Global Warming Hits Fort Worth, Texas.

We've been snowed in since Thursday night, and there's a good chance that we want get out until Monday.  This is the view from my front door. 

We have 36 months before we reach the earth's "Tipping Point" when it will be too late to stop irreversible global warming. 

According to Secretary Of State John Kerry, we have less then 30 days before the Arctic is ice-free. 

Seriously.  Who are you going to believe?  Al Gore and John Kerry?  Or your lying eyes?

 

A Climate Change Parable

I was reading some silliness about Global Cooling or Global Warming or  Climate Change on The Guardian's website, and came upon this little parable by someone named CloutPerson.  It beautifully captures why there are so many skeptics and denialists remaining in the reality-based community.

(Another reason for our skepticism is that we all own thermometers.  Read the article in the link.  The author is distressed and bothered because the thermometers aren't agreeing with the theories.) 

Enjoy.  I've changed a few of CloutPerson's obscure British references to equally obscure Texas references, and I've thrown in some helpful pics at the end. 

Here's Mr. CloutPerson's parable.   

I was engaged in my favourite hobby of jumping up and down the other day, when a fellow up-and-down jumper sidled up alongside me and said "Do you realise that jumping up and down will cause the ground to collapse? If we don't stop jumping up and down we'll all fall into an enormous chasm and be killed."

"Really?" I answered. "In that case why are you still jumping up and down?"

"Didn't you hear what I said?" he hissed. "It's known as ground-collapse theory - GCT for short!"

"I heard you very well," I answered. "But you haven't answered my question. I'm still curious as to why you keep jumping up and down if it is going to cause the ground to collapse."

"You fool!" he spluttered. "Don't you realise that 95% of scientists are convinced that GCT is real!"

He pointed. "Look!" I followed his finger, and saw a large group of people. By their appearance you could tell that they were all eminent scientists.  They were wearing white lab coats and were jumping up and down with thick academic studies that proved that jumping up and down was going to cause the ground to collapse.  And yet all of them were jumping up and down with varying degrees of vigor.

"You still haven't answered my question," I said. "Surely if all these eminent scientists are convinced that GCT is real, they would stop jumping up and down."

"Idiot!" he spat out the word. "Stupid, blinkered, denialist!"

"Actually, you still haven't answered my question," I responded mildly. "If I was as convinced of the reality of GCT as you seem to be, and I wanted everybody to stop jumping up and down, then I'd probably stop jumping up and down myself first. Otherwise my argument might seem rather less than compelling -"

"SHUT UP!" he interrupted me with an apoplectic scream, his face contorted with rage and hatred. "It should be a CRIMINAL OFFENCE to deny the reality of Ground Collapse Theory! You're worse than a MURDERER! You should be in JAIL along with all the other RACIST SWIVEL-EYED DAILY HEIL READING NAZI UKIP FACISTS!"

(UKIP is the United Kingdom Independence Party - Libertarian, non-racist, limited government - all the usual insults.  I think the Daily Heil is a reference to London's Daily Mail.  Somebody on that side of the pond, please help us out in the comment field....) 

And with these final words he took his leave, frothing and purple.

"But why are you still jumping up and down?" I called after his disappearing form....

Good stuff, right? 
Earlier this weekend, our Secretary Of State, John Kerry, put on one of his longest of long faces and declared that Climate Change "science" is clear.

"It is irrefutable and it is alarming," Kerry told a climate conference in Majuro in the Marshall Islands in a video address from Washington.
"If we continue down our current path, the impacts of climate change will only get worse."

Here are pics of John Kerry's houses, getaways, beach cottages, mansions, townhouses, and cabins.  If John Kerry wants anyone to believe his bullshit, he needs to stop jumping up and down.
 
Most of the pics came from here. 

This is the Kerry Karbon Footprint in Beacon Hill. 

