More 'global warming' shenanigans...

Washington, DC -- UK's Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al Gore at a high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009 at 10am in Washington. Monckton told Climate Depot that the Democrats rescinded his scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy and Commerce hearing on Friday. Monckton said he was informed that he would not be allowed to testify alongside Gore when his plane landed from England Thursday afternoon.

“The House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face,” Monckton told Climate Depot in an exclusive interview. “They are cowards.”

According to Monckton, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), Ranking Member on the Energy & Commerce Committee, had invited him to go head to head with Gore and testify at the hearing on Capitol Hill Friday. But Monckton now says that when his airplane from London landed in the U.S. on Thursday, he was informed that the former Vice-President had “chickened out” and there would be no joint appearance. Gore is scheduled to testify on Friday to the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment's fourth day of hearings on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The hearing will be held in 2123 Rayburn House Office Building.

According to Monckton, House Democrats told the Republican committee staff earlier this week that they would be putting forward an unnamed 'celebrity' as their star witness Friday at a multi-panel climate hearing examining the House global warming bill. The "celebrity" witness turned out to be Gore. Monckton said the GOP replied they would respond to the Democrats' "celebrity" with an unnamed "celebrity" of their own. But Monckton claims that when the Democrats were told who the GOP witness would be, they refused to allow him to testify alongside Gore.

“The Democrats have a lot to learn about the right of free speech under the US Constitution. Congress Henry Waxman's (D-CA) refusal to expose Al Gore's sci-fi comedy-horror testimony to proper, independent scrutiny by the House minority reeks of naked fear,” Monckton said from the airport Thursday evening.

Read the Rest at Climate Depot; more links there too on 'climate change'.

Brooks on 'the end of philosophy' or 'the end of humanity'

The End of Philosophy by David Brooks (New York Times)

Socrates talked. The assumption behind his approach to philosophy, and the approaches of millions of people since, is that moral thinking is mostly a matter of reason and deliberation: Think through moral problems. Find a just principle. Apply it.

One problem with this kind of approach to morality, as Michael Gazzaniga writes in his 2008 book, “Human,” is that “it has been hard to find any correlation between moral reasoning and proactive moral behavior, such as helping other people. In fact, in most studies, none has been found.”

Today, many psychologists, cognitive scientists and even philosophers embrace a different view of morality. In this view, moral thinking is more like aesthetics. As we look around the world, we are constantly evaluating what we see. Seeing and evaluating are not two separate processes. They are linked and basically simultaneous.

As Steven Quartz of the California Institute of Technology said during a recent discussion of ethics sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, “Our brain is computing value at every fraction of a second. Everything that we look at, we form an implicit preference. Some of those make it into our awareness; some of them remain at the level of our unconscious, but ... what our brain is for, what our brain has evolved for, is to find what is of value in our environment.”

Think of what happens when you put a new food into your mouth. You don’t have to decide if it’s disgusting. You just know. You don’t have to decide if a landscape is beautiful. You just know.

Moral judgments are like that. They are rapid intuitive decisions and involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain. Most of us make snap moral judgments about what feels fair or not, or what feels good or not. We start doing this when we are babies, before we have language. And even as adults, we often can’t explain to ourselves why something feels wrong.

In other words, reasoning comes later and is often guided by the emotions that preceded it. Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia memorably wrote, “The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and ... moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.”

The question then becomes: What shapes moral emotions in the first place? The answer has long been evolution, but in recent years there’s an increasing appreciation that evolution isn’t just about competition. It’s also about cooperation within groups. Like bees, humans have long lived or died based on their ability to divide labor, help each other and stand together in the face of common threats. Many of our moral emotions and intuitions reflect that history. We don’t just care about our individual rights, or even the rights of other individuals. We also care about loyalty, respect, traditions, religions. We are all the descendents of successful cooperators.

Read the rest of this wretched but interesting piece here.

My commentary:
As science comes up with 'explanations' for why humans feel the need to be moral, the moral 'values' that we hold will become useless. This is because, as science will have proven, it's all biologically determined anyway. This sort of reasoning admits a limit on what is reason; reason is strictly limited to the verifiable or empirical. Science hasn't accounted for feelings like "patriotism", but as Brooks asserts, eventually it will. Hence the title: "The Death of Philosophy". How does this not give a person pause? Reason is limited to materialistic determinism? Say 'bye, bye' to philosophy, theology, and reason-based ethics. An "epochal" shift. I think the article should be titled: "The End of Humanity". Brooks doesn't seem to get where this is going.... the topic is "above his pay grade".

