You really aren't that big of a deal

1. The Sun is 864,400 miles (1,391,000 kilometers) across. This is about109 times the diameter of Earth. The Sun weighs about 333,000 times as much as Earth. It is so large that about 1,300,000 planet Earths can fit inside of it.  
2. 
   
   
3. The innermost layer of the sun is the core. With a temperature of 15 million kelvins (27 million degrees Fahrenheit)
4. The outermost layer of the sun is the corona. Only visible during eclipses, it is a low density cloud of plasma with higher transparency than the inner layers. The white corona is a million times less bright than the inner layers of the sun, but is many times larger. The corona is hotter than some of the inner layers. Its average temperature is 1 million K (2 million degrees F) but in some places it can reach 3 million K (5 million degrees F). 
5. 
   Temperatures steadily decrease as we move farther away from the core, but after the photosphere they begin to rise again. There are several theories that explain this, but none have been proven.
   
   
   In the corona, above sunspots and areas of complex magnetic field patterns, are solar flares. These sparks of energy sometimes reach the size of the Earth and can last for up to several hours. Their temperature has been recorded at 11 million K (20 million degrees F). The extreme heat produces x rays that create light when they hit the gases of the corona.
6. 
   
   
7. The sun is the source of virtually all heat for our planet.  The earth is insignificant in comparison.  
8. If you want to feel even more insignificant, this guy ran a program to prove that every human alive would fit into one 900-meter ball.  
9. 
   
   
10. And yet if our politicians are to be believed, our failure to give them more control over the energy economy is boiling the planet.  
11. Seriously, people....  It's time to get over yourselves.  It's the sun, and the occasional lack of it.  You aren't that big of a deal.  Go here for more fun details.  
12. 
    
    

A quick prayer for The Super Bowl

God, I know that I am a sinner, and that I do not live according to your Word, whether it's the Torah, the Old Testament, the I Ching, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, or Dr. Atkins' Weight Loss Revolution. 

But God, I'm just asking for one little thing.....

Obama's will give his State Of The Union Speech on Tuesday night.  His typists are working on it now. 

Please have the Teleprompter Programmers come down hard on Global Warming.  President Obama, much like Ron Burgundy, will read whatever the Teleprompter Programmer puts on the thing. 

Let Obama stand before Congress and the nation and ask for money to fight warming.  Let him denounce the internal combustion engine.  Let him lobby for windmills, recycling, green bullshit, and carbon taxes. 

And then..... let it snow. 

May it snow enough to ground the wheels of D.C. to a halt. 

Let it snow some more. 

There is already a good chance that the Super Bowl will be postponed.  (Here's what the Meadowlands stadium looks like today.) 

 God, I ask this in your son's name, and in the name of Allah and Mohammad and Buddha and Dr. Atkins.  May the rescheduled Super Bowl also be postponed because of snow and cold and freezing and ice. 

May the Gore Effect make itself known throughout our land, and may your people break out in giggles.  Because it'll be so damn funny. 

Amen, Ameen, Shalom, Namaste, and we all bow to the Buddha nature that is within you. 

*******************

Everyone but God,  please go here for a few weather predictions and possibilities. 

Barack Obama and the 900 Foot Jesus

There's a quote in atheist circles that goes something like "Give me all the reasons that you don't believe in all the other gods, and you'll have the reasons I don't believe in yours." 

In other words, list all the reasons that you don't believe in Anahita, Anat, Anath, Andhrimnir, Andraste, Andvari, or Angrboda - to name just a few gods from the beginning of the alphabet - and you'll have a good list of why some people don't "believe" in the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 

You've probably heard of TV evangelist and faith-healer Oral Roberts.  (Please hang with me.  I'm going somewhere with this.)  Here's Roberts' CNN obituary:

In 1977, (Oral) Roberts said he had a vision of a 900-foot-tall Jesus, who told him to found the City of Faith Medical and Research Center. The biography said the center was aimed at "merging the healing power of medicine and prayer."
In 1986, Roberts announced that God would "call him home" unless he raised $8 million to send medical missionaries from the center -- an announcement that was widely publicized.

Are hospitals a good cause?  Yes. 

Do medical missionaries generally do good work and save lives?  Yes. 

Did you, or anyone else with good sense, donate money to Oral Roberts?  No. 

Why not?  Because most of us knew that a lot of the money would not be spent on the hospital.  We suspected that a 900-Foot Jesus didn't really appear to Oral Roberts in a vision, or tell him to send medical missionaries across the globe.  And finally, most of us prefer to give our charitable dollars to other causes. 

Several years ago, Barack Obama decided to radically change America's healthcare system.  He was going to give free (or at least affordable) healthcare to low-income Americans.  He had a plan.  And people on the political left seemed SHOCKED that this compassionate action was opposed by conservatives and libertarians. 