 

Here's Kerry's small, sensible, ecologically sensible Georgetown residence

 

Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania.  A carbon footprint big enough to negate all the recycling you'll do for the rest of your life. 

 

The little beach cottage in Nantucket. 

 

The Ketchum, Idaho ski getaway

If you believe Kerry's Chicken Little-ism, or Al Gore's, by all means send them money.  Pay for factories to reconfigure to reduce emissions.  Give Gore and Kleiner-Perkins money to plant trees to offset your carbon footprint. I respect your right to be gullible. 

 

But please don't tell anyone that these guys believe a word they're saying.  In a world of people who are now afraid that the ground is going to collapse, they're the ones jumping up and down the hardest.  

Traitorous Ex-Smoker Drug Warrior Bastards

My friend Tristan Tucker and I have had several conversations about the staggering numbers of politicians who smoke marijuana, then claim to quit, and then start locking up their fellow weed consumers by the tens of thousands.  

Tristan and I were both invited to speak at the recent DFW/NORML Regional Conference.  I bet Tristan that I could use the phrase "Traitorous Ex-Smoker Drug Warrior Bastards" in my speech more than he could in his speech.   

Tristan took me up on the wager. 

I lost.  I lost badly. 

Here's Tristan's speech, along with a few pics of the Traitorous Ex-Smoker Drug Warrior Bastards. 

Wow, what an honor it is to be speaking in front of people that I have looked up to for years. Keith (Stroup).. You founded NORML. Without you, none of us would be here right now.

 Judge Jim Gray… You and Gary Johnson had my vote. My generation appreciates men with principles and decency, you are one of my intellectual heroes.

Joy Strickland… when I first met you, your story motivated me to not give this fight up. The work you do with Mothers Against Teen Violence is incredible and has not fallen on deaf ears or blind eyes. Together, we are making the world a much safer, better place…and, the only government intervention we need is literally one fell swoop of a pen.

Thank you all, everyone, for being here, for being a part of a revolution and for taking the lead role in your freedom. I am Tristan Tucker, the executive director of the University of North Texas Chapter of NORML. I served in the US Navy for six years and I can honestly say that since I got out of the navy I have done more for my country, in terms of actually fighting for freedom, than I ever did while I was on active duty. I believe that my oath of enlistment and re-enlistment last for life. The words that I faithfully said, “I will support and defend the constitution of the United States against ALL enemies foreign and domestic..” are the words that ring out the loudest. I can see objectively who the enemy is now and the enemy isn’t in some far away land, they are here… in our own backyard. Our enemy is any law that allows for someone to be forcibly put in a cage for possessing a harmless plant and especially the people that support and defend such laws. I will not digress, I will not rest, I will not be silenced until we win this drug war. And we will win.

Ghandi is quoted as saying “If all the mice in the world held a conference together and resolved that they would no more fear the cat but instead, all run into her mouth, all the mice would live.” Well, mice, this is our conference and I want to be the first to scoff at the cat and tell her that “I am free. I was born to know no fear. I want you all to be fearless against the traitorous ex-smoker drug warrior bastards, the faceless persecutor that is always looking around our corners. I want you all to take these words from this conference and be empowered and develop a newfound passion for your activism because what we are doing doesn’t only effect DFW, or Texas – we are impacting the entire world. Every day when you talk about NORML, the drug war or even just about cannabis, I want you to remember just who exactly you are helping. We are helping our youth be relatively drug free. We are helping our troops, who came home like I did with newfound mental disorders or with chronic pain or missing limbs. We are fighting for the patients, like Cash Hyde, who, without us – many wouldn’t have a voice. We are fighting for liberty, for freedom and these United States of America.

As the director of UNTNORML I have come to realize and appreciate the necessity to have college-based organizations like Students For Sensible Drug Policy, Students for Liberty and NORML. Through my tenure at UNT I have definitely seen massive amounts of ignorance related to the topics of drug prohibition and the effects of cannabis. It is my profound belief that due to programs like DARE, the traitorous ex-smoker drug warrior bastards are still ruining our youth’s ability to use critical thinking skills to question this treacherous type of authority.

