Leftists Exploit Gun Tragedy. . . As Usual

With the Aurora shooting a couples days removed now and emotions cooling, let’s talk rationally about the issue of guns. As usual, the left has hopped on this tragedy in full exploitation mode. They’ve blamed everything from guns to the Tea Party. They are, as always, wrong. Let’s discuss.

As with Gabby Giffords, the left immediately jumped out and pointed their twisted fingers at the Tea Party. This charge was led by ABC News who decided the shooter had to belong to the Tea Party because they found a Tea Party member with a similar name. Naturally, they never bothered to investigate before smearing the Tea Party. Eventually, they were forced to retract this, but not before every other new outlet repeated the slander. Those outlets never withdrew their reports.

Meanwhile, the usual pack of leftist celebrities took to the airwaves to whine that this proves we need gun control. Roger Ebert even whined that this proved that concealed carry laws don’t work because no one in the crowd had a gun. Think about that. In Roger’s mind concealed carry means that someone in every crowd must be carrying a gun even when the theater and law forbid it. What a twisted turd he has become.

In any event, none of this is working. Almost no one on Capitol Hill has called for gun control laws. To the contrary they are running like scared rabbits. Why? Because polls show the public’s support for gun rights at an all-time high. Indeed, an October 2011 Gallup poll found that 73% of Americans would not support gun bans. This was the highest level in 50 years. Incidentally, the same poll showed 68% approval for the evil NRA.

So why doesn’t the public fall for the blathering of the moronic celebrities and professional tragedy exploiters? Easy, it’s common sense.

As I’ve pointed out many times before, gun tragedies are incredibly rare. The United States has 2.5 million deaths annually, but only 12,000 of those are related to guns (0.4% of all deaths) – many of these are shootings by police. This places gun deaths 43rd on the list of causes of death in the United States, well behind diseases, cancers, suicides, diarrhea related deaths, unintentional injuries, measles, falls, drownings, poisonings, fires, asthma and road accidents.

And mass shootings of the type in Aurora are even more rare. For example, in the last 10 years, there have been only seven shooting sprees at schools in the US that resulted in three or more deaths. Moreover, Europe has a comparable mass murder rate, despite its strict gun control laws. Europe saw six such mass murders in the same period, and the European ones had a higher body count. China too has seen a spree of stabbings at schools that have resulted in a vastly higher number of deaths than American shootings. So this problem the celebrity left is whining about simply about doesn’t exist, and people realize that.

Secondly, guns don’t kill people. There are 250 million guns in the United States. If guns “caused” crimes as the left claims, then there would 250 million murders a year. Even if only one in ten people fell under the evil spell of these guns, we would still be dealing with 25 million murders a year. Heck, even one percent means 2.5 million murders. Yet only 12,000 people are killed annually in the United States by guns. That works out to less than 0.004% of guns being used to kill someone. . . 40 out of every million guns in the country. Guns do not cause crime.

We know this from Switzerland too. Everyone in Switzerland is required to own a gun, yet gun crime is virtually nonexistent. It’s so low they don’t even bother keeping official statistics on gun crime. It is, in fact, lower than the gun crime rate in Japan, which absolutely bans guns. Switzerland ranks as the fourth safest country in the world and its violent crime rate is 1/100th that of Britain, where guns are banned.

Moreover, there is strong evidence that guns actually prevent crime. When Britain banned private gun ownership in 1996, crime rates skyrocketed. According to American Enterprise Institute economist John Lott, an examination of information released by the British Home Office showed that the violent crime rate rose 69% following the gun ban (with murders increasing 54%). Interestingly, in the five years prior to the ban, such crimes had been falling consistently.

A county by county examination by Lott of crime rates in the United States, found that right-to-carry states experienced (on average) lower rates of violent crime (27% lower), murder (32% lower), robbery (45% lower) and aggravated assault (20% lower) than states with more restrictive gun laws. Other studies conducted at Vanderbilt University, SUNY Binghamton, Claremont-McKenna College, George Mason University, and the College of William and Mary, have supported Lott’s findings.

So Ebert’s attempt to prove that concealed laws don’t worry through a bad analogy is proven ludicrous by comparison to these statistics.

The truth is the world is full of nuts. And if they want to find a way to kill people, they will find a way. It is better to let decent people arm themselves so they can defend themselves than it is to disarm the very people who would help, leaving everyone at the mercy of the crazies. It’s interesting that our left thinks this way. Why do you supposed they don’t want you being able to defend yourself?

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Media Finally Spots Flaw In Democrat's Hispanic Strategy. . . Sort Of

We at Commentarama like to keep you ahead of the curve. So while others are worrying about things that will never happen or missing both forest and trees, we’re busy trying to let you know exactly what is going on and what the world will look like in the near future. And that brings me to the issue of immigration. It turns out, the Mexican invasion is over. And while you knew this already two years ago (Link), the public is only now getting hints of this. Perhaps it’s time for the Democrats to panic?

The idea that Hispanics (particularly Mexicans) will take over the United States has become an article of faith on the left. Indeed, the Democrats are counting on it. Their electoral strategy involves pandering to minorities and trying to get overwhelming support among them to offset their near-total collapse of support among whites. To achieve that level of support, they are working hard to scare these groups with claims of racism and to enslave them with poor education and by ingraining hobbling ideas like group rights.

But this whole idea relies on a faulty premise. Indeed, it depends on immigration from Mexico remaining at the same levels it was during its peak period in the 1980s/1990s. In 1980, there were 30 million Hispanics in the US. By 2000, there were 45 million. If you draw a straight line between those points and extend it to the future, there will be 104 million in 2040 and they will be the new majority group shortly after.

Sounds simple, but here’s the problem. That growth has nothing to do with births of Hispanics in the United States. Indeed, 12 million of the 15 million growth in the last twenty years was purely illegal immigration. And the vast majority of that comes from Mexico. Ergo, if immigration from Mexico slows, then the minority take over of America is over.

And guess what? Immigration from Mexico has all but stopped. Starting in 2007 (before the recession), immigration from Mexico began dropping. Within the last few years, it’s actually reversed itself, as the number of Mexicans returning to Mexico has exceeded the number of Mexicans who have come to the United States. How much? Well, according to Pew and the Census Bureau, the number of illegal immigrants in the US fell by one million in the last five years while the number of legal immigrants rose only by 200,000.

Why is this happening? Partially it is the sad state of our economy. But even more importantly, it’s because Mexico is running out of Mexicans. Mexico’s birthrate is in free fall. In the past decade alone, it has fallen 20% (from 24 births per 1,000 persons to 19), and it keeps right on falling. Mexico’s birth rate is now just over 2 children per mother, almost identical to the birth rate in the United States, and it’s still falling -- it will soon be at European levels (around 1.4). Because of this, Mexico’s population is estimated to peak in 2043, though I suspect that will happen much sooner, as it has in other countries. And that means Mexico, like Europe, is starting to suffer from a birth shortage and, consequently, a worker shortage. That means there won’t be waves of millions of Mexicans sneaking across the border in each of the next 3-4 decades because they can find the jobs they want at home. So instead of having 104 million Hispanics in 2040 as expected, the US is more likely to have 60 million -- which won’t be anywhere near a majority in a country of 350 million people.

I told you about this in May 2000 and again last year. The LA Times first hinted at this yesterday. Neither the Times nor others on the left have yet fully grasped the meaning of this, but it will come as they realize what this means for the Democratic strategy.

And falling numbers aren’t the only problem. Look at the concentration of Hispanics in the United States. That is not a map which affords Hispanics political power. As California has learned, anything above 50%+1 is a waste in our system. So piling millions upon millions of Hispanics into the same 3-4 states means their influence will always been small compared to their numbers.

Further, there is this point I mentioned last year. According to the Census, 53% of Hispanics now identify themselves as “white,” while 37% identify themselves as “some other race” (the choice on the form) with the rest selecting other races such as black. And American- born children of Hispanics are even more likely to identify themselves as “white.” This means Hispanics are doing what every other ethnic group except blacks has done -- they are joining the melting pot.

