text:
These two clips cover her speech, and Q&A session at CPAC today.
Ann Coulter is outspoken and intelligent. I recommend the bio pic, "Is it true what they say about Ann?"
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Ann Coulter at CPAC
These two clips cover her speech, and Q&A session at CPAC today.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Friday B-Movie Pick
A really done action thriller from South Korea. Excellent story, fast paced, and great action scenes.
Friday B-Movie Archives
Boston Tea Party Events
The policies of our Dear Leader has invoked the spirit of the original Boston Tea Party across the country.
They are being held in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, St. Louis, Chicago, San Diego and Portland.
Update: Add Atlanta, Wichita, Oklahoma City, Nashville, and Tulsa.
Update: New York City Tea Party
Lies of the Obama cabal
Two big ones in a row.
First from the gaffmeister himself, Joe Biden. You can almost forgive him, because he has a long history of just saying wacky shit, but he is an official spokesman of our Dear Leader, so BHO should be keeping a leash on him.
Biden falsely claimed that Louisiana is loosing jobs a rate of 400 per day. Of course, the actual truth is the opposite of what came out of Joe Biden's mouth. Louisiana is adding jobs, i.e. the unemployment rate is falling. Don't expect MSNBC (i.e. the "Obama network") to point out this obvious error of the Obama administration.
The next big lie came from our Dear Leader personally. BHO claims that he can jack the taxes of "wealthiest 2% of Americans" to pay for his massive socialist government spending. The Wall Street Journal points out that the numbers just don't add up.
Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.
Note that federal income taxes are already "progressive" with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He'd also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need.
The bottom line is that Mr. Obama is selling the country on a 2% illusion. Unwinding the U.S. commitment in Iraq and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire can't possibly pay for his agenda. Taxes on the not-so-rich will need to rise as well.
On that point, by the way, it's unclear why Mr. Obama thinks his climate-change scheme won't hit all Americans with higher taxes. Selling the right to emit greenhouse gases amounts to a steep new tax on most types of energy and, therefore, on all Americans who use energy.
The numbers just don't add up, and I'm betting that Team BHO knows it. They are just hoping that most Americans won't do the math until it is too late.
BHO boosts sales of Atlas Shrugged
Since our Dear Leader has taken office and made his socialist agenda clear, sales of Ayn Rand's classic Atlas Shrugged have more than tripled.
Keep in mind that BHO won with a razor thin margin in an election with an average turnout. He stirred up his base, a good chunk of the right of center base stayed home and moderates in the middle seemed to have bought into the message of "change" not just being different than G.W. Bush, but somehow would be better. Now they are finding out that "change" can be worse, much worse. The democrats policies will stir up the conservative Republican base better than McCain could and alienate the moderate center. The campaign for the 2010 (and 2012) elections have alreadys started.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
RIP Philip Jose Farmer
Philip Jose Farmer, one my my favorite SF authors, passed away yesterday at age 91.
He told grand stories of life, love lost and love found. If you haven't read anything by him yet, you should.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Blatant, overt racism
No surprise that it is coming from the left and there will be no media outrage over it.
Two members of the extreme far left media, who have freely admitted their extremist political bias, made flat out, unequivocal racist comments about the non-white governor of Louisiana.
First it was Helen Thomas making racially charged and negative comments about "Slumdog Millionaire" in reference to the Governor, who is of Indian decent.
Then it was Chris Matthews of the "Obama Network" using racist language to describe the governor's speech.
The only thing more outrageous than this flat out racism from members of the press is the silence of the far left who bring the charge of racism against any perceived slight against our Dear Leader.
Anthropogenic global warming Luddites
Do you people have reading comprehension problems? I just got another "You don't even believe in 'Global Warming' whines.
What part of "I am one of Global Warming biggest fans" is it you just can't grok?
Given that the most common historic weather pattern for most of North American, Europe and a big chunk of Asia is to be under several kilometers of glacial ice, you should be having those knee bones hit the floor and thank whatever Deity you worship that you live in an age of global warming.
Unless you are one of those Algore cultists who refuse to acknowledge basic science and geological records that show that drastic climate change is a solid scientific fact that predates the industrial revolution (i.e. when mankind started producing greenhouse gases by burning fossil fuels in a large scale manner) and in fact predates the existence of mankind on the planet by a very long fornicating time.
A good way to tell that these AGW proponents are cultists and not based in reason and actual science is their refusal to logically debate the subject. They call you a "denier" and try to shut down debate. Arguing from emotion is easier than debating facts, which is why the AGW cultists don't want to debate, but instead want to shut down any and all debate on the subject.
Most of those cultists will point to Al Gore's fear mongering propaganda film. You know the one, it was based on the slide show he put together to pitch his business. A business that sells "carbon credits" to gullible morons. Carbon credits that he gets for free as an employee and tells you that those "offsets" make up for his his giant mansion with the heated pool and flying around the world in private jets that put out dozens "SUV Years" worth of green house gases per mile.
On the subject of "deniers", you won't find a better example of Al Gore. In putting together his pitch, he had to deliberately deny solid scientific facts about history in order to support his "hockey stick" graph. Historic facts like the Little Ice Age that ended near the closing of the nineteenth century. In geological terms, that was about five minutes ago. So the records are pretty easy to check. The Thames river froze solid enough during the Victorian and Edwardian period that the city of London had "Ice Festivals." People built shacks on the in the middle of the river and people walked out to them for a good three months out of the year. This was well documented in the literature and newspapers of the time. During the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, Londoners complain if they get a little snow. A fairly significant change in temperature, but according to Algore's graph, that period is a flat line. He also denies the earlier Medieval Warm Period. A period of history were there are records of wheat being grown on Greenland and London was a well know wine producing region. There are still streets in London with names reference vineyards and wine production dating back to that period. He had to edit these fairly recent examples of more extreme climate change out of his data in order to make things look worse than they really are and get you scared enough to believe his bullshit.
So, let's review. Al Gore faked the data, i.e. he lied, in order to prove his theory is his fear mongering propaganda film. A film designed to build business for his company that sells "carbon offsets." A business model that has been widely documented to be a scam in news organizations including the New York Times.
Let's review some of the "scientists" who back the Cult of Algore, including the ones who were warning everyone that the world was entering another Ice Age and that Global Cooling was the threat. That was before they found out that the money was better on the "Global Warming" side of the street. Go check Time magazine from 1974. Global Cooling was going to destroy civilization as we know it.
If you don't believe me, do your own research. The facts are there. Hell, Penn & Teller did an episode of BullShit! on the subject.
Let's review a few facts. Yes, pollution is very bad. Cutting back on overall fossil fuel use is good. Moving to cleaner energy sources such as wind, solar and nuclear (yes I said Nuclear you Luddites, and the founder of the GAIA movement in the UK and one founders of Greenpeace agrees with me) is good. Being taken in a simple scam such as "carbon credits" is bad.
The "Global Warming" fear mongers couldn't even predict a short term climate change, such as the recent period of cooling that started in 1998. That is why they now call it "Climate Change" and will spout complete nonsense including trying to claim that the cooling is a sign that "Global Warming" is happening even faster.
Come on people! Open your mind! Review the facts. Ask questions! Why was Communist China, now the biggest producer of dirty green house gases (yes, they passed the US, which is reducing its own rate of emissions faster than the European countries that signed the Kyoto Protocols), given a free pass to pollute at record rates in the Kyoto Protocols? If things really are as bad as Algore and the rest of the Fear Mongers are telling you, why did Communist China get a free pass to build a new dirty coal fired electrical plant every month? The US and other Western nations tax gasoline, and one of the reasons for the tax is to reduce its use. Communist China on the other hand, subsidizes gasoline prices. Their goal is for more people in Communist China to buy cars and drive them more often, making the problem of "Man Made Global Warming" worse? Why did Al Gore and the other nations that supported the Kyoto Protocols agree to that if this really and truly is a global crisis?
Don't forget to check why hundreds of actual real scientists in the field of global climate have left the UN's IPCC, stating that the reason was the organization was motivated by politics and not real science.
Let's review. Is global climate is change real? Hell Ya! It's being going on long before Homo Sapiens wandered out of Africa and will continue. Is Al Gore and the rest of the AGWs fear mongers running a scam on the gullible? Hell Ya! Let's be real, it's just a scam. Calling it a conspiracy would be insulting to the people who are intelligent enough to come up with decent and semi-plausible conspiracies. Is pollution bad and should intelligent people work in ways to reduce it? Hell Ya! I'll bet most of the people would read this are doing more for that than Al Gore or any one of that breed of hypocritical limousine liberals. Just look at how the rate of death from lung diseases have sky rocketed in Communist China since they started building an extremely dirty coal fired electrical plant a month. Then ask yourself why the IPCC or the UN Human Rights commission isn't doing a damn thing about it.
Let's compare this to another science/pseudo science debate. Evolution and Intelligent design. In this case, I'm the Evolution side which looks at all the evidence and draws a logical conclusion based on the full range of scientific data. You Algore Cultists are the ones selectively cherry picking only the stray bits of science that fit your narrow viewpoint of what you feel must be true. Except in this case, I'll give bonus points to the Intelligent Design folks because they at least admit their bias.
