So very many Christians, especially the Evangelical sects, believe that we are in the End Days and that the Rapture will soon come about. They await being lifted up into Heaven by their Lord, Jesus with anticipation and joy.

What if they’re waiting in vain? Not because they were wrong in their beliefs and that the Rapture would never happen, but because it had already happened and they weren’t number among the tiny handful of people on Earth who weren’t so steeped in sin as to be disqualified and doomed to eternal damnation.

Really! Look at the full criteria for boarding that final flight. What are we really talking about? 50 people? 40 people? 30 people? 20 people? Perhaps as few as 10 rising up in salvation into the heavens? Who’d notice it or believe the accounts of anyone who did?

Yeah, that’d be a pisser wouldn’t it?

They can try to change the rules!

Since there’s little thought that Pelosi can get enough support to win a House floor vote on the Senate’s version of ObamaCare, Pelosi has approached her staunch ally and sycophant, Chairwoman of the House Rules Committee Louise Slaughter (D-NY) to have to rules changed so that she can pass the bill without it being voted upon.

Would House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow House Democratic leaders try to cram the Senate version of Obamacare through the House without actually having a recorded vote on the bill?

Not only is the answer yes, they would, they have figured out a way to do it, according to National Journal’s Congress Daily:

“House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday.

“Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version.

“Slaughter has not taken the plan to Speaker Pelosi as Democrats await CBO scores on the corrections bill. ‘Once the CBO gives us the score, we’ll spring right on it,’ she said.”

Each bill that comes before the House for a vote on final passage must be given a rule that determines things like whether the minority would be able to offer amendments to it from the floor.

In the Slaughter Solution, the rule would declare that the House “deems” the Senate version of Obamacare to have been passed by the House. House members would still have to vote on whether to accept the rule, but they would then be able to say they only voted for a rule, not for the bill itself.

– Mark Tapscott
Washington Examiner

Pelosi and her cabal of treasonous Liberals will “deem” the Senate’s ObamaCare bill to have passed? If they’re fool enough to do this, then they will from that point forward no longer be able to govern the American people assuming that they’re allowed to continue to try to do so.

Governments have toppled and more than one would-be tyrant has been exterminated for less egregious seeming violations of countries’ constitutions, charters, and laws.

Don’t think it couldn’t happen in America as well. And don’t for a minute believe that any American would mourn these filth’s deaths. We would, however, hate the disruption to our lives and the potential fallout from such a course of events.  So it would be better were this to be avoided.

And why do Obama, Pelosi, Slaughter, and their ilk want to pass the Senate’s version of ObamaCare without a vote and, instead, use this corruption of the rules to enable a two-for-one deal on it where the Representatives can merely vote on accepting the rule instead of actually voting on the bill? It is because this is the only way that the House Speaker has any real hope of getting the 216 votes she needs to get the Senate bill through the House.

No House Democrat who’s defending his or her seat in the November 2010 Congressional mid-term elections wants to risk voting in favor of the Senate’s bill and then trusting to the planned reconciliation process to make it more palatable. They know that, if they do so directly, their constituents will most likely remove them from office. In other words, they know that the majority of we, the People do not want this legislation.

Obama, Pelosi, Slaughter, and their toadies just hop that they can convince these Congressmen that they can hide behind this piece of sophistry and say that they only voted for a rule, not for the bill itself.

Sadly, there are no legal means by which we can stop this from happening. It will, one way or another, be long over before the November elections and Pelosi and her supporters in the House have already proven that they will not listen to will of the People in this or any other matter, so phone calls, emails, and letters would be a fruitless waste of time and energy.

All that we can legally do is to enact our retribution upon them in the upcoming elections. So keep close track of who voted in favor of the Slaughter Solution and make sure that they and theirs reap the “rewards” of their choice.

Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down.

Many Americans claim to believe that the answer to all these questions is yes, all men are equal.

Indeed, answer is contained within the single most quoted line from our Declaration of Independence and has been used many times as a rationale for changing our nation’s laws.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

The very wording of this declaration, combined with what we know of the Founding Fathers’ theologies and philosophies, sets forth the inherent equality of all of Man as a matter of Natural Law.

