Ignorance Archives
November 08, 2007
"The Real GM Food Scandal"
GM foods are safe, healthy and essential if we ever want to achieve decent living standards for the world's growing population. Misplaced moralising about them in the west is costing millions of lives in poor countries.
. . .
Seldom has public perception been more out of line with the facts. The public in Britain and Europe seems unaware of the astonishing success of GM crops in the rest of the world. No new agricultural technology in recent times has spread faster and more widely. Only a decade after their commercial introduction, GM crops are now cultivated in 22 countries on over 100m hectares (an area more than four times the size of Britain) by over 10m farmers, of whom 9m are resource-poor farmers in developing countries, mainly India and China. Most of these small-scale farmers grow pest-resistant GM cotton. In India alone, production tripled last year to over 3.6m hectares. This cotton benefits farmers because it reduces the need for insecticides, thereby increasing their income and also improving their health. It is true that the promised development of staple GM food crops for the developing world has been delayed, but this is not because of technical flaws. It is principally because GM crops, unlike conventional crops, must overcome costly, time-consuming and unnecessary regulatory obstacles before they can be licensed.
"The Real GM Food Scandal," by Dick Taverne, Prospect, November 2007
Posted at 09:47 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Ignorance
August 18, 2007
Apocalyptic environmentalism
So why do so many people in the developed world believe in apocalyptic environmentalism? The attraction of apocalyptic thinking is strong. One self-described survivor of millenarian environmentalism, novelist Eric Zencey, recalled in his 1988 essay, “Apocalypse and Ecology”:"There is seduction in apocalyptic thinking. If one lives in the Last Days, one’s actions, one’s very life, take on historical meaning and no small measure of poignance … Apocalypticism fulfills a desire to escape the flow of real and ordinary time, to fix the flow of history into a single moment of overwhelming importance.”
Daniel Cohen, author of the 1973 Waiting for the Apocalypse, believes that every generation grows up convinced that it is the last generation in history. However, the method by which the end brought about changes. For Cohen’s generation nuclear war was the agent of the apocalypse.“We believed passionately that there would be such a war, and like the early Christians we were sure that this Judgment Day would come within our lifetimes.”
Interestingly, unlike the Millerites, when prophesies of environmental doom fail, ecological millenarians do not experience a "Great Disappointment." As Daniel Cohen noted,"One clearly wrong prophecy, or even a whole string of them, rarely discredits the prophet in the eyes of those who believe in prophecy."
As DiCaprio's new film shows, a lot people still want to think of themselves as living at the hinge of history in which their lives will make all the heroic difference for all the time to come.
But the truth is that our ancestors bequeathed to our generation a world that is immeasurably richer, cleaner and healthier than the one they lived in. I haven't seen The 11th Hour yet, but I suspect that it is not going to recommend those policies that have in fact improved the state of humanity for the last two centuries. Of course, it must be admitted that along the way there were some mostly unavoidable side effects on the natural world that arose as hundreds of millions of people clawed their way out of poverty. That being said, I will be happily surprised if The 11th Hour comes out in favor of strengthened property rights, expanding globalization, increasing urbanization, and spreading modern farming techniques. It is exactly those trends abetted by democratic capitalism that are improving humanity's estate and will help preserve nature.
"DiCaprio's The 11th Hour: We are the Most Important Generation in History," by Ronald Bailey, Hit & Run, August 16, 2007
Posted at 08:27 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Ignorance , Narcissism , Nihilism
July 11, 2007
Humor - Oh, he was serious!
This brings to mind the theory that the apparent collapse of Communism was a plot to lull the West into a false sense of security.
"A Creative Conspiracy Theory," by Bryan Caplan, July 10, 2007
Posted at 07:07 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Economics , Ignorance , Politics
April 27, 2007
Guns around the world
Gun confiscation, however, is correlated with homicide--in that gun confiscation is almost always a condition precedent for genocide and other murderous atrocities by government. This was historically true in Turkish Armenia, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Guatemala, Cambodia, and Idi Amin's Uganda. It is still true in Ethiopia, East Timor, Srebrenica, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, and Zimbabwe.
The experience of the Holocaust also shows that to the extent that victims do obtain firearms, they have a much greater chance of survival, even under the worst conditions.
In October 2005, the people of Brazil voted on a U.N.-backed gun confiscation plan, and 64% said "Não."
