This and That...

[Warph]

[Warph]

(A Strange Preview: Noah...
one might say this is powerful stuff.  Whether this turns out to be this generation's TEN COMMANDMENTS will depend upon how much of the original environmentalist screed is left intact.  Is it subtext or does the story wear it like an old Russian overcoat?  In other words, for what sins is mankind being punished?  Flooding the world for failure to recycle seems a bit of an overreaction)

Russell Crowe's Noah: A Malthusian Environmentalist Loony

Video preview: 

Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. I mean the idea of a big-time Hollywood director taking on a biblical epic.

Screenwriter Brian Godawa has read the script for director Darren Aronofsky's "Noah" project, starring Russell Crowe as the patriarch, and a thrill definitely did not go up his leg. In fact, the film  appears to be a cross between The Book of Eli, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and An Inconvenient Truth.

In other words, crap.

Seems that the latest retelling of the biblical story of the man who remains faithful to God's command despite the ridicule of his neighbors and the apparent absurdity of his situation has been reworked as a tale of environmental depredation, with Noah as a Bronze Age Unabomber:

Having got a chance to read an undated version of the script for Noah I want to warn you. If you were expecting a Biblically faithful retelling of the story of the greatest mariner in history and a tale of redemption and obedience to God you'll be sorely disappointed. Noah paints the primeval world of Genesis 6 as scorched arid desert, dry cracked earth, and a gray gloomy sky that gives no rain — and all this, caused by man's "disrespect" for the environment. In short, an anachronistic doomsday scenario of ancient global warming. How Neolithic man was able to cause such anthropogenic catastrophic climate change without the "evil" carbon emissions of modern industrial revolution is not explained. Nevertheless, humanity wanders the land in nomadic warrior tribes killing animals for food or wasteful trophies.

In this oppressive world, Noah and his family seek to avoid the crowds and live off the land. Noah is a kind of rural shaman, and vegan hippy-like gatherer of herbs. Noah explains that his family "studies the world," "healing it as best we can," like a kind of environmentalist scientist. But he also mysteriously has the fighting skills of an ancient Near Eastern Ninja (Hey, it's a movie, give it a break).

Noah maintains an animal hospital to take care of wounded animals or those who survive the evil "poachers," of the land. Just whose animal rights laws they are violating, I am not sure, since there are only fiefdoms of warlords and tribes. Be that as it may, Noah is the Mother Teresa of animals.

Though God has not spoken to men or angels for a long time, Noah is haunted by recurring dreams of a rainstorm and flood that he surmises is God's judgment on man because as Noah says, "At our hand, all he created is dying." The trees, the animals, and the environment. "If we change, if we work to save it, perhaps he will too [save us]." Or as grandfather Methuselah reiterates, "We have destroyed this world, so we ourselves will be destroyed. Justice." Oh, and I almost forgot, they kill people too, but it's not really as important. In another place, "We have murdered each other. We raped the world. The Creator has judged us." The notion of human evil is more of an afterthought or symptom of the bigger environmental concern of the great tree hugger in the sky.

[...]

Meanwhile, Noah has himself become a bit psychotic, like an environmentalist or animal rights activist who concludes that people do not deserve to survive because of what they've done to the environment and to animals. Noah deduces that God's only reason for his family on the boat is to shepherd the animals to safety, "and then mankind disappears. It would be a better world." He concludes that there will be no more births in this family so that when they start over in the new world, they will eventually die out, leaving the animals in a humanless paradise of ecoharmony and peace. As Noah says, "The creatures of the earth, the world itself, shall be safe." (Except for slamming intergalactic meteors, non-anthropocentric global warming, ice ages, sun spots, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and that "survival of the fittest," eat-or-be-eaten thing. But other than that ... "safe.")

His ethical reasoning? The same as all environmentalist activists: The ends justify the means. "We must weigh those [human] lives against all creation." Shades of Malthus and Al Gore.


I so don't want to see this. In fact, I wish I could unwatch Aronofsky's The Fountain, that's how much I don't want to see this.

At least if Cormac McCarthy had written the screenplay, the animals would have eaten Noah, then turned on each other, but one of the children would have lived on to wander the earth with a supermarket cart and a necklace made of human teeth. Kinda like hope and change.

