Gonna be quiet around here the next few days

Happy Thansgiving and see you next week.

Canada Free Press article on Hadley CRU Documents

Larry sent me this one.

Apparently none other than "Science Czar" John Holdren (you know, the guy who was going to return us to policy making based 'science and facts' rather than 'ideology') is complicit in this as well.

Yeah ... from "Change.Gov"

“The truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources—it’s about protecting free and open inquiry,” President-elect Obama said. “It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States—and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.”

Protecting free and open inquiry?  Facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology?

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!

Is Obamacare worth buying votes?

 CNN's John King asked Sunday

"To get Senator [Mary] Landrieu's vote, just to proceed, just to go across the starting line, language was inserted in the bill that gives her state up to $300 million. To get Senator [Ben] Nelson's vote, [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] agreed to drop a request that you take away the antitrust exemptions for insurance companies...[Is healthcare reform] important enough to buy votes? "

Senator Sherrod Brown answered

I want to see this bill pass. Nobody likes these kinds of -- any kinds of deals. I think anything that's done needs to be in the best -- in the best interest of those states and this country. I think those probably helped, if that, in fact, really happened -- I have no way of really knowing if it did. I suppose that helped a lot of people in Louisiana that don't have insurance, and so I think we move forward.

Only 38% of the population supports this bill, the health care reform direction this administration & the Democratic congress is taking.   They bought votes to get it to the floor for "debate" where hold the "nuclear" option in their back pocket to ram what they feel is in the best interest of [..] this country -- no matter what 62% of the country thinks.  This is ruling class arrogance.  I'll tell you what's good for you and you'll take it.  And that's the way they'll run health care, too.

Why are we trying Khalid Sheik Mohammad in Civilian Court again?

• Because it's wrong to try him in a military tribunal as an enemy combatant?
• So we can show the world our confidence in our fair civilian court system?
• Because we are holding him to long without a trial?

Well, let's see, Obama stopped the military tribunals to address that first issue, which meant that we were going to hold him still longer without trial in contradicion to the third point.  They got the civilian trial in New York, where Attorney General Holder is saying that he will be convicted, and failure is not an option, plus even if he is acquitted he'll never be set free because we'll then hold him as an enemy combatant, which blows point number two out of the water and puts us right back to point number one (not to mention number three again), meaning Bush was right in the first place.

They can't have that, so it's gotta be something else.  And my guess it will be to put "torture" and Gitmo back out front and center for another round of Bush Administration flogging, because that's what got them elected and they've got nothing else -- and we're going into an election year.

But they've overplayed their hand, and the result of all of this, I think (besides serving up a large recruiting campaign for Islamist Terrorism and some Democratic fund raising) will be that the American people are pretty much going to throw this on the pile of the many reasons they are going to dump the Democrats in droves.

I'm right.  And you know it.

RCP Article on the Hadley CRU Documents

This should blow the lid off of the Global Warming movement once and for all.

This is all very Alinsky, I hate to keep bringing this up ... but these are exactly the tactics they've used over and over and over again.

• Ignore all criticism of your position.
• Marginalize anyone who disagrees with name-calling ("deniers", "big oil stooges") or ridicule ("they're not published!")
• Exert pressure on "authorities" to distance themselves from or refuse to recognize opponents.

You can also see from these e-mails the scientists' panic at any dissent appearing in the scientific literature. When another article by a skeptic was published in Geophysical Research Letters, Michael Mann complains, "It's one thing to lose Climate Research. We can't afford to lose GRL." Another CRU scientist, Tom Wigley, suggests that they target another troublesome editor: "If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted." That's exactly what they did, and a later e-mail boasts that "The GRL leak may have been plugged up now w/new editorial leadership there."


Not content to block out all dissent from scientific journals, the CRU scientists also conspired to secure friendly reviewers who could be counted on to rubber-stamp their own work. Phil Jones suggests such a list to Kevin Trenberth, with the assurance that "All of them know the sorts of things to say...without any prompting."


So it's no surprise when another e-mail refers to an attempt to keep inconvenient scientific findings out of a UN report: "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. K and I will keep them out somehow-even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" Think of all of this the next time you hear someone invoke the authority of peer review-or of the UN's IPCC reports-as backing for claims about global warming.

:
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The picture that emerges is simple. In any discussion of global warming, either in the scientific literature or in the mainstream media, the outcome is always predetermined. Just as the temperature graphs produced by the CRU are always tricked out to show an upward-sloping "hockey stick," every discussion of global warming has to show that it is occurring and that humans are responsible. And any data or any scientific paper that tends to disprove that conclusion is smeared as "unscientific" precisely because it threatens the established dogma.

WSJ picks up on Hadley CRU Hack story

From today's WSJ

Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics' research was unwelcome: We "will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

 Really!!?

No wonder there is a "consensus".

Hadley CRU Break In Update

It looks to me, from reading various articles on the net this morning, that the Hadley CRU folks are basically admitting that the emails and files are from them, that they are legit -- because it looks as though the tactic they're taking is to defend them or dismiss them rather than to deny them.

Good news is the London Daily Telegraph reports that this story is the top story being hit on their website, dispite, and perhaps because of, the MSM's refusal to critically cover the story -- displaying the kind of incuriousness they used to love to accuse G.W. Bush of having.

This morning's Telegraph story pointed me to this handy post that summarizes and bookmarks many of the various email -- among several other links to chase.

Joined Bloggers for Sarah Palin

This is big, big, BIG news

Let's see how well the MSM can smother it.  Or if it's ready to wake up and smell the coffee.  After all, they do SO love a scandal, and if they're forced not to ignore it (John Edwards) they actually kinda get into it.


