Birdblog

A conservative news and views blog.

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Location: St. Louis, Missouri, United States

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Scrapping of Abortion Exceptions in Required ObamaCare Purchase is de facto Takeover of the Church

Jack Kemp

I urge you all to read the entire article at Red State, written by a convert to Catholicism named "Streiff." If all Catholics must buy insurance with birth control coverage and their hospitals are required to perform abortions, then the government has essentially outlawed a major tenet of the Catholic Church. The cathedrals can stay, but the teachings have to go, under the current regime.

Here is the link to the article and a few key paragraphs:
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2012/01/30/secretary-sebelius-scraps-conscience-exception-for-health-plans/

The second strain is the want to be liked. For most of American history, Catholics were THE OTHER. It was a foreign religion practiced by all manner of foreigners who either couldn’t speak English (Italians, Poles, etc.) or who could barely speak it (the Irish, it goes without saying). What other religion still has amendments to state constitutions directly aimed at its religious schools?

Just when things were going well with JFK (another devout Catholic) in the White House, he gets killed and the whole counter culture begins. If there was anything less cool in the 1960s than being in ROTC it was being a Catholic who believed in monogamy and abstinence until marriage not to mention avowing any religion that did not use mind altering drugs. Being cool is still important and despite his views on abortion Obama, that epitome of coolness, was invited to give a commencement address at a Catholic university.

This mindset was most egregiously on display during the 2008 election. The Catholic heirarchy — and I have to digress here for a moment to emphasize that we have many traditional bishops in this country who have fought the good fight for decades — wanted to catch the Hope-and-Change wave and had a problem: Barrack Obama loves him some abortion. Not just plain vanilla abortion. He is in favor of partial birth aboriton. He is in favor of killing a kid who happens to survive the abortion procedure.

SECTION OMITTED

So up until November Archbishop Dolan was being led to believe that he and the Obama Administration could work together and there would be a conscience exemption in the health care reform regulations and then he gets a call telling him that he’s been played for a chump.

It is really difficult to understate the cultural significance of this decision. If Congress doesn’t intervene and we end up with a pro-abort in the White House, which seems virtually certain regardless of how Obama fares in November, it is hard to see how this precedent will not be applied first to euthanasia, which seems to be the next big thing, and then to abortion. If left as it is, it really marks the end of independent churches in the United States.

Who We Choose to Adulate

Dana Mathewson forwards this:

You're a 19 year old kid.

You're critically wounded and dying in The jungle somewhere in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam ..

It's November 11, 1967.
LZ (landing zone) X-ray.

Your unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense from 100 yards away, that your CO (commanding officer) has ordered the MedEvac helicopters to stop coming in.

You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns and you know you're not getting out.
Your family is half way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you'll never see them again.
As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.

Then - over the machine gun noise - you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter.
You look up to see a Huey coming in. But.. It doesn't seem real because no MedEvac markings are on it.
Captain Ed Freeman is coming in for you.

He's not MedEvac so it's not his job, but he heard the radio call and decided he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire anyway.

Even after the MedEvacs were ordered not to come.He's coming anyway.
And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load 3 of you at a time on board.
Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses and safety.
And, he kept coming back!! 13 more times!!
Until all the wounded were out. No one knew until the mission was over that the Captain had been hit 4 times in the legs and left arm.

He took 29 of you and your buddies out that day. Some would not have made it without the Captain and his Huey.

Medal of Honor Recipient, Captain Ed Freeman, United States Air Force, died August 20th at the age of 80, from complications of Parkinson disease in Boise, Idaho
May God Bless and Rest His Soul.

I bet you didn't hear about this hero's passing, but we've sure heard a whole bunch about Lindsay Lohan, Dr. Murray, that sicko Sandusky, and a 72- day sham marriage.


Shame on the media !!!

Medal of Honor Winner Captain Ed Freeman

Monday, January 30, 2012

Another Mini Ice Age?

Timothy Birdnow

Another mini-Ice Age?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming--Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html

Maybe we need some Global Warming.

Thanks Duke!

IPCC Gag Order on Reviewers

Timothy Birdnow

Steve McIntyre reports a gag order from the IPCC on material destined for it's reports.

From a letter to McIntyre, posted at Climate Audit:

http://climateaudit.org/2012/01/26/another-ipcc-demand-for-secrecy/

"In a recent thread on the blog that you host, Climate Audit, you quote text and a figure directly from the WGI AR5 First Order Draft. We would remind you that each page of this document is clearly marked “Do not cite, quote or distribute”. Therefore, we kindly request you to remove this text and figure from your blog and refrain from such actions, which do not respect the terms of the IPCC review process.

[...]

As mentioned in our email to you of 16 December 2011, in order to have access to the Chapters and to submit review comments for consideration by the authors, all prospective expert reviewers of the WGI AR5 FOD are required to agree to the terms of the review, which specify that all materials provided for the review, including the chapter drafts, are considered confidential and shall not be cited, quoted or distributed. This is the standard IPCC practice in the preparation of its reports."

End excerpts.

What are they so afraid of? Isn't science about getting as many minds working on an issue as possible? Why should this be restricted to the chosen few?

Readers of THIS website know the anser; this isn't about science and never has been. It is a way to manage science, to get it to say what the statists and internationalists at the United Nations want it to say. The process MUST be closed, because if it is open too many people will be likely to spot the tricks employed to manipulate the science. The IPCC is about public policy, and to get the public to go along with it's policy recommendations the "science" must be presented as irrefutable, unchallenged, and must be withheld from those who are likely do find faults. It must be presented as a fait-accompli. Come out loudly as "science says" and make it impossible for critics to refute, because the critics haven't seen what was done. Then the public will believe that "the science is settled" and public policy can be made, policy that redistributes wealth, that manages the decline of the industrial civilization, that gathers more power into governments and international organizations.

The whole IPCC research process is a sham; it was never intended to get to the truth, but rather to message the truth, to lie in a convincing manner. Many scientists who thought they were actually there to get to the bottom of things found their portions edited out of the IPCC reports, while environmental activists and grad students wrote large swaths of the reports. The secrecy of the IPCC should be the tip-off; science kept secret - at least science done about something with far-reaching public policy influence - is not science at all. The only reason to keep it secret is to make it say what you wish.

Go to Climate Audit and read the entire letter to McIntyre - and his excellent reply.

The Illusion that Climate Policy is Environmental Policy

Timothy Birdnow

This was the quote of the week from the SEPP newsletter:

"...we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy...One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore..."

IPCC co-chair of Working Group 3, Dr. Ottmar Endenhofer, November 13, 2010 interview

St. Louis honors Iraq Vets

Jack Kemp

Here's a story you probably won't see on MS-NBC...

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/st_louis_honors_iraq_vets_tJG2u36O4jo9o5ByzY0oAO#ixzz1ksvRBDg3
Six hundred veterans, many dressed in camouflage, walked through downtown St. Louis yesterday in the nation’s first big welcome-home for those who fought in the Iraq War.

Organizers estimated that 100,000 people crowded city streets for the parade, cheering, waving American flags and holding signs that said “Welcome Home” and “Thanks to our Service Men and Women.”

Some of the war-tested troops wiped away tears as they acknowledged the crowd’s support.

“It’s not necessarily overdue, it’s just the right thing,” said Army Maj. Rich Radford, a 23-year military veteran who walked in the parade alongside his 8-year-old daughter, Aimee, and 12-year-old son, Warren.

SECTION OMITTED

The parade was borne out of a chat between two St. Louis friends a month ago

The Drip of Sharia in Dearborn

Timothy Birdnow

Dearborn Michigan is a hotbed of Sharia, and a while back the city arrested a pastor for handing out Christian Bible tracts at a Muslim festival held on public streets. A court has found in favor of the pastor, and ordered over a hundred thousand in restitution from the city.

According to the article:

http://www.wnd.com/2012/01/arresting-christians-costs-u-s-city-100000/

"The judge said in the order, “In this case, the plaintiff received the full relief he sought – an invalidation of the leafleting restriction and a permanent injunction barring its enforcement. … Because this result ‘cannot fairly be labeled as anything short of excellent, [plaintiff] is entitled to a fully compensatory fee.’”

End quote.

As to be expected, the city was furious:

"The city had argued that it was ridiculous to think that because it lost the case, it should pay for Saieg’s legal fees.

“Requiring defendants to absorb plaintiff’s attorney’s fees for the district court proceedings in this case would produce the absurd result of punishing defendants for their success in this court and for acting in accordance with precedent endorsed by two federal judges. Moreover, it would send a message that established precedent and this court’s rulings cannot be relied upon given that a plaintiff potentially could persuade the 6th Circuit to establish new precedent,” the city argued.

The judge suggested that the pastor did, in fact, prevail on his free speech claim.

“Defendants may have believed that they were ‘acting in accordance with precedent endorsed by two federal judges,’ but the 6th Circuit ultimately held that they were not acting in accordance with the Constitution,” he said."

End quote.

