Who betrayed Bin Ladin?

I was reading an about how Alexander the Great built his power based on either co-opting local leaders or killing them

and it was talking about how he knew he had to do more than just march in, if the local leader fled he had to track him down and kill him and thus our drone attacks in Pakistan and so forth...

Anyway apparently this one guy who Alexander had a hard time tracking down was finally killed by his own wife whom he was in love with and it didn't say why.

But duh, it doesn't follow that she loved him in return enough to want to spend the rest of her life living on survival food (mice, bugs and so forth.

She probably had had her fill of living that way and wanted to go back to how she lived before, which brought me to Bin Ladin.

If you want to try to figure out who squealed on him you have to ask yourself a couple of questions

1 Who did he trust (who was in a position to betray that trust)
2 Who would benefit from him being dead?
3 Were they the same folks?

In other words it was either the Taliban who betrayed him to us or it was the Pakistanis who run the Taliban who turned him in to us in return for us leaving Afghanistan.

Whomever ends up with Afghanistan after we leave is the answer to either 1 or 2 or both. Everyone gets enough of what they want, everyone saves face. And the Pakistanis who run the Taliban even got to pin it on some guys they didn't like no doubt.

Of course these are just thoughts that come into ones head when one is stuck in the head and it is based on total boredom and logic so don't quote it because it is not Gospel, it isn't even gossip, it was probably just gas.

Sen. Bob Casey; all pro-life talk, all culture of death action.

Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania may be talking big now about being against the contraception mandate in Obamacare, but this outcome was well known when he voted for Obamacare so this is just another part of his obvious and well known policy of pretending to be a pro-life and moderate democrat to the PA voters,

But in fact as we know from Bart Stupack, a democrat is a democrat first and then a candidate second. Pro-life is something they mouth in the election in order to get re-elected at which point they go back to advancing the goals of team democrat.

If you care about religious freedom or freedom of conscience then you can't vote for anyone on that team, even for dog-catcher, because even a dogcatcher position is a position and every position provides a "man at arms" in the feudal system that is our modern politics.

In our feudal system it goes something like this POTUS = King, Govs= dukes, congressmen/senators= court followers, local legislators=barons, and everyone lower than that are knights and their followers are "men at arms". Pages are still pages. Battles happen in campaigns and the wins and losses are determined by polls and at the ballot box.

This also applies to the GOP in the primary; an establishment guy as dog-catcher is just one more "man at arms for them" for their great feudal army. So in the primary we must vote for the man, but in the general we have to vote against the army that is violating our religious liberties.

In other words in the general it doesn't matter who the man says he is; we know who he really is by what team he is on. Beyond that there are certain advantages that the majority in congress have in terms of being able to pick who is speaker and set the agenda as well as who is placed on important posts up to and including in the case of the senate who votes on the supreme court candidates proposed by the president.

So no serious Christian can in good conscience vote for any democrat, even for dog catcher until as a party they recant totally and make amends.

Romney; "I'm not concerned about the very poor."

Instead of "I'm not concerned about the very poor" there are plenty of good, true and telling things that Romney could have said in a way that would play well with both the primary voters and in the general,

but what has been exposed here again is that Romney doesn't really understand the conservative position and all he is doing is trying to win a primary,

In the process of trying to win the primary he is making a cartoon of himself by saying things he doesn't understand because he doesn't believe it, but he thinks this is the sort of thing base wants to hear, because this is who he thinks the base is,

but the problem he is having is that the conservative cartoon will not win a general election and if we are smart it won't win a primary and partly for that reason and partly because he will be back to being a moderate with the baggage of having at one point been a cartoon.

There are a lot of intelligent things he could have said if he read the right articles and really understood conservatism, but instead he is projecting this insulting cartoon as a flop to the right.

1 He could have pointed out that the "poor" have more disposable income than the lower middle class

2 He could have pointed out what will happen to the poorest of the poor if the government goes under all the way, all the bennys are cut , and there are no jobs all at the same time

3 He could have talked about what is consistent with their dignity as humans which is that they should work for their bread doing useful work and that all our efforts should be to bring them to that point, not to just extend more bennys to keep them voting for the guy who is giving them out.

But he can't say that because he doesn't really have that in his heart, because he doesn't even know it, because he is not one of us, he despises us and he is probably so proud of his efforts to posture toward us while using ambiguous language that will allow him to slink back to the left as soon as this is sewn up.

That is what this sort of thing tells us, this is why they do it, and that is why we are always forced to defend this sort of clownish posturing that is jumped on by the likes of Rush as "Wow, Romney is really showing some conservatism and we have to defend him" when in reality he is just mocking us, and making us look bad in the process, and because we often fall for it he gets a 3-fer out of it.

If what Romney is is an accurate depiction of the conservatism of the political right then it is not consistent with Catholic teaching. Sure, one can make the tired old case of the GOP tends to have guys who tend to, and that it is the Democrats who are For abortion, For Same-sex unions, and trying to force us to pay for contraception, they are further from the concept of subsidiarity,

and that is all true, and so we have to vote against them, but Romney doesn't give us anything to be proud to vote for either. Newt may have articulated that "we want the poor to get a job, get a better job, and then eventually own that job" but one wonders what Federal or anti-subsidiarity program will be put into place to make that so. Newt is also recently was for Cap N Trade which would create a one-world regulation of carbon.

