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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Monday, September 30, 2013

Two Weeks in September

September 30, 2013 By Colin Flaherty
Large scale mob violence is now a regular feature of life in many American cities. Not just places like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Baltimore, Boston and Washington, D.C. But smaller cities as well. Place like Irondequoit, New York. Grandview, Missouri. Peoria. Springfield.  Big or small, they share this: Local media is loathe to report it.
On September 14th in Kansas City, hundreds of black people created mayhem and violence at the Country Club Plaza, part of an upscale shopping district. Mounted police and members of the SWAT team used pepper spray to subdue and disburse the crowd.  Tweeting from the scene, local NBC reporter Garrett Haake said, “Police and teens tell me after a movie got out, a large group came here to avoid the curfew and a fight broke out. Police arrived and sprayed.”  Assaults, robberies, vandalism, broken jaws, property destruction and other mayhem are a “perennial problem” at the Plaza, says one Kansas City TV station......To Read More....

Sex Jihad and Western Disbelief

By Raymond Ibrahim September 30, 2013

The sex jihad is back in the news. Last Thursday, during an address to the National Constituent Assembly, Tunisian Interior Minister Lotfi Bin Jeddo announced that Tunisian girls who had traveled to Syria to perform “sex jihad” had returned after being sexually “swapped between 20, 30, and 100 rebels and they come back bearing the fruit of sexual contacts [from pregnancies to diseases] in the name of sexual jihad and we are silent doing nothing and standing idle.”

Several video interviews with Tunisian females who went to the sex jihad further testify to the veracity of this phenomenon. For example, 19-year-old Lamia, upon returning, confessed how she was made to have sex with countless men—including Pakistanis, Afghanis, Libyans, Tunisians, Iraqis, Saudis, Somalis, and a Yemeni, all in the context of the “sex jihad, and that she and many other women were abused, beaten, and forced to do things “that contradict all sense of human worth.” Now back in Tunisia, Lamia has been to a doctor finding that she is five months pregnant. Both she and her unborn are carrying the aids virus (read her whole story)............

No apologies for Canada’s UN policy

By Terry Glavin, Ottawa Citizen September 25, 2013
“We walk out of meetings because North Korea is in the chair.” Well, there it is. Captured in that one single line is a magnificent, nearly poetic distillation of all the brow-furrowing complaints about the Conservative government’s attitude to the United Nations that the New Democratic Party’s Paul Dewar and a clutch of Chrétien-era diplo-mandarins have been successfully grabbing headlines with across the country all week.
The line comes from Carolyn McAskie, a senior fellow with the Graduate School …..“We’re increasingly denying ourselves a place at the table,” McAskie told reporters at a press conference in Ottawa on Monday. “We walk out of meetings because North Korea is in the chair. The reason you go to these meetings is so that you can engage all 193 (UN member states). You don’t pick your friends and your enemies. They’re all there. You go, you play the game ... if you’re not at the table, you don’t have a voice.”
We walk out of meetings because North Korea is in the chair. Like that’s supposed to be a bad thing?…… Well, wait just a second. The annual gathering of the UN General Assembly in New York is a yearly convention of the world’s most notorious mass murderers, rapists, torturers and war criminals, and we’re supposed to be upset that Canada is not especially popular with these monsters?….To Read More….
My Take – I posted this in order to challenge your sense of morality, and to further explore the concept of universal moral jurisdiction by the U.N. and the International Criminal Court, both gigantic failures. 

Crimes Against Humanity Are Only For Losers!

By Rich Kozlovich

An article titled; "Universal jurisdiction raises as many problems as it solves", was published by Hussein Ibish on September 28, 2013. He points out;

“Universal jurisdiction arises out of the post-Second World War environment, the first real applications of it being trials by the victors against Nazi and Japanese officials, among others. They created, in effect, a set of ex post facto crimes that were morally unimpeachable but raised significant legal problems. The magnitude of the evil, however, properly offset such qualms and new international legal norms were established.”

However, he states just before this;  

“It must also contend with even more knotty moral realities – which are usually ignored in the academic and theoretical conversation on the subject – and multiple examples wherein the greater good may well be served by not pursuing even heinous war criminals for various ethically persuasive reasons.”

In short; war crimes are for losers! Stalin butchered tens of millions of his own people. Why wasn't he tried at Nuremburg? Castro killed as many or more per ratio than even Stalin. Why didn't Britain and Spain attempt to try him at the ICC as hard as they attempted to try Pinochet? Some time back I wrote an article titled; "What Constitutes A Crime Against Humanity?" I think it’s worth republishing now.
__________
Recently I had an interesting conversation with one of my customers who turned out to be an atheist. The conversation started out about how Islam is not a religion of peace (and I don’t care what these idiots in politics say) since their religion requires them not to be moderate. They can kill, rape, steal, lie and do whatever else they like in the name of Islam and its ok. That led to a discussion on the Crusades and the Inquisition. Eventually we came to atheists.

Being an atheist she proclaimed that at least they don’t go around killing people. I looked at her with a smile of incredulity and said…I’m sorry…except for the environmentalists atheists have killed more people than anyone in modern history.

Although under no circumstances should it be construed that I am justifying the atrocities of the Crusades and Inquisition; but Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao were atheists and killed far more than all of those combined, and with the exception of Hitler, those they killed were all their own people. Mao deliberately starved thirty six million to death because he needed cash to buy armament. How did he get it? He sold the food these people needed to survive. He said that this may only be the beginning and far more may have to die for him to attain his goals. So much for the “people’s revolution”!

