deflected the advances of one of my idiot friends.

I remember telling her some months later that she could not go back home since I told her we were going to be married.

Oh, how I remember so much. The birth of my children and the gray hair they give me on a regular basis.

Today I'll remember the day after the Supreme Court called ObamaCare a Tax. They essentially booted the issue back to Congress and told them to clean up their own mess. I have no faith in Congress to do the right thing.

Every one of us remembers things differently. Sometimes we remember the same thing differently from time to time. We are fallible like that. The strongest memories are always associated with the strongest emotions or pain. Back before computers and even books, events were passed from eldest to youngest and remembered. If a particularly important event took place, the elders would find the younger (not the youngest) among them, recount the event over and over, and then beat them severely. This would fix the memory of the event and when it happened firmly in their minds.

9/11 was like that for many. So was the shooting of Reagan and the killing of JFK for my parents. Pearl Harbor for my Grand Parents (GI Generation). The Stock Market crash and WWI for my shadows, the Lost Generation.

What will my children remember? Will I be that grumpy old man who has to put down his archaic iPad to glare at my son's or daughter's children making too much noise in the living room?

I hope so.

Live well,

Zavost

Rodney King, We hardly knew you.

Atop the Stoa this day, I'm pondering truth, reality, and perception.

Some say that perception is reality. To me this is akin to saying that when David Copperfield makes an elephant disappear in a parking lot in front of thousands then it must me magic, since that was my perception.

Yep, bunk.

That phrase gets tossed about in business as well and it is just as much bunk, designed to provide cover for people who refuse to think for themselves...but I digress.

Rodney King catapulted into the national consciousness in 1991 when, while intoxicated on booze and dope, lead police on a high speed chase through the streets of Los Angeles.

Needless to say, the cops were not pleased with Mr. King, who resisted arrest and tried to flee the scene. The police began to spell out to him that he was being rude by beating him senseless with night sticks and boots.

The entire event was immortalized on tape and broadcast all over the country with the tagline, "Police beat innocent black man".

Well, the police did beat a black man, but I'd hardly say he was innocent. That is perception. Was Rodney King guilty of driving under the influence? Even without blood tests I'd have to say yes. No one takes the kind of beating he did and keep trying to get up. He was feeling no pain.

The police were guilty as well. They failed in their civic duty to protect and serve. Sometimes, the police must protect us from ourselves. Rodney King was not in his right mind when he was pulled over. It is like trying to reason with a newborn.

Guilt, innocent. They are cultural terms that mean different things to different cultures. Specific to our culture, people are LEGALLY innocent until proven guilty. In terms of absolute truth, he was guilty the instant he tried to run from the police. He must be held partially accountable for his actions.

The police were certainly guilty of using excessive force. They could have just sat on him until he got tired enough to put cuffs on. No need really to break his bones. He was trying to flee, not attack. Both parties were wrong on so many levels.

Then, our legal system failed yet again. It looked to stark right and stark wrong. That kind of truth was there, but only on one side. Was Rodney King at fault? Yes. He ran from the police, and he refused to follow their instructions. Guilty.

Was the police at fault? Yes. They used excessive force to apprehend an unarmed man. They continued to beat him even after it was apparent that bones had been broken, not realizing that his continued movements were really just twitches from the muscle spasms caused by the beating.

The ruling that was handed down for the police, "Innocent" sparked the famous LA race riots of 1992. In the end, it was decided that the police acted as they did because they feared Mr. King was on major drugs to continue to resist them after the initial beating. Perhaps there is something to that. Perhaps not.

Mr. King was made famous when, interviewed during the riots, he said, "Can't we all just get along?". I think that was the smartest thing said by anyone involved in the entire case, bar none.

53 people were killed in the resulting riots. Whites, like Reginald Denny, were pulled from their cars and beaten, many to death. Mr. Denny was saved by a black man who rescued him and drove him to the hospital. More than 2,000 were injured. Damage ran over billion dollars (1992 dollars).

His incident was a hot coal that sparked a wild fire in history. Even he was horrified by the death and destruction that resulted in his decision not to pull over. The moment he decided that it was fine to drink, get high, and then drive, he sealed the fates of those who died.

Mr. King had a hard time staying out of trouble. At the time of the beating he was out on parole. After the beating he continued to get arrested for petty offenses.

He has been largely out of sight and out of cultural mind for quite a number of years. Recently, his fiancé called 911 saying that Mr. King had been found at the bottom of a pool. Apparently, after a night of drinking and smoking dope, he fell into the pool and drowned.

An ignoble passing for a man who was the focal point of so much death and destruction in 1992. He was 41 years old.

The civil rights leaders today are hanging many labels around his legacy in an attempt to turn him into a totem for their cause. Some say he was a civil rights leader, others say he was a martyr for the civil rights movement.

Its all bunk. Even according to Mr. King himself.

The only time he made the news after the riots was when he got arrested for any number of things. He was not a great leader, nor was he even a follower. He did his own thing and his arrest record can attest to that. He was not well spoken or well written.

It was quite possible that he could have crashed into a telephone pole and died in 1991. This happens a lot in this country and his death would have gone unnoticed. In 2012, he got drunk and high and fell into a pool and died. This too would have gone unnoticed if not for his run in with the law in 1991. Would we have been better off had he hit that pole?

The truth of the matter is that he was a poor black man that was as much a victim of the civil rights movement as he was the poster child for that movement.

The perception of the matter is that the media and the black civil rights movement will use him in death in ways they could never use him in life.

The reality of the matter is that a man has died a meaningless death, having contributed so little to our society. I mourn his passing as I mourn the passing of any living creature.

His life created a spark that burned out 53 other lives. His actions released pressure that had been building. Perhaps someday, others will look to him and run in with the law and see it in the proper context.

Can't we all just get along? That is good stuff. Really. Rodney and I seem to have wished, and still do, for the same thing.

Live well.

--Zavost

Evil Triumphs when Good People do Nothing

From atop the Stoa this bright and warm day, I wish to ponder the title of this blog entry.

It is an oldie but a goody. In fact, this quote was featured prominently on my mother's blog site. The truth of it is painfully obvious.

