Bill Smith of the Times Online thinks we're "Getting far too heated over global warming."   Smith was a member of the church of global warming's chorus but has been converted into at least a skeptic by the words of Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT.   Lindzen is the guy ringing the alarm about global warming alarmism.   He will receive the Leo prize for independent thinking this week in Sweden for his stand against all the hype.

Can we please get off Keith Hernandez' back now?   The guy made a "girlie" remark while doing a New York Mets broadcast.   So what?!   He was shocked to see a woman in a major league dugout, didn't know what to say, and made a dumb remark.   I was watching the broadcast and heard him do it.   It was one of the moments when broadcasters are supposed to say something, they scratch their brains and say something dumb. &nsbp; It happens about every inning.   So what?!   What makes this different?   The fact is you don't see many women in major league dugouts and there's at least a pretty good reason for that.   Women mostly play softball.

The sports writers are falling all over themselves to tell us all how chauvinistic Hernandez and baseball are.   But they don;t even acknowledge that women play the related sport and do so quite well.   I know it doesn't matter to me that women do not have a huge presence in baseball.   I happen to like softball.

Before you beat me up for being patronizing, let me ask you a question.   Have you ever seen real women's softball?   Don't tell me the ball is soft.   Have you ever been hit by one?   My 9 year old daughter broke my left shin with a fastball during her pitching practice!   Ask number two draft pick and Alabama pitching ace Stephanie Van Brakle what it feels like to get hit by a "soft" ball.   She had her jaw busted by a ball hit back at her.   By the way, I think she may even have missed one game as a result.   And my recollection is she didn't wear a face guard after she went back out to pitch the next game.   These "girls" who play high level softball are extremely tough athletes.

It is a funny thing to hear people talk of women's softball as somehow being a more gentile game than baseball.   These folks obviously don't know of what they speak.   There are differences between softball and baseball but they hardly make softball a gentler sort of game.   For example, quality softball pitchers throw about 65 - 70 mph.   And they throw from a pitching plate which is 43 feet from home as opposed to the 60 feet 6 inches baseball pitchers use.   What this translates to after a pitcher takes her step to home and throws is, in softball, it takes less than half a second for the ball to arrive.   In the major leagues where an average fastball is about 90 mph, even after the step, it takes the ball closer to .6 of a second to arrive.   So softball batters have about one tenth of a second less than baseball batters.   For this reason, high level softball players have to be far more disciplined than their baseball brethren.   Their swings are shorter and they work hard on diagnosing pitches more quickly than baseball players do.

Another significant difference between men's baseball and girl's softball is the distance between the bases.   In softball it's 60 feet whereas in baseball it is 90.   Now not all ladies run as fast as men for sure but I guarantee you that the average woman softball player makes it 60 feet faster than a man does 90.   Something you don't see in softball is an infielder bobble the ball and get the out at first.   You also never see a softball infielder take her time or wipe her hand clean before throwing.   You either field it cleanly and quickly or you get charged with an error.   And even cleanly fielded balls generally result in close plays.   Oh, and lest I forget, because the field is so small, the action so intense, your typical softball third baseman plays about 40 feet from the batter.   Talk about scary, the reaction time for a softball third baseman is about two thirds what the guy working the baseball "hot corner" has to protect himself.

Now over the years many professional baseball players have tried to hit top level softball pitchers.   They can't.   That's because in addition to being far closer and the batter getting one tenth of a second less, softball pitchers throw a broader selection of pitches.   Your typical major league starter throws a fastball (maybe a four seam, maybe a two seam, maybe both), some sort of breaking pitch, and maybe a changeup or perhaps a slider.   Usually baseball starters have two main pitches and maybe a third which rarely sees the light of day.   In softball, it is rather ordinary for a starting pitcher to throw few fastballs because they're too easy for softball hitters to hit.   Your typical softball pitcher throws, two kinds of curves, a broad sweeping one and something akin to a slider, at least one kind of screwball, sometimes two, a drop (like a sinker, there are two different kinds, some pitchers throw both), a riseball (they actually do rise in softball since it is an underhand motion), and myriad other sorts of things like knuckle balls, changeups, etc.   Did I forget to mention that whereas in baseball, the breaking pitch is maybe five to ten mph less than the fastball, in softball, there is often no differenceor a negligible one in speed between pitches excluding the change.   That's not to say softball pitchers don;t change speeds.   They do so frequently.   I've seen several pitcher whose screwball comes in a couple mph higher than their fastball.   Sometimes a pitcher might throw a slower pitch - softball pitchers mix their speeds pretty well - but for the most part, you get a curve, a drop, a screw, a rise, and they're all at the 66 mph the fastball is.   Have you yet comtemplated how difficult it is to figure out if the pitcher is throwing a changeup when you have less than a half a second to make the judgment?   The change is very effective in softball and a good one is about impossible to hit.

If you ever get a chance to see Olympian, number one draft pick, and Texas Longhorn senior ace, Cat Osterman pitch, you will see something akin to magic done with a pitched ball.   But bring eye drops with you because your eyes are going to hurt after seeing Cat pitch.   Her drop-ball can best be described as "FILTHY."   Few human beings, be they major league baseball players or not, have any chance of ever touching a Cat Osterman drop.

Yes, Keith Hernandez made a stupid remark while trying to fill air time during a New York Mets broadcast.   But his comments did not diverge much from reality.   The truth is you don't see very many woman around baseball.   But we don't need to wash Keith's mouth out with soap for the unforgivable digression.   Let's just forget about it and move on.   It was a simple, honest mistake.   But now that it's over, can we see a list of the sports writers who criticized him and who can honestly say that they even know there is a professional women's softball league in this country?   It happens to be partnered up with MLB!   Can we see the hands of those who have actually been to a game?   And how many have written a single article about softball over the years?   Funny, I can't seme to find anything ever written about softball in the paper other than the local high school action - my paper does a good job of it, many don't.   But for you, my patient audience, I have a suggestion.   If you are unfamiliar with the game of high level women's competitive softball, let me suggest that you take the time to get familiar with it.   It's as gritty as baseball and far faster.   It may be seperate but it is definitely not equal.

Can you think of anything as ridiculous as the Republican-sponsored plan to rebate $100 to all taxpayers with income below a certain point in order to offset the increased price of gasoline?   For one thing what is anyone going to do with $100?   Buy more gasoline?   The taxation of fuel being what it is, most of the money will come back to the government in the form of taxes anyways!   What is this supposed to accomplish?   I suppose that's fairly obvious since the idea is really to buy votes in the upcoming elections.   But if they want to buy my vote, they can more easily roll back the tax on gas by 5-10 cents a gallon or something like that.   What's most upsetting about this is it fails to recognize that the law of supply and demand is what caused the price to increase in the first place.   By giving people, who might otherwise be more judicious about cutting down unnecessary driving, a little extra money, ostensibly for gasoline, you do nothing to impact the underlying economic forces.   If we cut the nation's consumption of gas, the price might back down even without a reduction of taxes and we'd all be better off by hundreds of dollars.   This is the worst sort of legislation.   Anyone who signs it ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Life is really entertaining.   And NCAA sports add immeasurably to our entertainment.   The organization's executive committee rejected appeals by Illinois, North Dakota and Indiana University of Pennsylvania to continue using Indian nicknames.   The committee is going to keep a close eye on Bradley University's use of its "Braves" nickname for the next five years to determine if it will be allowed to continue.   Um, let's see, Illinois, North Dakota and Indiana University?   Will the NCAA require these schools to change their university names?   And what about Illinois and North Dakota?   Can they make those states change their names?   But what is most amusing in all this is the NCAA Executive Committee does not see themselves as buffoons!

