Are You Smarter Than a Politician?

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has an online civic literacy test which is fun, challenging and easy to take.  If you think you know something about the political issues we face, and how those issues came to be, take this civics test!  I scored in the top 2%, and I should have known the few questions I did get wrong.  What's frightening is that most civilians got a higher score than did our elected officials.
Of the 2,508 people surveyed, 164 say they have held an elected government office at least once in their lives. Their average score on the civic literacy test is 44%, compared to 49% for those who have not held an elected office. Officeholders are less likely than other respondents to correctly answer 29 of the 33 test questions. This table shows the “knowledge gap” for each question: the difference between the percentage of common citizens who answered correctly and the percentage of officeholders who answered correctly.
Theme of Question		Citizens	Elected Politicians	Knowledge Gap
1.	U.S. – Soviet Tension in 1962	70.09%	56.51%	-13.58%
2.	Declaration of Independence	83.09	69.78	-13.31
3.	Sputnik	74.1	62.82	-11.28
4.	Definition of Free Enterprise	41.45	32.08	-9.37
5.	M. L. King’s “I Have a Dream”	80.5	71.5	-9
6.	Electoral College	65.88	57.31	-8.57
7.	Scopes “Monkey Trial”	67.76	59.21	-8.55
8.	Susan B. Anthony	80.84	72.98	-7.86
9.	Power to Declare War	53.6	45.82	-7.78
10.	Business Profit	49.11	41.38	-7.73
11.	International Trade	37.47	30.45	-7.02
12.	FDR’s Government Programs	66.63	59.73	-6.9
13.	Abortion	50.77	43.94	-6.83
14.	Federal Branches and Foreign Policy	54.71	48.39	-6.32
15.	First Amendment Freedoms	79.58	73.32	-6.26
16.	Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas	29.49	23.29	-6.2
17.	FDR and the Supreme Court	25.07	19.24	-5.83
18.	Taxes and Government Spending	27.7	22.12	-5.58
19.	Free Markets vs. Centralized Planning	16.25	10.71	-5.54
20.	Action Prohibited by the Bill of Rights	26.41	21.24	-5.17
21.	Commander in Chief	79.04	74.46	-4.58
22.	Anti-Federalists and the Constitution	38.22	33.82	-4.4
23.	Source of phrase “a wall of separation”	18.92	15.07	-3.85
24.	Policy Tool of the Federal Reserve	43.12	40.48	-2.64
25.	Powers of the Federal Government	75.01	72.69	-2.32
26.	World War II Enemies	68.76	66.58	-2.18
27.	The Puritans	19.1	17.32	-1.78
28.	Definition of a Progressive Tax	51.26	49.97	-1.29
29.	Three Branches of Government	49.65	49.32	-0.33
30.	Definition of a Public Good	27.6	28.03	0.43
31.	Gettysburg Address	21.06	22.95	1.89
32.	Fiscal Policy for Economic Stimulus	36.07	39.93	3.86
33.	Lincoln–Douglas Debates	19.06	23.62	4.56

Keep this in mind when you go to the polls next year.

MAVEN Underway

MAVEN, NASA's latest Mars probe, is scheduled to launch today at 1328 EST from Cape Canaveral.  Here on the west coast of Florida, weather permitting, we can see the launch from a hundred miles away - a vertical stem of fire and smoke.  It's really cool.

MAVEN sits atop an Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral

But MAVEN - Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution - is NASA's latest foray into our on-going,  on-site study of Mars. It seeks to determine why Mars devolved from a warm moist planet with a dense atmosphere to a cold and barren, airless planet. The early Martian atmosphere was thick enough to hold water and possibly support life, but most of that atmosphere is gone, eroded by the sun, or lost from some other cause.  “Something clearly happened,” University of Colorado’s Bruce Jakosky, the principal Maven scientist, said. “What we want to do is to understand what are the reasons for that change  . . . .” Maven's journey will require a flight time of 10 months to reach Mars, entering into orbit around Mars in September 2014. Its eight scientific instruments will attempt to determine when and why Mars's atmosphere went missing.

The U.S. is not the only country exploring Mars.  MAVEN will join India's probe launched earlier this month.  Two years ago, China failed in a joint attempt with Russia to put its first Mars probe in orbit.  China now says it's likely to be five to seven years before they makes it to Mars. You can't discover the same things twice, China's National Space Science Center director, Wu Ji, points out, so China will pick up where the U.S. and India left off.

