Election Year

Just a few days ago your humble scribbler received an astonishing bit of "junk mail". On the trek from the mail box to the incoming bin via the trash container I noted a missive from the Internal Revenue Service emblazoned with words to the effect that the communication should not be thrown away as it contained notice of a "payment". As I annually receive and respond to a nasty letter from the IRS questioning why I have filed no tax return and threatening me with dire consequences, this bit of news tweaked the curiosity button. The last time I filed an income tax return was in 1981 shortly after retiring on a supposed "tax free" service connected disability due to a spinal injury suffered on the job. Since that time I have had no taxable income sufficient to trigger the filing requirement but each and every year I receive the identical threatening official letter which requires the tedious recital of the same hackneyed response.

The recent letter however, contained a filing form and the notification that the "government" has decided to engage in an economic "stimulus" by sending out "free" cash to the tune of $300.00 per qualifying individual. Let's see if I understand this correctly. We will all be paid $300.00 for producing absolutely no goods or services anyone would be willing to exchange legal tender for (except the paper shuffling government bureaucrats).

Wow! This boggles the mind. It is amazing to perceive the degree if economic ignorance rampant in a society subjected to government indoctrination education for several decades. It appears that while the schools have been drilling into the heads of their captive charges the necessity of recycling and hugging trees as well as writing to their legislators on the need to oppose the development of energy sources, absolutely NO economic basics have been discussed.

Meanwhile, the cost of energy sources which literally drive our lives are now verging on the prohibitive. Crude oil (reserves of which are proven but legally cannot be tapped) has now exceeded $105.00/barrel. One of the results of this of course is the run-up in the cost of motor fuel i.e. diesel, which has increased in price over $.50/gallon in the last 2 months.

The owners of the trucks which move virtually every item which we consume are being squeezed out of business. Recently, one long haul independent trucker hauling a 41,000 lb. load of freight from Florida to Quebec stopped in North Carolina to refill his fuel tanks at a cost of $960.00. In order to remain in business the ordinary citizen truckers must pass along these increased costs to the ultimate consumers. The alternative is of course, the disappearance of the products we need from the shelves with the result that the remaining items' prices are driven up beyond what those of modest means can pay. Duh!

What's that? Mail out more pieces of paper with dollar signs and numbers on them? Yeah, that'll fix it.

Denial. The Leftist Plague

A few days ago a colleague of ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ posted an illuminating essay which touched briefly on the subject of among other things, denial. The definition of denial in its psychological context is defined as: "An unconscious defense mechanism characterized by refusal to acknowledge painful realities, thoughts, or feelings." In few areas of human discourse are there more glaring examples of this phenomenon than two of the subjects frequently discussed on "right" versus "left" fora; specifically "gun control" and "global warming".

On the latter subject, the lack of any empirical data measuring anthropogenicaly driven increases in global temperature has resulted in the media, politicians and their politicized surrogates in the so called "scientific community" (the warmistas) to exert considerable effort to redefine the phenomena not as "global warming" but "climate change". To the extent that this verbal ju jitsu is successful it allows the warmistas to utilize virtually any weather or climate related anomaly for the furtherance of their political agenda. Thus if record breaking heat in a geographical area is experienced, it is attributable to "global warming". Conversely, unprecedented cold temperatures as recently experienced in vast regions of the planet are the result of "climate change". Curiously both of these phenomena which have occurred countless times since the forming of our planet are attributed to the same cause and require the same remedy: the exponential accretion of political power to a specific political class that just coincidentally has an interest in such a turn of events.

Another example of the manifestation of psychological denial becomes evident when we examine the facts surrounding the issue of "gun control". In the context of this debate with those who insist that "the police are charged with protecting the citizenry" (a concept rejected incidentally, by the entire US court system) just remember: "when SECONDS count, the police are only MINUTES away". The debate over various states (now numbering 35 required to issue such permits) allowing law abiding citizens to legally carry concealed firearms and two states which have no licensing requirements to do so (Vermont and Alaska) invariably involves opponents of such laws predicting gunplay accompanying every traffic collision and every instance of road rage with homicide rates going through the overhead. The facts as written in the statistics have as yet failed to dissuade proponents of greater gun control from positing their shopworn arguments. This seems to lend credence to the view that gun control as well as climate control is not really about guns or climate but really about control.

According to the climate change scientist James Lovelock, this is the beginning of the end of a peaceful phase in evolution.

By 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine.

The people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain.

We will, he says, have to set up encampments in this country, like those established for the hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced by the conflict in East Africa.

Lovelock believes the subsequent ethnic tensions could lead to civil war.

"Give me four years to teach the children [and a system of government indoctrination education] and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted."

Vladimir Lenin

Why $4.00+ per Gallon? It's Artificial!

Your humble scribbler was recently involved in an exchange in a thread at another site on the subject of energy supply, specifically petroleum. The subject is exceedingly relevant as most observers of the recent run-up of the price of motor fuel will attest. The causes of this situation are explained variously as "gouging by big oil", "extortion by the OPEC cartel" and increased demand for a "limited" resource by developing nations such as China and India. Of the aforementioned scenarios the latter two are the closer to reality. This approximation, however is not satisfactory in explaining the complete story.

In the interest of full disclosure I must needs reveal having been born into a family deeply involved in the oil production industry of California. Three of my mothers brothers were owners of independent drilling companies and two others were contractors in the oil well servicing business as was my father. I myself began work in the industry at the age of 15. I was able to partially finance an undergraduate degree by working for Conoco, Texaco, Monterey Oil Co. and later by operating up to 50 producing wells for independent producers.

During the early 1960s the Oil industry especially in California began to suffer a series of hits not entirely the result of declining reserves. Crude oil began to be imported from the Middle East at considerably less cost than that which was domestically produced. As a consequence, domestic wells were permanently abandoned as increasing costs of complying with the new governmentally mandated environmental regulations made them economically unfeasible. The redrilling of these wells is generally prohibited by recently implemented environmental regulations even though the price of crude oil has increased exponentially.

Middle Eastern crude oil delivered to the refinery at a cost of under $3.00 per barrel resulted in the abandonment of hundreds of wells producing 5 or less barrels per day at a cost approaching $3.60 per barrel. I was forced to sell 9 gravity crude oil containing 4% H20 for $1.00 per barrel. Needless to say this is not a recipe for economic survival and I consider myself fortunate to have been able to change careers in order to feed my family. The further decline of the oil industry since that era is the result of increasingly burdensome governmental regulations imposed at the behest of the environmental movement. This includes prohibition of offshore exploration and drilling off the west coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico even though considerable proven reserves exist there. Ironically, Cuba has contracted with Chinese firms to drill in the Gulf in an "Economic Zone" granted by the Carter administration ( the gift that just keeps giving).

On September 14, 1960 in Baghdad, Iraq, the cartel OPEC was founded "...as an attempt to organize and unify petroleum policies, securing stable prices for the petroleum producers". The purpose of cartels is to maximize the price of a commodity by controlling the market for it by the manipulation of supply as it relates to demand (Econ. 101). Cartels (monopolies) cannot succeed if faced with external competition hence the pressure exerted on Norway, a large producer of North Sea oil as well as Russia, to join the cartel which presently controls 40% of the worlds crude oil production.

The crusade carried on by the environmental movement capitalizing on the technological ignorance of a propagandized population to prohibit petroleum production on US controlled territory such as ANWR, western Alaska, west coast offshore, eastern Gulf of Mexico and the placing off limits of the huge oil sand resources of southern Utah by the stroke of Bill Clinton's pen is not the end of the story. A recently enacted law signed by George W. Bush will preclude the importation of petroleum from Canada as its refining will result in the increase of "greenhouse gases" thus "global warming".

There are many of our countrymen (mostly products of the government schools) who hasten to decry our reliance on the importation of foreign supplies of petroleum and the consequent accretion of power to the Islamic radicals who wish to either kill or enslave us. Think again gentle folk. For the $4.00+ per gallon price of gasoline you can thank an environmentalist without whom the muzzies would be forced into a free market for the commodity which they could never sell or even produce without the infidels' technology given their 7th century cultural system.

cross posted at: Eternity Road

What Goes Around Comes Around?

Mike Nifong writ large!

This Just In: Cooling?

With the empirically observed global mean temperature data obtained over the last several decades (see above graphic) revealing the gradual 1.13 degree Celsius rise during the 20th century ending 10 years ago (1998) coupled with the decline in the just ending winter in the northern hemisphere the global warmistas are having a bit of difficulty. With no measurable increase in global mean temperature for 10 years and indeed a precipitous recent decline in such measurements, the warmistas are resorting to their favorite tactic of ad hominum attacks on those who would dare risk careers erected on grants by bureaucrats and politicians of taxpayer funds designed to increase government control of individual behavior.

We all remember during the last few years the seizure upon any unusually warm summer temperatures as further proof of the catastrophic impact of economic activity on global warming. Conversely, the implications of planet wide record setting cold temperatures and snowfall figures of the past winter season have been either ignored by the media and the warmistas or spun as further proof of the warming trend of the planet in order to push their agenda of forcing the implementation of drastic measures to transfer wealth and political power to the worlds politicians. One reporter on the recent record cold and snowfall experienced in the northern hemisphere received the following email from a warmista/bureaucrat who appears to work for the government of Ontario, Canada who states as follows: "What are you, retarded? Global warming = MORE snowfall. Not less." Meaning snowfall records will be broken. The way it is spun by the warmistas is that regardless of their prior predictions, ANY unusual event in the climate or weather is the result of anthropogenically caused global warming. What is most remarkable is the effectiveness of this brainwashing campaign on the general population.