But that is the whole point; the city doesn't care so much about winning a conviction as chilling free speech by making the arrest. The old saw "you can't fight city hall" is appropo, because the plan is to punish people for exercising their free speech rights by forcing them to defend against a government that has plenty of taxpayer cash to pursue such attacks. Even if the defendent wins he loses, and so his (and other people's) behavior will be modified to the city's liking. In short, without the city having to pay here the city wins. They know that.

They will keep arresting people until they get what they want.

The judge in this case had no other choice, and indeed magistrate Judge R. Steven Whalenis to be commended for his actions.

But this type of thing will happen more frequently, and less grounded judges will hear the cases. Eventually the Muslims will begin building case precedents that favor their "right" to Sharia and codify that into the civil law code. Islam works like water, finding it's way into cracks in in the concrete then expanding and contracting until the small crack leads to a shattered piece of pavement. They do this in every nation, every society in which they gain a toehold. They demand, they threaten, they cajole, and their neighbors eventually give in, much like a weak parent eventually gives in to his or her screaming toddler in the middle of a tantrum. Give in once, and it becomes easier to give in again, and this becomes a way of life. Eventually you have full-blown Sharia; the non-Muslims become second class citizens in their own countries. It's a tactic that has served Islam well over the centuries - and it serves extraordinarily well in the modern West, which has lost it's sense of self. The West no longer believes in the value of Western Civilization, and concepts of pluralism, multiculturalism and political correctness have made it impossible to censure bad behavior because it is somehow considered "intolerant". Islam is killing us with our own tolerance. They know it, too.

This strikes back at the civil jihad, but for how long?

New Gospels translation not to offend Muslims

Jack Kemp


I don't know where to begin. In a very mixed up world, this Jew is defending old time Christian missionary texts. I never thought I'd do this, but Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs website is informing us that new translations of the New Testament to be distributed in Muslim countries do not refer to "God the Father" or the "Son of God." Have mainstream Christian organizations walked away from their belief in Christianity? Do they expect Muslims to respect this and rush to convert to the religion of the Holy Trinity?

Here is a link and an excerpt from the Atlas Shrugs article. I suggest you read it all, no matter what your faith - or non-faith.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2012/01/new-bible-versions-remove-father-and-son-of-god-because-it-offends-muslims.html


New Bible Versions REMOVE ‘Father’ and ‘Son Of God’ Because It Offends Muslims

Mainline Christian organizations are changing their holy scripture to avoid offending Muslims. Not only does this violate Scripture, but it also defeats the purpose of their mission--to share the Gospel. If mainline Christian organizations fear Muslims so much that they have to edit what they believe to be the Word of God, how far can they be from submission? Where are the righteous, the outraged, the proud?

It is Islamic authorities who should be excising the quran and hadith of the ideology that calls for jihad, genocide, subjugation and oppression of women, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and all non-Muslims. It is the ummah who should be calling for sharia bans. Instead, the Christians are bastardizing their scripture? The Muslims refer to Christians in their daily prayers as "those who are led astray" (Muslims curse Christians and Jews multiple times in daily prayers). This madness validates their contempt and supremacism:

"Concerned Christian missionaries, Bible translators, pastors, and national church leaders have come together with a public petition to stop these organizations. They claim a public petition is their last recourse because meetings with these organizations’ leaders, staff resignations over this issue and criticism and appeals from native national Christians concerned about the translations “have failed to persuade these agencies to retain “Father” and “Son” in the text of all their translations.”
http://biblicalmissiology.org/2012/01/16/fact-check-biblical-missiologys-response-to-wycliffes-comments-on-lost-in-translation/

Biblical Missiology, a ministry of Boulder, Colorado-based Horizon International, is sponsoring the petition. The main issues of this controversy surround new Arabic and Turkish translations. Here are three examples native speakers give:

First, Wycliffe and SIL have produced Stories of the Prophets, an Arabic Bible that uses an Arabic equivalent of “Lord” instead of “Father” and “Messiah” instead of “Son.”


'Second, Frontiers and SIL have produced Meaning of the Gospel of Christ , an Arabic translation which removes “Father” in reference to God and replaces it with “Allah,” and removes or redefines “Son.”
For example, the verse which Christians use to justify going all over the world to make disciples, thus fulfilling the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19) reads, “Cleanse them by water in the name of Allah, his Messiah and his Holy Spirit” instead of “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Rev. Bassam Madany, an Arab American who runs Middle East Resources, terms these organization’s efforts as “a western imperialistic attempt that’s inspired by cultural anthropology, and not by biblical theology.” (morehere)'"

End quote

Report: American Bible translators bowdlerize scriptures to avoid offending Muslims: no "Father" and "Son" Jihadwatch http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/01/report-american-bible-translaters-bowdlerize-scriptures-to-avoid-offending-muslims.html

If this is true, for the parties they are trying not to offend, anything short of Islam -- of professing that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammad is his messenger -- would be "offensive." This is not making Christianity more palatable. It is de-Christianizing it. It is manufacturing yet another Christian heresy.

END OF QUOTE

Sunday, January 29, 2012

A Moonbat Idea from Newt?

Timothy Birdnow

In regards to Moonbat Newt's Lunie Moonbase (which I argue is not at all Loonie at CFP http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/44253), turns out I'm not the only one picking up on that Helium 3 business. Jim Hoft, the Gateway Pundit, has a piece discussing the matter.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/01/newts-moonbase-could-provide-enough-helium-3-in-one-space-shuttle-load-to-power-entire-us-for-a-year/

From the blogpost:

"Some experts estimate there a millions of tons in lunar soil — and that a single Space-Shuttle load would power the entire United States for a year. Both China and Russia have stated their nations’ interest in helium-3."

He goes on to quote an article in Discovery News:

http://news.discovery.com/space/this-moon-was-made-for-mining-helium-3.htmlAs Discovery News reports,
"Thanks to a critical shortage last year, the price of the isotope helium-3 has skyrocketed from $150 per liter to $5,000 per liter.

Helium wasn’t technically “discovered” on Earth until about 1895, despite being abundant in the universe. Almost all of the global supply of helium is located within 250 miles of Amarillo, Texas; it’s distilled from accumulated natural gas and extracted during the refining process.

Since the 1920s, the US has considered its helium stockpile as an important strategic natural resource, amassing some 32 billion cubic feet in an underground bunker in Texas, but for several years now, it’s been selling off that stockpile bit by bit to interested industrial buyers.

Helium is used for arc welding and leak detection, mostly, although NASA uses it to pressurize space shuttle fuel tanks. Liquid helium cools infrared detectors, nuclear reactors, and the superconducting magnets used in MRI machines, too. The fear is that, at current consumption rates, that underground bunker will be empty within 20 years, leaving the earth almost helium-free by the end of the 21st century. This could be bad for US industry."

End excerpt.

Get that? Helium 3 is selling for five grand a litre! That's more expensive than caviar, more expensive than the Kobe beef that Obama is so fond of, even more expensive than a gallon of gasoline in an Obama dream world. And we're going to just sit here and let the Chinese and Russians get it!

The Moon has other rare earth materials worth going after. We need to go there.

And Newt isn't a johnny-come-lately to this; in 1981 he introduced a bill that would manage lunar settlement and set up a way for a moon colony to become a state of the Union!

From Instapundit:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/136040/

"It looks like the bill was introduced in the 97th Congress as HR 4286, The National Space and Aeronautics Policy Act of 1981. Title IV of the bill dealt with the government of space territories.

The bill had 12 cosponsors — both R’s & D’s, including Tim Wirth, Robert Roe, Charlie Wilson, Bob Dornan, & Ed Derwinski."

End excerpt.

So Newt has been thinking ahead on this issue for some time. And what would be wrong with making the Moon (a planet with the surface area of Africa and room for even more as we would have to settle underground, thus making it actually larger in terms of space than the Earth which is largely a surface-only proposition) the 51st. state? It's close enough for nearly instant communication, and with the internet the settlers would hardly be cut off. The main problem would be the gravity; can children grow in low G? Will people who live on the Moon be able to tolerate a trip to Earth? Maybe not - but that's the whole point of trying. They won't have any shortage of volunteers. (I'd volunteer myself; with my bad heart I might live longer in low G.)

What would a lunar colony be like? It would have to be underground. First off, cosmic rays would zap any surface dwellers (the astronauts reported seeing cosmic rays as flashes on their retinas - even when their eyes were closed.) The big danger, though, are solar storms. If you were on the surface during a solar storm you would die. A moonbase would have to be buried under the lunar regolith. At first, it would be a small affair, just some buried rooms. It would be oppressive. But over time it could would be possible to build much bigger structures.

One suggestion is to build in a rille. Lunar rilles are giant canyons, the remains of collapsed lava flow tubes. They radiate like spokes on a bicycle wheel from impact craters. Build a domed structure in a rille and blast the sides of the canyon, collapsing the dirt onto the dome. Voila! Instant settlement.

