It May Be Too Late

Too late for what you ask? Well, the article I'm talking about is referring to global warming, but I'm actually referring to my desire to see people using a little common sense. I was reading this article today about global warming. There are several reasons why this is mind-boggling to me. First, the tone in this article is that we are past the point of saving our planet from catastrophic man-made global warming, or atleast at the tipping point. Second, methane gas increases are used as a cause for alarm, but I've already posted previously that MIT scientists have shown this is not man-made. To claim that it is is either naive at best, or a deliberate lie at worst. Third, the integrity of the temperature data is not very good. This was brought to the forefront again a few weeks ago when it was found that the GISS had faulty data and admitted it did not have the resources to validate its data. Anthony Watts has also been documenting the abysmal temperature measuring practices here in the US. Fourth, the article claims that polar ice is melting. No doubt this is true, the ice caps do melt, but they then subsequently freeze up again in the corresponding winter season. Here are one article with data to support that the total polar ice is actually increasing. Sidebar, who cares if that weren't true and all the ice caps did melt? That shouldn't effect the sea levels at all. When water freezes and becomes ice it takes up more volume than when its in liquid form. Don't believe me, stick a bottle of water in you freezer. When it freezes it will either blow a hole in your plastic bottle or deform the bottle as the water expands. So melting ice to water takes up less volume, not more. And the fifth reason I think this argument is garbage and why I have no time to listen to it, see the image below. Its a snapshot of the first article linked in this post. The point of interest is at the bottom of the image where you can see the current weather here in MN as of this posting. Its from a plug-in I have installed in Firefox. I'm sorry, but when I see a temperature like that I don't really care to read article like this.

SUV's To Blame

And in global warming news today, New Orleans was blanketed in a measureable amount of snow today. This is only the 17 time since 1850 that has happened and the first since 2004. And Houston tied a 64 year old record for earliest snowfall.

I wasn't going to do this, but now I feel I must. People, you have to go out and buy a $40,000 Chevy Volt immediately. I don't care if you don't have the money. And I don't care if you are getting nothing more than a Ford Festiva with an electric motor. If we all do this we will save the earth and Detroit at the same time!!!

Minnesota's Election and Obama Disciples

So this is the first disputed ballot on record so far (Full Story). Al Franken's campaign has challenged this ballot and wants the canvassing board to make a decision. Here's where this process is screwed up. The canvassing board now has to decide on the "intent" of the voter. I think any reasonable person would say this voter's intent was to vote for Coleman. But I say tough crunchies. If you're too stupid to fill out a ballot that cannot be read by the scanner, I'm sorry, you've lost your right to vote. Who's to say they won't find a ballot that looks just like this one except in addition to the marks next to Coleman the circle next to Al Franken is perfectly filled in. Now what do you do? Give that one to Al? So on one ballot a bunch of scribbles in a circle is counted, on another ballot its not? That's ridiculous. This whole voter intent business is way to open to partisanship.

Next, I wound up on the Zogby International website today after hearing about a poll they conducted and got absolutely railed for by the media. The poll was conducted by John Ziegler and a group that is putting a documentary together to show the media's effect on the 2008 elections. You can see the following video and the poll results on their website. This is absolutely disheartening. I know its not just Obama supporters, but the fact that our electorate is this clueless is scary. Not surprising I guess when these people answer that they get their "news" from Bill Mahr, Jon Stewart, and the BBC.

Another News Grab Bag

Its been a few days since I posted anything and like usual there has been a flurry of interesting articles, so here goes. I'm going to skip any attempt at debriefing the articles since the titles are pretty self explanatory. As you might tell, I'm a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal, hence all the links to articles from them.

Detroit Meltdown

• Let Detroit Go Bankrupt - NYTimes
• Obama's Car Puzzle - WSJ

Big Government

• Washington Is the Problem - WSJ
• Why Spending Stimulus Plans Fail - WSJ
• A Monument to Government Power - WSJ

Global Warming!!!

• The World Has Never Seen Such Freezing Heat - UK Telegraph

One comment about the previous article. Dr. James Hansen is the father of global warming hysteria. The fact that one his spokesmen said, "that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with," is absolutely ludicrous. The GISS is admitting that their data "may be" crap, and in fact was in this case, and that they have no way of validating it. Yet it is used by the UN's IPCC group to pertetuate the myth. I'd laugh if it wasn't so freaking sad (i.e. taking money out of my pocket). Here are a few other miscellaneous articles I found interesting as well:

• Mischief In Minnesota?
• Is Now the Time To Buy Stocks?
• Obama and Missile Defense

Correction, Its $5 Trillion

I am continually baffled that the American people turn to the government for anything. As I've said a hundred times before, the government is horribly inefficient and wasteful, not to mention corrupt. Take the $700 billion bailout. In the six weeks since the bill has passed no one has been named to fill the independent oversight posts. Nor have any of the required monitoring reports been filled out. That's great, so not only are they blowing taxing payer money, but there is no oversight as to who or what receives it. Its becoming obvious that the Fed and the Treasury are giving money to businesses that were never intended to get a bailout 2 months ago. Atleast the House Minority leader John Boehner is raising a stink about it.

But that's not even the worst of it. Our $700 billion dollar bailout is actually looking more like a $5 TRILLION bailout (another report). I honestly don't know what to say anymore. I'm convinced the American people are stupid, there is no other way to explain why we allow these shenanigans to go on.


James Garfield, 20th U.S. president
Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature.

Florida Has Nothing on Minnesota

Being a resident of MN I am smack dab in the middle of the Coleman/Franken recount debacle. This is, without a doubt, the shadiest process I have ever seen. As you may recall Coleman had bested Franken by a mere 725 votes on election day. In Minnesota whenever a race closes within 0.5% it triggers an automatic recount. By all means that is a good thing and an appropriate thing. The problem is that this process is rife with corruption. By Wednesday night, that lead had shrunk to 477. By Thursday night, it was down to 336. By Friday, it was 239. Late Sunday night, the difference had gone down to just 206 -- a total change over 4 days of 519 votes. Here are just some things that have happened since last Tuesday:

• For the entire state, all 4130 precincts, a total of 486 changes were made to the Presidential, House, and State House races. So that is all the changes for all the races in all the precincts. Al Franken, however, has alone received 519 additional votes from just 3 precincts! This of course is not impossible, but the statistical probability of this is astronomically small.
• A Ramsey County judge ruled in favor of Al Franken in allowing late absentee ballots to be counted. The law states that absentee ballots have to be delivered by end of day on Nov. 4th. In this case they weren't. If the absentee ballots were sent out late initially by the government a case could be made for allowing them to be returned after Nov. 4th. But there is no indication that the ballots were sent out late. This ruling now allows any "lost" absentee ballots that now show up to count. Amazingly and against all probability, every single absentee ballot found so far has been for Al Franken.
• MN has a canvassing board that is responsible for recounting all ballots by hand and determining voter intent. The board is made up of 2 MN Supreme Court Justices, 2 District Court Justices, and the Secretary of State (who has connections to ACORN). Local officials will look at a ballot and if Al's name is circled or underlined or anything other than what it's supposed to be, one of the local officials can say, "hey, I think this ballot is a vote for Al." The other local official can disagree and now it gets sent to the MN canvassing board. So now these 5 people (3 of which or Democrats) will determine voter intent. We can't determine our Founding Fathers intent they say, but apparently we can determine a voters intent. So what happens if a ballot has the circle filled in for Coleman AND Franken? How do we determine the "intent" on that one? The whole process is ridiculous.
• One county election official in Mt. Iron, MN, went back and updated his totals to include an extra 100 votes for both Obama and Franken. The claim is that at the end of the day the official was tired and forgot to type in the results correctly. Again, to be tired and make a mistake is understandable. Where I see the problem is that he made the exact same typo for 2 different races. The statistical probability that he would make the exact same mistake on two separate races is well beyond reason.