NASA has been sending probes to Mars since November 1964, when the agency launched the Mariner 3 spacecraft on an attempted Red Planet flyby. That mission failed, but Mariner 4, which blasted off just three weeks later, managed to beam home 21 up-close photos of Mars — the first pictures of another planet ever returned to Earth from deep space, and we've learned much about the Red Planet since then.  This will be NASA's 14th mission to Mars. 

The New Revolution

The media will tell you what they fear.  They fear the Tea Party.  They fear Libertarians.  They fear Christians. They fear those who believe in liberty, in self actualization and self reliance. They fear those who believe in something larger than themselves. They fear those who believe in smaller government, limited debt and low taxation. Those they fear they demonize.  They marginalize.  And they ridicule and mock. 

It should be no surprise that largely because of the media's propaganda, the two political parties are losing believers.  Something is obviously wrong, and folks sense that, even as the media pumps out the daily demagoguery and divisiveness.  Us, the left, tolerant and enlightened.  Them, the right, ignorant and repressive.  Yet nothing is more intolerant than the progressive left.  Think not?  Utter "redskins," or fly a confederate flag, or speak God's name in public and see what happens.

But a revolution is taking place.  It's grassroots, it's quiet, it's unorganized.  To the media and their handlers, it's fearsome.  It's an opposition  - both intellectual and literal - to the all encompassing Big Brother government and nanny state that this regime is dedicated to implementing.  And they've done an admirable job in doing so thus far, even considering the gross incompetence their arrogance and ideology has created.  In the last five years under the heavy hand of this regime, folks have started to wake up and they see the situation for what it is.  Democrats and Republicans both are less sure of the direction of their parties, and are taking a hard look.  They're seeing the Constitution being shredded as government lawlessness becomes even more blatant.  Want more Barack Obama-Nancy Pelosi-Harry Reid corruption?  Vote Democrat.  Want more Lindsey Graham-John McCain-Mitch McConnell RINO spinelessness?  Vote Republican.  

But wait - there's a new revolution.  Vote in those who will bring the county back from communism.  Vote in those who will respect and obey the United State Constitution and our government of laws rather than of men. Find Libertarians and Tea Party members in your state, vote them in. Many times, they are one and the same. Change your party affiliation.  Make your voice heard.  In Florida, vote Adrian Wyllie for governor.  In Texas, Libertarians have Kathie Glass, and Ohioans have Charlie Earl.  And there are others.  If the country doesn't stand up and take back its legitimate constitutional legacy at the ballot box one year from now, it may very well have to do so by other means.

They Will Tell You What They Fear

Yes, they certainly will.  "They" are the propaganda machine and its apparatus:  The federal government, the major political parties, the mainstream media, and the collective bargaining groups.  And who do they fear?  Who have they ganged up on?  Who do they want demonized, marginalized and destoyed?

The so called Tea Party.

My, my, my!  Such a fuss over nothing.  The Tea Party is an unorganized group of American citizens who actually understand the fundamental American principals of self government, and who advocate for smaller government, fewer taxes, and balanced budget.  We the people.  Wow, that is seriously subversive!

But wait.  The tea party has no formal organization; no official party status, no headquarters office, no president, and no charter.  How can they be so dangerous?  Why does the regime, acting through the IRS, want to lock them up and throw away the key?

Because smaller government and individual self actualization are things the progressive mind cannot abide.  The central planners always knows what's best for us, and these Tea Partiers are just fouling up the glorious march to social utopia, as their ideological potency demonstrated noticeably during the 2010 mid term election cycle.  I expect this demagoguery from the left, but even establishment Republicans, once conservatives themselves, want to silence this voice.  Shhh.  We're busy compromising with the Marxist/Statists/Progressives right now.  We don't want to hear your radical, hard right, intolerant and ignorant references to the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights.  We need to exert governmental control over every aspect of your life, and you're being obstructionist.  You gotta go along to get along.  You're just too ignorant with your God, Guts and Guns rhetoric to understand that we have the common good on our side.  

Immigration?  What the hell, let 'em all vote!  Gay marriage?  Sure, they love just as we do.  Electronic surveillance?  Oh, who has any privacy nowadays, anyway?  Health care?  Let the old, sick and infirm die off, it's nature's way!  National debt?  Whaddaya mean, I'm broke - I got checks left!!  Founding fathers?  Slave owning old white men - what relevance do they have today? 

Yeah, well, there's that.  If the government gets any more tyrannical, it'll be 1860 all over again.  End of the day?  From my cold dead hands as I lie in a pile of hot spent brass.  Don't tread on me.  Smile; wait for flash.

