death to the dictator

again, iran's is one green movement worth supporting. too bad chairman zero is oblivious to their struggle.

south of several borders,

"the night before Christmas" changes a little...

Christmas morning

Most of us have heard the story of the birth of Jesus Christ into the world. The Gospels describe it in various ways, but sometimes its meanings get lost as we repeat it in our traditions. Recently I heard a sermon explaining the nativity story from Mary's point of view, but something else just hit me tonight - one metaphorical angle that I don't remember hearing before...

Jesus was born in a stable, and it wasn't like the glittery ceramic scenes which decorate many homes and churches this time of year. A crowded and messy stable. A stable filled with noisy, smelly animals that probably just finished a long hot day of work or travel. Animals that only hoped to avoid predators and the whip. Animals, that didn't know anything better than to eat, sleep, procreate, and die in their own filth.

Those animals represent the wretched and pathetic state we all were in before our blessed Lord saved us.

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased."

snowing here

"melts on the ground, not in the air!"

update: i spoke too soon. the snow has already covered 80% of the grass, drifting up to 30 mm, and visibility is down to 5.2 × 10^-14 parsecs!

answer this

With the Obama-crats trying to take over everything in sight (GM, banks, the entire healthcare industry, etc...), shouldn't we at least be opposing them on the basis of anti-trust laws?

"nil"s bore

Distilling this argument to near-bumpersticker length: "Nietzsche was a hypocrite for believing the words "everything is meaningless" to have any meaning."

dfw 2020

Asking as a Fort Worth native, please please please do not hold the olympics in DFW. Some agree:

I understand why people want to hold the Olympics, but really all who benefits from it are IOC members who are bribed...err...lobbied, construction companies, and local elected officials...

Please Dallas don't mire us in a generation of debt just so we can pound our chest on TV for 3 or 4 weeks... Montreal just this week paid off their debt from the 1976 Olympics and that London is 8 billion dollars over their rainy day budget extension placed on top of the orginial budget figure... oh and that the final tally for China's Olympics was 40 billion USD.

www.chicagoansforrio.com

heh, indeed

now that's a hockey stick!

pantheists pan theists

One of many points about the "Avatar" movie:

(The protagonist race is) saved by their faith in Eywa, the "All Mother," described variously as a network of energy and the sum total of every living thing.

If this narrative arc sounds familiar, that’s because pantheism has been Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation now... Kevin Costner discovered when he went dancing with wolves. It’s (in) Disney cartoons like "The Lion King" and "Pocahontas." And it’s the dogma of George Lucas’s Jedi, whose mystical Force "surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together."...

Today there are other forces that expand pantheism’s American appeal. We pine for what we’ve left behind, and divinizing the natural world is an obvious way to express unease about our hyper-technological society. The threat of global warming, meanwhile, has lent the cult of Nature qualities that every successful religion needs -- a crusading spirit, a rigorous set of ‘thou shalt nots,' and a piping-hot apocalypse.

Read the rest at NOFP

by the people, for the people

Instapundit linked to "Contract with America 2.0", but I'm linking it too so that it will get more exposure...

:)

wrap it up

lileks, on presents:

I understand why my father wanted to spend time between presents, savoring the warm glow of gratitude and pleasure before it was extinguished by curiosity, and the next box was ripped open.

I should note that we didn’t rip. We opened carefully. My mother saved the paper, ironed it, reused it; she also saved boxes. If you ripped brand-new perfect paper you could see a hint of pain behind her smile, and in retrospect I don’t know why we just didn’t go outside, find a dry patch of sidewalk and step repeatedly on a crack.

mom occasionally saved boxes, but rarely saved used wrapping paper. her mom was more likely to save boxes & cards; i don't remember dad's mom saving anything but the cards. seems like they all saved the bows though...

i also agree with his twitter entry that clarifies a vague feeling i had earlier this week:

The message behind "We Need a Little Christmas" is: forced rote gaiety will distract us from our looming sense of dread and depression.

death and taxes

both ensured by harry reid's arrogance

viewpoint adds:

Maybe it's not too much of a stretch to estimate that there are about 280 Americans who favor ObamaCare. They're all Democrats and they're all in Congress. No one who'll have to pay for it seems to want it, but that's not stopping the Democrats from ramming it down our throats and forcing us to accept their plan to nationalize about 16% of our total economy. The Wall Street Journal is particularly incensed, as would be anyone who has followed the sordid details of how Harry Reid has bribed and bought enough Senators to win passage of a bill that will cripple the economic prospects of our grandchildren and greatgrandchildren and destroy the best health care system in the world.