Some points in history:
Nothing stopped the Arabs from taking over the classical world.
Nothing stopped the Mongols from murdering 20 million Chinese simply for more grazing land for their horses.
Nothing stopped the Europeans from nearly exterminating the Native Americans from both the North and South continents.
Nothing stopped the French from murdering thousands of nobles for the crime of being of noble birth.
Nothing stopped the North from crushing the South in the Civil War.
Nothing stopped the South from continuing to persecute blacks right up to the Civil Rights era.
Nothing stopped Stalin from murdering 20 million Ukrainians for not bowing down to him.
Nothing stopped 9 people in black robes from discovering a right to abortion in the US Constitution.
Nothing stopped the Nazis from conquering the known world....hold on, something DID stop them. WE stopped them.

We who chose not to sit back and watch yet more evil spread into this world.
We who chose not to allow humans to be bred like cattle.
We who chose not to allow the conquest of the civilized world.
We who chose to bleed and to sacrifice for the betterment of others.

It was we who chose to rebuild the world after WWII instead of simply taking the world, for there were NONE strong enough to have stopped us, had we wished it.

It was we who chose to harness the Atom for power and not simple destruction, though we mastered that as well.

It was we who chose not to be racist, and it was WE who welcomed the world to live with us, as long as they respected our laws.

It is we, through our neglect and intellectual laziness that permitted the Fabians to erode our values.

It is we failed to call Socialism out for what it is.

It is we that have begun to wake. It is we who are realizing, in horror, what has become of the country of our Grand Parents.

It is we that realize now what our hard work and treasure has been perverted and warped into.

It is we that have now begun to correct the errors of our neglect.

Yes, we are busy and yes we all have lives of our own. We wish that we did not have to work at the organs of self-rule as much as we must.

Life is like that. It is hard and requires constant attention. It is We who must put down our novels and our soaps, our Internet and our weekend trips. It is we who must turn back to the organs of government and remove the corrupting influences that have been allowed to gather and fester.

It is up to WE the PEOPLE to fix what we allowed fall into disrepair.

Thank you Tea Party. Thank you III percent. Thank you to Country Music and NASCAR. Thank you for remembering what our country is about.

We the People, we the silent majority that occupies "fly over country". We the people have awoken and we are filled with a terrible resolve.

We will remove, with only the power and the memory of the Constitution of the United States, the errors we allowed into existence.

We will remain vigilant for a generation or two, and then the Fabians will once again begin to encroach. It is the way of things, for as long as we make "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" our goal and not the mundane maintenance of government, then We the People must always have to relearn what made us great.

The evil of Socialism, of Fabians, and of ignorance itself must not be allowed to enervate the fabric of our souls, as it has in the old country of Europe. Their path leads to ruination. We must maintain the path of our Founders, for there lies the Last, Best, Hope of Humanity.

Live well, everyone.

--Zavost

A Donut Without a Hole is not a Donut, its a Danish

From atop the Stoa this day, I have to say; some of the best things Chevy Chase ever said were written by other people.

France has elected what they like to call, a Sensible Socialist. A National Progressive Socialist who will "do it right, this time".

Riiiiiiiiiiiggghhhht.

So how is this "new" Socialist going to do things differently? Well, he is going to do this:
1. Raise taxes on everyone earning more than one million Euros
2. Raise taxes on corporations and industries that he feels don't pay their fair share
3. He is going to pass programs to "equalize" the distribution of wealth in the nation
4. He is going to subsidize or outright make education a "free right"
5. He is going to heavily regulate the banking and insurance industry
6. He is going to re-write the import and tax tariffs on goods and services
....

So how does this differ from "old" Socialism? Some say, "he'll do it right, this time". How can you take money from one person and give it to another any differently than in the past? Two methods: threat of the gun, and/or threat of prison.

Someone would also need to tell me how the Socialist's policies in France differ in any way with those policies pushed and crammed by Obama?

I'm waiting...

So, a donut without a hole is not a donut, but a danish.
Fabians, Progressives, New Democrats, Communists, New Dealers, New Society, and Modern Democrats are not "new", their Socialists.

Can this be any clearer?

Class dismissed. Enjoy the wonderful day outside.

Live well.

--Zavost

Socialism, Part Duh

From the Stoa this day, I will look at a few specific ways that Socialism has been translated from theory into practice.

People LOVE theory. Everything is so nice and tidy in the land of theory. Everybody shares and no one tries to take more than they are entitled to take.

Meet reality.

Socialism is supposed to be fairly straight forward. You get paid according to your skill and contribution to society and your needs as an individual...the old "each according to his means, each according to his needs" and all that.

All property is everyones, while at the same time it is really no one's. A small elite, party members all, decided which is what and when and where. Socialism fails because this small elite feel that they are entitled to live a better life than the rest, since the stress and pressure of their jobs is so much more than the common proletariate. No real incentive to give up the luxuries...so FAIL.

Lets remember that in Socialism, all are equal. That means that everyone should have what they need. Maybe not what they want, but they will have food and a place to sleep.

Socialism is loyalty to the State, as embodied by the Party, you know, that small elite making sure that everything runs smoothly. Loyalty to the State means ensuring that the State has its needs met. Human as well as material resources.

In this wonderful place, as you work your way through the educational system, you are routed where the State needs talent and manpower the most.

Think of it this way: an agency looks into the future and feels that goods and services will need to travel by train rather than trucks. You know, the environment and all. So they feel that the number of mechanics and skilled support need to all be increased by 45% over the next 20 years. As children make their way through the educational conveyer belt, they are routed off to schools where they will be turned into the engineers, mechanics, and managers that will staff and control this new train system.

Do you think that all of those children who became the mechanics and engineers really wanted to do those jobs? Irrelevant, really, since it was in the needs of the State and by extension, the People.

In America, our version of Socialism in Education translates into, "No child left behind." This means that the best and brightest will be slowed, or retarted so that the less capable will be given more time to learn. The reality is that schools now teach to rote testing without regard to actual learning. Funding for the schools and all. This fails on multiple levels. Those with talent don't develop that talent, and those that are destined to be ditch diggers waste a lot of time trying to learn things they will never need. No one wants to look little Johnny in the face and tell him that he is not destined for the University. That little Johnny is not smart enough to be a doctor or lawyer. All children have equal potential and all that illogical stuff.

It is sad that the Socialist countries of Europe have a better educational system than ours. One reason is that they run their human resource through a cold calculation. We demand x number of students with y level of education. Well, we have too many students to spend a limited supply of resources upon, so they sort out the best and the brightest from the chaff and chum of society and spend the most resources on them.