Life and the Indefinite Cosmos

Today, United States NASA spacecraft Cassini is exploring Titan and the other moons of Saturn from orbit.  Forty-four years ago, in 1969, American astronaut Neil Armstrong was the first human to walk on a celestial body; the Moon. 

In 1971, the USSR's Mars 3 lander made soft landing on Mars, the first man-made contact on the Red Planet. Since then, a number of man made robotic probes have visited Mars. Today, the US still has a robotic rover still cruising around on the surface of Mars. In 2008, the Indian Space and Research Organization successfully launched a lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan-1, which discovered evidence of water on the moon. Last week they launched  Mangalyaan, which means "Mars craft" in Hindi.  In this launch India will attempt to become only the fourth country or group of countries to reach the Red Planet, after the United States, Soviet Union, and Europe.

We're searching for proof of life in all the right places.

As a human endeavor, regardless of which country initiates the technology, humans have consistently and intrinsically sought that which is greater than themselves.  Prehistoric man migrated from continent to continent searching for contact.  Ancient modern man created gods to explain the existence of that which he could not fully comprehend; the cosmos, the finality of life, even the weather. Today, we are still searching our back yard to the extent that it is possible at our current level of technology, and we still seek contact.  We seek life; we seek ourselves. 

But with all the difficulty involved in reaching the even the nearest planet, Mars, or even in landing on the moon, which is only 221,000 miles away at perigee (I have logged that many miles on my truck), we have only barely scratched the surface, so to speak.  Some reports emphatically claim there are alien artifacts on the moon, found during the Apollo landings, and the same have been found on Mars by our Martian rovers. I don't know this for sure, but neither do I discount the possibility, and here's why:  It is inconceivable that life - even as defined as we know it - is confined exclusively to Earth.  Putting aside the theological considerations, it is simply a statistical impossibility that of forty billion possible Goldilocks zone planets in our Milky Way Galaxy alone, that life hasn't formed - or was created by intelligent will - elsewhere in our neighborhood.  I think life is out there, and we're trying hard to make contact.

Maybe Richard Hoagland is right and we did find it.  He presents some compelling arguments in support, after all.  On the other hand, though, perhaps intelligent extraterrestrial life has already made contact with us.  And maybe we didn't notice. That could be.  

The Little Coup that Could

I grew up in the 50s and 60s, and can still remember the "duck and cover" drills we used to have in  school.  It was during the height of the cold war, and we knew the USSR was just waiting to invade us.  My family had a improvised bomb shelter in the basement, stocked up with canned goods and bottled water, and we were prepared. I live on the west coast of Florida, and we're only a hundred or so miles from Cuba, where the Russians had deployed ballistic missiles.  We were an easy target for them at only 35 miles from MacDill AFB.  Of course, we know how that turned out; the USSR backed down and removed the missles from Cuba, and in a political gesture for the USSR to save face, President Kennedy denied support of the Cuban liberty fighters, and they were decimated at the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion.  Not our finest hour.

But we won the cold war.  Really, we did.  The USSR devolved into several sovereign nations, the Berlin Wall came down, and all was right with the world.  And yet today, we in the US find ourselves under the rule of totalitarianism.  How did that happen?  How did this communist coup occur?   Back in the bad old days of the cold war, Soviet Premier Khrushchev banged his shoe on the lectern at the United Nations and screamed, "We will bury you."  And now all these years later it would seem he was right.  Although it's unclear if the remnants of the old Soviet apparatchik is responsible for empowering this unknown alien and his minions who now control us, the fact remains that we are buried under a gargantuan government that we can no longer support or tolerate.

To make matters worse, in the face of this coup - literally a government takeover - there is no loyal opposition.  The old guard of the Republican Party like McCain, McConnell, Rove, and many others, seem hellbent on kissing ass of the Marxist regime now in Washington.  And they wrack themselves trying to figure out why support of the GOP is dwindling.  Immigration?  Government shutdown?  Gays?   No.  Allow me to clarify.  It's because the vast majority of the American people do not want a socialist totalitarian state, and they see no opposition to it from the GOP.  So then why support your enemy's friends?  We have a constitution that puts quantifiable limits on federal governmental power.  The left has been marginalizing and denigrating that document for decades, hoping that people will forget that we own the government and it works for us, not the other way around.  Yet they do forget and now the situation is dire.  The only salvation comes next year; we have an election to change the political mindset in Washington, if we are brave enough to do so.  On that point I wonder if we are.