Time to Shake the Dust of New York Off Catholicism's Feet

Timothy Birdnow

"He said to the apostles, "When you travel, don't take a walking stick. Also, don't carry a bag, food, or money. Take for your trip only the clothes you are wearing. When you go into a house, stay there until it is time to leave. If the people in the town will not welcome you, go outside the town and shake their dust off of your feet. This will be a warning to them."

Luke9: 3-5

The state of New York has made it plain that the representatives of Christ are not welcome.

New York has enacted homosexual marriage, a thing anathema to Christian doctrine. This presents a terrible dilemma for Christian churches in general and Catholic churches in particular; how to be true to their beliefs and yet stay within the law? This is no idol question; if gay marriage is legal, will they be compelled to celebrate Christian marriages of same-sex partners? Will their organizations be forced to grant "married" status to homosexual employees or volunteers in violation of Church teaching? How can they possibly stay within the parameters of the law and still maintain their faith?

By declaring homosexual unions as marriages, New York has placed the full force of law behind what is, essentially, a lifestyle choice, one that is at odds with the word of God. This is different than other legal challenges to religion, because it cannot simply be ignored. For example, a Christian photographer was prosecuted in New Mexico for refusing to take a job photographing a "committment ceremony" of a gay couple. http://ncregister.com/site/article/13866 Granted, this is a secular business and not a protected religious organization, but the facts remain; the move is toward compulsory normalization of homosexual practices, and will religions be considered protected at the "expense" of marriage? Any protections written into the law for religious exemptions will be subject to judicial review, and there is a likelihood those protections will be overturned by judicial fiat. Making gay unions "marriage" opens up a pandora's box.

One need only look at abortion; the government is increasingly hostile to Christian doctors who refuse to perform abortions, and is in fact making them committ murder. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/18/AR2011021803251.html

Ditto contraceptives, which, in a California law forced Catholic schools, hospitals, and organizations to provide contraceptives in violation of Church teaching. The lawsuit was decided 6 to 1 by the California Supreme Court, and SCOTUS refused to hear the case. According to Terrence Jeffrey:

http://patriotpost.us/opinion/terence-jeffrey/2011/06/29/next-step-persecuting-churches/

"The California Supreme Court's decision was bold and simple. It conceded that the California law demanded that the Catholic Church act against its own teachings.

"We do not doubt Catholic Charities' assertion that to offer insurance coverage for prescription contraceptives to its employees would be religiously unacceptable," said the court.

But it concluded that the state's interest in eliminating "gender discrimination" trumped the Catholic Church's freedom of religion.

"Assuming for the sake of argument the (law) substantially burdens a religious belief or practice, the law nevertheless serves a compelling state interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest," said the court. "The (law) serves the compelling state interest of eliminating gender discrimination."

Catholic Charities appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court refused to take the case up, letting California's law stand."

End excerpt.

How can the Church resist the incoming pink tide?

There is only one way.

Shake the dust of those states from their feet and move on.

Yes, the Churches - and particularly the Catholic churches - should move out of those states lock, stock, and barrel. Any state that passes such a law should be declared anathema, and the Churches should leave.

Now, I know the argument; what good is accomplished by leaving? There are people who disagree with the laws, good people who need the sacraments. There are people who could be persuaded, too. But that is precisely what Jesus DID NOT do; He ordered His disciples to move on where they were rejected. The Churches simply will have to pull out of any state that fundamentally violates their First Amendment rights, or that sets the stage for such defilement. The Catholic Church should sell off their property and in New York and leave.

The liberals would be delighted at first; losing this "reactionary" influence and getting rid of a tax-exempt organization. But many productive citizens would leave New York rather than be cut off from their faith. Many will travel to neighboring states to attend mass, and will doubtlessly spend money in those states rather than New York. The afternoon Sunday breakfast rush will be over for many restaurants, for example.

There really isn't much choice for the Churches. They cannot continue to compromise their core beliefs. it's time to shake those feet!

And the Churches should preach in every church at every Mass against this. There should be formal excommunications. The time has come to do what the Apostles did; resist. Either that, or Christianity will die in America. It really is that simple a choice.

The Dufus Removal and Elimination of Morons Act

Timothy Birdnow

A Democrat dream!

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/durbin-maybe-illegal-alien-will-become-p

"(CNSNews.com) - Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) said in a congressional hearing Tuesday that a young person who is an illegal alien in the United States today may someday become president.

“When I look around this room, I see America's future, our doctors, our teachers, our nurses, our engineers, our scientists, our soldiers, our congressmen, our senators, and maybe our president,” Durbin said immediately after having asked all young persons in the room to stand if they were currently undocumented aliens who would be eligible to become citizens if the DREAM Act were passed."

End excerpt.

Welcome to the New World Order, a place where such annoying "reactionary" concepts as borders and sovereignty do not matter. Oh, and that pesky 18th century document that says what government can't do to us but not what it can do for us (to quote Obama), you know, the one Durbin the Turban swore to uphold, has no meaning outside of historical curiosity.

THESE are the people running our nation!

Perhaps we should go the other way, and make it illegal to be a moron and hold high public office. We could decimate the ranks of Congress, and remove this president with such an act. Call it the Dufus Removal and Elimination of Morons Act. It would certainly remove the esteemed Senator from Illinois...

Crime and Punishment in Ballwin, Mo. - Sacrificing Freedom for Security

Timothy Birdnow

America has gone off it's rocker.

A motorist in Ballwin, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis, has been arrested for flipping the bird to another motorist.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/bill-mcclellan/article_5c342c36-9d2a-58d3-a0ca-0939505cf95a.html

A 64 year old engineer named Steven Pogue was stuck in heavy traffic, and just as his light turned green at an intersection another driver ran the yellow and subsequently got stuck in the middle of the intersection, blocking Pogue. In frustration, he hoisted the solo finger salute, and a police officer happened to see it. Pogue was not ticketed for inciting violence or "fighting words", but rather for "extending a body part outside of the vehicle".

Yes, you read that right; Ballwin, Missouri has an ordinance against extending a body part out of a vehicle.

Now, would the police arrest a man who has his elbow extending out of the window as he was driving with said window down? What about using manual turn-signals? They do exempt manual signaling. Time was you used your arm to signal what you were doing to other drivers; hand up meant right turn, hand straight out meant left, hand down meant stop. But are motorcycles exempt? Pretty much your entire body is extended out of the vehicle when you ride a motorcycle.

Pogue shouldn't have done it, but flipping the bird is an expression of speech, and the Supreme Court has duly ruled it thus. Yes, it can lead to violence, but so can a harsh word - perhaps more so.

Pogue has to go to court over this, too; there is no specific fine for "extending body parts" and so the judge must hear the case. He went but the offending officer didn't bother to show, and now he has to return when the officer is present. I hope Pogue sues the city over this, but he probably won't.

This may seem comical, but it is a symptom of a deeper malady that is infecting the American mind. "There ought to be a law!" is no longer challenged; everyone believes that if they personally do not like something or think there is some need, no matter how minor, the law must intervene. We have what Mussolini termed "Totalitarianism" in the Fascist sense; a society intimately involved in all aspects of life. It does not matter whether the intentions are noble or malicious; the State is now viewed as having the right to intervene in every and any situation. Ballwin, Mo. has absolutely no interest in this situation, but it has chosen to involve itself anyway because some police officer thought this was rude. Rudeness is not a matter of interest to the State, but people no longer understand the proper role of government. Now Americans believe everything is the interest of the State.

There is a term for that; Police State. That's where we are headed if people do not awaken to the fundamentals. Constitutional government, the rights of the citizenry, everything is lost otherwise.

More than anything, these are the stories that make me shudder. It shows that the fault is not in the stars but in ourselves. Barack Obama is not an aberration; he may have gone a bit too far, but the public does not fundamentally disagree with the snake oil he has been peddling. Americans have tossed their zealotry for freedom away as casually as they would dispose of a used kleenex. We now value security over freedom.

Benjamin Franklin once famously stated "He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither" and that is exactly where we stand. Oh, and we are getting exactly that.

Anti-Smoking Causes Obesity

Timothy Birdnow

Here's one from the "unintended consequences" file that should come as no surprise - but to liberals every bad outcome of their stupid policies comes as a surprise. Apparently, efforts to ban smoking are leading to problems with obesity.
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/fall-in-smoking-linked-to-rise-in-obesity/story-e6frfku0-1226083946725

Gee, who'da thunk it! People deprived of one oral fixation are turning to another!

My own mother started smoking in her twenties to help her lose weight and it worked. Of course, she's smoked ever since, but she's never had a weight problem, either. One wonders what would have happened had she not smoked but had carried too much weight; she's been surprisingly healthy over the years. Perhaps she would have been sickly had she been fat and smoke free?

Of course the liberal answer would be to ban overeating or fatty foods in addition to smoking. When that turns to overindulgence in sex and the consequences of THAT I suppose they will regulate carnal knowledge, and when THAT leads to, say, an uptick in violence, they will ...

It never stops; these people see themselves as gods, deities capable of molding people as easily as a potter molds clay. Their hubris is staggering.

How long before everything that is not forbidden is compulsory? How long before there is no option save going quietly into that good night? Man is not an insect; we do not exist as a gestalt, or as a community. We are individuals, with faults and foibles. We will perish if the left gets what it wants; a society intimately wrapped around it's members.

So, eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow...

Guess Who's buying flooded Midwest farmland?

Jack Kemp

Story posted on Facebook by NY City Councilman Dan Halloran.

http://gulagbound.com/17158/look-whos-buying-up-flood-ravaged-farm-land/

Gulag Note: This evening, The Bound will post an update beneath Ann Barnhardt’s words. This is
subject matter we are continuing to monitor.

