Better Be Prepared For More Global Cooling

SEE HERE Here's someone who believes in data, data, and more data. The story he tells is a mite different from the usual alarmists. We could use some of that global warming because if cosmic ray activity increases we're in for extended global cooling. I'd much rather be warm than cold. "Always Winter but Never Christmas!"

Supreme Court, Here We Come!

SEE HERE Well here we go. Can the government force us to buy health care under the interstate commerce clause? Seems like a crazy idea on the face of it. The government has no Constitutional role in health care in the first place. Can we really just keep finding more and more services that the government is supposed to provide somehow? The government can't do anything very well. Why should we imagine that they're going to do something useful in health care besides bankrupt the nation? HOPE IT STICKS

Be Careful What You Wish For!

SEE HERE Frankly there are very few good results that come out of the Middle East. This Egypt thing is a mess. The most likely outcomes look bad for Israel and the United States. Almost any result will shake the equilibrium of the area. If the status quo remain temporarily it will only be as an explosive tinderbox and if it shifts to some choice of the mob it will likely end up with Islamic radicals involved and that can hardly go to any place good. So it looks like a lose/lose for the West and really no-one very obvious can win. Don't kid yourself about freedom or power to the people or something like that. That option is very likely not on the table except ephemerally. It makes it hard to know what foreign policy the U.S. can follow that makes any real sense. This choice of outcome in the reference might be as good as any, but even that just gives us breathing room.

Couldn't Happen To A Better Fella!

How Are Those Climate Models Working These Days?

If We Don't Raise the Debt Ceiling We Won't Default!

SEE HERE The economic ignorance of the population and the news media is really quite beyond belief. Just because we can't take on more debt doesn't mean we can't service the interest on the debt we have. It shakes the confidence that there is any common sense left in the land to imagine that people who have to pay their own bills don't understand that at some point the credit has to stop. We're in a position of unsustainable debt if we keep growing the debt. When that happens you have to cut back. You can do a lot simply by stopping the growth and don't replace those who are retiring. Trimming back at something like 10% a year is quite effective. It will also produce the wondrous result of people discovering how little they are getting for the money.

By The Time They Get To Washington They've Lost It Completely

Wake them up! I don't agree with this guy entirely but I agree with a lot of it. He's certainly nailed a lot of problems. Standardization is certainly the wrong approach so why not try this. Certainly nails the fallacy of the answer! What about the great presentation technology ... An awful lot of information (agree with it or not) delivered meaningfully in 11 minutes.

More Guns ... Less Crime

SEE HERE The crisis mongers are at it again. The reality is that more guns deter crime and fewer guns encourage criminals. So all the usual hoopla from the gun control nuts is the usual misguided nonsense. If they all stay in bed cowering they won't be hurt as often either. Get a life!

The Climate Spin Continues

SEE HERE Science is about data, not video snippets culled to embarrass those you don't agree with and cherry pick for items to take out of context. But that's what has become the standard spin to try to bolster the global warming narrative. The problem is that the data doesn't support the narrative so the spin has to pretend otherwise. In fact things have been getting colder lately, the past decade, and the CO2 narrative just doesn't work. It never really made all that much sense since CO2 isn't even that major a green-house gas player and has been much higher in the past without bringing on any catastrophic climate change. So the story is pretty obvious. It's all about trying to manufacture a crisis to justify big government power plays. That's what it is about. It's not about climate. Human being haven't a chance of making detectable changes is climate over all. Our leverage is just not that great. Unfortunately the media is about propaganda and not information. It shouldn't be that way, but the way things should be isn't a very good indicator of how they are.

What Passes For Sanity These Days

SEE HERE God help us! The world has gone insane. The thought police and the junior-gestapo that mans or is it womans the local government indoctrination centers have no reason nor sense of proportion. They might have gone insane in my day living in schools where rubber band fights and two finger slingshots were the order of the day when students were acting up. Instead we suspend students for having anemic knives that are a poor second best to the scout knives we all carried as boys in the late 1940s and 1950s. But now we'd be suspended from school for having such a terrible weapon. No mumblie-peg for you! (Note: We could write cursive and memorize things then too!)

Spitballs and straws were a wonder weapon when you wanted to act up. Sure beat throwing chalk which was hard and much more damaging. More than one teacher liked to throw chalky erasers at students who were acting up and we'd all laugh if he connected for the miscreant would have chalk powder all over him. All sense of humanity has been drained from the schools by the insanity of bureaucratic rigor that approaches the paralysis of the blind and ignorant. The sense of humor that is so important in people has been turned into an intolerance of anything but a kind of slavish obedience to a mindless and ineffective cult of sameness and mediocrity. Too bad. The nation suffers and the culture degrades.

The schools should be shutdown and vouchers issued to anyone who wants to educate children and let the parents decide if the education is worth the voucher. The experiment in government mandated everything has failed and failed in ways that are well advanced towards creating a failed civilization if it can even be called that. A society that suspends students for this kind of thing is a society I don't actually want to live in. I want it to be changed. It was a lot more sensible when I was younger. Now that I am an old man it is painful to see the changes. They are almost all for the worse. The technology is advanced, but the people using it have regressed towards barbarism. HERE's A LITTLE NOSTALGIA LINK I FOUND

A Gay Pushing Conservative Is A Contradiction In Terms

SEE HERE I suppose I ought to start by protesting the use of the word "gay" to describe homosexual persons. There is nothing gay about them. They are persons caught in a sinful obsession, an addiction, which like many sinful habits is likely hard to break. Those caught in that are to be pitied and helped if possible. In the case of male homosexuals it often leads to disease and an early death. What's to advocate in this? A Conservative, if the word means anything at all, is one who upholds the truth. The truth is that homosexuality is a perversion, a disordered act. It is condemned by the Natural Law and by the biblical teaching of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The fact that it has become a trendy popular advocacy issue is simply to condemn the Zeitgeist. We live in degraded and degrading times. Sorry to have to say it, but it's the truth.