Given a choice, I'd give my dollars to the Oral Roberts City of Faith Medical and Research Center before giving it to Obama and the government (assuming there wasn't a 3rd option of burning the money).  I don't think that the government acts responsibly.  I believe that government spends a massive amount of money on itself.  I think Obama uses tax money to buy votes and keep his faction in power.  Plus, the Oral Roberts City of Faith doesn't operate drones or have an army going all over the place pissing off Arabs. 

Give me all the reasons you didn't donate to Oral Roberts, and you'll have the reasons that I oppose ObamaCare. 

Give me all the reasons that you wouldn't let Bernie Madoff do your investing in stocks, bonds, and commodities, and I'll give you the reasons that I get downright giggly when some Congressman starts blathering about "investing" in education, infrastructure, or the future. 

Carefully list all the reasons that you don't want Mexico or Brazil raising huge armies and navies and going around the world, making the planet safe for democracy.  You'll have the reasons that many libertarians don't want America doing that either. 

And on and on.....

Government isn't society.  Society can accomplish wonderful, wonderful things without government intervening.    Here's some Frederic Bastiat:

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.

           We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

With that said, here's some MC 900 Ft Jesus.  Enjoy. 



 

Joy. Bliss.

I try not to update this website during work hours, but....

Al Gore, The Goracle Of Music City, Tennessee, one of the people who made me so absolutely nuts that I had to start blogging, the best-known Greenie on the planet, and one of the recipients of the Kleiner/Perkins Green Scams....

Al Gore, who won a freakin' Nobel Peace Prize for sounding the alarm about your SUV changing the weather....

Al Gore, who wants to require you to purchase Green Energy Credits (from his companies) to atone for your environmental sins....

Al Gore has sold his "Current TV" network to Al-Jazeera, the broadcasting wing of the nasty, polluting, Arab Oil States. 

He lobbied hard for the sale, and used all the political muscle at his disposal to make it happen. 

I'm laughing so hard that I'm almost crying.  This is a great day.  LOL. 

One other thing....It looks like he timed the bill to avoid the increased taxes associated with the Fiscal Cliff deal.  It saved him five million. 

The Pain, The Pain

Televangelist Oral Roberts once told his followers that unless they gave him 4.5 million dollars, the Lord was going to "call him home". He got away with it.


Barack Obama once told his followers that unless they gave him 700 Billion dollars in "stimulus", they were going to suffer an economic disaster. I bet he gets away with it. (The massive spending on the right side of this chart is supposedly a cure for the bad things on the left. LOL.)

BTW, Obama's top economic experts, Peter Orszag, Jared Bernstein, Christina Romer, Larry Summers, and Austan Goolsbee have ALL resigned. They came in, ripped off the Treasury, and got the hell out. There are some stains that they don't want on their resumes.

And yet there are still true believers who can't see it. No matter how likeable Oral Roberts and Barack Obama are, there really is such a thing as a con game. Admitting that you've been taken really does hurt.

The Dallas Museum Of Art - "Variations On Theme: Contemporary Art 1950's - Present"

A couple of days ago, I went to the Dallas Museum Of Art.  They have some great stuff in there. 
I also got a chance to check out the Nasher Sculpture Center for the first time.  It was incredible.  (I used to run the Jukt Micronics metal shop.  Many of the artists that Mr. Nasher purchased had some serious metalworking chops.  A few of them did welds that looked like birdshit on a wire, but most of us can overlook that.)   

And then there was the Dallas Museum Of Art's exhibit called "Variations on Theme: Contemporary Art 1950s–Present"  Much of the art in that particular display was pretentious junk.  Give a relatively talented 8th-grader plenty of time and materials, turn her loose, and tell her to start painting/building/stuffing and protesting.  Mix her output with that of the Modern Masters on display at the DMOA, and I would defy any layman to distinguish the 8th-graders stuff from that of, say, Mark Rothko. 

But here's why you should go see that exhibit.  The descriptions on the wall beside each painting are freakin' hilarious. 
(To learn more about the descriptions and manifestos and stances and alliances that are now so critical to your enjoyment of contemporary art, check out Tom Wolfe's brilliant The Painted Word.  It is not a satire.  You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll go to the DMOA to see what he was talking about.) 

This piece was my favorite.  It's by Gerhard Richter, who Wikipedia claims is now the top-selling living artist. 
Here's the description:

The text, just in case you can't read the pic, is as follows:
 
Gerhard Richter
German, born 1932
Mirror, 2008
 
Mirror glass
 
Lay family acquisition fund, 2010
 
This piece, which is a fully functional mirror, questions the nature of representation, a central concern of Gerhard Richter in his long career as an artist. 
 
