Friday, December 13

You may recall a few weeks ago I bought a copy of Newt Gingrich's newest book, Breakout. I tweeted about the purchase, and Newt re-tweeted me, which was awesome. Obviously, as an opinion leader, Newt wanted to know what I thought about the book. I'm sure you're curious too.

So, here's my Amazon review:

Breakout inspires, motivates, encourages and guides. Five Stars!

Newt Gingrich's Breakout is an important contribution to the future of our country.

Breakout is not your typical Left vs. Right book. For instance, if you read a book like Gingrich's To Save America, this is very different. It would actually be interesting to know how few times the words "Republicans" or "Democrats" actually appear in Breakout. Instead, this book is about big ideas and big thinkers, people who are trying to make things happen, and usually succeeding, in spite of government regulators and those who want to keep the old order in place.

Newt accurately uses a new label, "prison guards," to identify those keeping us locked down in the old, failed ways: bureaucrats, teachers, regulators, professors, government agencies, and environmentalists, to name but a few. Newt cites many great examples and resources throughout his book, all of which can easily be found for further research so we can all work toward achieving Breakout.

Newt's final chapter (chapter 13) and his Conclusion are both brief, but both a really great, important summations of what needs to be done to achieve Breakout. If you do not walk away from this book hopeful and motivated to make real change happen, the problem might just be with you, and you must be happy with the status quo which ultimately is the path to continued failure and mediocre outcomes.

As I mentioned before, go in to this book with an open mind. Breakout isn't just for Republicans or just for Democrats: it's for us. All of us. Breakout awaits, and this enjoyable, readable roadmap toward Breakout is a quick and easy read and will certainly open your mind to clearer thinking about what can happen if we all demand it and work toward it.

Thursday, December 12

Mark Levin Reacts to Mitch McConnell on Cavuto

Mark Levin used Mitch McConnell's pathetically weak appearance on Neil Cavuto's Fox News Channel show to demonstrate that Mitch McConnell is: 1) weak. 2) pitiful. 3) not a leader. 4) go-along-to-get-along Mitch. 5) needs to be replaced by Matt Bevin in Kentucky.

Watch the video here:


 Or you can just grab the mp3 here.

Wednesday, November 27

Mark Levin Continues to Expose Mitch McConnell

Mark Levin is continuing to expose the fraud that is deal makin' Mitch McConnell. McConnell is apparently a king maker, and prospective candidates and others have to goose step around him and kiss the ring in order to get his blessing. This brief segment mentions a recent meeting with Ben Sasse of Nebraska going to meet with Ditch McConnell.

McConnell is more interested in having a powerful name than is the future of his country, or even his party, as you can see with these petty games he plays.

Take a listen here.

Saturday, November 23

Mark Levin Sheds More Light on Mitch McConnell

On yesterday's Mark Levin show, Mark got a running start at Republican Senator, deal maker Mitch McConnell. Levin made some great points in this segment.

Take a listen here.

This is a great portion of the segment, a scathing indictment of McConnell:
"Isn't this the guy, who before the 2010 election said the Republican Party's becoming a regional party? He didn't even see the tea party movement coming. And in a year or so of that statement from him, one of the biggest electoral landslides up and down the ladder, local state and federal, in American history. And he didn't even see it. And you want to know why? Because he wasn't part of it. He didn't help lead it. He's just there."
McConnell has gone after and targeted the Senate Conservatives Fund because they are supporting his primary opponent Matt Bevin. Bevin needs to be the next Senator from Kentucky.

Ditch Mitch!

Saturday, November 16

Texas Tomorrow: An Economic Plan for Texas in the 21st Century

I posted the following review on Amazon.com for Raul Torres' book Texas Tomorrow: An Economic Plan for Texas in the 21st Century:

This brief volume from Texas State Representative Raul Torres, CPA is an important contribution to the public policy discussion in Texas, and could possibly be quite effective in some other states as well. Good ideas and clear thinking are not limited by state or international borders. Representative Torres helped to pass a bill in Texas Legislature to implement Lean Six Sigma process into state government. The results speak for themselves, and clearly, Rep. Torres is on to something.

Torres' writing is clear and concise, he uses a little humor to make a few points very well. He keeps it simple, where most other authors would bog the reader down with facts or nuance. The book goes into public education, tax relief, budgeting and economic development. On each and every topic, Rep. Torres keeps to the point and ends each section with several positive, solutions oriented recommendations. Those are well worth reading over and over.

Texas Tomorrow is very well researched and it is documented incredibly well. Many of the sources used are available online. Whether you're just interested in some new ideas as a private citizen, a candidate for political office, or an office holder looking for some new ideas, Texas Tomorrow is worth taking a chance on.