Hadley CRU hacked with release of hundreds of docs and emails. <--- Go read and follow any links.

UPDATE: Here's the London Telegraph article Patrick Michaels was talking about on Nolan's show this afternoon.

Between the Thanksgiving break coming up and the KSM trial in New York and chasing Ricky Hollywood around with a mic & camera ... we'll see if the story gets buried.

It's important.  "We" may be about to sign our soveriegnty away.







Hyperbole? "Fundamentally transform"? "We are the people we've been waiting for"? "Redistribuitive wealth"? Did you read "The Forgotten Man"?  "Liberal Fascism"?  Ringing any bells? Any bells at all?

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah?

Well, let's just remember that Maria was the herione in The Sound of Music, shall we?

But we should treat MSNBC as a News Organization

If Fox News is an "arm of the Republican party", then what do you call this?




Here we have the quite lovely but obviously just as biased Nora O'Donnell, whom Chris Matthews refers to as a "hard news" reporter, telling us that the crowd "has a connection" to Sarah Palin, "and I think it's an emotional one."  Sounds like opinion to me, however much truth there may be to it.  Of course, what you're supposed to take away from it is that there's no basis for that emotional connection other than the fact that she's white and Christian ... keep watching.

Another interesting thing is that as an example of how clueless these Palin supporters were, she said they liked her because she was against "the" bailout (there were multiple bailouts, but let's assume she means TARP) when "in fact" Palin "supported" it.  From which Salon editor in chief Joan Walsh jumps straight to "whopping lie".

Allahpundit over at Hot Air came up with a letter Palin wrote to the Alaska state legislature in January that evidenced her acceptance of the funds, but also, in the closing paragraph, clearly expressed her concerns about this kind of federal bailout and where they lead.

Although it is beyond my purview as Governor, I also urge you to consider how the economic stimulus package will affect the national debt and the future economic health of the country. The need for economic stimulus should not become an excuse for the continuation of the unsound policies of the past. The nation’s economy will never achieve long-term stability if we continue borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars from foreign countries, all the while Simultaneously sending huge amounts of money overseas to OPEC countries for oil that could be produced domestically. In this regard, I am astounded by amounts of a trillion dollars and more that are currently being discussed in some quarters.

I believe our nation is truly at an economic crossroads. Properly constructed, the economic stimulus package will greatly assist in sending our country down the right road. Without question, you will be called upon to make very difficult decisions on behalf of Alaska and the nation, and I want to assure you of the cooperation of my administration in achieving the best possible result.

In other words, I don't like this, but since it's happening, I'm willing to try to make the best of it.  Sounds like the Palin I know.   And I think what it exposes (for the eleventy jillionth time) is the echo chamber of the liberal press.  Someone interpreted her acceptance as support, and said "you lie!  Palin supported it!"... and it's become so accepted as fact that reporters don't feel the need to look into the veracity, dare I say, even nuances, of her position and just come out and boldly call her a whopping "liar".  They like that word, "lie", I've noticed.

Matthews and the rest point out that the crowd is "white", "monocrhomatic" ... and say a few times not that there's anything wrong with that ... but they continue to repeatedly point it out as if there were.

• This is a largely white, almost no minorities in this crowd.             almost, eh? - ed
• Well they look like a white crowd to me, not that there's anything wrong
• but it is pretty, uh, monochromatic
• No surprise in terms of the ethnic nature of the people showing up, nothing wrong with that
• but it is a fact
• I think there's a tribal aspect to this thing, in other words, white vs other people

(Would they even go there if they were reporting on a crowd that was monochromatically black?)

Cut to Palin saying it was a mistake to avoid "profiling" a Muslim soldier in our army who had on multiple occasions expressed sympathy toward the enemy's cause and terrorist tactics ... and then from Matthews

• everybody knows what proviling means: it's driving while black
• if you come from a middle-eastern country, keep your eye on this guy

Funny, I thought she was talking about Islamists (not a race, a belief, and one we're actively fighting against).

Again, I've been to Tea Parties.  Nobody was there making sure you were white before they'd let you participate.  And I've seen footage of Tea Parties and there have been blacks there right along with whites, in solidarity because what mattered was the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

The "nastiness".  The attacks on the "little people" ... Steve Schmitt, Nocole Wallace.  Yeah, little people.  You know, you have lots of people who are prominent operatives at the highest level of a presidential campaign.  They're your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers.  "And at the same time [she says] she's looking out for little people."

Now Joan is not a hard news reporter, although she probably considers herself that -- goes down her talking points list, and you can actually hear her set them up, and then repeat them just in case we missed what she was saying.  "She [Palin] is a very divisive, mean-spirited person".

Really?

She's fighting down (sic) with her 19 year old ex-future-son-in-law, who should really be ignored. 

I'm sure she'd love to.  Can we?  Would the media stop covering that self-centered idiot and stop asking her questions about what he's saying to keep "Ricky Hollywood" in the spotlight?  Is that a promise from Salon never to mention him again?  I sure hope so.

When her supporters say they believe that she'll "defend the constitution", they're "babbling".  For good measure, she adds "as if Obama won't."  (Clearly, from what Obama has said on more than one occasion suggests that he considers the Constitution merely a "remarkable" historical document that "paved the way" to where we are today ... but -- the guy says he wants to "fundamentally transform" the United States of America.  Since the Constitution defines The United States of America, it's not a huge leap to figure he's ready to depart from that definition significantly.)

Here's what you're supposed to come away with from this piece.  Palin's fans are ignorant, white, Bible-thumping racists, and Palin is a "nasty", immature, mean-spirited, divisive liar who really isn't for the "little people" who the "general public" doesn't trust and sees this kind of "mean girl" persona that she's "never grown out of" which is why "she'll never be President."  Be afraid.  Those are the talking points.

