"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Saturday, December 13, 2008

NEW EU CARBON ACCORD ALREADY THREATENING EU ECONOMY

UK INDEPENDENT:
Corus: 'We will quit EU to avoid carbon regime'

Philippe Varin, the chief executive of Corus, is threatening to shift the steelmaker's European operations to China unless regulations governing carbon emissions are overhauled.

Mr Varin warned that politicians had to help fund new clean-energy technologies or face the prospect of Corus quitting the UK and Europe.

Corus employs around 25,000 workers in the UK and is in negotiations with unions over pay in an effort to curb large redundancies.

"If we are forced to buy CO2 credits on the market without a system to improve our production process, then we will not produce steel in Europe," said Mr Varin, who is also chairman of the World Steel Association's Climate Change Policy Group. "To cut carbon emissions of steel production, we need breakthrough technology, but this is extremely expensive, costing €200m to €300m to upgrade a one million ton production plant."

Varin, who spoke exclusively to the 'IoS' at the UN Climate Change conference in Poznan, said: "There is no way for us to fund this and pay penalties for our CO2 emissions. This would wipe out all of our profits and put us at a competitive disadvantage with manufacturers in nations which are not subject to carbon caps.
NOT ONLY WILL AGREEMENTS LIKE THE EU'S DO NOTHING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE, THEY WILL DESTROY ECONOMIES.

IT'S JUST ANOTHER MASS SUICIDAL POLICY FROM THE POSTMODERNISTS OF THE LEFT.

OBAMA IS ONE OF THEM.

REMINDER: MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING IS TOTAL BULLSHIT:

TELEGRAPH, (AND OLDIE BUT GOODIE):
US satellite figures showing temperatures having fallen since 1998, declining in 2007 to a 1983 level - not to mention the newly revised figures for US surface temperatures showing that the 1930s had four of the 10 warmest years of the past century, with the hottest year of all being not 1998, as was previously claimed, but 1934.
MESSAGE TO ALL CARBONOPHOBIC ECO-NUTSIES: PLEASE STFU.

IRANIAN SHIP HEADED FOR GAZA - WITH "HIDDEN AGENDA"... OR A WMD!?

JPOST:
An Iranian Red Crescent vessel due to set sail for Gaza this week carries a "hidden agenda," providing cover for an attempt by Teheran's al-Quds Force to spread its influence and possibly ferrying intelligence agents, an American expert warned on Saturday.

Iran's Red Crescent Society announced on its Web site last week plans to dispatch the ship with 1,000 tons of humanitarian aid.

"The Iranian Red Crescent ship sailing to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip is an example of Teheran's effort to gain political influence through social aid programs, subvert societies with intelligence agents acting as charitable officials, and encourage the Sunni Muslim street to believe that the Iranian regime is on their side, despite its Shi'ite face," Prof. Raymond Tanter, president of the Washington-based Iran Policy Committee, told The Jerusalem Post.
  • PERHAPS THE HIDDEN AGENDA IS A WMD - AND A MEANS OF DETONATING IT NEAR TEL AVIV?
  • ER, UM... I MEAN... I'M SUSPICIOUS BECAUSE THERE'S NOTHING PARTICULARLY "HUMANITARIAN" ABOUT THE IRANIAN REGIME. AND GAZA IS PRETTY CLOSE TO ISRAEL - LAST TIME I CHECKED A MAP, AND THE IRANIANS WANT TO WIPE ISRAEL OFF THE MAP.
  • I SUSPECT THIS SHIP'S APPROACH TO GAZA IS A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER TO ISRAEL.
  • WE'LL SEE IF AND WHAT THE IDF OR THE SIXTH FLEET DOES .... IN ABOUT A WEEK...
STAY TUNED...

HOW TO GET CONGRESS TO STOP THE MADNESS - GIVE THEM A MONETARY INCENTIVE: THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS SCOOPS PAJAMAS MEDIA BY THREE YEARS AND TWO MONTHS

PAJAMAS TODAY - WITH A BIG LINK FROM GLENN:
The stock market and economy are in the dumps largely because of mistakes made by the boobs, scoundrels and narcissists who govern us.

... To these boneheads we now add Rod Blagojevich and his bribe scandal, which lends weight to the idea that government has never been run by poseurs, windbags, sociopaths and self-dealers to the extent that it is today. Washington has become a sort of Hollywood for ugly people.

Call me a dreamer, but I propose a simple fix to this problem. Pay politicians more. Give these takers the chance to become rich legally.

Here is how.

... Let’s put every elected federal official and appointee and bureaucrat on a stock option plan. The value of these options would be tied to the health and wealth of America. Half the options would vest over two years so as to spur politicians to make immediate changes. The other half would vest over 20 years, so politicians could build a framework for enduring success and be rewarded for it.
THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS JUST OVER THREE YEARS AGO:

This is all well and good - and it may expose some heretofore unknown examples of pork (though I'd betchya most people know where most of the fat is: in other peoples districts!!! Heh!)

There's a much MUCH simpler way to do it, and I guarantee it'll be 100% effective:

Let's just put all the Congressmen and Congresswomen on COMMISSION!

That would give them a personal incentive to cut spending. Here's how it would work: The Congress'd get a 2% commission - TAX FREE! - of whatever they cut/save. The Congressmen would have to share it, so, it would get divided by 535 the members of Congress. If they cut $60BILLION, then each Senator and Representative would get $225,000. The more they cut, the more they make. This gives them incentive to cut A LOT. But if they cut too much, then their constituents might vote them out of office.
REGULAR READERS KNOW THAT WE SCOOP THE BIGGIES ALL THE TIME - BUT NOT ALWAYS BY THREE EFFIN' YEARS!

TAKE THAT GLENN!

SPREAD THE WORD! BLOGROLL US! BOOKMARK US!

BOSNIA TEETERING TOWARD WAR - DESPITE EU OCCUPATION; SO WHY DOES OBAMA WANT NATO TO REPLACE THE IDF IN THE WEST BANK!?

ACCORDING TO THE NYTIMES, THE BOSNIA ARMISTICE IS COLLAPSING:
Thirteen years after the United States brokered the Dayton peace agreement to end the ferocious ethnic war in the former Yugoslavia, fears are mounting that Bosnia, poor and divided, is again teetering toward crisis.

... Yet for the first time in years, talk of the prospect of another war is creeping into conversations across the ethnic divide in Bosnia, a former Yugoslav republic that the Dayton agreement divided into two entities, a Muslim-Croat Federation and a Serbian Republic.

The power-sharing agreement between former foes has always been tense. Now, however, the uneasy peace has been complicated by Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in February, which many here worry could prompt the Serbian Republic to follow suit, tipping the region into a conflict that could fast turn deadly.

... Bosnia, which has received more than $18 billion in foreign aid since 1995, remains a ward of the West, its security guaranteed by 2,000 European Union peacekeepers.

... For the country to progress, leaders on all sides say, the structure established by the Dayton accord must be overhauled. The country’s two entities have their own Parliaments, and there are 10 regional authorities, each with its own police force and education, health and judicial authorities.

