Castro's useful idiots

Castro was an evil dictator. People who say nice things in his memory are wrong

Lastly, for all of Castro’s ranting about the exploitive nature of capitalism, it takes a truly mercenary mind to come up with the schemes his regime employed to garner hard currency — from drug-running, to assassinations to, well, vampiric behavior. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights reported in 1966 that 166 Cuban prisoners were executed on a single day in May of that year. But before they were killed, they were forced to undergo the forced extraction of an average of seven pints of blood from their bodies. This blood was sold to Communist Vietnam at a rate of $50 per pint. Those who underwent the bloodletting suffered cerebral anemia and a state of unconsciousness and paralysis. But that didn’t stop the executions; the victims were carried on a stretcher to the killing field where they were then shot.

Why 'Starship Troopers' Is the New 'The Art of War'

I first read Starship Troopers in 1959. The book is much better than the movie. After reading this review in Popular Mechanics I will read it again.  Robert Heinlein was a commentator on many social issues well ahead of his time. Consider this quotation on Socialism

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck. 

Read more about Robert Heinlein here

The last communist city

Anyone sad about the passing of that famous world leader, or enthusiastic about socialism, should read this article from City Journal "The Last Communist City". A visit to the Havana that tourists never see. Be sure and read the part about the free health care that Michael Moore is so enamored with.

Bonus article by Glenn Reynolds: Castro and his ilk showed us that under socialism, the powerful grow rich — and everyone else grows poor. I'm not sure why this is in the "opinion" category; it's just facts.

Under capitalism, the rich grow powerful. Under socialism, the powerful grow rich — and everyone else grows poor.

Is Trump a racist homophobe like liberals say?

Anybody who things that the way the media has described Donald Trump should read this article by a person who really doesn't like him.

Discover an author that's been here all your life

The Faith and Fiction of Madeleine L’Engle in a Politically Correct World is an article about an author that writes both award-winning children's books and life-changing non-fiction with Christian values. Consider "A Wrinkle in Time" for your grandchildren or "Walking on Water..." for yourself.

A new edition of L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art was released recently, offering a look at a woman who walked and wrestled in the light of faith. The book’s title, which draws on scenes from the New Testament, emerged from L’Engle’s belief that art and faith can never be separated

Read the article, then explore her books on Amazon

The American experiment with socialism

Socialism keeps popping up despite all the evidence that it doesn't work, doesn't feed the people (see Venezuela), and doesn't make for prosperity. People are treated equal--equally bad (except for the leaders of course). Because children are not educated in America, socialists like Bernie Saunders can make a credible run to be nominated for president. Since the Left is lacking in logic, they maintain their enthusiasm for the idea.

As is his annual custom, Rush Limbaugh tells the story of the Pilgrims experiment with socialism.

The New York Times collects the columns

If you are a real enthusiast for political commentary, I recommend this link where the New York Times has conveniently placed a collection of columns. I particularly suggest you read the first by Paul Krugman, possibly the most ignorant economist ever to win a Nobel Prize. He predicts disaster, but the market has hit a new all-time high since the election. The market is always smarter than the economists.  Further down there is some pretty good wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Are Donald Trump and the Republican Party racist?

The racist label is ubiquitous in the writings of columnists and liberal reporters. It's a Democrat Party talking point. But is there a shred of evidence that there is any truth to the accusation?

D. C. Mcallister examines the charges in detail, an article worth reading

The Supreme Court elected Donald Trump

Judicial Activism Set the Stage for Trump Win

The people don't like jurists writing their own laws. What is referred to as "judicial activism" was the number one reason Trump voters gave for their presidential choice.  Hillary was widely viewed as being in favor of using the courts to advance liberal causes, especially gun control, and there was widespread fear of what she could do to lean the court to the left.

The conservatives were particularly upset when the Court read into the Constitution a right to marry between people of the same sex. Other decisions were troubling, such as the support for Obamacare. For Trump voters, the Supreme Court was the bottom line regardless of how people felt about Trump.

Global Warming Roundup

I am skeptical about global warming on several issues.