That just doesn't jive with what I see.

What They Really Believe

I came home today to a column in our local newspaper by NYT columnist Thomas L. Friedman.  It was teased thus:

Don’t believe in global warming? You’re wrong, but I’ll let you enjoy it until your beach house gets washed away.

Thanks, Tom. Considerate of you to "let" me.  Two things.  One, I don't own a beach house.  And judging  by the Red/Blue political maps, I'd say that most people who do are not your "Drill, Baby, Drill" crowd.  Further, unless your house is about 25 cm (IPCC number) lower than the lowest safe height above sea level, you have more to worry about from coastal storms than you do about rising sea levels.  And that's IF the IPCC is right about what's going on.  And it hasn't been so far.   The models can't seem to predict climate at all, really.  It's been quite embarrassing.  Besides, you don't seem terribly concerned about it in practice.  Take another page out of the Gore book of do as I say, not as I do?

If you follow the debate around the energy/climate bills working through Congress you will notice that the drill-baby-drill opponents of this legislation are now making two claims. One is that the globe has been cooling lately, not warming, and the other is that America simply can’t afford any kind of cap-and-trade/carbon tax. 

 And both are demonstrably true, though the cooling hasn't been much.  Then again, neither was the warming.  And I note that while you infer that these "claims" are ludicrous, you didn't take those arguments on, but went on to other things instead.  Why?  Because you can't take those claims on and win.  They're true.

But here is what they also surely believe, but are not saying: They believe the world is going to face a mass plague, like the Black Death, that will wipe out 2.5 billion people sometime between now and 2050. They believe it is much better for America that the world be dependent on oil for energy — a commodity largely controlled by countries that hate us and can only go up in price as demand increases — rather than on clean power technologies that are controlled by us and only go down in price as demand increases. And, finally, they believe that people in the developing world are very happy being poor — just give them a little running water and electricity and they’ll be fine. They’ll never want to live like us.

(What?  Black Death Panels???? They're not in the bill!!!!!)

Huh, and here I thought that they believe that as countries become developed and prosperous, their birth rates drop, and that the whole point of drilling was to tap our own domestic resources instead of buying it from countries that hate us, and that we love the idea of clean power and believe that the free market will take care of that on its own as the kinks get worked out of it.  But who am I?  Just one of those crazy people who think that when you vastly inflate your money supply, it becomes worth much less, effectively taxing your citizens by whatever percentage that devalues the dollar, ruins your credit, and puts you in a very tight position with ... oh yeah, countries that you counted on to buy the debt you printed up, exacerbated by the fact that you couldn't find buyers for all of it so you started buying it yourself.  A tactic that has never, ever, ever worked and has always ended in disaster.

And THEN you plan on putting a further drag on the economy you want to tax by making energy much more expensive, making it more expensive to employ people, and tack an additional trillion or three of money we don't have onto the national debt for a road to nationalized, single-payer health-care which will be even more expensive and give most people less access to it.  Yeah, we're freakin' idiots, aren't we Tom?

Thank God we have you here to tell us what we believe. As I recall, the Drill Baby Drill crowd was calling for an "all of the above" approach, not just "drill, baby, drill".  The "Drill, baby, drill" bit was to counter the climate/enviro Chicken Little's position of continuing to buy so much of our oil from other countries -- or doing without and guaranteeing that the economy will crater.

The first is that the world is getting crowded. According to the 2006 U.N. population report, “The world population will likely increase by 2.5 billion ... passing from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050. This increase is equivalent to the total size of the world population in 1950, and it will be absorbed mostly by the less developed regions, whose population is projected to rise from 5.4 billion in 2007 to 7.9 billion in 2050."

It's just about 2010.  What was the world population supposed to be by this time by 20th century doom and gloom population bomb Chicken Littles?  I'll go look that up and update later.  Point being, why should I believe you?  Did you see Al Gore's chart?  What should global temperatures be by now?

The world keeps getting flatter — more and more people can now see how we live, aspire to our lifestyle and even take our jobs so they can live how we live. So not only are we adding 2.5 billion people by 2050, but many more will live like “Americans” — with American-size homes, American-size cars, eating American-size Big Macs.

 Academics love linear extrapolation, don't they?

First of all, there are different cultural and market forces elsewhere in the world than there are here.  Secondly, I don't know a single soul who is for abandoning clean and efficient energy development.  Third, whoever does is going to make a metric sh*t ton of money ... unless the government takes 90% of it.  In which case their incentive to do so will be significantly lower.  Third, as I mentioned before, as nations become more developed, their birthrates drop.  Fourth, market forces will force people to change their consumption habits as things become more scarce.

There is not a finite amount of wealth to "spread around".   And there is not an infinite amount of wealth in government printing presses.   Wealth is created, and it has a way of spreading itself around.  Sure, more tends to stay near those who created it -- which is what gives them the incentive to create it.

For my speal on Anthropogenic Global Warming, please see my speals starting here.

Which One Are You Drinking?

I have no idea who this lady is (right).  But I really like her sign.

Found here.

Oh!  How did I miss this one in the comments (below)?  That's great!

Perpetual Apology Machine

Just for fun.  Hey, it's one of the Community Organizers' "Rules for Radicals".  "Ridicule is man's most powerful weapon."   Or "potent".  Or something.  This was Morgan's brainchild, the propeller bit.

Going Rouge

I ordered the book weeks ago.  It shipped Monday.  I watched the Oprah interview (yeah, how often would you catch me watching Oprah?)  I watched the Barbara Walters interview (ditto).  It should be here by the end of the week.

