Friday, June 17, 2011

Angels and other stuff

I read somewhere that in the Middle Ages monks were known to sit around and debate how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. The answer, of course, is as many as God wants. And you would think that would end the discussion and the monks could then go into the village and help the locals feed and clothe themselves.

Of course they didn’t. Esoteric arguments are always more fun than actually doing things. Besides, arguments require no effort and your hands don’t get dirty and you can refuse to lose an argument but in the real world results can be denied for a time, but sooner or later they are known.

I mention the above because while I have been busy gardening and cleaning up the mess caused by the tornados and high winds the media has been busy telling us not about why gasoline prices or so high, but why Weiner should resign. And that definitely includes the conservative side of the page. Could I mention something?

I think Weiner is not qualified to be a Congressman and that he should have resigned immediately. But his mental health and employment intentions pale alongside sky high gasoline and soaring prices at the grocery. I mean, if you want to indict a Democrat just throw out some facts regarding Obama’s energy policy which is designed to raise gasoline process.

And, as an aside, I remind all the Repubs out there that they let Clinton win in ’96 by worrying more about the BJ’s he received than how he was doing his job.

At the risk of repeating myself, we have this damning statement made by him in the summer of 2008 and then the actions by Udal immediately after the election.

Link

Yeah, I know. The account has been cancelled. Well, what was in it was an interview with candidate Obama saying that high gas prices would be okay if they increased slowly….. Aint it funny how things that show Obama’s real positions just disappear.

Oh well, here is what Udall did at Obama’s direction.

Facing gas prices near $4 a gallon and a pivotal national election, congressional Democrats allowed a ban on offshore drilling to lapse in September

But times change, and on Tuesday, the Obama administration - with gas prices roughly half what they were and many Democrats’ having been swept into office - blocked offshore drilling plans put in place at the last minute by the Bush administration, including plans to open the national outer continental shelf for drilling.

Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar also announced last week that his agency would block drilling on public lands in Utah, criticizing the Bush administration for releasing its offshore drilling plan just days before leaving office.

Link

And gas went from $1.81 to above $4.00

Link

As the man said, “There is no shortage of gasoline. There is a shortage of cheap gasoline."

And in the meantime we have Obama’s Justice Department doing what it does best. Ignoring voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers….

When none of the defendants filed any response to the complaint or appeared in federal district court in Philadelphia to answer the suit, it appeared almost certain Justice would have prevailed by default. Instead, the department in May suddenly allowed the party and two of the three defendants to walk away. Against the third defendant, Minister King Samir Shabazz, it sought only an injunction barring him from displaying a weapon within 100 feet of a Philadelphia polling place for the next three years—action that's already illegal under existing law.

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……..and trying to get a case against the CIA’s people who are probably guilty of no more than trying to defend us.

Link

And Southern Baptist, who have never been shy about ignoring separation of church and state have decided the way to improve declining membership is:

The Southern Baptist Convention approved a new resolution at its meeting in Arizona this week advocating a path to legal status for illegal immigrants, in a move that policy leader Richard Land described as “a really classic illustration of gospel love and gospel witness.”

Snip

All Southern Baptist churches are independent, so the resolution is not binding on them, but it does represent the will of the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, with more than 16 million members.

The resolution was one of several signs at this year’s meeting that the SBC, which has been declining in membership, sees ethnic diversity as one of the keys to a turnaround.

Link

Uh, someone should tell these folks that declining membership is a sign that the people are not interested in the message from the pulpit, not a desire to expand the illegal alien population by extending amnesty. And that, despite that the Reverend says, is what this would be seen as by the 11 to 12 million illegal aliens that are now in the country.

And if they want diversity…. They can always take their kids out of the private schools they are attending and enroll them in local PUBLIC schools.

Yeah. Sure that’s gonna happen.

And I don’t blame the folks. People, who are often straining to keep their economic lives together, send their kids to private schools because the public school system has proved it cannot educate their children and it is more interested in indoctrinating them in the Leftie mind set than teaching them the basics of math, science, reading and English. You know the stuff that will let them survive in the modern world.

As many of you know, I am a fan of science fiction and fantasy and have a collection of over 4000 magazines dating from 1926 forward. And I am often amazed at just how accurate the predictions are from a genre that was largely action adventure, paid a penny a word and was mostly published on pulp paper that was designed to provide news one day and wrap the garbage in the next.

I started this post writing about angels and how monks would argue over how many could dance on the head of a pin. We now consider such actions crazy.

I now give you, “Angels in the Jets,” by Jerome Bixby and published in the Fall 1952 issue of “Fantastic.”



The story is about how an expedition is stranded on a distant planet and has discovered that the atmosphere has a trace gas in it that drives people insane…. Their supply of uncontaminated oxygen is running out and members are succumbing to the effects of the gas…. Thus, “Angels in the Jets.”

Look around you and tell me that premise is pure fantasy.


"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves.” - William Pitt

"Logic. There is little logic among the cultural elite, maybe because there is little omnipresent fear of job losses or the absence of money, and so arises a rather comfortable margin to indulge in nonsense." - Victor Davis Hanson