Colts Organization Should Be Ashamed

After going 14-0 the Colts decide to stop pursuing perfection when they sit their starters and lose their first game.

Coach Caldwell decided to sit his starters with five minutes left to go in the third quarter of a 15-10 game against the lowly Jets. Caldwell sat his best players to preserve their health for the upcoming playoffs. The Colts have clinched home field advantage throughout the playoffs and dont strategically need any more wins at all until they get to the playoffs. They ended up losing.

I dont like this decision the coach made. Sports are all about records and competition. You owe it to the players (who undoubtedly wanted to keep playing to win due to their facial expressions on the sideline when their coach made the decision to ultimately forfeit their game), and you owe it to the fans. If Peyton or any other crucial playmakers get injured from the last quarter and a half of football, I think it would be forgiveable. If the Colts win the Super Bowl this year, I don't know if the decision will be forgiveable.

Here is a link if you want any more information on this very important and hotly debated topic
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4776421

China to America: "The world doesn't have enough money to finance your spending."

I read this short little news bit from Rush Limbaugh dot com. According to the Chinese, the world can not continue to buy up U.S. treasury bonds because there are not enough dollars on the international markets. (This is according to my understanding of the matter.) The World Net Daily websites gives a short explanation.

IT is getting harder for governments to buy United States Treasuries because the US's shrinking current-account gap is reducing supply of dollars overseas, a Chinese central bank official said yesterday.[...]'The United States cannot force foreign governments to increase their holdings of Treasuries," Zhu said, according to an audio recording of his remarks. "Double the holdings? It is definitely impossible.'

'The US current account deficit is falling as residents' savings increase, so its trade turnover is falling, which means the US is supplying fewer dollars to the rest of the world,' he added. 'The world does not have so much money to buy more US Treasuries.'

America is spending way too much money that it does not have. It is somewhat funny that the Chinese are the ones that are the voice reason in this matter. I don't know the complete details of this economic relationship between the two countries, but I have heard that America's and China's economies are interdependent on each other, something to do with the fact that China's economy is tied to the value of the dollar. Maybe the Chinese can keep our government's spending in check. I just thought this was a funny story because our government is spending so much money that the world can not continue to finance its deficit spending, and this puts a little perspective on the level of spending and the debt that goes along with it that is occurring. This is could possibly be a good thing since Americans are saving more which could lead to forcing our government to reduce its spending; yet at the same time this fact also illustrates that our government is spending so much money that it takes the world running out of money to possibly prevent our government from continuing to spend money.

Obama's Afghanistan and Iraq Policies - Status Update

So, what's the RTP consensus on Commander-in-Chief Obama's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan?  The one aspect of Obama's presidency that I've been pleasantly surprised about is his handling of the Iraq and Afghan conflicts so far.  Pleasantly surprised as in not-a-disaster.  He's blown off his political base and pretty much done exactly what George Bush would be doing if he still were in office.  The fact that I can repeat this statement seven months after I first said it is a good thing.

In Iraq: After George Bush made the brave, painful, unpopular, highly risky choice (ie acted like a leader) of endorsing the surge suggested by Gen Petraeus, and ended up winning Iraq War III, Obama did not pull out precipitously as he had said he would in his campaign.  Obama has ordered a phased, steady disengagement, but, probably only due to Bush's efforts, this is happening under the same conditions that it would have happened with Bush at the helm: a combat phase-out happening when Iraqis are able to control things themselves.  From The Whitehouse's own Issues page:

Responsibly Ending the War in Iraq
On February 27, 2009, President Obama announced a plan to responsibly end the war in Iraq.

By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end and Iraqi Security Forces will have full responsibility for major combat missions. After August 31, 2010, the mission of United States forces in Iraq will fundamentally change. Our forces will have three tasks: train, equip, and advise the Iraqi Security Forces; conduct targeted counterterrorism operations; and provide force protection for military and civilian personnel. The President intends to keep our commitment under the Status of Forces Agreement to remove all of our troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.

Assuming things don't go down the tubes between now and then, this is a good, sensible policy, but only because Bush cleared the way for it to be sensible.

In Afghanistan, you know, the War that Bush forgot in his pursuit of cheap Iraqi oil, Obama has approved an increase in troop levels by 30,000, in semi-agreement with the request of Gen McChrystal, in an attempt to surge to put down the growing insurgency by the Taliban.  He announced a timetable for departure, which is foolish, but the fact that he is willing to fight the war even temporarily is more than what we expected from him.  This may or may not be the right policy for Afghanistan.  Maybe the right policy here is to pull back to major bases and just fuck up the Taliban when they get uppity.  But, at least it is not cutting-and-running.

I have many, many bones to pick with Obama, but in this critical area, he has been no better or worse than his predecessor, and it must drive his left wing base crazy!  You go girl!

Communist and Socialist are trying to save the planet.

This information is not new to us here. So I will make a short post with some entertaining videos. I got this video from the Hot Air blog and I downloaded it from Youtube.



I got this off of Rush Limbaugh dot com. Hugo Chavez made an interesting speech--minute seven is a good place to start--at the Copenhagen meetings where he generally attacked capitalism by stating that "capitalism is a ghost in the room". He received some applause for these remarks--Rush said it was a loud and long applause, but the one in the video was rather quiet and short. Chavez did give a shout-out to the young people outside of the meetings protesting. Probably not the people in the video above, but all of the other hippies. To sum up the theme of the Copenhagen meetings, Capitalism needs to go in order to save the environment--of course the saving the environment part is just a means to gain legitimacy for their goal of destroying capitalism, a new take on a relativitly old movement.

The remarks by Chavez illustrates one of the main problems with international meetings such as Copenhagen and international bodies such as the U.N.--they give equal time an and clout to these Communist dictators. If there is to be an international governing body that is conductive to free trade and overall freedom--which is necessary, these clowns need to be removed from these organizations or their influence needs to be completely sidelined in these organizations. This of course won't happen because two of the major players in the U.N. are Russia and China, and there can not be an IGB that leaves out over half of the world. These systems of tyranny will never be completely eliminated from the world--the free countries did not have the fortitude nor the means. There can not be a union of freedom or good and tyranny or evil. Tyranny and evil is the one that benefits from such a union. A union between freedom and tyranny is the how the current IGB is taking shape, so it will not turn out to be one that is good for Freedom. Overall, a good video that shows who the people are that are behind this global warming scam and a good illustration of what is wrong with the U.N. and these international meetings--the U.N. and these international meetings are a mixture of freedom and tyranny, and they are a means to disarm the West and to gain its compliance and support in the destruction of freedom.

White people will be the minority in America by 2050.

I read this article on yahoo news. Basically the recession has pushed back the original date of 2023 when white people would become the minority in America. What does this mean? Not much, just an interesting fact. America's demographics are changing. I remember reading about this in my American government class and the effects this would have on American politics--Mexicans will be the second largest majority group. Hopefully, these minorities will be educated with American values. Another interesting fact is that people with the knowledge of what it takes to maintain a free nation are rapidly becoming the minority thanks to the education system. I remember watching a show on the Discovery channel stating that white people are becoming extinct. Hopefully the culture of freedom that has been the hallmark of white people throughout history won't becoming extinct along with white people.

An update on the increase of the national debt limit and some facts about the national debt.

Back in August the Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner formally requested that Congress raise the $12.1 trillion statutory debt limit due to the massive amount of debt that the Country is acquiring due to the recession and the massive amount of government spending that is taking place under the guise of helping the economy to come out of the recession. The time has come for Congress to raise the national debt limit which has been increased twice since 2002, "House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Friday that Congress needs to raise the limit by at least $1.8 trillion". This would be the largest increase in to the national debt limit in the history of our.