But there are numerous flow tubes that haven't collapsed and wont collapse, and some go quite deep into the Moon. We've found the entrances to a couple. A lava flow tube is a long cavern that forms as hot molten lava flows from a volcanoe or impact site. The surrounding matter cools faster than the flowing lava (which is moving) and the tube the lava is flowing through closes up on one end and the lava flows right out, leaving a long hollow tube, usually with a flat bottom. On Earth they tend to be small, but in low gravity they can be huge. On the Moon they can be hundreds of miles long and dozens of miles wide.

And study of the flow tubes we've found on the Moon suggest they are about -50* Fahrenheit. On Earth we would call this bitterly cold, but it drops that low in SOUTHERN Alaska and people live through it. Night time temperatures on the Moon drop to -250, making it far, far colder and requiring much more energy to bring up to a comfortable temperature. The daytime temperature of250* does not affect the tube, which remains pretty constantly cold. A colony could be built in one of these tubes. The proponderance of silicates in the lunar soil would make the walls of such a tube glasslike, so it would be rather like living in a gigantic greenhouse (minus the sun, which could be brought in with periscopes). All that would be needed would be a way to bring in sunlight, power (available from sunlight, or a nuclear reactor) and a pressurized environment. Oxygen is plentiful on the Moon. Lunar dust could be converted into dirt by microorganisms. Water could be brought in from permanently shadowed spots in craters and whatnot.

Eventually such a habitat would be enormous, and not at all like living in a basement. It would appear to the inhabitants like a world, with ceilings hundreds of feet above and miles of open ground, You could have rivers, streams, lakes, forests, and beaches there. Careful use of mirrors would give you the sun, and perhaps the Earth (which would be an impressive night view). Settle near the poles and you don't have the problem of a two week day/night cycle. Use nuclear power in places away from the poles to generate sunlight at night.

Oh, and the first settlers would be able to fly with muscle-powered wings. Those growing up on the Moon would probably be too weak, unless they spend a fair amount of time in higher gravity.

Gravity will be the main problem; we have no real substitute for gravity on a world. In space centrifugal force (yes, I know; that's an illusion, the result of centripidal acceleration) can be used to make a kind of gravity, but that won't work on a planetary body like the Moon. And it is a serious consideration; a 240 lb. man will only weight 40 lbs. on the Moon, and his muscles will atrophy quickly. Returnees from the space station are just about invalids for a time (of course, they are in zero G not in 1/6 gravities.) Even if children could be born on the Moon and grow normally, they will be far more fragile and weak than their Earthly cousins. I don't see any way around that. And they will be susceptible to diseases since their habitats will be isolated and more sterile. It may eb that they will never be able to go back to Earth.

But what of it? Earth is the largest terrestrial planet, and if they can live in low G they can go to any other potentially habitable world and get along fine. Mars would be a bit heavy, but, thanks to lower density, Ganymede and Callisto would be like home, as would Titan. Triton, Neptune's moon, would be a bit too light.

Of course, it may be that we can't live in low gravity, which will mean lunar settlements will be temporary places, industrial complexes. That is o.k., too; we could build permanent colonies in orbit and spin them for higher gravity. These suckers could be HUGE; Gerard O'Neil worked out the economics of space colonies and figured his standard colony as twenty to forty miles long by four to ten wide. http://www.nss.org/settlement/space/oneillcylinder.htm

Or you could build a Bernal Sphere, a round structure that offers variable gravity for different people.

The hitch in all of this is solar storm shielding; O'Neil never did work out a good way to protect against solar storms. He suggested special shelters for the public during a storm, which is fine for people but not so good for the plants and animals left outside of the shelters (and the whole point is to create an Earthlike environment). It does not take into account what would happen to microorganisms. What kinds of diseases would be created by genetic mutation?

And the cost would be literally astronomical. I don't see space colonies in our near future. But a moonbse is doable.

We've got to start somewhere.

To steal a phrase from a source I can't recall at the moment "if God didn't intend for Man to colonize space he wouldn't have put a whole planet a couple of hundred thousand miles over our heads". We have the only terrestrial planet with such a situation. Mercury and Venus have no moons. Mars has two puny things that look more like asteroids. Yes, Pluto has a giant satellite, but Pluto is no bigger than the Earth's moon and is composed of frozen gases. It's not really a planet but a kind of super sized comet in a more regular orbit. Even the outer planets with their outsized moons aren't like ours in that they are frozen water ice and gases surrounding much smaller rocky cores. Only the Earth has an actual planetary body in orbit. Why we wouldn't be interested in it is beyond me.

Many people oppose going back to the Moon as a waste of time. Some think we should go on to Mars. I think both views are myopic. My essay at Canada Free Press explains my reasons for wanting a permanent American presence on the Moon, and I think Mankind is an expansionistic species that requires more than just the world around him to be happy and productive. A frontier is needed, a place where the energetic, the ambitious, the old line American types, can go and create. A settled world will slide into despair as the walls of civilization grow ever higher. And going to Mars is silly for now; it's too far, and all we will do is go and look at rocks at a huge expense. We will go and not go back in person. Oh, we'll use plenty of robots, but people just won't bother. That isn't what we need; we need people actually living and working out there. We need settlement. We need money to be made. We need competition.

I was reading the comments at Discover magazine about Gingrich's remarks, and the liberal crowd was complaining about Gingrich wanting America to be there first, because they want us all to go together; they believe in globalism, in one world, and don't want one nation to advance over any other. We'll never accomplish anything that way. The space station has been a huge boondoggle because we turned it from an American enterprise and made it an international cooperative effort. Too many cooks spoil the broth. And competition is GOOD, a force that spurs people forward. The liberal beliefs in the inevitability of internationalism and socialism are horribly misplaced; that way will lead to inevitable decay and collapse. Human beings simply are not herd animals. We need individual challenges, and tribal challenges.

We need a frontier. I would like that frontier to be settled by America and her allies. Western Civilization has been the most productive, most fruitful, fairest civilization in history. We have advanced art, science, technology, all of the things that have blessed the world in modern times have been the product of our unique systems of economics, our philosophy, our Judeo-Christian religion. Should China settle space the colonies would be gulags, prisons with people locked under the thumbs of the state. Ditto Russia. I don't mind them coming along, but WE need to be the standard bearers. Our settlements must be homes to freedom, places where people can get away from statism and control. And we'll be happy to bring the poor and downtrodden with us. We're the only ones who would do that.

The future depends on the choices we make in the present. Open space to commerce, to adventurers, to PEOPLE. The problem that the space program suffered from is the elitism of the lucky few chosen to be astronauts. NASa tried to solve that by sending up teachers and other gimmicky things. No. The answer is to make it possible for any person to go. The key is to make it profitable. The key is to make it a frontier and not a nature preserve. The Federal government did that to Alaska, and look how well that worked. Sure, Alaska is pretty, but nobody would call it a great place to move to - and not because it's cold.

If we want a bright future we are going to have to go up there. And to do that we are going to have to settle the Moon. It really is that simple.


Here is an interesting paper discussing ways to build a moon base.
http://soe.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/gset/lunar.pdf

Famine and the Rise of the North American Union

Timothy Birdnow

Mexico is suffering from drought, the results of La Nina, and the nation is on the brink of starvation as famine moves in. http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=472296&Itemid=1

According to the article:

"At least 50 percent of the municipalities of the country and 1.4 million hectares are affected by adverse weather conditions, specialist Emilio Romero told La Jornada newspaper.

In 2011, Mexico lost over 3.2 million tons of corn, 600,000 of beans and 60,000 head of cattle, according to official statistics.

Estimates show that 1,213 municipalities in 19 territories (50 percent of the country) have been affected by the worst drought over the past 50 years."

End excerpt.

Now, Mexico never suffered terrible drought when we had Global Warming; the terrible drought is occuring during a cooling trend. The Earth has been in a cooling trend for the last 15 years, or at least is not warming statistically, and now that we are no longer warming we are having famines. We need a little global warming! Historically, the warmer periods are the ones that have been more productive agriculturally. The Mound Builders of Cahokia flourished during the Medieval Warming Period, and their once-enormous metropolis failed when cooler weather set in. Ditto the Mayans, who were living in the Yucatan but ended up moving to Guatemala after the cooling began. Ditto the Incans. The Mongols poured out of the desolate Gobi desert when their food supply increased during the MWP. The Polynesians settled many of their Pacific islands during the MWP, yet by the time the Europeans discovered them many had fallen into barbarity. This is certainly true of Easter Island, where a civilization was able to build those big ponderous heads that so resemble Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama. Herman Melville speaks of evidence he saw on Nuka Hiva of an advanced civilization that fell. Why? Likely the end of the MWP saw the food supply drop.

And now we face famine in Mexico. This year's La Nina has shifted the jet stream, moving warmer, wetter air to the North and a strong Arctic Oscillation is keeping the cold air circulating around the Arctic, thus making a lower pressure region over the U.S. and Canada. In short, Mexico has been bipassed this year, and crop failures are the result.

But there's more; the ethanol mandate in the United States for gasoline has driven the price of corn sky high, and corn is one of the staples of the Mexican diet. Mexico just couldn't afford to lose any crops - but has done so anyway.

Couple this with the civil chaos that the drug cartels are causing (and much thanks for that can go to the Obama Justice Department, which has been supplying all manner of deadly weapons to the drug lords as part of "Operation Fast and Furious") and you have a recipe for disaster. Without oil Mexico would be finis.

