Eye of the Beholder

"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area we call... the Twilight Zone."

That's how I feel after the surreality of the health care vote.  And surely we need some imagination right now.


There have been many people who have said they will not participate in the socialized health care that's been passed. And we can be sure there will be a slow, piecemeal effort to intimidate everyone else and bring down stragglers in the herd until all acquiesce. It they refuse to participate, my understanding is that the IRS will be charged with prosecuting them, though the government will attempt to avoid anything with the smell of mass arrests or significant publicity. But I remind you of what Ellsworth Toohey said:

"I don't want to kill him. I want him in jail. You understand? In jail. In a cell. Behind bars. Locked, stopped, strapped--and alive. He'll get up when they tell him to. He'll eat what they give him. He'll move when he's told to move and stop when he's told. He'll walk to the jute mill, when he's told, and he'll work as he's told. They'll push him, if he doesn't move fast enough, and they'll slap his face when they feel like it, and they'll beat him with rubber hose if he doesn't obey. And he'll obey. He'll take orders. He'll take orders!"

The point to these people, the essence of what they are, is to control us while diminishing us.

They will go for the chinese water torture of time. This allows everyone to forget the controversy, to forget they were ever free. For example, if Citizen Joe decides he won't participate, he'll get progressively more sternly worded notices over a period of a year, informing him that he hasn't joined the national "plan". Warnings will be given of consequences, like those FBI warnings on every DVD--"Failure to comply could result in fines up to $$$ or XXX years in jail".

Ignoring them, a few months later he'll get a notice that a fine has been assessed, but he has a chance to get it reversed if he switches sides and plays ball.

Ignoring those, a month or two later he will be ordered to appear at some innocently named review board to hear his case.

Imagine this dragging out over 3 years, while the rest of the smurfs in our society come to complacently conclude that socialized health hasn't drastically changed their lives and gee, what's the fuss about?

Finally, his back against the wall, our conscientious objector refuses to pay his fine, or the additional fine for refusing to pay the first fine. He even has the temerity to refuse to go to his administrative hearing.

He is charged with tax delinquency, and doesn't show up in tax court.

Armed deputies appear on his doorstep one day, holding an arrest warrant. In front of his wife and kids he is handcuffed and carted away. The charge is something innocuous like "failure to appear", and he gets out on bail, but now the lawyers get involved. Maybe in 4 years (when socialized health care is fully implemented) he's been through various overnight stays in county jail, administrative hearings / tribunals / kangaroo "health" courts (but never a real court) and he's finally ordered to serve some real jail time. They might only give him a year with a chance to get out in 6 months on good behaviour, but are more likely start out with a simple "contempt" citation with a chance to change his mind (again), on the premise that a few weeks in the slammer with some serious offenders will soften him up.

Fear is the key, here. If he's stubborn, they'll ratchet it up, and probably pile on additional charges for obstruction of justice or god knows what. They can concoct any charge they want under the non-judicial system of arbitrary administrative judges and tribunals in this health care bill. But maybe the health commissars get impatient and go for broke -- they give him 5 years for bucking the system, on the premise that he'll just disappear from view till everyone has forgotten -- except the underground word of mouth.

That works to the advantage of the government. Tyrannies exist on such whispered fears, and our guys in government won't give up--our one, lonely conscientious objector is a threat to all of them. He might get out on parole on the condition that he sign up for health care. If he doesn't, he can spend some more time with the thieves, killers, rapists, pedophiles and bunkbed sodomists.

But when his sentence is finished, the same stipulation will still exist: if he refuses to participate, it starts all over again.

Imagine this happening in slow motion for dozens of other objectors. For every conviction based on trumped up charges of "injury to the social welfare" or some such contrivance, the government may trumpet it in the press as a warning to every one else--but they are more likely to pursue those objectors who commit violence or real crimes, out of anger at what's being done to them and their country, because the press associated with punishing violent people works much better to their advantage -- it discredits all the non-violent ones as social non-conformists, outcasts and trouble-makers.

Ever see the old Twilight Zone episode, "Eye of the Beholder"? It's about a woman in a bed at a state-run hospital after reconstructive surgery on her face, which is wrapped in bandages--which we can't see, any more than we can see the faces of the concerned doctors and nurses, who are always concealed in shadow. All we hear are their voices. But outside the patient's room, they talk about the patient's grotesque disfigurement, and one nurse remarks,

"If it was mine I'd bury myself in a grave someplace. Poor thing, some people want to live, no matter what."

The patient is desperately frightened of what will become of her if the surgery hasn't worked, and the doctor strives to reassure her, while preparing her for the worst, based on disappointing results from people of "her kind". Finally the bandages are removed and doctors and nurses recoil in horror: the surgery has failed: and the patient is as ugly as ever.

The camera pulls back and the patient's face is revealed to the audience: a face of overwhelming, innocent beauty.

The camera pulls back again and the doctors and nurses are revealed: deformed creatures of pig-like features, exuding malevolence.

The girl opens her eyes, sees the doctors and nurses and screams in terror. They attempt to drug her and she flees down empty corridors as the supreme leader of their nation delivers a hate-filled speech on televisions suspended overhead:

"...There must be a single purpose, a single norm, a single approach, a single entity of people, a single virtue, a single morality! ... We must cut out all that is different, like a cancerous filth! It is essential in this society that we not only have a norm, but that we conform to the norm! ...Conformity is the key to survival!"