The Heritage Foundation has done a quick run down on the national debt,

Why the Debt and the Debt Limit Matter

• $12,000,000,000,000: The total federal debt has reached a whopping $12 trillion. About $7.6 trillion is debt held by the public, which has been borrowed from citizens and foreign countries, and $4.4 trillion is debt held by the government, which has been borrowed primarily from the Social Security trust fund.
• Debt Is Earning Interest That Taxpayers Must Pay: Public debt holders are paid annual interest from the federal budget, which must be paid with taxpayer dollars. In 2009 interest payments amounted to $209 billion.
• Too Much Debt Will Slow the Economy: Government borrowing reduces resources available for private investment, leading to lower productivity, wages, and economic growth.
• Only Getting Worse: The recession and excessive spending have caused the debt held by the public to grow sharply to 56% of the economy, topping the historical average of 36%. To make matters worse, entitlement programs will double in size over the next few decades and cause the national debt to reach 320% of the economy.[Emphasise mine]
  
• Raising the Debt Limit: Congress will vote to determine the limit for the federal debt, which currently stands at $12.1 trillion. Since the national debt has hit $12 trillion, Congress plans to raise the debt limit.

Congress Plans to Quietly Raise the Debt Limit

• Congress Hopes Americans and Credit Markets Don't Notice: To avoid scrutiny, congressional leadership will likely try to sneak the debt limit increase into a "must-pass" measure, such as the defense appropriations bill. Doing so would limit necessary debate on the debt in the hopes that taxpayers and creditors would not respond.
• Increase Would Be Largest in History: Because this will be a difficult vote, the majority's leadership has suggested raising the limit enough to avoid another vote on the debt limit before the November 2010 elections. The estimated $1.8 trillion increase would be the single-greatest increase of the debt limit in history.

"Entitlement programs will double in size over the next few decades and cause the national debt to reach 320% of the economy." Clearly some of these entitlement programs will have to be cut or drastically reduced. The sad thing is that the government has forced people to be dependent on the government. For example, around twelve point four percent of one's pay check is taxed to pay for Social Security and two point nine percent to pay for Medicare, you pay seven point seven percent and your employer pays seven point seven percent. Fifteen dollars out of every one hundred you earn is taxed just by these two taxes alone. (I got these last figures from my Social Security statement.) So what is going to happen when all of these people are forced to suck on the government teat and it runs dry? As of now I don't see how the latter will be avoided?

Some more interesting information about the debt,

By 2030, Bergsten anticipates the net foreign debt of the United States will exceed $50 trillion, or 140 percent of gross domestic product. He predicted that by 2030, the United States will be paying $2.5 trillion a year to the rest of the world, equal to the nation's current total spending on health care, just to pay the interest on U.S. debt.[...]He continued, It has long been known that large external deficits pose substantial risks to the U.S. economy because foreign investors might at some point refuse to finance these deficits on terms compatible with U.S. prosperity.'Any sudden stop in lending

to the United States would drive the dollar down, push inflation and interest rates up, and perhaps bring on a hard landing for the United States – and the world economy at large.'

I am not fully aware of what the implications that these numbers will have for the economic future of America or the world; but from what I understand, it is not going to be good for the world economy, as much of the other economies of the world are build on a foundation of debt. If an economic collapse is to be avoided, a major shift in the direction of our country needs to occur. Even if this does occur, America will still be dealing with the effects of the debt caused by the recession and all of the other economic reforms and the overall shift of economic power from the private sector to the government that are occurring. The national debt will be a major drain on the overall economy for some time to come. I don't know if what happened in California will happen on a national or world scale, as Melkor stated, because many people are being forced to be dependent on the government for their substance during retirement and, in the next decade or two, their health care. The government is absorbing a lot of the private sector and using a lot of its resources, which there is a limited amount of, so that there will be little left for the private sector to produce anything. From the information I have now and my understanding of that information, I believe a major economic disturbance is a very real possibility at some point down the road.

Happy Birthday M. Dick!

Occasional guest commenter M. Dick turns 49 today!  Happy Birthday M. Dick!

The Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases under the clean air act.

It looks like the White House is not going to let the normal legislative process stand in its way of protecting the public from noxious greenhouse gases. The Congress will not be allowed to stand in the way! It is nice to know that someone is watching out for our welfare. I read this interesting new article yesterday.

The Environmental Protection Agency took a major step Monday toward regulating greenhouses gases, concluding that climate changing pollution threatens the public health and the environment.[...] The EPA said that the scientific evidence surrounding climate change clearly shows that greenhouse gases "threaten the public health and welfare of the American people" and that the pollutants — mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels — should be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

If the EPA goes through with this, what will this mean? It means that the government will have the power to regulate carbon emissions without having to pass legislation. Every form of economic activity that occurs in our carbon-based economy involves the burning of fossil fuels. This is a very clever way for the government to hide its goal of regulating every aspect of the economy and our lives, and this goal is being pursued on a global level. Charles Krauthammer states that this move by the EPA is blackmail and that environmentalism is the new socialism. This is a manufactured crises used to scare people into accepting more government --Very funny! I saw it on T.V. It is stupid. It might not be real. If it is, then WOW. (Where have I heard this before?)

Or as an Obama administration offical said,

If you don't pass this legislation, then ... the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area, the official said. And it is not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it's going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty.

"Regulate in a command-and-control way," What does that sound like to you? Obviously, this adminstration is serious about pursuing its goals of increasing the size and the scope of government into the private sector by using this global warming scam. Who knew the clean air act would be used for such purposes? Come on, clean air does not sound that nefarious.

In light of the Climate Gate scandal these people don't plan to reevaluate their stance on the global warming issue. Why? Because the various governments are using bad science and lies to pass and push through their agenda of wealth redistribution and an overall larger role of government in the private sector. Not to mention their desire to create a global governing body to enforce these climate rules.

This is big news, as is this whole Climate Gate scandal. This clearly illustrates how the governments of the world are trying to expand their power and size under the disguise of lies and by creating new regulations that would regulate every form of economic activity by regulating a substance that is essential to our economy--our economy is based on the use of fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases.

Is this some conspiracy, some pie-in-the-sky-amazingly-hard thing to believe? No, the founding fathers realized that due to human nature, governments would naturally try to increase their size and power. Human nature does not change nor can it be reshaped--like communism has tried to do. This is why the founding fathers created checks and balances in our government. Once one gets power they want more of it. As Lord Acton stated, "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Alexander Frazier Tytler states this about the different stages of a Democracy, which is what America has deteriorated into.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy[Jeff, this is happening now}, always followed by dictatorship[Jeff, a soft, mild one]. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: "from bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.

America is at the point of going from dependency back into bondage--in this case, dependent on the government to allow and bless any form of economic activity. America's fate is not that hard to comprehend. The fate of a free society is revealed by history and was foreseen by many people that looked at this history combined with a knowledge of human nature. The people will demand change in the leadership of our country(Obama's approval number are very low for this point in his Presidency), but not before a system has been set up and our course has been set.

This attempt by tyranny to expand its control over people by claiming to be watching out and providing for our "general welfare" was foreseen by Tocqueville. This is a must read to understand how our Country is being transformed into a soft and mild tyrannical form of government through global warming and health care. One can not be fooled by all the good intentions and feel-good-emotional hype that surrounds these arguments. (There are other ways to get that tingly feeling running up your spine.)