CNN just doubled its audience.   That happened when a member of the White House press corps asked to have the news channel onboard Air Force One changed from Fox to CNN and his request was granted.   Fox made no protest regarding this important change since it made no impact on its ratings.

I was thinking about it and what I've become convinced that we need is a new holiday to commemorate cultural diversity and unrestrained freedom.   We don't have a "May Day" in the US because we have never experienced a violent Communist revolution like Russia's.   We have had labor strikes which established the eight-hour work day.   Most of the world celebrates May 1 as "Labor Day" but in the US, we have a different day for that.   May 1 is a perfectly marvelous day for a new holiday because the weather is usually pretty good in most of the country.   It's a great time to get out into the street and demonstrate in support of "important" causes.

This particular May 1, illegal immigrants are going to take to the streets and attempt to "close major US cities."   After this is accomplished, the idea is, illegal immigrants will be granted greater rights than they currently share.   I'm not quite sure what those rights will be but I suppose something will be done to appease them and get them back to work.   So once that occurs, we should establish a national holiday to show respect for illegals.   May Day, already being a worker holiday, seems to make the most sense.

We could call this new holiday "May Day" but that's already taken and, besides, it's kind of a Communist thing so there are far too many negative connotations there.   We could call it "National Undocumented Workers Day" but that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue and, as we've said before, most of these "undocumented" workers have plenty of documents.   We could call it "National Illegal Immigrants' Rights Day" but again, not particularly smooth or poetic.   So I propose we call it "National Illegals Day."

What's that you say?   There already is a legal holiday established on May 1?   It's called "Law Day"?   So we could change the name to "National Legal and Illegals Day."   We could commemorate our nation's legal heritage, the value of the rule of law, and the rights of those who fail to obey the law all on the same day.   I kind of like that!   Let's go with it.

In almost completely unrelated news, the word on the street is Iranian spies are hard at work getting ready to cause mischief in the US should we ever dare to attack that nation.   A cadre of spies whose mission it will be to enter the US illegally and do sabotage is preparing to mix into the general population.   The first element of their preparation is language skills.   These guys are busy learning spanish so they can hide amongst the American civilian population.

The cover story in this month's National Geographic Magazine is called "Selling Alaska's Frontier" and it explores the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA) wilderness area's natural beauty as well as the animals which roam there for the purpose of surmising what the "cost of doing business" will be if we continue the move towards drilling for oil there.   The piece begins by telling us that "save for a few sizable parcels owned by the native Inupiat, (ANWR) belongs to you and me."   The reader is told that without exploitation, the area is home to "half a million caribou, hundreds of grizzlies, wolves, and in summer, more waterfowl, raptors, and shorebirds than anyone can count."   The notion is that since this place belongs to you and me, we ought to preserve it so we can keep its pristine quality while providing a home for this diverse wildlife and thereby save it for "our children's future."   But for whom are we preserving this area in its pristine state?   Are your children going to be visiting ANWR?   Mine aren't planning any trips there.   Are yours?

So much of what environmentalism is about is saving pristine wilderness for photographers, artists, and those wealthy enough to take trips there to enjoy its pristine beauty.   You aren't going to ANWR, neither is anyone you know, or their children, or their children's children.   The truth is that uncontrolled environmentalism has its costs.   We pay more at the pump than we would have if we didn't protect these large swaths of wilderness, much of it completely uninhabited and uninhabitable, in order to preserve spaces for the very rich or well-funded to go to and sell magazines or television programming.   We force ourselves into closer and closer living quarters, with all the negative ramifications of that, in order to preserve more and more "wildernesses" so we can provide habitat for squirrels, foxes, coyotes, etc.   We pay more for the things we need to live so that hundreds of grizzlies can roam free and provide subjects for National Geographic's photographers.

Yet we never question for whom these wilderness areas are protected.   It isn't for the animals which can still survive if we drill sensibly for some oil there.   It isn't for the average middle class workers who struggle to survive and scrape enough money together in order to take vacation trips to make-believe wildernesses in Kissimmee, Florida.   It is for the filthy rich that we preserve great open spaces.   It has always been that way.   It is an obscenity that the proletariat has been pushed around for so long by the rich.   That's what environmentalism is.

If you want to understand some of the facts about alternatives to gasoline, check out Popular Mechanics alternative fuel analysis.   Some of the points I found most interesting include:

• American farmers would need to dedicate 71 percent of the nation's 938 million acres of farmland to growing corn for ethanol in order to fully replace our current oil usage.
  
  
• "It takes about 17 kwh of electricity, which costs about $1.70, to make just 100 cu. ft. of hydrogen.   That amount would power a fuel cell vehicle for about 20 miles."
  
  
• Powering cars via electricity costs about 2 cents per mile at current energy production costs.
  
  
• "Even when emissions created by power plants are factored in, electric vehicles emit less than 10 percent of the pollution of an internal-combustion car."

It seems pretty obvious to me that the brightest technology our future holds is some sort of electric car or plug-in hybrid.   But how do you generate the needed additional electricity for these?   My guess is the best alternative is going to be nuclear power.   Hydrogen just ain't all that promising.   And let's not forget that if we succeed in weaning ourselves off foreign oil by making alternatives far cheaper, that will drive the price of oil to the bottom of its historical price range, causing the cheaper alternatives to seem expensive by comparison.

Here's a quick newsflash: Exxon Mobil Corporation's earnings fell short of analysts expectations.

Here's a detailed analysis breaking down the Time Magazine Report on human induced global warming which is all the rage these days.   Warning: it is long because it takes more effort to bring down myth-making than it does to propagate myths.

http://www.cei.org/pdf/5288.pdf

Do you remember the Oregon Petition?   That was the paper signed by 18,000 scientists concluding "there was no convincing evidence that human activity is responsible, or will be responsible, for any catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."   Didn't you see it reported on NBC News?   Didn't you read about it on AP?   Don't you often see it cited by Al Gore and everyone else who espouses the myth that there is no dissent with respect to the causes of global warming?   No?   Me neither.

If you travel to the Jersey Shore this summer via the Garden State Parkway, you're in for a big surprise when you hit the gas pumps.   Sure you may be surprised by the gas prices but you should be getting used to these already.   The big surprise is going to be the name on the gas station.   It isn't going to be Exxon, Mobil, BP, Hess, or anything else you have become acquainted with.   The name you will see on gas stations on the Jersey Parkway is "Lukoil."   Lukoil is the largest oil company in Russia.

Lukoil is not all that new to the U.S. but apparently they have friends in high places.   When the company opened its first New York City gas station in 2003, Chuck Schumer was there with Vladimir Putin for the grand opening.   Lukoil has been buying up gas station like crazy.   On May 21, 2004 the company announced it had purchased 779 Mobil-branded gasoline stations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania from ConocoPhillips.   Given a few years, Lukoil is likely to become about as well known as, um, McDonalds.

What will the Senators say once they have driven the American owned gas stations under water by the constant inquiry into prices and Russian Lukoil becomes the predominant name in "American" gas stations?

