THE POLITICS OF POVERTY

Star Parker cuts through all the left wing political crap about poverty in America. About 46.2 million people are now considered in poverty as of the end of 2010, up 2.6 million from 2009. The government defines the poverty line as income of $22,314 a year for a family of four and $11,139 for an individual. This explains the 46.5 million people on food stamps. All you have to do is drive through West Philly to confirm that poverty is a big problem in this country.

Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty in 1964. We’ve spent over $10 trillion on this war in the last five decades and the chart below shows you the ROI. A higher percentage of Americans are living in poverty today than in 1965.

Obama and his minions like Tavis Smiley and Cornell West think if we spend another $10 trillion we can solve poverty. Star Parker cuts to the chase. It’s about personal responsibility, education and men marrying the women they impregnate. It really is that simple. Of course we should have a safety net for those who got a bad break in life through no fault of their own. There should not be transfers to people who chose not to educate themselves, had kids out of wedlock, and take no responsibility for their actions. Expect the race card to be played over and over in the next 6 months by Obama. It will probably work. The Free Shit Army likes their free shit. I guess I don’t have a heart as I drive through West Philly and see gang bangers driving a Mercedes and talking on their iPhone and using their EBT card at Taco Bell. If I could just be more compassionate and volunteer that my taxes be increased, all would be well in West Philly.

How to keep the poor poor

Sunday, April 29,2012

 Media personality Tavis Smiley and Princeton philosophy professor Cornell West have just published their latest contribution to American poverty propaganda, “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto.”

The book should have a second subtitle: “How to keep the poor poor and blacks enslaved to government.” To the extent this book is taken seriously by anyone, the result can only be more, entrenched poverty.

Smiley and West’s message is simple. America today consists of a few powerful, rapacious rich people and a lot of unfortunate, exploited poor people. The rich are rich because they are lucky. The poor are poor because they are unlucky. And the only way to solve the problem is activist government to manage the American economy and redistribute wealth.

It’s as if the wealthy belong to a different species of life with no common thread of humanity linking who they are to those who have less. The idea that “haves” once might have been “have nots”— or that that they did something to become “haves” that today’s “have nots” might consider doing — never enters the equation.

Even if Smiley and West conceded that there might be some element of personal responsibility in how one’s life turns out, their portrait is of an America now so unfair, that personal responsibility is irrelevant. There is no hope for anyone to rise, according to this book, without government boosting them using other people’s money.

A good candidate for one of the more outrageous distortions, in a book filled with them, is No. 1 on their list of “Lies about poverty that America can no longer afford.”

That No. 1 lie is: “Poverty is a character flaw.” No way, according to the authors, is there a chance that poverty has anything to do with one’s behavior. Rather, “The 150 million Americans in or near poverty are there as result of unemployment, war, the Great Recession, corporate greed, and income inequality.”

Given this insight — that there are 150 million poor Americans whose economic condition is the result of extenuating circumstances — it is no wonder that Smiley and West never once mention what many scholars see as the major causes of poverty — poor education and family breakdown.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2011 unemployment for those without a high school diploma was 50 percent higher than those with a high school diploma and almost three times higher than those with a college degree.

According to the Census Bureau, 17.8 percent of American families with children under 18 lived in poverty in 2010. However, in households with children that had married parents, 8.4 percent lived in poverty. In households with children headed by a single mother, 39.6 percent lived in poverty.

The evidence is powerful that getting educated and getting married dramatically reduces the prospects for living in poverty. Yet apparently not sufficiently powerful to interest Smiley and West to note these factors once in their “poverty manifesto.”

Can better government policy expand opportunity for those who actually choose to get educated and live responsible lives? Certainly. But what we need is totally the opposite of what these authors advocate. Evidence abounds that countries with limited government and more economic freedom are far and away the most prosperous.

Despite this book’s message of the inherent hopelessness and unfairness of today’s America, the authors themselves seems to be doing quite well, selling their paperback “poverty manifesto” at $12 a pop. Apparently it’s quite good business to tell Americans that America is unfair.

Perhaps this book can be used to reduce competition for jobs by immigrants.

According to the State Department, there are currently 4.6 million visa applicants wishing to enter the United States under the family and employment preferences immigration program. They apparently haven’t gotten the word that America is no longer a land of opportunity.

