Search This Blog

De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Zone of Reality: Castro Notes

By Rich Kozlovich

For those who have been following these daily links about Castro and Che and the nightmare that they created in Cuba you have already grasped that these articles expose the Main Stream Media for who they really are as much as they expose Castro for the fiend he is. While giving the impression of grand professionalism, they are in reality hypocrites, liars and phonies; either that, or they are blatantly incompetent. Either way they need to be fired.

NBC's Castro-Driven Journalism

There's no worse crime in journalism these days than simply deciding something's a story because Drudge links to it. - NBC's Chuck Todd, March 6, 2010.
Oh, really? Well, how about partnering with a Stalinist regime's military robber-barons to boost their currency booty and hide their tortures, mass-murders, and mass-jailings? To wit:

In June 2007, Castro's Stalinist regime held a "tourism fair" in Havana to kick off an ambitious plan to boost the Cuban military's tourist booty. By some peculiar coincidence, NBC's "Today Show" decided to broadcast from Havana that very week. Amidst smiling, clapping, dancing tourists, Matt Lauer and Andrea Mitchell advised viewers on how to legally vacation in Cuba.

Don't look for this from NBC, but Castro's Soviet-trained and armed military and secret police own most of Cuba's tourist facilities. Along with providing these inquisitive Cuban officials with certain insights regarding visitors to Castro's fiefdom, this setup also insures that most of what tourists spend in Cuba lands in the pockets of the only people in Cuba with guns.....

###

Observations From the Back Row

By Rich Kozlovich

As we read and follow these stories we have to wonder; how we came to be in such a mess. Part of the problem is we don't get the right information from the media. If it hadn't been for the internet we would be stuck with the Kyoto Accords, just like we are stuck with the Montreal Protocol; which is an equally outrageous piece of junk science and would have never passed if the internet was in existence at the time. These massive expenditures into the green abyss are a direct result of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring.

But you say; her book had nothing to do with this! Not directly no, but Silent Spring is foundational to everything that has taken place since it appeared fifty years ago this year in June. It laid the ground work showing how junk scientist could get their views published without going through peer review, it established a mentality that everything man does is evil, it demonstrated how to intimidate politicians and bureaucrats, it demonstrated that corporations could be intimidated into ‘obeying’ green activists and it was and is the emotional foundation for the modern environmental movement.


Eco-Radical Defrauds Conservative Institute
What started as a spirited debate over global warming has turned into another scandal that has further discredited the motives and actions of the people who maintain that humans are having a devastating effect on the world’s climate. Dr. Peter Gleick, president and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, an environmental research and advocacy organization based in Oakland, California, has admitted to fraudulently obtaining confidential documents from the Heartland Institute…..In the past, Heartland used to release its donor list, but stopped doing so after radical opponents used that information to try to harass funders….Gleick called the Heartland Institute, identifying himself as a Heartland board member whose e-mail address had changed. A Heartland staffer then sent Gleick confidential documents based on the doctor’s false identification …..Nonetheless, a……crude forgery, [appeared] full of ridiculous, inflammatory phrasing that no public policy organization would actually use, along with statements that were obviously clumsily cut and pasted from legitimate documents. (Read Meagan McArdle’s devastating deconstruction of the fake strategy memo here.) another example of how the alarmist crowd continues to abandon any pretense of objectivity or morality in order to get their way….the high-priests and priestesses of the global warming religion will stop at nothing to stamp out heretics.

Three Oscars, but still no degree in toxicology
What’s the difference between Meryl Streep and a qualified toxicologist? Well, chances are that a toxicologist won’t presume to lecture publicly on method acting, but Streep apparently has no qualms about advising us on matters of chemical safety. In 1989 Streep was at the forefront of a contingent that believed the plant growth regulator Alar was turning the nation’s apples carcinogenic. ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan led a counter-movement by recruiting numerous expert scientists to rigorously denounce the scare tactics of Streep and her allies at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Unfortunately, the NRDC-Streep campaign against Alar had a devastating effect on the apple growers of Washington state. Scientific facts established that the chemical compound was not a risk to humans at the level it was used to regulate the growth of apples — but by the time these facts became widely known, Alar had already been withdrawn by its manufacturer, who feared activists’ lawsuits.

Idolizing an American Traitor
Private Bradley Manning, the soldier who is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of top secret military files and State Department cables to the website Wikileaks, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Lionized as a hero by the worldwide left, Manning is the latest in a long line of outrageous nominations considered by the peace prize committee, including past winners Yasser Arafat, Mikhail Gorbachev and Kofi Annan. Although it certainly comes as no surprise that a soldier alleged to have committed traitorous acts and severely damaged the interests of the United States would be included in the nominations for the award, the controversy over Manning’s case obscures the truly lamentable figure the young man makes as a liberal icon.

America’s Per Capita Government Debt Worse Than Greece
The office of Senator Jeff Sessions, ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, sends along this chart, showing that 'America’s Per Capita Government Debt Worse Than Greece,' as well as Ireland, Italy, France, Portugal, and Spain:



This Man Was Almost Elected President of the United States!
Al Gore, who came within a few hundred votes of being elected president in 2000, has designed a blueprint to overhaul capitalism to create a sustainable capitalism that will support lasting economic growth. He says that the way capitalism is now practiced does not “...incorporate sufficient regard for its impact on people, society and the planet.”

Obama Skins the Cat
How White House ideology circumvents the Congress and impoverishes American households by making energy prices “sky-rocket” - Much of White House policy is driven by pathological fear of global warming and the unreasonable compulsion to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a non-toxic natural constituent of the atmosphere and an absolute necessity for the survival of plants, animals, and humans. Never mind that there’s no significant evidence that any recent warming has been caused by CO2 increases—or indeed, that any such warming would endanger human health and welfare. In addition, it should be quite obvious that any attempt by the U.S. to reduce its emissions unilaterally is an exercise in futility and self-delusion: it would have little measurable impact on the ongoing rise of global atmospheric CO2 and would certainly not affect climate in any way. But evidently, ideology trumps science, economics, and logic. Even common-sense considerations have not stopped President Obama from listening to his science adviser, Dr. John Holdren, one of the chief apostles of the global-warming religion. Holdren is a former collaborator and associate of Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich, whose seminal book The Population Bomb, published some 40 years ago, preaches population control to achieve zero growth.

Germany Says Solar Energy is Path to Bankruptcy, Yet Obama Doubles US Down On It
One of the biggest national investors in green energy, Germany, is coming to the realization that green energy is the path to bankruptcy. This is nothing short of blasphemy in the green world to even make a partial admission that solar power is not the panacea it was promised to be. Germany invested gargantuan amounts of money in green energy, doling out more than 130 billion in subsidies to install solar systems and spends an additional 10 billion per year subsidizing existing solar installations. Yet after all of this capital expenditure, Germany has little to show in terms of reducing green house gasses and helping the country’s power needs. Despite massive investment, solar power accounts for approximately three percent of Germany’s total energy… when the sun shines! To add insult to injury, Germans also pay the second highest price for electricity in the developed world, due mainly to the fact that they are heavily subsidizing green energy by adding the cost to everyone’s utility bills.

Overspending Due to Mission Creep
Replacing Private Contractors with Government Workers Not the Answer - The latest fad for cutting federal government spending is slashing the number of private-sector contractors. You remember, the government contractors who were hired because they’d be more efficient than using the government’s own workers to do the same jobs.

Two Wolves and a Sheep
This front-page headline from Friday’s San Francisco Chronicle brings to mind the old adage about democracy being two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner: “Voters Willing to Tax Wealthy.” The article goes on to detail the not-surprising results of a poll in which voters were asked to choose between supporting the governor’s plan to pass a 1% surtax on incomes over $1 million, or suffer the consequences of automatic defunding of education……(Funny how it’s always schools, police, and fire houses that face the ax, and never jobs, salaries, or pensions of the hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats the state employs.)

$10 Billion in “Green” Corporate Welfare: Less Jobs and More Bankruptcies
In “Cost of $10 Billion Stimulus Easier to Tally Than New Jobs”  in the Wall Street Journal, Ianthe Jeanne Dugan and Justin Scheck report that the mega-billions in corporate-welfare subsidies to solar, wind, geothermal and other “green” businesses (under section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) have resulted in far less jobs than claimed. Instead, bankruptcies of existing firms have increased and “alternative” energy firms have proven unsustainable without continued bailouts.

My TakeWhy this is this such a surprise to so many? All of this alternative energy claptrap was tried under Carter and failed. The technology needed to make this work isn’t much better than the Carter years and new technology to make it work is nowhere on the horizon. The costs are unimaginable and unsustainable; the outcome is always less than predicted; the waste in the taxpayer’s money is enormous. At least the Carter people could claim ignorance because it hadn’t been tried before. We KNOW this won’t work with any technology we currently have.

