The Ten O'Clock Scholar

Blogging Light

2009-11-08T22:10:00.002-05:00

Blogging has been light lately and will remain so for a while. Why? Happily, I am just too busy with moving into a new house and working with my fiance on our wedding details.

In the meantime, I suggest keeping up with events by reading the excellent essays at Belmont Club, checking the headlines at Drudge, and finding the interesting tidbits at Instapundit.

And tell your Senators to stop ObamaPelosicare in its tracks, it's our only hope!

Lesser Evil

2009-11-08T21:57:00.003-05:00

Found via Instapundit. Jerry Pournelle opines:

“Unemployment is over 10%. It wasn’t supposed to get that high. TARP was supposed to fix that. . . . If the health care bill passes, it will fundamentally convert these United States into a different kind of popular democracy, which generally means rule by a unionized bureaucracy organized to vote. Once that much of the economy is run by government, economic recovery as many hope for will simply be impossible. Permanent unemployment at 7% or so; median income perhaps 10% higher than it is now, but not much higher; and a long period of stagflation. Reluctance to take on new employees, and great incentive to export jobs. Is this a picture of the future? We will have to see, as Congress debates the health care and carbon tax bills. . . . With Detroit a ruin and manufacturing industries on the ropes, small business is the only possible engine of recovery from what they don’t call a Depression; so the Congress is going to add an 8% tax on employing people. We already have the longest period of increasing unemployment since the Great Depression; I presume we are going for a really big record setting period of increasing unemployment. . . . The incentives are now to the job black market — hire illegal immigrants who don’t have to have health insurance — or to export the job if that can possibly be done.”

All I can say is,

Moral Imbeciles

2009-10-19T00:23:00.004-04:00

Ready to be disgusted?

Need more proof Hollywood is out of touch with reality?

Here is the petition to free poor old Roman Polanski, where we can see who are the moral imbeciles.

It is quite a list of so-called luminaries including several big names.

But first let's dissect the wording of the petition, for its decadence is glorious to behold:

Petition for Roman Polanski

We have learned the astonishing news of Roman Polanski's arrest by the Swiss police on September 26th, upon arrival in Zurich (Switzerland) while on his way to a film festival where he was due to receive an award for his career in filmmaking.

Mon Dieu! What poor taste to arrest a great filmmaker! He should be immune while receiving our awards!

His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978 against the filmmaker, in a case of morals.

You see, it was just a backward, Puritanical American morals charge -- not a real crime, just a case of morals. You know, morals, which are just a matter of opinion.

The "morals charge" these vile morons are speaking of is the drugging and rape of a 13-year-old girl (30 years his junior), in the face of her protests, to which (in spite of whatever "prosecutorial misconduct" his defenders rush to announce) he admitted his guilt, and was convicted. The unsealed details are here.

Filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision. It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him.

Do we laugh or cry at this? International cultural events are off limits to police?

These "people" are dismayed by justice, but not by Polanski's crime.

By their extraterritorial nature, film festivals the world over have always permitted works to be shown and for filmmakers to present them freely and safely, even when certain States opposed this.

The arrest of Roman Polanski in a neutral country, where he assumed he could travel without hindrance, undermines this tradition: it opens the way for actions of which no-one can know the effects.

What, they're diplomats now? The self-importance is unbelievable.

Then they demand his immediate release...or else Franco-American relations will suffer. The international filmmaking community stands by the predatory child rapist!

So do many others. They say the "alleged" victim wants the case dismissed.

Justice doesn't work that way.

It looks like 800-900 names so far, mostly French. Several are starlets and eurotrash directors. Others are big names, supposedly serious people. For example:

Woody Allen - no surprise there
Pedro Almodovar - "acclaimed Spanish filmmaker"
Jean-Jacques Annaud - directed Name of the Rose, Quest for Fire
Jonathan Demme - Silence of the Lambs
Terry Gilliam - Time Bandits, Brazil, etc.
John Landis - Animal House, Blues Brothers, etc.
David Lynch - Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Dune, Eraserhead, etc.
Jeanne Moreau - "greatest actress in the world" (said Orson Welles)
Martin Scorsese - Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, etc.
Tilda Swinton - Oscar-winning actress
Wim Wenders - Buena Vista Social Club, Wings of Desire, etc.

May they be jeered, shamed, and impoverished for their support of evilness.

Vespucci Day

2009-10-14T21:15:00.002-04:00

Monday was Columbus Day. Hurray for the New World!

The news of course trotted out the accounts of Columbus bashing in the schools.

TAMPA, Florida (AP) — Christopher Columbus' stature in U.S. classrooms has declined somewhat through the years, and many districts will not observe the explorer's namesake holiday on Monday.
...
In McDonald, Pennsylvania, 30 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, fourth-grade students at Fort Cherry Elementary put Columbus on trial this year — charging him with misrepresenting the Spanish crown and thievery. They found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison.

How nice.

More examples abound, like this tired complaint:

"You don't hear people using the world 'discovery' anymore like they used to. 'Columbus discovers America.' Because how could he discover America if there were already people living here?"

That complaint only makes sense in a multiculturalist context, because for Western Culture, which is my culture that I am not ashamed to defend as a very good and successful one, he DID discover it.

Or did he?

Amerigo Vespucci (born in Florence in 1452), whose name was given to the American continents by Waldsmuller in 1507, worked in Seville (where he died) in the business house which fitted out Columbus' second expedition. Here he gives an account of the first of his own four voyages. If his claims are accurate he reached the mainland of the Americas shortly before Cabot, and at least 14 months before Columbus.

Interesting. But that's not really the issue.

What's the issue is how we hear everyone complain how horrid the Europeans were to come to the pristine, innocent New World, bringing only disease and death to the noble indigenous peoples who were otherwise living in peace and harmony with Mother Nature.

Or were they?

From Vespucci's letter, we read some interesting observations:

Warfare is used amongst them, which they carry on against people not of their own language, very cruelly, without granting life to any one, except (to reserve him) for greater suffering.
...
and the cause of their wars is not for lust of dominion, nor of extending their frontiers, no for inordinate covetousness, but for some ancient enmity which in by-gone times arose amongst them: and when asked why they made war, they knew not any other reason to give than that they did so to avenge the death of their ancestors, or of their parents:
...
and so are they stirred up by fellow-feeling: they have no judicial system, nor do they punish the ill-doer: nor does the father, nor the mother chastise the children
...
and we saw a village of only thirteen houses where there were four thousand souls: every eight or ten years they change their habitations: and when asked why they did so: (they said it was) because of the soil which, from its filthiness, was already unhealthy and corrupted, and that it bred aches in their bodies, which seemed to us a good reason:
...
When they die, they use divers manners of obsequies, and some they bury with water and victuals at their heads: thinking that they shall have (whereof) to eat: they have not nor do they use ceremonies of torches nor of lamentation. In some other places, they use the most barbarous and inhuman burial, which is that when a suffering or infirm (person) is as it were at the last pass of death, his kinsmen carry him into a large forest, and attach one of those nets, of theirs, in which they sleep, to two trees, and then put him in it, and dance around him for a whole day: and when the night comes on they place at his bolster, water with other victuals, so that he may be able to subsist for four or six days: and then they leave him alone and return to the village: and if the sick man helps himself, and eats, and drinks, and survives, he returns to the village, and his (friends) receive him with ceremony: but few are they who escape: without receiving any further visit they die, and that is their sepulture: and they have many other customs which for prolixity are not related.
...
they eat little flesh except human flesh: for your Magnificence must know that herein they are so inhuman that they outdo every custom (even) of beasts; for they eat all their enemies whom they kill or capture, as well females as males with so much savagery, that (merely) to relate it appears a horrible thing: how much more so to see it, as, infinite times and in many places, it was my hap to see it: and they wondered to hear us say that we did not eat our enemies: and this your Magnificence may take for certain, that their other barbarous customs are such that expression is too weak for the reality:
...
we remained 37 days: and went many times to their villages: where they paid us the greatest honour: and (now) desiring to depart upon our voyage, they made complaint to us how at certain times of the year there came from over the sea to this their land, a race of people very cruel, and enemies of theirs: and (who) by means of treachery or of violence slew many of them, and ate them: and some they made captives, and carried them away to their houses, or country: and how they could scarcely contrive to defend themselves from them, making signs to us that (those) were an island-people and lived out in the sea about a hundred leagues away: and so piteously did they tell us this that we believed them: and we promised to avenge them of so much wrong: and they remained overjoyed herewith:

And they went and had their way with the evildoers, with cannon and lance.

