Pasadena Pundit
New below:
Only 17% of People Find Newspaper Stories Believable
Believability of Major Broadcast Networks Plummets
Star News Dumbs Down Public By Failing to Report That New Urgent Care Center in East Pasadena Will Subsidize Patients in Arcadia, San Gabriel, Glendale, and Baldwin Park
Read the dumbed down article in the PSN today about how the City of Pasadena is allocating $500,000 for a fast track study to put an urgent care center in East Pasadena - here: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_10241644
The Star News just wants to report the "news," not educate the public.
What the article fails to report is that the courts have socialized emergency medical care so that any emergency or urgent care center must take patients from outside East Pasadena (Arcadia, San Gabriel, Baldwin Park, North West Pasadena, Glendale, etc). The whole concept of a neighborhood based emergency care center was invalidated by the courts long ago. Poorer cities may want to dump their uninsured patients on the more wealthy Pasadena urgent care center. If so, why aren't other cities asked to chip in for the costs of any urgent care center in East Pasadena? To learn how the socialized emergency care system really works read here:
http://www.californiarepublic.org/archives/Columns/Lusvardi/20070921LusvardiGeo-Equity.html
Only 17% of People Find Newspaper Stories Believable
How Real Are Newspaper Stories?
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-real-are-newspaper-stories.htm
The question of credibility in newspaper stories has been around since newspapers first appeared. Many people read newspaper stories with a skeptical eye. More and more people are waking up to the fact that newspaper stories are not 100% truthful. In the age of mass media, with newspapers and television shows vying for the exclusive scoop, many facts are exaggerated beyond reasonable doubt.
A recent survey on the believability of newspapers showed that only 17% of people found their daily newspaper to be completely believable. Believability figures for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were as low as 50%. So is the world now populated by media savvy cynical readers, or have people simply lost faith in the media as a whole?
One of the major factors in the believability of newspaper stories is the anonymous source. This refers to people who frequently crop up in newspaper stories giving an opinion or insider knowledge on a story. The contending issue is, of course, that the anonymous source is never named. The use of the anonymous source can be seen as far back as Deep Throat in the Watergate Scandal expose by The Washington Post in the 1970s.
A reporter will never give up the name of his or her anonymous source; it is considered part and parcel of journalistic ethics. However, the New York Times recently had to print four pages of apologies for the fabrications of reporter Jason Blair. Blair's newspaper stories appeared over a three year span and were found to be full of fraudulent facts and information. A majority of unchecked fabrications were contained in anonymous source quotations.
This was not to be the only time that apologies would be printed for the fabrication of newspaper stories. Rick Bragg, another Times reporter, was forced to resign after his stories were found to be fraudulent. USA Today reporter Jack Kelley fabricated numerous stories, including his own eyewitness account of a cafe bombing in Israel.
In some instances, the public know that newspaper stories are simply false or exaggerated. The British tabloid press are some of the worst storytellers in the world. A huge percentage of these daily newspapers are filled with exclusive celebrity stories told by close friends. It is well known that the so-called close friend is actually the celebrity looking for extra publicity.
There is also the fact that many newspapers are biased towards one particular political party. The editors may run political stories favoring their political party, along with newspaper stories that make the opposing political party look like devil worshipers at best. The old saying of don't believe everything you read in the newspapers should be kept in mind when reading a large percentage of newspaper stories, especially those that frequently quote anonymous sources as their key fact givers.
Believability of Major Broadcast Networks Plummets
Read here: http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1358
Don Perata, Head of California Senate, Rips Off Peevey's Idea of Global Warming Think Tank But Wants It Additionally Funded by Municipal Utilities Such as PWP
Still a rotten idea
San Diego Union-Tribune
Don't soak ratepayers for energy think tank
August 18, 2008
In April, when Public Utilities Commission Chairman Michael Peevey persuaded the PUC board to back his plan to use $600 million generated by a 10-year surcharge on some energy bills to create a PUC-run global warming think tank, the response was far chillier than he probably expected.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was enthusiastic, but he was practically alone.
Experts on utility law questioned whether it would be legal for an agency created to regulate utilities to force ratepayers to subsidize an agency think tank. Consumer groups such as The Utilities Reform Network questioned the fairness of imposing an additional de facto tax on San Diego Gas & Electric, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison customers, who already fund renewable energy and conservation programs. Analysts noted the recent explosion of research into alternative energy sources and said the PUC think tank's work would be duplicative.
Perhaps the loudest critics of all were state lawmakers, who saw Peevey's plan as a clumsy, poorly thought-out exercise in empire-building. "I think it's a singularly bad idea," said Senate President Don Perata, D-Oakland.
Four months later, however, it turns out that legislators only oppose anti-consumer, ill-conceived empire-building when it's undertaken by some other government body. Capitol Weekly reported last week that none other than Perata himself had stolen Peevey's idea and will soon unveil his plan for a ratepayer-funded California Institute for Climate Change.
Its funding sources would be expanded to include municipal utilities, such as those owned by Los Angeles and Anaheim, as well as investor-owned utilities, allowing for a much bigger annual budget than envisioned by Peevey.
The institute would be run by a board that included representatives of the Governor's Office, the Senate, Assembly, Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission - meaning its management would be suffused with politics, its academic freedom compromised, its research limited to certain options.
Does anyone really believe this think tank would consider nuclear power for even 30 seconds?
But even if it were honestly run, the think tank would fill no need. There is more promising, well-funded energy research now than ever before.
Perata's initial take was right: Soaking ratepayers to set up a state think tank is nonsensical. It is beyond perverse that he is now the greatest champion of this "singularly bad idea."
Big Deal?: Free Radicals (Oxygen) Found as Pollutant in Air
Oversimplified, free radicals are essentially oxygen. Just as a sliced apple exposed to air and oxygen spoils, so does the human body. Read story about how researchers found that air has free radical (oxygen) pollutants in it here:
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1164736.html
Note: Free radicals are also naturally produced in the body without outside pollution. And the body has natural defense mechanisms against free radicals. For more balanced, non-hysterical, information on free radicals read here:
http://www.bsherman.org/freeradicals.htm
Vote For (Un)-Real Change - San Francisco to Decriminalize Prostitution Resulting in More Child Prostitution
Read about this here:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/08/pimps_pedophiles_welcome_to_sf.html
Solution Found to Pasadena's Anti-Hosing Rules - Hormonal Sprays for Ficus Trees
Dr. Ron Smith, Horticulturalist, North Dakota State University
Preface: The City of Pasadena is citing property owners for hosing private walkways and driveways to wash off berries dropped from the City's ficus street trees. But blowing the sticky berries off the walks and driveways doesn't work once the berries are mashed by automobile tires or shoes. Sweeping just spreads the berries all over the walks and doesn't remove the stains. A possible partial solution that avoids noisy and dusty blowers or water intensive hosing would be to "spay" or "neuter" the trees to reduce the large volume of berries produced by the trees. Would the City grant permission to spray street trees? Should property owners have to pay for the spraying when it is the City's trees creating the nuisance? Dr. Smith mentions that the critical element of spraying is timing. Can we expect bureaucratic agencies to timely spray city trees when they are molting?
Read the email response by Dr. Ron Smith below:
"There are hormonal sprays which cause embryo abortion of the flower when sprayed at the correct time. This would have to be something that would be timed just right to maximize impact. It would never be 100% elimination of the berries, but a significant reduction in them. How much this would cost is up for grabs, but here is a listing of some ISA Certified Arborists in your part of the state, some of which should be able to assist or advise. We have similar problems with crabapples in our area - as the trees get larger, and extend over walks, patios, or driveways, the fruit drops, attracts yellow jacket wasps, and stains the surfaces. By then the trees are often too large to spray or too expensive, so they end up getting taken out and replaced with a non-fruiting cultivar or different species of tree."
Link to local arborists:
http://www.santa-clarita.com/cityhall/pw/oaktree/QualifiedConsultingArborists5-19-08.pdf
Did Obama Lie About Voting Against the Iraq
It may depend on your cultural definition of lying and truth
"It depends on what your definition of 'is,' is?" - President Bill Clinton
Some perceptive online observers of the recent Saddleback Church Iraq
News commentators said that compared to U.S. Senator John McCain's answers at the Saddleback Forum, Obama's were more "nuanced" and "thoughtful." A "non-nuanced" and common sense answer was that he flat out lied about the above question. But this doesn't explain why Obama would risk making such a bonehead false statement when he is articulate and intelligent.
In all probability, "truth" is culturally defined differently by Obama than McCain. In Obama's social culture he didn't say a non-truth; in McCain's social world Obama stated an untruth. What do we mean by this?
We know that Obama attended school in Hawaii up until age 5, but from 6 to 10 years old he attended school in Jakarta , Indonesia Indonesia Jakarta
Moreover, Obama is a member of the Democratic Party whose policies place emphasis on collectivist programs and policies as opposed to the privatization programs and political ideology of the Republican Party. It is not a stretch of the imagination to say that Obama was born and raised so as to become what might be called a collectivistic personality.
People with a collectivistic personality believe that the group(s) in which they are most involved are ends in themselves. As such they are compelled to honor distinctive group values, notwithstanding their own personal drive for success. Even Obama's meteoric rise through academia and local politics was facilitated by collective affirmative action policies and gerrymandered voting districts that gave him sure electability. Obama's careers were largely determined by group goals that required the pursuit of achievement that improved the position of his group. The defining attribute of this social enculturation process was the honor and integrity of his family, his tribal-like childhood religion, his adult social gospel religion, solidarity with the in-group of his political party and his kin group. Particularly, when asked who he admires or would turn to for advice tellingly mentioned his grandmother and his wife first, while John McCain cited General Patraeus.
In a collective culture saying the right thing to maintain harmony and to reinforce cultural values is far more important than telling what seems to be the obvious truth. In fact, truth might be defined as conformity between what the in-group thinks about some person, event, or thing, and what the private self believes and knows. Collectivist persons are not expected to have their own opinions but to only hold those opinions that derive from social consensus.
In individualist cultures, by contrast, the power of the in-group over the person recedes. In individualistic American culture, inconsistency between public and private statements and actions is understood as hypocrisy. One must think and say or do the same thing. To lie is to say one thing publicly while thinking or acting differently privately.
Thus an individualistic lie is to think one thing and say another. To a collectivist, however, a lie involves holding a private truth different than one's in-group. Lying and deception can become second nature to a collectivist personality and can be honorable and legitimate. To lie in order to deceive an outsider, one who has no right to the truth, is thus honorable. Or more importantly, it dishonors those in the out-group. Thus, to deceive by making something "nuanced" or to lie to an out-group person or audience is to deprive them of respect, to refuse to show honor, to humiliate the other. Collectivist lying in a political context is thus a way to patronize and pander to one's collectivistic political base and to deny honor and respect to one's opponent.
So to repeat, why would Barack Obama, a highly educated and well-spoken political candidate make such a notorious falsehood in front of such a large audience? Your guess is as good as mine. When the inconsistency between Obama's statement and the facts are pointed out to the average Joe in the American public street that has individualistic cultural values, Obama lied. But, the bigger question is why? And my guess is that what makes Obama tick is his collectivistic cultural values ingrained in his personality, notwithstanding his obvious smarts and polished speaking abilities. Thus, Obama may be more understood by a collectivistic Muslim in, say, Afghanistan Saddleback Church
This explains why many conservative Americans don't like intellectuals, including this rather intellectualized analysis of Obama. Americans are known for liking "plain speakers," not Old World dogma or European intellectualizing. If Americans want "change," meaning truth telling, in their political leaders then they better ponder Obama's collectivistic cultural values as the election approaches.
Obama Lied, Babies Died
Read here:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTBkYTYzZDNjNDgyMWJmMzMxYzljYjYxNmEwMTdhYWE=
How To "Solve" Politically-Manufactured Water Crisis - Turn Your Lawn into a Protected Wetland for Endangered Arroyo Toad
Submitted by Mr. Toad
Install a pond in your front yard with tadpoles and larvae to feed the endangered Arroyo Toad (species: B. microscaphus californicus), install a sand or pea gravel subsoil with silt topsoil, rock garden and dirt berms where the toads can burrow shelters, and import plenty of insects by planting, say, Lantana shrub nearby. Provide a source of water from washing walks and driveways by diverting it into the fresh water pond, apply for a Section 404 Permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of the U.S. Dept. of Interior, and submit your "protected" habitat to the City of Pasadena as proof of immunity from water conservation anti-hosing regulations.
Why artists hate conservatives
By Mark Butterworth - American Thinker
Conservatives have a problem with artists, just as most artists have a problem with conservatives. For example, there is a provision in Bush's Medicare program (the prescription drug boondoggle) that attempts to allow individuals to create their own sort of 401K plan for medical care. Catastrophic health care would be insured for them, but ordinary medical care would be covered by their own tax free savings.
This sounds like a good idea. It gives people control over their medical care, their selection of doctors, treatment, testing, and so forth. Working people can manage this like they do their retirement funds. Everyone wins.
Except artists.
Artists have long and sadly accepted the general proposition that they cannot pursue their vocation in art and expect to be liquid or create much equity. No. Starving artist is not a misnomer or stereotype. People only get to become great (or very good) at an art by doing it full time. But doing so means they most likely scrape to get by. The trade off is that they get to do work they absolutely love instead of working on in the salt mines.
Artists are generally very liberal because they can't afford decent housing, private education for their children, medical expenses, or retirement funds. They tend not to be religious anymore, so they can't ask such communities for help, so they turn to government. They generally do not receive the approval of their fathers if their dads are traditionally masculine types, and receiving the approval of dads who are wimpy is not that much better. In both cases they feel marginalized and inadequate. Anger at the father leads to atheism, rebelliousness, and animosity to tradition.
Artists don't really care about the poor except that it helps them to make an argument for their own needs. You don't see Barbra Streisand or Steven Spielberg offering to create a huge endowment fund for starving actors out of their vast wealth, do you? No, they prefer that ordinary people to pay for starving actors' and artists' needs through the government programs liberals love. The very few artists who reap mega fortunes don't care a whit about their struggling peers, and won't dent their own fortunes for the sake of their own kind, but are more than ready to raise a working family's taxes a large percentage.
Conservatives, though, think that everyone should carry their own weight. Artists simply can't. It's no good saying the market should decide; that some fall by the wayside because they aren't good enough or self-promoting enough. We night possibly lose incredibly fine works of skill and beauty, for my experience (not with my own work) in observing a great many superb artists is that regardless of the quality of their work, they hardly get by because work of living artists of the highest quality is simply not valued by enough buyers with money to spend.
It's as if you have a market of 1000 people who can appreciate quality and will buy it, but you have 50 artists producing 5000 pieces of good work. It can't all be bought. So what do we tell the artists? They're hiring down at the union hall? We can always use more truck drivers?
The conservative vision of every man under his own fig tree simply doesn't work when it comes to people who are willing to starve and suffer for the sake of developing their craft and desire for mastery of creative work. It easy enough to say, "tough luck, hard world." But they aren't buying.
In fact, for most people, life isn't that tough or hard because they are satisfied in their vocation. Most people don't find their lives and work drudgery in America. Surprisingly, to me, is that most people like their jobs, whereas I hated working full time at any job that wasn't creative. No matter how decent the people, the working conditions, and useful the work, I hated having to devote my life to making a buck. I would become miserable, depressed, and suicidal if I thought that the rest of my life was going to be doing such work all day, every day.
I would have rather starved. And I did on many occasions, and lived in conditions people would marvel at, wondering how I could stand it. As long as I was free to work at what I loved, I could stand a lot.
As long as we have a large, educated, creative, but under-employed class of artists in America, there will be a huge propaganda machine directed with energy and hostility at conservative values, traditional Good, and natural law.
Freedom Means Responsibility
By GEORGE MCGOVERN
March 7, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120485275086518279.html
Nearly 16 years ago in these very pages, I wrote that "'one-size-fits all' rules for business ignore the reality of the market place." Today I'm watching some broad rules evolve on individual decisions that are even worse.
Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior. Much paternalist scrutiny has recently centered on personal economics, including calls to regulate subprime mortgages.
With liberalized credit rules, many people with limited income could access a mortgage and choose, for the first time, if they wanted to own a home. And most of those who chose to do so are hanging on to their mortgages. According to the national delinquency survey released yesterday, the vast majority of subprime, adjustable-rate mortgages are in good condition,their holders neither delinquent nor in default.
There's no question, however, that delinquency and default rates are far too high. But some of this is due to bad investment decisions by real-estate speculators. These losses are not unlike the risks taken every day in the stock market.
The real question for policy makers is how to protect those worthy borrowers who are struggling, without throwing out a system that works fine for the majority of its users (all of whom have freely chosen to use it). If the tub is more baby than bathwater, we should think twice about dumping everything out.
Health-care paternalism creates another problem that's rarely mentioned: Many people can't afford the gold-plated health plans that are the only options available in their states.
Buying health insurance on the Internet and across state lines, where less expensive plans may be available, is prohibited by many state insurance commissions. Despite being able to buy car or home insurance with a mouse click, some state governments require their approved plans for purchase or none at all. It's as if states dictated that you had to buy a Mercedes or no car at all.
Economic paternalism takes its newest form with the campaign against short-term small loans, commonly known as "payday lending."
With payday lending, people in need of immediate money can borrow against their future paychecks, allowing emergency purchases or bill payments they could not otherwise make. The service comes at the cost of a significant fee -- usually $15 for every $100 borrowed for two weeks. But the cost seems reasonable when all your other options, such as bounced checks or skipped credit-card payments, are obviously more expensive and play havoc with your credit rating.
Anguished at the fact that payday lending isn't perfect, some people would outlaw the service entirely, or cap fees at such low levels that no lender will provide the service. Anyone who's familiar with the law of unintended consequences should be able to guess what happens next.
Researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York went one step further and laid the data out: Payday lending bans simply push low-income borrowers into less pleasant options, including increased rates of bankruptcy. Net result: After a lending ban, the consumer has the same amount of debt but fewer ways to manage it.
Since leaving office I've written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.
Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don't take away cars because we don't like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don't operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.
The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.
Just Who Is The "Reverend" Donna D'Amore, Advocate of Same Sex Marriage?
The "Spiritual Awareness Network" website describes her as as follows:
Donna D'Amore is a clairvoyant, spiritual counselor, dream interpreter and author. She is the author of "Dreams - The Windows Into Your Soul". She derives great joy in having sessions with people and assisting them along their journey by interpreting dreams & spiritual messages, helping to heal emotional wounds and encouraging their spiritual growth and development.
http://www.spiritualawarenessnetwork.org/events/event-SAN.html
True to form the Pasadena Star News publishes her letter advocating same-sex marriages without telling us just what Ms. A'more is a "reverend" of. A'more is not described as a "minister" at the Illuminations Ministry 22 in Anaheim - see here:
http://www.zyworld.com/suzannishi33/Illuminations22.htm
Read her letter below:
Couple heartwarming
I wish to applaud the writer and editors responsible for an uplifting and heartwarming story about the marriage of Julian Bermudez and John Rabe, and commendations to the Star-News for running such a touching piece ("Love is in the air, Aug. 9).
