Every Man a King

On this day:

1066: The Battle of Stamford Bridge marks the end of the Viking invasions of England.
1513
Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa reaches what would become known as the Pacific Ocean.
1906
In the presence of the king and before a great crowd, Leonardo Torres Quevedo successfully demonstrates the invention of the Telekino in the port of Bilbao, guiding a boat from the shore, in what is considered the birth of the remote control.
1957
Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, is integrated by the use of United States Army troops.

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Apple, Oracle, Google, all started in a garage. They could've not have afforded to do this, and all of those companies took advantage of talent they couldn't find in the United States as they grew. I think what this does is hurt innovation long-term. I agree that it's going to push these really talented people into other countries. My attitude about this is if we educate you at MIT or at Harvard any school, we should give you a free ticket to stay here, get married, form a company, and build American businesses here. Why train them and kick them out?--Kevin O'Leary

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What kind of culture is it where 'rhetoric' can kill? It sounds like a South Park skit.

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How does an individual decide that a law, passed by a legally elected representative government, is illegal?

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A Paris court on Thursday sentenced former French President Nicolas Sarkozy to five years in prison after finding him guilty of criminal conspiracy in an alleged scheme to finance his 2007 campaign with funds from Libya.

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There is a statute of limitations on lying to Congress. Honesty has a shelf life.

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Russia has turned to its ally North Korea to fill some of its military and labor shortages. Laws prevent women from working dangerous defense jobs--but not foreign women who are being recruited from Asia and Africa.

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Every Man a King

We have become a society--not just politically but socially--that will be characterized in the future as insincere. In every walk of life, we lie. We lie about why we go to war, why we want to change the medical system, the purpose of taxes, the reasons for ethanol fuel, why we are supporting GM, why we did not support Lehman Brothers, why we have no charter schools, and why some students do badly regardless. And who knows what global temperatures mean now? Or the acid in the ocean? The way we are going, we will outlaw mathematics. And we lie to ourselves: the students with the lowest scores on achievement tests have the highest self-esteem. Political correctness supplants comity.  

And we expect insincerity. No one believes the nation's ubiquitous commercials. Evan a military guy can't answer straight. Nor does it matter. Obama says he won't pursue the torture question, and the next day he says he will. No one blinks. The guy who audited the S&L disaster in the 80s was interviewed in a hearing and was asked to estimate the amount of fraud in each government contract, and he said, "7% off the top and then whatever trickles down at each level." A culture that is completely crippled by lies. It is symbolically fitting that the greatest economic meltdown in history occurs because "no one trusts each other".

Now we have some serious domestic trouble. The leverage of free individuals is showing in its greatest strength: a strange, suicidal form of terrorism. The power of one man with a weapon or an explosive. Personal freedom abuts public safety. We need some help to think about this. And who do we have as a translator?  Who will make things clear? The boy who, for the last decade at least, has been crying "wolf!" Russia, Russia, Russia. The Hunter laptop. 1619. Biden's competence. Fascists. A president whose supporters "take him seriously but not literally."

The Dissemblers-in-Chief. 

We have no honest source of information. A culture without an interstitium, a culture where everyone is on their own.

And people are surprised by the "lone wolf?"