Star Parker is an author and president of CURE, Center for Urban Renewal and Education. See www.urbancure.org.

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Maddie's Mom
Maddie's Mom

War on Poverty. War on Drugs. War on Terror.

They never end and the problems are never solved.

What a scam.

AWD

Some good points. You’re way low on how much has been spent: It’s $16 TRILLION. Anyone with two neurons to rub together would have realized 30 years ago Welfare spending wasn’t working at reducing poverty, and it never will. As mentioned, it removes all personal responsibility. You can’t help people who won’t help themselves, and instead help themselves to all the free shit democrats can imagine.

Welfare allows, even encourages out-of-wedlock births, encourages not being educated, encourages life-long dependence/slavery. Black, white, latino; faced with being educated and having to work, or simply finding a “baby daddy” and living off the government with almost unlimited free shit for 18 years, with the “holy grail” of disability thrown in for the remaining years of your life; if you can somehow manage to become obese or depressed, or both. Well, most people will choose Welfare. And, here’s some more info:

THE ISSUE:

Despite spending almost $16 trillion since the War on Poverty began in 1964, welfare programs have failed to reduce the causes of poverty, and instead have hurt many of the people they were intended to help. Poverty in America is overwhelmingly linked to the absence of fathers and a lack of work, but welfare payments have had the destructive effects of eroding marriage and the work ethic in low-income communities. The welfare reform of 1996 transformed one program, significantly reducing welfare rolls and lowering child poverty. But today that reform is in jeopardy, and some 70 other federal means-tested programs need similar reform.

THE FACTS:

* Welfare on the Rise. The growth of welfare spending is unsustainable and will drive the United States into bankruptcy if allowed to continue unreformed. Welfare spending is projected to cost taxpayers $10.3 trillion over the next 10 years.
* The President’s Budget. President Obama’s FY 2011 budget request would increase total welfare spending to $953 billion, a 42% increase over welfare spending in FY 2008.
* The Collapse of Marriage. The collapse of marriage is the predominant cause of child poverty in the U.S. today. When the War on Poverty began, 7% of children were born out of wedlock; today, the figure is over 40%. Most alarmingly, the out-of-wedlock birthrate among African–Americans is 72%.
* Amnesty Will Make the Problem Worse. If the U.S. government were to grant amnesty or “earned citizenship” to illegal immigrants, the welfare system would be flooded with new recipients. Of the 11 million–12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., at least half lack a high school degree.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/08/the-unsustainable-growth-of-welfare

Steve Hogan
Steve Hogan

A simple thought experiment: imagine a world in which people were independent enough to lift themselves out of poverty without government assistance.

What would happen? People would begin to question why we have gigantic bureaucracies spending trillions we don’t have on projects that don’t work and that we don’t need. All the paper-pusher jobs in Washington sucking off the wealth of others would become obsolete. These parasites would have to get real jobs doing something productive.

No, the War on Poverty was never intended to solve poverty and never will. Follow the money (and power). The rest is a smoke screen.

flash
flash

never get up from your easy cahir again..new mobile lounge chair …must have for the FSA …comes with a built in seat toilet..

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2137302/For-armchair-driver-Toyota-unveils-sofa-wheels–dozens-futuristic-cars-Beijing-motor-show.html
Sofa on wheels? A model drives a Toyota i-REAL during the 2012 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition
comment image

flash
flash

The old Republicans good ,Democrats bad meme is bullshit.
Neither party has the guts to end the bread and circuses .It will end itself as it must.

Ike knew it and by now, decades later,the failure of multicultural diversity should be so readily apparent that any party worshiping ass licking fool in America should get it.

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

AWD

Great picture flash. The obese boomer clientele will love that, especially that it’s a Toyota. American scooters are pieces of shit right? It’ll be covered on Medicare with no cost you!!!!!!! Call today!

ThePessimisticChemist
ThePessimisticChemist

Isn’t that the thing people road around in in WALL-E ?

Hope
Hope

Please note that the greatest drop in the poverty rate occured in the decades when the American economy boomed and BEFORE Big Government, ie 1950s to 1968.

There is a lesson in there somewhere but it doesn’t fit the narrative of Smiley and West so they will ignore it.

