opposition to religion

orson scott card doesn't seem to believe in any of them...

he's against the cult of gaia,

against both creationism and darwinism,

and he doesn't like hillary or obama either.

the list of what he's actually for is pretty good too, as far as it goes.

for the kids

maybe divorce isn't such a great idea after all...

invitation to obama

scott ott hopes for change that obama can believe in

hmm, who should i vote for?

both roslin and sackofcatfood are more appealing than the dregs the two-party system is offering this year...

war on drugs

That oft-maligned "War on Drugs" is simply another front in the continuing battle of American independence.

remember

freedom isn't free, it has a very high price.

conservative principles

Fred Thompson:

Conservatives should stay true to their principles and remember:

• Congress cannot repeal the laws of economics. There are no short-term fixes without longer term consequences.
• In a free and dynamic country with social mobility, there will be great opportunity but also economic disparity, especially if the country has liberal immigration policies and a high divorce rate.
• An education system cannot overcome the breakdown of the family, and the social fabric that surrounds children daily.
• Free markets, not an expanding and more powerful government, are the solution to today's problems. Many of these problems, such as health-care costs, energy dependency and the subprime mortgage crisis, were caused in large part by government policies.

Would that we actually had a conservative choice in the next election...

Cult of Gaia, cont.

Jonah Goldberg goes behind the greens:

At its core, environmentalism is a kind of nature worship. It’s a holistic ideology, shot through with religious sentiment. “If you look carefully,” author Michael Crichton observed, “you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.”

Environmentalism’s most renewable resources are fear, guilt, and moral bullying. Its worldview casts man as a sinful creature who, through the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, abandoned our Edenic past. John Muir, who laid the philosophical foundations of modern environmentalism, described humans as “selfish, conceited creatures.” Salvation comes from shedding our sins, rejecting our addictions (to oil, consumerism, etc.) and demonstrating an all-encompassing love of Mother Earth. Quoth Al Gore: “The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”

I heard Gore on NPR recently. He was asked about evangelical pastor Joseph Hagee’s absurd comment that Hurricane Katrina was God’s wrath for New Orleans’s sexual depravity. Naturally, Gore chuckled at such backwardness. But then the Nobel laureate went on to blame Katrina on man’s energy sinfulness.

---

Whether or not it’s adopted the trappings of religion, my biggest beef with environmentalism is how comfortably irrational it is. It touts ritual over reality, symbolism over substance, while claiming to be so much more rational and scientific than those silly sky-God worshipers and deranged oil addicts.

It often seems that displaying faith in the green cause is more important than advancing the green cause. The U.S. government just put polar bears on the threatened species list because climate change is shrinking the Arctic ice where they live. Never mind that polar bears are in fact thriving — their numbers have quadrupled in the last 50 years.

---

Plastic grocery bags are being banned, even though they require less energy to make and recycle than paper ones. The country is being forced to subscribe to a modern version of transubstantiation, whereby corn is miraculously transformed into sinless energy even as it does worse damage than oil.

---

In the broadest sense, the environmental movement has won. Americans are “green” in that they are willing to spend a lot to keep their country ecologically healthy, which it is. But now it’s time to save the environment from the environmentalists.

(emphases mine)

sanctimonious rubbish

Lileks on Epcot's Cult of Gaia church service:

The actual Circle of Life, as applied to animals, consists of birth, killing, consumption, excretion, copulation, and solitary death from small predators in the blood or nasty ones with big teeth. Sometimes there’s death by fire, for variety’s sake. It takes consciousness on the human level to extract the metaphorical weight in the whole Circle of Life thing, and while I think it’s wonderful to appreciate and marvel at the intricate ecosystems of the planet, and tread as lightly as necessary, wordless choirs voicing ecstatic vowels over footage of wildebeest herds does not really equal a High Mass for spiritual impact or depth. All of which I kept to myself, of course. But I felt like the village atheist.

The plot was hugely ironical: Timon and Roomba or whatever the warthog is named were building a resort in the jungle, and damming a stream to create a water feature. Simba showed up to demonstrate the error of their ways. The hilarity of any manifestation of the Disneyverse criticizing an artificial lake to build a resort goes without saying. And it did go without saying, of course. Simba said that Timon and Roomba or whatever were acting like another creature that did not behave in tune with nature, and that creature was... man.

...I tire of this. Big evil stupid man had done many stupid evil bad things, like pile abandoned cars in the river, dump chemicals into blue streams, and build factories that vomited great dark clouds into the sky. Like the People’s State Lead Paint and Licensed Mickey Merchandise Factory in Shanghai Province, perhaps? Simba gave us a lecture about materialism and how it hurt the earth – cue the shot of trees actually being chopped down, and I’m surprised the sap didn’t spurt like blood in a Peckinpah movie – and other horrors, like forests on fire because... well, because it was National Toss Glowing Coals Out the Car Window Month, I guess. I swear the footage all came from the mid-70s; it was grainy and cracked and the cars were all late-60s models. Because I’m pretty sure we’re not dumping cars into the rivers as a matter of course any more. You’re welcome to try to leave your car on the riverbank and see how that turns out for you.

(emphases mine)

update: CSM has a related post.

Oriana Fallaci Square

in fair Verona, where we lay our scene

weekend summary

in ad form:

990 miles by car: $110
387 miles in a fully-loaded 26' u-haul: $780
ten assistants: free
getting dad closer to his grandkids: priceless


in prose(?) form:

leaving...
plans & midnight,
"amarillo by morning"
the dark northwest flow
interrupted every half-hour.

returning...
air & caffeine,
"lemmings in shiny metal boxes"
the first blue of dawn touches
the sodium-lit haze over dallas.

loooooong weekend

due to several hundred miles of family obligations, expect no new posts here until monday at the earliest.

turn it down

oh please, not 11!

Israel at 60

Mark Steyn:

By most measures, the Jewish state is a great success story. The modern Middle East is the misbegotten progeny of the British and French colonial map makers of 1922. All the nation states in that neck of the woods date back a mere 60 or 70 years – Iraq to the Thirties, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel to the Forties. The only difference is that Israel has made a go of it.

Would I rather there were more countries like Israel, or more like Syria? Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East (Iraq may yet prove a second), and its Arab citizens enjoy more rights than they would living under any of the kleptocrat kings and psychotic dictators who otherwise infest the region.

On a tiny strip of land narrower at its narrowest point than many American townships, Israel has built a modern economy with a GDP per capita just shy of $30,000 – and within striking distance of the European Union average. If you object that that’s because it’s uniquely blessed by Uncle Sam, well, for the past 30 years the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid has been Egypt: their GDP per capita is $5,000, and America has nothing to show for its investment other than one-time pilot Mohamed Atta coming at you through the office window.

the bottom line

...tells the whole story

better health care at a lower price?

everyone could have it if the government would get out of the way.

playing god's advocate

david berlinski asks some good questions in "the devil's delusion":

Has anyone provided a proof of God's inexistence? Not even close.

Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close.

Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close.

Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough.

Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough.

Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good? Not even close to being close.

Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences? Close enough.

Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even ballpark.

Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.

is it robin hood?

or rage against the machine?

Chuck Baldwin, Constitution Party

Chuck Baldwin has a presidential platform I could vote for, rather than merely choosing the lesser of two evils yet again.

fact vs. fiction

...is often found in the focus.

The experts agree...

Gun control works!

via the jungle hut

"Darwinians doth protest too much, methinks"

viewpoint points to three evangelical outpost posts explaining how darwinian dogmatists help promote intelligent design:

part 1
part 2
part 3

(disclaimer: the evidence i've seen points more towards young-earth creationism, but i'd take i.d. over darwin's folly any day...)

Gasoline's Still Too High

Guess I posted this a couple of years too early... :(

-------------------------------

With an insincere apology to the Starland Vocal Band, here again are my alternate lyrics to "Afternoon Delight":

Gonna buy unleaded, gonna fill my tank,
When I saw them numbers, well my heart just sank.
Only got a twenty for the whole dang week -
Wouldn't move my Suburban seven hundred feet.

Skyrocketing price,
Gasoline's too high.
Ga-aaa-soline's too high.

Thinking that I can't afford to fill 'er up.
Dollar got a couple gallons, now, just half a cup.
If the war was about oil, wouldn't you just think
That the pricing of the petrol might begin to sink?

Skyrocketing price,
Gasoline's too high.
Ga-aaa-soline's too high.

When the metal numbers move a dozen times a day,
You just know big oil company's gonna make you pay.

Skyrocketing price,
Gasoline's too high.
Ga-aaa-soline's too high.

---

This is still true, too.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

(update: this post has gone through many minor revisions, and may continue to do so. "kinda like microevolution, huh?" asks the author...)

I saw Ben Stein's new movie on Sunday. Tom Bethell's review of the movie is a solid starting point, and I would add:

• It was the only movie I've ever attended where people applauded more than once.
• It was not as humorous throughout as the previews might lead you to believe. The explanation of how "ideas have consequences" becomes rather depressing when it explains how many millions have died due to Darwin's folly as implemented by nazis, abortionists, and various communists.
• The presentation of the connection between Naziism and Darwinism could have been timed better. Though accurate, its suddenness had a Godwin's Law feeling.
  
• The user comments on IMDB show almost no signs of intelligence, but the wikipedia article does have at least one on the discussion page:

  "This article is about a movie that claims that scientists who oppose the "consensus" view are shouted down and marginalized as kooks. And when someone complains that this article itself is an attempt to shout down Ben Stein and marginalize him as a kook, they are in turn shouted down and marginalized as a kook. Do I detect a pattern here????"

  The bile spewed denouncing this movie is elegant and irrefutable proof that the movie's claims are true.
• One of the "stars" of the movie got really bent out of shape about it, and resorted to "pot calling the kettle black" tactics by saying:

  "dull, artless, amateurish, too long, poorly constructed and utterly devoid of any style, wit or subtlety."

  which describes Dawkins' rant perfectly,

  "What a shoddy, second-rate piece of work."

  which describes Darwinism to a T, and

  "Quite apart from anything else, it is drearily boring, the tedium exacerbated by the grating monotony of..."

  Dawkins' histrionics. (although the movie doesn't portray him as unsympathetically as his ideology deserves.)
• The ads before the movie previews were a whole other steaming pile of greenie propaganda that deserves nearly as much ridicule as macroevolution.

In related reviews, Martin Cothran's review has another angle, and Patrick Roberts adds at least four cents.

update 2: stand to reason answers some questions that might be asked after this movie.

what's the opposite of "our lady of peace"

how about "our madman of perpetual hate"?

---

related: it seems that the definition of "hate crime" in the u.k. now sadly includes "reporting hate crimes".

---

both links via local malcontent

just how far does that memory hole go?

or, the dark side of wikipedia

via snadrs

i come not to praise obama

but to mirror him:

So, it depends on where you are, but I think it’s fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about religion. The people are mis-appre…I think they’re misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to ‘city folk don’t wanna go to church — don’t wanna vote for the Christian.’ That’s…there were intimations of that in an article in the Weekly World News today - kind of implies that it’s sort of a faith thing.

Here’s how it is: in a lot of these overgrown cities in on both coasts, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by hypocrites, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about religion, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by — it’s true that when it’s delivered by a white man, then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter)...

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these urban sewers like New York, and like a lot of other rat-infested cities, morality been gone now for 80 years and nothing’s replaced it. And they fell through the Graham revival and local missions, and each successive revival has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to gays or drugs or hatred of non-miserable people or amoral sentiment or anti-god sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you’ll find is, is that people of every background — there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you’ll find true Christians. And you can go into places where you think they’d be rich and people will just be morally bankrupt. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what's right.

turnabout is fair play in love and war ;)

---

update: lileks buries him

Happy tax day, all you God-clinging gun-nut anti-NAFTA fools. The Rubeoisie, as Mencken might have called you.

What annoyed me about the Obama comments was the crude reduction of everything into economic terms, the most dismal prism through which to regard humanity. So the factories close, and the sullen mass of the lowly workers ball their fists, feel a strange sour bolus of resentment bolting up their throat, and think: must – channel – confusing - emotions- into – unreasoning – opposition – to – redefining – marriage. If the factories magically reappear, does everyone sigh with relief, quit church and drop off their guns? I have money! No need for the Magic Carpenter and that poorly-worded amendment. Call off the border patrol, too – there’ll be jobs and upward wage pressure for everyone. It’s not exactly an unusual thesis; I’ve encountered it for years. People cannot possibly believe these crazy things for their own sake; they must be driven to them by external forces.

It’s possible there are bitter people who regard their station in life as a direct result of the current rate of capital gains taxes, but it seems an insufficiently reasoned basis for a national economic policy. Oh, it’s possible; at this very minute one of the country’s innumerable domestic terror cells could be planning a bombing of a Planned Parenthood center, driven to extremism by the very possibility of a Colombian trade pact. But I doubt it.

Not to say economics don’t affect people; I’m not that stupid. But like any adversity, you meet it with a certain amount of psychological capital. The more grounded you are in things that transcend the dollar, the better you can deal with the downturns. Some seem to suspect that the “grounding” is nothing more than a stake in the ground to channel the bolts tossed off by madmen in the pulpits, but those are the people most likely to believe that church services either consist of yelling and snake-handling, or gaseous bromides pumped out over a complacent stack of prim-faced morons and hypocrites who spend the service lusting after young women in the choir. There is no goodness, only the momentary self-delusion accorded by participation in a consensual charade.