The Reality of Islam

The hatred against the Jews is not based on facts but on propaganda carefully honed and focused. The Palistinian problem is one that has been created by the arabs with the intention of blaming it on the Jews. Nathanial Davidson give some chapter and verse HERE in Part two of an account that began with Part one, HERE. The Jewish state is surrounded by enemies that hate it mindlessly and send their children as suicide bombers to kill innocent people. This is the act of madmen not patriots. Israel has the right to defend itself.

Meanwhile the U.S. finds a book celebrating suicide bombers in the desert of Arizona. SEE HERE Now just who would be carrying a book like that? Someone who admires suicide bombers and wants to emulate them maybe? Makes me feel safer all right.

The English Isn't Great But the Claims Are Interesting! Enjoy Global Warming While You Can

SEE HERE Dr. Ritesh Arya claims to have discovered paleo climatic signatures carved on batholiths of the Ladakh Indian Himalayas due to climate change mainly induced due to global warming and cooling since time immemorial and tends to redefine global warming as part of a natural cyclic process responsible for transporting various materials deposited during global cooling times.

Right or wrong this is fascinating stuff. Here's a LINK about Dr. Arya and a PROFILE
Here's a Video. He's obviously rather impassioned about it!

An Irish Blessing For All Of You

SEE HERE I am a fan of C.S. Lewis who was from Belfast, Ireland. So when I saw this Irish blessing I thought of Jack and thought all of you would enjoy the beauty and the blessing.

Looks More Like Carter II All The Time

SEE HERE I'm no fan of tyrants but if it comes to a pro-Western tyrant versus a bunch of crazy Islamic fundamentalists, frankly I think the tyrant has some real advantages. We found out how good the results were when that idiot Carter helped depose the Shah of Iran, yeah that helped kill a whole lot of pro-Western people in Iran, weaken confidence in the United States and launch thirty years of extreme terrorism. Thanks Jimmy! Now we have Barack getting ready, in all likelihood, to repeat the feat. Wow, am I impressed! Could we actually have a significant Middle Eastern Policy? Probably not. What we're going to end up with at this pace is some sort of nuclear conflagration in the region that expands to engulf the whole world. Policies have consequences and our policies have been stupid. We need to secure that region and we simply don't know how. My guess is we'll botch it again. We don't have much of a record of success and liberals are mainly good at botching things.

Obama Birth Certificate Wall Paper: $100 a Sheet

SEE HERE This is a funny development. The whole "birther" controversy is something that is immensely entertaining except that it is also troubling. Why would producing a birth certificate be any big issue in such an important matter as the legitimacy of the candidacy of a president? I've found that to be the most bothering aspect of this whole matter. First: Why is it a big deal? Second: Why doesn't anyone seem to care? I mean of course anyone who should care like those who assure us that our elections are fair and honest and all that. Third: It brings us to collateral matters like all those other records that Obama is hiding. Why? Why? Why? You don't hide ordinary things unless there is something to hide. Frankly this all smells to high heavens.

Socialism? It Is A Morally Evil System

SEE HERE Progressives are always touting Socialism to me as if it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Somehow collectivizing everything will bring heaven on earth. So when this link popped up in my email today I thought it was interesting and worth telling you about.

TFP stands for Tradition, Family,and Property and it is a student group. I enjoy them immensely when I've run into them. They go in for pomp and circumstance ... I first became aware of them at a March for Life probably in the late 1970s. They caught my attention because they showed up and surrounded the speakers' platform with an array of colorful banners each managed by a young man dressed impeccably in a dark suit with a colorful band across their chests. I'm a big fan of Medieval pageantry and thought this was colorful and symbolic of something that our society has lost.

Here we see the many ways that the Catholic Church has made it clear that Socialism is an unnatural and moral evil which ignores the rights of individuals and leads to oppression and injustice.

Some Element of Sanity Remains

SEE HERE The filibuster in the Senate is preserved. That particular check on majority power has been preserved.

This Wouldn't Be A Problem With Vouchers

This seems rather outrageous to me. In the first place the very fact that the quality of education is apparently sufficiently different that it motivates this mother to lie so her children can go to a better school. Then the actions of the school district seem particularly inappropriate and blunt. How about just saying no they can't go here if it is such a bid deal? It's a crock just like all the machinations when the government gets into businesses they have no business in being in. We should close down the government indoctrination centers and free market education. It would be good for everyone, the teachers, the student, and the parents and we'd see the quality of education source because people could vote with their feet.

Social Security Is Bankrupt! — Are You Surprised?

SEE HERE The facts of economic reality are coming down upon us fast. $45 billion dollar deficits with nowhere to go but down, down, down to a sunless sea of debt and failed expectations. Who will the hapless politicians blame? Will it be the businesses that they've regulated, taxed, and manipulated into insolvency? Will it be greedy Wall Street which tried to remain solvent and anticipate the effects of all the machinations, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. The one group we know they will not blame and that is themselves.

The problem with liberals is that they think good intentions trump reality. Thomas Sowell points out over and over in his book Basic Economics how the only thing that counts is the incentives and they often have totally unforeseen consequences. J. R. Dunn in his book Death By Liberalism — The Fatal Outcome Of Well-Meaning Liberal Policies documents the millions who have died due to the good intentions of liberals pursuing their frenzied agendas. The game is going to be over soon, but in all likelihood the consequence are going to be horrendous. It's hard to decide what to do to protect yourself. It also depends on if some sanity prevails in the coming decade to pull back from the brink. But if we continue pell-mell irresponsibly towards economic collapse we are sure to get there.