So I guess this leaves us with Santorum who has recently come to grips with the fact that the neo-con nation-building on sand theory of peace is flawed and may now be the best man in the race.I have to clarify this statement with the fact that the political reality in America right now is that we must either pick the Democrat or the Republican rather than a a candidate from some party that champions subsidiarity because that party doesn't exist

and that right now it is totally unacceptable to back a Democrat given the contraception mandates in Obamacare, the fact they are shutting down Catholic adoption services over same sex unions and so on. Also we must take as a given that the closest thing we have to a subsidiarity movement is "States rights" small government conservatism of which Santorum is right now our best bet.

Entering a "Steered Market"

I was reading recently about the January effect about how if the market does well in January then it will tend to do well all year. I couldn't help but think how in this age of charting and traditional rules of thumb that so much of the market is in continuous reaction mode.

The market is constantly reacting to events in a way that makes Asian Opera seem disorganized. If a certain group of folks had a large wad of cash and knew how to leverage it they could Steer the rest of the market into a buying frenzy.

Crazy? No more crazy than the fact that from 2000 - 2008 the whole economy hung like a loose tooth ready for one good shake, and that the DNC gave it that good shake in time for the 2008 election... and not before. Or if you prefer members of the DNC made sure that the last of a series of market bubbles popped in time to swing the 2008 election.

The bubble existed; all that was needed was a needle and the knowledge of how to apply it. Everyone who was familiar with our banking system knew that the mortgages were wildly out of control based on wildly overpriced real-estate with crazy LTV (Loan to value) ratios. I personally was offered a piece of paper on a house in Californication which would put me in 3rd place, "but hey, how else you going to get that kinda return?"

So the point is that with all the money at their disposal we can bet that the folks who were able to run us into a bear market in 2008 will be able to steer us into a bull market in 2012. That wouldn't make it a real Bull market, just a Steer market.

This is from a post I put on Human events comment section; sorry if it is similar the last post

I get you now Mr. Libertarian; you are a practical (in practice an) atheist who is in love with, or almost worship an idol that you call freedom but could better be defined as radical autonomy.

The difference between freedom and radical autonomy are very important because freedom is the right to do your duty and enjoy the latitude to choose to do things that are morally neutral. That is different from radical autonomy which advances this idea of rugged individuals, but in reality makes every man an island

Marriage for instance to be properly enjoyed must be supported by social and legal pressure as well as morality goodness for goodness sake (or fear of Hell which doesn't cut it in the long run, but it keeps the knaves in line). Now if you think we can have a successful civilization without successful families you are in denial of all evidence ever observed.

Put aside the baby-boomers and how they were able to say "live and let live" and yet still able to follow the law and show up for work every morning. You forget that they were raised in two parent homes (2PH) and taught morals; well not all of them, but among those not raised in a 2PH were more likely to live in poverty, commit crimes and have children out of wedlock.

Now look at their children and tell me that parent involvement from both a mother and a father is not important.I assume you think it is a bad thing to have a class of young men who were never taught the manly arts and are either helpless, worthless or in other ways do not provide value to potential employers.I assume that you understand that a girl who is raised to think that saving herself for marriage is not important, that if you teach her that mindset then she is more likely to act upon your teaching and by the time she senses that she might have wanted to do something else she has two kids with three suspects.

Few things are harder on a family then two dads and a mom per kid. First of all the courts run your life (that is not freedom) Second it is rare that they all agree on rules for the kid. Third the couple is never free of the bio-dad and he is has to pay out until his kid is 18. When same sex couples point to studies that show their kids have similar stats to kids raised in 2PH they won't tell you that the studies used 2PH where the bio-dad was the mothers ex-husband and the man she was living with now was not... the child's bio-dad.

If you believe in evolution (I'm agnostic on it as I like to see science challenged by science) then you can see how important it is to the childrens development to be raised in the balance of their mother and father. They have better mental and physical heath and are more likely to successfully pass those traits on to their children because they are also less likely to be raised in poverty, to join gangs/ commit crimes, more likely to get more education/training, and move up in life.

So what we are talking about is what studies show are the ideal conditions for producing good citizens which comes down to strong traditional families (if you look at the percentages). Good citizens are not a negotiable item in a civilization, it is especially important in a democratic republic where there is more freedom to choose. Libertarians need to understand that if people don't control themselves, historically they have always ended up being controlled by the state.

People are not machines covered in flesh; they are more like flesh you can see which is sometimes ruled by a spirit you can perceive. Libertarian (and socialist) ideology sees only flesh to be trained through reward and punishment. Since they never address the spiritual component their policies never work, and so we don't need to keep trying them.

Here is another post--

"Libertarianism is based on atheism and "radical autonomy" which deny reality of where the man with his radical autonomy came from. A man was once a child, so the "consenting adult" was once a child, raised by a family and within a community to which he owes more than he can repay.

