Alabama-Auburn rivalry now so crazy it has gotten to tree killing

This is crazy! Why would a football fan want to kill 130-year old oaks that fans of his rival team use as a stage for celebrations?

Amplify’d from www.outsidethebeltway.com

The Alabama-Auburn rivalry is as intense as any in college sports, consuming the state year round. If anything, the intensity is hotter than ever, as the two schools have alternated the last two national championships.

A 62-year-old Dadeville man has been arrested in connection with the poisoning of the historic Toomer’s Corner oak trees at Auburn University.

A man claiming to be “Al from Dadeville” phoned a radio show late last month, claiming he poured herbicide around the 130-year-old oaks that are the scene of celebrations after Auburn’s sports victories.

“The weekend after the Iron Bowl, I went to Auburn, Ala., because I live 30 miles away, and I poisoned the Toomer’s trees,” the caller told The Paul Finebaum Radio Show, saying he was at the Iron Bowl.

Calling himself “Al from Dadeville,” he said he used Spike 80DF, also known as tebuthiuron, and the trees “definitely will die.” The caller signed off with, “Roll Damn Tide.”

Auburn discovered the poisoning after taking soil samples on Jan. 28, a day after “Al from Dadeville” called Finebaum’s syndicated show saying he had used the herbicide on the trees.

The university said in a statement Wednesday that an herbicide commonly used to kill trees was applied “in lethal amounts” to the soil around the two trees, and that they likely can’t be saved. Read more at www.outsidethebeltway.com

 

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What do computer models prove?

They prove the programming ability of the programmers. That is all they prove. If you have garbage data, you will get garbage results. If the programmers are bad, you can start with good data and get garbage results. In no case do the computer models have any more value than the data used as their input has by itself.

Amplify’d from cafehayek.com

When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories. Many of the basic processes of planetary ecology are poorly understood. They must be better understood before we can reach an accurate diagnosis of the present condition of our planet. When we are trying to take care of a planet, just as when we are taking care of a human patient, diseases must be diagnosed before they can be cured. We need to observe and measure what is going on in the biosphere, rather than relying on computer models. Read more at cafehayek.com

 

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40% of union teachers in Madison called in [fired?]

When teachers shut down a school while lying about the reason they are taking the day off, is that not a firing offense? When teachers take their students on unauthorized field trips in order to serve as extra bodies in a protest, is that not a firing offense?



Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers who threatened to shut down US air travel by going on strike. Scott Walker should do the same to the teachers who have shut down their school districts in order to retain their gold plated benefits.

Amplify’d from minx.cc

Public employees should not be allowed to unionize or if they are, they should be forbidden to contribute to political campaigns. The current system essentially allows the employees to buy off the managers (politicians) in order to rip off the owners (the public). It's a system that is corrupt by it's very existence. The proof of this is the public pension and benefits schemes that threatens to crush the fiscal solvency of many states.

Even that well known conservative, anti-labor President Franklin Roosevelt knew this. Read more at minx.cc

 

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Why Conservatism instead of the other choices?

Because Conservatives realize that our laws and ideals of fairness and the honoring of laws and contracts, instead of living the law of the jungle, came from Christian civilization and not from atheists, libertarians, or pot smoking hippies. Matt Lewis says it better than I can.

