Obama Donation

This is truly remarkable.

Climate Change Believer

An absolutely beautiful day in mid-south Arkansas.  High of about 72 and low of 53.  It was so warm that we heard the lovely chirping (aka croaking) of our neighborhood frogs in the woods.  In January!

So I walked out toward the woods in search of the frogs.  What could be causing them to sound off so early in the year?  Low and behold I discovered the cause.  There it was, to my horror.  A huge CARBON FOOTPRINT as evidence!

I've never been a denier.

Now no longer am I a skeptic.

I believe in Big Foot.

A Cat Trapped in a Woman's Body

"A Norwegian woman is claiming that she is actually a cat trapped in a woman’s body — and that the fact that she has a human body is a “genetic defect.”"

Hey, why not?  You just need enough psychologists to agree that it's not a disorder and put it in DSM 6 and, presto, no disorder.

Crazy U.S. Gun Culture

White Privileged Patriarchy Behind the Wheaton Controversy!

It was only a matter of time:

Beginning with my doctoral dissertation, which studied the relationship between authoritarianism and sexism in the Evangelical subculture, my scholarship has Often revolved around the unconscious and seemingly invisible systems and forces that oppress and endanger the most vulnerable, to the advantage of the most powerful. I passionately teach and study the realities of racial and gender injustice and the oppressive systems that maintain them, such as white fragility, white privilege and institutional patriarchy.

I have stated publicly and in my classes that white patriarchy reigns virtually unchallenged in cultural evangelicalism and in the Wheaton College micro-culture. Patriarchy has evolved to maintain and protect the illusion, for men, that we are entitled to be obeyed and served. For years I have taught my students that it is the responsibility of those who benefit from these insidious systems to expose and dismantle them.

I know that many people have difficulty believing in these systems. Sadly, recent research reveals that White Christians are among the most adamant in their denial of the existence of such phenomena as Racism, ethnocentrism, white privilege, sexism, racialized police brutality, and the like.

I can testify to the fact that White Patriarchy exists at Wheaton because I have benefited from it while Dr. Larycia Hawkins was subjugated by it.

We'll take your word for it, professor.  Also, you get docked 5 points in your essay for forgetting to use the word "hegemony."

Canadian School Bans Words "Mother" and "Father"

It was only a matter of time.

That's the last straw. If this happens in the U.S. I'm moving to Canada another planet!

Hillary on Supreme Court Nominees

Here is the transcript of an NPR interview of Hillary Clinton I happened upon last week.  She was asked about whether--like Bernie--she would require a litmus test  for Supreme Court nominees and more generally what she would be looking for [my emphasis in bold below].

Well, I believe strongly that we need Supreme Court justices who truly understand the impact of their decisions, and I think some of the recent decisions — Citizens United being one, voting rights being others, the extension of more and more rights to corporations vis-a-vis real people — I think has created some unintended consequences. So I would want somebody who understands when you blow open the door and say money is speech and you have a, in my view, somewhat misguided hope that all of the money that would then be pouring into our political system would be disclosed in real time — which, of course, it is not and in some instances never is — that you would have someone who has ... experience as a lawyer, as a judge in the real world who would say, hey wait a minute, that really undermines and corrupts our political system.

[Ari Shapiro]: "So is that "yes" to a Citizens United litmus test ... ?"

[Clinton again] Absolutely, but it's broader than that. It's not just Citizens United, Ari. Let's take voting rights. I was in the Senate when we voted 98 to nothing to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. President George W. Bush signed it. And we did that because there was substantial evidence that a lot of the discrimination that, unfortunately, was part of our voting system that we addressed with the Voting Rights Act in the '60s was still a problem in some parts of our country.
The folks who didn't agree with that appealed it, took a challenge to it to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court really gutted the Voting Rights Act. And their argument, again, in my view, was fundamentally naive.
And that's the best I can say about it, which was, "You know, we really don't need all of this now. Everybody can kind of stand up for themselves." And look at what has happened. We have had a rash of efforts in states to try to suppress and undermine the vote.
So, I'm looking for people who understand the way the real world works, our political system when it comes to money, like Citizens United; our voting rights system; our economics system where, if you keep enhancing the powers of corporation vis-a-vis unions, vis-a-vis, you know, individuals, you're not going to have the kind of balanced economy that produced the middle class.