The result is a byzantine system of government directed by 160 ministers, a structure that absorbs 50 percent of Bosnia’s gross domestic product of $15 billion, according to the World Bank.
  • MODELING AN OCCUPATION OF THE WEST BANK ON A FAILED OCCUPATION OF BOSNIA - OR THE FAILED POLICING OF SOUTHERN LEBANON BY UNIFIL - IS AN UNBELIEVABLY STUPID IDEA ON ITS FACE.
  • THE ONLY THING THIS POLICY WOULD ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISH IS SEVERELY HAMPERING THE IDF'S ABILITY TO RETALIATE FOR THE INEVITABLE TERRORIST ATTACK EMANATING FROM THE WEST BANK.
  • EITHER OBAMA & COMPANY ARE STUPID, OR THIS IS THEIR REAL GOAL.

CBC DOCUMENTARY: GLOBAL WARMING DOOMSDAY CALLED OFF


VIA A COMMENTER AT GATEWAY.

AND SOMEBODY, PLEASE: TELL GORE AND OBAMA TO WATCH THE DOCUMENTARY, AND THEN TELL THEM TO STFU.

JEWISH TEACHER IN YEMEN WAS MURDERED

Yemen's anti-semitism continues to rear its ugly head:
(IsraelNN.com) Moshe Nahari, a Torah teacher and a well-known figure in Yemen's Jewish community, was murdered on Thursday morning in Reida, a city north of the capital city, Sanaa. According to the Arabic daily Ash-Sharq il-Awsat, Nahari's attacker called out, “Jew, receive the message of Islam” before shooting at him.

Nahari's friends said he had never attempted to hide his Jewishness. He hung a star of David on the door of his home and wore long peyot (sidelocks). One of his brothers is a leading rabbi in the Yemenite community.

The murderer fired on Nahari several times, made sure he was dead, and then waited for police to come. Ash-Sharq il-Awsat identified the killer as Abed el-Abdi, a former pilot. El-Abdi murdered his wife two years ago, but was not imprisoned because he agreed to give his wife's family financial compensation.
So not only was anti-semitism apparent here, so was Islamo-misogyny. That the repulsive lubricant didn't even serve a prison sentence for murdering his wife in an Islamic country should be no surprise. Is it any wonder that these murderers are able to continue on their demonic spree?

GLOBAL ROUND-UP: LEFTISTS ATTACKING BOGEYMEN

LEFTISM APPEALS TO PEOPLE WHO LOOK IN THE MIRROR, SEE DEFECTS AND BLAME SOMEONE ELSE - REAL OR IMAGINARY, SAYING "IF ONLY 'X' WASN'T AROUND THEN MY WORLD WOULD BE A UTOPIA".

THAT'S WHY LEFTISTS HAVE ALWAYS MADE THE BEST GENOCIDAL MURDERERS.

AND WHY LEFTISM ALWAYS FAILS: YOU CAN'T IMPROVE ANYTHING BY ATTACKING BOGEYMAN.

Innocent 'til proven guilty: here's your FREE BLAGO blog widget!

The man is utterly and completely innocent. Innocent, I say! You can show your support by adding this FREE BLAGO blog widget to your blog and other electronic correspondence.


Please send your checks to:

Free Blago! Defense Fund; c/o Kaplan & Sorosky
158 West Erie Street
Chicago, IL 60610-3703
Copy and paste this code to express your support.


You know as well as I do that Blago's still the right man for the job!

Old Glory: You're free to burn it but not free to display it at work



Something sure smells rotten there. Do only Leftists have rights? And guess which side the ACLU is on?

"Ralph Silvestro, a legal clerk who works at the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia, never imagined that anyone would have a beef over the American flag he had taped to the side of his work computer. After all, he works in a courthouse.

No one complained about the flags, Silvestro said. Then on Sept. 23, Silvestro got an e-mail from his supervisor: "Keith has advised me as your supervisor, that the flags must come down. They are not appropriate for the workplace," the e-mail said. The "Keith" mentioned in the e-mail was Keith Smith, the new director of Active Criminal Records....

When asked if Smith had violated Silvestro's constitutional rights, perhaps infringing on his freedom of expression, a civil-rights lawyer said: "No." "Here's the thing: Your boss rules your life," said Mary Catherine Roper, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania's Philadelphia office. "Your employer gets to make the rules."

Source

If burning the flag is protected freedom of expression, displaying it should be too. And the first amendment DOES apply because the guy was working in a government office. The story might have been different in a private business. If the ACLU were really in favor of free speech they would have defended this guy and had good prospects of success in court.

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

Conservatives are the real liberals

The so-called liberals are just Leftists

As a conservative, I believe my "liberal" credentials will stack up well with that of any of my contemporary peers in the academic, political, social, or religious venues of our day. Let me explain:

I am a liberal because I believe that the best education is one that indeed liberates. It liberates us from the consequences of those things that are wrong and frees us to live within the beauty of those things that are right.

I am a liberal because of my passion for a liberal arts education-an education that is driven by the hunger for answers rather than the protection of opinions, an education that is not subject to the ebb and flow of personal agendas or political fads, an education that is not afraid to put all ideas on the table because there is confidence that in the end we will embrace what is true and discard what is false.

I am a liberal because I believe in freedom-freedom of thought and expression and the freedom to dissent from consensus. I am energized by the unapologetic pursuit of truth. Wherever it leads I am confident in the words, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."

I am a liberal because I believe in integration. Truth cannot be segregated into false dichotomies, but it is an integrated whole. The liberally educated person recognizes that we cannot and should not separate personal life from private life, the head from the heart, fact from faith, or belief from behavior.

I am a liberal because I believe in conservation. There are ideas that are tested by time, defended by reason, validated by experience, and confirmed by revelation; and these ideas should be conserved. We are in fact endowed by our Creator with an objective moral understanding. I believe in nature and its natural law. We do know that rape is wrong, that the Holocaust was bad, and that hatred and racism are to be reviled. Even though we cannot produce these truths in a test tube, we hold them to be self-evident laws that no human being can deny.

I am a liberal because I recognize that, when we exchange the truth for a lie, we build a house of cards that will fall to mankind's inevitable temper tantrum of seeking control and power. History tells us time and time again that to deny what is right and true and embrace what is wrong and false is to fall prey to the rule of the gang or the tyranny of one. We need look no further than the lessons of Mao, Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot, or Robespierre for such evidence.

I am a liberal because I believe in liberty. I believe liberty is the antithesis of slavery and slavery is the unavoidable outcome of lies-lies about who we are as people, lies about what is right and what is wrong, lies about man, and lies about God.

Here is the question: Are we really free today or are we now becoming more and more enslaved by the constructs of the Ubermensch-the superman-the power brokers, the elites, the "fittest" who have survived in the political arenas of campaigns or campuses? Are we free to live within the boundaries of justice that come from the classical liberal education of the Uni-Versity-Uni-verities-Uni-Veritas-or are we becoming more and more bound by group think, political correctness, and populous power, what M. Scott Peck calls the diabolical human mind?