The Democratic dream of an angry racist Hispanic majority which supports their socialist ways is over. This wave of Hispanics is not coming, they are not going to the right states, and those that are here are leaving the race-reservation. The LA Times has finally put its finger on this, but hasn’t grasps the full implications yet. But that will come as the Times article is now getting widespread publication. Any guesses what the Democrats will do about their mistake. . . or if they'll put this together?


And don't forget, it's Star Trek Tuesday at the film site!
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Conservatives ARE Smarter Than Liberals

Liberals love to think they’re smarter than conservatives, but they aren’t. Conservatives are smarter than liberals, and we know this to be true for a variety of reasons. Now, Pew has give us more proof to add to the pile. But before we talk about Pew, let’s consider the proof we already have that conservatives are indeed smarter than liberals.

Here are six reasons why we know liberals are simply not very smart:

1. They support liberalism. No, I’m not being facetious. Liberalism has been an unmitigated disaster everywhere it’s been tried. It has bankrupted countries, destroyed inner city families, and made a mockery of education. Indeed, any area of our culture or economy which is dominated by liberals is a mess. And the more liberal a country is, the more likely it is to be broke with massive unemployment and little idea how to turn itself around. Not to mention that liberalism runs contrary to human nature, and its cousin socialism has slaughtered hundreds of millions of people. Einstein defined insanity as repeating the same behaviors and expecting different results, yet that is exactly what liberals are doing. Hence, anyone who still believes liberalism can work is either stupid or insane.

2. They reject reality. Anyone who ignores facts they don’t like and insists on believing things that are provably false just isn’t very smart. Yet, that describes liberalism to a T. They will believe things which have been debunked and ignore all evidence that disproves their beliefs. And, not only do they ignore evidence they don’t like, they attack the messenger and try to force people to accept their fantasy version of reality over genuine reality through groupthink and political correctness.

3. They accept contradictions. Anyone who can accept a logical contradiction is an idiot because it shows they have no ability to reason and they are willing to believe that which cannot be true just to maintain their worldview. And liberalism is crawling with logical contradictions. My recent favorite is Keynesian thought, which says that spending money helps the economy because it adds to the economy but simultaneously claims that taxes don’t hurt an economy even though taxes pull money from the economy.

4. They lack a principled framework through which to see the world. The liberal decision-making process is emotive and reactionary, it lacks consistency and any sort of framework upon which to base decisions. It is essentially “reasoning through gut feeling.” Inconsistency and lack of problem-solving methodology are evidence of weak, useless minds.

5. They are incapable of seeing the long term. All decisions have short-term and long-term consequences, yet liberals simply cannot grasp the concept of long-term effects. Only being able to grasp half an answer is evidence of stupidity.

6. They “admit” it. Liberalism’s most obnoxious trait is that liberals project their own worst traits onto others. Thus, while they act like racists/sexists/homophobes/ageists/etc-ists, they deny being any of these things and instead project these flaws onto others. They whine about conservatives speaking in code because they themselves speak in code. They accuse people of being liars when they are the liars, they accuse others of being “haters” when they have the hate, and they accuse others of being “fascists” when they are the fascists. So what do we make of liberals accusing conservatives of being closed-minded (a distinctly liberal, but not conservative, trait) and stupid? Hmm. Sounds like an admission to me.

And now we have more from Pew. Every year, Pew asks people a variety of questions to gage the public’s knowledge of various topics. If liberals are indeed smarter as they claim, they should dominate these tests, but they don’t. To the contrary, conservative blow them out.

Here are the results from the 2010 quiz:

● Men did better than women (50% to 35% correct) and in fact beat women on every question.
● College grads did much better than high school grads (61% to 33%).
● Age-wise, those in the 30+ brackets did much better than the 18-20 bracket (50% to 32%).
● And Republicans (50%) and Independents (47%) did better than Democrats (40%).

In fact, it was even worse than it appears for the Democrats. On the 2010 Pew survey, Republicans outperformed the Democrats on 10 of 12 questions, with one tie and the Democrats winning the other question. On this year’s survey it was even worse. This year, Pew asked 19 questions and Republicans outperformed the Democrats on ALL 19 questions. Imagine that.

So these condescendingly smug liberals who see themselves as vastly more knowledgeable than Republicans. . . after all, they watch Stephen Colbert while you hillbillies are watching NASCAR. . . got smoked on 19 out 19 questions. And this continues a trend of Republicans smoking Democrats.

Sadly, the Democrats are probably too stupid to understand what this means, but feel free to try to explain it to them the next time they claim they are smarter than conservatives. I suggest using puppets to make it easier for them to understand.

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Liberals Are Intolerant, Who Knew?

Is it just me or do liberals strike you as intolerant? They don’t engage with conservatives, they attack. Say something they don’t like and they will call you a liar, call you names, try to shout you down, or even try to get you fired. They won’t compete with talk radio, they demand prosecutions and FCC shutdowns. Bloggers? Forget about it, they want those shut down too. They want conservative political ads banned, actors blacklisted, companies boycotted, and churches hounded by the IRS. Not a very tolerant bunch. Here’s more proof.

Pew just did a fascinating poll about tolerance and the internet. And what they found will not shock you: liberals are intolerant of opposing views. Shocker, right?

According to Pew, 52% of liberals have discovered by going onto social networking sites (e.g. Facebook) that their friends have different beliefs than they thought. That’s right, more than half of all liberals were blind to the views of their friends. How did conservatives do? Only 34% of conservatives reported the same thing. And before you say those are roughly comparable, they aren’t. This means liberals are 150% more likely than conservatives to not grasp that their friends don’t share their views.

What would cause this? It’s a combination of two things. First, as anyone who has ever met a liberal knows, they live in bubbles. They believe that everyone thinks like they do, a view which gets confirmed by the MSM and Hollywood. Thus, they are essentially walking egoists without the power to empathize with anyone because they lack the ability to grasp that others are not like them. Hence it never occurs to them that their friends might disagree and they are incapable of seeing the signs that their blathering on about liberalism isn’t going over so well.

Secondly, they are intolerant. We know this because there is clearly something about these liberals which has stopped their friends from being honest with the liberals despite the fact they are apparently willing to otherwise share their views with the world on social networking sites. We also know this from something else Pew found. According to Pew, 28% of liberals have blocked people or unfriended people because they disagreed with something the user said. That's three in ten! Extrapolating that to the liberal population of the US means 34.7 million liberals have tried to silence people they know because they disagree with them. That’s the equivalent of TWICE the entire populations of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Boston combined.

But wait, aren’t conservatives just as bad? Hardly. Only 16% of conservatives reported doing the same. That means liberals are 175% more likely to try to shut people out because of their views. Imagine that.

Of course, none of this should surprise anyone. We’ve all seen the examples in our own lives where liberals assume that everyone in the room must be liberal because they simply can’t conceive of anyone thinking differently. And we’ve seen how shocked, how angry, and how vile they get when they hear that people have different views. And we’ve seen how they ignore all evidence which conflicts with their beliefs and how they dismissing any source which shakes up their world. We’ve seen it where they are incapable of good faith disagreement. We’ve seen it where they think nothing of using government force to impose their beliefs on others. We’ve seen it where they try to make words and thoughts into crimes and where they apply double standards based on their guess about your motives rather than looking objectively at your actions.

These numbers confirm that liberals are indeed what they appear to be: an intolerant group who are so self-centered they don’t understand that their friends don’t share their views and who are so intolerant that their friends are afraid to tell them the truth.

Liberalism is a sad way to live.

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Why The Nanny State Destroys All It Touches

Britain has just provided us with a fascinating example of why conservatism works and liberalism fails in the real world, and we should be paying attention. What they’re doing is removing street signs and other devices meant to keep people safe on the roads. Why they’re doing it, is because these signs were having the opposite effect. Get this!