I won't hold up the philosophy of this episode as without reproach (it advocates an odd mix of freedom and subjectivism), but you can't help watching it and coming away with the eerily overwhelming feeling that it captures the essence of the health care debate and the world we are moving into.

As I said, the government won't pursue hundreds or thousands of objectors at once, for damned sure. They don't want the expense and effort, and more important *do not* want to give objectors the appearance of being part of a widespread movement, even if they are.

My point here is simply this: there needs to be an organization in place so that every single person who refuses to participate in socialized health care has a place to go so they won't be forgotten--a place providing support, legal and otherwise, so it won't be too frightening and devastating to stand up against the Goliath, so they can't be easily picked off as stragglers in a herd by the wolves in government.

The goal is this: make every case a cause celebre, so each victim who has the courage to stand up can inspire others to stand up themselves, so the movement grows rapidly and without the ability of the government to control it or tame it. The goal is an organization to keep the fire of resistance burning in people, and to fan it, encouraging more and more people to "opt out" and "drop out" of socialized health care, with a message to the government and the socialists who created it: get the hell out of my life.

There's still some chance that the bill won't become law (though I wouldn't count on it). There's still some chance the courts will invalidate it (though I wouldn't count on it). There's still some chance the Republicans will acquire some backbone, take control of Congress and repeal it--though I wouldn't count on it. I'd start preparing anyway, and figure out how to promote mass civil disobedience on a scale this country has never seen before, if we are to get reversed this horrible rush to bald, pig-faced statism.











http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9dwKQ6xyIs&feature=related (part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEpMomBvPVQ (part 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMev5QQxs00&NR=1 (part 3)

Stuck in my Craw, It Needed a Stick in the Eye

I was on an email list today where one of the respondents remarked belligerantly on the wonders of statism, the marvels of big intrusive government, the privilege of paying taxes, etc, ad nauesum, and ended with book recommendations on the horrors of capitalism.  I had to make a reply.  Had to.

----- begin reply -----

All these books on the horrors of capitalism are based on the premise of unbridled statism and the rejection of every legitimate concept of individual rights, which are requirements of human existence in the real world.  They set up a straw man that holds men beholden without limit to their "brothers" in a sort of global social serfdom, and then criticize capitalism for not embracing a principle antithetical to human nature and the principle of capitalism itself -- freedom -- while accepting, simultaneously rejecting, and using the bountiful largesse created by capitalism, in their quest to destroy it -- most especially, the principle of freedom itself.

The authors of these books typically redefine freedom so that we're only "free" when we're slaves to the well-being of every other creature on Earth.  We're only free, they say, when we're shackled to our "duties", regulated into oblivion,  beaten into submission with non-objective laws and taxed out of existence to support everyone else.  They call it "egalitarianism" and "social justice".  When the creatures benefited by their alleged concern aren't even human, they call it "environmentalism".  When they don't even care about any creatures as such, I call it just old-fashioned nihilism.

For a better book on capitalism, I recommend "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal", which will at least familiarize you with what it actually is, rather than what it isn't.  For a book on what happens on a global scale with unfettered statism when capitalism is rejected, I recommend Atlas Shrugged. As a few million people have recently noticed, it is the most accurate book of all.

Robb

Mark Steyn Nails the Meaning of Obamacare to the Konigsberg Gate

If you recall the consequences for the Catholic church when Martin Luther was blogging with a hammer on the gate at Wittenberg, and if you recall that Immanuel Kant (Godfather of the Left) lived in Konigsberg, you'll understand that title. Copied at bottom is a particularly good op-ed by Mark Steyn highlighting the very great danger that Obamacare poses for the future of this country:  the permanent change to a statist government.  My highlights:

So there was President Obama, giving his bazillionth speech on health care... Why is he doing this? Why let "health" "care" "reform" stagger on like the rotting husk in a low-grade creature feature who refuses to stay dead no matter how many stakes you pound through his chest? 

I rather remarked on this just the other day with regard to global warming and the parallels to the movie Friday the 13th (http://robbservations.blogspot.com/2010/03/agw-crowd-planning-to-fire-back-volley.html).  To continue Steyn's observations:

Because it's worth it.  Big time. ...governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible. ... Right-of-center parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless.

Emphasis mine.  Steyn echoes my comment last fall in "The Real Meaning of Health Care Reform" (http://robbservations.blogspot.com/2009/09/real-meaning-of-health-care-reform.html), which I can't help re-emphasizing:  "The primary goal of health care reform is the enactment of the legal basis for totalitarianism."  This is so fundamental to Obamacare that you must fully grasp it to understand why Obamacare must be stopped at all costs. 

Republicans seem to have difficulty grasping this basic dynamic. ...The Democrats understand that politics is not just about Tuesday evenings every other November, but about everything else, too.

So true.  At least, the Fabian Democrats understand it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society).  Unfortunately, most Republicans couldn't grasp the dynamic of their own demise if they had a howitzer shoved in their mouth with a madman on the trigger.  Oh, wait.  Truth meets reality.

...Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever-expanding number of government jobs will be statists – sometimes hard-core Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily "compassionate" statists, but always statists. The short history of the post-war welfare state is that you don't need a president-for-life if you've got a bureaucracy-for-life...
      
