Save The Planet…Kill Yourself

Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth – Alan Weisman – (Little Brown Books)

I have to be brutally honest; I would HATE to be Alan Weisman and to have such a bleak outlook on life that you end up loathing not only yourself, but every other human on the planet so much that you advocate the elimination of the human species in a misguided effort to “save” the planet.

Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth is Weisman’s follow up to the book A World Without Us a pleasant little tale that would have the world heal and replenish itself, once relieved of the burden of human existence. Like I said, pleasant stuff. Apparently uncomprehending exactly how human biology works; Weisman thinks that human’s could be re-introduced to the newly healed and revived planet.

Weisman’s anti-human screed is certainly not new, he merely picks up where the cult of Paul Erlich left off with his late 1960s doomsday predictions of population out of control and the Earth sucked dry. Weisman is lauded for his “journalistic” approach by asking a series of questions on the subject of a sustainable future. He visits 21 countries around the globe to try to get a handle on the question of what is an acceptable way to find and attain a sustainable population.

Like so much of the biased media, Weisman funnels everything through a jaundiced prism of his assumptions about the planet. He takes a statistic like the claim of a billion people going hungry and blames it on the assumption that it is caused by overpopulation and a lack of capacity to grow food to sustain the population. He never bothers to look at the question from the perspective of not a lack of capacity, but one of delivery. Is it a lack of food or the lack of a viable/reliable delivery mechanism?

I remember vividly stories of Bob Geldof and Live Aid rockers buying tens of thousands of pounds of food to aid the hungry; that ended up rotting on docks due to the lack of a system to deliver the food to those in need. Again is the question capacity or delivery?

The problem for Weisman, Erlich and their ilk is that they put themselves on the record, predicting calamitous outcomes and the always end up being wrong. Yes. ALWAYS WRONG! In the end the arguments these people make in favor of their position spiral downward into a cascade of ridiculous, disgusting or down right despicable conclusions. Weisman writes about a “distinguished” Japanese economist who claimed that a post WWII  baby boom was halted by legalizing abortion to avoid starvation and – “can actually grow happier as it’s now shrinking numbers approach a more sustainable size” Hey, get happy, kill a baby! Absolutely despicable, at least to normal people.

Weisman also seems obsessed with being able to control the population; not just the overall head count, but the ability to maintain order and control people. Which is really what is at the root of twisted liberalism; enacting controls on the masses. It is striking that rather than seeking solutions to the problems, real or perceived, Weisman seek to eliminate the “problem” rather than find the solution.

The Two Faces of Bill Ayers

Public Enemy – Confessions of an American Dissident – Bill Ayers (Beacon Books)

I have always believed that words mean something. While many people try to twist words to accommodate their need, perpetually living in a world of gray areas, more often than not, things really are black and white. I find that those who live in the world of academia have developed a highly honed craft at twisting words.

It is from that perspective that I approached the continuing saga of Bill Ayers, Public Enemy – Confessions of an American Dissident the follow up to Fugitive Days, the tale of his days in the terrorist group the Weather Underground. As I read Ayers account of being thrust back into the public spotlight during the 2008 Presidential election I was torn between the natural inclination of turning a light on this cock roach to watch him scamper or if the better solution would be to ignore him and damn him to the specter of anonymity. Given the outsized self-importance that so many 60s radicals bestow upon themselves, the later may be the worse punishment.

While Ayers, along with his co-conspirator/wife Bernadine Dorhn, lays claim a leadership role in the Weather Underground, he denies any responsibility for their actions, which included bombing the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and other locales that left three dead. Leader. “A guiding or directing head, as of an army, movement of political group.”* If he truly was a leader of the Weather Underground, then he is ultimately responsible for the actions of the group and the outcome of those actions; including the death of his compatriots who blew themselves up when a bomb they were building detonated. Responsibility is not something Ayers can wish away with a rhetorical flourish.
A dissident is defined as “one who disagrees, especially one who disagrees with the government.”* While I regularly disagree with the government, notably with the failing leadership of Barack Obama, I, unlike Ayers and the Weather Underground, have never declared war and taken up arms (bombs) against the government.

