Regarding the Duke Lacrosse team rape case I saw some interesting data in a blog. In 2005 there were around 36,000 black women who reported being raped. Not one of them accused a white man of being the rapist. That corresponds with data I had found from a few years earlier. Apparently Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the Black Panthers, the liberal members of the Duke faculty, and liberals in general are not aware of our current culture. They are living in the past. White men are also not prone to gang rape. If the Durham DA had not been running for re-elction and needed the black vote, the Duke case would never have been pursued. Each year there are a few black athletes accused of gang rape in newspaper accounts. These cases are very rarely prosecuted.

I frequently hear politicians say that the science behind the Global Warming dogma is settled, and that the debate is over. This is interesting because I don't think most of us were aware of the debate. I think it would be a good idea to have the debate now in public. The negative side has a lot of good info now, so it could be very interesting. Based on what I know I doubt that many people would be willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, and greiviously harm our economy in order to slightly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being generated by burning fossil fuels. I think the dogma supporters do not want to have a real debate. They seem interested in suppressing debate, never a good sign in the case of scientific disputes. IN fact, it is a big red flag that something is wrong. Actually, the idea that the science on something as complicated as the climate on earth is settled is ridiculous. Anyone who says that has a poor grasp of science. That would be a good description of most politicians, and most lawyers.

There is interesting news about Khalid Sheik Mohammad is that after his capture he said he would talk as soon as he got a lawyer. Apparently he was unaware that Clinton was no longer President. This is a good example of why it is important to treat terrorism as war rather than criminal activity.

Has anyone seen the commercial for HDTV in which a pitcher deliberately hits a batter to see how the bruise looks in HDTV? If so, did you notice that on the first pitch, which was wild to the right, the batter was left-handed. On the second pitch the batter was right-handed. The producer must not have had a continuity person.

I have never liked Jimmy Carter. I have always thought him to be less ethical than his exalted reputation. I was a poor President who did the country great harm. Now others are agreeing with me as his anti-Semitism becomes apparent. Here is an interesting article about Carter's ties with our enemies.


The Real Jimmy Carter
By Alan M. DershowitzFrontPageMagazine.com April 27, 2007
I have known Jimmy Carter for years. I first met him in the spring of 1976 when, as a relatively unknown candidate for president, he sent me a handwritten letter asking for my help in his campaign on issues of crime and justice. I had just published an article in The New York Times Magazine on sentencing reform, and he expressed interest in my ideas and asked me to come up with additional ones for his campaign. Shortly thereafter, my former student, Stuart Eisenstadt, brought Carter to Harvard to meet with some faculty members, me among them. I immediately liked Jimmy Carter and saw him as a man of integrity and principle. I signed on to his campaign and worked very hard for his election.
When Newsweek magazine asked his campaign for the names of people on whom Carter relied for advice, my name was among those given out. I continued to work for Carter over the years, most recently I met him in Jerusalem a year ago, and we briefly discussed the Mid-East. Though I disagreed with some of his points, I continued to believe that he was making them out of a deep commitment to principle and to human rights. Recent disclosures of Carter's extensive financial connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity. When I was first told that he received a monetary reward in the name of Shiekh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the money, even after Harvard returned money from the same source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not believe it. How could a man of such apparent integrity enrich himself with dirty money from so dirty a source? And let there be no mistake about how dirty the Zayed Foundation is. I know because I was involved, in a small way, in helping to persuade Harvard University to return more than $2 million that the financially strapped Divinity School received from this source. Initially, I was reluctant to put pressure on Harvard to turn back money for the Divinity School, but then a student at the Divinity School, Rachael Lea Fish showed me the facts.
They were staggering. I was amazed that in the twenty-first century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up, a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son, hosted speakers who called Jews "the enemies of all nations," attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States' own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a "fable." (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the money back. To his discredit, Carter did not. Jimmy Carter was, of course, aware of Harvard's decision, since it was highly publicized. Yet he kept the money. Indeed, this is what he said in accepting the funds: "This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan." Carter's personal friend, it turns out, was an unredeemable anti-Semite and all-around bigot.
In reading Carter's statements, I was reminded of the bad old Harvard of the nineteen thirties, which continued to honor Nazi academics after the anti-Semitic policies of Hitler's government became clear. Harvard of the nineteen thirties was complicit in evil. I sadly concluded that Jimmy Carter of the twenty-first century has become complicit in evil. The extent of Carter's financial support from, and even dependence on, dirty money is still not fully known. What we do know is deeply troubling. Carter and his Center have accepted millions of dollars from suspect sources, beginning with the bail-out of the Carter family peanut business in the late 1970s by BCCI, a now-defunct and virulently anti-Israeli bank indirectly controlled by the Saudi Royal family, and among whose principal investors is Carter's friend, Sheikh Zayed. Agha Hasan Abedi, the founder of the bank, gave Carter "$500,000 to help the former president establish his center...[and] more than $10 million to Mr. Carter's different projects." Carter gladly accepted the money, though Abedi had called his bank, ostensibly the source of his funding, "the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists." BCCI isn't the only source: Saudi King Fahd contributed millions to the Carter Center "in 1993 alone...$7.6 million" as have other members of the Saudi Royal Family. Carter also received a million dollar pledge from the Saudi-based bin Laden family, as well as a personal $500,000 environmental award named for Sheikh Zayed, and paid for by the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. It's worth noting that, despite the influx of Saudi money funding the Carter Center, and despite the Saudi Arabian government's myriad human rights abuses, the Carter Center's Human Rights program has no activity whatever in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis have apparently bought his silence for a steep price. The bought quality of the Center's activities becomes even more clear, however, when reviewing the Center's human rights activities in other countries: essentially no human rights activities in China or in North Korea, or in Iran, Iraq, the Sudan, or Syria, but activity regarding Israel and its alleged abuses, according to the Center's website.
The Carter Center's mission statement claims that "The Center is nonpartisan and acts as a neutral party in dispute resolution activities." How can that be, given that its coffers are full of Arab money, and that its focus is away from significant Arab abuses and on Israel's far less serious ones?
No reasonable person can dispute therefore that Jimmy Carter has been and remains dependent on Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia. Does this mean that Carter has necessarily been influenced in his thinking about the Middle East by receipt of such enormous amounts of money? Ask Carter.
The entire premise of his criticism of Jewish influence on American foreign policy is that money talks. It is Carter, not me, who has made the point that if politicians receive money from Jewish sources, then they are not free to decide issues regarding the Middle East for themselves. It is Carter, not me, who has argued that distinguished reporters cannot honestly report on the Middle East because they are being paid by Jewish money. So, by Carter's own standards, it would be almost economically "suicidal" for Carter "to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine."
By Carter's own standards, therefore, his views on the Middle East must be discounted. It is certainly possible that he now believes them. Money, particularly large amounts of money, has a way of persuading people to a particular position. It would not surprise me if Carter, having received so much Arab money, is now honestly committed to their cause. But his failure to disclose the extent of his financial dependence on Arab money, and the absence of any self reflection on whether the receipt of this money has unduly influenced his views, is a form of deception bordering on corruption. I have met cigarette lobbyists, who are supported by the cigarette industry, and who have come to believe honestly that cigarettes are merely a safe form of adult recreation, that cigarettes are not addicting and that the cigarette industry is really trying to persuade children not to smoke. These people are fooling themselves (or fooling us into believing that they are fooling themselves) just as Jimmy Carter is fooling himself (or persuading us to believe that he is fooling himself). If money determines political and public views as Carter insists "Jewish money" does, Carter's views on the Middle East must be deemed to have been influenced by the vast sums of Arab money he has received. If he who pays the piper calls the tune, then Carter's off-key tunes have been called by his Saudi Arabian paymasters. It pains me to say this, but I now believe that there is no person in American public life today who has a lower ratio of real to apparent integrity than Jimmy Carter. The public perception of his integrity is extraordinarily high. His real integrity, it now turns out, is extraordinarily low. He is no better than so many former American politicians who, after leaving public life, sell themselves to the highest bidder and become lobbyists for despicable causes. That is now Jimmy Carter's sad legacy.

