I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. As I write, the number one video cassette rental in America is the movie Dumb and Dumber. Beavis and Butthead remains popular (and influential) with young TV viewers. The plain lesson is that study and learning - not just of science, but of anything - are avoidable, even undesirable. We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements - transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting - profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
If we really want to stop terrorism, we have to get Muslim men laid.
March 20, 2004 | New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer
Five British Muslims who were recently sent home from our prison at Guantanamo charge that their American captors brought in prostitutes to taunt them, because most had never even seen a naked woman before. It made me wonder how many members of al-Qaida have ever even dated a girl. We should hire women to infiltrate al-Qaida cells, and fuck them.
Things would change quickly. Because young Muslim men don't really hate America, they're jealous of America. We have rap videos, the Hilton sisters and magazines with titles like "Barely Legal." You know what's barely legal in Afghanistan? Everything.
Young men need sex, and if they don't get it for month after month after month, they wind up cursing the day they ever decided to go to Cornell.
Have you ever wondered why the word from the Arab street is so angry? It's because it's a bunch of guys standing in the street! Which is what guys do when they don't have girlfriends, or aren't allowed to even talk to a girl -- of course they want to commit suicide. Unlike this country, where it's the married guys who wanna kill themselves.
But here, we always have hope. You can at least talk to a girl, and one might be crazy enough to go for you. Or you could get rich, and buy one, like folks do where I live in Beverly Hills.
The connection between no sex and anger is real: It's why prizefighters stay celibate when they're in training, so that on fight night they're pissed off and ready to kill. It's why football players don't have sex after Wednesday. And, conversely, it's why Bill Clinton never started a war.
So to paraphrase the sign in his old war room: It's the nooky, stupid. We need the Coalition of the Willing to be really willing. We need to mobilize two divisions of skanks, a regiment of ho's, and a brigade of girls who just can't say no. All under the command of Col. Ann Coulter, who'll be dressed in her "Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S." uniform.
Forget the Peace Corps, we need a piece-of-ass-corps. Girls, there's a cure to terrorism, and you're sitting on it
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Host Guy Raz Talks To '2016: Obama's America' Filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza
In mid-July, an obscure film called 2016: Obama's America opened in just one theater in Houston. The film proposes that President Obama is weakening the country — deliberately.
Conservative writer Dinesh D'Souza, its co-director and star, traveled to Hawaii, Indonesia and Kenya to test that theory, and this week, his film could be seen at 1,500 theaters across America.
Many critics have blasted the conspiratorial tone of the film, which D'Souza calls a documentary.
Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz spoke with D'Souza and asked what he means when he argues that the president is trying to weaken America. "This is a matter of having an ideological hypothesis that comes right out of Obama's book [Dreams of My Father]. And by laying it forward, people who watch the film can make up their own mind," D'Souza says.
Interview Highlights On why he thinks President Obama is deliberately trying to weaken the U.S. economy
"Obama is an anti-colonialist. He has a dream, and it's the dream from his father. Anti-colonialism generally is based on the premise that the Western countries, and now the United States, have become rich by invading and occupying and looting the poor countries, so that the wealth of the world is unfairly distributed. And what Obama wants to do is correct that. How do you correct it? You correct it ultimately by making sure that the previous colonized countries have better access to growth and power, and if there's a cost for that you put the cost on the colonizers, in this case the United States."
On why he believes President Obama's family background influences his policies
"I would not normally hold Obama accountable for the views of either his father or his mother had he not written a book detailing how influential his father and also to some degree his mother have been on him. So I'm simply following Obama's story."
On former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker's assertion that the film was misrepresented when he agreed to be interviewed for it
"The interview with David Walker was on the specific topic of debt and I don't attribute to David Walker the argument of the film or even my view that Obama uses debt as a form of global re-distribution. So, we don't misrepresent him in any way, he doesn't claim we do."
Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. Transcript
GUY RAZ, HOST:
And if you're just joining us, this is WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.
In mid-July, an obscure film called "2016: Obama's America" opened in just one theater in Houston.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "2016: OBAMA'S AMERICA")
DINESH D'SOUZA: Obama has a dream, a dream from his father, that the sins of colonialism be set right and America be downsized.
RAZ: The film proposes that President Obama is weakening the country deliberately. Its co-director and star is conservative writer Dinesh D'Souza. He traveled to Hawaii, Indonesia and Kenya where he tests his theory. And this week, D'Souza's film could be seen in one of 1,500 theaters across America. Now, many critics have blasted the conspiratorial tone of the film, which D'Souza calls a documentary.
I spoke to him this week. Here's an excerpt of our conversation. And I first asked him to explain what he means when he argues that the president is trying to weaken America.
