December 2009 Archives

Wishing all of you a Happy New Year!

Let us hope 2010 will bring us better things than 2009.

I will not be envious. I will not be envious. Oh, I'd love to have a SIG. But I'm more of a P229 in the .357 Sig man.

An impressive display of frank, plain truth without the untruth of political correctness by Drew Cline of the Union Leader. How come that newspaper no longer signs its editorials?

Reminds me of my new year's resolution: End compliance in the use of political correctness (PC) and all its attendant terms! The "developing" world? Let's go back to the Third World or even the uncivilized world. But it'll drive the UNH professors crazy! Exactly.

Gerard Warner agrees and explains how this pernicious practice came into the free West:

There is now no area of life, however trivial or frivolous, that is not controlled by the Thought Police. And whose fault is that? Ours, of course. Our fault for not snuffing out this tyrannical nonsense at its first manifestation. Our fault for submitting to it.

I'm even considering calling blacks Negro, a perfectly acceptable word from earlier in my life. Labels have changed with dizzying rapidity: Negro, Black, Afro-American, and now African-American. This is just during my life! (I was born in '67.)

Jesse Jackson engaged in bogus revisionist thinking when he argued twenty years ago for the clearly fictitious disingenuous hyphenation (whites cannot be called that even if they hail from the Dark Continent) African-American. He was the least impressive speaker whom I listened to while a cadet at West Point. And I tried to listen to everyone. (Henry Kissenger was the best, followed closely by Dr. Donald E. Horward, a Florida State historian on Napoleon and a spectacularly gifted lecturer, and the wonderful writer of current social mores, Tom Wolfe. Sandra Day O'Connor was very poor, too.)

Negro wasn't a term foisted on Negros, as he argued; rather, it's the Spanish/Portuguese for black and when the New York Times made the editorial decision to capitalize Negro in something like 1923 there was widespread celebration within the Negro community.

I learned that from Stephen Thernstrom's "Just Say Afro," January 23, 1989, in the New Republic, which I used to subscribe to for years until the brilliant and independent-minded editor-in-chief Michael Kelly (a UNH graduate) was fired.

It appears that if the AGW faithful can't get their way via treaties and legislation, they'll do an end around and use the courts to force the issue even though AGW theory appears to either seriously flawed or outright fraudulent. I have no doubt at some point they'll sue you for breathing and exhaling CO₂. (Oh, okay. Laugh now. But just wait until it happens. Then we'll see who's laughing.)

Fresh from the fiasco in Copenhagen and with a failure in the U.S. Senate looming this coming year, the climate-change lobby is already shifting to Plan B, or is it already Plan D? Meet the carbon tort.

Across the country, trial lawyers and green pressure groups--if that's not redundant--are teaming up to sue electric utilities for carbon emissions under "nuisance" laws.

A group of 12 Gulf Coast residents whose homes were damaged by Katrina are suing 33 energy companies for greenhouse gas emissions that allegedly contributed to the global warming that allegedly made the hurricane worse. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and seven state AG allies plus New York City are suing American Electric Power and other utilities for a host of supposed eco-maladies. A native village in Alaska is suing Exxon and 23 oil and energy companies for coastal erosion.

Never mind that there's not one bit of verifiable proof carbon emissions have any relation to any of these things. They'll still take up the battle cry of "I'll Sue Ya!" But then, that's the way the folks like this have always worked, forcing their minority view on the rest of us by bypassing the legislative route and going right to the courts. And they'll justify it by telling us they're doing it "for our own good." What's worse is that they actually believe it!!

The faithful figure they have non-denominational, gender-neutral, non-judgmental G*d/G*ddess on their side, which gives them leave to employ any means to achieve their ends. (Hmm. That sounds familiar. Where have we heard that before? Somewhere in the Middle East, if I'm not mistaken...)

I do have to admit to surprise when I found that an actual, non-name-calling unemotional debate actually took place in the comments, somewhat lost in the noise of the faithful constantly linking to or copy/pasting discredited "proof", as if that's all that's needed to 'win' the debate. But all it is is repetition of talking points and nothing else.

One of the debates I mentioned started with this comment by Paul Drallos (edited to remove a few references to previous comments that were not germane to the topic, though the full unedited comment can be seen at the link):

As a physicist with more than 20 years experience of modeling hydrodynamic systems, I can tell you that there are many, many things wrong with the computer-climate models.

Where to begin? Even the AGW people don't contend that CO2 is the dominant climate forcing agent. It is well known that water vapor is much, much stronger. However, in their models, the IPCC has hard-wired into their codes that water vapor responds with a positive feedback to small temperature changes due to CO2. But this is wrong. Actual measurements show that water vapor acts with negative feedback to small temperature changes and does not amplify CO2's effects.

It is insane to say, as Buzz claims, that the pre-human record is irrelevant. By studying the pre-human or early civilization record provides a mechanism for identifying natural behaviors. This is essential for distinguishing natural from alleged non-natural behaviors.

The widespread agreement on how our temperature compares with the last few millennia is that there have been periods of much warmer and much cooler temperatures - Unless one fudges the data as the CRU has unquestionably done. (See the CRU computer codes instead of the emails for incontrovertible documentation of this.)

And Buzz, you are completely wrong about "hide the decline". It has *everything* to do about historical temperature fluctuations. The tree-ring data was used as a temperature proxy (for determining the historical temperature before thermometer data was available.) The problem with the proxy data was that it diverged from thermometer data when thermometer data was available. That means that the proxy data was *not* reliable. The act of "hiding the decline" was an unethical ruse to cover-up the obvious failure of the tree-ring data as a reliable temperature proxy.

I believe Paul has hit the highlights in regards to the theory of AGW and where it fails.

The followups between Paul and another commenter, Buzz Belleville, give a reasonable back and forth, though Buzz does tend to focus on a single dimension (carbon dioxide) as the only driver of climate change. It is in this area where I believe he falls short in his understanding of the semi-chaotic mechanism that is our global climate system.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

Gerard Posner, whose book on the JFK assassination convinced me that there was no conspiracy, takes aim at the Nigerian jihadist who attempted to bring down the plane by igniting the explosive.

Apparently, his sources say the failure is not systemic; rather, it's the result of intelligence officials at the Lagos, Nigeria, US embassy to precisely describe the threat rather than use vague expressions that didn't cause any action. As a result,

all international fliers to the U.S. will instead be inconvenienced by this communications snafu. Airline rules announced Saturday instituted extra baggage screening, additional personal inspections, and a stricter enforcement of an existing rule that permits passengers to only bring one carry-on bag. In addition, all passengers on U.S.-bound international flights will not be able to move about the cabin during the last hour of the flight.

My younger brother is a wet-behind-the-ears diplomat for the State Dept in South America. I hope he never makes a mistake like this.

The terrorists win even when they lose. So how can they lose? Richard Reid has caused much trouble. I hate having to take off my shoes because of him.

HT: Classical Values

Reading about Zuzu made me think of her. Duchess died in March, and lent an air of dignity and regal bearing to the family. My eyes get watery even now. Her loss after twelve years was--and continues to be--deeply felt.

2009 will be a year of remembrance for me.

Petting animals has a way of providing happiness. But dogs esp., by requiring our taking them out into the fresh air, bring additional happiness that exercise and the connection with nature bring.

Today with the brutal winds and frigid air was an exception, though.

Even members of the MSM can learn the lessons of ClimateGate. One reporter from northern California even changed his mind about AGW after seeing the overwhelming evidence of scientific fraud committed in the name of "climate science".

A few years ago, I accepted global warming theory with few doubts. I wrote several columns for this paper condemning what I thought were unfair attacks by skeptics and defending the climate scientists.

Boy, was I naive.

Since the Climategate emails and documents revealed active collusion to thwart skeptics and even outright fraud, I've been trying to correct the record of my earlier foolishness. In one of those columns, I even wrote: "And see Real Climate (www.realclimate.org) for global warming science without the political spin."

In fact, Real Climate was and is nothing more than the house organ of global warming activists, concerned more with politics than with science.

When the self-blinded finally come to see the light, the transformation is amazing to behold. Even if this fellow at some point decides we are at fault for (the presently reversing) global warming, at least it's likely he will come to this conclusion based upon real science and not the political pandering that has been masquerading as science.

There is hope, as illustrated by this one reporter.

What we're not willing to defend we will end up losing.

Since 1973 adults in and around schools in Israel have been packing. It has put a stop to terrorist acts there that had been common, according to Sam Cohen. But what to make of these inane statements in a Boston Globe letter to the editor by Brockton High School math teacher Doug Van Gorder?

Although [immediate exodus] removes potential hostages and makes it nearly impossible for the shooter to acquire preselected targets, it unfairly rewards resourceful children who move to safety off-site more shrewdly and efficiently than others....But as a progressive, I would sooner lay my child to rest than succumb to the belief that the use of a gun for self-defense is somehow not in itself a gun crime.

Wow. Could it be satire? I'm thinking so.

Remember the Sokal Hoax that spoofed literary trends of meaningless in the academy?

HT: SayUncle

It's already been established for some of us that political correctness kills. I'm thinking of the Portland, Maine, security screener Michael Tuohey, who let Mohammad Atta "red flag" through the gate--a man who was paying cash for a one-way plane ticket on first class--with this pile of dung,

"I said to myself, 'If this guy doesn't look like an Arab terrorist, then nothing does.' Then I gave myself a mental slap, because in this day and age, it's not nice to say things like this," Tuohey told the Maine Sunday Telegram. "You've checked in hundreds of Arabs and Hindus and Sikhs, and you've never done that. I felt kind of embarrassed."

Well, the horrific attempted Christmas day jihadi attack clearly shows current security procedures that are rigorous only in their PC-craptitude are not failsafe in keeping people alive. If the guy, perhaps tranquilized to be calm, had been more competent he would have gone into the bathroom when the plane was over the Atlantic to perpetuate his diabolical deed.

One word, gubmit: profile. Just a little. It means backing off the usual suspects the PC crowd likes to demonize--white men--and practice some down and dirty "people of color" targeting. Won't happen, though. It'll take something really big for the stupid PC mask to be taken off.

We'll know they're really serious if they do this: curtail or stop all Muslim travel and immigration into this country. It can and should be done, America. But instead we'll have sub-100 IQ guys and gals making McDonald's wages oogling at the body scan images of comely travelers that will almost certainly result in response to this attack.

LA writes:

It doesn't have to be this way. We're not trapped. We have a choice. Sixty years ago, there were no Muslims in the West. All we have to do, then, is ... TURN BACK THE CLOCK.

Impossible, you say? It's not impossible. We just stop letting Muslims into the West, and we tell the ones who are already here that they're not welcome. And if they don't leave voluntarily, through a combination of carrots and sticks, then we make them leave. Not because we hate them as individuals, but because, given that their religion commands them to subvert, subjugate, and kill us, the ONLY way that we can be safe and free is if they're not here.

The liberals and "conservatives" will shriek that to exclude Muslims will make us racist and evil, it will make us "as immoral as the terrorists," as the editor of a conservative magazine once said to me.

Not so. To quote Bob Dylan:

You will not die
It's not poison.

We have survived another Christmas Holiday season, making it down and back to the In-Laws without a single incident. Victuals were excellent and the gifts given and received were as well. About the only "gripe" (and I'm using the term loosely) is the use of the phrase "AS SEEN ON TV!" on a few of the gifts we received.

The gifts themselves were awesome, but I've never seen them on TV. Does that make them any less of a great product? Not as far as I can tell. But I can't see how the overused phrase on the box will induce anyone to buy them as I've seen plenty of products on TV that I would not spend a dime of your money on, let alone mine. Maybe in the earliest days of TV advertising such a claim might have swayed a purchase, but these days we're too cynical (and too connected) to buy something merely because it was 'seen on TV'.

A confession: I am using this neat gift as I write this, set up at an angle to hold the WP Laptop. (Notice the "AS SEEN ON TV" logo on the photo!) Thanks to the WP In-Laws for this gift as it makes writing a whole lot easier.

*********

Consider this a cautionary tale should we not take back Congress from Pelosi, Reid, and the Teleologist in Chief.

