Obama Joins the GOP in Fighting to Defeat Democrats

Mark Noonan3 Comments

Geesh!

…Here are the four sentences that will draw all of the attention (they come more than two thirds of the way through the speech): “I am not on the ballot this fall. Michelle’s pretty happy about that. But make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.” Boil those four sentences down even further and here’s what you are left with: “Make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.”…

Democrats just spent the last 6 months distancing themselves from Obama and here comes The Smartest Man, Ever, to muck it up for them. The last thing Democrats need is a public reminder from Obama and each and every House and Senate Democrat is a mere rubber-stamp for Obama.

The truth will out, they say – and Obama has done truth a favor, for once. I don’t know what his intent was, but he’s made it clear what the 2014 stakes are. And GOPers are already running with it.

The Continuing Death of Science

Mark Noonan4 Comments

Some time back around 2006, I wrote an article on the then-Blogs for Bush about the death of science. Unfortunately, I can’t link it here because those old articles have all been archived and I’m not energetic enough to pester Matt to drag it back out. The basic premise of the article was that as science has strayed away from a rigid search for truth it has come up with so many bogus ideas that people have lost respect for it. One of the more egregious examples has been, of course, the whole anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hoax – but that was just one of very, very many (and, also, in the public mind AGW hasn’t been entirely discredited – it will be though, when we get to ten years past Al Gore’s “ice caps will be gone” prediction). I think that most of us who come here are old enough to remember when coffee and eggs were considered veritable poison – now, not so much. Time and time again “science” has been dragged out to tell us this, that or the other thing and it has turned out to be greatly exaggerated, when not flat out false.

Recently there has been a debate around Neil deGrasse Tyson and his abilities as a scientist. When it first came up, I first hadn’t the foggiest notion of who he was, because I just don’t watch a lot of TV (mostly home improvement shows because that is what the Mrs likes). Turns out, he hosted the reboot of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. What started the controversy was deGrasse Tyson’s use of quotes from people – including former President Bush – which turned out to be bogus. And not just a little bit bogus, but incredibly, stupidly bogus. Ace of Spades has a good run down of it here. The bottom line of it all is that deGrasse Tyson, purported super-genius, (a) didn’t know what he was talking about and (b) when called out on it got all huffy and essentially demanded we forget about it and continue to honor him because he’s still so much smarter than us numbskulls – because Science, or something. Of course, an alleged scientist who doesn’t check his sources is, well, someone who isn’t a scientist, at all. He might be all sorts of things; might even be quite a clever fellow, but science is all about arriving at certainty as far as possible.

I hate to twist the knife here (well, truth be told, I don’t – its rather fun to point this stuff out), but the scientific method is a Christian invention. Specifically, a Catholic invention. Final twist: it was mostly developed by Catholic monks. You see, growing out of the Jewish tradition, the Catholic Church held that as the world was created by a Creator, and this Creator had a plan for his creation, the world then was comprehensible to the human intellect. In other words, by study, experiment and logical reasoning, we could come to understand the world as it is. This is actually quite different from all other civilizations, including the Greek which came closest to this understanding (but never developed a scientific method – and thus the Greeks, technologically, never advanced to an industrial civilization). Because monks sitting in their cells at the monastery knew that the world could be understood, eventually it was – the truth of it all was revealed. And passing out of the monastery, others picked up the threads and amazing things were learned and done. But it could only be done by strict adherence to objective truth. You can’t lie – even if your reputation is on the line. We’ve lost that.

We lost it as we shifted from being a Christian to a post-Christian civilization and the very concept of truth began to waver and grow thin. Two thousand odd years ago one well educated man asked, “what is truth?”, and for a long time after that Christians provided the answer – and in adherence to that, massively advanced human learning. Round about 150 years ago, that started to fade. We started to lose our connection not just to truth, but to a desire to know the truth. People started to doubt there was even such a thing as truth – or even such a thing as things which could be quantified and studied and understood.

Now, to be sure, there are plenty of men and women involved in science who are still out there finding the truth about things – but what we popularly know as “science” these days is a product of a very unscientific method. Its not whether a thing is true or false, but whether or not it supports a position, obtains a grant, burnishes a credential that gets it into common currency. What got deGrasse Tyson into trouble was a quote attributed to former President Bush which made out that he was an idiot – and this in service to a particular goal: making people like deGrasse Tyson seem smart and worthy of our respect; and, furthermore, making people who disagree with people like deGrasse Tyson seem utterly contemptible and not to be listened to under any circumstances. Some real scientist is out there working on a method to transport people to Mars – but he isn’t going to get the TV show, isn’t going to have the best-selling books and won’t be consulted on public policy. That sort of thing is reserved for “scientists” who will just make stuff up which, once again, supports a position, obtains a grant, burnishes a credential.

