Gee Whiz ... We Threw the Data Away: I Guess We Can't Check Those Results

SEE HERE One of the things I shared with my friend Alan was that: For me the dead giveaway that there was something and continues to be something wrong with Global Warming are: 1) Lack of measurement data, 2) huge heat island effects that are minimized, 3) inconsistent with satellite data, 4) existence of evidence that Mars is experiencing global warming, 5) almost total dependence on computer models. Each of these is a problem, the combination makes the whole thing overwhelmingly doubtful. I've been a scientist damn near my whole life and anything with this signature is likely to be bogus.

Note that I'm not saying Global Warming isn't happening, only that human beings have little to nothing to do with it. Our contribution to the CO2 for example is in the range of 3% and moreover the theory that CO2 drives warming is largely discredited if by nothing else than by the ice core data.

The Evolving Climate Debate: Finally!!

A friend of mine, Alan, sent me a gazillion links on the climate debate with the comment that reading the material was like reading a detective story and more and more came out. Increasingly it looks like much of the global warming evidence comes from cooking the books. We would sent accountants to jail for this kind of thing, I suppose scientists will just get a pass. Here (have not done it yet) is the link list ... I'll turn them into real links shortly:

Oct. 01, 2006: HERE Mar. 25, 2009: HERE Sep. 29, 2009: HERE Sep. 29, 2009:HERE
Oct. 14, 2009:HERE Nov. 09, 2009:HERE Nov. 19, 2009:HERE Nov. 20, 2009:HERE
Nov. 20, 2009:HERE Nov. 21, 2009:HERE Nov. 21, 2009:HERE Nov. 21, 2009:HERE
Nov. 21, 2009: HERE Nov. 22, 2009: HERE Nov. 22, 2009: HERE Nov. 22, 2009: HERE
Nov. 22, 2009: HERE Nov. 23, 2009: HERE Nov. 23, 2009: HERE Nov. 23, 2009: HERE
Nov. 23, 2009:HERE Nov. 23, 2009: HERE Nov. 23, 2009: HERE Nov. 23, 2009:HERE
Nov. 23, 2009: HERE Nov. 23, 2009:HERE Nov. 23, 2009:HERE Nov. 23, 2009:HERE
Nov. 24, 2009:HERE Nov. 24, 2009:HERENov. 24, 2009: HERENov. 24, 2009: HERE
Nov. 25, 2009: HERENov. 25, 2009: HERENov. 25, 2009: HERENov. 26, 2009: HERE
Nov. 27, 2009: HERE Nov. 27, 2009:HERENov. 28, 2009: HERENov. 28, 2009: HERE
Nov. 28, 2009: HERENov. 29, 2009:HERENov. 29, 2009:HERE Nov. 29, 2009:HERE
Nov. 29, 2009:HERE

One Hand Washes the Other

SEE HERE
I guess what we really have here is a kind of a confidence racket. The First World pays off the Third World ... not clear why or who is really benefiting. The whole thing seems to smell to high heavens though, especially since the "science" doesn't seem to be valid. On the other hand it's only $10 billion dollars. Nowadays with trillion dollar deficits and tens of trillions in unfunded mandates that's just chump change.

Do you suppose they'll bail us out when we go broke?

A Letter from A Patriot to the President

I think the letter says it all. Sarah Palin had a link to the letter today on Facebook (HERE)

---

Dear President Obama,

My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year. People meeting me for the first time don't believe my age because I remain wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert.

I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos'n Mate. Now I live in a "rest home" located on the western end of Pearl Harbor, allowing me to keep alive the memories of 23 years of service to my country.

One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind, blunt and direct even to the head man.

So here goes.

I am amazed, angry and determined not to see my country die before I do, but you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish.

I can't figure out what country you are the president of.

You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies like:

" We're no longer a Christian nation"

" America is arrogant" - (Your wife even

announced to the world,"America is mean-

spirited. " Please tell her to try preaching

that nonsense to 23 generations of our

war dead buried all over the globe who

died for no other reason than to free a

whole lot of strangers from tyranny and

hopelessness.)

I'd say shame on the both of you, but I don't think you like America, nor do I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do, for the obvious gifts this country has given you. To be without shame or gratefulness is a dangerous thing for a man sitting in the White House.

After 9/11 you said," America hasn't lived up to her ideals."

Which ones did you mean? Was it the notion of personal liberty that 11,000 farmers and shopkeepers died for to win independence from the British? Or maybe the ideal that no man should be a slave to another man, that 500,000 men died for in the Civil War? I hope you didn't mean the ideal 470,000 fathers, brothers, husbands, and a lot of fellas I knew personally died for in WWII, because we felt real strongly about not letting any nation push us around, because we stand for freedom.

