May 19, 2012
John McCain is at it again. The Stockholm Syndrome Senator is going to partner with Democrats to subvert free speech yet again with a new campaign finance law.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/05/16/great-news-mccain-to-partner-with-democrats-on-campaign-finance-reform-again/
McCain just doesn't get it; money is mother's milk to politics, and that stopping it's flow in one place will simply open a new spillway somewhere else. And it ultimately is a matter of freedom of speech - a Constitutional right. McCain would sacrifice that freedom, that fundamental right, to achieve some sort of "clean" politics.
But his last efforts made politics dirtier as third parties entered the fray to get around McCain-Feingold, and of course McCain compromised by allowing labor unions to be exempted last time. That's how it will happen again; the Democrats aren't going to hurt their own finances with this. The notion of cleaning up government with the help of Democrats is rather like expecting maid service from the principals of a hog ranch. He should know that.
McCain is a useful idiot. He loves the adulation and attention he gets from the mainstream media for being a "maverick" which means thumbing his own side in the eye, and so he is quick to partner with those who hate us. I suppose he believes he can "reset" relations as Obama believed he could reset U.S./Russian relations. I have yet to see any evidence of success for either enterprise.
McCain has Stockholm Syndrome. He is eager to please his captors, first in the Hanoi Hilton and now in Congress. He desperately wants the approval of the enemy. And he gets it as long as he is a good boy. Being a good boy means hurting his own side, something John McCain is more than willing to do.
If the GOP had not gotten on board with McCain's re-election last time we could have been rid of this chigger with false teeth. But too many feared losing the seat, and so we sent Grandpa Simpson back to the world's greatest deliberative body (you may resume reading after you stop chortling.)
McCain embodies everything wrong with the RINO approach, the "get along" policy. The Democrats are the enemies of the American People and must be beaten, not befriended. Those who make friends with them will end up like the Gingerbread Man, who believed the fox was his buddy, too. But it won't just be mcCain to end up digesting in the belly of a duplicitous beast; we'll all end up as sugary snacks.
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(This article first appeared at American Thinker
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/the_vanishing_feeling_of_freedom.html)
The primary reason why it is so difficult to defend political liberty today is because freedom is a rational construct, and thus cannot be understood by the irrational. Children, or adults whose moral reasoning skills are stalled at childish levels, are unable to experience it -- they literally don't know what they are missing.
This is why authoritarians of all stripes are hell-bent on producing and maintaining a society of childish citizens: dependent, trusting of the hand that feeds, obedient, pleasure-centered -- perhaps capable of proficiency in well-defined tasks, but frightened, above all else, of being left to "fend for themselves."
In short, individual freedom, in the complex sense captured in the most profound political philosophy, is completely inaccessible to a mind without a developed faculty of practical reason. And a moral concept that cannot be understood rationally cannot be deeply experienced emotionally. What does freedom feel like? What, conversely, does the deprivation of freedom feel like? Those who hope to restore freedom to the civilized world must first win the educational battle that would make those two feelings, and the difference between them, immediately accessible to every adult.
For there is no hope of winning a debate over the best means of securing liberty with an opponent who cannot understand what difference it makes whether health care is "provided" by private citizens or by the government, why some people should be "allowed" to be wealthy when others are poor, or why anyone who believes in Christian charity would oppose government programs that "take care of people." You might as well argue about driving technique with someone who has never seen a car.
One can read Aristotle, Aquinas, and Locke until the cows come home without ever feeling what freedom means. (The world's universities are full of political experts for whom the penny never drops.) That feeling is the surest safeguard of political liberty, and the most powerful weapon in the struggle against oppression. But it can be experienced only by those whose minds and characters have matured along with their bodies.
Consider the analogous case of justice. It is possible that every child has an innate sense of "justice" -- but it is not justice as an adult understands it, because it is imbued with a child's moral myopia, in which his own existence and immediate surroundings are the basis of all reality. Justice, as a child experiences it, primarily means that he gets what he thinks he has coming, regardless of how this might affect anyone else, or even himself in the long run.
Responsible parents and teachers of young children correct the behavior of their charges with admonitions such as "Imagine how you would feel if he did that to you," "You can have that if you finish your work first," or "That's not yours." These elders are trying to encourage the development of the concepts that make an adult sense of justice possible: respect for the independent existence of other people, a sense of the natural equality of moral worth, and an understanding that everyone should have what he has earned and deserves first claim on what he has.
What if, on the other hand, the parents themselves are observably unwilling to respect the wishes, moral dignity, or possessions of other people, and if the teachers substitute indiscriminate "sharing" for fairness, and "fitting in" for moral equality? Then the most likely product of their influence will be precisely today's increasingly dominant moral tenor: a belief that one's desires impose material obligations on the world, a refusal to acknowledge the moral claims of others when these conflict with one's desires, and a complete disregard for the basic concept of a man's possessions as the rightful fruit of his labor. In other words, adults with the moral sophistication of toddlers.
Now consider the case of political freedom. As a child experiences it, freedom means being permitted to do something by those who hold authority (parents, teachers, babysitters, etc.) -- and, more positively, it means doing what one feels like doing, without fear of adverse consequences. The immaturity of impulses, and the inability to conceive of one's long-term well-being, or to calculate the appropriate means to achieve it, are the reasons why children need adult supervision and guidance. They are not ready for the true freedom of which they cannot yet conceive.
Growing up to the birthright of our species, the natural liberty of the rational soul, entails the incremental development of the capacity to conceive ends appropriate to an adult human being, and to resist impulses towards immediate gratification that would thwart those ends. Gradually, "I want it now" gives way to "This is best for me," and "Gimme, gimme" gives way to "If I do this, hopefully I will achieve that." The subjective experience of life as a hodgepodge of successful and unsuccessful attempts at gratification evolves into the unified experience of an individuated soul with a consistent character and definable goals. The innate desire for happiness develops into the rational will to pursue happiness.
There is a moment along this path to maturity when a young person begins to recognize the causal chain leading from his present material state back through the various stages of activity that led him there, and ultimately to the initial idea that set the whole process in motion. This moment, when he realizes that his condition is the product of his effort -- that he is a self-sufficient being, able to bring about desired effects in the world through his own thought and action -- is a revelation. What is revealed to him, in part, is that this power to form complex, long-term goals and work toward them is what it means to be human. To experience oneself as the cause of one's own effects, and one's current state as the effect of one's own action, is the fundamentally human experience, which produces a kind of happiness more fundamental and lasting than any short-term gratification. It is happiness as the Greeks understood it, activity in accordance with one's nature. The subjective experience of oneself as a rational agent, as a force capable of defining and realizing its own ends, is the feeling of practical freedom. You feel free when you consider what it means to own something, and to have earned it.
The soul develops into maturity by gradually learning that freedom is not permission granted by an external authority, but rather one's birthright -- and that it is found not in doing whatever one wants without adverse effects, but rather in the capacity to choose what is best, and to weigh the value of a goal by the measure of adversity one is willing to endure to achieve it.
Or rather, it ought to develop this way. Modern moral education -- formal and informal -- blocks this road to adulthood by bringing down an avalanche of gratifications disconnected from achievement, thereby trapping the soul in a stale, rotting extension of childhood, in which happiness means scratching an itch.
Here is where today's ugliest, most cynical purveyors of "capitalism" -- statists all -- come into the picture. The popular entertainment moguls, through a brilliant collusion (half-calculated, half-serendipitous) with the drug underworld and the millionaire socialist elite, have created a kaleidoscopic whirlpool of reason-devouring charms to ensure that the mass of humanity never again sees itself as a civilized community of rational, moral individuals.
Sounds, words, and images that, just a generation ago, would literally have been classified as pornography are now the standard, ho-hum, before-, during-, and after-school fare of every twelve-year-old in the Western world.
