An Epidemic of Intellectual Xenophobia

This whole thing about Rush Limbaugh of all people talk about being “pushed” and “prodded to do better” and intellectually “challenged” by authorities is really silly.  Rush is the perfect example of a person who is completely intellectually lazy, as are all people who rely only on FOX news.   Callers say “My dad was always rather conservative but he became a regular fanatical unreachable whacko when he began watching FOX news.  I’ll use Rush Limbaugh’s words against him.  Because FOX news doesn’t make you think, or challenge what you know, or tell you something new.  No- - the purpose of FOX news is to make you “Feel” kind of like a post hypnotic suggestion.  It’s like a post hypnotic suggestion where a whole chain of mental pre assumptions falls into place.  And you trust that “People can reason from point A to arriving at point B”.  But if they had to reason from point A to point B themselves, they couldn’t do it if their life depended on it.   Rush mocks people who talk about “feeling” things yet shows like his are the chiefest perveyers of it, and they aren’t good feelings.  But I was thinking that I myself could have tried harder at school like High School.  If I hadn’t been on the medications I was on, if I had a better diet perhaps with more protein rather than junk food- - I would have done better.  So really- - if Rush was “pushed” as much as he claims certainly by now he has several college degrees, perhaps a Masters- - in several subjects.  Judging from how many people rely on Rush Limbaugh for economic expertise- - certainly Rush Limbaugh could “clean my clock” on any college test in economics.  Or ditto with electronics.  Rush has been in radio his whole life and I have not.  Certainly he could wipe the mat with me in any basic electronics proficiency test.  Of course I got to think about it and Rush is the perfect specimine of how a person ends up who has NOT been pushed- - who dodges the draft and is intellectually the laziest man on the planet.  He would be a poster boy for “Don’t let your kid grow up like this- - fat and lazy- - push your children when they are young”.    I noted way back in April of 1991 that Jesus in the Bible appears to be someone who’s never been “pushed”.   I mean- - if Jesus was the perfect man then surely he went through all of the ‘life lessons” people go through in common to reach maturity, that is, if Jesus is to be our example, he had to have gone through these things of putting up with things his elders told him what to do and how to think.  How come there is nothing about this in the Bible of how “Jesus character was formed” in the maturation process.   If Jesus was the greatest physician that ever lived- - how many hospitals did he build.  How many surgical procedures are named after him.   Is Jesus like Albert Sweitzer, or Marie Curie, or Lister, or Jonas Salk?   Is Jesus greater than these physicians?   If Jesus was a Carpenter what Cathedrals did he build that, say rival the ones in the Middle Ages in Europe?   Rush used to chide people who thought Dolphins were intelligent and yet none of them ever built a road or a bridge or a hospital.  What are Rush Limbaugh's great contributions to society?   Is it "to restore economic sanity to government" like the tea party says?  Can Rush explain ANY economic phenomenon?  Can Rush explain supply and demand economics?   Does he believe that the secret to increased supply and profits is to always sell more at a lower price?  Really?   First of all under classic supply and demand economics there is one perfect price at which something will sell and also the amount that is sold at that price can be predicted with exactitude.  Does Rush know that?   Think about it.  What will happen if your asking price is too low for what you are selling?   No- - reduced profits is not the most obvious peril.   No.  If you set your items at too low of a price you will sell out of the items and there will still be a line of people waiting to buy them.  Conversely if you set your price too high for the items you sell you will have a lot of items left over unsold- - and no one else to buy them.  Of course I have an entirely different theory about price and demand.   This is my changing rectangle and perimeter theory.  That is- - the perimeter of the rectangle remains unchanged but only the shape of the rectangle changes and when the area is at its maximum- - that is your best price.  People know what elastic demand is.  Items with inelastic demand are generally items that “society tells us we cant live without”.  These would be things like - - oh, electricity - - gas - - water.   But people don’t think about elastic supply curves.  For instance.  Suppose- - - nobody on this block but me has coffee and I have stacks of pound and a half cans in my closet.  I may tell others “You know I know you don’t have coffee to sell- - but you can get it from me.  I can “make it happen” but it’s going to cost you.  In exchange for you now having a supply- - you can charge More for coffee you’ve actually GOT than what you would hypothetically sell coffee for if you had some, when you don’t have any.  I guess what I want to know Rush says “excellence” and I say “Excellence in WHAT because I sure haven’t seen any.   Just to sit and read a bunch of clips the Koch Brothers and Grover Norquist hands him?  What kind of talent does that take.  You know- - I hope Sean Hannity is right.  I hope the tea party is at war with “The Republican party” because that means their self destruction is near.  They are getting so extreme and society is moving on - - forward - - without them.   The tea party is fast becoming irrelivent and they can’t stand that.

