What could be a great start for the new year

The people are rioting in Iran, the largest instigator of terrorism in the world. Iran is within a year of developing nuclear weapons and threatening every civilized nation in the region (as well as the others). And President O is still wanting to make a deal with the lunatics in charge instead of making it clear that we support freedom for the Iranian people and will do whatever we can to help them. Is he afraid the Mullahs will hate us? Too late, don’t you think.

Guess what we got for Christmas

We got a down payment on yet another unfunded mandate. It’s kind of like my mom who used to always give us gloves (it’s really cold in Phoenix, ya know) except this is more like getting one glove so it can be worn like Michael Jackson. I hate standing in those return lines but this gift is worse than useless. It’s a “free” months rent after signing a lifetime lease at the Biltmore. See yall in line!

I don’t think that most people even understand that much of the cost of this thing is placed on the states. You know, those local governments that are going insolvent. Like all governments, they create nothing, so it means either cutting other services or raising taxes. But this is how the game is played, a group of politicians (usually Democrats) passes something so they can say that they are for the “little guy” and then the others (usually Republicans) gets to be the bad guys and try to take it away or defund it because it can’t be paid for. Think of it as mom with a credit card and dad with a job. Mom is loved because she is '”caring” and dad is reviled because he is a tightwad.

Maybe it will sink in when the kids find themselves living in the street.

Lessons from the wreckage

As the smoke clears from the crash of AGW it is important to understand there are forces that will always attempt to harness the fears of people. We have all lived through several of these manipulations (swine flu, bird flu, mad cow, Y2K, 2012, global warming/cooling, gas shortages, peak oil, guilt, asteroids, hemorrhoids ...) so it is time to start paying attention or we will become slaves of our so-called protectors.

Understand that there are interests (political, religious, business) that want power and money. Any time it is demanded that you give up some of your freedom or money red flags should start to fly.

How can you Americans put up with this stuff?

The other day my wife had a baby shower for a lady who had immigrated from Poland several years back. I asked her how she liked it here and she mentioned that her husband, who is an engineer, was disgusted with all of the laws and rules. How ironic that people from a former communist country notice our suppression but apparently many of us don’t.

It seems that the left has found the perfect guise for totalitarianism. They just want to protect us from …. everything. Our light bulbs, cars, the toys our kids play with, what we put into or or on our bodies, whether or not we buy health insurance, even what we think. With a gun to our heads they will get what they want regardless of our silly outdated constitution.

If you think they were shocked by the governors elections in Virginia and New Jersey wait till they experience November 2010. There will be red from one coast to the other. We’ll have to repeal the damage they have done and are in the process of doing. There isn’t any money for this insanity.

Obama: “Precipice” of a deal

high cliff or crag: a high, vertical, or very steep rock face

• - dangerous state: a very dangerous situation

Does he have a way with words or not? I’m so glad we have an articulate President!

Déjà vu all over again

 

1974 CIA Report on imminent ice age. We are reliving all of those Saturday morning science fiction movies.

Measure it with a micrometer ….

We used to joke about how sensitive our test equipment (inertial navigation system) was back in the Air Force.  “We measure it with a micrometer, mark it with a piece of chalk, and cut it with an axe.” In the world of “climate change” it is exactly the opposite. We chop it with an axe (tree rings), mark it with a piece of chalk (guess), then measure it with a micrometer and say, “Look we’ve warmed a half degree!!! Oh no!!!”. Good grief.

Bias by silence

Most bias found in the alphabet news is not caused by a particular slant, it is often by the decision that it just isn’t news. “Climategate” is a perfect example.

12 Days, 3 Networks and No Mention of ClimateGate Scandal
Even as Copenhagen looms, broadcast news ignores e-mails suggesting warming alarmists 'manipulated' data, conspired to destroy information and thwarted peer reviews.
By Julia A. Seymour
Business & Media Institute
12/2/2009 2:01:37 PM

It’s been nearly two weeks since a scandal shook many people’s faith in the scientists behind global warming alarmism. The scandal forced the University of East Anglia (UK) to divulge that it threw away raw temperature data and prompted the temporary resignation of Phil Jones of the university’s Climate Research Unit.