This is what you get with Socialism.   France proposed financing a European search engine to rival Google.   Jacques Chirac said yesterday he was doing this to "take up the global challenge posed by Google and Yahoo!".   On one hand, you have two small groups of very smart people who wanted to make a better piece of software who worked night and day while carrying full college loads to produce search technology, and then spent countless hours refining the product and making it a money-maker.   On the other hand, you have a country providing venture capital to try to compete from a place where it is apostasy for workers to be at their jobs for 48 weeks of the year or 9 hours each day in a marketplace that is notoriously unforgiving.   What do you think the chances of France producing something better than Google or Yahoo! are?

What exactly is the global challenge posed by Google and Yahoo!?   Just how "American" are these companies?   And how might they pose a threat or challenge to anyone?

Alec Baldwin's latest work is called "Entertaining Mr. Sloane" but he's starring opposite the understudy because the co-star quit.   She quit because she was afraid for her personal safety what with Alec constantly freaking out, punching his fist through walls, and throwing things around.   She said, "bottom line was my physical safety, mental health and artistic integrity — none of which Roundabout (the theatre company) was supporting."

Alec Baldwin is such a kind, intelligent, sensitive modern liberal man.   I don't know about you but I've got a very bad temper.   Still, I haven't punched my fist through walls since my early twenties.   I consider myself too mature for such infantile idiocy.   It's undignified to act like that.   Why am I not surprised that Alec Baldwin and other spoiled brat movie stars typically engage in this sort of behavior?

A Senate panel today launched "a comprehensive review of the federal taxes paid" by the 15 largest oil and gas companies.   The panel requested the past five years worth of tax returns for these companies.   One Senator said, "I want to make sure the oil companies aren't taking a speed pass by the tax man."   Two Senators told the IRS, "the tax records of the major oil companies are needed to conduct 'a comprehensive review' of the companies' compliance with tax laws."   Maybe your first thoughts are "great, at last we'll get to the bottom of this.   Finally these companies are going to audited."   Well, boys and girls, think again.

All major companies in this country are under constant IRS audit.   That's not most extremely large companies are almost always under audit.   That is every large corporation is always under complete and total scrutiny by the IRS.   Our "voluntary compliance system" with its statistically determined targets for audits holds one exception.   That exception is called "large case" or "team."   And what it translates to is every (as in 100%) company above a certain balance sheet or income statement size is always under audit.

The way things work is once a company passes the IRS threshold for large case, which is not particularly large, it gets a letter explaining that it has been transferred to the large case division.   On such and such a date, the company is required to provide office space which can be secured for X number of agents.   Then another letter or other communication is made in which a specific date for the commencement of a long-term relationship is set.   No end date is ever mentioned and no end date ever comes to pass.   At the end of one three year period audit, the next begins.   After that point in time, there are likely to be IRS agents at the company's site for good.   The examination will be constant and as in depth as ANY medical procedure you have ever undergone.

The agents will come out and examine corporate balance sheets, then draft up a enormous lists requesting specific information regarding each account on the balance sheet.   The sheer volume of what are known as "IDRs" (document requests) will be far larger than the company's tax return itself.   And there's good reason for that.   The company's documentation which leads into the federal tax return will be many, many times larger than the tax return which is basically a summary document.   Most of these documents in this day and age will reside on computers but if you thought of things in terms of paper, a tax return might be about the size of the bible and the support for it would be as big as your local library.   That's for each year.

When you think of tax laws and the regulations etc. which interpret them, the ratio is similar to that between tax return and supporting documentation.   The law is just a couple bibles in size and not very good reading.   The regulations, revenue procedures, and other formal releases by the IRS would take up a couple of your local libraries.   But that's not all.   Then you have to add in all the court cases, the volume of which is enormous.   Thank goodness for computers and keyword searching for without it, our tax laws would be completely unmanageable.

As it is, the IRS and tax firms have people who specialize in single code sections.   Maybe that's an overstatement but there are certainly specialists who focus in on very narrow aspects of the law like consolidated tax returns, uniform capitalization, or transfer pricing.   These people are lawyers, economists, engineers, mathematicians, etc.   The IRS will bring in specialists as needed to conduct their continuous audit of large case companies.   There are also industry specialists.   They become so familiar with a particular company or industry or class of industries, that they know more about the law than people who wrote it in the first place.   When legislators want to change laws, they hold very long meetings with these folks to get their expert input before doing anything.

The Senate, on the other hand, has no real tax specialists.   Sure the people who will take credit for new tax laws are in there.   But these fellows don't know their arses from their elbows when it comes to real tax work.   The folks who do know anything about the laws are already examining the companies to begin with.   So, what do we have here?

What we have here is political grandstanding for your benefit.   Don't think for a moment that this Senate panel will find any sort of errors or irregularities the real pros at the IRS could not.   And don't think that this level of scrutiny is beyond what ordinarily goes on.   This is all happening because gas prices are high while oil company profits and executive compensation is also high.   Senators realize they can make some political points by pretending to do more than the IRS, which nobody trusts, could do.   But if these Senators really want to scrutinize this stuff, they can do it anytime they want to.   In fact, they frequently do just that, with the help of the IRS agents conducting the day to day audit.   But you never hear about these sorts of examinations, right?   That's because they never announce it.   What's different about this thing is Senators are announcing it and holding press conferences.   That's it.   They are grandstanding.

The economy is getting really scary.   It's hard to imagine a better economy than the one we have right now.   The New York Times told us yesterday that existing home sales were up in March though the report cautioned that inventories are high and while median prices were up (7.4 percent), they were up less than they were a year ago.   Today comes the news that new home sales were up dramatically in March.   But that's not the scary part.   Home sales are not an engine which drives the economy.   The key piece of the puzzle which indicates the economy's health is durable goods.   While only a small portion of gross domestic product, it is the piece which sits in the driver's seat.   Durable goods are what provide real jobs to those people buying the homes, real profits to shareholders, and real growth for the economy as a whole.   They were up significantly in March in all sectors.   It seems as if the economy is roaring.   Can you imagine where we'd be if gas prices were at $1.50 a gallon instead of approaching $3?   Now that's scary.

A friend wrote me asking where he could find the amount of federal taxes paid in and the amount of federal expenditures paid out by state in order to refute an e-mail he received.   The e-mail is as follows:

"Dear Fascist "X," I encourage you to look into the amount of money each territory contributed to the Republic in the form of taxation as well as the amount taken from the Republic by each territory.   Keep in mind farm subsidies are federal welfare.   Now try to imagine a federal budget without the contributions of California.   Now take away New York.   I think you'll find the majority of Republican territories leaches on the Republic's tit, whereas Democratic strongholds are keeping the Republic alive.   Though, admittedly, not keeping up with the unprecedented spending of the current Republican president and Congress.

Also note the overextension of the failed democracies as a result of huge military build-ups and foreign conquests prior to their collapse.

Signed
Socialist "Y"

I replied to "X" that no self-respecting conservative would ever bother to answer the deeply flawed question.   The question contains a number of presuppositions which are entirely false as follows:

• Each state is deeply dependent upon the others to such an extent that it is impossible to judge one's wealth relative to others.   For example, southern California could not exist were it not for the ability it has to remove water from the Colorado River.   Similarly, it is successful not because it has natural resources or such a great educational system but rather because it can engage in trade, duty free, with the other states in the union and because a large portion of its talent pool is imported to the state after it has been educated elsewhere.
  
  
• Similarly, while a large number of corporations are located in "Democratic states," the people who run these businesses are not universally "Democrats" or liberals.   In New York City, for example, where there are a high percentage of corporate headquarters a large part of the executive and professional ranks are filled with people from the neighboring states of New Jersey, Connecticut and even Pennsylvania.   These people and even those who choose to live in NYC or upstate are not, on the whole, Democrats.   There is a high percentage of Republicans and conservatives within the most productive slice of people living or working in the bastions of liberalism.
  