Wednesday, November 13

Mark Levin Comments on The Morning Schmoe, Again. Classic!

I blogged a few months ago about Mark Levin obliterating MSNBC's Joe Scarborough. Well, this week, Mark Levin got a running start and took another part of a segment to destroy The Morning Schmoe. It's brilliant audio. Take a listen. Enjoy.

Tuesday, November 5

Newt Made My Day

I stopped in to Barnes & Noble this morning to buy the new book by Newt Gingrich, Breakout. As I left the store, from the parking lot I took and tweeted a photo of my purchase. The rest, is history.

Friday, October 4

Norquist Attacks Ted Cruz; Mark Levin Discussed Norquist Recently

For some reason, Grover Norquist has decided to go after Senator Ted Cruz. In August, radio host, author and conservative leader Mark Levin used part of his radio show time to help us all learn a little bit about Grover.

Take a listen here. Enjoy and share.

Wednesday, September 25

Mitch McConnell Needs To Go; Rand Paul Shows Why

Senator Rand Paul has endorsed the re-election of deal-maker extraordinaire Mitch McConnell for 2014. McConnell is a man more worried about making deals, not making people mad and his own worthless leadership position than he is about actually adhering to the US Constitution, or in many cases actually standing up for the principles of his party.

I understand why Senator Paul made this endorsement. I think he did this to placate McConnell who is well known for his vindictiveness. I don’t think the endorsement was or is sincere in Paul’s gut. It is clear to me that we need to take Paul’s “endorsement” with a grain of salt and push forward with defeating Mitch McConnell next year. Matt Bevin appears to be the man for the job.

I personally wish that Senator Paul had not made this endorsement, but again, I “understand.” For those of you who have not read Senator Paul’s account of what all took place leading up to Paul’s victory in 2010, The Tea Party Goes To Washington is very insightful as to some of the backroom type of deals and shenanigans McConnell is known for. Again, a petty man worried about holding on to his worthless leadership position.

I have scanned a few pages from The Tea Party Goes To Washington that pertain to McConnell, just so readers can see what I’m referring to. Here they are, feel free to read, comment, enjoy and most importantly, share with others.