It is the duplicity of Ayers point of view, where he tries mightily to have it both ways that makes the story he tells here fall completely apart. While he may thrive in a suspended reality, for most, including me, it’s a non-starter.

*Dictionary.com

Bob Costas: The Patron Saint of the Self Righteous

Once again the arrogant, sanctimonious, midget sportscaster Bob Costas has chosen the halftime show of NBC’s Sunday Night Football to parade his ignorance. Costas took the opportunity to use his sportscasting perch to add his voice to the chorus of the politically correct, which includes our equally ignorant President, sounding off on the Washington Redskins team name.

Costas sounded off with the following comment; "Ask yourself what the equivalent would be, if directed [at] African-Americans. Hispanics. Asians. Or members of any other ethnic group. When considered that way, 'Redskins' can’t possibly honor a heritage, or a noble character trait, nor can it possibly be considered a neutral term. It is an insult, a slur, no matter how benign the present-day intent."

Apparently it’s an insult, because Tiny Bob says it’s an insult. This despite the fact that national polls of Native Americans find that 90% don’t find the Redskins name insulting. A full 79% of all Americans disagree with Costas and Obama on this issue. How can that possibly be?! He’s Bob Costas, he’s clearly smarter than the average Joe and if he says you should be offended by it, then you darn well better start getting offended.

Maybe if Tiny Bob, the patron saint of the self-righteous, bothered to take a look at the history of the Redskins name he would have learned that when the team departed Boston, where they were known as the Braves, they changed their name as a way to honor their head coach at the time, who along with four players on the team, were all native Americans. The Redskins name was never considered anything but a badge of honor.

Tiny Bob needs to stick to sports, because no one really cares what his thoughts are outside that realm, because he really isn’t has smart has he thinks he is!

 

 

  

Ron Paul: Capitalist

The School Revolution: A New Answer for Our Broken Education System – Ron Paul (Grand Central Publishing)

I remember very clearly the time I took something called the World’s Smallest Political Quiz. Ten questions total; five on personal issues and five on economic issues. Answering the questions online, I was taken to a graph that was divided into quadrants and that dropped me firmly into the heart of the libertarian section. For a person who believes in freedom, personal responsibility and small government it made perfect sense to me.

It also made perfect sense that I was drawn to then Texas Congressman, Ron Paul. I had the opportunity to interview Paul in the days before he ran for President and found his thoughts on limited government lined up well with my own. Paul is an accomplished, bestselling author and in this new effort, The School Revolution: A New Answer for Our Broken Education System he offers up his fix for the failing public U.S. education system.

Paul writes with a very matter-of-fact style as he dissects the current state of the centralized education system. Along the way Paul delivers a historical take on things through the lens of his own education. He also indicts the system we are saddled with for funding the education system. He posits the solution that we must somehow put the funding of education back into the hands of parents as educational decision makers.

I can hear the unholy howls of public education advocates and teachers union types in response to Paul’s “answer.” Like anything else, including healthcare, I favor putting the decision making power back into the hands of the individual. I am not certain that we could ever effectuate the wholesale change that Paul advocates. In this day and age of social engineering of liberals that has lead to the destruction of the family unit I can’t imagine what the country would look like if every so-called parent; just because you’ve been part of the process of having a child, doesn’t make you a parent, were to determine the education process for their children.

It does however make perfect sense that those parents who are capable of making educational decisions on behalf of their offspring, should be afforded the opportunity to opt out of the government education system and take their dollars with them to the alternative choices they make. This simple step will inject competition into the education system. Where there is competition, it naturally follows, there is the pursuit of excellence and higher standards. If the government schools improve, they can compete on equal footing for parent’s education dollars.

Despite agreeing with Congressman Paul on the personal freedom side, I could never bring myself to support his presidential runs, because his supposed support for smaller government rang hollow when he larded his districts pork barrel projects into house spending bills and sought cover by voting against bills that he knew would pass. In similar fashion, Paul uses this book to not only offer up an education solution, but to hawk his online education curriculum. While I am a capitalist and completely understand Paul’s goals, there’s just something a bit smarmy about the approach.

