Republican Jesus

Liberal propagandist Stephen Colbert had this to say:

Here's the central thesis that Colbert, representing all liberals, is putting forth: That Conservatives are wrong to seek to limit the size and scope of Government. That efforts to reform social spending are anti-Christian. That reducing any spending by Democrats is anti-Christian. That by opposing Democrats we are violating the teachings of Jesus!

Democrats talk a lot about Jesus. A common meme among them is "Republican Jesus," the notion that Conservative political values are hypocritically opposed to the values and teachings of the very religion to which Conservatives overwhelmingly belong.  Here's an example:

Well, anyone familiar with the actual teachings of Jesus knows about things like the Parable Of the Talents in which Jesus discusses a rich man who entrusts his wealth to his servants. The good servants (according to Jesus) invested their master's money and earned a profit. The bad servant buried the money in a hole and thus did not "increase it." None of the servants were stupid enough to give the money to Liberals to spend as they saw fit. Rather, Jesus directly advocated investing money to increase wealth.

Wait a second, liberals scream, what about this?

The Prosperity Gospel

The so-called prosperity gospel has a bad rap, partly for good reasons and partly for bad reasons.  It enabled a large part of the Christian community in the Western world yet another reason to look down on charismatic Christianity, and allowed large camps of both fundamentalist and liberal Christianity to have a common enemy within "Christendom."  The prosperity gospel grew out of an apparently controversial belief that God wishes his children to "prosper and be in health."  Fundamentalist and liberal Christianity thus formed an even bigger tent with atheists and humanists who believe that if there is a God he was only interested in healing sickness while Jesus was walking the earth as a means of advertising for the "good news."

Even free market advocate Jay W. Richards gets in a dig on the down-and-out "prosperity gospel":

Except for preachers of the misguided “prosperity gospel,” however, many of us still worry about capitalism. Some of the problems result from the word itself, which can conjure up images of greedy and cackling moneychangers.

However, in the wake of a time where many Christians were much more focused on dreams of comfortable living than they were on blessing others with those resources, even many who still believe that God wishes people to be healthy will now shy away from the idea that God wants people blessed with resources.

Gigantic Lies

Obama's Not the Only One Telling Whoppers

In 2011 the hyper-liberal Senator Bernie Sanders had this to say on the floor of the Senate:

First of all, as countless others have pointed out, this doofus doesn't seem to know the difference between a deficit (the amount by which spending is greater than revenue in the current year) and debt (the total amount borrowed as the result of past deficits).

Secondly, I should point out, this is the guy who's an "independent" because the Democrats aren't far enough to the left for his taste.

Although his lack of knowledge between deficit and debt indicates his current mental status, he's apparently not too senile to lie like a Democrat (although his Alzheimer's does prevent him from telling lies that are anywhere near to believable.)

Let's start off with the notion that "the deficit was caused by two wars- unpaid for." Let's assume he's talking about Iraq and Afghanistan. Let's further speculate that he means "debt" rather than deficit.  Because if he truly meant "deficit" in the year 2011, a time in which President Obama wasn't even bothering to submit budgets and the Democrats held the Senate quite strongly, then his speech was really an accusation against them.

Two wars unpaid for?  No...

• FY2003 Supplemental: Operation Iraqi Freedom: Passed April 2003; Total $78.5 billion, $54.4 billion Iraq War
• FY2004 Supplemental: Iraq and Afghanistan Ongoing Operations/Reconstruction: Passed November 2003; Total $87.5 billion, $70.6 billion Iraq War
• FY2004 DoD Budget Amendment: $25 billion Emergency Reserve Fund (Iraq Freedom Fund): Passed July 2004, Total $25 billion, $21.5 billion (estimated) Iraq War
• FY2005 Emergency Supplemental: Operations in the War on Terror; Activities in Afghanistan; Tsunami Relief: Passed April 2005, Total $82 billion, $58 billion (estimated) Iraq War
• FY2006 Department of Defense appropriations: Total $50 billion, $40 billion (estimated) Iraq War.
• FY2006 Emergency Supplemental: Operations Global War on Terror; Activities in Iraq & Afghanistan: Passed February 2006, Total $72.4 billion, $60 billion (estimated) Iraq War
• FY2007 Department of Defense appropriations: $70 billion(estimated) for Iraq War-related costs
• FY2007 Bush administration proposed $100 billion for the Iraq War and Afghanistan
• FY2008 Bush administration proposed $190 billion for the Iraq War and Afghanistan

A Limousine Liberal Takes On The "3Squares Challenge"

I recently came across this headline on a news website: CEO who lived on $36 of groceries for a week reveals just how hungry it made her.

Turns out there’s something called the “3Squares Challenge” in which people attempt to live solely on the $36 per week provided by Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as “food stamps”).  Right off the bat this is pretty ridiculous- I guess none of the liberals who started this “challenge” know what the word “supplemental” means.  That’s weird, they’re constantly telling us how much more intelligent and educated they are.

OK, feed yourself for $5.14 a day.  Got it.  As a conservative my first thought would “okay, so no caviar, Grey Poupon, or imported truffles for me!”  But apparently that’s not how Melinda Moulton, the woman who “courageously stepped up to the challenge” thought.

Here’s what she bought:

So, based on what I’m seeing, she went to the same upscale “ritzier than Whole Foods” store that she always shops at and bought the same vegan/organic/mother earth crap she always buys.  And then was shocked when “this was all $36 would buy.”  Which wasn't even true. Thankfully the DailyMail, unlike most American media, did some actual digging and found out she also bought Green Tea (which I’m guessing wasn't Lipton) and the same trendy upscale vitamins she always buys.  Eh, it's hardly news that liberals lie.

So why didn't she do what everyone who’s been a poor student does and buy a $5 case of Ramen?  She comes right out and tells us: “I didn't want to change or compromise who I am or what I eat.”  Oh, so you wanted to “rise to the challenge” but you weren't willing to stop being a rich, spoiled, limousine liberal.

My goodness, that is important news!  It’s been discovered that you can’t live like a pampered hippie on $36 a week!  How heartlessly cruel this all is!

The Truth About Austerity

I recently came across this on the Internet:

Here in America our 47% would laboriously sound out the word “austerity” and then respond “wuzzat?”  The better educated among them might speculate that Austerity is an island in Europe that’s somehow related to Germany and is where kangaroos live.

Put simply, austerity is a reduction in spending by a government experiencing large deficits and ballooning debt.  It is a “live within your means” policy, modeled after individual families not spending more than they earn.  Here in America austerity is referred to by the more straightfoward term “spending cuts.”

The picture above was undoubtedly produced by some liberal, using a hefty dose of their infamous liberal logic. It is fundamentally a complaint that austerity includes cuts to “social spending” specifically  welfare, food stamps, and other benefits.  My goodness!  Taking food out of the mouths of orphaned babies!  How heartless can one be?