Update: The Japan Society of Energy and Resources isn't buying Algore's bullshit either.
Update: Hardly surprising, the Penn & Teller video I linked to earlier in the post has "been removed for violations of terms of service." No other videos of Bullshit! episodes, just this one mocking the AGW cultists High Priest Algore. Here is a link they haven't shut down yet,and another of the first segment. Why are the AGW cultists afraid of open and honest debate of the actual science of the subject of climate change.
Monday, February 23, 2009
The market responds to "Hope & Change"
As of 1630, the Dow is down 250 points today. 10 points of that drop since our Dear Leader went on TV to talk about "financial responsibility."
Monday Book Pick
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
A well written tale of betrayal, revenge and englightment. A SciFi classic from the 1950s.
The Monday Book Pick Archive
Saturday, February 21, 2009
The morning round up
Mr. Reynolds nailed it back in June 2008.
"I can think of no better reason to vote against Obama than the prospect of an administration where any criticism of the President is treated as racism."
The proof, this AP story showing how leftists are using any excuse to accuse any possible criticism of our Dear Leader as racism.
Next, the vote fraud experts at ACORN are expanding their skills into illegal breaking and entering into private homes.
Our Dear Leader's Energy Secretary is demonstrating that he is perfect Obama pick. He's out there making rookie mistakes and doesn't know just what his job covers.
Crushing of dissent in the Age of Obama.
Having the leader of the Free World "winging it" is not inspiring confidence.
NY Times: Guantanamo Bay military prison Meets Geneva Convention Standards.
Democratic Members Of Congress: The Secret Ballot Is Essential For Workers...In Mexico, but not in America.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Friday B-Movie Pick
John Carpenter's Vampires
Violence, humor, and then a lot more violence with a little bit of humor. More Vampires in the American Southwest, and James Woods is out to put 'em down.
The Friday B-Movie Archive
Meanwhile in Chicago...
For once, not a story of democrat corruption in Chicago. I know a bit of surprise, since corrupt democrats are in the vast majority in Chicago.
Take a look at this video, and pay attention to the reactions of the people working in the Chicago Stock Exchange.
The reality is that the market has been dropping each time our Dear Leader and the democrats in Chicago announce another one of their "Five Year Plans."
Update: The DOW is down another 100 points on "Hope and Change", or as it is now known,"Hype and Crappola."
The left is fanning the fires of racism
...even if they have to lie to do it.
Case in point, the HuffPo using a doctored video to accuse Fox News of racism.
Johnny Dollar points out the actual truth:
There's only one problem with all this: the video posted by HuffPo is a fake. The three words allegedly spoken by Gibson, "bright blue scrotum", are actually in Trace Gallagher's voice. Those words were lifted from a few moments earlier and pasted over Gibson's actual sentence: "We were talking about Eric Holder today on the radio and his comment that this is a nation of cowards." But don't take our word for it. See, and hear, for yourself:
This raises the question, Why can't the left make their arguments with the truth?
Why are leftists so eager to raise the specter of racism?
Perhaps it is because they plan on using it to attack their foes regardless of factual arguments opponents of socialism.
Update: Huffpo has posted a retraction, admitting the video they quoted was a fake.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
An excellent interview with Dr. Pournelle
Stephen Euin Cobb has an excellent interview with Dr. Jerry Pournelle in his podcast, The Future and You.
The interview is spread across three episodes (1/28/09, 2/4/09, 2/11/09), and focuses mostly on his work other than writing science fiction novels.
From Mr. Cobb's website about Dr. Pournelle,
After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he acquired Master's degrees in both experimental statistics and systems engineering, and Doctorates in both psychology and political science. He co-wrote a military textbook called The Strategy of Technology which was required reading at West Point and the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. He helped to write a portion of Ronald Reagan's State of the Union Address concerning a missile defense system which the media at the time enjoyed making fun of and calling Star Wars, since they believed the technology needed to shoot down incoming missiles with our own missiles was impossible. He worked in operations research at Boeing, The Aerospace Corporation, and North American Rockwell Space Division. He was founding President of the Pepperdine Research Institute. He was campaign manager for Congressman Barry Goldwater, Jr., as well as for Mayor Sam Yorty. And he was a columnist for Byte Magazine beginning in 1982.
One of the more interesting parts of the interview, IMNSHO, was an explanation of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, and why it hasn't taken hold very strongly in the US Military (and has in some other countries armed forces).
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
Other fascinating items were Dr. Pournelle's involvement in the SDI program (which my Senior Senator was flat out wrong about) and its effect on the outcome of the Cold War.
Attention Code Pink
Our Dear Leader, Barack Hussein Obama is sending an additional 17,000 US military personnel to Afghanistan. This is just the first wave, "The new forces represent the first installment on a larger influx of U.S. forces widely expected this year."
I except your principled, non-partisan protests to start out side the White House and the Obama's Chicago home without delay.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
What Cafferty missed
CNN's Jack Cafferty has a scathing editorial about the democrat Porkulus bill that our Dear Leader will sign later today.
First let's review what Jack Cafferty nailed.
What a joke. Your Congress has voted to spend almost $790 billion of your money on a stimulus package that not a single member of either chamber has read.
The criminal part of this boondoggle is divided into two parts. The first is the Democrats promised to post the bill a full 48 hours before the vote was taken to allow members of the public to see what they were getting for their money.
It didn't happen. Why am I not surprised? Congress lying to the American people has become part of their job description. They can't be trusted on anything anymore.
When Reid first announced the compromise had been reached, Nancy Pelosi was nowhere to be seen. And it would take an act of God for this egotistical, arrogant woman to miss a photo op where she could take credit for anything. But she wasn't there.
The second part of the crime is the contents of the bill itself. Far from being only about jobs, infrastructure and tax cuts as promised, the stimulus bill stimulates a bunch of other stuff as well.
Let's review, the democrat leadership in Congress shoved this through at a dangerous pace with no bipartisan support (Let's be honest here, the 3 "Republicans" who voted for this pork fest are more liberal than the 7 Blue Dog Democrats who voted against it.), and loaded it down with massive amounts of non-stimulus pork (which Cafferty lists just a small fraction of).
What did Cafferty miss? Well, to start with, he tries to paint this as a "bi-partisan" fiasco. Nope, not gonna fly. If on the off chance this actually does some good over the next year (with only 8% of the porkulus bill being spent in 2009, that is kinda doubtful), the democrats will take all the credit. The flip side is if this pork barrel express legislation tanks, they have to take all the blame.
The other thing Cafferty missed was the correct role of our Dear Leader. Mr. Cafferty writes:
It's really too bad President Obama couldn't figure out a way to jettison these two who are poster children for everything that is wrong in Washington. The Associated Press called the birth of the stimulus bill "sausage making" in the best tradition of Washington politics as usual.
One of our Dear Leader's jobs is the head of his party. He should be dictating policy to Reid and Pelosi, not the other way around. In the case of this Porkulus bill, Barack Hussein Obama failed in his duty to the American people by letting the so-called "leaders" of his party in Congress load what is supposed to be a bill to help all of the American people with payback for their party's supporters and pork barrel spending for democrat congressional districts. To make matters worse, our Dear Leader is actually going to sign this pig into law. He'll wrap it up in very pretty words that he will read from his teleprompter, but no matter how much lipstick he puts on this bill, it is still a pig.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Monday Book Pick
Ghost by John Ringo.
Best known for his military themed Science Fiction, John Ringo breaks away from that mold for this modern day military/political thriller with a bit of serious B&D based sex thrown in for good measure. To give you an idea of the level action (i.e. violence against bad guys) is this book, here is what Richard Marcinko, "The Rogue Warrior" himself had to say about it: "John Ringo's done it again! Ghost is a complete adrenaline rush, filled with nonstop, kick ass action and hair-raising suspense."
The overt level of sex in this book (which tones down later books but is still present) put some of his fans off, but in my opinion, it's about as shocking to todays mainstream literature as Ian Flemings sex scenes where in the 1960's James Bond books.
If you like rough and tumble close quarters military action, especially where terrorists drop like flies, and are not upset by equally rough and tumble sex, you will like Ghost.
The Monday Book Pick Archive
Sunday, February 15, 2009
The math is simple
Leftists will try to pass the lie that the Bush Tax Cuts increased the deficit.
That is a flat out partisan lie. The facts are easy to check, federal tax revenue actually went up after the Bush Tax Cuts.
What cause the massive increase in the deficit during the Bush 43 administration was the huge increase in spending that went on at the same time. You can call President G.W. Bush many things, but a fiscal conservative isn't one of them.
The Republicans in Congress were just as guilty on the irresponsible spending, which is why they lost the votes of their base in the 2006 and 2008 elections.
As I have said before, the Republicans got their collective asses kicked, and they deserved it. They need to find their way out of the woods, and a return to actual fiscal conservatism is a damn good first step.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Viewing politics through a SF lens
I personally found the Karl "Darth" Rove analogy funny, and a bit accurate in how he consistently defeated his lesser liberal foes.