One other problem we have in Minnesota is same-day voter registration. I have not heard one single argument in favor of this that can hold any water. So please, anyone who can tell me why same day voter registration is a good thing I'd like to hear it. The downside of same-day voter registration is that you can have massive amounts of voter fraud. If you are required to pre-register then your name goes on the books with the election officials. With same day registration its not. So now election officials can say, "Oh wait, we found all these extra ballots that we didn't turn in." Then they can claim they were all same day registrants that forgot to sign the rolls and there isn't a single thing you can do to stop them. I just don't see how the benefits of a same day registration program can outway the potential for fraud.

No Pay for Obama Workers

You know the old saying that sometimes "life is stranger than fiction." Well, this may fall into that category, but I don't really see it as strange. This is pure, 100% unadulterated irony. Apparently redistribution of wealth isn't so much fun when its not the "rich" getting nailed. I can't make this stuff up.

• Obama Decides to Garnish Canvasser Wages

By The Numbers: The Impace of Tax Increases

This is courtesy of the Heritage Foundation:

$2.4 Trillion: The overall tax increase faced by American families, seniors and businesses if President Bush's tax cuts expire.

$1,716: The average tax increase for over 100 million Americans if tax cuts are allowed to expire.

$2,034: The average tax increase that will hit 17 million seniors if President Bush's tax cuts expire.

8.3 Million: The number of jobs created after the tax cuts of 2003.

$91 Billion: The cost of reinstating the Death Tax

$17.2 Billion: The amount of spent in 2008 by Congress on frivolous "pork" projects that use taxpayer funds to reward local special interests and pressure groups.

44 Million: The number of married couples affected by the Marriage Penalty before it was reduced by President Bush. These families will be hit hard once again if the Marriage Penalty is reinstated.

$1,480: The average cost in 2000 for couples punished by the Marriage Penalty.

$108 Billion: The reduction in the federal deficit in 2005 thanks to economic growth sparked by Heritage-backed tax cuts.

$2,084: The average tax hike 42 million American families with children will see if President Bush's tax cuts expire.

Global Warming Goodies

Articles discussing the recent debate in Britain's Parliament to cut "man-made" emissions by 80% by 2050. All this occurring of course while London was blanketed in snow in October for the first time since 1922. Also an article on non-warming related issues across the globe

• Snow Blankets London For Global Warming Debate
• Record Snow in Switzerland
• Record Cold in Florida

And as a bonus:

• MIT Scientists Baffled at Global Warming Theory
• British Channel 4's 'The Global Warming Swindle'

Obama's Judges (and Taxes)

A WSJ article discussing what we might see in the legislative arm of government if Obama becomes our next president. I think its a good article, but the one problem I have with it is that it pits judicial nominees as being either "right" or "left" of center. To me that's asinine, why can't we just get judges that rule on the Constitution as its written, with no left or right bias?

• Obama's 'Redistribution' Constitution

UPDATE 11/1/08

Found this article from the WSJ which discusses how under Obama's "stated" tax plan we could end up having more than 50% of tax payers collecting from the government rather than paying in. Essentially loading the burden on the wealthy.

• Obama and the Tax Tipping Point

Current State of Media Coverage

Columnist Michael Malone looks at slanted election coverage and the reasons why. This guy is an ABC journalist, so he's not some right-wing nutjob:

• Media's Presidential Bias and Decline

Give Me an S, Give Me an O, C, I, A, L, I, S, M

A friend of mine tipped me off to a few articles. This scares the doodoo out of me.

Discussion how Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee's Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support and California Dem George Miller, House Education and Labor Committee Chairman, are pushing to eliminate 401k plans and make us all buy into a government version. Folks, this scares the crap out of me. The media and liberals all around the country tore into FEMA after Hurricane Katrina for the slow and pathetic response in New Orleans, and rightfully so. But then they want to turn around and give the government control of the entire Healthcare system, and now our 401k's?!?!

• Would Obama, Dems Kill 401(k) Plans?
• Democrats to kill 401(k)s for … privatized Social Security?
• House Democrats Contemplate Abolishing 401(k) Tax Breaks
• House Dems Want to Abolish 401(k) Tax Breaks
• House Democrats: Abolish 401k Tax Breaks, Create New Tax

Mickey Mouse, D - Magic Kingdom

It looks like ACORN is at it again, this time registering Mickey Mouse to vote. Note how the article plays down this whole thing by portraying this as a witch hunt.

Nationwide, ACORN is a favorite GOP target for allegations of voter registration fraud this year.

Maybe its just me, but when your organization is caught registering Mickey Mouse or the entire Dallas Cowboys football team they no longer qualify as mere allegations. Here's a few more, and what I love is that in most of these articles its pooh-poohed as a non-issue:

• fraud in Ohio
• fraud in Ohio, part 2
• fraud in Missouri
• fraud in North Carolina
• fraud in Indiana (video)
• fraud in Michigan
• other states with potential problems: Colorado, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Here are a couple of liberal blogs I found that are defending ACORN.

• Lest you think registration fraud and voter fraud are the same thing, or even morally equivalent, this article is for you.
• The NYTimes defense.
• Another article saying that registration fraud is not voter fraud.

Around the Horn

The news is coming almost too quickly to keep up with these days. I'm just throwing a bunch of articles in together since there were quite a few these past few days.

First, ACORN, the group the Senator Obama worked with back in the mid-90's in Chicago (and recently as well). They are in the news again for potential voter fraud in Las Vegas. Here are a couple of quotes from the article:

Secretary of State Ross Miller said the fraudulent registrations included forms for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team.

"Tony Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada, and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4," Miller said.

and

In 2006, ACORN also committed what Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed called the "worse case of election fraud" in the state's history.

In the case, ACORN submitted just over 1,800 new voter registration forms, and all but six of the 1,800 names were fake.

More recently, 27,000 registrations handled by the group from January to July 2008 "went into limbo because they were incomplete, inaccurate, or fraudulent," said James Terry, chief public advocate at the Consumers Rights League.

