Quick 25 Things Update

Filled out an application over at a head hunter business. Hopefully something comes of that. If nothing else, I can hire them to do some intense marketing of myself in September.

I turned it the form to get my Master’s Degree piece of paper a couple of weeks ago.

And that’s it.

Sorry for the slow blogging day. Nothing piqued my interest. I might try and stick something up tonight, if no other plans spontaneously arise. Off to deposit the paycheck and go pay rent!

Conspiracy Corner: Eskimos Are a Canadian Government Construct

Have you ever seen an Eskimo? I have not (nor has anybody I know). I saw a strumpet dressed up in Eskimo-esque garb on the Simpsons, but that is just a cartoon.

The reason why you only hear of Eskimos (or Inuit, as the politically correct like to think of them) in the popular media is that they are fake. Not, say, global warming fake or imaginary girlfriend fake, but legal tender fake. Counterfeit Injuns, as it were.

You see, it is cold in Canada. Very cold. Frigid, even. No sane person wants to live in an environment where 30° F is considered shorts weather. Alaska has gold, oil, and Sarah “Paladin” Palin to make up for it. Canada has no such luck. That is where the Eskimos come in.

You see, the Canadian government knew that no sane person would want to live in their realm, so they created the Eskimo mystique to make living along Canada’s southern border not sound so bad. They invented the story that there is a tribe of Injuns that live in the Canadian tundra, fashioning houses out of ice and subsiding on delicious whale blubber. Compared to that Spartan existence, living in modern comfort where it is warm enough to support plant life is not so bad. The Canadians even imported some Mongols to live out there in case some snooping reporter decides to make his way up there (thus the whole “pre-Injuns crossed the Bering Strait to get to the Americas” myth).

The “Eskimos” eventually unionized and forced the Canadians to build them a massive underground metropolis, lest the general public become informed of this ruse. That city served as inspiration to famous “Eskimo” director Michael Bay’s best work (The Island). He might have even said so in the director’s comment soundtrack (I have never listened to it; have you?).

Famous “Eskimo” actor Jennifer Love Hewitt speaks fluent Mongol Canadian. Ask him to say something in it, though, and he’ll start screaming things like, “Get away from me!” and, “I have Mace!”. Mitchell “Megan” Fox, on the other hand, will start freaking out, swaying back and forth, muttering something about clubbing seals.

How is this consequential, other than having the ability to freak out famous “Eskimo” actors? Well, for one, it makes the “Canada does it” arguments moot. I mean who wants to follow the lead of a country that is held captive by their own scam? Also, if someone tries to talk you into moving to Canada, this provides another reason to turn the crazy person down.

In Other Anti-Human Science News…

…apparently Obama’s new science czar called for “de-development” back in the day:

“De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation.”

“The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided to every human being.”

“The most critical change of all must be a change in goals; all people, rich and poor alike, must come to recognize that being a citizen of a giant, smoggy, freeway-strangled industrial state is not necessary to being a happy, healthy, fulfilled human being.”

My first thought was to concur with the Other McCain: we should intentionally pollute something for spite.

My second thought? Where have I read something awfully similar to this recently? Oh:

““The world’s wealth is growing in absolute terms, but inequalities are on the increase. In rich countries, new sectors of society are succumbing to poverty and new forms of poverty are emerging. In poorer areas some groups enjoy a sort of “superdevelopment” of a wasteful and consumerist kind which forms an unacceptable contrast with the ongoing situations of dehumanizing deprivation. “The scandal of glaring inequalities” continues.”

“Secondly, the opposite danger exists, that of cultural levelling and indiscriminate acceptance of types of conduct and life-styles. In this way one loses sight of the profound significance of the culture of different nations, of the traditions of the various peoples, by which the individual defines himself in relation to life’s fundamental questions.”

“The dignity of the individual and the demands of justice require, particularly today, that economic choices do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable manner, and that we continue to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone.”

