Christopher Wray – Director FBI

TRUST IS A FRAGILE THING

ONCE BROKEN IT CAN ONLY BE REPAIRED WITH GREAT EFFORT

I heard the phrase “Situation Ethics” the other day in reference to Mr. Wray and others in the current Administration and it got me to thinking. 

I wanted to know the definition and so decided to Google the phrase.

I found that the term is a noun defined as:  “The doctrine of flexibility in the application of moral laws according to circumstances.”

That definition either sounds sort of “snake oil salesman” slippery or an attempt to put lipstick on saying its okay to be dishonest and lie when it suits your agenda.

I would define it as having a standard of personal integrity that is negotiable depending on the current circumstances.  Or, in other words, a set of core values that are “for sale” at the right price.

I remember as a boy that my father told me “Always remember that you can’t be a little bit dishonest any more than you can be a little bit pregnant.  You are either honest or you are not.  Be honest.”  I don’t think my father was referring to being personally honest in terms of “Situation Ethics”.  

I don’t know, but I would suppose that there is not a one of us who has not at some time (to our regret) told a lie or at least “fudged the truth” when we found ourselves in either an embarrassing or dangerous situation.  I know that I have,  am not proud of the fact, learned from it and made a decision not to do so in the future.  Still, the temptation will always be there.  Human nature.

If a child gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar and lies about it, we usually forgive them and try to use the incident as a teaching moment.

When an adult does this in the family or a tight knit group we become less forgiving and continued lying can lead to that individual being shunned, even ostracized or banned from the family or group.

A business that practices “Situation Ethics” will find itself losing customers and frequently either out of business or bankrupt.

When this happens in the public arena governments that utilize “Situation Ethics” lose the trust and support of the very people they are supposed to be serving and finds they must resort to totalitarian means to enforce their will on subjects who are no longer willing or participating citizens but unhappy and unwilling drones that despise being ruled as serfs.

The fundamental problem with “Situation Ethics”  is that when caught lying you lose credibility and any organization you represent also loses credibility.  After being caught in a lie, every time you make a statement after that, listeners wonder if it is another lie or not.  It is hard to build back trust. As more lies are told, building back trust becomes impossible.

At this time in our history there is a sizeable, perhaps plurality, of United States citizens that no longer trust our government to be truthful and honest in dealing with them.  It does not matter whether you agree or disagree with them,  their feelings of fear and distrust of government are genuine and many fear government agencies that they previously held in respect.  

You cannot legislate or buy trust.  It must be earned and maintained with trustworthy conduct and practices.

Bob Bandy – August 2022

I seem to be in a retrospective period at this time and with all the madness and destruction coming out of both Washington D C and Sacramento, California I find myself looking back to a time when I saw more humor in the “Tragi-Comedy” chaos being imposed on our lives by our “leaders”. 

I also get requests from readers to republish “favorite” articles from the past that are still relevant today.  The following is a piece I wrote some 11+ years ago in an attempt to provide some humor to salve the pain of the damage being done by those we elect to “protect & serve” us in public office.  

SOMETIMES SATIRE IS MORE INSTRUCTIVE THAN ANGER

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MOTHER OF ALL CONSPIRACIES

If  I wanted to destroy the United States economy and impoverish its citizens here is what I would do in five steps:

Step 1.  I would seek out and recruit incompetent people to infiltrate and take charge of our government.  Next, I would split them into two groups, which I will call, lets see, how about “Congress” and “Administration”.  The folks chosen  need not be co-conspirators,  just big spenders with big egos and no common sense.  All of these folks would be given unlimited borrowing and spending  power and the bills would be sent to the taxpayers.

Step 2.  I would have laws and regulations passed to make it nearly impossible for any individual or company to drill, mine, extract or in any way acquire any of the natural resources we need as a nation, within the physical boundaries or territorial waters of the United States.  All such needed materials would be required to be imported, preferably from countries not friendly to us.  This would be done in the name of protecting the environment.

Step 3.  I would have the government pass laws and regulations to punish hard work and financial success either by individuals or companies with a combination of regulations, fees and  confiscatory taxes.    For whatever “profits” were left over after the fees and taxes were paid I would unleash packs of morally bankrupt, ravenous Trial Lawyers to file endless lawsuits and litigation.   This would encourage any individual or company to move production (and jobs) out of the U.S. to places with more friendly environments to manufacturing and employers.

