Center-Right Citizen

Celebrate Earth Hour by turning on the lights

2011-03-26T09:06:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted at RedState)

Never heard of earth hour? Me neither until I read this article in the LA Times online edition:

Get ready to fade to black. Millions of people around the world are expected to turn off their lights at 8:30 p.m. local time Saturday -- no matter what time zone they're in -- to observe Earth Hour. Never heard of it? It was started in 2007 by the WWF conservation organization to make a statement about energy overuse and how it affects the planet.

Times Square, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Las Vegas Strip, Niagara Falls, the Opera House in Sydney, and many more landmarks around the world plan to douse the lights, according to Earth Hour's website.

In Southern California, the Queen Mary will blast its horn at 8:30 p.m. to indicate the beginning of Earth Hour. Then the Long Beach landmark will turn off lights on its smokestacks, the string of lights atop the ship and other areas as well as encourage guests staying in staterooms to do likewise.

I've decided to celebrate earth hour this year in a slightly different way. I'm going to turn all my lights on. I'm celebrating man's emergence from darkness. Man's use of technology that has saved millions from poverty and starvation. Won't you join me this year in the ritual lighting of an endangered species; the incandescent light bulb.

All kidding aside no one will be hurt by this silly event designed to make liberals feel good about themselves but the same can't be said about other liberal policies. From the millions of African children who have died of malaria because DDT was banned to starvation increasing in the third world because we have decided to turn food into fuel. Even something as simple as not allowing people to clear brush around their property which creates a fire hazard. (See this tragic story in the Australian Press) The progressives never give a second thought to the unintended results of their policies.

At least for one hour on Saturday they won't have to look at themselves in the mirror.

Red light cameras: A liberty issue or a safety issue?

2011-02-14T08:38:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted at Red State)

Every year we lose more of our liberty. From unwanted intimate encounters with TSA agents, to calls for limits on free speech after Tucson. Even the freedom of the open road isn't as free as it once was with the introduction of cameras at intersections and on highways. A discussion of red light cameras may appear to be strictly a safety issue but I believe that the controversy over these cameras is more political than many people realize. It's somewhat like the anthropogenic global warming theory.

In the beginning AGW wasn't politicized, it was simply a scientific theory. As time went on those of us on the consevative side read all the articles, looked at the empirical evidence and came to the conclusion that AGW was a hoax. As for those on the left -- if they didn't plan it from the very beginning -- they quickly realized that the AGW theory would allow them unlimited power to regulate the economy. As we all know, liberals never let the truth get in the way of government expansion. And who can argue that having cameras on every street corner is not conducive to a larger more intrusive government?

However, the red light camera issue hasn't become so politicized yet, it's not a clear cut case of us vs. them. Many conservatives, looking at it from a law and order point of view, might say that the small amount of freedom we give up is worth it to catch those red light scofflaws and make the roads safer and they would have a point except for one small detail. The cameras don't work as advertised, they don't make the roads safer. In many cases it's just the opposite. To back up my outrageous claim I offer three news stories. The first is an excerpt from a recent article from the UK's Telegraph:

The number of people killed and seriously injured on Britain’s roads continued to fall as speed cameras were taken out of use last year. There were 510 deaths between July and September, compared to 596 in the same period in 2009.

This represented a 14 per cent drop at a time when the volume of traffic fell by only 1.3 per cent. There was also a five per cent reduction in the tally of people killed or serious injured.

The continuing decline in serious casualties coincided with the retreat of the speed camera programme as cash-strapped councils began switching off devices because of spending cuts.

Somerset, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire were among the areas where the number of active cameras was reduced.

The figures will add weight to those who have argued that the proliferation of cameras over the past decade had little to do with fall in casualties during the same period.

“When we have a recession we expect the fatalities to fall because people travel less far, less often and are therefore exposed to less danger,” said Claire Armstrong of the anti camera group, Safespeed.

“Coupled with excessive fuel prices, this is of no surprise to us and any benefit is nothing to do with cameras.”

The next news item is from the The Palm Beach Post, dated May. 24, 2010:

WEST PALM BEACH — Rear-end collisions more than doubled and accidents increased overall in the first 70 days of red-light cameras in West Palm Beach compared to the same period of 2009, traffic records reviewed by The Palm Beach Post show.

In the name of boosting safety, not revenues, West Palm Beach issued 2,675 camera fines worth a third of a million dollars in March alone.

But at the three city intersections from Feb. 21, when fines began, through May 1, The Post found:

--Rear-end collisions increased to five from two. Rear-end accidents sometimes go up with cameras because anxious drivers are more likely to stop abruptly.

--Overall accidents increased to seven from six.

--The only injury in either period came under cameras, in a rear-end crash in March 2010. The injury was "non-incapacitating," according to records supplied by cities and compiled in Palm Beach County's accident database.

City officials did not dispute the data but said it was too soon to draw meaningful conclusions.

In the UK they turn the cameras off and accidents are reduced and in West Palm Beach they add cameras and rear end accidents double! How can this be? It doesn't make any sense. Well, actually it does make sense if you happen to have an old issue of Car and Driver lying around from 2002. Patrick Bedard writes:

When the nation's No. 1 cheerleader for red-light cameras admits there might be one teensy-weensy downside to the program, you just know it's going to be a lulu so large it couldn't be crammed under the carpet without making a bulge the size of a circus tent.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) recently enthused over traffic-tickets-by-mail schemes for an entire issue of its Status Report. On red-light cameras, however, it did allow that "most studies also reported increases in rear-end crashes."

It went on to say, "This isn't surprising. The more people stop on red, the more rear-end collisions there will be."

Duh! [....]

Spillover effect is IIHS's trick for giving the cameras credit for reducing fatalities even where they aren't. It assumes that red-light cameras at a few intersections will cause drivers to stop promptly all over town, or all over the county, or maybe all over the state, so improvements outside the cameras' ZIP Codes are credited to them nonetheless. As statistical acrobatics go, this one is breathtaking.

But you ain't seen nothin' yet. The obvious way to gauge the payoff of red-light cameras is to compare intersections with cameras to those without, then zoom in on crashes actually caused by drivers running red lights. Instead, IIHS considered all crashes at all 125 signalized intersections in Oxnard and concluded that injury crashes dropped by 29 percent due to the cameras, even though they were installed at only 11 intersections.

Spillover effect, don't you know.

Skeptics will notice that crashes went down rather randomly all over town, and some ordinary intersections outperformed those with the gotcha equipment. The cameras look remarkably ineffectual until, just in time, spillover effect arrives to snatch victory from the jaws of ho-hum.

In addition to the three articles quoted above, here is a bonus. I know liberals like to think they have science on their side so I decided to include information on a study by Barbara Langland-Orban, professor and chair of health policy and management at the University of South Florida College of Public Health. ScienceDaily reported on this study in 2008:

Rather than improving motorist safety, red-light cameras significantly increase crashes and are a ticket to higher auto insurance premiums, researchers at the University of South Florida College of Public Health conclude. The effective remedy to red-light running uses engineering solutions to improve intersection safety, which is particularly important to Florida’s elderly drivers, the researchers recommend.

“The rigorous studies clearly show red-light cameras don’t work,” said lead author Barbara Langland-Orban, professor and chair of health policy and management at the USF College of Public Health.

“Instead, they increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections. If used in Florida, cameras could potentially create even worse outcomes due to the state’s high percent of elderly who are more likely to be injured or killed when a crash occurs.”

Looking at the evidence from a safety perspective it appears that speed cameras are ineffective and red light cameras are downright dangerous. At this point it should be noted that this evidence only relates to traffic cameras not security cameras like the blue-light police cameras in Chicago. The jury is still out on those, although this quote from Anthony Daniels at The Corner is not encouraging: "Britain has the highest crime rate in Western Europe, despite having a third of all the closed-circuit television cameras in the world..."

As for traffic cameras, I think I've made my case. In summation I would simply add, "cameras bad, freedom good." What do you think?

Save the incandescent light bulb, sign the petition

2011-02-14T08:28:00.000-08:00

"The ban on standard incandescent bulbs was included in comprehensive legislation passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress and signed into law by Republican George W. Bush in 2007. The ban will go into effect next year, but the legislation can still be stopped. Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) has recently introduced H.R. 91, the Better Use of Light Bulbs (BULB) Act to amend the original bill, removing the anti-light bulb provisions. Your signatures will be compiled and sent to the Congressmen in your state."

Sign here

Social scientists at UC Berkeley study the Tea Party

2010-10-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted at: Red State)

Do you ever feel like someone is watching you? Do you ever feel like someone is studying you and those you associate with from afar? Well guess what, you're not paranoid it's real. We've been under the microscope for two years now by Berkeley's Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements. And here you thought those cars driving around your neighborhood with the funny looking cameras on top were from Google.

Okay, I don't have any proof that they are studying us cloak and dagger style but we are being studied nonetheless. Slate has the story, the subtitle of the article reads: "Lefty academics convene in Berkeley to try to make sense of the Tea Party movement." To the academic elites at Berkeley we are like an alien species that just landed on Earth and they are naturally curious.

Put yourself in their shoes for a minute. Obama and the progressives in Congress gave us all these wonderful things like the Stimulus and Obamacare and Finance reform. They are also trying to save the planet with Cap and Tax. And how do we show our appreciation? We go to town halls and shout at them. No wonder they are confused and perplexed. This calls for some serious research, here are a couple of papers they are working on:

Prospects for an American Neofascism. Initially the project would consist of a review of recent research on American right wing groups (including the Tea Party movement, the Minutemen, and the Christian right); and of trends in national and transnational political economy that bear on our subject (such as cyclical and structural economic crises, corporate/government interpenetration, and the explosive growth of the military/industrial/security complex).

A Macro-Micro Model of Participation in Political Action: The Tea Party and Cognitive Biases in Information Consumption and Processing. Hypotheses were tested using qualitative data obtained from interviews with two groups: protest participants from various Tea Party protests (protesting group, N-15) and non-protesting Tea Party "supporters" (supporting group, N=3). Results show that strongly held pre-existing beliefs (particularly economic and political individualist ideology) heavily impacted levels of dissatisfaction with government policy and choices of information consumed.

Gee, I didn't know I was a neofascist. I just thought I wanted a smaller less intrusive government based on our founding principles. Now I admit I'm not as smart as these researchers but I think I know what "Cognitive Biases in Information Consumption and Processing" means. It's just a fancy way of saying that I listen to Rush Limbaugh too much. I'll have to plead guilty on that one.

The results of two years of study are in and the participants in this conference have found that the tea party is racist:

"There is that U.S. DNA that goes all the way back and does provide the conceptual source for this lynch mob mentality," says Steve Martinot, who teaches at San Francisco State University. "And that is white supremacy. Shouldn't we be looking at the Tea Party through that?"

Perlstein moves around the question. "The thing that makes America different, and this is a very dialectical, paradoxical concept, is that we have a lot of democracy," he says. "The idea that everyone has an opinion of about what they're hearing is both the glory and the tragedy of American democracy."

But the social scientists are more ready than the historians to crunch numbers and prove that racial animosity is key to the Tea Party. It's cold comfort for people like Hardy Frye, but it does suggest that Obama's ability to form some grand populist coalition was always limited.

So, there you have it. According to the academics at this conference, "racial animosity is key to the Tea Party. And we have a " lynch mob mentality." And apparently it's a "tragedy" that we have so much opinion in this country.

There is only one small flaw in their logic. If America is a boiling cauldron of racial animosity as they seem to imagine how did Obama become president when only 12.4% of the population is African-American? Is it possible that the sinking popularity of the President has something to do with his failing policies?

And by the way, do these academic types realize that Obama is not on the ticket in this upcoming election? Race has nothing to do with what is going to happen on November 2nd. And all those White Democratic Congressmen and Senators about to be unemployed know it.

Anger, Anguish and Anxiety Across America

2010-10-08T18:02:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted at Red State)

The editors at Time missed an opportunity to make the perfect title for their article, Encountering Anguish and Anxiety Across America. They just needed one more A word to make it perfect -- Anger.

The "Yes We Can" crowd hasn't reached the boiling point yet but they are full of "anguish and anxiety" they just don't know who to blame anymore. The Bush piñata has been beaten to death. But they are starting to suspect that it could be the messiah's fault. Obama can't even go to a carefully screened town hall or a backyard barbecue without getting tough questions from his own supporters! The rest of us are just angry watching him shredding the Constitution. So what does Time think the problem is? Here is a taste:

On a blistering evening in Phoenix recently, a group of prominent civic leaders met to talk about America. It didn't take long for the conversation to get around to the fall of the Ottoman Empire. That's what happens when smart Americans get to talking about politics these days. Topic A is the growing sense that our best days as a nation are behind us, that our kids won't live as well as we did, that China is in the driver's seat.

I'm experiencing deja vu all over again, this is the exact same thing we heard when Jimmy Carter was in office, only then it was Japan in the driver's seat not China. Back then the MSM was telling us our best days were behind us and we better get used to it. Lucky for us Ronald Reagan came along just when we needed him.

Can you guess what Reagan would tell this group of civic leaders? He would tell them our best days are not behind us and all we have to do is unleash America's entrepreneurial spirit by reducing regulations and taxes. He would then add: "Government is the problem not the solution."

When the MSM and the ruling elites tell us that our best days are behind us, that we can't be the engine that drives the world economy anymore and this is the "new normal", I just wish I could reach right through the TV screen and slap them silly. Of course we could get out of this recession if the progressives in Washington would just take their boots off of our necks. As Rush Limbaugh might say: "Why would anyone start a business or hire more workers in this hostile business environment."

So, they tell us the Obama administration is not hostile to business? Really... Across the board tax increases heading our way in January, Cap and Tax, offshore drilling shut down, threats to insurance companies from Kathleen Sebelius. The list is endless. Obama has put in place an army of progressive bureaucrats making arbitrary and binding decisions affecting business. Uncertainty rules the day. If one of Obama's Czars decides to target your business you could be wiped out. Alan Greenspan touched on the subject of uncertainty writing in the Financial Times:

The instinctive reaction of businessmen and householders to uncertainty is to disengage from those activities that require confident predictions of how the future will unfold. For non-financial corporations (half of gross domestic product), the disengagement is best measured by the share of liquid cash flow allocated to illiquid long-term fixed asset investment. In the first half of 2010, that share fell to 79 per cent, its lowest reading in the 58 years for which data are available.

Liberals seem to think the economy is like the weather, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. They fully expected the business cycle to be on the upswing this November, and guess what? It would have been except for the actions of Reid, Pelosi and Obama. Isn't karma grand?

Liberals and progressives also have difficulty understanding the concept of "animal spirits" in the business world. They think people are in business simply to provide jobs. What they don't realize is that jobs are a by-product of profits. And profits come from entrepreneurs risking it all in the marketplace. Keynes defined animal spirits as: "a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction..."

Have you seen any business people acting spontaneously lately?

When Obama famously said now is not the time for profits. It put a real damper on the business psyche. But the one thing that Obama forgot or doesn't know is that without profits there are no jobs.

Obama won't be in Washington to see the aftermath of the destruction of the Democratic party on November 2nd, he'll be packing to go on a worldwide tour including a stop in India. He'll return on November 14th reinvigorated and undaunted in his efforts to transform America.

Congress is increasingly irrelevant to Obama. He couldn't even get the current Democratic controlled Congress to vote to tax the rich. The Wall Street Journal reports: "Forty-seven House Democrats have signed a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging that tax rates on capital gains and dividends be maintained at the current level of up to 15% for all earners." Apparently Obama's own party isn't radical enough for him.

Don't look for Obama to move to the center like Clinton did. Clinton was a politician, Obama is a far left ideologue. If anything he'll move farther to the left. Look for Obama to dust off his tattered copy of Rules for Radicals for inspiration. There are executive orders to sign, recess appointments to make and hundreds, perhaps thousands of regulations and taxes to be unpacked out of that Obamacare monstrosity.

As the Republicans start to bring our fiscal house in order Obama -- playing the role of populist demagogue -- will be there every step of the way to thwart their efforts, while at the same time claiming success for himself as the economy improves. Unfortunately success for Republicans in Congress means the possible reelection of Obama in 2012.

I don't want to end on a pessimistic note but I'm afraid anger, anguish and anxiety will be with us for at least two more years even with huge Republican victories in November. We are in for the fight of our lives. Obama recently said a Republican victory in November will mean hand-to-hand combat. Maybe he's right. At least now the battle is joined.

Why the left hates nuclear power

2010-10-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted at Red State)

From 1908 when the first Model T rolled off the assembly line until the mid-nineties vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine produced real pollution. They emitted nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and other nasty pollutants. Many of us can remember the eye-burning smog in the Los Angeles basin. Those days are thankfully behind us.

The environmental activists of that era deserve our thanks for encouraging government and the auto industry to clean up the air we breathe. But after the automobile exhaust had been essentially eliminated as a major source of pollution these same activists had a problem -- what next? Instead of congratulating themselves and moving on to other professions they decided to continue in the agitation business. But they needed a new bogeyman to attack.

The answer came from Professor Roger Revelle at Harvard, the self proclaimed "grandfather of the greenhouse effect." A young Al Gore attended Professor Revelle's class and apparently the Professor's theory made a big impression on him. As many liberals seem to do Al Gore focused all his energy on an obscure theoretical threat to society. War, famine and natural disasters are so boring. The idea that modern man was capable of destroying the planet simply by existing seemed to mesh perfectly with his progressive ideology. And as they say: "The rest is history."

Shortly before his death in 1991 Professor Revelle wrote: "The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time." Of course no one paid any attention to the dying professor's words. The carbon genie was out of the bottle and it is proving extremely difficult to put him back.

So, for the time being we have to live with the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) and the entire economy of the world must be changed because of this unproven theory. (I know Obama's science adviser says we should call it "global climate disruption". These constant name changes are too confusing, I'm going to stick with AGW for now.)

The reputation of that poor little carbon dioxide molecule has been maligned beyond repair and he must be banished from this earth, it doesn't matter that he is a harmless trace gas that loves to help plants grow, he must be eliminated. But how best to do that?

What if we had a power source that produced no carbon dioxide, zero, none, nada, zilch. Wouldn't that be a miracle? Don't you think the environmentalists who want to save the planet would be marching in the streets demanding that we convert to that power source?

If you really believe we are at the tipping point of no return, if you really believe that the Earth could look like Mars in a few decades wouldn't you demand that we embark on a "Manhattan Project" to ramp up this power source immediately? Apparently, no.

Perhaps today's environmentalists realize that with a solution for the AGW problem at hand they might have to go out and find real jobs.

There are two types of environmentalists in the world today. One wants to find real solutions to "save the planet". The other type seems more interested in making a career of his activism and promoting draconian measures to change our lifestyle, with the health of the planet being a mere afterthought.

A good example of the career type can be found in this recent article by Mark Cooper in The Hill. Mr. Cooper is identified as a Fellow at the Institute for Energy and the Environment. He seems to be worried that the U.S. might follow France's lead on nuclear power generation:

Among backers of nuclear power development in the U.S., France has long been held out as the model to emulate. Now, as pressure builds on policy makers in Washington to set a new domestic energy course, the French experience once again is being heralded as proof that nuclear power is the way to go.

Trouble is, France's nuclear "miracle" is more fantasy than fact. And facts are what Congress - and the American public - deserve before massive public subsidies are committed for new reactor construction. [...]

He continues by pointing out problems with cost overruns and other issues with the French system. Surprisingly he doesn't mention the real concern of safety and waste disposal. But a few paragraphs down we find what is really bothering Mr. Cooper:

Nuclear reactors crowd out energy efficiency efforts and renewable energy investments. The French track record on energy efficiency and renewable energy is poor compared to similar European nations. In France, commitment to huge nuclear reactors has led to excess generating capacity which, in turn, has discouraged efficiency. Consumption, not conservation, is critical to underwrite the bloated costs of these giant power stations. That is not the direction the U.S. should set for its own energy policies.

By heavily subsidizing large central station generating facilities, France has drained away public and private incentives to cut energy use or develop alternative "green" generating capacity.

Now we come to the real issue for this environmentalist. A clean abundant source of power would eliminate the need for "energy efficiency efforts and renewable energy investments."

The logic of his argument is, well... illogical. We shouldn't use this clean abundant power source because it will eliminate the need for ugly, noisy, bird killing wind turbines and habitat destroying solar farms?

So, even if we have a carbon free power source we still can't be allowed to enjoy life, we still have to live like monks and conserve. The lefties who have taken over the environmental movement are a strange breed, they are only happy when everyone else is miserable.

But not all environmentalists are that cynical. Patrick Moore the founder of Greenpeace explains in this 2006 article in the Washington Post why he came around to the nuclear solution:

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.

Unfortunately Patrick Moore is in the minority. As I stated earlier if those in the the environmental movement really believe that runaway AGW will destroy the planet they would be demanding that we start a crash program building nuclear power plants.

However, abundant clean power provided by nuclear energy would allow us to enjoy life and use as much electricity as we can afford. There would be no need for a smart grid or thermostats controlled by big brother. Electric cars recharged by these power plants would actually be pollution free. The environmental statists would lose the power to control us and our thermostats.

They fight against this clean abundant power source because if we obtained almost 80% of our electricity from nuclear as they do in France we would have no need for them. It would mean the end of their raison d'etre.

What is Gymkhana?

2010-09-17T07:55:00.000-07:00

Watch this video and then you'll know. And I'm afraid it's true, Obama may be good at basketball but he can't gymkhana.

RIGHTNETWORK: The alternative to the liberal MSM

2010-09-09T14:00:00.000-07:00

Are you tired of watching news, commentary and comedy on the liberal main stream media? Are you tired of watching comedians recycling old jokes about Bush? Have the P.C. police been knocking on your door? Then turn off cable and point your browser to http://www.rightnetwork.com/ for some refreshingly P.C. free comedy and drama.

Are red light cameras dangerous?

2010-06-05T13:52:00.000-07:00

When you combine government greed with technology you are bound to end up with severe unintended consequences. As West Palm Beach is discovering, red light cameras cause more problems than they solve. From The Palm Beach Post:

WEST PALM BEACH — Rear-end collisions more than doubled and accidents increased overall in the first 70 days of red-light cameras in West Palm Beach compared to the same period of 2009, traffic records reviewed by The Palm Beach Post show.

In the name of boosting safety, not revenues, West Palm Beach issued 2,675 camera fines worth a third of a million dollars in March alone.

But at the three city intersections from Feb. 21, when fines began, through May 1, The Post found:

--Rear-end collisions increased to five from two. Rear-end accidents sometimes go up with cameras because anxious drivers are more likely to stop abruptly.

--Overall accidents increased to seven from six.

--The only injury in either period came under cameras, in a rear-end crash in March 2010. The injury was "non-incapacitating," according to records supplied by cities and compiled in Palm Beach County's accident database.

City officials did not dispute the data but said it was too soon to draw meaningful conclusions.

If only some of those city officials had a subscription to Car and Driver they would have already known that those cameras don't work. Patrick Bedard wrote about this back in 2002:

When the nation's No. 1 cheerleader for red-light cameras admits there might be one teensy-weensy downside to the program, you just know it's going to be a lulu so large it couldn't be crammed under the carpet without making a bulge the size of a circus tent.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) recently enthused over traffic-tickets-by-mail schemes for an entire issue of its Status Report. On red-light cameras, however, it did allow that "most studies also reported increases in rear-end crashes."

It went on to say, "This isn't surprising. The more people stop on red, the more rear-end collisions there will be."

Duh!

The rest of the article is fairly technical as Patrick shows how the (IIHS) twisted the data like a pretzel trying to make it look like the cameras were effective:

Spillover effect is IIHS's trick for giving the cameras credit for reducing fatalities even where they aren't. It assumes that red-light cameras at a few intersections will cause drivers to stop promptly all over town, or all over the county, or maybe all over the state, so improvements outside the cameras' ZIP Codes are credited to them nonetheless. As statistical acrobatics go, this one is breathtaking.

But you ain't seen nothin' yet. The obvious way to gauge the payoff of red-light cameras is to compare intersections with cameras to those without, then zoom in on crashes actually caused by drivers running red lights. Instead, IIHS considered all crashes at all 125 signalized intersections in Oxnard and concluded that injury crashes dropped by 29 percent due to the cameras, even though they were installed at only 11 intersections.

Spillover effect, don't you know.

Skeptics will notice that crashes went down rather randomly all over town, and some ordinary intersections outperformed those with the gotcha equipment. The cameras look remarkably ineffectual until, just in time, spillover effect arrives to snatch victory from the jaws of ho-hum.

Maybe we shouldn't be too upset with the city officials at West Palm Beach. More than likely there are more readers of the New York Times than Car & Driver working at city hall. But perhaps they might have read a report by Barbara Langland-Orban, professor and chair of health policy and management at the USF College of Public Health. ScienceDaily reported on that study in 2008:

Rather than improving motorist safety, red-light cameras significantly increase crashes and are a ticket to higher auto insurance premiums, researchers at the University of South Florida College of Public Health conclude. The effective remedy to red-light running uses engineering solutions to improve intersection safety, which is particularly important to Florida’s elderly drivers, the researchers recommend.

“The rigorous studies clearly show red-light cameras don’t work,” said lead author Barbara Langland-Orban, professor and chair of health policy and management at the USF College of Public Health.

“Instead, they increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections. If used in Florida, cameras could potentially create even worse outcomes due to the state’s high percent of elderly who are more likely to be injured or killed when a crash occurs.”

With local governments always on the lookout for more revenue it's understandable that they will be open to the sales pitch of the companies promoting these systems. But a simple google search showing the dismal safety record of red-light cameras could have saved city officials a lot of embarrassment.

Of course my analysis of the actions of the officials at West Palm Beach is based on their stated goal of "boosting safety, not revenues". However, I still can't help wondering if the "third of a million dollars" they received in March will have any effect on the final decision to keep the cameras?

Civil disobedience in the Federal Government

2010-05-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

Mark Levin believes that civil disobedience is coming, in this audio clip at the 2:50 mark he makes an interesting prediction:

I think at some point you're going to see civil resistance and I don't mean in a dangerous way. People are just going to say you know what I'm not following that rule, you know what I'm not filing that form, you know what I'm not getting that insurance, you know what I'm not paying that tax. I'm not encouraging it, I'm just analyzing this. I think at some point that may well happen.

Well guess what? It's already happening but it isn't your average Joe or Jane citizen who's ignoring the maze of incomprehensible regulations in Obamacare, it's the federal government, as this excerpt from NRO's health-care blog explains:

The law is so complex that even the federal government is not complying! Last week, we reported that the office that administers health benefits for federal workers is basically ignoring the law and plans to keep its program operating as is, even though the Congressional Research Service seriously questions the legality of doing so.

How did this happen? Examiner.com enlightens us:

[I]t appears they have royally mucked up their own health insurance - for all 535 members of Congress and untold congressional employees. In a hurry, they forgot to get it right and wrote it all wrong; now it's the law...

The law puts Congress in the same boat they built for the rest of America, without a clue what the new health care reform will mean to them. The beauty of their dilemma is pure poetic justice to some -they have written law requiring that they move into a system that doesn't yet exist.

How could that be? Simple, a scaled-down provision of Republic Senator Grassley's “Health Reform Accountability Act” - this one requiring all congress members and their employees, with the exception of Senate committee and leadership staffs, to get their health insurance through the same health insurance exchanges where the general public would get theirs was left in the bill, unopposed, and was signed into law by President Obama.

That's right -- in an rare show of solidarity with average folk -- congress appears to have discarded their Cadillac health care plan and put themselves under the same Cuban style health plan the rest of us poor saps will be forced to use.

For a few days the fear in the halls of Congress was palpable. However it appears that this exercise in humility was merely a symbolic measure designed to win the support of the majority of Americans who have a small problem with Obamacare being rammed down their throats. It didn't take long for the bureaucrats to find a solution, they simply decided to ignore the law they had just passed.

It seems that tea partiers and federal workers have something in common, neither group wants anything to do with Obamacare. I wonder what would happen if a majority of Americans followed the example of our friends in government and refused to comply with the onerous mandates and regulations in Obamacare? If they can ignore Obamacare why can't we?

Mark Levin: Civil disobedience is coming

2010-04-09T12:38:00.000-07:00

Bill Brady and the Hispanic vote

2010-04-09T12:31:00.000-07:00

Will Hispanic demographic trends doom conservatism?

The East Coast Republican elites have been telling all of us rubes over here in fly-over country that Reaganism is dead. That we have to move to the center to win elections. That demographic trends are turning against us. The burgeoning Hispanic population will only vote for moderates. Really? Then how do they explain this little nugget of information from The Washington Examiner:

Who is Bill Brady? Fifty-five percent of Illinoisans have no idea. And according to a new poll from Public Policy Polling, a plurality still plan to vote for him over their incumbent Democratic governor.

