"Uncle" Orson hits one out of the Park!

Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite authors of both fiction and essays. His latest "Civilization Watch" column in the Greensboro, NC Rhinoceros Times entitled "How to Produce Stupid Children" should be required reading for all parents who truly love their kids and want them to grow up and be able to think for themselves.

There are too many good quotes to pick one and call it the "money quote". Here's a sample:

"As long as a single child grows up to vote Republican, these educators feel that they have failed."

"The Leftaliban version of American history has clearcut black-and-white good-vs.-evil stories to tell." (I do believe he's created a new word!)

"When they stop teaching American history before 1877, that will mean that everything that has made America a great, exceptional nation that has inspired and, yes, saved the world repeatedly, and is still the inspiration for true reformers in every part of the world – all those things will be ignored."

"But, you see, that "narrative" – the story of Franklin, Paine, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Jackson and Lincoln – is useless to them. It hurts them. It encourages people to think for themselves."

As the InstaProfessor says: "Read the whole thing!"

Too Late to Apologize: A Declaration

Awesome.

New favorite sign

The Day Obama Care Died

Paul Shanklin does it again! I just hope that he's right!

Do They Really Think We're That Stupid?

A friend pointed out this story about Gorebal Warning:

Remember those nasty CFCs and how they were destroying the ozone layer, causing untold harm to the environment? Well, it now turns out - if these clowns are to be believed - that because the entire French nation stopped using aerosol deodorants a decade ago, the hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic is healing nicely.

Read the whole thing, including the now-boilerplate prediction of melting Antarctic ice:

Scientists warn that as the hole closes up in the next few decades, temperatures on the continent could rise by around 3C on average, with melting ice contributing to a global sea-level rise of up to 1.4m.

This is an interesting theory, which neglects a very important fact about Antarctica: With the exception of the areas near the coast (such as the Palmer Peninsula) and the sheets of ice over water (and have therefore already contributed to sea level by virtue of the fact that floating ice displaces exactly the volume of water as the same ice melted would occupy), the temperatures in Antarctica are substantially below freezing. A rise in temperatures from -12°C to -9°C would melt nothing. Only in the marginal areas on land where the temperature now goes above -3°C would any melting happen at all.

At this point, it should be obvious to the casual observer that the AGW advocates are flinging poop at random and hoping some of it sticks.

A Proclamation

It was appropriate then, it's appropriate now.

General Thanksgiving
By the PRESIDENT of the United States Of America
A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houſes of Congress have, by their joint committee, requeſted me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to eſtabliſh a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and aſſign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of theſe States to the ſervice of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our ſincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the ſignal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpoſitions of His providence in the courſe and concluſion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have ſince enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to eſtablish Conſtitutions of government for our vafety and happineſs, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are bleſſed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffuſing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleaſed to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in moſt humbly offering our prayers and ſupplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beſeech Him to pardon our national and other tranſgreſſions;-- to enable us all, whether in publick or private ſtations, to perform our ſeveral and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a bleſſing to all the people by conſtantly being a Government of wiſe, juſt, and conſtitutional laws, diſcreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all ſovereigns and nations (especially ſuch as have shewn kindneſs unto us); and to bleſs them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increaſe of ſcience among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind ſuch a degree of temporal proſperity as he alone knows to be beſt.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand ſeven hundred and eighty-nine.

(signed) G. Washington

[Ed note: Whoever digitized this into characters must have mistaken the "long s" form "ſ" ("ſ" above, where it is not italicized), common in English writing back then, for the lower-case "f" it so closely resembles. The ſ form was the norm, with "short s" reserved for the ends of words. Some writers would also use the latter form even in the middle of a word for the second letter of a double-s: "ſs". This has more than a passing resemblance to the ß in modern German that is rendered "ss" in Switzerland, or where the former ligature is unavailable. As a Language Martinet, I study such things, and have corrected the mistranscription accordingly. Happy Thankſgiving, everyone!]

I Want a Name!

In case you missed it.
Three Navy SEALs have requested courts-martial for apprehending one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq.
Yep. You read that right.

Ahmed Hashim Abed...(the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004)... whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

And someone...
somewhere in the chain of command...
Made the decision to proffer charges.

I want that person's name.

Update: BTW, that link is to (shudder) Fox News. Because a search at "The Newspaper of Record" (AKA, "All the News that's fit to Ignore") revealed...

Gorebal Warming: Mmm, Fudge!