But don't take my word for that. Read the bill of particulars that the WSJ brings against the Democrats' plan.

Read the rest, it's revolting.

let me be perfectly clear

...okay, not me, but mark steyn:

The Obama speechwriting team doesn't seem to realize (how unpopular Obama has become). They seem to be the last guys on the planet in love with the sound of his voice and their one interminable tinny tune with its catchpenny hooks. The usual trick is to position their man as the uniquely insightful leader, pitching his tent between two extremes no sane person has ever believed: "There are those who say there is no evil in the world. There are others who argue that pink fluffy bunnies are the spawn of Satan and conspiring to overthrow civilization. Let me be clear: I believe people of goodwill on all sides can find common ground between the absurdly implausible caricatures I attribute to them on a daily basis. We must begin by finding the courage to acknowledge the hard truth that I am living testimony to the power of nuance to triumph over hard truth and come to the end of the sentence on a note of sonorous, polysyllabic if somewhat hollow uplift. Pause for applause."...

When you consider all the White House eyeballs that approve a presidential speech, it's truly remarkable that there's no one to scribble on the first draft: "Scrub this, Fred. It makes POTUS sound like a self-aggrandizing buffoon." It's not even merely the content, but the stylistic tics: "I do not bring with me" – as if I, God of Evan Thomas' Newsweek, am briefly descending to this obscure Scandinavian backwater bearing wisdom from beyond the stars.

nowhere to run

linked from instapundit:

...there can be little doubt which word won the prize for most important adjective. 2009 was the year in which "global" swept the rest of the political lexicon into obscurity. There were "global crises" and "global challenges", the only possible resolution to which lay in "global solutions" necessitating "global agreements". Gordon Brown actually suggested something called a "global alliance" in response to climate change. (Would this be an alliance against the Axis of Extra-Terrestrials?)

Some of this was sheer hokum: when uttered by Gordon Brown, the word "global", as in "global economic crisis", meant: "It's not my fault". To the extent that the word had intelligible meaning, it also had political ramifications that were scarcely examined by those who bandied it about with such ponderous self-importance. The mere utterance of it was assumed to sweep away any consideration of what was once assumed to be the most basic principle of modern democracy: that elected national governments are responsible to their own people – that the right to govern derives from the consent of the electorate.

The dangerous idea that the democratic accountability of national governments should simply be dispensed with in favour of "global agreements" reached after closed negotiations between world leaders never, so far as I recall, entered into the arena of public discussion. Except in the United States, where it became a very contentious talking point, the US still holding firmly to the 18th-century idea that power should lie with the will of the people.

Nor was much consideration given to the logical conclusion of all this grandiose talk of global consensus as unquestionably desirable: if there was no popular choice about approving supranational "legally binding agreements", what would happen to dissenters who did not accept their premises (on climate change, for example) when there was no possibility of fleeing to another country in protest? Was this to be regarded as the emergence of world government? And would it have powers of policing and enforcement that would supersede the authority of elected national governments? In effect, this was the infamous "democratic deficit" of the European Union elevated on to a planetary scale. And if the EU model is anything to go by, then the agencies of global authority will involve vast tracts of power being handed to unelected officials. Forget the relatively petty irritations of Euro‑bureaucracy: welcome to the era of Earth-bureaucracy, when there will be literally nowhere to run.

not even to the fort worth water gardens...

to continue:

If the impact of our behaviour on humanity at large is much greater or more rapid than ever before then we shall have to find ways of dealing with that which do not involve sacrificing the most enlightened form of government ever devised. There is a whiff (ed: a.k.a. rancid reek) of totalitarianism about this new theology, in which the risks are described in such cosmic terms that everything else must give way. "Globalism" is another form of the internationalism that has been a core belief of the Left...

...we had better come up with new mechanisms for allowing people to have a say in how they are governed. Maybe that could be next year's global challenge.

Yes, I know this is how the story ends, but since we don't know when it will end, we must fight totalitarianism while we are able.