Look at it from the Dems' point of view. You pass Obamacare. You lose the 2010 election, which gives the GOP co-ownership of an awkward couple of years. And you come back in 2012 to find your health care apparatus is still in place, a fetid behemoth of toxic pustules oozing all over the basement, and, simply through the natural processes of government, already bigger and more expensive and more bureaucratic than it was when you passed it two years earlier. That's a huge prize, and well worth a midterm timeout.
      
...that hardly begins to convey the scale of it. Obamacare represents the government annexation of "one-sixth of the U.S. economy" ... Nobody has ever attempted this level of centralized planning for an advanced society of 300 million people. ...The Soviet Union did, of course, and we know how that worked out.

Steyn answers the question I posed last November in my own piece, "Rodents of Unusual Size" (http://robbservations.blogspot.com/2009/11/rodents-of-unusual-size.html):

Why  were 40 Democrats sacrificed to pass the health care bill (they will lose in the next election for voting for this), and why do the people behind this want a "dominant role of government in health care"? ...Their goal is a Chavez-like incremental communism with an end-game of the Cuban model. ...It was Pelosi's sacrifice of so many members of her own party to her agenda that finally convinced me she is a committed communist and not just a socialist.

And I stand by that.  Steyn further echoes my observation (now being well borne out) that "This is why they will fight tooth and nail to pass any kind of compromise."

As I also observed in another post (http://robbservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/no-public-option-is-no-option.html),

"Obama's ultimate goal is socialism in America in every sphere of life, and this health care "overhaul" bill is only a means to that end. He won't give up on it."

This is what Steyn is reminding us of, and what we must not forget, or we will soon have a steady diet of Leftist worms in Washington.

(Historical Note: After Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenberg Church door in 1517 and pissed off the Catholic clergy once too often, the Pope in 1521 called the "Diet of Worms" -- a general assembly of the Imperial Estates of the Holy Roman Empire that took place at Worms, a small town on the Rhine River -- to decide Luther's fate.  From the delay between 1517 to 1521, you can gather that blogging in those days was not a speed-of-light process.  By donkey, usually--the draft animal of choice for monks everywhere. What Steyn warns us of is that Cardinal Obama would like to play Kong while making Donkeys of all of us.)


http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0310/steyn030810.php3

Obamacare worth the price to Dems

By Mark Steyn
March 8, 2010
  
So there was President Obama, giving his bazillionth speech on health care, droning yet again that "now is the hour when we must seize the moment," the same moment he's been seizing every day of the week for the past year, only this time his genius photo-op guys thought it would look good to have him surrounded by men in white coats.

Why is he doing this? Why let "health" "care" "reform" stagger on like the rotting husk in a low-grade creature feature who refuses to stay dead no matter how many stakes you pound through his chest?

Because it's worth it. Big time. I've been saying in this space for two years that the governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible. In most of the rest of the Western world, there are still nominally "conservative" parties, and they even win elections occasionally, but not to any great effect (Let's not forget that Jacques Chirac was, in French terms, a "conservative").

The result is a kind of two-party one-party state: Right-of-center parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless.

Republicans seem to have difficulty grasping this basic dynamic. Less than three months ago, they were stunned at the way the Democrats managed to get 60 senators to vote for the health bill. Then Scott Brown took them back down to 59, and Republicans were again stunned to find the Dems talking about ramming this thing into law through the parliamentary device of "reconciliation." And, when polls showed an ever larger number of Americans ever more opposed to Obamacare (by margins approaching three-to-one), Republicans were further stunned to discover that, in order to advance "reconciliation," Democrat reconsiglieres had apparently been offering (illegally) various cosy Big Government sinecures to swing-state congressmen in order to induce them to climb into the cockpit for the kamikaze raid to push the bill through. The Democrats understand that politics is not just about Tuesday evenings every other November, but about everything else, too.

A year or two back, when the Canadian Islamic Congress attempted to criminalize my writing north of the border by taking me to the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, a number of outraged American readers wrote to me, saying, "You need to start kicking up a fuss about this, Steyn, and then maybe Canadians will get mad and elect a conservative government that will end this nonsense."

Makes perfect sense. Except that Canada already has a Conservative government under a Conservative prime minister, and the very head of the "human rights" commission investigating me was herself the Conservative appointee of a Conservative minister of justice. Makes no difference.

Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever-expanding number of government jobs will be statists – sometimes hard-core Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily "compassionate" statists, but always statists. The short history of the post-war welfare state is that you don't need a president-for-life if you've got a bureaucracy-for-life: The people can elect "conservatives," as the Germans have done and the British are about to do, and the Left is mostly relaxed about it because, in all but exceptional cases (Thatcher), they fulfill the same function in the system as the first-year boys at wintry English boarding schools who, for tuppence-ha'penny or some such, would agree to go and warm the seat in the unheated lavatories until the prefects strolled in and took their rightful place.

Republicans are good at keeping the seat warm. A bigtime GOP consultant was on TV, crowing that Republicans wanted the Dems to pass Obamacare because it's so unpopular it will guarantee a GOP sweep in November.

OK, then what? You'll roll it back – like you've rolled back all those other unsustainable entitlements premised on cobwebbed actuarial tables from 80 years ago? Like you've undone the federal Department of Education and of Energy and all the other nickel'n'dime novelties of even a universally reviled one-term loser like Jimmy Carter? Andrew McCarthy concluded a shrewd analysis of the political realities thus:

"Health care is a loser for the Left only if the Right has the steel to undo it. The Left is banking on an absence of steel. Why is that a bad bet?"

