LOL

Talk about an erudite put-down:' Masterly chefs prepare a delicacy by stuffing a boned duck into a boned turkey. It is known as a turducken. In politics, a swan which is really more goose and turkey is called a Wayne.' (Piers Ackerman)

Yes but!

What a marvellous article. It articulates very eloquently the unintended consequences of non-reflective ideologies:  http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/great_green_lies_never_die_they_merely_get_recycled/

PoMo 'truth'

See how a 'leading academic' uses shamelessly manipulated statistics in attempting to 'prove' his argument.

But then look at the methology of this survey Manne cites:

The number stems from a 2009 online survey of 10,257 earth scientists, conducted by two researchers at the University of Illinois. The survey results must have deeply disappointed the researchers - in the end, they chose to highlight the views of a subgroup of just 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought humans contributed to climate change. The ratio 75/77 produces the 97% figure that pundits now tout.
The two researchers started by altogether excluding from their survey the thousands of scientists most likely to think that the Sun, or planetary movements, might have something to do with climate on Earth - out were the solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists and astronomers. That left the 10,257 scientists in disciplines like geology, oceanography, paleontology, and geochemistry that were somehow deemed more worthy of being included in the consensus. The two researchers also decided that scientific accomplishment should not be a factor in who could answer - those surveyed were determined by their place of employment (an academic or a governmental institution). Neither was academic qualification a factor - about 1,000 of those surveyed did not have a PhD, some didn’t even have a master’s diploma.The real result is based on the views of just 75 of 10,257 scientists. Manne thinks this is decisive. This says everything.

The cheating, lying and extreme manipulation behind those who would maintain the Global warming scare campaign should be enough to call everything they say into disrepute. But there is quite simply, too much money and power at stake for those at the top of the mountain to back down now.
But us ordinary folk should be very careful to think long and hard on what we believe.

Make a stand

The following excerpt contains very sobering words and ones that reflect strongly on what must happen in Australia in the not too distant future.

In the words of scholar Robert Kraynak, democracy—for all of its strengths—also “has within it the potential for its own kind of ‘social tyranny.’” The reason is simple. Democracy advances “the forces of mass culture which lower the tone of society . . . by lowering the aims of life from classical beauty, heroic virtues and otherworldly transcendence to the pursuits of work, material consumption and entertainment.” This inevitably tends to “[reduce] human life to a one-dimensional materialism and [an] animal existence that undermines human dignity and eventually leads to the ‘abolition of man.’”⁴

To put it another way: The right to pursue happiness does not include a right to excuse or ignore evil in ourselves or anyone else. When we divorce our politics from a grounding in virtue and truth, we transform our country from a living moral organism into a kind of golem of legal machinery without a soul.

This is why working for good laws is so important. This is why getting involved politically is so urgent. This is why every one of our votes matters. We need to elect the best public leaders, who then create the best policies and appoint the best judges. This has a huge impact on the kind of nation we become. Democracies depend for their survival on people of conviction fighting for what they believe in the public square—legally and peacefully, but zealously and without apologies. That includes you and me.

Thank goodness for those in the political arena who do stand up for good morals and who as a result bear the 'slings and arrows' of vituperation and slander.
We need to rally and support them, pray for them, help in any way we can to create a world for our children that will not end up with them becoming entertainment for bloodthirsty mobs like our brethren were two millenia ago. We must FIGHT!

Critics often accuse faithful Christians of pursuing a “culture war” on issues such as abortion, sexuality, marriage and the family, and religious liberty. And in a sense, they’re right. We are fighting for what we believe. But of course, so are advocates on the other side of all these issues—and neither they nor we should feel uneasy about it. Democracy thrives on the struggle of competing ideas. We steal from ourselves and from everyone else if we try to avoid that struggle. In fact, two of the worst qualities in any human being are cowardice and acedia—and by acedia I mean the kind of moral sloth that masquerades as “tolerance” and leaves a human soul so empty of courage and character that even the devil Screwtape would spit it out.⁵

In real life, democracy is built on two practical pillars: cooperation and conflict. It requires both. Cooperation, because people have a natural hunger for solidarity that makes all community possible. And conflict, because people have competing visions of what is right and true. The more deeply they hold their convictions, the more naturally people seek to have those convictions shape society

Humpty Dumpty

Brothers and sisters do not think for a moment that this fight is about 'romantic equality', it is a war pure and simple, and if we choose the fence - we will lose.

“As legal scholar Robert Vischer has observed, ‘The tension between religious liberty and gay rights is a thorny problem that will continue to crop up in our policy debates for the foreseeable future. Dismissing religious liberty concerns as the progeny of a “separate but equal” mindset does not bode well for the future course of those debates.’

“But there is, in my opinion, no chance—no chance—of persuading champions of sexual liberation (and it should be clear by now that this is the cause they serve), that they should respect, or permit the law to respect, the conscience rights of those with whom they disagree. Look at it from their point of view: Why should we permit ‘full equality’ to be trumped by bigotry? Why should we respect religions and religious institutions that are ‘incubators of homophobia’? Bigotry, religiously based or not, must be smashed and eradicated. The law should certainly not give it recognition or lend it any standing or dignity.

read the full article in:  http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/07/5884

Clever comment

An amusing comment from one of the blogs I subscribe to...it is so clever and perspicacious I had to reprint it in its entirety.
..................................................................................................................................................................
In an attempt to discover the reasoning of the Labor Government, a scientist, who in demonstrating a high level of common sense and obviously coming from outer metropolitan Australia, stumbled across a new element.