Is this due to Ratzinger using people that would tend to agree more with Holdren than with Jesus to write the rough draft? Some worse quotes that I considered ancillary are around these, more or less. So, the thought-process of destroying the life of the high to ensure everybody is content being low via reductions in economic growth and smack-talking progress to save the environment is still alive and well.

Which makes that dichotomy between the Social Justice office bits and Ratzinger’s bits of the encyclical so striking. One calling for the destruction and worsening of life does not exactly jive with the other calling for the preserving and betterment of life.

Chuck Norris Public Service Announcement #11

Ladies and Gentlemen, Chuck Norris:

“I, Chuck Norris, Philosopher King of Texas, am infuriated at this dreaded ‘Obamacare’ those dastardly Commies in Washington are wanting to foist upon my independent nation! I, in my near infinite wisdom, have come up with 7 reasons why I shall hunt down and slay those who would dare subjugate my citizens with this health service:

• “First, universal health care unwisely is being rushed.” No mere group of mortals can even read this bill in the time those Reds are giving them. I, who can read 1,000,000,000 words a minute, have still not finished the bill, and I have been reading it non-stop since last Tuesday!
• “Second, universal health care clearly would drive [America] deeper into debt, which is being progressively purchased by foreign powers without any concern by Washington to stop it.” I wish to conquer those United States for the glory of the Kingdom of Texas, not have to buy it from the Chinese!
• “Third, universal health care would impersonalize health care and ration medical services.” The streets will run red with the blood of the elderly as the bureaucrats will decide to pay for Botox treatments for teen-aged tarts instead of saving your grandmother!
• “Fourth, universal health care ultimately would limit the competitive market of health care.” A public option will destroy the private ones since medical insurance companies, unlike me, cannot resist the might of the US military, which could be used to force them to follow industry-crushing regulations and taxation.
• “Fifth, universal health care ultimately would transform legislators into quasi health care practitioners.” Can you trust a Congressman to understand which type of heart surgery is the most medically expedient one? I can’t.
• “Sixth, universal health care would increase big government, and America would continue on the slippery slope toward socialism.” Increasing government means increasing bureaucratic power Bureaucrats are greedy, lazy, and conniving! No government that has relied on bureaucrats to operate them have been able to stop them from stealing and wasting money! That is why the Kingdom of Texas is run entirely by me!
• And, Seventh, since the government has decided that my tears would be the most cost effective treatment for cancer, they are going to spend trillions of dollars and lives to try and capture me! Then, in their pipe dream that they could succeed in bringing me to “justice”, they will try to make me cry! I will be forced to mercilessly slaughter a bunch of innocents to maintain my freedom. While it will be easy to do so, it is a hassle I do not wish to put up with, if it is avoidable. After all, those men would be useful once the Kingdom of Texas has conquered those United States. It would be a shame to waste them so.

So, oppose the Obamacare, or you will be destroyed!”

The more you know… the less likely you will be annihilated by the most deadly mortal ever to live, Chuck Norris.

If I Waited to Respond to Tony…

…I could have just rested on Human Event’s laurels. They examined what they consider the 16 most important votes of this session. I would have preferred to see the raw data (it’s useful to see whether a block stance for fiscal responsibility would have mattered), but I’m not going to dig the raw data up for the 14 bills I did not pick out last night. Of those 16 votes, a majority of the “blue dogs” voted against the Democratic position once.

To be fair, outside of the grant program the bill sets up, HR 1913 has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility (which is the heresy the “blue dogs” hold within the Democratic orthodoxy), so I do not hold that vote against the loose confederation.

The rest of them?

Lucy got some spleenin’ to do

Random Thoughts

With apologies to Thomas Sowell:

*I watched Killer Tomatoes Eat France over the weekend, and, man, was I disappointed. Not only were the protagonists trying to save France (by restoring the French monarchy), there was very little Killer Tomatoes squashing dirty Frenchmen. I can only recall one person (the tour guide for the evil henchman’s castle tour) even being eaten.

