Archive for June, 2004
An Old Southerner
Posted by Bob in Musings about Life on 6/30/2004
A lady from out West has been assigned to the Deep South in her job. She doesn’t like it. She says we are a different country.
I thanked her for saying that, which was not the response she expected.
She’s nice, so I didn’t say to her what I usually tell Yankees who criticize the South:
“Keep in mind that WE didn’t fight a war to keep YOU.”
She also said I should stop calling myself old. She was being nice. Here is my reply:
“In the Youth Culture outside my Southern Nation, old is terrible. But we Southerners get a feeling that we were part of a long, long tradition, a nation of the South, from our older people.”
“Your older people are the World War II generation, the one that calls itself The Greatest Generation. They make young people feel like outsiders. You didn’t Sacrifice, you didn’t Suffer like they did.”
“Our old people told us about the family, the South, and made us part of it. Believe it or not, when I say I am old, I am bragging. I am now part of those who are carrying the tradition and I earned it.”
“I don’t want to be young. By my years and my loyalty, I earned the right to call myself one of the Old Southerners. Young people respond to it very, very well.”
We Honor Our Heroes
A leader in the Confederate flag battle wrote me for advice.
Here is my first piece of advice:
Use the Vietnam analogy. America lost the Vietnam War and the left and their pet media declared it an Evil War. As a result the men who had fought it were treated like lepers.
We all recognize that now as a national disgrace. Southerners never even thought of doing such a thing to our Confederate soldiers. The Civil War ruined us, but we treated our soldiers like the heroes they were and we treated the flags they carried with reverence.
If New Southers had their way, not only would Confederate flags be relegated to museums and labeled as a sign of shame, but the Confederate Monuments would be destroyed.
If you lose a war, history always says you were Evil. So Hitler was Evil and Stalin was a War Hero. If you lose a war, you are supposed to live in shame and spit on the men who fought your war.
We are not like that. We despise that attitude. We will honor our fighters as publicly as possible and damn the people who want us to treat our heroes the way the liberals treated those who fought in Vietnam.
Busy, Busy, Busy…
Posted by Bob in Musings about Life on 6/29/2004
I worked myself into two nervous breakdowns, but I was never busy, busy, busy.
Chris Matthews was number one staff member to the Speaker of the House. Nobody is more swamped than that. He was never busy, busy, busy.
Chris would go back to his office, pick up his sheaf of call slips, and call each person back. He would say to me, “Can´t deal with that now.’ or “Call X..’
That was all I needed, because I was a professional, too.
If you can´t delegate, you´ll always be minor league.
I met with George Wallace twice. The first time was in 1968 when he was on his feet. Maurice Bessinger wanted to take over the Wallace presidential campaign in South Carolina. Maurice had hundreds of campaign workers. He could get any literature from one end of the state to the other in one day, and right into the mills and on the farms. He already had a party on the ballot.
There was another group which consisted of “the best people’ led by Tom Turnipseed. They never did anything, but they wanted to run the campaign. Tom Turnipseed was their spokesman and he reported to the Republican Executive Committee every week.
George Wallace, the Great Man Himself, consented to speak with us briefly and then he turned us over to his Country Boy in charge of Soothing the Good Old Boys. He then talked to Tom Turnipseed at length and turned the campaign over to Turnipseed and the Very Best People. South Carolina was the only Deep South state he lost.
Turnipseed is now a hard-core liberal.
In 1972, Wallace was in his wheel chair but he was kind enough to sign a letter praising my first book. So I flew to Alabama to give him a signed copy. He spent quite a while with me that time. Jimmy Carter was arriving in town for his presidential campaign which Wallace was hosting. Wallace´s wife kept calling him but he wanted to talk to me. He kept saying, “If I had had you with me when I was on my feet, we would have won the presidency.”
No doubt about it. But he had me right there in front of me when it counted, and he was busy, busy, busy. Too busy to notice talent and too busy to take advantage of it.
That’s happened to me all my life.
Bible-Thumpers and Brownie-Points
I just got back from a reunion with the mountaineer half of my family, the Snyders.
The Bible-thumpers have taken it over.
