R. Lee Ermey unloads on the current administration with two barrels of truth

Thanks to Cousin Bobski and The Blaze for this link:

Socratic questions for liberals

Spotted on The People's Cube:

A list of Socratic questions from a former reluctant resident of the Soviet Union, Oleg Atbashian, for use during those "calm intellectual discussions" with rabid leftist/liberal/progressives. I've copied them directly here for your easier perusal.

There's quite a few questions here; but there could always be more. When logic is pitted against emotion in a debate, logic always crushes the opposition in a completely satisfying way. It's kind of fun to think up these sorts of gedankenexperiments, as Einstein called them--add more of your own in the comments section, and forward these around!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Americans,  these are some questions I have collected in 16 years of living in your country. Please see if you can answer them for me:

• If all cultures are equal, why doesn’t UNESCO organize International Cannibalism Week festivals?
• Why do those demanding “equal pay for equal work” never protest against “equal pay for little or no work”?
• Why has no politician ever run on men’s issues or promised to improve the lives of males?
• If all beliefs are equally valid, how come my belief in the absurdity of this maxim gets rejected by its proponents?
• Ever noticed that for the past thirty years, we’ve been hearing we have less than ten years to save the planet?
• Once a politician labels the truth as hate speech, can anyone trust him to speak the truth afterward?
• If a politician gets elected by the poor on a promise to eliminate poverty, wouldn’t fulfilling his promise destroy his voting base? Wouldn’t he rather benefit from the growing numbers of poor people? Isn’t this an obvious conflict of interests?
• How did the “war on poverty” end? Has there been a peace treaty or a ceasefire? Who is the occupying force and who are the insurgents?
• Why weren’t there demonstrations with anti-feudal slogans under feudal rule? And under Stalin, no anti-communist demonstrations? And under Hitler, no anti-fascist demonstrations? In a free capitalist society, anti-capitalist demonstrations are commonplace. Is capitalism really the worst system?
• If capitalism makes some people rich without making others poor, who will benefit when capitalism is destroyed?
• If the poor in America have things that people in other countries can only dream about, why is there a movement to make America more like those other countries?
• Why, on the rare occasions when Obama’s actions benefit America, does his base get angry? And every time his actions are hurting this nation, his  base is happy? Who exactly are these people?
• If cutting out the middleman lowers the price, why are we paying the government to stand between us and the markets?
• If racial profiling is an abomination, what do you make of the last presidential election?After Eric Holder called Americans a nation of cowards, what has he done personally to help the situation?
• If diversity training benefits everyone, why do those classes mostly consist of white heterosexual males?
• Why is a huge poisonous cloud over a volcano considered magnificent — but a smokestack over an American factory is ugly and harmful?
• How many Kyoto Protocols are rendered pointless by one medium-sized volcanic eruption?
• Why is burning gas in my car hurting the planet, but setting fire to housing developments in California is saving it?
• Why does Hollywood glamorize drug addicts, criminals, liberal Democrats, and mentally challenged people? What do they all have in common?
• How come Hollywood can always find a good side in thugs, but never in businesspeople? What was the last movie that pictured a self-reliant, industrious man as a role model?
• If it’s capitalist greed that forces Hollywood to exploit the lowest human instincts, why didn’t the same greed force Hollywood to exploit America’s patriotism and make war movies showing the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan as a force for good? Wouldn’t one such film bring more green cash than all the anti-American flops in the recent years? Where was Hollywood’s capitalist greed then?
• How come those calling Sarah Palin a “bimbo” often look like part of Paris Hilton’s entourage?
• If there are no absolutes and family is an antiquated tool of bourgeois oppression, why is having gay marriage an absolute must?
• Would you know from the media coverage that there are more sex offenders among public school teachers then among Catholic priests? How come the church gets the blame and the Department of Education doesn’t?
• Why is the media so outspoken about sex abusers being priests, but avoids calling them homosexual pedophiles? Who are they afraid to offend?
