RANDOM THOTS

Posted on January 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

OLBERMANN’S FALL FROM DISGRACE
Upon reading something about a 30 million dollar contract, my thought was… hate pays, but only in money. If reports are correct, Olbermann’s personality is the same off-camera as on. When off-camera his anger radiates in all directions we’re told, not just toward the political right but to staff and management as well. Keith Olbermann, by all appearances, is an angry and hateful man. Hate eats a person from the inside out. Hate is cancer of the soul.

Bush and Palin were favorite targets of the MSNBC star. These are two obviously very happy people. Olbermann is not. Targets of hate can rise above it because it comes at them from without. Haters are stuck in their own misery because one cannot rise above that which dwells within.

IMMELT’S REWARD
President Obama chose Schenectady for his nationally broadcast “jobs” speech. Schenectady has long been a home to General Electric. Jeffrey Immelt is Chairman and CEO of GE. The company is dominant in the city because it is the largest and oldest of the major employers in the region.

As he spoke, Obama highlighted what he had done to create jobs for MSNBC. Correction – for GE, the owner of MSNBC. In fact he said, the very reason he went to India was to negotiate a contract that will bring 1200 new jobs to General Electric’s manufacturing operation in this city in upstate New York.

Why Schenectady? Why GE? One cannot help but wonder, was it Immelt’s reward?

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THE ZINNS OF SCIENCE

Posted on January 22, 2011 | 1 comment

The noted revisionist historian Howard Zinn taught his students that a historian’s responsibility was to the future, not the past. To Howard Zinn, framing history in a manner that promotes a better world was a higher calling than recording history as it actually happened. Exactly what that better world may be is, of course, in the eye of the historian. For Zinn, it was socialism. The idea of adjusting history or any other truth to further an ideology is a variation of the rationale that “the ends justify the means”.

The same moral relativism is seen today in the science world. Here’s a sampling of quotes that illustrate the fact.

“We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory in an interview for Discover magazine, Oct 1989)

In other words, when your findings don’t support your premise, fudge the findings.

“Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to (find a) way to scare the public . . . and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are.”
Petr Chylek (Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, commenting on reports by other researchers that Greenland’s glaciers are melting. Halifax Chronicle-Herald, August 22, 2001)

If the truth doesn’t get you what you need, then fabricate and exaggerate.

“No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits…. Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart, former Minister of the Environment of Canada
Quote from the Calgary Herald, 1999

The story doesn’t need to be true. We can still use it to spread the wealth around.

Stewart is a politician not a scientist so she can’t be accused of professional fraud. But it reveals that just the fear of warming serves a purpose in and of itself. The validity of the fear is of no concern to those who see its usefulness in advancing a socialist agenda.

Science politicized is science polluted. Science polluted isn’t science at all.

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Posted in Political philosophy, Political polemics

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LIEBERMAN ACCORDING TO THE NEW YORK TIMES

Posted on January 19, 2011 | 4 comments

One thousand and fourteen words, and not one of them favorable in this announcement by the New York Times.

Okay, one could argue that “…voters once embraced Mr. Lieberman, the son of a liquor store owner who entered politics as a reform-minded Democrat in 1970, for his folksy ways and his common-sense approach to issues” was complimentary. But at the big city paper, “folksy ways” is the way they say unsophisticated and “common sense” means not very intellectual.

That may have been a bit vague, however, the Times was perfectly clear two sentences later. Quoting a prominent Democrat  they wrote of Lieberman’s pending departure, “It’s the first thing he’s done in 10 years to make Connecticut Democrats completely happy.”

It will have been 24 years of honorable service when he walks out that door, and all they can say to him is we are glad you are gone. Even the Mafia after all, gives one a parting.

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SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN PACKS IT IN

Posted on January 19, 2011 | 2 comments

The Honorable Senator Joseph Lieberman will announce later today that he will not be running for re-election.  2012 will be the Senator’s last year in office.

The United States Senate is losing a man with a level of integrity all too uncommon among those with whom he shares that office. He spoke from the heart, voted his true beliefs and always remained civil in the raucous world of political debate. The Senator from Connecticut has been a good servant of the people. Never a man to play the politics of power, nevertheless, he came within a cat’s whisker of holding the second highest office in the land. Had Al Gore only been able to win his home state of Tennessee, Lieberman would have been our Vice President.

