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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Friday, December 19, 2014

Observations From the Back Row For December 19, 2014.

Political Journalism Endangers Our Survival, By Ileana Johnson
Journalism in this country, if it ever was completely honest and objective, has become in-your-face political journalism—to be more specific, Democrat Party agenda progressive journalism. Dr. Savage called it "narrative journalism." We often have to consult foreign news to find out what is going on in our own country. We are no longer watching the news when a talking head on location somewhere is trying to explain what happened, what we are seeing, and who is involved to the best of their knowledge. The actual news reporting is very rare. What passes for news is the cable news owners' progressive agenda or the newspapers' affiliation with the Democrat Party. "News" is sensational videotaping and coverage of one event ad nauseam, the glorification of criminals, and of Hollywood stars who pass away from drug overdoses or other unfortunate accidents.....

My Take - It's clear the media is totally corrupt, historically ignorant, and logically challenged. Has it ever been different? No! In days gone by the media, which consisted of newspapers only, lied, postured and supported the same kind of clowns that are in office now. 
 
The only real difference was they were open in their biases. The media managed to convince people by getting a degree in journalism it made them impartial distributors of "truth". That was a lie from the beginning! When I see them continuously spewing out all the leftist claptrap they espouse, in spite of all the historical evidence that shows these views are irrational, misanthropic and morally defective, I have to wonder if they aren't insane. I know they aren't rational, or truthful - but are they sane.

Exploratory committee my a**. Jeb is in, and aren't we just better for it. I was wondering when a reasonable candidate was going to jump in, and although it does happen, it's pretty rare that a candidate commissions an exploratory committee and doesn't get in the race. As I see it today, there will be one real conservative - Ted Cruz- a few semi to faux-conservatives such as Rand Paul,Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio, and a slew of big government progressives: Jeb, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and probably many others……

Wisconsin's State Superintendent of Schools, Tony Evers, misrepresents the effect of Common Core Standards through his recent press release, "Higher standards: The right direction for students." Evers promises parents that the implementation of Common Core State Standards will "ready [students] for on-the-job training, an apprenticeship, or coursework at a college or university." Numerous educational experts have identified specific weaknesses in CCSS which will render students unprepared for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM courses) at the college level. Preparation for on-the-job training or an apprenticeship requires students to be skilled in basic math. Because the Common Core Curriculum has returned to the futile discovery and inquiry methods of instruction used in "New Math" or "Modern Math" which failed our children in the 1960s and 1970s, the re-implementation of these methods is once again confusing and frustrating parents and students......

Apollo 7's Walt Cunningham: 'My background in space science. My doctoral thesis that I was working on was fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field. I have no political inhibitions at all, I just think we ought to be honest about this and not be trying to use it to our own ends to try to get money from the government.'


Marc Morano: 'The UN is first and foremost political and they have bastardized science to achieve a political end...The UN claims that they can alter global temperature and storminess and weather events many decades to 100 years into the future. And the United Nations does not have that power -- that is reserved for medieval witchcraft.'…..

Science is being corrupted by political bias. As somebody who has championed science all his career, carrying a lot of water for the profession against its critics on many issues, I am losing faith. Recent examples of bias and corruption in science are bad enough. What’s worse is the reluctance of scientific leaders to criticise the bad apples. Science as a philosophy is in good health; science as an institution increasingly stinks. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics published a report last week that found evidence of scientists increasingly “employing less rigorous research methods”in response to funding pressures. A 2009 survey found that almost 2 per cent of scientists admitting that they have fabricated results; 14 per cent say that their colleagues have done so.  This month has seen three egregious examples of poor scientific practice. The most recent was the revelation in The Times last week that scientists appeared to scheme to get neonicotinoid pesticides banned, rather than open-mindedly assessing all the evidence. These were supposedly“independent” scientists, yet they were hand in glove with environmental activists who were receiving huge grants from the European Union to lobby it via supposedly independent reports, and they apparently had their conclusions in mind before they gathered the evidence. Documents that have recently come to light show them blatantly setting out to make policy-based evidence, rather than evidence-based policy…......

