Reinke Faces Life

FROM A LINKEDIN QUESTION

*** begin quote ***
Do you think we can drive new concepts, lifestyles, value systems… “Our Values – powered by IP – us / WE?”

Do you think we can drive new concepts, lifestyles, value systems… “Our Values – powered by IP – us / WE?” Can we come together and help the world through LinkedIn.com while at the same time help our own? Through groups of the smartest and brightest from around the world, can we create this next revolution online?

*** end quote ***

Implicit in the question is a collectivist concept. The “we”. Is there ever a “we”? Does there have to be a “we” to accomplish worthy goals? I answer a question with a question deliberately.

The “invisible hand” of Adam Smith’s “free market” has no “we” in it! (Like there is no eye in team?) It’s just a bunch of very greedy people each selfishly pursuing what they perceive as “best” as measure by their own self interest. Walk through WalMart and see what the “free market” produces for you.

In addition, that very greedy behavior is essentially cooperation. It’s accomplished by inducing one’s fellow man into giving you one or more “certificates of appreciation”. Satisfy another person’s needs and you get to satisfy yours.

The Mayflower colonists starved because of “collectivism” and thrived when they discovered “greed”.

I’d suggest that by chasing our own individual dreams vigorously, and unhampered by the collectivists (i.e., governments, communists, socialist, and “do gooders” of all ilks) then “good things” will appear as if by magic.

If one insists that there is a “we”, then I think those good things will be delayed.

# # # # #

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/peterson-brent1.html

How Much Did the Ancients Know?
by Brent Peterson

***Begin Quote***

The amazement at how a German monk knew what South America looked like before any European supposedly had been there isn’t well placed when such aspects were common of maps made at the time. We know that this knowledge came from maps that were very old when mapmakers compiled the information in the 15th to 17th centuries. There really isn’t any mystery to the creation of the maps themselves. The mystery is what is our real past? If we could ask these mapmakers of five centuries ago, they could not answer us. They were just the last in a long line of people who copied and preserved very ancient knowledge. Whatever our real history is, I know it isn’t the neat and tidy story we were taught in school.

***End Quote***

The hell with the ancients, how much do we really KNOW?

It seems that each week, we “uncover” more. More data, more information, more knowledge that indicates what we think we know is either mistaken, wrong, or just flat out wacky.

Just in the last few months, personally, I have read “Day of Deceit” that indicts FDR for inducing Pearl Harbor (If not actually, preventing its detection and mitigation). I read an article about another Kennedy assassination attempt prior to Dallas. And, see a flow of items that cast doubt about what was taught in “history”.

Certainly, maybe Mark Twain was righter than he knew. About what we think we know hurting us.

# # # # #

Corporate Altruism?
By Robert Ringer

***Begin Quote***

“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right,
greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms;
greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked
the upward surge of mankind.”

– “Gordon Gekko” in the movie Wall Street (1987), screenplay by Stanley Weiser and Oliver Stone

***and***

The fact is that greed is neither good nor bad. It is simply a human trait. Greed is technically defined as “an excessive desire to acquire more than what one needs or deserves.” And since no one has either the moral authority or omniscience to decide what is excessive (let alone what a person needs or deserves), what greed really means is desire. And everyone has desires – for wealth, power, prestige, love, understanding. No end to the list.

***End Quote***

It’s very interesting the paradox for greed.

One can only get rich by making your fellow humans give you certificates of appreciation. (Money!) The more you serve others the more certificates you earn. You can exchange these certificate for the goods and services of your fellow human.

So be as “greedy” as your miserable nasty grim soul drives you to be.

It means you are actually cooperating in the strange Kabuki dance that we call the “free market”.

It fascinates me that “greed” actually drives “social cooperation”.

You have to admire the Intelligent Designer’s sense of humor!

# # # # #

FROM SMALL GOVERNMENT EMAIL

***Begin Quote***

===========================================================
IN THE FIRST 5 DAYS OF DECEMBER, WE’VE ALREADY GOTTEN AS MUCH
MASSACHUSETTS NEWS COVERAGE AS WE DID IN THE FIRST YEAR – THE FIRST
365 DAYS – OF OUR 2002 BALLOT INITIATIVE TO END THE INCOME TAX
===========================================================

ABC Boston, MSNBC, Concord Monitor, Nashua Telegraph, front page
Boston Metro, WBZ, WBUR, WRKO, the Boston Herald, the Boston Globe,
Worcester Telegram and Gazette, SoCo Magazine, numerous talk radio
shows, several news radio shows, plus cable and broadcast TV news.

Six years ago, the Boston News Media tried to silence us and black us
out.

Then, in November 2002, our first END the Income Tax Initiative in
Massachusetts got 885,683 votes – 45%. We did it with volunteers, a
small budget, and advertising spending of less than $89,000.

And in the last 6 years, the Internet has become a 900-pound
information gorilla. Internet News and Opinion Media now drive old-
economy, Mainstream Newspapers, Radio, and TV News coverage.

The Internet is shattering the information control and gate-keeping by
Newspaper, Radio, and TV News Sources.

The Internet says, “No more censorship and news control by the
Mainstream Media and for the Mainstream Media.”