I don't think you mean the ideal that says equality is better than discrimination. You know the one that a whole lot of white people understood when they helped to get you elected.

Take a little advice from a very old geezer, young man.

Shape up and start acting like an American. If you don't, I'll do what I can to see you get shipped out of that fancy rental on Pennsylvania Avenue. You were elected to lead not to bow, apologize and kiss the hands of murderers and corrupt leaders who still treat their people like slaves.

And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded dozens more.. You mean you don't want us to do what you did when that white cop used force to subdue that black college professor in Massachusetts, who was putting up a fight? You don't mind offending the police calling them stupid but you don't want us to offend Muslim fanatics by calling them what they are, terrorists.

One more thing. I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life, but you're the Commander-in-Chief now, son. Do your job. When your battle-hardened field General asks you for 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him. But if you're not in this fight to win, then get out. The life of one American soldier is not worth the best political strategy you're thinking of.

You could be our greatest president because you face the greatest challenge ever presented to any president.

You're not going to restore American greatness by bringing back our bloated economy.. That's not our greatest threat. Losing the heart and soul of who we are as Americans is our big fight now.

And I sure as hell don't want to think my president is the enemy in this final battle.

Sincerely,

Harold B. Estes

Have Liberals Ever Contributed? Hunt Doesn't Think So

SEE HERE I was looking into the American Thinker piece of August 31st on American Thinker (SEE HERE) which critiques the Obama presidency six months in, and that brought up the question of "Who is Geoffrey P. Hunt?" the author of the piece. Apparently there is an attribution running around the net that it is this guy (SEE BIO) but he's got a clear disclaimer at the bottom of his bio. I did a short piece on the failed presidency article back about two week ago (SEE HERE) and in any case this is a long preface to what is just a note of applause for another of Geoffrey P. Hunt's articles, whoever he is.

In this one, which you can find by clicking on the first 'SEE HERE' or right now, he makes the point that the critics on the left have never created anything that works. I don't know whether that is true or not, but it feels right in my experience. The really far out lefties are just professional whiners. They tend to all feel like really great people that have been unfairly ignored (sort of diamonds in the rough) and that means of course that they could run things much better than the other people, that is the people who are actually making positive contributions.

I tend to be inherently distrustful of such blanket claims. Surely some liberal has contributed something of note. Perhaps someone will send me the short list of great contributions by card carrying liberals. I'd be happy to put it up on the brambles here. Meanwhile I'm puzzling over both what examples might apply and the question of "Who is Geoffrey P. Hunt?" ...

So naturally after I finished the above I did a google search on liberal contributions and got SEE HERE which I thought was pretty amusing since it is a list of liberal contributions and when you see it you'll notice that it is almost entirely made up of giving people's money away or creating regulatory bureaucracies. That was too funny not to go back and post. Maggie Thatcher said or is said to have said:"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." Looking at the list of liberal "contributions" you can see that they are contributing other people's money. That only works until you have beggared the productive, which seems to be a process well underway. See you in the coming bread lines when the Obama hyper inflation finally sets in ... From a site my wife likes to frequent, the Navy Conservative Moms, (SEE HERE) come a few other great quotes.

"When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both." - James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union

"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus

"A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn't own." - Unknown

What to Expect from Islam: The Peace is the Peace of the Grave

I received this in an email from a friend on the left coast. I think it does a marvelous job of summing up the danger represented by Islam.

---

Adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond's book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat

Islam is not a religion, nor is it a cult. In its fullest form, it is a complete, total, 100% system of life.

Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, social, and military components. The religious component is a beard for all of the other components.

Islamization begins when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their religious privileges.

When politically correct, tolerant, and culturally diverse societies agree to Muslim demands for their religious privileges, some of the other components tend to creep in as well.

Here's how it works:

As long as the Muslim population remains around or under 2% in any given country, they will be for the most part be regarded as a peace-loving minority, and not as a threat to other citizens. This is the case in:

United States -- Muslim 0.6%
Australia -- Muslim 1.5%
Canada -- Muslim 1.9%
China -- Muslim 1.8%
Italy -- Muslim 1.5%
Norway -- Muslim 1.8%

At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs.
This is happening in:

Denmark -- Muslim 2%
Germany -- Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7%
Spain -- Muslim 4%
Thailand -- Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. For example, they will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. This is occurring in:

France -- Muslim 8%
Philippines -- 5%
Sweden -- Muslim 5%
Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago -- Muslim 5.8%

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves (within their ghettos) under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islamists is to establish Sharia law over the entire world.

