Elites love liberalism because liberalism is the one ideology that won't get you torn apart by a mob. They're trying to keep their jobs, promote their businesses, and not get destroyed by idiots with a grudge.

It's just like in Bolshevik Russia during the revolution, or France during their revolution. Anyone who appeared to side with the ancien regime was a troublemaker, and that gave the crowd license to loot their homes, rape their daughters, etc.

So the elites made a big show of being liberal. It's no different in America today. If you want people to like you, convince them you're with the new and hip, the unique, the people-powered, "The People," the tolerant, the Progressive, the nice-to-everyone, the great granter of gifts to the dispossessed, etc. They don't honestly believe these views. They use their views as a justification for their status and wealth, and in an attempt to make the crowd not tear them apart.

Of course, that will never work -- when a true revolution is in play, order is suspended, and those with the guns take whatever they want. And if you are with the struggle, comrade, you will not mind sharing your house|daughters|wealth for the cause, will you?

I identify myself as a liberal, in that I believe in justice, but I'm also a historical literate, and I view the results of history as scientific knowledge. So I am anti-liberal in that liberal methods will lead to tyranny by failing and creating third-world disorder.

I have lived in third world places and, while their are good people there, the society at large is dysfunctional and it penalizes and isolates smart people. If humanity wants to reach great heights, we need to nurture and support smart people, and beat down idiots and corrupt people. Simple truth, but it requires work, and getting off the couch -- and risking being made a fool in the eyes of others, or failing, or not having the absolute "freedom" to be obligated and beholden to nothing except your whims and your slavelike job -- is the one taboo in this society.

This give us a good view of those of us in any kind of "third way": we're not liberals or conservatives, but tend to be people who from liberal motivations adopt conservative ("proven by history") viewpoints.

We tend to go beyond what even paleoconservatives will do, and look toward types of societies that thrived in the past, and try to hybridize those with our technology.

It's about time to do this. We changed our society so it could create technology; now, we should look over our options, and pick the best way to live so that our society doesn't "wag the dog" and have us serving it.

Increasing conflict worldwide and a neurotic, divided, miserable state within our society shows us that not only would this be a good idea, but it would be fun, and could liberate us from obligation to dead and dying ideas that make no sense whatsoever but are supported because they "look good" to the masses, and we want to sell them stuff, yes we do.

However, the masses are inert, and if given a chance, will destroy society around them and end up living in third-world corruption, dysfunction and squalor all while loudly proclaiming their freedom. They're not the ones to make political decisions because just like brain surgeon is a role requiring a rare personality, so is "leader." Not everyone can do it. Not even by voting.

So as you see the bloviation of wealthy, wasteful Hollywood and East Coast elites, and see them loudly proclaim their Progressive dogma, keep in mind that they're just trying to sell products. If they believed what they said, they'd live in inner city neighborhoods and be activists first and actors/marketers/politicians second.

But they don't, and that's the proof positive that elite liberalism is a marketing ploy and not an honest, well-considered belief. Feel free to laugh at anyone who takes it seriously.

"Rights" is such an absolute term. It implies that only 1 context exists for all things, and only 1 solution exists, and this same 1 solution should be applied to ∞ contexts.

Crazy talk, my nillas. Crazy talk.

As many who have read me here before (both of you!) know, I agree plenty with conservatives but am basically a liberal. Why: I believe we must impose a fair and rational society, and we cannot allow "free markets" or "social darwinism" exclusively to define it. It doesn't mean I'm against those things, but that I realize they alone are not a solution.

Big surprise: we need more than a single principle to rule ourselves.

One area I differ with conservatives is the idea that there is an absolute, right, moral, correct 1 way for us all to live. Liberals have the same idea, but their 1 way is many ways, which is equally dysfunctional. In fact, I laugh at both parties for their wholesale ignorance of history and philosophy. "The 1 way, man!!! It's the truth and the light!!!" -- more likely a camouflaged control mechanism. But I digress.

Many conservatives, wanting their kids to grow up with clear ideals, are not fond of homosexuality. They also cite some social problems with homosexuality, like its increased correlation with pedophilia, coprophagia, promiscuity, AIDS, et al. I don't deny any of this. All I say is that we need places for fags to be fags, and for conservatives to be conservatives, and it ain't gonna be the same places. No 1 rule for ₶ groups or places, right?

If we talk in terms of rights, fags have the right to be fags... that makes sense. Live and let them live.

