MAGICAL ROSE GARDENS vs THE BLOOMS OUTSIDE YOUR WINDOW
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. -Dale Carnegie

Truths and roses both have thorns about them. -Henry David Thoreau
-----------------

Well, folks, it's been a good run, but I'm ready to call it quits for an extended period. Blogging just isn't all that fun anymore, and definitely not worth the time and effort that is needed to post regularly--and that doesn't even factor in all the hate mail, the trolls, and the generalized sociopathy that runs rampant in the blogsphere these days.

Of course, in addition to the hate mail, I also get the other kind, and I know that a lot of you have found sustenance to battle the growing insanity by coming here. For that, I am grateful and thank you all very much. I'm sorry I haven't been able to respond to all the positive emails that I get that have kept me going for these five years.

There are many fine bloggers out there and more than enough to counter the craziness that seems to have descended on the great country of ours. I am not ruling out returning to blogging someday--or even blogging with others; but right now, with so much going on in my life, I just don't have the time to blog on a daily basis and keep it fresh and interesting. When--if--I return to blogging, expect to see Dr. Sanity in a different format. Hope and change and all that jazz.

And, speaking of hopenchange, it is sad to realize that many things happening in our nation and around the world right now are beyond any psychopathology that I could have imagined a few years ago (and I could imagine a lot).

At any rate, now seems to be the time to focus on family and friends; and do what is really essential to preserve life, liberty and happiness. I will be relocating to California in the near future to be closer to family; and I also plan on working on several projects which have been sorely neglected since I took up blogging. After that, who knows?

So, goodbye for now...and I'll leave you with some pictures from my rose garden, a place that never fails to soothe and stimulate my senses and keep things in perspective for me....


MISTER LINCOLN


CHERRRY PARFAIT


STRIKE IT RICH


MICHAELANGELO


POPE JOHN PAUL
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:22 AM |

 
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY !

Enjoy the day with your families and celebrate the birthday of this Great Country in which we are so privileged to live!

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.



- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:36 AM |

 
IT CAN HAPPEN HERE
I think Neo is on to something here:

This is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen online—a movement to repeal the 22nd amendment. You know, the one that limits a president to two terms.

Think it can’t happen here? Think again. These people set up this group on Obama’s inauguration day. I’m fairly certain it’s a very small movement now. But this can grow, depending on how much money they get to spread their message. It’s a move for Zelaya-style “democracy” in this country.

Who’s really behind it? You can bet your bottom dollar it’s not the group they themselves describe

In my profession, the key to understanding people is to pay much more attention to what they do rather than to what they say. The degree of correlation between the two is the measure of the person. And further, it is a well-known truth that the best (and essentially the only) predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

Obama has left a minimal paper trail. What we do have is a very carefully manufactured persona whose primary purpose appears to have been to obscure the
"real" person. It is quite amazing, really, how Obama attempted to hide his real thoughts and feelings about quite a lot of things (e.g., his habit of voting "present" so as not to be held to any particular opinion on most matters).

People are generally bewitched by his mellifluous words and soothing style of speaking, but the key to Obama has always been his actual behavior. Who has he actually associated with and for how long? What has he actually chosen to spend his time on? What does he actually choose to comment on and what does he ignore? (Don't listen to the words he is saying, note the fact that he is saying something about a particular event--e.g., that he chose to immediately meddle in the Honduras' presidential ouster; but to keep quiet and not to meddle in the Iranian stolen election).

Victor Davis Hanson compiles some of the most egregious examples of the disconnect between what the Democratic Messiah says, and what he does:

I don't think it has occurred to the divine ones that the administration now is at odds with the sort of ideology and attitudes Obama himself espoused on the campaign trail.

They call for patience and for confidence in Iraq — and not, in prior Obama-like fashion, dismiss our chances while demanding a strict and rather rapid timetable to get out.

They ask for understanding about renditions, tribunals, Guantanamo, intercepts, wiretaps, and Predator missile attacks as complex issues — and not, in prior Obama-like fashion, dismiss these necessary tools as Constitution-shredding authoritarianism.

They ask for patience on jobs — and not, in prior Obama-like fashion, pontificate about a "jobless recovery" when jobs and growth were far better.

They reassure us that missile defense is insurance against North Korean lunacy — and not, in prior Obama-like fashion, dismiss such investment as needless militaristic provocation.

