“You don’t have a life, you’re just….. your eyes are dead.”

Why do Canadians go to the US for healthcare?  Take a look at this video from Reason.com

News Roundup – 12 08 09

Time to Apologize to Future Generations:

A chilling paragraph

Unfortunately, since we keep adding more entitlements and refuse to pay as we go, we leave no inheritance of opportunity, just a horrendous, out-of-control debt. Our current deficit is over $12 trillion, but that’s just what politicians will admit. Former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker estimates the total “unfunded liabilities” at $56.4 trillion. That’s the bill to pay off the publicly held portion of the national debt and all the benefits already promised through Social Security, Medicare and other welfare programs minus what will be collected for these programs under existing tax laws.

It’s probably time to stop, stand back, review the situation, and try again.

—

“The slovenliness of our language makes it easier to have foolish thoughts.” Orwellian.  What are the definitions of terms like “activist”, “Civil Rights Leader”, “diversity”, “progressive”, “right wing”, “conservative”, “rich” and “poor” nations? Do the proper definitions agree with the MSM’s definitions of these terms?

—

The Quiet Family Killer: Pornography and Marriage – What does pornography do to the family?  There is a new study out.

Most men, including doctors, had not the foggiest notion that the wives of habitual pornography users developed deep psychological wounds, commonly reporting feelings of betrayal, loss, mistrust, devastation, and anger in responses to the discovery of their husbands’ use of pornography, especially on-line internet use. Both men and women considered on-line activity and relationships acts of adultery.

Many pornography-viewing husbands lose their emotional capacity, and this, in turn, causes both husbands and wives to be less interested in the marriage bed. It’s ironic that the thing which is supposed to increase desire actually increases dissatisfaction with a beloved spouse as real people fail to live up to airbrushed fantasies.

Reading List

I have a list of books I’ve been holding off reading for quite a while, and now, with all the time I have on my hands now that I’m home, (ok, that may be a little sarcastic) I think that I should knuckle down and read them.

Here’s the list, not necessarily in order:

How Now Shall We Live by Charles Colson & Nancy Pearcey
Words From the Fire by Albert Mohler
Going Rogue by Sarah Palin
Christianity’s Dangerous Idea By Alister McGrath
The Great Divorce, by CS Lewis
Living with Confidence in a Chaotic World by Dr David Jeremiah
Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World by John Piper , Dave Harvey, and C. J. Mahaney
Counterfeit Gods by Tim Keller

I’m also going to try to get through a chapter Grudem’s Systematic Theology a week.
It should take me a while to get through these 6 books, depending. If I find something interesting in them to let you know about, I’ll post.  Know that I am certainly not a book reviewer like Tim Challies or a learned theologian while you read, if you read.

One more thing – the only book that stands out in the list is Sarah Palin’s book, as it is not inherently Christian.  I’ll not be reading that one as a Christian book, but strictly as an autobiography.  I’ve read reviews out there that mention (slightly critically) that she put her Christian faith on the backburner, but I’m not reading it as a Christian book, or a Christian autobiography, so I won’t be focusing on that aspect of it.

The list was compiled because I have all these books.  I got them because I wanted to read them, so hey, perhaps it’s time to stop surfing and playing word games on the ‘net and read the darn things.  I’ll keep in touch.

Good news, by the way.  Fallen and Flawed is back!  Welcome back, brother.  I’ve missed you.

Chuck Asay, Political Cartoons, Editorial News

Chuck Asay, Political Cartoons, Editorial News

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Being a contrarian and NOT buying (or being) green *UPDATED*

This post by Bookworm Room started this huge argument on Facebook with my sister. I thought you (all?) might like to read it.

Being a contrarian and NOT buying (or being) green *UPDATED*Being a contrarian and NOT buying (or being) green *UPDATED*

Bookworm on Nov 22 2009 at 5:08 pm | Filed under: Climate change

Am I the only one who has had it up to here and more with the relentless imperative that I buy green? I have this incredible urge to pollute and waste. I do not like being bullied, and I am being bullied.

When I’m at the store, surrounded by all the little soldiers staggering under the weight of their reusable bags, I ask for paper and plastic. After all, you never know which of those bags might rip. The irony is that, if the store told me that its costs would be lower if I brought my own bags, and that it would then pass that savings on to me, I might be inclined for my own economic benefit to bring in reusable bags. The green thing, however, sends me careening in the other direction.

When I’m at Whole Foods, which requires a PhD in garbage just to figure out which bin is meant for your particular piece of garbage (paper, plastic, compost, compost with paper, petroleum based, etc.) I throw everything into the lone generic “trash” bin. No more sorting for me, baby!