Besides, the War on Poverty is ginormous business these days, employing everybody from JP Morgan in the food stamps scan to thousands of fed/state drones to administer poverty programs. It would be more cost effective to just take the “poverty budget” and divide it by all the poor people and hand them a check for $50K (or whatever it turns out to be).

Oh No!! Then the poor people can actually make their own decisions about how to spend their money!!

The Poverty Pimps will have to find another group to exploit.

Star is a gem, she is unafraid to call it like it is. The other lady I really like is Deneen Borelli. Her book “Blacklash” also lays it on the line.

flash
flash

AWD,

As soon as I gain another 125 pounds I’m calling Medicare or Medicaid, whichever pays %100.
Don’t want no debt holding me down whilst I’m cruising back and forth from the living room to the kitchen in my brand new,taxpayer funded Honda sofa.

flash
flash

From my quote collection..

Linda Bowles RIP

OPINION IN BRIEF

“While Johnny and Jill may not be learning how to read, they are
learning that: teachers are underpaid, God is irrelevant, big business
is ruining the environment, the Bible says driving an SUV is a sin,
rewards should be based on need rather than performance, bisexual
individuals are under the command of unstable genes, the Alamo was a
great Mexican victory, society rather than the individual is
responsible for crime, saving the sucker fish is more important than
saving farmers, teachers’ pay should be doubled, a diversity of
cultures and languages is America’s strength, Thomas Jefferson was a
racist, two plus two equals whatever, competition is destructive, the
right to be wrong makes wrong right, the Boy Scouts are a hate group,
Ronald Reagan is responsible for the disappearance of the dinosaurs,
the Catholic Church is a hate group, defending yourself promotes
violence, the government is the source from which all blessings flow,
Southern Baptists are a hate group, high taxes are good for America,
equality is more important than excellence, carbon dioxide is
poisoning the world, cops hate black people, putting a condom on a
cucumber is child’s play, the Salvation Army is a hate group, the
Constitution is obsolete, God is a homophobe, porpoises are smarter
than people, the Constitution requires the government to censor
religious speech, taxes are the same as charitable contributions, boys
and girls are exactly the same except girls are better, the toleration
of evil is a virtue, moral discernment is a hate crime, cutting taxes
is like stealing from poor people, American Indians would not have
polluted the environment even if they had known how, George Washington
was a racist, rich people enjoy stomping on poor people, the condom is
mightier than the conscience, Christopher Columbus infected the
natives with syphilis, one person’s opinion is as good as any other,
the American Constitution was written by racists and sexists, Ronald
Reagan is responsible for the spread of AIDS, teachers should be paid
as much as NFL quarterbacks, sex between consenting children is
inevitable, all sexual orientations are created equal, religious
people are bigots, in the beginning there was a big explosion, a
family is any collection of oddballs living under one roof, the right
to kill babies is in the Constitution, it is un-American to have more
than someone else does, the only hope of the world is for workers
everywhere to unite, and it is the constitutional responsibility of
government to provide jobs, housing, clothing, condoms, hot lunches,
living wages, family leave, child care and band-aids to all citizens.”
–Linda Bowles

ThePessimisticChemist
ThePessimisticChemist

A few things of note:

1) “The wellfare system will have as many people on it as it is designed to hold, so if its designed for 10 people it will have 10, and if its designed for 100 million it will have 100 million.” – My dad

2) Linda Bowles was spot on in some respects, and way off in others. Actually, I’ll take back the “way off” part and just shake my head sadly.

3) God the poverty line is so bloody low. If a person didn’t get sick and didn’t try to go to college it would be stupid easy to survive in this country, and by survive I mean “Live quite happily”, with standard household appliances and good clothes/food.

Those two addendums are very important unfortunately. People do get sick, and given how shitty health insurance is in this country anyone making under $50k is instantly in an inescapable hole, pretty much guaranteed to live in poverty. Relatively simple/common problems can cause a family to go under in no time flat.

