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Monday, August 15, 2011
Jonah's Job
Posted by Chris Sullivan at 8:32 PM
Seventy-five years ago, Albert Jay Nock wrote a column called Isaiah's Job that was published in The Atlantic Monthly. It advanced the idea that there is in any society a "Remnant" of people who are interested in the truth and in doing the right thing by their fellow man, but who are pretty much isolated from each other and go about their business without ever knowing how many others there are like themselves, if any.
The people of the Remnant can spot a phony immediately and will pay them no mind, but they can spot the purveyor of the genuine article or "true faith" just as easily. Isaiah is preaching to this Remnant and to everybody else that wants to listen, but he has no way of knowing who they are and they have no way of identifying each other.
I have thought about this essay many times over the years in relation to some of the modern Isaiahs such as Nock himself, but also people like Leonard Read, Frank Chodorov, Lew Rockwell, Murray Rothbard, Joseph Sobran, Jacob Hornberger and Ron Paul. These people disseminated their ideas, but had no effective way to reach a mass audience. You almost had to be in a clique to find out about The Freeman, The Rothbard Rockwell Report, analysis or Sobran's. Most of the publications were preaching to the choir for the simple reason that you had to be in the choir to even find out about them.
Ron Paul is probably the most visible Isaiah of modern times, at least in the political realm because he had a little bit of a forum by virtue of his congressional office.
The efforts of the Remnant have always been unorganized or disjointed because it had no effective way of recognizing and communicating with its members over a large area until the last fifteen years or so.
In Nock's day, if you wanted to make others aware of his Isaiah article, you would have to read it to them, buy multiple copies of the magazine or perhaps mimeograph copies of it, since nobody had copying machines or FAX machines or computers, and most people didn't own a newspaper.
This has all changed with the advent of the internet. Now anybody can alert all their friends in Botswana, Lichtenstein or the Azores about anything they wish. This allows the message to get out quickly and without a middle man "filtering" or censoring it, which of course leads me to Jonah.
For most of his congressional career, Ron Paul has been an Isaiah, but now he seems to be turning into a Jonah. When Jonah told the people of Nineveh that in forty days the city would be destroyed, they repented and took remedial action, thus averting disaster. Paul has been saying the same thing for years, but now it is becoming obvious that what he was saying is true, and the people - still a small percentage - are ready to put on sackcloth and ashes. Much of this is because of his unrelenting fidelity to the message, but a greater part is probably because the message can't be suppressed like in the recent old days.
News stories in the old-time news organs still try to ignore or minimize his accomplishments, but they are becoming less relevant by the day. With email, blogs, YouTube, world-wide access to unfiltered news and opinion sites, social networking etc., it's as though a hydra-headed genie has escaped the bottle.
Four years ago, many of the comments about news articles concerning Ron Paul would refer to him as "moonbat," "wingnut," "kook," "lunatic," or some other derisive term. Now almost all the comments are in support of his ideas. It's as though the people have heard the modern Jonah and are ready to put on the sackcloth - figuratively - and ashes.
There is something about truth that makes it recognized when heard - not always, but more often than not. When somebody has demonstrably been speaking the truth his entire public life without apology and can finally be heard, he will eventually be believed over the equivocators and apostles of mendacity.
Here is a man who said that the housing market is a bubble, we shouldn't go to war with Iraq, and the Fed is an engine of inflation. Is he a kook or a modern Jonah? Many people are starting to see him as the latter.
http://differentbugle.blogspot.com/2011/08/jonas-job.html
GOP operatives fear lasting Ron Paul problem
By: Byron York
08/15/11 8:05 PM
Republicans dodged a big bullet at the Ames straw poll on Saturday. If just 77 of the 4,283 people who voted for Rep. Michele Bachmann had voted instead for Rep. Ron Paul, then Paul would have won the straw poll. In the end, Bachmann came out ahead with 28.55 percent of the vote to Paul's 27.65 percent. No other candidate was close.
Some well-connected Iowa Republicans viewed it as a bullet dodged because they had long feared the possibility of a Paul victory. "It would pour jet fuel on the East Coast narrative that Iowa is just too nutty to have such an important place in the nominating process," says one of those Republicans. Before the poll, they saw a Paul-Bachmann one-two finish as the worst-case scenario. They ended up with Bachmann-Paul -- a result establishment Republicans viewed as somewhat better than the other way around -- and got a lot of the criticism anyway.