Jack Lew...Dumb as a Box of Rocks!

Obama administration Treasury Secretary Jack Lew got his ass handed to him during an appearance with Chris Wallace on Fox New Sunday. The verbal sparring was so one sided in Wallace's favor that Lew ends up sounding a dumb as a box of rocks. Enjoy

A Chronicle of Toppling the Taliban

The Last Warlord: The Life and Legend of Dostum, the Afghan Warrior Who Led US Special Forces to Topple the Taliban Regime – Brian Glyn Williams, PhD (Chicago Review Press)

Tales of military victory often center around public displays of heavy machinery and legends surrounding high technology. In reality it is more often than not it is the warrior that gets the short end of the story, while playing the major role.

Such is the case in the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan; where a relatively small number of U.S. Special Forces soldiers, somewhere around three or four hundred, played an instrumental role in toppling the hard line regime. Those highly trained forces were aided, guided and abetted by powerful Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum and his band of warriors.

It is the tale of the strongman Dostum (pronounced dohs-tuum) that is detailed in Brian Glyn Williams, PhD, latest book The Last Warlord: The Life and Legend of Dostum, the Afghan Warrior Who Led US Special Forces to Topple the Taliban Regime. Williams, a professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, had an amazing level of access to Dostum, his family and those that work and travel in the same circles with him.

 

It is from that insider point of view that Williams delivers a chillingly detailed chronicle of the role Dostum played in the 2001 defeat of the Taliban. This story often runs contrary to that espoused by the mainstream media who often portray Dostum as a brutal, murderous thug, they claim is responsible for the senseless slaughter of Taliban prisoners.

Williams portrait is one of a very hard man, who grew into power in a desperate time and location, with Soviet military forces battling for control of Afghanistan.  By the mid-1980s the forces under Dostum’s command had grown to a militia of 20,000 strong. The strongman’s forces would play a critical role in defeating the forces arrayed against them in the north on numerous occasions; not only the Soviets, but also the Mujahadeen and later the Taliban.

Instead of understanding the role Dostum and his men played in defeating the Taliban, the U.S. chose to marginalize him due to the public perception of his brutality. This approach seems to once again underestimate the role that these often brutal warlords play in a land that is the equivalent to the wild west on steroids. As the U.S. forces continue to downsize and withdraw, Williams makes it clear that Dostum and his Northern Alliance allies are gearing up for battle with a resurgent Taliban force.

Williams offers an intimate portrait not only of the warrior, but of the Afghan nation that so many have tried and failed to get their arms around.

 

Government Shutdown…grab a six pack and relax!

As the mainstream media and the uninformed populace that they under serve continue to gnash their teeth over the so-called government shut down, I can’t help but hear the classic line from radio reporter Herbert Morrison’s broadcast of the Hindenburg crash, “oh the humanity.”

Yes…how will we ever muddle through without access to the webcam of the cute little pandas at the National Zoo? It will be a true struggle for train nerds to get by, without a visit to the Steamtown National Train Museum in Scranton, PA. Not to mention that boating and recreation will apparently come to a complete halt in Harry Reid’s Nevada, with the lockdown of Lake Mead National Park. Sorry I must have missed that part of the Constitution where our Founding Father’s covered the forced housing of wildlife.

 

I love the now all too common phrases that private sector businesses use with more and more regularity, things like;  “the new normal” “wearing multiple hats” and my personal favorite “do more with less”. I don’t know about things where you work, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that there isn’t one “non-essential” worker where I work because we fully embrace not only the multiple hats concept, but the doing more with less as well.

If so many of the folks employed by the Federal Government are “non-essential” then way haven’t we released them to pursue their higher purpose? Not surprisingly the masters of spin in the Democrat party have quickly realized the error of their ways and re-labeled these folks furloughed and non-furloughed workers.

To borrow a bit of classic advice from the late Democrat, Mayor of Buffalo, New York, Jimmy Griffin during a snow storm “grab a six-pack, sit back, relax and we’ll make it through.”