So Feel-Good You'll Cry

Just read the story.

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Edit (5/6/08): Here's the whole story on video.

Is This Ad Negative?

Some in the media have denounced it as negative, even racist. Judge for yourself.

Take Home Pay's Better

Lots in the news today about the tax rebates from the "economic stimulus." Politicians apparently think giving us our money back, putting it into our hands, will help the economy.

Why couldn't we just keep it in the first place; i.e., lower taxes? Take home pay's a wonderful thing. Wouldn't that help the economy all the time?

Something's inconsistent in their reasoning. Wonder if it has anything to do with it being an election year.

The Carbon Lie

All three Presidential contenders -- McCain, Clinton and Obama -- vow to "do something" about carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, in an effort to prevent global warming.

The government will spend our money to enforce a cap-and-trade system, in which businesses buy and sell carbon credits. The cap-and-trade system will supposedly prevent global warming. The leading cap-and-trade bill, S. 2191 (sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman and John Warner) will increase federal revenue by $1.2 TRILLION dollars over just the first 10 years according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Al Gore and others purchase carbon offsets -- sometimes from themselves -- to justify not changing their lifestyle, aka "carbon footprint." These carbon offsets supposedly will prevent global warming.

In all these instances, Americans will pay more for food, energy and other necessities, while at the same time having less take-home pay because of higher taxes (those extra taxes, of course, used to fight global warming.)

Here's the big secret:

Higher CO2 levels do not cause higher temperatures. Higher CO2 levels follow higher temperatures.

The best argument is here.

In Al Gore's movie, he carefully avoids saying that high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere cause global warming. He describes the relationship as "complex." With this fancy verbal footwork, it's likely that Gore knows the truth. He profits, of course, from the CO2 panic.

Besides nailing every global warming alarmist you talk to -- and oh, how I wish I could have discussed the matter with the IPCC spokesperson that was in Lubbock a few months ago -- you may be wondering what you can do about this craziness.

First, we need to work hard to defeat the stupid Lieberman-Warner bill. Go here to let your Senators know that you do not want another boondoggle of a government program. Second, engage in every debate, every blog, every public forum you can. Popular sentiment must change before this is quashed completely.

Good policy based on good science is acceptable to me. Global warming regulations have neither.

Take Back the Nobel

Al Gore's Oscar-winning propagandumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" continues to fall to pieces under the light of closer inspection. Newsbusters.org reports that ABC News revealed last Friday that one of the most famous scenes in the film was fake.

The scene, purportedly showing Antarctic ice shelves "calving" (breaking apart,) was actually a CGI from the opening of the movie "The Day After Tomorrow."

Add this to the faked "stranded polar bears" photo, and you can see the pattern take shape. Not only does Gore lie, misrepresent and dissemble, he then has the gall to proclaim "The debate is over."

Not hardly.

Herewith a list of anti-global warming propaganda links:

UK High Court: "Gore's Film is Propaganda"

Nine Inaccuracies in Gore's Film Pointed Out in Court

35 Inconvenient Truths: Errors in Gore's Movie

Questions for Al Gore

Global Warming Fraud mega-link

A Feel-Good Monday Morning

Courtesy of those wacky kids at Improv Everywhere (perpetrators of "Best Game Ever,") here's a little number that could have happened at South Plains Mall.

Have a happy Monday.

Best Game Ever

To help cleanse the palate of that last video (shudder), take a look at this one. A group of practical jokers take over a normal, average Little League game and make it big league, complete with fans with body paint, the Jumbotron and the Goodyear Blimp. It's a game that these kids won't ever forget.

Raining McCain

I'm...confused. This throws the presidential election into turmoil.

The Perfect Problem

In America, trends tend to start in California. Both good and bad ideas often originate there, and the rest of the country tries to catch up.

Now Los Angeles Country transit officials, to fight global warming, want to add a new tax onto the fees and taxes that motorists already pay.

From the "Desert Dispatch" opinion piece: "Billed as a "climate change mitigation and adaptation fee," the measure would cost motorists either an additional 3 percent motor fuel tax, or up to a $90 annual flat fee, based on vehicle emissions." The bill was introduced by Assemblyman Mike Feuer, a Los Angeles Democrat (surprise!) and author of Assembly Bill 2558.

Again, from the piece: "Los Angeles County motorists should ask Mr. Feuer what global temperature would persuade him that a new tax is unneeded. Global warming, now conveniently rechristened "climate change," is perfect for demagoguery. Those advancing the cause won't explain how they will know we have won the global warming fight, let alone what the ideal temperature is supposed to be."

Some points to take away from the story: 1) All the hubbub is over computer models. The supposed disasters have not been confirmed with real-world applications at all. I previously wrote about the failure of computer modeling here and here. Real world examples? Al Gore's photo of the "stranded" polar bears in his movie was deceptive at best, and the Arctic ice cap is pretty much normal.




2) What's the ideal temperature? At what temperature would the global warming alarmists stop their hysteria? It's the perfect Liberal problem: one without a solution.