Here is a new meme to fit your head around. Barack Hussein Obama is Anakin Skywalker. Some see him as the one spoken of in Prophecy, to bring "balance" and a new age of enlightenment. Instead, he brings destruction and darkness.
The government is not your friend
A lesson brought home by the senseless arrest of a Boston area radio talk show host for not having car insurance in the state of Virginia after relocating, and registering & insuring his vehicle here in the Peoples Commonwealth.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Friday B-Movie Pick
Lone Wolf McQuade
Before there was Walker Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris was the rougher, dirtier Texas Ranger J.J. McQuade. He takes on evil drug cartels in Mexico with the added bonus villian of David Carradine. Star Trek fans will recognize a young Robert Beltran, who was in the worst of the Trek shows, ST: Lost in Space (also known as Voyager).
Friday B-Movie Pick
What Would a Reagan/Obama Debate Sound Like?
The differences are stark, President Reagan's love of Freedom vs. our Dear Leader's open statements of socialism.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
The People's Stimulus
This is a damn good idea, and would boost the economy better and faster than funding the pet pork project of almost every democrat in Congress. Remember that brave 11 democrats stood with the American people and against their party by voting against Pelosi's "Porkulus" plan.
Now our Dear Leader should veto that pork laden pig and follow this sensible and effective plan.
democrats reduce tax cuts keep partisan pork
I'm not really surprised that the congressional democrats kept the port for the their pet projects and payback for their far hard left extremist supporters, but reduced the tax cuts that would have actually stimulated the economy.
The $500-per-worker credit for lower- and middle-income taxpayers that Obama outlined during his presidential campaign was scaled back to $400 during bargaining by the Democratic-controlled Congress and White House. Couples would receive $800 instead of $1,000. Over two years, that move would pump about $25 billion less into the economy than had been previously planned.
Officials estimated it would mean about $13 a week more in people's paychecks when withholding tables are adjusted in late spring. Critics say that's unlikely to do much to boost consumption.
No crisis for the democrats, it's just politics as usual.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
An important history lesson
MsUnderestimated has a good history lesson about federal government intervention in the depression of 1920 and 1929.
Oh, you don't remember the depression of 1920? That is because the government kept its hands off and it went away quickly!
Here is an excellent "Money Quote" from the Ludwig von Mises Institute:
You cannot make a country rich by looting taxpayers and paying people to pound nails into siding at public schools! These activities amount to capital consumption. They are not sources of investment.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Mass Gov Patrick deals with recession by jacking gas taxes through the roof
With the Peoples Commonwealth hemorrhaging high tech jobs, our democrat Governor Deval Patrick is responding by wanting to raise the gas tax to highest in the country.
Deval Patrick is not only planning on jacking the gas tax by 27 cents per gallon, he plans on raising it over and over again. The tax he is proposing has a built in yearly increase based on the Consumer Price Index. So raising the gas tax to $0.555 a galleon is just the start.
It doesn't stop there. Our democrat Governor is also planning on charging drivers for miles driven. Your mileage would be tracked by a chip installed in a vehicle inspection sticker. The Governor plans to have this tracking chip in place starting in 2014. Hopefully housing prices will have recovered before then so more people can vote with their feet over that one.
On top of this the the Turnpike Authority, a separate entity from the state transportation department, is still planning on raising toll rates, in some cases, by 100%.
While the citizens have to cut back and become more efficient in the current recession, the government of the Commonwealth, under the guiding hand of democrat Deval Patrick, in his first government executive, and elected, position, continues to grow our bloated, inefficient state government by leeching the life blood of the citizens though oppressive and regressive taxes.
HT to Michael Graham.
FBI raids lobbing office with ties to democrat Congress Critter John Murtha
ABC broke the story of the FBI raiding the PMA Group, which was founded by former Murtha aide Paul Magliochetti and specializes in winning earmarked taxpayer funds for its clients.
The ABC story doesn't mention which party congressman John Murtha is a member of. This means that he is, of course, a democrat.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Monday Book Pick
From the Grandmaster of Science Fiction, Robert A Heinlein, Starship Troopers.
If you have only seen the movie, do yourself a favor and read the book!
Monday Book Pick Archive
CBO on recession and recovery
The nonpartisian Congressional Budget Office has release new data on the current recession.
CBO anticipates that the current recession, which started in December 2007, will last until the second half of 2009, making it the longest recession since World War II. (The longest such recessions otherwise, the 1973–1974 and 1981–1982 recessions, both lasted 16 months. If the current recession were to continue beyond midyear, it would last at least 19 months.) It could also be the deepest recession during the postwar period: By CBO's estimates, economic output over the next two years will average 6.8 percent below its potential—that is, the level of output that would be produced if the economy's resources were fully employed (see Figure 1). This ecession, however, may not result in the highest unemployment rate. That rate, in CBO's forecast, rises to 9.2 percent by early 2010 (up from a low of 4.4 percent at the end of 2006) but is still below the 10.8 percent rate seen near the end of the 1981–1982 recession.
Note that this is without the federal government increasing the debt by another Trillion plus dollars.
The CBO has some other statements about the massive spending package our Dear Leader and the democrats in congress are calling a "stimulus" package that we'll cover later on.
Let's review some basic facts about the "stimulus" package. The goal, according to the democrats who claim that "something" must be done and done quickly, is to borrow nearly a trillion dollars, filter it through the federal government, losing 30 cents on the dollar in administrative overhead if we're lucky, and pump that money into the economy in order to get the economic engine running smoothly again.
Ok, even you buy into that 100% (I'm not saying you should, but for this exercise, we'll let it slide), you have to admit that the money isn't going to do one damn bit of good until it is actually spent.
Which brings us to the findings of Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw.
A mere 8% of stimulus is to be spent in 2009. 59%, nearly two thirds, is not to be spent until after 2010. If it is so important to pass this bill Right Now, No Questions Asked!, or else he economy will get even worse, why is only 8% of the nearly one Trillion dollars being spend in 2009? Why is nearly two thirds not going to be spent until after 2010?
Let's get back to that most recent CBO announcement. The recession will probably end in the later half of 2009 even if the Federal Government doesn't do anything!
So, as informed and educated citizens of this Republic, we had to ask why the democrats are so keen to push through nearly a trillion dollars in mostly government spending if most of it clearly has nothing to do with the current economic climate?
Ok, that isn't really honest, the democrats so called "stimulus" bill will probably do more harm to economy in the long term than it will do any good in the short term, again, according to the non partisan Congressional Budget Office.
One of the factors that got us into this mess was uncontrolled government spending. Doing more of the same probably isn't a good idea. If the democrats, including President Obama, wanted to get money into the economy quickly, in order to help American citizens, they would concentrate on transfer payments to the states, and tax cuts. Good old JFK style, across the board tax cuts, and targeted cuts to stimulate business, especially small business growth. Once they get the economic engine revved up again, the average American probably won't be so set against increased government spending.
HT to Gateway Pundit for the latest CBO report.
Update: US News & World Report has picked up on this story.
Is the White House considering unconstitutional action?
Our Dear Leader is saying that he wants to take control of the US Census directly under his control in the White House.
Why would this democrat president want to take control of what should be a nonpartisan process of accurately counting the number of Americans in each state?
Personally, I think it is because of known and documented population shifts.
The big winner is Texas, which is likely to gain three new seats in the House of Representatives. Other states would gain single seats. Those being Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Utah.
The losers are Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. All are on track to loose a single seat.
There it is. Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania have majority democrat congressional delegations. In the case of Massachusetts, the entire delegation is made up of far hard left liberal extremist democrats. Not only will those states loose a member of congress, the states will lose a vote in the electoral college.
So, to keep the damage as low as possible, Our Dear Leader wants to remove control of the census from the non-partisan commerce department and move it into the White House where he and his staff of tax cheats can control the process.
An action that is in violation of the Unite States Constitution.
Don't hold your press waiting for CNN or MSNBC (i.e. the Obama network) to break this story.
Update: Michelle Malkin picks up on this story.
Update: John Fund at the Wall Street Journal agrees.
"There's only one reason to have that high level of White House involvement [in the US Census]," a career professional at the Census Bureau tells me. "And it's called politics, not science."
Sunday, February 08, 2009
A Green Economy
President Obama keeps talking about creating a "Green Economy."
A good idea if approached rationally. Even in flat out National Defense terms, more domestic energy equals a safer and stronger America.
If you read my tech blog, you know I'm a fan of electric cars. I also understand that electricity doesn't magically appear from the plug in the wall. It has to be generated in large amounts to support a modern economy.
Remember how all the watermelons kept claiming that we can't drill for domestic oil because it would take "10 years" to get the oil flowing? Well, they were saying that 10 years ago and they were wrong then too. They were also wrong about the timing. There are reserves that can tapped in two to five years.
If you want to talk about ten year plus projects, you can't find a better example than a lot of the "green" power projects such as industrial level wind and solar power. Not wanting to do them because they will take ten plus years is just as wrong as not wanting to tap domestic fossil fuel resources.
There are also some wind/solar projects that can be up and running in two to five years. Cape Wind for example, which is being blocked by the two liberal democrat Senators who don't want their view from their mansions to have a source of clean energy in it.
