Really? This takes ‘social engineering’ to a whole new level!

Some ‘town officials’ found a novel way to ‘encourage’ their citizens to drink more water:

‘Talon is small town located in Pecos County, Texas. When town officials realized that drinking-water consumption by residents was well below the national average, they decided take action and three months ago began adding sugar to their water supply to make drinking it more desirable. According to Hester Griggs, the Commissioner of Utilities for Talon, they are adding roughly “4 tablespoons of sugar for every 8 oz. cup of water.”‘

I am at a loss for words…

On a second thought, it’s probably less harmful – in the long run – than adding IQ-lowering, chilhood bone-cancer-causing  hypothyroidism-inducing and, yes, dental cavity-causing Fluoride to municipal water supplies!!!

P.S.  Perhaps it’s time to re-think the safety of GM foods:

‘Eating genetically modified corn (GM corn) and consuming trace levels of Monsanto’s Roundup chemical fertilizer [at levels legally permitted in drinking water] caused rats to develop horrifying tumors, widespread organ damage, and premature death. That’s the conclusion of a shocking new study that looked at the long-term effects of consuming Monsanto’s genetically modified corn.

The study has been deemed “the most thorough research ever published into the health effects of GM food crops and the herbicide Roundup on rats.” News of the horrifying findings is spreading like wildfire across the internet.’

The study itself is here.

CodeSlinger: an insightful comment following the 2012 election

Yesterday, I posted:  ‘A sober thought post-US 2012 election’.

I received an insightful and deeply analytical comment on it from CoreSlinger.  (Plus, he said I was right!)

It is powerful and should stand on its own:

Xanthippa:

I think you have hit the Republicans’ problem squarely on the head.

Many people, who would embrace the small-government, individual-rights, balanced-budget, common sense aspects of the conservative platform are not only terrified of the morally-constipated, holier-than-thou, bible-thumping religious zealots, but also horrified by the damn-those-gooks, war-for-profit fat-cats of the military industrial complex.

By forcing these groups into an awkward alliance and indiscriminately mislabelling them all collectively as “the right,” the Democrats have been able to overshadow the common sense of the true right, and convince large segments of the public that a vote for the Republicans is a vote for intolerance, oppression and war.

This is exacerbated by the fact that cultural Marxist indoctrination is everywhere. It has denigrated all of the strong, benevolent archetypes that people traditionally depended on for reassurance, safety, and security — God, father, and husband. But the deep psychological needs that gave rise to these archetypes in the first place are as compelling as ever, so people are only left with one place to turn to — the state.

The difficulty is that the average person doesn’t have the time or the inclination to really think through the issues. Therefore, a strong belief in God is one of the few things that enable many people to resist cultural Marxism’s gradual but relentless erosion of common sense, common decency, maturity, and self-reliance.

This is why the awkward alliance exists. Those who think independently are too few to stand against the indoctrinated majority alone. The result is and attempt to pit the two branches of the indoctrinated majority — secular Edenists and fundamentalist Christians — against each other.

And this is what has lead us to the spectacle we see today: the Republican party represents a sort of religious national socialism (a paradigm of the left) not unlike Nazi Germany of the 1930’s, while the Democratic party represents a sort of state-capitalistic collectivism (a paradigm of the farther left), not unlike present-day Communist China.

As a result, those of the true right — who want a small, non-invasive, financially prudent government that protects the rights of the individual and the freedom of the market — are left without a voice.

Rightists claim that leftists are fundamentally incapable of reasoning from cause to effect, if the outcome doesn’t please them. Interestingly, leftists accuse rightists of the same thing. The real truth seems to be that the two groups just think differently. In particular, it has to do with left-brain dominance versus right-brain dominance. Right-wingers are left-brain dominant and vice versa.

Interestingly, this is consistent with the way the nervous system is wired: the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, and vice versa. It’s also consistent with how the two sides of the brain operate. The left side of the brain is concerned primarily with symbolic processing, language, reasoning and the sense of being an individual. The right side of the brain is concerned with holistic processing, imagery, intuition and the sense of being one with the world.

As we mature, the left brain gradually assumes an increasingly dominant role. The thing is, modern cultural-Marxist-controlled schooling does a very good job of preventing this from happening; instead, it arrests mental development and turns out a population of narcissistic adult children. Paradoxically, the primacy of self is heightened in right-brain dominant thinking. The childish world view is not only “I am part of the world” but “the world is part of me.” It’s not far from there to “the world exists to serve me.”