• Why do those who decry modern civilization never live far from shopping centers and why don’t grind their coffee with a stone ax?
• If we are called a “consumer society” because we consume, why aren’t we also called an “excreter society” because we excrete? For that matter we also sleep, dream, talk, think, invent, play music, raise children, feel pain, get sick and die. Many of us work for a living. Why aren’t we called a “producer society” because we produce the things we consume? Who puts these labels on us and for what purpose?
• How come the unselfish Americans hate their country out of personal frustrations, while the selfish ones defend America with their lives?
• If describing terrorists as freedom fighters is justified by the journalistic principle of neutrality, what is the name of the principle that justifies describing U.S. troops as rapists and murderers?
• When the media portrays the killing of terrorists as “slaughter of civilians,” while slaughter of civilians is portrayed as “resistance to occupation,” is the media really being neutral? Whose side are they really on?
• If Hollywood types are so opposed to capitalism, why is there a warning against unauthorized distribution of their movies?
• Why is experimenting on animals cruel, but experimenting on human embryos compassionate?
• How come industrial logging is a crime against nature, but the destruction of forests by wildfires is a natural cycle of life?
• Why do those who object to tampering with the environment approve of tampering with the economy? Isn’t the economy also a fragile ecosystem where a sudden change can trigger a devastating chain reaction?
• Isn’t the latest economic crisis such a chain reaction?
• Aren’t most of today’s social ills the result of tampering with social ecosystems?
• Why is bioengineering bad, but social engineering good?
• If Al Gore is right and our consumption of the planet’s resources is a moral issue, doesn’t that make genocide an ethical solution? How about an artificial famine? What would Al Gore choose?
• If being a winner in nature’s struggle for survival is selfish, does being extinct make you an altruist?
• Since our planet’s resources are limited, wouldn’t the ultimate act of environmental activism be to stop eating and starve to death?
• How come those who hate humanity for its faults are called “humanists” but those who love humanity for its virtues are called “hate-mongers”?
• If economic ups and downs are natural cycles, why is the downturn always blamed on unbridled capitalism, but the upturn is the result of a wise leadership of a Democrat president?
• Why is there never a media story praising capitalism for the booming economy?
• Ever noticed that those who demand “power to the people” also believe that people can’t do anything right without government supervision?
• How exactly does dependency on the government increase “people power”?
• Why is there never a headline that says “Government program ends as its intended goal has been achieved”?
• How come so many anti-American radicals are wearing American brands, listen to American music, watch American movies, and play American video games on computers designed by American engineers?
• Why do advocates for higher taxes have accountants advising them how they can pay smaller taxes? Wouldn’t you expect them instead to seek advice on how to give away more of their income to the IRS? Or at least not to hire accountants at all?
• Can you name one person who paid the IRS more than he owed because he trusted the government to put his money to good use?
• Did it occur to any of the 9/11 Truthers that a government conspiracy to murder thousands of people would have also included a plan to rub out a few troublemakers?
• If U.S. oil companies own everyone in Washington, how come they allowed Congress to grill them for the alleged price gouging — and to broadcast it on C-Span?
• Why didn’t Congress also grill Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin, and a guy named Abdullah Ibn Abdul Aziz Bin Abdulrahman Bin Faisal Bin Turki Bin Abdullah Bin Muhammad al Saud?
• Why are windfall profits a problem when they enrich U.S. companies that pay billions in taxes — but when Hugo Chavez uses the same windfall profits to fund Marxist guerillas in Colombia, it’s not a big deal?
• If George W. Bush was an oil-thirsty dictator, why couldn’t he in eight years get permission from Congress to drill in ANWR? And why didn’t that failure in any way hurt his dictatorial reputation with the media?
• If it’s true that the media emphasized bad news and harassed President Bush only because they competed for ratings, what changed now? Aren’t they worried that today’s emphasis on good news from the White House will destroy their ratings and make journalism irrelevant?
• And finally, if all opinions are equal, how come a liberal who disagrees with a conservative is open-minded, but a conservative who disagrees with a liberal is a bigot?