Our story comes to us from the DailyMail Online (LINK), perhaps the greatest source of actual information left on the planet. This particular story deals with changes that have been made to Exhibition Road in the heart of London’s museum quarter.

For years now, liberal safety advocates have been installing ever more safety measures to protect drivers and pedestrians. This has ranged from restrictive rules for drivers to signs warning drivers about dangers to curbs meant to separate the road from the sidewalk to railings meant to pen in pedestrians to designated crosswalks, etc. The idea was that the government would find all the potential dangers and then warn drivers and pedestrians about them or they would find ways to eliminate those dangers.

Of course, that’s not how it worked out. Why? Because once the government took over warning people about what to watch for, they stopped taking precautions themselves and they relied on the government’s warnings. So now the conservative government is yanking these things out again and lo and behold, it’s actually getting safer. Here’s a picture of the road today with all the gates and curbs and signs removed:

Why is it getting safer? Because people are paying more attention. Said Sir Jeremy Dixon, the lead architect on the new project:

“When the rules by which traffic normally operates are removed - signs, barriers and curb markings - drivers become more observant. They make more eye-contact with pedestrians which produces greater watchfulness. They use the road more like pedestrians. They take more responsibility for their actions. [S]tudies have shown that when traffic lights are removed from crossings, traffic flows more freely and efficiently because drivers take more care.”

Imagine that. When the government takes responsibility for something, people take less personal responsibility for their own actions. When the government stops playing nanny, people take more responsibility for their actions. Who could have guessed?

And there’s more. Daniel Moylan, the Deputy Chairman of Transport for London said this:

“The psychology of this scheme is fascinating. Experience seems to show that when you dedicate space to traffic and control it with signs and green traffic lights, motorists develop a claim on it. It becomes ‘my space.’ Drivers become annoyed if people move into it.”

In other words, they develop a sense of entitlement.

Folks, this is exactly what conservatives warn about with government. When the government gives something to people, they develop feelings of entitlement and they become belligerent to anyone who violates “their rights.” What’s more, they stop taking personal responsibility for their own actions in those areas, i.e. they become dependent on the government.

This issue right here is the human condition in a nutshell and proves the conservative belief that the nanny state is destructive, not constructive. It destroys those it seeks to help. This is exactly why generations of government welfare have destroyed the families who accepted the government’s intervention in their lives. This is why big businesses who have come to rely on the government need bailouts to keep them afloat. This is why we are facing a crushing amount of regulation today, because once the government begins taking care of you, it keeps moving into more and more aspects of your life as you become increasingly helpless. These are not coincidences.

This is why government stinks on a human level and it applies to everything the government touches. There is an incredible lesson here, will anybody learn it? Seeing as how Los Angeles just banned footballs and frisbies from being thrown on the beach. . . I’m thinking the answer is no.

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Global Warmists Lie About Ocean Levels

No sooner did we discover that the trees are sabotaging global warming, than we get news that global warming enthusiasts are fudging their data to make the oceans appear to be rising, when they aren’t. This has been a bad month for the enthusiasts. In fact, it’s been a bad couple years.

Climate change enthusiasts have had a bad time of late:

1. Their seminal religious text, the Nobel-Prize-winning Fourth Report (2007) of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been repeatedly disgraced:

● They had to retract a completely unsupported statement that the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035.

● Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures. In fact, global temperatures are currently below the “low end” of the IPCC’s prediction. What’s more, 1999-2008 showed no warming, and certainly not the 0.20 degrees Celsius expected by the IPCC.

● It was revealed that flaws in weather stations wrongly created warming.

● It was revealed that the report wrongly used summer data for winter months to generate warming.

● The IPCC claim that global warming will hurt biodiversity was shown to have no basis -- not to mention that the world’s species are at least one million years old and thus have all been through hundreds of climate cycles.

● They had to retract unsubstantiated fears about threats to the Amazon rainforests;

● The IPCC’s statement that sea level would rise 2.3 mm per year was shown to be based on data collected in a part of Hong Kong that is sinking.

2. Real scientists have debunked much of the enthusiasts claims. For example, despite claims by enthusiasts, CO2 does not constitute 3% of the atmosphere, it actually constitutes 0.037%. What’s more, ice core samples show that we are currently in a low CO2 period compared to earth’s history. Indeed, CO2 levels have been as much as 10 times higher than today. And CO2 changes typically follow temperature changes, i.e. they do not lead temperature changes, and often by hundreds of years.

3. In 2009, the climate “scientists” primarily responsible for tracking global warming were caught fudging their data and formulas and waging a jihad against their opponents (see climategate).

4. In January, IPCC scientist Osvaldo Canziani was listed as an advisor on a report that overstated warming by 1000%, and which was published even after this error was pointed out to the study’s authors. They neither corrected nor noted the error.

5. Last week warming enthusiasts had to back down from claims about warming because it turned out that trees were actually absorbing carbon dioxide. . . as expected.

Now we have the sea level issue. Warming enthusiasts assert that rising sea levels would wipe out islands and coastal cities. The IPCC predicts sea level rises equal to 2.3 meters per century, with 2.7 feet happening this century. But in January 2010, they had to retract this report because of “mistakes in time intervals and inaccurately applied statistics.” Then in May of 2010, a paleogeophysics/geodynamics professor from Stockholm University in Sweden issued a report that observations from around the world showed no rising sea levels in the last 40 years.

So what do you do when the sea just won’t do what you predict? The University of Colorado’s Sea Level Research Group decided to add 0.3 millimeters a year to their sea level figures to create rising sea levels where none exist.

But don’t worry, they assure us, this rising is real. . . you just can’t see it because the land level is rising too. Does this make sense to anyone? If this is true and both land and sea are rising equally, then where is the justification for panicking the world into fighting global warming? And if it’s not true, then this is just another example of poli-scientists fudging their data to make their predictions appear to be true. And if land and sea are rising equally, why add 0.3 millimeters to create the impression that the sea is rising faster than the land?

Do you know what the Sea Level Research Group responded? Come on, we're not adding much.

I kid you not.


(P.S. Sorry for not continuing the 2012 contender series today, but Bachmann is requiring more research than expected. Besides. . . Ronald "Huntsman" Reagan has it all sewn up, right?)

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Global Warming Fails Again

Global warming is a politically-created myth. It relies on climate models that are so inaccurate they couldn’t predict an increase in room temperature if you started a fire. What’s more, warming enthusiasts have shut down all inquiry that might improve the science because those inquiries keep disproving the underlying theory. Now we have perhaps the biggest laugher yet to blast a glaring hole in their theory: the very trees are against them.

Ok, let’s start with some grade-school logic, the kind global warming enthusiasts can’t do. What do trees and plants need to grow? Yes, soil, water and. . . carbon dioxide. Trees, flowers and grass absorb carbon dioxide from the air. The more they get, the more they grow. The more they grow, the more carbon dioxide they absorb out of the air. Thus, logic tells us that an increase in carbon will be largely offset by plant life growth.

Sounds simple, right? The problem is that’s heresy.

Global warming enthusiasts don’t want to hear this because it undermines their theory that carbon dioxide is a useless industrial pollutant that will sit in the atmosphere forever causing the earth to warm up over centuries. Indeed, they’ve even put out “studies” (read= guess work opinion pieces) like one by the University of Minnesota in 2006, which claimed that “atmospheric carbon dioxide levels may rise even faster than anticipated, because ecosystems likely will not store as much carbon as had been predicted”! Oh my! Note, by the way, the hedging throughout this sentence. There is no science here, just speculation that reality might not be reality and thus we should destroy the world economy now to stop the release of carbon dioxide. . . evil, evil, pointless carbon dioxide.

Well, on June 5th of this year, experts from Finland and the United States were shocked. . . shocked to learn that reality works like everyone other than global warming enthusiasts knew it would. This report found to the enthusiasts’ horror that rising carbon dioxide levels caused forest density to increase: “Global warming, blamed by the U.N. panel of climate experts mainly on human use of fossil fuels, might itself be improving growth conditions for trees in some regions.” That’s right, trees are getting fatter. And the consequence of this is. . . well. . . um. . . it’s “offsetting climate change.” In other words, it’s keeping global warming from happening.