I have several goals for UNTNORML and want to brag a little about the efficacy we have had on campus. First, we were the first university in Texas to change dorm policies in regard to possession and paraphernalia. Before NORML’s campus-wide campaign, the school would evict students from the dorm, report to the police and place the student on probation while requiring them to pay a $1000 fine and attend a drug awareness class. Now, the school just forces the student to change dorms.

My main goal with UNTNORML is to get a college chapter at every university in the state of Texas. I believe that by placing intelligent, tactful leaders at universities across the state, we will combat the ill-effects of prohibition based propaganda like DARE. Additionally, I plan to make cannabis a topic that university administration will willingly talk about. I have gotten professors to discuss the topic but currently, the administration refuses to actually debate the topic or the university’s policies publicly. All of my requests have so far fallen on deaf ears. With that in mind, we have received overwhelming support from a plethora of students and student organizations. We are always well received on the campus’ “Free Speech Corner”… man I despise that name.

When I was on active duty, I was one of the ex-smoker drug warrior bastards. I was a neo-conservative military member that wouldn’t even associate with people that used or talked about cannabis. I participated in anti-drug operations off the eastern seaboard of South and Central America, as a 25mm gunner on the aft mount of an amphibious assault ship. For me, it took a mental health diagnosis and subsequent research into treatments and therapies to really discover the truth about marijuana. I am proud to publicly tell you all that the day I received my separation paperwork, I drove off base joint in mouth. I have sed cannabis medicinally now for three years and have weaned myself off of fourteen different medicines thanks to this wonderful plant. My quality of life is the best its been in years and, in my opinion, that is all that matters.

My first position I held with DFWNORML was the veteran outreach coordinator. Unfortunately, it had to fall to the wayside when I took over at UNTNORML, but I still reach out to every veteran I meet and know to spread the good word of unity, family, cannabis and love. With those tenets of inclusivity I believe we have really touched many veterans One of the most difficult parts of my transition out of the military was not having the close bond of brotherhood and I really try to bring that to both UNT and DFWNORML. I believe that veterans find that trait important and inviting and thus, flock to our organization.

Our veterans are battle trained leaders and continuing to reach out to them is imperative. Our veterans are already used to the type of pressure it takes to effectively communicate with our representatives. Our veteran members also provide a very unique viewpoint, particularly when discussing medicinal marijuana. Medical grade marijuana has proven to have incredible results when treating post traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, chronic pain and a whole host of other ailments our warriors are coming home with. We owe it to our veterans to continue to fight for them, since I know for a fact they would keep fighting for us.

As a team all of the Texas NORML chapters are planning comprehensive lobbying strategies for our next legislative session. Cheyanne Weldon has began coordinating our efforts via facebook already, less than a month after the end of our legislative session. Let me assure you that our representatives know who we are and what we seek to do in this state. Every time I have talked to my representatives or their staff about an action alert item, they explain ludicrous amounts of feedback and positive response from our supporters. We need to work on getting that type of commitment from members on a monthly or weekly basis.

Forming programs such as signed from letters, targeted mailing lists, positive recruitment strategies and continued public presence will win this drug war.

There is an old war movie, The Americanization of Emily from 1964, James Garner, who played commander Charles Madison said the following:

“War isn't hell at all. It's man at his best, the highest morality he's capable of. It's not war that's insane, you see. It's the morality of it. It's not greed or ambition that makes war: it's goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons - for liberation or manifest destiny. Always against tyranny and always in the interest of humanity. So far this war, we've managed to butcher some ten million humans in the interest of humanity. Next war it seems we'll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity. It's not war that's unnatural to us, it's virtue. As long as valor remains a virtue, we shall have soldiers. So, I preach cowardice. Through cowardice, we shall all be saved.”

