Rumor and Hearsay New Sources for Glacial Retreat

SEE HERE I'm actually beginning to feel a little sorry for all those UN IPCC folks. This has to be terribly embarrassing. They're all spending so much money ginning up global warming alarmism that they can't afford to actually use meaningful scientific data actually collected by scientists making (gasp!) measurements. Now we discover that another source for glacial retreat claims is just so much anecdotal data from mountain climbers and Alpian tour guides. Oh well, stop laughing all of you. This is serious (hahahahahaha) business. These guys have reputations (well they used to have reputations) to protect.

BTW, while you're at it, would someone explain to me again why having glaciers retreating is a bad thing? You sure don't want them advancing. As they retreat presumably they expose more arable land and good things like that. It just seems as if the Chicken Littles of the world have to have something to compulse over. I've been watching this doomsday is tomorrow due to kind of nonsense my whole life. If any of it were true I'd have been dead a hundred time whether it's Alar on apples, mercury in swordfish, the lack of nutritian in cereals (I think that one just turned out to be due to the fact that rats can't digest all the stuff we can.), not to mention chocolate kills dogs but not people, DDT in cranberries (not enough to do anyone any harm but it pretty much killed off a couple of cranberry crops) lead in gasoline, various concerns about this and that ... almost all due to poorly done research and fear mongering. The government seems to like to encourage these kinds of things because it gives them an excuse to imposed unnecessary regulation and expand their power. Let no crisis go unwasted and if you don't have a convenient crisis, then manufacture one.

The Abolition of Man

SEE HERE For however long it is up, here is Chuck Colson talking about man's hubris and citing C.S. Lewis's Abolition of Man in support of his argument or more accurately as the core of his argument. When man imagines that his puny efforts to control nature are in fact effective it is rather laughable. From space, even near space, there are few works of man that are even visible without instruments. Think about what Colson says, and if you are of a mind, get a copy of Lewis's book. It is the book that made me forever a fan of C.S. Lewis and put him on my list of clear thinkers.

Plan B: Probably Unnecessary but Worth a Look

This is an interesting video and worth a look. My problems with it are:
1) the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is doubtful as described. Numbers prior to the hysteria generated by global alarmists were about seven years.
2) the idea that there can be too much CO2 (at least at the levels we can generate, currently about 3.6% of the overall CO2 produced by nature) and that it has a cumulative effect of any particular consequence is doubtful. It's a logarithmic function and most of the effect possible has already been achieved. Each doubling may produce 1 degree centigrade and the earth has been much warmer and had much more CO2 in the past without it endangering life.
3) the idea of pumping particulates into the sky to cause global cooling is just expensive and not too troubling as long as the stuff you put up there doesn't stay too long and cause so much global cooling that we have a problem.

So this is an interesting idea and might be worth exploring just in the extreme case that any of this nonsense has anything behind it but puffery.

Rights

I think we need a clear and coherent and principled dialog on the term "right." I am so sick of people inventiong rights here and there. Whatever they want is turned into a "right" and that's not, well, right. Rights are not a right because you desire something. All rights arise out of duty and when was the last time you heard someone demanding a right acknowledge that they had any kind of a duty related to that right? Not often, I'd wager. I'd like to find a really clear exposition of the idea of rights. I googled around some and what I found was more incoherent and a much larger variety of inconsistent ideas than I expected. I suppose that just points up the need for a clear exposition.

The first point is that rights only apply to man. The reason for that is that a right is a moral concept and only man is a moral actor. Animals only have rights because human beings have duties which extend to animals. I'll have to dig around to see if I can find good, sound material to use to explain what I mean. Most of the rights I hear about are not rights at all but desires disguised as rights.

Don't Kill the Messenger: But We're In Big Trouble

SEE HERE Europe is ahead of us. Britain is ahead of us. We should see the future of our own societal dissolution in the collapse of Europe as their society is culturally overrun.

I stumbled upon this reference accidentally because I followed an interesting quote:
People are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: ‘If only,’ they love to think, ‘if only people wouldn’t talk about it, it probably wouldn’t happen.’ --Enoch Powell, quoted on Brussels Journal.

The thrust of the quote is often associated with the notion of mistaking the messenger for the message. The bearer of ill tidings is not the cause of the problem, but may be giving enough warning to do something about it.

Free Speech? In America? Don't Make Me Laugh

SEE HERE The most fundamental human right is the freedom of free expression of ideas, even unpopular or hateful ideas. To some, just talking about God is offensive. Poor dears, they need to be protected from people who bring up the notion that they are not their own little gods. The whole idea of political correctness and one of its corollaries, hate speech, are examples of those liberal/leftist/progressive proto-tyrants' idea of controlling the world of ideas so that only the ideas that they approve can be talked about. Best be aware before your freedoms are gone.

Hope Buchanan is Right!

SEE HERE Pat seems to be making the case that both right and left is abandoning Obama which is quite delightful if true. He's making enemies to both side in his own party and among independents and conservatives. With any luck that might mean the NIC (Narcissist In Chief) is a shoe-in for a one term presidency. Whew! Hope Pat is right. Now all we need is to throw out the Demon-crat majority and we might be able to weather the storm.

The Several Sovereign States Need to Be Alert

SEE HERE The Federal drive for ultimate power continues under a president who seeks to "fundamentally transform America." If any transformation is required it is a return to the vision of the founding fathers. The governors must not be coopted by the strategy of the inner ring.