Indeed. Look at it from the Dems' point of view. You pass Obamacare. You lose the 2010 election, which gives the GOP co-ownership of an awkward couple of years. And you come back in 2012 to find your health care apparatus is still in place, a fetid behemoth of toxic pustules oozing all over the basement, and, simply through the natural processes of government, already bigger and more expensive and more bureaucratic than it was when you passed it two years earlier. That's a huge prize, and well worth a midterm timeout.

I've been bandying comparisons with Britain and France, but that hardly begins to convey the scale of it. Obamacare represents the government annexation of "one-sixth of the U.S. economy" – i.e., the equivalent of the entire British or French economy, or the entire Indian economy twice over. Nobody has ever attempted this level of centralized planning for an advanced society of 300 million people. Even the control-freaks of the European Union have never tried to impose a unitary "comprehensive" health care system from Galway to Greece. The Soviet Union did, of course, and we know how that worked out.

This "reform" is not about health care, and certainly not about "controlling costs." As with Medicare, it "controls" costs by declining to acknowledge them, or pay them. Dr. William Schreiber of North Syracuse, N.Y., told CNN that he sees 120 patients per week – about 30 percent on Medicare, 65 private on private insurance plans whose payments take into account the Medicare reimbursement rates, and about 5 percent who do it the old-fashioned way and write a check. He calculates that, under Obamacare, for every $5 he now makes, he'll get $2 in the future. Which suggests now would be a good time to retrain as a realtor or accountant, or the night clerk at the convenience store. Yet Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., justifies her support for Obamacare this way:

"I even had one constituent – you will not believe this, and I know you won't, but it's true – her sister died. This poor woman had no dentures. She wore her dead sister's teeth."

Is the problem of second-hand teeth a particular problem in this corner of New York? I haven't noticed an epidemic of ill-fitting dentures on recent visits to the Empire State. George Washington had wooden teeth, but, presumably, these days the Sierra Club would object to the clear-cutting. Yet, even granting Congresswoman Slaughter the benefit of the doubt, is annexing the equivalent of a G7 economy the solution to what would seem to be the statistically unrepresentative problem of her constituent's ill-fitting choppers? Is it worth reducing the next generation of Americans to indentured servitude to pay for this poor New Yorker's dentured servitude?

Yes. Because government health care is not about health care, it's about government. Once you look at it that way, what the Dems are doing makes perfect sense. For them.

AGW Crowd Planning to Fire Back a Volley of Smoke

This was to be expected -- the global warming flim-flam artists been working this scam for 30 years, and aren't going to let go an inch from the brass ring (it surely takes a lot of brass to pull this off):

Paul G. Falkowski, a professor at Rutgers University who started the effort, said in the e-mails that he is seeking a $1,000 donation from as many as 50 scientists to pay for an ad to run in the New York Times. He said in one e-mail that commitments were already arriving.

Chump change compared to the grants they are fighting to preserve.  But note the angle they will now be pursuing:

Mr. Schneider said Mr. Inhofe is showing "McCarthyesque" behavior in the mold of the Cold War-era senator who was accused of stifling political debate through accusations of communism. "What I am trying to do is head off something that will be truly ugly," he said. "I don't want to see a repeat of McCarthyesque behavior and I'm already personally very dismayed by the horrible state of this topic, in which the political debate has almost no resemblance to the scientific debate."

What scientific debate?  Those commies are always getting mileage out of ol' Joe.  What really galled me was

He said the "social contract" between scientists and policymakers is broken and must be reforged, and...

There is no such thing as  a "social contract" between a "scientist and a policy maker".  The scientist's only "contract" is to the truth.  "Policy" makers, almost by definition, are liars and thieves.  Their only proper "contract" (I hate that Leftist terminology -- it's intended to implicitly impose obligations on everyone who isn't smart enough to catch the meaning) is to protect our individual rights to life, liberty and property, defend us from aggressors, and otherwise leave us the hell alone.

...he urged colleagues to try to recruit members of Congress to take up their case. He also said the press and nongovernmental organizations must be prodded.

In other words, these guys (or "pathetic bunch of losers" -- they don't deserve the title of "scientists") have learned nothing.  They are simply political hucksters trying to manipulate with P.R. and a gun, rather than reason with facts.  Pull the plug on the entire bunch, I say.  But for real gall, you can't match this:

"We are dealing with an opposition that is not going to yield to facts or appeals from people who hold themselves in high regard and think their assertions and data are obvious truths," [Mr. Woodwell ] wrote.

I have three words for that:  Pot.  Kettle.  Black.  Actually, that's terribly unfair to Pa Kettle, who's reasoning is shiny stainless steel compared to these black-hearted short-order cooks. 


Though they might be sideline players, I have to wonder how much involvement the White House has in this new caper?  I mean... campaign.  Obama and Emanuel don't give up easy.  Obama is another one that is the culmination of a lot more than 30 years effort.  (A communist's dream candidate -- in the White House!)  Al Gore for sure is involved -- a dead certainty.  He's got way too much riding on this to let go.  This crowd may lose again and again, but for sure they will keep coming back like Jason the Hockey Mask guy in Friday the Thirteenth.  Lock your door.

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/05/scientists-plot-to-hit-back-at-critics/

Climate scientists plot to fight back at skeptics

By Stephen Dinan
Undaunted by a rash of scandals over the science underpinning climate change, top climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be "an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach" to gut the credibility of skeptics.

