Economy 101

Bill Whittle voices this handy little tutorial.

2012 will definitely be a "fork in the road". I hope we start back on the right fork.

"Progressives" Successfully Slime "The Conservative Negro" from Presidential Bid

Probably scared spitless over the prospect of a conservative black man running against the Halfrican-American, Barack Obama, the regressive spinmeisters managed to schedule serial accusers of sexual harassment, culminating in allegations of a 13-year illicit extramarital affair against Herman Cain. The one-two-three-four punch proved too much for the man, who does lack the gloves-off campaign skills of the Chicago thugocracy currently inhabiting the White House. They hounded him from the campaign trail.

I suspect that the sexual harassment cases were the typical gold-digger frivolous type. These are commonly settled out of court even if there is no impropriety, simply because it is too expensive, too embarrassing and too risky to fight it. There's always the risk that you could lose even if you're innocent. It isn't worth it. So you settle. So much for equal justice for all.

The final nail in Cain's campaign coffin was the allegation of a 13 year illicit love affair. I don't know if this is true or not. We may never know. If true, then the Cain campaign was naive not to have a credible defense already in the hopper. However... if it isn't true, how could they have prepared? If it isn't true, then this is the scummiest, low-down attack on a good man's honor that I have ever seen. I would sincerely hope that we have higher quality people running our government, but I fear otherwise.

Climategate I and II

Evidence continues to accumulate, that global warming (or the more recently adopted non-falsifiable and self-fulfilling moniker "climate change") is an outright fraud.

Jim Lacey writing in National Review Online states in his article Scientists Behaving Badly,

Last week over 5,000 new e-mails, already dubbed Climategate 2, were released. Anyone still desiring to contest the assertion that only a few persons controlled the entire warmist agenda will be brought up short by this note from one warmist protesting that his opinions were not getting the hearing they deserved: “It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by a select core group.” Over the years this core group, led by Phil Jones at East Anglia and Michael Mann at Penn State, became so close that even those inclined toward more honest appraisals of the state of climate science were hesitant to rock the boat. As one warm-monger states: “I am not convinced that the ‘truth’ is always worth reaching if it is at the cost of damaged personal relationships.” Silly me, how many years have I wasted believing that the very point of science was to pursue the truth in the face of all obstacles. On the basis of this evidence the scientific method must be rewritten so as to state: “Science must be as objective as possible, unless it offends your friends.”

(Continue reading...)

One by one, scientists are beginning to speak up. Karin McQuillan writes in Scientists in Revolt against Global Warming over at American Thinker,

More and more scientists are revolting against the global warming consensus enforced by government funding, the academic establishment, and media misrepresentation. They are saying that solar cycles and the complex systems of cloud formation have much more influence on our climate, and account for historical periods of warming and cooling much more accurately that a straight line graph of industrialization, CO2, and rising temperatures. They also point out that the rising temperatures that set off the global warming panic ended in 1998.

It takes a lot of courage. Scientists who report findings that contradict man-made global warming find their sources of funding cut, their jobs terminated, their careers stunted, and their reports blocked from important journals, and they are victimized by personal attacks. This is a consensus one associates with a Stalinist system, not science in the free world.

(Continue reading...)

But, there is a real possibility that if humans ever are legitimately linked to global warming or climate change -- anything -- that real scientists and principled public servants will have a much harder row to hoe in order to convince people to take the necessary steps to reverse it.

Obama 101

Victor Davis Hanson provides us with one of the more uplifting articles about Barack Obama.

In the last three years, the president has taught us a great deal about America, the world, and himself.

Before Obama, many Americans still believed in massive deficit spending, whether as an article of fairness, a means to economic growth, or just a lazy fallback position to justify an out-of-control federal government. But after the failure of a nearly $800 billion “stimulus” program — intended to keep unemployment under 8 percent — no one believes any more that an already indebted government will foster economic growth by taking on another $4 trillion in debt. In other words, “stimulus” is mostly a dead concept. The president — much as he advised a barnstorming President Bush in 2005 to cease pushing Social Security reform on a reluctant population — should give it up and junk the new $500 billion program euphemistically designated as a “jobs bill.” The U.S. government is already borrowing every three days what all of America spent on Black Friday.

(Continue reading...)

I only hope he's right, and I also hope that America comes to its senses, because as the sign says,

If we have lost the once proud culture and founding principles that made the American form of government the shining example for the world -- and The United States the ultimate destination for huddled masses longing to be free -- then we have lost America. Barack Obama would be a symptom, not the cause of our demise.

Keep the Change

Burning Deceased Humans Will Produce Electricity

According to this article, In Durham, England, corpses will soon be used to generate electricity.

Mark Twain quipped in The Innocents Abroad, that they used to burn mummies to run the trains in Egypt. This is even better. I’m sure the backlog of unburned deceased humans is a huge untapped resource in the energy field. And if we run out of dead ones, we can start killing live ones. We're a scourge on the planet anyway. Win-win!

I’ve thought for a long time that the founders spinning in their graves would be a great source of energy. Just hook a drive belt between the spinning founder and an electric generator. At the rate they have to be spinning today, I'm thinking we could power most of the Eastern seaboard.

"Finish the Job"

Barack Obama says he'll need another term to "finish the job". It strikes me as a decidedly odd turn of phrase. My parents used to use the euphemism "finish the job" to mean "wipe and flush".

I really don't want Barack Obama to "finish the job" he dropped on America. That would stink.