Moral Adolescence and Leftism

2009-09-15T21:01:00.003-04:00

This blogger reveals fascinating research on morality and ideology:

With research in the field of moral psychology as a guide, we may discover that the split between the so-called “liberal” and “conservative” mindsets derives from a paradigm we already understand quite well.

Haidt: Ideology and the Moral Mind

The ideological key described above comes from what may seem an unlikely source: a self-described atheist and liberal academic – moral psychology researcher and U. Va. Associate Professor Jonathan Haidt. Through extensive research, Haidt and his colleagues have characterized notions of morality, and have quantified how these notions are expressed differently across various cultures and ideological groups. That expression, as Haidt’s and others’ research shows, is directed by a complex facet of our psyche which he calls our moral mind.

Professor Haidt explains his motivations -- they are not the typical ones often used to attempt to paint conservatism as a mental disorder:

If Democrats want to understand what makes people vote Republican, they must first understand the full spectrum of American moral concerns. They should then consider whether they can use more of that spectrum themselves. … Unity is not the great need of the hour, it is the eternal struggle of our immigrant nation. The three Durkheimian foundations of ingroup, authority, and purity are powerful tools in that struggle. Until Democrats understand this point, they will be vulnerable to the seductive but false belief that Americans vote for Republicans primarily because they have been duped into doing so.

The work of Haidt's group can be found here. Haidt's thesis in a nutshell is:

In brief, the theory proposes that five innate and universally available psychological systems are the foundations of “intuitive ethics.” Each culture then constructs virtues, narratives, and institutions on top of these foundations, thereby creating the unique moralities we see around the world, and conflicting within nations too. The foundations are:

1) Harm/care, related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. This foundation underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.

2) Fairness/reciprocity, related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. This foundation generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy.

3) Ingroup/loyalty, related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. This foundation underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."

4) Authority/respect, shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. This foundaiton underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.

5) Purity/sanctity, shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. This foundation underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).

Much of our present research involves applying the theory to political "cultures" such as those of liberals and conservatives. The current American culture war, we have found, can be seen as arising from the fact that liberals try to create a morality relying almost exclusively on the Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity foundations; conservatives, especially religious conservatives, use all five foundations, including Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity.

You can take your own test, and contribute to the research, here.

But back to Haidt's observation, here is a chart of the priority placed on the different types of morality by leftists vs. conservatives:

The blogger elucidates:

The first striking aspect is, of course, the wide separation at the liberal end of the spectrum, where the intuitive ethics of Harm and Fairness completely dominate the liberal definition of morality. The second striking aspect is how closely all five ethical foundations are grouped together at the conservative end of the spectrum.

Third – and striking primarily because these are the two areas of ethics most commonly cited by liberals, as indicative of conservative “heartlessness”, “corporate greed”, etc. – is the fact that while conservatives certainly associate Harm and Fairness with morality less strongly than liberals, the difference just isn’t really all that great on the overall scale.

Possibly the most critical aspect of the phenomenon exhibited in the graphic above is that Haidt, et al., see this same distribution in every culture they examine. Clearly, this is not an American or even a Western Culture phenomenon, but one grounded in basic human nature and, thus, driven by the rules of human psychological development.

The Nature of Moral Adolescence

Analyzing the data collected by Haidt, et al., and the amazing consistency he sees across various cultures in this regard, we recognize a number of critical points. First, we see that an individual’s political ideology is directly related to their definition of morality. Meanwhile, a moral mind which values only two of the five intuitive moral foundations has a strong affinity for the liberal notions of “social justice” and “fairness” as expressed in the collectivist ideologies of Marxism and socialism. Furthermore, a moral mind which values all five intuitive ethics in a holistic, comprehensive way is drawn to the conservative tenets of classical liberalism, as expressed in republicanism, individual liberty, right to property and capitalism, for instance.

Most importantly, in light of the first element noted up above, regarding the manner in which our morality evolves as we mature, we see that these two viewpoints – liberal and conservative – are clear expressions of moral adolescence and moral maturity, respectively. While Haidt avoids making this observation, this difference is the great insight his work provides. This is the Rosetta Stone needed to understand the fundamental difference between liberal and conservative views.

The blogger goes on to discuss why, therefore, it's useless to try to reason with or compromise with leftists as if they weren't adolescents -- instead they are to be educated:

In fact, outside the framework of scientific research in the realm of common experience, most conservatives – especially those frustrated with the downward slide our Republic has taken over the past 70-odd years – are likely to see moral adolescence as a perfect explanation for why an intellectually, physically and chronologically mature adult can espouse a political ideology that would only appeal to an adolescent with no life experience and no understanding of history. Furthermore, the appeal to ridicule fallacies, overwhelming and unnecessary use of profanity and tantrum-like behavior exhibited by many adult liberals certainly fits the notion of adolescent behavior.

In truth, for all those reasons and more, there are probably very few politically-aware conservatives who haven’t long ago viewed leftist ideologues as adolescents. Up to now however, there was no clear social science to support this view. That’s changed.

Great discussion there on the breakdown of education at the root of this cultural war -- read it all! Plenty of links, and a video of Haidt speaking on the topic as well.

Keep in mind that "moral adolescence is not Haidt's term; rather, he is interested in getting progressives to avoid groupthink in assuming conservatives are just dumb or misled, but instead have a well-defined different way of thinking. The key to his research is that humans are not born as moral blank slates, but across cultures have these five innate moral concerns, which can be shaped by experience.

And Haidt points out that the apparently "repressive" aspects of authority, ingroup, and purity in the conservative moral compass are there for an important reason -- namely, to maintain civilization -- which is a very tricky thing indeed, the difficulty of which leftists underestimate to the peril of us all. He supports this with social research into how group cooperation quickly disintegrates without some kind of punishment or other motivational mechanism (i.e. the conservative aspects of morality), and then we'd all be living in a Hobbesian chaos.

Interestingly, this other site also seems to have developed the notion of modern liberalism as a form of adolescent immaturity -- or in other words, a lack of understanding of the difficulty in building and maintaining a civilization, because all of its bounty was bestowed upon them semmingly without effort, when in fact it was created with enormous difficulty and is truly a miracle. They did not have to struggle to build it, nor did they vicariously partake in its construction through a proper education of traditional liberal arts -- too many "dead white males", apparently:

Under the creed of modern liberalism, the individual citizen is not called to maturity but is instead invited to begin a second childhood. Like the child at play, he is given, or at least promised, ultimate economic, social and political security without having to assume responsibility for himself. The liberal agenda requires him to remain in an artificial environment--the daycare program of the grandiose state--where he need not become an adult, take responsibility for his own welfare, nor cooperate with others to achieve what the state will give him for nothing.

Grow up and learn something!

The Government Can!

2009-09-07T19:00:00.000-04:00

Sea Levels

2009-09-04T18:14:00.002-04:00

More context for the boondoggle known as climate change.

Rising sea levels a sign of runaway global warming, which will doom us all?

For some perspective, a longer-term chart:

An observer makes these cogent remarks about the graph:

As it happens, the IPCC does present a chart of sea levels and its trend is more obvious than the temperature trend. It shows a steady rise of about 200 millimeters in the last 120 years. That's about eight inches. Is eight inches over 120 years significant or alarming?
...
First, look at the vertical scale. It ranges over about 120 meters (not millimeters), about 400 feet. On the page you see this graph, a change of 200 millimeters (or the change in the last 120 years per the IPCC) would be would be about the width of your eyelash. When the seas were 400 feet lower, people could walk from Russia to Alaska and from France to England.

We engineers have a saying: measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with an axe. That saying is meant to put things in perspective for young engineers who like to calculate things out to the number of digits visible on their calculators.

Global warmists are taking their micrometer, literally, to the last 120 years on this chart, an area that would probably fit in the upper rightmost dot on that chart. And from that, extrapolating that we are all about to die.

I no longer need to squint my eyes to see a one degree per century trend in a cloud of noisy data. The trends are stark. Thus, my epiphany.

If sea levels go along with global temperatures, as the warmists frequently remind us, then this chart makes blatantly obvious that

-- Man has just about nothing to do with global temperatures,
-- Any temperature changes in the last 100 years are insignificant compared to longer term changes,
-- And current trends are most likely just the final flattening out of temperatures after rising from the last ice age.

How can you blame man for sea levels rising when about 99% of that rise since the last ice age occurred before man built the pyramids, much less SUVs? A rise in sea level over the last century should not be surprising; it's been rising for the last 20,000 years.

