NC Renegades

This has to be embarrassing . . . if you’re an atheist. A new study performed at the University of York used targeted magnetism to shut down part of the brain. The result: belief in God disappeared among more than 30 percent of participants.

That in itself may not seem so embarrassing, but consider that the specific part of the brain they frazzled was the posterior medial frontal cortex—the part associated with detecting and solving problems, i.e., reasoning and logic.

In other words, when you shut down the part of the brain most associated with logic and reasoning, greater levels of atheism result.

You’ve heard the phrase, “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist”? Apparently we can now also say, “I have too many brains to be an atheist.”

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This also gives credence to those who state that Islam is not a religion.

David DeGerolamo

We in the III community need to seriously discuss what role we see in the upcoming games.  For the sake of this discussion, let’s ignore the “names” we want to call our groups and discuss the “roles” that are envisioned.

There seem to be three schools of thought about this:

1. Some seem to think that we will all fall in and form some sort of nationwide revolutionary army.  Sam clearly sees himself as the next unarmed George Washington.
2. Yet others see themselves as some sort of resistance fighters in a semi-organized underground force.
3. Some seem to think they will become some sort of home defense force protecting their neighborhood and ally with other like minded folks in a sort of community defense force.

A nationwide revolutionary army seems very unfeasible. Despite the calls for “reestablishing rightful liberty” from many in our camps, there doesn’t seem to be any consensus on what that really means from a pragmatic standpoint. Although rightful liberty is a subject for a different blog entry, I will proffer that reestablishing rightful liberty is a concept with no meaning seeing as I can find no time in America’s history where we really had rightful liberty as we would all attempt to define it.

Without consensus, there will be no national leader or national campaigns.

Without consensus, there will be no masses to convince and get support from.

It might happen as some reestablishment of a society evolves, but it won’t happen as part of some national effort to reform our country.

Resistance fighters may be more feasible. Many suggest that the upcoming war games will see many of the elements of 4th generation warfare. While we may see more of the features used against us (some would say that many of them are currently being used against us), certainly many of the tactics can apply to resistance type fighters.

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The German people have very limited access to firearms. When civil unrest erupts around the world, the Western governments will enact martial law. Our Fed Ex driver told us that he had ten different shipments of ammunition today. UPS is probably more. People are preparing for an uncertain future. Got Faith?

David DeGerolamo

Federal Protective Service Has More Cars Than Officers

The security force that protects federal buildings has more SUVs than officers, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) watchdog, which found $2.5 million wasted each year due to mismanagement of its vehicle fleet.

The Federal Protective Service (FPS) had 101 more law enforcement vehicles than officers last year, and spent taxpayer funding to upgrade its SUVs with bike racks, the new audit released by the Office of Inspector General found.

“FPS is not managing its fleet effectively,” the OIG said. “FPS did not properly justify that its current fleet is necessary to carry out its operational mission.”

“Specifically, FPS did not justify the need for: more vehicles than officers; administrative vehicles; larger sport utility vehicles; home-to-work miles in one region; and discretionary equipment added to vehicles,” they said.

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Welcome to the police state.

David DeGerolamo

This comes at the totally wrong time. Trucking had been booming. 2014 had been a banner year. Capacity was squeezed, and rates were rising, so trucking companies went on a buying binge, ordering everything in the book in preparation for red-hot demand in 2015 and more banner years down the road. But then came 2015.

Among businesses, over-ordering and tepid sales caused inventories to rise and the inventory-to-sales ratio to spike to Financial Crisis proportions. And now businesses are trying to bring them down by trimming orders because they’re having trouble selling more to the middle class, the over-indebted modern proletariat whose stagnant incomes are being eaten up by skyrocketing costs of housing, healthcare, college, and the like – and they simply can’t spend that much on shippable items.

And now this is ricocheting through the industry.

Monday after hours, the largest US truckload carrier, Swift, announced earnings. And on Tuesday, it clarified the debacle. It’s suffering from indigestion. The high costs from its red-hot capacity increase – average truck count jumped by 831 trucks in the third quarter from a year earlier – are now slamming into swooning freight demand.

Operating revenue declined 1%, which Swift blamed on the disappearing fuel surcharge, though it didn’t explain why it is getting away with still charging $109 million in fuel surcharges when diesel prices have plunged to rock-bottom.

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We Lost

Frankly, Hope n’ Change wasn’t expecting anything really scary to arrive at our door until Halloween, but it turns out that Obamacare has jumped the gun by presenting us with a trick that is definitely no treat.

We already knew that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” was a lie. But it turns out “if you like your NEW doctor, you can keep your doctor” was also a lie. Because we, along with over 300,000 other folks in Texas, were just informed that Blue Cross Blue Shield has “discontinued” every individual PPO health insurance policy statewide because under the Affordable Care Act, “some affordable plans are no longer affordable for the company to sustain.”

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Gov. Bobby Jindal’s lawyer has asked a state district judge to throw out a lawsuit that challenges Jindal’s executive order offering special protections to people who oppose same-sex marriage.