Here is a video of Arnold Schwarzenegger giving advice to Mexicans...



Let the mainstream media gloss over this and hope no one else sees it.

Labels: Arnold Schwarzenegger, illegal aliens, immigration

The Equal Employment Opportunity Council is suing The Salvation Army for "emotional pain, humiliation and embarrassment", because of it's English-only policy...

It all started in a thrift store in Framingham, Massachusetts. Two Hispanic employees were given one year to learn English in order to speak the language of the country in which they live and the language spoken by other employees. They failed to do so; in turn the employees were fired. The EEOC filed a lawsuit against the Salvation Army claiming the employees had suffered "emotional pain, humiliation and embarrassment" as a result of the English-only policy.

Read the whole article here, if you must...
http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/pweyrich/2007/pmw_04251.shtml

Labels: English-Only, Salvation Army

Here is a report about polygamous lesbians in Nigeria...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6599437.stm

This reminds me of the old adage, "give them an inch and they'll try to take a mile".

Gays are slowly winning legislation in the states for inclusion in marriage laws. Next thing you know, they'll want laws legitimizing polygamy.

Because what could be better than two guys getting it on, except for six guys getting it on!

Labels: Gay Marriage, homosexual, Polygamy

I'm still wondering if this is a joke, or an example of how retarded millionaire entertainers are.

"I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting."

Crow has suggested using "only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required".

Read the full article from the BBC...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6583067.stm

I guess SOMEONE has to take a stand on toilet paper abuse.

So now we're going to have "pottie police" monitoring sewage leaving our homes. If they detect gobs of paper flowing out of a home, they'll send us a bill for renewable energy credits.

Labels: global warming, Sheryl Crow, Strange News

Here's an e-mail that is making the rounds.   It expresses my sentiments as I watch the Democrats try to politicize the war.   This is one important reason I've posted so little lately .. I've lost faith in my fellow Americans.   I feel as if we are beyond redemption.   Every time I hear Nancy Pelosi or Harry reid say something on the news, it makes me sick to be an American.   And the news guys make sure we hear everything Pelosi, Reid, Obama, Clinton or Gore have to say.   It's as if they are completely convinced that these people are always right.   Lately, no broadcast has failed to mention Bush's speah on the ship where the sign read "Mission Accomplished" as if that proves he is always wrong and bordering on evil.   I'm sick of it.   And until I hear that people who do not believe this crap are willing to come out and say so, my posting will be drastically reduced.   This e-mail at least me feel like that is a possibility.   So, here it is:

Last week, while traveling to Chicago on business, I noticed a Marine sergeant traveling with a folded flag, but did not put two and two together.   After we boarded our flight, I turned to the sergeant, who'd been invited to sit in First Class (across from me), and inquired if he was heading home.

No, he responded.

Heading out I asked?

No.   I'm escorting a soldier home.

Going to pick him up?

No.   He is with me right now.   He was killed in Iraq.   I'm taking him home to his family.

The realization of what he had been asked to do hit me like a punch to the gut.   It was an honor for him.   He told me that, although he didn't know the soldier, he had delivered the news of his passing to the soldier's family and felt as if he knew them after many conversations in so few days.   I turned back to him, extended my hand, and said, "Thank you.   Thank you for doing what you do so my family and I can do what we do."

Upon landing in Chicago the pilot stopped short of the gate and made the following announcement over the intercom.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to note that we have had the honor of having Sergeant Steeley of the United States Marine Corps join us on this flight.   He is escorting a fallen comrade back home to his family.   I ask that you please remain in your seats when we open the forward door to allow Sergeant Steeley to deplane and receive his fellow soldier.   We will then turn off the seat belt sign."

Without a sound, all went as requested.   I noticed the sergeant saluting the casket as it was brought off the plane, and his action made me realize that I am proud to be an American.

So here's a public Thank You to our military Men and Women for what you do so we can live the way we do.

Red Fridays.

Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing Red every Friday.   The reason?   Americans who support our troops used to be called the "silent majority."   We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love for God, country and home in record breaking numbers.   We are not organized, boisterous or overbearing.

Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops.   Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday -- and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that ... every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear something red.

By word of mouth, press, TV -- let's make the United States on every Friday a sea of red much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers.   If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and family, it will not be long before the USA is covered in RED and it will let our troops know the once "silent" majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on.

The first thing a soldier says when asked "What can we do to make things better for you?" is .. "We need your support and your prayers."   Let's get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example, and wear something red every Friday.

I know we all have red in our wardrobes.....it's a great idea, pass it on
if you like.

Labels: iraq

Before Al Gore became a full-fledged minister in the church of environmentalism, he had that other Truth monoplizing his discourse.   "I'm going to put a lockbox on Social Security," he said.   Of course that was a foolish statement but it was effective in terms of persuading millions of senior citizens to vote for him.   The media didn't question it and they still haven't.   Unfortunately the day of reckoning, about which there is a real consensus, is approaching rapidly.   Whereas there is plenty of disagreement about just how high the seas will be in 2050, there is little doubt that the SS system will be broken by then.   We can only hope that Gore's current dialogue on global warming faces more scrutiny than the lockbox comment.

The very notion of a lockbox on Social Security is an example of an unsustainable act.   If you really put a lockbox on this entitlement, beneficiaries would receive $100 a month - payback for what they put in plus the meager earnings yielded by fixed interest federal debt investments.   Nobody who receives benefits today just gets back what they put in.   It is a wealth redistribution system.

Social Security is a joke when compared to what it was supposed to be back in the days of the "New Deal" when it was invented.   It was supposed to be a way to deal with the poverty rate for seniors and keep that below 50%.   Today many well-healed retirees collect the entitlement.   In practice, it isn't so much a retirement plan as it is welfare for the elderly and a little extra cash for those who don't need it.   A retired worker does not get back the money they paid into the system.   They get a payout from current workers.   And as healthcare continues to extend life expectancy, a greater and greater burden falls upon those currently employed.   It just isn't sustainable unless we drastically injcrease the working age population and hold the average age of death where it is or peel it back a few years.   That's not going to happen.   The system is going to crash.   It is a mathematical certainty.   The same can't be said for global warming.

At this point I should probably drop the term "global warming" because what we are really interested in is "climate change," isn't it?   Global warming is too simple of a way of describing the phenomenon Gore is talking about.   His concerns aren't limited to the planet just being hotter.   His biggest concern is that the thermohaline circulation will be stopped dead in its tracks causing all sorts of apocalyptic weather scenarios.   of course, we don't know the entire picture for the thermohaline circulation but that doesn't stop Gore from talking about it as if he knows exactly what makes it tick.   He's pretty sure it is going to happen unless everyone immediately trades their incandescent light bulbs for CFLs, swaps SUVs for hybrids, and buys into "carbon offsets" like those offered by the company he runs.

Gore is hardly the only opportunist working the climate change beat.   Even self-described conservatives use it for photo op.s.   Obviously self-appointed US diplomat Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi has made it a centerpiece of her platform.   So has fellow Californian Barbara Boxer and a litany of other liberals.   But even John McCain takes the opportunity to stand on it.   He wasn't about to be upstaged when several other Senators went to Alaska to check out the effects of global warming which apparently were not only real but occurring already.   These members of Congress stood in mud for pictures next to homes sinking into the defrosting tundra and declared they were going to do something about it.   Where are they today when parts of Alaska have other concerns?

