Post-Copenhagen: Is Man-Made Global Warming a Dead Issue?
Oops. A new study shows CFCs and cosmic rays are the major culprits for global warming. What does this mean?
In Between Sermons, Avatar a Stunning Experience
The 3-D elements help establish a sense of time and place that otherwise might not be possible.
Arbitrary Power, Dictatorship, and Health Care
Is the essence of dictatorship — and its institutional foundations — now being built into federal law?
Christmas, Satire, and Reality
When satire becomes politically correct reality, it's time to speak up.
CPAC: Consciously Providing Ammo to Critics
The 2010 conservative shindig will be sponsored by the conspiracy theorists of the John Birch Society.
Libertarians Need to Rethink Support for Drug Legalization
Does a man's death from swallowing a bag of pot during an arrest illustrate the evil of outlawing drugs? No, just the opposite.
Learned helplessness or learned optimism? You decide.
A reader emailed me today to ask if the American people were experiencing a kind of a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness”learned helplessness/a in response to our current government, much like the dogs in psychologist Martin Seligman’s studies. For those of you unfamiliar with learned helplessness–it is a technical term that “means a condition of a human being or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance to which it has been subjected.” br /br /Are people fed up and ready to give up in the face of overwhelming obstacles such as the health care bill debacle? Perhaps some, but I pointed out to this reader that one third of the dogs in the learned helplessness studies a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness”never gave up or became helpless:br //abr /blockquoteHowever, not all of the dogs in Seligman’s experiments became helpless. Of the roughly 150 dogs in experiments in the latter half of the 1960s, about one-third did not become helpless, but instead managed to find a way out of the unpleasant situation despite their past experience with it. The corresponding characteristic in humans has been found to correlate highly with optimism; however, not a naïve Polyannaish optimism, but an explanatory style that views the situation as other than personal, pervasive, or permanent. This distinction between people who adapt and those who break down under long-term psychological pressure was also studied in the 1950s in the context of brainwashing./blockquotebr /br /Like the more resilient dogs, those of us who love freedom, believe in making our own health care choices and know to our very core that the government does not own us must never become helpless but must continue to find ways out of an unpleasant situation, and look forward with optimism, knowing that no condition is permanent.br /br /Update: Stuart Schneiderman a href=”http://stuartschneiderman.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-to-produce-depression.html”has some additional thoughts./a
Massive Protests at Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s Funeral
The power of the dissident cleric has only grown since his death on Sunday.
I was saddened to hear that Brittany Murphy a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fredirect.html%3Fie%3DUTF8%26location%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.armchaircommentary.com%252F2009%252F12%252Fremembering-brittany-murphy-dies-obit.html%26token%3D0B2F044E0D97FF0A121B1574190E1207E3DC3C94tag=wwwviolentkicomlinkCode=ur2camp=1789creative=9325wwwviolentkicom”died of an apparent heart attack at 32. /a RIP.
Thoughts on the Democrats’ Health Care Victory
The way it is being rammed through Congress is not how the world’s greatest democracy should get its business accomplished.
Violence Policy Center Makes It Up as They Go Along — Again
The gun-control group that sprang from the Joyce Foundation is using false information and bad research to demonize concealed carry permit holders.
Climategate: The Perils of Global Warming Models
If a model has not been proven to fully reflect reality, then it has very limited use and should be treated like a horoscope.
The Franken vs. Lieberman Smackdown: A New Trend?
Comity is being replaced by comedy in the Senate, and sonorous debate may yet give way to hurled epithets and folding chairs.
Stopping Nuclear Terrorism
Time, as they say, is not on our side, and the Obama administration is apparently giving up trying to disarm North Korea.
The Socialist Revolution Has Come to America
Remember those heady days of 2008 when Barack Obama successfully painted himself as a moderate?
Copenhagen Wrap-Up: ‘I Have Seen the Future and It Stinks!’
I saw it with my own eyes: COP15 was only peripherally about “climate change” and almost entirely about UN hegemony.
The Historic Health Care Capitulation
Mitch McConnell got it right: “The history that’s being made here is the ignoring of the will of the American people.”
Year End Thoughts
Others have given us the Christmases past and present. But Christmases future are up to us.
History or Travesty, Health Care Reform Becoming a Reality
Whenever politicians start bandying about the word "historic" to describe something they've just done, grab your wallet and lock up the silver.
David Solway’s Hear, O Israel!: A Feast for the Conservative Mind
The new book by PJM's Solway asks why Jews are so prone to turn on themselves and make common cause with their enemies.
Mr. President, You Can’t Save the Economy and Save the Planet
Obama must choose between increasing economic activity which will increase emissions, or decreasing CO2 by keeping the economy stagnant.
PJM Political: Mazursky, Teachout, Geraghty, and Greenhut
Terry Teachout discusses his biographies of Louis Armstrong and H.L. Mencken, legendary film director Paul Mazursky, Jim Geraghty on trouble ahead for Newsweek, and journalist Steven Greenhut on his new book on public employee unions, Plunder. Hosted by the Vodkapundit, Steve Green!
PJM Political 12/19/09: Mazursky, Teachout, Geraghty, And Greenhut
Tune in each Saturday to Sirus-XM’s POTUS channel (#110 on Sirius, #130 on XM) at (all times eastern) 6:00 am, 12:00 pm, 6:00 pm, and Sunday at midnight (also eastern time zone) for the weekly edition of PJ Media’s PJM Political!
If you missed this week’s show, click below to listen:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
(Want to download instead of streaming? Click here to download this week’s show. Or click here to download the lo-fi edition.)
Join host Steve Green of VodkaPundit.com for a snapshot of Washington and beyond:
- Legendary film director Paul Mazursky stops by for an interview with longtime writing partner Roger L. Simon and his co-host on their weekly “Poliwood” series on PJTV, Lionel Chetwynd.
- Terry Teachout, drama critic with the Wall Street Journal and critic-at-large with Commentary magazine, discusses his new biography Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, and The Skeptic, his classic 2002 biography of H.L. Mencken.
- Jim Geraghty, proprietor of National Review Online’s “Campaign Spot” blog fleshes out his recent post on potential icebergs ahead for Newsweek in 2010.
- Steven Greenhut, director of the Pacific Research Institute Journalism Center in Sacramento and longtime Orange County Register journalist discusses his new book, Plunder: How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation.
- Produced by Ed Driscoll.
If you missed any recent edition of PJM Political, click here and scroll through for hours of audio archives. And tune in to PJ Media’s PJTV.com for wall-to-wall coverage of ClimateGate and other developing stories throughout the week.
Previous Posts | MICKEY KAUS: Does welfare cause terrorism, Part XVIII. ... |
| JOHN HINDERAKER: The Inevitable Decline Of Great Britain (cont’d). “The average American household is better armed than a London policeman, and as a result, it was left to a few women from the crowd of bystanders to try to deal with cleaver-wielding murderers. But that doesn’t mean the British are entirely lax with respect to law enforcement. No, not at all: it just depends which laws you are talking about. If you mean laws against carving up innocent people on the street with knives, well, the Brits have a problem. But if you complain about such an outrage on Facebook or Twitter, you’re going to be crushed by the full majesty of the law.” ... |
| A BAD REVIEW FOR OBAMA’S SPEECH: “He’s actually getting worse. This president will not admit that we are in a war.” |