Notice that conspicuous by its absence is any mention at all that Hillary will be looking for someone skilled at interpreting the Constitution. I have long said that the left has no love for the Constitution and that only the right is concerned that it be interpreted.  It is the sentiment of old, dead, white men which, when properly interpreted, sometimes put the brakes on "progress."  The Democratic nominees will have a litmus test, alright, for the one job justices are there to do: vote.

Common Core Exposed

No big surprise.

Trump vs. Cruz Voter Guide

Here

Funniest Thing I've Seen All Week

If this keeps up I'll have to refrain from calling it the Clinton News Network.

Evangelicals Marginalized by Elites

Excerpt (from a liberal rag bucking the trend, no less):

Yet, despite the demographic power of evangelicals, they are largely marginalised from the media and education. The writer Jay Nordlinger might be correct when he says that ‘all conservatives are bilingual – we have to be. (We speak liberal and conservative.) But liberals tend to be monolingual – they don’t need to speak our languages, or to know much about us at all.’ Indeed, if you are a secular progressive or liberal secularist, it is possible to live in a society that comports to your world view. If you are an evangelical Christian, it is not that easy.

Evangelicals have managed to capture a large segment of the Republican Party, but in other areas of culture they are forced to conform to the norms of society as defined by secular progressives. Take, for example, the most elite universities in the US. The leadership and faculty, when taken as a whole, largely reject the truth claims of Christianity or, at the very least, do not see Christianity as a useful system of belief to help shape campus and intellectual life. Evangelical student groups have been asked to leave campus because of their views on a host of social issues. Today, I would venture to guess, it is virtually impossible for a scholar who is pro-life, believes that marriage is between a man and a woman, or does not fully embrace a progressive view of human history, to land a teaching post at one of these universities. Evangelical faculty and graduate students, in order to make it, must learn to keep quiet about the way that faith informs their understanding of the world. This kind of compartmentalising is not always a bad thing, but it is a reality.

Whether it be academia, popular entertainment, or some other sector of culture, secular progressivism is a real threat to evangelical Christian values. Christian culture warriors are often sloppy and usually inconsistent in the way that they apply Christian faith to public life, but not all of them are crazy. They are astute observers of modern culture who represent the values and fears of a significant portion of Americans. And, as long as secular progressives continue to remain intolerant about the deeply held religious convictions of these Christians, and refuse to understand them as part of a larger conversation about national identity and the common good, it will be difficult for US democracy to move forward.

Socialist Prices

All this talk about Bernie Sanders' socialist healthcare plan brings to mind the following from soviet Gorbachev's press secretary:

When asked about his dream for mankind, the secretary replied that he hoped to see all of the world embrace socialism, except for New Zealand. “But why not New Zealand?” a reporter wondered. “Well,” the secretary responded, “we will need someone to get the prices from.”

Epictetus on the Face of a Young Man

Sagely advice from a Stoic philosopher:


Come, let us leave the chief works of nature, and consider merely what she does in passing. Can anything be more useless than the hairs on the chin?  Well, what then?  Has not nature used even these in the most suitable way possible?  Has she not by these means distinguished between the male and the female?  Does not the nature of each one among us cry aloud forthwith from afar, “I am a man; on this understanding approach me; ask for nothing further; behold the signs?”  Again, in the case of women, just as nature has mingled in their voice a certain softer note, so likewise she has taken the hair from their chins.  Not so, you say; on the contrary the human animal ought to have been left without distinguishing features, and each of us ought to proclaim by word of mouth, “I am a man.”  Nay, but how fair and becoming and dignified the sign is!  How much more fair than the cock’s comb, how much more magnificent than the lion’s mane!  Wherefore, we ought to preserve the signs which God has given; we ought not to throw them away; we ought not, so far as in us lies, to confuse the sexes which have been distinguished in this fashion….

