Why I don't read "Conservative" media.

Wonkette : Important Editorial: If Stephen Hawking Lived In The U.K., He Would Be Dead

You know where Stephen Hawking has lived for 67 years? England. Again: England. England. And this is why an editorial from the “Investors Business Daily” about Obama trying to kill Trig Palin for having Down Syndrome, one that was cited favorably in a Human Events press release today, has become the stuff from which humor-jokes are made on the Internet: “People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.” [IBD, Atlanta J-C, Ezra Klein]

I have a very simple requirement for my primary sources. I can account for bias, and if one source leaves out an "inconvenient" fact, I'm sure I'll be able to find it somewhere else. But what I absolutely cannot tolerate is being lied to, and if it's done in a way that could easily set me up for personal embarrassment and ridicule for days afterward... well. That source gets roundfiled.

After all, if I have to fact-check every freakin' link before trusting it, what's the point in even reading it?

Just imagine how many thousands of FORMER WND readers were gleefully ambushed at the water-cooler when they plopped out this rhetorical gem to "prove" how "Evil Socialism" would have killed Steven Hawking, had he suffered from Evil Socialist Health Care. In England. Where He Lives.

One fave twitter comment I saw in passing... "But he doesn't have an English accent!"

Let this be an example of why stupidity is so fucking dangerous. Well, if the burning pain of personal humiliation can illustrate WHY you need to have reliable and trustworthy information sources, perhaps it's done some good.

But not the "good" they had in mind. Which, you know, is better known as "evil."

Now, a rhetorical question. This is supposedly a site that gives out financial advice. They are stating as facts a number of lies and distortions that, should you believe it, would tend to be of gigantic financial benefit to the insurance and pharma sectors.

What are the chances that their direct investment advice is more honest, unbiased and truthful?

That's a rhetorical question, by the way. If you have to ask someone that sort of question, there's no point in believing the answer.

Illustration: citation needed by Anisotropy

John Batchelor: Sane Conservative on Radio?

There may be a sane conservative speaking on radio! He has a well-attended blog at The Daily Beast. Here's the quote that captured my attention.

If the Republican Party existed except as a club of groupies and roadies for the rabble-rousers on radio and cable, it would rouse itself from its narcotized self-satisfaction of second best and give a speech that the Turfers, Birthers Tea-Baggers and all the other amateurs of dissent must sit down and listen to the reason of statesmanship or else leave the halls of Congress. The GOP would tell the snipers that this is a somber, modest political party, not a cruise ship to the seventh grade. Somewhere in the outline of this speech, this make-believe worthwhile Republican Party would include the language of liberty and restraint. And then this never to be given speech by a non-existent leader to the never again to be dignified Republicans would build to a quiet conclusion that very much resembles Edmund Burke. "But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.”

John Batchelor is radio host of the John Batchelor Show in New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

***
Ordinarily, I think of my Zazzles as being illustrations more than products. I have sold a number of these posters, but honestly speaking, they are of interest to a rather narrow range of political junkie. However, if you were planning on attending a health care town meeting as a legitimate conservative who intended to ask real questions in the expectation of getting real answers in return, one of these would help separate you from the swastika-sliming idiots.

I happened to notice they are on sale, so get two and bring a friend.

In your heart, you know he's pissed! by webcarve See more posters at Zazzle

Buy 1 Poster Get 1 FREE! (50% off 2+ posters) Use code: BTSPOSTERS09

T-shirts are available if you find that more convenient. I have one featuring this design on the front with a quote from Goldwater on the reverse that seems trenchantly prophetic:

In your heart, you know he's pissed! by webcarve
See more Republican T-Shirts

House Hippos - An Example for Our Times.

A Classic Canadian public service commercial that advises children that they can't believe everything they see on Television.

It could probably go with out saying that house-hippos are far less dangerous to have underfoot that Becks and Limbaughs - but things that go without saying don't really fit into my blogging reality.