When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions. In Paris , we are already seeing car-burnings. Any non-Muslim action offends Islam, and results in uprisings and threats, such as in Amsterdam , with opposition to Mohammed cartoons and films about Islam. Such tensions are seen daily, particularly in Muslim sections, in:

Guyana -- Muslim 10%
India -- Muslim 13.4%
Israel -- Muslim 16%
Kenya -- Muslim 10%
Russia -- Muslim 15%

After reaching 20%, nations can expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings, and the burnings of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, such as in:

Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8%

At 40%, nations experience widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks, and ongoing militia warfare, such as in:

Bosnia -- Muslim 40%
Chad -- Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7%

From 60%, nations experience unfettered persecution of non-believers of all other religions (including non-conforming Muslims), sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon, and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels, such as in:

Albania -- Muslim 70%
Malaysia -- Muslim 60.4%
Qatar -- Muslim 77.5%
Sudan -- Muslim 70%

After 80%, expect daily intimidation and violent jihad, some State-run ethnic cleansing, and even some genocide, as these nations drive out the infidels, and move toward 100% Muslim, such as has been experienced and in some ways is on-going in:

Bangladesh -- Muslim 83%
Egypt -- Muslim 90%
Gaza -- Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia -- Muslim 86.1%
Iran -- Muslim 98%
Iraq -- Muslim 97%
Jordan -- Muslim 92%
Morocco -- Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan -- Muslim 97%
Palestine -- Muslim 99%
Syria -- Muslim 90%
Tajikistan -- Muslim 90%
Turkey -- Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates -- Muslim 96%

100% will usher in the peace of 'Dar-es-Salaam' -- the Islamic House of Peace. Here there's supposed to be peace, because everybody is a Muslim, the Madrasses are the only schools, and the Koran is the only word, such as in:

Afghanistan -- Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia -- Muslim 100%
Somalia -- Muslim 100%
Yemen -- Muslim 100%

Unfortunately, peace is never achieved, as in these 100% states the most radical Muslims intimidate and spew hatred, and satisfy their blood lust by killing less radical Muslims, for a variety of reasons.

'Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; the tribe against the world, and all of us against the infidel. -- Leon Uris, 'The Haj'

It is important to understand that in some countries, with well under 100% Muslim populations, such as France, the minority Muslim populations live in ghettos, within which they are 100% Muslim, and within which they live by Sharia Law. The national police do not even enter these ghettos. There are no national courts, nor schools, nor non-Muslim religious facilities. In such situations, Muslims do not integrate into the community at large. The children attend madrasses. They learn only the Koran. To even associate with an infidel is a crime punishable with death. Therefore, in some areas of certain nations, Muslim Imams and extremists exercise more power than the national average would indicate.

Today's 1.5 billion Muslims make up 22% of the world's population. But their birth rates dwarf the birth rates of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and all other believers. Muslims will exceed 50% of the world's population by the end of this century.

Adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond's book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat

The Thought Police Are Alive and Well

SEE HERE Welcome to 1984 in 2009. Freedom of speech in "liberal speak" means only freedom to think like liberals. No-one who thinks for themselves need apply. This is where all political correctness leads whether it be "hate speech" or "hate crimes" or any other a priori judgment of motives based on agenda driven thought. Welcome to the cubical of pre-digested thought, the end of reason. It is exactly what is happening. We can only stop it if we stand up and are counted.

Climate-Gate IPCC Scientist Calls for Removal of Mann, Jones, and Rahmstorf

SEE HERE
The Climate-Gate impact continues as IPCC contributing author Dr. Eduardo Zorita calls for his colleagues to step down. The highly politicized atmosphere of the IPCC seems to have been saturated with political pressure to impose a climate activism agenda on the scientists. Is it any wonder that the science is questionable?

What's Wrong With the Country

SEE HERE and HERE
Do you want to know what is wrong with the country? The story about how we treat our Navy SEALS when they capture a vicious terrorist and rough him up some says it all. We have lost our collective minds. This of course isn't the only example. It may not even be the craziest example. The liberal mind set that suspends children in our schools for bringing plastic gun key chain ornaments to school is the mind set that leads to this kind of madness. If we don't stop this kind of thing we might as well just bag it up as a nation. This isn't a sign of goodness or maturity or whatever it is that the liberal loonies want to feature it as. What it is is a sign of dementia, of systemic death wish. We need to celebrate these guys not punish them. Keep this kind of behavior up and we'll just be signing our own death warrants. The bad guys must be laughing their heads off, since they like to literally cut the heads off Americans or hang them from bridges. It's time to stand up and be counted and stop this kind of insane nonsense.