Personally, I am not opposed to any efforts to produce energy.....by the private sector. Let's face it, if this was workable without government financing, government tax credits and loans....some businessman would have already done it. As for the businessmen who do support it…..ask them to do it without infusions of billions of government dollars. They stop if they started and they won’t start without it. So why do we ignore the actions of people who actually know about energy production and listen to those who have an impractical philosophy of energy production based on false premises? We now know we aren’t running out of oil, gas or coal. We now know that the global warming scare is a farce. Those two issues were the false premise that was foundational to all of this.

So, since we now we know we don’t need alternative energy let’s stop this idiocy, drill, pump and refine; let the greenies whine and get over it! Our goal should be gas at $2.50 a gallon in 2012, $1.65 a gallon in 2013 and 1.10 a gallon in 2014. Impossible? When Rockefeller took over the oil companies was selling for around $12.00 a barrel. A few years later he made it so efficient that it was selling for around $1.00 a barrel.

"Such a process, which began in the mid-1860s, was more dramatic than almost anyone expected. Between 1865 and 1870, refining capacity exploded relative to oil production, and prices plummeted correspondingly. In 1865, kerosene cost fifty-eight cents a gallon; by 1870, twenty-six cents…. output had quadrupled from 1870 to 1880. And as for consumer prices, recall that in 1870 kerosene cost twenty-six cents per gallon and was bankrupting much of the industry; by 1880, Standard Oil was phenomenally profitable, and kerosene cost nine cents per gallon." Furthermore since Standard’s “monopoly” wasn’t a government imposed “monopoly” they started to loose market share in the early 1900’s because they showed how to do it right and others entered the market and began to complete very solidly with Standard. Standard no longer “controlled” the oil market. The whole REAL story of Standard Oil. Furthermore, you need to read it because everything you “know for sure” about this is blatantly false.




###

For the Record

By Rich Kozlovich

As most who have been reading Paradigms and Demographics know, I am fascinated by history. I firmly believe that we desperately need to understand the entire history of an issue in order to make solid decisions. Give me the history and I will give you the answer.

The trouble with history is that there is so much of it. Although I have read smatterings of the information discussed in the following article there is much here that I never knew. It explains much. As for FDR….Harry Truman said the problem with the president was that “he lies”. Roosevelt had no problem letting everyone think he was on their side…..everyone! In reality, he had much more in common philosophically with Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler than he did with his fellow Americans. He is on record of praising all of them for their socialist ‘successes’ before the war.

For the record; communism and fascism are both left wing philosophies. Fascism is the right wing of socialism and communism is the left wing. However, they are still different sides of the same coin.

Also for the record; I keep hearing lefties on the talk shows demanding to know what a socialist is and watching the righties squirm. I don’t know which is dumber.

Here is the definitive answer.

Socialism is a belief that central planning by a few elites can effectively tell everyone else in the world how to live, even if it means enforcing their dictates by a regulatory police state which will ultimately create a utopian world, without regard for individual rights or the failed outcomes of their central planning.

This explains why they so desperately attempt to destroy the U.S. Constitution. I do so wish that more people read Orwell’s Animal Farm. At any rate, this article is profound and provocative and lays the ground work for understanding much of why the world is in the state it is. Profound and Provocative….just my cup of tea!

AS for this first article, there is much I didn't know about why the war lasted as long as it did. This really is an important read. The second article shows that things still stink not only at Foggy Bottom, but the stench permeates all levels of government.

Dresden, Hiroshima, and Soviet Machinations

The anniversary of the Allied bombing of Dresden on February 13 and 14, 1945 has become an increasingly contentious memory for thousands of Germans. Historians have debated the military value of the old and crowded city, some saying it had little significance, with others pointing out that until the bombing it was still active with war production. What few doubt is that the war was already lost for Germany before the bombing of Dresden, and that the unconditional surrender demanded by President Roosevelt was inevitable in a few weeks no matter what.........

What is even more certain is that the intractable decision of FDR to settle for nothing less than unconditional surrender by the Axis Powers cost tens of millions of lives, lengthened the war, and extended the reach of Soviet power dramatically. Such an outcome is what traitors deep within the U.S. government wanted. In Europe, the demand for unconditional surrender meant that the brave Germans who worked to end the evil of national socialism worked without hope. The Anglo-American nations threw back every overture from these anti-Nazi Germans, some of whom held positions of influence in the military and government (though no in the Nazi Party)….

By 1944, however, the Roosevelt administration was honeycombed with Soviet agents; Britain, also, had been infiltrated at different levels. The firebombing of German and Japanese cities by the Allies would insure bitterness lasting for many generations. The invitation of the Soviet Union to occupy half of Europe and half of Asia — despite Stalin’s de facto alliance with Hitler and his faithful four-year allegiance to his wartime non-aggression pact with Japan — guaranteed that that Marxist power could enslave and impoverish hundreds of millions of souls.

Obama's giveaway: Oil-rich islands to Russia

Exclusive: Joe Miller sounds alarm over deal to put land in hands of Putin's Kremlin
By Joe Miller

The Obama administration, despite the nation’s economic woes, effectively killed the job-producing Keystone Pipeline last month. The Arab Spring is turning the oil production of Libya and other Arab nations over to the Muslim Brotherhood. Iraq is distancing itself from the U.S. And everyone recognizes that Iran, whose crude supplies are critical to the European economy, will do anything it can to frustrate America’s strategic interests. In the face of all of this, Obama insists on cutting back U.S. oil potential with outrageous restrictions…..

Author’s addendum, Feb. 17, 2012: This is not a new issue. In fact the Bush and Clinton administrations are directly at fault for the same inaction. A maritime agreement negotiated by the U.S. State Department set the Russian boundary on the other side of the disputed islands, but no treaty has ratified this action. Consequently, it is within the president’s power to stop this giveaway. The Alaska delegation’s failure to put pressure on the administration is inexplicable. State Department Watch, an organization that assisted with this article, has confronted each administration and is currently confronting the Obama administration — and has been met by silence. I’m hoping this piece will help reinvigorate efforts to stop this handover.

###

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Federalist No. 1

Many times it is difficult to understand what they mean and why they are saying these things because we may not understand the context, so I have added an explanation link is at the end. My sources for this are the Library of Congress and Wikipedia. RK

Author: Alexander Hamilton
To the People of the State of New York:

AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

This idea will add the inducements of philanthropy to those of patriotism, to heighten the solicitude which all considerate and good men must feel for the event. Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected. The plan offered to our deliberations affects too many particular interests, innovates upon too many local institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of objects foreign to its merits, and of views, passions and prejudices little favorable to the discovery of truth.

Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government.

It is not, however, my design to dwell upon observations of this nature. I am well aware that it would be disingenuous to resolve indiscriminately the opposition of any set of men (merely because their situations might subject them to suspicion) into interested or ambitious views. Candor will oblige us to admit that even such men may be actuated by upright intentions; and it cannot be doubted that much of the opposition which has made its appearance, or may hereafter make its appearance, will spring from sources, blameless at least, if not respectable--the honest errors of minds led astray by preconceived jealousies and fears. So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy. And a further reason for caution, in this respect, might be drawn from the reflection that we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists. Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question. Were there not even these inducements to moderation, nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties. For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

And yet, however just these sentiments will be allowed to be, we have already sufficient indications that it will happen in this as in all former cases of great national discussion. A torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives. An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty. An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good. It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

In the course of the preceding observations, I have had an eye, my fellow-citizens, to putting you upon your guard against all attempts, from whatever quarter, to influence your decision in a matter of the utmost moment to your welfare, by any impressions other than those which may result from the evidence of truth. You will, no doubt, at the same time, have collected from the general scope of them, that they proceed from a source not unfriendly to the new Constitution. Yes, my countrymen, I own to you that, after having given it an attentive consideration, I am clearly of opinion it is your interest to adopt it. I am convinced that this is the safest course for your liberty, your dignity, and your happiness. I affect not reserves which I do not feel. I will not amuse you with an appearance of deliberation when I have decided. I frankly acknowledge to you my convictions, and I will freely lay before you the reasons on which they are founded. The consciousness of good intentions disdains ambiguity. I shall not, however, multiply professions on this head. My motives must remain in the depository of my own breast. My arguments will be open to all, and may be judged of by all. They shall at least be offered in a spirit which will not disgrace the cause of truth.