A Dose of Reality: Something the President Doesn't Get

SEE HERE One of the amazing things about watching the president giving the State of the Union address was the sustained impression I had that he lived in some other world than I did, a sort of lala land where everything he said was true.

In fact nearly everything he said was not only not true, but demonstrably not true with relatively little research. There must be a set of liberal lenses through which the world is seen that distorts reality so that up is down and black is white and right is wrong, sort of a Bizarro world of 1984 dimensions of crystalline lenses through which a liberal can see the world in their distorted way. I think the rest of us should strive to live in the real world of mortgages and jobs and paying our bill and getting on with our lives and we should put these weirdos on their own little island somewhere where they can happily socialize and continue to be totally disconnected from reality.

"Bait and Switch" Change You Didn't Forsee!

SEE HERE The spin that the Demon-crats are putting on the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts would be funny if it didn't show how disconnected from reality they are. Back in September Chip Wood wrote:

“I think we are witnessing the beginning of the end of liberal domination in Washington. I think Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and Barack Obama have badly underestimated the American people. They lied about what they’d do and they badly misjudged how much we would endure. The counter-revolution has begun.”


I hope he's right. Meanwhile the Narcissist In Charge (NIC) is punching away trying to transform America into his socialist totalitarian image. The State of the Union said it all and he berated the Supreme Court for giving freedom of speech (a protected freedom) to businesses. It was liberal arrogance to take it away in the first place.

Wisdom

The Blame Game ... the Demon-crats favorite pasttime.

Demon-crats Up To Their Old Tricks: the Politics of Division and Demonization

SEE HERE Thoroughly predictable of course. We frame a series of questions designed to label your opponent as an extremist, questions which have not answer in a few words or perhaps are simply intended to imply that you're suspect. Perhaps the best thing to do is point out that this is a form of "hate" speech? I hate that term. It has no meaning other than to label the person accused, but that's what they're trying to do. I'll write down what I think of the questions:

* Do you believe that Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen? — I don't know if he is a citizen because I don't have access to virtually any of his records. He is very secretive and so you have to wonder what he is trying to hide?

* Do you think the 10th Amendment bars Congress from issuing regulations like minimum health care coverage standards? — Actually I think that the constitution makes no provision for the federal government to be in the health care business whatsoever. The only reason the 10th amendment is in play at all is that it says that powers not expressly given by the constitution are reserved to the states. I think the federal government is a bloated white albatross hanging around the necks of all Americans and should be made a whole lot smaller.

* Do you think programs like Social Security and Medicare represent socialism and should never have been created in the first place? — More like Ponzi schemes that are structurally unstable and incapable of being sustained. The certainly emerge from a kind of socialist mindset which has been characterized of late as the "Nannie State." I don't really need the government as my nursemaid and if they took less of my money I could provide all the services that they pretend to provide by myself. As Will Rogers is said to have said:"I am less interested in the return on my money and the return of my money."

* Do you think President Obama is a socialist? — He's on record as being a socialist in his own words and he's also on record as surrounding himself with Marxists and Marxist radicals, so I'd apply the adage my mother used to use:"Birds of a feather flock together."

* Do you think America should return to a gold standard? — A gold standard is just a promise to exchange something of real value for the paper that we're printing. It doesn't have to be gold, but some standard seem necessary before the government inflates all the value away. Failure to have a stable currency is one of the cruelist acts of all on the part of government since it steals from those who are aged the benefits of their frugality and rewards those who live for no tomorrow and spend their money as fast as they get it. In short it is a socially destabilizing policy and should be corrected. The gold standard is one way, but there are a lot of others.

Hope that's helpful Demon-crats. But I'm not running for anything.

Facts and Figures Not Obama's Strong Suit

SEE HERE Actually it is hard to tell if the president has a strong suit other than the one he is wearing, and that's an empty suit. Last night's state of the union address was pretty pathetic overall and it was exceedingly truth challenged. Far be it from me to call the liar in chief a liar. It is much more likely that he's clueless. Afterall a lie is when you say something untrue with the knowledge that it is untrue with the intention to deceive those listening. The president wouldn't do that would he? He's an honorable man, so are they all, all honorable men ... that's the default presumption which is currently being challenged. The bottom line is either 1) Obama is delusional, or 2) Obama is a conscious and intentional liar ... pick one! It almost doesn't matter which you pick because it's bad either way.

POTUS Promises More and More Government Spending and Control

I listened to the whole State of the Union and didn't hear anything but rhetoric, promises for more government spending, the trotting out of the usual left boogie men, wall street, CEO benefits, greedy this and that, and promised to force gays into the military (it was interesting to watch the faces of the senior military present ... they were uniformly grim at the prospect). The positives were sops to the right: nuclear energy, clean coal, and beefing up the Veterans Administration. The negatives were far more powerfully pushed. The myth of clean green energy and stupidities like bio-fuels which drive up food prices to manufacture bad fuel alternatives, and on and on.

Bottom line: Business as usual from the government is always the solution to everything. Perhaps most disappointing to me was the fact that there was no sign that anyone understands economics. This idea that government can take money from the people and give it to someone else and thereby stimulate the economy is sheer myth. It doesn't work and never has. We are on a track to destroy the economy and not rescue it. All in all, a very disappointing performance. I also think that President Obama would be more convincing if he could stop reading the teleprompters so much (we might hear a real person then) and if he'd lower his nose about 15 degrees he might look less arrogant. To me he just looks like the Narcissist In Chief (the NIC).