June 26, 2011 – 8:42am CT

Published by Andrea Shea King at Radio Patriot
Who’s buying up flood ravaged farm land
Double Red Alert
Posted by Ann Barnhardt – June 24, AD 2011 9:01 AM MST

Missouri River Flooding

Cattle commodities broker Ann writes:

Two HUGE intel leads in my email box this morning from way-back contacts that I’ve had for years, that are actually somewhat connected concepts.

1. File this one under “Now It All Makes Sense”. A Missouri farming and ranching contact just got off a conference call wherein he was informed that the federal government is sending out letters to all of the flooded out farmers in the Missouri River flood plain and bottoms notifying them that the Army Corps of Engineers will offer to BUY THEIR LAND.

Intentionally flood massive acreage of highly productive farmground. Destroy people’s communities and homes. Catch them while they are desperate and afraid and then swoop in and buy the ground cheap. Those evil sons of bitches.

2. Speaking of evil sons of bitches, George Soros appears to be “investing” in farmground through the same puppet company that he used to get into the grain elevator and fertilizer business. The company is called Ospraie Capital Management and is buying up farmground in a joint venture with Teays River Investments as a partner. Here is that announcement:

Click Here

Okay. Here’s the connection. This Ospraie outfit was a hedge fund specializing in commodities that was started and run by some cocky child who didn’t know how to trade bear markets and got his butt kicked into next week in the grain market of 2008. He also lost a fortune trying to trade RARE EARTH METALS. In fact, it was so bad that he had to shut his fund down because he had promised his investors that he would give them all of their investment money back if the fund lost more than 30% in one year. Whoopsie.

But it appears that Soros swooped in and saved the day because this Ospraie is the “co-investor” with Soros that bought the remnants of ConAgra’s trading operation and renamed it . . . Gavilon. In the industry, it is widely acknowledged that Ospraie IS Soros. That three-page article citation is here, copy and paste the URL into your address bar:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/12/news/companies/ospraie_demos.fortune/index.htm

As you probably remember, Gavilon just recently bought both DeBruce Grain out of Kansas City and the biggest grain elevator company in the Pacific Northwest, thus making Soros (who is the money behind Gavilon through both his own Soros Fund Management AND his de facto control of Ospraie) the third-largest grain company in the U.S. with 280 million bushels of storage capacity, behind only Archer Daniels Midland (542 million bushels storage capacity) and Cargill (344 million bushels storage capacity). That citation is here:

http://www.world-grain.com/News/News%20Home/Features/2010/12/A%20powerful%20signal.aspx?p=1

Bottom line: Soros, through Ospraie, is buying up farmground. Please also note that the hotlink citation above is dated June 26, 2009. My contact says this has been going on for two years – and also remember what I told you about farmground prices inflating wildly, especially in Illinois. I have personally confirmed farmground in Illinois selling for $13,000 per acre within the last month, whereas that same kind of ground in Illinois was going for $5500 per acre the day Obama was inaugurated.

Spread the word.

A NOTE FROM TIM:

It is common practice for the Corps (that's pronounced CORE, Mr. President) to buy out land that has been flooded, but I have never heard of it happening because of a conscious decision of theirs to flood the land. They have created a disaster for these farmers, and instead of compensating them are simply trying to seize their property. This fits with the environmentalist scheme to drive humans off the flood plains, and it fits with many other dirty schemes. It used to be that if you were wiped out by flood you took the bailout and surrendered your property - but you could lease it back. I've heard of this with homes, at any rate. Not sure about farmland.

Bottomland is the richest in the world. The Missouri, Mississippi, and Illinois all dump rich soil onto those flood plains. Should the government buy this land up and let it lie fallow, it will drive the price of food up even further.

Every step taken by this administration is aimed at controlling food and food prices. I cannot fathom how anyone would see this as anything but a power grab.

Mr. Smith Goes to Albany

Jack Kemp

New York State Taken to Court for Ruling By Decree


In December 2005, Republican Gov. George Pataki signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" in support of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in New York State. This was supposed to be followed by the State Legislature voting either to support this regional Cap-And-Trade measure - or vote it down. To date, the Legislature has avoided the issue and New York State has acted as if this Memorandum was a Decree by an Obama Czar or other royal figure, i.e., having the force of law in a mythical kingdom.

On the morning of June 28, 2011, Americans for Prosperity's Steve Lonegan, AFP's attorney Mark W. Smith and Niagara Falls resident activist Lisa Thrun joined forces to sue New York (Gov. Cuomo was named as a defendant) came to the steps of the New York Supreme Court in Lower Manhattan to announce they have filed a suit today in Albany, the state capitol, to end what is essentially an unconstitutional (New York's Constitution) power grab that has "collected over $320 million (in three years) in unauthorized taxes from this massive regulatory program,...forcing New Yorkers to pay more for energy." Steve Lonegan called it a "job and economy destroying program...scheme" because of its effect on businesses' utility bills. These ten Northeastern states were the last remnant of the failed Cap and Trade federal legistation defeated on the national level.

Mr. Lonegan pointed out that jobs - and people - have fled New York state because of the combination of high utility rates and high taxes - an economically lethal cocktail. One could make the argument that recent increases in New York City rents voted into law are partially the result of increased taxes on energy within New York state.

This is the same measure that Gov. Christie of New Jersey recently stopped in his state, reducing the partners to nine states. Every other Northeast RGGI state participant required their legislature to pass the authorization. The "greenhouse gas" involved is carbon dioxide, something every plant needs and every human exhales. Yes, the State of New York has essentially taxed its citizens for breathing - and hasn't even put up to a vote. This measure is an attempt to beggar the average middle class taxpayer by raising their utility bill. By using American's for Prosperity's lawsuit, Steve Lonegan believes he can force New York politicians to publicly state their position on this rate hike during tough economic times and thus end RGGI's false, vaporous legal approval in New York and thus end RGGI throughout the Northest.

Lead Attorney Mark Smith, stated that over the next ten years, the continutation of this unauthorized tax would net the state One Billion Dollars. I would add this is truly an example of Taxation Without Representation.

"Our lawsuit is not pro Cap-and-Trade it's not against Cap-and-Trade. It is pro-democracy, pro representative government," Mr. Smith said on the courthouse steps. "Whether you like RGGI or dislike RGGI, the point is that the New York residents who pay this tax bill should be heard in the form of legislation."

Lisa Thrun then spoke and said that although she lives near a huge hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls, local residents pay the third highest utility rates in the country and this needs to be stopped. Apparently this is New York politicians' version of "spread the poverty/"excuse me for breathing CO2" guilt among all residents of the Empire State, a state that has gone from 45 Congressional Districts after the 1950 Census and is now down to 29 Districts in the year 2012 as a result of residents fleeing high taxes that are essentially a penalty for achievement imposed on its citizens, both old and young. It's called "voting with your feet."

Steve Lonegan stated that the unauthorized carbon emission tax is "a clandestine tax used to prop up the (state) budget (in other areas)." In recent days, New York City bridge and tunnel tolls have been accused of being used in the same manner and not to improve the repair of transportation facilities.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bridges_crumble_as_mta_tolls_soa...

"We think the case is strong. Major issues are dealt with by legislatures. It is basic American law for them to decide," said Atty. Mark Smith. He expects the case to be heard in three or four months.

Near the end of the conference, an environmentalist approached me on the courthouse steps with his business card. He said that wind and solar power were more economical than fossil fuels and he was an "expert." Rather than ask him if he were such an "expert," then why didn't he start his own company and find financial backers, I just frowned. In a way, his argument probably had something to do with the legality of energy rulings by state government fiat. Namely, I suspect his plan would be to have New York State subsidize underproductive windmill and solar energy - thus further bleeding taxpayers - and he could imagine the company was "profitable on its own." Rule by Government Fiat is precisely why people leave high tax states, whether in a government subsidized Fiat or another car.

Video of this press conference can be seen on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nknOUhz9inA&feature=youtu.be and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCj6CzuqU2k&feature=youtu.be

Obama is a State of Mind

Timothy Birdnow

I said it first!
http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/life_is_a_state_of_mind-and_obama_supporters_have_lost_theirs

From Michael Barone, courtesy of the Federalist Patriot:

"Which past leader does Barack Obama most closely resemble? His admirers, not all of them liberals, used to compare him to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Well, Obama announced his candidacy in Lincoln's hometown two days before Abe's birthday, and he did expand the size and scope of government. But no one seriously compares him with Lincoln or FDR anymore. Conservative critics have taken to comparing him, as you might imagine, to Jimmy Carter. ... But there is another comparison I think more appropriate for a president who, according to one of his foreign-policy staffers, prefers to 'lead from behind.' The man I have in mind is Chauncey Gardiner, the character played by Peter Sellers in the 1979 movie 'Being There.' As you may remember, Gardiner is a clueless gardener who is mistaken for a Washington eminence and becomes a presidential adviser. Asked if you can stimulate growth through temporary incentives, Gardiner says, 'As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden.' 'First comes the spring and summer,' he explains, 'but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.' The president is awed as Gardiner sums up, 'There will be growth in the spring.' Kind of reminds you of Barack Obama's approach to the federal budget, doesn't it? In preparing his February budget, Obama totally ignored the recommendations of his own fiscal commission headed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Others noticed: The Senate rejected the initial budget by a vote of 97-0. Then, speaking in April at George Washington University, Obama said he was presenting a new budget with $4 trillion in long-term spending cuts. But there were no specifics. Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf was asked last week if the CBO had prepared estimates of this budget. 'We don't estimate speeches,' Elmendorf, a Democrat, explained. 'We need much more specificity than was provided in that speech for us to do our analysis.' Evidently 'first we have the spring and summer' was not enough."

http://patriotpost.us/opinion/michael-barone/2011/06/27/like-chauncey-gardiner-obama-is-profoundly-aloof/

911 Tribute Film Opens

Project Shining City, with the help of our very own Jack Kemp, has produced a wonderful 911 tribute film that is off and running.