The Obama plan for green energy is missing one of the most important parts of the future of America's energy independence and economic growth, clean and plentiful Nuclear Power.
There are solid ecological reasons why the founders of Greenpeace and the Gaian movement, and other honest greens, support the expanded use of Nuclear Power.
Building Nuclear Power Plants will provide jobs, and plenty of clean and relatively inexpensive electrical power. Power that will boost the economy and make electric and plug in hybrid cars much more practical.
Friday, February 06, 2009
Friday B-Movie Pick
Beer for my Horses.
This CMT production stars Toby Keith and Rodney Carrington as the comic relief sidekick. Surprising good for a bunch of country music stars who wanted to make a movie. Lots of cameos by other country stars such as Mac Davis (a serious 1970s flashback there), Willie Nelson (ok larger than a cameo and appears in cloud of smoke:->), Mel Tillis and David Allan Coe. The Motor City Madman, Ted Nugent has a large, but rarely speaking role, that he probably had a ton of fun with. There were a couple of "real" actors rounding out the cast as well, Tom Skerritt, Curtis Armstrong and a short appearance by the still delicious Gina Gershon.
Friday B-Movie Archive
BHO picks another democrat who doesn't pay taxes!
This time it is his nominee for Secretary of Labor, democrat Hilda Solis.
Compared to the tax cheat now running the Treasury Department, her nonpayment is small change, but this is a definite pattern of liberal democrats who want to rise your taxes and mine through the roof, but don't bother paying theirs.
Let's review the list:
Charles Rangel
Timothy Geithner
Nancy Killefer
Tom Daschle
Hilda Solis
What do they all have in common? Well, they are all far left liberal democrats who want to raise taxes but won't pay them.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Color me not surprised
Business as usual here in the democrat controlled Peoples Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
New Mass. House Speaker Robert DeLeo awash in lobbyist cash.
Math is not Speaker Pelosi's strong point
Listen carefully to what she says.
In case you missed it, here is the money quote:
"Every month we do not have an economic recovery package, 500 million Americans lose their jobs."
Let us review the total population of the United States of America: 305 million
The math here isn't hard. It's flat out impossible for 500 million Americans to lose their jobs every month!
Either the Speaker of the House of Representatives, third in line for the President's office, really is dumber than soap, or she is engaging in blatant fear mongering of the worst sort.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Fighting in the leftist ranks
It seems that it is not all harmony, rainbows, and unicorns inside the democrat party.
First, from the Hill:
A group of more than 50 House Democrats has penned a letter to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) imploring him to "restore this institution" and see that the House returns to a "regular order" process of legislating.
The letter, signed by a large number of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition and the centrist New Democratic Coalition, has not yet been sent. Members are still gathering signatures in an effort to send the strongest signal possible to all top House Democrats that the caucus is up in arms over the top-down method of legislating employed by Democrats since late last year.
It seems that all democrats are not thrilled with the iron fisted rule of Speaker Pelosi.
Then there is this from Politico:
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) — one of the lead Blue Dogs — made a startling admission to lefty Liberadio on Sunday, suggesting the White House quietly encouraged him to buck House leadership on the stimulus.
Cooper was one of 11 Dems to vote no — joining every GOP House member.
"Well, I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I actually got some quiet encouragement from the Obama folks for what I'm doing," said Cooper, one of about 55 House Democrats to sign a letter criticizing Speaker Nancy Pelosi for suspending normal debate and committee rules on the $819 billion package.
Say what you want about our Dear Leader, but he is smart fellow and very savvy politically. He understands that Pelosi is a greater threat to him than the Republican party at this point.
HT to AoSHQ and The Corner
Meanwhile in Minnesota
Republican Norm Coleman won a court case in the razor thin margin election there between him and democrat Al Franken (of the failed leftist Err America radio experiment) for the state's senate race.
Nearly 5,000 rejected absentee ballots are now going to be counted. As you remember, getting absentee ballots, in particular, the absentee ballots of men and women serving in the US Military, thrown out on legal technicalities was a cornerstone of Algore's attempt to steal the Florida election back in 2000.
Coleman was attempting to get 11,000 rejected absentee ballots counted. Franken's attorneys fought to have nearly all the ballots thrown out.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Monday's Book Pick
Lone Star Planet by H. Beam Piper.
This Libertarian novel points out how you keep politicians honest.
Monday Book Pick Archive
Meanwhile, in Kentucky
Imagine a disaster where at least a million Americans are without power in the dead of winter, 46 people have died and the president and FEMA are nowhere to be found.
We don't have to imagine. That is what is happening in Kentucky.
Utility crews renewed work in subfreezing temperatures Saturday in their effort to put the power back on for nearly a million customers left in the dark by an ice storm that crippled parts of several states this week.
Thousands of people in ice-caked Kentucky awoke in motels and shelters, asked to leave their homes by authorities who said emergency teams in some areas were too strapped to reach everyone in need of food, water and warmth.
Local officials grew angrier at what they said was a lack of help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In Kentucky's Grayson County, about 80 miles southwest of Louisville, Emergency Management Director Randell Smith said the 25 National Guardsmen who have responded have no chain saws to clear fallen trees. He said roads are littered with fallen trees and people shivering in bone-chilling cold are in need.
"We've got people out in some areas we haven't even visited yet," Smith said. "We don't even know that they're alive."
How is President Obama responding to this crisis? First by cranking up the heat in the Oval Office. Our Dear Leader's senior adviser, David Axelrod, describes it. "He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there." Step two to responding to American's dying in the cold is to throw expensive dinner parties.
Where is our "watchdog" media in this time of crisis?
Obama democrats by the numbers
Doug Ross gives us some important numbers concerning key Obama democrats.
Here are some of the highlights.
$34,000: the amount of federal taxes that Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner (D) failed to pay during his employment at the International Monetary Fund despite receiving extra compensation and explanatory brochures that described his tax liabilities.
$75,000: the amount of money that the head of the powerful tax-writing committee, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), was forced to report on his taxes after the discovery that he had not reported income from a Costa Rican rental property. His excuses for the failure started with blaming his wife, then his accountant and finally the fact that he didn't speak Spanish.
$133,900: the amount Fannie Mae "invested" in Chris Dodd (D-CT), head of the powerful Senate Banking Committee, presumably to repel oversight of the GSE prior to its meltdown. Said meltdown helped touch off the current economic crisis. In only a few years time, Fannie also "invested" over $105,000 in then-Senator Barack Obama.
$12,000,000: the amount of TARP money provided to community bank OneUnited despite the fact that it did not qualify for funds, and was "under attack from its regulators for allegations of poor lending practices and executive-pay abuses." It turns out that Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), a key contributor to the Fannie Mae meltdown, just happens to be married to one of the bank's ex-directors.
$2,000,000,000: ($2 billion) the approximate amount of money that House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI) is earmarking related to his son's lobbying efforts. Craig Obey is "a top lobbyist for the nonprofit group" that would receive a roughly $2 billion component of the "Stimulus" package.
$3,700,000,000: ($3.7 billion) not to be outdone, this is the estimated value of various defense contracts awarded to a company controlled by the husband of Rep. Diane Feinstein (D-CA). Despite an obvious conflict-of-interest as "a member of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee, Sen. Feinstein voted for appropriations worth billions to her husband's firms ."
$4,190,000,000: ($4.19 billion) the amount of money in the so-called "Stimulus" package devoted to fraudulent voter registration ACORN group under the auspices of "Community Stabilization Activities". ACORN is currently the subject of a RICO suit in Ohio.
There is more, go check out. The corruption runs deep in our Dear Leader's top congressional supporters.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
A brilliant political move
As Michael Graham says about Our Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama is that we now have a President who is actually good at politics.
Here is an example of that. White House sources are leaking that squishy lefty Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire could be the next commerce secretary. Remember that BHO's first pick, democrat Gov. Bill Richardson had to withdraw over legal/ethical issues.
New Hampshire currently has a democrat as a governor. So if Gregg resigns to take the second tier cabinet post, he will most likely be replaced by a democrat. That would give the democrats the sixty votes they couldn't get in elections and the ability to shut out the Republicans from the legislative process in the Senate.
Another tax cheat on Obama's staff
He sure can pick 'em. First a Treasury Sec. that cheats on his taxes, and now democrat former Senator Tom Daschle not only didn't report income, but lied about making charitable deductions. This could be the new definition of lowlife scumbag taxcheat. Good enough for our Dear Leader though.
I'm starting to think that a big chuck of the budget deficit could be taken care of simply by getting democrats to actually pay their taxes.


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Making It As A Mom: Live Within Your Limits
There are so many needs and opportunities in front of moms at all times. How do we know when to say "yes" and when to say "no" or "not now"?
There are so many needs and opportunities in front of moms at all times. How do we know when to say "yes" and when to say "no" or "not now"?
Good friends are an amazing blessing. Can I get an amen? But sometimes it's hard as moms to find the time to maintain friendships or start new ones.
Instead of more words for you today, how about a giveaway? Dayspring, a partner of the Write 31 Days challenge, is hosting a giveaway.