This comes from a variety of "cullings" that take place in your educational development. When a child first enters school, their aptitude and basic intelligence is measured. The exceptional artists are taken out and sent to a dedicated academies, such as music, dance, gymnastics, and mathematics. Those that are left continue on until about the 8th grade. From there, they are separated again along intelligence and aptitude scores.

Those that are not college material are shunted towards a trade school. This batch, at this level, is destined to be your line workers. Cars, bottles, road work, you name it, these are the people that will supply the vast manpower needs of the State.

The rest will proceed on a "college prep" path that will again match classes of children to the trade or service needs as projected by the State. When these children turn 18, they will take more tests to determine their paths.

Those under a certain line will go to work in their chosen trades as midlevel managers or more highly trained specialists. Those over a certain line will go on to the University for the best training. Even with these cut offs, there are more students then capacity, or need. So the first two years are meant to weed out the weak. Those unable to take the pressure or the pace are removed and sent back to the trades as mid level managers or specialists.

Those that make it through their University training, become the architects, designers, and executives of the trade organizations and government run companies. They also have been sorted out according to their "politics". Those from "good" families and good politics will become the next generation of party members and State planners.

Has there been any discussion of the student and their "holistic" needs in any of this? Have we even mentioned the "self-actualized" child? No, and you never will. The State does not CARE. There will always be more people than positions. They can afford to take the best and discard the rest. There will always be the need for menial labor. Robots are expensive. People are cheap.

This is the kind of world Obama embraces. This is the kind of world that people who love Theory will eventually inherit, as they don't think things out to their logical conclusions. People are just another resource for the State to manage, much like cattle are managed for meat.

Our schools spend on average of $10,000 or more per student. Socialist nations spend much, much less. With all that money going into our schools, you think the quality of the product would be commensurate. It is not. Not by a long shot.

Places with dirt floors and wooden planks for walls are turning out students of higher quality and better aptitudes then our schools.

What the hell went wrong and when did it go wrong?

That my students, is another blog for another day.

Until then, live well.

--Zavost

Socialism, History of

Upon the Stoa this day, I was going to speak of "Modern Socialism", however, that is a misnomer since Socialism is Socialism no matter the age it is practiced.

The discussion is appropriate at this time, my class. This is a Presidential election cycle and though every election is important, this one, I feel, represents one of those pivot points in history. The United States can either continue its slide into self-imposed inferiority or it can come to its senses and wake up.

But first, a short history on what we today call "Socialism".

There have been, recorded in history, attempts to share equally and to equally bear the burdens of survival. The small hunter tribes of our distant ancestors are the only example of this working, but even then, it worked only because the leader of the tribe was bigger, stronger, and held the spear point.

In those earliest of days, the Men hunted and the women Gathered. The men broke their bones and died far from home and family coordinating to take down dangerous animals many times their size. The women endured the long torment of being another's property. Someone has to keep things organized while the men are gone. Who better than the elderly and the women.

People have been the same for the last 80,000 years. I'm sure that there were Cro-magnon fathers smacking the hands of their children who were reaching out to screw around with the cave art. Likewise, I'm sure the children had to be told to finish their antelope hoof or they will get no bone marrow for dessert.

As families turned into clans and clans turned into a people, so too did the process of government grow more complex. The division of labor, farming, and technology contributed both good and ill to our race.

Fast forwarding to a more modern example of Socialism, one need look no farther than the Mayflower colonists of Plymouth Rock fame and the first of the Jamestown settlers in Virginia.

The "Mayflower Pact" was not just a document that described their relationship with God, but described also their relationship with one another. They agreed that to have the best chance of surviving in this hostile land, they would share the fruits of their combined labor equally.

Now, people are people the world over. I'm sure that some were given better plots of land than others, some had more children to help, others had better seeds and technique than others. The inequities of life and all that.

Some grew more food than others. Some worked harder than others. Those with better seeds grew more food with less work, while some who worked hard produced little food. Life is like that. It does not care for us one way or the other. The cosmic shrug.

The results? Starvation, disease, and mutiny. Colonists died in droves. Some had food to eat, but most did not. Those that made more food than others were forced to give up that food to those who were not successful, or to those who failed to work hard enough. The result was that EVERYONE went hungry and many died.

In the Massachusetts Bay region, those that survived tore up the compact with one another and grew their own food and bartered the excess for items they could not create or did not possess. The Free Market was once again allowed to come to the fore and Massachusetts began it climb to be the most industrious of the original 13 colonies.

In Jamestown, malaria, starvation and disease took many of the colonists. "Collectivization", as it was thought of then, failed miserably. It took a hard-charging Adventurer/Mercenary to put an end to the insanity. Like farther North, the people began to grow and trade their surplus. Virginia then became the richest of all the 13 colonies.

Socialism was tried from 1607 to 1610 and killed more colonists than did the Native Americans.

The concept languished with the harsh memories of Jamestown and Plymouth fresh in historical minds. It was not until the French Revolution that Socialism began to be repackaged into something more "modern", though at its roots it was still the same old thing.

In the United States, the Founding Fathers were so Liberty-minded that the modern term Libertarian does not do justice to what their politics really were. Ron Paul would have had a comfortable dinner debating politics with Thomas Jefferson, the first recognized Democrat.

The Constitution and Federal and State laws were erected to ensure that laws placed a "Collective" burden on the people and not individual ones. The government, at any level, could not force one group to pay all the bills and allow other groups to enjoy the fruit of someone else's labor without pitching in. In other words, no one group had to pay more (relative) than another. The rich paid more because they consumed more. Plain and simple.

Sounds alien, does it not? Look up the Whiskey Rebellion. The first and only time that a sitting President led the United States Army to the field in person. A tax was being levied on Whiskey, but not other types of spirits. The Pennsylvania distillers were irate that Beer and Rum were not being taxed the same as them.

The "rebellion" was put down, but the tax was removed nonetheless.

The French took a different spin on the concept of Freedom. The Americans felt that the lay farmer had more wisdom on the soles of his shoes than anyone educated at William and Mary's, or Harvard. The French felt that the educated and the enlightened needed to care for those less educated and polished. The idea that the State was to preserve the freedoms of the people was established. Remember, in America, it was the citizen that was responsible for protecting the Republic. A huge difference that will have future relevance.

I've started with these simple concepts of how "Socialism" is not as fair as people think. To get something for "free" means that someone else must provide that good or service. For the person who gets Food Stamps or Welfare, there is no real "Input" of resources, only "Output". Without regeneration, the system will feed on itself...but I get ahead of myself.