The criticism came not just from Democrats or so-called Eastern elite RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). "Ron Paul is going to destroy this party if they keep him in there," said Rush Limbaugh the day after the Aug. 11 Fox News-Washington Examiner debate in Ames. "This is nuts on parade."
Key Republicans in Iowa -- and around the country, too -- are genuinely baffled by the Paul phenomenon. They understand (and share) many of Paul's views on the Constitution and limiting the size and scope of the federal government, even if they think Paul sometimes goes too far. What perplexes them is Paul's take on foreign policy, especially the threat of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.
"Why wouldn't it be natural that they might want a weapon?" Paul asked at the Fox-Examiner debate. "They'd be given more respect. ... What's so terribly bad about this?" As for sanctions against Iran, Paul said, "Countries that you put sanctions on, you are more likely to fight them. ... I say stay out of their internal business."
The crowd in Iowa State University's Stephens Auditorium included a large group of Paul supporters who broke into loud cheers every time Paul spoke, including when he gave his views on Iran. "That audience goes nuts," Limbaugh said the next day. "I think, 'Oh, my gosh, what am I watching here?' "
It's likely most Republicans agree with Limbaugh's assessment, and Paul's ability to say such things and still remain a force in the party confuses many in the GOP. "What part of his support is attributable to a different world view, and what part is attributable to the economic libertarian world view?" asks the well-connected Republican, who freely admits he doesn't know the answer.
No one fears that Paul will walk away with the Republican nomination. But with a strong core of supporters, he has the means to stay in the race nearly as long as he wants. That core support also earns him a spot in high-profile debates. To qualify for the Fox-Examiner debate, for example, candidates had to have at least 1 percent support in five national polls. Paul qualified with plenty of room to spare; in the most recent RealClearPolitics average of polls, he has 9 percent support, well ahead of fellow candidates Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Rick Santorum, and, until his withdrawal from the race Sunday, Tim Pawlenty.
Paul also has enough money to do what he wants. He reported raising $4.5 million in the second quarter of this year, with about $3 million in the bank. Since he has decided to retire from the House, he can also spend unused funds raised for congressional campaigns.
Speaking of retirement -- one aspect of the Paul phenomenon that has received little attention so far is his age. Born in 1935, he will be 77 years old on Inauguration Day 2013 -- the same age Ronald Reagan was when he left the White House after serving two terms. If Paul were elected and re-elected, he'd be 85 at the end of his time in the White House. Even though Americans are living longer, most people would probably agree that's too old for a president.
But the Paul campaign isn't really about the practical possibility that he might become president. It's more about Paul's supporters forcing the larger political establishment to acknowledge that he's right. "The day will come soon when candidate Paul will get his due," tweeted one supporter recently. "Blowback is gonna be a b---h."
Of course, most Republicans don't believe that. But Paul commands enough support to make his presence known all the way through next year.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/08/gop-operatives-fear-lasting-ron-paul-problem#ixzz1V9UoZeOh
How About That of the Day: In his new book Secret Weapons: Technology, Science And The Race To Win World War II, Cardiff University professor Brain Ford makes a startling revelation: Desperate to bring the Second World War to a close, British spies sought to surreptitiously "feminize" Adolf Hitlerby sneaking sex hormones into his food.
The forced gender reassignment, they hoped, would soften the Führer's, well, furor. According to the declassified documents Prof. Ford used for his book, MI6 agents planned to use tasteless estrogen supplements that would go unnoticed by Hitler's food testers.
"There were agents who would be able to get it into his food – it would have been entirely possible," Ford says. The plot was scrapped at the last minute, for reasons unknown.
So, there's that.
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Gross ignorance: 144 muzzieshits.
 | Muslims wonder why so many muslims are on the NO-FLY list?barenakedislam | August 15, 2011 at 6:00 PM | Categories: Islam in America | URL: http://wp.me/peHnV-ygz |
The calls have reached a point of repetitive regularity for muslim civil rights lawyer Gadeir Abbas: A young muslim-American, somewhere in the world, is barred from boarding an airplane. (And this is a bad thing, because why?) The exact reasons are never fully articulated, but the reality is clear. The traveler has been placed on [...]
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The Truth About al Qaeda
Bin Laden's Files Revealed the Terrorists in Dramatic Decline
John Mueller
August 2, 2011
The chief lesson of 9/11 should have been that small bands of terrorists, using simple methods, can exploit loopholes in existing security systems. But instead, many preferred to engage in massive extrapolation: If 19 men could hijack four airplanes simultaneously, the thinking went, then surely al Qaeda would soon make an atomic bomb.