*********

Cap'n Teach points us to an inside view of how the Leftists are truly living in a dream world, showing their ignorance when it comes to health insurance and particularly when in relation to economics.

*********

The Senate passed the Health Care Destruction bill and the price for many Senate Democrats will be paying will become evident all too soon, particularly once November 2010 rolls around. Of course the whole thing might come apart should Connecticut decide to sue over Nebraska's 'special' deal in regards to Medicare. Other suits based upon the constitutionality of a number of provisions in both the House and Senate bills are also waiting on the sidelines.

With all the deals (aka bribes) made by the Democrat leadership (meaning Reid) in order to the buy votes needed to pass this steaming pile of manure, it isn't surprising the deals may come apart as other states find themselves holding the bag in order to pay off the other states. The Dems are working overtime to make sure this so-called reform wanted by no one, needed by very few, and paid for by those unwilling to give even more of their hard-earned money to those incapable of being frugal with it, passes.

One thing going for the GOP on this is that the Democrats have to take sole ownership of this g*d-awful legislation. The Democrats cannot lay the blame on the Republicans in any way, shape, or form. Despite Democrat claims that the GOP has put forth nothing for health care reform, it is a false claim. What they won't tell you is that every GOP amendment or bill has been killed in committee or on the floor, assuming they ever saw the light day.

(H/T Viking Pundit)

*********

The folks in Detroit understand this concept completely: Democrat power corrupts. Absolute Democrat power corrupts absolutely.

*********

This is a Congress Al Capone would have appreciated.

*********

Skip Murphy gets into one of my favorite topics: political correctness. It is a concept I have loathed since I first became aware of it, seeing it for what it was: fascism/marxism in disguise. (There really is little difference between the fascism and marxism. Only a few of the terms differ.) Even George Orwell was aware of the dangers of political correctness, as he showed in his dystopian novel 1984. 1984's Newspeak didn't allow any negative connotations, meaning there was no way to express dissent or dissatisfaction with the State.

Politically correct speech is no different, eliminating any negative speech and making it more difficult, if not impossible to express dissent or dissatisfaction with the State. Sound familiar?

*********

In light of the attempted Al Qaeda bombing of Delta Flight 253 as it approached Detroit, Obama's plans to close the Gitmo detention center are in doubt.

*********

Even though Obama has been in office for a little over 11 months, the world still doesn't love us.

Big surprise. NOT.

*********

Are we on the verge of a second American Revolution?

Seeing the heavy move to the Left in Congress by the Democrats, Obama and Pelosi's ongoing violation of the US Constitution, their continual profligate spending of the American people's money, their ever more confiscatory tax policies, as well as the backlash seen as the TEA parties have been growing in number and size, I'd have to say it's a distinct possibility. While it may not entail armed insurrection, the battles will take place in courtrooms, legislatures, town meetings, and polling places across the nation.

*********

The 9-5 New England Patriots played the 7-7 Jacksonville Jaguars in Foxboro this afternoon. Despite a failed first drive (a fumble at the goal line and a poor call by the officials, in my opinion) they managed to score two touchdowns in quick succession to make up for it. At the end of the first half the Pats were up 28-0.

The Patriots won, 35-7, clinching the AFC East division.

*********

At least one town in New Hampshire is making use of 21st Century technology, adding lasers to their snowplow trucks. The new lasers aid the plow driver in spotting where the edge of their wing plow will pass, meaning it's less likely the plow will strike mailboxes, road signs, and telephone poles. (To those of you living in more temperate climes, a wing plow is mounted on the passenger side - and sometimes the driver's side - of the plow truck, allowing it plow two or even three lanes at a time.)

If I were more of a cynic I'd be looking at these lasers as part of a precision targeting system, assuring maximum mailbox damage with minimal contact with the wing plow.

*********

The bald eagle population has rebounded here in the Lakes region of New Hampshire, with sightings becoming quite common.

I've seen more than one bald eagle in the area over the past few years, with six sightings just this past summer while I was out on Lake Winnipesaukee.

My first bald eagle sighting was about 18 years ago when I was still living just north of the capitol city, spotting a pair of eagles along the banks of the Merrimack River at a place called Sewall's Falls.

As an aside, I've seen the World Wildlife Federation's polar bear ad, with Noah Wyle explaining the plight of the polar bear and how it might "disappear in our children's lifetime." Too bad the ad is based upon a false premise considering the population of polar bears has increased by a factor of 5 since the early 70's and is still growing.

*********

The New Hampshire Supreme Court will be hearing a tax cap case, where the city of Manchester voters passed a tax cap article, limiting how much the city can raise taxes and limiting spending. But the article, which is slated to go into effect July 2010, is being challenged on constitutional grounds.

Of course the ones challenging the tax caps (a number of other New Hampshire municipalities also have tax caps) are the usual suspects: the tax-and-spenders. At a time when New Hampshire taxpayers are dealing with stagnant or falling incomes and higher costs and taxes, it seems counterintuitive to push for even more spending and higher taxes. But then the state legislature has been on a tax-and-spending spree over the past 4+ years, which in turn has motivated the municipal tax-and-spenders to ignore the economic conditions we are all dealing with and to push forward with budgets and taxes that are crushing far too many residents and even forcing some out of their homes.

Let us hope the New Hampshire Supreme Court makes the right decision and decides in favor of the taxpayers.

*********

After a 'Year of Obama Love', it appears the reality the O-bots and the MSM are now faced with will be devastating. It turns out their 'god' has feet of clay, is not the Alpha and the Omega, and is seen by other leaders of the world as an out-of-touch weakling with delusions of adequacy.

Welcome to the real world.

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

*********

As if we need yet another reason to hate unions, there's this story from Michigan (where else?) telling how over 34,000 day care providers are now 'members' of a union they didn't even know existed nor that they voted to join. What's worse is that the state of Michigan was complicit in this bit of racketeering. (Yes, racketeering, for that's what it is when the state conspires with the unions to create an 'employer' that by any stretch of the imagination shouldn't be.)

How is it someone who is self-employed with their own business (day care) can also be a union member forced to pay dues to a union that is nothing more than a means to collect someone else's money for a corrupt and criminal organization? Yeah, let's heap even more insult and economic injury on small businesses in a state with high unemployment, high taxes, high spending, a hostile business environment, and a population shrinking at an ever increasing rate.

And people wonder why Michigan is such an economic basket case.

I figure Michigan will end up being just like Detroit in short order if this madness continues: no jobs, decaying towns/neighborhoods, shrinking population, increasing crime, poor or non-existent services, a failing education system, and taxes rates that make paying 'protection' to the Mob cheap by comparison. At this rate Michigan will end up resembling a large number of Third World nations suffering from the same type of political corruption.

As one of the commenters to this WSJ piece wrote, "Let the last businessperson leaving Michigan turn out the lights on [their] way to Texas."

*********

And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has temporarily turned warmer, the woodpiles are getting smaller, and where really cold weather is on its way.

~ Rosalie Pedalino Porter, "Put English fluency first," Boston Herald, Saturday, 26 Dec. 2009, p. 16

Um...yeah. The council is an offshoot of Gov. Deval Patrick's Executive Order 503 launching his New Americans Agenda for Massachusetts. I agree wholeheartedly with Rosalie. This is regnant liberalism showing its true colors untethered by common sense, tradition, history, respect for the majority, or fear of ridicule. For just this reason it should make for good Howie Carr fodder for a day or so.

Rosalie's book Forked Tongue did to bilingualism what Charles Murray's did to welfare to women with dependent children: overwhelmingly demonstrated that good intentions have led to bad results.

I can't resist linking to this review of Murray's book, which helped to change the debate. The review has the stench of familiarity to me: typical liberal roadkill where assertions are made in the absence of examples. That just is simply amazing to me. I mean we teach high-schoolers preparing for the SATs to provide examples for positions they are arguing. It's so basic, yet it often escapes liberals who view themselves as Thomas Sowell has described them, as the anointed. Intentions, however, should never count for more than results. Can you guess why I'm no longer a liberal.

Ultimately the public policy changed with respect to deleterious bilingual education, at least in Calfornia, where Porter's book made headway.  Good luck in Massachusetts, which is a state that is beyond repair. I can tell that by how the corrupt liberal state views the Second Amendment, the litmus test for me, which the state's own constitution should protect.

If you're not familiar with bilingual education--the mediocre teaching of students in two languages, when the culture stipulates knowledge of one--it's a concept that quickly breaks down when literally dozens to hundreds of different immigrant groups are present, speaking a bedlam of languages.

It's doubtful we'll have school officials able to speak Azeri, for example, when the CIA is in desperate need of such people.

What fight? People are too scared of being called one of the names the Left finds handy to crush dissent. John Derbyshire pulls out the big gun for his end-of-the-year posting:

The left makes the social rules and enforces them; the right goes along meekly, with anguished, whining, sniveling apologies when the enforcers crack their whips.

Yep.

When the Dems were in the minority Republicans inveighed against the use of the filibuster. In 2005 David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute if memory serves, rightfully warned them then that what comes around goes around.

Now in the distinct minority Republicans--I almost said "we" but I'm much more of a conservative than a Republican--could use some of that filibustering.

And these words that open his very fine blog entry should be committed to memory:

The United States is a republic, not a majoritarian democracy. The Founders were rightly afraid of majoritarian tyranny, and they wrote a Constitution designed to thwart it.

So true. The Constitution, whence are laws spring, does not use the word equality until I believe the Fourteenth Amendment. The document is a conservative one, in which the writers purposively use less "small d" democratic language than the Declaration.

I really wish Bush II had not used all that democracy talk with respect to Iraq. What a thankless task he set us up to do!

Here's the story. Fast-thinking and -acting 32-year-old European entrepreneur forcibly intervenes like in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, extinguishing the flames of the Nigerian Muslim who had his hopes on taking out kaffirs and gaining all those dark-eyed virgins.

Jasper Schuringa is a hero. Curiously, a lot of the news accounts have been very sparing with details.

~ Ronald Reagan accepting his party's nomination for President in Detroit, July 17, 1980. Gosh, I miss him. We need him desperately. But they don't make 'em like this anymore.

Secularists on the Left--I happen to be sympathetic to those on the Right--bear a remarkable similarity with the infamous Washington Post description of the Christian Right in 1993. What psychologists call "projection" comes to mind.

Over recent years the coverage of the persecution of Christians by Muslims in Bethlehem has been one of the stories given short-shift or glossed over. Execrable coverage of Islamofascism in the Holy Land that makes my blood boil.

Now that the ethnic cleansing is almost complete, the truth is dribbling out even in one of the worst practitioners of the Pravada-like coverage. I heard a BBC report recently--unfortunately I've been having a lot of problems linking to interesting stories I hear to the same stories on the website--but here is an example of coverage by Heather Sharp that's semi-decent, breaking out of its execrable shell, finally revealing undeniable, outright religious persecution. But now of course it's too late. In 1995 when the Oslo accords gave the PLO control of Bethlehem,  forty percent of Bethlehemites were Christian. Now it's down to less than three percent.

In one of the most important journalistic pieces of the year, Daniel Schwammenthal in the WSJ writes:

In 2007, one year after the Hamas takeover, the owner of Gaza's only Christian bookstore was abducted and murdered. Christian shops and schools have been firebombed. Little wonder that most of Mr. Khoury's Christian friends have also left Gaza.

On the rare occasion that Western media cover the plight of Christians in the Palestinian territories, it is often to denounce Israel and its security barrier.

The same story is underway with the ancient Jewish community in Yemen. But does the world care? It's not their land, anyway. They've only been there since the sixth century.

It seems as if it's 1939 in 2010.

O. Henry's "Gift of the Magi" dramatically read. It's the true Christmas spirit written almost as memorably as the inventor of modern Christmas, Charles Dickens and his novella Christmas Carol. It's amazing how potent the writer can be. I also realized this seeing Scott's memorable monument in Edinburgh. I think it's obvious that monumentally successful novelist Dan Brown is the most recognizable New Hampshire laddie.

All those new guns introduced into society and crime lowers? I thought it would lead to blood in the streets, from what my political overlords tell me. John Lott wrote a book arguing that this would be the case. I can now say QED.

