Political Angst In America

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Location: Pantego, Texas, United States

Sunday, November 29, 2009

I have long been concerned about the increase of police discretionary power, and the militarization of police departments. Here is a discussion of this from the magazine The Economist. It has gotten to the point that the average person unknowingly violates some law every day. A book has been written describing how the Federal Government has criminalized most everything.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

The Hadley CRU email release is going to have a lot of impact on scientists working in the field of climatology. There are calls for the primary players in the emials to be banned from the IPCC in the future, as well as calls for te IPCC to be disbanded. The impact on scientists will be great, but the MSM and the politicians will attempt to ignore it. The politicians will attempt to act as if nothing has happened at the upcoming Copenhagen conference. Carol Browner, as expected, announced that the controvery over the emails is much ado about nothing, and changes nothing.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Here is more about the climate change scandal. I like the comment that if the East Anglia University guys couldn't get the data to fit the global warming hypothesis, it is a good bet that no one can.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

There is a global warming debate going on in New Zealand. As usual there is a lot of acrimony over "adjustment " of the raw data. Here is a discussion of this from Flopping Aces. Take a good look at the discussion of large variances in temperature over relatively small distances in similar terrain.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Here are comments about the Hadley Climate Research Unit (CRU) emails by Ian Pilmer. He is one the the critics of the anthropogenic AGW hypothesis that supporters said should be put on trial for "crimes against humanity." Pilmer had warned us that there were serious problems with the work done by the advocates of Anthropogenic AGW hypothesis. These people fudged data to show that previous warm periods inferred by agricultural records and tree line in the arctic when man had no impact did not occur. Not mentioned by Pilmer, the significant revelation that the computer models are "spaghetti" code, with apparently no configuration control, and a lot of arbitrary fudge factors to make results match historical records. In fact, there is no way the researchers can even reproduce their own past projections.

The AGW supporters fall back on polar ice melting and sea level rise since temperature is not cooperating. Here are some comments on this line of reasoning. I like the comment by Dr. Nils-Axel Morner of Stockholm University, the world's leading scientist on sea level who says the rising sea level claims are "the greatest lie ever told." Maybe Obama knew that when he said he would stop the rise in sea level.

George Soros is a nasty man and unscrupulous speculator who early in his life helped Nazi's steal property from his fellow Jews. He rationalizes that if he hadn't done it someone else would have. He became an American citizen, but doesn't like America. He wants to establish a socialist world government. To that end he actively supports the Democrats, and he also supports the green movement. Here is a discussion of his support of James Hansen, a prominent advocate of the apocalyptic anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis. Mrs. John Kerry's Tides Foundation has also contributed significant funds to Hansen. Hansen is a hypocrite because he castigates any of his opponents who have ever received any funding from an oil company, and claims their future research is irreparably tainted, yet he personally accepts money from advocates of his position.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Here is more about the Climate Research Unit scandal. It doesn't matter whether or not Anthropogenic Global Warming is happening; what the AGW hypothesis advocates did was unethical and unscientific. They subverted the scientific process to politics, and have made it difficult to determine if AGW is a serious issue. They also were guilty of what they accused their critics of doing in that their work was compromised by their commercial interests.

I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh, so I missed the parody of KSM singing New York, New York. A friend sent it to me, and it is pretty good. I saw the lawyer for one terrorist on the O'Reilly TV show, and the lawyer said that in their trial the 9/11 terrorists would explain why they attacked the US. The lawyer wouldn't say, but I got the impression that he felt the terrorists were justified. O'Reilly didn't ask questions that I was curious about, such as, did the terrorists consider themselves to be soldiers in a war against the US, and would they seek a change of venue from New York. I think the best the terrorist can hope for is a hung jury, and they would have a better chance of finding a socialist juror in Washington, DC, for example. But, I thought a hung jury was the best OJ could hope for in his murder trial with his "I'm a victim, the police did it" defense, and look how that turned out. In another matter, I wonder if Obama has thought about the sacrifice that will be required of the jurors. The trial may well take years, and the jurors, given the way Muslims operate, there will be a threat to the jurors safety. Despite what he says, Obama clearly wants to put the US foreign policy on trial. I wonder if he has thought about the fact that the terrorists can't excuse their attack based on the subsequent actions of George Bush: the terrorists have to have acted in response to the foreign policy of Bill Clinton. I suppose that Obama may regard the trial of the terrorists as another manufactured crisis useful in his Cloward-Pivens strategy to destroy capitalism in America.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Acorn is having some problems related to relevations that their employees are willing to help set up under-age prostitute operations. In California the state got a subpoena for their records. So they put all of their compromising records in a dumpster to get rid of them, but someone was watching so now Andrew Breitbart has the information, which must be damaging. Here is a discussion from Flopping Aces. Acorn and the equally corrupt service employees unions were primary supporters of Obama throughout his political career.