And let us not forget that Mexico is STILL a socialist country, with the ruling party refusing any sort of reform.

NOW is the time for the U.S. to press for Mexico to scrap her socialist system and go fully toward a market-based economy. Now is the time to push for more openness in the Mexican government. This government in power has failed miserably because Mexicans do not enjoy the fruits of their labor. But the U.S. is moving in the direction of Mexico, rather than the other way around, and with the current socialist in power in Washington there will be no pressure to reform. We could also get Mexico to increase oil production to drive down oil prices, but with President Windbag Windmill in office I don't expect that to happen.

What will happen? If things are bad enough, the U.S. will bail out Mexico (which means we will have to be bailed out by China) and Mexico will become a client state. What does that mean?

WELCOME TO THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION!

Yes, the North American Union will be at hand. Should the U.S. bail out Mexico (especially without insisting on reforms) we will have to take over a number of Mexican functions (and this can be sold as a matter of national security) and voila, we have permanent ties to Mexico, ties that future politicians will only strengthen. And even more Mexicans will enter the U.S. illegally, because we WON'T insist on reforms, and there will be no way to make a living. As Mexico empties into the U.S. the concept of a border will grow vague, and eventually will be erased. North America will become another E.U., a misanthropic empire of disparate peoples under one system. After that? Let's just say World Government is the next logical step.

The E.U. is an abject failure, and yet we rush headlong into creating a North American version. There is a serious effort to create the North American Union, and there is a scheme to create a United States of Africa as well. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/15/501364/main20043506.shtml Anyone who doesn't believe the end game is world government is kidding themselves. Why create super regional governments when the smaller local governments are failures? How is it an improvement to increase the size and scope of government when local government does not work? One would only believe that a U.S. of Africa is a good thing if you wanted world government; it would be but a means to an end. A U.S. of Africa would simply multiply the disaster that is Zimbabwe across the continent.

The theory with the NAU is that the U.S. and Canada would prop up Mexico, acting to dilute the poverty there. It's vintage collectivist thinking; we have too much wealth in the anglo north and we can simply share it with the Mexicans in the south. Creating a North American Union means being fair, not letting those evil American and Canadian people horde the wealth they were blessed with. That Mexico has an enormous bounty of natural resources and good land is immaterial; it's not a systemic failure, but the greed of the northerners. Put them together in one country and the "unnatural" boundaries will disappear as all share the wealth.

Not sure what wealth there is to share in a U.S. of Africa. South Africa and Rhodesia were, whatever their faults, prosperous under "colonial" rule; the integration of the new nations into inter-tribal countries has destroyed whatever prosperity they had - especially in what was Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe. But again, that isn't the point. The point is to establish these uber structures that can then be integrated into a worldwide federation run by the U.N.

This projected famine in Mexico would not be a worry had Mexico not been a socialist state. It would have been tough, yes, but the Mexican economy could have absorbed the losses and found ways to come back. Mexico is facing famine because it does not have a free system. Command economies always fail under pressure. They are too weak, too feeble to turn lemons into lemonade. Nobody cares enough to take initiative. Mexico's answer to stagnant economic growth was to export her unemployed to the U.S. Outsourcing their poverty bought them some time, but did nothing to fundamentally reform the problems that Mexico suffered. Those problems are systemic. And now the winds of fortune are blowing down the house of cards that the socialists have built.

When will Mankind realize the utter stupidity of socialism? It never works, yet we keep trying, trying. Always, it's just a matter of getting the right people in charge "we are the ones we have been waiting for" yet it always produces poverty, inequity, misery. And every time it fails that failure is used as an excuse for more of what caused the trouble in the first place.

This Mexican famine will be a golden opportunity for the American socialists. Beware!

Muchos Gracias to Ron De Haan

The New American Elite

By Alan Caruba

The only constant in the life of individuals and nations is change. Since the beginning of the last century, the process or rate of change has accelerated with the invention and availability of a myriad of machines, technologies that have altered the lifestyle of Americans as well as of millions around the world.

Let me put it in personal terms. When I was born in the late 1930s, my Mother washed the family laundry by hand and hung it out to dry on sunny days or in the basement of our home if it was raining. We were not poor. We were middle class. My Father was a Certified Public Accountant and we lived in a spacious suburban home in an upscale New Jersey community. Mass produced washers and dryers would arrive after the end of World War Two.

The differences between lower economic classes, the middle class, and upper classes were well defined back then. All, however, generally held the same values regarding societal institutions such as marriage, religion, national pride. Those values have eroded since the 1960s and Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute www.aei.org, whose new book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010” ($27.00, Crown Forum) tells you how and why.

Murray takes the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22,, 1963 as the starting point, noting, for example, that “Not only were Americans almost always married, mothers normally stayed at home to raise their children. More than 80 percent of married women with children were not working outside the home in 1963.”

“Part of these widely shared values lay in the religiosity of America in 1963” and Murray compares this to a 1963 Gallup poll in which “Only one percent of respondents said they did not have a religious preference, and half said they had attended a worship service in the previous seven days. These answers showed almost no variations across classes.”

“The racial differences in income, education, and occupations were all huge, noted Murray. “The civil rights movement was the biggest domestic issue of the early 1960s…” By 1963, “Poverty had been dropping so rapidly for so many years that Americans thought things were going well.”

The changes in values that many Americans deplore today were coming. “The first oral contraceptive pill had gone on the market in 1960 and its use was spreading widely.” Murray points out that “The leading cohorts of the baby boomers were in their teens by November 21, 1963, and, for better or worse, they were going to be who they were going to be. No one understood at the time what a big difference it could make if one age group of a population is abnormally large. Everyone was about to find out.”

“This book,” wrote Murray, “is about the evolution in American society that has taken place since November 21, 1963, leading to the formation of classes that are different in kind and in their degree of separation from anything that the nation has ever known.”

The culture that Americans shared uniquely and in contrast to much of the world, warns Murray “is unraveling” as “America is coming apart at the seams—not the seams of race or ethnicity, but of class.”

Murray defines the new upper class “as the most successful five percent of adults ages 25 and older who are working in managerial positions, in the professions (medicine, the law, engineering and architecture, the sciences, and university faculty), and in content-production jobs in the media.”

“As of 2010, about 23 percent of all employed persons aged 25 or older were in these occupations, which means that about 1,427,000 persons constituted the top 5 percent. Since 69 percent of adults in these occupations who were ages 25 and older were married in 2010, about 2.4 million adults were in new-upper-class families as heads of households or spouse.” That’s a very small slice of 330 million Americans.

They are not the “millionaires and billionaires” that President Obama is always blathering about. They are the new “establishment” that determine much about the nation’s culture, economy, and future.

To boil down Murray’s extensive research and reporting, that top 5 percent are largely isolated from the rest of the population because they tend to live where their counterparts live and interact mostly with one another in all aspects of their lives. They are the new “elite.”

“Rolling back income inequality won’t make any difference in the isolation of the new upper class from the rest of America.” They are wealthy by most standards and Murray expects them to become wealthier over time. Thus, all the talk of “fairness” and “a fair share” is meaningless.

“Fairness” as many point out, is just another word for “class warfare.” It has always been the siren call of communism.

Efforts in America and in Europe to create “fairness” in the form of our “entitlement” programs and the extensive European socialism have reached a point where they threaten to collapse our own and the economies of many European nations.

Murray says “We have been the product of the cultural capital bequeathed to us by the system the founders laid down; a system that says people must be free to live life as they see fit and to be responsible for the consequences of their actions; that it is not the government’s job to protect people from themselves; that it is not the government’s job to stage-manage how people interact with one another. Discard the system that created the cultural capital, and the qualities we have loved about Americans will go away.”

The system, of course, is free-market capitalism, deregulation, and lower marginal income tax rates, all within the context of the U.S. Constitution. It is under attack by the President of the United States and a cohort of civil service and industrial unions, along with liberal members of Congress.

It is why the Republican primaries have been, in part, a desperate effort to educate Americans to the reason America is in peril and why Americans must strive to restore the values that were shared on November 22, 1963.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Fly Me to the Moon; Why Gingrich was Right about Returning to the Moon at Canada Free Press

Timothy Birdnow

My latest at Canada Free Press.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/44253

Newt was right; we need to go back to the Moon. I explain why.

Smearing Newt

Dana Mathewson

This guy gets it right. Take names of the pundits who insist Mitt's the thing, see if they were the ones who pushed for Dole and McCain in turn, and ignore them in 2016 after Zippy wins in 2012. http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/smearing-newt-taking-names-for-2016/

No Need to Panic about Global Warming

Timothy Birdnow

No need to panic about Global Warming.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

From the article:

"In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts."

[...]

"Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job."

[...]

"Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

Related Video

Princeton physics professor William Happer on why a large number of scientists don't believe that carbon dioxide is causing global warming.

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet."