This is America and it will always exist as a free country, right? Things will always be the same as they were when one popped their head out into this world. Once people allow their freedoms to be taken away, it requires a lot of time and a lot of blood to gain it back. What awaits us is not all that unknowable or secret or amazing, if one knows how to look at current events from a historical perspective. If one knows the general direction we are headed, they can set themselves up to prosper. While this climate conference and the overall global warming debate will not led to America loosing its freedoms over night nor will it set the Country's fate in stone, it does illustrate that there is an attempt to fundamentally transform America and attack freedom, and whatever comes out of Copenhagen will led America and the world closer to universal tyranny. It is all under the guise of solving a non-existent crises, so what good can come out of it? This is all revealed out in the open to anyone who is looking and able and willingly to comprehend what is occurring.

A great lesson on how government policy caused the current economic downturn.

I just read this twenty page pamphlet from the Foundation for Economic Education--a great website with lots of information about the economy. The pamphlet is a little long, but it provides a great summary of what caused the current economic recession. It is well worth a read- it is a required read, in my opinion--to see how the government, purposely or accidentally, caused the recession.

"All government intervention in the economy is based on the belief that economic laws need not operate, that principles of cause and effect can be suspended, that everything in existence is 'flexible' and malleable,' except a bureaucrat's whim, whic is omnipotent; reality, logic, and economics must not be allowed to get in the way."(Rand, "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal", 81)

Basically the pamphlet illustrates how the government caused the recession and that the government is preventing the economy from correcting itself; and as a result of this, the economy will be slow and sluggish for many years to come,

More of what caused the Great Recession of 2008[Jeff, which is exactly what the government is currently doing]– easy money, regulatory interventions to direct capital in unsustainable directions, politicians and policy-makers rigging financial markets – is not likely to produce anything but the same outcome; asset price inflation and an eventual “adjustment” we call a recession or depression.

Many of the same policies that caused the recession are being carried out on a greater scale. It is worth learning a little about the economy so that one can be aware of what the economic forecast will be in the future.

I got this picture and the quote that follows off of Boortz dot com.

Are you really aware of just how much politicians - and I'm talking politicians from both parties - have trashed the future of your children and grandchildren? Are you sitting out there just blissfully thinking that since this country has been here all of your life, in generally the same shape it is right now, that it will always be here in something resembling its present form for your children and grandchildren? Have you ever heard that all good things come to end? Well then, what makes you so sure that this saying doesn't apply to this country? Do you think we're somehow bulletproof? Has it occurred to you that the citizens of the Soviet Union might well have thought the same thing?

AGW Scam/cHopenchangin' Summit Update

Things have been moving fast on the AGW-scam front since my last post on the subject. 

As Houston, TX experiences their earliest Gore-ble Warming on record, here is the latest:

- At the University of East Anglia in the UK, the Director of the Climate Research Unit, Professor Phil Jones, has stepped down while an independent committee examines the scandal that resulted from the leaked e-mails of his and other members of the Unit.  This is not some random department at a random university.  This is the chief Global Warming research department in the world.

- At Penn State University, Professor Michael Mann, developer of the now debunked 'Hockey Stick', graph of global temperatures used in Al Gore's propaganda piece 'An Inconvenient Truth' is being investigated by the university, also as a result of the exposure in the East Anglian e-mails of his faulty, fraudulent, covered up data and modelling programming.

- NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (formerly directed by Al Gore's climate change guru James Hansen) is resisting calls to release their Global Warming data.  A Freedom of Information Act request filed by Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has been stonewalled by NASA for two years, though NASA is a government organization run by taxpayer dollars, and this is not classified information.

- Al Gore, Chief Huckster of the AGW scam, has declared that he is cancelling his planned $1200/ticket speech at the Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference which begins Dec 7.  He has not given a clear reason for the cancellation yet.

- Conservative members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (surprisingly, there are some) have asked that Al Gore's Academy Award for Best Documentary, awarded in 2007 for 'An Inconvenient Truth', be rescinded, again based on the new information coming out that it is mostly a scam.

- But, is the massive momentum built up around the world in favor of drastic reductions in Western standards of living, and massive increases in Governmental Regulation of your lives able to be stopped at this point?  Leader of the Socialist World, President Obama, is going to the Copenhagen conference to lend his weight to get a treaty signed.  Think of it as Kyoto II - Revenge of the Fascists.

- Finally, maybe you're still thinking "what is all the kerfuffle about?  Didn't Al Gore say The science is settled?  A former Vice President wouldn't lie would he?"  If my earlier article didn't convince you that something is rotten in Denmark, take a look at this comment, left by a guy named Sean, on an article at the Watts Up With That? blog.  Since it's a comment, and it's so good, I'm just going to copy the whole thing so you don't need to go to the link:

I am a climate scientist, and it is clear that the evidence that “human activity is prominent [sic] agent in global warming” is NOT overwhelming. The repeated statement that it is does not make it so. Further, even if we accepted the hypothesis, cap-and-trade legislation does not do anything about it.

Here are the facts. We have known for years that the Mann hockey stick model was wrong, and we know why it was wrong (Mann used only selected data to normalize the principal component analysis, not all of it). He retracted the model. We have known for years that the Medieval Warm period (Bud-D: MWP) occurred, where the temperatures were higher than they are now (Chaucer spoke of vineyards in northern England).

Long before ClimateGate it was known that the IPCC people were trying to fudge the data to get rid of the MWP. And for good reason. If the MWP is “allowed” to exist, this means that temperatures higher than today did not then create a “runaway greenhouse” in the Middle Ages with methane released from the Arctic tundra, ice cap albedo lost, sea levels rising to flood London, etc. etc.), and means that Jim Hansen’s runaway greenhouse that posits only amplifying feedbacks (and no damping feedbacks) will not happen now. We now know that the models on which the IPCC alarms are based do not do clouds, they do not do the biosphere, they do not explain the Pliocene warming, and they have never predicted anything, ever, correctly.

As the believers know but, like religious faithful, every wrong prediction (IPCC underestimated some trends) is claimed to justify even greater alarm (not that the models are poor approximations for reality); the underpredictions (where are the storms? Why “hide the decline”?) are ignored or hidden.

As for CO2, we have known for years that CO2 increases have never in the past 300,000 years caused temperature rise (CO2 rise trails temperature increase). IPCC scientists know this too (see their “Copenhagen Diagnosis”); we know that their mathematical fudges that dismiss the fact that CO2 has not been historically causative of temperature rise are incorrect as well. We have also known for years that the alleged one degree temperature rise from 1880 vanishes if sites exposed to urban heat islands are not considered.

We have long known that Jones’s paper dismissing this explanation (Jones, et al. 1990. Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperature over land, Nature 347 169- 172) is wrong and potentially fraudulent (see the same data used to confirm urban heat islands in Wang, W-C, Z. Zeng, T. R Karl, 1990. Urban Heat Islands in China. Geophys. Res. Lett. 17, 2377-2380). Everyone except Briffa knows that the Briffa conclusions are wrong, and why they are wrong; groups in Finland, Canada (lots of places actually) show cooling by this proxy, not warming; the IPCC even printed the Finn’s plot upside down to convert the fact (cooling) into the dogma (warming).

Prof. McCarthy is, of course, part of the IPCC that has suppressed dissenting viewpoints based on solid climate science. His claim to support by “peer review” is nonsense; he has helped corrupt the peer review process. We now have documentary evidence that Jones, Mann, and the other IPCC scientists have been gaming peer review and blackballing opponents. On this point, the entire IPCC staff, including Prof. McCarthy, neither have nor deserve our trust.