Mind-altering, brain-damaging drugs are readily available to every high school student, as a quick fix for all of life's challenges. And the effects of drugs are much broader than even the most alarming statistical analysis of drug use can reveal. For the omnipresent affiliation of drugs with the world of popular entertainment (especially the most morally potent entertainment, music) has produced a general societal drug attitude. Think of the threatening hip-hop swagger, the disaffected heavy metal detachment, the modesty-obliterating pop diva exhibitionism -- and consider the extent to which these popular drugged-out poses have become archetypal among modern youth (and their parents), affecting the moral attitudes and behavior of all but the most superhumanly pure and innocent souls, regardless of whether they are actually drug users yet.
Conveniently linked with this pop culture's instant gratification ethic is the agenda of leftist authoritarianism. There has developed an easy, almost natural moral continuum between gang violence fantasies and "economic justice," between ersatz eighteen-year-olds begging for a chance to satisfy your every lust and "reducing carbon emissions." In this emotional universe, Snoop Dogg and Barack Obama, Beyoncé and Al Gore are somehow melded into one mental mess, like blobs of color in a child's finger painting. I want to feel pleasure right now, and I want the whole planet to feel pleasure right now -- except for those loser grown-ups who want to prevent me from feeling pleasure right now. I want them to suffer.
This nightmarish moral universe has its "mature" phase, wherein one merely empathizes with the more licentious and illegal elements of the worldview, without necessarily participating in them. Quasi-adults of this sort go by various names around the world. In the U.S., their most popular name is "Democrats."
And therein rests the dilemma that we started with. Decades of leftist policy, education, and culture have snipped the delicate thread of moral development that leads to the adult feeling of freedom that made natural rights theory, and liberal democracy, possible. Entitlement programs are the grown-up extensions of the unearned immediate gratifications of "Gimme, gimme." Leftist educational principles inculcate the premise of class envy -- that it is wrong for one man to have more than another, regardless of how the "inequality" arose -- in every young person. And the popular culture satisfies the demands of the market it has created by feeding us all a steady diet of arrested adolescence, teaching, in a thousand ways, that delayed gratification is a missed opportunity, that today has no clear link to tomorrow, and that adulthood is the enemy of freedom and happiness.
The cumulative effect of these influences is to undermine the recognition and appreciation of our rational agency, by obscuring, denying, or denigrating the cause-effect relationship between a man's will and his present conditions. And this means obscuring, denying, and denigrating the liberty that is our birthright -- i.e., human nature.
A person who knows the adult feeling of freedom also knows when freedom -- that is, human nature -- is being violated. Those for whom freedom remains forever the child's notion of permission to do what one feels like doing are a grave threat to the future of mankind. Their desire for instant gratification inevitably runs up against the rational will of others, but unlike children, they are fatally resistant to the moral education that teaches respect for those others.
And unlike children, they are, at present, the dominant force on Earth. They cannot be won over with rational argument, because they literally cannot understand the terms of the debate. They have been prevented from experiencing the feeling of natural freedom -- the joy of rational agency -- so they cannot recognize the violation of freedom that their demands are imposing on us all day by day.
They know not what they do. Thus, they cannot be persuaded. They must simply be stopped.
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May 18, 2012
An autopsy reveals that Trayvon Martin was high - or had been high - when he had his deadly altercation with George Zimmerman.
http://myfox8.com/2012/05/17/autopsy-marijuana-found-in-trayvon-martins-blood/
Yes, the kid who had gone to buy candy and tea had apparently been using illegal drug.
Now, that is not ground for execution, and this doesn't necessarily excuse Zimmerman, but it does weaken the case considerably. The media tried to paint Trayvon Martin as a pure victim, a little kid who went to the store and was foully murdered for walking while black. The reality is that Zimmerman has been shown to have had injuries consistent with an assault, and the autopsy showed Martin's knuckles were bruised in a manner consistent with Zimmerman's claim that he was being punched by Martin.
http://www.wnd.com/2012/05/report-trayvon-had-bruised-knuckles/?cat_orig=us
This case has disintegrated right before our eyes. One must ask, why was the media so quick to jump on the bandwagon when it appeared that a white man murdered an innocent black kid, but seem to have lost interest now that it looks like a black thug teenager tried to kill a "white hispanic" man?
The media is guilty of racial profiling. Zimmerman was walking while white.
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The big researcher on this topic at Amer. Thinker, Jack Cashill, says that this story proves one thing: that Obama's biography is a made up thing (read: lies), no matter where he was born. And the people who created this publisher's promotional booklet, which cost around $10 K to lithograph, had to have the approval of Obama before going to the expense of making it. To claim the Kenyan birth statement false in the booklet, Obama would now have to declare his biographical writings as false. I'd say he'd have to eat crow, but eat bulldog would be more fitting.
From the Drudge and Breitbart websites. Wow.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/The-Vetting-Barack-Obama-Literary-Agent-1991-Born-in-Kenya-Raised-Indonesia-Hawaii
The Vetting - Exclusive - Obama's Literary Agent in 1991 Booklet: 'Born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii'
by Joel B. Pollak 1 hour ago 854 post a comment
Note from Senior Management:
Andrew Breitbart was never a "Birther," and Breitbart News is a site that has never advocated the narrative of "Birtherism." In fact, Andrew believed, as we do, that President Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961.
Yet Andrew also believed that the complicit mainstream media had refused to examine President Obama's ideological past, or the carefully crafted persona he and his advisers had constructed for him.
It is for that reason that we launched "The Vetting," an ongoing series in which we explore the ideological background of President Obama (and other presidential candidates)--not to re-litigate 2008, but because ideas and actions have consequences.
It is also in that spirit that we discovered, and now present, the booklet described below--one that includes a marketing pitch for a forthcoming book by a then-young, otherwise unknown former president of the Harvard Law Review.
It is evidence--not of the President's foreign origin, but that Barack Obama's public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times.
***
Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama's then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii."
The booklet, which was distributed to "business colleagues" in the publishing industry, includes a brief biography of Obama among the biographies of eighty-nine other authors represented by Acton & Dystel.
It also promotes Obama's anticipated first book, Journeys in Black and White--which Obama abandoned, later publishing Dreams from My Father instead.
Obama’s biography in the booklet is as follows (image and text below):
Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation. He served as project coordinator in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and was Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago’s South Side. His commitment to social and racial issues will be evident in his first book, Journeys in Black and White.
The booklet, which is thirty-six pages long, is printed in blue ink (and, on the cover, silver/grey ink), using offset lithography. It purports to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of Acton & Dystel, which was founded in 1976.
Jay Acton no longer represents Obama. However, Jane Dystel still lists Obama as a client on her agency's website.
According to the booklet itself, the text was edited by Miriam Goderich, who has since become Dystel's partner at Dystel & Goderich, an agency founded in 1994. Breitbart News attempted to reach Goderich by telephone several times over several days. Her calls are screened by an automated service that requires callers to state their name and company, which we did. She never answered.
The design of the booklet was undertaken by Richard Bellsey, who has since closed his business. Bellsey, reached by telephone, could not recall the exact details of the booklet, but told Breitbart News that it "sounds like one of our jobs, like I did for [Acton & Dystel] twenty years ago or more."
The parade of authors alongside Obama in the booklet includes politicians, such as former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill; sports legends, such as Joe Montana and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; and numerous Hollywood celebrities.
The reverse side of the page that features Barack Obama includes former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader and early-1990s "boy band" pop sensation New Kids On the Block.
Acton, who spoke to Breitbart News by telephone, confirmed precise details of the booklet and said that it cost the agency tens of thousands of dollars to produce.