Brady, the Republican nominee, leads Gov. Pat Quinn, D, 43 to 33 percent. Quinn’s unfavorable numbers are double his favorables. To add insult to injury, Brady leads Quinn 37 to 29 percent among Hispanics.

Meanwhile, the Democrats’ Senate candidate, Alexi Giannoulias, is losing, too.

"Brady leads Quinn 37 to 29 percent among Hispanics." That's interesting, Brady must be a moderate Republican, right? The Chicago Tribune analyzes the choices:

Brady, a real estate developer with several other financial interests, represents the keep-government-out-of-my-business conservatism that emanates from his legislative district. He is a staunch fiscal and social conservative who is as opposed to tax increases as he is abortion rights.

Quinn, the longtime Chicago populist who was elevated to the governor's office more than a year ago after the impeachment of Rod Blagojevich, has long attached himself to liberal causes, including universal health care. But Quinn has struggled to accomplish his public policy goals, manage an overwhelming state budget deficit and persuade lawmakers to support his proposals for tax increases.

It would seem that Hispanic voters in Illinois have chosen conservatism over liberalism. But even if some of them don't know who Bill Brady is, they sure know that the Democrat's socialist policies are hurting the economy. Hispanics are hard working people who believe in conservative traditions like faith and family. They are not as ideologically wedded to the Democratic Party as the experts believe.

But wait -- our friends at the Tribune have some sage advice for the conservative candidate. "If general election contests represent a time for candidates to move to the center to secure the votes of independents, Brady may have a farther drive."

My advice to Brady is: don't listen to the mainstream pundits. Conservative principals are universal, any politician who runs on those principals will do well at election time.

Health care was really about redistribution

2010-04-06T19:08:00.000-07:00

First it was called health care reform then it was renamed insurance reform, just what is this thing the Democrats have rammed through congress? Now we finally have the answer, it's about redistribution. From Bryon York at the Washington Examiner:

It hasn't attracted much notice, but recently some prominent advocates of Obamacare have spoken more frankly than ever before about why they supported a national health care makeover. It wasn't just about making insurance more affordable. It wasn't just about bending the cost curve. It wasn't just about cutting the federal deficit. It was about redistributing wealth.

Health reform is "an income shift," Democratic Sen. Max Baucus said on March 25. "It is a shift, a leveling, to help lower income, middle income Americans."

In his halting, jumbled style, Baucus explained that in recent years "the maldistribution of income in America has gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind." The new health care legislation, Baucus promised, "will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution of income in America."

At about the same time, Howard Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chairman and presidential candidate, said the health bill was needed to correct economic inequities. "The question is, in a democracy, what is the right balance between those at the top ... and those at the bottom?" Dean said during an appearance on CNBC. "When it gets out of whack, as it did in the 1920s, and it has now, you need to do some redistribution. This is a form of redistribution."

Summing things up in the New York Times, the liberal economics columnist David Leonhardt called Obamacare "the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago."

Now they tell us. For many opponents of the new legislation, the statements confirmed a nagging suspicion that for Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress, the health fight was about more than just insurance -- that redistribution played a significant, if largely unspoken, part in the drive for national health care. [More]

People with good insurance (Cadillac plans) will be taxed at the rate of 40%. Young healthy people just starting their careers will be forced to buy insurance. And poor folks will get a subsidy to buy insurance, at least until the insurance companies go out of business due to all the new mandates and price controls placed on them. At that point we'll all be on medicare and the progressives will have their utopia, mediocrity for everyone.

Obama's 17 minute answer to a question about taxes

2010-04-05T15:00:00.000-07:00

Here is the video of Obama's odd 17 minute answer to this simple question: "... is it a wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care because we are over-taxed as it is?"

The reason Obama had a problem answering this question is very simple. Liberals don't have an answer to this very basic question. They believe that they can raise taxes on everyone -- although they always claim only the rich will be taxed -- and the economy will just keep humming along not missing a beat.

But anyone with a basic understanding of economics knows that when entrepreneurs are heavily taxed to grow the public sector, the private sector shrinks and jobs are destroyed.

E.O. “Coots” Matthews, the passing of an era

2010-04-05T14:32:00.000-07:00

In these politically correct times where we are afraid to use our own natural resources. And a Democratic president cynically throws a bone to conservatives and opens a few areas for offshore drilling, it's hard to imagine there was once a time when Americans were proud to search for oil all over the world.

One of the brave men who was a big part of that era passed away recently. The Houston Chronicle has the story:

E.O. “Coots” Matthews, a famed oil well firefighter and founding partner of Houston-based Boots & Coots — a company legendary for putting out some of the world’s most spectacular fires — has died at age 86.

Matthews died Wednesday of natural causes at his home in Humble.

During his 50-year career, Matthews, along with Asger “Boots” Hansen and Paul “Red” Adair, became the sooted faces of the storied “hellfighting” business, in an age when wildcat wells erupted on a regular basis.

Their exploits battling the biggest infernos in the oil patch inspired the 1968 John Wayne movie Hellfighters, and their adventures are part of the fabric of Houston’s history.

In a true roughneck-to-riches story, Matthews helped build Boots & Coots into a company with one of the most recognizable names in the oil industry.

“It was a pretty good trick,” said Jerry Winchester, president and CEO of Boots & Coots. “You start with two or three guys and a secretary and then you look up 30 years later and it’s a $200 million business with 700 employees.” [...]

As a young man Matthews joined the Air Force and served as a tailgunner in Europe during World War II. After the war he worked for Halliburton -- for a while:

Halliburton fired Matthews for allegedly crashing six company cars during his roughly 10 years with the firm. Matthews jokingly told friends the company punished him once for crashing a $700 car by making him drive a $1 million pump truck.

Thanks to a family connection, he was hired soon after by Adair to work for M.M. Kinley Co., a pioneer in well control and firefighting. That’s where Hansen and Matthews met. [...]

The trio would go on to develop firefighting and well control methods that paved the way for today’s sophisticated blowout preventer and pressure control technology, Winchester said. They figured it out through “sheer tenacity and ingenuity,” Winchester said, at a time when the industry lacked the equipment and science that now make well fires much less frequent.

As the AGW theory becomes discredited, most Americans are beginning to realize that there is nothing standing in the way of drilling for oil anywhere, except for the liberal agenda of the Democrats. Americans still possess the same drive and determination that motivated men like E.O. “Coots” Matthews. If we can fire the Social Democrats in congress this November, America can get back to work. Coots would be proud.

The Toyota problem: is it driver error?

2010-03-23T20:57:00.000-07:00

(Originally published at American Thinker)

Toyota chased General Motors for years until finally passing the General to become the world's largest automaker and now... disaster. Reports of runaway Toyotas are all over the news. The ghost of 1980's Audi is haunting Toyota. Now we have to find out if the problem is with the car or the driver?

Walter Olson at National Review and Richard A. Schmidt at the New York Times surprisingly have the same opinion, they both believe it is primarily driver error. They blame the runaway car problem on older drivers. The over 60 generation is taking it on the chin this year, first the threat of death panels and cuts in medicare and now this.

In fact I believe driver error is the least likely cause of most of these accidents. I agree with both authors that the majority of unintended acceleration claims against Audi in the mid-eighties was more than likely driver error. The sensationalized 60 Minutes story almost put Audi out of business. However that doesn't mean we are seeing the same situation now.

Elderly drivers stepping on the wrong pedal by mistake is just one possibility that investigators are looking into. The list of possible culprits includes: sticking accelerator pedals, out of place floor mats, a computer glitch and even cosmic rays. Let's examine each of these potential causes one by one.

But first, just to remind everyone of the seriousness of the issue here is one of the more lamentable stories from channel 6 in San Diego:

CHULA VISTA - A Highway Patrol officer, his wife, daughter and brother-in-law -- all killed in a fiery crash in Santee -- will be remembered at a memorial service Saturday in Chula Vista.

Mark Saylor and his wife Cleofe, both 45, their 13-year-old daughter Mahala and 38-year-old brother-in-law Chris Lastrella were killed in the crash at 6:35 p.m. Aug. 28 at the end of state Route 125 at Mission Gorge Road.

The officer was off-duty at the time of the crash.

They were in a 2009 Lexus loaned by Bob Baker Lexus in El Cajon while their vehicle was being serviced, authorities said. One of the occupants, believed to be Cleofe Saylor, called 911 to report the accelerator in the loaner vehicle was stuck.

Witnesses said the car was going more than 100 mph shortly before the crash.

The car collided with an SUV waiting to turn left at the end of Highway125, and continued across Mission Gorge Road, crashed through a fence and ended up on fire in the bed of the San Diego River.

All four victims died at the scene.

If we blame driver error for this horrific accident then we would have to believe that a highway patrolman with almost 20 years of experience couldn't tell the difference between the accelerator pedal and the brake pedal and apparently held his foot on the wrong pedal long enough for the car to reach over 100 mph. And this was presumably after he had already maneuvered the vehicle out of the dealership parking lot and onto the main road, enough time to become familiar with the position of the pedals. I think it is unlikely that a California Highway Patrol officer who spent thousands of hours in his patrol car would make that mistake.

Toyota has admitted that there could be a problem with the floor mats and the accelerator pedal in some of their cars. The engineers at Toyota included a "friction device" on the accelerator pedal to decrease play and provide a better "feel" for the driver. The effort to perfect this simple device may have resulted in tragedy for many drivers. Here is Toyota's statement as reported in Automotive Fleet:

Toyota said it has pinpointed the issue that could, on rare occasions, cause accelerator pedals in recalled vehicles to stick in a partially open position. The issue involves a friction device in the pedal designed to provide the proper "feel" by adding resistance and making the pedal steady and stable. The device includes a shoe that rubs against an adjoining surface during normal pedal operation. Due to the materials used, wear and environmental conditions, these surfaces may, over time, begin to stick and release instead of operating smoothly. In some cases, friction could increase to a point that the pedal is slow to return to the idle position or, in rare cases, the pedal sticks, leaving the throttle partially open, Toyota said. [....]

Separately from the recall for sticking accelerator pedals, Toyota is also in the process of recalling vehicles to address rare instances in which floor mats have trapped the accelerator pedal in certain Toyota and Lexus models (announced Nov. 25, 2009), and is already notifying customers about how it will fix this issue.

Toyota has also acknowledged that there is a problem with the brakes on some models of the 2010 Prius, "a software problem that can cause a brief loss of braking." While apparently not dangerous it can be disconcerting for a driver to lose braking even for a few seconds. The significance of this admission is just to remind everyone that the problem is not always driver error.

Federal regulators are even looking into the possibility that cosmic rays could interfere with the many computer systems on these cars. The Free Press reports that "an anonymous tipster whose complaint prompted regulators to look at the issue said the design of Toyota's microprocessors, memory chips and software could make them more vulnerable than those of other automakers." As you can see driver error is just one of many possibilities.

Celebrities are not immune, Steve Wozniak the co-founder of Apple had a problem with his Prius when it "started accelerating on its own -- to as much as 97 mph." He tried to tell Toyota and NHTSA about the problem "but he grew frustrated when no one would listen." Steve is 59, maybe he is one of those senior citizens that always push the wrong pedal.

Now that we've determined there may be mechanical or computer problems with some Toyota cars the question arises: what should you do if it happens to you? Remember, even with a sticking accelerator the driver still has options, but he or she has to react quickly and make the right choices.

The first reaction you might have is: Why not just hit the brakes? It is true that the brakes on today's cars will "by and large" stop a vehicle even with the throttle wide open if you push down hard on the brake pedal and not release it. Car and Driver did a test to verify this: "With the Camry’s throttle pinned while going 70 mph, the brakes easily overcame all 268 horsepower straining against them and stopped the car in 190 feet."

However this test involved the expert drivers at Car and Driver. You would probably not get the same result with the average driver in a panic situation as this technical article in Import Car explains:

Many drivers are slow to react to emergency situations that call for immediate braking, and when they do react they often don’t press down hard enough on the brake pedal. Worse yet, if the ABS system kicks in, the noise and vibrations that feed back through the brake pedal may startle them, causing them to lift their foot off the pedal momentarily, or to pump the brakes. Either of these actions will reduce the effectiveness of the ABS system, and may increase the distance it takes to come to a complete stop.

We can't be sure that the average driver in a panic situation would react the same as the experts at Car and Driver. If the driver is not applying the brakes properly the speed will be reduced too slowly and the brakes could have time to overheat and fail.

A shift to neutral is your best bet but who can say what's going through a drivers mind as they are weaving through traffic at high speed with both hands tightly gripping the steering wheel. More from Car and Driver:

Shift to Neutral or Park. This is your best option in an emergency. Neither the Camry’s nor the Infiniti’s automatic transmission showed any hesitancy to shift into neutral or park when accelerating at full tilt. (Automatics have a piece of hardware called a park pawl, which prevents the transmission from actually engaging park and locking the wheels at speed—it creates a disturbing grinding sound, but the car essentially coasts freely.)

With the brake pedal vibrating as the ABS kicks in and the transmission making a "disturbing grinding sound" when placed in park, it's easy to see how the average driver could panic and release the brakes or take the transmission out of park. Some drivers fear that if they throw the lever in park while traveling at high speed the vehicle will flip over.

Turning off the ignition is also problematic, especially if you have one of the newer vehicles with a push to start button:

Switching off the ignition is a sure way to silence an engine, but it’s probably the least desirable action because it will also make the car more difficult to maneuver. It causes a loss of power-steering assist, plus it will cut off vacuum boost for the brakes. The new wrinkle here: the keyless, push-button start-and-stop systems in many vehicles. Owners need to be aware that these systems require a long press of the button to shut off power when the car is moving (so that an inadvertent touch of the button by the driver doesn’t kill the engine). Here, too, the Toyota was slightly behind the curve; the Infiniti’s engine shut down after a 2.5-second press of the button versus 3.3 seconds for the Camry. In an emergency, that would probably feel like an eternity. For some perspective, if a V-6 Camry’s throttle became stuck at 60 mph, the car would accelerate to nearly 80 mph before the engine would surrender.

There are many questions that need to be answered before we start blaming elderly drivers for these tragic accidents. We should let the investigations play out before we jump to conclusions.

And if it happens to you? The best thing to do is to grab the gear shift lever and put it into neutral or park and don't worry about the noise from the transmission and the motor, then apply the brakes and your vehicle should come to a stop.

(Update 04/05/10: For those who believe I'm being too critical of Toyota here is another story from NRO about a Toyota that almost killed two people.) Here is the key paragraph:

While Mary was in the hospital, I was buying her flowers at the grocery store when I stopped to look at the car magazines. I was stunned to find mine mentioned on the cover of the May Car and Driver. The article said my model had suddenly been discontinued and replaced with a half-year model. Quite rare. The reason, said the magazine, was the car’s “loose hindquarters.” Specifically, “the back wheels toed-out, causing radical, often terminal, oversteer.” Exactly what we experienced twice. But we hold no grudges against Toyota; my next car was that half-year model, and my wife owns a Toyota now.

And this: "Toyota Hit by Largest-Ever Auto Civil Penalty"

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today announced that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is seeking the maximum civil penalty of $16.375 million against Toyota(TM) for failing to notify the auto safety agency of its dangerous "sticky pedal" defect for at least four months, despite knowing of the potential risk to consumers.

Sarah Palin's family used socialized medicine?

2010-03-13T15:59:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted at American Thinker)

Lincoln Mitchell is on his high horse over at Huffpo reveling in the supposed hypocrisy of Sarah Palin. How could she? That's right, Sarah Palin's family used Canada's health care system a couple of times when she was a child. How can we continue to criticize Obamacare when the most popular conservative woman in America was hiding such a damning family secret? Mitchell writes:

Sarah Palin's recent statement that, presumably during her childhood, she and her family used to cross the border from Alaska to take advantage of Canada's health care system is not really a gaffe or a verbal slipup, but offers an interesting insight into Palin. It is not exactly surprising, or even"ironic," to use Palin's words, that somebody who has made a name, and a great deal of money, for herself by linking health care reform to some kind of socialist bogeyman, used to take advantage of socialized medicine. [....]

A key to Palin's resilience may have been revealed in this latest comment. To Palin it was a throwaway line, good for building a folksy rapport with a Canadian audience. Referring to this as "ironic" is sufficiently cryptic that it is not clear what it even means, but it is clear from her lack of effort to distance herself from this remark that Palin is not really aware of how revealing this admission is. Palin is a complicated political figure, but she may be less of an ideologue than first thought. Clearly, a true right wing ideologue would probably not have made this revelation. The informality of Palin's revelation, and her seeming lack of understanding of what it meant, suggests that for Palin, the right wing populism, while fun and easy, is not really grounded in anything other than the advancement of Sarah Palin.

Actually Mitchell is the one who is not really aware of how revealing his comments are. He seems surprised that Sarah didn't try to hide this story. He believes that "a true right wing ideologue would probably not have made this revelation". Projection anyone? Pundits on the left are so used to their politicians being disingenuous, that when they come across a conservative who just tells the truth they assume that the conservative politician must be stupid.

Why don't we inject a few facts to clear things up? As usual we have to point our browsers across the pond to get the whole story. From the UK's Telegraph:

The former Republican vice presidential candidate has been a frequent critic of big government and has lambasted Barack Obama's health care reforms as ushering in socialised medicine, denouncing his plans as "downright evil".

But during a weekend speech in Calgary, she revealed that her family used medical care in Whitehorse, the capital of Canada's Yukon Territory, decades ago. [....]

"I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing, and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse, and I think, 'Isn't that kind of ironic now'. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada."

Chuck Heath, Mrs Palin's father, said they had had little choice but use the Canadian facilities given Skagway's location.

"There was no road out of there at that time. The ferry schedule was very erratic. We had no doctor in Skagway," he said.

"The plane schedule was very erratic. The winds dictated whether the planes could come in or not."

He said his family probably took the train to the Whitehorse hospital only twice - once when his son burned his leg and again when a daughter had rheumatic fever.

Mr Heath also stressed that they had "much preferred" to use US medical facilities as his insurance did not cover any treatment in Whitehorse.

And this from Kevin Libin writing in Canada's National Post:

American journalists, in calling Palin—a vocal opponent of socialized medicine—a hypocrite for admitting on Saturday that her family occasionally used Canadian health care when she was a child, are, this time, the ones who look ignorant. [....]

Put aside the fact that it was Palin’s parents—not the future vice-presidential candidate, who was born in 1964 and not older than a pre-schooler during the ‘60s—who were the ones responsible for making the choice to travel to Canada. It’s awfully hard to blame them. Skagway, where Palin’s family lived at the time, is a tiny town, with fewer than 900 people, its population is scarcely larger than a junior high school in many of the lower 48’s urban centres. Whitehorse is about thirty times larger, and considerably closer than Juneau. It has a major hospital. Facing a child with an emergency, clearly the three-hour drive trip to Whitehorse was the best option for an injured child. Perhaps little Sarah Heath should have put her little bootie down and demanded her parents use only good ol' U.S. health care, regardless of the consequences. But then, Chuck and Sally, with their son needing rapid medical attention, would likely have just handed her a digestive biscuit and a sippy cup and told her to hush up. [....]

In any case, as there’s certainly no evidence the Heaths didn’t pay for the care they received in Canada. In fact, visiting Americans typically did (and still do). Actually, in the ‘60s, Canadians often did. U.S. journalists seem happy to take it for granted that health care up here has always looked exactly like it does today, but it hasn’t. As blogger Matthew Campbell rightly points out “if Palin’s family did travel in the mid-1960s, they would not have used the same state-run system that Canada uses today.” Rather, they would have used a system that looked and operated much like the American system at the time.

Huffpo readers are only getting one side of the story. Now that we have all the facts and the statements of Sarah's father this story is a non-issue.

What's really news worthy is the fact that it's so rare for Americans to go to Canada for medical care. The flow of patients is normally going the other way. Hundreds of heart patients have come across the border to America for angioplasty and just recently a famous Canadian politician traveled all the way to Florida for a specialized heart procedure that was apparently unavailable in Canada's "highly regarded" health care system.

So, to summarize, if you have a minor burn or a fever you might want to hop across the border and give socialized medicine a try. For anything more serious I would recommend the current U.S. health care system -- at least until the Democrats get their hands on it.

(Updated 3/13/10 with excerpt from Kevin Libin)

End of the road for Obama?

2010-03-09T17:01:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted at American Thinker)

It's common knowledge that the American mainstream media have collectively had a thrill going up their leg from the time Obama announced his run for the presidency. Even now they find it difficult to report the truth as the Obama presidency falls apart. The UK press on the other hand seems to have a more realistic view of our troubles, and this commentary in the UK's Telegraph highlights Obama's problems with devastating clarity. Here are a few excerpts:

It is a universal political truth that administrations do not begin to fragment when things are going well: it only happens when they go badly, and those who think they know better begin to attack those who manifestly do not. The descent of Barack Obama's regime, characterised now by factionalism in the Democratic Party and talk of his being set to emulate Jimmy Carter as a one-term president, has been swift and precipitate. It was just 16 months ago that weeping men and women celebrated his victory over John McCain in the American presidential election. If they weep now, a year and six weeks into his rule, it is for different reasons.

Despite the efforts of some sections of opinion to talk the place up, America is mired in unhappiness, all the worse for the height from which Obamania has fallen. The economy remains troublesome. [....] Whole areas of the country, notably in the north and on the eastern seaboard, are industrial wastelands. The once mighty motor city of Detroit appears slowly to be being abandoned, becoming a Jurassic Park of the mid-20th century; unemployment among black people in Mr Obama's own city of Chicago is estimated at between 20 and 25 per cent.

For a land without a welfare state, America starts to do an effective impersonation of a country with one. This massive state spending gives rise to accusations by Republicans, and people too angry even to be Republicans, that America is now controlled by "Leftists" and being turned into a socialist state.

The author has come up with the perfect description of the tea partiers: "Republicans, and people too angry even to be Republicans". One of the nicer epithets thrown at conservatives is that we are "angry". In fact studies show that conservatives have a better outlook on life and a happier disposition than liberals. And acknowledged conservatives outnumber liberals 2 to 1. So what would cause this generally happy group of people to become so angry? Maybe a socialist leader systematically destroying our economy and our cherished institutions one by one?

"Obama's big problem," a senior Democrat told me, "is that four times as many people watch Fox News as watch CNN." The Fox network is a remarkable cultural phenomenon which almost shocks those of us from a country where a technical rule of impartiality is applied in the broadcast media. With little rest, it pours out rage 24 hours a day: its message is of the construction of the socialist state, the hijacking of America by "progressives" who now dominate institutions, the indoctrination of children, the undermining of religion and the expropriation of public money for these nefarious projects. The public loves it, and it is manifestly stirring up political activism against Mr Obama, and also against those in the Republican Party who are not deemed conservatives. However, it is arguable whether the now-reorganising Right is half as effective in its assault on the President as some of Mr Obama's own party are.

I hate to disagree with a senior Democrat but "Obama's big problem," is not "that four times as many people watch Fox News as watch CNN." Obama's big problem is that he doesn't understand the people who watch Fox News. Obama can't pivot to the center like Clinton did because he doesn't understand how the vast majority live in this center-right nation. He believes that his policies are unpopular because he hasn't explained them in simple enough terms that the "bitter-clingers" in flyover country can understand. The truth is the exact opposite, we understand his policies all to well, and we reject them.

Mr Obama benefited in his campaign from an idiotic level of idolatry, in which most of the media participated with an astonishing suspension of cynicism. The sound of the squealing of brakes is now audible all over the American press; but the attack is being directed not at the leader himself, but at those around him. [....]

The $783 billion stimulus package of a year ago was used to further the re-election prospects of many congressmen, not to do good for the country. America's politics remain corrupt, populated by nonentities whose main concern once elected is to stay elected; it seems to be the same the whole world over. Even this self-interested use of the stimulus package appears to have failed, however. Every day, it seems, another Democrat congressman announces that he will not be fighting the mid-term elections scheduled for November 2. The health care Bill, apparently so humane in intent, is being "scrubbed" (to use the terminology of one Republican) by its opponents, to the joy of millions of middle Americans who see it as a means to waste more public money and entrench socialism. For the moment, this is a country vibrant with anger.

With a few exceptions the ideas expressed in this article are right on the money, too bad our own press can't be this honest. In the spirit of international cooperation I propose that we trade our print media for theirs. They can keep the BBC with it's "technical rule of impartiality".

It's Perry in the Texas GOP primary

2010-03-04T14:48:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted at American Thinker)

On tax day last year Gov. Perry was at a tea party. Kay Bailey Hutchison was reportedly at a mattress store. Guess who won the Texas Republican primary? Here's analysis from the Houston Chronicle:

Less than a year ago, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was the most popular elected official in Texas and the odds-on favorite to be the next governor of Texas. Some polls showed her leading the incumbent, Rick Perry, by more than 20 points.

What Hutchison didn't realize this time a year ago was that her fate may well have been sealed by Tax Day, April 15, 2009, when Perry spoke at tea party rallies in Houston, Dallas and Austin and suggested — merely suggested — that Texas might have reason to secede from the union. He never mentioned the word “secession,” but there was no mistaking his drift.

Signaling his sympathy with the wave of anti-Washington, anti-Obama animus sweeping Texas and the country — animus fueled by the tea partiers — Perry effectively tagged his fellow Republican as a creature of Washington after her 16 years in the Senate. She never recovered from the anti-Washington barrage. And she knew it.

At 9:30 Tuesday night, with less than a quarter of the precincts counted statewide, Hutchison conceded the nomination to Perry.

She paid dearly for not recognizing early enough the power of the anti-Washington sentiment. “I think she spent tax day at a mattress sales place,” said Ted DeLisi, a political consultant to Perry who helped convince the governor that the anti-tax sentiment was “a prairie fire that was going to burn incredibly hot for an incredibly long time.”

On election day, Tom Mc-Kenzie, a senior citizen who works at a Houston commercial real estate brokerage, was one voter who saw no reason to make a change in Austin. “Texas has been a pretty successful state comparatively, and … if it ain't broke, don't fix it,” he said. [....]

Hutchison's initial strategy was to broaden the Republican base, appealing to moderates and independents of both parties. It was a flawed strategy, Austin political consultant Jason Stanford said. “You always have to throw the corn where the hogs can get at it. This entire primary was Rick Perry's briar patch, and it ran counter to her appeal,” he said of Hutchison.

I believe it's called the McCain strategy, "appealing to moderates and independents of both parties" and yes it is a "flawed strategy." Note to all Republicans running for office anywhere in America, stick to Reagan conservatism and you will win. Contrary to popular belief independents don't want moderate candidates, they want authentic candidates with core values.

And don't you just love those Texas aphorisms, " if it ain't broke, don't fix it", in other words if you have a good conservative Republican in office there's no need to make a change. We all know how "change" worked out in the last presidential election.

Debra Medina ran an impressive campaign for a newcomer. Her only mistake was her flubbed answer when Glenn Beck asked her about the truthers. Candidates like Medina will help keep mainstream Republican candidates honest.

Oh and by the way, the winner of the Democratic Primary -- what's his name? Used to be mayor of Houston -- he doesn't have a chance in the general.

Canadian Premier uses our "broken" health care system‏

2010-02-24T20:58:00.000-08:00

President Obama says our health care system is broken and apparently massive federal intervention is needed to fix it. Hence the upcoming health care summit, even as unemployment numbers hover around 10%. It's therefore surprising to learn that world leaders still come to America for health care. The latest to make the trip is Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams. The Canadian Press has the story:

An unapologetic Danny Williams says he was aware his trip to the United States for heart surgery earlier this month would spark outcry, but he concluded his personal health trumped any public fallout over the controversial decision.

In an interview with The Canadian Press, Williams said he went to Miami to have a "minimally invasive" surgery for an ailment first detected nearly a year ago, based on the advice of his doctors.

"This was my heart, my choice and my health," Williams said late Monday from his condominium in Sarasota, Fla.

"I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics."

Did a Canadian leader just say that our health care system is better than theirs? Danny wanted the "best possible health care" and where did he come to get it? The good 'ole USA, one of the last major countries in the western world with a relatively un-socialized health care system.

It seems Canadian doctors are not up-to-date on the latest procedures. They were going to have to slice Danny open and break some bones to get to his heart valve. They offered two options, "a full or partial sternotomy, both of which would've required breaking bones." Doctors here in America we were able to provide Danny with better options:

He said he spoke with and provided his medical information to a leading cardiac surgeon in New Jersey who is also from Newfoundland and Labrador. He advised him to seek treatment at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami.

