Put Your Fingers in the Dike People

Why I'm not worried about coastal flooding.

by Tom King

(c) 2009 - Some rights reserved

The government of Australia really has bought into the whole global climate change thing. They recently released a warning to Aussies that the ocean will rise 1.1 meters over the next 90 years endangering everything within 500 meters of the coast.

Okay, so somebody explain this to me.  1.1 meter is about 3 1/2 feet. You mean people built buildings along the coasts that are less than 3 1/2 feet above sea level.  What idiot did that? I've seen that surfing movie where they went to Australia to surf.  I know some of those waves are more than 3 1/2 feet tall.  So how come everybody's basement isn't full of water every time the surf gets a little gnarly?

And are you telling me that some guy with a 50 million dollar building in the flood zone is going to sit there while the ocean fills up the mezzanine?  You're telling me, he's NOT going to spend 50 or 60 grand to help build a 5 foot dike along the shore line to prevent flooding?  I mean it worked for the Dutch for crying out loud.  Why not for Australia?  Shoot, while we're at it, why not move the new dikes a bit farther out and add a little more expensive real estate to the coastline?

Are you telling me that in 90 years we can't move a little dirt down to the beach and raise the sand 3 and a half feet?  Plant a little grass?  Human beings are a bit more resourceful than the doom and gloomers think we are.  I think we can handle 3 and a half feet in 90 years.  We do have a lot of dump trucks and bull dozers.  Think of it as lots of new "green" jobs.  


Besides, apparently the leading global climate change scientists have been making data up all this time because - let me get this straight - they were afraid that if they couldn't get the data to prove global warming was happening in time, it might be too late by the time they did get it to stop it so in order to save us all from ourselves they lied about the data in order to frighten everyone into going along with a gigantic effort to stop global warming which they actually don't have any real proof for and then when the annual temperatures started to drop they renamed it global climate change hoping no one would notice it was getting cooler and so they kept on with the whole thing because, hey, even if the climate doesn't change, a massive socialist world government and redistribution of wealth will be good for everybody anyway.

Man, the 60's must have been really good to these guys......

Doing It To Ourselves - Misdirection and Road to the Apocalypse

The massive political upheaval that is taking place in America these days reminds me of a David Copperfield magic show. Our eyes are drawn from one illusion to another - a flash here, a flourish there while all the real action happens behind false walls and below trap doors. The news media trumpets the triumphs of the Obama administration. The leftists wail that it's not enough while the fringe right yammers on about conspiracies.  Now the fringies are saying Ronald Reagan was a big conspirator and Abraham Lincoln, a socialist and a bad man.

Apparently, since pundits like Glenn Beck have finally convinced people that the president and the Congress are up to something underhanded, the kook fringe feels the need to attack traditional conservative icons too. What is it with these people?  Whatever it is they think they are doing, they really only aid the real deception by drawing our attention eleswhere.  The irony is that both tree-huggers and gun nuts are helping disguise the real threat taking place in broad daylight in front of their noses.

The progressives have told us plainly that they want to turn the U.S. into a communist worker's paradise complete with massive government and an elite cadre of privileged "leaders" we all look up to and adore.  (Obama - mmmmm, mmmmmm, mmmmmmm!)

Confusion has always been Satan's most powerful tool and even more so as the Apocalypse.  The battle lines are drawn, but the lines may not be where you think they are. They aren't between lassez-faire capitalism and progressive socialism as some would have us believe, nor between Christian and Muslim, Jew and Gentile or Catholic and Protestant.  They are drawn between good and evil; between those who seek the light and those who cherish darkness; between those for whom lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, wrath and pride are a way of life and those who embrace chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.

Quick, which list made you to smile?  Which list caused you to curl up your lip in a sneer of derision?  If one of those lists of character attributes either appeals to you or disgusts you, you may have already chosen sides.  If you are like most of us, you probably halt between two opinions.  It's amazing, though, how often the great philosophical debates of the times have been between two evil choices rather than between good and evil - between sloth and greed rather than between sloth and diligence.  The devil likes to conduct those kinds of battles; the ones that, whichever side you choose, you lose!

But as for me and my house.......

Clinging To The Nearest Chunk of Solid Earth

By Tom King © 2009 – All Rights Reserved

Have you ever felt like the Earth was shifting underfoot and there was nothing you could do but cling to the nearest chunk of ground and hang on for dear life. This weekend the Earth has moved for me. In the larger world, decisions are being made that could turn our world upside down. In the smaller world, our family has decided to move from the house that has been our home for the past decade – the place where my son died.