Obama and Media Bias:
Second, I've noticed a bit of increased attention to the Obama-Ayres ties in the past few days. Ayres is an admitted terrorist who tried blowing up the Pentagon and the Capital Building among other things. Obama has repeatedly stated that his association with Ayres was minimal and was years after he tried blowing stuff up. Many media outlets have also helped bury any connection (#1,#2, #3). (It should also be noted that I have scoured the mainstream media for stories on Obama and Ayres. CBS and CNN had 1 story, ABC, NBC, and the Washington Post had bupkis. The only articles in the NYTimes were OpEds). This article by former Clinton man Dick Morris sheds more light on their connection. I really don't understand why this hasn't been a bigger deal. There are a lot of articles linking the two, but no one seems to care (#1, #2, #3, #4). Who know if and when the major media outlets will actually look into this.

Third, it would appear that if you are a Democrat, you can say anything you want and get away with it.

Financial:
Fourth, maybe you heard about the SNL skit ripping the Democrats over the financial crisis. Well, the skit was quickly pulled off the SNL website. It was edited before being put back. It was okay for SNL to portray Gov. Palin's husband as an incestuous father, but we can't poke fun at liberal politicians. Apparently some humor is not allowed in the country anymore. Full transcript is here.

Fifth, more evidence for the current financial crisis being a direct result of a few liberal Democrats.


UPDATE 10/10/08:
One more article showing that Barney Frank was right in the forefront of resisting oversight for Fannie and Freddie. Apparently his life partner was an assistance director at Fannie Mae.

Gusher of Lies

So I was listening to a local radio show the other day and they had Robert Bryce on as a guest. He just released a book called Gusher of Lies.

As many people in America today, 74% actually, I have spent the last couple years under the notion that we need to move towards energy independence. Bryce takes on that notion that not only is it impossible to achieve its not even desirable. Since this went against everything I believed I decided I would give him a shot to get his point across. Even though I didn't agree with it beforehand, I thought what he had said in the interview was well thought out and he provided enough information that I was intrigued.

I've only read the introduction and the first chapter, but his main point that I've been able to gather is that energy "independence" isn't practical because the world is already so energy "interdependent". To prove his point, here are some of the facts he used:

• Saudi Arabia, the largest oil exporter in the world, still imports 186,000 barrels of oil per day. Iran, another large oil producing country, imports 40% of its oil and natural gas.
• The US only imports 11% of its oil from the Middle East. That's obviously nothing to sneeze at, but its not nearly as large a percentage as I had thought.
• There are 143 countries who import oil from the Middle East. If we stopped buying oil from them tomorrow, there would still be 142 other nations buying oil from Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc. So we wouldn't be putting them out of business.
• The global market helps keep energy prices down. Inflation adjusted, we pay less for a gallon of gas today than we did in 1919. He believes this is a direct result of world market competition.

One other thing he brought up that I think is a very valid question. If we are seeking energy independence, why are not seeking independence in every other area of life? I'm almost ashamed that I never asked this question myself before reading it in his book. We import over 90% of many precious metals like alumina, cobalt, platinum, and gallium and nearly all of the material needed to produce steel. I can't remember the exact percentages (since I read the book at Barnes & Noble and didn't buy it) since I don't have them in front of me, but basically all the metals this country uses on a daily basis are imported. 99% of the semiconductors we use in this country are produced overseas, semiconductors that run EVERYTHING in our society today. Why are we not seeking semiconductor independence? Obviously his point is that we are so globally interconnected these days that seeking independence is not even a feasible option anymore.

I'm interested in reading the rest of the book because he's beginning to sway me already that the term "energy independence" is the biggest crock that is being perpetrated on America by politicians on both sides of the aisle. I'll keep posting as I read more.

More on Wall St

As I said in my previous post, if anyone has video to defend Democrats in this housing scandle I'll gladly post it. Until then they look pretty guilty.

Wall St Meltdown

As more and more information is coming out on Fannie and Freddie and the complete collapse underway in the financial sector the haze is clearing on what caused this mess. I know the the mantra that continues to get thrown out by liberals right now is that "it's George Bush's fault," but honestly, to a liberal, what isn't his fault these days? Reality seems to be painting a much grimmer picture for Democrats, particularly Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.



A few facts that aren't disputable:

• President Bush has made calls to reform Fannie and Freddie 17 times!


• Chris Dodd and Barack Obama are #1 and #2 respectively when it comes to money received from Fannie and Freddie


• In 2005 the Senate Banking Committee passed a bill to seriously crack down on Fannie and Freddie and force them to eliminate risky assets. That bill never became law as every single Democrat on the committee voted it down.

Here are a few recent articles on the subject. Now, before I start getting hate mails, if you have articles that can articulate it was the Republicans that caused this financial crisis, or articles that successfully defend the accussations made in these articles, let me know and I'll gladly post them. The problem is that I haven't found any up to this point:

• How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis
• 'Crony' Capitalism is the Root Cause of Fannie and Freddie Troubles
• New Agency Proposed to Oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (from 2003)

Oil, the War, Taxes, and Health Care. What More Do You Want?

I read a bunch of good articles in the WSJ over the past few days. Normally, I'd comment on all of them after pasting in the entire article, but since there are so many I won't. Here's just a quick intro and the link. Enjoy.

1. Deals with the speculation in oil prices. A survey was done by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that finds very little of the cost of crude is caused by speculation. Commodity Index funds were thought to make up 70% of the oil market, but its closer to only 13%.

• See You Later, Speculator

2. Takes a look at Bob Woodward's (of Washington Post fame) book The War Within. It discusses the political gauntlet President Bush had to face before ordering the "surge". It was just his political foes, members in his own Cabinet, leaders at the Pentagon, and many of his advisors were pushing for withdrawal from Iraq. Considering Obama called the surge a "success beyond our wildest dreams" in his interview with O'Reilly, it makes this even more remarkable.

• Bush's Lonely Decision

3. Written by Arthur Laffer (of Laffer Curve fame) and Stephen Moore. The article touches on several points. First, the median income for families over the past 25 years is trending upward. In fact, the lowest 20% of income earners have seen a 25% increase in living standards from '83 to '05, disproving that the poor are getting poorer. Second, more people have zero tax liability today than in '83 (33% vs 19%), so the "rich" are pulling a higher share of the tax load than in the past. And lastly, when taxes go up the "rich" actually pay less.

Taking from the rich through much higher tax rates in order to help the poor and middle class makes no sense intellectually and has seldom worked in practice. Reducing rates, on the other hand, does increase the share of taxes paid by the highest income-earning group. For example, in 1981, when the highest tax rate on the rich was 70% and the top capital gains tax rate was close to 45%, the richest 1% of Americans paid 17% of total income taxes. In 2005, with a top income tax rate of 35% and capital gains at 15%, the richest 1% of Americans paid 39%

• New Evidence on Taxes and Income

4. More on taxes. The two states with the highest tax rates have among the lowest prosperity in the nation (California and New York). The two states with the lowest rates (Texas and Florida), you guessed, the highest prosperity.

• How Not to Balance a Budget

5. Lays out the difference in to the two ideologies of the men running for PM in Canada between Stephen Harper (the current PM) and his opponent Stéphane Dion.

• Canada's Change Agent

6. The title says it all. A few things that jumped out at me. They claim the average family pays $12,000/yr in insurance premiums. If that's true that's insane. My wife and I pay around $600/yr. Also, I can't put much stock in any of their points when they make the following statement, "The immediate consequences of the McCain plan are even worse. The McCain plan is a big tax increase on employers and workers. With the economy in recession, that's the last thing America's businesses need." Sigh. We are not in a recession. A recession is defined by two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Last quarter we had 2.9% growth, well inside the 2.5-3.4% range which is considered healthy.