Oh, and I don't just want one house hippo. I want three.

The National Rebuke

Darth Seditious T-Shirt by webcarve

Rush Limbaugh demands to be the tar-soaked "anchor baby" of the Republican base. It's initially surprising how quickly this has become an issue - until you think about it. Because the only way to deal with this effectively would be to truthfully explain why exactly Rush does not represent the best interests of the republican party.

This, of course, would require discussing who and what those "interests" are. And somehow, nobody seems able to go there.

The "close your eyes and think of England" approach to dismissing reasoned arguments worked well enough when there actually were a few small, crumpled bills left on the nightstand after a distateful encounter. But it becomes entirely unpersuasive when the cash is replaced with an invoice for "services rendered."

In point of practical fact, it is no longer reasonably possible to expect anyone arguing a conservative case to be presumed an honest broker, faithfully expressing a defensible idea derived from fact and experience. There is now a very high bar to that presumption, and it has been put in place and jacked very high by the the pollution of the commons with fools demanding we give their stupid, provably dishonest and outright hateful speech the same respect reasoned arguments, well founded economics and solid scientific evidence deserve.

And yet the whining of the extreme right wing gets louder and louder, almost paradoxically, as more and more persons of intelligence dissociate themselves from associating themselves with embarrassingly public willful stupidity.

When a freshman republican has to joke that they might be a "closet democrat" in a clear attempt to gain an initial presumption of sanity, things are sad indeed. Of course, for his sins, he was forced to vote with the party against his judgement and that of his New Oreleans constituancy and for that, he's facing a recall petition. Maybe he should just come out of that closet.

Even four years ago, there were a great many more literate and persuasive voices on the Right, and what once were staunch bastions of rigorous conservative thought now content themselves with taking republican talking points and recasting them in bigger words.

I for one am intensely suspicious of people so conspicuously trying to blow smoke up my ass as that NRO piece, cited above. Insulting my intelligence in service of my vanity - well, perhaps I'm some sort of curmugeonly exception. With the NRO and other old line media sharply losing influence and revenue - perhaps I'm not as exceptional as all that.

There is only so much stupidity and self-congratulatory foolishness one can tolerate in service of any cause before one starts to question whether the cause itself is worth going down with.



I just wrote the following as a response in a digg thread and realized it made for a proper summation and a likely explanation as to why popular opinion has tilted so sharply and suddenly toward the center.

It's fallacious to assume that people are being dugg down or dugg up purely for partisan agreement or disagreement. It's fallacious on two levels. First, it reveals magical thinking - that an assumption about the internal motives of another is valid, when you actually have nothing to go on but a very minor behavior.

All you know is that the argument was found unpersuasive on the whole. Individual comments may help you determine the overall consensus about the worth of your argument, but of course the comments ARE made by individuals. You need a very large sample to make any useful presumption of motivation.

The second fallacy here is the presumption that both arguments are of equal merit. Never mind which arguments - this is true of any argument, or debate, and digg is explicitly set up to judge individual reactions to the merit of a post.

But we do not know why a point succeeds or fails with any individual. Nor, in many ways, do we actually care.

A debate or a discussion is a means to reach a consensus. In many ways, the exact consensus does not matter all that much.

However, there are cases where public policy has not respected the national consensus, because some factions of our culture have undue influence. Again, I'm not speaking to when, where, or what. I only point out that if you look back on history, a conspicuous disrespect for consensus has never worked out well, and the more conspicuously that disrespect favors the monied classes against people who are abused as direct or side effect to the concentration of power, the more reasonable it seems to the average man to kill them and take their stuff.

The Founders of the US Republic, being highly literate students of history, saw this as a problem - from the viewpoint of people who had nice stuff they felt they would like to keep.

I do not think it prudent to neglect such wisdom.