Thursday, September 19

George Gilder: The Need for a New Economics

By George Gilder
Why is it that so many Americans seem to believe that government spending, fueled by debt or taxes, can drive economic growth and wealth creation? Why do they believe that low interest rates, enforced by the Federal Reserve, can somehow spur business and investment? Why do they imagine that money and consumer demand impel the economy forward?
The reasons, I believe, are rooted in an economic confusion between knowledge and power. Many economists believe that growth is impelled by the exercise of power, represented by money creation and by government spending and guarantees. By manipulating the so-called “levers of the economic machine,” government power can enlarge demand, inducing businesses to invest and consumers to spend. This process is seen to generate the demand that fuels economic growth.
These images of the economy of power are part of the very creation story of economics in an era of new machines and sources of energy. The first economic models were explicitly based on the dynamics of the steam engine then impelling the industrial revolution. Isaac Newton’s physical “system of the world” became Adam Smith’s “great machine” of the economy, an equilibrium engine transforming coal and steam into economic growth and progress.
Exploring technology investments over recent decades, however, I found myself preoccupied less with sources of power than with webs of knowledge in a field of study called Information Theory. On one level this theory was merely a science of networks and computers. Its implications, however, would change our deepest concepts of the nature of wealth. It would show that wealth is not money or power or demand. It is essentially the accumulation of knowledge.
Information theory effectively began with Kurt Godel’s demonstration in 1930 that all logical systems, including mathematics, are intrinsically incomplete and depend on axioms that they cannot prove. This epochal finding is often obscured by elaborate explanations of the intricate mathematics he used to prove it. But as John Von Neumann in his audience was first to recognize, Godel’s proof put an end to the idea of the universe, or the economy, as a mechanism. Godel’s proof, as he himself understood, implied the existence of autonomous creation.
Godel’s proof led directly to the invention by Alan Turing of a universal generic computer, a so-called Turing machine. By this abstract conception, which became the foundation for all computer science, Turing showed that no mechanistic computer system could be complete and consistent.  Turing concluded that all logical systems were intrinsically oracular.
Computers could not be Smithian “great machines” or Newtonian “systems of the world.” They inexorably relied upon human programmers or oracles and could not transcend their creators. As Turing wrote, he could not specify what these oracles would do. All he could say was that “they could not be machines.” In a computer, they are programmers. In an economy, they are entrepreneurs.
In 1948 a rambunctiously creative engineer, Claude Shannon, from Bell Labs and MIT, translated Godel’s and Turing’s findings into a set of technical concepts for gauging the capacity of communications channels to bear information.
Shannon resolved that all information is most essentially surprise. Unless messages are unexpected they do not convey new information. An orderly and predictable mechanism, such as a Newtonian system of the world or Smithian great machine, embodies or generates no new information.
Studying information theory for decades in my exploration of technology, I finally found the resolution to the enigmas that currently afflict most economic thought. A capitalist economy is chiefly an information system, not a mechanistic incentive system. Wealth is the accumulation of knowledge. As Thomas Sowell declared in 1971: All economic transactions are exchanges of differential knowledge, which is dispersed in human minds around the globe. Knowledge is processed information, which is gauged by its news or surprise.
Surprise is also a measure of freedom and criterion of creativity. It is gauged by the freedom of choice of the sender of a message, which Shannon termed “entropy.” The more numerous the possible messages that can be sent, the more uncertainty at the other end about what message was sent and thus the more information there is in the actual message when it is received.
In Knowledge and Power, I sum up information theory as the treatment of human communications or creations as transmissions down a channel, whether a wire or the world, in the presence of the power of noise, with the outcome measured by its “news” or surprise, defined as entropy and consummated as knowledge.
Since these communications or creations can be business plans or experiments, information theory supplies the foundation for an economics driven not by equilibrium and order but by surprises of enterprise that yield knowledge and wealth.
Information theory requires that such a process be experimental and its results be falsifiable. The businesses conducting entrepreneurial experiments must be allowed to fail or go bankrupt. Otherwise there is no yield of knowledge and thus no production of wealth. Wealth does not consist in material capital that can be appropriated by the greedy or the government but in learning processes and knowledge creations that can only thrive in freedom.
After all, the Neanderthal in his cave had all the material resources and physical appetites that we have today. The difference between our own wealth and Stone Age poverty is not an efflorescence of self-interest but the progress of learning, accomplished by entrepreneurs conducting falsifiable experiments of enterprise.
The enabling theory of telecommunications and the internet, information theory offered me a path to a new economics that could place the surprising creations of entrepreneurs and innovators at the very center of the system rather than patching them in from the outside as “exogenous” inputs. It also showed that knowledge is not merely a source of wealth; it is wealth.
Summing up the new economics of information are ten key insights:
1) The economy is not chiefly an incentive system. It is an information system.
2) Information is the opposite of order or equilibrium. Capitalist economies are not equilibrium systems but dynamic domains of entrepreneurial experiment yielding practical and falsifiable knowledge.
3) Material is conserved, as physics declares. Only knowledge accumulates. All economic wealth and progress is based on the expansion of knowledge.
4) Knowledge is centrifugal, dispersed in people’s heads. Economic advance depends on a similar dispersal of the power of capital, overcoming the centripetal forces of government.
5) Creativity, the source of new knowledge, always comes as a surprise to us. If it didn’t, socialism would work. Mimicking physics, economists seek determinism and thus erroneously banish surprise.
6) Interference between the conduit and the contents of a communications system is called noise. Noise makes it impossible to differentiate the signal from the channel and thus reduces the transmission of information and the growth of knowledge.
7) To bear high entropy (surprising) creations takes a low entropy carrier (no surprises) whether the electromagnetic spectrum, guaranteed by the speed of light, or property rights and the rule of law enforced by constitutional government.
8) Money should be a low entropy carrier for creative ventures. A volatile market of gyrating currencies and grasping governments shrinks the horizons of the economy and reduces it to high frequency trading and arbitrage in a hypertrophy of finance.
9) Wall Street wants volatility for rapid trading, with the downsides protected by government. Main Street and Silicon Valley want monetary stability so they can make long term commitments with the upsides protected by law.
10) GDP growth is fraudulent when it is mostly government spending valued retrospectively at cost and thus shielded from the knowledgeable judgments of consumers oriented toward the future. Whether fueled by debt or seized by taxation, government spending in economic “stimulus” packages necessarily substitutes state power for knowledge and thus destroys information and slows economic growth.
11) Analogous to average temperature in thermodynamics, the real interest rate represents the average returns expected across an economy. Analogous to entropy, profit or loss represent the surprising or unexpected outcomes. Manipulated interest rates obfuscate the signals of real entrepreneurial opportunity and drive the economy toward meaningless trading and arbitrage.
12) Knowledge is the aim of enterprise and the source of wealth. It transcends the motivations of its own pursuit. Separate the knowledge from the power to apply it and the economy fails.  
The information theory of capitalism answers many questions that afflict established economics. No business guaranteed by the government is capitalist. Guarantees destroy knowledge and wealth by eliminating the precondition of falsifiability. Unless entrepreneurial ideas can fail or businesses go bankrupt, they cannot succeed in creating new knowledge and wealth. Epitomized by heavily subsidized and guaranteed leviathans, such as Goldman Sachs, Archer Daniels Midland, Harvard and Fanny Mae, the crisis of economics today is crony statism.
The message of a knowledge economy is optimistic. As Jude Wanniski wrote, “Growth comes not from dollars in people’s pockets but from ideas in their heads.” Capitalism is a noosphere, a domain of mind. A capitalist economy can be transformed as rapidly as human minds and knowledge can change.
As experience after World War II when US government spending dropped 61 percent in two years, in Chile in the 1970s when the number of state companies dropped from over 500 to under 25, in Israel and New Zealand in the 1980s when their economies were massively privatized almost over-night, and in Eastern Europe and China in the 1990s, and even in Sweden and Canada in recent years, economic conditions can change overnight when power is dispersed and the surprises of human creativity are released.
Perhaps the most powerful demonstration that wealth is essentially knowledge came in the rapid post world war II revival of the German and Japanese economies. Nearly devoid of material resources, these countries had undergone the nearly complete destruction of their physical plant and equipment. As revealed by decades of experience with unsuccessful ministrations of foreign aid, the mere transfer of financial and political power is impotent to create wealth without the knowledge and creativity of entrepreneurs.
Information Theory is a foundation for revitalizing all the arts and sciences, from physics and biology to mathematics and philosophy. All are transformed by a recognition that information is not order but disorder. The universe is not a great machine that is inexorably grinding down all human pretenses of uniqueness and free will. It is a domain of creativity in the image of a creator.
In the same way, capitalism is not a system of equilibrium; it is an engine of disruption and invention. All economic growth and human civilization stem from the surprises of creativity and the growth of knowledge in a domain of constitutional order.
The great mathematician Gregory Chaitin, inventor of algorithmic information theory, explains that to capture the surprising information in any social, economic, or biological science requires a new mathematics of creativity imported from the world of computers. He writes: “Life is plastic, creative! How can we build this out of static, eternal, perfect mathematics? We shall use post-modern math, the mathematics that comes after Godel, 1931, and Turing, 1936, open not closed math, the math of creativity…”
Entropy is a measure of surprise, disorder, randomness, noise, disequilibrium, and complexity. It is a measure of freedom of choice. Its economic fruits are creativity and profit. Its opposites are predictability, order, low complexity, determinism, equilibrium, and tyranny.
Predictability and order are not spontaneous and cannot be left to an invisible hand. It takes a low-entropy carrier (no surprises) to bear high-entropy information (full of surprisal). In capitalism, the predictable carriers are the rule of law, the maintenance of order, the defense of property rights, the reliability and restraint of regulation, the transparency of accounts, the stability of money, the discipline and futurity of family life, and a level of taxation commensurate with a modest and predictable role of government. These low entropy carriers bear all our bounties of surprising wealth and progress.

