Claude Lyles Artworks / Estudio Cielo Azul LLC: July 2022

Friday, July 29, 2022

JP II: “The words of the Latin poet Juvenal apply to all: ‘Consider it be the greatest of crimes to prefer survival to honor, And, out of love of physical life, to lose the very reason for living’”

Mainline Florida: Link to Mainline Florida.

I am making more use of links, music and visual. Click on them and then you might have a second link to search. Some locations, such as YouTube generate revenue for your "free" viewing by running ads, so be patient. On occasion there is a "skip ad" button. Sometimes it will load and start when you go there, sometimes you need to click on the white arrow in the red box. Also, you can expand most photos and some articles by clicking on it.

I hope you enjoy the updates to my art and life as presented in this blog. IF you don't like the political stuff and don't want to receive future blogs just say so, no hard feelings. So far, only five have taken me up on the offer. With that in mind, remember: BELOW THE FOLD is where (most) of the controversial stuff is placed. Sometimes stuff is a hybrid, say humor and political. Nevertheless, I do this blog for me, it clears my mind and then I do it to share stuff I think is interesting, fun, needed to be considered, etc. I like, also, the feedback I receive, either on a specific article or the concept in general. Right now there are about 70 of you who receive this directly. Claude

ART:

LINK to online gallery that shows some of my work

Can copy and save, also. https://www.bextraordinaire.com/lyles-gallery.html#/

OTHER:

HUMOR:

I can always count on Babylon Bee for articles, here are some headlines to such:

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This was on the back of my grandson’s highchair…read the WARNING.

Until age 9 Which BB determined you could stand unassisted…The tray is not a restraining system, its for holding food…

…it is not a snow shovel, just wanted you to know in case you ever asked. 😂

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READING:

Creativity, drive, 25-30 manuscripts at once, VERY Wealthy $400 million Net Worth, grosses $95 million per year before expenses. Humble origins.

MUSIC:

M McD. STL NORCO guy

THINGS OF WHICH I FIND INTERESTING:

Coming to Lazarus’ tomb, Jesus feels the deepest emotions and begins to weep.

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July 25, 2022. MARY:

“Dear children!

I am with you to lead you on the way of conversion, because, little children, with your lives you can draw many souls closer to my Son. You be joyful witnesses of God's word and love, and with hope in the heart which conquers every evil. Forgive those who inflict evil on you, and go on the way of holiness.

I am leading you to my Son, for Him to be the way, the truth and the life for you.

Thank you for having responded to my call.”

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STL Soccer

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😳

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Oversold it”

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

In my AUDI showroom, $166,000 STATION WAGON - not SUV- take the kids to church on Sunday…200 miles per hour engine. Only two to a dealership. Both sold here right away. This one came back as buyer had a “turn of events” financially. This one was gone at my next car wash visit.

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On my lanai one day…trying to scare me as the orange neck expanded and contracted.

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BELOW THE FOLD: WARNING:

Last words of Baudelaire The style all the more decorous as the ideas become less so,

How To Erode the

World’s Greatest Military

Alienating half the country is not a

wise strategy for military recruitment.

By: Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

July 24, 2022

The U.S. Army has met only 40 percent of its 2022 recruiting goals.

In fact, all branches of the military are facing historic resistance to their current recruiting efforts. If some solution is not found quickly, the armed forces will radically shrink or be forced to lower standards—or both.

Such a crisis occurs importunely as an aggressive Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea believe the Biden Administration and the Pentagon have lost traditional U.S. deterrence.

That pessimistic view abroad unfortunately is now shared by many Americans at home. In 2021, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute conducted its periodic poll of attitudes toward the U.S. military. The result was astonishing. Currently, only 45 percent of Americans polled expressed a great deal of trust in their armed forces. Confidence had dived 25 points since an early 2018 poll.

Military officials cite both the usual and a new array of challenges in finding suitable young soldiers—drug use, gang affiliation, physical and mental incapacities, and the dislocations arising from the COVID pandemic and vaccination mandates. But they are too quiet about why such supposedly longer-term obstacles suddenly coalesced in 2022—as if their leadership and policies have had no effect in discouraging tens of thousands of young men and women to join them.

The Greatest Skedaddle in Modern American History

A year ago, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley were assuring the country not to worry over Joe Biden’s strange idea of abruptly pulling out all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The radical step was purportedly to coincide with Biden’s planned 20-year celebratory event marking his role in ensuring an iconic end of the war on terror that began on September 11, 2001.