You see, good education, complete education, liberal education must be grounded in the conservative respect for and the conservation of what is immutable and right and just and real. It should seek to reclaim what has been co-opted and to reveal what has been compromised. It should be free of intimidation and should honor open inquiry and the right to dissent. It should have confidence in the measuring rod of Truth-that unalienable standard that is bigger and better than the crowd or the consensus.

Education-good liberal education-is the business of pursuing Truth. It isn't about constructing opinions. As Martin Luther King Jr. told us in his letter from the Birmingham jail, it is the conservation of the immutable virtues that serves as our strongest justification for our ongoing struggle for freedom, liberation, and liberty. Without such conservative ideas, I am not sure anyone can truly call himself a liberal.

More here

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

A RETURN TO "SEPARATE BUT EQUAL"?

Read about this new web browser:
For African-American Web surfers who just can't relate to their browsers, there's hope: the Blackbird Web browser.

Billed as "the Web browser for the African-American community," it's a modification of Mozilla Firefox with a different color scheme — black and earthy shades of green and brown — as well as certain built-in features meant to appeal to black Americans.

These include "Black Search," which brings up results tailored to what its backers assume are African-American interests; "Black News Ticker," which does more of the same; and "Blackbird TV," which is "the best of Black video on the Web."

"We believe that the Blackbird application can make it easier to find African American related content on the Internet and to interact with other members of the African American community online by sharing stories, news, comments and videos via Blackbird," reads a press release posted by 40A, the somewhat mysterious firm behind the browser, on the CrunchBase Web site.

Downloads (for Windows XP and Vista only) are free; the project claims to be funded by ads and targeted links.

Reaction from black bloggers, tech writers and commenters has been, shall we say, a bit mixed....
I am at a loss for a printable comment to this one.

Friday, December 12, 2008

CONGRESSMAN KEITH ELLISON AT THE HAJ

From the Khaleej Times, on December 10, 2008:
As Keith Ellison, the first Muslim member of the US Congress who performed Haj this week, told CNN, you forget who you are –- black or white and American or African — and where you come from when you are before God circling the Kaaba in a two-piece unstitched garment....
Ellison, who serves on the Financial Services and Judiciary Committees, forgot where he came from? He forgot he is supposed to be an American — and, having taken the oath of office, as a public servant in the United States Congress?

Oh, wait.

Ellison took the oath, at least symbolically, on the Koran. Allah and the ummah come first and foremost for him.

And what kind of sermon was preached at the Haj?
Saudi Arabia’s top cleric has used his annual sermon to Muslim pilgrims assembling for hajj to urge Muslim countries to renounce capitalism and form an Islamic economic bloc... [shari'a law]
The United States is already embracing shari'a finance. See this essay by Alyssa A. Lappen.

Shari'a finance is the camel's nose in the tent. Money is power.

"The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood"

The above quotation from George Orwell is a fairly classic Leftist comment. "All men are brothers" is a cry from Leftists that goes back at least to the 19th century. I document an 1894 example of it here (just before the half-way mark in the article). And we must not forget that "fraternite" was one of the 3 aims of the French revolution.

And it all fits in very well with some remarks I made recently about the emotional importance of "connectedness" in human beings. Because of their disgruntlement with the world about them, Leftists tend to feel disconnected from their own society but do nonetheless miss that sense of connectedness badly. So they make up a fantasy (and impossible) world in which they have a superabundant amount of connectedness: A world in which all men are brothers.

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

Is the gingerbread man nuts?

"You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man"

Reflecting on the question "Is Blagojevic nuts?," -- retired clinical psychologist Judith Lown writes:
I read your column with particular interest this morning because it echoed a conversation I had with a friend last night. My reaction then, as to your column, is that Blago is a classic personality disorder--Axis II in the DSM, which, technically, is different from psychosis, although part of an Axis II diagnosis is a vulnerability to psychotic episodes.

The question here is reality testing and the quality and the extent of loss of reality testing. Psychotics' loss of reality testing tends to have a bizarre flavor--Martians planting radios in the brain, the next door neighbor spying on them, etc. Personality disorders' reality testing deficits tend to be more in the line of "I wish it, therefore it is, or I don't wish it, therefore it isn't." There were times during the Clinton administration when, imo, both Bill and Hill seemed to wander pretty far into that territory. My guess is that we will see some of the same when pressures get to O.

If I were Blago's attorney and wanted to use an insanity plea, I would go for the episodic psychosis, but if I were a juror, I wouldn't buy it. His behavior is, to me, just garden variety sociopathic personality disorder behavior. And in the context of the Illinois Combine, there were simply insufficient contextual signals to make him moderate it.

Former Assistant United States Attorney Bill Otis also invokes his professional experience to answer the question:
No, he's not nuts. Having been an AUSA for a long time, one thing I noticed is that normal, honest people have difficulty understanding how criminals think. (This shows up, for example, in the death penalty debates I do, where abolitionists simply don't grasp the heartlessness and cruelty that some killers display. It's simply beyond their experience).

Blago's world is merely corrupt; it's not insane. To him, a Senate seat is not a public trust, it's a commodity. It has a price, and the most efficient mechanism for determining that price is to put it on auction, which is what he did. Far from being insane, it's perfectly clear-headed -- just venal. Mortgage markets should operate as well.

There are two other factors tending to argue that Blago was thinking clearly. First, the quality of one's thinking must be measured in the environment in which it occurs. Blogo was a powerful man. His prior years of greed had gone, not merely unpunished, but rewarded, ultimately with the Governor's Mansion. It might well be mistaken, but it is hardly insane, to believe that the behaviors that got you so much for so long will continue to work.

In this respect, Blago is more than a little reminiscent of both Elilot Spitzer and John Edwards, who, although high-profile and ambitious public figures under considerable real (and even more potential) press scrutiny, nonetheless thought they could continue to chase skirts with the joyfulness (and abandon) of an anonymous Wal-Mart worker in his twenties. The cocoon of arrogance and the feel of invulnerability that comes with getting away with this stuff for years -- as Blogo, Spitzer and Edwards all did -- comes to be their environment. A person is not crazy for living in his environment and adapting his behavior to it; indeed he'd be crazy to do otherwise.

Second, the absence of insanity is strongly suggested by the large number of candidates who joined the auction and put in their bids (or at least explored what the bidding might look like). We don't know yet who all these people were, but it's a safe guess they were some powerful and prominent citizens. Are they all crazy? No. They were, like Blago, acting rationally in the environment at hand (which they did much to create, but that's another story).

Of course, sometimes rational but corrupt people get caught, and this appears to be one of them. If they were always caught, or always (or close to always) made to pay a significant price for their misdeeds, then there would be a better case for thinking them to be insane. But that's not remotely how it works -- and they know that.