And this is what we find in the world view of the left-winger. The leftist wants the rightist to be more concerned with the world than with his own family, because the leftist understands that he is not part of the rightist’s family, but he feels himself to be part of the world and the world exists to serve him. This is patently muddled and inconsistent from the rational point of view of a left-brained right-winger, but it resonates pleasingly with the intuitional perspective of a right-brained leftist.

Now, we must remember that almost everyone uses both sides of their brain, but they use them to different degrees, so one side or the other dominates. You could say that left-brain dominant people have feelings about what they think, and right-brain dominant people have thoughts about what they feel.

In summary, it seems that the majority of people want a small, accountable, financially prudent government that respects individual rights and freedoms, but not if it comes bundled with intolerance, oppression and war.

So this is the bundling we must undo.

And to do that we must ask ourselves, how can we frame our message of classical liberalism, based on natural intrinsic morality and inalienable individual rights, in a way that will be comprehensible and compelling to these chronically right-brained left-wingers from both sides of the conservative / progressive divide?

A sober thought post-US 2012 election

This is a comment I left at another blog which discussed the Obama-win/Romney-losss.  I guess you could call it my sober thought post US-2012 election….

I suspect the problem is deeper than that – it’s in the ‘bundling of ideas’ that necessarily get thrown together to cater to the core movements/segments within the two major parties: the ‘progressives’ have a more ‘coherent’ or, perhaps, ‘internally consistent’ idea of what they stand for, so the individual differences between the different sub-groups that the Democrats draw on for support are much smaler and their differences are easier to bridge than that of the Republicans.

Just consider the gulf of difference between, say, a fiscally conservative, small-government (stay out of our bedrooms and boardrooms – and pharmacies) atheist – and the evangelical social conservatives who have no problem with huge, inefficient governments as long as they legislate their brand of morality and impose it on the whole of US society!

And that is just one of the many ways the ‘conservative’ or ‘right-of-centre’ support base can be divided up into mutually exclusive enclaves…

It is quite impossible to field a candidate that would appeal to both of these ‘polarized’ groups and no way to build an election platform that would not seriously alienate a significant percentage of their voter support: to the point that the alienated groups will simply not show up to vote for the ‘wrong’ kind of ‘conservatism’!

I don’t know that there is a workable solution for this, but, in-my-never-humble-opinion, that does not mean that this problem is not at the core of the GOP’s current difficulties.

P.S. – perhaps this difficulty could have been sufficiently minimized in 2012 to gain him the win if Romney had selected either Thomas Sowell or Rand Paul or a prominent atheist of the calibre of the late Christopher Hitchens (each being a bridge to a different group alienated by Romney)…

Thoughts?

Posted in politics. Tags: . 8 Comments »

Russian attack submarine sneaks inside the 200 mile territorial limit on the East coast of the USA

This time, it’s no Marko Alexandrovich Ramius trying to defect, either!

From Washington Free Beacon:

‘A Russian nuclear-powered attack submarine cruised within 200 miles of the East Coast recently in the latest sign Russia is continuing to flex its naval and aerial power against the United States, defense officials said.

The submarine was identified by its NATO designation as a Russian Seirra-2 class submarine believed to be based with Russia’s Northern Fleet. It was the first time that class of Russian submarine had been detected near a U.S. coast, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of anti-submarine warfare efforts.’

The same article cites something that is potentially even more disturbing:

‘Meanwhile, the officials also said that a Russian electronic intelligence-gathering vessel was granted safe harbor in the commercial port of Jacksonville, Fla., within listening range of Kings Bay.

“A Russian AGI [Auxiliary-General Intelligence] and an SSN in the same geographic area as one of the largest U.S. ballistic missile submarine bases—Kings Bay—is reminiscent of Cold War activities of the Soviet navy tracking the movements of our SSBN’s,” said a third U.S. official, referring to the designation for ballistic missile submarines, SSBN.’

It only gets worse:

‘The submarine deployment followed stepped-up Russian nuclear bomber activity near U.S. borders last summer, including the transit of two Bear-H strategic bombers near the Alaska air defense zone during Russian strategic bomber war games in arctic in late June.Then on July 4, in an apparent Fourth of July political message, a Russian Bear-H flew the closest to the U.S. West Coast that a Russian strategic bomber had flown since the Cold War when such flights were routine.

In both incidents, U.S. military spokesmen sought to downplay the threat posed by the air incursions, apparently in response to the Obama administration’s conciliatory “reset” policy of seeking closer ties with Moscow.

U.S. and Canadian interceptor jets were scrambled to meet the Russian bombers during the flights last summer.’

In other words, specifically in response to Obama anemic projection of woosiness power, Putin’s Russia has placed air, surface and underwater military assets within US territorial jurisdiction…all without any response from Obama’s eviscerated military!