These people committed some of the greatest crimes against humanity every recorded in history, yet Hitler is mostly singled out for that distinction. Why? Not that he didn’t deserve it mind you; but that is the rub isn’t it? Who decides what constitutes a crime against humanity?

Hitler proved that killing 6 million Jews is a crime against humanity because his henchmen were charged, found guilty, and many were executed for carrying out his orders. Joseph Stalin killed fifty million of his own people with the help of (among a host of others) Leonid Brezhnev, who became the leader of the USSR from 1964 till 1982. Neither of which were smeared with the epithet of ‘mass murderer’ or charged with crimes aginst humanity by any sitting official of any kind anywhere. In point of fact, neither
Nixon, Ford or Jimmy Carter seemed to have any problem at all dealing with this mass murderer.

Then we have the
modern Stalin apologists who claim that no one killed all those millions of people in Russia, and if millions did die; it wasn't Stalin's fault. But if millions did die, and Stalin did order those deaths; it was because he was trying to save millions more from the maniacs within his government. Accordingly, Stalin and Baria, his chief of the secret police, were in reality the heros, not the villians, and that all the evidence to the contrary constitutes a conspiracy of lies.

Walter Duranty even received a Pulitzer Prize for writing articles that claimed that Stalin wasn't killing anyone; and everyone in journalism working in Russia knew his work was nothing but lies. A Pulitzer Prize that the New York Times refuses to return ; a Pulitzer Prize the Pulitzer Prize committee, in spite of the fact that it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Duranty was a fraud,
refuses to revoke.

Mao Tse Tung killed even more people yet Richard Nixon along with Henry Kissinger sat around like old buddies with Mao and his partner in mass murder Chou En-lai. Apparently you have to lose a war to be a mass murderer; perhaps that explains why no one in the environmental movement has ever been charged with any crime against humanity. The media and the political element will only stand up for what is right when the agenda fits their needs or view of reality - facts notwithstanding. Thomas Sowell made a worthwhile observation regarding the media and this mass murderer saying; "The mainstream media never expressed half the outrage about Mao Zedong as they did about Ronald Reagan. Yet, when it came to killing millions of innocent civilians, even Hitler was an amateur compared to Mao."

Then let's not forget Hollywood's favorite
atheist and mass murderer, Fidel Castro. "According to the Cuba Archive Project, the Castro regime – with firing squads, forced-labor camps and drownings at sea – has caused an estimated 102,000 Cuban deaths. Cuba was a nation of 6.5 million people in 1960. Put your calculator to it and you’ll see that—per-capita wise--Castro and Che were close on the heels of their heroes and mentors Stain and Mao." These men slaughter men, children and even pregnant women; and yet prominent people today, who should know better, have this to say;

1.       Viva Fidel! Viva Che! Castro is the most honest and courageous politician I've ever met." Jesse Jackson
2.       Meeting Fidel Castro were the eight most important hours of my life." Steven Spielberg.
3.      "Very selfless and moral. One of the world's wisest men." Oliver Stone
4.      Cuba's Elvis." Dan Rather
5.      “A Dream come true." Supermodel Naomi Campbell
6.      "Socialism works. I think Cuba can prove that." Chevy Chase”.
7.       "Castro is an extraordinary man. He is warm and understanding and seems extremely humane." Gina Lollobrigida

In 1996 when Castro visited NYC he was called the “The Toast of Manhattan” by Time magazine. Newsweek called him “The Hottest Ticket in Manhattan” discussing the social swirl he had caused. Humberto Fontova wrote an article about this called, Happy Thanksgiving! (From Fidel and Che) about how Fidel is embraced by people that should know better. We are aghast of the 9/11 destruction of the Twin Towers, yet Fidel Castro and Che had planned something just as heinous, if not more so, in 1962.

“Cuban agents had targeted Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdales, and Manhattan’s Grand Central Station with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. The holocaust was set for detonation the following week, on the day after Thanksgiving…. the year’s biggest shopping day, for good measure. Thousands of New Yorkers, probably mostly women and children, were to be incinerated and entombed.”

Was he treated as a murderous maniac?

First there was “a luncheon at the Council on Foreign Relations. After holding court there for a rapt David Rockefeller, along with Robert McNamara, Dwayne Andreas, and Random House’s Harold Evans, Castro flashed over to Mort Zuckerman’s Fifth Avenue pad, where a throng of Beltway glitterati, including Mike Wallace, Peter Jennings, Tina Brown, Bernard Shaw, and Barbara Walters, all jostled for a photo op, and stood in line for Castro’s autograph. Diane Sawyer was so overcome in the mass-murderer’s presence that she rushed up, broke into a toothy smile, wrapped her arms around Castro, and smooched him warmly on the cheek.”

“God Bless you, Fidel,” boomed Pastor Calvin Butts of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church while introducing Castro on another New York visit four years later. The People’s Weekly World described Castro’s visit as such: “The audience which included New York Democratic representatives Charles Rangel enthusiastically greeted the Communist leader with a ten minute standing ovation. Chants of ‘FIDEL!-FIDEL! VIVA-FIDEL!’ resounded from the rafters.”

“Then with Congressperson Maxine Waters looking on in rapture, a beaming Charlie Rangel waddled up to the podium beside the terrorist (and racist) Castro and engulfed him in a mighty bear hug. Castro had to catch his breath, but he smiled and returned the rotund senator’s passionate abrazo.”