SIGNED:

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

Green Lebensraum

Timothy Birdnow

Our old friend Mark Musser has a great piece about Lebensraum and it's intellectual ties to the modern E.U. in a piece at American Thinker.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/green_lebensraum_the_nazi_roots_of_sustainable_development.html

The Nazis were Greens, splashed with brown paint, as Mark puts it. The new paint job is red, but in either case the inner color is green.

This is one you don't want to miss!

Environment friendly house and car: I'm Melting, I'm Melting

Jack Kemp

CBS reports that (video included):
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/01/25/woman-claims-neighbors-energy-efficient-windows-are-melting-her-toyota-prius/

A SoCal woman says the energy efficient window installed in a neighbor’s condominium is melting the plastic components on cars parked in her carport.

Heather Patron of Studio City was dealing with a mystery regarding her Toyota Prius.

“The side view mirrors were melting,” says Patron. “Anything that was plastic on the car was melting.”

Toyota told Patron nothing was wrong with the car. After having the mirrors replaced, she noticed the mirrors on the car parked next to hers were also melting.
END QUOTE

The solution is simple. Park near an windmill turbine. It will kill any birds that might "deposit" on your windshield.

Friday, January 27, 2012

To My Paulian Friends

Dana Mathewson

... and others who "like Ron Paul's ideas." Or just wonder what Ron Paul is all about.

http://rightwingnews.com/democrats/ron-paul-not-a-serious-candidate/

Rich Is The New Gay

Jack E. Kemp

This is the most profound insight I've seen in a while. It ranks with "politics is organized hate." Posted at Tea Party Nation by Tm Nerenz,

Below are the opening lines and a link. One may have to register (for free) to access the link, but it is well worth the small effort.

http://www.teapartynation.com/profiles/blogs/rich-is-the-new-gay

Rich Is The New Gay
Posted by Tim Nerenz on January 24, 2012 at 7:25pm
It’s ok to hate them for who they are. It’s ok to vandalize their property, taunt them, seize their assets, deny them government benefits, make them register and buy a license to practice their alternative lifestyle.

You can hound them at their workplace, you can bully them in schools, you can picket their homes, you can send them death threats with impunity, and you can occupy public buildings for months on end chanting bad things about them.

Rich is the new gay.

It is no longer permissible in our civil society to hate based on skin color, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, or sexual preference. But wealth – that’s a free-fire zone. Wealth is evil. Capitalism is sodomy. Free enterprise is lewd and lascivious conduct. Wall Street is the new Castro Street, only it’s ok to light it on fire. Even Tiffany Newt feels free to tee off on Mitt Romney for being (gasp) too rich – think Ellen reefing on Elton John to win George Michael’s vote.

You can say the most hateful things imaginable about rich people - even the President does it, cheered on by a wealth-o-phobic media. Imagine how the fur would fly if a President blamed all his failures on homosexuals, or if he expressed support for violent mobs rioting in the streets if it were the 3.6% instead of the 1% whose heads are demanded on a pole.

REPEAL 17TH AMENDMENT POSTER BOY

William Been

When the Founders created our Republic, it was their intention that the two senators from each state were to be representative of the political policies and direction of the individual state. With this objective in mind, Article 1, Section 3 of the Constitution establishes the Senate as follows: The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote.”

Among the various reasons that the Founders considered when designating the State Legislatures was their desire and intent to assemble a select assembly. Quoting John Jay from No. 64 of the Federalist Papers: “…as the State Legislatures who appoint the senators will in general be composed of the most enlightened and respectable citizens, there is reason to presume that their attention and their votes will be directed to those men only who have become the most distinguished by their abilities and virtue, and in whom the people perceive just grounds for confidence.”

Throughout the 19th century, there were various calls to change the senator selection process to a direct election by the people. Among the reasons given for changing the selection process were corruption charges at the state level during the selection process while the Populous and Progressive Movements pushed from the perspective of pure democracy. Eventually, during the heights of the Progressive Movement of Woodrow Wilson, the selection process was changed by the ratification of the 17th Amendment on April 8, 1913. The 17th Amendment simply changed the appointment by the State Legislative bodies to a direct election of the people from each state.

Fast forward to 2012. The worst of the Founders fears is now playing out across our country as we now talk about how much money it will take to win an election, we now hear that 20% of the voters don’t make up their minds until the last two months before an election, we now see radio and television ads of questionable integrity designed to sway the voters, we now see multiple special interest groups outside of the state influencing elections, we see disinterest at all levels of society, we see the Hollywood image trumping enlightenment, and sadly we see elections where the majority of the voters do not participate believing their vote will make no difference.

So now we approach the election of 2012 when Bob Casey is running for re-election as U. S. senator in Pennsylvania . While pondering the picture of Senator Casey, one cannot help but question the lack of wisdom exhibited by ratification of the 17th Amendment. Instead of the sitting Senator being closely tied to his state as the Founders intended, Senator Casey portrays himself as being a servant to the sitting President. His picture in his senatorial office is truly worth a thousand words. It reflects the diametrical opposite to what the Founders intended.

Again referencing the Federalist Papers, No. 64, John Jay makes it clear that the Founders desired to avoid elections by the people “where the activity of party zeal” takes advantage of the electorate. Party zeal and obedience to President Obama have been portrayed throughout Senator Casey’s current term. While the Pennsylvania electorate is belittled by the President as those who cling to their guns and religion, the sitting senator turns his back on the people of Pennsylvania and professes his unqualified support for the President with a 98% voting record favoring Obama Progressivism. Further illustrating Senator Casey’s disdain for Pennsylvania citizens, as well as the traditions of our great country, was his appearance as one of the keynote speakers at the Pennsylvania Progressive Summit held in January, 2011 at Pittsburgh.

Rather than representing the state of Pennsylvania as intended by the Founders, Senator Casey has identified himself as a part of the Progressive Movement that portrays its anti-American ideology through various radical organizations. His behavior and his record have defined him as being part of the Soros/Obama transformation of America. Perhaps Senator Casey should describe what America looks like when the Progressive Movement completes this transformation process that he so eagerly embraces.

Concerning corruption being a detriment to the original Constitutional intent, an attorney friend stated firmly that it would be much better to have the corruption closer to the people at the state level rather than being buried in the huge Washington bureaucracy. This statement is validated by the fact that over 30% of the money donated to Senator Casey comes from outside of Pennsylvania from various special interests. Also, consider the huge amount of money that George Soros and his allies pour through various PACs into the Democrat Party for support of Democrat candidates. As Eli Pariser of the Soros funded MoveOn.org stated after the 2004 election cycle concerning the Democrat Party: “Now it is our party, we bought it, we own it...”

In closing, as we watch dishonesty being the rule rather than the exception at all levels of political discourse, it is worthwhile to again consider the original intent of the Founders where State Legislatures would select those men who are most distinguished by their abilities and virtues. With 23 Democrat seats up for re-election, now is the time to elect conservatives who value the Constitution and roll back the Progressive Movement. The 17th Amendment would be a great starting place.

No Pennsylvania Senator should be ideologically tied to the President as a part of OBAMA’S PEOPLE which the Pennsylvania elections of 2010 made perfectly clear. However, 2010 was only a starting point and many Americans do not recognize the threat posed by the Progressive Movement which still holds the power in Washington DC by having infiltrated the federal government through the election of officials who blindly follow the transformation leaders to a destination that has never been defined to the American people.

How the UN "freezes out" Holocaust Survivors' Families

Jack Kemp

January 27th is the date for the U.N.'s Holocaust Memorial Day, designated in 2005. The same memorial day is observed by the European Union. This January date coincides with the liberation of Auschwitz, yet Israel observes "Yom HaShoah" (Holocaust Day) on a Hebrew calendar date that falls in March or April of each year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_Memorial_Day

Why the discrepancy in dates? When the Israelis designated their day of Holocaust remembrance, they wisely looked to a future when most younger Holocaust survivors would be aging. Going outside to a memorial service in the dead of winter, even in a place like Jerusalem, is a daunting thing for a senior citizen. The U.N. And the Israeli government knew that American, Canadian and British Jews would hold their commemorations on or near the same date as the commemorations in Jerusalem. By having the event in the spring, the outdoor weather would not be such a problem for a future diminishing population of survivors.

While there is symbolism in picking the January date, yet there were many other concentration and labor camps besides Auschwitz scattered across Germany, Poland, France, the Soviet Union and elsewhere. The U.N. "coincidentally" chose a date most inconvenient for elderly Jews. By 2005, when the U.N. declared their memorial date, a twenty year old Holocaust survivor would be eighty, might live in Canada or Chicago or Stockholm - and would probably have to stay home to avoid snow drifts and strong winds. Thus the U.N. and the European Union chose a date that is the equivalent of free Bungee jumps for seniors. It was a sophisticated insult, in my opinion. Yes, most of the original survivors were dead by 2005, but their adult children, often around age sixty by 2005, would also be inclined to avoid a U.N. "cold shoulder commemoration" in northern climes.

