Chesterton: A Man for All Times

SEE HERE G.K. Chesterton is one of my favorite people. I collect clear minds. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and a good many others have made my relatively short list of clear minds. They are not infallible minds, but they are clear minds motivated by truth. That's something I deeply respect. I can forgive a man a great deal who is truly seeking to know what is actual and real. For me that's what truth is. It is what is real. Everything else is an illusion. Chesterton looked at the world with deep insight. I value that!

Intelligent Design: Is There Any Other Kind?

SEE HERE I thought this was a bit amusing. Frankly the question of whether design can be quantified and detected seems like a reasonable scientific question. Intelligent Design is a bit of a tautology since design really implies intelligence. The Intelligent Design community have put up with a lot of slander on the part of lock-step Darwinists, mostly atheists, who see in the whole question a sneaky way of importing God into the debate. There are a few intellectual problems with this.

The first is that the existence of God in various capacities is a philosophically provable concept. Second, design clearly exists and we do it all the time. As a minimum one can make reasonable estimates of the probability that designated complexity can arise randomly. One also has the DNA codes which I personally believe with end up being the last nail in the coffin of traditional Darwinism. Evolution in the weaker sense of natural selection clearly takes place. Can it generate truly new species is a difficult question which seems to be largely answerable as sort of a little. You can certainly demonstrate that cats that don't usually interbreed can be bred and get weird results, often sterile. This is not unlike artificial breeding of plants through hybridization. Left alone they tend to revert to type.

I'm not a biologist, but I think the arguments against simple Darwinism are pretty devastating. Darwinism basically has the field to itself, since God isn't really a legitimate scientific hypothesis. Science works on the level of methodological materialism. That's not the same as materialism being true, but it is true that bringing God into science is like the universal answer without much illumination. God did it! doesn't provide too much insight generally. We can accept that in some sense God did everything through empowering it to exist and happen, but beyond that the God hypothesis isn't too much help. St. Paul does offer in the epistle to the Romans in the first chapter the observation: Romans 1:20 20 "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

Now if we unpack that a bit, what St. Paul is saying is that careful observation of nature reveals a designer. That's a reasonable hypothesis. The question is can it be made scientific. That's the question that complexity theory and intelligent design tries to answer. It's just dishonest to dismiss them as ideologues. It's a reasonable question and as the complexity of the DNA code becomes more and more obvious the answer will tend to look more and more obvious as well and it's likely not going to go well for Darwinism which is after all as Chesterton said absurd: “It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.”

Walter Williams: Up From the Projects

SEE HERE A great book about a great American. Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are my two favorite economists. There are a few others, but they're on the top. They are both self-made men and their stories are an inspiration. Both have biographies out there. You can hardly do better than to read about people like these who achieved their success the old fashioned way. They earned it!

Darwinism Is Getting Long In the Tooth

SEE HERE Ann Coulter seems hung up on Darwinism. I don't mind. Darwinism is quite interesting and very likely quite wrong. Ann trots out the usual devastating arguments against Darwinism which the Darwinists never answer. I've never understood why they don't answer them unless they don't really have answers. Natural selection clearly works as a selection mechanism that can produce significant changes. Morever, it is clear from the DNA that life is very much related. But that doesn't mean it evolved by natural selection, only that the plan form of life is build on a relatively robust underlying structure. For example if you look at automobiles you find they pretty much all share a common architecture. Cars are different than trucks but they share a common architecture that have a family resemblance. So the common basis of life might easily enough come from a designer. What about replication of mistakes? One of the first questions is whether we really know enough to tell when something is a mistake? But mistakes could certainly arise from a natural selection process. Indeed mistakes are what you'd expect from the vast vast majority of mutations. If I inject a random letter into this post it will be very unlikely to increase the sense of the language stream and might harm it. Honest scientists take criticism seriously. I'd very much like to see a robust discussion and resolution of the common criticisms of Darwinism instead of just dismissal.

Tea Party Stands For Core Principle: — Slams Are Tainted By Liberal Bigotry

SEE HERE The rhetoric against the Tea Party really makes no sense. As Allen West points out the Tea Party stands for American Core Principles, so what's the beef? As usual the reaction on the part of the left isn't to engage on the level of ideas, but to engage instead in mud slinging and racist bigotry. The bigots are the ones calling names and talking about lynching and it's not the Tea Party doing that, it's the liberals. ILLUSTRATION

Whatever You Believe About Public Education, It's Quite Clear It Has Failed

SEE HERE This is revealing. 70% of parents who took advantage of Indiana's voucher program pulled their kids out of the public school. You can complain about the fact that most ended up in Catholic schools, but after all they have to end up somewhere and the Catholic schools are likely the largest single alternative system. I'd guess that even the Catholic schools would not do too well if one really free marketed education because they've been corrupted too by the modernism that has saturated our schools. The quality of education in the United States is generally rather abysmal. That's frankly a disgrace for the wealthiest and freest nation on the planet. Voucher systems or other free market ideas in education are clearly one direction to go. I'm sold on the idea. Most of my extended family is doing home schooling and love the results. We may be ensuring that there are students who will have personal discipline and who truly know how to learn and stand on their own two feet. Someone has to education the leaders of the future and I think the public education system isn't doing a very good job of it.

An Inconvenient Truth — For Al Gore and the IPCC

SEE HERE Sorry Al, but human beings are not a big factor in climate change. I know this will upset your monetary apple-cart and you won't be able to make as much money as you hoped for from global warming. But look on the bright side. The folks in Sweden are going to be too embarrassed to ask you for the Nobel Prize back and you likely have enough money to continue your extravagant lifestyle. Moreover that house you own on the sea-shore actually isn't going to be overrun by rising oceans. So there is some good news wrapped in with the bad news, or is it some bad news wrapped with the good news. It seems to me that it's good news that we're really not facing anything more threatening than weather pretty much as usual.

Defund Our Enemies: Wild Bill back in April!

App Taking Off — Obama Job Creation

SEE HERE Maybe we can make more money making fun of Obama than taking him at all seriously. Keeping track of the state of the economy in a nice iPhone app seems like a good investment of 99 cents. One commenter made my day when he said, "And when it crashes it says it is Bush's fault."

The Empty Suit Does It Again

SEE HERE So the NIC is going to make another big speech. And, gee whiz, it just happens to be scheduled for the exact time of a GOP presidential candidates debate in California. Fancy that! And he wants it to be a joint session of Congress, kind of like a State of the Union address. Thinks well of himself doesn't he? With teleprompters in place we can expect to hear about more Keynesianism, more spending, calls for sacrifice, extended jobless benefits as he continues to take actions which sow uncertainty and keep the economy in a decidedly uncertain and concerned state. I'll certainly be impressed if he says something substantive. But I won't be watching. I think curling up with a good book is likely far more rewarding. I've never yet heard this man say anything very much worth listening to. We ought to implement an "I" counter so that we get a running count on the TV set as he speaks. That might actually increase the audience. COMMENTARY and then there's BOEHNER's REQUEST and FIVE REASONS why it was a stupid move by Obama.