In March of 2011 Humberto Fontova wrote and article entitled, "Women’s History Month and Castro’s Female Victims" wherein he outlines the media's complete contempt for truth, reality and the poor innocents who suffered at his hands. He states; "When Barbara Walters sat quivering alongside Fidel Castro in 1977 cooing: “Fidel Castro has brought very high literacy and great health-care to his country. His personal magnetism is powerful.” dozens of Cuban suffragettes suffered in torture chambers within walking distance of the hyperventilating Ms. Walters." He went on to say; "I also apologize for singling out Barbara Walters. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell also had praise for the tryant: “Fidel Castro is old-fashioned, courtly–even paternal, a thoroughly fascinating figure!”

And what was Casto's reaction to all of this adoration? “You people are the cream of the crop!” beamed the Stalinist/terrorist to the smiling throng he’d come within a hair of nuking in 1962.

Hear, hear!” chirped the delighted guests, while tinkling their wine glasses in honor of the smirking agent of their near vaporization." There really isn't any cure for stupid! Then again, perhaps it is just that this doesn't fit the media-political paradigm of the day? Either way.....there really isn't any cure for stupid.

What if one person is deliberately murdered for philosophical reasons, is that a crime against humanity? We know for sure that it takes somewhere between one death and six million deaths to constitute a crime against humanity and it must fit the media-political pagadigm of the day. What if tens of millions have been killed as a result of policies pursued by the environmental movement and implemented by governmental authorities? Surely that must be considered a crime against humanity? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media-political paradigm of the day?

For those who continue to say there are provisions which allows for DDT use in emergency situations and that DDT wasn’t banned in many areas of Africa; baloney,
it is all wall paper.

“Yet African states are still put under pressure to avoid using DDT. This year the EU warned of possible agricultural sanctions against Uganda, Kenya and other countries that defiantly use DDT and vow to continue doing so. An EU official warned the Ugandan authorities that if indoor spraying of DDT meant there was ‘a risk of contamination of the food chain’, then while ‘[it] would not automatically lead to a ban of food products…it will mean that that particular consignment cannot be sent to Europe’ (5). ‘The EU should be saying that DDT is safe and poses no threat to EU consumers’, says Innis. ‘Instead they make either direct or oblique threats about possible trade sanctions. What they’re really saying is, “We’ve benefited from DDT and gotten rid of malaria but you people in Africa cannot do the same”.’ 

As for those countries that did ban DDT;

“Almost two decades after the country banned the use of DDT, the Government is under pressure to lift the ban as one of the effective ways of controlling the spread of malaria. At the same time, there is pressure on the Government not to lift the ban on the insecticide, which remains banned in many countries in the world. The pressure comes in the wake of the heads of state conference in Abuja, which passed a resolution to put emphasis on and promote the use of indoor residual spraying to help fight the malaria vector.”
The outside pressure is tremendous on these leaders from the green movement.

We now know that by not using DDT millions have died unnecessarily and yet the greenies, the EU, United Nations authorities and the Environmental Protection Agency continue to stand against its use. It would appear to me that someone is guilty of crimes against humanity. The world court is hot to try people for all sorts of things, but why is it that no one with the authority to charge greenies with these crimes has noticed that a crime against humanity has been committed? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media political-paradigm of the day!

Depending on who you read, the number that have died from malaria alone runs between fifty and one hundred million since 1972. That doesn’t count the many other mosquito borne diseases that are transmitted to an unprotected population. Since all of this is a direct result of greenie activities; is this not a crime against humanity? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media-political paradigm of the day!

They stand against a genetically modified food called
Golden Rice, which would prevent five hundred thousand children from going blind each year in Southeast Asia. In Africa they convinced leaders not to let their starving people eat genetically modified corn because it would cause cancer in their people. Untold numbers died. Thousands died and tens of thousands were sickened in South America when they convinced leaders there to eliminate chlorine in the water supplies because they claimed it caused cancer. Since all of this is a direct result of greenie activities; is this not a crime against humanity? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media-political paradigm of the day!

There are those who arrogantly and smugly scoff at the very idea that anything the green movement does can be considered a crime; and if this was sixty, fifty, forty or even thirty years ago society would have agreed with them. Very few actually knew what was really going on and no one listened. We simply didn't know any better because the media kept the truth from society. But we now have the internet, and that has allowed the evidence of time and science to be made known. We now know that the positions they had taken were not only wrong but evil. Evil because the environmental stands that they have taken have been tested by time; and people are still dying and suffering needlessly because of them, and they know it. Why has no one been charged with crimes aginst humanity? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media-political paradigm of the day!

They know it! At the heart of the environmental movement they believe that humanity is the planet's greatest disease and must be eliminated. Prince Phillip once said that he would like to be reincarnated as a virus for that purpose. Apparently being detached from reality is a requirement to be a Royal and a greenie. For someone to be aware that they are taking a position that they know will kill untold numbers has to be criminal. Yet they continue to insist on standing their ground on all of their
misanthropic postions. How can this not be crimes against humanity? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media -political paradigm of the day!

If you don’t want to call these events crimes against humanity, could we at least agree that this certainly represents depraved indifference? That is a crime also, and yet these are the people deciding what pesticides (if any) should be allowed, if genetically modified foods can be grown and sold, if chlorine and fluoride should be allowed in our water supplies, whether we can use fertilizers and herbicides on our fields, what foods we should eat, whether hydroelectric dams can be built and whether oil should be or will be drilled and where.