The warmistas however, are less and less effective in convincing all and sundry that "the science is settled" and continue to rely on their fall back position of intimidating those who are skeptical of the heavy reliance on computer models referred to by one climatologist as "garbage in, gospel out".

EVIL?

In a recent posting on his blog, the economist George Reisman points out that although we may disagree with many ideas (isms), few adhering to beliefs in those philosophies would admit to supporting what could be characterized as evil i.e." that which causes harm or destruction or misfortune". Additionally I would pose the question: does evil exist independent from human existence? This is akin to the academic query that if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it is there in fact a noise? The moral concept of evil is recorded by human history and invariably posits that evil must be related in some measure to human existence. Consider the following quotes:

"What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.
Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado)

"Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs." John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

“In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.” Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund

"Cannibalism is a “radical but realistic solution to the problem of overpopulation.”
Lyall Watson, The Financial Times, 15 July 1995

"We, in the green movement, aspire to a cultural model in which killing a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of 6-year-old children to Asian brothels."
Carl Amery

"The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population."
Reid Bryson, “Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man”, (1971)

"In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer.
Paul Ehrlich, in The Population Bomb (1968)

All of the above quotes are by so called "leaders" in the environmental movement. There is NO record of these statements being either condemned or disputed by any recognized environmental organization.

If and when the environmentalists take full power, and begin imposing and then progressively increasing the severity of such things as carbon taxes and carbon caps, in order to reach their goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 90 percent, the number of deaths that will result will rise into the billions, which is in accord with the movement’s openly professed agenda of large-scale depopulation. (The policy will have little or no effect on global mean temperatures, the reduction of which is the rationalization for its adoption, but it will have a great effect on the size of human population.)

Compared to the so called "evil" political movements of recent history such as Communism and National Socialism, environmentalism ranks as equally evil if one considers the 96+ millions of deaths attributed to the unnecessary banning of DDT.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!

Yours' truly has been criticized by various well intentioned colleagues and friends for having a hankering for owning a HK416 assault rifle. The main objection to the rifle is its use of the 5.56X 45mm (.223) military cartridge. Such criticisms are all well and good if the purpose of the weapon is to knock down an opponent at ranges of more than 100 meters. For that purpose a larger bore rifle is more appropriate. As ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ is not a highly trained sniper and has been known to handle his firearms with a degree of salutary neglect when it comes to cleaning, the new item from Heckler and Koch seems to be the ideal solution. What a pity that the process for obtaining a license to own a fully automatic weapon is so arduous.

Update To Politics of Flags

The Obama campaign "volunteer" in Houston, TX who is so enamored of the mass murderer Ernesto "Che" Guevara has been identified. Her name is Maria Isabel and an identical but larger flag displaying the Marxist revolutionary's image has been until recently prominently hung from the balcony of her apartment in Houston. We say "recently" as a field trip to that location by a local investigative blogger revealed the offensive flag had recently been replaced by a huge U.S. flag accompanied by a Houston police officer in an obvious effort to "discourage" the curious .

Senator Obama has attempted to evade responsibility for the prominent placing of the Cuban flag in the Houston campaign office. In view of the above photo of the senator with Ms Isabel, you be the judge.

ht: Instapundit

The Politics of Flags

I for one seem to remember recent flaps over the display of the Confederate battle flag as part of various southern state flags. It fact protests against such displays by leftists ignorant of history resulted in the recent removal of the "stars and bars" from the Georgia state flag by order of the Republican governor Sonny Purdue. Imagine the outcry if the Confederate flag were prominently and proudly displayed in the office of a Republican candidate for high office such as Mr Huckabee or Mr McCain.

It would appear that the display of the Cuban flag replete with the countenance of the mass murderer Ernesto "Che" Guevara is no big deal when given a prominent place in the campaign office of the Democratic candidate for president (Barak Hussein Obama) who promises "change"and incidentally refuses to wear a US flag pin on his lapel. One can only hope that such "change" is not accomplished by Ernesto's tool of choice which was the projectile from a Colt model 1911 .45cal semi auto pistol applied to the back of a political opponent's head.

An Escape?

It seems that this humble scribbler has been tagged by a colleague blogger with an assignment of sorts. To wit: If ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ had an inexhaustible supply of financial resources, and time, where would he spend: One Week, One Month, One Year and Half of his Life? Answering such questions, though academic and more than a bit fanciful, tends to reveal the life experience of the respondent as well as his/her/its philosophical outlook.

