Category: Society

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More “UNthought”

Here’s another stupidity of our society’s proclivity for “unthought”: from the lips of a Fox Mass Media Podperson the phrase, “a higher level of truth.”

That’s right. The idea is abroad in the land that there are levels of truth. True truth, not-so-true truth, almost truth and true in ones own mind truth? Let’s just smack this stupidity down wherever it is encountered. There is truth and not-truth. Period. Truth adulterated by anything not true is either a lie or an unintentional a mistatement against fact. Period. It is not a different form of truth.

True/False is an either/or situation, period. If others’ notes and recordings of a conversation consistently contradict ones recollection of events, then ones recollection is not true, no matter how firmly one believes it to be so. Period. That’s one reason I’m glad I live in a “one party” state, where anyone who is party to a conversation can record that conversation with or without permission from the other parties (unless one is acting in concert with or as an agent of law enforcement, in which case either prior permission or a warrant, etc. is rerquired for recording). And I do carry a pocket recorder any time I feel I may have need of documentation of a conversation. While my recall is excellent, whenever I focus on mentally “recording” events, documentation in the form of a recording of a conversation with a service person, for example, can be a compelling resource in case of discrepancies in recollection.

And the truth (real truth, not some “higher level” of truth) is almost always a perfect defense when falsely accused of anything. Almost. Our society no longer has as great a respect for truth as it once may have… thanks to the spreading of the lie that there are levels of truth.

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The Three R’s

An antidote for the trials and tribulations we face today is… more trial and tribulation, as found in the “Three R’s”–Reading, Righting and Revolution.

One of the biggest barriers to good governance nowadays is the ignorance of the People. The answer to that is to teach the People to read. No, not just how to read but to read. And not to read just the poisonous pap they find in Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind rags but to read history. And not just to read history but to read the actual documents of history: the documents of our nation’s roots and its founding, extending at least as far back as the Magna Carta, first and foremost.

Then we need to be serious about righting the wrongs of a government grown bloated and overbearing, that neglects its principal duties and besets its citizens with oppression. A good pruning is sorely needed.

But those two steps will take a revolution, I fear, or rather, will be a revolution the like of which our political elites–in government, Mass Media Hivemind and Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries–will not easily allow.

Think: the generation that was inspired by the Boston Tea Party had not passed when George Washington–the Father of our country, as he is rightly styled–put down the Whiskey Rebellion, which was nothing but another “tea party” protesting oppressive and unfair government taxation. (Note that George Washington’s whiskey production was, like others of his class, taxed at only 2/3 the rate of poor Western farmers’ whiskey. Therein, and in the earlier shameful response to the so-called “Shay’s Rebellion”, I fear, was the seed of Elite Oppression of the People sown even in those early days of the republic… *sigh*)

It would be a Good Thing if we were able to effect the Three R’s by means of personal influence and see the real revolution take place at the polling booth, but even then, it may well take more than JUST personal influence and voting, the way the “community organizers” of the left have devised such slick ways to steal votes.

Interesting times.

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More for “The Unthinking Masses”

It’s the little things. Inability to discern between “same,” “different,” “similar” and other such general classes is a hallmark of society’s sheeple. Those who cannot count past two without the aid of an external device, set the time on their microwave, or tell the difference between two similar but different classes (“politicians” and “public servants,” for example) are a large reason why our ever more democratized (ruled by mob) society is headed toward the ash heap of history.

Take this simple, rather innocuous, example of a failure to differentiate (discriminate) between two similar but very different things:

“…the name Sweet’N’Low comes from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem of the same name…”

The same name?

SWEET and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon, and blow,
Blow him again to me;
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

Nope. Not “the same name” but “Sweet and low”. Similar but different.

Of course, “Sweet’N’Low” is close enough for government work…

And that’s a problem. The “government work” performed by sheeple every time they vote relies on just such quotidian sloppiness of thought and inability to distinguish between classes and objects. Besides, who would trust people elected by those who can’t even set the clock on their microwaves?

Continue reading “More for “The Unthinking Masses””

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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.

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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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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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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.

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An American Hope

Go and read Bobby Jindal’s response to The Obamassiah’s most recent pack of lies, hand waving and subtle deceptions (known in other circles as a “State of the Union Address”). Here’s a sample:

To strengthen our economy, we must promote confidence in America by ensuring ours is the most ethical and transparent system in the world. In my home state, there used to be saying: At any given time, half of Louisiana was said to be half under water, and the other half is under indictment. No one says that anymore. Last year, we passed some of the strongest ethics laws in the nation and today, Louisiana has turned her back on the corruption of the past. We need to bring transparency to Washington, D.C., so we can rid our Capitol of corruption and ensure we never see the passage of another trillion dollar spending bill that Congress has not even read and the American people haven’t even seen.[emphasis added]

I said in 2004 that Jindal was a strong future presidential candidate. After his performance since then–both in Congress and as Louisiana’s governor–I’d be perfectly happy to see a 2012 presidential slate that included two highly effective governors: Jindal and Palin, and though I’d prefer Jindal at the top of the ticket, I would be happy with Palin there, as long as someone of Jindal’s character were backstopping her.

Continue reading “An American Hope”

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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.

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Economic Education: Mac vs. PC

Sometimes tough economic times do wake folks up a bit:

Mac Sales Growth Falls Below PCs

At U.S. retail, Windows PC unit sales were up 16.6 percent year over year in January, while Mac sales fell 5.5 percent. In October, when Apple launched snazzy, new MacBooks, Mac unit sales rose 27.2 percent compared with 5.7 percent for Windows. The major difference for the two months between: a rapidly eroding U.S. economy.

The article includes Mac apologist comments about folks fleeing “value” over the issue of “price,” but that’s a bogus argument. Sure, there are times when a luxury Mercedes is the right car for the job, but if all you’re doing is getting to work and back, trips to the grocery store, etc., then a MOR Toyota or even Saturn is just as good.

But the quality difference between a $500 PC and a $1,000 (or usually more) Mac just isn’t as big as the Macultists argue. And the PC platform is still much, much more flexible and has apps that are just as good–even sometimes better–than the Mac platform has available, no matter what phanbois may say.

Personally, I’d rather have the difference in price to spend on more software and peripherals, but that’s just me. Folks who’d rather spend more to use a Mac can still do so, and that’s fine with me too. But apparently, more buyers of computers are seeing the value in having more money in their pocket for other things at the end of their computer purchase.