The confiscation campaign leader later warned his international allies, "First lesson is, don't trust direct democracy."
As Foreign Policy magazine observed in February 2006, the right to arms today "strikes a chord with people of very different backgrounds, experiences, and cultures, even when that culture has historically been anti-gun." Aggressively hostile to the right of self-defense against solitary criminals and criminal governments, today's international political and media elites are out of step not only with America, but with more and more people around the world.
"Are guns all-American? Should we be concerned that so much of the rest of the developed world believes U.S. gun laws are crazy?" All this week, David Kopel and Christopher Lockwood debate gun control. Today, the Independence Institute's Kopel and The Economist's Lockwood address the international view on guns. Los Angeles Times, April 25, 2007
I've heard people say "only in America" in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings. Clearly, though, it's not only in America. Terrible incidents like these have occurred and are occurring in countries across the world, including countries that severely restrict or ban the private ownership of firearms, and countries with a reputation of peace and harmony.
"'Only in America'? Gunning Down a Claim," by Steve Stanek, TCS Daily, April 20, 2007
Posted at 06:07 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: America , Crime , Ignorance , Politics
October 21, 2006
"Bulldozed by Naivete"
Politics makes artists stupid. Take "My Name Is Rachel Corrie," the one-woman play cobbled together from the diaries, emails and miscellaneous scribblings of the 23-year-old left-wing activist who was run over by an Israeli Army bulldozer in 2003 while protesting the demolition of a Palestinian house in the Gaza Strip. Co-written and directed by Alan Rickman, one of England's best actors, "Rachel Corrie" just opened off-Broadway after a successful London run. It's an ill-crafted piece of goopy give-peace-a-chance agitprop--yet it's being performed to cheers and tears before admiring crowds of theater-savvy New Yorkers who, like Mr. Rickman himself, ought to know better.
. . .
"My Name Is Rachel Corrie," by contrast, is a scrappy, one-sided monologue consisting of nothing but the fugitive observations of a young woman who, like so many idealists, treated her emotions as facts. "I am disappointed," she declares, "that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world." To mistake such jejune disillusion for profundity and turn it into the climax of a full-length play is an act of piety, not artistry.
"Bulldozed by Naivete," by Terry Teachout, Opinion Journal, October 21, 2006
Posted at 09:17 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Ignorance
August 17, 2006
"Bleeding-heart ignoramuses"
All across the board, Lebanese civilians are referred to as "civilians" where Israeli civilians are referred to as "Israelis" - an eerie and sinister difference pointed out by the non-Jewish stand-up comic genius Natalie Haynes, and one which very few people appear to have noticed - even me, until then.
. . .
Personally, I'd far prefer the Jews to be angry, aggressive and alive than meek, mild and dead - and that's what makes me and a minority like me feel so much like strangers in our own country, now more than ever. I've always loved being a hack, but now even that feels weird, as though I'm living among a bunch of snatched-body zombies who look like journalists but believe and say the most inhuman, evil things.
"Bleeding-heart ignoramuses," by Julie Burchill, HAARETZ, August 2006
Posted at 06:57 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Bigotry , Ignorance , Nihilism , Stupidity , Terrorism
June 03, 2006
Global Warming and Fear Mongering - more
If you like glaciers, you'll enjoy Rocky Mountain National Park. That any glaciers exist there in 2006 might have surprised readers of the Nov. 7, 1937, Rocky Mountain News. According to the 1937 News, scientific measurement of the glaciers in Rocky Mountain National Park showed that "these sheets of 'eternal' ice, within a few short decades, may be 'eternally gone.' "The News pointed to climate graphs showing that "winters are not what they used to be in the Never Summer Range." Thus, the glaciers were "inexorably retreating to extinction."
"Can it be possible that the Earth is undergoing a slow, but steady climactic change?" asked another Denver paper. The article pointed out that the "The winters are becoming colder, and the summers drier and hotter." The changes were taking place "all over the continent", while "In Europe we hear of climatic changes as strange as they are unaccountable." The newspaper was the Denver Tribune, and the year was 1874.
As the Tribune noted, climate change is nothing new. As the News demonstrated, neither are alarmist, inaccurate media predictions about climate. The Business and Media Institute, a branch of the right-wing Media Research Center, recently published Fire and Ice, a study detailing the national media's terrible record of climate hysteria over the last century.
