"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
“Margaret Sanger” (played by a concerned citizen, SS) explains that “No planned or wanted trees were injured during the filming of this very important message.”
(Of course, having watched the thing, you already knew that, hmmm? ;-))
In related news, Charles Manson gave his first interview in 20 years… to talk about anthropogenic global warming. He’s one of the saner voices in the cult.
I really despise the cretinous liars who produced the Nissan Leaf commercial featuring zero after zero after zero to end up saying “zero pollutants for the environment”. Liars. Electric cars do NOT produce zero emissions, zero pollutants (heck, just in their production alone they contribute to massive amounts of toxic waste*). Oh, at the “tailpipe” they don’t have, sure: zero emissions. But unless they’re powered via solar, wind, hydro or nuclear, they’re not “zero emission” cars. Heck, the lowest cost electricity plants in the US (at least until The Zero gets his way) are coal-fired generators, and that’s a Good Thing (at least until The Zero gets his way), because those coal-fired generators producing cheap(er) electricity also produce about half our electricity (and the US has enough coal reserves to continue doing that for at least a couple hundred years–at least if The Zero doesn’t get his way).
The “zero pollutants for the environment” claim made by the recent Leaf commercial is a patent and obvious lie, easily seen as such by anyone with more active brain cells than a head of cabbage… which excludes all the target audience for the lying commercial: greenie-propagandized subliterate, hypermoronic, self-lobotomized metrosexual grups and their (similarly greenie-propagandized subliterate, hypermoronic, self-lobotomized) hyper-sexualized but distinctly unattractive harpy fems.
Yep. I bet the Leaf sells just fine to that demographic.
*Yeh, I know the article at the link is specifically about wind turbines and neodymium, but don’t think the same material isn’t used in the Leaf’s motor, because it is, and the Leaf’s batteries’ components have the same sort of problematic origins. Just saying.
“…stone-cold dead cuts recidivism by 100%.”
Makes sense to me, at least for some crimes.
*sigh*
Probably once a week I get email trumpeting this, that or t’other conspiracy theory of the week, or whatever. Usually, these come from people who are easily smart enough to either know better or be able to find out “better” with a couple of simple clicks. Here’s the most recent from the tinfoil hat population, although it’s actually been around for three or four years in some form or another and its ancestry goes all the way back to conspiracy theories and hoax petitions circulated in the 60s and 70s, at least.
The text of the hoax/tinfoil hat conspiracy theory is this:
REFUSE NEW COINS
This simple action will make a strong statement.
Please help do this.. Refuse to accept these when they are handed to you.
I received one from the Post Office as change and I asked for a dollar bill instead.
The lady just smiled and said ‘way to go’ , so she had read this e -mail.
Please help out..our world is in enough trouble without this too!!!!!
U.S.Government to Release New Dollar Coins
You guessed it ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’ IS GONE!!!
If ever there was a reason to boycott something, THIS IS IT!!!!
DO NOT ACCEPT THE NEW DOLLAR COINS AS CHANGE
Together we can force them out of circulation…
The email included one picture of the obverse of the 2007 issue (so much for the contrafactual “U.S.Government to Release New Dollar Coins “) of the George Washington dollar coin and went on to “argue” that this supposed elimination of the motto was a part of a conspiracy to remove God from the public forum, yada-yada.
Here’s a picture of the obverse side of the coin:
Sure enough, “In God We Trust” isn’t there. How about the reverse side of the coin?
*huh* Not there either. So, at least the “missing motto” part of this nutso email is right, right?
Nope. If you buy the thing with only this much information, you’re the sucker.
That’s right, the “edge-incused inscriptions” include “In God We Trust,” “E Pluribus Unum,” and the date and mint marking. But since this idiot-attractor conspiracy theory/hoax gained so much traction a few years ago, dumbasses in Congress felt it necessary to assuage their dumbass conspiracy theory-hoaxed constituents who were up in arms over the “missing motto” and ordered the mint to redesign future American President coins with the motto where even idiots could find it (if they could manage to puzzle out the letters well enough to know what it said), and so in 2009 the motto was moved to the obverse of the coins with the minting of the Harrison and all future Presidential series coins.