It's not so much that Spitzer and Edwards will walk away from their respective scandals the multi-millionaire celebrities they were when they walked in, with a fawning (for liberals) press telling us that (a) everybody does it, or (b) to err is human, or (c) we can't be so judgmental, or (d) [fill in the blank]. It's that we (or at least they) learned from The Big One ten years ago. Bill Clinton disgraced his office, lied, and encouraged or (possibly) arranged for others to lie. He also granted at least one pardon after the pardonee's former (but still friendly) wife forked over a few hundred thousand in "contributions."

And what happened? Clinton's popularity went up, his spouse became a serious candidate for President, he's touted by the press as an elder statesman, his guy at DoJ who checked off on the pardon is about to become Attorney General, and of course Clinton himself lives a life of luxury and adulation. The world of perverse incentives that the Left labored so long to create has arrived. Is Blago nuts? Not hardly.

More here

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

Thursday, December 11, 2008

THE CORRUPT DEAL BETWEEN THE SEIU AND OBAMA: THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS SCOOPS THE UNIVERSE BY ALMOST A YEAR

THE NYTIMES WROTE ABOUT IT TODAY, AND SO DID HOT AIR AND OTHERS.

AFTER ALL, IT WAS IN THE INDICTMENT.

NYT:
The federal criminal complaint filed against Mr. Blagojevich said his chief of staff, John Harris, had suggested to a service employees’ official that the union should help make the governor the head of Change to Win, the federation of seven unions that broke away from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. The complaint said Mr. Blagojevich was seeking a position that paid $250,000 to $300,000 a year.

In exchange, the complaint strongly suggested, the service employees union and Change to Win would help persuade Mr. Blagojevich to name Valerie Jarrett, President-elect Barack Obama’s first choice, as the state’s new senator. And the union would get help from the Obama administration, presumably for its legislative agenda.
HOT AIR:
... the SEIU was Blagojevich’s biggest donor in his two campaigns for the governorship. The union also endorsed Obama early in the primaries, in February, when Hillary began to struggle. With Gaspard on the team and the union holding some IOUs from Obama, a third-party deal would make perfect sense.

The question is whether that idea came solely from Blagojevich, or whether the SEIU originated or at least concurred in the process. Obama would have gotten his preferred candidate in the Senate, the SEIU would have even more IOUs from both Blagojevich and Obama, and Blagojevich would have had his sinecure for a golden parachute out of Springfield.
WHY DID THE SEIU FEEL LIKE THEY COULD BE A DEALMAKER!?


BECAUSE THEY ARE TIGHT WITH OBAMA AND THE CHICAGO MACHINE.

WE BLOGGED THIS LAST WINTER, [ APOST ON THE SEIU AND OBAMA] - TWICE [LONG POST ON OBAMA AND THE CHICAGO MACHINE]; EXCERPT FROPM A LINK ON THE FORST POST:
Many SEIU leaders had backed Edwards before he dropped out, but giant New York- and Chicago-based locals blocked an endorsement. Now, with Chicago pushing hard for Obama and joined by much of the rest of the union's national organization, insiders said a tipping point appears to have been reached.
IT WAS THE CHICAGO WING OF THE SEIU WHICH TIPPED THE SCALES FOR OBAMA.

AT THE TIME - ALMOST A YEAR AGO - WE WARNED ABOUT THE CORRUPT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CHICAGO MACHINE AND THE SEIU AND OBAMA:
Can you imagine what will happen if PRESIDENT OBAMA signs a nationalized healthcare plan bill passed by HARRY REID and NANCY PELOSI!?!?

It'll probably be run by a Kennedy and a Daley - for their benefit and the benefit of and their SEIU/AFSCME cronies.
WE WERE RIGHT.

WE WERE RIGHT BECAUSE WE HAD PREVIOUSLY - IN 2006! - WARNED ABOUT HOW THE DEMOCRATS HAD BECOME THE MOUTHPIECES FOR THE TAX-GETTING UNIONS - LIKE THE SEIU AND AFSCME, AND THAT THIS WAS WHY THE DEMOCRATS ALWAYS FAVORED MORE SPENDING AND BIGGER PROGRAMS.

IN 2005, WE CALLED IT "THE AXIS-OF-TAXES":
"government workers" (like NEA teachers, and AFSCME white collar bureaucrats, and SEIU etc) are PAID FROM TAXES and are also HUGE supporters of the Democrat Party. They are perhaps the strongest backers of the party - in money, right after the Left-wing billionaires like Soros, Lewis, and Heinz-Kerry. And they might contribute the most to the Democrats when one takes into account manpower hours during campaigning and their get out the vote efforts.

This is OBVIOUSLY one reason why the Democrats FAVOR BIGGER GOVERNMENT AND INCREASING GOVERNMENT SPENDING: It's a PAYOFF their supporters.

In this light, it's OBVIOUS that the "government employeee union"/Democrat Party alignment nothing more than a self-serving "AXIS FOR TAXES" and that this is why the AXIS nearly always favors more government programs and higher taxes: in order to pay for higher wages and more perks for MORE government workers/union members.
THE SEIU IS A CENTRAL SPOKE IN THE CORRUPT AXIS OF TAXES.

RIGHT NOW, OBAMA IS THE HUB.

PEACE NOW MUST PUBLICLY APOLOGIZE FOR SLANDER

The leftist group called Peace Now has been ordered to take responsibility for committing slander:
(IsraelNN.com) The Peace Now organization and activists Hagit Ofran and Dror Atkis must pay residents of Judea and Samaria and issue a public apology, Jerusalem Magistrates Court judge Yechezkel Barclay ruled Thursday. The group was punished for a false report involving the Samaria town of Revava.

Peace Now, Ofran and Atkis were sued for damages caused by a report published two years ago. In the report, titled “A sin leads to another sin,” (Aveira goreret aveira in Hebrew), Peace Now argued that most Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria were built on land stolen from local Arabs. Among other things, the report said 71.15 percent of the land on which Revava was built was stolen from Arabs.

"The Fund for Redeeming the Land,” which legally owns 100 percent of the territory on which Revava is built, demanded that Peace Now correct its false report regarding Revava and issue an apology. The group refused to apologize, as did the authors of the report. The authors agreed to only partially correct the mistaken claim regarding Revava, changing the report to say 22 percent of the land was stolen, not 71 percent.

When Peace Now refused to apologize, the Fund sued the organization with the help of Attorney Doron Nir Tzvi. The group charged Peace Now and authors Ofran and Atkis with slander.

The court found the three defendants guilty. Besides ordering them to apologize, Justice Barclay ruled that they must pay the Fund for Redeeming the Land 20,000 shekels plus tax. The group's apology must be public, and must be published in both Maariv and Haaretz.

"The time has come to end the serial lies issued by various leftist groups,” Attorney Nir Tzvi said following the court's decision. “The public should doubt any report they write.” Nir Tzvi called on Jews living in Judea and Samaria to “stand up for their good name” when facing false accusations from groups like Peace Now.
Peace Now should be shunned publicly simultaneously. Those who care about their children's future, for example, should warn them to stay far away from such vermin.

WAFA SULTAN GOES INTO HIDING AFTER AN INTERVIEW WITH DUBAI TV?