I just got invited to one of those neighborhood parties where a friend hosts someone intent on selling goods. In this case, the goods are handbags. I might have been interested (handbags, after all, are useful), if the invitation hadn’t stressed that everything was recycled, recyclable, sustainable, organic, and had received Al Gore’s personal seal of approval. (I made the last one up, but everything else was right there on the invitation.) I said no. I’m planning on going to Target tomorrow and buying something cheap, big and PLASTIC.

This is entirely separate from the fact that I have long believed that the whole climate change thing is a giant hoax a giant hoax, meant to destroy the American economy and elevate Al Gore’s (and his friend’s) wealth and status. The fact that it turns out the climate change people haven’t believe in it either haven’t believe in it either, and have been using fraud, blackmail, bullying, and lies to perpetrate and perpetuate the hoax is just proof of what was already obvious to me, given the identity of those who scream about the whole human created global warming scam.

My green hostility is also separate from the huge element, not of class warfare, but of wealth warfare here. It is no coincidence that some of the most hysterical greenies (Gore, Tom Friedman, the whole Hollywood crowd) also live the most lavish, ostentatious, un-green life-styles. These nouveau riche nothings want to make sure that the rest of us don’t get too close in terms of lifestyle and purchasing power. If we do, there’s nothing else to distinguish these otherwise indistinguishable human beings from the rest of us peons.

As I said, though, my rant today is separate from socialism, class warfare and Al Gore-fare. Instead, it relates solely to my innate resistance to panic and pushiness. Don’t start screaming fire in my crowded theater and then try to heard me to an exit that’s just going to lead me off a cliff.

So pardon me while I go run some water, turn on some lights, throw some plastic bags and bottles into the garbage can, and run an unnecessary errand in my gas guzzling van. I feel the need to make a stand.

As Kermit lamented in the era before environmentalism became a moral imperative and apocalyptic movement, “It’s not that easy being green.”

UPDATE: I should probably add here that, like most of my readers, I’m not normally a wasteful person (aside from the occasional anti-green temper tantrum). My conservation efforts, though, come about, not because of green bullying, because I like to conserve my wealth and because I hate to fund Wahabbi-ism.

Leah

I’m with you there! A few years ago while spending Thanksgiving in your neck of the woods the host berated us. (we’re Republicans after all).
My husband’s comeback: we’ve raised three children in an 1800 sq. foot house versus your two children in over 3000.
We drive older smaller cars, one a hybrid.
Please tell my why my political affiliation makes us less ‘green’ than you?

Cheesestick

I try to be consious & not waste or use more than I should; like turning lights off and not over-watering, using a water filter instead of buying bottled water, etc. But seriously, you don’t even know if buying a “green” labled product is really helping reduce pollution (I don’t believe in global warming non-sense but pollution is all I’m talking about) or if it is just transferring it to a different point of the process so that it is less obvious. It’s just like oil – we can’t drill here because it is supposedly bad for the environment, but we can buy it from other countries who are not even remotely concerned about controlling pollution. So yes, I scoff at the green lables on products & will usually avoid them unless it is a really good deal. And I also don’t use the recycle bin at home either. Not sure how much it will help throwing a few cans and bottles in seperate bin that is then picked up by a seperate, ginormous, gas-guzzling truck is really helping the environment. Wouldn’t having just one truck idling through the neighborhood each week be more environmentally friendly?

zabrina

Book, I share your thoughts and feelings completely on this. I resent being bullied when it doesn’t even make sense (i.e. into a quasi-religious “faith” of “going green”). I am sick of the constant harping, to the extent I like you am now quite contrarian about it. I refuse to recycle from peer pressure when it is clearly uneconomic to do so. I will recycle my plastic and glass, etc. either when I am forced to (not yet here in my locality) or when the U.S. stops packaging everything in plastic (oh, the hypocrisy! as if my puny little efforts would make any difference in the big picture). There is way too much irrational emotion and very little sense in the whole “going green” movement–especially economic sense.
Because frankly, the greenies don’t give a hoot about economics. The rest of us know that’s what drives people–enlightened self-interest and the drive toward choice and freedom. The envirotwits are driven by unenlightened self-interest and the quasi-religious need to control other people, to the point of wanting to obliterate civilization in the name of saving the Earth. They are the worse kind of witch-burning Puritans. I reject them and everything they stand for.
I ask for paper and plastic bags at the grocery store, and reuse them at home–my choice. Give me my beautiful incandescent bulbs until capitalism comes up with a better idea (not another government-subsidized-and-enforced failure).