This George Gilder column was found at MauldinEconomics.com

Monday, August 19

Mark Levin Obliterates Joe Scarborough

Earlier tonight, Mark Levin absolutely obliterated MSNBC, aka MSLSD, host Joe Scarborough. Also known as Morning Schmoe, this was absolutely devastating audio. If you don't laugh at least three times during the clip, you're doing it all wrong.

Listen here.

Tuesday, August 6

Laughable, Insane: Sheila Jackson-Lee for DHS

Recently the racist Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) put forward the insane notion that somehow, Leftist Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee was qualified to be the new head of the Department of Homeland Security. Among her qualifications is that she's black, she's a democrat, she's a Leftist, and she's heard about US borders and knows about weapons and stuff.

Well, cue the circus clowns, as the local racist Leftist newspaper, Houston Forward Times (which is clearly going backwards as they refuse to move forward) has prominently displayed their savior, Her Majesty The Queen - Queen Sheila, on the front page of their latest issue. This is beyond appalling, it is a disgrace and it is an embarrassment. But is also shows what we rational, thinking Americans are up against.





Monday, July 22

Enjoying Subway In Opposition To UniteBlue Freaks

Here we go again. First, it was Chick-fil-A last year, now it is Subway under fire from devout, delusional Leftists. The Left, led by the freaks at UniteBlue, is boycotting Subway because they buy ad time during the Rush Limbaugh show.

The Leftist/Marxist game plan can be summed up pretty easily: The Left is not interested in debate and dialogue, if you oppose them, they want you out of the way (or out of business).

