Thought for Today

"The global political class has always suffered from an excess of immaturity, but every generation or so, political immaturity explodes like a star in its death throes and vaporizes everything in its vicinity."

~~~~~ Richard W. Rahn

Thought for Today

"In the end, the explanation for this long, long war – which grows longer – doesn't lie in anything we've done but in who we are: a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Has there ever been a doctrine more subversive to the despotisms of the world? What we in the West do, right or wrong or neither, is but an excuse for the war being waged against our civilization by a rapacious enemy. It is what we are that threatens them: a beacon. Ideas have consequences; they can spread of their own accord. That is why we are such a threat to their closed societies. It is what we represent: freedom. And freedom attracts by its very existence. Eternal vigilance, it turns out, isn't just the price of liberty but of our existence."

~~~~~ Paul Greenberg

Thought for Today

"If you were going to have open heart surgery, would you want to be operated on by a surgeon who was chosen because he had to struggle to get where he is or by the best surgeon you could find – even if he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had every advantage that money and social position could offer?"

~~~~~ Thomas Sowell

Thought for Today

"The world ain't going to be saved by nobody's scheme. It's fellows with schemes that got us into this mess. Plans can get you into things, but you got to work your way out."

~~~~~ Will Rogers

Thought for Today

"The economic freedom which is the prerequisite of any other freedom cannot be the freedom from economic care, which the socialists promise us and which can be obtained only by relieving the individual at the same time of the necessity and of the power of choice; it must be the freedom of our economic activity which, with the right of choice, inevitably also carries the risk and the responsibility of that right."

~~~~~ Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992)

Thought for Today

"Give to us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for – because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything."

~~~~~ Peter Marshall

Thought for Today

"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant."

~~~~~ John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), "On Liberty" (1859)

Thought for Today

"..in the lexicon of the political class, the word 'sacrifice' means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it."

~~~~~ George Will – "Newsweek," 2/22/93

Thought for Today

"We are a nation that has a government – not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the earth. Our government has no power except that granted to it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed."

~~~~~ Ronald Reagan

Thought for Today

"When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience in nearly forty years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, and storms and fog and the like. But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident...of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort."

~~~~~ E. J. Smith, 1907
            (Captain, RMS Titanic)

Thought for Today

"Conservatism is the political belief that best mirrors human nature across time and space; but because its precepts are sometimes tragic and demand responsibility rather than ever-expanding rights, it requires adept communicators – not triangulators and appeasers whose pleasure is only for the moment."

~~~~~ Victor Davis Hanson

Thought for Today

"Now, where do some of these attacks originate? They're coming from the very people whose past policies, all done in the name of compassion, brought us the current recession. Their policies drove up inflation and interest rates, and their policies stifled incentive, creativity and halted the movement of the poor up the economic ladder. Some of their criticism is perfectly sincere. But let's also understand that some of their criticism comes from those who have a vested interest in a permanent welfare constituency and in government programs that reinforce the dependency of our people. Well, I would suggest that no one should have a vested interest in poverty or dependency, that these tragedies must never be looked at as a source of votes for politicians or paychecks for bureaucrats. They are blights on our society that we must work to eliminate, not institutionalize."

~~~~~ Ronald Reagan

Thomas Jefferson on Global Warming

"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the spot of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck."

~~~~~ Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Smith, December 8, 1822

Thought for Today

"People are tired of wasteful government programs and welfare chiselers, and they're angry about the constant spiral of taxes and government regulations, arrogant bureaucrats, and public officials who think all of mankind's problems can be solved by throwing the taxpayers' dollars at them." ++ "Government can't tax things like businesses or corporations, it can only tax people. When it says it's going to 'make business pay,' it is really saying it is going to make business help it collect taxes." ++ "We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much." ++ "Our tax policy is engineered by people who view tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure." ++ "Raising taxes will slow economic growth, reduce production, and destroy future jobs, making it more difficult for those without jobs to find them and more likely that those who now have jobs could lose them." ++ "My friends, history is clear: Lower tax rates mean greater freedom, and whenever we lower the tax rates, our entire nation is better off."

~~~~~ Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)

Thought for Today

"The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets."

~~~~~ Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Thought for Today

“The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us. Business doesn’t pay taxes, and who better than business to make this message known? Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business. Begin with the food and fiber raised in the farm, to the ore drilled in a mine, to the oil and gas from out of the ground, whatever it may be – through the processing, through the manufacturing, on out to the retailer’s license. If the tax cannot be included in the price of the product, no one along that line can stay in business.”

~~~~~ Ronald Reagan

Thought for Today

"It's because somebody knows something about it that we can't talk about physics. It's the things that nobody knows anything about we can discuss."

~~~~~ Richard Feynman

Thought for Today

"The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor."