Does anyone feel any more confident now? Perhaps we can just get a copy of the New York Times to find out how we should feel.

New Lessons from the “Rescue” and the Failed Stimulus

Mises Daily: Monday, September 30, 2013 by John P. Cochran
The Wall Street Journal printed a major story on the aftermath of the financial crisis and the great recession and the lessons supposedly learned. In “Lessons of the Rescue: A Drama in Five Acts” author David Wessell claims, “[f]ive years after the financial crisis, enough time has passed to identify key moments in the war to save the world economy — and to derive lessons from the scramble.” (emphasis added) Wessell also claimed that “[f]ive years after the near-collapse of the global financial system, Americans could justifiably celebrate victory.” Wessel presents some limited criticism from the mainstream of Fed and Treasury mondustrial policy during the fall 2008“crisis,” 2009’s failed fiscal stimulus, and the nearly continuous rounds of quantitative easing during this period of slow recovery. But Wessel overall presents a picture in which, absent those mondustrial policies, things would have been much worse and the major error in the policies was a matter of them being too little too late.
Wessel appears totally oblivious to the fact that absent the Fed as an enabler with its overly expansionary credit creation policy, first in the 1990s, and then in the mid-2000s, neither the dot-com boom-bust with its unfinished recession, nor the housing bubble, general boom and subsequent bust, which precipitated the financial crisis, would have happened. Roger Garrison sums it up succinctly:….To Read More….

Man dies from seawater bacteria in Volusia Co

Central Florida health officials warn of seawater bacteria after man's death
Salt water was his life, according to the family of Henry "Butch" Konietzky, who died Monday night after he was exposed to bacteria in the Halifax River. "It's just horrifying, it's just totally horrifying," said Debbie Stack, Konietzky's sister-in-law.  Stack said it took just 28 hours for the bacteria to kill Konietzky.  "They tried multiple antibiotics, but nothing was touching it -- nothing even phased it," Stack said.
Konietzky, 59, was walking knee deep in the river on Saturday, setting crab traps.  The next day, he woke up and noticed what looked like a bug bite on his leg.  "They did not take it serious until it started festering and quickly, and then he started feeling ill," said Stack.  Konietzky was in the emergency room by Sunday night. On Monday, he was gone.
Doctors said Konietzky was exposed to Vibrio vulnificus, a bacteria that quickly spread through his body and shut down his kidneys and liver.  Experts said the bacteria lives in warm brackish or seawater.  Two cases of the same illness that killed Konietzky, have been reported in Volusia and Flagler counties in the last month.  Health officials are now urging people to avoid eating raw shellfish and going into the water with open wounds…..To ReadMore….
My Take - So, the greenies want us all to "return to nature, and become one with the biosphere".  If that style of living was so great then why did anyone ever abandon 'all natural' living.  So now, would someone like to explain to me why we want to return to nature?  Nature isn't loving, it isn't hateful, it has no emotions or feelings.  Nature is a biological machine and doesn't care about us in the least.  Furthermore, nature is trying to kill us and has done so forever.  Get over it.  
However, for those who really thinks that going 'back to nature' will create utopia, I encourage them to move to countries where they're already living that way; in poverty, misery, squallor, disease , suffering and early death.  So please feel free to walk your talk.    

UN “scientists”: never mind the data, global warming is real

By: John Hayward 9/27/2013
What’s a fanatic to do when his own data proves the “problem” he’s been using to scam billions of dollars out of terrified people isn’t real? Well, if you’re the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, you hold some sweaty closed-door meetings “transparency” is not a concern for these people – and doctor the report until it’s something you can spin politically.
UN "scientists": never mind the data, global warming is real 
Then you lunge for the cameras and spin away, giving us the astounding spectacle of so-called “scientists” acting like primitive tribal witch doctors.
The Angry Sky Gods have shown you mercy for fifteen years and counting, carbon sinners! But soon the death-fire will rain from the sky, unless you pay tribute!
(Apologies to actual witch doctors, who have much smaller expense accounts than global warming con artists, and put on a much better show.)....To Read More.....

This Week’s Activity

By Rich Kozlovich
Well, this last few months have really been active on Paradigms and Demographics with a whole new and active reader base in mainland China.  They went from a few irregular hits to surging into the top ten all time.  Why?   When that happens there is a subject the readers in a country are interested in, and those article links will be hit accordingly.  But no single subject was scrutinized during this upsurge.  In fact there were weeks where China was the number two country.   This last two weeks has also been surprising.  Indonesia has surged into the top ten for the month and this week was the number two country.  Why?  Same answer….I can’t see a pattern. 
I seem to have developed a large reader base in Bulgaria, and that was caused by their concern about fracking.  Apparently many in Bulgaria were dissatisfied with the government’s resistance to fracking.  That previous year there was a particularly cold winter in Eastern Europe and fuel costs were not only high but unavailable in parts of Eastern Europe, and people froze to death.  Many of those readers continue to visit daily.  With my Slovenian readers it started with solar energy and many of those readers continue to visit.  Finland, Sweden and Japan were strong for a while and those involved solar energy, but their interest peaks and wanes.   
Here is this week’s breakdown for the top ten.  United States, Indonesia, Germany, China, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Canada, Russia and France.  I can’t find a pattern for my Indonesian readers either, but I certainly welcome their interest!
The all time top ten are:
United States, Germany, Russia, France, United Kingdom, Canada, Bulgaria, Ukraine, China and Slovenia.

