I was fortunate to have grown up in a house where the human spirit did not have to compete with television commercials; where the intellect had the opportunity to grow under the stimulation of books and conversations. To be absolutely honest with you, I don't much like your country: it's noisy, shoddy, and disrespectful. It has buried the human soul under a mound of commercial stupidity. Your kids spit and swear in public, expect things to be given to them without any effort on their part, and you are foolish enough to elect a con like Barack Obama on the same "moral authority" as you have raised your children. In other words, you are children. And not very nice ones, I might add. What can I say?
You have a date with Satan. I hope you like forced anal sex.
I'll tell you what I can say for this Thanksgiving. I'm going to share with you the America you gave up. Dare to take a walk back in time with me?
America was founded as a constitutional republic. The nature and operation of that republic was immortalized in the Lincoln-Douglas debates (reenacted on C-Span), about which Neil Postman wrote:
Today marks the 46th anniversary of the
assassination of President Kennedy. Back in 2007, I interviewed James
Piereson about his then-new book, Camelot and the Cultural
Revolution, which looked at the enormous cognitive dissonance that
descended upon the left in its wake.
And it may be permanent: Piereson has a new article comparing the left’s
inability to process who shot JFK with the motivations of Nadal Hassan, the Fort
Hood shooter at the Weekly Standard. Click
here to read it.
Electronic files that were stolen from a prominent climate research center and made public last week provide a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes battle to shape the public perception of global warming.… What the CRU Scandal Tells us About Academia
I don't think I've ever seen Alan Caruba do cartwheels: CLIMATEGATE!!! Take it easy, Bobbalooey!
When the Pilgrims came to America, they nearly starved to death because they adopted communal agriculture. When William Bradford, leader of the Mayflower expedition, figured this out he reorganized the Massachusetts pilgrims in a regime of private property in land. The incentives created by private property promptly created a dramatic economic turnaround and the rest is history. Most history books ignore this reality, however, and blame the starvation crisis of the Pilgrims on corporate greed on the part of the Mayflower company.
Every time the price of gasoline goes up significantly, Congress convenes a Nuremburg Trial–style inquisition of oil-company executives. This practice began in the 1970s when the government's own foolish price controls on petroleum products caused massive shortages, and it needed someone to blame. Oil company executives are never praised when gasoline prices fall, as they have in the past year from over $4/gallon to under $2/gallon in many parts of the United States. Government's Never Ending Lies About Markets, Thomas J. DiLorenzo
It would not be fair to say that all motorcycle outlaws carry Linkhorn genes, but nobody who has ever spent time among the inbred Anglo Saxon tribes of Appalachia would need more than a few hours with the Hell's Angels to work up a very strong sense of deja vu. There is the same sulking hostility toward "outsiders", the same extremes of temper and action, and even the same names, sharp faces and long-boned bodies that never quite look natural unless they're leaning on something. Hunter Thompson
Orianne Greene of Portland, 22, helped three-year-old Aiden Bailey who was separated from his father on a MAX platform by staying with him until his father came back. "I was very very worried," said Greene. "What can I do? How can I help." went through her mind, and she decided to stay with the boy because she knew that his father would come back around. Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian.
He's cheerful, for the most part; a little impulive with his money; and likely to catch a peek into women's blouses as often as he might without resorting to Ho' Dog Rip Rap Dumb Shit Grunt. He thinks Bob Dylan is something of a poser and prefers southern sonsofbitches like Hank Williams to guys named Zimmerman. When he sings, his nose belts out the harmony.
And, brother, he liked women when they were women! You know who used to wear tattoos? Sailors! You know what sailors became? Constuction workers! You know what construction workers wore? Wife-beaters! That's not what we want in a woman, for chrissake!
Here's a woman:
What's Your First Clue?
She honors Venus with her beauty. She does not mar it with weapons. She is built for love and adoration, not something to be purchased at the market or displayed like a can o'Spam. She owned you with her beauty. Get it? You can't get there with trash talk. Gotta love 'em into owning you.
Thanks Saul Alinsky, and Doctors Cloward and Piven. Even if it's not the change the two of you hoped for, we might just see if your ideas really work. Calling Dr. Cloward and Dr. Piven.
[T]he priesthood of all believers, a protestant doctrine that Calvin expounded on, led to the education of nearly all America's citizens, since all believers are responsible for seeking to know what God has said to them in the Bible. This widespread literacy allowed the democratic system to operate, given the relative isolation of towns back then, and the lack of any mass media other than the printed word.
In addition, Calvin exhorted believers to work hard, while declaring secular occupations to be every bit as holy as that of the pulpit. These teachings, along with his view on the limitations of government, together set the philosophical stage for Capitalism. Given all of these factors, one can see just how profound an influence this theologian has had on the social and political formation of the United States of America.
The founder of the other America (which, in view of the first one, might well be considered the anti-America) also had a major anniversary this year, having been born in 1809. Though his discipline was science, the theory of origins that he formulated from his observation of plants and animals has had enormous implications in America's social and political realms as well. I am, of course, referring to Charles Darwin.
In his article entitled "Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence," Bradley C. S. Watson lists six core ideas that social Darwinists in the 20th century came to have with respect to politics in general and constitutional government in particular.
