Motto: The surest way to get a reputation for being a trouble maker these days is to go about repeating the very phrases that the Founders used in the struggle for independence.
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On my absence, again;
I, Serge Pretentiatti,
have come out of seclusion to complete a couple of
tasks. Task 1 is to address the “Fix of the Month”
posed in 2006.
Task 2 is to share a lesson I have only
recently learned about idealists, and what happens
to them as they age.
It is also abundantly clear that the writing
frequency has dropped to the point where the best I
can hope for is to, like Santa Clause (who Americans
recently reelected), come out from my lair but once
a year. Henceforth, the blogs will be an
annual event - with a theme. The theme for 2013,
Great Liberal Myths.
On Freedom and Environmentalism;
If you haven’t, I invite you to read the issue from
2006. Frankly, it was prophetic, and the revelations
by Ed Snowden in 2012 have only solidified what many
of us knew 7-8 years ago. The activation of Obamacare is even getting
onerous enough for low information voters to notice
their govt. has lied to them. And the stubborn
refusal of the earth to warm has resulted in Al Gore
even changing his language from “Global Warming” to
“Global Climate Change” so frankly, no matter what
happens, he can claim man is the cause.
On More Guns ='s More Violence;
Another liberal whopper, recited by every
"journalist" without ever examining the premise. The
tragedies at Sandy Hook, Aurora and other places
anger all of us, but let us look at the data -first-
and then form an opinion -later-. This site shows
that the United States has by far the most armed
populace on Earth.
By the premise, there should be no question that
homicide rates should be also the highest in the USA
- right? And if you listen to the nightly news, that
is what you would believe. But you don't have to be
a ignorant lump and accept the "unbiased" media
reporting. You can look it up yourself, and you
would find
And if you look you will see that the USA is in the
bottom half (at 4.7 deaths/100,000) as opposed to
the unarmed paradises like Jamaica (>40) and
Brazil (>20). The women and kids in these
countries know only too well that when the weak
cannot defend themselves from the strong, jungle law
is the rule.
On last month's Fix;
the answer to last month's Fix,
"What role does humanity have in global warming?" is
Global warming may (or may not
be) an observational fact, but linking it to CO2 is
an extrapolated hypothesis. Linking that to human
generated CO2 is an extrapolation on an
extrapolation. It is interesting to note that 450
Million years ago, atmospheric CO2 concentration was
10 times its current value and the earth was in an
Ice Age (see Reference 1).
The contribution of human made CO2 on GW can be
calculated. CO2 accounts for about 15% of
greenhouse gas heating (Ref. 2). Humans may account
for about 33% of that CO2 (Ref 3-4, using 1880 as a
baseline). So the fraction of GW that can be blamed
on humans is 5% - about .07 degrees Fahrenheit of
the 1.5 degree increase that the IPCC says has
occurred in the last 50 years. In other words, if
humanity had been wiped out 50 years ago, the
temperature would still be within 0.07 degrees of
where we are.
Still not convinced? Consider this following quote.
High-resolution
images
of the south polar residual cap of XXX
acquired in 1999 and 2001 show changes in the
configuration of pits, intervening ridges, and
isolated mounds. Escarpments have retreated 1
to 3 meters in 1 XXX year, … The erosion
implies that this reservoir is not in
equilibrium with the present environment and
that global climate change is occurring on
XXX.
Pretty damning indicment right? Only one problem, XXX is Mars. I breathlessly await someone explaining how Mars is suffering from Mankind's addiction to fossil fuels [5].
I work in a very large (>30,000 employers) company and this last week I was in a meeting with some of my colleagues and witnessed the following teachable moment.
One is a young, bright, physicist. She also happens to be a single mom, and gay. The other is a late 50’ish IT professional, married with college educated kids. They are both stout liberals and bleed BHO. This is important to understand because the way they bickered one would have thought they were political rivals.
We happened to be talking about computer security and the elder said to the younger, “Well, in an institution this big you have to assume that not everyone inside the firewall is who they claim to be. You have to assume some are working for foreign governments, and we have to have surveillance on the employee computers”
Coming from him, I though that was a candid and thoughtful observation. But then she said, “I don’t have to assume that. I think it’s rather cynical and controlling to assume that of our colleagues just because they may not have all been born here.”
And the argument went on from there. What I was having trouble grasping is why these two were on opposite sides of the fence. Then I realized it. When liberals are young, they are bright, optimistic and happy. As they age, they turn bitter and cynical.
I struggled for a few days with this, and then the reason hit me. To be a liberal you have to believe that people are angels. That’s the only way socialism works. Take Obamacare; to stay financially sound young healthy people have to cheerfully pay more then they should for healthcare insurance to make it affordable for the old sick people who load the system. If youth don’t happily comply, the system falls apart.
Youth can still hold onto the illusion that people are kind and altruistic. The world is their happy oyster. But then age brings experience, and the aging liberal finds that their ideals don’t hold up, and socialist paradises fail. Some liberals, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, discover their brains at this point and become conservatives (i.e. realists). But for those that stubbornly hold onto their youthful ideals, they become pulled in two directions: they are either wrong in their beliefs, or the rest of humanity is wrong. And so, the aging, arrogant liberal becomes bitter and cynical because it is society that “got it wrong”, not they. And in turn they come to hate the very society that they had thought to help.
none this month
"Helathcare.gov may not be fixed by
the end of Nov?"
-- BHO, Nov 20 Press Converence
"More Money Will Fix Education's
Woes"
1.
1. NY City, Oct:
1. Dec 2, Wall Street J: