Spock, Going Where No Man Has Gone

He Was, And Will Always Be, Our Friend: Remembering Leonard Nimoy : NPR:

When the Star Trek came out, in 1966, I was 10. I was interested in it, but I was more interested in Apollo and the Moon. When I was in college from 74-78, it was on in re-run and we tended to watch most of the shows, entertained by the imagined technology as well as the short skirts and scantily clad "alien" women -- Star Trek didn't ONLY push the envelope on racial and social issues!

Yet again, I'm struck by the incongruity of Nimoy passing at a time nearly 50 years later and finding the US unable to put a person in orbit at all, with the last trip to the Moon having been Apollo 17 in December of '72 as I approached the halfway point of my sophomore year or high school!

It is difficult to separate youth from thoughts of potential, unlimited horizons and bright outlook for the future, but here is an easy contrast. The Wright brothers first flew on December 17 1903, on October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, and on May 2nd, 1952 less than  50 years later the first commercial jet flight took off. By 70 years later, we had made six successful Moon landings, but in the nearly 50 years since, we have not been back, and in fact at this point lack the capability in the US of being able to put a man into earth orbit.

Star Trek was and is popular because unlike the vast vast bulk of future projection -- both scientific and social,  it is fairly utopian as opposed to dystopian. Rather than assuming that mankind would be snuffed out by nuclear bombs, plague, war, or some other combination of greed, violence, stupidity,  or as appears to be the case, just giving up. Star Trek asserted that humans would continue to work, innovate, explore, risk, and eventually spread out into the galaxy. It was optimistic.

So far, we have managed to retreat on the space front in the near 50 year span at which our war posture would have to be called "peace" relative to WWI, WWII and Korea that marred the time from 1903-1969. The Moon landings may well be remembered as our "high water mark" in the sense of Lee at Cemetery Ridge, Hitler at Stalingrad, or the USSR in Afghanistan.

Who is "our"? -- unfortunately, it would be Western Civilization, with the USA having been the nation that carried the torch to where it was dropped. A nation and civilization that decided as many had before that concerns at home, political battles over a barely growing economic pie, and comfort for the dying embers of a once great land are more important than exploration, advancement, innovation, competition -- and yes, challenge, sacrifice, and the never certain quest for glory.

So, in the spirit of Jimmy Carter, rather than reaching for the stars, we seek to make less bother of ourselves to the planet. A quiet future, attempting to bother no one, potentially even finding jobs for wayward Jihadis as a sop to those less educated on the proper role for man to play in this universe.

"Live Long and Prosper" -- we shall do neither, as we have lost the life spirit that enables the best in humanity and have traded it for the insanely regressive.  Perhaps, to paraphrase the Klingon, Spock picked a good time to die!

'via Blog this'

Churchill and Netanyahu Address Congress

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/netanyahu-s-moment_867715.html?page=1

Netanyahu will speak before Congress tomorrow -- an event that has some parallel to Churchill's Dec 1941 speech to Congress in that Israel is in the front lines against the forces of Islamic tyranny, surrounded by nations that hate both her and the US. The fail to recognize Israel as a state at all, and often refer to the US as "The Great Satan", for example as quoted in this article covering the use of a sea launched missile against a simulated US aircraft carrier in an exercise.

"The new weapon will have a very decisive role in adding our naval power in confronting threats, particular by the Great Satan, the US,"Admiral Ali Fadavi, Iran’s navy chief, told the Revolutionary Guards' website.

The speech is differed in that as Winston appeared less than a month after Pearl Harbor, and the American public had finally woken up to the danger they were facing from the Axis -- BO and most of the American public today are still in the appeasement phase. One of Churchill's lines in the speech was "the US has released the sword of freedom and cast away the scabbard" ... along with "What kind of people do they think we are?"
Sadly, today, the kind of people we are is in much more doubt than it was in '41 -- but I suspect that the forces of Islam, China, Putin and the left in the US will continue to help us determine that question.