What’s the opposite of austerity?  Oh, that would be stimulus.  It stimulates the economy! You know, if the liberals are going to be this transparent with the labels they come up with why don’t they go whole hog and use the terms “Evil greedmongering vs. Kind Carebearing.” When you put it that way, the right choice is obvious!

OK, let’s strip off the emotional labels and just call it Policy A vs. Policy B.  Policy A involves a nation spending money it does not have and thus sinking deeper and deeper into debt.  This has two (hopefully unintended) consequences:

1. An ever increasing amount of the annual budget must be spent on paying interest.  Politicians try to distract people from this reality by using the obfuscating term “servicing the debt.”  It really boils down to paying an amount of money every single year and receiving absolutely nothing in return.  How big an impact does this have? Well, thanks to the $7T Barack Obama’s regime has added to the debt, America paid $223B worth of interest in 2012.  That’s 6% of the total budget, over three times the cost of the entire Food Stamps (now known by the euphemism SNAP) program.
2. The more debt a country has, relative to its economic output, the lower its credit rating goes. And this then increases the interest rate on borrowing money.  Which ties back into item #1.

Policy A, the “just keep spending money you don’t have and borrowing to do so” policy has a definite limit- eventually a nation will have borrowed so much money that it needs to spend 100% of tax receipts on interest payments alone. Or, more commonly, it will run out of people willing to take the risk and lend more money. By the time a country hits this point, they’re usually so hopelessly addicted to deficit spending that there’s just no chance of them living without it.  So what do they do?  Caught in the paradox of “have to get more money” and “can’t get more money” they always do the same thing:  Print money.  It’s happened recently in Argentina and Zimbabwe, North Korea, and most of the countries that used to be part of the USSR.  Less recently it’s happened in Germany, Austria, and even here in America in Colonial times. Money printing inevitably leads to hyperinflation with all its attendent horrors: Riots, starvation, a complete economic collapse, and frequently the collapse of the government followed by a period of martial law and/or outright facism.

So Policy A inevitably leads to a horrific train wreck.  When things really get tough, who do you think it is that’s dying in the riots?  Starving?  The wealthy elite with their hoards of gold, food, and ammo in fortified retreats or the “the poor?”  Policy A is just about the worst thing that could happen to anyone but history has shown clearly that it is always hardest on the people at the bottom.  The people who counted on the government for food and rent and suddenly that government vanishes in a puff of smoke.  Even before the collapse, during the hyper-inflationary period, the poor will get welfare checks of $1,000,000,000… at a time when a gallon of milk costs five million.  The pitiful few times in history when Policy A didn’t end in disaster is the when the nation, realizing what’s ahead, switches to Policy B.

Policy B is the “never spend more than you take in” policy.  It’s the “balanced budget, no deficits” policy.  Now, one would think that “live within your means” could be perpetuated forever.  There’s no ballooning interest payments, so why not?  Well, Policy B has some side-effects as well.  One of which is that you can’t increase spending without increasing revenue.  How do you increase revenue?  Well, unfortunately liberal Democrats seem to be able to think of only one way to do this: Increase tax rates.  One would think it quite strange they would perpetuate this move; Fifty years ago Democrat-darling President Kennedy, in a nationwide address, pointed out that paradoxically raising taxes reduces revenues and that decreasing rates increases them. It also hampers the economy so as to lead to greater unemployment which leads to less revenue because there’s fewer taxpayers.  This swiftly snowballs into a death spiral of Raise taxes->Kill Jobs->Reduce revenue.  Eventually a nation reaches the point where so many people are dependent on direct government that they can muster enough votes so as to get people willing to switch to Policy A regardless of the perils.

So, to summarize, Policy A (unlimited spending of borrowed money) inevitably leads to either the incredibly painful and messy end of a Nation or (best case scenario) a switch to Policy B.

Policy B (don’t spend money you don’t have) inevitably makes “social justice” (a polite euphemism for the masses voting themselves increasing amounts of “free” government money) more attractive, which then leads to a switch back to Policy A.

You hear a lot about “austerity” and “cuts” these days.  Nine-out-of-ten liberal economists will cite Maynard Keynes as they pronounce austerity “the worst thing you can do to an economy.”  Twelve-out-of-ten (the liberals commit a whole lotta voting fraud) welfare recipients will tell you it’s inhumanly cruel to expect them to get along with anything less or even worse to *gasp* expect them to get a job.  I must admit, Policy A (unlimited spending) is a really fun party… right up until the whole thing comes crashing down.  Then it’s riots, starvation, and out-of-control crime, usually followed by brutal totalitarianism.  All of which hits the poor ten times harder than anyone else.

And yet, proponents of Policy B (getting spending under control) are eternally vilified for being uncaring, unsympathetic, and greedy.  Of waging a war on “the poor.”  Meanwhile, the people willing to spend unlimited amounts of other people’s money (most of it borrowed) are lionized as social heroes and win the undying support of the very people they are dooming to unspeakable poverty or worse.

So here’s my corrected meme picture for the state of affairs:

 Not as catchy and it lacks that class-warfare “us vs. them” appeal.  But at least it’s accurate.

Demythtifying The Exemption

Yes, Virginia, there really is a Congressional Obamacare Exemption

I recently had a couple of liberals whine to me about Republican members of congress being exempt from Obamacare.  “You shouldn’t be allowed to oppose it,” they argued “and then be exempt from it.”  Rather than point out the absurdity of their reasoning I laughed at them for (apparently) getting separated from the herd and having no idea what the rest of their sheeple are bleating.

Try Googling "congress exempt Obamacare" and you'll find out that every OTHER liberal in the country insists that it's a myth/lie that Congress is in any way exempt.  Quite the opposite.  And technically, they’re correct.  You will never find a piece of paper signed by any politician that states Congress is exempt.  What they do have is a de facto “paperless” exemption.  Here’s how it went down:

Currently, members of Congress and their staff receive health care coverage through the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP). The FEHBP allows individuals to choose from a set of options to pick the health plan that is right for them. As with any employer-based health plan, the federal government (their employer) can contribute to the health care premium of the employee and the contributions are not included in taxes.

However, Section 1312 of the ACA requires that all members of Congress and congressional staff must either get a health plan created by the ACA or through an Obamacare exchange- which does not allow tax-exempt employer contributions to health care premiums.

This put people like Nancy Pelosi who didn't read the bill before passing it in a bind- they don't want to have to pay for their health insurance or even pay the taxes on their insurance but they knew they couldn't get a legislative exemption past the American people.

The Conservative Croods (or The Crude Conservatives)

One of the more interesting and critical  reviews of The Croods out there is one (warning: the review has profanity) claiming that the movie promotes children taking an uncritical view of risk while basically adding nothing new to the plot of Hotel Transylvania.  Makes some good points and I recommend this review as a good starting point for thinking about the film, but I think there is a lot more to it.

If, as Anders argues, the humor is more ham-handed, the emotional moments are still very moving.  Croods is a very emotive film.  The jokes might be old, but the feelings are genuine.  In a dramatic sense, the film is a moderate success.