Young man, whom do you wish to make beautiful?  First learn who you are, and then, in the light of that knowledge, adorn yourself.  You are a human being; that is, a mortal animal gifted with the ability to use impressions rationally.  And what is “rationality”? In accordance with nature and perfectly.  What element of superiority, then, do you possess?  The animal in you?  No.  Your mortality?  No.  Your ability to use impressions?  No.  Your reason is the element of superiority which you possess; adorn and beautify that; but leave your hair to Him who fashioned it as He willed.  Come, what other designations apply to you?  Are you a man or a woman?—A man.—Very well then, adorn a man, not a woman.  Woman is born smooth and dainty by nature, and if she is very hairy she is a prodigy, and is exhibited at Rome among the prodigies.  But for a man not to be hairy is the same thing, and if by nature he has no hair he is a prodigy, but if he cuts it out and plucks it out himself, what shall we make of him?  Where shall we exhibit him and what notice shall we post?  “I will show you,” we say to the audience, “a man who wishes to be a woman rather than a man.”  What a dreadful spectacle!  No one but will be amazed at the notice; by Zeus, I fancy that even the men who plucked out their own hairs do what they do without realizing what it means.  Man, what reason have you to complain against your nature?  Because it brought you into the world as a man?  What then?  Ought it to have brought all persons into the world as women?  And if that had been the case, what good would you be getting of your self-adornment?  For whom would you be adorning yourself, if all were women?  Your paltry body doesn’t please you, eh?  Make a clean sweep of the whole matter; eradicate your---what shall I call it?—the cause of your hairiness; make yourself a woman all over, so as not to deceive us, not half-man and half-woman.  Whom do you wish to please?... [W]omankind?  Please them as a man.  “Yes, but they like smooth men.”  Oh, go hang!  And if they liked sexual perverts, would you have become such a pervert?  Is this your business in life, is this what you were born for, that licentious women should take pleasure in you?  Shall we make a man like you a citizen of Corinth, and perchance a warden of the city…or general, or superintendent of the games?  Well, and when you have married are you going to pluck out your hairs?  For whom and to what end?  And when you have begotten boys, are you going to introduce them into the body of citizens as plucked creatures too?  A fine citizen and senator and orator!  Is this the kind of young men we ought to pray to have born and brought up for us?

By the gods, young man, may such not be your fate!  But once you have heard these words go away and say to yourself, “It was not Epictetus who said these things to me; why, how could they have occurred to him?  But it was some kindly god or other speaking through him.”

--Epictetus, Discourses of Epictetus written by the Roman historian Lucius Flavius Arrian, 108 A.D (Book I. 16; Book III I.16;24-36).

Winning the Lottery

New York Values

Infantile morality on full display.

True Story

Sent to me by a blog follower:

Tyrone was having trouble in school.

His teacher was always yelling at him, "You're driving me crazy,Tyrone, can't you learn anything!!?

One day Tyrone's mother came to school to check on how he was doing.  The teacher told her honestly, that her son was simply a disaster, getting very low marks, and that she had never seen such a stupid boy in her entire teaching career.  The mom was so shocked at the feedback that she withdrew her son from school and moved out of Detroit relocating to Cleveland.

Twenty-five years later, the teacher was diagnosed with an almost incurable  cardiac disease. All the doctors strongly advised her to have open-heart surgery, which only one surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic could perform. Left with no other options, the teacher decided to have the operation, which was remarkably successful.

When she opened her eyes after the surgery she saw a handsome young doctor smiling down at her. She wanted to thank him, but could not talk. Her face started to turn blue, she raised her hand, trying to tell him something but quickly died.