President Obama has not, and will not, release any swords, nor certainly cast away any scabbard. Though Netanyahu will of course focus, as he should, on the details of a possible Iran agreement—the speech will be a moment that points beyond the particulars of an Iran deal. It will be a moment that could cause us to reflect on what kind of people we are, and, with new leadership, what kind of deeds we might once again be capable of

As it will be a moment of vindication for Zionism, the cause to which he and his family have dedicated their lives. In past episodes of Jews’ being consigned by the world to their fate, they were powerless to fight. And so the world (and not a few Jews) became accustomed to Jews’ playing the role of victim. On March 3, something remarkable and historic will happen. The prime minister of Israel, speaking on behalf of not only his country and millions of Jews, but on behalf of the West itself, will command the world’s attention as he declares his refusal to appease the enemies of Israel and the West. Both Jabotinsky and Churchill, both Ben-Gurion and Truman, would appreciate the moment.

'via Blog this'

The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk

Link to book on Amazon

I gave a little preview of this book that I re-started on back in November, and I have now finished my 3rd reading of this heavily tabbed and marked work which I first read in 2005. The book was first published in 1953 -- so it is three years my senior.

I pulled these quotes from page 470, but not in order -- I'm bad with the little [...] and such and I think they hold together pretty well anyway.  

When faith in a transcendent moral order, duty to family, hope of advancement, and satisfaction with one's task have vanished from the routine of life, Big Brother appears to show the donkey the stick instead of the carrot.

There are many in all parties who look forward to time when virtually the whole of the population will be dependent on the State for the whole of the amenities of life.  

But moral systems are not constructed readily by social engineers. The old religious and ethical imperatives demolished, compulsion must take their place if the great wheel of circulation is to be kept turning. When the inner order of the soul is decayed, the outer order of the State must be maintained by merciless severity, extending even to the most private relationships.  

If Democracy cannot be persuaded, then Democracy must be intimidated. 

Or as TS Eliot put it; "If you will not have God (and he is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin". I would add, Satan.

There is no way to capture the scope of this book -- the highlights of conservative thought from Burke to Eliot (as in TS), but that isn't the half of it. The various authors harken back to Greece, the Bible, Natural Law, British History and much more. The names from history flow like a wide and very deep river of genius -- Acton, Adams, Babbitt, Balfour, Coleridge, Disraeli ... and I'm only selecting a starting few from an already selective bibliography!

Conservatism is rich in history of both fact and thought because conservatives believe in the importance of history. They deny that the last instant is a privileged position to observe what is of ultimate import for man, mankind, families, communities, nations or other associations that are the essence of truly human life -- all often atomized by the oppressive Benthamite Statism we exist under today. Conservatives look for historical, even transcendent perspective, searching for principle and the hope of providence.

They deny that man is the measure of all, but oh, what men of what great measure have we been blessed to have seen rise up to contain the horrors of the French Revolution, Fascism, Communism and the ongoing onslaught of  increasingly godless, centralized,  and intrusive Statist power.

The thought upon which Britain and the US rose to our previous heights was conservative thought. Will our civilization hold out against the destructive envy of the masses, the machinations of the "sophists and calculators", those that would destroy all that transcends day to day existence and thus make our lives no more than those of the "flies of summer"? (Burke)

THAT is the ultimate earthly social question, the eternal one is like unto it -- Will you sell all you own (give up the idea of this is MY LIFE), and follow Christ!

That question is never securely settled, and has Reagan so correctly put it, the potential loss of all is never more than one generation away!

Burwell, TP, Screw You GOP!

Is GOP finally getting nervous that the Supreme Court might gut Obamacare? - LA Times:



If more Americans were somewhat awake and observing, TP (The Party-D) would be useless to elect. No matter what, NOTHING that they do is ever really their responsibility!



As I covered here  they wrote the ACA and EXPLICITLY put the "only the states that set up exchanges" will get subsidies! The idea was that they would FORCE the issue by PUNISHING those states that didn't comply.



But then 37 states didn't do exchanges and they realized their program was not going to work without those states involved, so they STILL gave people signing up in those states subsidies -- and now 87% of the people signed up get kickbacks.



But, as they make clear in the article, if the SCOTUS calls their bluff, IT IS THE REPUBLICANS FAULT!



Got it? You write a law with a specific intent to screw over your political enemies and reward your friends, it backfires and you get totally caught, but you STILL WIN!



That is what it means to be a ONE PARTY SYSTEM! "Heads I win, Tails you lose". You are the MINORITY, we own the media, most of the legal system, education, all the government workers, etc, so SCREW YOU!



We live in a corrupt regime, and TP is arrogant enough to just lay it all out there.





