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| “Floridly Psychotic” h/t Secular Apostate |
Image via WikipediaRelated source » Dennis Miller - The Big Speech
[This video is recommended in its entirety.]
“Segment from recent HBO comedy special. Miller's take on Islam - Terrorists and Nancy Pelosi.”
— WebsurferguyMN, November 28, 2010
Image by Renegade98 via FlickrRead related » The Looming Crisis in the StatesIf you happen to be a typical free-lunch liberal who takes his marching orders from the New York Times (All the news that comfortably fits!), I have a question for you: Have you had your plateful of crazy this morning? If so, you might be well advised to read your bible's recent opinion piece (excerpted above) as an antidote that, nevertheless, may not be very effective at this late date.
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“It is no way to run the nation’s fifth largest state [Illinois], and it is not even clear that investors will agree, but these kinds of shaky deals are likely to become increasingly common as the states try to cope with the greatest fiscal drought since the Great Depression. Starved for revenue and accustomed to decades of overspending, many states have been overwhelmed. They are facing shortfalls of $140 billion next year. Even before the downturn, states jeopardized their futures by accumulating trillions in debt that they swept into some far-off future. But that future is not so distant, and the crushing debt has made recovery far more difficult to achieve. As The Times reported, Illinois, California and several other states are at increasing risk of being the first states to default since the 1930s. The city of Prichard, Ala., has stopped sending out its pension checks, breaking state law and shocking its employees.”
— NYT Editorial, December 25, 2010 (nytimes.com)
Image via WikipediaRead related » Two new rules will give Constitution a starring role in GOP-controlled HouseIs this a great country or what? After two centuries of mostly contentious deliberations over sausage-making legislation, the House will finally begin each process with kosher ingredients [i.e., the citing of constitutional authority for the proposed legislation]. I think it's great.
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“And then they will require that every new bill contain a statement by the lawmaker who wrote it citing the constitutional authority to enact the proposed legislation. […] The constitutional authority rule will restart this debate with each new bill. Every measure will require a statement from its sponsor outlining where in the Constitution Congress is empowered to enact such legislation. […] "I see this as a statement of the Republican Party, heavily influenced by the tea party, that we are the defenders of the Constitution and we will exercise our constitutional responsibilities seriously in ways the Democrats did not," said Neil Siegel, a law professor at Duke University.”
— By Philip Rucker and Krissah Thompson, December 30, 2010 (washingtonpost.com)
 Image via Wikipedia |
| The Boy who Switched Names with His Dog |
“Narcissism is the purgatory of evil.”In the beginning there was self preservation. And the secular god of Darwinian nature saw that it was good, for the alternative was chaos.
— TheBigHenry's Handbasket Rule
Image via WikipediaRead related » Gravity from Quantum InformationWhen high-energy physics theory (hep-th) is described in terms of Einstein's general relativity, Landauer's principle, information erasure at causal horizons, Jacobson's idea, Einstein's special relativity, entropy, thermodynamics, and, to top it all off, quantum mechanics, you know it's going to be tough sledding through very dense physics. Furthermore, if the paper is submitted to arxiv.org, by non-native English-speakers, with sub-par editing for the manuscript, the sledding gets tougher still.
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“It is suggested that classical Einstein gravity [i.e., general relativity] can be derived by using Landauer's principle applied to an information erasure at causal horizons and Jacobson's idea linking the Einstein [field] equation[s] to thermodynamics. Our result implies that gravity has a quantum informational origin.
[...]
In short, the Einstein equations link matter to gravity, and his famous formula E = mc2 links matter to energy. We know also that Landauer’s principle links information to energy. Thus, now we have a relation between information and gravity, the Einstein equations with the quantum informational interpretation. Our theory implies that the Einstein equations [are] more about information than energy or the equation of state. In other words, information might be [a] more profound physical entity than matter or field[s].” [emphasis added]
— Jae-Weon Lee, Hyeong-Chan Kim, Jungjai Lee, 21 Mar 2010, arXiv:1001.5445v2 [hep-th]
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| h/t Theo |
Read related » Mocked U.K. Forecaster Who Predicted Snowy Winter Speaks Out
h/t Theo
Merry Christmas to all my Christian readers.