No wonder Putin has thrown his support behind Obama in the 2012 election!

Sure, the Bolsheviks are not in power in Russia any longer, but Obama and his Mensheviks are winning the long-term war in America – and dictators like Putin know how to exploit this very weakness!

 

 

Last minute thoughts on tomorrow’s US (2012) election

Putin, Chavez and Castro all endorse Obama for President in the US 2012 election….

Is there a better reason not to vote for him?

I don’t like Romney – he seems like a psychopath to me…and his belief in ‘magic underwear’ is just icing on the cake.

Obama’s religious beliefs are even more batshit-crazy than Romney’s.  Remember, he himself says that it was the racist screechings preachings of Jeremiah Wright that converted him to Christianity – and, from his college days, he has worn a ring that affirms his faith in one God.  He’s even used it as his wedding ring – even though he wore it for at least a decade before he got married…

I guess in a country where, in many places, it is still illegal for reasonable people (who don’t believe in a magical sky-daddy) to run for public office, you’re bound to end up with candidates who all hold batshit-crazy magical views.

There is a third choice….

Not a great third choice, but it does exist!

And while I don’t know Gary Johnson’s religious ideas (I would probably not like them – as per above), and I think his foreign policy is downright insane, I do like what he has accomplished to reduce the size of government while he was the governor of New Mexico.

It’s not much, but it’s something…

Yes, he has no chance to win – which makes casting a vote for him count to send a message of dissatisfaction with the two main parties.  It’s a fundamentally different way of being heard.  But, it is a valid way of being heard – and a way to make your vote count.

He wants to repeal the Patriot Act.

He wants to get rid of the insane Drug Wars.

He wants to get rid of Income Tax in favour of one single consumption tax.

He wants to create jobs by reducing corporate tax rates – to zero.

He wants balanced budgets – now!

Not much, perhaps, but better than voting for one of the two ‘status quo’ candidates and then being surprised things do not change.

Because, if a statistically significant percentage of ‘undeclared’ voters support these policies, the two main parties will have to consider them in the future in order to get sufficient votes to win.

Hard to believe, perhaps, but sometimes, voting for ‘the other’ candidate will have a greaer political impact than voting for a candidate from one of the two legacy parties.

PJ Media: ‘Beyond Impeachment: Obama Treasonous over Benghazi’

Roger L. Simon over at PJ Media is thinking along the same lines as I am:

‘Is it treason when you put your own reelection above the good of your country and the lives of its citizens? If so, Barack Obama committed treason in leaving the four Americans to die in Benghazi.

Our Constitution defines it this way: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

Aid and comfort to the enemy — what is that?

When you ascribe an action to the protest of a video when it is actuality a planned terror attack by Ansar al-Shariah, an established offshoot of al-Qaeda (if that’s not your “enemy,” then who) — and you knew that all along, you watched it live without doing anything, and then you told those who wanted to help to “stand down”? Meanwhile, our government may have been conspiring to arm another offshoot of al-Qaeda in Syria.

How much more treasonous can you get? Benedict Arnold was a piker.’

Excellent post which connects a lot of the dots and asks a lot of the pertinent questions.

But, once we start digging into Obama’s malfeasance, we just might find bodies on this side of the pond, too – at least according to some journalists still brave enough to report on this.

 

 

Could there be more behind the MSM’s refusal to investigate the Obama administration?

Sure, many of the talking heads and most visible journalists are blatant Obama sycophants.  But, why is the refusal to investigate Obama and his administration so pervasive?

Are there really no young and eager investigative journalists who want to make a name for themselves – and to hell with ideology?

While the brainwashing most liberal arts (journalism included) students are subjected to in Colleges and Universities may account for much of it, there may be more to it than just liberalism’s willful blindness:

‘I was on the brunt end of the Obama-generated censorship while employed at CNN as an investigative correspondent.

On at least a weekly basis, and to my constant frustration, my superiors and CNN’s lawyers were quick to remind me that we need to be extra careful because “President Obama has gone after more journalists and whistleblowers than any president in history”.  The leash around my neck began to tighten.

Whether I was allowed to embark on future stories or even interview sensitive sources for potential investigations, eventually became an ‘Obama subpoena risk assessment’ and potential court cost calculation, rather than a pure evaluation of the report’s contribution to public good or our journalistic duty to cover the story.

Some of my most crucial investigations were killed before they started because they were too high a risk of an Obama subpoena.

One boss told me quote “we know how the FBI feels about your source, if we have information the FBI will want we become a target”.’

I don’t know just how reliable this blogger is, but her read-worthy post includes many links to reputable sites with material confirming her observations.