All the major themes of human existence are represented. Love, hate, greed, charity, redemption, etc. are weaved into a brilliant tapestry of literal and allegorical devices. So comprehensive and timeless are many of the lessons of the Great Bard that his life's work is often called "The Lay Bible." But like the Good Book, many of the truisms contained within Shakespeare's work and his life continue to be overlooked or completely forgotten.
Buoyed by the ruling, two Irish journalists -- Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney -- released a documentary in which they gather evidence outlining the damage of global warming hysteria. In "Not Evil Just Wrong," they challenge the claims made in Gore's film and conclude that the film is not worth screening in schools because it is shown there as "an article of science, not faith." Tards of Darkness
As many of you will be aware, a large number of emails from the University of East Anglia webmail server were hacked recently (Despite some confusion generated by Anthony Watts, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Hadley Centre which is a completely separate institution). As people are also no doubt aware the breaking into of computers and releasing private information is illegal, and regardless of how they were obtained, posting private correspondence without permission is unethical. We therefore aren’t going to post any of the emails here. We were made aware of the existence of this archive last Tuesday morning when the hackers attempted to upload it to RealClimate, and we notified CRU of their possible security breach later that day.
No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.
Awhile back Cicero did a post on Ingrid Dean's book, Spirit of the Badge: 60 True Police Stories of Divine Guidance, Miracles & Intuition. I was lucky enough to receive a very lovely thank you note from Ingrid regarding our coverage of that story. She is certainly a keen and gentle soul, a real pleasure to have met. Ingrid and I have been doing some corresponding about spirits and such. And dreams. The subject of dreams was broached. It's a genuine pleasure to make contact with someone in Cicero's world who is not slavishly bound to arbitrary definitions, which are invariably called "truth" by their adherents.
I am one of life's fortunates to have not been stuck in a literalistic window display of Name and Form. For me, life started out as a dream. At age three I became aware of recurring dreams I had been having since age 2. By means of this "device", my earliest root of memory is of being 2-years-old. In other words, I have more dream memories of that time than physical memories, though I have some of those, too. I am conscious of an unfolding psychic plant that emerged through the dark swirl of dreaming. Dreamers out there know whereof which I speak. The rest of you must mutter your discontent, I suppose, though,in point of fact, everyone of you is exactly the same creature as me, you're just not aware of it. You're stuck with what you've been told. People like me are "different" because we understand that what is called "reality" are coordinates on a Living Consciousness, not skyscrapers that must be worshipped.
A hacker has gotten into the computers at Hadley CRU, Britain's largest climate research institute and a proponent of global warming, and seems to have uncovered evidence of substantial fraud in reporting the "evidence" on global warming; the unlawful destruction of records to cover up this fraud, conspiracy, and deceit in the entire operation.
Public policy is about choosing priorities
in the face of limited resources. That is the lesson Bjørn Lomborg and
his Copenhagen Consensus try to make plain — a lesson rejected by
the American Left, which likes to contend that focusing on one priority does not exclude others. But the Left’s
own standard bearer, Barack Obama, has just proved the fallacy of that argument
with his trip to China.
Sidewinder Sonsofbitches: Senate Working Saturday Health Care Vote Do these people realize it may be time to "water the tree of liberty"? According to the WaPo, "Opponents Turn Up the Volume" I see. You realize, of course, that if the Warm Fuzzies were opposing this kind of political fraud, the headline would read, "Opponents Seek to Block Republican End Run"
Socialist or Vast Expansion? You Be the JudgeThis is the area where Rush and I part company. "Liberal" is not always accurate; its pejorative use doesn't add to the discussion. As for Obama's "socialism", the truth is, with the exception of . . . . Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan maybe? No president since Roosevelt has given the American public the truth about constitutional government, i.e., we went into an Italian spoils system in the 30s. Been there ever since. It's dishonest to blame just Democrats or "liberals."
Obviously, our current chief of state did not invent this federal intrusiveness that the Founders explicitly tried to inhibit. From very early on, there were dribs and drabs of statist ambition, though it was not until President Franklin D. Roosevelt that we had the deluge - the New Deal - much of which is still with us.
Since then, both Republican and Democratic presidents have pushed us ever further in that direction. President Johnson gave us the Great Society, its most notable program being Medicare. President Nixon talked conservative talk but gave us the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, temporary wage-and-price controls, far more regulation, and automatic Social Security increases based on inflation. He unsuccessfully sought comprehensive health care reform.
New Mysteries of the Turin Shroud Unveiled. As usual, there are lots of wild and whacky stories out there in the world of Spooks n'Kooks! Some that are somewhat believable, some unbelievably stupid, and some that are downright intriguing! Washington Rebel's Spook of the Week:
SOMETHING big is out there beyond the visible edge of our universe. That's the conclusion of the largest analysis to date of over 1000 galaxy clusters streaming in one direction at blistering speeds. Some researchers say this so-called "dark flow" is a sign that other universes nestle next door.
Last year, Sasha Kashlinsky of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and colleagues identified an unusual pattern in the motion of around 800 galaxy clusters. They studied the clusters' motion in the "afterglow" of the big bang, as measured by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). The photons of this afterglow collide with electrons in galaxy clusters as they travel across space to the Earth, and this subtly changes the afterglow's temperature.
Mm mmm! What else is cookin' in the Whirlgigimata of Spooks and Kooks?
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