Amplify’d from www.politicsdaily.com

You know the negative stereotypes: Conservatives who embrace both fiscal and social conservatism are either prudes who want to tell you how to live -- "bigots" and hate-mongers -- or people who derive their policy positions solely from the Christian Bible (which, depending on your views, may seem either admirable or dangerous). But what is not widely understood or appreciated is the philosophical rationale for traditional conservatism, especially as it relates to creating a strong and vibrant society. (In may ways, this philosophy actually traces all the way back to Aristotle, whom many view as the father of political conservatism. Though he was a pagan, Aristotle argued that political life requires a moral foundation, and viewed the family as the fundamental political element.) But before we get too deep into that, it's important to note what conservatism is not. Liberals tend to set up equality as the highest good. Equality is the end goal of most liberal policy. The conservative asks, "Why does that idea become valued over all others?" Equality is certainly good, but as a highest end and goal, it can lead to devastating consequences. Likewise, the pure libertarian (as opposed to those of us who have some libertarian leanings) sets up liberty as the highest good. Liberty is the end goal of all policy. The conservative looks to the libertarian and asks, "Why does that idea become valued over all others?" Liberty is obviously a great good, but as the highest end goal, it can also lead to devastating consequences. The conservative argues that the greatest instructor on what laws should exist in a civil society is human experience. So, it would seem libertarianism hits its own walls when it ventures out of its world of make-believe theories and steps into the world of reality. Alternatively, traditional conservatives believe the rise and success of Western society was not merely a lucky accident or the result of a couple Enlightenment period thunderbolts, but rather the product of diligent work, trial and error, and human experience -- and in may ways the result of Christian civilization. As such, they argue that preserving a strong moral order -- an order that took shape over millennia -- is vitally important to a functioning society (including a functioning economic system). Read more at www.politicsdaily.com

 

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If a disordered desk signifies a disordered mind, what does an empty desk signify?

Don't take this too seriously. It's just a bit of fun.
William F. Buckley's Desk...



And Nat Hentoff's Desk...


And Albert Einstein's Desk...


And Barack Obama's Desk...
Have a better caption than the one I put in the title? Add it to the comments, please.

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The education bubble is fuel for Revolution

What is the common thread between Tunisia and Egypt? Free university education, with courses of study determined by the government, and a correspondingly high youth unemployment rate.

Amplify’d from mises.org

Having such a large number of unemployed youths can be dangerous. As George Mason University sociologist Jack A. Goldstone notes, "Educated youth have been in the vanguard of rebellions against authority certainly since the French Revolution and in some cases even earlier."

In Egypt, enrollment in tertiary education increased from 14 percent in 1990 to approximately 35 percent in 2005. Yet this has not helped the unemployment rate among recent grads. The national Egyptian unemployment rate is 9.4 percent, comparable to the United States, but the unemployment rate for people between the ages of 15 and 29 is 87.2 percent. College graduates, largely because of their age, have a ten times higher unemployment rate than for those who did not attend college. Read more at mises.org

 

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What is really going on in Wisconsin?

No more closed union shops. State workers are able to keep their jobs without paying union dues. State workers will need to pay 12% of their healthcare costs and half their pension deposits. This hardly seems overly burdensome.Oh, and the exemptions that allow state workers to unionize (as FDR would have never allowed) now exclude benefits from the collective bargaining agreement, plus voters have to approve wage increases that are higher than the cpi. None of this removes anybody's rights, though it removes extremely generous privileges only state workers had that those who work in the private sector have never had.



And what was the alternative? Raise taxes on everyone in Wisconsin in the middle of a recession that has led to a huge number of home foreclosures. That would increase unemployment and home foreclosures. Hardly a good idea. I support Walker's choices in Wisconsin.

Amplify’d from www.nationalreview.com

Wisconsin is broke. The current budget is already $137 million in the red. The 2011–2013 biennial budget faces a $3.6 billion hole. So Governor Walker has called the legislature into special session and presented them with an emergency budget. His plan closes the deficit without raising taxes. Government employees in Wisconsin get amazing benefits. They get a generous defined-benefit pension with minimal contributions on their part. They also only pay 6 percent of the cost of their health-care premiums. Few taxpayers enjoy anything this generous. Government employees get these benefits because of the special privileges government unions enjoy. Government workers in many states — including Wisconsin — must pay union dues or lose their jobs. The state subsidizes their fundraising by using its payroll system to collect these forced dues. This gives the union movement billions of dollars, which it uses to elect favored candidates. The American Federation of State and County Municipal Employees (AFSCME) spent more than any other outside group in the last election. Government unions have used this political clout to hijack state government to serve their interests. Governor Walker could have raised taxes or fired 6,000 state employees. Instead, like Governor Christie, he decided to actually fix the problems that brought Wisconsin to this point. His budget limits government collective bargaining to just wages, taking benefits and work rules off the bargaining table. He would also require voters to approve any raises above inflation. Walker would prevent government unions from forcing taxpayers to cough up for their gold-plated benefits. Having done that, his budget requires state and local employees to contribute half of the cost of their pension contributions — roughly 6 percent of their salary. He also requires them to pay 12 percent of their health-care premiums. By private-sector standards these are modest changes, but they will help close Wisconsin’s budget gap. Walker’s budget removes the special privileges that give government unions their outsize influence. His plan allows workers to quit their union without losing their job. He requires unions to demonstrate their support through an annual secret-ballot vote. He also ends the unfair taxpayer subsidy to union fundraising: The state and local government would stop collecting union dues with their payroll systems. Read more at www.nationalreview.com