There is a serious tendancy these days to blame everything that happens on either Global Warming or George Bush. Well, some blame Bush for everything. The Global Warming dogma involves a confirmation bias. Everything bad regarding climate is blamed on global warming. Al Gore blamed hurricane Katrina on global warming, and Bush for causing global warming. Cooler heads are now pointing out that global warming, should it happen, will result in less severe weather. This is borne out by a check of Earth's climate history. The weather was mild during the Medieval Warm Period, and got more severe with the onset of the Little Ice Age. I recently read that global warming is causing the extinction of species in the tropical forests. It amazes me that an increase of one degree Fahrenheit in the average Earth temperature could have such an effect, particularly since the increase is mostly at higher latitudes, and the annual spread in temperatures in the tropics is at least 40 degrees Fahrenheit. It seems obvious to me that blaming global warming is convenient, and will likely generate some research funding, but there is almost certainly some other cause.

The Financial Times has looked into the carbon credit scheme, and are shocked, shocked to discover that the carbon credits are mostly bogus. That may be true, but selling carbon credits is an opportunity for a lot of shysters to get rich quick without contributing anything useful to society. Al Gore has made $200 million since he left office, and this carbon credit gig can easily make him a billionaire. If they could just have gotten George Bush on board back in 2001, the Enron collapse might have been avoided. And they could claim credit for the Earth temperature not going up since 1998.

The MSM was wrong again. The Virginia State Police say that the Virginia Tech mass murderer Cho had only "standard" magazines for his pistols, rather than the extended magazines widely reported by the press. The MSM wanted him to have used the extended magazines that hold 33 rounds for political reasons, namely so they can blame this evil on Republicans. For unknown reasons the Police refused to say how many rounds the Cho's magazines held. The Glock standard magazine holds 15 rounds, but a few years ago the assault weapons law required that magazines be limited to 10 rounds. The Police also would not say how many magazines he had. Apparently the report that he fired a total of 170 rounds is correct.

The temperature of the Earth apparently hasn't gone up since 1998. That should not be the case according to the global warming dogma which predicts that the temperature goes up as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentaration increases, particularly at he poles. (The artic has been getting warmer but antartica has been getting colder.) I have noticed that the true believers have been getting more frantic to get action lately, and I suspect it is because the case for heroic action is getting weaker as the prdictions are not coming true. I think companies are getting on board with the globalwarming agenda because of the great money-making possibilities of carbon credit trading. Richard Lindzen has similar ideas to mine, or perhaps I should say I have similar ideas to his as expressed in this interview.

RELAX, THE PLANET IS FINE: AN INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD LINDZEN

This Earth Day, Professor Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist and the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, wants you to calm down. The Earth, he says, is in good shape. "Forests are returning in Europe and the United States. Air quality has improved. Water quality has improved. We grow more food on less land. We've done a reasonably good job in much of the world in conquering hunger. And yet we're acting as though: "How can we stand any more of this?" A leading critic on the theory of man-made global warming, Professor Lindzen has developed a reputation as America's anti-doom-and-gloom scientist. And he's not, he says, as lonely as you might think.

Q You don't dispute that the globe is warming?

A It has never been an issue of whether the Earth is warming -- because it's always warming or cooling. The issue is: What are the magnitudes involved? It's a big difference if it's warming a degree or two or 10, or if it's warming a few tenths of a degree.

Q And it's inconclusive how much it's warming?

A Sure it's inconclusive. It's a very hard thing to analyze because you have to average huge fluctuations over the whole Earth, and 70% of the Earth is oceans where you don't have weather stations. So you get different groups analyzing this. And they're pretty close. One group gets over the last century a warming of about .55 degrees centigrade. Another group says it's .75 degrees.

Q Is there any scenario in which global warming could be beneficial for the planet?

A Of course. Canada looks like it will benefit considerably if it were to happen. And it might very well happen -- but it won't be due to man.

Q You charge that the hysteria that's been created around global warming is an enormous financial scam. It's all about money?

A Well, how shall I put it? It's not all about money, but boy, there's a lot of money floating in it. I mean, emissions trading is going to be a multi-trillion dollar market. Emissions alone would keep small countries in business.

Q Are you suggesting that scientists manipulate their findings to get in on the gravy train?

A You have to differentiate the interests of different groups. In the scientific community, your interest is for your field to be recognized so that it will have priority in government funding.

Q So you are not accusing your scientific colleagues of corruption?

A No, I'm accusing them of behaving the way scientists always behave. In other words, some years ago, when Richard Nixon declared war on cancer, almost all the biological sciences then became cancer research. I mean, I don't call that corruption, I'm saying you orient your research so that it has a better chance to get resources.

Q And it helps if your findings suggest something catastrophic is about to happen?