I’ve been trying to find the right words for a certain theory, and I can’t quite do it yet. It has to do with how a candidate feels about America – they have to be fundamentally, dispositionally comfortable with it. Not in a way that glosses over or excuses its flaws, but comfortable in the way a long-term married couple is comfortable. That includes not delighting in its flaws, or crowing them at every opportunity as proof of your love. I mean a simple quiet sense of awe and pride, its challenges and flaws and uniqueness and tragedies considered. You don’t win the office by being angry we’re not something else; you win by being enthused we can be something better. You can fake the latter. But people sense the former.

bad news for bad religion

Let's pray that they are not merely exchanging one brand of church for another, but that they are turning towards the one true God through faith in Jesus Christ.

this meme's just six words long

tagged by local malcontent, i post:

The Rules:

1. Write your own six word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you want.
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to the original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.
4. Tag at least five more blogs with links.
5. Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

"obscure spectral shards with regrettable inertia."

it's both poetic and needlessly puzzling.

will tag others later; brain's tired.

the struggle continues

Charlton Heston recognized it nine years ago:

I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain accepted thoughts and speech are mandated.

For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1963 -- and long before Hollywood found it acceptable, I may say. But when I told an audience last year that white pride is just as valid as black pride or red pride or anyone else's pride, they called me a racist.

I've worked with brilliantly talented homosexuals all my life -- throughout my whole career. But when I told an audience that gay rights should extend no further than your rights or my rights, I was called a homophobe.

I served in World War II against the Axis powers. But during a speech, when I drew an analogy between singling out the innocent Jews and singling out innocent gun owners, I was called an anti-Semite.

Everyone I know knows I would never raise a closed fist against my country. But when I asked an audience to oppose this cultural persecution I'm talking about, I was compared to Timothy McVeigh.

From Time magazine to friends and colleagues, they're essentially saying, "Chuck, how dare you speak your mind like that. You are using language not authorized for public consumption."

But I am not afraid. If Americans believed in political correctness, we'd still be King George's boys -- subjects bound to the British crown.

In his book, "The End of Sanity," Martin Gross writes that

"blatantly irrational behavior is rapidly being established as the norm in almost every area of human endeavor. There seem to be new customs, new rules, new anti-intellectual theories regularly twisted on us -- foisted on us from every direction. Underneath, the nation is roiling. Americans know something without a name is undermining the country, turning the mind mushy when it comes to separating truth from falsehood and right from wrong. And they don't like it."

Let me read you a few examples. At Antioch College in Ohio, young men speaking and seeking intimacy with a coed must get verbal permission at each step of the process, from kissing to petting to final, at last, copulation -- all clearly spelled out in a printed college directive.

In New Jersey, despite the death of several patients nationwide who'd been infected by dentists who had concealed their own AIDS, the state commissioner announced that health providers who are HIV-positive need not -- need not! -- tell their patients that they are infected.

At William and Mary, students tried to change the name of the school team "The Tribe" because it was supposedly insulting to local Indians, only to learn that authentic Virginia chiefs really like the name, "The Tribe."

In San Francisco, city fathers passed an ordinance protecting the rights of transvestites to cross-dress on the job, and for transsexuals to have separate toilet facilities while undergoing sex change surgery.

In New York City, kids who didn't speak a word of Spanish had been placed in bilingual classes to learn their three R's in Spanish solely because their own names sound Hispanic.

At the University of Pennsylvania, in a state where thousands died at Gettysburg opposing slavery, the president of that college officially set up segregated dormitory space for black students.

Yeah, I know, that's out of bounds now. Dr. King said "Negroes." Jimmy Baldwin and most of us on the March said "black." But it's a no-no now.

...

If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does -- does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe.

Don't let America's universities continue to serve as incubators for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism. That's what it is: New McCarthyism. But, what can you do? How can anyone prevail against such pervasive social subjugation?

Well, the answer's been here all along. I learned it 36 years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., standing with Dr. Martin Luther King and two hundred thousand people.

You simply disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don't. We disobey the social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom.

I learned the awesome power of disobedience from Dr. King who learned it from Gandhi, and Thoreau, and Jesus, and every other great man who led those in the right against those with the might.

...

So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobediences of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men, by God's grace, built this country.

If Dr. King were here, I think he would agree.

via monday evening

absolut-ly

update re the absolut boycott: if it's not a googlebomb, should it perhaps be called a google-molotov? (googletov?)

I'm kidding; Absolut wasn't.



"This particular ad, which ran in Japan, was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a Japanese sensibility. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-Allies sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues. Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of Japan may feel was more ideal."



"This particular ad, which ran in Israel, was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a Israeli sensibility. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-Arab sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues. Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of Israel may feel was more ideal."



"This particular ad, which ran in Atlanta, was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a Southern sensibility. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-dam-yankee sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues. Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of the South may feel was more ideal."




"This particular ad, which ran in Russia, was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a Russian sensibility. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-NATO sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues. Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of Russia may feel was more ideal."



"This particular ad, which ran in America, was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a American sensibility. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-fur'ner sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues. Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of America may feel was more ideal."



"This particular ad, which ran in China, was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a Chinese sensibility. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-Tibet/Taiwan/Aksai Chin sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues. Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of China may feel was more ideal."



"This particular ad, which ran in Germany, was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a German sensibility. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-freedom sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues. Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of Germany may feel was more ideal."

Lileks summed it up nicely in one word: Idiots.

PRUDE PRIDE!

Created by OnePlusYou

inspired by a 2.3'er

yes, let's...

do have barack's "conversation about race in America".

update: so, how's that conversation going?

forty years later

most sensible people still "have the dream":

Today is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, and media commentators have throughout the day been making references to King's I Have Dream speech and talking about keeping King's dream alive.

I'd like to, but I'm afraid that King's dream is pretty much moribund. The dream was, in part, that someday his children would be "judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin." The dream was that we would live in a color-blind society where people would look past one's race and pigment to one's values and achievement. Unfortunately, modern liberalism has made that all but impossible.

So far from making race an irrelevancy, liberalism has made it a matter of crucial importance. Affirmative action, race-based scholarships, minority set-asides, race-norming, school busing, welfare, etc. were all attempts to compensate blacks - a kind of reparations - for the abominations of the past, but whatever they accomplished for black people in general, they surely stoked white resentments and pushed further into the distance the day when skin color doesn't matter.

...(read the rest)...

Like Martin Luther King a lot of us have a dream, too. We dream of the day when what matters in a man is what values he holds. What kind of morals he lives by, his ambitions, his attitudes toward his family, his community, and his country. We dream of a day when the things that we share in common are more important than the things which make us different. We dream of a day when the color of one's skin matters no more than the color of one's eyes, and when everyone, regardless of ethnicity, recognizes that the best way to guarantee a united, cohesive future is to share grandchildren in common. Even so, if that day is ever going to come, liberalism is just going to have to get out of the way.

victory seeds

Magdi Allam has seen the light:

Magdi Allam forsook Islam because he considers it to be "inherently evil". As he wrote to his editor at the Corriere della Sera:

My conversion to Catholicism is the touching down of a gradual and profound interior meditation from which I could not pull myself away, given that for five years I have been confined to a life under guard, with permanent surveillance at home and a police escort for my every movement, because of death threats and death sentences from Islamic extremists and terrorists, both those in and outside of Italy ...