Shit, people, it's a fully functional mirror !!  The sumbitch works !!!!  And not only does it work, it questions the nature of that which it represents.  YOU can look at it this mirror at the DMOA for only $14.00  
 
Playing with the notion of what is an accurate depiction of reality, it simply and literally reflects what is in front of it, whether museum visitors or other works of art. 
 
Much like the ones for sale at Home Depot. 
 
The ubiquitous mirror is at once a common, everyday material and a mysterious object, invested with mythic capabilities and allusions, capturing a moment in both time and space. 
 
It is almost impossible to pass a mirror without looking; it demands our attention, and thus, our time. 
 
Here's the real thing, which rivals the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the Mona Lisa, and maybe even those paintings of dogs playing poker.  It looks a lot better when other people are taking the picture. 
 

 
By the way, I impovised some bullshit of my own when I transcribed the text that describes this mirror.  I bet you didn't catch it, did you?  None of it matters.  It's just buzzwords piled on catch-phrases dumped in with jargon.  And lots of "juxtaposition".  Everywhere I looked, there was "juxtaposition". 

One word of warning.  I don't know much about Richter's work, but I think that this might not be the original Richter mirror.  After a close examination, I think this might be a clever fogery done by another artist.  Something about the style seems off, and the technique is less polished.  Is there anyone in the DFW area who could examine this piece and make a determination? 

This next bit o' commentary was in a different exhibition.  They're impressed that this Japanese dude constructed two different J.C. Penney clothing pedestals that are filled with identical amounts of water.  I think. 

Here are the pieces in question.  I swear to God I think that we used to stack books on these at Barnes And Noble, but they didn't have identical amounts of water in them back then.  (The piece on the wall was actually kinda cool, but didn't have water in it.) 

Anyway, I had a fun day off in the Dallas Museum District.  Seriously, check out the other stuff at the DMOA, and be sure to take in the Nasher Sculpture Center. 

More updates in Settled Science

Please enjoy this terrifying propaganda piece while contemplating the following info from Don Surber:

Today in settled science: A bird expert sees blobs in a photo, and promptly declares polar bears headed to extinction.

Remember the U.S. government report report five years ago that polar bears were drowning? Kassie Siegel, director of the U.S.-based Center for Biological Diversity, cited the report in her call to place the polar bear on the endangered species list. Never mind that we now have 5 times as many polar bears today than we did 50 years ago. We must take action immediately. Based on one report. Because that’s how science works. One report is all it takes to leap to a conclusion that may cost society billions.

In December 2006, Kassie Siegel told the Ottawa Citizen: “This is a watershed decision in the way this country deals with climate change. The science of global warming and the impact to polar bears are so clear that not even the Bush administration can deny that polar bears are threatened with extinction because of global warming.”

Well, it turns out that report was likely crap. The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of the Interior is investigating the veracity of the report.

From the Independent: “The 2006 report from American wildlife researchers Jeffrey Gleason and Charles Monnett told of dead bears floating in the Arctic Ocean in 2004, apparently drowned, and focused attention on the vulnerability of the animals to the melting of the Arctic ice, which they need for hunting. Widespread references were made to the dead bears and they figured in the film An Inconvenient Truth, made by Al Gore to highlight the risks of global warming.”

Drowning polar bears made no sense since polar bears are sturdy swimmers. But then considering Jeffrey Gleason is an avian biologist, perhaps the researchers did not know that. In July, the government suspended Charles Monnett from his job as an Arctic wildlife biologist at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, a Department of the Interior agency. He has since returned to work.

But Jeffrey Gleason now faces a lie detector test to determine his integrity, the London newspaper reported. Jeffrey Gleason’s lawyer, Jeff Ruch, told the Independent: “There appears to be kind of a desperate, almost fierce nature to pursue this until they find something.”

On July 29, 2011, the Guardian published the transcript of an interview by Special Agents Eric May and John Meskel of the inspector general’s office:

ERIC MAY: When you did take the photos, were you able to tell what they were?

JEFFREY GLEASON: Most of the time, yeah. We saw some dead polar bears at one time, and it was pretty obvious with the naked eye what it was. But the pictures, they just kind of turned out to be a white blob in the photos. And I can’t remember, we probably took three or four pictures, and it’s sort of white blob floating in the ocean, so it’s pretty hard to tell.

ERIC MAY: Dead polar bears, how far off the land were you?

JEFFREY GLEASON: I can’t remember. We published a paper on that as well, 20 to 50 kilometers I suppose.