For example, The New York Times in 1895 predicted widespread global cooling. In 1924, the paper reported "Signs of New Ice Age." But in 1933, 1952, 1959, and 1969, the Times declared global warming. Then in 1974 and 1975, the Times decided that the new ice age was coming, with catastrophic consequences: "the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade" leading to "mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence."
The Washington Post announced a "New Ice Age" in 1970, and, in 1974, Fortune agreed, touting a scientist who predicted that a billion people would die from starvation caused by global cooling. Time magazine declared global warming in 1939, global cooling in 1974, and currently believes in global warming.
. . .
Colorado's most prominent skeptic is Colorado State University professor of atmospheric science William Gray, who has directly harmed his own financial interests by speaking out.As detailed in a major profile in The Washington Post, Gray has lost most of his government grants because of his relentless presentation of evidence in support of his view that man-made global warming is a hoax. While the Boulder Daily Camera reprinted the story of Colorado's controversial scientist, The Denver Post - which has access to Washington Post articles - did not.
The News and The Denver Post do recognize Gray as an expert on atmospheric science, and have published dozens and dozens stories citing his hurricane forecasts and analysis, including stories this Thursday. They have quoted Gray's accurate prediction in the late 1990s that decades-long lull in hurricane activity on the Atlantic Coast was coming to an end, and his spring 2005 predictions for very intense hurricanes in the summer; such stories often quote other scientists affirming Gray's pre-eminence in the study of atmospheric science. Yet in the News and Post combined, one can find only a few paragraphs even mentioning Gray's analysis of global warming.
"Climate alarmism a perennial: Study: Journalists have often blown hot and cold on issue," by Dave Kopel, Rocky Mountain News, June 3, 2006
Posted at 03:48 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Ignorance
March 14, 2006
Equality of outcomes ... watch your thoughts
These days the postmodern left demands that government and private institutions guarantee equality of outcomes. Any racial or gender "disparities" are to be considered evidence of culpable bias, regardless of factors such as personal motivation, training, and skill. This goal is neither liberal nor progressive; but it is what the left has chosen. In a very real sense it may be the last card held by a movement increasingly ensnared in resentful questing for group-specific rights and the subordination of citizenship to group identity. There's a word for this: pathetic.I smile when friends tell me I've "moved right." I laugh out loud at what now passes for progressive on the main lines of the cultural left.
In the name of "diversity," the University of Arizona has forbidden discrimination based on "individual style." The University of Connecticut has banned "inappropriately directed laughter." Brown University, sensing unacceptable gray areas, warns that harassment "may be intentional or unintentional and still constitute harassment." (Yes, we're talking "subconscious harassment" here. We're watching your thoughts ...).
"Leaving the left - I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity," by Keith Thompson, San Francisco Chronicle, May 22, 2005
Posted at 04:37 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Bigotry , Ignorance , Nihilism , Politics , Stupidity
January 18, 2006
"A Credit to Their Racism"
Martin Luther King's birthday is a time to celebrate the civil rights hero's commitment to non-violent social change. That's why this week it was such a shame to see liberal speakers do violence to the English language and the King legacy by engaging in inflammatory rhetoric.Senator Hillary Clinton offended even many blacks by using Al Sharpton's MLK Day celebration to say the Republican House of Representatives has been run "like a plantation -- and you know what I'm talking about." Apparently, she meant that GOP House leaders were the modern-day equivalent of slavemasters, but she declined to elaborate to reporters afterward.
Then there was New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, a once promising reformer who has now descended into racial demagoguery to disguise his failure to properly evacuate his city as Hurricane Katrina approached. He used his MLK Day speech to say: "I don't care what people are saying Uptown. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day." He added that "God is mad at America" and said it was the Lord's will that the city retain a black-majority in its population.
When Martin Luther King was alive, the elite media were perfectly aware of which reactionary forces were blocking racial progress in this country. Today, charlatans like Al Sharpton, demagogues like Mayor Nagin and manipulative politicians like Senator Clinton are the major obstacles to letting the country get beyond race. If GOP Senator Trent Lott was forced to step down from his post as Majority Leader in 2002 for insensitive and thoughtless praise of the late Strom Thurmond, those on the left who deliberately exploit race for political gain deserve at least similar scrutiny and condemnation.