I propose, in a series of papers, to discuss the following interesting particulars:
THE UTILITY OF THE UNION TO YOUR POLITICAL PROSPERITY THE INSUFFICIENCY OF THE PRESENT CONFEDERATION TO PRESERVE THAT UNION THE NECESSITY OF A GOVERNMENT AT LEAST EQUALLY ENERGETIC WITH THE ONE PROPOSED, TO THE ATTAINMENT OF THIS OBJECT THE CONFORMITY OF THE PROPOSED CONSTITUTION TO THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT ITS ANALOGY TO YOUR OWN STATE CONSTITUTION and lastly, THE ADDITIONAL SECURITY WHICH ITS ADOPTION WILL AFFORD TO THE PRESERVATION OF THAT SPECIES OF GOVERNMENT, TO LIBERTY, AND TO PROPERTY.

In the progress of this discussion I shall endeavor to give a satisfactory answer to all the objections which shall have made their appearance, that may seem to have any claim to your attention.

It may perhaps be thought superfluous to offer arguments to prove the utility of the UNION, a point, no doubt, deeply engraved on the hearts of the great body of the people in every State, and one, which it may be imagined, has no adversaries. But the fact is, that we already hear it whispered in the private circles of those who oppose the new Constitution, that the thirteen States are of too great extent for any general system, and that we must of necessity resort to separate confederacies of distinct portions of the whole. [1] This doctrine will, in all probability, be gradually propagated, till it has votaries enough to countenance an open avowal of it. For nothing can be more evident, to those who are able to take an enlarged view of the subject, than the alternative of an adoption of the new Constitution or a dismemberment of the Union. It will therefore be of use to begin by examining the advantages of that Union, the certain evils, and the probable dangers, to which every State will be exposed from its dissolution. This shall accordingly constitute the subject of my next address.

Explanation

Observations From the Back Row

By Rich Kozlovich

My Quote of the Day

There is no need for these expensive alternative energy programs that are at best unreliable, and so unreliable that traditional power plants have to be built and maintained in order to supply power when these stupid green sources fail to work, such as the sun stops shining in the winter and the wind stops blowing in the summer. In order to have ‘alternative’ energy we have to pay for energy we aren’t using in order to pay for energy we don’t need. How stupid can we get? - Rich Kozlovich

A friend told me last Monday that the answer to all of these gas problems is to get all of these gas driven cars off the highway and force everyone to drive electric cars. Unfortunately no matter how I tried to explain it to him why this isn't a solution to our problems..... that was his answer and he was sticking to it. Ok....so I gave up trying and moved on to taxes. We both agreed that Obama was right. Everyone has to pay their fair share and we want that 45% or more that pay no federal income taxes to start paying. Then we can look at what the fair share of everyone else should be. At any rate, leftism must be a form or insanity. Why? Because their solutions are the same solutions that have made the problems they were supposed to fix worse. Insane because they actively work against solutions that do work and deliberately distort the history that shows this to be true. We really do need to get that!



The Tesla "Brick"!
Motors' lineup of all-electric vehicles — its existing Roadster, almost certainly its impending Model S, and possibly its future Model X — apparently suffer from a severe limitation that can largely destroy the value of the vehicle. If the battery is ever totally discharged, the owner is left with what Tesla describes as a "brick": a completely immobile vehicle that cannot be started or even pushed down the street. The only known remedy is for the owner to pay Tesla approximately $40,000 to replace the entire battery. Unlike practically every other modern car problem, neither Tesla's warranty nor typical car insurance policies provide any protection from this major financial loss. Here's how it happens.

With All The Volts Counted, Taxpayers Lose Again
Doubling down on industrial policy failure, the administration decides to bump up the taxpayer subsidy for Government Motors' touted electric car. Who said its range wasn't enough to drive us to the poor house? Tucked away in the recesses of President Obama's 2013 budget, a budget that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he will not bring to the Senate floor, is a nugget that speaks volumes about the troubles we're in:  While delaying the Keystone XL pipeline, the administration plans to increase the subsidy for the Chevy Volt and other "new technology" vehicles to $10,000 per car.

Fox Tests Volt, Runs Out Of Juice In Lincoln Tunnel
GM noted that Fox has issues with the Volt. They give Eric Bolling a Chevy Volt for a week. And this is what GM receives in return. Ingrates.

When 'being green' means subsidies for rich, harm for the poorOne thing we can expect in President Obama's State of the Union speech is for him to echo his declaration from last month, "That's the very simple choice that's facing Congress right now. ... Are you willing to fight as hard for middle-class families as you do for those who are most fortunate?" Yet when it comes to the environment, the president showers favors on the rich while punishing the poor. During last year's Occupy Wall Street protests, Obama expressed sympathy with calls for more "green" policies from the self-styled advocates for the 99 percent. So far, however, the environmental agenda has overwhelmingly favored the 1 percent.

Czar of the Day

Ed Montgomery
Auto recovery Czar
Black radical anti business activist who supports affirmative action and job preference for blacks. University of Maryland Business School Dean who teaches US business has caused world poverty. ACORN board member. Communist DuBois Club member. Resigned in 2010.


###

Zone of Reality: Castro Notes

By Humberto Fontova

This first appeared on April 14, 2010

Che Guevara at the Bay of Pigs
Forty-nine years ago this week, 1,512 Cuban men and boys landed on a Cuban beach with weapons in hand. All volunteers, they were putting their lives and limbs on the line to free Cuba from the Stalinism imposed upon it at Soviet gunpoint by Soviet proxies Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. The doomed (by the Best and Brightest) exploit would come to be known as the Bay of Pigs invasion.

"Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands!" snarls Ernesto "Che" Guevara in his diaries. "My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!"…. Not surprisingly, in his heated battle with a tape recorder and roman candles, the masterful Comandante had managed to wound himself…..Apparently, the sight of the bottle rocket's red glare and the sound of tape-recorded bombs bursting in air roused Che to a Pattonesque fury. He drew his pistol and prepared to lead the charge against the Yankee juggernaut. "¡Arriba muchachos!" he bellowed……Che stood atop a tank turret and turned to his men. "Let's wipe 'em out!" he yelled, while waving his pistol overhead in the manner of Clevon Little in Blazing Saddles.

Then he managed to shoot himself through the chin.

(At least he could take credit for shooting his gun. When captured in Bolivia with an unfired pistol; after insisting he men fight to the last; he whined that he was Che and worth more alive than dead. Apparently the Bolivians and his biggest and bestest buddy ....Fidel.... disagreed. It seems that Castro even thought this "hero of leftist dummies wasn't worth anything either. Of course when you are one of the 20th century’s greatest mass murderers of normal decent people; what does the death of one maniac matter? RK)


 
###

Avoiding Stupid is a Really Good Thing!

By Rich Kozlovich

An article entitled Bastard Nation appeared in Front Page Magazine discussing a New York Times report that “53 percent of babies delivered to women under the age of 30—the prime motherhood demographic—enter the world without their parents married to one another. This should seem startling to most, but they point out at the New York Times things are seen a bit differently as they go on to say;
But it’s not the rise of illegitimacy that scandalizes sex scribbler Katie Roiphe. It is the newspaper’s “peculiar moral undertone.’ “[M]arriage is very rapidly becoming only one way to raise children,” Roiphe explains at Slate, noting that “other countries are obviously way ahead of the United States in incorporating a rational recognition of the vicissitudes of love, and the varieties of family life, into cultural attitudes toward unmarried parents.” The peculiar immoral undertone in Roiphe’s plea to deny children a two-parent home stems in part from her bringing two children into the world fathered by different men, neither of whom remains in a relationship with the writer. The personal is political.
So then, “other countries are obviously way ahead of the United States” in abandoning traditional values! Can we also conclude they also way ahead of the United States in stupid? Have we have lost our minds?  Historically, traditionally, biologically and rationally a family is made up of a man, a women and their children with the goal of forming a stable, reliable, lasting monogamous relationship. No matter how the left works to destroy this with their embrace of sexually irresponsible conduct that results in illegitimacy with multiple partners, and homosexuals adopting and becoming a “family” this conduct is not conducive to a sable society. It is however conducive to destroying the foundational structure of American cultural thinking; Judaic/Christian principles.
“In 1963, as Pres. Lyndon Johnson was launching the War on Poverty, 7 percent of American children were born outside marriage. White House staffer Daniel Patrick Moynihan, U.S. Senator from New York, warned the nation of the calamities associated with the growing number of out-of-wedlock births. For more than 40 years, our society has ignored Moynihan’s warnings. Despite the transparent linkages among poverty, social problems, and disintegration of the family, the liberal intelligentsia has watched the steady collapse of marriage in low-income communities with silent indifference. “
George Will wrote about him in 2003 saying;
"forty years ago he called attention "to the crisis of the African-American family--26 percent of children were being born out of wedlock--he was denounced as a racist by lesser liberals. Today the percentage among all Americans is 33, among African-Americans 69, and family disintegration, meaning absent fathers, is recognized as the most powerful predictor of most social pathologies."
Out-of-wedlock births comprised 5.3% of total births in 1960, including 2.3% of white births and 23 percent of black births. Today illegitimate births are now around 40% with approximately 25% among whites and 70% in the black community and Hispanic rate of 48% in 2005.