Bill Press has got my knickers in a twist this morning.  Again he’s talking about how horrible E cigarettes are and how they need all of the smoking and advertising restrictions that regular tobacco products have.  You know a hypocrite when they say something over and over - - and over till your ears ring - - and I’ve spoken how Christians and the tea party do this too- - but in this case it’s “second hand smoke” and “tobacco is a filthy habit, and cancer and carsoginians and all of that.  E cigarettes have none of these liabilities but people like Bill Press want to put cancer warnings on E cigarettes and carry on about photos of infected lungs and all that- on the packages.  Bill Press can’t use pollution as an argument anymore, so now he just says “Well I feel uncomfortable being around people who do that sort of thing”.   Well, what if others felt “uncomfortable” knowing a Black person was in the room, or a guy reading “The Advocate” or “Mandate” or gay pornographic magazine.  Maybe I don’t like people in soap operas the minute they get into an argument with their spouse- - immediately down a drink or two - - just to brace them for what’s coming.  This anti smoking hysteria is every bit as bad at some of the hysterics Christian groups have engaged in in the past, and we all think they’re a bunch of fanatics.

This republican congress HAS no ideas when it comes to useful, productive legislation to either produce jobs, or as an alternative to the Affordable Care Act.  They keep talking about some alternate vision – like Hannity did yesterday – but I haven’t seen so much as one bill that spells out exactly HOW the republicans plan to create more jobs.  In terms of unemployment like this Congressman guest on the Ed Schultz show just now- - people that are unemployed now have had jobs all their live and find themselves in a unique economic situation in this recession which has gone on in excess of six years.  Evidence is clear now that the “recovery” is gaining little if any momentum- - and forces are out there to keep that from happening- and many of these forces are the Republicans themselves, who refuse to pass bills that could really kick start this recovery.  Back in 1983 we had an economic “tail wind” in pulling out of that deep recession of 1982 and Ronald Reagan proposed things to help the unemployed and government employment and involvement was stepped up.  This is the first “recovery’ that actually has been accompanied by a general CUT in government employment and services.  (Selah)

I was watching the remainder of the Bill Nye and “Ham” debate at the Creation Research Institute.  “Ham” said that there is not even any hypothetical possibility that anyone could shake him of the young earth and young universe theory.  Nobody asked him about the Milky Way galaxy being a hundred thousand light-years across.  Mr. Ham insists that though the continental drift and plates and such is at a slow, steady page now, this is not to preclude that it, and a host of other natural laws of science operated completely differently in the past.  What is to be done with an individual like this?  Bill Nye says that certainly the majority of scientist have been incorrect on issues and beliefs in the past, but when Lister for instance, discovered germs in the operating room, this was a proposal that immediately bore fruits in the operating room, as the rate of death during surgery plummeted.  I bring you again the Dana argument that is Jesus was so great and “knew all’ how come he never talked about modern medical science and anti-biotics and all that?  Huh?   As to the question about “where consciousness itself comes from” nobody knows the answer to this.  But for Mr. Ham to say “The answer to every unknown question is to say that God did it’ is almost meaningless.  It’s like people ask where Matthew and Luke got their material for the quotations of Jesus and scholars answer “From the Q document”.  Of course this Q document is just a hypothetical construct because nobody has actually discovered this Q document.  And to just say “God did it’ and then say “God Himself is a complete mystery which we’ll never know” therefore is of no scientific use at all.  And to say “We’ll all find out when we die” is like saying ‘I’ll pay you what I owe you when Hell freezes over, or when money begins raining down from the sky” when if that ever happened- - - nobody would care about having enough money anyhow.  There is a value in something that presents useful information in a timely manner. 

 I had Katie Kurick on.  She talked about this hard-ass juvenile judge who sent kids away to reform school at the drop of a hat, like one minor fight in the eighth grade, and it was a girl.  She stayed in “The Hall” for two years after an initial sentence of three months.  It took out that all that meanness twords youths was something he could make money off of.  So he began getting kickbacks from the juvenile system, and sentences to Juvy rose even higher.  He would deny leaves to see parents even at Thanksgiving and Christmas.  One girl’s father was dying of a stroke and this judge would not even let the girl get a furlough out for that.  Then it was retro-Thursday and they had Jaqueline Smith of Charlie’s Angels.  I guess I learned a thing or two.  All of the girls were really close.  Then it was dinner and we had beef Strogenoff, and I must say they have improved their recipe over the years.  And this was a very beefy batch with good beef.  We had corn and a green salad with that, and rice pudding for dessert.  Dora made it around the room with seconds with a portion larger than the initial one.