Take a look at this TV news clip that may be from MEMRI, first aired in Dubai, where Wafa Sultan tells them what she thinks. But with that told, here's what Andrew Bostom, who first wrote the letter with the link passed on to me by another writer, has to say:
This story is NOT reassuring.

I know the courageous woman Wafa Sultan. As a result of this appearance she had to go into hiding--HERE in the US!

That is how bad things have gotten.

Andy Bostom
And that's why citizens have to start calling for the expulsion of any Islamofascists who may have threatened her.

'Money transfer to Gaza is foolishness'

From the Jerusalem Post:


MK Tzahi Hanegbi (Kadima), the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Thursday leveled severe criticism at Defense Minister Ehud Barak over Barak's decision to allow the transfer of NIS 100 million from the West Bank to Gaza

Knesset Foreign Affairs and...

Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee MK Tzahi Hanegbi (Kadima).

"We don't need to transfer anything," Hanegbi told Army Radio. "Regardless of the rocket fire, as long as Gilad Schalit is being held by them we cannot finance the Hamas regime." 
Barak's decision, Hanegbi said, was "his own. I do not see that it is backed by any security-related reasoning. In my eyes, it is a mistake. This decision is foolishness and I would be happy if it is retracted." 

The radio station reported that dozens of family members of Kassam and mortar shell victims in the Negev had sent an urgent letter to Barak and Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer, demanding that the funds be frozen immediately. 


Zahar: Schalit can be released in a day

IF HAMAS ADMITS PUBLICLY IT CONTROLS SHALIT, THEN THEY ADMIT THEY ARE KIDNAPPERS, AND HANEGBI IS RIGHT. ALSO: THE CLAIM THAT ISLAM TREAT PRISONERS WELL IS A SICK LAUGHER.


From the Jerusalem Post:


A deal to free Gilad Schalit "could be reached within a day, if an Israeli government brave enough to release prisoners serving life sentences is established," Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said Thursday. 
Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar.
Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar.
Photo: AP [file]
Zahar told Israel Radio that Hamas had not believed that the Schalit case would last as long as it has. Today marks 900 days since the soldier was kidnapped in the cross-border raid at Kerem Shalom in June 2006. 
Hamas, said Zahar, had turned down requests by the Red Cross to visit Schalit for security reasons, but added that Islam commands fair treatment of prisoners. 

Oh Come All Ye Tasteless

('Chav' is a derogatory British term most frequently used to describe white working class teenagers or young people who misbehave. The burberry cap on the figure below is a chav hallmark)




A British school has asked kids to learn a "chav" nativity play - where Jesus turns water into lager instead of wine.

Mary and Joseph break into a garage instead of finding shelter in a stable. She is told she will get extra benefits for having Jesus - and the Wise Men are asked for gifts of Adidas and Burberry. When a character says Mary is a virgin, another replies: "Wossat then? A train?" The script was thought to have been found on the internet.

Michelle Taylor, 35, has a relative at Oakwood School for 11to-16 year olds with emotional and behavioural difficulties in Bexley, Kent. She said: "I couldn't believe it. You encourage children to speak properly, then they get this at school." Bexley Council said the script was used in a drama lesson for kids of 14, but the school would still stage a traditional nativity.

Source. Fuller details here

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

WHY NOT APPOINT ELIOT SPITZER SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TO INVESTIGATE BLAGOJEVICH...

I HEAR THAT ELIOT SPITZER IS LOOKING FOR A GIG...

AND HE CAN HIRE CHARLIE AND WILLIAM AND JOHN
AS HIS INVESTIGATORS...














DEMOCRATS... AS SLIMY AS THEY COME...

OBAMA IS PROBABLY VERY WORRIED THAT BLAGOJEVICH WILL SPILL HIS GUTS TO FITZ...

WHAT MIGHT "HOT ROD" BLAGOJEVICH
TELL FITZ
TO AVOID DOING TIME
(WITH A CELLIE WHO WILL GIVE HIM A REAL HOT ROD)?

WHAT DID OBAMA KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT?

POLITICO ASKS THE RIGHT QUESTIONS - AND WE DESERVE ANSWERS FROM OBAMA - UNDER OATH, AND IN PUBLIC:
7 Blago questions for Obama ...

1 – “Did you communicate directly or indirectly with Blagojevich about picking your replacement in the U.S. Senate?”

2 – “Why didn’t you or someone on your team correct your close adviser David Axelrod when he said you had spoken to Blagojevich about picking your replacement?”

3. “When did you learn the investigation involved Blagojevich’s alleged efforts to ‘sell’ your Senate seat, or of the governor’s impending arrest?”

4 – “Did you or anyone close to you contact the FBI or U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald about Blagojevich’s alleged efforts to sell your Senate seat to the highest bidder?”

5 – “Did federal investigators interview you or anyone close to you in the investigation?”

6 – “When did you and Blagojevich last speak and about what?”

7 – “Do you regret supporting Blagojevich?”
USE THE LINK AND READ WHY THESE QUESTIONS MUST BE ANSWERED, (BECAUSE OBAMA HAS BEEN HIGHLY INCONSISTENT ABOUT HIS DEALINGS IN THIS MATTER, FOR STARTERS).
  • FOLKS, THIS IS WAY BIGGER THAN TROOPERGATE...
  • BIGGER THAN WHITEWATER, TOO.
  • BLAGO MAY TAKE THE WHOLE CROWD DOWN WITH HIM...
STAY TUNED...

BTW: WHEN YOU GOOGLE THE TITLE OF THIS POST- ("WHAT DID OBAMA KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT", YOU GET 29,700 HITS.

IOW: THIS STORY IS EXPLODING...

AGW causing unprecedented pre-Christmas snow in Houston

IS THERE ANYTHING AGW CAN'T DO!?

YES. THERE IS ONE:

GETTING AL GORE TO STFU.

More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

From The U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works:

Study: Half of warming due to Sun! –Sea Levels Fail to Rise?

- Warming Fears in 'Dustbin of History'

Set for release this week, a newly updated U.S. Senate Minority Report features the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN.

The report has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke
out in 2007.
The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

The U.S. Senate report is the latest evidence of the growing groundswell of scientific opposition rising to challenge the UN and Gore. Scientific meetings are now being dominated by a growing number of skeptical scientists.

The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists' equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices and views of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. [See Full report Here: & See: Skeptical scientists overwhelm conference: '2/3 of presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC' ]

Full Senate Report Set To Be Released in the Next 24 Hours – Stay Tuned…

A hint of what the upcoming report contains:

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the istory…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

Etc., etc.

Go read the whole thing.

Obama wants to try 'rebooting US image' amongst Muslims

LIKE A GOOD LEFTIE, OBAMA THINKS ISLAMOFASCISTS HATE OUR IMAGE - AS IF THEIR ATTACKS WEREN'T PROACTIVE AND AS IF THEIR IDEOLOGY WASN'T INIMICAL TO OUR ESSENCE.
AP:

US President-elect Barack Obama will try to "reboot America's image" among the world's Muslims and will follow tradition by using his entire name, Barack Hussein Obama, in his swearing-in ceremony, he was quoted as saying in an interview published Wednesday in the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.