The left works at destroying the traditional nuclear family. Why? This forces more and more people to need government assistance; this grows government; this puts more power into the hands of unelected bureaucrats; this destroys individual freedom because nothing grows the “welfare state like the disappearance of marriage.” What is the solution to this growing problem from the left. More public sex education, free condoms and absolutely no moralizing about their conduct! That has been their solution for decades and the problem grows.

This continuing trend in illegitimacy for the last fifty years is startling. The reality is this: “The statist Left is not content to merely watch marriage die; it seeks to nail the coffin lid tightly shut.” The left is always at the front of the line to point out any minor misstep in their demands for perfection, but their claim of being able to deliver utopian freedom is lie. What they ultimately deliver is dystopia. They demand "perfection but the best we can hope for is the most acceptable imperfection". We really do need to get that!

I have another suggestion. Perhaps we could start to read some history and maybe….just maybe….we wouldn’t so easily gulled by so many smooth talkers. I'll tell you what. Let’s start with the Federalist Papers.

Federalist #1
Explanation

Monday, February 27, 2012

With Our Own Values They Destroy Us: Part XI

By Ellis Washington

THE DIABOLICAL JUSTICE BRENNAN

Exclusive: Ellis Washington highlight's 'evil' results of jurist's high-court opinions.

For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.~ Justice Wm. J. Brennan (1906-97)

It is impossible to fight against a revolution that wars against, that undermines, that incessantly seeks to destroy everything you hold most dear (e.g., God, family, country) when you don’t even realize that you, your parents and your grandparents were born right in the middle of a vicious, perpetual war of ideas – Progressivism vs. Conservatism – which in my upcoming book I call, “The Progressive Revolution” (two volumes).

Did you know that every president of the United States from the first president of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09), to our current president, Barack Hussein Obama (2009- ), was an admitted progressive, with the exception of three conservative Republicans: Warren Harding (1921-23), Calvin Coolidge (1923-29) and Ronald Reagan (1981-89)?...........To Read More.....

###

Observations From the Back Row

...

Times Square Billboards: ‘Don’t Believe the Liberal Media!’
The Media Research Center (MRC), a watchdog group that tracks liberal bias in the news, had two massive billboards erected in New York City’s Times Square on Tuesday. The billboards say “Don’t Believe the Liberal Media!” and they are expected to be viewed by 1.3 million onlookers over the next four weeks, according to the MRC.

Tesla libel suit against Top Gear fails again
Tesla and the company's lawyers are nothing if not determined. After a judge smacked down the electric vehicle manufacturer's libel suit against the BBC and Top Gear for comments made about the range of the Tesla Roadster, the automaker rallied with a second, amended lawsuit. It didn't take long for the the same judge to nix the new case, too, saying the amendment was "not capable of being defamatory at all, or, if it is, it is not capable of being a sufficiently serious defamatory meaning to constitute a real and substantial tort." That sound? It's the smack of the judicial backhand. The judge went on to say drivers know a manufacturer's claim about range is dependent on driving conditions and habits. The dustup, as you may recall, began when Top Gear put the Tesla Roadster through its paces on the show's test track. While Jeremy Clarkson lauded the car's acceleration, the segment claimed the vehicle ran out of juice after just 55 miles of abuse. That figure is far south of the 200 mile range Tesla claims for the vehicle. CEO Elon Musk called the show "completely phony" not long after the segment aired and brought out the legal guns. The rest, as they say, is history.

My Take - For those who missed it, the Tesla Roadster will turn into a brick if the battery is allowed to drain.   It can't be recharged and it can't even be pushed.  The cost to replace it is around $40,000.  RK

Obama's Federal Green-Car Fleet Promises Fall Flat
Well, color me surprised: yet another of the Obama administration's renewable-energy promises, borne of wishful green thinking and populist political appeal, meeting with resistance from that darn inconvenience that some might call reality. Bloomberg reports:
…….So, they're scaling back on the hybrid and electric cars, because -- gasp -- they're just not that practical. But, the Obama administration does include vehicles that can use both E85 ethanol-based fuels and gasoline in it's definition of alternative-fuel vehicles... except, the special ethanol fuel isn't really practical, either:
…..The way this administration is experimenting on green energy projects with taxpayer dollars, you'd think we had money to burn instead of a more than one hundred percent debt-to-GDP ratio. And you know something -- I bet they would, literally, burn taxpayer dollars, if they thought they'd release less carbon than traditional gasoline.

The government-imposed California dust bowl
Of all the problems within California — pension and budget deficits, high unemployment, an over-eager environmentalist agenda and a failed taxpayer-funded green energy firm — add a government-made dust bowl to the list.  Yes, California farmers who produce much of the produce that our nation depends upon are being strangled by a government imposed water shortage. To understand this situation, you first need to know that two-thirds of the state’s water comes from Northern California while two-thirds of California’s population is in the southern part of the state. But the most disconcerting part of the water problems in California involves the very middle of the state — the Central Valley.

The Onerous Effects of Over-Regulation
We keep hearing that the economy is in a “jobless recovery.” What’s holding American companies back? Why aren’t they hiring more people? High taxes draw a lot of attention, and rightly so. They depress investment and discourage innovation. But escalating regulatory costs also undermine our economy. And small businesses, which fuel so much economic growth and hire so many people, often wind up particularly hard hit by them. You don’t have to be a doctrinaire conservative to realize this. The Economist, the London-based news weekly -- and a supporter of President Obama's candidacy in 2008 -- highlights the problem in its latest cover story, “Over-regulated America.” And they note the irony: "The home of laissez-faire is being suffocated by excessive and badly written regulation."……. But while it’s entertaining to ridicule them -- and it’s certainly well-deserved -- we shouldn’t overlook the bigger rules. Take these three major new regulations from 2011:

Are the Navy SEALs Too...White?
I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty sick of this war on the white male. According to TIME, the Navy SEALs are too white and don't resemble real seals. Seriously. In nature, most seals are black, with relatively few white ones. The Navy's SEALs have exactly the opposite problem -- they're overwhelmingly white, with hardly any blacks. So they're trying to do something about it. What? I don't even know where to start on this one. Great, racist analogy TIME. The real question is: Why does it matter what color the skin of a Navy SEAL is so long as they complete the training to become a Navy SEAL in the first place? TIME wonders how in the world an elite volunteer force could ever be made of up mostly white males.

My Take - I had a cousin that made a career of the U.S. Navy...as a Navy SEAL. They didn't call them SEALs then. They were Under Water Demolition Teams, or Frogmen.  I will say this. If you volunteer; if you finish the training, especially Hell Week, then you become a Navy SEAL. That is it...period. No one has to volunteer, and no one has to finish the training; you can ring out any time and the pain and suffering that it takes to become a SEAL all stops.

No amount of recruiting will make a man a U.S. Navy SEAL if it isn't in him and no amount of political correctness can change that unless they have separate qualifications for different groups. They wouldn’t be U.S. Navy SEALs then.


Czar of the Day
Afghanistan Czar - Richard Holbrooke, who was a former Governor of New Mexico, an ultra liberal anti-gun pro abortion supporter of legal drug use. Wished to repeal the 2nd Amendment. Died in Dec. 2010


###

Zone of Reality: Castro Notes

By Rich Kozlovich

When I started this it was with the intention of exposing the truth about Castro. It has turned into much more of an expose of the media and very prominent people. Nothing is as it seems and the Main Stream Media are largely responsible for the incredible level of ignorance displayed by the pubic on almost every issue of consequence today. Did anyone see the evening news showing Al Sharpton declaring that Castro was"one of the three most impressive people I have ever met" and that there were "absolutely no human rights violations in Cuba?”

How about Bishop Desmond Tutu? Surely that paragon of virtue on personal rights can see the truth and speak out? No….apparently he wants unfettered commerce with Castro. Then there is that paragon of integrity and virtue Jesse Jackson who bellowed "Viva Fidel" and "Viva Che Guevara" with raised fists declaring “long live our cry of freedom”! In spite of a well documented terrible civil rights record...against black Cubans. Can we assume that he isn't aware of that? Or shall we assume that his real focus is on other things!

There’s more, but the most important question this must raise in anyone with the ability to think for themselves is this; why isn’t this common knowledge? Why wasn’t this a primary story on the evening news? The MSM has these people on the news moralizing about all sorts of things. Why? Does anyone besides me find this to be strange?