Climate-Gate Video

Time Brings Perspective

Are the Mea Culpa's Starting?

SEE HERE Here's one oh too faithful global warming drum beater having second thoughts ... It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the whole community to admit that their claims are built on a house of cards. We'll see.

In case you wondered ... Martha Stuart is an Airhead

SEE HERE If you're going to dis someone, have a real reason, not some sort of phony baloney like Martha offers. She also did the usual, "my mind is made up, I won't watch Sarah Palin, because ... oh yeah, because my mind is made up." This unfortunately is the common path followed by those whose ideas are manufactured for them by someone else. Amusing to see, but painful to think about. It's that kind of thinking that has brought us to Obama-nation. The whole nation watches in pain as the Narcissist in Chief blunders from crisis to crisis guided by his marxist (Groucho) friends. The real marxists have all quit that stupid system because of a fatal flaw ... socialism only works until you run out of other people's money.

Climate-Gate Continues to Get Traction Get Out the Tombstone

SEE HERE and HERE and HERE It will be interesting to see if they can live this down. So far the Climate-Gate emails have only drawn luke-warm traction mostly among those who already thought that Global Warming was a major exaggeration. The question is whether the followers of this poor science will see the light or stay in denial as the current cold snap deepens.

BTW Want to see Al Gore make a total fool of himself ... HAHAHAHA We are talking a total jerk. The idea that he's a spokes person for anything scientific is so laughable ... oh yeah and he got a Nobel Prize. Scary! Gore should probably not be let out without a keeper.

The bottom line is that the climate models are not very good. They are curve fits not models and they are not even very good curve fits since they don't seem to be able to simultaneously model warming and cooling over a few decades. What is certainly being shown to be a sham is any relationship between CO2 concentration and temperature, at least CO2 as a temperature driver.

Whether this is a smoking gun from a data point of view is still up in the air a little. But from a political point of view, it is apparent that these guys were agenda driven and not data driven and that, whatever else you want to call it, is bad science. So if the real scientists would just stand up and be counted we could all get back to doing science and not politics.

The Global Warming Conspiracy

SEE HERE Now that a rather large number of emails have been revealed among the principle global warming scientists we see that there is a clear trail of collusion to manufacture a crisis despite the data and not because of it. This is not merely bad science. Scientists, like everyone else, can and often do make mistakes. Science is supposed to be self-correcting because the work of one scientist can be duplicated by another and any mistakes are likely to be corrected in the course of that kind of confirmation process.

This doesn't work if the real process is to confirm the hypothesis at any cost, be it destruction of non-confirming data, or the selection from a large population of data only those particular data points that confirm the hypothesis (called cherry picking the data) or unfairly maligning those in the field who don't support your favorite hypothesis or ... (well I think you get the idea).

The emails which have come to light reveal that all of these kinds of activities were going on. To say the least this should put a pall over the alledged AGW theories. The fact of the matter is that most of the data appears to have been manufactured by a combination of questionable techniques ranging from cherry picking the tree core data to suppressing the cooling data which contradicts the global warming simulation models and can't be explained by them.

We have here a scandal of significant proportions and some heads should surely roll. But we'll see if the political forces that encouraged these bad actors in the first place will now protect them once their biased and unscientific actions have come to light. There is no honor among thieves we are told and as it becomes more and more obvious of late, most politicians are likely thieves I'm guessing we'll see some distancing from these bad actors as well as a great deal of denial. Should we call them "deniers" then? I'd feel bad for them, except they so clearly don't deserve a whole lot of sympathy.

Standing Up and Being Counted

SEE HERE The Manhattan Declaration " ... addresses the sanctity of life, traditional marriage and religious liberty. The 4,700-word declaration issues a clarion call to Christians to adhere to their convictions and informs civil authorities that the signers will not - under any circumstance - abandon their Christian consciences." Newsmax on the piece SEE HERE

One of the great problems of our times is that we are bringing up a generation of barbarians. We have educators who have been forced to leave moral instruction out of the curriculum because of vague and incoherent claims that it somehow constitutes religion. Aristotle would have been amused by that claim and unimpressed.

The dignity and humanity of the human person are under attack as in no time in history. Popular books reduce man to a chaos of incoherent molecules. We need to resist. We need to stand up and be counted. We need to say "No" loudly to this destruction of the very core of human values.