The Kodiak Daily Mirror published a story Wednesday regarding something Alaskans are really worried about.   They are concerned about the lox they provide to the people in the lower 48 as well as many other places on Earth.   They believe they have identified a trend which may cause their salmon harvest to drop significantly.   The trouble was this past year's record low termperatures.   It seems some of the most important salmon species are not very "evolved" and do not take care to put their eggs in a safe place.   "This past winter and early spring has been one of the colder on record" and as a result, many pink salmon eggs froze beyond their ability to survive.   Fishery managers believe this is going to result in a drastically reduced fishery in 2008.   Their concern is not limited to the frigid temperatures, "similar to some of those very cold winters we had in the '70s."   Aggitionally, fishery folks are worried about the overall lower temperature of the water which slows fish development.   Fish being cold blooded have slower metabolism when temperatures are lower.

I'm not sure how we can reconcile the reported freezing cold winter of Alaskan fisheries with the collapsing homes in the melting permafrost.   The climate in Alaska is, I suppose, quite variable.   But one thing is for sure, the lox Al Gore serves is going to cost a lot more in 2008, leaving him far less money for carbon offset investments and perhaps pricing the delicacy too high to be afforded by those reaping the benefits of a Social Security lockbox.

Labels: environmentalism, global warming

The news, the blogs and the forums today are abuzz with questions on why the system failed the college students at Virginia Tech.

While the concensus is that the killer, Cho Seung-Hui, purchased the gun legally, and satisfied the background checks, the problem is that Special Justice Paul M. Barnett should have earlier sent him to a psychiatric hospital, while reviewing a prior case of his stalking two women.

So there you have it, the system failed.

Or did it?

While we can jump all over the judge's back for not being tough enough on Cho, the fact of the matter is that we all have 20/20 vision in hindsight. All he had done was follow a couple of women around and take photos of them with his cell phone. That didn't suggest he was going to kill 30+ people later on.

Others noted that Cho had written letters describing acts of violence that he wanted to carry out. But Cho isn't the only one who has expressed a desire to kill someone. We often talk about killing somebody when we really don't mean it. How does a judge know that in the back of Cho's mind, he would eventually carry that out?

What I'm saying is that in this country, we allow these crimes to happen in exchange for a greater degree of freedom. We know that human beings make mistakes, and for that reason, the systems we put in place will fail. We have good days and bad days, and on a bad day, we might not evaluate all the data.

When the shootings at Columbine High School took place, people asked why this wasn't prevented. People asked why schools didn't check for guns. People asked why this country even allows people to own guns. We implemented new processes and procedures, and yet the tragedy repeated itself at Virginia Tech.

The bottom line is that Cho himself is to blame for the killings. Not a judge, not our right to bear arms.

We didnt fail Virginia Tech.

We live in a society that wants the higher degree of freedom, knowing that such lunatics are free to exist. We understand that human beings are not perfect and can miss details or have bad days. We accept a limited system of checks and balances because we don't accept bottlenecks and extremely long delays. We allow freaks like Cho to exist, because in our country ALL men are innocent until proven guilty.

If you want to prevent another Cho, create more rules, create more checks and balances, throw more people into the process. Make it even harder to obtain guns. While you're at it, raise the taxes some more to pay for it all. Then wait for the next school shooting to happen, and start the blame game hokey pokey all over again.

Labels: Gun Control, Virginia Tech Shootings

Reuters reports today that a scientific study concludes "Global warming may spur wind shear, sap hurricanes."   What's wrong with our understanding of "global warming" is we don't have any.   At this point, we don't have any real idea if the globe is actually warming up because we don't have sufficient measuring devices nor a mathematically sound method for determining an "average."   If we are sure the globe is warming, we have no idea what might be the cause because it is a system which is far too complex for our puny methods to determine.   Heck, we do not have a real understanding of the object which accounts for all the planet's heat, the Sun.   Some say we have an understanding but it is mostly the understanding of an infant.   If we are convinced the Earth is warming and the Sun is not a factor, we have no real understanding of what the cause is because not only do we not have our arms around the effects of other factors, we don't even know what all the factors are.   If we did know all the factors, we still couldn't say with any level of confidence because our computer models are far too simple to account for the complexity of a chaotic system.   We've never yet been able to model a single chaotic system to sufficient degree to make valid predictions about its behavior.   If we could predict future behavior, we still would be mostly in the dark because we cannot even identify all the possible effects of a change to a chaotic system.   That's why we label them chaotic systems!   Last year, the "scientific consensus," at least the one reported by the media and the one promoted by Al Gore, suggested that one of the ways in which we would suffer from global warming was via intense hurricanes.   This year, at least today, we're pretty much convinced that global warming will reduce the intensity and frequency of hurricanes.   My question to anyone and everyone is, why would we act upon so little real knowledge about a phenomenon we don't have a pre-schooler's understanding of?   What ever happened to the wisdom that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing?

If you think we really do know a thing or two about carbon in the atmosphere, read this little piece: "Carbon cycle modelling and the residence time of natural and anthropogenic atmospheric CO2: on the construction of the 'Greenhouse Effect Global Warming' dogma."

Labels: environment, global warming

Conservatives are quick to claim liberals live by a double standard.   Al Gore consumed huge amounts of fossil fuels and spewed tons and tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere while travelling the world to urge conservation of the environment and eventual elimination of fossil fuel usage in order to avoid turning up the global thermostat.   Wealthy liberals like John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and many others suggest we should each have a little less living space.   Of course, they mean us, not them.   They'd like to hold onto their mansions just like the Russian Communist leaders did.   Bill Clinton would like everyone to practice affirmative action, everyone except himself.   He wants you to hire minorities so he doesn't have to, as evidenced not only by his lilly-white, mostly all male choices for closest advisors, but also by most of his important appointments.   The Democrat party itself would have liked you to vote for Gore over Bush mostly because Gore had so much more experience than that unaccomplished Bush dude.   Yet they'd like you to believe Barack Obama's almost complete lack of experience will yield a newer, fresher point of view!

Today my newspaper says Jon Corzine was not wearing a seatbelt when he was seriously injured in a car crash.   It also says his limousine was travelling at 91 miles per hour in a 65 zone seconds before the crash.   The governor's car is allowed to break the speed limit for emergencies.   It remains unclear what sort of emergency was involved in this situation since Corzine was on his way to meet with Imus and the Rutgers Woemn's basketball team.   Perhaps he had one of those emergencies - the kind that can only be solved at a "rest" area.

The founder of a group which advocates seatbelt laws wasn't sure whether the seatbelt would have helped Corzine.   She said, "Seat belts are not designed to protect us in crashes at very high speeds."   That may be but two other passengers in the car were wearing their seatbelts and received only minor injuries.   It is difficult, perhaps disingenuous to even suggest that Corzine wouldn't have been in better condition following the crash had he been wearing the state mandated seatbelt.   But the Governor doesn't like to wear belts.   They're uncomfortable.   He just wants you to wear belts because "they save lives."   Corzine has been a huge advocate of requiring everyone to wear the uncomfortable safety devices.   He tried to get a law passed in 2001 for a federal mandate requiring everyone under age 16 to wear seat belts.   I'm surprised he didn't make it everyone younger than himself!

Finally, here's the twisted logic that liberals use when they are caught disobeying their own ideas about how everyone else should behave.   An Automobile Club of America spokesman suggested that, after his near fatal crash, Corzine "could be the poster child to make people listen, to show that traffic crashes and the injuries you get in them if you're not wearing your seat belt can hit anyone."   Yes, Bill Clinton should be the spokesman for an anti-adultery initiative.