First and foremost, before you do anything else in life, you have to define your terms. That is, you must assert a dogma – and then find out whether your dogma has anything to support it. You must find out if it is true. Its no good saying you’ll find the truth and then assert it – you have to assert something and then see if it is so. You find out the truth of it by, variously, logical thinking, observation and experiment. You do that to the best of your ability and you’ll find out soon enough if your dogma is worth keeping – or whether it needs to be modified, or tossed into the scrap heap. But a rigid adherence to truth is the key – if you don’t believe that absolute, objective truth exists, then you’ll never get anywhere – well, except perhaps to a pile of money, a TV show, and the utter contempt of people who actually think.

I am not a scientist – don’t have the patience or the self-discipline for it. Most people don’t – and just because someone has a science degree doesn’t mean they do, either. The only way to tell if someone is a scientist is by what the produce. By it’s fruit shall the tree be known – if the fruit is a useful device or a solid explanation of events, then you’ve got a scientist on your hands. If its a bag of gibberish which is making its author a millionaire, then you don’t have a scientist – and you don’t need to be a scientist to tell a true scientist from a charlatan; you just need common sense and a little time to think things over in the light of truth.

And, so, science is still dead – killed by hucksters who want money and fame at the expense of the service of truth. It may still come back, one day – if we, on the whole, re-discover a desire for truth; an acceptance that some things are absolutely truth all the time, and some things are false no matter how you dress them up. Of course, that would be a rather earth shaking change in our society. In fact, most people would be flabbergasted by a society in love with truth – and a lot of people wouldn’t like it, at all.

Ebola and the Empty Government

Mark Noonan6 Comments

Now that 80-100 people are being monitored for ebola in Texas, doesn’t it seem to be time to restrict travel from west Africa? Not according to the Obama Administration. I cannot understand this attitude. I tried to think of it in terms of maybe Team Obama thinks it would be racist to restrict travel from west Africa – but I don’t think any rational person would really believe that. Is it just that the Obama Administration doesn’t care? After all, its almost certain that if anyone in America dies from ebola, it will be among the lower classes…no one who lives in Manhattan and is an Obama fund raiser is likely to get it.

It is just bizarre. It would cost Obama nothing to restrict travel and would pretty much guarantee that no Americans in the United States catch it. Short, simple, no cost – and they won’t do it. Maybe it just goes in with the Obama attitude that the United States isn’t worthy of defense? Oh, I know he makes his speeches saying that while he’s President, America’s enemies better tremble in their boots, but lets face a fact here: the only reason we’re bombing in Syria is because the video beheading of Americans played a role in Obama’s cratering approval rating. ISIS could have beheaded 1,000 Americans and if Obama’s poll numbers held steady, we wouldn’t be bombing. The ebola outbreak is illustrating something about Obama: if he and his cabal aren’t threatened, nothing serious will be done.

It is almost as if they don’t see themselves from an American perspective. Citizens of the world, indeed…and while Obama is out there striking poses, the actual business of government isn’t getting done. There’s no one home – the store is not being minded. Now I begin to understand how the Secret Service could get so out of hand – no one was watching it; only when it started to risk Obama’s political fortunes was any attention given to it. We’d just better hope that at crucial moments doing a rational thing polls well between now and 2016 – because if it doesn’t, it won’t get done. Our government is empty – a mere collection of disparate forces rolling along without a plan or pilot.

So, Will 2014 Be a GOP Wave, or Not?

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Here you’ve got analysis that the GOP only picks up a few seats and that works out to a win for Nancy Pelosi. Here you’ve got other analysis which indicates the GOP might get its largest majority since the 1928 election. So, which is it?

Beats all heck out of me. Real Clear Politics currently has the GOP with 47 Senate seats in the bag, the Democrats with 44 and 9 toss-ups, with the likely outcome as of today being 52 GOPers and 48 Democrats (that includes us losing Kansas, by the way – which I don’t think we will, in the end). But another way to read it is that the GOP could end up with as many as 56 Senate seats – an 11 seat gain. That would, indeed, be a wave.

