If the names Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Klavan, Bill Whittle and PJTV are not currently part of your circle of awareness, then you might consider checking them out.

Glenn Reynolds is the mind behind Instapundit, the premier blog of the informal Tea Party (although he predated it, but in many ways has helped to connect people to the info that generated the Tea Party), and an aggregator of tech geek and political wisdom who will link you to some of the cutting edge happenings around the world, especially regarding the changing voice of new media and the dying gasps of the old media.

He is also one of the pioneers of PJTV (part of pajamasmedia), which is now a better source of alternative political and cultural news than you'll find elsewhere. I do not always agree with the opinions expressed, but I find that I am more political and cultural aligned with these folks than most others. I suggest you try out a basic (or entry) membership of PJTV so that you can access their videos

Here are a couple of videos you must see. This will give you an idea of just how smart these regular guys are. And they have a healthy sense of humor, which is especially telling.

Kicking Off the Tea Party Convention

Their part starts between 1 and 2 minutes into the video. They give a healthy perspective about what's happening with the Tea Party,

Also, if you don't know about Andrew Breitbart, you should check him out. He's the guy that broke the ACORN videos (and if you don't know about that, do a google search and watch the complete videos...). Andrew is out to hold the Lamestream Legacy media to account. Check out the two videos on this page to get a sense of what he's been up to:

Andrew Breitbart Award Speech

With Glenn, Klavan, Whittle, Breitbart, and the Tea Party, there may be real hope that out-of-control government can be stopped and reversed. It may be already too late to quiet these people.

Hurrah!

When we arrived at the wharf, there were three of our number who assumed an authority to direct our operations, to which we readily submitted. They divided us into three parties, for the purpose of boarding the three ships which contained the tea at the same time. The name of him who commanded the division to which I was assigned was Leonard Pitt. The names of the other commanders I never knew. We were immediately ordered by the respective commanders to board all the ships at the same time, which we promptly obeyed. The commander of the division to which I belonged, as soon as we were on board the ship, appointed me boatswain, and ordered me to go to the captain and demand of him the keys to the hatches and a dozen candles. I made the demand accordingly, and the captain promptly replied, and delivered the articles; but requested me at the same time to do no damage to the ship or rigging. We then were ordered by our commander to open the hatches and take out all the chests of tea and throw them overboard, and we immediately proceeded to execute his orders, first cutting and splitting the chests with our tomahawks, so as thoroughly to expose them to the effects of the water.

In about three hours from the time we went on board, we had thus broken and thrown overboard every tea chest to be found in the ship, while those in the other ships were disposing of the tea in the same way, at the same time. We were surrounded by British armed ships, but no attempt was made to resist us.

...The next morning, after we had cleared the ships of the tea, it was discovered that very considerable quantities of it were floating upon the surface of the water; and to prevent the possibility of any of its being saved for use, a number of small boats were manned by sailors and citizens, who rowed them into those parts of the harbor wherever the tea was visible, and by beating it with oars and paddles so thoroughly drenched it as to render its entire destruction inevitable.

Hawkes, James A, Retrospect of the Boston Tea-Party, with a Memoir of George R. T. Hewes... (1834).

What is the Tea Party? Check out this 8-minute video.

It's time to join up: TEAPARTYNATION.COM

Until then, arrivederci!

This is a simplification, of course. (Governments can support activities that create wealth.) But the main thing to keep in mind is that politicians and bureaucrats through their taxing power consume wealth that is created by others.

Parasites

Parasites are not necessarily bad. There are parasitic organisms that rely on a host and offer something in return. Some parasites are even necessary for the health of the host. But the distinguishing characteristic of a parasite is that it requires a host. It requires something to feed off of.

And even good parasites, when they get to be too many, can kill the host.

In an economy, in simple terms, there are hosts and there are parasites (some good, some bad, some good in small quantities).

Hosts create real wealth. Parasites consume the wealth created by hosts.

Real Wealth

What is real wealth (as opposed to unreal wealth or secondary wealth)? Which of the following would you say is real wealth?