When we think about the drug war, we see ourselves, rightfully, as the victim, but the important thing to note is that we have turned it around on our aggressors. When the drug war was officially initiated by President Dick Nixon and his regime of traitorous ex-smoke drug warrior bastards, we were made to look like the modern Taliban. We were the scourge of the country, us dopers. Through the decades, as science and morality has progressed, we have come to take the upper hand in this drug war. We are showing Americans that compassionate care via a plant is possible from stories like Cash Hyde’s and by way of documentaries like American Drug War, Square Grouper and The Union: The Business Behind Getting High. Americans are starting to realize that too much government intervention into our lives is a bad thing and that we would like to be able to close our metaphorical blinds for a change.

What we do damages nobody and heals everybody. This plant has brought communities together, brought addicts back from the brink of death, stopped pain, treated cancer, helped calm irrational minds and has the capacity to heal our nation – the nation that I was promised as a child. Cannabis can heal our economic hole, can help mend our moral degradation, will help improve our air quality and has potential to slow global warming.

In closing, I want to thank you all tremendously for the work you do for NORML, for coming to this conference and supporting our freedoms and for everything that you do out of the kindness of your hearts and with the dollars in your wallets.

Won’t you help us end our nation’s drug problem? Let’s legalize cannabis.

For a near-definitive list of politicians who have smoked weed, go here.  Not all of them (see: Gary Johnson) are traitorous bastards. 

"Coming Home" - by Sabrina Brady

This morning's Google logo features a heartwarming drawing by Sabrina Brady called "Coming Home". 
I can't imagine what this feels like for a kid - being reunited with a parent who has been in harm's way for months and months. 

But it's getting to the point where you can't go to a football or baseball game without seeing an orchestrated surprise reunion between a soldier/sailor/airman and his family.  These things are great.  But they distract us from the bigger issue. 

We have enough Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine and Coast Guard personnel on active duty to put a soldier, sailor, pilot, marine or coast-guarder at every 20 feet of the U.S.'s borders.  I figured it out the other day.  Every 20 feet. 

On the other hand, we have Secretary's Of State like John Kerry, She Whose Name Is Not Spoke, Condi Rice and Colin Powell wandering the earth, sticking our noses into other people's bidness, drumming up more and more business for Lockheed and General Dynamics.   

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, fewer soldiers would experience tearful reunions if we kept John Kerry at his house for a couple of years? 

Maureen Dowd on Rick Perry's and Barack Obama's college transcripts

Here's an excerpt from Maureen Dowd's latest editorial in the New York Holy Times:

Traveling to Lynchburg, Va., to speak to students at Liberty University...., (Rick) Perry made light of his bad grades at Texas A&M.


Studying to be a veterinarian, he stumbled on chemistry and made a D one semester and an F in another. “Four semesters of organic chemistry made a pilot out of me,” said Perry, who went on to join the Air Force.

“His other D’s,” Richard Oppel wrote in The Times, “included courses in the principles of economics, Shakespeare, ‘Feeds & Feeding,’ veterinary anatomy and what appears to be a course called ‘Meats.’ ”

He even got a C in gym.

Perry conceded that he “struggled” with college, and told the 13,000 young people in Lynchburg that in high school, he had graduated “in the top 10 of my graduating class — of 13.”

It’s enough to make you long for W.’s Gentleman’s C’s. At least he was a mediocre student at Yale.

Yeah, bad grades are a problem.  Going to Jerry Falwell University to address the Baptists in Lynchburg is a bigger problem, but not for most Republicans. 
So how do Perry's college grades stack up against those of our current Commander-In-Chief?  Let's got to the Occidental College website.....

The 1974 federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (34 CFR Part 99) protects the privacy of student education records. We, therefore, cannot disclose students’ classes, grade point averages, majors or other such information. President Obama's transcripts and other student records have not been released by Occidental.