"A Credit to Their Racism," by John Fund, OpinionJournal's Political Diary, January 18, 2006
Posted at 09:17 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Bigotry , Ignorance
November 06, 2005
"You Have To Break A Few Humans To Prevent An Omelette"
Incredible ...
Dafydd at Big Lizards notes this Robert Novak column blurb about an exchange regarding ecoterrorism at the US Senate last week. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) interrogated ecological activist Dr. Jerry Vlasak about the aims of the radical environmental movement. Novak has the key, chilling exchange that reveals the utter lack of perspective that produces ecoterrorists:Dr. Jerry Vlasak of North American Animal Liberation was quoted as saying at an animal rights convention: "I don't think you'd have to kill, assassinate too many. I think for five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, or 10 million non-human lives."
Questioned by Inhofe whether he was "advocating the murder of individuals," Vlasak replied: "I made that statement, and I stand by that statement."
That, however, gives only part of the story. Americans for Medical Progress has more of the transcript, which oddly does not appear readily accessible on the Senate's website. (Animal Crackers has the entire exchange archived, along with pungent and dead-on commentary.) Inhofe only got the ball rolling. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) becomes more and more disgusted with Vlasak as the hearing progresses, finally demanding that the witness be removed from his presence. But first, Inhofe makes sure that Vlasak hasn't been misunderstood:
Read the whole incredible thing ... "You Have To Break A Few Humans To Prevent An Omelette," Captain's Quarters, November 6, 2005
Posted at 12:58 PM · Comments (1) · Categories: Crime , Ignorance , Nihilism , Stupidity , Terrorism
September 27, 2005
Journalists aren't numerate? Who knew....
Five-year-olds can use their intuitive math abilities to solve problems, a new study finds. Reader Nels Nelson points out the news story describes math as "torture" and tedious. Well, people who find math easy generally don't become journalists.
"Math, pre-torture," joannejacobs.com, September 26, 2005
In the story cited, here's what the reporter wrote:
In the United States, a child's first encounter with math is often in elementary school, and for some, perfecting the ability to add and subtract, multiply and divide will be a long and torturous process.
Thank goodness the reporter who wrote that isn't writing for a "scientific" periodical or web site or anything ... whoops ...
"Math Made Easy: Study Reveals 5-year-olds' Innate Ability," by Ker Than, LiveScience Staff Writer, LiveScience.com, September 15, 2005
Posted at 06:13 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Ignorance
September 25, 2005
"A Day Among the Moonbats"
Michelle Malkin has a funny post ... "A Day Among the Moonbats" ...
I spent the afternoon at Sheehanapalooza in D.C. under overcast skies, in a haze of hemp-scented paranoia, steeped with fetid Bush hatred. Am uploading a bunch of photos of moonbats in action at my Flickr site.
Ai yi yi yi yi ....
see Global Cop From D.C. for many photos .. my favorite is this one: "'George Bush Killed my sons' Cindy Sheehan Saddam Hussein"
OxBlog tells us what A.N.S.W.E.R. stands for
for more, see ... protein wisdom "Anatomy of an anti-war puff piece" ... gateway pundit "Waiting on Ramsey Clark!" ... Davids Medienkritik "Just Back from the DC Demonstrations" (with photos) ... Instapundit ... Daily Kos "Do's and Dont's for Anti-War Rally This Saturday" ... RenaRF "My Photo Journal of the DC March" (love this caption: "Like all good radical anti-war protestors, we started our day at Starbucks. I had coffee and a cinnamon scone - armed for marching.") ... The Bitch Girls "I Went To The Protest Today" ... the anchoress "Rita and DC march both weakened" ("po-dunky picnic is precisely what it looked like to me") ... baldilocks covers LA "Sights and Sounds" ... TopTechWriter has many pics "Anti-War Protest in Washington, DC" ... GayPatriot asks "If Iraq is like Vietnam, how come the rallies keep getting smaller?" ...
Posted at 06:42 AM · Comments (1) · Categories: Ignorance
September 19, 2005
Fatwa ... Burger King lids ... formidable foes ...
protein wisdom ... "We commend the sensitive and prompt action that Burger King has taken."
The fast-food chain, Burger King, is withdrawing its ice-cream cones after the lid of the dessert offended a Muslim.
