The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ and ‘Thou shalt not lie’ in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.
— George Carlin
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Yeah, we don’t talk about Pluto being a planet or why it was “reclassified” as a Dwarf Planet. It’s highly frowned upon amongst the “intelligentsia” to do so and even more derided among the Liberals and Progressives, who will call one some variant of “knuckle-dragging science-denier.” Nobody is supposed to talk about how in August of 2006 a mostly European conclave of accepted masters of the astronomy, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), needed to make a new definition for planet so that an American wouldn’t be credited with discovering Planet X.
And, for the many of you that don’t know, Pluto was just collateral damage. The IAU’s exuberance of Humpty-Dumptyism was aimed at permanently refuting the discovery by and American of a planetary body past Pluto.
But Maybe We Should Talk About Pluto
Accepted by so many, secular science and scientism aside, the effects of this choice and insult may just be more far-reaching than the vast majority of people want to understand and internalize. I mean really? You can’t look back and see what’s happened – and at what pace! – to the world since 2006 vs. what was happening before then? 😉
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 2nd, 2022 at 7:50 am and is filed under Humor, Religion, Society.
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The Deep State is real. It is a body of people, made up of influential members of the government beaucracy, the senior military staff, and parts of top-level finance and industry, who are involved in the largely unreported and uncountable manipulation or control of government policy. It is not a conspiracy theory, despite what the anti-Trump Lamestream Enemedia so raucously claims. It’s a long-established and proven fact or, at least, the political science is settled on this matter and the debate over its existence is over.
Each year unelected federal administrators write thousands of regulations possessing the force of law. What do these civil servants know about the American people whom they ostensibly serve? Not much, according to this enlightening and disturbing study.
The authors surveyed federal agency officials, congressional and White House staffers, and employees of various and sundry policy-making organizations about their attitudes toward- and knowledge of the public. They found a gaping chasm between what D.C. officials assume they know about average Americans and the actual opinions and attitudes of those average Americans.
~*~
In a nutshell, the Deep State as longtime Republican party insider, Mike Lofgren describes it is a combination of elected and appointed members of the legislative and executive branches; and corporate insiders, especially the military-industrial complex, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley. Together, fueled by enormous amounts of money, they effectively control the country, regardless of which party is in power or the wishes of the electorate.
Drawing on insights gleaned over three decades on Capitol Hill, much of it on the Budget Committee, Lofgren paints a gripping portrait of the dismal swamp on the Potomac that our government has become.
~*~
National security policy in the United States has remained largely constant from the Bush Administration to the Obama Administration. This continuity can be explained by the “double government†theory of 19th-century scholar of the English Constitution, Walter Bagehot. As applied to the United States, Bagehot’s theory suggests that US national security policy is defined by the network of unelected executive officials who manage the departments and agencies responsible for protecting US national security and who, responding to structural incentives embedded in the US political system, operate largely removed from the public’s view and from constitutional constraints.
The public may in large believe that the constitutionally-established institutions control the laws and public policy, but that belief is both unfounded and mistaken. Judicial review is negligible; congressional oversight is dysfunctional; and presidential control is normally nominal at best. People and whole organizations that were created and staffed without the People’s input treat politicians of all sorts as individual impediments that will in most cases be highly temporary.
To put it in perspective one way, in 2014, 3,291 pages of new laws were passed by Congress – the sole branch of government with the constitutional authority to make law – and signed by the President. During this same period, unelected bureaucrats at dozens of federal departments and agencies issued 79,066 pages of new and updated regulations. Hence, unelected and only marginally accountable bureaucrats enacted approximately 24 times the pages of regulations that operate by and large with the full force of law that Congress enacted actual laws.
To put it in perspective in another way, for years since 9/11, the CIA has kept and utilized a fully armed fleet of drones, mostly Predators and Reapers. They have literally made an unknown number of lethal strikes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere. I say an unknown number because any such strikes by the CIA are classified as Title 50 covert actions and the government cannot by law provide any information about how the CIA conducts targeted killings. Even the majority of Congress is disallowed oversight or complete analysis of these operations.
Frankly, if they weren’t deranged and damaged, the hypocrisy of the Liberals and Progressives over the existence and their current denial of existence would be equally maddening and amusing. Have they not spent whole generations complaining about Big Oil, Wall Street, Big Ag, the Military-Industrial Complex, and Big Ag essentially owning the government no matter who is elected to office? Have the American people not had to hear them rant about the Koch brothers and ALEC since 2008?
It seems to me that they’ve been complaining about the Deep State for decades. They just didn’t use or know the right term to use for it. But now that Pres. Trump and the American people complain about it, their mindless rejection and cognitive dissonance forces them to deny it and what they’ve been ranting about and against for at least the last half century.
No, the Deep State is quite real. It’s not just some conspiracy theory and it’s not something that President Trump and/or White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon cooked up, though they did drag the actual term out of the “hallowed” halls of academia and into the light of day. The government is more than what you see. It’s roots run both deep and far and are largely hidden from sight. Or, said another way dearer to my heart, Prof. Glennon ‘s Madisonian Institutions that we see are just like mushrooms; they’re just the visible, fruiting body but the rhizomes make up the bulk of the fungus, do most of the work of keeping it alive, and are perpetually hidden from sight.
Being real, however, doesn’t automatically means that they constitute a subterranean web of common and nefarious purpose. One, the various groups don’t normally have a common purpose with each other. Two, whether or not any of those purposes are truly nefarious is a matter of supposition, perspective, and one’s value judgements.