When I was at the Council of Conservative Citizens, I watched the dedicated and inarticulate people who had founded the CCC being steadily replaced by the preachers. The attendance at the conference was, of course, way down.
In both Pigeon Forge and at the Snyder family reunion, I rode around the Tennessee and North Carolina mountain area and watched the handiwork of these self-styled “Christians.” There is a big building in Hendersonville, North Carolina, set up by these “Christians” and dedicated to interracial adoptions.
The anti-white left could not penetrate those mountains, but these “Christians” can, so the Christians are pushing third world adoptions to penetrate white enclaves. I saw many a white woman pushing her little black or Oriental child around. This gives the Bible-thumpers big brownie points with the liberals who control the media.
I was talking to one of the South Carolina Bible-thumpers who have taken over the Snyder reunions and asked him about Beasley’s blasphemy and the Baptist lack of reaction to it. He got a look on his face that I have seen before many, many times on the faces of Communist Party members and Catholic and Presbyterian theologues. It said, “This man has stepped over the Party Line.”
He acted like I hadn’t said it.
The Modular Man
The Modular Man is coming. By the middle of this century human parts will be developed in labs. If person has bad lungs, it will be easier just to put in new ones than to try to repair the old.
Parts of the brain will also be replaced. So where will the “Christians” and the sociologists who call themselves “bioethicists” going to be when that happens? Their propaganda campaign against cloning and embryo research is based on the idea that science is “crossing the line” into making new humans.
That is good fodder to make idiots put money in the collection plate or give a professor a good living right now, and that is all the preachers and professors care about.
But the simple fact is that the “line” they are talking about is not just going to be crossed, it is going to be stomped on and totally destroyed by the footprints of people who are not going to live with brain damage or heart disease or spend their lives in a wheel chair just to satisfy the preachers.
Though None Follow…
On the night before He was arrested, Jesus spent the night praying to be released from the terror of crucifixion that he faced. He needed a friend to share His burden, so he took Peter with Him.
Peter fell asleep. Jesus was terribly disappointed. He was hurt that in the time when He had to wrestle with Satan and his final commitment, not even His most faithful follower would stay with Him.
But Jesus did not even consider wavering because He was disappointed in Peter.
We are all hurt by how stupid and slavish our people are. Why can’t they stand up and fight back while our borders are violated, our women are violated, all decency is violated?
It is inexcusable. It is cowardly. These people are not worth our concern.
All of this is true. None of this matters.
We will fight the fight and we will win for our people, despite our people.
Not because they have earned it, but because it is right.
Someone Should Think of This
I haven’t changed a tire in decades. About forty years ago my tire went down and the temperature was about 104 degrees. I pulled over and started to jack the car up. It didn’t go up. I suddenly realized the jack was sinking into the tar the road was paved with.
But I understand that changing a tire is a real pain because you have to empty the trunk and take out the “donut” tire that will substitute until you get a real change.
Considering how seldom one has to change a tire these days, this idea may be useless, but it seems to me that one could put a rim inside or outside of each tire that is made of one of those superstrong materials they use to make roller skates these days. It would extend far enough down so that if the tire went down almost completely, you would be able to limp along on it to the nearest highway exit.
There are probably better ideas, in fact, I’m sure of it. But a car suddenly blowing a tire and having to stop is out of date, so maybe somebody should think about this.
Punishment is Cheap
Posted by Bob in Law and Order on 6/25/2004
Supply and demand is the basis of modern economics.
There is another simple rule that is just as basic to our society as supply and demand:
Punishment is cheaper than rewards. Any idiot can hurt somebody. It takes talent and work to make people happy. That is why Gangstah Rap is so popular with incompetent young people. They can only get what they want by simple-mindedly hurting people.
This is why Hell is so much more realistic to people than Heaven is. Everybody can imagine Hell. Nobody can imagine Heaven. You can visualize a hundred forms of agony. But how about permanent ecstasy?
In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift talked about a society that did not so much punish people for crimes as it rewarded them for honesty. Nice idea. Why didn’t anyone try it?
