Universe

How about a quick non-political quote. Just finished watching this week's Stargate Universe episode "Greater Good". Approaching the halfway mark in the second season it continues to deliver a solid story. 
It's interesting in that this isn't "clean" sci-fi. Look at all the Star Trek series, clean ships, uniforms, lots of technobabble, and so on, you even had that for the past Stargate series. This is a lot like Battlestar Galactica, they have limited resources, even more than BSG and every episode they live in risk of death, no relaxing on the holodeck here.

Two more pictures today

First is a Michael Ramirez cartoon that sums up how the wave broke last week. It wasn't pro-GOP, they just turned out to be the one trusted for the moment to be the extension of their collective will. "Get things right, you too are replaceable" is the message.

And what do they need to get right? How about this:

There's the problem, we have spent nearly a trillion and have nothing to show for it, people suspect that things are worse for the efforts of the Obama administration and the congress of the past two years. This situation isn't good and the possibility they would add inflation to the mix is lunacy. 

It's the economy, stupid!

Well, that was certainly interesting. Over 60 seats in the house and 6 solid senate seats gained. Add to it a historic number of state houses and governors just in time for redistricting. Any why did things so badly turn out for the party in power? Let me paint a picture.

While the past Republican administrations/congresses weren't exactly the model of restraint, the for went down on the gas in 2009 and they haven't let up.  This is what some on the left just can't understand, we see this and are scared. Debt is being piled up at a rate that belies common sense, and it would be something if we had something to show for it but 850 billion in stimulus and the unemployment rate hovers around 9.6%, growth around 2%. We're going to need something to kick it into high gear and government can't directly provide it, they can only create drag. 

The new congress needs to

1. Make certain the tax rates are extended, permanently if at all possible.
2. Issue a round of new tax cuts, things like the corporate tax rate (which is only passed on to consumers anyway) and capital-gains

When tax cuts do get the economy going again, shout it from the mountaintops. Need to drive a steak in the heat of liberal economic policy so that next time someone suggests we can spend our way to prosperity that they are laughed at and chased from the public stage before they do more damage.

Punishment

Let's start with a quote:

“We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.” - Barack Obama, October 25, 2010

Now I know this has gotten some play in the media but let it be absorbed for a moment, the president thinks that people who disagree with him are enemies needing to be punished. I often discuss/debate issues with my friends, some of them disagree with me, I never consider them enemies, I don't want to see them punished. The goal I've always had was to make them see my point of view, being them around to my thinking or failing that understand their thinking so I can further refine my arguments.


Today is election day, time to vote to put things back on track. Every generation we walk up to the well of socialism, bring up the bucket and take a deep drink. After just months the public has recoiled from the ideas, and is vowing to put us back on course. A movement arose, drawing from history, called the "Tea party", a peaceful revolt as is the American nature, it has been maligned by many but that just seemed to fuel their resolution. We didn't like where we were in 2008 but the change made took us to a darker place, time for a correction.







Go vote.

Warming up to the idea it was just wrong

I wrote this several months ago and didn't really post it, probably could use a little polish but worth posting.


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Ever believe something, really believe something so much that evidence to the contrary just wouldn't sink in? It seems there are a lot of people in that situation with AGW (Anthropogenic global warming), they saw the movie and were hooked. People started talking about it, it was in the news, awards were won and the belief was cemented. What if it was all wrong?
In the past few months a lot of info has come out, some of it covered by our media, some ignored but it's getting hard to avoid it.