We like this comment ... "All your words/symbols/lives are belong to us!"
my response to Burger King's decision ... goodbye Whopper ... goodbye BK fries ... goodbye BK ... hope appeasing idiots works out for you ...
What's next ... "This ad is CAIR approved" ... hajibs on all women in ads? ... displayed on products? ... instant hajib! ...
and you thought the study of medievalism was only for historians! ... "The medieval age was tyrannized by a demand for spiritual perfectionism, making it hard to accomplish anything practical."
during the Cold War, many suggested dropping JC Penney or Sears catalogs behind the Iron Curtain ... why use bombs on gynephobic wankers ... drop Victoria's Secret catalogs ... they might spontaneously combust ...
and note the hyper sensitivity of these wankers ... compared with the response of a Catholic guy to images of the Blessed Virgin Mary with dung and crucifixes in urine ... kind of makes you wonder how formidable such sensitive types are ...
Posted at 08:57 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Ay Caramba! , Gynephobes , Ignorance , Nihilism
September 13, 2005
Katrina Jambalya
An interesting "Katrina Jambalaya" of narcissism, fakery, ignorance, adolescent and criminal behavior, incompetence, lots-o-money, grandstanding, laziness, finger-pointing, and stupidity is being served up post-Katrina. But this jambalaya isn't just a Creole dish ...
Austin Bay, in "Katrina: Is it all about Cooper?" talks about fakery and moral airs on TV ...
24/7 tv craves drama and emotion — especially easily identified emotions, like anger, rage, fear. Think Greek dramatic masks, the cork or linen masks Greek actors wore in the ampitheater so the audience could quickly identify the character and the emotion.
Did you know slavery has returned to the South? ... or at least bloviation is still there ... baldilocks says this clown, er, slave, Fisks himself:
Man: What I would like to happen? I would like for them to give us at least $20,000 apiece so we can, you know, get our life together. You know, we didn't ask to come on that bus, slave. It's like a slave ship. It's just like, you know, back in history, you know, they put us on a slave ship. They separated us from our family. They did it--you know, just modern-day slavery, you know? Just give us what the f--- we deserve.
You know, like, you know ... you know?
James Taranto (Best of the Web, September 12, 2005) said about this particular occupant of the slave ship: "Looks just like a slave ship, doesn't it? Well, except that on a slave ship, he probably wouldn't have his arm around a white woman."
Taranto is gonna catch hell for that ...
baldilocks later quotes from an email she received:
It was heart breaking to hear their stories on the local TV. One man needed only one more years work to retire, one was a chemical factory worker (hired instantly by a local factory), one worked for the city, I believe one was a merchant, you get the idea. This is the opposite of what the MSM is telling. These are not poor, black, poverty stricken, non working, welfare expecting people. These are black Americans who consider themselves working middle class and who by natural disaster have lost all they have spent their lives working for. They arrived at 1am Sunday morning and some went to work this week. One man cried on camera in shame of not being able to take care of his family and having to accept charity. He also cried when he showed three handwritten pages of phone numbers and job offers he had received in a couple of days.
The Evacuees, September 13, 2005
how come most of the stories of New Orleans refugees we're hearing about seem to be about either the very well-off, or the poor, or the slaves ... are there any able-bodied middle class folks who lost everything? ... just wondering ...
George Will comments ("Post-Katrina Liberalism," Townhall, September 13, 2005) on how race-baiters are using the occasion to not let facts get in the way of grandstanding:
America's always fast-flowing river of race-obsessing has overflowed its banks, and last Sunday on "This Week" Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois' freshman Democrat, applied to the expression of old banalities a fluency that would be beguiling were it without content. Unfortunately, it included the requisite lament about the president's inadequate "empathy" and an amazing criticism of the government's "historic indifference" and its "passive indifference" that "is as bad as active malice." The senator, 44, is just 30 months older than the "war on poverty" that President Johnson declared in January 1964. Since then the indifference that is as bad as active malice has been expressed in more than $6.6 trillion of antipoverty spending, strictly defined.The senator is called a "new kind of Democrat," which often means one with new ways of ignoring evidence discordant with old liberal orthodoxies about using cash -- much of it spent through liberalism's "caring professions" -- to cope with cultural collapse. He might, however, care to note three not-at-all recondite rules for avoiding poverty: graduate from high school, don't have a baby until you are married, don't marry while you are a teenager. Among people who obey those rules, poverty is minimal.