He indicated that while "almost nobody" wrote his or her own biography, the non-athletes in the booklet, whom "the agents deal
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Rush Limbaugh has exposed another enviromental mania from the Chicken Little The Sky Is Falling University. The brains behind this idea is the World Wildlife Fund, the WWF - although it looks like it was thought up by Hulk Hogan and The Undertaker at the other WWF.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/05/17/enviro_idiots_two_earths_needed_by_2030
Enviro-Idiots: Two Earths Needed by 2030
May 17, 2012
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I have here, ladies and gentlemen, a full-fledged story at the Huffing and Puffington Post: "WWF Living Planet Report Warns That By 2030 Two Earths Will Be Needed To Sustain Our Lifestyles."
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May 17, 2012
In the Progressive war on the cow, they have tried many tactics; cow flatulence causing Global Warming, obesity, etc. Now they are trying to link eating fast food with depression.
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/120402_fastfood.htm
The World Science article opens with these words:
"A new study sup ports past re search ty ing fast food con sump tion to a great er risk of de pres sion.
Pub lished in the re search jour nal Pub lic Health Nu tri tion, the re sults in di cate that fre quent con sumers of fast food are 51 per cent more likely to de vel op de pres sion than those who eat lit tle or none of it. And "the more fast food you con sume, the great er the risk of de pres sion,” said Al mu dena Sán chez-Villegas of the Uni vers ity of Las Pal mas de Gran Ca naria in Spain, the stu dy’s lead au thor."
End excerpt.
This study, and the coverage being given to it, impugne the food itself. Yet the article goes on to make the obvious objection:
"The study included 8,964 participants that had never been diagnosed with depression or taken antidepressants. They were assessed for an average of six months; during that time, 493 were diagnosed with depression or started to take antidepressants.
The research also found that participants who ate the most fast food and commercially baked goods were more likely to be single, less active and have poor dietary habits, which included eating less fruit, nuts, fish, vegetables and olive oil. Smoking and working more than 45 hours per week were other prevalent characteristics."
End excerpt.
So, in other words, the people who would be prone to develop depression tended to eat more fast food and other "quick" foods. Gee, what a revelation! That lonely, overworked, strung-out people tend to "grab a bite" rather than cook themselves elaborate meals are becoming depressed is something we never would have thought could happen!
These types of studies are less than worthless; they are purely to promote a viewpoint or initiative.
To prove that assertion, the article concludes with a call to action against fast food:
""Although more studies are necessary, the intake of this type of food should be controlled,” Sánchez-Villegas proposed. He cited its effects for both mental and physical health, including its established tendency to promote obesity and cardiovascular disease."
End excerpt.
I suppose it never occured to the researcher - or the writer of this atrocious pseudoscientific article - that perhaps it is the study itself that "caused" the depression? It seems to me that the participants were fine until they entered the study. After all, the participants had never been diagnosed with depression before joining the group. Perhaps we should control such studies, as they are a menace to the public health?
What is the motivation for participating in such a study? People will join it precisely because they are hoping to get some benefit - like free antidepressants. The point is, the happy fast food consumer will not be enticed to participate. And the participants know what the researchers are hoping to find. This is the equivalent of the opinion polls where the participants tell the pollsters what they want to hear. It is what is known as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In point of fact, this is the purest pseudoscience. It's advocacy dressed in the garb of objectivity.
I've said it before; science is becoming a crock, an act of alchemy. The increasing politicization of science is causing the public to lose trust in research, and our scientific establishment is resembling more and more an arm of the Progressive establishment.
This is a prime example.
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http://thegwpf.org/the-observatory/5727-is-the-stratosphereresponsible-for-global-warming.html
Variations in ozone in the lower stratosphere could be the main reason for the global warming seen in the past few decades, according to a new paper in press at the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. It is claimed that the new model is capable of explaining 82% of the total Earth temperature variability.
Nataliya Kilifarska of the National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography, in Sofia, Bulgaria, presents a powerful analysis that confirms a strong relationship between stratospheric ozone and land air temperature.
She says that this highly significant relation raises the question about the nature of the influence, and suggests that it operates through control over the temperature and humidity in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere by ozone variations. The ozone variability itself is initiated by variations in Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) intensity, which produces O3 at these levels. GCRs are in turn mediated by the Sun. An important point is that the high effectiveness of this mechanism is due to the fact that small fluctuations of the H2O vapour (in the most arid regions of the troposphere) influences the radiation balance of Earth in a highly non-linear way meaning small changes in the Sun results in a big change in Earth’s temperature.
One of the major problems when considering the influence of the Sun on climate is that the Sun’s variation in output is too small for it to have a significant climatic effect when compared to that estimated due to greenhouse gasses.
Such reasoning prompted another way of looking at the problem. What if the solar influence on climate was an indirect one mediated by other agents? What if the relationship between the Sun and those other agents was non-linear? When thinking along these lines Kilifarska says it becomes clear,”…why the linear statistical methods are powerless in detecting the solar signal in climatic time series.”
She analysed using non-linear regression techniques the annual values of Northern Hemisphere land air temperature anomalies (CRUTEM3v), Sunspot numbers for the period 1900–2011 and the longest time series of the total ozone from Arosa, Switzerland for the period 1926–2011.
Cause Not Effect
Stratospheric ozone variations during the last 30–40 years have shown a severe decline until the middle of 1990s, with a slight recovery since.
The solar influence on the total ozone (via the 11 year cycle in the solar radiation intensity) is estimated to be no more than 2–3%. The most variable part of solar irradiance (UV band) is absorbed in the upper and middle atmosphere, which means that the reasons for the lower stratospheric ozone variations were unknown. Galactic Cosmic Rays are bombarding the lower stratosphere and troposphere though there are relatively few studies examining the ozone sensitivity to the GCR’s intensity, some of them contradictory.
A key change of emphasis regards the cause of upper tropospheric water vapour variation. The IPCC states that the global warming is due to the increased concentration of greenhouse gases, but because there is no mechanism known which could increase the amount of the upper tropospheric humidity (which has been observed in recent decades) the IPCC said that the water vapour increase is a response of the climate system to the warming initiated by greenhouse gases.
Kilifarska looks at this another way. Rather than being a consequence of global warming she speculates that changing water vapour in the troposphere might be a cause of it.
There are many experiments and models that suggest a high sensitivity of climate to the lower stratospheric ozone density. Recently it was noted that the O3 decrease during the last third of 20th century was accompanied by a cooling of the lower stratosphere and an uplifting of the tropopause. Also in 1997 Spencer and Braswell pointed out that outgoing long-wave radiation (OLR) is very sensitive to the humidity fluctuations in the driest upper troposphere. Thus a small enhancement of the upper tropospheric humidity leads to a non-linear decrease of the OLR and consequently—to a greenhouse warming of the Earth’s surface.
Kilifarska suggests that variations in lower stratospheric ozone (influencing the temperature and humidity near the tropopause) appears to be a factor altering the Earth radiation balance and the greenhouse warming of the planet. Although more investigations are needed, this work offers a significant new point of view in understanding the factors affecting climate variability.
Kilifarska’s model does what all good models do, it makes predictions. Most other forecasts of near-future temperature trends say that most of the years in the next 5 years or so will break temperature records, even though the global annual average temperature has been statistically unchanged for the past 15 years. Her model predicts cooling over this period, and at first sight seems to be more in line with real climatic data that IPCC forecasts. At the right of her Fig. 4 are her predictions showing a decrease of the land surface temperature until the end of the current decade. Click on image to enlarge.
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NASA, ever eager to spread apocalyptic news, has calculated the number of potentially hazardous asteroids (PHA's), asteroids that intersect the Earth's orbit, at 4.700, give or take 1,500.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/16may_pha/
According to the article:
"The asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE mission, called NEOWISE, sampled 107 PHAs to make predictions about the population as a whole. Findings indicate there are roughly 4,700 PHAs, plus or minus 1,500, with diameters larger than 330 feet (about 100 meters). So far, an estimated 20 to 30 percent of these objects have been found.
