Newt Gingrich and a lunar base? No to both

I'd much rather ditch the manned space program and invest the money and talent in unmanned space exploration instead. Fill the solar system with probes, orbiters, landers, detectors, and peer far back into the universe on every band of the spectrum. Sadly, the public probably wouldn't support NASA if they didn't have live astronauts to cheer for, though. But we may be the last civilization that is rich enough and capable enough and interested enough to solve the secret of the cosmos, so I hope we press on.

As for the Speaker, he's been too resoundingly false in his personal life to earn my public trust. He's obviously the most influential Republican of the past 20 years, brimming with ideas and snappy lines, but I just don't see leadership qualities in him.

Second Jihadi Convicted of Terror .... TODAY

Second Jihadi Convicted of Terror .... TODAY

These creeps are really crawling out of the woodwork these days. Yet proggs have built mental fences of denial in their minds, to preserve their multi-culti illusions.

Muslim Brotherhood wins Egyptian elections

It's a good thing that the multiculturalists have assured us that all people are the same except for holidays, headgear, and cuisine--else having this populous nation governed by the party that spawned the modern Jihad would be worrisome.

Unfair - the Dry Bones Blog

Ha!

Unfair - the Dry Bones Blog

Young boys increasingly being recruited as suicide bombers

Savages...

Young boys increasingly being recruited as suicide bombers

They're baa--aack...

Creationists draw a bead on another school system, this time in Missouri.

House Bill 1227, introduced in the Missouri House of Representatives on January 10, 2012, would, if enacted, require "the equal treatment of science instruction regarding evolution and intelligent design," according to the legislature's summary of the bill. The equal treatment provision would apply to both public elementary and secondary schools and to "any introductory science course taught at any public institution of higher education" in Missouri.

Let's hope the Kitzmiller ruling is still potent enough to ward off this idiocy.

Hostess files for bankruptcy

Not very lamented, to judge from the comments on this NPR thread. Maybe Hostess could market its products to Green consumers, by making Twinkies bio-degradable.

The world needs more pilots, fewer psychiatrists

George Jonas, in The National Post:

What's wrong with this world? The answer I keep coming back to is that we let psychiatrists run it, not pilots.

Why is that a problem, if so? Well, psychiatrists believe that blaming yourself is sick; it's something to cure. Pilots believe blaming yourself before anyone else is healthy; it's something to encourage.

A psychiatrist tries to assure his patient that things aren't his fault; a pilot resists the temptation to exclude anything from being his fault, at least potentially. A shrink wants you to go easy on yourself, including your vices; a flight instructor urges you not to be complacent even about your virtues. [...]

The casual observer may see a psychotherapist and a flight instructor walk side by side, but they live on different planets. The first revolves around Feeling Good; the second, around Doing Well. [...]

A flight instructor doesn't worry about your self-esteem; he just wants you to land in one piece. If we're in a mess today it's because we've been listening too much to therapists and not enough to pilots. Now, with our self-esteem intact, we're falling out of the sky.

First sentence of first post of each month of 2011

A blog meme from leeann, via Joan of Argghh!

January: Farewell to Denis Dutton, the late proprietor of Arts and Letters Daily, one of the pioneering opinion journal portals on the web.

February: Whatever. At this late date, I'm surprised anyone expects a show of patriotism out of San Franciscans anymore anyway. (Cheated to show some context.)

March: 48 hour rule. But if, as rumor has it, this is Isolated Incident Perpetrated By Lone Whacko That Has Nothing To Do With Islam #16,279, then it goes to show (once again) that the front line in this war is everywhere. (See above)

April: The sweetest thing I've seen today is...this video of a Japanese 12 year old & 7 year old playing "All Of Me" at a disaster fundraiser.

May: Very fitting, that the last people he ever saw were SEALs and spooks, come to put a bullet in his eye.

June: Repressing a church is something any old dictatorship can do, the church being a rival center of authority and all.

July: San Francisco becoming a child free zone? So says this NPR segment.

August: The Debt Ceiling Deal Haven't had a chance--and probably won't--to read through it.

September: CDC: Half of Americans will suffer from mental health woes. Wow. Half.

October: Via The Jawa Report: Occupy Wall Street protesters attack police, as seen in the video below.

November: Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.

December: You may recall that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors banned McDonalds from giving away toys with their Happy Meals.

