Dirty Tricks

Mickey Kantor: Not Guilty.

That’s the considered opinion of our experts (me, myself and I) here at twc central. The fact that the Clintoonistas are among the most accomplished dirty politicians of all time doesn’t excuse the YouTube fakery that had Mickey Kantor, a Clintoonista operative in 1992, calling Indianans “white n*****s”. twc central finds Mickey Kantor Not Guilty and says “Fie on you, you dirty bugger!” to the creep who faked the video/transcription *heh* (no link provided–you can find the thing on your own if you’re so inclined).

Throw all the Clintoonistas in the fires of the hell of their own making, if you want, but don’t make false accusations against them, because it only lowers those who do to the Clintoonistas’ level.


Trackposted to Pooh Flinging NeoCons, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Allie is Wired, Woman Honor Thyself, and The World According to Carl, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

On Liberty

Back in the day when there were liberals on The Left, liberty was a concept that was much-valued by those who called themselves liberals. When I was but a lad, as the expression used to go, I exposed myself to John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty, which dealt not so much with liberty of conscience or of will but liberty as exercised by individuals within the civil realm, in the social order. Of course liberty of conscience and social liberty are closely related, but Mill made clear that freedom to express oneself in the marketplace of ideas was a different thing to liberty of conscience.

Those who call themselves liberals nowadays seem to have forgotten any kind of liberty in their pursuit of extirpating all discourse that challenges their dogma in the areas of

homosexual behavior/priviledges

pseudo-scientific dogma in everything from Darwinism to anthropogenic global warming

economic suppositions

statist control of private matters

property rights

education

religion

and just about all other areas that touch our lives.

Of several things that Mill said in his famous essay that influenced much of my behavior during my formative years, two stand out: his comment that truth need not fear debate and that we must always be wary of the tyranny of prevailing opinion stifling debate.

A simple example to demonstrate that the typical soi-disant “liberal” of today is no such critter is Algore’s response to those who would challenge his AGW position with… facts.

“There’s no more debate. We face a planetary emergency. . . . There is no more scientific debate among serious people who’ve looked at the evidence.”

Funny thing, that “no more debate” meme he seems intent, along with other AGW dogmatists, on making fact: real scientists (as opposed to AGW dogmatists) are debating it, examining the facts and the hypotheses. You can find links to quite a few real scientists (AGW dogmatists simply dismiss real scientists as “deniers”) who have some inconvenient facts to discuss with Mr. Gore here, although anyone who can type “google” can find many, many more references (including this one–pdf, and do note the creds the interviewee has that Algore lacks).

Cutting off (or shouting down) debate on an issue to avoid having to deal with facts is the mark of a weak argument, which says a lot about most fake liberals’ arguments.

I do encourage you to track down (there, that wasn’t so hard, was it?) and read a copy of Mill’s essay, On Liberty. I have my copy, first read as a wee lad *heh*, within reach of my right hand, as I have had for many years. You might find it useful to purchase a hardcopy for marking and note-taking (it’s interesting to me to go back and read my “arguments” with Mill and see how they have changed over the years).

BTW, Mill’s arguments concerning liberty bear very closely on an upcoming post on authority, one I keep deferring but need to write soon.


Trackposted to Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Faultline USA, Nuke Gingrich, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Wolf Pangloss, Democrat=Socialist, A Newt One, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

“News” from The Onion: Diebold Leak

*heh*


Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

I particularly appreciate the “If you can’t trust your Shadowy Overlords to keep a secret, what is the purpose, really, of voting in a public democracy?” line. Very funny. Sad (because it voices something all too close to a looming reality), but funny.

One of the follow-on ads is ridiculous, though: “…Poverty May Be the Key to Eliminating Polo”? Nah. Once they have the rest of us firmly pidgeonholed as peasants, the ricos will have no problem detailing serfs to pooper-scoop their polo fields…


THIS is an open trackbacks post. Link to THIS post and track back. 🙂

If you have a linkfest/open trackback post to promote OR if you simply want to promote a post via the linkfests/open trackback posts others are offering, GO TO LINKFEST HAVEN DELUXE! Just CLICK the link above or the graphic immediately below.

Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis

If you want to host your own linkfests but have not yet done so, check out the Open Trackbacks Alliance. The FAQ there is very helpful in understanding linkfests/open trackbacks.

Those who do not learn from history…

…are doomed to repeat it.

Sadly, this is not necessarily true. I’ll get out the “splainsit stick” in a bit to expound on that.

/curmudgeon’s rant: on

George Washington was not the first president of the United States. Seriously. Now, I know many would deride such a comment as silly, even those who already know, as any student of American history knows, that John Hanson was the first president of the United States of America under the Articles of Confederacy, because some do not believe the United States existed before the Constitution of 1787-1789.

Pish-tosh. If the United States of America did not exist before then, then what entity was it that foreign governments treated with under that name? What authority paid troops, what authority issued the Great Seal of the United States in 1782, if the United States did not exist until the Constitution of 1787 was ratified?

Why is it important that we acknowledge that there were seven presidents before George Washington, despite the naysayers who wrongly assert there was no United States until the 1789 ratification of the 1787 Constitution? Because the Articles of Confederacy form the backbone of the fleshed-out Constitution, just as the Declaration of Independence describes the blood that flows through its veins.

Oh, dear me! Did I just make an allusion to a “living document”? Continue reading “Those who do not learn from history…”

Black Racism as an Employment Opportunity

[See Update below!]

This quote, leading off a post at The American Thinker Digest** is telling, in light of that elite class of professional black racists such as that ole devil Jeremiah Wright:

There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do do not want to lose their jobs. – Booker T. Washington

[h.t. Chaos Manor Mail]

But lest we be too easily sidetracked, professional black racists aren’t the only “shattering class” intent on Balkanizing American society. Hyper-angry homosexual activists (falsely claiming to be “gay”) with permanent chips on their shoulders; shrill harridans masquerading as seeking to level the playinmg field for women… while doing a poor job of hiding the fact that their real intent is simply to emasculate men; these and others have as their genuine goals to leech off society while dragging it down to their levels.

And all these professional whiners and gripers and bigots “contribute” to society is the obfuscation of genuine issues facing our country, issues they all love and want to become worse in order to capitalize on the difficulties of others:

a genuine education crisis resulting from an ever more stupid (or evil?) application of the “Lake Wobegon Principle”

an economic/business model ever more designed to create an atmosphere that will lead to a class of elite lording over peasants

burgeoning government interference in genuinely private matters that are none of ANY government’s business

the erasure of our country’s borders, its identity as a representative democratic republic (based on an uniquely English body of law leading to the greatest freedom from tyranny any people in history have had), and its culture as a bastion of Western Civilization

These and more are genuine issues facing our nation, genuine issues that are being buried under an onslaught of political, social and cultural Balkanization.

Enough is more than enough of this B.S.

The next time you hear someone put forth a candidate for a job, a political office or even for hearing out in argument because of their race, sex, or other divisive and irrelevant characteristic as part of a particular tribe of grievance whiners, just say, “Bullshit!”

After the shock dies down (and quickly, before the charges of “Racist!” or “Misogynist!”–Oops. Forgot that nearly all pseudo-feminist prefessional or semi-professional whiners are too subliterate to use such a word. Instead, they’d likely (still, again) misuse “chauvinist*” in some way–or whatever other bigotted slur) quickly enumerate your reasons for despising the bigotry inherent in “special groups need/deserve special attention” meme.


UPDATE: This, from a recent column by Thomas Sowell:

There is no reason why someone as arrogant, foolishly clever and ultimately dangerous as Barack Obama should become president — especially not at a time when the threat of international terrorists with nuclear weapons looms over 300 million Americans.

Many people seem to regard elections as occasions for venting emotions, like cheering for your favorite team or choosing a Homecoming Queen.

The three leading candidates for their party’s nomination are being discussed in terms of their demographics — race, sex and age — as if that is what the job is about.