D'SOUZA: He wants America to have less wealth and power so that other people in other countries can have more wealth and power.
RAZ: All right. Let's assume that maybe some of your arguments are, in fact, true. Why would he be doing this?
D'SOUZA: Obama is an anti-colonialist. He has a dream, and it's the dream from his father. Anti-colonialism generally is based on the premise that the Western countries, and now the United States, have become rich by invading and occupying and looting the poor countries, so that the wealth of the world is unfairly distributed. And what Obama wants to do is correct that.
How do you correct it? You correct it ultimately by making sure that the previously colonized countries have better access to growth and power. And if there's a cost for that, you put the cost on the colonizers, in this case the United States.
RAZ: Let's go through some of the arguments you raise in the film because, of course, I have seen the film. And you seem to hold his background, his African father and his mother who was from Kansas originally, you seem to hold these things against him. President Obama's never hidden his past, where he comes from, his background. I wonder if that's fair. I mean, he doesn't have any control over who his father was or who his mother was.
D'SOUZA: Oh, right. I would not normally hold Obama accountable for the views of either his father or his mother had he not written a book detailing how influential his father and also to some degree his mother have been on him. So I'm simply only following Obama's story. Look, it's odd for Obama defenders to say, he's a multicultural guy, he's different, he's not like any president we've had before, and then say, well, but it's illegitimate to ask how multicultural he is, how different he is, in what way he is different from traditional Democrats like Clinton or Kerry or Carter or Dukakis.
I think Obama is different from traditional Democrats in that traditional Democrats want to redistribute income in America while Obama wants to realign America in the world.
RAZ: At several times in the film, we hear President Obama reading from his book, "Dreams from my Father," including a passage where he describes how he was attracted to left-wing students, to structural feminists and others, foreign students as a young college student. But you exclude the part of the book that explains how he eventually rejected those ideas. The whole point of the book is about his transformation. Why did you omit that?
D'SOUZA: I don't agree that Obama rejected the beliefs of his college years. It would be different if Obama had said as an adult, well, you know what, I had some crazy beliefs when I was a kid. I hung out with some unsavory characters, but I now reject all that. I've learned better. I've changed my mind. But Obama has never repudiated his book. He's never taken back the points that he made there.
RAZ: David Walker, the former head of the GAO, is interviewed in this film about the debt. I called him, and I asked him what he felt about it. He says that when he was asked to be interviewed, the film was misrepresented to him. Did everybody you interview know what this film was going to be about?
D'SOUZA: I think so. Now, look, the interview with David Walker was on a - on the specific topic of debt. And I don't attribute to David Walker the argument of the film, or even my view, that Obama uses debt as a form of global redistribution. So we don't misrepresent him in any way. He doesn't claim we do. And also, a film being a journey, there are people in the film who like Obama. You know, Alice Dewey, the anthropologist in the film, ended our interview by saying, hey, I hope Obama does get re-elected.
RAZ: Was she aware of what you were - the direction in which you were going? This is a professor at the University of Hawaii.
D'SOUZA: Right. We said we were making a film that was going to look closely at Obama's life and look at Obama's world and say what the world would look like if Obama were to be re-elected. And on that basis, she was quite happy to be interviewed.
RAZ: Dinesh D'Souza, if you wanted to criticize or attack President Obama, why bend the truth? Why not just offer a policy critique rather than conjecture, and in many cases in this film, conspiracy?
D'SOUZA: This is not a matter of conjecture. This is a matter of having an ideological hypothesis that comes right out of Obama's book. And by laying it forward, people who watch the film can make up their own mind.
RAZ: That's Dinesh D'Souza. His new film is called "2016: Obama's America." Dinesh D'Souza, thank you.
D'SOUZA: You're welcome.
RAZ: And you can hear our full unedited conversation at npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
TIMES CHANGES
The New York Times editorial of October 2, 1999, defends the display of Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ and Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary: A museum is obliged to challenge the public as well as to placate it, or else the museum becomes a chamber of attractive ghosts, an institution completely disconnected from art in our time. The New York Times editorial of September 12, 2012, condemns the display of The Innocence of Muslims: Whoever made the film did true damage to the interests of the United States and its core principle of respecting all faiths. Whatever happened to “challenging the public”? Or is that obligation rendered non-obligatory when a certain public responds to challenges by killing people?
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Dr. Barbara Bellar – Obamacare Summed Up in One Sentence
So let me get this straight. (This is a long sentence.)
We’re going to be gifted with a healthcare plan we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don’t, which puportedly covers at least 10 million more people, without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a congress that didn’t read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a president who smokes, with funding (laughing & applause) same sentence – with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted social security and medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and (laughing & applause) and financed by a country that’s broke. (laughing & applause)
So, what the blank (laughing & applause) could possibly go wrong?