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| General Washington Crossing the Delaware on December 25, 1776 (Image via Wikipedia) |
Image via WikipediaRead related » PolitiFiction
True 'lies' about ObamaCare.
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“So the watchdog news outfit called PolitiFact has decided that its "lie of the year" is the phrase "a government takeover of health care." […] PolitiFact's decree is part of a larger journalistic trend that seeks to recast all political debates as matters of lies, misinformation and "facts," rather than differences of world view or principles. PolitiFact wants to define for everyone else what qualifies as a "fact," though in political debates the facts are often legitimately in dispute. […] In fact—if we may use that term without PolitiFact's seal of approval—at the heart of ObamaCare is a vast expansion of federal control over how U.S. health care is financed, and thus delivered. The regulations that PolitiFact waves off are designed to convert insurers into government contractors in the business of fulfilling political demands, with enormous implications for the future of U.S. medicine. […] [I]ts animating conceit is that opinions are what ideologues have, when in reality PolitiFact's curators also have political views and values that influence their judgments about facts and who is right in any debate. […] For a bill that in reality will raise health costs and reduce patient choice, [the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act] recalls Mary McCarthy's famous line about every word being a lie, including "the" and "and".”
— DECEMBER 23, 2010 (wsj.com)
“Truth is not assertion, and assertion is not proof.”Although synonyms abound, even a cunning linguist like Yesam Chumpsky understands that individual words have unique meanings. Nevertheless, it is astounding how misused the word "fact" is, especially in political debate.
— TheBigHenry's Truth Predicate
Image via WikipediaRead related » Deal for 9/11 Health Bill Reached in SenateThe very essence of the greatest nation ever conceived by civilized humans is expressed in the phrase, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", arguably the most influential phrase in the history of the English language. And though such a spirit was subsequently institutionalized in the American rule of law via the Constitution's Bill of Rights, most everyone is, and absolutely everyone who is a benefactor should be, aware of the steep cost of maintaining the associated rights. As many have observed, freedom is not free. And the cost is not borne by all to the extent that it is by those who serve to protect our freedom at the risk of "the last full measure of devotion".
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“A deal has been reached in the Senate to approve a bill that covers the cost of medical care for rescue workers and others who became sick from breathing in toxic fumes, dust and smoke after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. […] Should the Senate pass the measure, it will go to the House, where it is expected to be swiftly approved and then sent to President Obama for his signature.”
— By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ, December 22, 2010 (nytimes.com)
Image by mar is sea Y via FlickrRead related » Severe winter weather caused by global warming?You read that right — blame it on "warmalism"!
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“As Colorado braces for epic snowfall, Great Britain literally comes to a halt because of record blizzards, and the whole northern hemisphere enters what is predicted to be an especially harsh winter, some climate change experts are blaming the cold spell on global warming.” [emphasis added]
— By Amanda Carey, 12/21/2010 (dailycaller.com)
Above all else, what Americans don't want is some wannabe philosopher-king promising them hopey-dopey, making nice to our enemies, and shoving smelly-socialist horseshit down our throats. We want leaders who think America is exceptional and has an important role to play in this dangerous world we live in. And the most important role for our leaders is guaranteeing our National defense.Read related » Give The People What They Want
Image via Wikipedia
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“Whether we are analyzing why blue liberalism doesn’t work anymore or trying to think about what kind of political synthesis could replace it, we should do something obvious and ask ourselves what it is that Americans want. We are not thinking through a political program to recommend to one of Plato’s philosopher-kings; we are asking what kind of program and what kind of results could attract the enduring support of the American voters who, in our system, have the last word on how the system is run. […] Americans want to believe that all four of their goals work together: that defending their security, promoting their prosperity, preserving their freedom and equality, and fulfilling their world mission are all part of an integrated package and world view — and that the commonsense reasoning of the average American can understand the way the pieces fit together. They are, in other words, looking for more than a set of unrelated policies that accomplish their goals: they want those policies to proceed from some kind of integrated and accessible world view that meshes with their understanding of traditional American values and concerns. They want an ideology that links the policies of the present day to the national story and the national civic religion.” [emphasis added]
— WALTER RUSSELL MEAD, December 20, 2010 (the-american-interest.com)
Cover of The Godfather (Widescreen Edition)Read related » N. Korea Says Won't Hit Back Over S. Korean Drills
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“YEONPYEONG ISLAND, South Korea – South Korea's military staged live-fire drills from an island just miles from rival North Korea's shores Monday, despite Pyongyang's threats of catastrophic retaliation for the maneuvers. […], but the North finally said it would hold its own fire.”