1. The government prints up $10 billion dollars.
2. A man invents a process that yields 10 times as much corn per acre than before.
3. A bank takes in $1 million in credit card finance charges.
4. An insurance company collects $5 million in payments.
5. A man sees that his stocks are worth $100,000.
6. A woman has a 401K and a IRA that together are valued at $250,000.
7. A plaintiff's lawsuit results in $10 million in damages, divided up 50-50 with lawyers.

The answer is: Only number 2 is real wealth. All the rest are either unreal (1, 5, 6) or secondary (3, 4, 7).

In other words, only the man who invented a process that increases corn yields by 1000% has created real wealth. If you have trouble recognizing this, then you are a potential sucker for thinking parasites are hosts. You are open to being conned, by both conscious and manipulative parasites, and good-intentioned parasites.

Financial debts are a form of enslavement, a kind of karma with interest where others enrich themselves with your unrestrained desires to have something now rather than later. It can destroy individuals and families.

So why do so many people think governments are immune to the consequences of debt? How many of you fail to understand the root cause of this planet's financial crises?

The founders of this country tried to prevent the situation America and the world finds itself in. I know, I know...it's popular to talk down on our founders, dehumanize them, usually in an attempt to avoid dealing with their wisdom...but how can we not see the prophetic nature of these words?:

"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816.

"I consider the fortunes of our republic as depending in an eminent degree on the extinguishment of the public debt before we engage in any war; because that done, we shall have revenue enough to improve our country in peace and defend it in war without recurring either to new taxes or loans. But if the debt should once more be swelled to a formidable size, its entire discharge will be despaired of, and we shall be committed to the English career of debt, corruption and rottenness, closing with revolution. The discharge of public debt, therefore, is vital to the destinies of our government." --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1809.

"To preserve independence we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816.

"All the perplexities, confusion and distresses in America arise not from defects in the constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." --JOHN ADAMS, letter to Thomas Jefferson, August 25, 1787

America is now trillions of dollars in debt. And our last few presidents and congresses have through warfare and social welfare increased that debt beyond all reason.

All we hear now is a constant call to add even more debt, which once again no politician is ultimately accountable for. Actions have consequences. All debts must be paid. With interest.

So if I am a little less enthusiastic than many about government being a problem solver, I hope you are not surprised. As I've said before, giving money to a politician is like giving whiskey and car keys to a teenager.

Government is the root cause of the current crises. And since government is failing to take accountability for how they opened the doors of greed to the bankers and brokers (as well as to themselves), government will not be able to solve this problem, only make it worse.

TINSTAAFL: There is no such thing as a free lunch. Debt is slavery and every vote for debt is a vote to enslave others in this life and the next and interfere with their ability to acquire spiritual freedom.

It's all very simple, really.

(Just call me Mr. Happy.)

. Happy Birthday.

For a refresher, reread Evil Dictionaries and Money.

You won't want to miss it! Read the review:

Every so often someone in Hollywood uses his power to break the movie colony's rules. Consider this year's Total Eclipse. Odd as it may seem, this is the first serious American film set against the background of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, the deal that allied Europe's two totalitarian powers against the West and helped plunge the world into war. With an ally on the eastern front, Hitler sent his Panzers west while Stalin helped himself to the Baltic states and invaded Finland. A film like this could easily have turned out as big a didactic dud as the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's 1982 bomb, Inchon, with Laurence Olivier as Gen. Douglas MacArthur. But this time the verisimilitude of the script, carried by some outstanding performances, is the source of the film's dramatic power.

Dustin Hoffman's persuasive portrayal of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin obviously emerges from his close study of how power and perversity converged in the dictator. Likewise, Jurgen Prochnow sparkles as Hitler's foreign minister, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, and so does Robert Duvall as Vyacheslav Molotov, his Soviet counterpart. Duvall's delivery of Molotov's line that "fascism is a matter of taste" is a key moment, and deserves at least as much admiration as Duvall's famous quip from Apocalypse Now about the smell of napalm in the morning. The Molotov speech has drawn some objections for being over the top, but it was not invented by screenwriter William Goldman (Marathon Man); it's an actual quote.