. . .
Liberalism's post-Katrina fearlessness in discovering the obvious -- if an inner city is inundated, the victims will be disproportionately minorities -- stopped short of indelicately noting how many of the victims were women with children but not husbands. Released during the post-Katrina debacle, scant attention was paid to the National Center for Health Statistics' pertinent report that in 2003, 34.6 percent of all American births were to unmarried women. The percentage among African-American women was 68.2.Given that most African-Americans are middle class and almost half live outside central cities, and that 76 percent of all births to Louisiana African-Americans were to unmarried women, it is a safe surmise that more than 80 percent of African-American births in inner-city New Orleans -- as in some other inner cities -- were to women without husbands. That translates into a large and constantly renewed cohort of lightly parented adolescent males, and that translates into chaos, in neighborhoods and schools, come rain or come shine.
George, George, George ... the problem is that we had only "$6.6 trillion of antipoverty spending." ... we needed to spend at least twice as much ... or, according to the slave above, give every one on the "slave ship" $20,000 ... then everything would be fine ... there would be no more poverty ... just imagine ...
But, as Asymmetrical Information points out, "The poor really are different," September 9, 2005:
If poor people did just four things, the poverty rate would be a fraction of what it currently is. Those four things are:1) Finish high school
2) Get married before having children
3) Have no more than two children
4) Work full time. . .
That leaves us in a rather awkward place, because while I don't agree with conservatives that the poor are somehow worse people than we are, I also don't agree with liberals that money is the answer. Money buys material goods, which are not really the biggest problem that most poor people in America have. And I don't know how you go about providing the things they're missing: the robust social networks, the educational and occupational opportunity, the ability to construct a long-term life instead of one that is lived day-to-day. I think that we should remove the barriers, like poor schools, that block achievement from without, but I don't know what to do about the equally powerful barriers that block it from within.But I also don't think that the answer is to use those barriers as an excuse to wash our hands of the matter.
Captain's Quarters in "Will New Orleans Death Toll Escalate?" September 13, 2005, observes:
That prediction [of 10,000 dead in New Orleans] by Mayor Ray Nagin may yet still come to pass as more of the city emerges from the floodwaters. At this point, though, it will provide yet another example of the hysteria that finds its home with the unprepared and the passive, those who want others to do the work that should have already been done by themselves. The figure got a lot of press play because of its spectacular nature and because of the official status of the man proclaiming it.The Exempt Media should ask themselves whether the estimate of 10,000 casualties had any other basis in fact. If so, they need to explain what else prompted them to report that as a reliable range. If not, then they need to rethink using reports from overwhelmed local politicians who used such estimates to shove attention off of their own performances.
And PowerLine points out in "Business Week Publishes Democratic Party Hit-Piece As News, Forgets to Warn Readers" that the adminstration's approach to telecom de-regulation is probably not responsible for the collapse of communication after Katrina:
Today's example of MSM bias: this Business Week article by Leo Hindery, Jr., titled "Tragedy and Telecom." The article is subtitled, "How the Bush Administration's antiregulation stance contributed to the post-Katrina communications collapse -- and what should be done now." Mr. Hindery's indictment of the Bush administration is the latest effort to blame the President for just about everything associated with Hurricane Katrina. Its reasoning is so fragmentary, however, that Hindery never does explain why "the Bush administration's antiregulation stance" had anything to do with the hurricane or its aftermath.
Ben Stein, however, in "Get Off His Back," September 2, 2005, has a list of 12 things George Bush did not do:
2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born.
. . .
5.) George Bush had nothing to do with the hurricane contingency plans for New Orleans. Those are drawn up by New Orleans and Louisiana. In any event, the plans were perfectly good: mandatory evacuation. It is in no way at all George Bush's fault that about 20 percent of New Orleans neglected to follow the plan.6.) George Bush did not cause gangsters to shoot at rescue helicopters taking people from rooftops, did not make gang bangers rape young girls in the Superdome, did not make looters steal hundreds of weapons, in short make New Orleans into a living hell.
. . .