'¡Cuba Si! - Arizona No!' Says Mexican President Felipe Calderón
By Humberto Fontova

Mexican President Felipe Calderón can hardly contain his revulsion and rage against Arizona's SB 1070. He's "deeply troubled," reports the Associated Press, over a law he denounces as "discriminatory and racist," not to mention "a dire threat to the whole Hispanic-American population." This new Arizona law "opens the door to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement," sputters the Mexican president.

Indeed, this "threat to Hispanics" and these "abuses in law enforcement" have been ongoing for years. The Associated Press carried a story where one Maria Elena Gonzalez reported how female migrants were "forced to strip by abusive police officers, supposedly to search them, but the purpose is to sexually abuse them." Jose Ramos, 18, reported "that extortion by border police occurs at every stop on their migratory route, until migrants are left penniless and begging for food."

According to this Associated Press story, "Others said they had seen migrants beaten to death by police, their bodies left near the railway tracks to make it look as if they had fallen from a train." "If you're carrying any money, they take it from you," said Carlos Lopez. "Federal, state, local police -- all of them shake you down. If you're on a bus, they pull you off and search your pockets, and if you have any money, they keep it all and say, get out of here."

All of the above "hate" and "abuses in law enforcement" as reported by the Associated Press befell Central American migrants who enter Mexico. So perhaps Mexican President Calderón knows what he's talking about?



###

Lindzen totally pwns the alarmists

By James Delingpole

I would like to thank Mr. Delingpole for allowing me to republish his work. Please go to the original post for additional links. RK

Professor Richard Lindzen is one of the world's greatest atmospheric physicists: perhaps the greatest. What he doesn't know about the science behind climate change probably isn't worth knowing. But even if you weren't aware of all this, even if you'd come to the talk he gave in the House of Commons this week without prejudice or expectation, I can pretty much guarantee you would have been blown away by his elegant dismissal of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming theory.

Dick Lindzen does not need to raise his voice. He does not use hyperbole. In a tone somewhere between weariness and withering disdain, he lets the facts speak for themselves. And the facts, as he understands them, are devastating.

Here is how he began his speech, which was organised on behalf of the Campaign To Repeal the Climate Change Act:

Stated briefly, I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest.

You can read a full version of his speech here. The Bishop has it up here.

But don't take my word for it. Simon Carr of the Independent (not a publication hitherto noted for its rampant AGW scepticism) was sufficiently impressed to write a blog on the subject headlined Is catastrophic global warming, like Millennium Bug, a mistake?

I think we know the answer to that one, eh?

###

Saturday, February 25, 2012

This Week With Alan Caruba

.

Let's Start With Alan's Cartoon Round-up

The Clinton Years
PBS recently aired a two-part television documentary on Bill Clinton, his life, and his two terms in office from 1993 to 2001. Following the years of economic growth and optimism from the Reagan-Bush41 era, it may have just been inevitable that the voters wanted to put a younger man in the White House. At the time, few of us realized how seriously demented, Al Gore, Clinton’s choice for his vice president, would turn out to be

Grand Funk GOP

“In negotiation, ‘yes’ is the worst word. It just betrays a fear of failure and a fear of losing this deal, and it primes you to please the other side, to rush ahead, to compromise early and often to come to a deal, any deal. ‘No’ is the best word. It’s what you want to be prepared to say and to hear. ‘No’ will liberate you and protect you.”

"Fakegate" Blows Up in Warmist Faces


On February 16, I published “Anatomy of a Global Warming Hoax” concerning the theft of the private records of The Heartland Institute’s board meeting and the creation of an alleged forged document intended to harm its reputation as a long time advocate of the real, not fake, science that has been the basis of the global warming—now called “climate change”—hoax.

Greener Than Thou
The most obnoxious and hypocritical people are those who are always preaching a “greener” way of life, insisting that anything that constitutes our modern lifestyles is destroying the Earth and depleting its natural resources. Never mind that we depend upon oil, natural gas, coal, and a host of minerals and chemicals for that lifestyle, the absence of which caused people in earlier eras to live shorter, far more unpleasant lives.

###

Lower Than Pond Scum

By Alan Caruba

I would like to thank Alan for allowing me to republish his works.  This appeared on Alan's blog, Warning Signs. RK

Between 1955 and 1959 I was a student at the University of Miami. It was perhaps the best four years of my life and remembered fondly for its combination of fun and learning. On Thursday, February 23, President Barack Obama was on the UM campus to tell the biggest bunch of lies about energy in America I have heard compressed into a single speech.

This President has already set records wasting taxpayer’s money on a range of so-called clean energy and renewable energy “investments”. Solyndra, the solar panel company that went bust and stuck taxpayers with a half-billion in loan guarantees is just one of those “investments” and I keep waiting for someone to ask why public funds are being flushed down the toilet when, if the companies involved were viable, they could not raise private venture capital?

“And we’re making investments in the development of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance known as algae,” said the President. “Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17% of the oil we important for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in America.”

All politicians put the best face on their pet projects, but to flat-out lie about one of the most idiotic ideas to replace oil when this nation has enough oil, domestically and offshore, known and estimated to exist, defies the imagination. It is an insult to every one of us. And Obama wants to pump $14 million into algae, otherwise known as pond scum.

It is very likely that, like the solar panel and other “clean energy” scandals that we know about and will learn about as time goes alone, the average American is unaware that, by 2008, there were fifteen (15) algae startup companies. When I heard Obama talk about algae, I could practically hear the campaign fund-raising bundlers scurrying like rats from company to company.

To those of you not intimately and well informed about algae, it is that organic stuff that gathers in ponds and swamps and, in aggregate, is politely called “plant-like organisms that are usually photosynthetic and aquatic.” It is scum. It has no roots, stems, or leaves. It is scum.

In a marine environment it is called seaweed. Algae have chlorophyll and can manufacture their own food through photosynthesis. Algae, the scientists tell us, produces more oxygen than all the plants in the world in addition to being an important food source for marine creatures as diverse in size as shrimp and whales.

The notion that millions would be “invested” to turn algae into fuel ranks just above the idiocy of converting thousands of acres of corn into ethanol instead of food.

Barack Obama has been lying about so many things for so long I doubt he even knows when he is lying or even cares. It’s not enough to dismiss this saying that all politicians lie because many do not. Some in Congress right now are desperately trying to get the public in general and voters in particular to understand that America has more debt per capita than Greece. We are on the precipice of financial collapse and Barack Obama just wants to spend more and more and more; some of it on pond scum.

During his UM speech, he derided those who have for decades been saying that America has to allow oil companies access to its vast reserves in order to reduce our dependence on imported oil. “We’ve heard the same thing for thirty years,” he said. He’s right. And administrations and Congress have blocked access for just as long. It’s our oil!

He went further, though. “It means that anyone who tells you we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about—or isn’t telling you the truth.” That’s rich, coming from someone who lies almost as often as he exhales. Oil is a global commodity. The more that’s available to the market, the lower its cost. Domestic oil always costs consumers less than imported oil!

The truth is that oil production on federal lands declined last year by eleven percent on lands controlled by the Obama administration and six percent for natural gas in 2011.Oil and natural gas production on federal lands is down by more than forty percent (40%) compared to ten years ago. The Obama administration, in 2010, issued the lowest number of onshore leases since 1984. In 2011, it held exactly one offshore lease sale.

On February 24, one day after the Obama speech, the U.S. Geological Survey released a report on the amount of oil estimated to exist in the North Slope of Alaska. “The amount of oil that is technically recoverable in the United States is more than 1.4 trillion barrels, with the largest deposits located offshore, in portions of Alaska, and in shale in the Rocky Mountain West. When combined with resources from Canada and Mexico, total recoverable oil in North America exceeds 1.7 trillion barrels.

In a 2008 Wall Street Journal interview, Obama’s Energy Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, famously said, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels of Europe.” Anyone who does not believe this administration has a deliberate policy of achieving this goal is just not paying attention. Remember that the next time you fill your car’s gas tank.

This is the same President who stopped the building of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada that would provide more oil for our refineries and not cost the American taxpayer one penny to build. This is the same President who imposed a moratorium on oil from the Gulf of Mexico even after the courts told him to remove it. It caused the loss of an estimated 12,000 jobs while rigs departed for Cuba, Brazil and Mexico.

Between now and November, the President will be out campaigning and telling the same lies. The rise in the cost of oil isn’t just a seasonal thing though prices have usually gone up in the summertime when people travel more for vacations. It’s up because the Iranians are closing in on making their own nuclear weapons and their own missiles to hit, not just Israel, but the U.S. It’s up because it is essential to ensure that the tankers oil-producing nations around the Persian Gulf can enter and exist it via the Strait of Harmuz.

