Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Obama Knew!!!

When can we expect the damning cries of "Obama knew!!!" from the left?

[..] Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano [..]  kept a straight face when she claimed in the immediate aftermath that "the traveling public is safe" and "the system worked"? Soon after, she was forced to agree during an NBC "Today" interview that the system of protecting the homeland from terrorists actually "failed miserably."

Abdulmutallab's father walked into the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria earlier this year to warn America about this fanatic. The U.S. apparently ignored the message. Can a system that looks such gift intelligence in the mouth be said by anyone to be working?

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Just So You Know...

Things get quieter here around Christmas Time, and for good reason.

Keeping Christmas is something we take seriously in our household.  When you walk in to our house at Christmas Time, there is no mistaking what time of year it is.  Not gaudy.  But let's just say well decorated and not in a tacky way.

There are things to wrap, traditional recipes to make, family coming in... less time for blogging.

Not saying there will be NO blogging ... just that something's gonna have to hit me but good to stop what I'm doing and post.

I assume the senate passage is a done deal.  Just hope the House hates it and squabbles over it.  Or better yet, trashes it completely.  But I' trying to be realistic here.

Apparently the special election to replace Ted Kennedy is next month.  And it's not any sort of certainty that the Democrat will win.

I sure hope America is pissed enough.

Mean time, there will be much merry making with friends and family.

Monday, December 21, 2009

To My Senators

McCaskill and Bond (yes, I did send it to them).  I don't think Bond will vote for the bill.  It is a given that McCaskill, Pelosi's lap dog, will.

NO. Health Care provision is not a proper role for government.

61% of America is against this health care bill. 50% would prefer you do nothing.

But Democrats plan to do it anyway. They campaign saying they're going to Washington to represent us. And end up spending money from our state to buy votes from other states just to get a bill to the floor.

Why, again, am I going to be paying for Nebraska's Medicare indefinitely? So Democrats can vote again and force me to pay everyone else's? Nebraska has been promised money from me, not a voter in that state, to pay for medicare in that state, all so that Nelson would get on board with the bill.

You may call that business as usual on Capitol Hill. We little people call it stinking corruption and far from the Founders' vision - so far that they would not recognize it as theirs. But they would recognize what had happened. And they would not be happy.

Claire, I suppose you know you're out next time you're up for election. I also suppose you don't care, as I'm sure you've been assured you'll be "taken care of".

Well there are lots and lots of us who do care, and Democrats' tin ear to us will not be forgotten. I suppose you feel that you are doing something great and will be able to bask in the glory of "getting something done". What you are getting done is likely the final nail in the coffin of the Great American Experiment, and send us down the path of the Great Soviet Experiment and all the others like it failing all over the world.


No. NO no no no no. No no, no no no no. Did I mention No????

Sunday, December 20, 2009

You'll Take it, and You'll LIKE It!

So, over 61% are against the currently circulating and constantly morphing collection of mumbo jumbo called "Teh Health Care Bill".

And Pelosi said (according to the article that prompted this post) : Pelosi said she wouldn't change course on health care just because Americans are turning against the plan. (my emphasis)

In other words, we don't represent you, we represent the Democratic party -- as it looks at this as some major accomplishment and advancement -- a necessary progression -- in "our" society that they've been trying to push through for 100 years.
But her members aren't so cocky. Reports circulated last week that a half-dozen Democratic representatives from swing districts are considering retiring rather than explain to voters why they helped push the country so far to the left.
Then don't do it!!!!  B'Jezuz!  Have you no conscience?!  Or have there been death threats from party leaders?????

The article also says: 
Schauer of Battle Creek and Peters of Bloomfield Township serve constituents who aren't used to their representatives saluting San Francisco-style big government policies.


Pelosi is freeing a number of these at-risk members to cast votes that will play better in their districts -- but not enough of them to place passage of her priorities in jeopardy.
What is this?  Why should one Senator have any power to dictate how any other Senator votes?  Isn't that an obnoxious corruption of the system?  You elect someone, and yet someone else from another district, another state, gets to tell them how they will vote.

We are so far away from the Constitution it is truly frightening.  I hope to God a backlash next November will be enough.  I fear it may be too late.  But backlash we shall!!!

Merry Christmas from Haloscan

Real exciting news indeed.  Got an email from Haloscan:
Exciting news – Haloscan, the legacy comment system that JS-Kit acquired last year, is getting upgraded to the new Echo platform. You can test Echo on the bottom of this blog post to get a feel for it’s features.
This transition will happen in batches of users over the course of a couple of months. The first batch of users will start getting a notice of the upgrade right away on their Haloscan admin dashboard.
Once presented with the upgrade message, Haloscan users will have 2 weeks to make a decision. You will have the following two options.
  1. Upgrade to Echo for $9.95/year – all your comment data will be transitioned over automatically
  2. Export your Haloscan comment data and turn off their service
Users need to respond within the two week period to ensure uninterrupted service.
In other words, start paying or all your comments will be deleted and you will no longer be able to use the service.