Nor will they ever be.  They're too damn embarrassing.  Based on my own research, I've been able to determine that teleprompters were not allowed in the classroom in the early 1980's.  Therefore, Obama's college grades sucked. 

I suspect that Barack Obama failed Economics, he failed American Government, he got a "D" in Political Science, a "D" in Speech, and a "Fails" in a couple of simple "Pass/Fail" basic math courses.  Those are just suspicions on my part, though, based on the current evidence. 

Enough about Rick Perry vs. Obama.  We don't have Obama's transcripts to hold up to one of Dowd's pitiless investigations. 

Here's another section from Dowd's editorial, which is primarily about how Republicans disregard college transcripts in choosing who to put at the top of the ticket:

The Republicans are now the “How great is it to be stupid?” party. In perpetrating the idea that there’s no intellectual requirement for the office of the presidency, the right wing of the party offers a Farrelly Brothers “Dumb and Dumber” primary in which evolution is avant-garde.

Well, yeah, the Republicans might have difficulty finding their way out of a sack.  That's why they aren't Libertarians yet.  But who are the scholastic giants that the Democrats put on the ticket prior to the Scholar From Chicago/Kenya/Indonesia?

Here's an evaluation of the college transcript of St. Albert, The Goracle Of Music City Tennessee:

Gore arrived at Harvard with an impressive 1355 SAT score, 625 verbal and 730 math, compared with Bush's 1206 total from 566 verbal and 640 math. In his sophomore year at Harvard, Gore's grades were lower than any semester recorded on Bush's transcript from Yale. That was the year Gore's classmates remember him spending a notable amount of time in the Dunster House basement lounge shooting pool, watching television, eating hamburgers and occasionally smoking marijuana. His grades temporarily reflected his mildly experimental mood, and alarmed his parents. He received one D, one C-minus, two C's, two C-pluses and one B-minus, an effort that placed him in the lower fifth of the class for the second year in a row.


For all of Gore's later fascination with science and technology, he often struggled academically in those subjects. The political champion of the natural world received that sophomore D in Natural Sciences 6 (Man's Place in Nature) and then got a C-plus in Natural Sciences 118 his senior year. The self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet avoided all courses in mathematics and logic throughout college, despite his outstanding score on the math portion of the SAT. As was the case with many of his classmates, his high school math grades had dropped from A's to C's as he advanced from trigonometry to calculus in his senior year.

Here's how The Goracle performed while going through the seminary associated with Vanderbilt:

(Gore) took the religious studies courses while also working full time as a journalist at the Nashville Tennessean, and after getting off to a strong start with an A-minus in Ethics, he failed to complete any of the three courses he took in the fall of 1971, and those incompletes eventually lapsed into F's. He returned for another semester in the spring of 1972, when two more incompletes turned into F's.

In the meantime, George W. Bush, our first president to earn an MBA, was knocking out a 2.75 GPA in a Harvard MBA program while, by all accounts, he was partying his ass off. 

I repeat.... While The Goracle was flunking 5 out of 8 courses at a freakin' seminary, Bush was doing ok in a Harvard MBA program. 

W. was not a good president.  Until The Teleprompter Jesus came along, George W. Bush did more to increase the national debt than any other president.  But I can assure you that George W. is not the anti-intellectual dolt that the Maureen Dowds of this world have portrayed him to be.  While I was running bookstores in Dallas, GWB was a regular visitor, purchasing Current Events, Politics, Sports, and lots and lots of history.  I don't know if he read 'em, but he sure bought 'em and knew how to talk about them.  Ask anyone who worked at the Dallas Preston/Forest Bookstop back in the day. 

Well what about John Kerry?  Surely he outperformed Bush?  Naw.  He didn't.  Here's CBS News:

Senator John F. Kerry's grade average at Yale University was virtually identical to President Bush's record there, despite repeated portrayals of Kerry as the more intellectual candidate during the 2004 presidential campaign.