This compelling story was beautifully written and moved me to tears. It was courageous of John and Julian to share the personal details of their wedding preparations.
My hope is that their story will add a realistic perspective to the subject of same-sex marriages, and may help to soften the hearts of those who would seek to deny this right to our gay brothers and sisters.
As an ordained non-denominational minister in Pasadena , I am delighted that the day has arrived in California
Thank you for publishing such a thoughtful piece, which is extremely relevant for Californians at this moment in time.
My prayer is that the voters in our state will search their hearts and will not pass the marriage ban which has been placed on the November ballot. There are so many loving couples who deserve the opportunity to marry. I hope that your article will serve to illuminate minds and hearts!
Congratulations to John & Julian, and may they enjoy a lifetime of happiness and blessings. As written in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, verse 13: "There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love."
Rev. Donna D'Amore
Saudis Granted Immunity Even Though They Funded 9/11 Attacks
US court rules Saudis not liable for Sept 11 attacks
YahooNews - Thu Aug 14, 7:47 PM ET
A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled Saudi Arabia could not be held liable for the September 11 attacks against the United States despite charitable donations that ended up in the hands of Al-Qaeda.
Upholding a 2006 decision by a lower court, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled inadmissible a lawsuit in which families of victims of the 9/11 attacks charged that Saudi Arabia, four Saudi princes, a Saudi charity and bank had given material support to Al-Qaeda.
The plaintiffs in the case cited Saudi donations to Muslim charity groups that were later transferred to the Al-Qaeda terror network, arguing the Saudis were responsible for financing the 9/11 attacks.
The court in its ruling said the "Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976" granted the Saudi defendants immunity from prosecution on US soil.
It also ruled that a charity named in the suit, the Saudi High Commission for Relief to Bosnia and Herzegovina, was also immune under the same law as it was "an agency or instrumentality of the Kingdom."
Exceptions to the immunity provisions did not apply in the case, the court ruled, "because the Kingdom has not been designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States."
Please Apply My Electricity Overpayments to Water Conservation (Dis)incentives
Jeff Rupp - Pasadena
How ironic the recent front page photo shows one of the Brookside Golf Course lakes not being replenished with water due to "conservation" when the solution is a short iron away -- the Arroyo Seco River
It has always amazed me that for a small amount of engineering effort, these lakes, fueled by water from a concrete drainage canal, could not be incorporated into the entire golf course water management program and still maintain adequate flows to feed the newly restored central Arroyo Seco River and replenish the watershed.
Someone also needs to inform Pasadena Pasadena
And one final thought. Leave it to any good government discussion to worry about loss of revenues from conservation. Of course these are the same folks who complain about the loss of gas tax revenues from reduced consumption. The obvious solution, at least to those who we entrust with our future, is to raise taxes, impose fees (excuse me, "incentives") or ?borrow" $11.2 million from the City's Light and Power Fund to balance the budget and raise the electric rates at the same time. Quoting the City Manager from a recent Star-New article, "It is a standard practice in Pasadena
Perhaps you could apply any of my previous overpayments for electricity toward any of my future water (dis)incentives!
Pundit Note: In Pasadena, not only electricity, but water is overcharged and the excess above the real cost of water is transferred into the City's General Fund or diverted into investment accounts which are de facto reserves (now totalling two-thirds of a billion dollars). Which raises a point: why should property owners have their water rates increased if they are already overbilled?
Comment on above by Guido Meindl
Good commentary by Jeff Rupp re the Brookside GC lakes/ponds. My concern is that allowing them to evaporate will create additional problems aside from eliminating a significant watering and nesting/breeding environment for local and migratory bird populations and other 'beasties'. As the ponds continue to evaporate they will become an ideal mosquito breeding ground. To counteract this I would assume that the Pasadena Environmental Health Dept. will spray the ponds with anti-mosquito chemicals which will pose a threat to bird and animal species who rely on this water source. Without treatment this will pose a threat to the surrounding human neighborhood. Seems like a 'no win' scenario! Only retaining the water levels is the solution. Jeff Rupp has some excellent ideas of the subject.
Pasadena Pundit
New below:
Only 17% of People Find Newspaper Stories Believable
Believability of Major Broadcast Networks Plummets
Star News Dumbs Down Public By Failing to Report That New Urgent Care Center in East Pasadena Will Subsidize Patients in Arcadia, San Gabriel, Glendale, and Baldwin Park
Read the dumbed down article in the PSN today about how the City of Pasadena is allocating $500,000 for a fast track study to put an urgent care center in East Pasadena - here: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_10241644
The Star News just wants to report the "news," not educate the public.
What the article fails to report is that the courts have socialized emergency medical care so that any emergency or urgent care center must take patients from outside East Pasadena (Arcadia, San Gabriel, Baldwin Park, North West Pasadena, Glendale, etc). The whole concept of a neighborhood based emergency care center was invalidated by the courts long ago. Poorer cities may want to dump their uninsured patients on the more wealthy Pasadena urgent care center. If so, why aren't other cities asked to chip in for the costs of any urgent care center in East Pasadena? To learn how the socialized emergency care system really works read here:
http://www.californiarepublic.org/archives/Columns/Lusvardi/20070921LusvardiGeo-Equity.html
Only 17% of People Find Newspaper Stories Believable
How Real Are Newspaper Stories?
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-real-are-newspaper-stories.htm
The question of credibility in newspaper stories has been around since newspapers first appeared. Many people read newspaper stories with a skeptical eye. More and more people are waking up to the fact that newspaper stories are not 100% truthful. In the age of mass media, with newspapers and television shows vying for the exclusive scoop, many facts are exaggerated beyond reasonable doubt.
A recent survey on the believability of newspapers showed that only 17% of people found their daily newspaper to be completely believable. Believability figures for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were as low as 50%. So is the world now populated by media savvy cynical readers, or have people simply lost faith in the media as a whole?
One of the major factors in the believability of newspaper stories is the anonymous source. This refers to people who frequently crop up in newspaper stories giving an opinion or insider knowledge on a story. The contending issue is, of course, that the anonymous source is never named. The use of the anonymous source can be seen as far back as Deep Throat in the Watergate Scandal expose by The Washington Post in the 1970s.
A reporter will never give up the name of his or her anonymous source; it is considered part and parcel of journalistic ethics. However, the New York Times recently had to print four pages of apologies for the fabrications of reporter Jason Blair. Blair's newspaper stories appeared over a three year span and were found to be full of fraudulent facts and information. A majority of unchecked fabrications were contained in anonymous source quotations.
This was not to be the only time that apologies would be printed for the fabrication of newspaper stories. Rick Bragg, another Times reporter, was forced to resign after his stories were found to be fraudulent. USA Today reporter Jack Kelley fabricated numerous stories, including his own eyewitness account of a cafe bombing in Israel.
In some instances, the public know that newspaper stories are simply false or exaggerated. The British tabloid press are some of the worst storytellers in the world. A huge percentage of these daily newspapers are filled with exclusive celebrity stories told by close friends. It is well known that the so-called close friend is actually the celebrity looking for extra publicity.
There is also the fact that many newspapers are biased towards one particular political party. The editors may run political stories favoring their political party, along with newspaper stories that make the opposing political party look like devil worshipers at best. The old saying of don't believe everything you read in the newspapers should be kept in mind when reading a large percentage of newspaper stories, especially those that frequently quote anonymous sources as their key fact givers.
Believability of Major Broadcast Networks Plummets
Read here: http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1358
Don Perata, Head of California Senate, Rips Off Peevey's Idea of Global Warming Think Tank But Wants It Additionally Funded by Municipal Utilities Such as PWP
Still a rotten idea
San Diego Union-Tribune
Don't soak ratepayers for energy think tank
August 18, 2008
In April, when Public Utilities Commission Chairman Michael Peevey persuaded the PUC board to back his plan to use $600 million generated by a 10-year surcharge on some energy bills to create a PUC-run global warming think tank, the response was far chillier than he probably expected.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was enthusiastic, but he was practically alone.
Experts on utility law questioned whether it would be legal for an agency created to regulate utilities to force ratepayers to subsidize an agency think tank. Consumer groups such as The Utilities Reform Network questioned the fairness of imposing an additional de facto tax on San Diego Gas & Electric, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison customers, who already fund renewable energy and conservation programs. Analysts noted the recent explosion of research into alternative energy sources and said the PUC think tank's work would be duplicative.
Perhaps the loudest critics of all were state lawmakers, who saw Peevey's plan as a clumsy, poorly thought-out exercise in empire-building. "I think it's a singularly bad idea," said Senate President Don Perata, D-Oakland.
Four months later, however, it turns out that legislators only oppose anti-consumer, ill-conceived empire-building when it's undertaken by some other government body. Capitol Weekly reported last week that none other than Perata himself had stolen Peevey's idea and will soon unveil his plan for a ratepayer-funded California Institute for Climate Change.
Its funding sources would be expanded to include municipal utilities, such as those owned by Los Angeles and Anaheim, as well as investor-owned utilities, allowing for a much bigger annual budget than envisioned by Peevey.
The institute would be run by a board that included representatives of the Governor's Office, the Senate, Assembly, Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission - meaning its management would be suffused with politics, its academic freedom compromised, its research limited to certain options.
Does anyone really believe this think tank would consider nuclear power for even 30 seconds?
But even if it were honestly run, the think tank would fill no need. There is more promising, well-funded energy research now than ever before.
Perata's initial take was right: Soaking ratepayers to set up a state think tank is nonsensical. It is beyond perverse that he is now the greatest champion of this "singularly bad idea."
Big Deal?: Free Radicals (Oxygen) Found as Pollutant in Air
Oversimplified, free radicals are essentially oxygen. Just as a sliced apple exposed to air and oxygen spoils, so does the human body. Read story about how researchers found that air has free radical (oxygen) pollutants in it here:
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1164736.html
Note: Free radicals are also naturally produced in the body without outside pollution. And the body has natural defense mechanisms against free radicals. For more balanced, non-hysterical, information on free radicals read here:
http://www.bsherman.org/freeradicals.htm
Vote For (Un)-Real Change - San Francisco to Decriminalize Prostitution Resulting in More Child Prostitution
Read about this here:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/08/pimps_pedophiles_welcome_to_sf.html
Solution Found to Pasadena's Anti-Hosing Rules - Hormonal Sprays for Ficus Trees
Dr. Ron Smith, Horticulturalist, North Dakota State University
Preface: The City of Pasadena is citing property owners for hosing private walkways and driveways to wash off berries dropped from the City's ficus street trees. But blowing the sticky berries off the walks and driveways doesn't work once the berries are mashed by automobile tires or shoes. Sweeping just spreads the berries all over the walks and doesn't remove the stains. A possible partial solution that avoids noisy and dusty blowers or water intensive hosing would be to "spay" or "neuter" the trees to reduce the large volume of berries produced by the trees. Would the City grant permission to spray street trees? Should property owners have to pay for the spraying when it is the City's trees creating the nuisance? Dr. Smith mentions that the critical element of spraying is timing. Can we expect bureaucratic agencies to timely spray city trees when they are molting?
Read the email response by Dr. Ron Smith below:
"There are hormonal sprays which cause embryo abortion of the flower when sprayed at the correct time. This would have to be something that would be timed just right to maximize impact. It would never be 100% elimination of the berries, but a significant reduction in them. How much this would cost is up for grabs, but here is a listing of some ISA Certified Arborists in your part of the state, some of which should be able to assist or advise. We have similar problems with crabapples in our area - as the trees get larger, and extend over walks, patios, or driveways, the fruit drops, attracts yellow jacket wasps, and stains the surfaces. By then the trees are often too large to spray or too expensive, so they end up getting taken out and replaced with a non-fruiting cultivar or different species of tree."
Link to local arborists:
http://www.santa-clarita.com/cityhall/pw/oaktree/QualifiedConsultingArborists5-19-08.pdf
Did Obama Lie About Voting Against the Iraq
It may depend on your cultural definition of lying and truth
"It depends on what your definition of 'is,' is?" - President Bill Clinton
Some perceptive online observers of the recent Saddleback Church Iraq
News commentators said that compared to U.S. Senator John McCain's answers at the Saddleback Forum, Obama's were more "nuanced" and "thoughtful." A "non-nuanced" and common sense answer was that he flat out lied about the above question. But this doesn't explain why Obama would risk making such a bonehead false statement when he is articulate and intelligent.
In all probability, "truth" is culturally defined differently by Obama than McCain. In Obama's social culture he didn't say a non-truth; in McCain's social world Obama stated an untruth. What do we mean by this?
We know that Obama attended school in Hawaii up until age 5, but from 6 to 10 years old he attended school in Jakarta , Indonesia Indonesia Jakarta
Moreover, Obama is a member of the Democratic Party whose policies place emphasis on collectivist programs and policies as opposed to the privatization programs and political ideology of the Republican Party. It is not a stretch of the imagination to say that Obama was born and raised so as to become what might be called a collectivistic personality.
People with a collectivistic personality believe that the group(s) in which they are most involved are ends in themselves. As such they are compelled to honor distinctive group values, notwithstanding their own personal drive for success. Even Obama's meteoric rise through academia and local politics was facilitated by collective affirmative action policies and gerrymandered voting districts that gave him sure electability. Obama's careers were largely determined by group goals that required the pursuit of achievement that improved the position of his group. The defining attribute of this social enculturation process was the honor and integrity of his family, his tribal-like childhood religion, his adult social gospel religion, solidarity with the in-group of his political party and his kin group. Particularly, when asked who he admires or would turn to for advice tellingly mentioned his grandmother and his wife first, while John McCain cited General Patraeus.
In a collective culture saying the right thing to maintain harmony and to reinforce cultural values is far more important than telling what seems to be the obvious truth. In fact, truth might be defined as conformity between what the in-group thinks about some person, event, or thing, and what the private self believes and knows. Collectivist persons are not expected to have their own opinions but to only hold those opinions that derive from social consensus.
In individualist cultures, by contrast, the power of the in-group over the person recedes. In individualistic American culture, inconsistency between public and private statements and actions is understood as hypocrisy. One must think and say or do the same thing. To lie is to say one thing publicly while thinking or acting differently privately.
Thus an individualistic lie is to think one thing and say another. To a collectivist, however, a lie involves holding a private truth different than one's in-group. Lying and deception can become second nature to a collectivist personality and can be honorable and legitimate. To lie in order to deceive an outsider, one who has no right to the truth, is thus honorable. Or more importantly, it dishonors those in the out-group. Thus, to deceive by making something "nuanced" or to lie to an out-group person or audience is to deprive them of respect, to refuse to show honor, to humiliate the other. Collectivist lying in a political context is thus a way to patronize and pander to one's collectivistic political base and to deny honor and respect to one's opponent.
So to repeat, why would Barack Obama, a highly educated and well-spoken political candidate make such a notorious falsehood in front of such a large audience? Your guess is as good as mine. When the inconsistency between Obama's statement and the facts are pointed out to the average Joe in the American public street that has individualistic cultural values, Obama lied. But, the bigger question is why? And my guess is that what makes Obama tick is his collectivistic cultural values ingrained in his personality, notwithstanding his obvious smarts and polished speaking abilities. Thus, Obama may be more understood by a collectivistic Muslim in, say, Afghanistan Saddleback Church
This explains why many conservative Americans don't like intellectuals, including this rather intellectualized analysis of Obama. Americans are known for liking "plain speakers," not Old World dogma or European intellectualizing. If Americans want "change," meaning truth telling, in their political leaders then they better ponder Obama's collectivistic cultural values as the election approaches.
Obama Lied, Babies Died
Read here:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTBkYTYzZDNjNDgyMWJmMzMxYzljYjYxNmEwMTdhYWE=
How To "Solve" Politically-Manufactured Water Crisis - Turn Your Lawn into a Protected Wetland for Endangered Arroyo Toad
Submitted by Mr. Toad
Install a pond in your front yard with tadpoles and larvae to feed the endangered Arroyo Toad (species: B. microscaphus californicus), install a sand or pea gravel subsoil with silt topsoil, rock garden and dirt berms where the toads can burrow shelters, and import plenty of insects by planting, say, Lantana shrub nearby. Provide a source of water from washing walks and driveways by diverting it into the fresh water pond, apply for a Section 404 Permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of the U.S. Dept. of Interior, and submit your "protected" habitat to the City of Pasadena as proof of immunity from water conservation anti-hosing regulations.
Why artists hate conservatives
By Mark Butterworth - American Thinker
Conservatives have a problem with artists, just as most artists have a problem with conservatives. For example, there is a provision in Bush's Medicare program (the prescription drug boondoggle) that attempts to allow individuals to create their own sort of 401K plan for medical care. Catastrophic health care would be insured for them, but ordinary medical care would be covered by their own tax free savings.
This sounds like a good idea. It gives people control over their medical care, their selection of doctors, treatment, testing, and so forth. Working people can manage this like they do their retirement funds. Everyone wins.
Except artists.
Artists have long and sadly accepted the general proposition that they cannot pursue their vocation in art and expect to be liquid or create much equity. No. Starving artist is not a misnomer or stereotype. People only get to become great (or very good) at an art by doing it full time. But doing so means they most likely scrape to get by. The trade off is that they get to do work they absolutely love instead of working on in the salt mines.
Artists are generally very liberal because they can't afford decent housing, private education for their children, medical expenses, or retirement funds. They tend not to be religious anymore, so they can't ask such communities for help, so they turn to government. They generally do not receive the approval of their fathers if their dads are traditionally masculine types, and receiving the approval of dads who are wimpy is not that much better. In both cases they feel marginalized and inadequate. Anger at the father leads to atheism, rebelliousness, and animosity to tradition.
Artists don't really care about the poor except that it helps them to make an argument for their own needs. You don't see Barbra Streisand or Steven Spielberg offering to create a huge endowment fund for starving actors out of their vast wealth, do you? No, they prefer that ordinary people to pay for starving actors' and artists' needs through the government programs liberals love. The very few artists who reap mega fortunes don't care a whit about their struggling peers, and won't dent their own fortunes for the sake of their own kind, but are more than ready to raise a working family's taxes a large percentage.
Conservatives, though, think that everyone should carry their own weight. Artists simply can't. It's no good saying the market should decide; that some fall by the wayside because they aren't good enough or self-promoting enough. We night possibly lose incredibly fine works of skill and beauty, for my experience (not with my own work) in observing a great many superb artists is that regardless of the quality of their work, they hardly get by because work of living artists of the highest quality is simply not valued by enough buyers with money to spend.
It's as if you have a market of 1000 people who can appreciate quality and will buy it, but you have 50 artists producing 5000 pieces of good work. It can't all be bought. So what do we tell the artists? They're hiring down at the union hall? We can always use more truck drivers?