'via Blog this'

Chicago, Running Out of Other People's Money

Exclusive: Chicago nears fiscal free fall with latest downgrade - Yahoo News Canada:

Progressivism and socialism are great systems until you run out of other people's money. It's a lot like the Rock N Roll lifestyle -- booze, sex, drugs. Looks pretty glamorous for awhile, then, sometime around their 30s if not before -- they either wise up or die. Event he "wising up" often incurs a good deal of collateral damage.

If most people didn't have to work and everything from food, housing, clothing, entertainment, education, healthcare, etc could be provided for free, life would maybe really be like hanging around the university for a month between semesters with no job and 10 grand or so you inherited from your grandmother and decided to blow like a "responsible" 21 year old.

Unsurprisingly to those over 21 without 10 grand inheritances and a greater sense of realism than rock stars, Rahm Emanuel, BO, or the NYTs -- places like Chicago, Detroit, NYC, DC, CA, etc run out of money. You can read about Chicago's current woes in the linked article.

Nobody is looking now of course (D in the WH), but the US debt is over 18T, and the unfunded liabilities for FICA, Medicare, etc are $60T and rising.

Party on.

'via Blog this'

Frozen Slush Waves, 81 Years

Four photos of slush waves that'll chill your bones | MSNBC:

Those of us who are alive and able to read and see things, ought to be able to read and see things about WEATHER -- hot or cold!



Denver has broken a 102 year February record for snow.



Nantucket is having the coldest winter in 81 years. That is newsworthy -- people are living through it, there are interesting phenomenon associated with it. It is just DATA -- like CA having had a drought that was supposedly the "worst in 1200 years" ... which is kinda funny if you look at the "pattern" on the chart that supposedly shows that. It certainly does show that CA has a climate that is prone to deep drought. One might be able to find a statistical way to claim the last drought was "worst", but it ain't by much! (like pick out the NEXT worst from the chart ... )

Naturally, we have heard A LOT about the CA drought, because it fits the current narrative of "Global Warming" ... since Nantucket and Denver do not, old records going by the board there get little coverage. Thus, why many people "believe".







'via Blog this'

Kickback Neutrality

F.C.C. Net Neutrality Rules Clear Hurdle as Republicans Concede to Obama - NYTimes.com:

I happened to be listening to MPR this AM when they must have let the wrong caller through to a program on BOcare. She had a family of four, made too much for BOcare subsidies, but was well short of "comfortable".  She had thought BOcare would be a good thing, but discovered that her old $800 monthly bill for insurance went up to $1200 and the deductibles went from a couple hundred to couple thousand. In summary, her  health care cost went from a bit less than $10K to $20K -- it doubled and she was aghast. The show moved on with no comment -- not their kind of caller. You lost lady -- next question.

That is pretty much what is happening to most folks -- the folks that are benefitting from BOcare are those at a lower income level. It "works as expected" -- it transfers money from working people to those non-working or at least low income, and provides a kickback (more money) to the people that supported the program -- insurance companies and big medical providers like Mayo. TP's friends are rewarded and it's enemies are punished -- success! Next topic.

The linked article indicates that the FCC is going to pick up a whole new domain from where appropriate kickbacks can be garnered for itself and suitable friends. Want to certified as "neutral" -- well, here is how you do it, send so much here, contribute to this, pay this person / foundation / organization, and wala, you are "neutral"! Oh, wait -- I see that you are on a list as one of THOSE people -- "conservative", "Tea Party", "Christian" ... whatever. Do you want to cause yourself problems? or do you just not know any better?

I believe the IRS "scandal" is a watershed moment for America. We CAUGHT the Federal agency that we ALL have to deal with operating by punishing it's political enemies. And we did NOTHING! Note I said CAUGHT -- that is the equivalent of "seeing a rat". By the time you SEE a rat, only the most insane would think "oh, there is probably just one"!

Corruption is endemic to ALL human institutions! The church, business, private organizations, government, etc. ALL ORGANIZATIONS! The bigger they are, the more powerful, the more isolated by "disclosure rules", the worse the corruption is. When politics become involved -- as in Government UNIONS which are servants to ONE PARTY, everyone that has a brain knows what is happening. "Catching" someone is really beside the point. You hopefully have never witnessed a fatal car accident happen personally -- that does not mean that they don't happen!

Saying anything about the obvious gets more and more dangerous however. Letting the government run the Internet is no different from letting the Mob run the truckers union -- only all of us are like produce shippers in the trucking example.