As such, as the Left went on its crusade against Subway, and I decided to join many others across the country and stand with Subway in their hour of need. Here are my pics:


Eat it you Left-wing pigs, literally and figuratively.

Saturday, June 1

Senator Rand Paul Speaks at Ronald Reagan Library

In case you missed Senator Rand Paul's speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on May 31, this is your chance. This is a great speech, full of fundamentals, and you will thoroughly enjoy it.

 

Wednesday, May 15

Big Data, Republican Campaigns and 2016

Have you downloaded your copy of this free report that I've written?

Big Data, Republican Campaigns and 2016 by Steve Parkhurst, GPH Consulting
 
What is Big Data? Are Republicans using Big Data? How effectively did Obama 2012 utilize Big Data? Are 2016 hopefuls like Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul ready to listen to what Big Data can tell them? All of this and more in the free Special Report.

Download the FREE report now (click here for the .pdf)

Thursday, May 2

Four Years Ago Today...

...Jack Kemp left us. The modern day leader of the American Renaissance was taken way too soon. We remember him today.


Monday, April 15

Wednesday, March 27

Dodgers 2013: Ugh, Not Again

The Dodgers season is about to start, and it is time for a frank assessment.

This team is going to be bad. They did nothing significant in the places that matter to get better than they were last year. I do not see a chemistry with the team like we should see with teams that are planning to compete.

Ned Colletti needs to be fired.

Don Mattingly needs to be fired.

Mark McGwire...I guess we have to give him some time before we call for his firing, but choosing him as the hitting coach strikes me as a terrible decision. McGwire, who as best we can tell was juiced for about 80% of his career, either went 450 feet or popped up. He never hit for average. I just do not see how he helps this team make better contact.

These are nice guys, yes. That's fine. Nice guys do not always win. Just because the Dodgers employ them, does not mean they deserve loyalty from everyone forever.

I saw Eric Karros, Mike Piazza, Paul Konerko and Adrian Beltre among countless others in the minor leagues, when they played AA-ball in San Antonio. I was loyal to them until the day they each left the Dodgers. Being a loyal fan is no longer rewarded the way it was in the past.

Don Mattingly is, in my opinion, a terrible game manager. I hear the arguments that he is a "players manager" so be it. The guy bunts way too much, he makes questionable bullpen choices and he yanks starting pitchers way too early.

In Don's defense, he has been given crap to work with. That's on Ned Colletti. As long as this guy is pulling the strings and writing the checks and contracts, I think he only handicaps the Dodgers that much longer into the future.

So, 2013 is about to begin. The fans will root. Vin Scully, who could put a great voice to reading the phone book, will call another great season. But, this Dodgers team will be bad. How much longer will the Dodgers accept it? Will they make excuses for injuries or "this group hasn't been together long enough?" Time will tell.

For me, 2014 cannot get here soon enough.

Tuesday, March 26

The Rich, The Poor and America

"We don't believe in an America that pursues equality by making rich people poor, but by allowing poor people, indeed all people, to become rich."

- Jack Kemp, 1992 in his speech to the Republican National Convention.

Sunday, February 17

Perfect Photo

I saw this on Facebook today and I had to post it, it's so accurate and perfect.


Wednesday, January 9

Richard Nixon At 100

Today and several days recently, America is recognizing the 100th birthday of President Richard Nixon. There was a similar celebration in 2011 for President Reagan's 100th birthday.

I have been to the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California a number of times over the years. The Library includes both the birthplace of Richard Nixon and his burial place. Every time I stand at the place where a former President rests in peace, I find myself in awe. The picture below is of Richard Nixon's grave and headstone. Every time I've seen it, I have been struck by that quote on it, "The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker."

Richard Nixon Headstone - GPH Consulting

Classic Nixon


The Nixon Library blog has an interesting post today recalling Nixon and his legacy. It opens with something I would consider to be classic Nixon.
In June 1983, at the end of more than thirty hours of interviews about his life and times, the conversation, winding down, now turned to “mountaintop” and “legacy” questions. The former President had already indicated his displeasure with touchy feely topics — “psychohistory is for psychos” as he put it. His answer to the question “Do you consider you’ve had a good life?” was: “I don’t get into that kind of crap.”
The entire post can be read here. The later quote is entirely worth reading, I just did not want to include it here and dilute the main point of my writing.

Happy 100th Birthday President Nixon.

Thursday, January 3

A Confederacy of Dunces

I saw this copy of my favorite novel at the local bookstore today, and I had to snap a picture. It reminded me to remind you to start the new year right. If you have not read A Confederacy of Dunces, you're doing it all wrong. Get a copy today, they can be found cheap. You won't be sorry, and you'll laugh like crazy. After you read it, let me know what you thought.