Now that the winsome idiots that we have in Washington have determined that the Earth is warming and the USA's industry, jobs, economy, and working class pocketbooks are at fault, and that legislation passed before anyone can read it is the solution, we must ask ourselves some questions. I've asked these before and not one global warming/global climate change believer can answer them.
Following the Ice Age the Earth warmed, was that a good or bad thing? Were there SUV's, coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, that caused that warming trend? If Congress and the UN and the "scientific consensus" had been around back then, would they have tried to stop it? Were the campfires that Ogg and Thag used to cook their sabre-toothed tiger steaks the cause of the global warming? If the solution to arresting global warming were to live more primitive lifestyles, would we have to live more primitively than did the caveman?
At what point will we know that we have cooled the Earth enough? 5 years? 10 years? 100 years? When will we know if we have cooled the Earth too much? How long will it take before we discover that our conservation efforts have caused a global ice age? Will the scientists then suggest that we drive SUV's, use more coal-fired power plants, return to using incandescent light bulbs?
Since the Earth has recently been in a cooling (and not warming) trend and this trend could continue for the next 10 years, how will we know if our efforts have had any effect? What criteria are being used to decide how much is natural warming/cooling and how much is man/made? Precisely what criteria are going to be used to measure the efficacy of this legislation? Who decides what these criteria are?
Since "scientific consensus" is all the rage, who decides how many climatologists constitutes a "consensus"? Indeed, is the "consensus" composed entirely of climatologists? Who decides the composition of the "consensus"? What if a new "consensus" declares that the old "consensus" is all wet? Is a "consensus" of idiots more correct than a minority of scholars?
These are just some of the questions that I have and that, sadly, not one adherent of the global warming theory has yet to answer.
And judging by the rush to idiocy shown by our parliament of whores, I seriously doubt that we'll ever have an answer, at least until we are huddling around a campfire like our Ice Age caveman ancestors did.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
What Will the "Human Rights Groups" Say Now?
As I've gotten older I've become more jaded about the motives and actions of the so-called "human rights advocates" such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. for the most part they poo-poo true human rights violations by the Islamic countries and the Islamic terrorists while focusing on far less egregious violations by western countries, particularly the USA.
Now it comes out that Iran is torturing protesters that I captures. You can be assured that this torture goes way beyond the sitting naked in a cold room or being slapped in the face and yelled at that Amnesty and others have accused the USA of doing at Gitmo. (Horrors!) Now I wonder if there will be international outcry and protests and cries of outrage directed at Iranian torture? Will the news media parade photo upon photo of the outrages of the Iranians? Will Amnesty and HRW demand severe punishment for the torturers? Doubtful. If anything, there will be tepid condemnation and not a peep of that condemnation will be reported in the media. Indeed, there won't be so much as a scintilla of the reporting on Iranian torture that we saw directed at the laughable mild "torture" inflicted by Americans. Indeed, when this news item was made public, most Americans never read about it in their newspapers or saw it on TV. If they did at all it was a news media outlet questioning the authenticity of the document.
Will there be any USA politicians who express outrage at Iranian torturers? Highly unlikely given the current administration's love affair with Iran. Remember that Obama had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the mildest of condemnation of the Iranian crackdown.
Now it comes out that Iran is torturing protesters that I captures. You can be assured that this torture goes way beyond the sitting naked in a cold room or being slapped in the face and yelled at that Amnesty and others have accused the USA of doing at Gitmo. (Horrors!) Now I wonder if there will be international outcry and protests and cries of outrage directed at Iranian torture? Will the news media parade photo upon photo of the outrages of the Iranians? Will Amnesty and HRW demand severe punishment for the torturers? Doubtful. If anything, there will be tepid condemnation and not a peep of that condemnation will be reported in the media. Indeed, there won't be so much as a scintilla of the reporting on Iranian torture that we saw directed at the laughable mild "torture" inflicted by Americans. Indeed, when this news item was made public, most Americans never read about it in their newspapers or saw it on TV. If they did at all it was a news media outlet questioning the authenticity of the document.
Will there be any USA politicians who express outrage at Iranian torturers? Highly unlikely given the current administration's love affair with Iran. Remember that Obama had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the mildest of condemnation of the Iranian crackdown.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The Bad News Is That Pessimism Sells
I was reading the Drudge Report and saw this post that said that our GPS satellite system will fail in 2010. Sigh, more pessimism. Me, being the eternal optimist, cannot understand why anyone would buy into this line of crap.