In private e-mails obtained by The Washington Times, climate scientists at the National Academy of Sciences say they are tired of "being treated like political pawns" and need to fight back in kind. Their strategy includes forming a nonprofit group to organize researchers and use their donations to challenge critics by running a back-page ad in the New York Times.

"Most of our colleagues don't seem to grasp that we're not in a gentlepersons' debate, we're in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules," Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.

Some scientists question the tactic and say they should focus instead on perfecting their science, but the researchers who are organizing the effort say the political battle is eroding confidence in their work.

"This was an outpouring of angry frustration on the part of normally very staid scientists who said, 'God, can't we have a civil dialogue here and discuss the truth without spinning everything,'" said Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford professor and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment who was part of the e-mail discussion but wants the scientists to take a slightly different approach.

The scientists have been under siege since late last year when e-mails leaked from a British climate research institute seemed to show top researchers talking about skewing data to push predetermined outcomes. Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the authoritative body on the matter, has suffered defections of members after it had to retract claims that Himalayan glaciers will melt over the next 25 years.

Last month, President Obama announced that he would create a U.S. agency to arbitrate research on climate change.

Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and a chief skeptic of global-warming claims, is considering asking the Justice Department to investigate whether climate scientists who receive taxpayer-funded grants falsified data. He lists 17 people he said have been key players in the controversy.

That news has enraged scientists. Mr. Schneider said Mr. Inhofe is showing "McCarthyesque" behavior in the mold of the Cold War-era senator who was accused of stifling political debate through accusations of communism.

In a phone interview, Mr. Schneider, who is one of the key players Mr. Inhofe cites, said he disagrees with trying to engage in an ad battle. He said the scientists will never be able to compete with energy companies.

"They're not going to win short-term battles playing the game against big-monied interests because they can't beat them," he said.

He said the "social contract" between scientists and policymakers is broken and must be reforged, and he urged colleagues to try to recruit members of Congress to take up their case. He also said the press and nongovernmental organizations must be prodded.

"What I am trying to do is head off something that will be truly ugly," he said. "I don't want to see a repeat of McCarthyesque behavior and I'm already personally very dismayed by the horrible state of this topic, in which the political debate has almost no resemblance to the scientific debate."

Not all climate scientists agree with forcing a political fight.

"Sounds like this group wants to step up the warfare, continue to circle the wagons, continue to appeal to their own authority, etc.," said Judith A. Curry, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "Surprising, since these strategies haven't worked well for them at all so far."

She said scientists should downplay their catastrophic predictions, which she said are premature, and instead shore up and defend their research. She said scientists and institutions that have been pushing for policy changes "need to push the disconnect button for now," because it will be difficult to take action until public confidence in the science is restored.

"Hinging all of these policies on global climate change with its substantial element of uncertainty is unnecessary and is bad politics, not to mention having created a toxic environment for climate research," she said.

Ms. Curry also said that more engagement between scientists and the public would help - something that the NAS researchers also proposed.

Paul G. Falkowski, a professor at Rutgers University who started the effort, said in the e-mails that he is seeking a $1,000 donation from as many as 50 scientists to pay for an ad to run in the New York Times. He said in one e-mail that commitments were already arriving.

The e-mail discussion began late last week and continued into this week.

Mr. Falkowski didn't respond to an e-mail seeking comment, and an effort to reach Mr. Ehrlich was unsuccessful.

But one of those scientists forwarded The Times' request to the National Academy of Sciences, whose e-mail system the scientists used as their forum to plan their effort.

An NAS spokesman sought to make clear that the organization itself is not involved in the effort.

"These scientists are elected members of the National Academy of Sciences, but the discussants themselves realized their efforts would require private support since the National Academy of Sciences never considered placing such an ad or creating a nonprofit group concerning these issues," said William Kearney, chief spokesman for NAS.

The e-mails emerged months after another set of e-mails from a leading British climate research group seemed to show scientists shading data to try to bolster their claims, and are likely to feed the impression among skeptics that researchers are pursuing political goals as much as they are disseminating science.

George Woodwell, founder of the Woods Hole Research Center, said in one e-mail that researchers have been ceding too much ground. He blasted Pennsylvania State University for pursuing an academic investigation against professor Michael E. Mann, who wrote many of the e-mails leaked from the British climate research facility.

An initial investigation cleared Mr. Mann of falsifying data but referred one charge, that he "deviated from accepted practices within the academic community," to a committee for a more complete review.

In his e-mail, Mr. Woodwell acknowledged that he is advocating taking "an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach" but said scientists have had their "classical reasonableness" turned against them.

"We are dealing with an opposition that is not going to yield to facts or appeals from people who hold themselves in high regard and think their assertions and data are obvious truths," he wrote.

Serpent's Song

Ed,

I think Obama's looking much older than you think.  Copenhagen was tough enough on him, but have you seen him after the Health Care bill failed to get passed?  Still, I think we should be cautious before pronouncing him gone.  The guy has more lives than the character of Apophis, the evil nemesis of the Stargate SG-1 TV show.

Robb

http://www.gateworld.net/sg1/s2/218.shtml

 
-----Original Message-----
From: Ed
Subject: The Pinnacle of Power
Has anyone noticed that Obama's hair is turning gray? He's been in office for little more than a year, and has behaved like a tyrant, but still the office is costing him. No sympathy here, just an observation.