We have tolerated years of the refusal of Mann and Jones to release data. Now, we learn that much of these data were discarded (one of about 4 data sets that exist), something that would in any other field of science lead to disbarment. We have been annoyed by Al Gore, who declared this science “settled”, refused to debate, and demonized skeptics (this is anti-science: debate and skepticism are the core of real science, which is never settled). The very fact that Prof. McCarthy attempts to bluff Congress by asserting the existence of fictional “overwhelming evidence” continues this anti-science activity.

All of this was known before Climategate. What was not known until now was the extent to which Jones and Mann were simply deceiving themselves (which happens often in science) or fraudently attempting to deceive others. I am not willing to crucify Jones on the word “trick”. Nor, for that matter, on the loss of primary data, keeping only “value added” data (which is hopelessly bad science, but still conceivably not fraud).

But the computer code is transparently fraudulent. Here, one finds matrices that add unexplained numbers to recent temperatures and subtract them from older temperatures (these numbers are hard-programmed in), splining observational data to model data, and other smoking guns, all showing that they were doing what was necessary to get the answers that the IPCC wanted, not the answers that the data held. They knew what they were doing, and why they were doing it.

If, as Prof. McCarthy insists, “peer review” was functioning, and the IPCC reports are rigorously peer reviewed, why was this not caught? When placing it in context made it highly likely that this type of fraud was occurring?

The second question is: Will this revelation be enough to cause the “global warming believers” to abandon their crusade, and for people to return to sensible environmental science (water use, habitat destruction, land use, this kind of thing)? Perhaps it will.

Contrary to Prof. McCarthy’s assertion, we have not lost just one research project amid dozens of others that survive. A huge set of primary data are apparently gone. Satellite data are scarcely 40 years old. Everything is interconnected, and anchored on these few studies. Even without the corruption of the peer review process, this is as big a change as quantum mechanics was in physics a century ago.

But now we know that peer review was corrupted, and that no “consensus” exists. The “2500 scientists agree” number is fiction (God knows who they are counting, but to get to this number, they must be including referees, spouses, and pets).

The best argument now for AGW is to argue that CO2 is, after all, a greenhouse gas, its concentration is, after all, increasing, and feedbacks that regulated climate for millions of years might (we can hypothesize) be overwhelmed by human CO2 emissions. It is a hypothesis worthy of investigation, but it has little evidentiary support.

Thus, there is hope that Climategate will bring to an end the field of political climatology, and allow climatology to again become a science. That said, people intrinsically become committed to ideas. The Pope will not become a Protestant even if angel Gabriel taps him on the shoulder and asks him to. Likewise, Prof. McCarthy may claim until the day he retires that there remains “overwhelming support” for his position, even if every last piece of data supporting it is controverted. As a graduate student at Harvard, I was told that fields do not advance because people change their minds; rather, fields advance because people die

Now that's a comment!!!!

Pasadena, Here We Come!

Oregon is going to the Rose Bowl!

Oregon defeated Oregon State to win the Pac Ten title and earn a right to play in the Rose Bowl against America's sweet hearts: The Ohio State Buckeyes.

Oregon State played well, but Oregon earned this win and they earned the conference championship.

My last memory of an Oregon Rose Bowl berth was in 94. I was in fourth grade and we were to play Penn St. I bet Paul Sherwin one dollar and some pogs that Penn St would beat Oregon. Don't get me wrong, I liked the Ducks then and I do now, but I know my sports and knew Oregon would lose. The tables have turned though. I will place my bets on the Ducks this year!!!

Final prediction: Oregon 34, Ohio St. 24.

GO DUCKS!!!!!

Hope 'n' Change Fading Overseas Too?!

This good article by noted Arab Neocon Fouad Ajami regarding Obama's declining status in the Arab world motivated me to put together this list of recent articles on the rest of the world's view of Obama.  I'm not totally sure what the rest of the world really thought about the United States electing Obama president.  Did they think that the US was showing that yes, we really are the land of opportunity...for anyone?  Did they think, well, it's great that we don't have to deal with that warmongering, moron-cowboy George Bush anymore?  Did they think, finally someone who will understand us third-world types, taking into account his heritage and upbringing?  I don't know.  What they're finding out for sure is that, well we've elected a kowtowing pussy for one thing, an egotistical ponce for another, and a short-sighted simpleton (from the top article) for a third; and consequently, the high regard the rest of the world had for him at one time seems to be slipping a lot recently.

Compare and contrast subservience and mutual respect.  As I've probably said before, I think that the rest of the world is most happy that the US is being turned back into the Pillsbury Doughboy it was during the Carter and Clinton administrations, not willing to stand up to anybody.  They will never like us, regardless of what we do until we're turned into supine Euro-Socialists or a third world basketcase.  Since they will never like us, it's better that they fear us than laugh at us.  Unfortunately, we now have the Town Fool in the Oval Office.

Who's Going to Pay for Climate Change?

Just saw this piece on my NYTimes app, couldn't wait to get on a computer and talk about it.

First off, I was hoping that China would be as ever non-committal about climate change as they have in the past. This has always been the most effective politically charged attacks against climate change "why should we hold ourselves back as China marches ahead," but this announcement will probably lead the administration to charge forward to Coopenhagen pressing harder for some type of concrete action to reward his environmental-hippy allies. This news might be enough for the administration to think it has the political capital necessary to deflect the current Email debacle.

(But I think the method of making spending for the environment relative to increase in GDP as novel. We should incorporate it domestically for actual environmental programs like Forest Service, Parks, Endangered Spieces protection, fish conservation efforts, etc).

What I've become more concerned with, besides simple Cap-and Trade, is the growing insistence by countries that the West should pay for most of the tab. Brazil has made it's own version of Cap & Trade contigent on foreign funding (slahs and burn deforestation accounting for 75% of it's emissions) China has now come out and said that it won't allow anyone to inspect their compliance with the summit unless it is for efforts that have received foreign funding. Brazil and China represent the two of the largest and most powerful booming economies. It only makes sense for them to want any BS wasteful climate change spending to be done by those eggheads that are foolish to shell it out. While I doubt anything to emerge from the climate summit will be the new large evil international government that many here worry about (if you're worried about this, you should behold the beast of Babylon that emerged from the Montreal Pact, the most successful international environmental pact). I'm worried about the prospect that our Welfare Statist president is going to waste billions of dollars in foreign countries (most importantly China), who don't deserve one god damned cent.

Fortunately, there's good signs this BS is already proving too difficult to maintain. The Aussies are already falling apart over this and shows the consequence of trying to shove environmental programs without working with economic interests.

Healthcare is being picked away over it's run-away spending. if Obama commits to anything in Coopenhagen that further adds to wasteful spending that Washington doesn't have; than we can expect his political support to plummit faster and this summit to be one of the first things to be scrapped under Republican leadership. Maybe a treaty will languish in the Senate long enough for us to pick up a few more seats and ensure it's defeat during the ratification process.

Bombs Over Tehran?

Iran is going to be one of the cases in which we weigh the effects of Soft Power pressure and the speedier results garnered by Hard/military power. The IAEA firmly rebuked Iran yesterday over its Nuclear program. The censure showed a lack of patience that Iran's friends have for the psuedo Rogue state and also increases the legitimacy of sanctions even further down the line, military action.

Although the nytimes doesn't think it is very likely that Russia will get on board for sanctions, there have been signs that they Russian may. This might be one of the few positive consequences for the removal of the Anti-Ballistic-Shield. The lack of full response by the Russians is indicative of the precarious situation they find themselves in diplomatically and a lack of full measured committment for sanctions is logical when they're unsure how far Obama wants to take this. The European position is fixed (England, France, Germany being the only heroes in this process), Russia wavering, China probably unwilling to support sanctions (but I doubt they will stand alone in vetoing sanctions if it comes to a vote in the Security Council), this leaves US. Obama needs to be the one to take the initiative. He has the diplomatic room to wait on his one year deadline for negotiations but I think the humiliating loss by the Iranian rejection of his Uranium shipment proposal leaves him with few options.

