I Think I’m Losing Heart…

So many reasons to expect trouble in the future:

• Obvious cheating in an election in the U.S. – I’m talking about Al Franken’s Minnesota Democrats, here. These cheaters have zero self-respect. And the system of free elections in the United States, which should be the one thing we can all agree must be clean at all costs, are clearly no longer trustworthy – if this plays out the way it’s looking. Let me say this again: this is fundamental to our system of government. If the elections aren’t clean, if we don’t make them clean, the system of government I have believed in all my life has failed! If we don’t have clean elections, it might as well be organized crime running the country.
• Hamas can lob rockets into Israel, and then has the nerve to play the victim when Israel retaliates. Most of the Muslim world goes along with this. Dishonesty, again.
• It looks like Iran is about to have nuclear weapon capability, if it doesn’t already. Now there’s a bunch of stable, trustworthy individuals! < Snort! > It’s hard to imagine a good outcome of this.
• Economic crisis – very likely to be made worse by government intervention. Why isn’t more emphasis being put on this question: Where is the bailout money coming from??
• Economic crisis item #2: The people who are managing the crisis, in large part caused it. Additionally, they obviously have no expertise on the subject. Adding random input to a system that is spiraling out of control does not tend to make it more stable.
• Upper management in the United States is already filled with people like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed, who make decisions based on an agenda twisted so far to the left that they did not care how much the price of gasoline increased as a result of their rejection of drilling on our soil. You will note that high gasoline prices would NOT affect them personally. These people, who are supposed to represent our will, do not act as if they have any responsibility to the people for their actions.
• Soon, Obama will be in the White House. And we don’t have a clue what he will actually do; he won the election as a popularity contest. He’s changed directions so many times already that nobody knows what he will do. He believes in wealth redistribution, he’s against any kind of private ownership of guns (I know – he lied). He’s not even been sworn in and had to retain legal council to protect him from the Blago scandal. < Snort! >
• And there are probably a lot more.

I’ll try to come up with some more positive things before New Years. This list is too depressing…

-Popgun

Merry Christmas, Everybody!

Warmest Christmas wishes to my readers!

Remember what this holiday is about – the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Without Him, we would have no hope. With Him, we have everything!

-Popgun

Fuzzy Thinking

I was just reading an article on the local TV station’s website about a program to collect fingerprints and DNA samples of children. The article says it will “keep them safe“. One parent is quoted as saying that “if something happened to my child, they can find her” and it “makes me feel safe“.

Don’t get me wrong; this is an excellent idea, to have fingerprints and DNA samples of your children. It really is a good tool.

But it won’t “protect” your child. And it won’t “keep them safe”. And it won’t help them “find her”.

What it will do is help the authorities identify who they have already found. This is a good thing. But it will not protect your child in any way whatever.

That job is still yours, as a parent.

-Popgun

State of Iraq

Bad Dogs and Such has a well done article about the current situation on the ground in Iraq. Recommended.

Very clear, and done by somebody actually there.

-Popgun

The Evidence Mounts Against Global Warming

A quote from PowerLine:

The Associated Press said, “The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton’s second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama knows it.”

This displays a remarkable level of ignorance on the part of the Associated Press. Global temperature records are nowhere near accurate enough to rank years, over a period of centuries, with any confidence. For the recent past, though, we have the world’s best data set here in the U.S. And it’s true that at one time, it was widely believed that the 1990s were the warmest recent decade. But that was before it was discovered that NASA’s James Hansen, Al Gore’s chief scientific ally, had been fudging the data, either accidentally or on purpose. NASA was forced to correct its data, with the result that the ten warmest years on record here in the US are as follows: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938, 1939.

So, it turns out Al Gore’s pet expert was fudging the data. < Snort. Snicker! >

To reiterate, the ten warmest years on record: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938, 1939. Hard to get a global warming trend out of that.

Wake up, government! Quit basing policy on unsubstantiated fears of global warming!

-Popgun

Honest Politicians?

Maybe we need to start a list of politicians that are known to be honest.

Based on what I see on the news every night, it might be a short list.

Anybody know any?

-Popgun

There’s a Squirrel in the Machine

I was having random strange electrical problems with my car. I ride my motorcycle whenever my health and the weather permit, so the car’s been sitting a lot up until recently, when the weather started getting bad. Last week, it suddenly lost the automatic door locks, the instrument lights (except the odometer, for some reason), and the electric windows (except for the ones on the back, for some reason). Kind of a weird mix of problems.

After checking the fuses, which were good, eventually I took it to my favorite mechanic.

Turns out there was a squirrel living underneath the fuse panel under the hood. It had eaten completely through a few wires.

I have to admit that this is one vehicle problem I’ve never had before.

I’m going to try sprinkling a few naphthalene-based moth-balls around the car-port and under the panel where the squirrel was nesting. This technique will work to get skunks out from under your house or storage building, for instance, so maybe it will work on squirrels.

-Popgun

Did Anybody Notice?

Did anybody notice “Day Without a Gay“?.

I didn’t. Snort.

-Popgun

Global Warming – a Myth?

More than 650 scientists are bucking the entrenched idea that global warming is real. Much less being caused by human activity. Yet major policy decisions are being made by world governments based on this unsubstantiated idea. This is a critical mistake that cannot be understated. At the link, click on the article “UN Blowback: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims”. The UN (and Al Gore) is going with the views of 52 scientists – and ignoring the (currently more than) 650 who dissent.

In particular, CO2 emissions have little or no impact! The Earth has been cooling since 1998!

From the Inhofe EPW Press Blog: Some of the comments by scientists:

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” – Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.   

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.  

“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” – Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.  

“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC “are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” – Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico

“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” – U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.

“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.

“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri’s asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it’s hard to remain quiet.” – Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society’s Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.  

“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?” – Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.

“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” – Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.

“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.”- Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.

“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” – Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

“CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another….Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so…Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.” – Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan.

“The [global warming] scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds.” – Award-winning Paleontologist Dr. Eduardo Tonni, of the Committee for Scientific Research in Buenos Aires and head of the Paleontology Department at the University of La Plata. # #

-Popgun

Civilization?

Wouldn’t it be interesting if it turned out that civilization is inherently unstable?

Just looking at the headlines, here…

-Popgun