The Centrality of Vision and the Importance of Truth

"Without vision the people die." That's a rather loose reading of Proverbs 29:18. I was casting around for a topic to write just a little about and my son Stephen called me on the phone and mentioned the Climate Depot revelation due to someone hacking (or an insider revealing) a host of climate emails. SEE HERE also check out the WSJ article SEE HERE

In our modern world we don't have much in the way of vision. We've gone too far down the secular humanist, atheistic-materialist, road to a vision that might be summed up as party on because life's a trial and then you die. Interestingly enough Peter Abelard talked about life as the process of learning how to die well. That's something that really sounds odd to modern ears where death is so much to be feared and youth so much to be blindly sought that we often find the assumptions underlying that pernicious worldview popping into our consciousness as if they are necessarily true.

Of course they are not true at all. So what does this have to do with whether or not there is global warming? Well to tell you the truth I'm not sure. I'm just tracking along on a mind thread which wiggles this way and that. I'm just overwhelmed really that serious scientists would be manipulating their data to promulgate a lie. Why are they doing such a thing? I'm trained as a scientist and that's the equivalent of a mortal sin for a scientist to simply fabricate data to prove his hypothesis correct. If this is the kind of thing a modern world view produces then I want no part of it.

I started this with the thought that I'd write something about how to construct a proper vision, but the phone call interrupted that train of thought and got me onto the climate kick again. The bottom line is we're experiencing global cooling for the past decade and the climatologists wedded to global warming have been fudging their data and lying and comparing notes in the background on supposedly private emails which have not been put on the internet.

If it's true it's a hoot. If it's false it is also a hoot. So at least you can enjoy a good laugh. By the way, it appears to be true.

The Green Energy Scam ... Enrich Gore and Company but Not Provide Energy

SEE HERE The bottom line is that all the most highly touted solutions to the "green energy" problem are not solutions at all. They are politely "scams" and swindles. TANSTAAFL was an acronym that Robert Heinlein made popular. "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" and despite the desire of the green crew to claim there is, it just ain't so.

If solar isn't particularly cost effective then wind is simply off the charts entirely. We're talking comparable like 800% compared to the next most expensive alternative, oil. Clean coal would be far cheaper than either oil or gas. Nobody talks much about nuclear since they're all afraid of the boogie-man, but in fact nuclear is the cleanest of all the alternatives both from the point of view of environmental impact and expense. Much of what makes nuclear expensive is boogie-man generated fear-costs built into legislation. It's time to get some rationality into the process and not just wishful thinking.

A Little More On the Bowing Gig ...

Now we're told it was "protocol" .... hmmmm... apparently this is a unique protocol created just for President Obama. He needs to get off this obsequious kick. He's the leader of the free world not some two bit for sale flunky ... isn't he? Are we missing something?

Obama must have the bowing gene ...

What is going on? Now Obama is bowing to the Japanese emperor. First it was to some Saudi Arabian prince. This guy doesn't seem to get it. Americans are free men and women and we don't go around bowing to potentates, especially ones we had to fight a world war to lick. Give me a break!

Doesn't anyone give this character any direction on American protocol? It's just plain discouraging to see this. Between the apologizing and the bowing I'm not sure which is worse. They're both bad and both send entirely the wrong message.

Bush: Some Democrats are Soul-Searching

SEE HERE Sometimes it's easy to be myopic and see only the things you want to see or the things you choose to criticize. Here's a Democratic blogger's reevaluation of George W. Bush in the 20:20 vision of hindsight informed by the contrast with the current administration's leadership. Bush stands up well in the contrast.

Why You Should Vote Democratic

Yup, the Koolaid is free!!!! Yup, yup, yup ...

Twelve Trillion and Counting: The Beat Goes On!

SEE HERE It's painful to watch irresponsibility in action. Some things though have to be remembered so that you can put the world in perspective. I was reminded of one of those when I read my sister Mary's blog today about Ed Freeman. He died on August 20th last year. He was a hero SEE HERE and we need to remember that for every bozo there's a hero somewhere, often unheralded just as many of the bozos are celebrated. It doesn't make sense particularly. That's because the world measure out in coffee spoons as T.S. Eliot put it, doesn't make much sense. We're all in this together but some of use think that the result of us should pay their bills. A lot of those people are in Washington pretending to be leaders. They are mostly not fit to tie Ed Freeman's shoelaces and never were. So click on the first link and watch the continued irresponsibility unwind day by day. You have to pay for it, you and your kids and your kids' kids.