Perhaps the entire country can just operate on kickbacks of one form or another? That is how things work in "One Nation Under the Administrative State"!

'via Blog this'

If McCarthy Was a Democrat

I am Under “Investigation” | The Climate Fix:



Since this story will likely hit only the "right wing media" (underground media?) I better introduce it. A DEMOCRAT Congressman from AZ, Raúl Grijalva, has sent letters to the universities of 7 US academics informing them that they are under investigation under the suspicion of climate denialism -- "are you now, or have you ever been a denier of AGW?" (Anthropogenic Global Warming)"? 



For any with a rudimentary understanding of US political history, this is pretty much an exact analogue for what is commonly screamed of as "McCarthyism" if the political right comes anywhere close to it. 



The reason that this isn't of interest from the left is that from the left, this is what is called BAU -- Business As Usual. What part of "You MUST agree" is it that these 7 have failed to understand? "Gay marriage"? You must agree, or we will put you out of business! You are think your group can be tax deductible but  you don't agree with TP? No, you can't be and the IRS will prove it -- oh, and BTW, likely audit you and those on your contributor lists as well for good measure! Ditto AGW. 



The reason that "McCarthyism" is called "McCarthyism" is because McCarthy had the total unmitigated gall to go after THE LEFT -- Communists! He seemed to think that being called a Communist was somehow a BAD thing, when in fact the left has always made clear it is supposed to be a GOOD THING! 



The real definition of McCarthyism is "Someone on the right getting enough power to seem to be able to question the left, which results in the person on the right being demonized, losing their position and ultimately being destroyed". 



For those who are not in "THE PARTY (TP)", "McCarthyism" is "Being in a position of some level of power and questioning TP".



For Democrats (TP), "McCarthyism is simply business as usual.



'via Blog this'

Mourning Winston, Last Lion, Defender of the Realm

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0345548639/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

After now having finished 1800+ pages of Last Lion over the last few weeks (Alone, then Defender of the Realm), last night, with a glass of brandy in hand to honor his memory, I reached Winston's death shortly after his 90th birthday and the end of the defender book. I love to read. Given retirement and the weather over the last couple weeks, it feels a bit like I lost an old friend today.

 His birthday was on Nov 30th and he celebrated 90 as he liked to with family and friends, roast beef, oysters, Pol Roger champagne, brandy and cigars late into the early morning hours. Over a decade prior he had commented to Jock Colville on another January 24th that "today is the 24th of January, that is the day my father died. It is the day that I shall die too."  On the night of the 9th of January he refused to take either brandy or a cigar -- very rare. He had a stroke and went into a coma that night. He passed on the 24th.  I believe the image above is of the crowd outside on his 90th and him giving them the V for victory.

I don't think there is any question that he was the greatest man of the 20th century. Without him, we may well be all speaking German today and being forced to revere Hitler as that man. Next to Winston, FDR, Stalin, Truman and Eisenhower are just "other statesmen".

He was great because he was always Winston. Here he is calling socialism want it was and is:

"I hope you have all mastered the official Socialist jargon which our masters, as they call themselves, wish us to learn," he said in 1950. "You must not use the word 'poor'; they are described as the 'lower income group.' When it comes to a question of freezing a workman's wages the Chancellor of the Exchequer speaks of 'arresting increases in personal income'....Homes are in future to be called 'accommodation units.' I don't know how we are to sing our old song 'Home Sweet Home.' 'Accommodation Unit, Sweet Accommodation Unit, there's no place like our Accommodation Unit.'"

The level of tyranny and millions of subjugated and dead at the hands of Stalin and the USSR could likely have been significantly reduced if not nearly avoided had FDR been willing to listen to Churchill and had not had the idea that "he could talk to Stalin". Here is a little glimpse of comparison between Churchill and FDR:

... Roosevelt "always enjoyed other people's discomfort." Harriman recalled. "It never bothered him much when other people were unhappy."

Churchill did not rise to the bait until Stalin proposed to shoot at least 50K German officers after the surrender in order to ensure Germany's docility well into the future. "I would rather," Churchill replied, "be taken out to the garden here and now and be shot myself rather than sully my own and my countries honor by such infamy." Roosevelt then chimed in with a compromise; he suggested that only 49K officers be shot". 