Step 4.  I would have “my” government reward laziness, incompetence and failure with government handouts, grants, promotions, do nothing projects and various “freebies”.  These same people could later be hired into government make work  jobs in a variety of government agencies and departments  where nothing useful or productive is accomplished or expected.   That way they could continue to get paid for producing nothing and retire to fat lifetime pensions and benefits .  They would fit right in.

Step 5.  I would make sure the government kept increasing the national debt to the point that even paying the interest on the debt became impossible.  They could then destroy any remaining wealth in the country by hyper-inflating the currency,  just as Germany did following World War I.   In Germany at that time it got to the point that it took a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread.  For a more recent example one need only look to Zimbabwe where inflation reached 79600000000% per month in just the last couple of years. 

What’s that you say?   I’m too late?  Somebody stole my idea? 

(From February 2011)

Bob Bandy – August 2022

Former Vice President Al Gore

Scientists tell us that some 10,000 years ago the earth was largely a kind of round ice and snowball and early mankind, if the phrase is still allowed, wandered around up to their butts in ice and snow, eating their muskox raw from the bone with little as a side dish other than a few snowberries.

Then, these early folks discovered fire and that muskox tasted better as a tasty burger cooked over the fire than it did raw.  These were the true perpetrators of the beginning of “man made global warming and climate change”.  This is science fact at work.

Since then politicians with an agenda have been providing bags of taxpayer cash to “researchers” at colleges and universities to provide statistics that prove that man is causing global warming with our modern technology.  The understanding is that these bags of research cash will only continue if the politicians get the statistical evidence they want so they can write laws telling all of us citizens what we can and cannot do.  

These politicians and “researchers” never mention that “mankind” actually occupies a small percentage of 1% of the 30% of our earth that is land, the other 70% of the earth being covered by oceans.  Except on a very localized basis, we feeble humans do not have the ability, even with all of our supposed technology, to change the earths average temperature by more than a miniscule fraction of 1 degree.  Our sun goes through long periods of greater and lesser outputs of energy and that along with other natural phenomena, like volcanoes, are the real contributors to the cycles of warming and cooling of our planet. 

Over the years we have been blessed, or plagued with pseudo wannabe scientists and politicians predicting everything from global freezing to global warming as well as other end of civilization catastrophes unless their “solutions” were followed immediately and to the letter.  They have all been wrong but some few have made themselves wealthy by creating a following of “kool-aid” drinkers of their teaching.

Perhaps one of the biggest “hucksters” of all is former Vice President Al Gore who has made a fortune with his book, “An Inconvenient Truth” – 2006, and his following exploitation and “marketing” of his conjecture, all of which was supposed to happen many years ago.  Let’s look at some of his “predictions” and “science” while on his way to the bank:

1. Rising Sea Levels – inaccurate and misleading. Both Al Gore and former President Barack Obama have since bought Beachfront Mansions

2. New Ice Age in Europe – they’ve been spared; it never happened.

3. South Sahara Drying Up – completely untrue.

4. Massive Flooding in China and India – again, didn’t happen.

5. Polar Bear Extinction – The Polar Bear population is increasing.

6. The Earth would be in a “True Planetary Emergency Within a Decade Unless Drastic Action was Taken to Reduce Greenhouse Gasses” – never happened.

Al Gore made many other predictions. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Still he has created a huge following of “true believers” and a near panic in some quarters.

It’s all largely “Junk Science” though there are many well meaning and sincere believers.

For more on the subject read Junk Science Ala Carte which I published back in November of 2019 (use Search box). 

Keep in mind that our Al Gore is predicting the oceans will soon engulf much of our most beautiful shorelines with rising water levels due to melting of the polar icecaps.  Maybe that is why he bought himself that ocean front mansion with the dollars he has extracted from all his followers.

I will close with a quote from Patrick Moore: 

Patrick Moore – Former President of Greenpeace has stated it well: “There is no definitive scientific proof through real-world observation that carbon dioxide is responsible for any of the slight warming of global climate which has occurred during the past 300 years.” He rejects the “science is settled” and “the debate is over” statements so popular in worldwide media.