Indeed. Pretty much my take. My short form interpretation of Sowell’s comment: Why elect an “affirmative action” president whose qualifications are sub-par?


[*Yeh, I am aware that nearly 38 years of misappropriation, particularly by faux feminists, has degraded the sense of the word from that describing the hyper-patriotic views of the apocryphal Nicholas Chauvin. And I am aware of the intellectual dishonesty of those who so misused the word. ]

**Update: Observant readers will note that vanderleun corrected my misidentification of the opening quote source. Although, I must note for the record that my mistake was entirely natural, since the site does show some thoughtful reasoning. Regardless what’s being digested over there, the writing is certainly evidence that at least one American is thinking. 🙂


Trackposted to The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Faultline USA, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Reason #1,546,328 “Why I Love the Internet”

I’ve commented before about the availability of really high-quality reads on the internet–for free, no less.

There are things like Project Gutenberg, where one can freely read or download for offline reading any of thousands of public domain works–literally a lifetime of reading if one wishes.

Then there is “MIT OpenCourseWare [which] makes the course materials that are used in the … all MIT’s undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the Web, free of charge…” FREE courses. From MIT. Wonderful!

And I’ve also mentioned before that one can read many of the books available from the Chicago University Press for free online, books like The Founders’ Constitution which retails for $475 (and can be bought for anywhere from $80 for a not so good used copy all the way up to retail). For free, though… online. (And once again, I HIGHLY recommend The Founders’ Constitution for all American citizens and citizen wannabes. Highly recommended. Very highly. Seriously.)

Other books available there as well, such as biographies (a great book on Fred Hoyle, for example), history, and more, much more.

And then there are singular finds sprinkled all over the web. One such is find number 1,546,328 (approx. :-)): Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset, an amazingly prescient work written in 1930 (from lectures/essays dating earlier). Consider this extremely short excerpt from Ortega y Gasset’s introduction to the work:

The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will. As they say in the United States: “to be different is to be indecent.” The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated. And it is clear, of course, that this “everybody” is not “everybody.” “Everybody” was normally the complex unity of the mass and the divergent, specialised minorities. Nowadays, “everybody” is the mass alone. Here we have the formidable fact of our times, described without any concealment of the brutality of its features.

“…the brutality of its features” indeed.

May I seriously commend this book to your attention? Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset may be a dense read for those not enamored of the rather pedantic tone it sometimes assumes, and Ortega y Gasset’s view of the accomplishments of the common man may shock contemporary American sensibilities, but in this day and age where the democratic urges the Founders rightly feared are wreaking havoc on our society as a whole, it’s a very important read.

And it’s available for free on the web. Amazing. Dontcha just love the internet?


Trackposted to Maggie’s Notebook, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Democrat=Socialist, , CORSARI D’ITALIA, Dumb Ox Daily News, Conservative Cat, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

A Dilbertian Metacommentary

A CLICK ON Terms of Use at Dilbert.com yields a metacommentary on life, and all that…

The wonderful world of Dilbert, indeed.


THIS is an open trackbacks post. Link to THIS post and track back. 🙂

If you have a linkfest/open trackback post to promote OR if you simply want to promote a post via the linkfests/open trackback posts others are offering, GO TO LINKFEST HAVEN DELUXE! Just CLICK the link above or the graphic immediately below.

Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis

If you want to host your own linkfests but have not yet done so, check out the Open Trackbacks Alliance. The FAQ there is very helpful in understanding linkfests/open trackbacks.

Former (I like saying that) President Clinton Flayed for Rare Moment of Truth

Of course, he followed his rare moment of truth with an out and out lie the next day, but give the poor brain-damaged guy some credit will ya?

“The Interview” is all over the web, and even Mass Media Podpeople are following it up (to give as much help to Obama as possible, of course):

“The Denial” is all over the place, as well (again, in order to boost Obama as much as possible–it’s so petty that it adds nothing to the Clinton reputation for lies):

Of course Obama’s been playing the “race card” all along. As has The Hildebeast. Just two separate camps of bigots acting out their racist agendas.