Laframboise and McKitrick on the IPCC

Timothy Birdnow

Over at Ecofascism, William Kay writes about the IPCC:

http://www.ecofascism.com/review27.html

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is at the forefront of the global warming hoax. IPCC Assessment Reports are gospels to politicians and journalists. Two recent publications – investigative journalist Donna Laframboise’s woefully titled The Delinquent Teenager who was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert, and economics professor Ross McKitrick’s What is Wrong With the IPCC? – slam-dunk these Assessment Reports into the dumpster. What follows is a collated, abridgement of these two documents."

Ecofascism is a must-visit for anyone interested in the Global Warming swindle.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Romney Defends Brian Williams

Timothy Birdnow

Yet more proof that Mitt Romney is horribly clueless.
http://www.breitbart.tv/mitt-hits-newt-very-easy-to-criticize-debate-moderator/

First, the stupidity of the GOP in general to give liberal mainstream media marionettes control over the debates goes beyond astonishing. Why does our side put the enemy in charge? Just because a guy is a network anchor doesn't mean he has any credibility. It's time we stop affording the Left's attack dogs respect. Perhaps we have to accept this in the general election debates, but why the primaries?

It's like making Richard Dawkins the moderator of an ecumenical church council debate.

Second, if Romney thinks that the media should be allowed to run roughshod over us because they claim to be the unbiased investigators, then he is either a titanic fool or worse. Does Romney really believe the media is NOT biased? Does he not understand that they are diametrically opposed to our interests? Can't he fathom that they will turn on him as soon as he is the nominee? If he doesn't understand this simple fact then he is not the man to lead us. Worse if he does understand it and is using this to his advantage.

How much hand-ringing did Conservatives do over the "attack on Capitalism" by Newt's PAC; will their be comparable wailing and gnashing of teeth over this? I think this is worse, because it suggests that we should listen to the mainstream media and accept their views as honest. The media is owned by Obama, lock, stock, and barrel. They are liars and the father of lies. That is a fundamental axiom of Conservatism, because the media has mischaracterized our views and assassinated our character since the inception of electronic media, and even back into the days of print. You cannot be conservative if you accept the wisdom and honesty of the mainstream media.

This speaks volumes about what Romney believes and what he is willing to do. There is no way a man who defends an attack from the media on a fellow - even if that fellow has been horrible to him - can claim to be a conservative, and there is no way he is going to win the Presidency. Romney has just lost the race, in my opinion.

But then, he, like John McCain before him, is the media choice for GOP candidate.

Let's look at the track record of GOP Establishment candidates.

In 2008 we had John McCain, a darling of the media. He was always invited on Sunday talk shows because he was always good for bashing conservatives. Obama beat him handily.

George W. Bush was an Establishment candidate, but he had a nip-and-tuck with McCain. We may all remember he stalemated with the embarassingly dorkie and idiotic Al Gore in 2000, winning by just a few votes. After becoming President Bush whittled away the GOP margins, losing first the House then the Senate, and finally handing over complete control to the Democrats in 2008.

Bob Dole, the viagra spokesman, so lacked virility that he was soundly beaten by Bill Clinton, a man who was facing impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice. Clinton had no problems similar to Dole's, I might add.

George Herbert Walker Bush, the consummate insider, lost to Clinton because of a very minor recession, one that the media promoted with enormous fanfare prior to the elections. I remember the "signs that a recession may be coming" stories in the media up to a year before the election, and, of course, they managed to destroy consumer confidence to the point that we had a teeny, tiny recession (which the Clinton/Gore camp refered to as the worst economy since the Great Depression) and the bland Mr.Bush lost - despite having been a hugely popular war President, with sky-high numbers only a year before.

In 1980 the Establishment wanted George H.W. Bush, or Bob Dole, to be the nominee. Fortunately Ronald Reagan won, and he ended up annihilating the Democrats - twice!

In 1976 the Establishment promoted default President Gerald R. Ford over Ronald Reagan. Ford was beaten by the pathetic smiley face Jimmy Carter, a man who had to fend off a "killer rabbit" and who gave interviews to Playboy magazine admitting he "lusted in his heart". Carter was a national embarassment, and the Establishment candidate couldn't even beat him.

So now we are to believe the Establishment knows best, that we can only win with the guy who provided the model for Obamacare, with the fellow who was pro-abortion before he was against it, who wants amnesty for illegal aliens and then doesn't, for a Ken doll lookalike without Ken's personality. And this guy is defending the media! Why not nominate Tom Daschle and be done with it? (I hear he isn't too busy these days.) He'd get better press.

In a saner world Romney would be finished with this. Too many conservatives have put their eggs in the Romney basket, and prefer them there to on their faces. (See Ann Coulter's latest act of electorial malpractice here http://www.wnd.com/2012/01/re-elect-obama-vote-newt/

Speaking of eggs, Romney has laid a beauty.

The Race for the Bomb - Then and Now (a Retrospective)

(Here is an oldie but a goodie. This first appeared at Intellectual Conservative.)

By Timothy Birdnow, on January 4th, 2008


Why do our intelligence people think it will take six years or more for Iran to develop a nuclear device, when the United States was able to do it from scratch in just four, using Second World War technology?

In 1933 a startling idea occurred to a transplanted Hungarian at a traffic light at Southampton Row in London. This physics professor and former student of Albert Einstein had once read H.G. Wells' 1913 The World Set Free in which "atomic disintegration" was used as a superweapon to destroy the industrial world. Our young physicist, a Hungarian-born gentleman by the name of Leo Szilard, knew about the research of Ernest Rutherford in which the great man had discovered the inner structure of atomic nuclei. Daydreaming while at the stoplight, the thought occurred to Szilard that it should be possible to hit atoms with fast moving neutrons and thus split them. At this time there was not a name for such a thing, and it was not even considered theoretically possible. Szilard imagined a superweapon, Wells' "atomic disintegration," which would utilize a chain reaction, neutrons striking atoms, splitting off more neutrons that would strike more atoms, etc.

He went with this to see Rutherford, who summarily tossed him out of his office as a crank.

Szilard began searching for an element that would react as he envisioned. He would have to search for 5 years.

It was the purest of chance. In 1938 Dr. Lise Meitner, a physicist and Jewish woman who had once been at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin but had fled to Sweden to escape the rising anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany, received a letter from an old friend. Dr. Otto Hahn, a longtime collaborator and former student of Rutherford, had bombarded uranium with neutrons, and some of the uranium seemed to have turned into barium. He scribbled out a letter to Meitner, realizing that he was about to either make a total fool of himself or go down in scientific history. Meitner's nephew, Viennese-born Dr. Otto Frisch, happened to be visiting as she was reading the remarkable letter from her old friend. Frisch discussed the matter with a friend who happened to be a biologist, and dubbed the new phenomenon "nuclear fission," naming it after the process of cell division..

Frisch was a staff member of the great Niels Bohr, and he casually related this story to the famous professor. Bohrs was going to Princeton to spend several months at the Institute for Advanced Study, and he leaked the word of Hahn's discovery to some of the members of the Institute. On January 25 he was made a last-minute speaker at the fifth annual Washington Conference, where he gave the details of nuclear fission. The conference exploded.

Still, the matter was considered only of intellectual interest. Szilard and his friend, fellow Hungarian Edward Teller (later to be known as the Father of the Hydrogen Bomb), began agitating for the Roosevelt Administration to fund a project to develop this point of intellectual interest into a superweapon. Nazi Germany had been systematically gobbling up Europe, and the Thousand Year Reich was better positioned to develop such a weapon. They had the scientific firepower, the uranium, and the will to do it. Szilard understood that whoever possessed such a weapon could dominate the world.

But the Roosevelt Administration did not grasp this fact, and they offered lukewarm support, even after Albert Einstein wrote his famous letter (at Szilard's request) advocating the development of an atomic bomb. (He ended up writing a second letter since the first drew virtually no response.)

It would take pressure from the British government and Hitler's amazing early success in Russia before the Roosevelt government would get serious about the effort. Even then, the "Uranium Committee" was given a small budget, and unclear goals. They did not even invite Szilard, Teller, or Enrico Fermi to sit on the committee, since they were immigrants and not considered reliable! The idea of using nuclear power for submarines seemed more promising than building a bomb.

The project was not given full support by Roosevelt until a meeting on October 9, 1941; fully two years after Einstein sent his letter.

On August 6, 1945 the city of Hiroshima disappeared in a mushroom cloud and hellfire. Nearly 140,000 people perished.

This most lethal of weapons was developed entirely from scratch in under 4 years, just 7 years after the uranium atom was first split, 12 years after the vaguest idea that such a thing was even remotely possible occurred to Szilard. Here is a timeline of events. Go here for more on the Manhattan Project.

Consider the difficulties; computers had just been invented, and they did not have calculators, so most of the calculations required had to be done by slide rule and with paper and pencil. There were no transistors or other such electronics, so any equipment they needed had to function with vacuum tubes. They did not have centrifuges that were powerful enough to enrich the Uranium, so they had to use magnets to pick the U235 out atom by atom. (Nobody had ever done such a thing before.) They did not know the critical mass needed; since neutrons strike the atomic nuclei and send more neutrons to strike more atoms-much like one of those domino displays-the exact amount and shape of the Uranium was crucial. Too much and the neutrons would bog down and the chain reaction would fail, too few and it would not get started. The researchers had no idea how much they would need, some of them thought they would need tons. They didn't know how to trigger the reaction, and all sorts of ideas were considered and discarded. (They would finally hit on the idea of using a gun firing uranium bullets for the U bomb but would be forced to develop a means of triggering an implosion for the plutonium variant, since the reaction would have to occur in 1/1,000 of a second.)