Loved what Mark Steyn had to say about the eleventy jillion fact checkers the Associated Press sicked on it.  He's right.

And so is Rush.

I guess only conservatives need the AP fact-checking treatment.

Apparently an estimated 1500 people showed up 12 hours in advance to wait in cold Michigan weather for Palin's book signing event in Grand Rapids.  This is driving the liberals absolutely mad.

Most of the MSM reports you see on the web, anyway, put the number at "hundreds".  But they put the 9-12 march on the Capitol at "thousands" or "tens of thousands" when it was clearly hundreds of thousands, and the same with Michelle Bachmann's hasty "Kill the Bill" rally a few weeks ago, where numbers in the MSM were minimized.

Incidentally, found a post with some good shots from Kill The Bill.

---

UPDATE:  Sarah's book arrived in the mail today, but I can't start it until I finish that Progressive bastard's book I'm currently reading.  

Yeah! What HE said!

"To suggest that men and women that are taking a stand for fiscal discipline and traditional values in the national debate today only speak for quote, ‘grassroots activists' is absurd.  As evidenced by the hundreds of thousands that filled town hall meetings this summer and the nearly a million Americans who gathered here in Washington in September - millions of Americans, Republicans, Democrats and Independents are worried about liberal social policies and runaway federal spending, deficit and debt." - Rep Mike Pence

Rights & Mr. Dooley

In the beginning of our Republic, we listed out some inalienable rights granted by our creator when we were created, rules for governance, and tacked on 10 specific rights the government was not to mess with.

One of them being, by the way, the right of the people to keep and bear arms.  But I digress.

Knowing Mr. Alinsky's ideology, I doubt he read into the following words what I did, even though I found them in his book.

Apparently there was a Chicago humorist and columnist back in the early 20th century named Finley Peter Dunne who wrote articles from the viewpoint of a fictional Chicago Irishman named Mr. Dooley.

And Mr. Dooley, in one of them, apparently said the following:

Don't ask f'r rights.  Take thim.  An don't let anny wan give thim to ye.  A right that is handed to ye fer nawthin' has somethin' the matter with it.  It's more thin likely it's only a wrong turned inside out.   -- Emphasis, mine.

Keep that in mind when our governing class makes up "rights" such as health care for us.

I haven't read any other words from Dunne that I know of, so I don't know what the rest of his writing is like.  But I like that bit in the context of our Constitution.

In Alinsky's context of so-called "social justice" and equal outcomes, emphasis on democracy over republican structure and amoral tactics, not so much.  As you might suspect there'll be a review of Rules for Radicals coming up when this slow reader (and I'm reading this one even more slowly) finally finishes the relatively short book.

But I just ordered Mr. Dooley in Peace and War ... the collected Mr. Dooley columns.  It was only a couple of bucks and I have a feeling there's more than a few Irish Will Rogers gems in there.

Counter-Revolution

One thing Alinsky warned against is over-reach and setting off a counter-revolution to your own revolution.   Maybe we're fortunate that the kinds of people who are attracted to progressivivsm tend to be childishly impatient... dare I say, demanding.

It's no secret among those who know me that some of my favorite rock music comes from the late 1960's and early 1970's ... a lot of it written for and by those who re-launched the drive to socialism after having been radicalized by their professors.  A lot of these kids read and studied Alinsky.

Grateful Dead.  Crosby, Stills, & Nash.  Early Bonnie Raitt.  Spirit.  Moody Blues.  Canned Heat.  Jesse Colin Young.  Byrds.  Jefferson Airplane.  Kind of ironic considering where I am today.   And I still like most of that music.  But then again, so does Ann Coulter.

Recently the song Long Time Gone came on my MP3 player and I realized that it pretty much applies to the Tea Party movement of today -- mostly because the lyrics are too vague to reveal what they were speaking out and fighting against.  I figure if you change the line:

Don't you try to get yourself elected, cause if you do you had better cut your hair  to
Don't you try to get yourself elected, cause if you do you'd best not be caught sayin' a prayer

and it would apply even better.

You know there's something that's goin' on around here, the surely, surely, surely won't stand the light of day.

I mean, come on.  Tell me that doesn't apply to the shenannigans this administration is pulling ... and it's just on a larger scale than what's been going on behind the scenes for many, many years.

At any rate, apparently I mondegreened the lyrics to Jefferson Airplane's Volunteers,  and like many others thought they were saying "counter revolution, counter revolution" (when in fact they were saying "got a revolution, got a revolution")  but it was because of the misheard lyric that I dug the album back out again today after years and years.  And years.

So I'm listening to the first track on the album, which I'd never really listened to closely, and I hate it.   It's a communist revolution anthem.

We are all outlaws in the eyes of America
In order to survive we steal cheat lie forge f*ck hide and deal
We are obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent and young
We should be together
Come on all you people standing around
Our life's too fine to let it die and
We should be together
All your private property is
Target for your enemy

Yeah. You should be together.  Nasty and proud of it, and Marxist to boot. It could be the ACORN anthem. Can't remember where I heard this, but it was from a guy who briefly worked for ACORN in the 70's ... and he said they had boxes and boxes of "Rules for Radicals". So it's pretty clear that's an Alinskyite organization.

"Volunteers" is still vague enough, probably, to serve as a generic "counter revolution" anthem today, especially if we changed the lyrics to the misheard "counter revolution".

I still like Long Time Gone, though.... probably because I'm a bigger CSN fan.

Anyway, ain't we full of contradictions?  There's my thoughts for today.

I have another post brewin', but it's gonna take some time.  It was a major OMG moment I had while reading Mr. Alinsky's book.  Explains sooooo much about what we see from the Left.