Obama promised during his campaign that one of his priorities would be to work to repair America's reputation worldwide, and that one element of that effort would be a speech delivered in a Muslim capital.
He pledged anew to give such a speech, though he declined to say whether it would happen during his first year in office.

"It's something I intend to follow through on," Obama said in the interview.

"We've got a unique opportunity to reboot America's image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular. So we need to take advantage of that."
RELIAPUNDIT ADDS: WE WEREN'T ALLOWED TO MENTION HIS MIDDLE NAME DURING THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN WITHOUT BEING CALLED A RACIST ISLAMOPHOBE.

NOW HE INSISTS ON USING IT ON INAUGURATION DAY.

WHAT A FREAKIN' PHONY HYPOCRITE.
  • THESE LIB JERKS THINK IF WE TALK NICER TO THE ENEMY AND FORCE ISRAEL TO GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT, THAT THEN THE ENEMY WILL STOP ATTACKING US.
  • IDIOTS.
  • THE ENEMY DOESN'T JUST WANT ISRAEL'S LAND; THEY WANT SOUTHERN THAILAND, THE MOROS, AND KASHMIR, AND IRAQ, AND LEBANON, AND EGYPT, AND MOROCCO AND TURKEY, AND SPAIN. AND THAT'S JUST FOR STARTERS!
  • AND THEN THEY WANT US TO PAY THEM TRIBUTE.
  • THIS HAS BEEN THE ENEMY'S GOAL FOR OVER ONE THOUSAND YEARS.
SWEET TALK FROM A HALF-BLACK LYING CORRUPT SACK OF LOQUACIOUS CRAP WHOSE MIDDLE NAME IS HUSSEIN WON'T CHANGE THAT A BIT.

If Only




Every week, the Washington Post has a little contest called "The Style Invitational." A few weeks back, the Invitational was "If Only!" — a one liner explaining how the world would be different had some event not occurred.

The printed results for "If Only!" are below the fold (emphases mine, all a matter of personal preference)....

Read the rest at Always On Watch.

There IS such a thing as right and wrong

I have been writing -- sporadically -- on topics in moral philosophy for many years now (See here) so I think it is time for me to ask if I have learnt anything over the years. I think I have. In particular, I think I have now arrived at a complete answer to what Leftists say about the matter. "Complete answer" is a very bold expression for a philosopher to use but readers will be the ultimate judge of whether I have achieved that, of course.

The Leftist argument

The nub of the Leftist argument is that "right" and "wrong" language is incoherent. Saying "X is pink" and "X is right" seem on the surface to be the same sort of statement but we can immediately see that they are not. Pinkness is an objective property that we can point to whereas rightness exists only in the mind of the speaker. "Who says?" is a complete refutation of any claim that something is right. Religious people can say that "God says" but since religious people do differ considerably on moral questions (e.g. abortion) it is immediately obvious that it is only an opinion about what God says that we are dealing with. And how can an opinion have any objective reality? So the Leftist concludes that there is no such thing as right and wrong, just different opinions and value judgements. You cannot find rightness under a rock and you cannot find it anywhere so it does not exist as such.

A better argument

I did three courses in philosophy in my years as a university student and was always exposed to the above analysis. And up until fairly recently I accepted it as describing at least one sort of moral statement. I was always aware, of course, that nobody ever talks as if they believed it. Leftists are in fact very quick on the draw with moral language. They can say that there is no such thing as right and wrong and then immediately and with a straight face go on to say that "racism" or "intolerance' is wrong. And George Bush is of course EVIL!

So what the heck is going on? I think the first key is, as I have previously argued, that moral language is not used in one way but rather in several ways. And I have SHOWN that usage of moral language differs from person to person by way of psychological research. Philosophers are like physicists: They are always looking for a "unified field" theory of what they study but what if such a unified field does not exist? Perhaps the closest anybody has come to a single explanation of what moral language does is the formulation that "is good" or "is right" statements simply commend. R.M. Hare is associated with that view. But if we go on from there to unpack "commend", I think we are back to square one. Surely "commend" simply means "is good". Other objections to Hare's claims are summarized below (From Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century By Scott Soames. p. 137)
"What is it to commend something? Although Hare doesn't say very much about this, he does say that "when we commend or condemn anything it is always in order, at least indirectly, to guide choices, our own or other people's, now or in the future."' So if to call something good is always to commend it, to do so must always be to guide choices in some way. This emphasis on guiding choices fits many cases quite well. If we are trying to decide what movie to go to and someone tells us that Ed Norton's new film is a good movie, then it would be natural to take that remark to be an attempt to guide our choice. However, not all cases are this direct. We often say that certain things are, or were, good so and so' s even though we don't envision ourselves or others having the opportunity to make choices on the basis of that information. Personally, I would say that Ronald Reagan was a good president of the United States, even though I don't expect anyone to have the opportunity to vote for him again-- or even for anyone very much like him. Or, to use a nice example due to my former student Rebecca Entwistle, I would say that when the College of Cardinals selected Pope John Paul II, they chose a good pope. I am willing to say this to people despite the fact that I know that none of them is in the College of Cardinals, and they will never have any occasion to choose a pope, or even to influence such a choice. How does this square with Hare's idea that to call something good is always to commend it, where to commend it is always to guide choices, directly or indirectly?"

I have previously set out what I think are the main uses of moral language but I will repeat them here as a preliminary to an important update. It seems to me that statements such as "X is right" (or "X is good" or "You ought to do X") can be unpacked in only four or perhaps five basic ways:

1. I like it when people do X
2. Doing X generally leads to widely desired results
3. It is the will of God that you do X
4. X has an inescapable, universal "moral" quality.
5. X is the prevailing rule around here (though if the person was asked why that rule exists he would almost certainly reply by referring to some version of one of the preceding three statements).

I think most people would agree that "You ought" or "is right" statements can mean 1, 2, 3 or 5 above. I do. You might dispute the truth of any of them but you would understand what is being said and understand that it is a factual claim. I would for instance dispute an "ought" statement that is unpacked as 3 above because I am an atheist but I accept that the person making the claim is trying to make a statement of fact that can be proved or disproved in some way. So. at least in the senses 1, 2, 3 or 5 above, there clearly IS such a thing as right and wrong.

Interpretation 4 above however is the difficulty because it is apparently untestable and undemonstrable -- and is hence the one that Leftists focus on. They claim it is gibberish even though the usage does seem to be widespread. And I think that the widespread nature of such statements is the key to understanding them. I think that such statements arise because human beings do have inborn, hardwired moral instincts. So a person who uses "is wrong" statements of that ilk is expressing an important instinct. He is in fact referring to something quite objective: Normal human feelings and instincts. He is saying: "That goes against normal human feelings and I know it does because it goes against feelings deep in me". He could of course be wrong. His own feelings might not be a reliable guide to what is general -- but it is nonetheless a factual claim that can be disputed. Such a person might, for instance, say "murdering babies is wrong" and mean that as a universal and unquestionable claim about how normal people respond to the idea of murdering babies. But we can argue with him about the matter by pointing out that the undoubtedly brilliant civilization of ancient Greece routinely allowed the killing of babies in some circumstances. So the argument is an empirical one, not an unfalsifiable claim. And that is what I have only recently come to see.