The sheer unexpectedness of the film is almost as shocking as its content. In one of the film's more chilling sequences, the Soviets hand over a number of German Communists, Jews who had taken refuge in Moscow, to the Gestapo. Modern audiences may find this surprising, but that incident too is taken from the historical record. Indeed, former KGB officials are credited as advisers on the film, whose cast also includes some of their actual victims.

There has simply been nothing like it on the screen in six decades. It has taken that long for moviegoers to see Soviet forces invading Poland and meeting their Nazi counterparts. Audiences would likely be similarly surprised by cinematic treatments of Cuban prisons, the Khmer Rouge genocide, and the bloody campaigns of Ethiopia's Stalinist Col. Mengistu, all still awaiting attention from Hollywood.

Total Eclipse is rated PG-13 for violence, particularly graphic in some of the mass murder scenes, images of starving infants from Stalin's 1932 forced famine in the Ukraine, and the torture of dissidents. Director Steven Spielberg (Schindler's List) deftly cuts from the Moscow trials to the torture chambers of the Lubyanka. More controversial are the portrayals of American communists during the period of the Pact. They are shown here picketing the White House, calling President Roosevelt a warmonger, and demanding that America stay out of the "capitalist war" in Europe. Harvey Keitel turns in a powerful performance as American Communist boss Earl Browder, and Linda Hunt brings depth to Lillian Hellman, who, when Hitler attacks the USSR in September of 1939, actually did cry out, "The motherland has been invaded."

Painstakingly accurate and filled with historical surprises, this film is so refreshing, so remarkable, that even at 162 minutes it seems too short.

Read the whole thing. H/T Instapundit.

If I were a practicing Christian and I were to consult the Bible about when life begins, when a living Soul appears in the body, I think the Bible is fairly clear:

Genesis 2:7: "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

There it is. The body comes first and with "breath" life begins. The body without the breath of life is not yet a living Soul. That moment happens with breath.

Now, I'm not a Christian and I'm not telling Christians what to believe. I'm just showing how I would use the Bible as an authority if I were inclined to determine what it says about when life begins.

To say life begins at conception is understandable. But to say it in a way that means there's a living Soul in the zygote seems simply wrong. The sperm is alive. The egg is alive. They come together and guess what! The result is alive.

But if the Bible is to be used as an authority on when human life truly begins, clearly it's with the "breath of life." That's when the body becomes something more: A person.

This is important, because when discussing the whole abortion thing, with all its inevitable emotional baggage, it's easy to get lost in all the ways words are used. There's nothing wrong with anyone wanting to view human life as beginning with fertilization.

But when it becomes a matter of government legal action, we have to be more careful and clear because it makes a difference when determining when someone is to be charged with taking a life.

If we define a zygote as a legal person, then miscarriages can result in charges of voluntary or involuntary manslaughter. If a legal person is defined at the moment the baby takes a breath, then anything before that is merely biological and no charges should be brought.

Clearly both of these are problematic. What about a woman in her 8th month where the baby is viable, she wants the baby, and someone attacks her resulting in its death? We all can sense that this is a chargeable act because a real person was possible and a life was taken.

However, there's less of a sense of that when the zygote is only a few days old.

So we ought to at least acknowledge some of those differences legally.

- A zygote until just before viability is not a legal person.
- A viable baby in the womb is a legal person since a living Soul can be embodied.
- A baby born is a legal person and with breath becomes a living Soul.

I don't believe that the US Supreme Court should bypass the Congress (the people's representatives) and make law out of thin air. They are not accountable to the people the way Congress is. And this is precisely why I have problems with Roe v. Wade as law.

But Roe v. Wade as public policy is actually as close as we can get to a compromise that works according to the three-part structure I've outlined. It allows for a person being defined in the third trimester and beyond.

It's not a question of when life begins. Life is ALWAYS present. It's a question of when a legal person begins, and when we should use government to coercively enforce that definition of a legal person.