24 Types of Statist

From Laughing At Politics via Quick Take blog:

Random Rock Bloggage

I think I've just had a stroke of insight. The Paul McCartney and Wings song "Junior's Farm", includes a line:

Olly Hardy should have had more sense
He pulled a chee-chee and he jumped the fence,
All for the sake of a couple of pence.

I'll bet I know what "chee-chee" means. The song was written in 1974, the same year as the movie Godfather II came out. In the film, a hired killer named Willie Cicci turned state's evidence, testifying against Michael Corleone. I'll bet this is what Macca meant in this line of those free-assocative lyrics. I have never seen this hypothesis in any of the music forums, and it is more plausible than the ones I have seen. Any passing Beatles fans, tell me what you think!

Boko Haram bombs church during Nigeria Christmas services

Savages. The tree is known by its fruit.

Muslim baby adopted to prevent 'honor killing,' UK judges rule

When even British courts are taking atavisms like this seriously, that must count as progress.

"Inquiries of the police showed that (the baby's grandmother) had told them that if (the baby's grandfather) found out about the child, he would consider himself honor-bound to kill the child, (and the child's mother), (and the grandmother) herself and her other children."

The baby's father wanted the girl to live with him and his wife, but in July, High Court Family Division judge, Justice Parker, ruled that doing so would put her at "very significant risk".

If the family of the baby's mother discovered the truth about the child it could "provoke action to preserve the family's honor," Justice Parker said.

The values of rural Pakistan cannot integrate with those of Britain, and it is suicidal to continue to import these people.

Further musings on the passing of Christopher Hitchens from cancer

Hitchens, along with Nasim Nicholas Taleb, Peter Ackroyd, and doubtless other whom I can't think of at the moment, was one of the few people I admired whom I would nevertheless not want to meet. Why? Because I would be ashamed of myself for not being able to hold up my end of the conversation.

The best encomium I've read so far comes from the excellent general blogger Cobb:

Now that Christopher Hitchens is dead, the English speaking world is going to be able to get by with a little more bullshit.

RIP Christopher Hitchens

Not the least brave thing he did was to leave the herd of independent minds at The Nation, after 9/11, when they opted to withdraw all the more tightly into their proggy groupthink, rather than face up to the fact of The Jihad. Hitchens was almost alone among Leftists, in turning from a fair-weather foe into a foul-weather friend of the United States. The Left kept droning on about how bad America was, but how with enough "activism" it could be made better. Hitchens was shocked into realizing that America was a great good in the world--even if it were to become worse.

That's all I've got, really. Very sad. Search "Hitchens" in my blog's search box up to your left, if you want to see some earlier thought.

Have some quotes...

"When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don't forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything."
-- H. L. Mencken, Baltimore _Evening Sun_, June 12, 1922

"There's one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die--their silence."
-- Ben Hecht, Letters From Bohemia, 1964

Seattle schools junk food ban is failing

Too bad.

The Seattle School District is considering rewriting a policy enacted in 2004 that removed junk food from public schools, citing the ban's huge cut to revenues used to fund school programs.

When the Seattle School Board first implemented the policy seven years ago, the district was placed on the cutting edge of the battle against childhood obesity. Fatty snacks like candy bars and fried chips were stripped from vending machines and replaced with orange juice, water and granola bars.

And, arguably worse:

This student behavior supports existing research on junk food in schools. Research published in November revealed that just banning soda from schools doesn't actually curb student consumption of sugary drinks. Across all states, whether they have no policy, ban sodas or ban all sugary drinks, students' out-of-school access and purchasing behavior of those beverages was unchanged.

Let those who cry "Nanny State" remember one thing, please: these are children we're talking about. Adults are supposed to make responsibl­e decisions on behalf of children, since they are not mature enough to make them on their own. The sugar and fat in junk food are addictive, so naturally kids will gravitate towards it. I've got nothing but disgust for Statists who try to forbid parents from buying Happy Meals for their children, that's just proggs getting too big for their britches. But schools are different, or should be. Costs? Yes, schools cost money to run. But let's not make a Faustian bargain with deep pocket sugar daddies (pun intended), and sacrifice the children's future health as a result.

Andrew Klavan: Wall Street On Trial

San Francisco outfoxed by McDonalds

You may recall that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors banned McDonalds from giving away toys with their Happy Meals. This is because the BOS, good government nannies all, had decided that all those unlicensed parents were just too incompetent to keep their children away from the predations of an eeeeevil corprayshun like McDonalds. So, McDonalds is now charging ten cents extra for the toy, much to the flummoxment of nanny state proggs.