I think the disjointed leadership within Iran will make any concessions impossible as the fundamentalists in the military that Ahmadinejad uses as his clientalist allies have firmly rejected accomadation. Thus, new sanctions will inevitably be used. The only question on this front is how far will Russia participate.

Iran will take any sanctions placed against it as a propaganda ploy for people to "stand against the west" but with their already threatened legitimacy at stake following this years elections; the question will be how far is the theocracy willing to compensate deteriorating conditions with force? We immediately think force internally, but it will also be used in an increasingly aggressive bellicose stance against Israel and the US. If the people tolerate the of wealth that accompany sanctions and the repression of the regime than an Israeli attack is the only possible conclusion to this scenario.

Great Way to Run a Government, Mr President

Happy Thanksgiving RTPers!  I just had to make this and the other quick posts before I begin to enjoy Thanksgiving.  Oh, and I'm thankful for this wonderful blog where we can share our opinions and information. 

Anyway, just a quick link to an interesting chart showing the percentage of Cabinet positions from the Private Sector vs the Academic/Government sector in all administrations since Teddy Roosevelt.  A glance will quickly tell you why this adminstration is so riddled with Marxists and incompetents.

Good Summary of the AGW Scam and Implications

The American Thinker has been all over this story.  At the link is a good summary of where we are at this moment.  It describes the problem with the source data (from the AGW alarmists' point of view), the programming used to mask the problems with the data, and who has used these studies to base their 'we're all gonna die' hysterics.

A couple of summary paragraphs:

Clamoring alarmists can and will spin this until they're dizzy. The ever-clueless mainstream media can and will ignore this until it's forced upon them as front-page news, and then most will join the alarmists on the denial merry-go-round.

But here's what’s undeniable: If a divergence exists between measured temperatures and those derived from dendrochronological data (Bud-D: tree-ring data) after (circa) 1960, then discarding only the post-1960 figures is disingenuous, to say the least. The very existence of a divergence betrays a potential serious flaw in the process by which temperatures are reconstructed from tree-ring density. If it's bogus beyond a set threshold, then any honest man of science would instinctively question its integrity prior to that boundary.  And only the lowliest would apply a hack in order to produce a desired result. (Bud-D comment: The scientists are saying that the rules that justified their use of tree-ring data prior to 1960 can be thrown out for the post-1960 period and recorded temperatures used instead. This is similar to Creationists saying, "sure carbon-dating works until 6000 BC, but that's when God changed the rules of physics". The scientists are acting exactly like strict Bible literalist priests here).

And to do so without declaring as such in a footnote on every chart in every report in every study in every book in every classroom on every website that such a corrupt process is relied upon is not just a crime against science, it’s a crime against mankind.(bold Bud-D's)

What is distressing for our modern society is the realization that people who claim to be scientists can behave in such an un-scientific manner, in fact that they behave just like the rest of us selfish, greedy, highly-biased humans.  Scientific and technological advancement is based on the Scientific Method of reproduceable results.  The scientists doing this research are usually (by necessity) dealing with highly specialized data and jargon that the layperson can't follow easily or at all.  We trust the scientific/technological community to rigorously fact-check and verify the results before they come to us and say "the universe is not as you know it".  Global Warming alarmists want to fundamentally change our lives, to greatly diminish our standard of living because of the implications of this seriously flawed 'science'.  If we can't trust the Scientific Method to keep their shit straight, we will never be able to trust what they say.  Sort of like what the Main-Stream Media have done to themselves, except with far more serious implications.

Anti White Discrimination

I am doing an argumentative paper in my writing class. I am arguing that whites are more discriminated against in America. During my research I found this funny ass video of a commercial in Italy. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-A9orvi85Q&eurl=).
I laughed and grabbed Ashley and had her watch. I dont really think the video supports my argument, but I always give Ashley shit for listening to rap. I tell her she has "jungle fever". This video kind of depicts what she wants.

"'2009 is the first year of global governance with the establishment of the G20 in the middle of the financial crisis.'"

I don't really feel like posting a long post, since I won't be saying anything new. I found this off of the little out-there WND, but this quote and video comes from the new President of the EU. The video is three minutes long. He also states that, "'The climate conference in Copenhagen is another step toward the global management of our planet.'" Why do we need to globally manage a fake crises?

This statement fits perfectly into what Lord Monckton stated. This fits right into the previous post. I think this is interesting because it confirms the fact that the finical crises has changed the nature of the world order and it confirms that the global warming scare is being used to bring about some "global management" of the planet. From various sources I have read and heard, some form of a global government is slowly coming about. The economic crises and global warming are two of the tools that are being used to bring about this global government. When one looks at this from the perspective of the development of civilization, one can see that a global government or a globally connected world is the natural course of events for a civilization. The question is what form will this government take and will it be a beneficial thing? Considering that it is being brought about through deception, GW and the Economic crises that was the result of government action, this government does not look like it will be good for freedom; but will instead take the form that Tocqueville talked about--a mild, meek and savior/parental government. There won't be a complete one-world government anytime soon, but the framework or foundation for such a system is being slowly developed or brought about through deception so that it can be quickly set up in a short period of time when a world-wide crises presents itself--a global economic crises is a real possibility or some war.

AGW Hoaxters Hacked!

In October I posted an article titled "Blowing Man-Made Global Warming Out of the Hot Water".  I linked articles published by the "Watts Up With That" (shown on sidebar) and "Climate Audit" websites that showed that tree-ring data giving 'ManBearPig' Al Gore his famous Hockey Stick temperature spike at the end of the 20th century had been cherry-picked.  Now someone has gone in and hacked the computers at University of East Anglia (in the UK) where these Global Warming hoaxters are employed and shown e-mails of the scientists' scrambling in response to the exposure.  What is alarming is how the 'scientists' (they really are actually) show no hesitation to hide and distort the data presented to the public to defend their views.  This is what RTPers expect of left wing academia, but it is rare that scientific fraud is exposed like this and noteable (but not surprising) that it is applied to one of the left's key agendas.  The Powerline blog has some good articles, which I saw linked at Ace's.  But, it's going all over the internet and has even shown up in the Washington Post.

This should be huge!
Note - This bear will be just fine:

An interesting point of view on the current finical crises.

I got this off of the Glen Beck show. This guy was on the Asian Squawk Box on CNBC. This guy basically said that the current finical crises is leading to a world global currency that will lead to a global realignment under a global world government and a new world order. This is what I was trying to say about the current global finical crises. I don't know the creditability of the guy; but from what I understand about the global finical crises, I would agree to some extent on what this guy says. There is no doubt that the current GFC is leading to some sort of global realignment. I won't make a big post. If one cares, they can watch the four minute video, minute one is a good place to start.

Einstein Explains why Burning Fuels and Splitting Atoms are easily the most efficient ways to Produce Energy

Hint: it involves E = mc^2

A good article in the Energy Tribune where the author takes Einstein's Theory of Relativity and uses it in layman's terms to explain why you are able to get a great big huge hunk o' power by burning stuff or splitting atoms, as opposed to turning wind turbines or water turbines or sucking rays through solar panels, and is one reason why green power is four to five times more expensive than nasty dirty coal power (it would be even more expensive than coal power if the government didn't regulate coal so much).