It began raining in earnest in the night and has been quite heavy at times.  Last night I was in a long and initially slow medication line around the corner and got an egg sandwich.  It was the usual game shows and then it was “Arrow” followed by “Tomorrow People” I watched till 9:25 but must confess I was fighting drowsiness.   OK,  Kosher bakeries don’t have to supply non Kosher food.  Therefore if “Abortions” aren’t on our menu, doctors shouldn’t have to supply those.  I believe any business owner has the right to determine what services he'll render and which ones he won't, and even has the right to decline to do business with certain people and he doesn't have to give a reason to the government as long as it's not a matter of race, color, or creed.  I believe the businessman has the right to ban guns in his establishment, even if it's a concealed carry state like Florida.  I believe a businessman has the right to say whether smoking is or is not allowed there.  And if I am a bar owner in Russia I believe I have the right to conduct my club as I will and if I want to allow it to become a gay pick-up bar, then I will, or I have the right to discourage gay people from patronizing my bar.  It's my choice.  I believe I have the right to property- - and that some bigger business won't swallow me up using the eminent domain doctrine- - and government coersion.

The Other Side of the Creation Argument

Well as you know they had that Bill Nye the science guy and the Creation Research Institute debate earlier in the month.  And as I indicated I had certain fundamental problems with it going out the gate.  First of all they said that "Natural Science" was "a hijacking of the word Science" which Creationists go on to call 'Knowledge" and then go on to say that 'All knowledge starts with God in the Bible".  In other words the whole point of the debate in their eyes was not to be justified by Imperical or Experimental Science- - but as they put it "We must start with some ultimate Authority to determine what is Truth.  Now that Truth is going to be either belief in God and the Bible- - or else the worship of Man as the ultimate authority".  Right off the bat they miss the whole point of what Science is.  Science is 'Let the evidence point the way to what IT is trying to tell us".  Capish?   These Creationist seem to think Charles Darwin was the ONLY authority on the subject of "how we got here" and quote from his writings extensively as to "what it's all about" as though every scientists in the world today worshiped at the Temple of Charles Darwin, and they don't.  But the next thing you observe about this Debate is that they spend far less time trying to Disprove the theory of Evolution but spend their time as an "Apologist" for the Creation story and a six thousand year old earth and the flood of Noah and all of that.  So Bill Nye can point all day long to the Grand Canyon and layers of sedimentry rock and how each layer took a really long time to form.  Nye can speak of the gradual advancement of fossiles as one rises higher in the geologic layers.  This doesn't matter because- - and as a Christian you'll find this statement amusing, the Creationist says "We don't believe in Anything we can See right Now".  This guy will indeed to say that "Evolution has been observed to be happening today".  He talked about the evolution of finches.  He even said that in Noah's day there was one primorial Car and one primorial Dog, from with all other species of cats and dogs evolved.  This is mighty strange because they also say that when the Bible says "Kind" they refer to "Families" in biology.  This leaves the branches of genus, species, and variety- - to evolve on their Own!   So what the creationist admits going out the gate is that two "Family" members- - evolved into all the numerous species we have today.  That is- -  seven hundred "Kinds" evolved into- - something like sixteen Million species we have in the world today.  That's an awful lot of evolution and specialization we see right before our eyes!  It gets better.  Apparently in the alloted time it would take given four thousand years since the flood- - there would be eleven new Species appearing in the world Every Day.  So someone suggested "Today's ten new species of the day web site" kind of like Catch of the Day.  But in this vein of "not believing in anything you can't see" they say "Geology is Science - - but Historical Geology is NOT science".   They say that nobody can infer from Evidence we have now- - to things or realities that we cant see now but we know are True.  For instance when the Bible says "You will hear the noise of battles nearby and the news of battles far away".  Apparently the battles far away - - don't count.  But the strangest statement I heard them say is- - and this is where they are really hanged on their own pittard- - is that "Well we don't know if Natural Laws have always been what they are today".  This is kind akin to the line about "Well, if God chooses to have a sponge think - - then it thinks".  Spoken by Matthew Harrison Brady in Inheret the wind.  