~~~~~ Vince Lombardi (1913-1970)

Doctor Zero on Climategate

Over at Hot Air, there's an outstanding new post by Doctor Zero in the form of an open letter to the Warmist True Believers, A Memo To The Global Warming Cult. Here's how it begins:

Dear global warming fanatics,

Please. Stop. You’re embarrassing yourselves. Take a deep breath, and try to understand what has happened to you during the past month. You need to accept that your dreams of global domination are over. Increasingly shrill attempts to terrify the masses into ignoring Clima[te]gate are only making you look foolish. The con job you’ve been running for the last thirty years is busted forever.

I know this is difficult for you to accept. Things seemed to be going well. You’ve got the cap-and-trade bill lurking over the United States, ready to shatter an already weakened economy plagued with unemployment problems, and effectively end America’s role as a dominant industrial power. Your beliefs have been instituted in public schools as the official state religion, whose rituals and incantations are forced upon millions of school children. The wealthy royalty of popular culture is pleased to produce an endless string of movies, music, and television programming to market your beliefs. Your critics were marginalized to the point where the presidential candidate from the 2000 Democrat ticket felt comfortable referring to them as Nazis.

By all means read the whole thing.

Thought for Today

"There is scarecely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey."

~~~~~ John Ruskin (1819-1900)

It's a Climategate Christmas

Here's the latest from Minnesotans for Global Warming.

Thought for Today

"The government has no source of revenue, except the taxes paid by the producers. To free itself – for a while – from the limits set by reality, the government initiates a credit con game on a scale which the private manipulator could not dream of. It borrows money from you today, which is to be repaid with money it will borrow from you tomorrow, which is to be repaid with money it will borrow from you day after tomorrow, and so on. This is known as 'deficit financing.' It is made possible by the fact that the government cuts the connection between goods and money. It issues paper money, which is used as a claim check on actually existing goods – but that money is not backed by any goods, it is not backed by gold, it is backed by nothing. It is a promissory note issued to you in exchange for your goods, to be paid by you (in the form of taxes) out of your future production."

~~~~~ Ayn Rand

Thought for Today

"Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time."

~~~~~ Edmund Burke

Thought for Today

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

~~~~~ Richard P. Feynman

Thought for Today

"Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters."

~~~~~ Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Thought for Today

"Every government is run by liars. Nothing they say should be believed."

~~~~~ I.F. Stone (1907-1989)

Imagine There's No Global Warming

Thought for Today

"Remember the generational battles twenty years ago? Remember all the screaming at the dinner table about haircuts, getting jobs and the American dream? Well, our parents won. They're out living the American dream on some damned golf course in Vero Beach, and we're stuck with the jobs and haircuts."

~~~~~ P. J. O'Rourke

Thought for Today

"I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that
they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation... It is precise mathematically, but the mathematics is far too difficult for the individuals that are doing it, and they don't draw their conclusions with any rigour. So they just guess."

~~~~~ Richard P. Feynman

Feynman was commenting on superstring theory, but could just as well have been describing the theory of man-made global warming.

Thought for Today

"National Health Insurance:
The compassion of the IRS
The efficiency of the Postal Service
All at Pentagon prices!!!"

~~~~~ Seen on a bumper sticker

Thought for Today

“Speak seldom, but to important subjects, except such as particularly relate to your constituents, and, in the former case, make yourself perfectly master of the subject.”

~~~~~ George Washington

Henry Payne on Climategate

Thought for Today

“When the Forbidden Fruit was handed to Adam and Eve, they were allowed the moral choice to accept or decline. I know people who have refused to feast on the money tree. They live simply, within their means, and seem far more content than those who are trying to hoard their wealth while clinging to the ladder of ‘success,’ terrified to let go. That isn’t real living. The Puritans rightly saw that as covetousness.”

~~~~~ Cal Thomas

Thought for Today

“During decades of researching racial and ethnic groups in countries around the world – with special attention to those who began in poverty and then rose to prosperity – I have yet to find one so preoccupied with tribalistic identity as to want to maintain solidarity with all members of their group, regardless of what they do or how they do it. Any group that rises has to have norms, and that means repudiating those who violate those norms, if you are serious. Blind tribalism means letting the lowest common denominator determine the norms and the fate of the whole group. There was a time when most blacks, like most of the Irish or the Jews, understood this common sense. But that was before the romanticizing of identity took over, beginning in the 1960s... The unanswered question is why an approach with a proven track record, not only in American society but in various other countries around the world, has been superseded by a philosophy of tribal identity overriding issues of behavior and performance. Part of the problem is the ‘multicultural’ ideology that says all cultures are equally valid. It is hard even to know what that means, much less take it seriously as a guide to living in the real world.”

~~~~~ Thomas Sowell

Thought for Today

“Ultimately, the choice before the American people is the choice between two visions: on the one hand, the policies of limited government, economic growth, a strong defense, and a firm foreign policy; and on the other hand, policies of tax and spend, economic stagnation, international weakness and accommodation, and always, always, from them, ‘Blame America first.’ It’s the choice between the policies of liberalism or the policies of America’s political mainstream.”

~~~~~ Ronald Reagan