They ask for latitude about the definition of what is a tax, what defines unemployment, and how we calibrate deficits — and not, in prior Obama-like fashion, blast obfuscation while promising "transparency."

They reassure that their planted questions, the favoritism shown some journalists, the refusal to release White House visit logs, and the arbitrary firing of inconvenient auditors are nothing new — and not, in prior Obama-like fashion, charge government intimidation and suppression of thought.

They ignore corruption in the Democratic-controlled Congress, cater to lobbyists, are not bothered by the tax improprieties of their major cabinet appointments — and do not, in prior Obama-like fashion, demand an end to executive malfeasance.

I know this is old-story politics, but two things are different. One, never has the gap between pre-presidential and in-office behavior been so wide (heaven and earth really are quite distant), and, two, the past promises of utopia have so conditioned a mesmerized media that they don't realize their own complacency in allowing an administration to use whatever means they chose for professedly exalted ends.

And, by the way, if you do listen to Obama's rhetoric, then before you swoon in ecstasy, notice how self-referential and fundamentally narcissistic everything he says is. It is always about him first and foremost. His lovely words are fluid in both form and substance; and he has perfected the art of postmodern demagoguery.

But the whole point of postmodern rhetoric is to obscure and hide the truth or reality. You can hide behind such rhetoric ("it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is" for example), but the key is to watch the behavior.

Obama's behavior has been extremely consistent--consistently leftist and socialist; consistently supportive of thugs and dictators; consistently an example of the 'end justifies the means'.

Don't think it can't happen here; it is happening as we speak; and half our population is aiding, abetting, and loving it.

UPDATE: Likewise, don't listen to what the left says their ideas and policies will do; look at what those ideas and policies actually do (and have done) in the real world:


[Political Cartoons by Chuck Asay]
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:33 AM |

 
NO BLOGGING
Sorry. No blogging today. I'm back from vacation, but overwhelmed with work.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 12:18 PM |

 
ON THE ROAD AGAIN !
I'll be traveling all day today and back to regular blogging on Thursday or Friday.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to discuss the meaning of the well-known proverb: Birds of a feather, flock together.... when applied to today's politics.



[Cartoons by Michael Ramirez]
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:09 AM |

 
BIOLOGICAL FANTASIES FROM THE SICK IDEOLOGY OF THE LEFT
Protein Wisdom discusses the unbelievable case of Swedish parents who are going to raise their child "genderless" so as to give him/her/it a "choice" what sex he/she/it wants to be at some future date:

Anonymous Swedish parents decide to raise their child genderless, or well, until the young thing decides for itself

A couple of Swedish parents have stirred up debate in the country by refusing to reveal whether their two-and-a-half-year-old child is a boy or a girl. [...]
In an interview with newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in March, the parents were quoted saying their decision was rooted in the feminist philosophy that gender is a social construction.
“We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,” Pop’s mother said. “It’s cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.”

Oh, more or less cruel then having unmarried parents? (I’m assuming here because the article studiously avoids giving the marital status of “the couple”.)

Unsurprising applause from Vagina Warriors

Some places, school districts, neighborhoods, relatives, co-parents, might make this choice a lot more difficult, fraught, or even dangerous. But part of why it’s so difficult, and turns into such a controversial choice, is that there are so few people raising their kids with freedom of gender.

Because, ya know, gender is just something you slip into each day like a pair of Levi jeans — the stonewashed 501’s or midrise 553’s?

Freedom of gender?? Freedom from the oppressive bonds of... reality is what they desire.

This is probably one of the best examples of the kind of biological fantasies generated by the so-called 'progressive' and 'reality-based' intellects of the left. Yesterday I talked about how the face of evil constantly renews itself ; however, the ultimate goal remains the same: it is anti-mind, anti-life, and anti-reality.

The parents who wish to deny the biological reality of their child are no different than all those who wish to deny reality in order to proudly disply their leftist credentials. They are no different from any other "selfless" sociopath who desires control over others; except that their particular brand of malignant narcissism couches its oppression of others in terms like "social justice" and "choice"--but it is tyranny nonetheless.

Is it any wonder then that, unlike the capitalist system they abhor, where basic human nature--both the good and the bad parts--is harnessed and made socially useful, the ideologically-motivated paents described above (and all the reality-denying morons of the left) intend to stamp out or ignore any aspect of human nature they don't happen to like, or which is inconvenient to their ideology.