Because it would be too expensive. Rewarding honest people would be costly to say the least. Hanging the bad ones was cheap. America has two million people in its enormously expensive prisons. But that is cheaper than rewarding the other two hundred and seventy million or so other Americans for not committing crimes.
Irresistible Force Meets Immovable Object
Posted by Bob in How Things Work on 6/24/2004
If a reader writes me, I reply fast. It is such a relief to get something somebody wrote personally to me instead of that endless stream of forwards of articles somebody else wrote that I am supposed to read.
And it is especially fine to get a comment by someone who has actually read my stuff. I put a lot of work into this, and if I didn’t think it was worth reading, I wouldn’t write it.
Sine I do answer so promptly and I keep up the dialogue, one reader asked if he had offended me somehow. He also wrote about Beasley’s defeat inthe South Carolina Republican primary and Bush’s chances in 2004. This gave me a chance to vent on a couple of things, so I quote my reply below:
“You haven’t offended me.”
“One thing I guarantee you. If you offend me, I’ll let you know. I have had so many people suddenly go into a pout when they felt offended and just go silent. I HATE that!”
“Grown men don’t pout.”
“And you did not offend me by asking that. I know what you mean, as I said, it happened to me many times, so I understand your concern. You have apparently had to deal with it, too. Isn’t it sickening?”
“I was glad to see Beasley lose, though it if he had won it would have given me a chance to talk about those fake Christians some more.”
“I did not think it was possible for even a Bush to be dumb enough to lose to a Massachusetts Democrat, but Republicans are experts at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The Clintons tried to hand him victory in 2004 on a silver platter, so it is a race between Clinton’s political genius and Republican stupidity.”
“Republican stupidity is about the only thing that could overcome Clinton’s genius at electoral strategy. This is truly the case of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.”
Go Ahead, Take My Name in Vain
During the decades of the Cold War, I was a minor but definite enemy of the USSR. I was never mentioned in any Russian-language publication except maybe one that said, “Kill this bastard and we’ll give you a case of vodka.”
But not long ago, PRAVDA reprinted at least one whitakeronline.ORG article. Now that was something I never expected to see in my lifetime, and I got a real kick out of it.
I found out by chance that whitakeronline.ORG has also been discussed in the Australian Parliament. My informant told me that both the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition know who I am, but he kindly refrained from saying what they think of me.
I don’t know who else around the world has been using my name in vain, but I LOVE it!
Be Your Own Boss
Posted by Bob in Musings about Life on 6/24/2004
One of the cutest things on television is a line from many infomercials:
“Run your own business. Be your own boss.”
Now there’s an oxymoron if I ever saw one.
Long after his workers have gone home, the small businessman is still slaving away to please the hardest bosses of all: his customers.
Celebrity Condoms
Posted by Bob in Musings about Life on 6/24/2004
In case you are ever tempted to take celebrity brain power seriously, let me quote one.
On a talk show, this guy said, “I’m not afraid of AIDS. I use condoms. They block AIDS 98% of the time.”
The host responded, “So that means if you use a condom and have sex fifty times, you’ll get a fatal disease.”
The celebrity replied, “Oh. I didn’t think of it that way.”
My Brilliant Strategy
Posted by Bob in How Things Work on 6/23/2004
One time I was suddenly informed of a Brilliant Strategy I had been working on for years. It turned out that the only person who didn’t know I had planned and executed this Brilliant Strategy was me.
I discovered this Brilliant Strategy one time when we were having a session on whom we needed to contact. One guy was particularly hard to reach, so somebody said, “Bob can get in touch with him. All the secretaries LOVE Bob!”
Everybody agreed. It turned out that I had been “cultivating” these secretaries and receptionists for years.
Actually, I had always been friendly with receptionists and secretaries. I like smart, competent people, and these women didn’t get where they were by magic.
By the way, in Washington the top “secretary” is not a secretary. She is Office Manager and she has a salary to match the title.
An office is not The Great Man Himself. An office is a team. While other people waxed apoplectic about “having to talk to the secretary” I spent the time I got talking to her filling her in on the situation and finding out the best way to deal with it. Often she would take care of it for me, including a quick check with The Great Man Himself. That was easier than me getting to the Great Man Himself and then having him instruct her on it.