The second problem, getting a degree. I’ll just use a “useful” degree like Chemistry as an example. It takes 4-5 years ( 5 if you are going for ACS certification) to complete a degree. During this time you will rack up around 24-30k of debt. Starting pay for undergraduate chemists in this country? If you aren’t on the coast its going to be around 40 grand a year. Not exactly that great of a wage considering what you had to put on hold in order to reach it. The top of your pay scale will be about 60k, and thats if you are luck enough to break into a lab management position. Realistically its more like 50k.

I’ve known a number of mechanics/manufacturers who did their 18months of school/training, and then racked up job experience while I whiled away in college. Had I not gone onto get my masters they would be trouncing me thoroughly from a monetary standpoint.

They need to stop selling the college lie to kids. Want smarter adults? Raise the requirements for elementary/middle/high schools, because college is just a real expensive beer party these days.

PS: Man that Linda Bowles quote really rankles me. Probably because I’m an agnostic.

flash
flash

ThePessimisticChemist says:
PS: Man that Linda Bowles quote really rankles me. Probably because I’m an agnostic.

Then you will really get your cankles rankled over Ann Barnhardt’s rant on religion.
http://www.barnhardt.biz/
On the Communist-Homosexualist Infiltration (1)
Posted by Ann Barnhardt – April 28, AD 2012 10:10 PM MST
I get several emails per week, on average, from people telling me that I am either directly or partially responsible for their conversion or reversion to Catholicism. These emails are at once edifying and terrifying. Every one of those emails that I receive results in a prayer offered up that whatever parish the person or people end up in has a non-Marxist, non-homosexualist priest who actually believes in what the Church teaches and believes. One has to rely on prayer in this, because to rely on the odds is too terrible to think about.

The Church is probably at the lowest point it has ever been in because Communists set about infiltrating the Church in the early 20th century, and knew that the fastest, easiest way to destroy the Church was to destroy the priesthood and ranks of nuns. Destroy the shepherds and the flock will scatter. The methodology and tactics were simple: specifically recruit homosexuals into the priesthood and ranks of women religious. This was accomplished beginning in the late 1950’s, with massive inertia gained in the 1960’s and forward, coincident with the Communist-driven “sexual revolution.” The effects and damage have been massive and undeniable. Within a span of 25 years, the image of the Catholic priest went from Bing Crosby as Father O’Malley and Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan to the blanket assumption that every Catholic priest was a homosexual. In the 1980’s, it is safe to say that fully half, if not more, of the seminarians ordained to the priesthood were in fact active homosexuals. Seminaries turned into de facto bath houses. For more on this outrage, I recommend the book “Goodbye, Good Men” by Michael S. Rose.

As a child, I was exposed to many “ex-nuns” who had “courageously” left the Sisters of Charity who were headquartered in the area, and lived as lesbians. These were the kind of women of whom my childish eyes could not immediately discern their gender, and the lesbian angle went over my head completely due to the innocence of youth. They were just strange, ugly, repulsive and somewhat frightening women to me. There is no better intuition than the intuition of a child.

Oh, but we aren’t allowed to talk about things like that. We aren’t allowed to acknowledge the fact that women who go out of their way to look and act like men, aka “butch”, are in any way unattractive or even repulsive. We have been taught to suppress our attraction to beauty, and to embrace things that are intrinsically disordered, ugly and fundamentally repellant. Remember the 45 goals of Communism that I posted a while back? Let’s look at numbers 23 and 26:

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural and healthy.”

These two goals are tied together. The promotion of ugliness was not merely limited to the art galleries and new construction architecture. It also applied to the art of the human body, in the forms of clothing and hairstyles, specifically in the pushing of androgyny – making women look like men and men look like women. Now it is beyond mere looks. According to Marxists, women must now ACT like men, and men must ACT like women. Nowhere is this perversion more pronounced than among the priests and nuns in the Church today. As a result, the pews are empty, and those that are in the pews are grossly, grossly ignorant of the faith. What man would want to go to Mass if the priest is a flaming, effete homosexual? Who wants to go to Mass and CRINGE at the priest’s comportment, behavior and affectations? Who wants to be around nuns who wear their hair in six dollar crewcuts, wear men’s clothes, carry themselves like men, and are saturated with utter contempt for not just men, but the Church itself? How is any of that ATTRACTIVE or EDIFYING? It isn’t. It is viscerally repellant. And that is exactly why the Communists recruited homosexuals into the clergy.

The priests, whether they are homosexual or merely influenced by the Marxist-homosexualist milieu, are actively doing everything they can to drain every last bit of masculinity out of the Church. Behind them is a truly pathetic wall of lesbian nuns who hate both authentic masculinity and authentic femininity with every fiber of their beings. Considering that there are only two genders, and that these lesbian nuns hate both of them, this means that these nuns, deep down, hate humanity itself, as well as the Creator of humanity, hence their pro-abortion and Marxist totalitarian radicalism. They view themselves as a superior “third gender” destined to take over the Church, and eventually society itself, because no man who acts like a man, and no woman who acts like a woman, is capable or worthy of self-determination in their warped view. And no God Who contains in Himself both authentic masculinity and authentic femininity, or Who created humanity in that image, is worthy of worship. No, say these foul nuns. All shall love THEM, in all of their perverted hideousness, and despair.

These lesbian nuns have, for decades, held the keys to the seminaries. It is lesbian nuns who have populated the vocations boards, and who have targeted and recruited homosexual men into seminaries. So long as the men in question indicated themselves “open to the idea” of female ordination to the priesthood (which is impossible and will never, ever happen), and so long as these men showed no signs of any interest in genuine Catholicism, they were in without hesitation. Any man who projected genuine masculinity and orthodoxy was rejected. A few straight, orthodox men were able to slip by, hoping to merely “tough it out” to ordination. Sadly, thousands of good men were driven out of seminaries by the threat of homosexual assault by their classmates and even faculty. The thinly veiled threat was, “Are you gay? No? Well, you WILL BE.” Imagine, after hearing that, having to go to sleep every night to the sounds of a gay bathhouse all around you. It would require near-superhuman strength to withstand that. And so it has been for decades now.

Here is the point at which a person’s faith is tested by fire. Most Christians today do not worship God. They do not worship Christ – Christ is merely a mascot, if that. No, most Christians today worship THEMSELVES and THE GROUP. People go to superfun rockband church because they like the entertainment and the social experience. Many men only go to church because they are nagged by their wives into it. So, most people today absolutely cannot comprehend why an infiltrated clergy is NOT a reason to leave the Church. To them, the Church is the people and what the people do, and how much PERSONAL PLEASURE is derived from the people and what they do. It has little to do with God, and NOTHING to do with what GOD WANTS.

On the Communist-Homosexualist Infiltration (2)
Posted by Ann Barnhardt – April 28, AD 2012 10:05 PM MST
Since the “church experience” has been turned into a purely narcissistic activity, as soon as people become dissatisfied they leave, because their “church” and object of worship is really themselves. Therefore, “church” is whatever they say it is, and wherever they say it is.

The proof of this is in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ PHYSICALLY PRESENT. It isn’t a symbol. It is PHYSICALLY Him. How many “Christians” have I said this to – to their face – and there was ZERO reaction. All of them. These people are completely disinterested in even the POSSIBILITY that Jesus is PHYSICALLY HERE. No follow-up questions, no requests for clarification. Nothing. Why are they disinterested? Because for them, it isn’t about Jesus in the first place. It is about THEM, and the GROUP. And what is the common psychological denominator across almost all homosexuals? Narcissism. It’s all about ME. And what is the core of Marxism? Narcissism. It’s all about ME, and what I’m ENTITLED to. The Eucharist is the antidote to narcissism in all its forms. No wonder denial and marginalization of the Eucharist is the objective of every heretic and infiltrator, most especially the Marxist-homosexualists. It’s really hard for anything to be “all about ME” when Christ Almighty is twenty feet away in plain sight, and everyone knows it.

Here is the text of the Second Secret of Fatima. This is an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Fatima, Portugal in 1917. It has been certified as authentic by the Church, which is very rare. The miracles simultaneously witnessed by 70,000 people, many of whom were anti-clerical atheists, on October 13, 1917 helped with that. Emphasis mine:

You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illuminated by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”

How did three children know the name of the next pope, who wouldn’t even be elected and thus given the name “Pius XI” five years before the fact?

How did three children foresee and date World War II?

On January 25, 1938 there was a solar storm resulting in one of the largest aurora borealis events ever recorded. The entire Northern Hemisphere was illuminated over the entire globe. Within weeks, Hitler invaded Austria, and eight months later invaded Czechoslovakia.

