Month: April 2014

The Legacy Media’s Shoe-Horn of a Double-Standard (Dub v. Hill)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Remember when President Bush had a show thrown at him by a “journalist” in the Middle East? The media covered that as “more bad news for Bush” and the unpopularity of the war on terrorism. CBS even compared Bush to Saddam Hussein.

  • “Sock and awe. How the Iraqi shoe-thrower is now being hailed as a hero and drawing thousands of supporters….It’s being referred to as the ‘toss heard around the world.’ In fact, many Iraqis are showering accolades on the journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush.”  — CBS’s Harry Smith on The Early Show, December 16, 2008.
  • “In the Middle East, there’s no bigger insult than hitting someone with a shoe, a dirty object worn on the lowest part of the body. By showing the kind of contempt formerly reserved for Saddam Hussein to President Bush, [Muntathar] al-Zaidi’s become an instant hero….Al-Zaidi should do jail time, said the Iraqi bloggers – because he missed.” — CBS’s Elizabeth Palmer on the December 15, 2008 Evening News.

(NewsBusters)

(Kyle Drennen, via FoxNation) On Friday, all three network morning shows fretted over a woman throwing a shoe at Hillary Clinton during a speaking event in Las Vegas. NBC Today co-host Tamron Hall was particularly melodramatic: “I mean, but how scary is that?…Had it hit her, that would have been awful. It would have been awful.” Weatherman Al Roker added: “Jeez, that’s frightening.” Hall declared: “It’s hard for me to watch, actually.”

The shoe was on the other foot in 2008, when an Iraqi journalist threw two shoes at then-President George W. Bush during a Baghdad press conference. At that time, ABC and CBS referred to the shoe-thrower as a “celebrity” and “folk hero” who “thrilled the Arab world.” In 2009, then-MSNBC host David Shuster actually cheered the release of the footwear assailant from prison. Tamron Hall happened to be on the show at the time and observed that people would have been “more outraged” if someone threw a shoe at President Obama. Here are some reactions to the shoe throw at Hillary:

  • On CBS This Morning, co-host Charlie Rose observed that Clinton “handled that quite well” before noting that the thrower was “facing federal charges.” Fellow co-host Norah O’Donnell gushed: “You know, it was amazing to see how calm she [Hillary Clinton] was….she didn’t really react much at all and had a great retort, you know?” Rose agreed: “It was amazing.” O’Donnell concluded: “Incredible, indeed.”
  • By contrast, on Friday’s ABC Good Morning America, White House correspondent Jon Karl reported: “Hillary Clinton took that with good humor. But it was a scary moment.” Co-host George Stephanopoulos remarked: “Yeah, Hillary Clinton, quick with the quip. But that was a scary moment there for a second.”
  • On CBS This Morning, co-host Charlie Rose observed that Clinton “handled that quite well” before noting that the thrower was “facing federal charges.” Fellow co-host Norah O’Donnell gushed: “You know, it was amazing to see how calm she [Hillary Clinton] was….she didn’t really react much at all and had a great retort, you know?” Rose agreed: “It was amazing.” O’Donnell concluded: “Incredible, indeed.”

(NewsBusters)

Here is CNN covering Bush’s “Shoe Debacle,” take note of the public dislike of Bush in this report… from mentioning “disliking” him, to marveling that Bush would try and turn this into a positive:

  • “You may not like President [George W.] Bush‘s politics, but one thing you can say for sure is that the man has great reflexes,” then-CNN anchor Alina Cho told foreign correspondent Michael Ware in the wake of the December, 2008 incident in Iraq.
  • Ware marveled at the fact that Bush joked about the situation and attempted to “turn the incident to his advantage,” as opposed to dwelling ruefully on his shoe-administered repudiation.
  • “Bare in mind that, in Iraqi culture, throwing a shoe is close to the ultimate insult,” Ware noted. Unlike in the United States, where shoe-throwing is a traditional feature of weddings and christenings.
  • “This may become the press conference of the Iraq War that everyone will remember,” Ware later reported. He noted that this insult is “reserved only for the most hated.”

(Media’ite)

This blatant double-standard should be embarrassing to the legacy media. Alas, it is probably a badge of honor to them – unfortunately. Sad.

Fly At Your Own Risk: “Angry Birds” for Real!

Published by Papa Giorgio

Breitbart brings this “turkey roast” to bare:

In February, Secretary of Energy dedicated the Ivanpah Solar Energy Generating System in southeastern California, calling it a “shining example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy” [no pun intended, apparently]. 

However, the project–funded by $1.6 billion in Department of Energy loan guarantees from the 2009 stimulus–is killing wildlife as it concentrates heat on reflecting towers to maximize output.

The Ivanpah array (seen from the air in a Breitbart News photograph above) is cited in a new report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that describes it as a “mega-trap” for wildlife, according to the Palm Spring Desert Sun. 

In one section of the report, law enforcement officers from the agency describe visiting Ivanpah and witnessing “birds entering the solar flux and igniting,” each becoming a “streamer” of fire and smoke…

And the Washington Times (Via Lonely Conservative) points out some of the issues at hand:

1. Solar flux: Exposure to temperatures over 800 degrees F.

2. Impact (or blunt force) trauma: The birds’ wings are rendered inoperable while flying, causing them to crash into the ground. Birds that do not die are often injured badly enough to make them vulnerable to predators.