That's where he was treated by Dr. Joseph Lamelas, a cardiac surgeon who has performed more than 8,000 open-heart surgeries.

Williams said Lamelas made an incision under his arm that didn't require any bone breakage.

"I wanted to get in, get out fast, get back to work in a short period of time," the premier said.

It's understandable that Canadian leaders would want to get back on the job as soon as possible, they have a lot of work to do on their health care system.

The gang that can't shoot straight

2010-02-09T23:07:00.000-08:00

If you get your news from the mainstream media you might not be aware of an important story making the rounds of the blogosphere by Edward Luce the Washington Bureau Chief for the Financial Times. He's got the inside story (registration required) on the disastrous first year of the Obama presidency. Here is a sample:

Just over a year into his tenure, America’s 44th president governs a bitterly divided nation, a world increasingly hard to manage and an America that seems more disillusioned than ever with Washington’s ways. What went wrong?

Pundits, Democratic lawmakers and opinion pollsters offer a smorgasbord of reasons – from Mr Obama’s decision to devote his first year in office to healthcare reform, to the president’s inability to convince voters he can “feel their [economic] pain”, to the apparent ungovernability of today’s Washington. All may indeed have contributed to the quandary in which Mr Obama finds himself. But those around him have a more specific diagnosis – and one that is striking in its uniformity. The Obama White House is geared for campaigning rather than governing, they say.

In dozens of interviews with his closest allies and friends in Washington – most of them given unattributably in order to protect their access to the Oval Office – each observes that the president draws on the advice of a very tight circle. The inner core consists of just four people – Rahm Emanuel, the pugnacious chief of staff; David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, his senior advisers; and Robert Gibbs, his communications chief.

Two, Mr Emanuel and Mr Axelrod, have box-like offices within spitting distance of the Oval Office. The president, who is the first to keep a BlackBerry, rarely holds a meeting, including on national security, without some or all of them present.

With the exception of Mr Emanuel, who was a senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, all were an integral part of Mr Obama’s brilliantly managed campaign. Apart from Mr Gibbs, who is from Alabama, all are Chicagoans – like the president. And barring Richard Nixon’s White House, few can think of an administration that has been so dominated by such a small inner circle.

Luce gives us some insight on how Obama's health care legislation was mis-handled by the Obama team:

This White House-centric structure has generated one overriding – and unexpected – failure. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Mr Emanuel managed the legislative aspect of the healthcare bill quite skilfully, say observers. The weak link was the failure to carry public opinion – not Capitol Hill. But for the setback in Massachusetts, which deprived the Democrats of their 60-seat supermajority in the Senate, Mr Obama would by now almost certainly have signed healthcare into law – and with it would have become a historic president.

But the normally liberal voters of Massachusetts wished otherwise. The Democrats lost the seat to a candidate, Scott Brown, who promised voters he would be the “41st [Republican] vote” in the Senate – the one that would tip the balance against healthcare. Subsequent polling bears out the view that a decisive number of Democrats switched their votes with precisely that motivation in mind.

“Historians will puzzle over the fact that Barack Obama, the best communicator of his generation, totally lost control of the narrative in his first year in office and allowed people to view something they had voted for as something they suddenly didn’t want,” says Jim Morone, America’s leading political scientist on healthcare reform. “Communication was the one thing everyone thought Obama would be able to master.”

Apparently Obama and his four most trusted advisers have formed a mutual admiration society where opposing viewpoints from the outside are never considered.

Daniel Foster has some insightful commentary at the corner. He calls Obama's advisers the "The Four Horsemen of the Obamacalypse." Foster notes that: "Many of Obama's highest-profile cabinet members are, by contrast, largely disconnected from both policy creation and messaging decisions."

Those of us of on the conservative side always like it when liberals feel comfortable enough to show their true colors. Nothing can wake up this center-right nation quicker than watching the Federal Government gobbling up large chunks of the economy while the private sector shrinks.

But some on the left seem concerned. Steve Clemons of the Washinton Note thinks the Obama presidency is "sinking" and he has some advice for Obama:

Read the Luce piece. Be honest about what is happening. Read Plouffe's smart book again. Send Rahm Emanuel back to the House in a senior role. Make Valerie Jarrett an important Ambassador. Keep Axelrod -- but balance him with someone like Plouffe, and get back to putting good policy before short term politics.

Set up a Team B with diverse political and national security observers like Tom Daschle, John Podesta, Brent Scowcroft, Arianna Huffington, Fareed Zakaria, Katrina vanden Heuvel, John Harris, James Fallows, Chuck Hagel, Strobe Talbott, James Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and others to give you a no-nonsense picture of what is going on.

And take action to fix the dysfunction of your office.

Otherwise, the Obama brand will be totally bust in the very near term.

If the Obama brand goes bust, it goes bust. This is not the first failed presidency we have endured, America will survive.

A tough time for climate science

2010-02-03T18:07:00.000-08:00

In his latest blog post George Monbiot says that Phil Jones isn't the only one who should resign. The left leaning Guardian has the story:

This is a tough time for climate science. The Guardian's new revelations about the hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia might help to explain the university's utter failure to confront its critics. They could also explain why the head of the unit, Phil Jones, blocked freedom of information requests and proposed that material subject to those requests be deleted. He has been spared a criminal investigation only because the time limit for prosecutions has expired.

The emails I read gave me the impression that Phil Jones had something to hide. Now we know what it might have been. The Guardian has discovered that Jones appears to have suppressed data that undermines a paper he published in Nature in 1990. The paper claimed that Chinese weather stations show that local heating caused by urbanisation has very little effect on the temperature record. It now seems that much of the data they used is worthless and the documents required to validate it do not exist. The paper might be 20 years old, but in a way that makes the scandal worse: Phil Jones has had 20 years in which to issue a correction. Even after the hacking in October last year, he has still not done so.

When the emails were first published in November, I called for Professor Jones's resignation as head of the CRU. Though he has stepped down temporarily, his position is now even less tenable. The longer he leaves it, the worse this will get.

I believe the head of communications at the university, Annie Ogden, also has to go. She was warned repeatedly that the university's handling of this issue was a catastrophe, and still the policy – of utter passivity in the face of crisis – remains unchanged. Today was a re-run of what happened in December: though the story was on the front page of the Guardian's site at 9pm last night, by 10.30 this morning UEA had still not prepared a response and was unable to answer questions from journalists. As the emails show, climate scientists at the university have been up against a well-armed public relations campaign for many years, but no one at UEA has developed a strategy for responding. Even now the university has failed to make the obvious move: to call in a crisis management team, or at least to hire someone who can show they know how to respond to an emergency. [....]

George Monbiot and Phil Jones personify the two types of climate scientists in the world today. The former wants to uphold the ideals of peer reviewed science and the latter... Well, it appears that he just wanted to keep the accolades and the grant money rolling in.

John Coleman debunks AGW

2010-01-30T17:04:00.000-08:00

As we learn more details of shoddy work by the "scientists" involved in the 2007 IPCC report from the British press it becomes obvious that AGW was a scam from the beginning, just an excuse for the elites to control our lives. In a post at American Thinker Rick Moran laments the fact that the mainstream media in this country is ignoring the story.

However there is one figure in American media who has been shouting from the rooftops for many years about the global warming scam. His name is John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel and the original weatherman on Good Morning America.

With his latest effort to get the word out he has produced a short concise video that completely debunks the anthropogenic global warming theory. He even has some really cool charts and graphs like Al Gore used in his famous movie except John's are based on fact not fiction.

This video can be used to help deprogram any of your friends or family members that have been brainwashed by the warmists cult.

RINO attempts to revive Obamacare

2010-01-30T09:44:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted at American Thinker)

Sen. Susan Collins (RINO-Maine) is just itching to sign a health care bill. As reported in The Hill on Thursday she said "that it is still possible for Democrats and Republicans to reach a deal on a bipartisan health care bill." She added "that a deal would be contingent at White House outreach."

"I believe that if the White House sat down with Republican leaders, that it is possible to forge a bipartisan bill," the Maine senator told reporters.

President Barack Obama pledged during his State of the Union address Wednesday night that he would not walk away from the healthcare negotiations that are currently stalled in Congress.

But Collins said that she is "a little confused because the President's speech last night seemed to be going in the other direction [of a bipartisan compromise]." [....]

Collins said a bipartisan deal would have to "concentrate on healthcare costs, small business tax credits, some insurance reforms, such as interstate sale of insurance, and some medical liablility reforms, which are important to controlling costs."

A few questions immediately come to mind: Does she expect this Whitehouse to reach out to Republicans? Is it possible she is more tone deaf than Obama to the wishes of the American people?

Like the dwindling number of Americans still under Obama's spell Susan is "a little confused because the President's speech last night seemed to be going in the other direction [of a bipartisan compromise]." If Susan knew Obama's true agenda she wouldn't be "confused."

Obama is a far left idealogue who wants to transform our health care system into something like they have in Canada or the UK. He has absolutely no interest in doing anything that might make our current system work better.

Obamacare is like a monster in a cheap horror flick. Just when you think it's dead it comes back to life.

It's not very NICE to deny life saving drugs

2010-01-18T21:40:00.000-08:00

The Obama administration has made reducing the cost of health care one of the main reasons we should adopt Obamacare. Our cousins across the pond already have Obamacare. How do they reduce costs? By denying health care, of course!

Britain's notorious National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) is at it again. The Telegraph has the story: "Patients in England and Wales are being denied a powerful new arthritis drug on the NHS despite a decision by Scottish health authorities to provide it to sufferers for free."

The Government’s drugs rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), has provisionally said that it does not intend to recommend the use of the drug, called Tocilizumab, or Roactemra.

Nice claims that the £9,000 a year drug, for rheumatoid arthritis, has not proved that it is cost effective.

But patients in Scotland are to receive the treatment after it was recommended by the body which regulates drugs on the Scottish NHS, the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC).

The move will reopen accusations of medical ‘apartheid’ within Britain.

It follows an outcry after patients in Scotland were given access to expensive cancer drugs denied on the NHS in England and Wales.

Roactemra has been described as a “life changing” drug because it can be taken after other medications have failed, a common problem in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

Patients groups last night said that denying the medication to tens of thousands of patients with the crippling condition in one part of the country was “cruel”.

Ailsa Bosworth, chief executive of the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society (NRAS), said: “I have heard patients stories that would make you weep.

“People are virtually suicidal because they have nowhere else to go and yet they know that there are other drugs out there that they could have access to but cannot because of Nice.”

She added that it was “ludicrous” that the drug would be available in Scotland “and yet two miles on over the border you can’t get it.”

The drug - the first new arthritis treatment for a decade - is already used in most other European countries, including France and Germany.

This is the same government panel that previously forced patients to go blind in one eye before allowing treatment in the one remaining good eye. And banned two life prolonging drugs for women with advanced breast cancer.

Some might call NICE a death panel. That's not entirely accurate. It's more like a slow-agonizing-painful-existence-followed-by-death panel.

The end of liberalism, part II

2009-12-22T14:20:00.000-08:00

More evidence that Democrats are spending money so fast America will soon be bankrupt. And liberalism will be finished as a viable political philosophy. Mark Hemingway from The Washington Examiner writes:

Well, today's front page story in the Washington Post provides some evidence that our diagnosis is correct:

The recession's jobless toll is draining unemployment-compensation funds so fast that according to federal projections, 40 state programs will go broke within two years and need $90 billion in loans to keep issuing the benefit checks.

Sooner or later, the torrent of other people's money is going to dry up. And at this rate, it will be sooner rather than later.

The end of liberalism?

2009-12-19T10:27:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted at American Thinker and featured on the Rush Limbaugh show)

From the very beginning of the Obama presidency Democrats have been acting like kids in a candy store -- doubling down on the TARP bailout and the $787 billion stimulus/slush fund. The most recent 1.1 trillion spending bill and now the health care bill which, with a little accounting sleight-of-hand, comes in at under one trillion, the Democrats are spending like there are no more tomorrows.

What will be the results of all of this out of control spending?

The consequences will be many but one of the most surprising results could be the end of liberalism. At least that's the opinion of this editorial in the Washington Examiner. Which begins with this extraordinary statement: " With its most vigorous advocate in memory presiding in the White House and commanding Democratic majorities in Congress, it's difficult to believe that the end of liberalism may be within sight."

The Examiner piece goes on to explain how out of control spending may bring about the end of liberalism:

The Petersen-Pew Commission on Budget Reform has produced a new report warning that "[o]ver the past year alone, the public debt of the United States rose sharply from 41 to 53 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Under reasonable assumptions, the debt is projected to grow steadily, reaching 85 percent of GDP by 2018, 100 percent by 2022, and 200 percent in 2038."

Long before the debt reaches such stratospheric levels, the commission warns, "Fears of inflation and a prospective decline in the value of the dollar would cause investors to demand higher interest rates and shift out of U.S. Treasury securities. The excessive debt would also affect citizens in their everyday lives by harming the American standard of living through slower economic growth and dampening wages, and shrinking the government's ability to reduce taxes, invest, or provide a safety net."

In other words, within the lifetimes of the vast majority of living Americans, government as we have known it since the New Deal will become paralyzed, unable to deliver even basic services, let alone the myriad of entitlements that politicians had promised would last forever. Liberalism will owe its undoing to its blind faith that government could forever be the inexhaustible provider of ever more spending, more benefits and more prosperity, with nary a day of reckoning.

Obama and the liberal Democrats in congress have inadvertently implemented a top down Cloward-Piven strategy where liberal entitlement programs sow the seeds of their own destruction by being too ambitious. If America survives this experiment in socialism it could well be the end of liberalism as we know it today.

Press Release No.869 (garbage in garbage out)

2009-12-08T20:03:00.000-08:00

Press Release No.869 from the World Meteorological Organization opens with this ominous statement: "The year 2009 is likely to rank in the top 10 warmest on record since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850, according to data sources compiled by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)."

Should we be worried about this ominous sounding statement? No doubt the evening anchors on the three major networks will repeat it in the uncritical and solemn tones normally reserved for religious functions. But why don't we take a closer look at this press release anyway?

Just from reading the opening statement we can surmise that it is entirely possible that 9 separate years from 1850 to 2008 may have been warmer than 2009. And where did they get their peer-reviewed data to make that statement? Here is the key paragraph with my emphasis added:

This preliminary information for 2009 is based on climate data from networks of land-based weather and climate stations, ships and buoys, as well as satellites. The data are continuously collected and disseminated by the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) of the 189 Members of WMO and several collaborating research institutions. The data continuously feed three main depository global climate data and analysis centres, which develop and maintain homogeneous global climate datasets based on peer-reviewed methodologies. The WMO global temperature analysis is thus based on three complementary datasets. One is the combined dataset maintained by both the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office and the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, United Kingdom. Another dataset is maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under the United States Department of Commerce, and the third one is from the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The content of the WMO statement is verified and peer-reviewed by leading experts from other international, regional and national climate institutions and centres before its publication.

I don't mean to be skeptical but I can already see a few problems:

"land-based weather and climate stations": Are these the same weather stations reporting elevated temperatures due to the encroachment of urban development?

"ships and buoys": Could this be NASA's ARGO system that since being fully deployed in 2003 has shown that temperatures in the oceans have actually declined?

"Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, United Kingdom": Is this the same organization at the center of the Climategate scandal. The same organization that threw away much of their raw data?

"Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)": Is this the same organization that has been resisting a FOIA request from a climate sceptic for two years?

I'm sorry but I have no confidence in the accuracy of the pronouncements of the World Meteorological Organization. It reminds me of the old computer programmer's aphorism: "Garbage in, garbage out".

Camille Paglia, last of the open minded liberals

2009-10-26T13:09:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted at American Thinker)

What would you call an acknowledged member of the intellectual elite who is skeptical of global warming, likes to listen to Rush Limbaugh, has an ongoing battle with the feminist establishment and is a fan of Sarah Palin? I would call her the last of the open minded liberals. Don't get the wrong idea, she's no dittohead. And she has some controversial and disturbing ideas that would be right at home in the far left universe. But what she doesn't do is blindly follow today's liberal orthodoxy.

Today's liberals consist of two groups. One group includes the far left ideologues who believe that government is the answer to all our problems. Obama, Reid and Pelosi fit into this group. Also included in this group are those liberal politicians who may be uneasy with what those three are up to but are too afraid to speak out. The other smaller and shrinking group is made up of open minded liberals who are not afraid to speak out when they see corruption and incompetence in today's leaders.

Camille Paglia is a leading voice in the latter group. She is a Professor, Author and Cultural critic who writes a column for salon.com. It's no secret that she has been very critical of the Obama administration since his first week in office. In a recent column she answers a letter from a reader who asks how she can continue to support Obama in spite of her withering criticism of his administration.

Her answer is similar to the main theme of many of her other recent columns. She has some harsh words for those around Obama and some of his policies while still holding out hope that he can turn it all around, as reflected in this comment: "Count me among those who are very critical of many of Obama's actions or evasions but who continue to like him and to believe in his potential as a world leader."

A good example of her disdain for those around Obama can be found in this excerpt from a column she wrote in March of this year:

Yes, free the president from his flacks, fixers and goons -- his posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes, who were shrewd enough to beat the slow, pompous Clintons in the mano-a-mano primaries but who seem like dazed lost lambs in the brave new world of federal legislation and global statesmanship.

Heads should be rolling at the White House for the embarrassing series of flubs that have overshadowed President Obama's first seven weeks in office and given the scattered, demoralized Republicans a huge boost toward regrouping and resurrection. (Michelle, please use those fabulous toned arms to butt some heads!)

Interestingly this is not the first Democrat administration that Camille has had a problem with. In a 1995 interview in Playboy she was asked: "Were you optimistic when Clinton was elected?" Her answer:

Of course. We finally had a great opportunity. It was a chance to rethink everything that had failed as a result of the shoddy thinking in the Sixties and to try again with a new, reasoned approach. The Clinton administration should have been a think tank for the nation--he himself should have led the debate, reaffirming all Sixties ideals but correcting them where they had become excessive. It's a tragedy that he didn't. Instead of surrounding himself with progressive intellectuals, he surrounded himself with Eighties yuppies--like George Stephanopoulos, whom I loathe with a passion. I wish Clinton would fire everyone around him. I want a Saturday night massacre. I hate them all. But Clinton has totally lost the persona of leadership. It's pathetic. He's looking like a salesman.

It's deja vu all over again, she has a chronic case of buyers remorse.

Notice her criticism of the Clinton administration extends all the way to the guy at the top. She even criticized Clinton for not resigning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But today with her critique of the Obama administration she stops short of blaming Obama himself. It will be interesting to see if this changes in the future.

Why do influential liberals like Camille continue to give Obama a pass? Clearly Obama and those he has surrounded himself with are far more radical than the Clinton administration was. A new video has surfaced showing Anita Dunn, the White House communications director extolling the virtues of Mao Tse-Tung. This is just the latest in a string of marxists and radicals found serving in the Obama White House.

There is a logical reason the Obama administration is far more radical than the Clinton administration was. It is the culmination of a decades long trend. Professor Paglia's colleagues in academia have been a little too successful in their efforts to change our culture. Many parts of American society including political parties -- particularly the Democrat Party -- have been moving to the far left for many years now.

Camille and a few other liberals like her who still believe in liberty and freedom and reject political correctness have been shut out of the debate. No one is listening.

Her writings are filled with heartfelt questions for her party. Some may wonder if her thought process is taking her down the same road that Robin of Berkeley traveled recently? That's not likely, Camille has traveled too far as a Democrat. Here are some of her pleas to the Democrat establishment from her Sept. 9th column:

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year's tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? [...] It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? [...] I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party -- but I must be living in the nostalgic past. [...]

[A]ffluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it's invisible.

It's almost painful to read the lamentations of a JFK Democrat pleading with today's Democrat establishment. Camille doesn't realize that the Democrat party has been taken over by leftists. She believes that Obama is a pragmatic rational liberal like herself and all his missteps to date come from the bad advice he's been getting from his inept advisers.

The idea that Obama's problems may be self inflicted is probably too terrible for her to contemplate. Camille doesn't realize that Obama is a product of the new Democrat Party. The Democrat party of her youth is no more. It has been replaced with a party that is flirting with socialism and dare we say it -- communism. Camille is shocked that the anti-establishment hippies of the 60's now see no problem giving up their freedom to a huge government bureaucracy. Perhaps it's because those hippies from the 60's have become the establishment.

As the Democratic party continues to ignore the advice of open minded liberals like Camille Paglia and heads down the self destructive path of radicalism there is a valuable lesson here for conservatives. We should always vote for the most conservative candidate we can find because once he or she gets to Washington . . .

Well, you know what happens. Surrounded by the trappings of seemingly unlimited federal power politicians from both parties seem to be inexorably pulled to the left. Even Reagan couldn't get rid of the Department of Energy.

Even Newsweek is beginning to notice the hubris

2009-09-28T17:51:00.000-07:00

The liberals in the MSM are beginning to notice that Obama seems to like being in front of the camera more than doing the hard work of governing the country. They are imploring the president to stop campaigning and start governing. The latest to write on the subject is Howard Fineman at Newsweek. Here is a sample:

If ubiquity were the measure of a presidency, Barack Obama would already be grinning at us from Mount Rushmore. But of course it is not. Despite his many words and television appearances, our elegant and eloquent president remains more an emblem of change than an agent of it. He's a man with an endless, worthy to-do list—health care, climate change, bank reform, global capital regulation, AfPak, the Middle East, you name it—but, as yet, no boxes checked "done." This is a problem that style will not fix. Unless Obama learns to rely less on charm, rhetoric, and good intentions and more on picking his spots and winning in political combat, he's not going to be reelected, let alone enshrined in South Dakota.

The president's problem isn't that he is too visible; it's the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words "I" and "my." (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story.

You can detect a sense of panic in some of these articles as progressives realize their best chance ever to radically change America may be slipping away. As a conservative I don't mind at all. Obama can give all the speeches he wants to, every time he talks about healthcare for instance the public support for his health care plan drops.

The sky is falling temps to rise 6.3 degrees!

2009-09-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

When you read an article in the mainstream media on global warming you can count on two things: First, the headline will be designed to scare the reader with a doomsday scenario. And second, the "facts" in the article almost never back up the headline.

A case in point is this article from The Washington Post. The headline says: "New Analysis Brings Dire Forecast Of 6.3 Degree Temperature Increase".

If I didn't know better I would be worried. The Earth's temperature is about to rise by 6.3 degrees? What the headline failed to mention is that the temperature increase is predicted to happen 90 years into the future, if it happens at all.

Climate researchers now predict the planet will warm by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century even if the world's leaders fulfill their most ambitious climate pledges, a faster and broader scale of climate change than forecast just two years ago, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations Environment Program.

The new overview of global warming research, aimed at marshalling political support for a new international climate pact by the end of the year, highlights the extent to which recent scientific assessments have outstripped the predictions issued by the Nobel Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.

These climate researchers could be the best weather forecasters in the history of the world. The weather channel should hire these guys immediately. At the end of this century -- approximately 90 years from today -- the earth will be 6.3 degrees warmer than it is today. Not 6.2 degrees or 6.4 degrees but 6.3. Admittedly it is an estimate but what an amazingly accurate estimate considering the length of time involved.

Now I know we should never question the mainstream media, but this amazing prediction has got me scratching my head. How did they come up with that number? Ah, here it is:

The group took the upper range targets of nearly 200 nations' climate policies -- including the House-passed climate bill that would reduce emissions 73 percent from 2005 levels by 2050, along with the European Union's pledge to reduce its emissions 80 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2050 -- and found that even under that optimistic scenario, the average global temperature was likely to warm by 6.3 degrees.

Silly me, I thought that number was based on science. It is simply a guess of the Earth's temperature 90 years into the future based on the climate policies of 200 nations. This is what passes for journalism today? I could get more accurate data by closing my eyes and punching keys on a calculator. Imagine all the poor souls out there who read this stuff everyday, and believe it.

And by the way these predictions are based on the flawed theory that increases in CO2 in the atmosphere cause the temperature of the Earth to rise. In the last decade as CO2 levels have been rising the Earth's temperature has actually been dropping.

I did learn one thing from this article, if you want to be a soothsayer, let your predictions play out over a time span of almost 100 years. That way all your critics will dead and buried before the evidence comes in.

Nancy Pelosi is concerned about violence

2009-09-19T19:33:00.000-07:00

Nancy Pelosi gave quite a performance when she teared up while describing her fear of the tea party people. Funny, I never saw her shed a tear when the black panthers were "guarding" a polling place in Philly back in November of '08.

And I didn't hear her complain when the black panthers marched in Houston brandishing AK-47 rifles at the Republicans state convention in June of 2000. Where's that moral outrage when you need it?

And did she call a news conference when that anti-abortion protester was murdered in Michigan?

Yea, we better keep an eye on those grandmas, teachers and farmers at the tea parties. They're a wild bunch!

ACORN De-funded!

2009-09-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

This tweet just in from Michelle Malkin: "Final roll call vote on Sen. Johanns amndt to de-fund ACORN 83-7. Thank u, Sen. Johanns!"

As Hannity says: "Journalism is dead." Two kids with a hidden camera have more impact than the New York Times.

Up to 2 million march on Washington

2009-09-12T17:27:00.000-07:00

It's curious the way the U.S. mainstream media is reporting the size of the crowds in Washington today. According to the New York Times "Thousands Rally in Capital to protest big government". The AP also uses "Thousands" in the headline of their story. In a quick read of CNN's article I don't see any numbers mentioned. Even Fox -- trying to be fair and balanced I suppose -- only reported "tens of thousands" in the body of the article.

As usual we have to go to the foreign press to find out what's really happening in America today. The Mail Online has the story on the massive protest in Washington with an unbiased estimate of the size of the crowd:

Up to two million people marched to the U.S. Capitol today, carrying signs with slogans such as "Obamacare makes me sick" as they protested the president's health care plan and what they say is out-of-control spending.
The line of protesters spread across Pennsylvania Avenue for blocks, all the way to the capitol, according to the Washington Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency.
People were chanting "enough, enough" and "We the People." Others yelled "You lie, you lie!" and "Pelosi has to go," referring to California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.
Demonstrators waved U.S. flags and held signs reading "Go Green Recycle Congress" and "I'm Not Your ATM." Men wore colonial costumes as they listened to speakers who warned of "judgment day" - Election Day 2010.
Richard Brigle, 57, a Vietnam War veteran and former Teamster, came from Michigan. He said health care needs to be reformed - but not according to President Barack Obama's plan.
"My grandkids are going to be paying for this. It's going to cost too much money that we don't have," he said while marching, bracing himself with a wooden cane as he walked.
FreedomWorks Foundation, a conservative organization led by former House of Representatives Majority Leader Dick Armey, organized several groups from across the country for what they billed as a "March on Washington."

Organizers say they built on momentum from the April "tea party" demonstrations held nationwide to protest tax policies, along with growing resentment over the economic stimulus packages and bank bailouts.

More >>>

UK death panels exposed

2009-09-04T10:45:00.000-07:00

The Telegraph has the weekly (or is it daily now) horror story from the UK's National Health Service.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.

“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.

Imagine you've recovered from a near death experience only to find the nurse is withholding fluids and lifesaving drugs. Too weak to speak but still conscious you feel the prick of the needle as the sedatives are injected. When cost savings become the main driving force in a government program this is what you get.

With socialism the individual doesn't count, it comes down to what is best for society. If these old sick people would just die a little quicker more money would be available for the "productive" members of society.

Do we really want to start down that slippery slope, who's next? The severely handicapped, the mentally challenged.

The typical liberal who gets all her news from the MSM and knows for a fact that Rush and Hannity are hate mongers (even though she has never listened to talk radio) is genuinely perplexed at the health care protesters: "They don't know what's good for them."

Yes, we do know what's good for us and it's not turning our health care over to the same people who run the post office and Amtrack.

Government health care horror

2009-08-31T18:36:00.000-07:00

In case there is anyone out there who still believes that we should turn over our health care to the government these three stories on the UK's infamous National Health Service should make them reconsider.

From The Daily Mail: "The babies born in hospital corridors: Bed shortage forces 4,000 mothers to give birth in lifts, offices and hospital toilets"

Thousands of women are having to give birth outside maternity wards because of a lack of midwives and hospital beds.

The lives of mothers and babies are being put at risk as births in locations ranging from lifts to toilets - even a caravan - went up 15 per cent last year to almost 4,000.

Health chiefs admit a lack of maternity beds is partly to blame for the crisis, with hundreds of women in labour being turned away from hospitals because they are full. [....]

Babies were born in offices, lifts, toilets and a caravan, according to the Freedom of Information data for 2007 and 2008 from 117 out of 147 trusts which provide maternity services.