Man's penis amputated following misdiagnosis

Well, a Merry Christmas, & Happy, Happy New Year to you, too.

The story, from the socialist utopia of Sweden, is here. 

Notable quote:

"After three weeks passed without the prescribed treatment alleviating the man’s condition, he was instructed to seek further treatment at Blekinge Hospital.  But it took five months before he was able to schedule an appointment at the hospital."

So is this what we can expect from our new socialized medicine? I guess they weren't kidding when they said Obamacare might cost an arm and a leg!  Turns out it may just cost you much, much more.

Venn diagram showing the relationship of various Junk-Touchers

by Nick Gillespie at reason.com:

How did all that happen?

Victor David Hanson's column at Pajamasmedia is worth reading twice.  How did all this happen, indeed?

My answer is this:  Decades of utter corruption of the media by the left.  That corruption is the root cause of almost all of the battles we center-right folks have been fighting for decades--cultural, political, social, environmental, et cetera--and the reason that they ARE battles, and not just mildly interesting, esoteric discussions. 

For years the legacy Big Media has consistently and continuously refused to do its job (investigate and report) and instead has inserted its own agenda into the job description formerly occupied by ethical ideals.  Their new mission statement apparently reads as follows:
 

"Sell a particular progressive/liberal/leftist worldview to the unwashed, unsophisticated Untermenschen, at all costs.  Selectively publish facts, supress contrary viewpoints...do whatever you have to do, even make up the facts if you have to, just as long as one side (ours) gets a better face than the other side (theirs)." 

(Um, by the way, in case you were wondering: WE are the Untermenschen--that is, any conservative, including myself; most folks in the United States, and particularly anyone who has not matriculated from a sufficiently elitist university, or who doesn't know which fork to use for their goose-liver pâté. )

Solving societies self-induced problems would be much easier if we had an honest free press, by which I mean one that is as devoid of ideology as would be possible, or at least one where reporters would admit the direction their stories are slanted, and why, and acknowledge that their ideology often intrudes on the storyline. 

Until journalists embrace the ethics that they so often quote in public but refuse to abide by in secret, we're going to have an uphill fight.

Update:  a related article here.

The Bears Discuss Obama's Record (So Far)

Expletive warning, but worth the listen, just because their discussion so accurately portrays the general discussion in the legacy media.



(H/T NewZeal)

A Single, $48 BILLION Dollar Earmark in the New Omnibus Spending Bill!

Most folks that will see this post will have already seen Drudge,  so this probably isn't news to you...but just in case, here is the unbelievable story:  "Redistribution On Steroids".

It's just this level of over the top hubris--the unabashed, rigid-middle-digit-extension to the taxpayers, the producers, the folks that are making our economy continue to function against all odds--that will initiate the pitchfork and torch mobs these numbskulls are always warning about when those little people out in flyover country start to get unruly.

After all the rancor they've elicited in the past two years (remember the town hall meetings of August '09?), these congressional reprobates STILL don't get it.  Either that, or they just don't care.  They'll do anything to accomplish their ideological goals in order to consolidate power in the future.  Let's be perfectly clear here:  is there anyone out there who believes that this is anything but an attempt to build a beholden voting block? 

All summer long, the Harry Reid-led senate kicked the budget can down the road, and I believe it was just for this reason:  to produce a self-induced time crunch at the end, wherein they could spring yet another ponderous 1900-plus page bill, too long for most folks (and more particularly, the republican opposition) to digest.  Sounds kind of familiar, in an Obamacare kind of way, doesn't it? 

Their gluttonous quest for power  has once again trumped any sense of responsibility.  The same individuals who daily scream out against the war are now actively, gleefully engaging in the unbridled promotion of the basest sort of class warfare that has been tearing the country apart since the '60s, and all for their own benefit.

This is the sneaky, underhanded behavior that you would expect from a gang of juvenile delinquents trying to con their folks out of a weekend with the family car.  America deserves better--much better.

I can only hope that, barring defeat of this monstrosity, parts of it can be repealed quickly, once this Democratic run lame duck congress is put out of its (and our) misery.  

I am disgusted beyond any further words.

Idiocy Interviews Intellect

Of course, it's a common theme, especially when we're talking about ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, AP, or any of the other legacy media outlets.

Katie Couric interviewed Condolezza Rice, who straightened Couric out on a few of her pre-conceived liberal talking points (transcript here, from Newsbusters).

Okay, it's been awhile...

...since I've posted anything (12 days, as a matter of fact), but I promise I will be back in the swing of things in the next day or two.  My situation in my real life has been intruding on this one, but I will be putting it back into it's proper perspective by the end of the week.  Bear with me!

Cool New Surveying Technology

Surveying and aviation combined, all in a handy suitcase-sized package...What's not to like about this?



Seriously, as a guy that started surveying just when the first EDM machines were coming out (not that we got to use them much), this is some amazing stuff.  Wish I'da thought of it...

I do wonder how higher winds would affect data capture.  I can also envision some field-level angst when your new $50K+ surveying instrument is firmly anchored in the upper branches of a 60 foot elm tree.

Regardless, there are some great applications for this tool, and the gee-whiz factor is off the charts in my book.