The scientists seek to pair human morality with the reigning dogma on evolution/chance. This, of course, is not science but ideology. How are terms of 'value' and 'morality' and 'purpose' scientific? Explain why it is valid for scientists to be theorizing about such topics. Brook's article assumes evolution of random chance is true (so much for God's creative Spirit), and is more interested in taking such a view into the realm of morality with metaphysical underpinnings. The article posits, at least the scientists (it seems to me that Brooks doesn't get it), that reason is the slave of emotions because that's the only account empiricism can make for any 'moral' judgments. It very much appears that the 'science' going on here in Brooks' piece is just what you rail against in the quote above. This is especially seen when Dr. Quartz moves from 'the brain processing info at a vast rate' to 'this is what the brain is for' (assigning purpose... but I thought we were just moving particles at random?) to assigning 'value' to 'this is how we make moral judgments'. Where did the science end and the philosophy begin? I don't know about you, but I find it absurd when humans are compared to bees, moral decisions to tasting food, and that adults are no more qualified to make moral judgments than babies (yes, the article asserts all of those things). Hence, Brooks notes in the conclusion that the proposition of the 'moral scientists' is "an epochal" change; aka kiss religion, reason based morality, and what Lewis calls "the Tao" goodbye. Forget "The End of Philosophy" and enter "The End of Humanity". Which reminds me, you need to read The Abolition of Man if you haven't already; it's a great account of reason based morality that gives a role to emotion that I think you will find interesting.

At this point, the more important discussion is about the Brooks piece, and it gets back to The Metaphysical Club as well as Neuhaus' brilliant summation of Rorty and liberal irony.
One must choose:
a) To be with the materialists asserting that man's reason is slave to the emotions, and morality is simply as pragmatism describes (ready, fire, aim); truth is also always evolving and in-flux and determined by the utility in any given time by 'majority' consensus. Reality is really just what man percieves in his own mind; it does not apply to others. Such claims foundationally are anti-institution, anti-tradition, and anti-religious; usually if not always they favor a radical and unbridled positivism in the academy/polis.
-or-
b) To be with the realists who believe that man ought to and can order his emotions by using right reason and conquer his appetites, striving for the good, true, and beautiful which exist 'out there' and is accessible by our (God-given) reason, and embodied in the eternal Logos (in this account one can still recognize that we often act on emotions without thinking.) Such claims are friendly to religions, traditions, and hierarchical institutions (they are also not 'western' arguments exclusively); positivism has its place, but it is ordered to right reason.

There is no half-way house between the two. It's option 'a' or 'b'. This is the crux of our entire discussion! Again, even Brooks sees it as "an epochal" change - hence the problems of modern education as Deneen, Fish, and many others argue. Neither choice gives any road to a 'third' option; they are diametrically opposed. I'm interested to see what your choice is, and why.

Forcing students to condone homosexuality - EMU in Michigan

From CNA:

School faces lawsuit for dismissing student who refused to condone homosexuality

Ypsilanti, Mich., Apr 9, 2009 / 03:31 pm (CNA).- A lawsuit was filed against Eastern Michigan University on Thursday after school officials allegedly dismissed a student from the school’s counseling program for not affirming homosexual behavior as morally acceptable. The Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom filed the lawsuit with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of student Julea Ward.

EMU reportedly requires students in its counseling program to affirm or validate homosexual behavior within the context of a counseling relationship. It also prohibits students from advising clients that they can change their homosexual behavior.

According to the Alliance Defense Fund, Ward has never addressed homosexual behavior in any form during counseling sessions with her clients.

The school initiated a disciplinary process against Ward and reportedly said she could stay in the graduate school counseling program if she agreed to undergo a “remediation” program. According to the ADF, the program’s purpose was to change her belief system as it concerns counseling about homosexual relationships and to conform her beliefs to the university’s views.

Given the choice of voluntarily leaving the program or asking for a formal review hearing, Ward chose the hearing.

During the hearing, EMU faculty reportedly denigrated her Christian views and asked “several inappropriate and intrusive questions about her religious beliefs,” the ADF said.

Read the rest.

Marriage for all - a homosexual manifesto

This was an excellent post about what is really behind gay 'marriage' amendments from Catholic Culture.

marriage for all Posted Apr. 8, 2009 11:40 AM || by Diogenes || category

In every nation, in every epoch, homosexuals have been free to marry. In every nation, in every epoch, homosexuals been free to marry other homosexuals. Homosexuals have been prohibited, exactly as heterosexuals have been prohibited, from marrying persons of the same sex. There was no question of discrimination on the basis of orientation because the appetites of the consenting parties (as is the case in every contractual obligation) were beside the point. Until now.

Partisans of same-sex marriage pretend that marriage is a good they wish to extend to those it has been arbitrarily denied: hence campaigns named "Marriage for All" or "Marriage Equality." But the publicly dispensable good (the kind a marriage license gives you) has always been available. What they resent is the moral value accorded marriage -- an honor markedly weaker today than in the past, yet still potent enough to cause gnashing of teeth among the innovators. That honor is what they want to abolish.

Imagine that the attitudes of a century ago -- when marriage was accorded the power to ennoble sexual relations -- could be beamed forward into the present. And imagine today's parents of a young man betrothed to another young man, urging him to remain a virgin until his wedding so as to preserve intact his and his fiancé's purity. Or imagine a same-sex couple, piously abstaining from fellatio or rimming during the season of Lent, only to resume it with prayerful joy on Easter morning. Simply to raise these possibilities is to see how grotesque they are. The decision to countenance same-sex unions is not to shift sodomy in one's books from the "immoral" to the "moral" column, it is to dispense with the category of sexual morality full stop. It is to rip up one's passport and renounce one's citizenship in the commonwealth of sexual morality.