Eric Raymond is one of the main advocates for Open Source software. As such, he makes intellectual arguments in favor of open processes that allow anyone to examine how a system works, and point out errors. This was once the way that science worked, but for some reason, the "researchers" into Gorebal Warming have fought against releasing their primary data and the source code of the software they used to produce things like the infamous "hockey stick" graph.

Unless you've been living under a rock (or only getting your news from the MainScream Media), you're aware that someone either hacked or leaked megabytes of files from the Climate Research Unit. Eric has been perusing them, and found this interesting excerpt (emphasis mine):

;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,’Oooops!’
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)

Eric thinks calling it a mere "smoking gun" is a massive understatement: "it’s a siege cannon with the barrel still hot." Well, let me add that they didn't just cook the data; they marinated it for a week, put on a rub, laid it in the smoker for a day and a half, sliced it up, wrapped it in bacon, dipped it in batter, rolled it around in the flour, and deep fried it.

$547,726.00

I thought I'd to check out the Texas page on recovery.gov.
Notice anything?



The difference between "Total" in the top section and "Total Funds Awarded" in the bottom section is five hundred forty-seven thousand seven hundred twenty-six dollars.

You know what they say, "A half a million here and a half a million there, and pretty soon you're talking about some REAL money."

If you hover over the "Total", you get this helpful message.

I'll re-type it here, for sheer incredulity's sake. "Sum of funds awarded to primes (less awards to their subs) and sub-recipient awards from primes at that location."
Well, hell. Isn't that obvious?
Huh?
If you hover over "Total Funds Awarded", you get this helpful message.


"The sum of funds awarded by a Federal Agency to a prime recipient at that location."

So
If I'm a sub-prime I get 500K? Isn't that what got us into this current economic mess in the first place? Where do I sign up?

Happy Fact #1: $10,679,918,184(total funds awarded) divided by 19,572 (jobs created or "saved") = $545,673.00 per job. Where do I sign up?

Happy Fact #2: $1,826,235,380(total funds received) divided by 19,572 = $93,308 per job. Where do I sign up?

Happy fact #3: recovery.gov has just been awarded another Eighteen Million Dollars to fix a web site that has already spent 12-14 million dollars.

Can you imagine the web site we could create with 30 million dollars?

It might even be able to compute basic math! Or maybe, just maybe, be able to screen for congressional districts that don't exist.

Another Failed Presidency

A friend of mine sent this to me today in an email. You can, and should read the whole thing at American Thinker

Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.
...
In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012: "For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not offended, you just didn't give me enough time; if only I'd had a second term, I could have offended you too."

Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state--staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year. With a new Congress, there's always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.

Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them. The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.

[Ed. note]: Trimmed down to excerpts and linked back to original. The current version should fall well within fair use exemption to copyright law. Sorry about that, American Thinker.

This Cartoon seemed far fetched in 1948....

This cartoon is timeless and is just as true today as it was when made at Harding Colege in 1948!

After viewing this cartoon, it was shocking to notice how close it is to what is happening today. Its been over 60 years and that "ISM" problems are still with us today, much more so than in 1948. Remember too that in 1948, the ISM's didn't have as much influence with their mass mind control as they have gained since then, and ISM has been replaced with nice sounding names like "social justice", "going green" (not "red" as previously known), etc. Don't be fooled,... it is still the same old ISM from the same source.

By the way, does that snake oil salesman look familiar to you?

Remedy

Our Cuss-O-Meter is too low.
WARNING! Adult content below.

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, motherfucker, cocksucker, and tits.
[Click on the title above, or date stamp below, to see the full article.]

Why?

""Obviously, we're all guessing, but it's reasonable to believe that he will be convicted and sentenced to death," said retired Navy lawyer Philip Cave, now a military crimes defense attorney.

Cave estimated that Hasan, 39, would spend between five and 15 years in the military's court martial system."

If he isn't insane, and he can't point to a lookalike that he took the hit for. There is NO reason this guy shouldn't be in front of a firing squad inside of 90 days.

This is the difference between us and them.

From an email going around the web:


TO MY CONSERVATIVE PALS and Liberal friends that are somewhat conservative

This pretty much describes our Country today.

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one.
If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.
If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy.
A liberal wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good.

If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a black man or Hispanic are conservative, they see themselves as independently successful.
Their liberal counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government protection.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down.

If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church.
A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!)

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

If a conservative slips and falls in a store, he gets up, laughs and is embarrassed.
If a liberal slips and falls, he grabs his neck, moans like he's in labor and then sues.

If a conservative reads this, he'll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.
A liberal will delete it because he's "offended".

