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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (50727)	8/12/2013 8:27:11 AM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Recommended By sm1th Respond to of 85487

All the specific claims of fact in my post are basically indisputable. "People needed food, FDR presided over a vast destruction of food. People needed lower prices, he had government agents go after people for discounting. People needed flexibility to run their businesses in different ways to respond to difficult conditions, FDR pushed more and more centralized government control of business activity." is all true beyond any reasonable doubt. All those things were done, and they where all harmful. Its also true that Hoover expanded government, and was more activist than any president before him.

To: koan who wrote (50727)	8/12/2013 9:05:34 AM
From: average joe	Respond to of 85487

The Justification of Evil by the New Republican Party--Ayn Rand John Kenneth Galbraith wrote, "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for the superior moral justification for selfishness." Hello, Ayn Rand. Good literature illuminates the human condition. Bad literature attempts to reform the human condition. So Ayn Rand uses her novel Atlas Shrugged to promote her philosophy of Objectivism. She uses the main character in Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, as a spokesman for the philosophy she created qua Objectivism. This technique comes dangerously close to begging the question. In other words, she quotes herself to support the truth of her own belief. Miss Rand does this technique in a paper she presented in a symposium at the University of Wisconsin on February 2, 1961. The paper/lecture was entitled "The Objectivist Ethic." Even if, as I'm sure Ayn Rand would claim, quoting John Galt is merely a paraphrase or a further amplification of the ethics of objectivism, this quoting of herself is evidence of preachy, bad literature. Born in Russia in 1905, Miss Rand uses the most traumatic event in her life as a reason to create an entire philosophy of life. Bolsheviks confiscated her father's pharmacy in Saint Petersburg during the Russian Revolution. Her family was robbed in the name of collectivism so Alisa Rosenblaum, Ayn Rand's birth name, created a philosophy dedicated to vilification of communism and the glorification of capitalism. So what are the ethics of Objectivism? In "The Objectivist Ethic" Rand writes, "Objectivist ethics is that just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of the welfare of others--and therefore, that man must live life for his own sake neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. To live for his own sake means that the achievement of his own happiness is man's highest moral principle." Put differently, Daddy had a right to pursue his living by working hard in his pharmacy. The bastards had no right to take it from him. She goes on saying, "Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require sacrifices and cannot be achieved by sacrifice of anyone to anyone. Rational interests of men do not clash." She ends this passage by arguing that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the "unearned." That's a big proviso. She suggests that ethical men will stop the acquisition of that which makes them happy when they come to a point at which they have earned no more. Devout followers make no distinction between what is earned and what is acquired out of pure greed. That's what is so appealing to conservatives in our politics. There is no distinction between the earning a good living and amassing obscenely huge fortunes. That's why Paul Ryan, the author of the Republican bill to balance the budget, requires his staff to read Atlas Shrugged. It's a polemic novel that justifies using the federal government to allow the rich to get richer at the expense of everyone else. It's a piece of bad writing that, if treated like an immutable ethical guide, can be used as an excuse for the federal government to eviscerate Medicare and Medicaid and use the savings to give the wealthy another ten per cent tax break. As far as evil is concerned, Ayn Rand identifies the culprits in this passage from "The Objectivist Ethic." She writes, "If some men attempt to survive by means of brute force or fraud, by looting, robbing, cheating or enslaving the men who produce, it still remains true that their survival is made possible only by their victims, only by the men who choose to think and to produce the goods which they, the looters, are seizing. Such looters are parasites incapable of surviving." Translated, Ayn Rand believes the commies who stole daddy's pharmacy are parasites incapable of surviving on their own. The term is an emotional outburst filled with loaded words that belie Miss Rand's belief that the rational is good and the emotional is bad. Things emotional are things spiritual, according to Ayn Rand. Miss Rand doesn't believe in God. Since God doesn't exist because Miss Rand doesn't believe He exists, then emotional/spiritual ethical codes can't possibly be valid. So forget about the Golden Rule, folks. The Ten Commandments? It's all hogwash used by "looters" as an excuse to loot the Koch Brothers' forty billion dollars, which the brothers earned fair and square. Emanuel Kant spent much of his life walking around pondering an ethical question as difficult to solve as a rubic's cube the size of the Empire State Building. By pure deductive reason, Kant was going to solve the riddle of good and evil a priori, without observing man's behavior. He really couldn't do it and had to settle for the categorical imperative, which is just another way of stating the Golden Rule. A man's action, concluded Kant, can be judged ethical only if that action were to become a universal law of behavior. That wasn't good enough for our Ayn. She could figure it out with pure reason. She writes, "Objectivist ethics--the standard by which one judges what is good or evil--is man's life or: that which is required for man's survival qua man." How could Kant have missed this? In my opinion Emanuel Kant missed this "obvious" conclusion because his father's pharmacy wasn't stolen by the collectivists--the commies. Using purely rational means to find an ethical standard, is simple when the conclusion is reached before the rational pondering begins. Miss Rand sets out to make a universal ethical law by proving what she already believed. Evil is a mob stealing from an individual. Good is the individual struggling mightily to maintain what he has in his possession. Her proof is pure sophistry from where I'm sitting. Her philosophy is seized upon by Bible thumpers to justify their greed. Hello, Paul Ryan and Exxon Mobile.

