No More Bullshit! – Page 43 – third world county

March 22, 2009

Understanding the Economic Downturn

Douglas Wilson adds his common sense perspective to understanding the economy. A snippet:

Think of it this way. Suppose you and a buddy bet on the big game, and he bets you a zillion badillion dollars that his team is going to win. You take him up on it, but they lose. He promises to pay you next Tuesday, and you rush home all excited, eager to tell your wife about your good fortune. On the way home, because God has answered all your prayers, you go on a shopping spree involving SUVs, boats, motor homes, flat screen televisions, and so forth. When it turns out your friend doesn’t really have that kind of money — and if he did, he wouldn’t be giving you any — the global economy has not really lost a zillion badillion dollars. There will be some hard adjustments for you to the tune of whatever you bought and can’t take back, but the figure that dazzled you was not real wealth.

Most of the “losses” never existed to begin with, and real wealth hasn’t been lost at all; some has just found new homes.

March 17, 2009

Fear-mongering

In the decade or more before his death, Michael Crichton spoke widely about fear-mongering in science circles (often coupled with making a religion out of science), exacerbated by the pressing need in media to market fear (the pun was intentional; if you groaned, shame on you :-)). The Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind (and the politicians who bow before its altar) openly embrace fear-mongering both for immediate audience share and to enhance the addiction of the masses to its poisonous screeds.

Both those who embrace a strictly dogmatic scientific approach to issues and those who rebel against such dogmatism seem to often embrace fear-mongering as a primary persuasive tactic. Take “natural” foods proponents and “scientific nutritionists” or medical establishment dogmatists and “holistic medicine” proponents and put them in the same room, and you’d likely end up with a kilkenny cats donnybrook of fear-mongering. Just one example can serve as a cautionary: chelation therapy is presented by some alternative medicine proponents as THE answer to a host of ills–ills they often imply the medical community only want to treat with very expensive therapies that work less well. The medical establishment counters with scary threats of death from chelation therapy, often pointing out that more than 30 deaths from chelation therapy have occurred… since the 1970s while noting that more than 800,000 inpatient/outpatient chelation treatments are administered per year. Let’s see now… that’s about 0.0000000125% of treatments have resulted in deaths!

*feh* Fear-mongering. Since chelation therapy for other than heavy metals poisoning is most often for alternative medicine treatment of heart and artery disease how about comparison to another common treatment for heart and artery disease? Heart bypass surgery results in at least a 1.0% death rate. That’s about 80,000 times more risky than chelation therapy. *heh*

The dire warnings from the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming (which previously was the Church of Anthropogenic Global Cooling and is now transitioning to the Church of Anthropogenic Global Climate Change) have all been nothing but crying wolf. Not one of the warnings have come to pass–not one!–and so, like other whack job religious nuts who keep pushing back the date they prophesy for the end of the world, the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming keeps having to move the goal posts in their deadly game to keep the fictional fear-mongering within the realm of the sheeple’s oh-so-flexible suspension of disbelief.

Lies, lies and more lies, built upon grains of sand, less than even kernels of truth, lies designed to induce fear in the credulous sheeple who, thanks to long term media brainwashing aided by a public education system that seems to be designed to produce idiots and individuals who cooperate in their own lobotomization, are completely unable to even parse this moderately complex sentence, let alone deconstruct the lies fed them by The Powers That Be.

As a popularly-voiced, accessible (to anyone who really can read and do simple arithmetic at a genuine upper grade school level) preparation to skeptical perusal of contemporary science-as-religion as presented for sheeple consumption, I recommend once again James Hogan’s Kicking the Sacred Cow. It’s an easy read for any even minimally literate person, and the footnotes are well worth following.