Here is a video interview about the implication of the leak of Hadley CRU documents concerning catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. My guess is that the MSM will try to bury this event as some sort of illegal activity of no significance. But this sort of activity is a big deal in science. Using a sports analogy, cheating in politics is like cheating in politics; it's just business as usual. But science is like golf, where cheating is just not done. This is significant enough that it should get the participants, at least some of them, banned for life.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Over the past 30 years or so the EPA has become a threat to democracy in the United States. Under Obama the EPA poses an imminent threat to the economy of the country. Here is an example from American Thinker. Note the threats of criminal penalties.

The hacked emails from Hadley clearly show that the scientists promoting the AGW hypothesis act like co-conspirators rather than scientists. They are true believers, but are willing to fudge data to hide inconvenient facts. They reveal that they are unwilling to share their data as required by law, and take measures to conceal their data rather than sharing it, a startling departure from the way science is done. They warn against involving colleagues that are "unreliable." They are clearly promoting government policy rather than science. Here is a good discussion from Powerline. Some people have suggested that the hacked emails might be a hoax, but after looking at some of them, that is highly unlikely. The person who released these emails is almost certainly an insider.

Friday, November 20, 2009

In my previous post I discussed hacked files from Hadley that included emails discussing how the supporters of the global warming hypothesis will prevent researchers who disagree with them from being heard. Here is a report of a case in point.

I have casually studied the effects of CO2 on the environment since I was in college over 50 years ago. Starting in the 1980's there was an attempt to demonize CO2, and at least some people adopted the idea that CO2 was going to cause global warming. This remains more of an assertion than something definitely proven by science. The advent of powerful computers made it possible to create climate models that could be used to project temperatures far into the future. It was not possible to validate the models due to the complex nature of the earth climate system, which is chaotic dynamic system. It was, and remains, uncertain that the models even contained all of the significant influences on long term climate. But, many politically active people seized on the models as proof that cataclysmic climate change was going to occur because of CO2 emissions. These people had a political agenda that included destruction of Western Civilization. (For people who doubt this, please read the comments of Maurice Strong, the man who started it all back in the 1980's.) It has long been obvious that supporters of the global warming hypothesis have worked to exaggerate the impact of CO2, and to marginalize those who disagreed with them. This has been reported from private conversations. Now hackers have broken into the computer system at Hadley and have published their emails that support the idea that they have worked with a political agenda. Here is the story. I have long known what was happening, but politicians and environmentalists were not concerned since it supported their agenda.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Obama claims he has restored America's image in other countries. That may be true because most people in the world wanted a weakened America. The leaders of countries that don't like us really like Obama. But, they don't pay much attention to him. What they like is the weakness he projects. Here is discussion of his recent travels, and his inability to gain anything. Actually his agenda has failed everywhere. He dissed our allies in Eastern Europe. Iran has rolled him. The Russians ate his lunch. The Palestinians and the Israeli's are fed up with him. But, the people love him, even though their leaders don't respect him. But, everyone agrees that he is cool.

The November election in the 23rd congressional district of New York was close, as expected, and the Democrat won, which always is the case, even though pre-election polling had favored the independent candidate. (The 2000 Presidential election in Florida was an exception, but only because the Supreme Court thwarted the Democrat's plan to steal the election. Naturally the Democrats are still mad about this since they have a God-given right to steal all close elections.) In New York there were all sorts of problems with the voting machine, so no one knows who actually got the most votes. Then, as usual, the Democrat election judges had great difficulty in recording votes for the other candidates.(When I was young I used to be a Democrat and was a poll watcher. I noticed that the Democrat Judges had a strange problem with numbers: they transposed them a lot. And the result was always more votes for the Democrat and fewer for the Republican. It was soon suggested that I should find something better to do than be a poll watcher. What was really interesting was that at that time in Texas the Democrat always won, so they were just having fun. It worked out in 1960 when they stuffed the box for John Kennedy. In that case the Angelina County Judge was quoted in the newspaper saying, "I did it, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.") Here is more discussion about the New York congressional race.