As a misguided Turkish proverb holds, "If your enemy be an ant, imagine him to be an elephant." The new information unearthed in Osama bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, suggests that the United States has been doing so for a full decade. Whatever al Qaeda's threatening rhetoric and occasional nuclear fantasies, its potential as a menace, particularly as an atomic one, has been much inflated.
The public has now endured a decade of dire warnings about the imminence of a terrorist atomic attack. In 2004, the former CIA spook Michael Scheuer proclaimed on television's 60 Minutes that it was "probably a near thing," and in 2007, the physicist Richard Garwin assessed the likelihood of a nuclear explosion in an American or a European city by terrorism or other means in the next ten years to be 87 percent. By 2008, Defense Secretary Robert Gates mused that what keeps every senior government leader awake at night is "the thought of a terrorist ending up with a weapon of mass destruction, especially nuclear." Few, it seems, found much solace in the fact that an al Qaeda computer seized in Afghanistan in 2001 indicated that the group's budget for research on weapons of mass destruction (almost all of it focused on primitive chemical weapons work) was some $2,000 to $4,000.
In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, officials now have more al Qaeda computers, which reportedly contain a wealth of information about the workings of the organization in the intervening decade. A multi-agency task force has completed its assessment, and according to first reports, it has found that al Qaeda members have primarily been engaged in dodging drone strikes and complaining about how cash-strapped they are. Some reports suggest they've also been looking at quite a bit of pornography.
The full story is not out yet, but it seems breathtakingly unlikely that the miserable little group has had the time or inclination, let alone the money, to set up and staff a uranium-seizing operation, as well as a fancy, super-high-tech facility to fabricate a bomb. It is a process that requires trusting corrupted foreign collaborators and other criminals, obtaining and transporting highly guarded material, setting up a machine shop staffed with top scientists and technicians, and rolling the heavy, cumbersome, and untested finished product into position to be detonated by a skilled crew, all the while attracting no attention from outsiders.
The documents also reveal that after fleeing Afghanistan, bin Laden maintained what one member of the task force calls an "obsession" with attacking the United States again, even though 9/11 was in many ways a disaster for the group. It led to a worldwide loss of support, a major attack on it and on its Taliban hosts, and a decade of furious and dedicated harassment. And indeed, bin Laden did repeatedly and publicly threaten an attack on the United States. He assured Americans in 2002 that "the youth of Islam are preparing things that will fill your hearts with fear"; and in 2006, he declared that his group had been able "to breach your security measures" and that "operations are under preparation, and you will see them on your own ground once they are finished." Al Qaeda's animated spokesman, Adam Gadahn, proclaimed in 2004 that "the streets of America shall run red with blood" and that "the next wave of attacks may come at any moment."
The obsessive desire notwithstanding, such fulminations have clearly lacked substance. Although hundreds of millions of people enter the United States legally every year, and countless others illegally, no true al Qaeda cell has been found in the country since 9/11 and exceedingly few people have been uncovered who even have any sort of "link" to the organization.
The closest effort at an al Qaeda operation within the country was a decidedly nonnuclear one by an Afghan-American, Najibullah Zazi, in 2009. Outraged at the U.S.-led war on his home country, Zazi attempted to join the Taliban but was persuaded by al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan to set off some bombs in the United States instead. Under surveillance from the start, he was soon arrested, and, however "radicalized," he has been talking to investigators ever since, turning traitor to his former colleagues. Whatever training Zazi received was inadequate; he repeatedly and desperately sought further instruction from his overseas instructors by phone. At one point, he purchased bomb material with a stolen credit card, guaranteeing that the purchase would attract attention and that security video recordings would be scrutinized. Apparently, his handlers were so strapped that they could not even advance him a bit of cash to purchase some hydrogen peroxide for making a bomb. For al Qaeda, then, the operation was a failure in every way -- except for the ego boost it got by inspiring the usual dire litany about the group's supposedly existential challenge to the United States, to the civilized world, to the modern state system.
Indeed, no Muslim extremist has succeeded in detonating even a simple bomb in the United States in the last ten years, and except for the attacks on the London Underground in 2005, neither has any in the United Kingdom. It seems wildly unlikely that al Qaeda is remotely ready to go nuclear.