Despite that resignation and calls by a U.S. senator to investigate the matter, ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news programming has remained silent – not mentioning a word about the scandal since it broke on Nov. 20, even as world leaders including President Barack Obama prepare to meet in Copenhagen, Denmark next week to promote a pact to reduce greenhouse gases.

Read the rest

Day Fourteen and Counting Does anybody still watch these guys?

Crash and Burn …. we’ll see

It has been fun to watch the “believers” not knowing how to take in the hacking (or was it an inside job?) story. Their precious consensus is now shown to be what it always was, not only a lie but a con job. And then there is the absolutely disastrous data upon which global warming is based.

Last year a science teacher at our school decided to show his 8th grade classes Gore’s movie. I asked him if he was willing to show both sides. He told me there was no other side. I suggested a few videos that could be obtained on Youtube. He told me that that they weren’t “real” scientists to which I disagreed. In the end I asked him if he was just going to propagandize his students and he said that there was no other relevant view.

Hopefully that will change before we waste trillions of dollars and destroy civilization as we know it.

The S__T has finally hit the fan … just in time

CO2 never was a problem and all the machinations and deceptions exposed by these files prove that it was the greatest deception in history, but nobody is laughing. It is a very sad day for science and especially my chosen area of climate science. As I expected now it is all exposed I find there is no pleasure in “I told you so.”                 Dr. Tim Ball          Bio of Dr. Ball

The global warming farce is being exposed and it isn’t pretty!

Read more.

Some great ads being run in Australia

For more go to www.wattsupwiththat.com

Barack Insane Obama

Can't we keep this idiot here instead of sending him out to embarrass himself and this country at every turn?

It was a simple question, “And what is your understanding of the historical meaning of the A-bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Do you think that it was the right decision?”

World War II casualty statistics vary greatly. Estimates of total dead range from 50 million to over 70 million.^[36] The sources cited on this page document an estimated death toll in World War II of 62 to 78 million, making it the deadliest war ever. When scholarly sources differ on the number of deaths in a country, a range of war losses is given, in order to inform readers that the death toll is uncertain. Civilians killed totaled from 40 to 52 million, including 13 to 20 million from war-related disease and famine. Total military dead: from 22 to 25 million, including deaths in captivity of about 5 million prisoners of war. Wikipedia article on WW2 casualties

The war had to be ended. Japan was warned and they refused to surrender. America and the rest of the world was not interested in losing more young men to an invasion of Japan. The bombs were dropped on August 6th and 9th and the Japanese surrendered August 15th.

Second guessing what other strategies may have worked is a waste of time.

Uh oh!

Today I did one of those things that is so easy to start and so hard to finish. A nice relaxing ride up to Crown King sounded like the perfect way to spend a Sunday morning and afternoon so off I went on an easy ride planning on not spilling the coffee in the tail box of the KLR so that it would last through breakfast. And it did too.

The ride was leisurely and care was taken over the hundreds of thousands of bumps on the washboard riddled road. But at breakfast there was a group couples who had ridden up on those little 4 wheel drive golfcart like things called crawlers. They had come up the back side from Lake Pleasant. I had made that trip on a “real” dirtbike a few years ago and recall that it was a fairly nasty road so I asked if they thought it would be passable with the KLR. “Sure, no problem”.

So after a false start I found the road leading down and asked another couple on quads how the road was. She assured me that it was a little rough but passable. Ok, let’s do it.

After about 2 miles riding steeply downhill on loose shale filled with 1 foot diameter rocks bordered on one side by a steep stone wall and the other by a sharp drop-off, it became clear that I couldn’t turn back. Shit!