Anders gets ridiculously close to the mark, but thinks "[i]t's all a metaphor for how you're smothering your kids with your over-parenting."  Not quite.  It is true that both Hotel Transylvania and The Croods both involve an overprotective father watching his influence over his daughter get compromised by the appearance of a young man.  (Umm... Little Mermaid, anyone?) But in Hotel Transylvania the young man wins everyone over with his innocuous fun-loving nature, not by displacing the father as an authority figure.  It's not the case that he "teaches them to start unquestioningly accepting anything new and different" as Anders rightly notes about the counterpart in Croods.

Is this where Eep starts singing "Part of Your World"?

So, while there is a similar constellation of relationships, the message of the films are fundamentally very different.  Where in Transylvania the father's resistance to change is born of an emotional wound that needs healing through the formation of new relationships, Grug's resistance to change comes from his misplaced faith in the past.  He's too crood/crude to realize that the world has changed.  If this is sounding a little like the outdatedness of religious platitudes, the obsolescence of the U.S. Consitution, or the old fuddiduddiness of family values, you are starting to get the picture.

Anders gets the central issue in her cross-hairs in an almost tangential paragraph:

And there's a vaguely woolly liberal sentiment embedded in all this — Grug's "father knows best" ideology is presented as ultra-conservative and backward-looking, while Guy represents progress and innovation. The whole Crood family goes from thinking that the patriarchal Grug is right about everything to viewing him as sort of a sad holdout from an earlier time. And Eep, the feisty daughter, is sort of vaguely liberated by casting off her father's authority. So yay for liberal propaganda, I guess?

Yay, indeed.  Go, home team.  This is exactly what the movie is about.  It's not "vaguely woolly" at all. And if that wasn't enough, what circumstance make it obvious that Grug's ideology is obsolete?  Impending global environmental changes.  There's nothing like an impending environmental apocalypse to get you to let go of the past.  "You know, they didn't have modern technology and global warming/cooling/change when the Constitution was written..."

The stories of the past are also specifically discounted.  Early in the movie, Grug tells a story of a sad little bear who finds disaster because he abandons the safety of living in "routine, darkness, and terror."   A simultaneous appeal to liberal stereotypes of both conservatism and Judaeo-Christian (but not Muslim!) religion.  

Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. . . . These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us . . .  

Dan Savage, a man that our President has promoted as a voice to children around the country, openly derides the religious heritage of both Testaments of the Christian canon: both the Judaeo-Christian Tanakh and the early Christian writings.  They are both repugnant to him and he uses his pulpit to reach our young with his passionate message of hope of freedom from evil religion.

And Croods has a message of hope.  Father comes around.  Much as the Comte de Reynaud does in Chocolat:

Narrator:  The Comte de Reynaud was a student of history, and therefore a patient man. He trusted the wisdom of generations past.  Like his ancestors, he watched over the little village and led by his own example: hard work, modesty, self-discipline.

Comte:  I have completed the 18th Century. 

Madame Clairmont: Your letter to the editor, Monsieur le Comte ... this paragraph about family and tradition, it's... it's beautiful.

In Chocolat, the Comte's misplaced honor for the past will inspire xenophobia, racism, arson, and attempted murder (prescient of the current anti-Tea Party propaganda).  Once the Comte realizes how hate and fear and exclusion is at the core of his tradition-based way of life, he starts being open to the winds of change transforming his little community into a refuge of joy.  So, yay for liberal propaganda, I guess.

Wow, That's Some Crystal Ball You Have

I recently came across this article from the Congressional Budget Office:

The past few years have seen a sharp rise in the debt of the federal government. At the end of fiscal year 2008, debt held by the public amounted to $5.8 trillion--equal to 40 percent of the nation's annual economic output (gross domestic product, or GDP), a little above the 40-year average of 35 percent. Since then, debt held by the public has shot upward, surpassing $9 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2010--equal to 62 percent of GDP, the highest percentage since shortly after World War II. The surge in debt stems partly from lower tax revenues and higher federal spending related to the recent severe recession and turmoil in financial markets. However, the growing debt also reflects an imbalance between spending and revenues that predated those economic developments. 

At the same time, a sharp drop in interest rates has held down the amount of interest that the government pays on that debt. In 2010, net interest outlays totaled $197 billion, or 1.4 percent of GDP--a smaller share of GDP than they accounted for during most of the past decade. 

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that, under current law, debt held by the public will exceed $16 trillion by 2020, reaching nearly 70 percent of GDP...

It is right now October 19, 2013, seven years ahead of the prediction above.  And here's where we are:

That's right, we've already hit that $16T figure and passed it by another trillion.  Meanwhile, GDP has declined (as it's wont to do when over twenty-one million people are unemployed) so that our debt is currently at 73% of GDP according to this alarming paper from the CBO.

Here's a graph from that same paper, to which I've added annotations:

Notice that spending relative to GDP stayed fairly flat until the Dems retook Congress.  Then, once they had the White House as well as Congress the debt shot up like a rocket, flattening out somewhat once the GOP retook the House.

Amusingly, the CBO seems to be predicting that the GOP will retake the Senate in 2014 (notice the decline) and the White House in 2016 leading to a Bush-era flattening until about 2024 when the Dems will regain control through to the end of the graph.

From their lips to God's ears.

But how could the CBO have been so completely wrong about the predictions they made in 2010?  Two reasons: Number one, Barack Obama still had the 2012 elections ahead and truthfulness from the CBO certainly wouldn't help there. So he pressured them to lie, just like he pressured the UN's IPCC to lie about Global Warming.

Secondly, even the CBO didn't fully appreciate just how adept the Democrats have become at looting the treasury. That figured that by about the 100th Solyndra or auto bailout or similar scam the media would finally grow a conscience and apply some pressure.

They were wrong.

And so, here we are, a trillion more of debt seven years early. And with it the interest payments (cost of servicing the debt) that take ever increasing amounts of tax dollars and apply them towards something that does not benefit the taxpayers in the slightest.

Proof that we've already entered America's death spiral of debt.

The Gay Gene: The Politics of Cryptogenetics

I don't know when I'll have time to invest in a more lengthy treatment of the "gay gene"; there are many interesting aspects: correlation vs. causation, nature vs. nurture, description vs. prescription, etc.

The pervasive thought (in spite of a "massive" campaign to dose the masses with "critical thinking" education components is to confuse correlation with causation.  There are any number of correlations of moral, ethical, and emotional dimensions of human personality with biogenetic and hereditary factors.  Any sort of correlation of sexual behavior with genetics is taken as proof of genetic determinism.  The urban legend of the gay gene depends on a common acceptance of this fallacy.

