The Failure of the Lefties' "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention" Propaganda Meme

Encouraging people to "be angry" isn't proving to be such a great idea.

Key point:

"But most of us are reasonable people, and can see the difference between correctable problems within a strong system of democratic capitalism and the kind of catastrophic failure that justifies real outrage.

For the nonoutraged majority, here's what the bumper sticker ought perhaps to say: 'If you're not grateful to live in America, you're not paying attention.'"

On the other hand, it's highly debatable that a great many of our Dem/Lefty/"Progressive" citizens can be considered "reasonable".We see evidence of that right here in our local blahgosphere.

Barry O'Bama: Covering dishonesty with more dishonesty regarding Iraq

It's clear that the Anointed One has been and most likely will continue to be intellectually dishonest about Iraq.


Excerpt:

"Obama has not only turned out to be a practitioner of the 'old politics'; he has, as a young, first-term senator, come to embody it. He has fallen into seemingly every trap he said he would avoid.

All the hype, all the promise, all the high-minded words have turned out to be a mirage. And for those of us who were once impressed with Obama, even as we strongly disagreed with his political ideology, it has been both a fascinating and unsettling thing to witness. Watching a man become what he preaches against often is."

Actually, we shouldn't be surprised that Barry O is trying to have it both ways on Iraq.

Most of his Fellow Travelers in the Dem/Lefty/"Progressive"/Nutroot community are equally guilty of that sort of thing.

Krugman the Klown plays the Race Card

Luskin says that K the K's intellectual deck is all dealt out; hence, the move to the race card tactic.

Meanwhile, William Anderson, at the Ludwig von Mises Institute tells us about K the K's Krugpot Economics.

Noteworthy:

"One hates to break it to this perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize, but the problem is not 'unregulated free markets.'

For one, financial markets are heavily regulated by government. Second, the real problem has been the belief that government can act as the backstop for every financial failure.

In fact, the various guarantees, bailouts, loans, and the other measures taken by the government to prop up failing markets have served not only to lengthen the coming recession, but also to block the recovery. One cannot simultaneously have free and wide-open financial markets and government guarantees to back failures, which economists recognize as a moral hazard."

"Perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize"?

Well, why not?

The award to algore set the stage for wholesale American embarrassment that that particular House of Cards continues to produce.

Why should Krugman the Klown's House of Cards be any different?

Here's how a typical conversation about energy with a Dem/Lefty/"Progressive" usually goes

The typical rhetoric we get from our "friends" on the other side on this issue resembles the old Abbott and Costello routine "Who's On First?"

My favorite passage:

"Q: What’s your solution, then?

A: Don’t worry. Obama promised 'change.' He’ll figure it out, just trust him."

"It Can't Get Any Worse!"

The insidious meme that Hope and Change campaign promotes is wrong.

(Isn't "Hope and Change" a TV show on Lifetime?)

Noteworthy:

"There are many things, even in our 'crisis' areas that work very well in the United States of America. This is not pre-ordained.

It's perfectly possible for self-righteous, naïve idealists to destroy an excellent system in the process of 'improving' it. Anyone who doubts me should take some time and read up on the imposition of socialism to British healthcare. How about Stalin and collective farming, Mao's Great Leap Forward, and Pol Pot? Don't even get me started on the Schwarzenegger Administration...

Even though liberals like to see themselves as the thinking man's alternative, anyone with moderate intelligence and the willingness to do even minimal research will inevitable conclude that there is much, much, more right than wrong about present-day America. The glass is, most assuredly, well more than halfway full.

Next time you feel hopeless and swept up in an emotional desire for change remember the ultimate conceit in the words - 'It can't get any worse'.

Trust me: it can."

The Volt: Is this the answer for motorists and GM?

Short answer: Not likely, at least under current circumstances.

Read this Atlantic article for some great insight to the car and the process.

So why do I say that Volt is not the answer?

This excerpt is the key:



"Given the challenges, standard procedure dictates first building and testing the battery, and only then designing a car around it. That process, however, would take until 2012 or 2013—time GM does not have if it wants to beat Toyota.

The only hope of meeting the 2010 deadline is to invent the battery while simultaneously designing the car. Just-in-time inventory is common now in the car business, but just-in-time invention on the Volt’s scale is new to GM and probably to the modern automotive industry.

Many in the industry will tell you there’s a good reason car companies don’t do things this way. Toyota, which is proceeding much more cautiously with its own plug-in car, has made no secret of its belief that neither GM nor anyone else can keep the Volt’s promises.

