This pretty much says it all. This simple phrase by President Obama's daughter does more to sum up his presidency than anything I could ever say, write, or even think. Supposedly one of his daughters - he didn't say which one - quizzes him every day after he finishes shaving, asking, "Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?" This is so insane I'd think it was some kind of lie out of the vast right-wing conspiracy but it isn't. It came from the vast left-wing conspiracy, better known these days as Obama's pie hole.
For starters, Obama has ZERO to do with plugging the hole. In fact, until this week he didn't even seem to know about it. Until his poll numbers dropped and he snapped, "Plug the damn hole!" to some reporters to try and make himself look cool. He was probably smoking when he said it. And now he's taking credit? The people plugging the hole are highly trained engineers, scientists, and technicians who are the best in the world at what they do. They are skilled at something besides lying and making crap up. Using remotely operated equipment designed and built by some of the smartest people in the world, they are on the cusp of performing the impossible. And for some reason, Obama's daughter think's her dad is the one responsible? Is this me or does this smack of megalomania? Sure she's just a little girl, but little kids are better at repeating what they hear than just about anybody on the planet. She has no clue what she's saying, she's just repeating what she's hearing around the Oval Bedroom.
MICHELLE: Oh, my GOD!
BARACK: What? Lee DeWyze didn't win?
MICHELLE: No, silly. Those stupid oil drillers have gone and done it again.
BARACK: What a bunch of cracker morons. I guess I'll have to go down there and fix it.
KIDS: Daddy, you're our hero!
BARACK: Yes, I know. Now turn back to American Idol. I want to see who wins.
Doesn't this just speak to the man more effectively than anything else ever could? A man who takes credit for anything and everything good and passes the buck on anything and everything bad. Is he taking credit for laying the booms that contain the spill? Or for providing the food that the workers eat? Does his daughter think that? Or just that her daddy is working to plug the hole. Think about this. It is messed up! I suppose his daughter thinks he performs brain surgery too. And pilots the shuttle to a landing. They probably even think he's pulling the trigger in Iraq and Afghanistan. And there's no doubt they believe him responsible for this morning's blue sky. We've got a real kook on our hands here and if we don't stop him, the damage he does to our country is going to make the oil spill look like a beautification award.
His administration is even trying to blame the Deep Horizon disaster on the Bush administration. As if it were either's fault - which it isn't, just a terrible accident. And only today I heard that the number of attempted terrorist attacks against the United States is at an all time high. I suppose that's Bush's fault too.
This Obama is dangerous. Yeah, we've had bad presidents in the past but Obama's different. He's actively trying to dismantle 250 years of movement away from centralized control. It's the clostest thing to a personality cult we've ever had. And his acolytes, accustomed - indeed addicted - to an entitlement mentality, think he's entitled to do whatever he likes. His administration is like some kind of petty third-world dictator. Except this isn't the third world. And we don't want a dictator.
John Brewer, www.not-a-lemming.com
Watching this particular piece of legislation work its way through congress has been one of the more robust episodes of lemming-watching that I've encountered in a while. On the left we hear about civil rights and hundreds of years of struggle. On the right we hear about the draconian takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy and how it will result in a police state in short order.
The reality is that despite salesmanship efforts to the contrary, healthcare bears no more resemblance to civil rights than a unicycle to a cane. Indeed, modern healthcare hasn't even existed for a hundred years so how could the struggle go back a hundred years. And while totalitarian societies do ration healthcare as a form of population control, there are many other features of a police state that the United States has yet to adopt. Yet.
Sadly, the reality of this health care bill on the lives of each of us will be minor. As far as distribution it really only affects the "32 million uninsured," amounting to around 8% of the population, who, for our efforts, will receive the healthcare equivalent of government housing. Hope you enjoy it. Though free, I expect it will do little to shut them up.
It also creates an entirely new class of criminal. People who were law-abiding citizens 'yesterday' will, with the swipe of Mr. Obama's pen, become criminals 'tomorrow'. Liberty is, among other things, the right to not carry health insurance and take that risk. Yes, another of our rights has just fallen into the dust bin. Though realistically, this number represents only a few million people. Guess we're going to need more jails.
Taxes will go up. How do you think it adds nothing to the deficit? New taxes. Not by much. But it's never by much. A little here, a little there. And mostly on the evil corporations and businesses that hire us. Or lay us off. I personally won't be stimulating the economy this year by buying a new car because taxes are due in a month. Or a new computer. Or going on vacation. And I'll be saving more than spending. A huge difference in my life? No, not really. Multiply it by twenty million and is it a huge difference in the economy? You decide.
Government is the real winner and I don't mean the Obamocrats. Half of the $940,000,000,000 price tag will go to pay for the implementation of all this new stuff. After all, someone has got to manage the 32,000,000 formerly uninsured people. And set up the new health care exchanges. And guard the new criminals. And the corporations. All this big-brother is going take thousands of employees, dozens of new buildings, new software, new computer systems. And a few new forms. In triplicate. Yeah, government and the paper industry did well with this one. The forests, not so much.
Hat's off to Mr. Obama and his 'Crats. You really outdid yourselves this time guys... people. Would have made one heck of a movie.
John, www.not-a-lemming.com
Toyota Motor Corporation has announced plans to move forward with a radical new automobile depite massive flaws in the design. While members of the motoring public are expressing outrage at this irresponsible decision Toyota has defended their decision saything that the benefits to the public outweigh the risks and that the problems will be fixed after the car reaches the consumers.
Benefits cited by the troubled automaker are many and most customers will appreciate them almost immediately. For one thing, Toyota claims that the vehicle uses no gasoline at all. While it does require gasoline in the tank, a sophisticated re-constitution system running on solar power will recombined the exhaust byproducts back into gasoline that will then be pumped back into the tank ready for use again. One tank, they claim, should last about fifty years and produce zero greenhouse gasses.
Also of note, the car is said to be impervious to wrecks. It can not be damaged. "The paint can obviously be scraped," Toyota's president was heard to say, "but repainting is much less expensive than replacement!"
While consumers might expect a hefty price tag on this revolutionary new design, that's the biggest surprise of all. This car will not cost one penny more than their current cheapest model, and is actually expected to drive auto prices far lower and help the world economy rebound. Adding incredible styling to the mix along with a zero to 60 time of less than 5 seconds as well as seating for 8, Toyota expects their new ride to, "Pretty much put the competition out of business." And since it requires no fossile fuels, or any energy at all, to manufacture this incredible new vehicle, it will go a long way towards protecting the environment.