We can only hope that the "undated" screenplay that Godawa read has undergone extensive rewrites, perhaps by Aaron Sorkin, and Noah will wind up a conscience-stricken lefty news reader or something.

I wouldn't get too exercised over any of it, however, as it's unclear whether Noah's ark, which was parked in Oyster Bay on Long Island, survived 48 hours of Hurricane Sandy — never mind 40 days and 40 nights.
I only wish God could sue for copyright infringement.

...A. Sacramone

[Warph]

Venezuela Locks Up 100 "Bourgeois" Businessmen For The Crime Of Capitalism

(Watching Venezuela commit economic and political suicide is incredibly instructive for those that may not have lived thru earlier iterations of Communist dictatorships going belly-up. Take a gander at the future if you follow in the progressive mode. The cornerstone in many cases was the nationalizing of large swathes of the economy, such as healthcare)

Nov 14 (Reuters) – Venezuela's socialist government has arrested more than 100 "bourgeois" businessmen in a crackdown on alleged price-gouging at hundreds of shops and companies since the weekend, President Nicolas Maduro said on Thursday.

"They are barbaric, these capitalist parasites!" Maduro thundered in the latest of his lengthy daily speeches. "We have more than 100 of the bourgeoisie behind bars at the moment."

The successor to the late Hugo Chavez also said his government was preparing a law to limit Venezuelan businesses' profits to between 15 percent and 30 percent.

Officials say unscrupulous companies have been hiking prices of electronics and other goods more than 1,000 percent. Critics say failed socialist economic policies and restricted access to foreign currency are behind Venezuela's runaway inflation.

"Goodyear has to lower its prices even more, 15 percent is not enough, the inspectors have go there straightaway," Maduro said in his evening address, sending officials to check local operations of the U.S.-based tire manufacturer.

Since the weekend, soldiers and inspectors have gone into 1,400 shops, taken over operations at an electronics firm and a battery-making company, and rounded up a handful of looters.

[Warph]

If you think that last post about Venezuela was 'off the wall' try this on for size...
If you're one of the .05% of Americans who enjoys going to work in the morning, I have nothing to say to you.  But if you're one of the vast majority of despair-sodden grunts for whom Monday signals nothing more than an extension of an unjust prison sentence, then allow me to share with you a way out with this gulag guide to life.

Okay... think Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the late Nobel Prize–winning Russian writer, and a former zek.

You read it correctly: a zek, the name given to prisoners in the Siberian forced-labor camps during the bad old days of the Soviet Empire.  Now, the connection between Solzhenitsyn's grim prison life and your 9-5 day job may not be immediately apparent.  But if you find yourself trapped in a dead-end position, if you're frustrated, bored, and bitter, believing your talents and experience deserve better than you're getting from the mediocrities of middle management, then Solzhenitsyn's your guy.  His experience under the lash of his jailers can provide just the guidance and inspiration you need to succeed under the most grueling conditions.

So I impart to you a dozen principles gleaned from the life of a zek that may prove the key to fulfillment and a transcendent peace you could only have imagined, and then only with the help of pills.  You can thank me later.

1. Don't expect a thank-you. Russians released from German POW camps at the close of WWII, rather than receiving a hero's welcome, were thrown into the gulag by Stalin for consorting with the enemy.  Keep this in mind when you've worked 22 straight 22-hour shifts, developed carpal tunnel that would numb a professional wrist-wrestler, and suffered through migraines that could split an atom.  You should be fired just for expecting anything more that your paycheck. Cry on a friend's shoulder.

2. You have no friends. That amiable colleague you just spent your lunch hour venting to?  He's off to the boss, where you will be written up as a malcontent who spreads bad juju.  Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in a prison camp for making a joke about Stalin that somehow made its way back to the authorities.  Confess immediately. Don't make excuses—and don't try kissing up to your boss.

3. Kiss up to your boss. In Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle, Stalin is referred to by many elaborate titles, including... The Immortal, The Coryphaeus of All Sciences, and The Best Friend of Communication Workers.  So try addressing your immediate superior by original and imaginative monikers, such as The Adjudicator of all Justice or The Locus of Mercy.  Don't think of it as sucking up but rather as a refusal to conform.