Breaking the Law Doesn't Matter Any More? — Apparently Not If You're the President!

SEE HERE Why does this president get a pass every time on his fishy past? This social security thing is really strange. The forged birth documents are also strange. There's no question they are forged. Even the pass he gets on the statements he made in his two books which were likely ghostwritten since he's shown no evidence of any writing ability and an analysis suggests that at least one of them was written by Bill Ayers who the president has told us he only knew casually. The lies are many and the effort put into hiding every document imaginable about the man is monumental and just plain weird. When whatever it is all comes out I think we'll be astonished, but astonished about what? As I say, it is all really weird!

The Result of Irresponsible Government

SOURCE There comes a time in the life of a nation when one has to draw back from the brink. It is painful. It requires rethinking the role of government. It requires restoring the rule of law and honoring the original intent of the founders when they crafted the Constitution. We can do it. Will we?

Setting the Record Straight

SEE HERE "Duty, Honor, Country" is the motto of the men and women educated at the United States Military Academy at West Point. The Valerie Plame affair is very old news, but still needs airing for it represents a failure on the part of many to uphold their duty and honor. In particular it is disappointing that Colon Powell failed to tell the President all that he knew very early in the investigation. It would have save an innocent man from jail and it would have short-circuited what became a media circus. Too bad.

I've been listening to the audios from the IHM Home School Conference this year and the second audio in the sequence was on the manners of the late 18th century as depicted in the fiction of Jane Austen. We should read her works and strive to return our country to a more civilized state. Magnanimity towards our enemies and attention to duty were two of the themes. It is long since time to restore manners to an ill-mannered and rapidly declining society.

GOP Banned From Labor Day Parade

SEE HERE Do you trust these kinds of people with power? I sure wouldn't. This is the kind of thuggish and undemocratic behavior you can expect from the liberal progressive union owned crowd of cronies when they don't get their way. Why would you want to give this kind of people power? All you would get would be tyranny.

Breaking the Code — It's All About the Coming Collective

SEE HERE Pat Buchanan cites Lenin through Keynes on the matter of debasing the currency. Floating more and more money which isn't matched by work causes prices to rise because it makes money worth less. That's called inflation. Inflation is simply the debasing of the value of the money supply. Kings used to do it by such measures as adding base metal to the mix and expecting the resulting adulterated coin to trade at the same value. The Fed has been in charge of the U.S. currency system since it was created in 1913 INFLATION CALCULATOR $20 in 1913 would buy goods and services that today would cost $456.41 for a total factor of 22.82 or another way of expressing it would be that a $1.00 today would only buy the services that 4.38 cents would buy in 1913. Thanks Federal Reserve, for nothing and that's how much we'll have if this kind of thing continues.

Welcome to the Gulag Where Freedom of Speech Is Only Tolerated When The Speech Is Approved By The Liberal Progressive Baby Killers

SEE HERE This kind of thing always riles me quite a bit. Flag burners and marchers of all kinds, gay obscenities, and in your face profanity and thuggery is tolerated, but a guy handing out pro-life literature is handcuffed and beaten.

This Is Obnoxious!

SEE HERE The only thing this president knows how to do is spend money. This is outrageous. He buys 1.1 Million dollar buses and then has them flown to the places where he's campaigning all at taxpayer expense. When are we going to impeach this guy. He might as well just be giving us the finger!

The Media Vacuity On Religion

SEE HERE The media betrays its ignorance every time it talks about religion or for that matter what people right of say Karl Marx believe. The sheer nonsense they produce as a result should be embarrassing to them since it reveals just what bigots they are.

Defending the Indefensible — by Thinking! What a Concept!

Imposing your views on others when they are not hurting anyone is wrong. Maybe we should be more expansive in our understanding instead of taking all kinds of narrow and judgmental positions. Prices are signals and high prices signal need, the higher the more need.

I probably should point out that some of the activities clearly harm other people including yourself, such as prostitution and drug abuse. The exact dividing line is determined by moral considerations.

'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. ...

SEE HERE Clarence Thomas ought to be appreciated by the entire black community as a jurist who made it on his own merits despite the attempts of the liberal progressives to bring him down with concocted stories.

Ignorant or Evil — You Decide! I Already Have.

CHECK IT OUT

Ayn Rand at the hands of Ringer, Wallace, Buckley and Chambers!

SEE HERE Robert Ringer goes down memory lane to an old Mike Wallace interview with Ayn Rand. One can't agree entirely with Rand I think, but one can't ignore her either. Human freedom isn't without obligations. We are free and true freedom is doing what we ought to do.

Buckley on Rand!

WHITTAKER CHAMBERS ON ATLAS SHRUGGED
The problem with Rand is the deification of selfishness and a fundamental failure of humanity. So while I agree that the interests of the individual are important it is more important to recognize that morality is not merely about the self. Failure to take into account the good of others is to deny your own humanity.

If There's Nothing to Hide, Why Are They Hidding It?

SEE HERE UVA is covering Mann's sorry butt. It's hard to understand why unless they are also covering their own. Mann's hockey stick is a clear fudge exposed by one of my former teachers from George Mason, Ed Wegman, who I can tell you is the real deal. Wegman said it was nonsense, well not in those words exactly but it pretty much meant that. You could get a hockey stick by feeding in random data. That's a pretty powerful fudge and obviously means the data doesn't matter. So why is UVA covering from Mann? Whatever is going on they appear to be in clear violation of the law.

The Sliminess of Contemporary Politics

SEE HERE The recommendations offered in this article without apology show how far into the quagmire our politics have fallen. It's all just a game of entrapment. Truth, honor, integrity ?? What are those? The political discourse of our time is a mere upsmanship of who can be ridiculed the least. How sad is that?

Wild Bill On the Government Irresponsibility

"Fast and Furious" is just another example of a government program that should never have happened. Someone should go to jail for that one, maybe a lot of someones.

Is the Hidden Agenda to Destroy Small Community Banks?

SEE HERE Zero interest rates? On the whole I'm mystified by the whole economic picture. How is this supposed to work? We need at least a simple up front explanation. FED SITE I used to know how the system worked. I remember studying it at one time, but not too thoroughly so before attacking it too much I'd like to understand it better. In general my overview assessment is that it has failed to preserve the value of the currency and I view this as a serious failure. What I don't know is how the system ought to change. I'd be curious to know what the most successful systems of handing money and preserving the value have been. Meanwhile, I'm just adding learning more about the Fed to my evergrowing "to do" list. HERE'S A FUN SITE ON TOPIC
MILTON FRIEDMAN 1 explaining the Fed. MILTON FRIEDMAN ON THE DANGERS concluding with his preference to abolish the Fed. The point is that the stability of the monetary system should not depend on the person in charge. But what works better?