The Republican response delivered in one seventh the time was more effective and more substantive. Governor Bob McDonnell of Virgina sounded a more responsible message of smaller government and more reliance on a free people to handle their own affairs. If we keep growing government we'll soon all be enslaved and McDonnell gets it a whole lot more than Obama.

RedState summed it up as "The President Lied." SEE HERE

Congratulations Honduras! No Thanks to the USA.

SEE HERE Little Honduras has been plagued by a pro-tyranny regime in the United States that is disrespectful of its duly constituted institutions. That episode should be over now, but given the tenacious absurdity of U.S. posturing who knows what new obstacles may be thrown in the way of an independent constitutional republic.

Unraveling Web of Deception

SEE HERE Science is not agenda driven. Science is data driven. The whole global warming fiasco is coming apart at the seams and hopefully people will learn something from this. Governments are just as likely to spin data as big oil corporations or whoever you're accusing of spin. Science isn't about spin, it's about data and validation of theories based on their confirmation by relevant data. If you fudge the data you can get whatever you want. Any data fudging done by scientists has to be 1) public (I rejected these outliers because ...) and the outliers need to be presented with the rest of the data, and 2) not related to what is trying to be proved. (That's called cherry picking your data and is a really really big no-no, essentially fraud.)

We have both of these thing going on in the AGW debate as well as some other nonsense.

The Path To Perdition

SEE HERE To destroy a society, destroy its families. 40% of children in the UK are now born in single parent families which equates generally to little or no family at all in the traditional sense of shared love, nurturing and family commitment. This way lies disaster, but the left loonies continue to push for measures that only make matters worse. One wonders if common sense will ever raise its weary head. If the West goes down for the count it will be a case of self-inflicted wounds.
FOR MORE

The Ultimate Threat

SEE HERE Picture a mushroom cloud rising over Manhattan and devastating New York City and you have captured the dream of our Jihadist adversaries. They want to hit us in a way that would be a game changing photo-op and not just a scene of carnage. We seem to be imagining that these folks are running cost/benefit models when their MO is entirely different.

An Interview On the Shroud of Turin

SEE HERE Every now and then we should take a break from politics and look at religion. G.K. Chesterton in 1905 was told he could write about anything he wanted — except religion and politics. Chesterton responded by saying there was nothing else worth writing about and went on to write about almost nothing else for the rest of his life. So a brief interlude into one of my other activities is worth looking at. The link is to Barrie Schwortz's interview. Barrie is a friend of mine, the documenting photographer of the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) which in 1978 traveled to Turin, Italy and spend 120 hours intensely studying the shroud will all the tools of modern science. I gave two scientific papers in 2008 at the Ohio Conference whose proceedings have recently been published YOU CAN GET A COPY and it's well worth it. It was a great conference.

Something Needs To Be Done

SEE HERE Thomas Sowell is on my short list of clear thinkers. There are some terrific folks on that list like C.S. Lewis, Aristotle, G.K. Chesterton and some others. Sowell makes it because he cuts through the obfuscation like a hot knife through butter. Read here what he says and ask yourself if we don't need to do something to make government more responsive. I think it's obvious that things are out of control in a bad direction when the government starts pushing through huge programs no-one has read in the dark of night before anyone, especially the people have read them and understand what is going on. It has to stop.

Support Our Military

SEE HERE Great short video. Watch for the little girl who the marine kneels down to greet.
Heart warming!

Flim Flam Summary

SEE HERE When you're bucking the political will to tax and spend it is an uphill battle. But slowly the great iceberg of Global Warming flim-flam is surfacing and the only true scientists are turning out to be those awful "deniers." As soon as politically motivated labels start running around in a scientific discourse you know it has been politicized and it's time to suspect all the data.

The Hypocrisy of the Left

SEE HERE There is something quite odd about the left. It doesn't practice what it preaches. For example it talks about tolerance but is intolerant. It condemns tyranny but is on intimate terms with tyrants. What you call people with such huge internal contractions is hypocrites. The reason is that they say they advocate one thing, but then practice another. There is no truth in them.

Would It Were So!

SEE HERE The Tea Party phenomenon is one of the few heartening aspects of the current political landscape. Perhaps patriots throughout the United States are getting it, that an informed citizenry is the necessary element for a free society to prosper. Don't count on the political parties getting it any time soon. The whole party idea is to create cliques which like old-boy clubs parcel out power and influence with relatively little mind to principle. The spirit of party is like the spirit of the inner circle or the inner ring that C.S. Lewis so indicted in both non-fiction and fiction. Perhaps his most telling work against the inner ring was "The Abolition of Man" and its fictional counterpart the third volume of the space trilogy, "That Hideous Strength." If we are to have any hope we must restore at least one of the major parties to the rule of principle. Right now the only one that looks to be in play is the Republican Party. So it is essential that the Tea Party movement co-opt the Republican Party and restore it to a party of principle. Anything less will end up being business as usual.

Terrorists Are Not Combatants, They Are Terrorists!

In an earlier age (not so much earlier) terrorists when captured were summarily executed. In fact the U.S. has treated terrorists with amazing generosity. We've waterboarded a whole three that had critical information.

Waterboarding is part of Seal Training. It's not exactly cutting their toes off one at a time.

