Comments Posted By mannning
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Dear MR: The "shoe bomber" pled guilty up front with no trial.
How you can say that the undie bomber is doing anything beyond what the FBI let be known yesterday is quite beyond me. They said he was "talking". Big deal! You seem to presume that he is telling the truth, indeed, the whole truth, so all is well! I would not be so sure of a good outcome, when they first said he had given them his all in 55 minutes. Maybe in a few months we will know what is right.
Comment Posted By mannning On 3.02.2010 @ 18:23
Busboy is on the right track.
The phrasing of the questions and listing the possible answers very carefully, the necessity for choosing one answer out of several, and perhaps not the answer you would like to see, and the idea of answering in the most radical way available in order to make a (perhaps dubious to others)point, all can lead to a poll that is inherently flawed. So it is repeated ad nauseam!
Many Republicans, I think, would love to see Obama fully revealed as a non-citizen, a Muslim, and a Socialist and tossed out of office real soon now, though they know that there is no such proof available, and at least the smarter of them realize who would ascend to his office. Why, didn't Obama spend millions to clean up his record so that he couldn't be found out(so they believe)?
Of course, substantial government ownership of financial and sutomotive industries, and maybe the healthcare industry later, plus becoming a much deeper regulator of the rest of industry, and also having a rotating slush (oh, stimulus)fund of almost a trillion dollars under his control without any real restrictions or supervision to do his thing, isn't at all socialistic, now is it? Why it's all very temporary, isn't it? Sure it is! Who trusts Obama now?
Under the rather obvious and now quite apparent idea that Obama says one thing and does the reverse, when he said that he didn't want to run banks or auto makers, it must mean that he does---and now is, with a czar or two to do the real lifting. Clintonesque!
Then, too, there is that little matter of the national debt having been more than tripled since 2009, and some say quadrupled in reality--with a lot more to come!
But then, to run on about the real and devastating sins of Bow Obama in the office of President for only one year is just not...fair, is it? Can we withstand another oh so transparent year like this last one?
Well, he truly owns the problems now, all of them!
Comment Posted By mannning On 3.02.2010 @ 18:01
WHERE IS CLIMATE SCIENCE TODAY?
This is a fair-enough picture of the AGW debate today. One might also observe that:
1)Scientists that are far out on the limb of total belief in catastrophic AGW are not very likely to recant and suddenly become rational and effective partners for the rapidly growing number of rational scientists that;
2) Believe that the science is very far indeed from settled, and rank with defective approaches(such as models that will not predict in reverse, tampered models, refusal to show the base data used, glaringly imperfect understanding of the physics of the upper atmosphere and the role of clouds, and worldwide data that is tainted).
These scientists have been calling for an objective scientific program for years, hollering into the wilderness of AGW political posturing, settled science advocates, and fear-mongering pronouncements (such as from Algore).
Meanwhile, the AGW crowd receives the lion's share of funding, journal space, and acceptance, so long as they tow the mark. Even the current President supports AGW as if it is settled.
Scientific sanity will not return without a protracted battle.
Comment Posted By mannning On 2.02.2010 @ 13:37
THE PERSISTENT MYTH THAT PEOPLE DON'T VOTE THEIR INTERESTS
Playing elitists off against ordinary voters is indeed, a political club the Republicans use to good effect. And why not when the elitists can’t fathom the above statement? It is as alien a language as Farsi to them, this idea that people actually enjoy individual liberty and won’t trade it for what the liberals believe to be “economic security.”
Some day, someone will take on the task of identifying these so-called "elites" and their real preferences in life, government, and associations. Till then, I think that the concept is far too hazy, sort of like "the poor", which is quite largely a transient state in the US.
Tell me how to recognize an "elite" when I pass one on the street, meet one socially, or go hunting for one. Just who are they, anyway?
Are they the dreaded popcorn-idea-men intellectuals that Thomas Sowell writes about that want the power to make laws of their popcorn and to experiment on the public with all manner of provisions; are they the wealthy, the high Democratic officials, the professors, the politicos, liberals, Ivy League grads, kooks, some of all of this, or what?
No one seems to want to name names and give bios, so the elites can't be hunted down effectively, even with bird dogs.