Just Who Is the Liar? — There's Noone Even Close for Second

SEE HERE Robert Ringer points out that Joe Wilson was "right on" when he shouted out "You lie" during the president's speech. But it's all Bush's fault right? Well maybe no the lying, huh? Here's Ringer's list:

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For example, Bush never encouraged the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, and other Muslim extremists to overthrow America’s staunchest Arab ally and end thirty years of security for Israel on its western flank … or appoint socialists to high positions in his administration … or try to stop a major U.S. company from building a manufacturing plant in a right-to-work state … or push through an economy-killing healthcare bill over the objections of a majority of Americans … or encourage union thugs to get rowdy and violent whenever their demands are not met … or constantly berate anyone who disagrees with his socialist policies … to name but a few of the scores of anti-American actions the current occupant of the White House has taken since January 2009.

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The list goes on since the NIC keeps opening his mouth and making noise and all the noise is decorated with liberal swarms of lies. Just start keeping score and you'll notice.

Subsidies? Whatever for?

SEE HERE This little piece about farm subsidies is just an excuse to riff on the topic in general. What business is it of the government to subsidize anything? To take the money of others and give it to businesses that otherwise would fail is a recipe for making any society less competitive and less capable. It rewards inefficient producers and likely raises the cost of the goods subsidized simply because there's no incentive for the subsidized to be efficient. Taxes on corporations are also a lie. You can't tax corporations, only the people who depend on their production. Corporations don't pay taxes, people do. The people who pay are those who buy the products of the corporation and in the process the corporation is made less competitive against foreign competition. Is it any wonder that we're growing less competitive versus the rest of the world? We have the highest corporate tax burden on our corporations.

What's the remedy? Get the government out of the knickers of business by eliminating both subsidies and taxes. That being said it would be a shock to do it overnight and the last thing we need are shocks, so the subsidies and the taxes should be staged down in a smooth fashion from what they are today to nothing in five to ten years. To make sure it happens we really ought to put a Constitutional amendment in place that restricts the government from doing this kind of thing except under specific emergency conditions that are spelled out. If we can't get control of what we are screwing up then we'll only get it fixed after the train wreck that is sure to come.

Three Myths About the Great Depression

These are enlightening but they are still myths that drive the liberal progressive agenda. It shows how mythology often contributes to bad decisions. All three of these myths support the liberal progressive agenda and that's why we need to make it clear that they are false and continuing to believe them is destructive insofar as we act as if they are true.

Rich and Poor in America — Or How Rich the Poor Really Are

SEE HERE The reality of poverty in the United States is interesting because our poor are the richest poor in the world with more than the rest of the world has. Bill Whittle critiques the poverty in America narrative. When he talks about the parable of the check (that's not what he calls it but when you watch you'll know what I mean) I was reminded of the parable of the workers that agreed to work all day for a denarius and later some that worked only an hour also received a denarius.

People appear to resent generosity that is proportional and generosity that is disproportional. The people who did more think that they should receive more and the people who see others get something they didn't really deserve think they deserve the same thing. Both of those are a symptom of envy. You only have the right to what you deserve and if someone is generous however great or small you should be pleased. The reality of poverty in the United States is that what most of us call poverty isn't poverty at all. It is differential luxury.

I thought the timelines were particularly telling because they showed that on average if you wait in the United States when the economy is growing then in ten years you'll have what only the rich had ten years earlier. It's really a little hard to feel too sorry for the poor in America when you compare their "poverty" to the real poverty in the world.

The Clueless Democrats versus Reaganomics

SEE HERE Just listen to the liberals run down Reagan a time or two and ask who exactly is disconnected from reality? Reagan inherited the Carter economy and he rescued it by growing the economy despite the serious attempt by the Democrats to overspend him. He couldn't stop that but he could make the economy grow. So they blamed him with the growing deficit that they created by increasing spending faster than revenue increased. Now we're faced with another crisis and the Democrats are demonstrating that they haven't a clue.

Burning the Koran Causes These Barbarians to Kill People But They Can Burn Bibles

SEE HERE If it weren't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all. Well that's something I heard governor Palin say on a YouTube and I like it a lot just because it is illustrated over and over by their actions. I'm waiting for them to condemn Iran for burning bibles since they were so quick to condemn the minister who burned a single Koran some time ago. That led to the death of a few Christians at the hands of these barbarians. I'm betting the Christians aren't going to cut the heads off any Muslems for this outrage. It's a fundamental difference between a religion of hate and violence and a religion of love and charity. I hope Christians are starting to study the history of the spread of Islam a little more closely. It is a saga of systematic violence and the spread of religion by military force starting with the very lands first converted to Christianity by the early Christians.

Old News but Just Weird! Why was this an initiative?

I've seen this before and I expect you probably have as well, but it does seem surpassingly strange. Eight attempts to change the definition of "natural born citizens." Some of it may have been motivated by trying to make Arnold Schwarzenegger eligible for the presidency.

The Progressive Nightmare

SEE HERE Adrienne has commented several times on the brambles so I trucked on over to her site to see what was going on and garnered this post and the last one scarfing the YouTube she'd displayed. Conservatives have to stick together since we are under attack by the mob of liberal progressives who think that their world will be made better by stealing from the productive until they have collapsed the system. Then we will experience the truth of Maggie's dictum: "Socialism is great until you run out of other people's money."

Three Myths About Capitalism

Check out LearnLiberty.org.

The War Against Salt

SEE HERE I'm definitely a saltaholic. I salt everything and put up with the usual snide remarks from the folks that are bought into the "salt is bad for you" mantra. The problem is that salt is also an essential nutrient that promotes all kinds of bodily functions. I was quite amused by this article which shows that the big evidence against salt was feeding rats the equivalent in human terms of 500 grams of salt a day. Well why wouldn't you expect some sort of adverse effects from abusing rats that way? I remember some congressional testimony back in the 70's about the health value of breakfast cereal because rats fed a diet of only breakfast cereal died. Apparently rats don't metabolize cereal very well. This kind of "science" is always a bit questionable just because the proxies aren't necessarily a good analog to the human system they are being substituted for. The same problem crops up when you use tree rings for a temperature proxy and other such procedures. There are always confounding variables many of which you may be unaware of. I haven't dropped dead of oversalting my food yet, but never fear, we all use salt and we all die ... is there a connection? Well if you don't use salt you'll die sooner! Hmmm....

