Month: October 2011

Story one: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/koch-funded-study-changes-prominent-global-warming-skeptic-to-a-believer/comment-page-3/#comment-2157339

Summary: Oh my God, I was like so not a believer in global warming, but I got money from the Koch brothers and despite their pernicious, neo-Satanic influence, the forces of light and truth prevailed and I saw the TRUTH, which is, uh, something we are in the process of, uh, getting peer reviewed–soon, I promise–and which doesn’t include, you know, things, like ocean temperature, or mention the lack of thermometers on the poles, or explain how we were uniquely able to correct for the heat island effect, but, HEY: LISTEN TO ME. Koch brothers, former skeptic: this is a GOOD STORY.

Story two: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html?fb_ref=LikeButtonTop&fb_source=profile_multiline

Summary: Muller’s coauthor on all four papers: what the FUCK were you thinking, you ethically and mentally challenged jackass? That is not what we found AT ALL. We found that global warming had stopped. We found that the climate models were wrong, and had plainly assigned too large a role for CO2 in global warming.

Go find yourself another partner, you oleaginous cretin. That shit smell on your shoes is something you’re going to have to clean off yourself.

My summary: what is worth noting here is not the patent effort at lying to a media very eager to be deceived. This is nothing new. I just want people who are not able to reliably observe this phenomena simply to read the two stories, and try to reconcile them. Ask yourself what is actually going on here, and if by even the most generous stretch of imagination you can call this honest science, as it is being predigested and distributed.

First off, I saw the term “Obamavilles” today, which I thought interesting. It evokes “Hoovervilles”, with the key difference that where there was actual suffering under Hoover–caused by his meddling in the economy, in part, but primarily by the Fed’s deflationary monetary policies–there is not much here. Many of these kids are likely rich, and many seem to be getting paid. Not sure what use the term has, but it is potentially useful.

The main point I wanted to make is what sane political use could be made of these protests, and it occurs to me that their utility lies in the very fact that they–they tell us as a matter of principle–don’t stand for anything (just like Seinfeld wasn’t about anything). They are a blank canvas, upon which can be painted many different narratives, whose value can be assessed and modified as needed.

For now, the use Obama (really, the people around him; he doesn’t think all that much)seemingly wants to make of them is to say that since they are there, some sort of crime must have been committed, and that since they are plainly not Republicans, the culprits must indeed be the Republicans. This is a weak story, but one plainly borne out of the desperate need he and his have to defend the indefensible, which practically means avoiding the topic and going on the offensive, hoping that their control of much of our media complex will enable this deception to work.

But this also provides added heft to his vote-buying schemes, as with student loans, housing, and whatever else he and his come up with between now and election day.

This is a bit of out-loud thinking.

The end goal, in economic downturns, is to create an appetite on the part of business owners to hire people. They do this when they perceive business opportunity, and it is plainly the case that development and marketing generally precede consumer spending. You cannot indulge a desire you did not know you have to buy Chuy’s Mexican food until you have a Chuy’s restaurant. This is the case even if Barack Obama deposits $10,000 in your personal bank account. You can only spend your money on things which already exist, made or distributed by businesses which already exist. And self evidently, those businesses could not exist if they had not been built, if the money had not first been spent.

The ONLY principle goal of anti-Demand side economics, aka rational, historical economics, or just “economics”, is increasing the desire on the part of business to expand. You do this through incentivization, which means you take less money in taxation, giving them more capital, take less of the profits when they are successful (making risk-taking more lucrative and hence more likely), and made it less of a pain in the ass dealing with asinine government bureaucrats.

The game is psychological and practical. The only salient question is: what policies does government need to pursue–or, to the point, to NOT pursue–in order to build the confidence that builds business and job growth?

American business is sitting on record amounts of cash–all of it represents prospective jobs lost due to the ineptitude and ideological rigidity of our first anti-American President, not coincidentally the first born to a foreign national father, and a mother who chose not to spend her life here.

Tax simplification and regulatory clarity are the only sure signs to return to growth. The leftists are quite correct when they say that if we stay on this course we will get a Depression. What they fail to grasp, or are unwilling to communicate, is that it is THEIR policies which are making this more likely.