If you want other interesting bible facts, check out 2nd Corinthians chaper 12 verses 1-5 where Paul talks about a man out of the body and taken up to the third heaven.

Out of the body??? Third heaven???

It seems the body is just a container for a living Soul who can travel out of the body and visit one of the heavens while the body is still live.

There are even passages that point to reincarnation. Interesting, huh?

Uh-huh...

I think by picking Biden, Barack is showing his severe lack of political judgment. Here are just a few of the many gaffs Joe Biden has committed over the year. (Nevermind Biden's well-known vanity and obsessive need to talk waaayyyyy past the sale.) And also remember, this is the guy who dropped out of the 1988 White House race after the media disclosed that he copied parts of a speech from England's Lord Kinnock without acknowledging him.

From The New Republic:

At the Tuesday-morning meeting with committee staffers, Biden launches into a stream-of-consciousness monologue about what his committee should be doing, before he finally admits the obvious: "I'm groping here." Then he hits on an idea: America needs to show the Arab world that we're not bent on its destruction. "Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran," Biden declares. He surveys the table with raised eyebrows, a How do ya like that? look on his face.

Of course, Iran is not an Arab country. (They are in fact supremely anti-Arab.)

From the Chicago Tribune (the link has recently been removed...hmmm...so here's an alternate source):

Three years ago, during Senate Judiciary Committee questioning of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, Biden memorably warned Roberts to give "short answers," then filibustered into the cameras for 12 of his assigned 20 minutes. Lest anyone miss his superiority to Roberts, Biden added theatrics The Washington Post described as "the full Al Gore: While Roberts spoke, Biden shook his head, put his face in his hand, pouted and glared disgustedly."

Then there is this classic from The New York Observer:

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," he said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

And another from The Washington Post:

Asked about failing schools, Mr. Biden seemed to suggest that one reason so many of the District's schools fail is the city's large minority population and contrasted D.C. schools with those in Iowa. "There's less than 1 percent of the population in Iowa that is African American," Mr. Biden said. "There is probably less than 4 or 5 percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with." The Biden campaign quickly issued a statement asserting that the candidate was referring to socioeconomic status, not racial differences.

And this racist classic that you can see on YouTube:

"You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.... I'm not joking."

And let's not forget that it was Biden who Borked Bork and slammed Clarence Thomas. Here's some things Biden said in a 1991 interview with Charles Ogletree:

BIDEN: Thomas was the one in my view engaging in racism, and I not only mean racism in terms of playing the race card, but racism in trying to reinforce the stereotypical notion about black women. That was the sin I don't forgive the guy for and those who were making his case.

BIDEN: "I think that the only reason Clarence Thomas is on the Court is because he is black. I don't believe he could have won had he been white. And the reason is, I think it was a cynical ploy by President Bush."

Read Clarence Thomas's autobiography to see the kinds of games Biden played. Thomas has a clear history of integrity.

For a dose of Biden's patented long-windedness in defense of his gaff-making, check out this YouTube video.

And no, I'm not voting for McCain. I will no longer vote for the lesser of two evils when voting for President. I will only make a positive vote. The one and only time that happened was Ronald Reagan. (I would be, in popular parlance, a Reagan Democrat, even though I was never a Democrat.) And even then, I thought Reagan should resign if he truly meant it when he said he took full responsibility for the Marines getting bombed in Lebanon.

Take about 20 minutes and read it in its entirety. Below is a bit to get you started.

And if you want great access to both sides of the argument on a daily basis, add Climate Debate Daily to your list of must-reads.

There has been the most extraordinary series of postings at Climate Audit over the last week. As is usual at CA, there is a heavy mathematics burden for the casual reader, which, with a bit of research I think I can now just about follow. The story is a remarkable indictment of the corruption and cyncism that is rife among climate scientists, and I'm going to try to tell it in layman's language so that the average blog reader can understand it. As far as I know it's the first time the whole story has been set out in a single posting. It's a long tale - and the longest posting I think I've ever written and piecing it together from the individual CA postings has been a long, hard but fascinating struggle. You may want to get a long drink before starting, and those who suffer from heart disorders may wish to take their beta blockers first.