Bob Bandy  –  July 2022

This one is too easy.  Listening this morning to statistics on migration from states like, California, New York, Illinois etc. to states like Texas, Utah, Montana, Florida.  Florida for example is getting 3,000 new residents a day from places like California, New York, Illinois etc.. 

You can call it Blue State to Red State migration or as one commentator called it:  “The U-Haul syndrome”.  For example, renting U-hauls to move out of California is very expensive.  Renting a U-Haul to move to California is real cheap.  

Remineded me of something I wrote nearly 10 years ago as a “take off” from an Aesop Fable.  

Worth repeating and it follows:

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KINGDOM OF THE LOCUST

with an apology to Aesop

Once upon a time there was a pleasant meadow in a lovely valley.

A colony of ants came to the meadow and saw that the land was good and with work would provide for a lovely place to live for them and their children.

They worked hard and put away food for the winter and cared for the land.

From a neighboring valley a tribe of locusts came to the land of the ants and decided to stay because the meadow was so pleasant and fertile.

The ants welcomed them in as neighbors and soon they all decided that they should form a government and each ant and locust would get an equal vote in the affairs of the meadow.

Some of the  locusts came to the ants and said they were poor and in need.  Being of kind heart the ants voted to share the fruits of their hard work with the locusts.

Being locusts, they did what locusts are prone to do, that is create lots of little locusts and sit in their burrows eating the food produced by the ants and watching their flat screen televisions paid for by the ants.

In time they discovered, as the little locusts grew up to vote, that they now outnumbered the ants and could vote themselves more and more of what the ants were working so hard to produce.

More and more locusts had baby locusts and invited their relatives and kin in from neighboring meadows.

One by one the ants figured out that they were doing all the work and the locusts were doing all the eating and loafing and watching television.

The ants decided that they did not want to continue to provide for an ever increasing number of locusts who did little to provide for themselves.

The ants packed up and left the now ravaged meadow and moved away to another meadow in another valley.

Winter came to the meadow of the abandoned locusts.  The locusts starved and froze because there was no longer any ants to provide for them what they refused to provide for themselves.

And the shadow of darkness fell over the formerly  pleasant meadow in the formerly lovely valley.

End of story.  If you are an ant you know the moral of the story.  If you are a locust you don’t care if there is a moral; you just want to know where the ants went.

Bob Bandy – July 2022

(originally published November 2012)

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

Charles Dickens – A Tale Of Two Cities

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“No one wants to hear your opinion. They want to hear their opinion coming out of your mouth”

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As I write this the America I was born into, and grew up in, seems to now be two America’s ideologically split into two warring camps with non-negotiable demands at the extremes. 

At least that is what is portrayed in the media. I suspect that the reality for most folks is more like a 20-60-20 divide with the majority somewhere in that 60 percentile center wondering what the heck has happened to the country most of us thought we lived in. 

The 20 percentile on either end of this spectrum are getting all the media attention and making most of the noise.  Like the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.

We seem to be losing, or have lost our ability to talk to each other without yelling and posters demanding our way or the highway like a bunch of two year old’s. 

Whether it is Abortion, Guns, Racial issues, Inflation or one of the endless foreign entanglements we seem to get into, folks tend to take “set in concrete” positions that defy civilized conversation.  

People, we can disagree intently about something without hating each other.  I was deeply saddened a couple of days back when a friend of many years posted on Facebook that “If you take XXXX position on the Roe vs Wade decision you are “Out of my life”.  

Daring to gingerly touch the politically and morally hot “Third Rail” subject of abortion on demand let me say that I can have a “non-yelling” conversation on the subject. 

I am personally “Pro-Life”.  I believe life is precious and should be preserved and protected whenever possible but am open to a discussion on the subject in cases of rape, incest, violence and the threat of life to the “mother to be” or other medically tenuous situations where perhaps the only real option is the medical necessity for an abortion.  Maybe even for some unplanned pregnancies in the very early term it could be honestly argued and defended under certain circumstances.  In real life people sometimes need to make very difficult and painful decisions.  It is not my place to judge individuals.  I am open to listening and having an honest conversation.  No yelling and no name calling – I promise.

My question is this:  Can the “Pro-Choice” individual have a “non-yelling” conversation about the consequences of performing a mid to late term abortion on a healthy fetus from a healthy “mother to be”?  “Premature” births of infants from the fifth month on are not uncommon and the babies born this way most often live long and healthy lives.  If a criminal attacks a “mother to be” and kills an unborn baby in the womb, what do we call that?