Detroit, the urban frontier

Here's some community organizing that actually works:

In most cities, municipal government can’t stop drug dealing and violence, but it can keep people with creative ideas out. Not in Detroit. In Detroit, if you want to do something, you just go do it. Maybe someone will eventually get around to shutting you down, or maybe not. It’s a sort of anarchy in a good way as well as a bad one. Perhaps that overstates the case. You can’t do anything, but it is certainly easier to make things happen there than in most places because the hand of government weighs less heavily.

What’s more, the fact that government is so weak has provoked some amazing reactions from the people who live there. In Chicago, every day there is some protest at City Hall by a group from some area of the city demanding something. Not in Detroit. The people in Detroit know that they are on their own, and if they want something done they have to do it themselves.

There is such a dire shortage of protein in (Detroit) that Glemie Dean Beasley, a seventy-year-old retired truck driver, is able to augment his Social Security by selling raccoon carcasses (twelve dollars a piece, serves a family of four) from animals he has treed and shot at undisclosed hunting grounds around the city. Pelts are ten dollars each. Pheasants are also abundant in the city and are occasionally harvested for dinner.

This might sound awful, and indeed it is. But it is also an inspiration and a testament to the human spirit and defiant self-reliance of the American people. I grew up in a poor rural area where, while hunting is primarily recreational, there are still many people supplementing their family diet with wild game. Many a freezer is full of deer meat, for example. And of course, rural residents have long gardened, freezing and canning the results to help get them through the winter. So this doesn’t sound quite so strange to me as it might to you. The fate of the urban poor and the rural poor are more similar than is often credited. And contrary to stereotypes the urban poor often display amazing grit and ingenuity, and perform amazing feats to sustain themselves, their families and communities.

Read more about this and some other frontiers-to-be.

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

update 2 & bump: new title graphic, plus a random quote generator underneath.

trying to switch this blog to one of blogger.com's new modular templates, so it might look different, incomplete, or otherwise funny for a while...

update 1: done for tonight. will adjust the title graphic soon <\subliminal_hint_to_tlmc>

health insurance

zomblog explains one objection to public healthcare:

I’m speaking specifically of medical problems caused by:

• Obesity
• Cigarette smoking
• Alcohol abuse
• Reckless behavior
• Criminal activity
• Unprotected promiscuous sex
• Use of illicit drugs
• Cultural traditions
• Bad diets

Now, I really don’t care if you overeat, smoke like a chimney, hump like a bunny or forget to lock the safety mechanism on your pistol as you jam it in your waistband. Fine by me. And as a laissez-faire social-libertarian live-and-let-live kind of person, I would never under normal circumstances condemn anyone for any of the behaviors listed above. That is: Until the bill for your stupidity shows up in my mailbox. Then suddenly, I’m forced to care about what you do, because I’m being forced to pay for the consequences.

keep counting

at this "world turned upside down" post, commentor tr-nj asks:

What's the difference between the Million Man March and the Tea Party gatherings in Washington DC? Only one of them had more than a million people attend, and they appeared to be drinking tea.

:D

...to continue

when it rains,
it pours,

and sometimes
there's lightning.

at least

it's better than
an extended drought.

the sensible option

in which the difference between "theophobe" and "atheist" is explained:

Militant theophobes are celebrating that an Arkansas judge is letting them put forth a display celebrating nihilism and meaningless as an "in yer face" to Christian displays celebrating Christmas. Let's ponder this. Why be happy about the opportunity to spoil someone else's holiday if you are only motivated by reason and skepticism? Why not have your celebration of nihilism and self-centeredness in one of the other 11 months of the year, if it's not about an "in yer face" to Christians? If you are really motivated by reason and skepticism, why even care about other people celebrating what they believe?

Look, let's say I professed not to like fast food. Now, if I just avoided eating at fast food restaurants, that would be proof enough that I was sincere in my beliefs. If I stood outside McDonald's slapping Big Macs out of people's hands, you'd think I was a nut. If I demanded that the Government make it illegal for the golden arches to be displayed in public, you'd think I was a tyrant.