Immediately after World War II, the Soviets began in earnest their infiltration of the Western world, with the United States and the Catholic Church as the two primary targets of the spread of Marxist-Communism in the West. Today, the United States has been overthrown by a cabal of Marxist-Communists fronted by Barack Obama. The Catholic Church is under direct attack, has been deeply infiltrated by Marxist-Communists, and preparations are being made for open war on the now-severely weakened Church by the state.

Nuclear war in the Middle East, and spreading to the Pacific and North American theaters, is being facilitated by the Marxist-Communist hives in both Moscow and Washington D.C. Annihilation of entire nations seems not just plausible, but likely, both in terms of nuclear war and total economic collapse, made possible by Marxist nanny state policies and their attendant debt bubbles and currency debasement.

And Russia has NOT been consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

There is a tremendous amount of information here, but the point is to make as many people as possible understand that the fact that their local parish priest is a flaming homosexual is actually part of a much bigger picture. The fact that the average non-habited nun today is a pagan-lesbian-Communist is also part of a much bigger picture. The bottom line is this: If you love Jesus and worship Him, then it should never even occur to you to abandon Him. He is in control. Fatima shows us this. What do you do? Run to Him. Stay close. Never leave. Never abandon the Eucharist. If you can, find a parish where the Mass is said solemnly, reverently and without improvisation, preferably in Latin. If that means a two-hour drive, then so be it. There is a family down around Colorado Springs that commuted every weekend to Rapid City, South Dakota for over twenty years in the early 1970s through the early 1990’s because that was the closest Tridentine (Latin) Mass to them. They sacrificed ALL of their weekends. For two decades. If you absolutely cannot find a reverent Mass in your area, then kneel and pray during Mass in reparation for the sacrileges being committed. Console Our Lord for the offenses being committed against Him and His Sacred Heart by both the clergy and the laity. BUT DON’T ABANDON HIM.

MuckAbout

The more “Wars on” shit they (i.e. government) can generate, the more secure they are stealing your money. Obviously, based on the chart at the top, we’d have been far better off just butting out and letting the trend be our friend..

But oh,no.. Now look where we are..

MA

ThePessimisticChemist
ThePessimisticChemist

Nice story Flash, I wish I could believe in my favorite bed time tales like you do. I’d sleep a lot better at night.

Religion is a business, just like any other. Just because their service is faith doesn’t make it any less so.

“If people would just believe what _I_ believe then the world would be perfect!” – Every religious nut since the first person invented the first religion.

Hell, even within the same faith people can’t agree on what to do. Sunnis and Shiites, Catholics and Protestants….what a joke.

Zarathustra

The war we need the most…a war on government.

ickenittle

I get so sick of the use of the word war for everything.

Normalizing “war” is just a slick trick to make real war more palatable to the sheeple.

Pretty soon, when the time comes to launch a real war, the ignoramuses with their 5 second attention spans will yawn and go back to filling their heads with fast-food television.

Everything means something else.

flash
flash

TPC

I could care less what you think of my ‘bedtime’ stories .i have a similar view of arrogant asswipes.

If you want to flaunt your assumed superior non- belief system go here and prepared to have your snarky ass handed to you in a dixie cup.

http://voxday.blogspot.com/

Demonstrating ignorance
Gary Gutting of Notre Dame upsets the league of the ignorant godless:

In these popular debates about God’s existence, the winners are neither theists nor atheists, but agnostics — the neglected step-children of religious controversy, who rightly point out that neither side in the debate has made its case. This is the position supported by the consensus of expert philosophical opinion. This conclusion should particularly discomfit popular proponents of atheism, such as Richard Dawkins, whose position is entirely based on demonstrably faulty arguments.

A professional academic’s dismissal of Richard Dawkins hapless arguments? Make that the league of the indignant and ignorant godless. The comments are hilarious, as the immediate reaction from the usual sort of moderate-IQ atheist is demands for Gutting to “support” or “prove” his factual statement that Dawkins’s position is “entirely based on demonstrably faulty arguments”. Of course, whenever someone does bother to demonstrate precisely how Dawkins’s arguments are factually and logically flawed, the reaction of most such atheists is to a) refuse to read it, b) lie about the substance and attack strawman substitutes, and c) fall into an abrupt silence and hope the criticism goes away on its own.