Any reference to Orson Scott Card on this topic may or may  not mention that he has written sympathetic treatments of homosexual characters in his fiction or attended homosexual wedding ceremonies (only with the greatest sense of wonderment and irony), but it will certainly mention how Card pointed out the naturalistic fallacy of the "gay gene" thinking with the impolitic expression that a genetic predisposition to homosexuality is not just irrelevant but "almost laughably" so, since for most people, this allows them to imagine Card sitting on his front porch with a banjo having a good laugh at a homosexual's inner turmoil and suffering from harrassment, and all sense of the absurdity of the naturalistic fallacy is lost in the process.

This, of course, depends on folks having the same kneejerk reaction to words as in the case of reading all sorts of malevolence into the use of "legitimate" by Todd Akin.  Fortunately, there are all too many freethinkers out there who freely think using their limbic brain with involvement of the neo-cortex being optional, so it is great sport to make Card into an unfeeling fiend, so the loss of the sense of the statement is both welcome and hoped for.  

But maybe the most interesting aspect is the unwelcome fact that among identical twins, there is only a 50-50 chance that a homosexual's gay twin is also homosexual.  While it is unsurprising fro the standpoint that a predisposition should be that high, it is unacceptably low for those who dearly longed for a scientific justification for a forced social embrace of homosexuality (qua social liberalism), absurd an idea as such a justification may be.

With so many identical twins also sharing similar environmental nurturing, it is a shocking discrepancy.  There are a great many identical twins (though certainly not all) that actually look for ways to differentiate themselves and be unlike the other.  This, of course, is politically unacceptable as a factor in the development of sexual identity, since it is important.  If people are naturally homosexual, God must have wanted them to be that way; just as anyone who is naturally sociopathic must have been intended to be.  Of course, the same peddlers of the "legitimate rape" pseudo-scandal would dearly love to characterize this as a proposed equivalency of sociopathy and homosexuality, rather than address whether or not the naturalistic fallacy has been exposed.

. . . [I]t is possible to conclude that, given the difference in sexuality in so many sets of identical twins, sexual orientation cannot be attributed solely to genetic factors.  -Wikipedia

Nevertheless, the disparity among identical twins is, naturally, not taken by many to be evidence against the hypothetical "gay gene," but merely an opportunity for the creative storytelling powers of Darwinian fiction.  To support the hypothesis of the "gay gene," a new hypothesis has been formulated such that if one identical twin is gay, there is a hormonal suppression system at work in the amniotic fluid that stops the other twin from "getting the gay."  Apparently, gayness has so much raw adaptational value to the species that, rather than suppress homosexuality altogether, Natural Selection has invented a clever way to leave one gay and also leave the other free to perpetuate the genes.  Well played, Natural Selection. Well played. Very clever.

I'm not making this up.  This might seem like an unfortunately elaborate epicycle in any other science, but few sciences lend themselves so well to both politics and fiction as the flexible science of Darwinian speculation.  Immutability makes as good an explanation (much better in my opinion) of the pervasiveness of this particular naturalistic fallacy as any Darwinian story.  

Gringas and Chen (2001) describe a number of mechanisms which can lead to differences between monozygotic twins, the most relevant here being chorionicity and amniocity..  -Wikipedia

"Gay" is good, so therefore it should be adaptive, therefore if there is some evidence against sexual orientation being genetically pre-determined, there must be a mechanism that acts to effect the discrepancy.  One might wonder at some counterpart to Todd Akin saying that if one of two twins is gay, the woman's body has a way of shutting it down so that both twins don't have "the gay."  Of course, some would claim that this a gross misinterpretation of the hypotheses -- that what researchers are in fact suggesting is that these "mechanisms" merely highlight that sexual orientation is simply highly sensitive to epigenetics and/or the chorionic and amniotic environments.  

Realize here that there is much political mileage, both legal and polemic, to be gained out of classifying homosexuality as an immutable characteristic.  Which is one of the primary reasons that ex-gays are marginalized and denied by leftists and homosexual activists.  As long as it is a characteristic that is immutable after a baby leaves the womb, it still makes political, if not biological, sense.

Another interesting point is Richard Dawkins' contribution to the melee.  He can be seen on Youtube commenting that homosexuality is not necessarily adaptive, as the genes for gayness may have had a different effect when they evolved:

". . . When we talk about a gene for something or other -- a gene for anything, a gene for X, a gene for being aggressive, a gene fir, um, having blue eyes, a gene for being gay -- uh, it doesn't always have to be a gene for that thing. It's a gene for that thing under the right environmental conditions.  [at time= 4:36]

Dawkins here suggests another exaptational alternative to the other Darwinian speculations for the adaptational value of homosexuality.  He imagines that the genes that now make people desire the opposite sex at one time may have had a completely different, unrelated effect.

And lastly, it is interesting to note that there is evidence that whatever genetic factors predisposition one for homosexuality, they are different in men and women.  That is, genetic factors that make a male more likely to develop a sexual interest in the same sex (in our modern environment and modern physiology--as we may qualify it according to Dawkins) are in general different from those factors that are similarly at work in women.

Post-script:  One new avant-garde hypothesis postulates that many so-called genetic human conditions could have pathogenic factors, including same-sex attraction. While Ewald and Cochran warn that this does not necessarily make a condition a disease, Cochran opines, “Should we drop a theory that has a chance of being correct on the grounds that it might upset people?”  Interesting question.  Let's take a vote among the Sociology faculty and see what the response is.

That's Not Your Body

I've never spoken out about abortion to anyone.  Never gone on record as pro-life or pro-choice.  Never even discussed the topic. Mostly because I realize that after decades of debate I really have nothing to add.  Heck, no one does.  It seemed to me that all the the rational arguments had long ago been made and what was left was nothing but emotional and/or dogmatic slogans.

But apparently my subconscious had been thinking about it, because the other day it abruptly dumped an entire line of reasoning on my conscious mind.  Something that, so far as I know, hasn't been brought up before.

Here is the primary argument in favor of taxpayer-funded, on-demand, unrestricted abortion: “whether or not a pregnant woman aborts her child is her personal choice, as it involves her body, personal health, and future.”

Well, in 2009 Chris Brown used his body to severely beat his girlfriend Rihanna.  Is there anything wrong with that?  They’re his hands- doesn't he have the right to choose what to do with them?  No, of course not, any right to choose what to do with your body ends when you’re harming (especially violently) someone else.  Any abortionist will tell you that Chris Brown beating someone up is certainly not analogous to abortion.  Because abortion is not a woman terminating a child, it’s a woman having a blastocyst removed via elective surgery- no different than a mole or a tumor.  Similarly, it would be no big deal for Chris Brown to use his left hand to beat up his right hand- or his own face.

Okay, so what’s the fundamental difference between Rihanna’s face and Chris Brown’s face? More generally, what is the difference between your body and not your body?  The difference can be found in the nucleus of every cell.  I assert it as an axiom that not your DNA = not your body.  Your tissue may completely surround it, you may provide it with sustenance, but that baby is nonetheless not your body. It’s someone else. And that means it is completely analogous to any other form of violence between two people.

