The jury deliberating the case of I. Scooter Libby has pushed the easy button.   They had requested an answer to a question from the judge but when he said he didn't understand the question, they said, "never mind."   The AP reports that the jury "since getting the case last Wednesday, had asked no questions, only requesting office supplies."   This begins to seem like a commercial for an office supply retailer.

It is going to be interesting to see if the jury can find Libby guilty for obstructing an investigation which should never have taken place into a crime which never occurred.   We stare and wonder why when real crimes are committed like when Sandy Berger stole documents from the national archives in order to obstruct the investigation into something which really did happen, there is no prosecution.   Here we have no crime and someone is being prosecuted for forgetting something and thereby supposedly obstructing the investigation into nothing.   There's something wrong here.

Labels: investigation, Joe Wilson, Libby, Valerie Plame

A Florida state legislator wants to ban the term "illegal alien" from the state's official documents.   She said, "I personally find the word 'alien' offensive when applied to individuals, especially to children.   An alien to me is someone from out of space."

Out of space?   What is this, the baby-talk hour?   Dose Aliems is someones fwom out of space, mommy.

The legislator claims that people from her consituency don't use the word "alien" and instead say immigrant.   She encountered the problem while trying to pass a law which granted the lower "in-state" tuition rates to these foreigners - immigrants from a foreign land but from within real, tangible space - this dimension, just not this country.

The legislator says she prefers "undocumented" to "illegal."   But she provided no guidance as to what to call the freakin' illegal alien foreigners who HAVE DOCUMENTS.

Out of space!   Sheesh.   People who cannot speak should not try to control the way others speak.

Labels: illegal aliens, immigration

Andy Mukherjee, who writes a column for Bloomberg News, says that buying "green energy credits" are becoming such big business, that it's getting absurd...

The Sydney-based Easy Being Green says it will mitigate your cat's flatulent contribution to global warming for 8 Australian dollars, or $6. The same company could also make your granny "carbon-neutral" at 10 dollars a year, according to a report in the Australian newspaper last weekend.

Environmentalists have created such widespread fear and panic, that it's caused capitalists to turn this fear into money.

Read the full article here:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/22/bloomberg/sxmuk.php

Labels: energy credits, global warming

This one really pisses me off.   If I get profane, I apologize in advance.

An eight year old boy may be removed from his home because his parents are deemed by government to be abusing him.   Connor McCreaddie may be taken away from his mother because he weighs too much and because his mother continually misses government agency-arranged appointments with with nurses, nutritionists and social workers.

Nurses and social workers?   What do they know about anything?   Most of them are like the rest of us - don't possess any real specialized information.   They're just muddling through, earning a paycheck.   And these nurses, nutritionists and social workers are on the government dole - they're substandard,. not even good nurses, nutritionists and social workers!

Who exactly confers the right on government to interfere with people's live in this manner?   The government would respond that child protection laws do exactly that.   And "brilliant" second-rate therapists agree.   They claim, "Child abuse is not just about hitting your children or sexually abusing them, it is also about neglect."   OK, we'll buy that one for the sake of argument.   But let's extrapolate it a bit, shall we.

I think we should remove any child from dangerous parents who fail to provide an adequate moral underpinning.   That would cause almost every politician to lose his or her child since they routinely set a bad example by lying.   Also, anyone who fails to get their kid to some sort of religious study would fall into this category unless they could affirmatively prove they had found a valid substitute, one which meets with generally accepted principles of morality as judged by some objective standards.

Of course, any parent who failed to prevent their child from having sex before the age of majority would lose all parental rights.   The same would be true for not just smoking but any alcoholic beverage or illicit drugs.   All anorexics should become wards of the state under its magnificent protective custody.   Any kid who failed to get the precisely correct amount of exercise, or sleep, or protein, or strach under scientifically determined guidelines would also qualify for protective custody.   Kids who do not attain at least C's, perhaps B's, in school should similarly be removed from their homes since that's as sure a sign of neglect as anything else.

Appearance also plays a role.   Acne?   Why didn't the parents take their kid to a dermatologist every day to make sure that didn't happen?   Not particularly pretty or handsome due to neglect of appearance?   Blame the parents!   Your smile is not wide enough, your lips not full enough, there are steps one can take such as those awful palate splitters to make a kid more perfect.   Why can't some of these parents give up one vacation a year to pay for plastic surgery.   Studies have shown large percentages of the populace gets plastic surgery every year - so that's a societal norm.   If you don't adhere, you are neglectful.

What about some common personality traits?   Wall flower?   That's a total neglect of the social needs of the kid.   Overly boastful, sorry kid, you are going to be placed into a foster home as soon as we can find one.   For now you'll be in the orphanage under the tutelage of brother Paul, the sodomizer.   Enjoy your stay in government protective custody.   It would have been better if your parents had raised you better but they didn't so now we have to put you in the orphanage.

At what place have we arrived where we are willing to just sit still and watch the government determine precisely how much we should weigh, what we should eat, who is neglectful?   While we are examining the children of our politicians, why don't we also take a look at all the children of the psychologists, social workers, nutritionists and nurses, the under-trained, under-educated over-glorified "professionals - who state emphatically that neglect is the same thing as having your head bashed in by your father or mother.   If we looked long enough, we could easily build a case to have their children removed from their imperfect homes.

Just who is qualified to judge neglect?   What standards do we agree to?   When do we get to judge the judgers?   The government can't protect the kids who are actually being beaten or sodomized by their relatives in their homes.   But now they want to take a kid for being fat!   What complete rubbish!

Don't just sit still for this sort of Big Brotherism.   Take to the streets and protest this improper fuctioning of ineffectual government.   Take to the streets and let them know we won't stand for this.   Burn the houses to the ground of those who advocate taking a child from his parents absent real abuse.   Refocus their attention to their own shortcomings.   The time has come to rise up and overthrow the do-gooders who are so sure they know exactly how everyone else should live.

Follow-up:

The boy has been granted permission to stay with his mother.   At least this time, the government exercised good judgment.

Labels: big brother, government

Researchers are set to "take the planet's temperature" via a 60 country study of the Arctic ice sheets and the continent of Antarctica.   The study will cost hundreds of millions and will be not only the most comprehensive one ever conducted, it will also be the first largescale scientific examination in about three decades.

This raises a series of inescapeable questions.   If we are just now going to these places to study them, what is the basis of all the previous claims projecting calamity?   If scientists weren't already studying these things intensely, where do they come off drawing all sorts of conclusions about them?   If we really haven't been there in a meaningful way for three decades, why have we not?