I asked myself how it was possible that those who, like me, sincerely and boldly called for a "moderate Islam", assuming the responsibility of exposing themselves in the first person in denouncing Islamic extremism and terrorism, ended up being sentenced to death in the name of Islam on the basis of the Koran. I was forced to see that, beyond the contingency of the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive.

Far more important than denouncing the evils of Islam, though, is Magdi Allam's embrace of what he calls the God of faith and reason:

The miracle of the Resurrection of Christ has reverberated through my soul, liberating it from the darkness of a tendency where hate and intolerance in before the "other", condemning it uncritically as an "enemy", and ascending to love and respect for one's "neighbor", who is always and in any case a person; thus my mind has been released from the obscurantism of an ideology which legitimates lying and dissimulation, the violent death that leads to homicide and suicide, blind submission and tyranny - permitting me to adhere to the authentic religion of Truth, of Life, and freedom. Upon my first Easter as a Christian I have not only discovered Jesus, but I have discovered for the first time the true and only God, which is the God of Faith and Reason ...

Read the rest.

Defeating both "islamofascism" and "the decadent west" at the same time? Now that's a win-win.

(via snadrs)

questions and (hopefully) answers

viewpoint thinks there should be more to the presidential campaign than "gaffes, scandals, missteps and debate zingers... to delight the talking heads and newspaper columnists".

The only thing we have to fear is fearmongering!

these facts should give some perspective which the recent barrage of US economy gloom-and-doom stories lack:

Zimbabwe's inflation rate is over 66,000 percent, and it has been worse in Germany in 1923 and Yugoslavia in the winter of 1993.

Unemployment is still relativelyand historically low.

(this post inspired by dustbury)

update: no oil for pacifists reports additional details.

a cornball joke

that's not too funny.

abuse

house of eratosthenes tells a sad story of abuse. it begins:

If a man loved his wife the way democrats love America, how would he treat her?

Well, he wouldn’t act very manly at all, the way he’d keep bringing up things she did in the past, completely out of context. That’s a stereotype applied to small-minded, intemperate girlfriends and wives, isn’t it? Bringing up a bunch of things out of nowhere that you did ten years ago? So I guess he’d go to work, hang around the water cooler, babble away during the lunch hour — never getting far away from the subject of what a moral reprobate his wife is. You talk about sports, he’ll find a way to change the subject to a check his wife bounced a few years ago. You talk about religion, he’ll talk about his wife’s unpaid parking tickets. You talk about politics, he’ll talk about her old boyfriends — not humorously, but ominously, about the lack of character she must still have today, for ever interlocking with someone like that.

Always always always: Coming to unflattering conclusions about her, will be the point. The evidence will be cherry-picked to support this. He won’t even pretend to be analyzing it even-handedly. He’ll just be there to talk some smack.

Loving husband?

read the rest.

obama's new rules

update: a related cartoon

local malcontent carries barack's tablets to the rest of us mortals. here's an edited list; follow the link to read the details:

DO NOT talk about my race.

DO NOT complain that I am permitted to talk about racism, while you are being prohibited from doing so.

DO NOT bring up my own multi-racial ancestry.

REFER ALWAYS to my speech on race as the final word on the subject.

DO NOT mention my spiritual mentor.

DO NOT talk about my middle name, Hussein.

DO NOT talk about my wife's own words concerning her feelings of shame in our country.

DO NOT bring up my light-weight legislative experience.

DO NOT investigate my Chicago-brand election to either post, either.

DO NOT bring up Tony Rezko, my best fund-raiser, friend, and current defendant in a money-laundering scheme trial.

DO NOT ever bring up my total lack of military experience.

IGNORE the fact that my candidacy for President is based entirely upon empty words.

IGNORE that I, Barack Obama, am listed as the most liberal and most Communistic-rated Senator in the past 70 years.

IF YOU do not follow all of these rules, you are a racist.

VOTE for me unquestioningly, or I and my Islamic friends will target you as a racist.

veep?

fred barnes ponders a question that many (including mcgehee, snugg harbor, and the local malcontent) are asking: who should mccain choose to be his vice presidential running mate? i have even less of an idea than fred does, unfortunately. and even if i did, he or she would likely be disqualified by the increasingly spineless republican party for being too qualified for the actual job.

short answer: i see no political solution to our problems.

---

update: wizbang has some relevant (yet seemingly contradictory) quotes:

"The days of unquestioning loyalty are gone... It's time for principled leadership."

"...the anti-McCain sentiments [threaten] to have some Republicans stay home in November even though they know what will be the result of that action. Gather your senses Republicans, a Democrat in the White House with Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate is going to be a nightmare you'll be regretting not too far down the road."

fruit

The Anglican Archbishop endorses Islam.

The Vatican invents some new sins.

The Southern Baptist Convention lets the nose of the green camel in the tent.

but who am i to judge?

update 1: also beware of the peaceniks.

update 2: ...and obama's pastor.

update 3: Monday Evening reports a sadly typical incident of Islamofascism, while the Arab League remains as fruity as ever.

now i'm even more frightened

one blog had summarized the obama-vs-clinton contest as "when liberal guilt meets identity politics". and in that context, i agree with geraldine ferraro (gasp!):

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color), he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

"Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up."

"Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

no matter the intentions, racism is bad whichever way it points.

via csm

---

update 3: this incident gets a good scrapplefacing :)

update 2: looks like david mamet is coming to his senses as well.

update 1: in related news, i also agree with this former clinton apologist (emphases, italics, and links mine)

She has no idea how many times I defended her. How many right-leaning friends and relatives I battled with. How many times I played down her shady business deals and penchant for scandals -- whether it was Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster, Cattle Futures, Web Hubbell, or Norman Hsu. She has no idea how frequently I dismissed her husband's serial adultery as an unfortunate trait of an otherwise brilliant man. For sixteen years, I was a proud soldier in the legion of "Clinton apologists" -- who believed that peace and prosperity were more important than regrettable personality traits.

And then she ran for president.

After seven years of George W. Bush, America is hungry for change. Big change. (okay, i disagree with that phrase) And let's face it -- Hillary Clinton, the party standard-bearer and former White House denizen -- isn't it. But even after voters coalesced around Barack Obama, handing him eleven straight primaries (twelve, if you count Vermont), she refused to accept the possibility -though math, money and momentum were clearly against her -- that the Bush/Clinton Family Band might not be #1 on America's Billboard chart anymore.

So, rather than step aside and become the hero of her party, she made a strategy decision to go negative in advance of Ohio and Texas. Not just negative -- personal. She cynically chided Mr. Obama's message of hope. She played the victim card. The gender card. The Muslim card. She cried "shame on you, Barack Obama" for his campaign tactics, while (if we're to believe Matt Drudge) simultaneously floating a picture of him in Somali garb to stir up questions of his patriotism.