4. Conform. Once the Revolution is in place, teamwork is the key to domination of world market share, with no room for recalcitrant counterrevolutionaries.  Get with the program... but first make sure you know what the program is.  A Menshevik in a Bolshevik cafeteria is another word for dead meat.  Take your enthusiasm to the exponential max.  Nothing wrong with being more Catholic than the pope.

5. Don't be more Catholic than the pope.  An overenthusiastic demeanor may
communicate one of two things: (1) you think your colleagues are lacking in party spirit, or (2) you're a double agent (make that a corporate spy). There's a fine line between high morale and being a putz who snows himself into believing he's happy.

6. Pray for snow.  In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn describes how heavy snow days meant prisoners got to stay indoors, spared backbreaking construction work in subzero temperatures.  Seems the guards feared that whiteouts would provide prisoners opportunities to escape.  A snow day is G-d's way of reminding you of the serendipitous in life.

7. There is no G-d.  G-d is merely an instrument of repression, concocted by the bourgeoisie to placate the masses with promises of rewards in a mythical afterlife.  You are a biological accident, without purpose or meaning.  Only the Company is absolute.  How do I know this? The Company told me when I filled out my W4. And the Company never lies.

8. The Company always lies. Look at Enron.  Look at WorldCom.  Look at Crazy Eddie's.  The gap between image and reality is filled with lies.  Big fat lies. Morbidly obese, BMI-of-86 lies. Oh, and --

9. You're fatter than you think.  Those $75 Langer calipers may say you're ripped, but a diet of boiled onionskins and dust will prove you're packing more avoirdupois than a love-starved Sumo.  Impoverished Soviet citizens with little flab to spare emerged from the labor camps emaciated but breathing—thanks to interstitial fat, that stuff trapped inside muscles and between organs that you can't see and calipers can't grip.  The average American male is 20% body fat.  You need only 3% to live.  The disparity is 20 years of hard labor.  Fat people don't get promoted the way thin ones do.  So if the corporate ladder is too steep to climb in your current state of unfitness, spit out that mint Oreo or you'll be stuck in your current position forever.

10. Nothing is forever.  Don't buy into the détente argument, that the Party would never relinquish power and that the Cold War was eternal.  The regime ruining your company will eventually collapse and be replaced with something not currently being investigated by the FTC.  Or you'll find a gig where your myriad talents will be unleashed and appreciated.  Be grateful you survived, then prepare to tell others what you've learned.

11. Keep your pie hole shut.  If you've been fired or just plain quit, please spare the world another whiny tell-all.  Unless you have the talents of a Dostoyevsky and worked for Silvio Berlusconi, just move on.  Be grateful someone thought enough of you to deduct FICA.

12. FICA is history.  If the Obuma Administration estimates are correct, your first Social Security check will be an IOU and a cookie.  You will never be able to retire, hastening your demise as a bitter, broken, and bankrupt shell of a man.

You can thank me now.

[Warph]

Washington University Muslim Students Demand An Imam And Islamic Center In Response To Student's Bin Laden Halloween Costume

(Only in America... The never-ending saga of the Osama bin Laden Halloween costume continues)

Via Washington University Student Life:

The Muslim Students Association (MSA) would like to issue a statement in regards to a Halloween image shared on Facebook on October 30. Some members of our Muslim community were deeply affected by the content of the photo, and many were negatively impacted by insensitive and bigoted comments that followed. As the Muslim Students Association, we aim to provide a safe space for Muslims at Washington University; however, we cannot do this independent of student culture and administrative support. To that effect, we are invested in moving forward from this incident in a way that is both healing and productive for Muslim students, other minority students, and our larger Washington University community.

Last Thursday, MSA hosted a solidarity forum during which Muslim students were given a platform to relate their experiences with Islamophobia on campus and discuss the ways in which they were triggered by this recent incident. It was truly heartwarming to see so many friends and allies show their love and support during the forum, and MSA is deeply grateful towards all who attended. However, insights from the forum have made it strikingly clear that there is a woeful lack of resources and support services for Muslim students to utilize during times of need. The need for a Muslim chaplain, a religious authority figure who can serve as a spiritual resource and to whom students can turn to in times of need, is highly evident. In a similar vein, it appears fitting to establish a space on main campus in which Muslims students can not only congregate to pray and fulfill their daily religious duties, but also seek refuge and build community. We are painfully aware of how small our community is and implore the administration to include representation of Islamic religious services/events alongside other religious groups in admissions, prospective students', and orientation literature.