— Published December 20, 2010 | Associated Press (foxnews.com)
Read related » The Godfather (Signet) [Paperback] Mario Puzo (Author)The dictatorship of North Korea may be crazy, but it ain't stupid. Is it, however, as smart as Mario Puzo's Godfather? I think not.
[This related book is recommended in its entirety.]
“The abuse itself bothered him not at all. Hagen had learned the art of negotiation from the Don himself. "Never get angry," the Don had instructed. "Never make a threat. Reason with people." […] An agreement was reached but two months later the strong-arm was shot to death in his favorite barbershop.” [emphasis added]
— The Godfather, Page 57.
Image via WikipediaRead related » WikiLeaks Debunks History for Stupid PeopleWhether or not Assange actually performed a service for our government's credibility, based on the widely held view that publicly revealed official policy is largely disinformation, is really besides the point. In American jurisprudence, intent and premeditation play much more decisive roles than outcome. Even conspiracy to commit a crime that failed to materialize is treated with the seriousness it would have been if it had succeeded as intended.
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“Gideon Rachman at the Financial Times says WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange deserves a medal rather than prison. “He and WikiLeaks have done America a massive favour,” he writes, “by inadvertently debunking decades-old conspiracy theories about its foreign policy.” […] I suspect Rachman’s tongue is firmly planted in cheek when he says Assange should be rewarded. […] Surely somewhere in all these leaked files there’d be references to a war for oil in Iraq if the war was, in fact, about oil. Likewise, if 9/11 was an inside job — or a joint Mossad–al-Qaeda job — there should be at least some suggestive evidence in all those classified documents. […] The State and Defense department bureaucracies are far too vast to have no records of what they’re up to. Conspiracy theories, though, as someone once said, are history for stupid people. […] Julian Assange is stridently anti-American. He is not trying to boost the government’s credibility by leaking thousands of cables.
— MICHAEL J. TOTTEN - 12.19.2010 (commentarymagazine.com)
Image via WikipediaRead related » Eric Holder's Briefs Are In a Bundle
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“The Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has voted 212-206 to ban the Obama administration from spending any funds to try terrorism suspects in civilian court instead of military commissions. Attorney General Eric Holder is reportedly all miffed and vexed. Holder's knots will tighten if the Senate's continuing funding resolution also includes such a provision. […] Since Congress failed to pass a new budget for 2011, the House passed a continuing resolution […] Somebody on the House Appropriations Committee, to Holder’s supposed shock and dismay, inserted a provision that prohibits federal funds from being used to prosecute terrorist detainees in federal criminal courts […] When Democrat members learned about the trial provision, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer went into damage control mode. […] Holder called it “an unprecedented grab of executive authority by Congress […] We have been unable to identify any parallel … in the history of our nation in which Congress has intervened to prohibit the prosecution of particular persons or crimes,” Holder opined.
It’s about subject matter, venue, and funding of federal courts, Mr. Holder. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to decide on those. You can look it up.” [emphasis added]
— Janet M. LaRue, 2010/12/17 (townhall.com)
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| Image via "The Gavel Walk" by erik |
Read related » Congress' Job Approval Rating Worst in Gallup History
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans' assessment of Congress has hit a new low, with 13% saying they approve of the way Congress is handling its job. The 83% disapproval rating is also the worst Gallup has measured in more than 30 years of tracking congressional job performance.”