HT: Instapundit

The truth doesn't matter. In my est. we're about eight to ten years from a national gun registry, the vital step that leads to gun confiscation. I'm an alarmist, I can almost hear a reader say. Have you realized the Nazi 1938 gun laws were adopted almost whole cloth by the United States in 1968 by the corrupt Senator Dodd the Elder? Boy, the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree.

I read a very effective piece in the American Spectator in 1992/3 by Tom Bethell arguing that the United States steadily moving to the Left was going to happen--I wish I could find it and read it again--and recently this compelling editorial by L. Brent Bozell, again very effective, showing the difference in media coverage of two politicians acting similarly in each going against his party's political interest--Anthony Adams, a Calif. Republican assemblyman, and Joe Lieberman. One goes against his campaign pledge to enact tax increases and is very sympathetically treated in the Washington Post for the understandably angry response. The other temporarily stops acting like a fetchin'-step statist and gets The Treatment: Joe's all about Joe, the selfish bastard. Of course as Mark Levin has said on his radio programme, it was all a dog-and-pony show.

We're doomed. Even Reagan couldn't shrink gubmit. No one is coming to restore traditional American values. Publik Edyacashun prolifies* many. *A back formation word meaning "to make into a proletarian, easily led ignoramus in search only for bread and circuses or the modern equivalent."

I really liked reading Robert Novak's impossible-to-put-down autobiography--he was a pessimist like me, which is why he refrained from entering politics.  (He was astonishingly ignorant about his Jewish roots, his birth religion, making his switch to Catholicism a lot less impressive to me as it is for other people. David Klinghoffer, agreeing with me, deals incisively with it as I've come to expect from him.)

I tried to upload a photo of me indeed reading Novak's text with great scrutiny on a friend's hammock next to Lake Winnipesaukee, but the photo is too large.

Waiting for the children to wake up...

After failing miserably to enact that through the legitimate and transparent means, DemoRATS pushed it through in a way that's eerily similar to the PelosiSocialistUncare in Washington.

I loved reading the comments, esp. Sam Cohen's, a man I hold in much esteem as a lead member of Pro Gun Owners of New Hampshire. Several times he's answered questions I've posed to that website in an extremely thoughtful and courteous manner. A true gentleman.

Here's what he says about the Canary in the Mines, Israel, and guns in the hands of responsible adults at schools:

Second, someone asked if it would be OK to have guns in schools. Federal law prohibits that, but consider that Israel suffered frequent terrorist attacks that killed children at schools until 1973, when the government encouraged ALL adults in and around schools to be armed. No school children have been killed in a terrorist attack at a school in Israel since then.
- Sam Cohen, Bennington, NH

They're awake! Gotta go!

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

The part of the WP Team will be at the In-Laws to celebrate the holiday with family.

Regular blogging will resume after the holiday.

Interesting story of the first bona fide burial shroud from Jerusalem at the time of Jesus' crucifixion. And it doesn't match up well with the likely elaborate forgery, the Shroud of Turin, which some Catholics are too quick to proclaim as authentic.

I'm Christopher Hitchens skeptical of most claims of relics. I have a good friend who thinks he has a splinter from the One True Cross. I seriously doubt that.

I first heard of this on the BBC. I hope the pope is well after being pushed down by an apparently deranged individual. We have some of those in the US Senate, too.

It has become quite apparent that our so-called representatives in both chambers of Congress have ceased to represent us and instead have gone off in a radical direction that will, in the end, cripple America with crushing debt, destroy an imperfect but working health care system that rivals that of any place else on the planet, erode even more of our rights, and create economic roadblocks that will do nothing but further weaken our ability to compete in the world's marketplace. It is the nightmare of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged come to life. With all of this in mind, is it any surprise a large majority of Americans are so angry with Congress and their Leftist Overlord?

We're trying in every way legally and officially possible to make clear that we don't want the radical meal we're being forced to eat. We fervently do not want to "fundamentally transform" America. But there is such a huge disconnect from our world to our representatives'. It's as if we are ghosts whom they can't see or hear! When someone refuses to listen, going so far as to ignore you, don't you shout louder? Doesn't it anger you? When you're attacked and belittled because you have to shout to be heard and you're still ignored, doesn't that infuriate you? These people miss that we passionately don't want what they want. The more they refuse to hear us, the more we try to make them. We are not going away.

We're justly and increasingly angry because our reps not only refuse to hear us, but they also chastise us for wanting to be heard. How else would they expect us to react when we feel so helpless and hopeless? No matter what we want, say, or do, our government is going to force us to eat a meal we never ordered. In addition, we keep saying, "no, we don't want this," but they keep putting affirmations in our mouths and proceeding with their radical agenda anyway. We are not enjoying the governmental rape of our country. We said "no," and "no" means "no" in every language. Why doesn't this matter? Every poll reflects the president's rapidly declining approval rating -- for good reason. And still, Robert Gibbs flippantly dismisses it. How are "we the people" supposed to feel? Certainly we do not feel happy, or even just mildly upset, about being disregarded. Far-left ideologues who supposedly espouse "compassionate" causes have no compassion for how we feel, nor do they have a clue that we are an angry mob of their own creation.

I certainly feel angry, particularly with my Congressional Representative, Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH1), who has shown a penchant for dismissing any of her 'constituents' who do not ascribe to her particular political beliefs. On more than one occasion she is alleged to have referred to those of us non-Democrats living in her Congressional District as not being her constituents. That's funny as I thought everyone living in her district was her constituent, whether we agreed with her politics or not. So much for being our representative. Instead she represents only her own points of view and the hell with the rest of us. (I have a feeling Ms. Shea-Porter will have a very rude awakening come next November when she's booted, bag and baggage, from her seat.)

Obama's falling poll numbers certainly indicate a lot of our anger, particularly when his approval rating after a little over 11 months in office is worse than George W. Bush's after eight years.

Yet there's another twist that might make we angry Americans even angrier: Pelosi and Reid's move to short-circuit the normal conference process, where differences between House and Senate versions of a given bill are hammered out. Instead, reconciling the differences between the two health care reform bills will likely be done behind closed doors, out of the public eye, with little input from members of either house. In other words, the fix will be in.

When Democrats took over Congress in 2007, they increasingly did not send bills through the regular conference process. "We have to defer to the bigger picture," explained Rep. Henry Waxman of California. So the children's health insurance bill passed by the House that year was largely dumped in favor of the Senate's version. House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel and other Democrats complained the House had been "cut off at the knees" but ultimately supported the bill. Legislation on lobbying reform and the 2007 energy bill were handled the same way -- without appointing an actual conference.

Rather than appoint members to a public conference committee, those measures were "ping-ponged" -- i.e. changes to reconcile the two versions were transmitted by messenger between the two houses as the final product was crafted behind closed doors solely by the leadership. Many Democrats grumbled at the secrecy. "We need to get back to the point where we use conference committees . . . and have serious dialogue," said Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama at the time.

But serious dialogue isn't what Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid are interested in right now. Look for the traditional conference committee to be replaced by a "ping-pong" game in which health care is finalized behind closed doors with little public scrutiny before the bill is rushed to the floor of each chamber for a final vote.

Is there any wonder why things like the TEA party movement have been growing? Is there any wonder why confrontations between members of Congress and the public have been becoming more heated and less polite? Why are the Democrats so surprised when far too many of them have been ignoring their constituents back home, ignoring their wishes, ignoring their phone calls, letters, and e-mails, and following the lead of Pelosi and Reid, neither of whom has the best interests of the American people at heart. Instead they have their own Leftist Utopia-driven agenda that has nothing to do with what the American people want or need.

And the anger grows.....

Reading The Drudge Report, where I go after my homepage of Instapundit, I read this very disturbing story from New Jersey. Looming behind it is the disturbing likelihood that the attackers were black youths, although the story doesn't mention race.

David Muneton, a thirteen-year-old honors eighth-grader, called by the school principal "a model student," was beaten within inches of death on Dec. 18. He's needed facial reconstructive surgery and may lose his eyesight. And the large pack of murderous youths reportedly numbered eleven. That fits the pattern I've seen about blacks attacking isolated individuals. Liberals have so incapacitated truthful talk about black crime that I've continually been met with shouts of alarm for stating the obvious: blacks commit murder in higher rates than whites. I shut them up using the gubmit's own statistics, (this used to work, but Obama's Justice Department appears to be hiding the evidence as I've spent some time rutting around looking for homicide rates by race) though these minimize the differences by including Hispanics with the white rate, making the black murder rate "only" eight times higher than the white. (Here's a Steve Sailer article on race and crime.)

Lawrence Auster has been on the warpath pointing out the cruelty of black crime against whites. One of the pieces of information that would have put the Duke Lacrosse scandal in context is that FBI crime statistics from 2005 indicate whites raped 0-10 black women, while blacks raped over 37,000 white women. Jesus. 

People commenting on this horrible incident are jumping to the conclusion that the psychotic thugs were black, perhaps unconsciously using the bayesian inference. They've obviously had it. It's amazing how angry the commentators are. Haven't they ever attended sensitivity training?

LA calls the disproportionate black-on-white crime wave a "black anti-white intifada."

Maybe you should look at it, before the station erases them. There's anger out there at having  not only to have send one's children to schools where such thugs also attend, but the disgusting fact that many of these dysfunctional or female-headed households who disproportionately produce the thugs are on public assistance.

Responding to the New Century's "Color of Crime," using FBI statistics, report that is available on pdf, Walter Williams writes over ten years ago to the irrefutable evidence that of all the interracial, blacks and whites, blacks were responsible for 90 percent of it, whites just 10 percent.

Williams writes:

Do you want to see the future of the US under the policies Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are trying to impose upon us? Then check out this video, courtesy of PJTV.

After 50 years of leftist policies and politics, Detroit has gone from the peak to the valley, having shrunk in population by 50%. Is that's what in store for us under leftist leadership for the rest of the country?

Gunpowder justice, American style: burglar dies by gun shot.

Makes me think of the castle doctrine. It's not in New Hampshire? I wish it would be, for the sake of simplicity and putting potential criminals on notice. The burden should never be on the innocent victim when he or she has a reasonable fear for their person or loved ones.

Well, it's been debated in the NH House, including what attendees think was disingenuous statements by Anne Rice representing the state's attoney general's office. Is she the head of the all-female Laconia law firm? And a police representative spoke out against it. And that waste of ACLU space, Claire Ebel, spoke out against "testosterone" and "young men." (She refused to lift a finger when I was persecuted at UNH in 1991 for something I said, but that's for another day. I was found guilty of sexual harassment for the throw-away line to a scandalously dressed co-ed, "Gee, may I touch your leg?" [No, I didn't touch it or attempt to do so.] Defending myself at pretrial hearings at the Stafford Country Courthouse in front of Judge Joseph P. Nadeau, I made the university furiously backpedal.)

These statements were later brilliantly shot down. Here Penny Dean is seen on video doing so. G-d, she makes such good points. Do yourself a favor and listen to it. It's just seven minutes long.

Here in the Granite State we have to be prepared to retreat from places where we have a legal right to be, whenever possible of course. Luckily that doesn't have to be in one's home or "its cutilage," whatever that means, according to Part III, A. 

Why did I have to read the fine print to figure that out? What about somewhere else? I have to retreat from an aggressor?

Here's what we've got as law. But I don't like it much. We can meet non-deadly force with non-deadly force, and deadly force with deadly force. My thought is that we shouldn't be required to wait to find out. Assuming the worst of an attacker is prudential family security, whether I'm at home or in the car or out on the sidewalk.

Pulling out a gun at men who are about to attack at a parking lot, for example, would I guess be against the law, though it's an effective and proven method of deterring crime. NH's Massad Ayoub writes about doing just that in his book In the Gravest Extreme.

The horrific home invasion and murder in Mont Vernon caused a bill to be lodged to expand NH's feeble list of capital crimes offenses. Why isn't a murderous home invasion on the list? I think it should be, but ultimately it was suppressed on party vote. I guess there's a panel looking at the possibility of expanding the death penalty. They're sure taking their sweet time.