Oh, woe is she. In an “exclusive” interview with People magazine this week, first lady Michelle Obama lamented the “sting” of “racist experiences” that she and her husband allegedly still suffer. My message for America’s Marie Antoinette? Cry me a river.  To show how she’s down with The Struggle of post-Ferguson agitators, Mrs. Obama cited a supposedly horrifying incident at a Target store where she was treated, in her paranoid mind, as a subservient. “Even as the first lady,” she bemoaned,“not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf.” A lowly peon asked her for an innocent favor? It’s Jim Crow all over again! ABC News reports that Mrs. Obama said such“incidents are ‘the regular course of life’ for African-Americans and a‘challenge’ for the country to overcome.” Newsflash: Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe that it is part of the“regular course of life” of tall people of all colors (Mrs. Obama is 5-foot-11) to be prevailed upon to reach high on behalf of those of us who are vertically challenged. These are not odious “incidents” of racism between slaves and masters. They’re matters of common courtesy between equals…..

When it became too obvious to deny that the hostage crisis in Sydney, Australia was an act of Islamic terrorism, Prime Minister Tony Abbott asked Aussie citizens for calm, saying, “The whole point of politically motivated violence is to scare people out of being themselves. Australia is a peaceful, open and generous society – nothing should ever change that. And that’s why I would urge all Australians today to go about their business as usual.” That’s what a politician is expected to say. But what he should have said is that the time for business-as-usual is over……The West is in decline for a number of reasons, one of which is its cultural capitulation in the face of an ascendant Islamic fundamentalism. It is as if we, or at least our leaders and elites, have lost the cultural will to live. We need to get in touch with a sort of cultural rage, a fierce determination to crush threats to our culture, our values, and our liberty. We need to demonstrate that our tolerance has reached an end, that there will be no more coexistence with an ideology openly dedicated to our destruction. “Never mind normal,” as Jack Engelhard put it. To paraphrase his wish for Israel, for once let our blood “be exceptional and cause for nausea and trembling” among our enemies. Show the jihadists that there will be no more business-as-usual capitulation, and that they can expect us to unleash hell in retaliation for a single drop of Western blood......

The Soviet Union did not have to fall. If Carter had won a second term and Mondale had succeeded him, the Communist dictatorship might have received the outside help it needed to survive. And we would still be living under the shadow of the Cold War. Carter couldn’t save the Soviet Union, but he did his best to save Castro, visiting Fidel and Raul in Cuba where the second worst president in American history described his meeting with Castro as a greeting among “old friends”. Raul Castro called Carter “the best of all U.S. presidents.” Obama’s dirty deal with Raul will make the worst president in American history, Castro’s new best friend. Carter couldn’t save Castro, but Obama did. This was not a prisoner exchange. This was a Communist bailout…..

Rasmussen Report

1. Voters See A Sinking America - U.S. voters are less bullish on America's role in the world and see a diminished United States in the decades to come. Read More

2. Homeowners Worry A Bit More About Their Mortgage Payments - The number of homeowners who think they are likely to miss or be late on a mortgage payment in the next few months is at its highest level in over a year. Read More

3. Voters to Obama, Congress: Work Together! - Voters are closely divided over whether the upcoming Congress will be better than the one that is now leaving town, but they believe overwhelmingly that President Obama and the new Congress should work together rather than stand on principle. Read More



My Take - The voters - 47% of whom have brains filled with mush - want the Executive branch and Congress to work together but they never say how that’s to be done when the philosophical divide between them is so enormous. There are those who want to spend far more than we have - all the way until oblivion. A second side merely wants to slow oblivion down, a third group wants to hold expenditures to current levels and a fourth group that wants to reverse to the whole process by cutting expenditures dramatically and dismantling huge sections of an overbearing, intrusive, incompetent, corrupt government that interprets the Constitution in such a way that makes society the servant and they the masters instead of the reverse.