Sunday, September 9, 2012
A Himnusz: A MI HIMNUSZUNK MÁS MINT A TÖBBI . . . . . . . .
1823. január 22.én írta le Kölcsey Ferenc Himnuszunk szövegét szatmárcsekei magányában. Erkel Ferenc jó húsz esztendővel később zenésítette meg.
Gyönyörű költői mű e 64 sor.
A tudós irodalomtörténészek azonban nem túl gyakran emlegetik, hogy valójában miért is más ez, mint sok európai ország himnusza.
Mindjárt válaszolok rá - három példával is:
A németek például a Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, Über alles in der Welt kezdetű szöveget ma már nem éneklik. A második világháború után - mondjuk így - a győztes Európa tiltakozott e megfogalmazás ellen, mert e szöveg ugyebár annyit jelent, hogy Németország mindenek feletti, mindenek felett áll - az egész világon. Megmaradt Haydn gyönyörű zenéje és ma, az eredeti himnusz-vers harmadik szakaszát éneklik a németek. - Bármily hihetetlen is, de csak 1991 óta.
A Szovjetunió himnusza a soha nem létező szabadságot emberiség legnagyobb pusztítóit, Lenint és Sztálin éltette évtizedeken át. A mostani Oroszországnak - mondjuk így a jogutódnak - csupán 10 esztendős a himnusza.
A franciáké, az úgynevezett La Marseillaise - a vérben álló harcról szól és fegyverbe hív.
E rövidke európai példákat csak azért hoztam ide, hogy lássuk a legfontosabbat. Azt ugyanis, hogy a mi Himnuszunk nem éltet királyt, uralkodót, nem himnusza még a honszerző Árpádnak sem, az ország építő IV. Bélának úgyszintén nem, de még a diadalt diadalra halmozó Mátyást sem dicsőíti.
A mi Himnuszunk az évszázadokon át szorongatott, kétségbeesett nép IMÁDSÁGA a mi megtartó Istenünkhöz.
Az irodalom tudós művelői tehát gyakran felejtik el - így emlegetni e csodálatos 64 sort. Tehát, hogy ez egy KÖZBENJÁRÓ IMÁDSÁG: Isten áldd meg a magyart!
Amíg nem volt Kölcsey Himnusza, addig is volt a magyarságnak összetartó, kollektív imádsága, a nép ajkán őrzött énekekkel. Nem minden időszakban, nem mindig azonos belső erővel, hiszen pl. az elmúlt század diktatúrái / 1919-re gondolok és az 55 évig tartó magyar bolsevizmusra / tűzzel vassal irtottak mindent, ami nem a parancsszó ideológiája szerint született. De mondom: voltak a nép ajkán őrzött énekek, pl. a Boldog-asszony anyánk, a Székely Himnusz / ne hagyd elveszni Erdélyt Istenünk /, a reformátusok 90-ik zsoltára: "Te benned bíztuk eleitől fogva", vagy az evangélikusok "Erős vár a mi Istenünk" kezdetű Luther éneke.
Tehát mindig az Isten segítségét, áldását kértük harcaink elcsüggedésünk, elnyomatásaink nehéz éveiben, vagy balsors tépte évtizedeink alatt.
Ilyen Himnuszt tehát egyetlen európai nép sem mondhat magáénak, mint amilyet nekünk hagyott örökül a 33 éves Kölcsey, a szatmárcsekei szoba csendjében. A Nemzeti Múzeumban őrzött kéziratban csak egy-egy parányi javítás látható, tehát szinte ömlött a tolla alól e felséges 64 sor.
Sajnos mindmáig nem védi az Alkotmány nemzeti imádságunkat, pedig rátört a sorokra maga Rákosi is az 5o-es évek elején mondván: az mégsem lehet, hogy a dolgozó nép Himnusza, vagy bármely ünnepség az Isten nevével kezdődjön. Alattomos terve céljából magához kérette Kodály Zoltánt azzal a felszólítással, hogy írjon másikat, a szocializmushoz illőt.
Kodály rövid választ adott az élet és halál diktátorának. Ezt mondta: ahhoz sem hozzátenni sem abból elvenni nem lehet. Kodály a fejével játszott ebben a percben, de akkor Ő már Kodály Zoltán volt, a magyar zenekultúra és művelődés világszerte megkérdőjelezhetetlen tekintélye.
Rákosi nem nyugodott. Illyés Gyulát is magához intette, aki akkor a költészet, a haladó magyar gondolkodás legnagyobb vezéreként volt számon tartva itthon is, külhonban is, különösen Franciaországban. Írjon egy új Himnusz szöveget, mondta Rákosi, majd keresünk hozzá zeneszerzőt. A felszólításra Illyés ennyit válaszolt csupán: meg van az már írva.
