Category: Uncategorized

Shrubbery dreams of flying across a pink sky:

I’ve read up on the theory of political economy that you’ve pinned your hypothesis on and I flat out don’t buy it.

You mean the Law of Supply and Demand? Yes, well, the Marxians flat-out didn’t buy it either, and look where it got them. Circular-filed under Theories, Hopelessly Disproven.

1. Do you deny that the overall size of the labor force increased with the mass entry of women into the work force? Y/N

2. Do you deny that American real wages peaked in 1973? Y/N

3. Do you deny that when Supply increases faster than Demand, the Price falls? Y/N

Or perhaps you deny the notion that women are, on the average, predisposed to support collectivism? If so, I’d be interested in seeing a single electoral result where the candidate favoring smaller government enjoyed greater support from women than he did from men, or conversely, where the candidate favoring expanded government enjoyed less support from women.

Remember, the Gender Gap was not a negative term engineered by the Right, it is a positive term meant to describe the female preference for “progressive” politics. And by “progressive”, it is the progress of government expansion that is meant.

The Fraters Libertas draw attention to the Star Tribune’s embrace of ignorance:

In a major blow to people who know stuff everywhere, the dominant newspaper of the Twin Cities has been legally prohibited from allowing people with knowledge and expertise to write news articles for them.

It sounds absurd, but it’s all true. From the pages of the professional journalists’ guild newsletter, evidence of what happens when unions attack:

An arbitrator has upheld the Guild’s grievance against management’s use of freelance “experts” to write news stories for the A and B sections of the Star Tribune. The Guild filed the grievance a year ago after a story by [WCCO TV] meteorologist Paul Douglas appeared in the Metro Section. Subsequent stories by Douglas appeared on 1A. This is a significant and unambiguous victory for the Guild.

Morons. But what can you expect from the Star and Sickle? By the way, I’ll be on with the Northern Alliance crew at 2 PM today.

Craig Westover kicks vaccine cheerleader Dr. Hull when he’s down… again:

Dr. Hull accuses me of not doing thorough research. That’s a criticism I might accept from some of the parents who have spent years juggling care of autistic children with researching the complexities of biochemistry, but I won’t accept it from a health care professional that uses a truncated newspaper article as “scientific” support for his position.

I would expect a health care professional to be a little more (dare I say) “thorough” before dispensing information to a concerned parent of an autistic child. I would ask — who is it that is doing a “disservice” to the public?

Jamie disappoints me:

So I go to check out free week, and I realised that they’re asking me to sign up with my address and phone number on an unsecured webpage just to browse. I’m not comfortable doing that….

Dear Jamie,

They’re not going to verify your telephone number before they let you read it, much less your physical address. Almost no web site does. Never let an opportunity to insert garbage into Carnivore’s great data collection system pass to pass you by. It’s your moral duty!

Best regards,
Veronica Dawson

Norway will shut companies that refuse to recruit at least 40 percent women to their boards by 2007 under an unprecedented equality drive, a cabinet minister said on Tuesday.

“Companies have been dragging their feet. They really have to recruit more women,” Children and Family Affairs Minister Laila Daavoey told Reuters. “In the very worst case, they will face closure.”

Far too many women are fascists at heart. You can see this at work in almost every female-dominant organization and in the way that women’s organizations constantly attempt to force change on everyone, men and women, who don’t want it. Some people think the Founding Fathers had never even considered the thought of allowing women to vote, that it was just a historical oversight on the part of some unconsciously sexist men. I suspect that they knew perfectly well what they were doing, given the obvious connection between the female franchise and the West’s continental drift into socialism.

There is a reason why a fascist demagogue like Benito Mussolini made suffragism the very first point in the Fascist Manifesto, after all.

UPDATE: And this should kill off marriage in Spain once and for all….

Spain is about to pass a law forcing men to do housework. The draft approved by the Spanish parliament’s justice commission says men must “share domestic responsibilities and the care and attention” of children and elderly family members, the London Guardian reported.

The amendment, which has the backing of every Spanish party, will be incorporated later this year into the marriage contract at civil wedding ceremonies in a country where it’s reported 40 percent of men do no housework at all. It will be applied in divorce proceedings: Men who don’t do their share could be give less time with their children….