False advertising, I tell you. Not even Gomez Adams and the movie’s attempt to dispel the stereotype that French women are supposed to be thin and attractive could save it.

*Is there any candy both more wasteful and more tasty than Starbursts? 12 individually wrapped pieces of gooey delight bound together in another wrapper. Now ‘n’ Later come wrapped in bits of 18 individually wrapped pieces, grouped together by flavor (with wrapping), and bound together with a third layer of wrapping, but I have no luck with them. They are either semi-melted, making removing them from their packaging a pain, or rock-hard. Apparently, they only have a shelf life of one month (they oxidize).

*Is it just me, or does Cap ‘n’ Trade sound like a generic brand cereal?

Too poor or cheap to get Cap’n Crunch? Try Cap’n Trade! All the “deliciousness” of Cap’n Crunch, but for a whole lot less! With Cap’n Crunch, you have to pay for advertising and carbon emissions to power their infernal cereal making machines. Cap’n Trade does not advertise and uses Third-world slave labor to assemble our cereal in an eco-friendly way! Of course, you cannot afford Cap’n Crunch anymore since we took your ability to use internal combustion engines away and now you are unemployed, so you will be buying Cap’n Trade, if anything at all…

*Is it not ironic that “monosyllabic” is not a monosyllabic word?

*UPDATE: Yes, I know this is normally a Friday thing, but I hit the post button accidentally. Maybe I’ll do a bonus post on Friday. Maybe next week’s will be extra long. Who knows…

Where’s My Hat Tip, Moe Lane?

So, Mr. Lane posted a Shatner rendition of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds“. Not once did he acknowledge the inspiration I must have given him to do so.

I posted that particular Shatner tune during my whole “Bribe Harvey” phase of giving IMAO the first ever “Barely Literate” award. He must have noticed it, considering it is right above the Bilbo Baggins video he said was “not even remotely right“.

Granted, it is a different video of the same tune and used for different purposes (I was trying to bride Harvey with baked hams, Mr. Lane is trying to torture people who do not order some stuff), but I want, nay demand, that my contribution to the stockpile of cheesy videos he could think of!

All that being said, Steve Martin plays a mean “Loch Lomond“:

UPDATE: Yeah! Crisis averted! Ego Trip over.

Another Excuse to Link to Old Posts…

Check this out:

It’s a live action version of the theme song from this classic video posting I did.

Hilarity.

Thoughts on Caritas in Veritate: Part 3

Encyclical

Part 1

Part 2

I stopped at the end of Section 27 last time, let’s see if I can finish the Chapter…

Section 28:

“Not only does the situation of poverty still provoke high rates of infant mortality in many regions, but some parts of the world still experience practices of demographic control, on the part of governments that often promote contraception and even go so far as to impose abortion. In economically developed countries, legislation contrary to life is very widespread, and it has already shaped moral attitudes and praxis, contributing to the spread of an anti-birth mentality; frequent attempts are made to export this mentality to other States as if it were a form of cultural progress.”

Amen. China’s one-child rule is evil, as is Obama’s science czar’s forced abortion ideas to fight the population bomb boogieman.

“Some non-governmental Organizations work actively to spread abortion, at times promoting the practice of sterilization in poor countries, in some cases not even informing the women concerned. Moreover, there is reason to suspect that development aid is sometimes linked to specific health-care policies which de facto involve the imposition of strong birth control measures.”

UN Millenial Goals, anyone?

“Openness to life is at the centre of true development. When a society moves towards the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man’s true good.”

Amen.

Section 29:

“There is another aspect of modern life that is very closely connected to development: the denial of the right to religious freedom… [People] frequently kill in the holy name of God, as both my predecessor John Paul II and I myself have often publicly acknowledged and lamented. Violence puts the brakes on authentic development and impedes the evolution of peoples towards greater socio-economic and spiritual well-being. This applies especially to terrorism motivated by fundamentalism, which generates grief, destruction and death, obstructs dialogue between nations and diverts extensive resources from their peaceful and civil uses.”