1. Is it real, considering that satellite records show no global warming in 18 years?
2. The models that are used to predict global warming don't seem to match the atmospheric temperatures.
3. Is it really that bad for the planet and the people?
4. Is it worth raising the cost of everything for minimal results?
5. Do we really trust those folk who adjust the numbers to make their case?

Here are comments from reputable scientists who are quite a bit more knowledgeable than I

Renowned Princeton Physicist Freeman Dyson: ‘I’m 100% Democrat and I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on climate issue, and the Republicans took the right side.

Nobel Prize-Winning Scientist Who Endorsed Obama Now Says Prez. is ‘Ridiculous’ & ‘Dead Wrong’ on ‘Global Warming’

Green Guru James Lovelock reverses belief in ‘global warming’: Now says ‘I’m not sure the whole thing isn’t crazy

Politically Left Scientist Dissents – Calls President Obama ‘delusional’ on global warming

Why did Hillary lose Ohio?

Rust Belt Dems broke for Trump because they thought Clinton cared more about bathrooms than jobs.

The local chairman feels very strongly now that Clinton could have won Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan if she had just kept her eye on economic issues and not gotten distracted by the culture wars.

“Look, I’m as progressive as anybody, okay? But people in the heartland thought the Democratic Party cared more about where someone else went to the restroom than whether they had a good-paying job,” he complained. “‘Stronger together’ doesn’t get anyone a job.”

“The messages can’t be about ‘job retraining.’ These folks have heard it a million times and, frankly, they think it’s complete and total bulls**t,” he continued. “Talk about policies that will incentivize companies to repatriate manufacturing jobs. Talk about infrastructure … The workers we’re talking about don’t want to run computers; they want to run back hoes, dig ditches (and) sling concrete block. 

Holmes, who is African American, said it was more than just trade. Many Democrats in his district voted for Trump because they believed that Clinton wanted to confiscate their guns, supported late-term abortion and would not stop un-vetted Syrian refugees from pouring into the country. 

 

Remember the bakery that refused to cater a gay wedding? Payback

Brad Avakian was an obscure candidate for what might seem to be a relatively inconsequential position. But as it turns out, Oregon's secretary of state race provides an instructive lesson about the Democratic party's culture-war extremism.

Avakian briefly gained national headlines last year when, in his capacity as the Oregon commissioner of labor, he fined Aaron and Melissa Klein, the proprietors of Sweet Cakes By Melissa, $135,000 for refusing to bake a cake for a lesbian commitment ceremony. (Gay marriage was not yet legal in Oregon at the time.) The Kleins said they would be happy to serve gay customers, but they drew the line at participating in a specific ceremony contradicting their religious beliefs. What was especially notable about the fine Avakian doled out was its egregiously punitive nature. Owing to public outrage, the Kleins had shuttered their bakery a year and a half earlier. Aaron Klein had then taken a job as a garbageman to support his family.

Brad Avakian, a Democrat, lost an election in Oregon, a state where having a D after your name should guarantee a win. Read the article which tells a tale about Democrats war on culture.

How Jared Kushner got Trump elected.

The cover article in Forbes Magazine describes how Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law got him elected President.

Jared Kushner never talks to the press, to the chagrin of everyone in the media (especially the liberals, but I repeat myself). He sat down with this Forbes reporter to talk abut the campaign.

“It’s hard to overstate and hard to summarize Jared’s role in the campaign,” says billionaire Peter Thiel, the only significant Silicon Valley figure to publicly back Trump. “If Trump was the CEO, Jared was effectively the chief operating officer.”

“Jared Kushner is the biggest surprise of the 2016 election,” adds Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, who helped design the Clinton campaign’s technology system. “Best I can tell, he actually ran the campaign and did it with essentially no resources.”

Are liberals more anti-science than conservatives?

Conservatives are generally considered to be science deniers, with creationism or denial of global warming used as examples.  This article makes the case that it's liberals who are more likely to be wrong about science. And the media, being full of liberals, colors their news coverage with their bias; for example:

When Obama diplomatically ducked a question on the campaign trail about the age of the Earth (“I don’t presume to know”), the press paid no attention. When Marco Rubio later did the same thing (“I’m not a scientist”), he was lambasted as a typical Republican ignoramus determined to bring back the Dark Ages.