When I called Menahem Anderman, a prominent battery consultant in California, he said the lithium-ion battery will be expensive—far too expensive to make sense as a business proposition as long as gas is $3 or $4 a gallon. ('At $10 a gallon we can have a different discussion.') Its life is unproven, and unprovable in the short time GM has allotted. To deliver tens of thousands of vehicles in 2010, Anderman said, 'they should have had hundreds of them already driving around for two or three years. Hundreds.'

Not everybody can say it publicly, but everybody in the high-volume industry is saying, "What are they thinking about?"' An executive with a GM competitor, after making some of the same points, offered forthrightness in exchange for anonymity: 'They’re making a huge mistake.'"


As indicated, the technology and practicality are not in place, and probably will NOT be in place in the time frame required.

Battery technology is the main sticking point because of heat, reliability, size and cost issues.

Practicality and infrastructure are issues primarily because of battery technology. Building a car before you have the drive train in place is a recipe for disaster. GM's got the accumulated disasters to prove it. They'll be lucky if the car actually DRIVES like a car, not a horse cart, given the approach they're taking.

And a price tag of 40-50k is not going to do the job. In addition, price point swill only get worse if the bean-counters regain control of GM, as they have been successful in doing every 10 years or so througout the company's history.

GM's replies that the usual protocols don't apply here remind me of the "Redneck's Famous Last Words" line:

"Hey, y'all! Watch THIS!"

Doing the right thing: The David Wray Legal Defense Fund

We may never be able to correct the gross injustice and smears inflicted on David Wray by our Greensboro city government, certain of our fellow citizens, our City Council, certain special interest groups, and by the Greensboro News and Record.

We can, however, make sure he is not overwhelmed by the financial burden that this miscarriage of justice has imposed.

Billy and Bill Knight have details.

Send your contributions to:

Clifford, Clendenin & O'Hale, LLP
Attorneys at Law
415 W. Friendly Avenue
Greensboro, NC 27401

Make checks payable to the David Wray Trust Account

It's your chance to tell those responsible for the outrage perpetrated on David Wray, the people of Greensboro, and on the principles of good governance that you are quite aware of what has happened, and what's CONTINUING to happen, and that you're not happy about it.

Shifting from private health care to government health care makes the fiscal outlook worse

So says Arnold Kling.

He is, of course, absolutely correct.


Universal health care is a multi-level disaster just waiting for the complete indoctrination of our people into the standard propaganda of the Usual Suspects on this important agenda item fulfilment.

It's all very similar to the "anthropogenic global warming" alarmists' techniques.

Economic Illiteracy: The High Costs of Obamanomics 101

It's worse than you think.

Key points:

"Yet despite his obvious general intelligence, and uplifting and motivational eloquence, Sen. Obama reveals this startling economic illiteracy in his policy proposals and economic pronouncements. From the property rights and rule of (contract) law foundations of a successful market economy to the specifics of tax, spending, energy, regulatory and trade policy, if the proposals espoused by candidate Obama ever became law, the American economy would suffer a serious setback."

Obama's economic statism, his proposed expansion of government, and his "progressive change" on all fronts show he is pretty clueless.

Let's pray that in case Barry O manages to fool enough voters into electing him President, some of the people he has advising him and are likely to have some economic influence will turn out to be less dangerous than the self-anointed messiah..

My My! Guess who handled security for Barry O'Bama's World Tour segment in Iraq?

NO!

Say it wasn't those evil killers at BLACKWATER!

Noteworthy:

"What’s more, Obama was overheard saying: 'Blackwater is getting a bad rap.'"

Behold! The Anointed Child has appeared in The Wilderness!

A Cautionary Tale of the Road to Salvation.....

The "Racism! Racism!" nonsense gets louder and louder

The theme will soon completely morph into "If you don't vote for Obama, it's because you're a RACIST!"

Noteworthy:

"Calling someone a racist is one of the most serious charges than be leveled against an individual. It is outrageous enough that such a charge is being and will be thrown at tens of millions of people. It demonstrates the naked contempt the left have for the individual mind and the individual voter who approaches an election with certain fundamental benchmarks that a candidate must meet to earn his vote."

You will note that this is the same type of marginalization tactic used by the "Scientific Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming" clowns against us evil "Deniers".

Why are we never surprised to learn of things like this, from people like this?

Calling the "Anthropogenic Global Warming" cheerleaders' bluff

The True Believers and the IPCC are told in no uncertain terms: Put Up, Or Shut Up.

Noteworthy:

"The assertion that the recent rapid rise of CO2 is unique and dangerous is both deceptive and irrelevant because CO2 does not drive the world's climate. Claims that such rapid rises have not happened before are not supported by ice-core or other geological records ........

......Whatever might have seemed the case ten years ago, now, with better data and understanding, there is clearly no evidence for the CO2-based theory of global warming. Indeed, there is only evidence against it."