it’s not just literacy that’s a problem, although that certainly is a problem, but, as I found out in a recent conversation with someone locally, most people can’t even tell when they’re being manipulated with numbers. The “more than 30 people have died since the 1970s” attempt to frighten people away from thoughtful consideration of chelation therapies noted above is one such example. By contrast to the 30 or so deaths out of 24,000,000 or so chelation treatments in the U.S. since the 1970’s, 90 people a year are killed by lightning strikes. That’s roughly 0.000000003% of the population… per year! Ooo! Scary, huh? Not. Sure, ones chances of dying from a chelation therapy treatment are more than ones chances of dying from a lightning strike, but compared to other risks, both are neglible in the extreme. (I’m not advocating chelation therapy for anything but heavy metals poisoning. I’m just noting that scare tactics are reprehensible… and that the only defense is knowledge.) WHat’s my point here? Most folks wouldn’t even bother to count the zeros in the numbers offered above, and even more wouldn’t be able to discern how they were educed. The “recent conversation” that spurred this observation? Someone who’s back in school commented on how much trouble her statistics course was for her. Numbers are haaaard. *heh* Without a calculator, most folks can’t even balance their checkbooks. Heck, with a calculator many folks can’t. (OK, even I don’t do as many maths problems in my head as I used to do. I’m slowing down.) Even with calculators, math is just too hard for most folks, Why? Because most folks can’t do simple math at all and have no idea what that calculator they’re using is doing with the garbage they input–garbage because they don’t know what to input to get answers they need.

The simple answer is to learn to read. No, not how to read: to read. Read copiously, and choose books that are both well-written and have something worthwhile to say and that are well-grounded in reality. Even science fiction or fantasy novels can be more well-grounded in reality than much of the fear-mongering toxic waste poured down the gullets of credulous UNliterate sheeple by the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind and its partners in crime found in Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries and Congress.

Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Democrat=Socialist, The World According to Carl, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

March 16, 2009

The Wonderful Gift of Illiteracy

No, not just the inability to mumble through painfully puzzling out what printed words say, much more (or less *heh*) than that. What is even worse than the inability to painfully decrypt the squiggles written onto a page into sounds is the fact that more and more people have no idea what those painfully decrypted sounds actually mean. We see this every day in illiterate folks’ pejoration of words’ meanings and misuse of words (like those who think “everyday” means the same thing as “every day”).

Example (taken from multitudes proffered daily by Mass MEdia Podpeople, politicians *spit*, Academia Nut Fruitcakes and others): decimate. Mass Media Podpeople have so long used the word to mean something more akin to “annihilate” that we’ve lost the very useful meaning, “to execute one-tenth” of a population–whatever that may be–given us from the Roman practice of decimating a military unit which had members who refused to fight or who fled (NOT retreated under orders) battle. No, that perfectly useful distinction is now lost to almost the entire population of English speakers because some illiterate boobs misused it so often to mean “annihilate” (or something barely short of that), when they had other perfectly useful words… words that they apparently didn’t have access to because of the woeful paucity of their vocabularies.

*feh*

“Free speech” in the mouth of a leftard has become an oxymoron, because of the inability of our population of illiterates to distinguish word usage.

And the list could go on almost endlessly.

Words are tools of thought, and the fact that most people in our society have a very small bag of very dull tools means that thinking is half murdered in our public discourse.

What am I saying?!? “Half murdered” by dull tools wielded by dull tools?” Nah. Completely murdered by dull tools wielded by dull tools…

A written IQ and general knowledge test requirement for voting wouldn’t be enough to salvage the republic, but it could be a decent start… And don’t even start in with me about it being anti-democratic or violating people’s rights. *feh* Voting is a privilege with enormous responsibilities, and the ability to think, know what the words on a ballot mean and vote accordingly are base level skills the electorate should have… and does not.

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March 13, 2009

Obama’s Poll Numbers Tanking

From latest Rasmussen data,

“Obama’s Poll Numbers Are Falling to Earth”

Polling data show that Mr. Obama’s approval rating is dropping and is below where George W. Bush was in an analogous period in 2001. Rasmussen Reports data shows that Mr. Obama’s net presidential approval rating — which is calculated by subtracting the number who strongly disapprove from the number who strongly approve — is just six, his lowest rating to date.

Overall, Rasmussen Reports shows a 56%-43% approval, with a third strongly disapproving of the president’s performance. This is a substantial degree of polarization so early in the administration. Mr. Obama has lost virtually all of his Republican support and a good part of his Independent support, and the trend is decidedly negative.

(More at the link.)

Well, about time the sheeple woke up and smelled the cyanide tea. One can only hope that when The One’s polling numbers actually hit dirtside, they keep going down to the very depths of hell. Seriously. Because, while I wish him success as president, I most certainly do NOT see success in the office entailing the success of his agenda. Only if his agenda fails will history judge him to be a success as president.