3. Predators: When a bird’s wings are singed and it can not fly, it loses its primary means of defense against animals like foxes and coyotes.

The study found that besides the intense heat, birds may be mistaking large solar panels for bodies of water. The injured birds then attract insects and other predators to the area. They, too, are then vulnerable to injury or death.

In one instance, researchers found “hundreds upon hundreds” of butterfly carcasses (including Monarchs). The insects were attracted to the light from the solar farms, which in turn attracted birds and perpetuated a cycle of death and injury.

Other issues with alternative energy:

But there is a “hidden” cost behind powering a plant not producing enough power:

…But Ivanpah uses natural gas as a supplementary fuel, and data from the California Energy Commission show the plant burned enough of it in 2014 – its first year of operation – to emit more than 46,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

That’s nearly twice the pollution threshold at which power plants and factories in California are required to participate in the state’s cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions.

The same amount of natural gas burned at a conventional power plant would have produced enough electricity to meet the annual needs of 17,000 California homes – roughly a quarter of the Ivanpah plant’s total electricity projection for 2014….

See MORE

The Media Matrix: “I Barely Began to Scratch the Surface”

Published by Papa Giorgio

Appearing on Thursday’s O’Reilly Factor, former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson claimed that CBS “had barely begun to scratch the surface” of the “Fast and Furious” scandal before the network moved on from the story. She noted that the network showed similar reluctance for its coverage of Benghazi and the ObamaCare rollout.

RPT Project ~ Categorizing My Quotes (Patience Requested)

Published by Papa Giorgio

I will be working on separating my collection of quotes into somewhat similar categories. As you can see [above], I have already started. I think I will included a “Historical” section as well as an “Economic” section. I was limited in my old theme to how many “PAGES” I could have, but no longer. And it dawned on me that I can expand this section/resource of my blog.

What this will do — pro: it will allow visitors to better find relevant quotes or insights if they so choose. The posts with the loosely classified quotes/excerpts will not be quite as long! More manageable.

What it will do — con: Since many of these quotes span multiple topics, for instance, religious AND political, or Theological AND historical*, they will be hard to categorize. So some will seem out of place — except in my mind of course. For this, I apologize.

* This will end up in the “Historical,” even though it could be in “Theology”

The Christian faith often served as a prelude to political reform. Just as it appeared that the reforming light was about to be extinguished” in early medieval Europe, missionaries from Ulster sailed and transplanted the faith. Democracy’s growth centuries later would come from the soil nourished by the Christian ethos. St. Patrick’s Ulster faith would blos­som as much in Switzerland as anywhere else at the time. During the early sixteenth century, that same faith, greatly matured, would both fuel and be charged by Calvinism. Calvinism, in turn, contributed to revolu­tionizing the politics of England and eventually returned to Irish soil, from which many of the second wave of American settlers sailed. The faith that would transform Western political institutions spread conta­giously—not always predictably or systematically, but irrepressibly. As it was recycled from Bangor to Geneva, then back to Donegal, it gath­ered force again in the massive Ulster Scot migration during the eight­eenth century to America—still preserving the improvements of Genevan polity—through Scots-Irish missionaries like Francis Makemie.

David W. Hall, The Genevan Reformation and the American Founding (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), 37

Street Fighter II ~ The WOF Church Edition (Reposted)

Published by Papa Giorgio

My FaceBook comment:

…too funny. As a guy who came from a house that accepted the “word of faith” teachings (and it was the cause of my fathers early death: http://tinyurl.com/qe46zg4 ~ see also: http://tinyurl.com/d4omv4), I know what a reasonable, healthy/well-balanced faith should look like — hint: not like the above. So I can laugh at this but am always amazed and saddened at how gullible we as humans are (religiously AND politically) — and why Scripture asks us to “check” our faith often (http://tinyurl.com/kt8tbkj). A funny find… I needed that laugh this morning.

Another Failed Origin of Life Prediction for Evolutionary Naturalists

Published by Papa Giorgio

The above video is the “perhaps” of modern science, that the below refutes with more updated information.

This is with a h-t to Fazale Rana. Fazal wrote on the matter here, “Sea Vents Closed as Life-Origin Site.” Below are some excerpts from the Science Daily article:

One of the greatest mysteries facing humans is how life originated on Earth. Scientists have determined approximately when life began (roughly 3.8 billion years ago), but there is still intense debate about exactly how life began. One possibility — that simple metabolic reactions emerged near ancient seafloor hot springs, enabling the leap from a non-living to a living world — has grown in popularity in the last two decades.