Another problem with the "consenting adult" problem is that the so-called adult doesn't always know what he is consenting to. An 18 yr old girl who stars in a porn movie doesn't always consider how she will feel 20 years later when her sons friends stumble onto that on the internet."

Libertarians are liberals who don't like paying taxes

Libertarians are liberals who don't like taxes and regulations.Liberalism and libertarianism are both based on radical autonomy. If you presume radical autonomy then between liberals and libertarians the libertarians win every time.

However libertarianism will never work because when all the folks who made bad choices, and there will be more of them when bad choices are legal, when all those folks are at the point where they are supposed to be suffering as a result of their bad choices, starving to death and what not, they will not hold up their end of the bargain.

First of all the type of people who make bad choices are not the type of people who hold up their end of the bargain. This is because people who hold up their end are much less likely to make bad choices because they looked at the choice from that point of view from the beginning.

Next you have to realize that right now we have a lot of folks who only do the right thing because the law compels them or because social pressure compels them. Take away the laws and the social pressure will soon follow it "What? There's no law against it!"

So all summer long the ants will be producing and the grasshopper mob will be playing and then fall will come and the ants will be laughing to themselves at how wise they were to lay in a store for the winter, then when winter actually comes the grasshoppers will form into gangs and storm the anthill for provisions.

So how are liberals the same? Well first of all it is important to realize that liberals look at taxes a bit differently. First of all many of them who make good money just don't pay all their taxes; they either cheat outright and figure if they get caught they will pay up, or they get loopholes designed so that all their competitors pay much more. Another group gets their money from government and are fine with paying taxes on money they don't really earn.

Liberals simply position themselves to benefit from high taxes. They also need high taxes to pay for the welfare state which is how they keep the grasshoppers from storming the, well I was going to say anthill, but liberals are not producers. They tax the anthill and keep the ants in line by threatening their anthill will mobs of grasshoppers.

So basically liberals are smarter than libertarians because the libertarian ant, who believes in radical autonomy, but calls it rugged individualism, works his butt off thinking of all he is going to store up for winter, but the liberal termite simply waits until winter and then tell the ant that the majority has voted for high taxes and generous welfare and that he will now distribute the rich ants wealth to the grasshoppers.

Of course the termite is an important leader who has to fly around in a private jet stocked with free drinks and caviar, and have state dinners with expensive food and wine, with the best medical care and on and on.

The poor and budget cutting.

We are looking at America finally being in a position where she can no longer pay the new bills that have been piled on her. There are about enough straws to break the camels back and the DC Ruling class is still adding straws.

It would seem to those of us who have been personally successful in budgeting in our own lives that what is needed is to cut spending, or get a second job, or both. While the federal government can't get a second job they can raise taxes. They can also cut regulations that keep us from tapping our national resources such as oil, coal and farm ground.

The first option of raising taxes will be tried, but it will not work. The first problem is that the lower income half of earners pay no taxes, and will not be asked to get some skin in the game that would connect them to the pain of wasted spending. They would sooner raise taxes on the rich by which they mean anyone who makes more than they do.

In Africa a missionary friend of mine told me they can tell a man is rich because "he has meat twice a week instead of twice a year." The poor in Europe are much better off than that and can hardly be called poor by Biblical standards; the poor in America have a higher standard of living than the poor in Europe. Many have two cars, a flat-screen TV, a a lot of living space. There are exceptions, but this is the rule.

Next, we have the aged folks; as a group they tend to have more wealth than any other group, but they also include those with no means of providing for themselves and no ability left to do so. They are also becoming a group that is proportionately larger than it ever was because of the baby boom followed by the baby bust followed by advances in medicine that have extended many lives.

The population explosion increase in not happening because people are multiplying like rabbits, but rather because we are no longer dropping like flies soon after retiring. The advances in medicine have also make it possible for men to stay in the workforce much longer. Probably less than 5% of the men nearing retirement still work with their hands so if the retirement age were lifted one year, two years or even 3 years it would hardly be an unbearable hardship.

So while a sane nation would cut military expenditures by 1/3 by withdrawing from Libya right away. We could also come to the conclusion that there is no reason to be fighting the Taliban now that we have killed or captured most of the men who plotted against us including their cult leader Osama Bin Ladin. A sane nation would also dramatically cut the amount of money that goes to the fake poor and focus taxed dollars on those who truly are starving and can do nothing for themselves.

But that is not what is going to happen; too many people (the ruling class) have too much invested in the status quo. So those with defense contracts (and interests in the Mid East) will fund publications that will scream bloody murder. Many of them will also undercut efforts to drill for our own oil. The Democrats will lie about cuts, who gets what, and how bad they need it and how incapable they are of surviving without more government money let alone less.

I've noticed the poor have enough money to have turned Mexico into a drug-running Heck hole so I'm just sure that cuts can be made. In the mean time they won't so expect massive inflation, further loss in the means of production, and a bigger debt crisis than ever. If you don't have some means of production now, some tools with which you can produce a product, a place to plant a garden, then I suggest you go out and get them if you can while you still can because some time within the next few years things will get ugly and the only way we will see it through is if there is a population ready to support themselves.