Thus they invalidate carbon dating and nuclear transmutation, which occurs with predictability.  Because on one hand they say "We can't trust natural law" but at other times, just like Al Gore inventing the Internet- - they say that "God invented natural law, and we Christians had it before anyone else and brought about the renasance when others became aware of the knowledge that we had".  To hear Christians talk (and even Pete Richards noted this hypocracy) that "We invented the idea that the world was Round".  The truth is- - of course that the Catholic Church fought tooth and nail every scientific discovery as it came down the pike- - like the Helio-centric theory of Copernacus.  One hundred years later they tried to lay the same bullshit on Galileo.   They claim the Bible had "Truth before it's time".  And yet this Bible they venerate speaks of "the foundations of the earth" "the pillars of the earth" "the four corners of the earth" and the most telling of all "The sun rises in the east and sets in the west and then it hastens to its starting point".  The word "hastens" alludes to hurrying- - running - - getting out of breath - - like George Zimmerman pursuing Trayvon Martin on that 911 call.  But it gets better.  Since Noah's craft landed in the Mideast, and Kangeroos appear in Austrailia- - then one would expect a long trek of Kangaroos to the land Down Under, and you'd see a trail of Kangeroo fossles.  Not only this but they built a replica of the Ark, made out of gopher wood by fourteen of the best trained ship builders England could produce.  But what ended up happening was that this ship began to warp and twist with internal structural stresses and soon fell apart.  It would never have lasted a year and a half or whatever through one of the worst storms known to the planet.  Then there is the Grand Canyon argument.  If the Grand Canyon was created after the flood- - how come there aren't grand canyons all over the planet of equal grandure, like say just outside Portland Oregon where the Columbia River feeds in, or the Colorado down by Mexico.  Then there are the stars themselves.  We know that the Milkey Way is a hundred thousand light years long.  While it's true that a light year is a unit of Distance and not Time- - we can infer the elapsment of at least a hundred thousand years.  And that's just this galaxy.  And then we have the argument from the ice.  Because they have counted 160,000 cycles of ice freezes and refreezings in certain drilled out old ice.  The trouble is someone did the math and the Earth at one time would have had to revolve for the summer and winter cycles- - something like 174 times as fast around the sun as it does today.  How come nobody observed that?  Were the earth close enough to revolve that much faster it would have long since fried to a crisp.  We then have the argument from the fossiles themselves.  These Christians like to lie.  For instance- - - there ARE a whole lot of non human or pre human skulls out there- - and they just showed sixteen or more of them of radically different shapes and ask "Which one of these prehistoric skulls did homo sapiens evolve from.  (  Now there is a joke about how Evolutionists believe there were fish then anphibians then mammels then apes then homo sapien, then homo-sexual, so that when Obama says that he's "Evolving" on the subject it means he'll come out of the closet soon)  We can talk about sexual vs asexual reproduction.  Sex itself "Evolved" as a mode to introduce variety into reproduction to wart off infectious bacteria and paracites that reproduce asexually.  (Selah)  But there are indeed some species of Dinasaurs that are very bird-like.  And there are things called lung fish that were "predicted" by scientists to be discovered.  Needles to remind you that NO prediction in the Bible has some true in the Bible save for Ezekiel's prophecy about the rebirth of Israel.  Nothing else has of the eighteen hundred or whatever prophecies.  The goal of science is to have repeatable experiments and predictable results, and also being able to extrapolate from things seen to things unseen.   Some of the things in this speech I was puzzled by.  They said that newtrons could be "flash frozen" and spontaniously develop a positive charge and turn into protons and transmute elements that way.  Just to bring you up to speed- - Man transmutes elements forward by bombarding them with alpha particles.  The "weak force" in nature- - transmutes the elements in the natural downward progression in terms of atomic weight to lighter elements.  Hence this discovery of Rubinium transmuting into Strontium puzzled me.  That's a discussion for another day.  But in his rebuttal- - that 'Ham" guy stressed the idea that Natural Law can't be relied upon and that times gone by had a whole different set of natural laws, according to him, so that nothing can be extrapelated.  So just as there in people in Government today entering with a primary goal not of serving, but sabotaging government, it would seem some call themselves "Scientists" with the goal of sabotaging everything science has fundamentally stood for for Centuries- - since the Age of Reason.  "He Dicho"