We aren't allowed to stand our ground from a place we have a legal right to be. That doesn't seem to be very American. It's about self-defense, man.

Come on, NH, pass the law that's good enough for all those other states like Michigan, Tennessee, and Florida, where it began when a guy was purposively run down when walking.

Expand to read NH's law about defending the person:

As much as nuclear power seems to be on the verge of a revival here in the US, there are still issues to deal with, particularly the One-Big-Plant designs favored by most of the world. But maybe that's not the best means of bring more nuclear power plants on line. Instead, smaller may be better, and in the end, less expensive.

A smaller scale, economically efficient nuclear reactor that could be mass-assembled in factories and supply power for a medium-size city or military base has been designed by Sandia National Laboratories.

"This small reactor would produce somewhere in the range of 100 to 300 megawatts of thermal power and could supply energy to remote areas and developing countries at lower costs and with a manufacturing turnaround period of two years as opposed to seven for its larger relatives," [Tom] Sanders said. "It could also be a more practical means to implement nuclear base load capacity comparable to natural gas-fired generating stations and with more manageable financial demands than a conventional power plant."

The reactor system is built around a small uranium core, submerged in a tank of liquid sodium. The liquid sodium is piped through the core to carry the heat away to a heat exchanger also submerged in the tank of sodium. In the Sandia system, the reactor heat is transferred to a very efficient supercritical CO2 turbine to produce electricity.

Because the right-sized reactors are breeder reactors -- meaning they generate their own fuel as they operate -- they are designed to have an extended operational life and only need to be refueled once every couple of decades, which helps alleviate proliferation concerns. The reactor core is replaced as a unit and "in effect is a cartridge core for which any intrusion attempt is easily monitored and detected," Sanders said. The reactor system has no need for fuel handling. Conventional nuclear power plants in the U.S. have their reactors refueled once every 18 months.

There are certainly advantages to having a number of smaller, more distributed power plants compared to the 1000MW+ big plants, particularly if the cost per megawatt-hour is comparable or less than that of the big plants. The cost of building the smaller plants is also significantly lower because many of the major systems will be built in factories and not on-site as they are today.

Since the smaller plants do not require the maintenance of the larger plants nor the more frequent refueling, the cost of operating them might be less on a per megawatt-hour basis as well. Because they use a different power cycle they will also have less of a problem with long-lived nuclear waste, unlike existing U₂₃₅ fueled reactors. (Some of the problems with spent fuel rods of this type are not technical in nature, but political. However we won't delve into that here.)

Unlike the alternative energy sources being touted as the Answer-To-It-All, these small reactors are designed to handle what is called base load. Alternative energy sources tend to be supply-driven sources, meaning they aren't available on demand, particularly if there's no wind or if it's dark out. Base load plants are demand-driven sources, meaning they can be turned up or down as the electrical demand requires.

You can rest the rest of the article by clicking here. (A direct link to the article does not yet exist.)

Washington Post editorial, "The Coming Debt Panic":

Consider: In the space of a single fiscal year, 2009, the debt soared from 41 percent of the gross domestic product to 53 percent. By way of comparison, the average for the past half-century has been 37 percent. This sum, which does not include what the government has borrowed from its own trust funds, is on track to rise to a crushing 85 percent of the economy by 2018. Getting the debt back down to a reasonable level will require extraordinary, almost unimaginable, fiscal discipline and political cooperation. Failing to do so will lower the national standard of living and ultimately threaten America's economic stability.

HT: The Mark Levin Show

We're doomed. Adding another gigantic entitlement program? Re-arranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.

Conservatives are starting to connect the dots to the poster boy for liberalism. That's Detroit.

PJ TV. Very entertaining. I hope that guy had security. Chan. And me here and here. When are we going to stop piling on? Liberalism doesn't work. Detroit gives powerful evidence to this.

Going after the "carbon footprint" of the family pet. How low will they go?

A time for Western guilt? This was in Copenhagen Harbor during the $236 shendig where limousines had to be imported from Sweden and Germany for all the dignitaries used to the lavish lifestyle. Like Gore. Do as I say, not as I do. Great book.
Yep. HT: NH Insider

It's why white men are systematically persecuted at college campuses in ways that boggle the mind. Chan had a recent link to Duke rot. I read Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson's book about the atrocious persecution of the Duke lacrosse. Unfortunately, only about 6,000 other people bought the book.

And it's why the evil West needs to fork over the money to the "developing" world. Pay up, whitey. The global warming canard is just cover for leftist politics.

There's far more intellectual diversity on the Right than the Left.

For instance, I can't decide about Lincoln. Have you? Can you tell what Professor Clyde Wilson, who is an expert on John C. Calhoun, thinks of the greatest tyrant, er, President in history? Personally I side with Lincoln being a great President but the list is simply amazing. Take a look for yourself.

Ah, this video brings back memories of my time in DC in 1990, where I lived just blocks from the Capitol Building, working as an intern for the Cato Institute, working with and becoming friendly with current Case Western law professor and blogging superstar, Jonathan Adler, who writes for The Volokh Conspiracy and National Review. (His mother's penthouse suite in Centre City, Philadelphia, where I stayed July 4 weekend, was the scene over chicken and spinach salad of a liberal parent engaged in strenuous debate with her conservative son that made the TV show starring Michael J. Fox, Family Ties, seem tame by comparison.)

The result of the video will probably be disciplinary actions for the hot-headed plainclothes detective. What the h-ll was he thinking? If I were to do that, I'd be arrested pronto for criminal threatening, no questions asked. As I should be. Are cops above the law?

It calls into question whether the man was merely having a bad day or is temperamentally unsuited to such a position of authority. With power comes responsibility, which the detective apparently lacks.

The police in DC were way below what I was used to in Michigan and esp. in New Hampshire. First, was the lack of professionalism in their bearing and speech, sometimes peppered with the vilest profanity I'd ever heard. Not all, of course, but an alarming minority nonetheless. Some of the cops seemed to be thuggish, like former criminals. Turns out there were more such people than some wanted to admit.

The rule that required or favored DC residents in the hiring process--a backdoor way to minimize whites from the 'burbs dominating the police force--and the foolhardy stance of hiring people regardless of a, shall we delicately say, tainted past, including even felonies, made the department extremely ineffective. Its ability to solve murders was and is legendarily bad.

I thought of this recently when news broke that one in three of Atlanta's police academy graduates has a criminal record, which also practices the invidious discrimination of giving preferential treatment to applicants from the city (again, to keep the whites away, who tend to live outside the city limits proper). This made for scandalous headlines but no changes that I can ascertain.

More than one-third of recent Atlanta Police Academy graduates have been arrested or cited for a crime, according to a review of their job applications. The arrests ranged from minor offenses such as shoplifting to violent charges including assault. More than one-third of the officers had been rejected by other law enforcement agencies, and more than half of the recruits admitted using marijuana.

"On its face, it's troubling and disturbing," said Vincent Fort, a state senator from Atlanta. "It would be very troubling that people might be hitting the streets to serve and protect and they have histories that have made them unqualified to serve on other departments."

The big Nor'easter hammering parts of the Atlantic seaboard and southern New England has left the Lakes Region of New Hampshire untouched. Even the southern tier of the state isn't seeing nearly as much snow as originally forecast. The Weather Guys™ have had to backpedal a bit, explaining the reason why we haven't been seeing the snow amounts expected is because the air is so dry the snow falling from the clouds evaporates before it reaches the ground.

I'm not complaining. Really. I had no desire to shovel snow or fire up the Official Weekend Pundit Snowblower to clear the driveway this weekend. I figure I'll have more than a few opportunities to do so before spring arrives.

*********

Speaking of the Nor'easter, I had the opportunity to speak to friends living out on Martha's Vineyard Island last night. They were already set for the then approaching storm, having taken care of their shopping and making sure the snowblower was positioned in the garage in preparation for clearing their driveway once the storm passed.

Whenever I think of heavy snow out on the island all that comes to mind is the Stephen King made-for-TV movie Storm of the Century. Hopefully Mr. Linoge has not made his way out onto the island.

*********

Is there any doubt that Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist - VT) lives in an entirely different world than the rest of us?

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

*********

And speaking of Vermont, I'm adding Vermont Tiger to the blogroll.

*********

For those wanting a better understanding of the TEA party movement and how it is evolving, Skip Murphy has an excellent piece explaining the hows and whys of the movement.

One thing I've noticed is that it is far more encompassing than either the Democrats or the Republicans. Members of the movement come from both parties and a wider range of political beliefs than either of the two major parties. It is a grassroots movement of pissed-off Americans trusting no one in Congress to represent us as they should have, instead taking care of all the special interests and ignoring the wishes of their constituents back home.

*********

I guess Bogie is suffering from weekend writer's block, so she had to borrow content from one of my favorite websites.

At least of you're going to steal borrow, steal borrow from the best.

*********

Eric the Viking has a number of links to responses and opinions about the Senate Health Care Reform scam.

The common response: Everyone hates it, even MoveOn.org!

So why does Reid keep pushing this steaming pile of legislative manure?

*********

It seems poetic somehow the states whose residents report being the happiest tend to be Red states and the least happy tend to be Blue states.

Unfortunately my home state of New Hampshire ranks 28th on the happiness scale (in the past it was almost always in the top 10). That's not all that surprising considering we've been suffering under free-spending Democratic majorities in the New Hampshire House and Senate, a do-nothing Democrat in the Governor's Office, Democrats that never saw tax or spending bills they didn't like occupying both Congressional District seats, and one Democrat in the US Senate. State spending and taxes have skyrocketed over the past 4 years, greatly exceeding the rate of inflation (spending increased 30% in four years, while inflation during the same period totaled 14%).

Is it any wonder residents of all-too-Blue New Hampshire aren't happy?

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

*********

The New England Patriots played the Buffalo Bills in Buffalo this afternoon.

Buffalo had first possession and it took them almost 10 minutes to make it to the other end of the field only to settle for a field goal. The Patriots' battered defense managed to keep them from scoring a touchdown, and then only because the Bills got a false start penalty on 3rd and Goal.

The Patriots didn't fare any better, their first drive ending with an interception at the Buffalo 40. But at least they were finally able to turn it around, beating Buffalo 17-10.

*********

The Official Weekend Pundit Woodpile increased in size today, with the last two cords being delivered by BeezleBub's boss, Farmer Andy, this afternoon. One cord will make its way into the garage immediately and the second will be put under cover for use later this winter.

I'm just hoping we'll be able to keep our propane usage to a minimum as it still isn't all that cheap. The cost of the firewood we'll burn this winter will be less than that of a single tank of propane (we'd easily go through three, maybe four tanks if we heated exclusively with propane). If nothing else I can claim that we're using a renewable source of fuel rather than one of those evil fossil fuels.

*********

Has Duke University learned its lesson in regards to the Duke Lacrosse Team debacle a couple of years ago? Apparently the answer is 'no'.

(H/T Instapundit)

*********

Free the SEALs!

*********

Can Dave Bing turn Detroit around? Possibly, particularly if he can get the message across to the municipal unions that the gravy train has derailed and find way to cut the lengthy and expensive processes needed to open a business in the city for starters. He also has to fix the schools, reduce crime, and see about shrinking Detroit's infrastructure footprint (it has the infrastructure to support 2 million residents, but the city's population is half that these days yet it still has to maintain it all).

Let's hope he can pull off the biggest turnaround since Rudi Giuliani revived New York City.

*********

Daniel Botkin, professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at UCSB, teaches us a simple but no less powerful lesson about nature, adaptability, and its relation to the bugaboo of Anthropogenic Global Warming. It's a lesson many in the AGW camp should learn.

*********

For the last entry of this week's TOAS, we return to Skip Murphy as he expands on Brent's post from earlier today, digging deeper into the incipient tyranny the Left wants to impose upon us, first by silencing any dissent.

*********

And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow passed to the south of us, the woodpile has gotten bigger, and Christmas is only a few days away.

Now, Americans are waking up to the truth that ObamaCare basically means that every time you are sick or injured, you will have a clerk from the Department of Motor Vehicles telling your doctor what he can and cannot do.