The Job Killing Effects of Government

SEE HERE We're in for a long bitter recession if the government continues to interfere in the legitimate rights of business to locate wherever they like and employ whomever they like. What ever gave the government the right to do things like this? The is cronyism of the most contemptible sort.

Why Is the Government In the Transportation Business?

SEE HERE Government is about the safety of the citizens from enemies within and without and the necessary paraphernalia like police,courts and jails, armies, navies, and air forces to accomplish those responsibilities. It's not about competition with the private sector or the forever expansion of incidental intrusions into the citizens lives telling them what kind of food to buy and what kinds of light bulbs and toilets to own. Government is also addicted to the most colossal wasting of money imaginable. We should throttle them back, very far back and restore the ordinary business of day to day life to the people. We can handle it and it's increasingly evident that government can't.

Welcome to Hope and Change

One in nine homes in Las Vegas are in foreclosure. Overall the country over 2% of homes are in foreclosure. You can thank those who forced banks to make easy loans to folks who had shaky credit ratings. Who were they? The liberal progressives did it and then they tried to blame the banks when it was they who forced the banks to do it. If there is one thing that liberals are really bad at it is economics. They really shouldn't be let near the government but they make such a show of caring about people that the fact that they spread destruction and economic collapse wherever they go seems to go unchecked. Welcome to hope and change. I hope you survive until we can change back.

Support Conservative Hollywood

The question is asked about the double standard. Why can liberals say whatever hateful thing they want and conservatives get attacked for saying anything at all? Double standard? You bet! But think about it the next time some liberal is telling you about openness and freedom of speech and the open marketplace of ideas or some bushwa like that. What they mean is that all ideas are fine as long as they are their ideas. No other ideas need apply.

Robert Ringer: Cheering People Up Since 1982

SEE HERE The two extremes are 1) Gloom and Doom, and 2) Pollyanna Optimism. Reality usually comes somewhere in between. A salutary lesson that too few seem to have learned is that you can't spend your way out of debt, and putting off a painful remedy only makes things worse. Ringer has been on the gloom and doom side with good reason for a relatively long time. If I had to bet I'd say he's a lot closer to being correct than the pollyanna, all shall be well, crowd who want to keep spending as usual and ignore the huge sucking sound coming from behind. I think it's time to start looking at reality and getting off our duffs to do something. The main thing to do is to stop pretending that the government is a solution to much of anything. As Ronald Reagan said: Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.

The Genesis of Clouds— A Cosmic Connection

SEE HERE http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifSince clouds are among the most important elements in climate, the fact that we still don't understand them ought to humble the theorists who think that their climate models are the be-all and end-all of climate science. We still have much to learn. They'll be CERNing out cloud data in the years ahead. MORE HERE

A Despicable Decision — What Was Bloomberg Thinking?

SEE HERE This was pointed out to me by a group that I belong to and one of the members was reminded of C.S. Lewis's passage from The Abolition of Man which goes:

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"Men without chests ,...without a passion for good and a hatred of evil." "We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise, we laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate, and bid the geldings be fruitful."

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To honor the dead and exclude God is to make a travesty.

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For God's sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed,
All murdered.
(Richard II, 3.2.155-160)

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Genetically Modified Crops?

SEE HERE Just how dangerous are genetically modified crops? I'm a decided fence sitter on a question like this because I'm not knowledgeable about it and I'm inclined to opt for caution when I'm in explicit ignorance. That being said there's an adage that a co-worker of mine said to me long ago which I always hold to in situations like this. We were walking across an aircraft hanger at the Naval Air Development Center which was then developing the ANEW-System for the first centralized computer system on a Naval patrol aircraft. We were talking about complexity and who really understood the whole system. We concluded that really no-one understood the whole system which mean that there could be unforeseen emergent behavior. At that point my companion said (we were both student trainees at the time): "My dad says it is all a game of who do you trust!" That comment has stuck with me all these years, almost fifty now, and later I talked about it with my own dad who was a Rear Admiral and he seconded the concept saying that whenever he assumed a new command he would find old-hands that he trusted because he knew he didn't know the organization and its dynamics and customs.

In a similar way when we encounter new technology it is entirely reasonable to proceed with caution but also to recognize the great potential. Genetic modification of plants is not a new idea. People have been breeding genetic plant modification using hybridization and other methods for many years. The newer methods are less well understood and could prove to be very powerful. With great power comes the potential for great danger. I would look to motivations. I'm not happy with folks trying to patent plants like Monsanto and people who seem to be trying to breed in sterility (yeah that's what we need plant genes designed to spread non-fertility). I think we should demand to know the benefits and dangers. However, government isn't always the best agent. Follow the money and find people with real knowledge and expertise that you trust. Agenda driven science is always bad science. Watch out for policy wonks pretending to be scientists. That being said, genetic engineering has great promise for good.

"Bush Did It!" —Wearing a Little Thin is it?

SEE HERE Frankly the whole liberal progressive wing of the political spectrum is long on name calling and short on the truth. Usually there is a germ of some kind of truth so that they can plausibly hang their hat on the exaggeration that they are sure to offer thereafter. In the case of the overpowering deficit there can be no doubt that Bush the younger spent a lot of money with some justification on two wars and an economic bailout, but Obama campaigned against this and once elected has spent money at nominally twice the rate so that he will have outspent the entire two terms of the Bush administration in the first and hopefully last term of his administration.

Whether it is lying pure and simple or hypocrisy or an admixture of the two is yours to decide. But the facts remain that the performance of the first term of the Obama administration is twice as profligate as the Bush administration and shows no particular sign of winding down. Longer term many economists are saying that we have already achieved sustainability which means the system will collapse, the only variable is exactly when and with how much of a bounce.

Marines Forbidden to Fart in Afghanistan

SEE HERE Somehow this just seems absurd. Has our military leadership come to this? I wonder what Patton would say?

Obama: A Living, Breathing Nightmare

SEE HERE Probably one of the more objective assessments of the NIC. Certainly there has never been a president whose promises and delivery were so very far apart. "Hope and Change" was the mantra. But what he has delivered is change after change that leads not to hope but to greater hopelessness, and which testifies to a total lack of understanding about how anything works. It is as if you let a two year old with a hammer loose in a factory with delicate machinery. There seems little he is not capable to making worse.

Allen West Tells It Like It Is! The President is Shredding the Constitution

The Flash Mob Religion

SEE HERE The Democrats don't argue because they subscribe to a set of faith based beliefs that require absolute submission. Thus the only questions are do you believe in the fundamentals like evolution, abortion, socialism (well not usually called that, something more squishy that means the same thing), gay marriage, green energy, sustainability, and on and on. Never an argument to be seen! Well the problem with this is that it is the basis for their mob behavior. The other problem is most of it is nonsense. (Actually from what I can tell all of it is nonsense, I'm just trying to be nice.) Ann Coulter checks in on evolution and fails the Chris Matthews test, horrors! The problem is that believing in evolution is getting a whole lot harder to do as you actually find out more about life. Darwin knew almost nothing and even then it was possible to make a plausible case that Darwinian evolution wasn't true. Now that we know so much more it gets to be a vanishingly small probability that evolution as described by Darwin could be true. What is the truth? Probably not little green aliens!