While previous estimates of PHAs predicted similar numbers, they were rough approximations. NEOWISE has generated a more credible estimate of the objects' total numbers and sizes. Because the WISE space telescope detected the infrared light, or heat, of asteroids, it was able to pick up both light and dark objects, resulting in a more representative look at the entire population."
End excerpt.
Beyond a certain size the Earth's atmosphere makes no difference on an asteroid; even if a sizable chunk is turned to plasma that energy is coming with the rest of the body. At the speeds these objects move they just aren't in the atmosphere long enough to burn up. How much of a 500 foot long asteroid can vaporize in one second?
Asteroid strikes leave circular craters; take a look at the Moon and Mars. It is interesting to note how many unusually large, round spaces are visible on the Earth; Yucatan, Hudson Bay, the Persian Gulf, the Black Sea, etc. How many are the result of asteroid strikes?
Luis Alvarez, scientist with the Manhattan Project and Nobel Laureate, and his son Walter developed the theory that the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid strike in Yucatan. They noticed there was a layer of irridium in the soil that appears at the K-T Boundary (the end of the Cretaceous), and this iridium suggested an asteroid slammed into the Earth, blotting out the sun and likely killing most species on the planet. Thus was born the most widely held view of what killed the dinosaurs.
So, it may be that we have been getting clunked by these things for a long time. Perhaps Mankind owes it's very existence on this planet to an asteroid strike?
One thing is obvious; we are an extraordinarily lucky species. I would argue that we owe it all to divine intervention, and we should be grateful lest a hailstorm of extraterrestrial stones fall upon our heads.
But we are an ungrateful lot, and will no doubt continue to believe we owe it all to our own spunk and talent.
But given enough time any event is likely to occur, and the chances of getting creamed by one of these things is a certainty; the question is when. There isn't a whole lot we can do about it now.
That could change, but it requires a permanent human presence in space. We could move these things if we have the hardware up there, which means we need to use the space program for more than Muslim outreach. We need to build a serious infrastructure in Earth orbit, and we need to build permanent facilities to mine the Moon for our raw materials. Mankind cannot turn it's back on space. Time is not on our side.
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Lord Monckton Talks on Agenda 21 and Environmental Marxism at Windermere Manor, London.
A very informative, great speech, which ties many things together. See the 44 minute presentation on YouTube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8Hyl9YzJsQg#!
Part of it is a question and answer session where Lord Monckton explains that "The use of reason is one of the three great powers of the soul."
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May 16, 2012
By Alan Caruba
What is it with the "warmists”, Al Gore and his clones who keep insisting the Earth is warming, that too much carbon dioxide (CO2) will be the death of us, and that we have to immediately stop burning "fossil fuels” if we are to save the planet? They are the most relentless liars on the face of the planet.
They want us to cover the surface of the U.S. with solar panels and the mountains with wind turbines to generate the energy needed for everything we do. These Green energy alternatives are so wonderful they are producing a mere three percent of our current needs, require government subsidies and loan guarantees to exist, and tend not to be all that great when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.
So why are we still hearing from this discredited and disgraced bunch of charlatans and buffoons? In early May, The New York Times published "Game Over for the Climate” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-climate.html?_r=3&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120510 by a major offender of the truth, Dr. James Hansen, who for some reason is still the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), despite having pocketed big bucks beyond his humble government salary. In 2007 he split a million dollar Dan Davis Prize with someone else and in 2001, received a $250,000 Heinz Award. Former GISS employees want him fired.
As debased as The Times is, in 2006 the American Association for the Advancement of Science selected Hansen to receive their Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility. I cite this as a warning that even a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper and formerly respected science organization have long since gone over to the dark side when it comes to global warming. Nothing they have to say on the subject should be regarded as more than pure propaganda.
Suffice to say that Dr. Hansen’s opinion article cited every global warming lie we have been hearing since 1988 when he first gained famed testifying before a congressional committee that we were doomed. In his Times article, he predicted that the "semi-permanent drought” would turn the Midwest into "a dust bowl.” Like every other global warming prediction (that hasn’t come true) this will happen "over the next several decades.” Time enough for Dr. Hansen to pick up a few more awards and fatten his bank account.
The face of the global warming hoax, Al Gore, will not shut up. He made news in August 2011 when he totally lost it while speaking at the Aspen Institute. Anyone, noted climatologists, meteorologists, and mere science writers like myself were the target of his rant for actually citing things such as the fact that the Earth has been in a natural COOLING cycle since 1998 and other inconvenient facts about the climate.
"And some of the exact same people” said Gore, frothing at the mouth, "I can go down a list of their names—are involved in this. And so what do they do? They pay pseudo-scientists to pretend to be scientists to put out the message. ‘This climate thing, it’s nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn’t trap heat. It may be volcanoes’ Bullshit! ‘It may be sun spots.’ Bullshit! ‘It’s not getting warmer.’ Bullshit!”
The climate is not cooperating. The Church of Global Warming is crumbling around them. People are making fun of them. Parents are objecting to their scaring children with their lies. People actually want to warm their homes in winter and cool them in the summer. Meanwhile, using the global warming lies, the Environmental Protection Agency is trying to shut down the entire U.S. coal mining industry and attacking "fracking” to access natural gas. The Department of the Interior has virtually shut down all oil drilling on federal land and offshore. How crazed is all this?
One of their number, Dr. Peter Gleick, formerly of the American Geophysical Union’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics—the irony is too delicious—perpetrated a fraud against The Heartland Institute earlier this year, pretending to be a member of its board in order to secure a list of its donors and allegedly authoring a memo about a scheme to invade the nation’s schoolrooms with a program to dispute global warming. After confessing to the former, he resigned from the task force. An FBI probe is underway to determine if he broke any laws. Heartland has dubbed it "Fakegate.”
http://fakegate.org/
The Institute, by the way, is sponsoring its 7th annual conference on climate change, May 21-23, in Chicago, immediately following the NATO conference that will be held in the windy city where it is headquartered. Its theme this year is "Real Science, Real Choices.” Among the speakers will be Czech President Vaclav Klaus, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, vice chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, and two former NASA astronauts.
The lesson we can draw from the last few decades is that the entire environmental movement, of which the global warming hoax is one part, is an extension of what Dr. Robert Zubin, a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy, addressed in his new book, "Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalism, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism.”
Antihumanism has been around a long time. As Dr. Zubin points out, it has taken the form of "Darwinism, eugenics, German militarism, Nazism, xenophobia, the population control movement, environmentalism, technophobia, and most recently, the incredibly demented climatophobic movement, which seeks to justify mass human sacrifice for the purpose of weather control.”
Al Gore, James Hansen, and even President Obama’s science advisor, John Holden, are card-carrying members of this cult. In 1971 Holden co-authored "Global Ecology” with Paul Ehrlich, famed for his 1968 book, "The Population Bomb.” They wrote "when a population of organisms grows in a finite environment, sooner or later, it will encounter a resource limit. This phenomenon, described by ecologists as reaching the ‘carrying capacity’ of the environment, applies to bacteria on a culture dish, to fruit flies in a jar of agar, and to buffalo on a prairie. It must also apply to man on this finite planet.”
So you need to understand that you are no better than a fruit fly and you need to die in order to avoid depleting the planet’s supply of food and its energy resources.
God knows I would like to ignore or—better still—never have to hear from these climate Nazis, but that is not going to happen so long as The New York Times, the United Nations, and a host of others keep repeating their lethal lies.
© Alan Caruba. 2012
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There is an interesting article at Masterresource about the "smart grid" and how California is finding the implementation of smart meters and the like a bit more difficult than they first imagined.
http://www.masterresource.org/2012/05/cpuc-dra-smart-grid/#more-19892
From the article:
"The numbers are interesting, but DRA’s big point is that the CPUC has hardly any idea about what it does or doesn’t know amid the hyper complexity of smart meter costs and benefits.