So my question to those who took this poll as part of this idiotic report is this: Who should back down? These voters think the nation is going to hell in a hand basket and 47% like Obama - a number Rasmussen puts out daily which hardly varies - a man who is openly being called the stupidest President in history - saving Jimmy Carter from that distinction. Is it any wonder why I think polls and poll takers are full of it? Is it any wonder I think Jonathan Gruber was right?

Before There Was Common Core! By Rich Kozlovich
Before there was Common Core there was this 1912 8th grade test for Bullett County Schools in Kentucky. I want all Common Core supporters to take this 1912 8th grade test, and then tell me how many 8th graders could pass this test. Remember, this was before the leftists took control of education in the nation and the creation of the Department of Education. Two questions. Were schools more effective before all that interference with local parental control or did they become more effective now with centralized control. This appeared here. And for all those Common Core supporters that take this test and fail it. Gohere for a list of answers.You might also wish to review this 8th grade test from Salina Kansas in 1895.

Every time my AFDI ads run in San Francisco, city officials and the enemedia get into an uproar. They can’t stand for the truth about Islam and jihad to be told — and apparently, the little totalitarians don’t understand why it is even allowed to be told. So here, Liza Veale of KALW explains to San Francisco leftists that unfortunately, there is this thing called free speech:

Regular readers of our Dispatch know that our scientists have little respect for the typically-junk reports published in Environmental Health Perspective, and the same goes for authors based at the Harvard School of Public Health. The journal and the academic center often seem to have the same goal: ignore or flout or distort the rules of science and sound statistics whenever needed to promote their anti-chemical, anti-technology agendas. They have struck again with a remarkable pseudo-analysis of air pollution’s alleged link to autism…….“Over and over again, we see this type of phony, pseudo-quantitative junk being passed off as a putative link or association between factors that is simply not grounded in science, the study’s own data, or even common sense. But this author, Weisskopf, went beyond the fringe when he said this: ‘One of the unique aspects of the study we did is that it provides an even stronger piece of evidence for there being a causal effect…It’s really the pollution doing it.’ He gives away his clear bias and abandonment of any semblance of science: no observational/retrospective study can allow a ‘cause-and-effect’ inference, even a strong, solid study. And this is the antithesis of a strong study: it’s based on sand and smoke and mirrors, fully committed to its agenda.”

The U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) on Thursday passed an annual resolution condemning human rights abuses in Iran, but fewer than half the world’s nations supported the measure, marking the third consecutive year in which the number of countries voting in favor fell.....The resolution was introduced earlier this year by Canada on behalf of a group of mostly Western democracies.  The 35 countries which opposed the resolution fell into three broad categories – Islamic states; communist, leftist or other authoritarian regimes; and two Asian democracies with “non-aligned” tendencies (India and Indonesia).....Leading the opposition.... was Cuba, whose delegate charged that the “toxic practices and double standards and selectivity” contained in the measures “violate human rights.”.....“These resolutions are intended to harm developing countries, and they are politically motivated and have absolutely nothing to do with the defense of human rights and contribute nothing to that cause,”..... The same UNGA session.....dealt with a resolution on “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination” – which contains language criticizing Israel over the security barrier it built between areas under its control and those administered by the Palestinian Authority in a bid to deter suicide bombings. The measure passed by a huge vote: 180-7.....Before the end of December, the UNGA will also pass another nine resolutions critical of Israel. During a committee stage last month all nine were adopted by overwhelming margins......Israel was criticized in at least 32 resolutions between 2009 and mid-2014.....