Cults of Personality: Romania, Lebanon,...

A Romanian who lived through the Ceauşescu cult of personality, and now lives in Lebanon, warns that Nasrallah's Hisb'allah party is pretty much the same thing:

I thought the danger is there, in the cult of personality, lingering in the secrecy, in the spying, in the songs indoctrinating people.... If it were a state, Hezbollah would operate a dictatorship.

Read the whole thing, and see if you can spot emerging examples in Western countries, too.

This just in...

"Weekend Update" is not a real newscast.
Who knew?

via LabRat

ACORN:NOLA Embezzlement Total Grows

According to a story at nola.com the embezzlement covered up by ACORN was a lot more than previously reported:

Louisiana's attorney general has broadened the scope of an investigation of ACORN to include a possible embezzlement of $5 million a decade ago within the community organization, five times more than previously reported.

ACORN Chief Executive Officer Bertha Lewis said the new reported amount is "completely false."

Well, Bertha, we've established what you are; now we're just quibbling over the price.


And as long as we're quibbling, I'll put on my language martinet hat a moment. Can people stop using phrases like "five times more"? If $1,000,000 was previously reported, "five times more" would be "$5,000,000 more" than that $1,000,000 for a total of $6,000,000. Even if you don't read it that way, can we agree the "____ times more" construction is at best ambiguous? Just say "five times as much", OK. (And don't get me started on "____ times less"; suffice to say that times and less don't make much sense together).

The Problem With "Experts"

Over at Watts Up With That, one of the comments was so good that Anthony decided it deserved to be an article in its own right. This is something I find the Dextrosphere and talk radio do very well: We don't just dispense the news ex cathedra as the MainScream Media does. They seem so protective of their lofty status as gatekeepers that they won't allow anyone else to steal the spotlight from them.

Although he puts on a show of being a bombastic egomaniac, Rush Limbaugh knows when to shut up and let a caller carry the show. So does Neal Boortz. Back in the old days of ejectejecteject.com, Bill Whittle called one of my comments "profound", setting in motion a chain of events that ultimately led to the creation of this site. Neither Anthony, Rush, Neal, or Bill bothered to check the resumés of "Caleb Shaw", "Susan in Glendale", "Vick the Ranger", or "The Monster". It wasn't important who we were. What mattered was what we had to say.

Contrast this with the Gorebots who make the classic appeal to authority ("The science is in; the IPCC report says AGW is for real, and anyone who disagrees is a denier"); the technocrats who insisted that out of 300 million Americans, the only person who could fix our troubled financial markets was Timothy "Turbo Tax" Geithner; or the identity-politics crowd who insisted that "a wise Latina" would make a better Justice, or a Halfrican American who went to Indonesian madrassas could, simply by being who he is and assuming the office of POTUS, heal all our ills both foreign and domestic.

Over the course of my life I've learned from many people. Of course I've gained much from exposure to the writings and speeches of great intellects, but I've known people who were stoners of Jeff Spicoli's ilk, and people classified as mentally retarded, who have uttered nuggets of wisdom that have served me well. Smart people think that they are so much smarter than the common man that they are justified in ruling by force over them. Truly wise people recognize that no matter how smart they may be, they don't know everything, and that generally, everyone knows the most about his own life.

About that "Hockey Stick"....

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.


Steve McIntire at Climate Audit has peeled back the obfuscation of the infamous "Hockey Stick" graph. In the latest installment, McIntire lays out the evidence leading to the logical conclusion that the data sample, from which the Hockey Sick graph was produced, were cherry-picked to produce precisely that effect, and when the rest of the data are included, the Hockey Stick disappears entirely.

The "scientists" who produced the Hockey Stick have, in the immortal words of Ricky Ricardo "some 'splainin' to do".

RIP: William Safire

William Safire has died at the age of 79. In his long career as a columnist, he wrote two different kinds of columns, both of which influenced me greatly. Safire was both a small-l libertarian and a language maven (which is not quite the same thing as a martinet). He wasn't afraid to call out Republicans when he thought they deserved it, even if I didn't. And on those rare occasions when we disagreed, he forced me to dig deep and check my premises, for his arguments were always well thought out.

His "On Language" columns, in particular, may have helped fuel my appetite for understanding how words and their meanings have evolved. I have long believed that sloppy language breeds sloppy thinking. When we have a President who can, with a straight face, claim that a reporter looking up the definition of "tax" in Merriam-Webster's dictionary is doing so in order to stretch it, we will sorely miss a lover of language like Safire.

Godspeed, Bill.