Curtis Dahlgren
Coincidence and consequence: Congress, cons, and "CONVENTIONAL WISDOM"
By Curtis Dahlgren
"We cultivate the mind without loss of manliness." – Thucydides (471 BC)
"The real enemy of clear thinking is the script. We think the world is supposed to go by a familiar plot. And when the facts conflict with the script, we edit the facts." – Jonah Goldberg (quoted here, May 19, 2010)
"With the exception of a flailing Hillary Clinton, not a single upper-tier candidate is a conventional Washington politician who has stuck to the script." – Politico.com
THE WORLD'S SHORTEST BOOK: "The Conscience of an Agnostic Humanist Progressive Liberal Secularist: Majoring in Victimology and Anarchy" by Will Buffalo'em. Short book; long title (a play on Goldwater's "Conscience of a Conservative").
THIS ISN'T another piece about the presidential "race"; that only happens once every four years, but public relations goes on forever. We are being hit with P.R. blitzkriegs, a nightmare of psy-war proportions. Many agendas use taxpayer money in P.R. ads, and global warming is one of the favorite topics of the people who have been crying wolf for decades. This time they're bringing in the big guns – the U.N. and the Pope. There are big bucks in global warming (and they accuse us of fearmongering?).
"The 14 hottest years ever recorded occurred in the last 15 years," claims your President. Satellite measurements of global temps do not "verify" that claim. His own climatologists themselves admit that there are "gaps" in South America and Africa with the land-based measuring stations. Besides that, other scientists have pointed that those stations are disproportionately at lower altitudes, not representative of the mountainous regions. That makes sense, because it's not easy to get weather stations all over the Himalayas or Andes Mts.
And not only that, but even when their own stats don't match expectations (er, "hopes"), they can always "edit the facts" (as "scientists" at East Anglia Univ. admitted to actually doing)!
"There is a North-west passage to the intellectual world." – Laurence Sterne (1700s)
It's going to require a super ice-breaker to get through all the clutter and claims. There is no unanimous opinion on global warming in the intellectual community, but it's difficult to get people to look at both sides of the coin. Most climate change promoters prefer fiction to non-fiction, so here are a few quotes from Michael Crichton's "fictional" book, "State of Fear":
- "Nobody knows how much warming will occur in the next century. The computer models vary by 400 percent, defacto proof that nobody knows . . . I think it is reasonable to require that those models predict future temperatures accurately for a period of ten years. Twenty would be better."
- "There are many reasons to shift away from fossil fuels, and we will do so in the next century without legislation, financial incentives, carbon-conservation programs, or the interminable yammering of fearmongers. So far as I know, nobody had to ban the horse in the early 20th century."
- "We know astonishingly little about every aspect of the environment, from its past history, to its present state, to how to conserve and protect it . . . In 35-odd years since the environmental movement came into existence, science has undergone a major revolution . . Yet these no-longer-new ideas have hardly penetrated the thinking of environmental activists, [who] seem oddly fixed in the concepts and rhetoric of the 1970s."
- "I have great [wariness] for the corrosive influence of bias, systematic distortions of thought, the power of rationalization, the guises of self-interest, and the inevitability of unintended consequences."
The new rule of communication is not to call anyone a liar or an idiot, but to say "Your viewpoints are interesting, but have you ever considered THIS [idiot]?" As someone said in Alice in Wonderland, "NO, NO! Sentence first; verdict later." In other words, let's have energy taxes first, before "climate change" is proven beyond a reasonable doubt!
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." – William Pitt (to the House of Commons, 1783)
"Tyrants seldom [lack] pretexts [and] . . The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse . . Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny." – Edmund Burke
"I repeat – that all power is a trust – that we are accountable for its exercise – that, from the people, and for the people, all springs." – Benjamin Disraeli
A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam in a winter's day,
Is all the proud and mighty have
Between the cradle and the grave.
- John Dyer (1700-1758)
As Donald Trump said in the first debate, "This country has BIG problems."
P.S. Speaking of P.R. blitzes, someone said that the Four Corners of Deceit are Big Sis (radical feminism), Big Bro (abuses of power), Big Nanny (abusive regulations right down to the local level), and Big liberal religion (in bed with the other three).
And speaking of religion, I would be remiss if I said nothing about Mecca this week. There's an old saying, "A coincidence is when God wishes to remain anonymous." I'm not saying that this applies to Mecca, but I'm just asking, "If Islam is the New Super Race, don't you think they would have known that a crane was going to collapse last Friday?"
There was also a hotel fire and concern about Middle East Respiratory Syndrome due to the crowded conditions, but maybe the Saudis are smart enough not to let in any ISIS operatives as "refugees," eh?
PPS: I'm praying for the legitimate war-zone refugees (since I last mentioned Syria, the death toll has gone from 200,000 to 230,000+ – with almost no coverage in the mainstream media). If this were Vietnam, we'd be seeing grisly videos every night on the supper-time news. "You don't even want to know how messed up the world has become in the last few years," the dominant media (the Old Media) figures.
Dan O'Donnell figures that there could be over 46,000 potential jihadists among the refugees, even if only one or two percent of Muslims are radicalized. ISIS has outright promised to send half a million radicals to the West. Is this the King of the South "pushing" against the King of the North (NATO), ala Daniel's prophecies?