A President Without Respect

Here is President Obama at it again, showing no respect for the flag. What is with this guy? He goes around the world apologising for America. He shows no respect for the national anthem or the flag. He refuses to wear patriotic symbols. He locks up all his records. He seems bent on beggaring the country as he prints money willie-nillie and fires the heads of private corporations and bails out banks "too big to fail" and closes hundreds more. I think it's long past time to ask some serious questions about who this guy really is? What is his real agenda? What is his background in serious detail? Because everything we're constantly told about him, how smart he is, how open he is, how dedicated he is, all seems to be contradicted by his actions. He's made all kinds of dumb moves, he's been the most closed president ever about his background, if he's dedicated to anything it seems to be spending money without any kind of checks and balances. He says he wants to transform America. Unfortunately he was never very specific about the question, "transform to what." Right now the transformation doesn't look very positive.

Another Failed Presidency: An Oldie But Goodie

SEE HERE This particular article points out (August 31st) that Barack Obama's presidency was and in fact continues to be in free fall. I think that has to be ascribed to a remarkable insensitivity to the will of the American people. A president who puts his extreme agenda on the front burner and totally ignores the people who elected him is not showing either good judgment or any sense of proportion. This president has taken his election as a mandate to transform America into a leftist socialist, tyrannical nation ruled by an elite of the left. This ignores the fact that the nation is largely a moderately conservative nation dedicated to freedom and the free market. If he wants a fight he's certainly going after one.

How to Create A Housing Bubble: Thomas Sowell Tells All!

SEE HERE I won't kid you, I'm a very very big fan of Thomas Sowell. I began following him after seeing him on several of William F. Buckley's "Firing Line" shows. He was always quite brilliant, incisive, highly focused and data driven. Those are qualities I really value in analysis. I get really sick of reading analysis that is really just a veiled version of various opinions and prejudices mixed as a toxic concoction with political ideologies and the lock-step mantra of political correctness. Quite a few columnists come to mind that fit that description. Thomas Sowell by contrast is a voice of reason. If you wonder where the housing crisis started there is no better place to begin than reading Thomas Sowell. Dig in and enjoy. The fact is that despite all the spin that it was caused by greed, in fact it was caused by government meddling. When it gets broken, nine times out of ten it is the government that broke it when all the data is unpacked and inspected, whether we're talking about the Great Depression or this recent Housing Bubble. They are well on their way to breaking a lot more and a lot faster.

What Does Obama Have to Hide?

SEE HERE Obama is estimated to have spent over $1.4 million dollars concealing the most mundane elements of his biography, things that have been a matter of public record for most presidents. This secrecy coming from a man who wrote two self-promotional books and is widely touted by his supporters as being one of the smartest men to ever occupy the White House is just frankly bizarre. What is the motive for it? It is frankly very disquieting. One doesn't spend that kind of money to hide things unless there is something to hide. So what is it? The American people ought to know more about their president than this one is allowing them to know.

Audacity of Extremism: That About Sums It Up

SEE HERE The Obama administration is unique in American history for being "in your face" extremist on virtually every issue it has touched. No other administration in history has spontaneously generated so much opposition from such a cross section of the electorate as measured by the composition of Tea Party Activists. This is disturbing especially since the president doesn't seem to care leading people to believe that there's more going on than meets the eye. If you're already disturbed that moves you to being scared that in fact there is a move underway to destroy the traditional freedoms of all Americans. Lots of actions that the administration has sponsored send that message to, whether it is the call for Americans to rat-out their neighbors, or the attempts to turn people that disagree into the enemy. Freedom of speech is demonized. The race card is played on every possible occasion. Fiscal responsibility is out the window and somehow Afghanistan never gets the attention it deserves. I think "Audacity of Extremism" sums it up reasonably well.

Economics 101: Where We're Headed in 30 Minutes

A Move Towards the Purge of One's Political Enemies

Redstate offers a chilling assessment of recent administration political moves on the hiring of former political appointees. SEE HERE Far be it from me to be too concerned about the civil service except for its sheer size and lack of responsivity. If Redstate is right however, this is a significant partisan political move to eliminate former Republican political appointees from positions they have earned in the civil service and presumably a follow up to staff those positions with Democrats loyal to the administration.

Now it is all papered over in the enabling memorandum with non-partisan language, which seems like a cover. If Redstate is right then this is a totalitarian move. It should be no particular surprise that on the whole the civil service is a pretty leftist bunch on average. Why would you expect anything different? These are folks whose authority grows as government grows. You can make yourself a bureaucracy if the staffing doesn't grow. Work expands to fill the number of positions available so that what one person did in the past grows to be something four people do, then sixteen and so forth. This is just an application of Parkinson's Law properly generalized: "Work expands to fill the time available."