Well, now that we've dealt with “choose what to do with her body,” let’s address “health and future.”

Suppose you and a co-worker are both up for the same promotion which comes with a hefty raise.  This promotion is something that would further anyone’s career.  Get the promotion and your future is assured.  Additionally, suppose you are planning to use the money from the raise to get your deviated septum fixed, something that’s not covered by your HMO.  Getting your septum fixed will cure your snoring (allowing you to get better rest), reduce the number of times you get sinusitis per year, and just overall provide an improvement in your health. So, given that it affects your future and your health, is it morally correct for you to kill your co-worker, thus ensuring you receive the promotion?  If not, why not?  How is this not analogous to killing a baby?  Does morality have an age limit?

After having said all this, I must admit that I don’t give abortion a lot of thought. My town doesn't have a single “clinic,” although we do have a Pregnancy Center where they present women with a range of alternatives to abortion.  For me it’s “out of sight, out of mind” I guess.  But perhaps my detachment has allowed me to see abortion as it really is:  It is not any kind of solution, nor is it merely a moral problem; it’s perhaps better thought of as an engineering problem.

Here’s the thing: There’s really only one kind of woman who even considers an abortion- a pregnant one.  Even among pregnant women only one kind seeks out an abortion- someone who desperately wishes they were not pregnant.  Now abortion might seem like a fine solution for Democrats looking to keep the black and other minority populations down.  But the dirty little secret is that abortions (especially the cheap, assembly-line style ones the Democrats tax us all to pay for) cause scarring to the uterine wall.  Scarring that makes it increasingly difficult for a woman to ever carry a child to term.  So, ironically, the more abortions you have the less you actually need them.  Other than disposing of a child neither the mother nor the Democrats want, abortion is really no good for anybody.

But what if that woman didn't get pregnant in the first place?

Yes, I can hear you all saying “brilliant, Sherlock, you've invented birth control!”  Yeah, yeah, but have you ever stopped to think just how much our current methods of birth control really suck?  It  comes down to a handful of things: There’s condoms, which are uncomfortable for everyone, expensive, leak, and have to be applied at the absolute worst time.  There’s various pills, which increase the risk of stroke, can cause vision problems, and are easy to forget to take.  And then there’s the appliances like a diaphragm or IUD.  Inserting a diaphragm can be thought of as trying to rebuild an engine by reaching through the tailpipe, and it is failure-prone.  The IUD is possibly the best idea of the lot and can be thought of as essentially paper-clipping one’s uterus shut.  Its main drawbacks are that it’s expensive, requires a doctor’s visit, and is ridiculously uncomfortable to have installed (imagine your dentist accessing your teeth through your anus).

I sometimes find it useful to imagine what the end-product solution to an engineering product should look like to solve a particular problem.  In the case of birth control, wouldn't it be nice if we all came with a convenient selector knob that can switch between fertile and infertile?

We live in an age of pacemakers, implanted insulin pumps, mechanical heart valves, cochlear implants, intra-ocular lenses, and increasingly advanced bionics for the thousands of brave troops who have lost limbs fighting terrorism in the Middle East.  Is it really such a leap forward to imagine a remotely controlled valve that can selectively block or allow to pass eggs through the fallopian tube or sperm through the vas deferens?  Wouldn't that really be the best choice we all should have the “right” to: The choice to conceive or not?

At this point I suspect what’s holding us back is not technology but the billion-dollar industry dedicated to manufacturing the terrible choices already on the market.  They will fight tooth-and-nail and bribe the FDA to keep something better off the market.  So not only is this an engineering problem, it’s a political one. One that’s worth fighting, though.  Because with genuinely good birth control we can put an end to abortion once and for all without needing to overturn Roe v. Wade. Without passing any laws.  Without having to endure the wrath of the pro-choicers.  At this point, the engineering solution is the only clear path to winning this battle.

Global Hoaxing

Can anyone name the most profitable scam in human history? No, not Ponzi schemes- even at best those never cross the billion dollar mark (unless you count Social Security). Not extended service plans- although Squaretrade is reported to pull in over $13B a year. At this point a liberal would smugly inform us that religion is the greatest scam of all. And that's ironic since they came up with the only con that's poised to cross the trillion dollar mark: Global Warming.

Earlier this year the World Economic Forum's "Davos Report" called for extorting- sorry, I should say extracting $14T from various countries to "help fight Global Warming."

Let's go through some history:

First, we got told that these scientists had computer models that predicted dire things- all the coasts underwater from the melted ice caps (although that prediction did lead to the movie Waterworld, so I guess we can't claim Global Warming didn't cause some human suffering). A dramatic increase in hurricanes, tornadoes, and lightning. Possibly even earthquakes and volcanoes!

"Oh, my!" We all said. And then it occurred to someone to ask "if your computer models are so great, why can't you accurately predict what the weather will be like tomorrow?!"

"Uh, well," the Climate Change Hoaxers stammered, "there's a very good reason for that but you wouldn't understand that because you're not a scientist. See, only fully-funded climatologists can understand this stuff. Speaking of which, we know Global Warming to be a fact because 97% of all scientists agree.  We have a consensus.

About a billion people (roughly one-sixth of the Earth's population) have already brought up the point that science isn't a popularity contest where scientists vote on which theory becomes the Prom King.  It's not a Trident commercial ("...four out of five dentists surveyed recommend Global Warming to their patients who seem dumb...").  Supposedly what makes Science so superior to Religion is the strict adherence to measurable, repeatable observations.  Hard data.  You know, actual facts.  So the whole consensus nonsense is a non-starter right out of the gate.  It's just as ridiculous as saying "we can't tell you the weather tomorrow but we can tell you the climate fifty years from now."

But, as long as they brought it up, it turns out the "97% consensus" is a complete fraud anyway.

"But, but, but, the UN says Global Warming is real! They won a Nobel Prize for it!"
Man, that had to be the proudest moment in Al Gore's life. He flew on his private jet to Stockholm, spewing more carbon than a million Priuses in a year, to receive a Nobel Prize for his contributions to the very scam that paid for the private jet to begin with!

But still the people kept turning away from THE TRUTH. They kept listening to the people pointing out the really inconvenient truths, like the fact that the Earth's climate varies all by itself. That the planet had warm periods and ice ages long before the industrial age. That the temperature of the Earth may have something to do with that oft-forgotten orb at the center of our Solar system, the Sun. And so the Hoaxers found the one piece of irrefutable evidence on which they could rest their whole case: THE ARCTIC ICE IS MELTING!!!

They had pictures from NASA! They had pictures of polar bears swimming and (according to the Hoaxers) feeling really sad about it! The Northwest Passage would be completely free of ice by 2013! God help us all if there are ships north of Canada. That would be worse than dogs and cats living together!

The climate change skeptics (pejoratively dubbed "Deniers" by the Hoaxers) patiently pointed out that the temperature's only gone up 0.8degC in the last fifty years- and none at all in the last fifteen. They tried explaining that the ice melts every summer and polar bears actually enjoy swimming. They even produced evidence that the Antarctic ice sheet is thicker than ever. But none of that mattered. Because the Arctic ice is almost gone! Irrefutable proof of Global Warming.