Since I am now in the years of reaping blessings and with this perspective, I want to be the one to tell you to stay the course. Sweet moms, stay the course.
Something I struggle with as a mom is taking time to do fun things with my kids. Anyone else? Getting memberships to fun places helps me overcome this!
Right now, Fitness Blender works best for me because I can choose my workout based on how much time I have and what my skill level is.
I starting listening to podcasts regularly several years ago. I've found them to be a great way to fill the times when my hands are busy but my brain is not.
As time consuming as caring for children is, I have found it absolutely essential to find time to do things other than be a mom.
Between school papers, art projects, and doodles, dozens of papers can accumulate in my house every week. A friend introduced me to Artkive.
While eating sweets may not be the best way to cope with the challenges of motherhood, a few bites of this may just help you be more pleasant to your crew.

subset: commoncrawl


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It is easy to tell if a product was made
by someone who enjoyed making it.
Tagged corporate destruction
"Blurtso considers the end of an empire"
"Blurtso learns a lesson"
Look at all that hay! I wonder if I can fit through the fence?
Oh, oh, my ears won't go back… and I'm too fat to go forward.
I guess I'll just have to stay here. Hmm… I can't even reach the hay. That's all right. I wasn't hungry in the first place. I just wanted to stuff myself. I wonder how long I'll be here? Someone is bound to come along. Someone with a super-modern high-tech donkey-saving tool. I don't know why I wanted that hay, I wasn't even hungry. But I'll be hungry tomorrow. Then I'll want that hay. But all I'll have is the grass in front of me. I'd better be careful. I don't want to eat it all. I've got to save enough grass for the next day, and the day after that. And I've got to leave enough on top so the roots don't burn. Fortunately I've got a puddle of water, so I won't die of thirst. Unless I have gas. I've heard that methane contributes to global warming, and if the temperature rises, the water will evaporate and the grass will burn. All because I wanted to stuff myself. And I wasn't even hungry.
And so the days passed—night after day and day after night—and Blurtso tended his garden, eating only what was necessary to maintain his strength, and drinking only enough to slake his thirst. And from time to time it rained, and his puddle filled and his grass grew. And every day he looked at the hay, drying, splitting, and losing its fragrance, until one day when he was enjoying his morning snack… he slipped through the fence.
Hey! I'm skinny enough to get through! And to get out!


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|United States
|Bryant, Sturgis & Co., Boston
|Sunk in a fire at sea, 1856.
|General characteristics
|Class and type:
|Tons burthen:
|180 tons
|85 ft (26 m)
|1834 voyage described in Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
The Pilgrim was a sailing brig (180 tons, 86.5 feet (26.4 m) long) engaged in the California hide trade of the early 19th century. Although just one among many other ships engaged in the business, the Pilgrim was immortalized by one of her sailors, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., who wrote the classic account Two Years Before the Mast about its 1834 voyage between Boston and California.
The Pilgrim was built in 1825 for Boston owners Bryant, Sturgis & Co., and went down in a fire at sea in 1856.
|United States
|Brig Pilgrim
|Ocean Institute
|Port of registry:
|Dana Point, California
|General characteristics
|Class and type:
|3-masted schooner, converted to brig in 1975
|Used in 1997 film Amistad
A replica of the vessel is currently based in Dana Point, California, the site of some of Dana's adventures. This replica began as a 3-masted schooner (also called a "tern" schooner in North America) built in 1945 for the Baltic trade in Denmark. In 1975, Pilgrim was converted to her present rig, a brig, in Setúbal, Portugal. She is currently used as a floating classroom with the Ocean Institute in Dana Point, California, and she sets sail every summer on a tour of Southern California with a volunteer crew.[1] The ship was used in Amistad, a film directed by Steven Spielberg. Pilgrim also played the notorious "Ghost Galleon" in Power Rangers: Turbo.
As described by Dana, in addition to six to eight common sailors, the ship's complement included three officers: the Captain, the First Mate and the Second Mate. The second mate commanded the starboard watch but while an officer was socially isolated, being neither truly an officer or a crewman. This was probably due to the size of the ship; on larger vessels with more crew, the Second Mate was clearly an officer, but on the Pilgrim, the Captain and First Mate ate together and the Second Mate had to make do with their leftovers. Besides the captain, there were four specialist crewmembers who were not part of any watch: the steward, cook, carpenter and sailmaker.


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Ex-President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (CBK) stated that she would not be able to stay in the government if former Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa is appointed to the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) as some party loyalists have suggested.
Speaking at an event on Sunday (June 05th) she pointed out that the government was brought in to stop the looting of the country.
Minister John Seneviratne recently said that discussions were underway to appoint Gotabaya Rajapaksa the 'second leader' of the SLFP to prevent the party from breaking up.
The SLFP is divided as the pro-Maithripala Sirisena and the pro-Mahinda Rajapaksa camps and the latter supports the 'Joint Opposition' formed by the pro-Rajapaksa group in the UPFA.


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Originally uploaded by Lakshmi Eyes
I have a close friend, who gave me some amazing advice.. He said, "OK, Margaret! Quit crying, bitching and moaning!! Approach your life as if you were producing a Broadway show."
Identify the Lead Character.
Hint…that would be YOU!
Describe the Leading Lady.
What does she look like, what's in her wardrobe? What are her values? Say out loud five words that describe that person. My words were "loving, creative, sexy, intelligent and passionate".
Start Rehearsals
Every day do one thing that supports each value of importance to the lead actress. For example, express intelligence by reading something new, express creativity by learning a skill.
Define a New Look
As the lead actress you will need a sexy new haircut, new wardrobe - a revamped image! This forces you to take a look in the mirror (full length by the way – no cheating!!). You may have been tempted to do a dramatic makeover in an earlier stage of EX, but you are most ready, physically and emotionally to do it in the Exorcise stage. Check out our favorite clothes, stylists, and plastic surgeons around the world.
Decide on Your Supporting Cast and Those People You are Going to Lean On.
Be selective – "A- List" friends only. This is hard and takes time. It does not involve your ex! (and no, you can't just be "friends"!). You've probably exhausted your friends by now, so why not join a Woman's Group, attend a workshop or find new friends in the Forum Section.
Define the Audience.
Who is sitting in the front row? Who is up in the balcony? Remember, and this is very important, your ex is NOT in the audience either. He is not in the third balcony, and definitely not lingering backstage. He is outside in the pouring rain, clutching a tiny little yellow ticket that says "ADMISSION DENIED". As long as you put him in the audience/supporting cast/or production team, you will look for his approval and judgment. Don't do that – remember, this is YOUR show!!!
Choose a Venue (i.e. where you want to live).
You may want to skip town immediately. I drove to San Diego and back twice before I realized that I didn't really want to live there. I realized that I had never been to so many places that I might love. Many women find it useful or even essential to leave the place they were living in prior to EX, but many, like me, realized that wherever you go there YOU are.
Lawyers, Doctors and Banks Oh My!
If there was a divorce settlement, get it firmed up with all the terms clearly defined. Don't let things slip because months after the divorce your ex has officially erased you from his memory – along with the financial promises he made. Make sure you have your own bank account and a team of people to help you – a great accountant, lawyer, banker, real estate agent, etc. Even if you don't think you need them right now – line them up. We have put together a list of things you might want to consider, along with LINKS to some hand picked professionals.
Show Time!
The plot for your very own personal Broadway Show has developed all kinds of twists and turns - beauty, travel, escape, romance, charity work, concerts, and women's groups. You have a new supporting cast and perhaps a whole new audience. So many EXciting choices…, but now its time to launch this new EXtraordinary production!


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Liga MX Wrap: Cruz Azul open up six-point gap
Cruz Azul opened up a six-point gap in Liga MX with a 1-0 victory over Toluca, while America ended their losing streak.
A late header from Christian Gimenez gave Cruz Azul the win in the top-of-the-table clash with second-placed Toluca, which saw the Mexico City outfit win their eighth straight match.
Cruz Azul have stormed to 25 points in nine rounds of Liga MX's Clausura campaign, while Toluca remain second with 19 after suffering just their second defeat.
In a tight match with few clear goalscoring opportunities at the Estadio Azul, the hosts claimed all three points when substitute Gimenez got away from his marker at a free-kick and headed Rogelio Chavez's delivery past Toluca goalkeeper Alfredo Talavera.
Pumas UNAM, who sit third, missed the chance to move within a point of Toluca after a scoreless draw with Pachuca on Sunday, while America struck a late winner to overcome Monterrey 2-1 on Saturday.
America had lost their past three matches having conceded the first goal and would have taken a lot of confidence from Erik Pimentel's opening strike 10 minutes before half-time at Monterrey's Estadio Tecnologico.
That confidence looked to have disappeared when Wilson Morelo struck for the home side in the 81st minute but America responded with Rubens Sambueza hitting the back of the net eight minutes later to seal victory.
The win took the reigning Clausura champions to fourth with 15 points, while Monterrey (nine points) slumped to 15th.
Atlante started round nine with a 2-1 win at Morelia, while a brace from Rodrigo Millar helped Atlas to a 3-2 victory against Santos Laguna.