Just asking. More to come.
© Curtis Dahlgren
September 19, 2015
"We cultivate the mind without loss of manliness." – Thucydides (471 BC)
"The real enemy of clear thinking is the script. We think the world is supposed to go by a familiar plot. And when the facts conflict with the script, we edit the facts." – Jonah Goldberg (quoted here, May 19, 2010)
"With the exception of a flailing Hillary Clinton, not a single upper-tier candidate is a conventional Washington politician who has stuck to the script." – Politico.com
THE WORLD'S SHORTEST BOOK: "The Conscience of an Agnostic Humanist Progressive Liberal Secularist: Majoring in Victimology and Anarchy" by Will Buffalo'em. Short book; long title (a play on Goldwater's "Conscience of a Conservative").
THIS ISN'T another piece about the presidential "race"; that only happens once every four years, but public relations goes on forever. We are being hit with P.R. blitzkriegs, a nightmare of psy-war proportions. Many agendas use taxpayer money in P.R. ads, and global warming is one of the favorite topics of the people who have been crying wolf for decades. This time they're bringing in the big guns – the U.N. and the Pope. There are big bucks in global warming (and they accuse us of fearmongering?).
"The 14 hottest years ever recorded occurred in the last 15 years," claims your President. Satellite measurements of global temps do not "verify" that claim. His own climatologists themselves admit that there are "gaps" in South America and Africa with the land-based measuring stations. Besides that, other scientists have pointed that those stations are disproportionately at lower altitudes, not representative of the mountainous regions. That makes sense, because it's not easy to get weather stations all over the Himalayas or Andes Mts.
And not only that, but even when their own stats don't match expectations (er, "hopes"), they can always "edit the facts" (as "scientists" at East Anglia Univ. admitted to actually doing)!
"There is a North-west passage to the intellectual world." – Laurence Sterne (1700s)
It's going to require a super ice-breaker to get through all the clutter and claims. There is no unanimous opinion on global warming in the intellectual community, but it's difficult to get people to look at both sides of the coin. Most climate change promoters prefer fiction to non-fiction, so here are a few quotes from Michael Crichton's "fictional" book, "State of Fear":
- "Nobody knows how much warming will occur in the next century. The computer models vary by 400 percent, defacto proof that nobody knows . . . I think it is reasonable to require that those models predict future temperatures accurately for a period of ten years. Twenty would be better."
- "There are many reasons to shift away from fossil fuels, and we will do so in the next century without legislation, financial incentives, carbon-conservation programs, or the interminable yammering of fearmongers. So far as I know, nobody had to ban the horse in the early 20th century."
- "We know astonishingly little about every aspect of the environment, from its past history, to its present state, to how to conserve and protect it . . . In 35-odd years since the environmental movement came into existence, science has undergone a major revolution . . Yet these no-longer-new ideas have hardly penetrated the thinking of environmental activists, [who] seem oddly fixed in the concepts and rhetoric of the 1970s."
- "I have great [wariness] for the corrosive influence of bias, systematic distortions of thought, the power of rationalization, the guises of self-interest, and the inevitability of unintended consequences."
The new rule of communication is not to call anyone a liar or an idiot, but to say "Your viewpoints are interesting, but have you ever considered THIS [idiot]?" As someone said in Alice in Wonderland, "NO, NO! Sentence first; verdict later." In other words, let's have energy taxes first, before "climate change" is proven beyond a reasonable doubt!
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." – William Pitt (to the House of Commons, 1783)
"Tyrants seldom [lack] pretexts [and] . . The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse . . Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny." – Edmund Burke
"I repeat – that all power is a trust – that we are accountable for its exercise – that, from the people, and for the people, all springs." – Benjamin Disraeli
A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam in a winter's day,
Is all the proud and mighty have
Between the cradle and the grave.
- John Dyer (1700-1758)
As Donald Trump said in the first debate, "This country has BIG problems."
P.S. Speaking of P.R. blitzes, someone said that the Four Corners of Deceit are Big Sis (radical feminism), Big Bro (abuses of power), Big Nanny (abusive regulations right down to the local level), and Big liberal religion (in bed with the other three).
And speaking of religion, I would be remiss if I said nothing about Mecca this week. There's an old saying, "A coincidence is when God wishes to remain anonymous." I'm not saying that this applies to Mecca, but I'm just asking, "If Islam is the New Super Race, don't you think they would have known that a crane was going to collapse last Friday?"
There was also a hotel fire and concern about Middle East Respiratory Syndrome due to the crowded conditions, but maybe the Saudis are smart enough not to let in any ISIS operatives as "refugees," eh?
PPS: I'm praying for the legitimate war-zone refugees (since I last mentioned Syria, the death toll has gone from 200,000 to 230,000+ – with almost no coverage in the mainstream media). If this were Vietnam, we'd be seeing grisly videos every night on the supper-time news. "You don't even want to know how messed up the world has become in the last few years," the dominant media (the Old Media) figures.
Dan O'Donnell figures that there could be over 46,000 potential jihadists among the refugees, even if only one or two percent of Muslims are radicalized. ISIS has outright promised to send half a million radicals to the West. Is this the King of the South "pushing" against the King of the North (NATO), ala Daniel's prophecies?
Just asking. More to come.
© Curtis Dahlgren
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