The conservative vision of every man under his own fig tree simply doesn't work when it comes to people who are willing to starve and suffer for the sake of developing their craft and desire for mastery of creative work. It easy enough to say, "tough luck, hard world." But they aren't buying.
In fact, for most people, life isn't that tough or hard because they are satisfied in their vocation. Most people don't find their lives and work drudgery in America. Surprisingly, to me, is that most people like their jobs, whereas I hated working full time at any job that wasn't creative. No matter how decent the people, the working conditions, and useful the work, I hated having to devote my life to making a buck. I would become miserable, depressed, and suicidal if I thought that the rest of my life was going to be doing such work all day, every day.
I would have rather starved. And I did on many occasions, and lived in conditions people would marvel at, wondering how I could stand it. As long as I was free to work at what I loved, I could stand a lot.
As long as we have a large, educated, creative, but under-employed class of artists in America, there will be a huge propaganda machine directed with energy and hostility at conservative values, traditional Good, and natural law.
Freedom Means Responsibility
By GEORGE MCGOVERN
March 7, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120485275086518279.html
Nearly 16 years ago in these very pages, I wrote that "'one-size-fits all' rules for business ignore the reality of the market place." Today I'm watching some broad rules evolve on individual decisions that are even worse.
Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior. Much paternalist scrutiny has recently centered on personal economics, including calls to regulate subprime mortgages.
With liberalized credit rules, many people with limited income could access a mortgage and choose, for the first time, if they wanted to own a home. And most of those who chose to do so are hanging on to their mortgages. According to the national delinquency survey released yesterday, the vast majority of subprime, adjustable-rate mortgages are in good condition,their holders neither delinquent nor in default.
There's no question, however, that delinquency and default rates are far too high. But some of this is due to bad investment decisions by real-estate speculators. These losses are not unlike the risks taken every day in the stock market.
The real question for policy makers is how to protect those worthy borrowers who are struggling, without throwing out a system that works fine for the majority of its users (all of whom have freely chosen to use it). If the tub is more baby than bathwater, we should think twice about dumping everything out.
Health-care paternalism creates another problem that's rarely mentioned: Many people can't afford the gold-plated health plans that are the only options available in their states.
Buying health insurance on the Internet and across state lines, where less expensive plans may be available, is prohibited by many state insurance commissions. Despite being able to buy car or home insurance with a mouse click, some state governments require their approved plans for purchase or none at all. It's as if states dictated that you had to buy a Mercedes or no car at all.
Economic paternalism takes its newest form with the campaign against short-term small loans, commonly known as "payday lending."
With payday lending, people in need of immediate money can borrow against their future paychecks, allowing emergency purchases or bill payments they could not otherwise make. The service comes at the cost of a significant fee -- usually $15 for every $100 borrowed for two weeks. But the cost seems reasonable when all your other options, such as bounced checks or skipped credit-card payments, are obviously more expensive and play havoc with your credit rating.
Anguished at the fact that payday lending isn't perfect, some people would outlaw the service entirely, or cap fees at such low levels that no lender will provide the service. Anyone who's familiar with the law of unintended consequences should be able to guess what happens next.
Researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York went one step further and laid the data out: Payday lending bans simply push low-income borrowers into less pleasant options, including increased rates of bankruptcy. Net result: After a lending ban, the consumer has the same amount of debt but fewer ways to manage it.
Since leaving office I've written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.
Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don't take away cars because we don't like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don't operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.
The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.
Just Who Is The "Reverend" Donna D'Amore, Advocate of Same Sex Marriage?
The "Spiritual Awareness Network" website describes her as as follows:
Donna D'Amore is a clairvoyant, spiritual counselor, dream interpreter and author. She is the author of "Dreams - The Windows Into Your Soul". She derives great joy in having sessions with people and assisting them along their journey by interpreting dreams & spiritual messages, helping to heal emotional wounds and encouraging their spiritual growth and development.
http://www.spiritualawarenessnetwork.org/events/event-SAN.html
True to form the Pasadena Star News publishes her letter advocating same-sex marriages without telling us just what Ms. A'more is a "reverend" of. A'more is not described as a "minister" at the Illuminations Ministry 22 in Anaheim - see here:
http://www.zyworld.com/suzannishi33/Illuminations22.htm
Read her letter below:
Couple heartwarming
I wish to applaud the writer and editors responsible for an uplifting and heartwarming story about the marriage of Julian Bermudez and John Rabe, and commendations to the Star-News for running such a touching piece ("Love is in the air, Aug. 9).
This compelling story was beautifully written and moved me to tears. It was courageous of John and Julian to share the personal details of their wedding preparations.
My hope is that their story will add a realistic perspective to the subject of same-sex marriages, and may help to soften the hearts of those who would seek to deny this right to our gay brothers and sisters.
As an ordained non-denominational minister in Pasadena , I am delighted that the day has arrived in California
Thank you for publishing such a thoughtful piece, which is extremely relevant for Californians at this moment in time.
My prayer is that the voters in our state will search their hearts and will not pass the marriage ban which has been placed on the November ballot. There are so many loving couples who deserve the opportunity to marry. I hope that your article will serve to illuminate minds and hearts!
Congratulations to John & Julian, and may they enjoy a lifetime of happiness and blessings. As written in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, verse 13: "There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love."
Rev. Donna D'Amore
Saudis Granted Immunity Even Though They Funded 9/11 Attacks
US court rules Saudis not liable for Sept 11 attacks
YahooNews - Thu Aug 14, 7:47 PM ET
A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled Saudi Arabia could not be held liable for the September 11 attacks against the United States despite charitable donations that ended up in the hands of Al-Qaeda.
Upholding a 2006 decision by a lower court, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled inadmissible a lawsuit in which families of victims of the 9/11 attacks charged that Saudi Arabia, four Saudi princes, a Saudi charity and bank had given material support to Al-Qaeda.
The plaintiffs in the case cited Saudi donations to Muslim charity groups that were later transferred to the Al-Qaeda terror network, arguing the Saudis were responsible for financing the 9/11 attacks.
The court in its ruling said the "Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976" granted the Saudi defendants immunity from prosecution on US soil.
It also ruled that a charity named in the suit, the Saudi High Commission for Relief to Bosnia and Herzegovina, was also immune under the same law as it was "an agency or instrumentality of the Kingdom."
Exceptions to the immunity provisions did not apply in the case, the court ruled, "because the Kingdom has not been designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States."
Please Apply My Electricity Overpayments to Water Conservation (Dis)incentives
Jeff Rupp - Pasadena
How ironic the recent front page photo shows one of the Brookside Golf Course lakes not being replenished with water due to "conservation" when the solution is a short iron away -- the Arroyo Seco River
It has always amazed me that for a small amount of engineering effort, these lakes, fueled by water from a concrete drainage canal, could not be incorporated into the entire golf course water management program and still maintain adequate flows to feed the newly restored central Arroyo Seco River and replenish the watershed.
Someone also needs to inform Pasadena Pasadena
And one final thought. Leave it to any good government discussion to worry about loss of revenues from conservation. Of course these are the same folks who complain about the loss of gas tax revenues from reduced consumption. The obvious solution, at least to those who we entrust with our future, is to raise taxes, impose fees (excuse me, "incentives") or ?borrow" $11.2 million from the City's Light and Power Fund to balance the budget and raise the electric rates at the same time. Quoting the City Manager from a recent Star-New article, "It is a standard practice in Pasadena
Perhaps you could apply any of my previous overpayments for electricity toward any of my future water (dis)incentives!
Pundit Note: In Pasadena, not only electricity, but water is overcharged and the excess above the real cost of water is transferred into the City's General Fund or diverted into investment accounts which are de facto reserves (now totalling two-thirds of a billion dollars). Which raises a point: why should property owners have their water rates increased if they are already overbilled?
Comment on above by Guido Meindl
Good commentary by Jeff Rupp re the Brookside GC lakes/ponds. My concern is that allowing them to evaporate will create additional problems aside from eliminating a significant watering and nesting/breeding environment for local and migratory bird populations and other 'beasties'. As the ponds continue to evaporate they will become an ideal mosquito breeding ground. To counteract this I would assume that the Pasadena Environmental Health Dept. will spray the ponds with anti-mosquito chemicals which will pose a threat to bird and animal species who rely on this water source. Without treatment this will pose a threat to the surrounding human neighborhood. Seems like a 'no win' scenario! Only retaining the water levels is the solution. Jeff Rupp has some excellent ideas of the subject.
Pasadena Pundit
New below:
Only 17% of People Find Newspaper Stories Believable
Believability of Major Broadcast Networks Plummets
Star News Dumbs Down Public By Failing to Report That New Urgent Care Center in East Pasadena Will Subsidize Patients in Arcadia, San Gabriel, Glendale, and Baldwin Park
Read the dumbed down article in the PSN today about how the City of Pasadena is allocating $500,000 for a fast track study to put an urgent care center in East Pasadena - here: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_10241644
The Star News just wants to report the "news," not educate the public.
What the article fails to report is that the courts have socialized emergency medical care so that any emergency or urgent care center must take patients from outside East Pasadena (Arcadia, San Gabriel, Baldwin Park, North West Pasadena, Glendale, etc). The whole concept of a neighborhood based emergency care center was invalidated by the courts long ago. Poorer cities may want to dump their uninsured patients on the more wealthy Pasadena urgent care center. If so, why aren't other cities asked to chip in for the costs of any urgent care center in East Pasadena? To learn how the socialized emergency care system really works read here:
http://www.californiarepublic.org/archives/Columns/Lusvardi/20070921LusvardiGeo-Equity.html
Only 17% of People Find Newspaper Stories Believable
How Real Are Newspaper Stories?
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-real-are-newspaper-stories.htm
The question of credibility in newspaper stories has been around since newspapers first appeared. Many people read newspaper stories with a skeptical eye. More and more people are waking up to the fact that newspaper stories are not 100% truthful. In the age of mass media, with newspapers and television shows vying for the exclusive scoop, many facts are exaggerated beyond reasonable doubt.
A recent survey on the believability of newspapers showed that only 17% of people found their daily newspaper to be completely believable. Believability figures for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were as low as 50%. So is the world now populated by media savvy cynical readers, or have people simply lost faith in the media as a whole?
One of the major factors in the believability of newspaper stories is the anonymous source. This refers to people who frequently crop up in newspaper stories giving an opinion or insider knowledge on a story. The contending issue is, of course, that the anonymous source is never named. The use of the anonymous source can be seen as far back as Deep Throat in the Watergate Scandal expose by The Washington Post in the 1970s.
A reporter will never give up the name of his or her anonymous source; it is considered part and parcel of journalistic ethics. However, the New York Times recently had to print four pages of apologies for the fabrications of reporter Jason Blair. Blair's newspaper stories appeared over a three year span and were found to be full of fraudulent facts and information. A majority of unchecked fabrications were contained in anonymous source quotations.
This was not to be the only time that apologies would be printed for the fabrication of newspaper stories. Rick Bragg, another Times reporter, was forced to resign after his stories were found to be fraudulent. USA Today reporter Jack Kelley fabricated numerous stories, including his own eyewitness account of a cafe bombing in Israel.
In some instances, the public know that newspaper stories are simply false or exaggerated. The British tabloid press are some of the worst storytellers in the world. A huge percentage of these daily newspapers are filled with exclusive celebrity stories told by close friends. It is well known that the so-called close friend is actually the celebrity looking for extra publicity.
There is also the fact that many newspapers are biased towards one particular political party. The editors may run political stories favoring their political party, along with newspaper stories that make the opposing political party look like devil worshipers at best. The old saying of don't believe everything you read in the newspapers should be kept in mind when reading a large percentage of newspaper stories, especially those that frequently quote anonymous sources as their key fact givers.
Believability of Major Broadcast Networks Plummets
Read here: http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1358
Don Perata, Head of California Senate, Rips Off Peevey's Idea of Global Warming Think Tank But Wants It Additionally Funded by Municipal Utilities Such as PWP
Still a rotten idea
San Diego Union-Tribune
Don't soak ratepayers for energy think tank
August 18, 2008
In April, when Public Utilities Commission Chairman Michael Peevey persuaded the PUC board to back his plan to use $600 million generated by a 10-year surcharge on some energy bills to create a PUC-run global warming think tank, the response was far chillier than he probably expected.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was enthusiastic, but he was practically alone.
Experts on utility law questioned whether it would be legal for an agency created to regulate utilities to force ratepayers to subsidize an agency think tank. Consumer groups such as The Utilities Reform Network questioned the fairness of imposing an additional de facto tax on San Diego Gas & Electric, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison customers, who already fund renewable energy and conservation programs. Analysts noted the recent explosion of research into alternative energy sources and said the PUC think tank's work would be duplicative.
Perhaps the loudest critics of all were state lawmakers, who saw Peevey's plan as a clumsy, poorly thought-out exercise in empire-building. "I think it's a singularly bad idea," said Senate President Don Perata, D-Oakland.
Four months later, however, it turns out that legislators only oppose anti-consumer, ill-conceived empire-building when it's undertaken by some other government body. Capitol Weekly reported last week that none other than Perata himself had stolen Peevey's idea and will soon unveil his plan for a ratepayer-funded California Institute for Climate Change.
Its funding sources would be expanded to include municipal utilities, such as those owned by Los Angeles and Anaheim, as well as investor-owned utilities, allowing for a much bigger annual budget than envisioned by Peevey.
The institute would be run by a board that included representatives of the Governor's Office, the Senate, Assembly, Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission - meaning its management would be suffused with politics, its academic freedom compromised, its research limited to certain options.
Does anyone really believe this think tank would consider nuclear power for even 30 seconds?
But even if it were honestly run, the think tank would fill no need. There is more promising, well-funded energy research now than ever before.
Perata's initial take was right: Soaking ratepayers to set up a state think tank is nonsensical. It is beyond perverse that he is now the greatest champion of this "singularly bad idea."
Big Deal?: Free Radicals (Oxygen) Found as Pollutant in Air
Oversimplified, free radicals are essentially oxygen. Just as a sliced apple exposed to air and oxygen spoils, so does the human body. Read story about how researchers found that air has free radical (oxygen) pollutants in it here:
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1164736.html
Note: Free radicals are also naturally produced in the body without outside pollution. And the body has natural defense mechanisms against free radicals. For more balanced, non-hysterical, information on free radicals read here:
http://www.bsherman.org/freeradicals.htm
Vote For (Un)-Real Change - San Francisco to Decriminalize Prostitution Resulting in More Child Prostitution
Read about this here:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/08/pimps_pedophiles_welcome_to_sf.html
Solution Found to Pasadena's Anti-Hosing Rules - Hormonal Sprays for Ficus Trees
Dr. Ron Smith, Horticulturalist, North Dakota State University
Preface: The City of Pasadena is citing property owners for hosing private walkways and driveways to wash off berries dropped from the City's ficus street trees. But blowing the sticky berries off the walks and driveways doesn't work once the berries are mashed by automobile tires or shoes. Sweeping just spreads the berries all over the walks and doesn't remove the stains. A possible partial solution that avoids noisy and dusty blowers or water intensive hosing would be to "spay" or "neuter" the trees to reduce the large volume of berries produced by the trees. Would the City grant permission to spray street trees? Should property owners have to pay for the spraying when it is the City's trees creating the nuisance? Dr. Smith mentions that the critical element of spraying is timing. Can we expect bureaucratic agencies to timely spray city trees when they are molting?
Read the email response by Dr. Ron Smith below:
"There are hormonal sprays which cause embryo abortion of the flower when sprayed at the correct time. This would have to be something that would be timed just right to maximize impact. It would never be 100% elimination of the berries, but a significant reduction in them. How much this would cost is up for grabs, but here is a listing of some ISA Certified Arborists in your part of the state, some of which should be able to assist or advise. We have similar problems with crabapples in our area - as the trees get larger, and extend over walks, patios, or driveways, the fruit drops, attracts yellow jacket wasps, and stains the surfaces. By then the trees are often too large to spray or too expensive, so they end up getting taken out and replaced with a non-fruiting cultivar or different species of tree."
Link to local arborists:
http://www.santa-clarita.com/cityhall/pw/oaktree/QualifiedConsultingArborists5-19-08.pdf
Did Obama Lie About Voting Against the Iraq
It may depend on your cultural definition of lying and truth
"It depends on what your definition of 'is,' is?" - President Bill Clinton
Some perceptive online observers of the recent Saddleback Church Iraq
News commentators said that compared to U.S. Senator John McCain's answers at the Saddleback Forum, Obama's were more "nuanced" and "thoughtful." A "non-nuanced" and common sense answer was that he flat out lied about the above question. But this doesn't explain why Obama would risk making such a bonehead false statement when he is articulate and intelligent.
In all probability, "truth" is culturally defined differently by Obama than McCain. In Obama's social culture he didn't say a non-truth; in McCain's social world Obama stated an untruth. What do we mean by this?
We know that Obama attended school in Hawaii up until age 5, but from 6 to 10 years old he attended school in Jakarta , Indonesia Indonesia Jakarta
Moreover, Obama is a member of the Democratic Party whose policies place emphasis on collectivist programs and policies as opposed to the privatization programs and political ideology of the Republican Party. It is not a stretch of the imagination to say that Obama was born and raised so as to become what might be called a collectivistic personality.
People with a collectivistic personality believe that the group(s) in which they are most involved are ends in themselves. As such they are compelled to honor distinctive group values, notwithstanding their own personal drive for success. Even Obama's meteoric rise through academia and local politics was facilitated by collective affirmative action policies and gerrymandered voting districts that gave him sure electability. Obama's careers were largely determined by group goals that required the pursuit of achievement that improved the position of his group. The defining attribute of this social enculturation process was the honor and integrity of his family, his tribal-like childhood religion, his adult social gospel religion, solidarity with the in-group of his political party and his kin group. Particularly, when asked who he admires or would turn to for advice tellingly mentioned his grandmother and his wife first, while John McCain cited General Patraeus.
In a collective culture saying the right thing to maintain harmony and to reinforce cultural values is far more important than telling what seems to be the obvious truth. In fact, truth might be defined as conformity between what the in-group thinks about some person, event, or thing, and what the private self believes and knows. Collectivist persons are not expected to have their own opinions but to only hold those opinions that derive from social consensus.
In individualist cultures, by contrast, the power of the in-group over the person recedes. In individualistic American culture, inconsistency between public and private statements and actions is understood as hypocrisy. One must think and say or do the same thing. To lie is to say one thing publicly while thinking or acting differently privately.