Recent research by geochemists Eoghan Reeves, Jeff Seewald, and Jill McDermott at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is the first to test a fundamental assumption of this ‘metabolism first’ hypothesis, and finds that it may not have been as easy as previously assumed. Instead, their findings could provide a focus for the search for life on other planets. The work is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In 1977, scientists discovered biological communities unexpectedly living around seafloor hydrothermal vents, far from sunlight and thriving on a chemical soup rich in hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and sulfur, spewing from the geysers. Inspired by these findings, scientists later proposed that hydrothermal vents provided an ideal environment with all the ingredients needed for microbial life to emerge on early Earth. A central figure in this hypothesis is a simple sulfur-containing carbon compound called “methanethiol” — a supposed geologic precursor of the Acetyl-CoA enzyme present in many organisms, including humans. Scientists suspected methanethiol could have been the “starter dough” from which all life emerged.

The question Reeves and his colleagues set out to test was whether methanethiol — a critical precursor of life — could form at modern day vent sites by purely chemical means without the involvement of life. Could methanethiol be the bridge between a chemical, non-living world and the first microbial life on the planet?

Carbon dioxide, hydrogen and sulfide are the common ingredients present in hydrothermal black smoker fluids. “The thought was that making methanethiol from these basic ingredients at seafloor hydrothermal vents should therefore have been an easy process,” adds Reeves.

The theory was appealing, and solved many of the basic problems with existing ideas that life may have been carried to Earth on a comet or asteroid….

[….]

“What we essentially found in our survey is that we don’t think methanethiol is forming by purely chemical means without the involvement of life. This might be disappointing news for anyone assuming an easy start for hydrothermal proto-metabolism,” says Reeves. “However, our finding that methanethiol may be readily forming as a breakdown product of microbial life provides further indication that life is present and widespread below the seafloor and is very exciting.”

The researchers believe this new understanding could change how we think about searching for life on other planets.

Uncommon Descent notes the following after quoting the above Science Daily article:

As noted earlier, origin of life is a problem in the origin of huge amount of information and looking for a way it happened due to some fluke has always been a waste of time.

Software engineer Arminius Mignea’s specifications for a simplest self-replicator in Engineering and the Ultimate would be a useful read on that score. It advances the discussion by setting out what origin of life (by human or other hands) models should look like, to merit consideration.

Too often, people play rhetorical games that sound like: “Life happened, so my ‘stink world’ is plausible” or “The prevailing consensus says Stink World is plausible, therefore life.”

It’s a form of homage to philosophical materialism, not science really, and it suck in lots of well-meaning people. They don’t realize that when we are asked to accept an inherently implausible idea because it is materialist, we are invited to put materialism above every other consideration, including logic, reason, and evidence.

 

Obama’s Bizarro Facts About the Gender Pay Gap ~ and His Family

Published by Papa Giorgio

Below, Michael Medved deals with two issues from President Obama’s recent Executive Order “Payment Fairness Act” push through. He [Medved] deals first with the continuing distortion of Obama’s family history by Obama himself. Then he gets to the meat of the issue (followed by some of the WSJ article mentioned in the clip):

Here are excerpts from the WSJ article:

…In its annual report, “Highlights of Women’s Earnings in 2012,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics states that “In 2012, women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median usual weekly earnings of $691. On average in 2012, women made about 81% of the median earnings of male full-time wage and salary workers ($854).” Give or take a few percentage points, the BLS appears to support the president’s claim.

But every “full-time” worker, as the BLS notes, is not the same: Men were almost twice as likely as women to work more than 40 hours a week, and women almost twice as likely to work only 35 to 39 hours per week. Once that is taken into consideration, the pay gap begins to shrink. Women who worked a 40-hour week earned 88% of male earnings.

Then there is the issue of marriage and children. The BLS reports that single women who have never married earned 96% of men’s earnings in 2012.

The supposed pay gap appears when marriage and children enter the picture. Child care takes mothers out of the labor market, so when they return they have less work experience than similarly-aged males. Many working mothers seek jobs that provide greater flexibility, such as telecommuting or flexible hours. Not all jobs can be flexible, and all other things being equal, those which are will pay less than those that do not.

Education also matters. Even within groups with the same educational attainment, women often choose fields of study, such as sociology, liberal arts or psychology, that pay less in the labor market. Men are more likely to major in finance, accounting or engineering. And as the American Association of University Women reports, men are four times more likely to bargain over salaries once they enter the job market.

Risk is another factor. Nearly all the most dangerous occupations, such as loggers or iron workers, are majority male and 92% of work-related deaths in 2012 were to men. Dangerous jobs tend to pay higher salaries to attract workers. Also: Males are more likely to pursue occupations where compensation is risky from year to year, such as law and finance. Research shows that average pay in such jobs is higher to compensate for that risk.

While the BLS reports that full-time female workers earned 81% of full-time males, that is very different than saying that women earned 81% of what men earned for doing the same jobs, while working the same hours, with the same level of risk, with the same educational background and the same years of continuous, uninterrupted work experience, and assuming no gender differences in family roles like child care. In a more comprehensive study that controlled for most of these relevant variables simultaneously—such as that from economists June and Dave O’Neill for the American Enterprise Institute in 2012—nearly all of the 23% raw gender pay gap cited by Mr. Obama can be attributed to factors other than discrimination. The O’Neills conclude that, “labor market discrimination is unlikely to account for more than 5% but may not be present at all.”…

Again, and again, the Dems from the President on-down spread this lie! While I deal with this quite well here… I will now add another post dealing with this myth, lie, political tactic. Below will be a few video/audio clips as well as The Wall Street Journal and Powerline posts/articles on the matter.