The mantra for liberal politicians everywhere is "do as I say, not as I do."   The attitude is "I am smarter than you.   I know how you should behave so I'm going to pass laws restricting your behavior.   I'm also going to make the penalties rather strict so I can protect you from yourself.   But I'm not going to take my own advice because, well, I'm better than you."

Labels: Liberalism

Those jokers at Fox don't give you the hard news.   if you want that, you've got to go to the real news organizations like CBS.   Now there's an unbiased, completely factual network!   So, is CBS promoting medical quackery?   Judge for yourself:

CBS promotes author advocating dangerous therapies and medical lies"

Labels: hard news

More proof that Afghanistan has a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the world...

KABUL (Reuters) - rumors swept through Afghanistan on Monday that a deadly virus was being spread by mobile telephone calls, and government officials scrambled to reassure the public the talk was rubbish.

Many worried Afghan mobile phone users called family and friends, warning them not to answer calls from strange numbers. Some people said they had heard that several people had been killed by the mystery virus in Kabul at the weekend.

"Don't answer any strange number because it contains a virus that will kill you," said Ahmad Fawad, a shop owner in Kabul.

The rumors appear to have spread from neighboring Pakistan where last week a similar scare frightened countless mobile phone users.

Officials from the Afghan interior, communications and health ministries appeared on television and said the talk was baseless.

Labels: Afghanistan, Strange News

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney posted a question on Yahoo Answers asking members what they think can be done to simplify the tax code in such a way as to help struggling families while letting innovation flourish...

http://answers.yahoo.com/....qid=20070410092341AAxnl7B&fr=hp

Take a look at the answer that have been posted so far.

There is also a video of Romney in the link above discussing his platform for tax reform.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, Mitt Romney, Tax Reform

I read something on an ABC News blog yesterday which upset me quite a bit.   It told us to not "FEEL TOO SORRY FOR THE DUKIES."   Really?   We shouldn't feel sorry for a couple kids who had their lives turned upside down by a false accuser?   Why not?   Because she's black and whites are always kicking blacks?   No, that's not the reason the author, Terry Moran, gaves us.   Here's the reasons we shouldn't feel too sorry for the "Dukees:"

"They got special treatment in the justice system ... so many other victims of prosecutorial misconduct in this country who never get the high-priced legal representation and the high-profile, high-minded vindication that it strikes me as just a bit unseemly to heap praise and sympathy on these particular men."

- They deserve no sympathy because they spent whatever it took to vindicate themselves?

"They were part of a team that collected $800 to purchase the time of two strippers.   Their team specifically requested at least one white stripper.   During the incident, racial epithets were hurled at the strippers."

- No sympathy to anyone who can pull together enough money to have strippers at a party, or just those who request white strippers?   Prove there were racial epithets hurled at the strippers.

One "was charged with assault in Washington, DC, in 2005."

- Charged is not convicted. the men here were charged with rape but the prosecution found the crime had njot been committed.   If the lad had been found guilty of assault, then we could withhold an ounce of sympathy for him but ...

"The young men were able to retain a battery of top-flight attorneys, investigators and media strategists."

- That isn't a crime in this country.   It isn;t even morally questionable, by the way.

"As students of Duke University or other elite institutions, these young men will get on with their privileged lives. There is a very large cushion under them--the one that softens the blows of life for most of those who go to Duke or similar places, and have connections through family, friends and school to all kinds of prospects for success. They are very differently situated in life from, say, the young women of the Rutgers University women's basketball team."

- These men were there on scholarship, scholarships they would have earned regardless of any family wealth or poverty.   I've got news for you.   The Rutgers women will get on quite nicely in life, thank you very much.   They are upstanding women of intelligence and accomplishment.   They shouldn't have any trouble putting their first class educations to work for them.   And their lives are entirely relevant to any discussion of a couple of falsely charged kids.

"And, MOST IMPORTANT, there are many, many cases of prosecutorial misconduct across our country every year. The media covers few, if any, of these cases. Most of the victims in these cases are poor or minority Americans--or both. I would hate to say the color of their skin is one reason journalists do not focus on these victims of injustices perpetrated by police and prosecutors, but I am afraid if we ask ourselves the question honestly, we would likely find that it is."

- Rubbish!   I've got nothing more to say on that "most important" comment.

The real crux of the matter for Mr. Moran, ABC News journalist is that he perceives these boys to have been members of the "privileged elite."   That may be true but they did not ask God to be born into families of economic accomplishment when they were in line in heaven waiting to be conceived.   Last I checked, the only element of law in these United States which discusses wealth pertains to taxation.   There is nothing in our nation's laws, or any other's for that matter, which provides for different treatement based upon the wealth of a person's family.   Any suggestion to the contrary would be, well, prejudicial - judging someone's merit based upon actions or other criteria completely outside his control.

Mr Moran closes his discussion by referring to the clearing of the boys' names as "the celebrated exoneration of well-heeled, well-connected, well-publicized young men whose conduct, while not illegal, was not entirely admirable, either.   They aren't heroes."   What is that supposed to mean?   Nobody ever claimed the boys were heroes.   But there isn't very much evidence that the party was their idea, they wanted a stripper to visit their house, or anything else which would cause us to categorize them as not acting entirely admirably.   One of them claimed all along that he was only there for minutes.   he didn;t do anything at all which causes us to pause for a moment and consider his actions "not entirely admirable, potentially illegal."   The very idea to the contrary which Mr. Moran tries to spread is of a more morally questionable nature than some of the conduct of these boys.

It isn't a crime in this country to attend top institutions of higher learning, whether on earned scholarship or not.   It is not a crime to be born into wealthy families.   It is not a crime to spend your financial resources, be they considerable or not, to defend your name when you are innocent.   If you say we shouldn't feel for these boys because others have also been falsely accused, does that mean we should never feel sympathy for anyone unless nobody else is suffering?

Terry Moran is a complete moron who should think about what he says before he speaks or writes.   ABC should revoke his license to spread his BS via their web server.

Labels: Duke lacrosse

We've got a fundamental problem in this country.   Call it whatever you like but we collectively come off half-cocked about almost everything.   We're mixed up.   We've lost the ability to discern degrees of anything.   We think either Bush is stupid or he's a genius.   We think either the Iraq war was part of some conspiracy to avenge a plot against a father's planned assassination or it was a legitimate effort to root out al quaeda or prevent them from obtaining horrible weaponry.   We are convinced that either global warming is real and already taking an expensive toll on our everyday lives or part of a plot to convert all world governmental bodies into one big fat happy Socialist state.   We don't even consider that something could be partly a problem, partly not, partly this, partly that.

We think either bird flu is going to wipe out half the world's population or it is simply fear-mongering.   We do not carfeully consider anything and study it for more than a few moments before becoming convinced that there is only one way to deal with "this very real problem" and it's my way or the highway.   We are an extraordinarily foolish society.

We believe either there is an obesity epidemic in most places on Earth or there is not, period.   We are prepared to take action without ever considering the ramifications of action.   It doesn't occur to us that A) humans are preprogrammed to store fat for leaner times as a matter of biology, B) some humans are more programmed than others, C) some people, particularly athletes, don't conform to the one size fits all BMI measurement, and D) we cannot solve a potential problem, one we can't actually prove exists, through five easy steps which cost us no effort or anxiety.

The vast majority of people are completely convinced there is something called an obesity epidemic.   In a democracy, the vast majority rules the day.   But those who decide to take action must take responsibility for their actions when they are proven to have been fools.

I think I've heard one too many comments about obesity to ever believe the common wisdom on it again.   There is this whole class of people out there who are completely obsessed with the topic.   They are a strange lot.