Gay activists taunt the rest of us that conventional man-woman marriage is in a shambles today, and they're right. But their proposed innovation, as they really understand and rarely admit, is a choice for moral anarchy. Within their world there is no question of calling one act pure and another act impure, because the notion of purity has to be put to death before their project is embarked on. Chastity cannot be ennobling because to embrace same-sex congress is to debunk nobility. Even the photos from the Pride parades display a kind of sack-dance gloating over the dethronement of the concepts of purity and sexual integrity; it's a burlesque of those values that marriage -- real marriage -- was ordained to uphold.

Same-sex marriage is a war on honor. And it appears to be winning.

Vatican responds to Belgium's facism...

From CNA:

Vatican City, Apr 3, 2009 / 01:42 pm (CNA).- In response to Belgium’s diplomatic protest against Pope Benedict’s comments that condoms could potentially "increase the problem" of AIDS being spread in Africa, Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See newsroom questioned whether the lawmakers had considered the Popes words and scientific research, or whether they received their information "through the non-objective, imbalanced filter of the echoes in the western media."

According to Reuters, the Belgium House of Deputies called the Pope’s comments "unacceptable" and instructed their government to "react strongly against any state or organization that in the future brings into doubt the benefit of using condoms to prevent transmission of the AIDS virus." [Satan, is that you?]

The measure approved with a strong majority, 95-18, and asks the government to "condemn the Pope’s unacceptable position statement and to lodge a formal protest at the Holy See." Premier Herman Van Rompuy said he will support the motion saying, "it is not the Pope’s job to shed doubts on public health policies which are unanimously supported and save lives ever day."

Father Lombardi, expressed "amazement" at the resolution, reported the Italian news service, SIR.

He questioned how a democratic country could limit the "freedom of the Holy Father and the Catholic Church to express their own positions" which are "clearly relevant to the view of the human person."

As Belgium reacted to the Pope’s comments, Lombardi pointed to "the great tradition" of the Catholic Church in "education and health-care, especially in the poorer countries" that needs no "evidence or comments."

Lombardi also questioned whether Belgium lawmakers had considered the "Pope’s arguments" and scientific research, or whether they received their information "through the non-objective, imbalanced filter of the echoes in the western media."

Freeman Dyson: global warming a sham (the evidence mounts)

The Civil Heretic

By NICHOLAS DAWIDOFF

FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson has quietly resided in Prince­ton, N.J., on the wooded former farmland that is home to his employer, the Institute for Advanced Study, this country’s most rarefied community of scholars. Lately, however, since coming “out of the closet as far as global warming is concerned,” as Dyson sometimes puts it, there has been noise all around him. Chat rooms, Web threads, editors’ letter boxes and Dyson’s own e-mail queue resonate with a thermal current of invective in which Dyson has discovered himself variously described as “a pompous twit,” “a blowhard,” “a cesspool of misinformation,” “an old coot riding into the sunset” and, perhaps inevitably, “a mad scientist.” Dyson had proposed that whatever inflammations the climate was experiencing might be a good thing because carbon dioxide helps plants of all kinds grow. Then he added the caveat that if CO2 levels soared too high, they could be soothed by the mass cultivation of specially bred “carbon-eating trees,” whereupon the University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner looked through the thick grove of honorary degrees Dyson has been awarded — there are 21 from universities like Georgetown, Princeton and Oxford — and suggested that “perhaps trees can also be designed so that they can give directions to lost hikers.” Dyson’s son, George, a technology historian, says his father’s views have cooled friendships, while many others have concluded that time has cost Dyson something else. There is the suspicion that, at age 85, a great scientist of the 20th century is no longer just far out, he is far gone — out of his beautiful mind.

But in the considered opinion of the neurologist Oliver Sacks, Dyson’s friend and fellow English expatriate, this is far from the case. “His mind is still so open and flexible,” Sacks says. Which makes Dyson something far more formidable than just the latest peevish right-wing climate-change denier. Dyson is a scientist whose intelligence is revered by other scientists — William Press, former deputy director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and now a professor of computer science at the University of Texas, calls him “infinitely smart.” Dyson — a mathematics prodigy who came to this country at 23 and right away contributed seminal work to physics by unifying quantum and electrodynamic theory — not only did path-breaking science of his own; he also witnessed the development of modern physics, thinking alongside most of the luminous figures of the age, including Einstein, Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Witten, the “high priest of string theory” whose office at the institute is just across the hall from Dyson’s. Yet instead of hewing to that fundamental field, Dyson chose to pursue broader and more unusual pursuits than most physicists — and has lived a more original life.