Miért fontos ma, hogy a hamar árvaságra jutó, betegségekkel küzdő, Kölcsey mit hagyott ránk e nemzeti imában?
Azért fontos, mert a Himnusz megírásának napját január 22.-ét 1989 óta a Magyar Kultúra Napjának mondjuk ugyan - ám a magyar művészetek,a kultúra a szemünk előtt silányul el vagy hever romokban.
Ez az állapot kiállásra, kitartásra, s ha kell kiáltásra kell, hogy kényszerítsen minden jóérzésű, gondolkodó embert, a magyar értelmiséget pedig kötelezően.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Monday, September 3, 2012
Jonathan Murray
Opinion: Opinion: A Reverse Wisconsin (1 hour ago)
Comment: Typical dishonest processes by unions. It is an outrageous abuse of responsibility and governance to abuse a state constitution to enshrine favored status for a portion of a state's citizens.
I objected to it when the Ohio Constitution was twisted to allow and enshrine a gambling monopoly, and I object to what unions are trying to do in Michigan. If they win, the cost of government will be permanently out of the control of citizens, and the last business in Michigan should turn out the lights on the way to Texas. 2 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: Alan Colmes: How Democrats Made America Exceptional (1 hour ago)
Comment: It has to be a slow news day when The Wall Street Journals puts aside space for a propagandist like Alan Colmes. Like most leftists, he begins with the story he wants to tell, and cherry-picks information to support it.
This is consistent with the way that artists and writers see the world--not the way that empiricists like scientists and engineers see it. The world view of the former is "how it should be" and they advance their vision for that, while taking the moral high ground to assure us that their motives are pure. Then they systematically go about abridging private property rights, suppressing free speech and, in the most extreme circumstances (Cambodia, the USSR) murdering fellow citizens whom they can't coerce to see things their way.
Empiricists, on the other hand, seek first to understand how the world works, independent of their desires for it. They then devise policies and systems to channel outcomes, to the extent possible, in a desirable direction. Paul Ryan is an empiricist.
Unfortunately, a large portion of our fellow citizens are susceptible to the manipulation of propagandists, and actually believe things like Keynesian stimulus works, government drives the economy, taxes are good, and each person is "owed" a middle class life.
November is the tipping point. Vote carefully. 25 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: A Bleak Anniversary for the Arab Spring (1 day ago) Comment: Why are you writing about Christianity or Judaism? They have no relevance to the discussion I started here, unless you feel obliged, as many Westerners do, to apologize for superior religions when criticizing a clearly inferior one.
Jesus was a man of peace; Mohammed was a man of war. Jesus converted people to his beliefs through example, through words, and through deeds. Mohammed conquered, subjugated, and forcibly converted by the sword.
Etc., etc. Give up the modern narrative, and think for yourself. 19 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: The Ryan Difference (1 day ago)
Comment: This is exactly what Medicare needs. For one, Krugman is wrong: the government does not pay major medical bills, your fellow citizens do. Medicare just mediates the transaction, extracting a 30% rakeoff for the bureaucracy along the way.
It has been clearly, repeatedly, and definitively proven that Medicare not only can't manage the growth in healthcare spending, it is fueling it. Ryan's plan would return market forces to the purchase of healthcare by empowering individuals to choose for themselves what to buy and at what price.
Krugman hates and distrusts markets, though, like all leftists, and is unwilling to look at the evidence to the contrary. if you take your opinions from him, you probably agree with him. Just be honest about it. 4 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: A Bleak Anniversary for the Arab Spring (2 days ago) Comment: The problem with governance in the Middle East is Islam. It is a flawed political philosophy posing as a religion. The faith elements are used to subjugate people who have opinions that do not hew to the narrow, Medieval interpretations of fundamentalists.
Fundamentalist Islam is no different than the peasant boys who sent China's urban elites to toil in the fields during the Cultural Revolution, or the African gangster warlords who cut off people's hands and impress boys into their armies.
The root problems are intolerance and fascism. These tendencies always lurked at the center off Islam, but were held in check by strong men who traded a semblance of stability for freedom and economic growth.
The natural tendencies of Islam have now been unleashed. It will likely take a century of internecine strife among Muslims to determine if Islam can be saved, or whether it will become a narrow cult of death repressed by the majority of Muslims who do not adhere to fundamentalism. 27 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: The Ryan Difference (2 days ago)
Comment: Don't you know what the man did for a living? He went into companies that spent too much, brought in too little revenue, and needed structural overhauls, and he took the necessary steps to make them profitable again.
If that isn't the single best skill set for what our federal government needs, I can't think of a better.