  
• You cannot judge federal spending by examining where the money was sent.   We have much of our governmental infrastructure located in Washington, DC.   As a consequence, that location receives more tax dollars than anywhere else.   Similarly, there are significant economic infrastructures in places like New Orleans.   The federal government must spend money there in order to protect the resources.   Also, much money is sent to states which have military sites.   Federal money is simply not sent to states in order to equalize money in with money out.   That would be stupid.
  
  
• You cannot say farm subsidies are federal welfare paid to the states where the recipients are located.   Farm subsidies drive down the cost of food.   To the extent they are "welfare," they are welfare to anyone who eats food grown on American soil.   The subsidies are pretty stupid at times but they are not paid to benefit a limited group.   And that fails to mention that many of these states were historically Democrat states.   And all this fails to mention that money spent on farm subsidies is intended to maintain the nation's ability to be self-sufficient where food is concerned.
  
  
• There is no such thing as a "Democrat state" or "Republican state."   If you look through town or county maps, you might be able to say there are Republican or Democrat towns or counties but even in those places, most of the time the
  vote goes something like 65-35 or even 51-49.   And people living in a state which favors one party in a single election year switch political allegiances fairly frequently.   At one time in the recent past, the south was decidedly Democrat country.   Now it is definitely Republican ground.   But that's a mere measure of which party got most votes in the most recent elections.   It says nothing about how they might vote in the next.   Are all those "hick," "evangelistic," "federal welfare receiving" southerners now different people than when they were supporting the Democratic party under Texan, Lyndon Johnson?
  

But with all that being said, here are some interesting facts from the inflow outflow examination which can be found here:

2004 tax dollar received per tax dollar collected:

Washington DC $6.64
New Mexico $2.00
Hawaii $1.60
Louisiana $1.45
Maine $1.40
California $0.80
New York $0.79
New Jersey $0.55

Texas $0.94
Georgia $0.96
Ohio $1.01
Pennsylvania $1.06

The overall examination will undoubtedly illuminate the fact that so-called "Republican states" received more in federal expenditures than they paid in via taxes and that so-called "Democratic states" received less.   It was actually like that under Kennedy, Johnson, and Clinton.   It has been like that whether we have a Republican controlled Congress or a Democrat controlled one.   The fact remains that spending is not determined in any degree based upon where the party in power's constituency lives.   There is pork to be sure but because the largest spending of our government is in the areas of social security, military, high ways and governmental infrastructure, the fed.s simply don't get to pick and choose where the biggest slices of the pie goes.   the whole argument is absurd beyond the point of justifying this response.   Liberals made the comment purely out of frustration when they lost the last election.   We should be happy when they conjure it up again.

Ring the alarm bells.   The AP reports the percentage of Americans with moderate to middle incomes who don't have health insurance is growing.   This is just the latest attempt to create an environment in which Americans will favor "universal health insurance coverage" or put another way, socialized medicine.   Forget about the costs.   Forget about the reduction in care most of us would experience under socialized medicine.   We need it because without it, people will forgo certain "necessary" procedures like mammograms, or won't have a regular family doctor, or worse still, folks will have problems paying their bills or might incur debt to cover the cost of medical services.

Upon real inspection, we learn that many so-called "necessary procedures" are bad cost/benefit deals at best and ineffectual at worst.   Whether mammograms do or do not do a good job of finding breast cancer is subject to debate.   But they do cost money.   Perhaps it is money well spent, perhaps it is not.   When a willing buyer of medical services makes up her own mind, efficiency is served.   But when it is assumed one must have a mammogram, the line forms and gets longer and longer.   Such is the way of socialized medicine.   Access to care falls, quality of care falls, and those waiting for procedures wait longer because they have to stand in line the way they might at a theatre when a popular movie is out.

I could tell you several anecdotes about friends whose relatives live under socialized medicine.   But I'll spare you this time.   Suffice it to say that I know of two people who died waiting months to get the type of test one might get within a week here regardless of one's insured status.   I also know of a person who died because, while her condition would have easily been treated here, the medical bureaucracy she lived under determined that she had lived long enough.   She was denied care.

So what about the "regular family doctor?"   Do you have one now?   Do you get one under socialized medicine?   The last time I had a regular family doctor who I felt comfortable with was when I was young enough to see a pediatrician.   That was long ago.   Since then, regardless of my insured status, I have seen various doctors, some regularly for years, but they do not constitute what I would call a "regular family doctor."   I've been with the same "family doctor" for about ten years.   I seldom see the MD in charge of the practice.   Most of the time the physician's assistant sees me.   He's had me on various medications for years and I always assumed the MD had been consulted.   Sometimes, on the physician's assistant's day off, I see the MD.   Once he suggested to me that I should lose some weight so he didn't have to put me on a particular medicine.   So I told him he had put me on that medication four years ago and upped the dose two years ago.   He was completely clueless about what medications his practice had prescribed for me.   Some "family doctor!"   I could get the same level of care at any clinic.

It is easy to determine that some people are uninsured and will have problems paying bills or have to incur debt to pay them.   We are a society where people incur debt to change the tires on their cars, but appliances, or even pay for the weekly groceries.   In the case of groceries, that debt is more the result of convenience than anything else.   We use credit cards to pay for our groceries but we pay those "debts" off at the end of the month.   Similarly, when I have visited doctors during times I wasn't covered by insurance, I frequently pay with a credit card - I incur debt - but I usually pay those "debts" off pretty quickly.

In America where greater and greater numbers of people are self-employed, the decision of whether or not to get insurance coverage is a rational one.   In my decades of being under someone else's employ, I always had coverage.   It came with the job.   Since I have been self-employed, I get the same coverage because my family is unaccustomed to living without it.   But there are two kinds of coverage.   One kind provides insurance against catastrophic health problems which would bankrupt a millionaire.   The other kind takes care of the routine types of visits.   But if I took an average of medical bills over several years and evaluated the cost of the care with no insurance vs. the cost of care plus the cost of insurance, it would be a mistake to be insured.   So many rational Americans are making a rational decision to go without health insurance.   That should come as no surprise.   And that's a major part of what this study covered by the AP has discovered.   It just isn't spun that way because it does not serve the liberal agenda.

First he begged you for money, then he sent it to the most corrupt people on Earth.   Then he begged you for more money.   Now he says no matter how much money is sent, unless the corruption is fixed, it won't matter.   Irish rocker, Bob Geldof is finally getting smarter.   He says, "The rich world can pour endless billions into the continent of Africa but none of this will work unless African governments are serious."

No kidding, Bob?   That's what we've been trying to tell you.   The same is true for all the billions you and your friend with one name, Bono, have shamed governments into pouring onto the continent.   You were the agents of corruption.   They were corrupt and weak but you caused billions of dollars to flow to them.   Without those billions, the corruption wouldn't have made much difference and certainly would not have become even more entrenched.   But all that money created spheres of extremely wealthy power.   Now the corruption is too firmly rooted to ever be removed.   That makes what you did worse than doing nothing.

I recently came across a forum thread questioning the need for the Electoral College.

The person who started the thread went on to say that "each American's vote should count". While that idea sounds patriotic and democratic, it's short-sighted as well.

Firstly, we are a nation of States, not a nation of people. When the Constitution was created, it was meant to acknowledge the rights of States to govern themselves and need for States to have equal voting power.