The answer to this series of questions is, this is the way government and the UN works.   First identify a problem.   Then spend huge amounts of money compiling the work of people who know something about one small aspect of the issue.   Then claim you have discovered a major problem - one that should command all of our attention.   Conmpile report after report describing the possible problem as if you already know exactly what you are talking about.   Then, finally, after decades and hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent and thousands of people have been diverted from their usual occupation, commission a real study of the problem.   But given the huge amount of expense, the problem must be spun into a "real problem" because to do otherwise would cause too much embarrassment.   So before the real study commences, the conclusion to be supported has already been reached.

The next two years of this study and the following ten years of re=examination are going to be very interesting indeed.

Labels: global warming

Al Gore responded to criticisms that he is an energy pig by saying he takes steps to reduce his carbon "footprint" to zero.   He says he "signed up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installed solar panels and uses compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy-saving technology."

OK, Al.   You've placed your bet.   We call.   Show us your cards.   Give us the proof that you do the things you claim.   And let's see the dates on the documents - let's see that you signed up for "Green Power Switch" before the release of "An Inconvenient Truth."   Let's see that you took these steps before you were criticized by conservative talk show hosts last year for being an energy pig.

Al Gore implores you to use less energy.   He says that is to save the planet.   But maybe he's just trying to make us all save more for his personal consumption!

Gore's energy use reportedly increased dramatically after the release of "An Incovenient Truth."   He was an energy P-I-G before "a-i-t" but since he has been even worse.   Gore and spouse will use enough energy this month for an entire family for a year.   That's an understatement.   He uses a year's worth of energy in much less than a month.   And that's only one of his mansions.   He's got several residences!

Gore spends more on fossil fuel usage than most of the people who voted for him earn.

And in case you were wondering, he does not make significant use of renewable energy.   He doesn't have solar panels at his home.   There's no windmills visible.   He could pay a little extra to make sure his energy comes from so-called renewable sources at many of his several residences but he chooses not to.   He doesn't support the use of alternative energy he asks us to support.

There's no word on whether Gore uses those extra-long-lived energy=efficient bulbs but what do you think?   It's really hard to light up large spaces with those babies.

People who live in glass mansions ...

The AP reports, "The welfare state is bigger than ever despite a decade of policies designed to wean poor people from public aid."   That is essentially an example of the Socialists thumbing their collective noses at conservatives who believe all entitlement programs - said to alleviate the pain and suffering of the poor - actually engender it.   Liberals would like us to stop trying to cut entitlements and just cave in to them.   But the conservative reaction is likely to be somewhat different.   Any self-respecting conservative understands that trying to eliminate entitlements one little piece at a time is akin to a junky trying to get off heroin by cutting out one intravenous injection at a time.   It just doesn't work.   Socailist liberals want to keep entitlements alive just long enough so that they can again make them into the accepted norm and then extend them to everything they can possibly dream up.   The crossroads are rapidly approaching at which time we are going to have to decide once and for all whether it is good and right to alleviate our own psychic pain and suffering by enslaving those on the dole into a permanent role as members of an underclass.

Labels: welfare state

There are a growing number of reports suggesting that Israel has asked for and received permission to fly over nations to reach Iran on a bombing mission to knock out the country's nuclear capabilities.   I suspect that sort of attack - like the one on Iraq's nuclear plant - will not happen.   A more likely scenario is a multi-national attack coordinated by the US with a real "shock and awe" result.   Iran has too many defense systems to mrely have a four plane five second bombing run.   There will have to be a more intricate, coordinated attack with all sorts of damage to the country's infrastructure including electrical utilities and communications systems.   Most likely a surgical strike only targeting the facilities in question would be an impossibility.   Lots of people are going to die in this one - mostly military people but in an attack this large, there will be plenty of collateral damage.   That's not the fault of Israel, the US or any other people on this side of the argument.   The entire blame lies at the feet of the Iranian government who has claimed it has no breaks nor a reverse gear on its program which increasingly appears to be designed for military ends.   Get used to the fact that this thing is inevitable unless Iran acts and acts soon.   We just cannot allow them to develop a nuclear arsenal no matter what anybody tells you.   Things have progressed to the point that they are now as serious as any other sequence of events in human history.   Something must be done.   Something will be done.

Labels: Iran

No military personnel has a "right" to question a single order unless that order is illegal.   Once you cross the line and question an order, the burden is on you to prove it was an illegal one.   So, now we have 60 Minutes airing military dissension.   60 Minutes certainly can seek out and air such material.   But the military just as certainly is under no obligation to brook such dissension.   These soldiers are breaking their own law.   They should be tried and, if found guilty, penalized appropriately.

Labels: iraq

Is Jet Blue the new Wal-Mart?   Why else would any of its flights delayed by weather be newsworthy.   It was founded by a Mormon, after all.   That's certainly reason for suspicion of it by the press.   And it shakes up the establishment a little too much for comfort.   Human beings were made to sit in overly cramped seats - the price of obesity - and offered tiny bags of peanuts and beverage service blocking the restrooms.   Anything which seems too good to be true must be.   Continental airlines buckles to unions so it must be the one true and good airline.   Tiny Jet Blue just must be bad for us since it overs an alternative - relative comfort, low fares, etc.

Labels: Corporations

Was there ever any doubt that Al Gore would win the Oscar?   We are talking Hollywood, after all.   This is the same crew that tells us the Straw Man would become deeply intellectual merely by receiving an honorary degree from the Wiz.   This is also the group of human beings who feed us car crashes with moral overtones and street gangs dressed in baseball uniforms because they not only think that's what we believe but because they, themselves, believe it.   This is the group who has given us such recent noteworthy works as ... what is a recent noteworthy film?

It doesn't matter to Hollywood that most of Gore's work has been debunked as science junk.   It's still a documentary, isn't it?   They want us to believe things like this because it would be really cool if it were true - like youth gang warriors patrolling the streets of New York in roller skates.

Duck you suckers!

Labels: Al Gore

A jaguar was shot and killed after attacking and killing a zoo employee at Denver Zoo this past Saturday.   The employee opened the door to the animal's enclosure, against zoo policy, and was mauled to death by the 140 pound big cat.   The AP article describing the incident notes that the cat "had no history of unusual behavior."   He still doesn't and I suppose won't have the opportunity to develop one.   While I can certainly understand the pain of the employee's family, I have to wonder why it was necessary to shoot the cat to death for doing no more or less than what his natural instincts told him to do.   This is what jaguars do.   For some unknown reason, when something like this happens, we immediately seek an answer to the question, what would make the cat attack.   The answer is, quite obviously, its nature.   The same is true for cougars though we allow them to exist in our midst, even protect the species against any sort of human interference.   The thing which distinguishes human beings from other species is we are the only one which thinks we somehow exist outside the laws of nature.   Other species, such as the big cats, see us as merely another living creature, not a particularly superior one at that.