If Solar Is Such A Good Idea, Why Doesn't It Pay For Itself?

SEE HERE The tree-hugging mindless scientifically ignorant and proud of it set have been at it again, this time in France. Stupid subsidies to encourage the solar power folks has produced huge costs and uneconomical power. Why don't people remember that if it is worth doing, someone will do it on their own? If it isn't worth doing then it shouldn't be done, not put up your tax money because some idiots think it sounds nice. I think perpetual motion sounds nice. It just suffers from the small defect of impossibility.

Decoding the Message ...

SEE HERE Using my Captain Marvel decoder ring, I've discovered the true intent of the POTUS's SOTU address. "Stay in power and continue the program of destroying the economy." Patriot Post nails POTUS here in more words.

If You Do What You've Always Done, You'll Get What You've Always Gotten!

SEE HERE The standard recipes of smaller classrooms and more money have exactly nothing to do with quality education. It begins with not tolerating anything less than excellence. Make it tough and competitive and reward excellence and penalize indolence and sloth. No-one ever got an education by being lazy. There is no royal, pain-free, simple, easy, effortless way to knowledge. By the same token, a love of learning can make the path an exciting adventure. We have demonized work in this country and confused it with toil. Work is mind expanding, exciting, and fulfilling. Toil is mindless labor, repetitive and stultifying. We should be encouraging a positive view of work before we have China and the rest totally eating our lunch.

Media Provocation ... Ron Paul: "Symbolizes Doing What We're Trying to Do."

Ideas are the important thing and being open to the views of the people which involves actually honoring the Constitution. "More Freedom" says Paul. To have more freedom we need a smaller government. It comes down to the big government versus the small government issue. Big government is a recipe for continued degradation of our freedom.

Education? By Government? Gee ... It Hasn't Worked So Far!

SEE HERE Why should be believe that the government knows anything about education. If you want good education then you should shut down the Department of Education, create education vouchers and put the education of the children in the hands of the people who care about them, their parents. All the rest is sheer malarkey. The interesting thing to me is that public education is a relatively recent experiment and for the entire time of the experiment the quality of the schools has been going downhill as measured by student achievement. One of the most telling indicators is to get copies of old books and compare them with copies of new books at the same grade level. It will make you heartsick to see how much more difficult the old books were. We have cheated generations of children out of a superior education while lying to them about how superior they are.

Government Innovation: An Oxymoron! (part 2)

SEE HERE Ann points out how clueless the POTUS really is. It is extraordinarily scary how much "investment" the government thinks it is justified in extorting from us. The problem is that government is mostly staffed by people who have never done anything particularly innovative or productive, just functionaries pushing paperwork. So why is it that anyone, the POTUS, or anyone else, thinks that government has any particular insight into what will work for America? It mystifies me and I worked for the government for 15 years and never saw these great innovators. Indeed, all the ideas I had that were slightly innovative were squashed as soon as they were uttered. Too risky was the usual mantra. Things like remotely piloted surveillance vehicles, small ones. Things like robotic weapon platforms. I brought up both of those concepts in the early 1970's and they were not ever all that innovative. The Air Force was fooling with some, big and clunky ones for the Vietnam war. You'd think we could have done a study. Innovation is not the government's long suite. They are very good at spending money irresponsibly however, very good at that. When the money runs out I wonder what they'll be telling us?

Government Innovation: An Oxymoron!

SEE HERE Here's the quote that caught my eye: "Not five minutes into his remarks, the President took a beautiful legacy of U.S. innovation and diminished it by suggesting that it couldn't have happened without Washington's help. Like his party, he fails to understand that our nation's progress didn't happen because of the government, but in spite of it." Exactly! The root of much of our problem is this delusion that the government contributes essentially to American innovation. It isn't just not true, it is the diametric opposite. The government routinely destroys real innovation by imposing unimaginative bureaucratic solutions on problems which either really were not problems at all, or were problems that needed a lot better solution than the one-size fits all band-aid that government routinely applies.

No Birth Certificate in Hawaii Period!

There is no birth certificate. Obama is almost certainly not a citizen. Apparently there is simply no record of his birth at any hospital in Hawaii. When do we take this seriously?

Can We Hold the Laughing Down Please ... Please!

SEE HERE "Sputnik moment" ... I'm from the sputnik generation Mr. President. Your sputnik moment doesn't rate a fizzle. If you want to mobilize the nation, then take it out of the straitjacket government has become in the years since Sputnik. The American people can innovate with the best in the world, but not if their hands are tied with regulation after regulation by a blind bureaucracy and taxes on everything that moves. The Great Society launched by Lyndon Johnson after the assassination of Kennedy is largely to blame for where we are now. Maybe we should start by rolling government back to that Kennedy moment. Then we'd be ready for another "Sputnik moment." Meanwhile, fire your speechwriter.

Washington Is Broken Mr. President. Secure Our Borders

Jan Brewer had it right last month. Secure the borders and develop a sane immigration policy that enforces our national sovereignty.

Ventura Takes on the TSA

SEE HERE It's time to eliminate Homeland Security while it is still a baby viper. Once it transforms into the full grown snake with fangs and venom that it is on the way to becoming it will be too late. We need to crush the head of this viper now. It is an atrocity. Like so many liberal solutions to problems, it creates far more problems than it addresses. Ventura has it right. Give us back our country!