RedState had this:

Marc Thiessen was on with Christiane Amanpour earlier in the week on CNN’s International network to discuss his new book. They had a heated confrontation that is well worth watching.

PART 1
PART 2

"The guy's actually crazy."

SEE HERE
Hard to miss actually! His only real accomplishments are in his own mind and in the minds of those that he's gulled.

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Just a day after the dazzling and emblematic Brown victory in Massachusetts, Obama demonstrated how tenuous his hold on objective reality is. Rather than acknowledge the clarity of the message sent by the people in their rejection of his agenda, most particularly the monstrous health crimes legislation; a visibly choleric Obama postulated the preposterous and offensive theory that Americans simply don’t understand the genius of his plans.

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Funnier and Funnier!

Jobs? Your Government Bailout In Action

SEE HERE Check it out. It's interesting to watch the country turn purple as the days go on. The government is almost the last institution to ask to do anything like create jobs. Jobs are created by small business and that's the sector of the economy that has been almost totally ignored. Gee?! Hmm?! Do you suppose all that bail out money (billions and billions ...) went to payoffs to Obama's too big to fail friends and labor union muggers (ur leaders). Don't worry though, we can't run out of money because they're printing more of it every day and the Fed is giving it away (well sort of ... interest free loans to big banks ...)

Stewardship? From Pelosi? HaHaHaHaHa ...

You probably saw this coverage somewhere, but it's worth a reminder. This is the speaker of the house who is supposed to be a good steward of the people's treasure since it is the House that passes the appropriations. Apparently a useless junket on junk science to Copenhagen is necessary to increase the carbon emissions and give everyone a good time. If this doesn't make you mad then you're part of the problem.

Demon-crats? A Case In Point ...

SEE HERE Our local newspaper ran an editorial piece on this past Friday which is a dramatic case in point on Demon-crats. Now I coined "demon-crats" to characterize the Democrat party's propensity to not argue on the basis of facts and principles but rather by demonizing their opposition. Let me give the DNR's quotes of Olbermann and highlight the demon-crat moves:

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“In short, in Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against woman and against politicians with whom he disagrees. In any other time in our history, this man would have been laughed off the stage as an unqualified and a disaster in the making by the most conservative of conservatives. Instead, the commonwealth of Massachusetts is close to sending this bad joke to the Senate of the United States.”

Not content with that defamation, Mr. Olbermann opined further after Brown’s victory:

“I wanted to apologize for calling Senator-elect Scott Brown an ‘irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea bagging, supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees.’ I’m sorry, I left out the word ‘sexist.’” (emphasis added by me)

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Now explain to me where in this particular verbal vomiting there is anything but demonizing. He not only demonizes Scott Brown, but apparently doesn't like nude models or tea party protesters. Notice that in the entire quote there isn't a single attempt to present any facts or principles in anything like a reasoned fashion. Now my position is that this is fairly characteristic of the left. You can go and look at any time. One of my favorite tests was to google "Ann Coulter" and then click on images. See how many are the visual equivalent of this kind of stuff. Ann Coulter does tend to label leftists, but mostly by lampooning their positions and saying that the positions are stupid. She scores more style points than "this kind of invective and vitriol" as the DNR editorial featured it. They point out that this seems to be mainstream liberal thinking. Yup ... that's what I mean by Demon-crats.

Bogus Is As Bogus Does: UN Credibility Non-Existent

The picture is a Greenpeace publicity stunt (propaganda) but the story is about phony science and public policy pushed by climate alarmists claiming they are saving the planet. Mostly the only thing they are doing is enriching themselves and advancing a political and chilling statist agenda (might be really chilling too!)

SEE HERE When you put data into a scientific report purely for its political impact you are no longer writing a scientific report. You are writing propaganda and taking an advocacy position. Knowing that that data isn't based on anything but speculation and still approving it means that you're a knowing party to the propaganda. This should have consequences to your status as a scientist, negative consequences. Scientists are not supposed to engage in propaganda to push policy agendas. They can do it in appropriate forums, but their science should be science and not agenda driven pap.
SEE EARLIER BRAMBLE
MEANWHILE MORE STUPIDITY

Some People are Certifiable and Jim Hansen is Among Them

SEE HERE
It's really a bit of a scandal that lunatics like Jim Hansen, the NASA climate alarmist, are taken seriously. This guy in endorsing a book that advocates ridding the world of industrial civilization is taking a position that would literally condemn billions to death, perhaps two thirds of the current population (See graph which starts in 1800).

The biosphere doesn't automatically provide for the human population. It takes technology and technology takes energy. Just go back about 100 years and ask what the world population was ... that's probably a little larger than we could sustain on such a program since a hundred years ago was well into the industrial revolution.

The American Holocaust Continues

The American killing of the unborn continues as the 2010 March for Life protests another year when over a million children were murdered by their mothers with the collusion of people who pretend to be doctors. It is doubtful that Moloch had so many sacrifices in ancient Carthage and God visited Rome upon them. One wonders whom God will choose for our chastisement. Meanwhile the killing continues and the average citizen continues to watch the degradation of a once great republic and votes for a president who supports terminating children that are unwanted even after they are born. Pray for a rebirth of principle before we drown in the rising slime.

Ungovernable: By Design!