Earl Blumenauer Not Getting It

Complaining in a NYT editorial about his end-of-life counseling provision in "the" health care bill lead to that horrible "lie" about "Death Panels", Rep Blumenauer wrote

The most bizarre moment came on Aug. 7 when Sarah Palin used the term “death panels” on her Facebook page. She wrote: “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”


There is, of course, nothing even remotely like this in the bill, yet other politicians joined the death panel chorus.

Once again -- we are talking about the differences between "what's in the bill", presumably the bill's intent,vs the consequences of the bill becoming law, which include many things that are not in the bill.   Most, if not all bills have this problem.  Which is why government is supposed to be limited according to our Constitution.  I don't believe (and maybe I'm wrong, but I sure don't remember) -- I don't think that Palin  said it was in the bill.  Or even that it was the bill's intent.

"I didn't mean to kill Grandma. I didn’t even mean to create death panels."  the article  begins.

Progressives are only concerned with intent, not with consequences.  In the arrogance self-importance tht  comes from academic speculation taken as "fact", consequences are assumed to match intent.  If they do not, they will either say that more must be done, or blame their opponents.

Perhaps some latched on to Blumenauer's language in the bill to provide evidence of the kind of thing to look out for -- but it's not end-of-life counselling that is the problem.   It's government-controlled end-of-life counselling ... especially when the government is in charge of the purse strings -- that is the problem.

It is the fact that the entity that makes the rules and controls the purse strings is in charge of not only what it will pay for, but what treatment you will be allowed at all at any price -- which is what has happened in all other countries with government-run health care -- that is the problem.

What's So Wrong With Socialism?

Of course, when you point out that this administration has an unabashedly socialist bent to it, you get "it does not!!!!  Stop calling Him™ names!!!!"

But invariably you'll run across people saying that and then saying "and what's wrong with socialism?"

Something Joe Herring at American Thinker ran across.   And this post is to bookmark his post for me for future reference.

With a big hat tip to Morgan, who expounded nicely on it himself ... so I'll point you there for further ... uh ... expounderating.

Me, I just thought this was a very good, short, concise way of answering the bulk of that question:

... for a planned economy to succeed, there must be central planners, who by necessity will insist on universal commitment to their plan. -- F.A. Hayek.

I mean, that really sums it up there, and all of the horrible things that follow, follow from that.

But that would never happen here.  Jail time for not having health insurance?  Well, it's really not about that .... nothing to see here ... move along ...

A Problem

Read today that the New York Times, champion of all things progressive on most of its editorial pages, in addition to laying people off, is moving editorial jobs to Florida ... well, we'll let the story explain why....

The plan for the news service calls for The Gainesville Sun, whose newsroom is not unionized and has lower salaries, to take over editing and page design. Ms. McNulty said new jobs would be created at The Sun to handle the work.

Also, how much you wanna bet employment/business taxes in Gainesville are lower than in NYC?

On a related note, I read in a comment on a blog somewhere today from a guy in Pennsylvania that people were moving out of the big cities where liberal social policies have driven taxes through the roof ... out to places with lower taxes outside the city ... and what are they doing?  Voting for more liberal candidates and policies than the people who already live there ... thus bringing the same liberal polices that led to the conditions they fled in the first place to people who don't want them.

Thanks, libs.  You're all heart.

Or you just see government as the route to the illusion of something for nothing by stealing from your neighbors.

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." - Frederic Bastiat

My Pew IQ?

Wife sent me this quiz today.

Not bad.  Didn't know who the chair of the senate finance comittee was.  Other than that...

Guess not too bad.  No cheating!

Thank You, Veterans

Peace is not the absence of war. Peace is the subjugation of evil. Tyranny, even in the absence of war, is not peace. Few of us in this country have experienced tyranny up to this point, and most of those immigrated here from China, Cuba, Iraq, Iran and other such places where the liberty of its people has not been valued by those in power.

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. Let us never forget the men and women who put themselves in harm's way that we may sleep that peaceable sleep.

Ms. Mao is stepping down

Funny how all these people that "liar" Glenn Beck keeps exposing keep ... um ... "stepping down".

The latest:  Anita Dunn.

Not that they won't still be involved through other "coalitions of power" ... that can "bring about redistributive change".

Tides, perhaps?  Apollo?   Center for American Progress?  Soros has the dough to keep paying these people, no matter what their titles become.

It's not Anita Dunn.  It's not Van Jones.  It's not Yosi Sergant.  Or the women at ACORN.  It's not Mark Lloyd.  Or Cass Sunstein.  It's not any one of them in particular.  It's the whole mindset, the whole world view of the Alinskyites who have taken over the Democratic party.  That's been their goal, and they've done it.   Check this paragraph out:

Out of this [middle] classs have come, with few exceptions, the great world leaders of change of the past centuries.  Moses, Paul of Tarsus, Martin Luther, Robespierre, Georges Danton, Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Nikolai Lenin, Mahatma Gandhi, Fidel Castro, Mao Tse-tung, and others".
                                                             - Saul Alinsky - Rules for Radicals

They're all the same to them, or they want to elevate their real heroes to the level of ours by mentioning them in the same breath.   They do this all the time.  Dunn is not an anomaly.  It's part and parcel to the whole way all of them look at the world.

Did you know Hillary Clinton wrote her dissertation on Saul Alinsky?  Did you know that?  And that it was until recently off-limits to the public?   Even the Clinton wing of the party is infected.

Out! Out!  Foul Marxists!

Out! Out!  Foul Organizers for "Change"!

You know you don't have any good argument...