First off, you gotta understand that any article declaring that the sky is NOT falling would never get published in any news organization. Beyond the fact that by definition it would not be news it would have no "head turning" ability. Who'd glance twice at a news paper bearing that headline? Newspapers and other publications, including radio and TV exist solely to deliver an audience to someone paying to advertise to that audience.
Second, in most, if not all cases, you have to read well into the article to find words such as "...if nothing is done...". They are often the optimum words that indicate that the angle that the writer is taking is that someone is willfully refusing to action that is required. That is rarely the case. Most often, the person refusing to take the action required has a perfectly logical reason for doing so: it is actually not needed or an upgrade is in the works. Other times the writer is talking to some dolt who doesn't have the insight to speak with knowledge to current situation. The writer then takes the angle that the person speaking without insight has the correct view and the person who does have insight is the person forced to defend the indefensible.
Lastly, we need to ask ourselves the optimum question whenever we read a news story: Does this make sense? Look at the current question: Is the GPS system going to have a total breakdown in 2010? Is the US military going to let that happen to a system that is key to the operation of aircraft carriers, JDAM bombs, fighter jets, tanks, and the common ground-pounder? I doubt it. Neither will they let airliners, trains, semi-trucks, and common citizens end up without GPS service. The same goes for politicians, who would have to answer to everyone who relies on GPS service if it were going to suddenly go dark. Yet, you can be assured that in a few days or weeks you'll have folks running around exclaiming that the GPS system is failing and all of the satellites will suddenly fall to Earth.
If any of the satellites truly do fall from the sky, with any luck they will land on the heads of the folks who go around spreading this crap.
First off, you gotta understand that any article declaring that the sky is NOT falling would never get published in any news organization. Beyond the fact that by definition it would not be news it would have no "head turning" ability. Who'd glance twice at a news paper bearing that headline? Newspapers and other publications, including radio and TV exist solely to deliver an audience to someone paying to advertise to that audience.
Second, in most, if not all cases, you have to read well into the article to find words such as "...if nothing is done...". They are often the optimum words that indicate that the angle that the writer is taking is that someone is willfully refusing to action that is required. That is rarely the case. Most often, the person refusing to take the action required has a perfectly logical reason for doing so: it is actually not needed or an upgrade is in the works. Other times the writer is talking to some dolt who doesn't have the insight to speak with knowledge to current situation. The writer then takes the angle that the person speaking without insight has the correct view and the person who does have insight is the person forced to defend the indefensible.
Lastly, we need to ask ourselves the optimum question whenever we read a news story: Does this make sense? Look at the current question: Is the GPS system going to have a total breakdown in 2010? Is the US military going to let that happen to a system that is key to the operation of aircraft carriers, JDAM bombs, fighter jets, tanks, and the common ground-pounder? I doubt it. Neither will they let airliners, trains, semi-trucks, and common citizens end up without GPS service. The same goes for politicians, who would have to answer to everyone who relies on GPS service if it were going to suddenly go dark. Yet, you can be assured that in a few days or weeks you'll have folks running around exclaiming that the GPS system is failing and all of the satellites will suddenly fall to Earth.
If any of the satellites truly do fall from the sky, with any luck they will land on the heads of the folks who go around spreading this crap.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
What REAL Torture Looks like
So, with all of the chatter now on supposed torture by the CIA, perhaps it is time to take a look at what real torture looks like. It isn't slapping someone in the face or forcing them to stand in their skivvies in an air conditioned room. It isn't even waterboarding. It is the following, dated May 2007, and that can be accessed HERE. (If you access it, beware of very gruesome drawings and photos.)
In a recent raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, U.S. military officials recovered an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like "blowtorch to the skin" and "eye removal." Along with the images, which you'll find on the following pages, soldiers seized various torture implements, like meat cleavers, whips, and wire cutters. Photos of those items can be seen here. The images, which were just declassified by the Department of Defense, also include a picture of a ramshackle Baghdad safe house described as an "al-Qaeda torture chamber." It was there, during an April 24 raid, that soldiers found a man suspended from the ceiling by a chain. According to the military, he had been abducted from his job and was being beaten daily by his captors. In a raid earlier this week, Coalition Forces freed five Iraqis who were found in a padlocked room in Karmah. The group, which included a boy, were reportedly beaten with chains, cables, and hoses.
In all of the hoopla about torture, it is very surprising that no one talks about the torture performed by the Islamic terrorists. Far and away worse than anything that the USA has done or ever has done, it still flies way below the radar of most of the discourse in Washington DC or by any of the so-called "human rights organizations". The UN has completely and totally ignored it. The side effect of that is that the USA ends up looking like the only and the worst torturer in the world when, as you can see by this article, we are far from anything that the Islamic terrorists do.