So, although the first eight Presidential series coins had the motto, “In God We Trust” on the edge, where it was subject to less wear than on the coins’ faces and even served a sort of symbolic purpose, to my mind (a part of “binding” the two sides together, eh? ;-)), all eight coins already circulated in the years 2009 and 2010 had the motto plainly on their faces where even the stupidest sheeple might eventually find them.
But has that stopped this dumbass hoax/conspiracy theory from circulating? Nope. Not any more than the facts have stopped the “Madeline Murry O’Hare/FCC” hoax petition that’s been around in one form or another for 40-some-odd years.
Dumbasses come in all sizes, shapes and IQ measurements.
Yes, I suppose I could be more charitable in correcting this sort of thing, and I was with the person who sent me the email. As Jerry Pournelle put it when someone corrected him about a factual error he made,
One of the neat things about the Internet is that if you get something wrong you’re not stuck with being an uncorrected idiot. There will be someone out there who knows, and will offer the correction. My thanks.
Classy, Dr. Pournelle. But then, the error he made wasn’t so glaring as the ones in the email, nor was he hyperventilating about some vast conspiracy. Indeed, his error was a simple lack of information in a specific field of endeavor in which he has never claimed expertise, and the person correcting his lack of knowledge understood that.
The chief differences between Dr. Pournelle’s error and the ones in the email are several:
1. The email called for widespread social action based on grossly inaccurate and quite likely deliberately deceptive (as it originated) information. Dr. Pornelle’s inaccurate comment fit neither of those criteria.
2. ANYONE–literally, anyone with literacy skills above that of a typical kindergärtner–could readily verify the falsity of the claims made by the email simply by looking at one of the coins. Not so with the information a reader corrected in Dr. Pournelle’s offhand comment.
Still, I recognize that “smart” people say and do as many stupid things as anyone else, and so calling people who fall for things like this hoax “dumbasses” may be a bit harsh.
But it’s still true, IMO.
OK, by now almost everyone and their pet goats know that the IRS has delayed the sack and pillage of the middle class to April 18. Why? Because Washington D.C. is scheduled to have a holiday that day, whether an unscheduled “holiday” from budget disagreements is on or not.
And what, pray tell, are the Beltway Bandits celebrating? That great fraud, the Compensated Emancipation Act, which president Abraham Lincoln signed on April 16, 1862, and which D.C.ers celebrate annually on April 16. Since April 16 is a Saturday this year, in order to give the suckers-at-the-public-teat another day off, the “holiday” was moved to the 15th.
And why do I call both the celebration and the object of celebration a fraud? Read the thing sometime. The Emancipation Proclamation which announced its signing didn’t note the provisions of the act (another of Mr. Lincoln’s frauds), which were the abolition of slavery in the Southern States (where Congress exercised no authority at the time) but a strange silence about continued legally practiced chattel slavery in Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and West Virginia.
Neither Lincoln nor the Congress “freed” a singe solitary slave with the the Compensated Emancipation Act or Mr. Lincoln’s disingenuous “Emancipation Proclamation”. They were frauds from the get-go. Pure propaganda. Lies.
NATURALLY, such a massive and pervasive historical fraud deserves celebration in Washington D.C.!
Seriously. Recall The Zero’s blather last week wandering around in search of a justification for his Libyan adventure? The key comment was buried in the toxic fecal matter that issued from his pie hole:
“I believe that this movement of change cannot be turned back, and that we must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us.”
In order to discern what those “core principles” he refers to are, we need to ask a few questions:
WHO is The Zero saying that “we” share these “core principles” with?