Here's the problem in two pictures from NASA:

Yep, the Arctic ice sheet has grown by 60% in one year. The very year the last of the ice was predicted to have melted.

Hilariously, the captains of fourteen yachts and one cruise ship believed the Hoaxer's lies about the "Northwest Passage" and are now firmly stuck in the ice.

It's tough to say which is more embarrassing: The Arctic ice that spontaneously grew back or the over-the-top Hurricane Doom 2013 predictions handed out by climatologists a few months before the quietest start to the Atlantic hurricane season in decades.

Yes, I am aware that the generally accepted term for these people is Global Warming Alarmists. I don't think that quite fits, though. An alarmist is a Chicken Little, someone who runs in circles and screams hysterically about some genuinely perceived threat. These are people who are making trillions of dollars off of something they know to be a lie.

How do I know they know it's a lie? It doesn't take a genius to realize that if Al Gore really believed in Global Warming he'd get rid of the private jet and start bicycling places. Anyone remember in 2007 when he got busted for having a house that consumed twenty times the electricity of the average home? It shamed him into retrofitting his home with Green Technology... which made his power bills increase by 10%. He claims his actual consumption doesn't matter because he purchases carbon offsets... the very thing he himself sells to make billions of dollars.

So please, stop calling them "alarmists."  It doesn't accurately reflect the fact that these people aren't just falsely claiming the sky is falling, they're enriching themselves in the process.  Hoaxers is what they are.  And now that their last shred of evidence, the vanishing Arctic Ice, has magically re-appeared hoaxers is what we can all see them for.

Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself

Hillary's minions are doing a full court press on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and (not surprisingly) the Craigslist Joke Forum.

Today they trotted this out:

I was all set to start rebutting this prime example of liberal nonsense and discovered someone had beaten me to the punch: Politifact investigated this in such excruciating detail that I really have nothing to add except to note that maybe there wouldn't have been so much legislation about Religion and Gun Control if it weren't for Harry Reid and Barack Obama's relentless assaults on the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution.  There wouldn't be "445 Bills on Gov't Investigations" if it weren't for the most corrupt President ever and his continuous "phony" scandals like Benghazi, Solyndra, Fast 'n' Furious, NSA spying, IRS targeting of conservatives, Black Panther voter intimidation, illegal (not authorized by Congress in stark contrast to Iraq) war in Libya, selective law enforcement, and blatant influence peddling.

So, sorry this post is so short. But here's something I also came across on Jofo:

1. I voted Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I've decided to marry my German Shepherd. 
2. I voted Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't. 
3. I voted Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would. 
4. I voted Democrat because Freedom of Speech is fine as long as nobody Is offended by it. 
5. I voted Democrat because I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves. 
6. I voted Democrat because I believe that people who can't tell us if It will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a GM Chevy Volt. 
7. I voted Democrat because I'm not concerned about millions of babies being aborted so long as we keep all death row inmates alive. 
8. I voted Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free health-care, education, and Social Security benefits, and we should take away the social security from those who paid into it. 
9. I voted Democrat because I believe that businesses should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the Democrats see fit. 
10. I voted Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters. 
11. I voted Democrat because I think that it's better to pay billions for their oil to people who hate us, but not drill our own because it might upset some endangered beetle, gopher or fish. 
12. I voted Democrat because my head is so firmly planted up my ass it's unlikely that I'll ever have another point of view. 

Sounds about right.

You're Doing It Right, Kansas

This is priceless. Eric "Gunrunner" Holder wrote a nasty letter to the state of Kansas to try to intimidate the state with regard to its protection of its citizens' 2nd Amendment rights.  The State of Kansas responded.  Kris Kobach apparently agrees with me about What Congress Cannot Do.

Click here to get better resolution.

More Fun With Liberal Logic

On September 11, 2012, the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya was attacked by over 125 masked terrorists. They were armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), hand grenades, AK-47 and FN F2000 assault rifles, mortars, and heavy machine guns and artillery mounted on gun trucks.

Four Americans died in the attack: Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Information Officer Sean Smith, and Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, former US Navy SEALs who were employed as security personnel.

The Obama administration's response to this tragedy formed the basis of what is now known as the Benghazi Scandal. Here's a brief summary of the points that make this a scandal:

1. The Obama administration's repeated insistence that this was not a terrorist attack but rather a protest against a YouTube video.  Uh, so the fact that occurred on September 11th is a mere coincidence? These were just a group of regular guys, kicking back, playing XBox and watching YouTube videos when suddenly they saw one they didn't like. And so, all 125 of them piled into their military vehicles with the heavy weapons apparently all Libyans possess and roared off to the consulate to express their displeasure? Seriously, could you make up a lamer story? The only thing I can think of is "a herd of unicorns attacked the embassy!"  Good thing I don't work for Obama- they would have run with that one.
2. It took President Obama a full two weeks to even call it an act of terror, a fact Candidate Romney called him on during the debate. Obama tried to claim he called it such the same day, but fact checkers swiftly unraveled the President's lie.
3. The Obama Administration made a concerted effort to cover up what happened in Benghazi.  At first this was just exposed by conservative news sites like Alex Jones' InfoWars and Newsmax but now even HuffPo and CNN are blowing the whistle. And yet, Obama insists this is a "phony scandal."  Which brings us to the purpose of this post.

One of Obama's millions of brownshirted minions produced this graphic:

Wow, what hypocrites those Republicans are!  Sixty dead and they never mention that as a scandal!

Turns out there's a good reason for that. See, these liberals trot out these "facts" and then really hope everyone is too lazy to actually research it. Unfortunately for them, conservatives aren't as lazy as the pot-smoking OWS Occutards of which the Democrats are belatedly so ashamed. Let's go through the whole list.

January 22, 2002 US Consulate in Kolkata: First of all, it's a flat out lie that the US Consulate was attacked. What was actually attacked was an "American Cultural Center" consisting of a library, an office, and a cultural wing.  And the five dead?  Four local cops and one security guard.  Not a single American and certainly none of the embassy staff.  People get mugged and even murdered near the UN headquarters in New York all the time. Should that be a scandal for the Irish government? The Brazilian?  Every country that's a member of the UN?

June 14, 2002 US Consulate in Karachi: A truck bomb was set off outside the US Consulate. Again, no consulate staff were harmed, only locals. And here's a neat bit of liberal logic: The suicide bomber driving the truck is one of the 12 dead!

Feb 28, 2003 US Embassy in Islamabad: Yet another flat-out lie. It was the embassy in Karachi that had two Pakistani police officers shot by gunmen in the street outside. Once again, no staff at the consulate were harmed and this appears to be unrelated local street crime.

June 30, 2004 US Embassy in Tashkent: Same old story- happened outside the embassy, and the two dead were local security guards.  No embassy staff harmed.