While there is trouble for the GOP on the gubernatorial front (we’re definitely going to lose Pennsylvania and we’ll probably lose Kansas), there is also Democrat governor Hickenlooper’s likely defeat to counter that – and Hickenlooper was supposed to be the perfect person to transition a purple State to blue…now he’s probably going to lose, and maybe take down Democrat Senator Udall with him…all because he’s liberal.  Not fanatically liberal, but just liberal…and that is being rejected in Colorado, to all appearances (and this can’t make Team Hillary comfortable about 2016 – she’s a female Hickenlooper).

I really don’t know where this is heading. But there are some ingredients for a blow out – of course, we must remember the GOP’s penchant for snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory (and talk of Jeb or Romney running in 2016 is the GOP Establishment’s way of saying “we’d rather have Hillary than Walker”).

Global Warming Hoax Update

Mark Noonan24 Comments

From Don Surber:

After 35 years of telling us carbon dioxide is melting ice in Antarctica, New Scientist is now saying carbon dioxide has caused the ice to grow for 35 years.

What they said before:

From January 2, 2001: “Ice in the heart of Antarctica is retreating and causing sea level rise, scientists have shown for the first time.”

From June 23, 2007: “Rising sea levels could divide and conquer Antarctic ice.”

From March 25, 2008: “Antarctic ice shelf ‘hanging by a thread’.”

From January 21, 2009: “Even Antarctica is now feeling the heat of climate change.”

From March 10, 2009: “Sea level rise could bust IPCC estimate: Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice fast and could end up taking sea levels to nearly twice predicted levels by 2100.”

From July 31, 2011: “Antarctica rising as ice caps melt.”

Got that?

Year-in and year-out, the editors at the New Scientist have warned us that the ice in Antarctica is melting fast…

So, what is New Scientist saying now? That the Antarctic ice cap is larger than ever, and that global warming is the cause.

Face it, we can’t actually win this debate – if glaciers start to cover half of North America, the global warming alarmists will be out there saying it is because of global warming. It doesn’t matter what the facts are because global warming is replacing religion in the lives of people on the left…they have to believe in something, and they’ve decided to believe that (a) humanity (mostly Republicans, it goes without saying) are destroying the planet and (b) only they – the liberals – can save it. You can’t beat someone’s religious beliefs; you can’t argue them out of it. All we can do is hope to win elsewhere enough political power to prevent these numbskulls from wrecking things in the name of saving the planet.

Life in Liberal-Fascist America

Mark Noonan4 Comments

Here’s the story – you’ll recall that Governor Walker was the target of a completely bogus, politically-motivated hatchet job by an out-of-control Democrat prosecutor. Recently, details of the political motivation for the case were revealed – and what did our MSM do? Ruthlessly track down the source of the revelation, and then smear him.

Do read the linked article – it tells you all you need to know about the real power structure of the United States. It is more nakedly exposed in Wisconsin than elsewhere because in Wisconsin it is more directly under threat…and the liberals believe (correctly) that if they can’t squash Walker, then what Walker has done will spread, thus undermining the whole basis of liberal power (which is, ultimately, that liberals are subsidized by government – and if you take away the government subsidy, then liberals will whither away and die as a political force).

Remember what happened in this particular case – the truth about an out-of-control prosecutor was revealed and the MSM went out not to investigate the prosecutor, but to smear the man who told the truth. If you think that the MSM has any sense of honor or decency, think again – if liberalism is threatened, the MSM becomes the merest arm of political liberalism. And this brings us to the most important lesson: the liberals are at war with us. They want us destroyed. They will not play fair. They will not obey the rules. They will not tell the truth. Unless and until we internalize the message that it is all or nothing, we can’t do what is necessary to win. There can’t be bipartisanship. There can’t be working across the aisle. There can only be unrelenting conflict all up and down the line.

Scotland: Secession is the Answer

Mark Noonan17 Comments

Tomorrow (or, maybe, today? Its kinda late as I write this on Wednesday in the USA), the Scots will vote on whether or not to leave the United Kingdom. Lots of worrying articles have been written about the horror of horrors which will happen if the Scots for “yes” on secession, but I can’t think of a more splendid thing for the Scots to do.  Keep in mind that those most opposed are part of the United Kingdom’s Ruling Class – it would reduce their power if Scotland and England weren’t together.