But attacking a mentally disabled guy for speaking the truth (even though he later stupidly denied it–heart-surgery-induced brain damage at work, no doubt) is just not nice.

*heh*


THIS is an open trackbacks post. Link to THIS post and track back. 🙂

If you have a linkfest/open trackback post to promote OR if you simply want to promote a post via the linkfests/open trackback posts others are offering, GO TO LINKFEST HAVEN DELUXE! Just CLICK the link above or the graphic immediately below.

Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis

If you want to host your own linkfests but have not yet done so, check out the Open Trackbacks Alliance. The FAQ there is very helpful in understanding linkfests/open trackbacks.


Trackposted to Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Leaning Straight Up, and Conservative Cat, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Make War on “The War on Terror”

Seriously, folks, is there a stupider phrase than “War on Terror”? Think about it. What?!?! We’re making “war” on an emotion? “War on TerrorISM” would be pretty easy to live with, but “War on Terror” is just plain stupid.

Make war on “War on Terror” by refusing to use the idiotic phrase. Poke fun at it and at people who use it unthinkingly. Blow them all a big, fat, juicy raspberry.

Just stop the senseless butchering of the English language.


THIS is an open trackbacks post. Link to THIS post and track back. 🙂

If you have a linkfest/open trackback post to promote OR if you simply want to promote a post via the linkfests/open trackback posts others are offering, GO TO LINKFEST HAVEN DELUXE! Just CLICK the link above or the graphic immediately below.

Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis

If you want to host your own linkfests but have not yet done so, check out the Open Trackbacks Alliance. The FAQ there is very helpful in understanding linkfests/open trackbacks.


Trackposted to Celebrity Smack, The Pink Flamingo, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Adam’s Blog, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

We Need This Man for Emperor

*heh*

Well, either him or his clone, thinking exactly as he does.

Example, a snippet dealing with education, Darwinism and Intelligent Design:

“So long as the idea of scientific method — the generation and testing of falsifiable hypotheses — is shown, I don’t have any great worries that bright kids won’t figure out their own answers to matters like intelligent design; and I don’t really care if my auto mechanic believes in his heart of hearts that he was divinely created and endowed by his creators with certain inalienable rights as opposed to his having evolved from bonobos without attention from his creator. I do worry that he knows how to read the output of the computer test equipment, and that he can figure out what the funny squeak is…

“…Mandating the “correct” position and requiring local schools to adopt that is a more dangerous principle than teaching an alternative to Darwin, without regard to whether Darwin is “really true” and belief in Darwin is so fragile that teaching an alternative would undermine belief in Natural Selection. I am not convinced that there is a school district that would teach “flat earth” as an alternative to the conventional wisdom, but if there were, I do not think the republic would fall if that were allowed. There would be ridicule and merriment and mirth, but I doubt the consequences would be much greater than that.”

Read more at the link and here as well.

Heck, go a little further than Dr. Pournelle’s very calm and reasonable argument and (BUY AND) read James P. Hogan’s, Kicking the Sacred Cow. Hogan may go to extremes at times in his aversion for Dogmatic Science practiced as a religion, not science, but he marshalls his facts pretty convincingly in an accessible presentation for laymen.

Similarly to Hogan, it really chaps my gizzard to see purely religious views presented as “science”–and conversely to see religious views denigrated because they are not scientific. As my old chemistry prof was wont to say, the two manners of approaching reality deal with entirely different sets of questions and using the thinking of “blind faith” in science is just as stupid as attempting to use scientific reasoning to prove/disprove matters of faith.

Science cannot ultimately even ask or answer real “why” questions, just as religion cannot deal satisfactorily with “how” questions. ANd people who cannot see the differences in the two manners of thinking and the sets of questions they can effectively deal with are just dumber than a bag of hammers, no matter how high their IQ may test or how much alphabet soup they may string after their names.


Trackposted to Maggie’s Notebook, Right Truth, Adam’s Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, Cao’s Blog, Conservative Cat, D equals S, McCain Blogs, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Celebrity Smack, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.