AMI is now the subject matter of lots and lots of dockets, many of which appear to have little to do with it. By actual count, the commission must track more than 130 different costs and 50 projected benefits, probably not all well-defined.
Remarkable Estimate
The basic value of AMI has long been far from certain. In a 2005 response to the commission’s request for a "business case,” SCE concluded that on balance it would not be cost-effective, save for some programs for customers who already had smart meters. The company came back in 2007, and this time the regulators authorized $1.63 billion for implementation on the basis of a remarkable estimate.
Specifically, over the 24-year duration of SCE’s program, the present value of net benefits would be the princely sum of $9.2 million. (Some other claimed benefits like reduced power theft were thrown out by agreement.) The commission authorized the $1.63 billion, but the business case includes another $1.58 billion of post-deployment costs not authorized but in the business case calculation."
End excerpt.
Smart grids are the Environmentalists answer to generating electricity. A smart meter would regulate energy usage and pricing. The idea is not to make more power but to use it more efficiently. It is the dream of the Gang Green to power down America; it's the same thinking that gave us those horrible compact florescent mercury poisoners that put out dim yellow light.
But this article - and the comments after - show a profound misunderstanding of the purpose of these smart grids; they are not really about managing peak energy but about control. The endgame is to make it possible for the government to shut off the spigot when they please, or to throttle back how much power the consumer gets. Now it's about pricing, but that's not the endgame here.
The end result will be a system where the State can tell the consumer how much he can or cannot use.
That's why they will keep pushing forward with this technology despite dubious consumer benefits; this is ultimately about control. Granted, there has always been a kill switch on electricity, but it was always quite difficult, requiring choking everyone's energy. The smart grid makes it possible to choke just those you want to choke. Much like the Obama Administration shutting off water to California's conservative Imperial Valley (to punish his political enemies and ostensibly save some sort of snail or whatnot) so too they will ne able to turn off the lights to those they don't like. And if they think you are using too much power, they will shut off your air-conditioner, your computer, etc.
The ability to control energy is the ability to control the individual. THAT is the purpose of these smart grids. So don't be surprised that they do not live up to their billing; this isn't about the stated goals anyway.
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Here it is suggested that Zippy (and his minions) will stage a "Reichstag Event" to justify establishing martial law and suspending elections this fall if he thinks he will lose. http://beforeitsnews.com/story/2128/441/DHS_Whistleblower:_Obama_Will_Commit_Reichstag_Event_To_Trigger_Martial_Law.html
Frankly, I'm not sure how we can counteract this. Maybe it'll time for our great civilian army to mobilize.
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Our Emperor has been doing his best to convince voters that his likely opponent in November, Mitt Romney, is "out of touch" with voters because of his wealth. However, it turn out that Zippy and Mooch are not exactly relegated to eating at soup kitchens and shopping at thrift stores and the local Dollar Tree.
FTA: "Apparent from President Obama's annual financial disclosure statement, released today:
"He is a wealthy man, with assets of as much as $10 million.
"He has a hefty stake in JPMorgan Chase, the megabank that just made a bad $2 billion bet. Obama has an account worth between $500,000 and $1 million."
Read it all here, please: http://www.urgentagenda.com/PERMALINKS%20VII/MAY%202012/16.FUNDS.HTML
Dare we hope that Mittens will "man up" and take this fight to Zippy? I don't think he needs to get into a dollar amount comparison slugging match (which he'll lose), but he should be able to craft an argument that effectively addresses the "out of touch" meme.
Personally, I think it is just plain silly to argue that the amount of shekels a man has, has anything to do with whether he is "out of touch" with other people or not.
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Daren Jonescu
This article first appeared at American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/globally_warmed_over_hatred_unmasked_at_last.html
Aspiring apparatchiks of the coming world dictatorship, tiring of the hopeless race against facts in their anti-industrial carbon dioxide hoax, have finally given up the pretense of science in favor of pure, old-fashioned doomsday preaching. Having been outlasted by reality in the pseudo-science of "global cooling," undone once again in the pseudo-science of "global warming," and ultimately laughed off the stage in the unfalsifiable quackery of "global climate change," it is apparently time at last for the advocates of tyranny in the name of Gaia to play their last card: global mass hysteria. http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/43974
Consider a recent New York Times editorial by James Hansen http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-climate.html?_r=2&hp, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and adjunct professor at -- where else? -- Columbia University, the headquarters of the U.S. East-Coast wing of the global socialist movement. The article is an assault on the Canadian oil sands project, and a plea to the Obama administration to do something to stop the Canadian government from allowing wealth and jobs to be created.
Hansen's diatribe -- I choose that word merely as a literal description of the article, which bears no resemblance to an argument -- is noteworthy on three fronts: (1) its tone of angry defiance, suggestive of a man whose instinct, in the face of rational defeat, is to say, "Damn all of you!"; (2) Hansen's attempt to use the Times' friendly confines to double down on the projections of his discredited climate models, without compunction at having no remaining grounds for his claims; and (3) the straightforwardness with which his proposed course of action on this issue proclaims the real, but hitherto half-concealed, purpose of the global climate fraud -- namely, a government takeover of the world economy by means of a proletarian uprising against the "capitalists."
Consider Hansen's opening statement. After years of basing everything on climate modelling, in which he himself was a pioneer, Hansen is now prepared to jettison all that -- as indeed he must -- by dismissing the core of climate modelling -- i.e., prediction -- in favor of the bald assertion that "[g]lobal warming isn't a prediction. It is happening."
Is it happening? Not according to Hansen's British counterpart, Phil Jones of East Anglia University (of "Climategate" fame), who in 2010, when asked whether he agreed that there has been "no statistically-significant" warming since 1995, pathetically conceded, "Yes, but only just." (To paraphrase, "I'm wrong -- but barely!") And not -- as Timothy Birdnow recently detailed at American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/04/the_last_days_of_global_warming_theory.html -- according to James Lovelock, popular climate alarmist and inventor of the Gaia Hypothesis, who recently acknowledged that "we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago."
In other words, even some of the most prominent advocates of "hiding the decline" have finally been forced by inescapable facts to come out of the closet and confess what many honest scientists have been saying for years -- namely, that global temperatures simply aren't following the primary rule programmed into the computer models -- namely, that increased CO2 equals increased rates of warming.
James Hansen, however, is sticking to his guns. In fact, he's coming out all guns a-blazing.
Canada's tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet's species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.
First of all, this wild guess in the form of an authoritative conclusion is explicitly predicated on the full exploitation of all the oil in the tar sands. Who is proposing to extract (and burn) all of it? And how long would that take?
Assuming this were to happen, and CO2 "eventually" reached levels comparable to the Pliocene epoch, when, exactly, would sea levels reach Pliocene heights? How does one quantify statements such as "disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control"? What does "out of control" mean? Who controls such things now? Is Hansen saying that people in coastal cities would suddenly wake up one morning to find themselves in an octopus's garden?
Yes, that is precisely what he is saying. For he is no longer engaged in pseudo-science; he is simply screaming, "We're all gonna die! Run for the hills!" In his actual words: "If this sounds apocalyptic, it is."
Given the obvious boon to plant life that such an enormous boost in CO2 might entail, the fact that Hansen provides no evidence that the Pliocene epoch was characterized by a widespread reduction in life forms, and the fact that modern technology would make a voluntary migration of mankind to more tolerable -- and at present largely uninhabited -- climatic regions relatively easy, it is, on its face, unclear why Hansen is so "apocalyptic" about these projected changes, even assuming, charitably, that he isn't talking through his hat.
Why, then, is this alleged man of science speaking so incautiously? For a reason made all too apparent by his proposed solution to all of this, his policy advice to President Obama: palliate the masses with widescale wealth redistribution. Seeing that his project of decades -- and with it the "global governance" dreams of leftists like Al Gore and Herman Van Rompuy -- is crumbling in the face of growing public skepticism, he, along with others, is refusing to go down without one last desperate fear-mongering swing. If the climate frauds can get the policy action they want now, it will no longer matter, five years hence, whether there is anything left of the theory underpinning their ruse.