More inconvenient questions from this author:

I've seen graphs of temperatures, such as the so-called "global" temperature. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, presents such a graph in its "Summary for Policy Makers." While this graph does present to the eyeball a rising trend, one could ask several questions.

The total range of temperatures is within plus or minus half a degree Centigrade. Are we sure we are seeing a true trend and not just randomness?

The total range of time is about 150 years, and the range of time in which an upward trend is apparent is perhaps the last 30 years. Is that a long enough time period to gauge a trend?

On the other hand, looking closely at the years since 1998, the trend seems to have leveled off or even dropped. Is that too short a time to gauge a trend?

Are the thermometers in enough places and the right places? Maybe we get too many readings from North America and too few from Antarctica, for example.

How do you get just one number for each year? How do you take all the temperature readings from all the thermometers and all the days and hours that temperatures were read, and get a single number?

If a computer algorithm is used to come up with the numbers, how sure are you that the algorithm did not add some artificial biases?

How do you compare temperatures over time? Weren't thermometers added, thermometers replaced, and whole new stations included? Are earlier readings comparable with later ones?

How do you know any given temperature reading reflects real climate, and not just what's happening near that temperature station? That is, do parking lots, buildings, air conditioners, etc. have a significant impact on thermometer readings?

Weren't all the thermometers used to make this graph on land? Doesn't that leave out the 75% of the earth's surface that is water?

If the warming trend were stark and obvious, the questions above would be less important. But one degree in a century? I can't feel one degree. I can't find two thermometers that agree that closely. The temperature regularly changes by 20 degrees or so every day where I live. On any given day at any given time, temperatures on the earth differ by more than 100 degrees F. What is signal and what is noise?

Can't Keep Up

2009-09-03T22:19:00.001-04:00

I can't keep up with the insanity -- and it's not just me!

Too many Democratic congressmen behaving like jackasses for bloggers to keep up anymore

Yep.

Read the Bill!

2009-07-15T21:24:00.002-04:00

Just what do these clowns think they're doing?!? Does it disturb anyone that "lawmakers" are voting on bills they haven't read? That aren't even fully written and have blank spaces to be filled in later?

How is this even minimally acceptable?

Lawmakers, read the bills before you vote

The majority leader “found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. ‘I’m laughing because . . . I don’t know how long this bill is going to be, but it’s going to be a very long bill,’ he said.’’

Then came one of those classic Washington gaffes that Michael Kinsley famously defined as “when a politician tells the truth.’’ Hoyer conceded that if lawmakers had to carefully study the bill ahead of time, they would never vote for it. "If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes," he said. The majority leader was declaring, in other words, that it is more important for Congress to pass the bill than to understand it.
...
Congress passed the gigantic, $787 billion “stimulus’’ bill in February - the largest spending bill in history - after having had only 13 hours to master its 1,100 pages. A 300-page amendment was added to Waxman-Markey, the mammoth cap-and-trade energy bill, at 3 a.m. on the day the bill was to be voted on by the House. And that wasn’t the worst of it, as law professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University noted in National Review Online:

“When Waxman-Markey finally hit the floor, there was no actual bill. Not one single copy of the full legislation that would, hours later, be subject to a final vote was available to members of the House. The text made available to some members of Congress still had ‘placeholders’ - blank provisions to be filled in by subsequent language.’’
...
Fewer and shorter laws more carefully thought through would be a vast improvement over today’s massive bills, which are assembled in the dark and enacted in haste. Steny Hoyer chortles at the thought of asking members of Congress to do their job properly. It’s up to voters to wipe the grin off his face.

Places to look, from across the political spectrum, that are pushing for pledges to Read the damn Bills before meddling with our lives!

Let Freedom Ring

Read the Bill

Downsize DC

New Rights! Pay Here!

2009-07-15T20:44:00.002-04:00

Hey, is everyone excited about our new government-provided "right" to
healthcare, for which as a requirement of citizenship we will be "obligated" to
purchase insurance or face stiff penalties?

WASHINGTON – House Democrats on Tuesday rolled out a far-reaching $1.5 trillion plan that for the first time would make health care a right and a responsibility for all Americans, with medical providers, employers and the wealthiest picking up most of the tab.

The federal government would be responsible for ensuring that every person, regardless of income or the state of their health, has access to an affordable insurance plan. Individuals and employers would have new obligations to get coverage, or face hefty penalties.

Never mind the gross abuse of language to equate a man-given "entitlement" to a God-given "Right."

But why stop there? If they can make us buy insurance for our own good, why not make us also buy a "green" Government Motors car and a subscription to the NY Times?

Apparently they have that power now. Corporate fascism, right here in America.

I'd pose questions about whether abortions can now be rationed or regulated, since the motivation is economic rather than moral -- and if not, what makes them different from any other medical procedure -- but I'm sorry, it's time for me to run off to the Two Minutes Hate of Emmanuel Goldstein.

Oops, correction, I mean the 24/7 hate of Sarah Palin.

Hating Sarah Palin

2009-07-12T21:49:00.003-04:00

In a scathing satirical monologue, more like a modern-day political Screwtape Letter, the pseudonymous David Kahane reveals the supposed inner workings of the leftist mind, and how Sarah Palin drives them insane. It would be funnier if it weren't so accurate.

I'd love to post it all, but here is an excerpt -- read the rest!

I Still Hate You, Sarah Palin - The Republicans bring a knife to a gunfight, and lose again
...
Not only were we offended at the sheer effrontery of McCain’s pick: How dare the Republicans proffer this déclassée piece of Wasilla trailer trash whose only claim to fame was that she didn’t exercise her right to choose? Where were her degrees from Smith or Barnard, her internships at PETA, the Brookings Institution, or the Young Pioneers? We were also outraged that the Stupid Party had just nominated a completely unqualified candidate nobody had ever heard of, a first-term governor of Alaska whose previous experience consisted of a small-town mayoralty. As opposed to our guy, Barry Soetoro of Mombasa, Djakarta, and Honolulu, a first-term senator nobody had ever heard of, whose previous experience had been as a state senator (D., Daley Machine) in Illinois. After eight long, illegitimate, lawless years of &*^%BUSH$#@! tyranny, how dare you contest this election?

And so the word went out, from that time and place: Eviscerate Sarah Palin like one of her field-dressed moose. Turn her life upside down. Attack her politics, her background, her educational history. Attack her family. Make fun of her husband, her children. Unleash the noted gynecologist Andrew Sullivan to prove that Palin’s fifth child was really her grandchild. Hit her with everything we have: Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, taking a beer-run break from her quixotic search for Mr. Right to drip venom on Sister Sarah; post-funny comic David Letterman, to joke about her and her daughters on national television; Katie Couric, the anchor nobody watches, to give this Alaskan interloper a taste of life in the big leagues; former New York Times hack Todd “Mr. Dee Dee Myers” Purdum, to act as an instrument of Graydon Carter’s wrath at Vanity Fair. Heck, we even burned her church down. Even after the teleological triumph of The One, the assault had to continue, each blow delivered with our Lefty SneerTM (viz.: Donny Deutsch yesterday on Morning Joe), until Sarah was finished.

You know what? It worked! McCain finally succumbed to his long-standing case of Stockholm Syndrome (“My friends, you have nothing to fear from an Obama presidency”), Tina Fey turned Palin into a see-Russia-from-my-house joke, “conservative” useful idiots like Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker hatched her, and finally Sarah cried No más and walked away. If we could, we’d cut off her head and mount it on a wall at Tammany Hall, except there is no more Tammany Hall unless you count Obama’s Tony Rezko–financed home in Chicago. And it took only eight months — heck, Sarah couldn't even have another kid in the time it took us to destroy her. That’s the Chicago way!
...
This ain’t John McCain’s logrolling senatorial club any more. This is a deadly serious attempt to realize the vision of the 1960s and to fundamentally transform the United States of America. This is the fusion of Communist dogma, high ideals, gangster tactics, and a stunning amount of self-loathing. For the first time in history, the patrician class is deliberately selling its own country down the river just to prove a point: that, yes, we can! This country stinks and we won’t be happy until we’ve forced you to admit it.

In other words, stop thinking of the Democratic Party as merely a political party, because it’s much more than that. We’re not just the party of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition. Not just the party of Aaron Burr, Boss Tweed, Richard J. Croker, Bull Connor, Chris Dodd, Richard Daley, Bill Ayers, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and Emperor Barack Hussein Obama II. Not just the party of Kendall “Agent 202” Myers, the State Department official recruited as a Cuban spy along with his wife during the Carter administration. Rather, think of the Democratic Party as what it really is: a criminal organization masquerading as a political party.