Labels: environment, nature

There's a new web site for those who have enough activity above their necks to at least question the scientific underpinnings of climate change hysteria.   It is ClimatePolice.com.   Description of the site's founder and operator from the site:

"Climatepolice.com is operated by Joseph Conklin. Mr. Conklin has over 14 years experience collecting and analyzing surface weather observations.   He has additional experience in radar/lightning analysis, wind shear detection, and software development.   Mr. Conklin holds a meteorology degree from Rutgers University and an interdisciplinary degree from Monmouth University where his master's thesis involved climate studies with lightning and severe storms.   He also operates NiceWeather.com, a website specializing in monthly weather forecasts.

Editor's note: Mr. Conklin is not affiliated with any political party.   Additionally, he has no relationship with any energy company, and promotes the use of renewable energy to help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels."

Labels: global warming

I've grown weary of all this horse manure.   Liberals are making trade by being contrarians.   What ever way Bush uses is the wrong way.   So, what's the right way?   Something different than the way you are doing it.   OK, I accept that.   So, what's your suggestion?   Any other way - just not the way you are doing it.   OK wiseguy, time's up.   Now it's your turn to say exactly what you would do.   And cut the BS like "over the horizon redeployment."   That's rhetoric, not a plan.   If that's the best you can do, we're are totally f@*%ing doomed.

Presidential hopeful, NM Governor Bill Richardson, has some great things to say about how to deal with Iran.   He suggests we just talk to them.   He says Iran "not end their nuclear program because we threaten them and call them names."   No shit, genius!   Why don't you volunteer to spearhead the Bush administration's efforts to talk to the Iranian government?   I'll bet you can convince them to stop enriching uranium.   Of course, Iran has said uranium enrichment is their God-given right and they'll give it up when we do.   They've also said, they don't believe we can possibly go to war with them.   This is essentially the guy you propose to reason with standing on the wall giving you the fickle finger of fate.   He's thumbing his nose and laughing at you like some kid who has just gotten away with something and you think the best way to deal with him is to engage him in talk.

Bill, your an embicile.

Iran, you may be right that at this precise moment in time, we are not in a real good position to threaten complete war, but you're missing a few salient points.   The situation can change and you are pushing our buttons.   Keep going and eventually we will very much be in a position to start a war with you.   And again, I remind you, we will not engage in nation building or even infrastructure rebuilding if we are forced to bomb the crap out of you.   We will isolate you and let the Russians, or which ever faction is strongest, take over your country instead.

Labels: Iran, middle east

Ok, now I'm ready to hang myself...

Half of young children are anxious about the effects of global warming, often losing sleep because of their concern, according to a new report today.

http://www.gm.tv/index.cfm?articleid=24717

Could it be that environmentalists are to blame for causing sleep deprivation in children? Or are children worried that there won't be anymore "snowed out" days from school?

This study was apparently conducted by a grocery store chain concerning the use of plastic bags. Now you know how unscientific this all is.

Labels: global warming

One thing different about the new U.S. Dollar Coins, that other coins don't have, is that it doesn't have the words "In God We Trust" on them...


Not that I'm a Christian, or a believer in God, I am not.

This is a battle between freedom and control.

At one end you have a group of people who want the freedom to express their religious beliefs publicly. At the other end, you have a group of people who want to put an end to Christian domination of this country.

That's what it is.

Secularists ought to be happy with me.

That's because I don't believe in God, and I'm not a Christian. However, I'm a libertarian. I believe in freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion.

Despite my growing up with God all around me, I still ended up not buying into the rhetoric. Even though I recited the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, I never really believed that we were "under God". If I can grow up this way, what do secularists have to worry about?

In the end I don't really care if God is on our coins or not. What I do care about is that the people of this country can still be free to express themselves publicly without shame or retribution. I believe liberals and secularists are trying to fight that.

Somewhere down the line they convinced Americans that the 1st Amendment guarantees us "separation of church and state". But it doesn't. It doesn't even say that. What it says is that Congress cannot make any laws WITH RESPECT to religion. It doesn't free us from religion, it simply give us the freedom to be religious.

Congress didn't have to make a law to get the words, "In God We Trust" on the coins. It was put there because the people who designed our currency applied their freedom of religous expression. The Constitution guarantees that freedom in the public arena, even for judges and politicians.

The concept of "Separation of Church and State" doesn't exist anywhere in the Constitution. It was a phrase that Thomas Jefferson came up with when writing a letter to members of a specific church that the Federal Government wouldn't create a national religion. Secularists managed to convince Americans that it actually exists in the Constitution.

Please everyone, read the 1st Amendment, and understand that it protects everyone's right to express their beliefs publicly, even if you're an elected official.

Labels: Religion

Reuters absolutely gushes over the discovery of sophisticated mathematics demonstrated in Muslim architecture.   Why, their culture is superior to our own!   Isn't this the way of the mainstream media?   The Chinese have an older and superior culture to our own.   Those Indians educate their people better than we do.   Hinduism is far older and more developed than Christianity.   The Russians, especially when they were Communists, are far more artistic, even poetic than we are.   Yada, yada, yada.

Still, the Russian and Chinese Communists practiced homicide on a scale that dwarfs Adolph Hitler's amateurish efforts.   Hindu followers are as brutish as anyone else on the planet.   And Muslims have accomplished such noteworthy cultural break throughs as community rape to punish an unfaithful wife, and persecution of rape victims because they always bring this crime on themselves.

Let's not forget that the Greeks had much to do with any intellectual upbringing the Islamic world enjoyed.   Last time I checked, the Greeks were on the "westerner" European side of the coin.

Labels: Islam, Muslim, PC

I've always been a devotee of Maytag appliances and Sony TV sets.   Not anymore!   It seems as if we've moved beyond the customer non-service of the 1990s and into a new era of the buyer of durable home goods really having to beware.

When I purchased my home, it came along with several appliances at "builders grade" including a dish washer that couldn't wash dishes.   That's what "builders grade" means - something that doesn't do what it's supposed to do.   Instead it just looks like it can do what it's supposed to do - like the way things are in the model!

After a few months of realizing that the dishwasher was, as they say at Universal studioes, a facad or fake front, we decided to replace it.   We went with the Maytag because we thought they made reliable products.   We had that vision of the TV commercial Maytag repairman who spends his entire day sitting around with nothing to do.   Guess what?   That's an insider joke.   Thge maytag guy does sit around all day but not because he doesn't have repair work to do!

Recently, Maytag (Maytag and Jenn-Air brand) dishwashers were recalled for a little minor structural problem.   The little minor deficiency?   They'll burn your whole house to the ground!   According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, these dishwashers have resulted in 135 reports of fires - keep in mind that's just the number of complaints.   That's a lot of fires.