President Obama has a high regard for himself. He modestly acknowledges that he has a "gift" for public speaking. His speech when he secured the nomination for President from the Democrat Party is an example. Here is what he said: "I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last best hope on Earth." This is typical of an Obama speech since it falsely implies that the nation does not now care for the sick, or that there are not now any good jobs, and ignores that the sea level hasn't risen in the last 30 years, so that happened before the age of Obama. Nevertheless, it is obvious that he has a high regard for his own abilities. So far he hasn't succeeded in creating the collectivist utopia he envisions. But, I am certain that he will continue to punish the country as he works on his agenda.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

I am sure we all feel safer after learning that Nidal Hasan was on a Presidential Transition Task Force on Homeland Security. The Obama Administration was intent on bringing fresh thinking to the problem of terrorism, or as they say, "man-caused disasters." Based on their actions, they want to change focus from the poor, misunderstood Muslim victims to the true domestic threat of radical right-wing Christians. Obama and his Administration seem to feel that the radical right wing is far more of a threat to them than Muslim extremists. Actually Obama may be correct in that the Muslims regard him as a brother and most Christians are at least skeptical of his motives.

I have done some simple analysis that shows that the use of wind power does not provide the huge savings in CO2 emissions that environmentalists claim, despite the high capital expenditures required. The reason is that wind does not provide much power during times of maximum demand. In Texas the peak demand is on summer afternoons, a time when wind speed is low. In England maximum demand is in winter at night, also a time when wind speed is low. The shortfall in electricity generation is made up with power from natural gas fired turbines that can be started and brought up to capacity rapidly. The so-called smart grid is the environmentalist's partial answer to this problem. In theory power can be transmitted to Texas on August afternoons from faraway places where the wind does blow at that time. This prevents some, but not all of the duplication of generation capacity represented by the gas turbines, but still requires extra wind turbines. Here is an analysis of the CO2 reductions, or lack thereof, provided by wind and solar power.

Monday, November 16, 2009

One odd thing about bringing KSM and three other terrorists to New York for trial is that many of the other terrorists in custody will be tried by military tribunals. Why are they not all tried in civilian courts, or all tried in military tribunals? There is no consistency. I hear some liberals now saying that the Nuremberg trials of Nazi's after WWII were unconstitutional; that the trials should have been in the US. That seems odd to me. The Nazi's did a lot more damage to other countries than the US. I think it is clear that Obama has a different agenda with KSM. He would like to put the Bush Administration on trial and thinks that the ACLU will help KSM's defense team do just that. The liberals are hoping that they can get some fuel for going to Europe and getting a war crime indictment against Bush. I think that would work out really badly for Democrats in future elections, but I think liberal Democrats are eager to do it.

During the last election campaign Bush was criticized for having lowered the opinion of America in the world, and for lack of diplomatic success. Obama promised to meet with anyone without preconditions, and after election he has traveled the world apologizing for what he percives as America's transgressions. So far Obama is batting zero in his efforts. He has alienated most European leaders, who now think he is a pompous fool, the Middle East is lauging at him, he has alienated both Israel and the Palestinians. He has had no success with Iran. He has given in a lot to Russia, and has gotten nothing in return. He makes Bush look like a diplomatic genius.

Friday, November 13, 2009

It is becoming obvious that the real "green" agenda was to control people's lives. In Britain the government is beginning to talk about laws that give each person a carbon allotment. We should look at what is happening in Europe because Obama wants to convert America into a European-style society.

The global warming hypothesis has spawned an industry. Corporations, NGO's and governments are working together as a cabal on an agenda that advances their separate interests. The governments want more power over all aspects of life, the NGO's want to return the Earth to the Garden of Eden, and the corporations want regulations that disrupt their rivals and ensure there profits regardless of how inefficient they become. The governments will achieve their objective, as will selected corporations, but the NGO's will ultimately be frustrated. None of these groups has any real interest in science. They have used it to gain momentum, but will now discard it as it begins to turn against their vision. Here is some discussion from an environmentalist. He may be a former environmentalist since the global warming cabal brooks no dissent.