Firstly, the answers to these questions will vary widely when asked of individuals of varying ages; for example, Leonidas has had the good fortune just prior to the onset of midlife to be able to embark on a lifelong dream of sailing away aboard a smallish sail boat to experience a somewhat self sufficient and at times adventurous lifestyle visiting a surfeit of exotic and out-of-the-way places not available to the average tourist. Interspersed between these exotic locales were the expected instances of joy, awe and terror such as riding out hurricanes, being jailed as a spy by a revolutionary communist government, trading skin magazines with local fishermen for buckets of lobster and shrimp as well as being offered a huge stalk of bananas in exchange for the ship's cat in an anchorage on the north coast of Haiti. That particular Haitian averring that: "There's lots of good meat on that cat." The ordinary Haitian diet is lacking in protein. Needless to say the offer was declined and Caloosa T. Katt retained his position as the chief mate in charge of varmint suppression aboard the good sloop Leonidas.

As is inevitable, all of life's adventures must be surrendered with the passage of time and the concomitant onset of boredom and diminishing capabilities, the most influential of which is the "been there, done that" attitude. This, even though the aforementioned adventures were interspersed with 3 transcontinental motorcycle trips as well as ranching in the northwest US and surviving a gunfight with a dope grower. Anyway you get the drift.

In view of the above, it is safe therefore, in this instance to dismiss the first 3 questions posed in the first paragraph of this posting and focus on the 4th and final one: "Where would Leonidas spend his remaining and allotted time on this planet. My colleague Wollf answers this question by referring not to a geographical location but to an ideal relationship. He is wise to focus on such a choice but Leonidas happily arrived at that nirvana some score of years ago and will address the geographical issue.

There exists in the northeastern Caribbean a remarkable volcanic island of scant 5 square miles extent which rises to an altitude of about 3000ft. The island is steep to and has no beaches or harbors for large vessels. It is thus mercifully free of the ubiquitous cruise ships and their accompanying gawking throngs that have been the bane of many an erstwhile pristine tropical island paradise. Visiting the island by small vessel is problematic as there exist no safe all weather anchorages and changes in the wind direction of only a few degrees can make the existing anchorages untenable. Additionally, the absence of level ground precludes a long airstrip necessary for aircraft capable of carrying large numbers of tourists.

In spite of all of the above "drawbacks", the Island of Saba administrated by the Netherlands boasts a friendly and resourceful population as well as the modern amenities including long distance communications taken for granted in western societies.

In view of the electoral choices available here in the US come next November, Leonidas would seriously consider becoming a US ex-pat resident of Saba were the issues of family logistics to be overcome by an accretion of financial resources. Any contributions?

What's a GriGri?

Herr Doktor Goebbels had it right when he stated that big lies are more readily believed than small ones and that any lie repeated often enough will eventually gain credibility with a large portion of the population. An example of this assertion is the widespread acceptance that "Bush lied the US into the invasion of Iraq". When pressed, the political enemies of Bush inevitably cite the failure of the Iraq invasion to reveal the existence of "weapons of mass destruction" in the arsenals of the Iraqi dictator. But this is a tortured definition of "lie" which is objectively defined as a statement by someone who knows it to be false e.g. "I never had sexual relations with that woman...". Mr. Bush in stating the widely held belief that Saddam possessed WMDs although mistaken, does not qualify as a lie in spite of the best efforts of his political enemies.

The use of the big lie continually repeated, is routinely utilized by the so called "environmentalist" movement, especially it's anthropogenic global warming (warmista) wing which has convinced a substantial portion of the world's population (especially the ruling elite) that climate change is caused by human economic activity. The assertion by the warmistas that increased governmental regulation is the solution to their alleged catastrophic scenario is settled science beyond further debate is absurd on its face in view of the many thousands of dissenting scientific minds. A clue to the mythical dimension of these allegations are the strenuous efforts to suppress and demonize dissenting or skeptical viewpoints.

Possibly the most egregious example of the emergence of the acceptance of a myth as fact is the now established belief that all "recycling" is always beneficial to the environment. This myth is so embedded in for example, Swedish culture as well as our own here in the US, that the mere questioning of it evokes shouts of "blasphemy" and the dismissal of anyone who utters it as beyond the pale. When, however one who has compared the energy and resources needed to recycle products as opposed to their production from naturally occurring resources and found such recycling to be a net energy and/or material loss, the tendency is to ignore or dismiss the results as being virtually sacrilegious. As a matter of fact, without substantial government subsidies and force, most recycling efforts would be exposed for the wastefulness in terms of human effort and energy that they are.

The people of Sweden are... forced to clean their trash before carefully separating different kinds of materials. This is the future, they say, and it is supposedly good for the environment. (What about the economy?) Imagine a whole population spending time and money cleaning their garbage and driving it around the neighborhood rather than working or investing in a productive market!