It's too late, Ben Stein. It's too little too late. Besides, the liberal elites have been too in love with the Community Organizer and the Democratic party. Americans need to engage in more non-violent protest. It's a conspiracy, really, between the people at the top and the bottom, squeezing those of us in the middle.

We need to act more like those crazy free-staters. Those people who open carry and refuse to give up their driver's license when surrounded by wide-stanced cops because they aren't required to?

I must admit this up front: words fail me.

After spending countless days and untold millions of dollars while at the same time generating an incredible amount of carbon dioxide, the only thing that came of the Copenhagen climate conference was a non-binding agreement to keep the global temperature increase to 2 degrees?

Couldn't this whole thing have been handled with a few conference calls, an on-line video conference, or even a virtual conference via Second Life? It would have taken a whole lot less time and cost very little. But then it wouldn't have given the self-important Anointed a chance to preen before the cameras and make speeches to make it seem like they were actually accomplishing something.

There were no serious discussions about ClimateGate or the related Russian claims of data they provided being manipulated in order to show warming where there was none. Dissenters were given no voice even though many of them had better credentials (and credibility) than those whose questionable work was being used as the basis for the conference.

Over all it was a waste of time, money and energy that could have been better used elsewhere.

I've written about Detroit. But recent data has come to light, making me write about it again. And I'm not just talking about this Instapundit link, "Detroit Decays Under Democrats' Watch."

The Detroit fourth- and eighth-graders performed so poorly on the NAEP, a standardized test, that Time Magazine has this memorable quote:

"These numbers are only slightly better than what one would expect by chance as if the kids had never gone to school and simply guessed at the answers," said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Washington-based Council of the Great City Schools, which represents large urban school districts. "These numbers ... are shocking and appalling and should not be allowed to stand."

Wow.

I guess it doesn't help to see one's parents receiving assistance or being too lazy to work. If Mom or (much less likely) Dad don't want to work, why should I? If that sounds unfair, maybe you haven't read this: Fifty percent of Detroit's working-age population is unemployed.

We humans contribute three percent of the world's carbon dioxide, plant food last time I checked. And I learned from MIT climatologist and preeminent scientist Richard Lindzen that the atmosphere is only three percent carbon dioxide.

So we going to spend gargantuan sums on that? Three percent of three percent? As Bjorn Lomborg has repeatedly written and said, there're better dollars than that to help the environment.

Of course ecocide occurred in former and current communist countries--there seems to be a connection between larger government and a worse outcome for the environment--so I'm not clear why increasing the size and scope of gubmit will help when truly enormous gubmits failed miserably to keep the environment non-toxic.

An incredibly important book by Ian Plimer. A great post by Cato Institute's David Boaz. I remember hearing an interview with Charlie Rose and the late Michael Crichton. Boy did the latter lambaste the computer modeling, calling it "Garbage in garbage out."

I guess these models can't account for past climate changes or the current twelve-year cooling period we've been in. According to Ian Plimmer, the IPCC doesn't take into account known variables of climate change and overestimates the importance of carbon dioxide in bringing it about. Astonishingly, he claims the levels of carbon dioxide were higher during the last ice age.

Is it true the computer models aren't transparent? Is this science or more like a secular religion? Judging from liberals' response to the prospect of drilling in the frozen wastelands of northern Alaska (ANWAR), I'm thinking more and more we've got a surrogate religion on our hands.

Unbelievable video. I guess these marxists didn't get the memo to dress themselves in the green of environmentalism. They are straight up commies. I actually respect that more than the watermelons: green on the outside, red inside.

HT: Matt Drudge

You know it's getting bad when even the Russians are piling on. In this case, the Institute of Economic Analysis on Moscow made accusations that the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia likely tampered with Russian-supplied data, 'conveniently' ignoring temperature data from up to 75% of Russia's reporting stations.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country's territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

Where were most of those stations located? In non-urban areas, particularly in northern regions of the nation (that means Siberia). If the data from those areas was excluded, then it would have given a false result, showing warming when none really existed. The IEA believes that of all the data were used then the so-called warming trend would disappear.

To say this allegation is throwing even more cold water on the 'theory' of Anthropogenic Global Warming would be an understatement.

Here's a list I can really get into:

Climate Change Is Natural: 100 Reasons Why

1) There is "no real scientific proof" that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man's activity.

2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.

3) Warmer periods of the Earth's history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.

--snip--

10) A large body of scientific research suggests that the sun is responsible for the greater share of climate change during the past hundred years.

I particularly like #'s 8, 10, 12, and 16.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing. Pay particular attention to some of the comments following the article as they are indicative of the closed-minded AGW faithful and their inability to actually debate the issue.

If the following story doesn't make you think twice about swiping your debit or credit card, I don't know what will. But it certainly has made me think of using cash or one of the pre-paid debit cards instead. From an Information Week newsletter (no link available):

The enjoyment (and despair) of working with security experts like Greg Shipley is the heightened awareness I get of just how vulnerable my personal information is.

As we put the finishing touches on [Shipley's] Security Brief about how retailers can manage the risks to Point of Sale systems--the card-swipe devices used at malls, grocery stores, gas stations and more--a story broke that data thieves had stolen debit and credit card numbers from several restaurants in the South.

Breach stories are all too common, but this one comes with a twist: the restaurants have filed a class-action lawsuit against two companies that produced and maintained the restaurants' POS systems. The suit contends that Radiant Systems and Computer World are responsible for the theft because they failed to protect the POS systems in two critical ways.

First, the suit says Radiant provided the restaurants with POS devices that stored card data after the transaction was complete. That's a big no-no under PCI, the industry rules that govern card data security.

What really makes me want to cut up my cards and go back to the barter system is the second allegation: that Computer World administrators who maintained the POS devices installed PCAnywhere and then used the same login and password combination at 200 locations. According to a report in Wired, the login/password combo was "administrator" and "computer."

You can guess what happened next: an attacker gained remote access to multiple systems, and then installed malware that copied card data as it was swiped through the POS devices.

The login/password blunder frustrates me because you don't need a computer science degree to know how bad an idea that was. Even more frustrating is the entire world knows bad guys are hitting card processing systems as hard as they can. Do we really need to make it this easy for them?

Having been a victim (twice!) of computer crackers stealing debit/credit card information from a local supermarket chain, I know what a pain in the butt such problems can be. In a period of less than a month our debit card information was stolen twice. We had to replace our debit cards twice. We did end up with some suspicious charges against our debit cards after the first breach (which our bank voided). It was an inconvenience not being able to access our accounts via an ATM, meaning we had to go to our bank and cash checks to get money until we received our new cards.

As convenient as it is to have ATM/debit/check cards, the breaches of electronic transactions systems have made me rethink using them for everyday purchases. At one point I carried very little cash (between 5 and 10 dollars), using the debit card for any purchase larger than $10. Those days have ended. Instead I'll carry a bit more cash and use the ATM/debit card for very specific purchases (and never for online buys). These actions have two benefits: I'm less likely to spend frivolously because of the limited cash I carry and I'm less likely to spend more than I can really afford. One other advantage of cash purchases: anonymity. For all intents and purposes cash is untraceable (at least by computer crackers).

The same can be said about pre-paid debits cards, which are as good as cash. They're anonymous and they're covered just like debit or credit cards if they are stolen or lost.

Am I being paranoid? Maybe. But on the other hand I might pose the question "Am I being paranoid enough?"

How's that democracy thing working out for you, Minnesota? It was fun and different electing a comedian to the US Senate, wasn't it? Well, the result speaks for itself as he debates John Thune, a pretty boy from South Dakota, who happens to have a command of the facts and figures more than the writer of "Rush Limbaugh is a big, fat idiot" does. Jeanne Shaheen acts as president of the Senate, reminding (4:50 into the debate) Franken in precious fashion that he has the floor. Even she--and believe you me she's no MIT-trained engineer--understands Franken is flailing badly. It must be his rambling, slurred speech, and unfocused presentation that's the giveaway, and some colleagues do attempt to come to his aid, such as a leftist from Ohio, Sherrod Brown. (His daughter Emily, for example, according to Wikipedia, is employed by the notorious left-wing labor union brown shirts, the SEIU, who are in favor of open borders says Michelle Malkin. The pear hasn't fallen far from the tree in this case.)

The disagreement centers on the fact that although taxes for the proposed Pelosi Health Care Destroyer (PHCD) go into effect days from now, most of the benefits don't kick in for a few years. 2014 to be precise. Now there are some small potatoes that do kick in immediately along with the taxes. Here's what Franken says:

I heard Martin Gross, our present-day Jeremiah, on Michael Medved's show on this podcast. Five stars. Today I heard him on this G. Gordon Liddy podcast. Simply marvelous--you really have to listen to it. I mean I might even transcribe it; Mr. Gross goes on such tremendous riffs. Taped on December 4 and lasting 21:53, the podcast reveals what I've always thought but have been too timid to say: Obama is not only uninformed, not being a disciplined book reader, he's unintelligent.

Mr. Gross, a preeminent number cruncher and a old-time Democrat like Ronald Reagan, calls the current President "a master of deception [who] lies all the time." I know most politicians are liars, but this guy is on a Mt. Olympus-level of deceit. He also says, "The Democratic party has become the party of treason....The Democratic party has left us, and has left the United States in its loyalties, not consciously...[here he gets cut off at the end by a hard break]" Strong stuff, but increasingly an appropriate tonic, in light of how Democrats are treating the War on Terror with civilian trials, ridiculous mini-buildups lasting a year, not using the word victory at West Point (The cadets must have been groaning in their seats listening to the Community Organizer.), and not even calling the truth of Islamic terror by its true name, Islamic terror. I mean the Democratic primary was a joke on the whole topic, never once using the words "Islamic terror" in all their televised debates.

Gross, whose 1992 book received beaucoups media attention, is relegated now almost exclusively to the conservative and Christian talk radio circuit--my how times have changed!-- with an even more important book in 2009--National Suicide. (He says Christians, because of their belief in personal responsibility, have been marvelously receptive to his message.) His take on the vastly different levels of media exposure is that the media has changed. Boy, have they ever. All pretense of being disinterested purveyors of news and views has long gone by the wayside.

The Shallow Stream Media is not to be trusted, but Martin Gross is. What he has to say is jarring. Sometimes that's the way the truth is.

The hashish army after seven years of American tutelage isn't ready for jack sheet. Why that is must be a testimony to the ignorance and incompetence of the Afghans. What are we doing there? How is sending 30,000 more troops for another year and a half going to help? Can someone please tell me? This appears to be another Vietnam in the making.

HT: Mangan's

*Probably the tea chai, but I heard what I thought was a euphemism for the drug hashish, like calling marijuana "herb," as was done in my high school days in the early 1980s.

This guy's vote is weighted the same as Skip Murphy's. Kinda dumb, if you ask me.

This looks more like a D- to me, not a B+, the grade the President gave himself on Sixty Minutes. Nearly half of Harvard undergraduates receive A's? So maybe the President is being hard on himself. He should.

HT: Give Us Liberty blog

I also understand there's a big racial gap in presidential approval with blacks thinking over ninety percent that Obama is doing a good job, but under forty percent for whites. (The exact numbers are 92% and 37%.)

First, it was the bogus "nuclear winter" the KGB came up with that was successful beyond their wildest dreams according to Comrade J, about the highest defector ever from that outfit--Sergei Tretyakov. I remember how controversial was the proposal to install nuclear bombs in Europe. So the KGB came up with a scheme to thwart its implementation that was nearly successful, except for the wonderful intransigence of Ronald Reagan.

The parallels are simply eerie:

"The KGB was responsible for creating the entire nuclear winter story to stop the Pershing missiles."^[1] Tretyakov says that from 1979 the KGB wanted to prevent the United States from deploying the missiles in Western Europe and that, directed by Yuri Andropov, they used the Soviet Peace Committee, a government organization, to organize and finance demonstrations in Europe against US bases.^[1][12][13] Misinformation based on a faked "doomsday report" by the Soviet Academy of Sciences about the effect of nuclear war on climate was distributed to peace groups, the environmental movement and the journal Ambio

,^[1] which carried a key article on the topic in 1982.^[14]

Sound familiar? Now we have these present-day greenies, whom I consider socialists, trying to thwart capitalism and economic growth. It's not fair, after all, to have the poor parts of the world in comparison with the rich parts. Equality, doncha know. These watermelons are green on the outside and red on the inside.