This recall was not extremely well publicized.   We heard about it from a friend.   Since then we have been waiting for the repairman to show up!   And we have shared our knowledge with numerous other owners who never heard a damned thing about this recall.   I say we have been waiting on the repairman because there is a waiting list.   We got on that list and were finally granted, by the genorosity of Maytag, an appointment which spanned say 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm.   And at 4:55 that wasted day, we received a call from a repairman who was nowhere near our home but just wondered if we had received our kit for the repair job - we hadn't.   The repairman told us that this was typical - not many of his appointments had received the kit.   I guess that's because when you call in for repair, they sort of leave that little fact out of the equation!   So we called the company again and had one sent which took several additional days because they couldn't afford to ship it in any very quick manner.   Then we called and were granted another appointment for 1:00 pm to 5:00.   This time the repairman called at 4:59 and let us know he would be there around 7:00 pm - no good, we had places we had to be.   They recorded this as us cancelling the appointment!

You might say that I'm griping about the SNAFU of repair jobs but I think this tranjscends that.   This is about a company, Maytag, selling an inferior product, one containing a material and dangerous, potentially life-threatening, defect.   They don't want to incur the expense of putting out a meaningful effort to fix the problem they created.   Instead they are practicing a war of attrition in which the vast majority of customers will give up and just buy a replacement on their own dime.   I can make significantly more money in the 8 hours I have wasted waiting for the idiot Maytag repairman to arrive at my house than it would cost to replace the damn thing.   But you know what?   I'll be cold and buried before I buy another Maytag anything - I'm even giving up Anchor Steam beer, my personal favorite, because this conmpany needs to be brought to its knees!

Now on to more interesting product issues.   I don't know about you but I never buy the warrantee.   By the time and expense of waiting for the covered cost to be honored, I can easily do better by taking the disposable route.   That's true of any product I know of that costs under a grand.   But I don't know very much about TVs, especially HD TVs, and when I bought my little 42 incher from SONY, I figured I better listen to the guy selling it.   He said, these things break all the time and there's no way to really fix them.   So you need to buy the warrantee or purchase a new set every couple of years.

I've owned very few TV sets in my lifetime.   That isn't because I don't watch TV.   I do, especially sports and news.   But the typical sets I've owned seem to last for decades without any sort of malfunction.   Never having owned an HD set, I had to believe the guy.   So I purchased the in-home repair warrantee for a high percentage of the cost of the set.

Well, first off, the thing about an "in-home" repair is that only occurs when the repair guy can fix it in your home.   That means just about never.   So when you call for repairs, your in-home repair contract means the guy will come retrieve it from your home.   It took the guy who paid us a visit all of fifteen seconds to find the problem because he knew exactly what he was looking for before he even got our name and address.   These things pretty much all break in the same way every time.   And the repair is as routine as turning on a TV set via remote control.   The whole guts of the thing have to be replaced.   The process works like this, repair guy comes out and says, "yup, that's what it is."   Then they take the set and bring it into the shop.   Then they have to file for warrantee coverage which takes days for approval even though the defect is built right into the set and it's the same thing every time.   In our computerized world, it takes days for the company to acknowledge that what they expect to happen really happened!   Then they've got to order the "part" - the guts of the set.   Then they've got to schedule the work, perform it, and then arrange to send it back to you.   That can take weeks and weeks.   Spo much for buying an expensive product and the expensive warrantee for "in-home" repair!

I mention this second "event" not so much because it is comparable to the first - the SONY TV will not kill you by burning down your house while you sleep.   But it is an expensive item.   You expect something which costs multiples of the product it replaces to function properly.   And you expect warrantees which cost additional moneyt to be honored in an efficient manner.   I mention this because it is yet another example of the production environment in which we currently find ourselves.   If our homes were built as badly as these dishwashers and TV sets, we'd sue.   If automobiles functioned like this, we'd enact lemon laws to make manufacturers handle their mistakes.   We've entered a realm in which almost everything is produced as poorly as Microsoft's operating system - everything needs to be rebooted after you use it for a few hours!

Don't mistake my anger as a call for governments to just do something about this mess.   Governments cannot protect us from the fraud manufacturers are perpetrating.   All they do is add cost without adding value by making manufacturers jump through more hoops on their way to producing inferior products.   Instead, what I'm trying to tell you is we consumers need to band together to flush out the inferior products we find and oprganize to put these companies under water or otherwise take reasonable steps to honor their commitments.

Thanks for listening.   I do feel a little better now!

Labels: Product Failure

If I gave you five students and charged you with educating them in mathematics, then 2 of the 5 failed to achieve at a basic level, what would you call that?   I would call it abjest failure on your part.   OK, so how about I give you 4 kids and tell you to teach them to read?   What would you call it when 1 of the 4 could not read at a basic level?   Again, that would constitute failure.   You have failed to educate these kids I gave you to teach.   Your fired!   Oh, you're union.   And you want me to recognize that these kids' grades have been rising over the years.   And you'd like me to know that you;ve been teaching them harder and harder subjects.   OK, so that's interesting.   You're still a failure and you're fired.

This is the situation in which we find ourselves in the US today.   The AP reports "Large percentages of high school seniors are posting weak scores on national math and reading tests even though more of them are taking challenging courses and getting higher grades in school, say two new government reports released Thursday."   That means our educational system gets an F for failure.   They have failed to educate large percentages of the students we entrusted them with.   We should fire them.

Labels: education, teachers

I have a great idea.   Whatever poses the greatest threat to all of mankind, leave it up to the UN to solve it.   For example, let the UN take action on the most recent asteroid threat!   They have a lot of expertise on space exploration.   For example, they have sent rockets to .... where is it that the UN sent space missions to?   They launch a lot of satellites don't they?   No?   They don't?   Well, they're really good at solving all sorts of problems.   Like for example they really fixed the situation with regards to ...   OK but they've done a lot of good in the world like ....   Oh all right, the UN is a completely ineffectual organization which accomplishes nothing but they should be allowed to handle this asteroid thing because, well just because.   Let's at least give them an opportunity to fail at something before we get all upset about it.   It isn't like the continued existence of all humanity hangs in the balance.