A In this case it certainly has helped. First of all, the funding increased so greatly that it exceeded the capacity of the existing field to absorb it. You'll notice that Working Group 2 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came up with lots of scary things, but everything was always preceded by could, might, may, all these qualifiers. And the reason it was is those studies start out assuming there's a lot of warming. They assume all the science is in, and then they say, 'Well, how will this impact my field of insect-borne diseases, or agriculture, or health?' So they are almost, by definition, going to generate catastrophic scenarios, but they will never be based on anything other than the hypothesis that this will already happen.

Q I read that you bet one of your colleagues that the Earth will actually be colder 20 years from now?

A I haven't bet on it, but I figure the odds are about 50-50. If you look at the temperature record for the globe over the last six years, it's gone no place. That's usually the way it behaves before it goes down. In fact, I suspect that's why you have this tsunami of exposure the last two years, with Gore's movie and so on. I think that this issue has been around long enough to generate a lot of agendas, and looking at the temperature records there must be a fear that if they don't get the agendas covered now, they may never get them.

Q Did you watch Al Gore ge this Academy Award?

A No! Bad enough I watched his movie.

Q He would appear to have the support of the majority of your scientific colleagues.

A Not really. This is an issue that has hundreds of aspects. The very thought that a large number of scientists all agree on everything is inconceivable. Among my colleagues, I would say, almost no one thinks that Gore's movie is reasonable. But there will be differences. Some believe it is possible that warming could be a serious problem. Others think it's very unlikely. People are all over the place.

Q Some suggest that Roger Revelle, Gore's scientific mentor, would not have agreed with the movie?

A Well, he's dead.

Q Yes. So that makes it harder for him to speak out.

A It's a horrible story. Before he died, Roger Revelle co-authored a popular paper saying, 'We know too little to take any action based on global warming. If we take any action it should be an action that we can justify completely without global warming.' And Gore's staffers tried to have his name posthumously removed from that paper claiming he had been senile. And one of the other authors took it to court and won. It's funny how little coverage that got.

Q How cynical do you think Gore is?

A It's hard for me to tell. I think he's either cynical or crazy. But he has certainly cashed in on something. And 'cash in' is the word. The movie has cleared $50-million. He charges $100,000-$150,000 a lecture. He's co-founder of Global Investment Management, which invests in solar and wind and so on. So he is literally shilling for his own companies. And he's on the on the board of Lehman Brothers who want to be the primary brokerage for emission permits.

Q That sounds more cynical, less crazy.

A I think his aim is not to be president. It's to be a billionaire.

Q What do you find to be the attitude among your MIT undergraduates on global warming?

A I find that they realize they don't know enough to reach judgments. They all realize that Gore's book was a sham. They appreciate that Michael Crichton at least included references.

Q That's encouraging. Because I find the indoctrination at schools to be pretty relentless. On a recent Grade 7 test my daughter was asked something to the effect of, "How are you going to educate your parents about global warming?"

A I know. It's straight out of Hitlerjugend.

Q Having said that, are there any behaviours we should be changing, as a society, in order to protect our planet?

A Yes. We should learn math and physics so we don't get fooled by this idiocy.

Maryland Governor Corzine was critically injured in an accident when his vehicle crashed while speeding at 91 mph. He was in the front passenger seat, and didn't have his seat belt on. Perhaps he would not been as seriously injured if he had been wearing his seat belt. This is ironic since while he was in the Senate he championed legislation to reguire everyone to buckle up. This is another instance of a Democrat telling everyone else to do as I say, not as I do. His driver was speeding to get Corzine to the all-important meeting between Don Imus and the Rutgers women's basketball team. The news accounts of this that I saw and read didn't mention that he was a Democrat. The MSM doesn't like to point out problems Democrats have. On the other hand if a Republican does something dumb, they have a headline that includes the word Republican.

The Iranian Supreme Court has overturned the convictions of six mass murderers because the victims were engaged in non-Muslim activities, and had been warned to change their behavior two times. That should clear things up for all those liberals who say that Muslims do not believe they have the right, and even the duty to kill non-believers. (As I recall Ahmadinejad has warned Bush twice: so Iran is now free to attack us.) Islam is the Religion of peace; their definition of peace is when we are dead or enslaved.

Iran has also sentnced two women to prison for attending a demonstration for women's rights. Surely NOW is planning a protest; well probably not. It wouldn't do to offend Muslims.

In other news Muslim college students in Canada, supported by Muslim college student organizations in the US, are demanding special accommodations for themselves. They want foot washers, special prayer rooms, separate swimming times for men and women, and even separate water fountains. Canada is so far down the PC path that they will probably give in to the demands. The US Constitution will make it harder for them to get similar concessions in the US, but I'm sure liberals will try to help them in the name of diversity or multiculturism.

Muslims claim that it is not true that women are not treated equally in Islam. I wonder how they say that with a straight face. In Muslim courts a woman's word is not worth as much as a man's. A man can divorce his wife by saying "I divorce you" three time. But a woman can't get a divorce. Husbands can beat their wives (they get to have four at a time). Women can't go out alone. Women can be killed if they talk to a non-relative male. In Saudi Arabia women are not permitted to drive. The Taliban didn't allow women to get an education or to work. Those restrictions may not be universally true in Islam, but are in effect in some palces.

There's a lot of discussion about guns and gun control in the wake of the massacre at Virginia Tech on Monday. I recall that when I was in college back in the mid-50's a lot of guys had guns. There were a lot of rifles and shotguns in car trunks, and several guys had pistols in their car. I remember going up to one guys room to look at a German P-38 (the 9 mm pistol that replaced the Luger in the German army) that his Dad had brought home from the WWII. (His Dad had recently died, which was why he had the gun.) While I was in school I never heard of a student being shot or shooting anyone, or even threatening anyone with a gun or any other weapon for that matter. Something is different now, and I don't think it is the presence of guns. In some ways it was better back in the fifties.

The Supreme Court has decided that a law banning partial birth abortion is constitutional. Predictably, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, is upset about this. The only thing that is curious about his reaction is that he voted for the law. Maybe he didn't realize what he was voting on. He once commented on how poorly written Clarence Thomas' opinions were. But when pressed for examples it became obvious he hadn't actually read any. Maybe, like Chauncey Gardiner, he doesn't read. Chauncey, of course, didn't know how to read. I'm pretty certain Senator Reid knows how, but he is probably so busy protecting the public from the evil Republicans and raising money for his next election campaign that he doesn't have time to read the laws he is passing. It's unfair to make an example of him because just watching the news reveals that Legislators don't know what is in the bills they pass. For example, has any one person actually read the thousands of pages in the tax code?

There is a lot of inconsistency in the IPCC's and Al Gore's Global Warming catastrophe scenario. Today's Ft. Worth Star-Telegram at least tentatively broached two of these.

