(no subject)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

The General & The Community Organizer

To think that men who are trained to be careful and deliberate in everything they do, could do something so careless and so unguarded is simply beyond comprehension. I would argue that McChrystal and his aides knew exactly what they were doing.

This is obviously an opinion piece, but it goes along with what I was thinking when I first heard about the brouhaha over the article. It didn't make any sense for the top general and his aides to be bad-mouthing Obama to some random reporter, military guys don't normally talk to the press unless they have to.

I think this guy might be over-exaggerating the effect, but the general gist of the opinion I think is reasonable. Any other opinions on this?

Survey Says........

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Greetings political Monday morning armchair quarterbacks fellow political pundits.  The rankings are in.  Siena College Research Institute Survey of U.S. Presidents has come out again this year.  238 historians, presidential scholars and political scientists participated in the survey and there were some surprises. 

( Surprises )

Oil doesnt smell

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Santa Barbara, Three Mile Island, Bopal, and Chernobyl. These 4 places have little in common except for the ecological catastrophies that marked them in '69, '79, '85 and '86 respectively. So what links a California oil spill with an incident in a nuclear power station in Pennsylvania, with an explosion in a pesticides factory in India, with the cracking up of the nuclear reactor in USSR? Its the fact that all of these disasters have lead to serious changes in their respective industries. Perhaps it time we think about adding the Deepwater Horizon explosion to that list, as this is one of the biggest oil spills in the history of the energy industry?

Just 2 weeks after the incident, Svanberg, the BP board chairman said on a press conference with various European business leaders that the effect of the spill would be similar to what happened at Three Mile. The Pennsylvania incident 30 years ago eventually lead to a total re-thinking of the regulations in the nuclear power industry and practically caused a moratorium on buildng new reactors in the US. But the tiny difference is that if we're to use parallels from the nuclear industry, the BP incident could probably be only compared to Chernobyl. Even the most modest estimates about the direct losses vary between $ 20/30 bn, and that, provided BP somehow manages to plug the hole by the beginning of August.

Obama already requested a freeze of all deep water exploration for a 6-month period, and by the way Norway has also taken similar measures, canceling the issuing of new drilling licenses for now. But if you're a Greenpeace activist and you're ready to rejoice at the "bad news" for the industry, you better not hurry that much.

( Why little will change for the oil industry )

War on Christianity?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

I flip on C-Span2 and it's S.E. Cupp author of Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Medias Attack on Christianity

Now, I stay on the channel, cause, well, to be honest with y'all, she's hot.
She's batshit crazy [at least what I saw her talk about made me think that], but she's physically appealing.

She made the argument that the media is having an assault on Christianity. She condemned Rachel Maddow for calling the National Day of Prayer "awkward" as well as a number of other media personalities for disparaging remarks about specific Christians or Christianity in general.

She very stupidly quoted Kant--she went so far as to suggest that Kant was *insulting* those who possess faith. Kant did no such thing and her hotness went down a bit when she made such a blunder. Pity. She lumped Kant with Marx and Marquis de Sade in their assault on the stupidity of Christianity/faith in general.

She then said that Sarah Palin got taken seriously--so seriously that her facebook page can alter policy. Wow, she's batshit insane. She's *wayyy* above the Vicky Mendoza diagonal on the crazy-hot scale.

A) Have any of you (or those that you know) read any books by S.E.Cupp?
B) Do you think that the MSM (Fox aside) is part of a "war on Christianity"?
C) Why did she have to go and butcher Kant? He was a believer and wasn't insulting faith. God damnit.

What is Conservatism to you?

[404.livejournal.com]

I have started on Dr. Alitt's excellent primer on the Conservative Tradition, through The Teaching Company (available @ http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=4812 for those who are interested, it costs money though, but not too much, especially when compared to university level classes), and it got me thinking about what I feel Conservatism as a political philosophy really is. Obviously given from the word that is used: Conservative, which denotes careful planning and rational development, but is that all it is? I am curious in what y'all think it means. Maybe this will spark a conversation that does not break down into name calling, but we shall see.