Ron Paul Rings True on the Issues

The Disciples of Ron Paul, Spreading the Word in N.H. - washingtonpost.com

Have you ever heard the expression, 'What's wrong is right and what's right is wrong?' " Aitken, the retired art teacher, asks. "We've been doing things that are so wrong for so long that the right thing for some might feel freaky. Sometimes you have to stop and think, 'Okay, this is my conviction.' " (closing paragraph)

This month, the 10-term Texas Republican stunned the GOP field by raising a little more than $5 million in the third quarter, 70 percent of it from online donations; Sen. John McCain, once considered the front-runner for the GOP nomination, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who placed a strong second in the Iowa straw poll in August, raised $6 million and $1 million, respectively. For months now, Paul has been the most popular GOP candidate on the Web, with more supporters on MySpace, Facebook and Meetup than Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney, who won the Iowa straw poll and leads in the polls here.

"Everyone -- the staffers in the other campaigns, the bigwig political observers in the state -- is scratching their heads. They don't know what to make of this Ron Paul phenomenon," pollster Smith says. A University of New Hampshire poll last month showed Paul at 4 percent in the state. The most recent Washington Post-ABC News national poll, also from last month, had him at 3 percent. "The other campaigns aren't worried that he'd win the primary. They just don't know who his supporters are and whose support he's taking away," Smith adds. "His poll numbers aren't high now, but it's only October. And they could see him getting 10 percent of the vote here. If you get 10 percent of the vote in a crowded field, well, you might finish third." But the Paulites are aiming for higher than third place.

And it doesn't even occur to them to wonder if it might be that the problem is not that Ron Paul is an exceptional spokesperson for his ideals of small, limited, ethical and constitutional government, but that the other Republican are such a mixed bag of lousy, triangulating, scheming, lying, conniving pandering jokes that a man who might seem unremarkable and even a bit dotty in the company of a Roosevelt, a Kennedy or a Goldwater is seen as a literal giant towering over the mental and moral midgets sharing the stage with him.

By the modern standards of Republicanism, he's not a very good one. But then, that's the problem right there - and a hell of a lot of Republicans are wondering how the hell a Republican administration could get them into debt and into war with so little attention to the inevitable price of such folly.

Yet the current crop compete to compare themselves, not with Barry Goldwater, or even the saner and more centrist Richard Nixon - who'd be a Democrat today - but with that champion of Voodoo Economics and Feelgoodism, Ronald Regan.

Meanwhile there's a really troubling thought going around the nation, largely left unspoken but apparent in all quarters. What will Hillary do if she gets the Democratic nomination - and the Presidency?

She's thought of as being the most liberal - but she's the farthest to the Left. And those are two different concepts entirely. The way she's praised the President's war and his domestic surveillance with faint and perfectly triangulated damnations, I find it difficult to be confident that she will gladly return all the extra executive powers Bush has arrogated unto himself, nor will she see any way toward "healing the nation" other than centralized bureaucracies.

Now, unlike most Libertarians, I actually believe that one can have an efficient, professional and ethical civil service. I have been to Canada, and I know that in some countries, when a man from the government shows up at your door, they probably ARE there to help you.

But ... this is Ahumurika. And it would take an act of God, not merely Congress to change the culture of our civil service to the point where bigger would be anything resembling better.

Just ask anyone who has ever been in personal contact WITH our government, pretty much at any level, with any personal stake in the matter. The best you can expect is to waste an entire day waiting in an office designed with malice aforethought to crush the spirits and steal the souls of all so unfortunate or foolish as to step within them, even in search of a public restroom.

All them "Libruls" who praise, say, Medicare and Medicaid for it's remarkable efficiency and ruthless cost reductions have never been in contact WITH either program - or any competitor. Trust me when I tell you, as a Canadian-American, you do not want universal health care that is based in ANY way upon Medicare or Medicaid.

Some people refer to even those programs as "socialized medicine." I refer to them as "Stalinized Medicine." You see, socialized medicine comes with one assumption, that universal health care is of social benefit.