If the Electoral College is abolished, then all Presidential voting power would lie in the hands of major cities. Mayors and city council members become as powerful as governors and senators, and cities themselves become battlegrounds for liberals and conservatives with control of the White House at stake.

Presidential candidates would only need to campaign in 9 to 11 states. The remaining states become inconsequential, giving those states reason to secede, and planting the seeds for another civil war.

Now, many people will argue that the Electoral College was created because back in the 1700s and 1800s, most people didn't have access to enough information to decide which Presidential candidate was best. That's true. But they'll often make it sound as if this is the only reason why the Electoral College exists. Our Founding Fathers created the Electoral College for other reasons as well.

It's only been in the last 100 years that Congress has enacted laws that diminish the sovereignty of States. This is the reason why we think of ourselves more as a nation of people, instead of a nation of States. We tend to forget how important States are.

However, we are still called the United States of America, and for a very good reason. We need states because each State has its own set of circumstances to manage based on ethnicity, geography, economy, climate, etc. We need to protect the power of States so that citizens of a State can feel best served.

Retaining the Electoral College as it is now helps maintain a 50/50 balance between the power of States, and the power of People, to decide Presidential Elections.

I guess it is all becoming clear to me now.   I was wrong about global warming.   It's real.   It's potentially catastrophic.   We have to act now!

I came to my conclusion while reading another confession, that of Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace.   Mr. Moore says he was wrong about nuclear power, the primary demon which caused Greenpeace to be formed in the first place.   Mr. Moore thinks "the environmental movement needs to update its views (about nuclear power), too."   He also said, "the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2 emissions annually - the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 100 million automobiles.   Imagine if the ratio of coal to nuclear were reversed so that only 20 percent of our electricity was generated from coal and 60 percent from nuclear.   This would go a long way toward cleaning the air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.   Every responsible environmentalist should support a move in that direction."

Now, if Mr. Moore is willing to go out on a limb like this and embrace nuclear power, so am I.   I'll say the environment is doing whatever you want, if that means embracing nuclear energy.   So, here it is: I admit the globe is warming, OK?   Now let's get cracking on building nuclear power plants.   Sign the damn protocol or make a new one as long as you guys are willing to go nuke.

You might hesitate and conclude that I am jumping on the bandwagon to push a political agenda.   No I'm not.   Well, maybe I am but if you want to get technical, that makes me a neo-environmentalist.   So, if you're gonna call me names, call me "neoenv" if you can pronounce that.

Here's a collection for your green reading pleasure:

1) The Scotsman: "Detailed temperature records date only from 1860.   These show that between then and 1915 there was no change in the northern hemisphere.   Between 1915 and 1945 there was a rise of 0.4C, countered in the following 20 years by a fall of 0.2C.   During the remainder of the 20th century there was a rise of 0.4C, making an overall increase of 0.6C over the century." and "Britain had almost tropical temperatures in the Roman period and was at least as hot as today in the Middle Ages."

2) Washington Times: "Duke University scientists announced yesterday that 'the magnitude of future global warming will likely fall well short of current highest predictions.'" and "The Duke estimates show the chances that the planet's temperature will rise even by 11 degrees is only 5 percent, which falls in line with previous, less-alarming predictions that meteorologists made almost three decades ago."

3) Chicago Sun Times: "in 1970 the planet stopped its very slight global cooling and began to undergo very slight global warming.   So in the '80s, the doom-mongers cast off their thermal underwear, climbed into the leopardskin thongs, slathered themselves in sun cream and wired their publishers to change all references to "cooling" to "warming" for the paperback edition.   That's why, if you notice, the global-warming crowd begin their scare statistics with 'since 1970,' an unlikely Year Zero which would not otherwise merit the significance the eco-crowd invest in it."

4) The Guardian Limited: "This is embarrassing, but I've become a fossil fuel supporter.   Cheap hydrogen, the most viable low-carbon heat source, depends neither on nuclear power nor renewables - but on gas."

5) The Inquirer: "With around 200,000 PCs running the experiment non-stop for two months, it looks very much as if the BBC experiment is making more of a contribution to global warming than scientific knowledge."

Enjoy!

I don't know what you think but to me the mere firing of a CIA employee for leaking information is not nearly enough.   We need to make an example of her and anyone who was complicit in her crimes.   Unless we treat her as breaking the law and investigate properly, these ridiculous disclosures of classified information by the very persons charged with keeping them secret are going to continue.

Christopher Hitchens at Slate Magazine wonders about the apparent double standard when our government appoints a special prosecutor to investigate Valerie Plame's identity leak which had no national security threat yet they simply fire a CIA employee when the country's treatment of battlefield detainees is exposed.   This intelligence employee should not be fired.   She should be prosecuted.

There is a growing furor over a real fairy tale read to seven years olds in a Lexington, Massachusetts elementary school.   The story features a gay prince who finds his bride.   The prince, unimpressed by the parade of princesses brought before him, instead falls in love with a prince, the two marry and seal the union with a kiss.   The trouble potentially comes about because Massachusetts has a law on the books requiring schools to notify parents of sex-education lessons.   The school superintendent claims there was no obligation to notify parents.   He says, "This district is committed to teaching children about the world they live in. Seven-year-olds see gay people.   They see them in the schools.   They see them with their kids.   I see this as a civil rights issue.   People who are gay have a right to be treated equally.   If it were North Carolina, this would be a whole different story.   But the law in Massachusetts is that gay marriage is legal.   We have lots of gay families in Lexington."

Well, the superintendent is right about one thing.   This is a civil rights issue.   The parents of students in the school have civil rights which in Massachusetts include the requirement of parental notification.   It is disingenuous to claim "People who are gay have a right to be treated equally."   There is no indication that anyone who read the story to the class or any of the students who were forced to listen were gay.   The case does not in any way involve any real, living person who is gay so it cannot deal with the treatment of gay people.

The superintendent also misses something else in his weak attempt at logical justification for reading the story without notifying parents.   It doesn't matter what children in his community might have noticed.   What matters is whether the issue is appropriate for the age group.   We don't teach seven year olds everything which they might encounter around town.   A seven-year-old might be exposed to all sorts of topics we don't want to fully develop because they create confusion in very young minds.   We don't read stories about serial killers or the holocaust to seven year olds because they are too young to understand the concepts.   There is a litany of subjects we don't discuss with seven-year-old children, or, if we do, we discuss very carefully and make sure we tailor the discussion to their particular state of mental development.

This fairy tale is not about treating gay people fairly.   This incident is not about addressing things the children might encounter in their everyday lives.   This is about a school system indoctrinating children in a new "reality" by creating a new norm of behavior.   It is perfectly normal for men to fall in love with and marry men and women to marry women.   There's nothing unusual about it.   That is what this superintendent is trying to accomplish here.   And if he should be removed from his job and unemployable thereafter, so be it.   We do have a right to fire school superintendents, don't we?

Cliff Kincaid over at Accuracy In Media has a piece running today which discusses the gross exaggeration of HIV infected Africans.   And why does the UN grossly exaggerate the number of infected people?   Funding, of course!