But it doesn't end with the extra work at home and the extra space in each and every kitchen occupied by a variety of trash bins. What do you do with the trash that isn't collected? The garbage collection service (which nowadays doesn't offer collection too often, usually biweekly or monthly, even though the rates mysteriously seem to be much higher than before) only accepts certain types of garbage, generally only biodegradable food leftovers. But do not worry; it is all taken care of.

The authorities have established trash collection centers in most neighborhoods where you get to throw away your trash. These "centers" offer numerous containers where you can throw away your trash — there is one container dedicated for each and every kind of trash and they are all neatly color-coded to help you find the right one. But this means you better have separated your aluminum from your other metals and your newspapers from your soft and hard papers before you get here. You wouldn't want to throw away dirty milk cartons, cans with paper labels or unsorted paper, would you?

But it seems people do just that: they cheat if they believe they are better off doing so. So the authorities have responded by making it more difficult to cheat. Their first measure was to redesign all containers so that it is more difficult throwing the "wrong" trash in them. For instance, containers for glass have only small, round holes where you put your bottles [one at a time!], and containers for hard paper and carton materials have only letter-slit shaped holes (you need to flatten all boxes before recycling — that's the law).

Well, that didn't do the trick. People kept on cheating. And the more difficult the authorities made it to cheat, the more difficult it was to get rid of the trash even if you intended to put it in the right place. So people went to these centers and simply put everything next to the containers instead — why bother? The authorities responded by appointing salaried "trash collection center spies" (!) to document who was cheating so that they could be brought to justice. (There have actually been a few court cases where people have been tried for not following recycling laws.)

Admittedly, the above Swedish example is extreme and the result of nearly 3 generations of socialism at work but is a view into the future for the rest of us should the march of collectivism continue unchecked. An excellent and entertaining video presentation on this subject by the comedy team of Penn and Teller in 3 parts is here , here and here.

The Slippery Slope

The selling points of virtually all proposed legislative acts invariably include the assertion that they are benign efforts to address this or that crisis, injustice or societal problem. After the enactment however, we find the real world effects of the application of these statutes is quite another matter.

One of the glaring examples of this phenomenon is of course the ratification of the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1913 which enabled the Federal government to tax income. The chief reason put forth in support of the proposal was the facilitation of collecting from "fortunate" citizens a "fair share" of the exponentially increasing cost of government programs whose chief purpose is to purchase the votes of one or another political constituency. Additional arguments posited by the Progressives at that time in support of the amendment was that the small marginal rates of the progressive taxation would only effect a very minute percentage of the population and then only the very wealthy. Sound familiar? The good intentions paving that road to today's hell (IRS) are obvious in retrospect. Times have certainly changed since the early decades of the 20th century when it was accepted that changes to the Constitution required legislative action as prescribed in the document instead of the judicial fiat of a mere five black robed members of the legal priesthood.

A similar logic, or I might say, a lack thereof, has attended the widespread acceptance of "hate crime" legislation. These "laws" are attempts to penalize the thoughts of perpetrators by assigning additional penalties dictated by the baseness of their motives. If it can be successfully argued that a criminal has selected his victim on the basis of that person's membership in a protected group, the criminal will receive additional punishment. It therefore comes down to which groups are designated as specifically protected and this process is of necessity a political one. We thus now have political and thought crimes.

Enter House bill H.R. 1955: The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 which passed the House on 23 Oct. 2007 and is now before Senate committees. When has "An Act to Prevent ________" actually succeeded in preventing anything?

The most disturbing aspects of this bill, and there are many, are the definitions noted in Section 899a. The three offenses defined in this document that will warrant prosecution are:

“Violent Radicalization: The term ‘violent radicalization’ means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.”

“Homegrown Terrorism: The term ‘homegrown terrorism’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

“Ideologically based violence: The term ‘ideologically based violence’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs.”

Laws virtually identical to this bill have been enacted in various jurisdictions of Europe and have more often than not been used to suppress groups and individuals critical of the policies of the ruling, mostly unelected political elite with respect to immigration and the inexorable islamization of that hapless continent. Comments by US bloggers and other observers often allege that such outrages are precluded from occurring on the western shores of the Atlantic due to the protections of the First and Second amendments. I would hasten to remind you, dear readers that the second amendment's protection against infringement of the right of the people to keep and bear arms for otherwise lawful purposes does not extend into the cities of Washington, New York or Chicago nor to the state of California. Additionally, the First Amendment's protection of free speech does not include certain political speech during a specified time period prior to a national election. It seems that in localities and times when these "rights" are the most needed and useful, they will be violated by our rulers.