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March 13, 2009March 13, 2009

Differences? Notsomuch

I’ve met some Obamabots–even here in America’s Third World County where Democrats, let alone dyed-in-the-wool Dhimmicraps, are scarcer than hens’ teeth–recently that have caused me to go back and examine some stereotypes.

But first, a fore-word: before you get the wrong idea (even though I know it’s probably too late for that), stereotypes are good things, as long as we know we use them as shortcuts, as models based on a reality that is far more complex than the most accurate model can be. Stereotypes exist because a great preponderance of a certain class of objects or persons share characteristics that make them a class. We could substitute “class” for “stereotype” except that stereotypes embody more data than we can actually weight classes with via objective criteria–data derived from firsthand, subjective interaction with objects or persons. Now, because it is subjective interaction that adds the stereotyping, it involves a certain amount of projection, and therein lies the danger of stereotyping: if the emotional projection isn’t consciously recognized and analyzed for its qualitative values, for what it both contributes to or detracts from the observations leading to the development of ones own stereotypes, then one runs the danger of having models that aren’t very useful.

That said, my model, if you want to put the word “stereotypes” on the shelf, of contemporary faux liberals and those who support their agendas as falling into two general classes–the truly, wittingly evil and the stupidly, lazily evil–has held up fairly well in my encounters with Obamabots.

“Evil?!?” you may screech. Yep. You see, it doesn’t matter one damned plugged nickel whether a contemporary faux liberal (or a faux liberal enabler) such as Obama or his coterie of Chicago-style, (mostly) corrupt, socialist hangers-on have “good” intentions or just normal, Chicago-style, (mostly) corrupt, socialist genuinely evil intentions, because the end result of their behavior is evil.

Yes, evil. For they are intent–even the most stupidly altruistic of them–on dictating YOUR “best interests” as they see them, instead of allowing you the freedom to make those decisions on your own or with counsel of your own choosing. And that–compelling behavior to comply with THEIR ideology that the state is the fount of all that is good and that THEY, the self-anointed enlightened, decide what is good for you, the poor benighted idiot who does not belong to their club–is indeed evil.

Not even the God they so frequently rail against is that tyrannical. He has simply pointed out Good and Evil and said that Good will lead to Him while evil will lead to eternal death. Make your own choice and live–or die–with it. The statists who disingenuously call themselves liberals want to make your choices for you. Free will? Nope. That’s out, along with the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

To any who call yourself “liberal” or “progressive” let me offer you this: when you can show me–using facts and reason, not whiny faux-victim bleats–that denying free political speech to someone because his speech offends some hypersensitive whiny rabbit is a genuinely liberal act, then we can start discussing what’s right or wrong with the “philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide” that is contemporary so-called liberalism/progressivism.

As far as I can see, there is no real difference between the evil results of those faux liberals who know the evil they are doing and those faux liberals (and their enablers) who intend to do good but simply are too lazy (morally and intellectually) to think things through.

“By their fruits ye shall know them.” (Matthew 7:16)

Oh, and another lil question for any faux liberal who might wander by: When, oh when, will you and your ilk articulate an exit strategy for the quagmire you’ve unconstitutionally stuck the country in with your “War on Poverty”–the fruits of which have been advancing illiteracy, more poverty, and worse? Oh, right. To a faux liberal those are all good things, because they form a pretext for the government, at your behest, to do more harm.

March 11, 2009

Grading The One

The libtards at MSNBC must be in a tizzy. The results so far on their poll asking folks to grade The One’s performance to date aren’t turning out so well for their Anointed One:

Go. Contribute to The Grading of The One

h.t. to The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, Investorblogger Dot Com, Political Byline, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, CORSARI D’ITALIA, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and Stageleft, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

February 28, 2009February 28, 2009

Honk!

Found this at Woody’s Place but thought it needed a lil punching up, so… the original (punched up with color in The One’s logo) and an alternate text version:

While you’re at Woody’s Place, check out the Glenn Beck video in the post.