Other People Say Smart Stuff, Too Part XI

Thomas Sowell, the smartest man in America, recently wrote a column with observations on various topics, but mostly politics. Some of his gems:

"Most of the problems of this country are not nearly as bad as the "solutions" -- especially the solutions that politicians come up with during election years. "

"What is more scary than any particular candidate or policy is the gullibility of the public and their willingness to be satisfied with talking points, rather than serious arguments."

"It is amazing to me that there are people who still take seriously claims by some candidates that they are against "special interests." All politicians are against their opponents' special interests and in favor of his own special interests. "

"The way to get people's votes is to say that all their problems are caused by other people, and that you will stop those other people from giving them trouble. But if you really want to help, then you can tell them the truth and risk losing their votes."

Global Warming: The Last Decade

A report from BBC News quotes scientists as saying, "The global temperature has not increased since 1998." Then follows the usual harumph, harumph as they explain that the temperature over the last ten years is not as important as the "long-term warming trend." The World Meteorological Organization says that the Earth's temperature has risen 0.74 degrees Celsius since the beginnng of the twentieth century.

Meanwhile, there is a disagreement as to which year was the warmest. NASA says it was 2005, while the UK's Hadley Centre says it was 1998.

A question comes to mind. If these two scientific agencies can't even agree on what the temperature was in a particular year within the last decade, how can they measure with any confidence the precise temperature of a year more than a century ago, when measuring instruments were crude and inaccurate? Especially when the declared increase is less than one degree?

Doubts, doubts. It's not unreasonable to have doubts about the claims.

BigDog

If you want to know why America is great, take a look at this new quadruped robot designed and produced by Boston Dynamics. BigDog weighs 230 lbs. and can carry a 340 lb. payload. It has articulated legs, similar to an animal's, that make it able to walk on all kinds of terrain.

Watch the video to see BigDog in action.

In Comparison

During World War II, the Japanese attacked the Aleutian Islands, establishing small numbers of troops on American soil (the Aleutians are part of Alaska.)

One of the major battles the Americans fought was to regain the island of Attu. Read what Wikipedia has to say about the operation.

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On May 11, 1943, the operation to recapture Attu began. Included with the invasion force was a group of native Alaskan scouts known as Castner's Cutthroats. A shortage of landing craft, unsuitable beaches, and equipment that failed to operate in the appalling weather made it very difficult to bring any force to bear against the Japanese. Many soldiers suffered from frostbite because essential supplies could not be landed, or having been landed, could not be moved to where they were needed because vehicles would not work on the tundra. The Japanese defenders under Colonel Yasuyo Yamasaki did not contest the landings, but rather dug in on high ground away from the shore. This caused bloody fighting: there were 3,929 U.S. casualties: 549 were killed, 1,148 were injured, 1,200 had severe cold injuries, 614 succumbed to disease, and 318 died of miscellaneous causes, largely Japanese booby traps and friendly fire.

On May 29, the last of the Japanese forces suddenly attacked near Massacre Bay in one of the largest banzai charges of the Pacific campaign. The charge, led by Colonel Yamasaki, penetrated U.S. lines far enough to encounter shocked rear-echelon units of the American force. After furious, brutal, close-quarter, and often hand-to-hand combat, the Japanese force was killed almost to the last man: only 28 prisoners were taken, none of them an officer. U.S. burial teams counted 2,351 Japanese dead, but it was presumed that hundreds more had been buried by bombardments over the course of the battle.

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Use your imagination to picture what the outcry from Democrats today would be over such a battle in Iraq. The casualties above occurred in just over two weeks. This goes to show something the Democrats seem to have missed -- War is messy.

From the Left to the Far Left

Thomas Sowell has written an insightful column about Barack Obama. He points out something that isn't discussed -- that Obama has been consistent in his actions his entire adult life. In college he sought out extreme leftists (Marxist professors, structural feminists, punk rock performance poets, the "more politically active" black students,) and later visited a member of the Weathermen underground terrorist group who endorsed Obama. He sought out Jeremiah Wright's church.

Barack Obama's voting record and actions have been remarkably consistent throughout his career. Although he now tries to project himself as a "unifier," nothing he has ever done in his career substantiates that assertion.

From Sowell:

"There is no evidence that Obama ever sought to educate himself on the views of people on the other end of the political spectrum, much less reach out to them. He reached out from the left to the far left. That's bringing us all together?"

Three Stooges Candidates

How could I ever pass this up?

Was Obama Talking About Me?

In a recent radio interview, Barack Obama referred to his grandmother as a "typical white person."

Create your own scenario of what would happen if it were another candidate with a different version of that statement.

This boggles my mind. I may have to crack open a six pack of MHL, eat a Moon Pie and watch Full House in HD just to calm myself.

Nothing Here

> The national political battle rages -- nothing much has changed in the last week. Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos is wreaking havoc on the Democrats.

> I'm about through with the book. It's taken longer than I anticipated. I overestimated how many pages I could write in a day. I mistakenly translated my sprint speed (I can write 4-5 pages in a single hour) to my marathon speed and thought I could write 20-30+ pages a day. I probably can some day, but the most productive day I've had this week is 14 pages. It's hard to keep that intensity for several hours straight. One bit of good news -- every day this week I've written more than the day before. I hope to get the manuscript in the mail by Monday.