The new element is Laborium Governmentium (Gv). It is one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons and 198 assistant deputy neutron, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lefton-like particles called peons.

Since Laborium Governmentium has no electrons or protons, it is inert. However, it can be detected because it impedes every reaction with which it come into contract. A tiny amount of Laborium Governmentium can cause a reaction normally taking less than a second to take from four days to four years to complete

In an attempt to discover the reasoning of the Labor Government, a scientist, who in demonstrating a high level of common sense and obviously coming from outer metropolitan Australia, stumbled across a new element.

The new element is Laborium Governmentium (Gv). It is one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons and 198 assistant deputy neutron, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lefton-like particles called peons.

Since Laborium Governmentium has no electrons or protons, it is inert. However, it can be detected because it impedes every reaction with which it come into contract. A tiny amount of Laborium Governmentium can cause a reaction normally taking less than a second to take from four days to four years to complete

Laborium Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2 to 6 years. It does not decay but instead undergoes a reorganisation in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Laborium Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganisation will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

The characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Laborium Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as a critical morass.

When catalysed with money, Laborium Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Laborium Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons. All the money is consumed in the exchange, and no other by products are produced

Lift your eyes

I have reproduced an article worth reading. It concerns the politically correct 'cultural cringe' that some fanatical ideologues would have us translate into ruinous, self flagellating policies more akin to the misanthropic deep green philosophies of those who view the human inhabitants of this planet as a virus. Well I say 'let them eat grass'!

The Article:
Australia competes in a cruel world
 The Olympic Games; that fascinating time where our national self-image lives vicariously through the ultra-trained, superhuman endeavours of our athletes. Seconds of a televised race is all that it takes to transform us from mere mortals to espousing a collegiate affinity to a group who manifest in a pool of our own superhuman alter ego. Listening to James Magnussen or Emily Seebohm in their after race interviews, you see the pressure they feel to fulfill our goal is immense. We want to bask in their golden image, not the silver or bronze one.
 
 Like it or not, the Olympics is read as a global gauging station and at this stage our position has slipped. China's growth and advancement in their global status is now reflected in their sporting results, and it appears to be completely legitimate as opposed to the question marks of the past. Sporting prowess lives off the back of two essential attributes; talent and the excess economic resources to source and train talent to an internationally competitive level.
 
 Another issue that is pertinent about fair competition in a forum such as the Olympics, is that the results are an unambiguous representation of the reality of how the athletes rate. It is not clouded by rhetoric. You win because you are the best and any assertion otherwise is refuted by the replay. The world is super competitive and the difference between fame and anonymity is seconds or parts thereof. Wonderful bon mot and weeping excuses really do not matter in the end. Glory ultimately resides with the victor and the rest can please themselves.
 
 Economics however talks of fairness but generally favours the judicious cheat. The stakes are far too high to play by the rules so the world lives in a twilight zone of varying degrees of tolerance for a range of variant degrees of cheating.
 
 Other countries, virtually all, have quite prescriptive forms of protection of the national interest from foreign investment, in such seminal areas as agricultural land. However, we alone screech our righteous sermon that the national interest is a parochial anachronism to a congregation of one, ourselves. The same sermon is read with expectant intrigue by many other nations who would not in a blind fit make the same laws for themselves but are quite happy to take advantage of ours.
 
 We are scared to mention the word state-owned enterprise for fear that it will offend the State that owns the enterprise. Apparently we will fortuitously develop the clinical steel to deal with future disputes with that State. We can’t mention their name now but the Australian Taxation Office will have no problems hauling them into court later if required.
 
 There are no genuine free trade deals, there are bilateral and preferential trade deals euphemistically termed Free Trade Agreements. After our free trade deal with the US, is there really free trade between us? The US is about to pass a $1 trillion dollar farm support bill and that sounds awfully like subsidising farm production to me.
 
 So when global economics lines up on the blocks in its Speedos for the economic 4 x 100, and gets drug tested, then I will concede we have a fair race. When a country is starting in an outboard tinny, others are wearing flippers and we are stating that guilt will make them swim like us, then I have serious concern as to whether we are merely fooling ourselves.
 
 We should not be timid about stating the bleeding obvious about what we desire for Australians. We should not sanitise our own desires with some form of self-enforced, domestic political correctness. The Nationals have this peculiar notion that Australian farms should, as much as possible, be owned by Australians. Now let’s be honest, isn’t that the desire of every country? Why do I get a distinct sense of a reception of chardonnay embarrassment when I mention this about Australian farms, but that parochialism dissipates to a bipartisan position of no to the foreign purchase of residential homes?
 
 Australia has this peculiar habit of participating in a form of economic self- flagellation, as seen in no better form than our sole crusade with the carbon tax. It is always perplexing as to exactly who gives a toss about our desire to persecute ourselves or what global eco-moral attribute we think we have bequeathed from our loss