A couple of key paragraphs drawing on the implications of the equation above:

There is only so much energy we can draw from renewable sources. They are limited, either by the velocities attained, or by the distance that solar energy must travel to reach the earth. So is there anyplace in nature where we can take advantage of that “c2” co-efficient and tap transformations of matter into energy? There is one that we have used through history. It is called “chemistry.”

coupled with:

When we burn a gallon of gasoline, one-billionth of the mass of the gasoline is completely transformed into energy. This transformation occurs in the electron shells. The amount is so small that nobody has ever been able to measure it. Yet the energy release is large enough to propel a 2000-pound automobile for 30 miles – a remarkable feat when you think of it.


Still, electrons make up only 0.01 percent of the mass of an atom. The other 99.99 percent is in the nucleus of the atom. And so the question arose, would it be possible to tap the much greater amount of energy stored in the nucleus the way we tap the energy in the electrons through chemistry?

Read the whole thing and impress your friends with your ability to use Einstein's Theory of Relativity to explain the foolhardiness of wasting money developing vast arrays of wind farms or solar farms, or even hydros when we have plenty of coal and natural gas as well as the ability to develop clean, safe nuclear plants.

Mamma's Pissed

Newsweek didn't surprise me with its new cover story. http://http//news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20091117/pl_ynews/ynews_pl984

It has Palin lookin bomber than ever and acts like its a bad thing. Newsweek is showing a sexy picture of a woman and then hates on her. Is Newsweek trying to say that women who look good are stupid and incompitent at leadership? Judging the cover of the magazine it only leads me to assume so.

I can't believe Dad was subscribed to this magazine for so many years. Was this a recent change in their journalism agenda? Or have they always been this horrible?

Administrator's Note: ToeJamm, when posting about the person whom the left likes to call Caribou Barbie (which I think sounds pretty hot!) a picture must be posted.  I've taken care of this for you:

Music is as hard as rock

I once heard Bud-D (correct me if I'm wrong) say that downloading music illegally is going to crush the production of music.

I don't think it will hurt the production of music nor the quality. You have to remember that the best artists are very talented and passionate about their art. I was at a open mic night in east portland at The Goodfoot. I didnt expect to see much, but by the end of the night was amazed. There was about six different acts that I saw and they only lasted about three songs long. All but one were better than 95% of music on the radio. One guy played an accordian/base kick drum/snare drum/tamborine/harmonica all at the same time(he switched the right hand to use the tambourine and snare drum) and with him was a cute chick who played violin/vocals. They played remarkably well and in sync. There was other bands too that had great talent. No one got payed a dime.

I was worried that music might lose its steam. But I am now thoroughly convinced that there will always be great music created and performed. It might be slightly harder to find, but then again, taking a ten minute drive to The Goodfoot on wednesday night isnt hard at all.

I might sound like a hippie and have no works cited in this post to add credibility, but I don't think the most talented artists are driven by music at all.

Dobbs Leaves CNN

Just saw this off of Drudge. I don't have a lot of input beyond what is in the article. I'm not that much of a television news watcher and I know Dobbs has made some attacks on the right before. So the RTP interest might be limited, but, at least he was willing to go after stories that CNN "didn't think was news." At least Dobbs can recognize when there's a demand for news from the public irregardless what a media exec thinks. I personally don't care too much about the birther movement, but I respect Dobb's decision to fight internally over it.

Obviously the immigration issue should perk Bud-D's ears up.

One issue in the article, unrelated to Dobbs, that I thought was interesting was CNN's insistence that they are attempting to strike a "middle of the road" stance on news. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't CNN tanking compared to MSNBC and especially Fox? Is this indicative that America is moving in the direction of getting their news from partisan sources?

Happy Birthday Marines!

A confession of a supporter of health care reform.

This is not really anything suprising or new.

The typical argument for ObamaCare is that it will offer better medical care for everyone and cost less to do it, but occasionally a supporter lets the mask slip and reveals the real political motivation. So let's give credit to John Cassidy, part of the left-wing stable at the New Yorker, who wrote last week on its Web site that "it's important to be clear about what the reform amounts to."

Mr. Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. "The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment," he writes. "Let's not pretend that it isn't a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won't. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind."

Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of "making the United States a more equitable country" and furthering the Democrats' "political calculus." In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run.

This explains why Nancy Pelosi is willing to risk the seats of so many Blue Dog Democrats by forcing such an unpopular bill through Congress on a narrow, partisan vote: You have to break a few eggs to make a permanent welfare state. As Mr. Cassidy concludes, "Putting on my amateur historian's cap, I might even claim that some subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms enacted."

No wonder many Americans are upset. They know they are being lied to about ObamaCare, and they know they are going to be stuck with the bill.

Well, the President said the same thing. Damn, I thought this was about health care and taking care of the poor pitiful O so poor people and saving babies. Well most people think this and are blinded by the disguise of helping people and taking care of them. How can you be against helping the poor and sick and babies? I have talked to well meaning people that think like this. People are being mislead and misdirected into creating a tyrannical and all controlling government. America is very slowly and very gradually evolving into a welfare state with an large and powerful government. As long as one can work, as a slave does not matter, and make money and watch sports and drink a beer and read my pop culture magazine and watch the movie rewards and American Idol, why would one care? This is a major step to achieving this goal and controlling one sixth of the US economy. The current health care bill won't pass, but something that will eventually lead to, much later down the road, the government being the sole provider of our health care will pass. Come on now. We need to pass this, help them sick folks and babies out. Evil insurance companies and Evil Capitalism are preventing people from getting their health care. Government is going to save us from this!

This Is Rock: The Post Melkor Should Have Written

Melkor was home last Christmas and mentioned a band he thought was really great called Muse. About a month ago, Decoy left a CD of the album The Resistance laying around. I listened to it and understood what Melkor was raving about:

Combining overambitious rock/classical/operatic styles like glam bands Roxy Music & Queen did in their prime with a modern rock attitude, and just as importantly, modern technology, Muse may just be the best band to come around in a couple of generations. Yes, this reviewer is totally bowled over and is wondering if just maybe the rock opera album, The Resistance, is one of the top 5 albums of all time. And they excelled in a genre (the rock opera) that no one except The Who with Tommy and Quadrophenia ever successfully pulled off.

The band is able to pull off rip-roaring rockers (Stockholm Syndrome) as well as classical symphonies (Exogenesis). And the thing is, that symphony isn't a joke. That sounds as legit as anything you'd hear on a classical music station, but with rock drums and guitars mixed in, accentuating it rather than ruining it. Masterful.

Matthew Bellamy seems to be the driving force in the band, being the singer, guitarist, and keyboard player. He is clearly an accomplished classical pianist. I think the one mild criticism is that his voice seems a little weak, but he makes up for it by dripping sincerity and not shying from vocal challenges.

I thought, there's no way they can repeat this stuff live, but I thought wrong. Check out this live performance of Stockholm Syndrome: ass kickin'!

Follow Up On US-Chinese Trade Dispute

In light of other news that dominates the air-waves at the moment, the growing antagonism between US-China trade relations gets a short shrift. The chart on the Financial Times page does a good job displaying the rapid rise in trade disputes between China and the US. When we compare this to the arguments the Left used when defending Obama's decision to slap tariffs on Chinese tires (which were basically that the right was overblowing the issue), we can empirically observe Obama's threat to trade relations between the two countries.

As the tire case was a big victory for the union heavy auto industry, Obama's decision to slap a 99% duty on Steel pipes was a massive gain for the union heavy Steel industry. I think it's quite clear what game Obama is playing and what groups he's willing to protect and serve.