More 'Tolerance' From Stalinist Universities, By David Limbaugh

Honestly, sometimes leftist thought police surprise even me, not so much with their unreasonableness, extremism and tyrannical tactics but with their brazenness in openly showing who they are. Each new day's headlines trump yesterday's. A few weeks ago, Fox News' Todd Starnes reported on a Marquette University student's encounter with his ethics instructor. The professor, Cheryl Abbate, was leading her "Theory of Ethics" class in a discussion about the application of philosophical theories to controversial political issues. Among the issues listed on the blackboard were gay rights, gun rights and the death penalty. Professor Abbate removed gay rights from the list before the discussion began, with the summary explanation, "We all agree on this." This puzzled the student, as he certainly did not agree with his instructor's view on the issue and believed it should have been open for discussion along with the other issues. He approached Abbate after class and expressed his opinion that the class should have been allowed to discuss gay rights...... His complaint with university officials went nowhere.....Marquette professor John McAdams learned about the incident and expressed his strong disapproval on his blog, Marquette Warrior. McAdams wrote: "Like the rest of academia, Marquette is less and less a real university. And when gay marriage cannot be discussed, certainly not a Catholic university."....McAdams received a letter from the dean relieving him of his teaching duties, saying he was under investigation and banned from campus.....The enemies of liberty and tolerance continue their scorched-earth oppression of their political opponents under the fraudulent banners of tolerance and liberty — and it is truly sickening and highly disturbing.

It took 1,603 pages of legalese to keep the U.S. government running for another year. That is the length of the 2015 Fiscal Year Omnibus Appropriations Bill, which was approved by the Senate on Saturday to appropriate $1.01 trillion dollars for most federal agencies and departments through September 2015. The bill is on Pres. Obama’s desk waiting for his signature. It is not all about dollars. Congress also loaded the bill with special instructions, called policy riders, which dictate how government funds must be spent. Because the bill was rushed through just before the government ran out of money, and Congressional leaders did not want another government shutdown if the bill did not pass, lawmakers seized the opportunity to tack on controversial riders that might otherwise have been debated. A lot of those 11th-hour mandates will affect science and environmental policy. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for example, got $8.1 billion. That’s $60 million less than last year and the agency now has to operate at its smallest budget since 1989. But even that money comes with conditions. Although agriculture is a major source of atmospheric methane, Congress forbade the EPA from using its funds to require farmers to report greenhouse gas emissions from “manure management systems.” And the agency is no longer permitted to regulate farm ponds and irrigation ditches under the Clean Water Act.

Dr. Ozvorkian gets busted again. You are better off flipping a coin.  Posted by the American Council on Science and Health
When Dr. Oz eventually goes to the magic fat burner in the sky, he may reflect upon the past few months and conclude that there may have been better times in his professional life. The former golden boy of TV medicine has not really contributed all that much to public health, but he has inadvertently revived a previously-defunct science: alchemy. Defying all rules of chemistry, he seems to have stumbled upon a way to actually transform elements! Except in this case, the transformation hasn’t been lead to gold. It is more like gold to tin.  And, as anyone with a passable knowledge of chemistry will tell you, gold does not tarnish. But tin certainly does, although maybe not as quickly as Oz’s reputation. And it is all self-inflicted. His “slump” began in earnest back in June, when he was turned into cat food by Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) during a hearing at which he was tricked into believing that he was testifying about making dietary supplements safer. It didn’t exactly turn out that way, as ACSH’s Dr. Josh Bloom noted in his Science 2.0 piece entitled “The Lizard of Oz Takes His Own Medicine.”.......

 And Finally: This is a joke that’s been floating around but worth repeating.

 A public school teacher was arrested today at John F. Kennedy International airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a compass, a slide-rule and a calculator. At a morning press conference, Attorney General Eric Holder said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement. He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction'Al-Gebra is a problem for us', the Attorney General said. 'They derive solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in search of absolute values.' They use secret code names like "X" and "Y" and refer to themselves as "unknowns" but we have determined that they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philosopher Isosceles used to say, "There are 3 sides to every triangle."

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Obama said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes." White House aides told reporters they could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by the President.   It is believed that another Nobel Prize will follow.

Have a good weekend all!

Rich

 

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