Thus an individualistic lie is to think one thing and say another. To a collectivist, however, a lie involves holding a private truth different than one's in-group. Lying and deception can become second nature to a collectivist personality and can be honorable and legitimate. To lie in order to deceive an outsider, one who has no right to the truth, is thus honorable. Or more importantly, it dishonors those in the out-group. Thus, to deceive by making something "nuanced" or to lie to an out-group person or audience is to deprive them of respect, to refuse to show honor, to humiliate the other. Collectivist lying in a political context is thus a way to patronize and pander to one's collectivistic political base and to deny honor and respect to one's opponent.
So to repeat, why would Barack Obama, a highly educated and well-spoken political candidate make such a notorious falsehood in front of such a large audience? Your guess is as good as mine. When the inconsistency between Obama's statement and the facts are pointed out to the average Joe in the American public street that has individualistic cultural values, Obama lied. But, the bigger question is why? And my guess is that what makes Obama tick is his collectivistic cultural values ingrained in his personality, notwithstanding his obvious smarts and polished speaking abilities. Thus, Obama may be more understood by a collectivistic Muslim in, say, Afghanistan Saddleback Church
This explains why many conservative Americans don't like intellectuals, including this rather intellectualized analysis of Obama. Americans are known for liking "plain speakers," not Old World dogma or European intellectualizing. If Americans want "change," meaning truth telling, in their political leaders then they better ponder Obama's collectivistic cultural values as the election approaches.
Obama Lied, Babies Died
Read here:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTBkYTYzZDNjNDgyMWJmMzMxYzljYjYxNmEwMTdhYWE=
How To "Solve" Politically-Manufactured Water Crisis - Turn Your Lawn into a Protected Wetland for Endangered Arroyo Toad
Submitted by Mr. Toad
Install a pond in your front yard with tadpoles and larvae to feed the endangered Arroyo Toad (species: B. microscaphus californicus), install a sand or pea gravel subsoil with silt topsoil, rock garden and dirt berms where the toads can burrow shelters, and import plenty of insects by planting, say, Lantana shrub nearby. Provide a source of water from washing walks and driveways by diverting it into the fresh water pond, apply for a Section 404 Permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of the U.S. Dept. of Interior, and submit your "protected" habitat to the City of Pasadena as proof of immunity from water conservation anti-hosing regulations.
Why artists hate conservatives
By Mark Butterworth - American Thinker
Conservatives have a problem with artists, just as most artists have a problem with conservatives. For example, there is a provision in Bush's Medicare program (the prescription drug boondoggle) that attempts to allow individuals to create their own sort of 401K plan for medical care. Catastrophic health care would be insured for them, but ordinary medical care would be covered by their own tax free savings.
This sounds like a good idea. It gives people control over their medical care, their selection of doctors, treatment, testing, and so forth. Working people can manage this like they do their retirement funds. Everyone wins.
Except artists.
Artists have long and sadly accepted the general proposition that they cannot pursue their vocation in art and expect to be liquid or create much equity. No. Starving artist is not a misnomer or stereotype. People only get to become great (or very good) at an art by doing it full time. But doing so means they most likely scrape to get by. The trade off is that they get to do work they absolutely love instead of working on in the salt mines.
Artists are generally very liberal because they can't afford decent housing, private education for their children, medical expenses, or retirement funds. They tend not to be religious anymore, so they can't ask such communities for help, so they turn to government. They generally do not receive the approval of their fathers if their dads are traditionally masculine types, and receiving the approval of dads who are wimpy is not that much better. In both cases they feel marginalized and inadequate. Anger at the father leads to atheism, rebelliousness, and animosity to tradition.
Artists don't really care about the poor except that it helps them to make an argument for their own needs. You don't see Barbra Streisand or Steven Spielberg offering to create a huge endowment fund for starving actors out of their vast wealth, do you? No, they prefer that ordinary people to pay for starving actors' and artists' needs through the government programs liberals love. The very few artists who reap mega fortunes don't care a whit about their struggling peers, and won't dent their own fortunes for the sake of their own kind, but are more than ready to raise a working family's taxes a large percentage.
Conservatives, though, think that everyone should carry their own weight. Artists simply can't. It's no good saying the market should decide; that some fall by the wayside because they aren't good enough or self-promoting enough. We night possibly lose incredibly fine works of skill and beauty, for my experience (not with my own work) in observing a great many superb artists is that regardless of the quality of their work, they hardly get by because work of living artists of the highest quality is simply not valued by enough buyers with money to spend.
It's as if you have a market of 1000 people who can appreciate quality and will buy it, but you have 50 artists producing 5000 pieces of good work. It can't all be bought. So what do we tell the artists? They're hiring down at the union hall? We can always use more truck drivers?
The conservative vision of every man under his own fig tree simply doesn't work when it comes to people who are willing to starve and suffer for the sake of developing their craft and desire for mastery of creative work. It easy enough to say, "tough luck, hard world." But they aren't buying.
In fact, for most people, life isn't that tough or hard because they are satisfied in their vocation. Most people don't find their lives and work drudgery in America. Surprisingly, to me, is that most people like their jobs, whereas I hated working full time at any job that wasn't creative. No matter how decent the people, the working conditions, and useful the work, I hated having to devote my life to making a buck. I would become miserable, depressed, and suicidal if I thought that the rest of my life was going to be doing such work all day, every day.
I would have rather starved. And I did on many occasions, and lived in conditions people would marvel at, wondering how I could stand it. As long as I was free to work at what I loved, I could stand a lot.
As long as we have a large, educated, creative, but under-employed class of artists in America, there will be a huge propaganda machine directed with energy and hostility at conservative values, traditional Good, and natural law.
Freedom Means Responsibility
By GEORGE MCGOVERN
March 7, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120485275086518279.html
Nearly 16 years ago in these very pages, I wrote that "'one-size-fits all' rules for business ignore the reality of the market place." Today I'm watching some broad rules evolve on individual decisions that are even worse.
Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior. Much paternalist scrutiny has recently centered on personal economics, including calls to regulate subprime mortgages.
With liberalized credit rules, many people with limited income could access a mortgage and choose, for the first time, if they wanted to own a home. And most of those who chose to do so are hanging on to their mortgages. According to the national delinquency survey released yesterday, the vast majority of subprime, adjustable-rate mortgages are in good condition,their holders neither delinquent nor in default.
There's no question, however, that delinquency and default rates are far too high. But some of this is due to bad investment decisions by real-estate speculators. These losses are not unlike the risks taken every day in the stock market.
The real question for policy makers is how to protect those worthy borrowers who are struggling, without throwing out a system that works fine for the majority of its users (all of whom have freely chosen to use it). If the tub is more baby than bathwater, we should think twice about dumping everything out.
Health-care paternalism creates another problem that's rarely mentioned: Many people can't afford the gold-plated health plans that are the only options available in their states.
Buying health insurance on the Internet and across state lines, where less expensive plans may be available, is prohibited by many state insurance commissions. Despite being able to buy car or home insurance with a mouse click, some state governments require their approved plans for purchase or none at all. It's as if states dictated that you had to buy a Mercedes or no car at all.
Economic paternalism takes its newest form with the campaign against short-term small loans, commonly known as "payday lending."
With payday lending, people in need of immediate money can borrow against their future paychecks, allowing emergency purchases or bill payments they could not otherwise make. The service comes at the cost of a significant fee -- usually $15 for every $100 borrowed for two weeks. But the cost seems reasonable when all your other options, such as bounced checks or skipped credit-card payments, are obviously more expensive and play havoc with your credit rating.
Anguished at the fact that payday lending isn't perfect, some people would outlaw the service entirely, or cap fees at such low levels that no lender will provide the service. Anyone who's familiar with the law of unintended consequences should be able to guess what happens next.
Researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York went one step further and laid the data out: Payday lending bans simply push low-income borrowers into less pleasant options, including increased rates of bankruptcy. Net result: After a lending ban, the consumer has the same amount of debt but fewer ways to manage it.
Since leaving office I've written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.
Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don't take away cars because we don't like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don't operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.
The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.
Just Who Is The "Reverend" Donna D'Amore, Advocate of Same Sex Marriage?
The "Spiritual Awareness Network" website describes her as as follows:
Donna D'Amore is a clairvoyant, spiritual counselor, dream interpreter and author. She is the author of "Dreams - The Windows Into Your Soul". She derives great joy in having sessions with people and assisting them along their journey by interpreting dreams & spiritual messages, helping to heal emotional wounds and encouraging their spiritual growth and development.
http://www.spiritualawarenessnetwork.org/events/event-SAN.html
True to form the Pasadena Star News publishes her letter advocating same-sex marriages without telling us just what Ms. A'more is a "reverend" of. A'more is not described as a "minister" at the Illuminations Ministry 22 in Anaheim - see here:
http://www.zyworld.com/suzannishi33/Illuminations22.htm
Read her letter below:
Couple heartwarming
I wish to applaud the writer and editors responsible for an uplifting and heartwarming story about the marriage of Julian Bermudez and John Rabe, and commendations to the Star-News for running such a touching piece ("Love is in the air, Aug. 9).
This compelling story was beautifully written and moved me to tears. It was courageous of John and Julian to share the personal details of their wedding preparations.
My hope is that their story will add a realistic perspective to the subject of same-sex marriages, and may help to soften the hearts of those who would seek to deny this right to our gay brothers and sisters.
As an ordained non-denominational minister in Pasadena , I am delighted that the day has arrived in California
Thank you for publishing such a thoughtful piece, which is extremely relevant for Californians at this moment in time.
My prayer is that the voters in our state will search their hearts and will not pass the marriage ban which has been placed on the November ballot. There are so many loving couples who deserve the opportunity to marry. I hope that your article will serve to illuminate minds and hearts!
Congratulations to John & Julian, and may they enjoy a lifetime of happiness and blessings. As written in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, verse 13: "There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love."
Rev. Donna D'Amore
Saudis Granted Immunity Even Though They Funded 9/11 Attacks
US court rules Saudis not liable for Sept 11 attacks
YahooNews - Thu Aug 14, 7:47 PM ET
A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled Saudi Arabia could not be held liable for the September 11 attacks against the United States despite charitable donations that ended up in the hands of Al-Qaeda.
Upholding a 2006 decision by a lower court, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled inadmissible a lawsuit in which families of victims of the 9/11 attacks charged that Saudi Arabia, four Saudi princes, a Saudi charity and bank had given material support to Al-Qaeda.
The plaintiffs in the case cited Saudi donations to Muslim charity groups that were later transferred to the Al-Qaeda terror network, arguing the Saudis were responsible for financing the 9/11 attacks.
The court in its ruling said the "Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976" granted the Saudi defendants immunity from prosecution on US soil.
It also ruled that a charity named in the suit, the Saudi High Commission for Relief to Bosnia and Herzegovina, was also immune under the same law as it was "an agency or instrumentality of the Kingdom."
Exceptions to the immunity provisions did not apply in the case, the court ruled, "because the Kingdom has not been designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States."
Please Apply My Electricity Overpayments to Water Conservation (Dis)incentives
Jeff Rupp - Pasadena
How ironic the recent front page photo shows one of the Brookside Golf Course lakes not being replenished with water due to "conservation" when the solution is a short iron away -- the Arroyo Seco River
It has always amazed me that for a small amount of engineering effort, these lakes, fueled by water from a concrete drainage canal, could not be incorporated into the entire golf course water management program and still maintain adequate flows to feed the newly restored central Arroyo Seco River and replenish the watershed.
Someone also needs to inform Pasadena Pasadena
And one final thought. Leave it to any good government discussion to worry about loss of revenues from conservation. Of course these are the same folks who complain about the loss of gas tax revenues from reduced consumption. The obvious solution, at least to those who we entrust with our future, is to raise taxes, impose fees (excuse me, "incentives") or ?borrow" $11.2 million from the City's Light and Power Fund to balance the budget and raise the electric rates at the same time. Quoting the City Manager from a recent Star-New article, "It is a standard practice in Pasadena
Perhaps you could apply any of my previous overpayments for electricity toward any of my future water (dis)incentives!
Pundit Note: In Pasadena, not only electricity, but water is overcharged and the excess above the real cost of water is transferred into the City's General Fund or diverted into investment accounts which are de facto reserves (now totalling two-thirds of a billion dollars). Which raises a point: why should property owners have their water rates increased if they are already overbilled?
Comment on above by Guido Meindl
Good commentary by Jeff Rupp re the Brookside GC lakes/ponds. My concern is that allowing them to evaporate will create additional problems aside from eliminating a significant watering and nesting/breeding environment for local and migratory bird populations and other 'beasties'. As the ponds continue to evaporate they will become an ideal mosquito breeding ground. To counteract this I would assume that the Pasadena Environmental Health Dept. will spray the ponds with anti-mosquito chemicals which will pose a threat to bird and animal species who rely on this water source. Without treatment this will pose a threat to the surrounding human neighborhood. Seems like a 'no win' scenario! Only retaining the water levels is the solution. Jeff Rupp has some excellent ideas of the subject.
Pasadena Pundit
New below:
Only 17% of People Find Newspaper Stories Believable
Believability of Major Broadcast Networks Plummets
Star News Dumbs Down Public By Failing to Report That New Urgent Care Center in East Pasadena Will Subsidize Patients in Arcadia, San Gabriel, Glendale, and Baldwin Park
Read the dumbed down article in the PSN today about how the City of Pasadena is allocating $500,000 for a fast track study to put an urgent care center in East Pasadena - here: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_10241644
The Star News just wants to report the "news," not educate the public.
What the article fails to report is that the courts have socialized emergency medical care so that any emergency or urgent care center must take patients from outside East Pasadena (Arcadia, San Gabriel, Baldwin Park, North West Pasadena, Glendale, etc). The whole concept of a neighborhood based emergency care center was invalidated by the courts long ago. Poorer cities may want to dump their uninsured patients on the more wealthy Pasadena urgent care center. If so, why aren't other cities asked to chip in for the costs of any urgent care center in East Pasadena? To learn how the socialized emergency care system really works read here:
http://www.californiarepublic.org/archives/Columns/Lusvardi/20070921LusvardiGeo-Equity.html
Only 17% of People Find Newspaper Stories Believable
How Real Are Newspaper Stories?
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-real-are-newspaper-stories.htm
The question of credibility in newspaper stories has been around since newspapers first appeared. Many people read newspaper stories with a skeptical eye. More and more people are waking up to the fact that newspaper stories are not 100% truthful. In the age of mass media, with newspapers and television shows vying for the exclusive scoop, many facts are exaggerated beyond reasonable doubt.
A recent survey on the believability of newspapers showed that only 17% of people found their daily newspaper to be completely believable. Believability figures for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were as low as 50%. So is the world now populated by media savvy cynical readers, or have people simply lost faith in the media as a whole?
One of the major factors in the believability of newspaper stories is the anonymous source. This refers to people who frequently crop up in newspaper stories giving an opinion or insider knowledge on a story. The contending issue is, of course, that the anonymous source is never named. The use of the anonymous source can be seen as far back as Deep Throat in the Watergate Scandal expose by The Washington Post in the 1970s.
A reporter will never give up the name of his or her anonymous source; it is considered part and parcel of journalistic ethics. However, the New York Times recently had to print four pages of apologies for the fabrications of reporter Jason Blair. Blair's newspaper stories appeared over a three year span and were found to be full of fraudulent facts and information. A majority of unchecked fabrications were contained in anonymous source quotations.
This was not to be the only time that apologies would be printed for the fabrication of newspaper stories. Rick Bragg, another Times reporter, was forced to resign after his stories were found to be fraudulent. USA Today reporter Jack Kelley fabricated numerous stories, including his own eyewitness account of a cafe bombing in Israel.
In some instances, the public know that newspaper stories are simply false or exaggerated. The British tabloid press are some of the worst storytellers in the world. A huge percentage of these daily newspapers are filled with exclusive celebrity stories told by close friends. It is well known that the so-called close friend is actually the celebrity looking for extra publicity.
There is also the fact that many newspapers are biased towards one particular political party. The editors may run political stories favoring their political party, along with newspaper stories that make the opposing political party look like devil worshipers at best. The old saying of don't believe everything you read in the newspapers should be kept in mind when reading a large percentage of newspaper stories, especially those that frequently quote anonymous sources as their key fact givers.
Believability of Major Broadcast Networks Plummets
Read here: http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1358
Don Perata, Head of California Senate, Rips Off Peevey's Idea of Global Warming Think Tank But Wants It Additionally Funded by Municipal Utilities Such as PWP
Still a rotten idea
San Diego Union-Tribune
Don't soak ratepayers for energy think tank
August 18, 2008
In April, when Public Utilities Commission Chairman Michael Peevey persuaded the PUC board to back his plan to use $600 million generated by a 10-year surcharge on some energy bills to create a PUC-run global warming think tank, the response was far chillier than he probably expected.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was enthusiastic, but he was practically alone.
Experts on utility law questioned whether it would be legal for an agency created to regulate utilities to force ratepayers to subsidize an agency think tank. Consumer groups such as The Utilities Reform Network questioned the fairness of imposing an additional de facto tax on San Diego Gas & Electric, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison customers, who already fund renewable energy and conservation programs. Analysts noted the recent explosion of research into alternative energy sources and said the PUC think tank's work would be duplicative.
Perhaps the loudest critics of all were state lawmakers, who saw Peevey's plan as a clumsy, poorly thought-out exercise in empire-building. "I think it's a singularly bad idea," said Senate President Don Perata, D-Oakland.
Four months later, however, it turns out that legislators only oppose anti-consumer, ill-conceived empire-building when it's undertaken by some other government body. Capitol Weekly reported last week that none other than Perata himself had stolen Peevey's idea and will soon unveil his plan for a ratepayer-funded California Institute for Climate Change.
Its funding sources would be expanded to include municipal utilities, such as those owned by Los Angeles and Anaheim, as well as investor-owned utilities, allowing for a much bigger annual budget than envisioned by Peevey.
The institute would be run by a board that included representatives of the Governor's Office, the Senate, Assembly, Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission - meaning its management would be suffused with politics, its academic freedom compromised, its research limited to certain options.
Does anyone really believe this think tank would consider nuclear power for even 30 seconds?
But even if it were honestly run, the think tank would fill no need. There is more promising, well-funded energy research now than ever before.
Perata's initial take was right: Soaking ratepayers to set up a state think tank is nonsensical. It is beyond perverse that he is now the greatest champion of this "singularly bad idea."