Ronald Reagan's America:Marco Rubio In His Own Speak

Senator Rubio is a treat. This is the Tea Party.

Is Anyone Watching the Irresponsibly Wasteful Spending

SEE HERE Must be nice to own someone else's piggy bank so you can spend as much as you like and no one seems to question it. This is just irresponsible. When we've gotten these parasites out of the White House we need to put some controls in place to make sure that the next irresponsible spenders can't waste so much of the people's treasure on their personal enjoyment instead of the people's business.

The Appearance of Impropriety

SEE HERE The Appearance of Impropriety? What would you call it when the science journalists and editors are all the same people that write the IPCC reports. This certainly calls the independence of the science into question. Of course there is a "scientific consensus" when you pick the people who do the journals to write your reports. Wow ... What a concept!

The Tyranny of Do-Gooders

SEE HERE I'm not going to take a big position on this. But the question is whether we've really considered the unforeseen consequences of many of the actions we take for the very best of intentions. I personally have nothing against child labor so long as the children are treated fairly and not exploited. I was a paperboy and it taught me a lot about responsibility, money and money management, customer relations, and the importance of discipline. You had to be there every day and deliver the papers. In those days it was 42 cents a week for six editions of the Cleveland Press, and afternoon paper that doesn't exist anymore.

Other interesting cases are ticket scalping and price gouging that Stossel points out can be explained as the price for standing in line or the cost of going to the trouble of providing a scarce good in a difficult situation. Whether you agree or not, you should think through these things. The ticket scalpers are simply getting the market rate of a scare commodity. If you were hot to go then you should have gone to get the tickets while the getting was good. The alternative to price gouging is shortages. If you can't make a profit by going to the extra trouble then the goods that would otherwise have been provided won't be. Generally people don't think things through and that's a problem.

Palistinians Victims? Hardly! We Are Dealing With the Most Barbarous Movement On Earth

Let us pray for peace asks Jon Voight after pointing out how barbaric the acts done in the name of Palistinians. An outrage does not cease to be an outrage when it is supposedly done in a good cause.

Foreign Law Has No Place In American Courts

SEE HERE Citing foreign law in American courts should be off the table as a clear non-starter. We are a nation of laws, our laws. If someone wants different laws then move or try to get the laws put in place here, but don't expect foreign law to have standing in American courts. We have a long tradition of law and I expect we do recognize some common law but whatever that is it's already on the books. The idea that this is aimed at shariah is simply untrue. That being said, much of shariah from what I've gathered from reading is simply barbaric. Who would want it but barbarians? Citizens here have rights under law that are not available to people under sharia. So should shariah trump our laws? Seems like a no-brainer — the answer is a resounding "No!" One commenter had it right however, when seen in the light of shariah the issue is an attack on our law since the conflicts between our law and shariah are generally in areas like the subordination of women. Our law makes people more free and less in bondage. ON THE SHARIAH ISSUE

Ringer Points Out the Obvious: Evolution As Commonly Understood Simply Doesn't Work

SEE HERE This is fun! The truth of the matter is that while there is some evidence for natural selection (quite a lot if you admit animal husbandry into the mix) there is virtually no evidence for evolution of species. This has and continues to be the dirty little secret in biology. It's played a little like a shell game. You show all this evidence for natural selection and then just shift into belief mode in a total evolutionary picture of species evolution. The problem is that it fails the "Where's the data?" test. Sorry, science isn't allowed leaps of faith. We leave that to the folks reading religious revelation that need to exercise at least the leap of faith that it is truly revelation. Ringer does a pretty nice job of showing how completely lunatic it really is using the monkeys typing Shakespeare analogy. It goes down hill from there frankly. There is a ton of evidence that the structure of life in beyond a progressive complexification model that depends on a continuous chain of favorable mutations. Doesn't work for anything.

The President Cashes a Check! — Really!

President Obama walks into the Bank of America to cash a check. As he approaches the cashier he says "Good morning Ma'am, could you please cash this check for me"?

Cashier: "It would be my pleasure sir. Could you please show me your ID"?

Obama: "Truthfully, I did not bring my ID with me as I didn't think there was any need to. I am President Barrack Obama, the president of the United States of America !!!!"

Cashier: "Yes sir, I know who you are, but with all the regulations, monitoring, of the banks because of imposters and forgers, etc I must insist on seeing ID"

Obama: "Just ask anyone here at the bank who I am and they will tell you. Everybody knows who I am"

Cashier: "I am sorry Mr. President but these are the bank rules and I must follow them."

Obama: "I am urging you please to cash this check"

Cashier: "Look Mr. President this is what we can do: One day Tiger Woods came into the bank without ID. To prove he was Tiger Woods he pulled out his putting iron, and made a beautiful shot across the bank into a cup. With that shot, we knew him to be Tiger Woods, and cashed his check.

Another time, Andre Agassi came in without ID. He pulled out his tennis, racquet and made a fabulous shot where the tennis ball landed in my mug. With that spectacular shot, we cashed his check.

So, Mr. President, what can you do to prove that it is you, and only you, as the President of the United States ?"

Obama stood there thinking, and thinking and finally says: "Honestly, there is nothing that comes to my mind. I can't think of a single thing"

Cashier: "Will that be large or small bills, Mr. President?"

Tea Party Terrorists in Waco Texas

Remember the BATF and Waco. Know the real terrorists!

The Birth of Thought and Thoughts About Scientism

SEE HERE Delancey Place often has provocative pieces. You can sign up to get them mailed to you on a daily basis and you can tell if one is a "hit" by a quick look. This one focuses on the birth of philosophy, rational thought about the real world, not mythological fiction. I'd like to hurry to add that I'm a big fan of myth in the sense of story told to illustrate truth that can't be captured in any other way. That's what I think of as Tolkien's view of myth. But as a scientist I'm also very interested in things that can be shown to be true through data and principle.

I'm currently reading Stanley L. Jaki's book "Chesterton, A Seer of Science." It's a short book. Jaki was both a Benedictine priest and Distinguished Professor of Physics at Seton Hall University, New Jersey where he taught from 1975. He died in 2009. I had the privilege to meet him a couple of years before he died at a Chesterton conference in Minnesota. I have a small library of Jaki's books which are all a joy to read. He had doctorates in both theology and physics and I have a copy of his physics thesis on Olber's Paradox. In this book "Chesterton, A Seer of Science" among other things, Jaki illustrates how Chesterton reacted to the scientism of his time.