I went to drop off my kid at a birthday party a few weeks ago.   I was wearing a cap which I bought at a nationally sanctioned athletic competition held in Ohio last year.   It'll be held there again this year and the team I coach is going.

I met up with the father of the birthday girl in his driveway where he was conversing with a liberal buddy, the father of one of the party-goers.   I was introduced as the coach for his daughter's team.   This fellow was interested in discussing Ohio - where the competition on my hat was held.   I wondered if he had been born or grown up in Ohio.   He hadn't.   I asked if maybe he had gone to college there.   He hadn't.   He had just been there once, on business.   He wanted to tell me something and I was interested in knowing what since the conversation was kind of going nowhere fast.   Finally he told me what was on his mind - "there are a lot of really fat people in Ohio."   I said, "Really?   Are there?   I suppose there may be.   There's a lot of really fat people everywhere aren't there?   Isn't that what the government is telling us?"   But he insisted Ohio was a particular problem.

I wondered how that could be since the news media is always showing us people on food lines in Ohio.   How can everyone in the state be fat and on foodstamps?   He didn't know but his one observation for the day was people in Ohio are fat, really fat.   I suggested to him that the only people in Ohio I actually knew were attorneys who handled tax legal cases for me in my previous life and a few accountants and other business people I have met on business engagements while performing acquisition due diligence.   As it happens, none of these good folks happens to be the slightest bit fat.   I suggested that when he travel to the state again, he ought to call me to accompany him because I could show him where the skinny people hang out.

This liberal gentleman who obviously thought quite highly of himself and his powers of observation wanted to tell me something else.   He wanted to let me know that he considered himself to be an athlete.   He stood right there in front of me knowing that I was a coach and my kid was a fairly high level competitor and told me he was an athlete.   He stood there with his shoulders about half the width of mine and said, I am an athlete.   His 5 foot 7 frame held his 140 pounds pretty well but I had trouble picturing him playing any sport so I asked where he had competed and in what sport.   He wondered if I meant in high school ... he had not competed in sports in high school.   What he meant was he is an athlete currently, he runs, you know 5Ks and half marathons.   I told him, "well, I'm NOT an athlete.   I earned several varsity letters and all-conference in high school and college but I'm a lazy piece of couch potato now and would never call myself an athlete."   From there the conversation thankfully dwindled because I couldn't have taken much more of this jackass.   If I continued to speak to him I was going to have to shake the couch potato out of my butt and show myself to be an athlete, perhaps a boxer or extreme fighter of some sort.

As it happens, I do not consider people who take up jogging in their forties to be athletes even if they do compete in 5Ks or half marathons.   I do not consider 140 pound guys standing 5'7" to be athletes unless they earn their living in the ring or at least are capable of competing for their country club tennis championship.   I was 5 foot 7 and 140 pounts in 8th grade and one of the smaller kids on my sports teams.   Jogging is not a sport.   Running five miles in an average of 12 minutes per mile is exercise, not sport.   And when you come in 475th place in a 500 person race, you are still not an athlete.   You're living a healthy lifestyle, far more healthy than my own.   And you'll reap the benefits of that but one of those is not recognition by your friends and neighbors that you are an "athlete."   Please stop trying to fool yourself.

I mention this little anecdote because I think it is indicative of the sort of foolishness we Americans engage in every day.   People in Ohio are not generally fat because the 25 residents of the state you saw during the half hour lunch break you took on your single visit there were mostly overweight.   You are not a "good person" because you are not obese or because you jog.   You are not clever because you were smart enough to start exercising before your previous 40 years of relative inactivity killed you.   You are not an athlete because visions of Forrest Gump come to you while you run your daily stint of 4 or 5 miles so you can compete in the county 10K run next fall.   I'm no psychologist but I don't think I need to be in order to conclude that there is something seriously wrong with you psychologically when you are that obsessed with this topic.   But, mentally ill or not, you are definitely in the majority.   Unfortunately that has ramifications for all of us.

As the topic of this little diatribe is "childhood obesity," perhaps I should say something about the subject.   I happened to be reading a story in the Wall Street Journal the other day about childhood obesity and how the nation's schools are trying to deal with it.   The story mentioned one particular kid who was in the 97th percentile of BMI.   97th percentile is well beyond the obese point - higher is worse, you know.   So this kid's school report card says: math A+, science A+, language arts A+, obesity F.

The rub is, despite his 97th percentile on the FATNESS scale, this kid also happens to be a championship swimmer.   Perhaps many of you are not familiar with high level swimming competition.   Maybe I should explain some facts about it.   The first one is, there are no obese competitive swimmers.   The reason there are no obese swimmers is because it is not physically possible to get the calories in there fast enough to gain weight when you are in training.

I can recall my early days as a high school freshman swimmer.   We would leave school and go directly to the YMCA for a one hour practice - that's extremely short by swimming standards.   Then somebody would drive us over to Friendlies Ice Cream Parlor where we would scoff down a sundae or two.   My preference was two "Jim Dandies" which I could polish off in under five minutes.   I'm not entirely sure but my guess is that's about 20,000 calories!   Then we would go back to the Y again, do our homework on the gymnasium floor and get ready for a two and a half hour workout (or something like that) later that day with the Y team.   I would go home and eat a double portion of dinner so I wouldn't starve before my two breakfasts, one at home and one at school, then a double lunch.   I was a glutton - no wonder I was obese.

We would swim about 6,000 yards in the two practices combined.   For the mathematically disenclined, that figures to little over three and a half miles, every day, at least four days a week.   And that short little swim was because I was a sprinter - long distance swimmers did more.   Even though I considered myself to be in reasonably good shape coming as I did off football season and going directly into swim season, I would generally drop about 20 or more pounds during the swim season.   Yet, when I calculate my BMI from those days, I was definitely in the trouble zone despite the fact that my ribs popped out of my skin most of the time.   And I was decidedly underweight when football season came back around.

This kid whose name appeared in the wall Street Journal is not obese.   There's no question about that once you look at him.   Yet he and his stats are included in the obese kid list.   Most high school, college, world class, and professional athletes also qualify for obese, some morbidly so.   They are obviously suffering from the epidemic.   But this championship swimmer kid is being shorted at lunch.   The school not only sends home his F in obesity, but also since they are benevolent and don't want him to suffer, they're cutting down on the amount of food he can have.   They're controlling portions and denying "snacks" unless they are healthy snacks.   They've got the kid's best interests at heart and have no means to factor in that he burns three times as many calories than his classmates.

That's pretty much the story of our society - one size fits all.   You've got a body mass index of X, so you're going on a diet.   Never mind that you're a 6 foot sixth grader who exercises 25 hours a day.   We're putting you on the same diet Reginald, the 60 pound computer genius, is on.   We want you to achieve, achieve to the average.   We don't care that this may actually harm you.   We cannot account for everything.   We have one tool to evaluate this epidemic and it says, you're sick.   We just have to make you better!   We're doing this for you!!   Now, take your medicine.

Labels: media bias

I wish NJ Governor Corzine a rapid and full recovery from the injuries he suffered in an "SUV CRASH" the day before Friday the thirteenth while en route to moderate a meeting between fired radio shock jock Don Imus and those "nappy headed ho's" from national runner up Rutgers women's basketball team.   I'd like to see Corzine out of office but I wish him no physical harm, no life-threatening injuries, in the process.

First off, why was it necessary for the newspapers to announce that the accident was an "SUV CRASH?"   That isn't relevant to what happened when one pickup truck tried to pull off the road shoulder, hit another, and caused it to careen into Corzine's SUV limo.