Yep. Everything the enthusiasts predicted is once again proving false and everything we realists said would happen is happening. The earth remains in balance as always.

Of course, this isn’t what global warming enthusiasts want to believe, so we’ll see if they accept this or if they choose instead the burn the heretics at the carbon-free stake?

Interestingly, this follows some other recent revelations. For example:

● In 2008-2010, global temperatures dropped sharply enough to cancel out the entire supposed net rise in the 20th century. This is important because global warming theory relies on cumulative increases. Thus, their whole theory has fallen apart. . . again. Enthusiasts tried to blame this on the "unexpected" solar cycle -- an eleven year pattern that has repeated itself consistently throughout history and seems to coincide with scaremongering about new global ice ages or new global warming. Enthusiasts also complained that the oceans reacted in an "unexpected" manner by doing what they've always done rather than changing as the climate models suggested. And now the dirty trees have done the "unexpected" by doing what they've always done and refusing to conform to the models. Are you seeing a pattern? It seems that every time the Earth does what it's always done, it's "unexpected."

● In 2008, hundreds of actual scientists heaped scorn on the supposed “scientific consensus” reached by the enthusiasts, a collection of psychologists, gynecologists and other assorted experts with no knowledge of climate science.

● What’s more this most recent report notes that the evil United States, which we know is dominated by people who just like killing trees for no reason except pure spite, has experienced a surge in forest density. Between 1953 and 2007, forest volume in capitalist America grew by 51%. That's right, the whole time they were putting out PSAs and experts were appearing before Congress decrying “deforestation,” forest volume was increasing by half. And not only were there new trees, but existing trees were growing, something we were told wouldn’t be happening -- indeed, the last decade was all about growth, not replanting.

These are hard times for Chicken Little.

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Utopia Forgotten: The Left's Intellectual Collapse

The sad truth is there is no longer any point in talking to leftists as they have nothing of value to offer anymore. And the reason is they have lost any semblance of a philosophy and have devolved into a subspecies of retarded human that feeds on spite, excretes arrogance, and revels in ignorance and hypocrisy, all the while self-righteously claiming moral and intellectual superiority.

When I was in college, I had a leftist professor that I respected a great deal. He was an intelligent man who had given the world a great deal of thought and had put in years of research to flesh out his beliefs. He was well-versed in economics, psychology, and history, and he was a joy to talk to. What I found really interesting was that we both saw many of the same problems in society. Indeed, in many ways, if we laid out our vision of the ideal society, my version and his version would have been surprisingly similar. Where we parted company, however, was in how to get there. Indeed, after hours of argument, we realized that we had fundamentally different views of human nature, and this led to different ideas about how to achieve our goals. I take the view that human nature only changes when people want to change themselves. Thus, all we can do to fix society is to lay out the moral reasons for the change and then provide incentives to “do the right thing.” He took the view that human nature can be changed by government fiat, and that people will conform to the “new normal.” I thought his ideas were inconsistent with human experience and were destined to fail because imposing change upon people only breeds resentment and subversion. He thought my ideas would never work to help the “most vulnerable.” So we agreed to disagree, but we definitely shared a great deal of respect for each other.

He is the last leftist I ever respected, however.

Since his time, the left has lost its mind. His version of finding the best way forward through a thoughtful examination of the world is gone. Indeed, the left has all but abandoned ideology and no longer even has a "utopia" that it is trying to achieve.

Instead, the new left preaches hate, spite and grievance, without purpose or an ultimate goal apart from achieving political power. It no longer seeks to build anyone up, but instead seeks to tear down those it despises. It no longer seeks the moral high ground or to attune us to some higher truth, it seeks rigid conformity to lies that it deems politically expedient. And it is deeply intolerant, seeking to personally destroy all who dare disagree. This is once again evident in recent events:

Take the case of evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa who just released a study finding that black women were rated as less attractive than women of other races. Now I take no position on his study as I haven’t seen his data, but his results are plausible based on other studies about interracial marriage. But that doesn’t interest me. What interests me is the firestorm reaction.

Within minutes of the article’s posting, the usual leftist suspects called for his article to be removed from the site that published it along with all his prior articles. This accompanied universal calls for the termination of his employment and a slew of articles calling him a racist. No word on death threats yet, but I’m sure they’re coming. Now here’s the critical part: these demands were made before anyone even saw his data. In other words, the truth or falsity of his study was not relevant to the left. He said something they didn’t like and they wanted him silenced.

Then came his fellows to debunk his study. They attacked him for failing to properly analyze the data even as the admitted they hadn’t yet seen how he conducted the analysis. Think about that. They denounced him without having any basis to do so. Then came the coup de grace: they attacked him for reaching a conclusion even though many of the respondents in his data had voiced different opinions. In other words, they claim it was improper for him to reach a conclusion when his data did not show 100% conformity to that conclusion. That is beyond disingenuous and borders on Wonderland-ian criticism. Indeed, if we accept this as a valid criticism, then we are dismissing the entire field of statistics because you NEVER have 100% conformity. For a scientist to make such a statement is truly Orwellian.

What’s more, while they’re all bowing and scraping to the gods of racial sensitivity, let me remind you of something said by prominent black racist Jill Scott, who was invited by Obama to the White House: “As slavery died for the greater good of America, and the movement for equality sputtered to life, the White woman was on the cover of every American magazine. . . She was unequivocally the standard of beauty for this country, firmly unattainable to anyone not of her race. We daughters of the dust were seen as ugly, nappy mammies.” Basically, she’s asserting as truth what Kanazawa claims to have found statistically, yet he’s being burned at the stake for being a racist heretic for saying it.

This is the problem with much of leftist “thought” today: only certain people can say certain truths. . . the rest are required to swear to shifting lies in the name of pushing whatever the present ideology is.

Now take the case of British singer Adele, who just discovered that paying taxes sucks. Here is her quote: “I'm mortified to have to pay 50%! . . . When I got my tax bill in from the album, I was ready to go and buy a gun and randomly open fire.” She further clarified that she was particularly upset that she gets nothing for the taxes she pays.

At last check, there were 866 comments on this article and all of them were vile. Some denied reality, claiming that she’s lying about what she paid and denying that anyone actually pays 50%. Others said she should be thankful that “we let her keep any of it.” Oh, I didn’t know she was your slave? But most just called her fat, a bitch, a whore, a “selfish fucking idiot,” or accused her of stealing her music. Then they wished her ill, both personally and professionally. (About 10% of the comments were so vile they had been deleted by the moderator.) Think about this. She makes the point that paying 50% of your income in taxes is wrong and the responses fall into these categories: (1) denials of reality, (2) demands to punish her for speaking, and (3) hateful personal attacks. This is what passes for leftist thought today. By the way, not one single person rebutted her claims.

So what exactly does the left stand for? Does it want equality for all as it claimed in the 1960s? Hardly. It wants to substitute one group of oppressors for another. Does it want freedom? Hell no. It certainly doesn’t want you to have freedom of speech or thought. It hates religious freedom and property rights. God forbid you want a gun, or a car, or a hamburger. Does it want equal economic opportunity for all? No. It doesn't even want equality of result. It just wants to take everything you have away from you so that it can have it instead. . . actually, I’m not even sure most leftists want what you have. I get the feeling, they just don’t want you having it.

Thus, a philosophy that once stood for moral and economic equality (wrong though their views were) has devolved into a hateful club of subhumans who only want to hurt others. I honestly see nothing else that they believe in.

And if you think I’m wrong, then by all means, I challenge you to tell me what exactly the left wants? And don’t give me any generic crap about “fairness” and “equality,” those are words out of the leftist past that no longer have any modern meaning. Tell me exactly what the leftist utopia would look like. . . because from what I’m seeing, it looks an awful lot like a gulag.