If you had any sense, you would start using our tactics against us. After all, you have a few lawyers on your side. Sue us. File frivolous ethics complaints against all our elected officials until, like Sarah, they go broke from defending themselves. (David Paterson would be a good place to start.) Challenge the constitutionality of BO2’s legion of fill-in-the-blank czars — none of whom have to be confirmed, or even pass a security check. (Come to think of it, neither did Barry.) Let slip your own journalistic dogs of war, assuming you have any, to find Barry’s birth certificate, his college transcripts, whether he applied to Occidental as a foreign student, and on which passport he traveled in 1981 to Pakistan with his friend Wahid Hamid, for starters.

You might also want to think about interviewing New York literary agent Jane Dystel, who a) contacted the totally unknown Obama in the wake of an adulatory New York Times piece in 1990 and b) got him a $125,000 advance for a memoir that c) he couldn’t write, even after a long sojourn in Bali, which d) got the contract canceled, whereupon e) Dystel got him $40,000 from another publisher, following which f) the book finally came out to glowing reviews and g) Obama fired her. Wouldn’t she have an interesting story to tell?

I'm sure.

Reality

2009-05-31T17:51:00.002-04:00

Reality has a way of ventually breaking through pretenses. An interesting flurry of disillusionment with leftism in general and Obama in particular is taking place.

Item: How to Become an Accidental Conservative

In an excerpt from his new book, SPIEGEL editor Jan Fleischhauer describes his childhood in a typical West German liberal family, with parents who wouldn't let him eat oranges because they were grown in countries ruled by dictators, and his coming out as a late conservative.

I am part of a generation in Germany that knows no other reality than the dominance of the left. Everyone was a liberal where I grew up.
...
The way we were supposed to feel about conservatives was obvious. They were either deeply reactionary, because they refused to accept progress, or dangerously narrow-minded. In other words, they were either despicable or pitiful characters.
...
Go to any theater, museum or open-air concert, and you'll quickly realize that ideas beyond the mindscape of the left are unwelcome there. A contemporary play that doesn't critically settle scores with the market economy? Unthinkable. An artist who, until George W. Bush left the White House, could associate anything with America other than Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and the Washington's refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol? Out of the question. Rock concerts against the left? A joke.

The left has won, across the board, and has become the happy medium. When we search for a definition of what left means, we can draw on an impressive array of theories. Leftism is a worldview, as well as a way of explaining the world and how everything is interconnected. Most of all, however, it is a feeling. A person who lives a leftist life is living with the appealing awareness of being in the right, in fact, being right all the time. In Germany, leftists are never truly called upon to justify their views. In fact, their views have become the dominant views, not within the population, which stubbornly adheres to its prejudices, but among those who set the tone and in circles where they prefer to congregate.
...
Members of this social class are critical of the market economy, and yet are unable to specify an alternative. In their view, the current economic crisis is a gift from God, because it provides perfect fodder for all kinds of prejudices and practically eliminates the need for argument. All it takes is to mention words like "Deutsche Bank" or "Wall Street" in any discussion in which someone has dared to voice a cautious objection, and everyone standing around will quickly nod their heads in agreement, causing the troublemaker to withdraw, while mumbling apologies. In secret, however, they hope that this crisis of capitalism will not progress too far, because their own prosperity depends on capitalism and because, for the past 150 years, no one has been able to demonstrate that a comfortable retirement was not [im]possible under good old Karl Marx.

I missed the connection at some point. I don't know when it happened. There wasn't a specific day or incident that turned me off to the left. I cannot even claim that I consciously distanced myself. It just happened. Suddenly I no longer found it amusing to listen to constant jokes about the physiognomy of (former Chancellor Helmut) Kohl. I realized that I was relieved when my sons converted the puppet theater my father-in-law and I had built for them into a parking garage. When the discussion turned to the uselessness of marriage and family, I was the one who was secretly rooting for every married couple, hoping it would last as long as possible. Once, at a party, I even dared to put in a good word for nuclear energy during a conversation about climate change. It immediately put a damper on the evening.
...
I have since learned to go on the offensive with my conservatism. In fact, sometimes I even have the courage to address prejudices head-on. We recently invited a couple we have known for a long time, but with whom we had fallen somewhat out of touch, over to our house. He became a law professor at a university in eastern Germany not too long ago, and she promotes golf courses. The conversation quickly turned to the last Michael Moore film, and our friend suddenly claimed that the film could not be shown throughout the entire Midwest of the United States. He made it sound as if Moore were some French auteur filmmaker who was finally holding up a mirror to the Americans, which they couldn't abide.

I had a pretty clear idea of how the conversation would continue, and I knew that I would be upset with myself afterwards, once again, because I hadn't challenged him decisively enough. "To make it brief, because we'll get to this point anyway," I heard myself saying: "No, I don't believe that the CIA was behind the Sept. 11 attacks, and yes, we liked living in America." He was quiet, we drank our tea, and the two said their goodbyes before long. I was shocked by what I had said, but also a little proud of myself.

And at the American Thinker, we have a Letter of Amends from a Recovering Liberal in Berkeley, by "Robin of Berkeley", a psychotherapist:

Dear friends, family, loved ones, conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, my brother in law, Sam, and my cousin Joe: I am sorry and you were right.

These are not easy words for anyone to utter, much less a leftist from Berkeley, or a recovering leftist, that is. Even though I've been in recovery for 14 months, 2 weeks, and 3 days, leftists are always right in your face, in an I-hate-you-if-you-disagree sort of way. Hence, this letter of amends to all the people I've lectured, scolded, ranted and raved at, and otherwise annoyed during my 30 plus years of "progressive" politics.

Much like the revelation of the editor of Spiegel, Robin of Berkeley's transformation began with a realization that leftism was not interested in reasoned debate, but in social coercion, and that it was logically incoherent:

How did I go from a rabid, sanctimonious liberal whom you steadfastly avoided at family gatherings to a fan of Limbaugh, Hannity, and Savage? Recovery encourages us to share our story, so here's mine:

In February of 2008, I saw a new client, a bright and sensitive young woman who came in looking like she just escaped a war zone. In some ways she had; she had innocently shared with others at her job that she voted for Hillary rather than Obama. Immediately she was being targeted for abuse that put her in fear for not only her job, but her life.

We both suddenly became aware that something had grown really dark in the Democratic Party. I started hearing about many other incidents where loyal Democrats were being physically and emotionally threatened for supporting Hillary. A woman in Berkeley had her front window broken because it displayed a poster of Hillary. Randi Rhodes, an Air America talk show leftist, called Hillary a f______ witch. (Rhodes was recently promoted to a national talk radio show, illustrating another disturbing trend: the deafening silence about what Rush Limbaugh has dubbed the new "thug-ocracy.)

An acquaintance had her car broken into, and the only item stolen was a NoObama bumper sticker. A South Park episode featured an episode where a nuclear weapon was being aimed at Hillary's genitals. My local greeting card store sold very flattering cards about Obama, insulting ones about Hillary, and a Hillary "nutcracker." When I complained, the young male manager literally laughed in my face.

Things went from bad to worse when Sarah Palin entered the scene. When Geraldine Ferraro ran for Vice President, there was no debasement of her character, no sexual threats. But with Palin, a full scale "wilding" ensued that chillingly reminded me of the random sexual attacks on women by gangs of men in New York. She was called every vile name in the book by both male and female liberals.

Actress Sarah Bernhardt hoped a gang of black males would rape her. When Palin's church was torched with children inside, the press was missing in action (somehow I imagine the press would have been all over this if Obama's church were torched). Not only was the misogyny disgusting, but the classism was abhorrent. The Democrats, by ridiculing Palin's voice and her education, were acting like arrogant snobs. The party had changed, I had changed, and the differences looked irreconcilable.

The final straw for me was when a close friend flew into a rage at me when she learned I wasn't supporting Obama. The political became personal when she began impugning my character. Worse yet, she tried to intimidate me into changing my mind by threatening to dump me.

Suddenly a light went on. The peace and love and flower power of the old left was dead and gone (if it even existed to begin with except in my imagination). The Democrats had morphed into a power hungry Thought Police, and I was done with them. My new motto in life: don't PC on me.