Okay, a number of things are at work here. Proggs feel themselves to be shouldered with the responsibility to run everyone else's affairs. Since proggs disapprove of commerce, feeling that everyone should really be knitting Mexican wedding shirts on some hippie commune instead, successful companies offend them. And since proggs believe that they are endowed with the wisdom to build, craft, plan, construct the perfect Erewhon society of the future, the natural, organically evolved society they live in also offends them. Also, as the general population gradually becomes accustomed to the idea that government should take over individual responsibilities, the government naturally looks for ways to both extend and entrench itself in this new role, and also to make its job easier. The more money government has to spend forcing people to get healthy, the less there is for other purposes. And there is also the psychological phenomenon known as transference. As California's astronomical debt burden crushes the state flat, acivists and the government avoids the problem by screaming louder and louder about trifles such as Happy Meals.

Kudos to McDonalds for not knuckling under. Let them be yet one more business chased out of California, rather than bow to these self-impressed social saviors.

Theatrum Belli

The French military has been fighting in Afghanistan for ten years, same as us. However, they aren't getting a lot of support from the folks back home. So, at this link, you can send a message of support to French soldiers in the field this Christmas, who are just as lonely as ours.

David Mamet on Greed

I disagree with several details of Mr. Mamet's conservative epiphany, but he does score many incisive points. Like this one:

"The Left's current sentiment for the confiscation of benefits legally earned, but to them offensive, is Greed.

To wish to abrogate a legal contract between employer and employee because a nonparticipant feels someone got too much money is greed. It is not greed for money, but covetousness born of envy--the desire for that which legally belongs to another. That those in favor of this may not want the actual money for their own use is beside the point--they want the enjoyment of the power to strip the money from another. They may not use the confiscated funds to buy a car or a meal, but the billionaire who earns another million dollars cannot earn it either--he, like the offended Liberal, is enjoying the warm glow of its possession. A rampant and untrammeled glee, an unchecked ambition for gain is, in the individual, called miserliness; in the society which strips him of it, it is called Socialism.
-- David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm traveling, just ducked downstairs to the motel lobby to fire off a closing Thanksgiving greeting to you. What I am thankful for? I'm thankful for all the mid-life family challenges I face. I hit bottom pretty early in life, and it's been one long rebound ever since. I have grown up more than I ever suspected was possibly in the past decade and a half, so much so that I blush at the thought of my earlier protracted immaturity. In fact, I feel that I didn't grow up, so much as I converted to adulthood, with all the zeal of a convert. I feel my shortcomings in my present responsibilities quite keenly. But I'm grateful that I have been preserved, safeguarded, and brought to this present time to grapple with them at all. (Sorry to be enigmatic, but this is a pseudonymous blog, after all!) I'm also glad for my remaining family (I'm the youngest child of youngest children), and the chance to be with them. Hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday.

It frightens me
The awful truth
Of how sweet life can be
-- Bob Dylan, "Up To Me"

Occupy Wall Street protesters being cleared out of parks.

Where do they go from here? Back to university. They'll get tenure, write the history books, and portray themselves as heroes to mush-headed students of a future generation. Just like the radicals of '68 did. No one remembers how they stole credit for the civil rights movement, nor all the bombs they set, nor the soldiers they spat on, nor the criminals that they made into folk heroes, nor the riots they instigated & then successfully blamed on the police. Rather, they sit in pampered academic security, giving their blessings to their young proteges. And so shall it be with this lot.

Brooklyn museum exhibit features depiction of ants running wild over crucifix

Well, aren't we just too edgy to handle without oven mitts. Supposed to be a statement about AIDS or some similar sort of values inversion, to put mainstream society in the wrong, I gather. But if the intent is to shock, then the artists stand revealed as wimps. They no more want to be murdered, or go into hiding, or fend off homicidal attacks in their own homes, or be ostracized as racist by their own kind, than anyone else does. But that's what would happen--what has happened--if they made sport with images of The Prophet of the One True Faith.

Porn star Sasha reads to LA school children

Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future. OTOH, you can only have one reputation at a time.

"I am an actor. I am an artist. I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a partner. I have a past that some people may not agree with, but it does not define who I am.

Scores of angry parents, even nowadays, even in La-La Land, would beg to differ.