... when you argue that "the worst thing to do is nothing".   That's not an argument, that, as usual, is an argument against having an argument.  "No matter what I do it'll be better, so just let me do it."  Or, in other words, once again, "Shut Up".

"So I think it is good politics to pass this and to pass it as soon as they can. But I think the most important thing is, it’s the right thing for America. We just simply — the worst thing to do is nothing. The worst thing to do is to keep dragging around a 16.5 percent of G.D.P. health care system that doesn’t sent cover everybody — doesn’t get the right results..."  - Bill Clinton

You mean that wouldn't be worse than spending still more on it  ??? (because government social programs are always over budget and always expand 3 to 50 times their initial intent) ... which would thus make it a still larger percentage of the GDP, and the increase in taxes and mandated fees to pay for it would shrink the GDP, because that's what taxes do, making health care a still larger percentage of our GDP .... (for the math impaired a bigger number -- how much we'd be spending, divided by a smaller number -- the new GDP -- makes a bigger percentage).

In other headlines, I see..."The Fillibuster is Blocking Needed Change"

Needed?  The Right Results?   Who gets to decide these things?

Public "Option"

Morgan uses a .50 caliber nail gun to make this point:

I’d sure like to exchange some ideas with them right about now — find out what in the hell is going on in their head, how it makes sense to call a new offense punishable by hard prison time a “public option.”

RTWT.

Kill the Bill Rally

Has anybody seen any coverage on this anywhere by any of the traditional media?

How much coverage do you think there would have been if it were a pro-bill rally?

I have found some stuff on the net about it.   I've read reports from "thousands" to "at least 10,000" in one  report, 20,000 from a Fox News story, and I've seen outlier ones saying from 20,000 to 45,000.

For the record, I was hoping beyond hope for 5,000 on five days notice.  Sounds like my expectation was exceeded and then some.

So here's some of the stuff I've found.

New York Times (Monday, before the rally)

Heritage Foundation
Gateway Pundit
World Net Daily
Associated Press
Politico
North Jersey
Big Government (Breitbart -- this one covers the arrests at Pelosi's office)
Malkin
Fox NEWS (Greta VanSustren's show)
NewsBusters (on the coverage)

CNN (on Saturday's rally, not the big one)

Of particular note is in the New York Times story, Fox News is referred to as "Fox Television", apparently in keeping with the White House's ... discouraging ... others to treat Fox News as a News organization.  Apparently the NYT has signed on with the White House... no surprise there.  The second thing to note is that the story refers to the 9/12 event as being attended by "thousands" -- technically correct, but it is generally agreed upon that it was at least hundreds of thousands.

"Historic" does not necessarily mean "Good"

Remember, the Holocaust was "historic" as well.

A proud Pelosi compared the passage of the House Health Care Takeover bill to the passage of Social Security and Medicaid.

Well, yes, in fact, it does compare.  There's two programs that are in debt, bankrupt, even -- meaning we're living off of future generations' money.   Since all of these programs are recurring entitlement funds, they all put a drag on the economy forever.  It's more of the same, and adds to our burden.

And this one has dangerous implications for laws controlling our behavior.  Our liberty.  Our persuit of happiness.

I heard from C & Jeffmon after her trip to DC.  There were a ton of people there.  I saw an AP report that said at least 10,000.  Other reports range from 20,000 to 45,000 ... anything over 5,000 I would consider a success with 5 days notice.  Judging from pictures, I'm inclined to buy the 20,000 figure.  However many, it was a lot of people.

If this passes the Senate ... with THAT be The Day America Died?  Or was it Saturday evening's house vote?  Or will we just go ahead and trace it back to last year's election day?

"Naughtbama"

Read in a comment on the London Telegraph site by commenter Dan Collins.

He is an empty sign, a sonorous slogan, a thing of nothing: Naughtbama.

Now that there's poetry. :-)   I love it.

Robert Gibbs Can't Imagine....

.... people holding up Hitler signs a few years ago.   Mary Katherine Ham helps him out.

"Smith"

This morning my wife asked me when I returned from the basement to where she had the news on, "guess what the guy at Ft. Hood said when he opened fire?"

"Praise Jesus?", I asked sarcastically.

ABC's  Diane Sawyer reported through ABC's Martha Raddatz say that the wife of a soldier said "I wish his name had been Smith," so no one would have a reflexive question about that.

Yeah.  Me too.  Because that would've meant his chances of doing it would have been about 99% less.

Denial.  It's not just a river in Egypt.

Anti-Socialization Rally at the Capitol Yesterday

The DC rally yesterday was overshadowed by the Ft. Hood incident, and it's hard to come up with much on it.

I read something about a crowd of 20,000 .... but I haven't corroborated that yet.  Still looking.

But this post over at Gateway Pundit has some good stuff ... pictures, some video.

We'll see what C has to say about it when she gets back.

Arguing With Idiots

There's a contest to promote Glenn Beck's latest book, "Arguing With Idiots".   I bought it.  It's really very good.  Well written, well sourced, interesting, and entertaining.  It is better than I expected.

Anyway, here's my pick for the top reader promo video.




For those not in the know, "Sally Muckenfutch" is, I believe, a fictional name that Glenn came up with to use as a substitute in stories John Edwards told on the campaign trail to pull heartstrings for socialized medicine.   In Glenn's version, she was born without a face.

Ft. Hood

Nidal Malik Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar" before he opened fire.

I'm sorry ... that is significant, or people wouldn't have gone out of their way not to report it.

Here's all I have to say about it.

All military personnel should be required to carry at least a sidearm (loaded) at all times while on duty.

Thatisall.

The Attack of the Attack Ads

I saw an ad on TV this morning smearing our Republican congressman Blaine Lutkemeyer who was elected only last fall.  I was stunned.  I mean, the guy's not up for re-election for another 3 years.