Logical Fallacy of the Week, Week 66; Wishful Thinking Fallacy!

Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs and making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of by appealing to evidence, rationality, or reality. Studies have consistently shown that holding all else equal, subjects will predict positive outcomes to be more likely than negative outcomes (see valence effect).
On the other hand, some psychologists believe that positive thinking is able to positively influence behavior and so bring about better results. They call it "Pygmalion Effect".
Christopher Booker described wishful thinking in terms of “the fantasy cycle” ... a pattern that recurs in personal lives, in politics, in history – and in storytelling. When we embark on a course of action which is unconsciously driven by wishful thinking, all may seem to go well for a time, in what may be called the “dream stage”. But because this make-believe can never be reconciled with reality, it leads to a “frustration stage” as things start to go wrong, prompting a more determined effort to keep the fantasy in being. As reality presses in, it leads to a “nightmare stage” as everything goes wrong, culminating in an “explosion into reality”, when the fantasy finally falls apart....To Read More.... 
My Take - This is what I call the "Inevitability Factor: When reality reaches it's zenith!"  Think Global Warming activists as you read this. 

Don’t Let This Happen To Your Profession: AMA Culpable In Our Government Healthcare Fiasco

By Austin Hill on Sep 29, 2013
If you think Obamacare is bad for consumers and patients think about this: how would you like to spend between twelve and sixteen years of your life in grueling and expensive academic training, only to have politicians and bureaucrats dictating to you years later how you will practice your craft and how much money you’ll be allowed to earn?
Let’s be clear about medical doctors. Any individual who can genuinely earn the title “M.D.” is worthy of significant respect, and one would hope that an entire association of M.D.’s would be equally as worthy. Unfortunately the American Medical Association – the professional group that has purported to represent physicians in the U.S. for over a century - managed to foolishly get itself caught in the crossfire of the “Obamacare” war over the past few years. Now, MD’s – both those few who remain members of the AMA and the majority of physicians who are not members – as well as the practice of medicine itself, are all set to be big losers in the coming months and years.…..To Read More….

Will New Yorkers Elect a "Democratic Socialist" Mayor?

Diana West | Sep 27, 2013
Will New Yorkers elect a new mayor who dedicated himself to the Sandinistas in the 1980s, honeymooned in Cuba in the 1990s (in violation of a U.S. travel ban), and participated in a New York City Council event honoring Zimbabwe's tyrannous Robert Mugabe in 2002?
Right now, it looks that way. In 1988, Bill de Blasio went to Nicaragua to aid the Marxist, Soviet-supported Sandinistas. He came home, as The New York Times put it, with "a vision of the possibilities of unfettered leftist government." Today, 25 years later, New York City Public Advocate de Blasio, who remains "very proud" of his radical activities (he has since regretted his Mugabe "mistake"), is the front-runner in New York's mayoral race. Recent polls show the Democrat nominee with a whopping 40-point margin over Republican candidate Joe Lohta.
That could change if two things happen: 
1) If New Yorkers actually figure out that they are about to elect the most Marxist mayor in Big Apple history; 
2) If the concept appalls them. Both are Big Ifs......To Read More....

A Very Angry America

By Alan Caruba
I have been trying to remember when there was so much anger between the Democrats and Republicans. Or maybe I should say between liberals and conservatives? Or maybe I should say between the Tea Party and the Republican Party? Or maybe I should say those who find the President of the United States a contemptible liar who has diminished a once great superpower to an object of disrespect?
There is plenty of anger to go around. The mood of the nation is one of anger from one end of the political spectrum to the other.
What is one to make of a White House senior advisor, Dan Pfeiffer, who compared Republicans to arsonists, hostage-takers, and suicide bombers? The Majority Leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, told Republicans that “There’s no need for conversations” telling them to send over a continuing resolution without defunding Obamacare. He has called Tea Party members of the House “anarchists.”
Meanwhile, Republicans who do not want to see the government shut down are labeled “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only). Instead of keeping the spotlight on the Democrats who foisted Obamacare on us, we have been watching the Republican Party tear itself apart.
As the Wall Street Journal columnist, Kimberly Strassel put it, “The tragic reality is that this vote isn't shaping up to be all that perilous for the owners of the law. Nobody is even talking about Democrats. Nobody has put an iota of pressure on them for months. Every camera, every microphone has been trained on the GOP.”
Her colleague, Daniel Henniger, described the fratricide arising from the dispute over defunding Obamacare, saying, “This effort has not, for some time now, been about victory. It has become as RedState’s Erick Erickson put it with his usual eloquences, about shining a light on the ‘cockroaches’ in the GOP. Ted Cruz has spent months berating his own side as ‘appeasers’ who care only about ‘being invited to all the right cocktail parties in town.”
The result has been a GOP in meltdown while the President happily joined in on Friday calling the Tea Party members in Congress—though not by name-- “extremists.”
All this has brought to mind Barry Goldwater’s declaration to the Republican Party when he accepted their nomination to run for President in 1964. “Let me remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” He lost by a landslide to the incumbent, President Lyndon B. Johnson.
I understood what Goldwater meant, but extremism has never played well in American politics. Indeed, the Constitution is constructed so that any form of extremism can be thwarted by the checks and balances that slow any rush toward ill-considered legislation. That, however, did not work when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and imposed Obamacare on everyone.
Those who believe that, even with a Republican majority after the 2014 midterm elections, President Obama would not veto a bill to repeal Obamacare are deluding themselves.
Hating Obama is not enough. Understanding how our republic works is essential.Tea Party came about initially as a protest against Obamacare and then grew has a grassroots political movement that elected a number of those it supported to the House. It is this bloc of votes that Speaker John Boehner has struggled to work with. In the Senate, Tea Party members include Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Tom Coburn, Marco Rubio, and Pat Toomey.
Obama has many faults, but he has proven himself a master manipulator. The current struggle over Obamacare has played into his hands. That is unfortunate because what the GOP must do between now and the 2014 midterm elections is to focus on defeating those Democrats up for election who have supported Obama.
The general anger against Obamacare will gain in momentum, but if the GOP is seen as a bunch of crazies, it will affect the outcome. That’s the way it played out in 1964.
At this writing the possibility of a government shutdown is fifty-fifty. It will be over quickly, but by then the GOP will have dealt itself a disservice.
Until the GOP secures control of the Senate, the House, and the White House Obamacare will remain the law of the land. That is very bad news for all Americans and the future of America. Meanwhile, it is a good idea to remember that many bad laws have been reversed and repealed.
© Alan Caruba, 2013