Outside of war zones, the amount of killing carried out by al Qaeda and al Qaeda linkees, maybes, and wannabes throughout the entire world since 9/11 stands at perhaps a few hundred per year. That's a few hundred too many, of course, but it scarcely presents an existential, or elephantine, threat. And the likelihood that an American will be killed by a terrorist of any ilk stands at one in 3.5 million per year, even with 9/11 included.
That probability will remain unchanged unless terrorists are able to increase their capabilities massively -- and obtaining nuclear weapons would allow them to do so. Although al Qaeda may have dreamed from time to time about getting such weapons, no other terrorist group has even gone so far as to indulge in such dreams, with the exception of the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, which leased the mineral rights to an Australian sheep ranch that sat on uranium deposits, purchased some semi-relevant equipment, and tried to buy a finished bomb from the Russians.
That experience, however, cannot be very encouraging to the would-be atomic terrorist. Even though it was flush with funds and undistracted by drone attacks (or even by much surveillance), Aum Shinrikyo abandoned its atomic efforts in frustration very early on. It then moved to biological weapons, another complete failure that inspired its leader to suggest that fears expressed in the United States of a biological attack were actually a ruse to tempt terrorist groups to pursue the weapons. The group did finally manage to release some sarin gas in a Tokyo subway that killed 13 and led to the group's terminal shutdown, as well as to 16 years (and counting) of pronouncements that WMD terrorism is the wave of the future. No elephants there, either.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68012/john-mueller/the-truth-about-al-qaeda
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Ron Paul remains media poison
By: Roger Simon
August 15, 2011 03:17 PM EDT
I admit I do not fully understand Ron Paul and his beliefs. But I do understand when a guy gets shafted, and Ron Paul just got shafted.
On Saturday, the Ames Straw Poll was conducted in Iowa amid huge media interest and scrutiny. The results were enough to force one Republican candidate, Tim Pawlenty, out of the race, and catapult another, Michele Bachmann, into the "top tier."
There are so many "top tier" stories in the media today that I can barely count them, let alone read them all, and Bachmann is in all of them by virtue of her victory at Ames. The rest of the tier is made up of two candidates who skipped Ames, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.
As The Daily Beast put it: "The new top tier of Bachmann, Perry, and Romney -- created by Bachmann's Iowa straw poll win, Perry's entry into the race and Romney's lead so far in many national and state polls -- has unleashed torrents of talk about the reshaped race."
Paul's name was not mentioned in this piece nor in many others. A Wall Street Journal editorial Monday magnanimously granted Paul's showing in the straw poll a parenthetical dismissal: "(Libertarian Ron Paul, who has no chance to win the nomination, finished a close second.)"
But "close" does not fully describe Paul's second-place finish. Paul lost to Bachmann by nine-tenths of one percentage point, or 152 votes out of 16,892 cast.
If it had been an election, such a result would almost certainly have triggered a recount. It was not an election, however, and that is my point. Straw polls are supposed to tell us, like a straw tossed into the air, which way the wind is blowing.
And any fair assessment of Ames, therefore, would have said the winds of the Republican Party are blowing toward both Bachmann and Paul.
Nonsense, some would say. Straw polls are just organized bribery, with the campaigns buying the tickets and distributing them to supporters. (And, in fact, this is what I wrote before Ames.)
What they really show, many argue, is not where the philosophical heart of the party is, but the organizational abilities of the candidates.
Fine, I'll buy that. But why didn't Paul get the same credit for his organizational abilities as Bachmann did for hers?
I am far from a Libertarian. I believe big government is swell as long as it does big things to help the common good. But after Ames, it was as if Paul had been sentenced to the Phantom Zone.
Bachmann appeared on five Sunday shows following Ames. Paul appeared on none. POLITICO's Kasie Hunt was one of the few reporters to do a separate story on Paul's showing at the straw poll, but to most of the media he remained an exotic, unworthy of attention.
And I don't disagree that some of his beliefs -- legalizing heroin, the right of states to secede -- are strikingly peculiar (though he has been elected to a congressional district in Texas 12 times). But if Bachmann's victory at Ames was good enough to gain her enormous publicity and top-tier status, why was Paul's virtual tie good enough only to relegate him to being ignored?
So I asked Paul Monday if the media blackout disturbed him,
"It did disturb me, but it was not a total surprise," he replied. "The result at Ames was significant; it might well have propelled us to the top tier. The media cannot change that."
Though the media can, of course, change that since we get to determine who the top tier is.
"It is hard for them to accept," Paul said of his showing at Ames. "I had one interview scheduled for this morning, a national program, but they canceled. It is shocking to be told nobody wants you."
