The Eisenhower Warnings

Frequent Tizona Group commenter J.M. Heinrichs made the following comment in reference to a comment I made about Ron Paul being the only Team Elephant candidate who would take on the military-industrial complex.

People keep forgetting that Eisenhower issued two warnings, and the Mil-Industry one was the lessor.

That got me thinking. Everyone who knows anything about history is familiar with Eisenhower's admonition about the military-industrial complex. But another warning? I was intrigued. I googled Eisenhower's speech and found this.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.  (emphasis mine)

Does that sound familiar to you? It should.

The War on Man-made Global Warming (AGW) is just one example of what has become a symbiotic relationship between left-leaning politicians, left-leaning bureaucrats, and left-leaning academics. Science has been co-opted by this nefarious troika to the detriment of both science and humanity.

Government money is allotted to those scientists who come up with the "results" that government wants to see. Public policy is made on the basis of these "influenced" findings. And politicians leverage these "facts" to demogogue against those who question their agendas.

It's a pity that this Eisenhower warning wasn't given the same weight as the other, equally important warning. Only time will tell whether it will be the military-industrial complex that is our undoing or the scientific-technological elite.

Something different

Too often this blog is nothing but a giant bitch fest.  Bitch, bitch, bitch.  Moan.  Complain.  Grumble.  Kvetch.

Not today.  Today I wanted to share something I stumbled upon while reading Will Griggs's excellent article entitled Shadows and Foreshadowing at Nagasaki.  The "something" to which I refer is this paper written by scientists and engineers detailing their findings in the wake of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings of August 6th and 9th of 1945.  The paper was published on June 29th, 1946, so it contains none of the faux PC bullshit hand-wringing or political overtones we've come to associate with present-day reporting on that topic.

I highly recommend giving it a look.  I found it quite enlightening.

A shout out to yodaddy on his birthday

I just received a note from a fellow by the name of Dirt. It reads:

yodaddy,

I'd like to wish you a Happy Birthday. It's a privilege to send birthday wishes to the one person on Earth older than I.

--Dirt

Happy Birthday, yodaddy! You're living proof that only the good die young. *smile*

(Children like me are why tigers eat their young)

Have a great birthday and plan on having several more, please!

Another remake of an ageless prediction

Stop me if you've heard this before - the world is running out of oil. No, really! This time for sure! At least that's what the International Energy Agency is saying.

The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned.
[...]
Dr Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years – at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated.

Ah, yes! Nothing like a remake of a classic.

But Vulture! Aren't you concerned? I might be, except that, if one examines the history of these gloom and doom "We're out of oil! The sky is falling!" predictions, one tends to be a little more sanguine about them.

You see, I am a child of the 1970's. As such, I've seen the litany of doomsday predictions throughout the 70's, 80's, and 90's...and I've seen each one fall flat on its face. What's worse is that each "prediction" is nothing more than a recycling of the last one.

When projected crises failed to occur, doomsayers moved their predictions forward by a few years and published again in more visible and prestigious journals:

● In 1989, one expert forecast that world oil production would peak that very year and oil prices would reach $50 a barrel by 1994.

● In 1995, a respected geologist predicted in World Oil that petroleum production would peak in 1996, and after 1999 major increases in crude oil prices would have dire consequences. He warned that “[m]any of the world’s developed societies may look more like today’s Russia than the U.S.”

● A 1998 Scientific American article entitled “The End of Cheap Oil” predicted that world oil production would peak in 2002 and warned that “what our society does face, and soon, is the end of the abundant and cheap oil on which all industrial nations depend.”

Similar admonitions were published in the two most influential scientific journals in the world, Nature and Science. A 1998 article in Science was titled “The Next Oil Crisis Looms Large — and Perhaps Close.” A 1999 Nature article was subtitled “[A] permanent decline in global oil production rate is virtually certain to begin within 20 years.”

These predictions of doom and woe actually began WAAAAAY before the 70's.

O]il is a finite resource, and fear of running out has always haunted the petroleum industry. In the 1880's, John Archbold, who would succeed John D. Rockefeller as head of the Standard Oil Trust, began to sell his shares in the company because engineers told him that America's days as an oil producer were numbered.

After World War I, the American government's top oil expert predicted a coming "gasoline famine." One solution was to cobble together the three easternmost provinces of the defunct Ottoman Empire into a new country, called Iraq, believed to be rich in oil resources and safely under British control.

After World War II, fears of shortages spiked again, and the industry invented offshore drilling. (Today, 30 percent of America's crude oil comes from the Gulf of Mexico.) Reserves in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, discovered just before World War II, were rapidly developed.