But, if this is case, one would be forced to accept the bad along with good. Whether it is merely people’s belief that all men are inherently equal or a fact of Natural Law that they are, in fact, equal in both propensity for nobility and for ignominy then one should expect roughly similar results and responses any stimulus that is applied to a group people, irrespective of their race, ethnicity, or creed.

That being the case, why do so many people in America believe that “domestic aid” programs will achieve any better results than the bulk of both private (NGO) and governmental foreign aid programs have achieved in the many decades of their existence?

Foreign Aid Failure

Truly, if the aim of aid was and is to better the lot in life of its recipients, then the trillions of dollars Americans have given in aid to the impoverished of countless nations has been largely a failure. With the fewest of exceptions it has not achieved that goal. It may have kept a great many from dying but it has not let them live, but merely to exist dependent upon the largess of Americans.

Does anyone reading this post have an example of a circumstance when foreign aid has had a long-term positive effect that resulted in the recipients no longer needing the aid?

In some cases, such as AIDS relief in Uganda, foreign aid actually made things far worse. Foreign aid, focused on treatment instead of prevention and containment has actually ended up killing more people than would have died without it.

Domestic Corollary

There are, of course, obvious direct corollaries between foreign aid and domestic social programs, both in methodology and in efficacy. This stands to reason; people in America who are interested in such things have found a singular premise and formula for providing aid to the poor, and have applied it to both foreign and domestic targets.

Welfare, Medicaid, SCHIP, WIC, Food Stamps, and a plethora of other “Social Programs” are essentially domestic variations of the same programs we deploy as part of foreign aid. They are all based solely upon keeping people alive and do not make provisions for actually improving the recipients’ situation.

American Exceptionalism

Do people truly believe that our domestic aid programs will have  different and better outcomes than our foreign aid programs have had? Wouldn’t such a belief just be an example of the philosophy of American Exceptionalism – something which so many of the people who favor the continuance of these programs describe as self-serving, jingoistic, and based upon a myth?

Aside from some thought or belief that America’s poor are somehow different and better than the poor of other countries, how can people expect subsistence aid to have any long-term positive effect and remediation of the recipients’ situations when it has failed to do  so in other  countries time after time?

Conclusion & Opinion

I’m left with having to choose between two disparate conclusions – either the proponents and supporters of America’s various subsidies for the poor base their support on something other than actually improving the lives and situations of those poor, or the proponents and supporters of America’s various subsidies for the poor believe in American Exceptionalism and, therefor, do not believe that a man is man and that all men were created equal.

Of course, as the above image displays, Al Gore hopefully wouldn’t be the first choice by the Warmists for a PETA style AGW poster or billboard.

One of the prevailing arguments that atheists could, in fact, be moral was that morality can stem from a culture and/or society instead of from a Divine source. This is certainly a seductive argument; who, after all, doesn’t think their society is source of what is Right and Good?

There is a serious problem with that belief though as the philosopher and theologian, Francis A. Schaeffer so very eloquently pointed out:

Here is one simple but profound rule: If there is no absolute by which to judge society, society is absolute.

– Francis A. Schaeffer
How Should We Then Live? p. 224

Think on that for a moment for it is certainly true. In the absence of an absolute – inherently external – source for- and code of morality, a society is absolute in and of itself and the morality of its doctrines, policies, and actions could not be judged.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that this argument of morality stemming from society is a fantasy with no grounding in reality and it never could have any grounding in reality as long as mankind is made up of separate and heterogeneous cultures and societies.

What is sad and more than a little dangerous is that there are apparently a sizable number who either believe this or, at least, are willing to use the idea to rationalize their positions on morality.

Fortunately others have continued where NASA left off:

Spiders On Drugs – A Tangled Web Indeed

H/T to SwittersB & Fly Fishing for finding this great piece on YouTube.

Below is one of the few anatomical sketches of a representative member of the species:

Anatomical Sketch of Homo Urbanensis Thugii

NOTE: There is some debate among biologists and zoologists over the proper taxonomic classification of Urbanensis Thuggii; one school of thought places them as a subspecies of Man, hence Homo, while the other places them as a related species of hominid and classifies them as Hominidae Urbanensis Thugii.