The Carter /Obama Syndrome

The reality that underlies Obama's Magical Mystery Tour

He's nothing more than an arrogant windbag demagogic poser.

It must be some sort of requirement for a Democrat presidential candidate.

(hat tip: jaycee)


Nicholas Wapshott, in City Journal:

"...Obama’s early and long-standing opposition to the Iraq War has made him a standard bearer for an anti-Americanism that is now rife throughout the European Union. Many Europeans see his unusual family background and his mixed ethnicity as confirmation of their belief that he is not quite wholly American—that he is even, perhaps, un-American."

Why do we never hear of things like this from the Doom and Gloom Economic Klown Klub?

.....as is appropriately represented by the garbage offered by people like Ed Cone.

Mark Perry gives us the details

It's time we shamed these arrogant jerks into stopping their agenda driven promotion of economic doom and gloom hysteria.

Here's everything you need to know to combat the Oil Obstructionists' nonsense

Every reason these people are now trotting out, one by one, is intellectually or morally bankrupt.

Peter Ferrara tells us how phony all of it is.


Excerpts:


"THAT IS WHY the bold Republican initiative to expand oil production and other energy supplies, originally developed by Newt Gingrich, is so effective, and so threatening to liberals. Polls show increasingly overwhelming public support.

As a result, liberals are flailing about offering increasingly absurd distractions. One argument is that even if we started drilling for oil now, we wouldn't get any increased supply, and any reduction in gas prices, for 10 years or more. One popinjay from the misnamed Center for American Progress was recently spouting on TV that there would be no effect until 2030.

Well, let's see. On Friday, July 14, the price of a barrel of oil hit $147. On Monday, July 17, President Bush withdrew the Executive Order banning offshore drilling. That doesn't even start any new drilling because there is still a Congressional ban in place. Nevertheless, by Friday, July 21, after 4 straight days of decline, the price of oil had plummeted to $128, a decline of 13% on a symbolic action alone. The Center for American 'Progress' was only off by 21 years, 51 weeks."

.....and:

"Remember Obama's famous quote:

'We can't just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert, and keep consuming 25 percent of the world's resources with just 4 percent of the world's population, and expect the rest of the world to say you just go ahead. We'll be fine. That's not leadership. That's not going to happen.'

What he means by this is that the current standard of living of the American people is unfair. It represents massive inequality in comparison to the rest of the world. So here we have a leading Presidential candidate who thinks truth and justice requires a reduction in our opulent middle class living standards. Good luck, and good night."

This quote sums up Obama's "understanding" of a key national security initiative

"They say 'victory has a thousand fathers,' but to Sen. Obama, the Surge is a bastard."

-- Grim, at Blackfive, via Confederate Yankee, in response to the nonsense engendered by McCain's spot-on criticism of Barry O on Iraq policy.

We all take note at the "outrage" that the Nutroots are feigning over this clear sign that McCain, indeed, intends to talk straight during the course of this campaign.

Perhaps all this will help Obama get his head out of the sand.

Noteworthy:

"Sen. Obama managed to praise the surge (which he fervently opposed), all the while calling for timelines, degrading Iraqi leaders, and pretending that al-Qaeda in Iraq doesn’t exist"

Well,golly gee! THIS stuff does't help!

....does it, True Believers?


What do you think the response from the "Scientific Consensus" on "Anthropogenic Global Warming" Tag Team Chumps will be over these Inconvenient Truths, as as detailed by Dr. Roy Spencer to the Senate?

"Regarding the currently popular theory that mankind is responsible for global warming, I am very pleased to deliver good news from the front lines of climate change research. Our latest research results, which I am about to describe, could have an enormous impact on policy decisions regarding greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite decades of persistent uncertainty over how sensitive the climate system is to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, we now have new satellite evidence which strongly suggests that the climate system is much less sensitive than is claimed by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Another way of saying this is that the real climate system appears to be dominated by “negative feedbacks” -- instead of the “positive feedbacks” which are displayed by all twenty computerized climate models utilized by the IPCC. (Feedback parameters larger than 3.3 Watts per square meter per degree Kelvin (Wm-2K-1) indicate negative feedback, while feedback parameters smaller than 3.3 indicate positive feedback.)

If true, an insensitive climate system would mean that we have little to worry about in the way of manmade global warming and associated climate change. And, as we will see, it would also mean that the warming we have experienced in the last 100 years is mostly natural. Of course, if climate change is mostly natural then it is largely out of our control, and is likely to end -- if it has not ended already, since satellite-measured global temperatures have not warmed for at least seven years now."