Abuse of Power

SEE HERE Life must be tough for the First Lady, but one has to wonder why she needs an army of staffers to support her every whim. It is an unprecedented abuse of her position. The tragedy is no-one seems to take umbrage. I guess it's just expected these days that all elected officials and even their unelected wives will feed at the public trough without any consideration for the hard working taxpayers who make it all possible.

You're About to be Raped

WHERE IT CAME FROM Sure enough the government doesn't think that you have a right to keep what you earn, especially if you earn a lot. They also don't think that your earnings incentivize you and taking them disincentivizes you. So don't be too surprised when the taxman knocks on your door for more and more. You have to pay for all these perks that the government hands out somehow. The loonies in charge think that means rape the rich some more. It's been proven time and again not to work, but that's just experience, who believes in that?

I lost track of the original link that this squib pointed to. It talked about increasing the marginal tax rates on the higher income Americans to 60%. This has been done in the past with disastrous results. It produces little additional revenue because the people that fall into the bracket are motivated to evade the tax by not taking the income unless they have to.

It's the Constitution Remember: It's Supposed to Limit the Powers of the Federal Government

This is a sobering account of the growth of government and its unconstitutional intrusion into our lives. It is time to curtail the growth of government and to make it subordinate to the constitution for real. Tyranny rising!

Obama Needs to Get Over His Racism

Rupert Murdock points out that Glenn Beck was simply stating a fact when he said that President Obama had made a racist remark. The President's entire history is tainted with racism and this is something he said he would be above. Time to act that way. The perpetual playing of the race card is simply disingenuous and ultimately a sign of racism itself.

Veteran's Day: I Stand With the Patriots

My father was career military. I was in the Army, my sons have all served or are serving. We stand with the Warriors!

Freedom Isn't Free: Stand Up America!

Sobering Perspective Fiat Currency and Stocks: Gold Rules

Peter Navarro is one of my favorite commentators on investing. I got interested in Navarro when I listened to his course: Big Picture Investing. I enjoyed the course so much that I bought copies of all of Navarro's books and signed up for his newsletter. I really like him because he is data driven, which is techie talk for someone who practices his discipline scientifically. He doesn't just push the latest mantra. What's interesting here is that Gold (using the ETF GLD) has out performed almost everything. That's a little surprising to me since gold is after all just a commodity. It is the inflation hedge of choice of course. In these difficult economic times maybe we should all own a little gold.

How Do You Discern a Dysfunctional Culture?

The ongoing mantra of political correctness trumpets the value of all sorts of liberal elitist gobbledegook. I was looked for the ultimate short list to see if it could be condensed down to a principle by which one could discern what was and what was not politically correct.



It's time, long since time, to go back to teaching fundamentals, especially the fundamentals of Western civilization and the rise of freedom. If we fail to do that then we will fall back into the darkness and tyranny of what Adlai Stevenson called the man on horseback. SEE HERE Oddly enough I remember that speech. I was only twelve. It must have been on television, perhaps only an excerpt. In the intervening time we have forgotten our heritage and we've contrived to sell it for a bowl of pottage, the political correctness pottage of a smorgasbord of cultures, most of which do not value freedom in the same way we do. One need only look around at the chaos in the world to see that a beacon of freedom is needed very badly. If we shutter our lamp, if the flame goes out, then I fear darkness is descending and one doesn't know how long before freedom will once more rise.

Things that Didn't Have to Happen

SEE HERE where Redstate reports that we knew all along that this low-life who carried out the Ft. Hood shootings was trying to contact al-Qaeida. Apparently we're back to having our heads up our proverbial posterial places of darkness. It's time to stop pretending that Islam is anything but an enemy.

Who's the Biggest Phoney: Obama or Bush ...

SEE HERE Apparently Obama wins this one hands down. Whether you like Bush or hate him, I'm mostly a fellow who likes Bush but doesn't agree with him on all that much. I don't much care for Obama who comes across to me as a show-off, empty suit phony, while for the record I simply love Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Clarence Thomas,and Alan Keyes. The difference is the one between authenticity and phony.

Lessons: Will We Never Learn?

One of the obvious lessons that keeps getting drilled home and not being taken is that Islam is not a religion of peace no matter how many times the mantra that it is is repeated. Redstate makes the point today in light of the Ft. Hood murders: SEE HERE and Ralph Peters in the New York Post HERE (Punch line: What are we nuts? Islam is disproportionately responsible for murder after murder. This is no religion of peace, it's a murderous disease.)