The world isn’t running out of oil and is not about to run out. The Earth floats on an ocean of oil despite the rising demand from Asia and other developing nations. To replace foreign oil with algae-based fuel would require a chemically-controlled tank the size of the State of Colorado, about 69.3 million acres.

In 2010, Obama’s mandated biofuel production was less than ten percent of foreign oil imports. It is impossible for biofuel of any description to replace foreign oil imports; just as it is idiotic to pay $41,000 for an electric car when you can have a gasoline-fueled car for around $16,000.

Pond scum is not a rational substitute for oil and spending $14 million on its production as a fuel is beyond absurd. It is the same confidence game as selling “carbon credits” to avoid the hoax of “global warming.”

© Alan Caruba, 2012

###

Friday, February 24, 2012

Zone of Reality: Castro Notes

By Rich Kozlovich

Why isn't this all part of the historical record? Why didn't we see this on the news? Let's start with the answers to those questions first. We can graduate to bigger questions later. Someone needs to be made accountable!


Che and the Workers
By Humberto Fontova

The hero of so many leftists was not really what they think him to be. A May Day march without Che posters and Mexican flags is like a fish with a bicycle. …..It seemed that few groups of Mexican demonstrators forget to glorify the man on record as dismissing Mexicans en masse as "a rabble of illiterate Indians."…while residing in Mexico.

How many "Chicano activists" know this?......

Labor groups were also prominent on May Day with their Che regalia... [However] in a TV speech on June 26, 1961, when Che Guevara was Cuba's "Minister of Industries," he proclaimed: "The Cuban workers have to start being used to live in a collectivist regimen, and by no means can they go on strike." ……..

[As for those who resisted] The 20-year-old freedom-fighter's voice boomed out. "Shoot me right here!"….. His voice thundered and his head bobbed with the effort. "Right in the chest!"…."Like a man!" Tony stopped and ripped open his shirt, pounding his chest and grimacing as his gallant executioners gaped and shuffled. "Right here!"…..

Another enemy dispatched -- bound and gagged as usual….Castro and Che's firing squads riddled another 14,000 bound and gagged freedom-fighters. Many of their murder victims were boys in their late teens and early 20s. Some were even younger.

Compare Tony's death to Guevara's capture: "Don't shoot!" whimpered the arch-assassin to his captors. "I'm Che! I'm worth more to you alive than dead!"


###

The Left: Wrong, Insane and Evil

By Rich Kozlovich

A friend told me yesterday that the answer to all of these gas problems is to get all of these gas driven cars off the highway and force everyone to drive electric cars.

Unfortunately, no matter how I tried to explain it to him that this isn't a solution to our problems and why; that was his answer and he was sticking to it. Ok....so I gave up trying and moved on to taxes. We both agreed that Obama was right. Everyone has to pay their fair share; so we want that 45% or more that pay no federal taxes to start paying. Then we can look at what the "fair share" of everyone else should be.

At any rate, there have been some issues this week that stick in my craw. Leftism is a form or insanity. Why? Because their solutions are the same solutions that have made the problems they were supposed to fix worse. Insane because they actively work against solutions that do work. i.e. traditional values. Worse yet,  they deliberately work against the history that shows this to be true.

An ariticle appeared on Front Page today called Bastard Nation saying;
"The New York Times reports that 53 percent of babies delivered to women under the age of 30—the prime motherhood demographic—enter the world without their parents married to one another. But it’s not the rise of illegitimacy that scandalizes sex scribbler Katie Roiphe. It is the newspaper’s “peculiar moral undertone.”

“[M]arriage is very rapidly becoming only one way to raise children,” Roiphe explains at Slate, noting that “other countries are obviously way ahead of the United States in incorporating a rational recognition of the vicissitudes of love, and the varieties of family life, into cultural attitudes toward unmarried parents.” The peculiar immoral undertone in Roiphe’s plea to deny children a two-parent home stems in part from her bringing two children into the world fathered by different men, neither of whom remains in a relationship with the writer. The personal is political."
So…other countries who have embraced irresponsible behavior are “ahead” of the United States? In what? Stupidity? Those who spout this claptrap have lost their minds.

Historically, traditionally, biologically and rationally a family is made up of a man, a women and their children. No matter how the left works to destroy this with their support of homosexuals adopting and becoming a “family”, or embrace the concept that sexually irresponsible conduct of men and women that results in illegitimacy.  We absolutely know this conduct is not conducive to a sable society.

In 1963, as Pres. Lyndon Johnson was launching the War on Poverty, 7 percent of American children were born outside marriage. White House staffer Daniel Patrick Moynihan, U.S. Senator from New York, warned the nation of the calamities associated with the growing number of out-of-wedlock births. For more than 40 years, our society has ignored Moynihan’s warnings. Despite the transparent linkages among poverty, social problems, and disintegration of the family, the liberal intelligentsia has watched the steady collapse of marriage in low-income communities with silent indifference.“

The left works at destroying the nuclear family. Why? This forces more and more people to need government assistance; this grows government; this puts more power into the hands of unelected bureaucrats; this destroys individual freedom; because noting grows the “welfare state like the disappearance of marriage.” What is the solution to this growing problem from the left? More public sex education and free condoms! That has been their solution for decades and the problem grows. The reality is this: “The statist Left is not content to merely watch marriage die; it seeks to nail the coffin lid tightly shut.”

How can this not be considered insane? That quote from Albert Einstein where he says that expecting different results when doing the same things over and over again is a form of insanity has been appearing in more articles these last couple of years. Well? Do we get it? Apparently not because we keep doing and promoting all the things that destroy that which is traditional, responsible and the basis for a stable society; the nuclear family!

That makes them insane and evil; because evil is as evil does. Dennis Prager says that the left isn’t evil, just wrong. Wrong! If you perpetrate evil you are evil. If you aid and support those who perpetrate evil you share in their guilt. That is a basic principle of common law. We really do need to get this; the left is wrong, insane and evil!

###

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Logical Fallacy of the Week, Week 25 The Continuum Fallacy

______________

The continuum fallacy (also called the fallacy of the beard, line drawing fallacy, bald man fallacy, fallacy of the heap, and the sorites fallacy) is an informal logical fallacy closely related to the sorites paradox, or paradox of the heap. The fallacy causes one to erroneously reject a vague claim simply because it is not as precise as one would like it to be. Vagueness alone does not necessarily imply invalidity.

The fallacy appears to demonstrate that two states or conditions cannot be considered distinct (or do not exist at all) because between them there exists a continuum of states. According to the fallacy, differences in quality cannot result from differences in quantity.
There are clearly reasonable and clearly unreasonable cases in which objects either belong or do not belong to a particular group of objects based on their properties. We are able to take them case by case and designate them as such even in the case of properties which may be vaguely defined. The existence of hard or controversial cases does not preclude our ability to designate members of particular kinds of groups.

Zone of Reality: Castro Notes

By Rich Kozlovich

If you have been following these posts you will notice an amazing pattern of deceit from the media and public officials. Everything they do hides the truth about Castro and the Cuba he and his myrmidons destroyed. Everything they do not only hides the truth, but they clearly misrepresent the truth deliberately. Why? I think they must be insane!

Is Cuba Smuggling Terrorists into the U.S. through Mexico and Arizona?
By Humberto Fontova

When Fidel Castro ….recently slammed Arizona's SB 1070 as "a brutal violation of human rights," few Cuba-watchers took notice. Alas, cues from the Democratic/MSM teleprompter probably didn't prompt Castro's recent snipes against Arizona's SB 1070. Instead, Governor Brewer's law probably stung him hard -- and right where it hurts most.

Don't look for this anywhere in the U.S. media, but last week Cancun's former mayor, Gregorio Sánchez, who was also running for governor of Mexico's state of Quintana Roo (which includes Cancun and the Caribbean "Mexican Riviera"), was arrested and charged with a string of crimes including money-laundering and trafficking in drugs and illegal immigrants. Interestingly, Señor Sanchez is married to a Cuban Señorita named Niurka Sáliva, daughter of one of Fidel Castro's top Intelligence officials. ……

…normally the MSM would brand Los Zetas a "death squad." But since their tortures and rub-outs generally benefit leftists…. mum is the word in mainstream media circles….find some link, however tenuous….to the CIA or a "U.S.-backed strongman" and -- I ga-ron-tee! -- the label "death squad" would become instantly viral throughout the worldwide media… (Cuba) is likely helping smuggle al-Qaeda-allied terrorists into the U.S. Obama Team's response? Why, let's abolish those hideously embarrassing Bush-era restrictions and make it easier for Cubans to travel to the U.S., all in the name of -- you guessed it -- "cultural exchanges"!