SEE HERE Demon-crats suffer from one inexcusable flaw: The don't seem to know any history when it comes to their own country. The founding fathers went to great lengths to make the federal government "ungovernable." They didn't want a strong central government and so they intentionally built in all those checks and balances we always hear about but that Demon-crats never seem to really honor. Look at the shenanigans they've been pulling to try to get all their abusive big government measures passed in one big awful and unjustified hurray. Remember promises about transparency and bipartisanship and so forth? Let me know if you see any. At this point I think we are justified in calling them liars. Yeah, I know it's not polite. It's only accurate. One of the reasons that courtroom testimony tried to show that witnesses are liars is that it means their testimony is unreliable and they are dishonorable people. Remember, it's s simple equation: Liars = Dishonorable = Unreliable = (Oh and ...) Dishonest!! Now I think it is important to remember what a liar is since the Demon-crats don't seem to know that either. A liar is someone who knows the truth and tells a lie to mislead you. So George Bush when he attributed weapons of mass destruction to Iraq along with all the five major intelligence agencies in the world, was not a liar when we failed to find them. Indeed, the jury is still out since we telegraphed our every move and gave the Iraqis plenty of time to move and hide the evidence. We did find empty warehouses, empty casings, empty mobile biological and chemical laboratories and some few chemical weapons of older design. We also found stockpiles of suicide bomber suits (Saddam was a supplier) and lots of other stuff. But the key point is that you're not a liar if you believe what you say and later turn out to be wrong.

Demon-crats don't seem to get the distinction just as they don't understand that ungovernable was by design relative to the central, federal government. We should want to keep it that way. There is no evidence that Washington has ever found anything it couldn't screw up and if you let them expand the venue pretty soon everything will be screwed up.

Can You Hear Me Yet? Sheesh!

Do you think Senator Brown will be able to get the message through?

Line Up: The Next Eco Scare Is On The Way

SEE HERE
You probably should expect a new eco-scare since global warming is definitely cooling off. With a clear cooling trend in progress very few are finding continued howling about global warming very convincing and with all the evidence that it was manufactured in the first place coming out, this particular Chicken Little scare has likely run its course. So what's next? Who knows but expect the Green Hoard to flail around until they find one. I've lived through quite a number of these doom and gloom scenarios and I don't take any of them very seriously anymore whether it's mercury in fish that hasn't appreciably changed for centuries, to alar on apples or DDT in cranberries ... it has all been smoke and mirrors and layers and layers of lies and hype. Don't expect it to change. There's money in them thar hills! Scare'em and fleece'em. Works every time. There's a sucker born every minute!

A Little Humor: Some Folks Like Guns More Than Others!

Living In Interesting Times: 10th Amendment Rights

Virignia is a sovereign state! Bring the 10th Amendment back to life. There are boundaries in our system that were designed to be the critical checks in the checks and balances system. Without them we lose our liberty. Since when can the government order you to buy anything?

Let's Hear from Bob Marshall Too!

Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty!

Bio-Fuels: Stupid and Expensive Idea

SEE HERE It's really quite beyond me where some of these brain dead ideas come from. Taking perfectly good arable land suitable for growing food, indeed actually growing corn, and using the edible produce to make bad fuel (alcohol has a much lower energy density than gasoline and it does more engine damage) that is also way more expensive than the gasoline is just crazy, that's right Crazy, like in insane.

Sure we'll run out of gasoline and coal sometime or the other. Maybe we should invest in improving nuclear technology. It's currently driving around all our submarines and aircraft carriers and is supplying most of France's electrical needs. But taking perfectly good food and making it into really expensive energy inefficient fuel is , well I said it already, crazy. Who thinks up these things? Oh yeah, gubment! in conjunction with big business. Hudge and Gudge as Chesterton would have it. Time to stop and smell the roses and start investing in things that make sense, like letting people keep their money and the market decide what's worth spending money on instead of government.

This Is My Idea of Security

We could probably reduce the defense budget a lot if we just adopted this policy. We could also likely reduce the cost of police since the crime rate would likely be much reduced.

The Problem With An Uninformed Electorate

Why bother having an educated electorate? Maybe this should be a hint! This video is fairly old and it's amusing except that it is so pathetic. No wonder the country's tanking. Probably worth putting up Ben Stein's take on Obama's election: SEE HERE

It's Unraveling One Thread At A Time

SEE HERE Here's another story about pseudoscience pretending to be real science. It's really getting sickening as more and more comes out that shows how shallow and irresponsible the people have been that are supposed to be doing this "science." I guess maybe the glaciers aren't melting or at least aren't melting with the breathtaking speed everyone was talking about. The history of the planet is about glaciers advancing and receding. On the whole I'd much rather have them receding.

Chinese Cyberattack Is Serious Business

SEE HERE Do a little googling about the Chinese Cyberattack and what you find should concern you. The Chinese have been conducting a concerted and continuing cyber-espionage program against the United States and other Western nations. The objective appears to be technology. Peter Navarro, one of my favorite economic commentators said on his BLOG
China's objective was not that of a rogue hacker - to create chaos. Rather, the target was any intellectual property that would give Chinese enterprises a competitive edge - from trade secrets and new technologies to software such as Google's proprietary source code.Chinese cyberattacks are hardly new. China's military regularly hacks into America's defense networks to acquire military technologies. A glaring case in point: the highly sophisticated penetration last April of the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project.
It is clear that China represents a clear and present threat and should be treated as such. This kind of manipulation is part of a new and still emerging aspect of modern warfare called "Infowar." When I was employed in the defense sector I was exposed to some of the work is this area. It's serious business and Navarro and Google are only focusing on the tip of a very very large iceberg.