But by the same token, and here's where get in trouble with absolutes (univeralism, 1 rule for all people) like "rights" --

If we talk in terms of rights, conservatives also have the right to be conservatives... which does not include fags. Live and let live, separately.

Now we've got a crisis.

Michael Moore, a fat turd of a human being who makes his money pandering to idiot leftists, has a good point here. So does Phred Phelps. That's why this story is interesting: two people with legitimate points duking it out.

But we who care about living in a nice place not constantly divided by conflict would like a resolution.

Mine is simple. Some parts of town are sodomy-friendly, and others are not. Any other solution is oppression to one or more groups.

As the West gets increasingly divided, we're going to see more of this action. One reason many conservatives retreat to religious communities is not so much that they love Jesus, but that they love the idea that their society has a consensus upon its values and those are conservative -- read: historically proven to succeed -- values.

I like the idea of anarchy zones, too. Don't make the rest of us pay for them, but let them rule themselves, and legalize whatever they want. Drugs. Sodomy. Prostitution. Murder. Pedophilia. The world always needs frontiers and bad lawless horrible places for it to filter out its out-of-control denizens.

If you live in a conservative zone, and want to do a ton of drugs and sodomize boars, you need to go to an anarchy zone. Sure, you lose some of the benefits of a conservative zone -- but other citizens gain the freedom to not have your lifestyle screw up their lives. And you can do all the drugs and boar anal you need.

Freedom for all!

Earlier this month, the Mini Self Storage company in Scarborough was prepared to auction off the contents of a unit rented to a mortgage brokerage that hadn't paid its bill: 60 boxes of financial records, including loan applications with personal financial information such as Social Security and bank account numbers.

In the wrong hands, sensitive information such as this can be used for identity theft. But the sale of such documents is legal.

Nothing in Maine law prevents storage facilities from selling sensitive financial, personal or medical records to the highest bidder, when their original owners do not pay their storage bills. And that is becoming a real concern, with the failure of several dozen mortgage companies in Maine since the recession began one year ago.

Our laws aren't geared toward the idea that marks on paper, or the abstractions it represents, can be unique patterns that can harm us.

You don't own your own image, if you are photographed in the street. Or even if you leave a blind down. The photographer owns that image.

You don't own your own data that companies collect from you when you visit their websites. It's perfectly legal for them to probe your leaky browser for information, and then use that to connect you to visits on their partner sites.

You don't own your own financial information that you give to mortgage companies or other financial companies. And while technically giving your social security number is voluntary, we all know it is isn't, on a practical basis.

Who's the tail and who's the dog here in our modern civilization? It's like the plot of a bad romantic comedy:

Wonderful consumer society -- which brings us admittedly some very cool technologies -- could be like a farm in which the corn just thinks it gets free room and board, until harvest time. And they're bleeding us, and each year it's harder to get what we really want: homes in safe neighborhoods with good schools, a comfortable life and enough to retire. But since we can't mention unpopular stuff in public, that remains a little secret among those who haven't yet been destroyed.

Sure, we can afford the gadgets and crap, because those are relatively small change. But who's really going to take care of us as we age? Who's going to make sure our kids don't get taught garbage and thrown out to be grist for the mill, cube-slaves instead of enlightened apes?

Big business is staffed with people who don't want to be the ones beneath the wheel. Their workers are distracted by television, drink, socialization, movies, music, anything but reality. Go to a job, and people fill your head with paranoid, useless crap information. Watch TV and it's worse. And so it grinds on. And our leaders? Our leaders are actors; in addition, they're entering their twilight years, when they stop noticing negative aspects of reality -- this is what, in nature, helped predators carry off the old and infirm:

There's a scientific reason why older people tend to see the past through rose-colored glasses, Canadian researchers suggest -- negative memories are more inclined to fade.

Study author Dr. Florin Dolcos of the University of Alberta in collaboration with colleagues at Duke University in Durham, N.C., identified brain activity that causes older adults to remember fewer negative events than their younger counterparts.

If this evidence isn't clear to you, let me make it very clear: never, ever, ever trust a Baby Boomer (anyone born 1943-1953). These people are the blight who brought us the People's Revolution of the United States, which even absent political concerns was a bad idea, as it took a divided society and fragmented it, all while legalizing and encouraging selfishness. In short, these people were dumb once; now they're dumb and blind to the consequences of their stupidity. Expect nothing from your leaders. They are checked out of reality and never to return.