We have the left-ward drift of organizations like the UN. When the IPCC, charged by the United Nations to monitor global warming, acts more like the KGB than a disinterested overseeing body, one is left incredulous.

It seems AlGore is more than willing to 'debate' his findings about AGW with anyone, as long as that 'anyone' happens to agree with him. But given the opportunity to actually debate the issue in an open forum with those who disagree with his opinion that Global-Warming-Is-All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans, he'll take a pass.

Despite appearing on CNN and MSNBC Wednesday, Nobel Laureate Al Gore was apparently too busy to discuss global warming on the premiere episode of John Stossel's new Fox Business Network program.

To kick off his new show Thursday, Stossel chose the controversial subject of climate change, and invited on a number of guests to address the issue in great detail.

According to an e-mail message sent to Stossel's producers on November 23, "the growing influence of the climate crisis message and the demand on Mr. Gore's time" made it impossible for the former Vice President to attend.

He's made it clear on more than one occasion that the "debate is over and the science is settled", meaning there's no need to debate anything because it would be pointless. But anyone knowing anything about science, and specifically the scientific method, know one thing that all real scientists know - science is never settled. New knowledge can upset the science apple cart, turning everything that we believed to be true upside down. Goodness knows it's happened more than once during the whole of human history.

As a man far smarter than AlGore could ever hope to be once said, "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong." AlGore's problem is that more than one 'experiment' has proven the theory of anthropogenic global warming wrong.

Climate models touted by the AGW cabal as showing the planet's doom aren't capable of predicting what climatic conditions will be like next year, let alone 100 years from now. They weren't able to predict past climatic conditions (in the 70's, 80's, or 90's) using data from 1900 on forward. Their models have failed to predict the past 10 years of cooling. Their models have failed to predict the growing ice sheet on both the North and South polar regions. Their models have failed to predict the growth of glaciers in Greenland. Their models have failed to predict the falling ocean temperatures reported by over 3000 Argus ocean buoys. Their models have failed to explain why satellite measurements of surface and lower atmosphere temperatures are steady, if not falling in some areas, rather than rising. Their models have failed to explain or predict record cold winter temperatures in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Their models have failed to predict cooler and wetter than normal summers throughout most of the US. Yet we're supposed to turn our economies upside down based upon these same models? It's obvious that they believe we're stupid enough to be scammed by the dire predictions made by their seriously flawed climate models.

I wish AlGore would explain that to those of us not buying the crap he's peddling.

I have, recently reading the wonderful Tom Woods' Meltdown. It's the years 1920-21. Sharp, painful downturn, a depression.

Why it didn't last is found in the response of the Fed and feds: the opposite of what they're doing now.

Bob Murphy writes for The Freeman about the years 1920-21:

Here the government and Fed did the exact opposite of what the experts now recommend. We have just about the closest thing to a controlled experiment in macroeconomics that one could desire. To repeat, it's not that the government boosted the budget at a slower rate, or that the Fed provided a tad less liquidity. On the contrary, the government slashed its budget tremendously, and the Fed hiked rates to record highs.

The present economy is in rough shape. I work at UPS. I load the trucks, four of 'em anyway, that go out. I have a unique feel on the pulse of the economy. And in ten years of working there I have never seen such a crappy Christmas.

Two years ago I'd be having to show up at 1:30 am. Now, it's 3 am. I mean I'm not a smart engineer like Chan, but even I can do the math.

Winter temperatures arrived here in the Lakes Region with a vengeance, with day-time highs in the upper 20's, wind chill factors at or below zero, and night-time temps in the lower teens and upper single digits. The Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove has been running 24/7 in an effort to keep the temperatures inside The Manse to a reasonably comfortable level.

BeezleBub spent yesterday and today working at the farm, assembling a post-and-beam frame around the farm's new outdoor coolers. As he said more than once, "It's damn cold outside, meaning we had to keep working in order to stay warm." At least this morning he didn't have to get down there until 8, meaning I was able to get up an hour later than usual.

*********

I haven't been as diligent about posting regularly the past couple of weeks, allowing Brent and Nathan to pick up the slack. Part of it has been lack of the usual time (though a small part). A big part has been there's been too darn much to post about. I find that sometimes it's difficult to pick a subject, meaning that lately I've chosen none.

One subject that I could post endlessly about is ClimateGate. There's just so much fodder out there despite the denials by The Anointed that it's all much ado about nothing (except for scientific fraud, science influenced by a political agenda, data 'fixing', destruction of raw data, and worthless computer code written specifically to provide a predetermined outcome). The scientific method appears to have been bypassed in the name of "saving the planet" even if the planet isn't in peril (at least not from climate change). But with so much to choose from, it's been difficult to stick with even one aspect of the scandal. So I'm only posting about it nowhere near as often as I could.

*********

Dennis Miller has the right of it, comparing the ClimateGate perpetrators reactions to those of raccoons raiding your trash can 11:30 at night. (H/T Instapundit)

*********

The New England Patriots played the Carolina Panthers today in Foxboro. It was painful to watch right from the beginning.

The usual second-half malaise was there. Unfortunately it struck during the first half. The Patriots couldn't make the first downs, couldn't complete the passes, and had two turnovers (both of them involving Randy Moss, with an interception and a fumble).

The second half wasn't much better with offensive drives being short-circuited by turnovers.

Despite defeating Carolina 20-10, the Pats are starting to look all too much like the Patriots of the 70's.

*********

It appears that both Google and Bing have decided ClimateGate is not something they want to link to or have show up on searches...unless it's something denigrating about the leaked/hacked e-mails and other files. However Yahoo is still allowing full search results for "ClimateGate".

So which organization is living up to its "Don't be evil" mantra? Hint: It isn't Google.

*********

This doesn't surprise me in the least: Hourly workers tend to be happier than those on salary. I know it's true for me, having been on both sides of that equation. Hourly has always meant a bigger paycheck when all things are taken into consideration.

*********

Forget CO₂, now it's nitrogen we have to worry about in regards to climate change.

I'm betting oxygen will be next on the "We gotta DO SOMETHING about this!" hit list.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

*********

Talk about hypocrisy.

Liberals bash conservatives as greedy money-grubbers, but it turns out it's liberals that are most obsessed with more and more money and are as tight-fisted as Ebenezer Scrooge. They are also far more amoral in regards to earning money than conservatives.

Most surprising of all is reputable research showing those on the Left are more interested in money than Right-wingers.

Both the World Values Survey and the General Social Survey reveal that Left-wingers are more likely to rate 'high income' as an important factor in choosing a job, more likely to say "after good health, money is the most important thing," and more likely agree with the statement "there are no right or wrong ways to make money."

You don't need to explain that to Doug Urbanski, the former business manager for Left-wing firebrand and documentary-maker Michael Moore. "He [Moore] is more money-obsessed than anyone I have known -- and that's saying a lot," claims Urbanski.

They talk a good game, but when it comes to living up to the ideals and way of life they espouse, they want nothing to do with it. That's for the rest of us 'little people'.

*********

As RightWingSparkle puts it:

You gotta love this. How many times in the last eight years have you, as a Republican, said to yourself, "Why don't the Republicans fight back??? Why don't they answer their critics???" It was so frustrating for so long. Now we finally have someone willing to fight back.

To whom is she referring? Sarah Palin, of course. Sarahcuda does a smackdown on AlGore's response to her WaPo piece about ClimateGate and leaves him looking like the AGW fool he's become.

*********

And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where winter has firmly established itself, the wood pile is getting smaller, and once again Monday has arrived too soon.

Believe it or not, a balanced report from NPR about Tea Parties, specifically the Dallas Tea Party.



Who'da think it?

As the picture in this post says, "Do you miss me yet?"

I thought this quote was pretty good:

"I think the point of the comparison is this: Bush endured 8 years of wall-to-wall, 24/7 liberal bashing from multiple networks. Meanwhile, Obama was coronated and has enjoyed wall-to-wall adoration from the same multiple networks. If Obama's numbers, 11 months in, already approach Bush's after EIGHT years, then, baby, you've got serious problems."

Obama's tumbling poll numbers certainly aren't helping his administration, particularly when Democrats are saying they miss Bush.

This does not bode well for the Teleprompter/Teleologist/Apologist-In-Chief.

Could the falling poll numbers be one of the reasons Pelosi and Reid are trying so hard to ram through legislation a majority of Americans don't need, don't want, and don't have the means to pay for?

There was what looked like a clear case of voter intimidation at the polls in Philadelphia last election cycle. I saw some of the riot-like behavior of thugs on YouTube calling themselves black panthers in need of arrest ASAP.

I don't know if that happened. But the Washington Times is covering what very, very few Americans are aware of. Check out Lucianne, where the commentator postings will stay up only for a few days.

Many good ones. Liberalism is losing its pernicious grip on whitey; some are no longer taking the "bravo sierra" lying down as in the last few decades. Here's one:

Reply 3 - Posted by: The Patriot Code, 12/10/2009 10:39:07 PM     (No. 6093020)

I dream of a thug punk like Zulu attempting to impede my movement at a polling station. That would be the day that I became a household name.

Makes me think of my newest acquisition in the gun safe: a Ruger Redhawk 4" barrel in the .45 Colt. Thank goodness for the Internet. My wife had some custom jewelry made. I get the guns, she gets the bling.

I went on Amazon and purchased some very nice earrings for her in Michigan State green. I'm doing that in anticipation for purchasing this shotgun. There's a big sale going on over there on jewelry. And one never knows when the zombies will attack.

The average DC bureaucrat earns a salary of $71,206. HT: Instapundit

People in the private sector are the serfs, laboring in the fields to support their lords.

I pondered about what to write tonight, but there were far too many things that would be great blog fodder for the sharp wit (OK, semi-dull wit) of yours truly. Well, not really. Frankly, I got nothing that prompts me to write anything worthwhile tonight. I really didn't want to have no entry at all, so I pondered even more. Then it came to me in a flash:

What would it be like if wireless phone technology didn't exist?

A stroke of genius, I must say. There's even a video to help you imagine just such a thing! (OK, I shamelessly stole it from Texas Instruments, but it does get the point across.)



So the next time you pick up your cell phone, Blackberry, or iPod, or fire up your 52" LCD HDTV, remember to thank an engineer. We may be socially inept and not all that great with members of the opposite sex, but we actually rule the world. You just don't know it yet.

At first I couldn't believe it.

ABC World News was going to do a story about ClimateGate.

I thought, "Gee, at least someone other than Fox is paying attention." But that thought faded away as I watched the report, a piece that covered the hacked files and the so-called "smoking gun". Call it a CBS-Lite version of the scandal.

The only part of ClimateGate they covered were the incriminating e-mails, something they tried to explain away. No mention was made about the FORTRAN source code used to create results the CRU crew wanted to see, or the Read Me text file accompanying the computer code. No mention was made of destroyed data nor machinations to prevent skeptics from being able to question CRU's conclusions or publish dissenting articles. Nor did they say anything about Jones stepping down as head of CRU or of the UK government investigating the affair. There was also no mention of Penn State University investigating another member of the CRU cabal, Michael Mann, he of the discredited Mann "hockey stick" graph.

Instead they tried to make AGW skeptics seem deranged, even more than the AlGoristas have tried to do.

From comments made to the ABC News blog post about the report, it appears few are buying ABC's attempt to minimize the story.

Monstrous graph from the American Enterprise Institute over at our compatriots at GraniteGrok. Monstrous.

But Bertrand Russell, of all people, explains it:

...when great changes occur the theories which justify them are always a camouflage for passion.  And the passion that has given driving force to democratic theories is undoubtedly the passion of envy.

The Conquest of Happiness, p. 68.