What followed was the worst U.S. military humiliation since Pearl Harbor.

U.S. forces abandoned hundreds if not thousands of American contractors and loyal Afghan employees, a $1 billion embassy, a huge $300 million refitted air base, and reportedly somewhere between $60-80 billion in military equipment and infrastructure. That sum was nearly double all the current military assistance sent to Ukraine.

Thirteen Americans were murdered by terrorists during the chaotic flight. In response, the United States mistakenly blew up 10 innocent Afghans after misidentifying them as ISIS terrorists. The horrific scenes at the Kabul airport surpassed the 1975 catastrophic ending of the Vietnam War on the U.S. embassy roof.

The global aftermath was eerie. Russia a few months thereafter invaded Ukraine. Iran proudly announced it would soon have enough fissionable material to make a nuclear weapon. North Korea resumed its provocative missile launches. China openly talked of storming Taiwan.

The common denominator was the global perception that any president and military responsible for such colossal, televised incompetence would or could neither deter enemy aggression nor protect allied interests.

In response, widely reported furor arose among the ranks of some American officers and the enlisted. Mid-level officers especially claimed they were ignored after warning that the abrupt withdrawal was suicidal, that Pentagon grandees were lying about the dire facts on the grounds in efforts to lubricate the Biden agenda, and that thousands of Americans and loyal Afghans would be cast adrift, along with our NATO allies.

The shame of defeat and the cloud of incompetence from Afghanistan have continued to harm the recruitment efforts of the military.

The White Rage Unicorn

About a year ago Austin and Chairman Milley took time out from assuring Americans that all would be well in Kabul, to testify before Congress about the Pentagon’s effort to address “white rage” in the six-month aftermath of the January 6 riot.

Both were also asked to explain why the armed services were recommending soldiers read inter alia the often-discredited “antiracist” theories of Ibram X. Kendi. His polarizing doctrine asserts that the entire U.S. system of government, all social and political life, and our very culture are racist to the core. As a result, Kendi’s solution requires radical and overt racial preferencing and discrimination supposedly to fight such an insidious system.

Yet what was startling about the two officials’ testimonies was the utter lack of data showing any general trends that white soldiers were any more or less likely to practice racial discrimination or chauvinism than other ethnic and racial groups in the military. An array of officers defended various workshops and coursework at the military academies purporting that white rage is an existential problem in the military.

The subtext of the entire testimony debacle was that the two titular heads of the military wished to reassure progressive majorities in the U.S. Congress that they were sympathetic to the woke movement and, along with other high-ranking officers, wanted publicly to virtue signal to that effect.

In their emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion—the latest euphemisms for using race and gender quotas to assure proportional or even reparatory representation—throughout the officer corps, Austin and Milley seemed entirely oblivious that the U.S. Army depends on generations of family loyalty to the armed forces. Such heritage and legacy considerations have ensured a steady stream of recruits for front-line combat units.

In other words, over generations, the same families, drawn from mostly middle-class cohorts, have served disproportionately in combat units in Vietnam, the various Iraq conflicts, and Afghanistan. Indeed, if the military was consistent in its racial fixations, it might have noted that white males—the purported targets of the Austin and Milley efforts to ferret out supposed white rage cells— died in three wars at roughly twice their numbers in the general population.

Current analysis of the recruiting crisis reveals what almost any observer would have predicted a year earlier from the haughty virtue signaling of Austin and Milley: traditional military families are not sending their sons and daughters into the ranks. It is not the danger of combat or the rigor of military life that families fear, but the suspicion their offspring will be targeted for ideological indoctrination and coercion that is either extraneous or antithetical to military efficacy.

Traditionally, 40 percent of recruits cite the military service of their parents—not to mention their veteran grandparents. Currently, only 13 percent of recruits arrive from such military families. Yet Austin and Milley made no connection between the Pentagon's fixations on current hot-button social issues and its apparent inability to secure an honorable and safe withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Weaponization of the Pentagon

There is a general perception in and outside the military that the top ranks of the services are increasingly politicized. High-profile officers have used the great authority, influence, and power of the Pentagon in polarizing progressive advocacy roles from transgenderism to abortion—to the detriment of military efficacy and lethality. Much unhappiness with the military arises partly from the woke hysteria, the institutional disdain for Donald Trump and his response to it, and the perceived rewards for those retired military lobbyists and corporate board members who reflect a new woke creed.