This new vehicle is not without it's problems though. First, and perhaps most important, it doesn't work. Yes, it looks great, and the interior is magnificent, but testers couldn't get the engine to start. But they did note that they enjoyed simply sitting in such a flawless piece of artwork. Toyota promises to fix this problem soon after the car is put into production and, they add, as long as the engine doesn't work, it will help prevent wrecks. Moreover, until the problem is fixed, owners won't be required to register their vehicles or carry insurance, reducing costs significantly. That this feature of the vehicle was factored into it's incredible ability to survive wrecks in no way detracts from its safety rating, Toyota maintains.
There are a number of other problems as well including the tendency to rust when exposed to air and an electronics and computer system that currently don't do anything but make the lights blink. There have also been reports of a tendency of the vehicle to roll over whether in motion or not. Toyota guarantees these problems will be fixed at the company's expense after the drivers have taken possession of the vehicle which they will begin taking orders for yesterday.
Toyota has not yet identified the plant where this new vehicle is to be built but executives have hinted that it may be located somewhere on Earth. They also feel that the workers will offer to assemble the vehicle for free simply for the honor of being an employee of Toyota. The raw materials are expected to be gathered from meteorites randomly falling on the Earth so represent another significant cost savings. Any fluctations in the price of the vehicle as a result of ungrateful employees demanding to be paid for their labor or failure of meteorites to supply the necessary raw materials will be billed to the customer.
Despite these problems, Toyota is confident that the public, seeing the obvious benefits of the vehicle will begin sending checks to their dealers for the expected delivery some time in the next couple of years. Given their high customer quality, potential customers polled fully trusted Toyota to fix any problems after they take delivery. They decried opposition by consumer groups to sell a vehicle with obvious problems and that has not been certified as safe, economical, or even feasible, as typical naysayer whining by those fixated on the status quo of rising vehicle prices. "The world needs this vehicle now!" their president was heard to say. "It is too important not to build and any problems can be fixed later!"
The name of this revolutionary vehicle? Toyota is currently trying to decide between the Medicus or the Insura but an invasion of rats at their headquarters has driven the executive staff into refuge at a resort in Thailand where they were unable to be reached for comment.
John, www.not-a-lemming.com
One of the most boggling cases of unintended Toyota acceleration has been solved, experts close to the case were saying today. The problem it seems was in fact due to extreme ignorance of today's mechanical devices. The driver of the car, calling himself James Sikes who is pictured here, 
is in fact none other than Jonas Grumby, skipper of the S.S. Minnow, shipwrecked on a uncharted desert isle for the better part of the last four decades. 
This does in fact explain his inability to understand the relatively simple operation of a vehicle such as a Prius which has even fewer controls than a typical automibile. His lawyer, Thurston Howell III, 
has claimed that since the Prius is not equipped with a throttle such as the one that existed in the Minnow, which Capt. Grumby also wrecked, he can not be held liable for the incident.
In a rare twist, however, a team of scientists led by Professor Roy Hinkley, 
have analyzed the wear pattern on the brakes of the Prius and show that they are inconsistent with Capt. Grumby's story. No doubt there will be an inquest to determine the truth of this important matter, and maybe they'll clear up what happened with the Minnow as well.
John, www.not-a-lemming.com
The country is horrified. The world waits in suspense. When will the next Toyota suddenly speed to 94 miles per hour and kill the driver and her family? Stuck accelerator pedals? Plush floor mats? A faulty throttle body? Actually none of these are responsible. So what is the problem? Perhaps the most striking example of lemming-like behavior ever observed in a 'higher' mammal.
To my knowledge, an automobile can only continue to accelerate (assuming a level grade) if torque from the engine is continually applied to the wheels. And to my knowledge, all production automobiles have a complex device known as a TRANSMISSION between the engine and the drive wheels. Typically this TRANSMISSION has a position called NEUTRAL in which the gears that transmit torque from the engine to the wheels become uncoupled. In every car in which I've ever ridden, there is a large lever called a SHIFT LEVER that allows the DRIVER to select NEUTRAL whenever she desires, thereby uncoupling the engine torque from the drive wheels so the car can roll to a STOP.
The latest example of the unintended acceleration phenomenon occured earlier this week in California. The DRIVER of a Prius actually called 911 which responded with a Highway Patrolman who drove alongside and suggested the DRIVER shift to NEUTRAL. Apparently the DRIVER refused because he believed the car would FLIP if he shifted to neutral. Flip? Flip? How in the hell does a car flip if you shift to neutral? That doesn't even happen in movies. Is it possible that a modern human can be this misinformed about the natural world? The place where they live everyday? I gues it is.
Toyota might have an engineering problem that needs to be fixed. And I can see how such a problem might result in a fender bender if a DRIVER is surprised and doesn't have time to hit NEUTRAL. But deaths after a thirty-minute episode on the interstate? Toyota's problem isn't their cars. It is their customers. Honestly they must be the stupidest people on the planet! But, maybe that's what you get when your entire worldview is the result of television, movies, and video games. Sadly, I can actually forsee a day coming when Americans will be too stupid to have the right to operate a motor vehicle.
John, www.not-a-lemming.com
Clearly the Academy is full of shit. Again.
John, www.not-a-lemming.com
Horrified. That is the only word I can use to describe what I felt when I read that the military is going to allow women to serve on submarines. News on this potentially catastrophic decision can be found in many places and here is a link to just one of them. (LA Times)
At the outset, to avoid any confusion, let me make two points. First, I served on submarines so I know what I'm talking about. I wasn't the captain or anything like that but I did a patrol on a boomer and spent my time underwater. Second, it has nothing to do with whether or not a woman can do the job. In some ways a woman might be better on a submarine. No, the issues have nothing to do with ability and everything to do with suitability.
Allow me to first establish context. A submarine is a 500+ foot-long, steel cylinder that travels underwater at greater than 22 miles an hour at depths greater than 400 feet. Rumor has it that some Russian subs are capable of more than 55 miles per hour in a sprint. Most submarines have one or more nuclear reactors that provide power. All submarines carry torpedos laden with high explosives and fuel that catalyzes into cyanide gas if accidentally exposed to air. Accidents have happened. FBM's, or Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarines, often called 'boomers', carry 24 Trident missiles, each tipped with 8 independently targetable nuclear warheads of 500 kilotons each. One Ohio Class submarine could destroy 192 cities. The mechanical systems on submarines, aside from the nuclear reactor, are dangerous and often filled with poisonous chemicals like oils and hydraulic fluids. They remain submerged for months at a time with the crew, composed mostly of young men under the age of 25, completely isolated from families. Submarines have been, and remain, the first line of defense for not the just the United States but the free world. Can a woman do the job? It doesn't matter, and here is why.