Professor Christiana Hoff Sommers was recently interviewed by Larry Elder explains this nonsense in an erudite and concise manner::

Powerline says that the President is in trouble when it can’t even fool CNN: AEI’s Mark Perry sets out the “analysis” proving pay discrimination at the White House here in a form even the folks at CNN can understand. If Obama can’t fool those who want to believe at CNN with this line, who ya gonna fool? Again, Powerline posts (10-20, 2012)Thomas Sowell’s response to the matter:

At the Hofstra University presidential debate this past Tuesday (I’m working from the WaPo transcript here), Candy Crowley called on Katherine Fenton to ask this groaner of a question: “In what new ways to you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn?”

This is such an old canard I thought that Governor Romney might challenge the premise of the question. Equal pay for equal work is the law of the land, Katherine. The proposition that the statistical disparity in pay you mention results from employment discrimination has been examined and disproved many times over. The great Thomas Sowell addressed it in chapter 3 of Economic Facts and Fallacies (summarized in the video below). Katherine, the premise of your question falls into the category of “fallacy.”

What is truly scary is that everyone may know your pay at some point… this may be no-longer private:

The first bill President Obama signed into law was the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, but five years later, the White House is still talking about the gender wage-gap.

At a White House briefing on Wednesday, Betsey Stevenson, one of President Obama’s economic advisers, said female employees need to know how much their male colleagues earn, so they can tell if they’re being paid equally.

(read it all)

(Via The Lonely Conservative) …The Washington Post slammed [the above] graphic put out by the White House as being sexist.

It pictures two women, one in a pink dress carrying a handbag, the other in an orange dress, and both are wearing oh-so-practical stilettos. This is exactly what working women wear to work every day, right? All those women who are lawyers, and doctors, and cashiers, and investment bankers, and biochemists, and nursing assistants and architects and engineers and cashiers at the Piggly Wiggly? Perhaps this is why Obama was so focused on dry-cleaning bills at the White House signing ceremony? This is just not great messaging or symbolism for a White House that wants to also focus on women in minimum wage jobs. It screams “Sex and the City,” not “9 to 5.”

Ouch!

It didn’t get much better for Senate Democrats. Republicans took a look at their payroll records and found they also have a wage inequality problem.

It turns out President Obama isn’t the only hypocritical Democrat, in fact Senate Democrats have their own problems when it comes to equal pay. We pulled the official payroll records of various offices and calculated the average pay for men and women in each office for the most recent 6 month period available. Since some employees only worked a portion of the six month period, we calculated how much each person was paid per day in order to give an accurate representation. Here’s what we found:

  • Mark Udall pays women 85 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
  • Mary Landrieu pays women 88 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
  • Mark Begich pays women 82 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
  • Mark Warner pays women 75 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
  • Gary Peters pays women 67 cents for every dollar that a man makes.

That means on average, these five Democrats on the ballot in battleground states pay women in their office 79 cents for every dollar made by a male employee.

Dissent Is Not Allowed — Climate McCarthyism

Published by Papa Giorgio
IPCC Report Supports Dissenters Position

The above graph is from the IPCC’s own data, and shows no warming — at all! (WUWT)

This comes from the Daily Mail:

  • Richard Tol claims he is fighting a sustained attack on his reputation
  • Professor from Sussex University is a highly respected climate economist
  • Criticised by campaigners after saying report summary was ‘alarmist’
  • In his opinion, it focused on ‘scare stories’

The professor who refused to sign last week’s high-profile UN climate report because it was too ‘alarmist’, has told The Mail on Sunday he has become the victim of a smear campaign.  

Richard Tol claims he is fighting a sustained attack on his reputation by a key figure from a leading institution that researches the impact of global warming.

Prof Tol said: ‘This has all the characteristics of a smear campaign. It’s all about taking away my credibility as an expert.’

Prof Tol, from Sussex University, is a highly respected climate economist and one of two ‘co-ordinating lead authors’ of an important chapter in the 2,600-page report published last week by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

He has been widely criticised by green campaigners after he claimed that the much shorter ‘summary for policymakers’ – hammered out in all-night sessions between scientists and government officials over a week-long meeting in Yokohama, Japan – was overly ‘alarmist’.

In his view, the summary focused on ‘scare stories’ and suggestions the world faced ‘the four horsemen of the apocalypse’.

He said he did not want his name associated with it because he felt ‘uncomfortable’ with the way the  summary exaggerated the economic impact of global warming.

The source of the alleged smear campaign is Bob Ward, director of policy at the London School of Economics’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change.

Mr Ward – neither an economist nor a climate expert – claimed on the institute’s website that he was waging ‘an ongoing struggle’ to force Prof Tol to correct ‘errors’ in his work.

Mr Ward had earlier sent an email  disparaging Prof Tol’s research to  several leading IPCC scientists and officials.

The New McCarthyism -- of the Left

…Academics who deviate from the perceived ‘correct’ line risk vilification. The most recent example is Professor Richard Tol of Sussex University, who had the temerity to remove his name from a UN climate report because he said it was ‘alarmist’.