Certainly community organizing is a poor precursor to the job. It only leads to allying the office of the President with tort lawyers to extract settlements from businesses...which is exactly what Obama has done.
So Romney won't tell you the details of his plan: big deal. You can be sure that they're going to be an improvement.
By the way, Tom, didn't you notice that "Romney won't tell us the details" is an Obama campaign talking point? They want the specifics so that they can distort and lie about them to manipulate the media and the citizenry to vote again for the Marxist occupying the White House.
Romney's too smart to play that game. 6 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: The Janesville President (2 days ago)
Comment: Perhaps one of Dante's circles? Recommend Opinion: Opinion: The Facebook Deficit (2 days ago)
Comment: Thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately for the citizens of California, particularly the dwindling number of productive ones. They're going to have to pay for this mess. 1 Recommendation
Opinion: Opinion: The Ryan Difference (2 days ago)
Comment: Those Marxist biology teachers tried to enroll my daughter in a moral crusade against human progress, masked in the language of the "green" movement. They dissect owl pellets, these days, not frogs. 6 Recommendations Opinion: Opinion: The Facebook Deficit (2 days ago)
Comment: Anything that hastens California to its day of reckoning is good news. The state budget is unsustainable. The fictions within which California legislators live are unsupportable.
The best thing that could happen to California, its citizens, and the United States would be a rapid descent in fiscal unsustainability, leading to the need to file for bankruptcy. Then a judge could throw out the legislature that has brought the state to its current insolvency, and install a receiver to right the state's fiscal ship.
Too bad that Mitt Romney will be busy for the next eight years fixing the federal fisc. He would make an excellent receiver for California. 25 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: John Cochrane: The Federal Reserve: From Central Bank to Central Planner (2 days ago)
Comment: The illusion of independence is gone. The Fed under Ben Bernanke is a political organization, striving with untested experiments to support the fiction that Keynesian economics works, and that government drives the economy.
Guess what, leftists. Federal Reserve expansion and intervention hasn't worked. It won't work. It can't work. The problem is in the legislature and executive branch. Until the federal government creates and manages to a budget, the economy cannot recover.
The encroachment of the Fed on policy is in part due to a vacuum created by the cowardly unwillingness of politicians--particularly the Democrat Party--to stand for something and to articulate what they stand for to the American people. No budget for three years? Jail time for Harry Reid, say I. That will send a message, from the people to the politicians, that won't be forgotten.
The challenge we have before us--Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have before them--is to unravel the monstrosity that the Fed has become, and to prevent the precedent that the Fed has established, under Obama and his lapdog Bernanke, from justifying future interventionist Fed policy.
The best way to do this is to cut the Fed down to size, first by repealing the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act--what a fiction!--and then by whacking headcount by half at the Fed. 24 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: George Gilder: The Real Reagan Lesson for Romney-Ryan (3 days ago)
Comment: Cutting tax rates under Reagan did increase revenues--as it did under Hoover, Kennedy, and Bush. The reason the budget wasn't balanced under Reagan was because Congressional Democrats reneged on their part of the deal: cutting spending, or at least the rate of growth in spending.
That is a fact pattern that you can check, if you have the inclination to do so.
Alternatively, if you're just reading off an Obama Campaign Fact Sheet, go away. Nobody here is buying it.
Do not mistake the fact that birds fly and you can't see air, for the presence of some mysterious force that attaches birds to the sky. That's the equivalent of your "cause and effect" analysis if the economy. 7 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: The Ryan Difference (3 days ago)
Comment: Do you have kids in public schools? I have two, and each of them has brought home leftist propaganda, masked as "history," "social studies," and even "science."
From this nonsense, for which I am paying, I have to un-educate them.
Presumably, you're an adult (though you haven't yet learned manners). Are you too far gone to educate yourself? 14 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: The Ryan Difference (3 days ago) Comment: Marxists believe that all fortunes are based on crimes by the "haves" against the "have-nots." If you understand that, you can understand nearly everything that comes out of Obama's mouth, and most of his administration's policies.
Obama may mask his true beliefs and intentions through lying propaganda; he may be hindered in his true intentions by our robust republican checks and balances; he may be forced by circumstances and political realities to do non-Marxist things--but make not mistake about it. He is a committed Marxist.
If you don't understand this, do some research. Read, for instance, Paul Kengor at American Thinker who has carefully documented Marxists relationships with Marxist mentors, Marxist organizations, and Marxist beliefs.
If you are unwilling to do this research, or to see Obama for what he is, you are just one of the dupes is he is counting on to have his way with us.
Game, set, and match. 15 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: The Janesville President (4 days ago)
Comment: The left is determined to be inflamed over something. If there isn't anything real over which they can be outraged, they'll invent some narrative for the purpose.