On a tangential note, Half-Sigma’s argument for superior atheist intelligence is almost Hitchensian in its self-refuting quality.

I want to address the controversy of “atheism” vs. “agnosticism.” In the comment section, some people said that agnostics are smarter than atheists. I find this unlikely. Rather, smarter people are more adept at fitting in and avoiding controversy.

That’s what passes for his argument. Note how this fits the classic pattern of atheist illogic, to say nothing of the bait-and-switch of turning to fundamentally philosophical arguments instead of making any use of the science upon which they claim to rely. Half-Sigma happens to personally “find” it unlikely, (as opposed to “believing” it), ergo it must not be. But who fits in better and avoids more controversy, agnostics or atheists? Agnostics, quite clearly. So, agnostics are smarter than atheists by Half-Sigma’s own metric, his real argument is that he doesn’t believe (find?) that they are truly agnostic, the Archbishop of Oxford’s statement that he himself is actually an agnostic who leans atheist, not a genuine strong atheist notwithstanding.

If I did not believe in the existence of God, I would be downright embarrassed to call myself an atheist these days. I don’t know if it is because they are all studying butterfly collecting and evolution by something that is vaguely related to natural selection rather than history, philosophy, and literature, but they are simply incapable of presenting coherent arguments, let alone valid ones.

As for the myth of high atheist intelligence, that is one of several myths that are addressed in the Against the New Atheism slide show. You don’t have to be of limited intelligence to be a militant atheist, but it most certainly helps. The ironic thing is that like Ilya Somin of the Volokh Conspiracy, Half-Sigma is neither as stupid nor as ignorant as his reflexive atheism makes him sound. Consider, for example, Steve Sailer’s citation of his correct take on the results of meritocratic testing: “For example, a few years, Mayor Bloomberg and NYC schools supremo Joel Klein decided to fix the ramshackle admissions process to the gifted schools by imposing a standardized test on all applicants. Blogger Half Sigma immediately predicted that the percentage of Asians and whites admitted would rise at the expense of blacks and Hispanics, which would cause a sizable unexpected political problem for Bloomberg and Klein. All that has come to pass.”

It was obvious, perhaps, but sound reasoning even so. The problem is that due to a combination of factors that tend to include familial relationships, social inadequacies, sexual obsessions, group dynamics, and intellectual pride, otherwise intelligent atheists insist on continuing to dumb themselves down by repeatedly staking out completely indefensible positions contra religion, especially Christianity. I don’t mind that they do so, since it only makes it that much easier to shoot them down, but for the sake of intellectual exercise if nothing else we theists would be better served by a higher class of atheist apologists.

Labels: atheism

ThePessimisticChemist
ThePessimisticChemist

*gasp* You got me, I shall never besmirch your faith again!

I love sleeping in on Sundays, totally worth the eternity of hell it “guarantees” me.

Preach less please, these boards are for real issues, not for you to cry because nobody else believes in your imaginary friend.

flash
flash

TPC

Don’t get you tampon in a wad . Everyone believes in something ,even if most are wrong.

ThePessimisticChemist
ThePessimisticChemist

“Don’t get your tampon in a wad.”

Not to point fingers, but it was yourself who began the name calling/personal attacks. 🙂

“Everyone believes in something, even if most are wrong.”

“Most” being everyone that doesn’t believe as you do. And religious nuts wonder why its so easy for us “non-believers” to ignore their “truth”.

MuckAbout

Ann Barnhardt is a very smart, honest, exceptionally open fruit cake. I wrote her shortly after she refunded every nickel of client money to her clients and closed up a successful commodities/option/futures brokerage house.

She was listing her home address, direction to her home and all right on her website. So I cautioned her about all the nut cases out there that might resent such an open Catholic viewpoint (not thinking Muslim, of course) and perhaps she might think about scrubbing a few things from her home page.

I don’t know whether she did or not.

She’s a very bright mind mired in dogma from another age – but when she writes about anything other than religion, read closely because she possesses one sharp intelect.

One kink does not lessen the value of the rest of the output..