And let me tell you something else. If I get to the Great Man Himself and he promises something, he might forget before he tells his “secretary.” If the Office Manager herself asks him, the result is not forgotten.
All the time, it turns out I was “cultivating” this office manager. Like any competent person, she liked to be treated like one of the team. So she liked me for it.
I just didn’t realize I was being so shrewd!
That “little receptionist” up front can tell you plenty that you need to know. Whatever you have in hand will be handed over to a staff member, and she knows who that staff member will be.
And she likes being treated like a human, too.
I knew all this going in. I didn’t plan it. But it turns out that everybody knew it was a brilliant strategy I came up with.
I can live with that.
Killer Apes
Posted by Bob in Political Correctness on 6/23/2004
Those of us who will admit it have watched lots of horror movies and mystery movies. In those movies, we sit in the audience and wonder when the people in the movie are going to realize that everybody who goes into that particular house or movie studio or whatever gets killed. But people keep going in.
As a ridiculously overeducated redneck from Pontiac, South Carolina, I have exactly the same feeling when I watch science documentaries or political debates: “When are those clowns going to realize the obvious?”
I was just watching a documentary on Raymond Dart’s theory that man evolved as a “killer ape.” Dart said that man began to use weapons to kill animals, and the more intelligent weapons-makers survived.
This offended the Ghandi School of Political Correctness which says that man is a peaceful animal. So they found that men had used their tools as scavengers, which proved men were just scavengers, not predators. Those tools allowed men to get the brain of dead animals, which were left because animals couldn’t use their teeth to get through the skull. Also those tools allowed men to get to the nutritious bone marrow which animals couldn’t get to.
Whew! That took care of the killer ape bit!
I watched other documentaries which exposed the old idea that hyenas were only scavengers, not hunters. Scientists discovered that hyenas do hunt, but they also scavenge. In fact, the scientists explained, ALL hunters are also scavengers.
So, like someone waiting for the horror movie characters to add two and two, I wait for the documentaries to add two and two. The killer ape was also a scavenger.
This doesn’t end the puzzle of man’s origins, but when the documentaries miss obvious stuff like this, it sure makes the movie seem longer.
The Paper Hat Crowd
Posted by Bob in Musings about Life on 6/22/2004
Someone was telling me about flying helicopters in Nam and I, as usual, thought of something funny.
I thought I might say, “HELICOPTERS? Yea, you spoiled brats had HELICOPTERS in Nam. But in Africa, we had no damn helicopters! One unit had an old defunct ‘copter we used to call ‘Wishful thinking with a propeller on top.’”
In Africa you went in on foot or by parachute. They offered me parachute training and I said, “You ain’t seen hand-to-hand (combat) until you try to get me out of a plane at five thousand feet!”
If I had said what spoiled brats they were in Nam to have helicopters, I could have been one of the paper-hat brigade, one of the group that calls itself The Greatest Generation, the one that talks about its Sacrifices, and how everybody needs to show them Gratitude, Gratitude, Gratitude and how about some Gratitude for a change?
Gratitude is the main lyric of The Song of the Greatest Generation. It gets them money. But the refrain is how easy everybody else has it. “We were raised in the great Depression, we fought The Great Big War,” they sing, tears in their eyes.
I have all the money I want, but I sure would enjoy doing some of that “You have it easy!” bit. It sounds like a lot of fun.
The paper hat crowd wears paper army hats. What kind of hat would an ex-spook wear? He could have on a paper Casper-the-Ghost hat. The trouble is that that looks just like a Ku Klux Klan hood.
The Woman Who “Saved the World”
I believe this is the anniversary of the day that Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. By a strange coincidence, it is also the anniversary of the day that the entire political left in America switched from demanding American neutrality to demanding that America get into World War II.
Within a few days of Hitler’s attack on the USSR, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany.
KGB files that were opened when the USSR collapsed showed that Communist infiltration into the Roosevelt State Department went deeper than even Senator McCarthy suspected. But, as Joe Sobran pointed out, even the parts of the Roosevelt State Department who were not Communists never made single statement that Stalin would not have approved of.