Seven billionth human born this weekend: welcome, little stranger!

"There's just enough of me, but way too many of thee" is a prejudice as old as civilization. But it's notable that liberals--who feel themselves shouldered with the duty to run everyone else's lives--regard the rising population as mere mouths and stomachs. That is, as just another problem to solve (or at least to strike a concerned pose about). But the flaw is in liberals' base presumption: that humanity will inevitably rush headlong into ruin without their, liberals', intervention. (They never explain of what finer clay they are made, but that's another story.) They never quite believe that other people can solve problems, that other people can co-operate peacefully with each other, that other people are smart. It doesn't make them feel all affirmed & complete inside, to think that way, to have that kind of respect for other people, as patronizing people does.

Wealthy nations have lower birth rates. So, if liberals are serious about wanting the world's population to come down, they should recuse themselves from economic affairs, so that more people can get rich!

Is Occupy Wall Street the culmination of an Alinsky-ist plot?

You know, I don't believe in conspiracies, so much. But filling the unemployment rolls with thousands of Left-indoctrinated young people, with massive debts and degrees in worthless subjects, would be a socially disruptive move worthy of Alinsky himself. If it wasn't done on purpose, it certainly is playing to the hard Left's hand of cards anyway.

Occupy Wall Street law-breakers foreseen by Frederic Bastiat

Hey, when you practice civil disobedience--just like Gandhi did!!!!--everything you do is right, dood!

"What young man, going out into the world full of ardour and passion, does not say to himself: "The impulses of my heart are the voice of Nature, which is never mistaken. The institutions that stand in my way are man-made and are only arbitrary conventions to which I have never given my consent. In trampling these institutions underfoot, I shall have the double pleasure of satisfying my inclinations and of believing myself a hero" "
-Frederic Bastiat, 1848

Screwy Louie mourns Col Klink

Contemptible.

“I come to say to the world that the Nation of Islam mourns the loss of a great brother leader. Those who rejoice at his death, your laughter will turn to tears, and your joy will turn to sorrow and great pain,” Farrakhan said during the two-hour interview at WVON’s South Side studios.

Farrakhan had been a vocal supporter of the Libyan leader, traveling to Tripoli several times, and his Nation of Islam’s international headquarters, Mosque Maryam, was purchased with a $3 million loan from Gadhafi.

Pampered America-hater doesn't know what tears are.

Can any good thing come out of Berkeley?

Well, if we're talking about the hard physical sciences, yes. A project called Berkeley Earth went back and reviewed the climate change data that's been disputed over so much these past few years, and confirmed the findings. Something as complicated and omni-directional as climate can't really be crammed into a four word headline, or a 500 word blog post, even if I were qualified, which I'm not. So, click here and get up to speed.

I will, however, repeat my frequently voiced attitude towards global warming. I'm politically inclined to be dismissive of global warming. The image of failed socialist wackademic revolucionarios re-inventing themselves as environmental activists, seeking to shut down the means of production that they failed to win state ownership of, fits my mental template of the Left pretty snugly.

But, as voracious a devourer of popular science as I've always been, I must also admit that there seems to be more than a little something to global warming. I'm a big believer in the power of aggregate knowledge. If independent findings in many different scientific fields point to the same conclusion, then you've gotta take that seriously, the political coattail riders notwithstanding.

Greece, Eurozone, banks, and the 50% "Haircut"

Scenarios dire unfolded here and here.

Okay, thought exercise! In place of "banks" in this story, insert your name, and in place of "Greece", insert a needy, deserving unfortunate of your choice. So, the scene is this: The needy, deserving unfortunate and you had entered into a financial arrangement. The needy, deserving unfortunate has been borrowing from you, but is not able to pay you back. The looming default threatens to play havoc with your personal finances. Enter the government! It sizes up the situation and decides for you. It decides that you must simply take a bath on the bad loans. Which is to say, the money that you had lent the needy, deserving unfortunate is gone, and you will be on the hook for it and whatever collateral risk you took along with it. You may, however, receive a token bit of chump change from the government, to ease the sting. All for the greater good, of course--unless you're some kind of hater who has it in for needy, deserving unfortunates.

Okay, now you can take out the needy, deserving unfortunates, and substitute back in bloated, profligate, cafe society wannabe Greece. You're still on the hook, though.


Links via David Thompson and I forget who, sorry!

