Repeat after me: Government is power. Government is not to be trusted. Ever. Even if you believe that some government is and will always be necessary, that ‘necessary’ piece of government should always be regarded as a prudent lion tamer regards the big carnivorous cats that are ‘necessary’ for him to make a living. To imagine that seemingly subdued purring lions can be trusted to be dealt with in any ways that do not include the use of strong cages, leashes, ceaseless and deep suspicion, and escape hatches is the height of romantic absurdity – wishful thinking of the most extreme and inexcusable sort. Government is by its very nature a dangerous, untrustworthy, dishonest, arrogant, slippery entity – characteristics that are by no means reduced anywhere near to insignificance by a wide franchise, regular elections, and sturdy ink-on-parchment documents called “constitutions.”
Unless you are a high-ranking government official, government - no government – is ever “Us.” It is always “Them.” And They are not to be trusted. Ever.
I knew that the Global Warmists would pile on to the tornadoes and storms that recently hit Alabama and Mississippi, but I wanted to find the perfect example before posting anything about it.
As all right-thinking people know, Jehovah/Yahweh/Zuul/Gaia doesn't like it when we tolerate gays and lesbians. So He/She/It sent a hurricane to New Orleans to punish the offending parties.
If our crops fail, it's because there are witches in our midst. After we burn a few of them, the Gods are appeased and prosperity returns.
I'll never forget going to my uncle's house in the early 1970's and hearing a farmer question whether or not our space travel was causing an uptick in hurricanes.
Well, guess why we had tornadoes in the South last week?
Bad legislative karma. Yep. Certain regions have legislators that don't bow at the foot of Saint Albert, The Goracle of Music City, Tennessee. The Gods sent the tornadoes to those exact places as payback.
“Given that global warming is unequivocal,” climate scientist Kevin Trenberth cautioned the American Meteorological Society in January of this year, “the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming rather than the inane statements along the lines of ‘of course we cannot attribute any particular weather event to global warming.’” The congressional delegations of these states — Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky — overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists.
So there you have it. If the congressional delegations of 'Bama, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Georgia, Virginny, and Ol' Kentuck had just voted to let Al Gore buy Carbon Credits from himself, if we had just started using CFL bulbs a little sooner, if we had just built a few more idiotic windmills in West Texas, if we had implemented an economy-destroying carbon tax, if we had carpooled, starved a few more brown people by using grain as ethanol, used a push mower, minimized packaging, put on a sweater, bought a bracelet, air dried our clothes, and done other things to conform to some bureaucrat's Luddite fantasy.....
If we had turned our lives over to the government, crucified the evil Koch brothers, voted Democrat, and listened to the warnings from totally disinterested scientists whose research funding and prestige doesn't depend on government funding at all....
Then the earth-goddess Gaia would have been pleased. Alabama would have been spared. The tornadoes would have hit Canada, where the natives are well known for violating the Christian Sabbath. And consuming alcohol. And wearing clothing made of blended fabrics. And not wearing Burkhas.
Here's The Independent (UK) from just 10 years ago....March 20th, 2000. Put your coffee down. You don't want to get giggly and start spewing all over your keyboard:
Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.
This is a pic of the snow on the A3, taken a couple of days ago.
....However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".
"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.
This dude is in Epsom, somewhere in South England. He's trying to dig out his car from all the non-snow. Please take note that the insane statements about the snow came from Dr. David Viner, a legit scientist from the Infallible, the One True Church, the Peer Reviewed Climate Research Unit at The University Of East Anglia. I'm not anti-science. I'm not an anti-intellectual. But in this case, I think Dr. David Viner and the CRU Hockey Team were looking for a payday.
....David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes - or eventually "feel" virtual cold.
Here's a picture of a British kid in the "virtual cold". Jesus Christ Almighty, I can't believe these clowns are still taken seriously.
Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. "We're really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time," he said.
No, Doc, heavy snow like this always causes chaos. It doesn't matter if you call it weather or climate. Heavy snow causes chaos.