Dec 6, 2004 US Compound in Saudi Arabia: Yet another example of liberals counting the attackers among the dead and blaming Bush for it.  Yet another example of a consulate that was not breached and of no Americans being killed.

September 12, 2006 US Embassy in Syria: "Three gunmen and a Syrian security guard were killed in a foiled attack on the U.S. embassy."  Once again, embassy never breached, no Americans harmed, and the attackers are counted by the liberals as part of the "four dead!"

March 18, 2008 US Embassy in Yemen: A group of local doofuses got ahold of a mortar launcher, completely missed the US Embassy, and bombed a nearby girl's school.  Embassy staff had no idea they were under attack. They may have looked out the window and said "now that's a war on women!"

July 9, 2008 US Consulate in Istanbul: I'm starting to get tired of typing "consulate not breached/no Americans harmed/attackers counted by liberals among the honored dead." You're probably getting tired of reading it. Maybe I should start thinking of an acronym or a pictogram to convey this all-too-common information.

Sept 17, 2008 US Embassy in Yemen: Thankfully, we're at the end of the list.  I've decided to use cut 'n' paste to convey "consulate not breached/no Americans harmed/attackers counted by liberals among the honored dead."

So, sixty dead.  Why no "Republican outrage?"  Because this is nine examples of US security working.  Of no Americans being harmed.  Of a President quite rightfully labelling them as acts of terrorism.  And of no governmental coverups, just a relentless search for those responsible.  The exact opposite of what happened in Benghazi.

This graphic in fact shows, for all to see, how George W. Bush was a far better president than the current liar-in-chief.

Liberal Myth versus Liberal Reality

Über-liberal Seth McFarlane trotted this out in his propaganda/child-indoctrination cartoon Family Guy:

But, of course, here's what's really going on at the TSA:

On September 11, 2001 nineteen muslim terrorists crashed airplanes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, killing thousands of innocent Americans.  And now, twelve years later, the liberal's "multicultural diversity" has these same people performing cavity searches on nuns. While at the same time they tell the lie that we're still an overtly racist "whites only" society.

Wake up America.

Lies, Damn Lies, And Liberal Logic

While the rest of us are out working jobs to pay taxes, millions of indoctrinated liberal children sit unemployed in their parent's basement and flood the Internet with liberal propaganda.

The other day I came across this on the Craigslist Joke Forum:

Four different examples of how "Conservative logic is illogical."  Let's go through them starting at the top left.

Conservatives have the temerity to claim that life is precious.  Which, as every liberal knows, isn't true.  Meat is murder but never abortion.  Life ceases to be precious when a woman chooses it not to be.  But let's look at the photo to the right of the fetus.  What is that? Thank goodness for Google Image search. Turns out it's ostensibly a picture of a homeless child. Uh, so conservatives are somehow to blame for the homeless?  Then why did the U.S. Conference of mayors say that "homelessness continues to surge under Obama."  This is fueled largely by Obama's jobless recovery which leaves the 18 - 24 age group at a 13.1% unemployment rate.  But the picture above is not of an 18 - 24 year old, it's of what appears to be a 12-year old boy.  And I gotta call BS on that.  Every city, every county, every state in America has a Department of Family Services.  Any "homeless" child can call 911 and be in foster care that same day.  I did once see a child who claimed to be homeless in a store parking lot.  I was on the phone to the authorities immediately and they were there within minutes.  Turned out she was hustling money for her drug-addict mom (hey, it's woman's right to choose what to do with her child, right?)  That girl was off the streets and being cared for immediately.

Let's move on to top right.  On the left is a picture of a Tea Party rally.  On the right is a photo of the UC Davis pepper spray incident in which a few people at a Occupy Wall Street protest were pepper sprayed by a campus police officer.  First question, how the heck are conservatives to blame for this?  UC Davis, like most universities, is a hotbed of liberalism. That cop was hired by liberals, and served under the authority of a liberal administration. Why didn't they give the order to treat the Occutards nicer? Maybe for the same reason the ultra-liberal City of Los Angeles evicted them from City Hall.

But let's also talk about the notion "...unless you say something we don't like."  Can anyone tell me what the OWS Occutards had to say?  What was their point?  They themselves were certainly never able to state a point when interviewed by the media. It seemed to be nothing more than a bunch of lazy, low intelligence, out-of-work hippie stoners camping out on public property and making a tremendous mess for others to clean up.

In fact, it's the liberals who actively suppress any speech they disagree with. Barack Obama proved this by ordering the IRS to target conservative groups.

In the bottom left we have a fine upstanding Democrat doing what they do best, smoking a joint. Next to this liberal patriot is a picture of Ken Lewis, the former CEO of Bank of America, with the caption "...stealing billions gets you a bonus." First of all, that's an outright lie.  As liberal bastion HuffPo reported Ken Lewis received no salary and no bonus for his last year of employment. But let's talk about those "stolen" billions. Who was it that authorized the bailout of BofA? Why, of course, it was Barack Obama and the (then) Democrat-controlled Senate and House of Representatives. So... how is this in any way possibly a conservative thing?  Seems like those two pictures go together perfectly; the Dems smoked some pot and then handed out tens of billions of taxpayer money. Why not? No skin off their nose. They were squandering other people's money.

Finally in the bottom right we have a picture of a rally against Obamacare.  And beside it... a picture of a rally against Obamacare.  So, where's the contradiction? I guess this is why the caption admonishes "don't even try to figure it out."

Entitlement?  But, that's a liberal claim as in "everyone's entitled to healthcare."  This is the Democrats excuse for having the government destroy healthcare for everyone.  Seriously, can someone please name for me anything the government has taken over and not made much worse?  From education to the environment to charity to... pretty much everything the Federal government does is a disaster.  These are the people who tell the TSA to molest children in wheelchairs while doing nothing to stop the Boston Marathon bombing or Benghazi.  The people who so vigorously oppose American energy independence by blocking the Keystone pipeline so that instead we can continue paying billions per year to OPEC countries who funnel the money to Hamas and Al Qaeda.

But the bottom line is that 54% of Americans oppose Obamacare.  And yet, this is somehow an example of "conservative logic" gone wrong.  With liberal logic, ignoring the will of the people makes more sense.  Because then, when everyone is subjected to the abject misery of government healthcare, the liberals will use similar outright lying graphics to show how Obamacare was just another Conservative Plot and George Bush is to blame.

Attack of the Drones

At least two of the recent Two Worlds movies, Total Recall and Elysium, have involved the idea of evil regimes conveniently using robots to subdue humanity.  If all the people are oppressed, why trouble yourself indoctrinating soldiers when you can manufacture an army that is troubled by conflicts of loyalty and remorse?   The idea is a natural fusion of the idea of the Imperial Stormtrooper with the Terminator.  (Curiously, the robot in the old sci-fi movie Metropolis is not used as an instrument of war, but of corruption.)  Speaking of Star Wars, let's not forget Phantom Menace, which some have claimed was given anti-Bush and/or anti-conservative undertones.