You've really got to wonder about the sequence of events leading up to this.   It smells of a giant conspiracy.   Rutgers looses a basketball game for the national championship and before Tennessee, the winner, gets a chance to meet the president and become full-fledged media darlings, Imus makes his remarks and steals everyone's thunder.   Then Rutgers, the loosing team, gets air time all over the place including Oprah to demonstrate that they ain't ho's!   They act with all sorts of dignity and show themselves to be a class act while not calling for Imus' ouster.   Imus tries to save his ass by apologizing at least once with every breath.   The "civil rights activists" get into the act and call for the firing of the white guy.   The basketball team agrees to meet with him to discuss God only knows what.   Not to be upstaged by all these goings on, Corzine sees the opportunity to get his name in the papers too so he decides to moderate the thing, as if you need a a sixty year old white limousine liberal (actually riding in a limousine) to stand between the diminutive white shock jock and a bunch of tough Rutgers "nappy headed ho's," complete with tattoos.   Then pickup trucks, probably with white racist Christian fundamentalists at the wheels, get in his way and nearly cause his demise!   Something isn't right here!

I heard about this in the middle of the night and then just had to read the story in the morning paper to see if anyone suspected foul play.   At the very least "Friday the thirteenth" must have something to do with it.   But I found the real cause of Corzine's terrible injuries right there in the liberal press.   It was coded so most people wouldn't take notice but it was there nonetheless.

I looked to see if there was any information about white supremacists - I believe they favor pickup trucks - but there was no mention.   I figured the SUV might be the clue since that was in the headlines.   But deep within the story, reporters noted that "the SUV did not overturn and there was no fire."

I thought perhaps it was those notoriously bad "Jersey drivers."   There was a state cop at the wheel so I assumed he must have been doing about 80 mph.   Remember that NJ cop who got pulled over coming back from New Orleans after trying to help out with Katrina cleanup efforts?   The speed on the Garden State Parkway is between 55 and 65 but the median speed at which any NJ state trooper drives is closer to 75 - 80 on the average road and generally is higher on the GSP.   With a state trooper at the wheel of a government vehicle on official business, on the GSP, you can pretty much count on him being at the high end of the spectrum.   But the paper said "speed was not a factor" in the accident.

Finally I discovered my answer.   State police noted that it was unclear "whether Corzine was wearing a seat belt."   That's a code phrase which, if you have a decoder ring, means "the governor did not have a seatbelt on when his car had a fairly routine sort of crash."

No seat belt?   I thought that was a felony in New Jersey.   In New Jersey, you have to use a car seat until age 21 or 200 pounds, whichever comes later.   Not only that but drivers must attend a safety class, at their own expense, conducted by the Coast Guard, to learn how to properly install a car seat.   Improper car seat installation is a crime carrying a penalty of not more than 6 months in jail and/or $5,000 in fines for a first offense, after which the penalties climb.   The state has a three strikes and you're out policy which results in life imprisonment for a fourth offense.   Police conduct sting operations to randomly pull over cars and check to see if car seats are properly installed.   By the way, it doesn't matter if there is an actual child in the car seat.   If you have a car seat in your car, you are subject to being pulled over, examined and penalized.   If you've got the thing installed improperly, you're going to do time for your crime.   When it comes to seat belts, the laws get really tough.

In New Jersey, police are allowed to racially profile when it comes to enforcement of the state's seat belt laws.   It turns out that several races in this mixed race state have a tendency to ignore their seat belts and this is the one area where police are allowed to use their racial knowledge.   They're also allowed to shoot first and ask questions later.   If an officer feels threatened by a driver's failure to properly wear a seat belt, he is permitted to pull his weapon and use it if necessary.   Also, officers are permitted to engage in high speed chases if required to apprehend a seat belt offender.   I was once walking my child home from school when I witnessed such a high speed chase.   We even have a list, available via the internet, of repeat seat belt offenders.   Many are shunned and forced to move out of neighborhoods because parents don't want "that kind" near their children.   It is beyond me how the governor of the state can possibly ride on one of its busiest roadways without donning a belt.   I hope he is ticketed ... as soon as he recovers from his injuries.   I wonder if the state will finally change its laws to recognize the need for all passengers, regardless of age or weight, to be properly situated in car seats from this point forward.

Labels: Seatbelt laws

Somehow, we have got to get past this.   On one hand we have Don Imus's idiot comments which were at least as much about women athletes as they were about blacks, at least as much about a group of fine upstanding college students as they were about physically tough athletes.   On the other hand we have a bunch of half-cocked oratory from the "civil rights activists" who wanted to see a bunch of white college athletes publicly hanged for committing, apparently, no crime because the falsely alleged crime contained a charge which could be construed to be racist.   We need to find a way to get past this racism nonsense.

I sit here looking up at a family portrait (one half of my family - my wife's side) which contains a little over 20% persons of African heritage.   I wonder if the race of those with the African heritage is even worth pondering.   I know when I see them next, they will be discussing Imus' comments.   They were undoubtedly deeply hurt by these harsh words and the turmoil they have created.   But I wonder if any of it is relevant to anything any of us does from day to day.   I wonder if anyone should be hurt by Imus's remarks.

I once very briefly knew the father of one of the Duke lacrosse players falsely accused of sexual assault.   I imagine the kid will never recover from this.   He cannot just go about his life and career as just another person falsely accused and exhonerated of all charges against him.   He'll wear the scar of that media circus on his forehead for the rest of his days.   They'll be a 20 year anniversary with media coverage and his children will probably have to suffer consequences.   They may take some beatings in school or otherwise feel the effects of coverage of an event - the sexual assault - which never actually took place.   The Rutgers players will also have some explaining to do to their children when their turmoil is aired 20 years from now on some ESPN retrospective.   But they (the Rutgers players) will somehow be seen as heroes of the war against racism for doing nothing other than be the target of some ridiculous comments spoken to a small audience by an idiot who made a career out of stupidity.   The Duke lacrosse players will be seen as perpetrators even though the Attorney General has found them to be falsely accused of committing a crime which never took place.   Now that's a double standard.   Now that's racism.

Let's rehash these events just for the purpose of keeping the facts straight.   Some Duke lacrosse players had a party and brought in strippers - not a great thing but hardly an unusual thing for why else would there be girls who hold themselves out to be strippers at college parties?   The girls who came in a professional capacity were shall we say not of the highest moral character - again not unusual under the circumstances.   At some point, something happened which ticked one or both of the strippers off.   They decided to get even by creating a circus.   One of them invented a story of sexual assault.   When she was tested, none of the attendees at the party, magically, had left behind any DNA which could incriminate them.   Just about the rest of the western world had left DNA inside the accuser, however, so her story became just a little more suspect than it might otherwise have been.   Some immoral DA, running for election, who was depending on the "black vote," pushed the issue in order to get re-elected.   "Civil rights activists" staged rallies and otherwise got media air time to express their outrage which further kept the racism issue in the air.   When the DA's tactics were called into serious question, he recused himself and the state AG stepped in.   Shortly thereafter, the AG found that A) the charges against the boys should not merely be dropped but also the AG should say we found these boys innocent - not in a position which the state could not prosecute, INNOCENT; B) the case should likewise be dropped altogether - not because there is insufficient evidence but because the attack never happened; C) further investigation which may result in the prosector or the accuser themselves being charged will continue; D) the "civil rights activists" felt under no compunction to apologize for their racism charged comments on an event which has been determiend to not have taken place.