Put young women and young men together and what do you get? Six thousand years of recorded history and 6 billion people answer that question: Sex. Isolate them for months at a time and you just get more sex. Anyone who denies this is simply an idiot and has no argument. I have laid in a bunk on a submarine at night, in the dark, and heard sailors crying for their wives and girlfriends. I have heard them masturbate. You get two hot kids all alone in lower lever Engineering II and they're going to be screwing instead of watching a critical gauge. It only takes a few minutes to have sex. And a few seconds to lose a boat along with it's entire crew. And with sex comes a powerful emotion that Hollywood is all about exploiting. No, it isn't love, it is tension. A sub is tense enough. Do you really want to throw gasoline on that fire?
Lust is a powerful thing. Lust has brought down the lowliest peasents and the greatest kings. Women will be raped aboard ship. It already happens on surface ships. And rape has a special place in our society, as it should. But on a surface ship you can get the offender and the victims off the boat and away from each other. What do you do on a submarine? There's not even a brig. A boomer's job is to go underwater and stay hidden so if they get a launch order they won't get a Russian torpedo up the screw. So do you just terminate the mission? Pull into port and offload the problems? A woman can take the most level-headed man and turn him into a ravenous beast, and in many cases she won't have any clue about what has happened in his head and will have done nothing to make it happen. Her very presence is enough.
How about the opposite side of that coin? I've known a few women who use their sexual influence in inappropriate ways. Lot of sucky jobs on a submarine. Climbing into the battery well. Wiping up an oil spill in the mechanical spaces. Diving torpedo tubes after a water slug. How long is it going to take for some E-2 to get pissed because some girl is ensuring that she doesn't get the shitty job? You can factor the captain right into this one too. Captains have egos and some women work in ego the way a potter works with clay. Let your imagination run wild with this one, it will probably arrive at a realistic conslusion. And is it a stretch to see this kind of woman submitting some spurned lover to a life of hell? Trust me, it's bad enough already, throwing sex into the mix will kill these boys.
Here's a fun scenario for you. Take a look at that LA Times story above. There's a great picture of the 'bridge'. Pretty tight space there, huh? What you have are the helmsmen/planesmen driving the boat, the buoyancy control officer adjusting trim, the chief of the watch making sure they point that 500+ foot long, nuclear powered, nuclear armed, steel cylinder in the right direction. That's probably the officer of the deck staring through the periscope. Assorted squids like the quartermaster or the XO are standing around behind them. Replace one of those guys with a cute, young, E-3 who's screwing the helmsman and the buoyancy control officer. Personally, given the nature of a submarine, I'd prefer the helmsman be paying attention to course and speed.
So what do you do when that cute little E-3 gets pregnant? Are we going to billet gynecologists and obstraticians on submarines? Or just retrain the corpsmen? What if she's a nuke and decides she doesn't want her fetus around a nuclear reactor? Or maybe we should just carry RU-486 and force them to abort the baby? Got kind of a Nazi sound to it, doesn't it? And if you don't abort the child, and if it winds up with birth defects, the first thing that woman is going to do is blame the nuclear powerplant on the boat. So does the Navy now have to support that child for the duration? And what if she has a child with birth defects on down the line? Is that the Navy's fault? Male sperm gets constantly replaced so defective cells are far less likely to persist. Women carry the same eggs from birth to death. Send a stray neutron through an ovary and ten years later you've got Down's syndrome. At least a slick lawyer is going to convince a jury it could happen. So is the Navy (read: taxpayer) liable? Or do you just sequester the women forward of the control room and hope that holds up in court? You want to get crazy. Pimps and prostitution. Will it happen? It already is. Imagine it on a submarine.
Women also experience something that men don't. A menstrual cycle. So now we've got an enclosed space with a continuous supply of biohazardous waste that will require an whole new set of processes. And will the submarine carry a generic Mod. I, Mk I, tampon? Women are very particular about their feminine products as well they shoud be. Do you poll them and then send the supply officer to Target with a list? And what about PMS? PMS in a sardine can.
Submarine duty is perhaps the most stressful duty of all for families. Almost total isolation. It is better than it was when I was in but soldiers in Afghanistan have far more contact that bubble heads. It rips families apart. And with women on submarines we get a whole new list of worries. At least women back home haven't had to worry about their husbands cheating on them. And boomers don't generally make port calls. And as a husband how are you going to feel about your wife locked in a tin can with 200 horny men? We used to listen to training tapes and sometimes the narrators were women. Boys would come all the way from the engine room just to sit and listen to her voice. Are men going to want women on submarines? Hell yeah! But what man in an isolated, difficult environment doesn't want chicks around? Does this mean his recommendation is good?
And why in the hell would a woman want to go on a submarine in the first place? Why would a man? You've got to be crazy to stay with it. Two-minute showers. Zero privacy. Horrible conditions. The food is good, but why would a woman want to do this? What kind of woman would want to get locked up for months at a time with a bunch of hormonal men? Hmm?
You want to put women on subs, fine, I'm sure they'd do a great job. But make it an all female crew. Don't mix them on what amounts to a spaceship with the power to destroy the planet.
John, www.not-a-lemming.com
We've all heard about the soaring cost of health care. And that the only solution is for the government to step in. Only through a public option can health care costs be held down, they tell us. But what I don't understand is why costs are rising so much faster than everything else.
A Wall Street Journal article today predicts that without government involvement - as if they aren't involved already - health care costs will amount to nearly 20% of GDP by 2019. This year the tab was $2.5 trillion, or 17.3% of GDP. My question is, why is it going up? I'm not saying it shouldn't, but before we decide it's a job for Uncle Sam, somebody should figure out the driver.
The money has to be coming from somewhere and going somewhere and so far I've heard virtually nothing about either end. And there are really only two possibilities: either a lot more Americans are sick, or it costs a lot more to treat a sick American. Or perhaps its a bit of both. I do know that aging baby boomers will begin to draw more on health care as they grow older. This means that more Americans are getting sick and using the system but it doesn't necessarily mean that the cost of treatment for an individual is going up. So while total cost is going up simply because there are more people using the system, it doesn't mean that each 'unit' of health care costs more.
Talking about something like this in a collective sense bothers me and may well be a sham. In a collective sense everything is going up in cost simply because the population is growing. Total food costs are going up because more people are eating. The total amount of money spent on energy is rising because more people are on the grid. Cell phone costs are rising too because everyone has to have one. And what about death costs? As the population grows more people are dying meaning the total amount of money we spend on boxes, plots, and funerals is going up. So why isn't the government talking about a public option to hold down any of these costs?
Because it isn't about costs. It is about control. And how do you control people? You frighten them, just like lemmings. Scared people will run whatever direction you herd them without stopping to see if there's a cliff. How do you make health care look like a crisis? Why you talk about the total cost of health care. This is the crux of the matter and I urge you to read the next few sentences very carefully to understand the cause and effect at play here. With a growing population of elderly citizens, total costs are rising even though per unit cost is flat or even falling. But people who don't even use the health care system are paying ever higher premiums for their health insurance. So medical costs are not rising. It is insurance costs are rising. Read on.