In a recent raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, U.S. military officials recovered an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like "blowtorch to the skin" and "eye removal." Along with the images, which you'll find on the following pages, soldiers seized various torture implements, like meat cleavers, whips, and wire cutters. Photos of those items can be seen here. The images, which were just declassified by the Department of Defense, also include a picture of a ramshackle Baghdad safe house described as an "al-Qaeda torture chamber." It was there, during an April 24 raid, that soldiers found a man suspended from the ceiling by a chain. According to the military, he had been abducted from his job and was being beaten daily by his captors. In a raid earlier this week, Coalition Forces freed five Iraqis who were found in a padlocked room in Karmah. The group, which included a boy, were reportedly beaten with chains, cables, and hoses.
In all of the hoopla about torture, it is very surprising that no one talks about the torture performed by the Islamic terrorists. Far and away worse than anything that the USA has done or ever has done, it still flies way below the radar of most of the discourse in Washington DC or by any of the so-called "human rights organizations". The UN has completely and totally ignored it. The side effect of that is that the USA ends up looking like the only and the worst torturer in the world when, as you can see by this article, we are far from anything that the Islamic terrorists do.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
A Very Scary Horizon
Mark Steyn is rapidly moving up on my list of favorite commentators. But on the downside, his commentary, while spot-on, can end up being downright depressing. Essential, prophetic, but also depressing. I give you his recent article in Commentary as an example.
I give you a sample:
On the heels of his call for the incorporation of Sharia within British law, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave an interview to the Muslim News praising Islam for making “a very significant contribution to getting a debate about religion into public life.” Well, that’s one way of putting it. The urge to look on the bright side of its own remorseless cultural retreat will intensify: Once Europeans have accepted a not entirely voluntary biculturalism, they will see no reason why Israel should not do the same, and they will embrace a one-state, one-man, one-vote solution for the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.
The Muslim world has spent decades peddling the notion that the reason a vast oil-rich region stretching thousands of miles is politically deformed and mired in grim psychoses is all because of a tiny strip of turf barely wider than my New Hampshire township. It will make an ever more convenient scapegoat for the problems of a far vaster territory from the mountains of Morne to the Urals. There was a fair bit of this in the days after 9/11. As Richard Ingrams wrote on the following weekend in the London Observer: “Who will dare to damn Israel?”
Well, take a number and get in line. The dust had barely settled on the London Tube bombings before a reader named Derrick Green sent me a congratulatory e-mail: “I bet you Jewish supremacists think it is Christmas come early, don’t you? Incredibly, you are now going to get your own way even more than you did before, and the British people are going to be dragged into more wars for Israel.”
So it will go. British, European, and even American troops will withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, and a bomb will go off in Madrid or Hamburg or Manchester, and there will be nothing left to blame except Israeli “disproportion.” For the remnants of European Jewry, the already discernible migration of French Jews to Quebec, Florida, and elsewhere will accelerate. There are about 150,000 Jews in London today—it’s the thirteenth biggest Jewish city in the world. But there are approximately one million Muslims. The highest number of Jews is found in the 50-54 age group; the highest number of Muslims are found in the four-years-and-under category. By 2025, there will be Jews in Israel, and Jews in America, but not in many other places. Even as the legitimacy of a Jewish state is rejected, the Jewish diaspora—the Jewish presence in the wider world—will shrivel.
And then, to modify Richard Ingrams, who will dare not to damn Israel? There’ll still be a Holocaust Memorial Day, mainly for the pleasures it affords to chastise the new Nazis. As Anthony Lipmann, the Anglican son of an Auschwitz survivor, wrote in 2005: “When on 27 January I take my mother’s arm—tattoo number A-25466—I will think not just of the crematoria and the cattle trucks but of Darfur, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Jenin, Fallujah.” Jenin?
You can see why they’ll keep Holocaust Day on the calendar: In an age when politicians are indifferent or downright hostile to Israel’s “right to exist,” it’s useful to be able to say, “But some of my best photo-ops are Jewish.”
The joke about Mandatory Palestine was that it was the twice-promised land. But isn’t that Europe, too? And perhaps Russia and maybe Canada, a little ways down the line? Two cultures jostling within the same piece of real estate. Not long ago, I found myself watching the video of another “pro-Palestinian” protest in central London with the Metropolitan Police retreating up St. James’s Street to Piccadilly in the face of a mob hurling traffic cones and jeering, “Run, run, you cowards!” and “Allahu akbar!” You would think the deluded multi-culti progressives would understand: In the end, this isn’t about Gaza, this isn’t about the Middle East; it’s about them. It may be some consolation to an ever-lonelier Israel that, in one of history’s bleaker jests, in the coming Europe the Europeans will be the new Jews.