One of the unsung heroes of the American left was the daughter of the American ambassador to Berlin in the early 1930s. She was a fanatical Stalinist and her letters on the subject are a matter of record.
In the early 1930s, the only major power that Hitler threatened was the USSR. It was a major accomplishment to change the situation so that the West destroyed Hitler and gave a third of the world to Stalin and Mao.
The daughter of the American ambassador had a role in that process. She gave sex to German officers for information and planted information where needed.
When you are worshipping The Greatest Generation for this wonderful achievement, don’t forget this woman, who had more to do with ‘Saving the World’ than any hundred Medal of Honor winners in World War II.
Socialism Here and Now
Posted by Bob in How Things Work on 6/21/2004
Socialism is defined as “government ownership of the means of production and distribution.” But that is not what people debate when they discuss the merits of socialism.
The whole point of socialism is to turn the economy over to bureaucrats. It doesn’t matter who owns the shares, what socialists want is for professors to run the economy. So what we really argue about when the word “socialism” comes up is not who OWNS industry but who RUNS it.
It doesn’t really matter if government owns shares on the New York Stock Exchange as long as the government doesn’t use those shares to run it. Switzerland used to get a lot of its government revenue from Swissair, but it left the running of that airline to the managers and only judged the managers by how much money they made, like any other stockholder.
But if the professors are to tell everybody what to do, that means that the market can’t. Either supply and demand runs things or professors run things. That is why liberals are always denouncing “commercialism.” They want professors to decide what audiences watch, not the audiences themselves.
So the real argument over socialism is not about “the ownership of the means of production and distribution.” If a system is run by the market, professors have as little use for it if it is government-owned Swissair as if it is privately owned.
Professors no longer insist on socialism because they have discovered they can run thing through bureaucrats and lawyers no matter who owns things.
Socialism is just like all forms of leftism. It is a means by which professors could rule the world, and professors teach it in college. Leftists are people who never outgrew their college education, or people who have an inferiority complex because they didn’t get one (See my latest book, “Why Johnny Can’t Think.” which is subtly advertised in the flashing red letters at the top of this page).
No Need to Restate the Obvious
Posted by Bob in Bob's Book on 6/20/2004
Please, have mercy on an a old man! My latest book, “Why Johnny Can’t Think, America’s Professor-Priesthood,” does NOT “show there is leftist bias on campus.”
I recently got some clippings from two different female relatives that “say what you said,” that there is a leftist bias on college campuses.”
No, I did NOT “say that there is a leftist bias on campus.” No, Einstein did NOT “say that the speed of light is real fast,” No, Isaac Newton did NOT “say there is something called gravity.”
What would Einstein have done if someone had said “I think light moves real slow. You got to prove light moves fast.” He would have called the loony bin. What would Isaac Newton have done if somebody said, “There ain’t no such thing as gravity.” He would have acted like the guy didn’t exist and then hit him in the face if the fellow got in his way.
I do not try to prove that light moves real fast, or that gravity exists or that college campuses have a fanatical leftist bias. If you actually open the pages of “Why Johnny Can’t Think,” you will find that I say that that is the kind of thing dumbass respectable conservatives dedicate books to, not intelligent people.
Every sane person knows that light moves fast. Every sane person knows there is such a thing as gravity. Every sane person know that colleges are fanatically biased to the left.
PLEASE don’t insult me by saying I am trying to prove any of those things. Please don’t send me forwards and news paper clippings to show how morons are trying to prove these things.
No intelligent person will spend one minute “saying what you said, that there is a leftist bias on college campuses.”
If you waste time debating that, you are too much of a fool to get any real point made.
If you want to see how to cover that whole argument in two minutes, you will want to READ “Why Johnny Can’t Think.”
Dimwitted Brits
When Winston Churchill was born, the British Empire ruled a major portion of the world. The English were the richest people on earth with the exception of the Americans.
When Churchill took power in Britain and led the country into war in 1939, Britain had lost much of its wealth and a generation of its best in World War I. But its workers were still the best-paid in Europe and it still had an Empire on which the sun never set.
When Churchill died in 1965 Britain was just one cold, wet little island. Economically Britain was the sick man of Europe. Hundreds of thousands of British workers went to Germany, where the pay was twice as high as in England and the taxes much, much lower, even on workers.