Robin of Berkeley follows up with How to Deprogram a Liberal, well worth a read! We see the similar thread of indoctrination:

I wasn't just your garden variety liberal who voted Democrat and that was about it. I was a true believer. A zealot. Like many leftists who had abandoned Judeo-Christian religion, I worshipped at the altar of liberalism. For instance, I never missed watching the Democratic National Convention. I watched every speech, with tissue box handy. (What kind of a freak was I anyway?) The Democratic Party symbolized hope, love, compassion, promise, everything that was good and holy in the world. I gave money, my time, my heart, my soul. I cried with joy when Democrats won; I was distraught when they lost.

I was programmed from birth to be a devout liberal. My dad, a hard working first generation Russian Jew, would lecture me on a regular basis, "The Democrats are the party of the little people. The Republicans are the party of the rich guy." He would also get a little weepy when he watched the DNC (so that must be where I got it from). One of our rare moments of bonding was reading the newspapers together on opposite ends of the couch, interrupting each other with stories about the bad Republicans and the heroic Democrats.

Robin sees the light:

To my disbelief, the more I listened and read, the more these folks made sense. For instance, at first I couldn't understand why so many conservatives expressed concern about morality issues, like gay marriage. Berkeley is Lesbian Central, and I know many good hearted gay people. But the more I learned, the more I started getting the larger picture; that conservatives were not necessarily impugning the character of gay people, but they were alarmed at the breakdown of traditional values. If the basic structure of society goes, e.g., traditional marriage, religion, patriotism, common language, what remains? If everything becomes fluid, what is there to hold onto? Without any moral structure and traditions, a society descends into anarchy and mob rule, as it is clearly doing today.

As I educated myself, I started thinking and rethinking. I'd wake up in the middle of the night with the sudden realization that deeply held beliefs made no sense. Take the anti war stance of the left. Noble and sanctimonious and all that. But how easy it is to sit back and preach peace when you have an army defending you; to rail against the U.S. when you are protected by free speech laws; to demonize Israel, when you've never lived through the murderous pogroms of Tsarist Russia or the Holocaust. How hypocritical to lambast Big Business while you are making money from their stocks in your mutual fund portfolio (that is, until Obama took over). And how ludicrous to admire Chavez, Castro and all things socialist, when the closest experience you've had to standing on a bread line is queuing up for goat cheese/arugula pizza at Whole Foods.

And this love affair with Radical Islam -- what's up with that? I had previously thought of Islam as a quaint, folksy religion. But when I started actually reading about it, especially Dr. Phyllis Chesler's illuminating books and web site, I realized extremist Muslims were advocating some seriously scary stuff, like destroying Israel and the West. I had been oblivious of the horrendous treatment of women: the honor killings, beheadings, genital mutilation. It now seemed like the height of naivety, if not masochism, to embrace with open arms people who want to kill you. While as a liberal I was socialized to believe everyone was good, all cultures were the same, and We Are The World, We Are The Children, I began to understand that evil exists. The emergence of evil always offers warnings signs, and we ignore them at our peril.

In an even juicier item, the despicable far-left "cartoonist" Ted Rall (see this link for some examples of his "wit") is now "disillusioned" with Obama -- not that Rall has become rational and seen the reason behind conservative positions, but that he at least now knows that Obama is a charlatan. Indeed, Rall calls Obama a "monster"!

We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through. …

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now — before he drags us further into the abyss.

Belmont provides more insight to Rall's disillusion:

Then we learn a piece of information which almost explains it all. Mr. Rall has been laid off. Editor and Publisher reports:

“I’ve been laid off,” reads the headline on the blog of cartoonist Ted Rall, president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Rall, an editorial cartoonist for Universal Press Syndicate, has served as editor of acquisitions and development at United Media for the past two years. “My job was finding new talent — comic strip artists, columnists and writers of puzzles — to syndicate to newspapers,” Rall writes on his blog. “Considering the circumstances, I enjoyed remarkable success. … I am proud of what I accomplished.”

Transterrestrial Musings delivers a kick to Rall while he’s down. “It’s actually a sign of how good the economy has been for the last several years that a talentless hack like him could make a living in it.” Meaning that Rall had a job under George W. Bush and he ain’t got one now. Personally I think that the assumption that one was a function of the other is at the core of Rall’s disillusion. Perhaps the phrase “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you,” is a phrase that Mr. Rall misunderstood by taking it at face value. In the coming days, in areas ranging from the economy to foreign affairs to national security, how many people will confess themselves to being as they say, the last to know?

Oh, the schadenfreude...but before we get too deep in it, Belmont Club warns:

But its sobering to realize that every proof that Rall was wrong to support Obama will necessarily be another increment of public pain; job loss, fear or uncertainty. In a way keeping Ted Rall company is like being on a dinosaur island with someone who took you there believing it was a petting zoo. As the rustling in the bushes comes closer and hearing him loudly complain that nobody told him that t-rexes were meat eaters, you want to laugh; indeed it might almost be worth it even if in the end you know that the joke is on you.

Indeed. But otherwise, people would never learn, having things so good.

The blog The Other McCain quips, If Obama's lost Ted Rall, he's lost un-America

It is my firm belief that Reagan's background as an ex-Democrat, a labor union leader, and indeed something of a commie dupe, accounted for his tremendous courage and clarity as a conservative leader. He not only knew what ideas he was opposing, but he had some insight into the sentiments and character of the people he opposed.

I've described the Democratic Party as the Evil Coalition of Liars and Fools. Reagan had been one of those fools, and he possessed a very canny understanding of the liars who had misled him into believing in that progressive mirage.

Progressives are utopians, and it is important to remember that Thomas More coined the word "utopia" from Greek roots, so that the meaning of the word is, "nowhere."

The progressive is marching down the road to nowhere, seeking an objective that does not actually exist and can never exist. The progressive claims to cherish liberty and equality, yet supports a policy agenda that, if fully implemented, would annihilate liberty and render the great bulk of men the servants of a political elite.

Claiming to be humanitarian idealists, progressives in fact have succumbed to a form of malignant narcissism that compels them to pursue their vision -- The Vision of the Anointed, as Thomas Sowell so brilliantly described it -- because it reinforces their presumptions of moral and intellectual superiority.

Even Joe Biden is mocking Obama -- the delivery of this ad-lib quip (see link for video) doesn't sound at all "good natured":

[N]ot content to leave without a jaunty ad lib, Biden noted that heavy winds were gusting through the ceremonies. One of his two teleprompters had toppled over. Alluding to the jokes of Obama’s reliance on the speech-facilitators, Biden added, “What I am going to tell the president when I tell him his teleprompter is broken? What will he do then?”

Multicultural Poison

2009-05-27T22:24:00.002-04:00

Commenters at Belmont Club describe succinctly what is wrong with "multiculturalism":

viktor silo:

A nation is a body of people with common values. From common vales comes common behavior and from that comes a common culture. When a nation of people occupy a common territory we call that territory a country. Under this scenario, nation and country are synonymous.

It is only from a common culture (customs and values) that a form of governance called democracy (the will of the people) can work. From the will of the people will come generally agreed upon and enforcible laws.

Under the “rule of law” no one individual is above the will of the people as enacted in its laws.

The agents of the will of the people make the laws and the judiciary administers said laws.

If the territory devolves from being a single nation (a group of people with common values and occupying a common territory) to a common territory occupied by muliple cultures (value systems), then the laws do not represent the will of the people in the same way as in a common culture.

The laws enacted under a country comprised of multiple cultures do not have the same general authority as those enacted by common culture. These laws tend to be mere expedients to please various political constituencies.

But the people long for a common thread in their governance. So they put their trust in “The Courts.” Within the law, cultural differences are thought to be put aside so that no one culture dominates another capriciously. We are all thought to be equal before the law. Justice is thought to be blind.

Not so, under Obama. He does not even pretend that he wants justice to be blind. He wants the appointees to the court to be very aware of who is standing before them and to make their decisions accordingly.

We are in a process where the judiciary is becoming politicized and it will soon rule the country. The territory will divided into a series of jurisdictions and judges will become de facto oligarchs.

Inevitably, this will lead to a court rationale that the Constitution can be unilaterally amended by the courts.

Obama’s choice of Sonia Sotomayor to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court is an example of how the court can be corrupted. What is breathtaking is that she is a such a nakedly political appointment. She says as much “being a wise latino woman.” I’m sure Obama would agree that she’s not “typically white.”