There are a number of places that one realizes that FDR often gave weasels a bad name -- siding with Stalin and reducing his number by a thousand allows you to understand the REAL FDR vs the "Fireside Chat" fake.

In reading the book, one is shocked by how much FDR and others in his cabinet sidled up to Stalin and the USSR while taking a decidedly anti British Empire stance. For some strange reason, FDR had massive concern for what he saw as "injustice" to people in India, but was completely sanguine about many millions of Poles, Slavs and Germans being butchered, raped starved, and eventually imprisoned or virtually imprisoned as the machine of the Red Army blugeoned it's way west.

Or perhaps FDR just didn't like Britain and what he saw as her "interests". When there was a huge famine in Bengal and the demolished Brits had no ships, but 350K tons of wheat in Australia, FDR dithered for a month when he had the ships, then sent "regrets". At least a million more Bengalis died in the next twelve months. The book makes it very clear that American politics were what FDR cared about -- whatever it took for him to win elections was what he was committed to -- not matter what the cost in lives or the risk of loss to Hitler.

Churchill's life is a drama that exceeds any that could be imagined -- made more dramatic by being real. He heroically fought the monster Hitler, and won without becoming evil himself. And then his people turned him out of leadership because they wanted the "free stuff" promised by socialism less than 2 months after VE day. How is that for gratitude?

But he persevered, the socialists were a disaster as he had predicted, and he returned to the Prime Minister position in '51, laying it down in '55. His last 10 years were spent writing, painting and sailing the world on Aristotle Onassis' yacht.

His son Randolph was a source of disappointment, it was said that he inherited all of his fathers bad characteristics and none of the good.  -- as Winston once said with a tear in his eye "I love my son, but I don't like him".  Randolph died in '68 at the age of 57. His first wife, Pamela bore a son Winston who was a joy to old Winston. Pamela, eventually Pamela Harriman was is a study in herself -- it was once remarked that she was the worlds foremost expert on rich mens bedroom ceilings.

His daughter Sarah had success as an actress, struggled with alcohol her whole life and died at age 67, apparently having relapsed to alcohol.

His wife Clementine remained his love to the end and outlived him by over a decade.

I wish he had been a Christian -- I like to believe that God had a long talk with him from January 9 to the 24th and convinced him that he had one critical error in life. Inside Westminster there is supposed to be a fairly large block on the floor that says "Remember Winston Churchill" -- I certainly will, and I intend to see that marker in about a month!

Everyone Must Agree ...

Everyone Must Reject Giulianis Comment:



A rather longish but important discussion about the current Giuliani "loves America" flap and how such things affect our selections of appropriate and inappropriate thinking. The article fails to point out that BO himself questioned W's "patriotism" when W was trying to raise the debt limit. It also doesn't mention that calling W "liar", "torturer", "idiot", etc when he was in office by Democrats at all levels was rampant. Nobody really cared.



The main points made by the article is that these things are "staged" -- first it is demanded that the person that spoke apologize, then it is demanded that people who are "on the same side" as the person "distance themselves" from his comment, and then there is a demand that ALL of the "opposition" sign up to apologize for this "affront".



When we used to have "decent Christian people", we used to be able to say that "all decent Christians need to come out against X". Since "decency"and "Christians" have become rare, we are now into approving and denouncing statements based on our willingness to accept or reject the ideological rules of TP (The Party - D). When W was in office, any disparaging statement was completely legitimate -- no apologies required.



We know there is nothing "decent" or "patriotic" or "honorable" here -- BO himself effectively called patriotic Americans "bitter clingers". As the article discusses, "patriotism" itself is considered a tiny step from jingoism and something that any intelligent intellectual would only allow themselves to be associated with at arms length at best!



What we have is thought control -- a power play as to what you may or may not say about a TP leader in power. Any level of fighting back against throught control -- even just recognizing it is progress, but the fact that TP believes that a power play for thought control can work in their favor shows we have a long way to go.



Take the time to slog through the article, it IS worth the time!





via Blog this'

Iraqi WMDs Continue to Leak

C.I.A. Is Said to Have Bought and Destroyed Iraqi Chemical Weapons - NYTimes.com:

The main point of this article is the fact of a single cache of 400 sarin munitions that would have been lethal if used being bought by CIA.

I chronicle it only because the story that has been burned into the American mind is "Bush lied, people died" -- by literally THOUSANDS of repetitions.