So why is insurance going up? In a nut shell, because of government meddling. Because thanks to various laws medical insurance doesn't work like every other type of insurance on the planet. Car insurance, life insurance, home owners insurance, you name it, actuarial tables and personal behavior affect the price. You buy a BMW 4000 GTX with the optional 25,000 pound thrust Rolls Royce jet engine and your insurance is going to go up. Buy a house in the hood and your home owners insurance will go up. Open an amusement park and see what liability insurance costs. Decide to take up skydiving or motorcycle racing and see what happens to your life insurance premiums. But for some reason meth-heads and people addicted to food and cigarettes pay the same for their health insurance as health nuts. That's what's driving up costs and spreading the pain to everyone - even those responsible enough to walk up the stairs at work and forgoe that ninth slice of pizza. Somewhere along the way health care became a right! A right that is already being funded through confiscatory taxation except in this case it goes to a private agency.
You want to hold health care costs down? Put market forces back in control. Take all insurance except catastrophic off the table and link the premiums to personal behavior. If no one can afford to go to the doctor, prices at the doctor will have to come down. Because if the doctors have no patients how will they pay for their summer homes, or vacations to Europe, or their kids Ivy League educations? The problem with health care isn't the price, it is the quasi-socialist system currently in place. And adding more government laws is only going to make things worse.
Don't be a lemming. See the cliff! See the idiots driving you towards it!
Futbol Guru, www.not-a-lemming.com
How would I sum up last night's State of the Union Speech? He talked about change but gave the same old speech. The problem with politicians is that they believe their own propaganda. The truth is, Mr. Obama and his party don't realize why they lost in Massachusets. They still think it is because they didn't get their message across well enough. They think they'd become too distant from voters. In other words, the packaging was wrong. So this year we're going to get the same old nasty medicine but he's going to use even more honey. Last night Mr. Obama went back to basics. His basics.
Once again we had to listen to him talk about change. And as usual he didn't mention that change costs money. But just for the record, let's look at what he said in broad strokes: Jobs/stimulus. Healthcare. Cap and Trade. Healthcare. Change. Bipartisanship. And then he went on to chastise the Supreme Court for striking down Campaign Finance Laws and lecture the Republicans for opposing everything he does. Change? Bipartisanship? Pivot? Sounds more like a divot.That's the same old speech he's been giving for three years now. Tell you what change I'd like to see: a new speech!
Another thing I noticed that I haven't heard mentioned. And this is a refrain from his campaign. During the campaign he actually said, "America is the greatest nation on Earth and we need to change it!" He said the same thing last night as he spoke of American virtues. (Interestingly he did go on to talk about the effect of American virtures but never said what they were. Hmm?) So what I'd like to know is, if America is the greatest, why should we change it? It needs some fixing, absolutely. But change? If America is the greatest now, it is the greatest because of what already happened. Not what might happen. And what already happened, happened because of the principles he wants to change. That earthquake in Haiti, I think it was the Founding Fathers rolling over in their graves.
It comes down to this. There are two visions of America. Neither will ever be perfect but at least they are places to aim. In one, hard work, investment in self and those around you, combined with honest business decisions and personal responsibility, supported by a government that neither pushes nor hinders, results in forward progress for yourself and those around you. Like I said, it isn't perfect and there have and continue to be abuses, but in general this economic model creates growth through inspiration. Others see your success and try to emulate it, and since there is nothing blocking them, many succeed.
The other vision is very different. In the other vision, personal responsibility, good decisions, and hard work are useful but only marginally. Success is encouraged but in the end the focus of government is on those who haven't succeeded. And by taking resources from those who have been successful and giving them to those who are not, it is hoped that their boat will float. Like the previous vision, this vision is contagious too. Except in this case people see their neighbors getting free stuff and they want some too. But how long is it before these folks suck so much from the hard workers that the system fails? I'd say it happened some time in the '60s. So, based on when we became a welfare state it seemes to take about 25 years. One generation.
Change. You keep talking about change, Mr. Obama. In the end that must mean the policies you're advancing. What are those policies? Free Healthcare. Affirmative Action. Cap and Trade. Government stimulus. Your entire solution set is based on taking the fruits of hard work to feed those who have no understanding of, or appreciation for, the concept of personal responsibility. And you want the conservatives to stop blocking your every proposal?
Futbol Guru, www.not-a-lemming.com
Haiti. What a mess. As my father said so brilliantly, "Even before the earthquake it was never anything but a campsite." I would wager that if you'd sent a truck full of free food into Port Au Prince the day before the earthquake the reaction of the city's residents would have been largely the same as what we're seeing now. The earthquake didn't destroy Port Au Prince in any real sense of the word. It just took away the thin veneer of civility of an utterly failed state.
Does this mean we shouldn't help the people living there? Of course not. But it does hilight the fact that even before the earthquake they weren't even trying to help themselves. Sure, you can say all you want about government corruption and misuse of natural resources, but the truth is, even the people living there have no real desire to better themselves. They had nothing but a leaky roof that went unrepaired and a half-day of rations quickly eaten. Nudge that apple cart and the wheels are going to fall off. No, the earthquake didn't destroy Haiti. And why we're being tasked with rebuilding something that was already destroyed is a question I'm sure that a lot of American tax payers are already asking. It really should be allowed to fail but of course we can't have an island-nation the size of Haiti turning into a lawless pit right on our doorstep. I guess it's a good thing there were peacekeepers in Haiti before the earthquake.
Wall Street (and all that word represents). A decade of shakey business deals fueled by the same greed, corruption, and selfishness that keeps Haiti from getting anywhere. If Haiti's people had a half-day of rations before the earthquake, I figure Wall Street's liquidity was down to about thirty seconds. Leveraged far beyond their ability to absorb even the slightest ripple, and paying themselves handsomely for it, the housing crisis revealed a worm-eaten structure every bit as vapid and bereft of personal responsibility as the President's Palace in Port Au Prince. But, they were declared "Too large to fail". So when the aid trucks were ordered in, their behavior was no different, scrambling after cash like a half-starved Hatian family going after a bag of rice. Except in this case they used the money to give themselves bonuses twenty times larger than the salary of the average American worker. Now that's class. The upper-class that is. Unfortunately, the 'peacekeepers' on Wall Street were busy dipping their own hands in the till when the ground started shaking.