It just occurred to me why the Republicans are having so many debates: it favors Mitt Romney. He is the CEO, and he is the smooth one. He is also in my view the least principled of the available candidates. He is who he needs to be.

How on earth true conservatives could favor someone who enacted Obamacare as the nominee to END Obamacare is anyone’s guess.

I guess Romney is just their kind of asshole. They understand one another, since Karl Rove is no more principled, in my view, than Barack Obama.

Being led by smooth talking liars is a great way to wind up on the ash heap of history.

I will vote for Cain, Bachman, Perry, or Gingrich. I am not sure I can even hold my nose and vote for Romney. I guess I will just vote a Republican straight ticket.

Again, the issue is not defeating Barack Obama. The issue is, is this nation still capable of the rational appreciation of action and consequence? If our choice is between Obama and Romney, in this climate, then in my view the answer is no. We deserve failure.

And that may be the case. At least half of Americans do not value their freedom enough to understand history and basic economics. That is a large number.

Time will tell.

For whatever reason, I was unable to log in to post this at Human Events. I wrote it, and have no desire to spend all day screwing around with buggy or damaged software.

Here is the original article: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=47086

I would say that the need to preserve the NOTION of place and time is what should motivate us. Against this stands the pervasive call for a muddling and generalized moral and political mediocrity, imposed the world over, without time, without place, without name.

It is not always necessary to be able to see far into the mists of the future. If you keep moving, and keep some faith, things reveal themselves. Plainly, the long term task is to invent something which never has been, and conserve that. Progressives arrogate to themselves that “duty”, but it would seem to me that conservatism has never opposed progress, merely collective lunacy masquerading as progress. It is for that reason that I prefer to call myself a Liberal. In his own way, Burke was a Liberal, too, who if memory serves was largely supportive of the American Revolution, absent excesses like the Boston Tea Party.

What is the important essence of a religion, or social tradition? Goodness. Goodness as an identity. Goodness is pluralistic, and can take countless forms. This should be our goal, and for the foreseeable future Goodness should be built within whatever structures remain, in churches, and cultural habits, and even within Science.

My principle website is dedicated to providing both general philosophical guidelines that make no demands on anyone’s credulity that support Goodness, and which also offers up plans for moving into the future. Specifically, I think given TIME on their hands, so many social problems of meaning would solve themselves. As I grow and learn, it seems to me the most important question is not how problems get solved, but what prevents them from being solved. We were born to build.

In any event, this is the main page here: http://www.goodnessmovement.com

My financial treatise is here: http://www.goodnessmovement.com/Page23.html

As I have said before, I make or stake no claim on any of my content, here or on the other site. If you want to take my ideas and write a paper or book or speech or something else for money: hell, I’ve had my shot. Do something MORE useful with it than I have. I have the same 24 hours a day you do, and am simply not as disciplined as I could be. I accept control over this, and own my decisions.

At the same time, copying is dull. What I think would be COOL is variations on my themes, with YOUR INPUT. What we call the “Twinkle, twinkle little star” theme, an old French folksong with another name entirely, was taken by Mozart to create something BRILLIANT and ENTIRELY NEW, without foresaking the basic theme.

Please, if you are going to copy me–and it’s far from clear anything I have written is WORTH copying–then don’t copy me. You deserve better, and are capable of better. Fair and clear enough?

Phrase popped in my head. Makes sense.

In one word, what would the goal presumably be for the hidden people pulling some strings? Unification. The task would be to gradually weaken the identities of all nations, through cultural indoctrination in internationalism, blend the economies, erase the borders, and in the end make everyone answerable to a body–overtly, the UN, covertly, through the control of money the world over, the Bank of International Settlements, or something like it that doesn’t have a name that we know.

Plainly, there are many internationalists out there. There have academics and intellectuals calling for many years for global governance, for the sake, purportedly, of peace, and “sustainability”. With regard to the latter word, this is just code-speak for a lack of faith in free markets, and the ASSumption that people are too stupid on their own to avoid the complete decimation of Earth. The environmentalist movement is filled with these people. They don’t understand the role of price in regulating behavior and assume free markets can’t world in a large complex world, when the patent fact is that is the ONLY thing that will work. Central planning does not work.