These prejudices affect research:

The combination of all these pressures from the Left has repeatedly skewed science over the past half-century. In 1965, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan published a paper presciently warning of the dangers for black children growing up in single-parent homes, it was greeted with such hostility—he was blaming the victim, critics said—that the topic became off-limits among liberals, stymieing public discussion and research for decades into one of the most pressing problems facing minority children. Similarly, liberal advocates have worked to suppress reporting on the problems of children raised by gay parents or on any drawbacks of putting young children in day care. In 1991, a leading family psychologist, Louise Silverstein, published an article in the American Psychologist urging her colleagues to “refuse to undertake any more research that looks for the negative consequences of other-than-mother-care.” 

The article discusses many examples of where science has gone wrong.

Environmental science has become so politicized that its myths endure even after they’ve been disproved. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring set off decades of chemophobia with its scary anecdotes and bad science, like her baseless claim that DDT was causing cancer in humans and her vision of a mass avian die-off (the bird population was actually increasing as she wrote). Yet Silent Spring is taught in high school and college courses as a model of science writing, with no mention of the increased death tolls from malaria in countries that restricted DDT, or of other problems—like the spread of dengue and the Zika virus—exacerbated by needless fears of insecticides. Similarly, the Left’s zeal to find new reasons to regulate has led to pseudoscientific scaremongering about “Frankenfoods,” transfats, BPA in plastic, mobile phones, electronic cigarettes, power lines, fracking, and nuclear energy. 

Read the whole fascinating article 

Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's strategist

There is a lot of false information coming out of the liberal media about Steve Bannon who was appointed Donald Trump's "Counselor to the President".  He has been described as a strategic genius by fans in the Trump organization and a racist Nazi by the liberal media. As always, the liberal media is not to be trusted. Here's a reasonable article in the Wall Street Journal about Mr. Bannon. (click on the link to the Google search engine then on the wsj.com option.

Where is the real fake news?

Facebook has been in the news lately over a bunch of fake news items posted on the site. The posts were shared widely until the amount of fake news exceeded the amount of real news. Facebook is working to solve the problem.

What I see as the real problem is the amount of fake news published on real news sites. One of the worst offenders is the New York Times, which regularly distorts the news in favor of liberal causes and worked hard to elect Hillary.  Here is an article with links to several NYT stories that turned out to be fake or outright biased.

People can easily check fake news, such as the story that said "the Pope was supporting Donald Trump." It's not so easy to check fake news when it's published in the mainstream media; you have to dig through alternative sources generally available only on the Internet.

16 best quotes from the retiring Gen. James Mattis

Marine General James Mattis is being considered for Secretary of Defense.  It sounds like Trump likes him.  He was retired by Obama, along with a lot of other fighting generals who were replaced with political hacks.  Here's a list of quotes from General Mattis from 2013  General Mattis was beloved by the soldiers who worked under him.

A 12-step program for liberals agonizing over the election

Nicolas Kristof wrote an article in the New York Times called "A 12-Step Program for Responding to President-Elect Trump". Actually, it's a 12-step program for liberals, of which he is one.

Andrew Kalvan wrote his own article "An Alternative 12-Step Response to Trump" from a conservative view. Naturally, it makes more sense. I recommend the second.

Broadway production Hamilton gets political

Hamilton has been in the news lately because Vice-President Elect Pence attended the show with his family. One of the actors took time out at the end to recite a political message for his benefit. Much discussion occurred among the chattering class, though Pence took it with good humor and demonstrated again that he is a class act.

What isn't discussed much is the price of tickets to this sold-out show. The best seats are going up to $849  which tells you something about what kind of people attend these shows. The problem for the show was that the scalpers were making significant money in the secondary market and the producers want that money for themselves.

One interesting aspect of this production is that when they put out the casting call, they specified that "only non-whites need apply". Can you imagine what would happen if the offer said "only whites need apply"?