So why are these predictions recycled again and again? Because the dishonest Big Media (the BM for short) won't call these asshats on their prior erroneous predictions. They simply parrot the doom and gloom because bad news sells. Had they any integrity whatsoever, they'd at least MENTION the history of laughable (and patently wrong) predictions along side the announcement of the newest one. But that runs the risk of individuals breaking from the collective and doesn't contribute to the coming One-World Socialist Utopia! We can't have that!

Since most people know only what they are told and have no working historical knowledge, they fall for this shinola time and time again.

Orwell was right - "He who controls the past, controls the future."

Vulture Droppings - the Team Donkey convention

I am implementing a semi-randomly-regular feature called Vulture Droppings. It will be a kind of "Random Thoughts" post in which I try to quickly summarize a particularly large event. Think of it being sort of like what a vulture leaves behind after devouring a horse. You don't get the whole horse, just highly processed leftovers.

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Ah, convention week. It sucked. No Chicago '68. No chants of "The whole world is watching!". No cops in riot gear beating on hippie scum. The convention ended up being a big effing kumbaya fest of Team Donkey solidarity and unity. *sigh*

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I'm particularly disappointed with HRC. Since when does Beelzebub play nice and act the part of the gracious loser? Man, am I sore about that! There's no stake through the heart. So why's she being such a good soldier for Team Donkey? Hopefully there's some nefarious plot afoot behind the scenes, or this could be the most boring election ever.

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Okay, so since it was a boring convention and not Chicago '68, there should have been relative good behavior on the part of the police, right? Nay, nay! Unlike Chicago '68, they weren't busting heads on hippies. They were arresting an ABC reporter for daring to film Democrat high rollers in a public place. And they were brutalizing and arresting Christian teenage girls for writing on the sidewalk in chalk.

William Grigg is right. Police no longer view their duty as protecting and serving the people of their jurisdiction. They view their duty as protecting and serving der Staat.

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You might ask yourself - what kind of President might Obama be? Team Donkey is touting him as the heir to FDR. According to Al Gorebells, he is like Abraham Lincoln. While those of us who understand what Lincoln was beyond the mythology taught in public schools have reason to be fearful of that assessment, the reality is worse. Obama is showing signs of being the next Woodrow Wilson, a totalitarian thug. A small example from convention week.

"We just want it to stop. It's not fair, it's blatant attacks against Barak Obama"

I'm listening to WGN, where Stanley Kurtz apparently just finished talking about his research. The first two callers - apparently triggered by the Obama campaign - both wanted Kurtz silenced.

I'm beyond disgust. I've been bitterly opposed to 'silence the critics' on blogs and in the media everywhere. This is not remotely the kind of politics that represents change that I want to be part of.

Okay, what's the big deal? This sort of thing happens all the time, right. The difference this time is that Obama's campaign actually orchestrated the shout down campaign. Check out the text of the alert here. Ah, censorship - the mark of the Marxist!

Those of you who are only aware of Woodrow Wilson through the mythology taught in the public schools would be surprised to know that this Progressive was, in fact, the first Fascist. He employed every one of the methods of consolidated State control employed by Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco. He employed thugs to silence his critics. He jailed those who wouldn't "get with the program". His "war socialism" (as he called it) was a massive campaign to indoctrinate the American people to the whole concept of the individual being nothing, the state being everything. Does that sound familiar? It should. "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato" ("Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State") was the foundation of Mussolini's Italian Fascism. Obama's already started down the path of silencing his critics, and he's not even in power yet.

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Usually, once a convention is completed, the candidate whose party convened receives a huge bounce in the polls. For Obama.....not so much. Zogby shows the race as a dead heat, not a good sign for Mr. Obama. Even the most optimistic poll (from Obama's perspective) only shows him with an 8 point lead. By contrast, Michael Dukakis came out of his convention in '88 with a 17 point lead. McCommie must be beside himself with joy. It doesn't look good for the cause of DoublePlusGood HopeChange.

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Perfect storm brewing?

Two seemingly unrelated news items appeared as links at WorldNetDaily.com the other day. The first dealt with the new, much ballyhooed, extensively reported-upon North American Army. What? You didn't hear about it? No kidding! That's because the news media was too busy chasing after Lindsay Lohan's slutty ass to be bothered with something that affects the lives and liberties of Americans.

In a ceremony that received virtually no attention in the American media, the United States and Canada signed a military agreement Feb. 14 allowing the armed forces from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a domestic civil emergency, even one that does not involve a cross-border crisis. (emphasis mine)

Isn't that special? So......let me get this straight. We can call in the Canucks any time we want to quash a "domestic civil emergency"? And we can do this even if Canada isn't "threatened" by said "emergency"? O-k-a-y.