Another is Prof Roger Pielke Jnr of Colorado. His ‘crime’ is to have published evidence that, so far, hurricanes have not become more frequent, while financial losses from extreme weather have not increased as a result of climate change. His reward has been an organised campaign demanding he be sacked… (see more)

Via Climate Depot on more dissenters:

Another Scientist Dissents! Fmr. NASA scientist Dr. Les Woodcock ‘Laughs’ at Global Warming – Top Prof. Declares: ‘Global warming is nonsense’

Emeritus Professor Chemical Thermodynamics Dr. Leslie Woodcock of the University of Manchester’s School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science and a former NASA researcher, dissented on man-made global warming. Woodcock declared there was “professional misconduct by Government advisors around the world” when it comes to man-made climate change claims. Woodcock, who received his PhD from the University of London, (Full Bio here – [email protected]) is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a founding editor of Molecular Simulation, and a recipient of a Max Planck Society Visiting Fellowship, has more than 70 published journal papers, explained: “The theory of ‘man-made climate change’ is an unsubstantiated hypothesis’ –  water is a much more powerful greenhouse gas and there is is 20 time more of it in our atmosphere (around one per cent of the atmosphere) whereas CO2 is only 0.04%  – ‘Carbon dioxide has been made out to be some kind of toxic gas but the truth is it’s the gas of life. We breath it out, plants breath it in. The green lobby has created a do-good industry and it becomes a way of life, like a religion.”

‘When I ask the former NASA scientist about ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’, he laughs.’

Woodcock continued: “The temperature of the earth has been going up and down for millions of years, if there are extremes, it’s nothing to do with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it’s not permanent and it’s not caused by us. Global warming is nonsense.”

“If you talk to real scientists who have no political interest, they will tell you there is nothing in global warming. It’s an industry which creates vast amounts of money for some people.

…read more…

James Lovelock Recants Global Warming Position (GAIA Down!)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Some updated info via Climate Depot:

Lovelock, on BBC TV, slams the global warming claims including those of of the United Nations climate panel. ‘They just guess. And a whole group of them meet together and encourage each other’s guesses.’ Lovelock was once one of the leading voices of climate alarm. See:

Fast Forward to April 2012:

  • ‘Gaia’ scientist James Lovelock reverses himself: I was ‘alarmist’ about climate change & so was Gore! ‘The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago’

Lovelock becomes UN IPCC’s biggest critic:

  • Green Guru Lovelock Slams UN IPCC & Greens: ‘Whenever UN puts its finger in it seems to become a mess’ — ‘The green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion’

James Lovelock:

  • ”IPCC is too politicized & too internalized’ — On Green religion: ‘I don’t think people have noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use. The greens use guilt. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting CO2 in the air’

And from What’s Up With That:

From the Guardian, where I find it surprising they actually printed it:

Scientist behind the Gaia hypothesis says environment movement does not pay enough attention to facts and he was too certain in the past about rising temperatures

Environmentalism has “become a religion” and does not pay enough attention to facts, according to James Lovelock.

The 94 year-old scientist, famous for his Gaia hypothesis that Earth is a self-regulating, single organism, also said that he had been too certain about the rate of global warming in his past book, that “it’s just as silly to be a [climate] denier as it is to be a believer” and that fracking and nuclear power should power the UK, not renewable sources such as windfarms.

Charles Koch Responds to Harry Reid

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is a h-t to Gay Patriot:

Last week, one of the Koch brothers responded to Harry Reid’s outrageous attacks demonizing them:

Charles Koch: I’m Fighting to Restore a Free Society

I have devoted most of my life to understanding the principles that enable people to improve their lives. It is those principles—the principles of a free society—that have shaped my life, my family, our company and America itself.

Unfortunately, the fundamental concepts of dignity, respect, equality before the law and personal freedom are under attack by the nation’s own government…[and] we have no choice but to fight for those principles. I have been doing so for more than 50 years, primarily through educational efforts. It was only in the past decade that I realized the need to also engage in the political process.

…In a truly free society, any business that disrespects its customers will fail, and deserves to do so. The same should be true of any government that disrespects its citizens. The central belief and fatal conceit of the current administration is that you are incapable of running your own life, but those in power are capable of running it for you…

More than 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson warned that this could happen. “The natural progress of things,” Jefferson wrote, “is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” He knew that no government could possibly run citizens’ lives for the better. The more government tries to control, the greater the disaster, as shown by the current health-care debacle…

Instead of encouraging free and open debate, collectivists strive to discredit and intimidate opponents. They engage in character assassination. (I should know, as the almost daily target of their attacks.) This is the approach that Arthur Schopenhauer described in the 19th century, that Saul Alinsky famously advocated in the 20th, and that so many despots have infamously practiced…

…I have spent decades opposing cronyism and all political favors, including mandates, subsidies and protective tariffs—even when we benefit from them. I believe that cronyism is nothing more than welfare for the rich and powerful, and should be abolished….

