8.8 in Chile and aftershocks

64 as I'm typing this.

Water receding in Long beach, one surge in Hilo.

Looks very, very bad.

Pray for the folks at risk.



Psalm 121
A song of ascents.
1 I lift up my eyes to the hills—
where does my help come from?

2 My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.

3 He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;

4 indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The LORD watches over you—
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;

6 the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.

7 The LORD will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;

8 the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.

Snow!

Oy.

Bingo.

This is not going to end well. The branding continues.

What percentage will be amenable? What percentage are in it for power? What percentage will embrace identity politics? What percentage will join the personality cult? What percentage will go back to sleep after the elections? Will there be enough remaining to accomplish even a slowing of the decline and fall?

Look, Sarah can get up there and talk about small government, but she is supporting John-Cap-And-Trade-Amnesty-McCain(-Feingold). And lest you claim it's payback for being on his ticket in 2008, she's also supporting the truly awful Lindsey Graham.

Politics as usual.

She can wear her Israeli flag pin and talk about supporting Israel, but she endorsed the "two-state solution". Yeah, because turning Judea and Samaria over to the Arabs is a great idea, they've done so well ruling Gaza.

You know what? God's not down with that. And she's claiming His name.

You still wanna support her, go right ahead. But as for me, I shun this kinda crap.

Prince Charles vs. Enlightenment

The thing about this article that disturbs me most is that he's out in the open about it. And how many of the commenters there agree with him.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7013764.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1515793

The Prince of Wales has never been a man to suffer from a lack of enemies, from modern architecture to intensive farming. Yesterday, however, he declared war on a new — but also ancient — adversary: the Enlightenment.

Even by the Prince’s standards, his opposition to the system of beliefs that came to dominate thinking in the 18th century and has held sway ever since is an ambitious one, if a little tardy.

Long regarded as the foundation of contemporary political and intellectual culture, by way of influences ranging from the American Declaration of Independence to the scientific method as embraced from Isaac Newton on, the Enlightenment was based on the belief that all society’s ills could be vanquished by the application of reason.

Its seminal figures included the likes of Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Voltaire and Rousseau. To Prince Charles, however, it is old hat. “I was accused once of being the enemy of the Enlightenment,” he told a conference at St James’s Palace. “I felt proud of that.”
...
“We cannot go on like this, just imagining that the principles of the Enlightenment still apply now. I don’t believe they do. But if you challenge people who hold the Enlightenment as the ultimate answer to everything, you do really upset them.”

rea⋅son
  /ˈrizən/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [ree-zuhn] Show IPA

–noun
1. a basis or cause, as for some belief, action, fact, event, etc.: the reason for declaring war.
2. a statement presented in justification or explanation of a belief or action.
3. the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences.
4. sound judgment; good sense.
5. normal or sound powers of mind; sanity.
6. Logic. a premise of an argument.
7. Philosophy.
a. the faculty or power of acquiring intellectual knowledge, either by direct understanding of first principles or by argument.
b. the power of intelligent and dispassionate thought, or of conduct influenced by such thought.
c. Kantianism. the faculty by which the ideas of pure reason are created.

–verb (used without object)
8. to think or argue in a logical manner.
9. to form conclusions, judgments, or inferences from facts or premises.
10. to urge reasons which should determine belief or action.

–verb (used with object)
11. to think through logically, as a problem (often fol. by out).
12. to conclude or infer.
13. to convince, persuade, etc., by reasoning.
14. to support with reasons.



You know what happens when you stop using reason? You behave irrationally, insanely, without good sense. You become illogical, unable to form conclusions, judgments, or inferences from facts or premises.

You can no longer support your beliefs or actions with facts, so you are left with emotion and blind faith.

And when you can't convince or persuade people by reason, you resort to manipulation---through guilt, shame, or intimidation. And when you can't push someone's buttons, you resort to use of force.

Dictators love this.

The opposite of enlightenment is bewilderment, confusion, ignorance.

The Enlightenment was about building, edifying, establishing order. Declaring war on it will bring destruction and chaos.

Wacky fun!