Beware Obama. Love him or hate him, he is a force to be reckoned with. Let no one say that Obama has not given notice. His intentions are clear. He thinks the Constitution is flawed and he is impatient. Do not underestimate this man.

May 27, 2009 - 4:51 pm

31. Herb:

Viktor has put his finger precisely into the open sore of Multiculturalism. It grew out of the ward politics of the immigration waves of the late 19th Century and was refined by FDR in the 30’s and carried forward by the Dems for the remainder of the 20th Century. The whole “Immigration Reform” and Bilingualism of the last several years is part of the final push to destroy a common American political culture.

A significant attack came in the latter part of the 20th Century in their attacks on the founders (Jefferson’s child by Hennings, Lincolns alleged homosexuality, all the slave holding)

Obama is the point of the spear. The utterly multicultural. That’s why he seems so unlike the rest of us.

Commie Thugs

2009-05-27T21:50:00.003-04:00

Obama closing Chrysler dealerships on the basis of their past political donations?

Data crunching and long list of updates on Dealergate are here.

Dealers closed had given millions to Republicans, but only $200 to Obama.

Lawyer Leonard Bellavia, of Bellavia Gentile & Associates, who represents some of the terminated dealers, said he deposed Chrysler President Jim Press on Tuesday and came away with the impression that Press did not support the plan...

"It became clear to us that Chrysler does not see the wisdom of terminating 25 percent of its dealers," Bellavia said. "It really wasn't Chrysler's decision. They are under enormous pressure from the President's automotive task force."

High sales volume would not save Republican-donating dealerships, but

Large Democrat Donor groups not only remain open in all locations, but have their competition eliminated... and/or can purchase for pennies on the dollar.

Obama administration manipulating the media?

Last Thursday afternoon, for example, the White House invited in journalists, mostly opinion writers, to sell them on the substance of the president’s big speech on Guantanamo and the treatment of detainees.

Unbeknownst to the writers until afterward, they had been divided into two groups, one more centrist with a sprinkling of moderate conservatives, the other more liberal. (I was in the liberal group.) The president made an unscheduled appearance at each briefing. As is his way, he charmed both groups.

The idea, as far as I can determine, was to sell the liberal group on those aspects of Obama’s plan that are a break from George W. Bush’s policies, and to sell the centrist group on the toughness of the president’s approach and the fact that it squares with Bush’s more moderate moves later in his second term…

The smell of "useful idiots" burning in the morning would be pleasant if nor for the fact we are all going down together.

People are already saying:

This country is going to look back on the George W. Bush administration as a golden age of responsibility and integrity.

Utter Failure

2009-05-27T21:40:00.002-04:00

Wretchard of Belmont Club opines grimly:

May 27, 2009 - 7:39 am

For whatever reason, and following from the NYT’s article, it seems unlikely that the current administration or anyone else will do anything but nibble at the edges of the problem. Freeze an asset here, make a gesture there, but really do nothing substantive to stop North Korea. I think the basic problem is that we are now looking at a breakout. The final, in-your-face collapse of the nonproliferation regime. Kim Jong Il has just buried Obama’s dream of “a world without nuclear weapons” on the White House lawn.

This is the fundamental crisis. In a little while, perhaps not very long from now, there will be similar challenges. From Iran certainly; and perhaps Pakistan will start selling to all comers. North Korea may start selling to non-state actors. Why not? If they haven’t stopped him at this point, will they do it when he has Tokyo and Honolulu in the crosshairs? The day of the exclusive nuclear club died yesterday. It had been expiring for a long time, but it finally climbed into the grave and shoveled itself in.

With this turn, we may now be palpably closer to the nuclear car bomb. It’s not there yet, but with North Korea on the loose and the sheriff impotent, the danger of nuclear terrorism is no longer unthinkable. One response will be to let the nonproliferation regime collapse entirely. If the US can no longer be counted on to deter the tyrants of the world, then other nations may feel themselves free to do so. And it’s not Kim that did this: the West did it to itself, by progressively undermining it’s authority until it has reached this nadir. It was Kim’s very insignificance that underlined the totality of the collapse. Because if Barack Obama can’t stop the ludicrous madman from a starveling nation from threatening the world, then the system is well and truly broken.

...

Now whatever anyone thinks of Barack Obama, these are ultimately insults aimed at the United States of America, and indeed at all civilized people. And due to the seriousness of events, there’s no room for gloating, because these maniacs, though ridiculous, can kill. We’re not even into the second hundred days yet and the challenges keep mounting. At some point the West has to pick itself up and act. “Words matter”, but they’re not everything.

The world is changed.

Happy Lenin's Day

2009-04-26T15:46:00.002-04:00

Mass-murderer, terrorist mastermind, and commie-in-chief Vladimir Lenin was born on April 22, 1870.

Did you enjoy celebrating his birthday?

Of course, much as Washington's Birthday is now obfuscated by genericizing its name to President's Day, we now call Lenin's Birthday:

Earth Day.

Indeed, the first celebration of Earth Day, on April 22, 1970 happened to be Lenin's centennial.

A coincidence? Who knows.

But considering Earth Day was the brainchild of democrat Gaylord Nelson, senator from Wisconsin, who explicitly linked anti-Vietnam war activism to the first celebration of Earth Day, it is obvious where his sympathies lay with respect to communism versus capitalism. Indeed, Nelson wrote in Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise:

The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around.

Spoken like a true commie.

In fact, wikipedia reports that from his biography by Bill Christofferson, The Man From Clear Lake, we learn

Asked whether he had purposely chosen Lenin's 100th birthday, Nelson explained that with only 365 days a year and 3.7 billion people in the world, every day was the birthday of ten million living people.

"On any given day, a lot of both good and bad people were born," he said. "A person many consider the world’s first environmentalist, Saint Francis of Assisi, was born on April 22."[13]

Yeah, like I'm buying that as a denial!

As for the saintlike-veneration of Lenin by commie sympathizers, consider:

According to Orlando Figes, Lenin had always been an advocate of “mass terror against enemies of the revolution” and was open about his view that the proletarian state was a system of organized violence against the capitalist establishment.

Figes also claims that the terror, while encouraged by the Bolsheviks, had its roots in a popular anger against the privileged.[65] When Kamenev and Bukharin tried to curb the “excesses” of the Cheka in late 1918, it was Lenin who defended it.[66] In 1921, the Politboro, chaired by Lenin, expanded the Cheka's use of the death penalty.[67]

Lenin remained an advocate of mass terror, according to Richard Pipes. In a letter of 19 March 1922, to Molotov and the members of the Politburo, following an uprising by the clergy in the town of Shuia, Lenin outlined a brutal plan of action against the clergy and their followers, who were defying the government decree to remove church valuables:

“We must (…) put down all resistance with such brutality that they will not forget it for several decades. (…) The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing (…) the better.”[68]

Estimates of the numbers of the clergy killed vary. According to Orlando Figes[69] and The Black Book of Communism[70], 2,691 priests, 1,962 monks and 3,447 nuns were executed as a result of Lenin's aforementioned directives.
...
Yakovlev stated that Lenin was "By every norm of international law, posthumously indictable for crimes against humanity."[73]

Wikipedia also tells us the following predictions were made during the first Earth Day:

Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for the first Earth Day, wrote, "It is already too late to avoid mass starvation." [13]

Senator Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day, stated, "Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct." [13]

Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University, stated, "... by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions.... By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine." [13]

Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, predicted that between 1980 and 1989, 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would starve to death. [13]

Life Magazine wrote, "... by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." [13]

Ecologist Kenneth Watt stated, "The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." [13]

Watt also stated, "By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil." [13]

Nelson, like most environmentally-oriented anti-growth neo-Malthusians, wanted to stop population growth. Oddly, that makes the socialist welfare state unsupportable, as the Ponzi-scheme of Social Security and other wealth confiscation-and-redistribution policies rely on a growing pool of new young workers to pay the growing class of dependents.

The only solution is to encourage, then impose, euthanasia. Watch for it.

Oh wait, we already have euthanasia now being suggested not just for the sick and dying, but for the well and healthy, to join their loved ones at the moment of death; "suicide clinics" in Switzerland -- which have a profit motive in convincing the depressed and mentally ill allow themselves to be murdered -- are doing just that:

A British man and his wife, neither of whom was known to have a terminal illness, died at a Swiss euthanasia clinic Apr. 1 [2003]. Robert Stokes, 59, had epilepsy, while his 53-year-old wife, Jennifer, was diabetic and had other problems. They arrived in Zurich Mar. 31 and died the next day after ingesting barbiturates provided by a doctor from the Dignitas euthanasia group. They became the fourth and fifth Britons to die with the group's help, but are the first who weren't terminally ill.