Conflicting opinions about General Flynn

Michael Flynn has been appointed National Security Advisor by President-Elect Trump and the establishment is in a tizzy.  Flynn seems to be guilty of speaking truth about Muslims, which is not allowed in the Obama administration or his military.

You can have some fun and watch the news being biased by reading two disparate articles: one in the Wall Street Journal and one in the New York Times.  Unless you have a subscription to the WSJ, you can't read it, but you can bypass the pay wall by pasting the headline into Google and clicking on the link to the WSJ article. The article discusses the controversies in what seems to be accurate reporting.

On the other hand, the NYT describes the choice as a calamity. Starting with the headline:

"Michael Flynn: An Alarming Pick for National Security Adviser"

Biased reporting in action. Fortunately for the Trump administration and everyone who wants to be safe from radical Islam, the position does not require Congressional approval.

The fall of the house of Clinton

Jonah Goldberg has a terrific article on the Clintons,

Well schadenfreude is always a good way to get your day going. The stories about Hillary measuring the drapes are all over Washington. They literally popped champagne on the campaign plane on Election Day. I like to imagine Bill Clinton going through binders full of women — and not the Romney kind — picking out the “deputies” he’d like to work with in the White House and Sid Blumenthal letting his fingers wander over an assortment of fine Italian leather riding crops pondering his return to power. Someone recently told me that the Bill Clinton Presidential Library is built off-center on its campus in anticipation of the day that Hillary’s presidential library would go along side it.

It also seems plausible because the Clintons always planned on Hillary becoming president. It was the logical corollary for the “two for the price of one” nonsense Bill peddled from the beginning. The Clintons burrowed into the brain stem of the Democratic party, like one of those ear-tunneling scorpion things in Star Trek II, and they never left. In the process, they hollowed out the party. Barack Obama helped of course (see my recent column on that), but the Clintons didn’t mind too much because they knew if the bench was cleared of competition, Obama would have to hand the keys to Hillary.

Fun reading of the whole article

 

Freedom From Religion Foundation gets a lump of coal for Christmas

Liberals complain that radio is dominated by right wing folks like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin. They want more liberal radio programs. There's a problem; liberal radio is both boring and often lacks fundamental logic. Even in liberal Madison Wisconsin, the liberal talk station is switching to full time Christmas music for the coming season, and will adopt a new format afterwards, much to the chagrin of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Academic freedom gone insane

Professor Joy Karega of Oberlin College was criticized early this year for sharing Facebook postings that, among other things, claimed that “Israeli and Zionist Jews” were responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, and for the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in 2015.

Karega, whose academic interests include black political and protest literacies as well as social justice writing, also wrote that the Islamic State is not “a jihadist, Islamic terrorist organization” but rather “an operation” of the CIA and Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad. And she said Israel had brought down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 widely believed to have been shot down by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine.

It took eight months to fire this person, a process that should take five minutes. Can you believe that colleges think these kind of people should be teaching our children and we should be paying $50,000 a year for the privilege?  Surely someone this dysfunctional should have failed her hiring interview.

New report on Fracking and groundwater contamination

I work in geophysics, some of it oil and gas related, so I follow the fracking debate. Environmentalists oppose fracking. Movies and web sites devoted to the issue are widely available on the web and even streaming video services.  Strangely enough, the anti-fracking people are also supporters of efforts to limit CO2 production allegedly leading to global warming. They do this despite the fact that fracking has done more to reduce CO2 production than all the windmills and solar cells in North America. Because increasing the supply of natural gas, and lower its cost, gas is replacing coal as a source for electricity (incidentally, lowering your home heating bill).

Here's a new story about the environmentalists favorite study linking fracking to groundwater contamination.

Any natural gas in the ground water is the result of natural migration to the surface which occurred long before an fracking. This happens in lots of places, often to the delight of children that enjoy flames coming out of the ground.

How ignorant are college students about history?

This professor asked students to name one country besides the United States that practiced slavery. The students seemingly thought America uniquely invented the institution, not just its racial overtones.