In 1965 about the only thing Britain had left was tens of thousands of statues of its Great Hero, Winston Churchill. By then, even the Soviet Union had taken down the statues of Churchill’s Friend and Ally, Joseph Stalin.
Lenin Worship has ended now, even in Russia. But the poor little dimwitted Brits still worship Winston.
A Lesson in PC from Tourette’s
Posted by Bob in Political Correctness on 6/20/2004
A military man was telling me about an enlisted man who had Tourette’s Syndrome. Tourette’s Syndrome is a DISEASE that makes a person suddenly spout out obscenities and other things he wants to suppress. He will be talking and suddenly will spout out the very words he wants to say least.
This poor guy tried hard, but they had to kick him out of the military. They were able to overlook his obscenities and his comments about white peoples’ mothers, but he started using RACIAL epithets and the blacks kept beating him up. The kept disciplining him and finally had to let him go.
I asked the military man if they disciplined the blacks for beating up somebody they knew had Tourette’s Syndrome. He looked startled and replied, “No.”
I asked him if they would have discipline a WHITE man who beat up this man for saying something bad about his mother. The military man replied, indignantly, “Of course!” He then gave me a short lecture about how a man in uniform is supposed to show DISCIPLINE.
If he’s white. Now please don’t think the lesson here is that poor little white guys are being discriminated against, like everybody else does. Whites are always getting kicked around and I’m glad of it. Whites are wimps and race traitors and they deserve everything they get and more.
Notice that no white came to this sick white man’s aid.
No, the lesson here is what all white people know about blacks.
Note I said “know,” not “assume.” If Africa were threatened by massive non-black immigration, whites would be expected to lead to the defense of the existence of the black race. When every leader demands massive third world immigration into ALL white countries and ONLY into white countries, we all know it’s silly to ask a black person to help us fight it. They are incapable of that, and we all know it.
This racist goes so deep that nobody but Bob Whitaker would ever notice it.
God’s Special Pets?
I wrote this to a retired Methodist minister.
Fashionable preachers must tell Buddhists and others that Jesus wasn’t all that special, but the Jews are. After all, they must demand that America kill an awfully lot of people and spend a lot of money to help Israel keep the land it took from the Arabs.
You are in the position the Church was in when Galileo proved that earth is not the center of the universe. The idea that Jews invented monotheism and were God’s special pets was OK in the Middle Ages, but it’s silly now.
It will take a long time before the churches stop justifying all those killings in the name of The Chosen People, just as it took the church until the early 1800s to let Galileo back in the Roman Church.
I understand Pope John Paul recently forgave Galileo once and for all for his crime of being a heretic.
It will be a while before theologians stop demanding killing and billions of dollars for God’s Chosen Country in Israel, just as it took a long time after Galileo for the church to stop killing people who said the earth wasn’t the center of the universe.
If you admit Israel is not God’s central concern, you might lose your pension.
Anyway, all that will be needed is a change of fashion for Israel to go out of style, and, once Europe has a Moslem majority, that change of fashion will be right along.
As you said, it takes two hundred pages to justify this nonsense now, and it’s getting longer every day.
Church Unity?
I have been attacking preachers a lot lately, and this gives me the fear that some Catholics might think I’m a good guy. I am NOBODY’S good guy.
So let me take a blast at the Pope here. Everybody loves him, like everybody loves Winston Churchill and the group that calls itself The Greatest Generation.
The Roman catholic Church has Eastern Rite Churches. These are churches whose entire ritual is Eastern Orthodox, with a single exception. That exception is that in their Nicene Creed they says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from “the Father and the Son” while Eastern Orthodoxy says the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the Father.
Both churches have murdered and demand a lot of people over that.
Jesus said “of such is the Kingdom of Heaven,” referring to children. Those must have been some extraordinary children if they stayed awake at night worrying about whether the Holy proceeds from the Father and the Son or just from the Father.
Anyway, this is called the filioque, and having the right filioque is what God is all about, say the theologians.
I think I already pointed out that all theologians are psychopaths.