And here's yet ANOTHER confirmation of the Inconvenient Truth:


"To me the value of this paper lies in its dispassionate but ruthlessly clear exposition – or, rather, exposé – of the IPCC’s method of evaluating climate sensitivity. The detailed arguments in this paper, and, indeed, in a large number of other scientific papers, point up extensive errors, including numerous projection errors of climate models, as well as misleading statements by the IPCC. Consequently, there are no rational grounds for believing either the IPCC or any other claims of dangerous anthropogenic 'global warming'."

(hat tip: jaycee)

Life keeps getting tougher for the True Believers' in their incessant babble in support of their thoroughly discredited agenda, doesn't it?

Brian Wesbury addresses the Krugman/Cone Klown Klub regarding the economy

"Yes, it is true that the home building and autos sectors
have been hammered. But, it is not true that this
weakness has spread. Outside those sectors, the economy
is not just healthy but downright strong, reflecting
relatively low tax rates and loose monetary policy.......

...Many say it feels like a recession and predict negative
growth. Then the data arrive, and show growth. The
pessimists then say it doesn’t matter because it’s “old”
news. After all, the quarter is already over and the
evidence of recession will be clear by next quarter, they
say.

Eventually, those forecasting recession are going to
run out of time. The clock is already ticking and the
economy remains resilient. Construction and auto related
layoffs account for more than all the job losses in the past
year. Initial unemployment claims remain below 400,000
and the financial sector appears to be bottoming."

Let's Have Another Round of "Soak The Rich"

It's time to CUT taxes for "the rich"AGAIN!

Noteworthy:

"The idea that this has been a giveaway to the rich is a figment of the Left's imagination. Taxes paid by millionaire households more than doubled to $274 billion in 2006 from $136 billion in 2003. No President has ever plied more money from the rich than George W. Bush did with his 2003 tax cuts. These tax payments from the rich explain the very rapid reduction in the budget deficit to 1.9% of GDP in 2006 from 3.5% in 2003."

Not that facts like this will be enough to stifle the grandstanding, the demagogy, and the usual hate-filled tirades we're used to hearing from our favorite Usual Suspects near and far.......

A short but nearly complete primer

Mark Alexander, at the Patriot Post US:

" Leftist pathology is deserving of its own category on the short list of personality disorders, and liberal politicians have one uniformly defining characteristic: hypocrisy.

Liberal politicos advocate populist themes but are consummate elitists. They feign concern for the plight of the poor while hobnobbing with the richest of the rich. They are charitable with everyone’s income but their own. They decry school vouchers yet send their children to the finest academies. They hate SUVs, unless they are expensive imports. They advocate mass transit but commute on private jets. They express concern for the homeless yet maintain multiple manors.

Liberals advocate diversity, unless your views don’t comport with their own doctrines of moral relativism. They want to preserve nature and the natural order but advocate homosexual 'marriage.' They oppose the death penalty for the most heinous of criminal sociopaths, but they support the execution of unborn children in their mothers’ wombs. They believed that one nut who bombs an abortion clinic deserves far more law-enforcement attention than jihadi cells planning the 9/11 attacks. They called 9/11 victims 'Little Eichmanns' while calling their murderers 'oppressed.' They 'support our troops' while calling for retreat and surrender."

Algore: "Do As I Say, Not As I Do" Redux

Let's see now.....Two Town Cars and a Suburban, with one of the Town Cars running, with the AC running for 20 minutes to keep things cool.

Yeah, that's the ticket, Big Man!

Proof that the Economic Hardships Will Cause People To Starve

Oh, the humanity!

Won't someone feed the two poor souls discussed here, and pictured in that post's last link?

But...but....but....but people like Krugman and Cone say we're ALL totally screwed!

So how can THIS possibly be true?

Noteworthy:

"Linked to the current mood, commentators often depict an embattled and shrinking middle class, with sharply rising financial inequality. However, globally, this is simply not true. One of the most startlingly positive phenomena for many generations continues to unfold around the world. We are in the middle of an explosion of the world’s middle class."

(hat tip: Mark Perry, at Carpe Diem)

Cone, echoing his hero Krugman: "It's a recession because WE say it's a recession"

Arrogant Ass-ism of the Day: "The two-down-quarters or quit your whining stuff is just ignorant."

There are several possible reasons why hacks like Cone post the doom and gloom nonsense.

Politically, the doom and gloom drumbeating supports Obama's empty mantra of "(Chump) Change We Can Believe In". It's very easy and convenient to pin economic bad news on Republicans/Bush/Conservatives/Big Business, and it's even easier to exaggerate the effects of such bad news out of all proportion to the facts.