• ClimateGate – This scandal began the latest round of revelations when thousands of leaked documents from Britain's East Anglia Climate Research Unit showed systematic suppression and discrediting of climate skeptics' views and discarding of temperature data, suggesting a bias for making the case for warming.
• FOIGate – The British government has since determined someone at East Anglia committed a crime by refusing to release global warming documents sought in 95 Freedom of Information Act requests. The CRU is one of three international agencies compiling global temperature data.
• An investigation by the U.K.'s left-leaning Guardian newspaper found evidence that Chinese weather station measurements not only were seriously flawed, but couldn't be located. "Where exactly are 42 weather monitoring stations in remote parts of rural China?" the paper asked. The paper's investigation also couldn't find corroboration of what Chinese scientists turned over to American scientists, leaving unanswered, "how much of the warming seen in recent decades is due to the local effects of spreading cities, rather than global warming?" The Guardian contends that researchers covered up the missing data for years.
• An Indian climate official admitted in January that, as lead author of the IPCC's Asian report, he intentionally exaggerated when claiming Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035 in order to prod governments into action. This fraudulent claim was not based on scientific research or peer-reviewed. Instead it was originally advanced by a researcher, since hired by a global warming research organization, who later admitted it was "speculation" lifted from a popular magazine.
• Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman who accepted with Al Gore the Nobel Prize for scaring people witless, at first defended the Himalaya melting scenario. Critics, he said, practiced "voodoo science." After the melting-scam perpetrator 'fessed up, Pachauri admitted to making a mistake.
• Pachauri also claimed he didn't know before the 192-nation climate summit meeting in Copenhagen in December that the bogus Himalayan glacier claim was sheer speculation. But the London Times reported that a prominent science journalist said he had pointed out those errors in several e-mails and discussions to Pachauri, who "decided to overlook it." Stonewalling? Cover up? Pachauri says he was "preoccupied." Well, no sense spoiling the Copenhagen party, where countries like Pachauri's India hoped to wrench billions from countries like the United States to combat global warming's melting glaciers. Now there are calls for Pachauri's resignation.
• One excuse for imposing worldwide climate crackdown has been the U.K.'s 2006 Stern Report, an economic doomsday prediction commissioned by the government. Now the U.K. Telegraph reports that quietly after publication "some of these predictions had been watered down because the scientific evidence on which they were based could not be verified." Among original claims now deleted were that northwest Australia has had stronger typhoons in recent decades, and that southern Australia lost rainfall because of rising ocean temperatures.
• A researcher now claims the Stern Report misquoted his work to suggest a firm link between global warming and more-frequent and severe floods and hurricanes. Robert Muir-Wood said his original research showed no such link. He accused Stern of "going far beyond what was an acceptable extrapolation of the evidence."
• The London Times exposed another shocker: the IPCC claim that global warming will wipe out rain forests was fraudulent, yet advanced as "peer-reveiwed" science. The Times said the assertion actually "was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise," "authored by two green activists" and lifted from a report from the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group. The "research" was based on a popular science magazine report that didn't bother to assess rainfall. Instead, it looked at the impact of logging and burning. The original report suggested "up to 40 percent" of Brazilian rain forest was extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall, but the IPCC expanded that to cover the entire Amazon, the Times reported.
• The U.K. Sunday Telegraph has documented at least 16 nonpeer-reviewed reports (so far) from the advocacy group World Wildlife Fund that were used in the IPCC's climate change bible, which calls for capping manmade greenhouse gases.
• Even when global warming alarmists base claims on scientific measurements, they've often had their finger on the scale. Russian think tank investigators evaluated thousands of documents and e-mails leaked from the East Anglia research center and concluded readings from the coldest regions of their nation had been omitted, driving average temperatures up about half a degree.
• A presentation last October to the Geological Society of America showed how tree-ring data from Russia indicated cooling after 1961, but was deceptively truncated and only artfully discussed in IPCC publications. The tree-ring data made it into the IPCC report, albeit disguised and misrepresented.
• The U.S. National Climate Data Center has been manipulating weather data too, say computer expert E. Michael Smith and meteorologist Joesph D'Aleo. Forty years ago there were 6,000 surface-temperature measuring stations, but only 1,500 by 1990, which coincides with what global warming alarmists say was a record temperature increase. Most of the deleted stations were in colder regions, just as in the Russian case, resulting in misleading higher average temperatures.
• The IPCC based its findings of reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and in Africa on a feature story of climbers' anecdotes in a popular mountaineering magazine, and a dissertation by a Switzerland university student, quoting mountain guides.
• The IPCC claim that rising temperatures could cut in half agricultural yields in African countries turns out to have come from a 2003 paper published by a Canadian environmental think tank – not a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
• The IPCC also claimed rising sea levels endanger the 55 percent of the Netherlands it says is below sea level. The portion of the Netherlands below sea level actually is 20 percent. The Dutch environment minister said she will no longer tolerate climate researchers' errors.
• Geologists for Space Studies in Geophysics and Oceanography and their U.S. and Canadian colleagues say previous studies largely overestimated by 40 percent Alaskan glacier loss for 40 years. This flawed data are fed into those computers to predict future warming.

And there is more on top of this. You can't look at this and not conclude that at best people were so sold on an idea and they wouldn't let opposing ideas cloud their thinking, at worst they contributed in a fraud. Putting all that aside, let's look at the solutions proposed. If the climate is moving in a direction we don't like we have two basic choices, alter or adapt. The solution that has been pushed is to attempt to alter, they seek to manipulate a system they do not fully understand. The core of this solution is "Cap and trade", it attempts to reduce emissions by applying huge taxes. I think it's fair to say it will reduce pollution by increasing the cost of energy, which in turn will have a multiplicative effect reducing all economic activity. 

I've often said when asked if I think if the climate is changing that I agree it is in the same way I believe an elevator is going up, down or pausing to take on passengers, weather is complex but never static. Also, far be it from me to argue against efficiency or cleaner energy, these just make sense and those of us who have been skeptical of AGW have been accused of being against these things falsely. The problem always has been for me that the system is too complex for us to believe we understand it, the rush to a "solution" too quick, the cries that it's settled don't ask any more questions, just act. When a volcano can put more climate effecting gases in a day then all of mankind can in a year you have to wonder if anything we can do would have any effect. 

So what are we to do? Well, first off the issue should be restarted without any preconceptions. Data should be collected and shared openly, first time someone has to resort to a FoIA request to get information we should be suspicious. Second we should consider adaption because if the climate is changing it is doubtful any of our efforts could change it and could introduce unintended consequences. The world was warmer in the middle ages, it didn't come to an end and we weren't nearly as resourceful. Clean energy should be advanced, and we need to be using our traditional energy sources to their best. We need to move forward as much as possible today because the future is built on this progress.

"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."

Not too late for the rest of us to vote though. A week to go and all signs are pointing to something truly amazing. Two years ago we took the drink from the well of socialism that our country seems drawn to every generation, now just two years later we're spitting it out and collectively saying "My God, what have we done?!"

Separation of *blank* and state

   The incident the other day with NPR has brought the state sponsored media outlet into focus for a few of us, once again the question comes to mind, why are we paying for it?

   In 1802 President Thomas Jefferson penned a letter to the Baptists of Danbury addressing persecution they were receiving at the hands of the Congregationalist establishment to which they did not belong. Referencing the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Jefferson writes:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

   I have to wonder what if his letter was penned to the Hartford Courant? The First Amendment reads as follows: 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

   Now a legal mind would note that we talk about establishment of religion, not establishment of press, it doesn't say we need to restrict the government from establishing it's own entry in the press but how can any entity that is controlled by those in power, however ephemeral, be without bias, be truly free of this influence?
   I think we need to really consider cutting NPR and like entities free of government, let them survive or fail on their merits. Today we need to stand up in support of the Separation of Press and State.