Leany on Life -- October 2011

Some time ago I posited that the gospel taught: 1) you are to do your very best to be virtuous, and 2) if you are virtuous you are no better than people who aren't trying at all.

. . . or something like that. I was trying to make the point that I'm not going to apologize for acknowledging that I'm better than those people

I now have to apologize for saying that.

Honestly, this is the gospel: We can't do it. We can't. No matter how darn good we are, we fall short. So if I am further up the trail than someone else, there's still a huge canyon ahead that I can't cross without help. It's harsh, but we all deserve Hell. Practically speaking, you have to get yourself to the canyon, but don't get all uppity (like I did), because you can't make it across alone.

Don’t freak out—it's still me here. I am fixing to bash on some people. What I'm talking about is right brain/left brain kind of duality stuff. You've got your mathematical kind of stuff and you've got your touchy-feely kind of stuff.

This is what brought this up. Van Jones was commenting on the Occupy Wall St. crowd (the Flea Party) and said they have "moral clarity" even though their message is non-existent.

What?

No, he acknowledged that they had no message whatsoever; no substance at all. This is no surprise to anyone who's heard any of those people talk. But Jones figures that's okay, 'cause they somehow have some kind of "moral clarity."

Even though those guys don't have it, that sentiment-based element is essential in addition to the substance element. What I'm talking about is described in this article called What my Grandma Taught me About the Constitution.

We have a great document that spells everything out; lines out concrete guidelines about how things need to be done. But a whole bunch of nations crafted similar constitutions modeled after ours, and they aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Why? 'Cause that's all they had—the left brain part of things but not the character to follow it.

That's the secret of the greatness of America. We have the Law and we have the Word.

You know I never venture into religion or politics, but in the Bible . . .

James talked about True Religion being to attend to the needy and to keep yourself unspotted from the sins of the world. It's a yin-yang kind of a thing; Right vs. left brain. Religion is Charity and it's Virtue. As critical as Virtue is (doing the right things), it's sometimes easy to have it eclipse the idea of Charity (unconditional love). We may see God as someone who has this strict list of rules that he's holding us to, and forget that he loves us like crazy no matter what.

This sometimes makes us Mormons uncomfortable. But there's nothing to be afraid of in the concept of Saved by Grace. We sing "I Stand all Amazed," they sing "Amazing Grace." We don't think we're done once we say that we accept Christ as our personal savior, but we definitely believe we can't do it alone.

James said it best—we are saved by Grace, after all we do. That's why I love the song Amazing Grace—actually, I love it 'cause the chord changes are really easy (I'm not kidding)—the message is that it's amazing that such a gift was extended to us.

Which brings us to our final point. Music is a great illustration of both sides of the Yin/Yang coin. Music is a deeply mathematical precision process, but at the same time it's highly emotional and feeling based.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Read this article by George Will on Elizabeth Warren and Liberalism.

Continued below
(Best viewed with a mind not clouded by the Kool-Aid)

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The John Galt Society

It can be discouraging to look around at who's running the show these days and wonder "Where have all the grown-ups gone?"

Take heart. There are still some people who are not drinking the Kool-aid. Here's where to find them. I would suggest going gown this list every day and printing off the most recent articles you haven't read to read over lunch.

Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin is a feisty conservative bastion. You loved her book "Unhinged" and you can read her columns here.
Ann Coulter
Ann posts her new column every Thursday, or you can browse her past columns.
George Will
What can you say? It's George Will. Read it.
Charles Krauthammer posts every Friday. Just a good, smart conservative columnist.
If you want someone who gets it just as right, but is easier to read, try Thomas Sowell, who just posts at random times.
Jonah Goldbert seldom disappoints.
David Limbaugh carries on the family tradition.

Jewish World Review has all these guys plus lots more good stuff.

Or you can go to radio show sites like
 Laura Ingraham's or Glenn Beck's or Rush Limbaugh's..

If you'd like you can study The Constitution while you wait.

Then there's always TownHall.com, NewsMax.com, The Drudge Report, FreeRepublic.com, World Net Daily, (which Medved calls World Nut Daily), News Busters, or National Review Online.

For the Lighter Appetite

If you have to read the news, I recommend The Nose on Your Face, news so fake you'd swear it came from the Mainstream Media. HT to Sid for the link.
Or there's always The Onion. (For the benefit of you Obama Supporters, it's a spoof.)