Now, let's turn to the Rutgers women's basketball team.   We'll skip Imus's remarks and just look at the team.   Here we have a bunch of athletes on scholarship to Rutgers, New Jersey's state university - one of the 50 top colleges in the world.   We recognize that whereas in men's sports, athletes get to slip under the cracks of admission standards, in women's sports no such opportunity exists.   The hard reality is women athletes often have MORE rigorous academic standards they must meet in order to be recruited in the first place.

I've told you about a high school All America who was able to obtain a full ride only at a third rate school with a fourth rate athletic program because, despite her status as All America, her grades were just average.   For academic reasons only, she didn't garner any attention from major schools in her sport.   Out in the world of girls athletics it is common knowledge that one does not obtain a Division One scholarship via athletic prowess alone.   You must be at least as good in school as you are on the athletic field of play to be recruited.   One Division One coach told me point blank that he would have liked to have had this All America on his team but she would have pulled the team GPA down, down from a 3.7, so he couldn't justify a scholarship.

This fact apparently holds as true for Rutgers as it does any other major university.   You are a scholar - athlete not an athlete who goes to "questionable" classes.   We have a good chuckle at the boys on the rosters of big time NCAA football and basketball teams who list their majors as "sports physiology," "communications - sports broadcasting" or some other non-academic subject.   We wonder, when they are academically restricted from playing, why they had such difficulty with subjects like "teaching physical education," "history of sport," or "appreciating sports in art."   The women on the other hand mostly list serious subjects on their resumes.   Some are legitimatly interested in becoming physical education teachers, broadcasters or sport journalists upon graduation.   But most, as the commercials tell us, will become something else, like nurses, doctors, lawyers, scientists and the like, after graduation.

The difference between girls college sports and boys college sports is very large indeed.   Whereas many big time male athletes aspire to the professional ranks, for girls, college is the professional ranks.   There are some professional sports for women but most of these don't pay as well as McDonalds or Wal-mart and the number of slots is far fewer.   This country produces the best softball players in the world.   There is a nascient softball professional league but the pay rivals only that of jobs like "summer camp counselor."   A select few college athletes play professionally before moving on to their real careers.   In the world of women's athetics, basketball is one minor success story but there are very few slots for just a miniscule piece of the pie.   For most female athletes, a college scholarship is the payoff at the end of a sports career.

The bottom line here is these girls from Rutgers were the among the finest type this country produces - not the finest athletes, not the finest black athletes, just the plain finest.   They are disciplined kids who go off to college and study as hard as they can given little free time from the jub which pays the tuition, room and board.   These ladies will mostly graduate and do so on time with high GPAs despite having no real life outside the rigors of academia and sport.   They are examples of what this country ought to aspire to produce as foten as possible.   Imus's comments were not merely racially charged but also filled with an almost complete lack of intelligence regarding female college athletes.   We need to get past the discussion of the racist comments of a single white male.   The Duke lacrosse kids did nothing any other college kid did.   They are examples of victims not perpetrators.   The "civil rights activists" are the ones who are the perpetrators in this particular case.   It is time they disappeared from the media stage since they have nothing useful to say any longer.   Once we can come to these realizations, perhaps we can move forward.

Labels: racism

Before you purchase your tickets to go see rockstar Al Gore's Love Earth, you may want to read up a little on the subject of anthropogenic "greenhouse" global warming.   I post these links mostly for the journalists who presume to write expertly on the subject as well as those Supreme Court justices who should try to read a little more since they obviously haven't read much on the issue they adjudicated recently.   Here are some links:

• The IPCC's recent report does not merely contain a few errors after all these months of presumably checking the details.   Some of their work is downright embarassing
  
  
• From New Zealand, "our glaciers aren't shrinking, they're growing.   Come look and see for yourself!
  
  
• Our children are being indoctrinated in global warming religion, not being taught science.
  
  
• Groundhogs predict early arrival of global warming!
  
  
• Record April snowfall in the Dakotas   ;>
  

If you think the science about whether humans are the cause of global warming is confusing, consider the science about whether or not the globe is warming at all.   Heck scientists can't agree from week to week whether the oceans are cooling, heating or remaining about the same.   Forget about cures like completely halting the use of fossil fuels.   John Kerry says stopping all carbon fuel usage tomorrow wouldn't even help.   So, how do we fix the situation?   Plant trees?   A new study says forests don;t cool the planet, they warm it!

But even with the the lack of valid information concerning whether or not there is an issue, what the cause of an issue might be, or what we can possibly do about it, those of us who have used steroids in the past, are muscling up with fixes that have no basis in reality.

Hasn't anyone out there ever read about Chicken Little?

Labels: global warming

A study using stem cells has basically cured a bunch of people with type 1 diabetes.   All but two volunteers in a study group do not need insulin injections three years after their treatments.   The Times UK reports this promising discovery and notes, "research using the most versatile kind of stem cells - those acquired from human embryos - is currently opposed by powerful critics, including President Bush.   The JAMA study provides the first clinical evidence for the efficacy of stem cells in type 1 diabetes."   So, what's wrong with those words?   The cure was adult stem cells not embryonic stem cells.   There's a world of difference.   Bush and conservatives HAVE NEVER BEEN OPPOSED TO RESEARCH ON ADULT STEM CELLS.   In fact, they have sponsored and encouraged such research in degrees and ways never done by any previous US administration.   They have been pioneers with respect to adult stem cell research.   This cure involves the use of exclusively adult stem cells.   Any negative comments about Bush or conservatives and their approach to stem cell research is entirely improper.   Show us one single cure for anything which has resulted from the decades of work done with embryonic stem cells and then throw that up in our faces.   Until then, shut up or stay on point!

Labels: Stem cell research

As I was drifting off to sleep last night, I heard a New York news broadcaster proclaim that "tens of millions around the globe celebrated Easter" yesterday.   He noted that Orthodox Christianity's Julian calendar just happened to coincide with the Gregorian calendar.   Easter just happened to fall on the same day for all Christians this year.   The implication was that is why so many (tens of millions) celebrated the holiday on the same day.   That little part is accurate but "tens of millions" is way off the mark.

Whenever there is a Muslim holiday of some sort, the media reports "a billion Muslims," as if they are one body, all doing precisely the same religious act at precisely the same moment in time.   We, in America, are constantly fed information about how Islam is the fastest growing religion on Earth.   Whenever Christianity makes the news, a relatively rare occurence, newscacsters speak of "millions," "tens of millions," or discuss the variety of sects within the overall body of Christianity.   They never let slip the real numbers.   That's because they are overwhelming.

According to ReligiousTolerance.org, the breakdown of world population includes about 20% who are Muslim and 33% who are some sort of Christian.   This estimate is based on polling data.     In other words, it results from asking people "are you Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc.?"   The proximate percentages determined by polling data are reflected in other studies using other kinds of data.   If you look long enough at enough sources, you pretty much come to the same basic estimates of world figures on religion.

A healthy 13% in the polls say they are "non-religious" which isn't the same thing as claiming one is an atheist (2.5% of world population).   Many of those people you saw in church Sunday and last Christmas, are self-described "non-religious" folks, members of the 13%.   A good chunk of people I know who were baptized in the Roman Catholic church, got married and baptized their children there, are self-described "non-religious."