The nadir in politicization came in 2021 when it was revealed that Milley secretly contacted his Chinese communist counterpart during the height of the 2020 presidential election. Milley claimed he believed that his commander-in-chief, Trump, was unstable. And so, after his layman’s diagnosis, he wished to assure the People’s Liberation Army’s ranking officer that he would tip the Chinese off about any thought of a preemptive American strike on China. Milley also ordered his subordinate theater officers to report to him first should Trump contemplate any nuclear action against China.

Upon public disclosure of those facts, Milley should have been summarily fired. By law, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is an advisory official only. The position enjoys no operational command.

Milley violated the chain of command by usurping theater authority that was not his. Nor can a military long exist, if its iconic leader freelances in contacting enemy counterparts without the knowledge of the commander-in-chief.

Can we imagine the outrage that would now ensue, if Milley should once again warn his Chinese counterpart that another president, Joe Biden, in the chairman’s own opinion, suffers bouts of cognitive debility and early onset senility, forcing Milley to take matters into his own hands? Yet such freelancing insubordination is now Milley’s legacy.

In fact, some in the retired U.S. military for over four years systematically violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, sometimes to the extent of engaging in a sort of coup porn.

In a Washington Post op-ed, retired generals Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba, and Steven Anderson melodramatically and without evidence warned the nation of a supposedly impending coup should their commander-in-chief Donald Trump be elected again in 2024.

In August 2020, two retired officers John Nagl and Paul Yingling wrote an op-ed urging Milley to simply remove Trump from office should Milley himself feel such a move was necessary after a disputed election. That was a de facto call for a possible coup d’état. But it was not unique.

Earlier, civilian Rosa Brooks, a former Obama-era Pentagon legal official, published an inflammatory call to arms in Foreign Policy. She discussed three major possible avenues to remove newly inaugurated Donald Trump from the presidency. One of her alternatives was a military coup.

For the entire Trump presidency, retired four-star generals and admirals had routinely smeared their commander-in-chief as a veritable Nazi, a Mussolini-like figure, an abject liar, and comparable in his policies to the architects of the Nazi death camps. One retired admiral called for the removal of Trump “the sooner, the better” as if regularly scheduled elections were insufficient remedies.

Aside from clear violations of Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, these officers were oblivious that nearly half the country supported the president and his policies. And so, millions of people would logically conclude that the highest-ranking retired officers, and by extension the culture of the current military, had nothing but contempt for their views and voting decisions. Alienating nearly half the country is not a wise strategy for military recruitment.

Nor is hypocrisy. The perceptions in the ranks have grown that applications of the law are asymmetrical and politically warped. Article 88, applicable to retired generals and admirals, prohibits military officers from using contemptuous words about top civilian elected and appointed officials. It says nothing about the spouses of said officials.

None of the retired officers who in the media libeled their commander-in-chief from 2017-2021 faced any consequences—reprimands, court martials, or sanctions from doing business with the Pentagon from their corporate billets. Yet one recently did.

The U.S. Army just fired retired consultant Lt. Gen. Gary Volesky from a contractual position with the Pentagon because he poked fun at First Lady Jill Biden. Note that Volesky did not suggest Jill or Joe Biden was a Nazi, a fascist, or liar —much less that her husband should be removed from office “the sooner, the better.” Retired General Volesky’s crime was mocking Jill Biden’s purported hypocrisy on the recent overturn of Roe v. Wade.

Unfortunately, the crisis in the U.S. military transcends even the Afghanistan misadventure, unsupported accusations against an entire demographic, the erosion of military familial loyalty, freelancing politicized officers, and asymmetrical applications of laws and codes.

Fairly or not, the perception among the public and our enemies is that the U.S. military has become a political entity with an agenda that transcends defending the U.S. and its interests.

Its perceived main agenda by half the country is progressive social justice, administered top-down from a cadre of elites who can implement controversial policies through the chain of command without the messy work of Congress—to the delight of the Pentagon’s newfound sunshine friends on the woke Left.

Such military social engineers unfortunately appear to share contempt for a large group of Americans who voted for a president they despised. And this is a fact warmly welcomed by our worst enemies abroad.

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Are they nuts…. 3 year olds would have no concept of what was being discussed why wou you sit them down and read this to them????????????????????

WTF?