No, their grades weren't "virtually identical".  Bush's grades were 1 point higher. 

Kerry had a cumulative average of 76 and got four Ds his freshman year - in geology, two history courses and political science, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday.

His grades improved with time, and he averaged an 81 his senior year and earned an 89 - his highest grade - in political science as a senior.

"I always told my dad that D stood for distinction," Kerry said in a written response to reporters' questions. He said he has previously acknowledged focusing more on learning to fly than studying.

Under Yale's grading system in effect at the time, grades between 90 and 100 equaled an A, 80-89 a B, 70-79 a C, 60 to 69 a D, and anything below that was a failing grade.

In 1999, The New Yorker magazine published a transcript showing Bush had a cumulative grade average of 77 his first three years at Yale, and a similar average under a non-numerical rating system his senior year.

Bush's highest grade at Yale was an 88 in anthropology, history and philosophy. He received one D in his four years, a 69 in astronomy, and improved his grades after his freshman year, the transcript showed.

Kerry, a Democrat, previously declined to release the transcript, which was included in his Navy records. He gave the Navy permission to release the documents last month, the Globe reported.

So the best Dowd would be able to say about Kerry is that he wasn't quite as sharp in the classroom as Bush. 

How about Republican John McCain, another Republican dunce?  He barely passed. 

How about current Vice President Joe Biden?  How did he do in school? 

Biden graduated College in 1965, with a Bachelor of Arts and a double major in Political Science and History.  He was 506th in a class of 688.

At Syracuse University of Law, 1968, Biden graduated 76th in a class of 85. 

Wow. 

I couldn't find anything on Ron Paul's GPA or his college transcript.  But if grades really are that important, let's point out the obvious....  Ron Paul did well enough to get into medical school.  But then, he's not really a Republican.  He's a Libertarian.  And a genius. 

I'm with Maureen Dowd on this one.  Grades matter !!!

John Kerry walks into a bar....

John Kerry walks into a bar....

....and the bartender says "Hey, John, why such a long face?"

Go here for details.  If I voted for a ton o' tax increases, then got caught using another state's harbor as a tax haven, and then had to pay a half million dollar boat tax, I'd have a long face too.

John Kerry - doing his part to eliminate government waste

A couple of years ago, I started something called The Whitey Awards.  Hit the post tab below for a list of previous nominees and winners. 
The idea behind the Whiteys was to recognize those who have done the most to eliminate government waste.  The best way to eliminate government waste, of course, is to avoid paying taxes.  They can't waste what you don't give them. 
Previous nominees include Tim Geithner, Tom Daschle, and the great host of people who tried and failed to make it into Obama's cabinet. 
Here's a new one, noted by The Jammie Wearing Fool, who points us to a piece in The Boston Herald:

Sen. John Kerry, who has repeatedly voted to raise taxes while in Congress, dodged a whopping six-figure state tax bill on his new multimillion-dollar yacht by mooring her in Newport, R.I.


Isabel - Kerry’s luxe, 76-foot New Zealand-built Friendship sloop with an Edwardian-style, glossy varnished teak interior, two VIP main cabins and a pilothouse fitted with a wet bar and cold wine storage - was designed by Rhode Island boat designer Ted Fontaine.

But instead of berthing the vessel in Nantucket, where the senator summers with the missus, Teresa Heinz, Isabel’s hailing port is listed as “Newport” on her stern.

Could the reason be that the Ocean State repealed its Boat Sales and Use Tax back in 1993, making the tiny state to the south a haven - like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Nassau - for tax-skirting luxury yacht owners?

Cash-strapped Massachusetts still collects a 6.25 percent sales tax and an annual excise tax on yachts. Sources say Isabel sold for something in the neighborhood of $7 million, meaning Kerry saved approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $70,000.

John Kerry has prevented the government from wasting more than $500,000.00, simply by not paying any taxes on his luxury yacht. 
Congratulations, sir ! 
You win a Whitey !