Obama made a speech in Japan today in which he acknowledged that the US is in decline. That has been Obama's position. In fact, I think he is actively abetting decline.

During the Bush Administration there were claims made that supporters of global warming were being muzzled. James Hansen made those claims repeated even as he traveled the globe and made hundreds of speeches warning of the pending climate disaster if his recommended policy of curtailing carbon emissions were not adopted. It was sort of a joke that he claimed he was being muzzled even as he spoke out. He even testified at a trial in England that people are justified in vandalizing coal burning power plants. Now the Obama Administration, which promised to be the most transparent in history, is actively muzzling those who disagree with Administration policy. No surprise there.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

When I was young my grandfather used to explain to me the reasons that socialism, communism, and other forms of collectivism were bound to fail. I doubt he had ever heard of Freidrich Hayek or the "Road to Serfdom," but he saw the same flaws with collectivism that Hayek did. Here is a good discussion on the issue. The collectivist bent of the Obama Administration is revealed by their attempts to crush dissent, as is discussed in the article. For those under 40, Hitler was a socialist, and was defined as a right winger by the communists. The only people he was to the right of was the communists.

Pamela Geller doesn't like Sharia Law, or think much of Islam. Some say she feels that way because she is Jewish. I'm a Southern Baptist, and I agree with her. It is clear that Obama is either a Muslim or a Dhimmi. Here is a discussion that includes passages from the Koran that require Muslims to convert, kill, or subjugate all unbelievers. For intellectually dull people like our political leaders, that means us, and they mean it.

Last year Obama, while campaigning for President, said his reform of the health care system would cut the insurance bill for the average family by $2500 per year. The bill passed by the House does not do that. Was he lying, or just abysmally ignorant?

The Obama Administration is following its usual partisan pattern in banning former political appointees from civil service jobs, as announced in this memo. In highly technical areas like information Technology, the practice has been for political appointees to take civil service jobs when a new President appoints someone else to their job. Obama would like to get rid of everyone who worked for Bush in the name of "openness." Note that the ban goes back five years, so Bush appointees are effectively banned, but Clinton appointees are not. That sounds fair, doesn't it?

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Liberals are determined to reject the notion that Major Hasan was a jihadists, but rather that he was mentally disturbed. It appears to me that based on this example, one could argue that all of the jihadists are mentally disturbed. It certainly seems to me that they are. Based on this argument then, it appears that Muslims contain a statistically large number of criminally insane people. To me it doesn't matter whether or not they re mentally disturbed, they are a substantial threat to us. We need to recognize that substantial numbers of them are a threat, and deal with the matter rather than ignoring it, as Obama and the liberals desire. One thing that must be addressed is the attitude of the majority of Muslims who are alleged to not be jihadists, but who support the jihadi's.

Obama is a hard guy to figure out. He certainly seems off-kilter to me. His political philosophy is clearly collectivist. That is a easy to see, of course, but his personality is hard to figure out. He is a cypher to me. We know little of his personal life beyond that his family was a bit weird. His grandmother seems to have been relatively normal, and Obama trashed her as a "typical white person." Robin of Berkeley, a therapist, calls Obama a "nowhere man." that may be a good description of him.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

America as it has existed for over 200 years is under attack from within by liberals funded by such as George Soros. They have declared the majority of Americans as enemies. The upcoming election in 2010 is crucial; Obama and the Democrats must be defeated before, as Mark Steyn has said, they can push us across the bridge to fascist socialism and then burn the bridge so there is no way back. I'm not the only person who sees things this way. Here is some discussion.

Monday, November 09, 2009

With President Bush you got what you saw and he tried to do what he said. With President Obama you have someone who is not what he appears to be, and who does not attempt to do what he said. Here is some discussion. In addition to this Bush had about 500 hours in an F-102, a difficult fighter plane to fly. In contrast, Obama has a good jump shot.