When I finally ran into more riders it was a group of guys on quads stuck in the bottom of a ravine that I had to enter over a piece of road that they couldn’t get up. Shit again! I turned off the engine and walked it down to the bottom where they informed me that it didn’t get better ahead where they had just come from.

I won’t bore you with the a blow by blow two and a half hour struggle to get out but let it be enough to say that I crashed 3 times and am sitting here typing this with an ice pack on my sprained right ankle. The repairs to the KLR are surprisingly moderate, only a cracked shift lever and an even more bent handlebar. I had thought of doing this trail when my eldest son, J, next comes to visit but it would be best to consider the ride to Prescott over the Old Senator Highway from Crown King. Or maybe just sitting around talking about it.

UPDATE: The shift lever was just loose, not cracked. Saved $35 on that one! And I’m not even limping anymore, just driving at an angle (the bent bars, you know).

House narrowly passes landmark health care bill

The president said Democrats have a 70-year history of creating and defending programs like Social Security and Medicare, Andrews said afterward, adding Obama had said the day's vote "is going to define the difference between the Republican and Democratic parties for decades."

Yes it will. Another bankrupt program. We’ve got the “stimulus”, socialized medicine, and now on to cap and tax.

I sure hope we make it till 2010

But to be fair, this wouldn’t have been possible without the congress we have. Is that a hint?

A great 6 video series by a MIT scientist

Conservatism is alive and well

A true conservative today should stress construction, encouragement, moderation and understanding instead of destruction, prohibition, extremism and slogans. A conservative thinks in terms of countless minor corrections and improvements based on experience and experiment rather than in terms of a universal, uniform solution based on theory and enforced by inflexible law.

A conservative, in the best sense, sees the world and its inhabitants as an interdependent organism, comprising innumerable local communities and territories, each adapting to particular conditions. A conservative is someone who goes with the grain of humanity and the nature of the physical world, rather than trying to regiment and fashion a utopia through force of law. And, needless to say, an acceptable conservative is not one who thinks all the answers are obvious but is a modest person who admits that problems are not easily solved, that perfection is unattainable in this world and that it is often necessary to admit mistakes, change one's mind and start again.

Read the rest here.

Another great article: Obama and the liberal paradigm

Do the math

Well, let’s see. We’ve spent $160,000,000,000 of the stimulus so far to save or create 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 jobs for a year. So 160,000,000,000 divided by 1,000,000 or 1,500,000 works out to somewhere between $160,000 to $106,000 for each job while at the same time losing 7,000,000 jobs in the economy. Where are we going with this?

Survey: Slow recovery creating pessimism

Another asinine survey. The headline shouldn’t be “slow recovery” it should be no recovery. That’s what has people worried. Especially when we watch these idiots push for tax increases, and huge new entitlements when we can’t pay for the boondoggles we have. It is a government out of control run by people elected out of the failed states of Illinois, California, and New York. They are bringing us all the great programs that made their states so successful.

Fall Break in Colorado and Utah

The scenery is just amazing.

Utah in Arches National Park on the way home.

 

A thought provoking essay

“It is not the fault of the teachers – they work only too hard already. The combined folly of a civilization that has forgotten its own roots is forcing them to shore up the tottering weight of an educational structure that is built on sand. They are doing for their pupils the work which the pupils themselves ought to do. For the sole end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.”

The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers (1947)

Fall has finally arrived

One of Vicki’s high school classmates had his car in a show today over in Carefree so we stopped by to take a look. Apparently Jeff decided to upgrade his Ferrari to a Lamborghini. He opened it up for us ….. nice car. Says he takes it out once a week for 50 to 100 miles.

 

There were quite a few cars I have never seen before so here are some pics.

 

The orange one was a Cord and the Maroon one a who knows, but it has a chain drive.