I can't remember why I went to Haloscan in the first place.  I think it had something to do with how Blogger handled comments in the past.  I think that's been improved.  So ... as of Jan 2, all comments up to last night will be gone unless I can figure out a way to import my exported comments into Blogger.  And we're just going to start using Blogger's comments feature instead.

All your comments are belong to us.

If it's good enough for Buck, it's good enough for us.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

The Anchoress Nails it

Via my buddy Morgan -- this is fantastic from The Anchoress.
Dear Congress:
After watching the absurd kabuki theater going on in Washington, where Harry Reid spends half his time crowing, “we’ve got the votes!” and the other half bullying people to get the votes, and Nancy Pelosi walks around like a smiling set of brass knuckles, offering anything, hourly, to anyone who will help her pass their healthcare plan “by Christmas,” I have a message for all of you in both houses of the US Congress:
GO HOME. Drop what you are doing, right now, and go home. Put the 2000 page healthcare bill that you haven’t read into the trash can as you turn out the lights and head for the airport.
RTWT
But this bit is freakin' poetry:
Go home, Congress, and give America a break from your freakish certainties, your falsities, frailties and your folly. Turn off your blackberries and stay off the television and try to find whatever scraps of humanity still remain buried beneath the crust of stinking, corrupt ambition you’ve allowed to grow on you.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The Account of Cyndi's Trip to DC for the Michelle Bachmann DC Gathering

My sister-in-law went to Washington DC for the Nov 5 Michelle Bachmannn-organized "kill the bill" rally to express let her concerns be known about a government takeover of health care ... and everything else.

Brother jeffmon sends her account:
11/3 - Early in the morning, she leaves in the Jetta. Immediately out of the driveway, the car stalls. It's been having cold start problems. She re-starts it, and continues.

Illinois - Construction!

Indianapolis - Traffic! Construction!

Ohio - She arrives at the Reynoldsburg Super 8. It's not the nicest place in the world, replete with strip clubs, sirens, a drive-up to check in to the motel, and standing water in the tub.
11/4 - The car dies again, takes a while to start. After breakfast at Cracker Barrel, things are looking up. Until she is pulled over for 75 in a 65. The officer asks for the usual license, registration, and insurance, and asks where she is going. She tells him about her trip to DC to protest the house 'health care' bill. He asks if she knows how to get there, and lets her go with a warning.
Pennsylvania - Construction!

Maryland - OK.

Virginia - The tom-tom was inadvertently set to give walking directions to the Pentagon Best Western, so it sent her down every goat path from colonial times to get her there.

11/5 - Got up early. Took the hotel shuttle to catch the metro at Pentagon Center. There were other people from the hotel on the same mission, a 60 something Brenda from Houston (who was familiar with DC and help get Cyndi around) and a Seminole dude who had been testifying before congress about some veterans issues. He was sure Cyndi and her clothing and everything else about her was Seminole. Hmmm. Took the Blue Line to the capitol.

There were effigies of Pelosi and Reid. There were people all around the capitol, too many to just meet on the east steps like Bachmann had asked. There were snipers on the roof, and lots of areas blocked off to public access. People inside the capitol were looking out the windows at the crowd. After the speakers were done, pages from the bill were distributed, and people were asked to go in to the capitol office buildings and ask for explanations of that their page meant. There were long lines to get past security in the capitol office buildings.

As it turns out, the capitol building was surrounded by protesters.

In line, people were chanting Naaannnncyyyy..... Naaannnncyyyy.....

As Cyndi was waiting in line to go into the Cannon building, word came out were saying Pelosi was frightened and refused to see anyone. There was a report that she had some people detained (including an old priest, who had thrown pages from the bill at her, or maybe her staff). The second floor was closed. Another report came the Pelosi called a vote in an attempt to prevent representatives from interacting with the public.

Cyndi visited some unknown representative's office. There were cookies.

She also talked to some of Roy Blunt's people, who invited her to come to his office, but she never found it. She and the aforementioned Brenda visited her representative's office, they were very nice. They got hungry and left, eating dinner at the Pentagon City shopping area.

11/6 - The car died again. She got it going, and headed back toward Pennsylvania. She [..] ended up in a Holiday Inn near Big Beaver, PA. She had a good time with some revelers at the hotel who were celebrating birthdays and taking a weekend break from college. She was pretty sure one of them was brother Phil's [ed - that would be me] younger doppelganger.

11/7 - Cyndi [..] let the car warm up for several minutes before driving, and had no trouble. She spend an uneventful day driving to Indianapolis.

11/8 - Indianapolis to home. The bastards passed the bill the night before.
I like the bit where the cop let her go when he found out where she was going.  And, of course, the cookies.  Because everyone likes cookies.