Big Deal?: Free Radicals (Oxygen) Found as Pollutant in Air
Oversimplified, free radicals are essentially oxygen. Just as a sliced apple exposed to air and oxygen spoils, so does the human body. Read story about how researchers found that air has free radical (oxygen) pollutants in it here:
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1164736.html
Note: Free radicals are also naturally produced in the body without outside pollution. And the body has natural defense mechanisms against free radicals. For more balanced, non-hysterical, information on free radicals read here:
http://www.bsherman.org/freeradicals.htm
Vote For (Un)-Real Change - San Francisco to Decriminalize Prostitution Resulting in More Child Prostitution
Read about this here:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/08/pimps_pedophiles_welcome_to_sf.html
Solution Found to Pasadena's Anti-Hosing Rules - Hormonal Sprays for Ficus Trees
Dr. Ron Smith, Horticulturalist, North Dakota State University
Preface: The City of Pasadena is citing property owners for hosing private walkways and driveways to wash off berries dropped from the City's ficus street trees. But blowing the sticky berries off the walks and driveways doesn't work once the berries are mashed by automobile tires or shoes. Sweeping just spreads the berries all over the walks and doesn't remove the stains. A possible partial solution that avoids noisy and dusty blowers or water intensive hosing would be to "spay" or "neuter" the trees to reduce the large volume of berries produced by the trees. Would the City grant permission to spray street trees? Should property owners have to pay for the spraying when it is the City's trees creating the nuisance? Dr. Smith mentions that the critical element of spraying is timing. Can we expect bureaucratic agencies to timely spray city trees when they are molting?
Read the email response by Dr. Ron Smith below:
"There are hormonal sprays which cause embryo abortion of the flower when sprayed at the correct time. This would have to be something that would be timed just right to maximize impact. It would never be 100% elimination of the berries, but a significant reduction in them. How much this would cost is up for grabs, but here is a listing of some ISA Certified Arborists in your part of the state, some of which should be able to assist or advise. We have similar problems with crabapples in our area - as the trees get larger, and extend over walks, patios, or driveways, the fruit drops, attracts yellow jacket wasps, and stains the surfaces. By then the trees are often too large to spray or too expensive, so they end up getting taken out and replaced with a non-fruiting cultivar or different species of tree."
Link to local arborists:
http://www.santa-clarita.com/cityhall/pw/oaktree/QualifiedConsultingArborists5-19-08.pdf
Did Obama Lie About Voting Against the Iraq
It may depend on your cultural definition of lying and truth
"It depends on what your definition of 'is,' is?" - President Bill Clinton
Some perceptive online observers of the recent Saddleback Church Iraq
News commentators said that compared to U.S. Senator John McCain's answers at the Saddleback Forum, Obama's were more "nuanced" and "thoughtful." A "non-nuanced" and common sense answer was that he flat out lied about the above question. But this doesn't explain why Obama would risk making such a bonehead false statement when he is articulate and intelligent.
In all probability, "truth" is culturally defined differently by Obama than McCain. In Obama's social culture he didn't say a non-truth; in McCain's social world Obama stated an untruth. What do we mean by this?
We know that Obama attended school in Hawaii up until age 5, but from 6 to 10 years old he attended school in Jakarta , Indonesia Indonesia Jakarta
Moreover, Obama is a member of the Democratic Party whose policies place emphasis on collectivist programs and policies as opposed to the privatization programs and political ideology of the Republican Party. It is not a stretch of the imagination to say that Obama was born and raised so as to become what might be called a collectivistic personality.
People with a collectivistic personality believe that the group(s) in which they are most involved are ends in themselves. As such they are compelled to honor distinctive group values, notwithstanding their own personal drive for success. Even Obama's meteoric rise through academia and local politics was facilitated by collective affirmative action policies and gerrymandered voting districts that gave him sure electability. Obama's careers were largely determined by group goals that required the pursuit of achievement that improved the position of his group. The defining attribute of this social enculturation process was the honor and integrity of his family, his tribal-like childhood religion, his adult social gospel religion, solidarity with the in-group of his political party and his kin group. Particularly, when asked who he admires or would turn to for advice tellingly mentioned his grandmother and his wife first, while John McCain cited General Patraeus.
In a collective culture saying the right thing to maintain harmony and to reinforce cultural values is far more important than telling what seems to be the obvious truth. In fact, truth might be defined as conformity between what the in-group thinks about some person, event, or thing, and what the private self believes and knows. Collectivist persons are not expected to have their own opinions but to only hold those opinions that derive from social consensus.
In individualist cultures, by contrast, the power of the in-group over the person recedes. In individualistic American culture, inconsistency between public and private statements and actions is understood as hypocrisy. One must think and say or do the same thing. To lie is to say one thing publicly while thinking or acting differently privately.
Thus an individualistic lie is to think one thing and say another. To a collectivist, however, a lie involves holding a private truth different than one's in-group. Lying and deception can become second nature to a collectivist personality and can be honorable and legitimate. To lie in order to deceive an outsider, one who has no right to the truth, is thus honorable. Or more importantly, it dishonors those in the out-group. Thus, to deceive by making something "nuanced" or to lie to an out-group person or audience is to deprive them of respect, to refuse to show honor, to humiliate the other. Collectivist lying in a political context is thus a way to patronize and pander to one's collectivistic political base and to deny honor and respect to one's opponent.
So to repeat, why would Barack Obama, a highly educated and well-spoken political candidate make such a notorious falsehood in front of such a large audience? Your guess is as good as mine. When the inconsistency between Obama's statement and the facts are pointed out to the average Joe in the American public street that has individualistic cultural values, Obama lied. But, the bigger question is why? And my guess is that what makes Obama tick is his collectivistic cultural values ingrained in his personality, notwithstanding his obvious smarts and polished speaking abilities. Thus, Obama may be more understood by a collectivistic Muslim in, say, Afghanistan Saddleback Church
This explains why many conservative Americans don't like intellectuals, including this rather intellectualized analysis of Obama. Americans are known for liking "plain speakers," not Old World dogma or European intellectualizing. If Americans want "change," meaning truth telling, in their political leaders then they better ponder Obama's collectivistic cultural values as the election approaches.
Obama Lied, Babies Died
Read here:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTBkYTYzZDNjNDgyMWJmMzMxYzljYjYxNmEwMTdhYWE=
How To "Solve" Politically-Manufactured Water Crisis - Turn Your Lawn into a Protected Wetland for Endangered Arroyo Toad
Submitted by Mr. Toad
Install a pond in your front yard with tadpoles and larvae to feed the endangered Arroyo Toad (species: B. microscaphus californicus), install a sand or pea gravel subsoil with silt topsoil, rock garden and dirt berms where the toads can burrow shelters, and import plenty of insects by planting, say, Lantana shrub nearby. Provide a source of water from washing walks and driveways by diverting it into the fresh water pond, apply for a Section 404 Permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of the U.S. Dept. of Interior, and submit your "protected" habitat to the City of Pasadena as proof of immunity from water conservation anti-hosing regulations.
Why artists hate conservatives
By Mark Butterworth - American Thinker
Conservatives have a problem with artists, just as most artists have a problem with conservatives. For example, there is a provision in Bush's Medicare program (the prescription drug boondoggle) that attempts to allow individuals to create their own sort of 401K plan for medical care. Catastrophic health care would be insured for them, but ordinary medical care would be covered by their own tax free savings.
This sounds like a good idea. It gives people control over their medical care, their selection of doctors, treatment, testing, and so forth. Working people can manage this like they do their retirement funds. Everyone wins.
Except artists.
Artists have long and sadly accepted the general proposition that they cannot pursue their vocation in art and expect to be liquid or create much equity. No. Starving artist is not a misnomer or stereotype. People only get to become great (or very good) at an art by doing it full time. But doing so means they most likely scrape to get by. The trade off is that they get to do work they absolutely love instead of working on in the salt mines.
Artists are generally very liberal because they can't afford decent housing, private education for their children, medical expenses, or retirement funds. They tend not to be religious anymore, so they can't ask such communities for help, so they turn to government. They generally do not receive the approval of their fathers if their dads are traditionally masculine types, and receiving the approval of dads who are wimpy is not that much better. In both cases they feel marginalized and inadequate. Anger at the father leads to atheism, rebelliousness, and animosity to tradition.
Artists don't really care about the poor except that it helps them to make an argument for their own needs. You don't see Barbra Streisand or Steven Spielberg offering to create a huge endowment fund for starving actors out of their vast wealth, do you? No, they prefer that ordinary people to pay for starving actors' and artists' needs through the government programs liberals love. The very few artists who reap mega fortunes don't care a whit about their struggling peers, and won't dent their own fortunes for the sake of their own kind, but are more than ready to raise a working family's taxes a large percentage.
Conservatives, though, think that everyone should carry their own weight. Artists simply can't. It's no good saying the market should decide; that some fall by the wayside because they aren't good enough or self-promoting enough. We night possibly lose incredibly fine works of skill and beauty, for my experience (not with my own work) in observing a great many superb artists is that regardless of the quality of their work, they hardly get by because work of living artists of the highest quality is simply not valued by enough buyers with money to spend.
It's as if you have a market of 1000 people who can appreciate quality and will buy it, but you have 50 artists producing 5000 pieces of good work. It can't all be bought. So what do we tell the artists? They're hiring down at the union hall? We can always use more truck drivers?
The conservative vision of every man under his own fig tree simply doesn't work when it comes to people who are willing to starve and suffer for the sake of developing their craft and desire for mastery of creative work. It easy enough to say, "tough luck, hard world." But they aren't buying.
In fact, for most people, life isn't that tough or hard because they are satisfied in their vocation. Most people don't find their lives and work drudgery in America. Surprisingly, to me, is that most people like their jobs, whereas I hated working full time at any job that wasn't creative. No matter how decent the people, the working conditions, and useful the work, I hated having to devote my life to making a buck. I would become miserable, depressed, and suicidal if I thought that the rest of my life was going to be doing such work all day, every day.
I would have rather starved. And I did on many occasions, and lived in conditions people would marvel at, wondering how I could stand it. As long as I was free to work at what I loved, I could stand a lot.
As long as we have a large, educated, creative, but under-employed class of artists in America, there will be a huge propaganda machine directed with energy and hostility at conservative values, traditional Good, and natural law.
Freedom Means Responsibility
By GEORGE MCGOVERN
March 7, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120485275086518279.html
Nearly 16 years ago in these very pages, I wrote that "'one-size-fits all' rules for business ignore the reality of the market place." Today I'm watching some broad rules evolve on individual decisions that are even worse.
Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior. Much paternalist scrutiny has recently centered on personal economics, including calls to regulate subprime mortgages.
With liberalized credit rules, many people with limited income could access a mortgage and choose, for the first time, if they wanted to own a home. And most of those who chose to do so are hanging on to their mortgages. According to the national delinquency survey released yesterday, the vast majority of subprime, adjustable-rate mortgages are in good condition,their holders neither delinquent nor in default.
There's no question, however, that delinquency and default rates are far too high. But some of this is due to bad investment decisions by real-estate speculators. These losses are not unlike the risks taken every day in the stock market.
The real question for policy makers is how to protect those worthy borrowers who are struggling, without throwing out a system that works fine for the majority of its users (all of whom have freely chosen to use it). If the tub is more baby than bathwater, we should think twice about dumping everything out.
Health-care paternalism creates another problem that's rarely mentioned: Many people can't afford the gold-plated health plans that are the only options available in their states.
Buying health insurance on the Internet and across state lines, where less expensive plans may be available, is prohibited by many state insurance commissions. Despite being able to buy car or home insurance with a mouse click, some state governments require their approved plans for purchase or none at all. It's as if states dictated that you had to buy a Mercedes or no car at all.
Economic paternalism takes its newest form with the campaign against short-term small loans, commonly known as "payday lending."
With payday lending, people in need of immediate money can borrow against their future paychecks, allowing emergency purchases or bill payments they could not otherwise make. The service comes at the cost of a significant fee -- usually $15 for every $100 borrowed for two weeks. But the cost seems reasonable when all your other options, such as bounced checks or skipped credit-card payments, are obviously more expensive and play havoc with your credit rating.
Anguished at the fact that payday lending isn't perfect, some people would outlaw the service entirely, or cap fees at such low levels that no lender will provide the service. Anyone who's familiar with the law of unintended consequences should be able to guess what happens next.
Researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York went one step further and laid the data out: Payday lending bans simply push low-income borrowers into less pleasant options, including increased rates of bankruptcy. Net result: After a lending ban, the consumer has the same amount of debt but fewer ways to manage it.
Since leaving office I've written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.
Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don't take away cars because we don't like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don't operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.
The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.
Just Who Is The "Reverend" Donna D'Amore, Advocate of Same Sex Marriage?
The "Spiritual Awareness Network" website describes her as as follows:
Donna D'Amore is a clairvoyant, spiritual counselor, dream interpreter and author. She is the author of "Dreams - The Windows Into Your Soul". She derives great joy in having sessions with people and assisting them along their journey by interpreting dreams & spiritual messages, helping to heal emotional wounds and encouraging their spiritual growth and development.
http://www.spiritualawarenessnetwork.org/events/event-SAN.html
True to form the Pasadena Star News publishes her letter advocating same-sex marriages without telling us just what Ms. A'more is a "reverend" of. A'more is not described as a "minister" at the Illuminations Ministry 22 in Anaheim - see here:
http://www.zyworld.com/suzannishi33/Illuminations22.htm
Read her letter below:
Couple heartwarming
I wish to applaud the writer and editors responsible for an uplifting and heartwarming story about the marriage of Julian Bermudez and John Rabe, and commendations to the Star-News for running such a touching piece ("Love is in the air, Aug. 9).
This compelling story was beautifully written and moved me to tears. It was courageous of John and Julian to share the personal details of their wedding preparations.
My hope is that their story will add a realistic perspective to the subject of same-sex marriages, and may help to soften the hearts of those who would seek to deny this right to our gay brothers and sisters.
As an ordained non-denominational minister in Pasadena , I am delighted that the day has arrived in California
Thank you for publishing such a thoughtful piece, which is extremely relevant for Californians at this moment in time.
My prayer is that the voters in our state will search their hearts and will not pass the marriage ban which has been placed on the November ballot. There are so many loving couples who deserve the opportunity to marry. I hope that your article will serve to illuminate minds and hearts!
Congratulations to John & Julian, and may they enjoy a lifetime of happiness and blessings. As written in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, verse 13: "There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love."
Rev. Donna D'Amore
Saudis Granted Immunity Even Though They Funded 9/11 Attacks
US court rules Saudis not liable for Sept 11 attacks
YahooNews - Thu Aug 14, 7:47 PM ET
A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled Saudi Arabia could not be held liable for the September 11 attacks against the United States despite charitable donations that ended up in the hands of Al-Qaeda.
Upholding a 2006 decision by a lower court, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled inadmissible a lawsuit in which families of victims of the 9/11 attacks charged that Saudi Arabia, four Saudi princes, a Saudi charity and bank had given material support to Al-Qaeda.
The plaintiffs in the case cited Saudi donations to Muslim charity groups that were later transferred to the Al-Qaeda terror network, arguing the Saudis were responsible for financing the 9/11 attacks.
The court in its ruling said the "Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976" granted the Saudi defendants immunity from prosecution on US soil.
It also ruled that a charity named in the suit, the Saudi High Commission for Relief to Bosnia and Herzegovina, was also immune under the same law as it was "an agency or instrumentality of the Kingdom."
Exceptions to the immunity provisions did not apply in the case, the court ruled, "because the Kingdom has not been designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States."
Please Apply My Electricity Overpayments to Water Conservation (Dis)incentives
Jeff Rupp - Pasadena
How ironic the recent front page photo shows one of the Brookside Golf Course lakes not being replenished with water due to "conservation" when the solution is a short iron away -- the Arroyo Seco River
It has always amazed me that for a small amount of engineering effort, these lakes, fueled by water from a concrete drainage canal, could not be incorporated into the entire golf course water management program and still maintain adequate flows to feed the newly restored central Arroyo Seco River and replenish the watershed.
Someone also needs to inform Pasadena Pasadena
And one final thought. Leave it to any good government discussion to worry about loss of revenues from conservation. Of course these are the same folks who complain about the loss of gas tax revenues from reduced consumption. The obvious solution, at least to those who we entrust with our future, is to raise taxes, impose fees (excuse me, "incentives") or ?borrow" $11.2 million from the City's Light and Power Fund to balance the budget and raise the electric rates at the same time. Quoting the City Manager from a recent Star-New article, "It is a standard practice in Pasadena
Perhaps you could apply any of my previous overpayments for electricity toward any of my future water (dis)incentives!
Pundit Note: In Pasadena, not only electricity, but water is overcharged and the excess above the real cost of water is transferred into the City's General Fund or diverted into investment accounts which are de facto reserves (now totalling two-thirds of a billion dollars). Which raises a point: why should property owners have their water rates increased if they are already overbilled?
Comment on above by Guido Meindl
Good commentary by Jeff Rupp re the Brookside GC lakes/ponds. My concern is that allowing them to evaporate will create additional problems aside from eliminating a significant watering and nesting/breeding environment for local and migratory bird populations and other 'beasties'. As the ponds continue to evaporate they will become an ideal mosquito breeding ground. To counteract this I would assume that the Pasadena Environmental Health Dept. will spray the ponds with anti-mosquito chemicals which will pose a threat to bird and animal species who rely on this water source. Without treatment this will pose a threat to the surrounding human neighborhood. Seems like a 'no win' scenario! Only retaining the water levels is the solution. Jeff Rupp has some excellent ideas of the subject.
Pasadena Pundit
New below:
Only 17% of People Find Newspaper Stories Believable
Believability of Major Broadcast Networks Plummets
Star News Dumbs Down Public By Failing to Report That New Urgent Care Center in East Pasadena Will Subsidize Patients in Arcadia, San Gabriel, Glendale, and Baldwin Park
Read the dumbed down article in the PSN today about how the City of Pasadena is allocating $500,000 for a fast track study to put an urgent care center in East Pasadena - here: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_10241644
The Star News just wants to report the "news," not educate the public.
What the article fails to report is that the courts have socialized emergency medical care so that any emergency or urgent care center must take patients from outside East Pasadena (Arcadia, San Gabriel, Baldwin Park, North West Pasadena, Glendale, etc). The whole concept of a neighborhood based emergency care center was invalidated by the courts long ago. Poorer cities may want to dump their uninsured patients on the more wealthy Pasadena urgent care center. If so, why aren't other cities asked to chip in for the costs of any urgent care center in East Pasadena? To learn how the socialized emergency care system really works read here:
http://www.californiarepublic.org/archives/Columns/Lusvardi/20070921LusvardiGeo-Equity.html
Only 17% of People Find Newspaper Stories Believable
How Real Are Newspaper Stories?
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-real-are-newspaper-stories.htm
The question of credibility in newspaper stories has been around since newspapers first appeared. Many people read newspaper stories with a skeptical eye. More and more people are waking up to the fact that newspaper stories are not 100% truthful. In the age of mass media, with newspapers and television shows vying for the exclusive scoop, many facts are exaggerated beyond reasonable doubt.
A recent survey on the believability of newspapers showed that only 17% of people found their daily newspaper to be completely believable. Believability figures for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were as low as 50%. So is the world now populated by media savvy cynical readers, or have people simply lost faith in the media as a whole?
One of the major factors in the believability of newspaper stories is the anonymous source. This refers to people who frequently crop up in newspaper stories giving an opinion or insider knowledge on a story. The contending issue is, of course, that the anonymous source is never named. The use of the anonymous source can be seen as far back as Deep Throat in the Watergate Scandal expose by The Washington Post in the 1970s.