Sounds a little too much like Rosie (or, alternatively, political correctness, which is a sin). Can you not call a Mohammadean a Mohammadean?

“Yet it should be added that, as well as religious fanaticism that in some contexts impedes the exercise of the right to religious freedom, so too the deliberate promotion of religious indifference or practical atheism on the part of many countries obstructs the requirements for the development of peoples, depriving them of spiritual and human resources. God is the guarantor of man’s true development, inasmuch as, having created him in his image, he also establishes the transcendent dignity of men and women and feeds their innate yearning to “be more”. Man is not a lost atom in a random universe: he is God’s creature, whom God chose to endow with an immortal soul and whom he has always loved. If man were merely the fruit of either chance or necessity, or if he had to lower his aspirations to the limited horizon of the world in which he lives, if all reality were merely history and culture, and man did not possess a nature destined to transcend itself in a supernatural life, then one could speak of growth, or evolution, but not development. When the State promotes, teaches, or actually imposes forms of practical atheism, it deprives its citizens of the moral and spiritual strength that is indispensable for attaining integral human development and it impedes them from moving forward with renewed dynamism as they strive to offer a more generous human response to divine love. In the context of cultural, commercial or political relations, it also sometimes happens that economically developed or emerging countries export this reductive vision of the person and his destiny to poor countries. This is the damage that “superdevelopment” causes to authentic development when it is accompanied by “moral underdevelopment”.”

Amen.

Section 32:

“The dignity of the individual and the demands of justice require, particularly today, that economic choices do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable manner, and that we continue to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone.”

I’m sorry, but the only way I can read this statement is that Ratzinger is calling for economic equality of outcomes, which denies the humanity of all involved. 2 different people which 2 different skill sets are going to naturally have 2 different outcomes (amount of wealth, prestige, benefits, et cetera); an extraordinary person will have a much more desirable outcome than an incompetent person, ceteris paribus. Is he saying we should ensure that everyone get an equal (or equalish) outcome? The only way that will happen is to quash the things that make the people extraordinary. Thomas Sowell being spotted 50 points against Michael Jordan, for example. And everyone suffers the decrease in quality when job tasks are reduced to something an incompetent can handle.

And that is essentially the end of the chapter. I’m going to stop here to try and contain all of Chapter 3 in a single post (next time). It should be short enough (10 sections) that I can reasonably expect to be able to do so.

If You Have Not Been Following The Conversation…

…Reader Tony told me I should do some “research” on the “blue dog” Democrats (see the comments here).

There have been 2 important pieces of legislature so far this session: The Stimulus and Cap ‘n’ Trade.

Of the 52 Democrats in this loose confederation, 22 voted FOR Cap ‘n’ Trade. It passed by 7 votes. If the “blue dogs” voted in a block (id est, all 52 voting one way) against the gigantic energy tax, it would have failed. If 2/3′s of them voted against the bill (35), it would have failed.

Only 6 voted against the stimulus bill, a more overt strike against the principle of fiscal responsibility the “blue dogs” espouse. It passed by 56 votes. If the “blue dogs” showed solidarity against the bill, it might have failed.

And how come I did not hear of a “blue dog” block vote against Pelosi and Hoyer reattaining their leadership positions (both of which scored an ACU rating of 0% last session)? Would the “blue dogs” try to vote for someone more willing to build bipartisanship bridges? Or believed in fiscal responsibility?

Looks to me that, when it really matters for the Democratic party, the “blue dogs” will fall in line, principles or no principles. What evidence can you supply to show that the “blue dogs” vote in a block against the Democratic position in a major piece of legislation? Or even a large enough majority to kill a major piece of liberal legislation that flying in the face of their espoused beliefs?