One of the greatest lessons Islam teaches us as Muslims is the importance of forgiveness and mercy. As such, MSA is not seeking punitive measures against the individuals in the photo in question nor do we support further mobilization around the photo itself. We recognize that this incident is symptomatic of a larger student culture that needs improvement in the way of cultural understanding and inclusivity, and we intend to be part of a larger coalition of student groups and administrators committed to achieving this end.

We applaud the statement released by the SU Diversity Affairs Council earlier this week and echo the call to action issued towards students and administrators in making Washington University a safer and more welcoming campus. In that effort, we hope to also engage with the larger Washington University community in dialogue to promote better understanding and acceptance. We invite you to join us.

With peace,

The Washington University in St. Louis Muslim Students Association

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Obama's "Society of Fear"

By Absolute Rights Contributor on November 14, 2013
By Bob Barr

In observational experiments, researchers constantly battle a phenomenon called the "Hawthorne effect," where subjects of experiments alter their behavior when aware of being studied. For example, in 2011, researchers at Carnegie Mellon mailed postcards to customers of an electric company, informing customers they were the subjects of a company study on electricity usage. Researchers found that customers who received weekly postcards – simple reminders that their electricity usage was being observed -- cut electricity usage by nearly three percent.

The Hawthorn effect is not just limited to psychological studies. Behavior modification is the hallmark of any "society of fear," in which citizens live under the constant threat of government surveillance. In an environment where individuals reasonably believe their actions are being tracked, recorded and monitored by government agents, citizens are prone to avoiding behavior that will raise red flags. Using such psychological terror, States are better able to control and minimize anti-establishment behavior, and even undesirable thoughts.

Jeremy Bentham discovered this phenomenon more than two centuries ago in his "Panopticon" study. More recently, as a student of Chicago politics, Barack Obama became aware of the power of fear. In fact, many of Saul Alinksy's "12 Rules for Radicals" -- the Bible for budding liberal activists such as Hillary Clinton and Obama in their early days -- incorporate the power of fear. Understanding this, it becomes clear why Obama has chosen fear, more so than any other emotion, as his primary catalyst to pass his radical agenda; something that has worked remarkably well for the country's 44th President.

Following the 2011 "Wikileaks" data breach, Obama implemented a leak-squelching, internal surveillance scheme tabbed the "Insider Threat Program," designed to turn co-worker against co-worker in pursuing leaks of classified information. According to McClatchy, there is even a course called "Treason 101," for employees of the Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which teaches psychological profiling of would-be whistleblowers. "I'm waiting for the time when you turn in a friend and you get a $50 reward," national security law attorney Kel McClanahan told McClatchy, referring to Obama's "War on Whistleblowers."

This "Obama effect" is not limited to tightly-monitored government employees. Fear and intimidation techniques are employed by the Administration against the private sector as well. The Obama Department of Justice, for example, seized the phone records of the Associated Press, digitally stalked Fox News correspondent James Rosen, and is thought to be behind hacking the computer of CBS reporter Sharyl Attkinson – actions precipitated by media stories challenging the Administration. Making this even more sinister, all these steps occurred while the Internal Revenue Service was intentionally targeting anti-Obama activists with tax audits, and applying unprecedented scrutiny in approving the nonprofit status of Tea Party-affiliated organizations.

The federal government is not alone in its use of fear to enable the Hawthorne effect. Local and state governments also rely on the threat of Big Brother to engineer "better" citizens. Several states across the U.S. are looking at "black boxes" in vehicles as a solution to road congestion and taxation -- a strategy backed by the U.S. Department of Transportation. While state and federal officials laud such devices as a more "accurate" way to tax road use, privacy advocates see the insidious social engineering behind this plan. If a driver is constantly aware his or her behavior behind the wheel is being recorded -- and, given what we know about government, reasonably assumed to be transmitted back to the DMV or the driver's insurer -- that driver likely will modify his behavior to please anonymous government "watchers."

This is the Obama Fear Effect in everyday application. Citizens are afraid to speak, act and think freely. They fear having their computers hacked by government bureaucrats and lawyers, being audited by the IRS, or even being ticketed for rolling through a stop sign one midnight months ago. So, to avoid making trouble, citizens opt to "be on their best behavior" with government officials.