Labels: UN

Iran continues to defy the rest of the world with its nuclear program which is now almost undeiably a military application.   They're also arming for the conflict which they expect to develop over their deliberate tactics.   They know the US populace has no taste for a war like that which has been waged in Iraq.   They're banking on that lesson learned.   However, they may be overlooking the obvious which is the US and a few of its allies will likely not stay in-country and try to rebuild Iran.   Rather we'll probably apply a lesson also learned in Iraq.   That is, instead of trying to rebuild a nation, let it rip itself apart with factional fighting and then, once that has played out to the point of exhaustion, come back in and see what you can make of the pieces.   We can bomb Iran into oblivion at little cost to our country.   We can leave them in total chaos with little or no infrastructure left.   Then we can watch from afar as the country fights it out amongst itself.   Finally we'll come back in once everyone is completely exhausted!

Labels: global warming, Iran, nuclear weaponry

The environmental whackoes and lib.s of all stripes are positively giddy over Al Gore's potential Oscar win as well as possible plans to extend him a doctorate in climatology despite the many serious questions about the accuracy of his documentary on global warming.   The Academy Awards folks should think about creating yet another new category for My Gorey, call it fake-u-mentary!   And the folks at the University of Minnesota ought to think about defining a new sort of "honorary doctorate."   Maybe they could call it, doctorate of modern mythology.

Labels: Al Gore, global warming

What are we thinking when we disenfranchise adult noncitizen taxpayers?   "Adult noncitizen taxpayers" means people who get the benefits of being here without going through the burden of establishing citizenship.   Maybe we figured we had to draw the line someplace and this looked about as good as any other!   Maybe there is a little issue like they aren't citizens so why should they be extended rights specifically preserved exclusively for citizens!   Actually, you have to go one step further once you establish your citizenship.   You have to register too!   When citizens are legally living abroad, we allow them to vote in elections, assuming they are registered and request the absentee ballot.   Presumably that opportunity is afforded foreigners living here by their countries of nationality.   So there seems to be a loophole in the argument.   if you are so vested in the outcome of our elections, you have to become a citizen before you are allowed to have a say in them.   What's so difficult or unfair about that?

Labels: immigration

This is the kind of crap that passes for journalism: "Cities Can Make You Skinny."   That nonsense is repeated: here, here, and in many other major media outlets.   The "news" results from a study conducted by the Mailman School of Public Health which notes the coexistence of lower BMIs and those living in the densest, pedestrian-friendly parts of New York City.

The implication here is health = low BMI.   That may be true once you remove athletes of all levels from the picture.   Athletes tend to have higher BMIs since they build considerable muscle tissue and muscle is heavier than other kinds of flesh.   And you'll need to remove those with low BMIs too - who has a lower BMI than cancer and AIDS patients, concentration camp inmates, and those on their death beds?   The general concept is health is determined by the ratio of weight to height and nothing more.   That's clearly a fallacy.   But the skinny New Yorker journalists want you to know, in case you didn't hear them the first time, that their lifestyle is good and righteous.

The notion being spread by the journalists is skinny is good, New York makes you skinny so New York is good.   It isn't so much New York as it is densely packed, "pedestrian friendly" urban areas which are really good.   It's all those sprawling suburbs which are the root of all evil and unhealthiness in the world today.   Suburbs are fat, fat, fat!

Yet if you travel to the most densely packed cities across the country, you will not find many people walking even in the "pedestrian friendly areas."   I remember my days as a harried New York commuter who traveled to several other cities on business.   In particular I remember a fairly warm day in January in Minneapolis.   We needed to go do due diligence on an acquisition target about 15 blocks from the hotel.   I noted the temperature was above freezing so we left the overcoats in our rooms.   We asked the doorman to point us in the right direction but he refused to let us walk such a long distance, especially without coats.   He demanded to call a cab.   We told him to go ahead and call one but we would walk behind it!   I think he thought about calling the cops on us for being out of our minds.   It was a nice little walk especially since there was nobody on the sidewalks along the way.   I have had basically the same experiences in Washington, Dallas, Los Angeles, Columbus, and other densely populated places.   Nobody walks like New Yorkers - well maybe they do in Chicago and a few other places.

Also, I'm not convinced those who live in pedestrian friendly places in Manhattan actually do walk a lot.   I've visited quite a few acquaintances who reside in the very areas this study examines.   Typically we have to fight in order to not just take the subway or a cab.   New Yorkers are comfortable with mass transit but they just don't seem to enjoy walking around the city as much as those from the outlying suburbs do.   Maybe the locals don't like to walk because they encounter so many out-of-towners when they walk around.   In any event, my experience is you have to threaten the lives of locals just to get them to walk around with you rather than taking mass transit.

But the media would have us believe that living in New York City is the best way to optimize your life!   So give up your 3,000 square foot McMansion and move to Manhattan.   Of course, most of us wouldn't be able to afford food if we paid the prevailing rents charged in the "City that never sleeps."

Labels: junk science, urban dwelling

Reuters dutifully reports scientists are baffled by "the rare death of 17 loons in New Hampshire, saying warm weather may have confused the threatened species of bird which typically heads to the ocean for winter."   Scientists found five birds who were still alive and transported them to the ocean where they would normally have been expected to migrate during the winter.

I think it fair to say that biologists are universally well versed in the theory of evolution.   The core of that theory tells us that in the wild, just about anything can happen.   Those individual organisms which have qualities uniquely suited for survival will, of course, survive, while those less well suited will perish, thereby making the species stronger.   That's natural selection.   Without the working of natural selection, species would become ill-suited to survive the difficulties which are routinely encountered.   Predators help cull out bad genes by taking the weak, the sick, the ill-adapted for supper.   That's what makes elk fast, lions live in prides, etc., etc.   There is no reason short of hubris which should cause a scientist to interfere with the very world he or she is observing.

What we have here is a tragic chain of events.   Man wonders at God's creation.   Man studies and learns gradually becoming quite knowledgeable.   Man thinks highly of himself and kills God as unnecessary.   Man fears his kind is causing damage to Nature.   Guilt causes action and Man does real damage to Nature.   Man dilutes Loons' gene pool by preserving the lives of animals which would otherwise be culled out by natural selection.   It is nothing short of lunacy.

Labels: environment, evolution, scientific hubris

BadEagle.com is the website of David Yeagley, who bills himself as an "American Indian Patriot"...