The intellectual vanity and vacuity of theophobes is encapsulated in this quote from a high school sophomore who refused to read the Bible even as literature because, "This is the word of God. People take this literally... I don't want to read about what they believe to be true." That isn't reason, that's shoving your fingers in your ears and saying "Neener, neener, neener." There's something wrong when refusal to understand that which you do not believe is considered a mark of intellectual sophistication.

cleaning up the mess

Melissa Clouthier via Eratosthenes

So let me get this straight.

Stupid regulations by Democrats cause the banking crisis. Banks tank on bad debt that was required by stupid regulations by Democrats. Banks “saved” by being owned by the government with tax payer dollars. Banks pay back money, because, surprise!, government is a harsh task-master. Government blames the bankers for... fulfilling their obligation. Then, President Obama tells bankers to make more loans... probably to the very people who couldn’t afford loans to begin with.

How about the government minds their own **** business? How about banks giving money to good risks? How about people and businesses taking on responsible, minimal debt?

also via Eratosthenes, Chairman Zero's real report card

oh oh oh

the un-Christmas card

doing business on craigslist

it's just a thought, but if you place an ad on craigslist for housekeeping or tutorial services, and want to profit from it, you might want to consider *replying* to anyone who responds to that ad...

here's my answers

Yes, I actually filled in and submitted their questionnnaire, answering the next-to-last question thus: What other issues and ideas should the President consider?:

1. Upholding the Constitution as-written.
2. Showing America a valid birth certificate.
3. Stop appointing tax cheats and child molesters to public office.
4. Repudiating any and all ties to anti-American groups, such as: Bill Ayers, WeatherUnderground, Black Panthers, Tony Rezko, etc., etc., ...
5. Saluting the US flag.
6. Stop sucking up to terrorists.
7. Slashing taxes and slashing the size of bureaucracies that only serve as a drag on the real economy and just create volumes of useless regulations.

thanks directorblue

update: forgot to mention soros, the anti-rove

Warnings, from Isaiah 10:1-4:

Woe to those who enact evil statutes
And to those who constantly record unjust decisions,

So as to deprive the needy of justice
And rob the poor of My people of their rights,
So that widows may be their spoil
And that they may plunder the orphans.

Now what will you do in the day of punishment,
And in the devastation which will come from afar?
To whom will you flee for help?
And where will you leave your wealth?

Nothing remains but to crouch among the captives
Or fall among the slain.

and James 5:1-6:

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.

do the math

The facts:

1. The best social program is gainful employment.
2. Government has a poor track record of creating jobs.
3. Over 70% of all jobs and over 50% of all non-government payroll in the U.S. are created by small business owners.
4. Taxation and regulation increase costs for employers, resulting in a loss of jobs.

Given these facts, please answer the following questions:

1. How should government remedy the unemployment problem?
2. Why doesn't government do these obvious remedies?
3. Why do people vote for those who make the unemployment problem worse?

update: having trouble answering these questions? texas provides some hints.

all you need is love

...and a bulletproof vest. good riddance to john lennon, the actual greasy spaniard.

twooo wuvv

let me count the slav... er, ways.

(via dustbury)

godwin's law aside...

this video is hilarious

somewhat less funny, much more detailed: the thought processes behind the hoax

wait for it...

bailey, roark, and us

list of lies

or, the top ten most recent reasons to never trust democrats:

The White House will convene a “jobs summit” tomorrow against a backdrop of rising unemployment, soaring debt, and declining public confidence in the Obama Administration’s economic program. Washington Democrats staked their credibility on a nearly trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ that was supposed to be about putting people back to work, but has instead produced countless examples of wasteful government spending while more than three million more Americans have lost their jobs.

1. UNEMPLOYMENT "AT EIGHT PERCENT OR BELOW"

CLAIM: “Just 10 days before taking office, Obama’s top economic advisers [Christina Romer & Jared Bernstein] released a report predicting unemployment would remain at eight percent or below through this year if an economic stimulus plan won congressional approval.” (Associated Press, 6/14/09)

FACT: The nation’s unemployment rate now stands at 10.2%. The President and several members of his economic team explicitly stated that the ‘stimulus’ was needed to avert double-digit unemployment.

2. IMPACT FELT "IMMEDIATELY"

CLAIM: “Q: If the president gets his way and gets this package approved, he signs it into law, how soon before -- the American public starts to feel results, the creation of jobs? NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL DIRECTOR LAWRENCE SUMMERS: You’ll see the effects begin almost immediately.” (CNN, 2/9/09)

FACT: The U.S. economy has lost more than three million jobs since the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ became law.