A reporter will never give up the name of his or her anonymous source; it is considered part and parcel of journalistic ethics. However, the New York Times recently had to print four pages of apologies for the fabrications of reporter Jason Blair. Blair's newspaper stories appeared over a three year span and were found to be full of fraudulent facts and information. A majority of unchecked fabrications were contained in anonymous source quotations.
This was not to be the only time that apologies would be printed for the fabrication of newspaper stories. Rick Bragg, another Times reporter, was forced to resign after his stories were found to be fraudulent. USA Today reporter Jack Kelley fabricated numerous stories, including his own eyewitness account of a cafe bombing in Israel.
In some instances, the public know that newspaper stories are simply false or exaggerated. The British tabloid press are some of the worst storytellers in the world. A huge percentage of these daily newspapers are filled with exclusive celebrity stories told by close friends. It is well known that the so-called close friend is actually the celebrity looking for extra publicity.
There is also the fact that many newspapers are biased towards one particular political party. The editors may run political stories favoring their political party, along with newspaper stories that make the opposing political party look like devil worshipers at best. The old saying of don't believe everything you read in the newspapers should be kept in mind when reading a large percentage of newspaper stories, especially those that frequently quote anonymous sources as their key fact givers.
Believability of Major Broadcast Networks Plummets
Read here: http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1358
Don Perata, Head of California Senate, Rips Off Peevey's Idea of Global Warming Think Tank But Wants It Additionally Funded by Municipal Utilities Such as PWP
Still a rotten idea
San Diego Union-Tribune
Don't soak ratepayers for energy think tank
August 18, 2008
In April, when Public Utilities Commission Chairman Michael Peevey persuaded the PUC board to back his plan to use $600 million generated by a 10-year surcharge on some energy bills to create a PUC-run global warming think tank, the response was far chillier than he probably expected.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was enthusiastic, but he was practically alone.
Experts on utility law questioned whether it would be legal for an agency created to regulate utilities to force ratepayers to subsidize an agency think tank. Consumer groups such as The Utilities Reform Network questioned the fairness of imposing an additional de facto tax on San Diego Gas & Electric, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison customers, who already fund renewable energy and conservation programs. Analysts noted the recent explosion of research into alternative energy sources and said the PUC think tank's work would be duplicative.
Perhaps the loudest critics of all were state lawmakers, who saw Peevey's plan as a clumsy, poorly thought-out exercise in empire-building. "I think it's a singularly bad idea," said Senate President Don Perata, D-Oakland.
Four months later, however, it turns out that legislators only oppose anti-consumer, ill-conceived empire-building when it's undertaken by some other government body. Capitol Weekly reported last week that none other than Perata himself had stolen Peevey's idea and will soon unveil his plan for a ratepayer-funded California Institute for Climate Change.
Its funding sources would be expanded to include municipal utilities, such as those owned by Los Angeles and Anaheim, as well as investor-owned utilities, allowing for a much bigger annual budget than envisioned by Peevey.
The institute would be run by a board that included representatives of the Governor's Office, the Senate, Assembly, Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission - meaning its management would be suffused with politics, its academic freedom compromised, its research limited to certain options.
Does anyone really believe this think tank would consider nuclear power for even 30 seconds?
But even if it were honestly run, the think tank would fill no need. There is more promising, well-funded energy research now than ever before.
Perata's initial take was right: Soaking ratepayers to set up a state think tank is nonsensical. It is beyond perverse that he is now the greatest champion of this "singularly bad idea."
Big Deal?: Free Radicals (Oxygen) Found as Pollutant in Air
Oversimplified, free radicals are essentially oxygen. Just as a sliced apple exposed to air and oxygen spoils, so does the human body. Read story about how researchers found that air has free radical (oxygen) pollutants in it here:
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1164736.html
Note: Free radicals are also naturally produced in the body without outside pollution. And the body has natural defense mechanisms against free radicals. For more balanced, non-hysterical, information on free radicals read here:
http://www.bsherman.org/freeradicals.htm
Vote For (Un)-Real Change - San Francisco to Decriminalize Prostitution Resulting in More Child Prostitution
Read about this here:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/08/pimps_pedophiles_welcome_to_sf.html
Solution Found to Pasadena's Anti-Hosing Rules - Hormonal Sprays for Ficus Trees
Dr. Ron Smith, Horticulturalist, North Dakota State University
Preface: The City of Pasadena is citing property owners for hosing private walkways and driveways to wash off berries dropped from the City's ficus street trees. But blowing the sticky berries off the walks and driveways doesn't work once the berries are mashed by automobile tires or shoes. Sweeping just spreads the berries all over the walks and doesn't remove the stains. A possible partial solution that avoids noisy and dusty blowers or water intensive hosing would be to "spay" or "neuter" the trees to reduce the large volume of berries produced by the trees. Would the City grant permission to spray street trees? Should property owners have to pay for the spraying when it is the City's trees creating the nuisance? Dr. Smith mentions that the critical element of spraying is timing. Can we expect bureaucratic agencies to timely spray city trees when they are molting?
Read the email response by Dr. Ron Smith below:
"There are hormonal sprays which cause embryo abortion of the flower when sprayed at the correct time. This would have to be something that would be timed just right to maximize impact. It would never be 100% elimination of the berries, but a significant reduction in them. How much this would cost is up for grabs, but here is a listing of some ISA Certified Arborists in your part of the state, some of which should be able to assist or advise. We have similar problems with crabapples in our area - as the trees get larger, and extend over walks, patios, or driveways, the fruit drops, attracts yellow jacket wasps, and stains the surfaces. By then the trees are often too large to spray or too expensive, so they end up getting taken out and replaced with a non-fruiting cultivar or different species of tree."
Link to local arborists:
http://www.santa-clarita.com/cityhall/pw/oaktree/QualifiedConsultingArborists5-19-08.pdf
Did Obama Lie About Voting Against the Iraq
It may depend on your cultural definition of lying and truth
"It depends on what your definition of 'is,' is?" - President Bill Clinton
Some perceptive online observers of the recent Saddleback Church Iraq
News commentators said that compared to U.S. Senator John McCain's answers at the Saddleback Forum, Obama's were more "nuanced" and "thoughtful." A "non-nuanced" and common sense answer was that he flat out lied about the above question. But this doesn't explain why Obama would risk making such a bonehead false statement when he is articulate and intelligent.
In all probability, "truth" is culturally defined differently by Obama than McCain. In Obama's social culture he didn't say a non-truth; in McCain's social world Obama stated an untruth. What do we mean by this?
We know that Obama attended school in Hawaii up until age 5, but from 6 to 10 years old he attended school in Jakarta , Indonesia Indonesia Jakarta
Moreover, Obama is a member of the Democratic Party whose policies place emphasis on collectivist programs and policies as opposed to the privatization programs and political ideology of the Republican Party. It is not a stretch of the imagination to say that Obama was born and raised so as to become what might be called a collectivistic personality.
People with a collectivistic personality believe that the group(s) in which they are most involved are ends in themselves. As such they are compelled to honor distinctive group values, notwithstanding their own personal drive for success. Even Obama's meteoric rise through academia and local politics was facilitated by collective affirmative action policies and gerrymandered voting districts that gave him sure electability. Obama's careers were largely determined by group goals that required the pursuit of achievement that improved the position of his group. The defining attribute of this social enculturation process was the honor and integrity of his family, his tribal-like childhood religion, his adult social gospel religion, solidarity with the in-group of his political party and his kin group. Particularly, when asked who he admires or would turn to for advice tellingly mentioned his grandmother and his wife first, while John McCain cited General Patraeus.
In a collective culture saying the right thing to maintain harmony and to reinforce cultural values is far more important than telling what seems to be the obvious truth. In fact, truth might be defined as conformity between what the in-group thinks about some person, event, or thing, and what the private self believes and knows. Collectivist persons are not expected to have their own opinions but to only hold those opinions that derive from social consensus.
In individualist cultures, by contrast, the power of the in-group over the person recedes. In individualistic American culture, inconsistency between public and private statements and actions is understood as hypocrisy. One must think and say or do the same thing. To lie is to say one thing publicly while thinking or acting differently privately.
Thus an individualistic lie is to think one thing and say another. To a collectivist, however, a lie involves holding a private truth different than one's in-group. Lying and deception can become second nature to a collectivist personality and can be honorable and legitimate. To lie in order to deceive an outsider, one who has no right to the truth, is thus honorable. Or more importantly, it dishonors those in the out-group. Thus, to deceive by making something "nuanced" or to lie to an out-group person or audience is to deprive them of respect, to refuse to show honor, to humiliate the other. Collectivist lying in a political context is thus a way to patronize and pander to one's collectivistic political base and to deny honor and respect to one's opponent.
So to repeat, why would Barack Obama, a highly educated and well-spoken political candidate make such a notorious falsehood in front of such a large audience? Your guess is as good as mine. When the inconsistency between Obama's statement and the facts are pointed out to the average Joe in the American public street that has individualistic cultural values, Obama lied. But, the bigger question is why? And my guess is that what makes Obama tick is his collectivistic cultural values ingrained in his personality, notwithstanding his obvious smarts and polished speaking abilities. Thus, Obama may be more understood by a collectivistic Muslim in, say, Afghanistan Saddleback Church
This explains why many conservative Americans don't like intellectuals, including this rather intellectualized analysis of Obama. Americans are known for liking "plain speakers," not Old World dogma or European intellectualizing. If Americans want "change," meaning truth telling, in their political leaders then they better ponder Obama's collectivistic cultural values as the election approaches.
Obama Lied, Babies Died
Read here:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTBkYTYzZDNjNDgyMWJmMzMxYzljYjYxNmEwMTdhYWE=
How To "Solve" Politically-Manufactured Water Crisis - Turn Your Lawn into a Protected Wetland for Endangered Arroyo Toad
Submitted by Mr. Toad
Install a pond in your front yard with tadpoles and larvae to feed the endangered Arroyo Toad (species: B. microscaphus californicus), install a sand or pea gravel subsoil with silt topsoil, rock garden and dirt berms where the toads can burrow shelters, and import plenty of insects by planting, say, Lantana shrub nearby. Provide a source of water from washing walks and driveways by diverting it into the fresh water pond, apply for a Section 404 Permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of the U.S. Dept. of Interior, and submit your "protected" habitat to the City of Pasadena as proof of immunity from water conservation anti-hosing regulations.
Why artists hate conservatives
By Mark Butterworth - American Thinker
Conservatives have a problem with artists, just as most artists have a problem with conservatives. For example, there is a provision in Bush's Medicare program (the prescription drug boondoggle) that attempts to allow individuals to create their own sort of 401K plan for medical care. Catastrophic health care would be insured for them, but ordinary medical care would be covered by their own tax free savings.
This sounds like a good idea. It gives people control over their medical care, their selection of doctors, treatment, testing, and so forth. Working people can manage this like they do their retirement funds. Everyone wins.
Except artists.
Artists have long and sadly accepted the general proposition that they cannot pursue their vocation in art and expect to be liquid or create much equity. No. Starving artist is not a misnomer or stereotype. People only get to become great (or very good) at an art by doing it full time. But doing so means they most likely scrape to get by. The trade off is that they get to do work they absolutely love instead of working on in the salt mines.
Artists are generally very liberal because they can't afford decent housing, private education for their children, medical expenses, or retirement funds. They tend not to be religious anymore, so they can't ask such communities for help, so they turn to government. They generally do not receive the approval of their fathers if their dads are traditionally masculine types, and receiving the approval of dads who are wimpy is not that much better. In both cases they feel marginalized and inadequate. Anger at the father leads to atheism, rebelliousness, and animosity to tradition.
Artists don't really care about the poor except that it helps them to make an argument for their own needs. You don't see Barbra Streisand or Steven Spielberg offering to create a huge endowment fund for starving actors out of their vast wealth, do you? No, they prefer that ordinary people to pay for starving actors' and artists' needs through the government programs liberals love. The very few artists who reap mega fortunes don't care a whit about their struggling peers, and won't dent their own fortunes for the sake of their own kind, but are more than ready to raise a working family's taxes a large percentage.
Conservatives, though, think that everyone should carry their own weight. Artists simply can't. It's no good saying the market should decide; that some fall by the wayside because they aren't good enough or self-promoting enough. We night possibly lose incredibly fine works of skill and beauty, for my experience (not with my own work) in observing a great many superb artists is that regardless of the quality of their work, they hardly get by because work of living artists of the highest quality is simply not valued by enough buyers with money to spend.
It's as if you have a market of 1000 people who can appreciate quality and will buy it, but you have 50 artists producing 5000 pieces of good work. It can't all be bought. So what do we tell the artists? They're hiring down at the union hall? We can always use more truck drivers?
The conservative vision of every man under his own fig tree simply doesn't work when it comes to people who are willing to starve and suffer for the sake of developing their craft and desire for mastery of creative work. It easy enough to say, "tough luck, hard world." But they aren't buying.
In fact, for most people, life isn't that tough or hard because they are satisfied in their vocation. Most people don't find their lives and work drudgery in America. Surprisingly, to me, is that most people like their jobs, whereas I hated working full time at any job that wasn't creative. No matter how decent the people, the working conditions, and useful the work, I hated having to devote my life to making a buck. I would become miserable, depressed, and suicidal if I thought that the rest of my life was going to be doing such work all day, every day.
I would have rather starved. And I did on many occasions, and lived in conditions people would marvel at, wondering how I could stand it. As long as I was free to work at what I loved, I could stand a lot.
As long as we have a large, educated, creative, but under-employed class of artists in America, there will be a huge propaganda machine directed with energy and hostility at conservative values, traditional Good, and natural law.
Freedom Means Responsibility
By GEORGE MCGOVERN
March 7, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120485275086518279.html
Nearly 16 years ago in these very pages, I wrote that "'one-size-fits all' rules for business ignore the reality of the market place." Today I'm watching some broad rules evolve on individual decisions that are even worse.
Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior. Much paternalist scrutiny has recently centered on personal economics, including calls to regulate subprime mortgages.
With liberalized credit rules, many people with limited income could access a mortgage and choose, for the first time, if they wanted to own a home. And most of those who chose to do so are hanging on to their mortgages. According to the national delinquency survey released yesterday, the vast majority of subprime, adjustable-rate mortgages are in good condition,their holders neither delinquent nor in default.
There's no question, however, that delinquency and default rates are far too high. But some of this is due to bad investment decisions by real-estate speculators. These losses are not unlike the risks taken every day in the stock market.
The real question for policy makers is how to protect those worthy borrowers who are struggling, without throwing out a system that works fine for the majority of its users (all of whom have freely chosen to use it). If the tub is more baby than bathwater, we should think twice about dumping everything out.
Health-care paternalism creates another problem that's rarely mentioned: Many people can't afford the gold-plated health plans that are the only options available in their states.
Buying health insurance on the Internet and across state lines, where less expensive plans may be available, is prohibited by many state insurance commissions. Despite being able to buy car or home insurance with a mouse click, some state governments require their approved plans for purchase or none at all. It's as if states dictated that you had to buy a Mercedes or no car at all.
Economic paternalism takes its newest form with the campaign against short-term small loans, commonly known as "payday lending."
With payday lending, people in need of immediate money can borrow against their future paychecks, allowing emergency purchases or bill payments they could not otherwise make. The service comes at the cost of a significant fee -- usually $15 for every $100 borrowed for two weeks. But the cost seems reasonable when all your other options, such as bounced checks or skipped credit-card payments, are obviously more expensive and play havoc with your credit rating.
Anguished at the fact that payday lending isn't perfect, some people would outlaw the service entirely, or cap fees at such low levels that no lender will provide the service. Anyone who's familiar with the law of unintended consequences should be able to guess what happens next.
Researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York went one step further and laid the data out: Payday lending bans simply push low-income borrowers into less pleasant options, including increased rates of bankruptcy. Net result: After a lending ban, the consumer has the same amount of debt but fewer ways to manage it.
Since leaving office I've written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.
Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don't take away cars because we don't like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don't operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.
The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.
Just Who Is The "Reverend" Donna D'Amore, Advocate of Same Sex Marriage?
The "Spiritual Awareness Network" website describes her as as follows:
Donna D'Amore is a clairvoyant, spiritual counselor, dream interpreter and author. She is the author of "Dreams - The Windows Into Your Soul". She derives great joy in having sessions with people and assisting them along their journey by interpreting dreams & spiritual messages, helping to heal emotional wounds and encouraging their spiritual growth and development.
http://www.spiritualawarenessnetwork.org/events/event-SAN.html
True to form the Pasadena Star News publishes her letter advocating same-sex marriages without telling us just what Ms. A'more is a "reverend" of. A'more is not described as a "minister" at the Illuminations Ministry 22 in Anaheim - see here:
http://www.zyworld.com/suzannishi33/Illuminations22.htm
Read her letter below:
Couple heartwarming
I wish to applaud the writer and editors responsible for an uplifting and heartwarming story about the marriage of Julian Bermudez and John Rabe, and commendations to the Star-News for running such a touching piece ("Love is in the air, Aug. 9).
This compelling story was beautifully written and moved me to tears. It was courageous of John and Julian to share the personal details of their wedding preparations.
My hope is that their story will add a realistic perspective to the subject of same-sex marriages, and may help to soften the hearts of those who would seek to deny this right to our gay brothers and sisters.
As an ordained non-denominational minister in Pasadena , I am delighted that the day has arrived in California
Thank you for publishing such a thoughtful piece, which is extremely relevant for Californians at this moment in time.
My prayer is that the voters in our state will search their hearts and will not pass the marriage ban which has been placed on the November ballot. There are so many loving couples who deserve the opportunity to marry. I hope that your article will serve to illuminate minds and hearts!
Congratulations to John & Julian, and may they enjoy a lifetime of happiness and blessings. As written in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, verse 13: "There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love."
Rev. Donna D'Amore
Saudis Granted Immunity Even Though They Funded 9/11 Attacks
US court rules Saudis not liable for Sept 11 attacks
YahooNews - Thu Aug 14, 7:47 PM ET
A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled Saudi Arabia could not be held liable for the September 11 attacks against the United States despite charitable donations that ended up in the hands of Al-Qaeda.
Upholding a 2006 decision by a lower court, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled inadmissible a lawsuit in which families of victims of the 9/11 attacks charged that Saudi Arabia, four Saudi princes, a Saudi charity and bank had given material support to Al-Qaeda.
The plaintiffs in the case cited Saudi donations to Muslim charity groups that were later transferred to the Al-Qaeda terror network, arguing the Saudis were responsible for financing the 9/11 attacks.
The court in its ruling said the "Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976" granted the Saudi defendants immunity from prosecution on US soil.