Gaddafi reported to be dead

So long, Col. Klink. The Mussolini of North Africa meets a fate quite similar to that of Il Duce. Cue The Clash:

But in these days of evil presidentes,
Workin' for the clampdown
Lately one or two have fully paid their due
For workin' for the clampdown




Else-web, I see that liberals and proggs are out in force, labeling him a creation of the U.S. That gives me an opening to post one of my favorite examples of American military heroism, right at the beginning of Gaddafi's regime, in 1969:

“One day Khadafy ran a column of half tracks through my base—right through the housing area at full speed. I shut the barrier down at the gate and met Khadafy a few yards outside it. He had a fancy gun and a holster and kept his hand on it. I had my .45 in my belt. I told him to move his hand away. If he had pulled that gun, he never would have cleared his holster. They never sent any more half tracks.”

That's the late Daniel "Chappie" James, Jr., a legend in the Air Force. "Where do we get such men?"

Occupy Wall Street protesters *don't* want to tax the rich?

In a Guardian column rebutting some criticism of the OWS movement, Amanda Marcotte makes this strange claim:

It's fun to pick apart the illogic behind the conservative obsession with federal income tax, but what is most remarkable about We Are the 53% is how off-topic it is. Supporters of the 53% Tumblr seem to be under the impression that Occupy Wall Street posters are demanding a higher tax burden on everyone who pays federal income tax. There is simply no reason to believe this, especially since both We Are the 99% and Occupy Wall Street have repeatedly emphasised that they object to the 1% of Americans controlling 40% of our wealth.

Very odd, counter to everything I've heard the protesters themselves saying. See for yourself.

Occupy Wall Street and The Tea Party Movements

The Tea Party and the OWS movement are mirror images of each other. The Tea Party is demanding that Washington stop robbing generations yet to be born of wealth yet to be earned, and leave productive citizens to enjoy the fruits of their labors. Occupy Wall Street is more European, demanding that "somebody" give or continue to give them free stuff, or preserve them from the consequences of their actions, since they've already gone to all the fuss and bother of existing. The sight never fails to disgust, whether it's this OWS stunt or a more typical demo: Unemployable post-post-post-post-docs who couldn't run a lemonade stand (not least because their kind have all but outlawed them) presuming to dispose of the earnings of their more capable fellow citizens, all for "the greater good". Neighbors, if you knew how to handle wealth wisely, you would also know how to earn it--and you wouldn't need to occupy Wall St., because you'd be able to be generous with your own earnings.

Mikhail Gorbachev: We should have preserved the Soviet Union

This on the 20th anniversary of the dismantling of the Soviet Union. He also says the U.S. should have done more to bail him out during the attempted coup. Mmmmm, nope. Good riddance to the Soviet Union, the most evil regime to have ever arisen in Europe. Not Nazi Germany? No. Hitler was as evil as Lenin and Stalin, but he didn't have the means or the time to match their body count. Plus, he lacked their friends in the West. Nazism was based on racial hatred, while socialism is based on class hatred. By the 1930s, racism was becoming an atavism, whereas the Depression had given socialism renewed appeal to the herd of independent minds. The Nazis never claimed to be slaughtering their millions for the salvation of all mankind. So the luckless victims of socialism were done in on a more resplendent altar in a better-attended political temple.

It all reminds me of this old Jules Feiffer cartoon, shortly after the Soviet Union dissolved.

When that fool, Reagan, called the Soviet Union `the evil empire', I knew we were headed for war.
When that fool, Reagan, gave a blank check to the arms race, I knew the odds favored nuclear annihilation.
When that fool, Reagan, launched star wars on the premise that the Soviet Union would go broke trying to keep up, I knew he was a dangerous kook living in a never-never land.
When the Soviet Union went broke, surrendered its empire and called off the cold war, I knew it was Gorbachev's genius and Reagan had nothing to do with it.
Because if that fool, Reagan, was right all along...
What kind of fool am I?

The difference between progressives and children

Children demand the right to do whatever they please. Progressives demand the right to do whatever they please and consider themselves heroes for doing it.

#occupywallstreet Protesters Attack Police

Via The Jawa Report: Occupy Wall Street protesters attack police, as seen in the video below. Bet you've only seen the videos of the police's pushback, haven't you? Fautography from radical proggs? Well, knock me down with a feather... Ever notice how it's the union goons, the anti-globo rioters, the street-brawling anarchists, who are forever warning about the always-imminent but completely non-existent threat of Tea Party violence?