Are Americans Stupid?

By Alan Caruba

This appeared here and I wish to thank Alan for allowing me to publish his work.  RK
On the conservative side of the political spectrum, we frequently refer to liberals as “low information voters”, a nice way of saying they are stupid. From their point of view, however, we are the stupid ones. And not merely stupid, but evil.
The divide between conservatives and liberals can be seen in the outcomes of the many polls and surveys that are announced on a daily basis. The numbers are depressingly the same; ranging from 40-40% or 50-50%, depending on how many respond that they don’t have an opinion. There is, moreover, what I call the “thirty percent syndrome” of reliable liberal responses no matter what the issue may be. They are the hard core.
There is, however, a critical difference between stupidity and ignorance. All of us are ignorant about something or many things. I surely am. I am in awe of people who can make things or fix things. I appreciate it when someone demonstrates expertise that informs me about a topic.
If you Google “Americans + stupid” you will discover that the subject of whether Americans are stupid generates a significant number of news items and articles. For example, in late February, Reuters reported on a speech Secretary of State John Kerry gave to students when he was visiting Berlin. While discussing America’s virtues, such as tolerance of other points of view, he said, “The reason is, that’s freedom, in America you have a right to be stupid.”
Kerry, who I have always regarded as a dim bulb, inadvertently spoke a truth about the way those currently in high office, the President, his Cabinet members, and staff regard Americans. Those who oppose their policies and legislative agenda are “stupid” and, if the President is to be taken at his word these days, Republicans are “extremists” and other pejoratives. He is a master of the propaganda technique of repeating a lie often enough until it becomes “truth.”
I find it depressing to find that so many of our elected representatives display their ignorance on a daily basis. It is depressing to know that officials appointed to positions of great responsibility in our government see it only has an opportunity to impose some ideology or agenda that is disconnected from science or from any facts that support their machinations.
Let me say that I have long regarded Barack Obama as stupid. His incompetence manifests itself daily. He cannot speak without the assistance of a Tele-Prompter. He has zero experience with the way people make a living or run a business. He has zero experience regarding military affairs and appears to have no knowledge of history. His lack of knowledge about economics has left the nation with the highest debt and deficit in its history, and millions unemployed.
Obama is currently campaigning to make the low information voters believe that Republicans in Congress want to “shut down the government” and this is patently untrue. Speaker of the House, John Boehner, now daily repeats that Republicans in the House do not want to shut down the government, but are addressing whether to defund Obamacare. There’s a difference, but Obama and his minions will repeat and repeat and repeat the lie. In truth, most Republican leaders in Congress know that defunding is a fool’s dream.
The single greatest example of stupidity in America today is the Affordable Care Act—Obamacare—a law that is increasing unemployment, forcing others into part-time, unemployment, and denying physicians the right to practice medicine while stripping patients of their privacy, and will ultimately deny care to some judged ineligible due to age or a previous condition.
On September 17, Jonathan Jacobs, the director of the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics and chairman of the Department of Philosophy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, was published in The Wall Street Journal. “As Education Declines, So Does Civic Culture.”
Noting the “laments from graduates” that emerge with student loan debt and “wondering if their studies have prepared them for jobs and careers” Jacobs expressed the opinion that “A less familiar but even more troubling problem is that their education did not prepare them for responsible civic life.”
That is a very nice way of saying that, by the time many reach college, they are poorly prepared for that level of “higher” education and too often pick up a diploma because colleges and universities these days are frequently just giant sausage factories that exist to process students through while squeezing every dollar out of them. The problem begins, however, in kindergarten with a thoroughly dumbed-down educational system.
Jacobs acknowledges this saying, “The trouble begins before college. Large numbers of high school students have faced so few challenges and demands that they are badly unprepared for college.”
“Even after three or four years of undergraduate education, many students,” said Jacobs, “still cannot recognize reasoning when they encounter it.”
Reasoning is a cognitive function that employs facts and analysis. Much of what passes for political discourse from the White House and Democratic politicians these days is based on emotion no matter what the issue may be; whether it is gun control or invading Syria.
Conservatives are denigrated for actually pointing to the Constitution and suggesting that what is being proposed is forbidden by it. If, however, the intended audience has never read the Constitution and has a warped or inadequate understanding of American history, that kind of demagoguery works.
“A great many graduating students have little idea of what genuine intellectual exploration involves,” said Jacobs. They have passed through all phases of the educational system lacking the capacity to think through, not just the issues of the day, but have failed to acquire the most basic skills. He noted that employers frequently discover that “many college graduates can barely construct a coherent paragraph and many have precious little knowledge of the world—the natural world, the social world, the historical world, or the cultural world.”
These college graduates are often the sons and daughters of a generation of college graduates who likewise were regurgitated into the world with a comparable lack of knowledge and skills.
How many times has Jay Leno gone onto the street to ask people questions about events and personalities, only to demonstrate how abysmally ignorant they are? This kind of street theatre is repeated all the time in YouTube videos. A recent one asked people to sign a petition to have Karl Marx run for office!
“The cost to America of failing to reverse the trend toward trivializing education will be more than just economic,” said Jacobs. “It will be reflected in social friction, coarsened politics, failed and foolish policies, and a steady decline in the concern to do anything to reverse the rot.”
The late comedian, George Carlin, once said, “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.” I thought of that when I heard that Barack Obama had been reelected.
© Alan Caruba, 2013