Indeed, the founder of the Swiss death chambers says, "we never say no"; and why not, death pays according to Swiss law:

The founder of Dignitas – a Zurich, Switzerland, clinic that assists those with illnesses end their lives – says he wants to open a chain of "suicide clinics" in other countries to give everyone, including the mentally ill, the "the choice of a choice."
...
Minelli has helped 450 people commit suicide since founding Dignitas in 1998 – Swiss law permits the act of assisting someone with a "medical indication" to die. The organization charges members – there are 5,500 who pay a modest annual subscription – $3,500 for a planned death, the payment covering all administrative fees and compensation to the "collaborator" who mixes the lethal cocktail of sodium pentobarbital with a glass of water. The client must be able to drink the from the glass on his own – no assistance is given. A deep coma follows after five minutes and death, 20 to 30 minutes later.
...
One Dignitas member who suffers from manic depression is fighting in Switzerland's Supreme Court to have Minelli assist him in his death without the required medical indication or a prescription for the life-ending drugs – an action Dignatas encourages.

"If we lose, I'll take the case to [the European Court of Human Rights]," Minelli said. "I tell members suffering from mental illnesses: I am fighting for your freedom."

"We never say no," he said. "Even those suffering from Alzheimer's will have lucid moments in which they may choose to die once a certain point has been reached, such as when they can no longer recognise their children.

And they scoffed at the slippery-slope arguments surrounding Terri Schiavo and more recently Eluana Englaro...

Minelli, of course, is a ghoul and a demon who needs to be put to death, but the "sustainable population" environmental people must love him.

And One Was Assaulted...Peanut...

2009-04-25T18:17:00.004-04:00

OBAMA: Wait a minute now, I didn't authorize ATTACKS on the Pirates, I authorized A TAX on the pirates!

(received via e-mail)

More Hot Air

2009-04-20T20:14:00.005-04:00

Now according to the Government, Carbon Dioxide, which we exhale everyday and is essential for life, is classified as a "pollutant" to be regulated under the Clean Air Act!

New pollution limits seen for cars, big plants

The Environmental Protection Agency took a big step in that direction, concluding that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are a major hazard to Americans' health.
...
The court case, brought by Massachusetts, focused only on emissions from automobiles. But it is widely assumed that if the EPA must regulate emissions from cars and trucks, it will have no choice but to control similar pollution from power plants and industrial sources.

And why does it necessarily stop there? You now officially breathe out a pollutant.

Everyone who wants to save the planet, stop breathing.

Look at this chart:

Another blogger refers to that chart and points out cogently:

The sharper-eyed among you will notice that the great civilisations of the Ancient World arose and spread during a period of global warming a great deal worse than Al Gore's worst-case-scenario predictions.

Presumably Agamemnon drove everywhere in his 747.

The Goreite priesthood must therefore logically deduce that polar bears sprang out of the Void into existence about the same time Jesus did. Because the earth was too hot for them to survive before then.

And then they did so again after they were all wiped out ~1,000AD.

Persistent little bastards, aren't they?

See also the nice graph here showing the climate-change a larmists are essentially extrapolating a short-term trend and have missed the the real story -- see the little green arrow pointing to the red dot? We're diverging downward already!

THE IPCC’S FAILURE OF PREDICTING THE TEMPERATURE CHANGE DURING THE FIRST DECADE

Syun Akasofu
International Arctic Research Center
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Fairbanks, AK 99775-7340

The global average temperature stopped increasing after 2000 against the IPCC’s prediction of continued rapid increase. It is a plain fact and does not require any pretext. Their failure stems from the fact that the IPCC emphasized the greenhouse effect of CO2 by slighting the natural causes of temperature changes.

The changes of the global average temperature during the last century and the first decade of the present century can mostly be explained by two natural causes, a linear increase which began in about 1800 and the multi-decadal oscillation superposed on the linear increase. There is not much need for introducing the CO2 effect in the temperature changes. The linear increase is the recovery (warming) from the Little Ice Age (LIA), which the earth experienced from about 1400 to 1800.

The halting of the temperature rise during the first decade of the present century can naturally be explained by the fact that the linear increase has been overwhelmed by the superposed multi-decadal oscillation which peaked in about 2000.
...
The high temperatures predicted by the IPCC in 2100 (+2~6°C) are simply an extension of the observed increase from 1975 to 2000, which was caused mainly by the multi-decadal oscillation. The Global Climate Models (GCMs) are programmed to reproduce the observed increase from 1975 to 2000 in terms of the CO2 effect and to extend the reproduced curve to 2100.

It is advised that the IPCC recognize at least the failure of their prediction even during the first decade of the present century; a prediction is supposed to become less accurate for the longer future.

More details from Dr. Akasofu here.

He states:

Some of the weak points in the present IPCC Report are:

--There has recently been so much attention focused on the CO2 effect, the Little Ice age has been forgotten. The recovery rate from the Little Ice Age may be as much as 0.5°C/100 years, comparable to the present warming trend of 0.6°C/100 years. The warming caused by the linear change must be carefully evaluated and subtracted in determining the greenhouse effect.

--There was no critical analysis of the mid-century change; the temperature rose between 1910 and 1940, similar in magnitude and rate to the present rise after 1975. Further, the temperature decreased from 1940 to 1975, in spite of the fact that the release of CO2 increased rapidly. At that time, we had similar debates about imminent “global cooling” (the coming of a new ice age) in the 1970s.

--It is crucial to investigate any difference between the 1910-40 increase and the increase after 1975, since the former is likely to be due to natural causes, rather than the greenhouse effect.

--The most prominent warming (twice the global average) took place in the Arctic, particularly in the continental arctic, during the last half of the 20th century, as stated in the IPCC Report, but it disappeared during the last decade or so. Further, the IPCC models cannot reproduce the prominent continental warming, in spite of the fact that the measured amount of CO2 was considered. This particular warming is likely to be part of multi-decadal oscillations, a natural cause.

--It is also important to know that the temperature has been increasing almost linearly from about 1750, or earlier, to the present, in addition to multi-decadal oscillations, such as the familiar El Niño. These are natural changes.

--Both changes are significant. Until they can be quantitatively more carefully examined and subtracted from the present trend, it is not possible to determine the manmade greenhouse effect. Therefore, there is no firm basis to claim “most” in the IPCC Report.

--The IPCC should have paid more attention to climate change in the Arctic.

--The mid-century (1940-1975) alarm of a coming Ice Age teaches a very important lesson to all of us, including climate researchers. It is not possible to forecast climate change (warming or cooling) in the year 2100 based on a few decades of data alone.

--Further, it is very confusing that some members of the media and some scientific experts blame “global warming” for every “anomalous” weather change, including big snowfalls, droughts, floods, ice storms, and hurricanes. This only confuses the issue.

At the International Arctic Research Center, which was established under the auspices of the “US-Japan Common Agenda” in 1999, our researchers are working on the arctic climate change issues mentioned in the above, in particular, in distinguishing natural changes and the manmade greenhouse effects in the Arctic. The term “most” is very inaccurate.

We must restore respectability – by that I mean scientific rigor - to the basic science of climatology. We must also stop “tabloid” publications in science. Only then, can we make real progress in projecting future temperature change. Although I have been “designated” by the news media as “Alaska’s best known climate change skeptic,” I am a critic, not a skeptic. Science without criticism could go astray.

Common Sense

2009-03-23T01:44:00.002-04:00

Lay down your misplaced global burden!

See also the Tenth Amendment Movement, in which many states are moving to re-assert their sovereign powers under the re-discovered 10th Amendment.

Contrast

2009-03-09T21:32:00.002-04:00

Note how Bush is received like a rockstar by the Marines, versus the "tepid" response noted by the CNN newscaster to Obama:

A difference in setting to be sure, but still the contrast is stark.

Watchmen

2009-03-08T19:37:00.002-04:00

Warning -- Spoiler Alert for The Watchmen movie!

A. O. Scott of the New York Times gave Watchmen the lowest review of the 15 critics cited on the movie's Yahoo page -- a lowly D rating.

Scott complains:

But brutality is not merely part of Mr. Snyder’s repertory of effects; it is more like a cause, a principle, an ideology. And his commitment to violence brings into relief the shallow nihilism that has always lurked beneath the intellectual pretensions of “Watchmen.” The only action that makes sense in this world — the only sure basis for ethics or politics, the only expression of love or loyalty or conviction — is killing. And the dramatic conflict revealed, at long last, in the film’s climactic arguments is between a wholesale, idealistic approach to mass death and one that is more cynical and individualistic.