Why Science and Faith Don't Mix Well

It is not that science disproves -- or tries to disprove -- the existence of God. The acts of a transcendent creator are simply outside the realm of anything that science can examine.

Science is the process of trying to discover mechanistic causes of publicly observable phenomena. The trouble is that causation cannot be positively proven. Ever. Under any circumstances.

So the best that scientists can do is make guesses (hypetheses) about causation and then conduct experiments designed to prove those guesses wrong. If the experiments don't prove them wrong, then the guess is considered to be a good one, an educated one, and scientists assume that it is true, or true enough, until new evidence emerges to contradict it.

But in science, no answer is ever final. No assumption of cause is beyond question. We never know enough to say, "This subject is now closed."

And that's just on the subject of mechanical cause. When it comes to final cause, which we call "purpose" or "motive," science is simply helpless. It is up to historians and biographers and fiction writers to provide motive and purpose and meaning -- and their work is specifically considered not to be science.

Scientists must therefore conduct their work as if the entire universe were one big machine, in which everything that happens is caused to happen by outside forces that push on each other.

Every serious student of science knows that this does not imply that the mechanical model of the universe is a complete explanation of anything -- it's not provable, it's simply the assumption that must be made before any useful scientific work can take place.

Here's why: The moment you allow transcendent or metaphysical forces into the equation, by definition they cannot be measured or replicated on demand. So the moment you say, "This event does not have a mechanical cause, but rather a spiritual/intelligent/purposive/magical one," science has stopped cold.

Think how much progress medicine made back when diseases were blamed on gods, and "treated" through sacrifices or prayers alone. Whether invoking gods does any good is a matter of faith; it will never lead you to effective medical treatments.

That is why science simply cannot admit God -- or Intelligent Design -- into the public discussion of science. The moment transcendent forces are invoked, science ends. And that's why I am among those who do not want to see Intelligent Design offered as a scientific alternative to Darwinism in science classes. It is, at best, a distraction; it is not that ID is wrong, it's that it's irrelevant to the project of science.

Why Faith in Darwinism Is No Better

Just because ID cannot be part of the public discussion of science does not mean, however, that people who believe in Intelligent Design cannot be trusted to do good science.

Most scientific discoveries through history have been made by people who believed in God. Period. That's a historical fact.

Why shouldn't a scientist believe that the natural world has a purpose, that it was designed by God, and that life has value for reasons having to do with the purposes of that God? As long as he recognizes that science deals only with mechanical causation, his personal faith will not interfere with his ability to examine the evidence and perform useful and accurate experiments.

In fact, it is an open secret that throughout the sciences, researchers constantly use purposive assumptions to arrive that the hypotheses they test. They may disguise these assumptions by speaking of "elegant" solutions, or "symmetry," but the fact is that scientists commonly expect the universe to make sense. And "making sense" is a very unscientific idea.

Science thus becomes a game -- you are allowed to play only within the rules. But within that sandbox, scientists have made extraordinary discoveries that have transformed our understanding and our lives.

The tragedy is that many scientists forget that the assumption of mechanical causation has not been proven and cannot be. It is a natural human trait to want to believe that what we accomplish in our lives is real, that is has permanent, lasting value. Not all people are able to maintain the humility of a true scientist -- knowing that all his work will inevitably be contradicted, amplified, or otherwise redone by somebody else. And it is profoundly annoying to some of them, at least, to have to admit that they are only playing a game.

H/T to Michael Prescott

IRON MAN: Stay through the end credits to see the final scene that sets up Iron Man 2.

THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM: Every American teenage boy's king fu fantasy movie.

JUNO: Still the best. Get the DVD.

DAN IN REAL LIFE: Just caught this on DVD and realized that Steve Carell is a truly great actor and Juliette Binoche still makes my putter flutter.