Unanimity on global warming: Samizdata, Tangled Web, YARGB, and Maggie's Farm agree that the Stern Report, and the warming hysteria in general, is a government play for money and power. Now that people in the West are so relatively secure and prosperous, the socialists need a fresh angle.
In the mood for more Soros dirt? Atlas
Laptops for wounded soldiers. Info at Sisu
"John Kerry said WHAT?" Incredible. Michelle
The top earning dead celebs. Businesspundit.
Men spend six months of their lives ogling females. Is that all? (h/t, Carnival of the Insanities)
Snoopie with the Jihad Christmas. Tasteless!
Are we finished with tolerance yet? The decapitated 12 year old. LGF. I have no doubt that this is killing for the pure fun of it.
Can angels see the color green? Platonic forms, and God. Evangelical Outpost
The almost-dead buck: We posted this a year ago, but Howler reminds us of this goofy trick. Rather hilarious.
Amnesty Int. gets one thing right: Protect the internet from governments - and the UN.
Kirsten Powers understands an important concept. From a piece about Andrew Sullivan, about whom everyone always is talking (for no reason I can understand):
It is a common criticism today that if you divine your truth from the Bible, that is unacceptable. But if you divine your truth from your own internal dialogue or from talking to friends or from a philosophy other than that which is found in the Bible, then that truth is okay. The criticism of devout Christians is founded on a faulty premise: that non-Christians come to conclusions about what they believe without the influence of some sort of philosophical teaching. Even atheism is in itself a philosophy. It's based on the premise that humans are random occurrences and that there is no higher moral power. But since that doesn't come from the Bible, it's considered "objective" and developing public policy based on that view is acceptable. Or Sullivan's brand of Christianity -- that interprets the Bible in a looser fashion -- is held up as being "objective" which of course it is not. Sullivan is just as fundamentalist in his view of the world as any fundamentalist Christian. They just have different conclusions.
Plenty of people are uninformed and make decisions based on what their friends think or party identification, and there is precious little conversation about how the public discourse is being destroyed by uninformed, lazy people who spend all their time watching Fear Factor and The Bachelor (which in my opinion is closer to the truth) and a seemingly constant conversation about how fundamentalist or evangelical Christians are the root of all the problems in the political system.
There must be a separation of church and state, for we are not, nor should we be a theocratic state. But a religious person has as much right to make a voting decision based on their faith in God as an atheist person has a right to make their voting decision based on their belief that there is no God.
Image above: Edvard Munch's "Vampire"