Cone, and others, fantasize themselves as participants in the grand design of information distribution. Somehow, they've acquired the delusion that they're experts on EVERYTHING, are NEVER wrong about anything, and they're not shy about letting you know that, particularly when you have the audacity to point out their academic and intellectual emptiness.

Furthermore, they see their idols in the big time blahgosphere and in the Lame Stream Media piously pontificate about their "How We're All Gonna Be Screwed In The Coming Depression, So Vote For Obama" talking point, and these small timers want to be on the Depression Bandwagon with the so-called Big Guys .

On the other hand, it's quite possible these folks are actually stupid enough to believe what they're writing. Or perhaps it's just their individual personality disorders taking over their ability to use logic and common sense.

There is of course a danger in what these cretins say about the economy. The negative nay bobbing they so delight in babbling about on a regular basis effectively leads to an undercutting of consumer confidence, which leads to a further downward spiral. In addition, the rumors, half truths selective editing of "facts", and the perceptions they deal in potentially equals big trouble:

"Rumors about America’s two biggest government-sponsored enterprises, the loan-backers commonly known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, spread as if from nothing and sent their share prices plunging. What happened?

Maybe nothing! As Charles Duhigg writes, 'The cause of this week’s huge declines remains somewhat unclear.' An economist he interviewed adds: 'There wasn’t really any new news to set off this crisis. The stocks just started falling, and didn’t stop.' Can the markets really be so gullible?

Well, the global media, whose mantra is 'bad news sells,' doesn’t help matters. Just look at our own lead story. The headline reads, 'U.S. considers takeover of two mortgage giants.' But then, down in the sixth paragraph, we read that 'officials involved in the discussions stressed that no action by the administration was imminent, and that Fannie and Freddie are not considered to be in a crisis situation.' So, exactly what is being 'considered' here?"

Cone got his ass kicked by Wharton and Spagnola here on the very subject under discussion, and the result was this half slime-slinging/half apologia/complete fraud of a post.

Cone needs to pay attention to his own advice:

"A lot of this boils down to arithmetic. Pay more attention to the numbers and less to ideologues on teevee or the web who try to tell you different."

No, Cone.

You (and your mentors) use the numbers in a bogus way to make a point which fulfills one or more of your very own ideologies.

Stop doing that.

Start educating yourself about how all this works, instead of relying on what you glean from fellow hacks.

Revising the Record to Conform to the Current Political Expediency

The Obama campaign decides that a policy position from the recent past is no longer operative.

No big deal, right?

Rich Lowery offers some perspective:

"Obama spokesmen now say everyone knew that President Bush’s troop surge would create more security. This is blatantly false. Obama said in early 2007 that nothing in the surge plan would 'make a significant dent in the sectarian violence,” and the new strategy would 'not prove to be one that changes the dynamics significantly.' He referred to the surge derisively as 'baby-sit(ting) a civil war.'"

And, of course, Obama Rama gets the usual free ride from the Lame Streamers.

As usual, we're not surprised, are we?

The Left's Mass Amnesia Tactic

It's a wonderful little ploy that's served them well, and we have no better example than their current (and on-going) little problem with Iraq.

Excerpt:

"The average leftist is not even aware of any of this. If asked about Iraq, he will drone through the standard run of slogans, none of which made much sense in the first place and now come across as sheer raving. But it doesn't matter. It worked with the famine, it worked with the purges, it worked with Nam, and it will work -- so they think -- with Iraq.

How do you debate with such people? You don't. You can't. St. Augustine once said that there's no use wasting your time arguing with someone who won't grant a subject's basic premises. How much more so with people who won't grant a common reality?"

Just a Reminder

This is, of course, in addition to the continental shelf and ANWR opportunities.

But we know the Usual Drill from the Usual Suspects on this subject by now, don't we?

Do their arguments somehow get less bogus with every repetition?

Hat tip: Power Line, which has more:

John Cornyn:

"We’ve put ourselves in an irrational box. We’ve put 85 percent of our prime energy exploration lands off-limits. The U.S. is the only country in the world that refuses to develop its own natural resources. With a growing worldwide demand for energy, we’re willing to enrich foreign governments – some of which wish us harm – instead of helping ourselves.

The U.S. is well on the way toward transitioning away from over-reliance on fossil fuels. I’m for pursuing every source of energy out there – solar, nuclear, clean coal, wind, biofuels, hydrogen, shale. We need it all. But we’ve built up an infrastructure over 100 years that must be relied upon as we make the change to renewable sources. Congress has to get out of the way and allow the U.S. to develop its resources for that infrastructure – or we’re headed towards economic catastrophe."

Time, The Anti-Obama Vote, and Obama's Own Arrogance: Charting the Way for a McCain Landslide

Perhaps it's time to re-think the coronation festivities.