> I plan on visiting the Mexiteria this afternoon to pick up some chiles rellenos. My birthday present to myself.

> If I don't talk to you before then, Happy Easter.

> Time to get back to the book.

[Edit: The book is finished. Now I can rejoin the land of the living.]

The Racial Divide

"OBAMA DECRIES RACIAL RHETORIC" ran a recent headline. In the article, Barack Obama decried "the forces of division" over race that he said are intruding into the Democratic presidential nomination contest. "We have to come together," he said.

"The forces of division have begun to raise their ugly head again," Obama said. "It reminds me: We've got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country. A lot of pent-up anger and mistrust and bitterness. This country wants to move beyond these kinds of things."

Yet Barack Obama has for twenty years been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, says things like this:






When the media spotlight shone on Wright's anti-American, racist attitude, Obama "denounced" Wright's remarks as "inflammatory."
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In 2006, Barack Obama gave $22,500 to the church.
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Only after getting caught did Obama try to "distance" himself from the remarks of his pastor of seventeen years. Prior to this he had never publicly criticized the remarks as "racist" or "divisive."
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Does a potential POTUS get away with something like this? Shrugging off the remarks of his spiritual mentor of twenty years as though they were unimportant, and accusing others of the exact same thing for bringing up the subject? How much of a free ride does this guy get?
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"President" Obama?
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Not if I can help it.

Happiness is a Warm Light Bulb

A recent column written by H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, highlights something I've been saying for a long time -- much of the research done by "manmade global warming" scientists is sloppy and inaccurate.

The gist of their argument, of course, is that climate-caused catastrophes will occur in the future due to mankind's activities (unless the United States pays exorbitant amounts of money to the United Nations while at the same time turning our society's calendar back 100 years.) This argument is championed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Burnett points out that forecasting researchers have compiled 140 principles that can be applied to a broad range of disciplines, including science, sociology, economics and politics. Even if global warming research scientists had collected accurate data on historical temperatures (which they have not; see my discussion of the discredited "hockey stick" graph) they would still need to use sound methods to predict possible future outcomes.

From Burnett's article: "In a recent NCPA study, Kesten Green and J. Scott Armstrong used these principles to audit the climate forecasts in the Fourth Assessment Report. Messrs. Green and Armstrong found the IPCC clearly violated 60 of the 127 principles relevant in assessing the IPCC predictions. Indeed, it could only be clearly established that the IPCC followed 17 of the more than 127 forecasting principles critical to making sound predictions.

"A good example of a principle clearly violated is "Make sure forecasts are independent of politics." Politics shapes the IPCC from beginning to end. Legislators, policymakers and/or diplomatic appointees select (or approve) the scientists — at least the lead scientists — who make up the IPCC. In addition, the summary and the final draft of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report was written in collaboration with political appointees and subject to their approval."

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Global warming alarmists want changes on a massive scale made to the US economy and society. Our politicians have taken up the argument, beginning with outlawing incandescent light bulbs. Interference in our daily lives based on a theory supported by flawed science should astound and enrage anyone with a bit of common sense. They have managed to get laws enacted based simply on fear (and a fear of bad publicity for the politicians.)

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Our side loses if we simply sit idly by and watch it happen.

All Things Warm and Wonderful

A quick catch-up on some of the recent news on global warming.....

In a recent column by Bill Steigerwald, we find a few interesting facts: The Arctic ice cap, represented as melting so much that New York would be under water, and hapless polar bears were drowning, is now at nearly normal levels, and one expert says it's thicker than usual in some spots.

Another researcher, California meteroologist Greg Watts, finds that 70% of NASA's groundweather measuring sites fail to meet the government's own standards because they are not 100 feet from a building, are on blazing rooftops, sit next to air-conditioner exhaust fans, etc. These 1200+ sites are used to measure the "official" average annual temperature of the United States.

This news has been very under-reported in the US Media.


Real Scientific Minds
Global warming scientists who use the scientific method are starting to fight back. More than 19,000 scientists have signed a petition saying global warming is probably natural and not a crisis. (The complete list can be seen at www.oism.org/pproject.)

The International Conference on Climate Change is meeting this week in New York City. Its topic is "Global Warming: Truth or Swindle?" and according to the announcement, "More than 400 scientists, economists and experts will meet ... to challenge the claim that global warming is a 'crisis.'"

Common sense on this issue seems to be gaining traction.


Proof that Cable Started Off Right
John Coleman, who founded the Weather Channel, wants to sue Al Gore on this whole business of global warming being a hoax. In an interview on Fox News, Coleman said, "I see absolutely no evidence that CO2, carbon dioxide, is causing any warm-up in temperatures. I don't think it's happening. I'm asking the question: If Al Gore knows that CO2 forcing is invalid -- isn't really happening -- and he goes ahead and sells these carbon credits for millions of dollars, is he committing financial fraud? That is the question."

And he goes even further. Read more about it here.

Our side is winning.