"Scientism" is a particularly parochial view of science which imagines that the only truth is scientific truth. It is rampant in our day and had become rampant in Chesterton's time. The problem of course is that it isn't true. Chesterton pointed out in his own day how fast and loose with the truth scientists often were, using the patina of science to push views that were little more than an intellectual fashion in a narrow social society (rather like the liberal progressives of our day). In Orthodoxy for example, Jaki quotes Chesterton as saying: "Scientific phrases are used like scientific sheels and piston-rods to make swirfter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable." This is what we are seeing in the global warming discourse, bad science used as an argument to advance a political agenda. The point is that citing scientists is not the same as citing science, for scientists have views and all of their views are not scientific. Jaki points out something like what the media do:

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Thus "some men say that Science says this or that; when they only mean scientists, and do not know or care which scientists." Particularly apalling in Chesterton's eyes was the ubiquitous invocation of Einstein's name. He saw in it a cultural curse to be resisted by the imposition of a small fine on anyone who after dropping Einstein's name "could not demonstrate before a committee of mathematicians and astronomers that he knew anything about Einstein."

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The same kind of thing is going on constantly in our news media. The journalists cite science as if they (the journalists) actually knew any. Generally they don't. The only thing they know is which side they have picked to promote. Scientism is simply a false religion like all the other false religions. It is currently enslaved to the "Politics" false religion. This is particularly dangerous since it pretends that it is only doing the innocent thing of supporting the truth, when in fact it is manufacturing lies to please its master.

We Need a Solution Not More of the Same

SEE HERE All the jockeying around in Washington comes across to me as showboating. The dynamic of finger pointing to constantly play out the blame game. The problem is that I frankly don't care who is to blame. I think they are all to blame. The system is badly broken and the dumbnuts in Washington just dance around the funeral pyre like a bunch of idiots pointing fingers at each other. Is anything going to change if we throw Obama out? Did anything change when we threw Carter out?

The short answer is not only did nothing fundamental change but it just continued to get worse at a slightly different slope and even that changed with Bush so that there is a lot of evidence for the proposition that we're stuck with Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum (I wonder if that's an image of the same phenomenon in the British system when Lewis Carroll was writing.)

To have any hope of a change in the system we need a ground swell, maybe Ron Paul, maybe Sarah Palin, maybe Michele Bachmann ... but someone who has strong and different ideas and not just more of the same. More of the same will kill us.

Do You Really Think The Government Has Your Best Interests At Heart?

SEE HERE The government apparatus that is alleged for our own good is being increasingly turned on us to put crippling and pointless regulation in place. We need to remove Obama and begin to rein in out of control government intrusion into matters that are none of their damn business. The nanny state is being quickly transformed into something a whole lot closer to the Gestapo state.

The Effect of Unions Is To Kill Industries

SEE HERE Don't look at a good job and think "How can I force my employer to pay me more." When you create alienation between management and labor you are making the business less effective and more costly and hence less competitive. That means in the long run you are destroying the company. The history of unions has been of one industry after another killed by the greed and lack of productivity that is fostered by unions. It is one thing to organize labor to improve quality and quite another to simply organize to force less and poorer work at higher wages on a helpless employer. Until labor gets its head around the idea that it's about increased quality and you have to be worth what you're paid, unions will just be a destructive force.

Can We Throttle Back the Nonsense?

SEE HERE We seem to be running out of Middle Eastern countries to attack and maybe even running out of corporations and industries to demonize. Maybe it's time to pause and consider that all of this hostility is no part of the founder's vision. The United States was supposed to steer clear of European and by extension Middle Eastern wars and industry was a private matter to be encouraged. Somewhere not so terribly long ago we totally lost our way and are currently on a path which begins to take on the appearance of biblical Armageddon with all the characters of Gog and Magog once more receiving a new construction. It might be time to start thinking about minding our own business and let the wingnuts of the world go back to tearing each other up without our help. Meanwhile on the Libyan front Muammar Al Qathafi seems about to be replaced. I suppose the next question will be how long it will be before we discover that the replacements are just as bad as what they replaced?

A Plantation Squabble: The Republican Party Pioneered Equal Rights Not the Democrats

Charlie Rangel demonstrating that he's disconnected from reality and Laura Ingraham calls him on it. I do agree with Rangel that I want to get rid of Obama. This is a typical rhetorical exchange between a liberal and a conservative. They are never responsible for anything bad that happens. It's always someone else's fault. If you want to see spectacular evasion Rangel is hard to beat. The punch line is the usual: It's George Bush's fault! What a riot!

That Government Governs Best That Governs Least

I would suggest that, in addition to a no-new-taxes pledge, tea partiers insist that every candidate who wants their support sign a pledge to make the federal government as inconsequential in our lives as possible. — Robert Ringer SEE HERE We need to return to an earlier view of government that C.S. Lewis talked about in his inaugural address at Cambridge in 1954.

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... In all previous ages that I can think of the principal aim of rulers, except at rare and short intervals, was to keep their subjects quiet, to forestall or extinguish widespread excitement and persuade people to attend quietly to their several occupations. And on the whole their subjects agreed with them. They even prayed (in words that sound curiously old-fashioned) to be able to live "a peaceable life in all godliness and honesty" and "pass their time in rest and quietness". But now the organisation of mass excitement seems to be almost the normal organ of political power. We live in an age of "appeal if drives", and "campaigns". Our rulers have become like schoolmasters and are always demanding "keenness". And you notice that I am guilty of a slight archaism in calling them "rulers". "Leaders" is the modem word. I have suggested elsewhere that this is a deeply significant change of vocabulary. Our demand upon them has changed no less than theirs on us. For of a ruler one asks justice, incorruption, diligence, perhaps clemency; of a leader, dash, initiative, and (I suppose) what people call "magnetism" or "personality".

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And this shift from seeking a society in which one lives "a peaceable life in all godliness and honesty" is exactly what we have lost to our great detriment. Restoring it requires a restoration of virtue which requires a large shift in focus from our current decadent ways. We should at least hold up the banner and proclaim the goal. It will not be advanced with silence.

This Is Where Stupidity Has Brought Us

SEE HERE There is something utterly tragic about this news story. How can it have come to this? This is where the feel good movement has taken us. Don't criticize we've been told. Don't punish. And standards have been stripped from the schools, standards of manners and behavior and common decency. Politeness? A thing of the past that many modern children haven't the slightest idea about. It shows. It's time for a change, but don't hold your breath. The towering stupidity that all this reveals is not going to go away any time soon. The brain dead folks that got us here are still providing solutions that aren't and lecturing us on how to bring up children when most of them don't have any. I've grow sick of arm chair pundits who prescribe remedies that harm.