This will be a welcome relief for Sheila from the constant reminders that torment her. He died here and there are times she feels like she cannot bear it. Moving will help in her recovery from the PTSD that has plagued her for almost 4 years. I am certain of that.

I actually love the place we’re going. I’ll have a dock, fishing boat, our own beach and a spectacular view of the night sky. Not only that, but the place is cheaper and better built than where we’re living now. It’s a good thing. I know that. So why don’t I feel better about it?

I know when I walk out of this place, a piece of my heart stays here. Our beagle, Suzy, my old sailing partner, is buried in the back yard. It seems silly to even think about that. Our last Christmas with Micah was here. I can still see him joking with his sister; playing music with his brother. I walk past his bedroom door and for an instant it feels like he might still be there. His pickup’s been sold for months, but I still half expect to see it in the driveway when I pull up. I grasp at little straws of fading memories of my boy that slip away from me in time’s relentless slipstream.

I should be happy we’re moving. It’s a good thing. So, thank you God for whatever you’re doing to me. Like Scrooge once said, “Since I know that it is for my good, I will go with You.”

For now that means clinging to the nearest solid chunk of ground and hanging on for dear life.

Tom

Get Your Bowing Obama Doll - Today!

 Woo Hoo kids!  Don't you want one these!

Be the first on your block to get the new "Bowin' Barak" doll.

Waaaaaaay more obsequious than the Apologizin' Bobblehead Barak doll. Perfect for playing with your Emperor of Japan Doll or Your Saudi King doll or any Eastern monarch or African dictator action figure*.  Squeeze his head and he says "I'm sorry."

*Not for use with Queen of England or Prime Minister of Israel dolls.

Schrodinger's Lawn

"Wind"
An Acrostic by Tom King


Will I with courage face the closing of the day?
 In wrapping up my life will I be done?
 No, I expect to leave unfinished business here
 Don't grieve for I have fought my war and won.


My wife and I do not have the same set of values where yard work is concerned. I have been called "afraid of manual labor" because of that lawnological difference between us. I know better than to retort. Let her take her shot. She will go inside soon and leave me out here with the fresh cut grass and forever falling leaves.

The problem is, I think, one of basic gender values. Men tend to take the longer view; pursue more distant goals than do our women. We are, after all, the hunters in the hunter-gatherer partnership. In the poem, I express a very male idea. It's not accidental that women don't really get what I'm talking about here, but men do. Men seldom really finish our work. There's always more to do than we can get done in a day or in this lifetime for that matter.That's why we tinker and tweak cars, boats, sound systems, whatever! We plan on making them perfect eventually, but we never quite get there. Next time a guy shows you something he's proud of, see if doesn’t tell you not only how cool and powerful whatever it is, but he'll also tell you what's still wrong with it and what he plans to do to make it better.

Women on the other hand approach tasks as a series of nest buildings. They work very hard to pull everything into a nice nest-like enclosure and kill themselves trying to tie it all up in a bow. It's an exercise in futility though. There is always something undone left outside the bow and the basket. I think it's why so many women are unhappy. It's the way my wife does the lawn.

She'll kill herself to bring the lawn to the peak of perfection, not a leaf anywhere, the lines in the dirt perfectly parallel. Every blade of grass subdued; every flower standing erect. Then she stands on the porch, looks at it with satisfaction for a moment and then goes inside before the next autumn breeze can shower a ton of dead leaves down on her nice tidy lawn. She needs to see that moment of perfect in order to content herself that all is right with the lawn till next Sunday. Next Sunday, she'll start all over trying to subdue mother nature.

Me, I figure the grass is an on-going project. I know I'm not going to beat the leaves. I can be satisfied with the yard looking only generally better. While my Sweet Baboo is inside taking a bath and fixing her hair, I sit out on the porch, play the guitar and watch the wind swirl down the dry leaves and make them dance on the new mown lawn. I am content.

My wife is also content in the house where she doesn't have to watch the depredations of autumn leaves upon her perfect lawn. For her, it's like Schrodinger's cat, the physics exercise where you seal a cat in a box with cyanide and a radioactive trigger. The idea is that if you don’t open the box, the cat isn’t dead in there because you don’t really know till you open it. If Schrodinger wasn't a woman, he was certainly in touch with his feminine side.


So, for my wife, so long as she just doesn't look at the lawn, in her mind it's still perfect. 

Men don't much get that.......