What? This Looks Like a Bad Idea

SEE HERE If the government thinks that the internet represents a hazard to them, nothing is mandating that they stay connected. But imposing vast controls on a public service that isn't even a unity, but a lose conglomeration of interconnected privately own networks is an unconstitutional imposition of government power over private assets. It's largely equivalent to saying that the government has the right to muzzle everyone to stop them talking if they think national security is at risk. Who makes that kind of decision? On what basis and by what right? Government is too big, too intrusive, too irresponsible, and too unconcerned about the rights of the citizens. It's time to make is smaller, less intrusive, more responsible, and more engaged in defending our personal liberties and not endangering them.

Ron Paul On the Constitution: Too Many Have Simply Ignored It

Can we change? We can only change if integrity returns to Washington. Has Washington every had integrity? There are fundamental concerns which Paul enumerates. We have a long long history of suborning the Constitution. People have to become concerned and angry and demand a return to principle and integrity. Sure would be nice. I'm not holding my breath.

Liberal Solutions to Nonexistent Problems

Greatest Moments in Liberal History Part 1 from RightChange on Vimeo.

Awesome contributions by the liberals in our midst to solve problems that only they can see in ways that only they can believe in.

The Shocking Unexpected Government Is In Washington

This is an old (last year) but insightful indictment of the government out of control spending and lack of common sense in Washington. When are we going to wake up?

The Insanity of It All! A Ficticious Crisis Becomes the Basis for Huge Legal Actions

SEE HERE The phony crisis which largely ended DDT control of the malaria mosquito caused millions to die needlessly. Many another fictitious crisis cooked up by the left has had lethal consequences. Here's one in the making built on top of about as phony a crisis as there has ever been. The science behind global warming is mostly fear mongering and not science at all, but once you get an idea into people's heads it goes viral and then you have hell to pay to straighten things out. The legal system doesn't work on facts as much as emotions. Lawyers play on jury's emotions to get the deep pockets to pay for things that weren't really legitimate. It only matters that you can tug on the heartstrings of the ignorant and play the various liberal demonization themes effectively. It's always those greedy corporations, those oil companies, those insurance companies, and so on and so on and so on. The facts are rarely in evidence. None of them have a shred of economic legitimacy, but you've been told this over and over and never learned anything about economics so you believe it. When the United States has been destroyed by these kind of lunacies history will look back with wonder at how a whole people could be so thoroughly deceived.

Santorum Puts It On the Line: Who Decides Who Are People and Who Are Not People?

SEE HERE The liberal elites in the country are without moral content. They are posturers and frauds. I've often heard people criticized for being "opportunists" which seems to be a characterization of someone as talking views and positions because they make some goal of the moment more likely of achievement, but if the goals change so do the views and positions. Liberals are distinctly opportunists in this sense. It is almost hysterically funny to keep track of their positions and see them change moment by moment, occasion by occasion. The question is then, why should you trust them regardless of what they say. Should the opportunity present itself they will abandon you. I lived in Minnesota for about eleven years and in Minnesota Hubert Humphrey was a big name, a famous politician. Hubert was known for telling people what he thought they wanted to hear. I heard many stories about Hubert working a room and telling people in the room on the same occasion flatly contradictory things. But he was always goodnatured and friendly and personable.

I'm afraid that I want my politicians flat honest. I want people like Santorum and not like Humphrey. I want people of principle who flat out defend their principles and tell you that if you vote for them you're getting the whole package of principles and that they will stick by them. Those are the kind of honest men and women I want representing me. Because of that I can't abide liberals. They are all unprincipled opportunists. Now that I've grown older and watched for so long, I know that and I don't like it. A baby is a baby no matter how small and liberals have no principles, none at all.

While we're talking about liberal hypocrisy and opportunism, perhaps we should CHECK OUT this example from Red State. You just can't trust those liberals unless it's to be the way Sarah Palin characterized them, "If it weren't for double standards, what standards would they have?"

It's All Down Hill ... The Man Behind The Curtain Is A Flimflam Man

SEE HERE Snake-oil and moonshine all the time. The only question is really why anyone believes this guy when he says anything. I remember the notion that he is a clinically diagnosable narcissist and nothing he's done suggests that this was wrong. He says one thing and does another, over and over and over again and no-one calls him on it. We have a whole government into snake-oil and moonshine and that goes to no place good.

Smoke and Mirrors? — Lying More Like It!

SEE HERE The question is why do the Democrats get a pass on this kind of thing? If it were the least bit credible then maybe I could see the left-wing media giving them a pass. But this is ludicrous. It's not "smoke and mirrors" it's straight forward misrepresentation (big fancy word for lying). We're going to be lucky if we can survive this character with anything left to salvage. He spends money so fast it make the younger Bush look like a paragon of fiscal responsibility and the same idiots giving Obama a pass were crucifying Bush. If ever politics was corrupt, this looks like the classic example.

Roe vs. Wade: Worst Supreme Court Decision Ever

SEE HERE American Thinker nails Roe vs. Wade. It is hard to argue with their analysis. Someday when the world comes to its senses, this decision may well be seen as the worst ever in the history of jurisprudence. It has no support whatsoever in the language of the constitution. It was and is an example of raw judicial activism and in an immoral and vicious cause which has cost the lives of some 50 million children so far and polarized much of our society. It was a bad decision. It is bad law. It is fundamentally immoral. Tomorrow I will be marching in spirit with those who March for Life each year. I personally made the march for many years, but my feet won't do it anymore. Our leaders are moral cretins. The nation itself is slipping into moral turpitude and degradation and each generation is brainwashed that whatever they want is just OK. That won't work.

9th Freest Economy ... Hello?

