Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Economist George Newman tears into both candidates, although he offers some advice to McCain: …Nothing reveals Mr. Obama’s visceral hostility to business more than the constant urging of our best and brightest to desert the productive private sector (“greed”) and go into public service like politics or community organizing (i.e., organizing people to press government…

The Register UK is looking at how Greenpeace views fusion. Greenpeace is suspicious. Yes they are. The (Joint European Torus) JET reactor in Culham, Oxfordshire was completed 25 years ago, and work is underway on ITER in Cadarache, France, a €10bn facility, backed by six countries (including China) plus the EU. The Czech Republic has…

FedBizOpps.gov has a solicitation for a bid for more experiments by EMC2, Doc Bussard’s company now being run (at least on the experimental side) by Rick Nebel. The Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division, China Lake, CA intends to procure on an other than full and open competition basis a service to provide: 1) Research…

Kim Priestap reports on early voting in Florida. Democrats seem to have a big advantage in turnout. Democrats are beaming that their party is outperforming the Republicans in early voting, releasing numbers Wednesday that show registrants of their party ahead 54 percent to 30 percent among the 1.4 million voters who have gone to the…

As Abe Greenwald makes clear, “Something Happened.” One week ago, the Zogby tracking poll had Barack Obama beating John McCain by almost 10 points among likely voters. Today, it’s a four-point game. Yesterday, IBD reported, “After seesawing between 3.2 and 3.9 points over the weekend, Obama’s lead slipped to 2.8[.]” Gallup’s newest traditional poll has…

I’m getting a bit tired of the fact that every time I write a post about Bill Ayers, I am told that the real issue is somehow G. Gordon Liddy. On the most recent occasion a commenter accused me of Nazism: How is it that you support a neo-nazi fascist like G. Gordon Liddy, who…

During the discussion of Ayers’ and the Weather Underground’s genocidal plan to murder 25 million Americans, it occurred to me that focusing on tactics (like terrorism and murder) tends to sideline the murderous ideology that drives them. In what I think is an attempt to frame the debate away from ideology, typical “fact check” discussions…

From the comments at HillBuzz Sara P speaks Ok, I want to clear my conscious a little. Hopefully you could make a blog post to help some fellow clinton supporters out. I work for a campaign and can’t wait for this week to be over. I was doing it for a job. I was not…

HillBuzz needs your help with their get out the vote effort for McCain/Palin. We need to ask for your help. We’re putting together a canvassing trip into Ohio this coming weekend to bring what we hope will be about 70 DeMcCrats for McCain and Young Republican supporters into Ohio to canvass for McCain/Palin in the…

The Wall Street Journal has a memo from the McCain Campaign. Let me just give one highlight that touches on something I wrote about yesterday: The PUMA Question. * We are beginning to once again get over a 20% chunk of the vote among soft Democrats. Importantly as well, our long identified target of “Walmart…

In the comments on my post A Funny Thing Happened In The Voting Booth commenter Dr. Nobel Dynamite made the following point. “Not to mention the PUMA factor.” [that was me – ed.] You need to turn off the propaganda for a while, my friend. Just because Neil Cavuto trots out a cigarette hag that…

In a riveting interview piece titled “Eyewitness to the Ayers Revolution,”Bob Owens has more on the incredible story of the plan (by Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and others) to kill 25 million Americans: Pajamas Media: You stated in your interview in No Place to Hide that you wanted us to “imagine sitting in a room…

Howard Stern goes to Harlem and asks some man on the street questions. You have to wonder why the Shrinking Media can’t do stuff like this. Did I mention that the Christian Science Monitor is going weekly and the LA Times is laying off 75 more? And that there is a general circulation decline? H/T…

“Rain and snow this evening. A snow shower or two overnight” That’s tonight’s Yahoo weather forecast for Ann Arbor. And this is only October! Where’s my global warming? I realize weather is not climate, but I’m not all that cheered up by this chart: Moreover, I see that Ann Arbor is not alone. In fact,…

How dare a local Philadelphia CBS affiliate ask Joe Biden anything but softball questions? How dare they? Naturally, the station has been put on the campaign blacklist. Hmmm… With all the talk about media bias, I think outlets like this should be singled out for praise. I’m also wondering whether pliant news outlets that inevitably…

I’m sorry to read (via Hugh Hewitt) that Dean Barnett has died. Hugh Hewitt remembers him, and his inspiring desire to live despite a battle with Cystic Fibrosis that shortened his life: Dean told me early in our friendship that his disease had forced him to deal with the possibility of living too short a…

Red State has an interesting anecdote about some Democrats who got together to vote early. Yesterday, I heard a great story from a friend who describes herself as a “Legacy Democrat” she says that everyone in her family has been a registered Democrat as far back as she can remember – parents, grandparents, great-grandparents… you…

In an email, I was sent a painfully funny video showing a character played by the buffoonish William Shatner who Newsbusters describes as, “helping” Barack Obama as he defends the Second Amendment. I’ve never seen the series it’s from, but the episode is discussed here.

A mannequin dressed up to look like Sarah Palin is hanging by a noose in front of a West Hollywood home. WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) ? A Halloween decoration showing a mannequin dressed as vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin hanging by a noose from the roof of a West Hollywood home is drawing giggles from…

I love this explanation of the tax code which has been floating around for several years: Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this: The first four…