The doctor was shocked, wondering what went wrong so suddenly. Then he turned around and saw that our friend Tyrone, a janitor in the Clinic, had unplugged the life-support equipment in order to connect his vacuum cleaner.

If you thought Tyrone had become a heart-surgeon, there is a high likelihood that you will vote for Hillary Clinton!

Cruz Commander

Black Privilege

I hope this guy doesn't work for a typical university.  This is the sort of heterodoxy that won't help advancement through the ranks.

Equality!

K-12 School for LGBTQQI...Students

If you have a bisexual kindergartner interested in "experiential (or experimental) learning" (which is all the rage these days), here is the school for you.

Kids have full permission to be themselves — as well as educators. Where there’s no wondering, ‘Is this teacher going to be a person for me to be myself with?’” said Zsilavetz, who is transgender and a veteran teacher with nearly 25 years of experience. “This is a place where they (students) can just open up and be the best person they can be.”

It's Your Fault Ladies

And of course Islam had nothing to do with it.  Say it with me:  Islam had nothing to do with it.  One more time.

Difference Between Socialists and Democrats?

Hillary can't explain:

Harvard Med School Professor on Liberal Arts and Philosophy

Excerpt:

Recently, when philosophy and America’s higher education system were devalued by Sen. Marco Rubio during the Republican presidential debate and in subsequent statements, my thoughts returned to my sophomore year at Dartmouth, when I went back to my childhood dentist during a school break.

In the chit-chat of the checkup, as I lay back in the chair with the suction tube in my mouth, he asked: “What are you majoring in at college?” When I replied that I was majoring in philosophy, he said: “What are you going to do with that?”


“Think,” I replied.

Fossil Fuels

Made by solar energy and 100% organic.

Infinite Number of Contingent Truths

Suppose there are an infinite number of necessary truths (presupposing of course that there can be an actual infinite number of Fs).  Then there are also an infinite number of contingent truths.

For let p be a contingently true proposition (for example the proposition that Tully types on Tuesdays).  Then
1. p and 2+2=4
is a contingently true proposition, since any conjunction which has a contingent truth as a conjunct is also a contingently true proposition.

But then
2. p and 2+2=4 and 2+3=5
is a contingently true proposition.

And so on ad infinitum.  So if there are an infinite number of necessary truths, there are an infinite number of contingent truths.  What there may not be is an infinite number of contingently true, simple propositions or an infinite number of Fs.

Coddling University vs. Strengthen University

I might try to fit this in to one of my courses.
Jonathan Haidt pits two different university models against each other, one aimed to strengthen you, the other to protect you (unless you're "privileged").  Well worth the time.  Haidt has certainly delivered this talk before, finely honing and perfecting it.  It bogs down a little on the front half, but the second half is highly entertaining.

Microaggressions

What are they and why should you care?  UCLA education professors explain.

Personally, when dealing with a leftist concerned about microaggressions, I like to skip straight to macroaggressions.

Loot and Plunder Economics

More from Marx's Manifesto:

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

A Summary of Communism

"[T]he theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."
~Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party

Counterexample Example

Leftist Tactic Exposed

As you can see, this is an obvious Democratic meme, one for which I'm thankful. Another teaching moment.  I can't remember where I first encountered such nonsense.  Perhaps it was listening to a Rush Limbaugh tirade when I was working with my Dad on a new construction or remodeling job--a welcome voice of opposition to everything else in the media I ever encountered.  Yes, Rush Limbaugh.  If you don't think you can learn anything from Rush Limbaugh, you and your peers have  probably succumbed to groupthink.  In which case, you'd probably do yourself and us a favor if you stopped reading this blog.

If you're still a free thinker (not in the atheistic sense), notice that-- and it can only mean this--not taking money (by force) from those deemed rich from the most powerful government in the world (with imprisonment and ultimately death as the sanction for opposition) means giving money.

To repeat: NOT TAKING BY FORCE = GIVING.

"Giving more to the rich" means "not taking more from the rich."

Thank you for your honesty. Or do you Democrats disagree with my interpretation?