The almost unbearable hypocrisy Reid doesn’t get is his “renting” of the Senate floor to the 1% ~ via Breitbart:

The Republican National Committee says that the Senate Democrats’ all-nighter on the Senate floor Monday evening until 9 AM Tuesday was not about principle. The RNC claims Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats rented out the Senate floor to the environmental cause of one of their biggest left-wing billionaire donors.

RNC spokesman Raffi Williams points to how liberal billionaire Tom Steyer—a major Democratic Party donor—supports environmental causes.

“If you thought living in the Ritz-Carlton was expensive, it’s peanuts compared to the $100 million contribution from California billionaire Tom Steyer which is the going rate to rent Harry Reid’s Senate,” Williams said in a Tuesday statement. “Last night’s talk-a-thon was nothing more than payback for Steyer’s donations to the Democrat Party. Either Mr. Reid or the Democrat Party needs to reimburse taxpayers for their campaign stunt.”….

This bugs me to no end, I will post at the end of this a oft posted comparison to progressive billionaires versus more conservative billionaires and the impact this money has for-or-against our freedoms.

Michael Medved shows how Democrats and rational libertarians (the Koch Brothers) diverge on the issues most important to voters. Not to mention the hypocrisy of the left in all this. So much so that Washington Post’s Dana Milbank said:

  • “Democrats’ climate-change filibuster is nothing but a lot of hot air”…. “This may be the first time in history that a group of senators filibustered themselves.”

The Washington Examiner’s Zack Colman points out some of the hypocrisy when he writes,

  • “While Reid has grown more boisterous when it comes to the Koch brothers, Republicans have shot back that Democratic-aligned outsiders are starting to play the big money game as well. They have pointed to Tom Steyer, the billionaire former hedge fund manager, who has pledged to spend $100 million through his NextGen Climate PAC on climate and environmental issues ahead of the 2014 midterm elections.”

Powerline goes on to explain the reason behind a bunch of old, outdated politicians doing an all-nighter:

…Tom Steyer, a billionaire who has made a great deal of money on government-subsidized “green” energy projects, has become one of the Democratic Party’s most important donors. On February 18, he hosted a fundraiser at his home that netted $400,000. Harry Reid and six other Senators attended, along with Al Gore and a number of rich environmentalists. At that meeting, plans for last night’s talk-a-thon were already being laid.

The connection is simple: Steyer has pledged to contribute $50 million and raise another $50 million to help Democrats in the 2014 elections. The catch is that they have to emphasize global warming as an issue:

✦ Steyer’s advocacy group, NextGen Political Action, plans to spend at least $50 million of the former hedge-fund manager’s money, plus another $50 million raised from other donors. The group will refuse to spend money on behalf of Democrats who oppose climate regulation, but will not spend money against them either, according to Chris Lehane, a Steyer consultant.

So the Democrats are trying to walk a narrow line. They need to make noise about global warming to keep the cash flowing from Tom Steyer and other deep-pocketed environmental activists (some of whom, of course, are also “green” energy cronies)….

Plus, the comparison to these leftist radicals shrinking human freedom (growing government) versus allowing the proverbial us to make more choices in the individual sense (smaller government) is legend:

…First, the government needs to issue a mandate that all households must own at least one firearm. We will need a federal agency to ensure that people aren’t just buying cheap BB guns or .22 pistols, even though that may be all they need or want. It has to be 9mm or above, with .44 magnums getting a one-time tax credit on their own. Let’s pick an agency known for its aptitude on firearms and home protection to issue required annual certifications each year, without which the government will have to levy hefty fines. Which agency would do the best job? Hmmmm … I know! How about TSA? With their track record of excellence, we should have no problems implementing this mandate.

Don’t want to own a gun? Hey, no worries. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts says citizens have the right to refuse to comply with mandates. The government will just seize some of your cash in fines, that’s all. Isn’t choice great? Those fines will go toward federal credits that will fund firearm purchases for the less well off, so that they can protect their homes as adequately as those who can afford guns on their own. Since they generally live in neighborhoods where police response is appreciably worse than their higher-earning fellow Americans, they need them more anyway. Besides — gun ownership is actually mentioned in the Constitution, unlike health care, which isn’t. Obviously, that means that the federal government should be funding gun ownership….

…read more…

This is why people fear government, to answer John’s question.

Back to the excellent NewsBusters response to “Krystal Ball” on MSNBC:

Honestly, how does this woman have a job in a news division?

Oh. That’s right. MSNBC isn’t a news organization. How could I have forgotten?

Saying Republicans don’t want young people to buy health insurance is preposterous.

What conservatives don’t want is the government to force young people to purchase something that morbidity tables show will likely have absolutely no benefit for them until the distant future so that others who likely will benefit much sooner can get it either for free or far more cheaply.

Irrespective of what Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts foolishly ruled last year, this is neither Constitutional nor ethical.

As for these young people dying if ObamaCare is not enacted, that asininely assumes that people won’t have the money to pay for their care if they get sick or won’t purchase health insurance when they reach an age when they believe they need it.

For example, Ball mentioned prenatal care and tetanus shots. As a person that owns an insurance agency, I certainly would be telling a client looking to have children to purchase health insurance.

As for Pap smears, the Mayo Clinic recommends women over 21 do them every two to three years.

