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Thursday, January 15. 2015

23 Hollywood Moms With Same Sperm Donor Go on Vacation

Alfred Fuller's brush with history

My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

The Real Reasons We Don't Invite Friends to Church

Personal Trainer Impressed By Man’s Improved Excuses

The bias against guns: What the media isn't telling you

AMERICA'S MILITARY: A conservative institution's uneasy cultural evolution

A ‘Gentle Mob’ Pushes UVA to the Irrational

Oxford University Press bans sausages and pigs from
children’s books in effort 'to avoid offence': Bizarre clampdown branded
'nonsensical political correctness'

ObamaCare Opt-Out Act: Let all Americans make their own health care decisions

Martin Luther King Jr. enlisted to fight illegal immigration, Obama amnesty

Elitism driving “free” college proposal by Obama?

The Problem with Romney Nostalgia - Romney’s 2012 campaign was premised on dissatisfaction with Obama, not enthusiasm for Mitt.

Mitt is a superb fellow. If I were elected, I'd put him in charge of something big

Scott Walker, the un-academic?

Cruz:

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said Monday that Republicans should take advantage of their control of Congress to abolish the Internal Revenue Service.

“We need to pass fundamental tax reform making our tax code simpler, flatter, fairer,” he said Monday at Heritage Action’s 2015 conservative policy summit. ”And I’ll tell you, the single most important tax reform, we should abolish the IRS.”

Friends of the Earth are the Enemies of Mankind

1 million tons of pressurised CO2 stored beneath Decatur, Illinois. It was a tenth of that, 100,000 tons, that caused the Lake Nyos disaster

Top MIT Climate Scientist: ‘Senate’s Climate Change Vote Is Ludicrous’

Bernie Sanders: Keystone XL Pipeline Would Leave Planet ‘Significantly Less Habitable’

What Terrorism? Kerry Still Obsessing Over 'Climate Change'

$Billions Pledged to Haiti After Earthquake Have Vanished

Why Iraqi army can't fight, despite $25 billion in U.S. aid, training

France Arrests Comedian Dieudonné for Condoning Acts of Terrorism on Facebook - 54 arrested in crackdown; Interior Minister promises ‘total severity’ against free speech the government doesn’t like

WaPo: French Muslims 'Deeply Torn' by ‘I Am Charlie’ Slogan - 'Many are viewing the tragedy in starkly different terms from their non-Muslim compatriots.

Sky News Really Doesn't Want to Show the New Charlie Hebdo Cover - Self-censorship in action

Free Speech Can Get You Killed? Support It Anyway.

McInnes:

This isn’t an ethereal threat with complicated roots that we need to “open a conversation” about. It’s a religious war based on irreconcilable differences. How many attacks do we have to endure before we realize this? It seems like the only people who truly understand how violent Islam is have been beheaded. All skinheads had to do was wear a swastika. By fretting about nonexistent backlashes and demanding that everyone be civil, we are putting our entire civilization at risk.

It is Time for a “backlash” in Europe

What Carlebach Wrote, And Ma'ariv Published

West's anti-Israel propaganda encourages terror

The Existential Necessity of Zionism After Paris: A COMMENTARY Editorial

Drawing While the Hand Trembles - A view of "Charlie Hebdo" from the world of Arab cartoonists, where the risks loom large and the humor is black.

Below via Front Page

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 05:37 | Comments (22) | Trackbacks (0)

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I don’t invite my friends to church because I don’t want to subject them to Leftist propaganda.

#1 ErisGuy on 2015-01-15 06:25 (Reply)

I attend an Episcopal church in a small town in South Texas. Despite the rap the Episcopal Church gets, it's different in the Western Diocese of Texas. No leftist dogma; no political dogma at all; I really couldn't guess how my pastor or most of my fellow parishioners vote. There is a careful avoidance of the controversy over gay marriage that is such a cause of schism nationwide.

#1.1 Texan99 on 2015-01-15 12:39 (Reply)

Friends of the Earth are the Enemies of Mankind

I think we need to consider the eradication of environmentalists... for the sake of survival of the Earth, of course.

You couldn't pay me to click on that video of PsychoKerry.

The Haitian $ disappearance. I thought this was old news. Or is this is the continuation of the destruction of the Hilary pResidential campaign? Not that I'm complaining.

#2 fjord on 2015-01-15 07:05 (Reply)

My Lovey Wife in the Psych Ward......hmmmm, sounds like someone who was never allowed to fail and learn from that failure that life will not end, but that failure is instead, a valuable teaching tool in life's endeavors.

Wonder how many of theses Psycho cases arise in individuals who were cocooned and overly protected, then, when faced with some minor setback, had others rush to their "aid" and comfort, rather than being to taught to buck up and face their issues and simply relax? As Scarlett O'Hara so keenly observed, "After all, tomorrow is another day!"

The after-effects of adrenalin can be a killer! Yet, people forget this potent naturally-occurring chemical/drug is ever present and must be accounted for, in dealing with human behavior (if it can give a 100 lb. woman, the strength to lift a 3,000 lb. car off her child, one can only imagine what effect it could have on someone such as the wife in this article). I could feel the build up of same, as the author described his wife's behavior on her dream job: she was terrified of failure and the adrenaline rush from that stress, was a likely trigger for her descent into her own personal hell.