Among Dyson’s gifts is interpretive clarity, a penetrating ability to grasp the method and significance of what many kinds of scientists do. His thoughts about how science works appear in a series of lucid, elegant books for nonspecialists that have made him a trusted arbiter of ideas ranging far beyond physics. Dyson has written more than a dozen books, including “Origins of Life” (1999), which synthesizes recent discoveries by biologists and geologists into an evaluation of the double-origin hypothesis, the possibility that life began twice; “Disturbing the Universe” (1979) tries among other things to reconcile science and humanity. “Weapons and Hope” (1984) is his meditation on the meaning and danger of nuclear weapons that won a National Book Critics Circle Award. Dyson’s books display such masterly control of complex matters that smart young people read him and want to be scientists; older citizens finish his books and feel smart.

Yet even while probing and sifting, Dyson is always whimsically gazing into the beyond. As a boy he sketched plans for English rocket ships that could explore the stars, and then, in midlife, he helped design an American spacecraft to be powered by exploding atomic bombs — a secret Air Force project known as Orion. Dyson remains an armchair astronaut who speculates with glee about the coming of cheap space travel, when families can leave an overcrowded earth to homestead on asteroids and comets, swooping around the universe via solar sail craft. Dyson is convinced that our current “age of computers” will soon give way to “the age of domesticated biotechnology.” Bio-tech, he writes in his book, “Infinite in All Directions” (1988), “offers us the chance to imitate nature’s speed and flexibility,” and he imagines the furniture and art that people will “grow” for themselves, the pet dinosaurs they will “grow” for their children, along with an idiosyncratic menagerie of genetically engineered cousins of the carbon-eating tree: termites to consume derelict automobiles, a potato capable of flourishing on the dry red surfaces of Mars, a collision-avoiding car.

These ideas attract derision similar to Dyson’s essays on climate change, but he is an undeterred octogenarian futurist. “I don’t think of myself predicting things,” he says. “I’m expressing possibilities. Things that could happen. To a large extent it’s a question of how badly people want them to. The purpose of thinking about the future is not to predict it but to raise people’s hopes.” Formed in a heretical and broad-thinking tradition of British public intellectuals, Dyson left behind a brooding England still stricken by two bloody world wars to become an optimistic American immigrant with tremendous faith in the creative imagination’s ability to invent technologies that would overcome any predicament. And according to the physicist and former Caltech president Marvin Goldberger, Dyson is himself the living embodiment of that kind of ingenuity. “You point Freeman at a problem and he’ll solve it,” Goldberger says. “He’s extraordinarily powerful.” Dyson seems to see the world as an interdisciplinary set of problems out there for him to evaluate. Climate change is the big scientific issue of our time, so naturally he finds it irresistible. But to Dyson this is really only one more charged conundrum attracting his interest just as nuclear weapons and rural poverty have. That is to say, he is a great problem-solver who is not convinced that climate change is a great problem.

Dyson is well aware that “most consider me wrong about global warming.” That educated Americans tend to agree with the conclusion about global warming reached earlier this month at the International Scientific Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen (“inaction is inexcusable”) only increases Dyson’s resistance. Dyson may be an Obama-loving, Bush-loathing liberal who has spent his life opposing American wars and fighting for the protection of natural resources, but he brooks no ideology and has a withering aversion to scientific consensus. The Nobel physics laureate Steven Weinberg admires Dyson’s physics — he says he thinks the Nobel committee fleeced him by not awarding his work on quantum electrodynamics with the prize — but Weinberg parts ways with his sensibility: “I have the sense that when consensus is forming like ice hardening on a lake, Dyson will do his best to chip at the ice.”

Dyson says he doesn’t want his legacy to be defined by climate change, but his dissension from the orthodoxy of global warming is significant because of his stature and his devotion to the integrity of science. Dyson has said he believes that the truths of science are so profoundly concealed that the only thing we can really be sure of is that much of what we expect to happen won’t come to pass. In “Infinite in All Directions,” he writes that nature’s laws “make the universe as interesting as possible.” This also happens to be a fine description of Dyson’s own relationship to science. In the words of Avishai Margalit, a philosopher at the Institute for Advanced Study, “He’s a consistent reminder of another possibility.” When Dyson joins the public conversation about climate change by expressing concern about the “enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories,” these reservations come from a place of experience. Whatever else he is, Dyson is the good scientist; he asks the hard questions. He could also be a lonely prophet. Or, as he acknowledges, he could be dead wrong.

Read the whole story here.

Bishop Says Christianity Is Most Persecuted Faith

Laments Indifference, Ignorance of Western Church

BASEL, Switzerland, MARCH 25, 2009 (Zenit.org).- A bishop of Switzerland is lamenting not only growing persecution of Christians, but that the faith is losing its soul by its reduction to a private, individual affair.

In an article published by Giornale del Popolo, Bishop Kurt Koch of Basel said that "80% of people persecuted for their faith today in the world are Christians."

He reported: "The Christian religion is the most persecuted in the world today. In 2008 alone, of the close to 2.2 billion Christians, 230 million suffered discrimination, marginalization, permanent hostility and even persecution because of their faith."