Bad Eagle.com is the first website for American Indian Patriots, and the only voice of conservative American Indian thought. Dr. David A. Yeagley, direct descendent of the Comanche warrior Bad Eagle (1839-1906), is the first conservative American Indian in the American media. Through Bad Eagle.com all conservative Indians are invited to join their voices in honor of Indian warriors in the cause of American Patriotism

He posts most of his writings on his website's forum. He has some intriguing thoughts, from the perspective of an American Indian, who sees liberals trying to indoctrinate his people into a class of secondary citizens, for the purpose of vilifying conservative whites.

http://www.badeagle.com

Labels: Native Americans, Websites

Australia is taking a very small step - perhaps a backward step.   They are making the old fashioned light bulb a thing of the past!   The AP reports that the government is mandating the use of compact fluorescent lightbulbs and making incandescent bulbs illegal.   This expensive step will result in a savings of 4 million tons of "greenhouse gases" by 2012.   Isn't that just dandy?   The article I saw did not say it would reduce the country's emissions by 4 million tons annually but that must have been what they meant.   Right now Australia emits 565 million tons each year.   That means switching to these new, modern bulbs will reduce emissions by a whopping .7%!   Environmentalists "noted than the vast bulk of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions come from industry, such as coal-fired power stations."   And the AP points out that Australia has a "coal-dependent economy."   So basically this is just a political stunt to placate the voters who might be worried about global warming.   Of course, there were no announcements concerning how disposal of these mercury-containing bulbs will be disposed of.   Pundits are quick to point out that the amount of mercury is a "trace amount."   But when you're talking about more than 100 million lightbulbs, perhaps a trace amount can be problematic.   While we may not be absolutely sure carbon dioxide is causing global warming, we are positive that a 1% reduction in emissions won't make a difference AND even trace amounts of mercury dumped into the environment will poison the food chain.

Labels: global warming

I just read the article about yesterday's hijacking of an Air Mauritania flight.   It's a remarkable story of how the pilot was "in cahoots" with the passengers who managed to overpower the man despite his two guns.   The AP article takes great pains to tell us this man was not motivated by extremist Muslim terorism plans.   They go so far as to quote one apparently Muslim passenger who was trembling "during and after the hijacking."   Then they give us the hijacker's name, "Mohamed Abderraman."   Enough said?

Labels: PC, terrorism

In many ways the work being conducted by the UN's IPCC is similar to that performed by financial statement auditors.   The reports are much more in depth than public financial statements but they are in essence a full financial (numerical) disclosure of the earth's climate balance sheet, income statement and resource flow.   These statements are very late in arriving.   And instead of the full report, we are receiving it piecemeal.   And the auditors are ignoring subsequent events!

Roger A. Pielke, Sr. is a meteorologist who spends a good deal of his time working with climate issues and writing about them.   His Blog, Climate Science is highly critical of the works published by the IPCC.   Yet Pielke is no global climate change skeptic.   He says, "the evidence of a human fingerprint on the global and regional climate is incontrovertible as clearly illustrated in the National Research Council report and in our research papers."   Pielke is a member of the "consensus" of scientists ringing the global warming alarm bells.

Recently Pielke pointed out numerous errors in the recently released IPCC 2007 IPCC Statement For Policymakers including the fact that there seems to be significant cherry picking of data going on.   Also, the modeling on which the IPCC's conclusions rely have been successful at predicting precious little.   We are receiving a biased report of management.   Their financial statements do not tell the whole story - the financial statements are misleading because they select only the data which supports managements conclusions.   These financial statements are also very poor at predicting future performance.   Pielke is very specific in his criticisms, pointing out exactly where models' have failed and likely causes for the failures.   His criticisms are not self-serving but rather constructive ones which point the way towards better diagnostic tools, better financial statements, better science.

Pielke's blog today shows that more recently collected data, subsequent events if you will, running contrary to the report, are completely ignored by the folks writing the IPCC's report.   The only rebuttals so far appear to be ones which state the report's preparation predates the new data.   That rebuttal is disingenuous at best.

When auditing a company's books, accountants create a plan which covers the period of their examination.   As the period comes to a close, they engage in a search to discover anything detrimental which might have occurred since the date for the financial disclosures right up to and including the end date of the exam.   This search continues right up to the point at which the financials are published and printed.   If anything occurs, it must be disclosed either within the financials themselves or in the discussion which accompanies them.   If auditors discover something potentially damaging to the validity of the report or the company's prospects and fail to disclose it, that is considered malpractice.   Auditors are anal about disclosing too much.   They may change a report right at the printing office.   Errors of omission are the greatest sin they can commit.

The reason auditors act in this fashion is they are sworn to uphold standards of professional conduct which include a duty to protect the public.   I won't engage in a discussion of where auditors have failed in performing this duty in the past.   That's merely anecdotal.   The fact remains auditors on the whole do a pretty reasonable job of protecting the public.   The overwhelming number of financial reports are accurate and tell the full story.   And thank goodness for that since so many small investors would be hurt if they didn't.   That is the whole purpose behind auditors acknowledging a duty to more than the client - the public needs to be protected.   And they make sure that anything which comes to their attention is shared even when it's impact is uncertain.

Yet in the realm of anthropogenic greenhouse warming, which holds the potential to hurt more people financially than all the financial reports in the world, there is a missing standard of professional duty to the public.   Whole data sets are ignored when they point in a direction contrary to the central theme.   Subsequent events are ignored and the ignorance is defended by claiming a particular date for production of the report.   This is a serious failure of the system which needs to be repaired if the integrity of the IPCC's work is to be maintained.

Labels: environment, global warming

One journalist proponent of the candidacy of Barack Obama wrote in the Lexington Herald-Leader, "I know the roaches are scrambling now to find something in Obama's background that could be his downfall.   I expect that."   But do we really have to go into Obama's past to find reasons not to vote for him?   Do we even have to look more than a month ago?   I do not.

Obama recently declared that if you look like a black man in America, you are treated like a black man.   That's probably true enough.   But what's the particular treatment he is referring to.   Is that affirmative action?   Does that mean the federal government will come to you to ask whether they can pay for your college?   Does that mean employers will open their doors for you and make sure you get promoted simply because you are black whether you are the least productive employee they have ever seen before?   What is this racist chip on Barack's shoulder?

I once hired a gal who happened to be black for my shop.   I hired her not by recruiting for a position via the usual methods like talking to head hunters or placing ads in the paper.   We had an opening.   I knew her, liked her, and respected her intellect.   Some of my supervisors didn't care for her during the interview process.   I said, "look, I know this woman, she's exactly what I need in this department, I don;t want to ignore your opinions but you're wrong, I want to hire her and I'm going to hire her."   I made sure she got promoted and received good raises early on because she was smart, hard working, and a huge asset to me.   Then things got a little slow in our company and certain administrative functions started getting less money.   We cut staff and things got harder on those who remained.   This gal got lower pay raises than she was accustomed to and started to get anxious.   We all got lower or no raises but for some reason, she began to think it had something to do with her race.   She joined some group which held weekly discussions about how black people were held down on the job.   Her performance dropped off.   It got so bad that I would give her a research project that should take 4 hours and she would spend three to four times that amoutn and then produce a substandard work product.   Then one day she handed me research and I had to reperform the entire project because what she handed me was not only a piece of crap, it resulted in precisely the wrong answer.   Then it happened again and again.   It got so that it took me less time to do her job, without taking the time to explain it, that I stopped giving her good work and began handing her pure drudgery.   Then I gave her a bad evaluation and she reacted to it by claiming it had something to do with race.   Something to do with race?   I hired her into the position by short-circuiting the process.   I was her biggest advocate.   Now she was calling me a racist!   When she started, I gave her choice work and advanced her career because I liked her, trusted her, needed her.   Was I racist then?   What exactly changed?   This is the problem with keeping a chip on your shoulder.   But back to Barack Obama.