I am not of course saying that the unpacking I have offered above is always high in the consciousness of the person making such statements. Most people use the word "dog" with great confidence but would be rather hard put to define a dog when you remark that dogs can be of many shapes, sizes and colours. So what defines a dog? When pressed the person might say a dog is "tailwagger" -- but is a boxer dog with an amputated tail not a dog? And so it goes on. Similarly, "is right" statements can be used with considerable accuracy and meaningfulness even though the person using such statements might not be able to unpack them readily or at all.

Because the standard psychological measures of moral attitudes (e.g. Kohlberg's) are profoundly contaminated by the Leftist assumptions of their authors, I have not even tried to look up inheritance data about morality in the behaviour genetics literature -- though there is some supportive evidence mentioned here and here (referring to the work of Hauser and Haidt respectively) and the idea is to be found in the work of various well-known writers -- e.g. Steven Pinker and James Q. Wilson. So suffice it to say that most important human characteristics seem to show very substantial genetic inheritance (See e.g. here and here and here, and some work on a genetically-coded social abnormality reported here, here and here). If morality were an exception that would be most surprising.

And from the viewpoint of evolutionary biology, it would be even more surprising. Man is both a social animal and an animal that falls very readily into conflict with his fellow humans. So ways of regulating behaviour to enable co-operation and forestall conflict must necessarily be of foremost importance. And that is largely what moral and ethical rules are all about. To forestall conflict there HAVE to be rules against murder, stealing, coveting your neighbour's wife etc. And that is why there are considerable similarities between the laws of Moses (ten commandments etc) and the much earlier Babylonian code of Hammurabi. The details of moral and legal rules are of course responsive to time, place and circumstances, but there are some basics that will almost always be there. And given the importance of those basic rules for social co-operation, it should be no surprise that such rules became internalized (instinctive) very early on in human evolution. So many if not most of our social instincts are in fact moral or ethical instincts. Ethics are the rules we need for co-operative existence.

Obviously, however, the rules are not so well entrenched as to produce automatic responses. We have broad tendencies towards ethical behaviour but that is all. This is probably due to their relatively recent evolutionary origin. Most of what we are originates far back in our evolutionary past whereas the social rules that we use became needed only with the evolution of the primates.

Additionally, we are the animal that relies least on instinct. So all our instincts can be both modified and defended by our reasoning processes. Just because a thing is instinctive to us it does not mean that the behaviour concerned is emitted in any automatic way. We think about why we do what our instincts tell us and generally conclude that our instincts are thoroughly wise! And we do generally explain our rules of behaviour in a thoroughly empirical and functional way -- generally starting with: "If everyone did that .... ". And moral philosophers are of course people who specialize in such talk. But, as Wittgenstein often pointed out, all such talk is largely epiphenomenal (an afterthought). It is predominantly their set of inherited dispositions that make people behave ethically, not any abstract rationalizations.

And that realization does explain why philosophers so often back themselves into absurd corners. You might guess what is coming next at that point: Peter Singer. Peter Singer (a former student of R.M. Hare) is undoubtedly a very able and influential philosopher and in good philosophical style he starts out with a few simple and hard-to-dispute general rules from which he logically deduces all sorts of conclusions that are greeted with horror by normal people -- his view that babies and young children may be killed more or less at will, for example. As a theoretical deduction, his views are defensible but seen in the light of the biological basis of morality, they are counterproductive. A society that killed off its young more or less at will would not last long.

So we come back in the end to the good Burkean principle that theories are to be distrusted and and continually tested against whether or not they lead to generally desired outcomes. Philosophers judge an argument on its consistency, elegance and comprehensivesness. Conservatives judge it on its practical outcomes. And Leftists judge it on whether they can use it to make themselves look good.

A famous objection to any claim that moral statements are at base empirical and hence rationally arguable is the objection by David Hume. David Hume contends that there is an unbridgeable gap between "is" and "ought" statements -- so that you cannot justify "ought" statements by "is" statements. Yet that is precisely what people normally do. An "ought" statement always commends some course of action and when people ask WHY that course of action is commended the reply is often in terms of "is" (empirical) statements (e.g. the commendation of X can be explained as: "X leads to generally desired consequences" or "X leads to consequences that you would like" or "I like X" or "X is the prevailing rule in this culture"). So in my view the fact that an "ought" statement can be explained in that way shows that it is an empirical statement to begin with. Statements in general have all sorts of influences on people (for example, if someone said to me: "Your son has just died", it is clearly an empirical statement but it would also have an enormous influence on me if true. It would cause me to take many actions that I would not otherwise take) and an "ought" statement is an empirical statement with what is expected to be one particular sort of influence -- it is meant to cause you to behave in the way described (Something that R.M. Hare also saw). So an "ought" or "is right" statement is simply a shorthand (compressed) "is" statement that can be expanded in some way if desired. It might be noted however that there seems to be a gradient in "good", "right" and "ought" statements, with "ought" statements being most intended to incite action and "good" statements least so.

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

Do the dim die young?

Scots psychologist Ian Deary claims that clever people live longer than thickheads. Sure, some bright people die young and many thickheads live into old age but if you measure a large bunch of people the statistics point that way. Dr Deary and his team looked at more than 2000 Scottish children given IQ tests in 1932 when they were 11 years old. He traced most of these people again in 1997 and found that those still living at age 76 had average IQs of 102 but those who had died had average IQs of 98.

Dr Deary says more evidence comes from IQ tests on large numbers of young men recruited into the Australian Army at the time of the Vietnam War and nearly a million 19-year-olds inducted into the Swedish Army. Twenty years after the tests, those who had died in the meantime had lower average IQs than those who remained alive. Several other surveys point in the same direction.

Some critics find Dr Deary's claims insulting. "So, you're saying that the thick die quick?" "Anyway", they challenge, "haven't IQ tests been discredited"? "Well, no," says Dr Deary. IQ tests have a predictive value unequalled in psychology. Hundreds of data sets since 1904 show that IQ remains almost unchanged over a lifetime, can predict educational achievement, occupational success, propensity to sickness and age of death with some confidence. It's a better predictor of life expectancy than body mass index, total cholesterol, blood pressure or blood glucose.

But why IQ should be a good predictor of life expectancy remains a mystery. Some epidemiologists suggest that intelligent people get the easy jobs, leaving the heavier, dangerous, life-threatening work to dumber people. Or, they suggest, most people with high IQs behave better. In early life people with higher IQs are more likely to have better diets, do more exercise, avoid accidents, give up smoking, do less binge drinking and put on less weight in adulthood.