First, it is mentioned that addition of ethanol to gasoline may actually increase smog since burning ethanol produces some undesirable stuff, like formaldehyde. Ethanol has less energy per pound than gasoline, so more of the stuff has to be burned to go the same distance. And ethanol made from corn doesn't reduce the net amount of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere.

Then, there was a piece that says that Global Warming may not result in more severe weather after all. Historically, there was less severe weather during the medeival warm period than there was later as the "little ice age" started. The reason is that severe weather is driven by the atmospheric temperature differential between the mid-latitudes and the polar regions. The global warming theory calls for more temperature increase at the poles than at the mid-latitudes, thus there should be less severe weather if global warming actually happens. Ignoring this, the MSM and Al Gore have had a tendancy to attribute every bad weather event to global warming.

There is another inconsistency in Global Warming theocracy I have noticed. Water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas, responsible for about 95% of the effect. The theory is that a small atmospheric temperature results in much more water vapor in the air, producing a large temperature increase. (The amount of water vapor air can hold goes up exponentially as temperature increase.) The IPCC summary reports always predict that more droughts and floods will occur as a result of the increased load of water vapor in the air (and also that there will not be an increase of cloudiness, which would reduce daytime temperatures). It has always seemed more likely to me that there would be more rain everywhere. I'm not the only person who has noticed this inconsistency. One of the 2500 scientists working for the IPCC did also, though whoever makes the decisions for the IPCC ignored him. (An interesting question: who is the person who makes the decisions for the IPCC?) Here is an interesting email from one of the 2500 experts.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Willful ignorance in IPCC report (WG2 SPM)

An email below to Benny Peiser from Prof. Aynsley Kellow [Aynsley.Kellow@utas.edu.au], Head of the School of Government, University of Tasmania.

Thank you for publishing Indur Goklany's insightful critique of the SPM for the WG2 Fourth Assessment Report.

I would like to add a couple of comments, if I may be permitted. I was a referee for Ch 19 in the Report on 'Key Vulnerabilities and Risk Assessment', and made in essence the criticism Indur does that the whole exercise fails to take account of the increases in wealth that give rise to the emissions that drive the climate models, that drive the impact models. It is nonsensical to suggest that vulnerabilities will be as they would be if the projected climates impacted upon present developing countries. The Report persists in this nonsense in the face of at least this reviewer drawing it to their attention, so the persistence is quite willful. It is, of course, such a fundamental criticism that it virtually renders the whole report invalid, so it was not likely too be well-received. I also added that the chapter exaggerated the hazards of climate change and almost totally ignored any benefits. I put it that the First Order Draft read as if (in a warmer, and therefore wetter, world) no rain would fall in any form that would be in any way useful to anyone: there would be only floods and droughts.

The Second Order Draft included some language to the effect that this was because the Committee had decided that it should be so, to which I responded that they should not then represent their analysis as a risk assessment, since any sensible risk assessment must include benefits as well as costs. I'm not holding my breath for this criticism to be taken on board either, which underscores a fault in the whole peer review process for the IPCC: there is no chance of a Chapter ever being rejected for publication, no mattter how flawed it might be.

But then I'll be counted as one of the 2,500 experts who agree with this nonsense!

Liberals say their is no such thing as race. Race is a construct of society. There is no real difference in people. If that is the case, why do liberals talk about racism so much, and call those who don't agree with them racists?

Today there is a lot of discussion on TV about what the Democrat's have accomplished during their first 100 days in control of the Congress. They haven't passed any laws. In the House they passed six bills, but not much has happened legislatively in the Senate, and Pelosi hasn't even sent members to negotiate differences with the Senate . And, they have not done anything to correct abuses such as earmarks that they campiagned on in the last election. But, the Democrats seem very pleased. They say that, while they haven't passed any laws, they have started a lot of investigations of Republicans, and generally have the Administration tied up in knots. It appears their agenda is all about politics, and not about improving the lot of ordinary Americans.

The Duke Lacrosse rape case is now over, except for the civil roghts violation investigations and civil lawsuits. On TV and in newspaper editorials, a lot of liberals are not giving up. They keep saying that "something bad happened." One woman said to an interviewer, "You weren't there so you don't know that nothing happened." It never seems to have occurred to her that she wasn't there either. Some black speakers said that the rich white boys deserved to be prosecuted because of centuries of abuse of blacks by whites. Terry Moran, for example, seemed to agree with that line of thought, and thought they deserved what has happened to them because they had at least shown bad judgment by hiring strippers. One problem that seems obvious is that the alleged victim appears to have selected the accused at random. One of the ones she selected had left the party. How was he guilty of anything? One thing that bothered me about this case from the beginning was that while there are several cases each year of athletes accused of gang rape at a party, it almost always black players, and usually there are no charges brought. Another is that in most rapes the attacker and victim are the same race. On top of that, contrary to what appears to be conventional wisdom in the black community, it is now extremely rare for white men to rape black women. In a study by Wilbanks in 1988 there were 9406 rapes of white women by black men but only 10 rapes of black women by white men. In 1989 Andrew Hacker's study indicated that blacks rape of whites were 30 times more likely than vice versa. Looking at the Duke case I still see it as I did at the beginning: a rogue prosecutor playing to the black population to win an election with support from liberals who wanted to "pay back whites" for past sins of the white race.

On TV today there was a piece on a Speech by Daniel Pipes to the Ayn Rand Society (no doubt perceived as a conservative organization) at a Califronia University. The topic was radical Islam, so predictably there was a demonstration. The protesters had an amazing sign that said Muslims are opposed to freedom of speech. It is well known that Islam is opposed to democracy, freedom of speech, etc. It is surprising that Liberal Americans would admit that.

It is funny how the news media beat to death some minor events, like Anna Nicole Smith's life and times and Dom Imus's comments about Rutgers basketball players. The Imus thing got me to wondering where he picked up the word "ho." He is almost as old as me, and I had never heard that until fairly recently. OK, I'll admit, I never listened to rap (music?). I was talking with some young people about how I liked hot water cornbread, especially some I had in a cafe in Tennesse, but generally didn't get it because no one knew how to make it like my Grandmother did. The young people said they had never heard of hot water cornbread, and asked what was it. I said basically it was a hoecake. That caused a lot of laughter, and I found out what a "ho" is. The young folks didn't know what a hoe is.