In other results, bottom club Veracruz held Tijuana to a 1-1 draw, Leon cruised to a 3-0 triumph at Chiapas, while Guadalajara were held to a scoreless draw at home by Tigres UANL.


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Many years ago, when I was young and still in search of wisdom, I went on a pilgrimage to meet the man I thought was the wisest in the world. I came away wiser, though what I learned was what most pilgrims learn, which is that if you want to become wise you should not go on pilgrimages. I hadn't thought much about the pilgrimage, or the wise man, until the past few months, when a friend sent me a new book that brought it, and him, back to mind.
The book is "Wittgenstein's Poker" (Ecco; $24), by the British journalists David Edmonds and John Eidinow, and it has become an improbable best-seller. It's a terrific book, a fuguelike account of everything we know and don't know about a ten-minute squabble between two great and ornery Austrian-Anglo-Jewish philosophers, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper—the wise man I went to see. The squabble took place in 1946 in a Cambridge tutorial room, where Wittgenstein either did or did not threaten Popper with a poker and Popper either did or did not, when asked by Wittgenstein to give an instance of a moral rule, say, "Not to threaten visiting lecturers with pokers." The authors conclude that the poker incident happened but that the line was strictly a wishful afterthought. They also suggest that a real pivot of the fight was both men's need for the attention of a third philosopher in the room, Bertrand Russell, who was Wittgenstein's intellectual father.
Though Wittgenstein is the star of "Wittgenstein's Poker," Popper is, I think, meant to be its hero: while Wittgenstein's puzzles made for the bigger reputation, Popper's problems presented the bigger ambition. Yet Popper suffered from the shortest half-life, and wore the smallest halo, of any great thinker who has ever lived. He reconfigured the image of the natural sciences in a way that altered everything from art history to Marxist philosophy, whose pretensions to scientific force he ended. In 1945, Russell could write, as an unexceptionable fact, that science dealt with the realm of the definite, philosophy with the unprovable. A half century later, no philosopher (including Russell) would have written that. Everyone accepts that science centers on the hypothetical and the conjectural, the imaginative leap and the subsequent search for a significant test, and the questions turn on just what tests, and just what guesses, count.
Popper was almost single-handedly responsible for this revolution and never got enough credit for it, as he would have been the first to tell you. In fact, since his death, in 1994, he seems to have receded right into history. Though a very good biography of him came out in 2000, Malachi Haim Hacohen's "Karl Popper: The Formative Years" (Cambridge), and though he has had fierce admirers (George Soros's Open Society Institute was inspired by him), his reputation is closer today to Ayn Rand's, say, than to Russell's, sectarian rather than secure.
Among the many themes of "Wittgenstein's Poker," the most human involves not so much the space between character and achievement ("Nasty Men Make Nice Things; Unpleasant People Think Important Thoughts" is, after all, the headline on almost every chapter in cultural history) as the more ticklish, almost taboo subject of intellectual glamour. Why is it that some people—and no one is a better instance of this than Wittgenstein—are able to impose their personality so forcefully on a time that they seem unencompassably large, while others, however large their thoughts, remain in some way little? This mystery, which, fully inflated, takes in everything from the different receptions of John the Baptist and Jesus to those of Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen, is one of the great, unacknowledged motives of human affairs—and one whose mystery I experienced when I went on my pilgrimage to visit Popper, at his home in the English countryside. No hero, I learned, ever made it harder on his worshippers, and no thinker gave better evidence in his person of just how much it is temperament that can fix a thinker's place in the history of thought, changing and transposing and often untuning the song he sings.
It was the winter of 1975; I was staying with my sister in Oxford, and had spent Christmas in Paris with my cousin, with whom I went to movies. I also went to the Louvre every day. I haunted Raphael's portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, the famous courtier and humanist. In Castiglione's gentle gaze and half smile, civilization dancing at the serene corners of the eyes, I was sure that I was already seeing the face of the philosopher I was on my way to visit.
Karl Popper had been an inquisitive, socially conscious young man in post-First World War Vienna. He was from a solid but by no means aristocratic family of assimilated Jews, and he had, one senses from his biographer, a kind of Gandhi-like innocence that comes to people who will one day think big thoughts. Preoccupied by social questions—his essential obsessions as a youth were music and the education of poor children, and for years he did social work—he was excited by the philosophy of science at a time when Einstein's physics was new, and had about it a world-changing, everyone's-talking-about-it thrill.
Even though the new physics was transforming everything in science, most philosophers agreed about what science was. Scientists, it seemed clear, began with careful observations, cautiously proceeded to a tentative hypothesis, progressed to more secure but still provisional theories, and only in the end achieved, after a long process of verification, the security of permanent laws. Newton saw the apple fall, hypothesized that it had fallen at one speed rather than another for a reason, theorized that there might be an attraction between all bodies with mass, and then, at long last, arrived at a law of gravitation to explain everything. This "observation up" or "apple down" picture of how science works was so widespread that it defined what we mean by science: when Sherlock Holmes says that he never theorizes in advance of the facts, he is explaining why he can be called a scientific detective. Various thinkers poked holes in this picture, but generally their point was that, while the program was right, it was harder to do than it appeared.
That picture, though, as the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume had been the first to insist, was always haunted by a small, permanent ghost of uncertainty: no matter how many times the apple fell down, one could never be entirely certain that someday an apple might not fall up. In the textbook example, if the law was "All swans are white" you could count white swans for centuries but still not know that all swans were white, not for sure. This caveat—Hume's "problem of induction"—seemed to most working scientists, however, to be one of those insoluble philosophical difficulties that haunt the game without actually spoiling the party.
Popper came of age around the Vienna Circle, a group of philosophers who were trying to apply the principles of science to all human thought. Yet he had, in a way, been even more deeply affected by the new physics than his contemporaries, because he saw that Einstein's observations weren't just new ones resting on the edifice of old ones. The new physics had begun as stunning, original insights. What if science didn't proceed from observations to theories—what if it was the other way around? But, if the guesses came first, how could you tell the right conjectures from the wrong ones? How could you tell the new physics from the old astrology? Because of a simple asymmetry, Popper went on to reason: no number of white swans could tell you that all white swans were white, but a single black swan could tell you that they weren't. Hume's problem might be not a problem at all but a disguised solution—the problem of induction wasn't a problem for science, because scientists had never really used induction in the first place. Newton thought of gravity, and then saw the apple falling.
Science, Popper proposed—first in conversations with members of the Vienna Circle, later in his first published book, "Logik der Forschung" ("The Logic of Scientific Discovery")—didn't proceed through observations confirmed by verification; it proceeded through wild, overarching conjectures, which generalized "beyond the data" but were always controlled and sharpened by falsification, by refutation, by the single decisive experiment, or swan. It was the conscious, purposeful search for falsifications, and the survival of theories in the face of them, that allowed science to proceed and objective knowledge to grow.
In the real world, as Popper knew perfectly well, the response of the scientist who has proposed that all swans are white when a black swan appears is not to say, cheerfully, "Wrong again!" It is to say, "You call that a swan?" The principle of falsification would begin an argument rather than prove a point. But the argument was the point. The argument that the black swan would produce—an argument about what evidence was crucial, and why—was different from all other kinds of argument. Science wasn't a form of proof. It was a style of quarrelling. The reason science gave you sure knowledge you could count on was that it wasn't sure and you couldn't count on it. Science wasn't the name for knowledge that had been proved true; it was the name for guesses that could be proved false.
In exile in New Zealand in the forties, Popper gave this insight a surprising political twist in the greatest of his books, "The Open Society and Its Enemies." He saw that political philosophers, from Plato to Hegel and Marx, had tried to make political philosophy rigorous by making it, like the false idea of science, authoritarian, proceeding from close observations to fixed laws of history. Once it was apparent that science had no certain truths, or secure foundations, the notion that a good theory of the state should begin with something solid—with fixed ideals about virtue, or with a large-scale view of historical development—had to give way, too. A truly scientific political philosophy would be "open"—to criticism even of its own foundations—and so would the societies based on that philosophy. (Popper pointed out that Marx, in particular, had made clear predictions—and, as history falsified each one of them, the Marxists pretended that they hadn't been made in the first place, disguising the fact that Marxism failed by sanctifying its white swans and sending its black swans, so to speak, to the Gulag.)
In the forties and fifties, when the most gifted defenders of humanism were counting up the "costs" of modernity—uncertainty, ambiguity, alienation—Popper was arguing that these things were exactly what allowed science to tell us plain truths and give us great gifts. The growth of knowledge begins in uncertainty, and increases it: it opens more questions than it answers, and is possible only through the institutionalization of doubt. Anxiety is fruitful. All you need for liberty to continue is a tradition of seeking out criticism. In the Louvre for the umpteenth time, I looked at Castiglione's smile and was reminded of the serenity this belief must bring to the man who held it.
A few days after my return to Oxford, I got on a bus to High Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire, which was the nearest stop to Popper's home, in the hamlet of Penn. (I didn't record, in the notes I made later about my pilgrimage, exactly what I said in my letter to the great man, but I had somehow wangled an invitation.) I recalled something that he had written in his autobiography, "Unended Quest": "It was after our first visit to America that we moved to Penn in Buckinghamshire, which was then a quiet and beautiful little place."