Confessions of an Intellectual Geisha

I don't know if you've read the letter copied at bottom in its entirety -- the man who crashed his plane into the IRS building in Austin. It's inarticulate and rambles a lot, and mostly not worth reading. But parts are also a fascinating and revealing psychological confession of the desperate need people have for philosophy, which Joe Stack didn't. Some things he says reminds me so much of characters in Atlas Shrugged -- right down to this, near the end:

"I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough."

And yet, at the end, he condemns capitalism, and lauds communism! This is the confusion in the minds of too many people.

I had no real interest in reading Stack's suicide note, but looked it up when I read that it had been taken down from his website. Probably because of too much traffic rather than any conspiracy, but I thought I'd better check the content. Definitely not a conspiracy. Stack was just a sadly confused guy who didn't know how to fix things beyond destruction.

I think his suicide note is now being labeled a "manifesto" by the Left to discredit the "anti-government" crowd, including Tea Party protesters, Objectivists, and everyone else they put under that label. The irony is that Joe Stack's note is really an anti-manifesto. A completely un-philosophical screed. The Left would love calling it something so contradictory-- because it would leave the entire realm of philosophy to them, and leave the impression that anyone opposed to big government is a crackpot.

Contrast Joe Stack's letter to Quentin Daniels, in Atlas Shrugged:

Dear Miss Taggart:

I have fought it out for three weeks, I did not want to do it, I know how this will hit you and I know every argument you could offer me, because I have used them all against myself--but this is to tell you that I am quitting. I cannot work under the terms of Directive 10-289 -- though not for the reason its perpetrators intended. I know that their abolition of all scientific research does not mean a damn to you or me, and that you would want me to continue. But I have to quit, because I do not wish to succeed any longer.

I do not wish to work in a world that regards me as a slave. I do not wish to be of any value to people. If I succeeded in rebuilding the motor, I would not let you place it in their service. I would not take it upon my conscience that anything produced by my mind should be used to bring them comfort.

I know that if we succeed, they will be only too eager to expropriate the motor. And for the sake of that prospect, we have to accept the position of criminals, you and I, and live under the threat of being arrested at any moment at their whim. And this is the thing that I cannot take, even were I able to take all the rest: that in order to give them an inestimable benefit, we should be made martyrs to the men who, but for us, could not have conceived of it. I might have forgiven the rest, but when I think of this, I say: May they be damned, I will see them all die of starvation, myself included, rather than forgive them for this or permit it!

To tell you the full truth, I want to succeed, to solve the secret of the motor, as much as ever. So I shall continue to work on it for my own sole pleasure and for as long as I last. But if I solve it, it will remain my private secret. I will not release it for any commercial use. Therefore, I cannot take your money any longer. Commercialism is supposed to be despicable, so all those people should truly approve of my decision, and I -- I'm tired of helping those who despise me.

I don't know how long I will last or what I will do in the future. For the moment, I intend to remain in my job at this Institute. But if any of its trustees or receivers should remind me that I am now legally forbidden to cease being a janitor, I will 'quit.

You had given me my greatest chance and if I am now giving you a painful blow, perhaps T should ask you to forgive me, I think that you love your work as much as I loved mine, so you will know that my decision was not easy to make, but that I had to make it.

It is a strange feeling -- writing this letter. I do not intend to die, but I am giving up the world and this feels like the letter of a suicide. So I want to say that of all the people I have known, you are the only person I regret leaving behind.

Sincerely yours, Quentin Daniels

Somehow, I don't think Stack ever read Atlas.

http://www.businessinsider.com/joseph-andrew-stacks-insane-manifesto-2010-2

Suicide Note of Joseph Stack:

If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head. Exactly what is therapeutic about that I’m not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.

While very few working people would say they haven’t had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.

Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.

And justice? You’ve got to be kidding!

How can any rational individual explain that white elephant conundrum in the middle of our tax system and, indeed, our entire legal system? Here we have a system that is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand. Yet, it mercilessly “holds accountable” its victims, claiming that they’re responsible for fully complying with laws not even the experts understand. The law “requires” a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that’s not “duress” than what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is.

How did I get here?

My introduction to the real American nightmare starts back in the early ‘80s. Unfortunately after more than 16 years of school, somewhere along the line I picked up the absurd, pompous notion that I could read and understand plain English. Some friends introduced me to a group of people who were having ‘tax code’ readings and discussions. In particular, zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful “exemptions” that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy. We carefully studied the law (with the help of some of the “best”, high-paid, experienced tax lawyers in the business), and then began to do exactly what the “big boys” were doing (except that we weren’t steeling from our congregation or lying to the government about our massive profits in the name of God). We took a great deal of care to make it all visible, following all of the rules, exactly the way the law said it was to be done.

The intent of this exercise and our efforts was to bring about a much-needed re-evaluation of the laws that allow the monsters of organized religion to make such a mockery of people who earn an honest living. However, this is where I learned that there are two “interpretations” for every law; one for the very rich, and one for the rest of us… Oh, and the monsters are the very ones making and enforcing the laws; the inquisition is still alive and well today in this country.

That little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retirement plans back to 0. It made me realize for the first time that I live in a country with an ideology that is based on a total and complete lie. It also made me realize, not only how naive I had been, but also the incredible stupidity of the American public; that they buy, hook, line, and sinker, the crap about their “freedom”… and that they continue to do so with eyes closed in the face of overwhelming evidence and all that keeps happening in front of them.