How to Enrich or Impoverish a Nation

By Selwyn Duke on Sep 28, 2013
The lesson here is this: to minimize the profit motive personally is virtuous; to minimize it in public policy is vice.   What has lifted more people out of poverty, charity or economic freedom? It’s not even close.
Charity is wonderful, and I’ll be the first to say we have an obligation to share our gifts, be they material, intellectual or talent oriented. Yet whether our redistributionist endeavor is charity — and charity is voluntary redistribution — or the less noble, coercive, outsourcing of charity known as government programs, there first must be wealth to redistribute.……Sane people live in the real world, however, where different rules apply. One of them is that since the spiritual/moral motive is the highest reason to serve your fellow man, it is also the rarest.…… profit encourages your fellow man to serve you even if he doesn’t give a darn about you….To Read More….

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Savaged by Incivility

by Franklin D. Leupp, Sr. September 28, 2013
I rarely ever stay up late for any reason; even company. A friend of mine several years ago got so tired of his guests that he went to his bedroom, put on his pajamas and reappeared to say “goodnight” to his guests. Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far. But Tuesday afternoon I wanted to see just what Senator Cruz had up his sleeve and so I began to watch – and listen, critically, I might add, to what he had to say in his attempt to keep the floor of the Senate occupied as long as he could stand. The Senator from Texas impressed me with his knowledge, ability and desire to deliver what should have been a convincing argument for defunding the ACA, Affordable Care Act. He, I thought, gave more reasons than necessary for striking down this monstrosity, not the least of which were the innumerable “exceptions,” seemingly granted to President Obama’s friends and even including Congress. And so I stayed up much of the night to listen to what he had to say.
I remember when President Obama promised that those who had health insurance that they liked could keep it. When the Teamster’s Union president, Mr. Hoffa, found out that the President had lied to them and that this new law was turning out to be a huge job killer to all the hard working men and women who helped him get elected, he wrote a very uncomplimentary letter to  the President venting his anger at their betrayal. Senator Cruz read the letter during his time on the floor. Needless to say, this new law is very unpopular with the Teamsters.....To Read More.......

13 Things About America That Would Make The Founding Fathers Turn Over In Their Graves

John Hawkins | Sep 28, 2013
We're a nation that was founded by principled revolutionaries who took on the super power of their day over almost insignificant taxes they felt Britain had no right to levy. These men were small government fanatics who felt very comfortable with God, guns, and taking care of themselves. The principles those men put in place and the standards they set were what helped turn America into the most successful nation that has ever existed on God's green earth.
In order to be fair, it's worth noting that in some respects, we've done a better job of fulfilling the vision of the Founding Fathers than they were able to accomplish in their lifetimes. We got rid of slavery, became the world's only superpower, and delivered a level of economic prosperity that wasn't even dreamed of when men like Ben Franklin, John Hancock, and George Washington roamed the earth…... For all of our success, many things that Americans unquestioningly accept today would have been considered intolerable to the Founding Fathers.....To Read More.....
 
 

From Benny Peiser's Global Warming Policy Foundation

Green Nightmare Haunts UK Prime Minister David Cameron
Warned He May Lose Elections Over Rising Green Energy Costs