11.) New Orleans is a great city with many great people. It will recover and be greater than ever. Sticking pins into an effigy of George Bush that does not resemble him in the slightest will not speed the process by one day.12.) The entire episode is a dramatic lesson in the breathtaking callousness of government officials at the ground level. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had gotten her way and they were in charge of your health care.
and in an update asks some questions, including
What church does Rev. Al Sharpton belong to that believes in passing blame and singling out people by race for opprobrium and hate?
. . .
Is there any problem in the world that is not Mr. Bush's fault, or have we reverted to a belief in a sort of witchcraft where we credit a mortal man with the ability to create terrifying storms and every other kind of ill wind?
The last ingredients for Katrina Jambalaya are an incompetent mayor and members of his police department who go "shopping" at a Wal-Mart with other looters ...
There's even a song to go with Katrina Jumbalaya ... The Right Place has put together "New Orleans Rhapsody"
Making a bigger batch of a recipe that wasn't nutritious in the past ... is still a recipe for more of the same ... and adding a few ingredients and renaming the recipe "Katrina Jambalaya" won't make this putrid dish any better ... or more effective ...
Posted at 09:36 AM · Categories: Ignorance , Katrina Jambalaya , Politics
September 02, 2005
New Orleans buses ...
The vitriol and venom aimed at the federal government coming out of the mouths of some Louisiana politicians is a mystery ... it wasn't like Louisiana and New Orleans leaders didn't know the hurricane was coming or anything ... and planning for natural disasters takes place at the LOCAL level ...
so ... a Cat 4 hurricane is coming towards your city, which, by the way, lies below sea level ... do you let your several-hundred school buses sit on a lot and get submerged ... rather than evacuating residents BEFORE the storm hits? ... Ai yi yi yi yi ...
can you say "smoke screen"? ...
If you're keeping track, these boobs [New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Terry Ebbert, head of New Orleans' emergency operations, and other corrupt and clueless New Orlean's officials] let 569 buses that could have carried 33,350 people out of New Orleans--in one trip--get ruined in the floods. Whatever plan these guys had, it was a dud. Or it probably would have been if they'd bothered to follow it.UPDATE: Looks like the bus lot now has a name: "Mayor Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool"
Read the whole thing ...
Junk Yard Dog, " The Buses of New Orleans," with a photo of the buses ...
"Mayor Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool" ... Heh ...
Update: Another reason why New Orleans Mayor Nagin was screaming for federal help? ... some of New Orleans finest were busy, uh, "shopping" at WalMart (video link) ...
Posted at 09:15 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Ignorance , Politics
August 22, 2005
13-year-olds can get abortions without parental consent but 18-year-olds are still "children" if they want to join the military ...
Ay caramba! Mark Steyn writes:
They're not children in Iraq; they're grown-ups who made their own decision to join the military. That seems to be difficult for the left to grasp. Ever since America's all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterize them as "children." If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that's her decision and her parents shouldn't get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the broadloom in Bill Clinton's Oval Office, she's a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year-old is serving his country overseas, he's a wee "child" who isn't really old enough to know what he's doing.I get many e-mails from soldiers in Iraq, and they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd, who writes like she's auditioning for a minor supporting role in ''Sex And The City.''
The infantilization of the military promoted by the left is deeply insulting to America's warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd's purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that "of course" they "support our troops," because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.
"'Peace Mom's' marriage a metaphor for Dems," by Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, August 21, 2005
Posted at 09:07 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Ay Caramba! , Children , Ignorance , Politics , Pundits
August 21, 2005
NIMBY Of The Year Award
from West Virginia Political Sweatbox
Kennedy, along with a bunch of other millionaire/billionaire muckety mucks, like Walter Cronkite, and author David McCullough (who's recent book "1776," is excellent, by the way) are vehemently fighting the construction of this pollution free energy source [windmills off Cape Cod]. Why? Because they would be visible from their multi-million dollar beach homes on the Cape and they don't want to ruin their pristine view of the ocean. So, they are willing to demand everyone else clean up their rivers, and not pollute this and not pollute that, but when it comes to someone making pollution free electricity, RFK Jr.'s response?"I'm all for that and think it's a great idea, but NOT IN MY BACKYARD."
And for this display of elitist greed and hypocrisy, we at the West Virginia Political Sweatbox, hereby award our first ever NIMBY Of The Year, to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I'm sure his father would be proud. [Golf clap]
All joking aside, this is why people dislike "limousine liberals." People who are quick to condemn your lifestyle, under the guise that they know what you need, better than you. But, they don't often practice what they preach, as in the instant example.