I could write a long rant about what how Obama is a threat to free trade blah blah. But I think we've already gone down that route. What I think would be a bit more interesting is a discussion over the issue of "Dumping" that composes most of Obama's arguments against China (and generally constitutes the majority of our WTO conflict resolution cases) and whether or not it is necessarily bad.

Dumping can take a variety of forms, it can be an export subsidy that a country tags onto a good that plunges the price of the good when it is traded abroad (the justification being, that the reduced price will make it more viable compared to other producers). When exactly this subsidy is placed (either in the production of the good i.e. State artifically lowers the cost of making it, or just as the finished product is about ready to be shipped) doesn't matter so long as the subsidy artificially lowers the price of the good.

Obviously we have a guttural negative reaction to Dumping, but is it actually bad? I mean, when we look at it in the China --> US relationship (Chinese Dumping) the American consumer is the person who benefits. We get to buy goods that are cheaper than they would otherwise be. Chinese consumers actually lose because their taxes are compensating the lower price of the good (and thus, gov't spending creates good/services for the US rather than themselves) AND, because there is less of that good in China (since more Pipes are leaving China to go to America than there would otherwise be at normal market prices) the price of that good will be higher in China (less supply equals increased demand, increased price). So yeah, that's pretty cool if China wants to pay for a discount on our shopping trip while increasing their own.

The major media response (and what you're probably thinking right now) is that such prolonged practices will destroy American/foreign competition and then the Chinese will be able to dominate the supply side and increase their profits in the long run.

However, there's numerous problems with this argument. First off, the threat of being edged out of the market forces our firms and industries to develop new practices/innovation to improve their production of such goods and will actually, in the long run, make them more viable than the subsidy laden industries. Even if our firms shrink, the practices they develop will ensure that when the Dumping subsidies stop and the market price resurfaces (or if the Chinese try to demand higher prices because their competition is less), our firms will be able to produce the good cheaper than the Chinese. Theoretically, the subsides that the Chinese government gives to lower the price should be used for Research and Development to counter this scenario, but in authoritarian gov'ts, subsides frequently feed into an expanded system of graft and corruption that diminishes/negates their long term viability. Also, there's been numerous attempts at Dumping in the past and it is rarely effective at eliminating enough competition to be completely dominant.

Secondly, There's the issue of what Americans get to do with their expanded consumption horizons as we're able to get pipes cheaper than before, the savings from this aren't going to be stagnate but will chase other goods. Maybe cheaper pipes means we can make cheaper houses/buildings, thus leading to more construction contracts? Or maybe I decide to upgrade my computer with the new OSX Snow Leopard from my savings? The possible outcomes of having more pocket change is endless. What we actually have is not a net loss of jobs as the Dumped Good edges itself into the market, but a transition of jobs from one industry to others. why we don't recognize this is because it's easier for the one industry losing jobs to be vocal about their problems compared to the multitude of industries that have benefited. Thus, we think there's only a loss.

Thirdly, and this is the most important in my opinion, Dumping practices are difficult to define and frequently lead to abuse. Is a Chevy car that is exported abroad a dumped good? Because of the bailout it's tough to say what our state to firm relationship is with Chevy. What about the massive grants that the US gives to R&D of a variety of goods? Could this be dumping? I think a determined analyst could point their finger at some point of a good's production cycle and find some type of state intervention. Thus Anti-Dumping policies in the WTO lends itself to abuse, especially by anti-free market politicians. There's a fine line with this argument I know, when we look at the super-rivals of Boeing vs Airbus, state subsidies can have a huge impact on the outcome of the industry (since the industry is largely only made up of two firms), and maybe RTP can explore the topic more.

"Workers of the world unite!" More interesting people in postions of power and influence in our government.

(I am copying this from the Glen Beck show. This video is twenty minutes. The two other videos say the same thing in about three minutes. I saw this and thought it was interesting.)

Andy Stern is the President of the Service Employ International Union. Unions are a means to bring about bigger government. This guy has visited the White House twenty two times. He is working towards building a global organization or as he puts it, " "workers of the world unite". I just finished reading a book on the regimes of Hitler and Stalin and this term was the battle cry of communism and Stalin's goal of a global Bolshevik revolution. Communism in its raw, naked form is dead; but a mild and meek version under the guise of taking care of us is attempting to establish itself in America. To see this just look at some of the people that are in positions of power in our government. The video is one minute and fifteen seconds. I think what this guy is trying to say is fairly obvious.

Have you heard of Anita Dunn the White house communication director? She admires a very interesting person. Mao Tse Tung and Mother Teresa are her favorite political philosopher and the two people she turns to most. The first two minutes is the relevant part. Mao was a communist that killed between forty and seventy million people. Why would this be here favorite political philosopher? I am trying to understand what she is trying to say from this clip. Maybe she is saying you don't have to follow someone else's path or definition of how to do things but you can admire them?

The manufacturing Czar has some interesting thoughts. I don't know the complete context of what he is talking about. Is he being sarcastic? When I look at what other people in the Obama White House have said, I have some doubts about him being sarcastic or joking here.

Generally speaking, we get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to gain the system. To beat the market or at least find someone who will pay a lot of money cause they're convinced that there is a free lunch. We know it is largely about power, that it's an adult only no limit game. We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely comes from the barrel of a gun, and we get it that if you want a friend you should get a dog.

The free market is nonsense?

The list of people with an affinity for communism in positions of power in our government keep growing. When will the list end? A part of me wants to hopes these quotes are taken out of context. It looks like with the results of these current elections that the public opinion is changing and these people are running out of time; but the Left's goal of bringing about this form of government will never end, and I believe this goal will eventually be realized in some form at a much later date. I guess the election of Obama shows how people react when it seems like the economy is crumbling and things seem very bad--they elect a charismatic-savior-like leader with an affinity for communism that can speak well , has rock star power, has a nice slogan with a nice and catchy ring, and wants to fundamentally transform America. I hope all of this debt doesn't create an even worse economic situation or even an economic collapse. Who will the people elect to fix that mess?

London Times Commentary on Replacement of Dollar

The Times has a good article on why there really is no substitute for the dollar, even if everyone wants to bring the US down a peg. A good article for us all.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article6888848.ece

WSJ: Worst Bill Ever

Another article on a matter that the RTPers are weak on: the Health Care issue. The Wall Street Journal says of Pelosi's Health Care Bill

but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi's handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR's National Industrial Recovery Act as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously contemplated.

Wow. That's about as serious a slam as is possible to make. What is so maddening is how effortlessly the Democrats shade and hide the truth to get their bill passed.

Even so, the House disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional costs with budget gimmicks. It "pays for" about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion. ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that.

Read the whole thing. Get some learnin'. Good stuff.

Entertaining spoof on the black and the victim culture.

I got this video off of Boortz dot com the fourth link from the bottom. The last minute is good. This video can not be labeled as racist since black people are the ones that made it. A good satire of black culture. A good book to read about this is "Black Rednecks and White Liberals", by Thomas Sowell. It debunks a lot of myths and common beliefs about race relations and slavery and such.

RIP CITY!

Once again, the Blazers are back. This year is going to be huge. And for once, we can root for a solid group of guys just like they were when the term "Rip City" was coined.

Andre Miller, a 30 year old vet, is on the team. In his Blazer debut against the Rockets yesterday he showed what he can do...and boy do we need him. With Steve Blake at point we get consistent smart basketball and few mistakes. But thats the thing, he doesnt over play or play too risky. Blake is good, but with Miller running the point we get a new asset that we've never had...someone that can perfect the baseline pass to Oden. This will get Oden to become a real dominant inside threat. Defenses will have to defend our lethal deep threat as well as our post threat. I'm really excited about this. We just have to beat LA.