• Why Obama's Health Plan is Better

The "Not so" Great Outdoors

Here's an article from the Wall Street Journal that I read yesterday. Republicans like to associate themselves with the "Moral Majority", but that is just laughable in my opinion. Republicans and Democrats alike are pathetically corrupt at the Washington level. I don't think I'm alone considering Congress has a 16% approval rating. Anyway, this story is about the two Republican knuckleheads from Alaska:

The GOP's Alaska Meltdown
August 28, 2008; Page A14

The scandals that led to the demise of Republican Representatives Tom DeLay, Bob Ney and Duke Cunningham -- and to the party's loss of Congress two years ago -- should have been a teaching moment. Alaska's GOP voters haven't taken the hint, and that may cost their party again in November.

Alaska Senator Ted Stevens easily won a six-way GOP primary on Tuesday with 63% of the vote, even though he was recently indicted for failing to disclose $250,000 in gifts from Veco Corp., an oil company. Mr. Stevens deserves the presumption of innocence, and after his primary victory he told supporters his re-election will be a "piece of cake." Democrats are happy to hear that because the political reality is that the 84-year-old Senator's case goes to trial before a Washington, D.C. jury less than six weeks before Election Day, and he already trails Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich by double digits.

GOP voters were somewhat tougher on Don Young, Alaska's lone House Member, whose own primary race was too close to call as of our deadline Wednesday. Mr. Young led Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell by just 145 votes -- 42,461 to 42,316 -- with some 2,000 rural votes and 4,000 absentee ballots to be counted. Mr. Young is also under federal investigation for his ties to Veco. His legal defense fund has spent more than $1 million, though he hasn't been indicted. If he does eke out a victory, he's a likely loser in November against Democrat Ethan Berkowitz, a former Alaska House Minority Leader who plans to make ethics an issue.

Messrs. Stevens and Young -- who've spent a combined 75 years in Congress -- have built their careers funneling tax dollars back to their home state and punishing any Member who stands in the way. Their primary election strength, even amid scandal, shows that such pork-barreling still carries political weight. But this same earmarking habit is what has put them under an ethical cloud, and voters in November aren't likely to be so forgiving.

With Republicans in danger of falling below 41 Senate seats (from the current 49) and thus being unable to sustain a filibuster, Mr. Stevens's insistence on running again is especially damaging. There's still time for him to drop out of the race and let the party pick a new nominee, but his career has not been noted for such grace notes.

Here's some bonus material on these fools.

• Alaska's Congressmen Are a Bridge to Nowhere

ExxonMobil CEO Defends High Profits

I found this interesting article on ABC News' website documenting an interview Charlie Gibson did with ExxonMobile CEO Rex Tillerson. What struck me the most is right at the beginning of the article. Tillerson makes the comment that Exxon makes $1400 every second. But the real shocker, they pay $4000 per second to the government in taxes!!!! So basically the government is doing absolutely nothing and making almost 3x what Exxon is making for providing the energy. It just seems curious to me that "Big Oil" gets pummeled for making too much money, but you never hear anything said about how much Uncle Sam is making off the oil companies.

Media Coverage of Obama

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081503100.html?sub=AR

Temperature Cools in Chicago

Like I've said before, one location doesn't prove anything from a climate change perspective, so consider this just one data point:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-tom-skilling-explainer-13aug13,0,918946.story

Let's Set the Record Straight

Recently I got into a conversation (if you could call it that) with someone who was relentlessly spewing his "we just went to Iraq for the oil, Bush lied, yada, yada, yada" rhetoric. I wasn't able to even have a civil conversation with him because he was so emotional about the whole thing that he refused to even reason with me. So I decided to look back over the facts leading up to the war.

First, we need to make a distinction between the War in Iraq and the War on Terror. The War in Iraq was about regime change. If you recall, that didn't take very long as we marched to the gates of Baghdad in about 3 weeks. That war ended soon after that when President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier and announced victory in Iraq. What we see know in Iraq is the War on Terror, two different, but similar things. But I'm going to deal with them seperately.


War in Iraq

The first thing you always hear is that we went to Iraq for the oil. Look, I don't think that is true, but I have no way of proving it one way or the other. However, I can compare the price of oil and gas from the time we went to Iraq and the price of oil now. In 2003, the average price for a barrel of oil was around $32 and the average price for a gallon of gas was around $1.50. So far in 2008 the average for oil is up around $100/barrel and $3.65/gallon for gas, and we've seen it as high as $140/barrel and $4.05/gal. Now technically OPEC sets the price on a barrel of oil, so if we went into Iraq and took all the oil I wouldn't expect that to have any effect on oil prices. However, if we took the oil, we'd no longer have to pay that huge $100/barrel price so technically our gas prices should come down. Since gas prices have sky rocketed with the price of oil I'm fairly certain we didn't go in and take Iraq's oil.

Next, what about the accusation that we went into Iraq on faulty intelligence information? This is red herring because we had the same intelligence information as countries like Great Britain and Germany. So let's assume for a moment that the intelligence was bad. If that's the case then how is that President Bush's fault? He's not the operative out in the field collecting that data. The President had to make a decision based on the intelligence he did have which was the same intelligence given to Congress. In 2003, H.J. Res 114 passed the House 296-133 and the Senate 77-23, essentially authorizing the War in Iraq. So Republicans and Democrats alike saw the same intelligence as the President and overwhelming decided to go to war.

Despite the intelligence information, there was one other reason we went into Iraq that never gets discussed. Like all the teethless resolutions that were passed by the United Nations. Like the last one, UN Resolution 1441. In all, Saddam Hussein was given hundreds of different resolutions from the UN, 19 specifically to disarm and to allow inspectors in to see his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities. He continually thumbed his nose at the UN (not surprisingly since they did nothing the previous 18 times). 1441 was unanimously (15-0) passed, so to say we "unilaterally" went into Iraq is pretty much hogwash.

Unfortunately that's all I have time to write today... I'll keep updating this as I have time.

GW = The Dark Knight

A friend sent me an article comparing President Bush to Batman. I laughed of course and dismissed it immediately. However, after reading the article I have to say that I agree with a lot of what the author had to say. The jist being that "doing the right thing is not always easy, and you may even be despised for doing it." He also touches on why movies like The Dark Knight, in which the hero takes a stand against terrorism and injustice and stands for what is right do so well in the box office. Meanwhile liberal movies about the war on terror always flop at the box office. Anyway, I thought this article was worthy of posting:

• What Bush and Batman Have In Common

Coverage Bias?

This seems like a moot point to me, but a raucous is being made, so I thought I'd add a link to this. Apparently some people think MSNBC is giving a little too much coverage to B. Hussein Obama's Middle East Tour.

• NBC Defends Obama Coverage

The Piece the NYT Wouldn't Publish

This is the rebuttal that John "my friends" McCain tried to submit to the New York Times. NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley gave some lame excuse which basically amounted to "we don't agree with what he believes so we aren't going to print it." And they wonder why no one reads their paper anymore.

