RedStateEclectic

The Audacious Milky Way

Watch serious scientists at work.

They actually have the politically incorrect audacity to conjecture and meaningfully corroborate that the earth's climate is not the homo- and geocentric affair that parochial minds reduce it to, but is linked to the universe via the clouds, the sun and the milky way.

It looks as if there might be forces in the universe more significant than the politicians men vote for.

See also The Great Global Warming Swindle, (the current link to the documentary) and Epistemic Consequences of Totalitarian Democracy - The Abuse of Environmental Concern.

 

Thad McCotter: "Time For The Tea Party To Grow Up"

(Big tip of the hat to Left Coast Rebel, as I didn't catch this remark in the mainstream press.  Good thing I read his blog. You should too.)

My fellow Michigander Thad McCotter was originally in the "No" camp when the brouhaha over Boehner's bill was unfolding.  But true to form, he again folded like a cliche''d cheap suit, declared himself a holier-than-thou nation-saving hero and fired off some words from up on high to those of us that apparently define conservative much, much more conservatively than he does.

The Hill got the goods: 

"We cannot unite America if we divide the movement," McCotter warned. "Consequently, the time has come for the Tea party to grow up and the Republican Party to wake up and come together to serve and save this great nation."

Grow up? I think he meant "cough it up."  He's coming for our wallets.

Yes, once again, right on cue, "we" have to save this great nation together. It's our patriotic duty to grab our flags and our cash, and stand with the same idiots who are responsible for the disaster in the first place. Stand independent of them, and you're a petulant child. A Hobbit. A Crank.

Getting behind the self-absorbed centerists just in time to kick off the election season. What a great plan. But hey - at least they're not Obama, right? (Uh, wrong.)

Saving this nation, saving those children, saving the world - how about saving my sanity, because this is insane. ( I'm a little cranky  - how is it possible that so many people are either unwilling or unable to see the obvious pattern here? )

The emperor still has no clothes - these clowns are dead wrong once again but they're telling us openly that if we don't stand behind them, they're going to push us off the cliff into that raging current below. 

Tea Party, here's the deal - you don't get it both ways. Either you believe that this nation is strong enough to withstand the deconstruction of the strong federal government, or you don't.  There's never going to be a good time to scale back - they'll make sure of that, because one thing beaucracies always excel at is finding reasons to justify their own existance.  The time to fight is now, no matter what the party faithful keep telling you.  Remember, they've got far more to lose than you do.

Have you joined your local GOP yet?

 

The Dramas of Value

The search for a theory of economic value (the role of values in the economic interaction of human beings) is full of drama, an instance of which being the ironic detour initiated by the classic economists (especially Adam Smith and David Ricardo), not the most ferocious enemies of a free economy, whose mistakes (in value theory) would pave the way for socialist theories and Marxism.

Another drama, within that drama, presents itself in the fact that in his much acclaimed The Wealth of Nations, not only did Adam Smith deviate from previous advances in economics (by the scholastic Jesuits of Spain, Cantillon, Turgot), spearheading in many important ways a deterioration of our economic knowledge that lasts to this day, but he also inexplicably ignored in that famous book his earlier correct subjectivist solution to the water-diamond paradox, only to come up with a labour theory of value (see below) that would be gladly taken up by Karl Marx.

Thanks to the Ludwig von Mises Institute, I keep getting positive "shocks" all the time from reading literature I did not know before or could not easily/cheaply get hold of. Also following the von Mises trail, one gets to build a consistent network of readings on the most diverse subjects that nevertheless form part of a connected whole.

One of these positive "shocks" ensued after reading Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk`s Karl Marx and the Close of His System. Perusal of this relatively small book had the effect on me of reading a suspenseful novel. Style and content of Böhm-Bawerk's criticism are fascinating in their own right. But, the book offers a dramatic storyline, too: Karl Marx promising to refute the detractors of his fundamental tenet - that labour is the source of economic value - keeping his friends and opponents in suspense year after year until the denouement was to be presented in the third volume of Das Kapital, and then ... Well, anyone interested in this fascinating story is well-advised to keep in mind what Don Boudreaux tells us about subjective value:

 

Where Are Romney & Rubio?

Real Clear Politics picked up and wrote about a topic that's been bubbling up to the top of some of the GOP 2012 discussion forums:   Romney's Low Profile on Budget Debate... 

The headline adds a couple of more words: "Rankles Foes" but I'm not really rankled. I don't expect him to actually take a position on it, because he doesn't need to.  The GOP rank-and-file is sharply divided on this issue, and Romney knows, better than any of the other politicians in the race, that it's much easier to avoid taking a position than it is to take both sides a position.  He has nothing to gain by taking either position, so therefore it's best for him to go on vacation.