I would like to thank one of my most important mentors for first indicating this passage to me, the late Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. It was a great, great privilege for me to correspond several times with him. He gave me a number in the States when he made his annual foray here. I called it mid-morning. He had written he was in Chicago. But the number was for San Francisco! He mildly rebuked me, but later sent me a nice post card of one of his own paintings of a parrot/chameleon amalgamation. Hideous. But that's where the man clearly saw where we were heading unless we kept true to our principles in the Founding: liberty, not equality. Where's our Equality Bell?

The fault, dear sirs, is in our un-American system of democracy. I have vowed not to shed a drop of my blood for it. A republic, yes. Certainly, yes. That's what we're supposed to be, after all. That's what Dr. Franklin said to the lady.

Dr. Leddihn said democracy was an importation from the French Revolution, a real topsy-turvy affair, unlike our own much more modest War for Independence. Our principles in the Declaration are eternal, but we didn't change the calendar, destroy the churches, or engage in a genocidal precursor of the horrors of the Twentieth Century.

Leddihn and Marx both share--coming from opposite poles, though the former was adamant to avoid the confusion that extremes can meet--in their outlook of the extreme importance of the French Revolution. For Leddihn it was a hideous developent; Marx embraced it.

The teaching of the French Revolution is hideously sanitized by most American textbooks and educators. There was a notable revisionist effort by Simon Schama about twenty years ago, with his book Citizens.

P.S. And, Will, it's because the doctors and lawyers read newspapers like the New York Times that espouse egalitarianism. Since they have no pride in blood (heritage) and often lack optimism for the future, which means they have few if any children, they are susceptible to take on surrogate religious movements. They are taught to feel guilty for being rich and seek redress by voting for the Left, which Leddihn always capitalized.

In short, without America following its motto in the "Star-spangled Banner," (last stanza) [Why is it the best stuff in songs like this are at the end?] we're doomed. We probably are, which is why I preordered and read John Derbyshire's new book with pessimistic delight.

It's good to know that it's not only white people who are the cancer of the planet, as Susan Sontag is infamously remembered for having sputtered. We're all at fault if we breath out that poisonous gas carbon dioxide that's a "threat" to the public safety.

Silly me for thinking that that gas was good for plants in their production of oxygen and sugars. That's at least what my grandfather, a Ph.D. in biology, constantly taught me when we went down to visit him in Naples, Florida. Photosynthesis, no?

Obviously I should be sent to a re-education camp for siring more than two or three children. (I have four.) All that poisonous carbon dioxide!

Wait. I'm a gun-toting, Bible reading, weekly church attending, conservative. I think there are moral absolutes, truth, and Haydn is better than Lady Ga Ga. They won't even bother wasting time on me. I'm hopelessly reactionary.

I must admit I've missed Steven Den Beste since he pulled the plug on USS Clueless a few years ago. When he resurfaces from time to time his postings are poignant and to the point, just as they have always been. His latest is no different.

In his new screed he ties together ancient Greek philosophies, modern Western society, and our Teleologist-In-Chief.

It does not bode well for the U.S. at all.

What did Aristotle say, few laws but well understood?

Okay, I think it's a misdemeanor, but by driving on the main thoroughfare in my tiny town, I violated the Gun Free School Zone Act (GFSZA) of 1996. As a concealed weapon permit holder, I'm allowed to have a loaded firearm in my vehicle. The main artery for the town, Route 25, is almost certainly less than the 1000-foot distance from the elementary school (where my wife works and three of my children attend) that the legislation--based on an interpretation of the Commerce Clause no longer legally au courant--stipulates as the closest one may venture when possessing a loaded firearm.

Basically GFSZA nullifies CCW licenses in my town--and many others where schools are very close to heavily traveled roads. And the problem can become quite ridiculous when school zones buttress one another in densely packed areas, as Jacob Sullum wrote in Reason Magazine in 2006.

The rushed legislation in response to the horrible Columbine massacre in Colorado needs to be torpedoed on constitutional grounds, exactly like its predecessor was.

Remember the Free-stater with the open gun at the school event when the President spoke in Portsmouth? He was on private property, but the police made him stay a 1000 feet away from the building.

Pity this aide in Maine. The officials went lenient on her, but the consequences of job loss and extensive embarrassing media coverage were harsh. And the district attorney spoke of "the privilege" of having a CCW license.

Gee, all this time I mistakenly considered it an inalienable one. You know God-given, not to be bartered away. Seth Lipsky, whom I heard interviewed by Milt Rosenberg, has a new book out, The Citizen's Constitution: An Annotated Guide, espousing "the plain-language school of the law." He says we're at a moment in history where we're on the verge--"a Constitutional Moment"--of ditching the whole concept of "enumerated powers." What are the?, the typical person might ask.

They are those things gubmit is entrusted with. Nothing more but those. But Nancy Pelosi considers such talk ridiculous. Though I have to admit since gubmit already spends forty-seven cents of every dollar, we've long been traveling the social welfare model of Europe.

Is it possible that the much hated Sarbox (Sarbanes-Oxley) law will be struck down by the US Supreme Court? Let's hope so.

Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board was brought in 2006 by Brad Beckstead, whose small Nevada accounting firm endured a costly examination under Sarbox rules. At issue is whether the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, or PCAOB, which supervises compliance with the law, violates the Constitution's separation of powers. Under the Appointments Clause, all "officers" of the United States must be appointed by the President and accountable to him--a condition PCAOB members do not meet.

(emphasis added - ed.)

--snip--

The PCAOB has indeed grown as a politically unaccountable entity with vast power to regulate business. Texas Senator Phil Gramm warned at its creation that Congress was setting up a board with "massive unchecked power" to "make decisions that affect all accountants and everybody they work for, which directly or indirectly is every breathing person in the country."

Massive is the right word. The accounting board's wide-open mandate--to make whatever rules "may be necessary or appropriate in the public interest or for the protection of investors"--has cost the economy nearly $1 trillion, according to a study by AEI and the Brookings Institution. The benefit is supposed to be investor protection. But despite these costs, the law did nothing to warn about the meltdown of mortgage-backed securities, much less expose Bernie Madoff or other fraudsters.

A hastily put together bill created an unsupervised and unchecked regulatory organ with little or no Congressional or Executive oversight with questionable efficacy as well as problematic constitutionality pulling almost $1 trillion out of the economy and we're just supposed to take it?

I don't think so.

Hopefully the Supremes will pull the rug out from underneath Sarbox, a bill that actually did little to 'protect the investor' but added one hell of a burden on to American businesses.

It's time for Sarbox to die.

Received via e-mail:

Well, there is good news and bad news about my Christmas decorations this year.

Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after 2 days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever.

Great stories.

But two things made me take it down. First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by. Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn't realize it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn't take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard.

Kind of feel like I gave in to the man by taking him down but my neighbor did confirm to near miss accidents on the busy street next to my house. I think I made him too real this time. So it was fun while it lasted.

See below the fold for a picture of his Christmas 'decorations'.

The Lakes Region of New Hampshire looked like a winter wonderland this morning, with snow coating the trees and a blanket of white from horizon to horizon.

If I believe the Weather Guys™, a good portion of the snow will melt away today, leaving the roads clear and dry and most of the snow cover gone.

The snow made for an interesting trip to the farm this morning, with Deb's car (shod with snow tires) having great difficulty making it up The Manse's steep driveway.

BTW, the Great Ice Storm of 2008 hit the Northeast a year ago, leaving over a million people without power, 400,000 of them in New Hampshire alone. We were fortunate here at The Manse because we were without power for only 16 hours. Even without power we had heat, light, and hot water (think baths and showers).

*********

I caught a portion of ABC's Good Morning America this morning during a 'report' about the upcoming Copenhagen climate conference and I was dismayed. This so-called report was nothing more than a propaganda piece pushing the AGW agenda. No mention of ClimateGate, no mention of growing dissent among knowledgeable scientists, and only a passing reference to a decline in public acceptance of AGW theories.

As I and many others have said, the fix is in.

*********

Another indication that AGW 'heretics' are being silenced: many respected science professionals are "losing their positions" on BBC-TV.

*********

Maggie's Farm has a round-up of ClimateGate posts and stories. Thanks to the News Junkie for doing this so I woundn't have to.

*********

The New England Patriots played the Dolphins in Miami this afternoon, and following their usual pattern, the Patriots had problems during the second half, between missing coverage, blown plays, and penalties costing them dearly. The Patriots lost yet another one, 22-21.

As much of a Patriots fan as I am, I have to say I believe the Patriots are done for the season and tat they won't even make the playoffs even though they are leading their division of the moment. Their morale is shot and their defense has huge holes in it, some of which can be laid at the feet of Bill Belichick (trading away Mike Vrabel was a huge mistake, particularly in light of the retirement of Tedi Bruschi and Junior Seau).

*********

Cap'n Teach informs us Sarah Palin is so popular that even the media is showing up in growing numbers for her appearances.

Maybe the media is finally catching on that's she's actually quite popular with much of Middle America.

*********

Darleen Click illustrates the differences between the Left and the Right, specifically in regards to 'death' taxes (also know as the estate tax). Unfortunately the Left still sees only 'the rich' paying such taxes. But the definition of rich is far too broad, with the unintended consequence of far too many family owned businesses going under because the government will confiscate a good portion of those businesses in taxes. How does impoverishing families by confiscating their wealth (as small is it might actually be) help anyone?

A message to the Leftist looters: Closed businesses and their now unemployed workers don't pay taxes.

Part of the Left's problem is that it still thinks of wealth as a zero-sum game, meaning that they believe that in order for one person to become wealthy they somehow had to impoverish someone else. That may have been true back in the days when wealth was measured purely by how much gold, silver, and precious/semi-precious gems you had in your treasury. But that hasn't been the case in the West for a few hundred years now.

*********

Here's another difference between the Left and the Right: Egocentrism versus Theocentrism.

*********

It's official - Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs fame has gone full lefty. It appears he is also suffering from selective amnesia, forgetting things he wrote only 2 years ago.

*********

The Official Weekend Pundit Christmas Tree is up, though not yet fully decorated. Deb and I assembled our tree (we have no need to go out and kill a tree needlessly for the holiday, so an artificial tree we can use again and again is our preference), strung the lights (including some new LED Christmas lights I picked up early this year for $2), and draped a few garlands. The rest of the decoration we'll leave in BeezleBub's hands as it's something he does so well. (He's also particular about where various ornaments go on the tree, so better that he does it rather than us so he doesn't have to undo it and then "do it right".)

While our original plan was to spend both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at the WP In-Laws, we've had to change it. Deb has to work both those days as she's the new person on the ward (she's just started a new job). Instead the In-Laws will be coming to The Manse.

This is the second major holiday in a row where we've not had to travel. I doubt that will happen again any time soon.

*********

And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow has finally fallen, more cold weather is moving in, and where Christmas will arrive all too soon.

At Perkins you can have both your eggs and your waitress "easy over." Good luck, Tiger, in attempting to break Wilt's record. What is it with some women when faced with the rich and famous man? They delude themselves or something.

Please listen to this podcast with Kenn Blanchard, "The Urban Shooter," as you read this. It's a great one. He talks to The Gun Rabbi, an orthodox Jew who, after the massacre in Bombay, India, last November--including the unspeakable torture and slaughter of the Jews in the Chabad house there, has embraced the gun culture.

A movie needs to be made about these two guys. Great interview! And a funny joke by Kenn while he's listening to ZZ Top and ordering pancakes. I laughed.

CCW=concealed carry weapon. It's been a quiet revolution these past decades, as this interactive map demonstrates. But it's complicated. Only certain states recognize each other's concealed carry permit. And it differs for each state. I think it's a clearly untenable state of affairs.

All the states recognize my marriage certificate and driver's license, but not my CCW license? How's that?

I'm going to read this to my students on Monday, a delightful speech given by Mark Twain, identifying 136 weathers in one twenty-four-hour period in spring--a time not to be praised, necessitating New Englanders' killing of poets who do so.

The students are heading off Wednesday to Rome for two weeks on a special trip to see members of the order be consecrated priests and meet the Pope. Yippee! No school for me.

We had just been talking about it. Some boys from Louisiana find the "sumptuous variety" (Twain's words) to be annoying. I like it.

Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only one thing certain about it: you are certain there is going to be plenty of it.