And there was this:

JEFFREY GLEASON: And it was not just the dead polar bears that was of interest to us, but it was the number of swimming polar bears and the distance we observed some of those polar bears offshore. And we went back, you know, you noted at the time and I was pretty curious. So we went back into the database, which is, you know, 30 years of records, and it was the most swimming polar bears that had been observed and the distances. And there were no records of any dead polar bears floating out there.

You start thinking about probabilities, detection probabilities, which is basically what is the potential that I’ll actually observe an individual on these surveys, on these transects. It’s not like you’re covering the entire ocean. It’s a needle in a haystack. And when you start thinking about seeing a swimming polar bear or a dead polar bear out in the middle of an ocean from an aircraft moving that fast, covering roughly an observation transect of maybe a mile, half a mile out of each window under ideal conditions, it’s staggering what the potential is. I mean, it’s really low.

So when we started putting it together, that particular paper, there was a windstorm that came up. I’m trying to remember how that fell out that year. There was a windstorm. We had done some survey work about three days prior, and there was about three days of very strong winds. And we had seen these animals swimming offshore that last survey. And then, following that windstorm, it was pretty calm, and that’s when we saw the dead ones.

ERIC MAY: So is that what attributed to them dying?

JEFFREY GLEASON: We attributed it to that. Of course, we have no way to determine actual cause of death. We can’t pick them up. There’s no way. But given the distances and the number of polar bears we saw preceding the storm, and then the dead polar bears after the storm, it seemed probably the most parsimonious explanation for what happened.

JOHN MESKEL: The most what?

JEFFREY GLEASON: The simplest sort of rationale and reason.

So we have an expert on birds guessing that white blobs on a photo are drowned polar bears.

That’s it.

That’s the science.

He called it a parsimonious explanation. I call it Rorschach.

Well said, sir !!!

Do you feel lucky?

About a week ago, I was minding my own business in my favorite bar. A guy came in who looked to be a few years older than me, but with a lot more mileage. He had a Neon Tan, complete with the Bourbon spiderweb/vein marks on his nose. We made some small talk, and then he started harassing one of the ladies at the bar. He eventually asked her if she was a lesbian, which didn’t go over well. She got very angry and gave him a five minute harangue that I’d pay good money to have on tape. It was a brilliant beat-down.

The guy retreated and started talking to me again, and asked if I wanted to shoot some pool. I said “Sure”, mostly because that lady was going to go Postal on him if I didn't get him away from the bar.

I walked over to the pool table and the guy said “How about we play for a pitcher of beer. Loser buys.”

I’m not a great pool player. I can hold my own, but not against a legit shark. However, I knew that I wanted to beat this clown, and I wanted it bad. So I agreed to the bet.

The guy (who I’ll call Morton from now on) watched me rack the balls, and he was getting ready to break. Morton looked over at me and said “You know I’m broke, right? I don’t have any more money on me. Just thought you should know.”

A seasoned pool player or gambler would’ve sat down at that moment, or asked someone else to play. But I wanted to beat Morton so, so, so badly. In public. In front of the lady that he had called a lesbian. I wanted his broke, deceptive, beer-hustling ass to retreat from my tavern owing me a pitcher of Shiner.

I told Morton that if I won we could work something out on his next trip to the bar.

Then we started playing. I spent more time lining up some of those shots than I did filling out my home mortgage paperwork. I made some two-cushion bank shots that I’ve never even attempted before. And I also got lucky. Morton flubbed a few easy shots. Throughout the entire game, I heard Morton’s voice in my head saying “You know I’m broke, right? I don’t have any more money on me. Just thought you should know.”

It came down to the 8-ball. I made it with nothing else left on the table. (Graduates of North Sunflower Academy or Ole Miss won’t be surprised that I heard the marching band fight-song version of “Dixie” playing in my head when I sank the 8-ball. I’ve never made a touchdown in my life, but a marching band plays “Dixie” in my head whenever I win anything, including Tic-Tac-Toe, coin flips, and pool games.) I shook hands with Morton and we both went back to the bar, where I explained to the bartender that Morton didn’t have any money for the pitcher she was about to pour at somebody’s expense.

The bartender was almost as pissed as the lady who wasn't a lesbian. 

The more I talked with Morton about meeting him at the bar some other time for my pitcher of Shiner, the more uncomfortable he became. He left before the lady who wasn't a lesbian got involved in the discussion.

“You know I’m broke, right? I don’t have any more money on me. Just thought you should know.”

I don’t care what Morton does or did with his paycheck. I'd feel sorry for the guy if he hadn’t tried to hustle me. He’s probably an alcoholic. I’ve never come close to having a drinking problem, and I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a thirst strong enough to try a stunt like Morton tried that afternoon. I didn’t think much more about the incident.

Three nights later, Thursday night, Barack Obama gave his Jobs Speech. I didn’t write much about it, mostly because I suspected it would be a re-hash of Porkulus One. And it was.