They solved all of these problems in under four years with 1940's technology. In fact, they solved it twice, since they not only developed Little Boy which was a uranium-based device, but also Fat Man which was plutonium-based. These were two completely different approaches to the problem, and both worked.

Seven years later the first fusion bomb was exploded by the United States at Enewetak.

On August 29, 1949 the backward Soviet Union had their "First Lightening" atomic test; this from a nation with no known Uranium reserves. Four years later, in 1953, the Soviets detonated a fusion bomb of their own. By 1955 they were testing thermonuclear devices in the megaton range.

Recently our intelligence community put out a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) http://www.odni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf which stated "with moderate confidence" that Iran could not be capable of producing enough Highly Enriched Uranium (HEW, at or above 20% U235, as opposed to Low Enriched Uranium LEW below 20%) to produce an atomic bomb before 2009, and they believe it unlikely before 2013, although they admit that Iran has been running an enrichment program and is currently seeking to purchase more centrifuges for the enrichment of uranium. They judge with "high confidence" that Iran is incapable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before 2015.

They say that Iran had suspended its nuclear program in 2003.

Huh? They have an enrichment program, but that does not constitute a nuclear weapons program? Somebody please explain to me the difference; enrichment of uranium IS the nuclear weapons program!

Iran does not need to work out any technical details. They could obtain design blueprints from North Korea, or purchase them from the Russians or Chinese, or could have gotten them from A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, before his little cottage industry was broken in 2003 (interesting year, wasn't it?). The myriad details that were worked out by the Manhattan Project in less than four years are of no concern to the terror masters in Iran. For that matter, they could probably download a schematic from the Internet.

The crucial issue is the procurement of nuclear material; a nuclear weapons program requires little more than that.

Granted, that is not an easy thing to do. One must either obtain material already processed (something that would be difficult, but not necessarily impossible since the collapse of the old Soviet Union has left materials scattered about and there is no reason to believe that the Chinese would not sell a little on the side — or North Korea) or do the processing oneself.

To make weapons-grade uranium, it is necessary to separate out the highly fissionable U235 from the unrefined ore. (U235 constitutes just .72% of most ore.) This can be accomplished through electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS), the method first used at the Y-12 plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in which electromagnets separate uranium ions. Another early technique requires that the uranium be processed into uranium hexafloride gas and then passed through a filter which allows more of the U235 to penetrate. Rinse, lather, then repeat until you reach 95% U235. Perhaps the most efficient method is to whirl the uranium hexafloride in centrifuges; the heavier isotopes tend to settle to the outside (just like processing sugar). This technique requires far less energy, but necessitates rather sophisticated centrifuge technology; the Manhattan Project could not make this method work, for example. A really high-tech method is to use lasers to selectively excite atoms. The Iranians experimented with this, but abandoned it because it would not allow them to produce what they needed in abundance. Here is a website explaining the enrichment process.

Making plutonium requires a nuclear reactor; U238 is bombarded with neutrons inside a "breeder" reactor to produce U239, which then decays into Neptunium239. The highly radioactive Neptunium then decays into Plutonium 239 which can be "harvested" and used in atomic weapons. The technicians had best be careful; plutonium is highly poisonous, and will kill anyone who is accidentally exposed to it. Should a terrorist try to build a bomb from purchased plutonium he will likely wipe out his entire cell by mishandling the material. Go here to learn more about plutonium production.

In both cases, it is difficult to hide a clandestine nuke program; the enrichment process generally requires a large amount of space and energy, and things which can often be detected. Plutonium requires running a nuclear reactor — something we should not miss.

But difficult is not impossible, and North Korea developed their atomic weapons right under our noses.http://www.isis-online.org/publications/dprk/currentandfutureweaponsstocks.html This from a nation under intense scrutiny and with extremely limited resources. Of course, the Chinese likely assisted them in their quest, but they still managed to catch the intelligence community by complete surprise. It should be pointed out that they have been partnering with Iran, and had been assisting the Syrians to build a reactor for plutonium production. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=23202

The conclusions of the latest NIE not only contradict their own report from '05, but disagree with aspects of this Congressional Research Services report from September of `06. http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:32uqnHf_XOAJ:fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RS21592.pdf+Iranian+nuclear+enrichment+program&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us&ie=UTF-8

Here is a list of Iranian enrichment sites. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RS22531.pdf

Iran has had a nuclear program since before the Revolution, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, coupled with the proliferation of nuclear technology, has made it much easier to advance these programs. Why do our intelligence people think it will take six years or more for Iran to develop a nuclear device, when the United States was able to do from scratch in just four, using Second World War technology? They have a clandestine network assisting them. They have all the blueprints and schematics necessary. They have merely to acquire enough fissile material, and they may well have that supplied to them. Granted, their centrifuge technology may require more time to complete, but where there's a will there's a way. This report takes the Iranians at their word, something extraordinarily foolish in such a dangerous world. I wouldn't be surprised if they already have a bomb; they won't test it until they have more than one. Despite what the culprits responsible for this report (Donald Kerr, Van Vann Diepen, etc.) may believe, closing an official office hardly means shutting down the entire operation. As long as Iran continues to enrich uranium, they continue to have a nuclear program.

The thought occurs to me that perhaps this is some sort of ruse; we may be preparing some sort of action and want to catch the Iranians by surprise? It would be a very sound strategy, but President Bush simply does not operate in such a devious realm, and the political fallout would be very damaging if the public were not prepared.

No, it seems far more likely that the loose cannons in the CIA and at State have taken it upon themselves to undermine the President and our national policy. They have effectively removed the stick from our diplomatic position, and this will allow Iran to openly flaunt what they are doing, without fear of our response.

The idea that it will take Iran considerably longer to COMPLETE their program than it took America to develop one from scratch with inferior technology is ludicrous. A casual glance at history should tell us otherwise.

The clock is ticking, and time may be shorter than we think.
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Wednesday, January 25, 2012

I've got no String to Hold me Down

Timothy Birdnow

A quick personal note for readers.

As most of you know, I suffered heart failure back in September and have been forced to lug around a portable defibrilator. I have been on a horrible diet for diabetic cardiac patients, with no salt, not processed meats, no processed foods, no sugar, low starch, restricted fluid intake, and absolutely no taste. I have been moved to insulin, which I take twice a day, as well as a drug called corvedilol, which makes me dizzy and weak. It's been a hard three months.

I've been quite dilligent about doing what I am supposed to do, and all praise belongs to my saintly wife who has devoted her life to keeping me above ground. (My sister-in-law refers to her as Nurse Ratchet, or the Food Nazi.) I had an echocardiogram on Monday.

Good news! My ejection fraction has risen from 25% to 45%, a major increase! I am no longer in danger of Sudden Death Syndrome (a wonderful party favor of my weak heart) and so was able to unplug myself from the chain I forged in life (whenever I wore the accursed thing I felt like the ghost of Jacob Marley) and return to , well, life!

The Lifevest is a wonder; a vest that resembles a gun vest but is actually more like a brazziere (a cardiozziere?) with heart monitors on wrap-around arms and front and back "treatment pads" which are electro-shock paddles. The unit itself is like an old-fashioned camera, about five pounds and can be worn on the belt (theoretically). It transmits a signal to the company, who are always recording what is happening with the patient's ticker. If the heart stops a siren goes off, and the patient has to press a button or he will be defibrilated. Mine went off several times during my tenancy (it's a rented machine) although I was never defibrilated. I suspect I had a missed beat.

The gadget is hideously expensive, and the insurance company doesn't like to pay for it (they are happy to pay for a permanent pacemaker/defibrilator which it turns out I didn't need). I am in a second appeal to the denial of benefits on the gadget now. (It costs $3300 per month.) If they won't pay I suppose I'll be able to make a deal with the company. They have been excellent to deal with, I might add.

But OH! how I longed to be free of that gadget! It's tight, and has to be worn 24/7. When you try to turn over in your sleep you have to raise up first, or you will pull the contacts lose and get a gong sound that will wake you. Whenever you move you have to think about the unit. Going to the bathroom means picking up the thing and carrying it. Taking my insulin was a chore; I had to set the unit down, then rotate my body to perform the small tasks to get the syringe ready and give myself the shot. While it may not seem like a big deal, it's much like the Chinese water torture; after a while it drives you mad.

I would leave it off for an hour in the mornings; I just couldn't stand using it.

But now I'm free! To quote Pinoccio:

"I've got no strings to hold me down, to make me laugh, to make me frown, I had strings, but now I'm free, there are no strings on me!"

I'm not out of the woods yet; my heart is still below normal strength, and the recovery is fragile. I'm still stuck with the horrible diet, and will have to take the corvedilol for the rest of my life. Hopefully my body will eventually get used to it. It makes me dizzy.