Was this because technically Paul came in second and not first? I don't think so. Four years ago, Mike Huckabee came in a bad second to Romney, losing by 13.4 percentage points. Huckabee managed to spin that into a victory at Ames and became a media darling.
But Paul almost wins the thing and he remains poison.
"They [the media] believe this guy is dangerous to the status quo," Paul said, "but that is a reason to be more energized. I am a bit more challenging, but I am not on the wrong track. I don't think that my ideas are more exotic. They are threatening."
In his interview with me, Paul stressed his "peace" message -- he wants our troops brought home from foreign soil == and believes that and his fiscal conservatism will gain him supporters.
"We are trying to reverse 100 years of history, the change from a republic to an empire, the change to tax and spending, who wants to admit that?" Paul said. "Who wants to admit we don't have to be policeman of the world?"
Let me say right here that unlike many of Paul's supporters, I don't believe there is a left-wing media conspiracy working against him. Ralph Nader, who is about as far as you can get from Paul politically, has the same problem whenever he runs for president.
And, no, media attention is not based solely on polls. The most recent polls, taken before Ames, showed Bachmann with 10.2 percent of the vote and Paul with 9.0 percent. That's not a huge difference. Though those polls will no doubt change with all the publicity Bachmann is now getting because of her "stunning" victory at Ames.
There was a deliciously intriguing line in The Washington Post's fine recap of Ames on Sunday. It said had Paul edged out Bachmann, "it would have hurt the credibility and future of the straw poll, a number of Republicans said."
So don't blame the media. Here are Republicans, presumably Republican operatives, who said if one candidate wins, the contest is significant, but if another wins the contest is not credible
Amazing. And disturbing.
"Well, yes I can get discouraged and dispirited," Paul told me. "We came so very close. To come that close to winning, it shows my views are very mainstream. And if we are worth our salt and our message is sound and we tell it honestly, we will do well."
Though possibly no one will notice.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61412.html
NEW EMERGENCY NUMBER
Advice for all new Muslim immigrants :
If you are trapped in a burning house or
have been seriously injured and are
bleeding to death, the new emergency
number is:-
0846387120866658120938715376100866513124540854735270674586991233241657490768554109283657389999566322084638712086665812093871537610086651
3124540854735270674586991233241657490768554109283657389999566322389999566322084638712086665812093871537610086651312454085473527067458699
1233241657490768554109283657389999566322473527067458699123324165749076855410928365738999956632238999956630846387120866658120938715376100
8665131245408547352706745869912332416574907685541092836573899995663220846387120866658120938715376100866513124540854735270674586991233241
6574907685541092836573899995663223899995663220846387120866658120938715376100866513124540854735270674586991233241657490768554109283657389
9995663224735270674586991233241657490768554109283657389999566322389999566308463871208666581209387153761008665131245408547352706745869912
3324165749076855410928365738999956632208463871208666581209387153761008665131245408547352706745869912332416574907685541092836573899995663
2238999956632208463871208666581209387153761008665131245408547352706745869912332416574907685541092836573899995663224735270674586991233241
6574907685541092836573899995663223899995663084638712086665812093871537610086651312454085473527067458699123324165749076855410928365738999
9566322084638712086665812093871537610086651312454085473527067458699123324165749076855410928365738999956632238999956632208463871208666581
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Thank You For Your Patience.
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 | Govt Gone Mad: Proposed Calif Law Mandates Fitted Bed SheetsEowyn | August 15, 2011 at 11:05 am | Tags: California SB 432, Jerry Brown, Kevin De Leon | Categories: Crazy Politicians, Economy, Idiot Law Makers, Just Plain Nuts, Liberals, United States | URL: http://wp.me/pKuKY-8JB |
Nanny State Madness: California's Proposed 'Fitted Sheet' Law
By Mike Opelka - Patriot Action Network - August 15, 2011
When California's elected officials come back from their month-long recess they face a mountain of proposed legislation (almost 900 bills are lined up and waiting), including a new law (SB432) that would require hotels to eliminate flat sheets. Not having fitted sheets on hotel beds would now be a crime in California. This is not a joke. . .
California, the state trying to deal with a massive $26 BILLION dollar debt, is considering a law that some hospitality industry experts claim would add an estimated $15 to $30 million dollars in costs to an already hurting hotel industry. The low-end estimate of fifteen million is the projected cost to purchase new fitted sheets for the 550,000 hotel beds in the state. Of course the hospitality industry is claiming that these added costs will hurt their business and put jobs at risk.