"We have so made American slavery the focus of our history education" that most students "have no idea that slavery is a worldwide phenomenon, that people of all races across the world have practiced it." And that wasn't the only major flaw in their knowledge — students could not identify Thomas Jefferson as a president, and could not explain Marxism, socialism, or capitalism in a sentence. Perhaps ironically, on one quiz, 29 out of 32 students knew Jefferson owned slaves, but only three identified him as president. Interestingly, six of them incorrectly believed Ben Franklin had held that office.

We've transformed the teaching of history into a political act, not a historical act.

Roger Simon thinks Trump will be a great president

Simon, columnist for PJ Media, predicted that Trump would win the election back in August.

Donald Trump will prove to be one of the greatest and most consequential American presidents, at least since Ronald Reagan and possibly before. No one will ever approach Washington or Lincoln, but Trump is positioned to be one of our most important leaders and be a true change-maker, turning this country around at a time when American power and greatness were on the wane.

Although I had previously suspected as much, I was convinced of this watching his performance on 60 Minutes Sunday. What we saw was Trump in the presidential mode he has long promised and he slipped into it remarkably easily, as if it had always been there and needed no coaxing. The daffy Donald of the primaries and later was far in the rearview mirror. (Was it ever real or just a masquerade?)

 Read his analysis here

Here's another guy who predicted Trump would win: Roger Moore

"I take no pleasure in having called this five months ago. So I don't want to hear that, really," Moore said, relating a segment on the network where panelists had made fun of the Trump campaign expense report showing the largest expenditure on red hats. "...We wear ball caps. We, to borrow the Dylan line, the country I come from is called the Midwest. This Middle America thing -- and the reason why they have this anger toward the media, this kind of elitist thing... that was laughable that they weren't spending money on getting new polls or doing -- 'they have no ground game.' 'They have no ground game.' Are you kidding me?"

"First of all, the ground game has occurred over the last 30 years and this did not turn people into Republicans, because it started under Ronald Reagan in Flint, in Detroit, where people lost tens of thousands of jobs, and their lives were decimated and they were kicked out of the middle class and when Reagan fired the air traffic controllers and other unions didn't stand up and say anything or do anything, that was the end right there. And it just got worse and worse and worse for working people," he explained.

Insightful quotes from Alexis de Tocqueville

Californians voted to extend an income tax surcharge on the rich, and I was look for that quote about democracies failing when the people learned that they could vote extra largess by taking it from others. The idea of letting poor people vote to take money from rich people struck me as wrong, just like politicians tax visitors who rent cars and stay in hotels to pay for those convention centers.

Anyway, I stumbled across Alexis de Tocqueville, a visionary thinker from the 1800's. Here are some samples:

On the above subject:

A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

On Islam:

 I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.

On Socialism:

As for me, I am deeply a democrat; this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can't have it both ways.

Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude

 

Why Trump won the election

The media can't figure it out. They spent the day after the election, analyzing and hypothesizing about how the polls could have been so wrong. I went along with the talking heads, not really understanding, until late in the day Wednesday when Fox News mentioned the strong support among evangelicals, and then it all made sense.

Millions of Christians across the country were praying about the election. In the face of all that support, what could God do but swing the election to Donald Trump. As a general rule, liberals on the left don't take faith seriously, didn't call on the Almighty for their candidate, and thus Hillary didn't have a prayer.

Why did Christians support this twice-divorced womanizer? For me, it comes down to liberal attacks on Christian values. Not just gay marriage, but for the fact that a pizza restaurant can't refuse to host a gay marriage reception, or a Christian bakery can't refuse to bake a gay wedding cake, or a Christian photographer can't refuse to document a gay wedding. Why can't the gays just take their wins in the public sector and leave Christians alone? There are plenty of services available to gays; why antagonize someone who isn't harming or even inconveniencing you? Why go out of your way to make a statement and ruin a little business with outrageous fines?

So, the bottom line was the Supreme Court. We believe we knew what kind of Justices Hillary would nominate, while Trump produced a list of reasonable choices.

Of course it didn't help Hillary to be so pro-choice as to state that babies didn't have any constitutional rights.