The chances are certainly now stacked against the sort of heavy snowfall in cities that inspired Impressionist painters, such as Sisley, and the 19th century poet laureate Robert Bridges, who wrote in "London Snow" of it, "stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying".
Not any more, it seems.
I bet someone wishes he could take a Mulligan on that last sentence. Oh, and here's The Telegraph (UK) from a couple of days ago. Almost every road in Britain is a snowed under mess....
Forecasters warned that parts of Britain could see record low temperatures this week of -26C (-15F). Heathrow will experience lows of about -9C (16F) tonight and further snowfall is expected in the South East during the evening rush hour.
Motorists continued to struggle. The M25 was closed in both directions for about six hours while drivers on the M40 in Oxfordshire suffered severe delays.
Commuters were warned to expect treacherous conditions with thick ice and freezing fog today. Train passengers also face delays and cancellations, particularly in the North. Eurostar services between London and Paris have also been affected.
Air travel experts warned that even when the weather improves it will take at least 48 hours before flights return to normal.
And let's close it out with a comment from Powerline, from which all these great links came....
It's fun to ridicule the warmists because they are so often wrong, but their errors are in fact significant: a scientific theory that implies predictions that turn out to be wrong, is false. A principal feature of climate hysteria is its proponents' unwillingness to be judged by the standards that govern real science.
Yeah, they screwed up when they offered a concrete prediction, and it really hurts the funding when prophecies don't come to pass. They'll not make that mistake again. But don't despair. Let not your heart be troubled. If you look over in the sidebar, you'll see a countdown for the end of 2013, when Gore predicted that the polar ice caps will disappear. The blog entry for January 1, 2014, is going to be a fun post to write.
DALLAS, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Texas and several national industry groups on Tuesday filed separate petitions in federal court challenging the government's authority to regulate U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
Texas, which leads U.S. states in carbon dioxide emissions due to its heavy concentration of oil refining and other industries, will see a major impact if U.S. mandatory emissions reductions take effect.
LONDON, Feb 14 (UK Daily Mail) -
* Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
*There has been no global warming since 1995
*Warming periods have happened before - but not due to man-made changes
DALLAS - In December, the Environmental Protection Agency ruled that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide endanger human health, opening the door for the agency to issue mandatory regulations to reduce them....Texas said it had filed a petition for review challenging the EPA's "endangerment finding" with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Texas has also asked the EPA to reconsider its ruling.
LONDON - The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information....Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.
Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.
The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.
Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.
I could keep going back and forth for a while, but that would quickly become tiresome. It seems that the EPA's decision to declare CO2 a pollutant has suffered from some lousy timing. Here's some Ray Wylie Hubbard. "Screw You. We're From Texas"
Links to websites of various Texas singer-songwriters and their haunts are provided for visitors from the U.K.
I got on my cowboy boots, jeans
And Hawaiian shirt, mirrored sunglasses
And a mobile phone
I guess I look like some Port Aransas
Dope dealer that's out on bail
Just trying to get home
Well I ain't in jail and I got me a guitar
Got a little band that's hotter than a rocket
Sometimes we're sloppy
We're always loud, tonight we're just ornery
And locked in the pocket
So screw you, we're from Texas
Screw you, we're from Texas
Screw you, we're from Texas
We're from Texas baby, so screw you
So screw you, we're from Texas
Screw you, we're from Texas
Screw you, we're from Texas
We're from Texas, screw you
Sing it with me--
Screw you, we're from Texas
Screw you, we're from Texas
Screw you, we're from Texas
We're from Texas, screw you!
Now Texas has gotten a bad reputation,
Because of what happened in Dallas and Waco
And our corporations well they are corrupt
And the politicians are swindlers and loco
But when it comes to music my friend
I believe these words are as true as St. John the Revelator's
Our Mr. Vaughan was the best that there ever was
And no band was cooler than the 13th Floor Elevators.