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Stop Attacking The Budget Deal

The moment the budget deal came out, large groups of conservatives started whining. Most were just poorly informed, but some are doing this intentionally because it gets them ratings or gets them noticed -- a recent crop has joined them because they don’t want to be on the wrong side of the crowds. So let me point out a few things:

1. Get Your Numbers Right: Let me state clearly a point that most of these pundit keep wanting to ignore -- this was not $38.5 billion in cuts, it was $78.5 billion in cuts. That means Boehner got 78.5% of the $100 billion sought, which is not bad given that he does not control the Senate or the White House.

2. 100% Is A Delusion: The idea that Boehner should have gotten everything is ridiculous. As someone who is accustomed to negotiating professionally, I can tell you that anyone who claims you can get everything you want in an adversarial negotiation has no idea what they are talking about. The amount you can get depends entirely on two factors: (1) how much the other side cares about a particular issue and (2) how desperate they are. The fact is, the Democrats weren’t desperate. Why? Because they are down and out and without momentum and without a way of regaining it. Their best chance is to introduce a wild card like a shutdown in the hopes of finding an issue that gives them respectability or hope the shutdown deprives the Republicans of momentum. Shutting down the government when the other side has nothing to lose is stupid because you can't win. Moreover, even if the Democrats did care, the closer you get to 100% the greater the resistance. By the time you get to 100%, the other side has nothing to lose by rejecting the deal and seeing how things play out.

3. Stop Ignoring The Riders: Look at the riders and you will see a tremendous amount of conservative influence won. Everything from forcing votes that will hang around Democratic necks to forcing Obama to keep Guantanamo Bay open to forcing the removal of the gray wolf from the endangered species list was included in this deal and represent clear conservative policy victories. So why do the pundits keep focusing only on the two big riders the Democrats never would have agreed to?

4. Stop The False Comparisons: This idea that more ($80 billion) was spent in two weeks than the cuts is a red herring. First, federal spending is not consistent week by week, thus you can easily find weeks where nothing gets spent. Does that mean the value of the budget deal depends on what week they sign it?

Secondly, this is false logic of the worst kind. A budget is a year-long endeavor and cuts are incremental. This criticism is like complaining that a dieter didn't stop eating until they’ve burned off all the calories they are trying to save throughout the year.

The complaint that the debt grew more than the cuts is similarly flawed. 88% of our budget is either defense spending or mandatory entitlement spending. Comparing the total spending cuts made to the remaining 12% against the debt caused by the 88% will naturally end up with the debt being greater because we haven’t touched entitlements yet. This is like complaining that someone who cuts their movie ticket budget in half hasn’t made any cuts because that amount is dwarfed by their spending on utilities.

5. Know What You’re Talking About: This idea that gimmicks were used seems to have sent people into hysterics, even though they had no idea what the gimmicks were. All budgets use “gimmicks.” That’s how you estimate anything that isn’t a precisely known amount, e.g. future tax revenues. Complaining about "gimmicks" without knowing what they are is irrational.

6. Stop Treating Spin As Fact: This idea that the cuts will only result in $300 million in savings is pure spin. It is a flat out distortion.

First, let me point out the irony that conservatives, who regularly attack CBO for blinding applying the assumptions it is given without ever asking if those assumptions are realistic, are suddenly accepting as true the spin placed on a CBO report.

Secondly, make no mistake, this is spin. If you look at the CBO report, it quite correctly notes that the 2011 budget will be reduced by $80 billion. The end. So how do we get to the $300 million figure? By making a false comparison. The $300 million number comes from comparing the actual spending after the budget deal against the amount spent in 2010. But that’s a false measure. When budgets are issued, they include automatic increases for each year. The 2010 budget was no different. Thus, had no budget deal taken place, the 2011 spending would have been $78.5 billion higher. To pretend that this somehow wouldn’t have happened and that therefore a comparison to the spending of 2010 is appropriate is factually wrong and entirely deceptive.

Further, this is where the supposed gimmick comes in. CBO is assuming that many of the spending cuts involve spending that isn’t likely to have happened based on the rate of spending so far during the year. In other words, based on what’s been spent so far, CBO thinks the agencies wouldn’t have needed this money anyway. Thus, the inclusion of these amounts as cuts in the budget deal is considered "a gimmick." But CBO knows this is false because agencies always spend their budgets. This is part of an ancient end-of-year ritual where agencies rush to spend everything they’ve been given so that their future budgets aren’t reduced. Also, large projects often get pushed off to the end of the year so the agency knows before it begins that there will be money available to complete the project in the following year. Thus, comparisons to the current rate of spending are a fraud.

7. Stop Aiding And Abetting The Democrats: Finally, this whole thing is really ticking me off. If people have a legitimate criticism then make it constructively. Don’t go throwing a temper tantrum and ignorantly attacking the Republicans. All these pundits are doing is helping the Democrats by making the Republicans seem fractured, disorganized and unsupported.

And let me point out a few facts about the pundits doing the attacking. First, most of these people rely on being loud and bombastic to get audiences. Outrage sells, whether it’s justified or not.

Secondly, the track record of these pundits is suspect at best. These are the same people who ran with every single anti-Republican rumor they heard over the last couple years. Many of these pundits are the same people who kept insisting the Republicans didn’t have the nerve to fight Obama/Pelosi even as they blocked most of the Democratic agenda in party-line votes and filibusters despite having NO power to block anything. These same pundits who now ignore the riders and the additional $40 billion in cuts and who have bought hook, line and sinker into the spin on the CBO report, are the same people who jumped on the Scott Brown for President bandwagon without having any clue what he stood for. They are the same people who jumped on the Christie bandwagon because of a youtube video, again without bothering to look into his RINO ways. These are the same people who jumped on Tea Party freshmen for a party that none of them attended, and a dozen other stupidities.

These arm-chair revolutionaries are Monday Morning Quarterbacks of the worst kind, because they are too lazy to do their research, they are front runners and bandwagoners, and because they know they are using false arguments and false logic to attack people they claim to support, all in an attempt to further their own careers.

It’s time we started asking them the hard questions, and tuning them out when they can’t answer.

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TV Review: Is It Real (2005-2007)

If you’re looking for a great show that debunks a variety of supernatural, paranormal and just plain crazy theories, then Is It Real is for you. Produced by the National Geographic Channel, Is It Real is a 28 episode documentary series that examines everything from ghosts to alien abductions to Atlantis to exorcisms to human superpowers. It’s honest, it’s fair, it’s snarky and it’s well worth your time.

For some time now, claims of the paranormal have been gaining credibility because books like Erich von Däniken’s “Chariots of the Gods” and “Ancient Aliens” on the History Channel are ramming these ideas into the public consciousness. And since humans love to believe the inexplicable and are easily fooled by false logic, these ideas are catching fire within our culture. Unfortunately, the evidence presented to support these claims ranges from the paranoid or conspiratorial to the just plain stupid. But often it’s not clear just how fraudulent these claims are until someone does a critical analysis of the claim.

That’s where Is It Real comes in. Is It Real gives both proponents of these theories and skeptics a fair chance to present their arguments -- though, when I say “fair,” I mean precisely that: “fair” not “unchallenged.” Indeed, unlike so many of these shows (both pro/con) which typically just accept one side's presentation at face value, the Is It Real crew will interview witnesses, will stage experiments, and will consult actual scientists to examine claims. This makes the show a valuable resource for anyone who wishes to understand the issues being addresses. For example, they interview the man who claims to have worn the Big Foot costume in the famous Big Foot Photo. They show how insects will cause the precise conditions that cattle mutilation enthusiasts claim can only be made by alien surgeons. They explain the psychological reasons people would want to believe they are possessed. They show how the description of aliens varies by culture and explain the reason for this, and how alien abduction stories are the result of sleep paralysis. Etc.

Many believers object that the show favors the skeptics, but it’s hard to agree with their point. Certainly the show lands on the side of skepticism, but that is because the skeptics are making arguments that are logically sound, backed by evidence, and consistent with human experience; the believers have nothing similar to offer. Moreover, Is It Real always acknowledges the limits of the skeptic's case, and has at times found some credibility in the claims of paranormal activity, such as when they examine sleep-walking murders, where they note both that sleep walkers are capable of performing highly complex tests and that people awoken from such states are often intensely violent.