The reason Democrats are attacking Ryan is because they are scared of him. He stands up to their lies in a calm, educated, reasoned way, and this prevents them from the thing they desire most: preaching to us from the higher moral ground they have claimed.
Paul Ryan is for real. Democrats, watch out. You will probably be seeing him for 16 years. 73 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: George Gilder: The Real Reagan Lesson for Romney-Ryan (4 days ago)
Comment: America needs an entrepreneurial economy. This is the best way for each of us to enrich ourselves, as well as for the U.S. to outcompete other countries.
Entrepreneurial success also will provide government with the greatest revenues. Rapidly growing companies create jobs and the sales taxes, income, and other taxes that workers pay. When entrepreneurial companies are sold of go public to repay their initial investors, they produce capital gains that further enrich government.
The path we are on under Obama is to fight harder over a shrinking pie. That doesn't work, unless your true objective is to initiate class warfare. 45 Recommendations Story: Time to Get Serious on Medicare (4 days ago)
Comment: @Andrew Semeiks, some people may not be competent to make their own decisions. Here is how I would address that.
First, I would assume that most people are competent to make their own healthcare decisions. The current system and the experts in Washington assume the opposite, that we are not competent and that, therefore, experts have to decide for us. I consider this to be arrogant on their part.
Second, I would design a system that assumes that most people are competent to make their own healthcare decisions. The current system assumes the opposite, that bureaucrats in Washington should determine the number of physicians being trained in medical schools, and the price that should be paid for every one of thousands of procedures. Paul Ryan's plan is the correct design for the system, particularly if it results in each citizen having a Health Savings Account for routine care coupled with an insurance policy for extraordinary needs.
Third, I would observe how people respond to a system designed to facilitate learning and decision-making by individual consumers. I believe that the experts are wrong, and that most of us will be able to make better healthcare decisions for ourselves--in consultation with our doctors and families--than any group of experts in Washington. While we each might make errors individually, the cumulative decisions of individuals, agglomerated into markets, will ALWAYS result in better decisions and better resource allocation than any number of experts in Washington can achieve.
Fourth, I would recognize that there are people who, in any system, can't cope. That is as true of today's Medicare as it will be of the Ryan plan. I would then design mechanisms to help them--not by distorting the entire system or destroying the market we have so carefully resurrected, but by having special support for those people who need it.
A system should not be designed around the exceptions, but around the norm. The norm is that most people can make these decisions for themselves, and should be allowed to. 2 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: Reagan and Obama: A Tale of Two Recoveries (4 days ago)
Comment: You're buying--or selling--Democrat Party spin. Reagan's debt was substantially less as a percentage of the American economy than Obama's.
Reagan's debt was put to use creating economic growth by rebuilding our defense; meaning, it was spent on companies making products and employing workers. The jobs were mostly in the private sector.
Obama's spending is on wealth transfer for consumption, because he is a demand-side Keynesian who believes that consumer spending drives an economy (with no concern from where that spending comes from--creating and earning or being given by the government). He has fueled only the growth of government, and a decline in employment overall in the U.S. economy.
During the Reagan years, people worked, earned, and prospered. During the Obama years, half of all Americans are receiving handouts of one kind or another from the federal government that they haven't paid for.
Reagan and Obama lived in the U.S. between 1950 and 2010. Besides that, they have nothing in common. 22 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: Romney's Image Problem (4 days ago)
Comment: The GM bailout was a transfer of ownership from shareholders who invested money in the company to unions--outside of the rule of law and normal bankruptcy process. If that isn't a king's dictate, I don't know what is. The bailout was only successful if you are a member of the UAW; so far, it has cost taxpayers and shareholders a bundle. So, you see, Obama is a Marxist after all: he hates capital, capitalists, and markets, and favors unions and government-engineered transfer of wealth.
Romney didn't create the tax code. He just did what each of us does, maximize it to his own benefit. Why would he--or you or me--do anything else? You don't like the tax code, advocate for fixing it. Don't blame an honest, law-abiding citizen for optimizing his outcomes. 40 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: Romney's Image Problem (4 days ago)
Comment: You take your political commentary from Rolling Stone? And you treat it as objective fact? Are you lost? 30 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: The Ryan Difference (5 days ago)
Comment: Well, maybe Romney's FCC can look into the licenses of those "objective" media outlets... 42 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: Reagan and Obama: A Tale of Two Recoveries (5 days ago) Comment: Nice analysis of the facts. Unfortunately, the left cares not a whit about facts. They have their own narrative, which they advance as the truth and, unfortunately, far too many people buy. It goes something like this:
- Supply-side economics is "trickle-down" economics; - Lowering marginal tax rates, even if it results in economic growth and higher government tax collections, is "tax cuts for the rich;" - Business is evil and must be controlled (ironically, by people whose skill is using the legacy media to lie to and manipulate us); - Economic growth and job creation are good, but wealth creation is evil; - (Somewhat paradoxically) Reagan was really a Keynesian, deficit-spending, tax-increasing fellow traveler.