SEE HERE This is not the right direction to be going. Once you get very far down this slippery slope a lot of other freedoms start to go too.

The Lethality of Liberal Ideology

I've just started reading J. R. Dunn's "Death By Liberalism" and he's is making a strong and cogent case that the Liberal Ideology that masquerades these days as liberalism or progressivism, but bears no recognizable link to the Classical Liberalism of the past, is deadly. The misguided initiatives of our anointed elites who imagine they are the epitome of wisdom, in fact have caused the death of millions in the name of a vision that seldom makes any progress towards its stated goals. This is a welcome reading companion to Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics which makes much the same kind of case for liberal blindness in the economic realm.

Dunn begins by drawing parallels with the socialist tyrannies of the 20th century and their misguided savagery which killed tens of millions. Then he progresses to his treatment of the soft tyranny of the Liberal Ideology that emerges from the New Deal, is continued with the Great Society, the War on Poverty and other high sounding but socially destructive programs which bring us to the present.

By page 44 Dunn has shown that liberal policies that are soft on criminals and crime can be credited with the murders of some 263,568 (pg 43) that would not have died over a forty year period between 1964 and 2004 if the criminal justice policies had not been relaxed so that many hardened criminals received a slap on the wrist or extremely light jail sentences so were free in the populate to kill and kill again. This touches me personally since a friend of mine was murdered by an escaped murderer who should have received the death penalty but instead killed four more people including my friend. The book is a fast read and Dunn gives plenty of examples. The data is there. It is just a matter of reading it and not being in denial like so many liberals are.

Safe Abortions? The Back Alleys Just Went Pro

SEE HERE The term "safe abortion" is just more liberal Newspeak. Every abortion kills a child. Many maim the mother. Abortions are performed by doctors (doctors? — "First do no harm" ... "...I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. ..." ) obviously the line from the Hippocratic Oath is no longer honored or we can safely say that those who perform abortions are not doctors, only back alley butchers who have gone pro to cash in on the big bucks that our society offers to people without honor, integrity, or values. The number of dead from this procedure exceeds the deaths of the Nazi holocaust, but liberals deem it a woman's right to murder their children in the womb. It was originally proposed by Margaret Sanger as part of her final solution to the inferior races. Is it any surprise that our liberal friends try to foist this horror on the third world. It's time for people to wake up to what this really is. POTUS SUPPORTS THE KILLING MICHELLE MALKIN ON THE PHILADELPHIA KILLER
The bottom line is that the liberals know exactly what they are doing and they don't care. This is no less a holocaust because the victims are small and unseen by most of us. It is the very personification of evil. When will we wake up? When we are all enslaved?

Life Ain't Nothing Like A Bowl of Cherries ...

Enjoy!

Even Jon Stewart Sounds Sane Sometimes: How Strange!

Word Warcraft

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Sometimes You Actually Find History Instructive

All the phony propaganda about the "religion of peace" ignores seven hundred years of history. Get real! Thank you Col. West.

I Guess the Science Isn't "Settled" After All!

SEE HERE The whole climate narrative is a case of too little knowledge and too much big government agenda chasing minimal understanding. The more we know the less CO2's role turns out to be so of course we should spend a zillion dollars to reduce the minimal fraction caused by manmade emissions.

Delancey Place Celebrates the "Crystal Palace"

SEE HERE Delancey Place is a webservice that delivers interesting clips to your email box every day. Sometimes they are particularly noteworthy, and sometimes not. Today's however was about "The Crystal Palace." I am particularly fascinated by outstanding human achievements that often represent paradigm shifts in the sense of transforming sensibilities from prior states of belief that some things could not be done to subsequent states of wonder that they have not been done before. Among these I would list The Crystal Palace, an architectural breakthrough, an achievement in the use of reusable parts, progressive construction and epic proportions. Two other examples that come to mind are the Empire State Building which was built in 18 months, and the Victory ships of WWII. When the imagination is unleashed it is often amazing what can be achieved.

The Spin Doctors Of The Left And Their Rants

SEE HERE It's interesting that this comes up on Red State this morning. The reason is that it came up just yesterday in a Facebook exchange with a potty mouthed liberal ranter in which I invited him to be civil which seemed to enrage him and cause him to spew all sorts of profanity, I was accused of being some sort of blind follower of Glenn Beck who was urging people to shot others in the head and he cited a youtube video. VIDEO I clicked on the video and even in the highly compressed clip it was evident that Beck was being taken out of context. He was certainly being somewhat alarmist and truth be known there is enough reason to be alarmed as the republic blunders towards bankruptcy. But what Beck did not do was advocate violence. He warned instead of the revolutionary intent of many of the far left liberals. I'm sorry (actually I'm very very sorry) but that's fact and you can cite their rhetoric rather easily. Now you either take people at their word, or you live in lala land until their words become reality. Meanwhile the left cooks up rants against the right and turns their potty mouthed minions loose to repeat them. It would be nice to see the land return to civil discourse, but that seems unlikely given the state of the schools.

How Much Government Is Enough? Whatever the Answer Is We're Way Past It!

SEE HERE Don't know quite what to make of this. How would an Internet ID card work exactly and whose bright idea is this? I'm not sure who it was that decided that the government had to be in every aspect of everyone's life. It's a bad idea. The reason that "I'm from the government, I'm here to help you" is a joke is that it never plays out that way.