I had to see who paid for it.  It turned out to be "The League of Conservation Voters".  And they were taking him to task for accepting money from "Special Interests" ... but the clear implication was that he's in the pocket of "big oil" as everywhere he walked he left oil footprints, and oil on everyone's hands he shook, and on crying babies he greeted (hey, should the League of Conservation Voters be called to task for exploiting a baby?  I mean, it's clear the baby was distressed, and they must have intentionally distressed it to get the shot they wanted.  What did they do to distress it?  Can the baby sue?  Just sayin').

And this likely boils down to the fact that he's voted against the "Climate Change" Hysteria bills.

The ad said he has a "stain on his record" (at the beginning of the oil-stain filled ad) They didn't say anything specific other than the fact that he got, *gasp*, a whopping $28K from oil interests for his campaign.   Well big fat hairy deal, frankly.

I guess only interests aligned with progressive causes are allowed to donate money to political campaigns.

And of course, the implication is he's beholden to them for the money, rather than them donating to him because they know what his views already are, which means ... huh, just like he represents me, he represents them.

From their website:

Big Oil has launched a multi-million dollar smear campaign to stop clean energy and climate legislation from passing in the U.S. Senate. We need your help to fight back.

 Of course, when Big Oil tries to defend its side of the story, it's a "smear".   But when a White Knight Environmental™ special interest group does it by shady implication, it's just fine.

I hope people are waking up to this kind of crap.

Congress Funds Study on How To Avoid Constituents, Stay in Office

Congress Funds Study on How To Avoid Constituents, Stay in Office

They don't like it when real people wake up and give them a piece of their mind.

"Deepening" split?

Growing.  Worsening.  Deepening.  Increasing.

These are all words used by the media in stories where they are pushing a narrative.   If oppositon to the Iraq war was growing and increasing every day, every time it was brought up during the Bush administration, opposition should've been up to about 260% by the end of his term.

So I see story this morning about the NY-23 race...

Democrat Bill Owens took a surprising victory in a special election Tuesday in Upstate New York, winning a House seat that Republicans had controlled since 1872 and, in the process, potentially deepening a split that emerged within the GOP during the campaign.

A split, you say?   51% of the vote went to someone other than the Democrat.  Of that 51%, 88% went to Hoffmann, and 12% went to Scozafava.

For that split to deepen, the GOP base would have to move farther to the left.   I would call this a surface crack that has improved dramatically since a year ago.

One question I have is how many of the Scozafava votes were cast before she dropped out of the race? If it were a significant percentage of her 6% of the tally, that would show even less of a "split".

I think this race sends a pretty clear message to the GOP.   To win, stop trying to be Democrat Lite™.  Had you not tried, this seat would likely have remained Republican.

Go, "C", Go!

My sister-in-law, who doesn't exactly appear to be your poster-child for originalist conservatism, is on her way to DC to meet Michelle Bachmann on the steps of the Capitol this Thursday at High Noon, then to go in and look her congresscritters in the eye and Just Say No to bigger government.

I almost feel sorry for those critters.  She'll probably disarm them with her Haight-Ashbury style, and they won't know what hit them when she says, "Enough!"  My brother says it's almost as if she's going under cover.  But no.  That's her.   She's an individual.   As am I.

She had called me Sunday to see if I wanted to go.  That's pretty much a whole week of not working, as we'd be driving.  I'm not sure how much politicians realize it means for people with jobs to sacrifice their vacation time or paychecks to go to Washington and tell them to knock it off! At any rate, it was too short-notice for me.

You go, "C"!  Kick butt, take names ... and pictures.  We'll want a report when you get back!

NATO

Ok, I have to post this.

Last night, we were watching some odd movie (well, my wife was and I just came down for the end of it).  And there's a dad talking to his son ... senior in high school, telling him to go and be free.  Gives him $1,000 and the keys to his small plane.

"I'm NATO", he said.

"Huh?"

"Not Attatched To Outcome."

Perfect.  People who want to be seen "doing something".  Consequences?  What the hell are those?

And of course, NATO is U.N. Lite.

iStuff

This started out as a comment on Morgan's post over here. But it got so long, I decided to post here and just link it in the comments there, so other people's comments wouldn't be shoved down to the seventh level of hell... and because it's so much about my experience it belongs here anyway.

In a sociology class in high school accessible through the Way Back machine in my brain ... I was taught a term that describes this phenomenon (the iStuff craze).

Conspicuous Consumption.

I still remember the first time I sat down in front of a MacIntosh. You know, the first PC I ever layed hands on and took a programming class in was an Apple II. It behaved a lot like the first PCs. Green screen, and the BASIC programming language.

Macintoshes came out, but I had little use for them. I used a Wordstar shell called "Easy" to write my papers, but at least as often I wrote them in Xedit on the mainframe because the PC's were very popular and the mainframe geeks who could even consider using Xedit for a word processor were fewer and farther between. Hence, free terminal.

But one day I sat down in front of a Mac in one of the student labs. I was very confused. How do you start a program on this thing, and what is this little dangly thing next to the keyboard? How do you get to a command prompt?  Seriously, I was like Scotty in that Star Trek movie, except nobody talked to computers back then.

Eventually I got the hang of it, though. And it was pretty ingenious once you realized what was going on. Except for the stupid system "bomb". Which happened a LOT. Yeah, they used to crash quite often.

They got better. At the time they couldn't be beat for graphics programs, and I even had a job for a while designing a statewide test for the Education Dept here on campus -- doing the graphics, mainly. I was always the artist in the family.