Lieberman’s loyalty was always to his beliefs, to the people he represented and to himself, for if a man  is not true to himself, he cannot be true to others. At times, those loyalties fell into conflict with positions taken by his political party. His integrity was without reward. The party pushed him out. It was not pretty. We know whereof we speak. We write from the town where he lives and where he will make the announcement at 12:30 today. Joseph Lieberman is our senator.

We have great admiration for this man with whom we so often disagreed. Sen. D. Patrick Moynihan was another. Good luck and very best wishes, Joe.

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CAPITALISM BOWS TO COMMUNISM

Posted on January 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

This is not just a photo. It is an image of a solemn faced President of the United States bowing to the smiling head of Communist China as the oriental leader remains erect. Back when I went to high school that would have said a lot. I think it still does.

Later, Obama honored the communist leader with a lavish White House dinner. This is the same President who wouldn’t even share a bagel with the Prime Minister of democratic Israel. It’s the same president who found hours of time for nearly weekly White House visits from the head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) but refused to give a minute to the Dali Lama.

Barack H. Obama is also the same person he was when he ran for office in 2008, the first post-American president.

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JUSTAPHOTO

Posted on January 17, 2011 | Leave a comment

EASY TO BUILD, BUT NEEDS TO BE IRONED EVERY MONDAY

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VENEZUELA’S OIL RESERVES

Posted on January 17, 2011 | Leave a comment

Reports have just been issued that Venezuela’s proven oil reserves now surpass those of Saudi Arabia. The report is official. It comes straight from the Venezuelan government. But official and truthful are not the same thing, especially where Chavez is concerned. For the claim to be true, new discoveries would have had to add 41% during 2010 alone. An increase of 10% would be extraordinary.

Furthermore, a barrel is a measure of quantity and says nothing about quality. Saudi oil is light and sweet. Venezuelan crude is thick and impure. It requires greater refining and usually needs to be mixed with sweet light crude oil in the process. Extraction is easy in flat Saudi Arabia and difficult in Venezuela because it is found in the mountainous region surrounding the Orinoco River.

The South American country’s reserves are substantial whatever the real numbers may be, but they are no threat to Saudi dominance. Chavez is pumping up Chavez, not new oil, with his claim.

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HONORING MARTIN LUTHER KING

Posted on January 16, 2011 | Leave a comment

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AROUND THE POLLS

Posted on January 16, 2011 | Leave a comment

CBS
A CBS poll asked the public whether deficits should be reduced by raising taxes or lowering spending. The percentage response was 77 to 9 in favor of lowering spending with another 9% saying do both. But there’s a rub.

The poll made 10 suggestions for specific areas to cut and asked would you be willing or unwilling to cut in each. The results revealed the public’s attitude to be, yes, cut spending but NIMBY (Not In My Benefits Y’know).

GALLUP
Approval of Congress has increased 20% since Gallup’s last poll taken in December. The new Congress was only 10 days old when the poll was taken so the showing must be more an expression of hope than one of accomplishment. The Satisfaction Level of how things are going generally in the country rose from 17 to 19 percent, but that was not enough to break the steady downward trend line from 27 percent last May.

STATE of the UNION ADDRESS
The address this year promises to be a very interesting one. It may even provide a little healing. Certainly there will be no insults directed at the Supreme Court and we hope the President will not say anything so outrageous that a member of Congress cannot audibly control his furor.

Democratic Sen. Mark Udall has proposed a welcome change from tradition. Congressional seating is first come first served; members, however, have always elected to divide themselves by sitting strictly on their own side of the infamous aisle. Sen. Udall proposes that they intermingle this time. It was great fun to watch one side of the chamber frown while the other side clapped as the President spoke. We will happily forgo a little amusement for the benefit some unification. It remains to be seen how many of either party will actually cross the dreaded aisle.

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BLOOD LIBEL AND BRING A GUN TO THE FIGHT

Posted on January 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

“Blood libel” was a series of actual false accusations that morphed into a general term. A blood libel is defined as a serious false accusation. It is derived from ancient and not so ancient accusations that Jews drank the blood of Christian babies. The belief survives today in the minds of some extremist Muslims.

If someone said that Obama told a group of Philadelphia supporters, referring to Republicans, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we will bring a gun”, it would not be blood libel because it’s true. But if in turn, it was claimed that his rhetoric caused the Gifford shooting it would fit the definition of the term “blood libel” – a serious false accusation. That’s what Sarah Palin suffered.

Within the Jewish community, the term blood libel has connotations not so widely known elsewhere. We know that it was an unfortunate choice of words because it raised the sensitivities of some people, understandably so. It would have been better had she called the accusations “cheap shots”.

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