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IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING HOW THE PROTESTER'S GET FROM PLACE TO PLACE

TAKE A LOOK----THERE IS BIG MONEY BEHIND THE FORCE TO DESTROY AMERICA.

(spelled: George Soros)

Monday, July 25, 2022

New Art and a great segment of a Jordan Peterson talk

Mainline Florida: Link to Mainline Florida.

ART:

From a group drawing session this week

16 x 12” oil on canvas board from my photo: Monterey Bay II

Other’s:

READING:

Light reading - one day…fun stories, including this excerpt…

MIZZOU:

MUSIC:

I like an old time Freddy Jones Band from Chicago - I know, I know - here are some links to their music from YouTube. You might have to fast forward through an ad or two…

This the link to IN A DAYDREAM

And link to Hold On To Midnight

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Missed these when they came out, REALLY enjoyed them.

Do you know Jason Isbell? Being a first born to a young mother, this REALLY affected me, good interview on CBS Morning.

LINK to YouTube version. And Live session and interview

Another missed it, but really like the sound, the chord changes.

LINK to MATTER. And Live version

HUMOR:

British Parliament Forms July 4 Commission To Investigate Colonial Insurrection

LONDON — The British parliament has convened for an emergency session to investigate the events of July 4th, 1776 in the colonies across the Atlantic. Sources indicate an illegal insurrection took place there that cost many lives.... Read more

I love Babylon Bee

Going To College? Here's What You Need To Pack For The Fall Semester In Order To Survive

Are you registering for classes for the upcoming fall semester at a prestigious and expensive university?... Read more

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I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.

Woody Allen, Annie Hall: Screenplay

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NO, REALLY WEIRD

😅😅😅, but 😢

😳 but 😊

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LINK to more fun from Babylon Bee

Help for Californians fleeing their state…

THINGS IN WHICH I FIND INTERESTING:

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Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris

The utility companies have thus far had little to say about the alarming cost projections to operate electric vehicles (EVs) or the increased rates that they will be required to charge their customers. It is not just the total amount of electricity required, but the transmission lines and fast charging capacity that must be built at existing filling stations. Neither wind nor solar can support any of it. Electric vehicles will never become the mainstream of transportation!

The problems with electric vehicles (EVs), we showed that they were too expensive, too unreliable, rely on materials mined in China and other unfriendly countries, and require more electricity than the nation can afford. In this second part, we address other factors that will make any sensible reader avoid EVs like the plague. EV Charging Insanity

In order to match the 2,000 cars that a typical filling station can service in a busy 12 hours, an EV charging station would require 600, 50-watt chargers at an estimated cost of $24 million and a supply of 30 megawatts of power from the grid. That is enough to power 20,000 homes. No one likely thinks about the fact that it can take 30 minutes to 8 hours to recharge a vehicle between empty or just topping off. What are the drivers doing during that time?

ICSC-Canada board member New Zealand-based consulting engineer Bryan Leyland describes why installing electric car charging stations in a city is impractical: “If you’ve got cars coming into a petrol station, they would stay for an average of five minutes. If you’ve got cars coming into an electric charging station, they would be at least 30 minutes, possibly an hour, but let’s say its 30 minutes. So that’s six times the surface area to park the cars while they’re being charged. So, multiply every petrol station in a city by six. Where are you going to find the place to put them?”

The government of the United Kingdom is already starting to plan for power shortages caused by the charging of thousands of EVs. Starting in June 2022, the government will restrict the time of day you can charge your EV battery. To do this, they will employ smart meters that are programmed to automatically switch off EV charging in peak times to avoid potential blackouts.

In particular, the latest UK chargers will be pre-set to not function during 9-hours of peak loads, from 8 am to 11 am (3-hours), and 4 pm to 10 pm (6-hours). Unbelievably, the UK technology decides when and if an EV can be charged, and even allows EV batteries to be drained into the UK grid if required. Imagine charging your car all night only to discover in the morning that your battery is flat since the state took the power back. Better keep your gas-powered car as a reliable and immediately available backup! While EV charging will be an attractive source of revenue generation for the government, American citizens will be up in arms.

Used Car Market

The average used EV will need a new battery before an owner can sell it, pricing them well above used internal combustion cars. The average age of an American car on the road is 12 years. A 12-year-old EV will be on its third battery. A Tesla battery typically costs $10,000 so there will not be many 12-year-old EVs on the road. Good luck trying to sell your used green fairy tale electric car!