The best one was the prototype of the Government Motors “Public Option”. It’s the one we will all be required to choose (but if you like your present car don’t worry you can keep it if you can afford the registration). It’s somewhere between a SUV and a golf cart. The rear seats can be removed for those of you who wish you still had your pickup.

After the show we had lunch at Harrold’s , burgers with a chaser of Moose Drool.

Through the Looking Glass

I think we are in the process of losing all rational thought. We have elected a man who hates the country he represents. We are expanding a government that can’t support itself. We are about to raise taxes on un and underemployed people. We are trying to save the planet from a nonexistent peril. We are going to reduce costs by increasing liability. We are prepared to exchange freedom for security and will find that we have lost both.

How does one protect himself from this insanity?

More Nonsense

I was reading the CBS article below about how cap and tax would cost families about $1800 a year in extra energy expense. Apparently the EDF shot back a rebuttal, copied below.

Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year

Update 9/16/2009: The Environmental Defense Fund has responded to the documents' release with a statement saying, in part:

Even if a 100 percent auction was a live legislative proposal, which it's not, that math ignores the redistribution of revenue back to consumers. It only looks at one side of the balance sheet. It would only be true if you think the Administration was going to pile all the cash on the White House lawn and set it on fire.
The bill passed by the House sends the value of pollution permits to consumers, and it contains robust cost-containment provisions. Every credible and independent economic analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (such as those done by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the Energy Information Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency) says the costs will be small and affordable -- and that the U.S. economy will grow with a cap on carbon.

The question one needs to ask is if it doesn’t drive up the cost to anyone then how does it cut down on carbon? In other words who is it  affecting? The answer is again, not me ….. it’s those rich guys who’ll pay! Another redistribution scheme, this time to “save the planet”.

Go Joe!

Joe Wilson said what many people were thinking. Oh, he probably voiced it at an inopportune time, or maybe not. He was just handing back what O was saying in his speech about anyone who disagrees with him.

But was Joe right about this healthcare plan covering illegals? What do you think? They get healthcare now because federal law does not permit hospitals to turn away those in need. Who pays for that? We do through higher insurance rates. Will the law change? And what happens when the next amnesty comes along and by a stroke of the pen they are citizens?

It doesn’t matter what is said or what is “in the plan” unless you have experienced the continual stream of lies from politicians, you can’t read between the lines. It will be everything the critics say and twice (maybe 3 times) as expensive. The graph below shows just those over 65. We haven’t controlled what we have now. What will be the effect of adding in the rest of the population?

“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future. Period.”

Forgive me, Mr. President, but you aren’t telling the truth. People are beginning to question the premise of more government being the solution.

Eamonn Butler (UK)

“Personally, I’d like to see government so small that nobody would notice if it went on holiday for a month. You can’t do that while the entire career structure of journalists and politicians depends on them expanding the scope of politics more and more.”

That sounds like change I could believe in.

Big Sis Napolitano’s right wing terrorist list …

Right wing hate mob at a Texas healthcare town hall. I went to a Tea Party in Gilbert on July 4th and it was about like the hate mob in the video.

Don’t take it personal, we just don’t trust you.

I was watching some guy at one of the recent town halls ask President O how he was planning on paying for the healthcare plans. O talked about all the savings that could be found by cleaning up the way things are done and then the last third of the money came down to increasing the taxes of those deadbeat rich guys who make over $250,000 a year. He even volunteered his piece of the pie. It sounded so … reasonable … except when you try to think of any huge government undertaking that has ever run on budget, or even close. Let’s see, we have Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, the prescription drug benefit, the military budget, Afghanistan, Iraq, among a few off the top of my head. And then the other day O contrasted UPS and FedEx with the USPS.

"UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? It's the Post Office that's always having problems."

Holy cow!

You know, there are things that could be fixed with health care like portability. There is no reason that health insurance should be tied to a job, just make COBRA last indefinitely. In other words, if you have coverage in a group there is no reason that you should have to drop your insurance just because you change or lose a job. Insurance should be able to be bought across state lines. There need to be limits on lawsuits. Krauthammer has some good ideas as do others.