Not long after that, I got a job at the Learning Center, where I was an office gopher. One of my jobs was to tally up all the tutor evaluaton sheets. It took forever, because I did it with paper and pencil.

So I wrote a program in BASIC on the MacIntosh to do it. Yes, there was actually a BASIC interpreter on the MacIntosh.

When I was hired full-time in the computing department, my MacIntosh experience was the justification they used to the higher-ups to hire me.

But I was also well-versed in PC software, had used RBase and DBase, and knew CMS on the mainframe better than most.

I don't own a MacIntosh, and I never have.

It's not because I think they suck. They don't. They're great. They're also very expensive. And here's the reason we see what we see with MacIntosh owners.

They are the Mercedes, the BMW of the PC world. Yes, they're fine cars, but people buy them as much to impress their friends and family and strangers as anything else. If something goes wrong, "I just take it to the dealer."  And they pay through the nose for them. It makes them feel special. And that, as much as anything else, is what they're being sold. (Kind of like just a little over half the voters in the last presidential election.)

They are also designed for and marketed to people who aren't predisposed to trying to understand how things work in the slightest. Therefore, a complete computer illiterate can get a MacIntosh and do a lot of things that PC users do without really having to learn much.

And that's great.

Now ask yourself, what group of people -- what political herd do people who aren't predisposed to trying to understand how things work, typically belong to? What group of people are strongly attracted to symbolism over achievement? "Expert" advice as a substitute for their own judgement?

Now mind you, I don't buy PCs because they are better. I buy them because I can get twice the computer for the money, and I can open them up and slap cards from a bevvy of manufacturers ... myself ... to expand its capabilities and customize it to my liking. I have no problem with Apple. I have no problem with MacIntosh.

As an aside, most people today wouldn't recall that at first, it was MacIntoshes that had huge problems with viruses, I think because they were easier to write for Macs. But Mac was young and not married to backward compatibility like the PC world has been, and they took care of that problem for the most part, plus the PC world became a much bigger target as IBM PC "clones", as they were called in the day, outstripped Macs by leaps and bounds in the market -- due to price. Economics.

As I recall, the "i" prefix in Apple's line of products referred to "internet". I THINK it was the iBook laptop. But it might have been some desktop as well. It was to make "the internet" easy for people.  (Update: I just remembered.  "iMac")

Which, again, I'm fine with, except it's probably directly responsible for the Huffington Post.

When people found out my job was in computer support ... at parties I would go to, people asked the same question... "What's better, Mac or PC?" And my standard answer was, "It depends. What do you want to do with it, and how much money do you want to spend?" I found that in general people who probably needed a Mac didn't like that answer. They wanted an "expert" opinion on which to validate whatever decision they made.

Of course, now the "i" is practically a trademark symbol for any Apple Product. Their products are shiny, slick, cute, generally work very well... and you pay for that.

For MP3 players, I've generally had the Creative Zen line. Why? I can get twice the player for the money. That's changing some. I think the iPods are being priced more competitively these days, but they're still more expensive, more buck for your bang.

I work with conservatives and liberals alike who have iPhones. My stepson and his girlfriend have iPhones. They, like most of the rest, are liberals. iStuff is just a marker for progressivism... you can't use a single marker (indicator) to judge (I mean, hell, I wear Birkenstoks in the summertime and I listen to the Grateful Dead and all kinds of other late 60's early 70's rock). But when they start to pile up, you can get a pretty good idea. So if Melissa Clothier has an iPhone ... that's great. Have a lot of iFun with it. Of course, I don't text. I don't surf the web on my phone. I don't need "an app for that". At least not for $100 a month per phone. Do I think all that would be cool? Hell yeah.

And here's the paradox. Even though I have nothing against Apple, because iFind Apple fans annoying, if I were to decide to spend money on those services, I would strongly consider going with a competing product. And I suspect I would end up paying less for it.

related (video):  How we got the iPresident.

Some very good questions

File this under "stuff I'd like to remember".

Why is it that if you cross the North Korean border illegally, you get thrown into prison and get 12 years of hard labor.

If you cross the Iranian border while out supposedly leisurely hiking in the hills you get arrested and imprisoned.

But if you cross the U.S. border illegally you get a drivers license, Social Security card and free health care?

Hat tip to Morgan.

NY 23

Well, well!  I was feeling pretty jaded toward the congressional race that everyone is talking about, thinking that the conservative vote would be split and the Democrat would win -- which at least in the short run would be very bad, and the MSM and the Democrats -- or should I say the Democrats through the MSM -- could say "see, the Tea Party Movement" (or "teabaggers" as they disparagingly call us) have no power.

Think about this.  This is New.  Freakin'.  York.   Sure, a relatively conservative district of New York, but then again Hillary Clinton is conservative relative to Barack Obama.

I was talking to my sister in law over the weekend who is going to DC to meet Michelle Bachmann and get a congressional walk-through.... and she told me that Scozafava had dropped out of the race.  I hadn't heard.  But I was then worried that the vote would still be split (people would vote for her anyway) and the Democrat would still win.

And this morning I hear -- Scozafava the "Republican" threw her support behind the Democrat.  And the Conservative Party Candidate Hoffman has a 54%-38% lead in polls this morning. This tells me everything I need to know.

Newt Gingrich, God bless him, was dead wrong.   The party doesn't need to shift left to win, it needs to shift right.  It also says that the Tea Party sentiment is far more broad than even I thought it was.  New York, fer Chrissakes!!!!  Imagine what will happen in 2010 in "flyover" country (we don't call it that here -- it's home, and it's America with a capital "A" and a proud flag we don't burn).  It tells me that people are fed up with the political parties and their persistent expansion of government.  And both parties are running scared.  As they should be.  It is very, very good news indeed.