February 25, 2009

Greed, Lies and Bluster: No “Hope and Change”

After perusing Bobby Jindal’s after SOU address, I went back and tried studying the Obamassiah’s peroration for genuine content. Hasn’t anyone told him he’s living in the White House now? Why’s he still giving a stump speech, trying to win the election? Oh. Right. That’s ALL he knows how to do: lie, bluster and appeal to greed in order to win elections. Actually DOING ANYTHING MEANINGFUL while in office is a concept that he’s so far not had to tackle. I suppose one could argue that bullying for something–anything!–to be done now, without thought or reflection, about the economy and then turning the idea over to his political cronies to stuff with pork and political patronage does constitute doing something, but something useful, something meaningful? I think not.

Once again, as far as actually serving in the office he’s been elected to, the Obamassiah is simply phoning in his part, rehashing his fav teleprompter-fed sound bytes.

Again, why is it that anyone thinks this guy’s an orator? Oh, yeh. Because he’s (sorta, kinda-almost) black (cafe-au-lait with a twist) and gets the affirmative action bye? I suppose one could always join with the optimistic young boy who, shoveling through a load of horse manure on Christmas Day, enthusiastically proclaimed, “With all this horse shit, there must be a pony in here somewhere!”

But with the Obamassiah’s record of non-accomplishment so far, I’m not willing to shovel too much more horse shit to find a pony buried (probably smothered, dead) at the bottom of the pile.

Red State has some useful links on the SOU bloviation. And the comments are worth reading as well. In fact, I’ll just steal one of the best:

E Pluribus Unum commented,

“For those unwilling to sacrifice an hour of their lives, I found a condensed version that I think captures the spirit entirely”

So, what’s the condensed version he posted?

*heh*

February 21, 2009February 23, 2009

Name Change

Michelle Malkin has a long post well worth your time, but the capstone, AFAIC, is her inclusion of Woodie Guthrie’s cover (and redaction) of Tom Paxton’s classic. See the YouTube video below. Needs no further comment from me.

Oh the price of gold is rising out of sight
And the dollar is in sorry shape tonight
What the dollar used to get us now won’t buy a head of lettuce
No the economic forecast isn’t right
But amidst the clouds I spot a shining ray
I can even glimpse a new and better way
And I’ve devised a plan of action worked it down to the last fraction
And I’m going into action here today

CHORUS:
I am changing my name to Fannie Mae
I am going down to Washington D.C.
I’ll be glad they got my back
‘Cause what they did for Freddie Mac
Will be perfectly acceptable to me
I am changing my name to Fannie Mae
I am headed for that great receiving line
So when they hand a trillion grand out
I’ll be standing with my hand out
I’ll get mine

When my creditors are screaming for their dough
I’ll be proud to tell them all where they can go
They won’t have to scream and holler
They’ll be paid to the last dollar
Where the endless streams of money seem to flow
I’ll be glad to tell them all what they can do
It’s a matter of a simple form or two
It’s not just remuneration it’s a liberal education
Ain’t you kind of glad that I’m in debt to you

Chorus

Since the first amphibians crawled out of the slime (of the slime!)
We’ve been struggling in an unrelenting climb
We were hardly up and walking before money started talking
And it’s sad that failure is an awful crime
It’s been that way for a millennium or two
But now it seems that there’s a different point of view
If you’re a corporate titanic and your failure is gigantic
Down in Congress there’s a safety net for you

Chorus

UPDATE: Not to be left out of updating his classic, “I’m Changing My Name to Chrysler” *heh* Tom Paxton has his own revision out:

Good git fiddle work, and his lyric changes are, if anything, more biting. Not as singable are the melodic variations, but then, it was his song to begin with, as I recall, and he’s perfectly entitled to change whatever he likes about it.

🙂

February 20, 2009

Santelli’s Chicago Tea Party

As seen at Cathouse Chat:

Go watch the video (CNBC doesn’t allow embedding of the thing).

Go vote in the poll.

Money quote:

“The government’s promoting bad behavior”– Rick Santelli

Well, *duh*. What do you call the 40+ year quagmire of the “War on Poverty”? (Hint: “promoting bad behavior”) What do you call the complete disinterest in enforcing immigration law? (Hint: “promoting bad behavior”) Heck, what do you call the TSA? (Hint: “promoting bad behavior”)

THAT’S WHAT OUR GOVERNMENT DOES. That seems to be its primary job for the last few decades: promote bad behavior and punish good behavior. Anarcho-tyranny at its fedgov finest…

Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Rosemary’s Thoughts, , Woman Honor Thyself, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and The World According to Carl, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.