3. "90 PERCENT ... PRIVATE SECTOR"

CLAIM: “More than 90 percent of the jobs created by this plan will be in the private sector.” – President Obama (News conference, 2/9/09)

FACT: “Although President Obama initially said that 90 percent of the jobs created by the stimulus program would be in the private sector, the data suggests that well over half of the jobs claimed so far have been in the public sector.” (The New York Times, 11/4/09)

4. "NO EARMARKS OR PET PROJECTS"

CLAIM: “There will be no earmarks or pet projects in this bill.” – Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Floor statement, 2/13/09)

FACT: The trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ has produced countless examples of wasteful government spending... ‘stimulus’ funds were reportedly used by one town to hire a new worker whose job is to apply for more ‘stimulus’ funds from Washington.

5. "A VERY FISCALLY SOUND PACKAGE"

CLAIM: “We must make sure the public understands this is a very fiscally sound package.” – Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Talk Radio News Service, 3/10/09)

FACT: With the help of the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus,’ the Obama Administration spent more in its first 100 days than all previous presidents have combined. The national debt has topped $12 trillion for the first time in U.S. history. The federal government is now operating on a budget that doubles the national debt in five years and triples it in ten.

6. "A LOT MORE JOBS CREATED"

CLAIM: “The second hundred days you’re going to see a lot more jobs created.” – Vice President Joe Biden (ABC’s This Week, 7/5/09)

FACT: The U.S. economy lost roughly 930,000 jobs in June, July, and August. It was during this period that the President proclaimed he could “see a light at the end of the tunnel.”

7. "A LOT MORE AMMUNITION LEFT"

CLAIM: “There is a lot more ammunition left in the stimulus package.” – Jared Bernstein, the Vice President's chief economist(CNNMoney.com, 10/30/09)

FACT: “The government’s economic stimulus spending has already had its biggest impact and probably won’t contribute to significant growth next year, a top White House adviser said Thursday.” (Associated Press, 10/22/09)

8. MORE WORK, NOT MORE JOBS

CLAIM: “I think we got the Recovery Act right. … It may be desirable to have a given amount of work shared among more people. But that’s not as desirable as expanding the total amount of work.” – National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers (The Washington Post, 11/8/09)

FACT: The Obama Administration’s attempt to suddenly make job creation seem like a lesser goal of the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ flies in the face of numerous public statements made in the days before the bill was passed, including the President’s statement that creating jobs was his “bottom-line number one.”

9. RAISES SAVE JOBS

CLAIM: “If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job.” – Department of Health and Human Services spokesman (Associated Press, 11/4/09)

FACT: This is one of several attempts by the Obama Administration to define a job “saved or created” by the ‘stimulus.’ In this particular case, the AP found “more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren’t saved.” In a newly released report, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office states that “it is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.”

10. "YOU HAVEN'T SEEN WASTEFUL SPENDING"

CLAIM: “We’ve been in business seven, eight months. You haven’t seen wasteful spending. No one has said we spent $2 million on things that didn’t exist.” – Vice President Joe Biden (The Daily Show, 11/17/09)

FACT: “Stimulus jobs reported in non-existent congressional districts... Of all the problems found in the latest round of stimulus reporting, add another one: congressional districts that don’t exist. ABC News reported yesterday that White House officials have found 700 mistakenly credited congressional districts out of more than 130,000 stimulus grants.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 11/18/09) “The reports on jobs created or saved by the $787 billion economic stimulus package are ‘riddled with inaccuracies and contradictions,’ the federal watchdog overseeing the spending acknowledged Thursday.” (USA TODAY, 11/19/09)

via directorblue

the placebo is worse than the hypochondria

i.e. fixing global warming causes global warming

In 1985, scientists from the British Antarctic Survey found a giant hole in the ozone layer of Earth's atmosphere over the South Pole. This discovery prompted a largely successful international effort to ban CFCs, the chemicals largely responsible for man-made thinning of the ozone layer.

Unfortunately, a new analysis from Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) suggests that stopping ozone depletion may actually increase global warming and speed up sea level rise...

how about this time we trust the one who controls the winds, and not a bunch of eggheads?