Global Warming is Real!

a long long time ago, on a planet right beneath your feet, cold blooded dinosaurs roamed the earth. The jungle planet they roamed suited the ectotherms perfectly. We know the planet was a jungle planet because dinosaur fossils have been found on every continent, and on every corner of the Earth.

Then something happened. Either volcanic activity or debris from a cataclysmic meteor strike caused the sun to be blotted out from the sky. The age of dinosaurs was over. This event caused the jungle planet to transform into an ice planet. This period lasted long enough for glaciers to form and reach as far south as Long Island Sound. The large hills in Danvers Massachusetts were created by glacial deposits. If you have ever tried to dig a hole anywhere in New England then you have had the pleasure of moving some large, usually roundish and rather smooth boulders from the Earth. Those are from glacial deposits. And those classic stonewalls you see as you drive around the Northeast were built by hand, with herculean efforts by farmers who needed to clear their fields not just of trees, but of those damn boulders as well.

At some point, the sun shone once again, and the advance of the glaciers ceased. The Ice Age was over. At that moment in time the process of Global Warming was born. Ever since then the Earth has been warming, and the glaciers retreating. By the time the human species, like the dinosaurs, had become the predominate species and at the top of the food chain, the glaciers had retreated amost entirely out of europe and to the most northern climes of North America. By the time European settlers found their way to New England, the glaciers were long gone, and all that needed to be done was to pull those rocks from the fields and farm the land.

And the trend continues today. So, yes Virginia, there is global warming. It exists as certainly as the dinosaurs and the Ice Age existed, and you know that they were here and then gone. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were never any changes to climate or species. It would be as dreary as if there were no dinosaurs ever. There is global warming, and it is not your fault. Like water returning to the sea, the earth will always seek the equilibream of climate that is dictated by the planets rotation around the sun.

Darwin was right. Adaptation is what allows species to survive. Stop thinking you can manipulate or alter things you have no control over. Focus on adapting!

Stupidly is as Stupidly does; Gatesgate

The news that Prof Henry Louis Gates Jr was arrested by a white cambridge Police Officer was already big news up here in Jolly Old New England. The accusations of racial or racist motivations had sent the region into an uproar, where the debate at every bar and every water cooler was about who was right and who was wrong. The philosophical questions have been flying and are being debated.

If this was racially motivated, is this a setback to the progress that everyone hoped would change the landscape of racial relations?

or

If this is another Tawana Brawley like false claim of racism callously used to excuse the bad behavior of an individual, can we ever achieve racial harmony?

It was already a big deal here. Then the bomb went off. While I was watching the President of the United States perform his infomercial for Intergalactic Health Care he ended the presentation by taking the last question and the only question, not related to health care, from a Chicago reporter Lynn Sweet who is also a long time associate. In his last question he changed the national conversation from health care to race relations. Probably a good thing considering the reviews of his attempt to sell his plan. It's almost like this was the self destruct plan.

OK, that didn't go well. Execute plan B. Release the hounds of racial arsonists.!

Hardly anyone was talking about the failure happening to the health care effort today.

Maybe it was a good short term strategy, but I think long term he may get backed into a corner and have to throw another proclaimed friend under the bus.

Right, Wing-Nut!: Did Obama "Act Stupidly"?

Right, Wing-Nut!: Did Obama "Act Stupidly"?

Cap on Cost, No Cap on Benefit

Liar! Today on capitol hill democrats held a press conference as part of their marketing campaign and effort to ram rod their health care reforms through congress. In that press conference Nancy Peolosi said that with these reforms the new system would provide "a Cap on Cost, No Cap on Benefits". There is no way any one can promise to sustain a system where they swear to limit money coming into the fund and spend without regard. She is absurd!

Where in the proposed bill does it say that? It does not. If it does then that is what they need to point out and post on line so the American people can see it for themselves.