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse."

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military's readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

How Would You Like Your Embryo, Fresh or On Ice?

As I was walking to the ice machine today at work I passed by one of the TV monitors which have CNN news constantly running. As I walked passed the monitor Dr. Sanjay Gupta was discussing a new study that just came out saying that IVF actually produces healthier babies than the good old fashioned way of making babies. Here's the video, and here's the Reuters press release.

But it got me to thinking. It reminds me a lot of the movie Gattaca, where making babies the way God intended is no longer acceptable. Embryos have to be "scrubbed" and cleaned in the laboratory before they are implanted in the woman so that the child has all the characteristics approved by the government. Laugh if you want, but this study is the first step in us moving to a Gattaca like world. We are already being told what kind of cars we are supposed to drive (SUV's are out, scooters are in) and what kind of light bulbs to install, why would they stop there. Its all a slippery slope and it seems to me we are getting closer and closer every day.



The Trailer

Global Warming Made Me Murder

Okay, I haven't killed anyone... yet. But at the rate we are going in this country I have no doubt that we will have a murderer blame global warming on his killing spree. Here is the latest malady caused by GWB (and that's not short for George W Bush, its Global Warming Bullpoop)

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5374174&page=1


And in case you forgot all the other problems, you can find all 400 of them here in the GWB goodie bag:

http://amishpundit.blogspot.com/2008/01/global-warming-goodie-bag.html

Global Warming Destroys More than Glaciers

Found this article today. A 17 year old kid was admitted to psychiatric ward in Australia because he had apocolyptic visions of the future due to "global warming". Its just sad the Al Gore's of the world have destroyed this poor kids life. Hopefully there is still time to talk some sense into the kid. The article goes on to discuss the Australian Prime Minister's plan for cutting emissions and how they will cost billions of dollars, but in reality will have absolutely no effect on total world emissions.

Indeed, so fast are the world's emissions growing -- by 3.1 per cent a year thanks mostly to these two giants -- that the 20 per cent cuts Rudd demands of Australians by 2020 would be swallowed up in just 28 days. That's how little our multi-billions of dollars in sacrifices will matter.

I also like the discussion on why India and China have no plans on cutting their emissions in the future.

Said Ma Kai, head of China's powerful State Council: "China does not commit to any quantified emissions-reduction commitments . . . our efforts to fight climate change must not come at the expense of economic growth."

The plan's authors, the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change, said India would rather save its people from poverty than global warming, and would not cut growth to cut gases.

Global Warming = Mass Flooding

I'm starting to think I could make it a full time job reading over Reuters and AP stories and poking holes in there logic. Its beyond absurd what these people print and call news. I've enjoyed doing this lately, so let me once again break down the "news".

Midwest floods show signs of global warming
Tue Jul 1, 2008 8:56pm BST

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - Floods like those that inundated the U.S. Midwest are supposed to occur once every 500 years but this is the second since 1993, suggesting flawed forecasts that do not take global warming into account, conservation experts said on Tuesday.

Two floods, 15 years apart does not suggest anything Ms Zabarenko. Apparently the environmental/green folks are under some delusion that the earth is one big systematic machine. "Well if someone says that we only are supposed to get a flood every 500 years and we get one every decade, it must be global warming!" Look folks, the earth isn't a computer program that cycles with pinpoint accuracy. From a 500 year vantage point there "may" be some semblence of order, but statistically speaking there is no way to decipher any weather trends from 15 years of data.

"Although no single weather event can be attributed to global warming, it's critical to understand that a warming climate is supplying the very conditions that fuel these kinds of weather events," said Amanda Staudt, a climate scientist with the National Wildlife Federation.

This is what I love about these people. They refute their own arguments. In this article it only took until we got to the first sentence of the second paragraph. She admits that "no single weather event can be attributed to global warming..." But wait, in her opening sentences she just said that global warming was responsible for the flooding. So what it is?

Good stuff I tell you. The sad thing is that there are people that read this stuff and actually believe it. If you want to read te rest of this article, you can find it here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN0127972720080701?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&rpc=22&sp=true

North Pole Ice Melting

Saw this article today that scientists are "concerned" about the fact there is a 50/50 chance the ice melts on the North Pole. You can read the entire article for pure enjoyment like I did, but I thought I would cut and past some of my favorite stuff.

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course
to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.

They didn't waste any time. This is the first line of the article. Is it me or it quite arrogant to say this is the first time in human history? Really? I know I'm not a genius, but how could they even remotely prove that?

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.

I guess I fail to see why this is so worrying. Unless I live on the beach and the sea levels rising a few inches floods my house, this is a non-issue in my book.

"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.

Similar to the North Pole, catastrophic global warming is just a hoax, "but symbolically its hugely important."

Each summer the sea ice melts before reforming again during the long Arctic
winter but the loss of sea ice last year was so extensive that much of the
Arctic Ocean became open water, with the water-ice boundary coming just 700
miles away from the North Pole.

What?!?! Only 700 miles! That only gives polar bears about a 2 month journey in any direction from the North Pole. How can they live in such cramped quarters? If only they could swim then we wouldn't to worry about them drowning. Of course, its there own fault its so crowded. If they would just stop multiplying they'd have more room to roam.

Drive-Thru's Next Target

It appears the madness over global warming is spreading now to restaurants that offer drive-thru service.

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/293046

Its La Nina's Fault

So I read this article and the general feeling is that the "slight" downturn in global temperatures is due to La Nina. But according to the article, the "overall trend" of temperatures is rising and that La Nina is just a small variation in an upward trend. I'm not an oceanographer or a meteorologist, so maybe I'm overstepping my bounds a bit, but again I think these experts are completely missing the forest for the trees here. I understand that El Nino and La Nina may have some effect on temperatures, but they still would pail in comparison to the effect of the Sun, wouldn't they? I mean, if the Sun disappeared, what do you think would happen to global temperatures? They'd approach absolute zero!!!! Yet no one ever includes the Sun in these discussions. It just totally boggles my mind. Anyway, here's the story:

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7329799.stm

Why Brazil Isn't Ashamed to Exploit Its Oil

http://online.wsj.com/article/the_americas.html

THE AMERICAS
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

Why Brazil Isn't Ashamed to Exploit Its Oil
June 16, 2008; Page A13

Petrobras CEO José Sergio Gabrielli was flush with bullish insights when he stopped by the Journal's New York office last week to talk about the Brazilian oil company.

One reason for Mr. Gabrielli's optimism is last year's discovery of the offshore Tupi field, which is said to contain between five billion and eight billion barrels of black gold. Another, equally important reason is that, according to Mr. Gabrielli, neither environmentalists nor Brazilian politicians have raised concerns about exploiting oil in the waters off the Brazilian coast.

That's quite a contrast with attitudes in the U.S., where offshore exploration and development has been all but shut down save in the Gulf of Mexico. One company official explains the difference by saying that Brazilians understand the importance of energy to their future, while Americans do not.

I have another theory. And mine fits the pattern of resource development – or lack thereof – all over the Western Hemisphere. It comes down to this: Where government has the property right, restrictions on development tend to be low. But when the private sector is the owner, environmental concerns blossom.