#3 earl t on 2015-01-15 09:04 (Reply)

Wonder how many of theses Psycho cases arise in individuals who were cocooned and overly protected, then, when faced with some minor setback, had others rush to their "aid" and comfort, rather than being to taught to buck up and face their issues and simply relax.

I am reminded of what a Colombian co-corker told me. His grandmother came from a protected, upper class family and married into an upper class family. Having been sheltered all her life, I was told, his grandmother could not cope with the stress of coping her husband's death, and spent the rest of her life in an insane asylum.

#3.1 Gringo on 2015-01-15 14:50 (Reply)

Scott Walker, just a few credits shy of being granted the magic ticket, is apparently, according to Democrats, unqualified for high office. It is not like he didn't "go to college" he just didn't get the magic sheepskin.

If Walker runs, it could be very interesting as the DC crowd, both sides, reveal themselves to the American people as snobbish and ignorant. Universities may never recover from an honest discussion of the value of a "degree" over the "education" the diploma supposedly signifies.

#4 JK Brown on 2015-01-15 09:05 (Reply)

Well, Oxford, although did permit some basic research that facilitated it, miss the steam engine. They rushed to catch up, but their bigotry excluded the men who transformed the world from their hallowed halls. If we depended on university to advance mankind in the transformative ways, we'd still be in a horse and buggy.

QUOTE:

"Newcomen's religion had consequences greater than absence from a local census. Dissenters, including Baptists, Presbyterians, and others, were as a class, excluded from universities after 1660, an either apprenticed, or learned their science from dissenting academies."

"At the same time that he chartered the world's first scientific society, Charles II had created an entire generation of dissenting intellectuals uncontrolled by his kingdom's ever more technophobic universities."

p29, Rosen, Willam, 'The Most Powerful Idea in the World'

So the universities abandoning freedom of thought, we might see another major transformation of humanity via the minds that avoid the universities tyrannical thought control.

#5 JK Brown on 2015-01-15 09:14 (Reply)

In support and in amplification of your point, C.C. Darlington in The Evolution of Man and Society points out that the scientific and engineering advances in 17th-19th century England came entirely, or almost entirely, from religious dissenters. While Newton spent most of his career at Oxbridge, he had to dissimulate his dissenting religious views in order to do so.
During this time Oxbridge ended up training Anglican clergymen or government bureaucrats, not scientists, as a consequence of requiring adherence to the Anglican creed.

#5.1 Gringo on 2015-01-15 15:02 (Reply)

Re: Bernie Sanders and Climate Change

As if declaring himself to be a socialist wasn't enough evidence to believe he is a loon... I guess "in for a penny, in for a pound".

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

#6 mudbug on 2015-01-15 09:28 (Reply)

Re: Scott Walker The college dropout

I notice that Bernie Sanders got a college degree - in political science, no less. That's all I need to know about the usefulness of a college degree.

#7 mudbug on 2015-01-15 09:41 (Reply)

Ah, political science. I have a cousin who was a good football player but not such a good student (untreated dyslexia). When he got a football scholarship to college, he majored as most of the players did in political science. When his knew blew out and he lost the scholarship, he switched and got his degree in Sports Medicine. Did okay, but no lucrative, working with a Sports Medicine Group and training a couple Olympic athletes.

The moral of the story is, once you lose your sport scholarship due to injury, you should switch out of poly sci and into some major that offers a future since you'll have the time to meet the more stringent study.

#7.1 JK Brown on 2015-01-15 11:32 (Reply)

Yeah, imagine if you did graduate in poli-sci. You might end up as a know-nothing politician like Bernie Sanders (who unfortunately will continue to suck at the tax payer tit till he dies).

#7.1.1 mudbug on 2015-01-15 11:52 (Reply)

http://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars

Why Arabs Lose Wars

by Norvell B. De Atkine
Middle East Quarterly
December 1999

Norvell De Atkine, a U.S. Army retired colonel with eight years residence in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, and a graduate degree in Arab studies from the American University of Beirut, is currently instructing U.S. Army personnel assigned to Middle Eastern areas. The opinions expressed here are strictly his own.

Arabic-speaking armies have been generally ineffective in the modern era. Egyptian regular forces did poorly against Yemeni irregulars in the 1960s.1 Syrians could only impose their will in Lebanon during the mid-1970s by the use of overwhelming weaponry and numbers.2 Iraqis showed ineptness against an Iranian military ripped apart by revolutionary turmoil in the 1980s and could not win a three-decades-long war against the Kurds.3 The Arab military performance on both sides of the 1990 Kuwait war was mediocre.4 And the Arabs have done poorly in nearly all the military confrontations with Israel. Why this unimpressive record? There are many factors—economic, ideological, technical—but perhaps the most important has to do with culture and certain societal attributes which inhibit Arabs from producing an effective military force.