The good thing about this debacle is that destruction comes to the stupid and unwary. In fact, it's coming in a tidal wave, and only those who are already prepared to keep their heads above water are going to do well. You will need to have personal discipline, family, finance and basic survival mastered, but if you do that, you'll be part of the next civilization instead of getting dragged down with the delusional.

Science Fiction writer David Brin weighs in with a classic liberal humanist Enlightenment dogma screed. What I've done is excerpt only the nodal points:

On one side are those who think the Internet will liberate humanity, in a virtuous cycle of e-volving creativity that may culminate in new and higher forms of citizenship. Meanwhile, their diametrically gloomy critics see a kind of devolution taking hold, as millions are sucked into spirals of distraction, shallowness and homogeneity, gradually surrendering what little claim we had to the term "civilization."

{ snip }

But the very freedom that makes the Internet so attractive also undermines the influence of gatekeepers who used to sift and extol some things over others, helping people to pick gold from dross.

{ snip }

Carr and others worry how 6 billion ships will navigate when they can no longer even agree upon a north star.

{ snip }

Clay Shirky, the technology forecaster and author of "Here Comes Everybody," presents an equally impressive array of evidence showing that the ability of individuals to autonomously scan, correlate and creatively utilize vast amounts of information is rising faster, almost daily.

{ snip }

If our bodies were this inefficient -- with such an astronomical ratio of silliness to quality -- we'd explode from all the excess white blood cells before ever benefiting from the few that usefully attack an error or disease.

{ snip }

Can Shirky or Huffington point to even one stupidity that has been decisively disproved online?

{ snip }

Beyond imagination and creativity and opinion, we also need a dance of Shiva, destroying the insipid, vicious and untrue.

{ snip }

I can self-express with the best of 'em. It's how I make my living! But all by itself, it is never, ever going to bring us to a singularity -- or even a culture of relatively effective problem solvers.

{ snip }

What we need to remember is that there is nothing unique about today's quandary. Ever since the arrival of glass lenses and movable type, the amount that each person can see and know has multiplied, with new tools ranging from newspapers and lithographs to steamships and telegraphs, to radio and so on. And every time, conservative nostalgists claimed that normal people could not adapt, that such godlike powers should be reserved to an elite, or perhaps renounced.

What if both sides were correct: we're processing more information than ever before, but it's information created by our disconnection from reality?

Think of it this way. When there's a consensus as to what reality is and how to assess (judge) it and our actions toward it, relatively little information is generated. But when this isn't known, each person veers off into their own path, becoming automatic mental chaff generators before their arc converges on well-known paths and becomes normed.

Of all the blogs out there, 98% of them expressed the same six things today, just dressed up in "unique" and "important" forms.

The information we're processing -- opinions, viral videos, computer games, Wikipedia editorial drama -- has very little to do with reality. Our technology is building on the shoulders of giants but breakthroughs are not as dramatic. There is more bulk to process, and less of those rare and insightful moments when a change at the center of a structure alters its fundamental character.

Some of this is science. After you discover the digital computer, you must build a whole bunch of them to evolve the process. After you discover DNA, you begin the long process of documenting each part of it. But even that is hampered by our drama. Scientists must get funding for research that generates money; computers are products and so the fancy ones sell more than new technologies.

Maybe what Brin is looking for, as a writer, is the knowledge that the 6 billion lacking agreement about the north star are the problem -- that our civilization is in decay -- and that this process began long before technology. It happens to every society. Just like humans, if we keep our focus, we thrive; if not, we dissolve and die.

Luckily, this seemingly grim knowledge spares us from worrying about whether the internet will make us 6 billion geniuses or 6 billion fetuses: realists know that we've already arrived at 6 billion cabbage heads nodding sagely to lies and frowning at truth. Wikipedia just documents it conveniently for us.

Dying civilizations always birth a final group, a remnant who can still recognize reality despite the influx of socialized reality dogma, or the idea that humans in society can re-define reality based on human form and socialization. This parting group goes on somewhere else to found a new society. They do so on the basis of consensus about what is real, not being self-impressed by how much bloviation about nothing they can foment to convince each other of their own importance. And that's really the only singularity or net.wisdom we need look for here.

Had Toni Vernelli gone ahead with her pregnancy ten years ago, she would know at first hand what it is like to cradle her own baby, to have a pair of innocent eyes gazing up at her with unconditional love, to feel a little hand slipping into hers - and a voice calling her Mummy.

But the very thought makes her shudder with horror.

Because when Toni terminated her pregnancy, she did so in the firm belief she was helping to save the planet.