Before even having to make a shaky recovery from the sting of the first lesson on what justice really means in this country (around 1984 after making my way through engineering school and still another five years of “paying my dues”), I felt I finally had to take a chance of launching my dream of becoming an independent engineer.

On the subjects of engineers and dreams of independence, I should digress somewhat to say that I’m sure that I inherited the fascination for creative problem solving from my father. I realized this at a very young age.

The significance of independence, however, came much later during my early years of college; at the age of 18 or 19 when I was living on my own as student in an apartment in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My neighbor was an elderly retired woman (80+ seemed ancient to me at that age) who was the widowed wife of a retired steel worker. Her husband had worked all his life in the steel mills of central Pennsylvania with promises from big business and the union that, for his 30 years of service, he would have a pension and medical care to look forward to in his retirement. Instead he was one of the thousands who got nothing because the incompetent mill management and corrupt union (not to mention the government) raided their pension funds and stole their retirement. All she had was social security to live on.

In retrospect, the situation was laughable because here I was living on peanut butter and bread (or Ritz crackers when I could afford to splurge) for months at a time. When I got to know this poor figure and heard her story I felt worse for her plight than for my own (I, after all, I thought I had everything to in front of me). I was genuinely appalled at one point, as we exchanged stories and commiserated with each other over our situations, when she in her grandmotherly fashion tried to convince me that I would be “healthier” eating cat food (like her) rather than trying to get all my substance from peanut butter and bread. I couldn’t quite go there, but the impression was made. I decided that I didn’t trust big business to take care of me, and that I would take responsibility for my own future and myself.

Return to the early ‘80s, and here I was off to a terrifying start as a ‘wet-behind-the-ears’ contract software engineer... and two years later, thanks to the fine backroom, midnight effort by the sleazy executives of Arthur Andersen (the very same folks who later brought us Enron and other such calamities) and an equally sleazy New York Senator (Patrick Moynihan), we saw the passage of 1986 tax reform act with its section 1706.

For you who are unfamiliar, here is the core text of the IRS Section 1706, defining the treatment of workers (such as contract engineers) for tax purposes. Visit this link for a conference committee report (http://www.synergistech.com/1706.shtml#ConferenceCommitteeReport) regarding the intended interpretation of Section 1706 and the relevant parts of Section 530, as amended. For information on how these laws affect technical services workers and their clients, read our discussion here (http://www.synergistech.com/ic-taxlaw.shtml).

SEC. 1706. TREATMENT OF CERTAIN TECHNICAL PERSONNEL.

(a) IN GENERAL - Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978 is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new subsection:

(d) EXCEPTION. - This section shall not apply in the case of an individual who pursuant to an arrangement between the taxpayer and another person, provides services for such other person as an engineer, designer, drafter, computer programmer, systems analyst, or other similarly skilled worker engaged in a similar line of work.

(b) EFFECTIVE DATE. - The amendment made by this section shall apply to remuneration paid and services rendered after December 31, 1986.

Note:
· "another person" is the client in the traditional job-shop relationship.
· "taxpayer" is the recruiter, broker, agency, or job shop.
· "individual", "employee", or "worker" is you.

Admittedly, you need to read the treatment to understand what it is saying but it’s not very complicated. The bottom line is that they may as well have put my name right in the text of section (d). Moreover, they could only have been more blunt if they would have came out and directly declared me a criminal and non-citizen slave. Twenty years later, I still can’t believe my eyes.

During 1987, I spent close to $5000 of my ‘pocket change’, and at least 1000 hours of my time writing, printing, and mailing to any senator, congressman, governor, or slug that might listen; none did, and they universally treated me as if I was wasting their time. I spent countless hours on the L.A. freeways driving to meetings and any and all of the disorganized professional groups who were attempting to mount a campaign against this atrocity. This, only to discover that our efforts were being easily derailed by a few moles from the brokers who were just beginning to enjoy the windfall from the new declaration of their “freedom”. Oh, and don’t forget, for all of the time I was spending on this, I was loosing income that I couldn’t bill clients.

After months of struggling it had clearly gotten to be a futile exercise. The best we could get for all of our trouble is a pronouncement from an IRS mouthpiece that they weren’t going to enforce that provision (read harass engineers and scientists). This immediately proved to be a lie, and the mere existence of the regulation began to have its impact on my bottom line; this, of course, was the intended effect.

Again, rewind my retirement plans back to 0 and shift them into idle. If I had any sense, I clearly should have left abandoned engineering and never looked back.

Instead I got busy working 100-hour workweeks. Then came the L.A. depression of the early 1990s. Our leaders decided that they didn’t need the all of those extra Air Force bases they had in Southern California, so they were closed; just like that. The result was economic devastation in the region that rivaled the widely publicized Texas S&L fiasco. However, because the government caused it, no one gave a shit about all of the young families who lost their homes or street after street of boarded up houses abandoned to the wealthy loan companies who received government funds to “shore up” their windfall. Again, I lost my retirement.

Years later, after weathering a divorce and the constant struggle trying to build some momentum with my business, I find myself once again beginning to finally pick up some speed. Then came the .COM bust and the 911 nightmare. Our leaders decided that all aircraft were grounded for what seemed like an eternity; and long after that, ‘special’ facilities like San Francisco were on security alert for months. This made access to my customers prohibitively expensive. Ironically, after what they had done the Government came to the aid of the airlines with billions of our tax dollars … as usual they left me to rot and die while they bailed out their rich, incompetent cronies WITH MY MONEY! After these events, there went my business but not quite yet all of my retirement and savings.