Wall Street. Haiti. Two sides of the same worthless coin. Both bailed out by middle and upper-middle class American tax-dollars. I guess we have the Bush-Obama administration to thank for that one. "Thanks guys!" I think I'll go barf on a pile of $1 bills. It's all I have left but they aren't worth anything.
Futbol Guru, www.not-a-lemming.com
Environmentalism. Imperialism. Corporatism. Words used by the left to destroy our beloved republic. And James Cameron's Avatar is only the latest in a string of attacks on our freedom and liberty.
Or is it? Anyone who reads my blog regularly knows I'm a traditionalist, which means I'm right of center. But they also know that I don't typically fall for political arguments. I recently did a three-part series on the politicization of the global warming argument for the purpose of socializing the West. Or America at the least. If Avatar was patently anti-American I figure it would raise my hackles. So why have I seen it three times now and will probably go again?
The main arguments against Avatar in the blogosphere are that it portrays American soldiers in a negative light, and that it attacks industrialization. Interesting that both of these observations come from people who say they haven't seen Avatar and then go on in the next sentence to predict that the movie will fail. Would it be possible for these people to have been more wrong? I remember the same people criticizing Harry Potter as being pro-witchcraft. Had they read it? NO. Did they look stupid? YES.
The problem here, and the fact that they don't see it, is that environmentalism and other issues have become political footballs - which they should not be. The left uses them to get votes so the right uses them to get votes. Before you know it, preserving our nest is a bad thing.
More specifically, Avatar does not hide the fact that it is strongly against destruction of rainforests and wanton industrialization. At the same time, it says not a single word about global warming. Not one. Now, what kind of fool is against preserving the natural beauty of our planet? In fact, preserving nature for the masses is an American invention. We were the first to do it. And it was a conservative republican (Theodore Roosevelt) who led the way. What was Robin Hood's crime? Hunting in the King's Forest. America preserved natural areas for the common man. And we better damn well take care of this place or it isn't going to be a very good home for our children. I love animals. I love the wonder of nature. How is preserving them, liberal? If you think it is, it is YOU that have become the politicized element. Or maybe I can come cut down the trees in your yard and use them in my fireplace. Yes, we need resources, but the environment MUST be a consideration. If Avatar had used the global warming argument it would have been political. That it didn't is a nod to Cameron that he didn't want to take that route.
Secondly, I have read in a number of blogs that Avatar criticizes the War on Terror and the soldiers fighting in it. This too I have to disagree with on several levels. First, Avatar clearly states in the opening scenes that the soldiers on Pandora are mercs. Mercenaries. Former military that have become hired guns. Blackwater scum machinegunning civilians. Sorry, but this is the case and if it a political statement to you then you need to review your concept of right and wrong. No one is more pro-Military than I. My grandfather flew Wildcats at the Battle of Midway. My father flew Intruders in Vietnam. I spent time on submarines. I love the military. But having been in I also know there are plenty of people in the military who'd gladly leave to do the same thing for a bigger paycheck sans oath.
As far as the War on Terror goes, I've never seen a more botched operation than that mess in Iraq. The soldiers and military performed flawlessly but Sadaam had no nukes. He didn't even have a program. Hell, he didn't even have air conditioning. The evidence was crap. We should have never gone into Iraq. We won but we look like the Romans. Or the Russians. We had more business in Vietnam than we had or have in Iraq. Now Afghanistan is a different story. We should have concentrated our resources there and that one might be finished already. So how is criticizing a botched military operation un-American? In North Korea you can't say anything against the government. You go to jail. In other words, as far as they are concerned, criticizing their government makes you anti-North Korean. But in America, we get to criticize all we want. So really, criticizing a botched military operation isn't anti-American, it is an exercize of our constitutional rights. It is pro-American. Nothing ever gets better in North Korea because there is no dissent. In America, just the opposite is true. So if you maintain that criticism of a botched military operation is anti-American, then maybe you have more in common with a North Korean stooge than you realize.
My advice: Go See Avatar. See it more than once. It is freaking awesome. It is the first movie that did to me what Star Wars did in 1977. First one I've seen in a theater more than twice since then. It is fresh. Unique. Well executed. Powerful. Rich. A technological masterpiece. Possibly the best movie ever made. Could parts of it be called political? If you wanted to, parts of the original Star Wars could be interpreted as political. If you love America, you'll still love America. If you are a lefty, you won't change your mind. If you are a righty, you won't change your mind. And if you've passed judgment before seeing it, don't be such lemming.
Futbol Guru, www.not-a-lemming.com
Aesop was a slave who lived in Ancient Greece around 600 BC. He is best known for his collection of fables that teach moral lessons of human interaction. While Aesops Fables are often cast as childrens stories today, throughout most of history they were recognized as the deep wisdom of the ages. A few of his more notable titles - taken from a list on Wikipedia, are:
One of my favorites was The Ant and the Grasshopper, which was redone by Disney just a few years ago. In this story the ants are out working in the fields, collecting food for the winter. Meanwhile the grasshopper played and ate to his heart's content, all the while making fun of the ants for the labor. Come winter of course, the ants were safe in their warrens with plenty to eat and the grasshopper was cold and hungry outside. Knowing the ants had plenty the grasshopper came to the anthill and begged for food. But the ants told the grasshopper that what they had was a product of their labor and they weren't going to give it away. The grasshopper, having not prepared, starved to death in the cold. The lesson of course doesn't apply only to food and is generally interpreted as meaning, if you don't take responsibility seriously you aren't going to have what you need in life.
For thousands of years this was taken as a fundamental truth. Even Christianity, which is often referenced when the issue arises, doesn't endorse helping those who are lazy. (2 Thessalonians 3:10 - If any will not work, neither let him eat.) Indeed, this is one of the precepts that has made America great. While you weren't given what you need, the tools were there for you to go out and get it. And those who were willing to work hard would be rewarded for their labors. That is why the pilgrims landed at Plymouth. That is why Europe flocked to our shores. So what in the world is happening?
I honestly don't understand what my nation has become. Far from The Ant and the Grasshopper, the only thing our leadership ever talks about these days is how to give our tax dollars away. In Copenhagen Hillary Clinton has pledged $100 billion (that's $100,000,000,000) yearly to help the third world catch up with the developed world. At the same time she wants to slow the growth - even turn back the progress of - our economy. Now I don't mean to be insensitive but we have in this country what we have because we have chosen to have a stable government and to work our asses off for 250 years. The people in those other countries haven't done that so why should they benefit from our hard work? Why do my leaders think it is okay to take what the ants earned and give it to the grasshoppers, while making it more difficult for the ants to do their job? When did that become wisdom?