From Jack:

"Just announced on WWOR's Steve Malzberg Show in New York.
The premier showing in New York of 9/11 Reflections Then and Now will be on July 24th after 12:30 pm at St. Luke's Church Theater on 308 w. 46th st. Tickets can be had at Telecharge or at the door. DVDs can be bought now at the preview website for $20 at www.911tributefilm.com"

End quote.

Everyone who can attend should; this is a very special film honoring some very special people. If you cannot attend be sure to buy a copy so that this work may continue to be distributed.

Brian does some Spade Work at Townhall

Timothy Birdnow

My brother Brian had a terrific argument against the politically-correct war and our coddling of Islam in a piece at Townhall the other day.
http://townhall.com/columnists/brianbirdnow/2011/06/27/on_calling_a_spade,_a_spade

Be sure to read the comments; some quite good ones and one really crazy fellow who may be a Muslim radical, although I think he's just a nut.

Warmist Cargo Cult Science Returns at American Thinker

Timothy Birdnow

I have distilled the work I've been doing on Kemp et. Al and Michael Mann's junk research on North Carolina's shoreline into an article at American Thinker.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/warmist_cargo_cult_science_returns.html

Many thanks to editor Thomas Lifson, who spotted an error in which I said Mann was from U. of Penn rather than Penn State. Doubtless it would have been used to dismiss the whole piece.

More on Mann Made Sea Level Rise

Timothy Birdnow

A few days ago I wrote a quick post on a study done in North Carolina on sea level rise, a study with "hockey stick" Michael Mann participating as author which claimed to reconstruct 2000 years of sea level rise and concluded that sea levels are rising faster now than at any other time in history. I had limited information at the time, but postulated that dredging and building levees would affect the depth of the swampy tidal pools as less silt would be getting into them. (Remember, levees prevent flooding of flatlands by rivers, thus reducing the amount of silt eroded from the land and deposited into the shallow parts of the sea.)

http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/a_2000_year_study_of_sea_level_rise_in_north_carolina

Again, I had limited information on the details of the study. Sepp kindly fleshes this out for us in a piece in their newsletter:

Sea Level Rise

The climate alarmists released another study claiming accelerating sea level rise. In a twist from past claims, many alarmists now claim that sea level rise is the major threat of global warming. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), was immediately greeted with comments on various blogs, pointing out the inadequacies of the study. As William Gray suggested in his article carried in TWTW last week, the internet blogs provide a more rigorous analysis of questionable climate science studies than the "peer review" process does. (Please note that the articles in the Proceedings are not necessarily rigorously peer reviewed.)

Among the many interesting revelations is that one of the co-authors was none other than Michael Mann of hockey-stick fame. Yet, the study asserted a Medieval Warm Period and a Little Ice Age - contrary to the hockey-stick. The study claimed to establish a global sea level model for the past 2000 years, which it validated by using studies of microfossils from sediment cores taken in the coastal salt water marshes of mainland North Carolina. These were then compared with North Carolina tidal gage records going back only 80 years. From this 80 year record, the researchers extrapolated back 2000 years!

According to the study, the area was selected because it is not rebounding from being burdened by ice during the last Ice Age.

Environmentalists generally refer to these coastal salt water marshes as "fragile wetlands" and these wetlands have a number of interesting characteristics. They are broad, flat, generally marshy lands made of plants, silt, and sand which were formed by sediments from the long term erosion of the Appalachian Mountains and other uplands. As one can see by looking at a road map, these wetlands may stretch as far as 50 miles deep into main part of the state. As with most coastal areas built up by sediments, they are probably subject to subsidence, sinking in relation to the surrounding land or water.

During the last Ice Age, streams and rivers cut channels through these sediments, but as the sea levels rose by about 400 feet after the last Ice Age, the channels became tidal estuaries resulting in wide rivers and bays. The areas are subject to erosion and accretion caused by the tides and storms such as hurricanes and northeasters.

The areas are partially protected from ocean waves by a series of barrier islands made of sand which shift over the years. As the islands shift, they change the influence that tidal currents and storms have on these wetlands. To suggest that a model of global sea levels can be based on studies of such unstable lands is highly questionable.

The natives of these areas call land that is suitable for farming and building "fast" (stable) land. It appears this study is not built on fast land.

Given the difficulty that Richard Lindzen, a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, had with the editors of the Proceedings who refused to publish an article without almost impossible restrictions, as described in last week's TWTW, one must wonder about the standards used when this new study is readily published. Please see referenced articles under "Change Seas" and "Climategate Continued."

End Sepp Excerpt.

Oh, and by the way, the claim that the rate increase coincided with the industrial era is exactly that; their data shows it beginning in 1880, during the industrial era certainly but long before the atmosphere was showing any effects from emissions.

Willis Eschenbach does a fine job of explaining the many errors in the paper at Wattsupwiththat.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/23/reduce-your-co2-footprint-by-recycling-past-errors/ He argues the same point as I, that the nature of the land as such is likely quite different than it was a thousand or even a hundred years ago.

Also see his follow up post here. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/26/further-problems-with-kemp-and-mann/#more-42276

Historical Peaks of CO2 higher than present

Timothy Birdnow

I just stumbled upon a 2007 paper by Ernst Beck that claims, well, this:

"More than 90,000 accurate chemical analyses of CO2 in air since 1812 are summarised. The historic chemical data reveal that changes in CO2 track changes in temperature, and therefore climate in contrast to the simple, monotonically increasing CO2 trend depicted in the post-1990 literature on climate-change. Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942 the latter showing more than 400 ppm. Between 1857 and 1958, the Pettenkofer process was the standard analytical method for determining atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and usually achieved an accuracy better than 3%. These determinations were made by several scientists of Nobel Prize level distinction. Following Callendar (1938), modern climatologists have generally ignored the historic determinations of CO2, despite the techniques being standard text book procedures in several different disciplines. Chemical methods were discredited as unreliable choosing only few which fit the assumption of a climate CO2 connection."

Beck, E-G, 2007; 180 Years of Atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods; Energy & Environment, Vol 18 No. 2, 2007

Here is the pdf file for the entire paper http://icecap.us/images/uploads/EE_18-2_Beck.pdf

and here is the documentation http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/

One of the cornerstones of Global Warming alarmism is that we are experiencing the highest CO2 levels in ten thousand years, and that the rise in carbon dioxide is driving the late twentieth century warming trend. If Dr. Beck is correct, we had higher CO2 levels than today; in the 1940's it spiked over 550 at one point.

Beck bases his conclusions on collected data from direct measurements made via bottling of air, instead of reconstructions using ice cores. Modern climatologists seem to ignore the direct measurements in favor of proxy reconstructions.

Why haven't we at least heard about this outside of the blogosphere? Agenda anyone?

Spending Insanely While the Economy Collapses

By Alan Caruba

America is a sovereign nation, a constitutional Republic that will celebrate the 235th anniversary of its declaration of independence in 1776 and the 223rd anniversary of its Constitution which became effective when the State of New Hampshire became the ninth State to ratify it in 1788.

By most indications it is a nation in its death throes. Its original values and virtues are being jettisoned and that is always a sign of internal rot. The passage of a law legalizing gay, same-sex marriage in New York State is just one example. It becomes the sixth State to do so.

Families are regarded as the keystone to a healthy society. When they begin to disintegrate or are redefined as same-sex, most observers conclude that a range of social problems will ensue.

The Census Bureau recently announced that married couples no longer head a majority of families in the United States. They now represent only 48% of households, based on data from the 2010 census. It is the first time this has ever occurred.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/37340

The 2008-2009 financial crisis was a wake-up call. The nation has been through such crises in the past including the Great Depression from 1929 until the start of World War Two in 1941. The present administration, Congress, and Federal Reserve has responded in much the same way it did in the past and, not surprisingly, the economy has not responded to a flood of “quantitative easing”, governmental make-work programs, and similar efforts.

As Ronald Reagan told us, government is not the answer, government is the problem.

Let me share just a few examples of what is so terribly wrong.

The U.S. Department of Transportation cancelled a $1.2 million federal highway program that would have sent employees on a 17-day globe-trotting journal “to photograph different billboards” after ABC News told the Department it planned to air a report on it. The program has been around for a decade, allegedly to study how other countries handle their major highway networks, motorcycle safety, managing pavement, and “adapting to climate change.”
http://abcnews.go.com/blotter/billboard-boondoogle-federal-highway-administration-halts-globetrotting/story?id=13897851

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently announced the awarding of $26.7 million in “sweat equity” grants to produce at least 1,500 affordable homes for low-income individuals and families. Grants were made at a time when there is an abundance of homes in the marketplace that have been emptied by foreclosure or the decision to walk away from them because the mortgage costs more than the decreased value of the home. A total of four cities received these grants. This same department handed out more than $31 million in grants to public housing authorities, resident associations, and non-profit organizations. It appears to be a lame effort to keep people on payrolls at a time of growing unemployment.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is giving $60 million in the form of $20 million each to three public universities in Florida, Iowa, and Idaho (the first two States have political importance in the forthcoming election) as a “major scientific investment in studying the effects of climate change on agriculture and forest production.”

Climate change is the new way of describing “global warming.” At a time when an estimated 14 million Americans are out of work, the USDA is enriching professors of tree physiology and claiming that climate change will increase levels of food contamination “from chemicals” such as the ones used to actually grow crops and protect them against weeds and insect depredation.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, through its Forest Service Awards, has also given away nearly $3 million for “renewable energy projects” at the same time the administration has tapped the Strategic Oil Reserve—intended for use only for emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina—in a lame effort to lower prices at the gas pump. Secretary Tom Vilsack claimed that “Biomass is a vital part of America’s clean energy future” while Congress was voting to discontinue subsidies to ethanol producers that were costing Americans billions.