Friday I hiked Mt. Israel between jobs in a T-shirt! One of my favorite hikes, the summit, by pure happenstance, being named for the original farmer who lived near its base, is the precise elevation of Jerusalem. That's cool

FOUR IN 2009

Thursday night our cat Sweet Pea was ailing in a terminal way. She's had kidney failure diagnosed a year ago. The sweet tough bird--so ugly she was fascinating to look at, her bug-out eyes made her look as though she were severely under the influence of some pernicious drug--lasted this long. The fetching wife and I bought her before the brood began arriving, shortly after our marriage in 1997.

Her brother, Willow, died suddenly, without warning five years ago. The other animal we had, before the children, died in the spring. Duchess, the regal and highly intelligent golden retriever, was a devastating loss for me when she passed away at home on March 11. I'm the dog person; my wife loves the cats.

We also lost a bunny, Eeyore, whom I sometimes would cuddle with when watching Michigan State football games.  I think stroking him reduced my stress, which that program amply dishes out.

And my mother-in-law who also lives with us--breaking my Rule 13: to live at least one hour's drive from a mother-in-law--lost her nearly twenty-year-old persian cat, Delilah.

Four animals in 2009, as my wife said during our special Friday night family dinner. No more, she said. I agree. Luckily we still have the gecko, the large fish tank, the two turtles, the three cats, and the two dogs (well, one's the neighbor's but he lives here during the day and tries to avoid leaving at night). The menagerie continues. And the fetching wife is on the internet prowl at local humane societies for another feline addition.

During a fascinating interview with his friend Charlie Rose not too recently before his death, Michael Crichton's attack on man-made global warming (at 22:18) with the "garbage in/garbage out" summation following his detailed look at the computer modeling makes him look...well, even smarter. And he was one super smart man.

Charlie Rose was aghast at the climate skepticism, acting as if his friend were denying the Trinity!

The free ranging interview covers a lot of topics, including gene patenting and his most recent book, Next.

Being that smart, that tall (6'7" to 6'9"), that handsome--it's no wonder he married a bunch of women.

It's been a busy day, between getting snow tire mounted, BeezleBub off to work (and back again), grocery shopping, and a host of other chores and duties. And on top of that, we received out first snowfall, which started around 1 in the afternoon and is still falling as I write this, almost 10 hours later. So far 5 inches have fallen with maybe another inch expected before it ends sometime early Sunday morning.

Needless to say I really didn't have much chance to put together anything profound or amusing today.

I, as well as many others, have been beating the ClimateGate meme to death. It's about time AGW met its long overdue comeuppance. Despite claims by many of the AGW faithful that the fraud committed by the Climactic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia was not major, being that the CRU was only one of many climate research institutes, they have overlooked the fact that the CRU was a major clearinghouse for climate data used by other institutions to generate their climate models. That meant they were using the same 'corrected' data as the CRU, which in turn meant the other models were wrong, too. And one must keep in mind that the CRU data and models were used by the UN IPCC to generate their reports. The fraud committed by the CRU did not affect just the CRU, but any research team or institution using their data to create climate models and the resulting predictions.

As an aside, I came across this presentation about Anthropogenic Global Warming (available here in both PDF and PowerPoint format) given by Burt Rutan at Oshkosh this past summer. (Yes, that Burt Rutan of SpaceShip 1 fame.) For anyone not familiar with Burt Rutan, he is an aeronautical engineer extraordinaire. And as such, he has a considerable amount of experience analyzing test data and putting it in formats easily understood (and reproducible) by just about anyone wishing to spend the time to do so. With that in mind, Burt applied his considerable data analysis skills to the theory of AGW...and totally shreds it. Using readily available data from a number of sources including NOAA, NASA, as well as from global warming advocate sites and organizations, he delves into the data and its presentation to the world.

As he states more than once in a number of ways, it isn't always the amount of data you have that 'proves' a case like AGW as much as how it is presented. In this case he shows how climate data has been manipulated in ways that change the meaning as well as the context in order to sell a theory that is pretty crappy at best. Never mind the data massaging and corrective algorithms applied at the CRU to make it look like we're all doomed because of AGW. He shows how data analysis should be done to show what's really happening and why, regardless of one's personal beliefs one way or the other.

I must remind you that Burt Rutan is not a climate scientist, nor has he studied climatology or meteorology or atmospheric physics. He is an aeronautical engineer and he makes his living designing aircraft and spacecraft. Part of his engineering duties include analysis of flight test data and making sure the analysis is accurate. His job demands accuracy and an elimination of bias because if he gets it wrong people die. This isn't something abstract like AGW. If he fails in his job the aircraft or spacecraft he's designed and built will fail and those on board will die. That gives him great incentive to get it right. And so it is with his analysis of AGW.

Look at his presentation and decide for yourself whether he's on to something or not.

Seven percent (Saudi financed John Esposito) or forty-nine percent (JihadWatch's Robert Spencer)? We're talking the numbers of Muslims who support jihad terror. Totaling a billion adherents, the numbers are either frightening or cosmically scary. Depending on what the number is.

This is one of the most important questions facing us in the West today. Andy McCarthy has an incredible piece at The Corner how jihadi sympathizers are being recruited and hired by federal agencies to teach the troops. "Somebody at Fort Hood Should Walking the Plank." Must read. We very well could lose this war against Muslim terror. September 11 must not happen again, but I fear in my bones another attack is coming. Soon.

As I do physical manual labor at UPS about twenty hours a week, which I'm sure I'm being redundant in stating though it's been a godsend for the financial maintenance of my family, I listen to several podcasts faithfully, including BBC's NewsPod. Much better than anything comparable from NPR.

Well, I heard from one in late November that the UK police are compiling a DNA database of criminals and even anyone they investigate for criminal activity, regardless of the outcome. Gives me the creeps. But we are entering the age of biology.

But one datum was stated on the podcast: seventy-five percent of black men in Britain are on the registry. Can it be? I've heard this before. So I have googled it and come across an AP story of it.

Could anyone explain this without resorting to the tired liberal kneejerk of "racism is to blame"? Under the scientific rigor of Chan, I've been taught to practice Occam's razor: entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, which should no doubt apply here.

Normally I don't use this blog to comment directly about the post of one of the WP team members, but in this case I feel I must. But first, I have a confession to make.

I don't always read what others post here on Weekend Pundit.

It isn't that I'm lazy, but rather that there are evenings where I don't even post my own scribblings until very late in the evening because it's the only time I have free to sit down uninterrupted. That leaves me little time to read my own blog. However that's no excuse. It's my blog and, in the end, it's my responsibility for what's posted here.

That said, I have to say that I failed to read Brent's post from the morning of November 25th titled The Benefits Of Affirmative Action. I wasn't aware of the tone or the subject of his post until Gilford Police Chief John Markland brought it to my attention Tuesday evening. When I got home that evening I read it and I can honestly say I was dismayed and disgusted.

Brent, What. The. Hell. Were. You. Thinking?! Do you really believe Officer Janero Sankey was hired due to affirmative action? You certainly imply that's the case. Knowing both Chief Markland and Deputy Chief Kevin Keenan as well as I do, I can tell you your implication is way off base. If Officer Sankey wasn't qualified he would have never even gotten an interview, let alone hired. To say otherwise is an insult to Officer Sankey, the Gilford Police Department, and the town of Gilford.

To Officer Sankey, Chief Markland, Deputy Chief Keenan, and the rest of the Gilford Police Department, I offer my sincere apologies.

(Cross-posted to One Voice In Gilford)

Most momentous (and calamitous words) from the speech:

I don't think the Cadets were impressed. I sure wasn't. Can he deliver a speech without the tennis back and forth his Teleprompters give?

Sgt. Rock, a commentator in this thread, writes: If I'm sitting in a cave in Pakistan watching CNN, I learned a couple of things: 1) If I can make it expensive enough for you to fight me, you'll cut and run, and b) In 18 months you'll pick up and leave anyway. Either way, I win. And then I can go back to murdering your infidel countrymen on your own soil, after which I'll be tried in YOUR courts and defended by an ACLU lawyer YOU paid for. Praise be to Allah, I'm going to get fitted for a new explosive vest.

Michael Bellesiles=Phil Jones

Notice both now have stepped down from their lofty respective perches but in Bellesiles's case he is now back teaching at an obscure school in Connecticut. He sounds unrepentent. It's another indication of how lousy academia is.

Do you want to win in Pashtun land, Obama? The only feasible way is this. Send in the lawyers. Lord knows, we're going to be producing an excess number of them as record numbers are taking the LSAT.

UPDATE: I'm not alone in making the connection. Though I was there first.

I find it interesting (but not surprising) the AlGoristas are not willing to discuss or debate the ClimateGate scandal, turning instead to invective, ad hominum attacks, and the old stand by - repeating the same old tired mantra "But the scientific consensus is..." over and over again as if that's all that's needed to make AGW come true.

A perfect example of all three can be found in the comments to this op-ed piece by MIT Professor of Meteorology Richard Lindzen.

The general support for warming is based not so much on the quality of the data, but rather on the fact that there was a little ice age from about the 15th to the 19th century. Thus it is not surprising that temperatures should increase as we emerged from this episode. At the same time that we were emerging from the little ice age, the industrial era began, and this was accompanied by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. CO2 is the most prominent of these, and it is again generally accepted that it has increased by about 30%.

No argument there. But then Lindzen does the unforgivable, at least in the eyes of the AlGoristas: He questions the validity of the claims that GW is real and that we, human beings, are the sole cause.

At this point there is no basis for alarm regardless of whether any relation between the observed warming and the observed increase in minor greenhouse gases can be established. Nevertheless, the most publicized claims of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deal exactly with whether any relation can be discerned. The failure of the attempts to link the two over the past 20 years bespeaks the weakness of any case for concern.

He goes on to make his case, showing the science is, at best, very weak and that the models are useless because they give too much weight to some factors and not enough (or none) to others. It is this that drove the comments of the faithful to go over the edge and cease being a debate. One comment in particular sticks out, trying to discredit Professor Lindzen despite his impeccable credentials and expertise in the science of climate.

At age 70, Professor Lindzen just isn't current on the research, it's that simple. He's done distinguished work in the past, but his current opinions [are] at best outliers. He's not involved in the current research.

His view is that the computer models are unreliable. Considering the capabilities of computer modeling at the time he received his Ph.D, which was 1964, that view is understandable. His expertise in the state of computer modeling is just outdated.

So the argument put forward is that he's too old, which means he is incapable of understanding the science (and the math) behind climate research? The commenter, one Arthur Kreitman, believes that just because Professor Lindzen is 'old' that he is out of touch, implying perhaps that he is senile. He also assumes that the professor's knowledge ossified and that he's learned nothing new since 1964! He is assuming based upon facts not in evidence. Kreitman's comments are a perfect example of an ad hominum attack. Don't argue the facts, argue instead the qualifications of the one you disagree with and make the allegation that he is incapable of understanding the science behind the fraud that is AGW.

But on the other hand, I liked this one because, if nothing else, it explains a few things I've noticed, too.

I too have a theory and a model. Through careful observation of the night sky, I have determined, within a few percentage points of perfection, the winning numbers for every lottery drawing over the last 20 years. But something always goes wrong, and the numbers drawn are not quite right. I've decided that this is clearly the work of extraterrestrials, who are screwing with the night sky to fudge my numbers and deny me my rightful winnings. I had all the data to prove this, but I threw it away when my computer's hard drive got overloaded. Nevertheless, my theory is a fact, because I say it is. And since no one has ever published data proving me wrong in a peer-reviewed journal, no one can say I'm wrong.

The exact same thing happened to me, too!

I wish this evening a cadet at West Point would yell this at the top of his lungs.

Probably, though, he'd get in big trouble. But it would certainly be something to cherish.

News I heard that a fireman is told not to park on public property for having three anti-Obama bumper stickers, including this one. I'd like to get it for myself, even though I'm generally opposed to 'em.

When are we going to talk affirmative action for males at higher education, asks Phyllis Schlafy, when they are merely forty-two percent of the graduates? Well, don't women outlive males by a significant degree, also? I seem to hear a lot more about women's health issues than men's. So don't hold your breath.