It also ruled that a charity named in the suit, the Saudi High Commission for Relief to Bosnia and Herzegovina, was also immune under the same law as it was "an agency or instrumentality of the Kingdom."
Exceptions to the immunity provisions did not apply in the case, the court ruled, "because the Kingdom has not been designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States."
Please Apply My Electricity Overpayments to Water Conservation (Dis)incentives
Jeff Rupp - Pasadena
How ironic the recent front page photo shows one of the Brookside Golf Course lakes not being replenished with water due to "conservation" when the solution is a short iron away -- the Arroyo Seco River
It has always amazed me that for a small amount of engineering effort, these lakes, fueled by water from a concrete drainage canal, could not be incorporated into the entire golf course water management program and still maintain adequate flows to feed the newly restored central Arroyo Seco River and replenish the watershed.
Someone also needs to inform Pasadena Pasadena
And one final thought. Leave it to any good government discussion to worry about loss of revenues from conservation. Of course these are the same folks who complain about the loss of gas tax revenues from reduced consumption. The obvious solution, at least to those who we entrust with our future, is to raise taxes, impose fees (excuse me, "incentives") or ?borrow" $11.2 million from the City's Light and Power Fund to balance the budget and raise the electric rates at the same time. Quoting the City Manager from a recent Star-New article, "It is a standard practice in Pasadena
Perhaps you could apply any of my previous overpayments for electricity toward any of my future water (dis)incentives!
Pundit Note: In Pasadena, not only electricity, but water is overcharged and the excess above the real cost of water is transferred into the City's General Fund or diverted into investment accounts which are de facto reserves (now totalling two-thirds of a billion dollars). Which raises a point: why should property owners have their water rates increased if they are already overbilled?
Comment on above by Guido Meindl
Good commentary by Jeff Rupp re the Brookside GC lakes/ponds. My concern is that allowing them to evaporate will create additional problems aside from eliminating a significant watering and nesting/breeding environment for local and migratory bird populations and other 'beasties'. As the ponds continue to evaporate they will become an ideal mosquito breeding ground. To counteract this I would assume that the Pasadena Environmental Health Dept. will spray the ponds with anti-mosquito chemicals which will pose a threat to bird and animal species who rely on this water source. Without treatment this will pose a threat to the surrounding human neighborhood. Seems like a 'no win' scenario! Only retaining the water levels is the solution. Jeff Rupp has some excellent ideas of the subject.
Pasadena Pundit
New below:
Only 17% of People Find Newspaper Stories Believable
Believability of Major Broadcast Networks Plummets
Star News Dumbs Down Public By Failing to Report That New Urgent Care Center in East Pasadena Will Subsidize Patients in Arcadia, San Gabriel, Glendale, and Baldwin Park
Read the dumbed down article in the PSN today about how the City of Pasadena is allocating $500,000 for a fast track study to put an urgent care center in East Pasadena - here: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_10241644
The Star News just wants to report the "news," not educate the public.
What the article fails to report is that the courts have socialized emergency medical care so that any emergency or urgent care center must take patients from outside East Pasadena (Arcadia, San Gabriel, Baldwin Park, North West Pasadena, Glendale, etc). The whole concept of a neighborhood based emergency care center was invalidated by the courts long ago. Poorer cities may want to dump their uninsured patients on the more wealthy Pasadena urgent care center. If so, why aren't other cities asked to chip in for the costs of any urgent care center in East Pasadena? To learn how the socialized emergency care system really works read here:
http://www.californiarepublic.org/archives/Columns/Lusvardi/20070921LusvardiGeo-Equity.html
Only 17% of People Find Newspaper Stories Believable
How Real Are Newspaper Stories?
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-real-are-newspaper-stories.htm
The question of credibility in newspaper stories has been around since newspapers first appeared. Many people read newspaper stories with a skeptical eye. More and more people are waking up to the fact that newspaper stories are not 100% truthful. In the age of mass media, with newspapers and television shows vying for the exclusive scoop, many facts are exaggerated beyond reasonable doubt.
A recent survey on the believability of newspapers showed that only 17% of people found their daily newspaper to be completely believable. Believability figures for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were as low as 50%. So is the world now populated by media savvy cynical readers, or have people simply lost faith in the media as a whole?
One of the major factors in the believability of newspaper stories is the anonymous source. This refers to people who frequently crop up in newspaper stories giving an opinion or insider knowledge on a story. The contending issue is, of course, that the anonymous source is never named. The use of the anonymous source can be seen as far back as Deep Throat in the Watergate Scandal expose by The Washington Post in the 1970s.
A reporter will never give up the name of his or her anonymous source; it is considered part and parcel of journalistic ethics. However, the New York Times recently had to print four pages of apologies for the fabrications of reporter Jason Blair. Blair's newspaper stories appeared over a three year span and were found to be full of fraudulent facts and information. A majority of unchecked fabrications were contained in anonymous source quotations.
This was not to be the only time that apologies would be printed for the fabrication of newspaper stories. Rick Bragg, another Times reporter, was forced to resign after his stories were found to be fraudulent. USA Today reporter Jack Kelley fabricated numerous stories, including his own eyewitness account of a cafe bombing in Israel.
In some instances, the public know that newspaper stories are simply false or exaggerated. The British tabloid press are some of the worst storytellers in the world. A huge percentage of these daily newspapers are filled with exclusive celebrity stories told by close friends. It is well known that the so-called close friend is actually the celebrity looking for extra publicity.
There is also the fact that many newspapers are biased towards one particular political party. The editors may run political stories favoring their political party, along with newspaper stories that make the opposing political party look like devil worshipers at best. The old saying of don't believe everything you read in the newspapers should be kept in mind when reading a large percentage of newspaper stories, especially those that frequently quote anonymous sources as their key fact givers.
Believability of Major Broadcast Networks Plummets
Read here: http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1358
Don Perata, Head of California Senate, Rips Off Peevey's Idea of Global Warming Think Tank But Wants It Additionally Funded by Municipal Utilities Such as PWP
Still a rotten idea
San Diego Union-Tribune
Don't soak ratepayers for energy think tank
August 18, 2008
In April, when Public Utilities Commission Chairman Michael Peevey persuaded the PUC board to back his plan to use $600 million generated by a 10-year surcharge on some energy bills to create a PUC-run global warming think tank, the response was far chillier than he probably expected.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was enthusiastic, but he was practically alone.
Experts on utility law questioned whether it would be legal for an agency created to regulate utilities to force ratepayers to subsidize an agency think tank. Consumer groups such as The Utilities Reform Network questioned the fairness of imposing an additional de facto tax on San Diego Gas & Electric, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison customers, who already fund renewable energy and conservation programs. Analysts noted the recent explosion of research into alternative energy sources and said the PUC think tank's work would be duplicative.
Perhaps the loudest critics of all were state lawmakers, who saw Peevey's plan as a clumsy, poorly thought-out exercise in empire-building. "I think it's a singularly bad idea," said Senate President Don Perata, D-Oakland.
Four months later, however, it turns out that legislators only oppose anti-consumer, ill-conceived empire-building when it's undertaken by some other government body. Capitol Weekly reported last week that none other than Perata himself had stolen Peevey's idea and will soon unveil his plan for a ratepayer-funded California Institute for Climate Change.
Its funding sources would be expanded to include municipal utilities, such as those owned by Los Angeles and Anaheim, as well as investor-owned utilities, allowing for a much bigger annual budget than envisioned by Peevey.
The institute would be run by a board that included representatives of the Governor's Office, the Senate, Assembly, Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission - meaning its management would be suffused with politics, its academic freedom compromised, its research limited to certain options.
Does anyone really believe this think tank would consider nuclear power for even 30 seconds?
But even if it were honestly run, the think tank would fill no need. There is more promising, well-funded energy research now than ever before.
Perata's initial take was right: Soaking ratepayers to set up a state think tank is nonsensical. It is beyond perverse that he is now the greatest champion of this "singularly bad idea."
Big Deal?: Free Radicals (Oxygen) Found as Pollutant in Air
Oversimplified, free radicals are essentially oxygen. Just as a sliced apple exposed to air and oxygen spoils, so does the human body. Read story about how researchers found that air has free radical (oxygen) pollutants in it here:
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1164736.html
Note: Free radicals are also naturally produced in the body without outside pollution. And the body has natural defense mechanisms against free radicals. For more balanced, non-hysterical, information on free radicals read here:
http://www.bsherman.org/freeradicals.htm
Vote For (Un)-Real Change - San Francisco to Decriminalize Prostitution Resulting in More Child Prostitution
Read about this here:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/08/pimps_pedophiles_welcome_to_sf.html
Solution Found to Pasadena's Anti-Hosing Rules - Hormonal Sprays for Ficus Trees
Dr. Ron Smith, Horticulturalist, North Dakota State University
Preface: The City of Pasadena is citing property owners for hosing private walkways and driveways to wash off berries dropped from the City's ficus street trees. But blowing the sticky berries off the walks and driveways doesn't work once the berries are mashed by automobile tires or shoes. Sweeping just spreads the berries all over the walks and doesn't remove the stains. A possible partial solution that avoids noisy and dusty blowers or water intensive hosing would be to "spay" or "neuter" the trees to reduce the large volume of berries produced by the trees. Would the City grant permission to spray street trees? Should property owners have to pay for the spraying when it is the City's trees creating the nuisance? Dr. Smith mentions that the critical element of spraying is timing. Can we expect bureaucratic agencies to timely spray city trees when they are molting?
Read the email response by Dr. Ron Smith below:
"There are hormonal sprays which cause embryo abortion of the flower when sprayed at the correct time. This would have to be something that would be timed just right to maximize impact. It would never be 100% elimination of the berries, but a significant reduction in them. How much this would cost is up for grabs, but here is a listing of some ISA Certified Arborists in your part of the state, some of which should be able to assist or advise. We have similar problems with crabapples in our area - as the trees get larger, and extend over walks, patios, or driveways, the fruit drops, attracts yellow jacket wasps, and stains the surfaces. By then the trees are often too large to spray or too expensive, so they end up getting taken out and replaced with a non-fruiting cultivar or different species of tree."
Link to local arborists:
http://www.santa-clarita.com/cityhall/pw/oaktree/QualifiedConsultingArborists5-19-08.pdf
Did Obama Lie About Voting Against the Iraq
It may depend on your cultural definition of lying and truth
"It depends on what your definition of 'is,' is?" - President Bill Clinton
Some perceptive online observers of the recent Saddleback Church Iraq
News commentators said that compared to U.S. Senator John McCain's answers at the Saddleback Forum, Obama's were more "nuanced" and "thoughtful." A "non-nuanced" and common sense answer was that he flat out lied about the above question. But this doesn't explain why Obama would risk making such a bonehead false statement when he is articulate and intelligent.
In all probability, "truth" is culturally defined differently by Obama than McCain. In Obama's social culture he didn't say a non-truth; in McCain's social world Obama stated an untruth. What do we mean by this?
We know that Obama attended school in Hawaii up until age 5, but from 6 to 10 years old he attended school in Jakarta , Indonesia Indonesia Jakarta
Moreover, Obama is a member of the Democratic Party whose policies place emphasis on collectivist programs and policies as opposed to the privatization programs and political ideology of the Republican Party. It is not a stretch of the imagination to say that Obama was born and raised so as to become what might be called a collectivistic personality.
People with a collectivistic personality believe that the group(s) in which they are most involved are ends in themselves. As such they are compelled to honor distinctive group values, notwithstanding their own personal drive for success. Even Obama's meteoric rise through academia and local politics was facilitated by collective affirmative action policies and gerrymandered voting districts that gave him sure electability. Obama's careers were largely determined by group goals that required the pursuit of achievement that improved the position of his group. The defining attribute of this social enculturation process was the honor and integrity of his family, his tribal-like childhood religion, his adult social gospel religion, solidarity with the in-group of his political party and his kin group. Particularly, when asked who he admires or would turn to for advice tellingly mentioned his grandmother and his wife first, while John McCain cited General Patraeus.
In a collective culture saying the right thing to maintain harmony and to reinforce cultural values is far more important than telling what seems to be the obvious truth. In fact, truth might be defined as conformity between what the in-group thinks about some person, event, or thing, and what the private self believes and knows. Collectivist persons are not expected to have their own opinions but to only hold those opinions that derive from social consensus.
In individualist cultures, by contrast, the power of the in-group over the person recedes. In individualistic American culture, inconsistency between public and private statements and actions is understood as hypocrisy. One must think and say or do the same thing. To lie is to say one thing publicly while thinking or acting differently privately.
Thus an individualistic lie is to think one thing and say another. To a collectivist, however, a lie involves holding a private truth different than one's in-group. Lying and deception can become second nature to a collectivist personality and can be honorable and legitimate. To lie in order to deceive an outsider, one who has no right to the truth, is thus honorable. Or more importantly, it dishonors those in the out-group. Thus, to deceive by making something "nuanced" or to lie to an out-group person or audience is to deprive them of respect, to refuse to show honor, to humiliate the other. Collectivist lying in a political context is thus a way to patronize and pander to one's collectivistic political base and to deny honor and respect to one's opponent.
So to repeat, why would Barack Obama, a highly educated and well-spoken political candidate make such a notorious falsehood in front of such a large audience? Your guess is as good as mine. When the inconsistency between Obama's statement and the facts are pointed out to the average Joe in the American public street that has individualistic cultural values, Obama lied. But, the bigger question is why? And my guess is that what makes Obama tick is his collectivistic cultural values ingrained in his personality, notwithstanding his obvious smarts and polished speaking abilities. Thus, Obama may be more understood by a collectivistic Muslim in, say, Afghanistan Saddleback Church
This explains why many conservative Americans don't like intellectuals, including this rather intellectualized analysis of Obama. Americans are known for liking "plain speakers," not Old World dogma or European intellectualizing. If Americans want "change," meaning truth telling, in their political leaders then they better ponder Obama's collectivistic cultural values as the election approaches.
Obama Lied, Babies Died
Read here:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTBkYTYzZDNjNDgyMWJmMzMxYzljYjYxNmEwMTdhYWE=
How To "Solve" Politically-Manufactured Water Crisis - Turn Your Lawn into a Protected Wetland for Endangered Arroyo Toad
Submitted by Mr. Toad
Install a pond in your front yard with tadpoles and larvae to feed the endangered Arroyo Toad (species: B. microscaphus californicus), install a sand or pea gravel subsoil with silt topsoil, rock garden and dirt berms where the toads can burrow shelters, and import plenty of insects by planting, say, Lantana shrub nearby. Provide a source of water from washing walks and driveways by diverting it into the fresh water pond, apply for a Section 404 Permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of the U.S. Dept. of Interior, and submit your "protected" habitat to the City of Pasadena as proof of immunity from water conservation anti-hosing regulations.
Why artists hate conservatives
By Mark Butterworth - American Thinker
Conservatives have a problem with artists, just as most artists have a problem with conservatives. For example, there is a provision in Bush's Medicare program (the prescription drug boondoggle) that attempts to allow individuals to create their own sort of 401K plan for medical care. Catastrophic health care would be insured for them, but ordinary medical care would be covered by their own tax free savings.
This sounds like a good idea. It gives people control over their medical care, their selection of doctors, treatment, testing, and so forth. Working people can manage this like they do their retirement funds. Everyone wins.
Except artists.
Artists have long and sadly accepted the general proposition that they cannot pursue their vocation in art and expect to be liquid or create much equity. No. Starving artist is not a misnomer or stereotype. People only get to become great (or very good) at an art by doing it full time. But doing so means they most likely scrape to get by. The trade off is that they get to do work they absolutely love instead of working on in the salt mines.
Artists are generally very liberal because they can't afford decent housing, private education for their children, medical expenses, or retirement funds. They tend not to be religious anymore, so they can't ask such communities for help, so they turn to government. They generally do not receive the approval of their fathers if their dads are traditionally masculine types, and receiving the approval of dads who are wimpy is not that much better. In both cases they feel marginalized and inadequate. Anger at the father leads to atheism, rebelliousness, and animosity to tradition.
Artists don't really care about the poor except that it helps them to make an argument for their own needs. You don't see Barbra Streisand or Steven Spielberg offering to create a huge endowment fund for starving actors out of their vast wealth, do you? No, they prefer that ordinary people to pay for starving actors' and artists' needs through the government programs liberals love. The very few artists who reap mega fortunes don't care a whit about their struggling peers, and won't dent their own fortunes for the sake of their own kind, but are more than ready to raise a working family's taxes a large percentage.
Conservatives, though, think that everyone should carry their own weight. Artists simply can't. It's no good saying the market should decide; that some fall by the wayside because they aren't good enough or self-promoting enough. We night possibly lose incredibly fine works of skill and beauty, for my experience (not with my own work) in observing a great many superb artists is that regardless of the quality of their work, they hardly get by because work of living artists of the highest quality is simply not valued by enough buyers with money to spend.
It's as if you have a market of 1000 people who can appreciate quality and will buy it, but you have 50 artists producing 5000 pieces of good work. It can't all be bought. So what do we tell the artists? They're hiring down at the union hall? We can always use more truck drivers?
The conservative vision of every man under his own fig tree simply doesn't work when it comes to people who are willing to starve and suffer for the sake of developing their craft and desire for mastery of creative work. It easy enough to say, "tough luck, hard world." But they aren't buying.
In fact, for most people, life isn't that tough or hard because they are satisfied in their vocation. Most people don't find their lives and work drudgery in America. Surprisingly, to me, is that most people like their jobs, whereas I hated working full time at any job that wasn't creative. No matter how decent the people, the working conditions, and useful the work, I hated having to devote my life to making a buck. I would become miserable, depressed, and suicidal if I thought that the rest of my life was going to be doing such work all day, every day.
I would have rather starved. And I did on many occasions, and lived in conditions people would marvel at, wondering how I could stand it. As long as I was free to work at what I loved, I could stand a lot.
As long as we have a large, educated, creative, but under-employed class of artists in America, there will be a huge propaganda machine directed with energy and hostility at conservative values, traditional Good, and natural law.
Freedom Means Responsibility
By GEORGE MCGOVERN
March 7, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120485275086518279.html
Nearly 16 years ago in these very pages, I wrote that "'one-size-fits all' rules for business ignore the reality of the market place." Today I'm watching some broad rules evolve on individual decisions that are even worse.
Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior. Much paternalist scrutiny has recently centered on personal economics, including calls to regulate subprime mortgages.
With liberalized credit rules, many people with limited income could access a mortgage and choose, for the first time, if they wanted to own a home. And most of those who chose to do so are hanging on to their mortgages. According to the national delinquency survey released yesterday, the vast majority of subprime, adjustable-rate mortgages are in good condition,their holders neither delinquent nor in default.
There's no question, however, that delinquency and default rates are far too high. But some of this is due to bad investment decisions by real-estate speculators. These losses are not unlike the risks taken every day in the stock market.