In the 1920's, Calvin Coolidge refused to help Texas farmers during a drought. His reasoning was founded on the bedrock of the Constitution. It was not the responsibility of the Federal Government to respond to a State or regional issue. If we were being invaded by a foreign power, then yes, he would respond. To give money to farmers who did not create anything was patently insane.

Today, the Farm Bill is annual give-away by both parties to buy favor and votes...but again, I get ahead of myself.

Socialism, as put forth by the "Great" (I'm coughing as I say that) thinkers Marx and Engels, was only the beginning of a historically inevitable process as nations and peoples grew more complex and interdependent.

According to them, Capitalism (i.e. Free Market Theory) would collapse under the greed and avarice of the fat cats as the worker would rise up to take the fruits of their labors.

It was thought that this would happen in the industrialized nations, as those two felt that it was the factory worker who was the most oppressed.

Turns out they were way, wrong. The revolutions took seed in the rural areas of the world. Russia, China, and the nations smashed by WWI saw Communist activity.

You see, Socialism would give way to Communism. According to Marxist theory, no nation was ever able to attain pure "Communism". True Communism is a government-less society. Everyone works for the welfare of others, who in turn, work for the individual welfare. Everyone has a car, a phone, a place to live, and food to eat...all without a government.

Wow, that sounds pretty utopian, but that was their central theory.

Along the way, Nations would evolve from Capitalist, to a hybrid model that included creeping Socialism, and then Socialism. After a period of time, government would drop away and the people could enjoy true Communism.

Again, didn't happen.

What did happen, is that people are people are people. Some are born with more ambition than others, some are born with more drive and morals than others. It is simply in our human nature.

Remember, we are descended not from those ancestors that say,"Here, after you," but "Hey, after me." Remember that. We are here today because those who came before had more food, influence and women than other men.

What really happened was a small group of people centralized power and decided that they knew best on how to build society. Social Engineering and all that.

You see, the Free Market has been described by those like Adam Smith. Observed and documented like a force of nature. I use those terms because the Free Market is just that. It is something that exists all on its own. All you need for it to exist is for one person to trade something they don't need for something that they do need. You don't need a government telling you what you can trade and for what you can trade it for.

Socialism is humanity's attempt at remaking the world, bending the forces of nature to meet our demands. It works about as well as putting a hand up and demanding that the train stop at your whim.

To explain the complex simply, we need to look at things simply.

Nationalized healthcare sounds cool. If you are sick, just go to a doctor and get fixed up. Its free. It is a right.

It is not. Healthcare is a commodity. If my car breaks, can I go to the mechanic and simply have him fix it, no money down? No. If my car is smashed, my insurance may cover it, or help me replace it. It is my choice if I want anything more than legal liability covering the car.

I would love full coverage if someone else was paying.

How about dinner? We all need to eat. Why is food not free? Food is a right.

However it is not a right that the government was designed to provide, nor is it designed to provide for healthcare, or education, or anything other than national projects and national defense.

Socialism is great as long as you have someone else's money to spread around. New York, New Jersey and California are having a grand experiment right now. How many rich people can they drive out of their states and still have a functioning economy? Turns out, when even a few leave, the ripple effect is disastrous.

It turns out those horrible rich people actually SPEND their money...they buy houses, cars, boats, and take trips to other places, leaving a little of their money behind all the time. Wow.

When those people leave, they buy all that stuff from someone else, and YOU suffer. Bummer. Pretty simple, huh?

How about the Federal Government seize all of our rights and make the 50 (or 57) States completely dependent on Washington D.C.? The rich will not be able to run any longer...what? They can go to Singapore and other countries? Darn.

Socialism loves to call the rich "greedy", but it is the rich that have done more for the Republic than any other.

Thomas Jefferson donated his library to the Federal Government who then used it as the seed to start the National Library.

Big Oil bastard, John Rockefeller provided the grand money to permit Colonial Williamsburg to be restored as a living example of American Exceptionalism.

The Anheuser Busch family created Busch Gardens. Walt Disney gave us, well, Disney. The Smithsonian was a donation from an English guy who never even lived here, though he admired our spirit. Why didn't he give his inheritance to the British government, I wonder?

Theodore Roosevelt provided free education to the poor and disadvantaged in the big cities. He sent them West where they could become self-reliant MEN. He was poisoned with Progressivism, but the results there were pure charity.

In Socialism there can be no charity. Only a small group of people deciding who gets what and who must make it. Over time, an equilibrium is reached and there is then forever growing expense and not enough money to pay for it.

The EU and Europe are the best examples of this.

During the late 1800's, nations began to play around with Socialism. Germany had universal healthcare in 1871. Democratic Socialism began to blend...the hybrid model...

By the 1960's, this liberal experiment of blending Socialsim and Democracy began to falter. Democracy never works because sooner or later, a group of people will begin to vote themselves ever increasing amounts of largesse. It just happens that way. That is why we are a REPUBLIC, with checks and balances.

The EU now finds itself Trillions of dollars in debt and with NOTHING to show for all that. Can you believe it? Trillions have been loaned and will NEVER be repaid.

This is because all of that was expense without any intent to create wealth. Wealth begets wealth and debt begets more debt.

I'm sorry, but that is just how it works. Everything costs and nothing is free. Someone, somewhere must pay for that good or service that you are possessing or consuming. Farm tractors don't just assemble themselves. Bridges don't just fall into being. The ham sandwich provided at your meeting may not have cost you anything, but the person setting up the meeting caused it to be created and given to you. Someone with currency requires something. Someone with skill constructs or provides that need. The rich people are the perpetual motion portion of a free market economy. Kill them and you kill the economy...and innovation. Just remember, it was no government office that willed the iPad into creation, nor could it will the smart phone into existence. Rich people seeking to become richer did those things.

Socialism breaks the human spirit. Just ask East Germany and Cuba. How many West Germans were killed trying to get into East Germany over the Iron Curtain?

Here is a hint: ZERO.

How many Floridians die every year trying to ride the ocean current to Cuba and Socialist Utopia? Zero.

Say what you want about the pros and cons of Socialism. It is all just theory anyhow. Look to how it is applied and who chooses to live under it.

Your answers are there. America began the hybridization some time ago and our system is beginning to collapse. We are not far behind Europe.

