Rep. Lynn Woolsey (Democrat 6th District – CA) says Afghanistan War a Moral Blight~Dennis Prager Responds

Representative Lynn Woolsey (Democrat 6th District – CA) spoke on the floor about the Afghan war. Prager talks about the vacuous nature of any moral compass on the left.

For more clear thinking like this from Dennis Prager… I invite you to join Pragertopia: dennisprager.com/

South Sudan Voting to Seperate from Northern Region

In the South you have a mixture of Christians and animist religions. In the North you have predominately Muslims. The Muslims are killing anyone who disagrees with their sharia ways and Christians and others are harassed and looked at as chattel, especially the women. The southern part of the nation has been pushing for this for some time. It will allow for aid organizations and ministries to do what they are best at, caring for the sick and starving. This is one cause Hollywood was early to in regards to the mainstream media, but late in comparative terms to Christians pointing out the genocide and slavery imposed on the Christian population for over 20-years by the Muslims. A good documentary is The Devil Came on Horseback, there use to be a free online version, but you must purchase it now (or go to the Bay *wink*). At any rate, this is good news for freedom.

Ask and ye shall receive

NewsBusters h/t:

  • Ex Google lobbyist Andrew McLaughlin working as the No. 2 tech policy guy in the White House discussing net neutrality with Google lobbyists (registered and unregistered) while Google stood to profit from the administration’s Net Neutrality rules.
  • Former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson taking a job as Treasury Department chief of staff within 9 months of his work for Goldman.
  • Former H&R Block CEO Mark Ernst being hired by Obama’s IRS and then writing new regulations on tax prep — regulations that H&R Block has endorsed, and that will help H&R Block.
  • Obama officials meeting off campus for official business for the sake of avoiding the Presidential Records Act.
  • And this nugget from the same NYTimes piece: “Two lobbyists also cited instances in which the White House had suggested that a job candidate be “deregistered” as a lobbyist in Senate records to avoid violating the administration’s hiring restrictions.”
  • The firing of AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin. As my colleague Byron York has explained: “The method of Walpin’s firing could be a violation of the 2008 Inspectors General Reform Act, which requires the president to give Congress 30 days’ notice, plus an explanation of cause, before firing an inspector general.”
  • Giving a car company (Chrysler) to a political entity that spent millions to get you elected. This deal involved alleged threats by a since-indicted car czar to knee-cap investors who didn’t want to agree to the White House’s deal.

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~Global~Sophists

Victor Davis Hanson hit a home run… again:

In classical Athens, public life became dominated by clever and smart-sounding sophists. These mellifluous “really wise guys” made money and gained influence by their rhetorical boasts to “prove” the most amazing “thinkery” that belied common sense.

We are living in a new age of sophism — but without a modern equivalent of Socrates to remind the public just how silly our highly credentialed and privileged new rhetoricians can often sound.

Take California, which is struggling with a near-record wet and snowy winter. Flooding spreads in the lowlands; snow piles up in the Sierras.

In February 2009, Nobel Laureate and Energy Secretary Steven Chu pontificated without evidence that California farms would dry up and blow away, inasmuch as 90 percent of the annual Sierra snowpack would disappear. Yet long-term studies of the central Sierra snowpack show average snow levels unchanged over the last 90 years. Many California farms are drying up — but from government’s, not nature’s, irrigation cutoffs.

England is freezing and snowy. But that’s odd, since global warming experts assured that the end of English snow was on the horizon. Australia is now flooding — despite predictions that its impending new droughts meant it could not sustain its present population. The New York Times just published an op-ed assuring the public that the current record cold and snow are proof of global warming. In theory, they could be, but one wonders: what, then, would record winter heat and drought prove?

In response to these unexpected symptoms of blizzards and deluges, climate physicians offer changing diagnoses. “Global change” has superseded “global warming.” After these radically cold winters, the next replacement appears to be “climate chaos.” Yet if next December is neither too hot nor too cold, expect to hear about the doldrum dangers of “climate calm.”

