/var/log/otto

You can't even dignify this squalid racket as bribery: If I try to buy a cop, I have to use my own money. But, when Harry Reid buys a senator, he uses my money, too. It doesn't "border on immoral": it drives straight through the frontier post and heads for the dark heartland of immoral.

--Mark Steyn

# posted by Otto @ 2:17 AM

...the US still holding firmly to the 18th-century idea that power should lie with the will of the people.

# posted by Otto @ 12:50 AM

The above picture tells you all you need to know about the left-liberal view of America as well as the likely fate of any body so constituted.

--Vox Popoli

# posted by Otto @ 4:39 AM

The best summation of the UN climate circus in Denmark comes from Andrew Bolt of Australia's Herald Sun: "Nothing is real in Copenhagen – not the temperature record, not the predictions, not the agenda, not the 'solution'."

If you're young and you fall for this, you're a sap. Indeed, you're oozing so much sap the settled scientists should be measuring your tree rings

# posted by Otto @ 4:26 AM

Jesus was born, but too much richness is lost by misunderstanding the context of his birth.

# posted by Otto @ 11:36 AM

"With this, the words of Job are ended; he has nothing more to say. Baffled, questioning, tormented, yet unwilling to forsake God, he falls silent. What can we say about the trials, the pressures, and the riddles of our own life? Remember that Job at this point has learned that his theology is too small for his God. That is true for many of us. We think we know the Bible, we think we have God boxed in, and we understand how He is going to act. And just as surely as we do, God is going to do something that will not fit our theology. He is greater than any human study of Him. He is not going to be inconsistent with Himself; He never is. He is not capricious, acting out of anger and malice. He is a loving God, but His love will take forms of expression that we do not understand. Up to this point Job has had his faith in the rule of God, but now at last he has begun to reach out tremblingly to exercise faith in the God who rules. That is a transfer that many of us need to come to."

Ray Stedman

# posted by Otto @ 11:24 AM

"The lefties have been making a great to-do recently about this matter of separation of church and state, which appears nowhere in the Constitution except in the sense that the federal government is prohibited from establishing a state religion. Mr. Jefferson seems to have invented the idea of a "wall of separation," which he thought desirable in avoidance of something such as the Church of England.

Considering the present state of our educational system, it might seem that a wall of separation should probably be erected between school and state. At the present time, our schools appear to be run essentially by the teachers unions, to the disastrous ignorance of our young people. It is by no means clear that the church could do worse than the state in running our schools. About the only way they could go would be up."

--Jeff Cooper

# posted by Otto @ 2:50 PM

Once again what is righteousness as to things? What do I mean by things? Just things! Houses, cars, bank accounts, trees, fields, beasts, minerals, mountains, valleys, subtle and hidden forces not yet discovered, things already discovered such as electricity, anything, everything. What has righteousness to do with them? What does righteousness mean in regard to them? It means the discovery of things as to their being and as to their true purpose in the Divine economy. There is nothing inherently evil that God has created. What then, is the matter with the world? Men not adjusted to God, men not articulated as within that great adjustment have not discovered the forces that they need; or having discovered them, do not know their true purpose and are misusing them. The ultimate Kingdom of God in this world will not be a kingdom from which are banished all the things that we see and touch. It will be a kingdom in which man has discovered them and their true meaning, and one in which man will no longer lay hold upon some subtle potent thing that has its purpose in the universe and use it for a kingdom in which things we call poisons will be relegated to their proper place, and made use of, since all are gifts of God. Righteousness with regard to things means also the development of the thing discovered. An imperfect flower in your garden is proof of the lack of righteousness somewhere. Arrested development is proof of lack of righteousness. The opposite is true. Righteousness means that the flower found for the first time in the forest, under the touch of man in right relationship with God and in cooperation with his brother man will become beautiful with a beauty of which we never dreamed but which was potential in the flower when first man found it. The discovery of all the great and gracious, sweet and wonderful secrets of old mother earth.

Finally, rightiousness as to things means that they are used and not abused, that they are made the servants of humanity and not the masters of men; like the very Sabbath of God, they are made for man and not man for them.

In the presence of the great word we dream wondrous dreams, and no dream we dream approaches the glory of the reality of righteousness. Do you wonder that the New Testament writer upon one occasion made use of the words "...the fruits of righteousness..." Righteousness blossoms into beauty and produces fruits. Righteousness is a word full of beauty, and we, alas too often, have made it merely hard, mechanical, ethical. It is bursting with life. It describes man coming to the fulfilment of his manhood because his face is lifted to the throne of God. It describes humanity finding the true social order because human life is articulated as the result of the adjustment of the individual to God. It describes the earth, blushing with beauty, laughing with flowers, becoming more glorious in its light and more full of ease and delight in its being. It is God's great word, a word in which He sings out to men if they but have ears to hear it, the exeeding beauty of His own being, the exeeding joy of His own heart, the characteristic grace of His purpose for the people whom He has made.