Blast From the Past: Sowell's Critique For Change

By Rich Kozlovich


Every so often an old article of mine will start to get a bunch of hits. I never have any idea why, and it always surprises me that it may be from other countries. These last few weeks has turned Paradigms and Demographics into an international favorite for a number of non-English speaking countries, especially Germany, Russia, France, Slovenia, Bulgaria, India and Japan. South African readers have been showing more interest lately also.

I don't know why Paradigms and Demographics is getting so much international attention since my focus originally was to the pest control industry. However, I do believe that coming to the conclusion that it is impossible to talk about environmentalism without talking about leftism explains it. I decided to change this blog from an anti-green blog into a pro-humanity blog. You cannot be pro-humanity without being anti-left because environmentalism is the spear point of the left and the rationale for a socialistic world government. Either way…. it is what it is, and I do appreciate everyone's interest. This article has been hit a great deal lately so I decided to run it again. RK



This blog site was created for the following purposes.
1. To fight the battles that the pest control industry refuses to see, or sees but refuses to address.
2. To better inform the pest control industry that Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Green Pest Control is an unscientific dream of the greenies, government regulators and their fellow travelers in the pesticide chemical manufacturing distribution and application industries that will become a constantly recurring nightmare.
3. To present enough information to give those in the industry who agree with me the intellectual ammunition needed to challenge what is now becoming conventional wisdom, which I prefer to call the Philosophical Flavor of the Day.
4. To outline lists of questions that will allow those who agree with me to have the ability to place the burden of proof on those who are attempting to impose regulations on our industry that will eventually destroy structural pest control, and as bed bugs have shown, wreck havoc on the nation’s people.
Unfortunately, it becomes very apparent that trying to stay focused on one issue with the environmental activists is impossible. They ubiquitously stick their noses into everything. As a result all of these issues overlap. While addressing our industry's concerns I have come to realize these overlapping issues also present overlapping challenges with overlapping answers requiring overlapping logic. These issues are presented in such complicated ways that it takes some time to realize that all of these challenges are presented with the same lines of logic, because the environmental cabals who present these issues use the same illogical junk science mentality; which are the same logical fallacies and intellectual dishonesty used by the rest of the Left.  The patterns repeat over and over  again. 

Climate change is much larger than most realize. Not because of the potential danger to humanity and the world from global warming. It is huge because the warming activists have thrown all their efforts into this and the science is killing them. A large number of the science sites are full of information showing that this is a naturally occurring phenomenon. Here is one such site that addresses this issue with an objective eye.

Unfortunately the only information we were, and are, getting from the Main Stream Media (MSM) supports the view that global warming is anthropogenic and as a result we have the ability to make the climate do what we want.

We can’t accurately predict tomorrow’s weather and so get this; we are going to make the climate do what we want on a worldwide scale? What nonsense! Yet we had people like Al Gore asking the MSM to donate advertising time to promote the global warming scare.

If it had truly been scientific; why did it have to be sold? He announced there would be an upcoming coalition of environmental, labor, religious and other groups that will be raising money to buy airtime for ads over the next three years to address this issue.

Once again, why did it have to be sold? Why was selling this issue to a non-scientific gullible public so important? Because the science didn’t support it then and it doesn’t support it now!  However, without being scared to death the public would not demand that something be done by political leaders. And now Al the High Priest of the Warming Globe whines that “our government has failed us".

If the MSM was going to donate airtime, why did it not donate airtime for a public debate on global warming. Let “The Sky is Falling Al”, and his allies present their information against those that see this issue differently in a public forum without any ability for either side to spin. This of course did not happen. The Mother of Junk Science, Rachel Carson led the way with Silent Spring by going public without facing peer review and thereby bypassed all science based safe guards.

How does this apply to structural pest control? This web address takes you to a web site that appears to be a corporation set up by EPA and Cornell University whose goal is to promote IPM. Why does it have to be promoted (sold) to the public? Now we have to ask ourselves:
• If science supports IPM, why does it have to be sold?

• EPA certainly has the authority to impose it by merely changing the labels on pesticides. Why don’t they?

• If there is no science behind this effort, why are they trying to “sell” it to the public?

• At public events, why isn’t anyone who is opposed to IPM invited to present anything at any national forum?

• Why isn’t the idea of a national debate on IPM an idea whose time has come?

• If IPM in structural pest control was based on real science, wouldn’t an open debate be the ideal way to get everyone on board by exposing the flaws in the arguments of those that believe there is no such thing as IPM in structural pest control?

• Why aren’t we seeing articles stating views that are opposed to IPM in the publications of our industries information deliverers? I’m not talking about occasional letters to the editor. I am talking about regular features opposing ipm just as we see regular feature articles promoting IPM.
The patterns keep repeating over and over again. All of these issues, whether it is IPM, pesticides, endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, global warming, endangered species, saving the trees, clear air or clean water issues are in reality the same issue couched in different terms,  with the same goal. Eliminate real science, eliminate people and dominate those that are left. Since this will be the end result of enacting these policies; this must be their goal. If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it must be a duck.

Onkar Ghate made this observation; Man's method of survival – transforming nature to meet his needs – must be defended against environmentalism's attack. Do you agree with that? If you do, how can you justify supporting IPM or Green Pest Control? If you are opposed to that concept are you an eco-terrorist? This would be a good time to apply what I call “Sowell’s Critique For Change”. There are three questions to the Critique.
1. As compared to what?

2. How much is it going to cost?

3. What hard evidence do you have?
These three questions by Thomas Sowell could be an excellent basis for a public debate at one of our industry’s national forums regarding IPM and Green Pest Control. At some point we must begin to realize that this just isn’t about business, pesticides and regulations. At some point we must come to grips with the fact that this is a moral issue. We are part of that thin gray line that stands in defense of the nation’s health. We are part and parcel of the public health service. We are “The Rat Catchers Child"!   If we don’t take a moral position on all of this; are we not as lost as the green activists and their acolytes in government? We are the experts! We are society’s last best hope in these matters.

But are we courageous enough to reach out and grab the battle standard of our fallen predecessors?


Comments will not be accepted that are rude, crude, stupid or smarmy. Nor will I allow ad hominem attacks or comments from anyone who is "Anonymous”, even if they are positive!

###

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Blast From the Past: The Fourth Branch

By Rich Kozlovich

Every so often an old article of mine will start to get a bunch of hits. I never have any idea why, and it always surprises me that it may be from other countries. These last few weeks has turned Paradigms and Demographics into an international favorite, especially Germany, Russia, France, Slovenia, Bulgaria, India and Japan. South African readers have been showing more interest lately.

I don't know why Paradigms and Demographics is getting so much international attention since my focus originally was to the pest control industry. However, I do believe that coming to the conclusion that it is impossible to talk about environmentalism without talking about leftism explains it. I decided to change this blog from an anti-green blog into a pro-humaniy blog. You cannot be pro-humanity without being anti-left because environmentalism is the spear point of the left and the rationale for a socialistic world government. Either way…. it is what it is, and I do appreciate everyone's interest. This article has been hit a great deal lately so I decided to run it again. RK


Paradigms are defined in following manner.
A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.
In short; it is how we look at the world. How we perceive reality. It is the basis of how we judge our actions and the actions of others.

Fully 25 percent of all federal regulations that have been passed involve environmental issues and EPA has only been in existence since 1970. Since that time we have a plethora of regulatory bodies at the state level to meet the minimum federal standards and in some states, like California, they go way beyond federal standards, and the Federal Registry increased from 62,000 pages to 75,000 pages in one three year period. President G.W. Bush passed more federal regulations than any president since Richard Nixon; and Nixon created, among other things, the EPA and OSHA.

Now we have a host of federal and state agencies, along with researchers and their universities imposing their views on society without regard to the impact of their actions. Yet we have to ask; what terrible thing happened to impose these kinds of costs and to give state and federal bureaucrats the authority to overturn the protections under the fourth amendment against unlawful search and seizure and self-incrimination under the fifth amendment of the U.S. Constitution?

I did the research and found that this was fought up to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) and it was decided that in these cases state and federal bureaucrats, and their regulations, usurp the protections “guaranteed” by the Constitution. What regulation passed by any regulator to make society safer was not already covered under criminal and civil penalties of state or federal law?

Why is it when you ask everyone if they think it is okay that they say, for the most part; yes it is necessary. Environmental paradigms have become everything! It started with Rachel Carson when she wrote Silent Spring in 1962. Her book, which was lauded and continues to be lauded, launched the modern environmental movement. Yet, almost everything she touted in her book was conjecture, prediction or lies.