 

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Alleged bias against women in science disproved

The number of politicized studies pointing to discrimination against women or any affinity group you care to name keeps on growing. The problem with these studies is that they, like the studies about the role of CO2 with relation to climactic effects, depend more on volume than on accuracy. They are trumpeted to a receptive press and a political establishment looking for another excuse to increase its control over people's lives, and their conclusions become law without any skeptical scientists ever being allowed to examine the evidence, let alone testify against them. If the evidence doesn't prove the conclusions, or if it is falsified to be more persuasive than it was when raw, in most cases we the public will never know.



So it's wonderful when science works the way it is supposed to and allows other scientists to challenge the results of earlier studies. That's what we have here.

Amplify’d from www.nationalreview.com

In “Understanding Current Causes of Women’s Underrepresentation in Science,” Cornell professors Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams provide a thorough analysis and discussion of 20 years of data. Their conclusion: When it comes to job interviews, hiring, funding, and publishing, women are treated as well as men and sometimes better. As Williams told Nature, “There are constant and unsupportable allegations that women suffer discrimination in these arenas, and we show conclusively that women do not.” Put another way, the gender-bias empress has no clothes.

Congress should hold hearings on the merits of continuing to spend hundreds of millions on Title IX science reviews and the ADVANCE grants. This time skeptics like Ceci and Williams must be included. It is hard to see how the gender-bias empire will stand once reason and truth are given a place at the table. Read more at www.nationalreview.com

 

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When the fawning mainstream media doesn't fawn enough

The mainstream media did its best to get Obama elected, and continues to do what it can to prop his administration up amid the disastrous economic numbers and terrifying developments overseas, but they aren't obsequious enough for the White House.



What to do, what to do? How about doing an end-run around the mainstream media to put out an even more whitewashed and falsified view of what goes on?

Amplify’d from abcnews.go.com

As the 2012 presidential campaign kicks into gear, President Obama's White House media operation is demonstrating an unprecedented ability to broadcast its message through social media and the Internet, at times doing an end-run around the traditional press.

The White House Press Office now not only produces a website, blog, YouTube channel, Flickr photo stream, and Facebook and Twitter profiles, but also a mix of daily video programming, including live coverage of the president's appearances and news-like shows that highlight his accomplishments.

"The administration has narrowed access by the mainstream media to an unprecedented extent," said ABC News White House correspondent Ann Compton, who has covered seven administrations. "Access here has shriveled."

Members of the press have always had quibbles with White House media strategies, calling cut-backs in access an affront to transparency, even as administration officials insist they're simply taking advantage of new technologies.

But some say the current dynamic is different, and dangerous.

"They're opening the door to kicking the press out of historic events, and opening the door to having a very filtered format for which they give the American public information that doesn't have any criticism allowed," said University of Minnesota journalism professor and political communication analyst Heather LaMarre. Read more at abcnews.go.com

 

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102.6 percent

The US Government's debt will be 102.6% of the GDP this year, according to Obama's budget. To put this in perspective, you must know that he aims for the government to spend 25% of the US GDP while taking in about15% in revenues. This is like you buying a million dollar house on a yearly budget of $250K while only earning $150K. How long do you think that will last before it collapses?

Amplify’d from www.washingtontimes.com

Mr. Obama‘s budget projects that 2011 will see the biggest one-year debt jump in history, or nearly $2 trillion, to reach $15.476 trillion by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. That would be 102.6 percent of GDP — the first time since World War II that dubious figure has been reached. Read more at www.washingtontimes.com

 

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