This sort of thing will of course infuriate the Obamamaniacs, who will respond as mindlessly as usual to any suggestion that their messiah is a false god.

Campaign Econ versus Real Econ: Phil Gramm is right

Amity Shlaes:

"Campaign Econ is certainly understandable. Gas prices are ruining vacation plans and killing businesses. Many Americans have lost or are about to lose their homes to foreclosure or in distress sales. The federal government may not be talking about it much yet, but inflation plagues the country. The weak dollar is altering our everyday calculations. For many, this is not a happy summer.

Still, to liken the current moment to the Great Depression, or even the early 1980s, as Campaign Economists have, is to whine, just as Gramm said. During the Depression, people lost their homes even though they had borrowed only 10 percent of the purchase price. People losing their homes today frequently have borrowed 90 percent or more. The country approached double-digit unemployment in the early 1980s. This week, even as McCain was trying to talk his campaign past Gramm's comments, joblessness stood at a historically modest 5.5 percent.

And Campaign Econ has costs. The first is that talk of a downturn -- or 'mental recession,' as Gramm put -- can itself generate a downturn. Keynesian economists say this is so because consumer spending slows when people are afraid. But there's also a non-Keynesian dynamic. Grumbling leads to costly government rescues that scare markets and slow growth."

Not according to a certain local Blogger Boy Extraordinaire, Ms. Shlaes.

Berlin, 1948: Lessons Learned

Harry Truman:"We're not leaving."

Noteworthy:

"The lessons are clear. Stand fast. Put the right men in charge. And never doubt the capacity of the men and women of the American military, when given the right orders, to perform far better than the experts predict."

"What on earth does the 'audacity of hope' mean? Nothing. It just sounds good."

So says Ralph Peters.

And dissent is not "the highest form of patriotism", as many of our Usual Suspect pals love to intone at every possible occasion.

And, of course, he's right.

Here's more:

" Instead, we get dissent worn as a fashion statement. And fanatic dissent (as Jefferson noted) is the enemy of a democratic system."

Observations upon traveling this past holiday weekend

If people are vacationing at home, or close to home, because of increased gas and food prices crimping their budget, it sure wasn't notable based on the observed crowded highway traffic Mrs. Bubba and I experienced.

Journeying westward on I40 toward Cherokee on Sunday, I had anticipated westbound traffic to be somewhat lighter than the expected eastbound traffic returning from the mountains.

I was wrong. I could see no appreciable difference. Both directions of travel were pretty crowded all the way down to Exit 27.

The crowd at Harrah's was pretty good for a Sunday afternoon. But when I mentioned this to one of the ladies at the Rewards Desk, she said "You should have seen it yesterday. We set a new one day record for visitors." She didn't say so, but I would bet they set a new one day record for house take that day also.

We left Cherokee Monday morning to experience the Smokey Mountains Parkway trip to Gatlinburg, and again, we were not lacking for company. The scenic overviews were packed visitors. If you've never taken this route, it's well worth your time. The scenery near and far was impressive.

Impressive too was the moving parking lot aspect of the highway from Gatlinburg through Pigeon Forge and Sevierville. Take the Myrtle Beach Ocean Avenue Saturday Night Crawl in the dead of summer times three, and you have an idea of what I'm talking about. After the requisite outlet mauling, we checked into ourhotel north of Sevierville, and we learned from the front desk folks that they had been booked solid for the previous three nights, a first for that location.

The traffic on the way home going east on I40, then north on I81 wasn't exactly light, either.

Moral of the story?

It may only be anecdotal, but we saw LOTS of people spending LOTS of money on gambling, shopping, dining, and fuel, and we saw no sign of people who were pessimistic about the economy.

I guess somebody forgot to tell them to read or watch the Lame Stream Media, or Cone's blog, huh?

The Cone Project, 7-7-08

Cone's at it again.

Poster Hugh wonders where my comment to Brad Krantz from earlier today went.

See my explanation below, which is the reply I left at Cone's.

It will probably be deleted by Cone by the time you read it here.

Here's the original link:

"Why was the comment about Krantz and a syndication deal or lack thereof removed?"

It's just Cone being his usual arrogant jerk self, Hugh.

He likes to make people think he's "banned" me. The reality is he can't "ban" me, he can only flag posts from my IP address as spam. When I'm out of town, posting from a different IP source, he can't do that. Hence, the need to remove my posts, which apparently he's done twice today.

Side note to Cone: Go ahead, pal. Do it again. Enough people will read this before you have a chance to get to it.

This whole incident will be cross referenced on Noteworthy.

-----------------

This thing is NOT going away.