One of the enduring fallacies of the Bush Administration’s prosecution of the War on Terror was the refusal to admit that islam was neither peaceful in nature nor a disinterested observer in the war. This is not to say that all muslims are members of al-Qaeda, but to blithely ignore the religious dimension of the war was simply wrongheaded. To continue to ignore the particular vulnerability of muslim troops and officers to the propaganda on the grounds and label that very unremarkable observation as being racist or xenophobic is a fatal error. As we saw yesterday at Fort Hood.

The Moslim response: dispicable. These people need to be identified and removed to some other country. This is what we can expect from the Islamic sub-population in our midst. As they grow they grow as a parasite dedicated to killing the host when they get large enough. This is the history of the expansion of the Moslims. It is the character of the Meccah-Medina journey from a minority to a majority, from a "religion of love" to a tyranny of spite under Shariah law.

Confused Priorities ... the Norm

SEE HERE I guess I'm not surprised that President Obama seems to have his priorities confused and seems also to lack the personal touch. He's so used to reading teleprompters eloquently that actually pretending to be a human being doesn't come easily to him. Too bad. He stuck his foot in his mouth on this one. It's bad enough that he can't seem to get the Afghan war up to a high enough priority to actually talk to the people leading our soldiers in harms way, but now when a lunatic military officer takes out thirteen people for no very obvious reason the teleprompter reader in chief holds a light airy press conference. Is this guy from another planet? I think more and more that the original diagnosis as a chronic narcissist was right on.

Principles are the Only Track That Counts

Principles are those things that guide us in the path of truth. A principle is like a yardstick in that sense. It guides you to measure things to see to what degree they correspond with the truth. They may not always be perfect just because none of us is perfect. Before you elect someone to a leadership position, one of the fundamental questions is to what set of principles do they conform their lives. Good actions arise from good people, principled people. People whose principles are "me first" or "what have you done for me lately" or "one hand washes the other" or "do what feels right and hang the consequences" or ... well maybe you get the idea. Principled people are those who seek always to do what is right and avoid what is wrong. Unprincipled people almost always have their own ends in mind and see the ends of others as merely obstacles to their own advancement. These are not the people you want leading you. Even if they have a track it likely leads to places that you don't really want to go.

Free Speech Obama Style: Free to Agree With Him

Worth a look! The question is why does it take so long for this kind of stuff to come out? Where was the news media when this stuff was going on? Oh yeah, in Obama's corner. So much for a "free press" being the watchdog of the public good. Pravda was nothing compared to this voluntary cheer leading from the traditional media. It's time to restore the idea that freedom of speech includes the freedom to disagree with the presumptive consensus on anything. The notion of conventional wisdom, politically correct positions, and other expressions of right thinking as opposed to that evil wrong thinking is fundamentally antithetical to freedom. The speech censors are looking to control everything under the name of such things as "fairness" or "honesty" or any good sounding thing that can be wrestled into looking like something good while the slight of hand behind the scenes is thought control and rising tyranny.

Today in Washington: Tell'en It's Tyranny Not Health Care!

If the government health care plan goes through, this is what you can expect. It's not like it is news. Anyone who is subject to government run health care is in the hands of a system that doesn't care about your and drains the caring out of everyone else with massive bureaucracy and profligate inefficiency. Cheaper? — In Your Dreams.

A Clarion Call ...

SEE HERE I get the Patriot Post (you can subscribe yourself by CLICKING HERE) I don't always pay much attention to it and I'm not sure why I did today. I get so much email that often I just click it away to the trashcan without a second thought. It was probably the quote from Plutarch that got me ... I'm a sucker for classical allusions, the wisdom of those long dead that still applies today. Timeless truth is, well, timeless!

"The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits." -- Greek historian Plutarch (c. 46-120A.D.)

Plutarch lived under the Roman Empire in the somewhat golden years (at least if you were not a Christian). He wrote about great men and women. The devolution of a people arises when they begin to think they are entitled to the goods of others. That what taxes do, especially to those who distribute the largess. Spending other people's money is great fun. There ought to be a lot of responsibility associated with it, but that's another word that is mostly abused today.

On page 2 of today's Patriot Post is a quote by another of my favorites, a bit more contemporary, economist Thomas Sowell. He said " ... The entitlement mentality has eroded the once common belief that you earned things, including respect, instead of being given them. ..."

The rest was good too so I'm sharing it. Good things should be shared. Bad things should be warned about and disposed of. Right now we have some serious issues with government actions that seem to lead to no good place. Yesterday's elections look like a clarion call from the people to stop disassembling the republic. We'll soon discover whether anyone is listening.