Answer: Islamic savages on one side of a conflict to decide which set of Islamic savages will be in power in Libya.
WHAT are the “core principles guiding the Islamic savages on both sides of the conflict?
Well, let’s see: both sides profess to revere as the perfect man to emulate in all manner of life a man whose life and teachings demonstrate (and teach as proper) the rape and brutalization of women, mass murder, that it is right and proper to steal anything not nailed down (as long as it is the property of “unbelievers”), applaud pedophiles, and believe the “kafir” (which means anyone who’s not an Islamic savage, including almost all those idiots who voted for The Zero) is good only for butcher sport and plunder, etc.
WHO is this “we” The Zero refers to?
Surely not you and I? Do you and I share the “core principles” that guide Muslims? Do you revere a “prophet” whose life and teachings DEMAND that his followers commit mass murder, rape, pillage, abuse of women, slavery, and such like? Well, I can’t be absolutely sure about you, but I’m not a part of any “we” that shares those values. Obviously the “we” The Zero refers to does share those “core principles” with the group of Islamic savages The Zero has aligned himself with, so that “we” must be Muslims.
Then again, since Mohamed also taught–both in word and deed*–that lying to “unbelievers” to advance his cause is not only permissible but required if force alone cannot advance the aims of Islam, then he could also just be blowing smoke up our skirts by asserting the “we” part of the statement. He could be standing alone in his siding with one group of Islamic savages against another group of Islamic savages.
Or he could be using a “royal ‘we'”.
Or maybe he had a mouse in his pocket.
*Remember: The Butcher of Medina earned that sobriquet via his first “great victory”–the massacre of the Jews of what is now Medina after he had drawn them out, unarmed, under a flag of truce. Then, of course, he rewarded his band of thugs by sharing the rape of the women and the plunder with them.
Sweet guy.
h.t. to TF for reminding me of The Zero’s lil slip up.
What matter is that? The essential difference between decent human beings and those who deem themselves our political, social and intellectual betters among the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, politicians *spit* as a general class, Academia Nut Fruitcakes and Loony Left Moonbats.
I know of no one who has not done stupid things or behaved dishonestly at some point or another in their lives. And I specifically include myself in that assessment. Only a pathological liar could live past the age of two and say that they’ve never done something stupid or dishonest with a straight face.
That said, what’s the difference between a common, ordinary decent person and the typical Mass Media Podperson, politician *spit*, Academia Nut Fruitcake or Loony Left Moonbat?
It’s this: an ordinarily decent person experiences genuine guilt when they catch themselves lying or deceiving others and will repent and attempt to remediate their lie. An ordinarily decent person who does something stupid will make every effort to make whole anyone harmed by their stupidity and seek for ways to do better next time.
Just keep that in mind, would you?
He’s a blow-dried blowhard, IMO. Just listening to him speak gives me a rash.
But. My, oh, my, didn’t he snooker Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind into hoisting itself with its own petard? You probably know the details by now. The Hivemind has been covering for The Zero’s failure to produce a verifiable copy of an official source document–his birth certificate–for several years now by claiming the “anyone can phone in a part” computer-generated copy of a Hawaii Certificate of Live Birth is the same as a birth certificate, which names names and places, including the delivering physician and place of delivery, as well as signatures of witnesses to the birth and an official acceptance of their representations.
Nope, for The Zero, a document that’s computer generated and simply stating that a birth took place is enough.
But, when Trump released his “Birth Certificate” the Hivemind immediately jumped to attention and sneered, almost as one (as any “good” hivemind is wont to do), that what Trump had produced wasn’t good enough. No, it was merely a hospital “birth certificate” (complete with witness signatures, name of delivering physician, etc.–IOW, much, much more info than on the computer-generated piece of crap they say if good enough for their Obamassiah) and so proved nothing.
So, what did Trump then do? Oh, he released his official Department of Health Birth Certificate.