A truly free society exists only when citizens have a reasonable expectation they are free to live their lives without the fear of unwarranted interference from the authorities.

Unfortunately, in today's society, there is a growing expectation that is quite the opposite -- that we are, or soon will be, the victims of government targeting, for either personal or political motives. This is exactly what Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service bodyguard for Obama who is now running for Congress, meant in an interview with Glenn Beck when he said, "t's only a matter of time before someone slaps an email on your desk from 15 years ago... and says 'look what we got against you.'"

This is the reality of Obama's new Fear Society, where nobody is safe and everybody is subject to scrutiny; and only those most loyal to the State have the least to fear.

http://www.absoluterights.com/obamas-society-of-fear/

[Warph]

Guess Which Senator Is Effectively Calling For A Total Repeal Of Obumacare?

(Just went full-on wacko bird.... did McShame just realize his messiah's signature legislation is a piece of crap!  What did McRINO expect?  Did he really think between Obuma's twisted ideology, hatred for America, and his incompetence that it would be a success???  Sheeeezzzz...)

Via The Blaze:

After repeatedly criticizing senators such as Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) over their crusade to defund Obamacare, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called for the "total repeal" of the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday. It's a quick turnaround after the longtime senator, in September, proclaimed that it was "not rational" to think Obamacare could be defunded or repealed.

McCain outlined his "solution" during an interview with Greta Van Susteren, which culminated in an admission that the law should be repealed completely.

"The solution is, first of all, to let people keep their insurance if they want to," he said. "Or at least reinstate them."

He continued: "Second of all, let the insurance companies give a menu of whatever they want to provide. Third of all, medical savings account. Fourth of all, medical malpractice reform. Let people go across state lines to, in order to, if they can get a better insurance policy in another state. And remove this whole tax incentive for employers to provide employees health insurance."

"That is repeal," Van Susteren said, pointing out the obvious.

"That's exactly right," McCain replied. "That is total repeal in every other way. Because what Obamacare is, is an experiment in social engineering — in other words, making healthy people pay more...in order to subsidize the health care for people that are older and unhealthy. That is the ultimate in social engineering."

[Warph]

Bill Maher: "If You're A Democrat,
The Clintons Are A Pre-Existing Condition"

(Think that's funny Maher?  Then you'll be giddy by Feb.  Three major policy challenges are converging in January.  Government spending authority expires in the middle of the month, just three weeks ahead of the debt ceiling.  January 1st is the deadline for individuals to have insurance.  If the website isn't fixed or if young and healthy Americans haven't yet signed up for coverage, insurers will begin panicking and ObamaCare itself could start to unravel)

(Hopefully, we've suffered that last of that pre-existing condition.  Benghazi left an albatross on her neck, so let's hope the voters don't forgive or forget!)

[Warph]

Numb-Nutz Holder Of The...

.... Takes Aim At 3-D Guns,
Calls For Renewal Of Metal Detection Law

(Coming for your plastic guns, too... gun shot wounds from plastic guns aren't covered under 0bamacare.  Anywazzz... the putz Holder needs to recheck the blueprints he has.  The 'Printable Gun' has a metal core, It was designed that way... not to mention the ammunition fired in the weapons are also made of brass, copper and lead which are all detectable.  No way a weapon made exclusively out of plastic could survive the severe pressures generated by a modern pistol cartridge)

Via Fox News:
Calling 3-D plastic guns an "extremely serious problem," Attorney General Eric Holder called on Congress to renew a law that requires all firearms to be subject to metal detection.

The Undetectable Firearms Act, a law first enacted in 1988 and then reauthorized in 2003, makes it illegal to "manufacture, import, sell, ship, deliver, possess, transfer or receive" any firearm that's undetectable by scanners. But the law is set to expire Dec. 9, unless Congress again reauthorizes it. Holder said the new technology of printing 3-D guns made of plastic means guns could potentially be smuggled onto planes, into federal buildings or at large public events.

"This is an extremely serious problem," Holder said in a statement. "This is a very worrisome threat to law enforcement and to people who fly every day. We can't have guns legally in circulation that are not detectable by metal detectors."

[Warph]

(Actually... it should read: "...Obumacare 'AND OBUMA' Are A Total Unmitigated Disaster)