Click here to see the Text of SB 432 (California)
Read more at TheBlaze
Contact info for Senator Kevin De León (Democrat) - 22nd District (Sponsor of this Bill):
- Capitol Office:
State Capitol. Room 5108, Sacramento, CA 95814
Tel: (916) 651-4022
Fax: (916) 327-8817
- District Office:
617 South Olive Street
Suite 710
Los Angeles, CA 90014
Tel: (213) 612-9566
Fax: (213) 612-9591 - Email the State Senator
California residents:
- Click here to locate your Senators by your Address
- Click here to locate your Assemblyman by your Address
Contact Governor Jerry Brown (Democrat):
- c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173
Sacramento, CA 95814 - Phone: (916) 445-2841
- Fax: (916) 558-3160
- Email Governor Brown
H/t our Miss May.
~Eowyn
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| | Peter and the Elephant |
This is an incredible story! You'll be amazed and moved to tears!
In 1986, Peter Davies was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University .
On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air.
The elephant seemed distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully.
He got down on one knee, inspected the elephant's foot, and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot.
The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments.
Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away.
Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.
Twenty years later, Peter was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenaged son.
As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Peter and his son Cameron were standing.
The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.
Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter could not help wondering if this was the same elephant.
Peter summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing, and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder.
The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Peter's legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.
Probably wasn't the same elephant.
This is for everyone who sends me those heart-sob b.s. stories.
H/t my dear friend Bill :D
~Eowyn
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Managing Your Thinking
Posted by Butler Shaffer on August 15, 2011 09:05 AM
CNN the established order's principal voice on cable is providing yet another example of Thomas Pynchon's observation: "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers." CNN asks (re the GOP campaigning this past weekend) whether Michelle Bachmann or Rick Perry had the better outcome. Perry wasn't a candidate at the Iowa straw poll, so the importance of his presence has meaning only to the mainstream media bobble-heads whose job it is to communicate to the boobeoisie the establishment's preferred thinking. No mention need be made of the 800 pound gorilla at the dinner party, because no decent, right-thinking person would be so crass as to mention him, anyway. But in addition to Perry, there was another man whose absence from the straw poll confirms his greatness as a candidate: Rudy Giuliani! Will he be "America's choice?" The establishment may soon tell us via the mainstream media who we really want!
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 | Mental Health "Professionals" Seeking to Remove Pedophilia From List of Mental Illnessesdoctorbulldog | 15 August, 2011 at 11:13 am | Categories: Gay Agenda, Medicine, Pedophilia, Psychology | URL: http://wp.me/p1NPg-7ib |
Yup. Anyone who still thinks pedophiles and homosexuals haven't been inexorably intertwined since day one when the push for "gay rights" began hasn't been paying attention. This is the exact same thing the queers did in the early 1970's in order to "normalize" homosexuality. Then, its onward towards changing the laws and minds---especially those of our children---into accepting these sexual perversions as normal. From there, it's just a small hop, skip, and jump into allowing marriages for these perverts under the auspices of "equal rights."
Conference aims to normalize pedophilia
By John Rossomando - The Daily Caller
If a small group of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have their way at a conference this week, pedophiles themselves could play a role in removing pedophilia from the American Psychiatric Association's bible of mental illnesses — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), set to undergo a significant revision by 2013. Critics warn that their success could lead to the decriminalization of pedophilia.
The August 17 Baltimore conference is sponsored by B4U-ACT, a group of pro-pedophile mental health professionals and sympathetic activists. According to the conference brochure, the event will examine "ways in which minor-attracted persons [pedophiles] can be involved in the DSM 5 revision process" and how the popular perceptions of pedophiles can be reframed to encourage tolerance.
Researchers from Harvard University, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Louisville, and the University of Illinois will be among the panelists at the conference.
B4U-ACT has been active attacking the APA's definition of pedophilia in the run up to the conference, denouncing its description of "minor-attracted persons" as "inaccurate" and "misleading" because the current DSM links pedophilia with criminality.
"It is based on data from prison studies, which completely ignore the existence of those who are law-abiding," said Howard Kline, science director of B4U-ACT, in a July 25, 2011 press release. "The proposed new diagnostic criteria specify ages and frequencies with no scientific basis whatsoever."