*heh*
If the Hivemind had any scruples whatsoever, it’d be wearing sackcloth and ashes, flagellating itself with steel-tipped whips and wailing in repentance.
BTW, I checked, and if I needed an official replacement B.C., all it’d take would be
1. a copy of my current driver’s license or similar ID
2. an SASE
3. $15
Big. Stinking. Deal. That’s something that wouldn’t even take 15 minutes over a lunch break to handle. I guess The Zero’s just not had 15 minutes to take care of such an onerous task anytime in the last 3-4 years since the issue was first raised.
But he and his minions have had many, many hours and millions of dollars to invest in preventing anyone from compelling him to produce a birth certificate, as other presidents have had to do. (Anyone recall the kerfuffle about Chester A. Arthur’s natural citizenship qualifications? Oh, I suppose you just weren’t around at the time… *heh* But heck, surely you recall Dwight Eisenhower having to produce his legal birth certificate to get on the ballot in 1952? I mean, sure he’d graduated West Point, served honorably in the armed forces and been a public figure for years, etc., but he still had to produce a birth certificate to show the circumstances of his birth to run back in those days of yore… )
Maybe The Zero and his minions have spent those millions to avoid the release of his official birth certificate simply as their own private means of preserving or creating jobs in the legal sector during the economic downturn. Yeh, that’s it: it’s just private charity.
Peggy Noonan, writing in the WSJ, demonstrates once again that becoming a Beltway Pundit requires a lobotomy.
It all seems rather mad, doesn’t it? The decision to become involved militarily in the Libyan civil war couldn’t take place within a less hospitable context. The U.S. is reeling from spending and deficits, we’re already in two wars, our military has been stretched to the limit, we’re restive at home, and no one, really, sees President Obama as the kind of leader you’d follow over the top. “This way, men!” “No, I think I’ll stay in my trench.” People didn’t hire him to start battles but to end them. They didn’t expect him to open new fronts. Did he not know this?
Peggy Noonan used to be rather bright until she had a Beltway Lobotomy. What The Zero is doing seems patently obvious to anyone who’s taken even a cursory glance at his background. Peggy, if you’d been studying The Zero’s playbook (Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” and the Cloward-Piven Strategy), you’d know he needs everything he can throw at the U.S. to wreck the economy and strain government services to the breaking point–and beyond–in order to bring down the whole country.
Further: Noonan writes, “In fact, this may turn out to be true: If Gadhafi survives, the crisis will go on and on. If Gadhafi falls, the crisis will go on and on.”
No it won’t Peggy. Not really. If Gadhafi survives, Libya will be under the heel of an Islamic tyrant. If he does not survive, it will be under the heel of another Islamic tyrant. Heck, this is an even easier prognostication than when Dhimmi Kahtah handed the reins to Islamic Mullahs in Iran through a fumble-handed undercutting of the Shah. And the “crisis” will end, as far as The Zero and his partners in crime are concerned, as soon as it (and other “crises” manufactured and managed for his purposes) has brought down the U.S.
The Zero is not some mad buffoon wildly lurching from crisis to crisis; his is a well-known and well-advertised strategy, plainly obvious to his partners in crime and anyone else with more active brain cells than a head of cabbage.
Noonan does (accidentally?) make a couple of commonsense points: that there is nothing obviously in the interest of the U.S.’s national security at stake in Libya, and that what strategy there exists in the Libyan adventure is murky at best, although she minces words on both points, as a Good Beltway Insider must in order to remain an insider…
…you must be a racist, if one were to judge by the standards of The Zero’s allies and other assorted leftards. Why, oh why, can you not appreciate BLACK coffee?
[This micro-mini-rant brought about by a dumbass commenter in another forum who accused me of being racist–and of being excessively “white” and a “hater” whatever that means–for my lack of appreciation for the finer points of The Zero’s policies. I predicted this sort of thing when The Zero first announced his presidential candidacy, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy having been prophetic.]