Christianity itself evolved and you can prove this.  As late as 150 AD the belief in resurrection from the Dead was believed to be a Spiritual resurrection, not a physical, bodily one.  In my file "Greeks" by Justin Martyr, this is spelled out rather clearly.  It's notible what is never mentioned in word searches.  Clearly the resurrection stories of Matthew, Mark, and Luke had tacked on endings.  With Luke you see this in the "Original version of Luke" that Marcion put out- which is the oldest historical Like version we know about. Needless to say each resurrection story contradicts the other three and as one schollar noted "Trying to find a coherent post resurrection story, timeline, scenario- - is pointless.  But lets go back even further in time before 150 AD.  Isaiah 53 predicts that the Messiah would be reckoned as Dead (having died and not among the living) "by the people of his generation".  This contracts that Satanic Diary book I read six months ago which states that "News of the Resurrection was all over Jerusalem on Easter Sunday".   OK, fine.  Snow me any evidence of that in the contemporary history.  You can't.  You have trouble even proving that Christianity, at least as we know it now, even existed in the first century.  So who was Jesus and what was the real Jesus like.  We have a glimmer.  I was rereading the Gospel of Thomas today and even considered posting some or all of it- - which would have been awfully long.  The Jesus in that was a Nazarite, just as Sampson was.  They were "pescaterians' meaning they ate fish but no land animals they had to hunt in kill.  Strangey in no Gospel does it make reference to the passover Lamb being slaughtered, or served or eaten, even though Passover is referenced in all four Gospels.  Nazarites could not cut their hair, or have contact with any dead body or drink wine, thus validating Jimmy Swaggart's notion that the desciples drank grape juice and not wine.  Terms were looser in those days.  But one thing a Nazarite could do is have sex, and we know from the Bible that Sampson had a lot of sex.  Jesus had some strange ideas about women somehow one day evolving into a man.  At other times even in the Gospels Jesus speaks of heaven as a place "where there is neither male nor female".   But certain things are absent.  There is little talk of sin atonement- - or a coming blood atonement.  He never talks about "my blood" as somehow being the thing we all need to cover sin.  Jesus' ministry seemed to opperate independantly- - or unhindered by the fact that he had not yet Died and Risen from the Dead yet.  Nobody has ever explained this one to me why all these people who were physically healed and ministered to or even had demons cast out of them- - was ever told to come forward to the Alter and be Born Again and receive a pamphlet on the Four Spiritual Laws.  And just in case there is anyone from the gay lobby reading this- - Jesus makes no reference to homosexuality either in the Gospel of Thomas, or in the rest of the Gospels.  He spoke of God as "Father" but one will note that he urges his disciples too to refer to God as "Our Father".  In this way he makes us equal with him.  Jesus in Isaiah is referred to as "The Branch" which is another word for Nazarite.  We know that the tree is greater than the branch and that the branch can not live unless it abides in the Tree.  Jesus in John said "Apart from the Father- - I can do nothing".  The problem with this scripture for a Trinitarian is that we know that God is unchanging and self sustaining.  But a branch separated from the tree will wither and die.  Nobody has ever explained to me how this can be.  Jesus said a few things in the Gospel of Thomas that perhaps aren't as neat of conceise as we are used to.  It's as though "certain statements Jesus made here just weren't Marketable".   What we see in the Gospels is a Jesus has been sqooshed into a pre-set Mold.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoed the contrversial anti gay "religious freedom" law that was passed by the Arizona state legislature.  Not only Mc Cain and Romney came out against this bill, plus all of those looming boycotts threatening commerce, but also legislators who voted FOR the bill turned against it after they woke up and smelled the coffee (and vanishing business dollars from their state) and realized they had made a really bad mistake.  Now there are doings afoot in Texas, the next unlikely source of the latest 'Onslaught" of hetrosexual marriage, as follows.  - - three - - two - - one - - A federal judge struck down Texas’s ban on same-sex marriages Wednesday, the latest in a rapid-fire series of rulings in which judges have all reached the same conclusion: that states may not withhold marriage from gays and lesbians.
The Texas ruling was handed down by U.S. District Court Judge Orlando L. Garcia, who declared the ban to be “state-imposed inequality.” His decision does not mean that gay and lesbian couples in Texas will be able to marry — at least, not right away. Garcia, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, immediately stayed the effect of his ruling, pending an appeal.

Sean Hannity said yesterday that if Obama allowed more drilling and exploration on Government lands, then vast other areas of the country could experiance the rush of wealth that North Dakota is now experiancing in terms of help wanted, not to mention skyrocketing local price (and wage) inflation.  The trouble is that if this sort of explosion occurred everywhere we would make Planet Earth a hell hole.  You see I don't believe, as Rush Limbaugh has stated he does, that we can somehow "Evolve" in reverse the natural laws and somehow it won't matter if vast species of plants and animals are wiped out because we'll all just "Evolve" into a society that can live on a planet ten to fifteen degrees warmer than now- - - and wonderful new species-- - - apparently oil resistent- - will rise to take the place of the ones that went extinct.  Rush's faith in Evolution thus far exceeds my own.  (Selah)  In fact- as global warming symptums become even MORE obvious than today, we may come to curse those North Dakotan s and their high paying oil rig jobs.   Think about it.