What has to end is the idea that healthcare is a right that the government should provide. I mean really, where will it end? gas for your car, food on your table, a table, a house, a college education, a high-paying job, a good looking wife …. I mean really, where will it end?

Flag Yourself!

The Public Option …. kind of says it all

“Let’s have an honest debate. We can agree on that.” (Barack Obama)

Surprisingly strong jobs data signal turning point

That was the headline in this AP story, followed by:

“The Labor Department's report Friday showed that the unemployment rate dropped a notch to 9.4 percent in July, from 9.5 percent the previous month. Together with slight increases in the average workweek and wages, the new figures suggested the economy is in a transition from recession to recovery.“

Unfortunately if you read down a bit there are these little nuggets:

“If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included the unemployment rate would have been 16.3 percent in July. All told, 14.5 million were out of work in July.

Job-seekers are finding it harder to get work because there are so few openings. A record 4.97 million people had been unemployed six months or longer in July. And the average length of unemployment grew to 25.1 weeks, also a record.”

So: “A net total of 247,000 jobs were lost last month, the fewest in a year and a drastic improvement from the 443,000 that vanished in June.”  

We lose a quarter million jobs, which is going backwards isn’t it? And that is good because the ship is sinking slower? And a lot of people have just given up looking so they don’t count in the 9.4%? I’m not understanding what strong data is referred to in the headline.

What would the headline have been if George Bush were still President?

The Blue Pill and the Red Pill

Which do you choose the truth or the fantasy?

What is a jobless recovery?

What we are seeing is it. The stock market continues to rise, good for those who still have money in it and a job or are able to survive  on reduced hours, bad for those who don’t have a job and are cleaning out what money they have saved. But why does it happen? The economy is in a recession so sales are bad and companies lay off people. Because companies are cutting costs they are able to show a profit therefore their stock goes up.

The sad thing is that the economy could rebound quickly if the Democrats were more interested in growth policies than they are in expanding the government. If cap and trade, the healthcare reform, and energy policy (support for wind and solar but the exclusion of nuclear, coal, and oil) are shelved (in other words if Obama, Pelosi, and Reid fail) the economy will quickly turn around. If not, get ready for much worse unemployment and extended stagnation.

The bright spot is that Americans are beginning to understand the choice.

UPDATE: Here is an article that explains it well.

Doing what you wish you could do when you don’t have the time.

When I’m dragging myself out of bed during the school year I almost always ask myself, “Where would you rather be and what would you rather be doing?” So today I did that. I would rather be visiting the Grand Canyon and having lunch on the ski slopes in Flagstaff. The scenery was surreal. Judge for yourself.

Kinder Crossing July 12-14

I decided to approach the Mogollon Rim the back way by as much dirt road as possible so I took the Apache Trail through Fish Creek Canyon past Roosevelt Dam (and Lake) connected with Highway 188 then Highway 288 which has sections of blacktop and dirt through Young all the way to the top of the rim to Highway 260.

I took the Rim Road all the way from Highway 260 to Highway 87, approximately 50 more mile of dirt. Cell phone service was very spotty so after a quick call to Vicki it was off to Clint’s Wells for some fuel and as it turns out the only place to go to make a cell call.

About 10 miles of highway and 5 miles of Fr95 gets you to the Kinder Crossing turn off. Another mile of dirt and the trail starts. I decided to camp at the trail head since the road ended in a steep canyon.

On the trip back the KLR was loaded like something from the Grapes of Wrath (except for the mattress). Controlled burns caused thick smoke to move in at the whim of the wind sometimes making a road almost undrivable. As soon as I came off of the hill outside of Sunflower the heat from the desert hit me in the face like a frying pan full of grease. I arrived in Fountain Hills at 8:58 am; it was 108. What a contrast from the cool on the rim!