--G. Campbell Morgan

# posted by Otto @ 1:04 AM

In a bold but risky year-end strategy, Democrats are preparing to raise the federal debt ceiling by as much as $1.8 trillion before New Year’s rather than have to face the issue again prior to the 2010 elections.

And the Maryland Democrat confirmed that the anticipated increase could be as high as $1.8 trillion — nearly twice what had been assumed in last spring’s budget resolution for the 2010 fiscal year.

# posted by Otto @ 5:06 PM

In the course of the first year of the Obama administration, it has become clear to many close observers that it is intent on destroying the U.S. economy and, with it, the Republic.

It has virtually shut down all exploration for energy resources such as oil and natural gas despite the bonus of thousands of jobs and billions in tax revenue that this would generate.

It has declared war on the mining and use of coal even though coal provides just over half of all the electricity generated nationwide.

Its “Stimulus” bill, at this point, has largely distributed funds to state governments to help them pay for Medicare and other entitlement programs. The program has claimed new jobs in congressional districts that don’t even exist.

# posted by Otto @ 2:21 AM

Jackson remained calm as she spoke with a 9-1-1 dispatcher during the break-in. She called at 12:40 a.m. and was on the phone for more than 10 minutes reporting the intruder, explaining that her barking dogs had awakened her in the middle of the night. She said she was alone, and her husband was working a night shift.

She told the dispatcher, the sheriff deputies "need to hurry. He's going to break this thing open. If he does, I'll have to kill him, ma'am. I don't want to kill him."

# posted by Otto @ 1:46 AM

In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inadvertently posted online its airport screening procedures manual, including some of the most closely guarded secrets regarding special rules for diplomats and CIA and law enforcement officers.

# posted by Otto @ 1:36 AM

Sarah Palin says the United States should rededicate itself to seeking God’s will, arguing a humble spirit could help leaders get more answers on issues such as health care, energy and national security.

# posted by Otto @ 4:57 AM

Bill Whittle praises President Obama's long-awaited decision to send more troops to Afghanistan in the face of opposition from left-wing media stars such as Chris Matthews, Michael Moore, and Keith Olbermann.

# posted by Otto @ 2:30 AM

Our sin is as the sin of Sodom. There was more to their depravity than their sexual proclivities. Look at what Ezekiel said: “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.” (Ezek 16:49-50 NIV)

She was arrogant. She was overfed. She was unconcerned. She did not help the poor and needy. She was haughty. Just like that Pharisee.

It is interesting that the church at Laodicea had the same litany of accusations against it: “I am rich and increased with goods. I am in need of nothing. I am comfortably lukewarm.” Yet they were truly poor, blind, and naked (Rev. 3:15-18).

# posted by Otto @ 5:25 AM

House Republicans pointed to controversial e-mails leaked from climate scientists and said it was evidence of corruption. Top administration scientists looking at the same thing found no such sign, saying it doesn't change the fact that the world is warming.

"You call it 'Climategate'; I call it 'E-mail-theft-gate,'" she said during a committee meeting.

Amid an international climate-change scandal involving hacked e-mails just days before a major U.N. climate summit of world leaders, it is instructive to profile top White House officials who are drafting President Obama's climate policy.

Some of the officials include known supporters of socialism who have advocated using environmental activism to spread America's wealth.

# posted by Otto @ 11:59 PM

Here's what Phil Jones of the CRU and his colleague Michael Mann of Penn State mean by “peer review.” When Climate Research published a paper dissenting from the Jones-Mann "consensus," Jones demanded that the journal "rid itself of this troublesome editor," and Mann advised that "we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers."

So much for Climate Research. When Geophysical Research Letters also showed signs of wandering off the "consensus" reservation, Dr. Tom Wigley ("one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change") suggested they get the goods on its editor, Jim Saiers, and go to his bosses at the American Geophysical Union to “get him ousted.” When another pair of troublesome dissenters emerge, Dr. Jones assured Dr. Mann, “I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

Which in essence is what they did. The more frantically they talked up "peer review" as the only legitimate basis for criticism, the more assiduously they turned the process into what James Lewis calls the Chicago machine politics of international science. The headline in the Wall Street Journal Europe is unimproveable: "How To Forge A Consensus." Pressuring publishers, firing editors, blacklisting scientists: That's "peer review," climate-style.

# posted by Otto @ 3:37 PM

POLITICALLY-correct penpushers have banned calling yobs "youths" - so as not to hurt their feelings.

Government bureaucrats insist they must be called "young persons" instead.

Annoyed civil servants had to spend hours correcting the document itself, after they were the first to fall foul of the new rule.

More than 100 mentions of the banned word had to be deleted in the 26-page code.