It reminds me of Jeff Foxworthy's: "You may be a Redneck if...." joke list. You may be an elite if you graduated from Yale, are worth over a million inherited dollars, have the required liberal guilt syndrome, are a frustrated professor of something exotic, write books no one reads, and vote Democratic across the board. (or not!)
(Plea #2)
Comment Posted By mannning On 1.02.2010 @ 12:14
IN FOR A PENNY, IN FOR A POUND: MORE EYOREISM ON BROWN
Does government have a role in regulating the economy? Does it have a role in education, in protecting the environment, in making sure we don’t have poor people dropping dead on the street from hunger, in health care? The American people support government intervention in all of these areas and many more. Don’t believe me? Try eliminating the dept of education or the EPA. You will be very unpopular, very quickly.
The answers here are YES, but the next question is not posed. Which government should have these roles: federal, state, or local? The follow-on question:"To what degree?" is not posed, either. The principle of subsidiarity says that the roles should be greatest nearest the customer, and least at the top, perhaps totally restricted to no-string grants to poorer states and localities.
Comment Posted By mannning On 20.01.2010 @ 16:26
REPORTS ON THE DEATH OF CULTURE 11 HAVE BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED
It's a good quibble, busboy. Maybe I should throw in Allah as well, to further confuse things. Each of these views of God is rather unique at the core, but it would test my mind and soul to define all of the similarities and differences. So I will lump them together under the working title--"God", for now!
Comment Posted By mannning On 19.01.2010 @ 11:39
funny man:
Well, maybe I should confess to believing in the tooth fairy, Santa, Intelligent Design, UFO's, the Loch Ness Monster, and the predictions of Nostradamus, among my other beliefs, such as Christianity.
How in hell should I know what anyone else really, really believes in?
Comment Posted By mannning On 16.01.2010 @ 12:17
busboy:
Well, the idea that morality evolved over eons has been expressed by some as fact. Call it a supposition or a theory, it cannot be proven. That was my point.
Cicero was indeed a polytheist that seems to have settled in the end on a Supreme Creator (perhaps the God of Gods, I don't know!). He did serve as a definer of Natural Law, which was the opening argument. He also arrived at the two great commandments of (the eventual)Christianity more or less independently once he had settled on the SC, and his ideas were used by our Fathers in framing our Constitution, using very similar phrases. I do not believe I ever claimed Cicero to be Christian: he did live way long before Christ(106-43BC)after all.
What he also believed in was a Supreme Creator that set forth the rules of right conduct in society. He believed that the Creator's order of things was Natural Law. (Ref: Ebenstein, Great Political Thinkers, p.132-134)
Hence, my claim is that Natural Law by Cicero's definition, and the use of the NL by our Founders, contains a spiritual element, i.e. 'given by the Creator', and I interpret the Creator to be the same as 'The First Cause', 'The Supreme Architect of the Universe', or the 'God' of our Bible in the OT.
So that is how I see it. We are now approaching a "which came first argument, the chicken or the egg?" I vote for the Creator!
Comment Posted By mannning On 16.01.2010 @ 12:09
CT:
Of course one can adopt a morality one has learned to be beneficial to life. It is a product of human inheritance, history, education and experience. The origin of morality, however, is a very murky "fact" since no one has recorded its beginnings and its evolution adequately. It is merely a theory.
There is a First Cause for everything, including Natural Law, and morality, and its evolution or progression too, which is a decidedly spiritual and faith-based point of view.
I suppose that the First Cause idea is the cut, or at least a major cut, between belief and non-belief in God.
Comment Posted By mannning On 15.01.2010 @ 22:38
Natural Law.
Cicero, in his Republic, defined Natural Law as "true law".
True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions...He goes on to state that right reason comes from God, and then produces the First great two of the Ten Commandments as essential to understanding our obligations to God:
1) Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
2) Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.Recognizing and loving the Creator, God, as the giver of right reason seems to me to be quite spiritual, and it is the foundation for the prescription of morality that follows.
To get the full impact of this one should read both Republic and the proper sections of the Bible, but it is clear that the foundation for Natural Law is spiritual.
Comment Posted By mannning On 15.01.2010 @ 08:44