She accused Mr. Obama of his own shady business deals (the irony of which nearly ripped a hole in the fabric of space/time). She accused him of being two-faced on NAFTA, when it was her campaign that had winked at the Canadians. She demanded that he "reject" the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, but remained silent when Rush Limbaugh stirred up votes for her in Texas. And she crafted the now-infamous "3am" attack ad -- which used scare tactics to highlight Senator Obama's perceived lack of experience in foreign affairs. Straight out of the ol' Atwater/Rove playbook. Of course, all of this paled in comparison to her husband's patronizing, racially insensitive comments earlier in the primary season.

Was this the same Hillary Clinton whose husband ran on the idea that hope was more powerful than fear? The wife of a president who had less foreign policy experience than Barack Obama when he was elected? And exactly which crisis is she referring to when she claims to have more experience? And while we're at it, where the h*** are those tax returns?

It's clear that Hillary's back in this thing, at least for the time being. But at what cost? Short of some cataclysmic event, there's no way either she or Mr. Obama can reach 2,025 delegates in the remaining contests. That means she's accepted the inevitability of a brokered convention. A convention she'll almost certainly enter with fewer delegates than her opponent. That raises some important questions:

Will she subvert the will of the voters? Will she turn Denver into a series of shady back-room deals and arm twisting? Will she dispatch her husband to pressure superdelegates into switching allegiances at the last minute? Are we in for, as one pundit put it, a good ol' fashioned "knife fight?" (probably all of the above)

And if she does manage to secure the nomination, what about the scores of disenfranchised Obama supporters (many of them young people with little loyalty to the Democratic Party)? How will she bring them back into the tent? Hillary seems confident that this can be remedied by offering Mr. Obama a spot on her ticket. Really? And what would his motivation be for accepting? Playing third-fiddle to Bill?

However, if Mr. Obama goes on to secure the nomination, she'll have handed his rival a treasure trove of sound bites. All John McCain has to do between August and November is play clips of Hillary questioning Obama's experience and belittling his platitudes. In a way, she'll have become Mr. McCain's second running mate.

She's proven that she cares more about "Hillary" than "unity." More about defeating Obama than defeating the Republicans. She's become a political suicide-bomber, happy to blow herself to bits -- as long as she takes everyone else with her.

On Friday, one of Barack Obama's foreign policy advisors, Samantha Power, resigned after calling Senator Clinton "a monster" during an off-the-record exchange. It was an unfortunate slip, but one that echoed the sentiments of many Clinton apologists like me (and most sensible people) -- who've watched Hillary's descent into pettiness and fear-mongering with the heartbreak of a child who grows up to realize that his beloved mother has been a terrible person all along.

Are the conservatives right about the Clintons? Will they do and say anything to get elected? (they always have. why would they change now?)

I don't know.

All I know is...I'm through apologizing.

on spitzer

scrappleface takes the high road

update: tehran's police chief follows spitzer

they only bring out the good china for visitors

also from csm, a foreign policy pop quiz:

What did the State Department do as a result of (China's history of human rights abuses)? If you guessed "It removed China from its list of the world's worst human rights violators," you're right! Congratulations! You've won a trip to the gulag of your choice!

Sure, the top ten offenders could give China a run for its money. After all (those countries) have nothing much to be proud of in the human rights arena. But with a population of 1.3 billion, China can trounce on more human rights in an afternoon than its competitors can falsely imprison, torture or just plain murder in a month of Sundays.

---

Before we go, let's do a little exercise in civics with the top ten (human rights violating countries):

• North Korea, Communist dictatorship
• Myanmar, Communist junta
• Iran, Islamist theocracy
• Syria, Islamist dictatorship
• Zimbabwe, Socialist dictatorship
• Cuba, Communist dictatorship
• Belarus, Soviet anachronism, Communist style
• Uzbekistan, Soviet anachronism, Islamist style
• Eritrea, Islamist dictatorship
• Sudan, Islamist theocratic dictatorship

Gee, not a democratic nation, Judeo-Christian or otherwise, among them. What have we learned, class?

first ingsoc, now nc-soc

the flannel avenger warns of big brother's intrusion into north carolina: on the roads and down the wells. and liberty dad has some generally related links.

"When everybody’s a victim, nobody’s a victim."

Mark Steyn on the Democratic primaries:

The Democratic primary season seems to have dwindled down into a psycho remake of Driving Miss Daisy. The fading matriarch Mizz Hill’ry doesn’t want to give up the keys to the Democratic-party vehicle but the dignified black chauffeur Hokey insists it’ll be a much smoother ride with him in the driver’s seat, full of gear change you can believe in, etc. Yet, just as he thinks the old biddy’s resigned to a nomination as Best Supporting Actress, the backseat driver plunges her hat pin into his spine, wrests the wheel away and lurches across the median.

Read the rest

i'm actually somewhat frightened

dustbury has a semi-regular feature of "strange search engine queries", but this blog may have just gotten one of the strangest ones ever:

#1 of 243 on google for "Quaker Oats made past the Crab nebula, near the Planet Q".

update: looks like this post has reinforced that #1 position. if you found this post via those search terms, could you please leave a comment clarifying what this search is for? (i'm hoping it's song lyrics...)

continuation

I agree with the first part of Echo Zoe's statement against political compromise, and I respect his conclusion. Tying in to my previous post, here are the key parts I agree with - emphases mine:

...realizing that voting Democrat because my parents did was a bit silly, and I needed to figure things out for myself. However, I still hadn’t softened to the Republicans. In 1998, I voted to elect Jesse Ventura Governor of Minnesota. My second mistake, but heading in the right direction.

Six months later, in May of 1999, at the age of 21, I came face to face with my Savior. It was a radical change in my life, and I would never be the same. I immediately took interest in all things related to Christianity. Among the first things I ever prayed was that the Lord would show me His view of the world, and where mine was wrong. I chalk it up to answered prayer, but I immediately became very Conservative. I understood at once that no matter how I tried to justify it, abortion is murder. I realized that there was a reason why socialism is a relatively new phenomenon in America, which it hasn’t always been - that the redistribution of wealth is nothing more than legalized theft - “Plunder” as Bastiat called it. I had a year and a half to go before the next election, and I was firmly on the Right.

So you’d think I’d be a Republican now, right? Wrong. In late 1999 and into 2000, I could see that most of the candidates seeking the Republican Presidential Nomination were watered-down Democrats. John McCain was getting great praise from the media, and W. was preaching “Compassionate Conservatism”, which struck me as neither compassionate nor Conservative...

Between 2000 and 2004, and also the 2002 and 2006 mid-term elections, I received a lot heat from my friends on the Right for not jumping in line with the Republican Party. When I argued that they hadn’t done anything to convince me that they deserve my vote, or that they are even Conservative, I got all the usual platitudes about them being better than the alternative. I didn’t believe there to be only one alternative...