I highly recommend this series. Not only does it give you the basics upon which these beliefs arise, i.e. the history of their development and a discussion of the most famous cases, but it carefully dispels what can be dispelled and it exposes the charlatans who seek to profit from pushing these beliefs. And it does so with both a snarky sense of humor and a fair examination of the evidence. All of which makes for an enjoyable and educational experience.

It also just so happens that Is It Real can be watched instantly on Netflix at the moment. Check it out. . . do it for Nessie!

So, what’s your favorite paranormal phenomena/supernatural creature?

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Leftist Hate Speech

The left are liars and hypocrites. No surprises there. But the last couple days have been extreme, even for them. I'll deal with the reason they've flipped out tomorrow morning, so as not to clutter this post. In the meantime, today I’ve collected some information they won't like: examples of leftist hate. I apologize in advance for the vile language (NSFW), but I will be quoting lots of leftists.

1. The Shooter Is A Leftist

Before we dig into leftist hate, let me point out that this shooter was by no means a right-winger. All the evidence puts him firmly on the left:

● The shooter’s favorite books include The Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf, and The Republic, which are all leftist books.

● He's a 9/11 truther.

● He was an intolerant atheist who wrote a diatribe against the military handing out miniature Bibles to recruits.

● Classmate Caitie Parker, who knew him in high school and college and was in a band with him, has stated: “As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal and oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy.”

● His favorite video on YouTube was someone burning the American flag.

None of these are consistent with him being a right-winger. Indeed, the only thing consistent with him being on the modern right is vague demands about abandoning the dollar because it is not backed by gold, BUT he then talks about everyone making their own currency -- which is more akin to Marxist thinking, which disdains currency as a tool of oppression.

2. The Left/Media Ignore The Truth So They Can Attack

Despite this evidence coming out fairly quickly, the left and their friends in the MSM jumped right out and claimed it was hateful right wing rhetoric that was to blame. Here are some samples of their claims (note the emphasis on boogeywoman Sarah Palin):

● Markos Moulitsas, founder of the DailyKos, sent the following tweet: “Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin.”

● New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell said: “There’s an aura of hate and elected politicians feed it, certain people on Fox News feed it.”

● Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) specifically blamed the Tea Party for turning our political discourse “toxic” and making it so that “if you’re an opponent, you’re a deadly enemy.” He then accused them of “threatening our form of government.” And he said that “Ms. Palin needs to look at her own behavior, and if she wants to help the public discourse, the best thing she could do is to keep quiet.”

● Keith Olbermann compared the shooter to Glenn Beck and called on him to apologize.

● Paul Krugman claimed that Rush, Beck and Palin were to blame.

● CBS’s Nancy Cordes, CNN’s Jessica Yellin, Today’s Kelly O’Donnell and ABC’s David Wright all blamed Palin’s “cross hairs campaign” for causing this.

● The New York Times wrote a piece that actually lets liberals speculate that the shooter was motivated by specific militia magazines, even after they confirmed that he was never a subscriber to any of these. And interestingly, when they describe the shooter in this piece, they "somehow" fail to mention any of the evidence presented above, even though they mention every other known fact about him.

There are literally thousands of more examples, as this became a liberal talking point. Note the key themes, this was because of an "atmosphere of hate" created by the right.

3. The Real Purveyors of Hate Speech

So who really created this atmosphere of hate about which the left complains. With all their vast media resources, they've found one instance where Palin use a cross hairs image, which they have spun into possibly implying to the unstable that she was calling for an assassination (forget that leftist journalists routinely use warfare terminology to describe politics and many have used the cross hairs image themselves). Beside that, they have their opinions that Beck, Rush, etc. are spreading hate, but have been unable to produce any examples.

But what about leftist rhetoric? Bev informed us that the Huffers claimed the left had never said anything hateful. Roger Ebert likewise claimed that: "Were liberals angry about Bush? Yes. But liberals played by the rules." So is this correct or has the left conveniently developed collective amnesia? Let’s take a look.

Let’s start with some of things Ebert has said about Republicans:

● They have "a base it should be ashamed of."
● "The entire climate of paranoia and hate? Have these people always been there?"
● "Some of them may have been the victims of child abuse."
● "They are told to oppose, even hate, those who might be trying to help them."

So right-wingers are retarded, hateful, victims of child abuse? Nope, nothing hateful there. But Ebert's a piker when it comes to hate. For example, he never called for Bush's assassination, like so many other liberals did:

● Here is a collection of protest signs that threaten to kill Bush. Some of these signs include:

○ I’m here to kill Bush (Shoot Me)
○ Kill Bush Bomb His F___IN House
○ Save Mother Earth Kill Bush
○ Hang Bush For War Crimes
○ Bush Is The Disease Death Is The Cure
○ Bush the only Dope Worth Shooting

This link also shows dozens of other items like images of Bush being decapitated, a guillotine brought to a protest with Bush’s head in the basket, Bush being hung, Bush being burned in effigy, and an image of Bush being assassinated. Here are thousands of images of Bush as Hitler or Satan, and examples of t-shirts calling for Bush’s death, and wanted dead or alive posters.

● Comedian(?) Craig Kilborn showed a picture of Bush and ran a caption that read “snipers wanted.”

● John Kerry joked about killing Bush on Bill Maher's show. When asked if going to New Hampshire for his campaign "would kill two birds with one stone," Kerry responded: "I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone."

● And of course, in the middle of these nasty protests and Bushitler signs, Nancy Pelosi encouraged all of this when she called Bush “stupid” and said that “Dissent is the highest form of Patriotism.” Of course, when the protests went against her, then she suddenly demanded the government step in and investigate anyone involved with the protests.

Similarly, Democrat Rep. Robert Brady has now told CNN he will introduce legislation to make it a crime to use language or symbols that could be seen as threatening or violent against federal officials. Funny how that wasn't an issue when it was Republicans being protested and attacked. . . like when bullets were fired at Eric Cantor's office or Bobby Jindal's campaign manager was attacked and her boyfriend's leg broken by protestors, or 7 out of 10 instances of violence at healthcare town halls were perpetrated by leftists.

But Bush hate is nowhere near the only hate the left has spewed of late. Tea Party hate is pathological on the left:

● In April, Joe Klein claimed that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin were guilty of sedition for opposing ObamaCare.

● Democratic House Whip James Clyburn accused the GOP of “aiding and abetting. . . terrorism.” Clyburn also described the Tea Party thusly: "It reminds me of that period in our history right after Reconstruction, when South Carolina had a black governor and the political gains were lost because of vigilantism, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan."

● Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) said this in October of Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott (a Tea Party candidate): "Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him."

● Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy said this of the Tea Party:

I know how the "tea party" people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their "Obama Plan White Slavery" signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads.

● In November 2009, Dylan Rattigan of MSNBC was so upset that voters (i.e. Tea Party) were frustrating his leftist friends that he said this: "Are things in our country so bad that it might actually be time for a revolution? The answer obviously is yes, the only question is how to do it."

His guest then said that non-violent means were not effective for the left: “The american left has been very peaceful since the early ’60s and where has it gotten us?” And here is a quote from the guest’s book, “The Anti-American Manifesto”:

“A war is coming. At stake: our lives, the planet, freedom, living. The government, the corporations, and the extreme right are prepared to coalesce into an Axis of Evil. Are you going to fight back? Will you do whatever it takes, including taking up arms?

The millions of partisans who follow Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and right-wing televangelists happen to be the best-armed people around, and they despise just about everyone who doesn’t think and pray like them. . . . They will act to stop teenage sluts from getting abortions, teach niggers a lesson, and slaughter those spics, dots, and everyone else who doesn’t fit into their vision of what and who is right.”

● The Nation also calls for violence: “where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs?