Popper had told me on the telephone to take a taxi from the bus depot, and the cabdriver, a Pakistani, I think, reacted immediately when I gave him Popper's address.
"Ah, Professor Pop!" he said. "A very smart man."
"You've met him?" I asked.
"Oh, many times. He never talks. All the time he is busy thinking, thinking."
"His books are very famous."
"I tell you, this is no surprise to me. People going to pay good for all that intelligence."
We drove up to Popper's cottage, and I knocked on the door. In "Unended Quest," Popper wrote that one of his first memories was feelings of admiration for his cousin Eric Schiff, "whom I greatly admired for being one year older than I, for his tidiness, and, especially, for his good looks: gifts which I always regarded as important and unobtainable." Good looks as an important gift, like a gift for writing or for thinking—it had seemed a strange idea to me at the time. But now I got it. Popper was a small, unimpressive man, several inches shorter even than I was—and I was a pipsqueak—and his long, solemn face was bracketed by a pair of elephantine ears. He was wearing a gray sweater, gray trousers that were too large in the seat, and a white shirt, missing a button from the left cuff.
The house led to a terrace that led to a small and straggly garden, with a scrawny, expiring apple tree.
"It's pleasant here," I said politely.
"Once it was pleasant here, but no more," he replied, shaking his head. An airplane hummed overhead and he looked at it as though it were an unrepentant Hegelian. We stood at the terrace door.
"I have something I wish to show you," he said abruptly, and he disappeared into the house. I stared blankly at my notebook full of high-minded questions. The sky looked threatening.
"Here," he said, coming back with two new books in his hand. "I have just received these in the mail this morning." One of the books was called "A Critique of Karl Popper's Methodology," by a certain Ingvar Johansson. The other one was in German. I opened the Johansson book and, at Popper's urging, read the inscription. "To Sir Karl with admiration, I. Johansson."
"Do you know Johansson, sir?" I asked.
"No, no." He took back the book and began to flip desultorily through its pages. "It is another attack, no doubt. You know, people do not distinguish between intellectual criticism and personal attacks. I don't receive criticism. They think it is enough to call me a fool."
"Oh, surely no one does that," I protested.
He smiled sadly. "All of my students are attacking me now. Three of my students, all of them I helped to get positions, to get chairs, and they know this, and still they attack me personally. You know, when you do things for people there are two types of reactions. There are those who cannot forget you for it and those who cannot forgive you for it. Do you see?"
He returned to thumbing through the book by Johansson. "He has read nothing of mine, of course. He will then attack this imaginary Popper. Since he already knows what is contained in my works, he need not read them, you see."
"Tell me," I said, "what criticism have you received in your career that has helped you—that you regard as really useful?"
He stared off for a long moment. "None," he said. "I have never received any of this kind of criticism." He looked away again. "Come. Let us go into the house."
The living room was large, and nearly empty, except for a grand piano in one corner. Six or seven small Rembrandt reproductions were hung around the room. We sat down in armchairs, with a table between us, and I realized that Popper was rather deaf; for the next four hours, as we spoke, he would cup one of his enormous ears and press it toward me. We talked, interrupted only by Popper's rising, at key moments, to go and fetch some book that he had mentioned and plop it down on the table. It seemed that for him the books were the reality; that the discussion about a book could not continue unless the book, the Real Presence, was at hand.
It is difficult to convey, after all these years, the vehemence with which he put forth his views—the silly, the profound, the trivial, and the deep. This was a man alive with resentments, vindictive anger, and persecution mania; at the same time, he had a kind of large-spiritedness, not remote from simple naïveté, that led him to open his door to a kid from Canada and fill him up with all his dogmas and doubts as though he were an old colleague.
Music—the great sequence that, for him, began with Bach and ended with Schubert—was his favorite art form, and he began to talk of his distaste for modern music. "It is terrible," he said. "And this is one of the most interesting and encouraging phenomena of our time—the failure of the historicist propaganda for the modern in music." Another famous book of his, "The Poverty of Historicism," attacked the popular notion that history had a shape, a progression, followed laws of development. "We have been exposed to this propaganda for fifty years, and it has been quite unsuccessful," he said. "There is something I must show you in this connection." He got up again, went into the next room, and came back with Charles Rosen's introduction to Schoenberg, a volume in the old Fontana Modern Masters series. (Popper himself had been a subject, in a short book by Bryan Magee.) He stood over me. "Read out the first paragraph of this book," he insisted.
I read, "Arnold Schoenberg always thought of himself as an inevitable historical force."
Popper grabbed the book from my hands and threw it down on the table. "Now, what has this to do with music?" he demanded. "We can wish to do our work well—but this wish to do work that is ahead of its time, this is nothing but historicist propaganda. Bach and Mozart never wished to shock people—they never worried about the 'shock value' of their work."
I tried to turn the subject to books, and asked him if there were any contemporary writers he admired.
"There are a very few I have enjoyed," he said. "The writer J. D. Salinger is the one I admire most. He has written one or two things that are quite good." He got up, found a dog-eared copy of "The Catcher in the Rye," and placed it on the table, where it joined Schoenberg and Johansson and the rest. "Yes, this is a very good study of adolescent psychology," he said. "I do not care for his last book. Tell me, what has he published recently?"
I informed him that Salinger hadn't published anything in a decade.
Popper stared off again. "Yes, no doubt he, too, was a victim of historicism."
What iron had entered his soul? Twenty-five years later, I still don't know. "Wittgenstein's Poker" is full of similar testimony, about Popper's ferocious temper and his inability to accept criticism of any kind. Even Bryan Magee, his most articulate popularizer, wrote, in a memoir, that "everything we argued about he pursued relentlessly, beyond the limits of acceptable aggression in conversation. . . . He seemed unable to accept the continued existence of different points of view, but went on and on and on about them with a kind of unforgivingness until the dissenter, so to speak, put his signature to a confession that he was wrong and Popper was right."
The situation was straight out of Molière: the greatest living exponent of the value and necessity of criticism would fly into a rage at the least breath of criticism. In one way, Popper's paranoia was a critique of his philosophy. People don't welcome criticism. In fact, even scientists dismiss criticism and potential falsifications until someone builds a new edifice on the basis of the black swan. Popper believed that competing hypotheses fought each other off nobly while we watched; the reality is that competing hypotheses are mauled, and then one creeps away to die in peace. No one ever really changes his mind about anything; there are just more minds that think the new way. Behaviorism, Freudianism—no one refuted them, really. They just passed away out of loneliness.
In another way, his persecution mania wasn't entirely unfounded. He had changed the climate of thought, but he had not changed the weather in philosophy departments. He felt cheated, and in a sense he had been. Although big ideas are meant to go from controversial to celebrated, in truth they more often go from contemptible to commonplace. "The earth is round!" someone says, and the world's first response is "You're mad!" and then, after someone takes measurements, "Of course it is! Who didn't know that?" It's a rule that applies with special force to Popper.
But what really underlay the contradiction between what he thought and what he was, I now think, after a quarter-century's reflection, is a perversity of human nature so deep that it is almost a law—the Law of the Mental Mirror Image. We write what we are not. It is not merely that we fail to live up to our best ideas but that our best ideas, and the tone that goes with them, tend to be the opposite of our natural temperament. Rousseau wrote of the feelings of the heart and the beauties of nature while stewing and seething in a little room. Dr. Johnson pleaded for Christian stoicism in desperate fear of damnation. The masters of the wry middle style, Lionel Trilling and Randall Jarrell, were mired in sadness and confusion. The angry and competitive man (James Thurber) writes tender and rueful humor because his own condition is what he seeks to escape. The apostles of calm reason are hypersensitive and neurotic; William James arrived at a pose of genial universal cheerfulness in the face of constant panic. Art critics are often visually insensitive—look at their living rooms!—and literary critics are often slow and puzzled readers, searching for the meaning, and cooks are seldom trenchermen, being more fascinated by recipes than greedy for food.
It is not so much that we are drawn to things that frighten us as that we are drawn to things that we can think of as things—as subjects that exist outside the boundaries of all that is just the way we are. It is not merely that we do not live up to our ideals but that we cannot, since our ideals are exactly the part of us that we do not instantly identify as just part of life. An original thought is like a death mask of a man, with the solids made hollow and the nose a cavity, a portrait pulled inside out. We are our ideas (Popper, with his long, slightly overformal sentences, lucid but unornamented by wit, sounded like Popper, and no one else), for they include everything we are—but turned right around to face us, and looking back at us in surprise.
I stayed for two more hours. Popper held forth on the question of "big" science—technological science, the science that sent men to the moon and made hydrogen bombs. ("It is a myth that the success of science in our time is mainly due to the huge amounts of money that have been spent on big machines. What really makes science grow is new ideas, including false ideas.") He recalled conversations with Albert Einstein in the fifties. ("You must understand that I learned nothing from Einstein directly, as a consequence of our conversations. He tended to express things in theological terms, and this was often the only way to argue with him. I found it finally quite uninteresting.")