One woman gave birth in a lift while being transferred to a labour ward from A&E while another gave birth in a corridor, said East Cheshire NHS Trust.

Others said women had to give birth on the wards - rather than in their own maternity room - because the delivery suites were full.

Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley, who obtained the figures, said Labour had cut maternity beds by 2,340, or 22 per cent, since 1997. At the same time birth rates have been rising sharply - up 20 per cent in some areas.

Mr Lansley said: 'New mothers should not be being put through the trauma of having to give birth in such inappropriate places. [....]

'It shows the incredible waste that has taken place that mothers are getting this sort of sub-standard treatment despite Gordon Brown's tripling of spending on the NHS.

'Labour have let down mothers by cutting the number of maternity beds and by shutting down maternity units.

Notice there is no mention of a doctor ever delivering a baby, only midwives. Apparently having a doctor deliver a baby in the UK is not even a consideration.

Here is outrageous headline number two: "Man collapses with ruptured appendix... three weeks after NHS doctors 'took it out'."

After weeks of excruciating pain, Mark Wattson was understandably relieved to have his appendix taken out.

Doctors told him the operation was a success and he was sent home.

But only a month later the 35-year-old collapsed in agony and had to be taken back to Great Western Hospital in Swindon by ambulance.

To his shock, surgeons from the same team told him that not only was his appendix still inside him, but it had ruptured - a potentially fatal complication.

In a second operation it was finally removed, leaving Mr Wattson fearing another organ might have been taken out during the first procedure.

The blunder has left Mr Wattson jobless, as bosses at the shop where he worked did not believe his story and sacked him.

Mr Wattson told of the moment he realised there had been a serious mistake.

'I was lying on a stretcher in terrible pain and a doctor came up to me and said that my appendix had burst,' he said.

'I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I told these people I had my appendix out just four weeks earlier but there it was on the scanner screen for all to see.

'I thought, "What the hell did they slice me open for in the first place?"

'I feel that if the surgery had been done correctly in the first place I wouldn't be in the mess I am today. I'm disgusted by the whole experience.'

But wait... There's more from The Telegraph: " 'Cruel and neglectful' care of one million NHS patients exposed"

In the last six years, the Patients Association claims hundreds of thousands have suffered from poor standards of nursing, often with 'neglectful, demeaning, painful and sometimes downright cruel' treatment.
The charity has disclosed a horrifying catalogue of elderly people left in pain, in soiled bed clothes, denied adequate food and drink, and suffering from repeatedly cancelled operations, missed diagnoses and dismissive staff.

The Patients Association said the dossier proves that while the scale of the scandal at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust - where up to 1,200 people died through failings in urgent care - was a one off, there are repeated examples they have uncovered of the same appalling standards throughout the NHS.

All government run health care systems have a common problem. Due to government bureaucracy and inefficiency there is never enough money, so services are continually cut: "Labour had cut maternity beds by 2,340, or 22 per cent, since 1997." Then the service provided reaches a critical point and the MSM finally wakes up and reports on the crisis. At this point the embarrassed government officials promise to fix the problem.

What you have in these health care systems is a kind of seesaw effect, where a crisis builds to a breaking point and eventually some remedial action is taken. Then things settle down until the next crisis appears. Is it any wonder Americans reject this type of system?

We should spend more on health care, not less

2009-08-27T07:55:00.000-07:00

Everyone is talking about controlling the rising cost of health care, but is that really such a good idea? When other sectors of the economy grow it's considered good news. We Americans spend more on our clothes, more on our cars and more on our homes than most people around the world. Why shouldn't we spend more on health care? We're not like other countries, well not yet anyway.

We do spend more per capita on health care than any other nation in the world. In 2007 we spent $2.26 trillion, that comes to $7,439 per person. Why do we spend so much? Is it because our health care system is broke like the mainstream media tells us, or could there be other reasons?

These excerpts from Wikipedia may shed some light:

The United States is a leader in medical innovation. In 2004, the health care industry spent three times as much as Europe per capita on biomedical research. [....]

In 2006, the United States accounted for three quarters of the world’s biotechnology revenues and 82% of world R&D spending in biotechnology. [....]

The top five U.S. hospitals carry out more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other country. Between 1975 and 2008, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to U.S. residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined. [....]

The Congressional Budget Office has found that "about half of all growth in health care spending in the past several decades was associated with changes in medical care made possible by advances in technology.

Reminds me of the old saying: "You get what you pay for."

What would the rest of the world do without American research and innovation? The socialized health care systems in Europe are not stepping up to the plate. And why would they? New medical procedures and drugs are expensive. And as we all know the main concern of government run health care is controlling costs.

A Japanese citizen may live modestly in a small house and drive a small car, but not us. We drive the biggest car and live in the biggest house we can afford. And guess what, all this greed and extravagance is what makes our economy the envy of the world and keeps everyone employed.

Why should health care be any different? It's almost one fifth of a vibrant American economy. At least it was a vibrant economy until Barney Frank and his cohorts started screwing with the banking system, forcing them to make sub-prime loans.

In November of 2008 a government report showed that for the preceding 12 months the health care sector of the economy created 350,000 jobs while the non health care private sector lost 1.7 million jobs. The health care industry in America is one of the bright spots in an otherwise depressed economy. Why would we want to turn over a part of our economy where we are clearly a world leader to a bunch of government bureaucrats?

We baby boomers are not like our parents, retirement is the beginning of a new exciting life. And we need our health to enjoy this new phase of our life. We didn't sign up to go quietly into the night. And if grandma is 100 years old and full of spirit, she's going to get that pacemaker no matter what Obama says.

The progressives in Washington have a different vision of America. To get an idea of their way of thinking you may want to rent a copy of Logan's Run.

When the government takes over health care -- which Obama said is the ultimate goal -- and starts controlling cost and denying lifesaving treatments because of the cost, the damage to our personal health is almost a side issue. The real disaster will be the economic contraction in one fifth of our economy as government control replaces the free market system.

Cash for Clunkers hurts charities

2009-08-16T16:13:00.000-07:00

Being a liberal means never having to say you're sorry -- for unintended consequences that is. Whether it be the banning of DDT or the promotion alternative fuels or fighting global warming. All of which have inadvertently caused disease and famine on a massive scale, it's the thought that counts.

Now comes news that the Cash for Clunkers program has resulted in far fewer cars being donated than otherwise would be the case. The headline from Reuters says it all: "Clunkers" program slows car gifts to U.S. charities.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The popular "cash-for-clunkers" program is boosting U.S. auto sales and manufacturing but is also slashing donations to charities that rely on gifts of cars to fund social programs, charity officials say.

Volunteers of America and other charities that receive tens of thousands of cars each year said such donations have quickly fallen up to 12 percent -- and fear a 25 percent drop eventually, or over $100 million -- as owners rush to trade gas guzzlers for new fuel-efficient models while federal rebates last.

Read the whole article.

The Democrat's schizophrenia on ID cards

2009-08-13T16:47:00.000-07:00

When election time comes around the Democrats are against requiring voters to show identification. In 2008 they went all the way to the Supreme Court to fight Indiana's requirement for voter ID, and thankfully lost. You don't suppose they are hoping that some people here illegally will be able to vote and they assume these people will vote for the Democrat candidate? That's not possible is it? To borrow a phrase from Nancy Pelosi, that would be "un-American".

On the other hand, they are not always against using ID. Gene Green our venerable Congressman from Houston just announced that ID will be required at his next town hall meeting. Seems just a little hypocritical after he voted in the past against requiring voters to show ID.

But how do Democrats feel about health ID cards for all Americans? There is some dispute on the question of whether Obamacare calls for a Health ID card to be issued to all ~~citizens~~ persons in America. Here is section (D) on page 58 of the health care bill, you can judge for yourself:

"(D) enable the real-time (or near real-time) determination of an individuals financial responsibility at the point of service and, to the extent possible, prior to service, including whether the individual is eligible for a specific service with a specific physician at a specific facility, which may include utilization of a machine readable health plan beneficiary identification card;

Since the word "may" is used instead of "will" the proponents of Obamacare get to call all of us critics a bunch of right wing fear mongers for saying that the government is going to give everyone an ID card. Now I don't speak legalese but I would say there is a high probability that we will all get a health ID card.

And if we do get this card, in what other ways could it be used? Maybe it will be used for an ID card at election time like the Canadians do.

I don't believe Democrats will have any problem with every person in the U.S. being issued a health ID card, even people here illegally. Last month an amendment offered by Rep. Dean Heller R-Nev. that would have prevented illegal aliens from receiving Obamacare was defeated by a straight party line vote.

This health ID card could be a back door way to begin the process of legalizing illegal immigrants. Immigration "reform" is on the agenda for next year, why not get an early start on it with health care? And since the card will be issued to all persons living in the U.S. the Democrats will probably be OK with it being used for identification at election time.

With another potential 12 million voters on their side they will be in power for the foreseeable future. Plenty of time to complete the transformation of America into a socialist country.

Of course, what I have described here is not written in stone, if free thinking Americans continue to speak their mind at town hall meetings and continue emailing and phoning their members of congress Obamacare can be defeated.

At a recent town hall meeting the besieged Democrat Congressman was complaining that the questions weren't about health care. That's because the people at the meeting know that health care reform is not about health care it's about control.

Texas is where it's at

2009-07-13T21:51:00.000-07:00

As Obamanomics starts to slowly strangle the U.S. economy from Chicago to Michigan and down through California, there is still one place in America where free markets rule, where unemployment is low, where oil flows from offshore rigs, where there is no state income tax and that place is Texas.

In America's Future The Economist takes a look at the rivalry between California and Texas. And at this stage of the game Texas appears to be winning. Here are some fun facts on the subject:

California is $26 billion in debt, and has started issuing IOUs instead of checks.
California's unemployment rate is 11.5% (2 points above the national average)
California has a net loss of more than 100,000 citizens every year. (If you count illegal immigrants coming in this number may be lower.) Tax payers are leaving and tax users are coming in, not a good trend for California.
Texas has a unemployment rate of 7.5% (2 points below the national average)
Texas has no capital gains or income tax.
More Fortune 500 companies call Texas home than any other state.
Texas was recently ranked the top state for job growth.

What a revelation, if you lower taxes and regulation business will thrive and create jobs in abundance. It's too bad for America that the liberal Democrats running things now can't grasp this simple concept.

Hat tip: Michael Berry

Is Obama an alien? -- (Satire)

2009-05-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

In a recent post at American Thinker, Rick Moran writing about Obama's out of control spending asked --possibly out of frustration -- this question: "What planet is this guy from?"

This got me to thinking, is it possible? Could Obama be from another planet? If we are to be open minded and fair shouldn't we at least look at the possibility no matter how unlikely it may be?

I decided to look at some conspiracy websites and I came across this anonymous account supposedly written by an intelligence operative from another planet, in it he explains how it was all done right under our noses:

By the time you read this earthlings it will be too late, we are well on our way to conquering your planet without a shot being fired. Even with our advanced technology the conquest of another planet is not to be taken lightly and there are several options we considered. We have been monitoring your broadcast channels for years and the most obvious strategy was to take a page out of a Hollywood script and send in the fleet. This would work of course as Earth's defenses are no match for our spaceships. However there is a problem, much like yourselves we are having a budget crisis at this time and the full frontal attack option is off the table for now.

Luckily our ACIA (Alien Central Intelligence Agency) came up with a better and much less costly plan. Their brilliant idea was to take our most famous agent and disguise him as an earthling. We intercepted broadcasts of speeches made by your most powerful leaders throughout Earth history, such as Hitler, Castro, Chavez and Ahmadinejad of Persia. The style and cadence of these speeches was synthesized and injected into his brain. However there was a problem, all this information had the unintended effect of overloading his synapses, and he was forced to use teleprompters from this point forward.

The one area that had us stumped was documentation, you may think it's amusing that an advanced society such as ours can't produce a simple birth certificate, but you see the problem is we destroyed our forests ages ago and we have no paper! We got around this problem by devising a back story with our agent having lived all over the world at a young age and supposedly being born in Hawaii. Another one of our agents in Hawaii was able to suppress the birth certificate story.

Now our agent armed with an irresistible charismatic persona and superior oratory skills rose inexorably through your academia and shady Chicago politics to your most prestigious legislative body, the Senate. Then in what many considered an audacious move he ran for president of the USA and easily defeated his two opponents, Hillary and McCain.

Now that you know the truth perhaps you can see how an inexperienced junior senator from Illinois could so effortlessly defeat these two experienced politicians.

Now our devious plan can begin. The first step is to bring the power of the Earth's last superpower down to the level of the other nations. Our agent -- now president of the USA -- is in the process of implementing a multi-faceted approach to destabilize America.

First, a so called stimulus plan was rammed through Congress that will have the effect of devaluing your currency. Your financial institutions will be weakened, Wall Street will play a less dominate role in the worlds financial markets.

Spending on your military will be reduced, the assembly line of your most advanced fighter aircraft will be shut down. The size of your once invincible navy will be reduced.

In spite of his pacifist rhetoric our agent will increase the number of your soldiers in Middle East conflicts, further straining your military.

Your most secure detainment facility will be closed and the dangerous terrorists in this facility will be released in your homeland.

Your missile defense programs will be cut back, this will make it easier for other nations to attack you . As North Korea and Iran build nuclear weapons our agent will take no military action to prevent these rouge nations from obtaining these horrific weapons.

Once the power of America has been reduced, the other nations will attack. In the ensuing chaos we will send in our spaceships and pick up the pieces. If you earthlings thought it was bad living under the hegemony of America, just wait until you meet your new masters.

I have no way of knowing if this document is authentic and even if it is true I'm not sure there is anything we can do to prevent the conquest of Earth. God help us all.

Shovel ready solar project put on hold

2009-04-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

Where are those green jobs the stimulus money was supposed to create? If you are a unemployed San Franciscan waiting for the trillion dollar stimulus money to trickle down, you may have to wait a while longer.

Here is the sad story from the San Francisco Examiner:

Financing issues emerged Wednesday that may threaten a proposed solar-power plant in The City that could become California’s largest.

The City had identified the Sunset Reservoir as the installation site for a shimmering stretch of solar panels to be installed next year. The panels would be used to help power municipal buildings and services, such as Muni.

Under the proposal backed by Mayor Gavin Newsom, the land would be leased to San Francisco-based Recurrent Energy, which would install 25,000 solar panels at the site. The 4.97 megawatts of power produced by the panels would be sold exclusively to The City for 30 years under a so-called power-purchase agreement.

Here it comes, the always predictable and ill-informed mainstream media has to take a shot at natural gas. Isn't this reporter aware that natural gas is one of the cleanest fuels available and Nancy Pelosi and T. Boone Pickens have been promoting it as a clean alternative to 'dirty' oil and coal.

By contrast, a billowing waterfront smokestack in Potrero Hill is connected to a 147-megawatt gas-fired generator that powers businesses and homes. Sprawling solar-power plants being built elsewhere in the state are expected to produce hundreds of megawatts apiece in coming years.

But problems arose when Recurrent Energy asked The City to exempt the 30-year Sunset Reservoir project from the Board of Supervisors’ regular annual appropriations and spending oversight procedures. [....]

Some city supervisors have said they would prefer to see The City own and operate the power plant.

San Francisco Public Utilities Commission staff, however, said The City’s overall cost to buy bonds needed to build the plant would be substantially higher than it would pay Recurrent Energy in purchasing fees because the company can take advantage of federal tax incentives and purchasing might.

Why the hesitation San Francisco? Build it yourself, here is your chance to own the means of production and stick it to big oil. Just imagine a sunny day when "California's largest" solar power plant cranks out an amazing 4.97 megawatts of energy! We might actually be able to turn the gas down at the other power plant by 3% or thereabouts. Whew! we saved the planet. Oops, lookout! Here come some clouds.

Breaking News: "Sunspots May Cause Climate Fluctuations"

2009-04-23T21:22:00.000-07:00

Is science and reason making a comeback in climatology? Willie Soon, is a researcher affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Harvard College Observatory, he offered his comments in this article at thecrimson.com

The title of the article at the The Harvard Crimson wins the award for stating the obvious: "Sunspots May Cause Climate Fluctuations, Harvard astrophysicist says recent cooler temps are a result of fewer sunspots." Apparently this researcher didn't get the memo to just go along with the CO2 theory to keep the money rolling in.

Here is a sample:

Sunspot activity may be a primary factor in climate fluctuations, according to Willie Soon, a researcher affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Harvard College Observatory, who offered the hypothesis in an interview with TG Daily, an online news source.

Although many climatologists have cited increases in carbon dioxide as the primary cause of the temperature increases associated with global warming, Soon maintained that solar radiation from sunspots also has a great effect.

“The sun is a great driving force to climate change,” Soon said in an interview with The Crimson yesterday, adding that most observed climate data could be explained by fluctuations in solar radiation.

Sunspots—pockets of magnetism on the sun’s surface—generate high levels of energy, which then heat the Earth’s atmosphere.

Soon told TG Daily that the lack of additional energy resulting from a decrease in sunspots is directly responsible for colder temperatures experienced in recent years.

He said that, as of last week, there had been sunspots on only 11 days this year, and there were only 99 days with visible sunspots last year—the second-lowest total since 1911.

Should we save the environment or the planet?

2009-04-23T20:48:00.000-07:00

Apparently we can't do both, we have to degrade the environment to save the planet. Now that liberals and environmentalists are running the show they are faced with a conundrum. To save the planet from global warming and reduce CO2 we have to develop thousands of acres of land, destroying vegetation and habitat in order to install solar panel farms. In addition to being a huge eyesore, these facilities require large amounts of water to operate in an area where water is a scarce commodity.

This is a good news bad news story: First the good news, from wind-watch.org here is what's happening in Barstow California:

With interest in wind and solar energy rising, the public lands surrounding Barstow appear likely to become a major player in renewable energy production.

As of February, applications for wind and solar projects in the Barstow Field Office area of the Bureau of Land Management made up about 27 percent of applications pending statewide.

The Barstow Field Office covers about 3.2 million acres within the BLM’s California Desert District, Barstow Field Manager Roxie Trost said. As well as Barstow, it includes the Victor Valley and Twentynine Palms area and extends north to the Nevada state line. While the project applications are scattered throughout that area, there are clusters in the area immediately surrounding Barstow and along Interstate 40 to the east.

The wind applications started rolling in about four years ago, and the solar applications came slightly later, Trost said. She attributed the increased interest to both federal and state actions, including an executive order signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that sets a target of producing 33 percent of the state’s energy through renewable power by 2020. [....]

Mickey Quillman, resources branch chief with the Barstow BLM office, said the priority application currently is a 914 megawatt solar plant proposed by Stirling Energy Systems, Inc., which would sit on about 6,779 acres west of Ludlow along Interstate 40. Within the next few months, the BLM expects to publish a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement for the project.

The city of Barstow is looking at the possible influx of renewable energy projects and related jobs as a boost for the local economy, city spokesman John Rader said.

“With virtually unlimited amounts of sun and wind, our area is ground zero for the renewable energy industries,” he said. “We would be foolish to not take advantage of our natural strengths.”

Now for the bad news:

However, the “green” projects bring along their own set of environmental issues, including the fact that solar projects can consume a large amount of water, Quillman said. The environmental review process also looks at the impacts on threatened and endangered species.

David Lamfrom, a field representative with the Barstow office of the National Parks Conservation Association, said the nonprofit environmental group also has concerns about water consumption and potential habitat destruction from renewable energy projects.

Lamfrom said his group would prefer to see projects sited in areas where the habitat has already been disrupted, and as close to population centers, so that desert communities like Barstow can take advantage of the jobs they create.

“We support clean energy, and we support the need for clean energy, but we also want to ensure that the projects are carefully considered,” he said.

Of course informed readers are aware that CO2 is a harmless trace gas that is actually beneficial to our ecosystem, but the Obama administration, which has proclaimed science to be of primary consideration in all of their policies is apparently unaware of that fact.

The logical thing to do is to save the environment and build more nuclear power plants, not these huge wind turbine farms and solar panel farms which will more than likely be decommissioned and abandoned in twenty years or sooner.

As a member of the loyal opposition there is some enjoyment to be had watching liberals fight over environmental policy.

Inequities in socialized health care

2009-03-24T16:06:00.000-07:00

The goal of socialized health care is not to provide exceptional health care to the few but to provide "cost-effective" health care to everyone. In theory this may be a worthy goal but how does it work in the real world?

The UK's National Health Service was created in 1948 and you would think by now they would have their act together but as any regular reader of this website knows, no one can outdo the British when it comes to health care horror stories. Here are just a few examples:

The conditions at Staffordshire General Hospital have been compared to a "third world hospital."

"UK's top cancer consultants warn that NHS drug "rationing" is forcing patients to remortgage their homes to pay for treatment."

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has effectively banned the use of two cancer fighting drugs for advanced breast cancer because it considers them too expensive.

Until recently patients with macular degeneration disease were forced to go blind in one eye before the government would pay for treatment in the one remaining good eye.

In 2007, 70,000 UK citizens flew out of the country to obtain needed medical care.

The Canadian system may be slightly better than the NHS in the UK. Of course it's lucky for Canada that the excellent health facilities in the U.S. are just across the border and act as a safety valve. As Dr. Alastair S.E. Younger explains in this article at aaos.org:

Without a private system, Canadian patients have nowhere to turn, which is why so many seek care in the United States. In fact, the United States is the private arm of the Canadian healthcare system. The Cleveland Clinic, for example, has an office in Toronto.

And from Lisa Priest at globeandmail.com:

More than 400 Canadians in the full throes of a heart attack or other cardiac emergency have been sent to the United States because no hospital can provide the lifesaving care they require here.

Most of the heart patients who have been sent south since 2003 typically show up in Ontario hospitals, where they are given clot-busting drugs. If those drugs fail to open their clogged arteries, the scramble to locate angioplasty in the United States begins.

“They rushed me over to Detroit, did the whole closing of the tunnel,” said Eric Bialkowski, 47, of the heart attack he had on March 14, 2007, in Windsor, Ont. “It was like Disneyworld customer service.”

Stories like this show that government run health care can be hazardous to your health. But even with all these problems you would think there would be one area where it would work. And that would be the elimination of inequities between the rich and the poor.

Well, guess what? They can't even do that right. The Canadians have been trying to eliminate inequities in health care for five years now and the situation is worse than before.

The results of a five year study from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) has recently been published. At the beginning of the study the affluent citizens of Ontario were 25% more likely to receive a MRI than the poorer citizens.

After the study began the province put in place a strategy to increase access to MRI scans and reduce wait times. In a little over three years $118 million was spent and the number of scans performed doubled.

There was only one problem, now the wealthier Ontarians are 38% more likely to get a MRI scan than their less well-to-do counterparts.

The health care inequities are markedly worse!

Here is an excerpt of the report on the ICES study from the Canadian Health Reference Guide:

Toronto, March 4, 2009 - Ontario wait times for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) have improved since the provincial government's Wait Time Strategy began in 2004. But a study out of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) has found wealthy Ontarians are now 38 per cent more likely to receive MRI scans than their poorer counterparts.

The study of 1,356,750 outpatient MRI scans done in Ontario between April 1, 2002 and March 31, 2007 found:

* At the beginning of the study, before Ontario's Wait Times Strategy began, a gap in access to MRI scans based on income existed. Patients living in the richest one-fifth of Ontario neighbourhoods were 25 per cent more likely to receive MRI scans than those living in the poorest one-fifth of neighbourhoods.
* During the next five years, during which approximately $118-million in Wait Times spending was injected for MRI services between November 2004 and March 2008, the annual number of MRI scans performed in Ontario doubled.
* However, the increase in MRI use over the five-year period was largest for those in the wealthiest Ontario neighbourhoods, so that the gap in access to MRI between rich and poor widened. Patients living in the richest neighbourhoods are now 38% more likely to receive MRI scans than those in the poorest neighbourhoods.
* So, while Ontario's Wait Times Strategy has improved access to MRI, the findings suggest the improvements in access have not occurred equally amongst all Ontarians.

"We already knew from previous work that there was greater access to MRI scans for richer Ontarians. This study shows that access has improved but it looks like it has not been shared equally," says principal investigator and ICES Scientist, Dr. John You. "It's well known that, on average, poor people have more health problems than the rich, so the trends go against what we would have expected.", says You, who is also an assistant professor of medicine and clinical epidemiology and biostatistics at McMaster University. "Although many of us pride ourselves on Ontario's universal hospital and physician services, our study highlights the need for simultaneous strategies that aim to improve the appropriateness of MRI scanning, so that access is based on medical need."

That last sentence seems slightly ominous, "strategies that aim to improve the appropriateness of MRI scanning" in other words wait lists and rationing are coming back. They spent all those millions and it only benefited the wealthy. The government bureaucrats never learn this simple law of economics, if something is free or relatively free it will be over-used by the public and the only way to limit its use is to make it so difficult to obtain that only the most desperate will put up with the wait lists and rationing.

Here is a radical idea: how about letting the free market work? In America -- at least for the time being -- if there is a shortage of MRI machines in the city a savvy entrepreneur can buy some machines, rent a space and open up for business. A few years back I needed a MRI scan, my doctor didn't send me to the hospital located next to his office, he sent me to a privately run facility. The appointment was a few days after my visit to the doctor, there was no waiting. My insurance paid most of the cost and the owners of the facility made some profit.

Now imagine you are a government bureaucrat running a government health care program. There is no incentive to buy more MRI machines, it's only going to cost the government more money. You would do everything you could to get by with what you have.

While it is true that there are inequities in our current health care system, this study shows that adopting a system like the one they have in Canada will not solve the problem.

Daily Kos not happy with my 'screed'

2009-02-27T21:18:00.000-08:00

I find it hard to believe that anyone could ever disagree with anything I've written, but apparently someone over at Daily Kos has a problem with this piece I wrote for American Thinker on socialized health care. I think it's the word socialism that gets them riled up.

If I hear anymore of these "it's really just socialism" Talking Points from the "Me-First" Party of Greed -- I think I'll scream!

In the spirit of the fairness doctrine here is a link.

Socialized medicine, here we come

2009-02-25T06:48:00.000-08:00

In his address to Congress President Obama said health care reform can not wait, must not wait, and it will not wait another year. How should we respond to this challenge? If he plans to introduce socialized health care I believe every American who is concerned about the damage this would do, can not wait and must not wait to oppose this plan.

Republicans in Congress need to take the long view, since they don't have the votes to stop the Democrats on most issues, let the Democrats raise taxes, nationalize the banks, down size the military and shut down all the coal fired power plants. These policies can be reversed. If Republicans regain control of Congress in 2010 or by some miracle regain the presidency also in 2012 they can rollback taxes, they can privatize the banks again, they can rebuild the military and they can give the green light for new coal and nuclear power plants.

There is one thing we would never be able to roll back and that is socialized health care. This is where Republicans need to draw the line and do everything in their power to stop Obama.

The problem is, once you have "free" health care who in their right mind would give it up, no matter how bad it is? And make no mistake it is bad, you don't have to search very long to find horror stories coming out of Canada and the UK. The United Kingdom nationalized health care in 1948 and it has been down-hill since then.

In 2007 70,000 Britons flew to other countries for medical care to avoid long waiting lists and inferior treatment. And they are not the only ones fleeing. Illegal immigrants are trying to sneak out the UK for the same reason. And still the citizens of the UK grin and bear it -- albeit with a slightly yellow toothless grin.

Obama was smart not to tackle health care reform first. The massive porkulus bill was a great diversion and fighting it has worn down the opposition. Now with a successful address to Congress under his belt he can turn to his real priority -- universal health care -- it is the crown jewel of socialism.

That is why he fought so hard to save Tom Daschle his nominee for health and human services secretary. Tom is an expert on socialized health care and has written a book on the subject where he proposes setting up a new bureaucracy that will monitor health care. He has said we “won’t be able to make a significant dent in health-care spending without getting into the nitty-gritty of which treatments are the most clinically valuable and cost effective.” He was also a big supporter of the failed Clinton health care plan of 1994.

The audacity of Obama's rhetoric is amazing, somehow a tax cut for 95% of Americans' turned into the re-introduction of welfare. Using the same strategy Obama will attempt a stealth takeover of the health care system. It will start with "health care reform" and a promise to let you keep your current insurance. In the following excerpt from Human Events Tony Blankley, commenting on Tom Daschle's book, explains how "19 words would spell the end of independent private-sector health care in America."

On Page 179, he writes, "The Federal Health Board wouldn't be a regulatory agency, but its recommendations would have teeth because all federal health programs would have to abide by them." But here is the kicker: Although his board technically would have no say on the 68 percent of health care that is provided through the private sector, at the bottom of Page 179, Daschle modestly adds: "Congress could opt to go further with the Board's recommendations. It could, for example, link the tax exclusion for health insurance to insurance that complies with the Board's recommendation."