Exhibit A is Petrobras. Not only did Mr. Gabrielli say there is no appetite for stopping offshore projects in his country. He went further. "Brazil has one of the freest and most investor-oriented regulation in the world. Even freer than the United States of America," he said, referring to the climate for oil exploration.

That may be so, but it would be interesting to know why, given Brazil's prominent embrace of socialism. It could be that the country is changing. After all there is now private-sector competition in the oil industry. Yet it is also worth noting that the Brazilian government has a 58% controlling stake in Petrobras's voting shares and 32% of its total shares. This means that some of Petrobras profits go straight to the government's bottom line, giving the politicians more money to spend on bribing their constituents.

In the U.S., Congress doesn't have nearly such a vested interest in a successful oil industry. What good are corporate profits if they go to shareholders, pensioners and employees? Congress has even been denied the windfall profits tax. For American politicians there is a much greater incentive to respond to the concentrated power of the special interest group known as the "greens."

There are plenty of other examples. In 1995, the British government sold its final remaining shares of British Petroleum, which had been largely privatized throughout the 1980s. In October 1996, a British member of the European Parliament, Socialist Richard Howitt, began harassing BP for alleged environmental and human-rights violations in Colombia. Had the company suddenly gone from being a model citizen to a murderous, contaminating corporation? Or did the Socialists lose their incentive to support the company and discover new reasons to attack it, since left-wing constituents were ideologically allied with the Colombian rebels who were blowing up BP pipelines?

At least Petrobras is a well-run, publicly listed company that has to answer to shareholders. Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly, has a history as a notorious polluter yet is seemingly exempt from political pressure to clean up its act.

Mining provides an even better window on this contradiction. Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba all boast aggressive, state-owned mining operations. Yet neither the nongovernmental enviro-movement nor the political class utters a peep to object.

Wherever the private sector is proposing mineral exploration, the story is flipped on its head. In February, I visited a rural town in El Salvador, where Pacific Rim Mining Corp. is trying to reopen the El Dorado gold mine. The company spent a year building the designs for the mine, in a process that included more than 20 public meetings with the local community. It says that the final design exceeds international standards. The government of President Tony Saca acknowledges this by telling the company that there is no technical problem with the mine, only political ones.

Those political problems come from the left-wing FMLN political party, and the NGOs that share the FMLN's antiprivate-sector ideology. They have raised an environmental stink about the mine, though none of it has been substantiated. Even so, the Saca government has responded by sitting on Pacific Rim's permits for four years, sending a signal to investors that El Salvador is not open for business.

The local mayor told me that the community wants the project, which will directly create 600 new jobs and could produce as many as 3,000 indirect jobs. The real problem is that since the government isn't the owner, El Dorado doesn't inspire politicians in San Salvador the way Petrobras inspires Brasilia.

Drill! Drill! Drill!

http://online.wsj.com/article/wonder_land.html

WONDER LAND
By DANIEL HENNINGER

Drill! Drill! Drill!
June 12, 2008; Page A15
Charles de Gaulle once wrote off the nation of Brazil in six words: "Brazil is not a serious country." How much time is left before someone says the same of the United States?

One thing Brazil and the U.S. have in common is the price of oil: It is priced in dollars, and everyone in the world now knows what the price is. Another commonality is that each country has vast oil reserves in waters off their coastlines.

Here we may draw a line in the waves between the serious and the unserious.

Brazil discovered only yesterday (November) that billions of barrels of oil sit in difficult water beneath a swath of the Santos Basin, 180 miles offshore from Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. The U.S. has known for decades that at least 8.5 billion proven barrels of oil sit off its Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf coasts, with the Interior Department estimating 86 billion barrels of undiscovered oil resources.

When Brazil made this find last November, did its legislature announce that, for fear of oil spills hitting Rio's beaches or altering the climate, it would forgo exploiting these fields?

Of course it didn't. Guilherme Estrella, director of exploration and production for the Brazilian oil company Petrobras, said, "It's an extraordinary position for Brazil to be in." Indeed it is.

At this point in time, is there another country on the face of the earth that would possess the oil and gas reserves held by the United States and refuse to exploit them? Only technical incompetence, as in Mexico, would hold anyone back.

But not us. We won't drill.

California won't drill for the estimated 1.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil off its coast because of bad memories of the Santa Barbara oil spill – in 1969.

We won't drill for the estimated 5.6 billion to 16 billion barrels of oil in the moonscape known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) because of – the caribou.

In 1990, George H.W. Bush, calling himself "the environmental president," signed an order putting virtually all the U.S. outer continental shelf's oil and gas reserves in the deep freeze. Bill Clinton extended that lockup until 2013. A Clinton veto also threw away the key to ANWR's oil 13 years ago.

Our waters may hold 60 trillion untapped cubic feet of natural gas. As in Brazil, these are surely conservative estimates.

While Brazilians proudly embrace Petrobras, yelling "We're Going to Be No. 1," the U.S.'s Democratic nominee for president, Barack Obama, promises to impose an "excess profits tax" on American oil producers.

We live in a world in which Russia's Vladimir Putin and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez use their vast oil and gas reserves as instruments of state power. Here, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid use their control of Congress to spend a week debating a "climate-change" bill. This they did fresh off their subsidized (and bipartisan) ethanol fiasco.

One may assume that Mr. Putin and the Chinese have noticed the policy obsessions of our political class. While other nations use their oil reserves to attain world status, we give ours up. Why shouldn't they conclude that, long term, these people can be taken? Nikita Khrushchev said, "We will bury you." Forget that. We'll do it ourselves.

Putin intimidates Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic states and Poland with oil and gas cutoffs, while Chávez uses petrodollars to bankroll Colombian terrorists. Cuba plans to exploit its Caribbean oil fields within a long tee shot of the Florida Keys with help from India, Spain, Venezuela, Canada, Norway, Malaysia, even Vietnam. But America won't drill. Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said just last month he's afraid of an oil spill. Katrina wrecked the oil rigs in the Gulf with no significant damage from leaking oil.

Some portion of the current $4-per-gallon gasoline may be attributable to the Federal Reserve's inflationary monetary policy or even speculators. But we can wave goodbye to the $1.25/gallon gasoline that in 1990 allowed a President Bush to airily lock away the nation's oil and gas jewels. This isn't your father's world of energy. New world powers are coming online fast, and they need energy. We need to get back in the game.

The goal shouldn't be "energy independence," a ridiculous notion in an economically integrated world. It's about admitting the need to strike a balance between the energy and security realities of the here-and-now and the potentialities of the future. Some of our best and brightest want to pursue alternative energy technologies, and they should be encouraged to do so, inside market disciplines. But let's at least stop pretending the rest of the world is going to play along with our environmentalist moralisms.

The Democrats' climate-change bill collapsed last week under the weight of brutal cost realities. It was a wake-up call. This is the year Americans joined the real world of energy costs. Now someone needs to explain to them why we – and we alone – are sitting on an ocean of energy but won't drill for it.

You'd think the "national security" nominee, John McCain, would get this. He's clueless – a don't-drill zombie. We may mark this down as the year the U.S. tired of being a serious country.