Soak The Rich & Soon There Are Less

SEE HERE The rich have been about soaked out except for the few billionaires out there who are complaining that they are not taxed enough like Warren Buffet. The millionaires are actually a fairly small population in the overall scheme of things and a little adverse climate in financial terms quickly culls the herd. If we work it right we can reduce things further so that everyone is just eking out a living except of course for the anointed in Washington who fly separate jets to Martha's Vineyard and party while the rest of us struggle.

Getting Even

SEE HERE This is a short piece from Red State, but it shows the nature of politics in its usual bad light of petty men with small minds and expansive egos striving to get even for past slights. Is it any wonder that the political landscape is so heavily populated with slimeballs?

Media Manipulation: Talking Points From the Left

SEE HERE Red State's Erik Erickson gives us a review this morning of the media's use of talking points to try to influence the presidential nomination process on the right. Not being the most industrious of men, the media types fall into fairly predictable patterns with thought processes so worn that they'd cut grooves in the campaign trail like wheel ruts in a muddy road. Stand by for the same old same old as the campaign season heats up.

Calling All Catholics

SEE HERE The wife of one of my nephews' (I've lost count, don't ask) has started a blog called CatholicSistas ... and you can find it at the link. Check it out and see what you think. She is involved in her local parish and in apologetics which is a fine thing to be involved in. Defending the faith is growing increasingly important in a world bent on decadence and decay. Whether you are a traditional Catholic or a member of the separated brethren, you might find the site interesting. I promised I'd give her a plug. She's smart, articulate and it's certainly a topic of great concern in a world gone mad.

What Should We Do About Money?

VIDEO We need a solution to the country's monetary problem that doesn't lead to massive inflation. The key is a monetary solution that preserves the value of money so that it is stable and enduring. I don't know the solution, but the two hour video here gives a summary of some of the challenges. I've personally watched in my own life a cup of coffee go from a nickel a cup to $1.89 a cup (well a refillable cup at Cracker Barrel). We need a better system. The video claim that government issued money is the solution. I think it has to go further than that. Gold is not the answer is their position. Who controls the quantity of money is the issue according to this view. Quantity should be controlled so that value is preserved.

The Real Agenda: Destroy the Developed Economies

SEE HERE Isn't it rather strange that all the strategies that the global warming alarmists propose have the side effects of making things more expensive and taking down traditional methods that have been the source of our affluence whether it be fossil fuel energy production and transportation or coal fired power plants that actually work to be replaced by alternatives that have yet to be demonstrated to work effectively but which are more expensive. Why is that?

Here we have a frank statement that it is part of the plan, the larger plan to bring down the developed economies. Then we can join the third world and be as miserable as they are. Doesn't it strike you that this is a really bad idea? Why does anyone listen to these fools?

Maxine Waters Dials Back the Rhetoric — LOL :)

Liberals think that they are the only ones that have a right to an opinion and that's really all they have is opinions since they are impervious to facts and principles. Looks like she's talking to a union crowd that likes to listen to confrontational rhetoric since it fuels and gives rationale to their propensity to beat people up and destroy things.

Pharoh In the White House — Anatomy of a Would Be Dictator

SEE HERE I'm not sure it can be said any better than this. Mychal Massie nails the NIC right where he lives, in his narcissistic dreams spending down the people's wealth to personally aggrandize himself and his cronies. He's the most worldclass liar to ever live in the White House and eclipses all his predecessors. He lies about everything for the least motive or apparently no motive at all. That's the signature of a pathetic human being.

Human Generated CO2 Is A Joke!

SEE HERE This puts the notion that human generated CO2 has something to do with climate change in perspective. It's a joke! The amount of CO2 humans generate is so small compared with natural sources that you could eliminate it and the planet wouldn't notice. You could double it and the planet wouldn't notice. Check out the numbers: plants 60 Gtons, ocean 90 Gtons, and human sources 5.5 Gtons — So that means humans produce at most less than 4% of all the CO2 and notice that besides plants and the ocean we have quite a few other sources that can contribute.

So in case you wondered as more and more data comes in the case for AGW simply collapses into something more and more laughable. When will these clowns fold up their tent and go away? Meanwhile, remember I told you, it looks like it's going to get cooler before it gets too much warmer. If the solar cycle crowd is right then we're going to be looking at some global cooling in the next decade or two.

Sarah Palin In Her Own Speak

I enjoy Sarah Palin. She's so much more of a real person than the usual run of the mill ignoramus politician. I want people who don't run on talking points and hypocrisy.

The Dry Rot Is There For All To See

SEE HERE He who has eyes should see. He who has ears should hear. We have been warned and if we pay no heed and do not turn ourselves around we will have no one to blame but ourselves. We have destroyed our country in only a century. It was a century of great promise which has been squandered on a delusion that we can simply wish ourselves into sustained greatness. No nation was ever great without sacrifice and dedication and industry and integrity. But we pretend to greatness while exceeding our means, frivolously squandering our time on idle pursuits, pretending that we can gain all we desire without effort and throwing away any consideration of morality as we kill millions of the unborn as sacrifices to our lifestyle and evade our obligations and our debts. We will reap what we have sown. The warnings are all around us. When will be begin to pay them heed?

Obama Is Tempted To Be A Dictator — Hubris Will Take Us Down If We Don't Stop It

Glenn Beck points out that these are prepared remarks. That's scary! Notice the audience reaction. LA RAZA What he says later, no recording yet, essentially start the ball rolling to make him a dictator. Really!? If this continues we are looking at the dissolution of the nation.

Calling Out the Media: They Wouldn't Know Science If They Tripped Over It

SEE HERE It used to be that the media had scientists who wrote their science articles. I mean real scientists that did real science. Now they just bloviate based on a rather pigmy understanding of what science is that they probably go somewhere around the sixth grade from a teacher who had also never done any real science. Let me tell you what appears to be a well kept secret: 1) Science is about data, and 2) science is not about consensus. Indeed if science were about consensus we'd still be locked in some of the paradigms of the past. Data rules.

When we come to climate science the first thing to understand is that the climate models do a pretty lousy job of matching the data, especially when you examine them closely. Moreover, the track record of the modelers is to conceal much of their work. That's also unscientific. True science is done in a goldfish bowl where all the data is open and replication of experiments are encouraged. Not so in the so-called climate science community where just trying to get the underlying data has taken independent investigators years of requests and hounding. Moreover, the cherry picking, no only of data such as proxies, but suppression of evidence that doesn't support their cause, like the Medieval Warm Period (sort of negative cherry picking) is clear evidence of an intent to defraud. It's just a scam to pay off their financial supporters with results that will allow them to go forward with taxes and regulation. We should get the government out of science and science will benefit.