I give you a sample:
On the heels of his call for the incorporation of Sharia within British law, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave an interview to the Muslim News praising Islam for making “a very significant contribution to getting a debate about religion into public life.” Well, that’s one way of putting it. The urge to look on the bright side of its own remorseless cultural retreat will intensify: Once Europeans have accepted a not entirely voluntary biculturalism, they will see no reason why Israel should not do the same, and they will embrace a one-state, one-man, one-vote solution for the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.
The Muslim world has spent decades peddling the notion that the reason a vast oil-rich region stretching thousands of miles is politically deformed and mired in grim psychoses is all because of a tiny strip of turf barely wider than my New Hampshire township. It will make an ever more convenient scapegoat for the problems of a far vaster territory from the mountains of Morne to the Urals. There was a fair bit of this in the days after 9/11. As Richard Ingrams wrote on the following weekend in the London Observer: “Who will dare to damn Israel?”
Well, take a number and get in line. The dust had barely settled on the London Tube bombings before a reader named Derrick Green sent me a congratulatory e-mail: “I bet you Jewish supremacists think it is Christmas come early, don’t you? Incredibly, you are now going to get your own way even more than you did before, and the British people are going to be dragged into more wars for Israel.”
So it will go. British, European, and even American troops will withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, and a bomb will go off in Madrid or Hamburg or Manchester, and there will be nothing left to blame except Israeli “disproportion.” For the remnants of European Jewry, the already discernible migration of French Jews to Quebec, Florida, and elsewhere will accelerate. There are about 150,000 Jews in London today—it’s the thirteenth biggest Jewish city in the world. But there are approximately one million Muslims. The highest number of Jews is found in the 50-54 age group; the highest number of Muslims are found in the four-years-and-under category. By 2025, there will be Jews in Israel, and Jews in America, but not in many other places. Even as the legitimacy of a Jewish state is rejected, the Jewish diaspora—the Jewish presence in the wider world—will shrivel.
And then, to modify Richard Ingrams, who will dare not to damn Israel? There’ll still be a Holocaust Memorial Day, mainly for the pleasures it affords to chastise the new Nazis. As Anthony Lipmann, the Anglican son of an Auschwitz survivor, wrote in 2005: “When on 27 January I take my mother’s arm—tattoo number A-25466—I will think not just of the crematoria and the cattle trucks but of Darfur, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Jenin, Fallujah.” Jenin?
You can see why they’ll keep Holocaust Day on the calendar: In an age when politicians are indifferent or downright hostile to Israel’s “right to exist,” it’s useful to be able to say, “But some of my best photo-ops are Jewish.”
The joke about Mandatory Palestine was that it was the twice-promised land. But isn’t that Europe, too? And perhaps Russia and maybe Canada, a little ways down the line? Two cultures jostling within the same piece of real estate. Not long ago, I found myself watching the video of another “pro-Palestinian” protest in central London with the Metropolitan Police retreating up St. James’s Street to Piccadilly in the face of a mob hurling traffic cones and jeering, “Run, run, you cowards!” and “Allahu akbar!” You would think the deluded multi-culti progressives would understand: In the end, this isn’t about Gaza, this isn’t about the Middle East; it’s about them. It may be some consolation to an ever-lonelier Israel that, in one of history’s bleaker jests, in the coming Europe the Europeans will be the new Jews.
Friday, May 8, 2009
The Danny Gokey Hype? Oh, PUH-leez!
I just watched the much over-hyped, nay BIZARRELY OVER-HYPED arrival of Danny Gokey at the Fox6 studios in Milwaukee. I was so taken by it that I got up and got myself a cup of coffee and checked my e-mail. I am sure that Mr. Gokey is a nice young man. To be sure he is a good singer. But then, to me, anyone is a good singer if they aren't off-key. He is a Christian and the worship leader at Faith Builders International in Milwaukee. Wonderful! But then, there are a lot of good singers in church. Most of them have their head on straight and realize that they are singing for the Lord and not for man.
But two weeks ago I was at Mitchell Field for a far more impressive homecoming, one that the local media totally ignored: The arrival home of 100 elderly World War II vets who, thanks to Stars and Stripes Honor Flight, had spent the day in Washington DC visiting the World War II memorial, Arlington, and the Iwo Jima Memorial. About 1000 of us, mostly family members, cheered on these vets as they walked (but mostly were wheeled) up the concourse.
One of them was my dad.