Yup ... Demon-crats At It Again!

My oh my, the devil himself. Demon-crats don't feel any need to actually use facts in any of their material. Why limit yourself when making things up is so much easier and after all the electorate are fools ... that's what the Demon-crats think. So we'll see if they've figured it out on Tuesday after a couple days of Demon-crat slime-balling.

It All Began in Massachusetts

Where Is The Economy Headed?

SEE HERE Pat Buchanan asks a good question here. If our government can't manage the money supply then is our republic sustainable? I don't know the answer, but I certainly hope so. Meanwhile all the economic signs are pointing every which way and the only thing I'm really pretty sure of is that inflation will be on the rise. Will it get out of control? Don't know. It might. Will it be worse than the Carter administration? Might be. Meanwhile I'm still in gold ETFs and Australian dollars and I'm shorting the dollar. Is that smart? I don't know but I've made about 15% on my money in the past three or four months which doesn't make me feel too bad.

Global Warming Is Fraudulant Science: Really!

CLICK the Banner for the KUSI Special Report page. To see the pages for the individual parts of the report, click on the part you are looking for.
PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 PART 4 PART 5

There is no significant man-made global warming, there has not been any in the past and there is no reason to fear any in the future. Carbon dioxide is a natural trace gas in the atmosphere with very limited greenhouse impact on temperatures and naturally produced CO2 greatly exceeds the CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels. There is no tipping point when the impact of CO2 sets in to cause an increased impact because of "forcing." The bad science behind the global warming myth is based on a hypothesis that has failed. — John Coleman
The bottom line? Someone is lying. Guess who!

Take What You Can Get In Massachusetts

SEE HERE There are a lot of things that are obvious, and media bias is clearly one of them. Red State does a nice job of summing up the reasons, primarily the fact that they are all drinking the same koolaid. It is impossible in politics or anything else for people to be clones of one another, but the mentality of the upscale media liberal comes about as close as is reasonably possible. Massachusetts seems like a breeding ground for that kind of thinking, at least in the circles media type frequent. In that environment you are probably blessed if you can get a fifty percent conservative principles. Of course willingness to "settle" for less than what you want is called compromise. There are limits to compromise. I find the principle of voting for the lessor evil at least painful if not incoherent. If they're both evil is it really better to vote for the lessor. Perhaps the evil will be relieved sooner if you vote for the worse, or perhaps you ought to vote for neither since any vote is an implied endorsement of evil. It is frustrating that the public square is contaminated with so much evil in our day and age. It makes being a responsible citizen particularly difficult.

CR/Z Coming In 2011

I was in love with my CR/X for a long time. Right now I'm driving a Mitsubishi Eclipse (2006) pearly gray, great car. But I still have a soft spot in my heart for my old CR/X which is now being driven by one of my grandchildren. Want to see it? HERE IT IS

I'm not too sure about this CR/Z. It's a hybrid after all and I'm not convinced that hybrids are all they are cracked up to be. They are part of this nonsense about global warming after all and that is really nonsense. Why you should buy an extra expensive car that is more complex, harder to maintain, and likely puts more dangerous stuff into the environment when it is recycled than any existing car is quite beyond me. Still I loved my CR/X and I want to take a look at this new Honda creation.

When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best

SEE HERE U.S. Military relief to Haiti. The pros enter the game.
"... the USS Carl Vinson, with a crew of between 4,000-5,000 sailors on board, is on the way and will arrive in the area by Friday, with 19 helicopters on board. It has three operating rooms, several dozen hospital beds and can produce fresh water."

INTERPOL immune from Freedom of Information Act and Search? Why exactly?

SEE HERE Just some interesting speculation here about why President Obama gave INTERPOL such unusual and quite possibly unconstitutional privileges. It is odd, as Chuck Norris points out that INTERPOL people said it was only for the New York office. It may be a play to keep sensitive information out of the U.S. or maybe even terrorists hands, but it may be more sinister. Who knows?

Do You Feel Safer? I Sure the Hell Don't!

SEE HERE Obama's one year anniversary is soon upon us. That should lead to a little assessment. Are we, as Americans, safer today than we were one year ago? We've had the Christmas underpants bomber who was only thwarted because he was incompetent. We had the Ft. Hood massacre by a loony Islamic U.S. Army officer who had telegraphed his extremism time and time again and been ignored. We have the 9/11 master mind about to be tried in a civilian court with U.S. protections and rule after being incarcerated in a military prison — now that's a brilliant move. (I'm being sarcastic. I have to say that in case any liberals are reading this since they don't have enough neurons to detect sarcasm even when it is obvious.) The triumph of political correctness in all its sundry forms is a disaster for the nation. It's time to put common sense back into play. That means you profile. It means you actually consider removing military officers with Islamic backgrounds to nice desk jobs far from weapons and best make sure they are not bringing firearms to work. These guys are nuts. I could go on ... but I think you have the idea. We can't fight a war against seriously bad guys with both arms tied around our backs. That is a recipe for suicide. No I don't feel safer. The POTUS is a empty suited nut job who puts extremists into sensitive positions in the White House and goes around the world apologizing for the United States. I'm going to have a very hard time stomaching three more years of this.