I have sat back this season and watched as so many Conservatives lamented the poor selection this time around. The mainstream media had decided early on that McCain, Romney, Giuliani, and Huckabee were the “viable” candidates. The punditry lamented that Fred Thompson wasn’t running, and quickly abandoned him when he did enter the race. After 7 years of unprecedented spending increases under G.W. Bush and the Republican Legislature, a war that has been promised to last decades, no dent in the abortion holocaust, and the curtailing of person freedom in the name of a “War on Terror”, one would have hoped that the Right would be eager to rally around a true Conservative. However, they quickly decided that Conservatives were “unelectable,” and resolved to have a Liberal candidate be the nominee.

leaders? leaders? we don' need no steenkin leaders!

dustbury shows us a view from the porch:

Folks, we have a serious perception problem in this country. A bunch of people seem to think we have "leaders" instead of "representatives". Bosses and not employees.

Folks, we hired them. We pay them. They work for you, not the other way around. If you are sitting around and waiting for leadership from this collection of do-gooders, used car salesmen, and former Student Body Treasurers, you might as well wait for Santa while you're at it.

These are the people we hire to schlep out our legislative trash in Washington, DC because we're too busy being, you know, productive to handle scutwork like that. We've given them a metaphorical Roto-Rooter and asked them to keep the navigable waterways clear; handed them a calculator and asked them to keep an eye on the national checking account. And, like a sixteen year-old left home with a simple list of chores who instead gets into the liquor cabinet and invites her friends over for a party, look what's happened to them.

Folks, if you want "Political Leaders" you're living in the wrong country; the closest provision we have for a "Political Leader" in the Constitution is the guy we hire to mind the Army & Navy and shake hands with foreigners for us. This is the country where we're supposed to be leading ourselves, not waiting for solutions to be handed down from on high. Your representatives are supposed to be representing you, hence the name. They are not the legislative equivalent of grenades, where you pull the electoral pin, lob them towards Washington, and hope they go off the way you expected. They're your employees; you need to tell them what to do and keep an eye on them, or they'll be stealing the petty cash and spending their whole shift leaning on a broom handle and slacking off.

Don't wait to be led.

options

this history lesson posted at mostly cajun is being noted around the blogododecahedron, and rightly so. here's the core of it (edited):

We find ourselves at another one of those key moments in history.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants, and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world.

The Jihadis... believe that Wahhabi Islam should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world. All who do not bow to their will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra and their goal. There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East - for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not yet known which side will win, - the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and (eventually) the US, European, and Asian economies. The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC - not an OPEC dominated by the educated, more rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis. Do you want gas in your car? Do you want heating oil next winter? Do you want the dollar to be worth anything? You had better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away. A moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

...

The Cold War lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989; 42 years!

Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany!

World War II began (with the Japanese invasion of China) in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten-year occupation, and the U.S. still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50,000,000 people, maybe more than 100,000,000 people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The U.S. has taken more than 3,000 killed in action in Iraq. The U.S. took more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism.

In WWII the U.S. averaged 2,000 KIA a week - for four years. Most of the individual battles of WWII lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far. The stakes are at least as high... a world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).

...

The history of the world is the history of civilization clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilizations should be like, and the most determined always win... The pacifists always lose, because the anti-peace militants kill them.

...

WWII cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year’s GDP - adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars. WWII cost America more than 400,000 soldiers killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

The cost of not fighting and winning WWII would have been unimaginably greater - a world dominated by Japanese Imperialism and German Nazism.

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the United States about $160,000,000,000, which is roughly what the 9/11 terrorist attack cost New York. It has also cost about 3,000 American lives, which is roughly equivalent to lives that the Jihad killed (within the United States) in the 9/11 terrorist attack.

This is not a TV show or a two-hour movie in which everything comes out okay. The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain, and sometimes bloody and ugly. It always has been, and probably always will be.

The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the U.S. can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an ally (like England in WWII) in the Middle East, a platform from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates to conquer the world. The Iraq War is merely another battle in this ancient and never-ending war. Now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons unless somebody prevents them from getting them.

We have four options:

1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.
2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran’s progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).
3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.
4. Or, we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and possibly most of the rest of Europe. It will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier.

If you oppose this war, you are effectively condemning our children and grandchildren to live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

welcome to the choir

Larry Norman, "father of christian rock music", left the planet on the same day as grandmother.

led zeppelin would be proud

i've heard of yellow-dogs and blue-dogs, but now dustbury is reporting some black dogs in the democratic party. :)

look again

at language

Who gave us the terms "Left" and "Right"? The atheistic, murderous French Revolutionaries, who were themselves on the Left Bank of the Seine, and whose implacable enemies were on the Right Bank of the Seine. These monsters, overshadowed by the evils of other Leftists later, were quite prepared, by their own admission, to kill one quarter of the population of France - many millions of people - to achieve their revolutionary aims.

Who invented the terms "liberal," "conservative," "progressive," "reactionary," "revolutionary," "radical," and "moderate" in the sense that we use those terms today? Karl Marx and those who largely accepted the Marxian view of things created this lexicon of political shades. Marx, who influenced Lenin, Mussolini and Mao, has been allowed from the grave to give us those words that we use to describe our politics today.

Orwell presciently told us that language is the key to politics. He also warned us that the intention of those who seek power was to drain meaning from words so that we could not cogently grasp the enemy or his weapons.

and hoover vs. f.d.r.

Herbert Hoover, Republican

• Race: In 1924, Hoover maintains that America's anti-Japanese immigration quotas are wrong, full stop.
• Integrity: Hoover disdains anti-Semitic jokes, and stands against tricks "to smuggle fascism into America through a back door."
• WWII: Hoover is not against all wars, but against Roosevelt's handling of the war, and shares John F. Kennedy's concerns.
• Childhood: "Hoover was born in pinch poverty in the little town of West Branch, Iowa, where every home is humble."
• Hobbies: "Hoover [the poor country pupil] entertained himself with sticks and tacks, strings, wires and nails and the assortment of things the village smithy leaves scattered in the shade of the chestnut tree."
• Education: Hoover, the orphan, worked his way though Stanford, because he was not too proud to do laundry work.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democrat

• Race: During WWII, FDR sends Japanese families to "internment camps" while many white Germans are free to play, and travel.
• Integrity: Like so many Democrats, President Roosevelt adopts a fondness for anti-Semitic jokes.
• WWII: FDR often falls out with Churchill, makes a series of costly blunders, and falls in love with Stalin.
• Childhood: Roosevelt was America's little Lord Fauntleroy, the child of a Hudson River squire. He grew up in Hyde Park, NY.
• Hobbies: "Franklin played with imported toys under the tutelage and protection of a governess [to the age of fourteen!], which ever is the nicest term." Then, he was off to Groton, the elite preparatory school.
• Education: Franklin Roosevelt's daddy dear, paid his son's way into Harvard, living "on the Gold Coast" and then Columbia.

both links via molten thought

road hazards

some due to rage, more due to ignorance and inattention

something i never thought i'd say

Clinton Obama 08!