Dilbert.
Dave Barry's Column
Daryl Cagle's Index of Political Cartoons
About half of these cartoonists are liberal (Latin for wrong) but the art is usually good. (Fantastic, if you're used to the quality of art on this site.)

Or just follow the links above and to the right of this section (you can't have read all my archived articles already). If you have read all my articles (you need to get out more) go to my I'm Not Falling For It section.

Above all, try to stay calm. Eventually I may post something again.

The Paper Dyno
10/07/11

Who doesn't want to know how much power their car has? (Julia! Put your hand down!) Horsepower is cool. Horsepower is cool 'cause it makes your car fast—specifically, it makes your car accelerate.

Technically, what makes your car accelerate is thrust, which is developed in your engine as torque. The rate that the torque is output is power.

Because power is all tied into how fast your car accelerates, you can find this mystical quantity by measuring how fast your car accelerates.

Back in 1994 I wrote an article for National Dragster magazine called The Paper Dyno. The purpose of the piece was two-fold:
1) To explain what power is and sort out the relationship between torque, power, and acceleration, and
2) To provide a means for the average hot-rodder to calculate how much power his engine is putting out.

You can read all about it here. Make sure you check out the spreadsheet. It has some cool utilities to calculate torque and horsepower and shift points.

(No, seriously, you should check it out. There's a wealth of information there.)

Few principles are more consistently reliable than 'projection.' People always accuse you of what they're guilty of.

Now Herman Cain is working his way up in the polls for the Republican nomination. Last I heard I think he was polling about third. I like what he has to say, but I've never seen him or a picture of him. Apparently he is black.

So Janene Garofalo, (Who? Oh, wasn't she the girl that fell in that well or something?), has it all figured out. Republican support for black man Herman Cain is proof positive that . . . wait for it . . . Republicans are racists!

I kid you not, she said that. But when democrats elected Barack Obama that proved they were not racist.

You'll never see a bigger racist than a democrat. I pointed that out when Obama first got elected—the democrats were desperate to elect a black man to prove they weren't racist, because they know that they are. Now Janene Garofalo, bless her little mongoloid idiot heart, has confirmed it for all of us.

Barack Obama is a useful idiot that the despicable racists who run the democrat party used to get the support of the useful idiots that voted for him.

You're about to see an American catastrophe of Chilean proportions, and it all started when a black man got elected President.

I hope the filter phrase "it all started when a black man got elected President" sounded incendiary enough. I'm not a racist, but I don't give two microcraps if you think that I am. I have no obligation to dissuade you from your stupidity. If the lenses you're reading this through saw racism, I would say your lens is more of a mirror.

I did it for effect, but it doesn't change the fact that it's absolutely true.

Barack Obama is a Marxist. He is an American-born American citizen, but he's not an American in any meaningful sense of the word. He doesn't believe in the American system or have any love for the nation he leads. He is not the kind of man that we would elect to run our nation.

But, because so many people were so anxious to prove they are not racist, that's what we got.

It was brilliant, really. America would never elect a Marxist. Oh, really? What if he were black? Brilliant. I feel like the cop who is conflicted by a sense of admiration for the criminal he's chasing. It was a clever ploy to install the kind of man who we would never otherwise elect to achieve the ends of the enemies within.

We are living the curse "May you live in interesting times." The protests on Wall Street are a preview of what's to come. If you missed out on Chile during Allende, here's your chance.

You wanted change? You got it, baby. Find something to grab onto.

And yes, by the way, I believe that Barack Obama is the duly elected President of my country. Democracy means you don't always get your way.

As if to prove the concept of projection, 'Joe' once started an e-mail to me with something like "I know that you don't accept Barack Obama as the duly elected President of the United States . . ." I can't remember the rest of the e-mail, but I immediately corrected him.

I don't like Obama--no surprise there, I don't like Carter, or Mondale, or Dukakis, or Clinton or bazillion other morons like them--but I have never said anything to indicate that he's anything but the President of the United States. 'Joe's' refusal to acknowledge Bush because he didn't vote for him doesn't mean I don't believe in the system.

One more time: Barack Obama is the duly elected President of the United States. Anyone who says any different is a nutcase and you should distance yourself from him.

End of ADD moment.