As readers here know, I’ve long advocated secession as the answer for many ills in the United States – not in the sense of States leaving the Union, but in the sense of States leaving the States.  Setting up 60-65 States in place of the 50 States we have today, many of which are just too large or two different in their constituent parts to make a rational whole. But, still, everyone stays in the good, old US of A: so, why am I ok with the Scots bailing on the United Kingdom?  Because it is probably the only way to eventually get to a Europe which is basically united.  The United States is, so far, essentially united – we have a general sense in our broad majority what it means to be American and what America is supposed to be about…we just have a problem in taming the Big Government beast we’ve allowed to grow up among us. Breaking up the States and other reforms will restore the situation.  Europe doesn’t have that – it has a lot of States which already dictate minutely the lives of the people and in the European Union you just get one more layer of micro-managing bureaucrats thrown into the mix to ensure that there are no local differences, at all.

A lot of places in Europe which are part of larger nations today really don’t have much business being part of their nations. Northern and southern Italy, for instance, are very different and were cobbled together in the 19th century by a set of ambitious adventurers who really didn’t ask so much as a “by your leave” of the Italian people if they wanted to be united in a nation called “Italy” (yeah, they cooked up some plebiscites which allegedly gave the will of the people – but when the army of the group wanting you “in” is already there, kind of a foregone conclusion how the vote will go…). The end result of this is two very different places being artificially fused together – and for south Italy to live a relatively impoverished and parasitic life attached to the wealthy and dynamic north. Same thing goes in Spain where the Catalans are starting to revive their age-old dream of independence – and if you can find me a reason that Bavaria is in the same Germany as Pomerania, then I’m all ears.  Other than ethnic affinity, there is no reason for Scotland to be in Britain, Naples and Milan to be in Italy, Bavaria to be in Germany or Catalonia to be in Spain. To be sure, all of these places are (or, at least were until recently) European (which means, further, Christian), but that is really where the unity ends. For the rest of it, these are different places with different people and different ideas of what is needed – they can be in one nation, but only if there is a limited central government and maximum power at the local level.

The Scots leaving the United Kingdom is, then, to me a healthy development. To be sure, the Scottish nationalist leadership seems to be largely made up of socialist pinheads who are apparently promising more welfare without anyone having to work harder. That illusion will quickly be dashed after independence, if won – but it was just as swiftly dashed in Slovakia when it broke off from the Czech Republic and now once-socialist Slovakia is one of the more dynamic nations of Europe; they no longer could live off the richer part of the nation; they no longer could blame others for their own troubles; they could only look to themselves.  And that is pretty much what they did – and that is what all of the peoples of Europe, once freed from the dead hand of the results of 19th century nationalism and 20th century multiculturalism, will do as well.

Don’t get me wrong, patriotism is a grand thing – but the welding together of things like “Germany” and “Italy” in the 19th century (and “Great Britain” in the 18th) weren’t acts of patriots – they were the acts of ambitious people, some of whom were scoundrels, who didn’t care about the people involved but only about the expansion of their own power (prime examples of this were Bismarck in Germany and Cavour in Italy). It’d be better, in the long run, if the genuine constituent parts of Europe separated and then found a mechanism of unity – some modern revival of the ideal behind the Holy Roman Empire. Some form of government which will keep the peace between the parts and defend the whole against outside enemies: but which will leave the parts pretty much alone to do as they wish (the European Union is the negation of this ideal – it is senseless and remote bureaucrats trying to micro-manage every aspect of European life and no locality having the power to opt out).

The Scots may take the first step – or they may decide that cutting lose from London and the money therein is too risky. We’ll see.  But I think that the concept is growing in the public mind both in Europe and the United States that remote, central governments simply cannot answer for the needs of the people and that while a central government is necessary for a few, limited functions, most power had better be in the hands of the people and their local governments.

What Media Bias? Part 198

Mark Noonan12 Comments

There is a Media Research Center study which shows that from January 1, 2006 to August 31, 2006 the MSM reported on Bush’s crumbling poll numbers 124 times.  Fast forward and between January 1, 2014 and August 31, 2014 the MSM has reported on Obama’s equally crumbling poll numbers a total of nine times.

This is what media bias is all about: its not so much the outright lies (though they are a problem – and an increasing problem), but the way that the same sort of story will be reported quite differently depending on whether it involves a Republican or a Democrat.  Take, for instance, when a politician is arrested – you can just about bet your life savings on it that if a Republican politician is arrested, his party affiliation will be front and center. Meanwhile, if a Democrat is cuffed, you’d have to read to the last paragraph where it is revealed that the offender may have had some slight connection to the Democrat party.