But certain phrases started reminding me of something, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until today….. And then it hit me.

Barack Obama and the George Bushes and Reagan have spent us into a hole that we’ll probably never get out of. (Clinton was fairly restrained by comparison.)

Obama has already added 4 trillion dollars to the national debt. Obama threw $800 billion in Porkulus at the unions and government employees. He destroyed about 600,000 automobiles to “stimulate” Detroit. Businesses and Doctors are acting like ObamaCare will make Death look like a reasonable alternative. Obama fired up another war in Libya. And now our economy is behaving like we owe $15 trillion dollars to somebody, which we do. Very few people want to take the risk of bringing on more employees. The piper must be paid.

They have blown it all.  Every cent of it. 

So here are some excerpts from the Obama Jobs Speech, the way that I now hear them.

*********

Pass this jobs bill, and we can put people to work rebuilding America. Everyone here knows we have badly decaying roads and bridges all over the country. Our highways are clogged with traffic. Our skies are the most congested in the world. It’s an outrage. “And you know I’m broke, right? I don’t have any more money on me. Just thought you should know.”

*********

There are private construction companies all across America just waiting to get to work. There’s a bridge that needs repair between Ohio and Kentucky that’s on one of the busiest trucking routes in North America. A public transit project in Houston that will help clear up one of the worst areas of traffic in the country. And there are schools throughout this country that desperately need renovating. How can we expect our kids to do their best in places that are literally falling apart? This is America, and by the way “you know I’m broke, right? I don’t have any more money on me. Just thought you should know.”

*********

Ask yourselves -- where would we be right now if the people who sat here before us decided not to build our highways, not to build our bridges, our dams, our airports? What would this country be like if we had chosen not to spend money on public high schools, or research universities, or community colleges? Millions of returning heroes, including my grandfather, had the opportunity to go to school because of the G.I. Bill. Where would we be if they hadn’t had that chance? “And you know I’m broke, right? I don’t have any more money on me. Just thought you should know.”

Barack Obama is like an old drunk trying to hustle one more round of drinks for his union and government cronies. He's got a strong need.  He's getting the shakes.  But he's blown it all. 

You know he’s broke, right. He doesn’t have any more money on him.


Just thought you should know.

So do you feel lucky?

The Fix Is In

Ron Paul is now hitting the airwaves with this video rant about the debt ceiling.
I'm afraid it is too late. Boehner and Obama have met in private, and that's enough to guarantee that the fix is in.
When time permits, go to Vegas and try to place a bet that the government WILL raise the debt ceiling.
They'll laugh you all the way to Miami. Nobody in his right mind would take that action.

In which Ron Paul gets Ben Bernanke to say that gold ain't money

Here's the most amazing video you'll ever see.

It explains why the stimulus didn't "work", other than in its intended purpose of helping Bernanke's buddies.
It explains why prices are rising.
It explains why our national debt is rising.

It reminds me of Clarence Darrow grilling William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Nice work if you can get it

James Hansen, one of the more famous of NASA's global warming/cooling/changing alarmists, has been milking the AGW cow in double shifts.  In addition to his government salary of $180,000.00, he's pulled in the following:

-- A shared $1 million prize from the Dan David Foundation for his "profound contribution to humanity." Hansen's cut ranged from $333,000 to $500,000, Horner said, adding that the precise amount is not known because Hansen's publicly available financial disclosure form only shows the prize was "an amount in excess of $5,000."

-- The 2010 Blue Planet prize worth $550,000 from the Asahi Glass Foundation, which recognizes efforts to solve environmental issues.

-- The Sophie Prize for his "political activism," worth $100,000. The Sophie Prize is meant to "inspire people working towards a sustainable future."

-- Speaking fees totaling $48,164 from a range of mostly environmental organizations.

-- A $15,000 participation fee, waived by the W.J. Clinton Foundation for its 2009 Waterkeeper Conference.

-- $720,000 in legal advice and media consulting services provided by The George Soros Open Society Institute. Hansen said he did not take "direct" support from Soros but accepted "pro bono legal advice."

As long as the weather continues to get either warmer, cooler, or changier, Hansen will be able to claim that 1) he predicted it, and that 2) it is your fault, and that 3) taxpayers should continue to give him more money. 
Nice work if you can get it. 

The pic of Hansen traveling to a protest to speak out against traveling came from here. 

Al Gore takes off the mask. Or puts it back on again. It's hard to keep track.

Go here to read about the latest pronouncements of Saint Albert, The Goracle Of Music City, Tennessee. 
He didn't blow a lot of money to save the planet or the polar bears. 
He did it to get elected.  Saint Albert is now admitting that his support for ethanol was a mistake.   