A Good Visual ... on Climate Change

SEE HERE The Patriot Post had an interesting visual today on Climate Change. It accompanied a pointed essay on the whole climate change brouhaha that continues to rage on. I personally think the science is settled: (i.e. what little science is actually involved) and the result is Al Gore's gloom and doom and that of a bunch of other global warming climate alarmists is so much manipulative poppycock. We just don't know enough. I'll be a lot more impressed when they can explain why we have ice ages because that might actually be useful to know. But I was interested in the visual since I think it makes the valid point that AGW never did make much sense, period. End of message, settled science.

Do You Hear Me Now ... Google Gets It? Hmm...

SEE HERE For an outfit whose motto is "Do no evil" Google's been heavily compromised in China. Maybe that is coming to an end. I was struck by the comment in the report "Google learned from its naivete. Oppressive rulers are never appeased by niceness. They see it as weakness." Now that's a lesson the president needs to learn. He doesn't have four years to learn it.

You might want to CHECK THIS OUT as counter point to this report.

By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them ...

SEE HERE Well most of the fruits and nuts are in the Demon-crat party. Those of us who are working folks tend to be a bit more conservative. Thomas Sowell has a new book out about intellectuals, and I fancy myself one, although one of the conservative ones like Sowell himself. There must be something in the water of the social sciences (that's an oxymoron of course) that turns them all into liberal, progressive, socialist, communist, statist proto-totalitarians. If that's not the case then I keep wondering why they almost all seem to end up with those kinds of opinions.

A long time ago I was thinking about the nature of discourse between people since all discourse is about the search for truth (I'm not talking about the weather here, not smalltalk) the question is why is it often so difficult. I concluded after some thought that it was because while we often think we are talking about the same thing, in fact depending on our presumptions, we may be talking right past each other, using the same words but meaning very different things.

There was a correspondent in today's newspaper who shall remain nameless but will be my poster boy for this. He said: "Capitalist markets are good at many things, but the assertion that they are good at taking care of the poor is a myth perpetuated by the wealthy to soothe consciences and justify selfish and profligated consumption." Wow!!

Not sure where to begin: "capitalist markets" is an incoherent category. There are only free or constrained markets. The markets in the United States are constrained. The only free markets are small informal affairs that have escaped the notice of governments. The idea that these markets don't help the poor is incoherent. It is not the function of markets to do anything but exchange goods at mutually agreed prices (in a free market) and at more or less controlled or constrained prices in a constrained or regulated market. What helps the poor is being able to have access to goods at the lowest possible price which is what a free market ensures. (See Adam Smith for the argument.) The demonization of the wealthy is gratuitous. The wealthy are in no particularly better position to control a market that is free than anyone else.

Our correspondent goes on to claim that "For distributing resources, capitalism is based on the principle of competition, which necessarily produces winners and losers." This is an interesting claim. Free market capitalism provides goods at the lowest price and quickly signals through prices the fact of scarcity so that producers can increased production or seek to provide the markets with alternatives. Government interference with markets muddles the signals and makes the markets less efficient. There is no "competition" only producers seeking buyers and distributing themselves voluntarily into the niches that are most productive for them.

Finally our correspondent claims: "Government is responsible for maintaining a socio-economic floor below which its citizens are not allowed to sink." This is asserted but not demonstrated. It seems to me that government does not have such a responsibility. Human beings have a responsibility to honor the dignity of their fellow human beings which includes helping the disadvantaged to live a human life and not be degraded. There is almost nothing more degrading than becoming a case-number in a government bureaucracy. The citizens may choose to delegate their own responsibility to the government but they cannot thereby escape the fact that it is a personal and human responsibility and not a government one.

In view of the fact that our correspondent gratuitously attacks capitalism, the wealthy, and assigns gratuitous responsibilities to government, one can suggest he is a statist and likely a socialist. Of course that is only an inference from his positions. One further statement "As a philosophy, capitalism is fundamentally at odds with the teachings of Christ — it encourages producers to gouge their neighbors not for what their product or service actually costs to produce, but for whatever they can get away with charging for them."

That's quite a condemnation. To start with capitalism is not a philosophy, but a label demonized by Karl Marx in Das Kapital. The implication is that the correspondent thinks that all goods should be traded at cost. Aside from the fact that all the costs are difficult to ascertain, on what principle should this be concluded? If I make something, this implies that I am required to sell it at what it cost me to make it. Suppose I am an artist. I buy paints, some canvas, and spend a couple of hours making a masterpiece because I've very good. My costs are minimal. Whose right is it to tell me what I should sell my work for? What does Christ have to do with it? Christ never condemned markets, only markets in the temple precinct. (a controlled market by the way) and He said that the poor would always be with us. "gouging" implies force and a free market doesn't require you to buy anything. It forces no exchanges. If you don't like the price you don't buy or you buy from another vendor at a lower price. So I suppose on the whole our correspondent has provided no coherent case against markets, or capitalism, nor has he demonstrated that Christ would be against markets. Instead he has demonstrated a thorough-going mind-set of a socialist/Marxist cast.

We need more clarity in the public square. No-one should make gratuitous assertions about motives without demonstration and expect them to just be accepted. Finally our correspondent is guilty of Bulverism. His whole argument turns on the gratuitous assignment of motives and characteristics to what he wants to condemn without any effort to demonstrate that the assertions are true. That is ideological thinking. There is too much of it in the world today since it undermines the search for truth. In fact free market capitalism has made every nation that has tried it wealthy so that the poor of those nations are the richest poor in the world.