Kincaid discusses a report originally published in the Boston Globe a couple years ago and cited on the web site of FAIR whose mission it is to reverse inequities in disease research spending by Congress and the National Institutes of Health such as the "favoritism given AIDS over all other diseases, including the sixteen diseases that kill a million more Americans than AIDS annually," and the "amount spent on the 'Health Effects of Climate Change' which is greater than the funding for each of these: brain cancer, cystic fibrosis, autism, cerebral palsy, cervical cancer, child leukemia, COPD, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Crohn’s Disease, Down Syndrome, emphysema, epilepsy, Fibromyalgia, hepatitis B & C, Huntington's Disease, Hodgkin’s Disease, the flu (influenza), multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, SIDS, spinal cord injury, stem cell research, uterine cancer and thousands of other illnesses."

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Ah, those lovable liberals and their nuanced arguments.   They scoff at conservatives who embrace both the death penalty while being fervently anti-abortion.   They wonder how someone could claim to have respect for human life yet put a person to death for a heinous crime.   They don't see the distinction between killing an otherwise viable baby who has done no harm to anyone and taking the life of someone who has purposely taken that of another.   Along these lines, Human Rights Watch (HRW) wants you to know that lethal injection may cause excruciating pain.   The organization is officially in favor of legalized abortion even in the face of medical evidence that fetuses are "fully capable of experiencing pain" at 20 weeks.   HRW states that it is wrong to inject a carefully crafted stew of lethal chemicals intended to render a murderer unconscious before taking his life but it is perfectly alright to kill a baby without any anesthesia and it is fine to permit assisted suicide, or as in the case of Terri Schiavo, allow "death with dignity" to occur "naturally."   Don't forget that HRW board member Michael Farrell is set to profit from Michael Schiavo's story.

These are difficult issues.   Each of us needs to make up our own minds how we feel about the death penalty, abortion, and assisted suicide.   Regardless of my personal opinions about these issues, I find it deeply disturbing that an entire organization dedicated to human dignity and rights would be filled with such complete and total hypocrisy.

I don't put much stock in polls but there was one published in the New York Times yesterday discussing what worries Americans most right now.   Numero uno, by far, was the Iraq thing.   No surprise there although there was nothing in the poll about Iran which, IMHO, is a more pressing issue at the moment.

The next biggest worry, although well below Iraq, was jobs and the economy.   Americans are always most concerned about what effects them directly, today, right now, and that's the pocketbook.   Yet, by all measures, the economy is humming along, more people have jobs now than at any time in the past, and while gas and other fuel prices are reducing their purchasing power, Americans are generally doing pretty well.   There are economic issues of concern to be sure but they just don't seem like the type of things which would raise worries right now.

The list continues immigration, terrorism, healthcare ... and way down near the bottom is environmental issues.   The poll was published within a framework discussing global warming so the surprise message is Americans are not very unconcerned about the environment.   But if that's not a big enough surprise, of the hot button environmental issues worrying Americans, the biggest ones were pollution of rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and drinking water; soil contamination; air pollution; ozone depletion; rainforests; and species extinction.   Way down the list was global warming.

Still within the same poll, a specific question about global warming was perhaps a little more telling.   The vast majority of those polled believe global warming is happening now.   Of the minority who didn't think it was happening already, a decided majority expect to see it happen within the next few years, their lifetime, or shortly after they are dead and buried.   Almost 90% see it as happening and happening reasonably soon.   Yet it doesn't make their list of top concerns.

I'm kind of shocked, even though I don't put much stock in polls, that global warming would carry virtually no importance even where most people are sure it is real and will have consequences soon.   This is true even with all the daily reports of dire consequences directly effecting everyone.   We're going to have to move inland.   We're going to have to pay to build and rebuild and rebuild again New Orleans, not to mention every other place located near the see.   Deserts are going to form wherever we are currently growing food.   We're all going to die.

If you were an alien life form trying to figure out what was the biggest concern to the American psyche and you checked out information flow, you would undoubtedly encounter more about global warming than any other single issue.   You would find something about it on maybe a quarter to half of all television channels available via cable and satellite TV.   You'd find something about it in every major newspaper.   Heck, it's even coming to a theatre near you.   If you perused the most popular news stories on the web, you'd find some sort of reference included in most.   Yet Americans aren't worried.   They just don't see it as a pressing issue.

So what is the lesson in all this?   Will liberals stop ringing the alarm bells so they can win some elections?   Will they ignore this poll? Or will they simply take a different approach to getting their message out?   If history is any indicator, liberals will definitely pay attention to this poll.   It was, after all, published in the official liberal handbook, the NY Times.   And it shows there is at least support for the notion that the issue is real to Americans.   My guess is that all efforts will be shifted form the nature shows to demonstrating to Americans how global warming is going to hit them in the pocketbook.   Al Gore ought to shelve his current cinematic production and start on a new one.   From this point forward, if we hear anything about global warming, expect it to be in dollars and cents rather than degrees or amount of glacier melt.

An internet poll conducted on a forum asked readers to pick what they thought was most responsible for making a black person black...

What Makes a Person Black? (Poll)

1. Grew up black (9%)
2. Parents were black (26%)
3. Melanin (48%)
4. Other (12%)
5. Don't Know (6%)

1,086 people voted so far

I picked "Melanin".

But what I'm interested in is the 52% of voters who felt it was something other than Melanin.

Why is that 52% of respondents believe that a black person is someone more than just having "black" skin?

Perhaps proof that racism is still alive. It's not a racism based on hate, but based on politics, ideology, multiculturalism, on a combination thereof. They're saying that blacks are a category, for purposes of sorting out societal factors.

There are liberals who say that Bill Clinton was our nation's first black president, for reasons still unknown to me; more proof that people still see blacks as something other than skin color.

The way I see it, it's the liberals who continue to categorize people by race. They're the ones who keep on telling blacks that they're disadvantaged. How do you expect to raise a child's self-esteem if you keep telling him that he's born under a bad sign?

I'm sitting here watching "Too Hot Not To Handle" and I've got to say, most of us get the notion that the globe is warming, that will cause the sea to rise, and the sea rising is not a good thing.   But the issue is not what is happening.   Rather the issues are what is causing it and what can we do about it, if anything.   Showing pictures of 1) Alaskan permafrost and glaciers melting, 2) eroded beachlines which have always eroded irrespective of global temperatures or sea level, 3) New Orleans which is rather inconveniently situated well below sea level and has been sinking more than the ocean has been rising, and 4) other sensational videos, does nothing to answer the fundamental questions.   So my question is why do those who want to tell us about the phenomenon constantly barrage us with sensationalism and not spend more time explaining the scientific underpinnings of why they are so certain carbon dioxide is causing it?

This is the issue which is too hot not to handle: what is the science behind blaming the burning of fossil fuels for the half degree Celsius "global warming."   What is settled as fact?   What is theory and what are the objections raised so far about it?   What is pure conjecture?   If you're so sure about your science, you should exude confidence rather than be engaged in hype.   If all you do is inflame the public, you become the rough equivalent of an American yellow journalist.   You bring your science down by participating in hype.   So, let's get cracking.   The issue is too hot not to handle.

What if warming the Earth were determined to be extremely beneficial?   How would we go about doing it?   According to most reports in the news, the only thing we have at our disposal is carbon dioxide - that is, carbon dioxide emissions are to blame for the lion's share of this global warming catastrophe which is going to kill all life on Earth.   So it stands to reason that if we wanted to heat up the planet's atmosphere, the most obvious way would be by burning "fossil fuels" and emitting as much carbon dioxide as possible.   If we wanted to turn up the thermometer, we should burn everything in sight.   But if we tried that, our efforts would be a miserable failure for a few reasons.