Just remember these types of Socialism:

Socialism: means of capital and production centrally directed by a small group of unelected officials.

Communism: means of capital and production undirected and are spontanious to the needs of the people (fairy land).

Fascism: means of capital and production controlled by the STATE. Think GM and Fanny Mae. Also, when you hear people say that the Republicans are Fascists, point out to them what the acronym NAZI stood for: The National Democratic Socialist Worker's Party. Socialist, NOT Free Market based.

Socialism has murdered over 150 million people in the 20th century. How many must die in the 21st?

Live well,

Zavost

The Great Race

Atop this wet Stoa this day, I wish to discuss "The Great Race".

My son the other day was watching an episode of, "Scared Straight", where teenage punks are sent to jail to see what their future will look like. The best part of the episode is the end when you get to see who was paying attention and who was not. To see those that straighten up and fly right vs. those who continue their spirals.

My son asked me why these kids do these things? If they know they are going to be in trouble, why do it? If their lives are going to be messed up forever, why do it?

Again, the kids do listen, even when you don't think they are.

What he is referring to is what I call, "The Great Race". This is a euphemism for what everyone else calls, "Life".

We all have our races to run. Our own paths to take. Sometimes they cross, sometimes they run together for a time. Some paths end prematurely. Others, steer off the path and into a tree.

When a child is learning to walk, the most they have to worry about is falling on something sharp or pulling something heavy down onto them. When they are getting on to their Junior or Middle School years, they really need to be thinking about their placement on the starting line. What their pole position will be in life.

My goal, and as I've imparted upon my children, is to live a life of comfort and contentment. Am I comfortable? Not really. Life is tough. Am I content? For the most part, yes. As Mr. Conehead would say, "contentment and stability have been achieved." If you set out to be rich, then you really do not know what will make you happy for money certainly is not the answer.

To do this, you have to get a good education in school. I don't give a fig about "extra-curricular activities". It is about knowing something or knowing how to do something that some one, some where, some time, will be willing to give you money in order to provide that something as a service.

Helping the homeless is admirable, but you've got your own bills to pay. Feeding the poor does not help the poor find work, nor does it help if you end up being at the back of the chow line yourself.

Like in a falling airplane, put the mask on yourself first, then help others.

Get good grades, pay attention in class and teach yourself how to think. Challenge your teachers and be critical of things that smack of pseudo-science.

From there, go to a good Community College or University, or combination thereof, and learn a skill or trade that others will be willing to pay you to perform. I don't care if it is engine repair or quantum mechanics. Don't take primitive Latin poetry or Underwater Basket Weaving or Post Feminist Studies in Gay and Lesbian Policy Making in Elizabethan England. No one will pay you for those skills.

The race is that everyone else out there is looking for the same kind of comfort and stability in their lives, even if they are not consciously aware of it. It is the "duck, duck, goose" of life. There are only ever so many chairs at any given time. You MUST be able to compete with and defeat the guy or gal standing next to you for the spot in the University or the position at work. If you studied hard and learned more than the other guy, then you will do alright.

When you are at work, you must continue to better yourself. Learning does not end with school, it only begins. You must work smarter and harder than everyone else if you want to get paid more. What you produce must be superior to others if you want to remain comfortable.

The trick is balance. If you devote yourself to work, you will lose in the end, for you will have lived to work instead of working to live. Remember the Stoic concepts of strife and unhappiness. Those only happen when you are not living in accord to Nature.

There will be the potential to be "downsized" at every point in your life. Be in the top 10% of anything you do and you will prove to be too valuable to be cut, though even that will not help you all the time.

Live your life your way, don't harm or impose upon others. Don't ask for anything that is not offered, and even then, all in moderation.

You will always be racing and competing with others. For the attention of a boy or girl at the school dance. For the head nod at a job interview, for the recognition and promotion of a job well-done.

You must be sharper and cleaner than the others if you wish to stay ahead.

If you have to be sent to jail to learn what your future home is going to look like, then things are not looking good for you. If you have a Juvenile criminal record, colleges and Universities may pass on you. If you have a criminal record, then even working at a gas station becomes a goal as most others will have nothing to do with you.

In a tight labor market, the employer is looking for the best and the brightest at all times...at the right price. If you have strikes against you, then you simply set yourself up for failure each and every time you go for a new job. Each and every time.

Run the race. Run it honorably. Live without regrets. Live understanding those things you can and should change, and develop the patience and wisdom to know the difference between them all.

Take care, everyone.

Live well.

--Zavost

Healthcare is NOT a right!

Oh, yes, there seems to be some heat atop the Stoa this day, although and angry Stoic is hard to tell apart from a bored Stoic, but I digress.

I had an interesting conversation with one of my neighbors, a few columns down the Arena. She and her husband own a franchise in our city-state healthcare eventually came up as part of the discussion, since she had to ask about the leach ponds in my back yard and the Delphic servants that come to visit all the time.

She had plenty of good questions. Good questions, however, begin to take you to a granular level of detail that then loses sight of the bigger picture. Context begins to become as important as the topic. So, to keep it big picture and understandable, I used metaphors that directly lined up with the context of her life.


I started out by describing to her how the system used to work, how it works now, and how Obama wants it to work now.

She owns and operates a wonderful fried chicken and fixin's restaurant. A good Southern joint where grease is one of the primary food groups. I love the place.

So, when she opened her business, she had to calculate her overhead, such as utilities, insurance, maintenance, new equipment schedules, produce and product expenses, and staffing costs. To cover those expenses, she planned on selling fried chicken with all the Southern sides. If she sold enough of those, she could cover her material overhead, pay her staff, pay herself, and bank the rest for the future.

Here is how it worked. A man came into the restaurant, went to the counter where a chipper young lady stood in front of a register, hair pulled back and snaked through the back of her baseball cap. That's cool. He would look at a huge board of fare and then pick what he wanted. Two other nice young folks would then rapid fire the food from a hot service line that was just behind the counter. The customer can see the food and see what is going on his plate. People worked in the back in a semi-open environment so he can see how they are preparing the food. The prices are up on the board next to the food item, and when his order was complete, the register rang up and he handed over the money for the cost of his meal.

If he was unhappy about any part of the meal, he told them and it was quickly dealt with, usually with free food or a coupon for his next visit.

That free exchange of goods and services has existed since our non-Sapien ancestors had two rocks to trade among each other.

