Many people I talk to still believe what has become one of the great lies: that is, that large corporations have opposed the “cap and trade” law that environmentalists hope will stop the use of fossil fuels. Actually large companies are mostly “rent seekers” who will support any law that they can get passed which will harm their competitors or garner subsidies for themselves. Individual liberals who would like to see establishment of a socialist global government such as George Soros, Mrs. John Kerry and the Tides Foundation contributed huge sums of money to the cause, dwarfing expenditures of those opposed, who are mainly old retired scientists. This article by Shika Dalmia discusses this, and states that the Breakthrough Institute, a liberal think tank, estimates that $100 million was spent over the past two years on the campaign to get the carbon cap and trade bill passed.

I have written a lot before about the problems with the average global temperature data that the proponents of global warming distribute. The curious thing that does not arouse the curiosity of journalists or even other “scientists” is that raw temperature data from around the world do not show any temperature increase, but the “adjusted” data does show warming. One problem I noted many years ago was that huge area of the world has no temperature measurements, and they do not use data from many regions. Instead they extrapolate or interpolate to get the temperature in those regions. It seems to me that it is impossible to take the monthly average temperature in Dallas and predict the temperature in El Paso with an accuracy of 0.1 degree. I have never seen the technical paper that demonstrates that this can be done successfully, and I doubt that it can be done. Here is a good discussion of this issue from the blog Strata-Sphere.

I've been checking the mailbox, but my invitation to Chelsea Clinton's Wedding hasn't shown up yet. It looks like I will miss another of the most significant events of the century.

The Republican candidate for governor of New York wants to use eminent domain to turn the 9/11 site into a war memorial. That would prevent Muslims from being able to turn the site into their own "victory memorial," in accordance with their long standing tradition. Democrat candidate Cuomo has no problem with the Muslims putting a Mosque on the spot. He is for religious freedom and all that. I wonder if he would be OK with a Japanese Shinto Temple at Pearl Harbor. When I visited Pearl Harbor their were more Japanese than Americans making the tour, and the Japanese appeared to be quite proud of their accomplishments in sinking the US Fleet with a sneak attack.

I predict that elderly people who don't want to "do their duty" and just die will go offshore for medical aid after Obamacare kicks in. Here is another thought from the blog American Thinker that did not occur to me, but seems likely to happen. Namely, that a black market will develop. I think that wll also happen.

When I was young I used to talk to my grandfather about politics. He usually didn't express many opinions in public, but he would tell me his views. He didn't like Franklin Roosevelt, and was one of the few people I knew who did not idolize FDR. He was convinced that FDR was a fascist. Since then I have found that a lot of European analysts, removed from the American political scene, agree with that assessment. More recently a young woman, Amity Shlaes, has studied the Roosevelt Administration and tends to agree. Obama is the first President since FDR to embrace FDR's antagonism to business, and the policies are failing just as they did in FDR's time. Obama probably assumes that, like in the time of FDR, the media can convince people that the policies are successful. But, in the age of the internet, the old line media and the "journolists" may not be able to pull it off. Here is an article by Amity Shlaes about the need to instill confidence in order to recover from the recession.

Dead Penguins are washing up on the beaches of Rio de Janerio. They are migrating from their home waters because of the extreme cold. Experts suspect global warming is the probable cause. Or maybe Bush, Cheney and Halliburton have something to do with it since they are responsible for everything bad that ever happened. I was thinking Rove, but I'm not sure if his "power to cloud men's minds" works on penguins.

T. Boone Pickens would like to convert large trucks in the United States to use natural gas fuel. He probably has an ulterior motive since he is in the oil and gas business. But, he is pretty old, and already has more money than he can ever spend no matter how many more football stadiums he builds for Oklahoma State. So, he may truly have patriotic motives. In the article there are some things he doesn't mention. Natural gas has less energy per unit volume than liquid fuel, even when compressed. This is a serious drawback in a small personal automobile, but is easily manageable in a large vehicle such as an 18-wheeler or a bus (and perhaps in a large pick-up truck). Because natural gas burns so much cleaner than gasoline or diesel the engines require less maintenance and will last longer. The higher octane rating of natural gas allows the engines to be designed to about the same efficiency level as diesel fueled engines. The United States uses about 21 trillion cubic feet of natural gas annually, and now has proven reserves of about 2000 trillion cubic feet, and probable reserves of 8000 trillion cubic feet. The shale gas development processes perfected in Texas are now being exported around the world, increasing the world's reserves of natural gas.

The Obama Administration is pushing the development of battery powered trucks. But these are not 18-wheelers, for which battery power is impractical. The battery powered trucks envisioned are the Fed Ex variety that make deliveries over fairly short routes within an urban environment.

Natural gas ties in with wind power for the following reason: wind power is intermittent, but people want electricity to be available on demand. Nuclear and coal-fired power plants are slow to respond to changing demand, so are not practical as backup to the wind turbine electric generators. Natural gas fired electric generating plants respond faster, so are the preferred wind power backup source.