Hansen's proposal:
We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices.
"We should impose a fee." A fee is a charge for service. But those paying the fee proposed here would be receiving no service -- on the contrary, they would be having their source of income, and those of their thousands of employees, destroyed. So why should they choose to pay this fee? Naturally, they would not "choose" it. That is why "we" should "impose" it on them. An imposed fee? That is a euphemism for one of two things: theft, if the fee is imposed privately, or a tax, if imposed by the government. Presumably, Hansen intends the latter, in which case "we" might generously be interpreted as "we voters," although it is more likely that what he had in mind was something like "we power brokers, we the elite, we who control things."
So a new tax -- a tax imposed exclusively on the fossil fuel industry, and then "distributed" to "all Americans on a per-capita basis every month." Tax certain people, and hand the money directly to other people. Hansen conveniently leaves the prefix "re-" off the word "distribute," so the little people won't notice what he is really driving at.
But the best part of this "fee" which will be "distributed" to "all Americans" is the next part: "The government would not get a penny." So when the government collects taxes, and then spends the revenue on redistribution of wealth, this does not constitute the government "getting a penny." If I rob a bank and distribute the cash among my friends, this no longer counts as my having acquired money illegitimately from the bank. Money-laundering made easy! Feel better now? When tax dollars are used to subsidize other people's lives, this is, according to Columbia University professor Hansen, a "market-based approach."
Further, following the fairness doctrine of the post-partisan president, this "market-based approach" even-handedly avoids having the government "pick winners or losers." What about all those people working in the fossil fuel industry, or related fields, you say? Well, they were picked as losers by Gaia -- the government had nothing to do with it.
And don't forget the best part: "Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices."
In other words, this demolition of the fuel industry will obviously lead to vast price increases -- not to mention scarcity and subsequent price increases in all other areas of the economy -- but these will be offset for "most Americans, except the heaviest energy users," by the direct transfer of "fees" from the fuel companies to your pocket. Or it will be offset until the money from those companies dries up, which, under such a "market-based approach," should probably be about six weeks. By then, certainly, those imposed "distributions" will have "stimulated" enough "innovation" in alternative energy to get everyone off those over-priced fossil fuels anyway, right?
The general outline of Hansen's modest proposal: the drivers of industrial society and modern technology, along with the wealthy in general ("the heaviest energy users"), shall be wiped out, with the spoils redistributed among the masses in an effort to solidify the support of these "beneficiaries" long enough to complete the "fundamental transformation" of America and the rest of civilization. Needless to say, a few "heavy energy users" will be spared; these are the global elitists themselves, who always have a built-in work-around plan for such eventualities. (In this case, however, they may be over-estimating what connections can do for you -- complete civilizational ruin tends to "accelerate out of control," if you will.)
Think, finally, of what Hansen is asking of those who would receive these "distributed" "fees" -- i.e., "all Americans." He is banking everything on the idea that the majority of people would shamelessly accept the premise that private companies with hundreds of thousands of employees supporting millions of family members should directly hand them a portion of their revenues for no reason other than as punishment for producing CO2. If his presumption is correct -- it may well be -- the battle for liberty has already been lost.
Forget Hansen's scare tactics -- he has officially forsaken semi-rational argument, so there is no reason to pay attention to his claims. Focus instead on his practical proposal. Shout it from the rooftops, in fact. If fear is to be used as a political weapon, then let's give everyone something really scary to think about.
This famous global warming "theorist" has laid everything on the table: he is proposing the direct confiscation of legally earned wealth for the express purpose of temporarily offsetting the hardships that will result from destroying the industrial economy.
And when the destruction is complete, and the confiscated wealth has dried up? Well, then of course Hansen, Obama, and the rest of the redistributionist planet-savers have a plan for restoring the liberty that had to be suspended temporarily in Gaia's name -- wouldn't you think?
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In The Coming Breastfeeding Wars I argue that the Left is gearing up to make breastfeeding the next civil rights struggle, and that the advocates of extended breastfeeding are a bit on the moonpie side.
Well, I am not wrong - especially about the moonpies.
http://mothering.com/breastfeeding/aids-war-breastfeeding
Yes, if you bothered to visit the website you did indeed see an argument that mothers infected with HIV should still breastfeed their children!
From the article:
"There was no evidence that the 15% of children breastfed by HIV-positive mothers who themselves become positive are actually infected with HIV let alone that all, or even most, will develop AIDS. There was also no attempt to factor out how many health risks in these children were due to many of the mothers being IV drug users or malnourished. There should have been concerns about the use of unpublished data and the most extreme data coming from a study of a type that the authors themselves declared should not be used. The extensive problems with this analysis are discussed in detail in an AnotherLook position paper (Crowe, 2006).
But the profitable formula train had left the station and facts and experience were not going to derail it. Drug and formula companies brought women simplified messages, like this from a GlaxoSmithKline-run website in 2004, "If you are HIV positive, do not breast-feed, because it's dangerous for your baby. Your baby can get HIV infection or reinfection from breast milk. Bottle feeding with infant formula will help protect your baby's health.” (TreatHIV.com, 2004) Governments insulted the intelligence of women with capitalized (and unsubstantiated) orders like, "HIV-positive women SHOULD NOT BREASTFEED” (Alberta Health, 1998)."
[...]
"t is depressing to think how much better off the world would have been, how many babies would be alive and how many mothers would have been spared the agony of watching their baby die in front of them, if only all those PhDs, MDs, RNs and other educated people who have swallowed the HIV=AIDS theory for all these years, had simply done nothing, if the world had paid them to stay at home rather than coming to work and promoting and managing the deadly formula feeding programs of the past decade."
End excerpts.
Now, only a pathological zealot would advocate breastfeeding for a woman with a disease that is transmitted through bodily fluids, yet there you have it. This whole breastfeeding thing is far beyond rationality. Notice the author of this piece claims bottle feeding is killing babies, and that it is better for a very sick woman to breastfeed than for a child to consume formula. This is the argument of a lunatic.
I ask all readers; is my assessment of the coming breastfeeding wars somehow over the top? The reality is that many advocates of the practice are so enthralled with this "back to nature" ideal that they can no longer think rationally.
This is what is about to be unleashed on America.
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I occasionally get quoted in the mainstream media and when a Mother Jones reporter asked my opinion of the effort to declare the diamond back rattlesnake on the endangered list, I told him that it was absurd. He had found me via my recent blog post on the Endangered Species Act.
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2012/05/playing-god-with-endangered-species.html
The Mother Jones reporter asked if there was a connection between the rattlesnake and the Tea Party use of the famed "Don't Tread on Me" flag from the days of the Revolution. I shot that down!
Well, a reporter at Business Week picked up on the Mother Jones article and quoted yours truly in his own.
This is why I continue to ask for donations because Warning Signs is getting noticed in the mainstream media and I do a fair amount of radio interviews as well. It gets the conservative message out there and God knows it's hard to break through the liberal blather served up as news.
The articles are brief and fun to read:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-15/tea-partiers-love-of-rattlesnakes-only-goes-so-far
http://m.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/05/tea-party-snake-diamondback-flag-rattlesnake
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May 15, 2012
Time Magazine has caused a stir with a rather risque' picture of a pretty model breastfeeding her three year old son, and the internet has been abuzz with commentary, much of it directed at the picture - and its appropriateness - itself. What has been missing is a discussion of the actual article the picture was intended to promote, and why Time felt it worthy of devoting the cover to an article about extended breastfeeding. One must ask; is there more to this than meets the eye?
Unquestionably. This is the tip of the iceberg.