The press release announced a letter the group sent to the APA criticizing its approach, and inviting its leaders to participate in the August 17 conference. "The DSM should meet a higher standard than that," Kline continued. "We can help them, because we are the people they are writing about."
APA spokeswoman Erin Connors told The Daily Caller in an emailed statement that her organization was not participating in the conference and would not comment on its aims.
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Meet the Press: Whatta buncha knuckleheads!
Published: Saturday, August 13, 2011, 1:52 PM Updated: Sunday, August 14, 2011, 2:14 PM
By Paul Mulshine/The Star Ledger
I just turned off "Meet the Press."
This was the single most extreme example of cluelessness in general and liberal media bias in particular that I have ever witnessed.
The subject was yesterday's Iowa Straw Poll, in which Michele Bachmann finished in a statistical dead heat with Ron Paul.
Yet these bozos yapped on for half an hour without mentioning Paul, except in passing. They went on at great length about Bachmann and even Tim Pawlenty, her fellow Minnesotan who finished way back in the pack and dropped out of the race. But hardly a word about the Texas congressman.
I found this particularly grating when the subject came to the theme of getting the government off our back. First they showed a clip from Rick Perry, even though the Texas governor did not compete in the straw poll.
Then they showed a clip from, of all people, Pawlenty. Not a single one of these clowns mentioned that Paul practically invented the idea of getting the government off our backs.
And not a single one of them mentioned that Paul also pioneered the idea of voting against raising the debt ceiling. He has never voted to raise it in all his years in Congress. Yet when that issue came up, all the talk was about Bachmann, who just discovered the issue the other day, relatively speaking, and who is a complete ignoramus on economic issues.
What are these idiots up to? Well, I shouldn't use terms like "idiots" and "bozos." These guys know exactly what they're doing. The pitchmen for the mainstream Republican Party, such as Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, want to do everything in their power to deep-six the man who has stood up to the Republican establishment for three decades.
As for the journalists, there was not a conservative up there on stage. All were liberals who love the idea of portraying the ditzy Bachmann as the face of the Republican Party. In the earlier part of the show before the panel session, host David Gregory spent half an hour interviewing her. He focused almost entirely on social issues such as gay marriage, the better to make the GOP look out of touch with middle-class voters.
Somewhere in there one of the panelists made an observation that the attendees at the Ames poll are heavily evangelical in their beliefs. Well if that's the case, then Paul won the day. Even though his message is not tailored to evangelicals, he got the votes of 4,671 of those in attendance. Meanwhile Bachmann, whose appeal is focused on evangelicals, got just 152 more votes than Paul.
And then there's the fact that Paul has defined the issues in this race. On Obamacare, he was the first to come out against the individual mandate, for example, which he did as early as 2007 in this column of mine. He has always been a deficit hawk, another area in which the rest of the field is following his lead. And he's refocused the foreign policy debate to the question of whether the U.S. should be the world's policeman, and he won on that issue it in the debate Thursday night.
I'm sure if I discussed all this with the talking heads who were on the panel, I'd hear what I always hear from liberal commentators: Ron Paul is "unelectable."
Perhaps you believe that. If you do, you're either a Democratic operative or a moron.
Check this page of polling data from Real Clear politics. Of all the candidates in the field, Ron Paul lines up best against President Obama with the single exception of Mitt Romney. And Romney's going to have a tough time getting through the primaries if this straw poll is any indication.
The reason is not far to seek. Alone among the Republicans, Paul connects with the youth vote. Though he the oldest candidate in the field, he has the youngest supporters, all of whom are aware just how wretched an economy they're going to be inheriting.
The economy is going to be the big issue next year, yet the members of the panel ignored it. If they'd paid attention to it, they would have had to discuss Paul, the sole candidate who predicted the collapse of 2008.
It's far more fun for a liberal to focus on Bachmann and her Bible-based ideas on social issues - all of which are calculated to alienate the same youth voters to whom Paul appeals.
A further bonus for liberals is that Bachmann is guaranteed to keep saying really stupid things, such as her assertion that Barack Obama ran up more debt in his first year than all prior presidents combined. Paul, by contrast, cannot be caught in such a howler because he knows the budget much better than any of the questioners do.
He certainly knows more about it than David Gregory. I suspect another reason these blow-dried bozos don't like to have Paul on their shows is that they'd have to do some actual research to ask intelligent questions on such topics as the role of the Federal Reserve.