By this time, I’m thinking that it might be good for a change. Bye to California, I’ll try Austin for a while. So I moved, only to find out that this is a place with a highly inflated sense of self-importance and where damn little real engineering work is done. I’ve never experienced such a hard time finding work. The rates are 1/3 of what I was earning before the crash, because pay rates here are fixed by the three or four large companies in the area who are in collusion to drive down prices and wages… and this happens because the justice department is all on the take and doesn’t give a fuck about serving anyone or anything but themselves and their rich buddies.

To survive, I was forced to cannibalize my savings and retirement, the last of which was a small IRA. This came in a year with mammoth expenses and not a single dollar of income. I filed no return that year thinking that because I didn’t have any income there was no need. The sleazy government decided that they disagreed. But they didn’t notify me in time for me to launch a legal objection so when I attempted to get a protest filed with the court I was told I was no longer entitled to due process because the time to file ran out. Bend over for another $10,000 helping of justice.

So now we come to the present. After my experience with the CPA world, following the business crash I swore that I’d never enter another accountant’s office again. But here I am with a new marriage and a boatload of undocumented income, not to mention an expensive new business asset, a piano, which I had no idea how to handle. After considerable thought I decided that it would be irresponsible NOT to get professional help; a very big mistake.

When we received the forms back I was very optimistic that they were in order. I had taken all of the years information to Bill Ross, and he came back with results very similar to what I was expecting. Except that he had neglected to include the contents of Sheryl’s unreported income; $12,700 worth of it. To make matters worse, Ross knew all along this was missing and I didn’t have a clue until he pointed it out in the middle of the audit. By that time it had become brutally evident that he was representing himself and not me.

This left me stuck in the middle of this disaster trying to defend transactions that have no relationship to anything tax-related (at least the tax-related transactions were poorly documented). Things I never knew anything about and things my wife had no clue would ever matter to anyone. The end result is… well, just look around.

I remember reading about the stock market crash before the “great” depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything. Isn’t it ironic how far we’ve come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn’t have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it’s “business-as-usual”. Now when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes… isn’t that a clever, tidy solution.

As government agencies go, the FAA is often justifiably referred to as a tombstone agency, though they are hardly alone. The recent presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies in their eight years certainly reinforced for all of us that this criticism rings equally true for all of the government. Nothing changes unless there is a body count (unless it is in the interest of the wealthy sows at the government trough). In a government full of hypocrites from top to bottom, life is as cheap as their lies and their self-serving laws.

I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.

I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.

I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

Joe Stack (1956-2010)

02/18/2010

X( :-S >:) Religicons' Attempts to Steal Submersed Tea <:-P ;P =;

Reading various comments on attempts by religious right and neocons to steal the momentum of the Tea Party movement for their "vision" of the Republican party, as well as reading the organized hatchet jobs on Ayn Rand in the mainstream media (eg, New Criterion), I continue to wonder (as I have for decades without firm resolution) if there isn't value in a true third party. Is the Republican Party beyond redemption? I bring this up despite the inevitable criticism that a third party can't do anything except steal votes that keeps democrat statists in power. Yet, if the religicons keep hold of the Republicans, is that any better?

Until the Tea Party movement, I'd accepted the fact that a third party mainly takes votes from one party's candidates--Republicans, usually--giving advantage to the other party in most elections. In that context, a third party is destructive (unless the Republican candidates are worse).

After Massachusetts, I'm not so sure. If a third party came along today and was very selective about where it ran (always pick your battles so you don't look weak), I wonder if it could be quite successful and influential in shaping the course of politics in this country, even if it only won a few members office in Congress in the near term.

In locales with a large population of independents, I think a third party with a platform constructed to appeal to rational voters who uphold secular government and freedom could draw votes from both Republican and Democratic candidates representing the status quo. I've noticed for some time that neither party represents significant numbers of people today.

That's partly what the Tea Party is a reaction against. Who represents the patriotic, gun-toting guy who wants to get rich and doesn't want to be taxed to death for global welfare programs, but who doesn't think religion belongs in government, has nothing against hard-working immigrants who want to be Americans, and thinks it's nobody else's damned business what a woman does with her body?

Steve Bailey is running here in Colorado as a Republican, and I know nothing of his chances--he's got Left-Wing Boulder in his district, I think. But I never in a million years would have thought a Republican could have taken Ted Kennedy's seat, and certainly not so decisively.

My lack of knowledge of the details of politics makes me highly unqualified to have an opinion, but that's never stopped me before, so I'll say: I think a secular third party (the Tea Party) could do well in targeted places fed up with big government and religion and bad schools and anti-U.S. bashing and any number of other things. Maybe selected districts in California qualify. That would be an excellent counterattack against the neo-religicons trying to subvert the Tea Party message, because it would do an end-run around all their flacks controlling the primary and caucus process. (Remember, that's how the religious conservatives grabbed the Republican Party in the first place.)

I think our opponents are missing the point that when the independents (as in Massachusetts) outnumber the main parties and pull equal numbers from either party in an election, an independent can win. So better to create a party for the independent and give him an intellectual message and a coherent platform to attract like-minded candidates and voters. Better than making him the odd man out in a party of losers.

P.S.: See http://messenger.yahoo.com/features/emoticons/ for explanation of that title.