Now, lets see how this works in a 3rd party provider environment...read Blue Cross, and other commercial insurers. I'll even through Medicare and Medicaid in for good measure.

I will start with managed healthcare from its early stages all the way to how it works today, just so you can see how it evolved.

Now, the big commercial insurance companies work by acting as an intermediary between the customer, you, the hungry person now standing in line for your food, and the restaurant owner, the person covering their overhead and trying to make a living by selling chicken.

Since the Insurance company is able to "pool" customers together, they are able to demand a price that is lower than what is seen on the menu. If BC came to you and said, "Your chicken is great, but at $5.00 it is just too much. How about if we promise you access to 15,000 people per year, you will only charge them $4.00 for the same meal?"

In the beginning, you know, the top of the slippery slope into Hell, you thought, "ok, guaranteed business is better than the uncertainty of hoping that my marketing works and I get people in here in ones and twos."

So, they sign on to BC and other entities like them. Now, some of those entities are able to negotiate different pricing based on the number of "people" they can pool together and guarantee to patronize your chicken establishment.

Since it is too time consuming to explain this pricing to each and every customer in line, you pull all the prices of the menu. Most people are not going to understand when they find out what and how their carriers are paying for their services.

At first, this new system seems to work ok. The restaurant is able to budget and plan ahead since it knows about how many customers it may have in any given year. They buy new equipment and upgrade their services to attract more of these carriers.

Over time, costs for everything go up. Just talk to your grandparents and ask them what a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk cost when they were young.

Now, people being people and business being business, if it is not illegal, people will take advantage of a system and extract the most they can out of it.

So, in 1980, our same guy goes into the chicken joint and asks for a chicken lunch. The harried woman behind the counter is not as well dressed and certainly not as polite as the young, chipper woman that was there 10 years ago. Instead of looking at him, she first asks for his card to see if they accept his carrier plan. Now that that hurdle is out of the way, she then tells him to move on down the line to get his food.

By 1990, the carriers are not making the kind of money they used to. You see, these third party people who negotiated the price in 1980 have to make money for themselves. Their organization grows and gets sued and must lobby the government so that they will leave them alone. So, since they are not making as much money, they negotiate the prices down even further. So far, that the restaurants must now begin cutting back on things to stay competitive with one another.

By 1993, these carriers found themselves under attack by politicians. It was felt that quality and access to care was being denied to people who did not belong to these carriers. The cost of food was not listed on menus any more and those that had to pay out of pocket the old way felt they were being overcharged.

These carriers then began to demand more than just a low price, but proof of the quality of the food that was being prepared and served to their customers.

These added expenses caused most the chicken joints around the country to start going out of business. Those that didn't began to lump together for safety in numbers.

So, in 1995, the same man would stand in line outside to get to the counter where he could order his food. After long wait, he gets to the over worked and under paid, angry woman behind a stack of paperwork. The menu is now gone, and in its place is a list of rights that the business must comply with for each and every customer who wants chicken. The man can no longer see behind the counter to where the chicken is prepared. Instead, a sign is nailed to the door reminding everyone that quality is their highest priority. There is no more hot food out for him to see when he orders.

Instead of ordering, the woman takes his name and his card, punches both into a computer where she reads back to him, "You can have only a two piece meal with one side. Your carrier will no longer pay for two sides." If you ask to pay for the side out of pocket, she declines saying that it violates their agreement with the carrier to do that.

Standing in line some more, you eventually get to the end where your meal comes out on a tray from a conveyor belt. The chicken is bland because the government feels that too much salt is bad for you. It is also cooked in recycled peanut oil and not lard, because lard is bad for you as well. The pop is diet pop because the carrier will not pay for regular pop any more. Your teeth may rot and then the carrier will have to pay out for dental work. No, sir.

So at the table you have chicken you don't like, a side you didn't order, and diet pop. A statement of benefits comes to your house in a few days showing you what services were rendered. The meal that once cost $4.50 now seems to cost $25.00 for some reason. What the.....

Now, by 2001, the number of regulations has grown ever higher and this chicken restaurant owner must comply with them all if she still wants to take carriers.

The meal that used to cost $4.50 now seems to cost $75.00.

By 2009, along comes Congress and the President, who feel that eating Southern style chicken is a right now has decided to make it "Universal". The results?

Where before, co-pays and deductibles used to keep some people from ordering a meal rather than cook at home, now, everyone wants to eat out all the time, since this new "chicken plan" is supposed to cost you next to nothing.

The results?

Well, now that the government was going to set both the price of the chicken and its quality, most of the restaurants simply quit. The ratio of restaurants to customers has become so lopsided that there are very long waiting lists to get that meal. Furthermore, the government mandated training programs that were then created to create more chicken chefs has resulted in sub-standard chefs who are more likely to poison you then cook good chicken.

You must now wait for a letter to come in the mail to tell you when you may go stand in line for your chicken. The line, when you are allowed in, will be very long. The woman in the restaurant will no longer even look at you. She simply scans the card and sends you down the line. No questions are asked, you are simply given what they feel you should get and you had better be happy.

In 45 short years, you went from being able to choose where you wanted to go for dinner and paying $4.50 to being told when you would be allowed, no matter how hungry you were, to go get that dinner. Gone are the "carriers" even. The government has taken everything over and treats the chicken and you as if you were at the DMV.

I could go into so much more detail, but we need to keep this under a hundred pages. The point is clear. Whenever the deal is between YOU and the SELLER, there will always be quality control. If you don't like the chicken, you go elsewhere. That person then fails. The one who does it right, shows others how to do it right. All the government knows how to do is mess stuff up and make sure that everyone else messes things up according to a detailed policy.

Enjoy.

Live well,

--Zavost

History will Know

Upon the Stoa this night, I want to look at the long view of history.

The tyrants and power hungry of today will be the footnotes of tomorrow's history books sooner or later. Some day, some where, the truth will win out. We know about the infidelity of Alexander the Great's father, Philip II of Macedonia and the secret fears of Joseph Stalin. We know about the sick deeds of Mao and his little girls as well as the rampant occultism and drug use among the Socialist regime of Hitler and the NAZIs.

During their lives there were always those that knew, but liked to breath. The truth will eventually come out regardless of how powerful the tyrant.

George Bush, though aggravating with his silence, is right in every respect that history will win out. Even today, military historians and political historians are coming to understand how President Bush's policies led to the destruction of radical islam in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is just to name a single instance among many.