Is such a conversation even possible?  I believe there is a great number of people in that mid 60% group who would welcome such a dialog.

A similar conversation could be held in regard to the ownership of guns by law abiding private citizens.  Government could confiscate every one of the much feared, even hated, AR-15 Rifles from law abiding citizens  in the country and it would not keep them out of the hands of criminals and killers.  With the reduced funding for law enforcement and “soft on crime” courts the average citizen is at great risk from criminals who love gun control laws that disarm law abiding people.  Most of the gun deaths in our nation are the result of illegal guns in the hands of non-law abiding criminals and gang members, often related to drug traffic and “turf” wars.

Can we have a non-political conversation on this subject that deals with facts and not heated rhetoric and fear?

There are other volatile and divisive topics that are begging for some calm and reasoned discussion and solutions that we can all live with.  As a nation and people we need to seek out those answers that actually work and don’t just feed our egos and bias’s.

We are a badly divided nation at this time and we all can understand that a “Divided House Cannot Stand”. 

Bob Bandy – July 2022

“WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US”

POGO

SOMETIMES it is fun to revisit something I wrote a number of years ago.  The following piece is from January 2011, some two years into the first Obama Administration when we were “only” 14 Trillion Dollars in debt as a nation.

Point of reference, from 1776 to 2009 we, as a country, went from no debt to 10 Trillion dollars in debt.  We went from approximately 10 Trillion Dollars in debt when Mr. Obama took office to 20 Trillion Dollars in debt when he left office 8 years later in 2017. 

Now, less than six years after that we are 30 – racing to 31 Trillion Dollars in debt and sort of paying the Visa with the Mastercard.  I think I see a pattern developing here. 

There is no way to even pay the interest on this debt without a lot of smoke and mirrors, like inflation.

Truly, the enemy is us and we simply lack the discipline to fix this.  Sad.

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BARBARIANS AT THE GATE

I have always had a special place in my heart for the 1971 Pogo Cartoon strip by Walt Kelly (1913-1973) in which our little hero returns from a kind of scouting mission to announce what he discovered about possible invaders. (I think I have that right –  its been a while).   Although Pogo (and Walt Kelly’s ) web site makes a point of not wanting Pogos famous observation to promote any one group or cause, I am sure he would have no problem with the observation that the enemy we most encounter is, as Pogo so astutely observes, ourselves.  I would very much  put myself at, or near, the top of any list I might compose.

I believe that we, as a nation are at a tipping point, or crossroads if  you prefer.  One of our nations  founders wrote (and I paraphrase)  that our democracy would last until the people discovered that they could vote themselves money from the public treasury.  A sort of  “Day of Reckoning”.

Maybe the question we should be asking ourselves it whether we as individuals, and as a nation, can again return to our nations roots and  practice self discipline, financial discipline and the willingness to postpone gratification of desires until we can pay for them.  Or, do we continue to demand instant everything and let our credit cards  and  Uncle Sugar (the government)  pay for it with borrowed money.

I am old enough that I can remember when Lyndon Johnson was President and promised us that we could afford both “Guns and Butter”.  In other words we could afford to fight and pay for the Vietnam War and at the same time launch a massive “War on Poverty” transferring our nations wealth to those in need.  I was thrilled at the time thinking that poverty would be eradicated,  there would be no more poor people and we would all live in a land of plenty.  President Johnson was wrong and I was wrong.  What we did was to acquire several Trillion (that’s Trillion with a T)  Dollars in debt while seriously damaging the family structure for millions of people. All with the best of intentions.  In the process we also created a whole sub-culture who became entitlement “junkies”.

As a nation we are now 14 Trillion Dollars in debt and that total is growing at the rate of more than a Trillion Dollars a year.  We are rapidly reaching the point where just paying the interest on the debt will consume an ever increasing portion of the nations annual tax revenue.  Do we have the remaining discipline as a people to make the hard choices and practice self denial  to halt and reverse this process?  I am beginning to doubt this.

On its present course this government wagon is one  I do not want to help pull.   I think I will work on a way to not participate!

January 29, 2011

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Something to think about.

Bob Bandy – June 2022