Medicare and Medicaid presume that all their clients are of little or no social utility, that giving them any medical attention at all (much less than the care they actually medically require) is more than they deserve, and that treating clients (and doctors) with anything other than suspicious contempt and a level of compliance enforcement and auditing that is generally reserved for things like ebola viruses and weapons grade plutonium. Their costs are low because they offload all the costs onto the few doctors that actually accept medicare and medicaid.

These are usually clinics and doctors that you would not want to go to. I mean, you would really, really prefer not to go. You might prefer consulting your local curando than trust your health to the disease incubators they laughingly refer to as "reception areas."

I actually want a universal access system that is free for those who are poor and affordable for everyone. I definitely want the government putting pressure on the costs of the system - many of which are deliberately extortionate. I want it simple and I want it to be easy, because sick people should not have to jump through hoops, nor should physicians be second guessed by bean-counters about appropriate treatments.

Plainly speaking, before we develop a new system of payment to overlay on our current healthcare industry, we should question whether it should be an industry at all. Shouldn't it be a profession, like education? Something seen as an inherent, inarguable social good that is one of a very short list of things government should do and be expected to do well?

Don't we deserve a government that sees every single citizen as being of value, deserving respect? Of course, we would have to ensure that the respect is mutual, and that government service was seen as a calling worthy of respect, not the last resort of idologues, cronies, losers and mental basket cases. CF "Education."

I believe in a small, limited, competant and efficient government, one dedicated to governing and regulating as little as possible, but doing what they actually do very, very well indeed. I want to be happy to pay my taxes because I get my money's worth.

And I don't think it's been possible to say that since... well I don't remember a time in my life where I was conscious of politics and government that I didn't consider it a gigantic waste of time, money, paper, effort and manpower to achieve results that were no better than that which a moderately retarded fifth grader with a decent education could have come up with on their own.

You see, it's not HARD to do that. We have a Constitution that's specifically designed to lead us to that very outcome, designed to strikingly limit the ability of Government to meddle with our private affairs and the public arrangements of the various States. It was intended to be a central FACILITY, not a Central Authority.

And when you start looking at it that way, you see all kinds of things it does badly, many things it should be doing, but doesn't, but above all it's impossible to ignore that it's gotten damned uppity and there are all kinds of folks in it that, while not properly qualified to give you change for a ten-spot, think they understand economic policy better than you or me.

I'm not saying that with the idea that we know better. I'm saying that in thinking they know more, they have actually achieved negative results.

People call Ron Paul dotty for calling for a return to "hard money," but when you start looking into it, you realize that all that means is that he's calling for a medium of exchange that government cannot mess with. He's calling for a return to one of the most fundamental duties of government, setting a standard of value for commercial exchanges that applies to all market activities.

When the dollar is "adjusted" against gold, it doesn't mean that the actual value of the gold has changed. It's worth what it's worth, based on a steady commodity demand. So when your dollar is mysteriously worth less gold than it was last Tuesday, that's what you call "theft."

In fact, our entire central banking system is a necessity that serves as a fig leaf for what must be the most massive fraud in existence; the Federal Reserve essentially pulls money out of the air. It's technically related, vaguely, to the return on government bonds and other indicators - though I darkly suspect that it's a designedly complex system intended to hide within it the essential core truth that a US Dollar is only worth what you believe it's worth - other than it's value as a recyclable material.

Now, nobody likes thinking about it, because we value everything in dollars - including human life and our own self-worth. So the idea that our entire economy is based upon debt and promises you would consider dubious coming from your brother-in-law is troubling, and in general, we prefer to not think about it. Really, Really Hard.

But for saying that real money based on a real commodity with a real, measurable value unaffected by and not bound to debt is a better way, Ron Paul is dismissed as a nut.

But what would you prefer to have in your hand, a silver dollar - Constitutionally set at one troy ounce of coin silver - or a promise that a coupon you hold will be honored at your local merchant according to an arbitrary value assigned to it in the money markets that day?