The Time article was devoted to the theories of Dr. Bill Sears, who advocates something called "attachment parenting" http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/attachment-parenting/what-ap-7-baby-bs
Sears believes that children are encouraged to be independent too early and too much, and that mothers should wrap their little ones in a cocoon of motherly love. Now, there is nothing wrong with showing love to your child, but one must ask where the line should be drawn. Adolf Hitler, for example, was extremely close with his mother and look how he turned out. At any rate, one wonders exactly how a society of children so smothered by parental care will fare upon adulthood; will the children learn independence and self-reliance as American children have traditionally done, or will they move from breastfeeding on their mothers to breastfeeding on Uncle Sam? It seems to me that "attachment parenting" is going to make a bunch of permanent children to replenish the dependent classes.
Be that as it may, the question arises; why did Time run this article on the front cover, and why now?
This is an issue that has been quietly gaining momentum.
The U.S. Surgeon General supports breastfeeding http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2011pres/08/20110801e.html, and even extended (over one year) breastfeeding. So does the World Health Organization http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/exclusive_breastfeeding/en/, so does Michelle Obama. In fact, the IRS is offering tax breaks to encourage nursing. http://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/02/14/michelle-obama-to-promote-breast-feeding-as-irs-gives-tax-breaks/
And the city of Seattle has declared breastfeeding a civil right.
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/09/11106924-breastfeeding-is-now-a-civil-right-in-seattle?lite
According to an AP article, the Surgeon General issued goals that fully 25% of all babies be breast fed by 2020.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-masks-problem-kids-breast-fed.html
And the Affordable Healthcare Act (aka Obamacare) requires employers to provide for nursing workers. http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2011/02/new-breastfeeding-law-to-help-working-moms.html
There is the key.
The new federal regulations will force employers to give mothers time off during the workday to nurse their children (unpaid at present, but that will be subject to change) But what value is time to nurse if the child is not available? This ultimately requires employer-provided daycare to exercise this new "right". It fundamentally redefines the relationship between employer, employee, and the government. It puts the grubby paws of the regulators that much deeper into the economy. And it creates a new right where one did not exist. How long before this right metastasizes into a right to free daycare, or free healthcare for the children, or the right to other special privileges?
Meanwhile, the father's role is diminished even more as mom drags her children to work every day.
There are other nice benefits to this from the Progressive standpoint. For instance, the Left has always hated the cow http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/01/wheres_the_beef.html, which they see as the embodiement of American excess. They hate it for it's Global Warming-causing flatulence, for the damage it does to creeks and streams, for the four pounds of grain it eats to produce one pound of meat. They would love to be rid of the stinky animals, but the cow produces milk. Extended breast feeding would greatly reduce the demand for cows milk, and perhaps push some dairy farmers to sell their land to some Soros-owned investment corporation or forfeit it to the government. The Administration has been quietly waging a war on cows milk, classifying milk as a form of oil http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/28881 thus forcing dairy farmers to keep expensive "toxic spill" equipment on hand lest they spill a milk jug, and raiding "raw" milk farms. And milk, once the hallmark of America's bounty, will become less profitable as sales decrease. Oh, and America will become more like the Third World where mothers breastfeed for long periods of time because they have to.
There are several organizations dedicated to promoting extended breastfeeding and the like. La Leche, for instance. I found a group called the Lactavists, too.
Let's not forget this continues the feminization of America, what Rush Limbaugh calls the "chickafication" of our society.
But again, why now? Well...
There is a real chance Obamacare will be found unconsitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, and if that law is struck down so too will the breastfeeding requirements. Obama can start campaigning for stand-alone legislation imposing these regulations on businesses, and the GOP will be forced to oppose him. He and his lackeys in the media will then have the perfect souondbytes for the "war on women" shibboleth they have been fashioning; the GOP and that evil Mitt Romney hate women, children, and despise motherhood. And they will walk right into this trap, as they always manage to do.
Progressives do not do things Off the cuff, and their stated motives are never their true motives. This is particularly true of this Administration. We would be wise to seek out the real purposes behind Time Magazine's cover article, and to understand that this is the beginning of a campaign to create a new right. A right imposes no obligation on others to exercise, yet the Progressives have turned the concept on its head. Consider Barack Obama's lament that the Constitution does not offer "positive rights" delineating what government must do for the citizenry; he shows that he thinks rights obligate others. He would undoubtedly see breast feeding as a right, and demand that businesses and society at large reorganize itself to promote the wishes of a minority of women. and with the media's help he will manage to convince many Americans that this is so.
Thus begins a titanic struggle. We need to get out in front on this.
(Thanks to Jack Kemp for telling me about La Leche.)
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From an section on training a former soldier's therapy dog in the book "Until Tuesday:"
One Sunday, Tuesday's foster mother took him to church. Not to sit in the car, but to sit under the pew and listen, without complaint, to an entire sermon. At communion, he followed his foster mother to the kneeler. Instead of sitting behind her as she expected, Tuesday sat beside her, with is paws on the altar rail. Everyone else had their hands there, so why not? When the priest came with the communion wafers, Tuesday quietly watched him pass, but his eyes said, Hey, why didn't I get a treat? The priest came back, placed his hands on Tuesday's head and blessed his future work.Tuesday waited quietly for a few seconds, then turned and walked back to his seat, the whole congregation chuckling behind him.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
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The wheels are coming off the wind energy gravy train
And subsidy-dependent wind energy supporters are running scared
Marita Noon
The wind energy industry has been having a hard time. The taxpayer funding that has kept it alive for the last twenty years is coming to an end, and those promoting the industry are panicking.
Perhaps this current wave started when one of Big Wind’s most noted supporters, T. Boone Pickens, said in an MSNBC interview, "I’m in the wind business…. I lost my ass in the business.” But the industry’s fortunes didn’t get any better when the Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial titled, "Gouged by the wind,” in which they stated: "With natural gases not far from $2 per million BTU, the competitiveness of wind power is highly suspect.” Citing a study on renewable energy mandates, the WSJ noted that states with renewable energy mandates "paid 31.9% more for electricity than states without them.”
A comprehensive article in the Financial Times concluded that the "US renewables boom could turn into a bust,” the enthusiasm for renewables "could fizzle out,” the US wind industry is stalling and may go into reverse,” and "governments all over the world have been curbing support for renewable energy.”
Michael Liebreich of the research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance says, "With a financially stressed electorate, it’s really hard to go to them and say: ‘Gas is cheap, but we’ve decided to build wind farms for no good reason that we can articulate.’” Christopher Blansett, alternative-energy sector analyst for the Best on the Street survey, says, "People want cheap energy. They don't necessarily want clean energy.”
As the Financial Times reports, time-limited subsidy programs "face an uphill battle.” The biggest US program set to expire this year is the production tax credit (PTC) for onshore wind power, which "is the most important factor behind the fourfold expansion of US wind generation since 2006.” Four recent attempts in Congress to extend it have failed.”
According to the WSJ, "The industry is launching a lobbying blitz.” The "2012 Strategy” memo from the American Wind Energy Association includes:
· "To maximize WindPAC’s influence, WindPAC will increase the number of fundraisers we hold for Members of Congress.”
· "Continue the Iowa caucus program to ensure the successful implanting of a pro-wind message into the Republican presidential primary campaign.”
· "Respond quickly to unfavorable articles by posting comments online, using the AWEA blog and twitter, and putting out press releases.”
· "Continue to advocate for long term extension of PTC and ITC option for offshore wind.”
· "AWEA requested a funding level of $144.2 million for FY 2012 for the Department of Energy (DOE) Wind Energy Program, an increase of $17.3 million above the President’s Congressional budget request.”
A wind turbine manufacturer quoted in the Financial Times article says, "If the PTC just disappears, the industry will collapse.” Regarding United Technologies plans to sell its wind turbine business, chief financial officer Greg Hayes admitted: "We all make mistakes.”