Politicians like to talk about the National Debt, and how each new baby "owes" about $60,000 (or some similar figure). I suppose each immigrant to the US also assumes a similar debt. You might wonder why anyone would come to the US, given that burden? Perhaps it is because if the government assets of the US were apportioned to the citizens, each person's share would be over $500,000. Considering that it is not such a bad deal. Even moreso, since the valuation of the land owned by the government is low-balled. For example, at one time the real estate in the City of Tokyo was worth more than all of the land in the contiguous 48 states. Which would you rather own, Tokyo or all of the 48 states?

Islam would like to get enough Muslims into Western countries so that they can establish parallel societies in which Muslims follow Sharia Law, and the rest of the people follow their laws. The Muslims claim that is the way things are done in the countries they control, but there seems to be little evidence of this since the Muslims are dominant, and the others are dhimmi's (sort of sub-citizens). The Muslims would like to be "parallel" until they get sufficient numbers to go on the attack. They don't have to have the majority since their suicide bomber attacks can bring the cowardly majority under control. This parallel thing is sort of like KIng Snakes and Rattlesnakes. The Kingsnake slides up along side the Rattlesnake until he is parallel with him, and suddenly jumps on the Rattlesnake, wraps around him, and squeezes him to death. I think that is what Islam has in mind for the West.

Check out the photo of Miss Carnivorous in front of Nancy Pelosi's house in San Francisco. I'm not up to date on real estate in San Fran, but I would guess that is a multi-million dollar place. (Pelosi admits to being worth $40 million, but that is undoubtably a low-ball number. Feinstein also claims to be worth $40 million, even though her husband controls two major defense companies-which got more sole source contracts than Halliburton. But who knew, since the MSM doesn't report on Democrat's indiscretions.)

http://pigmeat.blogspot.com/

See my earlier post about the inverse relationship between the size of the CEO's house and the price of his companies stock. Our countries CEO lives in a nice, green-friendly, moderate sized house in Texas. The Democrat would-be's all live in huge estates. That may be a bad sign for us.

The Duke rape case finally ended with the North Carolina Attorney General saying the accused are innocent. Hopefully the Democrat DA will be dis-barred, at least. This was one of the worst cases I've ever heard about, where the DA completely ignored exculpatory evidence. I suppose this could be looked at as justice is finally done, but it cost the defendant's families a lot of money. Democrat politics had a lot to do with this case.

Justice is still missing in the Libby case, where the Judge would not allow exculpatory evidence to be presented, and the Prosecutor effectively mislead the Court. In his closing he made statements that were not proven or even presented during testimony. It is sad but true that a Republican can be convicted of almost anything by a Washington, DC jury. The Appeals Court should throw out the conviction, but they are mostly Democrats. Again, this is a case of Democrats using the courts to get their political adversaries.

The Tom DeLay case is another example of Democrats attacking their enemies by use of criminal indictment. Ronnie Earle, the Liberal Democrat DA in Austin is a bad joke. He has brought trumped up charges against several of his political enemies, some of whom were fellow Democrats. He had to shop for a Grand Jury to get an indictment against DeLay, and originally charged DeLay with something that was not illegal. It is sad but true that in Austin it may be possible to find a jury that will convict DeLay for being a Republican.

In all three of these cases the Prosecutor at least mislead the Grand Jury. Another interesting aspect of the last two of these is that Capital Cities are heavily Democrat. Why is it that the people who work in government are mostly Democrats?

The IPCC report on Climate Change is flawed for many reasons that have been discussed before. Here is an item that says the recommendations for policy makers is also flawed, and exposes the bias of the authors. It is clear that the IPCC would like for the world to go back to subsistence farming similar to what happens when socialists or communists take over a third world nation. The net result would be that a lot of people would die, a result that some of the "greens" such as the Prof at the University of Texas say they want to achieve.

ACCENTUATING THE NEGATIVES: THE IPCC WORKING GROUP II SUMMARY FOR POLICYMAKERS (SPM)

By Indur M Goklany

Although the SPM has some useful and apt things to say about the need for adaptation, it is flawed by the fact that it:
* Overstates negative impacts and understates positive impacts of climate change.
* Overstates the level of confidence that should be attached to the impacts on both human systems as well as "natural" systems (because the latter are also affected by human actions).
* Fails to examine the impacts of climate change in the wider context of other stresses affecting humanity and the rest of nature, which would allow us to gauge the importance of climate change relative to other stresses.
* Fails to examine the relationship between climate change and sustainable economic development more fully, which could mislead policymakers into opting for policies that would divert scarce resources from dealing with today's urgent problems in favor of policies to pursue longer term, and more uncertain, problems.

Among the several problems regarding the SPM are the following:

1. Once one gets past the opaque verbiage of the SPM, it is clear that most of the negative impacts listed in the SPM are overstated, while the positive impacts are understated. This is particularly true for impacts that human beings can directly or indirectly alleviate through adaptation. The SPM implicitly acknowledges this by stating in the captions for Tables SPM-1 and SPM-2 (which cover pp. 15-17) that they do not account for adaptation and "changes or developments in adaptive capacity". This is also generally true for the impacts listed on pp. 7 through 14, as is implied by the sentence in the preamble to Section C that states, "The magnitude and timing of impacts will vary with the amount and timing of climate change and, in some cases, the capacity to adapt." Note that Part C, which includes the abovementioned tables, covers virtually all the material in the SPM that speaks to future impacts.

2. Overstatement of negative impacts and understatement of positive impacts occurs because the methodologies generally used in the impact studies do not account fully, if at all, for increases in "adaptive capacity" (i.e., the ability to adapt) that should occur if the world gets wealthier, as is assumed by the IPCC's emission scenarios. An increase in adaptive capacity would translate into greater "autonomous" (or "automatic") adaptation that would occur in the absence of explicit policies, because under a "business as usual" world, i.e., in the normal course of things, humans (as well as other species) will take steps to reduce harm to themselves, take advantage of any new opportunities that may come along, or both, regardless of whether anyone gives them the green light that it's OK to adapt.

3. A corollary of this methodological oversight is that most of these impacts studies are inconsistent with the level of economic development assumed by the IPCC's emission scenarios and, therefore, with their estimates of climate change. So we have the curious situation where high economic growth drives large emission estimates but the same level of economic growth is overlooked in estimating impacts. All the IPCC emission estimates assume that the world will become significantly wealthier between 1990 and 2100. Under the poorest scenario (the A2 scenario), the average GDP per capita in developing countries will be nine times higher in 2100 than in 1990 (in real dollars), while under the richest-but-warmest" scenario (the A1FI scenario), it will be 70 times higher than that for the average inhabitant of developed countries in 1990, i.e., she would be wealthier than her U.S. and Luxembourg counterpart in 1990). This means developing countries should have much greater access to available technologies to cope with climate change than they have today. Equally important, technology would have advanced - existing technologies would be replaced by new and improved technologies and they will also be cheaper (in real dollars). But generally these developments are not fully considered.