These are just three government departments that are giving away millions for useless, politically-motivated, grants and programs that drain the public treasury. The news, however, gets worse.

Wayne Crews, a vice president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, is an expert on the impact of federal government regulation of business and industry. He recently noted that the federal government “is on track to spend more than $3.5 trillion this year. What most people don’t know is that government costs about fifty percent more than what it spends. That’s because complying with federal regulations costs an addition $1.75 trillion—nearly an eighth of GDP. And almost none of that cost appears on the budget.”

“At the end of 2009, the Code of Federal Regulations was 157,974 pages long. In 2010, 3,752 new rules hit the books—equivalent to a new regulation coming into effect every 2 hours and 20 minutes, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”

While Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke was telling reporters he had no idea why the economy was stalled, growing at an appalling rate of just over 1 percent annually, the government was continuing to throw money away in the name of climate change, a green economy, and countless other giveaway programs labeled “discretionary spending.”

The author, Ayn Rand, warned that, “When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion—when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed.”

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/ and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs.

Till the One Day when the Lady met this Fellow...

Jack Kemp

Guys, that's the lib Republican turned lib Democrat Mayor...

http://www.lucianne.com/thread/?artnum=623372


Brady Bunch mom got crabs
in affair with NY mayor
Reuters, by Dean Goodman
http://www.edmontonsun.com/2011/06/25/brady-bunch-mom-got-crabs-in-affair-with-ny-mayor

Los Angeles - This would have made an interesting episode of “The Brady Bunch.” Florence Henderson, the actress who played perky mom Carol Brady in the beloved family sitcom, says she once got crabs after a one-night-stand with career politician John Lindsay, who was the mayor of New York City at the time. Henderson, now 77, recounts in her upcoming memoir that she was cheating on her husband during the 1960s, and gave in to her better judgment when her married and unattractive friend put the moves on her over drinks at the Beverly Hills Hotel. (Snip) Lindsay, who died

Oil as a Woman's Issue

Jack Kemp


One of the most little noted and insightful speakers at the recent Right Online conference in Minneapolis was the journalist and documentary filmmaker Anne McElhinney, Irish immigrant and co-creator of “Not Evil Just Wrong http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1493038/ - a film about the harmful effects of extreme environmentalism on poor people of the undeveloped countries – as well as (arguably) the poor in America. This self-described "Recovering European" who is "doing a job Americans just won't do" combined women’s issues, feminist delusions and the history of technology to speak in the main ballroom, creating a great rant that can be seen on this page http://rightonline.com/beta/completed-sessions as the 23rd video on the webpage.

In noting (at the 4:53 mark in her speech video) that the feminists at the Netroots convention, located across the street from Right Online, McElhinney speculated they were talking (advocating) for solar and wind power. She then added, in rebuttal:

"This should be a feminist issue. All across Africa and across India there are women who devote a lifetime to washing clothes. The whole career, they wash clothes. A complete waste of time when you could have a washing machine.

The Pill didn't liberate women. The washing machine liberated women. (Loud applause followed.) And for all those feminists over there at the Netroots nation who are depriving the women of Africa and India of their washing machines so that a couple of girls in the Harvard faculty lounge can feel cool are awful. It is a human rights abuse to deprive a woman of a washing machine."

This situation was not limited to the women of Africa and India in the past. In the Wall Street area of Manhattan there is a place called Maiden Lane which runs downhill and has a paved over stream. In the time of the Dutch colonial settlers of the Sixteen Hundreds, it was the custom to send the youngest daughter of the household to this stream to wash the family clothes. If a family didn’t have a youngest daughter, it was the role of servants or the wife to do this task. And some of you may be familiar with the Public Television series “Frontier House” http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/frontier-house/201536 where a family attempted to live like a 19th Century Montana family of homesteaders without modern appliances – a great challenge to modern Americans not raised to these tasks.

Ann McElhinney is, of course, absolute correct in her remarks at the Right Online conference. She may have been drawing some inspiration from a book published a year before her documentary “Not Evil Just Wrong,” a book called “The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google” by Nicholas Carr. Carr made note of early modern appliances taking the physical drudgery out of many domestic chores, even as he quotes Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s “More Work for Mother” which states “the labor saved by labor-saving devices was that not of the housewife but of her helpers.” What Cowan is also saying indirectly (though not necessarily as her intention) is that women who could not afford servants could now lower the physical toll of housework on herself, even as the total hours involved may have not decreased that much. Despite Cowan’s arguments and Thomas Edison’s overoptimistic 1912 prediction in an article he authored entitled “The Future of Women” where he claimed women would become “a domestic engineer,” one finds it hard to believe that many women in America have a physically harder life today than women in the days the laundry was taken to Maiden Lane to be beaten with a rock.

In fact, one could make the argument that rising gasoline prices, which impact everyone’s mobility, including women. The prices – and taxes and non-development of oil resources – tends to make women have to stay home more often than meet with friends and explore events in the world. This might not impact the life of the privileged young women McElhinney described in the Harvard faculty lounge, but it effects millions of others both in the US and abroad – as well as men, I might add.

One may recall the remarks of the privileged Teresa Heinz Kerry who stated that Laura Bush didn’t have a “real job” because she was “just” staying home and raising her daughters. That remark may have cost Mr. Kerry the electoral votes of Ohio and few other states for its effrontery and stupidity. But we owe Mrs. Kerry a thank you for dropping the mask of feminism and showing us their real attitude and thoughts concerning domestic life, namely that work at home doesn’t count to them, i.e., isn’t worthy of respect by feminists. Thus, whether a woman is operating an American or European washing machine or beating clothes with a rock in the Andes, Africa or India is of no import to them because they do not consider this Worthy Work. They believe such work is beneath them and that is enough, in their egocentric minds, to consider it beneath everyone else’s consideration - unless, of course, the domestic task involves George H.W. Bush marveling at a supermarket scanner. In that case, domestic tasks then take on a great importance and unfamiliarity with them is enough to disqualify one for higher office.


But as Ann McElhinney has once again discovered, the elitist feminists, masquerading as the “friend of all women” (not named Paula Jones or Katherine Willey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Willey ) are as out of touch with real life and real women as any Anthony Weiner Facebook “friend.” Not using oil to electrify a community is a path to taking most of us back to a village much like the one Hillary Clinton talked about in her book “In Takes a Village” – a village in which only the chieftain or warlord could afford a washing machine or a motor vehicle. And that is the “energy savings” of tyrants.

Race and the Housing Bubble

Timothy Birdnow

How promoting race-based values led to the housing meltdown.
http://netrightdaily.com/2011/06/no-relief-in-sight-inside-the-housing-meltdown/

Virginia Atty. Gen. takes on Net Neutrality

Jack Kemp

This guy is a fire breather on our side. He spoke a bit about this at Right Online in Minneapolis, much to the crowd's roaring approval. In the Healthcare breakout session, Dr. Betsy McCaughey called him a "hero."

Excerpts from the Washington Times article:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/23/cuccinelli-goes-after-another-federal-regulation/

Cuccinelli goes after another federal regulation
Seeks partners for FCC suit against ‘net neutrality’
Wading into another fierce ideological battle, Virginia Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II has announced plans to sue regarding new federal regulation of the Internet and has urged other states to jump on board his fight against “net neutrality.”
Calling the regulations the “most egregious of all violations of federal law,” Mr. Cuccinelli told The Washington Times on Thursday that he will begin in July or August to gather support from other attorneys general and private partners for a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission.

“They have no respect for the courts, no respect for the states, no respect for the Constitution, no respect for federal law,” Mr. Cuccinelli, a Republican, said during an appearance on Capitol Hill at a lunch meeting of the National Italian-American Foundation.
Mr. Cuccinelli has engaged the federal government in legal battles related to other hot-button political issues, including health care and climate change. The net neutrality issue has become a cause celebre for Republicans who fear the Obama administration is attempting to control the Internet.

SECTION OMITTED

A lawsuit challenging net neutrality would be the latest in a string of lawsuits filed by Mr. Cuccinelli, whose 18 months in office have been marked by efforts to halt regulation of greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency, overturn a federal mandate for individuals to purchase health insurance and require the University of Virginia to turn over controversial climate-change research documents.

U.Sl. Upgrading Nuclear Arsenal?

Timothy Birdnow

An article in Pravda claims the U.S. is quietly upgrading her nuclear arsenal in Eastern Europe.
http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/20-06-2011/118250-nuclear_russia-0/ They are hopping mad about it, too.

From the article:

"This time, the command of the U.S. Air Force intends to modernize their existing nuclear bombs B61. As stated by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the goal of modernization is not an increase of capacity, but increased safety, reliability and service life of the weapons systems.

[...]


However, a number of scientists believe that the commanders and politicians are not openly telling the entire story. According to Hans Kristensen, a specialist on nuclear weapons with the Federation of American Scientists, the modernization of these bombs could make them more powerful, which contradicts earlier policy for universal nuclear disarmament proclaimed by the president. The expert believes that it is impossible to modernize without increasing capacity. As a result, he thinks that the military may find such a weapon suitable for liquidation purposes, while previously such weapons were unavailable because of too much collateral damage.

[...]

Of particular concern is the fact that the U.S. intends to modernize its nuclear bombs stored at our borders. Of course, all this is directed against us. The Russian side has tried before to raise this question and initiate a discussion regarding the possibility of placing nuclear arsenals of the United States in the countries of Eastern Europe seeking membership in NATO, but the Americans were very evasive in this discussion. Their answers boiled down to the fact that "we cannot prevent and prohibit members of the alliance to have such weapons on their territory, since they are all equal."