For 80-90% of the people, it CAN'T be changed -- it is part of TP controlling the media and what I consider to be a lack of combativeness on the part of W and company. They were however at war -- as we still are,  and W's concern was after 9-11-2001 focused primarily on keeping America safe.

He made the (probably correct) determination that given the level of media bias and attack mode, putting out information about what was being found would not have helped -- it would have not been covered, and if it was, it would have been covered as somehow "not valid weapons" -- too old, not enough, etc.

Enough time has now passed that as this information comes it the media covers enough of it so that if we get hit with a weapon from Iraq it can be firmly identified as a "failure of the W administration to find the weapons".

Much like the end of the USSR -- the idea of which was firmly considered a "dangerous Reagan fantasy" in the early '80s, suddenly became a fait accompli know by all, impeded by Reagan and brought to completion by Gorby. All those pronouncements from the early '80s? Down the memory hole!

'via Blog this'

Cholesterol, Connections, Causality

Big Fat Surprise

I got to hear the linked story on MPR yesterday and the host, Kerry Miller -- if you go out and listen to it, it is at about 4min that Kerry gets worried about "science denialism" because it seems that although "science" told us that they KNEW what we ought to eat, it turns out that they were WRONG!

The attempted response of dietary science being "fragile science" with some prevarication about "prestigious schools like Harvard" is kind of fun to listen to. "It is hard to find causality" -- yes, now there is something we can agree on!

Say your computer crashes "some of the time" when you are browsing the web -- or just "randomly". You can meticulously keep track of when it does it, what you are doing, keep charts, etc, etc. You (unless you are a programmer / maintenance person) build up a lot of information ABOUT the  problem, but it takes someone that can "look behind the curtain" to find the causality and FIX IT. Causality is HARD -- and that is in domain where we KNOW everything in your computer was designed and constructed by human minds / hands.

For the human body, most food, and the climate, NOTHING was constructed by human hands -- we can only postulate an ultimate causality of "God" or "random chance", and if we want it to be somehow "predictable", we better lean pretty hard to the side of "something with "order" created a reliable order around us that we can count on and find rules / patterns / etc.

Unsurprisingly -- for those that have some contact with what thought means , Kerry has stumbled into an epistemological problem -- what can/do we know and how do we know it? (a link to some cliff notes on that).

Hmm, and another link that might help on the issue.

Kerry seeks to BELIEVE in science -- so she is very concerned that what she sees as an "error" in science will spread and encourage "science deniers". But science is a PROCESS, and in fact an inductive process which  means that no matter how many times your experiment was repeated, that is NOT "proof" that it will not fail the next time.

 I call the induction problem the Thanksgiving turkey problem -- the little turkey develops a hypothesis that humans are benevolent creatures that feed and take care of turkeys. Each day of it's life this theory is "inductively proven". On the day the turkey has the greatest certainly of the correctness of it's theory, (having had the most successful tests), it is Thanksgiving. The turkey has discovered induction -- and epistemology.

We don't know what we don't know. The set of what we don't know is INFINITE!

"Progressives" believe in the Whig theory of history -- the latest knowledge is better, and generally believe in "logical atomism" -- each event can be studied in isolation to gain meaningful knowledge.

Another  mistake Kerry made is to drift toward a holistic view -- that things are related. For a moment the SHOCKING thought crossed her mind that if one kind of science could have an error, then how could she know in her heart that other science was not less than holy and true? She has been carefully taught that "it's all particles and progress", and each event is separate -- but something in her soul is wondering about that.

Progressive thought is founded on "the latest is greatest" and "believe the experts, not your own stupid mind". Plato, Christianity, Burke essentially claim the opposite -- there is a transcendent grand plan and everything is related to that plan.

Kerry is a transcendent, purposeful, related universe "denier" -- intellectually. She wants to isolate nutrition science from climate science. She wants to raise cigarette taxes to curtail smoking, but doesn't see raising income taxes as reducing income. She wants the universe to work in the way she wants it to work, with no reference to the "I AM".

To put it in the words of Mannheim:

"One must make one's choice between two views: on the one hand that there is a reason working in and through men's minds which can lay hold of a timeless structure of things: on the other, that thinking is a series of temporal events determined, like all other events, non-rationally"

There is either a God and a purpose so that everything is part of an ordered and related plan,  or it is is "a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing". 