While our diplomats are giving away the store to a bunch of uncouth, uncivilized heathans overseas, our legislators are in Washington trying to decide how to give healthcare to those who haven't earned it. Like many of you reading this piece I've worked my tail off for the last twenty years. I studied while others were out partying. I didn't engage in casual and irresponsible sex. I maintained a low debt to income ratio. I kept my body healthy through exercise and moderation. I've gone to work every day even when I don't particularly like what I'm doing. I've provided for my family even when it meant I have to sacrifice for myself. And under the burden of taxation and inflation I have virtually nothing for the future. Sound like anyone else you know? And they want to use the money you and I earn to pay for our healthcare, to buy healthcare for those who partied and screwed around while they should have been on task? And medicate the AIDS epidemic in Africa. This after using half of last year's budget to pay off the banks. While we're in debt up to our eyeballs they are increasing outflow and decreasing inflow. How did these fools wind up in charge?
I drive to work every morning and see the bumperstickers on the cars. You do too. People hate the government and for good reason. Just this morning I saw one that said Elect Nobody. So I ask, how and why are these idiots in power? They can't even balance a checkbook. I don't understand how they made it past the 8th grade without getting hit by a car or falling into a hole. Our leaders have abandoned all reason in their relentless pursuit of being loved by everybody. And we have abandoned all reason by trusting them. We've forgotten about Aesop! We've forgotten what they knew 3,000 years ago.
As far as I can tell, given the only debate occuring in Washington - our Government's plan for the future - is as follows:
- Cut our economy and use our wages to fund nations wracked with internal strife and corruption.
- Reduce our healthcare and make us pay for those who won't accept responsibility.
- Use the wages of the middle class to bail out banks and investment firms and pay their failed-executives' 7-figure salaries
- Use the wages of the middle class to purchase automotive companies that failed through mismanagement.
- Use the wages of the middle class to buy cell phones and service for people who can't afford them.
- Fight wars for nations that have no stability, no educated populace, and deeply corrupt governments.
- Pay to medicate the sick of an entire nation for a communicable disease that can't be cured.
- Increase the national debt to pay for today's excess
People - this isn't about Democrat versus Republican. This isn't about conservative versus liberal, or right against left, or Christian versus atheist. This is about stupid, greedy people in power. Greece forgot about Aesop's Fables and look what happened. If we forget them the same thing will happen to us. Re-read Aesops Fables. They are all summarized on Wikipedia. It takes less than twenty minutes to go over them all. You might even see a connection between this wisdom and the values of our Founding Fathers. Ancient Greece was, after all, one of the inspirations for our form of Government. Didn't you ever wonder why so many of our Government Buildings look like Ancient Greek temples? Let's make sure ours don't collapse, because all that is left in Greece is ruins of their former glory.
Futbol Guru, www.not-a-lemming.com
It has been said that Christianity would be perfect if there weren't people involved. I guess that's true of many things. Look at the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. As a group of documents they exalt man to a higher level and establish a nation based on freedom and liberty. It truly is a magnificent construct and grants a never before seen level of rights and responsibilities to the public. The biggest problem is that in order for them to mean anything, they have to be administered by people. And people means politics.
Politics is the study, dynamics, and practice of dealing with large groups of people. What motivates them. What inspires them. How can they be controlled. How can they be freed. And people who make a career out of this are called politicians. Some people are very good at appealing to the mob. Fortunately, there are those who use this talent for good. And since positives in the natural world always have negative counterparts, there are also those who use this talent for bad. What is 'good' and what is 'bad' is always left up to the public to decide, and later, to the historians. It is amazing how often politicians viewed as 'bad' by the people of the day are remembered as 'good' by historians. And the opposite is just as true.
Sadly, the climate change football is now in the hands of politicians. If the Left wins, draconian and unnecessary measures will strangle the global economy and ultimately undermine all their hopes. As history has shown with the utmost clarity, economic downturns always lead to significant increases in carbon output as a result of wars, less efficient industrial practices, and population pressures. If the Right wins, nothing will be done and industrial output will continue to rise at a steady pace, lining the pockets of industrialists and flowing ever more treausure into government coffers. Either way, the people lose.
I've stated in other posts that science does not support the doom and gloom interpretation of climatology. In other words, there is no scientific evidence that rising levels of carbon dioxide will result in a runaway greenhouse effect that will end life as we know it. Nor have rising temperatures been definitively linked to carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, and even more importantly, it is not alltogether clear that temperatures are even rising. Indeed, average global temperature is a meaningless quantity and the apparent increasing severity of weather related phenomenon has much more to do with larger populations moving into ever more sensitive and dangerous areas, and the rapidity with which the global media reports on and disseminates any kind of negative weather event.
Climate change is real. It has always been real. It is as real as weather change. Expecting the climate to stay constant is no different than expecting the weather to remain constant. The only difference is that climate changes more slowly than weather. In fact, up until the last couple of hundred years nobody even noticed climate change because when people died their climate records died with them. Daily weather recording and stable governments are the only reason that climate change is even noticeable. Climate change is real. On the other hand, catastrophic global warming has no basis in rational scientific study. Nevertheless, there is a very real danger of coming catastrophe.
There are two enormous problems facing the biosphere that are far more immediate than climate change: population pressure and habitat loss. Like 'global warming' they are both side effects of an industrialized societies. Unlike global warming, they are real and demonstrable. And unlike climate change, which despite the negotiations in Copenhagen, humans can not alter, we can do something about population pressure and habitat loss.
Population pressure is simply populations growing beyond sustainability. Put some e.coli on a petri dish and let it grow. Colonies will form quickly and healthy growth will soon cover the surface of the dish with a bacterial mat. But at some point access to food will begin to cause bacteria on the outer edges to die. At the same time, those in the middle will begin to drown in their own waste products. Without outside intervention the entire colony will eventually collapse. This is an excellent analogy to human population pressure. While populations in industrialized nations have been stable for the last half century or so, populations in 'developing' nations are increasing geometrically. While this massive growth is causing some migration, that isn't really the problem. The problem is that the growth of these populations is being artificially sustained.
Most developing nations lack both the industrial capacity and the governmental organization to support large populations. And throughout history, nature has limited the size of these populations through natural causes. Infant mortality, malnutrition, plague, internal strife and other factors have combined to keep average lifetimes comparitively low. While this is nature's way of maintaining stability we in the west view it as anathema. Therefore, we in the West have provided food and medical care that has allowed these populations to burgeon far beyond anything even remotely natural. And whether we have done so for religious reasons, political reasons, or simply out of the 'goodness' of our hearts, we have created a situation every bit as unnatural as the industrially-forced rise in atmospheric CO2.
But we can not focus all the blame on the third world. While population pressure is at least 50% our fault, habitat loss is 100% our baby. For starters, much of the habitat loss we see is occuring in underdeveloped nations whose populations have been artificially swollen by well-meaning but misguided do-gooders in the West. With tribes far larger than anything ever seen throughout the long (and relatively peaceful) history of these far-flung regions, people in these areas are domesticating areas they'd have never dreamed of colonizing in the past.