Double Standard Alive and Well in Washington

SEE HERE Frankly I don't care if Harry Reid steps down as Senate Majority Leader. But I am amused that he can say something worse than Trent Lott and get a "bye" from the same arrogant idiots that crucified Lott. The Hypocrisy is gooey, but all too predictable. Any stick will do to beat those with principles while the unprincipled go merrily along lying and dealing for wealth and power. I am more and more disgusted with a postive revulsion at what passes for government these days.

Stimulus Doesn't Work and That's NOT a Surprise

SEE HERE One of the scary things is how little economics the average person knows. It seems a rare quality to actually know any fundamentals. The government stimulus story is a case in point. What is the rationale for expecting that the government spending money will do anything useful?

Where does the money they spend come from? It comes from you either immediately in the form of taxes or over a longer term in the form of inflation of increased interest rates on all loans. In any of these cases the money that the government spends is money that is then not spent by the tax payer or squeezed out of the tax payer somewhat more slowly in the form of more expensive loans or more expensive goods. Does that sound like stimulus?

There can be some stimulus in the short term because it takes a while for the economic signals to travel through the economy in the form of higher prices, higher taxes and the like. In the longer run the result is actually to depress the economy because the money so spent is typically spent wastefully. Government is a poor steward of money. It's not their money. No-one is every as good a steward when they're spending other peoples' money as when they are spending their own. That's just life. The bottom line: Stimulus doesn't stimulate. If the trillions we've blown doesn't show that then I don't know what will.

The Liar In Chief Gets Nailed by Cafferty on CNN

Openness? Give me a break. With CNN pointing out the obvious maybe we can start thinking that Obama's honeymoon is over. The question is: Why did it take so long for the media to start questioning this bird? He's been an empty suit from the beginning. Does it really take that long to figure it out. We need a media with more neurons.

What You Have To Do To Keep Warm These Days

My Wife Will Like This

Sometimes you just need a good laugh. I laughed a lot at this one. My wife will identify. She says I need supervision at the grocery store or I'll buy the whole place. That's not true of course. I don't have enough money to buy the whole place. I just like to try new things that I have not tried before. She's more of a safe eater. Eating things you already know about means you'll never be disappointed, and besides she hates garlic and garlic is one of those things that some people put in food and don't mention. Anyway, this piece was one I thought she'd like and she comes around my blog now and then to make sure I'm not making an absolute fool of myself. I think she thinks that all men need good female supervision. She's probably right too given some of the things men get to doing on their own. Make up your own list.

Red State Concern

SEE HERE I'm a fan of straight talking and Sarah Palin is a straight talker. Erick Erickson of RedState is a straight talker too so far as I can tell. He expresses concern here for the Tea Party gala in Nashville where Sarah Palin is set to speak. Now I don't know squat about how these Tea Party affairs are funded or organized. The Tea Party crowd I've personally run into have all been private citizens that are fed-up. So I can't say whether Erickson is on the right track or not. Only time will tell. I do know that some of the Tea Party crowd from my area are going to be there and I expect I'll get a report on how it went. The Tea Party probably shouldn't become a third party, especially not just another personality driven party. We have too much of that kind of politics. But they could become a force for pushing the principles of the founding fathers to the forefront. That I can support. Sarah Palin is the kind of straight talking, common sense person who could help make that happen. I share some of Erickson's concern, but we'll have to wait and see if it is warranted.

The Mindset of the Left: Personalities over Principle

The Kennedy Seat ... that says it all. The purpose of the Senate was to be a legislative body that represented the states. The House of Representatives was the legislative body that represented the people more specifically. The Founders exercised great insight in the way they structured the representative republic (the res publica) that was to avoid the twin dangers of mob-rule democracy on the one hand, and oligarchical tyranny on the other. Since 1789 we've been taking that insight apart piece by piece and it all heads in the direction of tyranny because there is tyranny to right and left. The seat is the seat representing the state of Massachusetts. The people's seats are in the other house. Oh yeah, but we messed that up didn't we? hmmm... To restore liberty we need to restore principle to its rightful place and stop imagining that it is all about who you are and not about what you are.

Reality Challenged

SEE HERE Oliver North, no stranger to intelligence nor to Osama bin Laden comments on the lack of realism in the Obama administration towards terrorism. If you don't take your enemy seriously, if you don't respond in a timely manner, if you insist on an unrealistic view of what is in fact a global conflict for hearts and minds, then you'll do stupid things. So far stupidity is winning.

How to Imagine Your Own Biases ... The Media Need More Neurons

SEE HERE Thomas Sowell, always a clear thinker, reveals the sloppy thinking of the media elite who can't tell the difference between static and dynamic categories. All of us have been "poor" at one time or the other. I had no income before I got my first paper route, and I was definitely not at the top of the food chain when I was a newly minted young physicist working at an entry level position for the government. Sowell's point is that our media elite can't seem to read statistics for what they are, a snapshot of a dynamic reality. Instead they read into the data their own statist biases. We all are exposed to the resulting propaganda.

Sarah Palin A Fox Contributor: You Go Girl!

SEE HERE I'm thrilled to hear that Sarah Palin is going to be a Fox Contributor. That will certainly give her the media experience that all the stupid media types seem to think is a candidate prerequisite. She has more neurons than the whole lot of them, so it will be interesting to see how this comes off.