I didn't see agnosticism listed and I wonder if the 2.5% atheists includes those since this site states atheism includes "belief in no god" as well as "no belief in god," decidedly different points of view.   The majority of American "atheists" have "no belief in god" rather than a well developed "belief in no god."   The newsies don't generally say that, however.   They'd like us to believe "positive" or "affirmative" atheism, belief in no god, is a common variety of belief system in this country.   It isn't. The overwhelming majority of Americans are self-described Christians (75%) while a good number makeup part of the 13% world list of "non-religious" people who go to Christian service twice each year.   Some of those atheists who do not have a belief in god were also in church or at family celebrations yesterday.

My point is Christianity is by far the single largest religion not only in the world, but also in these United States.   It would have been more accurate if this particular news broadcaster were to say hundreds of millions celebrated easter around the globe today.   It might not have been inaccurate to proclaim billions did.   Judging by the traffic late last night, there were tens of millions celebrating just in the greater metropolitan New York area!

Labels: Religion

Dr. William Gray, an emeritus professor at the atmospheric science department at Colorado State University, and the country's top hurricane forecaster, has called Al Gore a global warming alarmist...

"He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things. I think he's doing a great disservice and he doesn't know what he's talking about," Dr. William Gray said in an interview with The Associated Press at the National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, where he delivered the closing speech.

Here's is Gray's theory on the periodic rise and fall of hurricane activity...

Rather than global warming, Gray believes a recent uptick in strong hurricanes is part of a multi-decade trend of alternating busy and slow periods related to ocean circulation patterns. Contrary to mainstream thinking, Gray believes ocean temperatures are going to drop in the next five to 10 years.

As if you global warming alarmists even care.

Labels: Al Gore, global warming, hurricanes

Here's an article from Kenneth R. Timmerman, a journalist, on "the real reason" why Iran freed the 15 British sailors...

http://www.aina.org/news/20070405085325.htm

This article appears to be the full, unedited version, as opposed to the one published by NewsMax.

Take the article at face value if you will. However, it's so far the only article I've read that seems to make any sense, and the only article that seems to offer a "real world" explanation.

Timmerman paints a picture of Iran wanting to deflect focus away from its nuclear weapons development, a picture of Iranian leadership at odds with itself, and Iranian leadership completely in fear in U.S. military force.

Labels: British Hostages, Iran

Politically active shockjock, Don Imus, referred to the Rutgers University Women's basketball team in derogatory terms and is being criticized about it as well he should.   Imus called the team "some rough girls from Rutgers.   They got tattoos ... some nappy-headed hos."   He made these comments while saying the Tennessee team "all looked cute."   A show producer said on air the game the two teams played for the national championship was "the jigaboos versus the wannabes."   Afterwards, in the midst of the firestorm his comments created, Imus told everyone to chill out and not get upset about "some idiot comment meant to be amusing."   Rutgers said basically "we agree.   It was an idiot comment."

Imus has made a career out of being, shall we say, uninhibited.   But this goes a bit too far.   Women's college sports are not at all like men's.   These are not future professional athlete millionaires who use the college arena as a stepping stone, as a minor league system feeding the pros.   Yes, there are women's professional basketball teams and players.   Some few of the players do make big money, although not when compared to the men's game.   Women's college athletes are required to actually be "student athletes" as opposed to the men's game where the absolute bare minimum of academic work is acceptable.   One of the dirty little secrets of women's college sports are your grades usually matter almost as much as your shooting percentage or batting average.

I know of one high school all-america who was unable to get a major scholarship because of her grades.   The problem wasn't that she didn't have decent grades or couldn't achieve the minimum score of her boards.   Rather, she couldn't get a major scholarship because she wasn't an outstanding student.   I know this because I spoke directly with a major Division I head coach about this girl and was told by the coach that "we only want A students in our program.   We're looking for someone who will bring our team GPA up from its current 3.4, not improve the number of earned runs we give up or score."   They're interested in academic all america players not all america ones.

I have no idea what the Rutgers women's basketball team's GPA is but I have to assume these kids are not the dregs from the bottom of the academic barrel.   Generally speaking, the bottom of the barrel in women's sports does not get recruited while the same cannot be said of the men's side.

Looking at Tennessee vs. Rutgers, there is one interesting trend.   The Rutgers team gets its players almost entirely from the greater New York / New Jersey area.   Of the team's starting 5, 3 were from NJ and 2 NYC.   Rutgers sits within the ring of places from which folks commute daily to NYC.   You can drive to manhattan from Rutgers in about 45 minutes on the few occassions there is no traffic.   These girls are from the backyard of the university.

Tennessee, on the other hand had no kids from within the state on its starting team.   There were only 2 on the entire roster who came from within the state.   Several came from NYC, which is not even a short plane ride away.   This is not a criticism of Tennessee.   Rather it puts a little contrast into the picture and shows what a good thing the Rutgers basketball program is.

Imus felt he could criticize the university because it has historically been thought of as something of a joke when it comes to intercollegiate athletics.   I was once pulled over by an officer outside of Penn State U. and he proceeded to mock New Jersey because there are no good college football teams there!   That can no longer be said since Rutgers now boasts a superior football program to most.   The same can now be said of the women's basketball program.   But realistically, no fun ought to be played on Rutgers sports.   The university was among the first couple of schools to even play intercollegiate sports.   It was the site of the first intercollegiate football game ever played in 1869.

Rutgers as an academic institution has an even longer and more storied history than its athletic programs.   It is known as the birthplace of the first known cure for tuberculosis, the antibiotic streptomycin.   Rutgers University was ranked 46th in the world in terms of academics as recently as last year.   Several academic departments are individually ranked among the best programs in the United States.   While it does not get the respect that say Duke University does, perhaps it should.   There isn't much room to criticize the university or its women's basketball team.

So what exactly was it that Imus did when he referred to true student athletes from the number 2 basketball program in the country at one of the top academic institutions in the world as "nappy-headed hos?"   You be the judge.

Labels: PC

Nancy Pelosi makes it up as she goes.   That's why she decided to claim Israel validated her circumvention of US foreign policy by sending her on a mission to deliver overtures to Syria.   There's one little sticking point on that.   Israel says Israel denies Pelosi's claim.   In fact it "clarifies" the situation by saying "although Israel is interested in peace with Syria, that country continues to be part of the Axis of Evil and a force that encourages terror in the entire Middle East."   In other words, although Israel desires peace, it is not willing to undergo talks with a belligerent regime.   So who would you believe?   Pelosi or Israel?   I'm gonna go with Israel and assume Nancy Dearest is just making stuff up ... again.

Labels: Democrat party, Pelosi

The US Supreme Court's decision in Mass. vs. EPA was an extremely poor one.   You may look at it, or the news reports regarding it, and think it just another rebuke to the evil Bush administration which will force their hand and make them take action on the global catastrophe of greenhouse warming.   That's not the case at all.   This decision will not stand because it is poorly crafted and because it will be offensive to future generations of liberals as well as conservatives, not to mention everyone in between.

The Court's decision requires the EPA to regulate "any air pollutant that may endanger the public welfare and defines pollutant to include "any air pollution agent ... including any physical, chemical, ... substance ... emitted into ... the ambient air ..."   The Court noted the applicable statute "embraces all airborne compounds of whatever stripe.   Moreover, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are undoubtedly 'physical [and] chemical ... substance(s) ... EPA's reliance on postenactment congressional actions and deliberations it views as tantamount to a command to refrain from regulating greenhouse gas emissions is unavailing ... unpersuasive is EPA's argument that its regulation of motor-vehicle carbon dioxide emissions would require it to tighten mileage standards, a job (according to EPA) that Congress has assigned to the Department of Transportation.   The fact that DOT's mandate may overlap with EPA's environmental responsibilities in no way liceanses EPA to shirk its duty to protect the public 'health' and 'welfare' ... EPA can avoid promulgating regulations only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do ... Nor can EPA avoid its statutory obligation by noting the uncertainty surrounding various features of climate change."