4. In the few cases where they consider that existing technologies will be adopted more widely because of increasing wealth, these studies don't generally allow for new technologies. This is the case for some of the studies of agricultural production and hunger, for example. These studies estimate impacts for 2085 using technologies from the 1990s or earlier. This is like estimating today's food production and levels of hunger using technologies from the 1910s! You are bound to underestimate food production and overestimate hunger. In developing countries prevalence of chronic hunger declined from 37% to 17% between 1970 and 2001, despite an 83% increase in population, in substantial part because of new technologies. These improvements would not be captured using the above methodologies had they been applied in, say, the 1960s to estimate hunger in the 2000s. [This view -- that adaptive capacities and technologies are static -- was exactly why Paul Ehrlich's predictions in the Population Bomb, for example, bombed in reality.] Not allowing for secular technological change or for technologies developed specifically to alleviate any impacts of climatic changes does not reflect "business-as usual" as the IPCC scenarios claim to do. One should expect the greater the potential food shortfall, the greater the adaptive response. It means that net negative impacts for the future are overstated. Similarly, human health impacts are often estimated assuming that adaptive capacities are fixed as of the start date of the analysis. Under such a methodology the mortality and morbidity rates from water related diseases in the U.S., for example, would be the same in 2000 as in 1900. But in fact, these rates have declined by 99% or more during the 20th century for disease such as typhoid, paratyphoid, dysentery, malaria, etc. (Goklany 2007c). This indicates that because of such methodologies, the potential for error is very large indeed especially for analyses that span several decades.

5. Because increases in adaptive capacity with increasing wealth and technological development have been largely ignored, the confidence levels attached to numerical estimates of the impacts on human-affected systems are exaggerated.

6. Ignoring adaptation overstates impact estimates not only for so-called human systems (e.g., food production, hunger, water resource management, human health, etc.), it also overstates the adverse impacts on the "rest of nature." This is because the most important current-day threats to ecosystems and species are loss of habitat, and overexploitation of biological resources. Consider terrestrial ecosystems and species. The most significant threat for them is conversion of land for agriculture and timber. But if we produce more food or timber per acre of land that means we can reduce or relieve these threats on ecosystems and biodiversity. And, in fact, over the past century, we have been producing more food per acre. Today worldwide we feed almost twice as many people on an acre of land as we did in 1900, and we feed them better (as witnessed by the drop in chronic hunger, see above). This is a trend that should continue unless we reject technologies, such as bioengineered crops, that will help produce more food on less land and with fewer chemical inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides. Moreover, some studies indicate that global requirements for cropland may indeed decline in the future (at least through the 2100) because of a combination of technological change, carbon fertilization and climatic changes. But less cropland means more land for the rest of nature. None of this is accounted for in the estimates of species extinction, as far as one can tell. Thus, those estimates should be viewed with suspicion on that basis alone, and the notion that we know the effects of climate change on species with "medium confidence" (p. 8) verges on the ludicrous.

7. In addition, as evidenced by the environmental initiatives that have been undertaken over the past decades not only in the US but also around the world (e.g., restoration of habitats, reductions in hunting and fishing quotas, reserving land for conservation purposes, agreement to manage or restrict fishing and hunting of various species etc.), other efforts will be made, even in the absence of climate change policy, to reduce pressures from non-climate change related threats to ecosystems and species which would, then, reduce the vulnerability of these systems to climate change. But none of these are factored into these analyses either.

8. There are additional reasons for skepticism regarding the level of confidence attached to estimates of impacts on ecosystems and species. First, impacts on species and ecosystems have to be based on local climatic changes. But the uncertainties in changes in temperature and precipitation increase as we go from the global to the regional to the local scales. Second, many of the estimates regarding shifts in ranges and species extinction are based on studies that employ the modeled association between current climates and present-day species distributions to predict future ranges and extinction risks under radically different climatic regimes where atmospheric CO2 concentrations are much higher, and rates of plant growth, water use efficiency, energy requirements of species, predator-prey relationships and, possibly, species-area relationships would all be different from what they are today. Future outcomes may also be confounded by unanticipated evolutionary changes. There is also the possibility that species have broader climatic tolerances than indicated by their observed ranges would indicate. Moreover, with respect to vegetation in particular, species, once established, may not be easily moved or pushed aside.

9. Impacts assessments generally employ a series of models in which the uncertain output of each model provides the inputs for the next model. To compound matters, each model is itself based on uncertain assumptions and is necessarily a simplification of reality. Usually the series of models starts with assumptions of population growth, economic growth and technological development from 1990-2100 in order to generate emission scenarios. These emission scenarios then are used to generate atmospheric concentrations of the various greenhouse gases (ideally based on models of the global cycles involving each of the greenhouse gases). Next, these concentrations are used to calculate radiative forcing to estimate temporal and spatial changes in climatic variables. These variables are then fed into biophysical models to estimate location-specific biophysical changes (e.g., changes in the distribution of vegetation and species, sea level, timber and crop yields, etc.). Then depending on the system under consideration, these outputs may be used to drive socioeconomic models to estimate impacts on human beings, e.g., food production, hunger, etc. And, as noted previously, there are egregious oversimplifications and systematic errors in this step which overestimate net negative impacts. Thus, we have a system where uncertainties build on each other. Unfortunately, there are few, if any, analyses that show how these errors and uncertainties propagate through the system of models. Given this, the SPM's characterization of the level of confidence attached to impacts estimates is overstated. It's hard to see how one can with a straight face claim that we have anything other than low confidence in the estimates.

10. Although the SPM notes that vulnerability to climate change will be exacerbated by other stresses, it fails to note that by the same token relieving these other stresses will increase the resilience of systems to climate change itself. Examples of this are furnished in paragraphs 6 and 7.

11. Although the SPM notes that vulnerability to climate change will be exacerbated by other stresses, it neglects literature that shows that through much of the rest of this century the contribution of climate change to the combined stresses on various systems is smaller than the contribution of other factors. [Some of this literature is summarized in Goklany 2005, 2007a, 2007b]. Consequently, the SPM fails to inform policymakers that through the foreseeable future dealing with these other factors could be more important - and could provide greater benefits in terms of advancing human and environmental well-being (Goklany 2005, 2007a).