Bonus article from The Atlantic: Why Christians Overwhelmingly Backed Trump

Update: Another writer that suggests the same reason

Pictures from the old west

Here are a series of pictures from the old west, many are fascinating

A roundup of analysis from the liberal media

The liberal media are going insane over the election results.  Here's a roundup of commentary

Huffington Post: America Has Done What Seemed Unthinkable

The New York Times: A suite of critical editorials

Slate: White Won the country is racist

Salon: A nation gone wrong . How did this happen?

The Daily Beast: How The Daily Beast Will Stand Up to President Donald Trump

Jezebel: The United States has elected Donald Trump, a 70-year-old tangerine Superfund site and a menace to the peace, stability, and dignity of the country and the future of the free world

Mother Jones: Hate Trumps History: A Reality TV Star Wins the White House in a Broken America

Chris Mathews: Hillary Won the Debates, Had ‘Best Ad Campaign’

Another reason to boycott Dunkin Donuts

Besides their coffee. It was one thing to take Christmas off their holiday cups, but take a look at this picture of a famous atheist making an obscene gesture in the spirit of the season

George Soros is spending millions to manipulate the election process

The Democrats hold up the Koch brothers as evil incarnate because they support activities conducive to right wing causes. A little research can show that the Koch's are patriotic citizens with the best interest of the country at heart. Read between the lines in this biased article in Wikipedia to see where their interests lie in the betterment of society.

On the other hand, George Soros, is working to support leftists causes. Here's an article that lists his activities to change the nature and culture of the US. George Soros is as much a hero to the Democrats as the Koch are villains. Remember this when you see the Kochs criticized on the talk shows.

The problems in Venezuela start with SOCIAL and end with ISM

Venezuela is a socialist country, lauded by liberals in the old days but now ignored. Here's a thorough article in the New Yorker exploring the problems. Worth reading. The state is failing; we should send Bernie Sanders there to tell the people how happy they are with free stuff.

Bonus story: Dana Carvey destroys socialism.  Funny of course.

Obamacare is dying and the Democrats want to blame the Republicans

Nancy Pelosi said about Obamacare, "we have to pass it so we can see what's in it".

 In “The Federalist 62” James Madison argued that “Laws must be few, understandable, and stable.”

“The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous – It poisons the blessings of liberty itself – It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow"

ObamaCare’s Chickens Have Come Home to Roost. This complex law is economic insanity, a common characteristic of things promoted by politicians who lack common sense about anything except how to get elected. The law is collapsing because it was never economically viable in the first place.

Bonus: Fewer Americans Have Private Health Insurance Now Than in 2007

Bill Whittle thinks the nation would be better off with a turnip than a Clinton

Bill Whittle always makes creative, insightful, and entertaining videos. In this one, he argues that electing a turnip (yes the vegetable) would be better for the country than electing Hillary Clinton.

Poll results over time by demographics are interesting

The LA Times and USC have plotted the way people planned to vote over time.  Right now, Trump is ahead, but what's really interesting is to dig down into the demographics and see how it affects voting preferences. Major events are plotted to see how they affected the poles. One thing is clear; if the original intent of the founding fathers was still in effect, we would have a different country today.

Watch 100 drones flying in formation--at night--with lights

Intel, the microprocessor company, created a show with 100 drones flying in formation, with lights. They took it to Germany, and Palm Springs, and Sydney. There are many versions on YouTube including the one linked above. Bringing in a live orchestra was an extra touch.

Bias in the media

Andrew Klavan thinks we should reform the mainstream media by putting some conservatives in the company of liberal operatives disgused as journalists.

The "garage" where Hewlett-Packard started

In 1938, Bill Hewlett and David Packard built an audio oscillator in a garage behind a house. The sold some oscillators to Walt Disney who used them in the movie "Fantasia". That was the start of Hewlett-Packard which became a giant company based in Palo Alto before there was a Silicon Valley. When I was a young technician, I wanted nothing more than to work at HP. One of their salesmen taught me about ethical sales practices. The garage and house have been restored and here is a photo essay.  The captions are on the right side.