The cost varies state by state. In New York City, you can get one for as little as $150.

As such, a woman in that city doing it even once every two years would save thousands of dollars paying for it herself rather than buying health insurance.

As for cholesterol tests, these are now available online for as little as $40.

…read more…

This great, short, update comes via The Lonely Conservative:

The short answer to the question posed above is “Not even close.” It’s not the Koch Brothers or ALEC. Nope. The biggest spender in the dark money game is the Tides Foundation. Oh and by the way, Tides is a big liberal group.

Whenever “ALEC” and “dark money” are mentioned in the media, however, there ought to be a third name given at least equal attention – the Tides Foundation. That’s because Tides, the San Francisco-based funder of virtually every liberal activist group in existence since the mid-1970s, pioneered the concept of providing a cut-out for donors who don’t wish to be associated in public with a particular cause. It is instructive to compare the funding totals for Tides and ALEC.

A search of non-profit grant databases reveals 139 grants worth a total of $5.6 million to ALEC since 1998. By comparison, Tides is the Mega-Goliath of dark money cash flows. Tides received 1,976 grants worth a total of $451 million during the same period, or nearly 100 times as much money as ALEC. But even that’s not the whole story with Tides, which unlike ALEC, has divided and multiplied over the years. Add to the Tides Foundation total the directly linked Tides Center’s 465 grants with a combined worth of $62 million, and the total is well over half a billion dollars. (Read More)

So there.

READ MORE

“I think that I’m very different from the Koch brothers in the sense that I have absolutely no personal interest in what happens except as a citizen of the United States. So whereas they’re representing points of view that are in their personal monetary interests, I’m actually representing the citizens of the whole country in terms of their diffuse interests against concentrated economic interests that the Koch brothers represent.” ~ POWERLINE

(A response to this quote is at bottom)

The newest installment in regards to the biggest story lately in Democratic [billionaire] hypocrisy is the recent piece by John Hinderaker on Tom Steyer. Below is part of that article by John as well as an interview of John by Hugh Hewitt:

But Steyer’s hypocrisy goes still deeper. Today, he is a bitter opponent of fossil fuels, especially coal. That fits with his current economic interests: banning coal-fired power plants will boost the value of his solar projects. But it was not always thus. In fact, Steyer owes his fortune in large part to the fact that he has been one of the world’s largest financers of coal projects. Tom Steyer was for coal before he was against it.

A reader with first-hand knowledge of the relevant Asian and Australian markets sent us this detailed report on how Steyer got rich on coal. He titled his report “Hypocrisy & Hedge Funds: Climate Change Warrior Tom Steyer’s Secret Life as Coal Investment Kingpin.” Here it is, in full:

Tom Steyer founded Farallon Capital Management L.L.C. (“Farallon”) in 1986. Farallon has grown to become one of the largest and most successful hedge funds in the United States with over $20bn in funds under management.1 Mr. Steyer’s net worth is reported to be $1.6bn.2

Mr. Steyer left Farallon in 2012 to focus on political and environmental causes and potentially to position himself for public office. He has been described in the press as the “liberals’ answer to the Koch Brothers”3 due to his wealth and his opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline and carbon-based energy in general. He has dedicated some $50 million of his personal fortune to back political candidates who support his position on climate change – and punish those who don’t. Mr. Steyer has led recent campaigns with Bill McKibben to encourage university endowments to divest coal equities.

[….]

The facts, summarized below, might lead one to conclude that:

  • Mr. Steyer has had a direct, personal involvement in assembling, through Farallon, a portfolio of strategic investments in overseas coal miners and coal fired power plants which is unprecedented in scale. The total quantum of Farallon’s investments in these transactions is not publicly disclosed, but reasonable estimates suggest that it could be between US$1 and $2 billion in total.6 Taken collectively, the coal producers in which his fund has amassed these investment interests represent one of the largest sources of thermal coal in the world;
  • The financing provided by Mr. Steyer’s fund enabled these coal producers to restructure and recapitalize thereby freeing them to grow rapidly during a period of rapidly rising coal prices, leading to one of the largest expansions of thermal coal production in modern times7;
  • Made during a period of ever rising coal prices, these investments were almost certainly extremely profitable for Mr. Steyer’s fund overall, and my extension Mr. Steyer personally. It stands to reason that few people in American history have made more money from investment in thermal coal than Mr. Steyer.

[….]

Hypocrisy is not in short supply in the political world, but Tom Steyer is in a class by himself. Now that he is enriching himself through “green” cronyism, coal is evil. Sure: like all hydrocarbons, it competes with the solar energy boondoggles on which he is making millions, with the aid of the Obama administration. But where was Steyer’s alleged social conscience when he was one of the world’s biggest investors in coal? And how substantial are his current holdings in coal projects? Is Steyer financing his anti-fossil fuel campaign on profits from past or, perhaps, ongoing investments in Asian and Australian coal? Inquiring minds want to know! Tom Steyer appears to have elevated political hypocrisy to an entirely new level.