Someone should tell them it has been tried many times before, and by much smarter tyrants than the current crop of ideologues will ever be. It won't work. It cannot work. It has NEVER worked.

But they will keep trying. Because both their narcissism and their psychological denial are without bounds.

--------------------------------------------------

It all reminds me of this scene from The Life of Brian where
Art imitates Life:

STAN: I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me 'Loretta'.
REG: What?!
LORETTA: It's my right as a man.
JUDITH: Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
LORETTA: I want to have babies.
REG: You want to have babies?!
LORETTA: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
REG: But... you can't have babies.
LORETTA: Don't you oppress me.
REG: I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! -- Where's the fetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!
LORETTA: [crying]
JUDITH: Here! I-- I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.
FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.
REG: What's the point?
FRANCIS: What?
REG: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't have babies?!
FRANCIS: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
REG: Symbolic of his struggle against reality.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:16 AM |

 
THE FACE OF EVIL EVER RENEWS ITSELF....
Wretchard has a post up that explores the evolution of George Orwell's understanding of tyranny:

Where once he imagined that totalitarianism consisted of an enumerable number of fascists who would all disappear if we shot one each, he suddenly saw that totalitarianism was a face that haunted every human undertaking. Fleeting, shifting, but indisputably present...

The ability to recognize the face of tyranny is a fragile skill which cannot really be passed on, except as a critical attitude. As the twentieth century recedes into the past, a kind of antiquity has descended over the prophets of the past, who speak to us now only through old, cloth-covered books from second-hand bookshops or lying in corners at garage sales or lending libraries. Even 1984 is set in a time so long ago that it can only be portrayed in film as steampunk. We can no longer imagine “a boot in a human face forever” in a world where the Croc sandal may be the preferred footwear of militants. ‘A Croc sandal stamping on a human face forever?’ Who could credit such a tyranny, even if it were true? But the face of evil ever renews itself. When Moses returned from Mount Sinai he discovered that it had taken a new shape....

From our own jewelry and by our own hands we often forge the chains that bind us.

Read it all, of course and watch the videos.

Then consider this article which proposes that the events in Iran signal the beginning of the end of Islam:

Much as the hammers that leveled the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the end of the Cold War, so might the protests rocking Iran signal the death of radical Islam and the challenges it poses to the West.

No, that doesn't mean we'll be removing the metal detectors from our airports anytime soon. Al-Qaeda and its ilk, even diminished in strength, will retain the ability to stage terrorist strikes. But the danger brought home on Sept. 11, 2001, was always greater than the possibility of murderous attacks. It was the threat that a hostile ideology might come to dominate large swaths of the Muslim world.

Not all versions of this ideology -- variously called Islamism or radical Islam -- are violent. But at the core of even the peaceful ones, such as that espoused by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, is the idea that the Islamic world has been victimized by the West and must defend itself. Even before the United States invaded Iraq, stoking rage, polls in Muslim countries revealed support for Osama bin Laden and for al-Qaeda's aims, if not its methods. If such thinking were to triumph in major Muslim countries beyond Iran -- say, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- violent extremists would command vast new stores of personnel, explosives and funds.

This is precisely the nightmare scenario that is now receding. Even if the Iranian regime succeeds in suppressing the protests and imposes the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by force of bullets, mass arrests and hired thugs, it will have forfeited its legitimacy, which has always rested on an element of consent as well as coercion. Most Iranians revered Ayatollah Khomeini, but when his successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, declared the election results settled, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets, deriding his anointed candidate with chants of "Death to the dictator!"

Even if Muravchik's optimism about the demise of Islam is on the money, there is no reason to expect that the face of evil will be more than briefly deterred from his long-range objective, which is to enslave the human mind, and by doing so to to destroy humanity and all evidence of human accomplishment.

But if you look carefully at history, you can begin to see how seemlessly evil moves--or cycles--through the human world, it's face ever renewed and altered just enough to make it seems like you have never met him before. Evil's smile is genuine and his intentions always seem so benign--or at least the words that he uses to describe his intention. He says does what he does for your own good ; but coincidently, your enslavement happens to enrich him and give him pleasure.

Socialism---->Nazism---->Communism---->Islamism---->???

You can perhaps begin to guess what new form it will take next and what kind of face it will adopt; since it haunts every human undertaking, after all....

But it should be reasonably clear that the most malignant evil always starts out being about some kind of 'hope and change'.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 5:59 AM |