# posted by Otto @ 3:10 PM

One of Labour's great triumphs with the National Health Service is that people now go into hospital to die rather than to be cured. It seems to render the whole debate about assisted suicide utterly pointless. Who needs a Dignitas clinic when you can check into a hospital in Basildon and be relatively certain to be taken out in a box?

It is a further achievement of our monitoring, regulating culture that even the monitors and the regulators don't seem to have a clue how bad things are – or they certainly didn't in Basildon. This exposes one of the great pretences of the NHS: that it is there first and foremost for the benefit of patients. It isn't. It exists these days mostly for the benefit of various trade unionists who are fully paid-up members of the Brown clientele, and who earn good money as petty bureaucrats trying to "manage" things that, if they need to be managed at all, could be far better done by fewer people in much more efficient systems.

# posted by Otto @ 4:54 AM

Commissar Lynch has it exactly backwards: it's the craven submission to political correctness, the willingness to leave your marbles with the Diversity Café hat-check girl, that leads to death—real death, with real corpses, from Texas to Ontario. And when the guy’s on the table firing wildly and screaming "Allahu akbar!", the PC enforcers won’t be there for you.

# posted by Otto @ 3:38 PM

She called 9-1-1 just before being beaten to death with a blunt object outside of her home.

# posted by Otto @ 5:09 AM

No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems – of which getting elected and re-elected are No. 1 and No. 2. Whatever is No. 3 is far behind.

Many of the things the government does that may seem stupid are not stupid at all, from the standpoint of the elected officials or bureaucrats who do these things.

The current economic downturn that has cost millions of people their jobs began with successive administrations of both parties pushing banks and other lenders to make mortgage loans to people whose incomes, credit history and inability or unwillingness to make a substantial down payment on a house made them bad risks.

Was that stupid? Not at all. The money that was being put at risk was not the politicians' money, and in most cases was not even the government's money. Moreover, the jobs that are being lost by the millions are not the politicians' jobs – and jobs in the government's bureaucracies are increasing.

# posted by Otto @ 5:04 AM

For anyone who wondered if last winter's federal seizure of the financial services industry would have adverse economic consequences, an answer is now available. The credit market has been tilted to favor a single borrower with a huge appetite for money, Washington. Private borrowers, particularly small businesses, have been sent to the end of the queue.

# posted by Otto @ 3:48 AM

It has been increasingly obvious that this administration is dedicated to destroying the nation’s economy by increasing its debt, imposing changes to our healthcare system—one sixth of the nation’s economy, taking ownership in General Motors and AIG, and doing nothing substantive about a rising unemployment rate.

It has done this at an astonishing rate of speed as if it realizes it only has a limited amount of time in which to bring down America.

The only element of the system that Obama has not yet significantly harmed is our system of justice. Americans implicitly believe in our system of justice which is fretted about with all manner of ways to protect the rights of the accused.

# posted by Otto @ 3:41 AM

First, the data simply does not support their conclusions. Second, they know the data doesn't support their conclusions.

The hoax has its roots in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an instrument of the United Nations Environmental Program, for whom global warming was the open sesame to achieving a one-world-government by scaring nations into signing a treaty that would control their use of energy, the means of producing it, and require vast billions to be sent to less developed nations in exchange for “emitting” greenhouse gases.

Energy is called "the master resource" because, if you have lots of it, you can call your own shots. If you don't, you are condemned to live in the dark and keeping people in the dark about the global warming hoax was essential.

For years the IPCC has been controlled by a handful of the worst liars in the world, utterly devoted to taking actual climate data and twisting it to confirm the assertion that the Earth was not only warming dramatically, but that humanity was in peril of rising oceans, melting glaciers and polar ice caps, more hurricanes, the die-off of countless animal species, and every other calamity that could possibly be attributed to "global warming", including acne.

So, around November 20, when some enterprising individual hacked into the computers of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU), making off with thousands of emails and documents that demonstrate the level of collusion and deception being practiced by its scientists.

The infamous "hockey stick" temperature graph purporting to show a runaway acceleration in global temperatures beginning in 1850 was never accurate--and the Climatic Research Unit knew it wasn't accurate when they published it.

# posted by Otto @ 3:28 AM

"We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill from Alabama," Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. "You can't vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man."

# posted by Otto @ 8:37 AM

A 12-year-old girl is prohibited from bringing aspirin to California public schools without a note from her mother or father – but in many California districts she may sign herself out of classes, leave her junior-high campus without parental permission, secretly have an abortion and return to school before the end of the day – and her own family may be none the wiser.

# posted by Otto @ 5:14 AM

"The people of this city are vindicated," said Joe Bruno, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys. "They didn't do anything wrong. It's now time for them to be compensated."

"It has been proven in a court of law that the drowning of New Orleans was not a natural disaster, but a preventable man-made travesty," the attorneys said in a statement. "The government has always had a moral obligation to rebuild New Orleans. This decision makes that obligation a matter of legal responsibility."

# posted by Otto @ 5:02 AM