Anyway, Eastern Rite churches are interesting. The Ukrainian Eastern Rite Church has millions of members. The Melkite and Marionite Churches, both Lebanese Eastern Rite, make up most of the Christian population of Lebanon, which used to be the only Arab country with a Christian majority.
Eastern Rite priests are Roman Catholic priests, but they are married. In the Orthodox Church a priest can be married if he marries before ordination. A lot of Orthodox priests finish seminary and put off their ordination until they are married. Eastern Rite priests do the same thing.
I said, “Eastern Rite priests are Roman Catholic priests, but they are married. ” An Eastern Rite priest would not like that sentence. They insist that they are Orthodox. The local Greek Orthodox priest told me that part of their regular reading is Melkite writings.
The Catholic Church recognizes an Orthodox priest and an Orthodox service to be as valid as a Catholic one, and vice-versa.
So recently the Melkite Church asked that their members be allowed to go to either Orthodox or Roman Catholic services, as they chose, in the many places where there is no Melkite Church. It was the Pope who refused, for all his talk about Church Unity.
Women Priests?
St. Francis Xavier (Xavier College), heir to Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, went to India, had most of his ministry there, and died there.
Xavier would not take Mass from Indian priests because they were colored.
Xavier had the same problem with brown priests that American Catholics will have with female priests after their church backs down on that, too.
Why Big Business Loves Big Government
Posted by Bob in How Things Work on 6/20/2004
If you read the next article, and then THINK about it, you will see why Big Business loves Big Government. Unfortunately most people won’t THINK about it. They will either forget it, or they will grab the nearest article they can find and forward it to me with the note, “This says something like what you are saying.”
So while I have your attention, let’s concentrate on what I AM saying.
I have been a ham radio operator on and off for fifty years, and I tell you there is nothing complicated about providing that cable service you pay a fortune for. You need a big dish and some electronics. What makes it so expensive is the city rules, the FCC rules, the state rules, the reams of paperwork and lawyer hours to get the monopoly each city gives out to cable service providers.
Then there is affirmative action and a bunch of other regulations it makes me tired to think about, much less list.
And you pay for all of that.
And the last thing a cable company has to worry about is you.
And you never question that. You would have to fight the cable company, the lawyers, the city, the FCC, the state, and all the rest.
So your cable company is a big business just because of the lawyers, the city, the FCC, the state, and all the rest. So that big business, the cable company, just LOVES the lawyers, the city, the FCC, the state, and all the rest.
Please don’t send me an article that says “the same sort of thing you said” in 5,000 words or more.
I just SAID what I said.
Only the Government Can Stop Space Exploration
Posted by Bob in Political Correctness on 6/20/2004
A tiny private group is sending a little rocket into space. They are doing it to win a prize.
Before long, space exploration will be done privately at far less expense than the giant government projects. Technology is moving fast and satellites have proven there is big money out there.
Only the government can get in the way. If the government can make regulations to protect anyone who takes a rocket into space, they can make it enormously expensive. Today’s government would never have allowed Lindbergh to cross the Atlantic. Several men had already died trying it, and he was in an overloaded craft.
The government would have stopped Lindbergh for his own good.
The government can set up requirements to make sure that only very expensive craft can be sent up, for the pilots’ own good.
And what happens when it comes back down? When governments sent up thousands of space craft, no one said they couldn’t do it because they could kill somebody when they came down, but private people sending up such craft is an entirely different matter.
This will be a lawyer’s bonanza. Soon there will be lawsuits requiring hugely expensive precautions to be sure those crafts come down in predictable places. Even dropping them in the sea might not do it. What about endangered animals?
Does this sound like a joke? I remember when the idea that California was considering denying benefits to illegal aliens was looked upon a joke. Before then it never occurred to anybody that illegal aliens had a right to public benefits.
The government and the lawyers can force anyone going into space to spend huge sums on pilot safety, affirmative action, flight paths for re-entry, and a long list of other things. By piling up regulations, government and lawyers can make space exploration prohibitively expensive for small businesses.
For their own good, of course.
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Bob's first book - 1976 
A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES
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THE NEW RIGHT PAPERS
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Why Johnny Can't Think
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