This idea is sickening but also, finally, unpersuasive, because it is rooted in a view of human behavior that is fundamentally immature, self-pitying and sentimental. Perhaps there is some pleasure to be found in regressing into this belligerent, adolescent state of mind. But maybe it’s better to grow up.

Scott seems turned off by the moral issues raised by the movie -- if we all just "grow up" all this fighting and killing will go away, apparently. Scott also hated even more the movie 300, about the Spartans defending Western civilization in manly-man style.

Sacrifice, honor, killing...how immature.

I find it ironic that the reviewer's comments actually parallel a speech by the villain Adrian Veidt from the Watchmen graphic novel! Here, Veidt believes he has tricked the world into a utopia of international cooperation, saving it from the brink of nuclear war -- the only price was a few million innocent lives (as is typical of left-wing utopian programs):

NITE OWL: Veidt, you Bastard. If you've hurt her, I'll...

VEIDT: Oh Daniel. Daniel, Daniel, Daniel...Please...Do Grow up. My new world demands less obvious heroism, making your schoolboy heroics redundant.

I'm sure Scott would agree with Veidt!
Veidt goes on to babble about humanity being about to "reject the darkness in its heart."

As if!

Rorschach of course will have none of it. He demands to expose the Truth -- that Veidt murdered millions to manufacture a fake external threat against which to unite humanity.

No compromise, even in the face of Armageddon. Evil must be punished. People must be told.

This review, and the movie's moral dichotomy, illustrate well the different mindset between utopian Leftist and individualistic Rightist thought. I struggle to articulate the point, but Brian Doherty of Reason Online nails it:

Rorschach Doesn't Shrug
The Watchmen's hero as Objectivist saint

The moral center of Watchmen, both the original graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and the new, much-discussed movie based on it premiering today, is a curious and prickly masked vigilante who goes by the name Rorschach.
...
Both Rorschach and Watchmen’s villain (who I’ll avoid naming, for slight spoiler protection purposes) are willing to kill in the name of what they think is a higher good. Indeed, given Rorschach’s contempt for what he sees as the moral stink of the Watchmen world, it's easy to imagine that he might have been willing to accept that each and every person killed in the movie’s central scheme might have actually deserved it (as Rand did in a smaller-scale disaster; Atlas Shrugged’s train wreck scene).

But Rorschach would deliver that as a personal, individual judgment—breaking what bones needed to be broken with his own hands—not from a world away with indiscriminate techno-gimmicks and no sense of actual individual guilt. The opposition between Rorschach and the villain is easy to read as that of individual, true justice versus the state’s collectivist version.

This illustrates another subtle mischaracterization in Scott's review -- Rorschach's violence isn't about "mass death" like Veidt's, he is responding to it.

Doherty continues:

Rorschach’s sense of justice may make him hate most of humanity—he brags to himself at the beginning that if mankind begged him to save them, he’d justly say “no.” But by the end he sacrifices himself in the name of avenging the deaths of millions who he doesn’t know. He does it for another reason as well, one of particular holiness to the Objectivist: the truth, the facts of reality. Whether or not the villain’s scheme might result in some “higher good,” it did so at the cost of Faking Reality—a cost no Objectivist will bear. We don’t know if Rorschach’s attempts to set the record straight will do any good—but he’s willing to bear any burden, let the very heavens fall, to stay square with reality.
...
Yet he’s also the only man around who stands up for everyone’s right to be judged individually on the basis of their character and actions, their right not to be a means to someone else’s higher end—no matter what one might think of that end. He knows what it means to be human—that’s why he has to condemn those he kills as having betrayed the essence of man qua man, relegating them to the status of dogs to be put down.

But always, Rorschach judges as an individual mind, and judges individual minds. Rorschach is no handsome Rand hero as she imagined them; but he’s still probably the most vivid and well-thought-out Objectivist hero that Rand didn’t create.

And Veidt's planned utopia is doomed, as Rorschach gets the last laugh...

Other reviewers, however, "get it". At E! Online:

But most likely everyone will get a kick out of Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), a sort of Dirty Harry gone rogue, whose Clint Eastwood rasp could have been really silly but stays just this side of camp. Investigating the murder that kicks off the story—and ultimately uncovering a much larger conspiracy that will determine the fate of the world—he serves as the film's moral compass, in a weird way, even when he's splitting open a guy's head with a meat cleaver.

Especially when splitting open a guy's head with a meat cleaver!

Hey There Cthulhu

2009-03-06T00:04:00.001-05:00

Phn'glui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn
Boy, that's really quite a mouthful, can't quite cram it in my noggin
Not today
I try to say it anyway
I feel my soul begin to fray
Still I await that frabjous day
Cthulhu calay!

Cuteness!

2009-02-27T23:40:00.003-05:00

More cuteness here!

Gun Bans Explained

2009-02-05T21:18:00.003-05:00

One of the many frustrating things about government gun-bans is the seemingly naive imperviousness to the argument that it only disarms the law-abiding citizen, keeping the criminals armed.

It's so obvious -- why wouldn't they see?

What, do they want to give criminals an advantage?

The answer is stunning -- in Chicago's notoriously draconian gun-ban, it turns out that is EXACTLY what was intended!

The aldermen were crooked, and wanted to create a monopoly for the Mob:

Recently,The Justice Department prosecuted The Chicago Mob in a landmark trial. The Chicago Tribune reports:

In one of the biggest strikes in Chicago's history against the mob, federal authorities today began rounding up alleged organized crime figures—including outfit boss Joseph "The Clown" Lombardo—in connection with a string of 18 unsolved murders and one attempted murder dating back to 1970.

In the culmination of what officials dubbed "Operation Family Secrets," a federal racketing indictment unsealed this morning took direct aim at Chicago's three dominant mob chapters: The Grand Avenue crew of Lombardo; the Melrose Park crew of brothers Jimmy and Michael Marcello, and the 26th Street crew of imprisoned mobsters Frank Calabrese Sr. and his brother, Nicholas, who has turned mob informant.

Just whose name came up at the Family Secrets Trial as an unindicted co-conspirator of the massive racketeering enterprise? Chicago Alderman Fred Roti. Alderman Roti was named by the Justice Department on pages 27 and 47 of this civil racketeering indictment as a "high ranking made member" of The Chicago Mob.

Roti was no ordinary member, his job was to hijack Chicago's City Council which he did for 23 years. The Chicago Tribune explained how Alderman Roti ran Chicago's City Council in 1982:

Roti has placed nearly as many city employees on the payroll as the city personnel department,and many of them are his own family members...Roti's name is always called first during council roll calls, and he revels in that privilege. His initial response gives other administration alderman their cue as to what Roti-and, therefore, the mayor-wants. It's often said that roll calls could stop after Roti votes-the outcome is already known. Roti,an affable fellow, controls the Chicago City Council with an iron fist.

What could be more frightening than a "made member" of the Mob hijacking America's third largest city? Alderman Roti decided he wanted to ban guns in Chicago so honest citizens couldn't fight back against Chicago's Mob.

The Roti family's union power goes back to two late organized-crime figures, Ald. Fred B. Roti and Chicago Outfit boss Anthony Accardo, according to union investigators.

Bruno and "Toots" Caruso are nephews of Roti. The three were among 47 men identified by the FBI in 1999 as "made" members of the mob. "Made" mobsters, according to the report, pledge loyalty to the Outfit "and would carry this oath of commitment and silence to the grave."

If you take a oath to a racketeering enterprise you can't be serving the "public interest" of the citizens of Chicago. This means every ordinance that Alderman Roti voted on between 1968 and 1991 has the potential to be part of a racketeering enterprise. Which,of course,includes Chicago's gun ban.

So it's not misguided innocence.

It's not a philosophical difference of opinion.

It's a deliberate criminal enterprise designed to disarm you for the benefit of predators.

There it is, in black and white.

The need to be armed and suspicious of government motives is no crazy conspiracy theory anymore.

And President Obama came out of that very same corrupt Chicago political machine.

Some Amusing Videos

2009-02-01T14:05:00.003-05:00

Happy baby in time-lapsed play -- hilarious:

Extreme basejumping with wingsuits -- thrilling and amazing:

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

Of course, we don't get to see the valley floor, littered with all the experimental wingsuits that didn't quite work...