It is beneficial for the Americans. One of the main problems for them now is to achieve reduction of our power at the expense of Russia's nuclear potential. In fact, at the moment we are the only ones who can compete with them in this regard. Developing missile defense, and seeking further reduction of our nuclear weapons, they reduce our benefits to zero. Today we see yet another "gift" from the U.S. coming from the Black Sea in the form of a cruiser equipped with a missile defense system. There are no guarantees that it will not remain there. However, most likely, nothing will prevent it and other like ships from going there again if need be. In fact, we find ourselves in a situation of confrontation in terms of conventional weapons, where we are greatly inferior to only the U.S."

End excerpts.

Now, the hypocrisy of Pravda is staggering; Russia modernized her nuclear arsenal, largely with money given to Russia to dismantle their old Soviet arsenal and with materials from their "nuclear cities which Bill Clinton helped retool to keep Russian scientists from selling to terrorists, and the Russian leadership thought they had suckered America by getting us to agree to freeze our 1980's era arsenal. Clearly, the Obama administration has found loopholes to allow us to modernize our moldy oldies, and that would negate the entire purpose of START III, which was intended to make a missile defense system worthless. The goal of the Russian leadership was to be capable of overwhelming any defensive system with a large strike - a strike we could not respond to in any credible way. A modern American arsenal coupled with a missile defense system means the Russians gain nothing.

Clever, if one believes the Obama Administration would actually do it.

I don't believe it, but it appears they may have done the right thing in this instance. For once I have to give kudos to the O'Bumbler.

Catholic College supports Planned Parenthood - a Petititon

Timothy Birdnow

This from TFP Student Action:

Seattle University – a Catholic institution – offers students the option of interning for Planned Parenthood on its web site.

This unimaginable scandal must be opposed.

And it gets worse. The women studies department at Seattle University also encourages students to “get involved” with pro-abortion groups. Web links to the National Organization for Women, the Feminist Majority and Legal Momentum are featured on their web site.

Important note: You can effectively help me counter the culture of death at Seattle University by sending this urgent alert to your pro-life friends. There’s only so much I can do alone, so please spread the word by email, facebook, blogs and so forth.

Everyone – both young and old – can sign this protest.

Sign your peaceful protest now.
http://petitions.tfpstudentaction.org/seattle-university-remove-planned-parenthood.html?utm_source=sm&utm_medium=email&utm_content=SAE0068&utm_campaign=MainNewsletter

Thank you so much for opposing the sin of abortion.

Fighting the good fight,


John Ritchie
Tradition Family Property
Student Action Director

P.S. -- For more details on this issue please visit: Catholic College Helps Planned Parenthood

To voice your concern politely yet firmly, please contact:

Fr. Stephen V. Sundborg, SJ
Seattle University, President
901 12th Ave.
Seattle, WA 98122-1090
Phone: 206-296-1891
E-mail: SUNDBORG@seattleu.edu

Illegal Aliens and the Housing Glut

Jack Kemp

From Tea Party Nation (membership required, I believe, to access this essay).

Illegal Immigration and its consequences
Posted by Harry f. Hagan on June 22, 2011 at 9:25am


The key ingredient in the collapse of the housing market is illegal immigration. After nearly three years, no mainstream media outlet will mention it in passing, nor report it in depth, but we all know their reputation for veracity anyway. The simple fact is that many millions of skilled and semi-skilled men were allowed, encouraged, enabled, to come here to (over) build houses, malls, and every other kind of building. The "perfect storm" was the combination of cheap money and an unlimited work force; two commodities that had never before co-existed.

The greed of bankers, politicians, developers and builders is not new. It is, sadly, human nature. There is a fine line anyway between self-interest and greed. Self-interest is what causes men to invent, develop, and improve things. Greed is a notion that even too much is not enough. That certainly seems to fit the description of the housing mania that at long last came to a screeching halt about three years ago, leaving in its wake vast forests of green PVC sewer taps, unfinished strip malls, and an inventory of houses that won't be exhausted for who knows how many years. It was as if all vestiges of common sense and basic intelligence suddenly vanished. Ostensibly grown men with college degrees seemed to be totally unaware of the simplest market boundaries and strictures. The zeal to build was nothing less than orgiastic. It appears in hindsight even uglier than it was as it was happening.

The simple, basic, fact is that the more there is of a thing, the less that thing is worth. And the first, and last, overarching, inexorable, and undisputable fact is that without the presence of millions and millions of undocumented, illegal, quasi-slave labor (15 men living in one room) at the ready, the whole grotesque specter of the rampaging over-building could not and would not have occurred. A resident, tax-paying, native, mortgage-owing, authentic American work force could not possibly have even come close to the amount of superfluous binge-building.

Big Media won't mention this fact, simply because so many entities were involved in allowing the vast illegal hordes into America; chambers of commerce, left-wing politicians, right-wing politicians, builders, contractors and so many more. The entire balance of the written-in-stone laws of supply and demand were upended and perverted.

Not to beat a dead horse, but in all the recapitulations of the event by the lamestream media, the lies of omission are glaring and odious.

Harry Hagan, Atlanta

Illegal Aliens and the Housing Glut

Jack Kemp

From Tea Party Nation (membership required, I believe, to access this essay).

Illegal Immigration and its consequences
Posted by Harry f. Hagan on June 22, 2011 at 9:25am


The key ingredient in the collapse of the housing market is illegal immigration. After nearly three years, no mainstream media outlet will mention it in passing, nor report it in depth, but we all know their reputation for veracity anyway. The simple fact is that many millions of skilled and semi-skilled men were allowed, encouraged, enabled, to come here to (over) build houses, malls, and every other kind of building. The "perfect storm" was the combination of cheap money and an unlimited work force; two commodities that had never before co-existed.

The greed of bankers, politicians, developers and builders is not new. It is, sadly, human nature. There is a fine line anyway between self-interest and greed. Self-interest is what causes men to invent, develop, and improve things. Greed is a notion that even too much is not enough. That certainly seems to fit the description of the housing mania that at long last came to a screeching halt about three years ago, leaving in its wake vast forests of green PVC sewer taps, unfinished strip malls, and an inventory of houses that won't be exhausted for who knows how many years. It was as if all vestiges of common sense and basic intelligence suddenly vanished. Ostensibly grown men with college degrees seemed to be totally unaware of the simplest market boundaries and strictures. The zeal to build was nothing less than orgiastic. It appears in hindsight even uglier than it was as it was happening.

The simple, basic, fact is that the more there is of a thing, the less that thing is worth. And the first, and last, overarching, inexorable, and undisputable fact is that without the presence of millions and millions of undocumented, illegal, quasi-slave labor (15 men living in one room) at the ready, the whole grotesque specter of the rampaging over-building could not and would not have occurred. A resident, tax-paying, native, mortgage-owing, authentic American work force could not possibly have even come close to the amount of superfluous binge-building.

Big Media won't mention this fact, simply because so many entities were involved in allowing the vast illegal hordes into America; chambers of commerce, left-wing politicians, right-wing politicians, builders, contractors and so many more. The entire balance of the written-in-stone laws of supply and demand were upended and perverted.

Not to beat a dead horse, but in all the recapitulations of the event by the lamestream media, the lies of omission are glaring and odious.

Harry Hagan, Atlanta

Net Neutrality at Right Online

Jack Kemp

There is a 57 minute video of a breakout session on so called "Net Neutrality" from the Right Online conference in Minnesota. It features Cong. Marsha Blackburn and John Fund of the Wall St. Journal.

It can seen at http://vimeo.com/25254830

The Devil and Maureen Dowd

Timothy Birdnow

The Blue Fairie, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, has been at it heartily these days, launching a series of attacks against Catholicism and Catholics. George Weigel highlights her latest acts of dummyspeak in a piece at National Review.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/270110/maureen-dowd-s-catholic-problem-george-weigel?page=1#.TgDTxX0ZscE;email

Why do I call Maureen Dowd the Blue Fairie? Because she is first and foremost the voice of Blue State America, and because in her personal life is quite blue, suffering the slings and arrows that her philosophical choice has wrought. She has punished herself, choosing a life path tightly bound by unnatural philosophical positions like feminism, the sexual revolution, the worship of the State, etc. which bring her spiritual suffering and discontentment but which she clings to all the more strongly when faced with that very suffering.

She has trouble with men, because she is a feminist who thinks men are scumbags, yet when men reject her she grasps her feminism all the more, believing that the problem is outside her rather than a result of her inner deformity. In short, she sets herself up as a rival to the men in her life, and likely is a regal bitch to them. When they leave, she blames it on sexism, rather than face the fact that she is driving them away.

This is what is meant by Divine punishment; God does not pull out a bullwhip and thrash a sinner. Rather, the sinner is, well, mentally deranged, and is violating immutable laws of reality. If a man jumps off a cliff, believing he can fly, we say he is insane, yet a liberal jumps off the cliff of reality and suffers the pains that the poor Blue Fairie suffers, the spiritual and emotional torment, yet we fail to accept this as the result of a willful refusal to accept reality and live in accordance with it.

That is why liberals tend to be so miserable; they are trying to go the wrong way down the street. Ever swimming against the tide, they suffer. And in that suffering comes a sense of identity, a view that their suffering is somehow a martyrdom for their beliefs. It is, but it is a stupid martyrdom, a gift to the void, to anarchy, to nothing. It's rather like burning your money; no good comes of that. Liberal burn their spiritual currency, and then when they are hungry and ill-clothed they blame it on those who told them not to do it.