"And the NIMBY Of The Year Award goes to.... May I have the envelope please....." August 17, 2005
via the Robert C. Byrd Hillbilly Carnival
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August 19, 2005
Best line today
Best line today from Mediacrity: "This is the version of 'reality' you expect from people for whom 'terrorism' is getting bad sturgeon at Zabar's." ... "An Unreality Check at the Times"
Posted at 10:04 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Ignorance
August 15, 2005
Ignorance about basic civics on proud display
Ay caramba! The ignorance about basis civics just boggles ... Matt Taibbi wrote a story for Rolling Stone on how Congress works, and concludes:
Taken all together, the whole thing is an ingenious system for inhibiting progress and the popular will. The deck is stacked just enough to make sure that nothing ever changes. But just enough is left to chance to make sure that hope never completely dies out. And who knows, maybe it evolved that way for a reason.
"nothing ever changes", which is why we still have slavery, right Matt? ...
Congress didn't "evolve" that way ... it was "designed" that way ... Matt, did you take high school civics or American history? ...did your editor? ... have you ever read the U.S. Constitution? ... is your story what passes for informed commentary about how Congress works? ... Ai yi yi yi yi ...
"Four Amendments & a Funeral: A month inside the house of horrors that is Congress," by Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, August 10, 2005
Links
- U.S. Constitution, Article I., Section 7, Revenue Bills, Legislative Process, Presidential Veto
- The Federalist Papers, No. 62: "...a senate, as a second branch of the legislative assembly, distinct from, and dividing the power with, a first, must be in all cases a salutary check on the government. It doubles the security to the people, by requiring the concurrence of two distinct bodies in schemes of usurpation or perfidy, where the ambition or corruption of one would otherwise be sufficient."
- The Federalist Papers, No. 72: "The propensity of the legislative department to intrude upon the rights, and to absorb the powers, of the other departments, has been already suggested and repeated; the insufficiency of a mere parchment delineation of the boundaries of each, has also been remarked upon; and the necessity of furnishing each with constitutional arms for its own defense, has been inferred and proved. From these clear and indubitable principles results the propriety of a negative, either absolute or qualified, in the Executive, upon the acts of the legislative branches. Without the one or the other, the former would be absolutely unable to defend himself against the depredations of the latter. He might gradually be stripped of his authorities by successive resolutions, or annihilated by a single vote. And in the one mode or the other, the legislative and executive powers might speedily come to be blended in the same hands. If even no propensity had ever discovered itself in the legislative body to invade the rights of the Executive, the rules of just reasoning and theoretic propriety would of themselves teach us, that the one ought not to be left to the mercy of the other, but ought to possess a constitutional and effectual power of self defense.
But the power in question has a further use. It not only serves as a shield to the Executive, but it furnishes an additional security against the enaction of improper laws. It establishes a salutary check upon the legislative body, calculated to guard the community against the effects of faction, precipitancy, or of any impulse unfriendly to the public good, which may happen to influence a majority of that body."
- "'Virtual Congress' Would Weaken Deliberative Process," by Rep. David Drier (R-CA), Roll Call, December 20, 2001: "The founding fathers purposefully conceived Congress as a slow-moving, inefficient institution. Congress is not meant to react to the public emotions and demands of the moment. Indeed, by its very design, it serves to check the popular passions and develop legislation through a deliberative, consensus-building process."
Update - we're below the salt: we've been forwarded some comments made by our betters ... that we didn't understand the article ... and that Matt wasn't talking about the Congress as devised by the Founders ... Ai yi yi yi yi ... when Matt states "Taken all together, the whole thing is an ingenious system ...." suggest our betters go back to school ... take, or retake, civics 101 ... and familiarize themselves with ALL of the First Amendment ... including ... speech ... peaceable assembly ... petition the government ... lobbying is what special interests do ... but our betters, of course, don't belong to any special interests ... except their own ... no unions ... no coalitons ... no trade or academic associations ... no dreams of an even bigger state telling us all what to do ... no political parties ... no churches ... nope, no special interests there ... only those below the salt and other unworthy people belong to special interests ... after reading the First Amendment, go read Mancur Olson's "The Logic of Collective Action" and Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom"
Posted at 07:58 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: America , Ignorance , Politics