When asked whether he might be the victim of an assassination attempt because he is a black candidate, his wife said on 60 Minutes, as a black man, Barack can be shot on his way to the gas station.   Really?   Just how many black men were shot last year on their way to gas stations?   Were there any?   I doubt it.   And if there was even one, was he a guy who travels with an entourage who lives in some wealthy neighborhood?

Let's be honest here.   A white man walking in an exclusively black neighborhood is just as likely to be shot as a black man walking through an exclusively white one.   Yet this woman, Barack's wife, walks around in life with this racist chip on her shoulder.   There's something disturbing about that.

You might write this comment off as the rhetoric of the wife of a politician who just can't wait to get her hands on the order form for Whitehouse curtains but is this how she defines blackness in America?   Black folk fear for their lives every waking moment?   Give me a break!

That's just his wife.   Barack himself recently said about his self-documented drug abuse during youth that it resulted from being black.   That didn't cause too much of a stir.   Liberals probably mumbled something to themselves like "oh yea, that's probably why."   What pure unadulterated rubbish.

Drug abuse during Obama's youth can hardly be said to have been more prevalent in the black community.   Everybody was "experimenting" regardless of race, creed, gender or hair color."   And Barack didn't grow up in a black community - he grew up in the lilly white home of his lilly white mother's family.   So if he was exposed to drug abuse, it must have been because he was in a white neighborhood!   Or maybe it was because he was the token black kid in a predominantly white area.   But I doubt it.

Growing up in my lilly white neighborhood, at about the same time as Barack grew up in his, I knew few kids who didn't horse around with substances every once in a while.   In my group of pot smoking dudes, there was one black kid.   He was adopted by some white couple.   And there was a native American kid too who was also adopted.   These kids all smoked pot and experimented with other things.   So did I.  p As we grew older we sometimes wondered what made us try these things.   I suppose it was all the usual reasons but none of them had anything to do with race.   The black kid didn't use drugs so much because of his race as he did because he struggled with feelings of having been abandoned by his birth parents.   The same was true of the native American kid.   I did have one friend in that lilly white neighborhood who never even tried drugs.   He was one of the "token" black kids.

The trouble yet again, however, is this comment by Barack shows that the annointed one walks around with a racist chip on his shoulder.   He blames a youthful mistake, if you will, on half of his heritage, the half which shows in the color of his skin.   How ridiculous is that.   How superficial is that?   I don't much care what else I can say about Barack Obama right now - I don't agree with any political statement he makes.   I just cannot vote for somebody who is apparently so utterly convinced that every difficulty he encounters, every mistake he might make has to do with race or skin color.   I cannot vote for somebody whose wife thinks he is more likely to be assassinated because he is one of millions of black men than because he is one of the few presidential candidates.   If he and his wife think bad things happen to black people because of their skin color, his actions will be colored by that.   His whole being is pervaded by this black, racist insecurity.

This country needs to put racism in the past.   One way that can happen is if we all stop talking about it, blaming it for ordinary problems and generally making mountains out of mole hills.   We police the use of the "N" word as if we are some gestapo force looking out for people wearing the letter "J" on their clothing.   Yet we permit such obviously racist comments like Barack and his wife recently made to pass without even questioning them.   These words and, more importantly, the thinking behind them, perpetuate racism.   Until we get past these ways of thinking and speaking, there is no hope of stamping out racism completely.

We don't have to look into Barack's past to see what will undo his candidacy.   Almost every time he opens his mouth, something problematic, even offensive, rolls off his tongue.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, racism

The media is crucifying ex-NBA star, Tim Hardaway.   As the world got word of one former NBA player's sexuality - John Amaechi became the first active or former NBA player to publicly acknowledge he was gay, Hardaway was interviewed about his career with the Miami Heat.   But the broadcaster just had to ask Hardaway about his opinions of gay people and Hardaway answered the questions honestly.   He said:

Well, you know, I hate gay people.   I let it be known, I don't like gay people.   I don't like to be around gay people.   Yeah, I'm homophobic.   I don't like it.   It shouldn't be in the world for that or in the United States for that.   So, yeah, I don't like it."

OK, so the guy said stuff which didn't fit the current PC sensibilities.   SO WHAT?   He was asked a question and answered it honestly.   Is it better to be dishonest than it is to dislike gay people?   We have a serious problem in this country with people trampling on the rights of others and ignoring any commonly accepted sense of decency and goodness because in the moment it doesn't suit them.   They reap personal gain from being dishonest and just doing whatever they please.   We accept that provided they don't speak their honestly held opinions like "I don't like gay people."

Say something like that and look out, even if the rest of your life as been exemplary.   Admit that you honestly despise gay people and everyone acts like you trampled to death the new puppy of a child cancer victim.   We have lost all perspective.

For God's sake, the man is a basketball player.   His fame comes from an unusual ability to dribble a ball, shoot it through a metal ring with strings around it, several other fundamental basketball skills, and not much else.   Does being a good athlete now require one to be perfectly PC?   To be completely dishonest?

There is something seriously wrong with American society.

Labels: homophobia, homosexual, Sports figures

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy says morale is low in the federal judiciary because they don't make enough money!   He claims this threatens to "undermine judicial independence."   he sites rates of pay in the private sector including law firms and academia.   Kennedy said "I'm losing my best judges" including U.S. District Judge David Levi, who is leaving to become dean of Duke University's law school.

The low pay Kennedy is concerned with includes: Federal district court judges $165,200; Appeals court judges $175,100; and Supreme Court justices $203,000.   Now I'm no fool and do realize that partners in private practice can make a whole lot more than these figures.   But they also have to drum up business, handle the ugly inter-personal stuff, be accessible to the client, and work sometimes monstrous hours.   Judges don't have to do that.   They have what could be described as a condition akin to retirement when compared to what life in the private sector is like.

An attorney's CHOICE to become a judge involves a choice about a number of things like desired career path.   One doesn't become a judge to become wealthy.   One becomes a judge for a host of other reasons.   The same is true of academics. &nbs-p; You don't agree to become the Dean of Duke Law because it pays more than your current job.   You do it for the challenge, for the prestige, for any number of reasons having nothing to do with the amount of your take-home wages.