This is MoDo in a nutshell. She hates the Catholic Church because, however imperfectly the Church upholds it's ideals, it tells her she is wrong. (Frankly, I prefer a hypocrit to a standardless person; the hypocrit can at least be held to account based on public examination while the standardless is immune to any persuasion.) Like a willful child Ms. Dowd hates the voice of authority, and imparts her own hatred to those telling her how to not be so miserable. And like a dog returning to it's vomit she feeds herself on that very same bile that made her sick to begin with. It's a vicious circle - but not a peculiarity singular to MoDo. It's Liberalism. A rebellion against reality.

I call her a fairie because she is gossamer; her heavyweight thinking amounts to easy platitudes, snarks, word games, an unwillingness to engage in real in-depth thinking. She, like many in the media, in academia, in the arts, is a particularly lazy thinker, prefering to believe what the inner core of the Left generates and regurgitating it in platitudes. And that is what she does; she BELIEVES! George Weigel makes that very point in his essay:

"The last is, in fact, the key to understanding Maureen Dowd’s particular form of virulent anti-Catholicism. Ms. Dowd believes in the sexual revolution as fervently as Archbishop Dolan believes in the Creed in which he leads his congregation at St. Patrick’s every Sunday. The difference between them is that Archbishop Dolan can rationally defend the articles in the Creed, while Maureen Dowd is impervious to the massive empirical evidence that demonstrates that the sexual revolution has been a snare and a delusion for a) women, b) children, c) men, d) marriage, e) family stability, and f) the country’s political culture (cf. Clinton, William Jefferson [whom Dowd helped save in 1998]). Interestingly enough, and in this respect, Maureen Dowd is not the linear descendant of Nast and the rationalist anti-Catholics, who were more often than not the “progressives” of their day. Rather, she is the rhetorical great-great-granddaughter of Elder W. C. Benson and his 1928 anti-Catholic screed, the difference being that Benson’s fundamentalism involved notions of Biblical inspiration and inerrancy, while Dowdian fundamentalism involves an irrational and empirically unsustainable belief in the sexual revolution."

End excerpt.

Liberalism is a belief, consciously chosen. It is not Reason in a real sense; it involves assumptions about reality, about morality, about eternity. Those assumptions are antithetical to Christian and Jewish beliefs, a counterfeit religion. And since that religion is based in the physical world it requires all adherents to labor here to bring about a leftist paradise on Earth.

As John Lennon put it:

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

And what is this but a grieving of the Holy Spirit? The Bible says that is the one unforgivable sin; why? Because it is a conscious rejection of God for some Earthly thing. In the case of liberalism it is a rejection of God for an Earthly religion, a belief in Man and Man's material god. Once chosen it is hard, hard, hard to break, because no amount of discipline will matter. Maureen Dowd is an example; she doubles down on her beliefs, despite the fact that they cause her pain and suffering. She is unwilling to ask herself that fundamental question; is she right or wrong? She, like Lucifer, has made her choice.

I realize this sounds harsh, and I am hardly saying she is a devil, but it's the same choice made by that first rebel (you know, the guy to whom Saul Alinsky dedicated his tombe "Rules for Radicals"). I am not judging the Blue Fairie, but using her as an example of the great lie of liberalism. We all have to make choices in this life, and the liberal has generally made theirs. That is not to say that all liberals are bad people, or destined for hell, but it is to say that they have chosen a very treacherous path, sometimes through laziness or shallowness, but it is a path that leads to suffering. And it is a hard choice to break, because it establishes a sense of identity. Like being homosexual; there are homosexuals called bug chasers who WANT to become HIV positive, to prove their committment to their "sexual identity". They think they are authentic if they get sick. This is the madness that is Liberalism, and it is point I was making.

Now, I'm not saying that all atheists are sick with this malady; many good atheists see the folly of liberal thinking, that it is at odds with reality. The matter of their souls is in the hands of a loving and all-powerful Deity, and I cannot say what the final result may be. They certainly haven't decided to pretend that the Universe works the way they say it does. Liberals do that. Liberals violate the First Commandment - they deify themselves and Man in general. They believe that they can imagine (as John Lennon clearly did) a world more to their liking, and that this will be so. They ignore simple reality, substituting their delusions. They believe they can fly, and eagerly run to the cliff's edge.

And poor Maureen Dowd is caught in this trap. Miserable by her own admission, she nevertheless refuses to change her beliefs, doubling down on them when the pain rises. I feel very sorry for her.

Reality is that thing that, when you stop believing in it, won't go away, according to writer Phillip K. Dick. Dick was right. Liberals really should take this to heart.

But they can't.

"For we will not inherit with them on yonder side of Jordan, or forward; because our inheritance is fallen to us this side of Jordan" (Numbers 32:19)

"

What Did Obama Know about Fast and Furious, and When did He know it?

Timothy Birdnow

Received this from CCRKBA (Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, a fifth amendment group.

www.ccrkba.org

The latest developments of the failed ATF "Fast and Furious" and "Project Gunrunner" Plan is that U.S. Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) says: "We believe he [Holder] was aware of it much earlier than he said in his testimony and questioning before the Judiciary Committee. Are we confident that Eric Holder knew it much earlier? Did he know it earlier than he testified? Absolutely."

In a shocking interview last Thursday, Issa produced a potential "political bombshell" when he stated: "The president knew about it before Eric Holder, according to Eric Holder."

On Friday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said that Barack Obama did not know about or authorize the operation. "As the president has already said, he did not know about or authorize this operation," said Carney, "but the Department of Justice has said repeatedly that fighting criminal activity along the southwest border including the illegal trafficking of guns to Mexico has been and is a priority of this department."

In back-stepping a little, Issa says he does not think the president personally knew about the operation. "I take the president completely at his word there; that this isn't something that would ordinarily rise directly to the president. Was it briefed to people in the White House? I'm sure it was. Did he know about it personally? Probably not. Now that he said it should be looked into, the clock has been ticking a long time and nothing has happened as far as their releasing any findings."

The Justice Department's Inspector General is investigating the matter in relationship to getting to the bottom of "Project Gunrunner" and "Operation Fast and Furious." We want answers to see how big of a cover-up there really was.

Some have likened this to the Watergate scandal of years ago.

The initial fallout from this cover-up is that Kenneth Melson, the acting director of the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol and Firearms (ATF), is expected to step down in the wake of the "Fast and Furious" gun-running scheme in which weapons were sold to Mexico's drug cartels.

Melson, who has been acting director since April 2009, is likely to resign within the next couple of days, says CNN. Attorney General Eric Holder met with Andrew Traver, head of the ATF field office in Chicago on Tuesday, about replacing Melson, CNN reported.

The original "sting" strategy was that it would allow the ATF to trace the undercover weapons sold by them and to then discover who was selling them further. But the plan horrendously back-fired when the ATF admittedly lost track of two-thirds of the guns. It has been discovered and verified that the weapons have been used in at least 150 shootings!

As reported by Second Amendment Foundation on numerous occasions, the scandal began to break wide open last December when Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered in Arizona and two weapons discovered at the scene were found to have been part of Project Gunrunner.

After months of administration stonewalling, finally Mr. Obama has "sort of" acknowledged that the plan was flawed. "There MAY be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made. If that's the case then we'll find out and we'll hold somebody accountable," he said in March. Obama still claims that he had no prior knowledge of the operation.

Last week, Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley called for an independent investigation into the operation and called for heads to roll.

Apparently, Kenneth Melson's head will "roll." Some have called him the "scapegoat" for Eric Holder.

During Issa's important Congressional hearings last week, John Casa, an agent at the ATF's Phoenix Field office called the program "a colossal failure of leadership." He said every time there was a shooting in Arizona, including the one that killed six and seriously injured Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, agents worried that guns from the operations could have been involved. "This happened time and time again," he testified.
House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) said in a national interview that he believes the Justice Department is covering up information relevant to a congressional investigation of an operation in which the department knowingly allowed intermediaries of Mexican drug cartels to purchase guns at licensed firearms dealers in the United States and then get away without being arrested or the guns being retrieved.

Issa pointed to two things he says indicates a Justice Department cover up. First, he cites a letter that Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, head of the Justice Department's office of legislative affairs, sent to Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 4, 2011. Issa characterizes that letter as a "lie."

Secondly, Issa says the Justice Department made excessive and unjustifiable omissions in documents it provided to his committee.

The entire "grandiose" operation began in 2009 and ended in early 2011 with ONLY the indictment of 20 individuals on relatively minor charges for illegal gun purchases!

Agent Terry's murder prompted ATF agents--who had warned their superiors of the risk of the Fast and Furious operation--to come forward as whistleblowers.

Representative Darrell Issa made it very clear he thought it is a cover-up when he pointed to a Department of Justice to Sen. Grassley and the excess redaction of documents. He proclaimed: "There are two kinds of cover ups. There is one in which you lie to people in order to mislead them. That letter represents that type of cover-up. There's also the one in which you delay and deny in an attempt to simply not have the facts come out. Clearly they've done that with Sen. Grassley, first, and then with our committee, because some of the things that they redacted, we have the un-redacted versions from whistleblowers. We believe they did excess redacting, which again is denying us that which would be reasonable to deliver us. We're hoping that that's changed. We hope that what was said yesterday (last Wednesday), there is in fact a change in the administration's view in order to not be embarrassed."

Banning BPA Will Kill People - The BPA File, Part Six

By Alan Caruba

The lies being told about Bisphenol-A, BPA, via the print and broadcast media, and via the Internet are a destructive tsunami intended to ban its use. If successful, people will die.

In previous parts of this series on BPA, I have identified environmental organizations and public relations firms that have worked as sponsors and/or purveyors of systematic falsehoods about BPA.

The inescapable conclusion is that there is an intricate matrix of comparable groups behind a global fraud that reeks of the same pathology and methodology as the disgraced and debunked “global warming” hoax. But the results of a successful BPA hoax could have deadly consequences.