PC Strikes Again

Textbook council accuses publisher of being politically correct on Islam
Jun 7, 2008 7:21 AM (4 days ago) by Leah Fabel, The Examiner

Washington, D.C.

A new report issued by the American Textbook Council says books approved for use in local school districts for teaching middle and high school students about Islam caved in to political correctness and dumbed down the topic at a critical moment in its history.

"Textbook editors try to avoid any subject that could turn into a political grenade," wrote Gilbert Sewall, director of the council, who railed against five popular history texts for "adjust[ing] the definition of jihad or sharia or remov[ing] these words from lessons to avoid inconvenient truths."

Sewall complains the word jihad has gone through an "amazing cultural reorchestration" in textbooks, losing any connotation of violence. He cites Houghton Mifflin's popular middle school text, "Across the Centuries," which has been approved for use in Montgomery County Schools. It defines "jihad" as a struggle "to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil."

"But that is, literally, the translation of jihad," said Reza Aslan, a religion scholar and acclaimed author of "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam." Aslan explained that the definition does not preclude a militant interpretation.

"How you interpret [jihad] is based on whatever your particular ideology, or world viewpoint, or even prejudice is," Aslan said. "But how you define jihad is set in stone."

A statement from Montgomery County Public Schools said that all text used by teachers had been properly vetted and were appropriate for classroom uses.

Aslan said groups like Sewall's are often more concerned about advancing their own interpretation of Islam than they are about defining its parts and then allowing interpretation to happen at the classroom level.

Sewall's report blames publishing companies for allowing the influence of groups like the California-based Council on Islamic Education to serve throughout the editorial process as "screeners" for textbooks, softening or deleting potentially unflattering topics within the faith.

"Fundamentally I'm worried about dumbing down textbooks," he said, "by groups that come to state education officials saying we want this and that - and publishers need to find a happy medium."

Maryland state delegate Saqib Ali refrained from joining the fray. "The job of assigning curriculum is best left to educators and the school board, and I trust their judgment," he said.

Our Age and Our Prosperity

I read this transcript of Chuck Colson's Breakpoint ministry this morning. I thought it provided an interesting take and a new look at how our ability to reproduce and create "new consumers" is vital to the ongoing prosperity of any country.

Demographics and Prosperity
Demographic Winter and the Economy
June 10, 2008

If you follow the financial news, you have probably heard the phrase, "Stocks were up (or down) on news that . . ." The "news" that is referred to is always something having to do with some government economic report, or the market's reaction to an interest-rate cut.

This makes sense—buying stocks is essentially betting on the future of the economy, and the best guide to that future is the actions of policymakers and financial markets. Correct?

Well, not necessarily. There is another—arguably more reliable—predictor of economic health: demographics.

Specifically, it is looking at the age of a population: the ratio of older people to younger people. That is one of the points explored in the brilliant documentary Demographic Winter. In it, a financial consultant tells a story about two charts on his desk. The first graphed the performance of the S&P 500 during the past few decades.

The second graphed the number of births during the "Baby Boom." When he compared them, allowing for a 45- to 50-year lag representing people's peak spending years, he found that the S&P's performance and the number of births tracked almost perfectly. In other words, future prosperity is determined, to a significant degree, by the number of children being born today.

In hindsight, this ought to be obvious: Consumer spending drives the economy. The more people you have in their peak spending years, the more spending you have on everything from housing, to travel, and taxes paid. As a population ages, it spends less.

This is also true of the rest of the world. The most famous example is Japan, which did not experience a post-war baby boom. This, combined with the low Japanese birthrate, caused its population to age sooner than the rest of its competitors.

When the post-war Japanese economic "miracle" came to a sudden halt in the '80s, economic explanations abounded: bad loans, inflated real estate prices, government policies. No one mentioned the aging of the Japanese population. And that is still true today, even as the economy still staggers.

It is as if those experts are wearing glasses that will not let them see the connection between demographics and prosperity.

In fact, they are wearing such lenses—their worldviews. Thirty-plus years of "population bomb" rhetoric has caused most people to think that "overpopulation is one of the worst dangers facing the globe." In fact, as Philip Longman, the author of The Empty Cradle, points out, "the opposite is true."

As Longman notes in Demographic Winter, no society has both a shrinking population and a growing economy. The two are incompatible. Yet our culture denies the problem.

It could hardly do otherwise: As Demographic Winter documents, the "birth dearth" is largely the product of our values. Clearly, our
society believes that individual self-satisfaction—measured in terms of material prosperity—is more important than the creation and welfare of future generations. The irony here is that our material prosperity depends on those future generations.

To solve the problem, we have got to ask ourselves, as I titled my book
some years ago, "How now shall we live?" What is the biblical worldview? We need to see the world through new glasses—through God's eyes.

Canadian Scientists Want to Study the Sun

http://ibdeditorial.com/ibdarticles.aspx?id=287279412587175

The Sun Also Sets
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Thursday, February 07, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Climate Change: Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV — the sun.

Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.

To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.

And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.

Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity. Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle.

But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.

Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.

This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.

Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.

Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope that he calls a "stethoscope for the sun." But he and his colleagues need better equipment.

In Canada, where radio-telescopic monitoring of the sun has been conducted since the end of World War II, a new instrument, the next-generation solar flux monitor, could measure the sun's emissions more rapidly and accurately.

As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's climate over time has been the sun.

For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."

Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet." Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth."

"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had."

In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves — and not a few enemies in the global warming "community" — by predicting that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by "dramatic changes" in temperatures. A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.

"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.

The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures."

The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."

But if the sun shuts down, we've got a problem. It is the sun, not the Earth, that's hanging in the balance.

"Welcoming Schools" Comes to MN

Found this article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune this week. It discusses the new "Welcoming Schools" curriculum that is being piloted in a few schools in the metro. I'll add more information as I find out more.


http://ww3.startribune.com/kerstenblog/?p=430

The real agenda behind schools' anti-bullying
curriculum
KATHERINE KERSTEN, Star Tribune

The bully is the scourge of the elementary school playground. So who
could object to a new anti-bullying curriculum scheduled to be tested in three
Minneapolis elementary schools -- Hale, Jefferson and Park View -- and adopted
districtwide if successful?

But what if that curriculum is really a disguise for a very different
agenda brought to Minneapolis by the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington,
D.C.-based gay and transgender advocacy group? What if its lessons have little
to do with bullying, and much to do with ensuring that kids as young as age 5
submit to HRC's orthodoxy on family structure, even if it differs from their own
parents' view?

What if students who dissent are subjected to teacher-directed peer
pressure and negative evaluations?

In other words, what if anti-bullying advocates themselves turn out to
be the bullies?
Welcome to the "Welcoming Schools" curriculum.

In March, Minneapolis Superintendent Bill Green praised "Welcoming
Schools" as "a tool to combat bullying, by focusing on diversity, gender
stereotyping and name-calling." But the curriculum's underlying social/political
agenda leaps from every page.

"Welcoming Schools" has three sections. The first, on "family
diversity," drums into kids the idea that "traditional families" are outdated.
To emphasize this point, kids in grades 3-5 "act out" being members of
nontraditional families, including same-gender-headed families.