This narrative can be assembled from listening to a half-dozen Obama speeches, reading a couple of columns by Paul Krugman, or by listening to the cynical Marxist puppeteer David Axelrod and his disciple Robert Gibbs spin the GOP convention. 27 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: Romney's Image Problem (5 days ago)
Comment: The President is not our leader; he is our employee. I think Mitt Romney understands this, but Barack Obama does not.
The Marxist in the White House thinks that he is our king and that his appointees are his court. He is, at heart, a European politician who wants to control business and the economy, and award perks to the ruling elite whom he represents and to those businesses who supplicate before him and his court.
Mitt Romney will be a competent President. He may not be an inspirational speaker, but look where electing a preacher has gotten us--moralizing, finger-wagging lectures and a dismal economy. 59 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: What If Obama Had Turned to the Middle? (5 days ago)
Comment: Obama's idea of moving to the middle is to move the middle by getting everybody to his right to accept a leftward drift. He's less interested in adjusting his positions than in forcing his opponents to accept his.
This is what has happened in Europe, where in most countries the most conservative candidate with a chance to win would be regarded as middle-of-the-road here.
"Elections have consequences," the Marxist-in-Chief famously pontificated when justifying his use of force. Well, so does coercion, and one of the consequences of government coercion is rebellion. That's what the voters did in 2010, and are going to do in November.
Time to downsize Washington, starting at 25%. 31 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: A Downgrade for Illinois (5 days ago)
Comment: Maybe once Obama is done ruining the national economy, Illinois will welcome him back as governor to repeat the failed Keynesian experiment there...oh, I forgot, Illinois can't browbeat Gentle Ben Bernanke into printing currency to paper over government overspending. I guess it's out of Obama's control.
What is happening in Illinois, California, and New York is a shame. They're all great states, with great cities, that are voluntarily bankrupting themselves by letting the political class run the electorate--instead of the way it should be.
These states are failing, and based on the path they insist on sticking to, they will fail. Only then, perhaps, will the public unions and their allies in politics be swept away and reform come to these states.
I feel like I'm watching, in slow motion, the Titanic approach the ice berg, but helpless to do anything about it. I love California, Chicago, and parts of New York. But I wouldn't live in any of those places, or take my family there. 66 Recommendations
Opinion: Opinion: The Ryan Difference (5 days ago)
Comment: Paul Ryan treats citizens like adults to be reasoned with, instead of dupes to be manipulated. That approach, more than anything else, distinguishes him from the lying, manipulating, divisive Marxist in the White House, and his entire support base.
Unfortunately, after 40 years of the "drip-drip" of leftist propaganda in schools, in the legacy media, and in Washington, all too many of our citizens are susceptible to being manipulated, and have delegated their powers of reasoning to people they falsely call their "leaders," but who are in fact our "employees."
It's time to call out the left for advancing false narratives; the media for unthinkingly repeating them; and the Democrat Party for allowing itself to be taken over by Marxists, and for abjuring the values on which these United States are based in favor of some wifty leftist social theory about how to get government to take care of everything for us.
We are a people who want to do for ourselves what Obama wants government to do for us. We need to push Washington out of the way. 272 Recommendations
Story: Time to Get Serious on Medicare (5 days ago)
Comment: Precisely right. The healthcare market isn't the problem, because their isn't really a market. Government and its rules and fakokta price schema has so distorted the market that common sense no longer prevails. 5 Recommendations Story: Time to Get Serious on Medicare (5 days ago)
Comment: Better yet, do completely away with the Medicare price schedule, and let market forces set prices instead of bureaucrats. If patients buy their own plans, as under the Ryan proposal, and have to shop for their own services, prices and results will have to be provided, and consumers can then decide if they would rather pay 2.5 times as much for proton therapy as IMRT.
The collective wisdom of consumers, acting in their own self-interest, agglomerated into markets, is always better at allocating resources than the schemes of self-anointed experts.