Those last 19 words would spell the end of independent private-sector health care in America. Obviously, no health insurance would be sold if it were denied the tax deduction. Thus, every policy, every standard decided by this board would be the law of the land for every drug company, every hospital, every doctor and every health insurance company.

Indeed, 20 pages later, in the section in which he identifies "losers" under his plan, Daschle is admirably candid. Among the explicit "losers,” he includes: "Doctors and patients might resent any encroachment on their ability to choose certain treatments, even if they are expensive or ineffectual compared to alternatives. Some insurers might object to new rules that restrict their coverage decisions. And the health-care industry would have to reconsider its business plan (emphasis added)." That is to say, they can stay in business and deliver their services, but only as the government bureaucrats say they may. They no longer would be genuinely independent.

Say goodbye to freedom of choice, the government bureaucrats will now decide what treatment your doctor will be allowed to give you.

In fact we are already on our way down the road to universal health care, The Dems are working in from the margins agewise. Congress recently reauthorized SCHIP which allows some states to cover adults under this "children's" program and now there is talk of letting those 55 years of age opt into medicare. It won't be long before every age group will be looking to the government for health care and then it will be too late.

Republican leaders should not be distracted by other issues, they need to focus like a laser beam on health care. Just as they came up with an alternate and better stimulus plan, it wouldn't hurt for them to come up with some ideas to tweak our current health care system and make it better.

The health care system we have in America today is like democracy, it's messy and it doesn't always work very well but it's still the best system in the world.

Australia turns to socialized health care

2009-02-16T18:39:00.000-08:00

We should keep an eye on Australia, they are slightly ahead of us on the road to socialized health care. For a glimpse into our future under the Obama administration take a look at this article from The Sydney Morning Herald:

DENTISTS have condemned a Medicare-style system for free universal dental care being considered by the Rudd Government as impractical, and massively expensive. [....]

Dr Neil Hewson, the president of the Australian Dental Association, representing private dentists, slammed the Denticare proposal, saying it could nearly double to $11 billion the cost of dentistry to the government and individual patients. [....]

The association believed the Government should target the 35 per cent of the community who could not access or afford proper dental care and said it would be fiscally irresponsible to introduce a universal scheme for dentistry.

The commission has also proposed an indigenous health authority to upgrade care indigenous Australians get, similar to the special arrangements made for veterans.

It has also called for schemes to boost health funding for rural communities, and for the introduction of more community services to counter mental illness among young people.

The commission strongly urged the introduction of individually controlled electronic personal health records which the commission's chairwoman, Dr Christine Bennett, described as "one of the most important systemic opportunities we have".

"Electronic personal health records", where have we heard this before? Here is an excerpt from Obama's former campaign website:

Lowering Costs Through Investment in Electronic Health Information Technology Systems: Most medical records are still stored on paper, which makes it hard to coordinate care, measure quality or reduce medical errors and which costs twice as much as electronic claims. Obama will invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records, and will phase in requirements for full implementation of health IT. Obama will ensure that patients' privacy is protected.

Don't worry about your personal health records, "Obama will ensure that patients' privacy is protected." With assurance like that how can we go wrong? However, as Alex Rodriguez's current predicament shows, no matter what the intentions of the record keepers may be, health records are always subject to subpoena and leaks.

Obama is telling the truth when he says electronic health records will save money, but not for the reason you think. This is a necessary precursor to nationalized health care. Before the government takes over the health care system, costs have to be contained.

Once all of our medical records are on that big mainframe at the White House the new National Coordinator of Health Information Technology will start deciding which procedures have to be cut to save money. You won't be allowed to have that expensive experimental operation that could save your life even if you can afford it, it wouldn't be fair.

The report said there was an urgent need to tackle inequities in health status and outcomes and lack of access to health services for many groups in Australia. For indigenous Australians it proposed an increase in funding to reflect the much greater health needs.

Isn't it amazing how great socialists' minds think alike, let's take another look at Obama's campaign website:

Tackle disparities in health care. Obama will tackle the root causes of health disparities by addressing differences in access to health coverage and promoting prevention and public health, both of which play a major role in addressing disparities. He will also challenge the medical system to eliminate inequities in health care through quality measurement and reporting, implementation of effective interventions such as patient navigation programs, and diversification of the health workforce.

Again we come back to the main tenet of socialism, no one will be allowed to have better health care than anyone else, inequities will be eliminated. Medical breakthroughs and innovation will be eliminated, everyone will get equal treatment.

A National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Authority would purchase services specifically for indigenous patients and focus on results to ensure high quality and timely access to services.

The chief executive of the Australian Health Insurance Association, Dr Michael Armitage, said insurers would consider the dental care proposal and other recommendations and compile a response to the reform commission.

"The industry would support any plan to improve access to dental care for Australians but it is about more than that - it's about quality, safety and achieving better health outcomes - not just health financing," he said.

The Opposition's health spokesman, Peter Dutton, said taxpayers would pay billions of dollars in extra taxes for a national Denticare scheme. [....]

Converting Australia's current health care system to a socialized health care system is a daunting task. But it's good to know that they will "focus on results to ensure high quality and timely access to services." But don't forget to read between the lines: "focus on results" means the government will not pay for procedures that are not deemed cost-effective.

I wonder how all this is working out in the UK, they've had nationalized health care since 1948. Here is an excerpt from a Feb. '08 article in The UK's Telegraph. I hope it's not too discouraging:

People who cannot get an NHS dentist are pulling their teeth out with pliers and using Superglue to put caps back.

So declared Mike Penning, from the Tory front bench, in a bid to destroy the "complacent" picture of dentistry painted by Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary.

Let us leave the glue on one side, or beneath whatever caps it may be holding in place: what worried some of us was the thought of the pliers.

I have a recommendation for everyone living in Australia and America... get your teeth fixed, pronto!

Former astronaut speaks out on global warming

2009-02-15T18:01:00.000-08:00

Harrison Schmidt a former astronaut who walked on the moon and has served in the Senate doesn't believe in man made global warming. As the earth continues a cooling trend that started in 1998 more scientists are speaking out on the global warming scam. The Boston Herald has the story.

More casualties of environmentalism

2009-02-11T23:25:00.000-08:00

Environmental policies have caused millions of casualties over the years. The banning of DDT resulted in millions of African children dying from malaria. Growing corn for fuel has resulted in starvation in third world countries. Now from down under we have the tragic results of another unintended consequence of overzealous environmental policies. The Australian newspaper The Age has the story:

ANGRY residents last night accused local authorities of contributing to the bushfire toll by failing to let residents chop down trees and clear up bushland that posed a fire risk.

During question time at a packed community meeting in Arthurs Creek on Melbourne's northern fringe, Warwick Spooner — whose mother Marilyn and brother Damien perished along with their home in the Strathewen blaze — criticised the Nillumbik council for the limitations it placed on residents wanting the council's help or permission to clean up around their properties in preparation for the bushfire season. "We've lost two people in my family because you dickheads won't cut trees down," he said.

"We wanted trees cut down on the side of the road … and you can't even cut the grass for God's sake."

Later, the meeting was cut short when Mr Spooner's father, Dennis, collapsed in his chair and an ambulance had to be called. Despite losing his wife and son and everything he owned, a friend later said he had not stopped or slept since the weekend.

Another resident said she had asked the council four times to tend to out-of-control growth on public land near her home, but her pleas had been ignored.

There was widespread applause when Nillumbik Mayor Bo Bendtsen said changes were likely to be made about the council's policy surrounding native vegetation.

But his response was not good enough for Mr Spooner: "It's too late now mate. We've lost families, we've lost people."

In my grandparents day farmers here in Texas would burn the underbrush around their farms and in the forest every year. This slow burning fire cleaned out the brush and grass but didn't bother the trees and made it practically impossible to start forest fires.

Now in the environmentalists quest to save every bush and weed, we have huge forest fires consuming thousands of acres every year, not to mention the loss of human life and property.

Why are we not surprised that another environmental policy has resulted in horrific unintended consequences? It's unfortunate that it takes the loss of life before we stand up to these enviro-nuts.

Can we talk?

2009-02-08T13:21:00.000-08:00

We can be on the right side of any policy, be it taxes, school choice, limited government, you name it. But if we don't have leaders in the Republican party who can be aggressive and articulate, it doesn't matter, we will ultimately lose. Thomas Sowell writing at townhall.com understands this. Here is a sample:

One of the huge and perennial handicaps of the Republicans is that they seldom have anybody who can articulate their case to the public. It is hard to win the White House with candidates like Bob Dole and John McCain.

That was why Governor Sarah Palin was such a sensation in arousing the grassroots Republicans. She could talk!

Try to name five articulate Republicans. Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln come to mind. After that, you have to rack your brain. [....]

Michael Steele can talk. That is even rarer among Republicans than being black.

Too many Republicans don't even seem to understand the need to talk. They seem to think it is something you have to go through the motions of doing but, really, they would rather be somewhere else, doing something else.

When the first President Bush looked at his watch during a nationally televised Presidential debate, he epitomized what has been wrong with Republicans for years.

A member of the audience had just asked a stupid question. Ronald Reagan would have been all over him, like a linebacker blitzing a quarterback. But Bush 41 just looked at his watch, as if he couldn't wait for this to be over.

Michael Steele not only knows how to talk, he seems to understand the need to talk. In his appearances on television over the years, he has been assertive rather than apologetic. When attacked, he has counter-attacked, not whined defensively, like too many other Republicans.

When criticizing the current administration, Steele won't have to pull his punches when going after Barack Obama, for fear of being called a racist.

We can argue policy all day long but what we really need is someone who can articulate that policy to the American public.

Social engineering rampant

2009-02-04T20:57:00.000-08:00

It's common knowledge that Hillary and Obama were disciples of Saul Alinsky, and for all we know they may each still possess a copy of Rules for Radicals. Now that the Alinsky liberals have gained power, the radicalization of American society can proceed unabated. With like minded compatriots already in positions of power in Europe and America they are ready to move to phase two. This involves the subversion of the legal and educational systems.

I realize these comments may sound like the rantings of a right wing version of Rosie O'Donnell. But before you dismiss them completely take a look at these three seemingly unrelated news items.

The first involves a person of world renowned stature telling children that due to the wonderful education they have received in the public school system they are more knowledgeable than their parents, particularly when it concerns the threat of climate change. The implication is, they should not listen to their parents on this subject.

What's next, maybe they shouldn't listen to their parents about... birth control, abortion, marriage, religion, tax policy, income redistribution, etc. The indoctrination of our children has begun.

Al Gore gave a speech to a group of students who attended the presidential inauguration. One of the students recorded the speech. Her father was so upset with what he heard that he called Glenn Beck and played the recording. You can listen to the audio at glennbeck.com.

Here is the part that got the caller and Glenn riled up and Glenn's comments:

GORE: There are some things about our world that you know that older people don't know.

GLENN: Stop. "There are some things that..." you're 12! "There are some things that you know that older people don't know." That is -- and I'm just getting started. That is one of the most incredible things I have ever heard. "There are some things that you know that older people don't know." He is pitting the youth of this nation against their parents. We have a former vice president of the United States, a man who claims to have been President of the United States saying to the best and the brightest 12-year-olds that "You know better than your parents," that "You don't have to listen to your parents on things because they just don't know."

I'm trying to think where else this has been done. Soviet Russia, Nazi, Germany, Mussolini's Italy. In fact, the Nazis took an extra step. Not only did they indoctrinate the kids and tell them you're probably right, you know but your parents don't; in fact, here's the next step: Why don't you tell us what your parents are telling you. Are we having the new Hitler youth? Is that what this is? The new Hitler youth? I'm sorry, that's so politically incorrect. The new green guard. Man your station, 12-year-olds, your parents just don't know.

Go get 'em Glenn!

Now to the 2nd news item: The LA Times had the first interview with Obama's new Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. Here is an excerpt of his dire predictions for California:

Reporting from Washington -- California's farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said Tuesday.

In his first interview since taking office last month, the Nobel-prize-winning physicist offered some of the starkest comments yet on how seriously President Obama's cabinet views the threat of climate change, along with a detailed assessment of the administration's plans to combat it.

Note that he is not a climate scientist, I don't believe Al Gore is either -- why do we listen to these guys anyway?

Chu is not a climate scientist. He won his Nobel for work trapping atoms with laser light. He taught at Stanford University and directed the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he reoriented researchers to pursue "clean energy" technologies to help reduce the use of greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels in the U.S., before Obama tapped him to head the Energy Department.

He stressed the threat of climate change in his Senate confirmation hearings and in a video clip posted on Obama's transition website, but not as bluntly, nor in as dire terms, as he did Tuesday.

In the course of a half-hour interview, Chu made clear that he sees public education as a key part of the administration's strategy to fight global warming -- along with billions of dollars for alternative energy research and infrastructure, a national standard for electricity from renewable sources and cap-and-trade legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Notice a recurring theme here? "Chu made clear that he sees public education as a key part of the administration's strategy to fight global warming."

Yes, we all need to be re-educated in the new progressive dogma, parents and students alike.

For the third item we move to the world stage and the subversion of the western legal system:

This story comes from the UK's Guardian, back in September of '08 James Hansen who heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies took time out of his busy schedule to fly to the UK and testify in a vandalism trial.

Six Greenpeace climate change activists have been cleared of causing criminal damage at a coal-fired power station in a verdict that is expected to embarrass the government and strengthen the anti-coal movement.

The jury of nine men and three women at Maidstone crown court cleared the six, five of whom had scaled a 200m tall chimney at Kingsnorth power station at Hoo, Kent in October 2007.

The activists admitted trying to shut down the station by occupying the smokestack and painting the world "Gordon" down the chimney, but argued that they were legally justified because they were trying to prevent climate change causing greater damage to property around the world.

It was the first case where preventing property damage caused by climate change has been used as part of a "lawful excuse" defence in court. It is now expected to be used widely by environment groups.

The court had heard from Prof James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, that the 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted daily by Kingsnorth could be responsible for the extinction of up to 400 species.

Hansen, a Nasa director who advises Al Gore, told the court that humanity was in "grave peril".

He said: "Somebody needs to step forward and say there has to be a moratorium, draw a line in the sand and say no more coal-fired power stations."

I don't blame the jurors, I'm sure Dr. Hansen put on a very impressive dog and pony show. Perhaps if the cooling trend that started in 1998 continues for another ten years the public will stop paying attention to these "climate scientists." However, in the mean time government acceptance of the flawed global warming theory continues to erode our private property rights.

With the stated goal of saving the planet Dr. Hansen demands we give up our property rights. Al Gore, working behind our backs, is trying to diminish our parental rights. And President Obama and Dr. Chu will soon demand radical changes in our way of life as they take more of our rights.

These three news items are just the tip of the iceberg, we now have a whole army of liberal bureaucrats busy chipping away at our liberties. This creeping socialism is like the old experiment with the frog and a pot of water. You may not have noticed, but the new administration has started to slowly turn up the heat -- and I'm not talking about global warming.

We must have abortion to save the planet?

2009-02-01T14:55:00.000-08:00

The mass suicide of European civilization is almost complete and this story from the UK's timesonline provides the final nail in the coffin. The government's green adviser says couples having more than two children are being irresponsible "and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming."

COUPLES who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government’s green adviser has warned.

Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. He says political leaders and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population.

A report by the commission, to be published next month, will say that governments must reduce population growth through better family planning.

“I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate,” Porritt said.

“I think we will work our way towards a position that says that having more than two children is irresponsible. It is the ghost at the table. We have all these big issues that everybody is looking at and then you don’t really hear anyone say the “p” word.”

I wonder if Mr. Porritt has been coordinating his efforts with Mrs. Pelosi. She was promoting abortion last week as part of Obama's stimulus plan in an effort to save money for local governments.

So, we must have abortion to save the planet and save money. In a more rational universe people like Pelosi and Porritt would be considered mentally imbalanced, but in today's upside down world this passes for rational thought. I believe we should take care of the planet in much the same way as we take care of our homes. I don't leave trash laying around the house and if the roof leaks I repair it, but if I had to choose between my family or the house -- the house is gone.

To my ancestors progeny I say -- go for it -- no need to worry about de-population I'm sure the Muslim citizens of Great Britain will be more than happy to take up the slack, reproductionwise. In fact as this next excerpt shows the native population is already being outpaced by the new arrivals.

The British population, now 61m, will pass 70m by 2028, the Office for National Statistics says. The fertility rate for women born outside Britain is estimated to be 2.5, compared with 1.7 for those born here. The global population of 6.7 billion is expected to rise to 9.2 billion by 2050.

Let's set aside for a minute the fact that CO2 does not drive temperature, which is the basis for the entire environmental movement today. For the last 10 years CO2 levels have been rising as the temperature has been dropping. All this effort to save the planet and every last species on the planet is all for naught in the long run. This nice toasty interglacial period we are living in now is an anomaly. In a short geological time the Earth will revert back to its natural frozen state and 99% of life will become extinct, including probably, humans.

By all means let's take care of the planet while it is hospitable to us but if I have to choose between the planet and human life, I'll choose life.

Spike tells Obama: "What Bush did don't do!"

2009-01-27T23:49:00.000-08:00

Some Hollywood celebrities have a depth of knowledge on government policy that can be somewhat surprising. For instance in this video from CBS news Spike Lee has some sage advice for Obama. In an unusually concise and compendious manner Spike tells Obama: "What Bush did don't do!"

That sounds like good advice, but we need more information. Which Bush policies is Spike referring to? Since I don't have Spikes email address I decided to post a list here on the internet of some of the things Bush did in his eight years as president. If Spike sees this list I hope he will get back to me and let me know if these are the type of things he doesn't want Obama to emulate.

1. Free millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq from tyranny.
2. Keep America free from attack for over 7 years.
3. Keep captured enemy combatants off of American soil.
4. Save 10 million people in Africa from devastating diseases.
5. His steadfast support of Israel
6. His No Child Left Behind education reform bill.
7. His medicare prescription drug benefit.
8. The surge which saved Iraq from chaos and genocide.
9. His tax cuts that gave us 7 years of a strong economy.
(Until mismanagement of Fannie & Freddie by congress killed it.)

Hope to hear from you soon Spike, let's do lunch.

Obama to GOP: 'Stop listening to Rush' (Updated)

2009-01-24T13:55:00.000-08:00

The political battle over the trillion dollar stimulus package has begun between President Obama and ~~the Republicans~~ Rush Limbaugh?

This recession we are in was a godsend to Obama and his new administration, as Rahm Emanuel said: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Obama doesn't care about foreign policy that is why he put experienced moderates in charge of foreign affairs like Gates and Hillary (OK, I cringed a little when I typed Hillary's name in but you get my point.) Obama's main concern is transforming America into a quasi-socialist society. He is the worlds most powerful community organizer.

Now the only question is, are Republican leaders going to fight Obama's New Deal stimulus package that will fundamentally change America for years to come? Apparently Obama thinks the only opposition left is Rush Limbaugh. That's why he reportedly told top GOP leaders at the White house: "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done."

Bryon York at NRO has Rush's response. Here is an excerpt:

To make the argument about me instead of his plan makes sense from his perspective. Obama's plan would buy votes for the Democrat Party, in the same way FDR's New Deal established majority power for 50 years of Democrat rule, and it would also simultaneously seriously damage any hope of future tax cuts. It would allow a majority of American voters to guarantee no taxes for themselves going forward. It would burden the private sector and put the public sector in permanent and firm control of the economy. Put simply, I believe his stimulus is aimed at re-establishing "eternal" power for the Democrat Party rather than stimulating the economy because anyone with a brain knows this is NOT how you stimulate the economy. If I can be made to serve as a distraction, then there is that much less time debating the merits of this TRILLION dollar debacle.

Obama's words may be more than a harmless off the cuff remark. Trying to drive a wedge between Republican leaders and America's most popular radio personality may be part of a larger strategy. Later in his comments Rush reminds us of Obama's ties to Saul Alinksy style politics:

One more thing, Byron. Your publication and website have documented Obama's ties to the teachings of Saul Alinksy while he was community organizing in Chicago. Here is Rule 13 of Alinksy's Rules for Radicals:

"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

Update : Good News!.... from The UK's Telegraph:

President Barack Obama got the $825 (or $1.2 trillion over a decade) stimulus package through the House of Representatives but the 244 to 188 vote is a hollow victory indeed. Without a single Republican voting for the bill, his high-profile visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday came to exactly naught - at least on the House side.

Obama vowed to change Washington and usher in a new post-partisan era. The the mood music and optics were pitch perfect as he trekked up to the Hill. Republicans praised his gesture, welcomed his sincere demeanour and appreciated his willingness to listen.

Problem was, he wanted only to listen and did not want to act on what Republicans said. When he was asked if he would re-structure the package to include more tax cuts, he reportedly responded: "Feel free to whack me over the head because I probably will not compromise on that part." [....]
The Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill badly miscalculated by treating the bill as a victor's charter. Not that it seemed to bother Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, who grinned from ear to ear as she announced the result of the vote.
Obama said yesterday he did not feel he had ownership of the bill. Be that as it may, if it goes through the Senate in similar fashion and is signed into law then - the efforts of Pelosio and Senator Harry Reid notwithstanding - it will be his and his alone.

At the beginning of this post I asked this question: "Now the only question is, are Republican leaders going to fight Obama's New Deal stimulus package that will fundamentally change America for years to come?"

Now we have the answer, the Republicans in the house -- and even 11 Democrats -- made the right decision. We know this so called stimulus package is going to pass eventually anyway, at least the Republicans will have no ownership of this massive debacle.

George Bush, the healer

2009-01-22T21:50:00.000-08:00

The libs are in a festive mood while rhetorically kicking president Bush on his way out the door. Nancy Pelosi said she feels as if a 10-ton anvil has been lifted from her shoulders. I know the excitement of seeing America elect our first socialist leaning president is almost more than they can bear. And I don't mean to rain on their parade but it turns out that President Bush has done some things even liberals might grudgingly admit are worthwhile. He has literally saved 10 million lives during his presidency.

Instead of signing Kyoto and wasting valuable resources fighting a non-existent problem. Bush spent billions fighting aids and malaria in Africa. In the long run the wisdom of that choice will become self evident. Bill Frist wrote about this for CNN, the article is prominently labeled as commentary lest anyone think CNN has gone soft on Bush. Here is a sample:

A legacy of President George W. Bush will be that he saved 10 million lives around the world.

His critics ignore it, but name another president about whom one can say that with such certainty. It is what historians will say a decade from now looking back. Not bad for a president who leaves office with the lowest approval rating in recent memory.

The bottom line is: George Bush is a healer.

First, a surprise proclamation came on January 29, 2003.

I was in the first row in the House chamber when three quarters through his State of the Union address, the president boldly said: "I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years ... to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean" and "lead the world in sparing innocent people from a plague of nature."

And lead the world we did. No president in history had made such a commitment against a single disease. Those words and the action that followed meant that instead of another 30 million people dying from HIV infections, maybe just another 20 million will. [....]

In my annual medical mission trips to Africa during the Bush administration, I saw the cost of treatment for HIV with life-saving antiretrovirals (ARVs) drop from $4,000 a year to $125. The number of Africans on ARVs jumped from 50,000 to 2.1 million. [....]

And it was more than HIV. Six months ago, Tom Daschle, Mike Huckabee, John Podesta, Cindy McCain and I (yes, we five of different persuasions do work together!) went to Rwanda on a fact-finding trip.

Our visits with villagers all over the country opened our eyes to how Bush's five-year, $1.2 billion effort to combat malaria has provided 4 million insecticide-treated bed nets and 7 million life-saving drug therapies to vulnerable people. Yes, George Bush the healer.

Future historians will also note what today's pundits ignore: total US government development aid to Africa quadrupled from $1.3 billion in 2001 to more than $5 billion in 2008. What's more, the Bush administration doubled foreign aid worldwide over the past eight years. You have to go back to the Truman years to match that.
[....]

I've had the privilege of knowing George W. Bush personally and as president. I have seen his passions. Naturally, he will be judged in the short term for his role in waging the war on terror, keeping America safe since 9/11 and acting on his belief in promoting liberty aboard.

Over time, however, it is the foundations he laid for healing. for the most part ignored by mainstream media, that I am confident will be his enduring legacy.

From this conservative's point of view Bush was far from perfect and no one wants to see our tax money wasted, but I think 10 million lives saved is well worth the effort. As more stories like this come out and Bush Derangement Syndrome starts to subside in the coming months and years the true Bush legacy will eventually shine through.

The tipping point is back

2009-01-18T00:27:00.000-08:00

Remember the tipping point? It's the point at which no matter what we do the Earth is a goner. I've always looked forward to reaching the tipping point so we wouldn't have to worry about all this global warming nonsense and could get on with our lives.

The only problem with the tipping point is that it's like chasing a moving target. In June of '07 the Environment News Service told us the tipping point would be reached by 2016.

Tipping points can occur during climate change when the climate reaches a state such that strong amplifying feedbacks are activated by only moderate additional warming.

Dr. Hansen has said in the past that a global tipping point will be reached by 2016 if levels of greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide are not reduced.

And yet today from the UK's Guardian we learn that we only have four years left. Isn't it amazing how that coincides perfectly with Obama's first term as president?

Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama's first administration, he added.

Soaring carbon emissions are already causing ice-cap melting and threaten to trigger global flooding, widespread species loss and major disruptions of weather patterns in the near future. "We cannot afford to put off change any longer," said Hansen. "We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead."

Now we have something to look forward to. If we don't solve this climate crisis in four years we can just relax and enjoy our new tropical climate. But why do I have a sneaking feeling that at the end of Obama's first term Dr. Hansen is going to give us four more years to fix the problem.

I don't think these climate scientists will ever let us reach the tipping point. If we did reach it they would be out of work. And here is a possibility even more disturbing, what if we've already reached the tipping point and the scientists are trying to keep it under wraps. Read this next excerpt carefully. I think Dr. Hansen may have let the cat out of the bag.

Hansen said current carbon levels in the atmosphere were already too high to prevent runaway greenhouse warming. Yet the levels are still rising despite all the efforts of politicians and scientists.

That's right, it's already too late. The sea levels will be rising soon. If I were a rich Hollywood star I would put my Malibu Beach house up for sale right away before the word gets out.

Anthropogenic global cooling

2008-12-28T18:43:00.000-08:00

Being of European descent means carrying a world of guilt on your shoulders. Slavery, the decimation of the indigenous people of the New World. And in more modern times, the industrial sweatshops of the late 1800's and now global warming.

If you thought electing Obama would wipe the slate clean have I got some bad news for you. Get ready to add one more thing to the list. In this report from mongabay.com we learn that white people caused the little ice age.

Recovery of forests following the collapse of human populations in the Americas after the arrival of Europeans may have driven the period of global cooling from 1500-1750 known as the Little Ice Age, report researchers speaking at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

By some estimates, diseases introduced by Europeans may have killed more than 90 percent of population on the New World within a century of first contact. The rapid depopulation led to large-scale abandonment, and subsequent reforestation, of agricultural lands in the Americas. Analyzing charcoal found in soils and lake sediments at sites across the Americas, Richard Nevle and Dennis Bird found evidence to suggest that this forest regeneration sequestered enough carbon to trigger global cooling.

We never learn do we, first we make the planet too cold and now were making it too hot. In any case these scientists in San Francisco may have inadvertently stumbled across the answer to our current dilemma. If we drastically reduce the human population of Earth it will cause the planet to cool. The answer is obvious we must halt all efforts at peacemaking and encourage more wars and famine.

On a more serious note, do these guys ever look at that big round thing in the sky? It's called the Sun and all the heat in our solar system comes from it.

Let's take a look at this graph of Solar Irradiance from NOAA. I'm not a scientist but it looks like the sun was taking a nap during the little ice age and during the hot 90's it was very active.

OK, I've solved the climate crisis, where is my grant money?

The Bush legacy from main street to Africa

2008-12-26T19:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday James Lewis analyzed the psychopathology of Bush hatred in today's liberal mainstream media. It's a sad commentary on what passes for journalism today. We're all familiar with Bush derangement syndrome as practiced by the New York Times and other media outlets. And the prognosis for Bush's legacy may seem bleak. However James ends his article on an optimistic note: "Bush will soon look like an American hero. Just watch it happen."

In fact it may already be happening, not in America yet, but from the far corners of the world. As evidenced in this story from javno.com:

The main street in Pristina today, carries the name of the current US president, George W. Bush. That is a decision by Kosvo’s cabinet, and it was brought as a sign of thanks for his support to independent Kosovo.

This is the second time the street has changed its name, until 1999 it was Vidovanska Street, then it was named into Majka Tereza (Mother Theresa) Street.