MA

SSS

Cleavage shots on Star Parker must be rare. This one is close.

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQGrGAsAHz3MHsUvX1tA9wSuJKvZQyWq_1fs94dZQBdB-UCgyW8LQ

Ron
Ron

Everone well be poor(what ever that is,travel and you find out how wealthy you are),your college education well mean knothing.Well right now it means almost knothing.
I pray to God and things happen.

Zarathustra

Ron, my guess is that you pray for misspelling and shit.

flash
flash

TPC

Whilst your overpriced piece of parchment paper may or may not provide you a ticket to ride a future gravy train , it in no way endows you with any special knowledge of the secrets of the universe.

I posted a Linda Bowles quote and like some prissy little limp wristed prog-tard you couldn’t wait to to display your total contempt for anyone of faith or their system of belief.

I’m no bible thumper and neither am I Catholic , but I admire both Bowles and Barnhardt for not only standing up for their belief in a shit storm of militant atheism spurned on by the obsequiousness of the collective left and right…same shit ,different pile, but being able to defend their positions as well.
You only wish you had the set of balls Barnhardt’s has a’hanging

When you have spent hundreds of hours of study and written thousand of pages of copy defending your reasoning that you have absolute proof that can be no God or Satan other than because you’ve decreed it , I’m might give your little flippant snipe some attention.

Until then you might want to stick to something you know something about…making stink bombs.

But , before you shoot your mouth off again , about your ‘special beliefs’ get the other side of the story first…and for free. http://www.voxday.net/mart/TIA_free.pdf

And, in the event that unlike your superior wisdom in all things of faith , you have little knowledge of the current state of this economy , go here and read more from a real intellectual whose credentials in academia make you look like a pre-schooler.
Would you like you bah bah now?
The Return of the Great Depression [Hardcover]
Vox Day (Author)

MuckAbout

I sure am glad I gave up making comments when a “God thread” comes along! I can see it has flash all excited and TPC backing and filling to avoid all the shrapnel.

But what really pisses me off is that no one has made a nasty comment about my new avatar! Such unobservant people lurking on and off TBP these days..

By the way – hi SSS. I thought for a bit we’d lost you like Stucky. Glad we didn’t. How’s golf going now that it’s _hot_ out there?

MA

flash
flash

MA-I can see it has flash all excited .

I’m not excited.I’m just don’t mind stepping up to the plate and giving as good as sent.
I didn’t even know it was a Christian thread.

Linda Bowles was just reciting a litany of New Age bullshit progressives in social club churches, government and government schools use to bastardize the belief system of average American ,along with institutions that support such that I found worthy of posting and along comes an easliy offended prog-tard to inform me how “rankled” he was with Bowles quote and how I must be a damn fool for belling such bedtime stories like I could give a fat rats ass what some snarky twerp believes which is why I posted Ann Barnhardts rant.
I knew if Mr. Hissy Fit didn’t approve of Bowles quote , he would shit his Pampers over Ann”s rant….and I was right.

BTW….ref. your icon…A bull in this HFT market?…really muck?

SSS

Hi Muck

I’ve been posting a bit more lately after a dry spell. It’s getting warmer, so we tee off early. My team won the match today……a big five bucks to each player. Helluva way to make a living.

ThePessimisticChemist
ThePessimisticChemist

“I sure am glad I gave up making comments when a “God thread” comes along! I can see it has flash all excited and TPC backing and filling to avoid all the shrapnel.”

To be honest I hadn’t stopped by this thread since the last time I posted. The only thing of note I seemed to have missed is another humorous pic from the Admin.

Candace McCarty
Candace McCarty

I’ve had enough of people taling about the POOR as if you know “those” people personally. We are NOT all the same. I was a Welfare mom, and I’m white.

Without some assistance, financial aide, and student loans. . . I wouldn’t be an elementary school teacher working in the impoverished community I grew up in and my daughter wouldn’t be an OB/GYN Surgeon, who happens to be BLACK.

I am so thankful for the Faith, Hope, and Courage, that Smiley & West are demonstrating by illuminating the Least of Thee, and working tirelessly to get POVERTY on the National Agenda. We will not have a democracy, with so many children being denied EQUAL ACCESS to THE AMERICAN DREAM!

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