“The idea of equality within marriage always stumbles over the problem of work in the house and caring for dependent people,” said the law’s chief sponsor, Margarita Uría, of the Basque Nationalist party.

“This will be a good way of reminding people what their duties are,” she said, according to the Guardian. “It is something feminists have been wanting for a long time.”

It’s time for men to fight back against these laws with the nuclear option. Refuse to get married in the eyes of the law. Christians can have a church-consecrated relationship-blessing ceremony that is non-legally binding, while non-Christians don’t even have to bother with that. If the children and property aren’t yours even if you do marry, then what on Earth is the point of subjecting yourself to the evils of the state’s marriage machinery?

FreeWeek at elliottwave.com starts at 12:01 a.m. EST on Thursday, April 7 and ends at 5 p.m. EST on Thursday, April 14. It’s completely free to anyone with a Club EWI user ID and Password.

Even if you’re a skeptic with regards to wave theory, you might wish to check out EWI’s free week, which is offering access to their specialty services for the first time. I very much recommend them, as I began trying them out in March and have found them to be more effective than the short-term updates.

They’re not cheap, beginning at $200, but I can say that in my personal experience, it paid for itself three times over on the very first day. It’s not perfect, but it has definitely improved my trading performance. Suggestion: stick with the third waves at first and don’t get greedy; patience is definitely a virtue. I should also mention that in my experience, they don’t send out email solicitations to club members very often either.

Full disclosure: while I do not accept any money from EWI in return for sales they receive from this blog, I do allow them to apply affiliate commissions to further access to their services. Make of that what you will.

CDM requests some examples:

I noticed the Arminian-friendly here argue by philosophical perspectives, and seeming truths. How about backing your assertions up with Scripture? Christians shouldn’t care what one thinks if the Word contradicts one’s humanistic arguments.

Since Greg Boyd already went to the trouble of looking up more than a few verses which demonstrate this, I see no reason to reinvent the wheel.

When the Bible says that God “changed his mind” (e.g. Ex. 32:14; 2 Chr. 21:15; Jon.3:10, Jere. 26:2-3; Joel 2:13-14), I simply do not see anything, in the text which suggests it is intended to be taken as figurative. So too, when God adds fifteen years to Hezekiah’s life after he’s prophetically informed him of his intention to end it immediately (Isa., 38:1-5; 2 Ka. 20:1-6), 1 assume that God altered his plans. The same is true when God says he will reverse his prophesied decision to bless or curse a nation if that nation changes (Jere. 18:7-11). I don’t know how to faithfully interpret this passage unless God really changes his mind. And this, so far as I can discern, implies that the fate of the nation was not from eternity a foregone conclusion.

In just the same way, when the Lord says that he thought Israel would turn to him and expresses disappointment over the fact that they didn’t (Jere. 3:6-7, 19-20), I personally don’t know how to interpret this with integrity without concluding that what Israel was actually going to do was somewhat up in the air at the time God thought this. When the Lord says that he “regretted” the way even decisions which he made turned out, I have to take this as factual (Gen. 6:6, I Sam. 5:12, 35). And when the Lord speaks of the future using words like “if,” “perhaps” and “maybe,” as he frequently does, I don’t know how to acknowledge these words as absolutely authoritative in my thinking- without concluding that the aspects of the future to which he refers is genuinely a “maybe,” not a settled issues (e.g., Ex. 4:1-9; Jere. 38:17-18, 20-21, 23).

It is more than a little ironic that the omniderigistas require a figurative interpretation of the Bible in defense of their orthodoxy. They aren’t generally quite so eager to accept the non-literal argument when it comes to other matters, such as the Revelation or the Gospels.

Jay Nordlinger points out a howler:

Howard Dean, chairman of the National Democratic Committee. He said that Sen. Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican, should “stay in Virginia,” where he lives as he works on Capitol Hill. But, Dean cracked, “Santorum is too much of a right-winger for Virginia. How about Venezuela?”

Huh? Does he realize that Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan strongman, is a Castroite?

But then, this is the Democratic leader whose favorite book in the New Testament is Job.

Remember, this is the CHAIRMAN OF THE DNC! The party that thinks they’re smarter. The party that thinks they’re better-educated. The party that thinks they’re morally superior.

I mean, I understand that most Democrats are too maleducated to know that the National Socialists were hard-core left-wingers. I’m used to that level of cluelessness. But to think Chavez, the worker’s champion and ally of Fidel Castro, is a right-winger takes a staggering level of ignorance of world affairs.