It couldn't get any better than THAT, could it? Read this -- and try to keep your head from exploding.

The agreement, defined as a Civil Assistance Plan, was not submitted to Congress for approval, nor did Congress pass any law or treaty specifically authorizing this military agreement to combine the operations of the armed forces of the United States and Canada in the event of a wide range of domestic civil disturbances ranging from violent storms, to health epidemics, to civil riots or terrorist attacks. (emphasis mine)

Okay, you're telling me that this "plan" was carried out without so much as a peep from our elected representatives? And doesn't this agreement fall into the category of a treaty, which, if I remember my 12th grade Civics, HAS TO BE RATIFIED BY THE SENATE? Once again, the Constitution is toilet paper to our elitist leaders.

And just what might this little "Army of North America" be used for? Maybe to keep uppity states like Montana in line.

Montana officials are warning that if the Supreme Court rules in the D.C. gun ban case that the right to keep and bear arms protects only state-run militias like the National Guard, then the federal government will have breached Montana's statehood contract.
...

The dispute goes back more than a century. Back in 1889, the settlers of the Montana territory struck a deal with the federal government: They agreed to join the union, and the government agreed that individuals had the right to bear arms.

That has worked fine for the past 118 years, but the Supreme Court is expected next month to hear oral argument in District of Columbia v. Heller, the appeal of a federal court decision striking down the District's gun-ownership ban on Second Amendment grounds.

You may recall that just last month (as reported by me here) Traitor-in-Chief Bush's administration filed an Amicus brief for this case ON BEHALF of Federal gun control. In other words, Bush is thumbing his nose at us all, particularly Montanans.

But Montana can't secede! After all, didn't the tyrant Abe Lincoln see to that once and for all? There'd have to be military action against Montana, in the Lincoln tradition. But surely the American military would NEVER attack Montana now, not with prima facie evidence that they are in the right here. The Canadians..........who knows? It would certainly qualify as a "domestic crisis", would it not?

I'm just sayin'............

Black Democratic voters = Conservative Republican voters

For years the lament in the black community has been that the Democrats take their votes for granted. Blacks vote overwhelmingly Democrat (over 90% in most elections), but are treated like red-headed stepchildren by Democrats. Oh sure, Democrats pay lip service to the needs of the black community. But it's all hot air. And why should Democrats exert themselves to actually represent the blacks? The conventional wisdom is: where else are they going to go? They're certainly NOT going to vote Republican!

So blacks piss and moan and grumble and groan about the way they're disrespected and taken for granted by their party of choice. But nothing is ever going to change so long as they continue to vote in this monolithic style. Democrats have no incentive to do anything for blacks until they feel that their votes are in jeopardy.

The situation with Team Elephant is exactly the same. The Republican establishment takes the Conservative vote for granted. Conservatives are treated like the red-headed stepchildren of the party. Their desires are ignored, dismissed -- even RIDICULED -- by the party aparatchiks. They are basically told to sit down and shut up. And why can the Rockafellerites get away with this? Where else are they (the conservatives) going to go? They're certainly NOT going to vote Democrat!

Can you see where I'm going with this?

I got off of the red-headed stepchild train a long time ago. The only reason I'm a registered Republican is so that I can vote in the primaries in my home state. I left the party in terms of my loyalties 4 years ago, and, barring some miraculous return to the ideals of our founding fathers (and Ron Paul), won't ever identify myself with that party again.

If you count yourself as a political conservative or libertarian, DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN in the national elections this Fall. Vote Libertarian. Vote Constitution Party. Hell, vote for Mickey Mouse. The only way to reclaim the Republican party is through tough love. And, if the party is beyond reclamation, then so be it -- we align ourselves with a third party and do everything within our power to make it into something.

Lost in the history books is the fact that the Republican party is only a little more than 150 years old. So....who was the opposition party to the Democrats prior to that? The Whigs. Whatever happened to the Whigs? The Whigs disappeared from the American landscape when a third party, the Republican party, came onto the scene as the answer to a split within the Whigs over important issues of that day. Oh, that can't happen NOW, you say. The hell it can't! ANYTHING is possible.

Stop giving away your vote to ingrates who, in their heart-of-hearts, HATE the things you hold dear.

Presidents Day

For President's Day, AOL posted the results of a poll to select "The Top 10 U.S. Presidents". There were some surprises, to be sure. George W. Bush ranked 10th. GW "Chimpy" Bush, 10th! Uh...WTF? Who did they poll for this list - a Toby Keith concert?