Worth thinking about…

 

 

Did General Ham defy orders and tried to send help to Benghazi?

This is just getting weirder and weirder…..

James Robinson from the Washington Times is reporting that a ‘trusted source’ said that the top US commander in Africa, General Ham, tried to send help to the besieged Mission in Benghazi – defying orders to do so – only to be relieved of duty and the help stopped:

‘The information I heard today was that General Ham as head of Africom received the same e-mails the White House received requesting help/support as the attack was taking place. General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready. 

General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command. 

The story continues that now General Rodiguez would take General Ham’s place as the head of Africom. ‘

This directly contradicts Panetta’s statement, that General Ham advised they not go in until they have more intelligence…
And as for the story of the nanny on New York who is said to have murdered two of her charges and then cut her own throat, just hours after her boss is said to have published something connecting the people in the Obama administration to a money-laundering scheme with an Iran connection, only to have the original story ‘dissappear’ (it now exists only as a screenshot) …
Weirder and weirder!!!
UPDATE:  More on the nanny who is being reported to have tried to commit suicide by slitting her own throat is here.

Benghazi: the top brass actively forbade the air support from firing on the ‘team’ that later killed 2 Americans…

UPDATE:  An AC-130U Gunship was indeed on the scene in Benghazi and was denied permission to fire.  Also, CIA brass throws Omaba under the buss and openly says that it was NOT the CIA who denied the permission to fire!  On the aftermath, here.

UPDATE 2:  This article has excellent write up with all the currently known facts.

 

Revelations have been pouring in all day about the fiasco in Bengazi.

This charts some of the details that came out today, but does not draft the full picture.  Yet, it is well worth noting:

It has now been definitively established, from multiple sources, that there were 2 drones in the air over Benghazi, feeding live video of the attack to the US – including to the Situation Room’ in the White House, where Barack Obama was scheduled to be that evening. (Aside – lots of intriguing links in this link.)

They had hard evidence, 2 hours into the attack, that the terrorist group ‘Helpers of Sharia’ had taken responsibility for the attack.

But it gets worse – much worse.

Ambassador Stevens was running guns to Islamists – that much is clear.

But…

And this is where it gets very, very nasty.

The security of the buildings was being provided by the 17th of February Brigade – a militant Islamist group. As in, militant and violent jihadists!

WHY?!?!?

Who would ever hire an organization whose avowed goal is to kill all non-Muslims and use force to install Sharia worldwide, who would hire one’s declared enemies to be the security force for their Ambassador?

That’s a lot like getting Nidal Malik Hasan to provide pre-natal care to Francheska Velez!

We now also know that one of the people in the compound posted a message onto a gaming site saying that the ‘police’ (and he put the word ‘police’ into quotation marks, as if mocking the very concept) who are supposed to be guarding them are taking pictures and that something is up – and expressed fear that they may not live to see the morning…

Then, after this, the Ambassador met with a ‘Turkish diplomat’.

(We know Stevens was running the guns into Syria through Turkey…)

The ‘Turkish diplomat’ left.

Less than an hour later, the attack started…

Please, consider the information in the following newscast:

But, there is more.

Yes, the SEALs went in against orders!

Then, when they returned to their compound, their compound came under fire….almost as if all the people who had been in the first location were supposed to have died in order not to say what they knew – and since some got out, the attackers followed them in their ‘mop-up’ operation!

What is this – a B-movie or reality?!?!?

We know there were 2 surveillance drones, tag-teaming, over the area.  Please, keep that in mind.

The compound (second location) was being shelled by the attackers.

One of the people inside the compound went onto the roof and illuminated (tagged) the equipment firing at the compound with a laser – no, not a pointer but a target-identification tag for a guided strike from the air.

The drones in the air may or may not have been armed – but the two AC-130U’s in theatre (since March) certainly were.

And, tagging the target does not occur unless (and until) the targeting system is synchronized – on location, and ready to fire.  It is the ‘last step’ in the firing procedure before the trigger is pulled – because by going out and tagging the target, the person doing the tagging is exposed and vulnerable.  Hence, it is the last step.

This means that in one way or another, there was someone in the air who had the attackers in their sights and was ready to fire.

But, was denied permission to take the shot!!!

It was only AFTER this that the shelling from this very ‘no-longer-target’ hit the compound and killed 2 Americans!!!

Can you get your mind around it?

Only orders from either the White House or head of the Africa theatre would have had the power to deny the permission to shoot – and, as a direct result of this inaction, American lives were lost!

This is beyond a scandal – it is criminal!

Frank Gaffney: Obama’s Middle East Fast & Furious?