Obama has said that at crunch time he will come down on the side of the Muslims. So, when a Muslim major shot 40 people at at Fort Sill, Obama warned us not to jump to conclusions. That was sort of like an after thought after he congratulated some American Indians on having a good meeting, and telling them that he to had suffered they way they had. (I'm still trying to figure that out, given his privileged upbringing and education.) The liberal TV networks have been trying to convince us that the Muslim major wasn't acting as a terrorist or jihadist, but had simply gone berserk. That doesn't comport well with what we know about the major. Tonight I saw on Fox News that the major had been trying to make contact with al Queda, and had been corresponding with an al Queda recruiter who has called on Muslims to kill Americans. Here is some more about this.

Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs decries critics comparing the current Administration's policies with those of Hitler. He thinks that is just wrong. He seems to have a short memory because we just went through several years of people calling Bush Hitler, or calling Bush's supporters brownshirts, or calling for the assassination of Bush. (I don't recall Bush even making any comment about this.) What is curious to me about all of this is that Bush didn't advocate anything like fascist policies, something Obama's Administration does routinely. Here is an interesting discussion of this.

Obama wants electric cars for the United States. Chrysler took a few billion from the government to develop an electric car, and planed to have them for sale in 2010. But now the plan has been scrapped. Apparently there was an issue with batteries. I guess Obama is going to have to turn his attention from stopping the rise of the seas (which actually stopped 30 years ago according to the leading expert who bases his opinion on actual data rather than computer simulations), and wave his magic wand to create a super battery.

Here an opinion writer asks the question, were young voters duped by Obama, or were they stupid? I would say both possibilities are correct for the majority. But, I think a solid minority are socialists, and Obama is just what they want. I have talked to some who expressed a dislike of capitalism and a desire for higher taxes on everyone.

Sunday, November 08, 2009

Obama and the Democrats had to cut a lot of deals to get the so-called healthcare reform passed by the House of Representatives. Dick Morris outlines some of the deals that were made. This is some of Obama's Chicago-style politics that rewards those who play ball and penalizes those who do not. Most people probably do not recognize that AARP is now an insurance company. Nor that Bush's Medicare Advantage program, which works well, cut into AARP's business. But Obama is going to fix that; he's cancelling Medicare Advantage. He argues that it primarily helps the privileged, to the disadvantage of those less fortunate. That doesn't make a lot of sense since anyone on Medicare can join Medicare Advantage. Naturally the AARP Medigap policies cost a lot more than Medicare Advantage, but so what. Obama doesn't like those privileged folks who are paying attention enough to enroll in Medicare Advantage anyway. He likes people who just turn their life over to the government. we may find out what Pelosi gave to individual Representatives to get their vote. One Republican representing a predominantly Democrat district voted for the bill. It will be interesting to see if Democrats mount a serious challenge in the next election. Hopefully a Republican Challenger will knock him out in the primary.

There is a lot of talk about the renewable energy plan being executed in Great Britain. A lot of people tout it as the wave of the future. Obama seems to think it would be good for the US. Others see electricity prices doubling, and people cold and shivering in the dark because of involuntary power curtailment. Here is some discussion.

Saturday, November 07, 2009

There is a lot discussion about medical treatment of illegal aliens in the US. I have witnessed this myself on a late-night trip to the hospital with a sick granddaughter. Most of the people there were apparently Mexican; at least, they were speaking Spanish, and many of them appeared to not understand English. The patients were children and one was receiving kidney dialysis. A large portion of the babies born in the DFW area have illegal alien mothers. Here are some comments on the situation:

Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas is a fairly famous institution and for a variety of reasons:

1. John F. Kennedy died there in 1963
2. Lee Harvey Oswald died there shortly after
3. Jack Ruby-who killed Oswald, died there a few years later.

On the flip side, Parkland is also home to the second busiest maternity ward in the country with almost 16,000 new babies arriving each year. (That's almost 44 per day---every day)

A recent patient survey indicated that 70 percent of the women who gave birth at Parkland in the first three months of 2006 were illegal immigrants. That's 11,200 anchor babies born every year just in Dallas

According to the article, the hospital spent $70.7 million delivering 15,938 babies in 2004 but managed to end up with almost $8 million dollars in surplus funding. Medicaid kicked in $34.5 million, Dallas County taxpayers kicked in $31.3 million and the feds tossed in another $9.5 million.