Thomas Sowell Is The Epitome of Common Sense

Any time I can listen to Thomas Sowell I drop everything because he's simply the most clear minded economist and sensible person you could imagine. I collect people with clear minds because truth is the only basis for reasonable action. Thomas Sowell has a very clear mind and he expresses his thoughts well. He cuts through the clutter of modern confusion and makes it look effortless. I'm currently reading the fourth edition of "Basic Economics" and savoring every line. SOURCE

When You Let Hoopla Replace The Market You Get Stupidity

SEE HERE I'm sorry all you green posturing urbanites who think that wind and waves and sunlight will power the planet ... it's not going to happen because you can't afford it and stealing from your neighbors to subsidize it is just throwing perfectly good money away. If it worked the market would already be implementing it. I've been scammed too many times by people who tried to get me to put "energy saving" solutions that were not economic in place because of a subsidy. Solar water heating, solar energy panels, windmills ... all that stuff looks great if you don't bother to actually make measurements and count the costs. When you do you find that it's nowhere near the point it needs to be to be worth doing. I have no problem with some investment in further development of the technology. Maybe we can find a way to make it more efficient. But putting it on-line at it's present cost is just another way to bankrupt us and I'll let you in on a little secret. We're already bankrupt. If we weren't the largest economy and the reserve currency of the world we'd already be paupers.

Hubris Has Always Offended the Gods

SEE HERE "Whom the gods destroy they first make mad." is a variant of an ancient proverb erroneously attributed to Euripides. The madness that George Will addresses here is the notion that government is the solution to all our problems. Indeed, the truth is closer to Ronald Reagan's saying, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem." The ancient Greeks seemed to better understand hubris than we do today. Hubris is a kind of blindness induced by pride and arrogance that you can do no wrong and that all must fall before you. The government often acts that way.

I Think They Call This "A Start" But It Only Begins To Address The Real Problem

SEE HERE A million here and a million there and pretty soon you're talking real money. That's something Everett Dirksen is supposed to have said. Now it would have to be updated to "a billion here and a billion there" and not because we have any more money, but because the money continues to be worth less and less and the government keeps insisting on spending more and more of it. That is a recipe for collapse if left unchecked. We have a great choice facing us. We can go forward continuing doing what we have been doing and we will certainly destroy the economy. The alternative is to return to fiscal responsibility and principles and to stop imagining that government can fix every problem or even that government has a stake in every problem. Personal integrity, personal initiative, personal discipline, personal freedom, these are all part of the solution. Continually expecting someone else to carry your load is a recipe for poverty and squalor.

The Impact of "Digital" on Education? Breaking the Statist Monopoly

SEE HERE Student learning should be the center of education, especially learning how to learn on your own. Education is not something that is ever "over and done" because there is always something more to learn and the world is always changing. Can digital technology have an impact? Certainly! Any move toward free marketing education will make it more flexible and improve it for everyone. CHECK IT OUT

Health Care or Fiscal Dishonesty? You Guess!

The country is going bankrupt? No — the country is bankrupt. It is fiscally bankrupt. It is morally bankrupt. "This bill blows a hole through the deficit!" ... "Two point six trillion dollars of spending." This is more than fiscal chicanery, it is corrupt government.

You Are Now Entering The Twilight Zone

SEE HERE I can almost hear Rod Serling on "The Twilight Zone" — All over the world nature seemed to be in disarray as the auguries of doom settled upon the world. The dark times had begun. Well 2012 is coming and the Mayans knew ... right? Sure! I'm not one for apocalyptic thinking. "It was the best of times. It was the worst of time." Isn't that how Dicken's Tale of Two Cities starts? It is always the case ... but ghost stories are always a little fun and scary so I thought you might wonder about this one.

On What Grounds Does the Government Meddle With the Net?

SEE HERE The FCC was created to control the public airwaves which are the common property of all. The Internet is not a public property. It is a conglomeration of local privately owned nodes which are linked locally and pass packets of information around on wires. The government doesn't, on the face of it, have jurisdiction. If they have taken such jurisdiction, the question should be on what legal grounds? The Internet doesn't need a lot of government meddling unless you want to mess it up beyond belief.

Liberals Live In The Vacuum Between Their Two Neurons

SEE HERE Ann Coulter points out the obvious, that it doesn't really matter what reality is, the liberals will run their narrative whatever way things go. That's what is so funny really. They only spew two kinds of things: demonization and rants. Since two neurons should support at least four states assuming a neuron is a two state device, then the other two are likely sleep and eat.

OK, it's not that funny. It needs more work. But the reality disconnect should be obvious. If you are operating on a narrative that is independent of reality then it also doesn't inform you about anything. It is a narcissistic narrative that looks only at your interior ideological biases uninformed by reality. That's how liberals work. They have a whole cluster of demons which bear little relationship to the real world and they project everything onto those biases.

No doubt they would accuse conservatives of the same thing. But the difference is that if you look at the statistics, the conservatives actually are the ones that do the majority of the real work, the productive work of the society. The liberals are usually too busy whining and writing social fictions about all the greed, pollution and waste while sipping their latte. It would be amusing except they dominate the media and do the kind of things Coulter is complaining about here. Who needs reality when a good rant is so much easier to generate?

ARTICLE FROM AMERICAN THINKER

It's Too Bad The Government Is So Politicized That It Lies To Us

SEE HERE An issue of Whistleblower magazine (Vol. 20 #1) came the other day in the mail with the provocative headline on the cover: Inflation Nation. I've been worried about a major rise in the inflation rate for some time with the irresponsible spending the government has been doing. This didn't do anything to relax me.