I guarantee it.

UPDATE:

I put the original question back up at Cone's.

FYI: I'm in a different city than I was last night; hence, a new ISP address.


FURTHER UPDATE:

The Jerk is consistent. Both new posts are gone.

Side note to John the Catholic: Explain to me how I took a "cheap shot" at Krantz.

Re-instate the national 55 MPH speed limit?

Oh please, spare me from the utter stupidity of that notion.

Noteworthy:

"The only likely beneficiaries are insurance companies (ticket surcharges), local governments that live off speed traps, P.R. firms (the genius creators of public service ads like “Save Gas Save Lives, Drive 55”) and perhaps the radar detector industry. In return, the driving public is treated to aggravation, maddening traffic flow, tickets, bloated insurance premiums, and billions of hours of lost time......

It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. The reasons are many."

"Did it save fuel? In 1984, in what started out to be a promotional 'study' of the 'Benefits of the 55 MPH National Maximum Speed Limit' the Transportation Research Board (Part of the National Academy of Science) determined that keeping the 55 MPH speed limit, versus allowing the states to raise the limit to 65 MPH, would result in a 0.18 percent (less than two tenths of one percent) fuel savings (Source: TRB Report, 55: A Decade of Experience; page 176)

This is not an amount that will devastate the oil economy of the Middle East. The same study did determine that the 55 MPH national speed limit was wasting approximately one billion man hours a year (page 123). This did not include state trooper man hours being burned up enforcing an arbitrary speed limit on the safest highways in the nation."

And then we have this compelling evidence of the lie that "it will save lives!"


Source: NHTSA 2006 Traffic Facts (page 16)

No, there's no liberal agenda in our school systems, is there?

Here's one of the best articles I've read about the insidious Government Schools/Libthink Indoctrination Centers, as promoted by the "Education" Lobby, AKA our nation's schools of education.

Excerpts:

"One theory, often called constructivism, assumes that motivation to learn is enhanced by the opportunity to choose what to learn and how to learn it. This theory claims that what students learn must be self-constructed from their own initiatives and experiences. Meaningful learning is said to take place only when students can construct, with their peers, their own understanding of the world they live in, whether from personal experience or from the texts they choose to read......

The other theory, a 'social justice' approach to teaching and learning, assumes that motivation to learn is enhanced by developing students’ awareness of the historical and current grievances that social groups considered “oppressed” should hold against those who are to be perceived as their 'oppressors.' According to this theory, teachers should discredit traditional curricula and choose alternative curricula."

It gets worse.

Read the whole thing.

Your worst fears about the dangerous and detestable influence of Libthink in our schools have been exceeded.

Seymour Hersh: Back to making it up as he goes along

......just like the good old Viet Nam days, isn't it, Sy?

Max Boot:

"Reading a Seymour Hersh article is a bit like panning for gold: You have to dig through a lot of dirt to find any nuggets of possible value. Relying almost exclusively on vaguely described anonymous sources, he makes sweeping claims about top-secret operations that can only be known to a small number of people inside the government with access to the relevant 'sensitive compartmented information' and 'special access programs,' and they aren’t allowed to comment one way or the other. And his 'reporting' is always colored by a sixties-leftist, anti-American, conspiratorial worldview."

Read the whole thing.

On the other hand, Hersh is hardly alone in this aspect, particularly on the internet, and you don't even have to visit the Usual Suspect national blahgs of ill repute to find it.

Plenty of kindred spirits can be found right here in our local blahgosphere.

Are you convinced yet that the gas prices are an intolerable burden, the likes of which we've NEVER seen before?

Think again.

Don't let the hysteria cause you to buy in to the Doom and Gloom nonsense.

Mark Perry has the analysis.

Key point:

"For gas to reach a record high as a percent of per-capita disposable income, it would have to sell today for about $5.50 per gallon to reach 14.90% of per-capita disposable income, like it did in March of 1981, when gas sold for $1.42 per gallon, and per-capita disposable income was only $9,500."

Here's the latest about the Economic Doom and Gloom/"We're all so screwed, so vote for Obama" gang

(Yes, I'm talking about YOU, Cone.)

John Stossel has something to say about his lame colleagues in several lame media venues.

Noteworthy:

"The state of economic reporting in this country is abysmal. We might laugh at it if it didn't have bad consequences. But the more people hear such inappropriate comparisons, the more apt they are to believe them and change their behavior accordingly -- investing less and taking fewer economic risks -- thereby aggravating bad economic conditions."

There are only two reasons these people do this.

They're either ignorant of the actual processes that iare taking place in our economy, or they are specifically making a concerted public relations effort (as is the case among the "Anthropogenic Global Warming" True Believers) to distort the facts to fulfill their political/social/economic agenda items talking points.