Kerry clearly WANTS to believe in SOMETHING, and nutrition science has just been show to have feet of clay

Either it all makes sense ... or it doesn't, and that is a matter of faith! 

'via Blog this'

Women Make 75% What Men Do

The Gender Pay Gap is a Complete Myth - CBS News:

As a regular listener to NPR, the "fact"  in the headline is well known. In fact, we are one of the WORST of the developed nations in that area. They cover the story (a very apt word) quite frequently.

This "fact" needs to be drilled in  -- like racism, a lot of the strength of TP (The Party-D) depends on it! It is a great spur to use in "The War on Women". Who wouldn't be angry about getting 25% less pay than someone else for the same work! It's like some groups were taxed 25% more than others ...

Oh wait, the top bracket DOES take home 25% less than a married person making $74K -- but there are less of them, so we don't care how they are affected. Never mind.

The "fact" of the women pay gap is a myth. The whole linked article is short and worth the read, but the following us the punchline:

Despite all of the above, unmarried women who've never had a child actually earn more than unmarried men, according to Nemko and data compiled from the Census Bureau.

Women business owners make less than half of what male business owners make, which, since they have no boss, means it's independent of discrimination. The reason for the disparity, according to a Rochester Institute of Technology study, is that money is the primary motivator for 76% of men versus only 29% of women. Women place a higher premium on shorter work weeks, proximity to home, fulfillment, autonomy, and safety, according to Nemko.

'via Blog this'

GOP Frontrunner Easy to Find!

Scott Walker is officially the GOP frontrunner, and the media is out for blood « Hot Air:



It reminds me of a bitch (female dog) being in heat in the country neighborhood when I was a kid -- every male dog within a couple miles was around for a visit, often with one dragging a chain that was supposed to keep them home.



The usual drill in '11 was as a new face hit the top we heard about their husband maybe being gay (Bachmann),  the old divorce re-marriage with wife (Mitch Daniels), the racist rock (Rick Perry) ... Herman Cain women, Romney was a "bully" -- like I said, "bitch in heat".



One thing about having an R next to your name, the media LOVES to do opposition "research" on you! Only problem is that they already went berserk on Walker in the recall and then again in the last election, and even after shaking down friends and associates so hard they ended up getting court orders against them, they really didn't find anything.



So we are on "he didn't graduate from college", "he was in a room when somebody said something uncomplimentary about BO" and "you, can we ask you if you think BO is a Christian?".



Seriously, in the media mind is somebody being a Christian good or bad???



The predictability of the MSM gives banal a bad name!



'via Blog this'

Al Gore and Michael Mann Penniless

Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher - NYTimes.com:

I'm often struck by the "denier researcher got paid"! articles. The people that push the warming agenda don't get paid? Are Al Gore and Michael Mann street people? Are government, university endowments and other foundations, grants, etc provided by wealthy donors, the UN, etc somehow "not money"? Is a Nobel Prize for taking a certain position not an award?

We all need to maintain awareness of bias on every front -- the very way our senses and brains work is a giant "fish studying wetness" bias that goes with us every second of every day. To be human is be motivated by money, influence, status, intellectual validation, security, popularity, and a whole host of other subtle and not so subtle items.

As we age and experience the myriad motivations and biases of people, at least many of us learn to at least be a LITTLE careful of the "hey, the other guy is BREATHING over there"! sort of little kid taunt. Does the NYTs really not realize that ALL sides of EVERY issue have at least many of the same motivations? For people with a TINY level of intellectual maturity that are not complete zealots on an issue, it would seem completely incredible that they could not realize that, and in fact not realize that BILLIONS of dollars around the planet are being spent, granted, tax incentivized, etc on wind, solar, batteries, etc on the hypothesis that the planet is warming due to human causes.

Or are they actually aware of that reality and are consciously attempting to smear the "other side" for having the very same motivations.

How many times have you seen the "hockey stick" chart or some other version showing "massive warming" ... along with predictions of "many feet of sea rise in 100 years", "droughts, storms, heat waves", etc, etc 

How often have you seen this chart of what temperature has been doing for the last 10K years? The far right of the chart is where we are -- it indeed might be warming.

If you REALLY want to worry, notice how much shorter the warming periods are getting and how much longer the Little Ice Age was than the previous cooling periods! Hmmm ...

'via Blog this'