Cross posted at: Eternity Road

The Shell Game

Recently while stumping for his "wife's" current run for the white house Bill Clinton accidentally let the cat out of the bag with regard to the ongoing warmista program to increase government regulation of our lives and wallets. The warmista program is not really about "saving the planet", but increasing the political power of the collectivists. The present Democratic strategy of encouraging an economic recession in order to score political points for the upcoming elections has run afoul of the warmista strategy of pursuing the same objective.

The Democrats have been doing their best (with the help of the Republicans) to assure that an economic downturn occurs in time for them to use it as an issue to win back the White House and increase their majorities in both Houses of the Congress come next November. The game was given away when the spokesman for the leading contender for the Democratic nomination for President made the following statement on 30 January:

"We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren."

At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? "Slow down our economy"?

Mr. Clinton goes on to assert that his wife, if elected will solve this dilemma by establishing a new "energy Trust Fund". When either one of the Clintons begin using the words "trust fund" or "investment" hold on to your wallet. Just be assured that your suffering will not be in vain as it will be "for the children".

The Bluff that Killed

In recent exchanges with not only some of my leftist friends but a European blogger, I have challenged the assertion that "Bush Lied" in order to generate support for the military action required to remove the Saddam regime in Iraq in 2003. The fact that virtually all western intelligence agencies were of the opinion that Saddam possessed so called WMDs has been completely ignored or dismissed conveniently by political opponents of the Bush administration. This is evident in the Goebbelesque strategy they have adopted and will in all likelihood continue to pursue. It is now publicly revealed by Arab News, the Middle East's English language daily that Saddam was in fact engaged in what turned out to be for him a suicidal bluff.

Saddam Hussein allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction to deter rival Iran and did not think the United States would stage a major invasion,...He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as [Clinton] did in 1998 ... a four-day aerial attack...Saddam publicly denied having unconventional weapons before the US invasion, but prevented UN inspectors from working in the country from 1998 until 2002 and when they finally returned in November 2002, they often complained that Iraq wasn’t fully cooperating....Saddam also said that he wanted to keep up the illusion that he had the [WMD] program in part because he thought it would deter a likely Iranian invasion...Saddam had the intention of restarting an Iraqi weapons program at the time, and had engineers available for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

This information has been revealed by the FBI investigator who interrogated Saddam after his capture in December 2003 and is due to be the subject of a segment of CBS's "60 Minutes" on Jan 27, 2008. It will be interesting to observe how the sufferers of BDS attempt to spin/ignore this tidbit of news.

Unholy (Corrupt) Alliance

This global warming sure is a pain in the neck. In many parts of the nation the citizens are paying through the nose for home heating because the predicted warming has not alleviated the bitter and often record breaking cold. Some are wishing that Owl Gore's promise of steeply rising temperatures would lend a hand in stemming the flight of cash from their wallets caused by simply trying to avoid freezing to death. Strangely enough the prescribed cure for this supposed crisis is the accretion of more power (and taxes) to the very politicians who are responsible for the increases in the cost of energy which is necessary to warm our homes and businesses as well as transport the goods we require.

While our elected "leaders" are kow towing to the enviro nazis by removing sources of energy under US control from being developed such as Alaskan and offshore petroleum reserves and the vast low sulfur domestic coal deposits they are at the same time damning the "eeevil" corporations for price gouging as the costs of diminishing resources increase while demand is rising.

A large part of America's energy dependence on foreign sources can be traced to Sept. 18, 1996, when President Bill Clinton stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon on the Arizona side and signed an executive proclamation making 1.7 million acres of Utah a new national monument.[...] In fact, the declaration of 1.7 million Utah acres as a national monument, thereby depriving an energy-starved U.S. up to 62 billion tons of environmentally safe low-sulfur coal worth $1.2 trillion and minable with minimal surface impact, was a political payoff to the family of James Riady.

It would appear that the economic and political dumbing down of the government educated masses is paying off big time for our "progressive" friends as it is possible that this most corrupt duo may soon to be returned to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Let me know when a progressive politician or one of their enviro nazi minders comes out in favor of constructing a non polluting nuclear power plant to aid in solving this serious situation. Meanwhile Ms Clinton characterizes as "pathetic" the efforts of President Bush to convince our Arab "friends" to increase petroleum production. How right she is!

Suspicion Confirmed!

During some stays in Venezuela hiding from Caribbean hurricanes some time back while cruising aboard our sailboat Leonidas we had occasion to utilize the facilities of two boat yards in Puerto La Cruz and Puerto Azúl. During both of those instances requiring fiberglass work on the boat's hull we had extreme difficulty obtaining acetone which is needed to thin the polyester resin as well as for cleanup. The reason given to us for this difficulty was that acetone was used in the processing of coca leaves into cocaine. That was before the ascent of Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela who is apparently a fan of the use of coca according to statements during a recent 4 hour speech to the Venezuelan Assembly.