Gavin Goes to a Tea Party Protest

Old high school and college schoolmate and recently re-found friend Gavin reports from Claire McCaskill's doorstep today:
Just wanted to relate my experience at my first official protest! A local radio host Dana Loesch called for a "red alert" protest at McCaskill's office to protest the health care bill. It was an "over the lunch hour" protest to make one last statement to Senator McCaskill. There were 75-100 people there at any given time. (I did a head count 2 times.) There was a lot of support from drive bys too. The office is in the city in a rough neighborhood so they have a security system that requires you to buzz in. Several people attempted to go in the office but were told they already had some constituents in the office. Their office was small so they did not want to "over crowd" it. Myself and 5 other people waited for 35 min to get entrance but to no avail. Three time a spokes person came out and repeated the line that they did not want to over crowd the office. While we were waiting to get in a man in a very expensive suit came up and walked right in. Must have been a "real" constituent. He came back out after 15 minutes. I didn't really expect to get a hearing but was amused at the technique they used to keep us out. Saw another guy in an expensive suit go in the back of the building. Lobbyists I'm guessing.
About 15 minutes after I arrived 3 police cars arrived. One lady officer went into McCaskill's office. Just checking on the staff I suppose. They stayed around till I left. Froze my rear off but got a little education in politics. There were some bloggers there with their cameras rolling but no Other media present of course.
I talked to him about my first protest experience, and he added
I never thought of myself as a discontented citizen. Look at what it took, the threat of losing my way of life. Hope I haven't waited too long to get into the fray.
It was funny. You could tell that all of us were rookie protesters. No one brought a bull horn and the chants were... a little awkward... but by golly we protested!
Been there.

Still there, really.

Rant

I heard from a friend that Amtrack Joe was warning this morning about "health care" being kicked back a generation if it "doesn't pass in this congress".  I snapped.
If Health Care™ doesn't pass in this congress, little baby kittens will die horriffic deaths over and over again (9 times each) in front of your chillllllllldren, and civilization as we know it will collapse back to a bunch of redneck racist greedy fat cats who won't spread the wealth around.

And if no treaty is signed in Copenhagen, and Cap & Trade isn't passed, Polar Bears will fall out of the sky on Manhattan as the rising sea water floods up to the 27th floor of the Empire State Building!  (Not to mention vastly increasing the volume of Al Gore's heated swimming pool.)

So do it now Now NOW!!!! No time to read it!!!!! No time for questions!!!! NOW!!!! Before it's tooooooo LAAAAAAAAATE!!!!!!!!!!  and those gun-totin', moose-killin' NASCAR fans vote a dam' 'publican administration 'r somethin' leaving us smart people on the sidelines!!!!!

sigh
Always remain skeptical when someone is trying to sell you something and they pressure you to buy it NOW!!!

Friday, December 11, 2009

Dr. Sanity

I used to read Dr. Sanity a while back.  I had forgotten about her, but I do remember I liked her stuff.

tim, or "small 't' tim" as Buck calls him, pointed me to a really great article on her blog with links (circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, eh?) on what the Hadley CRU documents exposed and what it means, relating it to the Challenger disaster.

And on the blog roll she goes!

It's "Logical"

So this morning on Fox & Friends Geraldo weighed in on the CRU Email issue.   He said is isn't about the data being wrong ... (it's not?  Then why hide, obfuscate, and destroy?) ... it's about it "looking" bad, and it'll deal a body blow to the movement.

He then went on to say (correctly) that this doesn't mean there isn't global warming, it's just a blow to the case, but in saying that he blurted out something very close to  ... It's logical that there is global warming because of pollution.

NO!

How can you appear to be so close to getting it and just miss it entirely in the end?

Isn't that what this research has been all about?  To figure out what, if any, effect  man's contribution to earth's carbon budget has?  If it were just logical, then what has all this money been spent for, exactly?

He only says that because it's been repeated ad nauseum for 20 years on every newscast, every movie, every award ceremony, sit-com, newspaper -- because these clowns who can't explain the stabilization in temperatures, whose dire predictions keep getting pushed farther and farther into the future, whose models cannot reproduce past climate variations -- have systematically interfered with anyone checking or even questioning their work -- decree that it is so.

I'll admit, I heard "obvious" instead of "logical" at first, which is what got me fired up.  There is a line of logic (we call these things "theories" until they're proven -- that's what the scientific method is about) that says that since CO2 is a strong visible absorber and IR emitter,  more of it (up to a point) would contribute a positive temperature feedback.  In the absence of any other negative feedback that might be introduced by other factors.   Still, while "obvious" and "logical" aren't technically synonymous, they are in the minds of most lay people.

Maybe Geraldo's right about this.  It's not about the data.  It's about the whole process from beginning to end.