Bush is also popular in another part of the world. Few people are aware of the help Bush has provided to Africa. He has an astonishing approval rating of 80% on that continent. The NY Sun reported on this back in February:

President Bush's sense of mission to improve the lives of the people of the Middle East has attracted so much attention that the Wall Street Journal called him "Bush of Arabia" the other day over an article by Fouad Ajami. Less widely appreciated are Mr. Bush's achievements in Africa, which are worth marking as the president embarks today on a visit that is scheduled to include trips to Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, and Liberia. Mr. Bush has committed $15 billion to fight AIDS and HIV in Africa, and the result is that the number of Africans benefiting from anti-retroviral drugs has soared to 1.3 million today from 50,000 a few years ago. A similar effort is under way to fight malaria, with similarly promising results.

Mr. Bush hasn't gotten much credit for this among the American public, but, as a BBC interviewer noted yesterday, his approval rating in Africa is in the 80% range, which is astonishingly high. [....]

Asked about all this yesterday, Mr. Bush characteristically looked beyond the poll numbers to the broader principles. "I believe to whom much is given, much is required. It happens to be a religious notion. But, it should be a universal notion as well," the president said. "I believe America's soul is enriched, our spirit is enhanced when we help people who suffer."

We don't know if an Obama administration will be as generous with aid to Africa as the Bush administration has been. The only example we have is this report from The UK's Telegraph on Obama's interaction -- or lack thereof -- with his brother in Africa.

Mr Obama, 26, the youngest of the presidential candidate's half-brothers, spoke for the first time about his life, which could not be more different than that of the Democratic contender.

"No-one knows who I am," he told the magazine, before claiming: "I live here on less than a dollar a month." [....]

He told the magazine: "I live like a recluse, no-one knows I exist."

Embarrassed by his penury, he said that he does not does not mention his famous half-brother in conversation.

"If anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related. I am ashamed," he said. [....]

He has only met his famous older brother twice - once when he was just five and the last time in 2006 when Senator Obama was on a tour of East Africa and visited Nairobi.

The Illinois senator mentions his brother in his autobiography, describing him in just one passing paragraph as a "beautiful boy with a rounded head".

Of their second meeting, George Obama said: "It was very brief, we spoke for just a few minutes. It was like meeting a complete stranger."

We can only hope that Obama has more compassion for the Continent of Africa than he has shown for his brother.

In Africa Bush has an amazing 80% approval rating. In Kosovo the former Mother Theresa Street now carries his name. Back here in America things are a little different, the mainstream media has cast a spell that may take a while longer to break.

Where can we find a liberal utopia?

2008-12-03T08:05:00.000-08:00

What do liberals want? A few things come to mind, gun control, a restrained police force, no capital punishment, legalized drugs. Now that the liberals are running things we are probably headed in that direction. But one thing liberals have a problem with is visualizing the ultimate results of their decisions, they can't see very far into the future.

Maybe if we could find a country that has already adopted these same policies, we might get an idea of what America will look like in a few years. There is a country out there that took a turn to the left early in it's history and we can look at this country to see where we are headed -- That country is Mexico...

Mexico has strict gun control, it's practically impossible to own a gun legally. They have no capital punishment. Police enforcement is nonexistent in many areas. Drugs, while not legal, are readily available.

It should be a liberal paradise, but what is the reality? Drug cartels armed to the hilt virtually run parts of the country. Crime is out of control, murder and kidnapping are a daily occurrence. The state department has advised that the government of Mexico might collapse. And since 2004 more than 200 American citizens have been killed in Mexico's out of control violence.

One lesson we can learn from this is that decades of liberal policies can virtually destroy a society. Another valuable lesson is the devastation that can happen when citizens are not allowed to own firearms legally for protection in a society where law enforcement has collapsed and criminal gangs run amok.

Gun sales have gone through the roof recently here in the U.S., could it be that Americans instinctively know what's coming?

Why liberals won

2008-12-01T22:06:00.000-08:00

During the presidential campaign thousands of articles were written by conservative pundits about the evils of liberalism. It didn't make a bit of difference did it? Before we move forward we need to see if we can figure out why that happened. Let me attempt a little analysis.

Anyone who was trying to earn a living during the Carter years knows first hand what it's like to live under a liberal President and Congress. Runaway inflation, high taxes, high gas prices, diminished military strength. It was so bad new words like stagflation and the misery index had to be invented to describe our condition.

The Iranians, sensing weakness, took our embassy personnel hostage and held them for 444 days. Our emaciated military attempted a heroic rescue, but after the helicopters collided in the desert, they themselves had to rescued.

Carter gave away the Panama Canal and then he tried to pull our troops out of South Korea. A now extinct breed of congressman -- the conservative Democrat -- stopped him.

Younger Americans are not aware of any of this, it's not taught in schools. Today we have politically correct history where the achievements of minorities have taken precedence over the achievements of dead white guys. I don't mean to belittle the achievements of minorities, their story should be told but not at the exclusion of mainstream history.

College is even worse, professors many of whom used to be radicals from the 60's don't have a negative word to say about communism or socialism, its too close to their own ideology.

The end result of all this is:

If you point out that as a young man Obama was mentored by a member of the CPUSA or that he "palled" around with a known terrorist/marxist, or that he attended a church that promoted a communist ideology from South America, it doesn't matter. Young people have no frame of reference to understand what you are talking about.

There is no better way to describe the situation we are about to experience than the often quoted Santayana aphorism: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Welcome to Liberal World. Take a seat in the Cyclone, listen to the clickity clack as we are pulled up the first hill. Hang on, it's going to be a wild ride.

Bye-bye, Rosie

2008-11-27T15:30:00.000-08:00

I must admit I enjoyed reading the bad reviews of Rosie O'Donnell's ego trip / variety show. It couldn't have happened to a nicer conspiracy theorist. Only 5 million viewers tuned in to see "Rosie Live"on NBC. Do we need any more proof that liberals are not funny?

It's so sad to see Elizabeth Hasselbeck's nemesis suffer a potentially career ending debacle. NBC the parent company of MSNBC has learned a valuable lesson. Outside of that narrow slice of the cable network that they dominate, almost no one in the general population is interested in shows headlined by a liberal firebrand like Rosie.

Here is a sampling of the reviews:

From thrfeed:

The network's attempt to revive the primetime variety show failed to draw an audience Wednesday night, tying for the evening's lowest-rated program. A mere 5 million viewers tuned in for the 8 p.m. premiere of "Rosie Live," with the program earning a 1.2 preliminary adults 18-49 rating. The telecast matched ABC's recently cancelled "Pushing Daisies" as the night's lowest-rated program on a major broadcast network.

From TV Guide:

If the TV variety format weren't already dead, the ghastly ego trip of NBC's Thanksgiving-eve turkey Rosie Live would surely have killed it. Like the pie Alec Baldwin predictably pushed into Conan O'Brien's face that fell to the floor without sticking, the entire hour landed with a sickening, sad, ill-conceived thud. It felt like an off night at America's Got Talent, bookended by wobbly appearances from Liza Minnelli and Gloria Estefan, each forced to perform with the caterwauling host, Rosie O'Donnell.

And this from a sympathetic LA Times:

Two words: Dancing food. “Rosie Live” ended with dancing food. There’s nothing else to say, really except perhaps, Liza Minnelli. “Rosie Live” opened with a little song and dance from Liza Minnelli, who rose to the stage, as if from the grave, to sing a duet with O’Donnell, in a luminous white suit, complete with fetching Broadway hat. Liza, we love you, we will always love you, but there is no shame in retirement. [....]

For those of us who are, and remain, Rosie fans, who think “The View” will never quite recover from her departure, who think her desire to resurrect the variety show was, and is, a great idea, disappointment does not even begin to describe it. [....]

“Rosie Live” may enter the realm of unsolved mysteries, along with the fate of Amelia Earhart and the design team of the pyramids. O’Donnell was clearly attempting to recapture the uplifting unapologetic wonder of the big Broadway musical and the television variety show. But having a bunch of talented guests does not a terrific show make—you have to actually give them something interesting to do. Otherwise you're left with, well, a rubber turkey.

You could be sitting next to a Republican

2008-11-23T14:20:00.000-08:00

Here is an amusing story from Jay Nordlinger at National Review:

Heard something interesting the other day — friend was telling me about it. Her family lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and they are Republicans. Sometime in October, they were with a few families they have known for years — years. But politics, I guess, had never come up. My friend’s father informed these others that he and one of his daughters were attending a Sarah Palin rally. And the other families said — so are we.

Just Imagine, all those years they could have been making fun of liberals. This gave me an idea for a new business.

There are agencies where individuals who were adopted can go to learn the identity of their birth mothers, if the birth mother had previously signed up.

This same strategy could be used to bring together like minded Republicans in the bay area. If you are a Republican living in the bay area simply sign up at a website with a name like www.republicans-out-of-the-closet.com or something similar and you would be introduced to the other 2 or 3 Republicans who live in your neighborhood -- I'm joking of course, there are probably at least 5 or 6!

What happened, and what we need to do

2008-11-17T23:52:00.000-08:00

This is truly a historic time for America, Whoopi Goldberg said she has always felt like an American but now she can finally put her suitcase down. We can be proud of the fact that an African-American has been elected to the highest office in the land while at the same time being concerned about the direction he plans to take America.

After the election some in the mainstream media have been using words like "hope and change" again but in a different context. As in, hoping and praying that Obama won't make all the changes he talked about. We can only hope that Obama will govern in more of a Clintonian style and less of a Pelosian style. But more than likely the trifecta of Obama, Reid and Pelosi will steer the country hard to the left. These are not your grandfather's Democrats.

Now for Republicans the post game analysis has started. The east coast elites say we need to move on from Reagan conservatism and turn toward the center. The anonymous attacks on Sarah Palin appear to be the first step in this process.

On the other hand from middle America, talk radio and the wilds of Alaska we get different advice. They say when Republican candidates run away from conservative values they always lose, and they are right.

The public was confused and rightly so, Obama was promising tax cuts for 95% of Americans. McCain wanted the government to buy every bad mortgage in America. Who was the liberal and who was the conservative? This is what happens when we nominate a moderate Republican candidate. Both men were running as centrist. The voters decided -- all things being equal -- why not go with the cool, hip, new guy.

Here is what we need to do. We need to choose one issue that we can champion that will differentiate us from Democrats in such a drastic way that no one will ever confuse a Republican for a Democrat ever again.

There is one battle we could join that would accomplish this objective. In this battle we would be on the side of reason and common sense. We would be on the side of saving people in third world countries from starvation. We would be on the side of saving Americans from needless taxation and regulation.

Global warming is that issue. There is no need to go into the details of the global warming scam here, anyone with a modest interest in science and an internet connection knows that the earth has been cooling since 1998, that sunspot activity is unusually low, that record breaking cold temperatures have been set all over the world.

As the empirical data heads in the wrong direction the global warming cabal becomes more corrupt by the day. Dr. James Hansen of NASA was recently caught supplying bogus temperature data to the IPCC. The situation is ripe for a -- the-emperor-has-no-clothes -- moment.

What we need is one brave conservative politician on the national stage to stand up and state the obvious. That global warming is -- as Bob Lutz Vice Chairman of General Motors so colorfully put it: "a crock of s**t". Then another conservative politician will follow his or her lead and then many more will follow.

At last there would be a clear difference between the parties. If the Republican party continues to drift to the center we will be forever a minority party. Why would anyone vote for a liberal Republican, why not vote for the real thing -- a Democrat.

Sarah Palin might be the one to step up to the podium and do it. It's difficult to get worked up over global warming while living in Alaska surrounded by ever increasing populations of polar bears and encroaching glaciers.

Here's real alternative energy

2008-11-09T09:03:00.000-08:00

Say goodbye to:
Those ugly noisy bird killing wind turbines
Those annoying T. Boone Pickens ads
The coal industry
Cap and trade legislation
Obama's alternative energy plan
Acres of mirrors and solar panels in the desert
Those annoying Al Gore public service ads
Your high electric bills
CO2 emissions from electric power plants

Say hello to:
Mini nuclear power plants

Don't buy that Guardian diesel powered electric generator for your home just yet, for a not unreasonable $25 million you can have a garden shed sized mini nuclear reactor that will power your home and 19,999 others.

From the UK's Guardian we have this story: Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes

Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.

The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. 'Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,' said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. 'They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.'

Deal claims to have more than 100 firm orders, largely from the oil and electricity industries, but says the company is also targeting developing countries and isolated communities. 'It's leapfrog technology,' he said.

Liberalism has taught Americans to be afraid of technology, so these will be used in other parts of the world first, but once they are proven they will come to America.

Don't you know this is just killing the eco-nuts, we can have our cake and eat it too. We can save the planet and have all the cheap power we want. Throw away those weird looking light bulbs that give you a headache when you try to read something, leave the plasma TV on 24 hours a day, turn the AC on full blast, all without a twinge of guilt.

A lurch to the left

2008-11-08T09:27:00.000-08:00

In years past when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House, a large percentage of those Democrats were conservative. That is not the case now, the moderating influence of conservative Democrats is no more. Now the only question is, how far to the left will these new Democrats take the country?

To get an idea of where America is headed take a look at Fred Barnes article in the Wall Street Journal. Here are a few excerpts from: We Could Be In for a Lurch to the Left.

There's an old saying that politics in America is played between the 40 yard lines. What this means, for those unfamiliar with football, is that we're a centrist country, never straying very far to the left or the right in elections or national policies. This has been true for decades. It probably won't be after today's election.

David Gothard
For the first time since the 1960s, liberal Democrats are dominant. They are all but certain to have a lopsided majority in the House, and either a filibuster-proof Senate or something close to it. If Barack Obama wins the presidency today, they'll have an ideological ally in the White House.

A sharp lurch to the left and enactment of a liberal agenda, or major parts of it, are all but inevitable. The centrist limits in earlier eras of Democratic control are gone. In the short run, Democrats may be constrained by the weak economy and a large budget deficit. Tax hikes and massive spending programs, except those billed as job creation, may have to be delayed.

But much of their agenda -- the "card check" proposal to end secret ballots in union elections, the Fairness Doctrine to stifle conservative talk radio, liberal judicial nominees, trade restrictions, retreat from Iraq, talks with Iran -- doesn't require spending. And after 14 years of Republican control of Congress, the presidency, or both, Democrats are impatient. They want to move quickly.
Democrats had large majorities when Jimmy Carter became president in 1977 (61-38 in the Senate, 292-143 in the House) and when Bill Clinton took office in 1993 (56-44, 258-176). So why are their prospects for legislative success so much better now?

The most significant change is in the ideological makeup of the Democratic majorities. In the Carter and Clinton eras, there were dozens of moderate and conservative Democrats in Congress, a disproportionate number of them committee chairs. Now the Democratic majorities in both houses are composed almost uniformly of liberals. Those few who aren't, including the tiny but heralded gang of moderates elected to the House in 2006, usually knuckle under on liberal issues. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi bosses them around like hired help.

In the past, senior Democrats intervened to prevent a liberal onslaught. Along with Republicans, they stopped President Carter from implementing his plan to pull American troops out of South Korea.

[more]

The trouble with socialism

2008-11-03T18:36:00.000-08:00

The Telegraph has an article on the day before the US election informing us that globalization and capitalism have run amok and we are now poised for disaster. Don't waste your time, it's full of the usual leftist garbage, with quotes from Markos Moulitsas and Eric Hobsbawm. But what caught my attention was a comment from Big Jack, he has laid out in plain language why liberalism and socialism never work.

Without success after years of trying, I have yet to drill down to just what exactly liberals want in their perfect world. Capitalism is no good, apparently, wherein individuals with ambition for a better life excel and rise above those without it (or who won't or can't exercise their own), and instead decide that the world has always been made up of Haves and Have Nots and the only "fair" way to make the world palatable is to forceably take a portion of the fruits of the Haves and give it to the Have Nots. The mistake here is that the results are never what is expected: Have Nots never are transformed into Haves this way and instead there are fewer Haves to take from because it makes little sense for would-be Haves to excel, knowing their substance will be given away to those who never did anything to earn their own. If you were a student with a 1.5 average, why would you work harder if the teacher had decided to give you an additional 1.0 of GPA, taken from the 4.0 students, to make the class average better? Why would you try to achieve anything if you were simply going to get it free? Eventually, everyone is a Have Not and there's no Haves left to take from and the system dies. The results can be seen in N. Korea and Cuba right now. Liberals love the "little guy" and try to help him gang up on the better off, be it through labor unions or political revolution, or whatever. But human nature dictates that some will always seek a better life for themselves--as long as the option exists. Liberalism kills the incentives and everyone becomes equally poor...class warfare brings it all to a crashing end. Find a place where the liberal model really works. Where is it? Where?

Yes, where is it? Maybe The Telegraph could ask Moulitsas or Hobsbawm to inform us where this liberal utopian society is located in the world today so we can emulate it. Don't hold your breath.

Democratic speechwriter defects

2008-10-30T18:08:00.000-07:00

Democratic speechwriter Wendy Button has decided to leave the Democratic party and vote for John McCain. Just as Reagan before her, she found that she didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left her.

According to The Huffington Post: "Wendy Button has written for Democratic Senators John Edwards, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John Kerry and for Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. She received her MFA in writing from Bennington College."

She recounts her journey from party stalwart to disillusioned Democrat at The Daily Beast. Be sure and read the whole article. It's a journey many have taken before, and if Obama and the Democrats take control of Congress and the Whitehouse it's a journey many more will take in the future. Here are a few excerpts:

Since I started writing speeches more than ten years ago, I have always believed in the Democratic Party. Not anymore. Not after the election of 2008. This transformation has been swift and complete and since I’m a woman writing in the election of 2008, “very emotional.” [....]

This drift started on a personal level with the fall of former Senator John Edwards. It got stronger during the Democratic National Convention when I counted the substantive mentions of poverty on one hand and a whole bunch of bad canned partisan lines against Senator John McCain. Some faith was lifted after Senator Hillary Clinton’s grace during a difficult hour. But that faith was dashed when I saw that someone had raided the Caligula set and planted the old columns at Invesco Field.

The final straw came the other week when Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (a.k.a Joe the Plumber) asked a question about higher taxes for small businesses. Instead of celebrating his aspirations, they were mocked. He wasn’t “a real plumber,” and “They’re fighting for Joe the Hedge-Fund manager,” and the patronizing, “I’ve got nothing but love for Joe the Plumber.” [....]

The party I believed in wouldn’t look down on working people under any circumstance. And Joe the Plumber is right. This is the absolutely worst time to raise taxes on anyone: the rich, the middle class, the poor, small businesses and corporations.

Our economy is in the tank for many complicated reasons, especially because people don’t have enough money. So let them keep it. Let businesses keep it so they can create jobs and stay here and weather this storm. And yet, the Democratic ideology remains the same. Our approach to problems—big government solutions paid for by taxing the rich and big and smaller companies—is just as tired and out of date as trickle down economics. How about a novel approach that simply finds a sane way to stop the bleeding?

That’s not exactly the philosophy of a Democrat. Not only has this party belittled working people in this campaign from Joe the Plumber to the bitter comments, it has also been part of tearing down two female candidates. At first, certain Democrats and the press called Senator Clinton “dishonest.” They went after her cleavage. They said her experience as First Lady consisted of having tea parties. There was no outrage over “Bros before Hoes” or “Iron My Shirt.” Did Senator Clinton make mistakes? Of course. She’s human.

But here we are about a week out and it’s déjà vu all over again. Really, front-page news is how the Republican National Committee paid for Governor Sarah Palin’s wardrobe? Where’s the op-ed about how Obama tucks in his shirt when he plays basketball or how Senator Biden buttons the top button on his golf shirt?

Governor Palin and I don’t agree on a lot of things, mostly social issues. But I have grown to appreciate the Governor. I was one of those initial skeptics and would laugh at the pictures. Not anymore. When someone takes on a corrupt political machine and a sitting governor, that is not done by someone with a low I.Q. or a moral core made of tissue paper. When someone fights her way to get scholarships and work her way through college even in a jagged line, that shows determination and humility you can’t learn from reading Reinhold Niebuhr. When a mother brings her son with special needs onto the national stage with love, honesty, and pride, that gives hope to families like mine as my older brother lives with a mental disability. And when someone can sit on a stage during the Sarah Palin rap on Saturday Night Live, put her hands in the air and watch someone in a moose costume get shot—that’s a sign of both humor and humanity. [....]

I can no longer justify what this party has done and can’t dismiss the treatment of women and working people as just part of the new kind of politics. It’s wrong and someone has to say that. And also say that the Democratic Party’s talking points—that Senator John McCain is just four more years of the same and that he’s President Bush—are now just hooker lines that fit a very effective and perhaps wave-winning political argument…doesn’t mean they’re true. After all, he is the only one who’s worked in a bipartisan way on big challenges.

Before I cast my vote, I will correct my party affiliation and change it to No Party or Independent. Then, in the spirit of election 2008, I’ll get a manicure, pedicure, and my hair done. Might as well look pretty when I am unemployed in a city swimming with “D’s.”

Whatever inspiration I had in Chapel Hill two years ago is gone. When people say how excited they are about this election, I can now say, “Maybe for you. But I lost my home.”

Oliver Stone's W 'won't recoup'

2008-10-26T17:46:00.000-07:00

If recent trends continue Hollywood may be looking for a government handout. A surge of liberal style patriotism has gripped the movers and shakers in Hollywood, they have produced movie after movie critical of the war in Iraq. Every one a box office dud. The red ink flowing faster than the blood of Al Qaeda in Iraq as our brave troops hunt them down in every corner of the country.

Hollywood reporters seem perplexed -- why isn't the public interested in Iraq war movies? Could it be the clear majority of Americans who consider themselves conservative (according to this article in Newsweek nearly twice as many people call themselves conservatives as liberals, 40 percent to 20 percent) are tired of seeing America and our armed forces vilified. For proof look at Vantage Point, that little pro-American thriller cost $40m to produce and made $73m here and $78m overseas.

And now we have W. Oliver Stone's vision of the Bush presidency. Nikki finke reports on the latest egg laid by Hollywood:

There's been tremendous interest by the public in the box office fate of Oliver Stone's W. for its second weekend in release. Well, it ran out of steam. QED International/Lionsgate's Bush biopic sank 58% to No. 7 with a $5.3M weekend from 2,050 dates and new cume of $18.7M. The $30M negative cost film should end up with $23M domestic box office gross by the end of its North American run. That means, with a $25M P&A investment and Lionsgate's distribution fees, the film won't recoup.

For your amusement here is a list of the other Hollywood failures and their final box office takes:

In the Valley of Elah (2007) - $6.8 million
Redacted (2007) - $.06 million.
Rendition (2007) - $9.7 million.
Lions for Lambs (2007) - $15 million.
Home of the Brave (2006) - $.04 million.

Casualties of liberalism

2008-08-31T16:47:00.000-07:00

As Democrats look forward to voting for Barak Obama, arguably the most liberal presidential candidate in American history, now would be a good time for the rest of us to look back and reacquaint ourselves with all the suffering that liberalism has brought to the world.

Liberals like to support causes that make them feel morally superior to conservatives. With the simple act of affixing one of these bumper stickers on their Toyota Prius they can sleep soundly at night: Free Tibet, Save Darfur, Stop Global Warming. And let's not forget the political ones: Visualize Impeachment, More Trees Less Bush, It's Time For Change Barack Obama 08.

However, according to liberals, under no circumstances should we use American military power to affect any changes in the world. Unilateral use our military power is immoral, we should defer to the United Nations.

If only liberals would adhere to their non-interference rhetoric and to the Hippocratic oath and "do no harm" the world would be a much better place. But they can't leave well enough alone, they have to meddle and almost every policy championed by liberals has resulted in catastrophic unintended consequences. Millions of lives have been lost due to the misguided policies of liberalism/socialism/progressivism.

Here is a breakdown of the casualties:

DDT and malaria:

When Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962 malaria had almost been wiped out. Activists, inspired by her book, gained the upper hand in the debate over the use of DDT, and its use was severely restricted. Then "malaria came raging back" and now "malaria kills about 1 million people a year, mainly children, and mainly in Africa, despite a decades-long effort to eradicate it."

After 45 years and millions of deaths The World Health Organization has belatedly decided to promote the use of DDT again to control malaria. npr covered this story in 2006:

The World Health Organization today announced a major policy change. It's actively backing the controversial pesticide DDT as a way to control malaria. Malaria kills about 1 million people a year, mainly children, and mainly in Africa, despite a decades-long effort to eradicate it.

The WHO previously approved DDT for dealing with malaria, but didn't actively support it. While DDT repels or kills mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite, it doesn't get much good press. In 1962, environmentalist Rachel Carson wrote a book, Silent Spring, about how it persists in the environment and affects not just insects but the whole food chain.

As activist Malvina Reynolds once sang, "It kills the bugs in the apple tree, I eat the pie and it's killing me. DDT on my brain, on my brain."

In the early 1960s, several developing countries had nearly wiped out malaria. After they stopped using DDT, malaria came raging back and other control methods have had only modest success.

Currently about one million lives are lost every year to this devastating disease, while we don't know the exact number of lives lost since Rachel Carson wrote her book 45 years ago, it's probable at least 20-30 million have died needlessly since she wrote her book, most of them children. That's on a scale equal to the atrocities of Stalin or Hitler. Apparently it is true what they say -- the pen is mightier than the sword.

Global warming alarmism and alternative fuels:

Al Gore is spending millions on a public relations (indoctrination) campaign to convince the public that global warming is real, while there is no proof even one person has perished due to global warming, every day almost 16,000 children die of hunger. How many could be saved with the money we're spending to study and promote the global warming theory?

Whether you believe in global warming or not. It could be argued that our reaction to this perceived problem has been more devastating than the actual effects of global warming.

Instead of domestic drilling for oil liberals propose we use "alternative energy" and "renewables" like ethanol. Around the world the negative side effects of converting 18% of our corn production to fuel is starting to be felt, people in poor countries are starving to death. The UK's Telegraph has that story:

We drive, they starve. The mass diversion of the North American grain harvest into ethanol plants for fuel is reaching its political and moral limits.

"The reality is that people are dying already," said Jacques Diouf, of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). "Naturally people won't be sitting dying of starvation, they will react," he said.

The UN says it takes 232kg of corn to fill a 50-litre car tank with ethanol. That is enough to feed a child for a year. Last week, the UN predicted "massacres" unless the biofuel policy is halted. [....]

Mr Diouf says world grain stocks have fallen to a quarter-century low of 5m tonnes, rations for eight to 12 weeks. America - the world's food superpower - will divert 18pc of its grain output for ethanol this year, chiefly to break dependency on oil imports. It has a 45pc biofuel target for corn by 2015. [....]

The world intelligentsia has been asleep at the wheel. While we rage over global warming, global hunger has swept in under the radar screen.

Genocide in Darfur and Rwanda:

Hollywood celebrities and the United Nations have been working on the problem of Darfur for several years with little to show for it. And during that time close to half a million have been killed and 2.5 million displaced according to the United Nations.

This is an example of a situation where a limited use of American military power could have saved many lives. However after the beating Bush has taken from the left for his liberation of Iraq, he is in no mood to go on any other military adventures -- so the genocide continues.

Rwanda was another case of liberal pontificating and moral outrage coupled with little action. Hundreds of thousands of the minority Tutsis were killed in 1994. President Bill Clinton has called failing to act in Rwanda his greatest regret as president.

Roe v. Wade and Abortion:

Since Roe v. Wade became the law of the land in 1973, over 46 million abortions have been performed. Before we add this number to the "casualties of liberalism" we have to answer this question -- when does life begin?

If NASA discovered a single-cell microbe on Mars tomorrow the headlines would read "Life Discovered on Mars!" And yet the liberals can't even admit that a 9 month old fetus is alive.

At the Saddleback Forum Barak Obama was asked when human life begins? He gave one of his "thoughtful and nuanced" answers:

“Well, uh, you know, I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or, uh, a scientific perspective, uh, answering that question with specificity, uh, you know, is, is, uh, above my pay grade.”

Nancy Pelosi answered a similar question by explaining Catholic Church doctrine. She said that "doctors of the church" have not been able to define when life begins. I imagine the Pope will be surprised to hear that.

Peggy Noonan gave the best answer in one of her recent columns, she said: "Everyone who ever bought a pack of condoms knows when life begins."

It should be obvious to any rational person that life begins at conception.

***

I'll resist the temptation to add up all the casualties of liberalism, but I think we can say with certainty they are in the multi-millions. It seems liberals only live in the present and never learn any lessons from the past. If they had any sense of history they wouldn't be giving us (Obama/Carter II) and if they could see into the future just a little they wouldn't propose policies that clearly have bad unintended consequences.

