FINALY!

Bill Self's Jayhawks managed to hold off Davidson to get to the final four in the NCAA's. It was a great game and Davidson almost pulled it off at the end, but the Hawks held them off.

That was one of the greatest defensive displays by two teams I have ever seen. I was so impressed with Davidson's ability to play the half-court style. They were awesome.

Next up; Benedict Williams and the Tar Heels of North Carolina.
It should be an awesome matchup, as both teams love to run, with the offensive side in favor of Carolina, and the Defense, Kansas.

I know what I'll be doing Saturday night at 9.

In re-reading some more Robert Heinlein, I came across this passage in a post-script to Revolt in 2100. It struck me as brilliant.

"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics. This is equally true whether the faith is Communism or Holy-Rollerism; indeed it is the bounden duty of the faithful to do so. The custodians of the True Faith cannot logically admit tolerance of heresy to be a virtue."

Indeed, I can see this at work among charismatic Christian evangelicals, who by taking their children out of public schools, hope to avoid the social mores increasingly being legislated into public education, and in the environmentalists, pushing global warming as fact rather than theory. In an age of instant idea exchange, the danger is greater than ever that some sweeping change in the way people see the world can take place without benefit of proof.

No parent has ever had control over what their children think, but, before the liberal wave of the 1960's, in the United States at least, you had more influence than anyone else. Since then, however, the nuclear family, the community church, and the spirit of national identity as mankind's last best hope, have been chipped away, and eroded to the point of confusion, especially among the young. Hell, even the Boy Scouts are considered a subversive organization now.

It strikes me how very much like religion, politics can be. There are certain tenets of faith that must be adhered to, or you are labeled a heretic and shunned, even by your friends.

Politician-speak is full of absolutes. All Republicans are bigoted homophobes that hate poor people and want to kill anyone with brown skin. All Democrats are bleeding-heart liberals that want the government to run everything and hate rich white straight people. Okay maybe that last part is true, but you get my drift.

Look what happened to Joe Liebermann after he stood up against those calling for an immediate pullout from Iraq. He didn't say it was a great idea to go, he simply said we need to stay and finish what we started. His reward was to lose support from the Democrat Party, and most Democrats of note endorsed his opponent in the party primary. The tenet is all wars are bad, and no war is ever worth fighting, especially under a Republican administration.

The Republicans are little better. When was the last time you heard of a Republican suggesting that maybe it would be a good idea if the Widget Corporation shouldn't be allowed to pump raw sewage into that river over there?

Looking back into history, there have always been vehement arguments about what particular direction the country would take next, but there was always some sort of balance. Right now, it seems as if the Republicans want us to just accept more of the same, and the Democrats want to rebuild the Soviet Union, right here on our own shores.

Liberals have succeeded in pulling the moral underpinnings out from our society at large, but what they've replaced these legs with is rotten wood. In a citizenry that has been taught moral relativism since birth, and that people are due respect regardless of how they think and comport themselves, how can the average voter be expected to make a rational decision with their franchise? Current thinking leaves little room for American Exceptionalism.

I still have yet to hear what change Barrack Obama intends to bring. I still have yet to hear how Hillary Clinton or Obama will pay for all their wonderful plans for a New America without bankrupting us or our children. And no-one is paying attention to anything John McCain is saying, so I don't know what that is.

I have a sinking feeling that maybe too many people in the United States are more interested in what a particular candidate is going to do for them personally, or to make them feel good, than in what a candidate is going to do for America and Her ability to remain the last best hope of mankind.

Rock Chalk Jayhawk, back to the sweet sixteen.

The Hawks made it back to the round of sixteen in the NCAA tournament tonight with a smothering defeat of 8th seeded UNLV.
It was close for awhile, but never in doubt. Now, Kansas will play either a 12 or 13 seed for the right to play either Wisconsin or Georgetown for a trip to the final four.

This is Bill Self's best team as a head coach, and although there are some fine players, there are no superstars. They are very unselfish, and it seems as if someone different every time they play shoulders the load for the team. To be sure, they have weaknesses, but if Bill Self is to get over the round of eight hump it will be this year. The tournament committee has done them a favor, by making them #1 in the midwest, and the pressing style of Georgetown, and Wisconsin has not given the Jayhawks trouble at all this year. In fact, their most impressive victories this year have come against that style of defense.