As documented by Aid to the Church in Need in this year's report on "Religious Liberty in the World," the persecution of Christians takes place especially in the former Soviet Republics, in the People's Republic of China and in neighboring countries, as well as in several Arab and North African countries.

Christians are mistreated, imprisoned or killed for their faith in at least 25 countries.

Bishop Koch said that is it "particularly sad" that "in our Western countries this tragedy is not even known by Christians themselves." He added, "A reason for this lack of interest might be the fact that, while persecuted brothers proclaim their faith publicly, we have reduced it to a private matter."

"We shut ourselves up in our own internal problems and do not take serious consideration of our public mission in society, in politics, in the State, if we don't forget it all together," the prelate noted.

Recalling Benedict XVI's words, that "if Christians are resigned to consider faith and Church as a private individual matter, then faith itself loses strength," Bishop Koch pointed out that "the more religion becomes a private matter, the more it loses its soul."

Obama & the Stem Cell 'Sham'

Morally Unserious in the Extreme
By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Last week, the White House invited me to a signing ceremony overturning the Bush (43) executive order on stem cell research. I assume this was because I have long argued in these columns and during my five years on the President's Council on Bioethics that, contrary to the Bush policy, federal funding should be extended to research on embryonic stem cell lines derived from discarded embryos in fertility clinics.
I declined to attend. Once you show your face at these things you become a tacit endorser of whatever they spring. My caution was vindicated.
Bush had restricted federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to cells derived from embryos that had already been destroyed (as of his speech of Aug. 9, 2001). While I favor moving that moral line to additionally permit the use of spare fertility clinic embryos, Obama replaced it with no line at all. He pointedly left open the creation of cloned -- and noncloned sperm-and-egg-derived -- human embryos solely for the purpose of dismemberment and use for parts.

read the rest...

======================

Stem Cell Sham
The president as sophist.
by P.J. O'Rourke
03/23/2009, Volume 014, Issue 26

When a Democratic president goes from being wrong to being damn wrong is always an interesting moment: Bay of Pigs, Great Society, Jimmy Carter waking up on the morning after his inauguration, HillaryCare. Barack Obama condemned himself (and a number of human embryos to be determined at a later date) on March 9 when he signed an executive order reversing the Bush administration's restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research.
President Obama went to hell not with the stroke of a pen, but with the cluck of a tongue. His executive order was an error. His statement at the executive order signing ceremony was a mortal error: "In recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values."
A false choice is no choice at all--Tweedledee/Tweedledum, Chevy Suburban/GMC Yukon XL, Joe Biden/Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Is there really no difference "between sound science and moral values"? Webster's Third New International Dictionary states that science is, definition one, "possession of knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding."
Let's look at the various things science has "known" in the past 3,000 years.
Lightning is the sneeze of Thor.
The periodic table consists of Earth, Wind, and Fire and a recording of "Got To Get You into My Life."
The world is flat with signs saying "Here Be Democrats" near the edges.
You can turn lead into gold without first selling your Citibank stock at a huge loss.
We're the center of the universe and the Sun revolves around us (and shines out of Uranus, Mr. President, if I may be allowed a moment of utter sophomoricism).

Read the rest...

(Jesuit) Catholic universities - a total disgrace

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

City of Madison, Wis. Eyes Draconian Zoning Ordinances to 'Adapt to Climate Change'

Keep in mind that Madison has seen record snow levels as well as record cold winter temps this year...

Liberal Wisconsin capital would limit development, tree removal, fast food restaurants and parking to promote 'sustainability.'

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
1/14/2009 12:20:24 PM

Call this a case of liberalism via central planning gone wild.

In one of the most politically left-of-center cities east of Berkeley, Calif., ideas put forth at city hall in Madison, Wis. would dramatically limit free enterprise and personal liberty, all in the name of environmental sustainability.

According to the “Broad Strategies” section of a meeting agenda recently posted on the City of Madison Web site, an ordinance being considered would force city zoning to account for and mitigate climate change:

10. Zoning should adapt to meet the demands of climate change; use zoning to address or mitigate effects, or adapt to climate change; remove any barriers to mitigating the effects, adapting to climate change (trees, green space, mobility, renewable energy, land use).

Another item in the “Broad Strategies” section has a grim outlook for the future. It includes a proposal that spells out a doomsday scenario – allowing for the city to function should shortages in energy and food occur:

11. Write the code to allow the city to function when automobile travel will be severely limited and oil-related products, including food and heating fuel, become prohibitively expensive because of the scarcity and high-cost of fuel.

Other proposals throughout the document would push for use of alternative energies (solar, geothermal and wind), conservation, electric cars and urban agriculture. Other more Draconian regulations throughout the document would:

* Limit waterfront development in the name of water sustainability,
* Require two trees to be planted if one is removed from your property
* Limit the “number/density of fast food outlets and drive-through windows” in the name of public health
* Discourage individual parking options to promote public transportation usage

Madison is the state of Wisconsin’s capital and home of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. With a very low industrial base and few blue-collar workers, it has a reputation for being politically liberal, based on a high concentration of government employees, academics and students within its city limits.