The primary reason we would fail to raise the temperature is that carbon dioxide does not exist in an otherwise empty atmosphere.   Carbon dioxide absorbs certain wave-lengths of radiation and so do many other "greenhouse gas" elements in the atmosphere like water vapor.   These other elements "compete" for the available radiation like a flock of pigeons competing for bread crumbs an old man sitting on a park bench is throwing.   Adding more pigeons does not make the old man distribute more bread.   One molecule of "greenhouse gas" stands in the way of others like a pigeon and as each molecule absorbs its limit of solar radiation, it does not leave the party to make way for the next.   Water vapor and droplets in clouds absorb the same sort of solar energy carbon does.   But there is far more water (in terms of absolute volume and in absorption potential) in the atmosphere than there is carbon dioxide.

Even if carbon were the only such gas in an otherwise empty atmosphere, the presence of greater and greater amounts of it would not proportionately raise the temperature because there is a law of diminishing returns.   Pump 50% more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and you simply do not get 50% more solar energy absorption.   To demonstrate, think of a window allowing a certain amount of light into a room.   If we put up a shade blocking half that light, then put up another blocking half the remaining light, then another acting similarly, the first shade blocks 50% of the total light otherwise entering the room, the second 25%, and the third 12.5%.   As we continue to add more and more shades, we'll never block out all the light and each additional shade will block a smaller and smaller portion of the total light.   The second shade blocks half of what the first one did.   The third blocks one quarter and so on.   If you extend this out to just ten shades, this tenth shade will block out a mere two tenths of a percent of what the first shade blocked.   The light blocked by the entire population of additional shades will never add up to the fifty percent the first shade blocked.   That is a mathematical impossibility.   This is what is known as a logarithmic effect.

Here is a spreadsheet which demonstrates a logarithmic effect.   Clicking on the graphic will open the Excel spreadsheet underlying the graphic:

Notice the rapid diminishment of effect each increment delivers.   Logarithmic effects display an initial rapid diminishment which decreases at an increasing rate.   Yet the bulk of reports I have read suggest that carbon's energy absorption potential is additive or, put another way, each additional molecule increases the "greenhouse effect" equally as the one before it.   There is a lot of time and effort spent explaining just how much carbon dioxide we are spewing.   For example, one such report says "the atmospheric carbon pool is expanding by about 6.1 gigatons per year."   6.1 gigatons?   Oh my gosh, the sky really is falling!   They actually go a bit further and explain that the :greenhouse effect" has a multiplier effect, the impact of carbon dioxide is exponential.   Earth's temperature may have only risen .5 degrees Celsius in the past 100 years but as time wears on, this increase is going to increase at an ever-increasing rate.

The conclusions cannot be true unless we haven't reached the first level in our logarithmic analysis - the effect of the first window shade.   That can't be because if it were true, this place would be a whole lot hotter and colder than it is now.   Our global temperature would vary similarly to the way the atmosphere-free moon's does.   On the moon the mean temperature varies from -243 degrees Fahrenheit to +225.   Obviously, the Earth's temperature does not.   We cannot be anywhere near line one of the graphic.   We must be further down.   And therefore, additional carbon dioxide must have a rapidly diminishing effect.

Thankfully, our world's "greenhouse" is much larger than the mere presence of carbon in the air.   If it weren't, we wouldn't be here.   But the science of "global warming" suggests that doubling the current amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be catastrophic and that's where we're headed if we continue to heat our homes, turn on our TVs and refrigerators, and drive automobiles to workplaces.   They suggest the cures are to live in far smaller spaces, do without much of what we have now, and take mass transit to work.   But my question is, if this is what is causing global warming, how can taking these steps help even a little?   The conclusions drawn about "anthropogenic greenhouse global warming" suggest that we must stop burning fossil fuels in order to somehow reverse the "greenhouse effect."   Yet if you look at the logarithmic scale from the bottom up, you will notice that as you move lower and lower, each decrease in carbon dioxide, each removal of a window shade, results in an almost negligible impact until you get near the top, near the moon if you will.   So cutting the amount of carbon we emit by say 30% would have very little impact.   It all really depends on where we are in the logarithmic scale.   If we're at the "30 window shade" location, reducing from 30 shades to 20% reduces the energy absorbed from 99.9999999069% to 99.9999046326%.

Now, I'm no scientist.   I'm merely a citizen of the Earth trying to understand why we should put such a large chunk of our resources into solving this problem.   Before I can conclude that driving cars (something I seldom do) is causing a global catastrophe which can be reversed only if we take drastic steps, I have to gain some sort of understanding of where we are on the logarithmic scale.

I know that water makes up about 95% of all greenhouse gases in terms of energy absorption today.   I'm not quite sure how much carbon we have up there in terms of percentage of all greenhouse gases but let's assume carbon dioxide and methane are about equal and make up the bulk of the remaining 5 - 10%.   That means 2.5 - 5% of the total "greenhouse effect" is due to carbon dioxide.   And let's assume that any increase in levels is completely due to human activity.   So how much carbon is there up there?   One report I found says there was 578 gigatons of carbon in the air in pre-industrial revolution 1700 which increased to about 766 gigatons by 1999.   So after 300 years of industry, we have managed to increase carbon by about 33% and in the process increased the global temperature by one half of one degree Celsius.   We currently spew an excess amount of carbon dioxide the environment cannot absorb of about 6 gigatons each year.   Another report says world carbon dioxide emissions are expected to increase by 1.9 percent annually between 2001 and 2025.

We have been led to believe that there are background effects which multiply the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.   These are mostly young theories, even conjecture.   The truth is nobody really knows because our climate has not been studied in a meaningful way for long enough to test any of these theories.   All we really have is observed phenomenon.   All we really have is a 30% increase in carbon dioxide during the entire industrial revolution.   All we really have is a .5 degree Celsius increase in global mean temperature (assuming this observation is valid which is a whole other can of worms).

There you have it.   Carbon is but one of several "greenhouse gases" albeit an important one, just not quite as important as the media or the UN would have you believe.   Logic tells you that carbon competes with other gases for the solar energy it can potentially absorb.   And as the amount of greenhouse gases increase, they have a rapidly diminishing (logarithmic) energy absorption potential.   We are already pretty deep into the logarithmic table since the Earth is rather temperate, rather unlike the moon.   While the amount of carbon we spew is a big number and increasing each year, it isn't big in terms of percentage of all greenhouse gases, it has not had much impact thus far, and the annual increase is not likely to have much.   Similarly, the proposals for decreasing emissions are even less impactful.   According to Junk Science's Global Warming Primer, "If we consider the warming effect of the pre-Industrial Revolution atmospheric carbon dioxide (about 280 parts per million by volume or ppmv) as 1, then the first half of that heating was delivered by about 20ppmv (0.002% of atmosphere) while the second half required an additional 260ppmv (0.026%)."   So if we never had an industrial revolution, the Earth would probably still be warming right now.

We couldn't increase global temperatures if we wanted to.   If there were a discovery tomorrow telling us that warming the globe would cause all sorts of good things to happen, all the kings iron horses and all the king's men couldn't make it happen.

It is really too bad that the global warming debate is over.   Most people believe Al Gore.   Most politicians are unwilling to say or do anything unless it reflects the weight of popular opinion.   Businesses are already figuring out ways to profit from this exercise and the don't want to waste that effort.   Personally I don't care either since I'm a cheapskate and impulsively turn off lights and other electric things in my house, only use about a tank of gasoline every two months, and set the thermostat to 64 during the winter.   But my mother taught me to never jump off a bridge just because somebody said to do it. &nbs; So while you guys are looking up from the water, I'll be looking down wondering if it was a smart thing to do or not.   If you're right, don't mind little old me.   Either way, I won't spoil your fun.