Indeed, if Calvin & Hobbes were to mimic reality, it was foredoomed that someday Calvin would outgrow his tigerish playmate and Hobbes would cease to exist except as occasionally dredged up memory of Calvin’s lost childhood.

The Last Calvin & Hobbes Cartoon?

There is a certain sadness that this happens at all. There is a far greater sadness in how young many children are these days when it happens.

That it happens, however, all too often because parents and teachers find the often unfocused energies and fantasies of their children to be too difficult or too inconvenient to deal with causes me far more anger than sadness – both at the proximate perpetrators and at our society, which makes their actions seemingly logical and for the children’s benefit.

~*~

NOTE: The above cartoon wasn’t actually the last Calvin & Hobbes cartoon. Bill Watterson ended the series on December 31, 1995, on a much more hopeful and upbeat note. It ended with Calvin and Hobbes hopping on a sled and going exploring.

In truth, it’s an easy bit of rhetoric for the Liberal politicians, power brokers, and their MSM operatives such as Olbermann and Maddow, to use against the Tea Parties, since it resonates with both a large segment of the Black population and Leftist Whites as well.

It’s a simple fact that, when you’re a Liberal who is supporting America’s First Black President, who you’ve decided cannot be allowed to fail, a crowd of angry White Americans protesting his policies and agenda is both a danger and an opportunity.

After the Internet allowed the Tea Parties and alternate or citizens’ journalism outlets to largely refute the Liberals’ and their MSM operatives original tactic of only depicting and reporting upon the “lunatic fringe” of the protesters at the various rallies the Liberals fell back on a simple statement to continue to paint the Tea Parties as racists:

You never see Blacks at the Tea Party protests and rallies; the Tea Party is all White and, therefor, must be racist. No matter what the Tea Partiers are saying, it’s really all about race.

This is, admittedly, a somewhat alluring argument. The Tea Parties, after all, do seem to be a White phenomenon; one rarely, if ever, sees a Black among the crowds shown during coverage of the events. This means it’s certainly reasonable to question why there is such a seeming racial disparity between Blacks and Whites in the Tea Parties.

Is this racial disparity evidence of the racism of the Tea Party supporters or is this disparity caused by factors other than racism, prejudice, and animosity?

Statistical Data On The Tea Party

There’s currently very little demographic and/or statistical data available on the Tea Party movement and it’s supporters, but CNN and Opinion Research did recently perform a poll of the Tea Party movement and its supporters.

Opinion Research conducted interviews by telephone with 1,023 adult Americans, including 954 registered voters on February 12-15, 2010. They claim the margin of sampling error for results based on the total sample is +/-  3% overall.

Population and Party

Analysis of what percentage of Tea Party supporters should be Blacks based upon US racial demographics and political affiliation:

1. Blacks are 12% of the total US Population
2. Blacks are 80% likely to support Democratic Candidates

It’s a simple equation.  12% of population – 80% opposing ideology = 2.4% of Blacks should support the Tea Party on the basis of simple population and political viewpoint. CNN’s poll showed 2.0% of the self-identified Tea Party supporters were Black. Given the small sample size, that’s a within the realm of probable overall statistical error and only 1% above Opinion Research’s stated sampling error rate.

Furthermore, CNN’s poll had a total of 11% Black respondents, not 12%. That changes the baseline demographic projection to 2.2%, and an even closer match.

Economics And Income Bracket

1. 66% of Tea Party supporters make in excess of $50K per year
2. 32% of Blacks make in excess of $50K per year

Assuming that there is an economic component to support of the Tea Party movement – an unproven but seductive supposition,  then Blacks would be roughly 50% less likely to be among them.

Urban vs. Non-Metropolitan

1. 91% of Tea Party supporters are Suburban or Rural dwellers
2. 58% of Blacks are Urban dwellers

Assuming that there’s a direct correlation between living in suburban or rural communities and supporting the Tea Party movement – again an unproven but seductive supposition, only 42% of Blacks would be in a similar situation as the bulk of those supporters.