With Bachmann, it's a simple matter of asking over and over if she really means what she says about the Bible. This is great fun - if you're a simpleton or a party hack. And all the people on that panel met one of those definitions.
http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2011/08/rick_perry_a_right-winger_that.html
Texas RLC Sends Out Warning on Rick Perry
By Dave Nalle - August 12, 2011 at 10:41 PM
Don't Believe the Hype. Meet the Real Rick Perry
Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas Sends Warning to Republicans Nationwide About Perry's Tax and Spend Record
![[]](http://www.fontcraft.com/images/txtorchy.jpg)
AUSTIN, TX – Texas Governor Rick Perry may be the flavor of the day for a lot of Republicans, but Texas Republicans who are familiar with his record are a lot less enthusiastic about his presidential run. "Perry has a unique talent for finding new ways to raise taxes and loves to use taxpayer money to subsidize his business cronies," says Secretary Dave Nalle of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas. "His supposed belief in limited government and states rights conveniently disappears whenever it conflicts with the demands of the special interests and corporate cronies who he serves."Governor Perry's record of big government, big spending, big taxing and attacks on the fundamental rights of Texas citizens is a familiar to Texans, but seems to be much less well known to Republicans outside of the state, which may explain his high initial showing in the polls. The Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas is compiling a complete dossier on Perry to share with fellow Republicans outside their state so that they can be informed about what they are being sold in a Perry presidential candidacy.
The file on Perry's abuses of power, insider deals with cronies and tax and spend policies is thick, but for a start here are what Texas RLC members voted as the top five Perry scandals which GOP primary voters need to know more about:
- 1. Business Slush Funds: Perry made heavy use of business incentive "slush funds" which used taxpayer dollars to subsidize selected businesses, many of them run by his major campaign contributors. Just two of these funds, the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Texas Emerging Growth fund, spent over $700 million to subsidize businesses to move to Texas or expand operations in Texas, with little evidence that these handouts of taxpayer money produced job or revenue growth anywhere near sufficient to justify the expense. In fact, many of these businesses eventually downsized or relocated long before they had earned the money Perry gave them, or even went bankrupt with $25 million fund dollars like Countrywide Financial. source 2. Toll Roads and Land Seizures Perry has never met a toll road project he wasn't willing to seize huge amounts of private land for and then give the exclusive management contracts to foreign corporations. Perry's time in office has set records for eminent domain land seizures – over a million acres have been seized. His toll road projects have confiscated family farms and torn communities apart. Toll roads have been used as a massive off-the-books tax program, taking money from Texas drivers and feeding it to foreign financial interests and management groups which lobbied the governor for special deals which produce much higher tolls and higher profits than are typical in other states. source 3. Forced Vaccinations: In 2007 Perry issued an executive order which would have forcibly vaccinated every girl in Texas entering the sixth grade with Merck's Gardasil vaccine for Human Papilloma Virus. This massive violation of the privacy rights of Texas teenagers and their parents would have come at a cost of $360 in taxpayer money per shot. It would have been a huge windfall for Merck, which had paid Perry's former Chief of Staff $250,000 to lobby the governor and legislature to promote the forced vaccination program. source 4. The Job-Killing Franchise Tax: Knowing that it would be impossible to pass an income tax against popular opposition in Texas, Perry promoted the idea of a special business tax called the "Franchise Tax" which taxes businesses at different arbitrary rates set by the government. This tax expands business taxes to types of businesses which are not taxed in most states and in many cases taxes small businesses more than large corporations they compete with. For example it taxes small car repair shops at double the rate it taxes large dealerships for car repairs. It's a small business and job killer. source 5. Scuttled the Anti-TSA Bill When Rep. David Simpson led the Texas legislature towards passage of an enormously popular bill (HB1938) to hold the TSA accountable for intrusive searches of airline passengers, Perry played a key role in making sure that the bill was not passed. When the TSA and the Justice Department began pressuring him, although Perry had promised to submit the bill to the special legislative session, he delayed submitting the bill until it was so late in the session that it was virtually impossible to hold the constitutionally mandated votes necessary for passage. That way he could score points with the public for submitting the popular bill while at the same time making sure that it wouldn't pass. It's a classic example of Perry's insincere pandering. source
RLC of Texas Chairman Judson Vandiver asks, "Let's hope Republicans outside Texas see through all the hype. Let's all say to to Perry what he said to a Texas state trooper when he tried to bully her after she pulled him over for speeding YouTube: 'Why don't you just let us get on down the road?'"
http://www.rlc.org/2011/08/12/texas-rlc-sends-out-warning-on-rick-perry/
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