Was Obama born in the US? Is Chavez and his Socialist revolution going to endure? Has the Tea Party been discredited? Will Romney do right by conservatism? Did Obama use BBQ sauce with his dog?

Who knows. I know not knowing this stuff in the present sucks, but sooner or later we will be enlightened with the truth.

All the misguided around the world that fall for tyrants and the fools that fall for them. How will history view those poor souls?

Live well.

--Zavost

You Never Know

From the Stoa this day, I ponder our impact upon those around us. So many people shoot their mouths off without regard to the damage their words do to those around them. Sometimes unintentionally, sometimes, very intentionally.

In this case, I'm thinking good things.

Sometimes parents think that their kids have cement in their heads. You can look straight at someone, say, my son for instance, and tell him to put his socks in the hamper. The head will bob and he will give a sign of understanding.

Two hours later, the socks are still on the floor...

They do hear you. They don't always listen...or take out their earbuds for that matter.

But sometimes, just sometimes, they say things that let you know that they are listening and retaining the important stuff.

Sometimes my son will go on and on about some discovery he has thought up or explain to me how this event connects to another event.

It is just as hard for me to pay attention sometimes, so I'm no better. I'm patient in that I usually let him ramble on about fairly meaningless things, but I do listen, just at a dialed down level.

The other day, the boy blew my mind. He started rambling and I kept on doing what I was doing, and when he finished I had to take a mental double-take.

He does listen. He can interpret things that have nothing to do with HALO, or shooting zombies. He has listened and understood some of the conversations I routinely have with my daughter about people and the human condition.

From nowhere, the boy says to me, "You know dad, your generation looks to the stars and says, 'I want to go there.', mine looks at the same stars and says, 'Someone needs to take me there."

Holy crap, I thought. The boy has said something that was completely original and blew me away.

We then talked about what he had just said and decided that he was really on to something. We quickly sketched in the other generations. Here they are, lined up to make our point:

Gen X: I want to go to the stars.

Millennial: Someone needs to take me to the stars.

Boomer: Why go, you'll just pollute and rape them anyways.

Silent: I'll help whoever goes.

GI: Been there.

I'm still trying to put my head back together. He may not have a lot of things worthwhile to say (again, think Halo and zombies), but when he does, boy does he!

Think about those sayings. You can see the self-evident truth of them.

Live well, and thanks, boy, for becoming a contributor to the Stoa and the Arena of Ideas.

--Zavost

Modern Hetalia, Part II

Once again atop the Stoa, a point will be made while wrapped in an entertaining outer coating.

My daughter asked several questions about how things got to the EU burning and why Obama is pulling down the shades on the American public. I will seek to inform and entertain, and perhaps make you laugh while you learn. Enjoy.

Let's go to the EU Cul-de-sac. In this neighborhood, you have the Europeans. Asia, both Russian and Asian-Asia are behind them. Africa and the Middle East are on the other side of the rail road tracks that run along Southern Europe. Africa and the Middle East also embody what it means to "live on the other side of the tracks".

Across the street is the United States and on each side, reside Mexico and Canada. Central and South America are in nearby neighborhoods down the road.

The neighborhood was much changed over the last 70 years. Europe had been destroyed, along with much of Russia at the end of 1945. Germany especially. Their yard looked like the lunar landscape when the Allies were done with it in May, 1945.

As they began to dig out from all the rubble and rebuild, they traded gold to the United States for currency to begin the rebuilding process, since they were all in debt and badly damaged. The Marshall Plan extended huge amounts of liquidity for the Europeans to rebuild their homes. We "held onto" their gold and then printed up the necessary dollars that they were then able to use to rebuild and convert into their native currencies.

Thus, the formal rise of the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

Over the years, the Europeans thought about either normalizing labor and trade practices or going to a unified currency, imaginatively called the "Euro". They would have been better off limiting the unionization of their nations...but that is another story for another time.

France, Germany and Great Britain played tug-of-war with the rest of Europe and its financial policy, each trying to become the dominant economic power on the continent.

As usual, reality started to catch up to the Europeans and they began to figure out, Great Britain first, that Germany was still larger and more powerful than the rest of Europe put together. When the British realized this, they grabbed on to their venerable "Pound Sterling" with both hands and said, "we'll trade with you, but we will neither join the EU, nor will we join the common currency."

Over this time, their Empire dissolved. Their moral and economic ability to maintain the Empire waned and they realized that simply maintaining their identity within a European Framework was now jeopardized. The Faulkland War, fought in the early 80's against Argentina, a 3rd tier military power, was a slugfest, with too many British naval assets being destroyed and too many of its young men dying on a spit of windswept, sheep inhabiting slab of rock near the Antarctic landmass. It was a wake up call telling them that they were not the power that they once were.

This is when Britain slowly began to pull away from the problems of Europe and began hanging out on the recliner in the United State's living room. Constantly trying to tell the Americans how wonderful Soccer really was and that the passion of Empire has been replaced with the passion of Soccer and Cricket.

America could not help from chuckling every time Britain told him that Cricket was an actual sport.

France, never one to allow reality to interfere with policy, continued to pull, push, and whine to Germany about power sharing. France continued to unionize, continued to travel the path of Democratic Socialism, and to invite everyone who wanted to come to France, to come to France.

Germany did some of this for a while and then realized that many of the Turks, and Asians coming to live in Germany were not "Germanizing" properly and began to tighten up requirements. They also began to tighten up, on their own, economic and labor practices necessary to remain a power into the 21st century.

Rather than tighten up labor laws, the Union decided to go after a unified currency. This meant that poorer homes, like those owned by Iceland, Greece, and Portugal, suddenly found their currency having a higher intrinsic value than their old drachmas and whatever. Interest rates were low and credit was backed by the European Central Bank. What could go wrong?

It did not take long for Greece to put in a swimming pool and reseed their front yard. Iceland got a new car. Heck, they got 5 new cars, even though only three people lived in the house. Portugal and Spain began to build and build onto their homes. They added on entire wings to house visitors and tourists who would come to hang out in their yards.

Italy, France, Spain, The Netherlands, and others used the pooled resources to borrow and spend their way into an artificial prosperity.

The party could not last though. The visitors did not show up as much as they thought, and all those new buildings that had gone up were mostly empty. Some of the homes that hosted the Olympic games now had venues that were grassy and decrepit. They had build for nations ten times their size and prosperity and there simply was not enough money or people to make any of their work profitable.