In 2009, brilliant economists in the Obama administration — Peter Orszag, Larry Summers and Christina Romer — assured us that record trillion-plus budget defects were critical to prevent stalled growth and 10 percent unemployment. For nearly two years we have experienced both, but now with an addition $3 trillion in national debt. All three have quietly either returned to academia or Wall Street.

There is also a new generation of young, sophistic bloggers who offer their wisdom from the New York-Washington corridor. They are usually graduates of America’s elite colleges and navigate in an upscale urban landscape. One, the Washington Post’s 26-year-old Ezra Klein, recently scoffed to his readers that a bothersome U.S. Constitution was “100 years old” and had “no binding power on anything.”

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California Battered by Record Flooding Rains, Snowfall
Uploaded by Bloomberg. – Up-to-the minute news videos.

Designer Society via Genes

I read a great article today posted over at Public Discourse. I thought I would share the beginning which reached out and grabbed me. The article is by Justin D. Barnard and is entitled — Designer Genes: One scientist’s flawed argument for flawless humans. What a great article. If anyone knows me they know that I love politics, and I love my patron drinking saint almost as much. Who is that? C.S. Lewis. By the way, if you haven’t done it yet, purchase or rent The Narnia Code. Jaw dropping and it endears me ever more to doc Lewis (and his extreme intelligence) and to the wonders of my Creator. Anyways, here is the portion that hooked me:

In a 1958 editorial, C.S. Lewis commented on the questions: “Is man progressing today?” and “Is progress even possible?” Lewis feared the prospect of a “planned state”—a “technocracy” in which the government “must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists, till in the end the politicians proper become merely the scientists’ puppets.” With his characteristic frankness and common sense, Lewis articulated the grounds of his fear thus:

I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But . . . questions about the good for man, about justice, and what things are worth having at what price . . . on these a scientific training gives a man’s opinion no added value. Let the doctor tell me I shall die unless I do so-and-so; but whether life is worth having on those terms is no more a question for him than for any other man.

Whether western liberal democracies have “progressed” in the direction of the “welfare state” that Lewis envisioned in his 1958 essay is a matter of on-going political debate. What is, perhaps, undisputed is that in addition to telling us about science, a new scientific priesthood speaks ex cathedra on the whole range of “questions about the good for man, about justice, and what things are worth having at what price.”

[….]

It is precisely this aspect of the new scientific priesthood that is most disconcerting. It wants science unencumbered by the rigorous demands of rational moral discourse. At the same time, this priestly class recognizes that they serve a populace still very much enthralled by a moral universe they have long since rejected. Consequently, the scientific priests must provide a substitute mythology for traditional, rational moral discourse—one that affords therapeutic solace for the vacuum created by the elimination of the latter. This is achieved perfectly when morality is reduced to emotive preference and science becomes an instrument in the satisfaction of consumer desire.

That Designer Genes aims at a popular audience is telling. It tells a story of the exciting and uncertain future of genetic enhancement in the tradition of Disney’s Jiminy Cricket. However, what guidance it provides comes not from conscience, but from technological possibilities offered in the interest of consumer demand. What passes for moral counsel is mere reassurance that the customer is king. If C.S. Lewis is right to fear scientists who speak as though their technical training as scientists provides grounds for moral authority, one ought to be more fearful of scientists who, speaking out of their scientific expertise, assure us with full moral authority that there is no moral authority. Just relax while the anesthetic takes effect.

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Ted Williams Update

From The Statesman:

Left homeless after his life and career were ruined by drugs and alcohol, Ted Williams has been offered a job by the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers and is being pursued by NFL Films for possible work. He and his compelling tale became an online sensation after The Columbus Dispatch posted a clip of Williams demonstrating his voice-over skills by the side of the road. The man has a great voice.

“This has been totally, totally amazing,” Williams said Wednesday, his voice choking with emotion. “I’m just so thankful. I’m getting a second chance. Amazing.”

The Cavaliers offered the 53-year-old a two-year contract, including living expenses, for a job that could include announcing work at the team’s arena. In court records, his address is listed as “Streets of Columbus.”

“I can’t believe what’s going on,” said Williams, a father of nine, adding he feels like Susan Boyle, the Scottish singing sensation who became an overnight star. “God gave me a million-dollar voice, and I just hope I can do right by him.”