'man-made global warming' continues to cool off...

From the Belfast Telegraph...

Environment minister Sammy Wilson: I still think man-made climate change is a con

Wednesday, 31 December 2008

Spending billions on trying to reduce carbon emissions is one giant con that is depriving third world countries of vital funds to tackle famine, HIV and other diseases, Sammy Wilson said.

The DUP minister has been heavily criticised by environmentalists for claiming that ongoing climatic shifts are down to nature and not mankind.

But while acknowledging his views on global warming may not be popular, the East Antrim MP said he was not prepared to be bullied by eco fundamentalists.

“I’ll not be stopped saying what I believe needs to be said about climate change,” he said.

"Most of the people who shout about climate change have not read one article about it

“I think in 20 years’ time we will look back at this whole climate change debate and ask ourselves how on earth were we ever conned into spending the billions of pounds which are going into this without any kind of rigorous examination of the background, the science, the implications of it all. Because there is now a degree of hysteria about it, fairly unformed hysteria I’ve got to say as well.

“I mean I get it in the Assembly all the time and most of the people who shout about climate change have not read one article about climate change, not read one book about climate change, if you asked them to explain how they believe there’s a connection between CO2 emission and the effects which they claim there’s going to be, if you ask them to explain the thought process or the modelling that is required and the assumptions behind that and how tenuous all the connections are, they wouldn’t have a clue.

“They simply get letters about it from all these lobby groups, it’s popular and therefore they go along with the flow — and that would be ok if there were no implications for it, but the implications are immense.”

He said while people in the western world were facing spiralling fuel bills as a result of efforts to cut CO2, the implications in poorer countries were graver.

“What are the problems that face us either locally and internationally. Are those not the things we should be concentrating on?” he asked.

“HIV, lack of clean water, which kills millions of people in third world countries, lack of education.

“A fraction of the money we are currently spending on climate change could actually eradicate those three problems alone, a fraction of it.

“I think as a society we sometimes need to get some of these things in perspective and when I listen to some of the rubbish that is spoken by some of my colleagues in the Assembly it amuses me at times and other times it angers me.”

Read the rest.

A lesson in how sin makes you stupid: by Margaret Sanger

You have to link up here. Very wicked and very interesting.

Watch this wicked interview. It's interesting how solid journalism was back in the day. Wallace, can you believe it, just grills her over and over. I wonder what would happen to our modern day politicians if they were dealt with in such a fair, but forthright manner? (actually, I have a pretty good idea)

MSNBC poll: "In God We Trust"?

A poll on NBC's website.

Should the motto "In God We Trust" be removed from U.S. currency?

6,686,953 responses [wow...]

Yes. It's a violation of the principle of separation of church and state.
23%

No. The motto has historical and patriotic significance and does nothing to establish a state religion.
77%

I think that's a pretty big "NO".

Hilarious & crazy: the wymyn priest ordinations...

Check out the whole thing from Fr. Z.
Commentary by Fr. Z.

Jessamine woman to be ordained a priest
By Jim Niemi
Herald-Leader Religion Writer

As a young girl growing up in Milwaukee, Janice Sevre-Duszynska often fantasized [That places it in the right category.] about becoming a priest while helping clean the sanctuary of the church her family attended.

“I’d sit in the priest’s chair, go to the pulpit, make believe I was preaching and giving communion,” she said. “I thought, ‘Why couldn’t I be up here?’” [Make believe is still fun!]

Now, 50 years later, she will get her wish, but it could come with a price — excommunication from the Roman Catholic church. [NB the small "c".] On Aug. 9, in defiance of the church’s 2,000-year ban on women in the priesthood, she will be ordained [No she won’t be.] by Roman Catholic Womenpriests, an activist group that has protested the ban since 2002. [Okay… what language is being used here? So far, its a "ban". Can’t only things that are actually possible be banned? Right there is a ban on importing Cuban cigars in the USA. But it is still possible to smoke them here.]

Sevre-Duszynska, 58, a Jessamine County resident and grandmother of three, has protested the church’s stance [now its a "stance".] for the last decade.

In 1998, she disrupted the ordination of a Lexington priest [classy!] at the Cathedral of Christ the King by pleading with then-Bishop J. Kendrick Williams to ordain her as well. In 2000, she impersonated a reporter [a liar too!] to attend an annual meeting of Catholic bishops in Washington, D.C., where she grabbed the microphone and again called for the ordination of women. And in 2002, she was arrested as part of a group protesting ordination of deacons by the Catholic Diocese of Atlanta. [and stingy! "If I can’t be ordained, no one can!"]

Spanish parliment - defending the 'rights' of apes...

Yes, yes, yes... of course. My favorite line, from the liberal-material fascists interviewed was: "This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity." Indeed, it will go down in history...
It certainly made it on this blog half-way around the world already, but probably not for the reasons Pedro Pozas was intending! Dumba$$.

Spanish parliament to extend rights to apes
By Martin Roberts

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's parliament voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans.