I chew coca every day in the morning . . . and look how I am,'' he is seen saying on a video of the speech as he shows his biceps to the audience.

Chávez, who does not drink alcohol, added that just as Fidel Castro ''sends me Coppelia ice cream and a lot of other things that regularly reach me from Havana,'' Bolivian President Evo Morales ``sends me coca paste . . . I recommend it to you.''

Another uniquely Venezuelan solution to the problem of motorcyclists proceeding along the long lines of motorists stalled in traffic jams in Caracas robbing them at gunpoint is to prohibit two males from riding on any motorcycle anywhere in the country. One male OK. One male one female OK. Two females OK. You simply can't make this stuff up.

UPDATE : 27 Jan 2008 @ 08:24 EST

Resist Censorship

There is an old saying that I know has permeated at least as far as Scandinavia for I first heard it several years ago from the lips of a member of the Communist Party of Sweden who is an old school chum of Mrs. ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ: "As California goes, so goes the US, as they are in the progressive vanguard." There is considerable truth to this statement as is evidenced by myriad encroachments on liberty which have had their inception in the "golden state" such as draconian gun laws and scores of taxing schemes designed to transfer wealth from those who earned it to the more "leisurely" sectors of the population. It has been said of Maryland that "If you can dream it we can tax it". This goes in spades for California where the state practice also includes: "If you can do it we can regulate it."

One area that thus far has escaped the tax and regulate mentality of the modern collectivists in the US is freedom of speech, and even that is threatened by the spread of "anti hate" legislation which has begun to appear here and there. Mostly due to the efforts of our government school system, few of us here in the US understand that we inherited our traditions of liberty from the prudent adoption by our nation's founders of a written constitution which basically formalized the "Rights of Englishmen".

Britain on the other hand, has never formally adopted a written constitution and therefore Parliament is able to enact virtually any law which it deems appropriate. An example of such an act is: sections 18(1) and 27(3) of the Public Order Act of 1986 which prohibits "Stirring up Racial Hatred by displaying written material" likely to result in attitudes of hatred toward any ethnic, racial or religious group. Interestingly enough the law has not been applied to Muslim demonstrators such as those displaying signs reading "massacre those who insult Islam, May God curse the Queen, Butcher those who mock Islam and God bless Hitler". It is, however to be applied to a UK blogger who has called attention to the dangers of Islamists who advocate the positions referred to above. He is to be arrested for statements of fact, truth and personal opinion published on his blog.

If any of you, dear readers, care to peruse Lionheart's blog and its archives please get back to me in the comments to this posting and advise if contained therein are any incitements to violent actions against anyone. I would submit that in fact what "hatred" exists over these issues predates Lionheart's postings. If on the other hand you perhaps find this turn of events outrageous please feel free to exhibit your support in the manner you find most appropriate. One wonders if the flap over Salmond Rushdie's publication of "The Satanic Verses" would result in his prosecution by the current Labour Government. Also, if you believe that "this could never happen here in the US", think: 2 or more "progressive" appointments to the Supreme Court. You might also go here for additional discussion of this issue. Meanwhile:
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE!

cross posted at: Eternity Road

Qui Bono?

These days one cannot even view the daily weather broadcast on the tube without being subjected to the ASSUMPTIONS of the warmista religion. Every unusual weather event especially anything related to an elevated temperature anywhere is cited as further evidence that mankind is to blame for destroying the planet and we must submit to draconian controls as well as the additional confiscation of our wealth in order to avert catastrophic changes to the climate. The substantial evidence to the contrary is invariably ignored and unreported.

Recently the number of scientists having a skeptical view of this doom and gloom scenario has emerged and in fact been revealed to exceed that of scientists who are said to consist of a "consensus" of the warmista persuasion. Nevertheless, the information presented to us by the MSM continues on the assumption that it has been settled that mankind is responsible for the eminent and catastrophic collapse of the Earth's ability to support life as we know it. The political nature of this campaign was in part revealed by the events recently transpiring in Bali, Indonesia sponsored by the United Nations to gin up support for an international protocol to replace the idiotic Kyoto accord which is set to expire in 2012.

Into this festive setting dropped a small group of scientists and free-market advocates intent on expressing a different point of view regarding the science, economics and policy implications of a new global warming treaty. Arriving from New Zealand, Australia, England, India, and the U.S., these "skeptics" came to present facts and empirical data to anyone who would dare listen. They came with a mission: to make the case for a more reasoned, balanced approach on the climate change issue and challenge the clarion call for a second draconian Kyoto-style treaty based on new revelations in science. But their job, as they soon would discover, would not be easy.