Hmmm, robots used by collectivist totalitarian regimes to keep the masses in check.

There's something very messy about war, and while it's horrible, it's appropriate that human beings are on the field seeing it and knowing it.  Michael Medved, in his autobiographical Right Turns, writes about his front row seat in the pacifism movement of the 1960s/70s and how the student activism against the Vietnam War subsided when the rules of the draft changed to not terrify them so much.  Their idealism about making the world a better place went out the window when they didn't feel personally endangered, revealing much of the altruistic sanctimony as mere self-interest.

Now that more soldiers have come home from the Middle East (the end of the Wars goes on and on) the Wars have become more and more automated.  George Bush became the devil over the Wars in the Middle East, and the sainted Obama continued prosecuting the war with drones, the collateral damage to women and children due to increased drone use was largely ignored by the news and media.  The Bush was administration reviled for making rules for playing rough in the War on Terror and for not treating foreign terrorist with the rights of American citizens, while the Obama administration largely given a pass for secret kill lists, secret kill list criteria, secret interpretations of the Patriot Act, and "legal regimes" for indefinite detainment.  (Then again, do you really care what he's doing as long as he keeps dishing out "free" stuff for your out of his secret stash?) Claiming to be transparent but changing the rules to give itself discretion over how much sunlight is used to disinfect, waging a war against whistleblowers, this administration is almost scary, but, well gosh, look how intelligent Mr. President sounds and look at that nice paternal smile he gives us...

Hey, soldiers are coming home.  So forget about what's happening overseas.  Show's over, folks.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.

At least two recent movies feature some kind of superman taking out a drone:  The Bourne Legacy and the iconic Man of Steel.  I think we're supposed to relate to these triumphs of an individual spirit over an inhuman, mechanistic government.  But this is just the Hollywood story machine acknowledging our deep-seated fears.

Boston Dynamics' ATLAS

Meanwhile the present American regime keeps pushing the envelope in automating the surveillance and policing of our own people, even as the media and Tinseltown keep selling this very trend as a uniquely conservative policy.   How progressives intend to regulate our lives without being able to police our lives seems to be ignored for the most part.

The armed forces continues to become more and more automated.  After all, as the movie White House Down tries to convince us, armies made up of actual humans are a threat to Pres. Obama.  I mean, if most soldiers were liberal Democrats,  Al Gore might have tried to get their votes counted in 2000.  Time to replace these people with machines.  Soon we'll be able to sit down and watch tv and forget that war has been automated.  We can go on watching our favorite tv shows until we one day find that our human militias and our native soldiers all together are no match for the automated machines of war.  A government that doesn't want its people dictating the rules any more, will have a new option at its disposal.  The terrorist threat has already been redefined as people that are opposed to Big Government.  Stooges in the media immediately tried to sell the Boston bombing as a probable conservative attack.  Now liberal news outlets are trying to redefine Tamerlan Tsarnaev as a conservative.

Sleep well tonight.

Do Not Look At The Black Racism Behind The Curtain

In the midst of all this Treyvon Martin and Paula Deen epidemic racism scare, I read some article somewhere in which a person repeated the familiar claim that, and as I recall he/she actually stated it in these words, that blacks were unable to be racist.  Black people are incapable of racism, or so the claim goes, because racism, by definition, I assume they mean the definition used by critical race theorists like Obama hero Derrick Bell.

Of course, I know some Caucasian people, who are not racist, but who grew up as the minority in their communities.  To them, all this talk about white power structures appears contrived and absurd.  Racism is racism to these deluded (or so Derrick Bell would call them) people who think that 10 black kids surrounding an Asian kid to bully him/her is racism, not an expression of righteous anger for being so much worse off in America (!?).

Reginald Denny atones for the sins of Los Angeles

Of course, to Derrick Bell and others, these white people are racists too, and they too are unable to work out their salvation until they first confess their sins of being part of the great white power monopoly, let alone start making amends by imprisoning George Zimmerman for following and reporting more young black males than young white males.

Didn't this former Obama supporter (i.e. Zimmerman) ever hear of quotas? Just because most of the crimes in his area are committed by young hoodie-wearing black males who seem to have no curfew, he obviously should have been following and reporting just as many young white males. Of course, when that poor sap looks to gun down a black kid in cold blood, he first calls the police to let him know what he's doing, and then he lets himself get jumped and beaten up before he actually follows through on his evil plan-- or was it his evil plan to go scott-free by almost getting beaten unconscious before finally pulling the trigger?  He's obviously not that good at this whole evil racism thing.  And nobody's talking about how obviously sexist he is mainly following males, now that we've established how the actual crime demographics are unimportant.

Anyway, after being confronted with this courageous definition of racism that lets all black people off the hook of personal responsibility in a way that would have made Martin Luther King throw up, I couldn't help wonder about how the thoughtful men like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams and Larry Elder -- who don't judge how racist someone is by the color of their skin, but who happen also to be black -- figure into this theory of racism.  According to that one commentator's definition, they can't be racist or do racist things because they are black.  Yet, they are supporting the "power structure" of racism with ideas that allegedly arise from white racism.  A paradox.  Al Sharpton and his groupies would probably say they have ceased to be black.  Judging by the way the black leftist politico-industrial complex labels men like this and like Clarence Thomas "Uncle Toms," one imagines that the Samuel Jackson character in Django Unchained was meant to represent these "traitors" to the Black Left's great crusade against color-blindness.

What would they say about a black leader that said:

"Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58% of its crimes? We've got to face that. And we've got to do something about our moral standards.  We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can't keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves."

This was said by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr in 1961.

A Suggestion to Harry Reid about Taxes

Harry Reid demonstrated the typical "high road" tactics typical of Obama's "new tone in Washington" with his unfounded insinuation that Mitt Romney had cheated on his taxes.   He may well have known of an order by the Obama administration (I won't say "by Obama" since that man apparently has no idea what anyone in his administration is actually doing, that is, when anything bad is being done), so I won't say that Reid's suggestion had no connection to any reality, though any insinuations of wrongdoing by Romney remain unsubstantiated.  He may well have had an inside line from the IRS that there was something in Romney's tax statement which, though not illegal, would aid the Democrats in their all out feces-throwing campaign against capitalism.

Here's my suggestion to Reid:  Since you care so much about disclosure and, like your idol Obama, think that "sunlight is the best disinfectant," back a bill that makes it a requirement for all candidates for Congressional, Presidential, federal court, and Cabinet offices to make the last five years of their taxes a matter of public record.  I personally want to know how the 10 richest Congressmen (most of which are Democrats) made their money.  Do it, Reid.  You apparently have nothing to hide and neither do your fellow Democrats, so let's call a vote and see which Congressmen are willing to back this bill.

I'm very interested to see who does.

By the way, Reid still hasn't denied the rumors that he is a child molester.