Here's Ed Morrisey, in the article linked above:

Why, then, did Gore spend most of the last two decades pushing for ethanol subsidies? It wasn’t because he was trying to help humanity:


Well, here's The Goracle:
“One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”

Well, everyone who isn't trying to get into his Prius with a recycling bin shoved up his ass already knew that.  Can we have our incandescent bulbs back now? 

I'm just glad that he's finally admitting it. 
How long until he admits that the rest of his ClimatePanic is a scam to buy votes and to help subsidize Green stuff ? 

Jon Meacham thinks Obama is kinda like Job. Jon Meacham is wrong.

Jon Meacham is laboring under the false impression that Barack Obama has something in common with Job, the Old Testament character who had it all and then lost it.

Unfortunately for the powerful, the plight of the biblical Job is a story with perennial resonance. A man seemingly rich in the gifts life has to offer, happy and blessed, finds himself — unjustly, from his perspective — bereft. Protected and apparently invincible one day, he is buffeted as God turns his back on his former beloved, producing rage, confusion and self-pity. In the history of the American presidency, reversal happens time and time again: Lyndon Johnson declining to run four years after his landslide victory in 1964, George H. W. Bush losing re-election after winning the Persian Gulf war of 1991, Bill Clinton in the 1994 midterms, and now Barack Obama.

....Outside politics, President Obama thinks of himself less as a professor or community organizer and more as a writer — a man who observes reality, interprets it internally, and then recasts it on the page in his own voice and through his own eyes. And he is a reader of serious books.

Given that, he might find Alter’s new book (on the Old Testament character Job) congenial. John Boehner is not exactly a case of boils, but the president may feel differently at the moment, and thus the story of Job could be of some use to him.

Like Obama, Job was once the highly favored one:

Would that I were as in moons of yore, as the days when God watched over me,
when he shined his lamp over my head. . . .

But the Lord withdraws his protection, inflicting pain and death and misery on Job, who cries:

Terror rolls over me, pursues my path like the wind. . . .
At night my limbs are pierced, and my sinews know no rest.
With great power he seizes my garment, grabs hold of me at the collar.
He hurls me into the muck, and I become like dust and ashes.

God is having none of it. He will not be questioned by a mortal, even a mortal whom he once loved and who has honored him. Fairly snarling, the Lord taunts Job from a whirlwind: “Where were you when I founded earth? / Tell, if you know understanding.”

Ah, the tragedy of it all !!!    The ManGod has fallen !!! 
Of all the grasping and desperate and failed attempts to apply some significance to the behavior of this mediocre Chicago con artist, this one from Jon Meacham is probably the worst. 

Barack Obama now has more in common with King Solomon than he does with Job. 
Barack Obama has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. 
In less than two years, Obama has:

1) Given 3/4 trillion dollars of pork to his contributors,
2) Temporarily socialized two major auto companies, both of which employ thousands of his contributors, and relieved them of the responsibility for their actions,
3) Relieved his upper and lower end contributors of having to face the music for their bad housing investments,
4) Socialized American medicine, a move guaranteed to increase the number, loyalty, and power of his party's contributors,
5) Began paying for these thefts with "quantitative easing", an economics term that means "printing a bunch of money",
6) And he did all this while maintaining his posture as an intellectual who reads "serious books", in Meacham's phrase. 

To those of us who see the goal of politics as a series of spectacular transfers of wealth, Barack Obama is not Job.  Not even close.  He's the most succesful president in American history. 

Obama is not having a dark night of the soul. 

Everything after this is not Obama's tragedy.  It is his victory lap.   

Global Climate Disruption ! ! !

I KNEW this day would come.  They could no more leave those words alone than they could avoid touching the wall behind a "Wet Paint" sign. 

I just KNEW they would do this one day, and I'm kicking myself for not predicting it online someplace. 

The phrase they had was plenty vague enough and broad enough to cover anything that could possibly happen.  But Nooooooo......they had to be even more vague, just in case the word "change" was too precise. 

Here goes. 

From CNSNEWS.com:

John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, says that the term "global warming" is "a dangerous misnomer” that should be replaced with “global climate disruption."

You bet your ass the term "global warming" is dangerous.  You see, there's a good chance that it could get cold.  What would happen to all the Cap'N'Tax funding then?  What would happen to all the Green Energy wealth transfer schemes? 

At the Environmental Protection Agency's 40th celebration of the Clean Air Act on Tuesday, Holdren said, "I think one of the failures of the scientific community was in embracing the term 'global warming'. Global warming is in fact a dangerous misnomer." And in a speech last week in Norway, echoing remarks he made at a 2007 speech at Harvard University, Holdren said the term "global climate disruption" should be used instead of "global warming."