UK Chancellor George Osborne tells the environmental lobby today that Britain should not be “in front of the rest of the world” in tackling climate change. In an interview with The Times, the Chancellor dismissed as a gimmick Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices, but he signalled that he could ease green measures if prices continued to rise. Michael Fallon, the Energy Minister, is understood to be looking at reducing the burden of environmental measures on household bills in the next Conservative manifesto. --Francis Elliott, Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester, (subscription required) The Times, 28 September 2013
On June 8 2008, only five Members of Parliament – Christopher Chope, Philip Davies, Peter Lilley, Andrew Tyrie and Ann Widdecombe (all Conservatives) – voted against the Climate Change Bill. They are worth naming, I think, because “the Five Members” who defied executive fiat in the 1640s have an honoured place in our history. The modern Five Members, four of whom are still MPs, should be honoured too. But all the other Tories – nearly 200 of them – voted for the Bill, led by an enthusiastically green David Cameron. What this means is that energy prices will go on rising for at least a generation. What that means is that the most unavoidable element in any household’s cost of living will make that household poorer each year for the foreseeable future. And what that means is that any incumbent government will find it extremely hard to get re-elected. –Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph, 27 September 2013
By putting energy prices at the heart of the political debate, [Britain's opposition leader Ed] Miliband has raised a series of interconnected issues. [UK chancellor] George Osborne is known to have been increasingly impressed by the former chancellor Lord Lawson’s more sceptical view of the orthodoxy on global warming – an orthodoxy reaffirmed last week by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I ask David Cameron if he, too, has shifted his ground on greenery. “I’m certainly not more Lawsonian. It’s worth looking at what this report this week says – that [there is a] 95 per cent certainty that human activity is altering the climate. I think I said this almost 10 years ago: if someone came to you and said there is a 95 per cent chance that your house might burn down, even if you are in the 5 per cent that doesn’t agree with it, you still take out the insurance, just in case.” --Matthew d’Ancona, The Sunday Telegraph, 29 September 2013
From the geniuses who gave us vanishing Himalayan glaciers and similar jeux d’esprit comes another million-word exercise in Nostradamus-style science to be hung on a very robust nail in the smallest room in the house. The dystopian predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are now awaited by the saner elements of the population with the same keen anticipation as the special edition of a favourite television comedy show on Christmas Day. -- Gerald Warner, The Scotsman on Sunday, 29 September 2013
A leading global warming expert believes the latest UN warning on man-made climate change is a "big gamble" as temperatures have not increased since 1997. Dr Benny Peiser, of Lord Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation, argued today's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is based on flawed models. Dr Peiser does not doubt the climate has changed, but the report has failed to explain why temperatures have not risen since 1997. He said: "The IPCC are gambling that temperatures will rise soon. They ignore the fact that their models have a problem, and they are unable to say when the temperature will start rising again. That is a gamble.” --Owen Bennett, Daily Express, 28 September 2013
The global warming ‘pause’ has now lasted for almost 17 years and shows no sign of ending – despite the unexplained failure of climate scientists’ computer models to predict it. The Mail on Sunday has also learnt that because 2013 has been relatively cool, it is very likely that by the end of this year, world average temperatures will have crashed below the ‘90 per cent probability’ range projected by the models. Last night independent climate scientist Nic Lewis – an accredited IPCC reviewer and co-author of peer-reviewed papers – pointed out that taking start years of 2001, 2002 or 2003 would suggest a cooling trend of 0.02-0.05C per decade, though this would not be statistically significant. --David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 29 September 2013
The IPCC has thrown down the gauntlet. Should the pause continue they are toast. --Judith Curry, head of climate science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Mail on Sunday, 29 September 2013
In the climate debate, which side are you on? Do you think climate change is the most urgent crisis facing mankind requiring almost unlimited spending? Or that it’s all a hoax, dreamt up to justify socialism, and nothing is happening anyway? Because those are the only two options, apparently. I know this from bitter experience. Every time I argue for a lukewarm “third way” — that climate change is real but slow, partly man-made but also susceptible to natural factors, and might be dangerous but more likely will not be — I am attacked from both sides. I get e-mails saying the greenhouse theory is bunk and an ice age is on the way; and others from guardians of the flame calling me a “denier”. --Matt Ridley, ,(subscription required) The Times, 28 September 2013
In the past 16 years, temperatures have not risen at all, that is a fact, and before 1980 we had 30 years of cooling. Since 1950, only 20 years have seen rising temperatures and nobody knows when temperatures will rise again. If climate scientists were honest enough to acknowledge their predictions were for excessive warming they would have to admit that their climate models could be in serious trouble. The reality regarding climate change is that the outlook is much better than people are being led to believe with scary reports like this. We are not facing imminent disaster, temperatures aren't rising as predicted and we have much more time than is claimed by climate alarmists to get our policies right. Unless global temperatures begin to rise again in the next few years it is very likely going to suffer an existential blow to its credibility. --Benny Peiser, Daily Express, 28 September 2013
Everyone likes a consensus. The word itself has only positive connotations, regardless of the conclusions reached. When the consensus is said to be among experts — rather than the more obviously fallible world of politics — then that’s it: opinion is elevated to the status of unchallengeable fact. This is when things can get really dangerous. --Dominic Lawson, ,(subscription required) The Sunday Times, 29 September 2013
It is thanks to the Labour leader Ed Miliband that we are paying dearly for the Climate Change Act - easily the most expensive law ever put through Parliament. Yet the man who sent us down this disastrous path now wants, by law, to stop electricity prices rising, just when our energy companies must spend billions of pounds to bring his mad dream to fruition. –Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 29 September 2013

The Trojan Horse that is Agenda 21

Posted by Mindy Patterson on Sep 28, 2013
One of the most critical of America’s Founding principles is private property. Without our right to private property in the United States, we have nothing. I believe our current administration and their socialistic views seek to destroy private property in America. And like anyone seeking to destroy something precious, the attack will come in a disguise and chip away incrementally. A steady push has already been underway to remove the free market system from America, which rewards success, and to move us toward Socialism, which punishes success, redistributes wealth, and encourages “collective ownership” while promoting the belief of “global dominion.”
The Obama administration will be implementing 68 new regulations per day during the first 90 days in 2013. Many of these onerous regulatory reforms will be directed at small business and agriculture.  How do you destroy agriculture, including the pet industry, in America?
Answer: Regulate them out of business:…….I encourage you to go directly to the UN website to read the Agenda 21 action plan and learn more about it. UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Sustainable Development. Website address: http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/..............Read more at......