With any luck at all, they will be in the final four.

Plus Duke lost tonight, so it's already been a great weekend!

For Tim and Jack: Beware of the Blank Slates; We might get chalk dust on you.

Don't you hate when there's something you want to do that requires an effort on you part, and you know if you don't do it you'll wish you had, but you just don't want to do the work to get there?

I really wanted to go over to the coast to watch the shuttle go up, as it was a night launch, and those are so spectacular. But I hemmed and I hawed, and convinced myself that, because it was a weekday, I should do the responsible thing and just set my alarm and get up to watch it from the yard, so I wouldn't be tired at work on Tuesday. Well great, Mr. Conscientious, it was too cloudy inland, and we couldn't see anything at all. What a bummer. I should have just done what I knew I wanted to do.

Oh well, they're shooting up an Atlas rocket this weekend at night and those are almost as cool.




Truly something to see.

I'm reading Starship Troopers, by Robert A Heinlein. This passage seems particularly relevant to me during this election cycle.

"...'market value' is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average of personal values, all of which must be quantitatively different or trade would be impossible.
This very personal relationship, 'value,' has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, its use to him...and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him. There is an old song which asserts 'the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted ... and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.
Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain."

It frightens me to think that maybe a majority of people in this country, including all three major candidates for the presidency, think that the way to make health care more affordable is to have the government seize control of one seventh of our economy.

When the top 25% of income earners in the United States pay 86% of all federal income taxes, and the top 50% pay 97% of all federal income taxes we are perilously close to being past a point of no return to reign in taxation and spending in this nation. We cannot continue to create entitlements and programs without crippling our childrens' futures.

Right now it takes the withholdings of four taxpayers to pay for the social security benefits of one senior citizen. In fifteen to thirty years, that ratio will be down to two to one. In order just to maintain current levels of payments, a tax rate of somewhere around 70% per worker will be required! These figures are buried in the federal budget, but they are there.

Socialism sucks.

Here are a couple clips of a really cool band from Austin, Texas.
They generally don't use amplification when they play, and their musicianship is incredible. The members rotate depending on who's in town or available to tour, and they've been around for 20 years or so. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Asylum Street Spankers:

Good Music:



Hilarious:

Do you suppose that we would even be mentioning Barrack Obama as a viable candidate for the Democrat nomination if He, and not Hillary Clinton had lost 11 or 12 straight primaries? It seems pretty likely he'd be getting the Huckabee treatment. In a way, I really hope Clinton wins Texas and/or Ohio in order to force someone on the donkey side to start articulating whatever small differences there are in the way they would govern. Plus it's fun to watch them beat each other about the head and shoulders.

I guess I'm resigned to McCain as the Republican nominee, and the news is not all that bad for me. He is after all about the only politician in Washington who was against the Iraq war up front, but when it was a go, he was behind it even as he was calling for more troops to make sure it was viable. He was calling for a surge before anyone else I can think of.

I think he was wrong on the amnesty bill that bore his name, and his status as a leading member of the gang of fourteen makes me think he really doesn't stand for the principles he is now trying to claim, I don't think it's always a bad thing to compromise.
And it has been hilarious to see him become entrapped in his own legislation this past week, the McCain-Feingold act, as he has run out of money, and legally cannot get help from his own party.

I think, he may stand a better chance against Clinton and
Obama than nearly everyone is giving him credit for, because there are real differences between whomever the Democrat nominee is and McCain.

I think the swooning rock concert that is Obamamania has built too quickly to sustain itself for another six months without him having to say something substantial in terms of policy or direction. He is campaigning in a similar way to Ronaldus Magnus in 1980 invoking the "need for change", however Reagan, as the campaign went on Reagan was very specific in how he would limit government. Obama's rhetoric is all about growing government, and aside from class warfare, is deliberately unspecific about how we would pay for 300 billion in new spending, when as he says we can't afford to be at war.

Hillary's negatives are so high she would have a difficult time getting enough support from independents to be elected, and even democrat's seem to be tired of the Clinton slash and burn style of politics. To paraphrase Bill Bennett, It seems the time has come at last to "sick up what was ingested in the name of power."