In any case they could do with a little less self-righteousness and a little more humility.

McCain visits the Genesis oil rig

2008-08-19T16:16:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post reports that McCain flew by helicopter to the Genesis oil production facility 150 miles off the coast of Louisiana. The 700 foot platform produces over 10,000 barrels of oil per day. At the end of a short tour, wearing safety goggles and a hard hat McCain read his prepared remarks:

"When I'm president, there will be a whole lot more like this, not only here in the Gulf, but also off of our east and west coasts," McCain said in brief remarks to the press. "We need to drill off-shore, we need to do it now, if I were president, I would call the members [of congress] back into session and tell them get back to work."
.
He added, "Senator Obama opposes new drilling. He has said it will not "solve our problem" and that "it's not real." He's wrong, and the American people know it. I hope he'll seize the opportunity to come out and pay a visit like this one and I think it would probably change his mind."

I'll bet Obama will visit one of Chavez's oil rigs before he visits an American one owned by "Big Oil". Of course he might visit one if Maxine Waters gets her way and nationalizes the oil companies.

Coincidentally the same day McCain visits an oil rig in the Gulf we have this news from rigzone.com, 47 Companies Place 423 Bids for Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 207

The bids are in for Western Gulf of Mexico Federal Oil and Gas Lease Sale 207 to be held tomorrow. The U.S. Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) Gulf of Mexico Region announced that 423 bids were received from 47 companies on 319 tracts offered offshore Texas.

"This sale is an important next step in the journey to ensuring the nation’s energy security," said MMS Director Randall Luthi. "The participation of the offshore oil and gas industry in this sale shows their commitment to the leasing, exploration, and production of the nation’s energy resources in the Gulf of Mexico."

This is just a small example of what can happen when you let the oil companies do their job, there are over 6000 active and retired oil platforms in the gulf region. At cccarto.com you can see maps of the location of the rigs. From the same website we have this nugget of information:

"The Gulf of Mexico normally pumps about 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) of US crude, a quarter of domestic output and equivalent to nearly 2 percent of global oil production. As we now know, any disruption to this area can cause oil prices to dramatically increase."

Imagine what would happen to the price of gasoline if the rest of the coastal states joined Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas and started producing oil and natural gas?

Obama's view of America troubles voters

2008-08-04T17:21:00.000-07:00

Rasmussen reports that McCain is pulling even with Obama, apparently Obama's excellent adventure in Europe didn't have much effect on American voters:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows the race for the White House is tied with Barack Obama and John McCain each attracting 44% of the vote. However, when "leaners" are included, it’s McCain 47% and Obama 46%.

This is the first time McCain has enjoyed even a statistically insignificant advantage of any sort since Obama clinched the Democratic nomination on June 3.

That's good news for McCain, but this election is not really about McCain is it? This election is about Obama and I think this excerpt here is even more eye-opening:

Forty-six percent (46%) of voters nationwide now say that Obama views U.S. society as unfair and discriminatory. That’s up from 43% in July and 39% in June. By a three-to-one margin, American voters hold the opposite view and believe that our society is generally fair and decent.

In June 39% of voters said that Obama views U.S. society as unfair and discriminatory. In July it was 43%, now it's 46%. That looks like a trend doesn't it? The more voters learn about Obama the more they realize the "Change" he's talking about is a radical change of American society.

If the trend continues it won't be long before a majority of voters realize that Obama sees America as "unfair and discriminatory". Three out of four voters disagree with that statement.

And of course that's the way he views America, it's the central theme of his candidacy. In Obama's opinion our society is unfair because we use 25% of the worlds petroleum supplies while we make up only 4% of the worlds population. He said the only problem with the high price of gas is it happened too quickly. And we can't drive our SUVs anymore, or set our thermostats at 72deg.

It's well known that Obama wants to redistribute wealth in America from the wealthy to the poor, what's less understood is that he also wants to do this on a worldwide scale. He wants to redistribute America's wealth to the rest of the world. World Net Daily has that story:

Sen. Barack Obama, perhaps giving America a preview of priorities he would pursue if elected president, is rejoicing over the Senate committee passage of a plan that could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars in an attempt to reduce poverty in other nations.

The bill, called the Global Poverty Act, is the type of legislation, "We can – and must – make … a priority," said Obama, a co-sponsor.

It would demand that the president develop "and implement" a policy to "cut extreme global poverty in half by 2015 through aid, trade, debt relief" and other programs.

More troubling is his plan to scale back our military and create a civilian security force "just as as powerful". From Investors Business Daily we have his words on the subject:

"I'm the only major candidate who opposed this war from the beginning; and as president, I will end it.

"Second, I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems.

"I will institute an independent defense priorities board to ensure that the Quadrennial Review is not used to justify unnecessary defense spending.

"Third, I will set a goal for a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop nuclear weapons; I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material; and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal."

Obama wants to disarm our missile defense just as Iran is starting to build nuclear missiles. And he wants to "slow our development of future combat systems". In Obama's world we would be forced to negotiate from a position of weakness, there would be no more American exceptionalism, we would be just like every other country in the world.

I hope the more voters learn of Obama's plans for America the more they will disagree.

Finally! Gas prices are dropping

2008-07-23T21:10:00.000-07:00

I hate to be one of those people that say I told you so but I predicted this would happen back on May 22nd when I wrote: It's Supply and Demand Stupid!

Here is the story from cbs2chicago.com:

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Finally, there's some good news about gas prices. They've dropped nationwide by about a nickel, and as CBS 2's Susan Carlson reports, analysts are predicting even bigger drops through the rest of the summer.

For the first time in awhile, drivers can fill up at the pump without a pained expression.

"We saw a substantial drop in the price of crude oil, which it appears gas station owners were in a hurry to pass on to consumers," said Phill Flynn, Vice President an Senior Market Analyst at Alaron Trading.

AAA reports gas prices in the Chicago area are averaging $4.25 a gallon Wednesday. That's down from $4.27 Tuesday, and $4.33 last Friday.

"So often we hear gas prices rise like a rocket and drop like a feather, this time, they're starting to drop like a rock and that's a good thing," Flynn said.

That's partly because demand is down about 4 percent from where it usually is. Many people have put the brakes on driving this summer because it costs too much.
[....]

Analysts say right now, gas prices are on track to keep plummeting through the end of the summer.

"We could see $3.70 in the city and if we get really lucky, maybe $3.50 by Labor Day," Flynn said.

Bovine emissions 23 times more damaging than C02

2008-07-15T21:07:00.000-07:00

It appears that our efforts to control C02 emissions may be misguided as the real culprit in global warming could be cows. The UK's Daily mail has the story.

Argentine scientists are taking a novel approach to studying global warming - strapping plastic tanks to the backs of cows to collect their burps and farts.

Researchers say the slow digestive system of cows makes them a producer of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that gets far less public attention than carbon dioxide in efforts to fight global warming.
[...]

Berra said the researchers 'never thought' a cow weighing 550 kg (1,210 lb) could produce 800 to 1,000 litres (28 to 35 cubic feet) of emissions each day.

At least 10 cows are being studied, Berra said, including some in a corral whose burps are collected in yellow balloons hanging from the roof.

Greenhouse gases are widely blamed for causing global warming. Methane, researchers say, is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere and can be found in animal waste, landfills, coal mines and leaking natural gas pipes.

Not to worry the scientist are working on a new diet for the cows which should reduce emissions by 25%.

Be sure and check out the pictures in the article, the cows look very stylish with the big pink plastic tanks on their backs.

I would file this story the same place you filed the one where Sheryl Crow proposes that everyone use only one square of tissue in the bathroom.

There may be hope for the youth vote after all

2008-07-13T19:30:00.000-07:00

The conventional wisdom is that almost all college age young people will vote for Obama. But who knows as liberal teachers and college professors come to expect this and start to put pressure on young folks to toe the party line, some may decide to rebel. That's what one young African American woman did much to the disbelief of her family and friends.

Angelica Brown just graduated from High School in Detroit, she is working this summer as an apprentice at the Free Press. She wrote a short article with a somewhat surprising headline: Why my first vote will go to John McCain. Here are a few excerpts, be sure and read the whole thing it will put a smile on your face.

This November, I will vote for the first time.

I am not ashamed to admit that the man getting my vote will be a Republican referred to as "the anti-Christ" by my acquaintances. My support for Sen. John McCain started off as just a silly way to rebel against Sen. Barack Obama and the idea of voting for him just because he is black.

But now it is less superficial.

Since the campaign began, most of my friends and family supported Obama just because of the color of his skin -- not because of his politics. Sorry to say, skin color alone did not make me an Obama aficionado.

Ironically, I began to actually start watching more political shows, reading excerpts from candidates' books online, and researching their backgrounds before deciding to be a McCain supporter.

[...]

With Bush having been a president consistently mocked for his lack of communication savvy, causing people to believe he was "dumb" or an "idiot," it seems that Americans are ready to go for a smooth talker as opposed to someone who is really doing what he says he believes in.

Just because Obama can write up and deliver a speech better than others does not mean he is the best candidate. If I remember correctly, Adolph Hitler and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick convinced mass numbers of people that they were respectable through dialogue. In no way do I mean to compare Obama to the likes of such immoral men, but let's just be honest -- you cannot judge someone based on what he says. There has to be more to that person.

McCain has proved time and time again that he is a person for America -- not just America's next best speech provider.

The Pickens Plan

2008-07-11T20:55:00.000-07:00

By now everyone has seen the ads from T. Boone Pickens pushing his latest project at PickensPlan.com, which promotes wind power, and downplays oil. Here are a few excerpts from his website:

America is in a hole and it's getting deeper every day. We import 70% of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year - four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.

I've been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of. But if we create a new renewable energy network, we can break our addiction to foreign oil.

On January 20, 2009, a new President gets sworn in. If we're organized, we can convince Congress to make major changes towards cleaner, cheaper and domestic energy resources.

To get this done, I need your help. Check out the plan. If you think it's worth fighting for, please join our effort.

There is something odd about this, here is a Texas oil man, complete with that Texas Twang, like a character out of the 1968 John Wayne movie Hellfighters, telling us we can't drill our way out of this one.

Thanks a lot T. Boone, just as a majority of the public comes around to the realization that we need to start drilling everywhere ($4.00 a gallon can cause even the most extreme liberal to become a pragmatist) and Newt Gingrich has over a million signatures for the "Drill Here Drill Now Pay Less" campaign, here comes T. Boone trying to throw a monkey wrench in the deal. I have a problem with people who say "we can't drill our way out of this". How do you know we can't? We haven't tried, 80% of our offshore areas are off limits, ANWR is off limits, Shale oil is off limits. Of course if one energy source is restricted the other sources become more valuable don't they?

Has T. Boone suddenly become a tree hugger and renounced the evils of big oil? I don't think so, he's still a businessman where the bottom line rules and he's in this to make money. His plan sounds reasonable, he wants to ramp up wind power to replace the 22% of our electrical energy needs that are now supplied by natural gas. Then the natural gas can be used to power our cars and replace a large percentage of imported oil.

So far so good but there is a problem. Here is a key paragraph from his website:

Building wind facilities in the corridor that stretches from the Texas panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20% of the electricity for the United States at a cost of $1 trillion. It would take another $200 billion to build the capacity to transmit that energy to cities and towns.

The best location for the wind farms is the central part of the country but the power is needed in the big cities on the coasts. How do we get the power to the cities? Who is going to pay for those expensive power lines? This quote here makes me a little nervous: "But if we create a new renewable energy network, we can break our addiction to foreign oil." That word "we" has me checking to see if I still have my wallet. Does he expect us taxpayers to pay for this "renewable energy network"?

Why does he "need our help", why do we have to "fight for it"? If wind power is such a good idea then go ahead and build the wind farm, why have a big PR campaign? Could it be that he needs help from the government? Help with legislation to condemn the land for the right of way for the miles and miles of power lines to send the power from middle America to the big cities? And perhaps subsidies from the Federal Government for the $200 billion to build the power lines. Perhaps fast track legislation to circumvent environmental laws. The greenies better think twice before they jump on this bandwagon.

In reality we have to do more of everything, more drilling, more wind, more solar, more coal and nuclear. If you hear a politician leave out any one of those five sources of energy you know they are not serious about helping the American public with energy prices.

There are several problems with increasing wind power to the point where it would supply 22% of Americas electrical needs:

1. What do you do when the wind isn't blowing? You will still need the same number of conventional power plants that you have now to supply the grid when the wind isn't blowing. The only advantage with wind power is when the wind is blowing you can shut down one of your conventional power plants and save some fuel. I doubt you would save enough fuel to offset the cost of maintenance on those wind farms.

2. Conventional power plants are built close to the cities where the power is used, as we learn from his website the wind farms would be located thousands of miles from where the power is needed. Thousands of acres of land will have to be condemned to make right of way for power lines to bring the power to the cities. Would you like to have a big power line passing over your farm or your house transmitting electromagnetic waves into your brain? If T.Boone gets the Federal Government involved in this project you won't have any choice in the matter.

3. Wind turbines break down a lot and mechanics willing to work 400 feet in the air don't come cheap.

4. NIMBY (Just ask Ted Kennedy), When Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi agree to have one of those things installed close to their homes maybe wind power might be a little more believable.

As strange as it sounds we need to follow France's lead (at least where power generation is concerned) and build more nuclear power plants. They can be built closer to where the power is needed and hooked into the existing power grid. They are as clean as wind power and as a bonus they don't kill birds. But I have no problem with T. Boone Pickens building the biggest wind farm in the world. America needs all the energy it can get, just leave my tax money out of the deal.

No ice at the North Pole?

2008-06-26T22:35:00.000-07:00

The UK's The Independent has an article on climate change with the headline: "Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole". At first glance this is very distressing, but let's take a closer look.

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.

The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.

Wait a minute: "ice is on course to disappear"..."may well have melted away by summer". Oh I get it, the ice is still there. That title was a little misleading. As we read on there are more examples of backtracking:

"Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally ice free North Pole this summer are greater than 50:50"[...]

"I'd say it's even-odds whether the North Pole melts out," said Dr Serreze." [...]

"We'll see what happens, a great deal depends on the weather patterns in July and August," [...]

Ron Lindsay, a polar scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, agreed that much now depends on what happens to the Arctic weather in terms of wind patterns and hours of sunshine. "There's a good chance that it will all melt away at the North Pole, it's certainly feasible, but it's not guaranteed," Dr Lindsay said.

Let's get back to the science:

"From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water," said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

So, if it is symbolically hugely important does that mean realistically it is not that important?

Looking at the map included with the article you can see that the thick multi year ice is only around 150 miles away from the North Pole. So why isn't that thick ice where it should be, under the North Pole? Did it melt away due to global warming? No apparently not. In the article we find this statement: " the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away".

What we have here is a serendipitous event for the global warming believers. Winds have blown the thick multi year ice from under that small dot on the map called the North Pole. Next year the ice may float back the other way and the story will fade away. But by then another climate crisis story will take it's place in the mainstream media.

Update: 7-1-08: Here is a picture of three submarines floating in the water at the North Pole in May of 1987.

Is the global warming battle headed to court?

2008-06-23T09:23:00.001-07:00

AGW believers and skeptics have been battling in the press for years, maybe it's time to take the fight to the courts where each side would have to present facts not rhetoric.

Since John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel, has been unable to get Al (the science is settled) Gore to agree to a debate, he has decided to take him to court. From Fox News we have that story:

John Coleman, who founded the cable network in 1982, suggests suing for fraud proponents of global warming, including Al Gore, and companies that sell carbon credits.

"Is he committing financial fraud? That is the question," Coleman said.

"Since we can't get a debate, I thought perhaps if we had a legal challenge and went into a court of law, where it was our scientists and their scientists, and all the legal proceedings with the discovery and all their documents from both sides and scientific testimony from both sides, we could finally get a good solid debate on the issue," Coleman said. "I'm confident that the advocates of 'no significant effect from carbon dioxide' would win the case."

Now from the other side we have James Hansen, who heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He wants the CEO's of Exxon Mobile and Peabody Energy "to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature". The UK's Guardian has that story:

James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

I don't understand his reasoning. NASA's own Argo System which has been operational for five years has found that the Earth has actually cooled during that time. And recently the head of the IPCC has admitted the Earth has been cooling for the last 10 years and is projected to cool for at least another 10 years.

Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech to the US Congress - in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming - to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the "perfect storm" of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable.

Wasn't it 20 years ago when we were told that we only had 10 more years before we arrived at the irreversible tipping point? I sure wish that tipping point would hurry up and get here.

In an interview with the Guardian he said: "When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime."

Here he may be thinking of AL Gore's indoctrination film which is taught in schools and was discredited by a English court.

Someday college courses will be taught on global warming hysteria. What is it that causes people to press on even as the evidence crumbles beneath their feet? I propose that we call this disease Nifong Syndrome after the infamous prosecutor of the Duke lacrosse players.

The Next President and the Price of Oil

2008-06-20T20:54:00.000-07:00

The next president, whoever it is, is going to be one lucky guy, and if it's Obama this will be bad for Conservatives and bad for America. Let me explain:

In USA Today we have the story on the potential of Iraq's future oil production. As security improves the major oil companies are moving in to rebuild the oil infrastructure, Iraq could eventually pump an extra 3.5 million BPD of oil. Wayne Kelly, director of an oil consulting company that has studied Iraq's oil sector says: "Such an increase would more than double Iraq's current oil output — and add nearly 4% to the global supply. "That becomes a very significant amount that would help alleviate gas and energy prices," ... "Iraq truly has that capacity."

Even in the good ole USA people are starting to actually discuss drilling for more oil. (And by the way if you haven't signed the Drill Here Drill Now Pay Less petition at newt.org, now is a good time.) In fact more drilling in the U.S. has already started as shown in this article at investors.com.

Soaring energy prices have launched a bonanza among drillers in North America and overseas. Explorers and producers are sinking more wells. Drilling contractors are building more rigs.

"Initially we were estimating the (land rig) fleet would add four or five dozen units this year," Mason said. "Now it looks like it's going to nearly double that."

So, Iraq's oil infrastructure is being rebuilt and there is a "bonanza among drillers in North America and overseas". That's good news for the future but what about todays prices?

Many experts in the oil business think todays prices are artificially high due to speculation. From an article in the UK's Telegraph we have this:

Lehman's latest report - Is it a Bubble? - says commodity index funds have exploded from $70bn (£36bn) to $235bn since early 2006. This includes $90bn of fresh money. Energy takes the lion's share. Every $100m flow of investment money into oil lifts crude prices by 1.6pc, it said.

"We see many of the ingredients for a classic asset bubble," said Edward Morse, Lehman's oil expert.

Even George Soros agrees in another article from the Telegraph:

Speculators are largely responsible for driving crude prices to their peaks in recent weeks and the record oil price now looks like a bubble, George Soros has warned. [...] The comments are significant, not only because Mr Soros is the world's most prominent hedge fund investor but also because many experts have claimed speculation is only a minor factor affecting crude prices.

The point of all this is, we are starting to get a glimpse of a possible future with markedly lower oil prices.

When the next president takes office, oil prices will be starting a downward trend similar to what they did in the early eighties, and like then they could continue to drop for 10 years. The public will be grateful to whoever is in charge during this time. If Obama is elected President he would have to be incredibly incompetent not to be elected to a second term.

And what about the Iraq war? Even though the Democrats have done everything they could to secure defeat in Iraq, they have failed. Due to the efforts of General Petraeus and our superb Armed Forces the Democrats may have to resign themselves to victory in Iraq.

Don't believe Obama's rhetoric of immediate troop withdrawal. Just as he changed his mind on NAFTA and campaign finance he could do the same on Iraq. If Obama is elected president he will get credit for bringing the troops home and winning the war.

The combination of steadily lowering energy prices and reduced expenditures on Iraq frees up billions of dollars for Obama and his radical friends to enact their complete socialist agenda for America. The true cost of Obama's radical agenda won't be known for years.

Obama likes to think of himself as the Ronald Reagan of the left. Just as oil prices steadily dropped the entire time Reagan was in the White House the same thing could happen in Obama's two terms.

If Conservatives stay home in November Barak Obama will be one lucky guy.

What's happening with the price of oil?

2008-06-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

Here is an "Industry Snapshot" of the oil business from Investors.com. The price of oil has moved into uncharted territory, but old hands in the oil business have seen prices crash before. And once this happens the price can stay low for a decade. As a consumer that sounds wonderful, although I wouldn't want to be in the oil business if it happens.

We have entered an age where oil price forecasts are worthless. The Energy Information Administration's May 2007 energy outlook called for a steady increase in oil prices to $100 a barrel by 2015. Its short-term outlook, released June 10, called for an average of $122.15 a barrel this year, climbing to $126 in 2009.

Crude oil futures climbed to near $138 a barrel last week.

No one knows what happens next. The real possibility of further declines in the dollar have top-flight investment names like Goldman Sachs (GS) banking on oil making further gains. But the oil industry is led by old hands that have watched prices crash repeatedly through the years. Once crashed, prices have sometimes taken as long as a decade to recover.

Many in the oil business are skeptical of the current high prices. And the conventional wisdom is they should be in the $75 to $90 range.

Soaring energy prices have launched a bonanza among drillers in North America and overseas. Explorers and producers are sinking more wells. Drilling contractors are building more rigs.

"Initially we were estimating the (land rig) fleet would add four or five dozen units this year," Mason said. "Now it looks like it's going to nearly double that."

More drilling will eventually bring lower prices but by the time that happens our bank accounts will be as empty as our gas tanks.

John Coleman vs Al Gore

2008-06-13T18:20:00.000-07:00

Regular readers of this website are well aware of the Global Warming scam. Poking holes in the AGW theory is becoming child's play. But we have to keep at it because the general public is not so well informed. A large percentage of the public still get their news from the mainstream media. And of course the MSM is in the tank with Al Gore and the global warming believers.

That's why it's important to let the public see the other side of the global warming debate. We are very lucky to have a scientist like John Coleman who is not afraid to speak his mind. John has been a weatherman since 1953, for 7 years he was the weatherman on "Good Morning, America". He is also the founder of "The Weather Channel" on cable. Now he is in his "retirement job" at KUSI in San Diego. A lot of younger meteorologists just starting out can not speak out against AGW orthodoxy because they might lose their jobs. John has reached a point in his career where he doesn't need a paycheck and can speak his mind, and he did just that in his comments before the San Diego Chamber of Commerce. Here are a few excerpts:

There is no significant man made global warming. There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future. The climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.

Through all history, Earth has shifted between two basic climate regimes: ice ages and what paleoclimatologists call “Interglacial periods”. For the past 10 thousand years the Earth has been in an interglacial period. That might well be called nature’s global warming because what happens during an interglacial period is the Earth warms up, the glaciers melt and life flourishes. Clearly from our point of view, an interglacial period is greatly preferred to the deadly rigors of an ice age. Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented, out of control warming.

Well, it is simply not happening. Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares. That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming?

The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it. He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind’s warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns. Oh, really. We are supposed to be in a panic about man-made global warming and the whole thing takes a ten year break because of the lack of Sun spots. If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.

Now allow me to talk a little about the science behind the global warming frenzy. I have dug through thousands of pages of research papers, including the voluminous documents published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I have worked my way through complicated math and complex theories. Here’s the bottom line: the entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels. They don’t have any other issue. Carbon Dioxide, that’s it.

Hello Al Gore; Hello UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Your science is flawed; your hypothesis is wrong; your data is manipulated. And, may I add, your scare tactics are deplorable. The Earth does not have a fever. Carbon dioxide does not cause significant global warming.

The focus on atmospheric carbon dioxide grew out a study by Roger Revelle who was an esteemed scientist at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. He took his research with him when he moved to Harvard and allowed his students to help him process the data for his paper. One of those students was Al Gore. That is where Gore got caught up in this global warming frenzy. Revelle’s paper linked the increases in carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere with warming. It labeled CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

Later in his comments there is this: "By the way, before his death, Roger Revelle coauthored a paper cautioning that CO2 and its greenhouse effect did not warrant extreme countermeasures".

So, Roger Revelle, Al Gores mentor and teacher did not believe that CO2 and its greenhouse effect warranted extreme countermeasures. I wonder if he would approve of what his former student is doing?

Since the planet has actually been cooling in the last ten years it's fun to watch the AGW believers flail about trying to come up with new theories to explain what's happening. Their favorite new word is "variability", this is how they explain global cooling.

And what do we call this scam? Global Warming has been passe for some time now and until recently it was Climate Change (better to explain temps going up or down). Now, in one of those slick new public service ads (courtesy of Al Gore's Nobel Prize money) they use the phrase "Climate Crisis". Apparently Obama has copyrighted "Change" and anyway "Crisis" adds a little more urgency to the whole enterprise. I wonder what it will be called next year? Perhaps "Climate Catastrophe".

Markos to Republicans: You are 'doomed'

2008-06-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

Democrats have convinced themselves that victory will just fall into their lap. An overconfident foe is usually blind to its own weaknesses.

Markos Moulitsas, of the Daily Kos, has written a piece for The Hill that, not surprisingly is very critical of Republicans. The premise of the article involves a fantasy that the far left believes. Namely that the Democrats are the party of racial harmony and racial unity. And the Republicans are not and are "doomed to struggle just to retain a shrinking constituency mostly comprised of white Southern males." (Apparently he doesn't believe there are any white Southern females in the Republican Party)

In fact the Democrats are the party of racial dis-unity. In the Democratic primary race 90% of African Americans were voting for Obama, and in many states large majorities of whites voted for Hillary. A CBS exit poll of West Virginia Democratic primary voters found this: "Looking ahead to the general election, 59 percent of Clinton voters say they would either vote for Republican John McCain or not vote at all if Obama is the Democratic nominee."

At a time when the Republican Party can’t raise money or attract top-tier recruits to run for office, the failure to attract minority candidates may seem a trivial concern. But the lack of diversity in current candidate ranks points to a dim future, as the party appears doomed to struggle just to retain a shrinking constituency mostly comprised of white Southern males.

The GOP claims just four Hispanic members of Congress, with no African Americans in their caucus. Their only governor of color is Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. Democrats can claim three governors, five senators, and 68 representatives (41 African Americans, 22 Latinos, and five Asian-Pacific Islanders).

Let's look at his assertion that the Republican party can't raise money. We didn't have to in the primary, we had a sensible nominating process and selected our presidential candidate in a timely efficient manner without spending huge amounts of money. The Democrats on the other hand have a very convoluted undemocratic process. The record $425 million spent in the Democratic primary race was a battle within the Democratic Party. Now that Obama has stumbled across the finish line where is the money? Hillary is $20m in debt and at the end of April the DNC only had $4.4m left to spend. The RNC has $40.6m in its accounts.

He briefly mentions the Governor of Louisiana as our "only governor of color". Bobby Jindal is a rising star in the Republican Party. I'm not telling Bobby what to do but I imagine he wants to finish rebuilding Louisiana and then maybe make a run for president. Republicans prefer our presidential candidates, whatever their ethnicity to have some experience and accomplishments under their belt before they run for the highest office in the land. Unlike the Democrats who fall for the first person "of color" with a good speaking voice and a thin resume. In any case Bobby Jindal is more qualified than Barak Obama to be president right now.

He continues with dire predictions for the Latino vote:

While 44 percent of Latinos voted for George W. Bush in 2004, only 28 percent of them voted Republican in 2006, and that dropped to 23 percent in 2007. The GOP is losing ground with this demographic as the Latino share of the overall electorate grows steadily, from 6 percent in 2002 to a projected 10 percent in 2008. With Latino support for Republicans dropping so drastically, the situation is dire.

Yes 44% of Latinos voted for Bush in 2004, and in 2006 only 28% of them voted Republican. This is not surprising, the Republican brand lost support across the board in '06 due mainly to the Iraq war. Now that the situation in Iraq has improved significantly, it remains to be seen how Latinos will vote in the next presidential race.

Author Earl Hutchison in an interview in Newsweek had this to say about race in politics: "... the rules of political engagement fall apart when you talk about black and Latino candidates. I do not believe Latino voters will vote even for a candidate like Obama who is an appealing, well-financed liberal Democrat."

Its also interesting to note that the Culinary Union's endorsement couldn't carry Barack Obama to victory in Nevada, the Culinary Union has many Latino members, this does not bode well for Obama's appeal to these voters.

Yet what can Republicans really offer these constituencies? African Americans are watching conservatives trash Obama as un-American, a closet Muslim, a member of a supposedly “hateful” black church. The message sent? African Americans aren’t really Americans. Latinos, for their part, are quite cognizant of the GOP’s strong nativist streak and the hateful anti-immigrant efforts that terrorize and divide families in a culture in which the family is preeminent. In fact, Republican support for remittance and travel bans to Cuba are even costing it support among its traditional Cuban American allies, putting the GOP’s three South Florida Cuban American congressional seats at risk.