Why Give Aid and Comfort to the Enemy?

This guy asks a good question. Why are we blowing U.S. special operations cover? These kinds of releases are done for the benefit of the president's popularity and to the detriment of national security. Obama needs to learn to think of someone but himself.

The Left Wing Smear Machine In Action

SEE HERE This is a story that needs to be tracked. The New York Times and a Pulitzer Prize winning author published a hit piece on Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif, making claims that amount to malfeasance and corruption. The Congressman is understandably upset and calling for a retraction. We'll have to watch how the New York Times squirms out of this one. HERE'S THE NYT PIECE

Such a Liar!

His father was 9 1/2 when WWII ended. Hello! This guy is simply a bald faced liar. Update 8-22-11: SNOPES I thought you'd like to see how Snopes spins this. I have to agree with Snopes that this is the most likely explanation and similarly agree with them about the Auschwitz related comment. On the other hand it's interesting that by the standards that they called George Bush a liar, Obama is a liar in spades. So let's just say that he's fast and loose with the truth.

Be Watchful!

SEE HERE Two days to be watchful: September 11th when we may see a terrorist attack commemorating the anniversary of 9/11 and September 17th when the nations communists (or whatever they are) are trying to attack Wall Street. The efforts to foment social unrest are ramping up with flash mobs, terrorist threats, communist demonstrations. But the Tea Party is a problem?

Sometimes It's More Important to Laugh Because Otherwise You'd Cry

SEE HERE The president who does nothing worthwhile and knows nothing worthwhile, but is full of blame for anyone on his political hit-list. The only bright spot is that the 2012 elections are coming and hopefully we'll get rid of him.

Allen West In His Own Speak

Tea Party Critique from Zonation ... What a hoot!

When Is This Charade Going to End?

SEE HERE The love affair between Barack Obama and the media means that no matter what he does they give him a pass. George Bush would have been crucified if he spent public money lavishly on a campaign bus tour, but not Obama. $2.2 million dollars for two luxury buses and untold dollars for the tour ... when is this kind of malfeasance in office going to be called what it is — larceny.

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Couldn't resist adding that following a few days on the road in this elaborate bus, Obama and family are off to recuperation on a ten day vacation at Martha's Vineyard ... this guy takes more vacations than any six real Americans.

How Government Ultimately Kills Creativity

SEE HERE Big science spends billions of dollars for ever diminishing and narrowing returns. As we've increasingly entered the era of big science we've also entered the time of publish or perish and the generation of every more meaningless and limited science. Creativity is not bought and paid for. It is a labor of love and the fruit of intense concentration in a kind of mental space free of the pressures of bureaucratic obligations. It's interesting to me that one of the most productive enterprises, Bell Labs, was also one of the least confining. At Bell Labs they freed smart people to do what they loved and they generated phenomenal results. It was a big play pen for grown up kids who loved science. It wasn't built on the model of a production line or a focused development project. It worked. The more government has intruded big money and big planning into science the less progress there has been. The engineering has gotten more intricate and the technology has been astounding at times, but where are the scientific breakthroughs? I'm reminded of those who at the turn of the century thought that science had already found out everything that could be found and that all that was left was crossing the t's and dotting the i's. The we got relativity and quantum mechanics and superconductivity and all bets were off. That's the only reason I'm the least bit skeptical about saying that we're killing the goose that lays the golden egg. We probably need more adult playpens and fewer big government overkill projects. MORE

Some Letters Never Grow Old

Editor,

Has America become the land of special interest and home of the double standard?

Lets see: if we lie to the Congress, it’s a felony and if the Congress lies to us its just politics; if we dislike a black person, we’re racist and if a black person dislikes whites, its their 1st Amendment right; the government spends millions to rehabilitate criminals and they do almost nothing for the victims; in public schools you can teach that homosexuality is OK, but you better not use the word God in the process; you can kill an unborn child, but it is wrong to execute a mass murderer; we don’t burn books in America, we now rewrite them; we got rid of communist and socialist threats by renaming them progressive; we are unable to close our border with Mexico, but have no problem protecting the 38th parallel in Korea; if you protest against President Obama’s policies you’re a terrorist, but if you burned an American flag or George Bush in effigy it was your 1st Amendment right.

You can have pornography on TV or the internet, but you better not put a nativity scene in a public park during Christmas; we have eliminated all criminals in America, they are now called sick people; we can use a human fetus for medical research, but it is wrong to use an animal.

We take money from those who work hard for it and give it to those who don’t want to work; we all support the Constitution, but only when it supports our political ideology; we still have freedom of speech, but only if we are being politically correct; parenting has been replaced with Ritalin and video games; the land of opportunity is now the land of hand outs; the similarity between Hurricane Katrina and the gulf oil spill is that neither president did anything to help.

And how do we handle a major crisis today? The government appoints a committee to determine who’s at fault, then threatens them, passes a law, raises our taxes; tells us the problem is solved so they can get back to their reelection campaign.

What has happened to the land of the free and home of the brave?

- Ken Huber
Tawas City

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This letter was originally sent in June of 2010. I stumbled upon it when I was doing some research on something else and couldn't resist putting it up because it illustrates so well Governor Palin's comment "If it weren't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all."

Union Thug Shoots Head of A Small Non-Union Business

This is the kind of thing you can expect from unions. What they do is destroy the businesses they are associated with and shoot the folks that won't go along. It's the history of unionism. They are nothing more than a licensed protection racket just like the mob runs only legal. It's time to shut down the unions that engage in this kind of stuff.

The Liberals Are Helping Sell Ann's Book: How Nice!

SEE HERE Liberals love mobs because rioting and anarchy is their path to power.

Making sound proposals based on facts and logic is not their metier. Issuing impossible promises to the easily fooled is their specialty. For more on this, see "The 2012 Democratic Platform."

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Ann Coulter is always a treat especially when the liberals and playing into her hands by rioting all over the globe. We must have them on the run, they're certainly throwing enough tantrums. It's what liberals do since they don't have enough neurons to actually engage in rational discourse or argue the points of significant policy.

The rule of thumb is: "We want our way ... " Because? well because "We want our way! Damn it!" "You Nazis never listen to us." And it goes on like that for a few rounds and then they break something and blame it on you. They just did it with the debt crisis which they manufactured in the first place. Watch carefully. It's really the only thing they know how to do.

I think it's actually modeled on Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" which also provides their primary social model. There are "Haves" and "Have Nots" so we'll solve all our problems by taking what the "Haves" have and giving it to the "Have Nots" and then things will be solved, or at least reversed. Oh yeah, we do it by force. Don't you just love these peace loving, diversity loving, globally unifying, hypocrites? I don't believe anything they say because they don't and it's fairly obvious if you listen carefully.