The average patient in Parkland is maternity wards is 25 years old, married and giving birth to her second child. She is also an illegal immigrant. By law, pregnant women cannot be denied medical care based on their immigration status or ability to pay.

OK, fine. That doesn't mean they should receive better care than everyday, middle-class American citizens. But at Parkland Hospital, they do. Parkland Memorial Hospital has nine prenatal clinics. NINE.

The Dallas Morning News article followed a Hispanic woman who was a patient at one of the clinics and pregnant with her third child---her previous two were also born at Parkland . Her first two deliveries were free and the Mexican native was grateful because it would have cost $200 to have them in Mexico . This time, the hospital wants her to pay $10 per visit and $100 for the delivery but she was unsure if she could come up with the money. Not that it matters, the hospital won't turn her away -- (I wonder why they even bother asking at this point.)

How long has this been going on? What are the long-term effects?

Well, another subject of the article was born at Parkland in 1986 shortly after her mother entered the US illegally - now she is having her own child there as well. (That's right, she's technically a US citizen.)

These women receive free prenatal care including medication, nutrition, birthing classes and child care classes. They also get freebies such as car seats, bottles, diapers and formula.

Most of these things are available to American citizens as well but only for low-income applicants and even then, the red tape involved is almost insurmountable.


Because these women are illegal immigrants, they do not have to provide any sort of legitimate identification - no proof of income. An American citizen would have to provide a social security number which would reveal their annual income - an illegal immigrant need only claim to be poor and the hospital must take them at their word.


Parkland Hospital offers indigent care to Dallas County residents who earn less than $40,000 per year. (They also have to prove that they did not refuse health coverage at their current job. Yeah, the 'free' care is not so easy for Americans.)

There are about 140 patients who received roughly $4 million dollars for un-reimbursed medical care. As it turns out, they did not qualify for free treatment because they resided outside of Dallas County so the hospital is going to sue them! Illegals get it all free! But U.S citizens who live outside of Dallas County get sued! How stupid is this?

As if that isn't annoying enough, the illegal immigrant patients are actually complaining about hospital staff not speaking Spanish. In this AP story, the author speaks with a woman who is upset that she had to translate comments from the hospital staff into Spanish for her husband. The doctor was trying to explain the situation to the family and the mother was forced to translate for her husband who only spoke Spanish. This was apparently a great injustice to her.

In an attempt to create a Spanish-speaking staff, Parkland Hospital is now providing incentives in the form of extra pay for applicants who speak Spanish. Additionally, medical students at the University of Texas Southwestern for which Parkland Hospital is the training facility will now have a Spanish language requirement added to their already jammed-packed curriculum. No other school in the country boasts such a ridiculous multi-semester (multicultural) requirement.

(Sorry for the length, but this needs wide circulation particularly to our "employees" in Congress.)

Remember that this is about only ONE hospital in Dallas, Texas. There are many more hospitals across our country that must also deal with this.


I know two nurses who work at Parkland, and, while they don't know specific statistics, they confirm that most of the babies born there appear to have illegal alien mothers. (This may not be true in all cases, since illegal aliens don't have to have any proof, and the illegals get preferential treatment.) It is also true that Mexico has made formal complaint that the police and hospital staff in Texas should speak Spanish so as not to inconvenience Mexican citizens who come to Texas to work or for medical care. (When I was borm there were 6 million people in Texas with very few Mexicans, living mostly along the border with Mexico. Now there are 8 million Mexicans in Texas, covering the entire state. Many of them are citizens of the US thanks to Reagan's one-time amnesty.)

Friday, November 06, 2009

Obama is trying to turn the US into a European-style socialist nation. Included in that transformation is a drastic reduction in the availability of energy. England is ahead of us. Projections are that England is on a path to blackouts in the near future due to their leaders worship at the alter of the "green" religion that Obama is also worshiping.