This is why we’ve already gotten as much Massachusetts News Coverage
in the first 5 days of this month for our 2008 Ballot Initiative to
END the Income Tax as we got in the first YEAR – the first 365 days –
of our 2002 Ballot Initiative to End the Income Tax.

See this (12/3/07) article in the New York Times’ OWNED Worcester
Telegram and Gazette:

http://www.telegram.com/article/20071203/NEWS/712030628

Or see Howie Carr’s column in the Boston Herald (12/02/07)

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1048284

***End Quote***

Imagine if these nuts can roll back the Income Tax in Taxachusetts?

It would be stunning.

# # # # #

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17438347/how_america_lost_the_war_on_drugs/6

How America Lost the War on Drugs
After Thirty-Five Years and $500 Billion, Drugs Are as Cheap and Plentiful as Ever: An Anatomy of a Failure.
Ben Wallace-Wells
Posted Nov 27, 2007

***Begin Quote***

Even by conservative estimates, the War on Drugs now costs the United States $50 billion each year and has overcrowded prisons to the breaking point – all with little discernible impact on the drug trade.

***End Quote***

Isn’t insanity defined as doing more of the same and expecting different results?

Don’t need a long article to say you can NOT stop someone from using drugs. All you can do is minimize the harm to others.

# # # # #

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/12/genocide_nearly_forgotten_by_h.html

***Begin Quote***

Through an interpreter, I asked Darina if she had any memory of Stalin. And this kindly proud old lady who has toughed through everything that humanity (The Nazis came through the Ukraine on their way to Stalingrad) and Mother Nature can throw at a person and survived it, became visibly frightened and started to shake. So many years after Stalin and the Soviets left the stage, what they did still terrifies her. She was unable to speak about it.

***End Quote***

Interesting!?

What scares the … out of a little old lady?

The thought of a gooferment genocide, what it has cost her, and what it still might do to her.

Wow, that is pretty powerful reporting. We should take heed.

It CAN happen here (i.e., Japanese Interment; the American Indian; Southern Lynchings, Waco)!

# # # # #

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2007/11/28/bitter_partisan_politics

Bitter Partisan Politics
By Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, November 28, 2007

***Begin Quote***

The reason why these issues produce conflict is because education is government-produced. That means there’s either going to be prayers or no prayers, “intelligent design” or no “intelligent design” and sex education or no sex education. If one parent has his wishes met, it comes at the expense of another parent’s wishes. The losing parent either must grin and bear it or send his child to a private school, pay its tuition and still pay property taxes for a school for which he has no use.

***End Quote***

Don’t forget that there is a whole segment of the population that are being robbed (i.e., those without children) who have “no dog in that fight”.

I’d like the gooferment out of education completely. Period.

# # # # #

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=2007-11-25_D8T4MUPO0&show_article=1&cat=breaking

Social Security to Become Key Issue
Nov 25 08:47 AM US/Eastern
By DAVID ESPO
AP Special Correspondent

***Begin Quote***

WASHINGTON (AP) – Three years after the collapse of President Bush’s plan for private Social Security accounts, Republican presidential contenders are eager to try again. Not so the Democrats, who gravitate toward increasing payroll taxes on upper-income earners to fix the program’s finances.

With the notable exception of former Sen. Fred Thompson, a Republican, presidential hopefuls in both parties shy away from suggestions that might offend their own primary voters. As a result, bipartisan commissions to resolve the program’s long-term financial problems are in. And longer waits for retirement are most definitely out.

Thompson’s proposal, by contrast, includes lower-than-promised benefits for future retirees, as well as new private accounts to make Social Security solvent for 75 years. “If somebody’s got a better idea let them put it on the table,” he said recently, daring his rivals.

***End Quote***

How about the gooferment just get out of the Social Security “business” now?

It’s Ponzi scheme. The scheme is unraveling. And, with most such schemes, the last ones in are the losers.

# # # # #

http://abcnews.go.com/US/Story?id=3902495&page=1

44 Years After JFK’s Death, New Assassination Plot Revealed
Just Three Weeks Before Dallas, Feds Uncovered Plot to Kill JFK in Chicago, Says Ex-Secret Service Agent
By CHUCK GOUDIE, WLS-TV
Nov. 22, 2007

***Begin Quote***

A former Secret Service agent has told WLS-TV there was a plot to kill President Kennedy in Chicago three weeks before he was assassinated in Dallas.

***End Quote***

Wow!

There’s a block buster. I’m not conspiracy theorist, but you have to wonder.

What else don’t we know?

# # # # #

I was doing my daily work. (I’m anal. I have a little routine.) And, wow, was I shocked to find an obit for one of my fellow Prepsters, Prep64sters, Prep-64-er-ista, … fellow high school alums.

Reflecting back, I knew so little about him. I call that my “oblivious phase” — covering most of my life. Argh! He was an “old” guy. In high school, it was our first real exposure to “different people”. In Catholic grammar school, everyone was from the same parish other than the Jewish kid and some odd folks from outside the parish whose parishes didn’t have schools. In the age band, he was one of the “old” guys and I was one of the “young” ones. Silly the distinctions that were made. Our school divided up into “smart” and “dumb”. Even within the class, we were seated by alphabet and he was close to me. It is just shocking to me.

# # # # #