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

More Climategate (sorry, the AGW religion is one of our pet topics around here)

Via ICECap.

Watt's Up With That? digs into the kinds of "adjustments" that are made to, ahem, "hide the decline".

Note: my personal take is that in the last 10 or so years, we really can't say there's been cooling.  But nor can we say there has been any warming.  It appears that IPCC scientists politicians just tend to like hiding declines when they find them.

Speaking of "Hide the Decline", with my above note in mind -- Minnesotans for Global Warming have struck, stricken, strickificated ....  again:


I believe that's Michael Mann of Hockey Stick Chart fame's mug in the video.  And in the spirit of the season ....

Next Time the Obama Administration blames TARP on Bush....

Remember this:
  • Senator Obama voted for TARP
  • Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and Henry Paulson wrote it
  • Obama appointed Geithner as his Treasury Secretary
  • Obama re-nominated Ben Bernanke as Fed Chairman for 2010
But Bush! But Bush! Previous administration! I inherited this mess!

But nothin'. Big government, followed by vastly bigger government.

Demean, Ridicule, Repeat

John Gibson nails the Left's formula for argument.  Don't bring up facts.   Demean, Ridicule, Repeat.

The only thing I disagree with this guy on is that Swiftboating was fellow Swiftboat Veterans bringing up facts about John Kerry's service and record rather than finding 50 ways to call him a poopy-head.

Gore Dismisses Hadley CRU emails as "Old"

Via Drudge:

Gore dismisses the Hadley CRU emails that he says he hasn't read on the grounds that they're 10 years old.

Well, the oldest ones are 13 years old.  The most recent ones aren't even 10 weeks old.  Or even 5.

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Great Global Warming Swindle and the Hadley CRU Documents

For those of you who missed it, or for those of you who have seen one "side", that is, "An Inconvenient Truth" ... and haven't seen the other side of the story, I post this from March, 2007. Watch it, and I do mean the whole thing. Then go read about the Hadley CRU emails, and ask yourself who is telling the truth here.



Sunday, December 06, 2009

The Complex

Besides being an awesome Blue Man Group video ...

Remember the Industrial Military Complex (I believe first noted by Eisenhower but latched on to by Leftists for decades)?

George Will came up with a similar term talking about Climategate this morning (good article, btw.  When he's not talking about whether or not one should wear blue jeans, George is pretty good) ....
Actually, never in peacetime history has the government-media-academic complex been in such sustained propagandistic lockstep about any subject.
Heh!

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Must Watch PJTV Trifecta

Video:  Trifecta on Climategate.

Steve Green is in rare form.  And Bill Whittle is his usual insightful self.

And the quote Bill Whittle unearthed from President Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex speech from 50 years ago rings true.
the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. - Dwight D. Eisenhower
And please consider subscribing to PJTV to keep it going.  It is a valuable service, IMHO.  $5 a month.  Well worth it to me.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Shoe thrower pelted with shoe by Iraqi in France

Heh.  Will this make MSM news?

 Via  Gateway Pundit (right in my back yard)....  There's video as well.  In other news, from the same blog, Obama's approval rating is down to 33% in my state.  I think we were technically a McCain state by a few thousand votes.  So down from 49.999% to 33%.

Peer Reviewed! Peer Reviewed! Peer Reviewed!



"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"  - Phil Jones, Director - Hadley CRU
Frankly, I doubt Ed Begley Jr. has a clue what "peer review" means. It's just a term AlGore's been throwing about lately, so Ed parrotts it.

If you get to define away scientists who disagree with you as non-peers, then peer review becomes meaningless.  Well all the people who agree with us agree with us!!!

Richard Lindzen Speaks

Haven't seen much from MIT's Richard Lindzen lately (probably by design ... what with the IPCC "scientists" and the media shutting out anything outside of the now clearly manufactured "concensus"), but he is the single scientific voice I respect the most on the subject.

Go.  Read.  Be enlightened.

If you can't beat 'em ...

This morning on Fox and Friends I was surprised to see a familiar face ... a face that I don't believe has been on Fox much if at all over the past several months during the White House's Anti-Fox News campaign ...

Robert Gibbs.

Gibbs appeared good natured, had well-worded, canned answers to the not incredibly light questions being asked of him ... almost as if he knew exactly what questions would be asked (this is probably fairly normal in the News Business these days especially for high-ranking White House officials from what I understand).   In other words, he did his job. 

I couldn't help but notice that at least twice he threw in very thinly veiled jabs at the Bush Administration.  But that is, sadly, what we've come to expect from this administration (you know, the one that's getting us away from the politics of the past).

Anyway, if you're going to try to control the message, which is your job as Press Secretary ... there's no better way than to go on yourself.

Two Kinds of People

Quote from Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell I really like....
"There's two kinds of people.  You either call 9-1-1, or you are 9-1-1."