Incredibly, so determined was she that the terrible "mistake" of pregnancy should never happen again, that she begged the doctor who performed the abortion to sterilise her at the same time.

He refused, but Toni - who works for an environmental charity - "relentlessly hunted down a doctor who would perform the irreversible surgery.

Finally, eight years ago, Toni got her way.

At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to "protect the planet".

Incredibly, instead of mourning the loss of a family that never was, her boyfriend (now husband) presented her with a congratulations card.

While some might think it strange to celebrate the reversal of nature and denial of motherhood, Toni relishes her decision with an almost religious zeal.

"Having children is selfish. It's all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet," says Toni, 35.

"Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population."

While most parents view their children as the ultimate miracle of nature, Toni seems to see them as a sinister threat to the future.

This is a complete failure of logic. While I do agree that overpopulation is the problem, I do not feel this is the correct attitude towards making a better world. The rational thing to do would be to reproduce and raise children who are environmentally aware to live in balance with nature. If everyone who was worried about the environment refused to have children, this guarantees that the only ones who do breed are those who are not concerned with the environment. The next generation will then be raised without concern for the environment or any understanding of the natural world around them. They will be forced to discover this on their own, if they discover it at all.

Additionally, if these women feel that terminating their pregnancies will help save the planet, why then do they not terminate their own lives? Here we see their hypocrisy at work. Human life is not inherently unnatural, the way we choose to live these lives can be. Rather than focus on destroying lives or not creating any at all, we should opt to change how we live these lives.

Programs teaching U.S. schoolchildren to abstain from sex have not cut teen pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases or delayed the age at which sex begins, health groups told Congress on Wednesday.

1) Not all kids are equal, and many are born to copulate like bonobos
2) You have to give kids something to live for, like romance and family, that isn't dysfunctional in their experience; you can't just hand them negativity.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey warned Wednesday that organized criminal networks have penetrated portions of the international energy market and tried to control energy resources.

Energy resources, including water and food, will be the cause of many future wars.

The levels of toxic pollution in the Baltic from farming, and the levels of sewage from places like St. Petersburg, are distressing. The Baltic Sea is threatening to collapse, and the fishing industry is in desperate danger. We need a radical change in direction.

Let's go and buy some green light bulbs, that'll do it. Seriously, why does it take such a long time for us to wake up?

Nearly 17 years after riots tore Crown Heights apart, the recent beating of a black college student by Jewish assailants has exposed rising tensions between blacks and Jews in my neighborhood.

[---]

The man on the bike sprayed Charles with tear gas, and a few minutes later a contingent of Jewish men arrived by car and in scooters and began chasing them.

[---]

In the neighborhood's calculus of tribal resentments, the attack on Charles was the mirror image of a January incident in which a teenage yeshiva student named Samuel Balkany said five black kids jumped and beat him, shouting "little Jew boy, you think you own this neighborhood," and such.

No, we can't all just get along: we want our own cultures, and our own identities, so we can find a consensus that works for who we are genetically.

Pluralism/multiculturalism/globalism are the same thing and they make people alienated by giving them no framework of values in which to exist. Our future is endless racial conflict, culminating in a grey lumpenproletariat, until we figure this one out.

- Brett Stevens

Haiti's Parliament has voted to dismiss Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis after deadly protests over rising food prices.

[---]

Globally, food prices have risen 40 percent since mid-2007. Haiti, where most people live on less than $2 a day, is particularly affected because it imports nearly all of its food, including more than 80 percent of its rice.

Much of Haiti's once-productive farmland has been abandoned as farmers struggle to grow crops in soil decimated by erosion, deforestation, flooding and tropical storms.

40 %!! That's quite a lot..

Woe to the caffeinated, for gone are the days of simply grabbing a coffee. Today's order requires surviving a gauntlet of choices: Latte or Americano? Flavored or plain? Cream and sugar? Small, medium or large? And the list goes on.

New research shows that such daily decisions eat up limited mental resources, ultimately rendering our self-control into mush. Which means making too many decisions might be why many people can't stick to a diet, finish a big project or even complete simple daily tasks.

"It's a strange paradox because human beings are drawn to choice," said study co-author Kathleen Vohs, a marketing professor at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. "We love having more choices, but at the same time the human psyche is easily overcome by them."

Democracy and free choice make us confused and poor decision-makers.

Short-term exposure to smog, or ozone, is clearly linked to premature deaths that should be taken into account when measuring the health benefits of reducing air pollution, a National Academy of Sciences review concludes.