And how much of a raise are we going to these guys?   is it really going to make a dent in the gap between judge, working 10 - 4 and earning a couple hundred thousand, and a star litigator, living at the office and pulling down a couple million?

The very notion is absurd.

And this is one of the select couple of people who we consider to be wisemen in this country!

Labels: Judiciary, Supreme Court

Before we even get to the issue of whether or not any actual global warming is due to human influences, we just might want to question the accuracy of news reporting which informs us that not only is it real, its effects are here already!   I cannot possibly count the times I have heard someone, news reporter, politician, liberal friends, etc., utter the words that all the world's glaciers are melting.   But how do we know it's true?   Can you see any glaciers from your back door?   Have you visited any recently?   Did you take measurements?   No, of course not, that's ridiculous.   We know the glaciers are retreating because scientists tell us they are.   They are telling us that, aren't they?   Well, maybe and maybe not.   Today there is a news article in an Indian online newspaper which castes some doubt on the subject.   It is entitled, "Experts question theory on global warming."

One of the more interesting factoids I found in this piece was "There are only about a dozen scientists working on 9,575 glaciers in India under the aegis of the Geological Society of India."   9,575 glaciers in India, alone?   That's a lot.   It caused me to wonder how many there are worldwide.   the quick and dirty (unverified) number I found on the web was about 160,000.   Now I'm no rocket (uh ice) scientist but 160,000 glaciers is a big number.   I mean to say not every slab of ise or snow is a "glacier."   Answers.com defines "glacier" as "a huge mass of ice slowly flowing over a land mass, formed from compacted snow in an area where snow accumulation exceeds melting and sublimation."   Any ice sheet called a "glacier" is big.   Britannica says, "Glaciers occupy about 11% of the Earth's land surface but hold roughly three-fourths of its fresh water; 99% of glacier ice lies in Antarctica and Greenland."   So, I conclude the 160,000 glaciers covering 11% of the Earth's land mass comprise a lot of frozen water.   If 100% of these glaciers are melting quickly, we are certainly in trouble since there will be a lot of flooding.

But go back to this article and you'll see that as far as the official tally of people checking glaciers goes, each of the Indian scientists involved in such study has almost one thousand glaciers to measure.   That's 3 a day!   And they ain't exactly all located in places that are easy to reach.   That's what satellites are for, isn't it?   Well, according to at least one scientist, you really need to be on the ground to conduct thorough glacial research.   he noted "Nobody knows what is happening beneath the glaciers.   What ever is being flaunted about the under surface activity of the glaciers, is merely presumptions."   Indian scientists also say, "recent studies in the Gangotri and Zanskar areas (Drung- Drung, Kagriz glaciers) have not shown any evidence of major retreat."

I week or so I heard someone call into a conservative talk radio show and challenge the host to name one glacier that is not retreating substantially.   The host could not name one since he didn't know the name of a single glacier.   Can you name any without looking them up somewhere?   I challenge anyone to name 1% of all the known / named glaciers - that's about 1,600 names you need to know!   There are certainly people who can rise to that challenge, but I'm not allowing time to memorize them.   My challenge is to see if anyone knows the names of 1% of glaciers right off the top of their head.   Of course nobody can do that.   Not even a glacier scientist can handle that job without use of his personal laptop.   It is an absurd question to challenge a global warming skeptic to name just one glacier which is not melting - perhaps which is growing.   Obviously, even if the global average temperature increased 10 degrees, some glaciers would be growing, perhaps hundreds or more of them would be.

But the global temperature has not warmed nearly that much.   It remains a difficult issue to know precisely how much the globe has warmed since it is next to impossible to filter out the effects of the urban heat island phenomenon - it is always warmer around where people live, you know, where all the thermometers are located.   And there has been no concerted effort to record temperatures in every place on Earth.   In fact, nobody has yet devised a plan for obtaining a reasonable record of the current "global temperature."   Throwing that aside, nobody claims the globe has warmed more than 1 degree Celsius over the past hundred years, a time period during which some glaciers have grown and some shrunk.   There really isn't much scientific debate that some glaciers are still growing while some are shrinking.   I question what percentage of the 160,000 are actually studied thoroughly - there aren't enough scientists worldwide for the job, let alone in places where the glaciers are located.   I question the misinformed questioners who constantly call into the conservative media outlets to raise this question.   All you liberal AGW alarmists calling into talk shows must be prepared to answer this quiz:

1) How many glaciers are there worldwide?
2) Are the Indian glaciers retreating, growing, or remaining about the same?   How many are A) retreating, B) growing, or C) remaining about the same?   Give me rough percentages if you can't remember the exact count.
3) How do you happen to know the answer to number 2?
4) Give me the names of 1% of the glaciers located in India - that's 96 names.   OK, then name 9 of them.
5) Name one of these glaciers which every scientist studying glaciers in India agrees is shrinking.

Sorry, but those answers were unacceptable.   You get an "F" on my quiz.   "F" stands for failure.   You have failed to demonstrate even a cursory knowledge of the subject about which you spout off like you know something.   So, please shut the heck up.   Your time would be better spent reading.

Labels: environment, glaciers, global warming

The last I checked, Congress was the co-equal legislative branch of the federal government.   They have two peers, the executive and judicial branches.   they are co-equal via a seperation of powers.   Did I fall asleep and miss the vote on a constitutional amendment giving Congress plenary powers over all executive matters?   Pardon me but I thought that was a different form of government.

Congress has gotten upset over hirings and firings of US Attorneys like John McKay.   They'd like to reign in Bush's supposed propensity to fill slots previously held by "effective, well-regarded and capable" attorneys with "political appointees."   Even judges question McKay's firing.   But last I looked, federal prosecutors are part of neither the legislative nor judicial branches.   last I checked they were part of the executive branch.   Last I checked this position was not a union job with restrictions over hiring and firing.   Still democrats feel it is within the legislative branch's authority to question every action made by Republican Presidents and attempt to take control over executive functions through whatever means possible.

Maybe some of these privileged limousine liberals should have spent more time studying the US Constitution instead of travelling in Europe during their formative years.   The European governmental systems, though basically modelled after the US system which predates them, are different.   We don;t vest excessive powers in a parliament here.   And until the Constitution is changed, we never will.

You may want to check this anti-AGW-hysteria propaganda: "Chicken Little and global warming."   But I'll warn you in advance that it is published by that noted conservative think-tank propaganda machine, funded by big oil, which promotes anti-intellectualism, the Boston Globe.

I know I posted what seemed like a pro-Edwards piece a couple weeks ago.   But I have a confession to make.   I'm not really for him either as the best Democrat candidate or as