© 2009 by Tom King

You Too Might be a “Real” Princess

by Tom King c)2009

Part of the recent political struggle in the United states has been a return of the notion that "rank has its privileges" to an America that was not built that way in the first place. The U.S. was created in that "one brief shining moment" when the increasingly preposterous excesses of the nobility spawned philosophers like John Locke, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and the idea that “all men are created equal”. The idea was even written into the new American constitution.

The nobility did not take kindly to losing their privileges. Raised on fairy tales and children's stories that promote the belief that there are certain special people out there who ought to be above the rest of us mere mortals simply because of who they are. Generations of girls have fantasized about finding out they were a “real” princess. Walt Disney made billions telling that story dozens of different ways.

In the mid 1800s’ help came to the noble and would-be noble class from Charles Darwin. He famously proposed that talent and brains and, by inference, success, was, in fact, inherited and improved by natural selection. Those who had believed all along that some people (mostly themselves) were, in fact, better than the rest of us, seized on this idea and ran with it. The result was the flowering of progressivism, eugenics, socialism, communism, nazism and finally, the Democrat party - all predicated on the idea that this better breed of people should run things (and, incidentally have extra privileges to go with that responsibility).

Oh, at first the notion took a quasi-Democratic form. If by chance or dint of hard work, you did manage to "make it", it is considered self-evident that you are one of the elite. You (and your genes) are welcomed into the privileged gene pool and protected from the consequences of actions that would get ordinary mortals thrown into jail. The 16th and 17th century kings, dukes, earls and barons have been replaced by actors and actresses, politicians and corporate titans.

When are we going to give up the Hollywood-fueled notion that there ought to be such a thing as a privileged class? Well, Halloween came and went and once again this year the number one costume for girl children in the United States was - you guessed it - the "Princess" costume.


It may already be too late.

Tom King
Flint, TX

We've Only Got One Globe

The Problem With Globalization

The folks that moon after a one world government see it as the next logical step towards universal peace.  Quite rightly they lay the blame for war, violence and exploitation at the door of tribalism, nationalism, greed and corruption. The globalists have looked around for a villain and believe they have found one in capitalism.

Let's face it, capitalism is tough on the face of it. If you work hard, you reap the rewards. If you don’t – tough luck. No guarantees. Progressivism/socialism says you should take from those who are well off and spread it around to those who are not. It's sold as a more humane form of government. It sounds like progressivism would be a better way of creating a peaceful world than the apparently dog eat dog capitalist system.  That good feeling about progressive socialism lasts until you actually sit down with an honest history book.

The flaw in the progressive ideology is that it assumes a black and white world; one in which all capitalist leaders are greedy, self-interested, evil and exploitative and that socialist leaders are altruistic, unselfish and good.  It further assumes that if we only have one government, war will end. After all, who will we go to war against?  Right?

The truth is, we can't trust any of our leaders, whether they be socialist or capitalist. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Sort of. That old proverb is is flawed. There are sometimes good leaders. Power doesn't corrupt everybody. What actually happens is that "Power attracts the corruptible."  You may get lucky and get one or two incorruptible leaders, but if you surround them with all that power, you can bet there's a whole bunch of folks out there who would dearly love to get their hands on all that power and usually do.

But isn't all those separate nations out there, governing in the name of their own self-interest a very bad thing. Turns out, not so much. The United States is 50 separate government banded together, but each governing according to the self-interest of their own people. Like states, if there are many nations and one nation rises up to harm its neighbors, the community of nation states can (and does) tend to band together against that rogue nation. If there is just one world “nation” and it goes bad, then we’re all pretty much screwed. That's the trouble with breaking all your eggs into one basket. You're really vulnerable to having rotten eggs swirling around poisoning the whole basket.

 Even God does not build a one-world church.  When an oppressive one world church organization threatened to overwhelm Christendom and establish a one world theocracy, God raised up a thousand communities of faith to resist. In ancient Israel, God warned the Israelites that centralizing power in one man - in a king, no matter how charismatic or well-meaning that king might be - was a mistake. God’s system trusts no leader with massive power.  If there were civilizations on other planets nearby stars with whom we had commerce, we might have a need for a global government to represent us. We would also have other worlds to which we could appeal to for help should one planet move against us, or even if our own government become oppressive and went bad.

In the meantime, till we start building the United Federation of Planets, this world is all we've got and we have very good reasons to fear a global government. The other old saw about not putting all your eggs into one basket is excellent advice. Too much of a risk of rotten eggs to make that a safe policy.


(c) 2009 by Tom King - Some Rights Reserved