And when it comes to radio personalities and political writers, the left really gets hateful. Ask yourself if you could ever imagine saying any of the following yourself or if you would accept your friends saying any of the following:

● Canadian columnist Antonia Zerbisias of the Toronto Star said this of Michelle Malkin: “Forget the Marxists. I wish the marksmen would take MichelleMalkin.” This same liberal often complains of other’s hate speech.

● How about some of the letters Michelle Malkin gets, like this:

○ You’re a sick BITCH. Are you aware that you almost causes the death of an elementary school teacher the other day with your bullshit. You are a disgrace to Black people. I’m sorry .That’s right . You’re not black. Is your husband a white man that works for the Insurance Cartel?

○ from Greg Diaz: times up you ugly motherfucker make sure sure your husband signs that policy bitch

● How about some of the letters Rush gets from liberals:

○ Rush Limbaugh is Cunt of the Day for not dying. So many people die each day, why does hateful cunt Limbaugh get to live?

○ RUSH LIMBAUGH WHY WONT YOU DIE?

○ rush deserves to die AND I HOPE HE BURNS IN HELL!!

● How about some liberal hate for Palin on Twitter:

○ Death 2 Palin family them retarded hillbillies take teabaggers w/ you hateful bitch

○ We cant expect gov to intervene we must shoot Gen. Palin on site be 4 her troops strike again!

○ one word racism choose sides plain and simply that bitch Palin launch an attack, she need 2 b shot on site!

○ @Palin360 you need 2 b assassinated soon we ll settle 4 one of the family if not u!

○ maybe it takes a murder or 2 2 get the point across take aim at radical TP members

○ Palin will b met with gunfire her or her family

○ @SarahStormRpt u need 2 be shot on site startin that racist Tp shit, all you all do is promo violence dont cry when some kill u basterds

○ her map w crosshair need to b put on her family she that bitch can die or a TP supporter

○ I cant wait till someone serious hurt that bitch Palin or one of her children soon she out of control!

○ Palin came 2 lower 48 2 start a civil divide this could b the moment of truth 4 americans 2 put her down

○ i encourage ppl 2 meet the TP wit the same acts of violence Palin instructs them 2 do we need 2 harass them 2 their racist graves

○ Damn violent teabaggers!

So when the left complains about hate speech, let’s be clear, they are talking about themselves. That’s why they are so familiar with it. They use it, they mean it. These are the ideological blood-brothers of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Che, and so many more -- hate and murder are deeply ensconced within their ideology.


(FYI: Patti has a link today that the left is using this shooting in their fund raisers already: LINK. I guess we shouldn't be surprised: "Never waste a crisis." -- Rahm Emanuel)

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It's Not That Simple...

Tomorrow, I’ll discuss how the Tea Party is bringing much-needed common sense back into politics. But before I do that, I want to dispel this idea that governing should be simple if we only used common sense. What I'm talking about is best illustrated in a recent commercial which asked, “what would the world be like if firemen ran it.” As the firemen sit in the legislature, the chief asks, “who wants clean water?” Everyone raises their hands, and the chief says, “easiest job in the world.” Sadly, many people believe this utopian view is how government should be and they see any suggestion that governing is more complex than that as an attempt to keep "real" people out of government. This is utter nonsense.

To explain why, let’s start with the most basic principle ensconced in law. This is one we can all agree upon and which most people view as so entirely obvious and unambiguous that they think it could be put into law “as is,” and they complain that only a lawyer could see ambiguity in it: thou shalt not kill. Unambiguous, right?

Well, let me ask: what if I kill in self-defense? Suddenly, we've found an exception and the statement is no longer as inviolate as it seemed. But this is only one exception and everyone understands what self-defense is, right? Ok, is it self-defense if I kill someone who wasn’t actually trying to kill me? Does his intent matter or how I perceived it? What if I acted preemptively, before he made the threat? What if I started the fight or if I could flee with no danger? What if I killed an innocent bystander in the process? Does it matter if the danger passed before I finished the killing? Does it matter if I was defending someone else instead of myself? What if they didn’t want my help? What if I was drunk? What if someone else made me drunk or a medication made me lose touch with reality? What if the medication was illegal? Ok, forget self-defense, what if my killing took place on a battlefield where the government instructed me to kill? Can I kill in the government's name? Anyone at any time? What if I’m violating orders? What if I kill an enemy soldier who has surrendered? What if I kill a friendly soldier by mistake? What if I kill purely by accident? What if the accident resulted from my carelessness or recklessness or indifference? What if I built a dangerous product that I knew would kill someone? What if I only suspected it might? What if they misused it, but I knew they probably would? What if the person I killed was about to die anyway? What if they were being eaten by a shark, and they asked me to shoot them to stop the suffering? Does any of this apply to animals? Should it apply to a fetus? What if the woman was on her way to get an abortion when I killed the fetus? I could go on for pages.

Do you see the problem? It sounds easy to say “this is an obvious principle and there’s no reason it should be complicated” until you stop to realize that it is complicated. This is the clearest, most agreed upon principle across the planet, but it lends itself to hundreds of pages of discussion because there are thousands of scenarios to consider. And as you get further and further along, you’ll find that opinions begin to diverge until you find scenarios where there is no clear consensus. Now imagine how much more complex this becomes with less clear issues like “respect another’s property” or with dividing up the use of river water.

You can often see that people don’t grasp that these issues are inherently complex when they start talking about the Constitution. Too many people who adopt the simplistic view will spit out a single phrase they’ve picked from the Constitution and they will assume that settles the issue. For example, gun people often say, “shall not be infringed,” to argue that the Constitution clearly forbids any regulation. But that’s an irrationally simplistic view of the Constitution, as even the “no infringers” will simultaneously agree that police should have the power to disarm you in a confrontation and that wardens can keep prisoners from buying guns. Both of these are infringements. And if you accept that the phrase “shall not be infringed” cannot be taken literally, i.e. it does allow for infringements, then you’ve interjected ambiguity, the same ambiguity the simplistic view finds so offensive.

Moreover, despite popular opinion, the Constitution is not a complete guide for government nor is it a detailed list of dos and don’t. . . it is ambiguous. For example, while the Constitution provides a list of rights and powers, that list is crawling with vague terms, such as allowing the government to impose regulations for the “health, safety and welfare” of the people. Taken literally, that would seem to grant unlimited power. It took the Supreme Court to decide that the Bill of Rights limited state governments as well as the Feds -- the Constitution is silent on that point. So should we undo that? It's the rare literalist who says we should. Even more interestingly, the Constitution doesn’t actually tell us who decides what's constitutional, the Supreme Court grabbed that power in Marbury v. Madison, yet everyone seems to accept that now.

There is also often a utopian flavor in the simplistic line of thinking. You often hear: why don’t the politicians just do what the people want? But which people? And what if the majority want to enslave the minority? We’ve asked before, should the role of representatives be to do the will of the majority in their district or should they use their judgment? None of our readers was willing to say entirely one or the other, in other words you all accepted an ambiguity in the system.

The point to all of this is that the simplistic view that governing is all about just reading the Constitution and doing the common sense thing is flawed. Simplicity is not a sign of purity of thought or wisdom, it is a sign of ignorance of reality. (The same holds true in science as well, where answers usually only seem simple when you’re missing critical details.)

Now, that said, let me state that we need a return to common sense principles in government. Too many politicians live in a world of semantics and false logic where verbal games and procedure trump substance. They see a critical difference between a fee and a tax, even though both are the same. They see a reduction in a projected rate of growth as a cut. They think they can balance a budget by taking spending “off budget” or by adding in fake future cuts that will never happen. This is where common sense is badly needed.

What we need are people who understand the complexities of making laws, but who also grasp the common sense principles about how a government should be run. We need to avoid the snake oil sellers who tell us “it’s simple, I’m just gonna lift the hood and fix it,” but we also need to avoid the snakes who think they can dance on the head of a pin.

This isn't that hard, but it's just not simple.