It is a truism of military life that an army fights as it trains, and so I draw on my many years of firsthand observation of Arabs in training to draw conclusions about the ways in which they go into combat. The following impressions derive from personal experience with Arab military establishments in the capacity of U.S. military attaché and security assistance officer, observer officer with the British-officer Trucial Oman Scouts (the security force in the emirates prior to the establishment of the United Arab Emirates), as well as some thirty year's study of the Middle East.

#8 Robert Sendler on 2015-01-15 09:43 (Reply)

A very interesting and worthwhile read. Thanks for posting.

#8.1 feeblemind on 2015-01-15 10:50 (Reply)

As has been pointed out before, it predates Islam.

i.e. The Anabasis.

Only the Wests disunity and internal wars have ever given the Arabs and their neighbors a chance.

#8.2 John the River (Link) on 2015-01-15 15:11 (Reply)

Re: Iraqi army (Afghan army, too, for that matter)

We spent a lot of money and lives to help the Iraqis and Afghans stand on their own two feet and it doesn't look like it's paid off. The "reasonable" thing to do is to cut our losses and leave them to their own devices. What are the chances that more training, more equipment, more lives lost will make a difference? Worse, if we end up being their protector, what incentive would they have to defend themselves (see Europe).

Unfortunately, given their (and our) enemies, there are global implications to their failure. There may be no good options.

#9 mudbug on 2015-01-15 10:02 (Reply)

"The problem with Romney nostalgia"

Romney is a smart and capable man. He is likeable and honest and no doubt would be the ideal grandfather or mentor. He has proved his management skills numerous times. The problem is if he were elected president he would be a place holder. He wouldn't reverse any of the disastrous policies and directions that our prior politicians have created. He wouldn't implement new and radical (constitutional) inititives to bring us back to a constitutional Republic of for and by the people. He would simply "kind of" maintain the status quo. Make no mistake he would do it as well as the best manager in the world could do it. We would slowly increase taxes, slowly increase welfare and slowly increase the national debt. At the same time we would continue to increase the restrictive and probably unconstitutional federal government bureaucratic regulations that are strangling our small and large businesses, we would continue to allow the federal government to usurp power that the constitution clearly says is not theirs for the taking and we would continue the disastrous foriegn policy that the last three presidents have created. But he would do all of this well and with a winning smile. I like Romney, but I have seen his "type" before. With a strong hand guiding him and very explicit instructions he would be a great manager of a company or other organization. As an innovator and leader he lacks so much. What we need is a Ted Cruz. What we are being offered is Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton. There are no good choices in front of us so the next president at best will make things much worse but slowly and at worst she willmake things much worse quickly.

#10 GoneWithTheWind on 2015-01-15 11:03 (Reply)

Slightly related to the Iraqi Army story.

The man who may have been one of the most influential in ending the US Draft, Martin Anderson, passed recently.

Imagine the shape the US military would be in if we still forcibly took in all those loser grads from the universities, especially the Ivies, instead of men and women of character who want to be professionals and take pride in their calling?

#11 JK Brown on 2015-01-15 11:40 (Reply)

re 1 million tons of pressurised CO2 stored beneath Decatur, Illinois

I had not heard of this project. It would be interesting to learn how they did it and how they could build 'safeguards' into the project so there could be no catastrophic leak.

I also wonder what it cost, and who made off with the money?

#12 feeblemind on 2015-01-15 14:04 (Reply)

The "Black Lives Matter" crowd has blocked the two main roads into Boston today.

Commuters going to work and ambulances going into the 77 major hospitals in Boston experienced hours of delays.

I live ten miles south of the southern blockage and traffic on the highway didn't move all morning. I think the stalled traffic went back another ten miles south due to the lack of any other roads to detour onto.

Two points; none of the protesters I saw on the news were black, and at least two seriously injured car crash victims had to be diverted to other suburban hospitals.

[url]http://onthenorthriver.com/2015/01/15/black-lives-matter-says-all-white-protesters/[url]

#13 John the River (Link) on 2015-01-15 15:19 (Reply)

AN update to that story: When these protestors appeared in court they were released on their own recognizance. The protestors are wearing slings on their arms presumably to demonstrate that the police caused them physical harm when they were seperated from those 55 gallon drums full of concrete. As they were walking out of court a reporter tried to interview two of them and the protestors refused to be interviewed and asked the reporter to get out of their way because they had to go to the hospital to get their injuries looked at. The irony...

#13.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2015-01-16 20:30 (Reply)

Once again--we are being forced to forsake our own rights to be an outspoken individual because we cannot "offend the other". BS! BS! BS!

I grieve for this 54 arrested in France. I grieve for a world with speech codes and any restraint on "free speech". You CANNOT HAVE DEMOCRACY if the individual is not allowed to speak her thoughts, or to defend her family. PERIOD !! NO GROUP--NONE should be protected--singled out as "protected" If you are not aloud to speak about a problem, an issue, or a circumstance, you are not able to resolve the problem! If you don't like colorful language --turn off the damn TV!!

#14 faculty wife on 2015-01-15 18:04 (Reply)

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Thursday, January 15. 2015

Thursday morning links