— by Jeffrey M. Jones, December 15, 2010 (gallup.com)
Image via WikipediaRead related » Where Do Leftists Come From?
The mystery of socialism's origins explained.
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“For a very long time now, I have been turning over this question in my mind: What is it that makes a leftist? Where do leftists come from? How is it possible that sentient human beings, endowed with reason, memory, and foresight by their Creator, or by the evolutionary demiurge, can zealously adopt a political position so contrary to both good sense and common sense — and what is more, remain glued to its premises in the face of all contradictory evidence? For despite the miserable failure of socialist experiments the world over and from time immemorial, the determined leftist does not budge from his ideological sanctum and will invent every conceivable, or rather inconceivable, excuse to validate the soundness of his principles and justify every subsequent social and political miscarriage these principles bring about. […] We live in truly amazing times, vibrant with unexpected discoveries. Such a mutation, if that is what it is, would go a long way to clearing up the once-insoluble mystery of the existence of the liberal-left among us. Some will no doubt find it comforting to learn that we are not alone. Extra-terrestrial life has always been here and SETI can now turn its gaze earthward to examine the galactic specimens we have long wondered about. The shadow biosphere, which in the course of evolutionary time gradually developed into a pervasive and anthropocidal psychosphere, is still a theory. But it accounts for much that continues to puzzle us about the various noxious manifestations of hominid-type behavior.”
— December 14, 2010 - by David Solway (pajamasmedia.com)
Cover of Free to Choose: A Personal StatementRead related » The Magic Bullet
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“We have lowered the marginal rates on high incomes four times since the inception of the income tax — in the 1920s, the 1960s, the 1980s, and the 2000s. In each case, the result was a much more prosperous national economy, lower unemployment, and higher tax revenues for the government. If you do A (lower marginal rates) four times, and four times, despite differing economic circumstances, B (increased prosperity) happens, a rational person might conclude, at least tentatively, that B is the result of A. Not liberals. As I said, high tax rates on the rich is a religious principle with the left. If the poor have to suffer because of it, so be it.”
— JOHN STEELE GORDON - 12.12.2010 (commentarymagazine.com)
Read related » Why populism isn't popular
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“[Slate's Timothy] Noah's thorough examination of the Great Divergence [widening of the gulf separating the rich from the rest] suffers by eliding the basic distinction between inequality and destitution. The truly destitute are poor in absolute terms, not because their finances, vis-a-vis the affluent, are so meager. If Obama somehow discovered the policy formula to double every family's disposable income during his administration, millions of people's economic anxieties would be greatly alleviated. However, the "problem" of economic inequality would not be mitigated even slightly. The ratios between a New York Times janitor's take-home pay, Noah's and Warren Buffett's would be the same at the end of Obama's presidency as they were at the beginning.”
— November 29, 2010|By William Voegeli (latimes.com)
"The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if the exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another." — Free to Choose, by Milton and Rose Friedman, p.13.What the do-gooders at the NYT like to think is that their own feelings of envy comprise the moral imperative to act on behalf of the helpless. The so-called "helpless", however, would most likely prefer to have the opportunity to improve their own lot in a thriving economy, without the stifling and meddlesome interference of the elitist "progressive" left.
Image via WikipediaRead related » Now What?Unfortunately, I do “remember the Michael Moore shtick in the Cindy Sheehan era”. That execrable excuse for human detritus wormed his way into the hearts of many people I once counted among my friends and acquaintances, and into the brain remnants of delusional leftists who cling to their drug-addled hippie ways.
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“Remember the Michael Moore shtick in the Cindy Sheehan era? He rose to the heights of liberal society (invited to sit next to Jimmy Carter at the Democratic convention) on the basis of being a useful idiot who could for the more respectable vicariously slander their president. That he had lamented bin Laden had chosen a blue state to murder 3000 Americans, and that he rooted for insurgents in Iraq to defeat Americans (they, not us, were “Minutemen”) did not lessen his utility. We may see him now as a pathetic buffoon, but in 2004 he was an ascendant one, who understood that he had carved out a brilliant career as the unsightly smelly attack dog that nevertheless bloodies the adversary out in the street without the resulting hair and blood soiling the veranda porch.