Yet that is only half the problem. Back home, our insatiable materialism is driving everything from deforestation to the worldwide collapse of fisheries. And with our emerging love of all things 'green' we have shifted this destruction more and more from our own backyard into the developing countries - out of sight and out of mind - accelerating population induced habitat loss. Even in our own nation we need look no further than our own posh neighborhoods to find the worst culprits of habitat destruction. Whether it is a view of the beach out our backdoor or the removal of a mountaintop to get at the minerals under the ground, we are bit by bit eroding the very habitats that once absorbed changes in the ecosystem driven by climate change. Climate change isn't the problem. The problem is that when the climate changes there is nowhere for the animals to go - and humans are included. And since when is a 10,000 square foot home necessary for a family of four? The resources to build it had to come from somewhere as does the energy to keep to cool in summer and warm in winter.
That is the real danger of the current climate of climate change. Because every idea being discussed is driving the global community the wrong direction. The politicians want to turn citizens of the industrialized nations into paupers while supporting the unnatural growth of third world populations. The kernel of their negotiations centers around artificially limiting the growth of developed economies while artificially accelerating the growth of underdeveloped economies, and using the manpower of the developed contries to make it happen. The only possible result of this can be huge populations with nowhere to go, nothing to do, and with personal futures of the citizens stymied by chronic market saturation. Historically, when this happens, there is always only one outcome. War.
Futbol Guru, www.not-a-lemming.com
Either the planet is getting hotter or it isn't. Are manmade emissions the cause? Is the world headed for environmental Armageddon? Why is this a political football?
It would seem to be an open and shut case. If the world is getting warmer, if manmade emissions are the cause, and if the climate will cartwheel out of balance because of this, we need to fix things and we need to do it now. Compare it to H1N1. H1N1 has hardly been the global killer that some international aid agencies were hoping - or rather, feared. Yes H1N1 is dangerous and we all understand that. We don't really understand how, when, or if it will morph into the next pandemic strain, and some people are more worried than others, but precautions were taken and the spread kept manageable. There are critics who will say that the government hasn't done enough, some who say we have done too much, and still others who worry only about how it will be paid for. But so far as I have heard no one has advocated doing nothing. And while there are political implications to how this 'crisis' is handled, as there are for any international effort, they are related to the epidimic and not controlling the management. So why is climate change so different?
The underlying fact is that we don't understand climate change. The equations that model climate are non-linear, multi-variable, partial differential equations with multiple boundary conditions, underdetermined initial conditions, and un-modeled dynamics. They can not be solved directly. They can not be fully initialized. They fall under the realm of 'chaotic' systems. Regardless of what anybody says, we don't really understand the complex interactions between sun, atmosphere, ocean, and land. We don't. From the standpoint of science and engineering, when compared to climate, building a nuclear bomb or sending a man to the moon are rather trivial exercises. Just consider how many nuclear and rocket tests were necessary to get these programs right.
Okay, so we don't understand climate. What this means is that information related to climate is subject to interpretation. When a missile is tested either it performs properly or it doesn't. A nuclear test either produces the expected fireball or it fizzles. There are questions as to degree, but success or failure is fairly straightforward and obvious. Climate data, on the other hand, by virtue of the way it is collected, is subject to considerable uncertainty. Climate data is collected over a wide area and most of the EAOS is ignored. The EAOS is the Earth-Ocean-Atmosphere-System and interactions between these realms are what drives climate. The EAOS is so big that 99.9% of it can't be measured. The deep ocean. The upper atmosphere. Far out at sea. Remote locales. Most places throughout the EAOS don't have thermometers or pressure gauges so conditions are inferred from the nearest hard measurement. Which means that 99.9% of what we know about the EAOS is being inferred from measuring somewhere in the range of just 0.1% of it. While there is validity to collecting data this way, it is no small surprise that there is a lot of uncertainty associated with it and how you handle the remaining 99.9% of inferred conditions is subject to a lot of debate. While satellite-based remote sensing is helping to fill the gaps, satellite data is NOT a hard measurement and is itself subject to a host of errors that can only be removed through data processing - a process that requires choices on how the data is to be manipulated.
Okay, so we don't understand climate. We can't really measure the climate. This means people have to make assumptions. And how do we make assumptions? Why we base them on the sum-total of our experiences: our childhood, our education, our training, our personality, our ideological viewpoints, our wordly ambitions. Everything about us goes into making assumptions whether they are about how to treat data gathered from an EAOS observing satellite or how to react to the troop surge in Afghanistan. And everybody's experiences are different which is why there are so many different reactions.
Now I don't claim to know why people act the way that they do. Some people belive that money collected through taxation should be used to help those in 'need'. Some people believe that everyone should stand on their own two feet. Sink or swim. Some people believe the world's problems are caused by the poor. Others believe they are caused by the rich. Some people think that everyone's resources should be pooled so that no one has any want. Others think that everyone should get only what they earn. And of course, for each of these ideological bents, there are countless gradations between the extremes.
For most of civilization the common man had no rights. Hereditary succession, interspersed with the occasional coup d'etat, determined the course of government and the have-nots of the world could only watch in misery and squallor. Until a few hundred years ago, a movement called "The Enlightenment" began to ask if all men had basic rights. From this came two primary schools of thought, both of which maintained that people had intrinsic value. One school believed that each man was a free individual endowed with the right to self-determination. It culminated in the US Constitution, which for the first time ever, spelled out these rights in a legal document. We'll call these people individualists because they believe in the power of individual control. The other school of thought maintained that each man was part of a collective whole and the main focus of society was to ensure that no one existed in the poverty of the ages. This school is what we know today as socialism and saw extreme experiments in the form of the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and other interesting places. We'll call these people centralists because they believe in the power of centralized control. Why a person chooses one school of thought over another is partly due to their background and experiences but also comes from somewhere within. It is outside the scope of this essay to answer why people choose one school or another, only to recognize that they do. Nevertheless, it can not be debated that adherents to individualism or centralism are generally quite energetic about their choices. Indeed, most of the world's wars come about as the result of ideological clashes.
Individualism requires relatively open access to resources, goods, and services. The result is a wide disparity in achievement based in part on individual talents, work ethic, and initial conditions. Centralism requires centralized control of resources, goods, and services so that each person can be give some arbitrarily-determined minimum allocation regardless of individual talents, work ethic, and initial conditions. Individualists, therefore, attempt to influence government and economic decisions that promote laws and conditions providing wide access to resources, goods, and services. Centralists, on the other hand, attempt to influence legal decisions that restrict access to these same resources, goods, and services. It can be argued that the outcome of these legislative and regulatory battles between Individualist and Centralists determine the success of one ideological bent over the other.