BPA has been in use for more than a half century and as such, it is among the most tested substances in use today. It is used to line the insides of metal containers and to make shatterproof safety plastics. Unlike what the junk science merchants would have us believe, BPA is not a carcinogen, it is not mutagenic and it’s not an ‘endocrine disruptor.’

Stated simply, BPA improves human health and safety.

Dr. Angela Logomasini, PhD, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, authored the report “Anti-BPA Packaging Laws Jeopardize Public health,” and concluded, in reference to efforts at the state level to restrict BPA, that “these policies threaten to undermine food safety because BPA is used to make resins that line metal cans and other packaging to prevent the development of dangerous pathogens and other contamination.”

The safety characteristics provided by BPA in making shatterproof plastic are no less valuable. Consider this simple and common scenario: a new mother trying to care for her infant while literally juggling a telephone, a cooking utensil and a glass baby bottle. This is actually one of the reasons that bottles made of hardened, shatterproof plastic became so popular so quickly; they were safe to use and spared mothers the risk of shards of shattered glass in homes with infants and toddlers.

We take for granted that we eat all manner of food packaged in cans as well as food and drink in plastic bottles. Imagine if you could not be sure that it was safe to eat or drink? Imagine if you had to fear the contents of a metal can of soup every time it was opened? Or feared what might happen if you drank soda from a plastic bottle?

Banning the use of BPA would put the contents of billions of cans and bottles at risk of contamination, a function that BPA protects against every day and everywhere around the planet. The risk of a BPA ban is clear; there are no alternatives to BPA that have a similarly tested safety profile.

Thousands of studies have been conducted on BPA and not a single one of them has ever shown any harm to human health from BPA in normal consumer use.

This truth was illustrated in an April article by author Jon Entine who reported “A comprehensive review by the German Society of Toxicology http://www.american.com/archive/2011/april/a-toxic-setback-for-the-anti-plastic-campaigners of thousands of studies on BPA concluded, ‘(BPA) exposure represents no noteworthy risk to the health of the human population, including newborns and babies.’” During June 2011 in Europe more people died from eating organic vegetables than ever exhibited so much as a symptom of illness due to BPA over the past half century.

While activists clamor for bans on BPA, they’re largely mute when asked what the alternative might be. A report in FoodQualitynews.com noted that Dr. John Rost, chairman of the North American Metal Packaging Alliance, stated “There is a great deal of research underway at this time, but the fact remains there is no readily available alternative to BPA for all the types of metal food and beverage packaging currently in use.” The likelihood of finding a substitute is literally “years away.”

Opponents of BPA seek to intimidate and marginalize credible researchers by condemning their ‘links’ to industry – accusations that are as specious as the non-existent ‘links’ of BPA to physical ailments – yet Rost’s safety concerns were underscored in a May 12 opinion piece in the New York Times which stated what scientists have been saying all along; “Swapping out BPA-free bottles, teething rings and sippy cups for substitutes whose dangers are unknown isn’t keeping our children safe."

Banning BPA would not only constitute a health threat, it would have a catastrophic economic impact on the provision of all food and drink packaged in metal or plastic containers. The assault on BPA is an assault on the vast bulk of humanity that depends on safe, protected containers.

The anti-BPA propaganda, all of which use the vague phrases that BPA “may” pose this threat, “might” pose that threat, “could” have some affect, “has been linked”, is baseless. It plays to the fears of those also read and hear an endless range of specious claims about chemicals of every description. That fear has a name, chemophobia.

Just as the anti-PBA propaganda continues, so do the alleged “studies” that link it to “possible”, “potential” hazards. Time and again, they prove to be an insult to the scientific method.

The sensible consumer knows that mere “exposure” does not constitute a threat or hazard. Every day we are “exposed” to all manner of things we safely eat and drink simply because the exposure is so small—parts per billion—as to constitute no hazard and because the body naturally excretes substances such as BPA on a daily basis.

This pernicious assault on the use of Bisphenol-A must be stopped.

Editor’s Note: The complete series can be accessed at http://thebpafile.blogspot.com/ and at http://www.anxietycenter.com/bpa/htm.

Not Depending on the Courts: Health Care Compact Alliance

Jack Kemp

“If we only had free healthcare at the beginning of this country, we would have free leeches now.”

Eric O’Keefe of the www.healthcarecompact.org was addressing a breakout session at the Right Online Conference in Minneapolis last week. It was called “Healthcare: Obamacare vs. Patient Freedom.” O’Keefe had been preceded Dr. Betsy McCaughey, the patient healthcare advocate president of www.DefendYourHealthcare.com who had pointed out that ObamaCare adds $16 Billion to healthcare costs and “shreds your Constitutional Rights.”

Passionately – and factually - Dr. McCaughey further argued, “Women’s groups have fought for privacy and abortions. The government now shreds this. ObamaCare expands Medicaid by evisceration Medicare. It is Robbing Grandma to pay Paul. The government that has the power to grant a waiver (from ObamaCare) has the power to withhold a waiver and destroy a business.”

The next panelist, Jennifer Grossman, Senior Vice President at the Dole (Foods) Nutrition Institute http://www.dole.com made a case eating healthy being as low cost and lower for poor people as convenience foods, thus avoiding a number of illnesses by increasing personal responsibility for one’s health.

But before Virginia Atty. Gen. Ken Cuccinelli spoke of his court case against ObamaCare http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/cuccinelli-lawsuit-obama-liberty/2010/12/14/id/379960 , a case he predicts will go to the US Supreme Court just before the 2012 election (“States checking the Federal Government is another aspect of Checks and Balances”), Mr. O’Keefe first presented his less widely known alternative to the Obama healthcare plan.

Calling for an interstate compact – somewhat like the laws that allow reciprocity in recognition of out-of-state drivers’ licenses, O’Keefe said he would tell Washington “to keep their regulations and send us our money.” The US Constitution, in the Compact Clause, Article One, Section 10 states:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress… enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State.
END

In short, a Republican controlled Congress – which we may well have fairly soon – can approve a regional or multi-regional Healthcare Compact to be regulated by the states that are party to it. In fact, such a Compact would not legally require the signature of the President of the United States – although that may well be possible after January 20th, 2013. Although I am no legal scholar, this appears to be a highly realistic plan – and method of pressuring the Federal government. A fine a legal scholar as the Attorney General of Virginia being willing to share a panel with Mr. O’Keefe – and not attempt to blunt the argument of the Health Care Compact speaks volumes.

I don't see how the Obama administration or any Democrats can go to the US Supreme or any other Court and raise the question of constitutionality without making a major issue of the question of constitutionality of the ObamaCare bill itself. There's a lot of brinksmanship here, a game of chicken, as it were.

Even now, the Democrats are trying to create a Northeast version of Cap and Trade (Gov. Christie just blocked it in New Jersey) – why can’t conservatives create their own version of an alternative to ObamaCare? There answer is there is no legal barrier, just one of effort to create what most Americans have said in polls they want: an alternative to the ObamaCare monstrosity. This compact would become, the website states, a de facto statewide (in states that adapt it) repeal of ObamaCare. The Compact’s website states that there is no method for revoking a compact between states, i.e., it would take a Constitutional Amendment to do that - which would have a very slim chance of passing, in my opinion. Indeed, a Compact between States can also be used to remove from the control of the Federal Government other non-enumerated powers such as the States deem fit. This includes EPA regulations on carbon dioxide and Right to Work Laws as the Obama administration is attempting to nullify in Boeing’s move to South Carolina. As Atty. Gen. Cuccinelli stated, previously States Rights were used in an attempt to deny blacks their full US Citizenship Rights, however now States Rights are being invoked for legitimate ends to limit the overreaching of the Federal Government in areas not allowed in the US Constitution.

There are provisions for states opting out of ObamaCare. They are complex and Senators on both sides of the aisle have moved to have them go into effect earlier.
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/Brown-States-Quit-Obamacare/2010/11/22/id/377781 It is partially in connection with such opt outs that the Health Care Compact would be made viable. Also, if money were denied the federal government in taxes supporting ObamaCare from Compact member states, it would be more difficult on a practical level to implement this monstrosity.

The States Compact movement also does not exist in a political vacuum: it is part and parcel of the court cases against ObamaCare. As for those who would say that the Health Care Compact wouldn't directly negate ObamaCare, the Constitution has already directly negated ObamaCare, yet this legal fiction marches forward, as does the legal fiction of abortion being a "privacy right." If the Supreme Court would let ObamaCare stand with its violations of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, then we are at a point in American History where political will trumps much of the Constitution and we had best use this or any tactic to negate this socialist strong arm takeover. Such a Compact would be a lot less extralegal than an open, armed rebellion against federal authority attempting to redefine Commerce, Healthcare and the Rule of Law via non-Constitutional means. If the Supreme Court passively allows ObamaCare to stand, then we no longer have a country with a working Constitution but a mass of legal fictions used for the convenience of a ruling elite. Negating the right to not buy health insurance would make us all serfs of a federal feudal lord – but probably not for long.

Ironically, the authors of this Healthcare Compact movement believe even liberal governors would be in favor of moving money and control away from distant Washington and into their own direct management. Human nature – and politics - being what they are, they are probably correct. The Healthcare Compact legislation is currently being brought up in ten states.


The Healthcare Compact would create:
http://www.healthcarecompact.com/compact

The Health Care Compact does not conflict with the efforts by state attorneys general, state legislators and members of congress to repeal or modify the health care bill.

The Elements of the Health Care Compact

Pledge: Member states agree to work together to pass this Compact, and to improve the health care in their respective states.

Legislative Power: Member states have primary responsibility for regulation of all non-military health care goods and services in their state.