As it happens, nobody will ever trade you a one ounce silver coin for a one dollar US Federal Reserve note. And that indicates that ever since we went off the gold standard, our medium of exchange has lost touch with economic reality.

Of all the Republican candidates, Ron Paul is the only one in close enough touch with reality to offer any sort of credible alternative. And that includes hard, cold, metallic truths such as this.

Money that does not have a real world value allows all kinds of economic shenanigans dear to the hearts of bankers and politicians - and that is precisely why we need to have a medium of exchange that can be independently verified as worth what it is worth.

Ron Paul - like hard money - rings true. That often means he says things you won't like hearing. But that's the test of truth, and we have collectively enjoyed the opposite since 1981.

Peace and the power of Intent.

I just got a note from my good friend, Jim Wallis, and I'd like to share it with you. It touches me that we seem to be on a first-name basis.

Ok, it's a mass mailing, but he has a point and I'd like to share it with you.

Dear Bob,

Jesus said to them, "This kind can come out only through prayer." (Mark 9:29) Let Congress know you're praying for them to end the war in Iraq.

Next week, Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will report to Congress on the troop "surge," in which the Bush administration has escalated the war in Iraq by sending an additional 20,000 American combat troops.

As people of faith, we believe in the power of prayer to soften the hardest of hearts and open the way to peace and reconciliation. So, as General Petraeus testifies, we're planning to match his surge with one of our own–20,000 prayers for Congress to bring an end to this war.

Click here to share your prayer with Congress–let them know that you're praying for their courage and wisdom to end this war.

We are at a critical moment, as the House and Senate decide on our nation's continued involvement in Iraq amidst a frenzy of swirling accusations and partisan rhetoric.

But while the Bush administration has frequently abused the language of scripture to justify this disastrous war, a growing number of Christians from across the theological and political spectrum are coming together to oppose it.

And our nation's political leaders are listening–in fact, we've spoken to several members of Congress who are considering reading a selection of your prayers for peace into the Congressional Record.

Like many of you, I've opposed this war from the start, and together we've raised a prophetic voice against it–marching in the streets, writing letters, and much more.

We'll continue to do all of that, but I believe it will also take faith to end this war. It will take prayer to end it. It will take a revolution of love to end it, because this endless war in Iraq is based ultimately on fear, and the Bible tells us that only perfect love will cast out fear.

Will you be a part of this surge of prayer for peace? Click here to let your Senators and Representative know that you're praying for them.

In times such as these, we ought to remember the words of the Apostle Paul:

Do not worry about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)

Blessings,

Jim Wallis and the rest of the team at Sojourners/Call to Renewal

P.S. To reach 20,000 prayers by next week, we'll need your help. Can you share this message with 10 of your friends, family, and congregation members, asking them to join us in this campaign?

Jim is speaking to fellow Evangelical Christians, and so in a way, he's "speaking in tongues." But it's not that hard to translate, so let me just say that it matters little what, if any religion or faith you follow. What matters in efforts like this is intent.

As it happens, I grew up in the usual way in these United States - Sort of Christian. Between my mother's religious quest for simple answers and my father's dedication to the path of personal selfishness, I was exposed to both credulity and cynicism about spirituality. Naturally, I rejected both and made my own explorations, finding that when examined, there is a great deal to be said for Christian faith - if you ignore most of those most willing to provide ready reference cards to make it "easier to understand."

It's really not that complicated. Indeed, it's taken over 2000 years and the lives of thousands of dedicated theologians to obscure the Bible's ethos to the extent we see to day, where it's a matter of faith that God approves of blowing up random brown people in His Or Her Name. But this is not so much about faith or ethics as it is about ritual and intent - and for ritual and intent, there are no good Protestant sources, other than the Episcopal Church - and even there, the idea that there is a point and intent to the ritual has largely been lost. This is true for many Catholics as well. The reform of the Catholic liturgy was... well, it needed reformation. But it was apparently reformed by people who didn't really understand why you do rituals in the first place.