I saw proud former Marines, Army, Navy, and Coast Guard vets attempt to keep true to the code of their generation and look stalwart and not cry. Notice that I said "attempt" as most failed. I saw people, kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids, cheer these old men for bravery and dedication that occurred well before these kids were born. None of these old men had made their name via a contrived competition on a TV show. None of the folks cheering these old men can ever comprehend the degree of selfless bravery that it required for these men to do what they did. None of the crowd would be able to really put themselves in the shoes of these guys and comprehend the storming of the beaches at Normandy, or fighting a battle while freezing to death at Bastogne, or, as in the case of my dad, facing sudden death from a submarine attack while sailing in the frigid seas around Alaska on a cheaply built Coast Guard patrol frigate. The cheering crowd was not hyped-up by cheerleaders and TV producers.
Indeed, there was no media there at all. None from the print or TV industry. And that is a real shame. Not one brief video clip. Not a single picture in the next day's paper. Fox6 morning person Nicole Koglin was not there screeching with ecstasy about the veterans. Mark Concannon of Fox6 was not there gushing like an oil well about how marvelous everything is. Did state or local government even recognize this homecoming? No. Perhaps if Danny Gokey had said something about it they would have.
Am I bitter? I shouldn't be, but I am. I shouldn't be because Fox6 is only doing what most media these days does and that is hype pre-staged events that are spoon-fed to them by network publicists. The true heroes come home with dignity, unencumbered by the manufactured flash and glitz that we have come to expect. We now have huge community events, staged by event managers and show biz producers, for people who have done little more than excel at a sport or in the entertainment industry. Media personalities gush all over these contrived "stars" while the true heroes quietly sit back, in dignity and honor, and wonder at the stupidity of it all.
But two weeks ago I was at Mitchell Field for a far more impressive homecoming, one that the local media totally ignored: The arrival home of 100 elderly World War II vets who, thanks to Stars and Stripes Honor Flight, had spent the day in Washington DC visiting the World War II memorial, Arlington, and the Iwo Jima Memorial. About 1000 of us, mostly family members, cheered on these vets as they walked (but mostly were wheeled) up the concourse.
One of them was my dad.
I saw proud former Marines, Army, Navy, and Coast Guard vets attempt to keep true to the code of their generation and look stalwart and not cry. Notice that I said "attempt" as most failed. I saw people, kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids, cheer these old men for bravery and dedication that occurred well before these kids were born. None of these old men had made their name via a contrived competition on a TV show. None of the folks cheering these old men can ever comprehend the degree of selfless bravery that it required for these men to do what they did. None of the crowd would be able to really put themselves in the shoes of these guys and comprehend the storming of the beaches at Normandy, or fighting a battle while freezing to death at Bastogne, or, as in the case of my dad, facing sudden death from a submarine attack while sailing in the frigid seas around Alaska on a cheaply built Coast Guard patrol frigate. The cheering crowd was not hyped-up by cheerleaders and TV producers.
Indeed, there was no media there at all. None from the print or TV industry. And that is a real shame. Not one brief video clip. Not a single picture in the next day's paper. Fox6 morning person Nicole Koglin was not there screeching with ecstasy about the veterans. Mark Concannon of Fox6 was not there gushing like an oil well about how marvelous everything is. Did state or local government even recognize this homecoming? No. Perhaps if Danny Gokey had said something about it they would have.
Am I bitter? I shouldn't be, but I am. I shouldn't be because Fox6 is only doing what most media these days does and that is hype pre-staged events that are spoon-fed to them by network publicists. The true heroes come home with dignity, unencumbered by the manufactured flash and glitz that we have come to expect. We now have huge community events, staged by event managers and show biz producers, for people who have done little more than excel at a sport or in the entertainment industry. Media personalities gush all over these contrived "stars" while the true heroes quietly sit back, in dignity and honor, and wonder at the stupidity of it all.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Ah, Dear Sweet Schadenfreude!
I'm glad that Arlen Spector is now their problem and not ours.
Let's be frank senator, you've painted yourself into a pretty tight corner. Never the most popular fellow in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body, you have at least always had everyone’s grudging respect as a tough, smart guy. We may not like Snarlin' Arlen, they['d say, but we’d much rather have him as an ally than a foe.But in the space of a single week, you have squandered that respect. First, you alienated the Republicans by defecting to the Democrats and then you managed to annoy the Democrats enough to have them vote to strip you of your seniority -- the preservation of which was the very reason you switched parties in the first place.
Now you are the 79 year-old rookie senator on every committee the Democrats will consent to let you sit in on. Without that seniority, it is hard to see what you have to offer the voters of Pennsylvania to stay in office. It's not like anybody in the Senate is rushing to do you favors right now.
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