So the “we are doomed without Obama” hysteria has finally gone the way of the torrential seas, the silent spring, the population bomb, the war on poverty, the geodesic dome, TM, the greening of America, and all the other periodic hysterias of the bored affluent liberal class, whose intellectual factories send in the raw product of challenges and problems and vomit out variously packaged “doom” on the other end of the assembly line.”
— December 12, 2010 - by Victor Davis Hanson (pajamasmedia.com)
When the moon hits your eye[Apologies to Dean Martin]
Like a big pizza pie,
which explodes in your gut
On the Fourth of July,
That's amore!
Image via WikipediaRead related » Pretty in Pink? Obama’s Dark Night of the Soul
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“Life keeps getting worse for President Obama. […] [T]he mainstream, liberal press and the American left are deserting him now. […] Michael Moore [has] turned on the Messiah. 'Take off your pink tutu!' Moore commanded the President on Bill Maher. […] We and the President were always likely to come to this point. The adulation lavished on a one-term senator of little life experience was not a good thing for anyone. For Obama, it fed an already enlarged self-esteem that had become grotesque by the inauguration. A cruelly accurate piece by Jonathan Last in The Weekly Standard highlights the ghastly series of intentional evocations of Lincoln that a delusionally imprudent White House team put forward in the flush of victory. Important note to all future denizens of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first compare to Abraham Lincoln. […] There’s an epidemic now of repentance from Obama voters. That isn’t me. My eyes were open in the voting booth and I had a pretty good idea of what we were getting when I voted for him. I have always thought he was too liberal for the American people and too inexperienced to know it. I hoped things wouldn’t come to this point, but thought it was likely and still thought he was the best of the two available picks. […] I voted for Obama because the United States needs a government, and that is something that John McCain and the Republicans were simply unable to provide at the time.” [emphasis added]
— WALTER RUSSELL MEAD, November 16, 2010 (the-american-interest.com)
Cover of John F. KennedyRead related » Iran Placing Medium-Range Missiles in Venezuela; Can Reach the U.S.
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“According to Die Welt, Venezuela has agreed to allow Iran to establish a military base manned by Iranian missile officers, soldiers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Venezuelan missile officers. In addition, Iran has given permission for the missiles to be used in case of an "emergency". In return, the agreement states that Venezuela can use these facilities for "national needs" – radically increasing the threat to neighbors like Colombia. The German daily claims that according to the agreement, Iranian Shahab 3 (range 1300-1500 km), Scud-B (285-330 km) and Scud-C (300, 500 and 700 km) will be deployed in the proposed base. It says that Iran also pledged to help Venezuela in rocket technology expertise, including intensive training of officers
Venezuela has also become the country through which Iran intends to bypass UN sanctions. Following a new round of UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic, for example, Russia decided not to sell five battalions of S-300PMU-1 air defence systems to Iran. These weapons, along with a number of other weapons, were part of a deal, signed in 2007, worth $800 million. Now that these weapons cannot be delivered to Iran, Russia is looking for new customers; according to the Russian press agency Novosti[2], it found one: Venezuela.”
— Anna Mahjar-Barducci, December 8, 2010 (hudson-ny.org)
Image via WikipediaSee related »
[This related material is recommended in its entirety.]
“Hi guys, here's my latest creation! This is a SUPER VADRUM VERSION of the "Barber of Seville" Overture by Gioacchino Rossini!”
— vadrum
Image via WikipediaRead related » A Deal Without a Compromise
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“I opposed the original Bush tax cuts. But I support a temporary extension now. Let’s think about the circumstances. We’re in a horrible economic climate. The entire business community thinks the government is out to destroy them. Do we think raising taxes on small business people is going to improve their willingness to invest and take risks? In other words, the economy did fine in the Clinton years with a 39 percent rate. Eventually, we should return to that. But this is not the moment to take another sledgehammer to market psychology. I’m actually a little depressed by Democrats’ inability to think dynamically about this.”
— DAVID BROOKS, December 8, 2010 (nytimes.com)