But when you wish to gather people together in a shared intent to effect a change in the course of things through pure intent, that is done by means of a ritual that defines and focuses that intent. By the by, we now have a scientific understanding that such focused intents can effect probability and appearently causation on a subatomic level. It really does change reality. (in wikispeak, citation needed.)

But in order to do that, the ritual must be precise. It's best to fit the current intent into an existing, well-practiced formula, which is why ditching liturgies wholesale is a bad idea.

But there are few books of ritual more familiar and well-worn than The Book of Common Prayer, and it would be profitable to study it's composition, and the way it can be used to build a full ritual from various paragraphs.

Now, I know Evangelicals are suspicious of ritual and it's trappings - although I've been to enough Evangelical, "spirit filled" events to wish they respected it more. Spiritually speaking, certain rituals are sensible - much like reflexively "safeing" your gun before putting it away. If you believe - as do I, and apparently as Jim Wallis does, that prayerful intent can have a real-world effect, it should be intuitively obvious that it can have a less than ideal result if you do not consider and carefully state the intent so that everyone shares the exact SAME intent.

Otherwise, the very best result is that nothing much happens. And indeed, if the only intent is political - simply getting a large number of people to send a message, that intent will be met simply by doing as Jim suggests. However, what Jim does NOT do is exclude the other intents that individuals may have, and therein lies the rub. There are potential pitfalls involved in simply "praying for peace," and praying at people to "make the right decision." Coercion is Unchristian - and unethical. Aside from that, it leads to most unpredictable outcomes.

Of course, the reason for formulaic prayers is to create templates for such occasions, so that potential pitfalls are avoided automatically. The risk is that the existence of those pitfalls will be forgotten as the price of having avoided them for so long.

I had thought to include an example within this post - but it seems that it's not so easy as it might appear; I'm sure there are suitable rituals - but most likely one would have to seek out Pagan and Wiccan sources and work from that point. Wiccans and other Pagans are on the forefront of ritual design these days because it's an article of their faiths - whatever else they may not agree upon - that ritual is the key to the expression of what they believe and what they wish to accomplish. This has been generally discounted within the greater Church - even the Anglican and Catholic branches have de-emphasized the importance of proper ritual.

And now we reach MY point: There can be no real or lasting peace without justice. I am unwilling to return to a state where we accept the largely nonviolent exploitation and oppression of people, with only isolated tragedies here and there as a consequence of brutal economic and class warfare as "peace."

Peace is not a general absence of outright warfare. It is not just the cessation of military adventures - it is also the abandonment of the intent behind them, to unjustly control the destenies of other persons, while holding them accountable for the costs of their own compliance.

Peace is just that; it is peace. It is the absence of the will to impose one's will on others - by whatever means.

And THAT is what you must seek - or you will simply be agitating for war by more comfortable means, with fewer disturbing images on television and casuaties measured only in relative standards of living.

So long as you are praying, in part, to maintain "our American Way of Life" as it has been within living memory, you are praying for what has been a state of constantly smoldering potential violence that occasionally breaks out into open aggression. And that is what I refer to above as an "unexpected outcome."

You see, in order to properly craft an intent, you must be brutally honest with yourself about what it is you seek, and what it will cost others should the result be "positive" from your point of view. Otherwise, while there may be a short-term shift in direction, the fundamental change many of us feel long overdue will come, not with hosannas, but with cries of outrage as the world re-aligns against OUR will and our interests.

Because, well, that's Karma, baby.

An Unaired Graphictruth from Mythbusters

In which we test the myth - Do Girls Fart?

clipped from www.milkandcookies.com

We agree, there's no substitute for experimental evidence. Although in this case, we aren't sure what it's not a substitute for.

Now, for results from segments that actually aired...

tag: Mythbusters, farts, passing gas, flatulence, flatus, toots, farting, funny, adult humor