The real question for policy makers is how to protect those worthy borrowers who are struggling, without throwing out a system that works fine for the majority of its users (all of whom have freely chosen to use it). If the tub is more baby than bathwater, we should think twice about dumping everything out.
Health-care paternalism creates another problem that's rarely mentioned: Many people can't afford the gold-plated health plans that are the only options available in their states.
Buying health insurance on the Internet and across state lines, where less expensive plans may be available, is prohibited by many state insurance commissions. Despite being able to buy car or home insurance with a mouse click, some state governments require their approved plans for purchase or none at all. It's as if states dictated that you had to buy a Mercedes or no car at all.
Economic paternalism takes its newest form with the campaign against short-term small loans, commonly known as "payday lending."
With payday lending, people in need of immediate money can borrow against their future paychecks, allowing emergency purchases or bill payments they could not otherwise make. The service comes at the cost of a significant fee -- usually $15 for every $100 borrowed for two weeks. But the cost seems reasonable when all your other options, such as bounced checks or skipped credit-card payments, are obviously more expensive and play havoc with your credit rating.
Anguished at the fact that payday lending isn't perfect, some people would outlaw the service entirely, or cap fees at such low levels that no lender will provide the service. Anyone who's familiar with the law of unintended consequences should be able to guess what happens next.
Researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York went one step further and laid the data out: Payday lending bans simply push low-income borrowers into less pleasant options, including increased rates of bankruptcy. Net result: After a lending ban, the consumer has the same amount of debt but fewer ways to manage it.
Since leaving office I've written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.
Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don't take away cars because we don't like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don't operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.
The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.
Just Who Is The "Reverend" Donna D'Amore, Advocate of Same Sex Marriage?
The "Spiritual Awareness Network" website describes her as as follows:
Donna D'Amore is a clairvoyant, spiritual counselor, dream interpreter and author. She is the author of "Dreams - The Windows Into Your Soul". She derives great joy in having sessions with people and assisting them along their journey by interpreting dreams & spiritual messages, helping to heal emotional wounds and encouraging their spiritual growth and development.
http://www.spiritualawarenessnetwork.org/events/event-SAN.html
True to form the Pasadena Star News publishes her letter advocating same-sex marriages without telling us just what Ms. A'more is a "reverend" of. A'more is not described as a "minister" at the Illuminations Ministry 22 in Anaheim - see here:
http://www.zyworld.com/suzannishi33/Illuminations22.htm
Read her letter below:
Couple heartwarming
I wish to applaud the writer and editors responsible for an uplifting and heartwarming story about the marriage of Julian Bermudez and John Rabe, and commendations to the Star-News for running such a touching piece ("Love is in the air, Aug. 9).
This compelling story was beautifully written and moved me to tears. It was courageous of John and Julian to share the personal details of their wedding preparations.
My hope is that their story will add a realistic perspective to the subject of same-sex marriages, and may help to soften the hearts of those who would seek to deny this right to our gay brothers and sisters.
As an ordained non-denominational minister in Pasadena , I am delighted that the day has arrived in California
Thank you for publishing such a thoughtful piece, which is extremely relevant for Californians at this moment in time.
My prayer is that the voters in our state will search their hearts and will not pass the marriage ban which has been placed on the November ballot. There are so many loving couples who deserve the opportunity to marry. I hope that your article will serve to illuminate minds and hearts!
Congratulations to John & Julian, and may they enjoy a lifetime of happiness and blessings. As written in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, verse 13: "There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love."
Rev. Donna D'Amore
Saudis Granted Immunity Even Though They Funded 9/11 Attacks
US court rules Saudis not liable for Sept 11 attacks
YahooNews - Thu Aug 14, 7:47 PM ET
A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled Saudi Arabia could not be held liable for the September 11 attacks against the United States despite charitable donations that ended up in the hands of Al-Qaeda.
Upholding a 2006 decision by a lower court, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled inadmissible a lawsuit in which families of victims of the 9/11 attacks charged that Saudi Arabia, four Saudi princes, a Saudi charity and bank had given material support to Al-Qaeda.
The plaintiffs in the case cited Saudi donations to Muslim charity groups that were later transferred to the Al-Qaeda terror network, arguing the Saudis were responsible for financing the 9/11 attacks.
The court in its ruling said the "Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976" granted the Saudi defendants immunity from prosecution on US soil.
It also ruled that a charity named in the suit, the Saudi High Commission for Relief to Bosnia and Herzegovina, was also immune under the same law as it was "an agency or instrumentality of the Kingdom."
Exceptions to the immunity provisions did not apply in the case, the court ruled, "because the Kingdom has not been designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States."
Please Apply My Electricity Overpayments to Water Conservation (Dis)incentives
Jeff Rupp - Pasadena
Pasadena Pundit
New below:
Only 17% of People Find Newspaper Stories Believable
Believability of Major Broadcast Networks Plummets
Star News Dumbs Down Public By Failing to Report That New Urgent Care Center in East Pasadena Will Subsidize Patients in Arcadia, San Gabriel, Glendale, and Baldwin Park
Read the dumbed down article in the PSN today about how the City of Pasadena is allocating $500,000 for a fast track study to put an urgent care center in East Pasadena - here: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_10241644
The Star News just wants to report the "news," not educate the public.
What the article fails to report is that the courts have socialized emergency medical care so that any emergency or urgent care center must take patients from outside East Pasadena (Arcadia, San Gabriel, Baldwin Park, North West Pasadena, Glendale, etc). The whole concept of a neighborhood based emergency care center was invalidated by the courts long ago. Poorer cities may want to dump their uninsured patients on the more wealthy Pasadena urgent care center. If so, why aren't other cities asked to chip in for the costs of any urgent care center in East Pasadena? To learn how the socialized emergency care system really works read here:
http://www.californiarepublic.org/archives/Columns/Lusvardi/20070921LusvardiGeo-Equity.html
Only 17% of People Find Newspaper Stories Believable
How Real Are Newspaper Stories?
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-real-are-newspaper-stories.htm
The question of credibility in newspaper stories has been around since newspapers first appeared. Many people read newspaper stories with a skeptical eye. More and more people are waking up to the fact that newspaper stories are not 100% truthful. In the age of mass media, with newspapers and television shows vying for the exclusive scoop, many facts are exaggerated beyond reasonable doubt.
A recent survey on the believability of newspapers showed that only 17% of people found their daily newspaper to be completely believable. Believability figures for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were as low as 50%. So is the world now populated by media savvy cynical readers, or have people simply lost faith in the media as a whole?
One of the major factors in the believability of newspaper stories is the anonymous source. This refers to people who frequently crop up in newspaper stories giving an opinion or insider knowledge on a story. The contending issue is, of course, that the anonymous source is never named. The use of the anonymous source can be seen as far back as Deep Throat in the Watergate Scandal expose by The Washington Post in the 1970s.
A reporter will never give up the name of his or her anonymous source; it is considered part and parcel of journalistic ethics. However, the New York Times recently had to print four pages of apologies for the fabrications of reporter Jason Blair. Blair's newspaper stories appeared over a three year span and were found to be full of fraudulent facts and information. A majority of unchecked fabrications were contained in anonymous source quotations.
This was not to be the only time that apologies would be printed for the fabrication of newspaper stories. Rick Bragg, another Times reporter, was forced to resign after his stories were found to be fraudulent. USA Today reporter Jack Kelley fabricated numerous stories, including his own eyewitness account of a cafe bombing in Israel.
In some instances, the public know that newspaper stories are simply false or exaggerated. The British tabloid press are some of the worst storytellers in the world. A huge percentage of these daily newspapers are filled with exclusive celebrity stories told by close friends. It is well known that the so-called close friend is actually the celebrity looking for extra publicity.
There is also the fact that many newspapers are biased towards one particular political party. The editors may run political stories favoring their political party, along with newspaper stories that make the opposing political party look like devil worshipers at best. The old saying of don't believe everything you read in the newspapers should be kept in mind when reading a large percentage of newspaper stories, especially those that frequently quote anonymous sources as their key fact givers.
Still a rotten idea
San Diego Union-Tribune
Big Deal?: Free Radicals (Oxygen) Found as Pollutant in Air
Oversimplified, free radicals are essentially oxygen. Just as a sliced apple exposed to air and oxygen spoils, so does the human body. Read story about how researchers found that air has free radical (oxygen) pollutants in it here:
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1164736.html
Note: Free radicals are also naturally produced in the body without outside pollution. And the body has natural defense mechanisms against free radicals. For more balanced, non-hysterical, information on free radicals read here:
http://www.bsherman.org/freeradicals.htm
Vote For (Un)-Real Change - San Francisco to Decriminalize Prostitution Resulting in More Child Prostitution
Read about this here:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/08/pimps_pedophiles_welcome_to_sf.html
Solution Found to Pasadena's Anti-Hosing Rules - Hormonal Sprays for Ficus Trees
Dr. Ron Smith, Horticulturalist, North Dakota State University
Preface: The City of Pasadena is citing property owners for hosing private walkways and driveways to wash off berries dropped from the City's ficus street trees. But blowing the sticky berries off the walks and driveways doesn't work once the berries are mashed by automobile tires or shoes. Sweeping just spreads the berries all over the walks and doesn't remove the stains. A possible partial solution that avoids noisy and dusty blowers or water intensive hosing would be to "spay" or "neuter" the trees to reduce the large volume of berries produced by the trees. Would the City grant permission to spray street trees? Should property owners have to pay for the spraying when it is the City's trees creating the nuisance? Dr. Smith mentions that the critical element of spraying is timing. Can we expect bureaucratic agencies to timely spray city trees when they are molting?
Read the email response by Dr. Ron Smith below:
"There are hormonal sprays which cause embryo abortion of the flower when sprayed at the correct time. This would have to be something that would be timed just right to maximize impact. It would never be 100% elimination of the berries, but a significant reduction in them. How much this would cost is up for grabs, but here is a listing of some ISA Certified Arborists in your part of the state, some of which should be able to assist or advise. We have similar problems with crabapples in our area - as the trees get larger, and extend over walks, patios, or driveways, the fruit drops, attracts yellow jacket wasps, and stains the surfaces. By then the trees are often too large to spray or too expensive, so they end up getting taken out and replaced with a non-fruiting cultivar or different species of tree."
http://www.santa-clarita.com/cityhall/pw/oaktree/QualifiedConsultingArborists5-19-08.pdf
It may depend on your cultural definition of lying and truth
"It depends on what your definition of 'is,' is?" - President Bill Clinton
People with a collectivistic personality believe that the group(s) in which they are most involved are ends in themselves. As such they are compelled to honor distinctive group values, notwithstanding their own personal drive for success. Even Obama's meteoric rise through academia and local politics was facilitated by collective affirmative action policies and gerrymandered voting districts that gave him sure electability. Obama's careers were largely determined by group goals that required the pursuit of achievement that improved the position of his group. The defining attribute of this social enculturation process was the honor and integrity of his family, his tribal-like childhood religion, his adult social gospel religion, solidarity with the in-group of his political party and his kin group. Particularly, when asked who he admires or would turn to for advice tellingly mentioned his grandmother and his wife first, while John McCain cited General Patraeus.
Thus an individualistic lie is to think one thing and say another. To a collectivist, however, a lie involves holding a private truth different than one's in-group. Lying and deception can become second nature to a collectivist personality and can be honorable and legitimate. To lie in order to deceive an outsider, one who has no right to the truth, is thus honorable. Or more importantly, it dishonors those in the out-group. Thus, to deceive by making something "nuanced" or to lie to an out-group person or audience is to deprive them of respect, to refuse to show honor, to humiliate the other. Collectivist lying in a political context is thus a way to patronize and pander to one's collectivistic political base and to deny honor and respect to one's opponent.
Freedom Means Responsibility
March 7, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120485275086518279.html
Nearly 16 years ago in these very pages, I wrote that "'one-size-fits all' rules for business ignore the reality of the market place." Today I'm watching some broad rules evolve on individual decisions that are even worse.
Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior. Much paternalist scrutiny has recently centered on personal economics, including calls to regulate subprime mortgages.
With liberalized credit rules, many people with limited income could access a mortgage and choose, for the first time, if they wanted to own a home. And most of those who chose to do so are hanging on to their mortgages. According to the national delinquency survey released yesterday, the vast majority of subprime, adjustable-rate mortgages are in good condition,their holders neither delinquent nor in default.
There's no question, however, that delinquency and default rates are far too high. But some of this is due to bad investment decisions by real-estate speculators. These losses are not unlike the risks taken every day in the stock market.
The real question for policy makers is how to protect those worthy borrowers who are struggling, without throwing out a system that works fine for the majority of its users (all of whom have freely chosen to use it). If the tub is more baby than bathwater, we should think twice about dumping everything out.
Health-care paternalism creates another problem that's rarely mentioned: Many people can't afford the gold-plated health plans that are the only options available in their states.
Buying health insurance on the Internet and across state lines, where less expensive plans may be available, is prohibited by many state insurance commissions. Despite being able to buy car or home insurance with a mouse click, some state governments require their approved plans for purchase or none at all. It's as if states dictated that you had to buy a Mercedes or no car at all.
Economic paternalism takes its newest form with the campaign against short-term small loans, commonly known as "payday lending."
With payday lending, people in need of immediate money can borrow against their future paychecks, allowing emergency purchases or bill payments they could not otherwise make. The service comes at the cost of a significant fee -- usually $15 for every $100 borrowed for two weeks. But the cost seems reasonable when all your other options, such as bounced checks or skipped credit-card payments, are obviously more expensive and play havoc with your credit rating.
Anguished at the fact that payday lending isn't perfect, some people would outlaw the service entirely, or cap fees at such low levels that no lender will provide the service. Anyone who's familiar with the law of unintended consequences should be able to guess what happens next.
Researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York went one step further and laid the data out: Payday lending bans simply push low-income borrowers into less pleasant options, including increased rates of bankruptcy. Net result: After a lending ban, the consumer has the same amount of debt but fewer ways to manage it.
Since leaving office I've written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.
Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don't take away cars because we don't like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don't operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.
The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.
Just Who Is The "Reverend" Donna D'Amore, Advocate of Same Sex Marriage?
The "Spiritual Awareness Network" website describes her as as follows:Donna D'Amore is a clairvoyant, spiritual counselor, dream interpreter and author. She is the author of "Dreams - The Windows Into Your Soul". She derives great joy in having sessions with people and assisting them along their journey by interpreting dreams & spiritual messages, helping to heal emotional wounds and encouraging their spiritual growth and development.
http://www.spiritualawarenessnetwork.org/events/event-SAN.html
True to form the Pasadena Star News publishes her letter advocating same-sex marriages without telling us just what Ms. A'more is a "reverend" of. A'more is not described as a "minister" at the Illuminations Ministry 22 in Anaheim - see here:
http://www.zyworld.com/suzannishi33/Illuminations22.htm
Read her letter below:
Couple heartwarming
I wish to applaud the writer and editors responsible for an uplifting and heartwarming story about the marriage of Julian Bermudez and John Rabe, and commendations to the Star-News for running such a touching piece ("Love is in the air, Aug. 9).
This compelling story was beautifully written and moved me to tears. It was courageous of John and Julian to share the personal details of their wedding preparations.
My hope is that their story will add a realistic perspective to the subject of same-sex marriages, and may help to soften the hearts of those who would seek to deny this right to our gay brothers and sisters.
As an ordained non-denominational minister in
Thank you for publishing such a thoughtful piece, which is extremely relevant for Californians at this moment in time.
My prayer is that the voters in our state will search their hearts and will not pass the marriage ban which has been placed on the November ballot. There are so many loving couples who deserve the opportunity to marry. I hope that your article will serve to illuminate minds and hearts!
Congratulations to John & Julian, and may they enjoy a lifetime of happiness and blessings. As written in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, verse 13: "There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love."
Rev. Donna D'Amore
Saudis Granted Immunity Even Though They Funded 9/11 Attacks
US court rules Saudis not liable for Sept 11 attacks
YahooNews - Thu Aug 14, 7:47 PM ET
A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled Saudi Arabia could not be held liable for the September 11 attacks against the United States despite charitable donations that ended up in the hands of Al-Qaeda.
Upholding a 2006 decision by a lower court, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled inadmissible a lawsuit in which families of victims of the 9/11 attacks charged that Saudi Arabia, four Saudi princes, a Saudi charity and bank had given material support to Al-Qaeda.
The plaintiffs in the case cited Saudi donations to Muslim charity groups that were later transferred to the Al-Qaeda terror network, arguing the Saudis were responsible for financing the 9/11 attacks.
The court in its ruling said the "Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976" granted the Saudi defendants immunity from prosecution on US soil.
It also ruled that a charity named in the suit, the Saudi High Commission for Relief to Bosnia and Herzegovina, was also immune under the same law as it was "an agency or instrumentality of the Kingdom."
Exceptions to the immunity provisions did not apply in the case, the court ruled, "because the Kingdom has not been designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States."
Please Apply My Electricity Overpayments to Water Conservation (Dis)incentives
Jeff Rupp - Pasadena
How ironic the recent front page photo shows one of the Brookside Golf Course lakes not being replenished with water due to "conservation" when the solution is a short iron away -- the
It has always amazed me that for a small amount of engineering effort, these lakes, fueled by water from a concrete drainage canal, could not be incorporated into the entire golf course water management program and still maintain adequate flows to feed the newly restored central Arroyo Seco River and replenish the watershed.
Someone also needs to inform
And one final thought. Leave it to any good government discussion to worry about loss of revenues from conservation. Of course these are the same folks who complain about the loss of gas tax revenues from reduced consumption. The obvious solution, at least to those who we entrust with our future, is to raise taxes, impose fees (excuse me, "incentives") or ?borrow" $11.2 million from the City's Light and Power Fund to balance the budget and raise the electric rates at the same time. Quoting the City Manager from a recent Star-New article, "It is a standard practice in
Perhaps you could apply any of my previous overpayments for electricity toward any of my future water (dis)incentives!
Pundit Note: In Pasadena, not only electricity, but water is overcharged and the excess above the real cost of water is transferred into the City's General Fund or diverted into investment accounts which are de facto reserves (now totalling two-thirds of a billion dollars). Which raises a point: why should property owners have their water rates increased if they are already overbilled?
Comment on above by Guido Meindl
Good commentary by Jeff Rupp re the Brookside GC lakes/ponds. My concern is that allowing them to evaporate will create additional problems aside from eliminating a significant watering and nesting/breeding environment for local and migratory bird populations and other 'beasties'. As the ponds continue to evaporate they will become an ideal mosquito breeding ground. To counteract this I would assume that the Pasadena Environmental Health Dept. will spray the ponds with anti-mosquito chemicals which will pose a threat to bird and animal species who rely on this water source. Without treatment this will pose a threat to the surrounding human neighborhood. Seems like a 'no win' scenario! Only retaining the water levels is the solution. Jeff Rupp has some excellent ideas of the subject.