It has long been noted that environmentalism has become a religion. I suppose it could be termed a revision to old religions, such as the nature worship of American Indians. Environmentalists claim that their "green" religion is based on science, but in reality it is based on faith, just as more traditional religions are. Now in England a judge has ruled that "green" actually is a religion, and its believers have freedom of religion legal protection. I am not surprised.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

This article suggests that Obama could improve the economy and reduce greenhouse gas generation by championing a switch to natural gas, since the US now has a lot of it. I think it is unlikely that Obama would do that. The Obama Administration has scared operators off from drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale in upstate New York, and has indicated they would like to ban hydraulic fracturing altogether. The Obama Administration appears to be more inclined to punitive action to reduce energy consumption than to adopt an alternative strategy that would provide more low cost energy. They would like to promote high cost energy to help redcue consumption.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Police in England have electric patrol cars. They will go 100 miles withoit a recharge if they don't turn on the lights. I presume they don't have an air conditioner since they are in England. It seems doubtful that many people in Texas would want a car with no A/C. I feel certain that are some "greenies" who would want one, but most people wouldn't. It is hot here in the summer. That brings up the matter of a heater. Sometimes it is cold in Texas, and a heater is necessary. In fact there is not much of the year in which the weather moderate here: most of the time either hot or cold.

In an interview with a German magazine, Charles Krauthammer rates Obama as an average President. I think that is an overly generous assessment, but that's just me.

Monday, November 02, 2009

The Democrat's recent feel-good Hate Crime Legislation appears to me to be an attempt to muzzle free speech. Many Democrats tell me that they are not opposed to freedom of speech, etc., but hateful speech should be controlled. The trajectory of hate crime legislation can be observed from what has happened in Great Britain. There Hate Crime legislation is being used to at least intimidate people from expressing their thoughts, as discussed by Mark Steyn.

Nancy Pelosi's healthcare reform bill creates 111 new boards, commissions, etc. Obviously a lot of new bureaucracy. Here is a list from the blog Powerline. I couldn't see how some of these bodies would relate to healthcare.

When I was in Graduate School I figured out that fascism and communism were very similar and are both the opposite of capitalism, something that Democrats have not seemed to have figured out yet. I think my awakening came from reading the works of Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek. I also always read Walter Lippmann. I recently read that Walter Lippman pointed out during the 1930's that socialism, fascism, communism, progressivism, and even liberalism were all the same: authoritarian collectivists. Here is Ayn Rand's view of communism and fascism as contrasted with Capitalism.

"It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of 'Freedom or dictatorship?' into 'Which kind of dictatorship?' -- thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice -- according to the proponents of that fraud -- is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism). That fraud collapsed in the 1940's, in the aftermath of World War II. It is too obvious, too easily demonstrable that fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory -- that both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state -- that both are socialistic, in theory, in practice, and in the explicit statements of their leaders -- that under both systems, the poor are enslaved and the rich are expropriated in favor of a ruling clique -- that fascism is not the product of the political 'right,' but of the 'left' -- that the basic issue is not 'rich versus poor,' but man versus the state, or: individual rights versus totalitarian government -- which means: capitalism versus socialism." --philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

Our current President is the master of the false choice as described above by Ayn Rand.

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Obama is reported to be prepared to sign a treaty in the upcoming meeting in Copenhagen that would surrender UN sovereignty to the UN. We would hope that the Senate would not approve such a treaty, or, if the Senate did agree, that the Supreme Court would void the treaty. But, with Obama and the Liberal Democrats in control, an attempt may be made to enforce the treaty. Not much attention has been paid to this in the media, for reasons that are unclear to me. I suppose, given the Obama control over NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, etc., they would have no objection to the treaty. I think it could lead to the civil war that Obama and his friends are hoping for. Here is some discussion from American Thinker.

Hilliary Clinton went to Pakistan and told some whoppers. She said that when her husband left office, peace in the middle East was at hand. But Bush messed it up. This is ridiculous because the Palestinians are not interested in peace; they want the elimination of Israel. Apparently that would be OK with Obama, who follows what seem to me to be un-American policies both foreign and domestic. Here are views that I support from American Thinker.

Once upon a time Donald Rumsfeld pressured his generals to find a way to win with fewer troops, and was roundly condemned by all on the left. Now Joe Biden is pressuring generals to find a way to win with fewer troops, and he is proclaimed by the left to be of superior wisdom. (This is odd because Biden has seldom been right about anything.) I suppose this just shows that timing is business.

Liberals don't like Ayn Rand. Here are some of her comments:

"When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see money flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."

—Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (1957)


We may no be done yet, but a few more years on Obama will surely put us dire jeopardy.