News flash! Obama to star in remake of "Friends" series!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vTN3mShDZVI

Here's how one group of Americans chose to celebrate this special day

The scene is Baghdad, the people are 1215 members of the Armed Forces of the United States, and they are gathered to re-enlist in the service of the nation they love.

Power Line has details.

And we continue to hear those of a certain worldview demean these folks, while they assign certain numbers of their ranks to spread the vicious lie that "we support our troops".

John Adams Survives

Reflections on Independence Day.

Excerpt:

"As Jefferson put it in a letter he wrote shortly before the jubilee celebration: 'For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.'"

If he were able, I think Jefferson might add today, "And let no man diminish our devotion to those rights through artifice of political, social, and economic devices intended to advance a particular antithetical world view destructive to our revolutionary ideals."

Mark Alexander (Patriot Post US) has more:

"If our nation’s Founders could visit us on this, our 232nd Independence Day, what would they make of us? What would they declare of us?

A hint can be discerned in a letter from John Adams to his wife, Abigail, on July 3, 1776, as the Declaration of Independence had just been approved. 'It ought to be commemorated,' said the man who would become our second president, 'as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Day’s Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.'

Americans have maintained the 'Pomp and Parade' for more than two centuries now, and the 'Bonfires and Illuminations' are commonplace, but how often do we recognize Independence Day as 'the Day of Deliverance?' How often do we honor it with 'solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty'? How often do we contemplate the cost of our freedom, 'the Toil and Blood and Treasure?'

Our Founders believed that independence was more than a choice; they viewed our break from royal rule as necessary.

Consider the first statement of the Declaration: 'When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.'

The signatories were emphatic that separation from the crown was not only an objective, but an obligation: 'But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.” In conclusion, the Founders wrote, 'We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation...'

Their cause, of course, was not anti-government. Rather they objected to the misgovernment of the king, saying, 'He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.' Furthermore, the Americans had been patient, petitioning their British rulers for redress for over a decade. Armed hostilities had commenced on April 19, 1775, at the battles of Lexington and Concord, and the colonists faced the full power of the British Empire in their quest for American independence.

One year before taking that step for nationhood, on July 5, 1775, the Continental Congress adopted the Olive Branch Petition, beseeching the British king for a peaceful resolution of the American colonies’ grievances. A day later, that same Congress resolved the 'Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking Up Arms.'

King George III refused to read the peace petition and assembled his armies. On July 2, 1776, Richard Henry Lee’s proposal for a formal declaration of separation passed, and the document was ordered printed on July 4.

The war-weary among us today might ask, was independence really necessary?

To pose the question at the outset of the Revolutionary War was to answer it. Representatives of the colonial Americans realized that, in voicing this query, they already possessed proof that they, not the King of England, were legitimate instruments of self-government for their countrymen. How could circumstances be otherwise when the king offered no remedy for his subjects’ complaints, no guarantee their rights would be respected, and no means for them to govern themselves in their new lands?

The founders knew, however, that power could not be its own justification. They recognized that only an appeal to overarching laws, binding the king as much as his subjects, was legitimate. And abuse of authority demonstrated disqualification of any governor, whether a monarch or a purported representative.

We would do well to apply this insight to the political debates of today.

Indeed, two competing philosophies of government at odds during the American Revolution have reappeared, with the anti-republican form seen in those politicians who would seek to gain favor by manipulating language and misrepresenting their positions. Royalists, on the other hand, believed that the king was divinely ordained to rule over the people and was therefore above the law. This view is manifest currently in government officials—especially our elected officers—who believe they may properly command the citizenry to whatever they please, to whichever they purport to be for the good of the people.

As Thomas Jefferson observed, 'Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.' Yet the prevailing philosophy of government proposes exactly this—that directions from Washington as to how we must conduct ourselves, in matters large and small, will lead inexorably to scarcity and will inevitably erode our freedom.

Our system of government today is not so different from the monarchy we escaped, except that a swarm of bureaucrats have taken up the throne.

A necessity thus presents itself to us as well: We must reconnect with the timeless principles that inspired our Founding Fathers; those same principles that long ago gave birth to a good, great and God-blessed nation.

'[W]hat do we mean by the American Revolution?' reflected John Adams. 'Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.'

Let us celebrate this Independence Day 2008 in a manner that Adams himself might recognize—with 'solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty,' and with a rededication to the principles of our necessary American Revolution. And as always, in the words of George Washington, 'Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.'"

"Global Warming": The "sick souled" religion

It's a good example of mass neurosis.

Noteworthy:

"Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification."

....and:

"Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?

As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success."