So screw you, we're from Texas
Screw you, we're from Texas
Screw you, we're from Texas
We're from Texas, screw you!
Screw you, we're from Texas
Screw you, we're from Texas
Screw you, we're from Texas
We're from Texas Screw you
Screw you, we're from Texas
Screw you, we're from Texas
Screw you, we're from Texas
We're from Texas Screw you
We're from Texas Screw you... I apologize for posting a video that contains pics of Eminent Domain Sports Palaces. But the rest of it is pretty cool. Trey Garrison is pretty cool also. Hope he doesn't mind me ripping off his post.
I saw the Ricky Gervais movie "The Invention Of Lying" last night. It's a good one. Imagine a world where everyone tells the truth. The words "truth" and "lie" don't seem to have been invented. Next, imagine a short, dumpy guy like Gervais showing up for his first date with Jennifer Garner. The truth-telling that follows is hilarious.
Gervais plays a screenwriter assigned to write about the 13th century. (Remember, "fiction" is an unknown concept to these people, so the only books and movies are about history. Actors are pretending, and therefore they're liars. That's why there are no actors in the movies the Gervais character writes.) Everyone tells the cold, hard truth, regardless of the consequences.
Ricky's mother is dying in a nursing home, and she states that she's scared of disappearing into a meaningless non-existence. Ricky wants to ease her pain, and fumbling for a way to comfort her, he tells his mom that she's going on to another world, a painless world where she'll see all her friends again, and she'll always be happy.
Word spreads about this new world. People want to know more. Ricky invents an Invisible Man In The Sky. People want to know more. Ricky says the Invisible Man In The Sky speaks to him. People want to know more. Ricky brings down the Ten Commandments taped to some Pizza Hut boxes (I'll add them to this post as soon as I can find them online....)
When Gervais is explaining that The Invisible Man In The Sky causes everything to happen, a brilliant "Why do bad things happen to good people>" conversation takes place. Ricky's response is the same as every honest theologian's answer : "Hell if I know. You figure it out."
That's all I can tell without going into total spoiler mode.
Most reviews are labeling this movie as a sacreligious diatribe. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has already rated "The Invention of Lying" as "O - morally offensive".
Not so. "The Invention Of Lying" asks most of the big questions, and makes you laugh at your inability to answer them.
You may claim that you've never doubted the existence, or nature, of God. You might even claim that everyone who disagress with you about God's nature is going to be tortured forever. But what if you lived in a world where you had to tell the truth?
Dr. Ralph has been the editorial conscience, B.S. detector, and token Democrat on these pages from sometime around day one. We're both members of Broadway Baptist Church.
When I was asking various people to fill in for my during my vacation this week, one of the topics I sent out was about the challenges faced by libertarians in this dark age of Buddy Bailouts, Crony Capitalism, and Troubled Asset Relief Programs.
I immediately thought of this post that Dr. Ralph did shortly after the election, entitled "To My Libertarian Friends". I've copied it in its entirety, along with a follow up. You can see my (rushed and hurried) reply in the comment field at his blog. I hope this one generates some discussion. Here's Dr. Ralph, winner of the Trotsky Lookalike Contest:
This is probably going to be my last political screed for a while, which affects only the 2 or 3 people who actually read this drivel. But before I drift into discussing things like technology and the folly of everyday life, I wanted to offer up a few final thoughts on the 2008 election.
Amongst my friends and associates of various political persuasions are several Libertarians: all extremely bright, intellectually curious people who are passionately interested in politics. I have a lot of respect for them. I don't necessarily agree with them.
Here's why.
There is a broad range of political beliefs that fall under the designation of "Libertarianism," all of which (to perhaps over-simplify) focus on the elevation of individual liberties and negate the power of the state. To restate: they believe in social freedom and economic freedom without interference and regulation from the government.
Sounds good, no?
The problem is, this ignores the reason all that regulation and interference is there in the first place. Not to put too fine a point on it, but people are jerks. Maybe not individually, but certainly collectively. And there are certainly outstanding examples of individual jerkiness to be found in the wild.