Your answer illustrates one of the challenges in dealing with entitlements like Medicare: the program and its mechanisms are so deeply embedded in your practice, that you can envision ways to tweak it, but not to break away from it. 6 Recommendations
Opinion: Charlie Crist's Non-Shocker (5 days ago)
Comment: Out of the closet in more ways than one. At least he's finally being honest with himself. The public saw through him some time ago. 3 Recommendations
The Broder Dilemma and Inferiority Complex
We Muslims have an inferiority complex and are terribly sensitive to the world, feeling that our Islamic religion needs constant, practically daily, confirmation by way of Europeans and Americans converting to Islam. What rapturous joy takes us when a European or American announces [their conversion to] Islam—proof that we are in a constant state of fear, alarm, and chronic anticipation for Western validation or American confirmation that our religion is "okay." We are hostages of this anticipation, as if our victory hinges on it—forgetting that true victory is for us to create or to accomplish something, such as those [civilizations] that these converts to our faith abandon.
And we pound our drums and blow our horns [in triumph] and drag the convert to our backwardness, so that he may stand with us at the back of the world's line of laziness, [in the Muslim world] wherein no new scientific inventions have appeared in the last 500 years. Sometimes those who convert relocate to our countries—only to get on a small boat and escape on the high seas back to their own countries.
The dilemma which we Muslims imbibed from one end of the earth to the other—by way of our sons, our intellectuals, our youth, our elders, our men and our women—regards the German writer Henryk Broder. We celebrated him through our media and Internet sites, saying that he had converted to Islam, because he said "I have been saved from misguidance and have come to know the truth, returning to my natural state [fitriti, i.e., Islam]." Our writers and intellectuals portrayed Broder's statement as a slap to Germany's face, since he was one of the most critical opponents of Islam, but now he had announced his repentance.
Then the truth was immediately revealed and the embarrassing predicament which we imbibed of our own free will: for Broder is not to blame; he merely wrote a sarcastic article—but we are a people incapable of comprehending sarcasm, since it requires a bit of thinking and intellectualizing. And we read with great speed and a hopeful eye, not an eye for truth or reality. Some of us are struck with blindness when we read things that go against our hopes.
We actually imagined that the man was speaking truthfully and sincerely! Thus we drank from the bitter cup of failure and shame, products of our chronic ignorance and contemptuous feelings of inferiority and detestability.
[note: despite the fact that it is now common knowledge that Broder never converted, many popular Arabic/Muslim websites—including Al-Islam Al-Youm (Islam Today) Al-Sharuk News, Al-Moheet—continue to gloat under headlines like "Famous German embraces Islam after his long struggle against it."]
How come the Buddhists don't hold the festivities we do for those who convert to their religion? And some of these converts are much more famous than Broder. Did you know that Richard Gere, Steven Seagal, Harrison Ford—among Hollywood's most famous actors—converted to Buddhism? What did the Buddhist countries of Asia do regarding these celebrities? What did the Buddhists in China and Japan do?
Did they dance and sing praise and march out in the streets, or did they accept these people's entrance into Buddhism as a mere matter of free conviction? When Tiger Woods, the most famous golf player and richest athlete in the world, discussed his acceptance of Buddhism, did China grant him citizenship, or did Japan pour its wealth on him? No, being self-confident, they treated him with equality, not servility.
It is sufficient for the Buddhists that these celebrities purchase their nations' electronic goods—without any beggary or enticements.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation
CHAPTER 16|Document 1
p 120--21
1623
All this while no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any. So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.
The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labours and victuals, clothes, etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men's wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it. Upon the point all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought themselves in the like condition, and one as good as another; and so, if it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And would have been worse if they had been men of another condition. Let none object this is men's corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.
The Founders' Constitution
Volume 1, Chapter 16, Document 1
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s1.html
The University of Chicago Press
Bradford, William. Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620--1647. Edited by Samuel Eliot Morison. New York: Modern Library, 1967.
All this while no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expecte any. So they begane to thinke how they might raise as much corne as they could, and obtaine a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Gov[erno]r (with the advise of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corne every man for his owne particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to goe on in the generall way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance), and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted than other ways would have been by any means the Gov[erno]r or any other could use, and saved him a great deall of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now wente willingly., into the field, and tooke their little-ones with them to set corne, which before would allege weakness, and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.'
The experience that was had in this commone course and condition, tried sundry years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince they [the] vanitie of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients, applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property, and bringing in community into a common wealth, would make them happy and florishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte. For the young men that were most able and fit for labour and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to worke for other men's wives and children, with out any recompence. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and cloaths, than he that was weake and not able to doe a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalised in labours, and victuals, cloaths, etc., with the meaner and younger sorte, thought it some indignite and disrespect unto them. And for men's wives to be commanded to doe service for other men, as dresing their meate, washing their cloaths, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brooke it. Upon the point all being to have alike, and all to doe alike, they thought themselves in the like condition, and one as good as another; and so, if it did not cut of those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take of the mutuall respects that should be preserved amongst them. And would have been worse if they had been men of another condition. Let none objecte this is men's corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in his wisdome saw another course fitter for them.