"What can Republicans really offer these constituencies?"

For starters how about a chance to get out of crime infested under performing inner city public schools with vouchers. The Democratic party forces inner city kids to go to these schools. They will not allow these families to send their kids to better schools where they would have a chance to break the cycle of poverty. The Democrats don't want these constituencies to really improve their lives, they might lose their votes.

We are witnessing a Republican Party so bereft of ideas, so hampered by unpopular policy positions on everything from the war to the economy, so incapacitated by scandal and corruption, that it’s left with only one card to play:

Did he say "scandal and corruption"?-- What about: Chicago politics? Rezko?Land deal? Ayres? Wifes salary triples? Earmarks for hospital?

“It’s the politics of identity - not necessarily racial or ethnic identity but identity as an American,” writes Mark Schmitt, a senior fellow at the New American Foundation, in an American Prospect cover story. “And we have already seen how that manifests, in McCain’s slogan [“The American President Americans Are Waiting For”], the politics of the flag pin, the e-mails charging that Obama doesn’t salute the flag, and the attempt to associate him with the anti-American politics of 1968, when he was 7 years old.”

Here the problem appears to be that Republicans identify themselves as Americans and we like to wear flag pins and salute the flag, what's wrong with that? And Republicans are trying "to associate him with the anti-American politics of 1968, when he was 7 years old." Was he 7 years old when he went to William Ayers house? Was he 7 years old when he went to Rev. Wright's church?

The Republican Party has some work to do to recruit minority candidates, but the Democratic party is not the racial utopia that Markos Moulitsas and Howard Dean proclaim it to be.

A new refinery, it's about time

2008-06-04T16:09:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time coming but it looks like we may get our first new oil refinery in over 30 years. By a margin of 58% to 42% the voters in Union County, S.D. have approved the re-zoning of 3292 acres for a new oil refinery. Hyperion Energy has promised billions of dollars in capital investment and thousands of high paying jobs. The construction of the refinery will require 4500 jobs over a four year period and when the plant is in operation it will provide over 1800 full time jobs at a pay scale of $20-$30 dollars per hour.

The Sioux City Journal has the story here:

ELK POINT, S.D. -- Flashing a smile, Joyce Bortscheller briefly hugged Hyperion Energy Center executive Preston Phillips as she greeted him in the backyard of her home here.

Bortscheller, president of the Elk Point City Council, had invited about 250 supporters to an outdoor barbecue Tuesday to await the returns for arguably the most important election in Union County's history. The big crowd didn't leave disappointed.

As midnight approached, they popped the champagne corks, celebrating a hard-fought victory that keeps alive the county's chances of landing the nation's first all-new oil refinery in 32 years.

By a solid 58 percent to 42 percent margin, county voters approved Hyperion's request to rezone 3,292 acres of farm land for a new classification, Energy Center Planned Development.

"What happened tonight, we were not supposed to be able to do," Phillips told a cheering audience. "Development projects like this are supposed to be outright rejected by residents and neighbors. But this project is a testament to our balancing the needs for growth and for protecting the environment."

At stake was billions of dollars in capital investment and thousands of high-paying jobs. From the beginning, Hyperion executives said they would abandon its Union County site, just north of Elk Point, if a majority of voters failed to give their blessing to the rezoning.

The Sioux City Journal has another story concerning a meeting with the zoning Commission and Hyperion Energy. Officials from the company highlighted the benefits to the community of the project which include, tripling the county's valuation to $3.4 billion. And according to the company this new refinery will have 80% less emissions than any refinery in California, which has the strictest air quality regulations in the country.

Project executive Corky Frank and Todd Meierhenry, a Beresford, S.D., attorney working with the company, also took a portion of the 90-minute presentation.

If constructed, the 400,000-barrel-per-day refinery would be the first built in the United States in more than 30 years. The officials pitched the project as a step, along with various renewable energies, in reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Local benefits

Meierhenry juxtaposed studies showing the decline and low profitability of farming in the county with a study showing the massive economic impact Dakota Dunes, a planned development in the southern tip of the county. He said they show that the $10 billion oil refinery would be the salvation of small farms by providing 1,800 jobs and the off-farm income needed to allow families to stay on the land.

And, he said, it would provide a windfall of tax revenues for the county, schools and state, tripling the county's tax valuation to $3.4 billion. He also worked to convince commissioners that the planned development zoning fit into the county's comprehensive plan and was superior to the alternatives.

Environmental pitch

Phillips touted the facility's anticipated environmental profile. He said the refinery would draw about 10 million gallons of water from the Missouri River each day -- 1/20 of 1 percent of the river's daily flow -- from shallow wells so as not to affect recreational use of the river. It would also create a 500-acre wetland recreation area.

In addition, the refinery would supplant river water use by using its own "gray water" from restrooms and captured rainfall run-off, and then return it to the earth cleaner than the river water.

And, he pledged, the emissions into the air would be 1/30th that of the typical Midwest coal plant and 80 percent less than any refinery in California, which has the strictest air quality regulations.

"There will be no odor and there will be no noise," Frank pledged.

Of course the public has the right to be skeptical but we should take into account this will be a new refinery using new cleaner technology. Comparing this new refinery to the old refineries in operation now is like comparing a 2009 Honda Civic to a 1975 Ford LTD.

If (and it is a big IF) it passes all the hurdles of permits and protests to come, it could be just the first of many new refineries. And now perhaps the time has come to build a new nuclear power plant? Everyone wants to protect the environment but unless we are prepared to go back to using candles for light and horses for transportation we will need to build new refineries and power plants.

(Note: Hyperion CEO Albert Huddleston is not related to the author of this article.)

HBO may want a ratings 'Recount'

2008-05-30T17:57:00.000-07:00

This from THR LiveFEED:

HBO might want to ask for a ratings recount.

The Sunday night premiere of its much-discussed original movie covering the 2000 presidential election fiasco was seen by a modest number of viewers when compared to the network's other high-profile projects.

"Recount" was seen by 1 million HBO subscribers, which is on par with the network's last film, February's lesser-known Susan Sarandon telepic "Bernard and Doris."

Compared to recent HBO movie titles that received considerable media attention,"Recount" fares worse -- 1.9 million watched the first airing of last year's historical epic "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" and 1.5 million watched Queen Latifah in last year's "Life Support." The premiere of the March miniseries "John Adams" was seen by 2.5 million.

"Recount" was seen by only 1 million HBO subscribers. "John Adams" was seen by 2.5 million at its premier. "John Adams" was an uplifting patriotic tale "Recount" was a factually challenged partisan propaganda piece. Contrary to what the liberal mainstream media believes this is still a center-right nation. HBO doesn't seem to understand this.

Tired of boring "action" movies where the CIA agents are always portrayed as a bumbling fools? Tired of Bill Maher's angry rants? Tired of left leaning specials like "Recount"? I've canceled my HBO subscription, how about you?

Is it time for a strategic retreat?

2008-05-27T15:23:00.000-07:00

Talk radio has brought up this subject recently, as conservatives there are two scenarios we need to consider:

(#1) The worst predictions come true and the Democrats add 11 seats in the Senate and Nancy Pelosi ends up with a 70 vote margin in the House at the end of this year. However due to the Democrats ineptitude at running a primary race they end up putting a flawed candidate up against McCain and McCain squeaks by and wins. Before we celebrate too much let's take a look at what this really means.

The Democrats will have a Supermajority and can override any veto of McCain. No legislation McCain sends to Congress has a chance. He will have to compromise in his choice of judges. McCain has a natural tendency to work across the aisle and since he wants to have some kind of a legacy he will work with the Democrats.

This will result in a lot of legislation that conservatives will be unhappy with. As the bad effects of this legislation start to be felt by the general public (when has socialism and higher taxes ever made the economy better) who are they going to blame? The average man or woman on the street may not know much about Congress but they sure do know who the president is. And they know the Republicans will have been in power for 12 years at the end of the McCain presidency.

Due to McCains age at the end of his first term and due to the Democratic Congress's handiwork the economy will probably be shot at this time. What are the chances the public will go for another Republican president (an older McCain or some other Republican) after 12 years, none, zilch and nada!

So it's not a question of are Republicans going to lose the White House, it's only a question of when. Maybe we should choose the time, maybe the time is now?

(#2) All of the above happens but Obama wins, Imagine the Democrats getting everything they want, it's a nightmare scenario. More socialism, less freedom, nationalized health care, higher taxes, stronger unions, more affirmative action, less drilling for oil, higher taxes on the oil companies, pulling the troops out of Iraq just as were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I could go on and on but you get the picture. The only silver lining in all this is the Republicans would not get the blame for the inevitable side effects of all this feel good legislation. History proves that America can only take 4 years of the progressive/liberal agenda (see the Carter years). After 4 years of Obama and a Democratic Congress I predict the Republicans would be swept back into power in both branches of government, the only problem is would America be too far gone at that point to save?

I'm not advocating either scenario, it's the proverbial choice between the lessor of two evils.

It's Supply and Demand Stupid!

2008-05-22T13:49:00.000-07:00

Adjusting the price of oil is not rocket science it's simple supply and demand. In the late 70's we were in the same situation we are in now. What was the Democrat's solution then? The same as it is now. Alternative energy and tax the oil companies.

Before we start down that path again why don't we take a look back and see how it all worked out.

When Carter came into office the price of oil was around $14.00 per barrel. A lot happened during the Carter years, most of it bad. Investor's Business Daily has a good summary here. By the end of the Carter Administration we had: the Synthetic Fuels Corp., the Energy Department., price controls on domestic oil, oil import quotas, and the Windfall Profits Tax. And when he left office the price of a barrel of oil was $35.00 that was a 154% increase.

One of Reagan's first acts was to completely decontrol oil prices. Prices peaked briefly then began to fall. For years prices steadily fell until they reached about $10.00 a barrel.

At the same time Reagan decontrolled prices, Americans were working overtime building drilling rigs and related equipment. This equipment was shipped all over the world. A drilling boom was in progress. It was a combination of deregulation and drilling that caused the price of oil to fall.

The Democrats are now proposing more regulation, more taxes on oil companies and less drilling, what do you think will be the result of those policies? Just ask Jimmy Carter.

So why did the Saudis diss the president at their recent meeting by giving him a token 300,000 bbl increase, it's not because they wish to damage our economy. An autocratic ruler has the luxury of looking at the long term, not like our politicians. The Saudis remember the nightmare of $10.00 oil. Now as a consumer of oil you would be grateful for $10.00 oil but imagine you are a producer, a price collapse like that would be catastrophic.

Looking at the price of oil now it's hard to imagine but I believe these prices are built on a speculative house of cards and could collapse at any time. The UK's Telegraph has that story here: (emphasis added)

The perfect storm that has swept oil prices to $132 a barrel may subside over the coming months as rising crude supply from unexpected corners of the world finally comes on stream, just as the global economic downturn begins to bite.

The forces behind the meteoric price rise this spring are slowly receding. Nigeria has boosted output by 200,000 barrels a day (BPD) this month, making up most of the shortfall caused by rebel attacks on pipelines in April.

The Geneva consultancy PetroLogistics says Iraq has added 300,000 bpd to a total of 2.57m as security is beefed up in the northern Kirkuk region.

"There is a strong rebound in supply," said the group's president Conrad Gerber.

Saudi Arabia is adding 300,000 bpd to the market [And recently another 500,000 bpd] in response to a personal plea from President George Bush, and to placate angry Democrats on Capitol Hill - even though Riyadh insists that there are abundant supplies for sale.

[....]

Lehman's latest report - Is it a Bubble? - says commodity index funds have exploded from $70bn (£36bn) to $235bn since early 2006. This includes $90bn of fresh money. Energy takes the lion's share. Every $100m flow of investment money into oil lifts crude prices by 1.6pc, it said.

"We see many of the ingredients for a classic asset bubble," said Edward Morse, Lehman's oil expert.

Update 5/26/08: For more evidence that oil prices are about ready to fall here is another article from the UK's Telegraph. George Soros: rocketing oil price is a bubble.

Speculators are largely responsible for driving crude prices to their peaks in recent weeks and the record oil price now looks like a bubble, George Soros has warned.
The billionaire investor's comments came only days after the oil price soared to a record high of $135 a barrel amid speculation that crude could soon be catapulted towards the $200 mark.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Soros said that although the weak dollar, ebbing Middle Eastern supply and record Chinese demand could explain some of the increase in energy prices, the crude oil market had been significantly affected by speculation.

We could help the price of oil to drop faster by taking a page out of the Gipper's playbook, let's not follow the Democrats down the path of the "failed policies of the past."

A 'Radical' religion threatens Great Britain

2008-05-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

In this article for the Telegraph, David Modell is concerned that a "radical" and "hard-line" religious group has set up shop in Great Britain.

They think society should be built on their beliefs. They claim non-believers are damned. But these radical Christian groups are not in America - they are here and are aiming to change the laws of our land, discovers the Bafta-winning film-maker David Modell

Carmel Christian School is my latest stop on a journey through British Christian fundamentalism, for a Channel 4 Dispatches film. With the nation focused on the perceived threat from radical Islam, I am interested to know if a less apparent form of radical religious belief is gaining ground. It is.

Was it a "perceived threat" that killed 52 people on July 7th, 2005 or was it real?

Yes, the liberal media, always attuned to any threat to our way of life is now focusing it's attention on Christian fundamentalism in England. We can all sleep safer now. He continues by explaining the aims of these "hard-line Christian organisations."

The school is part of the Carmel Christian Centre, one of a growing number of locally based hard-line Christian organisations. The aim of these groups is to spread a fundamentalist form of Christianity. The followers believe that the Bible is literally true and not open to any degree of interpretation. They are the only "true" Christians because they have confessed their sins before Jesus and become "born again". Those who have not converted are damned.
[....]

The ambitions of Britain's hard-line Christians go far beyond the borders of their local communities. Like most fundamentalist movements, the ultimate aim is a society built on their rigid belief system.

In his opinion they are "Like most fundamentalist movements".

In the liberals quest for equality in all things they are constantly trying to equate some Christian groups with radical Islam. I believe a sober analysis of the number of victims from each group should dispel this idea. However it seems Mr. Modell's main concern is that they are trying to influence Parliament.

To achieve her ends, Ms Williams doesn't just organise demonstrations - she has secured access to the heart of Westminster. As the HFE Bill reaches its final reading in the Lords, she calls me to say she has arranged a meeting with Lord Tebbit. Would I like to come?

What I then witness is a piece of raw and normally strictly confidential parliamentary lobbying. Lord Tebbit meets us in Central Lobby and takes us to a meeting room. He and Ms Williams perch across the corner of a huge oak table. Ms Williams is persuading him of the importance of laying an amendment to the Bill. "You can get a slot on the Today programme," she says. "Because you can say, 'I'm tabling an amendment to reduce the upper limit on abortion'."

What's wrong with individuals or groups having access to their leaders. Perhaps Mr. Modell's real concern is that Ms. Williams would like to reduce the upper limit on abortion. I think it's only fair since the pro-abortion groups have certainly had unlimited access to the leaders in both our countries for many years.

I would like to try to allay Mr. Modell's anxieties about these "radical" groups, having lived amongst these evangelical groups here in America for many years I can speak from experience that they are relatively harmless. The worst that can happen is you might get cornered at a dinner party for a few minutes as one of them tries to save your soul.

Obama's Health Care Program

2008-05-16T22:52:00.000-07:00

Now that Hillary is fading fast in Obama's rear view mirror we should take a look at some of his proposals for America. Let's start with health care. Here are his words on the subject from one of his speeches:

“We now face an opportunity — and an obligation — to turn the page on the failed politics of yesterday's health care debates… My plan begins by covering every American. If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change for you under this plan is the amount of money you will spend on premiums. That will be less. If you are one of the 45 million Americans who don't have health insurance, you will have it after this plan becomes law. No one will be turned away because of a preexisting condition or illness.”

— Barack Obama, Speech in Iowa City, IA, May 29, 2007

It's a very ambitious plan and it's not free health care as some believe. If you have insurance already you will continue to pay your premiums. He does promise to lower your premiums, I'm not quite sure how he intends to do this. Here are some of the features of his plan:

1. It covers every American.
2. If you already have Insurance your premiums will be lower.
3. He will offer a plan similar to the one Congress has to all Americans.
(You will have to pay premiums for this plan)
4. No American will be turned away from any insurance plan because of illness or pre-existing conditions.
5. Individuals and families who do not qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP but still need financial assistance will receive an income-related federal subsidy to buy into the new public plan or purchase a private health care plan.
6. If you are one of the 45 million Americans who don't have health insurance, you will have it after this plan becomes law. No one will be turned away because of a preexisting condition or illness.
7. It will require that all children have health care coverage.
8. It will expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs.

Of course there is a lot more to it than what I've listed here, you can see the whole plan here.

Every one of those 8 items listed above is going to cost a lot of money, what it all boils down to is, If you are a middle income American you will still have to pay Insurance premiums. And it's possible he might lower your premiums a little. But your taxes are going to go up. Someone is going to have to pay for subsidies, expanded eligibility for Medicaid and SCHIP and to insure the 45 million that are now uninsured and I wonder does that 45 million include illegal aliens?

However, Obama says he can lower costs by modernizing the U.S. Health Care System. Let's take a look at how he plans to do that. Here are three paragraphs taken from his web page on that subject, let's analyze these:

Require full transparency about quality and costs. Obama will require hospitals and providers to collect and publicly report measures of health care costs and quality, including data on preventable medical errors, nurse staffing ratios, hospital-acquired infections, and disparities in care. Health plans will also be required to disclose the percentage of premiums that go to patient care as opposed to administrative costs.

Just what hospitals need more paperwork, think this will lower costs?

Tackle disparities in health care. Obama will tackle the root causes of health disparities by addressing differences in access to health coverage and promoting prevention and public health, both of which play a major role in addressing disparities. He will also challenge the medical system to eliminate inequities in health care through quality measurement and reporting, implementation of effective interventions such as patient navigation programs, and diversification of the health workforce.

OK, I give up. I don't know what this one is about but I know it involves more paperwork and cost.

Lowering Costs Through Investment in Electronic Health Information Technology Systems: Most medical records are still stored on paper, which makes it hard to coordinate care, measure quality or reduce medical errors and which costs twice as much as electronic claims. Obama will invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records, and will phase in requirements for full implementation of health IT. Obama will ensure that patients' privacy is protected.

Let me get this straight. In order to lower the cost of keeping medical records we have to spend $50 billion dollars? This last paragraph has nothing to do with lowering costs. It has everything to do with Obama's wish to implement government control of health care. He wants to "phase in requirements for full implementation of health IT." This will allow the government to "coordinate care" and "measure quality". In other words, this is just a way for the government to get its hands on your medical records.

Obama knows that the American people are leery of nationalized health care, I think his plan is a way to ease us into it. I predict in his second term he will propose we go to a completely government run program.

Government health care and its complaints

2008-05-13T20:29:00.000-07:00

The promise of free government health care from Obama and Hillary is a tempting proposal. But before we jump on board let's take a look at how our cousins across the pond are doing. They've had nationalized health care in England since 1948, and they still haven't worked all the bugs out of the system. Here are some excerpts from an illuminating article in the Guardian:

A big variation in the performance of NHS trusts across England is revealed today in the health inspectorate's annual survey of patients' experiences.

In some hospitals more than three-quarters of inpatients said the standard of care was excellent, compared with less than one quarter in others.

In the best trusts, staff almost invariably helped frail patients to eat, but in the worst nearly half the people who needed assistance at mealtimes said they did not get it.

There was also a wide variation between hospitals in the quality of food, cleanliness, responsiveness to call buttons and the proportion of patients expected to share bathrooms and toilets with members of the opposite sex.

The level of quality care seems uneven at best. A hospital in West London had an approval rating of only 24% almost as bad as Congress! Apparently until recently you were forced to go to the hospital in your neighborhood. At least West Londoner's can now go to a better hospital in another part of the city.

"Since last month people have had the right to choose between any NHS hospital in England and any private clinic meeting the Department of Health's standards on quality and cost."

Unfortunately effective infection control and good basic hygiene have gotten worse:

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, said: "These results will make worrying reading for a government that claims to be committed to infection control and patient dignity. The key indicators of effective infection control - good basic hygiene - have got worse rather than better."

There also was a problem with long waiting times at the emergency rooms. The Labour Party made a pledge to the public that every patient would be treated in no more than 4 hours. How did the hospitals meet this requirement? They leave patients in ambulances parked outside the emergency room. The title of this article in the Daily Mail says it all: A&E Patients left in ambulances for FIVE hours 'so trusts can meet government targets'

Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets.

Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside accident and emergency departments because trusts will not let them in until they can treat them within four hours, in line with a Labour pledge.

The hold-ups mean ambulances are not available to answer fresh 999 calls.

When you get a toothache in Great Britain the quality of care you'll be receiving is not your main concern, it's just hoping you can find a dentist. The Telegraph has this story:

People who cannot get an NHS dentist are pulling their teeth out with pliers and using Superglue to put caps back.

So declared Mike Penning, from the Tory front bench, in a bid to destroy the "complacent" picture of dentistry painted by Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary.

Let us leave the glue on one side, or beneath whatever caps it may be holding in place: what worried some of us was the thought of the pliers.

Canada is also having some major problems with maternity care in their nationalized health care system as reported in this article from the Canadian Medical Association:

It is well known that Canada is facing a shortage of maternity care providers in a trend that has been developing over the past two decades. This shortage is being felt most acutely in rural and remote communities. For years, maternity care has been provided in these communities by family physicians with the assistance of registered general nurses. Increasing numbers of family physicians are deciding not to provide intrapartum care. Rural hospitals are finding it equally difficult to attract nurses with maternity care experience.

In many cases, women and their families are leaving their home communities up to 4 weeks prior to their due dates and residing in hotels or with relatives until the birth of their baby. In the most remote communities, women are usually flown out alone, and accommodated in hostels located in large cities, completely unfamiliar to the expectant mothers. The emotional, social, and financial costs to these women and their families are immense.

Someone should ask Hillary if she thinks it's OK for a pregnant woman to be forced to fly alone to an unfamiliar large city and sit in a Hostel for 4 weeks waiting to give birth, and can she guarantee this will never happen with her health care system?

It looks as though in order to get free health care we may have to give up a few perks such as "infection control" and "patient dignity" and we may have to become more adept at home dentistry.

Government run health care in Canada and the UK have many problems, including a shortage of doctors in emergency rooms, a shortage of dentist and maternity care providers.

Now we know why the Democrats never give any examples of other countries where nationalized health care is a success, it's because there are none.

Update: May 24th, 2008, More news from the dysfunctional NHS. The UK,s Mail has this story: Half the country can't get an NHS Dentist - and haven't had any treatment for 2 years. Another story from the Mail: 'We're fed up with the cold weather and the NHS,' say asylum seekers trying to break OUT of Britain

Hillary joins the vast right wing conspiracy

2008-05-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

Hillary must really miss the good old days when all she had to deal with was a vast right wing conspiracy, now she is under attack by a vast left wing conspiracy. You know who they are: moveon, daily kos, nbc, msnbc, cnn, cbs. They all want her to get out of the race, so why doesn't she?

Dick Morris has the answer, he suggests that Hillary has already decided that she has no chance of getting the nomination this time. But in order to position herself to run in 2012 she needs to damage Obama enough so McCain can win. Then 4 years from now the electorate will be tired of 12 years of republican rule and McCain may be considered too old to run again.

Is she continuing her race so as to have a platform from which to continue to bash Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in the hopes of so damaging him that he can’t win the general election? Is she doing this to keep her options alive for the 2012 presidential race?

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) felt similarly justified in staying in the race for the Republican nomination until Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) reached the majority threshold required for nomination. He contested the Texas primary vigorously, even though his earlier losses in South Carolina and Florida made it most unlikely that he could win the nomination. But he chose to run a positive campaign. He didn’t knock McCain. He just articulated the case for his own candidacy.

But Hillary won’t avail herself of that option because it does not serve her long-term fallback position: a shot at the nomination in 2012. If Obama is elected this year, he will seek reelection in 2012 and Hillary would have to face taking on an incumbent in a primary in her own party if she wanted to run, a daunting task. But if McCain wins, the nomination in 2012 will be open. And it might be worth having. McCain will be 76 years old and the Republican Party will have been in power for 12 years. Not since FDR and Truman has a party lasted that long in power. When the Republicans tried to do so, in 1980 and 1992, they fell flat on their face.

John McCain might as well go on vacation until the Democratic race is over. Hillary is doing everything in her power to sabotage the Democratic front runner.

Welcome to the team Hillary.

Obama visits all 57 states

2008-05-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

In a swing through Oregon today before starting his attacks on McCain, which might include something about age or "losing his bearings" Obama was getting the pleasantries out of the way and had this to say:

"It is wonderful to be back in Oregon," Obama said. "Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it."

Apparently Obama plans to annex 7 new states. So this is the change he's been talking about. There is even a new flag pin out with the new states on it, maybe Obama will wear that one. Here's more from the LA Times story:

(UPDATE: At a later stop Obama was talking with reporters and expressed concern he'd also mis-stated the number of potential cyclone victims in Burma. He said, ""I hope I said 100,000 people the first time instead of 100 million. I understand I said there were 57 states today. It's a sign that my numeracy is getting a little, uh." At that point, an aide cut him off and ushered journalists out. Before he could mis-speak again?)

Campaigning against the Clinton's is hard work involving long hours and little sleep so we can cut Obama a little slack. Now some will argue that this story is not that important and we shouldn't waste time commenting on it and they are right except for one thing. What if it had happened to McCain? It would be front page news all over the mainstream media and they would start to question McCain's mental state.

If it can happen to the youngster in the campaign maybe it won't be front page news when sometime in the future McCain makes the inevitable slip of the tongue. And if he does, afterward all he has to say is: "Well, at least I know how many States are in the Union."

A reader responds to my American Thinker Post

2008-05-09T16:59:00.000-07:00

(A reader responds to "America in decline or the rest of the world rising?")

Dear Mr Lifson,

I apologise for sending so many comments in recent times, but unfortunately
I can't shut up while AT columnists make posts that warrant - or, in some
cases, require - a response from me. When you add the Comment feature to the
AT realm, I will not need to email you, thus sparing you space in your
mailbox, sir.

For now, however, I need to send things directly to you in cases when I
don't know the email addresses of the authors.

Mr Huddleston, for the future, I'd suggest, ask, and simoultaneously advise
you not to use Newsweek as a source, whether quoting Fareed Zakaria or any
other NW editor. To say it succintly, Mr Zakaria doesn't know what he's
talking about, and the article you've quoted constitutes examplary proof.
The specifics are that those big things may indeed be in countries other
than America, but bigger doesn't necessarily mean better. A380 jets reflect
the centralised nature of Europe, the fallacy that 'bigger is always
better', and Europe's inability to compete against the US. The A380 has been
subject to frequent criticism from Mr Lifson himself, on AT, and from
others. The fact is that Boeing snookered Airbust into producing such white
elephants only to then construct planes that the market actually wants:
B777-200LRs, the longest-ranged jets in the world, and B787s, the most
efficient jets in the world. A380 can hardly land anywhere besides LHR, JFK,
CDG, Toulouse (Tou-louse) and Singapore. Mr Zakaria then went on to say
that:

'But along every other dimension-industrial, financial, social, cultural-the
distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance. In
terms of war and peace, economics and business, ideas and art, this will
produce a landscape that is quite different from the one we have lived in
until now-one defined and directed from many places and by many peoples.'

Huh? Who exactly is going to dominate the world economically or culturally,
if not the US? America's economy is a $15 trillion giant, bigger than the
Chinese and Indian economies combined. America has won more Nobel prizes
than the rest of the world combined. India won only a few, China has won
none. Culture? Where are Chinese Coca-Cola bottles, McDonald's restaurants,
fashionable trousers, Ford-like motor cars, NASCAR cars, songs and films?
Listen to me, everyone around the world listens to American music, watches
American films, plays American video games, wears American-designed clothes
(like jeans), and America is also slowly becoming a popular tourist
destination on par with France (having surpassed other countries long ago).
In fact, last year, we've seen the French President holiday in the US and
wear American T-shirts!

Why is that? It's because America is the most successful, most vibrant, most
productive country in the world's history. China has contributed nothing to
the world besides violence, and can only offer that - violence.

NOTE: China did invent a few things, but those things were useless for the
rest of the world until a Westerner (Marco Polo) introduced them to
non-Chinamen and other Westerners (e.g. Johann Gutenberg) made them usable.

Yours,
Zbigniew Mazurak