At the very end, as the winter light dimmed in that cold and cheerless way it does in England, I asked him what unsolved problems might still interest him. I suppose I was trying to raise his spirits. "In contemporary philosophy there are no such problems," he said. "This is owing to the influence of Wittgenstein. As you know, Wittgenstein said that there are no philosophical problems, only linguistic puzzles. This has been the predominant attitude in Britain throughout my lifetime. As a result, there are no philosophers left, real philosophers who grapple with real problems. There are only professors who worry about words."
He turned and looked out the window, over the wintry hills of a Britain denuded of philosophy. He looked, as Holden Caulfield might say, goddam depressed. By now, the pile of books between us, Salinger and Bellow and Johansson and Ernest Jones and Kuhn and Forster, well-thumbed paperbacks and old university textbooks and leather-bound volumes all mixed up, had risen until he almost disappeared behind it.
Ironically, Popper was on the brink of a false spring of fame. Many of the first generation of Thatcherite intellectuals admired him keenly, and pointed to him as a model. But British Toryism was unhappy with a too tightly argued position, while his brief romance with the right damaged his reputation with the social democrats. In the century's last decade of liberal triumph, then, Popper's contemporary Isaiah Berlin, who in the seventies had seemed too plummy and sonorous and lacking in fighting spirit for a hero, became the image of enlightened humanism. Popperians, now and then, tend to be suspicious of Berlin, since he had all the gifts Popper lacked, and, though unquestionably on the right, or same, side, let rhetorical grace do a lot of the work of hard thought. Berlin lifts the curtain, peeks at the irrational, and then quickly closes it again, with a reassuring bow to his audience. It is squalid in there, but, fortunately, not too squalid to bear.
Yet Berlin, too, we now know from Michael Ignatieff's biography, was the man his thought denied. The news his work provides that liberal humanism is superior precisely because it can encompass the humanity of even those who are most anti-liberal was a revelation. But it left him divided. He ended up believing in his head that the ideas of the good life could not be reconciled, and in his heart that they could all be reconciled in one genial temperament, or at one great dinner party. His charm and social curiosity—which, according to his biographer, flowed from his sense of insufficient accomplishment, as Popper's charmlessness flowed from his sense of thwarted recognition—ended by having a political meaning: though thoughts were not reconcilable, thinkers were, or might be. (It is an awkward truth that social life is the antidote to scholarly paranoia; it drains intellectual differences of their drama. The cure for the acrimony of intellectuals is dinner. Had Jesus invited a few Pharisees over for the Supper—and the Pharisees, let us remember, had been revolutionaries only a little while before—it might not have been his last. Dining with disciples is a perilous business.)
Between the heart and the head lies the soul, and soulfulness is not the least thing we ask of thought and thinkers. Liberal humanism, as much as it is a theory, is a style—even, at moments, a look, an appearance—of openness turned inward, social tolerance, geniality writ large; my naïve instinct that the civilized spirit was represented by Castiglione's smile had a drop of truth in it. Popper's philosophy, I now think, explained everything but Popper—left no room for the forces of ambition and attraction and jealousy and rage that governed his own life. His philosophy, so rich in so many other ways, did not allow for that kind of human perversity, or for his own doubleness. It was humane but inhuman.
I went to the British Museum the day after I returned from my pilgrimage, and happened to come across the vase that Keats wrote his ode about. Well, I thought, looking at the thing, so truth is not a black swan gliding, or a bunch of dancers dancing. Truth is an ugly duckling with big ears, truth is whatever it may be, and beauty is whatever it may be, and they are not the same, not at all, not even close. That urn had it all wrong. I knew that much now, and for sure. ♦


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By Guillermo Parra-Bernal
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Oi SA (OIBR3.SA) on Monday formally started talks to restructure $14.3 billion of bonds, pitting some of the world's biggest investors against each other as Brazil's most-indebted phone carrier fights for its survival.
In a securities filing, Oi said a group of bondholders that have Moelis & Co as their advisor signed a non-disclosure agreement to join talks. Reuters, citing sources, said the group of over 25 investment firms including BlackRock Inc, Citadel LLC and Pacific Investment Management Co, could sign the accord as early as Monday.
The decision to begin talks with the Moelis-advised group leaves unclear how, or whether, Oi will negotiate with other creditors such as hedge funds that have bought credit default swaps linked to Oi's bonds. The carrier wants to negotiate with bondholders who "care about the company's future," one of those sources told Reuters.
At stake is the fate of Oi, the byproduct of a state-sponsored merger eight years ago and the only Brazilian carrier controlled by domestic capital. Shareholders see a restructuring facilitating a potential takeover of Oi, which they say could help narrow the gap with rivals controlled by Spain's Telefónica SA and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim's América Móvil SAB.
Oi "intends to conclude the ongoing restructuring process promptly, as it believes that conducting negotiations with a sole steering committee representing the company's bondholders will make the process more agile," the filing said.
Shares posted their biggest intraday jump in 23 years on Monday, on hopes the tack could speed Oi's turnaround. Nonvoting shares (OIBR4.SA) rallied 28 percent to 1.18 reais, helping pare the stock's 53 percent slump this year.
Still, a disparate base of creditors, the multiple currencies of issuance and a complex debt structure in which liabilities from several units are consolidated at the holding company level, could make a quick resolution hard, said Francisco Velasco, a fixed-income analyst with Exotix Partners.
Oi's restructuring would be Latin America's second-biggest ever, behind a $15 billion debt overhaul by Mexican cement maker Cemex SAB in 2009, data compiled by Thomson Reuters showed. It would also dwarf the $5.2 billion restructuring of former billionaire Eike Batista's OGX Petróleo e Gás SA two years ago, heretofore the largest such deal in the country.
"Different investors could embrace different strategies, making this situation like a four-player chess game in which you won't understand anybody's strategy until the very last minute," said Paolo Gorgó, an Italy-based investor who analyzes distressed debt and turnaround cases for several newsletters.
Both Oi and New York-based PJT Partners Inc, which was hired in February to oversee the restructuring, declined to comment. According to the filing, law firms Barbosa Müssnich & Aragão and White & Case LLP were brought in as Oi's legal consultants.
At 54.9 billion reais ($15.4 billion), Oi's gross debt looks unsustainable at this point, with almost half of it maturing by the end of 2017. Debt-servicing also poses a challenge for Oi, whose debt is 75 percent denominated in currencies other than the Brazilian real, which fell 16 percent against the U.S. dollar over the past two years.
Oi has almost 200 different bondholders spanning from Brazil and the United States to Switzerland and Chile. About ten bond firms who did not join the Moelis-advised group have hired Houlihan Lokey Inc to form their own, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters last week.
Negotiations "will not be easy as there is the potential for high inter-creditor conflict, with different types of creditors looking to make the most for themselves, for which the process could be extended in time," Exotix's Velasco said.
With the widespread notion that Oi's equity is worthless, creditors may also seek to thwart any deal aiming to protect shareholders.
The price on the May 2020 issued by Oi's Portugal Telecom Intl Finance BV subsidiary
The cost of insuring the Oi subsidiary's bonds for one year through credit default swaps (BRTO1YUSAC=MP) were unchanged on Monday at $620,000 per every $1 million of principal protected.
Creditors whose positions in credit swaps surpass their bondholdings by a large margin have an incentive to disrupt talks or trigger events that could force Oi into a default, Gorgó and other analysts said.
According to the sources, the amount of net notional positions on Oi's CDS is around $1 billion. Some creditors identified billionaire Paul Singer's Elliot Management Corp, the fund that recently won a $4.7 billion, 13-year defaulted debt battle with Argentina, as one buyer of Oi's CDS.
A spokesman for New York-based Elliot declined to comment.
Bloomberg News reported last week that Oi feared that some bondholders who bought CDS were trying to push it into default. Lawyers for Oi were looking for ways to offset plans by those investors, the report said.
Other elements could also turn negotiations even more protracted, bondholders and analysts said.
Brazil's harshest recession in a century, and a political crisis that has delayed a long-sought overhaul in industry rules that would eventually favor Oi, may discourage bondholders from giving the company further breathing room.
The revamped laws could significantly reduce Oi's mandatory capital spending in fixed-line telephony, where the company loses money on a regular basis.
(Aditional reporting by Tatiana Bautzer in São Paulo and Jennifer Ablan and Matthew Toole in New York; Editing by Christian Plumb, Alan Crosby and Meredith Mazzilli)


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text: Pastoral Ministry is one of the most important duties of a Clergy, to walk with persons in times of need, sickness and sorrow, but also during times of joy and celebration, offering spiritual support, counselling and pastoral care. Pastoral care for the sick and infirm is one of the most significant ways that members of the Body of Christ continues the ministry and mission of Jesus. Pastoral care, 'helping others' is the responsibility of all Christians. The support of shared praying and consolation has been characteristic of believers from New Testament times. When Peter was imprisoned, his friends gathered to pray for him (Acts 12:5,12) and James exhorts Christians to support one another in prayer (James 5:16). Clergy are trained in Pastoral Ministry which includes the care of individuals and families in their charge.