State Control: In member states, states can suspend federal health care regulations. Federal and state health care laws remain in force in a state until states enact superseding regulations.

Funding: Member states get an amount of money from the federal government each year to pay for health care. The funding is mandatory spending, and not subject to annual appropriations. Each state’s funding is based on the federal funds spent in their state on health care in 2010. Each state will confirm their funding before joining this Compact. This funding level will be adjusted annually for changes in population and inflation.
END OF QUOTE

Virginia Attorney General Cuccinelli, in this breakout session, stated that when the ObamaCare bill was passed near midnight, he and his staff stayed up for hours writing a legal challenge to it. The next morning, they filed the papers several city blocks away – but on the very same street – where Patrick Henry declared in St. John’s Church in Richmond, “Give me Liberty or give me Death!” Perhaps today this Founding Father would have added the word “Panels” to the end of his historic statement.

Walter Williams on Black Racism

Jack Kemp

Walter Williams is a distinguished economist and a black man. Here are the concluding remarks of his article in Townhall.com today on the subject of "America's New Racists."
http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2011/06/22/americas_new_racists/page/full/

"In many of these brutal attacks, the news media make no mention of the race of the perpetrators. If it were white racist gangs randomly attacking blacks, the mainstream media would have no hesitation reporting the race of the perps. Editors for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune admitted to deliberately censoring information about black crime for political reasons. Chicago Tribune Editor Gerould Kern recently said that the paper's reason for censorship was to "guard against subjecting an entire group of people to suspicion."

These racist attacks can, at least in part, be attributed to the black elite, who have a vested interest in racial paranoia. And that includes a president who has spent years aligned with people who have promoted racial grievance and polarization and appointed an attorney general who's accused us of being "a nation of cowards" on matters of race and has refused to prosecute black thugs who gathered at a Philadelphia voting site in blatant violation of federal voter intimidation laws. Tragically, black youngsters -- who are seething with resentments, refusing to accept educational and other opportunities unknown to blacks yesteryear -- will turn out to be the larger victims in the long run.

Black silence in the face of black racism has to be one of the biggest betrayals of the civil rights struggle that included black and white Americans.

A 2000 Year Study of Sea Level Rise in North Carolina

Timothy Birdnow

Michael Mann is up to his old tricks; he's co-authored a study that supposedly shows sea level rise has greatly accelerated in the industrial era.

http://thegwpf.org/science-news/3267-new-sea-level-study-divides-climate-researchers-.html

Uh, sure, Mike.

This study, which reconstructs the last 2000 years, only looked at the North Carolina coast. Now, anyone who bothers to look at North Carolina would know that it is a swampy, low water region with a chain of islands (the Outer Banks) and considerable port activity. I suppose it never occured to Mann et al that there has been, uh, dredging going on since these coastal regions were settled, and perhaps sea level rise is attributable to clearer coastal bottoms? Dredging and control of river flooding means less silt backing up on the shore. Can Mann and company determine how much of an effect this has had on apparent sea level rise in North Carolina?

This is true in Louisiana, where low lying wetlands have been disappearing. For instance:

http://www.tulane.edu/~bfleury/envirobio/enviroweb/LandLoss/LandLoss.htm

"Human disturbance has had a massive impact on the balance of wetland growth and decline. Since the colonization of America, over half of the original wetlands have been lost. In modern times and with the increase in available technology, this loss has accelerated geometrically. In the past 100 years, Louisiana has lost 20% of its wetlands, representing an acceleration of 10 times the natural rate.

The main forms of human disturbance are the river-control structures such as dams and levees, the dredging of canals, and draining and filling. Beginning in the 1920’s, large scale river-control structures, such as the Old River Control Structure, which diverts 30% of the Mississippi Rover water into the Atchafalaya River system, were built to ease flooding problems along the banks. These control structures led to a dramatic decrease in the sedimentary load which reached the mouth of the river and formed the basis of new coastal land.

The construction of levees similarly affected coastal land. A large part of the sediment gathered by existing marshes is accumulated during seasonal flooding. Flood overtopping and overbank sedimentation, both vital to the survival of existing marshes, were dramatically reduced as large areas ceased to be flooded. River water also helped to reduce marsh salinity and provide nutrients, and its loss has resulted in the breakup and dispersal of large amounts of nutrient-starved marshlands.

Canal dredging has had one of the most dramatic effects on wetland growth and regeneration. In addition to directly destroying marshes in the path of the canal, the plants are unable to recolonize, and thus the marsh is unable to regenerate itself. Once canals are dredged, most grow larger as the sustainable areas of marsh subsequently decrease. The largest and most destructive example of this dredging is the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO). Created in the 1960’s to facilitate the passage of ships to the Gulf of Mexico, the canal destroyed over 23,000 acres of wetland. The MRGO has now grown to 2 ½ times its original size and costs the government $7.6 million a year to maintain. Experts say that canals now account for 6.8% of Louisiana’s wetland area."

End excerpt.

This phonomenon is well-documented along the Louisiana coast, so I used it as a case study, but it clearly occurs along the North Carolina coast as well.

Has Mann and company considered that the Little Ice Age locked up a good deal of sea water and that the modern warming period is seeing the release of that locked up water?

It's also interesting to note that the article in Der Spiegle says this rise correlates with the industrial era; what does that mean? When did it start, before or after the strong rise in carbon dioxide emissions? If before 1900 it would be a technically correct statement but utterly meaningless, because this rise cannot be attributable to industrial emissions.

This is just another example of "Mike's nature trick", but it will be seized on by the uninformed and the partisan.

Bachmann's glitter attack in Minn. pt. 2

Jack Kemp

If you watch a video of Michele Bachmann leaving the stage at Right Online, you will see she goes off to the side and down into the crowd, facilitating the attack on her by the lesbian activist with the glitter (Thank God it wasn't acid or a gun).

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/06/leftists-fail-to-score-glitter-attack-on-michele-bachmann-video/

As I attended this conference, and saw perhaps 15 other speakers on that same stage, every other one of them exited by turning backwards and going behind the curtain, not giving someone wanting to throw something an opportunity to easily hit them with it. As is, the security guards should have tackled this young redhead as she strided towards the stage.

Fortune Telling banned in Iran - a joke

Jack Kemp

Atlas Shrugs points out that Iran has launched a war against occultism. The article states:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/06/iran-launches-attack-on-occultism-to-the-ordinary-diviners-and-fortune-tellers-and-of-course-on-nonc.html

"Alireza Afshar, acting interior minister in executive affairs, told Nasim Online, a news website, that the ministry had commissioned a non-governmental organisation to identify those engaged in divination and exorcism as well as "deviant schools of thought and false Gnosticism".

Under Iranian laws various kinds of occultism are punishable by fines and jail terms of up to seven years.

Occult practices such as fortune-telling, divination and black magic have always existed in certain strata of Iranian society and were largely tolerated unless individuals claimed to be victimised or defrauded."
END QUOTE

This brings to mind an old joke I will reuse in relation to Ahmadinejad - and a possible explanation for this crackdown by the Iranian government.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran was told by his intelligence sources that the Israelis would attempt to kill him on a Jewish holiday, but they could not identify which one. Desperate for the exact date, Ahmadinejad goes to the market in Tehran and seeks out a fortune teller's booth.

"The Israelis want to kill me on a Jewish holiday, but I don't know which one. Could you tell me?"

The fortune teller looks into her crystal ball, goes into a trance state - and then tells Ahmadinejad, "The Spirits tell me that any day you die will be a Jewish holiday!"

FOR THOSE OF US WHO REMEMBER - HOLLYWOOD SQUARES

Steve Rankin

These great questions and answers are from the days when ' Hollywood Squares' game show responses were spontaneous, not scripted, as they are now. Peter Marshall was the host asking the questions, of course..


Q.. Paul, what is a good reason for pounding meat?

A. Paul Lynde: Loneliness!

(The audience laughed so long and so hard it took up almost 15 minutes of the show!)

Q. Do female frogs croak?

A. Paul Lynde: If you hold their little heads under water long enough.

Q. If you're going to make a parachute jump, at least how high should you be

A. Charley Weaver: Three days of steady drinking should do it.


Q. True or False, a pea can last as long as 5,000 years...

A. George Gobel: Boy, it sure seems that way sometimes.


Q. You've been having trouble going to sleep. Are you probably a man or a woman?

A.. Don Knotts: That's what's been keeping me awake.


Q. According to Cosmopolitan, if you meet a stranger at a party and you think that he is attractive, is it okay to come out and ask him if he's married?

A.. Rose Marie: No wait until morning.


Q. Which of your five senses tends to diminish as you get older?

A. Charley Weaver: My sense of decency..


Q. In Hawaiian, does it take more than three words to say 'I Love You'?

A. Vincent Price: No, you can say it with a pineapple and a twenty..


Q. What are 'Do It,' 'I Can Help,' and 'I Can't Get Enough'?

A. George Gobel: I don't know, but it's coming from the next apartment.


Q.. Charley, you've just decided to grow strawberries. Are you going to get any during the first year?

A.. Charley Weaver: Of course not, I'm too busy growing strawberries.


Q. In bowling, what's a perfect score?

A. Rose Marie: Ralph, the pin boy.


Q. It is considered in bad taste to discuss two subjects at nudist camps.. One is politics, what is the other?

A. Paul Lynde: Tape measures..


Q. According to Ann Landers, is there anything wrong with getting into the habit of kissing a lot of people?

A. Charley Weaver: It got me out of the army.


Q. It is the most abused and neglected part of your body, what is it?

A. Paul Lynde: Mine may be abused, but it certainly isn't neglected.

Steve's websites are at http://southerncrown.blogspot.com/ and
http://freecitizenblog.wordpress.com/