But Dr Deary has checked all that stuff, and finds it does not wash. Rather, he thinks, intelligence causes the association between education, social class and health. He favours the theory that IQ tests in youth reveal a well-wired body better able to respond effectively to environmental insults.

Some supporting evidence comes from the finding that simple reaction speed - the time taken to press a button when a stimulus appears - can replace IQ test scores as an even better predictor of an earlier death. Reaction-time tasks don't demand complex reasoning, so are unlikely to improve by education. Dr Deary hopes his findings will explain the connection between childhood IQ, sickness and earlier deaths and help to tackle problems of health inequalities.

In Christchurch, David Fergusson leads a team studying the behaviour and fates of 1265 children born there in 1977. He has already shown that those with higher IQs did better at school. If his study continues long enough, it may throw light on the connection between IQ and life expectancy of Christchurch kids.

Source

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

NYTIMES: THE ATOMIC BOMB WAS INVENTED ONLY ONCE; THE ENTIRE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE IS THE FAULT OF THE LEFT

NYTIMES:
The authors [OF TWO NEW BOOKS ON THE HISTORY OF THE ATOMIC BOMB] shatter myths, throw light on the hidden dynamics of nuclear proliferation and suggest new ways to reduce the threat. ... Both document national paths to acquiring nuclear weapons that have been rocky and dependent on the willingness of spies and politicians to divulge state secrets.

Thomas C. Reed, a veteran of the Livermore weapons laboratory in California and a former secretary of the Air Force, and Danny B. Stillman, former director of intelligence at Los Alamos, have teamed up in “The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation” to show the importance of moles, scientists with divided loyalties and — most important — the subtle and not so subtle interests of nuclear states.

“Since the birth of the nuclear age,” they write, “no nation has developed a nuclear weapon on its own, although many claim otherwise.”
  • IF THE RUSSIAN SPIES IN THE USA HADN'T GIVEN STALIN THE BOMB, THEN THE USA MIGHT STILL BE THE ONLY NUCLEAR SUPERPOWER.
  • THINK ABOUT IT. THINK ABOUT ALL THE MONEY THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN SAVED. THE NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED.
  • AND IRAN WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO GET THE BOMB, EITHER.
  • ALL THAT ENDED WHEN LEFTIES WITHIN THE USA NUCLEAR PROGRAM GAVE OUR NUKE SECRETS TO THE USSR.
THE LEFTIES WHO SPIED FOE THE USSR WERE IDIOTS. THEY WERE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING, AND WE ARE STILL PAYING THE PRICE.

IMPEACH OBAMA: BLAGOJEVICH AND OBAMA PAL REZKO WILL LEAD FITZGERALD TO OBAMA

Awesome news: Blagojevich indicted!
  • WE KINDA HAD A FEELING THAT OBAMA WAS A PHONY - BECAUSE OF HOW HE TREATED HIS FIRST LITERARY AGENT JANE DYSTEL.
  • AND ALSO BECAUSE OF THE GANG HE PLAYED BALL WITH - THE CHICAGO MACHINE, THE COOK COUNTY MACHINE AND THE ILLINOIS COMBINE.
  • AND ALSO BECAUSE OF DALEY, BLAGOJEVICH, AND REZKO.
WE POSTED ON OBAMA'S CORRUPTION MORE THAN ONCE; WE POSTED ON IT:
  1. HERE, AND
  2. HERE, AND
  3. HERE, AND
  4. HERE, AND
  5. HERE, AND
  6. HERE, AND
  7. HERE, AND
  8. HERE, AND
  9. HERE, AND
  10. HERE, AND
  11. HERE, AND
  12. HERE.
THE INDICTMENT AGAINST THE GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS ALLEGES THAT WIRETAPPED CONVERSATIONS REVEAL THAT BLAGOJEVICH WAS CORRUPTLY DEALING WITH SEIU PRES ANDY STERN.

ABOUT THE SEIU AND STERN, I WROTE THIS LAST SUMMER - YES... SUMMER:
I have long argued that the Democrats are the party of the SEIU and AFSMCE - huge unions which represent people who work FOR the bureaucracy. They scratch each other's backs: the Democrats fight to get them more jobs and raises, and the unions fight to get the Dems reelected.

This "coalition" is a VERY BIG PART OF THE CHICAGO MACHINE AND THE OBAMA COALITION.
I WROTE THIS LAST WINTER! YES LAST WINTER, WHEN THE SEIU ENDORSED OBAMA:

  • THEY [THE SEIU] COULD'VE LIVED WITH ANY OF THE THREE LEADING DEM CANDIDATES: ALL PROMISED TO EXPAND THE GOVERNMENT'S ROLE IN HEALTHCARE AND THEREFORE DIRECTLY BRING THEM RICHES.
  • OBAMA IS PROMISING THEM THE MOST - WITH EXPANSION OF TAX-PAYER FINANCED HEALTHCARE AND HIS "GREEN CORPS".
  • IT'S A QUID PRO QUO PAYOFF TO THE DEMOCRAT/UNION MACHINE - TYPIFIED BY THE CHICAGO MACHINE WHICH ANOINTED OBAMA.
THE ASTUTE BLOGGER TWO WEEKS AGO WEEK:
  • THE OBAMA-REZKO RELATIONSHIP SPEAKS VOLUMES - ABOUT OBAMA.
  • AND IT EXPLAINS WHY AND HOW OBAMA ROSE SO QUICKLY THROUGH CITY AND THEN STATE POLITICS AND INTO THE SENATE.
  • AND IT EXPLAINS WHY TED KENNEDY IS SO ENTHUSIASTICALLY SUPPORTING HIM
  • IT'S NOT JUST CLINTON-FATIGUE, OR CLINTON HATRED.
  • IT'S THE OL'TIME CORRUPT, ELECTION-STEALING, PATRONAGE JOB-GIVING CHICAGO DEMOCRAT PARTY MACHINE, FEELING YOUNG AGAIN - FEELING WELL-OILED, AND EAGER TO GET CONTROL OF THE WHITE HOUSE SO THEY CAN:
  1. GET CONTROL OF FEDERAL PATRONAGE,
  2. GET CONTROL OF THE POWER TO INCREASE FEDERAL UNION WAGES,
  3. AND - AS TEDDY BELLOWED SO LOUDLY DURING HIS ENDORSEMENT SPEECH -
  4. GET THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO CREATE THE GREAT-GRANDMOTHER OF ALL FEDERAL TEAT-SUCKING PATRONAGE PROGRAMS OF ALL TIMES: NATIONAL HEALTHCARE.
Can you imagine what will happen if PRESIDENT OBAMA signs a nationalized healthcare plan bill passed by HARRY REID and NANCY PELOSI!?!?

It'll probably be run by a Kennedy and a Daley - for their benefit and the benefit of and their SEIU/AFSCME cronies.
THE OTHER SHOE WILL SOON DROP.

WITH REZKO'S FALL CAME BLAGOJEVICH'S FALL. THEY WERE VERY CLOSE ALLIES. AS WERE REZKO, BLAGO AND OBAMA.

OBAMA'S FALL IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK...