Archive for the ‘Pontification’ Category
January 1st, 2010 | 
Author: Charles Krauthammer’s take on the Obama administrations handling of our national security is spot on.
IMO, it is not even defensible by the left that Barry’s entire Ivory Tower view is anything other than a fraud and suicidal. The academia mind-set of world affairs is WRONG. It ignores first principles…which is not harmony and social “progress”. It is national defense which allows all the virtues of an enlightened society. That “enlightenment” doesn’t create the foreign policies. It is teh security of a strong foreign policy that allows the luxury of academic fancies.
This is all quite mad even in Obama’s terms. He sends 30,000 troops to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.
The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator — no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.
The president said that this incident highlights “the nature of those who threaten our homeland.” But the president is constantly denying the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Tuesday, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab (and his terrorist ilk) as “extremist(s).”
A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is not one of these. He is a jihadist. And unlike the guys who shoot abortion doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains in London, nightclubs in Bali and airplanes over Detroit (if they can); and are openly pledged to war on America.
The Dallas Morning News has a great article about how the video game industry has filled the void Hollywood has left on entertainment which extolls the virtues of the American Military.
Hollywood churned out dozens of in-the-trenches, pro-America extravaganzas such as Wake Island and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo while World War II was being fought.
But the portrayal of the U.S. military during its current engagements has been more subdued and even critical.
Game makers have stepped into the breach. And they’re making huge bucks crafting patriotic entertainment pieces for which the movie industry used to be famous.
Most notable of the new virtual epics is Modern Warfare 2 and its predecessor, both from California-based publisher Activision Blizzard Inc.
Activision’s top executive made it clear where the company stands when he announced an endowment to help military veterans find jobs.
“Business leaders have an opportunity to … reverse an alarming trend of not recognizing the sacrifices made by the men and women of our military service,” CEO Robert Kotick said.
Years ago, back before White Wolf released the Vampire the Masquerade to legions of Proto-Emos and Anne Rice wrung every homoerotic fantasy out of her twisted little brain, vampires were monsters. They were The Bad Things to Avoid and were clearly a thing you did not want to become. They were demonic metaphors for Satan… a liar who bewitches to spread his own damnation. And his minions ate bugs! How grody is that?
Ah… the good old days.
"I want my two dollars!"
The days when creepy dead kids would float outside your window, whispering to you to open it and invite them in.
Back then, you were pretty damn sure that seriously f*cked up sh*t would go down if you opened that window. Hell, I had nightmares about that evil kid, and every scratch sound from my window kept me up at night. In those day vamps were things to be terrified of. They would murder you… and becoming one meant the REAL you… your mind and soul… would be destroyed and replaced by an evil spirit that would likely kill everyone you loved. Your mom, your wife… your kids.(even babies)
Tags: In its mania for jailing people, Britain has declared trivial offences crimes
an article in the UK newspaper Guardian by Simon Jenkins (Thursday 12/11/2009) speaks out against the over-criminalization of Britain in an effort to “be tough on crime”.
Quote: Only the Americans among civilised democracies love prisons more than the British. For imprisonment Britain leads Europe, jailing convicts for non-violent crimes that most countries handle with non-custodial sentences, or do not regard as crimes at all. Thousands of British offences are for the “crime” of not obeying a government official.
Hat-tip to Wendy McElroy.
Reason TV interviews the authors of If We Can Put a Man on the Moon: Getting Big Things Done in Government in this 10 minute video. The book is a serious analysis of the failures of government action from conception to design to implementation.
Jonah Goldberg has a great post over at National Review Online about the Climate email scandal. Clock on over to read the whole thing, but here are a few salient points:
In a long string of embarrassing e-mail exchanges, CRU scientists discuss with friendly outside colleagues, including Penn State University’s Michael Mann, how to manipulate the data they want to show the world, and how to hide the often-flawed data they don’t. In one exchange, they discuss the “trick” of how to “hide the decline” in global temperatures since the 1960s. Again and again, the researchers don’t object to just inconvenient truths but also inconvenient truth-tellers. They contemplate and orchestrate efforts to purge scientists and journals who won’t sing from the same global-warming hymnal.