To: koan who wrote (50727)

8/12/2013 9:27:18 AM

From: Brumar89

1 Recommendation

Recommended By
FJB

Respond to of 85487


NASA : That 90 Year Long US Cooling Trend Wrecks Our Story : Let’s Get Rid Of It Posted on August 12, 2013by stevengoddard 1999 version 2013 version http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/nasa-that-90-year-long-us-cooling-trend-wrecks-our-story-lets-get-rid-of-it/

To: koan who wrote (50727)	8/12/2013 9:28:30 AM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Recommended By FJB Respond to of 85487

I PCC : That Medieval Warm Period We Used To Believe In Wrecks Our Story, Lets Get Rid Of It From the 1990 IPCC report. Remarkably, no one prior to Michael Mann had noticed that the world was heating out of control since 1860. http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/ipcc-that-medieval-warm-period-we-used-to-believe-in-wrecks-our-story-lets-get-rid-of-it/

To: koan who wrote (50727)

8/12/2013 9:58:50 AM

From: Brumar89

1 Recommendation

Recommended By
FJB

Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 85487

European Institute For Climate And Energy Calls Climate Protection “An Absurd Science”…Says Models FlawedBy P Gosselin on 11. August 2013

The European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) based in Germany held a conference on climate and energy in Hamburg on June 14. The following is a good video recap in German.

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Most of the attendees are retired German scientists and experts who are free to speak their minds without fear of occupational retaliation or loss of privileges.

EIKE is a privately funded institute that critically and objectively looks at climate science and the data behind it. Having taken a comprehensive look at the science, they’ve reached a conclusion that is best summed up by veteran meteorologist and EIKE spokesman Klaus-Eckhart Puls at the 0:28 mark:

Politicians have empowered an absurd science called ‘climate protection’. In it they strive to attain a certain climate by turning CO2 knobs and meeting a 2°C target within a climate system that we know is highly complex. It’s simply absurd.”

Puls says the same about politicians calling plant-food CO2 a pollutant or a “climate killer“.

At the 1:58 mark expert meteorologist Prof. Dr. Walter Fett comments on climate models and water vapor feedbacks:

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This [assumed] positive feedback is not some natural physical law. It’s a demand that has to be made so that it works. You can also see it the other way around, … that there’s a negative feedback that has a stabilizing effect for the atmosphere.”

Vice President Michael Limburg adds at the 3-minute mark that the transition to renewable energy only “makes the best energy available expensive” and is leading “to an exodus of jobs and businesses2 out of Germany.”The film adds that renewable energies in Germany thus far have been a failure and has only driven up costs.

At the 4:10 mark Dr. Bernd Benser tells the audience that renewable energies have made the German power grid unstable. Power companies had to intervene on 267 days and warns that should projected amounts of volatile renewable energy be fed in into the power grid over the coming years, then the possibility of blackouts becomes very real. “Blackouts for Germany all because of dubious climate models.”

Later in the video Klaus Angerer calls for more openness for shale gas, calling it a “game-changer” in the energy markets. Here he reminds the audience that shale gas has led to a boom in the USA and has reduced CO2 emissions at the same time.

EIKE urges politicians to base there decisions on the facts, and not dubious models. Klaus-Eckhard Puls summarizes:

We have to be able to finally ask ourselves after 25 years of of the catastrophe research why we have to pay billions, which could be used to fight hunger worldwide, to keep hearing over and over the same future scenarios using certain boundary conditions over which we know too little about and from which we cannot get any kind of reliable results. It shows the failure of the climate models across the entire board at the moment.”

notrickszone.com