The treatment of this group of dissenters by the UN bureaucracy is a classic case of political suppression of the views of its opposition.

A small room at the [UN] NGO forum was granted to [the dissenters] during the first week to carry out [it]s task, and after disseminating numerous press notices at the on-site media center, some forty members of the press did actually turn out to hear another side of the global warming story. The first event began and was proceeding quite smoothly, in fact perhaps too smoothly, when word got out and reached the ears of certain U.N. administrators that a robust dialogue between skeptics and the media was occurring. That was apparently more than could be stomached. Needless to say, it did not take long before an official from the Secretariat's office promptly stormed into the meeting, broke up discussion, and ordered everyone out of the room.

This attitude on the part of UN bureaucrats was to continue through the entire 2 weeks of the gathering; however the skeptical (heretical) position was to a very limited extent made available for the world press.
With the recent revelation that a substantial number of well credited scientists indeed have a contrary evaluation of the data on climate change it is nothing short of scandalous that the media continue to report on the assumption that a "consensus" exists. On the other hand it is not so surprising considering the advice of "Deep Throat" in the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s: "follow the money".
Qui Bono indeed!

Imagine That

Photo courtesy of: ERIC ENGMAN / Fairbanks, Alaska Daily News-Miner

"Ace and Cat Callaway stand in front of their log home as it continues to burn Thursday afternoon. Fire departments responded within minutes, but ended their service when they determined that the structure fell just outside their fire service area boundary."

Looks like the "last frontier" has finally succumbed to the predations of the ubiquitous tax man. This is said in all seriousness as we were under the impression that a spirit of "help your neighbor" obtained in frontier locations.

A Fairbanks, Alaska couple lost a home to fire Thursday because it was just outside the fire service [taxed] area and firefighters turned back from the scene [of the burning house].

Ace Callaway, the owner of the house, said officials told him his house was only 180 feet outside the area that the Steese Area Volunteer Fire Department covers, effectively putting it on the wrong side of the road. The nearest fire department is less than two miles away. Callaway says he's been paying for fire insurance for years and he assumed that the department covered a large radius.

From reading the story however, some suspicions do arise: 1) The homeowners are involved in a divorce 2) A "remodeling" was being planned and 3) Due to the planned "remodeling" a lot of their "furnishings were elsewhere". Additionally, the actions of the fire department were apparently not a complete surprise as evidenced by the final sentence of the article: "People on this side of the road are scared to death what will happen to them if their homes catch on fire,".

Could it be that your humble scribbler is too cynical due to his former career and life experience?

ht: neal boortz

A Hate Crime?

Of late, the enactment of so called "hate crime" legislation appears to be all the rage in the halls of the mostly two ring circuses we refer to as legislative bodies. These statutes generally pertain to one or another leftist designated "victim" group and boost the penalty for perpetrating ordinary crimes against members of those groups based on the mindset of the perpetrator. In ordinary language these are thought crimes. The list of protected groups is usually designated in the laws themselves. Prosecutions under such statutes are for the most part difficult due to many criminals failing to communicate their motivational rationale in such a way as to be obvious to a prosecutor. Occasionally however, the perpetrator will make statements that clearly reveal the motive for the crime to be his or her distaste for the group membership of the victim. One such case recently occurred in the environs of Chicago. Read the entire posting at Black Five for more data.

Marine Sgt. Mike McNulty is on activation orders to Iraq (second tour). On December 1st, 2007, Mike went to visit a friend in Chicago before deploying to say goodbye. In order to get to his friend's residence, and keep in mind that Chicago is a myriad of diagonal and one-way streets, the front entrance (right way) to the one-way street was blocked. Mike, being a Marine, overcame and adapted by driving around the block to the other end of the street and backing up all the way to his friend's place.

While saying goodbye, at about 11am, he noticed a man leaning up against his car. Mike left his friend's apartment and caught the man keying his car on multiple sides.
After [being] caught in the process, the man told Mike, "you think you can do whatever you want with Department of Defense license plates and tags". (In Illinois you can purchase veteran, Marine, or medal plates. Mike has Illinois Marine Corps license plates.) During the exchange, the perpetrator made additional anti-military comments.

This is as clear an instance of a "hate" crime as one can cite. The rub of course is that members of the U.S. military are not designated as a leftist protected group. Incidentally, the suspect, an attorney, after being apprehended in the act and offering to pay the insurance deductible of $100.00 for the damages, accused the victim of seeking prosecution due to the attorney being Jewish!

Clearly, in the Orwellian world of 21st century U.S. some groups are more equal before the law than others. This of course applies to suspects as well as victims. According to some so called "civil rights" organizations and many social "science" professors, members of certain designated groups by definition, cannot commit hate crimes.