What is the goal of the climate conference that will be held in Copenhagen?

Here is a prime example of how the manufactured "climate crises" is being used for a smoke screen and a means to gain the support of people to achieve the goal of growing the size and power of government. This article is from World Net Daily,

A former science

adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher says the real purpose of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen on Dec. 7-18 is to use global warming hype as a pretext to lay the foundation for a one-world government."[...] 'I read that treaty and what it says is this: that a world government is going to be created. The word 'government' actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity.'

I have not done any research on this Monckton guy; so I can not say that he is a credible source, but I do agree with his views on global warming not being caused by man. I don't know about some one-world government, but one of the purpose of this conference is clearly to grow the size and power of the various governments of the world and to possibly create some international regulatory body. I think there is enough scientific evidence to prove that man is not causing climate change. So then why do we need new legislation and new government powers to combat a non-existent crises? This is hard to figure out. I might have the answer in the next couple of years. It is sad that there are too many people that just don't think critically. Another purpose of this conference sounds very similar to President Obama's desire to spreading the wealth around.

'"The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to Third World countries, in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, 'climate debt' – because we've been burning CO2 and they haven't. We've been screwing up the climate and they haven't. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government is enforcement.'"[...] "Moncton is a well-known critic of the theory of anthropogenic causes for global warming who has argued repeatedly that global warming hysteria is an ideological position of the political Left advanced in the interest of imposing global taxes on the United States in the pursuit of international control of the U.S. economy under a one-world government to be administered by the U.N."[...]'So, thank you, America. You were the beacon of freedom to the world. It is a privilege to stand on this soil of freedom while it is still free,' he continued. 'But, in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your humanity away forever.'

How is this allowed to come about? By creating a fake crises that requires more government to advert disaster. This also sounds very familiar to our President's views on spreading the wealth around.

Why do the governments of the world need to increase their size and create more regulations that increases the power of these governments to solve an obviously non-existent crises? Are there really that many dumb people? I think most of the people who ascribe to the belief that man is causing the climate to change are just blindly following bad science, but those at the top are using the climate crises as a way to gain support for increasing the size and power of the various governments of the world and to enact a globalist agenda. Combating climate change also means that America will be weakened. Maybe this one-world government sounds stupid, but combating climate changes is definitly not about the climate. What is it being used for then?

Rush Limbaugh: Denied

Although I like Limbaugh, I agree with the NFL country club of owners in denying him the opportunity to have ownership of the St. Louis Rams.http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/10219568/Limbaugh-lashes-out-after-Rams-bid-debacle

I think this is a perfect example of business being able to do what it wants. I think it is a perfect example of Capitalism. If the NFL, a profit seeking business, doesn't want Limbaugh bringing any unwanted press, then they should be able to deny him if they see fit. I think people are idiots for not liking him, but I respect the NFL's right to do this.

Its funny that Capitalism is used by liberals when it is to their advantage. Otherwise, it is an evil policy.

More developments on the decline of the Dollar and what it means.

I got this off of the Hot Air blog. This article states how foreign banks are dumping the dollar. Bloomberg dot com has an article that presents more information on the decline of the dollar and what it means. I won't go into great detail on this since one can read it and I really can't make any intelligent observations on this, I am still trying to understand this.

It seems like the devaluing of the dollar is hurting other countries that rely on exports.

Yukitoshi Funo, executive vice president of Toyota City, Japan-based Toyota Motor Corp., the nation’s biggest automaker, called the yen’s strength 'painful.' Fabrice Bregier, chief operating officer of Toulouse, France-based Airbus SAS, the world’s largest commercial planemaker, said on Oct. 8 the euro’s 11 percent rise since April was 'challenging.'

It is in the best interest of the world economy that barriers to trade be eliminated and that every country does well. A global currency was seem to help solve this problem as I will discuss below.

An undeniable result from the decline of the dollar is stated by Fiorini, "'The diversification out of the dollar will accelerate,' said Fabrizio Fiorini, a money manager who helps oversee $12 billion at Aletti Gestielle SGR SpA in Milan. 'People are buying the euro not because they want that currency, but because they want to get rid of the dollar. [In the long run, the U.S. will not be the same powerful country that it once was].'" I don't think this is really news to any of us. The world economy and the world power structure are in the process of being rebalanced. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing.

Maybe the trend of dumping the dollar is temporary, "Central banks’ moves away from the dollar are a temporary trend that will reverse once the Fed starts raising interest rates from near zero, according to Christoph Kind, who helps manage $20 billion as head of asset allocation at Frankfurt Trust in Germany." There seems to be other signs that things are not all that bad.

The article goes on to state that the US economy is expected to grow by a larger percent that other economies of the world in 2010, "America’s economy will grow 2.4 percent in 2010, compared with 0.95 percent in the euro-zone, and 1 percent in Japan, median predictions show. Japan is seen keeping its rate at 0.1 percent through 2010." The value of this 2.4 percent depends on what percentage the economies have shrunk due to the recession. I don't know what this percentage is.

This article from World Net Daily seems to indicate that there is an active attempt to bring about a new global currency and that this would not be a bad thing. This statement is from the economics professor who helped to create the Euro and is currently advocating a new global currency.

Mundell has argued for decades the proposition that nation-state currencies, including the dollar, need to give way to a new official world currency. According to Mundell, an "optimal currency area" is best defined by international free-trade areas and regional markets, not by nation-states such as the United States of America. Mundell's argument was that nation-states are not optimal currency areas because nation-state borders are artificial constraints imposed on the globe to create ethnic or historical divisions that do not necessarily represent how international markets operate. To understand the concept, Mundell cites former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker's frequently quoted dictum, "[A global economy needs a global currency].'The benefits from a world currency would be enormous,' Mundell argues on his website.

From the above article, it seems that a global currency makes sense in the global economy and will solve some issues of free trade by eliminating "artificial constraints" to world trade.

Some would state that a plan to create a one-world currency is some conspiracy, "Appearing on Sean Hannity's Fox News Channel television show, political consultant Dick Morris and Hannity agreed the decision by the G20 proved the 'conspiracy theorists were right' and there is now clear evidence of a plan to create a one-world currency." I don't see that as some "conspiracy" but just the natural course of the development of human civilization. Globalization is here to stay and will only become more pronounced in the future. This would be a necessary development towards a one-world government that WND makes a big deal out of--I disagree with this being made out to be some conspiracy and some bad thing. It would depend on who is in charge of this government. But I don't see a truly one-world government coming about any time soon; the world is still very divided and will not likely be able to come to any major agreements. Maybe if there is some world wide crises such as an economic crises or some war, this would cause the world to unite and form some temporary agreement by electing some unified government or some type of alliance.

It seems inevitable that some form of a new global currency will come about some time in the future, and the current developments in the world economy and the decline of the dollar is helping to bring this about by illustrating a need for such a currency, and these developments are acting as a catalyst to help bring this about. This would be a shift of power that is currently held by America and other nations to an international body. From what I understand, the dollar is currently acting as a form of a global currency and that it is in the slow process of being replaced by an international currency. The world will only become more interconnected and interdependent due to globalization, and this development will create a need for a global currency. Many of the world trade export and import issue seem to me to be caused by the world using different currencies. While there are definitely some negative effects for America in the short term due to the dollar being devalued, it seems like these negative effects could be temporary and is helping to bring about the inevitable necessity of re balancing the global economy. I still have a long ways to go to understand what all of this really means.