Despite twenty years of taxpayer funding, says the Financial Times, "Most of these technologies are unable to stand on their own commercially, particularly in competition with a resurgent natural gas industry that has created a supply glut and driven prices to 10-year lows.” The WSJ opines: "the tax subsidy has sustained the industry on a scale that wouldn’t have been possible if they had to follow the same rules as everyone else.” A level playing field would mean that wind developers would also lose its exemptions from environmental and economic laws that all other businesses must abide by.
It is precisely the fear of having to play by "the same rules as everyone else” that must have propelled the anti-fossil fuels Checks and Balances Project to dig deep to unearth a "confidential” document. The brainstorming document was designed to trigger conversation during an initial meeting of grassroots folks who share the common goal of compelling wind energy to follow the same economic, environmental and scientific rules. While the meeting was held February 1-2, the document’s author didn’t attend (but I did) and his ideas received little attention, months later our little meeting was suddenly in the news.
On May 8, many meeting attendees received calls from several publications, including the National Journal, Washington Times and Bloomberg News – none of whom ultimately ran a story. However, The Guardian did run a story that was picked up and expanded on by Environment & Energy (whose reporter also to a few of us), HuffPost, Tree Hugger, Climate Progress, and others. (Interestingly, Climate Progress and Tree Hugger remove any comment in opposition to wind energy as soon as it is posted.) High Country News also ran an original story that was trigged by the Checks and Balances press release.
These sources resulted in some form of the story being blasted all over the Internet. The wind energy industry panic certainly explains the sudden interest. But why our little group? Washington Examiner columnist, Timothy Carney, provides the answer: "AWEA plans ‘continued deployment of opposition research through third parties to cause critics to have to respond,’ the battle plan states. In other words: When people attack AWEA's subsidies, AWEA might feed an unflattering story on that person to some ideological or partisan media outlet or activist group.”
The members of this growing "same rules for everyone” coalition are the people who have attacked the subsidies. Our collaborative actions have helped block the PTC extension efforts. And so, through "third party” pro-wind activists, the AWEA has fed "an unflattering story” to a "partisan media outlet.”
A common claim in the news stories is that we are actually an oil-and-gas funded entity. They’ve tied us to the Koch Brothers. We all wish. Apparently they cannot believe that individuals and local groups can think for themselves and impact public policy, without a puppet master telling us what to do and say.
In fact, the group has no funding. As we began to email back and forth over the sudden reporter interest, one meeting attendee quipped: "My trip was funded, in part, by MY brother, who donated frequent flyer miles for my trip. I can assure you that my brother is not part of the Koch family. I paid for the rest of the trip out of my own pocket.”
Yet, the reporters seemed determined to find a funding link. I told the Bloomberg reporter that we each paid our own way, the meeting was held in a budget hotel outside of DC (unlike the AWEA meeting held at taxpayer and ratepayer expense at the prestigious La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, CA), and we each had to pay for our own transportation, food and lodging. My comments never made it into print. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I am the executive director of companion organizations that do receive funding from oil and gas companies, as well as many individual donors. But like the others, I was invited to the wind meeting as an individual, not as a member of any organization.)
Additionally, we are not even a formal group. We met to consider forming a group. The "leaked” memo addresses finding a group that might absorb us, affiliate with us, or align with us.
Attendees brought their individual issues, observations, and successes. Each contributed important insights. Some viewed health impacts as the most important topic, others, economics – still others turbine setback distances, or bird deaths or land use. Others, including the meeting’s organizer, John Droz, believe that the science – or in the case of Big Wind, the lack thereof – is the best weapon. Other reasons to oppose wind come down to government use of taxpayer money to support something that raises electricity prices, based on the failed hypothesis of dangerous man-made global warming.
Because of the meeting, attendees now know we are not alone, and we can call on one another for insight and advice, and to ensure far greater strength in numbers. However, without Checks and Balances director Gabe Elsner "discovery” and subsequent "exposure” of the "secret memo,” we’d still be just loosely affiliated individuals and small citizens’ groups. So we owe Elsner a debt of gratitude. His attack has emboldened us and helped others find us! A representative from the Blue Mountain Alliance sent Droz an email stating, "I probably need to send them a thank you note for leading me to you and your efforts.”
After the murmurings became known, meeting attendee Paul Driessen wrote a data-filled column, "Why we need to terminate Big Wind subsidies.” It garnered more than 700 Facebook "likes” on Townhall.com, suggesting that many readers had recommended it to friends – and friends had recommended it to friends. Within just a few days, his column was all over the Internet.
Wind energy has more opposition than most people realize, and Elsner, who has served as the "third party” in the AWEA strategy, has enabled us to find many more like-minded citizen-voters. While a few attendees at the DC meeting were concerned about all the publicity, attorney Brad Tupi, who has represented citizens victimized by wind energy projects, responded: "I would plead guilty to participating in a meeting of concerned citizens opposed to wasteful, unproven, inefficient wind energy. I would agree that we are interested in coordinating with other reputable organizations, and I personally would be honored to work with the Heartland Institute and others.”
If you do not support industrial-scale, tax-payer-funded wind-energy projects that are promoted based on ideology and emotion, rather than facts and sound science, you can benefit from affiliating with us. Dr. Droz has a wonderful presentation full of helpful information. A few of the many websites represented by meeting attendees include: Illinois Wind Watch, Coalition for Sensible Siting, Energy Integrity Project, and Citizen Power Alliance.
The lesson to be learned from the attack on these hard-working citizens is that we little people can make a difference! We’ve got the rich subsidy-seeking wind-energy supporters running scared – along with the crony capitalism that accompanies them. Remember, "If the PTC just disappears” – meaning if we do not keep giving Big Wind taxpayer dollars – "the industry will collapse.” Your phone call or email to a Senator or Congressman, such as Steve King or Dave Reichert who recently came out in support of the PTC, can make a difference. Tell them, as the WSJ said, "If the [Republican] Party is serious about tax reform … it will vote to take wind power off the taxpayer dole.”
It is time for the AWEA and the politicians who support the PTC to explain why higher electricity costs, human health impacts, substantial loss of property values in rural communities, dead bats and birds, and increased national debt are good for America and her taxpayers!
Marita Noon is the author of Energy Freedom and executive director of Energy Makes America Great and the companion educational organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy (CARE).
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
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In frequent White House visitor Hilary Rosen's latest rant against heterosexuals, Breitbart.com's Ben Shapiro reports that Rosen now claims that straight people are ruining marriage. Specifically, she stated on ABC Television's "This Weak:"
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/05/14/Rosen-back-lesbian-divorce
Here's one more sort of nonpolitical point, which is, you know, sorry, but straight people don't need any help tearing down the institution of marriage. You're doing just fine as it is. One in three divorces. You know, come on.
END OF QUOTE
As Shapiro said in the article, there is nothing nonpolitical about this. Ms. Rosen has figuratively divorced the partner she had when they adopted these children (apparently carrying a child to term was not a favorable option for both these partners), so Rosen now has her own lesbian version of divorced parents with the children traveling between both "parents." And she wants to lecture straights on the subject of fidelity. She's not even qualified to lecture lesbians who have gone through pregnancy and delivered their own children. These two children more resemble, for Ms. Rosen, a set of matching fashion accessories.
Also the photo in the article shows that the children adopted by Ms. Rosen are both black. That means this boy and girl now have no father in their life, which not so ironically is a major problem in the black community. So Rosen is doing her part to make sure two black children, which could have gone to a heterosexual couple of whatever background, will probably never have a father.
It appears, as Ms. Rosen lashes out against straights (Romney's campaign manager is probably restraining himself from sending her a "Thank You" note and four dozen roses), that she is trying as hard to convince herself of her negative position on heterosexual marriage as the rest of us.
But there is one consolation. Hilary Rosen is now perfectly qualified to author a trendy new children's book: Heather has FOUR Mommies.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
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