I have long thought that Obama and environmentalists have an agenda to turn the United States into a third world nation. Here is some thoughts on the matter from American Thinker. It really doesn't matter whether that is their agenda, it will be the result of their actions if they are successful.

The various inquiries into the so-called "climategate" affair have all been non-serious "whitewashes." In all cases no critics were questioned: instead the the principals were asked if they had done anything untoward. They answered, "No." The inquiry board then said in effect, thanks, glad we cleared that up. Here are some comments that are similar to my conclusions.

Obama is on TV every day blaming Bush for the current economy. Businesses are not investing and are not hiring people somehow because of Bush's Administration. Obama, as usual, is confused. Investors and businesses do not look at the past for investment and hiring decisions, they look to the future. The future they see from the Obama Administration is more oppressive regulation, higher taxes, more bureaucracy, and an adversarial relationship with the Federal Government. Reacting to this bleak vision of the future they are naturally hoarding cash and postponing hiring. This is exactly what delayed recovery from the great depression under the similar policies of FDR. Unemployment actually was higher after the first six years of FDR's Administration than when he came in. Only World War II reduced unemployment. Apparently Obama and the Democrats are unable to learn from history. Either that, or they think that, like FDR they can achieve electoral success despite public rejection of their fascist agenda by blaming the Republicans for the sorry state of affairs.

Freedom of speech is under attack around the world. Muslims want the UN to make it illegal to criticize Islam. Obama would like to shut down conservative talk radio, and to provide public funding to left-wing newspapers that are failing financially, and Europeans want to criminalize criticism of "climate change." Totalitarian government is on the rise around the world, and tyranny is coming.

The BP deep sea oil rig explosion and massive oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico provides the environmental crisis liberals have craved. It may be simple incompetence, but the Obama Administration did not take quick action to ameliorate the impact of the leak which could cause conspiracy nuts to suggest that the lack of effective action is deliberate. The Obama Administration is taking the opportunity to do what they have long wanted to do, and that is stop all off-shore drilling. A judge over-turned Obama's moratorium on deep water drilling, but Obama is ignoring the judge. They simply won't issue any more drilling permits. Obama's EPA is also moving to shut down much of the industry in Texas under the guise of improving air quality. Once the oil refineries in Texas are closed, the price of gasoline will skyrocket even if the price of oil falls. Here is some discussion. In a related story, the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram reported today that the cement kilns south of the DFW region are closing for good. It appears that we will have to buy cement from Mexico in the future. With a cessation of drilling in the Gulf, and closing a lot of industry, so unemployment in Texas will be going up. Texas is in the south, and votes Republican. so that fits in with Obama's master plan.

Muslims are making a serious attempt to take over the west, including the United States. This plan for conquest of the west was developed by the Muslim Brotherhood back in the 1980's. The plan involves gradually inserting Sharia Law into the west until a critical mass is achieved, and then more violent methods can be adopted. (The critical mass is probably only 10% of the population or less, since the suicidal Muslims can frighten and intimidate the non-Muslim majority.) Attempts are being made to establish enclaves of Sharia Law in the US. Some of Obama's advisers and judicial appointments have said that they see no problem with having Sharia Law in the US. It seems to never occur to them that Sharia Law would be Unconstitutional. Obama is a Muslim, so he appears to have no issue with Sharia Law. AS reported before, Obama has told the NASA Administrator that his primary job is to improve relations with Muslims.

There is a reason that Democrats are known as the 'evil' party and Republicans are the 'stupid' party. The Democrats manage to play the Republicans as suckers every time. Thomas Sowell has a good comment about this situation today.

President Obama has told NASA Administrator Bolden that his foremost job is to improve relations with Muslim nations. THat seems to me to be a curious mission for the head of NASA since Muslim nations have nothing to offer. Obama talks about the outstanding achievements of Muslims in science, mathematics, and engineering. There actually are not many, and most of those happened a long time ago. There were some advances made by Muslims in astronomy and mathematics 900 years ago. The Persian Omar Khayyam is better known in the west for his poetry, perhaps due to the translations of FitzGerald, but he was the premier mathematician of his day, being the first to solve the cubic equation. But Muslim dogma has shut off scientific inquiry since then. To me this is another example of Obama's partiality toward Muslims. Bush wanted to induce Muslims to adopt democracy: Obama seems to want us to adopt Islam.

Here are some views on this issue from the blog Flopping Aces.

It has been obvious for some time now that among women prominent in politics a lot more of the Republicans are good looking than the DEmocrats. Here is an article discussing the situation. Something not mentioed is that many of the Republican politicians have a lot of children. Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and Liz Cheney each have five. This fact seems to particularly enrage liberals. The Democrats do have a former beauty contest winner in Jennifer Granholm, governor of Michigan.