12. Likewise, it fails to inform policymakers that dealing with these other stresses that climate change would exacerbate could help society deal with the additional stresses caused by climate change more effectively and possibly at lower costs (Goklany 2007a, 2007b).

13. The SPM obfuscates on the relationship between climate change and sustainable development. It suggests that climate change could impede nations' abilities to achieve sustainable development pathways. While this might be true in the longer term, over the foreseeable future it is lack of sustainable economic development that hinders their ability to cope with and alleviate the impacts of climate change. The failure to acknowledge that the lack of sustainable economic development constitutes a larger and more immediate problem than climate change (see paragraph 11) is potentially misleading in that policymakers may divert resources to solve longer term problems while ignoring current-day problems that are and will continue to be more urgent than climate change in the foreseeable future and which may actually be easier to solve (Goklany 2005, 2007a).

Environmental groups are getting what they want in government requirements to increase gasoline mileage, and to increase the use of "renewables" which is primarily ethanol. This is sort of a double whammy for the auto manufacturers since ethanol gets less mileage than gasoline in cars with engines designed to burn "flex fuels." A gallon of gasoline has about 18,000 BTU per pound, while a gallon of ethanol has contains about 12,000 BTU. Thus, with the same efficiency, the ethanol gets less mileage. (Note: an engine designed to burn only E85 could run at a higher compression ratio than one designed to run on gasoline because of higher octane level, ie, tendancy for pre-ignition, so would have higher efficiency.) The goverment wants manufacturers to increase their fleet average fuel consumption to 43.7 mpg by 2016. That is going to b difficult. The environmental activists don't see it as a problem. I saw one guy on TV who said the auto manufacturers just need to use the ingenuity that their engineers have, instead of just continuing to be ugly to the public. The environmentalists are beginning to realize that increased use of so-called renewables will increase generation of smog producing compounds.

Today's Star Telegram has an article in the business section that says there is an inverse relationship between the size of the CEO's house and his companies stock price. That shouldn't be a surprise: when the CEO begins to "live large" he has less time to devote to the business.

This month's AARP Bulletin says that 2006 was the warmest year on record for the US. That may be, but it was far from the warmest in the DFW area. I think 1936 still stands as the hottest summer on record in the US. The AARP Bulletin states flat out that increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is causing the temperature of the world to increase. Maurice Strong and Al Gore and the IPCC have gotten this to be the conventional wisdom. It seems to me that many of the people who have embraced the global warming religion have trouble coming to grips with the reality that the Life of Earth is finite. Eventually the sun will die. Even before that life on Earth will end. It is inevitable, and there is nothing man can do about it. The Earth is overdue for the next ice age, and there is little reason to doubt that another ice age cycle will occur, and based on the history of earth it will probably happen soon, which on the Earth time scale is a few hundred years..

The furor over recent comments by Don Imus is interesting. He made racist remarks, so critics want him fired. I thought he was mostly liberal, though this may not be true since I turned him off after a few minutes the only time I ever listened to his show because all he talked about was how high his ratings are, and how great he is. (I turned off Limbaugh and Stern after a few minutes for the same reason.) I seriously worry about the intelligence of people who listen to Imus, Stern, and Rosie O'Donnell, and that they have such a wide audience is depressing.

Rosie recently said some things that were incorrect (eg, steel buildings won't collapse in a fire) and things that offend me (eg, the US government was behind the 911 attacks, Christians are more of a threat to the US than radical Islamists, and Bush was behind the capture of 15 British sailors by Iran). Liberals say Rosie has freedom of speech, so can say whatever she likes and should not be fired. Why do liberals not apply this to Imus (a guy I don't like). What Rosie said was more offensive to me than what Imus said. After all, black rappers say worse things about black women than what Imus said, and liberals don't seem to be offended by it.

Here is Richard Lindzen's recent comments about climate change. My opinion on the subject are close to his.

Why So Gloomy?

By Richard S. Lindzen

Judging from the media in recent months, the debate over global warming is now over. There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true. What of it?

Recently many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe. What most commentators-and many scientists-seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. The earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year; periods of constant average temperatures are rare. Looking back on the earth's climate history, it's apparent that there's no such thing as an optimal temperature-a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week.

A warmer climate could prove to be more beneficial than the one we have now. Much of the alarm over climate change is based on ignorance of what is normal for weather and climate. There is no evidence, for instance, that extreme weather events are increasing in any systematic way, according to scientists at the U.S. National Hurricane Center, the World Meteorological Organization and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which released the second part of this year's report earlier this month). Indeed, meteorological theory holds that, outside the tropics, weather in a warming world should be less variable, which might be a good thing.

In many other respects, the ill effects of warming are overblown. Sea levels, for example, have been increasing since the end of the last ice age. When you look at recent centuries in perspective, ignoring short-term fluctuations, the rate of sea-level rise has been relatively uniform (less than a couple of millimeters a year). There's even some evidence that the rate was higher in the first half of the twentieth century than in the second half. Overall, the risk of sea-level rise from global warming is less at almost any given location than that from other causes, such as tectonic motions of the earth's surface.

Many of the most alarming studies rely on long-range predictions using inherently untrustworthy climate models, similar to those that cannot accurately forecast the weather a week from now. Interpretations of these studies rarely consider that the impact of carbon on temperature goes down-not up-the more carbon accumulates in the atmosphere. Even if emissions were the sole cause of the recent temperature rise-a dubious proposition-future increases wouldn't be as steep as the climb in emissions.Indeed, one overlooked mystery is why temperatures are not already higher. Various models predict that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will raise the world's average temperature by as little as 1.5 degrees Celsius or as much as 4.5 degrees. The important thing about doubled CO2 (or any other greenhouse gas) is its "forcing"-its contribution to warming. At present, the greenhouse forcing is already about three-quarters of what one would get from a doubling of CO2. But average temperatures rose only about 0.6 degrees since the beginning of the industrial era, and the change hasn't been uniform-warming has largely occurred during the periods from 1919 to 1940 and from 1976 to 1998, with cooling in between. Researchers have been unable to explain this discrepancy.

Modelers claim to have simulated the warming and cooling that occurred before 1976 by choosing among various guesses as to what effect poorly observed volcanoes and unmeasured output from the sun have had. These factors, they claim, don't explain the warming of about 0.4 degrees C between 1976 and 1998. Climate modelers assume the cause must be greenhouse-gas emissions because they have no other explanation. This is a poor substitute for evidence, and simulation hardly constitutes explanation. Ten years ago climate modelers also couldn't account for the warming that occurred from about 1050 to 1300. They tried to expunge the medieval warm period from the observational record-an effort that is now generally discredited. The models have also severely underestimated short-term variability El Ni¤o and the Intraseasonal Oscillation. Such phenomena illustrate the ability of the complex and turbulent climate system to vary significantly with no external cause whatever, and to do so over many years, even centuries.