:)

"It Takes a Village to Steal an Election"

Looks like the Clinton machine is at it again:

Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.

That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district.

City election officials this week said that their formal review of the results, which will not be completed for weeks, had confirmed some major discrepancies between the vote totals reported publicly — and unofficially — on primary night and the actual tally on hundreds of voting machines across the city.

Vince Foster and Ron Brown could not be reached for comment.

slaveowners then and now

apology nothing, how about reparations?

letter to both sides

Fellow GOMLPer The View From Out Here wrote an open letter to both of the political parties:

As a citizen of this, the greatest country on earth, I want to say that I find the choices you have given me to be disgusting. The lack of consideration for the voices of American citizens shows that both parties desire power above the good of the country.

My first grievance is the continued lack of response to American citizen’s cries to stop illegal immigration. The influx of illegal immigrants and the rush to grant them all the privileges of citizens has lowered our standard of living and taken away benefits of citizenship. Both parties have worked to give this group amnesty so they can win them as voters. When we rose up you backed off, till you thought we were asleep again. But I am not.

The next issue is your desire to enslave the people through expansion of government programs. The expansion of the safety net that will turn our nation into a cradle to the grave social state goes against the founding principles of this country. Look to Europe, Socialism has not worked there. Yet you seek to choke the life out of our country, through government give aways, so that the citizens will vote for your party perpetually.

It may be too late to have a good choice for President, but I state my intent to work to elect people to congress who will uphold the foundations of our country, and work for the freedoms of the people.

, and recommends that if you agree, "print it out and place it on both the Republican and Democratic parties offices in your city or county."

The Abomination of Taxation

and we don't even get to rest on the seventh day...

10 reasons to doubt global warming

(paraphrased)

the first five:

1. It hasn’t gotten warmer in the past seven years.
2. The Sun, which by itself accounts for about 99.8% of the solar system’s mass, just might have a profound impact on the temperature.
3. There is a lot of money in global warming. There have been charges laid against companies like Exxon/Mobil for paying for climate change research, however, there is more money involved in proving the theory than debunking it.
4. Kyoto isn’t about reducing carbon... Kyoto “is not a simple environmental issue... This is about international relations, this is about the economy, about trying to create a level playing field for big businesses throughout the world... the Kyoto Protocol is “the first component of authentic global governance.”
5. Regardless of what really happens, the alarmists fit reality into their predictions, or they just ignore reality completely.
   

then the second five begins with this:

In 1895, the New York Times was telling America to stock up on firewood, because the Ice Age was coming... Then in the 20s, the Earth got a fever and temperatures increased a half a degree, leading the Times to report on the new impending doom: global warming. In 1954, the Earth was destined to freeze again... This global cooling talk went through the 70s and the first Earth Day... In 1974 Fortune wrote:

“It is the root cause of a lot of that unpleasant weather around the world and they warn that it carries the potential for human disasters of unprecedented magnitude,”

Sound familiar?... either way they were certain we were doomed. And remember, those journalists didn’t just make these stories up out of thin air. Each one was backed up with science. Or so they thought.

read both links.

but don't question his patriotism!

update 2: Hussein also refuses to salute the American flag.

update & bump: Lamest. Apology. Ever.

Barack Hussein Obama refuses to wear an American flag pin, and there are Che Guevara flags hanging in his campaign offices. Maybe he doesn't personally idolize that communist mass-murderer, but his staffers sure do.

valentine 08

as per usual, nothing special about this day for me. go read this, which is far better than both this and this combined.

salutes

America's newest Korean War fighter ace, Retired Lt. Gen. Charles G. Cleveland.

Southeast Oklahoma's newest Electronic Gaming Regulation Enforcement Agent, Local Malcontent.

on meaninglessness

great title, great concept: Of Pro Bowls and Nematodes

new york london paris munich

everybody talk about hot planet!

the sun rises on the west

Even though Ibn Warraq doesn't mention the theological underpinnings, he proves the West's superiority of values.

The World Turned Upside Down

A few centuries ago the British bemoaned their cultural upheaval in song. Unfortunately it seems time to start singing a new version, inspired by this pathetic bit of news: "Archbishop of Canterbury argues for Islamic law in Britain"

Listen to me and you shall hear,
news hath not been this thousand year:
Since Herod, Caesar, and many more,
you never heard the like before.
Holy days are despised.
new fashions are devised.
Old Christmas is kicked out of Town.
Yet let's be content, and the times lament,
You see the world turn'd upside down.

The wise men did rejoice to see
our Savior Christ's Nativity:
The Angels did good tidings bring,
the Shepherds did rejoice and sing.
Let all honest men,
take example by them.
Why should we from good Laws be bound?
Yet let's be content, and the times lament,
You see the world turn'd upside down.

P.C. now reigns, we must obey
and quite forget the Christian way.
Kill three thousand men, or two towers fall?
We must not say a word at all!
The world must all be linked,
while we just feast and drink.
And then strange notions will abound.
Yet let's be content, and the times lament,
You see the world turn'd upside down.

Our Lefts and Rights and Centrists too
dare not offend a soul (but you):
Deploying sappers at our wall,
invaders shan't be hindered at all.
They count it as good
to play Robin Hood
while good men in bad laws are drowned.
Yet let's be content, and the times lament,
You see the world turn'd upside down.

A list of rulers, truly mad -
Ayatollah to Ahmenadijad -
slay all who stand to block their paths.
Dance halls and bus stops? Now bloodbaths.
The deaths of innocents they rejoice
with insane ululating voice.
Jew, Gentile, Hindu - no quarter found.
Yet let's be content, and the times lament,
You see the world turn'd upside down.

The mullahs will rejoice aloud
to make their western mushroom clouds,
and stoning women and children to death
won't cause them even one sad breath.
Now stand, my brothers, to cease
their bloodthirsty cult of "peace"!
And once again we shall hear
true peace throughout the year.
Let's not be content, and weakly lament,
To see the world turn'd upside down.

update: sadly, it's not just "across the pond" any more

ClearPlay

This looks like a good idea: a self-censoring DVD player.

how about "America is great, ignore the whiners."

Lileks has a six-word motto for the NYTimes, and its little poll too, "Hundreds of snippets of derisive snark."

"You can picture the satisfied little grins on the authors’ faces; you can imagine the whole tableau – the computer (which most people in the world will never touch, let alone use, let alone own) the TV in the corner connected to a network that has channels catering to every taste, the iPod stocked with music hoovered up free of charge without consequence, the fridge stocked with food – the light comes on when you open the door, too, unless it’s burned out, and then you go to the store and get another one; they always have another one. The soft bed, the coffee machine, the well-fed pet, the vast panoply of free information and unfettered opinion flowing 24/7 from the internet. You can drink alcohol without being sentenced to death; you can be a girl alone in a room with a man without earning a public stoning; you can stand up in a room and argue for the candidate of your choice without being arrested; you stand in a society that allows for astonishing amounts of freedom, comfort and opportunity. But.