Holdren has skipped the equally offensive (and perhaps dangerous) term "climate change" altogether, kind of like some people skipped using the somewhat weird term "Afro-American" when it was politically correct for about two weeks (between "Black" and "African American") in the late 1970's or early 1980's. 

So....From now on, anyone on this site wishing to discuss Global Cooling Global Warming Climate Change making money from the weather will be required to use the phrase Global Climate Disruption. 

All other phrases are too risky.

 

Has anyone else noticed that the sky is no longer falling?

How long has it been since you saw any new propaganda from The Church Of Global Warming? 

If the priests of the COGW truly believed that the earth is melting, we would still be getting daily updates on the upcoming disaster. 
Unfortunately for everyone in The Nunnery Of Saint Albert Of Music City, there is no longer any money to be made on the project. 
As soon as money is once again available to save us - say, if the Dems retain control of Congress - more wild-eyed research will be made public, research that will justify the government purchase of more incredibly expensive Green Things, Wholesome Devices, Impurity Eliminators and Perpetual Motion Machines.
 
After all, there's no point in screaming that the sky is falling if nobody has money to spend on a Skyhook. 

Bail Out Studebaker ! Bail Out T. Boone Pickens !

I saw this bumpersticker in Fort Worth today, and started thinking....

....would bailing out Studebaker be any sillier than bailing out Chrysler?  What could be sillier than the current rounds of bailout mania? 

Well, I found out when I went to Bally's fitness to put in some mandatory treadmill time. 

The Bally's TV's were tuned to CNN, which featured Larry King interviewing T. Boone Pickens, mostly about the BP oil spill, but partly about AMERICA'S DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL and the Pickens plan to replace oil with gentle gusts of wind from unseen fairy flatulence which would be enough to power Pickens Inc. windmills paid for by your taxes. 

T. Boone Pickens wants your money, just like Chrysler wants your money.  They both go through government to force the wealth transfer.  In the case of T. Boone, he just wants his bailout up front.  Just like Chrysler, he can't make it without you.  Nobody in his right mind would voluntarily a dime of their own funds for the windmill scheme unless he knew up front that Boone was going to get some pork.     

One thing about AMERICA'S DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL....think of an individual that you do business with, preferably a little guy.  Think of somebody with an oil change franchise, or a seamstress, or a Mom'n'Pop restaurant.  Do you depend on them, or do they depend on you? 

It's mutual, isn't it?  You're trading stuff with each other.  If you didn't buy the oil changes, the clothing, or the meals from them, they would have to find someone else to sell the stuff to.  Finding new customers is a hassle. 

Political hacks like to talk about AMERICA'S DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL.  Well, that street runs both ways, but you never hear them talk about FOREIGN OIL'S DEPENDENCE ON AMERICAN DOLLARS.  If the dreaded foreigners couldn't sell their oil to us, they would have to sell it to someone else.  Their overhead is high, just like ours is.  They have to keep the money rolling in.. If they want to cut us off, they still have to sell it to somebody who is not yet purchasing very much oil.  Somebody like....well, I can't think of anybody else.  But whoever bought it would wind up selling most of it to us. 

Frederic Bastiat figured it out 150 years ago.  He wrote:

The sort of dependence that results from exchange, i.e., from commercial transactions, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot be dependent upon a foreigner without his being dependent on us. Now, this is what constitutes the very essence of society. To sever natural interrelations is not to make oneself independent, but to isolate oneself completely.

Giving T. Boone Pickens his bailout money ahead of time would be like reviving Studebaker to end our dependence on Toyotas. 

The real British Petroleum scandal

From the Powerline blog:

Corn is great food, but lousy energy. Energy derived from corn--ethanol--cannot compete in the marketplace with more efficient sources of energy, like petroleum, unless its producers get money from the government (i.e. you) to artificially lower the price of their product. This is what is known as "green energy."

It amounts to having a bonfire with your money. Well, no, not exactly a bonfire, since, while there is undeniably a net inefficiency and thus a destruction of wealth, your money doesn't go up in smoke. Rather, your tax dollars are transferred to a combination of Midwestern farmers and politically connected ethanol plant developers. Like other government subsidy programs, it's great if you get to cash the checks, but bad if you are a taxpayer or an energy buyer.

Ok, roll that around in your head for a minute, and then check this out - from Kevin Williamson of The Corner:

BP's oil-spill cleanup bill, so far: $3.2 billion

Money BP is setting aside for the total bill: $20 billion
Annual cost of U.S. ethanol subsidies: $5 billion
Ethanol subsidies going to BP this year: $600 million

Conclusions: Every four years, U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing the energy firms by an amount equal to the maximum that BP expects to spend on the cleanup. BP specifically will collect an equivalent amount every 33 years. This year's BP ethanol subsidy by itself will offset about 20 percent of what BP has spent on the cleanup so far.