Is there any point in pretending that CO2 increases will be catastrophic? Or could they be modest and on balance beneficial? India has warmed during the second half of the 20th century, and agricultural output has increased greatly. Infectious diseases like malaria are a matter not so much of temperature as poverty and public-health policies (like eliminating DDT). Exposure to cold is generally found to be both more dangerous and less comfortable.

Moreover, actions taken thus far to reduce emissions have already had negative consequences without improving our ability to adapt to climate change. An emphasis on ethanol, for instance, has led to angry protests against corn-price increases in Mexico, and forest clearing and habitat destruction in Southeast Asia. Carbon caps are likely to lead to increased prices, as well as corruption associated with permit trading. (Enron was a leading lobbyist for Kyoto because it had hoped to capitalize on emissions trading.) The alleged solutions have more potential for catastrophe than the putative problem. The conclusion of the late climate scientist Roger Revelle-Al Gore's supposed mentor-is worth pondering: the evidence for global warming thus far doesn't warrant any action unless it is justifiable on grounds that have nothing to do with climate.

(Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies)

The latest IPCC Report on Global Warming has reduced the predicted temperature increase. It is interesting that the MSM reports in detail the remarks of those scientists who think the latest IPCC predictions of global warming destruction of civilization are not dire enough. The MSM had and has no interest in reporting the views of those other scientists who think the IPCC predictions are too extreme. The MSM fails to report that the reason the IPCC has reduced the predictions of temperature increase and sea level increases is because their earlier predictions have not been coming true. It is curious to me that the MSM has missed this altogether. They seem unaware that the Global Circulation Models predict a monotonically increasing Earth temperature of significant magnitude, yet there has been no increase since 1998. And they have forgotten the predictions made back in the early 1990's that we would have fried by now. The MSM also seems to have learned nothing from the example of other famous doomsayers like the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth" work that predicted our natural resources would be depleted by the year 2000, or Paul Ehrlich's famous prediction that we would all starve to death in the 1980's. I find it interesting that politicians are now beginning to take the action Al Gore and the other carbon dioxide doomsayers desire just as evidence and scientific inquiry are showing the IPCC's predictions to be erroneous.

I recently heard on TV that the US would not have to import oil if the gasoline mileage of our cars was as good as that of Europe. That seems doubtful to me, though I don't know what the average mileage is for the fleets of autos in the two regions. The US currently consumes about 385 million gallons of gas per day. That is equivalent to 19.5 million barrels of oil per day. The US uses 22 million barrels of oil per day. Total domestic production of oil and natural gas condensate is 8 million barrels per day (and is falling rapidly). The remaining 14 million barrels per day is imported. To eliminate oil importation the amount of oil used for gasoline production would have to be reduced from 19.5 million barrels per day to 5.5 million barrels per day. To do that without reducing miles driven, average mileage would have to be increased by a factor of 3.5. Assuming the US fleet now gets 15 mpg, that average mileage would have to be increased to over 50 mpg. I seriously doubt that the European fleet averages 50 mpg. This analysis is optimistic because out of every 42 gallon barrel of oil, 19.5 gallons of gasoline are produced. Much of the other 22.5 gallons are used for other products and it is doubtful that the economy could tolerate elimination of those products. Ethanol production could help some. It is currently running at around 16 million gallons per day, but would have to be much larger to eliminate oil importation, even with better mileage. (And ethanol mileage is only about 66% of that of gasoline.)

I read the other day that terrorism is a new tactic of Muslims. This is not true. During the Crusades in the middle ages the Muslims had little success in pitched battles against the French when the two sides were about numerically equal. One tactic that did work was the individual suicide attacker. One Muslim would approach a Western leader during an unguarded moment and stab him. The potentate's body guards would immediately chop the attacker to pieces before he could escape, so it was a suicide attack. That tactic still works, and is even more effective using modern explosives.

Muslims have launched their third attack against the West. It is not looking good for us this time. Most of our people, particularly the Libeals, have lost their will to resist. The attack this time is through terrorism and migration rather than direct armed conflict. George Bush is trying to respond by launching our concept of freedom in Muslim lands. It is a good idea, but he is having difficulty because of our laws that make it difficult for us to deal with terrorists, and the Liberal's embrace of "diversity" and "political correctness." Europe is in imminent danger of chaos, and eventually submission by Muslims. The situation is a bit better in the US, but not much. A large minority of our population has lost faith in Christianity, and in any sense of national purpose. We should bar Muslims from immigrating to the US, but that would be politically impossible now. I think our best chance is if the Muslims overplay their hand and conduct massive attacks against the West. We would respond to a nuclear attack, for example, probably only after Democrat leaders are impeached. That would result in the massive war that I think George Bush is attempting to avoid. After the third counter-attack I suspect Muslims would effectively cease to exist. If the Muslims are smart they will never provoke the counterattack.

Here is an interesting talk by Bernard Lewis that discusses and helps explain the long war between Muslims and the West:

http://aei.org/include/pub_print.asp?pubID=25815

The Supreme Court has decided (by a vote of 5 to 4) that carbon dioxide is a "pollutant." The majority opinion says that carbon dioxide is "the most important greenhouse gas." Apparently those liberal legal wizards on the Court have little understanding of physics; they seem unaware that water vapor is responsible for 95% of the greenhouse gas effect. If they ever become aware of their error it would seem necessary that they also declare water vapor a pollutant. It is frightening to think what this will mean when Al Gore and Carol Browner regain control of the EPA. Perhaps they will have to outlaw watering the lawn, and it would make sense to require covers over swimming pools to prevent evaporation into the atmosphere. The potential for ever more government regulation is mind boggling, and is no doubt causing great joy and anticipation among Liberals and Democrats.

The Democrat's have decided to have their own foreign policy according to Congressman Lantos and evidenced by Nancy Pelosi's recent trip to Israel and Syria. The Democrat's policy seems to be to sacrifice Israel. I'll bet the Israeli's don't like that. Will the Democrat's tell the public the details of their alternate foreign policy?

I wonder if the Democrat's plan to set up a "shadow government" as is done in Parlimentary Systems such as in Great Britain. I get the impression that they think that having control of the legislature should give them the right to take over the Executive Branch. What happened to the separation of powers?