But. Someone somewhere is a practicing Baptist and someone somewhere else is eating a hamburger larger than you’d prefer, and other people are watching cars go around a track at high speed. As your skinny unhappy friend said the other night: people are just too fat and happy. He bites his nails and plays WoW six hours a night, but he has a point. It doesn’t matter that these fascists-in-fetal-form never quite seem to accomplish anything; it’s not like they drove the gay Teletubbies off the air or had Tony Kushner drawn and quartered in the public square. But they’re preventing something. Something wonderful. And they’re driving large cars to Wal-Mart and putting 18-roll packs of Charmin in the back and they have three kids. Earth has withstood a lot in its four billion years, but it cannot withstand them. And even if it does, who wants to live in a world where these people don’t care that they’re being mocked by small, underfunded theaters in honest, gritty neighborhoods?"

my motto for that article is "read the rest, it gets better."

"progress"ing us off a cliff

Bidinotto says "anybody but McCain"

"While the (Jonah) Goldberg article zeroes in on Democrat "progressives" like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, he surprisingly -- and completely inconsistently -- gives a pass to Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain. McCain embodies not Wilsonian progressivism, like the other two; rather, he embodies Teddy Roosevelt progressivism. Here's a candidate who calls himself "conservative," but who spends much of his time channeling bully-boy Teddy R while bashing corporations, extolling "patriotism" over "profits," assaulting the First Amendment (McCain-Feingold), pushing hardcore environmentalism (no oil drilling in Alaska; imposing cap-and-trade restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions; touting the horrors of "global warming"), voting against major tax cuts, demanding individual self-sacrifice on behalf the great unifying causes of The State -- and calling us "my friends" while he picks our pockets and directs our lives.

If Mike Huckabee embodies the extreme social-conservatism minority within the GOP, McCain represents a resurrection of progressivism, long-interred since the early twentieth century. And his brand of progressive statism, like Hillary's, borrows from an ugly intellectual tradition long denied by progressives, but thoroughly exposed by Goldberg: fascism.

No, Bidinotto is not saying that the election of Hillary, Obama, or McCain will be a harbinger of brownshirts in the streets kicking down doors and beating up writers, bloggers, and editors like...well, like me. No, modern times require more sophisticated methods of social control and coercion. Like compulsory "national service" programs, in which we will all be required to do our Patriotic Duty by participating in various "progressive" social causes. Like controls on political activity and political speech via the IRS and "campaign finance reforms."

For people on the right, opposition to the liberal, Wilsonian progressivism of Hillary and Obama is a no-brainer. But in their visceral reactions against liberal Democrat progressives, many of these same right-wingers seem poised to rush headlong and without reflection into the waiting arms of conservative Republican progressive John McCain.

On the heels of George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" -- i.e., big-government altruism on behalf of conservative values -- John McCain's selection as the GOP leader would be a further ideological disaster for the party, and for the nation. His ascendancy would cement in place within American politics two hard-core variants of statism as the only major-party alternatives, and thus effectively banish the individualist/limited-government faction from participation in the political process.

That trend has been underway for decades, with growing numbers of Republican candidates doing their best to repudiate and run from the party's individualist premises. Some of the better conservatives, like George Will and Rush Limbaugh, have been sounding the alarm. So has Objectivist writer Robert Tracinski, the most philosophically astute of the various commentators.

But now, with the best GOP candidates (Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson) gone, and two remaining candidates (Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, in their own ways just as bad ideologically as McCain) not realistically in contention, that leaves the underwhelming Mitt Romney as the last best hope of stopping McCain. But at this point, unless Romney manages to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the proverbial hat (I turn my secular eyes to California tonight, and desperately offer up a secular prayer), then the fall election will be a choice between Tweedledee liberal progressivism and Tweedledum conservative progressivism. And either way the election turns out, the next four years will be a statist nightmare."

(emphases mine)

I'm not ready to say who I'd vote for in a McCain-vs-either-dem race (update: CSM is), but in the "lesser of two evils" sense it might feel like a choice between cthulhu and morgoth...

undersea cable cut

If you pay close attention to online news, you may have heard about undersea communications lines being cut around the Middle East. While Occam's Razor might point to an earthquake in the region, the comments here are much more entertaining. I'll paraphrase the best ones:

First time is an accident. Second time's a coincidence. Third time it's a conspiracy. So what's the fourth time, profit???

It was American Tech Support, getting revenge for all the outsourcing.

USS Jimmah say hai!!1!

Cloverfield?

of course, i had to add

"lolsquid say "i'm on ur seaflor chuwin ur cablz nom nom nom""

stuck in the commune

Get Offa My Lawn Party member Twisted Spinster is upset about what will happen to the TV series 24:

"...it’s a shame that yet another apparently hard-hitting and gritty show is going to be shoved into the Very Special Lesson cesspool...

...(also) two extremely obnoxious "Global Warming Will Kill Cuddly Things" spots, one by the World Wildlife Federation (due to the length, the lies told — it uses those shots of polar bears floating on ice floes as emotional manipulation devices, images which we know to have been edited in such a way as to not show the fact that the bears were floating next to much larger and more solid ice sheets which they could easily reach by their usual method of just swimming over to them — and the gulpy sobbing voice of the actress they used I have resolved never to give them a dime in contribution); and another by some website which uses the anti-appeal of a Cute Widdle Kids montage of them each saying “Tick.” “Tick.” “Tick.” “Tick.” “Tick.” until I hit the mute button... Way to get me on your side, Glopaholics.

But it’s always been like this. Dealing with what our so-called entertainment media sees fit to serve up to us here in the US of A has always been an exercise in torment for anyone who thinks that art should not take a back seat to teaching five-year-olds how to share their toys. Unfortunately to get into power in this country... you have to be the sort of person who really believes that the rest of the nation is comprised of toddlers clutching their dollies stubbornly to their chests. I don’t think I have to give any examples, do I? Just think of the upcoming election, or look at the night’s television schedule. The media, of course, is part of the powers that run this country. Back when I was young the problem was an entertainment industry hamstrung by the need to be “proper” according to the standards of no later than twenty years previous. In the Sixties and Seventies that meant the Forties and Fifties was the touchstone of progress, and Depression-era decorum was the norm, which meant only women on TV wore white gloves and hats when they went outdoors. Today, in the supposedly progressive first decade of the 21st century, our Baby-Boomer-run media empire has stalled in those halcyon days when women considered themselves “emancipated” if they were living with bearded stoners, being called “my old lady,” and serving mushroom tea instead of coffee to all the bearded stoner’s bearded stoner pals. There have been a few attempts to crawl at least into the Reagan era, but for the most part we’re stuck in the commune..."

(slightly edited)