There were two presidents whose ratings were, to me, insultingly low. Thomas Jefferson at 7th? George Washington at 5th? W-T-F?!?!?!? How about these two are 1st (Washington) and 3rd (Jefferson) on MY list of best presidents. Again...which historical illiterates made these choices?

Bill Clinton ranked 6th. Cut through the hype from the left and the right, and Bill Clinton was a mediocrity as president, as were 8th ranked Harry Truman, 9th ranked Teddy Roosevelt, and 4th ranked John Kennedy.

FDR ranked 3rd. Franklin f'in Roosevelt! FDR did more to open the door for the unconstitutional intrusions of the federal government into every aspect of American life and did more to foment socialism in this nation than any president other than LBJ. FDR's policies EXTENDED the Great Depression, contrary to the popular mythology that FDR saved America from it. FDR sux.

2nd ranked was Ronald Reagan. Good choice. He's my 2nd choice as well. He didn't accomplish everything he set out to do. He made some terrible judicial appointments. But, on the plus side, he undid 17 years worth of national decline resulting from the policies of LBJ-Nixon-Ford-Carter (particularly Carter) and saved us from the ruination that would have been a 2nd Carter administration. He faced down and ultimate brought down the Soviet Union. And he REALLY pissed off the far Left, which makes the Vulture smile like nothing else. In fact, that's the ONLY thing I like about Bush -- he makes the far Left go bananas.

But the choice for 1st rank made my head explode. It shouldn't have; I should have absolutely expected it. There is a mythology in this country that Abraham Lincoln was a great man. The Emancipator. The man who Saved The Union. Hell, it's right there in the history books, so it must be true, right?

Rather than go on a 800-word rant here, let me summarize the reasons Why Abraham Lincoln Is the 3rd Worst President (behind Carter and LBJ):

• Habitually exceeded his Constitutional authority (suspension of Habeas Corpus, attempt to jail the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court)
• Coerced Maryland at bayonet point to remain with the Union during the war (against the will of its citizens, who wished to join the Confederacy) and kept a military blockade on the Port of Baltimore to "ensure cooperation"
• Fought an unconstitutional war to force the Confederate States to return to the Union
• Was a virulent racist who believed that Blacks were little more than animals

C'mon, people! Read a book once in a while. Look beyond the "approved" reading and see what else is out there. You might learn something!

At least Woodrow Wilson (the 4th worst president and the father of "nation-building war" and the League of Nations) didn't make the list.

Nate is a genius

Nate, AKA Der Hausfrauhrer, has a blog called The Pan Galactic Blogger Blaster. Nate is Southern - REALLY Southern, "The South shall rise again!" Southern. One of his favorite post topics is ATF - not the federal agency, but rather the alcohol he's drinkin', the seegar he's smokin', and the weapon he's firin'.

And there's a brain along with all of that "Southern". It turns out that Nate's a genius.

You see, in the endless debate of "God or Science", the one argument I'd never heard is the one made by Nate last week in his blog. There's really no summarizing it, and I can't do it justice with snippets, so here's the whole thing, intact. Well done, Nate!

History vs. Science

Given that History and Science are both bodies of knowledge... and both are systems for verifying knowledge... it seems a bit odd that I would choose to juxtapose them so. After all...we're supposed to pit Theism and Science against each other aren't we?

This matchup seems far more logical to me...as the two are in many ways mirror images of each other. Science is the study of what is real. History is the study of what has happened. Again...the matchup doesn't seem natural. After all... what's happened is obviously real...isn't it?

See there-in we have the rub.

The processes of historical investigation are tried and true. They are just as self-correcting as science.

But what can science say about history?

Not a lot really. We can't really experiment to determine if Caesar crossed the Rubicon. In fact...science is really pretty useless for determining anything that may have happened. See science hamstrung by its "repeatability" requirement. Which is odd for something designed to study nature...since nature isn't necessarily prone to performing on demand.

History says...This Happened!

Science says...This couldn't have happened because I don't understand it and can't make it happen again.

History says...Science is irrelevant.

The trouble here is scientists. They have reached the point where they no longer acknowledge that there are things they don't understand. Rather than simply saying, "we don't understand" they claim that the offending phenomena is simply impossible.

History says that Jesus Christ was Crucified and Resurrected. Science doesn't understand it...so it hisses from a safe distance.

3000 years ago we were wise enough to realize that we didn't know everything...

Today...we have shiny trinkets and machines that go "PING!" but we're fools. We're stupid enough to believe that if we don't understand something...it must not be possible.

I can only applaud. Again, well done, Nate!