In one instance, Phil Jones, the CRU director, says a scientific journal must “rid (itself) of this troublesome editor,” who happened to publish a problematic paper. In another, Jones says we “will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
These documents reveal the trick behind how they hide the dissent. Climate-change activists often dismiss critics by noting that the skeptics haven’t offered their arguments in peer-reviewed literature. Hence why they work so hard to keep dissenters out of the literature! Indeed, whatever the final verdict on the CRU’s shenanigans, two things are already firmly established by even a sympathetic reading of these documents.
And when you loss the Daily Show…
Over the last few jobs I have had (over the last 20+ years) I have been one that has taken on as much responsibility as I can. When I got hired on as a full time employee where I work now, my boss, the president of the company, hadn’t had a vacation in about 7 years. My goal was to take enough responsibility away from him so that he would be able to take a vacation without having to worry that something would go wrong while he was gone. My philosophy is, the President of the company should only be doing the things that only he can do. If he is doing something I can do, then I will do it, or get someone else to do it for me. After I worked here for two years, he took a one week cruise. Mission accomplished!
The last few jobs I have had, I have increased in responsibility and pay faster than anyone else in the history of those companies. When you take on more responsibility than you are required to, you make yourself an asset to the company. Essentially, you create job security.
When the recession hit, my company had to reduce the number of employees they had in order to cut costs. Definitely not an unfamiliar action in today’s world. However, since I spent my time taking on responsibility and pushing my comfort zone way out there, I have become indispensable. I would venture to guess that I would be one of the last people to be laid off because I do so much for this company.
People need to realize that they do control their destiny. Things don’t just happen, unless you let them.
I have been working on getting debt free for a while now. You see, while I have a good work ethic, I have shown laxity in my finances. I wish I would have found someone like Dave Ramsey when I was in high school, instead of just a year or so ago. Although what he preaches is common sense, sometimes you just have to be hit upside the head with a 2×4 of common sense before you get it.
Now, making myself indispensable with the company I work for sounds like some really good job security, right? What happens, though, if the company goes out of business? That is the possibility I am facing now. How’s that for a 2×4 of common sense. It doesn’t matter how indispensable you are if the company no longer exists. That’s why you need to be debt free, and have an emergency fund in place. Once you have indispensability, no debt and an emergency fund, then you are “recession proof”.
President Obama is 48 today. So happy birthday Mr. President. Happy Birthday to you.
May the next year bring you wisdom and a sense of patience.
President Obama having a smoke, compliments of Reason.
And for the love of Vice President Biden, I hope you have many, many more Birthdays infront of you.
I clipped this from the National Review Blog: The Corner
Animal Welfare vs. Animal Rights [Wesley J. Smith]
Eating meat is a natural human activity — that is, we are biologically omnivorous. In my view, this makes it entirely moral for human beings to eat meat. How that meat is obtained is important. Human exceptionalism — a concept denied in animal-rights ideology — holds that we have a duty to treat animals humanely. Arguments can certainly be made that factory farms are not humane, although they do provide important human benefits of inexpensive and nutritious food. Many opponents of factory farms don’t have to worry about food prices when feeding their families. Still, there is “humane meat,” advocated by Matthew Scully in Dominion, which is more expensive but is raised on Old McDonald–type farms with humane methods of slaughter.
I consider vegetarianism for moral reasons akin to a vow of chastity by monastics: It eschews a normal human activity for higher moral purposes. That is to be admired. But no monastic would or should say that his vow of chastity makes him morally superior to married married people who have sex. Similarly, vegetarians’ decision to refrain from eating meat does not make them morally superior to people who do eat meat.
In Dominion, Scully does indeed come at his advocacy from an animal-welfare (as opposed to an animal-rights) perspective. But he is barely on the right side of the line because he is indifferent to the human good derived from animal industries and animal use.
He also claims that the ideology doesn’t matter in this debate. That is absolutely wrong. Animal-welfare philosophy supports human exceptionalism; animal-rights philosophy disdains that approach and rejects human exceptionalism as “speciesist.” There is a huge difference between the two. Whether we believe human beings have a unique moral status in the world has tremendous implications for human rights and human flourishing. Indeed, it could be the most important ethical and moral issue of the 21st century.
— Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow in human rights and bioethics for the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His next book, to be released in the fall, will be an exposé of the animal-rights movement.