These people, though, sit on the boards of large banks. They sit on the boards, particularly, of the central banks that determine the financial future of all the worlds nations, and do so largely without ANY legislative or legal restraint or supervision.

In one of his plays–Major Barbara, if memory serves–the Fascist/Socialist (take your pick: he adored both systems) George Shaw portrayed the unification of very large business with socialism. Putting the government in charge of picking winners and losers is very lucrative, if you are going to get picked as a winner. For their part, the Socialists get the power they have always hungered for to punish SOME businesses defined by their non-Socialism as wicked and greedy, and to redistribute their wealth. There is never enough, of course, and they have merely redirected greed–and made it much worse, since it is now legally protected without restriction–but they are willing to overlook the increased poverty they regularly induce by reflecting how wonderful it is to be in charge. One wonders why they don’t install more mirrors to admire their magnificence than they do. Why not relocate the EU headquarters to Versailles? They all fancy themselves Louis 14th’s, but morally perfected, of course.

Several points: Islam is a great instrument of control. It is one of the most static social systems ever devised. They go on century after century without inventing anything, without changing anything. Their system, they are told, is perfect. This does not lead to innovation or social change. What changes have happened have largely been the result of external forces.

The great merit of Islam to a group seeking global control is that it imposes itself across broad sections of the Earth, making the formation of units of political control easy. Once you have a de facto autocracy, all you have to do is keep the leadership fed, and they will do what you want. Easy enough.

Second: Most business owners, large and small, that I have dealt with were periodically assholes. The sampling in my case is pretty large. Capitalism, per se, merely forces (in theory) people to confine their predatory tendencies to a rule bound system. As such, it is much better than war. As such, it is much better than socialism, since the people ruling the government are NOT bound by rules in most cases, either ethical or legal.

The great merit of freedom, though, is that you can leave the company you are at, and either work somewhere else, or start your own company. You can’t do that in socialist nations. It’s hard to start businesses in places like Germany, and Sweden, and France. That is my understanding, at any rate. They have all sorts of rules about who you can fire, so effectively they place restrictions on who you can hire. You have high minimum wages, etc. etc. This is not freedom: it is a curtailment of freedom.

I like to think we are moving slowly towards a much more moral world. That is my hope. Yet it is foolishness to think that moral improvement could come about as a result of the work of people who use deception and force to impose their own wills on the rest of us. Morality is wisdom, which is perception. It is empathy, and seeing other people as living confused and often suffering just like ourselves.

The foregoing is a bit wandering, but hopefully frees up some perceptions for someone somewhere.

Work 15 emotionally and physically tiring hours, then have a couple really good beers somewhere they know your name.

That was me today.

It reminds me of running cross country in the desert, and remembering what a lovely savor water has. We did not carry water bottles then.

You must have ups to have downs, correct? No classical music consists in the same note, repeated, correct? Contrast makes the day, the life, the mood, the balance.

We are all the richer for it. Remember the moments of peace, when peace is not to be found.

Maybe you will have better luck with it than me, darn it. No doubt I am ridiculous. If you are too, perhaps we could share a beer in peace. When drinking, I have no bigger plans. Perhaps this is my best moment, thrust though a life.

Someday, I believe, I will know.

The stereotype is that of the large armed, steel faced bruiser, who shoots, cuts, stabs his way through throngs of enemy. This stereotype has merit: this person is needed at times and places, but only after sustained failure in effective warriorship.

In my view, the effective warrior wakes up daily determined to make it impossible for his enemies to attack, to make it impossible for them to properly organize, to make it difficult for them even to conceive of him as an enemy worth attacking.

One could ask: if there is no war, how can one speak of a warrior? My answer would be that violence–war–is always a possibility, and the warrior never forgets this, or forgets to prepare for it. But actual violence is always a failure, is it not? You didn’t think the damn thing through, and present timely countermeasures.

Two quotes from memory:

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Isaac Asimov (very approximate)

Violence is the last recourse of an exhausted mind. The father of a friend of mine, who was perhaps not a gangster, but who regularly associated with them, and had an expressed capacity for actual violence.