First, Iceland went bankrupt. Then Ireland. Greece, Portugal and Italy were next. France, panicking, began to loan money to these countries and begged Germany to do the same.

The money went in, but the homes continued to fall into foreclosure. Germany saw good money going after bad and began to cut off the flow of money. Then France had a shock and nearly went bankrupt. Only America, with the promise of unlimited dollars was able to keep France from going under.

We now join the EU in their back yards on the day that it all fell apart.

Germany, always the serious business type, sat behind a HUGE mahogany desk under a shade tree. His home, behind the tree, still looked pretty good. France, next door, looked good too, though on closer inspection one would see the peeling paint and rust beginning to take over. Britain had the lights off and the shades drawn. Many wondered if he still lived over there.

France stood near Germany, a growing crowd of neighbors gathered about him. Italy and Spain loomed over the effete Frenchman.

"You need to make more Euros available for borrowing," Italy said. "Yeah, we need more money to fund our healthcare. The unions will go on strike if we don't give them a raise," Spain chimed in.

Greece was trying to push its way to the front, but Slovakia just swung her bottom around and hip-checked him over onto his backside.

"Friends, friends, please be patient. Germany and I are working out the finances right now. You must be patient. We have loaned a lot of money out and we have seen nothing come back. We can not loan forever. Sooner or later you have to pay us back," the Frenchman yelled at the shouting crowed.

A beer bottle, probably thrown by Belgium, broke over France's head. He went down flat faster than in May, 1940.

The crowd surged over him and formed a semi-circle around the big, Teutonic desk.

The German, a big man, was hunched over his desk. There was no computer upon it. He scribbled with a large feather quill and had two big stacks of paper, one on each side. The paper appeared to be parchment as opposed to paper.

The German paid no more attention to them now then when France was doing the talking.

Torches were lit to guard against the growing onset of darkness. Still the German scribbled at his desk.

The shouting died down while they waited for Germany to recognize the fact that they were there.

With due diligence to the document he was working on, Germany finished a paper and set it on the other stack. He looked up and around the desk at the crowed.

He reached over and took a torch away from Malta and lit the candles on his desk. He handed the torch back to Malta.

"Vat is it you need?" he asked in an even voice.

Only after the candles were lit could they see the scars and pock marks on his face. A strong and powerfully built face. There was signs of age and wear on it. He was starting to get cheeky, but that was only because moving the East Germans into his home had caused him to eat cheaper, less healthy foods for more than 20 years. Even after all the time that had passed, the scars of WWI and WWII were still visible.

Italy was the first to speak up, "we need more access to credit to keep our trains going."

Germany looked at him evenly. To his credit, the Italian did not wilt.

"Go to the bond market. Ask the Americans. Ask the Chinese. Why come to me?" he said evenly again.

"They won't lend us anymore money. You are the largest member of the European Central Bank. You have to make it lend us more money!" The Italian began to yell.

The German, expressionless, slapped his hand upon the desk. The sudden clap jolted everyone back into silence.

"The ECB is nothing more than the accumulation of European wealth. Germany puts in the most money. Germany has given and loaned hundreds of billions of Euros to get your finances back in order. If you are still in trouble, then you need to find other money."

The Italian turned red with fury. "Its not fair that you have all that money and we don't!" he screamed.

The crowd got loud again.

Germany, without raising his voice said, "We saw where things were going ten years ago and took appropriate measures. You failed to take those measures and now you must pay for your irresponsible behavior. The German people are NOT responsible for your debt."

The Slovak bobbed her head up and down in agreement. She suffered much to be able to join the EU and the monetary union. She did not think it fair that she should have had to jump over so many hurdles to join just to have to watch half of the membership go bankrupt.

Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Iceland all began shouting at the same time, "You owe us that money as being part of the EU...we all are in the same monetary union, you must spread that wealth around....we don't have to listen to you, we are equal...you could not take us by force in WWII and now you want to take us over with money!"

They all yelled over each other. The last comment made Germany show some emotion for the first time.

He stood up, towering over everyone. The crowed backpedaled to make room.

"Look at you. You are sniveling, whining, irresponsible dregs! Why would I WANT you?" Germany was getting worked up now.

"If I had conquered you, we would not be in this mess. You would all be running smoothly, just as I am. You would not have overbuild, or over borrowed. You had to call on the United States and look where we are now, hmmmmm?"

The others bristled in their indignation.

Grass and torches were being flung in the air as countries shouted to be heard.

Germany sat back down and picked up his quill, calming himself.

"This is a mess you made and a mess that you will have to clean up. Germany will no longer fund your ill-discipline."

The crowd surged to his desk and began so shove it.

Germany grew thunderously angry and began to speak as he stood, "You insolent brats! I'll take on anyone who wants to fight!!"

Some nations back peddled, like Slovakia and Finland, but the indigent and desperate nations facing the abyss with nothing to lose began to charge Germany in a fit of insanity. France remain unconscious and oblivious. It was his only defense.

Germany stood straight and brought both arms up to fight.

"Ich sehe ein, zwei, drei... oh, scheisse."

Germany was literally buried under the indigent nations of Europe, each demanding some of the money that Germany had. Ignorant of the realization that all the money in the world was not going to "bail" them out.

In fits of rage, houses began to catch fire. Fences were pulled down, bushes torn out. Cars were flipped and trees cut down.

The Chinese came to the windows of their Megaplex apartment buildings to see what all the ruckus was about. The Arabs and Africans began to press against the fences near the rail road tracks, eager for the looting that always follows a dust up like this.

During this fit of insanity, Belgium, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal looked across the street. They only wanted to have the same kind of life the Americans led. No, not just like them, they wanted a more "just and equitable" life, but to be as happy as Americans and it just never came to be.

Why should they be so happy when THEIR world was falling apart?

Across the street they noticed a light on in the living room, the flicker of a TV in the background.

A face was in the window looking out at them. America was there! They would help, they always had in the past!!!

The blind came down over the light. The porch light went out.

Disbelief turned into fear which turned into terror. America was not going to help! It was all their fault anyhow! Europe was doing just fine before America showed them that they could live good too. How dare they!

The mob began to turn its attention across the street, even as the Russians, Chinese, and Arabs began to climb the fences and move into Europe...

Hope you enjoyed this. There may be more to come, but that part has not unfolded yet. I'll be here to write about it, though.

Live well.

--Zavost.