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Wishing For War

Global warming is in disgrace. It’s been done in by falling temperatures, a public grown skeptical of the religious zeal with which “environmentalists” proselytize on the issue, and now proof that the high priests of climate change were manufacturing their evidence. So what is a global warmist to do? How about try a new sales pitch: did you know global warming will lead to WAR? In fact, over the next two years, you’ll begin hearing a lot about how “climate change causes war.”

In 2013, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will issue a report which actually includes a chapter addressing “threats to human security” from climate change. This includes the “existential threat” of war for resources and 200 million climate refuges.

To lay the groundwork for this propaganda, several books are being published with alarmist titles and totally false arguments. Obama himself beat this drum when he accepted his anticipatory Nobel Prize: “climate change will fuel more conflicts for decades.”

But there’s a problem with this: it’s never fueled a single conflict in the past and there is no evidence to think it will in the future. In fact, the evidence runs the other way.

When the alarmists preach their case, they rely on a study conducted by the University of California (a formerly great university turned clown college), which concluded that global warming led to war in Africa. This study, done by Marshall Burke, compared African wars from 1980 to 2002 against the effects of global warming. Burke claimed to have found that rising temperature are associated with crop failures and economic decline, which resulted in a sharp rise in war.

Said the study co-author “earth scientist” David Lobell:

“Given the strong historical relationship between temperature rise and conflict, this expected future rise in temperature is enough to cause big increases in the likelihood of conflict.”

Indeed, the study suggested that a one degree rise in temperature could translate into a 55% increase in the risk of civil war by 2030. Because of this, Burke wants us to shower Africa with money to stop this horrible certainty. . . never saw that coming.

Of course, predicting civil war in Africa is a bit like predicting that the sun will rise in the morning. And now we also know that all that warming data they relied upon (which showed Africa heating by 0.5 degrees C in 50 years) is flawed. But that’s not even the real problem with this study. The problem with this study is that they cherry picked their time period.

Consider this: the colonial wars in Africa dragged on from the 1950s until the 1960s, when the Marxist sponsored civil wars began. By the 1980s, these had all died down and Africa settled into a relatively calm period. Indeed, you couldn’t have picked a calmer period to begin your study than 1980. In other words, the authors picked an anomaly period as their baseline for their study, i.e. they picked the calmest moment in recent African history to start their study, ensuring that it could only get more violent during their study period. And indeed, the Africans did not disappoint: they began fighting in the Congo, in the Sudan, in Rawanda, in Liberia and a dozen other places.

What’s worse, the authors stopped their study in 2002, right before a noted period of peace and calm in Africa, which ran from 2002-2008. So basically, the authors picked the calmest moment in recent African history to start their study, and then stopped their study to avoid a second calm period. Nice huh?

But there’s more. If natural disasters lead to war, as these environmentalists claim, then the world would be awash in wars. But that hasn’t happened. It hasn’t happened after earthquakes, it didn’t happen after the tsunami, and it doesn’t happen after hurricanes or droughts. In fact, a study of the hurricane activity in Haiti and the Dominican Republic showed no increase in violence when storms got worse. This lack of war is damning.

Even in Africa, the evidence runs counter to their claim. They claim that Darfur shows that violence has increased during the same time that temperatures rose. BUT they ignore the fact that Darfur is a religious genocide brought on by an aggressive Islamic religion that is supported by Islamic terrorist organizations that did not exist during the first half of the study period.

Moreover, a more reliable study showed that violence actually fell in the Horn of Africa during times of drought and increased during times of plenty. . . the exact opposite of what they claim should have happened.

So what we have here is a total lack of evidence of any correlation between violence and disasters, droughts or rising temperatures, despite thousand of opportunities for such evidence to exist. In fact, not only is there no evidence to support their claim, the evidence we do have points in the other direction. . . that droughts reduce violence. But as usual, this isn’t about evidence or truth. This is about a political agenda. So no matter what the truth is, expect to start hearing stories on how our failure to cure climate change will lead to wars followed by hopeful reports of possible conflicts.

And if you ask me, it's kind of sick to be praying for war.

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Ain't No Liberals Here. . .

Do you know how you can tell it’s election time? Because the Democrats are scrambling to pretend they’re conservatives. They always do this before elections, it's how they assure the yokels back in the hinterlands that they are one of them, and not some loony Washington Democrat. That means Democrats who’ve been happily supporting everything Pelosi/Obama have done, will now start taking very vocal positions in direct opposition to their party. Of course, these are fake positions, i.e. symbolic at best, but they're hoping no one notices.

In the past couple weeks and days, we’ve seen the following:

• A group of Democrats (WHAP) have “attacked” their leadership for not proposing real spending cuts. WHAP offered symbolic cuts, which they and their friends in the media described as courageous. They were of course nothing of the sort, $40 in every $10,000 of spending.

• Sen. James Webb from Virginia this week argued that it was time for the government to drop affirmative action, which he (correctly) claims helps people who don’t need it and never faced any historic discrimination, and hurts poor whites. Of course, his party will never act on this, so he can safely pound this drum without anything happening.

• Sen. Ben Nelson took the courageous step of declaring that he would vote NO on Kagan. Of course, his vote won’t matter as she is assured to win nomination. . . but just to be safe, he’s made it clear he wouldn’t join a filibuster.

• At least eight Democrats have called for Charlie “RICO” Rangel to resign. They are “outraged” at his conduct. Actually, they are concerned the American people will see his corruption as endemic. So by sacrificing the 80 year old multi-millionaire Congressmen from a safe district who is always rumored to be retiring anyway, they can claim to oppose corruption, even as they remain silent about all the other corrupt Democrats. And if Rangel does decide to retire, every Democrat will rush to the podium to take a meaningless punch at this safe target for the benefit of the viewers at home.

• A week or so ago, Obama’s HHS mysteriously issued a ruling that basically prevents abortion from being included in policies issued under the high risk pools being set up for ObamaCare. The pro-abortion people claimed they were caught off guard. Is this a pro-life victory? No. This is a sales pitch. This lets about 40 Democrats, e.g. the Stupak group, go home and tell their districts that their cave-in on ObamaCare actually did result in keeping federal funds from being used to fund abortions. Then, after the election, HHS will suddenly revise the rule to allow abortions.

• And as Bev pointed out, Steny Hoyer is actually trying to claim the Republicans want to raise your taxes by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. . . the same tax cuts they've been promising to let expire.

You can expect a lot more of this until November because this is how the Democrats survive. They vote far left on vote after vote in the Congress and happily support Lunacrats like Pelosi in the leadership, but then they cast a few symbolic votes in the other direction, make a few angry conservative speeches, point a dirty finger or two at their corrupt leaders, and generally pretend that they aren’t really what their record says they are.

Now this is not to say that they will ignore their leftist base, but they leave that up to others at this point. Indeed, while these Democrats are putting on their “I’m more conservative that Rush Limbaugh” masks, national Democrats like Howard Dean and Democratic organizations like the NAACP are out there working hard to excite the base. For example, both Dean and the NAACP have been busy slinging racism charges: the Tea Party is racist, the Republicans are racist, this ham sandwich is racist, wahhhhhhh. They’ve also been promising to end global warming, end capitalism, and turn the whole world gay.

Sadly, this has been working. Too many people in too many places like West Virginia and Ohio only hear about the few symbolic conservative instances and they don’t realize that their “conservative” representative has a liberal voting record eerily similar to Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi.

That’s why it’s important to call the Democrats out on this. When Nelson says he’s voting against Kagan, ask him why he waited to announce his vote until after it became clear she had enough votes to get nominated and why he won’t filibuster her if she’s so unqualified? When WHAP talk about spending cuts, ask them why they couldn’t find more than $40 dollars out of every $10,000? When your representative tells you they think Charlie Rangel should resign, ask them why they don’t feel the same about Max Baucus, Maxine Waters, Obama/Clinton/Sestak’s Jobsgate, and a dozen others. When Steny Hoyer speaks. . . ask him if he's really that stupid.

Their conservatism is for show only.

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