(In other words, I expect him to be a spineless political sociopath in matters of electoral politics, so there's not much to get rankled about.  He's Mitt Romney, and as such it is safe to assume he is firmly on both sides of every issue, including this one.)

However, another "exciting new face" has also been conspicuously absent from the cameras and editorial pages: that of Florida's TEA Party darling Marco Rubio.   

It's understandable. I mean if you wanted to be Mitt Romney's vice-president, isn't this what you'd do?  

It's too soon to oficially chant, "I told you so," but it painfully obvious that, like Allan West, Rubio is another "Bait-N-Switch" candidate.  He ran and won on a record that didn't match his rhetoric, but in the race between Rubio and Crist it was pretty difficult to argue that Rubio wasn't the more conservative. And so, the TEA Party adopted him by default.

Yep - I said it. Rubio is not really not conservative enough to be considered a TEA Party candidate, and calling him that requires ignoring both the subtle signs of betrayal in his voting record as well as the Sentaor's distinct elucidations that he isn't a true TEA Party supporter. In short, he's a hard core member of the GOP and as such we can assume that McConnell won't ever need to sneer at him to "get his ass in line," as Boehner recently did to his Tea Party dissenters.

However, while adding Rubio to the Romney ticket won't bring in the excitement that Palin brought to McCain, it will bring Romney a claim of having a small government VP,, a significant chunk of the TEA Party media attention, and of course, the ever-gullible disenfranchised GOP vote.

And the small government movement will lose again.

The Story of Civilization

Find advice on how to design and model an ancient Greek house here.

I wish I had the time to read Will Durant's monumental work, which is now available for the asking, including the eleven volumes of The Story of Civilization:

Don Boudreaux has an excellent comment on an observation

from page 135 of Will Durant’s 1939 book The Life of Greece [volume II of The Story of Civilization, G.T.]:

The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs; diversities beget conflict, comparison, thought; superstitions cancel one another and reason begins.

Opponents of free trade literally are unreasonable.  No matter how “progressive” they fancy themselves to be – a fancy fueled by the asinine yet apparently attractive notion that society progresses the more individuals’ wills and actions are bent (with force, if necessary) to conform to the will of the state – opponents of free trade are peddlers of a backwoods notion grounded as firmly in ignorance as it is in the fears and superstitions of atavistic tribalism.

The source.

My Kids Totally Get It

Jolly Rancher frozen pops (which the kids highly recommend) have riddles on the sticks, which led to the following exchange:

My younger son, reading the stick; "What has hundreds of ears but does not hear?"*

My older son, not missing a beat; "Congress."

 

Heh.

 

*The official anwer? A cornfield.

Pamela Geller's Self-Censorship

Pamela Geller removes an incriminating line from a post of a letter she received from a Norwegian reader in 2007. This left people wondering if Geller knew the identity of her reader and whether this reader was Anders Breivik.

The removed line:

We are stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is going to happen fast.

Anyone who has a sizable audience will get emails from time to time. Some of these emails would be from disturbed people. Is it Geller’s fault for not predicting an attack four years later? I find it interesting the obsession to ascribe responsibility for these attacks on Geller. But what I find more interesting is the fact that Geller is actively censoring the violent speech in her blogs (she recently censored another post). These actions reveal that in some way, Geller herself believes she incited the violence in Norway.

Cross-posted to Politics by Jayel Aheram.

Marital Differences: Married GOP Representatives' Dueling Votes

Rep. Mary Bono Mack (CA-45) took to Twitter today to berate her fellow Republicans to get behind Speaker John Boehner's bill. What she forgot to mention on her Twitter account was that she failed to convince her own husband, Rep. Connie Mack (FL-14), to support the Boehner bill.

Connie Mack was one of the 22 Republicans who bucked their leadership and voted against the Boehner bill. This is surprising as Connie Mack is not aligned with the tea party, with him making public statements before about his differences with the movement (though, not opposing them outright like Sen. John McCain recently did).

If Connie Mack's vote on the Boehner bill was surprising, then Mary Bono Mack's vote for it was predictable. Mary Bono Mack is not known for her principles, but as a partisan who will toe the party line as long as it ensures her reelection.

What is so striking about this, however, was her failure to change the mind of the one person in the House who is closest to her. If she cannot even change the mind of her husband-colleague, what does it say about her ability to lead?

Cross-posted to Politics by Jayel Aheram.

Blast from the Past

I heard this tune as a kid a million times (a great cheer up on a cold, dark, far too early winter morning), and always liked it  ... "A Walk in the Black Forest"  by Horst Jankowski.

Have a great weekend.

Oh, by the way, can we swap some of your hot weather for our cold "summer"?

 

Free Spirits Descending on Omaha

In honor of Laura’s hard work for the upcoming LibertyFest. Must be some interesting personalities out there.