Tuomas Katainen, an enterprising Finish Tesla owner, had an imaginative solution to the battery replacement problem—he blew up his car! New York City-based Insider magazine reported (December 27,2021): “The shop told him the faulty battery needed to be replaced, at a cost of about $22,000. In addition to the hefty fee, the work would need to be authorized by Tesla…Rather than shell out half the cost of a new Tesla to fix an old one, Katainen decided to do something different… The demolition experts from the YouTube channel Pommijätkät (Bomb Dudes) strapped 66 pounds of high explosives to the car and surrounded the area with slow-motion cameras…the 14 hotdog-shaped charges erupt into a blinding ball of fire, sending a massive shock wave rippling out from the car…The videos of the explosion have a combined 5 million views.”

We understand that the standard Tesla warranty does not cover “damage resulting from intentional actions,” like blowing the car up for a YouTube video.

EVs Per Block In Your Neighborhood

A home charging system for a Tesla requires a 75-amp service. The average house is equipped with 100-amp service. On most suburban streets the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla. For half the homes on your block to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly overloaded.

Batteries

Although the modern lithium-ion battery is four times better than the old lead-acid battery, gasoline holds 80 times the energy density. The great lithium battery in your cell phone weighs less than an ounce while the Tesla battery weighs 1,000 pounds And what do we get for this huge cost and weight? We get a car that is far less convenient and less useful than cars powered by internal combustion engines.

Bryan Leyland explained why:

“When the Model T came out, it was a dramatic improvement on the horse and cart. The electric car is a step backward into the equivalence of an ordinary car with a tiny petrol tank that takes half an hour to fill. It offers nothing in the way of convenience or extra facilities.”

Our Conclusion

The electric automobile will always be around in a niche market likely never exceeding 10% of the cars on the road. All automobile manufacturers are investing in their output and all will be disappointed in their sales. Perhaps they know this and will manufacture just what they know they can sell. This is certainly not what President Biden or California Governor Newsom are planning for. However, for as long as the present government is in power, they will be pushing the electric car as another means to run our lives. We have a chance to tell them exactly what we think of their expensive and dangerous plans when we go to the polls in November of 2022.

Dr. Jay Lehr is a Senior Policy Analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute. He is an internationally renowned scientist, author, and speaker who has testified before Congress on dozens of occasions on environmental issues and consulted with nearly every agency of the national government and many foreign countries. After graduating from Princeton University at the age of 20 with a degree in Geological Engineering, he received the nation’s first Ph.D. in Groundwater Hydrology from the University of Arizona. He later became executive director of the National Association of Groundwater Scientists and Engineers.

Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition, and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute. He has 40 years of experience as a mechanical engineer/project manager, science and technology communications professional, technical trainer, and S&T advisor to a former Opposition Senior Environment Critic in Canada’s Parliament

They do not need to have an advanced degree in mathematics to understand the term “Overload”! The average person, no matter where you live, can quickly identify the political feel-good sensation that is being attempted by those short sighted individuals who are promoting the EV revolution….Vehicle manufacturers, Charging station builders, Transmission Line contractors, Battery producers….etc. “It’s Magic”….and you are saving the planet by creating less pollution as you get rid of your gas burning vehicle and take out a five year loan to pay for the shiny new $60,000 electric car. No more fill-ups at the service station and the global warming is solved. You can now sit back and imagine the new polar ice formations that are providing a safe environment for the Polar Bears, Seals, Penguins that we all adore. We have done our part saving humanity….and you can see the smile on little Greta Thunberg’s face! BUT WAIT….why are we losing power at our house?

Well the short answer is….We failed to understand that our electrical grid reached max capacity and was overloaded when all of the EV’s were plugged in tonight at the same time. The next short answer is…..where do you think the energy came from to supply the grid in the first place? It sure was not from Wind or Solar….nor from any other alternate energy source we use which, when all combined, only provides 7% of today’s use demand It was from the traditional combustible resource called Hydrocarbons!

Until we discover a non-hydrocarbon energy source that is efficient and safe, GET OVER IT….we are committed to Oil & Gas!

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Unusual obit name: Schimmelpfennig

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From the WSJ:

The heart of every electronic clock is a tiny tuning fork around a 10th of an inch long. It’s normally made of quartz, which is why we talk about quartz watches. And it is astonishingly good at keeping time.