Correlating The Data

Simply put, the available data-set isn’t granular enough to allow one to properly correlate its various parts. The is no way to determine how to weight each individual factor, nor were notations on possible overlap of factors being present, e.g., what percentage of the rural Blacks make less than $50K per year or voted for Democratic candidates respectively.

One can, however, state that Blacks are a minority population who: tend to vote for politicians that are not favored by the Tea Party supporters; are largely not within the same economic strata of the Tea Party supporters; and who do not live in the same sorts of areas of America as the Tea Party supporters.

The Unquantifiable Factors

Of course the above data and limited analysis was only that which has been quantified by the CNN / Opinion Research poll on the Tea Party supporters. It did not even attempt to factor in various unquantified – and likely unquantifiable – factors that might affect the racial demographics of the Tea Parties and their supporters.

Some of those unquantifiable factors include:

1. The inherited fear and resentment of Whites that many Blacks were taught as children -  A large group of angry Whites does seem an unlikely group for many Blacks to feel comfortable going near, much less joining. Some lamentable portions of American history would certainly support such an avoidance strategy.
2. The converse of above – Many Tea Party supporters might feel an initial distrust towards any Black approaching them. They have, after all, been labeled as racists by the MSM and 95%+ of the record number of Black voters did support Obama in 2008.
3. Racial Solidarity – There is an undisputed tendency for Blacks to avoid criticizing other Blacks in the public sphere unless that Black is seen as a sell-out, race traitor, or “Uncle Tom.”
4. Obama’s Symbolism – Many Blacks see Obama and his election as POTUS as an important symbol, both for themselves and for their children who are in desperate need of Black male role-models. For some unknown number of them it was the primary reason for their voting for him in 2008.  It’s highly unlikely that they’d protest against him without dramatic and overwhelming provocation.
5. The Smear Campaign – It quite possible – probable even – that many Blacks believe that the Tea Parties and their supporters are racists who are protesting against the current administration because President Obama self-identifies as Black. If so, it’d be close to inconceivable that Blacks would want to associate themselves with them even if they agreed with some of the Tea Parties’ voiced complaints.

I’m fairly sure that every one of the above factors, plus a great number more that I didn’t list, negatively impact the number of Blacks that support the Tea Party movement. I can’t, however, make any judgment as to how much they affect it.

Conclusion And Opinion

As far as I’m concerned the most compelling part of the data is the racial population demographics combined with the longitudinal support of Black for Democrats, a brand of politician largely unfavored by the Tea Parties and their supporters. Those numbers alone put Opinion Research’s finding of 2% of  Tea Party supporters being Black as actually being very close to the statistically predicted and expected number.

All the other quantifiable data that the Opinion Research poll provided was either non-informative  – e.g., education levels, which are comparable between Blacks and Tea Party supporters – or served to further point out the dissimilarity between the lifestyles, circumstances, and probable viewpoints of the majority of Blacks and the supporters of the Tea Party movement.

There is just no measurable basis for the Liberal politicians, power brokers, and their MSM operatives argument that the lack of Blacks in the Tea Party movement is proof or evidence that the Tea Parties are racist or have a racist agenda.

Are there racists who are Tea Partiers? In the words of Sarah Palin, You Betcha! You can find racist in any group of people, Black, Brown, White, Yellow, or Red, so of course you can find them in the Tea Parties as the MSM has taken great pains to do.

Is there any indication that they are anything more than a fringe element of the movement? No so far, but better and fuller judgment of the matter would have to wait for more data and analysis.

Is it about race? Is the lack of Black members and supporters an indication or proof that the Tea Parties are racists? The statistics indicate otherwise – and voluntary membership demographics are both a poor and frankly dangerous measure of racism for anyone to espouse using.

Shall we apply the same standard to: the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, La Raza, or the “Historically Black Colleges” as the Liberals apply to the Tea Parties? Those other groups, after all, are even quite open about their having few, if any, White members or supporters and are, by their very natures, based upon purely racial and racially biased agendas and goals.

I’m not sure if mankind’s lives are ruled by the stars and planets, but I’m absolutely certain that men’s thoughts, desires, actions, and fates are controlled by heavenly bodies. On that note, the Zodiac:

Can you seriously doubt that these heavenly bodies could easily control the destinies of men?

So what’s your sign?