Now, the crux of the matter. Take a subject like climate change. The data and methodology used to make predictions are both subject to considerable interpretation. One interpretation predicts almost random seeming fluctuations in heating and cooling - sort of the way the EAOS has behaved for the last million years or so - that occur slowly over time. The other interpretation predicts a runaway greenhouse effect - something never before seen or inferred from past climate records - that could potentially end life as we know it in a relatively short period of time. Neither can be proven. Each can be supported by appropriate choices made when data is processed and climate dynamics modeled. I ask, which of these interpretations is going to be siezed upon by a crisis-loving media, and a crisis-driven culture?
People will die and kill for their ideological choices. We see this in Iraq and Afghanistan every day. They will torture, maim, rape, and commit genocide to see their ideological choice reign supreme over another. Endless wars, death, and pestilence have proven it beyond debate. Centralists want to control access to resources, goods, and services. If they can make people believe that the only way to stop catastrophic global warming is to control access to resources, goods, and services, you think they're not going to make assumptions in data processing and climate dynamics modeling that prove their point? They're not even going to be conscious of it. They're getting exactly what they want out of life - a victorious ideology - without even having to talk about politics. This in addition to the fact that they've made themselves the most important scientific figures on the planet with an exponentially increasing revenue stream. Add to that the hype-factor of an omnipresent, crisis-driven media and it is no surprise that public opinion is what it is.
The Climate Change Centralists say the CRU-East Anglia email scandal doesn't change anything, because for them, it doesn't. It's like Nixon saying that Watergate doesn't matter. You can't change the mind of a true believer. And in that sense, they aren't even lying. They are simply making choices that support their world view. They see no more inconsistency in what they've done than communist party leaders who executed former capitalists and then moved into their luxury mansions, or priests who condemned lasciviousness only to descend into debauchery under the protection of papal indulgences. But what this means to the rest of us is that the CRU email scandal is the most important event in climatology since James Hansen stood before Congress in 1988 and predicted the end of life as we know it. It is Jan Huss standing up to the Roman Catholic Church. Martin Luther nailing his Ninety-Five Theses on the cathedral door in Wittenberg. A ragged, underfunded band of patriots defying George III. Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus. It is resisting an increasingly oppressive establishment that has become infatuated with its own priveleged status. Like Ms. Parks it is time to keep our seats or we're going to find ourselves walking to work - those of use who still have jobs.
Futbol Guru, www.not-a-lemming.com
I've been watching aghast the last few weeks as the climate change storm sweeps the planet. A few weeks ago we had the release of hundreds of emails detailing a systematic plan to silence and disrepute any scientific data or opinions contrary to the accepted view of anthropogenic climage change. Most chilling perhaps, those implicated in the emails say that their conspiracy has no bearing on the climate discussion. Remember the clergymen who threatened Galileo with death for saying the moon had mountains on it? They too said that evidence to the contrary had no bearing on the discussion. The scientists have become the Church.
At the same time, we have the climate summit in Copenhagen, or is it, Hopenhagen, with the world's leaders gathering to the strains of children singing about our need to save the world. Indeed, Danish PM Lars Loekke Rasmussen, as the conference opened, told delegates the world was looking to them to safeguard humanity. How many horrors have emerged from people trying to save us from ourselves can not be counted. Jim Jones and David Koresh were trying to save people from themselves too. But there was no one to save the followers from the leaders.
And today, the US Environmental Protection Agency declared greenhouse gasses as harmful to human health, opening the door for them to directly regulate emissions. Or, if you prefer, control the US economy through the backdoor as it were. Even though none of the greenhouse gasses are poisonous but have been in the environment as long as people have. It would be no different to say that sunlight was harmful to - oh yeah. They did say that.
Honestly I can find no words to describe the horror taking place before my eyes. Here, at the dawn of the 21st Century, we see the United States rushing headlong towards centralized economic planning - the same system that turned Eastern Europe into the biggest environmental disaster the world has ever seen. All predicated on science that can not be proven, for an effect that hasn't killed even a single person. Yes, you heard me right. Greenhouse gasses have never killed anyone and yet they've been declared hazardous to human health. I wonder how many people died as a result of the recent worldwide recession. I would guess hundreds of thousands due to reduced food supplies and medical care. Not because of a natural calamity, but because of greed by the world's financial leaders. And yet we are now seeking to regulate the very technologies that are responsible for saving and lengthening human life.
Look around the world. Where are people dying? In third world countries with poorly managed governments and centrally planned economies. People without access to health care. People without access to energy and transportation. It is in the industrialized nations, with access to these goods and services, where lifespans have increased and people with formerly life threatening conditions are being saved. And yet we want to regulate not only health care, but also energy and production, and say that these things don't save life, but end it. Truly 2+2 is no longer equal to 4! Truly "yes" has come to mean "no".
I admit, I don't understand what is going on. I happen to be a rocket scientist but I also studied climatology in a 'former life'. Now climatology is hard. Much harder than rocket science. No one understands it, not even the experts. If they say they do, it proves they don't. Sort of like a guy saying he understands women. And you can't simulate it on a computer (any more than you can simulate a woman.) You can't even initialize the simulation. To do so you'd have to know the state of the atmosphere at every point - an impossibility. And chaos theory tells us unequivocally that is does matter. That's why I went back to rocket science. There are no answers in climatology. Only questions and observations. Did you know it is not even possible to calculate the average temperature of the Earth? You'd have to know the temperature at every point on the earth and in the atmosphere and you can't. And I'm supposed to believe that Al Gore understands that? Or Barack Obama? They may be good politicians but something tells me they don't know what a differential equation is, much less a non-linear, partial DE with boundary conditions. (The mathematical tools used to model climate and weather.) How can you make a politician understand that mathematical non-linearities and sensitivity to initial conditions render climate simulations useless? Obviously you can't. But these same people understand the meaning of power. And they are going to get it even though global warming hasn't killed even one single person. Carbon dioxide hazardous? You'd have to remove all the air, and then you'd just suffocate.
People, we are being duped. We are being lied to. We are being lied to. We are being driven over a cliff by those who would use us for their own ends. Remember the Matrix? That fictional world where machines used humans as bio-batteries? Well, it turns out it is going to be real. It's being set up right now. The only difference is that it isn't run by computers, it is run by the politicians and the wealthy. People who will use our energy to power a world that turns only for them. Luxury has always required labor. Somebody to hold the palm leaf and build the pyramids. All they have to do is make sure we don't wake up.
Futbol Guru, www.not-a-lemming.com
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