In that same press conference they trotted out a woman with her story about not being properly insured and then getting cancer and then running up some pretty hefty bills. There are many challenges in life and some people do get dealt situations I would never want to face. What I did not understand was why she thought that all the treatments she talked about would be automatically paid by the government? Where does it say that in the bill? In fact, if the government decided that as part of rationed care she was not qualified for the treatments, it would be illegal for her to go out and buy the care with her own money, which was how she resolved the mistake of being under insured. At least that's the way it works in Canada.

So if the socialized medicine like Canada and the UK have is so great, why are people coming here for treatments?

All we have to fear....is the politics of fear

Today president Obama went on Television to bang the drum and keep up the cadence for his "quick pass this now" health care reforms. Just like the beat of a drum, he stayed on message with the same rhetoric.

1.

We have a system that works better for drug companies and insurers than it does for patients.

2.

We must change our health care system now, or it will never change.

3.

unless we pass these reforms, the American people will be spending more and more money for less and less health care.

(quotes are para phrased from the notes I took during the speech)

Wow! pretty bleak and dire! A couple of days ago (Fear and Loathing of Lost Wages) I tried to explain this paradox of using the bully-pulpit to scare the shit out of people and then in the next sentence accuse all the critics and any doubters of fear mongering. "Pandering to the politics of fear" I believe is the phrase he likes to use. But, here again, we see Obama bludgeoning the press with a chicken little 'sky is falling' and 'we must do something now' message.

Until the president comes out and explains in great detail how these reforms could never slide into health care rationing, and lays out the mechanisms put in place to insure that health care rationing never happens, this march to socialized medicine will slow to a stagger.

One of the more poignagnt quips was when Obama said

"so that kids can get the care they need, when they need it"

Cute children, and fuzzy bunnies. How can anyone say no to that? The reality is that the American public wants to be reassured that their kids, and their families can get "the care they need when they need it".

This day in History.... National Socialism is Born.

National Socialism - Yes we can!

Hitler Publishes First Volume of Mein Kampf (1925) Hitler dictated his manifesto, whose title means "my struggle," while serving a prison term for treason. The book, filled with anti-Semitic outpourings, political ideology, and strategy for world domination, became the bible of National Socialism. By the end of WWII, about 10 million copies of the book had been sold or distributed in Germany—owing much to the fact that every newlywed couple and every soldier at the battlefront received a free copy. Where is it illegal to sell copies of the book? More...

Fear and Loathing of Lost Wages

Why is it that when our dear leader says

"If we don't act now, and pass the stimulus Bill, then disaster will be upon us and unemployment will soar above 8.5%"

it is successfully packaged as a dire warning and an undisputed call to action? But when the opposition crunches the numbers and reasons

"It will cost too much, yield minimal results, and burden the taxpayer for generations to come"

it is decried as the 'politics of fear'?

Why is it that when our dear leader says

"If we don't act now, and create a National Health Care system, then health care premiums will soar beyond anything anybody can afford"

it is successfully packaged as a dire warning and an undisputed call to action? But when the opposition crunches the numbers and reasons

"The plan will increase costs, and erode the level of health care available today"

it is decried as the 'politics of fear'?

Clearly Barack "Nostrodomus" Obama was wrong about the stimulus package saving the economy and preventing unemployment from soaring above 8.5%. Do you believe his predictions about looming disaster in health care? Why the rush? He has described the current health care system like it is a ticking time bomb, yet no one knows why? We just know it needs to be fixed now.

The reality is that the blitz strategy is necessary precisely because the plan will not stand up to scrutiny. The regime needs this passed before they get cornered and are forced to explain how this plan is different than the UK and Canada, and how this plan won't kill people with rationed care. Either you have looked at this plan and concluded that the numbers don't add up, and that going in this direction will mean irreversible devastation to the health and wealth of your family, or you are such a pie in the sky optimist blind faith partisan that you are in a fetal position rocking back and forth repeating the phrase "health care; definitely health care" like rain man.

I commented back in June how scary the advent of a national health care system is (Intergalactic Healthcare - "The Public Option"). The dollars, and the irreversable nature of such a plan makes one at least apprehensive if not scared. So back to my original point. Is it a scare tactic to question something that really is big and scarry?