At the end of each and every day, these bureaucrats have their own interests just like the rest of is. They want to keep their jobs, above all. They wouldn’t have gone into the bureaucracy in the first place if job security wasn’t of tantamount importance to them. They will whenever possible act in ways to ensure that job security and will ally themselves with anyone and any policy which they perceive to enhance it. They will also work against and ally with those who also against whatever might infringe upon their job security.
And that brings us to President Trump. Part of his platform was to “drain the swamp” that is the federal government. Pres. Trump even issued two significant Executive Orders (EO 13771 and EO 13777) which focus this draining squarely upon the various agencies who employ these unelected bureaucrats. Such act directly threaten those people’s job security. Hence, it’s hardly unreasonable that would they be and act as they could against him as they could.
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 12th, 2017 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Books & Reading, Politics.
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Of course, to be heartlessly fair, this a breakdown of a large swath of the scientific community. If one limited the polling to only “Climatologists,” the consensus of belief-in-detail in Anthropogenic Climate Change with CO2 emissions as the sole or primary cause is over 95%. Hence, most of the queried scientists aren’t properly certified to have or espouse an opinion, not being “Climatologists.”
Yet, to once again be heartlessly fair, Climatology is nothing be a degree in Geology with a handful of extra credit hours attached to it is a degree that was created by the Warmists themselves a decade or so ago. As it teaches the revealed truth of Global Warming as a postulate and scientific truth, of course those degree holders are in orthodox consensus; they wouldn’t be able to be published otherwise and would perish. Hence, their magisterium is invalid and unfounded upon anything but fiat.
Eppure Si Raffredda
Yeah, the Warmists are quite bad at math…and Economics, Political Science, and History – and obviously have zero understanding of even the basics of Chaos Theory. They are, however, quite good at Theater Arts and fairly good at creative Theology and Divinity.
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 22nd, 2015 at 8:17 am and is filed under Politics, Society, The Environment.
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One thing to remember – when working within a sociopolitical context, contagion is bidirectional. It almost, but not quite, mimics osmotic transfer. Hence, just as the modern, corrupted form of Liberalism infected the educational system, the worst attitudes and preconceptions of educational system infected Liberalism.
Our Intelligentsia In Inaction
Therefore it is perfectly reasonable that the elitism and pseudo-technocratic prejudices and insecurities of the intelligentsia aka America’s cleristry would strongly color the Liberal response to dissent against their doctrine and dogma.
“So, tell me: are you a physicist? Do you have a degree in chemistry? Or a doctorate in infrared or ultraviolet light, spectroscopy, or associated sciences? Have you performed extensive studies into exothermic reactions, combustion, heat or light? Are you a state-licensed firefighter or other extensively trained rescuer? Have you written or published a single peer-reviewed paper on the flame (the visible part of the fire) or how the gases therein might become ionized to produce plasma? Do you even know plasma theory? No! Then how are you even remotely qualified in any way to say the house is on fire?†asked the Liberal.
“Because the house is on fire, dumb ass, and is burning to the ground,†said the Conservative.
And there you have it, an apt and near perfect parable of how the intersectionality between the Intelligentsia and the Liberals view dissent by Americans against their agendas. In their minds only the “properly” qualified and certified people are allowed to comment. The rest – we groundlings and churls – must remain silent if and when we disagree with what our “betters” tell us lest we be charged as “Deniers” and anti-intellectuals by these educated elites for defying the rightness and validity of their self-proclaimed magisterium.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2015 at 8:27 am and is filed under Politics, Society.
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Americans have always had a great deal of respect and admiration for the plain-spoken man. Unsurprisingly, Obama has always rejected such clear, frank, and honest speech in favor of “nuance.”
To Obamacize…
Yep! There’s being well-spoken, “with no Negro dialect” and then there’s what Obama does whenever he speaks in public.
The roots of Obamacizing could be overcompensation for choosing to be Black. More likely though, it’s just the boy’s way of trying to both feed his narcissism by making himself sound superior to whoever he speaking at and to always give himself “an out” if called upon any of his lies.
This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2015 at 7:15 am and is filed under Politics.
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Tyler, the Portly Politico on Chinese Spy Balloon: “My sentiments precisely. The balloon flew over my town, and my reaction was amusement, not fear. I figure the ChiComs…” Feb 6, 11:05
Each year unelected federal administrators write thousands of regulations possessing the force of law. What do these civil servants know about the American people whom they ostensibly serve? Not much, according to this enlightening and disturbing study.
In a nutshell, the Deep State as longtime Republican party insider, Mike Lofgren describes it is a combination of elected and appointed members of the legislative and executive branches; and corporate insiders, especially the military-industrial complex, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley. Together, fueled by enormous amounts of money, they effectively control the country, regardless of which party is in power or the wishes of the electorate.
National security policy in the United States has remained largely constant from the Bush Administration to the Obama Administration. This continuity can be explained by the “double government†theory of 19th-century scholar of the English Constitution, Walter Bagehot. As applied to the United States, Bagehot’s theory suggests that US national security policy is defined by the network of unelected executive officials who manage the departments and agencies responsible for protecting US national security and who, responding to structural incentives embedded in the US political system, operate largely removed from the public’s view and from constitutional constraints.
Climate Consensus – Warmists Are Bad At Math