…read it all!…

Jake Tapper of CNN, one of the few truly fair guys in the legacy media, was also asked by Hugh Hewitt about Tom Steyer and the hypocrisy uncovered by John at Powerline. Hugh also played an American Commitment ad for Jake to get his comment on the topic at hand. Here is THAT interview with the description from my YouTube channel:

Hugh Hewitt interviews Jake Tapper of CNN, the topic? John Hinderaker’s recent piece, “The Epic Hypocrisy of Tom Steyer” (http://tinyurl.com/lro2wow). Tapper is hopeful for a braoder media attention to stories like John broke in regards to rich — hypocritical — millionaires and billionaires that give to the Democratic party. LIKE, the legacy media does, in regards to the Koch brothers and others.

My posts on the Koch brothers and Tom Steyer are as follows:

♚ https://religiopoliticaltalk.com/tag/koch-brothers/
♚ https://religiopoliticaltalk.com/tag/tom-steyer/

Tapper is fair as usual, one of the names in the media I have come to respect.

For more clear thinking like this from Hugh Hewitt… I invite you to visit: http://www.hughniverse.com/

To see more projects and information as well from American Commitment, check out their site: http://www.americancommitment.org/

WOW! I look forward to more on this.

PolitiBrew offers a response to the quote I chose to start this post with, “I think that I’m very different from the Koch brothers…” (top). I will include an upload of Michael Medved speaking about the generosity of the Koch Brothers as well, enjoy:

Tom Steyer is most certainly not the Koch Brothers. Steyer’s hedge fund is tied to a $67 million ponzi scheme that siphoned millions of dollars from foreign investors.

Steyer has also promised to spend $100 million to get democrats elected in 2014.

Meanwhile, the “evil” Koch Brothers donate billions of dollars to many deserving causes but generally give to conservative ones, you know, like all the money they give to M.D. Anderson for cancer research. How conservative is that? I guess they’d like to help conserve lives. How about that they “underwrite research and teaching at Brown, Mount Holyoke, Sarah Lawrence, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Vassar, and some 245 other colleges”? Is that conservative?

Think nothing of the Millions to MIT for cancer research, that’s conservative too, right? Right.

Yes Tom. We can’t deny that you are not the Koch Brothers. You may be able to hold a candle, just not to these Men. May as well blow it out….

These leftists are making it too easy! It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

Bubba Stock of Texas Catches the Famed Chupacabra

Published by Papa Giorgio

Before posting the Breitbart link, I wish to say the biologist, Brent Ortego, in the above story is wrong… because a canine doesn’t use it’s front paws like this. Here is more:

In the rural town of Ratcliffe, Texas, a couple believes they caught a mythical chupacabra.

According to numerous reports, Bubba Stock captured the creature on Sunday evening. The creature was eating corn in a tree at the time. Bubba’s wife, Jackie Stock, told local media outlet ABC7, “He told me to come look, and I said, ‘Bubba, that looks like a baby chupacabra.'”

The captured animal is hairless, blue-eyed, and growls.

KFOR-TV reported that Wildlife Diversity Biologist Brent Ortego thinks the creature is a dog or coyote with mange, a skin disease that causes animals to lose hair. Others have said the creature is likely a raccoon. But many Ratcliffe residents believe it could be an actual chupacabra.

According to local reports, resident Arlen Parma is puzzled by the animal’s growl.

“A raccoon don’t make that noise, or a possum,” Parma contended. “What makes that noise? I guess a Chupacabra does, I don’t know.”

…read more…

My bet is that it is a raccoon with mange.

Marrs Hill Church Digging a Deeper Hole ~ Warren Smith

Published by Papa Giorgio

This update to an ongoing [apparently] issue[s] at Mars Hill comes way of Warren Smith at World Magazine:

Mars Hill Church, the Seattle megachurch pastored by Mark Driscoll, has moved to destroy all staff emails more than three months old. According to the church’s new email retention policy, announced this week, the email deletions would reduce technology costs. But a group of former staff, elders, and members say the new policy is a deliberate attempt to destroy documents that might be used in litigation against the church.

WORLD obtained an email from the church announcing the new policy, scheduled to go into effect by the close of business today. “We are now shifting to a new email retention policy, which will automatically retain emails only from the last 90 days on our machines, servers, and backups,” the email read.

Reaction to the new policy was immediate, with some former staff members and elders saying that even though Driscoll issued a lengthy statement confessing to and repenting of behavior that has led to recent controversies, this action is not consistent with that statement.

“Mars Hill leaders say they are ‘repenting,’ yet their actions scream cover up and damage control,” said former church staff member and elder Kyle Firstenberg “Sin that is repented of declares the glory of the gospel of Jesus. Sin that is covered up declares self-preservation and a lack of understanding of the gospel. Why don’t their words and actions agree?”

…read more…

To be honest, his infractions are not that great in my minds eye. A pastor shouldn’t participate in this “worldly ploy” maybe, but getting a christian based relational type book on the best seller list for people to see is a worthy goal. Plagiarism is a big deal… if not cited in his writings (as the audio at the top makes the point of)… there are dissenting opinions on this however.

But alas, there are better ways in which a pastor is suppose to act, as Sola Sisters make clear. Issues lightly touched upon in that post by SS that are more pertinent than buying books.