Quartz is a rigid lattice of silicon and oxygen atoms, and it’s possible to make almost perfect crystals of it artificially. So it’s relatively straight forward to create a quartz crystal in the shape of a tuning fork. It will ring just like the tuning forks that musicians use, with the prongs vibrating at a specific frequency. But the really useful thing about quartz is that if the crystal is deformed or squashed slightly, a tiny electrical voltage is generated on its surface. And the reverse is true: If you apply a voltage, the crystal will deform. This is the piezoelectric effect, and it is what connects the mechanical tuning fork to the world of electronics.

As the tuning fork starts to vibrate, it generates a voltage which is connected to a circuit. The circuit then takes the signal and feeds it back to the tuning fork, providing a bit of energy that keeps the ringing going. Like pushing a child on a swing, it might take some extra energy to get started, but after that you only have to provide a bit of a push at exactly the same point in each swing, and it will just keep going.

The frequency of the tuning fork (the “note” at which it rings) depends on the size and shape of the crystal, and so the engineer making it can choose. In practice, all digital watch designers use the same frequency, one that is too high for us to hear, about three octaves above the highest note on a standard piano. At this frequency the prongs vibrate 32,768 times every second, which makes counting time easy. You can make an electrical circuit that only counts every other tick, halving the frequency, and if you start at that figure and halve it 15 times in all, you get an electronic tick exactly once every second. Now you have a clock.

This is all a digital clock is—a very precise tuning fork, an electronic circuit to dribble in just enough energy to keep it going, and a counter for the output.

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This is the same analogy used by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman.

Suppose that every day, ten men, all high school classmates, and friends, some very successful, others less so, and some struggling financially…but all friends who enjoy each other’s company, play a weekly game of basketball at a local gym. They decide to go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100...

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this...

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7..
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest and most successful) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar each week following their basketball game and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your weekly beer by $20". Drinks for the ten men would now cost just $80! “Wow,” they all exclaimed…. “a 20% reduction…that’s incredible! Lift your glasses and toast the bartender,” they exclaimed!

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So, the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share? (Democrats are all about everyone getting their fair share, right?)

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. That certainly was not the intention!

WHAT TO DO????????

Thinking quickly, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay. And So…….

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% saving).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% saving).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% saving).

OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS:

Each of the six was much better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, all the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20 saving," declared the sixth man. He pointed angrily to the tenth man, "but he got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar too. It's unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!"

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back, when I got only $2? I’m a better player than he is anyway! The wealthy get all the breaks!" (it’s unclear if that man was a Democrat but what he says seems consistent with the democratic way of looking at things)

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison, "we didn't get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!" These four are clearly cut from the Democrat mold.

The nine men, filled with anger, then surrounded the tenth and beat him up, and drove him out of town! The next week the tenth man didn't show up for the basketball game or the after-game drinks. So, the nine others sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, students, teachers, professors, journalists, government ministers, and citizen voters all, is how our tax system works. The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the business atmosphere is somewhat friendlier. Get the picture? Democrats have been using this lie for decades. You can certainly increase taxes and say they are targeted to impact the wealthy, but the wealthy will leave and then the taxes fall on the middle class. Rarely do Democrats point that out in any of their rhetoric

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UPDATED 10:51 AM PT – Thursday, June 30, 2022

New data shows a spike in disability rates among US adults coincided with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, which is raising more questions about adverse effects. According to the data by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the number of Americans with disabilities suddenly increased last year from 30 million to 32.7 million people.

The St. Louis Fed data also shows the rate of disability remained stable between 2016 and 2020. The alarming rise in disabilities began in early 2021 just as Americans were mandated to take experimental vaccines for COVID-19. The report also shows more than 14,000 Americans reported being permanently disabled after receiving COVID shots.

In the meantime, some medical professionals are questioning the vaccine’s exact side effects.

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A SCOTUS Judge with common sense…

During an oral argument, the court's three more liberal members compared Kennedy's prayers to the hypothetical prayers of other school officials, which would not be permitted. Members of the court's six-member conservative majority, meanwhile, asked questions comparing Kennedy's prayers to other, non-religious actions.

Justice Clarence Thomas asked how the school district would respond if rather than taking a knee for prayer, the coach took a knee on the field during the national anthem in "moral opposition to racism."

Monday, the justices ruled that the coach's prayer was protected by the First Amendment.

"The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike," wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch for the majority.

The case forced the justices to wrestle with how to balance the religious and free speech rights of teachers and coaches with the rights of students not to feel pressured into participating in religious practices.

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