And that's just one subsidy program.
Tell me again why this "green economy" stuff is not a scam.

The banks paid back their TARP money, and the nation remains scandalized by that bailout. What are the chances the energy industry is going to pay back a penny of the billions we're pouring on them through green energy subsidies?

Is man-made Global Warming falsifiable ?

You remember how Statists used to run around claiming that such-and-such strategy or policy was "right out of Karl Rove's playbook"? 

Well, here's the Statist playbook on getting Cap And Trade passed ASAP, courtesy of links provided by Ann Althouse. 
Page 12, which describes how to frame the opposition, is so Saul Alinsky that it makes my head hurt. 

Why is it so important for them to get something passed immediately?  Here's Ms. Althouse:

You see why this is absolutely necessary, don't you? What if nothing is done and global warming... doesn't happen? What a disaster! But if disastrously extreme measures are taken and then global warming doesn't happen? What a great relief! It will be impossible to tell whether the solution worked or whether global warming just wasn't going to happen anyway. Win-win!

These guys want to control industry, transportation, and most of all, they want to control you.  I've never understood that mindset, but I admit that there's lots of money in it. 
But the climate is not cooperating with the computer models.  The temps have been flat for a while, if not showing a cooling trend in North America.  As best I can tell, it all depends on who is reading the thermometers, massaging the data, and then claiming that the dog ate their homework. 

Even worse, is there anything that would be accepted as proof that Global Warming isn't happening? 

Here's my current favorite debating point when discussing this with alarmists: 

I don't believe that God intervenes in what's happening on this planet.  Or anywhere else.  But hey, I'm open to discussion.  You can change my mind.  If you tell me God has revealed to you that on July 13th of 2021, a baby will be born with two heads, and by the age of two, one head will start speaking Aramaic and the other will speak Choctaw, I'm going to have to re-evaluate my theology if that unlikely event comes to pass.

If you have no scientific background, and you tell me that God has revealed to you, through prayer, how to cure pancreatic cancer, and lo and behold you have a cure for pancreatic cancer, then I have to do some thinking.  (And praying.)

If God were to suddenly interfere with our TV and radio signals for a year and beam in programming from heaven that explains the Book Of Revelation, I would affirm that I've been wrong. 

For the debate on this issue to matter one way or the other, there has to be a possibility of proving one side or the other as false.  But there are millions of good people out there who will always believe that God intervenes.  They can't come up with a scenario that would disprove their opinion that God intervenes in their lives all day every day. 

So.....has the Alarmist side of the Global Warming debate ever admitted that there could be climate trends that would disprove their belief in man-made Global Warming?  I haven't found it yet.  Ice, snow, cold, and hot are all proof that we're warming the planet.  (Plus, do you remember about three years ago, when it became politically incorrect to say "Global Warming" instead of the preferable "Climate Change"?  Ever wonder what that was about?)

The rest of us see the proof every day, and the more snowstorms we see, the more important it is for Obama/Pelosi/Reid to strike while the iron....unh....isn't hot. 

Healthcare Hypotheticals

I read about the merits and demerits of the upcoming healthcare bill on a lot of other websites. The Comment Field debates usually wind up with the Statists accusing their opponents of selfishness and mean-spiritedness.

Well, let's assume that convicted swindler Bernie Madoff has been released from prison. Bernie gets together with Louisiana televangelist Jimmy Swaggart and former Chicago governor Rod Blagojevich.

These guys come up with a healthcare plan that will ensure that all Americans have healthcare coverage. It's 2,000 pages long, and no one involved in the process of compiling the plan will admit to reading the whole thing. It's identical to the plan under review in Congress, but with Bernie, Jimmy, and Rod administering the system.

The U.S. government is seriously considering implementing the Madoff/Swaggart/Blagojevich healthcare plan, and allowing those three gentlement and their followers to run the program.

If you oppose this plan, does this mean you want to see uninsured babies die?

Does your opposition to this con game mean that you are mean-spirited or selfish?

Is their anything, anything at all, in the past history of Madoff/Swaggart/Blagojevich that leads anyone to believe they could honestly and effectively administer something as massive as the American medical system

And finally, the U.S. government has spent $12,000,000,000,000.00 more than its income. (That's 12 trillion, if you lose count of the zeroes.) At worst, Madoff/Swaggart/Blagojevich have cost their unfortunate followers 20 billion. At best, they have displayed a certain (ahem) entrepreneurial zeal.

Are you a selfish bastard if you oppose the genuine healthcare reform program or the M/S/B reform program? And if you had to choose one over the other, which one would it be?

The cool pics came from Photobucket.