K-3 students study words like "lesbian" and "gay," while fourth- and
fifth-graders learn "bisexual," "dyke" and "transgender."

In the curriculum's second section -- "Looking at Gender Roles and
Stereotyping" -- children learn to "expand their notions of gender-appropriate
behavior." They read books such as "Sissy Duckling," which deals with
"characters challenging gender norms," and "King and King," in which a prince
proposes to and marries another prince.

"Welcoming Schools" does not address bullying until its third and final
section. It says relatively little about bullies' traditional targets -- kids
who are overweight, short or the wrong skin color, for example -- and places
heavy emphasis on anti-gay name-calling.

To promote its agenda, "Welcoming Schools" employs classic
indoctrination techniques.
Teachers begin lessons by questioning students to
identify their current beliefs. Then they use group exercises, films and books
to convince the kids that any traditional attitudes they harbor about family
structure and homosexuality are harmful "stereotypes." At the end of a lesson,
teachers "evaluate" students to ensure that their views now pass official
muster.

One fill-in-the-blank phrase that students are to complete during
evaluation says it all: "I used to think, but now I know ..."

The "Family Diversity Photo Puzzle," a typical lesson for grades 1-3,
exemplifies this approach.
In the exercise, the teacher instructs students
to arrange photos of adults and children to create seven families. But the
exercise is rigged, though children don't know it.

"The packets of photographs selected make it impossible to create seven
'traditional' families: that is, families that include a mother, a father and
children," says the curriculum guide. "Students will find that they must create
some families with adults of the same gender. ..." and then decide how to label
the members.

The guide advises teachers to use their authority to encourage the
right answer: "[I]t is helpful for students if you use your own set of photos to
create a family with two moms and/or two dads."

When the lesson is over, the teacher exhorts students to examine their
beliefs, confess their errors and commit to reform.

"Were there types of families you didn't create?" asks the teacher.
"Why do you think you didn't create those families?" (In other words, what's
wrong with you?) "If you did this activity again, would you do anything
differently?" (Hmm, I wonder what the right answer is to that one?)

"Welcoming Schools" uses the same strategy in its section on expanding
"gender norms." (The guide advises teachers to avoid referring to their class as
"boys and girls." "For some children," it explains, "identifying as a boy or
girl in order to participate in an activity creates internal dissonance.")
Students are evaluated on "whether or not [they] feel comfortable making choices
outside gender expectations."

At Hale School, some parents are up in arms. While they oppose
bullying, they say, this is not the way to address it. They have been explaining
their concerns since February, when Principal Bob Brancale announced in an
e-mail that "Welcoming Schools" "will be piloted ... regardless of the personal
issues or concerns of parents or staff."

"It's a direct slap at parents' face," said Hale parent Arbuc Flomo of
the newly formed Coalition for Parents' Rights. " 'I used to think, but now I
know ...'? It's like a teacher saying to your first-grader, 'what you learned in
your seven years before coming to first grade here -- what you learned from your
parents -- is wrong.' "

Dan Loewenson of the Minneapolis School District says that parents are
free to opt their children out of the program.

After Hale parents filed formal objections to "Welcoming Schools" in
March, district leaders referred the matter to the district's Curriculum and
Instruction Committee. On May 28, the committee will deliberate about next steps
after hearing from parents and staff.

The Cost of Immorality

I ran across a great article from Chuck Colson this past week from his Breakpoint daily ministry. He takes a look at our current economic predicament here in the United States and how much of it can be directly related to the decline of morals.

Why We Whisper
The Economic Costs of Sin
May 2, 2008

Imagine the following social experiment: You divide up Americans into two groups. Those who agreed to live by traditional moral values live in certain states. Those who reject traditional values take up residence in other states that would allow them to do whatever they pleased, morally speaking.

After 20 years, which states would be better off—economically speaking? The traditional values states would be far better off, because the liberal states would be spending $500 billion dollars every year dealing with the economic costs of their moral decisions.

Senator Jim DeMint and David Woodward outline those costs in their book, titled: Why We Whisper: Restoring Our Right to Say It's Wrong. As the authors note, "As elected officials and judges continue to throw traditions overboard from the ship of state," conspicuously absent from the political debate "is the mounting cost in dollars [and] debt."

For example, there is the cost in treating sexually transmitted diseases. Research shows that more than half of all Americans will contract a sexually transmitted disease at some point. The cost: Some $17 billion in higher taxes and health insurance costs every year. And that does not include secondary costs, like treating cervical
cancer, infertility, birth defects, and brain damage. And yet, our government does little or nothing to discourage premarital sex.

And then there are the huge costs of out-of-wedlock childbearing. Welfare costs alone to single-parent families amount to $148 billion per year. We pay indirectly, as well, through costs associated with child abuse—much more common in single-parent homes—and in higher crime rates.

We know about this at Prison Fellowship. We see it in the faces of the inmates day after day. Crime and incarceration rates are soaring—so much so that corrections budgets in many states exceed education budgets. And what is the leading cause of crime? Fatherless families, the lack of moral training during the morally formative years, according to respected studies.

Americans spend billions on abortions—mostly to single women—not counting the expense of treating post-abortion medical and psychological problems.

We also pay huge economic bills associated with pornography and government-sponsored gambling. We pay for the easy availability of divorce and for the choice of many to cohabit instead of marry. In time we will, like Scandinavian countries, be asked to pay the economic costs of destroying traditional marriage.

As DeMint and Woodward write, the quest for unfettered moral freedom has come at a very steep price—a price we all pay, whether we engage in these behaviors or not. And at the same time as we pay—more and more each year—we are being told we are narrow-minded bigots if we speak out against the destructive behaviors that are causing the increased costs.

The economic costs—not to mention the costs in human suffering—are why you and I need to speak out. We ought to insist that our lawmakers support policies that make good economic sense and relieve human misery. Instead of making biblical arguments, which sadly, most people do not listen to anymore, we ought to make prudential ones: that encouraging destructive behavior is destroying the economic health of our nation. And it is demonstrable.

If special-interest groups and liberal lawmakers tell us to pipe down and stop trying to "impose our morality" on everyone else, we need to remind our leaders of that little clause in the Constitution: the one that talks about promoting the general welfare.

Effect of BioFuels

I'm starting to feel a little bit like a prophet. Why you ask? Well let me tell you. Last year I distinctly remember having a conversation with several friends of mine about the inherent dangers of Congress' decision to increase the use the biofuels here in the United States. The one problem I mentioned was that as the demand for ethanol, soy diesel, and other biofuels increased that farmers would be less inclined to grow their crops for food consumption. If a farmer can fetch $4/bushel selling their corn to an ethanol manufacturer or get $1/bushel selling it to Costa Rica it doesn't take a genious to figure out what will happen. I postulated that you'll see people go hungry in 3rd World countries which will ultimately lead to riots and armed protests. I was laughed at last year, but it appears I will be having the last laugh. I found two articles that appear to be proving my predictions correct:

• New York Times - 4/15/07
• UK Telegraph - 4/15/07
• National Policy Analysis - December 2007