To what extent are we talking about removing "interference," anyway? And by whose definition?
Reforming drug laws and not interfering with people's personal medical and reproductive decisions (read: abortion rights)? I'm good with that. Permitting anyone, regardless of gender, to get married? I'm cool with that, too. The right to own as many assault weapons as I can scrape the money together for? ...You're starting to loose me. And there are a world of people out there for whom the latter example is fine but have major discomfort for the former.
And let's get a little more mundane -- what about something like zoning? Care to have your neighbor set up a rat breeding factory? Don't laugh -- this battle is going on right now in Fort Worth. What about civil rights laws? One could certainly argue they are interfering with someone's property rights.
This may be a reductio ad absurdum argument, but at what point does the absurdum kick in? It's one thing to be for less regulation. The devil is in the details.
Removing "barriers" to free trade is the other major talking point I hear much about: economic deregulation. Much is made of the "Invisible Hand" that is supposed to insure that free and unregulated markets benefit society as a whole.
Excuse me?
This make about as much sense to me as Intelligent Design.
Again, this may sound good in the abstract, but I have little faith in real world application, especially in light of recent events in the financial world. Allen Greenspan, patron saint of deregulation, admitted after after the general market collapse earlier this year that maybe he was wrong in opposing all regulation and stated, "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity -- myself especially -- are in a state of shocked disbelief."
The Invisible Hand bitch-slapped us.
And the idea that an unregulated John D. Rockefeller type monopoly serves the public interest seems naive at best. People forget that things get regulated for a reason, and the chief reason is to correct past abusive behavior.
After the November election the Libertarians would seem well-positioned to swell their ranks with thinking conservatives disgusted by the mean-spirited, intolerant, xenophobic anti-intellectualism that seemed to have taken over the GOP. So why don't I think the Libertarians will ever move beyond fringe status?
I'm not sure they want to.
As Otto von Bismarck once said, "Politics is the art of the possible." Compromise has come to be a word delivered in a sneer, but in a land as diverse as ours, the ability to work out deals with competing interests is key to being able to govern.
Can the Libertarians compromise their guiding principles? Should they?
It may be they best serve the nation like yeast leavening the loaf, as a source of ideas to be co-opted and co-joined by the majority parties.
Parting shot: here's Stephen Colbert discussing a topic near and dear to my Libertarian friends.
Enjoy.
Click here for the video. This particular format makes my site go nuts when I direcly embed it. Here's a follow up that he wrote just a few days ago:
This is a follow up to my previous post, To my Libertarian friends, in which I laid out some of my thoughts and criticisms of the Libertarian Party, which includes amongst its numbers several friends and associates. To sum up (so you don't have to be bored twice) I have a lot of respect for Libertarians (they tend to be extremely bright, intellectually curious people) but I don't necessarily agree with all of their positions. On economic issues, their faith in the Invisible Hand of the Free Market strikes me as a bit like believing in Intelligent Design. Their take on civil rights, workplace regulations, and some other areas strike me as naive at best.
Where they have my full agreement is in the area of personal freedoms. God bless 'em.To pull a few quotes from the 2008 National Libertarian Party platform: *We favor the repeal of all laws creating "crimes" without victims, such as the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes. *Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration. *Consenting adults should be free to choose their own sexual practices and personal relationships. Government does not have the authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships.
While the Democrats have cautiously embraced the pro-choice issue, they act like someone who farts in the elevator on the issue of gay marriage rights: they conspicuously avoid acknowledging the obvious and hope people forget the whole unpleasant business by the time they arrive at their floor. Shame on them. I'd venture to say the Libertarians will continue to see considerable growth in the decade ahead as gay conservatives see them as an alternative to the rabidly fundamentalist anti-intellectual nuthouse the Republican party is becoming. And I hope they drag the Democrats along, kicking and screaming, for the ride.