Can we count on the new Republican majority? GOOD QUESTION

I've been wondering about all the talk that we have to increase these irresponsible spending programs to avoid deflation. All the time this talk is going on the price I pay for groceries keeps going up. A pound of bacon gets more expensive. Finding a good price for Coca Cola take a longer wait and the sale price is more than I was willing to pay a year ago. Gas if back over $3 at the pump with no expectation of going down. Where I come from that is called inflation. In general there is only one cause for inflation and that is government floating unbacked credit. Now that's general inflation, not rises in isolated products and services which can be caused by supply and demand issues. One of the problems seems to be that the folks tasked with reporting on inflation are changing the rules to make it look like no inflation is taking place. They seem to be fudging the data. I'm tempted to start my own inflation index and call it something like the kitchen index.

One of the many functions of government is preserving the economy by stabilizing the value of money not inflating it all the time. A sobering analysis titled "Crashing the Dollar" by Craig R. Smith and Lowell Ponte provided this interesting bit of analysis:

"... To buy the average $10,250 house in 1954 cost, in gold worth $35 to the ounce, 293 ounces of gold or 2.6 years of income.
In 2009 the average new $210,000 home case 221 ounces of gold or 4.7 years of income.
In other words in 2009 it took 80% more years of labor to buy a house.
But it took 25 percent less gold, because gold by 2009 had risen to $950 per ounce. ..."

Let's just stop there. We're used to being told that things are getting better, but it's a lie. Things really were cheaper and better in the past. The value of labor has been falling, partly due to the strategy of getting the women into the workforce which drives down the price of labor. When the supply increase the price goes down. Did we get a higher quality of life for this? Only if you think two folks working for to make up for that 2.6 to 4.7 person years of cost is an improvement.

Government isn't telling us the whole story. They're cooking the books to make things look better than they really are. I remember the brouhaha about Eisenhower lying about the Gary Powers U-2 incident (of course that was just another case of the liberals trying to score political points) so why isn't this cooking of the books a scandal? We're in no danger of deflation. It's all in the fevered imagination of the book-cookers and gives them an excuse to ramp up the deficit and spend, spend, spend. The big risk we face is likely to be runaway inflation. We'll see!

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Liberals Are Such Hypocrites

SEE HERE Let's decode the liberal play book. 1) A Catastrophe Happens, 2) You Blame a Political Enemy Regardless of the Evidence, 3) If they Defend Themselves ... Call Them Egocentric or Narcissistic. 4) Repeat As Necessary. What a bunch of hypocrites and losers. The key to defense I think is to point out their hypocrisy at every opportunity with as much humor as possible. Ronald Reagan did it with "There you go again!" — Short and sweet and to the point. I liked Palin's remark the other night so much I'll say it again: "If it weren't for double standards, what standards would they have?"

Isn't This Proof The Government Is Insane?

What You Don't Know Is What Kills You

Think about this and ask yourself if this is what the government should be doing? Hell No!

Manifest Weirdness! What Were They Thinking?

SEE HERE George Washington is likely in the running as the single most noble of the Founders of this country. Only collective ignorance and neural deficiency could explain such a obtuse act. As C.S. Lewis fans are always saying: "What do they teach them in those schools?"

Playing With Fire: Someone Always Gets Burned

SEE HERE In case you thought the dollar was secure, think again. This is a double-edged sword for everyone, maybe especially China. We should watch this closely I would think.

"If It Weren't For Double Standards, What Standards Would They Have?"

That's the question Sarah Palin posed tonight on Sean Hannity's show about the liberals who dug up any possible way to slime her in the context of the Tucson tragedy. It's an incredible degree of hypocrisy. Sean put the rhetoric of the left in context by showing how many vile attacks the left has made against Palin. Do they really have any standards? These are the people who support the killing of millions of children for convenience. These are the people who concoct pseudoscience to "save the planet" and line their own pockets. These are the people who want to seize the health care industry and get between you and your doctor to tell you what kind of health care you can and cannot have. These are the people who want to control every aspect of your life because they are an anointed class who know better than you do what is good for you. They want your money. They want your submission. They want to decide every aspect of your life. They don't have your best interests at heart. They are double dealing hypocrites. Palin has it exactly right.

Want to Cut the Deficit? I Have A Place To Start

SEE HERE The whole climate narrative is nonsense. I remember when I was in high school in the heady days when we were almost the only nuclear power, and when the promise of nuclear technology was routinely touted as leading to cars that would if not forever for a very long time and other imaginings that have not happened. Among them was the notion advanced by know-nothings that we could erect a giant weather grid of some sort and control the weather.

In the sober light of reality this particular notion was given a quick burial. I suspect that the same fevered imagination that produced that nonsense remotely fueled the current nonsense. The impact of man on the global environment is far less than the doomsayers are always touting. They can't even begin to make a case without leaving out most of the data because we just don't do enough compared with a wealth of natural sources which are rarely counted. If you look at the Mauna Loa CO2 data you see seasonal variation of about 7 ppm peak to peak. Those peak to peak variations are unlikely to be caused by human CO2 variations so it's important to understand them. One of the common explanations is that they arise from the oceans emitting CO2 when they are warmer and absorbing it when they are cooler. HERE IS SOME OCEAN DATA

Well it's still a mystery I suspect if you're interested in all the details. One question is where's the smoking gun that suggests that any of this really needs to be done at such outrageous expense? There is no evidence that weather is really any different today than in the last 100 years. The warming trend that was touted and promoted to be some sort of looming emergency has given way to a cooling trend and it's getting embarrassing to see the warming alarmists trying to transform into climate extremes alarmists without a shred of scientific justification. It just doesn't wash, not one whit.

This About Sums It Up

Today's Patriot Post and Patriot Quotes were both on target. Here's the quote:
"It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions." --Thomas Jefferson
Now that's a lesson for us all. Disagreement doesn't have to be disagreeable. I am really disappointed in the low neuron count of so much of the discourse that goes on on the web. Just read the comments following any controversial story and you'll get what I mean I hope. My mom taught me when I was very small that "Sticks and stone may break my bones but words will never hurt me." In the longer view I'm not entirely sure that is true. Words won't hurt me, but the result of mindless reactions to words might. What is rather despicable is that the worst hate mongers in the society are the left wing nutniks screaming about the right wing talk radio folks. I've never actually heard the right wing folks advocate violence but I hear the left wing ones do it all the time and make charges that the right wing folks do. So it's a bit strange. (isolated exceptions are likely the case since I'm sure there are some ... but as a rule the folks charging violence are on the left and all the violence I'm aware of is either left-wing or jihadist.) Maybe we should make a victim count to make the point, I don't know. But what should certainly happen is that people should talk more sense to each other and not just issue mindless slogans and demonization.

Mark Levin Is Not Amused: Somebody Has To Stand Up To The Liberal Weasels

SEE HERE Someone has to stop the irresponsible journalism and news coverage that is agenda driven, trying to tie the conservative media to whatever atrocity the liberals think might be a useful association so that they can create the false perception of a connection. It's vicious. It is dishonest. It is what liberals do all the time. It's the result of serious neuron depletion which minimizes the ability to ascertain truth. They need to stop smoking that stuff and smell the roses.

TANSTAAFL Redux

An awful lot of what goes on in politics these days is pretending to give people something for nothing. It depends for its effectiveness on the nearly total ignorance of the American people about economics and the idea, embedded in the popular mind, that if you don't have something it is because someone else has it. (zero sum game thinking)

You owe it to yourself to get informed about economics and I can think of no better way than to pick up Thomas Sowell's clearly written and informative book "Basic Economics." I recently picked up a copy of the new 4th edition. Thomas Sowell has been one of my heroes since I first heard of him when he would appear occasionally on William F. Buckley's "Firing Line."

I've only read the first three chapters so far, so I'm not too far ahead of you if you have not picked up the book. In those first few chapters Sowell deals with some foundational ideas and illustrates them with down to earth examples. Of particular interest is the negative examples he gives of societies that have tried to circumvent basic economics with the result, in my words, "You can't fool Mother Nature." Examples drawn from the former Soviet Union which attempted to run a planned economy are constantly used to reveal how ineffective such a strategy is.

The first topic is Prices , which in a free market quickly signal the needs of the economy. Rising prices signal increasing demand and falling prices signal softening of demand. These signals inform both suppliers and consumers who independently adjust their activities to reflect the prices which themselves are not "set" but the result of free transactions.

Meddling on the part of government with the prices simply dislocates the market by sending "false" signals to all concerned. Sowell illustrates market behavior with copious examples from the housing markets subjected to rent controls and various other illustrations drawn from government intrusion into the market with price controls, price floors, price ceilings, government subsidies, etc. All these send false signals (i.e. signals that don't actually reflect the market) and result in massive dislocations, surpluses of goods whose prices are artificially high, and shortages of goods where the prices are set too low.

The usual mantras of good intentions on the part of government are shown to be illusions since the interference in the markets can be shown to generally not accomplish the expressed intent. If you don't know and understand this then you are an unwitting accomplice to a fraud, perhaps an unintended fraud, but no less a fraud for that. The educated citizen needs to understand economics in some depth or the politicians will continue to charm us with their good intentions while they bankrupt us with the costs and the cruel fact that the thing doesn't work.

Liberals Talk A Different Language

One of the difficulties in talking to liberals is that they talk a form of Newspeak, George Orwell's propaganda language from "1984." It's all inherited from the far left which believes that the only purpose of speech is to achieve power. The right is still wedded to the quaint notion that speech is for the purpose of discourse and that the purpose of discourse is to find the truth. Silly us!

The notion that speech is for acquiring power goes back at least to the sophists of ancient Greece so we can't say it is a new notion. It has a long and illustrious career with many proponents down the years. It is the mother of all logical fallacies and all language distortions aimed at muddling the issue and confusing the listener.

An exercise that has been advanced by thinkers I respect such as G. K. Chesterton and Richard Feynman who are actually united in this thought is that if you want to analyze something, reduce it to words of one or two syllables, preferably one. It is remarkable how much clearer things become. I was reminded of this recently by listening to a rather technical talk in which exactly this had been done by Guy Steele one of the authors of the Scheme programming language which is a dialect of Lisp, the language used in many pioneering Artificial Intelligence projects. If you have some time and don't mind listening to slightly technicalese you might get a kick out of it. CLICK HERE But the point I want to make is that when liberals talk you have to translate what they say because the words don't mean the same thing that plain spoken people mean. They have a power agenda tied to their words that makes them loaded with spin. You have to learn the lingo and that can be very very sobering. Read "1984" again to get the idea. Orwell was talking about them.

Liberals Are Always Trying to Muzzle Their Opponents

SEE HERE Free speech includes freedom of access to the media. The liberals have the print media and the general broadcast media pretty tied up. Talk radio and cable news as well as the blogosphere are the only venues they don't have in a straitjacket. So of course they'd like to fix that. Too many people from their traditional base are actually hearing the truth and not drinking their koolaid anymore. This could grow to be a problem so they'd like to fix it. I think the Zeitgeist has passed them by though. They may already be quaint history and just not know it. Print media are in trouble and broadcast networks are looking like yesterday's technology.

Obama's Government Dental Plan

I couldn't resist. These guys were so funny they broke each other up all the time on the Carol Burnett show. My wife and I would howl through the whole show.

Reality Is A Deep Mystery and Life Is At It's Core

Amen!