Parliament's environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.

"This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity," said Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project.

Spain may be better known abroad for bull-fighting than animal rights but the new measures are the latest move turning once-conservative Spain into a liberal trailblazer.

The rest.

The Gospel of Barack Obama

InsideCatholic.com

by Mark Shea

1:1 As it is written in the AP Manual, "Behold, I send my press corps before thy face, who shall prepare thy way." And so it came to pass that pundits went forth into all that country, preaching a vote of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And lo, these pundits spake by the Spirit of the Age, going into all their towns and cities and declaring:

1:2 "He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians. . . . [He is] the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century." -- Gary Hart

1:3 "Barack Obama is our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings . . . . He's our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence." -- Eve Konstantine

1:4 "This is bigger than Kennedy. . . . This is the New Testament." "I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often. No, seriously. It's a dramatic event." -- Chris Matthews

1:5 "[Obama is] creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom . . . . [He is] the man for this time." -- Toni Morrison

1:6 "Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. . . . He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh . . . . Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves." -- Ezra Klein

Are you elevated yet? Read more here (still don't know how to do links!):
http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=2862&Itemid=48

Obama & the absurdity of black 'liberation theology'

Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor, wrote the following trash:

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

Kill whitie or kill God! Absolutely absurd. Yet Obama didn't know... right.

Here's what a reporter said:

The MSM can't smother this, not in the age of the web, though they are trying mightily. (The Sunday New York Times "Week in Review" Section had nothing about Wright; neither did the main news section.) Americans are a fair-minded people, who find double standards obnoxious. A guy who says "nappy-headed ho's" in an irreverent radio show is dragged round the city walls behind a chariot to the delighted howls of a mob of self-righteous "anti-racists"; yet a man who uses the authority of the cloth to damn our country and curse white people, is praised as a "biblical scholar" by a candidate for the presidency? I don't think so. This won't stand. The man is toast.

Christians persecuted? ....No, never.

Christians are persecuted all around the world, even in the west were persecution comes in the form of atheistic legislation or suppression of religious freedom and expression in the public square. In India, things are just like they were in the 1st century... pray for our brethren in the middle east.

Christians in the crosshairs in Madhya Pradesh: "they're using girls to defame the Church"
by Nirmala Carvalho
Demonstrations against the arrest in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, of a priest accused of child molestation. The churches and schools of the diocese have suspended their normal activities as a sign of protest, and will meet with the governor to ask for justice.

Madhya Pradesh (AsiaNews) - The Christians of the diocese of Ujjain are protesting against the arrest of Fr Joseph Kappiliparampil, and are dismissing as unfounded the reason for the February 12 arrest.

Together with a few religious sisters, Fr Joseph is responsible for managing a school and boarding house that serves 22 girls. On February 12, a group of about 300 Hindu nationalists together with Bajrang Dal activists attacked the house, seized the priest, and after roughing him up had him arrested together with one of the sisters. The superintendent of the police who arrested him says that in reality "we have not arrested the priest, but have taken him to save his life from the mob led by fundamental organisations".

The event followed charges levelled by two girls, aged 12 and 15, who have accused the priest of molestation and abuse. It seems that the two girls do not agree with some of the strict rules imposed by the priest and the sisters at the boarding house, and their rebellion against their guardians has erupted in weighty accusations against Fr Joseph.

The extremist movements have exploited the opportunity to commit further abuses against Christians, who are increasingly the target of those who aspire to a Hindu nation, and do not tolerate religious minorities.

The attacks against the Church in Madhya Preadesh have increased since the Indian Popular Party (BJP) - which includes ultra-nationalist and extremist fringe groups - came to power in December of 2003.

Fr Hans Puthiakulangara, spokesman for the diocese of Ujjain, says that the fundamentalist organisations are coaching children to make accusations and using them to defame the Church.

Archbishop Leo Cornelio, Bishop Sebastian Vadakel of Ujjain Diocese, and the bishops' council of Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh have condemned the use of girls to dishonour the priest and discredit the Church. "It is the most heinous and most shameless method the timid fundamental organisations are using to assert themselves through hooliganism. We condemn the incident and ask the state government to deliver justice". Christians fear that episodes of this kind will increase with the approach of the elections.

Sickening: Mentally Retarded Women Used in Suicide Bombings

BAGHDAD (AP) - Two mentally retarded women strapped with remote-control explosives—and possibly used as unwitting suicide bombers—brought carnage Friday to two pet bazaars, killing at 73 people in the deadliest day since Washington flooded the capital with extra troops last spring.

The coordinated blasts—coming 20 minutes apart in different parts of the city—appeared to reinforce U.S. claims al-Qaida in Iraq may be increasingly desperate and running short of able-bodied men willing or available for such missions.

But they also served as a reminder that Iraqi insurgents are constantly shifting their strategies in attempts to unravel recent security gains around the country. Women have been used in ever greater frequency in suicide attacks.

The twin attacks at the pet markets, however, could mark a disturbing use of unknowing agents of death.

Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, Iraq's chief military spokesman in Baghdad, said the women had Down syndrome and may not have known they were on suicide missions. He said the bombs were detonated by remote control.

In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the bombings prove al-Qaida is "the most brutal and bankrupt of movements" and will strengthen Iraqi resolve to reject terrorism.

The first bomb was detonated about 10:20 a.m. in the central al-Ghazl market, the home of a weekly pet bazaar with various small animals but mostly birds. At least 46 people were killed and more than 100 wounded, said police and hospital officials.

Police said the woman wearing the bomb sold cream in the mornings at the market and was known to locals as "the crazy lady."

The pet bazaar has been bombed repeatedly, but with violence declining in the capital, the market had regained popularity as a shopping district and place to stroll on Fridays, the Muslim day of prayer.

But on Friday, it was returned to a scene straight out of the worst days of the conflict. Firefighters scooped up debris scattered among pools of blood, clothing and pigeon carcasses.

A pigeon vendor said the market had been unusually crowded, with people taking advantage of a pleasantly crisp and clear winter day after a particularly harsh January.

"I have been going to the pet market with my friend every Friday, selling and buying pigeons," said Ali Ahmed, who was hit by shrapnel in his legs and chest. "It was nice weather today and the market was so crowded."

He said he was worried about his friend, Zaki, who disappeared after the blast about 40 yards away.

"I just remember the horrible scene of the bodies of dead and wounded people mixed with the blood of animals and birds, then I found myself lying in a hospital bed," Ali said.

About 20 minutes after the first attack, the second female suicide bomber was blown apart in a bird market in a predominantly Shiite area in southeastern Baghdad. As many as 27 people died and 67 were wounded, police and hospital officials said.

Rae Muhsin, the 21-year-old owner of a cell phone store, said he was walking toward the New Baghdad bird market when the explosion shattered the windows of nearby stores.

"I ran toward the bird market and saw charred pieces of flesh, small spots of blood and several damaged cars," Muhsin said. "I thought that we had achieved real security in Baghdad, but it turned that we were wrong."

The bombings were the latest in a series that has frayed Iraqi confidence in the permanence of recent security gains.

Read the rest of this sickening story here:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8UHNN081&show_article=1

2007 Campus Outrage Awards

Lunacy on college campuses. The number one choice is absolutely ridiculous. You'll have to read it to believe it...

This year’s winners:

1. The College of William & Mary

In October 2006, William & Mary President Gene Nichol secretly ordered a college official to remove a two-foot gold cross from the college’s historic Wren Chapel, where it has been on display since the 1930s. When the episode came to light in the pages of the campus’ independent student newspaper, The Virginia Informer, Nichol was forced to explain his decision. He asserted that “the display of a Christian cross . . . in the heart of our most important building sends an unmistakable message that the Chapel belongs more fully to some of us than to others. That there are, at the College, insiders and outsiders.” Though Nichol told tales of students, alumni, and visitors who had complained to him about being offended by the cross’ presence, he produced only one actual letter of complaint and repeatedly denied Freedom of Information Act requests for correspondence he received about the cross. He also went to great lengths to evade an invitation to debate renowned author Dinesh D’Souza on the issue in an event sponsored by the Informer and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).

Nichol’s actions in regard to the cross followed on the heels of his surrender to NCAA officials, who threatened to bar the college’s athletic teams from lucrative NCAA-sponsored bowl games unless William & Mary gave up its traditional Indian-feather logo. Though Nichol wrote in protest of the NCAA’s decision, he refused to fight it in court, as other colleges did. The feathers of the William & Mary Tribe are no more.

On Valentine’s Day 2007, William & Mary hosted a "Sex Workers Art Show,” featuring topless women, former prostitutes, and current strippers. Hundreds of people packed the college's University Center to witness such edifying performances as a stripper with a sex toy in her mouth undress to the strains of the "Ave Maria.” Twelve hundred dollars in student funds were used to subsidize the event, and some 100 students enrolled in Women’s Studies and Performance Art courses were required to attend the performance. When asked about the propriety of the event, Nichol responded: "I don't like this kind of show and I don't like having it here. But it's not the practice and province of universities to censor or cancel performances because they are controversial.” But apparently it is Nichol's job to censor Christian symbols on William & Mary's campus.

In early March, Nichol accepted the recommendation of his hand-selected Religion Committee that the cross be returned to Wren Chapel but placed under glass in “a prominent, readily visible” place in the chapel. The committee also recommended that "the Wren sacristy . . . be available to house sacred objects of any religious tradition.” Though he cannot be pleased about being forced to have this “offensive” object returned to permanent display in the chapel, Nichol must be happy that the committee carefully crafted the new policy in an open-ended manner, so that the Christian identity of Wren Chapel can slowly be eroded if, for example, a president who slavishly follows the credo of political correctness is in charge.

Read the rest at the Acton institute:
(Sorry, I still have no idea how to post links!)
http://www.campusmagazine.org/articledetail.aspx?id=
1aadba57-4ff3-47bb-8f38-46564de95de4