Her book was never peer reviewed because it didn’t start out as a published book. I started out as excerpted installments in New Yorker magazine. That presentation was so popular the book followed, and when you read her work you can understand why.  She was a magnificent writer. I have been re-reading Silent Spring and I am now amazed at how poor her science was, in spite of the fact that her acolytes praise her as a scientist unendingly.

Her work was not science because it hadn’t been peer reviewed before publication. When it was, after the fact, it was discovered that everything she predicted failed to come true and in at least one case she knowingly and deliberately misrepresented the facts. Her book is full of anecdotal evidence (stories), which may or may not have been true, but there was no way to check it because she didn’t footnote source information for these stories. That isn’t science! She became the Mother Superior of the green movement, but in reality she was the mother of junk science.

Ultimately, this book was the justification for the formation of EPA by Richard Nixon, with the primary purpose of eliminating DDT. Everything you know about DDT is a lie. Yet the regulations and impositions continue! Now we have Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) imposing their will and jumping on the “funding” bandwagon.

In 1790 the fledgling U.S. Federal government passed the Whiskey Tax. The result was that in 1792 they had armed rebellion that President George Washington had to put down with the Federal army. Who were the biggest supporters of this bill? The whiskey distillers in the large cities! Why? Because this would give them the competitive edge they needed over the backwoods farmers who made moonshine, which was easier to transport into the towns than corn was. Far more profitable too!

Apparently having all these government imposed regulators and regulatory agencies aren’t enough to satisfy large industry. We now have regulators for hire who are just like bureaucrats; they need activity to give the impression of accomplishment. And what is the only activity we can expect from a regulator? More regulations! And more regulations and taxes put the largest companies in a position that will allow them to avoid real competition.

 Just as was the case with the Whiskey Act. Large companies and corporation love regulations and taxes. That is why they support all sorts of greenie nonsense because they believe they will profit from it and believe they will still survive, even if it is in some other form. But what about the consequences to society for adopting regulations that will restrict pesticides and pesticides applications to humanities detriment? That is the problem. These people never have to pay the consequences for their actions.

In order to generate some heterodoxy, I have four questions I would like to ask.
1. What terrible event or series of terrible events took place that would justify a SCOTUS decision that would give bureaucrats and government agencies the right to ignore the rights guaranteed under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution against illegal search and seizure and self incrimination?
2. What civil and criminal penalties in state and federal pesticide laws administrated by state and federal agencies were not already covered under criminal and civil law?
3. Have we been lied to regarding the need for all these regulations?
4. Will there ever be enough regulations?
The United States Constitution created three branches of government consisting of the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial branches. The result of all of these regulations is that there are now actually four branches of the United States government; now we have the Bureaucracy.  After the laws are passed these people are the ones who make the rules, they change the rules, they make all the decisions as to how the laws that are passed are to be interpreted; and without consequence. Why? They never have to answer for their actions.

They were not chosen by the people; they went to college, took a test and got hired. Most of them never have done anything except go to school and go into government, which we call “public service”!

How is it that those who create jobs, meet the payrolls and create the economy that we all enjoy aren’t considered public servants, but those who do nothing except undermine those who do are?

Why in the world would we think these people could possibly have any special insights as to how the economy or anything else should work? I find it interesting that in 1900 “government spending at all levels (local, state, and federal) represented 7.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Out of that amount 66 percent occurred at the local and state levels. Local government spent 55 percent, state government spent 11 percent, and the federal government spent the remaining 34 percent.”

Did it occur to anyone to ask; do we really need all these rules and regulations? Did it occur to anyone to ask; what would happen if these bureaucracies were eliminated and these people were fired?

 Comments will not be accepted that are rude, crude, stupid or smarmy. Nor will I allow ad hominem attacks or comments from anyone who is "Anonymous”, even if they are positive!

###

Observations From the Back Row

_______

Academia’s Consumer Fraud
It is fascinating to see people accusing others of things that they themselves are doing, especially when their own sins are worse. Academics love to say that businesses are not paying enough to people who work for them. But where in business are there people who are paid absolutely nothing for strenuous work that involves risks to their health?

In academia, that situation is common……there is a long feature article in the February 17th issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education on the chronic over-supply of historians. Worse yet, leading university history departments are resisting demands that they keep track of what happens to their students after they get their Ph.D.s — and inform prospective Ph.D.s of what the market is like. If any business operated this way, selling customers something that was very costly in time and money, and which the sellers knew in advance was almost certain to disappoint their expectations, academics would be bursting with indignation — and demanding full disclosure to the customers, if not criminal prosecutions.

But The Chronicle of Higher Education reports “faculty resistance” to collecting and publishing information on what happens to a university’s history Ph.D.s after they leave the ivy-covered walls with high hopes and low prospects……But apparently many academics are too busy pursuing moral crusades in society at large to look into such things on their own ivy-covered campuses.

Obama’s Enviro-Fat Cat Welfare Program
Last week Al Gore called capitalism “unsustainable.” It was a silly pronouncement, but considering the way that the Obama administration is manipulating the economy to benefit its “green energy” buddies, the ex-vice president may have stumbled across a greater truth: Obama’s crony-capitalism is clearly unsustainable. In a blockbuster story published last week, Washington Post reporters Carol D. Leonnig and Joe Stephens outlined more of the details of the incestuous relationship that the administration and green energy companies share. With $80 billion of stimulus money set aside for so-called clean energy projects there was a huge temptation to cross ethical boundaries separating the private and public sectors and it appears that few people involved in the business were able to resist that kind of temptation.

The Global Warming Cult and the Death of Science
At the end of last year, the media widely trumpeted the “recantation” by Richard Muller, a physics professor at Berkeley. Muller’s confession of faith was met with the unreserved glee of fanatics who believe that conversion equals validation of the True Faith. Now Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a prominent German chemistry professor and green activist, announced that he is coming out with a book breaking with the Warmist view. Naturally, this recantation wouldn’t receive nearly the same prominence, except when the inevitable stories kick in about Vahrenholt being a tool of the oil companies.

But set aside the partisan bickering, and one professor accepting a view he had formerly rejected, while another rejects a view he had formerly accepted, is all part of the normal scientific debate. …..In an ordinary scientific debate, a professor leaving one side and joining another might occasion some recriminations and name calling, but it wouldn’t make him anathema……hopping on board the Warm Train makes you a permanent member, and there is no room for changing your mind. Once a Warmist, always a Warmist. That’s not a rational position, but then the Cult of Warm is not a rational faith.

The Left’s Blind Eye to Non-Western Suffering
Last Thursday, Voice of America reported one of the saddest stories of the last few years: about half of all girls in Kenyan slums apparently give their bodies to older men in trade for sanitary napkins. As health educator Lydiah Njoroge, a field officer for the Freedom for Girls Program, explained, The least [expensive] in the market is 40 shillings … a packet that has eight pieces in it. So, because this girl cannot afford 40 shillings – their mother, their parents are poor, they have other things to provide food and shelter – sanitary towels are not a priority. So the girl just goes [and] has sex with an older man, most of the time not the same man – they would have one this month, another one next month, so they are very, very at risk of having HIV. This story was largely buried in the media. Instead, the media focused on issues like Israel’s “occupation” of Palestinian Arab-populated areas; Rick Santorum’s opinions on birth control; and, of course, the evils of those GOPers who didn’t want to extend the payroll tax cut. Can you say priorities, anyone? ……But here’s the dirty little secret of the left: they don’t want our living standards extended abroad. They think we’re sinning against the planet. By maintaining these standards…….

If we want to solve serious problems around the world, the first step is to stop beating ourselves up, pretending that we are the problem. We aren’t. We’re the solution. Millions around the globe beg for us to apply the Western solution rather than wasting our time in useless self-flagellation.

Here is a follow up article from my post Natural Resources Were Meant to Be Used! RK

Waiting for DoD: What does the Pentagon think of our rare earths vulnerability?
Inquiring Congressional minds want to know — or at least the Congressional mind belonging to Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), co-chair (with Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman) of the newly-formed Rare Earths Caucus. During Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s House Armed testimony this week, Cong. Johnson seized the opportunity to ask where things stood with the Pentagon’s report on the use of rare earths in the defense supply chain. That report, due in October 2010, remains missing in action 16 months after its due-date, and 28 months after Congress first directed DoD to undertake the assessment.

In response to Cong. Johnson’s query, a DoD legislative aide answers for the Secretary that the report is in interagency clearance and will be sent to Congress “very soon.” When Congressman Johnson politely presses for a bit more specificity, Secretary Panetta promises it within “a couple of weeks.” Judging from the body language, no one at the Pentagon seems too worried about keeping Congress waiting.