Even for a Democrat.

DB questions his own free will:

I was reading your blog awhile ago and was noticing your questioning about God sanctioned governments. I think what is hard for me is trying to take your arguments about something in the Bible seriously when you have openly advocated for “open theism.” Don’t you find it pretty amazing that historical Christianity doesn’t give any credence to “open theism?” With that in mind, how do you square going against guys like Edwards, Bunyan, Owen, Spurgeon, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Packer, Grudem, Sproul, Piper and Lewis? You are basically putting Greg Boyd and Clark Pinnock up against those guys? Did Boyd and Pinnock just wake up one day and say, “You know, these good ol boys for hundreds of years have this whole God’s sovereignty think way wrong! Let me tell the world how the Bible REALLY is!”

Do you think our historic Christian leaders just completely missed the boat on this one? If so, that is a very daunting argument to make considering the above have led some of the most amazing revivals in history such as Edwards and the Great Awakening. I don’t hear anything like that with Boyd or Pinnock or even yourself. Doesn’t there have to be at least some proof in the pudding played out on an evangelical level rather than just sitting around thinking up stuff?

First, Piper has no credibility with me whatsoever. He’s a hand-waver and a name-caller, not someone who engages in substantial debate, and I don’t bother with people like that. Second, DB’s formulation is fundamentally flawed, because God can and will use people who don’t know or understand the first thing about Him or how He works. The fact that God has used an individual in an evangelical sense does not necessarily mean that this individual’s understanding of God is more accurate to any other believer’s. To put this in perspective, Satan almost surely has a better understanding of God and His works than your average minister, and yet the minister is likely to be more effective in an evangelical sense.

One reason that I am rather dismissive of “closed theism” is that its adherents are so quick to baselessly cast aspersions on those who don’t agree to shut off their minds and accept the assertion that God is amusing Himself by playing puppets with humanity. They seem to forget that it is one’s belief and confession in Jesus Christ that saves, not a superior understanding of supernatural operations. Also, given that the Bible states that we see through a glass darkly and are incapable understanding God’s ways, the common wisdom is assured of being more reliably incorrect than it is with regards to purely worldly matters.

I see far more intellectual humility and civility on the part of the open theory advocates than I do on the part of their opponents, whose actions reflect the same sort of anger and fear that one usually sees in those who doubt their own position. This is another factor that makes me more sympathetic to the open side, although I refuse to take a firm stand on it because regardless of what evangelical tradition or my reason might say, it is impossible to know the answer.

Finally, the omniderigence to which the closed theists subscribe is absolutely littered with both Biblical and logical flaws; perhaps one day I’ll have to write a column addressing this. The fact that many of the great evangelists believed that they had no choice but to do as they did does not mean that they were correct to believe so.

I don’t believe God is inflicting my cousin’s child with leukemia, I believe God wants to heal that child and He will if He can find a human agent of sufficient faith. One of Jesus Christ’s most oft-repeated themes was that all things are possible through faith, but Man has so little faith that he usually can’t accomplish anything. I suspect that many people find omniderigence to be comforting because it lets them off the hook for their own failures and the responsibility to confront the evil around them. But why would Jesus tell his disciples to feed the poor, heal the sick and raise the dead if it was God’s Will that the poor be poor, the sick be sick and the dead be dead?

From the Corriere della Sera:

La prima al Milan: Stam e il solito Sheva affondano l’Inter. Massimo risultato con il minimo sforzo. Il Milan si aggiudica con un 2 a 0 il primo round dell’euroderby. Per gli uomini di Mancini, mai veramente incisivi, tutte le speranze sono ora riposte nel ritorno che si giocherà martedì 12 aprile.

The first game to Milan: Stam and Shevchenko, as usual, sink Inter. With a maximum result from a minimum of effort, Milan took a 2-0 lead in the first round of the Euroderby. For Mancini’s men, who were never very incisive, all of their hopes are now resting on the rematch, which will be played Tuesday, April 12.

It was nice to see Chelsea destroying Bryan Munich too. Milan shouldn’t have any trouble reaching the next stage, since one away goal will see them through even in the event of a draw. A Scudetto/Champion’s League double would certainly be a nice way to close out the season.