The findings contradict arguments made by some White House officials that the connection between smog and premature death has not been shown sufficiently and that the number of saved lives should not be calculated in determining clean air benefits.

Unbelievable that we need "evidence" to "prove" that the industrialization has gone too far.

A former U.S. Army mechanical engineer was arrested Tuesday on charges that he spied for Israel over 20 years ago. Government officials in Israel said they were not familiar with the case.

Ben-Ami Kadish, 84, was to be charged with slipping classified documents about nuclear weapons, fighter jets and air defense missiles to an Israeli Consulate employee who also received information from convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, authorities said.

America is as safe as a Swiss cheese.

Children are more vulnerable to the effects of air pollution because their lungs don't fully form until they are adolescents, the American Academy of Pediatrics noted.

The leading pediatricians group added that "because children spend more time outdoors than do adults, they have increased exposure to outdoor air pollution."

"If you live near a polluted area of a city, it's like the child is smoking," said best-selling author and pediatrician Bill Sears. "We all know what smoking does for the lungs."

City life is unhealthy in many respects, but this is completely intolerable.

Most of the cities that are seeing high theft rates are near the nation's border with Mexico, a fact that can make it tricky for authorities to recover the vehicles.

"When the car is stolen, it takes a period of time for a person to realize the car is gone," said Scafidi. In the meantime, cars are driven right across the border.

"Once it is Mexico or Canada, then you are dealing with another country and you can't go in there and route around," Scafidi said.

Finger im po, Mexiko!

For the first time since the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, life expectancy for a significant proportion of the United States is on the decline largely because of an increase in chronic diseases related to obesity, smoking and high blood pressure.

Although life expectancy for all other Western nations and for most of the U.S. has continued to improve over the past several decades, researchers at Harvard University and the University of Washington say many of the worst-off here are getting much worse.

[---]

"It is what you would expect to see in a developing country, not here," said Dr. Majid Ezzati, a Harvard professor and lead author of a study published in the open-access journal Public Library of Science Medicine.

Third world USA is here.

A "why bother?" economy has been created in Britain which has left thousands with no motivation to work, a report published today concludes.

Successive governments have encouraged a welfare culture that has left every family facing a £1,300 bill because the poor stay poor, it claims.

The findings by the public services think tank Reform suggest that increased welfare dependency has made it more difficult for those on the lowest incomes to do better.

The social welfare system has become a safety net for parasites and idiots, all while the hard working middle class is struggling just to stay alive.

Beard and Ramsey have experienced what's commonly called "social promotion." They're also part of a pilot program to help struggling Knox County students that began in January.

[---]

The idea of social promotion is to move students who have failed some or all their courses on to the next grade but still reach them through intervention while they're with their peer group.

Some parents say the practice of advancing students regardless of whether they're ready is the worst thing that can happen, because it puts them at a disadvantage for future grades and sets them up for failure in life.

Equal opportunities for all means the idiots take over and normalize everything.

It's no longer enough to live a greener life — now people are being encouraged to be environmentally friendly when they leave the Earth too.

Cardboard coffins, clothes sewn from natural fibers, a burial plot in a natural setting. Green funerals attempt to be eco-friendly at every stage.

"People are trying to think about what's the best way to live and with that, what's the best way to die," said Roslyn Cassidy, a funeral director for Green Endings, which provides eco-friendly funerals.

A good idea if you ask me.

Researchers have found that gene expression in breast tumors differs between African-American and Caucasian patients in ways that might help explain why the disease is more deadly in African-American women and why it strikes these women at an earlier age. Although more Caucasian women are diagnosed with breast cancer overall, their cancers tend to be less aggressive and generally occur later in life, investigators report.

Researchers at the Windber Research Institute in Windber, PA, found 65 genes were differentially expressed between tumors in the two racial groups. Of these, 28 genes were more highly expressed in African-American patients and 37 genes had lower expression. Although most of the genes have not been previously linked to cancer, some are known to be associated with tumor progression or suppression.

"This study suggests that in addition to the socioeconomic and health care factors that have been found to play a role in breast cancer outcomes, there may also be molecular differences that contribute to the more aggressive clinical features of breast tumors in African-American women, compared with Caucasian women," said lead investigator Lori Field, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the women's health research program at the institute.

Different ethnic groups have different needs, so why do we insist on cramming them all together under one system? It takes either racism or foolishness to ignore this simple truth.