But the worst appears to be over. I suspect I'll be heading back to the Ozark Hilton in the reasonably near future, and can at least expect to live through the visit!

I'll keep everyone posted.

Does Obama Want to Lose? Yes!

By Alan Caruba

It seems like a bizarre notion, but does Barack Obama want to lose the election in November?

I think he does!

One is struck by the way Obama has visibly aged in the job. He may well have grown weary being POTUS.

By any rational standard, one would say he wants a second term, but Obama has always operated in a fantasy world where mere words are supposed to translate into reality. And he has repeatedly talked about being a one-term president.

He is, after all, his own invention; the author of two memoirs of a life that had little achievement to point to other than getting elected first to the Illinois legislature and then to the Senate where he lingered a bare two years before running for president.

I raise the question because Obama seems to be deliberately irritating the very people who are supposed to be his “base”; the hard core liberals, the Hollywood crowd, youth, and unions, among others. His partisanship has put Congress into total gridlock.

When members of the Occupy movement showed up in Washington, D.C., one of them threw a smoke bomb onto the White House lawn. Others who have been camped out in a park there are likely to be tossed out if for no other reason than the place is overrun with rats and has become a public health hazard.

The decision to stop the Keystone pipeline is a deliberate offense to the unions that have contributed millions to his campaign. Why? It pleased the environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. Americans, however, understand the pipeline represented both jobs and oil, two things they deem worth having.

Then there are all the vacations Obama and his family takes. They have one thing in common. They are ostentatiously expensive. Obama or Michelle always seem to be going on vacation or returning from one. The characterization may be unfair, but perception is everything.

Americans are very keen on their military and, of all the government programs Obama could have chosen to trim, he’s had the knives out for the Pentagon since he took office. While a war-weary public was likely pleased when he withdrew troops from Iraq (neither Bush, nor Obama had a choice as the Iraqis made it clear they wanted U.S. troops out), the fact remains that the main news out of Iraq these days are bombings as the Sunni versus Shiite conflict has returned. Afghanistan remains a millstone.

Even in the face of a clear threat, it is unlikely that Obama would respond militarily between now and Election Day. The most likely scenario, however, would be an Israeli decision to strike at Iran before it becomes a full-fledged nuclear threat. It must be said, however, that Obama and other NATO nations have positioned some military assets in the Persian Gulf, but would he pull the trigger? It’s doubtful.

The most obvious problem Obama faces is unemployment. It’s variously set at anywhere from 11% to 20% depending on the part of the nation you’re discussing. It still is far too high everywhere and he gives every impression of being, if not indifferent to it, at least in no hurry to address it. Most certainly none of his programs have reduced it. His alleged “stimulus” was little more than a political slush fund that added billions to the national debt and failed.

Every President is subject to “events” and the likely default of Greece and financial troubles of several European nations are likely to impact the national election as Americans try to sort out what effect it will have here. Obama has already presided over the first downgrade of America’s debt rating and we shall surely be reminded of that in the months ahead.

The other event will be the Supreme Court hearing of the case against Obamacare in March. They may not issue a decision right away or they might issue one just before November 6th.

There are two lines of thought about the forthcoming national election. Past Presidents were relieved to leave office despite its power and prestige. (1) Obama may not like being President and (2) he has concluded that he will be defeated. He gives the impression of not caring about public opinion anymore.

The only people publicly defending him seem to have Attention Deficit Disorder. Either they haven’t paid attention to what a disaster his term has been thus far or they just don’t think it’s his fault.

I think he will go through the motions, but I also think a majority of voters no longer believe a word he says anymore.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Obama Lies about Domestic Energy Plans

TIMOTHY Birdnow

In what can only be termed a breathtaking display of hypocrisy, Barack Obama promised to promote shale gas and oil production in the U.S.
http://www.thegwpf.org/international-news/4829-obama-pushes-shale-gas-a-oil-drilling-to-create-600000-us-jobs.html

“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” Obama said in his State of the Union speech last night.

Why is this a breathtaking act of hypocrisy? It was Obama who shut down Gulf drilling. It was Obama who killed the Keystone pipeline (which could have been used to transport AMERICAN oil as well). It was the Obama Administration that recently restricted the mining of uranium. It was the Obama people who have locked up useful coal deposits in government "parks" and that has made operating coal-fired electric plants prohibitively expensive. It was the Obama EPA that issued a report falsely claiming that fracking chemicals were polluting groundwater http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2011/12/14/Tainted-EPA-Report-on-Fracking-Blasted-by-Gas-Co.aspx and has done it's best to block the practice. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/energy-intelligence/2011/12/01/fracking-key-to-the-energy-revolution-if-epa-gets-out-of-the-way

It was Barack Hussein Obama who, when asked about the high price of gasoline (at over 4 bucks a gallon) during his election campaign said he was glad for high gas prices, but that he wished they would have risen more slowly. The man is a committed Green, and does not want Americans to have access to cheap energy.

His statement - after having killed the Keystone XL pipeline and the accompanying 20,000 American jobs - is the most cynical of lies, purely a campaign promise that it would be easy to renege on after the election. The man is shameless and despicable.

But some Americans will doubtlessly believe it, just as they believed his "green jobs" promise four years ago.

This Administration is hostile to energy. It hates every aspect of the modern industrial economy, from the first pinprick in the earth to the final usage in cars and air conditioners and automation. It hates oil companies, oil refineries, gas stations. It hates automobiles and the Americans who drive them (rather than ride public transportation like good little serfs). It hates these things because America pioneered much of this and gives Americans their lavish lifestyle. Leftists hate comfortable lifestyles - except for themselves. They retain a hangover from the old Puritan view that life is supposed to be hard and austere, and they want that for their fellows (while exempting themselves) as a way to create a virtuous populace. They snear at the American, fat and happy with his gas guzzling SUV, driving off to his gun show then going out to dinner at some meat packing plant-sized restaurant, guzzling beer and enormous chunks of meat in air-conditioned comfort. They hold this in complete contempt. (Of course, their prius takes them to a sushi bar where they smack their lips over raw fish and Kobi beef and guzzling saki, after having attended a lecture on the evils of capitalism, then they go home to their 5000 square foot homes using as much energy as a small city, but they are entitled because they CARE so much...) How dare America live well when there are starving people in Africa! It is our duty to make other Americans sacrifice for those poor wretches!

And it's about control; a rich populace, mobile, armed, is a danger to the ultimate plans and ambitions of Liberals. They can't put the public under their thumbs if they have no leverege over them. They need the public to be dependent on them, dependent on them to eat, drink, heat their homes, move about. Government cannot rule (and that is what they want, rule and not govern) if it cannot control, and it cannot control those who have what they need.

What a free people need most is energy. With energy they have no need of government except as a servant.

So when a man like BHO says he wants more energy in this country, look rather at his actions, and not his words. Every half bright liberal knows that green energy is not going to work on any scale; they advocate it precisely for that reason. It is a way to equalize America, to cut the fat, beer guzzling hicks down to size. If Obama wanted more energy he would not have followed any of the policies he has followed. He is a liar!

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

The Road Warrior Coming to Egypt

Timothy Birdnow

Spengler predicts economic collapse in Egypt in a piece in Asia Times Online.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NA24Ak02.html

From the article:

"Egypt faces a disaster of biblical proportions, and the world will do nothing about it. Officially, Egypt's foreign exchange reserves fell by half during 2011, including a $2.4 billion decline during December - from $36 billion to $18 billion, or about four months of imports.

But the situation almost certainly is worse than that. More than $4 billion left the country during December, estimates Royal Bank of Scotland economist Raza Agha, noting that the December drop in reserves was cushioned by a $1 billion loan from the Egyptian army and a $1 billion sale of dollar-denominated treasury bills.

The rush out of the Egyptian pound is so rapid that Egyptian investors refuse to hold debt in their own national currency, even at a 16% yield. After Islamist parties won more three-quarters of the seats in recent parliamentary elections - 47% for the Muslim Brotherhood and 25% for the even more extreme al-Nour Party - the business elite that prospered under military rule is counting the days before exile.

The first reports of actual hunger in provincial Egyptian towns, meanwhile, are starting to trickle in through Arab-language press and blog reports. A shortage of gasoline accompanied by long queues at filling stations and panic buying was widely reported last week.

In some towns, for example Luxor in Upper Egypt, the disappearance of diesel fuel shut down bakeries, exacerbating the spot shortages of bread."

End excerpt.

Food riots seem likely to come soon. The Obama Administration, completely oblivious to the forces they were unleashing, has handed Egypt to the Islamists, and has guaranteed the collapse of the Egyptian economy at the same time. Egypt is a critical nation in the region, and should Egypt topple the whole Middle Eastern economy is likely to go with it - and Greece will doubtlessly follow. Then the dominoes will fall one after another, inexorably.

We appear to be perched on the precipice of a worldwide catastrophe, and the man in the most critical position is too busy playing golf and fighting Global Warming to be bothered.

Hat tip: Ron De Haan

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