Justice Stevens, writing for the 5-4 majority, said "A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.   Respected scientists believe the two trends are related.   For when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it acts like the ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and retarding the escape of heat.   It is therefore a species - the most important species - of a 'greenhouse gas.'"

Stevens' choice of language is curious.   "Well-documented rise in global temperatures" is a poor or lazy choice of words.   First of all, there must be several "temperature" readings (plural) which require monitoring since "temperature" is a quality, a measurement not an object and he used the term plurally.   The problem here is "global warming" refers to an average temperature reading not multiple "temperatures."   Stevens could have said an increase in the average global temperature.   He chose not to because he probably understands that there is no such thing as a global average temperature.   It is a mathematical impossiblity like the "average telephone number in the US."

Secondly, Stevens says the mythical object, the mathematical impossiblity global temperature increase, "coincided" with the negative quality in question, a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.   Coincidence is obviously not causality.   That would be a huge logical error.   Nobody should ever act based on coincidence since it is a preliminary stage for study.   Causality requires action.   Coincidence requires study and a decided refrain from action.   If you were mugged on the same street twice while wearing your "lucky" Washington Redskins socks, would you go home and throw away the socks?   That would be superstition.   That is essentially the underpinning of Stevens' argument.

The very term "concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere" implies a scientific understanding of a correct concentration at which the Earth is in equilibrium when no such understanding exists or could possibly exist.   The concentration of carbon dioxide has never remained constant nor even within a particular range for very long.   Claiming that there is some proper level of the gas is tantamount to a finding that there is a precise optimum world human (or any species for that matter) population figure.   It is not within the realm of human understanding to make such a statement but if it were, that too might REQUIRE action on the part of the government to achieve it.   That logic could be used to institute anything from sterilization to genocide.

Stevens then leaps from his concern over the coexistence of one quality which cannot be determined to be good or bad with another, to the statement that "respected scientists believe the two trends are related."   That is true but so is the statement "respected scientists believe the two trends are unrelated."   How many of each there are is largely irrelevant but the fact remains there are "respected scientists" who believe both, mutually exclusive statements.   Also, Stevens does not say "the majority of respected scientists believe one condition causes the other."   He says scientists believe the two are connected.   That's identical to saying the two coexist and does nothing to lay blame.   If global warming caused the seas to rise fifty feet, would we say sea level causes global warming?   Yet the two are, theoretically, connected and respected scientists would agree to that.

Stevens then says "when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it acts like the ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and retarding the escape of heat.   That's not at all how the Earth's atmosphere or carbon dioxide work.   First of all, it isn't just carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere which works in ways which might produce a warming of the planet.   It is any carbon dioxide from whatever source and that is hardly all that carbon dioxide does.   Carbon dioxide is the chemical which causes your brain to make your breathing involuntary.   It is the chemical which ultimately provides the non-water mass of the human body.   It is plant food which is consumed by the things we eat and which allow us to live.   If it were not present on Earth, no life as we know it would be possible.   Secondly, whatever does act to trap solar energy and retard its escape from the planet also is necessary for life.   Wihtout something to trap heat, the planet would be uninhabitable.   Thirdly, what carbon dioxide does is absorb heat energy from all sources and reflect it back in all directions.   The ceiling of a greenhouse acts to block heated gases from interacting with the atmosphere above it.   Carbon dioxide does not do that.

Stevens concludes carbon dioxide "is therefore a species - the most important species - of a 'greenhouse gas.'"   It would be wrong to say a consensus of scientists would agree upon carbon dioxide as the most important species of greenhouse gas.   That's because, to the extent that science regarding so-called greenhouse warming is settled, absolutely every scientists on Earth would emphatically agree that the most important species of gas is water vapor.   That point is not debatable.   There is no scientific doubt on the point.

So, to sum up, the opening statements of Stevens are precisely what the problem of global warming hysteria is all about, causality vs. coexistence, lack of information concerning what the normal or right temperature and / or concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are.   We do not have enough information.   We have not observed it long enough.   There is no way to mathematically evaluate the measurements.   Justice Stevens is absolutely wrong in his opening "factual" comments.   He then applies logical fallacies regarding coexistence and causality.   His understanding of anthropogenic greenhouse warming induced climate change is a not a Cliff Notes version.   It is a comic book version.   He doesn't know enough about the subject he dares to address to fill a bottle cap yet he puts himself forward as an expert.   We don't need to move on from this to see how this decision is a bad one but we will.

The Court noted that the EPA is essentially mandated to regulate "any physical, chemical, substance emitted into the ambient air that may endanger the public welfare."   That's anything which may endanger anyone's welfare.   To claim that is a bit broad is a significant understatement.   If the Court wondered if was a bit unclear, they made up for that with the next statement, which said the statute "embraces all airborne compounds of whatever stripe."   Not to be cheeky but that means the eventual development of hydrogen based engine which would emit the genuine most important species of greenhouse gas, water, must also be regulated by EPA.   Not only that, the Court said the EPA is REQUIRED TO ACT regardless of stepping on ANY other agency's toes, like the DOT.   In other words, EPA has a higher authority whenever its concerns are at issue than any other governmental agency.   Now that is a dangerous notion.

There are many other statues, aside from those concerning automobile emissions, pertaining to the EPA's authority.   If the logic of this case were to be applied to all of them, the EPA would essentially constitute the brains of the entire US government.   It would be the supreme deciding power in the country.   That's not much of an extrapolation from the logic of the case.   But it is one that cannot occur.

The Supreme Court's decision can be logically extrapolated in any number of directions.   It could be used to claim the federal government can control its citizens' weight, exercise level, water usage, cooking, etc.   A person's size influences the amount of carbon dioxide he or she exhales.   An exercising person exhales more carbon dioxide than a non-exercising one.   Spraying water anywhere causes evaporation to increase which increases the concentration of water in the atmosphere which contributes to greenhouse warming.   Boiling water, under the dicta of the case, constitutes polluting the air.

As a further point, this decision could be used to evaluate any number of coexistences and force the government to take affirmative action.   You can make an easy argument that, using the case's logic, would have REQUIRED the Bush administration to invade Iraq since there was any number of recorded coexistences of Muslim fundamentalists, weapons of mass destruction, actions taken against the interests of US citizens, etc. to require the federal government, whose primary mandate is the protection of its citizens against all enemies, to act in order to protect them.   You can use this case to make an argument that if Chinese factories cause acid rain or any sort of environmental condition harmful to citizens of the US, the federal government must act in all available ways, including military, to get the Chinese to stop.   You can easily argue that if the US determines greenhouse gas emissions may cause global catastrophe, it should not only join Kyoto but rather insist on a more rigorous strategy and force any and all countries to also participate even if that dictates the use of military force to accomplish the objective.

This was a decision whose main points cannot stand as precedential law because they are so poorly crafted as to be ridiculous.   Even the dicta of the case will be viewed as absurd by future generations because it changes what would normally be viewed as a poor decision into a monument of judicial activism.   The US Supreme Court's decision in Mass. vs. EPA would be comical were it not for the fact that it will impact all of our lives so drastically if it is extrapolated to its logical conclusions.   It won't be.   Instead the history and law books will mock it as a judicial disaster.   And over the next many years, it will be eaten away at until it is dead and buried.

Labels: environmentalism, global warming, Judicial Activism, Judiciary

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