This is common across all elements of the MSM – doesn’t matter what organization, they all report things pretty much the same way. There is, however, no cure for this – the hard left people who make up the MSM simply will not change.  The only thing we can do, as conservatives, is to create a duplicate MSM to compete.  Fox News has shown the way, but we need a genuinely conservative news network; we need newspapers and magazines and all that MSM infrastructure which drives the narrative. And we need to start ignoring what the MSM is saying because it is all presented in a manner to help the Democrats and harm Republicans.

Obama’s Non-War

Mark Noonan7 Comments

The usual course of action is that when the guns go off, we citizens are to rally ’round the flag and back our forces in the pursuit of victory. But that is a bit impossible right now – Obama and his Administration are telling us, over and over, that this isn’t a war. That we’ll be bombing the heck out of things and that lots of people will die horrific, violent deaths at our hands doesn’t count: per Obama and Co, war is only in existence is U.S. troops are on the ground doing the fighting.

So, no war – and thus no rallying ’round the flag. And even if we decided – correctly – that Obama and Co are just full of “stuff” and that this is a war so we’d better rally anyways, what would we be rallying for? Not for victory, because there can be no victory in this non-war. Its not like the enemy commander can offer to surrender to a drone. We’ll bomb a lot and kill a lot of people and this will help those who are fighting the people we’re bombing – and that, in turn, might lead others to victory. A Kurdish victory would be ok, as the Kurds seem a lot of very decent people – but it could also lead to Assad’s victory in Syria and Iran’s victory in Iraq; not exactly ideal outcomes for us. It could also lead to victory for non-ISIS, non-Assad forces in Syria, this might not work out well, either. Let’s just say I have my doubts about Administration assurances that they can pick the non-Islamist-screwball forces in Syria for us to back.

We can also get the worst of all worlds – we blow a lot of stuff up and kill a lot of people with attendant video showing what a bunch of hideous war criminals we are but after all that, Assad still rules his part of Syria, ISIS still rules vast tracts of Syria and Iraq and Iran has secured itself the part of Iraq it cares about (ie, Baghdad plus the oil fields). That sort of outcome is made doubly bad because if ISIS survives in any form, it will become the Islamist hero as it stood up to us, endured a pounding and emerged from the welter of slaughter with victory. Of course, all of this won’t fully come out until after Obama leaves office, so he probably doesn’t care in the least about it, even if he’s aware of the possibility.

This whole thing is the terribly bad decision of a man – Obama – who knows nothing of history, nothing of the world and yet sits assured that he’s the smartest guy in the room. I hope it works out – and I hope our losses are small. But the rule of thumb for war is that you either go all in, or stay all out. Our choices for ISIS were two:

1.  Go all out to war against them until they are all killed or taken, regardless of cost.

2.  Surrender to them and allow them to do as the wish.

Either course of action can have rational arguments to back them up. We have failed to choose between them – we’re just going to bomb a bit and hope for the best. I believe we will be disappointed – and maybe in a vastly worse geo-strategic situation two or three years from now.

UPDATE: Reeling from criticism about us not being at war, the Administration has decided we are at war with ISIS, just as we are against al-Qaeda. Meaning? I guess that six years from now ISIS will be around and a threat, just as al-Qaeda is still around and a threat after six years of Obama…

Just Not Getting It – Open Thread Version

Cluster23 Comments

I meant to write a post about this article last week, and have since noticed that there is now a Part II version, which I have yet to read. But you see, according to the author, the reason why the racial divide still thrives is because of smug White delusion. We just don’t understand the plight of Black Americans. We’re too stupid and we need to have more conversations on this issue because we just haven’t discussed this topic enough. Like Eric Holder says, “we are a nation of cowards”. There were many statistics included in the article to support the authors contention, one of which was this:

The black-white income gap is roughly 40 percent greater today than it was in 1967.

One obvious conclusion to me for this result could be that the Democrats coveted “war on poverty” is a colossal failure. Another stat was this:

Because of the catastrophic experiment in mass incarceration, black men in their 20s without a high school diploma are more likely to be incarcerated today than employed

I don’t remember any “experiment in mass incarceration” – can anyone help me out here?

The way I see it, Black America has a huge cultural problem within their own community and that is a problem that only they can resolve. There have been an untold number of government programs and initiatives designed to lift them up, individually and collectively, and obviously they have all failed, and I just don’t think more “conversation” is going to help either. One idea does come to mind – improving the economy. 

Feel free to speak your mind on this issue and prove Eric Holder wrong!