New York Times Class "A" shareholders are up in arms over their second class position as shareholders.   Class "A" shareholders hold votes for only 4 of 13 Board positions while "B" shareholders vote for 9.   Not surprisingly, "B" shareholders are mostly the old line ownership of the company.

My advice to these shareholders is, follow Jim Cramer's advice and sell the stock!

The only way Islam will accomplish its stated goals of total world domination is if the Islamic world can figure out a way to simultaneously eliminate future threats from Russia and China while also dealing a blow to the US.   It seems as if Iran has figured a way to do this.   First create a threat which the US must respond to - obtain nuclear weapons.   Second, act provocatively without any real intention of negotiating a settlement with the US and western nations.   Third, strengthen economic ties with Russia and China sufficient to make them hesitate about cooperating in any fashion with the US.   Finally, create a situation, by repeating steps one through three, in which the US has no other choice but to engage in war with Iran and China and Russia have no choice but to defend the country.   That's the gun barrel we're looking down today.

China is growing so fast that it is like some voracious beast which simply must have more to eat, more oil that is.   Russia's only hope to maintain a place at the table with the world's powerful nations is to negage in commerce which exploits the technology they created during the cold war.   China has inked significant oil deals with Iran and Russia is building a nuclear reactor for them while also selling them significant amounts of military technology and equipment.   While from an objective point of view, it should be clear to both China and Russia that Iran cannot be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons, they are beholden to the country for economic reasons.   As such they are unwilling to allow the UN to take any substantive steps against Iran which in turn makes war inevitable.

Of course China and Russia do not see themselves as pawns but they are pawns nontheless.   Britain, France, US, Germany, and other nations cannot permit Iran to get nuclear weapons for reasons of national security.   The same is true for China and Russia, both of which experience their own fair share of Islamic terror.   But they care more about keeping their economic engines going well into the future and less about the very real risks of some militant group lighting off an A-bomb on their territory.   But such is the mindset of ostensibly Socilalist nations which need to succeed today and leave tomorrow for, well tomorrow.

And the Muslims have these two countries in their crosshairs too since they are basically just as heathen as the US, Israel and the western world are from an Islamic point of view.   Heck, China is officially atheist and while Russia doesn't mandate an official atheism the way it once did, it is still an abomination to the Muslim world.   Too bad thee countries don't see things this way.   And the Muslim countries aren't about to explain it to them.   The Muslim countries would be happy to see the west, Russia and China all being at war with each other.   That might provide the Muslim countries the opportunity to play all sides against each other while rising up their society to what they see as its rightful position in the world.   They've waited centuries for this opportunity and cannot wait to pull the trigger on the grand scheme.

I think it stands on its own that Mexico routinely and systematically abuses any illegal immigrants it finds within its borders.   I don't need to add anything to this report.

My fourth grader had an interesting question for me last night at dinner.   She wondered, "Dad, did you ever watch that TV show called Beavis and Butthead?"   I replied that I had seen it a few times.   She confidently told me that it was taken off the air because one of the characters liked to play with fire and that caused someone who had seen the show to burn his house down and thereby kill a member of his family.   She went on to note that Sponge Bob Squarepants might be taken off TV because some very young child jumped off a cruise ship and died because she wanted to go see Sponge Bob.   I asked my young impressionable elementary school kid where she had heard this information.   She told me one of her teachers had discussed it that day in school as part of a lesson.   I would like to take this opportunity to thank the teacher for providing an invaluable opportunity to my child to learn several very important lessons.

The first part of the lesson my wife and I taught our daughter was about hoaxes.   We told her we don't know why but some people get off on fooling the rest of us by spreading false stories which sound plausible.   We showed her that the Sponge Bob story is a now well-debunked hoax.   We showed her how simple it was to find the truth.   She wondered why her teacher had not been able to do similarly.   That provided the second learning opportunity for the day.

We told my daughter that often teachers are not particularly smart people.   Nothing a teacher tells you which you cannot independently verified should be assumed to be truthful.   You are going to spend your life hearing all sorts of things from all sorts of people who appear to be authority figures or experts.   Even so, you must endeavor to discern the truth for yourself.   For example, we told her, all your teachers and much of what you read in your lessons are telling you that the Earth is warming because people drive cars which causes air pollution.   We explained that the truth is the Earth is far less polluted than it was when we were children.   We also explained that while the media treats the reasons behind a relatively very small increase in the average global temperature to be caused by automobile and power plant exhaust, scientists who are expert in the area of climatology are far from convinced they know the precise cause.   We explained that the temperature on Earth never remains constant - it is always either rising or falling.   We told her that when we were children, the "consensus" opinion was that the Earth was cooling in a dangerous fashion and everyone was sure there was going to be a new ice age shortly.   We told her that there is a normal range of temperature variation just like one day the temperature outside might be 40 and the next it could be 70, the same thing appears to be happening in the world today but the variation is normal.   Finally we explained to her that scientists receive money because of fears about global warming so they continue to talk as if they are sure about it when they are not because they want that money.   She "got" this very easily.

The next part of our lesson to my daughter involved a discussion about frivolous lawsuits and personal responsibility.   We explained to her that sometimes people hurt other people, whether on purpose or not, and that sometimes the hurt person, or his or her family, sues the person who caused the harm by taking him or her to court and asking for money to compensate them for the injury.   We asked her if she would ever do something really stupid like jump out of her window because she was "told" to by a TV show.   She understood immediately that she would not but wondered if maybe young kids would.   We explained to my daughter that even at a young age, she would never have done something so stupid and that even if she would have, it was our job as parents to make sure she wouldn't and couldn't.

We then told our daughter about the story of the 5 year-old child who burned down his house killing his little sister.   We explained that the parents sued the show Beavis and Butthead but that since the show aired only on cable TV and the family did not have cable, the kid could not have regularly watched Beavis and Butthead, and then copied what he saw.   We told her the lawsuit against the show did not win money for the family and that the show did not go off the air because of this incident.   We further explained to her that even if the show was still on the air, we wouldn't allow her to watch it because we believe the content is too adult for her.   We explained that just as we prohibit her from watching certain other shows because that is our job, similarly we would have prevented her from watching that show.   Finally we explained that when she was five years old, she went to bed at 8:00 because we felt that was important for a child and since Beavis and Butthead aired at 11:00 at night, she would never have even had the opportunity to watch the show.

My daughter understood that everything this teacher had taught her about these two TV shows was quite wrong.   She also understood that some people believe such myths because they are intellectually weak.   She also understood about personal responsibility including the responsibility of parents.   She even got the bit about frivolous lawsuits.   But what really confused the heck out of her was somebody so stupid would be put in the position of teacher where he or she could spread such falsehoods to impressionable children at whim.   We explained this by telling her that teachers are members of labor unions.   We explained that labor unions were originally set up to protect the rights of people who worked really hard and get them a fair wage.   We went on to explain that since the days when unions were first started they have been changed to include people who don't work very hard.   We explained that teachers unions where the profession involves zero hard physical work argue with their employers primarily to make it very hard to fire bad or stupid teachers.   Probably when this teacher got the job, nobody knew how stupid he or she was and since the union protected this person's job, he or she would continue to teach and give out bad information but there is nothing anyone can do to stop him or her.

We concluded our discuss